“Good,” she says and slowly I realize what she means. If it gets to it I’ll do the deed. I have no choice but to cross us all over before we’re turned.
More howls and shouts, the Dubs moving steadily forward.
The stench of the risen hits us first, the air perfumed with the funk of death and decay and an odor that reminds me of rancid bodies that have been heaped onto a bonfire. The sour smell someone once said of corruption.
There’s a Dub nearly on a man and his little girl and so I shoot the thing in the head which seems to piss off the ghoul’s comrades.
The screams of the Dubs rise, their bodies so tightly packed that the sheetrock on the walls begins to crumble.
One of the Dubs squirts free and runs, arms raised, at a squat, muscular woman who faces the thing down. The woman reaches into a pocket and plucks out something trivial and throws it at the Dub’s head.
BAROOM!
The Dub’s head shatters.
Bone-confetti and gore spatter the woman, the bullet that just decapitated the monster zinging into the wall.
Silence is sucked out of the hallway and then the sound of sustained gunfire bounces off the walls.
“GET DOWN!” I say.
We duck and cover our ears as holes are blown through the flood of flesh-eaters. I watch their bodies jerk spastically, the walls rupturing all around them, bullets gouging holes in the walls, piercing the roof.
And then the last Dub falls, skull-capped by a perfectly-placed shot and a spasm of fear grips my gut at the thought of who fired the shot.
I bring my pistol up, expecting hell and overjoyed to see a black face appear out of the smoke and haze.
It’s Brixton.
He’s followed by Asian Phil and the big man named Donkey and Mad Meg who’s wiping off the gore from a stabbing knife across her thigh.
Brixton exhales and removes the empty ammo magazine from his assault rifle as Zeus runs and jumps into his arms.
He hugs the dog and I reach out a hand that he grips and pumps.
“How many lives you use up getting here, Jumper?”
“At least four.”
He smiles.
“You come from the lower levels?” he says.
I nod.
“How bad is it?”
“They followed us in.”
“How many?”
I pause, assessing the faces of everyone staring at me and then I whisper:
“Jesus. All of them.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Brixton does a quick recon of the doorway, the gap between the buildings, the kid on the other building still staring at us.
“We need to move quick ‘less we wanna be shanked. Your old mate Shooter is rounding up his boys with Odin’s blessings and they’re not too far behind us.”
I point at the kid on the other building and without hesitation, Brixton turns and aims at him.
“Aye!” Brixton shouts.
The kid holds his hands up.
“Swing over the ladder!”
The kid hesitates and Brixton shoots the windows above the kid’s head, little shards of glass showering him as he quickly unfurls the ladder.
“FUCKING NOW!” Brixton says.
The kid commences to extend the ladder, turning a wheel that powers it slowly toward us.
I kneel and spot a kind of hitch on the ground and as the ladder nears us, I grab it and maneuver its black metal ball and then set it down on the hitch, securing the thing in place.
Brixton takes a few steps and jostles the ladder which bends, but holds.
Then he points at the stragglers that followed us and windmills his arm.
“GO, GO, GO!”
I grab Stan’s arm and lead him out.
“Can you make it?”
Stan nods, shivering in the cold air.
“Is it like they say it is over there?” he asks, pointing at the other building.
“Better.”
I kiss him on the forehead and he grins and moves across, the other stragglers filing after him. It’s chaotic, some of them running, others petrified and on their hands and knees, unwilling to look down or side-to-side.
I see Roger Parker emerge from the other building. He’s got on a tactical vest and for a moment I think he’s going to prevent the stragglers from making it across the ladder. Instead, he mounts it and heads over to us.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Parker says to me, standing between us and the ladder, blocking the way forward.
“We’re sending people over,” I reply.
“You have permission?”
“We don’t need it,” Brixton says.
Parker looks at Brixton then glances down the hallway at the Dub bodies lying in heaps. The sound of sirens and shouts are far off, but audible.
“They’re in the building, Parker,” Brixton says. “The dead have taken the building and there ain’t no good way down.”
“What about Odin?” Parker asks.
“Odin’s a murderer,” I say.
“A murderer who still holds the keys to the kingdom.”
“Not for long,” I reply.
“This is your moment, Mister One Zero,” Brixton says, leaning in close to Parker. “This is your chance to stand up and be counted.”
“And when the dust settles?”
“Who else is gonna be on top but you?”
Parker nods and then Brixton grabs his wrist.
“Save as many of our people as you can and make sure you do right by ‘em,” Brixton whispers. “Don’t fuck these good people over a second time or give them any handle against ya or you’ll answer to me.”
“Absolute powers corrupts absolutely,” Parker says, nodding, waving his hand to signal to the other stragglers that it’s okay for them to follow him over into the other building.
“When they cross the widow-maker you and your people follow,” Brixton says to me, watching the stragglers filter over the ladder.
“What about you?”
“Don’t worry about us. We got business downstairs and besides, Sweepers are always the last ones to piss off to the big show,” he says, Asian Phil nodding, the team reloading and readying their weapons.
A scream rises behind, the two of us looking back to see one of the stragglers, an older woman, shot through the back.
She spins like a drunken person on the ladder, blood smeared across her chest. Glancing back at us, another shot shears off half her face and then she’s falling, eyes wide, mouth open, her screams drowned by the echo of rifles bouncing off the canyon between the buildings.
“PROWLERS!” I shout.
I see Parker grab the other stragglers and make it safely inside the other building as bursts of gunfire ring out.
“HOLD ME!” Brixton says, Asian Phil grabbing the back of a yellow safety harness strapped to Brixton’s back. This allows the big man to swing out and glance up and then he’s pulled back and nods and sucks in a breath and swings out again.
In one fluid motion he fires a burst from his gun at the top of the building.
There’s a cry and then one of the Prowlers falls past us, nearly hitting the ladder as Asian Phil pulls Brixton back to safety.
“How many are up there?” Naia asks.
“Too many to count.”
I look across the ladder and spot Stan in a window, hands pressed to the glass. I wave goodbye and step back from the open door.
“What say?” Brixton says to me.
“We can’t go across the ladder.”
“Figured that out all by yourself, didya?”
I point to the floor.
“What’s down there aside from certain death?”
“There’s a machine,” I say. “A huge battle truck that’s big enough to drive out of here.”
“Bullshit.”
“I saw it with my own eyes. It’s down below ten.”
“Which means we have to go past the Keep.”
I nod and Brixton’s people exchange qui
ck glances.
We caucus for a few seconds and introductions are made between Brixton and his people and Del Frisco and Naia, and then, sensing no better plan, weapons and ammunition are given to us.
Mad Meg hands Naia a pistol.
“Time to sack up,” she says.
“Ovary up,” Naia replies, racking the slide on the pistol as Mad Meg grins and smacks Naia on the head and whispers, “good, very good.”
I steal a glance at Brixton.
“So I guess we’re all traitors now, huh?” I say.
“If this be treason, then let’s make the most of it,” he replies with a smirk.
We trek down a veranda corridor that runs along to the left of the building, then at a T-junction, joins the main thoroughfare that bisects the floor.
The junction is loaded with Dubs so we swing to the right where there’s a large bullpen filled with cubes of glass-walled offices. A four-foot wide aisle runs between the offices, leading to a set of wood and glass double-doors.
Brixton crouches and flicks two fingers to us as if to say “advance,” and we do.
We scurry forward, me, Naia, and Del Frisco in the middle, the others around us. Brixton has his hand over Zeus’s mouth, the hair on the back of the dog’s neck ridged.
We’re halfway across the floor when there’s a grunt and then a burst of breath from the other side of a glass panel. Brixton holds a finger to his lips and then we wait. Slow deliberation turns to anticipation as a shadow rises up, visible through the glass. Then a face, a wet mouth, presses to the glass and yellow eyes rotate down and the Dub, a shaggy, blue-boated mess who’s missing his right hand, pounds its left stump on the glass.
The other ghouls hear this and throw themselves at the glass.
“Double-time it!” Brixton says.
We rise and run as the Dubs shatter the glass behind us, flopping over the wooden portions of the office walls.
We open up on the Dubs, blasting them back as we hit the double-doors that spill to marble steps which are speckled with blood and body fluids. Corpses of the recently slain, residents ambushed by the Dubs, lie scattered, twitching and convulsing, on the verge of being resurrected.
The building, which only hours earlier had been a hive of activity and commerce, is now a shattered husk filled with the dead and soon-to-be dead. There’s a part of me that thinks they had it coming, Odin and his people. Every evil thing that has ever been done in the name of the community is being revisited on it. And then upon searching the bodies I spot a young girl, only a few years younger than me. Blood trickles out of her nose and when she mouths the words “kill me,” I know nobody deserves to die like this.
An explosion jars everything, forcing me to look back.
Asian Phil’s tossed a grenade at the pursuing Dubs, knocking a handful of them to the ground. One of the wounded zombies, a woman with a shaved head, rises, dragging coils of her own intestines before Brixton shoots her through the mouth.
Against the far off battle cries of the Dubs we weave down the steps and slam shut a pair of heavy doors that safeguard an inner chamber filled with terrified residents huddled around a long metal table and a grouping of large, leather chairs. I imagine many important meetings were held here and decisions hammered out in the years before the world ended. On the other side of this space, through a shattered glass door, is a foyer of sorts and a bank of elevators.
We tread across the chamber and past the residents, all of us shouting, imploring them to take shelter and arm themselves.
There’s a titanic blast somewhere overhead and a dry rain of dust falls from the ceiling.
Suddenly, from speakers hidden in the drop-ceiling comes Odin’s voice. Perhaps the most eerie thing about hearing him again is how quickly the range of his voice changes. In one instant it’s booming, the weight of authority behind it, and in another it’s softer, more reasonable. His is the voice of a holy man, of a seducer, of a salesman fighting to convince people to undertake actions they might never have otherwise considered.
“They have come amongst us,” Odin says. “A terror to all that are around them, having resolved themselves by weak means to destroy all that we’ve built. But the mischief they’ve plotted and the violence they’ve offered and exercised will be brought down upon their own heads and I will burn them up in and dung the ground with their flesh.”
“What the hell is he talking about?” I say.
“Us, he’s talking about us, Wyatt,” Naia replies.
“He’s an asshole and an idiot,” Asian Phil says.
“No, he’s not,” Brixton says. “You could take a stroll through Odin’s deepest, darkest thoughts and get plenty wet. The man’s a straight-up destroyer of worlds.”
“Either way he’s lost his mind,” Del Frisco offers.
“You’re assuming he had one to begin with,” Brixton adds.
Odin continues to babble like some kind of deranged prophet, frightening those who’ve sought shelter in the chamber even more. Some drops to their hands and begin praying to him while others fight to shout his voice down. And yet his voice continues to rise through the speakers and I hear these final words:
“When a people have grown to such a height of blood and deceit against the one, true ruler, they shall all be put to the sword and suffer the most terrible of deaths that can be imagined.”
BOOM!
The doors to the room explode and a barrage of gunfire rings out.
Figures swim in and out of focus, but I can see Shooter, holding a machine-gun, backed by a dozen of his men.
They make no distinction between us and those seeking shelter in the room, opening up on anything that moves.
People fall where they stand, cut down in a wall of lead. Mad Meg is winged in the arm, the bullet tearing through the soft flesh in the space between her bicep and shoulder. She doesn’t even cry out, sinking to one knee, wrapping her shirt around the wound as we retreat to the far side of the room and tip over a pair of wooden desks for a barricade.
We return fire and then one of Shooter’s men tosses a grenade at us. The grenade bounces and spins toward us and Brixton displays some his athletic prowess by wearing forward and dropping low to kick away the grenade which explodes and kills one of Shooter’s men.
Brixton and Donkey snipe from our makeshift blind, wounding or crossing over a few of Shooter’s men, buying Brixton some time to double back.
I peak over the blind and spot Shooter directing his soldiers, urging them to advance.
I fire my pistol at him, but it’s as if he anticipated the shot, twisting to the left before the bullet can strike him down. He vanishes in the smoke, bullets eating into our blind, a grenade air-bursting thirty-feet away, bringing a portion of the drop-ceiling down in an ear-splitting crash.
“There’s too many!” Naia says.
Using the smoke as a screen, we fall back, zigzagging across the chamber only to see more of Odin’s men rushing through the foyer. We slide to the left, hip-firing at them, scuttling over a breezeway that ends in a vestibule jumbled with industrial and commercial equipment, some of the crap the Jumper teams brought back from the outside world.
Hiding behind a generator, I look back but don’t see Shooter of any of his men pursuing.
We quickly knock down several of the bulkier items near us: four industrial fans, a cooling machine, two generators and the like, to form a blockade. Then we reload and wait, but nothing stirs at the other end of the breezeway.
“There’s a reason they didn’t follow us,” Brixton says.
“They’re scared?”
Brixton shakes his head.
“There’s something they’re hunting for on fourteen.”
He motions down with his eyes and then he peers at each of us.
“There’s a detonator there.”
There’s silence for a few seconds.
“What – are you serious?” I ask.
“As a fire at an orphanage,” Brixton replies.
�
�Jesus, Brixton.”
“It’s the final solution. Odin gave the order to roll us up.”
Naia looks over at me, perplexed.
“What?” Naia asks. “What does that mean?”
“They want to do it like we did before when you saved me, Naia,” I say. “They want to blow the whole building up with us in it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“They had a meeting,” Brixton says, everyone standing around him. “Odin and upper-management convened a real quick pow-wow on thirty when they found out you and your friend had come back into the building with the Dubs in tow.”
“They probably had it set up all along,” Del Frisco says, slapping his hands together.
“Or maybe he’s just playing the cards he’s been dealt,” Asian Phil says.
“He always was an opportunistic bastard,” Brixton says. “What better way to be remembered that to go out in a blaze of glory? Drain the goddamn sea to kill the fish.”
I listen to the others talk and wonder whether Odin, the master tactician, did indeed have this planned all along. Maybe he let me and Naia escape knowing we’d probably be forced back into the building again which would provide justification for martyring himself and rolling the entire building up. The notion that it was all planned out is a fluke and hard to fathom, but then I remember Dad always said there are no coincidences, no real ones at least. Soon Brixton and Naia are arguing and I turn back.
“So let’s get the hell out of this death-trap before they do the deed,” she says.
“Not enough time, little lady.”
She glares at him.
“I’m not climbing down the outside of a goddamn skyscraper again.”
“I don’t fancy that route either.”
“Well then quit the hand-wringing and sack up, big man,” Del Frisco says, “cause I got us a way out of this mess and it starts with doing a little spidering.”
Brixton studies Del Frisco and his bruised face and mutilated hands.
“You take a look in the mirror lately, kid?” Brixton asks Del Frisco.
“Hell no.”
“Cause you look like a sack of smashed arseholes.”
“I feel twice as bad.”
They trade a long look.
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