by Sam Sisavath
“What is it?” she asked.
He looked over. “Hmm?”
“You’re smiling like an idiot.”
“Was I?”
“Yeah.”
He shrugged. “I was just trying to remember how many times Willie boy and me have been in situations just like this one.”
“How many times?”
“Too many to count. In the Stan, during Harris County SWAT, then later, when things really got weird…” That smile again. “We always got through it, though. He’d come up with a plan and I’d carry it out to perfection, if I do say so myself. That’s what they used to call me in college, you know. Perfection Danny.”
“The two of you ever been in a situation this bad?” Nate asked.
“Worse,” Danny said.
“Worse?” Nate said doubtfully.
“We had a bad habit of getting up creeks without paddles. The shit we got into, and got out of…” He shook his head, smiling at the darkness outside.
It was the first time she could recall Danny talking about Will like he would never come back. In the weeks after Song Island, after Danny had recovered from his wound, she had kept a close watch on him. They all did—her, Carly, Lara, even Maddie and Blaine. In so many ways, the fact that Lara had the rest of them to worry about allowed her to better deal with Will’s absence. Danny, on the other hand, had to wake up to hear the bad news.
Now, as she watched Danny staring out the window, as quiet and thoughtful as she had ever seen him, she couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind at the moment. They had never really talked about the loss of Will, but she knew it weighed heavily on him. Not just the huge empty space Will had left behind, but all the responsibilities Danny had had to take up as a result of it.
She didn’t expect Danny to start spilling his guts now, and he didn’t disappoint her. Instead of pushing him to do something he would never do, she looked out the window at the encroaching darkness, at the undecipherable walls of trees that surrounded the entire airfield.
Christ, it was dark out there, and getting darker with every passing minute.
Clanging metal as Mason rushed down the catwalk, leaving the other collaborator behind on the platform. Mason disappeared into the office with Lucas and the fourth man. She could hear them talking quietly inside, making plans.
“What are they talking about in there?” Nate asked, looking back at the office on the other side of the building.
“Nothing good,” she said.
“We better keep an eye on them. Him, too,” Nate said, nodding at the lone collaborator on the platform across from them.
If the man heard them, he didn’t react to it.
She nodded, when something suddenly moved in the corner of her right eye, and she turned back to the window and peered past the bars toward the small group of darkened buildings across the airfield.
“Danny,” she hissed.
Danny glanced over. “What?”
“Movement,” she said, taking a step to her left until she was no longer exposed in front of the window.
Danny did the same on his side. “Where?”
“The buildings.”
“Ghouls?” Nate asked, hugging the wall behind her.
“I don’t think so. They didn’t move like ghouls.”
“Mason’s BFFs,” Danny said, narrowing his eyes. “They’re in the fields. Stealthy bastards must have been picking their way toward us for the last few minutes under the cover of darkness.”
“How many?” Nate asked.
Danny looked over at her. “A dozen?”
“Sounds right,” she nodded.
Nate looked back down at the office, where Mason and the others were still inside. He turned back to her and was about to say something when the collaborator Mason had left behind on the platform across from them bellowed out, “Mason! We got company!”
Mason, Lucas, and the fourth man rushed outside, but only Mason ran up the catwalk stairs, his boots clanging loudly.
She turned back around to her window and focused on the grassy fields that flanked the long landing strip. There were a dozen figures that she could see, some crouching, others lying on their stomachs, their black uniforms making them nearly invisible.
“You see that?” Danny said.
“What?” Nate said.
“They’re wearing gas masks.”
She saw it: moonlight glinting off the lens of a gas mask covering one of the men’s faces. She could only see the one man because he had raised himself up to his knees and was aiming a rifle at the hangar.
It had been a while since she had run across collaborators in gas masks, and the sight of the kneeling man outside made her shiver slightly. She would never forget Mercy Hospital in Louisiana as long as she lived, because it was where she had killed her first man. She didn’t remember what the man looked like, only the shape of the breathing apparatus covering his face and the dark shape of his eyes behind the clear lens. In some ways, the fact that she couldn’t see all of his face when she killed him made it easier to deal with. The lack of detail meant the nightmares were less vivid.
“Looks like your time’s about up,” Mason said from across the hangar. He was grinning stupidly at them. “Those are our boys out there. Better hope—”
Crack! as a bullet drilled through the windowpane half an inch above Mason’s head and pinged! off the back wall before ricocheting and embedding into the smooth floor a mere two feet from Patterson’s dead body.
“Fuck me!” Mason shouted as he ducked on the platform.
The other collaborator mirrored Mason’s action, throwing his arms over his head as if that would protect him from a bullet. Luckily they were both under the windowsill, so the shooter couldn’t see them.
Gaby and Nate remained where they were, hidden from view next to their window.
Danny, similarly unexposed, was chuckling. “Looks like they didn’t get your memo, Mason. You didn’t send it by carrier pigeon, did you? Birds are so unreliable these days.”
“Shit!” Mason said to no one in particular. He scooted along the platform before sliding up against the wall, where he could stay out of view.
“The fuck they shot at us for?” the other man asked as he did the same thing, sliding up along the side of the other window.
“Why don’t you go out there and ask them, Hendricks,” Mason said.
The man named Hendricks seemed to think about it before leaning slightly toward the window and shouting out, “Hey, don’t shoot—”
Crack! as a second bullet drilled through the windowpane a foot from Hendricks’s face and pinged! off the back of the hangar before burying itself into the floor like the first shot.
Hendricks jerked his head away from the window and shouted, “Fuck!”
Lucas and the fourth man were hugging the wall below them, apparently unsure whether to stay where they were or to make a run for the back office. She would have stayed in the safety of the room because ricocheting bullets didn’t care what uniforms you were wearing, or if you wore one at all.
“I don’t think they know their friends are in here,” Nate said, grinning at her.
“Either that, or they don’t care,” she said.
“My guess is they’re not taking any chances,” Danny said. Then, louder so Mason and the others could hear, “In fact, if I were them, I’d take this hangar out from a distance. Safer that way. Hey, Mason, you boys carrying RPGs these days?”
Mason glared over at him but didn’t answer.
Gaby peered out the window again, keeping as far back as possible while still seeing out—somewhat, anyway. Her angle was limited and she was very aware of how brightly lit her window was at this very moment, giving the shooters clear-as-day targets to aim at.
“See anything?” Nate asked behind her.
She shook her head. “Not a whole lot.”
“Can’t see shit on this side, either,” Danny said.
She couldn’t see forward, where she had
spotted the collaborator in the gas mask, but she could see off to the side just fine. The problem was the endless wall of trees that stared back at her. There was nothing out there—
Oh God, she thought, and said breathlessly, “Danny, the trees. The trees.”
She didn’t need lights or night vision to see them as they poured out of the woods surrounding the airfield; there were so many that she swore the building around her was trembling against the stampede of bare feet.
“How many?” Nate whispered behind her.
“Too many,” she whispered back.
“What’s out there?” Mason shouted over to them. “What are you seeing?”
She didn’t answer him. Neither did Danny.
Their lack of response only made Mason angrier, and he shouted again, “Hey, fucktards, what’s out there?”
Gaby was braced against the wall when it started to shudder, the vibrations causing her body to move with it. It wasn’t like when she felt the creatures coming out of the trees. No, this was stronger, more intense. Before she could properly register it, the entire hangar was rumbling as if it was going to come apart at the seams—
Danny whirled away from the window and screamed at them, “Down! Get the fuck down!”
She dropped to the platform on instinct, just as pieces of the windows began to spiderweb, and she heard the sound that she knew would haunt her nightmares for as long as she lived, however long that might be.
It came from above, like a great beast unleashing its rage upon the world.
Brooooooooooorrrrttttttttt!
CHAPTER 12
KEO
WELL, I’VE HAD better nights.
And that was before the tankers fired up the music. They were blaring heavy metal, and the drums and guitars were just loud enough to drown out the soothing waves of the ocean just beyond the beach.
I’ve had a lot better nights.
After the speakers came to life, the cannon fire began. Again and again and again. Each time it let loose, the ground shook. He waited for them to run out of shells. Surely they didn’t have a full load, did they?
But that wasn’t all they had on them. He remembered glimpsing the gun turrets from a distance and knowing they had been modified, but not how or why. In his wildest dreams, he wouldn’t have guessed someone would come up with the bright idea to rig a flamethrower to a sixty-ton war machine. It was a tad overkill, if someone were to ask him.
The unmistakable whiff of burning flesh made its way through the trapdoor above him soon after the cannon fire began. At first, he thought it might have been barbecue cooking. Well, he wasn’t too far off the mark; it just wasn’t the kind of searing meat he usually preferred. It simultaneously sounded, felt, and smelled like the world was having one big party and coming to a glorious, bloody end.
Keo had been to a lot of bad places, seen a lot of bad things, and had even done some of them (okay, maybe most of them), but he had to admit, what was happening above him now was entirely new. Then again, it could just be his present circumstance making things look much worse than they really were.
Yeah, let’s go with that.
“Jesus, how many times have they fired that thing?” Jordan said next to him.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Guess.”
“Do I have to?”
“It’ll help pass the time.”
“How so?”
“Just guess.”
On cue, another thoom! rang out, and the enclosed space trembled. Keo imagined a slew of ghouls disintegrating against the explosion somewhere out there. Closer to home, a piece of dirt that had been clinging to a section of the wall for God knew how long fell loose and landed on his hand. He flicked it away.
“What was that?” Jordan asked, alarmed.
“Nothing; just a piece of dirt.”
“Stop that. I have enough dirt on this side and under my ass, I don’t need some of yours, too.”
“Sorry.”
They were in the (coffin) rectangular space under the storage building that he had discovered earlier. It wasn’t nearly as roomy as he had promised Jordan, though there was enough space for both of them to lie down, even if they couldn’t twitch their arms or legs, or blow at a piece of dirt without it landing on one other.
Not that Keo minded too much. If he had to be sealed off from the world in a literal hole in the ground with anyone, at least Jordan smelled better than most. Not that she had done anything special, but women, even ones covered in dirt and grime as she was at the moment, with a week’s worth of sweat to boot, was still preferable to the best-smelling guy he’d ever had the misfortune to lie down next to. Besides, it felt good to give his legs a long rest.
As far as he could tell, the house above them was still standing, though he couldn’t say the same for the others around it. The possibility of losing the building wasn’t the problem; it was being trapped under its pile of rubble that made him nervous. Keo had come to accept the possibility of death in a variety of ways, and buried alive was far, far down the list.
Shoulda made a run for it. Hell, shoulda done a lot of things, pal.
“Well?” Jordan said.
“Well what?”
“I asked you a question. How many times have they fired that thing? About twenty?”
“Ten?”
“Can’t be…”
“Around ten.”
“It has to be more.”
“Maybe.”
“Are you even trying?”
“Of course.”
She sighed, her breath warm against his left ear. He could feel her body heat, hear the soft rustling of clothes as she moved her legs and arms from time to time. She got more restless each time the tank fired and a cloud of dust shook loose from the oak door a foot from their faces. The floor under them was cold and wet and hard, like sleeping on the world’s worst, most painful mattress.
“What the hell is that, anyway?” she asked.
“What?”
“That music…”
“‘War Pigs.’”
“What did you call me?”
He grinned. “It’s a song called ‘War Pigs’ by Black Sabbath.”
“Oh.” Then, “I didn’t know you were into heavy metal.”
“I’m not, but I knew this guy who was. Got himself killed in Mogadishu a few years back. RPG pierced the car we were riding in and gutted him.”
“Gutted him? I thought rockets were supposed to explode.”
“This one didn’t. It sliced through the door and got him in the stomach. Missed the client by a foot. The poor bastard was muttering ‘God’ for three straight days after that. After a while, I wanted to kill him.”
“That must have been awful.”
“Why? He lived.”
“No, I meant your friend.”
“Oh. Yeah. It was pretty ugly.”
“Were you good friends?”
“Nah. Truth is, I didn’t really like him that much.”
“Why not?”
“His taste in music sucked.”
“Oh sure, why not hate a guy because you disagree with his taste in music.”
“Glad you approve.”
She made a sound that might have been a snort. “So these people you used to work for…”
“What about them?”
“They have a name?”
“Yes.”
When he didn’t elaborate, she said, “What was it?”
“You wouldn’t know them. They don’t show up in the Yellow Pages.”
She chuckled.
“What?” he said.
“Phone books. I remember when everyone had one. Then the Internet happened. I guess we’re going to have to go back to phone books now, huh?”
“We’re going to need working phones first.”
“Yeah, there’s that. Well, one problem at a time.”
Another thoom!, and the ground around them shook again, the shockwave lingering a bit longer this time. He listened to
another house toppling somewhere in the background.
Shit, they’re landing closer and closer.
“What exactly are they doing out there?” Jordan asked, sounding simultaneously angry and scared.
“Making a hell of a mess, would be my guess.”
“What if it really is the U.S. Army? What if they’re finally fighting back?”
“What they’re doing up there isn’t fighting back.”
“I don’t understand…”
“There’s no point in blowing up a beach full of ghouls,” he said. “If you wanted to kill the bastards, you could go around firebombing buildings and taking out all the places they use as nests during the day. Break a lot of windows, bust down all the doors you can find—all that fun vandalism stuff we used to do back when we were kids.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“Okay, that I used to do when I was a kid. Eventually, you’d have to accept that there’s no point in killing them.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying that. The more we kill, the less of them there are.”
“You really think so?”
“The question is, why don’t you?”
“Because there are millions of them out there, Jordan. Maybe billions. You can kill a hundred of them, even thousands a day, and you wouldn’t make a dent. It also won’t get you any closer to winning this war. You’d just get every blue eyes in the area sicced on you. Ones like Frank, except less friendly. Anyone running around out there shelling beaches doesn’t understand what they’re facing.”
“Which is?”
“That we’re living behind enemy lines. The entire planet’s occupied territory. The last thing you want to be doing out there is drawing attention to yourself if you don’t have to.”
He expected an argument, but she was very quiet for a long time.
“I forget that you’ve been out there longer and seen more than I have,” she said finally. “Even when I was at T18, then running around in the woods with Tobias, I was never really out there. What else do you know?”
“Just that the ones behind all this had it planned out from the very beginning. Frank said as much. He said he could hear them talking, hear voices of the ones in charge. They knew what they were doing from day one. The blood farms, the hospitals, the military response…”