by Sam Sisavath
She nodded. “Be careful.”
“I didn’t think you cared.”
“I don’t.”
He grinned before hurrying off.
Don’t let there be a warehouse, Smith thought. No warehouse. No warehouse!
But no matter how hard he wanted to believe that, Smith had a feeling he was going to be disappointed. This Archers was just too big not to have its own surplus inventory stacked in a big warehouse next door.
Shit. There’s a warehouse. I just know it…
He slowed down when he reached the fishing aisle and walked between shelves filled with hard and soft bait. Unlike other parts of the Archers, this area hadn’t seen much looting, probably because very few people had uses for fishing gear these days. Smith didn’t need them either, but only because his time on Black Tide Island had taught him to fish with nothing but a string and a stick. That, and just about anything could be used as bait. He didn’t need fancy glowing lobsters or worms—
Smith stopped in his tracks, his right hand immediately reaching across his body for Margo’s knife. He drew it slowly, making as little noise as possible.
The air. Something had changed in the air.
His nostrils began to twitch, and the skin along his cheeks—as well as the rest of his face—started to tingle at a growing and very familiar smell.
Goddammit. Why couldn’t I be wrong for once?
He twisted, stabbing upward as the creature lunged down at him from one of the shelves. The ghoul let out something that almost sounded like a shriek as Smith’s knife plunged into its chest. The point of the blade easily broke through the emaciated thing’s weak cavity, a combination of Smith’s swinging momentum and the monster’s falling motion.
The knife cut its way through the creature’s body and out the back, even as the rest of the ghoul’s skeletal form sank down the length of Smith’s arm. It was difficult to gauge the size of the nightcrawler because every inch of it was so pruned and unnaturally shrunk, as if it had been soaking in water for years. It should have weighed more than it did, but the monsters were always impossibly light. That weightlessness was why they were always so fast and quiet when they moved.
The creature wasn’t so quiet now as its body slid along Smith’s arm and flopped to the smooth floor with a dull thud, spindly arms and legs splaying out as if in sacrifice. Thick black blood oozed out of the gaping hole in its chest and another one in its back, spreading across the glossy tiles. More dripped from Smith’s arm as he sacrificed a second or two to wipe the sludge off on a polyester fishing bib hanging nearby.
He stared down at the creature. It lay still, dead, the silver coating the blade on Margo’s knife having killed it on contact.
As he gazed at the dead thing, the words When there’s one, there’s usually more raced through Smith’s head just before he took one, two, then a half dozen steps backward down the aisle.
He looked up—
—and his eyes widened at the sight of them hopping across the top of the shelves toward him.
Five—ten—too many to count.
They poured out of the dark shadows in waves of pruned black flesh and hollow dark eyes, the air around Smith turning rancid. Breathing through his nostrils suddenly became unbearable.
Smith turned and fled.
Thirteen
The stench was unbearable, like a landfill that had been hidden away in a vault somewhere for thousands of years to rot was suddenly allowed to burst free into the world. It filled up his nostrils, making breathing difficult and forcing him to switch to his mouth again. That didn’t do anything to help with the foul odor clawing at his face, like physical spikes trying to mutilate his flesh and reach the soul underneath.
Smith ran, because he had no other choice. He had a silver-bladed knife, but that was it. He had the shotgun and two handguns, not to mention the spare magazines in the pack thumping against his back. All those things would slow some of them down—some of them—but it wouldn’t stop them. The only thing that could stop a ghoul was silver.
And he was very aware of how heavy the shotgun was, along with the pack.
But especially the shotgun. Damn, it was heavy!
He twisted around until he was backpedaling, threatening to fall down on his ass with every step. By some miracle, he remained upright.
He knew they were back there—he couldn’t just smell them, he could feel them violating the same air that he gasped for—but seeing the horde rushing through the store, crashing into shelves, knocking down racks, and getting netted by layers of clothing almost took his breath away.
It had been too long since he’d come face-to-face with this kind of number. Too, too long. People he knew said there had been thousands, maybe more of them, in Darby Bay during the battle, but Smith hadn’t witnessed it in person. He had arrived too late, after everything was over, after all their friends were gone—
Stop thinking and shoot!
He did, firing and racking, then firing the shotgun again. He had to slow down—but he never stopped—to do it, but that couldn’t be helped. Flames stabbed out of the barrel, and buckshot ripped into black flesh that glistened against the random strays of moonlight pouring in from the high windows. They were spread out, coming at him in a jagged line of spidery legs and wild, swinging arms and deformed heads. A few were missing eyes, others had lost limbs, but none of it stopped them.
They were fast. Too fast.
He pulled the trigger and racked, and pulled the trigger again.
But the shadows continued to spit the creatures out one after another. There weren’t nearly as many as he’d first thought—thirty, maybe forty, if his eyes weren’t deceiving him—but the combination of darkness and the deep, dark black of their skin made it seem as if there were more than there actually were.
At least, Smith hoped he was right.
God, he hoped he was right!
The shotgun ran out of shells faster than he’d anticipated, and rather than reload, Smith tossed the weapon and twisted back around and continued running. He picked up speed with every stride, hearing but not caring to look back as the ghouls continued their pursuit.
He didn’t bother shouting at Margo and Clark to alert them that he was coming. They would have heard the shotgun blasts by now unless they were—
The pop-pop-pop of gunfire coming from the parking lot to his left signaled that Freddy’s crew was, once again, fighting for their lives. Which meant the horde behind him hadn’t come alone. The ones that hadn’t found their way into the store had gone around it, toward the parking lot—
Something splashed against the back of his neck, and Smith glanced back, just as a ghoul reached for him with bony fingers.
Jesus Christ! How’d it get so close without him realizing it?
He unslung the pack and swung backward with it, knocking away the creature’s outreached arm and nailing it across the elongated head. The impact threw the ghoul off its feet and sideways, sending it crashing into three other nightcrawlers. All four splattered to the floor like wild coyotes in a Looney Tunes cartoon.
Not that Smith expected that small victory to stop the rest.
And indeed, it didn’t.
They were still coming, still spread out, still catching up to him little by little…
He dropped the pack to lessen his load and could instantly feel himself picking up speed. He still had the SIG Sauers and Margo’s knife, and they would have to do. All the extra ammo in the pack wasn’t worth a damn if he didn’t have time to reload. Besides, they weren’t the right bullets anyway, and at this very second he needed the right ones. Badly.
“Get down!” a voice shouted from in front of him.
It was Clark, appearing in the aisle like a ghostly apparition. The big man was lifting his rifle to aim.
Smith did exactly as Clark ordered. He dropped to the floor and slid along the smooth tile, scattering footballs and basketballs and other sports equipment that had fallen off their shelves and into his path.
&n
bsp; Almost instantly, Clark unloaded, firing on full-auto and oscillating his shots left and right, then right and left. The brap-brap-brap of his continuous gunfire filled Smith’s eardrums as he glided past the shooting man, casings ejecting from Clark’s AR clink-clink-clinking against the floor around them. More than a couple of empty brass casings bounced off Smith’s head, and at least one made its scalding-hot presence felt when it ricocheted off his left cheek.
Smith snapped up to his feet as soon as he was past Clark. He spun around, his hand going for his holstered SIG and drawing it—
Clark flew past him, shouting, “Run, run, run!”
Ghouls. They were coming.
Of course they were still coming.
Except now there weren’t nearly as many. Clark’s gunfire had decimated the creatures, leaving only half—maybe less than that—of their original number. Some of the remaining ghouls were picking themselves up from the floor where they had fallen after tripping or colliding over the bodies of their fallen nightcrawlers. Not that they wasted even a second mourning.
Ghouls didn’t feel. Ghouls didn’t care about anything but reaching their prey.
And right now, that was him.
Smith shot the closest ghoul in the head, punching out its right eye. That didn’t even slow it down. The damned thing’s head snapped back briefly, but it never lost its stride.
Smith turned and ran after Clark.
“Incoming!” Clark shouted.
Smith didn’t have to wonder who Clark was shouting at. That would be Margo, waiting for them near the front entrances. She had stayed behind to watch the doors while Clark came over to assist him. There was no fear in Margo’s face as she waited, patiently, for them to reach her.
Margo lifted her rifle and took aim, but she didn’t fire until Clark—then Smith—had run past her. Then she opened up, the pop-pop-pop of her shots ringing out almost in sync to the battle going on outside in the parking lot at the same time.
Clark, in front of Smith, stopped and spun around and began reloading his rifle. “The doors!” he shouted at Smith.
Smith nodded and ran toward the doors as Clark pulled on his rifle’s charging handle and stepped toward Margo and began firing on semiauto. Ghouls fell in front of them in waves. Margo smashed a nightcrawler in the skull with the butt of her rifle when it got too close, then spun the weapon back around and continued shooting.
Damn, she’s good.
They both were. Margo and Clark didn’t need his help, so Smith focused on the doors. He turned around just as two ghouls bounded across the parking lot, black flesh flickering like glitter underneath the moonlight.
Smith drew his knife as the first ghoul lunged through one of the destroyed inner doors. He kicked it in the chest, and the creature seemed to ricochet off the sole of his Merrells as if it were a beach ball, landing at least ten feet back.
That allowed the second nightcrawler to reach Smith, but he was ready and stabbed it through the forehead. The blade penetrated the skull without much trouble, and blood sprayed a nearby wall in a nasty shade of black when Smith pulled the knife out.
The first creature was already on its feet and coming again. Smith waited for it. Not that he had very long to wait. He grabbed it by the throat as it launched itself at him and sank the knife into its face.
Smith let the lifeless corpse drop to the floor and looked out at the parking lot.
The action outside was just chaotic, with muzzle flashes moving away from the store, almost near the street now. Either Freddy’s boys were running for it, or—No, that was exactly what they were doing. However many were left, they were now fleeing the Archers and the ghouls in the parking lot, firing their weapons as they went. Smith couldn’t make out how many were running or how many undead were in pursuit. There was just too much night and mist.
Not that Smith gave a damn. All that mattered was that the creatures out there weren’t attacking the Archers. Even better, Freddy’s group was drawing the remaining ghouls outside with them from the looks of it.
Better you boys than me.
He turned around just as Margo backed up toward him, ejecting and snapping a new magazine into her rifle. Clark followed, but instead of reloading—or maybe he’d already reloaded but didn’t want to waste a bullet—he had his knife out and was slashing at two ghouls as they threw themselves with wild abandon at him. He got one, and Margo shot the other, clipping it in the shoulder. That was more than enough to introduce the silver-coated bullet into its bloodstream, and the ghoul collapsed to the floor next to Clark’s victim.
Those two were, Smith realized, the last of the wave that had made it inside the Archers.
And he had survived them.
Goddamn, he had survived them!
“Freddy?” Margo was saying, looking back at him.
“Took off, with ghouls in pursuit,” Smith said. He walked over to join her. “My suggestion is to find someplace to hole up in case they come back or more show up. And I’m not talking about Freddy and his boys.”
“I’ll go get Donna,” Clark said. He slung his rifle and hurried past Smith.
Smith looked after the big man and toward the gym area. He had missed it earlier in all the action, but the horses were gone. “Shit. The horses…”
“They smelled the ghouls before you even started shooting,” Margo said. “We tried to stop them, but they stampeded for the door. It was chase after them and confront what was out there, or save your life.”
“Then you made the right choice.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Smith smirked. “How did they get loose?”
“Donna.” Margo sighed. “I guess she didn’t tie them down well enough.”
Margo looked over at the pile of dead ghouls. There were so many of them that they all but covered up the floor, with the fallen clothes around them splattered with so much black liquid it was hard to tell they weren’t black to begin with.
And the smell…
Smith grabbed a shirt from a nearby rack and tied it around his mouth. “The employee lounge in the back. We should go there. It’s defensible.”
“What if Freddy comes back?” Margo asked.
“Assuming he makes it through tonight, you really think he’ll take the risk of coming back here? Before morning?”
She shook her head. “He’s a violent psychopath, but he’s not stupid.”
“Good to know.”
Clark came back with Donna, still unconscious, in his arms.
“Lead the way,” Margo said to Smith.
He did, heading toward the back. Clark followed with Donna, and Margo brought up the rear.
It was quiet inside the store again, except for the sound of their squeaking shoes, but it wasn’t so silent outside. They could still make out the occasional pop of rifle fire, sometimes mixed in with those of handguns. So that meant some of Freddy’s gang were alive.
At least for now.
Smith looked back at Clark, following closely on his heels. “How’s she doing?”
“So far, so good,” Clark said. “I think I might have given her too much sedative, though.”
Smith envied the serene expression on the teenager’s face as she slept. He wondered if she was having a good dream at the moment.
“Thanks for saving my life,” Smith said to the big man.
“Yeah, well, we did try to kill you earlier, so I guess that makes us even,” Clark said.
Smith grinned and thought, We’ll see about that.
Fourteen
Smith opened his eyes sometime in the middle of the night. Clark was sitting on the room’s lone couch across the employee lounge from him, the big man’s eyes closed while the still-unconscious Donna lay with her head in his lap. They were both snoring, Clark’s noticeably louder. They looked natural together, like father and daughter.
It didn’t take Smith very long to find Margo. She was sitting next to the door, her rifle in her lap. Even in the semidarkness, with no ligh
ts between them, he could tell that she wasn’t just wide awake but looking back at him.
“Go back to sleep,” Margo said.
“Don’t think that’s gonna happen,” Smith said. He picked himself up from the floor and stretched. “Anything happen while I was out?”
“No signs of ghouls or Freddy.”
“You think he made it?”
“I don’t know. And I don’t care.”
“What are you hoping for?”
“What do you think?”
Smith smiled.
Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.
He walked over to where Margo was sitting and sat down across the door from her. It was locked with a deadbolt, and there was no other way in or out of the room. Smith didn’t like those lack of options, but for tonight it was the best they could get without leaving the Archers in search of a better spot.
He glanced down at his wrist before remembering he didn’t have his Casio anymore and hadn’t had the opportunity to find a replacement. “What time is it?”
“Time for you to get a watch,” Margo said.
Smith grunted. “I had a watch, but someone took it.”
“Who would take a watch from you when there are two-tone gold and diamond Rolexes lying around everywhere?”
“You’d be surprised what kind of weird ass people are out there.”
“You’ve been around,” Margo said. It wasn’t a question.
“So have you.”
She glanced across the room at Clark and Donna, snoring on the sofa in unison. “We all have.”
“So you gonna tell me the story with you guys and Freddy out there?”
“Do you really want to know?”
Smith thought about it. Did he really want to know? He hadn’t really considered the question; it had just seemed like the thing to ask—to collect intel. It was what he’d been taught back at Black Tide: Know your enemy.
But now, looking at Margo, he wasn’t so sure.
Do I really want to know?
For some reason, he said, “Yeah, I do.”
“I told you, we used to run together,” Margo said. “Then things changed.”