The heatwave cascaded over him from behind, throwing Keo to the filthy floor on his face. Luckily, he was able to stick out his hands to keep from crashing right into the grime-covered ground. The knuckles of his right hand went slightly numb as they slammed into the hard concrete while still gripping the KA-BAR, a voice inside his head shouting at him, Don’t lose the knife! You lose the knife, and you’re dead! You hear me? Don’t lose the knife!
Don’t lose the knife…
That’s right! Don’t lose the knife, pal!
And he didn’t, even as intense heat enveloped him. Chunks of cement and brick pelted his back and legs, and he braced himself against the onslaught, counting down from ten.
…nine…
A severed black limb landed in front of him, the flesh sizzling at the elbow.
…eight…
Pieces of a leg bounced off the top of his head, leaving behind a black sludge that he could already smell.
…seven…
Fingers—or were those toes?—ricocheted off the floor around him like heavy rain, each droplet black and pruned and hairless.
…six…
Keo’s sense of smell was already stuffed with the rotting garbage of attacking ghouls, but it was now overloaded with the aroma of burning flesh.
…five…
A ghoul, half of its head missing and its jaw hanging onto the rest of its face by thin sinews of muscle, stumbled into Keo’s peripheral vision. It turned, as if sensing him. One eye was missing, but the remaining one narrowed at the sight of Keo.
…four…
Keo shook off the shock and numbness and snapped up to his knees as the creature staggered toward him, moving on legs that were slightly bent outward. He stabbed it in the chest, and even before it could fully sag to the ground, Keo jumped up to his feet and spun around.
There was a big crater where Sharon had been standing. The blast (Was that a grenade? Where the hell had she been hiding a grenade?) had taken out parts of the back alley walls as well as a large number of ghouls that had been charging toward the woman. There were limbs everywhere. The thick scent of scorched flesh mingled with the choking stink of smoke and soot.
Keo took a couple of steps back as a pair of ghouls crawled toward him, dragging the upper half of their bodies now that they no longer had legs. He didn’t waste time killing them. They weren’t going to reach him anyway unless he just stood there like an idiot and didn’t move for at least a day.
Movement from behind!
Keo spun and slashed, taking out one—two—four ghouls that converged on him. As soon as they fell, others began appearing out of the smoke and shadows toward him.
Jackson and Liz. Where were Jackson and Liz?
Shut up! What did I tell you about keep moving? Keep moving, you dummy!
Keo took off, making a beeline for the closest alleyway. He’d lost all sense of direction and didn’t know where he was going, but this seemed like the right choice given the huge number of ghouls coming from the opposite direction.
There was just enough moonlight to keep him from running right into a brick wall, but that was about it. He couldn’t make out anything on the other end of the corridor. There could be a fence back there or another wall—
The street!
He pivoted onto the sidewalk and jumped onto the street and continued running.
Faster! Faster!
He could hear them coming behind him, and a quick glance—
There had to be ten back there and even more pouring out of the alleyway. Their natural stink, now coupled with the smell of singed flesh, tickled at his senses. He might have been able to hear the sound of their stampeding feet if both his ears weren’t still ringing from Sharon’s blast. The only bright side—and that was stretching it big time—was that there was nothing in front of him. The creatures were all behind him, so he didn’t have to fight his way up the street.
The street. Get off the street!
Nothing good was going to happen as long as he stayed out in the open underneath the moonlight. He thought he could glimpse figures flitting across the rooftops on both sides of him but didn’t want to make sure. The ones up there didn’t matter when considering how many were behind him right now.
Then Keo spotted it.
A door.
A wide-open door among a wall of closed ones. It might as well be a lighthouse with a big bright spotlight telling him to “Come here! This is your salvation! Get in here now!”
Maybe, if he’d had a second or two—or five—to think about it, Keo would have kept right on going past the wide-open door, but he didn’t. He wasn’t even sure how long he’d been running.
A minute? Two?
Five seconds?
And there was the door, begging him to take it. The only one in the entire street, it seemed, that wasn’t sealed shut.
Take it! a voice shouted.
Don’t take it! his gut instincts chimed in.
Take it! Get out of the streets! Get out of the streets now, you idiot!
His instincts lost, and Keo veered left and out of the street.
As he turned, he was able to glimpse a stream of moving shadows behind him. He could have seen more if he took another half second to tilt his head, but the truth was he didn’t want to know. Knowing that they were back there, and charging fast, was enough.
Keo jumped up the sidewalk and darted into the opening, spun on a dime, grabbed the door, and slammed it shut. There was a deadbolt, and he slid it into place, then glanced around. A black and shiny Foosball table stood out the most, and he dived for it.
Bam-bam-bam! like machinegun fire crashing into the door behind him.
Keo had gotten a good grip on the smooth edge of the table and was about to summon a dose of Herculean strength to lift and carry it over to the door when he heard the crash!
He turned, gasping for breath.
Ghouls were falling through the two windows that flanked the front entrance. They were literally pouring into the building, scrambling over each other to be the first one inside. They sliced their flesh against the jagged glass—not that any of them noticed what they were doing to their frail, thin, and emaciated bodies.
Keo abandoned the Foosball table and stumbled back farther into the building. He glanced around desperately, looking for a way out. Or at least something that was better than a front door and two now-useless windows.
A back office, maybe, one with a sturdy oak—
A hallway, behind him. It had to do!
He ran for it, telling himself not to glance back because there was no point. He already knew what he would see: Ghouls, flopping their way through both windows.
A door at the end of the corridor in front of him. There was a deadbolt on it, just above the silver doorknob. A basement of some kind? It was either that, or the bathroom to his right.
The basement! Take the basement!
Keo unlocked the door and pulled the heavy lumber (Good! Heavy is good!) out of the frame and lunged inside. He almost fell down a flight of stairs—it was so dark he could barely see anything—but managed to hold up in time. The truth was, he wasn’t even close to tumbling down the steps, but it seemed way closer because it was so damn dark inside the basement.
He spun around and pulled the door closed, and immediately realized a big problem: The door was made to be locked from the outside, not the inside. That was why he’d had to pull the deadbolt to get in.
Should have taken the restroom. Dammit!
It was too late to change his mind now. They were right behind him.
They were right behind him.
Keo grabbed the lever with both hands and held on for dear life, and waited for the inevitable.
One second.
Two…
Bam-bam-bam! as the first wave of ghouls pummeled the thick piece of lumber on the other side.
Bam-bam-bam!
Bam-bam-bam!
Bam-bam-bam…!
Nine
It was dar
k.
Bam-bam-bam!
Really dark.
Bam-bam-bam!
Dark enough that Keo had almost done a header down a flight of stairs that began about seven or so feet behind him. His mind was conjuring up all kinds of nasty scenarios even as he maintained his grip on the cold and slippery doorknob (Jesus. Why is it so slippery? Is that sweat? Blood? My blood? If not mine, then whose?) while he braced against the heavy wooden slab with his left shoulder.
Bam-bam-bam!
He wanted desperately to turn around to make sure there wasn’t anything creeping up the stairs behind him. Luckily, his ears had gotten better and the ringing was fading. At least it wasn’t overwhelming his senses right now as he grunted against the door, feeling every bam-bam-bam as the ghouls continued their relentless assault.
He was feeling good about the door holding as long as he kept the lever from turning. It felt extremely solid and heavy, and was going to take a legion of ghouls to break it down. And even that wouldn’t be enough. Even if there were a hundred (Shit. I hope there’s not a hundred of them out there.), there were only so many pairs of bodies that could ram themselves against the door at a single given time.
The doorknob moved constantly against his grip, but he had no trouble holding on. Ghouls were bumping against it, some probably even groping at it, but it didn’t seem as if they were trying to actually turn it. He had to remember that the creatures didn’t know how to open doors. For them it was an obstacle to get around or through, so they banged themselves against it, trying to batter it down.
Bless your simple-minded undead hearts!
So he was feeling pretty good. Not exactly ecstatic, but as good as a man covered in ghoul sludge could, anyway. Every breath he took filled his nostrils with a vile odor that was akin to being punched repeatedly in the face by Mike Tyson. There was liquid dripping off his chin and right cheek, and the front of his shirt was thick with the stuff. His pants legs, too, but that was easier to ignore.
I smell like shit. No, that’s not true. I wish it was shit. This is more like dog vomit.
His thoughts strayed to Liz and Jackson. Had they made it back to the office? He didn’t have to wonder so much about Sharon. She was gone. Grenades didn’t go off by themselves. Someone had to pull the pin. Someone who wanted to give her friends a chance to escape even if the cost was her own life. Sharon had gone out like a champ. If Keo had any choice in the matter, he wouldn’t mind ending it the same—
Floorboards creaking behind him.
Keo spun around, taking one hand off the doorknob while the other stabbed down for his sheathed KA-BAR. He pulled it out just as the small figure appeared out of the darkness, looking out at him with wide eyes.
It was a girl with short blonde hair and large blue eyes.
Keo stared at her, and she stared back, and neither one of them said anything. If she was anything like him, she was trying to recover from the almost heart attack at seeing the other.
Definitely an almost heart attack there.
She was only visible from the chest up because she hadn’t come all the way up the stairs. He searched for a weapon, but the closest thing he could find was the bulbous head of an aluminum baseball bat held defensively in front of her. If she were scared of him, Keo couldn’t detect it in her eyes.
Bam-bam-bam! from behind him, reminding him that it wasn’t just the girl he had to worry about.
And that was what she was—a girl. Even without any lights to see with, Keo could tell that much. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen, if that.
Bam-bam-bam! as the door moved slightly behind him now that he wasn’t pushing against it with everything he had. Keo changed that by pushing his back flush against the smooth wooden frame while keeping one hand permanently glued to the doorknob.
Slowly, the noise from the hallway outside faded until Keo could focus just on the girl in front of him.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” the girl said back.
Okay, that was a good start. He could detect obvious hesitation and maybe some fear in her voice, but apparently not enough for her to turn and flee.
Or attack him with the bat.
“What are you doing down here?” he asked.
“What are you doing down here?” she shot back.
He couldn’t help but grin at that. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“Neither did I.”
“You gonna hit me with that?” he asked, nodding at the baseball bat in her hand.
“Depends. You gonna stab me with that?” she asked, nodding at the KA-BAR in his hand.
“Oh, this.”
Keo slipped the knife back into its sheath. The girl was at least ten feet away, with enough stairs and the landing between them that he wasn’t afraid she could make up the distance and bash his head in with the bat before he could get the knife back out to defend himself. That, and the fact she was so tiny, Keo thought he had a reasonable chance of taking her even barehanded.
“Better?” Keo said.
“Depends,” the girl said.
“On?”
“Who are you, and what are you doing down here?”
Keo glanced around him, but all he could see were cobwebbed corners and a wooden ceiling. There were no lights, and though his eyes had adjusted somewhat, he was still, literally, in the dark about his surroundings.
“Where is ‘here,’ anyway?” he asked.
The girl shook her head. She may or may not have relaxed slightly. Maybe because she could see that he didn’t want to be down here any more than she did and that there were other things on the other side of the door neither one of them wanted to face. The continued bam-bam-bam! of ghouls ramming against the door didn’t hurt Keo’s status as the lesser of two evils.
That’s me. The lesser of two evils.
Hey, whatever works.
“I don’t know,” the girl said. Then, before he could ask anything else, “Who are you?”
“I’m Keo.”
“K-who?”
He smiled. He’d gotten worse reactions. “Keo. Rhymes with mayo.”
“Oh. That’s your name.”
“Yes. What’s yours?”
“Carter.”
Carter? Now where have I heard—
Oh, right.
Was he inside a bar? Maybe. He hadn’t exactly had the time to look around at his surroundings while he was running for his life through them. There were the round tables, the Foosball table, and something that looked like a counter on his left side…
He hadn’t noticed a sign outside when he was making a beeline for the door. Then again, he was so intent on getting inside that he would have missed a giant glowing neon logo even if it’d struck him in the face.
Keo almost laughed at the irony of stumbling into Carter when he wasn’t even trying to find her but didn’t because that was probably not going to go over well with the clearly-frightened kid. She might have become less ready to take his head off with the bat, but they weren’t exactly best friends forever yet.
He said, “Carter. You were on the radio with Liz and Sharon.”
Those blue eyes widened. “You know Liz and Sharon?”
“I was with them when they were talking to you on the radio.” Then, remembering what Liz had told him, “They tried to radio you earlier, but you didn’t answer.”
“I couldn’t.”
“What happened?”
“My radio died. It ran out of power.”
Of course that’s the reason, Keo thought, wondering how Liz and Jackson (if they were even still alive) were going to feel when they heard that. The women had believed Carter was in imminent danger when they left their sanctuary. That decision had cost Sharon her life. But since they were planning on looking for Carter anyway, maybe their belief that Carter was in trouble had just sped things up.
Keo didn’t tell the kid standing in front of him any of that, though.
“Are they okay?” Carter was asking him even as she
took the rest of the stairs until she was standing on the landing with the bat hanging to one side of her small body. That was a lot better than when it was poised to attack.
Sharon’s dead, Keo thought. Blew herself up in a dark alley not far from here. And I have no idea about Liz and Jackson.
He said out loud, “I don’t know. I think so.”
“What happened?”
“We were ambushed on the way here.”
“You guys were coming here? To rescue me?”
“Yes.”
She pursed her lips, like she was choking back tears of happiness. “I knew it. I knew they wouldn’t abandon me. Where are they now?”
“I don’t know,” Keo lied. Well, it was only partially a lie. He didn’t know what had happened with Liz and Jackson, but he knew pretty damn well what’d become of Sharon. “We got separated.”
“But they’re safe?”
Keo shook his head. “I don’t know that either, kid. I assume they are.”
He was surprised how easy the lies came, but it looked like Carter believed him. The joy and renewed hope on her face was hard to miss.
“What’s down there?” he asked, hoping to take the conversation elsewhere.
“Nothing,” Carter said. She looked past him and at the door. “They’re out there.”
Keo nodded even as he thought, Gee, what gave it away, kid? The pounding or me trying desperately to keep this door closed?
The ghouls were doing their part to remind him that they were still out there and trying to get in at him. At them, now.
Bam-bam-bam!
Bam-bam-bam!
Bam-bam-bam!
The girl had wandered closer, and if he wanted to he could have reached over and snatched the bat out of her hand. But of course he did no such thing. Instead, he got a better look at her.
She was young, but he already knew that. What he hadn’t seen before was the patch of dry blood along the right side of her face, caking parts of her hair. The girl didn’t appear to be in any pain, which made him wonder if she even knew about the blood. Maybe it wasn’t hers; didn’t Sharon tell him that Carter had been in the thick of battle with the others, against the ghouls before she was taken?
Road to Babylon (Book 8): Daybreak Page 8