Nate crashed against the wallpaper beside her, his blue eyes seeking hers out immediately. “You okay?”
She nodded silently, too afraid of what might come out if she tried opening her mouth to speak. Her legs were still shaking, her arms trembling, and for some reason her teeth were chattering, even though she knew it wasn’t from the cold pouring into the building through the large gaping holes all over the hangar.
“Fuck!” someone shouted at the same time a black form slid along the floor and slammed into the wall next to her in a heap. Mason.
Gaby ignored him and looked back at Danny as he slammed the door shut (Yeah, that’s going to do it, Danny, that’s going to keep the building from falling on top of us), then hurried over to the windows and pushed one, then the other down.
Danny even took the extra few seconds to flick the locks on both windows into place before stepping back. “Just in case,” he said, grinning at her and Nate.
She managed to smile back, even though she didn’t know how or why.
Danny flattened his back against the wall to her right at the same time they heard another plane (Or was it the same one? How many did Mercer have flying around out there tonight?) slashing by above them, even louder now that there was a giant hole (Holes?) in the roof.
Brooooooooooorrrrttttttttt!
Pieces of the office ceiling tore free and fell around her feet just as the hangar let out a groan that seemed to be coming from every inch of its foundation.
She became aware of something moving outside the windows and glanced over in time to see the last of Mason’s collaborators—the same one who had been with Lucas—running toward them, even as different sections of the roof continued to collapse around him. The man reached out a hand toward the windows—toward her—just before he was sucked under a cascade of beams and shiny metal. A cloud of dust flooded against the windows, covering the glass in sheets of metallic gray.
Gaby wished she could have said she felt sorry for him, but that would have been a lie. He was the enemy; had been, for the last year or so of her life after The Purge. After losing so much—Will, Josh—and with so much more at risk, she didn’t have the strength to care what happened to a man whose name she didn’t even know.
She looked up and saw the night sky, visible through the jagged opening where a large part of the roof used to be. It was a clear night with barely any clouds, and there was plenty of moonlight to see with. She marveled at the sight, feeling strangely calm, when the belly of a plane appeared and disappeared half a heartbeat later, and she braced herself for what she knew would come next.
Brooooooooooorrrrttttttttt.
My God, that sound. That sound!
“Well, this isn’t going well,” Danny said, his voice slightly more haggard than she was used to hearing even in all the previous life-and-death situations they had found themselves in.
A hand—Nate’s—wrapped around hers. She was startled by the sudden contact, but the warmth of his fingers, squeezing her numbed (and cold) ones, was a welcoming feeling. His face was covered in sweat and dirt and blood, and she thought about asking where the blood came from, but he looked okay, or at least unharmed, and his smile was convincing enough that she didn’t.
They slid down the wall and sat on the floor, Danny doing the same to her right. Mason had scurried over to his own corner, his eyes darting to the ceiling as it continued to creak and groan against the continued onslaught outside. Maybe like her, he was waiting for it to break apart and come crashing down and put an end to everything. Maybe, she thought, that might be for the best…
“Danny,” Nate said. “I saw parachutes. Outside, when one of the Warthogs made its pass.”
Danny wiped at a small trickle of blood dripping from his hairline before cleaning his palm on his pants. “Cluster bombs. The A-10s are dropping them like leaking piñatas out there.”
“Where the hell would they get something like that?”
“Probably secured them the same time they did the planes. Why not, right? Everything’s just sitting around in hangars like this one. But, you know, still in one piece.”
Gaby listened to them while focusing on the windows across the room. Even with the thick layer of crushed cement caking the glass panes, she could see enough to know the walls were still standing. A large swath of moonlight lit up the beams and bent steel sheets that had come tumbling down. Somewhere underneath all that was Lucas and the other guy. A part of her accepted that they both had it coming; they were sellouts to the human race, after all. And yet, there was the lingering old Gaby who felt sorry for them, who hoped they hadn’t suffered at the very end—
Something fell out of the sky and bounced against a section of the fallen roof, then slipped and slid almost comically, bony arms and legs flailing out of control, before finally landing in a pile on the floor. There was so much moonlight that she had no problem at all seeing its pruned black skin and domed head as it straightened up and turned, sensing their presence. Sensing her presence.
The creature’s twin dark orbs focused in on her, and it had been so long since she had come face to face with one of the creatures that Gaby had forgotten how unnatural they looked, how emaciated and deformed. This one, in particular, gave the impression of a little child standing on rail-thin legs, its flesh like oily film wrapped around protruding bones.
Gaby scrambled to her feet at the same time as Nate and Danny. She didn’t have to say anything—they had seen the thing falling out of the sky like some sick gift from the heavens, too. She didn’t know about Mason, somewhere in his own corner of the office, and she didn’t particularly care.
Danny rushed forward first and had gotten halfway when the creature smashed itself into the other side of the window. It had used its head like a battering ram, and the glass cracked but somehow managed to remain intact. Everything would have been fine if the ghoul had stopped then, but of course it didn’t, and even as Danny hesitated after the initial strike, the creature struck again and again and again.
“Danny!” she shouted, just before one of the windows shattered and glass sprayed inside the room.
Danny was almost at the window when he stopped and darted left to avoid the flying shards. The creature shoved itself through the opening and landed in a pile of limbs, pieces of glass jutting from its domed head like spikes.
Closer and without the window to limit her vision of it, the creature looked smaller, even unthreatening. That was, until it opened its mouth, showing off caverns of crooked sharp brown-and-yellow teeth. Thick clumps of saliva dripped from the corners of its mouth as it moved—straight toward her.
“Hey, ugly!” Danny shouted.
The thing froze in place, appearing more confused than afraid (Was it still even capable of fear?), and turned in Danny’s direction. It hadn’t gotten its head completely around when Danny struck it in its hollowed chest with a piece of the window frame that had come loose during the creature’s entry. The wood was weak and it cracked into kindling on impact, but it did manage to send the bloodsucker sprawling to the floor. The blow and fall dislodged one of the pieces of glass jutting from its head, though that still left plenty more fragments in place.
Gaby had no illusions the ghoul would stay down for longer than a few seconds, and she was proven right. It quickly untangled its limbs like a snake and was already rising when she saw more black shapes falling out of the sky behind it. They dropped seemingly from nowhere, crashing into the piles of rubble before finally flopping to the floor on the other side of the office windows.
“Well, this ain’t good,” Danny said.
“What now?” Nate shouted from behind them.
“Get back.”
“And then?” she asked.
“I dunno. Make it up as we go, I guess.”
“Good plan,” Nate said.
“You got a better idea? I’m all ears,” Danny said.
“Not right now.”
“All right, then.”
Somewhere behind
her, Mason had stood up in his own private little corner, his makeshift knife clenched tightly in one hand and his eyes glued on the broken windows even as the ghouls stood up and moved toward the office. She wondered if Mason knew for certain that his uniform wouldn’t save him, or if he was erring on the side of caution by hanging back to see what would happen next.
Two of the creatures were attempting to squirm through the broken window, slicing themselves on the jagged glass, but of course that didn’t slow them down for even a second. Thick black blood sprayed the walls and floor, but they didn’t stop until they had flopped inside, leaving space for the other two to follow them in. They hadn’t bothered with the door or with the other unbroken window.
Path of least resistance, she thought, before saying, “Danny?”
He glanced back at her and grinned again. He was still clutching the window frame, though it was mostly a handful of skinny twigs now. Gaby didn’t know why, but she grinned back at him. Was this what it was like for him and Will in all those times they found themselves fighting for their lives? An exchange of stupid jokes and cocky grins? Because they expected to survive, even if they didn’t know how exactly?
Except she didn’t really feel as if everything was going to be okay this time, because something very important was missing: Will.
“Think of something,” Nate said.
“Thinking!” Danny shouted back.
“Think faster!”
“That doesn’t help!”
She heard a gasp (Oh God, was that me?) when one of the creatures lunged at them. Its bones clacked as it moved, clearly with some difficulty. She didn’t have to look far to see why: one of its legs was damaged, maybe from the fall into the hangar.
Before she could react, Danny had moved in front of her and was choking up on the remains of his weapon when something she had never seen before or thought would ever happen in her lifetime, did.
Something blindsided the attacking creature and sent it sprawling to the floor. It slid across the room before finally crashing into the side wall. It was locked with something, before she realized that that “something” was another ghoul. They were fighting.
She couldn’t tell the ghouls apart—they all looked the same, little more than thin layers of black skin and dangerously sharp bones—and there was a moment when the world seemed to stop except for the two creatures struggling on the floor. Gaby stared because she didn’t know what else to do. Nate and Danny looked just as perplexed next to her, as were the other three ghouls already inside the office with them.
Jesus, what’s happening?
One of the creatures had managed to get the upper hand and was straddling the other one. It wrapped bony fingers around the other’s throat, pinning it to the floor. Then, with its other hand, it jerked the ghoul’s arm from its socket with a sickening crunch.
“Oh, Christ,” Nate said, sounding as if he might vomit.
But Nate didn’t, though his voice did have an unforeseen effect: it snapped the other three ghouls out of their stupor, and their eyes abandoned the two struggling on the floor to refocus on her, Nate, and Danny. One of them opened its mouth, and bloody saliva dripped to the floor.
“Eyes forward, kids!” Danny said.
“Mason, the knife!” Nate shouted.
She looked back at Mason, standing in the corner with his “knife” held in front of him like a sword and not the finger-sized weapon that it really was. If he understood what Nate wanted, he didn’t respond.
“Mason, give me your fucking knife if you’re not going to use it!” Nate shouted.
“Forget him!” Danny said. “Stick together!”
The ghouls moved almost as one toward them, but they hadn’t taken more than a few steps when something hit a creature in the head. It took Gaby half a second to realize it was an arm. Someone—no, some thing—was using a ghoul arm like a baseball bat—
The same creature that had broadsided the first one and knocked it to the floor. It was up and swinging the arm, striking down the first ghoul before turning its attention on the other two. Bones broke and flesh twumped!, and another one of the ghouls fell to the floor. The third one spun and lunged at its attacker and the two of them spilled into a corner next to the window, vanishing into a part of the office where moonlight couldn’t reach, though she could just barely make out limbs flailing in the darkness.
She was still trying to come to grips with what had happened when one of the fallen ghouls started to get back up.
No, no, no!
She ran right at it—heard Nate shout her name—and kicked out and caught the creature in the head as it was picking itself from the floor. Despite wearing heavy combat boots, her leg shook with the impact as the monster lifted up into the air as if levitating—and for a moment she thought its head might pop loose like in the cartoons—before it fell back down to earth a few feet away.
Instead of giving it time to pick itself up again, Gaby lunged forward and stomped down on its head with her boot, hearing rather than feeling the skull underneath crunching. Thick gobs of black coagulated blood splashed the floor and parts of her pant legs. The stench of tainted blood filled her nostrils as she took a step back, but she pushed it away and kicked the creature in the chest, sending it skidding across the office, where it crumpled against the wall under the windows.
She turned, her chest heaving, looking for Nate and Danny in the semidarkness of the office. For some reason, it seemed to have gotten harder to see in the last few seconds despite the plentiful moonlight coming freely through the now mostly-roofless hangar, bright streams of light reflecting off metal beams and steel sheets strewn around them.
She finally located Nate in the back. He hadn’t moved and was staring at her with his mouth slightly agape.
A flash of movement, and she whirled around, ready to fight, only to see Danny shoving the remains of his window frame into another one of the creature’s eyes before grabbing it by one leg and swinging it into the wall, again and again and again, leaving bloody patches against the wallpaper each time. Finally, when there didn’t seem to be any blood left in the skinny thing, he flung it across the room with a loud, tired grunt.
Danny stumbled back, out of breath, and watched as the remains of the ghoul tried to get back up. “Oh, fuck me. That didn’t really work, did it?”
Because they don’t die, remember? It doesn’t matter if you cut off their limbs or their heads. They don’t die. As long as there’s blood flowing through them, they don’t die.
“Any suggestions?” Danny asked.
She was too busy watching the creature she had fought pick itself up from the floor, even though it didn’t have a head anymore, to answer him. There was just a big lump hanging off long, stringy neck muscles like an unused hoodie, clumps of blood slurping free with every movement.
Danny’s ghoul had given up trying to stand, and despite a crushed skull, it began crawling toward him, spindly arms dragging its remains forward one pull at a time. Two broken legs, twisted into impossible angles, twitched behind it.
“Jesus, I think I’m going to throw up,” Nate said behind them. But like the last time, he didn’t.
“Back, back,” Danny said.
She backpedaled, the ghoul blood sticking to one of her boots making a clumping sound with every step. She winced each time, but managed to keep moving, when—
There was a ringing crack! from the darkened corner next to the window where the two ghouls had disappeared earlier.
She turned, as did Nate and Danny, and even Mason still hiding in his corner somewhere to her right. The collaborator stuck the knife out in front of him, as if that would be enough to ward off any ghoul that decided to zero in on him.
The creature stepped out of the shadows, blood dripping from gashes along its cheeks and body. There was a hole the size of her fist in its chest, where a steady flow of black liquid trickled out. She couldn’t tell if it was the same one that had, for whatever reason, attacked the others. One emaci
ated thing was the same as another. Right?
The ghoul looked back at her for a moment, as if those obsidian eyes were trying to remember her, to carve her image into its mind. (If it even had a mind anymore.)
“Dead, not stupid,” Will always said.
She looked down and saw that the creature was holding the other ghoul’s head in its hand, its fingers digging into the empty eye sockets.
She didn’t know how long she and the creature stared at one another. A second might have passed, or maybe a minute, before Nate’s voice pulled her back from the other side of the planet.
“Gaby, be careful,” Nate said, stepping between her and the ghoul.
“What the hell’s it doing now?” Danny said, but he hadn’t gotten “now” out when the ghoul looked away from her and threw the head it had been holding out the window.
Then it disappeared back into the corner before returning a few seconds later, dragging the headless ghoul it had been struggling with out with it. They watched it toss the twitching body out the window, knocking loose blood-smeared glass shards that had managed to cling to the frames.
The other two ghouls that were slowly, pitifully making their way across the office had stopped for a brief moment and turned to look at the creature that had attacked them. Or maybe “look” wasn’t the right word, because you needed eyes to look, and heads that were still in one piece, didn’t you?
The third ghoul ignored the other two, finding nothing that resembled a threat from them apparently, and walked to the window and climbed out, then began crawling up the side of the rubble.
“What the fuck,” a voice said behind them.
She looked back at Mason, staring after the creature.
“It’s got the right idea,” Danny said, looking back at the other two ghouls that had begun, once again, to gradually slink their way toward them one painfully slow inch at a time. Whatever dangers they might have presented a few minutes ago had evaporated into something pathetic and sad.
The Purge of Babylon Series Box Set, Vol. 3 | Books 7-9 Page 17