The sudden silence is deceptive. More shadows move behind the buses as a mass of hollow-heads arrive, expecting food. Something bangs against the far side of one of the buses, causing it to shudder. The metallic thump grows increasingly insistent as more hollow-heads press against the baffle.
“The gate,” I shout, running the last few yards to the perimeter. I pull hard on the locked chain. I consider and then discard the idea of shooting at the lock or one of the links. Getting a bullet to strike dead-on would be next to impossible, and missing even by millimeters would only cause it to deflect in some random, dangerous direction. Had I known about the gate, I would have taken the officer’s bolt cutters with me. Wright has gone for help, but he won’t be back before the hollow-heads have passed the fence.
I count our numbers and our bullets. There may be at most a hundred rounds among us, but probably a lot fewer. We’re not going to be able to hold off any sizable group. Certainly not from our exposed position in the middle of the street. We’re going to have to retreat, but even the best shooters can’t hit the side of a barn door when fleeing for their lives. I glance around, looking for Olsen, and find him at the end of his climb atop the nearest building. He drops to his belly and pulls a small pair of binoculars from his pack.
The hollow-heads are coming around the Volkswagens now. I tell the others to take up positions, and we fall into place in a practiced, fluid movement, making a shallow arc across the width of the street. Luther and I remain in the center. Olsen uses scout signals to describe what he sees, and I feel the blood run from my face when his last signal is “dozens.”
I wait, tensed, weapon raised. The hollow-heads didn’t see their scouts go down, which is why they haven’t reacted with their typical pattern of enragement. They stumble over the bodies, a few of them even dropping to feast, but most ignore the shrieker corpses. If we shoot now, they will certainly notice, and they will react with the speed and aggression that we saw in the tunnel, back when all of this began.
The first spilling of blood within view of the hollow-head mass will mean that we’ve already lost the fight. No containment will be possible, unless we have overwhelming numbers. We have to wait until we have reinforcements.
Already the citizens of this street are rousing themselves in the early morning, responding to the shrieks and gunfire. Doors open, heads peek out, and within minutes there are people streaming onto the sidewalks, heading away from the open gate. At the same time, Luther and I pull our warding semicircle back along the blacktop, still unwilling to shoot again. Now that there are civilians in the streets, it would be even more dangerous to bring out the hollow-heads’ wrath. I hear Luther muttering under her breath as she pivots her rifle from one hollow-head to the next. A steady stream of curses, repetitive, meaningless. The words rattle me, and I have a strong urge to tell her to shut up, but I know she needs to release that anger.
Wright returns, coming up to my side and hooking a thumb back to show me that Barkov has sent some of his people. One of them has a bolt cutter, but she doesn’t try to use it. It’s too late for that now. “Any word on Phoebe?” I ask between clenched teeth.
“No,” Wright answers without equivocation. “Barkov is pulling his people away from the parking deck.”
I share a glance with Luther: we know what’s going to happen next. Randall will escape with Regina’s daughter, perhaps with Banderas and the sniper as well. And right now, none of that matters, no matter how much the bile in my throat insists otherwise. Phoebe is my responsibility, but these people shouldn’t be collateral damage. I want to leave them. I can’t leave them. Groaning with the decision, I tell Wright to help with the evacuation of Inman Park.
The Little Five has never been breached like this before. We have contingencies, and some semblance of a tactical plan, but it all boils down to the simple mantra of escape. I’ve never heard of a community surviving an incursion of any size, and based on Olsen’s continuing frenzied signals, I’m sure this one is significant. The hollow-heads shamble forward, blank expressions punctuated by wide stretches of open, gap-toothed mouths blowing fetid breath.
We have no options. All we are accomplishing now, stepping backward from the slow tide, is staying within range so that if they decide to give chase we will be close enough to kill them. But not enough of them. Back at the tunnel, there was only a small gap in the wall that the hollow-heads could exploit, and they managed to break through and rip apart a member of the sweep team. This is horrifically worse. This is Savannah all over again.
Olsen rises from his position and hurries back down, stowing his binoculars. I gesture for the sweep team members of my group to go with Wright, leaving only Luther, Olsen, and myself at the vanguard. To my left and right I see men and women rattling doors, gathering up those too stubborn or sleepy to get out on their own. Behind us, the street fills with quietly fleeing citizens, some carrying prepared luggage, but most moving quickly in hastily thrown-on clothes. Families. Young children, bewildered. Some with mouths held shut by their parents, wriggling against the affront to their right to panicked screaming. Then ahead of us, to the right side where peaceful-looking houses are nestled in small, prim plots of grass, a door opens, revealing an elderly couple dressed in night clothes, silhouetted against lamplight from their hallway. Somehow that house was missed, or no one answered.
Now it is too late to retrieve them. Hollow-heads are within yards of that front door, and as soon as the light pours out onto the sidewalk, eyes turn. The couple keep their wits; I’m grateful for that. They step back and shut the door in moments. But the noise was loud enough to attract more attention. More hollow-heads turn to follow the sound, and soon the façade of the pleasant two-story home is swarming with hungry bodies. Glass breaks: a front window. I am reminded of the futility of hiding indoors.
Suddenly, gunshots sound from inside the house. A revolver I can’t identify and what must be a Glock. The householders are fighting back, together, as their deaths approach. Again I’m grateful: they are shooting inside the house, which keeps the bulk of the horde unaware. But it can’t last. Soon a wave of agitation ripples out from the house as the man and woman scream their last moments. The agitation spreads across the mob, and I can see, with excruciating clarity, the exact moment that the search for food becomes a frantic lust for whatever kind of vengeance these mindless creatures can feel.
Our three-person shield won’t hold them back. Gulping down the disgust, I fire two shots into the nearest hollow-heads, then turn away with a shout to the evacuees: drop everything and run. Luther throws her rifle onto her back and echoes my urgency, screaming, “Go! Go!”
In movies, the heroes always took lazy shots behind them as they ran, hitting their targets every time, but we would only be wasting bullets. Unless we shoot them in a vital spot, hollow-heads ignore their wounds until they bleed out and collapse. And a bite from a dying hollow-head is no less dangerous than from the other kind.
The screaming, panicked confusion rises from the civilians as the mob presses into the street, spreading out into the gaps between houses, an impenetrable wave of predation. I think I see Amy, Barkov’s wife, at the back of the evacuation. She and other stragglers, some still trying to keep their possessions, lose ground against the threat, too lost in their own confusions to heed us when we shout for them to just let go and run. I kick a rolling suitcase out of one man’s grip, and he turns back to retrieve it. Before I can grab his arm to drag him forward, a hollow-head wearing the remnants of a Sunday best suit lunges at him, biting the right side of his face. His scream is cut short by the gurgling of blood.
Like breakers against the rocks, a leading-edge portion of the hollow-head mob collapses against the dying man, rending his flesh and opening a gap between them and the rest of us who are still fleeing. I wish I knew his name. The man’s unintended sacrifice may have saved lives.
But not all of them. Fed by a panic of the uncanny, some of the civilians on the sidewalks ha
ve stopped to pound on doors, screaming to be let in, or have crashed their way through unlocked entrances. Clusters of the horde follow them, snatching the foolish and unlucky.
The street in front of the parking deck where Barkov barricaded Randall is swarming with the enclave’s defenders. They have set up a defensive line, most of them wielding automatic weapons that they must have scavenged from an army base or police armory after the collapse. But they can’t shoot: there are too many civilians in the line of fire. I shout for the evacuees to drop to the asphalt or run to the sides, but very few listen to me, and those who do quickly regret their decision and climb to their feet or continue running directly toward their protectors.
Memories of Savannah interfere with my concentration: desperation, futility, no sense of control over anything that was happening around me, trying to keep Jeannie safe. Everyone panicked. Bad decisions piled on top of one another, compounded by the certainty that each next step would pull Jeannie away from me. Her body held tight to my side, every muscle straining to hold her steady while I ran. For the first time since my wife died, I cried out of fear. Hated myself for the weakness. And lost every sailor and civilian I had promised to protect, except one.
I can’t let that slaughter happen again. I walked out of Savannah with one child in my arms and the blood of a hundred on my boots. Not here. Dropping to one knee, I begin shooting into the asphalt, scaring the evacuees into fleeing the crazy person with the gun and clearing a space between Barkov’s men and the oncoming horde. I use every bullet, but it’s worth it. I fall flat to the ground as the rifles explode in front of me. Hollow-heads drop behind me. Some fall only a few feet away, blood and air gurgling from collapsed lungs, liquefied brain matter spilling like applesauce onto the pavement. I tell myself, convince myself, that I don’t recognize any of the dead. And perhaps I don’t, but I have to safeguard my sanity, just in case.
I wait until the noise has quelled. A glance behind tells me that most of the horde has been dispatched. The survivors feed on their dead, giving the riflemen time to reload their weapons and herd the evacuees. I hear Barkov shout for everyone to get onto the Belt Line path and head for the football stadium at the far end of it. I climb to my feet, look around, and see Olsen on his side, clutching his bleeding leg. A dead hollow-head lies less than a foot away, blood in its mouth.
“Damn,” Olsen says when Luther helps him up. “Tripped in a goddamn pothole,” he adds, trying to laugh.
Luther says, “Chief, I’m taking him back to Marilyn. You’re going to be fine, Olsen.”
“Bullshit,” he mutters. “I’ve got maybe a day, and you know it.”
“She can put you in the freezer,” Luther says, giving Olsen a shake. “Clean the wound. Keep your fever down. It might not—”
“Fine,” Olsen says. “Fine.” He looks at me, his eyes telling me that he knows the truth. Hollow-heads spend their days eating fresh and rotting meat. Without antibiotics to treat an infected wound, the cocktail of bacteria in a bite is enough to send even the strongest people into septic shock.
I nod to my friend. “All right. Luther, take him back to the hospital. I’m staying here. Maybe there’s a chance Randall hasn’t gotten far, and I can convince Barkov to—”
I am interrupted by a shriek echoing between the buildings around us. It sounds muffled, constrained, but not by distance or walls. It’s much too loud for that. Barkov notices as well. “Where is that coming from?” he calls to his people, and some of them fan out to search for the source.
The surviving hollow-heads who were eating their dead perk up at the sound of the shrieker. They look in our direction, stand and begin shambling toward the noise. Barkov gestures for two of his peace officers to finish them off. The shriek comes again, exactly as before, and I realize that we are listening to a recording. Like the open locked gate, Randall’s partner Banderas—or the sniper, Andrew—must be behind it.
Now I hear different screams from the far side of the parking deck as evacuees begin fleeing back toward us. Leaving Luther and Olsen, I hurry to round the corner. The Belt Line runs parallel to the main road at this point, and because the miles-long stretch of walkway has been secure for years, there is no gate or fence here. Only a low hill rising to the pavement defines the boundary between the Inman Park enclave and the public strip of land. The nearest gate is five hundred yards down the Belt Line, past the hollow-heads that are now beginning to tumble down the hill from that direction. We are being surrounded.
The recording of the shrieker blares again, agitating the hollow-heads further. They move faster now, with more attention, coming onto the street and making their way past the parking deck. The barricade erected by Barkov’s men diverts the horde away from it, keeping them on the short road toward North Highland Avenue.
I can see that some of Barkov’s peace officers want to shoot despite the crowd. Their own agitation is increasing, especially after the adrenaline rush of slaughter. They’re good people, but they’re not used to this. I’ve been here before, and even I am having to focus on keeping my finger off the trigger, though it wouldn’t matter, anyway: I’m out of ammunition.
Barkov’s usually impassive expression has tightened. “What have you brought to my town?” he growls at me, pulling me away from the approaching horde. I can see the gears of his mind spinning as he looks left, right. To our left is the bridge gate, where more hollow-heads are beginning to gather. To our right, around a bend in the street, is the gate to the Little Five. There could be safety there, but there is an unwritten rule between communities. He knows it; he doesn’t want to remember it.
I grip Barkov’s jacket sleeve and wrench his thoughts back. “No,” I say firmly. “You can’t. We can’t. That fence won’t hold back a mob this size.”
The people of Inman Park have gathered like coagulating blood in the center of the main street, trapped between two horrors. If a horde ever broke through the Little Five’s tunnel, at least it would be faced with a wide-open space with plazas and small crop fields. Here, there are only buildings, fences, and panicked civilians. And more prerecorded shrieking, coming from up the street in the direction of the Little Five. I’m sure of it.
“What choice do I have?” Barkov says, shoving me away. “There is nowhere else to go!”
Already we are being pushed into the street with the others. Already the civilians have realized the only remaining avenue of escape. A few of them break from the group and run in the direction of the Little Five. There is nothing I can do to stop them. The gate isn’t locked. They pass Luther and Olsen around the curve of the road.
That fence won’t hold. A small group of hollow-heads would break against it, but a mass this size would pile up, turning a mound of bodies into a ramp. And the wire at the top would tangle only the first few hollow-heads to try.
The shriek again. “Fuck!” I shout. Then, “I have an idea.” I pound Barkov on the back to get him moving. “Evacuate to our side. But be careful. It’s a small gate. Don’t let everyone jam up. You’ll end up getting people crushed. I’m going to try to keep the hollow-heads away from the fence.”
Barkov stares at me for a long moment, probably wondering when I went insane.
“I have an idea,” I say again. “I’m going to find the speakers.”
Before giving Barkov the chance to respond, I run, but Olsen flags me down as I approach. The strain of trying to hurry with a gash in his leg has started him sweating. I tell myself that it isn’t fever—not yet—but it doesn’t help. I swallow around the lump in my throat.
“I’m slowing her down,” he tells me. Luther supports him under one shoulder, keeping the weight off the wounded leg, but despite her strength, they aren’t moving nearly fast enough to get away from the hollow-heads.
“Luther, get him into one of the houses.” I don’t have time to explain. “They’re going to walk right past you,” I say. “Trust me.”
Without waiting for objections, I continue up
the incline of the road toward the source of the shrieking. As I get closer, the echoes resolve themselves and reveal their origin: the last multi-story apartment building on the street before everything turns back to single-family homes with pleasant front yards. I realize too late that I lost my flashlight somewhere in the retreat.
The building is unoccupied and has been for a while. The windows and doors are boarded, though a service entrance at the side has been forced open. Before entering, I check my weapon and remember that I used my last bullets getting civilians out of the way of the firing line. I have only my hunting knife.
The shrieking comes again. The sound is unnerving, uncanny, like the scream of a demon. As I make my way to the stairs I distract myself by trying to figure out how Randall and Banderas managed to get a hold of something like that. How they managed to play it back.
I stop on the second floor, one floor below the source of the sound. I wait for the shriek to come again so I can use it to mask my approach. There must be someone in the room with the speakers waiting for a signal, or a set time, to shut off the machine; otherwise the sound would continue looping until every hollow-head was crowding around the building.
There is a door at the top of the stairs. I think it’s safe to assume that the speakers are in an outward-facing apartment, which would cut the options down to three. And if it were up to me, I’d pick the apartment farthest from the stairs.
I hear footsteps below me. I swing around to see Luther, alone in the shadows, hurrying to reach me. Just loudly enough to be heard half a floor away, I hiss, “What are you doing here?”
“I figured out the same thing you did, and you need me more. Olsen’s got help. You’ve got a knife.” Luther hands me an old M1911A that she must have gotten off one of Barkov’s officers. She keeps her Springfield rifle slung on her back, preferring her G27 Glock.
The Post Page 11
