Harper didn’t say anything. He didn’t know why, but there was something about the man now he didn’t like. Something he didn’t trust. And it didn’t help that the man’s son was looking at him strangely.
So he turned away without a word and continued toward the sound of gunfire. He left Conrad and his son, both who turned away and hurried down the hall, to the stairs.
Philip was not happy. Things should not be going this way. He should not be cornered in a room with a number of his men, waiting for whoever it was that had decided to crash this party to come in and expire them. So he told his men he wanted their rifles. He told them he wanted their rifles now. His men relented, giving him their rifles. He said that if they were true Hunters, they would use their broadswords to fight. One of them began to protest. Philip shot him in the head. He said, “Anyone else have a problem with that?” None did. They charged out into the hallway, their swords held high above their heads. A spray of bullets took them down. Philip waited a moment. He waited a moment for a lull in the gunfire. Then he emerged. He came out and fired at his enemy, aiming for their heads. He hit most of them. He got hit a few times too. But he didn’t slow. He never slowed. He had never slowed a day in his existence and that was why he had gotten so far, why he was now the Hunter General, why he was now at the top of the world’s tallest building, even if it had become overrun by living extremists. Fucking living extremists, the real problem with this world. Bad enough there were the living, but then there were the dead that thought there was nothing wrong with the living. Philip used this to keep him going, even when he was hit. He shot and reloaded and shot until all the men and women left standing were down. He walked around and finished them off. He came to one man, a man with a beard, who said, “You—” but Philip shot him in the head. When he was satisfied, he found a phone and got in contact with one of his men on the first floor. “I don’t want excuses,” he said. “I don’t want to hear you say you can’t do something. Understood?” When the man said yes, Philip said, “Good. Then make sure Conrad and his son do not leave this building. They’re mine.”
Chapter 53
A man with a gun was waiting in the stairwell. He had heard them and was ready for them, his gun aimed, so that the moment they showed themselves he would open fire. He saw Conrad first and he saw the broadsword and he was about to shoot but then hesitated when he saw Kyle. He shouted, “Stop!” and then stared up at Kyle, asked him if he was okay.
“This is my dad,” Kyle said, his voice quiet and shaky. “Please don’t expire him.”
The man lowered the gun. He asked what was going on.
Conrad said, “I just talked to Harper. He said you’re working on getting the prisoners.”
The man nodded dumbly.
“I’m looking for a man named Gabriel.”
The man hesitated again, then stepped aside and opened the door and motioned them in.
Conrad went first, followed by Kyle, and there they saw the same kind of destruction as on the top floor. Most of the bodies on the ground were those of expired Hunters, but some were also of the men and women who had come to fight with Harper. The man who had almost shot them called to someone, told her to take care of Conrad and Kyle.
She looked at them, her black eyes staying a little too long on Conrad’s broadsword. “What do you want?”
Conrad told her.
“Yeah,” she said. “I think I know exactly who you mean. He’s the only one that refuses to leave.”
“Show me.”
She led them down the hallway to an opened door, looked hard at Conrad and said, “Good luck.”
Conrad stepped into the room. Gabriel was hunched in the corner, his knees pulled up to his chest, his head lowered.
“Gabriel.”
The zombie looked up slowly, as if awakening from a deep sleep. His face was the palest Conrad had ever seen it.
“Come on,” he said. “We have to go.”
Gabriel stared at him a long moment before slowly shaking his head. “You asked me before what’s so great about being alive? Well, the answer is nothing. Pain—who wants to feel pain? I’m … I’m in so much pain right now. It makes me … it makes me dizzy. It makes me … want to die.”
Conrad left Kyle where he was and walked over to crouch down in front of the zombie. He grabbed Gabriel’s arms and shook him. “We’re leaving here now. So stand up.”
Gabriel shook his head, tried to pull his arms away. “Leave me alone. Let me die in peace.”
“Do you see my son back there? He’s living now. I intend to keep him that way. And I owe you for saving me before.”
“Leave me alone and we’ll consider it even.”
Conrad grabbed Gabriel’s arms again and pulled him to his feet. Gabriel cried out as the wounds in his arms were squeezed and his leg was jerked up. But then the zombie was standing and Conrad had a firm hold and he stared straight into Gabriel’s face.
“Ready?” he asked.
Gabriel turned his head away and threw up on the floor.
Back out in the hallway a minute later, pulling Gabriel along with Kyle behind him, Conrad spotted an expired body with an assault rifle. He paused to pick the rifle up. He checked the cartridge and saw there were still plenty of rounds left. He looked around to see if anyone cared but it seemed most of Harper’s people were preoccupied with getting all of Philip’s prisoners gathered, trying to figure out a way to get them all out of the building safely. One of them kept speaking into a radio, saying Harper’s name over and over, only getting static in reply.
Conrad directed them back toward the stairs. The man with the gun who’d been there before was now gone. They started down the steps, going around and around, and went only five more flights before Conrad realized they couldn’t possibly go the entire way. Not only was it over one hundred more flights, but there was no guessing who might be hiding around any corner.
So he picked the first door and opened it and immediately aimed his rifle, ready to shoot whoever stood on the other side. But the floor appeared empty. It was silent and dark, lit only by emergency lights. They entered quietly, Conrad now confident Gabriel could stand and walk on his own.
They went to the elevators. Conrad pressed the down button. They waited. A minute passed, another, and Conrad kept pressing the button. Finally there was a ding and one of the lights above the elevator doors lit up and he turned just as the doors opened and saw the Hunters inside, four of them. They were confused as to the sudden stop and saw him too. They went to raise their weapons but Conrad raised his first. He opened fire. He hurried forward and continued shooting until only one Hunter was still animated, and by then Conrad was in the elevator and had grabbed another Hunter’s rifle and used it to finish the job.
It took another minute to get the expired bodies off the elevator. Conrad then took two of their rifles, kept one and gave the other to Gabriel.
He pressed the button for the lobby, the doors closed, and then they were headed down.
After about ten seconds of silence, Gabriel spoke.
“Remember what I said about pain? I’ve never felt so much. And after they put me in that room and turned out the lights, all I could do was cry and think. And I started thinking about pain. I asked myself, just what is it. I mean, is it something I actually feel, or is it something I know is there and because I know it’s there my mind tells me it should hurt, so it hurts.”
They passed the seventy-fifth floor.
“So I started thinking about emotions. I started thinking about imagination. All the things you and the rest of the dead don’t have. And I asked myself, is that even true? Or maybe … well, maybe you’ve just been told all your existence you don’t have those things, so that’s what you believe. You just accept it as fact and because they don’t exist in your mind, they somehow don’t exist at all.”
They passed the fiftieth floor.
“I mean, you wonder about things, don’t you? You think about how certain things could turn out, a
ll the different outcomes … right? Does any of this make sense? Any of it?”
Conrad didn’t answer. He stood facing the two metal doors and watched the numbers as they descended. He was for some reason reminded of the elevator at Living Intelligence he’d first ridden with Norman, and all the things he had learned there. And he thought about dominos and ripples and how if maybe he had never gotten into that elevator, he and Kyle and Gabriel would not be in this elevator right now, the numbers counting down—ten … nine … eight—and he wouldn’t be forced to think about everything Gabriel had just said to him.
The elevator slowed and stopped. The doors opened and immediately they heard the gunfire in the lobby, saw the smoke, saw people running around shooting at each other.
Conrad hit the CLOSE DOORS button.
The doors closed and there was a heavy moment of silence where only the echoes of the gunfire could be heard.
“Now what?” Gabriel asked.
Conrad kept staring at the panel of numbers. His gaze had focused on the two under the lobby button: B and SB.
“Conrad? Now what do we do?”
“Now we try our only other option.” He pressed SB. “The Labyrinth.”
Chapter 54
Denise drove by the house twice—the first time noticing the destruction, the second time trying to make sense of it—before she pulled into the driveway. She knew she should leave at once, that she should return to the Meadowland Inn, apologize, act like she never left in the first place, but once the car was parked she turned off the ignition and extracted the key.
She looked down at the puppy on the passenger seat, the puppy looking back at her, and said, “Stay.”
Then she was out of the car, heading up the walkway, doing her best to ignore the dark holes in the outside of the house, the shattered glass, the tears in the front lawn. The door was ajar and she approached it slowly, remembering what she thought before, that this was now a stranger’s house and would always be a stranger’s house.
She stepped up onto the porch. She had the strange impulse to knock, ring the doorbell, call hello. Instead she placed her fingers against the door, gently pushed it open. Its hinges squeaked.
Stepping into darkness, she reached for the switch on the wall and flicked it on. Nothing happened. She flicked it again. Still nothing.
There were flashlights in the kitchen, in one of the drawers, and she started down the hallway, taking her time as she stepped over plaster, over pieces of broken wood and glass. There was some light coming from the kitchen, some moonlight streaming through the patio door and the windows, and she focused on that light, letting it lead her, allowing its sharp glow to wrap its hand around her hand and gently pull her forward.
Her eyes having already adjusted to the dark, she could make out the destruction here without much trouble: the tipped over chairs, the cabinet doors hanging open, the plates and bowls and glasses on the floor, some broken, some not.
She went to the counter, opened the first drawer, began rummaging through it. In the very back she found the flashlight, a cheap plastic thing, and she pulled it out, pressed the rubber button to turn on the light.
The beam was small but bright, and she surveyed the damage with even more scrutiny. Noticing the toaster oven on the floor, the door to the microwave completely shattered, she found herself thinking about the vase she always used for Conrad’s flowers and swung the light to the kitchen table.
The vase was there, but it was broken, shattered, the bright beam of her flashlight glinting off a number of the pieces.
But that wasn’t the most disturbing thing.
A man sat at the kitchen table, the man watching her, the man now standing and smiling and raising his arms as if awaiting a hug.
“Welcome home, Denise,” he said. “I’ve been waiting.”
Chapter 55
As the elevator descended, Conrad had the two of them move to either side of the car, Kyle pressed against the left corner, Gabriel the right. Then he crouched down and aimed the rifle at the center of the doors, waiting, waiting, until the elevator slowed and stopped and the doors opened.
Nothing.
Conrad motioned for Kyle and Gabriel to wait, then cautiously stepped out of the elevator. He swept his rifle from left to right, but the corridor was empty.
“It’s clear,” he said. He turned back and saw his son and Gabriel still in the elevator, their hands placed over their ears, their eyes squeezed shut, their faces scrunched up in what appeared to be pain. Conrad looked first at his son, then at Gabriel, then stepped back out into the corridor.
He looked around, not sure what he was looking for at first, but then he saw them. All along the corridor there were little cubes, quartz-encrusted rocks three inches wide and three inches long and three inches thick, maybe twenty of them in all.
Back in the elevator, he touched his son’s head, waited for his son to open his eyes, then motioned for him to follow. He did the same to Gabriel. Both of them kept their hands tight over their ears as they stepped into the corridor to follow Conrad.
They passed those Pandoras, rounded a corner, found even more Pandoras. The corridor was narrow and dark. They came to an opened door and he stopped, feeling what he’d felt that night at the Warehouse.
A large metal door had once guarded the room. Its lock completely destroyed, the door had been opened. Conrad stepped in and found even more Pandoras, stacks and stacks, not nearly as many as there had been in the Warehouse but a couple hundred at least. High-powered lamps had been set up around the room, casting shadows everywhere.
He turned back around. Kyle and Gabriel had their eyes closed tight again, and for the first time Conrad considered what was in his pocket. How easy it would be to test the theory. Thinking about the energy trapped inside, how only he could release it. Thinking about that rabbit, going from dead to living. But no, not yet. Not with Kyle still here, trapped in this building. First he had to ensure his son’s safety, a way out, then he would come back.
He started to take a step out of the room when something moved out of the shadows. He noticed it at the last moment but by then it was already too late.
James came at him low, throwing him to the ground. The rifle fell out of his hands, the broadsword clattered against the wall. The zombie kneeled on his chest and punched at his face, then got off, starting kicking him in the ribs. Conrad of course felt no pain, but that didn’t matter. The assault slowed him down, kept him down, and if he didn’t get up soon, James would tear his entire decaying body apart.
A gunshot sounded out, then another. James paused in his kicking. Conrad looked up and saw that the zombie had caught a bullet in his shoulder, some blood blossoming on his shirt. He stood there a moment, stunned, then turned and rushed at Gabriel, the older zombie standing in the doorway. Gabriel fired another round into James’s shoulder. James didn’t slow. In seconds he was on him and grabbed the rifle, pushed it back into Gabriel’s face, breaking his nose. Blood squirted everywhere. Gabriel cried out and fell to the ground.
Conrad tried getting up. He reached out, flayed his arms and legs, but it did no good. His broadsword was somewhere close by, so was the rifle, but he could find neither. And his only thought right now was his son, getting Kyle to safety, making sure that nothing—not one scratch—was inflicted on him.
Gabriel now on the ground, his face a mess, James picked up Conrad’s rifle and bent down, placed the barrel right on Gabriel’s shoulder. He said, “How do you like it?” and shot him there, Gabriel screaming, kicking his feet.
James stood up and turned, came walking back toward Conrad. Conrad had just managed to sit up when James swung his foot, his toe connecting with Conrad’s chin, sending him back to the ground. A moment later the zombie stood over him, placing a foot on his chest, holding him down. He aimed the rifle at his face. He glared down at Conrad, shook his head once, and Conrad closed his eyes, didn’t want to witness his own expiration.
A gunshot, then another gunshot, a
nd Conrad jumped both times, not feeling the bullets rip into his body but knowing they had anyway. He only felt the pressure lift from his chest, and when he opened his eyes James was still standing above him. Only now the zombie’s eyes had gone glassy, his face suddenly pale, and the rifle in his hands started to sway. Then he fell forward, knocking his head on the ground, and first Conrad saw what had become of his back, the ravaged bullet holes, then he saw his son standing only a few feet away, a rifle shaking in his hands.
Conrad rolled away and got to his feet. He went straight to Kyle. He knelt down in front of his son, took the rifle away, and embraced him.
Kyle was sobbing, his body trembling, saying, “He was gonna hurt you, Dad, he was gonna hurt you,” and Conrad told him that it was okay, that he had done good, that everything was going to be okay.
They stayed that way for just a few moments, holding each other, before Conrad remembered they had to keep moving. He stood up, motioned for his son to leave the room. He bent and picked up the rifle, picked up his broadsword, then approached Gabriel, who still lay on the ground, his face covered in blood.
Gabriel’s eyes moved to look at him, and he said, “I … can’t,” in a voice that sounded nothing like his own.
“Yes you can,” Conrad said. “You can and you will.”
He held out his hand. He kept it there. Gabriel just stared back at it, not moving, until finally Conrad had to lean down and grip his arm, pull the zombie to his feet. He ushered both Gabriel and his son out into the corridor, then paused when he noticed a flashlight on the ground. He picked that up too, stuck it beneath his arm, and then he was out in the corridor again, moving, Kyle behind him, Gabriel limping as he brought up the rear.
Around another corner, at the end of the corridor, was the metal door. The entrance into the Labyrinth.
Conrad turned toward Gabriel. He meant to hand the rifle to him so he could try opening the door himself, when the zombie slumped to the floor. The light here was poor, so he turned on the flashlight and aimed the beam at Gabriel’s face. It had taken on a preternatural paleness. Conrad lowered the beam. Every place the zombie had been wounded tonight—both arms, his leg, his shoulder—was dark with blood.
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