by Sam Sisavath
But it didn’t seem to matter how many rounds Kennison’s machine gun squad threw at the ghouls outside, or how much Overwatch contributed, because there was always one more to take the place of every fallen creature.
Soon they would be inside the building. It was inevitable. They couldn’t stop that juggernaut forever, not with limited ammo.
But for now, the creatures hadn’t won yet. Not yet.
Gaby twisted around just as she heard the ploompt! of Becker firing a 20mm grenade round into the back hallway. It landed inside the tight space and exploded, shredding flesh and bone and decapitating everything within its frag radius. Black blood covered the walls and ceiling, and the corridor itself was suddenly open.
That’s it. That’s it!
“Go, now!” Gaby shouted.
Becker was already moving along with Chambers even as the reassuring brap-brap-brap of machine gun fire continued behind them.
But for how much longer? For how much longer?
The closer they neared the back hallway, the more treacherous the ground under Gaby’s boots became. She had to fight to not slip on all the layers of rended flesh and bone and blood and bullet casings, but she managed. Lara and the others did, too, and the only saving grace was that Becker’s grenade round had taken out, if not all, then most of the ghouls coming from the back of the building. They shot the rest as they tried to crawl free from the rubble and piles of unmoving bones.
Gaby glanced back to check on Kennison’s machine gun crew. The men were still on their feet, backing up slowly while shooting and swinging their weapons from side to side. Green was still there, still on his feet, the pop-pop-pop of his rifle barely audible against the brap-brap-brap of the M240s.
The creatures continued to stumble and fall through the windows and squeeze in through the doors. They slipped and slid on layers of viscous liquids that coated the floor and crashed into the bodies piling up in front of them.
And they kept coming. A forest of pistoning limbs and hives of black eyes and slobbering teeth.
We’re not going to make it. Even if we get out of this place, they’ll just follow us through the hallway. We’ll never outrun them. As long as one of them can see us, the others will, too. That’s how their hive mind works.
Then one of Kennison’s machine gunners stopped shooting.
No, no, no, don’t do that, Gaby thought, but the man didn’t have any choice. He’d run out of bullets and he was dropping his M240 and reaching for his sidearm when one—two—five ghouls swallowed him whole. She heard the muted bang-bang-bang! of his handgun…and then there was nothing.
The second machine gunner screamed something, maybe his partner’s name, but all of that was lost in the brap-brap-brap of his gunfire. He continued to back up while Green threw down his rifle and took out a frag grenade and threw it.
Boom! as flesh shredded and limbs detached near the front wall.
Something sailed over her head—a green bulbous object—and landed near the front of the lobby, where the ghouls were swarming over what was left of one of the machine gunner. The resulting boom! left a hole in the floor and sent shattered bones and decapitated heads in every direction. Green, who had been standing too close to the blast, turned at the last second as ghoul blood splashed his clothes.
Then Becker and Chambers were standing on her right side, shooting, while Lara and Kennison did the same on her left. For some reason, Gaby couldn’t hear the clatter of their gunfire, even though they were right next to her. She had either gone temporarily deaf, or her mind was shutting the noise out for some reason…
…so she could concentrate.
Concentrate!
Will’s voice came back to her, as reassuring now as it was when he was alive:
“Buckle up, Buttercup. This is no time to wallow in your failures. Put on your big girl pants and focus. Stay alive and look for your windows of opportunity. And there will be opportunities; you just have to see it. So pay attention.”
She couldn’t remember exactly if it was his real voice and his real words or something her mind had come up with. It was a good enough facsimile that she embraced them.
Put on your big girl pants and focus.
Look for your windows of opportunity. It’s there. You just have to see it.
Do you see it?
She turned around and saw the ghoul-less corridor in the back. The hallway was broken and devastated, but the ghouls that had been there earlier were now lying in sheets of torn flesh and pools of blood and pulverized bones. There had been none to replace them, the way the endless horde seemed to be doing at the front.
They’re stupid. The black-eyed ghouls are stupid. They go where the action is. Like moths to the flame.
In a flash, she saw it.
The opportunity.
Buckle up, Buttercup, she thought as she turned around.
Lara was next to her, but Gaby hurried around her back and grabbed Kennison on the other side while he was reloading. He was pulling back his rifle’s charging handle when she shouted at him, “The back door!”
“What?” Kennison shouted back.
“They’re not coming in from the back anymore!” She pointed at the empty hallway. “They’re all coming in from the front! The back’s clear!”
Kennison looked and saw it for himself.
“Get Lara out of here!” Gaby shouted. “Fight your way to Parrish, if you can! Hide if you can’t!”
“Gaby!” Lara said. “What are you doing?”
Gaby turned to her friend, smiled, and grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her at Kennison. Lara wasn’t ready for it, and she stumbled and might have fallen if Kennison hadn’t caught her.
“Gaby!” Lara shouted. She sounded shocked.
Gaby ignored her and locked eyes with Kennison. “You have one job, do you understand? So do your fucking job, soldier!”
She didn’t know if Kennison understood or not, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he grabbed Lara by the arm and began dragging her toward the back hallway. Lara fought him the entire time, but Kennison was bigger and stronger and he forced her across the slippery sludge of undead corpses toward the back whether she wanted to go or not. She didn’t—and Lara showed that by landing a blow against Kennison’s forehead with her gun. He didn’t let go. She hit him again, this time in the nose, but Kennison still refused to let go. Instead, he stared back at Gaby and clenched his teeth in determination.
That’s a good soldier! Gaby thought as she grabbed Chambers by the vest and pushed him after Lara and Kennison. “Go help him!”
The man gave her a shocked look, but only for a second or two before he chased after Kennison and Lara.
Gaby turned to Becker, who was calmly reloading his rifle next to her. “You too! She’s going to need all the guns she can get!”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Becker said. He looked confused, and for the first time since they met, Becker didn’t immediately understand what she wanted from him.
Well, at least I can say there was this one time he couldn’t read my mind, Gaby thought even as she watched Kennison, now with Chambers’s help, pull Lara into the back hallway. Lara continued to fight against them, swinging wildly with both hands—she landed what looked like a painful punch to Chambers’s nose—but if she had no chance against Kennison, she now had none with both men.
Then they were gone, vanishing into the darkness of the back corridor.
Gaby slung her rifle and pulled out two frag grenades from her pouch and showed it to Becker. The light went off behind his eyes.
“I’ll cover you!” she shouted. “Keep them from following you and Lara! Try to reach Parrish. If you can’t, hunker down until morning!”
“Good idea!” Becker said, and before she could react, he dropped his rifle—the sling kept it from falling to the floor—and grabbed both grenades from her, turned, and pulled the pins on them one at a time before tossing them toward the hallway opening.
Sonofabitch!
Gaby thought as the first, then the second frag went off, the explosions tearing loose the walls and caving the already-weakened ceiling down on the passageway. Before the smoke had even cleared, Gaby knew that it had worked, that the grenades had sealed off the exit out of the building except for small slits to squeeze through. Even a ghoul, as razor thin as they were, would have trouble getting through those openings.
She narrowed her eyes at Becker, but he looked past her and was already lifting his rifle again. She spun around at the same time that Kennison’s remaining machine gunner disappeared, and Green was turning, trying to flee, when a ghoul lunged forward and pulled his legs from underneath him. The man fell to the floor face-first, his hand stretching out for the handgun that had clattered away.
Gaby locked eyes with Green just before he vanished into a pile of ghouls—
—then someone was pulling her backward.
Becker, dragging her across the lobby. “Time to go, time to go!”
She turned, and he let her go. They ran by the now-sealed back hallway and toward the stairwell door. It was the only viable direction, with the front filled with ghouls and no other path left for them.
Gaby sneaked a look over her shoulder and wished she hadn’t.
They were coming. So many that they had swallowed up the lobby with their numbers. A big wall of twisting and pruned black flesh and hollowed dark eyes, like oceans of tar staring back at her. A few ran for the back hallway, but when they found they couldn’t go through it, they turned and joined the rest pursuing her and Becker.
Even as she turned back around and ran stride for stride alongside Becker, Gaby’s only thoughts were of Lara, with Kennison and Chambers, hopefully making their way across the back alleys of Darby Bay while seemingly every creature in the city was pouring into the lobby of the apartment building behind them right this second.
I did my best, Will. I did the best I could.
…I hope it was enough!
Twenty-Three
Bam! as Becker slammed the stairwell door into place, and before Gaby could even suck in her second wind, the thoom-thoom-thoom! against the thin (God, why is it so thin?) slab of wood began from the other side.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
“Hold it!” she shouted. “Hold it, Becker!”
“What do you think I’m doing?” he shouted back, even as he leaned everything he had into the door while his gloved hands tightened over the doorknob as if their lives depended on it, because, well, it did.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Gaby immediately unslung her rifle and let it fall to the floor. It was empty, and she didn’t have any more magazines for it. The thought of keeping it as a blunting weapon registered briefly, but it was quickly countered with Who are you kidding? Did you see how many of them were out there? If you have to start swinging that rifle, it’s already too late and you’re already dead. Might as well just give up!
But she wasn’t going to give up, then or now. She couldn’t, not even if she wanted to—which she didn’t. It wasn’t in her DNA. Gaby was no quitter and never had been. If she were, she would never have survived that first night of The Purge or all the other brutal and dark nights since.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
She was tired, though. Her breath came out in loud gasps as she leaned back against the cold stairwell wall and pulled out her Glock and checked it. The magazine was full and she had two spares, but that was it. The gun along with the knife in her left hip. The blade was silver, of course, but if she had to go for that, she was already dead.
Becker glanced back as thoom-thoom-thoom! echoed in the narrowed confines of the stairwell. “If you’re gonna do something, you should do it now!”
Do something? she thought. Do what?
Gaby looked for cracks along the door but didn’t see any. At least, not yet. But it was going to happen. Sooner or later, those rabid things outside were going to get in. It was just a matter of time. How long could such a piece of flimsy wood construction hold—
Crack! as a jagged line appeared along the side of the door two inches above the doorknob. It spidered three inches toward the center before stopping. Becker jerked away from the door in shock before shoving his body back against it.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Then another one, this time along the bottom…
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
And another…
Crack! Crack! Crack!
She glanced up the stairs to her left. She thought she could still hear shooting from the rooftop. That was a good sign, because it meant Peters and the others would still be up there. For a second she thought they wouldn’t be, that somehow the creatures had found their way up the side of the building…
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
“Gaby!” Becker shouted. Then, when she looked over, “It’s not gonna hold for very long!”
Crack! as a chunk of splinter flew across the room. Gaby ducked, even though she really didn’t have to, as the piece of wood lost steam and landed in front of her toes.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Crack! Crack!
“Gaby!” Becker shouted as he leaned even more of his mass against the door, his boots sliding against the hard concrete floor. “If you have anything under your sleeve, now’s the time!”
Something under my sleeve…
She began looking around the room, her breath still coming out in loud, labored gasps. She was hyperventilating, her heart crashing against her chest, but instead of trying to calm herself down, she desperately searched the limited space around them.
Thoom-thoom-thoom! from behind her, but she ignored it.
Crack! Crack! and she tried to ignore those, too.
It was dark enough inside the stairwell that she had to give her eyes time to adjust before she could really see what was around her. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but there had to be something that could help them, that could give them the extra time to run up the stairs. Because they needed it. As soon as Becker let go of the doorknob, the ghouls would be inside, and what were the chances they could outrun that horde up seven flights of stairs?
Jack and shit.
“Gaby?” Becker said just before there was another crack! This one was the loudest by far, like a Howitzer over her thundering heartbeat.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
They were going to keep at it. All day. All night. But of course it wasn’t going to take them all day or all night. It wasn’t even going to take them another few minutes—
There!
Gaby ran to the back corner of the room, behind the stairs. It was an old yellow sign, folded up and lying on the floor. The words Caution on top of a black image of a man “slipping,” with Slippery When Wet underneath that.
She grabbed it and ran back to Becker. The plastic was light in her hands, but it didn’t need to be heavy. All it needed was to be just the right size.
“Are you serious?” Becker asked. He was bracing his body against the door, both hands clutching the doorknob.
“It’ll give us a head start!” Gaby shouted back. “Get ready!”
He may or may not have believed her, but he nodded and got into position to let go of the door.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Sure, why not?” Becker said. “Who wants to live forever anyway?”
I do, Gaby thought as she shoved the folded sign underneath the door. It resisted going in at first—the board was a little too big to fit—but she pushed anyway. When it still wouldn’t slide through, she sat down and kicked at it with the heel of her right boot. That did it, and the yellow board slid underneath the door and jammed into place.
Gaby scrambled up to her feet and stepped away. Becker stared at her even as more cracks began forming around the door and splinters flicked more urgently into the stairwell around them.
They didn’t say anything. They didn’t have to.
He nodded—and she returned it.
“Now!” she shouted and turned and ran up the stairs.
Becker was right behind her even as the thoom-thoom-thoom! continued.
Then it was below them: Thoom-thoom-thoom!
They made it around the second floor, Gaby grabbing the banister and slinging herself around and up so she wouldn’t have to slow down as much.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
The third floor appeared in front of them—
BANG! as the door slammed into the wall from below them.
“Here they come!” Becker shouted.
“Shut up and run!” she shouted back.
“I’m running, I’m running!”
“Run faster!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Gaby was rounding the third floor when she sneaked a look down. She couldn’t see the gray of the concrete anymore. Instead, there was just a moving surface of black flesh as one ghoul after another poured into the stairwell.
Oh, my God.
The creatures were already on the second floor and rounding it, but there were so many of them trying to run up the same space that they were forced to jostle for position. Ghouls were knocked over the railing and plummeted down into the pile below. Not that that stopped the ones coming up. It was amazing how fast they moved, and if not for the brief couple of seconds she had bought them—
Shut up and run!
Run, run, RUN!
She ran.
So did Becker behind her, nipping at her heels. She didn’t know if he was lagging (slightly) on purpose, allowing her to take the lead so he could watch her back, or if she was just that much faster than him. Becker was taller and had longer legs, but he had been badly wounded tonight. Maybe that mad dash across the lobby had taken more out of him than he was letting on.
Bullshit.
When she glanced back, she could see him straining. Sweat flicked from his face, but he didn’t look to be in obvious pain. The pills he’d taken were clearly doing their jobs, just as the ones she’d taken were keeping her from remembering all the aches and pains and that still-fresh bullet hole in her left arm. The only reason Becker was “lagging” behind her was to watch her six.
