by Sam Sisavath
“You know that for sure?”
“Yes. I can feel it. It’s close.”
Becker chuckled. “That…doesn’t sound very pleasant.”
She looked past Becker and at Peters.
The older man was holding his radio in front of him as he smiled wryly back at her. “You know she’s trying to get a hold of us right now, right? If I didn’t have this radio’s volume turned all the way down, I’d hear her telling me—ordering me—to put an end to this nutso plan of yours. You know that, right?”
Gaby smiled back at him. “I know.” Then, “Can you get in touch with the Warthogs? It would be nice to have some air support.”
“If any of them even has any fuel left.”
“Find out.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Peters said and gave her a mock salute. He walked away, fidgeting with his radio before pressing the transmit lever. “This is Peters to any Warthogs still out there. Respond if you’re receiving this…”
Gaby looked over at Becker, standing close to her. “You know what’s going to happen next, don’t you?”
Becker nodded. “I’m not gonna lie. I would have liked to have that date somewhere else, but hey, this’ll do.”
She glanced at the door. Turner and Bannion had been replaced by Wasserman and Jerry, with Daniels standing nearby, waiting to jump in if needed.
Bang-bang-bang!
Bang-bang-bang!
She thought it might have been her imagination, but she swore the creatures were attacking the door with more intensity than before.
Gaby looked over at Peters’s men. Turner had taken up position next to the north ledge while Bannion had the east. They both looked back at her. Like the last time, she wasn’t sure what they were thinking. Were they having second thoughts?
Too late for that, boys.
“You understand what we just did?” she asked them.
Turner nodded. “Doesn’t take a genius, ma’am.”
Bannion’s face was more somber. “I could think of worse things.”
“Like what?” Becker asked.
“I could be down there. Instead I’m up here with you lot. If it weren’t for Lara, I wouldn’t be here at all. So the way I see it, all of this is just house money.”
“Damn, remind me never to go to Vegas with you, Bannion,” Becker said.
Bannion chuckled. “But I’m really good at Blackjack…”
Gaby looked over as Peters walked back to them. “I’m hoping you have some good news,” she said.
“There’s one left,” Peters said.
“Who?”
“Mayfield. She’s en route now.”
“What does she have?”
“Two Maverick air-to-surface missiles and just enough 30mm rounds to scratch an itch.”
“We’re gonna have more than just an itch to scratch in a few minutes if what Gaby did worked,” Becker said.
“That’s what the Mavericks are for.”
“Oh,” Becker said.
“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Gaby said, even as she thought God, I hope it doesn’t come to that. She said instead, “But she’s on her way?”
“I told her what was at stake,” Peters said. “But she’s running on fumes. Might not even be able to return to the highway she just took off from after this.”
“She’s coming anyway?”
“It’s Lara,” Peters said.
Gaby smiled. “It’s Lara.”
“Just to be sure, she knows our location?” Becker asked. “Wouldn’t want her buzzing the wrong building and burning up all that precious fuel.”
“She knows,” Peters said. He glanced up at the dark skies. “I don’t think she’ll have any trouble recognizing us when she sees the shit that’s going to be all over us pretty soon.” He looked back down at Gaby. “So how are we gonna do this, kid? You got that part figured out, too?”
Gaby looked across the rooftop at the access door. “It’ll come through that like it was made of paper. I know that much. And it’ll bring all of its friends along.”
“Sounds like fun,” Becker said.
“That’s your idea of fun?” Turner asked.
“I was being facetious.”
“Ah.”
Gaby continued: “It’s not unkillable. If you can put a round in its brain, it’ll go down just like any black eyes.”
“That’s the trick, isn’t it?” Peters said. “A headshot.”
“Yeah, that’s the trick.” Gaby looked around at the faces on the rooftop with her. The wind had picked up, but she barely felt the cold. “You’ve probably all heard that the blue eyes are fast. Much, much faster than the black eyes. You’ll expect it to be fast, but you’ll still be shocked when it starts moving, because it’s so much faster. You won’t believe your eyes, and that’ll cost you precious seconds as you try to adjust to what you’re seeing. Don’t let it cost you your life, too.”
“Go for the head,” Turner said.
“Yes. Shoot the head.”
“Sounds easy enough,” Bannion said.
Becker chuckled. “Does it?”
Bannion shrugged. “Shoot high. Spray and pray. Gotcha.”
Gaby looked back at Peters. “You need to stay as far away from the door as possible. When it comes through, it’ll see us first. Me, Becker—the others. You need to be back there, waiting to take your shot.”
“Why me?” Peters said.
“You know why. You’re the best shot out of all of us here. Everyone knows that.”
“She’s right, boss,” Turner said.
“Lady’s on point,” Bannion added.
Peters sighed but nodded. “All right, kid. I’ll stay back and wait to pick my shot if it gets through the rest of you.”
“We have the advantage up here,” Gaby said.
“We do?” Becker said.
“We know how it’s going to approach us. Through that door.”
“What about the others?” Turner asked. “Like you said, once it comes through, it’s not going to nicely close the door back up for us.”
“No, it won’t,” Gaby said. She glanced up at the sky, searching the black canvas for signs of a plane. There was none. “Hopefully Mayfield will be here by then and can lend some covering fire.”
“Doing an awful lot of hoping tonight,” Becker said.
“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst,” Peters said, grinning at Gaby.
She returned it. “We don’t have to kill every ghoul that comes up here. Only Blue Eyes. Take it out, and the others won’t know what to do. I’ve seen it. The blue eyes control them through that hive mind of theirs. Once we kill it, the rest will be easy to deal with. If we even have to deal with them at all.”
“The bright side is, there’s eight of us and just one of it,” Becker said. “I like those odds.”
“That’s because you’ve never seen one of these blue-eyed devils up close and personal,” Peters said.
“Hey, first time’s always the best. Or, at least, that’s what they say.”
“You guys have to trust me on this,” Gaby said. “Just kill the blue-eyed ghoul, and we can survive. Just kill Blue Eyes.”
“Assuming there’s just one of them out there,” Peters said.
“Keo thought so.”
“Keo’s been known to be wrong.”
“Maybe, but—” Gaby started to say but never finished.
Someone screamed behind her, and Gaby spun around in time to see Turner rising into the air, legs kicking wildly underneath him. His rifle clattered to the floor, along with the handgun he had been reaching for.
What…?
A fist appeared out of Turner’s back, the bone-thin knuckles covered in blood.
A second later, Turner’s body was thrown across the rooftop. It crashed into Daniels as he was readying his rifle to fire. The two men spilled to the gravel floor in a pile, but Gaby was too busy staring at the dark shape standing in front of her, where Turner had been.
It pe
ered back at her, blue eyes like twin orbs pulsating in the darkness, its razor lips curved into a grisly smile.
“Tell me,” it hissed, “are things still going according to plan…Gaby?”
Twenty-Six
No…
Someone had opened fire, the pop-pop-pop of gunshots so loud that Gaby couldn’t even hear the bang-bang-bang! of ghouls pounding on the door behind her anymore.
No, no...
The blue-eyed creature was standing in front of her one second, mocking her, and it had disappeared in the next breath she took. In a flash, she remembered what she had told the others not more than a few minutes ago:
“You’ve probably all heard that the blue eyes are fast. Much, much faster than the black eyes. You’ll expect it to be fast, but you’ll still be shocked when it starts moving because it’s so much faster. You won’t believe your eyes, and that’ll cost you some time. Don’t let it cost you your life, too.”
And that was exactly what happened to Bannion, who was trying to track the creature when it grabbed him by the throat, turned him around, and snapped his neck.
No, no, no…
How had the creature gotten behind them? How had it gotten up to the rooftop? It was supposed to come through the stairwell. It was supposed to burst out and bring its horde of undead with it, and they were going to shoot it in the head and survive this long, miserable night.
No, no, no, no…
Except it didn’t. It must have found another way up. Maybe it had climbed the side of the apartment building. All seven floors of it. Or maybe it had jumped from another rooftop.
Maybe, maybe, maybe…
But it didn’t matter how the blue-eyed monster had gotten to them without using the stairwell, because it was here.
It was here.
Then someone was shouting. “Gaby, get back!”
Becker. That was Becker, behind her.
She was already stumbling backward, her legs moving on their own accord as she reached for her holstered Glock, drawing it as—
Blue Eyes leapt into the air toward Peters, who was firing at it with his M4 on full-auto. The creature jerked in midair and slammed into the gravel floor halfway to Peters. Black blood flicked from wounds along its chest and limbs as it lunged back onto its feet a split second later.
“Gaby!” Becker again. She wished he would stop shouting her name. There was nothing he could tell her that she didn’t already know. She was seeing it all happen with her own eyes.
Shoot it again, Peters, shoot it again!
But Peters didn’t. Instead, he dropped his rifle (Shit. He’s out!) and reached for his holstered SIG Sauer instead of wasting the precious two or three seconds it would have taken to reload the carbine. Two or three seconds that Blue Eyes would have used to kill him.
Gaby’s eyes snapped to the roof access door. Jerry and Wasserman were still there, Wasserman clutching the lever even as her eyes widened at the sight of Blue Eyes bounding across the rooftop toward Peters a second time.
Gaby fired her Glock, as did Becker with his rifle next to her. She wasn’t sure if either one of them hit the creature as it launched into the air—
Peters looked up, his gun at his hip, tracking it—
The monster twisted in the air, changing its direction in the flicker of an eye, and landed on the roof access building with a loud crunch! Wasserman and Jerry reacted badly to its sudden appearance, and Jerry stumbled back, reaching for his slung rifle while Wasserman clung to the lever by herself.
No, no, don’t leave the door! Gaby thought and tried to shout the words out, but before she could manage it, the creature had reached down and grabbed Wasserman by the hair and jerked her into the air.
Jerry fired from almost point blank range, and the ghoul stumbled back as bullets slammed into its chest—and Wasserman, too, in its grip.
Wasserman!
Blue Eyes tumbled backward and off the other side of the roof access building, and Gaby was still trying to process what had happened (Had Jerry made the shot? Did one of his many bullets—the dozens of rounds he had just unleashed in one pull of the trigger, killing Wasserman in the process—landed a headshot?) when the metal door burst open.
Oh…God.
A black swarm of ghouls emerged onto the rooftop, their numbers swallowing up Jerry even as he continued to pull the trigger. He disappeared, the rattle of his gunfire fading into muted pop-pop-pops until…nothing.
“Get back, get back!” Peters, shouting as he retreated toward them while firing from the hip at the horde of creatures flooding out of the small opening and fanning across the rooftop, like impossibly thick black carpeting.
Daniels was struggling to his feet, looking dazed after his collision with Turner. He was looking around for his rifle when a ghoul leapt on top of him and knocked him down. The man punched the creature in the face and it reared back, but even before Daniels could scramble to his feet, two—three—ten ghouls were on top of him. And like Jerry before, Daniels disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT!
She was moving toward Peters, firing her Glock. She could feel the weight of the gun dropping at dizzying speeds and thought, I won’t be able to reload. Jesus, I won’t have time to reload!
Becker was on her left, firing three-round bursts into the incoming wall of black flesh and clacking bones. It didn’t matter how many he dropped; more simply took their place, the new arrivals stampeding over the fallen ones and continuing their surge forward.
“Is it dead?” Becker shouted. “Is it dead? Did Jerry get it?”
He missed, Gaby thought but couldn’t get the words out. She was too busy sucking in every precious breath, the mass of black sentient beings crashing across the limited rooftop space toward her and Peters and Becker taking up all of her concentration.
But she knew, without a doubt, that Jerry hadn’t gotten Blue Eyes in the head because the black-eyed ones were still coming. They would have stopped by now if it were dead. But they weren’t stopping, because it wasn’t.
It wasn’t!
Unless she was wrong about that. Could she be wrong? Maybe the black eyes didn’t need the blue-eyed ones around to command them anymore. Had something changed in the five years since The Walk Out? Since the incident at the farmhouse? Were they now autonomous and could act on their own?
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was wrong about everything.
There were no signs of Wasserman or anyone else besides her and Peters and Becker as they continued to back up toward the ledge behind them, firing everything they had. The rooftop was a mass of squirming and bounding and running death, their hairless domed heads reflecting off the moonlight above.
So many. There’s always so damn many!
Another few feet, and she and Becker and Peters would reach the ledge—
They stopped.
The black eyes. Every single one of them simply…stopped.
What…?
Who cares! Reload! Reload now!
Gaby did, fumbling with the spare magazine even as her eyes remained fixed on the creatures before her. Becker was doing the same, snapping a fresh mag into his Beretta on her left. She didn’t remember when he’d dropped his rifle. To her right, Peters was also scrambling to reload his SIG Sauer even as his eyes, like hers, refused to leave the undead in front of them.
How many were there? Hundreds? Thousands? No, it couldn’t be thousands. Thousands of ghouls on the rooftop were impossible. There wasn’t nearly enough space for all of them. So how many more were in the stairwell trying to get out?
She shot a quick glance over her shoulder. The ledge was less than five feet away.
And beyond that…
Death. That’s what’s beyond that. Just death.
She looked forward, lifting her gun, but didn’t pull the trigger. She couldn’t see the dead ghouls anymore. The standing ones had simply stepped over them to get to her, Becker, and Peters. The world was suddenly deathly quiet, and if not for her
sledgehammering heartbeat, there would be no sounds at all, as if the rest of the universe knew what was happening and were waiting with bated breath to find out the outcome.
“What’s happening?” Becker said. His voice came out in quick spurts, like he was having trouble breathing. “Is it dead? Is that why they stopped?”
God, please let it be dead, Gaby thought, and she might have even begun to open her mouth to say the words when she saw it.
It stood on top of the access building, just as it had earlier when it snatched up Wasserman. A lone figure, tall and proud, its elongated form like a stick man against the moonlit background. Sickly-looking branches for arms hung at its sides, a thin neck that reminded her more of a twig than something that was made of muscle and bones, and a head that was impossibly oval-shaped.
But there was no mistaking its eyes. They pulsated blue. Bright blue. The color was so vibrant she imagined she might be able to see them even if she closed her eyes. They bore into her. Deep, deep down into her soul.
She shivered.
“Fuck me,” Peters whispered beside her.
Gaby took aim at the creature. At its head.
So did Peters to her right and Becker to her left.
The monster remained perfectly still, even though it could see what they were doing. It had a perfect vantage point, high above the gleaming domed heads of the black eyes. Its children.
So why did it look so damn amused?
“Shoot it in the head,” Gaby whispered.
“Shoot it in the head,” Becker repeated.
“In the fucking head,” Peters added.
Blue Eyes smiled. Or it did something with its lips that might possibly resemble a smile. She knew it had heard them. The blue-eyed ghouls had hyper senses. They weren’t just faster and stronger; they could hear and smell and feel at an almost supernatural level. She’d seen those things for herself. Up close and personal.
Gaby looked away from the creature and at the wall of black eyes surrounding her and the men. The monsters had formed an almost half-circle around them, blocking any path to escape onto the other side of the rooftop. A few nightcrawlers balanced on the edge of the building, inches from falling off.
They stared back at her with hollowed eyes that, if she peered at them hard enough, she thought maybe she could see right through and out the back of their skulls. She wouldn’t think there was life behind any of them if they weren’t standing in front of her, fidgeting, anxious to move again, to attack.
