by Sam Sisavath
It reached down, its fingers rough and scratchy, like sandpaper, touching the sides of her head. She felt as if cardboard were touching her, not flesh, rubbing against her skin, cutting into her, though she didn’t detect blood. The ghoul lifted her head off the steps, and it bent down, and she felt pain—I can still feel pain?—lance through her body as it closed its mouth over her neck.
She closed her eyes as the blue-eyed ghoul dug deeper with its teeth. It had punched through her skin seconds ago, and she could almost hear the sound of blood draining out of her into the ghoul’s mouth.
This must be what Donald had felt in his final seconds…
Then she remembered what Donald had looked like afterwards, and panic filled her. This wasn’t what she wanted. Not to die like this. To become one of them. She had only wanted to free the others, free herself.
Oh, Will, why didn’t you finish the job? Why did you leave me alive?
Goddamn you, Will, you couldn’t even do that much for me? I asked so little of you…
Then she heard something else—the ghoul’s blood flowing into her, and it reminded her of wild streams splashing across an open range. Was this what happened with Donald? With the others that were bitten? She didn’t know. No one knew. The only people who knew were the ones that had been bitten, and they didn’t come back to spread the tale.
The blue-eyed ghoul pulled back, and she looked up and saw her blood staining its teeth and much of its lower jaw. It had nice teeth, not jagged or brown-stained or yellowed like the others. It wiped at the blood clinging to its jawline with the back of a strangely strong-looking right hand, then licked it with a long—unnaturally long—tongue that darted out like a reptile’s, making a flickering noise against the air.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, a voice that wasn’t hers, talked to her, clear as day, as if the person was standing right next to her ear:
“Thank you for opening the door, Kate.”
She stared up at the blue-eyed ghoul hovering above her. Had it said something? No, it hadn’t, she was sure of that because she hadn’t seen its lips move. In fact, they were still shaped as if smiling, though it was hard to tell because its lips were so shriveled and constricted. Could they even move to form words?
And the voice she heard clearly came from inside her head.
“What’s happening to me?” she said, and she found that she had more strength than a few minutes ago. It was coming back. Slowly at first…
“You know who I am, Kate,” the blue-eyed ghoul said inside her head.
You’re in my head.
“Yes,” the voice said.
It could hear her thoughts?
How are you in my head?
“You know how, Kate.”
This is how you communicate. With the others.
“Yes.”
How is this possible?
“How is any of this possible? Why do you ask silly questions, after all you’ve seen?”
Will thought you might have a hive mind.
“He’s right. He’s very smart for a soldier. We should have killed him back in the city. He’s very dangerous, your Will.”
I’m not dead. Why haven’t you killed me?
“Because I still need you, Kate. You’ve been chosen.”
Your voice. Why does your voice sound so familiar?
Kate saw the wide-open pitch-black sky above the ghoul start to get smaller, and she realized the Door was closing. She hadn’t heard the gears stop or restart, which was strange, but then she was so preoccupied with the blue-eyed ghoul inside her head it probably wasn’t so surprising after all. She had a hard time concentrating on anything outside her mind. It all felt out of her reach, hard to grasp, and as each second passed, the blue-eyed ghoul’s voice inside her head became clearer.
I know you. I know your voice.
“Yes,” it said.
Another flood of ghouls was rushing inside the facility, leaping and darting behind the blue-eyed ghoul, hurrying through the closing Door. Kate hadn’t heard the creature talking to them, but she thought it had. She didn’t know how she knew it, she just knew.
You told them to hurry.
“Yes,” it said inside her head.
I didn’t hear you.
“You can only hear what I want you to hear, Kate. I am the master, you are the slave. You will learn first.”
You said I was chosen.
“You were.”
Why is your voice so familiar?
The blue-eyed ghoul’s lips curved into a half smile. It seemed almost human for a second, despite the black, shrunken skin that draped over its prominent skull. Why did it even bother with the skin? There was no fat or any meat underneath anymore.
“It gets cold,” the blue-eyed ghoul said, answering her unasked question. “And it serves other purposes. You’ll learn soon enough.”
Are you going to kill me?
“Why would I do that, Kate? After all you’ve done for us.”
I did it for them. For Will and the others. To free them.
“Of course you did.”
She felt a strange sensation ripple through her, and she found herself sitting up on the steps. Suddenly the aching pain in her chest, where Will had shot her, didn’t hurt so much anymore. She felt unnaturally energetic, more alive than she had ever been, though she couldn’t explain how. She stood up and found that her body was lighter, and there was an energy boiling up inside, prepare to explode if she didn’t expel it.
She looked back at the blue-eyed ghoul, standing a few steps higher behind her. It wore no clothes, not that it mattered. It had ceased to possess any semblance of sex organs. It didn’t need them. The ghouls didn’t procreate like the living.
“What did you do to me?” she asked. Her voice was calm. Everything about her was calm, and she couldn’t quite explain that either.
“I gave you what you wanted.”
“I didn’t want this.”
“Yes you did, Kate. When I looked at you outside the bank, I knew this was what you wanted. To give up. To give in.”
She heard gunshots behind her and turned as a swarm of ghouls rushed from the living quarters, past her and toward the Operations area. As each shotgun blast thundered through the hallways, she felt a stabbing pain originating from somewhere inside the deep recesses of her mind.
She reached up and pressed her palms against her temple, hoping it would help control the pain, but it did nothing. The pounding continued unabated and the shearing sensation only increased in volume.
“What’s happening? My head…” Just speaking was painful.
“Pain, Kate,” the blue-eyed ghoul said inside her head. “It is the pain of your brothers and sisters dying. You’re linked to us now. To me. To them. To every one of them. You feel what they feel, until you learn to control it. Eventually you’ll see what they see, hear what they hear, and bend them to your will, as easily as you breathe.”
Your voice…
“You know who I am, Kate. You know.”
The pain shot through her every time she heard a shotgun blast. Will and Danny with those shotgun shells loaded with silver buckshots. Will’s idea again. Will, who had come up with the perfect way to kill them. He was the bane of their existence, their one road bump since The Purge.
“Yes,” it said inside her head. “You understand now.”
“Why me?”
It smiled at her. Truly, truly smiled.
“Because you’re perfect, Kate. For what’s coming next. Just like I was perfect for the beginning, you will lead us into the ending. You, Kate, you…”
CHAPTER 43
LARA
THE SCREAMING GOT to her. She could stand the gunshots, the loud banging, and even the sounds of doors crashing.
But the screaming. The screaming got to her.
She hadn’t left the door since it began, though she lost track of just how long she had been standing there with the Glock gripped tightly in her hand. Seconds and minutes seemed
to merge until she couldn’t judge time anymore. Fear, anticipation, and creeping terror all converged into one bubbling emotion that threatened to engulf her. She did the best she could to stave it off, but it was getting harder with every passing second that Will didn’t show up.
Where are you, Will?
Carly, who was pacing the room behind her, had put her handgun away in the Armory a long time ago. Lara never felt truly safe without hers, which was odd to admit given how she grew up, in a household where guns were seen as cruel and unnecessary things.
Behind them, Elise and Vera sat on the floor, backs against the far wall. Both girls were silent, their hands entwined. She wanted to tell them that everything would be alright, but she didn’t, because she didn’t know everything would be alright, and she was afraid that the truth would come rushing out if and when her voice trembled.
Looking at Elise, holding tightly onto Vera’s hands, Lara felt utterly depressed and guilty. What had she done? She had “saved” the girl only to bring her here.
What was that old saying? Out of the frying pan, into the fire …
She listened to the ghouls crashing against the door, trying to get in. How many of them were out there right now? Hundreds? Possibly thousands. How many had been able to enter the Door when it opened and closed?
Too many. Just too many…
She changed the gun from her right hand to her left to keep her fingers loose. Her right hand had become numb, the fingers gripped around the handle turned white. She flexed them while listening to the ghouls assault the door, every maddening thoom! loosening the door from its hinges.
She could almost feel the door slowly, inch by inch, coming looser with each strike. It had been so long since the bank that she forgot how terrifying it felt to know that the undead were right outside the door, trying to get in. She could almost feel the wall trembling each time, but maybe that was her imagination working overtime.
They had piled every piece of furniture they could find against the door, but she had no illusions that it would hold forever. The beds were mostly metal frames and soft mattresses like in other rooms, but at least in Carly’s, one designed for a family, there was other, heavier furniture. The table and dresser took a lot of effort to move, and they left jagged, shallow gutters in the concrete floor in their wake. They also added an ugly red felt armchair that Danny liberated from the Starch Public Library. Carly hated the thing because it was so wide and heavy and took up so much space.
“Thank God he never got around to removing this ugly thing,” Carly said, as they grunted with the effort of pushing the armchair across the door.
They topped the pile with the mattresses and bed frames.
Lara was intimately aware that the door in her room wouldn’t have lasted more than a few minutes against the ghouls. But here, in Carly’s room, they had a chance. It wasn’t much of one, but there was a chance.
Hurry up, Will. Hurry, for God’s sake.
After the barrage of blood-curling screams in the first few minutes of the siege, things seemed to calm down. The screams were rare now, though they still wafted up and down the hallway, usually preceded by gunshots.
Women’s screams. Men’s, too.
She tried to remember how many people were inside the facility. More than twenty at last count. Ben and Rick were dead, killed by Kate. Not many left now. Soon it would just be them, in this one room, waiting for salvation that might never come.
Hurry, Will, hurry.
She abandoned the door, tucked the Glock in her waistband and walked across the room and sat down next to the girls. Carly came over and sat down next to her, until all four of them were sitting in a row, eyes zeroing in like lasers on the door and the trembling pile of furniture pressed up against it. Their last line of defense. Their only line of defense.
“Anything from the guys?” Carly asked.
“No,” Lara said.
She unclipped the radio from her belt. It had been a while since she last heard from Will. There was a series of shotgun blasts, and for a moment she was jubilant, expecting Will and Danny to reach them any moment now. But then the blasts stopped, and there was only silence.
“Maybe we should try calling them,” Carly said.
“They might be in the hallways. If the radio starts blurting…” She shook her head. “We need to wait for them.”
“I heard shotguns a couple of minutes ago. That was them, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Then it went quiet…”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think it means?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Lara said. “They’ll come. Will promised. And he’s never broken his promise yet. They’ll come. We just have to wait for them.”
The radio in Lara’s hand mercifully let out a loud squawk that made both women jump.
Will’s voice came through, in his usual calm—maddeningly so, at times—manner: “Lara.”
“Thank God you’re alive,” she said. Carly tensed beside her. Lara said into the radio, “Danny?”
“He’s fine,” Will said. “We’re both fine. How is everyone over there?”
“Scared. Where are you?”
“We’re in the Control Room. We couldn’t get through the hallways, there were too many. We don’t have enough bullets to clear them all out.”
Her heart sank. She was hoping Will would have made some progress through the facility, but she knew the Control Room was well on the other side, in Operations. It was near the Armory, where Will and Danny had gone for their weapons.
“What now?” she asked.
“I need you guys to hang on a little while longer. We’re coming.”
“When, Will?” She had managed to keep her voice calm, afraid it would crack at any moment.
“The air conditioner ducts,” Will said. “They run through the facility. There should be a grate near the back of your room.”
She stood up and walked toward the back. She saw it in the corner, a two-by-two foot metal grate that was pushing out warm air to balance out the cold night. “I see it.”
“Can you find a way to open it?”
“We’ll try.”
“We’re on our way, but if we don’t get there in time, if the door doesn’t look like it’s going to hold, you know what to do.”
“Use the air ducts.”
“You’ll have to try to make your way to us and chances are we’ll meet somewhere in the middle. The Control Room has a steel door, so it’ll last indefinitely.”
“Where are you now, Will?”
“We’re coming as fast as we can. Hold on tight.”
“I’ll see you soon?”
“Yes,” he said. Then he added, “Lara.”
“Yes?”
“I’m not letting you go that easily.”
She smiled. “Hurry.”
The radio went quiet, and she laid it on a nearby shelf.
Carly said, “I should tell you something. I’m afraid of confined spaces.”
“I should tell you something, too,” Lara said. “So am I.”
They exchanged nervous grins.
Lara looked back at the grate. Carly stood next to her, taking it in as well. The ceiling was about eight feet high, at least two heads taller than either one of them.
“How do we open it?” Carly asked. “We don’t have the tools, and we can’t even reach it if we did.”
“Chair,” Lara said.
She hurried back to the door and untangled a metal chair from the barricade. The chair was mostly metal tubes and a mesh seat, and was uncomfortable to sit in. Every room had one.
She put the flimsy chair down and put a foot gingerly on it, testing to make sure it would hold her weight. She was glad she hadn’t gained weight since The Purge. Not hard to do given that her appetite rarely extended past survival mode, and she ate mostly for the calories.
When she was certain the chair would hold, she climbed up and took a second to orient hersel
f. The chair wobbled a bit with her full weight on it, but held. It gave her an extra foot and a half, and she was able to touch the metal grate with her hands. It felt warm, and a hot wind brushed against her face. They would have to crawl in that.
Better than down here…
“What do you see?” Carly asked.
Lara took in the entire grate. It was a perfect square shape, exactly two feet on all four sides. The grates were designed to have air flow through them, and she could insert her fingers through the slots. She tried jerking the grate free, but it didn’t budge. Not even a little. There were flathead screws along all four sides, one in each corner, and additional screws between the corners, making a total of eight.
She looked down at Carly. “I don’t suppose you have any screwdrivers lying around?”
Carly gave her a wry look. “It never occurred to me to stock up on screwdrivers, sorry.”
Lara climbed back down. “Well, we’re going to need a screwdriver. Or something that can work like one.”
There was a loud bang! behind her, and turning, she saw that one of the mattress frames had tipped over, pushed back by a particular massive hit on the door. Immediately, the girls gasped, and Carly gave her a pale look that didn’t try to hide the horror rushing through her.
“It’s alright,” Lara said, “the door’s still holding.”
Carly nodded, though there was no relief on her face. The door was holding now, but for how long? That last hit was hard enough for the concussive force to travel through the barricade and knock back the mattress frame. How badly had it damaged the door?
She said, “Everyone, I need your help. Start looking around the room, find anything that we could use to take out the screws. A ruler. A knife. Anything long and flat. Okay? Let’s go.”
Elise and Vera got up and started to look. Carly did the same. Lara picked up the mattress frame and pushed it back against the barricade, over the mattress that usually went on top of the frame. They were beating against the door again, and with each strike, more and more of the vibrations came through.
