by Ty Drago
That particular game was over.
And, somehow, Cole had avoided the saltwater mud bath.
Tom watched the deader commander move easily from rare dry patch to rarer dry patch, often treading on the backs of his convulsing soldiers. Will had warned him about Specials—how their strength and speed was unique, even among Corpses.
Well, here it was in action.
“I commend you. You understand the principles behind siege warfare. I am receiving reports from our other attack points of different but equally effective measures. Well-played, Chief.”
Tom offered no reply and Cole didn’t seem to require one.
He said, “But we are legion, Chief Jefferson. Kill twenty of us, and forty replace them. How much salt do you have? How much gasoline? How many cats? We will outlast you, overrun you, and kill you all.
“But I couldn’t let you die without expressing my admiration.”
As Tom watched, the Corpse reached down, grabbed one of his fallen soldiers, and blithely tore the deader’s head from his shoulders. Then, with a furious gleam in his milky eyes, he threw the head at the camera.
The monitor winked out.
“Get ready, Susan,” Tom told Haven’s medic. “From here on, kids are gonna start gettin’ hurt.”
Chapter 43
DERBY
The Corpses spotted us almost immediately, which wasn’t surprising, since ours were the only lights left on in the fort.
Three of them, a couple of Type Twos and a really gamy-looking Type Four, headed our way immediately. The Twos were fast, bounding across the grass like gazelles. The Four moved more stiffly, making me wonder what he was doing on guard duty anyhow.
“Ready?” I asked Dave.
“Oh, yeah!” he replied, a stupid grin on his face.
I turned the Tacoma toward the advancing deaders. The four-wheel-drive truck bounced crazily over the uneven ground, but it stayed upright and kept going.
The Type Twos split up at the last minute, probably hoping to jump onto the sides of the cab or maybe into the truck bed. The Four, for reasons I can still only guess at, kept to the middle.
The Type Two on the left lunged at the Burgermeister, who swung his pickaxe, slamming it into the dude’s chest with enough force to knock him completely off his feet and send him flying.
“Nailed him!” he exclaimed.
The one on the right made a grab for my door, his face—a Halloween mask of death and animal fury—suddenly filling the driver’s side window.
I slammed on the brakes and watched him get torn off and go tumbling over the hood. The moment his body hit the grass, I gunned it and squashed his head under one wheel. I felt the bump.
A moment later, the Type Four hit our grill, and got splattered across the windshield for his trouble.
Three down.
I had no idea how well the girls were doing, and didn’t have anything like the time to look for them.
Six more deaders were coming.
“Floor it!” Dave yelled.
I floored it.
The Tacoma sprang forward, churning up the grass. To our left stood the Arsenal, a small, one-story building of yellow brick. To our right was the Quartermaster’s House. We were steering for the central building, the Commandant’s House, which was where maybe half of the Corpse contingent seemed to be hanging out.
Why not steer straight for the Magazine? Because to pull this off, we had to take out as many deaders as we could first.
The truck’s speedometer hovered around forty, not bad, given the uneven parade grounds. The steering wheel bounced in my hands like a living thing, while each new jolt dug my seatbelt painfully into my midsection.
Nevertheless, I pushed the accelerator pedal a little harder.
Forty-five.
We hit a circle of deaders, a half-dozen of them, all of whom scrambled to get out of our way. I clipped one with the front fender and managed to rip his leg clean off. Another stumbled and went head first into one of the headlights, breaking it. A third tried to jump onto the hood, but mistimed it and instead bounced over the roof. A fourth took Dave’s pickaxe in the face. His head came clean off.
The other two, however, managed to make it into the truck bed.
“Crap!” I yelled.
Then I hit the brakes again.
They both flew forward, slamming into the back of the cab.
I hammered the gas—hard.
One tumbled backward and fell out over the tailgate. The other grabbed onto the edges of the cab roof, hanging on like grim—well—death.
“Crap!” I yelled again.
A dead fist shattered the cab’s rear window; grasping dead fingers reaching for my throat.
I took one hand off the wheel—not a good idea—and fished out my pocketknife. Activating its Taser, I reached back and blindly stabbed with it, hoping to connect.
I did.
The electricity passed through the Corpse and into the truck bed. It didn’t quite zap Dave and me, but we felt it, and it almost caused me to lose control of the wheel completely.
The deader however, stiffened and fell back into the empty bed, did a crazy sort of momentum-driven backward somersault, and then went the same way as his bud, out over the tailgate.
I cut the wheel hard, brought us around, and, before either deader could regain his feet, flattened them both.
Nine down.
“Dude,” the Burgermeister said. “Watch it with that Taser, will ya?”
“Sorry,” I told him.
We spotted the girls.
The Escape had gone around the back of the Arsenal, hammered two deaders, and was cutting across the parade grounds behind us, straight into a mass of four more Corpses.
Helene drove and Sharyn, like Dave, was leaning out the passenger window. In her hand she wielded Vader, which was working at least as well as Dave’s pickaxe. Heads went flying. Three of the four Corpses were decapitated as Helene spun the wheel, bringing the SUV around in a tight circle.
The fourth managed to jump onto the hood, hanging on fiercely as the Escape neared the Officers Quarters.
For a terrible moment, I thought Helene meant to drive right through the building’s wooden frontage. But instead, just before she hit the porch, she slammed on her brakes. The deader clinging to the hood went flying into one of the vertical posts holding up the porch roof. The post snapped in half.
So did his spine.
So far, so good.
I spun the wheel again and brought the Tacoma back around. With the Escape following, we headed for the East Magazine.
This wasn’t a normal building, but instead more like a big grassy mound. Around its front was a narrow brick entranceway that led into a tight left turn and then a tight right turn before spilling into a large windowless space with an arched brick ceiling. This was where, once upon a time, the fort had stored gunpowder.
When I’d visited it as sixth grader, the East Magazine had stood empty and eerily quiet, since no sound could penetrate the layers of brick and dirt.
Now, according to Dillin, there was a door in there, big and steel and built very recently. And beyond that, the Anchor Shard.
That was the good news.
The bad news was that I’d lost sight of the rest of the Corpses. They’d run off somewhere, probably into one of the buildings to regroup.
On top of that, a new light now illuminated the darkened fort.
A helicopter was approaching, flying low over the northern ramparts.
And I knew who had to be onboard.
Chapter 44
BREACH
Tom
“They’re through!” Chuck reported from the western entrance. He was trying to be cool about it, but there was no missing the edge of terror in his words. “We cooked maybe sixty of ‘em before we ran out of gas! Then they just climbed over their charred buds and hit the door!”
“Where you at now?” Tom
asked urgently.
“Back at the first barricade, about forty of us. We’re hosing ‘em with Super Soakers, but they just keep coming!”
“On my way. Pull back more if you gotta.” He broke the connection and yelled, “Susan!”
Will’s mom came running, her face going pale. “Tom?”
“The Corpses broke through the west entrance. I’m headin’ there. If … when you get calls from Burt or Jillian, put ‘em through to me. Can you do that?”
“Of course.” Then: “Tom, what if–”
He fixed her with as hard a look as he could muster. “Even if they get through the western entrance, we might be able to hold the line a bit longer. But if the southern one falls, with the numbers they got in that subway spur … Susan, if that happens, grab the girls and go out the through the maintenance door into City Hall.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. I told you, I’m not—”
He took her shoulders. “I’m your chief. And I’m asking you to make sure those girls get out of here alive. You hear me?”
“The wounded …”
So he told her what he’d really hoped he wouldn’t have to. “Susan, if Haven gets overrun, there won’t be nothin’ you can do for the wounded.”
A single tear rolled down her cheek. But she nodded. “If we do get out … what then?”
“You run,” he told her. “And you keep running, as fast and far as you can. Change your name. Disappear. And pray.”
She nodded again.
Tom turned and did his own running.
As he tore through the empty, dimly-lit corridors, the only sound at first was his own ragged breathing. But then he picked up cries, fearful and desperate, and he hastened his pace. Past the cafeteria. Past the Brain Factory. Almost to his own office.
Then, in the corridor ahead, he saw.
Corpses were throwing kids, slamming them up against walls.
They’d breached the hallway barricade. Tom didn’t look at the bodies on the floor. He didn’t dare. He simply pulled out his pocketknife, popped the 2 and 3 buttons together, and leaped into the fray. His Taser zapped, and his knife sliced. A Corpse went down, his brain stem severed. Another fell, his eye pierced all the way to the frontal lobe.
More came.
“Chuck!” he called.
“He’s down,” someone answered. A girl holding a Dillin Dagger. One of the newer recruits. Tom didn’t even know her name.
“Soaker!” he yelled.
Someone threw him one. It was pretty full and he started firing, crippling one deader after another.
More came.
“Back!” he cried. “Everybody back!”
Kids darted past him, blurs of frantic movement. Corpses tried to follow, but Tom hosed them, moving in careful rearward steps, his eyes locked on the advancing enemy.
His sat phone rang.
Oh God!
“Get down, Chief!” someone yelled.
Tom didn’t question the command. He didn’t turn to see who’d said it. He just dropped to the hallway floor.
An instant later, a flash of white light lanced the air above him, so heavy with power that the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Lifting his head, he saw the white light hit the first two Corpses. They disintegrated before his eyes, turning to dust in a split second.
A moment later, a second flash lasered out, cutting down another three deaders. Then a third, which turned two more of Cole’s soldiers to ash.
Finally, the rest clued in and either turned and fled or ducked into nearby rooms for cover.
Tom rolled over and sat up.
Steve Moscova stood maybe ten feet behind him. He wore some kind of contraption on his back that it took Tom a moment to identify: a car battery. The battery was wired to the anchor shard, held in place with thickly applied electrical tape. Steve clutched the alien crystal in his right hand, on which he wore a heavy gauge rubber glove.
“Answer your phone,” the Brain Boss told him.
Tom stood up and did just that.
A moment later, Burt’s voice was in his ear. “Outta cats, Chief! They’re at the door. They’ll be in any second.”
“Fall back!” Tom told them. “I’m on my way.”
He went to Steve. “What is that thing?”
The boy shrugged. “Haven’t had time to name it. It just occurred to me that maybe the Shard’s effect on organic matter had … military applications. Looks like I was right. Was that my brother?”
Tom nodded.
“Is he okay?”
“Yeah.” Tom turned to the kids filling the hallway, the remainder of Chuck’s contingent. “Listen up!” He called. “Work with Steve. Some o’ y’all get the wounded to the Infirmary. I want the rest to pull back as far as the first intersection and hold the line as long as you can.”
“Where’s Chuck?” Steve asked nervously.
“Don’t know,” Tom told him. “Wounded … I hope.”
The boy’s face lost some of its color. But his grip on the Anchor Shard remained steady.
Tom said, “I gotta get to the northern entrance.”
“Take this,” the boy replied, motioning to the crossbow at his hip. “I spent some time with it after Will and the rest got back with his Dillin Dagger idea. I’ve replaced the Ritterbolts with Dillinbolts … regular crossbow bolts coated with Corpse-killing poison. They’re rapid fire, so no reloading. But I only had time to make six of them.”
Tom leaned in and detached Aunt Sally from Steve’s belt. “Since when are you Rambo?” he asked the boy.
“Since Ian died. Now get going. I got this.”
Tom got going, once again navigating Haven’s warren of corridors. He passed the Monkey Barrel. He passed Sharyn’s room, and Helene’s, and Will and Dave’s. What were they up to now? Were they even still alive?
He couldn’t spare the time to worry about it.
Maybe thirty Undertakers filled the chambers just inside the northern entrance. As Tom arrived, Burt ran up to meet him. “Alex did something to the door that seems to be holding them off … for now.”
Tom sidestepped him and ran to the small room that marked the edge of Haven’s border. There was the old sewer door, barred and bolted as its western counterpart had been, shaking and trembling with the weight of the dead behind it.
But, he noticed, it wasn’t giving way.
A three foot steel bar had been hammered into the floor about two feet from the exit. Then the bar had been tilted forward, until its opposite end rammed firmly up against the door.
“It’s a buttress,” Alex said. “The same thing they used to use to hold up cathedral roofs.”
“They can’t break it down?” Tom asked him.
“The buttress? Not a chance. But Chief … they will eventually split the wood enough to tear the door away from the other side. Then we’re toast.”
Tom turned to Burt, who’d come up behind him. “Start moving your Undertakers back to the first intersection. Once the Corpses get through, pick a few kids and make their only duty grabbing any wounded and getting them to the Infirmary.”
“Gotcha, Chief,” Steve’s little brother said. Then: “Is my brother okay?”
Despite everything, Tom smiled at that. “He’s cool. In fact, he’s awesome. He’s holding ‘em back at the western entrance with the Anchor Shard … and a bucket o’ guts.”
Burt’s grinned. “That’s my bro. How about Chuck?”
Tom’s smile died. “I don’t know.”
The boy’s grin vanished. “K,” was all he said.
“One thing at a time,” Tom told him.
Then he handed Alex the Super Soaker. “Use this when they bust through. Might buy y’all a chance to pull back.”
Alex took it. “Chief,” he said, with an odd, completely uncharacteristic look on his face. “I’m scared out of my mind.”
“I know it, man. Me, too.”
His sat phon
e rang again. Even before he answered it, he knew what the news would be.
The southern entrance is falling. We’re down to minutes.
Will. Hurry up.
Chapter 45
THE MAGAZINE
We were almost at the East Magazine when the rest of the Corpses, having recovered themselves and reorganized, attacked.
They rushed out of the Commandant’s House, maybe a dozen of them. A few targeted our flank while the rest charged the Escape, their stolen legs carrying them across the uneven ground like loping tigers.
A Type Three lunged at our open passenger window, but the Burgermeister gave him a mouthful of pickaxe, with enough force to snap the deader’s neck like a dry twig. At the same time, two more Type Twos slammed into the Tacoma’s side and hung on as I gunned it. A head appeared in the corner of Dave’s window, teeth snapping, trying to take a bite out of the boy’s thick biceps.
I spun the wheel and he went flying.
The last one scrambled up onto our hood, so I took a page from Helene’s book and made for the Commandant’s House, slamming on my brakes at the last second. The deader flew forward and slammed, head first, into the side of the big building’s red brick porch.
Nearby, the helicopter was settling in over an empty patch of parade ground, the wash of its blades throwing up dust and grass clippings. It was a small chopper, and it bore the City of Philadelphia’s official seal on its sides.
I could throw another EMP, I thought feverishly. Make it crash.
But no. If I did that, then both the SUV and the Tacoma would get fried as well, leaving us stranded in the dark with Corpses all around.
So instead, I threw the truck into reverse, spun the wheel, and looked for the girls.
I found them.
The Escape was in trouble.
Most of the remaining Corpses seemed to have focused on the small SUV, hammering at it and rocking it back and forth. Amidst their bodies, I could see Vader flashing out, again and again. One head went flying. Then two. A third dead dude got stabbed right through the eye, Sharyn’s blade popping out the back of his rotting skull.
