The Gates of Byzantium (The Babylon Series, Book 2)

by Sam Sisavath

  She felt her heart sink at the sight of them.

  Where the hell did they all come from?

  “Go go go!” Danny was shouting, grabbing her wrist and pulling her with him. She thought her arm might snap out of its socket, but it didn’t.

  Lara ran as fast as she could, and suddenly the pain in her left arm came screaming back like a roaring train, engulfing her in a firestorm. The Remington seemed to have tripled in weight, and it was all she could do to hold desperately to it, too afraid to let go. She gritted through the pain and kept running, her legs pumping hard under her.

  Behind her, she heard Will’s shotgun roaring, firing again, and again…and again.

  And each shot got closer, and closer…and closer still.

  We’ll never make it. We’ll never make it…

  CHAPTER 29

  JOSH

  PROS AND CONS: What were they?

  Pros: They had taken the island from Tom, Karen, and Marcus. Tom was dead, which was a major plus. Josh didn’t ever want to deal with that asshole again, and stumbling across his body on the second floor of the Tower hadn’t disturbed him nearly as much as he had thought it would. Marcus was also dead, which to a lesser extent Josh supposed was a good thing. The others, like Sarah, had just gone along in order to survive. Josh could understand that. Hell, he might have done the same thing if Gaby’s life were at stake.

  Cons: Karen was unaccounted for. Which was disturbing, because Karen was, to hear Sarah tell it, the real brains of the operation. Josh didn’t doubt that at all. Karen looked like the kind of woman who would barter and trade for what she needed, and survival was a hell of a need. So he didn’t like having her out there, running around in the dark. Who knew what she was up to?

  Conclusion: It could be worse.

  He was up on the third floor of the Tower, along with Gaby. Carly and the girls were below them on the second floor, with the girls still sound asleep on the cot Tom used as his bed. The second floor had been a mess when they had arrived, with a small pool of blood where Tom lay, a neat hole in his forehead. The real mess was on the wall, where his brain had splattered when Will had shot him.

  Will had ordered them to toss Tom’s body out the window to save them the trouble of carrying it down the narrow spiral staircase. Josh thought he would feel a little queasy about just tossing Tom out the window, but he felt strangely okay with it as he watched the corpse tumble down the side of the Tower to land in a bush. Well, after it bounced off the bulging base of the Tower.

  Instead of cleaning up the blood, they threw a towel over it and picked up the bookcase and tossed the books and Playboy magazines and board games back on the shelves. You could tell there had been a fight, but it wasn’t like Elise or Vera noticed as they snored. Carly, for her part, sat and watched them sleep with a shotgun leaning against the wall next to her. She looked too tired to care that someone had been shot in the room not all that long ago.

  The radio broadcast that had lured them to Song Island came from a simple setup that looked like something he could have put together back in his bedroom in Ridley with parts from the local Radio Shack. A thirty-inch LED monitor sat in front of a tower hard drive and keyboard, with a broadcasting microphone hanging from a thin metal arm bracket. There was a pile of black cords under the table, hooked into multiple jacks along the wall. The monitor showed a program running over a Windows 7 desktop.

  Microsoft. End of the world or bust.

  Will radioed them right away, asking if they had seen Karen from the windows. They hadn’t.

  “Keep an eye out and let me know if you see anything on or off the island,” Will said.

  “Will do,” Josh said.

  Gaby looked over at the computer setup, then grinned at him. “Didn’t you use to have something like this at home?”

  “Something like this, yeah. Wait, when were you in my room?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” she said, and gave him a mischievous wink.

  Like on the second floor, there were four windows around them, spaced out to give them an excellent, all-encompassing view of the island and beyond. They were both armed with night-vision binoculars that were hanging from hooks along the wall when they arrived. Gaby was over on the south window, which faced the beach. She leaned the Remington shotgun against the wall next to her and tossed two ammo pouches filled with shells on the floor.

  “Have you ever fired that shotgun before?” he asked.

  “No,” Gaby said, “but it can’t be that hard. Just point and shoot, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “Danny says there’s supposed to be a big kick.”

  She looked comfortable with the shotgun. He hadn’t even wanted to touch the thing. It looked dangerous, like it could go off in his hands by accident if he touched it the wrong way. The Glock, by comparison, looked innocuous.

  Josh turned back to the west window and began scanning the trees in the distance with his binoculars. This side was mostly dark forest, with only the occasional glint of moonlight against the solar panels ringing the island.

  “See anything?” he asked.

  “Water,” Gaby said.

  “I got more water on this side.”

  “This is not a competition, Josh.”

  “I win.”

  She laughed.

  He was thinking about how much he liked the sound of her laughter when he saw a strangely bright, colored figure darting through the trees in the pitch-darkness.

  Karen.

  *

  “GHOULS,” GABY SAID breathlessly. “Oh my God, there are ghouls on the island.”

  Josh didn’t believe her at first, because it was absurd. Wasn’t it? They had seen night fall, and there were no ghouls. Even if Song Island was a trap, he had seen night come with his own eyes and there hadn’t been any ghouls.

  So why would there be ghouls now? It didn’t make any sense.

  But there they were, flowing across the open grass, dark black shapes rendered clear as day in the fluorescent green neon of his night-vision binoculars.

  Ghouls!

  There were so many they swallowed up the ground underneath them, dark figures merging perfectly with the surrounding night. They crashed out of the power station and across the clearing and smashed into the wall of trees and seemed to stampede anything and everything in their path.

  The radio in Josh’s hand squawked, and he heard Will’s voice shouting (but somehow calm, though Josh didn’t know how that was even possible): “We’re taking them through the hotel to slow them down! Let anyone into the Tower who isn’t undead!”

  “Roger that,” Josh said, though he wasn’t sure if what he actually said was “Roger that” or something else. He might have even babbled something unintelligible. It was hard to tell because his heart was pounding and his fingers were numb.

  There are ghouls on the island!

  Song Island isn’t safe!

  He heard movement behind him and looked back and saw that Carly was standing behind them. When did she even come up here? Then she was moving across the room, snatching up the Remington shotgun Gaby had leaned against the wall. She picked up the pouches of ammo as well and walked back to them.

  He watched helplessly as Carly took the radio out of his hand and replaced it with the shotgun and ammo, handing the radio to Gaby. “Gaby, you stay up here and keep in communication with Will and Danny. They might need a spotter. That’s you.” She looked over at him, eyes hard, in full command. “Josh, you come downstairs with me. Understand?”

  He heard Gaby, surprisingly calm, reply, “Okay, go.”

  Then he was moving, following Carly to the door in the floor and hurrying down the narrow spiral staircase to the second floor. The girls were up and sitting on the cot, rubbing at their eyes, looking disoriented.

  “Stay up here, girls, and don’t move,” Carly said. “Don’t go near the windows. Don’t move from that cot. Understand?”

  They nodded back and didn’t argue. Josh knew
how they felt. At that moment, Carly sounded like the voice of God.

  Carly snatched up her shotgun from the wall, then disappeared through the door. He heard her moving down the spiral staircase. “Josh, come on!”

  He hurried after her. The new set of metal steps under him felt flimsy and undependable all of a sudden. Carly was in front, moving downward with purpose.

  “Hurry, Josh,” Carly said between breaths.

  He followed her down to the first floor, surprised he didn’t trip or fall to his death on the way down. He could barely feel his legs moving. It didn’t help that he could hear gunshots the whole time. Booming gunshots. Shotguns.

  They’re getting closer, leading them right to us…

  “Stay calm,” Carly said.

  He nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak.

  She opened the heavy wooden door and stepped outside. Josh followed obediently, fumbling with the shotgun in his hands.

  He knew how a shotgun worked. You pulled the slide back to load a shell into the chamber and you squeezed the trigger. It wasn’t all that hard. Even the dumbest person alive could pull it off. All you needed was the strength to work the slide—or whatever it was called—because the trigger was easy. He had fired a gun before. A shotgun wouldn’t really be that much harder, would it?

  They stepped outside, into the night air. It had gotten more humid. How was that possible? It had felt almost chilly back on the third floor. Maybe it was the altitude?

  The crash of gunshots snapped Josh back to the present. They were even closer now, coming from within the hotel, less than fifty yards from their position. When Josh looked in the direction of the building, he saw a dark figure emerge from the blackness.

  A familiar voice, shouting at them, “Don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot!”

  Sarah appeared in a circle of bright LED lights. She was holding Jenny in her arms, the girl clutching her mother’s neck, small face buried in Sarah’s chest. Sarah was running as fast as she could, but to Josh it looked like she was moving in quicksand. Why was she running so slowly? Didn’t she know what was coming?

  Josh didn’t remember exactly when he made the decision, but he was suddenly racing toward Sarah, the shotgun slung over his back, the big heavy barrel tapping him over and over again.

  Sarah ran straight to him.

  “Give her to me!” Josh shouted.

  Sarah pried Jenny loose and handed the girl to him. Josh took her, could feel the girl wiggling in his arms, fighting, but he ignored her resistance and began racing back toward the Tower, Sarah running next to him. He was actually running faster than her, even with Jenny and the shotgun, and had to slow down for her to catch up. She was tired and out of breath, but she pushed forward until they finally reached Carly and the Tower.

  “Where are the others?” Carly shouted at them.

  “I don’t know!” Sarah shouted back.

  “Get inside!”

  Josh handed Jenny back to her mother and Sarah gave him a grateful nod before she disappeared into the Tower. Josh wished he were right behind her instead of standing out here in the dark. Even with the LED floodlights pouring down from the third-floor windows, he still felt like he was swimming blind.

  Josh looked back toward the hotel, then suddenly heard a new sound.

  Rifles.

  Will and Danny were using their assault rifles now. What did that mean?

  He didn’t have to wait long to find out. They heard Gaby’s voice from directly above them. She was leaning out the window, radio in one hand. “They’re coming! Get ready!”

  Josh was going to ask “Who?” when he saw them.

  “The roof!” Gaby shouted above them.

  He thought he was prepared for it, but he was wrong. He stopped breathing at the sight of them racing across the rooftop of the hotel, almost gliding, dodging and leaping and weaving around parts of the construction that had never—and would never—be finished. He had forgotten how sickly they looked, how amazingly fast and preternatural their movements were. They seemed to come out of nowhere, spat out by the night. One second there was nothing, and then the next, the island was bristling with them.

  My God, there’s so many…

  Then they weren’t just on the roof anymore. They were all over the hotel grounds, too, swarming around the big building in their path. There were so many that at first he had trouble separating them from the bushes and grass and trees. But then it became easier as they began darting in and out of the LED lights. They were converging on the hotel, almost as if they hadn’t noticed the Tower existed yet. The continuous, smashing sounds of gunfire were drawing them like moths to flame.

  Will and the others are still in there.

  “Get ready!” Carly shouted.

  Josh lifted the shotgun up to his shoulder. What was that Gaby had said? “There’s supposed to be a big kick.”

  Okay. No problem. He was smart. Smarter than most people his age. Smarter than most people older than him. He could handle the recoil of a shotgun as long as he knew it was coming. And he knew it was coming.

  “Josh,” Carly said, her voice strangely clear despite the fog dominating his brain at the moment. “Don’t shoot until you see the black of their eyes. The shotgun has a limited range. Understand?”

  “Yes,” he said hoarsely.

  The sound of gunfire was constant, a steady stream of shots that sounded closer and closer with every passing second. Were Danny and Will even reloading? Every second seemed to be filled with gunfire. How was that even possible?

  “Back exit!” Gaby shouted from above.

  Josh looked toward the back of the hotel and saw figures racing through the inky blackness, then the stabbing flames of a gun firing backward. Handguns. They were down to handguns now.

  That’s not good. That’s not good at all.

  Will and Lara emerged out of the shadows, running as fast as they could. Will was loading his Glock as he ran, the M4A1 bouncing wildly behind his back. Lara was trying desperately to keep up, but falling behind. Each time she fell too far back, Will slowed down and turned and shot into the darkness.

  Josh saw ghouls leaping off the rooftop behind them.

  “Oh, fuck,” Carly whispered.

  Josh pried his eyes away from the back of the hotel. They were moving so fast, and there were so many of them, it was hard not to see them, rampaging across the hotel grounds. They darted in and out of the halos of the scattered lampposts, the lights flickering off their smooth, hairless, and malformed bodies. They were still far away, but getting closer. Josh was reminded of a stampeding herd of cattle.

  Is the ground trembling? I swear the ground is trembling.

  There was a loud boom next to him. It was so close he thought he had gone instantly deaf, but that proved false when he heard a second boom and turned to see Carly firing into the shadows to her left. Josh watched with odd fascination as two ghouls emerging from the darkness evaporated before his eyes, their skin ripped free from shiny white bone as Carly’s shotgun blasts tore into them.

  Oh God, how did they get so close?

  Then he heard them coming from his right. He turned and saw hollow black eyes moving quickly across the darkness and into the light.

  Two eyes—no, four—no, six—

  Josh lifted the shotgun and thought, There’s going to be a kick, prepare for the kick, and pulled the trigger.

  Immediately he was sure his shoulder was dislocated. He grunted through the pain and saw the first ghoul come unglued under the onslaught of buckshot. He hadn’t fully grasped what had happened to the creature—it was there one second and gone the next—when two more instantly appeared and sprinted across the distance at him.

  He worked the slide and fired again and watched buckshot catch both ghouls in mid-stride and exploding chunks of skin scattering into the night air. The creatures didn’t make a sound, not even a squeak, as they fell, but the sight of them dying (Dying!) was something to behold. He recalled the ghoul in the back of th
e store in Lancing where Matt was bitten, watching them with its head hanging off its shoulder, refusing to die.

  Not here. Not this time. Not against silver.

  Suck on that, mofos!

  Suddenly the pain in his shoulder didn’t hurt so much anymore, and the shotgun felt lighter in his hands.

  Carly shouted next to him, “Hurry up!”

  Will and Lara were twenty yards away and getting closer. As Will neared them, Josh saw that his clothes were covered in thick clumps of black goo. Lara was running next to Will, trying to keep up. Will was purposely staying with her, never straying too far ahead.

  There was another figure behind Will and Lara. Sienna, Jake’s girlfriend. She wore pajamas and a T-shirt and there was a horrified expression on her face as she ran. Josh wasn’t sure if she was laughing or crying. It might have been both, or neither.

  “Where’s Danny?” Carly shouted.

  As soon as she said it, Danny appeared behind Sienna. He was running calmly but fast, loading his Glock at the same time. Like Will, Danny’s clothes and parts of his face were covered in the black, gooey substance. Danny reached up and wiped a thick slab of the goop off his face, flicking it into the grass as he ran.

  “Go go go!” Danny shouted, to no one in particular.

  “Shotgun!” Will yelled.

  Carly tossed the shotgun at him and Will snatched it out of the air. He immediately stopped and spun and fired, erasing a wall of ghouls emerging out of the night to his left. Josh hadn’t even seen them until Will fired, the flames from the shotgun lighting them up in the half-second it took the buckshot to rip into them.

  Then Lara was there, and Sienna, and they ran into the open Tower door behind him.

  Then Danny, ten yards away, shouting, “Shotgun!”