Jolly gave her a grateful nod as Gaby lifted her end. It was heavy—a lot heavier than it looked—and long. Bringing the pews inside the room one by one had taken time, and now with so many people jammed into the same small space—
“Shit!” Bart said as Gaby’s end of the pew slammed against the side of his head.
“Sorry!” Gaby shouted.
“Go, go!” Peters was screaming, just before—
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
The dresser quivered and threatened to topple as the creatures slammed into the door on the other side. Peters shoved his entire body into the furniture to keep it pinned, and Donald rushed over to help out.
Here they come. Here they come!
“Hurry up!” Peters shouted.
The pew was too heavy and unwieldy to transport quickly, but they got it halfway across the room before Bart grabbed her side of the bulky object. With three people, they began moving faster, faster—
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
The dresser quaked against Donald and Peters, and each time it did, a jagged sliver appeared in the door.
“Anytime now!” Donald shouted.
“You want it any faster, you try carrying this fucking thing!” Bart shouted back.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Another crack appeared near the top of the door, and a piece of splinter flicked through the air and nearly stabbed Gaby in the eyes. She blinked (God, that was close!) but didn’t stop moving, and neither did Jolly and Bart. She could hear Bart’s haggard breathing next to her and wondered if she sounded just as pathetic, because she had no idea. Her ears were still ringing from the C4 explosions earlier, and it was a miracle she could hear anything. She assumed it was the same for the others and why everyone was shouting.
Thoom! as another crack appeared, this one closer to the middle.
Another thoom!, and more pieces of the cheap wood that made up the door snapped free.
It’s never going to hold. It’s never going to hold!
“Come on!” Peters shouted. “Get your asses moving!”
“Yes, sir, boss!” Bart shouted.
Finally (finally!) they reached the door, and Jolly lifted his end upward by himself, but it took both Gaby and Bart to do the same with their side. They grunted, and Gaby grimaced at the weight as they sat the pew down on top of the dresser, then pushed it flush against the door even as the thin slab of wood quaked again and another hole formed in front of her.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Gaby was bent over at the waist, trying desperately to catch her breath, Bart doing the same next to her.
“Move move move!” Peters was shouting.
She did, and so did Bart, as Peters and Donald carried over the second pew. They were moving surprisingly fast despite the massive piece of lumber between them, but like her and Jolly earlier, they were forced to maneuver around the interior of the room to avoid crashing into the walls and each other.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Gaby stepped out of the way as the two men, now with Jolly’s help (The man’s a machine), leaned the pew against the dresser and the first pew already on top of it. They were reinforcing the barricade, and as soon as the second furniture toppled into place, the door seemed to shake a little less. Even the ceaseless pounding on the other side seemed to get duller, as if the ghouls were losing their energy.
But she knew that was a lie, because she could still hear them (Thoom-thoom-thoom!) slamming their fists and whatever else they had at their disposal against the door. The door frame had cracked at multiple spots, and there were a half dozen lines crisscrossing the top section. She imagined it was the same at the bottom, except she couldn’t see that part of the door with the dresser blocking it.
“Come on,” Bart said as he hurried to the back.
Gaby followed him to the third and final pew, and they took one side as Jolly (Jesus, he really is a machine!) took the other one. This time they had additional help, with Peters and Donald running back and grabbing different sections.
With all five of them at the same time, they were able to haul the last pew across the room with ease and lay it against the door, balancing out the reinforcement so that two of the heavy pieces of lumber were now evenly spaced over the dresser.
The pounding against the door continued, not that she actually expected it to stop. What was that Keo had said?
“They’re predictable. Dumb. They’ll smash their heads into a wall over and over and hope it breaks.”
He was right. She’d seen it. Though it didn’t completely make her feel any better as little cracks appeared along the only slab of wood that stood between them and God only knew how many ghouls were on the other side at the moment. Each time the creatures slammed into the door, the dresser trembled slightly, but to her relief, didn’t look to be in any danger of giving way.
At least, not yet.
They stood in the middle of the room catching their breath. Even Jolly was breathing hard (I guess he’s human after all) next to her. Every single one of them had instinctively unslung their rifles and checked their magazines, their faces covered in layers of sweat despite the chilly air. She wouldn’t have been able to see their faces or even the quaking door in front of them if not for the light sticks spread along the floor.
Thoom-thoom-thoom.
How many bullets did she have left? She’d emptied her whole magazine into the horde outside, so it was no wonder her rifle felt so light at the moment.
Thoom-thoom-thoom.
They were out of grenades, and Jolly had used up all the C4 to blow the wall for Keo. That left whatever they had in their rifles and the spares in their packs. She counted three for her but had no idea about Peters’s team.
Thoom-thoom-thoom.
She had the SIG Sauer in her side holster, but only two magazines for it. That wasn’t a lot, but at least she still had the knife on her left hip. The silver-tipped blade would come in handy in close-quarter combat.
Thoom-thoom-thoom.
She hoped she didn’t have to use the knife.
Thoom-thoom-thoom.
Finally, after what seemed like hours of the five of them just standing there staring at the door and not moving an inch, Peters said, “Check on Carter.”
Donald hurried over to the back corner of the room, where Carter lay on the floor underneath a blanket, with another roll under his head. If Carter had heard or was even aware of what was happening, he hadn’t bothered to open his eyes.
“How is he?” Peters asked.
Donald looked up and nodded. “He’s fine.”
“Jesus, how much dope did you give him?” Bart asked.
“I might have misjudged the dosage,” Donald said. He checked Carter’s pulse just to be sure. “Yeah, he’s definitely still alive.”
Thoom-thoom-thoom.
She looked back at the door. New cracks had stopped forming, but there were little rivulets everywhere, and wooden splinters covered the dresser and the floor around the entrance. They were surrounded by brick and mortar, and Gaby hadn’t seen a black-eyed ghoul yet that could break their way through that, or knew how.
The blue-eyed ones, on the other hand, were a different story.
She wasn’t sure how long they actually stood there, listening to the ghouls bang on the door over and over again, but eventually Peters slung his weapon and walked to a corner and sat down, his face dripping with sweat. He took off his ball cap and wiped at his face with a rag and let out a relieved sigh.
Gaby did the same, retreating to the back, where they had put their packs in a pile, and sitting down next to where Donald was crouched near the sleeping Carter. Jolly took the corner opposite from Peters at the front of the room while Bart settled next to her with a loud, relieved sigh of his own.
You said it, brother, she thought, but couldn’
t muster the energy to actually put the thoughts into words.
She hadn’t sat for more than a few seconds before the throbbing from her right leg hit her like a freight train. Gaby wasn’t sure how long it had been acting up, but she hadn’t felt it until now. It was the adrenaline, sparing her the pain. Now that the adrenaline was fading, the pain was trying to make up for lost time.
She clenched her teeth and dug out the pill bottle from Mayfield’s first-aid kit and shook out a couple. She ground them into powder with her teeth, too afraid she might not have the strength to swallow them whole, before finally letting them slide down her throat. She was too tired to go looking for water, even though she was sure she had a bottle somewhere…
Thoom-thoom-thoom.
From the back of the room, the banging sounded more like faded echoes instead of something that could kill her at any second. There was enough light from the sticks that she could see every inch of the room. There had been a sofa bed and armchair inside the office, along with an ottoman, but they’d removed them to make room for the pews.
Thoom-thoom-thoom.
She stared at the door, unable to take her eyes away. Bart did the same next to her. Donald had sat down beside the unconscious Carter and was pulling out a bottle of water from his pack. He took a drink, then passed it over to Gaby, who chugged it before handing it to Bart.
“You think he made it?” Bart asked after a while.
“I don’t know,” Donald said.
“Boss?”
Peters shook his head but didn’t say anything. Instead, he looked over at Gaby.
“I don’t know,” Gaby said. She finally mustered the strength to open her own pack and fished out the two-way portable radio and set it next to her. “He’ll make contact when he can.”
“I saw it,” Jolly said.
“What?” Bart said, looking over at him.
“The blue-eyed ghoul. It was on the rooftop of the building across from us.”
“I saw it, too,” Gaby said.
“Fuck,” Donald said, almost breathlessly.
“Did it…?” Bart asked, but let the rest trail off.
“What?” Jolly said.
“You know…”
Jolly shrugged. “It was there, then it was gone.”
“I don’t know, either,” Gaby said. “But it’s not here now. Because if it were…”
“That door wouldn’t have stopped it,” Peters said.
Gaby nodded, and thought, Not in a million years. Not in a few million years.
They stared back at the door.
Thoom-thoom-thoom.
Thoom-thoom-thoom…
“So that means what, Keo made it?” Donald asked. He glanced at Peters, then over at Gaby.
She shook her head, then turned back to the radio sitting next to her.
It remained silent.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Peters said. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the door, and his rifle remained clutched in his lap.
Gaby closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wall, comforted by the heavy brick surface scraping against the back of her skull.
Thoom-thoom-thoom.
“Hell of a day,” Bart was saying next to her. “A hell of a day…”
She agreed, but was too tired to say so.
Thoom-thoom-thoom…
…thoom-thoom…
…thoom…
Twenty-Nine
She opened her eyes to sounds in the room, and even as the thoughts You fell asleep. You fell asleep! raced across her mind, she was calmed by the familiarity of Peters’s voice coming from across the room.
“She just woke up,” Peters said into the microphone connected to the long-range radio sitting next to him. “Hold a sec.” Peters held the mic out to her. “It’s for you.”
Gaby stared at him for a moment before looking over at the door. Light from the glow sticks continued to fill the room, giving her a clear view of the badly cracked door and the barricade that was still in place over the entrance.
And there was something else—the pounding had stopped.
The pounding had stopped.
“They quit about an hour ago,” Peters said. “About the same time the storm rolled through us.”
“Storm?”
“It’s gone now. Came and went pretty fast. Maybe thirty minutes of heavy downpour, followed by some drizzle. Black Tide thinks it’s the same storm front that kept us from reaching them earlier.”
Gaby glanced at her watch. 3:15 a.m.
She didn’t remember falling asleep or hearing anything that even resembled a storm while under, but she was groggy when she stood up and walked across the room to Peters.
How had she managed to even drift off with the creatures banging on the door? It had to be the fatigue of the last few days catching up with her, the pain from her leg, and the (too many) meds she’d taken for it probably hadn’t helped.
At least I’m not the only one who fell asleep.
Jolly was snoring in the corner to her left, while Bart and Donald were in the same shape behind her. Seeing the rest of Peters’s men sleeping made her feel a little better.
“Everyone’s out,” Gaby said.
“Not everyone,” Peters smiled. “Don’t look so worried. I would have woken everyone up if it was necessary. A gunshot would have done it.”
“Thanks, Peters.”
“Don’t mention it, kid.”
She took the mic from him and sat down on the other side of the radio, keeping her eyes on the door as she pressed the transmit lever. “Gaby.”
“How’s the leg?” a voice asked through the receiver.
She smiled at the sound of Lara’s voice. “How did you know?”
“Peters told me. You okay?”
“Is that Lara the doc asking?”
Lara laughed. “I haven’t been ‘the doc’ in a long time. But that doesn’t mean I can’t worry about my friends. So, how are you?”
“Gimpy, but otherwise in one piece.”
Next to her, Peters had dug out a bag of MRE from his pack and begun eating. Gaby’s stomach growled at the smell of meatloaf.
“Peters told me about what happened,” Lara was saying through the receiver. “He said there were hundreds of them. Maybe more.”
“Maybe more sounds about right,” Gaby said.
“How many more?”
“They were everywhere, Lara. Everywhere.”
“Jesus.” Lara went quiet for a moment. “There’s never been reports of that many in one place before. Not since The Walk Out. Pockets here and there; even the numbers in Asia and Europe have started to decline in the five years since.”
“Trust me, seeing that many in one place… I might not have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
“Peters told me he lost a man, and one’s wounded.”
“Yeah,” she said, looking across the room at the snoring Carter.
He’s going to sleep right through this. Then when he wakes up and the others tell him what happened, he probably wouldn’t believe it.
I still don’t believe it all happened…
“Peters was telling me what he found in Fenton,” Lara was saying.
“Bad?”
“That doesn’t begin to describe it. The things they’re doing, have been doing…” She paused again, and like so many times since she’d known her, Gaby could practically feel the weight of the world on her friend’s shoulders. “We’ll discuss what to do about Fenton later. Right now, your only goal is to get home.”
“But we’re coming back? We’re not just going to ignore this?”
“No,” Lara said. “Fenton isn’t something you ignore. It’s a cancer, and it’ll fester if left unchecked.”
“Good,” Gaby said, and thought, Because I made a friend a promise, and I’ll be damned if I don’t keep it.
“Gaby,” Lara said, “is he there? Can I talk to him?”
Lara had asked hesitantly, like she wasn’t sure if
she wanted to. Gaby was going to say, “Is who here?” but she knew the answer right away.
“He’s gone,” Gaby said.
“Gone? Gone where?”
Gaby glanced over at the two-way radio sitting at the back of the room where she had set it and waited for it to make a sound, but it never had.
It still didn’t, now.
Peters saw where she was looking and shook his head.
“I don’t know,” Gaby said into the microphone. “I don’t know where Keo is now…”
The downpour had not only chased away the ghouls last night, but it had also lightened the suffocating smell that usually accompanied their presence. The early morning sunlight that managed to poke through the clouds above Axton took care of the tainted blood and severed body parts from last night’s firefight.
They stepped out of the church, Peters and Gaby leading the way, to find bleached-white bones scattered across the backyard. Broken shards floated in puddles that filled craters formed from the grenade impacts. The land was dotted with holes and bones, and while the acrid stink of evaporated ghoul flesh was mostly gone, there were still residues clinging to the fog that had resulted from the passing storm.
The mist made it difficult to see their surroundings more than ten yards at a time in any direction. They could have waited for more light, but the need to get out of the church before more enemies showed up—this time, ones that weren’t constrained by light—drove them forward one careful step at a time, weapons in front of them and fingers on triggers.
They didn’t say a word, because they didn’t have to. Jolly and Donald carried the still-unconscious Carter between them, while Peters led the group with Gaby at his side. Bart, meanwhile, brought up the rear.
They picked their way through Axton, sticking to houses and scampering across wet yards. Every tree that appeared out of the fog was a potential enemy, every building hiding a possible troop of Fenton soldiers. (Killers. Not soldiers, but killers…) It took a while, but they finally reached the southeast edge of town and stopped next to a large red structure that might have once been a grain warehouse.
Road To Babylon Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 57
