0692672400 (S) (31 page)

But the truth stared her in the face as she took in the forest of pruned black flesh and heard their bones
clacking
as they surged through the opening and poured across the lobby floor like an endless ocean wave.

She turned and ran, and heard Danny’s footsteps close on her heels.

“Faster!” he shouted. “Faster!”

Up ahead, Nate had finally found his way out of the door, and his eyes widened at the sight of her and Danny racing back to him.

“Nate, run!” she shouted. “They’re inside! They’re inside the building!”

She saw the whites of Nate’s eyes, and he might have screamed something back at her but she couldn’t hear, because at that very moment the floor and the walls and the ceiling began vibrating uncontrollably. She heard the very distinct
clink-clink-clink
of empty brass casings (Danny’s, the collaborators, whoever’s) that were littering the floor began jumping around like beans.

At first she thought they were being hit by an earthquake, but then she heard it, and the sound sent a spear into the very center of her soul. The first time she was introduced to it was on the road, then again later, outside of Larkin. It was a sound that she would never forget for as long as she lived, whether that be the next few seconds, or minutes, or years from now.

Brooooooooooorrrrttttttttt!

18

FRANK

H
E WAS CLOSE
. So close. He could almost
feel
them nearby.

Danny and Gaby.

It was a trap. He knew that without a shred of doubt. Danny, Gaby, and the boy whose name he couldn’t remember were being used to lure him to the town of Gallant. They knew he would come, that he would have no choice because the (small) part of him that was still human demanded he come.

They were waiting for him. The blue eyes. And they wouldn’t be alone.

He knew all these things, and yet he had come because he had no choice. Simply no choice. Because they had Danny and Gaby, and if there was a shred of humanity left in him, he couldn’t ignore it.

They were so close and yet so far away. He wished he could pinpoint their exact location, but there was too much chaos inside his mind as well as outside in the physical world. The universe was breaking apart, death pouring from above, and he caught random flashes of memory from faraway places filled with sand where it was hot and cold and sometimes both at the same time.

Somewhere above him, Mercer’s warplane shook the heavens as it returned for another pass.

He didn’t know how he had gotten here, but he was sure Danny and Gaby were close even as he concentrated on the two black-clad figures, almost indistinguishable in the pitch-darkness of the floor. They were facing the far wall when he crashed through the window and tucked and rolled and snapped back up to his feet. They turned—fast, but not fast enough—and he saw the whites of their eyes shining through the clear glass of their gas masks.

Collaborators. Traitors.

The one on the left was the first to react, and he had almost fully lifted his rifle when his neck snapped. The second one was slower and dropped his weapon and stumbled back in mortal terror. It didn’t save him.

He grabbed the man by the uniform and flung him into the wall with one hand. There was a heavy
crack!
as bones shattered and the
thump!
as the limp body slid unconscious to the floor.

He turned his head at the sound of a few hundred stampeding feet surrounding the building outside. They poured themselves into the first floor below him, and more were coming from up and down the streets.

Moonlight glinted off one of the men’s fallen rifles, and he picked it up. It had a name. M-something. And a number. He couldn’t remember either details at the moment; not that it mattered, because it would come to him.

It always did, eventually.

The air shifted and the familiar gust of wind swamped the walls of the building, signaling the return of another kind of monster—this one made of metal and fire. The wall in front of him exploded, a tsunami of glass and brick and mortar reaching out at him like spidery tentacles. Shards sliced what remained of the trench coat as he lifted his arms to protect himself and spun at the same time, making himself as small as possible.

Then, a second after its armaments had razed the street outside and everything around it, there was the delayed sound of the plane’s roar:

Brooooooooooorrrrttttttttt!

He staggered away from the wall—or what was left of it. Blood dripped from his wounds, long pieces of glass jutting out of flesh, an extended gash across his right cheek, and something the size of his fist protruding from his chest. He picked and pulled at shards both big and small, like annoying wood splinters, the
slurp
of his blood spraying the already-filthy carpet.

Thomp-thomp-thomp!

They had finally made it to the second floor and were now racing through the hallway. In a matter of seconds, they would find the right room and overwhelm him.

“He’s inside!”
the voices shouted.
“Don’t let him escape!”

He didn’t have to break his way through the windows this time, because there weren’t any left—or even a wall to stand in his way. There was just a jagged hole, and he charged and leapt and shot free like a bullet through it. The cold night air flooded his hyper senses, the shredded remains of his coat snapping angrily like unwanted limbs behind him.

He sailed through the night air, free of the restraints of gravity, even of human logic, the rifle still clutched in his hands. Maybe he had clung to it as a token of his old self, a reminder of what he once was but could never be again.

As he slashed through the night air like a knife, he glimpsed rubble in the streets below. Vehicles had been reduced to junk, the concrete pavement a shell of its former self. The concentrated fire had left behind severed limbs and decapitated forms, still-intact bodies buried under the upended road. A carpet of
(re?)
death as far as he could see, and yet, miraculously, the buildings around the devastated killing field remained mostly intact. Clearly the sign of a highly skilled pilot at work.

Then he was across and crashing into metal scaffolding that was holding a white sign with letters on it. It buckled and snapped, the grinding of metal like nails on a chalkboard in his ears, so loud that no one could have missed it.

Noises—
pop-pop-pop!
—coursed through the soles of his feet like electricity. Gunfire, coming from the building below him.

Then a new noise—
thump-thump-thump!
—racing wildly.

Heartbeats, also from below.

Human heartbeats.

Had he found them after all? Danny and Gaby and the boy whose name he couldn’t remember? Were they below him now, fighting for their lives?

He managed a single step toward the edge when the world quaked as half of Gallant vanished in a ball of fire in the distance. Some kind of bomb. The heat washed across the air, forcing him to turn his shoulders against it. Unnatural warmth made his flesh tingle as the dead and dying filled his head with tortured screams, hundreds of ghouls blinking out of existence as flesh was stripped from bones, which were then pulverized into powder milliseconds later.

He managed to quiet the pained voices in his head, the relentless screams, just as the air above him quivered. He looked up as the creature fell down, smashing him with its fists and driving him to the graveled rooftop floor. Blue eyes glared at him as impossibly long, bony fingers tightened around his throat.

“There you are,”
it said, even though its lips, inches from his own, didn’t move.
“We’ve been looking for you for so long.”

He smashed the weapon he’d held onto since picking it up from the building across the street into the side of the creature’s head. The rifle disintegrated like brittle twigs, but it stunned the ghoul just enough to knock it off him.

He sprang up, realizing too late that the monster wasn’t alone.

They surrounded him, blocking his paths of escape.

“We knew you’d come,”
they said, four voices forming one coherent thought inside his head.

“So predictable.”

“…so human.”

“Look at him…”

“…clinging to the façade.”

“Pathetic.”

“Now you’re going to die.”

“Again.”

“But this time…

“…for good.”

“And he’ll be pleased…”

“…that we finally ended you.”

“…so pleased...”

They attacked as one, and from all four sides simultaneously. They were faster than any of the black eyes could ever hope to be, and stronger. So, so much stronger. He didn’t have the element of surprise on his side, and there was no advantage to be had. None.

They went for his arms and legs. He managed to dislodge one, but his attempt to punch through its chest went wrong and he only landed a glancing blow.

His left arm had been grabbed and bent at an impossible angle, and he heard the
crack!
of bone breaking but didn’t feel it. Somehow he fell on one knee, then both, and a hand seized his throat before the grip became a forearm pressed against his neck, searching for and finding a hold that refused to yield.

“You shouldn’t have come,”
they said inside his head.

“But we knew you would…”

“…knew you would.”

“They’ll be the death of you…”

“…again.”

“They’re only human…”

“They were made for this…”

“…destined…”

“They’re chattel...”

“…meat…”

“…storage…”

“Let it go.”

“Stop fighting.”

“Why are you still fighting?”

“You have no idea how long…”

“…he’s been planning this…”

“It’s all part of the plan.”

“Accept it.”

“Accept it!”

He somehow ended up staring at the sky. It was a strangely bright night, and the wind was cool against his flesh. He closed his mind from the pain as two of them pulled at his arms while a third, behind him, put pressure on his head until his neck was straining and he could feel the muscles stretching beyond their limits, hear the tendons tearing one by one, by one…

“It’s over,”
they said.

“This is how it ends.”

“She wasted her life to turn you…”

“…such a mistake…”

“…remedied, now…”

“Thank her when you see her again.”

He refused to think of her. She was gone. Dead
(again)
. Outside a gas station somewhere unimportant. Ironic that his last breaths would also happen on the rooftop of a building somewhere unimportant.

But he didn’t give in. It wasn’t in his nature.

“Still fighting,”
they said.

“Give in…”

“…this is the end…”

“…inevitable.”

“It’s all part of the plan…”

“His plan…”

“…give in!”

Lara
,
he thought, his mind’s eye filling with memories of her. Images and sounds and sensations that he had held onto even though doing so weakened him and kept him unsure and hesitant. But he couldn’t let go because it was her. It was Lara. The natural and crystal blue of her eyes, always so full of life even at her lowest moments. The smooth touch of her skin and the warmth of her breath against his neck as they lay together.

The best nights of his life.

The best days.

Because she was there.

Lara.

Lara…

I’ve failed you.

Again.

Forgive me.

Forgive me…

Then something strange—a sudden uptick in the cold followed by the loud scream of metal piercing air.

Then something heavy falling from the sky.

Plummeting faster, faster,
faster.

“No,”
they said inside his head.
“No!”

Yes
, he thought, and closed his eyes as the heat of the expanding blast absorbed the buildings around him and the solid rooftop under him disintegrated and he tumbled, out of control, into a black void as his skin burned and peeled and screams from a hundred—a
thousand
—creatures filled his mind in a tsunami of pain and horror and, oddly enough, sweet release…

B
LUE EYES PEERED AT HIM
, but the shape was all wrong.
Everything
about it was wrong. It wasn’t thin enough and the smell coming off it was sweaty, dirty, and greasy, but not the chaos of cold and heat coexisting. Warm air flowed forth as it breathed in and out with some difficulty, the weapon clutched in one hand and draped over its knee almost
too
casually.

“Man, talk about dropping in without calling first,” it said.

No, not an
it.

A
he.

“Good thing we were in the other room when you showed up. Of course, you guys made a real mess, but I’ll let that one slide since I don’t think it was you that dropped the bomb. Or da bomb, as the kids say. On the plus side, you also buried all the corpses we had piling up in here, so thanks for that. They were becoming a real eyesore.”

It was a man and his voice was…familiar.

“It wasn’t easy, you know. I was
this
close to putting a bullet in your head and calling it a day,” the man said, pinching his forefinger and thumb together. “That trench coat—or what’s left of it—saved your life. Where do you do your shopping anyway, and do you get a discount if the stuff is only thirty—excuse me, I meant, ten—percent intact?”