“You are hurting us, hurting our kind. Go. Leave us. Alone.”
“Fuck you and your kind. You are an abortion. I want every one of you dead.” Anger seared through me—a hot fuse that was going to explode. If I had a box of C-4, I would probably set it off just to spite these assholes.
“But we are you. We are human,” the ghoul said. Why couldn’t I pick him out in the mass? I couldn’t even determine where his voice was coming from.
The room swam before my eyes, and I didn’t think I could stay on my feet much longer. How many shots had I fired from the big gun? Did I have another one I could use on myself? Rookie mistake, losing count like that. Or the simple mistake of a man driven to the brink of his sanity and exhaustion. The whole last terrible month felt like it was crushing me with an ungodly weight. I wanted to sit down and babble about the evils of the world, find Jesus, slink away to a cave somewhere, and just die.
But if these ghouls had their way, I would join them. It wouldn’t take much for them to simply hold me down and force feed me some zombie flesh. Then they could lock me up until I changed.
What did I have? A few bullets? A knife? And I was faced with about fifteen or twenty of the glowing-eyed bastards. A pair of eyes from much farther away than the rest told me a tunnel stretched into the distance. Who knew how far back it went or what it contained? There could be a hundred more of the monsters.
If I only had some last resort. Once again, I yearned for a brick of C-4 explosives; maybe that would shut this place down.
Screams from above accompanied flashes against the dark of the stairs as bullets bounced around. I wished I were up there, able to fight with my friends, but they would do their best to finish the mission. They would kill every last one of the dead in the camp before leaving. They had assured me it would be done. Then they would lead the survivors out of the camp into freedom. Maybe take them to Portland.
Wait. Explosives. These ghouls were mean, but they weren’t all that bright. I took one of the bags off my shoulder ever so slowly while trying to keep the gun trained on them. It had a couple of smoke grenades that I wasn’t sure what to do with, but the boy scout in me had said they might come in handy. I held it up above my head.
“This explosive can level this place. If I pull the pin, we all go up. You, me, and everything in the room—every last dead one of you. Someone want to start negotiating?”
Silence was their answer, while unblinking green eyes continued watching me. No one moved. It was a start.
“You will die,” one of them said in that voice that made me want to rip off my own ears.
“I don’t care.”
Or did I? I missed Katherine terribly and wanted nothing more than to join her again. For all her problems, she was as close to the perfect woman for me as I had ever met. Allison had been pale and waifish, beautiful and flighty. She never knew what she wanted, and I never knew where I stood with her. With Katherine, there was never any bullshit.
“Your sacrifice would be for nothing. We are everywhere. We are—as the old line goes—legion.”
One of the green-eyed monsters stepped away from the wall with its hands above its head. He was dressed in the rags of his old life—a Hawaiian shirt that now looked ridiculous hanging from his dead body. It was torn and dirty, and I don’t think he cared one bit. He wore a pair of jeans that hung low and loose, the bottoms torn and frayed.
His eyes regarded me in their lifeless way. The others moved around as he stepped toward me, and I expected one of them to pop out and try to take me while my attention was focused on the ghoul moving toward me.
More gunfire from up above. Yelling, but the words were hard to make out. Ripples of fire rocked the ground as the big gun spoke.
“Fine. You go first.” I gestured toward the stairs.
He picked his way over the broken stairs. I followed close, the Desert Eagle aimed at his head and the ‘package of explosives’ in my other hand. As we moved upward, I kicked debris over the edge of the stairs.
I squinted as we came into the light above. I worried that Scott or Jack would see the ghoul and shoot on sight, but they seemed to have their attention on taking out zombies.
When I came into the light outside, I looked around. The vehicle was fifty or sixty feet away with Scott on the machine gun, firing toward the entrance of the camp. Jack was on the side of the truck firing in single-shot mode from an automatic. I grabbed the ghoul and thrust him in front of me. He nearly fell, but I didn’t help. Touching the thing was repulsive.
“Look at all of your sheep dying.”
“There are always more sheep—many more sheep. A whole world of sheep.” the ghoul said. “I was one once. My name was Warren. I was much like you, but now I am better.”
“And dead.”
The thing turned to look at me, his face a nightmare of bruised and mottled flesh around large green eyes that even glowed in the light of day.
“As will you be, someday. I look forward … to it.”
I could just shoot him here and now, be done with it, but then I would lose a bargaining chip. I needed him, but only for the time being.
“Scott, Jack, you ready to roll?” I called out.
Jack looked at me as he changed a magazine. Bullets whizzed by him, and one pinged off the side of the truck. Scott readjusted his aim and fired in the general direction of whoever was shooting. He was smart, for he didn’t pound the gun. Instead, he shot a short burst, moved his aim, and shot again.
Who the hell was shooting at them?
“Are there more ghouls out there with guns?”
“Only your kind use guns. Mine use a much greater weapon.”
“Blah blah. Why don’t you stick to simple yes or no answers?” I considered shooting the ghoul again, then I had a better idea. Besides, he was full of shit. I knew one of them had shot Katherine.
I grabbed his cold neck, but shifted the remains of his shirt up so I didn’t have to touch his flesh. Then, with the warm barrel dug into his neck, I propelled him ahead of me toward the truck. There were a few hordes coming at us.
Pushing the ghoul ahead of me, I used him as a shield. We walked as fast as he could, but his movement was wooden, stiff, and resistant, like he was on stilts or had boards strapped to his legs. The ground was flat, and I frowned when we passed a cage that was now empty.
A zombie came at us; a large naked man covered in mud. There were two more behind; one was missing a foot and dragged the remains of his leg. I lowered the big gun and fired, but the shot went wide and only hit his shoulder. He spun around as the round ripped a path of destruction along its way. Stumbling, the zombie fell into one of the others, then they all went down like dominoes.
Bullets kicked up clumps of dirt around me, but none struck the ghoul. He stumbled once, over the foot of one of the dead lying discarded on the ground. I stayed with him and guided him back to his feet so we both didn’t go down.
Scott tore his gaze away from whatever he was aiming at and scanned the area. I followed his focus as I tried to keep it together. Just a few more feet. Then, once in the truck, I would rearm and shoot everything that moved. That was the plan now.
“You got a new girlfriend?” Scott asked as we slammed into the side of the truck.
“You run off and I’ll shoot you in the back of the head. Got that?” I said in the ghoul’s ear, but his dead eyes were unreadable. I wanted to smash the gun into his head, wanted to grind the barrel between his lips and blow the back of his neck out. The thing that was once a man disgusted me.