He was certain he was back at his old spot, where he had been lying in wait for the assaulters, when he saw moonlight glinting off spent shell casings on the ground. That was good, because a man could only run for so long. How long had he been in constant motion, anyway? He had no idea. Time had a way of slipping by when you were trying to keep from getting shot.
The sudden burst of pop-pop-pop from behind him made Keo duck his head instinctively, praying for the twentieth time in as many seconds that one of those bullets didn’t get lucky and take out his legs. Except he didn’t have to duck, because nothing was coming at him. Bark on the trees around him weren’t flying, and branches weren’t snapping into kindling. Instead, the gunfire continued behind him but, for whatever reason, it wasn’t being directed at him.
He told himself to keep running, to keep going—
Then someone screamed.
Then someone else joined in…
Keo slid to a stop and twisted around, lifting the MP5SD to fire. He was breathing hard, all the running finally catching up to him. He expected to see the four men in pursuit, but instead there were only two of them, and they were backing up toward him while shooting at something behind them.
It took only a second for Keo to see what they were shooting at.
He stared, because the sight was too much. Too…insane.
There had to be hundreds of them, so many there was no room for the trees, for the branches, for him and the two poor saps standing twenty meters in front of him, firing regular bullets into the creatures. Keo couldn’t see the other two, but he didn’t have to know where they were or what had happened to them. He could hear them screaming from inside the thick mass of moving ghouls.
I guess the uniform’s not working anymore, Keo thought before he turned and lunged out between the trees and felt mushy white sand under his boots a second later.
Run! Run, run, run, run!
Behind him, from inside the woods, the screaming and the gunfire continued, but Keo didn’t waste a second looking back. He didn’t have to. He knew what was back there. God knew he had seen plenty of it to last a lifetime. Tens of lifetimes. Right now, there was just the blood-soaked beach under him, the bodies left behind where they had fallen, and the boats still perched on the other side waiting, so close and yet so, so far away.
Christ, he didn’t remember the beach being this wide. Had it always been this wide?
Keo pushed harder, leaping over bodies and dodging rifles buried in the sand. There was so much blood it looked as if Song Island had soaked up all the plasma and was trying to give itself some kind of Grand Guignol makeover. And yet, and yet, the air still smelled fresh and clear, as if he could lie down and go to sleep right here and now and never notice the horrors.
Then the ground under his feet started to rumble. It felt like an earthquake, but of course he knew better. It wasn’t a natural disaster. Hell, there was nothing natural about this.
He didn’t have to look over his shoulder to know what was back there, but he did it anyway.
Because he had to be sure.
Because there was a chance he could be wrong—
He wasn’t wrong.
They came out of the woods, between the trees, and the sight of the beach being swallowed up by the wave of pruned black flesh, like a living flood, sent a shiver up and down his spine. This was the stuff of nightmares, and Keo might have given in to his instincts and let out a loud mindless scream if he still had any energy left to make his mouth do anything besides gasp for breath.
To keep himself from freezing with fear, Keo looked forward instead and counted the steps to the nearest boat.
Twenty meters. Not too bad.
Then what?
Jump up into the boat. Turn the engine. Pray the motor still worked. Then somehow back out into the lake—
Dead. I’m dead meat.
He didn’t have to look over his shoulder this time to know they were almost on top of him. He could smell them. The air had changed, shifting from that pleasant clean lake aroma to something thick and grimy that made breathing difficult. His lungs continued to burn from all the running he had done, and his legs became dangerously wobbly.
Ten meters…
Gunshots rang out, and Keo glanced left without breaking his stride. Someone else was also moving toward the row of boats further down the beach. Because of the distance and with only moonlight to see with, he couldn’t tell if it was a lone figure or multiple people huddled together. Or hell, an entire basketball team.
But at least they knew where they were going.
The water. Get to the water!
Five…
Four…
Three…
Then he was there, the splash of wetness against his boots, letting him know that he had made it. He ran past the closest boat without looking at it, because the air behind him crackled and he felt warm, tainted breath hit the back of his neck and what sounded like a guttural squeal of delight—
Keo took a leap of faith. Or maybe he just leaped. Through the air. He imagined he must look like some kind of dolphin.
He hit the water headfirst and went under, unable to squash the laughter even as he sucked in a mouthful of Beaufont Lake water, because this was the third time he had gone for a swim in as many nights. He sank with his entry, but thank God he was a strong swimmer, because Keo quickly righted himself.
“They will not cross bodies of water,” Lara had said in her broadcast. “An island, a boat — get to anything that can separate you from land.”
Why, exactly, wouldn’t the ghouls cross bodies of water? Lara didn’t know. No one knew. The creatures just didn’t.
Well, it was time to test that theory. Up close and personal.
Hello, Guinea Pig Island!
He was halfway to the bottom of the slanted lake floor when he whirled around and almost choked on more of the clear water when he saw them dive bombing into the lake around him, shattering the surface one by one by one. They looked like missiles falling from the sky, but they were so light (bags of bones) that they didn’t sink right away.
Keo counted.
Five…ten…
Twenty!
Maybe one more. Maybe one less. Twenty or more (or less) ghouls in the lake with him were more than enough to make this a very short swim.
He was reaching for his MP5SD, hoping the German gun would still prove effective. He had never actually fired it under water before. But hey, there was a first time for everything. Like the end of the world. Like keeping a stupid promise to a woman he hadn’t seen in half a year. Like almost giving up his life for an island full of strangers run by a third-year medical student—
Keo never had to try shooting the submachine gun under water, because one second the creatures looked as if they would right themselves at any second and the next they seemed to be convulsing, desperately trying not to swallow the lake water. Their arms and legs were thrashing about wildly and one or two, maybe more, of them began trying to swim back toward the shore. Or what appeared to be an attempt to swim. It actually looked more like frantic kicking and clawing, movements he’d seen more than once from dumb tourists who got to Mission Beach and realized, too late, that they didn’t know how to swim.
He watched with a combination of fascination and exhilaration as the closest ghoul struggled to stay afloat, its dark eyes bulging as water poured into its agape mouth, bony fingers reaching out toward him as if for a handhold. Keo treaded water, neither sinking nor going up, too mesmerized by the sight to go anywhere.