He turned around, got a good grip on the windowsill, and pulled himself up and—
— over.
He landed in a crouch and quickly unslung the M4, scanning the darkness behind the iron sights of the weapon.
There was just the black shroud of night staring back at him from every direction. The gas station was flanked by a thick wooded area to his right and Interstate 10 to his left, its gray concrete form just barely visible under the moonlight about a hundred meters away on the other side of a feeder road and overgrown grass that swayed in the breeze. The real jungle was on the other side — thick patches of shadows, like walls, that was as inviting as stepping into a wood chipper.
He stood up just as Natasha made an oomph! sound as she landed a few inches next to him.
It didn’t take long for the door in the backroom to go. In fact, the loud crash! caught him off guard because Will expected it to last just a little bit longer. Had Natasha really been the only thing keeping it from collapsing all this time?
“Oh, shit,” Natasha said breathlessly. She stumbled, turned around, and lifted her M4, ready to shoot the first thing that came through the open window behind them.
She didn’t get the chance because the darkness behind her shifted, moving in ways that shouldn’t be possible. Natasha fell. As she did, she pulled the trigger and the carbine fired a three-round burst into the air, the staccato effect of the discharge lighting up the immediate area for a second and a half, illuminating the half dozen ghouls that were pulling her down, bony fingers clutched around her legs and arms and waist.
Natasha let out a shriek that pierced Will’s soul.
Then she was gone, swallowed up by the shadows. The air crackled and the stench of death filled his nostrils as she screamed and screamed and screamed…
He started moving toward Natasha instinctively, but froze when they emerged out of the blackness. There was just enough moonlight to make out their emaciated forms, hollowed black eyes, and the sound of bone joints popping as they scrambled toward him.
He took a step back and fired, the first three-round burst shredding the chest of one of them. The second burst drilled three holes into the head of a second. Of course he knew it wouldn’t stop them. Why should it? The bullets weren’t silver, and he might as well be throwing sand pebbles at them for all the good the rounds were doing.
But he didn’t have a choice. Will kept backing up along the wall, moving left, even though he didn’t know why left would be any better than right. Left took him toward the highway, but he had no illusions he was ever going to reach it. He should have stopped then and there to catch his breath, but that would mean surrendering. Will hadn’t given up when the world died, and he’d be goddamned if he was going to do so now.
He kept shooting, because there was nothing else to do. But it wasn’t just the ghouls coming out of the nothingness around him now; they were also pouring out of the small gas station window, dropping to the ground one after another, after another…
He shot the legs out from under a ghoul, and it fell and was instantly stepped on by two — three—a dozen others.
“Will, stop.”
There wasn’t the sound of triumph in her voice that he was expecting. There was almost…what was it? Concern? No. That had to be a trick of his mind, giving her human traits when he knew damn well Kate was no longer human. She was a monster, like these poor bastards coming at him from every direction at the moment.
He was hoping the continuous gunfire would drown out her voice, but he had no such luck. He could hear her just fine. More than fine, actually. Her words were so loud and clear despite everything that he might as well be trying to shut himself off from his own thoughts.
“Why do you keep fighting me?”
He smashed the butt of the rifle into the head of the first ghoul that reached him. He heard a crack! as its skull gave way. The blow sent it reeling, though whether he had actually hurt it or not (or maybe just annoyed it), he couldn’t tell. And he didn’t have time to find out because the others were already closing in from the right and left—
Left. Christ, the left!
“You always were so stubborn.”
He spun and started shooting in that direction, but that meant he was now cut off from the highway.
“Always so…Will.”
Click! as the rifle went empty.
Already? He didn’t have time to breathe or reload because they were everywhere, converging on him in an unending tide. He dropped the rifle and drew the Smith & Wesson, shooting the closest one point-blank in the face. The bullet drilled through its right eye and hit another ghoul behind it in the forehead. It, too, snapped back momentarily.
“The world turns whether we’re here or not.”
He shot another one in the chest, spun around, and blew out the forehead of another, and then they were all over him. One had gotten a grip on his right arm and was pulling it back, along with the gun. He punched it in the face, staggering it. That forced it to let go of his arm, but it just gave another ghoul—two—the opportunity to take its place.
“There is order in acceptance.”
He could only see the tops of their pruned foreheads as they climbed over him, and soon they were pushing him down to one knee. He fired another shot, but it was like throwing a pebble into an ocean of black tar. Nothing. Absolutely nothing happened.
“You don’t have to lose your humanity. Not all of it, anyway. I can show you how.”
Then he was kneeling, trying to rise, but unable to against their sheer number. One or two, or even a dozen wouldn’t have done it, but there was more than that. There were two, maybe even three dozen, crawling over him. Whatever had happened to them — this infection, this deviant transformation — it had shrunk them into husks of their normal size. They were shorter and lighter, but that didn’t matter when there were so many of them.
“Let go.”
He fell. He had no choice. He went down on the grass, trying desperately to punch and kick at them, but he could barely move any of his limbs.
“Just let go…”
No.
“It’s over…”
No!
“Yes…”
He couldn’t see anything — just a world of black, even darker than the night itself. This nothingness, this void was complete and suffocating. He waited to feel their teeth penetrate his skin, to inject their poisoned blood into his veins and turn him from who he was into what they were—
“No, Will. You’re not for them. You were never meant for them.”
There was a sadness in her voice. He didn’t know how he knew, but he felt it in every fiber of his being that this Kate was once again the Kate he knew, the survivor of The Purge and not the one that had become a monster. Or maybe he was fooling himself again.
“Soon you’ll understand everything.”
They had pinned his right arm against the ground near his hip, bony fingers wrapped around every inch of his skin like pricking needles.
Never.
“Yes.”
Never…
It took every ounce of muscle, but he was able to move his hand partially up the length of his body despite the arms — so many fingers, and so strong — tugging at him the entire way. Or maybe they weren’t strong at all. Maybe it was just their sheer number. How many now? Three dozen hands? Four?