It didn’t matter. There were too many. There were always too damn many.
He kept pulling anyway, willing every muscle to work, and slowly, very slowly, turned the gun in his hand until it faced up instead of down.
Lara, I’m sorry. I tried to make it back home.
He wrapped his finger around the familiar cold trigger.
I tried, baby. I really tried.
The gun wasn’t exactly right under his chin where he could be guaranteed of a killing shot, but it was close enough. Or it would have to do, anyway.
I can’t become one of them, Lara. I won’t become like her.
He wished he could see where the barrel was pointing, just to be sure. He wished, he wished, he wished…for so many things at the moment.
Please understand.
He had to get it right with the first shot, because he wouldn’t have a second one. If he just wounded himself, he might not have the strength to try again.
I hope you’ll be able to forgive me.
He started to pull the trigger…
“What are you doing, Will?”
He didn’t remember the trigger being so strong, so difficult to pull. It felt as if the gun was purposefully fighting him. Or was he just weak from all the struggling? That could have been it.
“No.”
He ignored her and closed his eyes, shutting out the sight of the wall of black flesh. He didn’t need to see them to know this was the right thing to do. He couldn’t become one of them. Never. Lara would understand.
“You can’t do this.”
At least Danny and Gaby had made it home. At least there was that. If nothing else — all the failures, the near-misses — at least he had done that one thing right.
Take care of her, Danny. I’m counting on you.
There, almost there—
“Stop it,” the voice said, and this time it wasn’t inside his head. This time it was coming from outside. “It can’t end like this.”
The ghouls pinning him to the ground unraveled, their thick layers dissolving like liquid around him. They released his arms and legs and slithered backward on their hands and knees.
He could breathe again, and sucked in a deep lungful of biting cold air.
He was still on the ground, his chest heaving, the thickness of the night sky exposed above him. It was ironic that it would end here — out in the open and under the stars. The Purge had begun inside an apartment building for him, and it seemed as if he had been hiding inside back rooms and basements ever since.
Except for all those wonderful times when he was at the island with Lara. Those were the best days of his life. The best nights, too. Because of her.
Lara…
Something moved in the darkness, flickering in the corners of his eyes. He sat up and scrambled to his feet, backing up until he was pressed against the brick wall of the store, the Smith & Wesson clenched tightly in his hand.
Almost. He’d almost pulled the trigger.
He didn’t shoot the approaching figure right away; not yet, not until he could see what he was shooting at. He could feel the weight of the gun even through the gauze covering the raw (and probably bleeding again) flesh underneath — the magazine was half empty, and he knew with absolute certainty he wouldn’t have time to reload if he emptied it now.
Not yet, not yet…
The lone ghoul emerged out of the black canvas like a ghostly apparition; it was taller than the others, and it stood straight. It walked toward him with a preternatural fluidity that shouldn’t have been possible and had the obvious hips of a woman even though anything resembling breasts were long gone, replaced by a sunken chest that, nevertheless, managed to still look strong and boastful.
The way it moved was undeniable: It owned this moment with every step, and it knew it.
Bright blue eyes pulsated in the darkness.
He knew this day would come. Somehow, some way, he knew it would end this way, with the two of them face to face in the middle of a lonely, dark night.
“Hello, Will,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”
CHAPTER 25
LARA
“Run!” the kid shouted.
Kid? Why was she calling him a kid? The Josh who had come back to the island after supposedly dying wasn’t a kid anymore. Far from it. The fact that he had just shot Danny with a pistol erased any doubts about that.
Lara was struggling to pick Danny up when Gaby grabbed him on the other side. They exchanged a brief look and as much of a smile as they could manage before they lifted Danny up from the cobblestone road.
“Run!” Josh was shouting behind them. “Get out of here, Gaby! Leave him, and get out of here now!”
But Gaby didn’t leave him, and Lara couldn’t be any more prouder of her. The girl who had come back to her was hardly recognizable, but it wasn’t because of the bruises and cuts. Gaby had changed. She had grown up. She might have still been nineteen, but Lara saw a woman when she looked across Danny.
She’s a soldier, Will. You’d be proud of her.
And she was going to need Gaby, too, because Danny was heavy. God, he was so heavy.
She hadn’t taken more than a few steps when the air became drenched with a nauseating smell. It was indescribable, and though she hadn’t seen them in such a long time, she knew exactly what the stench was a harbinger of even before she glanced back over her shoulder. She had to see for herself — the proof that all of this was happening, that Song Island really was lost to them.
The wall of pruned flesh moved against the night, blackening the already dark background on the other side of the open pathway. She swore she could hear them not just in front of her, but through the woods to both sides, too — the loud and stampeding crunch! of grass and the snap! and thwack! of branches assaulting every one of her senses.
“Faster,” Lara said, the word coming out in a breathless whisper. “Faster, Gaby!”
Gaby didn’t answer, but she did pick up her pace, and together they pushed their way through the four soldiers staring, a couple of them already lifting their rifles at the legion of creatures swarming down the pathway toward them.
Run! Lara wanted to shout at them. Run, you fools! Bullets don’t stop them! Even silver bullets only slow them down until the next hundred more take their place!
She didn’t, because she didn’t care what they did or didn’t do. She didn’t have any interest in their lives at all. They were the enemy — people who had come here to kill her and her friends — and she didn’t give a damn what happened to them. But a small part of her that thought maybe, just maybe, having the soldiers between her and the ghouls would slow the creatures down.
What was that old joke? “I don’t need to outrun the bear. I just need to outrun you!”
She wanted to laugh, but of course when she opened her mouth, the only thing that came out was harried breathing. She was already out of breath and they hadn’t even gone a few yards yet.
“Run!” someone was shouting behind them.
Josh. He wasn’t talking to her or Gaby; he couldn’t be, because they were already running. So who was he screaming at?
The soldiers. Of course.
“I can’t control them!” Josh was shouting. “Run! For God’s sake, run!”