Danny went into the bathroom first, then gingerly laid Nate down on the small single-size mattress they had inserted into the bathtub earlier. She thought Nate might have groaned as Danny lowered him, or it might have actually been Danny sighing with relief.
“Guy weighs a ton,” Danny said. “Time to put him on a diet.”
“I’ll get on it as soon as we get back to the Trident.” She looked back at the bedroom. “What—”
A loud crash! tore through the house before she could finish. It came from their left and was soon followed by the unmistakable sound of glass breaking. On cue, the tap-tap noises above them ceased entirely.
“Danny,” she said breathlessly.
“I know, I know,” Danny said. “Maybe we should have barricaded those windows after all, huh?”
“Gee, ya think?”
He grinned back at her then nodded at Nate. “Keep an eye on him.”
“Where are you going?”
“Be right back.”
“Danny,” she said, but he had already vanished through the door, the darkness on the other side swallowing him up in a matter of seconds.
She unslung the rifles, laying one across the sink, then spent a few seconds pushing their backpacks and supplies into the crevices around the toilet so she didn’t accidentally trip on them if she had to scramble around the tight confines. It was dark enough inside that she couldn’t even see her own reflection in the mirror above the sink. She only knew where to find Nate because the white porcelain tub stood out—
Another loud crash! and Gaby thought, There goes the bedroom door…
She spun toward the open bathroom door at the same time the first gunshot rang out. It was followed by two more shots, both single shots but fired in such quick succession it was easy to mistake them for burst-fire. They seemed to have come from right outside the bathroom, except she didn’t see the telltale staccato flash of gunfire, so it couldn’t have been that—
The single shots became a volley as the shooter switched from semi-auto to full-auto, the pop-pop-pop blowing across the house and she thought, At least Nate won’t be awake to see this.
She ran back into the master bedroom and immediately made out a solitary figure (Danny) crouched in front of her and firing at where the door had once been. Something had shattered the slab of wood into pieces that were now spread across the room — something either very heavy or very, very strong.
Danny snapped a quick look behind him as he stood up, his hands busy with loading a fresh magazine. “Get back inside! We’re fu—”
She was pretty sure she knew what he was going to say but didn’t get the chance to, because one second he was standing up in front of her trying desperately to feed a magazine into his rifle, and the next he was on the floor and there was a ghoul perched on top of him.
Jesus!
The thing had moved so fast she hadn’t even seen it coming through what remained of the door. It was just suddenly there and on top of Danny, pinning him to the floor with one hand while ripping the rifle out of his grip and tossing it across the room as if he were a petulant child in need of discipline.
Then it turned its head, and deep, pulsating blue eyes bored into her soul.
“Run!” Danny shouted despite the creature’s hand wrapped tightly around his throat.
Run? Run where, Danny? Where can I run that it can’t find me?
Of course, she didn’t say any of those things out loud. She was too busy backpedaling, moving as fast as she could (though it didn’t seem to be nearly fast enough) toward the bathroom door behind her. She lifted her M4 (Go for the head! Shoot it in the head!), but before she could pull the trigger, something moved in the corner of her left eye.
She finished the pull anyway, but her aim was off and the round sailed past the creature’s head and disappeared into the shadows. She had missed! How the hell had she missed from such a short distance? Or had the thing simply moved its head to avoid her shot? Could it move that fast?
Yes. Yes, it could. She remembered that time at the farmhouse in Louisiana and how fast that blue-eyed monstrosity had been—
It was just a blur, but even before her eyes could report its presence to her brain, it had already reached her and broadsided her. It couldn’t have been flesh and blood because the blow was too strong, like being hit with a jackhammer, and it sent her flying across the room and into the armoire. She was still trying to comprehend why she was no longer holding her rifle (or standing) as she was falling and finally slammed into the floor.
She couldn’t find the wherewithal to stick her hands out in time to stop her fall, and the face-first blow with the floor sent pain rippling through her entire body. Which was just as well, because most of her bones were still rattling from being slammed into by that semi-trailer (Anyone get the license plate of that thing?), then not even a second later crashing into the armoire.
Which part of her wasn’t screaming at the moment?
She expected to hear gunshots, something to indicate Danny had gotten the upper hand on the monster that had knocked him to the floor, but there wasn’t any. Which were more bad signs. With Danny, silence was never a good thing.
Gaby managed to flatten her palms against the floor and pushed herself up, if just slightly, even as her face throbbed. She turned her head and saw two figures entering the room, stepping over splintered wood sprinkled across the floor. But they moved like men, not ghouls, and were wearing gas masks and carrying rifles.
A pair of bare feet entered her line of vision, blocking her view of the figures in gas masks. The legs in front of her were black but somehow still stood out against the suffocating darkness inside the room. She craned her head, her neck straining with the effort, until she was staring into a pair of blue eyes. They looked like crystal heartbeats hanging in the air, beating slowly. The thing’s skin emitted an unnatural combination of cold and heat that had little difficulty piercing through her thermal clothing, making every inch of her shiver uncontrollably.
“So frail,” the blue-eyed creature (hissed) said. Thin strips of purple lines on the lower part of its face twisted into a grotesque facsimile of what must have been a mocking smile.
She looked past the creature and at Danny, unmoving on the floor behind it. The blue-eyed ghoul that had been perched on top of him was gone — no, not gone; it had simply abandoned him after Danny was no longer a threat and was now standing over him.
“Danny,” she said, his name coming out as barely a whisper.
The creature in front of her bent, grabbed her by the throat, and lifted her up from the floor as if she weighed nothing. It held her effortlessly in the air, and she struggled to breathe even as the toes of her boots scraped the floor, desperately trying to find the solid footing that was no longer possible.
Being in such close proximity to the creature, being touched by it, made her almost gag. If not for the pain, she might have lost the battle. Its fingers were more bone than flesh, and she swore she could feel every single joint that made up all five digits. And as hard as it was to fathom, she didn’t think it was even using most of its strength, because it looked almost amused by her flailing. Its lips (or what passed for lips) again formed that twisted thing that might have been an attempt at a smile.
“How did you ever survive for so long, little thing?” it asked her, its voice a sharp hiss that left no room for doubt it was no longer human.