Kate stumbled backward and Lara watched, horrified, as Kate’s thumb moved, pressing down on the pendant—
No no no NO!
They heard it, like the sound of some angry god rising from the pits of hell, the loud grinding noise as the Door began to move.
“No!” Danny screamed, racing toward Kate.
He wrestled the pendant easily from her weak fingers, as she sat down heavily on the steps like an old woman resting for the very last time.
Danny was repeatedly hitting the button on the pendant, not that it did any good.
The Door was already moving, opening, and what was initially just an inch of moonlight — a dark, milky sea of blackness in the sky, something she had rarely seen these last few months — turned into two…then five…then ten inches, all within a couple of heartbeats.
She felt the rush of spring wind from outside, the coldness of the March night flooding in, giving her the kind of chills that raced up and down her body in an endless rush of terror.
Will shouted next to her, “Danny! Get back!”
A pair of dark, black eyes appeared above the stairs, peering through a small sliver of opening. Then one pair of eyes became two, then five, until suddenly there was a dozen of them peering in, waiting, waiting…
As the Door continued to open, grinding away against the still night outside and inside the facility, she reached for her Glock and found the handle cold and strange and uncomfortable. She pulled it out just as Will took a step back, and Danny started backpedaling, the pendant in his hand. Danny was still pressing the button desperately.
She knew it was pointless, and wanted to shout it at Danny, even as he kept backpedaling toward them. She didn’t doubt he already knew it was futile, because, like Will, he had been out there more than most and had had to wait each time for the Door to close behind them before they could set out on a mission. Because the Door couldn’t begin to close until it was fully opened. A “quirk” in the facility’s construction that bothered Will, but there was nothing they could do about it.
Harold Campbell strikes again.
As the first ghoul slipped through the hole, all she could think of was a conversation she had had with Will. She had asked him how many ghouls he thought were out there, standing silently inside the dark woods, waiting for their chance. Just waiting, and waiting, and waiting…
“A lot,” he had said.
“But how many?” she insisted.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “A hell of a lot.”
Her hands trembled as several ghouls dropped out of the widening hole at the top of the stairs and landed on the top steps. Even Kate, sitting on the bottom step, must have felt them behind her, because she looked back at them as they slipped through like rain, one after another after another after another…
Will grabbed Lara’s wrist and dragged her back, his voice so forceful that it immediately seized her attention: “Go back to Carly and the kids and lock yourselves in their room! We’ll come for you! Go!”
She didn’t argue. There was no point.
She turned and ran, almost crashing into Rhonda standing behind her staring dumbly as the ghouls came in. Lara wasn’t sure if she pushed Rhonda out of the way or if the other woman just fell.
She just ran, turned the corner, and kept running.
The girls! Get to Elise and Carly and Vera!
She heard gunshots behind her. Loud, crashing gunshots, and knew they were from Will’s and Danny’s Glocks. They were using regular bullets, not silver, and regular bullets only slowed the ghouls down long enough to make them mad. The silver bullets were in the Armory, where they were always kept until they had to go out on missions.
She kept running, fighting the urge to look back, even as the gunshots rang out one after another. She ran as fast as she could, taking corners almost haphazardly, grabbing at walls to keep from sliding and spilling, willing herself to go even faster.
Familiar faces came out of rooms in front of her, flooding into the hallways one by one, woken up by the loud, undeniable sounds of gunshots. They couldn’t ignore it now. There were too many gunshots, one after another, rumbling through the facility like thunderclaps.
They looked at her with dazed eyes, confused by the sight of her barreling down the hallway toward them, gun in hand, passing them with reckless abandon.
What must her face look like to them?
But all she could think to do was scream at them as she ran: “Get back inside! They’re through the Door! Get back inside and lock your doors!”
Some listened and quickly retreated, but most just stared dumbly at her. She knew them all by name, had treated all of them in the Infirmary at one point or another.
She saw Sandra, whose little daughter, Mandy, Lara sometimes saw sneaking around the hallways by herself. Sandra looked stunned at the sight of Lara racing down the hallway. “My God, what’s happening? I heard gunshots…”
“Get back inside!” Lara yelled.
“What?” Sandra said, confused.
Mandy stood clutching at her mother’s leg. Lara didn’t care about that right now. She screamed at the top of her lungs down the hall, at Sandra and at the others still staring mutely after her.
“Get back inside! For God’s sake, go back inside and lock your doors! They’re coming! They’re through the Door! Get back inside now and lock your doors!”
She saw realization on some of those same faces, but not enough of them. Not nearly enough. Most of them continued to look after her as if she was shouting at them in a language they couldn’t understand.
“Goddammit, get back inside!”
She couldn’t waste any more time now, even as the gunfire started to move away from them, toward the other side of the facility.
Operations.
Will and Danny were heading toward Operations. But why?
Of course. The guns. That was where all the guns were. In the Armory.
Including the silver bullets…
She turned the final corner.
Carly was coming out of her room. She saw Lara and froze. “What’s going on?”
Before she could answer, there was another sound, cutting through the hallway like a scythe, pursuing Lara and finally reaching her. It stopped her in her tracks and she turned, looking back down the way she had come. Her gut constricted, and she had to remind herself to breathe.
“Is that…?” Carly began.
“Yes,” Lara said. “Come on.”
She turned and grabbed Carly’s arm and dragged her back into the room. Carly went along hesitantly, her eyes darting back up the hallway.
Lara slammed the door shut and twisted the lever up ninety degrees to lock it. She had no illusions that the door would hold. At least, not for very long. What she wouldn’t give to have one of those steel doors they had over at Operations.
Behind them, Elise and Vera were sitting on a small cot. They looked back at her, terror visible in their big eyes, even brave and usually stoic Vera.
“Lara?” Elise said, her voice soft, barely audible.
“It’ll be all right, sweetheart,” she said, trying to smile back at the girl. “Everything will be fine.”
“What do we do?” Carly asked, her voice visibly shaking.
“We stay here,” Lara said, remembering Will’s words. “Will and Danny will come for us. But we have to stay here. Whatever happens, we don’t go out that door. Whatever we hear, whatever knocks against it, we stay inside.”
Carly nodded, and they looked back toward the door and took a few steps away from it.
Then they heard it again, the same noise that had stopped Lara in her tracks in the hallway. It sounded louder this time, closer.