“It’s gone.” Will pulled the rifle back.
Danny did the same, then looked at him again. He couldn’t tell if Danny believed him. “You said it had blue eyes? And it stood tall?”
“Blue eyes and it stood tall.”
“Did you at least hit it?”
“No, the other ghouls threw themselves in front of it.”
“The fuck you say. Like some kind of Secret Service for the United States of the Undead?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“Did it, I don’t know, say anything after that?”
“No, it just looked at me.”
“And it grinned at you.”
“And it grinned at me, yeah.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” Will said.
“Well, fuck me,” Danny said.
CHAPTER 25
LARA
Lara didn’t pray. She didn’t come from a praying family, and her parents didn’t believe in a “mythical being in the clouds,” as her mom would say. Her dad was a little more open-minded, but even he enjoyed the occasional eye roll whenever someone with a heavily religious persuasion came on TV.
Lara wondered what her parents would say now, in the days and weeks after The Purge, as Will and the others called it.
As she sat in the bank manager’s office and listened to footsteps moving above her on the rooftop, she wanted to believe that all of this could be explained away by science. But it was hard to hold fast to everything she grew up believing — and disbelieving — when the dead didn’t stay dead. She thought about all those stories in the history books of people returning from the grave, fantastical tales eventually explained away by science. There had to be explanations for what was happening now, right?
Maybe…
She sat on the floor with Vera and Luke, who sat with his back against the wall, heavy gauze wrapped tightly around his abdomen. He looked much younger than the first time she had seen him this morning. He craned his head upwards, listening to the ghouls. She didn’t know what they were doing, but their constant movement unnerved her.
She felt safe in here, with the LED lanterns spread out along the ceiling and walls. Ironically, the room was much brighter with the lanterns than in its normal daytime setting. She found a strange sort of comfort in the humming sounds of the lights and the unnatural brightness.
Even the exposed weapons in the room didn’t disturb her nearly as much as she thought they would. There were four shotguns and two military rifles leaning against and on top of the weapons crate to her left. There were pouches of ammo, filled with rifle magazines and shotgun shells, scattered about the floor along the side wall next to the crate. She wasn’t sure what Will intended to do with all the weapons, but she guessed there was a reason he had chosen the office as their fall-back position. It was the biggest room, safely tucked between the lobby and the employee lounge. If all else failed, they would come in here.
She marveled at these people she had fallen in with, who had saved her from the Sundays. Even the little girl, Vera, seemed to have adjusted surprisingly well. Or maybe that was just a coping mechanism. Kids were highly adaptable, but they could also quickly retreat into a state of mind that cut them off from the real world. She hadn’t known the kid long enough to know for sure either way, and Carly didn’t seem overly concerned.
Carly was leaning against the opened doorframe, looking out to her left at the bank lobby. They had seen Kate and Ted go by a few minutes ago. The employee lounge was farther up the hallway, hidden by the bend.
She looked down at the Glock in her hands. It was a smaller gun than the ones Will and Danny carried, though it was about the same size as Carly’s and Kate’s. Luke also had a Glock, though his was a little bigger.
The gun felt cold and rubbery in her hands, unlike the cold steel of the revolver that killed Jack Sunday. That gun felt real and heavy, the way an instrument that could take someone’s life should feel.
She remembered killing him, though the details eluded her. How many times had she shot him? Did he die right away? Why did she keep pulling the trigger? The memories were hazy and she wondered if she was purposefully forgetting them, or if her mind decided to keep them from her to spare her the gory details.
He’s dead, that’s all that matters. The Sundays are dead. All three of them…
There was a loud crash of gunfire from the lobby. First a single shot, then the loud clatter of a full magazine being unloaded.
Carly leaned out farther to see what was happening, and the machete she wore in a sheath at her left hip stuck out. It was an absurdly long weapon, though Carly looked comfortable wearing it.
After a moment, Carly looked back at them and shook her head. “It’s fine. Will was shooting at something. But it’s fine now.”
Carly didn’t sound entirely convinced by her own assurances. But there were no other sounds from the lobby, which was a good sign. Wasn’t it?
Lara looked over at Luke, grimacing silently next to her. “Are you okay?”
He tried to smile it off. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine. Maybe I should take a look at the wound. You might be bleeding again.”
He waved her off with another attempt at a smile. “I’m good, Doc. It’s not bleeding. Just hurts a little when I try to move, that’s all.”
“So don’t try to move.”
“Good advice,” Luke said and leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. “I think I’m just gonna rest for a while…”
She looked down at Vera, lying prone on the floor, cautiously filling in Snoopy’s body with white crayon. Her tongue stuck out one corner of her mouth in intense concentration. She looked oblivious to what was happening and hadn’t even looked up when Will fired in the lobby.
She’s used to it. And I don’t know if that’s a good thing…
Lara looked back down at the small Glock in her hand. The magazine was loaded with silver bullets, and she only needed one shot to kill (Re-kill?) them, according to Will. Shooting it with anything else, or even decapitating it, did nothing. There had to be an explanation as to why the ghouls were fatally allergic to any form of contact whatsoever with silver. A scientific explanation. And if there was a scientific explanation for how the ghouls died, then there had to be one for the ghouls themselves.
If she only had the time and the materials to study them…
But that was for later. For tomorrow. Or the day after that. She had to survive tonight first. That was the trick, wasn’t it?
She heard them moving above her again, and suddenly the Glock felt heavier in her hands. It didn’t have a hammer, and the trigger was much easier to pull than the revolver. She had fired off an entire magazine — not a ‘clip’, she had been told, but a ‘magazine’—earlier today, and while it felt unnatural in her hands at first, it wasn’t anything she couldn’t adjust to. God knows she had already adjusted to a lot in the last few weeks.
She was looking up at the ceiling when Luke spoke: “Don’t let them get to you. Will’s right, they’re not going to break through the ceiling. They never have.”
First time for everything. “What are they doing up there?”
“Who knows? Don’t let it bother you.”
I can’t help it…
She leaned back against the wall. At least the shooting from the lobby had stopped. Seconds counted down slowly in the silence and the minutes seemed to move at a snail’s pace. For a while, it seemed as if the night would never end.
Carly was still glued to the door, while Luke had fallen asleep with the gun in his hand. Lara crawled over and slowly removed it from his grip, then placed it on top of one of the weapons crates. The thought of Luke squeezing the trigger by accident while asleep was disconcerting.