Seven o’clock turned into eight, and they heard nothing from the lobby, though she could still hear the creatures moving above. What were they doing up there? What were they doing out in the parking lot, for that matter?
What are they waiting for?
She started to drift off, lulled by the quiet, when gunfire erupted from the bank lobby for a second time.
Carly looked back into the room with another progress report. “It’s okay. They’re shooting through the peepholes. I don’t know why. Maybe they saw something out there.”
Vera had gone to sleep on the floor and was snoring quietly. She slept next to her coloring books, a blue crayon clutched in one of her hands. Lara picked up a blanket from a nearby bedroll and placed it over Vera.
“Thanks,” Carly said behind her.
“Should I carry her over to her bedroll?”
“She’s used to sleeping like that.”
Lara glanced at Luke sleeping soundly against the wall. Like Vera, the fresh gunfire from the lobby hadn’t disturbed his sleep.
She walked over to Carly and leaned out of the door. She looked left, toward the bank lobby. Will and Danny were sitting on the floor, their backs against the wall on either side of the doors. Neither looked anxious and seemed to be passing the time cleaning their rifles and shotguns.
“They’re so calm,” she said.
“They’re always like that,” Carly said. “It’s kind of annoying, to be perfectly honest with you.”
Lara smiled. “You’ve been with them from the beginning?”
“Pretty much. We were lucky to find them. Ted and Vera and me.”
Lara looked to her right, down the hallway, which curved slightly to the right about ten yards from their door. Both Kate and Ted were sitting on the floor, guns in front of them, backs against the wall. They looked tired and nervous and hungry. She was struck by just how different they looked from Will and Danny.
The hallway extended for another ten yards, leading to the back door, with the employee lounge somewhere before that. It was impossible to see the back door from here, or the furniture and shelves they had stacked up in front of it earlier.
Nothing’s getting through there. Hopefully.
“We’ll be okay,” Carly said. “We’ll get through tonight.”
Lara nodded and wondered for whose benefit Carly had said that. She didn’t really know these people very well, though she thought they were good people. She was lucky to have found them, and she wished Tony were here, too. How differently things might have turned out if she had met Will and Danny before all of this, run across them while they were leaving the city. From what Will told her, she and Tony were only a few days ahead of them. If only they had started their exodus a day later, or the others started theirs a day earlier…
The past now. All in the past.
Concentrate on surviving tonight!
She glanced back toward the bank lobby and saw a dark shape slip silently through the peephole in the window over Will’s right shoulder.
It was a hand.
She was about to scream but realized what would happen if she did. Will would turn and shoot it with a silver bullet, or use that strange cross-knife of his, and it would be over. Instant contact with silver would kill the creature, and the hand would be useless to her.
There has to be a scientific explanation, she thought, even as she pulled Carly’s machete out of its sheath and rushed up the hallway and into the lobby.
Will looked up at the sound of her footsteps and his eyes went wide. He shot up from the floor when he felt it, and jumped back from the window even as the hand reached for him. The arm was straining against the glass shards, cutting itself into ribbons, clumpy black blood spraying the boards.
Will reached for his Glock, but before he could pull it free, Lara lopped the hand off at the wrist. They heard a shriek, then the creature pulled its remaining arm out of the hole, leaving behind a patch of blood and skin on the jagged glass.
Will stood over the severed hand and watched it flop around the marble floor at his feet. The fingers grabbed fruitlessly at the smooth surface, pumping a small amount of black ooze in its wake.
“What the fuck?” Will said and aimed the Glock.
“No!” Lara shouted at him.
Will stopped short of pulling the trigger and looked questioningly at her.
“I need it,” she said.
“What the hell for?”
“Look, it’s still alive.”
He looked down at it, then stepped on it with his boot, pinning it by the back of the palm to the floor. It flopped desperately against his boot, trying to find leverage that wasn’t there.
“How is it still alive?” she asked.
He looked at her for a moment, then back down at the hand. “That’s a good question. How is it still alive?”
She sought out his eyes. “Please, don’t shoot it. Not yet.”
He didn’t respond, but his eyes softened a bit.
“Wait,” she said, and before he could say anything, she ran quickly back to the hallway.
Carly was staring at her as she ran back. “I’m confused. What’s happening?”
“I need to know,” Lara said and handed the stunned woman back her machete.
Lara found what she was looking for in one of the supply crates in the office — a backpack filled with socks and rags. She dumped them out — toilet paper, toothbrushes, and tooth paste fell out, too — and hurried back to the lobby.
“What are you going to do with that?” Will asked. He was still standing over the hand, moving underneath his boot.
She crouched in front of him and held the backpack open. “Okay, when I give the word, lift your boot.”
“What?”
“I’m going to throw this backpack over it and put it inside.”
“Why the hell are you going to do that?”
“Look at it, Will, it’s still alive. Even after I cut it off at the wrist, the hand is still sentient, essentially its own entity now. Don’t you think it’s worth finding out how that’s possible?”
Will glanced across the room at Danny, who shrugged and said, “Yeah, she’s got a point, Kemosabe. Know thy enemy and blah, blah, blah.”
Will looked back at her. “And you’re going to do what? Study it?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
He seemed to think about it.
“Will, we can learn so much from it,” she said, seeing the doubt in his face. “Please, it’s just a hand. It can’t be that dangerous.”
“We don’t know that.”
“You have to let me try. Please.”
He sighed. “All right.” He shook his head. “I’m so going to regret this.”
“Thank you.”
“On the count of five. Ready?”
She nodded.
“Five…four…three…two…one!”
Will lifted his foot, and Lara quickly brought the backpack down over the moving hand. She trapped it against the floor, then scooped it up with a sweeping move that tossed the hand into the bottom of the backpack.
She instantly felt it moving, crawling up the interior of the backpack by stabbing the sides with its fingernails. She zipped the backpack shut and tossed it across the room. It lay still for a moment, but then the hand started moving again, punching against the backpack as if trying to rip itself free. It had no leverage and no strength, and the backpack didn’t move from the spot where it had landed.