He’s going to pull my arm right out of its socket, and it’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt a lot…
The human arm was not meant to be dragged, the socket that connected it to the shoulder could only take so much pull before it snapped loose. Lara found, through some research, that tearing a human limb off was much harder than most people realized, and even the tried and true method of quartering by four horses was a major hassle, not only for the executioner, but for the horses.
These inane facts, seemingly from another lifetime, flitted across her mind as Will dragged her along the floor.
She felt a wetness on her face and remembered that she was bleeding.
What’s that phrase? Oh, right. I’m bleeding like a stuck pig.
As she peered through a mask of flowing blood, she saw them coming through the hole in the wall across the bank lobby. They were climbing over the great big steel machine (A car, dummy, it’s just a car) as if they were moving on spring-assisted stilts.
She saw five — no, more than that, maybe ten — then ten became twenty.
No, wrong again. There had to be at least fifty of them trying to squeeze in through the hole all at the same time.
Lara stared, mesmerized by their graceful gait as they climbed the length of the badly crumpled car and entered the lobby with great alacrity. Their black eyes darted left and right as soon as they crossed the threshold, dark, tightened skin shimmering unnaturally against the bright LED floodlights.
And the booming. Loud, crashing, earsplitting booms of guns firing around her, a never ending cascade that started, amazingly enough, to fade into the background, until they were just mere echoes and she was suddenly left with just her thoughts.
I never finished medical school. If Mom ever found out, she’d be so disappointed.
I’m sorry, Mom, I’ll try to do better in the next life…
CHAPTER 26
KATE
She heard a loud crashing sound, like a bomb had gone off next door. It came from the lobby, where Will and Danny were holed up with Lara. And the last time she checked, Carly was out there, too.
It was an intensely grinding sound, like metal against concrete. Then gunfire, and she knew Will and Danny were shooting. First they were firing single shots, but then she heard the roar of their M4A1s on full automatic.
That was the dead giveaway that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.
Ted, sitting down the hallway a few yards from her, threw a quick look over his shoulder and she saw large, terrified eyes underneath the LED lanterns hung above him.
“Stay here!” she shouted, leaping to her feet.
She ran up the hallway. She saw Carly up ahead, turning when she heard Kate coming up on her.
“Don’t leave Vera!”
Carly nodded, but Kate was already running past her and out into the lobby.
She came right up against Will as he was backing up, dragging something on the floor with him.
Lara.
Her body limp as Will pulled her back by the wrist while he continued firing with the M4A1 using his free hand. Danny was next to him, firing on full-auto at the far wall.
Then Kate saw them.
A swarm of black death, flooding in through a massive hole in the wall. The bank doors with their thick, reinforced barrier were still there. But that didn’t matter now, and the sight of the still-standing doors next to the gaping hole in the wall looked patently absurd. She stared at the front grill of a four-door Chevrolet sedan, covered in brick and mortar and dust, and over the roof of the vehicle, at the nebulous moonlit parking lot of the strip mall beyond.
Every time Danny and Will shot one of the creatures, two or three (or five) instantly took its place, leaping over the quickly piling bodies. The front of the lobby was covered in black, oozing, contaminated blood and shriveled forms, like a growing landfill of black prunes with arms and legs, heads and eyes.
Through the fog and gunfire, she heard Will screaming: “I’m out! I’m out!”
She ran to him and got a quick glimpse of Lara on the floor. She hardly recognized the pretty blonde girl from this morning. Lara’s face was covered in a mask of blood, and she blinked her eyes rapidly, as if trying desperately to get her bearings.
“Go!” Kate screamed.
Will pulled Lara past her, trying to reload at the same time. It seemed like an impossible task, but he was actually dragging Lara and reloading at the same time. She didn’t know how that was even possible.
Kate switched her M4A1 to full-auto and, bracing against the kick she knew was coming, began firing into the wall of ghouls rushing through the wall. There were so many of them, filling every inch of cold, brightly lit open space, that it was impossible to miss. She didn’t even have to aim, she just concentrated her fire into the thickest part of the mob.
Danny was suddenly next to her, backing up, shouting, “Changing!” as he dropped an empty magazine and quickly inserted a new one. A second later, he shouted, “Go go go!” and began firing again.
Kate backed up, still firing. She was stunned when she fired the last bullet and the M4A1 stopped pounding against her shoulder.
My God, already?
She quickly hit the switch to release the empty magazine and snatched a new one from one of the pouches around her waist.
Danny stood still in front of her, holding his position, firing calmly and almost point-blank into the creatures as they tried to bull rush him. He was conserving bullets, firing a burst into this section, another into that, and back and forth. Calmly. So damn calmly. She wondered if she could ever be that calm in the face of certain, horrifying death.
She jammed a fresh magazine into the rifle. “Go go go!”
Danny dropped his magazine and stepped back behind her, and she heard him reloading as she fired off her second magazine.
The ghouls kept coming.
They were feverish, rabid, and the wanton disregard they were showing for their own lives was unfathomable to Kate. Their bodies had become so thin and frail that she could see her bullets go right through them when they didn’t hit bone, continuing and hitting the second and even third ghoul — and even speckling what was left of the wall — behind them.
Kate knew she was halfway through her second magazine when she felt a hand touch her shoulder and heard Will’s voice, calm and shouting at the same time next to her, “Manager’s office! Go go go!”
She didn’t move right away. She fired off the remaining bullets from her magazine before stepping back, passing Will, who had taken her spot. Danny was backing up and reloading again. They were moving backward the entire time, the sound of machinegun fire never ceasing for even a second.
As she stepped back toward the office, her sneakers slid in liquid, making a squishy sound, and she looked down at a thick trail of blood leading into the hallway and through the door into the office.
Lara’s blood…
Then Will and Danny were almost on top of her. She quickly stepped over the blood and continued down the hallway.
Will was shooting with the shotgun now, racking the forend and shooting, racking and shooting, without end, burning through the weapon’s seven-shot capacity at a dizzying pace. The ghouls were now so close she could hear the sound of silver-coated bullets slapping into flesh and bone and the cries of ghouls as they continued to throw themselves into what was left of the lobby. Between the shotgun blasts and Danny’s M4A1 firing on full-auto, she was only vaguely aware of her heart thrumming mercilessly against her chest.