Will shouted, “I’m out!”
Danny stepped forward into the hallway and began firing with his own shotgun, racking and shooting, the blasts deafening in the narrow confines of the hallway. Would she still have her hearing come morning?
If they made it to morning. At that moment, she wasn’t so sure.
Something crashed behind her, and she spun around.
Ted hadn’t moved from the end of the hallway and had held sentry over the back door throughout the entire ordeal. He didn’t see the ceiling behind him cave in as something bulky, square, and massive came crashing through, taking a pair of LED lanterns with it, slamming into the hallway floor with such force that she actually heard it over the roar of shotgun blasts a mere three feet behind her. The heavy object splintered the tiled floor as if it were wood, sending chunks of debris into the air.
A projectile scraped her temple, drawing blood, and she instantly lost her balance and groped at the wall to keep herself upright.
Ceiling debris hadn’t even begun to scatter into the air when two dark, skeletal shapes fell out of the ceiling and landed on top of the object — an air conditioner unit the size of a small closet. One of the creatures leaped at Ted, who got off a shot, turning the ghoul’s head to mush, but then — more fell through the hole. There were so many of them they took up her entire line of sight. She couldn’t even see Ted, though his shotgun continued firing somewhere on the other side.
Will was behind her, grabbing her by the shoulder and shoving her toward the office, shouting: “Inside, Kate! Inside now!”
Ted’s down there! What about Ted?
But her words wouldn’t come out. Danny’s shotgun fired behind her, Will’s next to her, tearing one ghoul, then two, then a half-dozen to blistering pieces before her eyes.
Will gave her another push and she fell through the office door, Will and Danny right behind her as Carly, who had been waiting beside the door, slammed it shut and threw down a large steel bar they had welded to the wall earlier in the day. The heavy object fell over the door, landing into a waiting latch on the other side of the wall and snapping into place with a loud crashing sound that made Kate’s ears ring.
Immediately the door shook as the ghouls crashed into it from the other side, the heavy, loud, persistent thoom-thoom-thoom! vibrating through every inch of the office.
She stood in the center of the room, the M4A1 hanging loosely at her side. She wasn’t sure if it was shock or terror, or both, that had left her paralyzed, but she had become an observer, watching the door shake and the latch threatening to come loose from the wall as the ghouls slammed and smashed their bodies with wild abandon into it over and over and over again.
And all she could think was, Ted is still out there. Ted is still out there!
Luke was on his feet, one hand clutching his Glock, the other gripping his stomach. He looked pale and was covered in sweat, clearly in immense pain. He was barely standing, using the edge of a big desk to stay propped up. She wanted to reach out and grab him, force him to sit back down, but she couldn’t move.
Carly had retreated into a corner, Vera gripped tightly inside one arm, her other hand holding a Glock at her side. The little girl pressed her own palms against her ears and buried her face in Carly’s chest.
Good, that’s a good girl. You don’t want to see or hear what’s about to happen. You’re a very smart girl, Vera.
The sisters were standing next to Lara, who lay on the floor, bleeding badly from a large gash in her right temple. There was a thick pool of blood already forming underneath her head, and Kate wondered how Lara could possibly be still alive after losing so much blood. Someone had put a towel underneath Lara’s head — it might have been white once upon a time, but it was red now, and getting darker with every passing second.
Will was loading shells into the shotgun, his ammo pouches bulging again. Danny’s pouches were similarly replenished.
When did they reload?
It was hard to focus on what was happening around her. Her mind was everywhere and nowhere. In the hallway with Ted. At the back of the room with Luke, trying to stand despite the pain. In the corner with Carly and Vera, hoping for the best. With poor Lara on the floor, bleeding everywhere.
Danny took a familiar-looking box the size of a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket. She had seen it before.
Back in Houston. At the Archers warehouse store.
It was a C4 detonator.
Plan Z.
God, that’s such an awful name, Will. You should have changed it by now. I told you, you can’t sell people on a ‘Plan Z’. Why didn’t you listen to me? This is what I do, Will. I sell people on things. You should have listened to me…
Will and Danny were talking — she saw their lips moving but couldn’t hear what they were saying. She wasn’t entirely certain she could even depend on her eyes, because it looked like the wall around the door was actually pulsating, as if it were alive. Cracks began to spread along the length of the wall, originating from the edges of the door. First in small increments, slivers that sliced left and right, then increasing in size, expanding and widening, actually tearing, coming apart at the seams…
They’re coming in. The door isn’t going to hold. They’re going to take the whole wall down and they’re coming in.
Her sense of touch came back as fragments of the ceiling began pelting her. Small, misshapen pieces the size of pennies, tapping against her shoulders, disappearing into her hair.
The ceiling was shaking almost in sync with the pounding against the door, the widening cracks along the walls, the throbbing of the building around her…
Will was suddenly in front of her, saying something. She shook her head to let him know she couldn’t hear him. He put his arms around her, and she felt warm and wanted very much to just let herself be lost inside his arms, to be with him like this forever, the ghouls be damned. Who were they to say who she could or couldn’t be with on the last night of her life?
The ground underneath her began to tremble.
An earthquake? Texas doesn’t get earthquakes…
In the back of her mind, she knew it wasn’t an earthquake. It was the C4 Danny had hidden around the strip mall, underneath cars in the parking lot, planting them in a wide semicircle around the bank. The earthquake that shook the walls and floor and sent shards of the ceiling crumbling down on top of their heads was the C4 going off one by one, taking most of the parking lot and surrounding buildings with them in what was probably a huge sea of explosions, igniting the gas in cars, propane tanks, and just about anything else they found that could be ignited or imploded.
Plan Z…
She heard and felt the earsplitting results of Plan Z while wrapped in Will’s arms. She pressed against his chest as half the ceiling fell on them with a sudden rush of cold air as the room ventilated. Even before the sounds of the massive explosion had a chance to die down, she heard gunfire and realized Will was gone, and she was crumpled on the floor alone, covered in pieces of ceiling and dust and specks of brick and mortar.
She looked up, inching her head slowly. Fire spat from Will’s shotgun as he fired at two ghouls leaping over the fallen wall.
Wall? What happened to the wall?
She watched in fascination as buckshot ripped ghoul flesh from their bones over and over again. The creatures fell like drops of water from the heavens, black blood splattering white floor tiles in a sea of tainted darkness, making for an oddly beautiful canvas.