The mob of ziggies had to climb over the litter of bodies in his wake and he fed the first two a few headshots apiece before his sidearm was empty.
He put it back in its holster out of habit, but brushed against something on his belt loop.
Aw shit, was that a grenade?
Danton pulled it free, squeezing it as if he didn’t believe it was real.
He had to use this right. They were too close.
Danton reached into his duffel and felt a trigger of something in there. He yanked it out and stared at a pissy little .22
“The hell?”
Danton had no clue how that got in there. He hated .22s. He would have to make due with it.
He pulled the pin on the grenade, spun around at the top of the stairs and began pumping itty-bitty bullets into the lower legs and knees of the ziggies nearest him. They fell but tried to keep coming. He underhanded the grenade to the bottom of the flight of stairs, hoping that in the crush of bodies they wouldn’t be able to grab it and toss it back if they understood what had just come their way.
Danton counted three! And threw himself on the next flight of stairs, clapping his hands over his ears. A moment later there was an ear-shattering THOOMand the walls shook. He prayed he hadn’t just brought down the whole building with him still in it, but that meant there was even less time to waste. Danton didn’t plan on being inside when the thing came down.
He took a moment to look back, seeing the prior flight of stairs had vanished, along with almost all the ziggies that had been on it. A few had made it to the top, but they were disoriented, stumbling their way in his direction.
He jabbed the .22 in the front one’s direction and it threw its arms out as if to block a blow, but managed to send itself over the rail and into a column of nothing. Ego. So these guys didhave weaknesses.
Danton was able to take it a little slower getting to the top. He’d need his wind to face whatever was at the top. He even reloaded the AK with one final magazine.
He swung the door open, dropping and rolling onto the roof. When he stood, something hard and sharp bounced off his forehead. Danton felt hot blood roll into his eyebrow. Any moment he’d be blind in one eye until he could get the bleeding stopped.
The stink of burning wood was almost as pungent up here as on the stairs. Prickly hairs stood up on his neck, his head swiveling from side-to-side. To Danton’s left were two big HVAC units, long silent.
Something groaned underfoot. Had to hurry.
Two ziggies grabbed him. Damn. His hearing had to have been blunted. But the first one had him by the muzzle of the AK, the other under the arms in a half nelson.
He squeezed the trigger and the first one pinwheeled back as several rounds slammed into it. Danton could grab the knife in his jacket sheath, but where could he stab a ziggy where it would count?
He hoped their vanity went deeper than he’d first seen. Danton pulled the knife out and stabbed at where he guessed the ziggy’s face was. It screamed and shoved him off. Danton turned and saw it pluck the knife out of its head at the temple. He’d gotten it in deep enough to where it had also skewered the back of its eyeball. The whole mess slid out of the socket.
It roared at Danton and he replied with two hits to the forehead with the AK-47. He did the same with the first one he’d shot.
“Rinse and repeat, bitch,” he said.
It couldn’t be this easy, he thought, not factoring the fiasco from the stairs. He headed in the direction of where the two ziggies had come from, hoping they were guarding the master and wondering why they hadn’t tried to bite him. Nothing was over here.
Danton looked across to the next building over. A full two stories higher—well, what remained of it—and much too far to jump.
He caught movement below and to his right. Danton glanced down and saw a ziggy, hisziggy, climbing down some sort of service ladder. He ran over and pointed the AK.
“Heads up!” he shouted.
It looked up at him and he could see the recognition in its eyes. It was eerie. Like the thing was alive. Its stare held all the fire of a living man who’d been cornered and knew he was about to die. It roared. Danton fired.
The floor shifted and there was a colossal crunching sound. Danton had to throw his arms out to catch his balance and keep from falling as the building had pitched to an angle. What remained of the foundations was going to give soon. Danton shouldered the AK and swung his legs down to the ladder.
It was ready to give by the time he got to the bottom. He stepped over the body of the master. There was a tremendous snap inside and rather than a collapse it looked more like the building was lying down for a nap, it moved so slowly. But all the walls folded in, trapping and crushing anything inside.
Danton could hear them moaning and mewling inside. Did they sense their master was gone? It was weird, but, he felt an odd sense of guilt.
Danton hurried back to where he’d left the girl. She was gone, but worse yet, there was blood. It didn’t smell like anything to him, but he had the feeling someone else would say it smelled like ash.
He hurried back to the maze of burned out cars and just then a ziggy came out of it. The sleeve of its tattered shirt was soaked in blood and it held the arm aloft as if it were disgusted.
Feeling a sharp pull in his stomach, Danton shot it before it saw him.
By the time he reached her she was almost gone.
Danton touched her and she twitched, opening her eyes and looking in his general direction. Her breathing was ragged. She had a fist-sized hole in her stomach.
“They drew me away from you.” He wanted to go back, dig every one of those ziggies up and shoot them all in the head, but leaving them there would be far worse. No one, human or ziggy, would ever pull them from the rubble of that building. Let that be their grave until the last one rotted.
“But I thought… you’re a zig—I thought this couldn’t—”
Danton felt a ball of ice in his throat and fire running down his cheeks. He closed his eyes as they were submerged in boiling tears.
Small fingertips touched his cheek. Danton looked and saw she’d managed a weak smile.
“Back.”
“Yes. I’m here. You just tell me what you need. Will… will you eat something? Will that make it better?”
She shook her head.
“You can’t go, you can’t! I don’t—I don’t understand any of this. You have to guide me. Stay. Pleasestay.”
Her eyes were on him now.
But he could tell she was gone.
***
By the time he made his way back to base it was dark. There was no way Barneywould be on sentry duty now; they knew the risk was too great. Danton had resharpened their will to endure, made them realize they wanted to be alive again.
But he was changed too.
Just like they craved survival, so did he. He ran his tongue over his gums where the new glands had grown in. They were tender and full.
He’d changed tremendously over the last twelve hours, but a part of him was still alive. He still felt that human-ness, could feel it flooding out of him like water out of a balloon, but it still resisted what he was thinking now.
Danton needed them for his kind to survive. But they werehis kind already.
Danton looked down at the sidearm held loosely in his hand. He’d found a single round in the duffel bag.
The two halves of him—one surging, one waning—warred.
He knew what he was supposed to do, was trained to do and had seen done several times over the last few years.
Danton estimated he had about a half hour to do it.