“Let me guess,” said Benny sourly, “that one’s the one we have to take, right?”
Joe gave him a tight grin. “What’s wrong, you want to live forever?”
“Not forever. Maybe another seventy years, though.”
“Let me know how that turns out for you.”
“Flashlight?” asked Nix.
Joe clicked on the small light that was mounted on his gun and dialed it up to its widest beam; but the light was small and the illumination didn’t reach very far into the gloom. No one else had a flashlight.
“Don’t bunch up,” said Joe. “I don’t want a sword up my backside.”
They entered the hallway, following the blue-white splash of Joe’s flashlight. Once more Benny took up the rear position. No need to cede that responsibility to Lilah anymore. He felt capable of defending them.
But as they went deeper and deeper, the light from the staircase landing faded and then vanished, leaving everything behind Benny as black as the pit.
Don’t be cocky, he told himself. And don’t be scared. Sight isn’t your only sense. Listen to what the darkness has to tell you.
It was one of Tom’s lessons filtered through his own personal understanding.
He let the others move ahead so the sounds of their footsteps and the rattle of their equipment faded. He listened to the darkness.
Everything behind was silent.
Silent.
Until it wasn’t.
He heard a sound.
Soft. Quick.
In darkness the sound of running is often defined by the panting breath of the runner as much as by the slap of feet on the ground.
Unless…
Unless the runner did not need to pant, did not need to breathe.
Benny suddenly realized that the others were too far ahead, which meant that the meager spill of light from Joe’s flashlight was sending almost no reflected illumination this far back.
And something was coming.
Something was running toward him.
Silent.
Fast.
And he couldn’t see it.
CHAPTER 78
Benny had two seconds to decide.
Stand and fight in almost total darkness or…
He turned and ran.
He ran as fast as he had ever run before. He ran so fast that all he could hear was the harsh grating of his own breath in his ears. That sound blocked out the noise of whatever pursued him, which meant that almost at once he lost any sense of how close it was.
He ran and ran.
Up ahead Joe Ledger turned a corner and took his light with him.
The corridor became completely black.
Benny thought he could hear a sound behind him.
Not the rhythmic panting of another runner, but the low, continuous moan of something so hungry that it would run and run forever until it caught its prey and dragged it down.
“Joe!” Benny yelled.
He wanted to yell more, he wanted to yell for light, but he saved his breath for running.
And then there it was.
A splash of light so bright that it blinded him. He recoiled from it, throwing up an arm to block it.
Suddenly something slammed into him from behind.
The impact sent him crashing painfully into the wall. The sword fell from his hands and clattered to the ground. The air left Benny’s chest with a whoosh, and cold fingers clawed at his shirt and neck and tried to hook into the corners of his mouth.
The image of the tiny white worms in the black muck filled his brain as immediately and intensely as a grenade exploding. It galvanized Benny into action.
He spun along the wall until the zombie that clung to him was caught between him and the unyielding stone, then he planted a foot and kicked himself forward halfway to the opposite wall, then kicked out again, braced his foot on that wall, and thrust backward with all his strength. The ping-pong action sent Benny and his attacker crunching backward once more, but this time the impact was many times harder. The creature lost its grip and collapsed to the floor.
Joe’s light was getting closer, and everyone was yelling and running toward him.
The zom — a man dressed as an American Nation soldier — came off the ground at him, snarling and biting the air.
Benny kicked him in the chest and knocked him once more into the wall.
And then with a snarl of fury Grimm crashed into the zom. They fell sideways, and Benny ducked backward away from the wet pieces of things that flew and splatted against the wall.
“Off!” cried Joe, and the hulking monster froze. Red blood dripped from its spikes. The zom still had blood in its veins and tissues, proof that it had turned only minutes ago.
As Joe came running up and shone his light on the zom, Benny realized that he knew this man.
Sergeant Peruzzi.
Dead now, torn to pieces.
Benny heard Nix make a small, sad sound.
He’d been rude and threatening to Nix, but he didn’t deserve this.
No one did.
Benny glanced at Joe and expected to see the hard, dismissive face of a killer, but there was sadness in the big man’s eyes.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Lilah picked up Benny’s sword and handed it to him.
“Thanks,” he said. “I—”
But the Lost Girl got up in his face. “Chong is waiting for me. Don’t slow us down again.”
There wasn’t the slightest trace of compromise or mercy in her face.
All Benny could do was nod.
They turned and ran.
They passed two side corridors, but both were empty. Joe quickly explained that one led to the maintenance hangar and the other went to the generator room.
They went up a flight of stairs and along a corridor that was better lighted. There were two sets of heavy doors set fifty yards apart, and at each one they found blood and shell casings.
“Someone’s making a fight of this,” observed Joe. “Using doors and corridor bends as opposition points.”
There were no bodies, though. Nix pointed this out.
“Does that mean that they’re already inside?” she asked.
“With the mutagen, reanimation is very fast,” said McReady. “More of a transition from one state to another instead of death and a return to life. Anyone who died here could have been up in seconds.”
“Is anyone left?” asked Nix.
A new rattle of gunfire answered that question. It came from deeper inside the complex, along the path they were following. McReady and Joe listened, each of them judging distance. Their eyes snapped wide at the same time.
“God,” said Joe.
“The infirmary,” said McReady.
Everyone broke into a dead run as the gunfire continued, interspersed with moans and screams. To Benny every hallway and staircase looked the same, and he had the irrational feeling that they were running in circles.
Then one corridor ended with an air lock similar to the one they’d destroyed in the badlands. The door was ajar, held open by a slumped figure with a bullet hole in its forehead. A zom, Benny saw. There was red powder on its hair and face and black muck smeared on its mouth.
Beyond the air lock was a small chamber and then a second air lock, also blocked by the legs of a dead woman, whose head hung on an absurdly crooked neck. The woman was not one of the zoms from outside, nor was she was a reaper. She wore a soiled white lab coat over a military uniform.
“God — that’s Karen Lansky,” cried McReady. “She’s a nurse here.”
The sounds of battle were much closer now, but the intensity was less.
Fewer shots. Fewer screams.
Benny did not think this was a good sign.