“Grey,” repeated Looks Away. “Who are they?”
The question jolted Grey. “You can see them?”
“Yes… but I don’t…”
Then Looks Away stiffened and it was clear that he understood. “Oh… my God… your men. And… and… dear god in heaven.”
The ghosts held their ground. The two men held theirs. Screams and gunfire filled the air.
“Please…,” whispered Grey once more.
Then Annabelle nodded. Once. A small thing. Despite the rain and clouds, the day seemed strangely bright. He could feel a snarl etch itself onto his mouth. He raised his gun and touched the barrel to the brim of his hat. A salute. An acceptance. He said nothing. There was nothing more that needed to be said. Together, brothers in arms, they ran toward the fight. Both of them knowing, deep in their hearts, that they were going to die. Neither of them cared. All that mattered was taking as many of their enemies with them as they could. This fight was no longer about winning.
Now it was all about slaughter.
Chapter Eighty-Six
The fight was brutal.
Nearly two hundred of the undead had made it off the bridge before it blew. They ran howling at the barricade, straight into a hail of bullets. They fell by the dozen, some with wounds that their demons’ spirits would heal given time; others dropped back with head wounds that doomed them to nothingness.
Grey saw Jenny Pearl standing with a foot braced on the pile of sandbags, her face set into a mask of mingled hatred and acceptance as she fired her Lazarus pistol into the heart of the swarm. The gun seemed to be functioning perfectly now, and one after another of the dead men exploded as the compressed gas inside the ghost rock bullets blew them to red pieces.
Looks Away and Grey opened up as they caught up to the invading horde. The Lazarus bullets killed every undead they struck, no matter where they hit. Even a wound to a leg or arm set off a chain reaction with the fragment of ghost rock in their chests. Undead died screaming.
The Kingdom rifle did far more damage, though. When one of its rounds struck, the resulting blast consumed everything inside a twenty-foot radius. Souls flickered to the wind and then were torn to emptiness as brains exploded from the monstrous pressure. It took the walking dead in the middle of the swarm only moments to realize that death chased them even as they sought to overwhelm the barricade. They laughed in the face of it, though. The red madness of slaughter was all they cared about.
Other townsfolk deserted the other barriers and dashed through the ever-thickening rain to join the melee. Grey saw Mrs. O’Malley holding a musket by the barrel and laying about her like a warrior queen from some ancient legend. Old though she was, she put real power into her swings, and a heap of undead with shattered skulls attested to her ferocity.
Grey fired his gun dry and paused to reload. He had already used half of his ammunition. One of the living dead rushed him before he could finish slapping the new cylinder in place. Grey pivoted and stamped hard on its knee with the flat of his boot. Bones snapped like dry sticks and the monster fell flat on its face, and even as it landed Grey stomped down with his heel, catching the thing behind the ear. The skull shattered and the neck canted inward. The creature stopped moving. Grey slapped the new cylinder into place and ran over the corpse to rejoin the fight.
A series of explosions tore through the air and Grey wheeled around to see several of the little disasters — blue, yellow, pink, and purple — explode in the thick of the enemy.
A split second later, a cry went up, and to his horror, Grey saw Doctor Saint fall as a line of red energy pulses punched downward from the railing of the sky frigate. Whether the scientist was dead or crippled was impossible to determine as the tide of battle swept over him, and he was lost to Grey’s sight.
Grey fought his way to the outer edge of the barricade and launched himself into the thick of a battle between two youngsters — a boy and a girl of about seventeen who looked like twins — and five of the undead. The boy was on his knees, hands pressed to a savage wound in his stomach while the girl stood her ground and fired a Winchester, working the lever with fevered determination, hitting the enemy because at that distance there was no room to miss. One of the walking dead grabbed the smoking barrel of her gun and tore it from her hands and the creature behind him flung himself atop the girl, bearing her to the ground.
Grey shot the dead man who had taken the Winchester, but he dared not shoot the one atop the girl. Instead he kicked it in the ribs with all of his strength, flipping it off of her and onto its back. The girl whipped a knife from her belt, rolled onto her knees and drove the point of the blade into the monster’s eye socket. The creature twitched once and then collapsed back, dead.
Grey flashed her a wild grin. If life was kinder and if he had any chance at a future — which he knew he did not — he would want a girl like this as his daughter.
The other three undead rushed forward, but Grey pivoted in the mud and killed them with three fast shots from the Lazarus gun. They exploded in blue fire and red blood.
“Get him to safety,” Grey said, pointing to the girl’s wounded twin.
But she shook her head and foraged among the dead for a new gun. “Safety?” she barked, then followed it with a mad laugh. “Where’s that?”
“Grey!”
He turned at the sound of his name and saw Jenny there. Right there.
She was streaked with mud, blood, and rainwater, her hair was in rattails and her dress was torn, but she was more beautiful in that moment than ever before. She had her Lazarus pistol in one hand and a big Remington army pistol. The barrel of the Lazarus gun was pointed down, but the big, black mouth of the Remington was pointed at his heart.
“You killed him,” she said.
“Jenny—?”
“You killed my pa.”
“I… I tried to save him,” said Grey. “I begged him to stand down. I wanted him to tear the rock from his chest so that he didn’t have to die.”
There were tears in her eyes. “You shot him in the chest.”
“I—.”
“Not the head,” said Jenny. “You didn’t shoot him in the head.”
“Jenny, please…”
“You killed him,” she repeated. Then she said, “You saved him.”
Grey held his breath, frozen into the moment.
“You saved his soul,” said Jenny in a voice that was strange and distant.
“This wasn’t his fault,” he said simply. “He didn’t deserve this.”
She looked down at the dead men whose bodies lay in pieces. “But you killed him.”
“What choice did I have?”
Jenny shook her head, then stared up at the frigate. “Deray is a monster,” she said. “He is the Beast of the Apocalypse made flesh. He turns flesh against flesh and hearts against hearts. He is the defiler.”
Her voice was so strange now. Not like Jenny’s voice.
“Jenny—?”
She lowered the pistol and began to turn away. Then she paused and turned her head, looking over her shoulder at him.
“We love you, Grey,” she said. “We both love you.”
Then she raised both guns and rushed back into the fight.
We both love you.
A sick wave of horror washed through Grey’s soul.
“No…,” he said aloud.
No, he screamed in the empty halls of his breaking heart. He heard a chorus of despairing cries rise up from the defenders and he turned to look. What he saw nearly crushed him. The sky frigate had moved back across the chasm, past the blackened ruin of the bridge, to the far side. The undead aboard the frigate had cast down a dozen ropes, and the remaining soldiers on the far side of the gorge were lashing them to the arms of the metal giant. Then the ship rose again and bore Samson into the air.