What’s happening up there?
He made to turn back toward the stairs to go find out when he saw the shadows shifting once again out of the corner of his eye. He spun back around just in time to see a pair of blue slits glowing in the swirling smoke.
They were coming—launching—at him.
Will reflexively struck out with the rifle, because lifting it and firing would have taken more time — a second, maybe two, that he didn’t have. The M4A1 vibrated on contact, both his arms shaking long after he had swung from right to left, his body turning with his momentum.
It didn’t fall very far and it was back up on its feet even before Will could right himself. It attacked again, springing like an animal on all fours, barreling into his chest and knocking him back. He groped for the wall but couldn’t find it and briefly had a feeling of being weightless as he was thrust through empty air before crashing back down to earth.
He was in the back hallway, past the stairs leading up to the second floor. The door was farther behind him, invisible in the darkness. For a moment, he waited for another blue-eyed ghoul to break its way through that side of the house—
Concentrate! Focus!
The creature climbed up the length of his body and he felt (impossibly) cold dead fingers wrapping around his throat, over the plastic band of the mic. A pair of glorious gems in the blackness bore down at him even as thin, pencil-like lips curled into a smile. It leaned down until its face — the deformed shape of the skull obvious behind smooth black flesh — was inches from his own.
Will stared up at it, fumbling with his fingers for the cross-knife in its sheath along his left hip, cursing himself for losing the rifle. He hadn’t even remembered when he had lost it. Hopefully it was still somewhere nearby.
The rifle.
Lara called it superstition, but he called it habit.
She’s probably right. I am superstitious about the damn thing. I should tell her that when I get back to the island.
I love you, Lara, please forgive me for dying.
He couldn’t breathe. How long had it been since he took his last (smoke-filled) breath? A second ago? Two seconds? Ten? An hour?
The creature’s fingers were tightening with every erratic heartbeat he managed, and he momentarily rejoiced at the touch of the cross-knife’s smooth handle.
The brain.
Go for the brain.
Will pulled the knife out and swung it upward in a wide arc—
— but the sharp point never reached its destination. The creature’s other hand had intercepted his swing well short of its intended target.
Oh, shit.
“We know,” it hissed at him. “Didn’t Kate tell you?” It was holding his hand up in the air with hardly any effort. “We know what happened with the others. How it happened. You didn’t think we’d let you get away with it twice, did you?”
He could hear its voice, which meant he hadn’t gone deaf after all. Thank God.
“Don’t worry,” the creature hissed. “It’s not going to end that easily for you, Will. Kate made us promise her this time. I think she has big plans for you. Of course, she didn’t say anything about punishing you for what happened at Dunbar first.”
Its lips curled into a devilish grin.
He somehow found the strength to look away from its face to his own hand, suspended in the air, the cross-knife (Go for the brain!) frozen in place. It didn’t even look like the ghoul was exerting any effort at all. It was so strong. So fast and so strong. What chance did he have against an army of these things? What chance did Lara and the island have?
Lara. At least I got to talk to her one last time.
Please forgive me for dying.
His vision was faltering and the creature’s fingers were still tightening, and Will swore he could feel cold bones cutting into the skin around his throat. Was that even possible? Who the hell knew? He didn’t. Right now, all he could do was lie on the floor and wait to die, wait to be taken, wait to be given to Kate…
BOOM!
The hallway trembled, as if it had been hit by an earthquake.
The walls, the ceiling, and even the floor underneath him quaked in the aftermath of the shotgun blast at such close proximity.
Will’s eyes snapped open because he could breathe again.
Air!
The creature was still perched on top of him, but it had turned its head and was glaring at something behind it. Chunks of its shoulder and neck were gone, and blood arced out of the ruptured flesh and splattered the wall next to it in a grisly shower of thick, clumpy black blood.
Will looked past the ghoul and saw a small figure standing at the mouth of the hallway, holding a shotgun.
Claire. It was Claire. The little girl with the FNH semi-automatic shotgun.
How’d she get down here?
Claire fired again — the massive BOOM! lighting up the hallway a second time.
The blue-eyed ghoul’s head jerked backward as buckshot tore into its face, shards of shiny white skull shattering and imploding in the air. Meaty globs of foul-smelling flesh hit Will in the face before he could turn his head in time.
Then his left hand was free and Will wrestled it loose from the ghoul’s grip, even as the lifeless (again) body on top of him flopped sideways to the floor. The creature’s form was so much lighter now that Will found it difficult to understand how this almost feathery thing landing next to him was the same creature that had, just moments ago, smashed into him like a five-ton elephant.
He sucked in air like a drowning man, scrambling up from the floor, trying desperately to command his legs to work properly. Maybe it was the lack of oxygen, or the throbbing pain. Despite what the creature had said about promising Kate (What the hell did that even mean?), it sure didn’t seem to care that it was about to crush every bone in his throat.
Claire was standing in front of him, staring at the dead (headless) body resting in a thick pool of its own blood. She didn’t seemed to notice him as he finally got back on his feet and grabbed the wall to steady himself, the creature’s flesh and blood caking his face and clothes like a second layer of rotting skin.
Goddamn, it smells.
The continued loud clatter of gunfire from the second floor told him everything he needed to know — it wasn’t over. Far from it.
The gunfire snapped Claire out of it, and the girl rushed over and grabbed his waist with one hand — the other still clutching the shotgun — to keep him upright because, even though he didn’t realize it, he needed her help. She was a small, frail thing, but she gave herself up as a crutch so he could stand on wobbly feet.
“My rifle,” Will said, his voice coming out as a croak. “My rifle,” he said again, louder and clearer this time.
“I don’t know,” Claire said. Her own voice was strained but somehow still impossibly calm.
She’s going to make a great soldier…if we survive this.
“What are you doing down here?” he asked.
“They told me to run,” Claire said.
Gaby and Danny…
He clutched the knife in his left hand, thanking God he had held onto it all this time, and searched the darkness for his rifle, doing his best to squint through all the pockets of shadows. There were no traces of the carbine anywhere. Of course, there was so little light that it could have been right next to him, and if he didn’t step on it, he might never find—