“If you see them, run the other way, Obi-Wan Keobi. Or shoot them in the head. That seems to work pretty well.”
The head.
Shoot them in the head!
He racked the shotgun and tilted the weapon up slightly, but before he could squeeze the trigger a second time, the thing moved.
No, that wasn’t true, because to say it moved meant Keo could see its body in motion. Because he couldn’t. Not really. Maybe it was the darkness and shadows and moonlight once again messing with his eyes, but Keo swore he only saw a black blur (Like back at the T18 marina…) just before the shotgun was jerked out of his hands.
It was so swift, so unmercifully forceful, that he hadn’t quite come to grips with what had happened until the creature’s pruned black flesh filled his vision, because it was now standing in front of him. Tightened black skin seemed to be vibrating in the dark room and suffocating heat emanated from its eyes, even as an icy coldness radiated from every pore of its flesh. Those things shouldn’t have been possible, the incongruent nature of hot and cold warring inside Keo’s head.
He struggled to understand what he was seeing and feeling, but all he could focus on was the thin trickles of coagulated black blood dripping out of holes in the creature’s trench coat. Except Keo couldn’t see gaping wounds through the openings-if they were there, they had somehow healed themselves. He wished his own injuries were that efficient.
Why was it even wearing clothes at all, he wondered. The sight of the fabric wrapped around its elongated frame was almost absurd, and for a moment Keo wanted to ask the creature if it knew what it was.
Then, unfathomably, the creature spoke.
“Keo,” it hissed. “I’ve been looking for you.”
CHAPTER 28
Daebak. It knows my name, too.
The sight of the creature standing in front of him, its blue eyes like twin otherworldly orbs, made Keo hesitate. He wasn’t sure for how long, though; it could have been just a second, or two, or possibly a minute.
He didn’t know how long he stood there staring back at the creature, replaying the sound of his own name coming out of its impossibly thin and blackened lips. But when he finally did manage to gain some semblance of control, the first thing he did was shout, “Jordan!”
But the ghoul reacted before Jordan could, and it pointed the Mossberg at Keo-no, not at him, but past him, and at Jordan standing over his shoulder. The fact that it even knew how to use a shotgun surprised him for some reason. And the way it held the weapon-as if it had been doing it all its life-made Keo more curious than scared, and he was pretty goddamn scared to begin with.
For the next few seconds, Keo didn’t know what Jordan was doing behind him. Maybe like him, she had frozen in place and was unsure how to respond to the sight of this thing in the room with them. Maybe like him, she couldn’t understand how it could radiate heat and icy coldness at the same time.
However long the next few seconds passed for the three of them, the monster must have no longer thought she was a threat because its eyes (Christ, they’re blue) shifted back to him, and Keo saw it clear as day and without a shred of doubt:
The creature was intelligent.
He was so focused on that (impossible) sudden realization that he forgot to reach down for his sidearm. Not that he would have had much of a chance, anyway. This thing had crossed the room in less time than it had taken him to rack the shotgun. Did he really think he could draw the Glock before it fired, taking both him and Jordan out in a hail of buckshot?
No way in hell. Not even close.
“If I’d wanted to kill you,” it hissed, “you wouldn’t have escaped T18.”
T18.
Back at the marina…
“You,” Keo whispered.
He didn’t know exactly why he was whispering. Maybe it was the sound of the creature’s voice-it was so low, as if just talking (hissing) was painful somehow, and he wanted to…do what? Match its pitch?
Crazy talk.
“You saved my life,” Keo managed to get out. Then, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say or do, “Why?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” it said, and cocked its head slightly to one side. “They’re coming.”
“Who?”
“The others.”
Others? What others-
Oh, right. The others.
“The door won’t hold forever,” it hissed. “There’s too many of them.”
“Keo?” Jordan said behind him. She sounded breathless, which made him wonder how he was sounding at the moment. “What’s happening?”
“I…” Have no fucking idea, he wanted to say, but finished instead with, “It saved my life. Our lives. Back at T18. We wouldn’t have made it out of there if it hadn’t shown up. I’ve been, uh, meaning to tell you.”
“And…now?”
It looked past him-at Jordan, or the door, or both-before settling on him again. “You’ll never survive the night. Not alone.”
Keo nodded. He didn’t know why he was so calm all of a sudden. Maybe it was the way the creature talked, or possibly it was the lack of animal urges behind its cool blue eyes. He had faced enough of the black-eyed ghouls up close and personal to recognize the absence of a soul behind the hollowed holes that used to be their eyes. This thing standing in front of him was so far removed from those frenzied monsters that Keo wondered if he was dreaming, if this was all just one long (albeit very vivid) nightmare.
Wake up! Wake up, you idiot!
But he didn’t wake up, because he wasn’t asleep. This was real. Jesus, this was real.
“I agree,” he said. “We can’t survive alone.”
It pulled back the Mossberg, then held it, stock-first, to him.
Keo stared at the shotgun, then at its unmoving face, those pulsating blue eyes. He didn’t react for a long time.
Five seconds…then ten…
He reached forward and took the Mossberg back from the ghoul.
It lowered its hand, bony fingers unfurling at its side.
Behind him, Jordan might have shuffled her feet nervously, though it was hard to tell because he was so glued to the creature, on its every movement, waiting-waiting-for the first hint that it would prove him right, that it was, after all, just another undead thing waiting to end his existence.
“Now what?” Keo asked.
“You can’t climb,” it said.
“Is that how you got up here? You climbed?”
It nodded.
“Damn,” Keo said.
“Keo,” Jordan said, and he could almost hear her doing everything humanly possible not to scream out his name.
He turned around and saw her looking back at the door.
“They’re inside the house,” the creature hissed behind him.
Keo moved across the bedroom and pressed his ear against the wall. He didn’t have to wait very long. They were out there, on what was left of the second-floor living room. The unmistakable sounds of shuffling bare feet, the growing smell of their numbers swelling on the other side of the thick slab of wood.
Behind him, Jordan was staring at the creature in the trench coat, her shotgun pointed at the floor. She was gripping the Remington so tightly that her fingers looked ghost-white against the darkness. For its part, the thing looked unbothered by Jordan’s unwavering stare or the weapon in her hand.