THOOM-THOOM-THOOM!
He could feel the relentless pounding in his bones as he climbed.
The night air swirled around him, threatening to grab and toss him off the ladder. He spent almost as much time looking down, waiting for the inevitable black-eyed ghouls to appear out of nowhere, as he did looking up at Jordan as she maneuvered herself to follow him down.
He hopped the last few meters and landed in a crouch, quickly unslinging the Mossberg. Out here, in the middle of the night, the spreading power of the shotgun was preferable to the M4. Not that he expected them to do the job completely, but placed at the right spots, maybe he could slow them down just enough to outrun them.
THOOM-THOOM-THOOM!
The door had to have been weakened drastically by now, and when it could no longer be called a door, there would be nothing to stand in their way except Ol’ Blue Eyes, as Keo had come to call his savior. It was better than just referring to it as, well, it all the time. Given what the creature had done for him at T18 and now, on Santa Marie Island, Keo felt almost obligated to give it a name, and with it, some measure of respect.
Just don’t fall in love with it, pal. It is a monster, after all.
His heart was racing even as he swept the backyard with the shotgun and continued to wait for the first ghoul to pop out of the bushes like in the movies. It was pitch-dark back here, and what he wouldn’t give for one of those night-vision goggles Steve’s people had been wearing. Of course, those were inside the house behind him at the moment, likely drowned in a sea of undead.
Even now, with his back to the two-story building, Keo could smell them, so many that he imagined the walls of the house bulging with their numbers. He was very aware that all it would take was for one ghoul to stray from the task at hand, from their deadly single-minded determination once they set their sights on a goal, and check the backyard and it was over. Jesus Christ, he was a sitting duck out here.
Jordan jumped the last few feet and landed with an oomph! next to him. She quickly sprang back up and gathered herself and unslung her Remington, even as-
THOOM!
The crash was so loud that Keo felt the door finally, mercifully crumbling all the way down here.
“Go!” he whispered sharply to Jordan, and the two of them began running across the moonlit backyard and through knee-high grass, toward the fence on the other side.
The very loud explosion of chaos, of flesh smashing into walls and floor and ceiling, thundered from the second floor master bedroom behind them, the bang-bang-bang! like machine-gun fire.
Keo didn’t look back and kept running. Ol’ Blue Eyes had been strict about that.
“Run to the docks,” it had said, in that unnatural hiss that gave Keo goose bumps every time. “Take my boat. It has everything you’ll need. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. Just run.”
A shrieking sound, unlike anything Keo had ever heard before, made him break his promise and he glanced back while still moving at full stride.
He glimpsed a flurry of clothing-a trench coat-flashing across the window just before a ghoul trying to climb out was grabbed from behind and jerked back inside.
Bang-bang-bang!
Jesus, it’s doing it. It’s actually stopping them.
But it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. Sooner or later, the flood would drown even Ol’ Blue Eyes. It didn’t matter how fast you were; you couldn’t outswim the ocean. Like most of the lessons he had learned in his life, Keo had accepted that one the hard way, too. It didn’t matter how strong or fast (or unnatural) you were.
Jordan had outdistanced him and reached the gate first. Of course she did. She wasn’t limping on one bad leg. He watched her sling her shotgun, then jump and grab the top of the spikes and scamper up and over. He smiled to himself, remembering how she had told him she had gone to Tulane University on a softball scholarship. He didn’t even know schools had competitive softball.
Keo mimicked her movements and pulled himself up and over the fence. He didn’t land on the other side quite as gracefully as her, spilling on the tall grass with one of the M4’s parts jamming into his side. He grimaced, hoped it didn’t puncture skin, and scrambled back up.
“I didn’t know you were so clumsy, Keo,” Jordan said next to him.
He grinned. “Shut up and run.”
Jordan jogged across the weeds until they finally felt hard pavement under their feet. He couldn’t see the marina from here, but there was no doubt about the direction: South.
“Take my boat,” Ol’ Blue Eyes had said. “It has everything you’ll need.”
Everything? What’s everything? Keo wanted to ask, but by then the door was already bursting at the seams.
He glanced back toward the house one last time.
The tall, white two-story structure stood out even in the darkness, its size dwarfing the other houses around it. The building was so big he had no trouble believing that a hundred, maybe more, of the ghouls had managed to squeeze themselves inside its wide two floors. They would be assaulting the master bedroom right now, waiting their turn to enter, only to find Ol’ Blue Eyes standing in their way.
How long before they overcame him? (Him? Did I just refer to the ghoul as a him?) Or how long before they realized he and Jordan were no longer inside-
“Oh, shit!” Jordan shouted in front of him.
Keo turned around and lifted the Mossberg just as two skeletal forms bounded across one of the unkempt lawns to the left of them.
“Run to the docks,” Ol’ Blue Eyes had said to them. “Take my boat. It has everything you’ll need. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. Just run.”
Like I said, pal, easier said than done, Keo thought, and pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER 29
“Run! Don’t look back! Just run!”
She was glancing back at him while still in mid-stride, her face covered in sheets of sweat despite the chilly night air, the gust of wind coming from the ocean and over the ridgeline and between the houses before finally pouring into the street around the both of them.
“I said, don’t look back!” he shouted, just before he spun around and fired, the flame from the shotgun stabbing forward and lighting up two ghouls as they were shredded by buckshot.
He racked the Mossberg and fired again even before they had a chance to pick themselves up from the pavement. His second shot obliterated the legs out of one of the creatures, and his third blew the right arm off the other one.
Behind him, Jordan’s own shotgun roared once, twice, three times.
It wasn’t going to be enough. He knew that without having to think too hard about it. It wasn’t even close to being enough. Sooner or later, they were going to run out of steam, or run out of bullets, or just plain run out of space.
Should have hid. Should have found a basement and sealed it tight.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda, but didn’ta, pal.
They hadn’t gone more than twenty meters down the sloping hill when the first creatures appeared. His first shot was like thunderclaps across the island, and he might as well have lit a torch and carried it down the street with him because after that they came out of everywhere.
Then they were running and shooting, and they were still too far from the marina. Much, much too far.
Both his legs were already burning, not just the one with the bullet hole. And he had only been running for about three minutes. What would happen at the five-minute mark? The ten?