He stuck out the Glock behind him and squeezed off a couple of shots. Even the handgun began feeling too heavy, and after six shots, Keo threw it away and picked up even more speed as a result.
Or, at least, that’s what he told himself.
Faster!
He was halfway through the parking lot now, his breath crashing out of his lungs, every part of him burning from inside out.
Faster! Faster!
The clacking of bones, the tap-tap-tap of bare feet, and that foul pervading stench pressing up against the back of his neck like a living physical thing, unlike anything he had ever experienced before and never wanted to again-
Faster! Faster! Faster!
Jordan, standing tall in the middle of the boat, behind the steering wheel, was backing the vessel away from the slip. Smart girl. He would have told her to do exactly that if he thought he could shout loud enough to be heard over the roar of the motors.
And there, the edge of the marina, coming up fast. Almost there.
The water glistened under the moonlight, waves sloshing back and forth against the docks. Calm, welcoming, calling to him. He imagined he could hear it moving despite the roar in front of him, the noises of the creatures stampeding behind him, getting closer and closer, louder and louder…
Almost there.
The stench of the creatures continued to fill his nostrils, the manic tap-tap-tap of their bare feet invading his space even further.
He wasn’t going to be able to run fast enough. He knew that now. He would never reach the water before they got to him. Unlike at Song Island, when he could just leap for it, here he was still too far away from the water.
So close, and yet so, so far.
“Half-dolphin, this guy,” Danny had once said about him.
Too bad dolphins can’t fly.
Then he saw it out of the corner of his right eye, the thing he had been waiting for. It was just a single, long bony finger, but it was a harbinger of what he knew was coming. The black-fleshed digit brushed against his shirt, sending an electric sensation through his entire body. It started to curve, to grab onto him, when-
Something sailed over his head.
Keo didn’t hear it coming (the boat’s motor was too powerful, the relentless pounding in his chest, the patter of death behind him), but he actually felt it rippling through the air.
He tried to turn his head, to follow its trajectory, but he might as well be moving on quicksand compared to its speed. A heartbeat later there was a loud BOOM! and the ground shook. The wall of ghouls behind him let out one long singular shriek, the sound of things dying (again). Keo had seen shrapnel rip into flesh before, but he’d never seen what they could do to an entire wall of them.
The concussive force slammed into him from behind like a sledgehammer and Keo was picked up and launched through the air as if he were little more than a rag doll. He was trying to orient himself, make sense of what had just happened, when a second BOOM! shattered the night. His eardrums rang and the metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. His bones shook from the vibrations, but his ears were still ringing from the first impact, so this second one was more of a dull THOOM instead of the familiar blast of a grenade impacting.
The screams behind him, like the wails of dying animals, somehow managed to pierce through the internal thrumming slashing up and down his body. Then he shut everything down and missed the wooden bulkhead that separated the marina from the ocean by barely a foot and hit the water headfirst and went under like a stone.
Maybe it was all those days and nights and months on the San Diego beaches, but he had enough awareness and ability to fight through the pain and spin around even while he was crashing through the water until he was looking up again. The moonlit night sky stared back at him on the other side of the surface, just before the air began filling with a red and orange glow. It was beautiful and inspiring, and he found himself gazing up at the spreading color and smiling, or thought he was, anyway.
He wanted to look at it forever, but for some reason he was still free-falling, going deeper and deeper into the Gulf of Mexico.
Keo was a strong swimmer. He’d always been, and those skills had come in handy the last few months. But for some reason, he couldn’t call on them at the moment. His legs didn’t move, and neither did his arms. There was a continuous throbbing pain from behind him, as if someone (or a hundred someones) were repeatedly stabbing him in the back, over and over and over again.
He didn’t want to go anywhere, anyway. He found himself incredibly content to stare at the blooming spectrum of colors beyond the surface and wondered if this was what it was like to witness the birth of the universe.
Daebak, he thought, and smiled up at the sight of the night sky burning. It was glorious.
CHAPTER 30
“I thought you were dead,” Jordan said. “Again. Though I guess I can’t be that mad at you this time; it was kind of my fault.”
He smiled up at her. Or thought he did. He might have just spat out some of the water he had taken in while he was drowning.
So how did he get up here?
“I didn’t know it would do that,” she said. “I thought it was a riot gun or something. You know, the kind that shoots smoke? Shit, I almost killed you.”
“What was it?” he asked. Or tried to. It sounded suspiciously like a loud croak.
“It’s uh…this.”
She held up an M32 grenade launcher. The last time someone had fired one of those at him-it might have even been the same one, for all he knew-they were using tear gas. This time it was 40mm grenade rounds. He had seen what one of those could do to an area and had launched a couple himself back at Beaufont Lake not all that long ago. But he had been firing a single-shot weapon back then, whereas the one she was showing him could launch six in a few seconds.
“M32,” he said.
“What?”
“It’s an M32 grenade launcher.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that. Sorry.”
“’s okay. What happened?”
“I, uh, hit one of the trucks in the parking lot with the first round by accident. I don’t know what happened after that, it was dark and it looked like the entire marina was exploding. Then I saw you flying through the air. It was kind of cool, actually. That is, until I realized I might have killed you in the process of trying to save you.” She frowned. “They were almost on top of you and I didn’t want to lose you, too. If I didn’t do something, you’d never have made it into the water.”
“You saved my life.”
“I almost blew you up. That blast should have killed you.”
“Shrapnel?”
He remembered the ghouls shrieking behind him, the sounds of flesh rendering, metal bouncing off bones…
“I didn’t find any on you,” Jordan said. “But your entire back is black and purple, kinda like my face the last few days. I guess we have that in common now. When you didn’t swim back up to the surface, I thought your back might have also been broken.”
“Is it?”
“Can you feel your legs?”
He tried. “Yes.”
“Then it’s not. Thank God.” She gave him a pursed smile. “You’ve got to be the luckiest man I know, Keo.”
“Yeah, that’s me, lucky.”
He found it incredibly difficult to focus on her face with all the darkness around her. He would have been immediately alarmed, except he could feel the gentle ocean’s surface under him. Under the boat. They were out at sea, safe from land. Or, at least, safe from the black-eyed ones.
It came to Santa Marie Island on a boat. Ol’ Blue Eyes. It actually came on a boat…and left a lot behind, apparently.