He stood over Mike now, looking down at the blood-splattered face, wondering how he could still be alive with so much of his blood covering the long hallway. Mike’s lips quivered. Will wasn’t sure if he was trying to say something or if it was just muscle spasms. Large, gaping wounds ran along Mike’s neck and legs. His neck had been easier to get to, but in order to get at his thighs the ghouls had chewed through his pajama pants. It was a grisly sight.
Danny said, “Want me to do it?”
“No,” Will said.
He drew his Glock and shot Mike once in the forehead. The body went still on the floor as a thin trickle of blood dribbled out underneath Mike’s head, and gravity pulled it into a larger pool nearby.
They continued up the hallway, stepping through puddles of red and black blood, slick against the soles of their boots. He strained to hear, but couldn’t detect anything around the turn up ahead. There were two more turns, he remembered, recalling the facility’s layout in his mind, then the Entrance Hallway beyond that.
And from there, the Quarters on the other side of the facility.
Lara and the girls, after that…
They took the corner without encountering another ghoul, entering an empty hallway covered in as much blood as the previous one. This one also had a single shoe. A sandal. Turned on its side, the manufacturer’s name — Roxy — visible in bold black letters.
Rhonda’s.
They kept moving and reached the Control Room again. This time he stopped and peered inside with the shotgun. He knew what he was going to see before he saw it.
There were two ghouls inside, crouched over a pair of bodies on the floor. The greedy, thick slurping sound preceded the sight of them. He drew his Glock and shot the first ghoul in the back, and as it fell the other one lifted its head in curiosity. He shot out its right eye. It flopped to the floor, splashing tainted blood everywhere, and lay still.
He paused to look across the room, at Ben and Rick, their bodies laid out on the floor in awkward poses. He could only see the back of Ben’s head, the patch of blood where Kate had shot him. There was a hole in Rick’s chest.
Kate, what did you do?
Silent static played on the monitors along the walls, and he guessed it had something to do with the fire ax sticking out of the computer dashboard. The large button that opened and closed the Door was gone, destroyed into little pieces, wiring sticking out like innards. The biggest piece of the broken red button was underneath a shelf at the back, slightly hidden by a fallen chair.
Danny called from outside in the hallway: “We good?”
“Yeah.”
He went back outside to rejoin Danny.
“Ben inside?” Danny asked.
He nodded. “Rick, too.”
“How the fuck did she get the drop on Ben?”
“I don’t think he saw it coming. I didn’t.”
“I don’t think any of us did.” He shook his head. “Shit, Carly’s going to take it hard.”
“She’ll get through it.”
“You’re not the one who’s going to have to hear about it.”
“You’re all heart, Danny.”
“I know. It’s a curse.”
They continued up the hallway, sticking close together, avoiding as much of the blood on the floor as possible. They had already tracked bloody boot prints in their wake, like some kind of perverse follow-the-bloody-tracks game played by children. Sick and demented children.
He tried not to think too much about it. During battles, it had always been easy for him to shut out the gratuitous details and concentrate entirely on the work at hand. He did that now, though seeing the heavy concentration of blood ahead didn’t make it any easier.
They turned another corner, and as they did, Will froze.
Danny had done the same next to him.
The ghouls were stuffed into this section of the facility leading into the Entrance Hallway like pebbles on a beach. Possibly four dozen of them. Black, shrunken things perched on the floor, as if waiting their turn for some purpose.
As Will and Danny turned the corner, the first pair of dark black eyes shifted to greet them. Then the rest turned, almost in unison.
“Fuck me,” Danny whispered.
The first ghoul spun its thin body and started toward them, and Will blew it in half, pieces of the shotgun shell’s silver buckshot spraying two other ghouls around it. Even as those three fell, there were already ten scrambling over them.
They opened fire, backing up, and ghouls slobbered the floors and ceiling with black blood. Will fired, racked, fired, and racked again. He was moving on pure muscle memory, and the target environment in front of him was so rich he didn’t even have to aim.
Still, the sheer number pushed him back.
This must be what it’s like trying to hold back the ocean.
Each time one fell, five more took its place. There were too many of them, and more were coming every second, drawn to the fight by the loud crash of shotgun blasts.
More ghouls came around the corner, and because it was impossible to pass the thick mass already in front of them, the newcomers leaped onto the walls and ceilings, running on top of each other’s heads, until there was no grayness left. It was just black — a flood of tainted, black death.
Will shouted, “Go go go!”
Danny fired his final shot and turned and ran, Will right behind him. He loaded as he ran, shoving shells into the long shotgun, but it was a difficult task, and he managed only two shells before the Control Room appeared in front of them, its door invitingly open.
“Control Room!” he shouted.
Danny was well ahead of him and already making a beeline for the steel door.
Will was halfway to the Control Room when he could feel them almost on top of him.
He twisted, and immediately the face of a ghoul was inches from his own. He struck out with the Remington and caught the creature across its face while it was still in mid-air, the shotgun’s stock nearly sinking completely into the ghoul’s cheek, cratering the brittle bone underneath and tossing the creature across the hallway and into the wall like a flesh-and-bone piñata.
He backpedaled and fired, wasting the two shells he had just managed to reload into the obscene, surging black wall behind him. He obliterated the closest five ghouls with one shot, then six more from the second wave that scrambled over them.
Danny screamed behind him, “Let’s go! You want an invitation?”
He turned and ran full speed, and because the shotgun was too heavy he tossed it aside. He could feel them almost on top of him again, made the calculations and leaped the last two meters.
He dove through the door like a human rocket and crashed into the fallen chair and slammed his back into the legs of the dashboard even as he skidded across the concrete surface. He heard the solid thoom! of the steel door slamming shut behind him and the ratcheting sound of the lever locking in place. But even as he came to a crushing stop against the dashboard, grimacing with pain, he could hear the simultaneous hissing above and behind him and knew that two of the ghouls had managed to follow him inside.
Almost instantly, the ghouls outside threw themselves against the door, raining repeated blows on it, one after another. But the steel door held as it was supposed to and didn’t budge an inch.