He scrambled up from the floor, eyes flashing around the room, before finally settling on the ghoul hanging from a monitor above him like some sort of monkey. Will slid the cross-knife out of its sheath and caught the ghoul in the throat as it dropped on top of him. He was driven back down to the floor, the ghoul’s sticky black blood dripping onto his chest. He lifted it off — it was shockingly light, almost entirely bag and bones — and flung it away with utter distaste.
He glanced over at the door, where Danny had grabbed the other ghoul by the throat and had jammed his cross-knife through its forehead, killing it on the spot. Danny stepped back, letting the creature slide down the wall, leaving a thick trail of splotchy, dark liquid behind, before collapsing to the floor in a pile.
Danny looked over and managed a grin. “Well, that plan didn’t work.”
“No shit,” he said, catching his breath as he pulled himself up from the floor again.
“You got a Plan B? At this point, I might settle for a Plan Z. The girls aren’t going to last long with that door.”
“I’m thinking, I’m thinking…”
“Think faster.”
He pulled up Rick’s chair and sat down heavily on it. He wanted to sit for a few hours and gather his strength, but his mind was already racing through options. So many options, and most of them weren’t going to get them more than a few meters beyond the Control Room.
The continued pounding against the door didn’t help.
Danny, frustrated, kicked the steel door and shouted, “Shut the fuck up! The man’s trying to think in here!”
Will grinned.
He looked over to his left, at Ben and Rick’s bodies, the two dead ghouls he had killed earlier lying nearby.
“Well?” Danny said.
“Thinking, thinking…”
Danny sat down on the floor, the cross-knife dangling between his knees. He looked tired, covered in thick clumps of flesh and blood and sweat.
Will pushed himself back up on his feet. He always thought better on his feet. He looked over at the destroyed dashboard, then shook his head. “I’m open to suggestions.”
The ghouls at the door suddenly went quiet, and Will and Danny stared at it for a moment.
Danny got up and walked over and pressed his ear against the door. “They’re playing possum. I can hear them moving around outside. Smart fuckers.”
“How many?”
“All of them?”
“That’s not good.”
“Yeah, what I said.”
Will wiped the cross-knife against his leg and slid it back into its sheath. He walked around the small room, taking in every inch of it from floor to ceiling. There wasn’t exactly a lot of space, and it only took him twenty seconds to cover the entire room. As soon as he was done, the finality of it, the sudden lack of viable options, drew a disappointed sigh from him.
“I don’t want to hear that,” Danny said behind him.
“Thinking, thinking…”
He looked over at the shelf. Maybe he had missed something there. Ham radios, electronic parts, and a stack of manuals. A lot of things that couldn’t help him get to Lara and Carly and the girls right now. He turned away from the shelf and looked up at the ceiling. If there was nothing down here that could help, maybe he could find some possibilities up there.
Then he saw it.
He walked toward the back right corner and stood below it.
Danny said behind him, “What is it?”
“Harold Campbell designed the facility to be his own private bomb shelter. Built most of it to his personal specifications. But even he had to follow standard building codes, because they became standard for a reason.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Will pointed up at a two-by-two foot metal grate on the ceiling, near the corner. “Ventilation ducts. They cool and warm the facility. And it runs all along the structure. Through every hallway, every room, and every living quarters.”
Danny walked over. “So what are you saying? We’re going to Die Hard our way over to the girls? We’re in the middle of a crisis, with thousands of blood-sucking ghouls outside our door, and you’re looking to an action movie from the ’80s as inspiration?”
“It worked for John McClane.”
“True enough,” Danny said. “Okay, assuming it works and we can get to the girls that way. Then what? How do we get out of here? There are still a lot of those fucks stuck in the facility with us.”
“We just have to survive until morning.” He nodded at Ben’s pendant hanging from Danny’s neck. “Then we open the Door. Let sunlight kill as many as possible and we finish off the rest. As long as we can keep accessing the Armory, load up on the silver, we can hold out indefinitely. Or damn near close.”
“Is this Plan Z? I hate your Plan Z.”
“What happened at the bank? They gave up after we killed enough of them. We have a hell of a lot more ammo here, and every day we’ll be able to close the Door and whittle them down. We’re not the ones stuck in here, Danny, they are. We control access to the Door. We have the advantage.”
“Right. We have the advantage.” Danny didn’t look convinced.
Will grinned at him. “It’s just a matter of perspective.”
“What perspective? That you’re insane?”
“Shut up and look for rope. Or strings.”
“What the hell do we need ropes for?”
Will opened one of his pouches and pulled out a handful of glow sticks. “First rule of survivaclass="underline" stay out of the dark.”
CHAPTER 42
KATE
The fact that it didn’t hurt at all surprised her. She had prepared for this moment, expected it to be the most painful moment of her life. She thought it might be like giving birth — not that she knew what that was like — only more permanent.
She knew it would come to this, because she wanted it so. With her very last breath in the split second she heard Will shoot, she would press the button and it would be done. She would be dead, but not before she pushed the final pieces into place. Literally, in this case. Instead, she wasn’t dead — she only felt a mild sensation on the bullet’s impact. Then she pressed Ben’s pendant, and the gears cranked up and the Door behind her started to open.
The people in the facility treated the Door with a reverence that was justified. It was the one thing standing between them and what waited outside. The things that she had just let in…
She stumbled back and somehow ended up sitting on the bottom step. Danny appeared, suddenly standing in front of her and snatched the pendant out of her hand. She didn’t even realize Ben’s string necklace was gone until she saw Danny pressing it over and over again.
Danny, you know better than that, she wanted to say.
Or maybe she did say it. She couldn’t be sure, because everything looked slightly off-kilter and even surreal, and she felt as if she was looking at the world through a fog. Her perception became skewed and a feeling of floating on air, light as a feather enveloped her. She hadn’t planned for that.
One moment Will was there, looking at her quizzically, as if trying to understand what was happening, what she had done, and then he was gone. Danny was gone, too, and Lara, and Rhonda, and those two guys Kate had never made the effort to get to know. There might have been gunshots, but her senses were dulled, and she couldn’t really tell if the gunshots were new or if she was just replaying Will shooting her.
Where were Will and the others going, and why? But then remembered: Oh, right, the Door is opening…