She didn’t really hear them, because they never made a lot of noise, but she could feel them coming down around her, the rippling in the air, in response to their movements. There must have been a lot of them, and there was going to be more as the Door widened farther.
Even now, she could feel them gathering around her, flowing down the steps. Their numbers must have been something to see. She wished she could turn her head and look, but she couldn’t.
Or maybe she did. She didn’t really remember.
She only recalled a sense of finality, of, at last, tranquility. A job well done. A final task performed.
Doing things with her body was very hard. Probably because she was dying. Or maybe it was for another reason.
This is what happens when you die, right? Nothing becomes clear. Everything becomes difficult, muddy, even the simplest things like turning one’s head…or listening.
Or remembering. Or perceiving what was happening around her. Were the ghouls really passing her by without touching her?
Yes. That seemed to be the case, though she didn’t understand why. They didn’t even pay attention to her. She could see thin, clattering bony feet appearing out of thin air in front of her before disappearing again. They didn’t acknowledge her.
Now this is odd. I didn’t expect this, either.
She stopped fighting the ache in her arms and legs and leaned her head back against the steps. She felt the cold concrete, her first real exterior sensation in a while, press up against the back of her neck, and it sent goose bumps through her. She had forgotten what that felt like. She arched her neck some more and lay still, and looked up and saw nothing but cold, calm, soothing night sky above her.
The ghouls were still coming down, but they weren’t using the steps anymore. She could see dozens — hundreds — of them simply plummeting, like bats falling out of the night around her. Coming down from the moon itself, it seemed. Which made for quite a sight. They weren’t so ugly when you stopped being afraid of them.
They looked almost…poetic.
And they continued to ignore her, never once giving her a second look.
Where was Will at that moment? Will and Danny. There were loud, booming sounds throughout the facility. It took her a while to figure it out, but she eventually did.
Gunshots. They’re fighting back.
What’s the point? It’s over. They should just accept it.
It’s over…
She had accepted it. She wanted to tell them to stop wasting their time. This was their world now. They, the humans, were the intruders. All she had done was usher in the end sooner, that’s all. The inevitable ending that she knew was coming. They should thank her. Or at least, realize what she was doing and embrace it.
There isn’t any pain at all. I’ve been shot. There should be pain, shouldn’t there?
Something appeared above her, entering her line of vision and taking away a big chunk of the pitch-black night sky and the beautiful, round moon high above. It was a face. A thin, oval-shaped face. Near the center, under the forehead, were two very bright blue eyes.
The blue-eyed ghoul…
It stared down at her, the first ghoul to accept that she was there at all. It looked so different from the others that for a moment she wondered if someone was playing a trick on her, that it might be Will or Danny, always the trickster, in a Halloween mask trying to prank her. In her clouded, hazy mind, it was a very real possibility that she couldn’t ignore.
Haha, Danny, you got me. Funny.
But it wasn’t Danny. Or Will. It was the blue-eyed ghoul.
She remembered seeing it from a distance at the bank outside of Cleveland all those months ago, back on the night Luke and Ted died. Really, they should all have died that night, but Will and Danny fought like animals to keep them alive, and they were saved once again by Will’s Plan Z.
That’s such an awful name. I could have given you a better name than that, Will, if you’d asked me first.
And for what? This? Living underground in artificial light, never to see the night sky in person again. Never to feel the comforting cool breeze of darkness against your skin. It wasn’t really life, it was a prison of their own making.
What’s the point?
The blue-eyed ghoul was looking down at her. Was it smiling? Had what was left of its thin lips moved in a way that could possibly be interpreted as a smile? Its eyes were so bright. She didn’t think she had ever seen such piercing blue eyes, even before The Purge. They seemed to almost glow, in fact. Or maybe that was just her imagination. The blue-eyed ghoul she had seen outside of the bank looked like it had dead, pale blue eyes. Or maybe she was remembering it all wrong.
It reached down, its fingers rough and scratchy, like sandpaper, touching the sides of her head. She felt as if cardboard were touching her, not flesh, rubbing against her skin, cutting into her, though she didn’t detect blood. The ghoul lifted her head off the steps, and it bent down, and she felt pain—I can still feel pain? — lance through her body as it closed its mouth over her neck.
She closed her eyes as the blue-eyed ghoul dug deeper with its teeth. It had punched through her skin seconds ago, and she could almost hear the sound of blood draining out of her into the ghoul’s mouth.
This must be what Donald had felt in his final seconds…
Then she remembered what Donald had looked like afterwards, and panic filled her. This wasn’t what she wanted. Not to die like this. To become one of them. She had only wanted to free the others, free herself.
Oh, Will, why didn’t you finish the job? Why did you leave me alive?
Goddamn you, Will, you couldn’t even do that much for me? I asked so little of you…
Then she heard something else — the ghoul’s blood flowing into her, and it reminded her of wild streams splashing across an open range. Was this what happened with Donald? With the others that were bitten? She didn’t know. No one knew. The only people who knew were the ones that had been bitten, and they didn’t come back to spread the tale.
The blue-eyed ghoul pulled back, and she looked up and saw her blood staining its teeth and much of its lower jaw. It had nice teeth, not jagged or brown-stained or yellowed like the others. It wiped at the blood clinging to its jawline with the back of a strangely strong-looking right hand, then licked it with a long — unnaturally long — tongue that darted out like a reptile’s, making a flickering noise against the air.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, a voice that wasn’t hers, talked to her, clear as day, as if the person was standing right next to her ear:
“Thank you for opening the door, Kate.”
She stared up at the blue-eyed ghoul hovering above her. Had it said something? No, it hadn’t, she was sure of that because she hadn’t seen its lips move. In fact, they were still shaped as if smiling, though it was hard to tell because its lips were so shriveled and constricted. Could they even move to form words?
And the voice she heard clearly came from inside her head.
“What’s happening to me?” she said, and she found that she had more strength than a few minutes ago. It was coming back. Slowly at first…
“You know who I am, Kate,” the blue-eyed ghoul said inside her head.
You’re in my head.
“Yes,” the voice said.