“Oh great, another Plan Z,” Carly frowned.
“Carly,” Will said, “you first, then the girls.”
Carly climbed up on the chair and held out her hands. Will grabbed them, and taking a breath, pulled her up slowly. Carly said, “If you say I’ve gained weight, I’m going to kill you, Will.”
He grinned and pulled her halfway up. Carly reached into the corners of the duct for leverage, while Danny grabbed her legs to help push her the rest of the way.
They continued that way with Vera, then Elise. The girls were easier, lighter, and Danny simply passed them up to Will, who pulled them both into the air duct without much effort.
When it was her turn, Lara loosened up her legs and arms and climbed back up on the chair. Will, dangling from the square box in the ceiling, said, “Ready?”
“Thanks for coming,” she smiled up at him.
“I had no choice. It was either this or find a new girlfriend. As you’ve probably noticed, my history with girlfriends in the post-apocalypse has been pretty hit and miss.”
“I bet you say that to all the g—”
She never got the chance to finish. There was a loud crack! behind her and she knew without looking that the door had just given way, that the only thing holding the ghouls back now was the barricade, and it wouldn’t last for more than a few seconds.
Danny, behind her, shouted, “Go go go!”
Will had already gotten a grip on her wrists, and he pulled her up in one fluid motion, grunting loudly in the effort. Unprepared for the pull, she thought her arms might pop out of their sockets.
Will deposited her into the air duct with another big grunt.
The air duct was intensely hot, and Carly and the girls were already sweating profusely as they sat inside, their wet faces lit up by the glow sticks hanging from their necks. The unnatural green glow glinted off the shiny metal interior of the air ducts, reminding Lara of some weird sci-fi movie.
She climbed past Will, who made himself as small as possible to allow her to hurry by. Fortunately it wasn’t as tight a squeeze as she had feared. Although the grate was only two-by-two feet wide, the duct itself was wider at four-by-four feet. It had to be to accommodate the massive industrial-sized air conditioner that Harold Campbell had installed in the facility. The generous size allowed Carly to mostly sit and the girls to stand slightly hunched over.
Even as she moved past Will, a loud crashing sound thundered behind her, back in the room. She knew the door had just come completely free from its hinges, and on cue, a split second after the loud crashing noise, she heard the roar of a shotgun blast.
She stopped and looked back at Will. He was leaning over the hole, shouting, “Danny, now, Goddammit!”
The shotgun bellowed from below.
One, two, three times.
Will reached down and grabbed onto something and jerked back up in a harder and rougher movement than he had used on her. Danny climbed through the hole, his face grimacing with pain. She knew instantly that Danny hadn’t been as lucky as her, that one, possibly both of his arms, had come free from its sockets during the pull. He was heavier than her, and the weapons and ammo he carried only added to his weight.
He crawled up the rest of the way by himself, but she could see he was in tremendous pain. His teeth were tightly clenched and he cradled his left arm as he crawled forward while behind him Will unslung his shotgun and fired into the room. The loud shotgun blasts were ear-shattering in the close confines of the ducts, and Lara thought she might have just lost all hearing, but that proved false when she heard Will fire again, and again, and again.
Danny struggled into a sitting position in front of her and reached into one of his pouches, pulling out two round green globes.
Grenades!
Danny shouted, “Fire in the hole!”
Will quickly scooted back as Danny pulled the pins and tossed the grenades through the opening, just as a ghoul stuck its head up, black eyes searching. A second later the ghoul evaporated in the dual blasts that sent shrapnel screaming through the opening, slicing into the area around the grate like thousands of tiny daggers. Much to Lara’s relief, Will had moved far enough away to be spared from the double explosions.
Lara feared the entire ceiling — and they with it — might collapse. A cloud of smoke shot through the opening, and for a moment she lost sight of Will, who was somewhere behind the wall of white mist.
She looked back at Elise and Vera to make sure they were all right. Both girls were pressing their hands against their ears, eyes squeezed shut, neither one making a sound. Elise looked on the verge of tears, but when Vera took her hand away from her ears and reached for Elise’s, the other girl fought back the tears.
While things were calming down in front of her, they continued to be chaotic and desperate behind her. Lara still couldn’t see Will through the curtain of drifting smoke. She could only see Danny, sitting nearby, cradling his left arm in his lap and trying desperately to get it to work for him.
She crab-walked over. Danny gave her a look indicating he was fine. She knew better and grasped his left arm. He flinched, but didn’t say anything.
“Hold still,” she said, “this is going to hurt.”
He grinned back at her through the swirling white smoke. “No shit, Doc. Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I once dated a lesbian in college.”
“Oh ye—”
She pulled. Hard. And heard the pop! as the bone slid back into the socket.
Oh my God, I can’t believe I just did that. Professor Stevens would be so proud…if he wasn’t probably already dead.
Danny sighed and unslung his M4A1 from behind his back. “So, about that lesbian encounter…”
“Later,” she said.
Two more shotgun blasts roared behind them, then Will appeared through the smoke like some apparition. “Less chatter, more moving.”
Ahead of them, Carly began crawling through the air duct, moving as fast as she could. The girls followed, walking hunched over. Lara crawled behind them, her head bumping into the ceiling every few feet until she got used to it and started moved at a lower angle.
She risked a glance back over her shoulder, just in time to see a ghoul appear out of the evaporating mist. Its black eyes looked even more freakish against the green neon of the glow sticks that flooded the ducts. That is, for the split second before Will detached its head from its shoulders with a shotgun blast. The buckshot must have kept going, because Lara heard another ghoul behind the headless one let out a surprised shriek.
The shotgun blasts were like someone hammering away at her ears with explosives. Each shot made her wince and hesitate, and it was only with great focus that she managed to force herself to keep moving, despite what sounded like the never-ending bellow of gunfire behind her.
Carly was well ahead of the pack, with the girls moving steadily behind her. They were so far up front that the two-foot halo of their glow sticks began to fade into the darkness. She was afraid they would get lost. Lara didn’t know if there were turns in the air ducts, though she could feel it curving in places to accommodate the half-circle construction of the facility. She hadn’t passed any overt turns yet, which was good. That meant there weren’t too many spots where they could get lost or lose track of one another.
She knew the ghouls were now in the air ducts with them, because Will and Danny were firing and moving and firing. Through the sound of shotgun and M4A1 fire behind her, a scream pierced the darkness of the air duct in front of her.
Carly.
She recognized Carly’s scream even though she couldn’t see a damn thing up ahead. She looked back at Danny and Will, taking turns firing into the darkness behind them, oblivious to what was happening up front. They probably couldn’t hear anything over the roar of their own weapons. And they were kept busy, too. Ghouls lunged into Danny and Will’s neon halo, only to be shredded by gunfire. Like they had done before, Will and Danny fired and reloaded, screaming out “Changing!” each time.