There had to be hundreds of them squeezed into the Green Room, so many that they stretched all the way out the doorway and beyond. They didn’t move, and seemed content to watch and wait…for something.
Will squeezed her hand tighter. “Hey.”
“What now?”
“I love you, too.”
Lara didn’t take her eyes off the ghouls for even one second, but she smiled and squeezed his hand back. Suddenly the pain coursing through every inch of her body didn’t hurt nearly as much as a second ago.
Then she saw it. A figure standing near the back, just outside the opened door, among the ghouls.
But it wasn’t like the rest. It stood tall, almost human, and it had blue eyes.
The sight of it made her simultaneously joyous and terrified. That raw instinct doubled when the creature turned its head and stared at her across the distance, over the heads of the other ghouls.
She shivered.
It sees me. And it wants me to know that it sees me…
The blue-eyed ghoul broke their contact, turned and walked away, moving through the wave of endless creatures. It struck her just how different the blue-eyed ghoul was, like some kind of royalty among its subjects.
As it walked away, she saw a second blue-eyed ghoul looking across the room at her.
This one also stood taller than the rest, but it looked much more feminine than the first one, though gender was hard to decipher with the creatures. The second blue-eyed ghoul looked across the room, and it smiled at her, before turning and following the first one through the tightly packed space.
Kate…
CHAPTER 44
WILL
Being locked in a room with a few hundred ghouls introduced a smell that was hard to ignore. It was acidic and pungent, like rotten eggs boiled in filth and trash for an obscene amount of time before someone decided to add vinegar. It stung his eyes and made swallowing repellent. It was all he could do not to vomit.
They sat on the floor, backs against the wall, making sure they were well within the heavy flood of UV light. There were a good thirty meters between them and the closest ghoul, though it felt much closer. Twice now the creatures had tried to come down through the air duct opening, only to evaporate almost instantly as they were exposed to the lights, leaving only bones behind.
Lara sat next to him, her head resting on his shoulder. He held the cross-knife in his right fist. Covered in a thick coat of black blood and gooey flesh, its silver still glinted brilliantly against the light pouring down above them. It felt like sitting in the sun without sunscreen. He couldn’t fathom how Rose had survived this onslaught day in and day out.
“What happens to the lights if they find a way to destroy the turbine?” Lara asked. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the ghouls. Neither had he.
“Backup generators,” Will said.
“Can’t they get to those, too?”
“They’re in a basement behind a steel door. Without the codes, Ben’s pendant is the only way in, and Danny has that.”
“If Danny’s still alive,” Lara said.
“He made it.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I just am.”
Lara sighed. “So we wait them out?”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“You have that knife…”
“Uh huh.”
“How many of them do you think are stuck in here with us?”
He had stopped counting about an hour ago — at 200—when he could no longer keep track of the blackened and shrunken forms. There were more than that in this room alone, and even more outside in the hallway. He and Danny had killed over a hundred since the siege began, and they hadn’t made so much as a dent. It made him wonder if his original plan was even still viable.
He glanced at his watch. 1:33 a.m.
Five more hours until sunup…
“A lot,” he finally answered.
“That’s not very scientific,” she said.
It had been almost an hour and a half since Kate opened the Door and the ghouls flooded inside the facility. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
Kate…
What had happened to her? Had the ghouls gotten her? Lara swore she saw Kate at the door, though she didn’t look like Kate anymore. She looked like a ghoul, except Lara said this new Kate had bright blue eyes, like the blue-eyed ghoul he had seen at the bank.
“I swear it was her,” Lara said. “It was the eyes. Not the color, but the way she looked at me. It was her, Will.”
“I believe you,” he said.
And he did believe her. After everything he had seen and lived through, the idea that Kate had become another blue-eyed ghoul was the least unbelievable thing thrown at him.
There was a movement above them, and a second later another ghoul dropped out of the air duct and landed on a trough nearby. It was turning to face them when the UV light reduced it to ashes.
The sight was still surreal to him, like watching the creature’s entire being simply come unglued at a molecular level, flesh falling away from skeleton and leaving behind nothing but a pile of white ash and pale bones to mark its passing.
“How many does that make?” Lara asked.
“Five,” he said.
“I thought you said they were smart.”
“They can be pretty damn stubborn, too.”
The ghouls in the room didn’t look particularly disturbed by the death of one of their own. In fact, none of them even moved or made any indication that they noticed the dead ghoul. There were piles of bones all around them now, turning the Green Room into a kind of ghoulish cemetery where the bodies weren’t properly buried.
Lara said, “Are you sure Danny and the others made it back to the Control Room?”
“That’s the third time you’ve asked me that.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry.” She paused. “It must be the UV lights. It’s too damn bright.” She paused again. “How did you answer the last two times?”
“I’m sure they made it.”
“Are you absolutely sure?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Lara lifted her head and blinked at the bright lights above them. “Maybe we can turn down the lights a bit. How am I supposed to get any sleep with those things on all night?”
“Give it a shot.”
She leaned her head back on his shoulder. “Why did you tell me you loved me?”
He was unprepared for that question. Admittedly, it stunned him when she made the declaration in the air ducts, and he hadn’t really known what was happening when he said it back to her later on. Maybe it was the heat of the moment. He remembered saying it to only two previous women in his life, and one of those had been his mother. The other a high school sweetheart whom he never saw again after she went to college, although they had promised to stay in touch. Whatever happened to her?
“Will?” Lara said. “Should I take the silence as a bad sign?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh,” she said, disappointment in her voice.
“I don’t know why I said it, but I meant it,” he said, hoping to salvage the moment. Lara didn’t answer right away, and he knew she was waiting for him to continue. “I know that now. I meant it, every word of it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
She kissed him on the cheek.
“Not in front of the undead creatures, dear,” he said.
She chuckled tiredly and closed her eyes, and he held her hand as she drifted off to sleep.