He glanced at his watch: 7:05 a.m.
They had given it an extra thirty minutes after sunup before emerging from the safety of the Green Room, just to be sure. They had kept the Door open to let sunlight in.
Lara, weaponless, stayed close behind him. His only weapon was the cross-knife, and he ached to get his hands on something that could be used more than a meter in front of him. They were halfway to the Armory when Danny appeared out of the Control Room with his M4A1, Carly and the girls tailed close behind him. He guessed by the way Danny was holding the rifle, almost as a club, that he didn’t have any silver bullets left in it.
Carly and Lara ran into each other’s arms, dodging piles of dead ghouls on the floor. It didn’t take Vera and Elise long to join in on the screams and crying. Will and Danny hung back and let them have their moment.
“So,” Danny said, “you going to tell me how you survived in that room surrounded by those things, and armed with only that pig sticker?”
“UV lights,” Will said.
“UV what?”
“In the Green Room. There are giant industrial-sized UV lamps they’ve been using to grow the plants. Turns out they’re really, really good for killing ghouls, too.”
“You thought of that?”
“Lara did.”
“Ah. So she’s the real brains of this operation, then.”
“Never any doubt.”
“I’ve never been in the Green Room,” Danny said.
“Not once?”
“Not once. I got better things to do than see where they’re growing the trees.”
“I’ll show you later.”
They made it to the Armory without incident.
Without the turbine constantly turning in the background, the only sounds were their heavy breathing, footsteps, and the air conditioner cranking out the heat, powered by the emergency generators.
Inside the Armory, he and Danny rearmed themselves with new Remington shotguns and refilled their ammo pouches with silver ammo. It may have been daylight outside, but the facility had plenty of dark spots where sunlight couldn’t touch. Every single room held a potential nest. Deep in his mind, he considered that the evacuation by the ghouls could have been a feint. Send most of the foot soldiers home, and leave a few behind as a surprise.
Dead, not stupid…
Both Carly and Lara rearmed with Glocks, loading magazines with silver bullets, while the girls looked on in the background. The new kid, Elise, was handling it well. Maybe it was Vera’s presence. The two of them looked joined at the hip.
“What’s the plan?” Danny asked.
“Clear out the rooms, then take tally of the damages.”
“Are we staying here?” Carly asked.
“For now,” Will nodded. “We still have power and weapons and food. Until we find a better place, this is still our best bet. Even if the power goes, we still have the Door. Of course, opening it is another matter without the power, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
“Hopefully the bridge won’t be on fire,” Danny said.
“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst,” Will said.
Lara said, “How much damage did they do to the turbine, do you think?”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Will said. “You guys stay here in the Armory while Danny and I clear the rooms.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. I’ll go with you.”
“Lara, I need you to stay here.”
She looked hurt and fixed him with a stare that told him this wasn’t going to end with him raising his voice. So he took her aside. He held her face in his hands, kissed her softly, and looked her in the eyes.
“I need you to be safe,” he said quietly. “I can’t do what I have to do out there if I’m worrying about you, because I will. Because you mean that much to me.”
She softened against him, and finally nodded. She kissed him quickly and glanced across the room at Danny. “Watch his six.”
Danny grinned back. “Yes, ma’am.”
Danny kissed Carly and followed Will outside.
They closed the Armory door, then waited until they heard the door lever turning and locking into place. Danny banged on the door twice, then they headed off, stepping over eviscerated ghoul corpses.
They moved from room to room with shotguns, finding no survivors. There were no ghoul corpses in the Quarters area. Which made sense. Will and Danny were the only ones who had managed to arm themselves with silver ammo, and they never made it past the Entrance Hallway during the siege.
Sunlight continued pouring through the Door like a great big welcoming bath. The feel of sunlight against his skin as they walked across the Entrance Hallway was one of the best damn feelings in the entire world. Second, he concluded, only to Lara in his arms.
On their way back from Quarters, Danny said, “What about Kate?”
“What about her?”
“We know what happened to her?”
Will told him about what Lara saw in the Green Room last night.
“Blue eyes?” Danny said. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. I wish I knew, but I don’t.”
“If it was actually her…”
“Lara was pretty sure.”
“Shit. That’s new.”
“Yeah.” He paused for a moment. Then said, “I saw something in the Green Room that I haven’t seen before.”
“Share with the class.”
“They were scared. Freaking out. They knew the sun was coming and they were trapped down here with us. That’s why I thought opening the door early for them to leave would work.”
“Still, a hell of a risk. What if they had just sent in more ghouls?”
“I figured, what the hell. There was already a billion of them inside.”
Danny grunted. “Oh sure, what’s another billion more, right?”
“Exactly.”
They cleared the Cafeteria next. It was easily the biggest room in the whole place, and it took them longer than the rest of the facility combined, but eventually they found nothing except more patches of blood, the red and the black kinds. Scattered around the facility were bullet casings of different calibers and shredded clothing. There were also left-behind guns, and someone had resorted to using a spatula as a weapon, which lay in a corner covered in blood.
“Last stand of the spatula,” Danny said, with surprisingly little humor.
They moved on to the Turbine Room, which looked undisturbed, except for the fire ax sticking out of the computer dashboard. The massive, towering turbine itself looked fine, and sat coldly, silently on one side of the room. He didn’t think he would ever miss the sound or feel of the turbine’s omnipresent hum, but he was wrong.
They stood looking at the machinery for a moment, before he said, “You know how to fix a computer?”
“I don’t even know how a computer actually works,” Danny said. “Do you?”
“Not really, no.”
“You mean you know a little bit?”
“I know how to turn it on and search for porn.”
“You and every other male on the planet. That doesn’t do us any good here.”
“Nope.”
“So we’re screwed.”
“Ben said Harold Campbell designed the turbine to be operated by laymen.”
“Yeah? You’re a layman, right?”
“Last time I checked.”
“So you can probably operate this thing.”
“Sure.” Will looked back at the dashboard, with the ax sticking out of it. Half of the machine was destroyed, the other half scattered about the room. “But how do you put that thing back together?”
“Carefully?” Danny said.
Will knocked on the Armory door and it swung open, Lara standing on the other side with her Glock next to her hip. “Good?”