“Told you,” Will said.
“Don’t rub it in.”
“Just saying.”
“What are you, twelve?”
They didn’t spend any more time on it beyond that. Will was not religious — and neither was Danny, for that matter — nor given to pontificating about things he couldn’t explain with a sentence or two. He was soldier, a grunt when you got right down to it. In the absence of someone smarter, someone with insight, the ghouls being fatally susceptible to silver was as good an explanation as any.
They were knee-deep in dead ghouls, with about two dozen of the things spread across the hallway and living room.
And yet, they kept coming.
And Will and Danny kept killing them.
The ghouls attacked in waves, one after another, coming through the windows and the door at almost the same time. A coordinated attack, he was sure of it.
Organized and disciplined, was the thought that kept running through his head all night. The ghouls gave off the impression of being rabid and wild, when the truth was very different. They were aimed, he concluded, unleashed at very specific targets. That bulls eye being him and Danny at the moment.
Then, without warning, they stopped.
Will was at the door, while Danny kept watch on the window on the other side of the room. The door was gone, obliterated, the doorframe covered in blood and thick patches of dark liquid that Will wasn’t quite sure was blood. It certainly didn’t look like any blood he had ever seen, and he had seen more than his share. Not that he could really tell for sure in the semidarkness, with only the moonlight from the window to break the monotony of shadows.
When they were sure the ghouls had finally retreated, they slid down to the floor and allowed themselves a moment to rest. Will loosened his grip on the flesh- and blood-encrusted cross. He could barely see the silver or bronze anymore. He wiped the clumps off by scraping it against the hard carpet. What would their owners think if they knew what he and Danny were doing with their religious symbols? He imagined screaming, shouts of blasphemy being possibilities.
“What are they doing?” Danny asked from across the room.
“I think they’re retreating.”
“Fucking A.”
They were both covered in blood and what smelled like pus. Maybe it was something else the ghouls bled in lieu of blood. It wasn’t like he had time to sit down and examine it with a microscope. Survival had taken precedence over inventory, and eventually the smell had mostly faded and become inconsequential.
Mostly…
Will found the couch, not far from the door. He picked up one side and Danny hurried to help, stepping over dead bodies. Sounds of brittle bones cracking like kindling underneath boots echoed inside the room.
“Aw, man,” Danny said, “this isn’t right. Sorry, guys. My bad.”
“I don’t think they’ll mind.”
“It’s not about them, it’s about me. I can practically smell the nightmares after tonight, and they smell like rotting pus.”
“That’s cute. You think we’re going to live through tonight. Captain fucking Optimism.”
Danny grunted in reply.
They put the couch back in front of the hole where the door used to be, then stacked a dresser from the bedroom on top of it. That covered half of the door but left a gaping hole at the very top. That was fine. Climbing ghouls were easier to deal with than ones that walked unencumbered through the door.
He searched the room until he located Peeks’s body. The big man stood out from the smaller, twisted dead things scattered around him. Peeks, even dead, looked like a God among the emaciated forms.
Will and Danny crouched in front of Peeks and watched him in silence. The former SWAT man was propped up against the wall, his hands entwined in front of him as if he had died in the middle of prayer. He looked peaceful, and in some ways, Will felt relieved for him. Peeks had been in tremendous pain throughout the night.
“Maybe he’s just fucking around,” Danny said.
“I doubt that.”
“He wasn’t bad, for a fat fuck with tree trunks for legs.”
Will smiled. He knew Danny actually liked Peeks. They all did. Peeks was always good with his share of the breakfast in the mornings and the lunches in the afternoons. Will had met Peeks’s wife, Sharon, and their kids, Lisbeth and Marcus, a couple of times at birthday parties for the kids of guys on the team. He recalled Sharon. She was such a little thing, such a counterpoint to her husband. The kids, though, were wildcats. You could tell they were going to grow up to be miniature versions of their father.
“His wife—” Will started, but he didn’t finish because at that very second Peeks opened his eyes and lunged at him.
Will fell backward, the cross falling from his hand and the back of his head smashing down on the femur of a dead ghoul lying on the floor. Peeks’s huge size collapsed on top of him like some boulder come alive. It was all Will could do in the split second he had to get his hands underneath the dead man (?) to keep from being crushed by his huge weight.
He saw dark black pits where Peeks’s eyes used to be, and the suffocating aroma of rotting cabbage stung Will’s nostrils. He realized, with sudden clarity, that the putrid smell spewing out of every pore of Peeks’s body at the moment was the same prevalent stench that filled every inch of the Wilshire Apartments.
Peeks was grinning down at him. Will saw grotesque and damaged teeth. (Meth teeth.) It wasn’t Peeks. Not really. The man Will knew was dead. This thing on top of him, reaching for his throat with its malformed hands, was something else.
Something dead.
“Any time, man!” Will screamed.
Danny appeared behind Peeks and rammed the sharp end of his blood-encrusted cross into the back of Peeks’s head. The life — as damaged and perverted as it had become — in Peeks’s black eyes went out like extinguished candles, and the big body slumped over him, suddenly soft and pliant.
Will pushed what used to be Peeks off with some effort. Peeks collapsed on the floor and lay still. Danny leaned over the dead man (again?) and pulled his cross free with a dull sloshing sound that reminded Will of spilling beer.
“Fuck me,” Danny said.
Will pushed himself back up to his feet, light-headed and wobbly. The effort he had expended to keep Peeks from crushing him had sapped most of his strength. He hadn’t realized just how big Peeks really was until seconds ago.
“You good?” Danny asked.
“Not really, no.” He gathered his breath. “You took your sweet time.”
“I wanted to make sure Peeks was really dead.”
“He didn’t look dead to you?”
“You can’t be too sure,” Danny said. “Shoving a silver cross through the back of a man’s skull is serious business. And you’re welcome.”
Will smirked, and Danny grinned back.
He looked around and found his cross, picked it back up. “From now on, everyone gets a silver cross to the head, just to be safe.”
Danny crouched over Peeks’s still form. “What happened to him?”
“One of those things bit him on the fifteenth floor. Maybe that’s how you turn. They break skin, you die, and you become one of them.”
“You just making all that up?”
“Probably, yeah.”
“Good enough.” He wiped Peeks’s blood and sticky clumps of brain matter off the cross using Peeks’s remaining pant leg. “So what’s the lesson here? Don’t let them bite you? Or don’t let them bite you and don’t die?”
“Sounds about right.”