“Yeah?”
“Take my Glock and the two spare magazines on my right hip.”
“Why?”
“They have silver ammo.”
“Right, silver bullets.”
He put his Beretta away and drew her Glock from its holster, then opened one of her pouches and pulled out the two spare magazines.
“Is this all we have?” he asked.
“More magazines in my pack, but they’re loaded with regular ammo.”
She remained still, watching through the small opening as the ghoul slowly slid under the window.
Dammit.
The good news was, there was still just the one. She could deal with that. Too bad she had never gotten around to arming herself with a silver knife, the way Will carried that cross-knife of his everywhere. She was going to have to make a lot of noise just to kill this one ghoul, which would risk bringing more—
She hadn’t even finished the thought when two — no, four—ten more ghouls had appeared out of the darkness and were swarming toward the pawnshop from the other side of the window.
Oh, God.
Then ten became twenty, and suddenly there were too many to count. She didn’t know where they had come from — nowhere and everywhere. Like moths to the flame, squirming, pushing, and fighting to enter the pawnshop at the same time. So many that they began clogging up the entrance like hundreds of black worms wriggling in the ground, their individual silhouettes impossible to make out against the blackness. She got queasy as glass shards sticking along the broken windows sliced into their flesh, drawing thick clumps of blood that dripped, dissolving in the puddle on the floor.
And still they pushed, wordlessly, soundlessly, anxiously—desperately—to get inside.
The first creature she saw — the painfully small one — was the first to make it through, pushed on ahead by the amorphous blob behind it. It slid against a puddle, almost out of control, but quickly gathered its wits about it and looked across the darkened room and hissed at her.
As the ghoul rose to its feet, Gaby pushed the door open wider and shot the creature in the chest.
Even before the creature fell, two — three—five—were already leaping over its collapsing form and bounding across the room, moving with such incredible speed that Gaby found herself staring, fascinated and awed by their ferocity.
“Gaby!” Nate shouted behind her.
Gaby stood up, switched the AR-15 to full-auto and squeezed the trigger.
Bullets speared flesh and chipped bone and kept going, the creatures’ soft, non-existent muscle doing nothing to stop the velocity of the silver rounds. The windows spiderwebbed, the pak-pak-pak sound of impact like the raindrops from earlier. What sounded like a bullet ricocheted off one of the metal bars and pierced a ghoul, even as more of them fell and flopped to the floor as if they were slipping and sliding.
For a brief instant, she almost wanted to laugh at the comical sight.
She dropped seven of them in the first burst, but they hadn’t all crumpled to the floor yet before another wave began squeezing their way through, cutting and slashing and eviscerating themselves against the broken glass.
“Gaby!” Nate shouted again. “Close the door!”
Gaby couldn’t really hear him, because she was too busy emptying the rest of the magazine into the jagged hole where the wet floor met the opening, where the ghouls were fighting — each other and the shards of glass — to get through. The sound of silver slapping into flesh, continuing, hitting more flesh, deflecting off bone, and digging into the parking lot beyond was like a melody — a death song filling the quiet, silent night.
It was almost beautiful.
Then the window disappeared, and there was just a wall of moving prune flesh — gaunt, bony faces and dark, unforgiving black eyes looking back at her.
“Nate!” she shouted. “The desk!”
Gaby stepped backward and slammed the door shut. She twisted the deadbolt into place, ejected the spent magazine and ran over to her pack, pulling out a fresh one and shoving it back into the rifle.
One down. One to go.
She pulled out the glow stick and cracked it, then tossed it on the floor in the middle of the room. The office lit up, just as the sound of falling glass rattled from the other side of the door, and she knew they were breaking through, no longer willing to wait in line. She could already hear the cacophony of bare feet slapping against tiled floor, splashing water that had settled across the store.
Gaby slung her rifle and reached for the other side of the desk. Nate, on his own, had managed to push the big, heavy oak furniture a good five feet. Gaby grabbed the other end and, grunting with the effort, lifted it up. Nate did the same on his end, using both hands, though his right was doing most of the lifting. She didn’t want to imagine the kind of pain he was feeling at the moment. She couldn’t afford to care. Not now, not with the creatures bearing down on them.
They moved to the door one desperate inch at a time, the desk between them. She could feel sweat pouring down her temple, cheeks, and dripping off her chin. Nate’s face was a twisted mask of pain, and he grunted with every successful inch.
They were almost at the door when the first ghoul smashed into it on the other side. The entire frame trembled under the impact.
She moved faster, and Nate, sensing her urgency, fought to keep up.
“How we doing this?” he grunted.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
“Angle it, on its side, tabletop against the door!” she shouted back.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
The attack on the door had increased in intensity and speed with every passing second. The doorknob quivered and the wood quaked and the frame splintered with each impact.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
At last they were at the door, and Gaby dropped her end and rushed over to Nate’s side. They exchanged a brief nod, and with a heavy, simultaneous painful grunt, upended the desk until the bulky object was standing on its side.
“Push!” Gaby shouted, and put her shoulder against the underside of the desk as Nate did the same next to her.
She didn’t stop pushing until the desk’s tabletop slid perfectly flat against the door. It almost instantly trembled as soon as the two pieces of wood touched.
Thoom-thoom-thoom! Thoom-thoom-thoom!
Gaby backpedaled, taking each step, each breath, almost in tune with the relentless, unceasing pounding. Nate mirrored her actions, though she barely noticed him until his labored, ragged breathing seeped into her flaring senses.
“Do you think it’ll hold?” Nate asked between gasps.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
“No,” she said quickly.
“Damn.” He pulled out the Glock from his waistband, his right pocket bulging with the two spare magazines. The Beretta was stuffed behind his back. “How did they know we were in here?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“We should have gone looking for a basement.”
“Yeah.”
A loud crash rang out, and she knew the door had just come free from its frame on the other side of the desk. Splinters flickered into the room, along with torn fragments of the wall that shot at her like projectiles. She twisted her body instinctively and swatted the air, batting away a few loosened chunks.
“We’re fucked,” Nate said.
“Not yet.” She glanced behind her at the back door.
Nate followed her gaze. “Isn’t it more dangerous out there?”
“There are two dumpsters in the back…”