Beyond the Barriers (37 page)

After I shot her in the face, I bolted for the remains of the shack. Smoke rose from the fallen walls and made the air reek of explosives. I poked the gun under one sheet of metal that had fallen over a desk. It was bowed in the middle, making a weird little tent. I couldn’t help but think that it would have made a much better place to rest than our cage. I would have killed for such a place a few days ago.

Scanning the remains of the walls, I didn’t see any legs or hands poking out. There were no bodies to be found.

“Goddammit!” I yelled in frustration.

Shoving aside one of the thin walls, I found the remains of a sparse room built atop a thin wooden floor. I moved more pieces aside, hoping to see bodies squirming around in the wreckage or lying unmoving.

Setting the rifle down, I worked on the edges, but kept one pistol in hand. When one of the dead got too close, I would shoot it.

The chance to escape with my life was fading as they arrived. They closed in from all sides as I worked to slide things aside.

There were no bodies.

The big gun opened up again, and I thought of Scott on top, shooting our former brothers and sisters down. I would have been horrified, but I would have done the same. I would have cleared them like weeds.

My boot snagged on a ragged section of wood that stuck out of the ground. Stepping over it, I wrestled another piece of metal out of the way. I had to move my foot off the metal, then I stepped back onto the place I had cleared.

There was a snapping sound, then a crash, as I slid into something. I reached out for purchase, for anything, but there was only the hard wooden floor to grasp at as I went down.

A flight of stairs greeted me as I fell, and I’m pretty sure I crashed into every step on my way down. I tried to stay on my back, but I hit a railing and slid over to smash into the wall about halfway down. Clods of dirt smacked me in the face as my feet hit the ground. I lay for a few seconds just listening. The zombies above me moaned, while chunks of stair and earth fell all around.

My body felt like someone had taken a jackhammer to it. My legs and back were bruised and sore to begin with, but now they were barely able to function when I told them to get me up. I reached for the railing, but it broke in my hand, so I had to sit forward and try to lurch to my feet.

In my current state, I was as close to being one of the dead as I had ever been in my life. If one of them fell on me now, I doubted I would have the strength to resist. Then it would all be over.

Struggling to my feet, I took in the room. It was much larger than the floor above. There were a few bodies here, but none of them moved. I trained the gun around me, sweeping it left and right in the poor light. Nothing rose up to threaten me.

Parts of the walls were shored up with wood. I found a light switch and flipped it a few times, but nothing came on. Where the hell did I think the electricity would come from?

I staggered around until I found a shelf in the back. Feeling along it, I came across something round and hard—a flashlight. After I hit the button, a dull light cut into the gloom. Dust fell from above, as did more chunks of earth. What was this room for? Had someone built it as a prison, or just a place to work and escape the heat during the day?

As I scanned the room, a shape moved into my light, and gleaming green eyes transfixed me. My body went cold with shock, and goose bumps rose across my chest. A ghoul stood right before me.

“Hello,” it hissed, emitting breath as foul as any sewer I had ever smelled. I didn’t give the ghoul a chance to say another word. I tugged the gun up and shot it twice. Once in the throat—almost a reflex shot—and once in the cheek. I meant to shoot it in the center of its forehead, but fired careless in my shock.

At this range, nearly point blank, the ghoul was taken off its feet and fell to the ground. Well there was my revenge, just as pretty as you please. A ghoul shot down and me the victor. Weep for me, world; the greatest victory I could ever hope for was at my feet, and I still felt empty inside.

Then other bodies on the floor moved. Why didn’t I check them when I first tumbled down here? Probably because my brain was addled from the fall.

I don’t know how many there were in the room. Three? Ten? Instead of wondering, I started shooting. They howled for my blood as they closed in. I shot one in the forehead, and then rocked my elbow back into someone’s face as they grasped at me.

I stepped on something and slipped. Only when my foot slid off it did I look down and recognize the shape. A skull. Another ghoul came from the right, sliding off the ground like a shadow. I barely saw it until the eyes gleamed with intent. Green, angry, and dead, but cunning. I planted the barrel in its face as its hands reached for me. They brushed my shirt, questing for something to hold on to. I fired, but my aim shifted as I was rocked from the rear by another of them.

Gunfire from above told me my friends had arrived. Hope at last.

“Down here!” I yelled, lashing my elbow back, but I missed my target. I adjusted my aim and fired again. The shape fell away, but I didn’t know if I’d hit it. There was no sound. My ears were completely numb, felt like they were full of cotton. The noise in the room when I fired was overwhelming. Each shot was now muffled, like I was shooting underwater. I hated that I had lost one of my best weapons—my hearing.

I backed up until my legs hit the stairs. A piece of the building had fallen so that it partially blocked my view. Light streamed in from where I’d found the entrance.

My shoulder and back ached from the fall. I had banged my hip pretty hard, and it throbbed to my heartbeat. The pain was refreshing; it reminded me that I was still alive, and it kept me focused.

I shot another one in the chest, and it fell back, then I fired at another shape before the gun jammed. I was surprised it had lasted this long without getting stuck. The weapons were in good shape, but not all that well taken care of. “Way to go, Lee, still fucking me over.”

Dropping the rifle, I drew the Desert Eagle from under my arm. It was a heavy gun—big and nasty. When it spoke, it did so with authority. I didn’t have time to inspect everything carefully, but I was pretty sure it was a Mark VII. It held eight rounds of the .44 caliber variety instead of the modified .50 I had fired a few times. That gun took even fewer rounds, but it would probably take down a bear. I didn’t need to shoot anything that large, but the weight was reassuring.

It was good to know that if I did fire off seven rounds, I had one left with my name on it.

The ghoul behind me got up again, snarling and drooling blood from a busted lip where my elbow struck. I spun, leveled the nearly foot-long gun, and shot it. The gas-powered auto-loader worked like a dream as it propelled the massive .44 load down the long barrel. It sounded like someone had tossed an explosive at my feet, and it did the job. The ghoul didn’t so much fall back as he was blown back into the wall. Not a headshot, but I think the gun did enough damage to justify not aiming.

Fuckers were everywhere. I tried to get up the first step, but missed it and scraped my chin as a hand closed on my ankle. Cold, questing fingers that felt like they were coated in slime wrapped around my leg. I spun and stomped down, missing the wrist but smashing the forearm into the ground. Aiming where I thought the thing was, I fired another load, then another as I shifted the aim based on the flash. If I hit it, the round went in probably near the shoulder. My next shot was right in the brain.

The ghoul’s head hit the ground so hard that it recoiled, and a mass of gray splattered the cold wood floor.

“Stop,” someone called out. It was soft, but had the telltale dry rasp, signifying it was not human. It sounded like two old pieces of leather rubbing against each other.

The shapes fell away and moved to the side of the room. There were a lot of them—more than I thought possible. Green eyes regarded me from all four walls. I didn’t know who had spoken. If I found out, I was looking forward to shooting that one in its glowing orbs.

“Stop killing. We can talk like civilized men. You and I. Just put away your gun. I can promise you safety.”

“You can promise me safety? I believe that about as far as I can spit. Talk fast so I can get back to killing all of you.” My lungs hurt from the night before, from running, from being lost in the woods. They hurt from falling, and they ached from the fight. I didn’t have much left. Hell, I hadn’t had much left when I woke up this morning. Here I was, letting the damned things I came to kill try to talk me out of it.

“You are hurting us, hurting our kind. Go. Leave us. Alone.”

“Fuck you and your kind. You are an abortion. I want every one of you dead.” Anger seared through me—a hot fuse that was going to explode. If I had a box of C-4, I would probably set it off just to spite these assholes.

“But we are you. We are human,” the ghoul said. Why couldn’t I pick him out in the mass? I couldn’t even determine where his voice was coming from.

The room swam before my eyes, and I didn’t think I could stay on my feet much longer. How many shots had I fired from the big gun? Did I have another one I could use on myself? Rookie mistake, losing count like that. Or the simple mistake of a man driven to the brink of his sanity and exhaustion. The whole last terrible month felt like it was crushing me with an ungodly weight. I wanted to sit down and babble about the evils of the world, find Jesus, slink away to a cave somewhere, and just die.

But if these ghouls had their way, I would join them. It wouldn’t take much for them to simply hold me down and force feed me some zombie flesh. Then they could lock me up until I changed.

What did I have? A few bullets? A knife? And I was faced with about fifteen or twenty of the glowing-eyed bastards. A pair of eyes from much farther away than the rest told me a tunnel stretched into the distance. Who knew how far back it went or what it contained? There could be a hundred more of the monsters.

If I only had some last resort. Once again, I yearned for a brick of C-4 explosives; maybe that would shut this place down.

Screams from above accompanied flashes against the dark of the stairs as bullets bounced around. I wished I were up there, able to fight with my friends, but they would do their best to finish the mission. They would kill every last one of the dead in the camp before leaving. They had assured me it would be done. Then they would lead the survivors out of the camp into freedom. Maybe take them to Portland.

Wait. Explosives. These ghouls were mean, but they weren’t all that bright. I took one of the bags off my shoulder ever so slowly while trying to keep the gun trained on them. It had a couple of smoke grenades that I wasn’t sure what to do with, but the boy scout in me had said they might come in handy. I held it up above my head.

“This explosive can level this place. If I pull the pin, we all go up. You, me, and everything in the room—every last dead one of you. Someone want to start negotiating?”

Silence was their answer, while unblinking green eyes continued watching me. No one moved. It was a start.

“You will die,” one of them said in that voice that made me want to rip off my own ears.

“I don’t care.”

Or did I? I missed Katherine terribly and wanted nothing more than to join her again. For all her problems, she was as close to the perfect woman for me as I had ever met. Allison had been pale and waifish, beautiful and flighty. She never knew what she wanted, and I never knew where I stood with her. With Katherine, there was never any bullshit.

“Your sacrifice would be for nothing. We are everywhere. We are—as the old line goes—legion.”

One of the green-eyed monsters stepped away from the wall with its hands above its head. He was dressed in the rags of his old life—a Hawaiian shirt that now looked ridiculous hanging from his dead body. It was torn and dirty, and I don’t think he cared one bit. He wore a pair of jeans that hung low and loose, the bottoms torn and frayed.

His eyes regarded me in their lifeless way. The others moved around as he stepped toward me, and I expected one of them to pop out and try to take me while my attention was focused on the ghoul moving toward me.

More gunfire from up above. Yelling, but the words were hard to make out. Ripples of fire rocked the ground as the big gun spoke.

“Fine. You go first.” I gestured toward the stairs.

He picked his way over the broken stairs. I followed close, the Desert Eagle aimed at his head and the ‘package of explosives’ in my other hand. As we moved upward, I kicked debris over the edge of the stairs.

I squinted as we came into the light above. I worried that Scott or Jack would see the ghoul and shoot on sight, but they seemed to have their attention on taking out zombies.

When I came into the light outside, I looked around. The vehicle was fifty or sixty feet away with Scott on the machine gun, firing toward the entrance of the camp. Jack was on the side of the truck firing in single-shot mode from an automatic. I grabbed the ghoul and thrust him in front of me. He nearly fell, but I didn’t help. Touching the thing was repulsive.

“Look at all of your sheep dying.”

“There are always more sheep—many more sheep. A whole world of sheep.” the ghoul said. “I was one once. My name was Warren. I was much like you, but now I am better.”

“And dead.”