Empire's End (21 page)

* * *

Finn Meyer stood back as Pat Morgan and
another lieutenant nailed boards across the door to the warehouse
where they’d been trapped. “Hurry up!” Meyer barked.

“Help us, Finn!” Morgan shot back.

“Fuck.” He didn’t want to go anywhere near
the doors or windows. But the pounding was getting worse. He
grabbed a two-by-four off the floor. “Got another fucking
hammer?”

“On the table by the nails!” Morgan
snapped.

Finn headed over to a window facing the
alley. There weren’t any rotters out that way. He’d dick around
over here while the others finished up, then collect their guns. If
they weren’t willing to give them up, he’d take them.

A hand smashed through the window and seized
his throat. “Help!” he croaked. “Fucking help me!”

Morgan rushed to him and buried a hammerclaw
in the rotter’s hand. It held on. She dug into the hand until bone
snapped. It finally withdrew.

Meyer stumbled back, coughing. “God! I
thought that was it, Patti. God.”

“Finn...” she frowned. “You’re bleeding.”

“What?”

“It must have cut you with its fingernails.”
She was stepping back from him.

“What?” he shouted. “You can’t get infected
that way!”

“If it had blood on its hands...”

They stared at each other. For a second, time
stood still.

Meyer was faster.

Morgan slumped to the floor, blood trickling
from a hole between her eyes. Meyer’s other lieutenant looked over
in shock. “What in the bloody hell?”

Meyer shot him in the heart. Then he wiped
his neck clean with a handkerchief while the man gasped his last
breaths.

Then he collected their guns.

Ernie ran into the squadroom and locked the
door behind him, then grabbed hold of the nearest desk and started
building a barricade.

“Officer!”

He nearly jumped out of his skin. Casey came
rolling out of his office, a shotgun resting across his lap, and
said, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“They’re everywhere! There’s nothing we can
do!” Ernie panted as he dragged desks. “It’s all coming apart out
there. It’s already over, man!”

“Those don’t sound like the words of a peace
officer—” Casey began.

“That’s easy for you to say!” Ernie yelled.
“You’re holed up in here! You haven’t seen it! They’re pulling
women and children into the streets and ripping them to pieces! And
they’re almost here!”

“I expected better from you,” Casey said.
Wheeling himself over to the nearest window, he pulled the blinds
down without looking outside.

“Help me over here, Ernie.”

“Forget the windows, man! We’ve gotta secure
the door!”

“I am still your superior!”

A window on the other end of the room
shattered. Casey saw a dark blur fall into the room, between two
desks.

“What the hell was that?” Ernie cried.

“Shhh.” Casey picked up the shotgun and
waited for the rotter to show itself. But none did; there was only
the faint sound of dead skin rustling.

The dark shape flew across the aisle and
disappeared among the desks again. What was it, a child? “Ernie,”
Casey whispered, and nodded toward the place where the thing had
gone.

Ernie shook his head.

“Ernie!” Casey hissed.

“You’ve got the gun! You go!”

Tiny feet padded across the floor. The thing
was weaving in and out of the desks, drawing ever closer. Casey
took aim at the end of the aisle and waited.

The scampering stopped. Ernie crouched behind
his barricade.

Silently cursing, Casey began to move
forward.
Just a child
, he told himself.
A child already
dead. I won’t hesitate.

The Dwarf leapt onto the nearest desk.
Casey’s jaw dropped at the sight. Then the rotter jumped into his
lap and sank its claws into his face.

Ernie shot across the squadroom like a
fucking bolt, faster than he’d ever moved in his career, and dove
into Casey’s office, slamming the door shut.

Casey rolled backwards with the tiny rotter
thrashing atop him. The shotgun clattered on the floor. He screamed
and pummeled the Dwarf with his fists, trying to knock it loose,
but it had its fingers beneath his skin and blood was pouring down
the front of his shirt as his face began to come off.

The wheelchair hit the wall. The Dwarf closed
its fingers around Casey’s left eyeball and ripped it free of the
socket. Casey’s vision was skewed wildly as the eye came loose. The
optic nerve was still connected when the Dwarf popped the organ
into its mouth; its teeth finally severed Casey’s sight. He
wailed.

The Dwarf hopped down and surveyed the room.
It heard Ernie pushing Casey’s desk against the office door. It
charged at the door, seizing the knob and scratching and kicking at
the wood. Ernie screamed from within.

Casey sat and watched numbly as blood pooled
in his lap, streaming in dark rivers from his ragged face. Why had
it left him to go after Ernie? Why wasn’t he dead?

No matter. He soon would be.

* * *

Gregory sped down the road from the airfield
in Gillies’ Hummer. He had plenty of guns and ammunition in the
back. He was going to drive straight into Gaylen and bring
Armageddon back to those godless monsters.

The British had filed out of the plane and
begun shambling across the tarmac. They were too slow and too
decayed to catch any of the other Senators before they and their
men fled. No one had questioned Senator Gillies’ fate. It was every
man for himself now—as it always had been, but now without the
democratic posturing.

“For you, Barry,” he muttered, jostling as he
left the road and headed directly for the city.

* * *

The streets downtown were flooding with
people.

Some were trying to fight the undead. Though
they had the rotters beaten in sheer numbers, stark panic and lack
of weapons made it a losing battle for the living. Spilled blood
ate at the growing snowdrifts. Soon the humans began retreating
west. Those who stayed behind slipped in the guts of their
neighbors and were torn apart.

There was little biting. The pack knew that
if they bit their prey, they’d be losing meat. And the meat was all
they cared about.

“We’re chewing through ammo pretty quick
here!” Tripper called as people streaked past him.

Cam nodded. “Fall back to the
storehouse!”

They ran for the soup kitchen, Halstead in
the lead with Lily clinging to her back. “I’m scared,” the girl
whimpered.

“I’m fucking terrified,” the cop replied.

“Thanks.”

“Door’s locked!” Halstead cried. Tripper
stuck his key in the lock and turned the knob. He was met with firm
resistance. Someone was inside, and they’d blocked the door.

“Hey! Whoever’s in there, let us in!” he
yelled. “You’ve got to let us in! We can help you!”

“We left the cellar open,” muttered Cam.
“They’re set. They’re not going to listen to us.”

“All right.” Tripper glanced down the street
and saw a wave of undead sweeping over the civvies. He sighed.
“Cathouse.”

High overhead, an apartment exploded;
ruptured generator. They fled through a shower of burning
debris.

* * *

When they entered the dark front hall of the
cathouse, Cam caught Tripper’s shoulder and whispered,
“Listen.”

There was a metallic whine coming from
elsewhere in the building. Then a long, mournful scream.

Cam took point with machine gun in hand.
Tripper locked the door they’d come through. It wouldn’t hold
long.

Cam descended the stairs to the basement
corridor where the girls’ rooms were. The whine was much louder
now, and more distinct: a gas-powered saw. It was coming from the
last room. Cam slowly made her way to the door. There were more
screams, a man’s screams. She reared back and kicked the door
in.

Logan stood over a dismembered rotter,
chainsaw held high over his head. He wailed and plunged it into the
chest of the spasming corpse.

“What the fuck!” Cam snapped. Logan turned
and stumbled, dropping the saw on the floor. Cam kicked it over to
the wall and trained her gun on the soldier’s head. “You’ve lost
it.”

“No!” He held trembling hands out in protest.
The others joined Cam in the doorway.

“Don’t look,” Halstead told Lily.

“Too late,” Lily said.

“I just didn’t want her to burn.” Logan
stroked the fake hair on the rotter’s decapitated head. “She never
did anything wrong. She shouldn’t have to suffer.”

“What do you mean, burn?” Tripper asked.

“The Army’s going to torch the entire city,”
Logan said. “Orders from Cullen. They’re lighting up the perimeter
right now.”

Halstead’s face fell. “So it’s over.”

“Maybe for Gaylen, but not the other cities.”
Walking over to Logan, Tripper nudged him aside and felt along the
wall until he found a crack gummed with blood. He knocked, and they
all heard the hollow sound.

Tripper pulled the panel away to reveal a
dark passage. “Cam,” he called. She resumed leading the group, now
including Logan and his saw.

Tripper replaced the panel behind them. “This
used to be part of the sewer system,” he said. They stood in a
tunnel with no light source. Tripper felt along the floor until he
found the torch he’d placed there. Igniting it with his lighter, he
passed it to Halstead. “Mind the kid.”

“Meyer uses some of these tunnels to run
drugs,” Tripper said as they walked, “but he doesn’t come this far
downtown.”

“Speaking of which,” Cam said, “we should
probably find a tunnel going back east. We’ll avoid more rotters
that way.”

“Good idea baby.”

The couple led the way through winding, fetid
sewers. It was so quiet beneath the city. It almost seemed like the
world wasn’t coming down right over their heads.

They entered a tunnel lit by lanterns, with
several crates stacked along the walls. “Booze,” Tripper said.
“We’re on Meyer’s turf now. Gotta keep an eye out for his
goons.”

Cam stopped at a ladder. She took the torch
from Halstead and held it up to the shaft from which the ladder
descended. “Looks like a trapdoor up there.”

“Let’s not bother with it,” Tripper said.

“Might be ammo up there.”

“You’re right.” He grabbed the rung above the
one she was holding. “But I’m taking point this time.”

Halstead let Lily down. “You go ahead of me,
okay?”

They ascended into the dark shaft. Tripper
nudged the trapdoor with the barrel of an Uzi. “It’s open.”

He rose swiftly, throwing the door back.
Three men with pistols gawked at him.

Lily cringed as she heard gunfire being
sprayed up above. People dying left and right. Would any of them be
alive in the end?

“Clear!” Tripper called down, and they each
in turn climbed up through the trapdoor.

It was a long room lit by firelight and
filled with tables and chairs. A long counter ran along one wall,
behind which were stocked bottle of liquor.

“Speakeasy,” Cam said.

Lily stepped over the bullet-riddled arm of
one of the goons. “Is it safe?”

“I don’t know,” Cam replied. “We shouldn’t
stay long. Em, grab their guns will you?”

Logan pulled a chair out and sat down,
slouching like a man who’d given up.

Tripper hopped up on the bar. “Cullen... why
did Cullen give the order to burn the city? What about
Gillies?”

“Dead,” Logan said.

“Karma’s a bitch.” Tripper shrugged.

“And what’ll you call it when
you
die?” Logan muttered.

Becks crouched behind a vegetable bin as the
Geek crept into her market stall.

She’d heard the cries, seen the carnage
unfolding blocks away, and come straight here. She was about to do
herself, knife pressed to her jugular, when she heard the rotter
and lost her nerve. She didn’t want to be food for these things.
Even without Blake, she couldn’t bear to go through with it.

The rotter had three or four arms, all
misshapen and swaying as it walked among the bins. Becks crawled
toward the back. There was an exit there. She could race down the
alley and to the amphitheater. There were places to hide there.

The Geek overturned the bin right behind her
and roared.

She sprinted toward the exit, slamming into
the door with teeth-rattling force—and burst through, stumbling
headlong into the alley but never slowing down, running for dear
life.

At the mouth of the alley, she made a hard
right, and hands caught her by both arms in a vise-like grip. She
screamed.

“It’s me, girl!” Finn Meyer hissed. “They’re
all over. Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“Amphitheater,” she gasped. He nodded and
tugged her along.

They stumbled down the bleachers and onto the
stage where Becks had performed so many roles—most poorly written
by that hack Cullen, but she had always loved the stage no matter
what. Still... she couldn’t make this her last stand.

The Geek clambered over the gate and onto the
bleachers. “Jesus!” Meyer breathed.

He pulled Becks against him. “Sorry,” he
whispered, then she heard the gunshot. Then she felt the wetness
spreading over her abdomen.

She fell on her back, sobbing in horror and
disbelief, looking up at Meyer, who regarded her coolly before
making his exit. He’d left her behind to stall the rotter.

She rolled over and dragged herself across
the stage, pain spreading like a wildfire through her stomach and
chest. She pulled herself to her feet and glanced back. The Geek
was halfway down the bleachers. She had time. And she knew where
she was going.