The Fires of Atlantis (Purge of Babylon, Book 4) (28 page)

At least they hadn’t tied him to the chair, which Keo scooted away from now and laid on his side, his hands still bound behind him. He stared up at the ceiling, at the bright squiggly lightbulb above. It was impossibly bright, though the fact that he hadn’t been this close to an artificial light source in a while might have a little something to do with that.

“Hey!” Keo shouted. “Can you at least turn off the light so I can get some sleep?”

He waited for a response. The guy outside didn’t seem to have heard him. Or if he did, he didn’t care.

“Come on. Do a guy a solid, huh? Geneva Convention and all that? I know you can hear me. Come on, man. ”

The shadow didn’t move.

Keo sighed and closed his eyes.

At least he was still alive, so there was that.

One promise down, one to go…

“
S
ilver bullets
?” Tommy said. “You mean they actually work?”

“You’ve heard about them?” Will asked.

“There was a radio broadcast some of the kids picked up a few days ago. Something about silver, ultraviolet lights, and islands.” The teenager shook his head. “Harrison dismissed it and we never really tried to put it to use. I mean, the idea of silver… That sounded crazy.”

“Because all of this is so clearly
not
crazy,” Danny said.

Tommy looked slightly embarrassed. “Harrison made the decision.”

“You guys do everything he says?”

“He’s the one who put this city together. He organized the resistance in the beginning. I don’t think we’d be here without him. For all his faults, he really did save us in the early days. After that, I guess it just became a habit to follow him.”

Even in the semidarkness of the Dunbar museum, Tommy looked young and innocent, and Will could easily picture the kid falling in line like the others, including Rachel. She had seemed strong-willed to him, even stubborn, but she too had hitched her wagon to Harrison.

It’s hard to say no to a savior.

“This radio broadcast,” Danny was saying. “Was it a woman?”

“Yeah,” Tommy said. “You heard it, too?”

“I might have caught a snippet or three.”

Tommy was talking about Lara’s broadcast. The same message that had incurred Kate’s wrath. Kate, who at this moment was plotting the island’s destruction as retaliation.

Goddamn you, Kate. You’re going to haunt me for the rest of my life, aren’t you?

They were crouched behind a half-circle entranceway that separated the lobby of the museum with the back of the building, where the administrative offices and back rooms were linked by a long, curving hallway on each side. The spacious front lobby made up nearly sixty percent of the place, with still-intact double glass doors looking out into the moonlit sidewalk beyond. There were half a dozen small windows, but they were too high up to make any difference. Why bother with those when there were the doors?

The museum was made up of old photos, commissioned paintings of the city’s founders, and different angles of Dunbar over the decades from cattle town to what it was now. Not much, if you were to ask Will, but then its residents probably saw it differently. There were old maps, clothing, and even six-shot revolvers in dust-covered glass cases. Evidence that mankind once built something here. How long would they last once Dunbar’s citizens were scattered into the wind after tonight?

“The towns, the pregnancies,”
Kate had said.
“They’re all just the beginning. In ten, twenty years, you won’t recognize any of this. In a couple of generations, man will have forgotten they were ever in control of the planet.”

A
couple of generations
, Kate? It’s hard to remember now, a year on…

He pushed those defeating thoughts of Kate away (nothing good ever came of thinking about Kate) and concentrated on the doors in front of him.

Those damn doors. Those were going to be a problem if the ghouls attacked. Will didn’t have any doubts that the creatures knew they were inside. Not after pursuing them through the alleyway.

Dead, not stupid.

So why hadn’t they attacked? The twin doors wouldn’t last under a prolonged assault. An hour, if he was being optimistic. Less, if he was being practical. Barricading them hadn’t been an option. The only furniture in the lobby were a few chairs, a water cooler, and some stanchions that had been knocked over months ago, along with the velvet ropes attached to them. Bringing the heavy oak desks and metal filing cabinets from the offices in the back was too much work. Besides, they had already come up with a plan of retreat for when the creatures finally gained entry into the museum. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when.

So where the hell are they?

He could easily make out the abandoned streets on the other side of the doors about twenty-five meters across the lobby. The entire city of Dunbar looked and felt as if it had become stuck in time, like a museum outside of a museum.

Tommy moved nervously next to him from time to time. Danny was on the other side of the half-circle, sitting Indian-style with his M4A1 in front of him as he ate a granola bar Tommy had produced from one of his pockets. The teenager had put away his M40A3 sniper rifle and was clutching a Glock from his hip holster. Will had given him one of his silver-loaded magazines, something they had precious little left of at the moment.

“How’re you for ammo?” he asked Danny.

“Three mags for the rifle, all five left for the nine mil,” Danny said while chewing and spitting out pieces of granola at the same time. “You?”

“Two for the M4, three for the sidearm.”

“I guess we should start conserving. Of course, we could always use Tommy here as a baseball bat. You take the right leg, and I’ll take the left.”

“Hey,” Tommy said.

Will grinned. “Deal.”

“Whatever,” Tommy said. “Anyway, where should I shoot them with this?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Danny said. “As long as you put silver into their bloodstream, that’s all she wrote.”

“Like some kind of chain reaction? Are they allergic to silver or something?”

“Ask him,” Danny said, nodding at Will. “He’s supposedly the mastermind. I just work here.”

Will shook his head. “We don’t know. Just that it works better than anything except the sun.”

“Hard to holster the sun,” Danny said. “I’ve tried. Burned a hole right through my boxers. Had to go commando for weeks until I could find another pair.”

Tommy stared at Danny uncertainly.

“He’s joking,” Will said.

“Oh,” Tommy said.

“Carly wasn’t amused, though,” Danny went on.

“Who’s Carly?” Tommy asked.

“The hottest redhead you’ll ever see, kid. I’ll introduce you to her when we get to Song Island.”

Tommy nodded anxiously.

They sat in silence and stared out the twin doors for the next few minutes, which became the next thirty minutes. Will glanced at his watch every now and then. Between the running and shooting and waiting, it was easy to lose track of time.

Three in the morning. Four hours, give or take, before sunup.

Doable.

Maybe…

“Where are they?” Tommy finally whispered. “They know we’re in here, so where the hell are they?”

“Why, you getting anxious?” Danny asked.

“I wish they’d just attack already, that’s all. Get it over with.” He passed the Glock to his left hand, then back to his right.

“Now you’re just trying to jinx us, kid—”

Danny hadn’t finished saying the word “kid” yet when the sound of exploding glass cut him off. Their eyes darted back across the lobby to the two front doors. Something had obliterated the long pane of glass that made up nearly eighty percent of the left door, leaving behind just the frame and a big gaping hole. Will traced the trail of destruction to the source—a long metal wrench lying on its side on the floor.

“Now you’ve done it, kid,” Danny said. “I blame this on you, I hope you know that.”

Tommy wanted to respond, but either couldn’t figure out how, or couldn’t make anything come out of his mouth when he opened it.

“You ready?” Will said.

“I was born ready,” Danny said.

“Then you changed your name to Danny?”

“What, I told you this story before?”

“Only a few thousand times.”

“Hunh,” Danny said.

Crash!
The second glass door shattered into a thousand pieces, this time against the black metal of a tire iron that
clattered
to the floor. Glass sprinkled the lobby, chunks of it reaching halfway to the three of them crouched on the other side of the room. It was already cool in the building after nightfall, but now that the lobby was suddenly ventilated, the temperature dropped even further.

“Hey, kid,” Danny whispered.

“Yeah?” Tommy whispered back, his voice shivering slightly.

“What’s the difference between a wife and a hooker?”

Tommy stared at him for a moment. Finally, he said, “I don’t know. What?”

“The hooker’s cheaper to keep around.”

There was a brief pause as Tommy processed the joke.

“Don’t think about it too hard, kid; you’ll bust a blood vessel,” Danny said. He glanced over at Will. “I call dibs on the sniper rifle when he keels over.”

“Hey,” Tommy said.

Tommy might have continued his protest, except whatever sound was going to come out of his mouth turned into an involuntary gasp when they heard the
tap-tap-tap
of bare feet against concrete, and the streets outside the broken front doors blackened. It wasn’t because the moonlight had disappeared, though Will thought that might have been the preferable explanation. Instead, it was because a swarm of ghouls had come out of nowhere and converged on the sidewalk and began squeezing their way through the openings.

The sight of them slashing their skins against the glass shards hanging off the doorframes—thick clumps of black blood wetting the tiled floor—while desperately forcing their way in was hypnotic. There were so many of them it was hard for Will to know where one began and ended and the rest continued. It looked like one continuous squirming flesh, accompanied by the
plop-plop-plop
of blood on the floor and the patter of footsteps growing in intensity with every passing second as more arrived.

“It’s about damn time,” Danny said. He had dispensed with the whispering. “My legs were starting to cramp anyway.”

Will flicked his rifle to semi-auto, leaned out, and shot the first ghoul that was almost through in the chest. The bullet easily punched through the creature’s skin and muscle and hit another one—then another—behind it. As the undead thing fell lifelessly
(again)
forward, it was pulled unceremoniously back through the door and the next one flopped inside.

And just like that, the dam broke.

They moved with the same speed and agility, and with the absolute and complete lack of self-preservation that always managed to both fascinate and terrify Will. While he stared, Danny stood up and fired on full-auto, dropping a dozen ghouls on the first volley as they raced across the room. Silver bullets punched through soft, yielding flesh and slammed into bones and muscle.

“Go!” Will shouted back at Tommy.

The teenager gave him a horrified look before stumbling to his feet and running up the hallway to their right. He was moving so fast he was literally tripping over his own legs.

“Changing!” Danny shouted.

Will flicked the M4A1 to full-auto and pulled the trigger.

Ghouls fell, others slipped and slid, and multiple streams of arcing black liquid sprayed the lobby. Not that it did anything to slow them down. Not even close. The surging black wave of amassing flesh began to spread out, at once providing easy targets and
too many
to concentrate on.

“You coming or what!” Danny shouted behind him.

Will stopped firing and turned and ran.

He followed Danny up the hallway, reloading as he went, dropping the magazine and snapping in his next-to-last one. “Stick to the plan!”

“As long as it’s not Plan Z!”

“You love Plan Z!”

“You misheard! I said I love zucchini lasagna!”

They ran past offices and closets and didn’t bother to stop at any of them. They had checked earlier: the doors were cheap wood and wouldn’t last against a prolonged attack, even with a barricade using desks and filing cabinets. Maybe against just the black-eyed ghouls they might have stood a small chance, but that wasn’t all they were dealing with tonight. Not by a long shot.

They get creative when the blue-eyed ones are around.

The metal basement door under Ennis was proof of that.

But there was one, a bathroom at the end, that could work. Or, at least, it had the most potential to get them to sunrise. It had a stainless steel door with a large deadbolt on the other side and no windows. It was easily their best choice by a good margin, and the plan was always to retreat to it once the attack began.

Now all they had to do was get to it…

Then something happened. It was so unexpected that Will couldn’t have explained how he knew, except that he just
sensed
it.

He slid to a stop. “Danny.”

Danny stopped a few meters up the hallway and looked back, then opened his mouth to ask— Will held up his hand and Danny didn’t follow through with it.

Except for their labored breathing, they couldn’t hear anything.

The building, as it had been just a few minutes ago, was
dead silent
again.

“The fuck?”
Danny mouthed at him.

“No clue,”
Will mouthed back.

They both looked down the hallway—at the empty nothingness staring back. There was no wave of ghouls, no black eyes seeking them out, or moving death nipping at their heels like rabid dogs. Even the telltale patter of bare feet against tiled floor was gone, along with the all-too-familiar
clacking
of bones underneath sagging flesh.

There was just…silence
.

Five seconds…

…then ten…

Until a scream pierced the hallway
from behind them
.

Tommy!

They looked back up the hallway and Danny started moving, and Will was right behind him when—

—he heard it, the noise he had been waiting for—anticipating with dread—coming from behind him: the
tap-tap
of bare feet coming,
inhumanly fast
.

He spun back around, lifting his rifle and expecting to see a flood of ghouls making their way up the narrow passageway.

But there was just one.

A tall, silhouetted figure with piercing, almost pulsating blue eyes
.
It wasn’t quite as thin as the ghouls he was used to seeing; it actually looked almost healthy, like the one that was standing outside of Ennis last night.

Ennis…last night…blue-eyed ghoul…

Silver…

It didn’t go down.