The Gates of Byzantium (Purge of Babylon, Book 2) (60 page)

Josh looked back toward the hotel, then suddenly heard a new sound.

Rifles
.

Will and Danny were using their assault rifles now. What did that mean?

He didn’t have to wait long to find out. They heard Gaby’s voice from directly above them. She was leaning out the window, radio in one hand. “They’re coming! Get ready!”

Josh was going to ask
“Who?
” when he saw them.

“The roof!” Gaby shouted above them.

He thought he was prepared for it, but he was wrong. He stopped breathing at the sight of them racing across the rooftop of the hotel, almost gliding, dodging and leaping and weaving around parts of the construction that had never—and would never—be finished. He had forgotten how sickly they looked, how amazingly fast and preternatural their movements were. They seemed to come out of nowhere, spat out by the night. One second there was nothing, and then the next, the island was bristling with them.

My God, there’s so many…

Then they weren’t just on the roof anymore. They were all over the hotel grounds, too, swarming around the big building in their path. There were so many that at first he had trouble separating them from the bushes and grass and trees. But then it became easier as they began darting in and out of the LED lights. They were converging on the hotel, almost as if they hadn’t noticed the Tower existed yet. The continuous, smashing sounds of gunfire were drawing them like moths to flame.

Will and the others are still in there.

“Get ready!” Carly shouted.

Josh lifted the shotgun up to his shoulder. What was that Gaby had said?
“There’s supposed to be a big kick.”

Okay. No problem. He was smart. Smarter than most people his age. Smarter than most people older than him. He could handle the recoil of a shotgun as long as he knew it was coming. And he knew it was coming.

“Josh,” Carly said, her voice strangely clear despite the fog dominating his brain at the moment. “Don’t shoot until you see the black of their eyes. The shotgun has a limited range. Understand?”

“Yes,” he said hoarsely.

The sound of gunfire was constant, a steady stream of shots that sounded closer and closer with every passing second. Were Danny and Will even reloading? Every second seemed to be filled with gunfire. How was that even possible?

“Back exit!” Gaby shouted from above.

Josh looked toward the back of the hotel and saw figures racing through the inky blackness, then the stabbing flames of a gun firing backward. Handguns. They were down to handguns now.

That’s not good. That’s not good at all.

Will and Lara emerged out of the shadows, running as fast as they could. Will was loading his Glock as he ran, the M4A1 bouncing wildly behind his back. Lara was trying desperately to keep up, but falling behind. Each time she fell too far back, Will slowed down and turned and shot into the darkness.

Josh saw ghouls leaping off the rooftop behind them.

“Oh, fuck,” Carly whispered.

Josh pried his eyes away from the back of the hotel. They were moving so fast, and there were so many of them, it was hard
not
to see them, rampaging across the hotel grounds. They darted in and out of the halos of the scattered lampposts, the lights flickering off their smooth, hairless, and malformed bodies. They were still far away, but getting closer. Josh was reminded of a stampeding herd of cattle.

Is the ground trembling? I swear the ground is trembling.

There was a loud boom next to him. It was so close he thought he had gone instantly deaf, but that proved false when he heard a second boom and turned to see Carly firing into the shadows to her left. Josh watched with odd fascination as two ghouls emerging from the darkness evaporated before his eyes, their skin ripped free from shiny white bone as Carly’s shotgun blasts tore into them.

Oh God, how did they get so close?

Then he heard them coming from his right. He turned and saw hollow black eyes moving quickly across the darkness and into the light.

Two eyes—no, four—no, six—

Josh lifted the shotgun and thought,
There’s going to be a kick, prepare for the kick
, and pulled the trigger.

Immediately he was sure his shoulder was dislocated. He grunted through the pain and saw the first ghoul come unglued under the onslaught of buckshot. He hadn’t fully grasped what had happened to the creature—it was there one second and gone the next—when two more instantly appeared and sprinted across the distance at him.

He worked the slide and fired again and watched buckshot catch both ghouls in mid-stride and exploding chunks of skin scattering into the night air. The creatures didn’t make a sound, not even a squeak, as they fell, but the sight of them dying (
Dying!
) was something to behold. He recalled the ghoul in the back of the store in Lancing where Matt was bitten, watching them with its head hanging off its shoulder, refusing to die.

Not here. Not this time. Not against silver.

Suck on that, mofos!

Suddenly the pain in his shoulder didn’t hurt so much anymore, and the shotgun felt lighter in his hands.

Carly shouted next to him, “Hurry up!”

Will and Lara were twenty yards away and getting closer. As Will neared them, Josh saw that his clothes were covered in thick clumps of black goo. Lara was running next to Will, trying to keep up. Will was purposely staying with her, never straying too far ahead.

There was another figure behind Will and Lara. Sienna, Jake’s girlfriend. She wore pajamas and a T-shirt and there was a horrified expression on her face as she ran. Josh wasn’t sure if she was laughing or crying. It might have been both, or neither.

“Where’s Danny?” Carly shouted.

As soon as she said it, Danny appeared behind Sienna. He was running calmly but fast, loading his Glock at the same time. Like Will, Danny’s clothes and parts of his face were covered in the black, gooey substance. Danny reached up and wiped a thick slab of the goop off his face, flicking it into the grass as he ran.

“Go go go!” Danny shouted, to no one in particular.

“Shotgun!” Will yelled.

Carly tossed the shotgun at him and Will snatched it out of the air. He immediately stopped and spun and fired, erasing a wall of ghouls emerging out of the night to his left. Josh hadn’t even seen them until Will fired, the flames from the shotgun lighting them up in the half-second it took the buckshot to rip into them.

Then Lara was there, and Sienna, and they ran into the open Tower door behind him.

Then Danny, ten yards away, shouting, “Shotgun!”

Josh didn’t think, he just reacted, and tossed the shotgun at Danny. But he must have had too much adrenaline pumping through him, because the weapon sailed right over Danny’s head. Danny glanced back, following the trajectory of the shotgun as it landed and disappeared into the grass behind him.

Will was backing up toward them, firing into the darkness. “Go go go!”

Danny didn’t go back for the shotgun. He kept coming, grabbed Carly with one hand, and lunged for the door. Josh followed, heard Will firing one last time before he, too, was suddenly behind Josh and pushing him inside.

Josh lost his balance and sprawled on the hard concrete floor and rolled over, saw Danny slamming the door shut behind them, shoving the deadbolt into place just as
bang!
something crashed into the thick wood on the other side.

“Josh,” Carly said, standing next to him.

She grabbed his arm and pulled him up. Josh felt tired and heavy, but somehow she managed to get him up anyway. Carly led him away from the door as Will and Danny carried the heavy bookcase over, grunting with the effort. Lara hurried over to help, flinching noticeably with pain, and they slammed it down against the door, even as the pounding increased in volume and urgency.

“Second floor,” Will said calmly. “Go go go.”

They hurried up the flight of stairs, moving in a train. Squeezed in between Carly behind him and Sienna in front of him, Josh felt his feet moving on automatic pilot. Sienna was crying, tears flooding down her cheeks, though he couldn’t hear her over the pounding noise from below and the loud roaring in his ears.

“Keep moving, Josh,” Carly said behind him.

Farther up the staircase, he glanced down and saw Danny crouched next to the open basement door, reaching down and pulling out weapons and boxes of ammo that Will was passing up to him from somewhere inside the opening. The beam of a flashlight flickered back and forth from inside the basement.

“Hurry,” a voice said above them. Josh looked up and saw Gaby leaning through the open second-floor door.

The others were waiting, with Elise and Vera peering down from the third-floor door above them. Sienna had found the cot and was sitting on it, crying quietly to herself. Lara walked over and put her arms around the other woman and Sienna broke down, tears splashing across Lara’s already sweat-stained shirt.

“Where’re Danny and Will?” Gaby asked.

“They’re coming,” Carly said. “Where’s Sarah?”

“Third floor. That’s where we should all be.”

“Go. I’ll wait for them.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, go,” Carly said.

Lara took Sienna up first, the other woman stumbling, shell-shocked, every step of the way.

Gaby was also on her way up when she realized Josh hadn’t moved and looked back. “Josh, come on.”

“I’ll be right up,” he said.

“Hurry,” she said, and climbed the stairs.

Josh stayed behind. He wasn’t sure why, but the idea of abandoning Carly now didn’t seem right. So he didn’t move and waited alongside her.

The pounding from below them went on and on. Relentless.

“Can they climb?” he asked nervously.

“Yes,” she said, “but not if there’s nothing to hang onto. Is there anything to hang onto out there?”

He shook his head. The Tower was a smooth conical structure that got smaller as it got taller. And it went pretty tall. But he didn’t recall anything that could be used as handholds.

Carly smiled at him. “You did good out there.”

“Thanks.”

“For a kid.”

He managed a decent grin back at her.

Will and Danny finally arrived, climbing through the door in the floor. They were carrying duffel bags that looked heavy.

Josh’s eyes went to the front door. It was still closed, and the bookcase was still pressed against it, but he could see the thick oak shelves trembling each time the ghouls smashed into the door. It had begun to slide half an inch at a time with each impact, moving back a little every time…

Will slammed the floor door shut, so loudly Josh jumped a bit. Will and Danny picked up the bookcase and moved it over, then laid it on top of the door. They took a step back and exchanged a look.

“That’s not going to hold,” Danny said.

“Probably not,” Will nodded. “What else we got?”

“The computers on the third floor,” Josh said quickly.

“What else?”

Danny looked over at Josh and grinned through the mask of dripping black ghoul blood and flesh. “Hey, kid, how much do you weigh?”

*

The first-floor
door gave way ten minutes later, but by then they had reinforced the second-floor door with the bookcase and about twenty pounds of computer equipment from the third floor, including the desk. Everything else that wasn’t nailed down went on top of the door, including paintings, pieces of the cot, and all the hardcover books.

While they were stacking books on top of the door, Danny said, “We should have kept Tom around. He’s what, a good 250?”

“About that,” Will said.

“Definitely should have kept him around. Make the big lug useful for once.”

The ghouls began pounding on the second-floor door almost immediately, but there was no leverage for them to break the deadbolt. Still, they continued at it, banging away, pouring an unrelenting torrent of force that did little good. Even though the door held, and didn’t look to be in danger of giving any time soon, Josh couldn’t shake the disconcerting feeling of so many of the creatures below them, salivating at the thought of coming through.

The island isn’t safe. It was all a lie…

Josh crouched next to the open third-floor door and looked down through the opening at Will and Danny, sitting calmly on top of the bookcase. They had wiped the black clumps of dead ghoul flesh and blood off their faces and gotten as much out of their clothes and hair as they could manage. They still looked like homeless soldiers wearing camouflage face paint that refused to wash off. They had transferred most of the weapons they had taken out of the basement up to the third floor, leaving just enough on the second floor. They were loading a couple of shotguns with shells that didn’t have an “X” on them.

We’re out of silver bullets.

The third floor was crowded, but they made do. The girls, Elise and Vera, sat in a corner together, holding hands, and eventually dozed off. Lara sat with Sienna, doing her best to calm the other woman. Josh didn’t have to ask what had happened to Jake, Sienna’s boyfriend. Or Al. Or Debra and her son. At least Sarah and her daughter, Jenny, had made it, and mother and daughter sat on their own side of the wall, the girl asleep in her mother’s lap. Sarah stroked Jenny’s hair, staring off at nothing in particular.