And he was the last point.
While he had been drinking and maintaining his shitfaced high, playing with suicide, the enemy walked right up to his front door and chewed their way into his castle.
22
As he sat and theorized about just how the undead plague below arrived at his house, one riveting thought stabbed through it all and demanded his attention.
What the hell was he going to do about them?
He heard wood whine in the direction of the gate, and knew another piece of it had been weakened by flame or torn asunder by the unimaginable numbers. Even if he got aboard the beast or the pickup and rolled over them, sooner or later the vehicles would probably only spin out, and he’d be stuck. Gus didn’t want to find out what would happen then.
He considered jumping off the roof, as it was only a forty-foot drop at the most. Even with his helmet off and diving head first, the cushion of all those bodies might break his fall enough for him to survive.
Survive until they chewed through the Nomex
, his mind added.
Then, he remembered the propane tanks in the pickup.
Four of them, all waiting for him.
One liter of propane equaled two hundred and seventy liters of vapor.
There was enough of a boom lying in his garage to make him smile. Surviving the blast didn’t enter his mind. Why should he, with the things he’d done? He’d killed people—living, breathing people—in cold blood. No, there was no point in surviving, and if he had to go, he much rather be blown up than scarfed down.
Swinging his leg back over, he slid halfway down the incline of the roof and hooked his arms into the open skylight. He wormed his way back into the attic and regarded the closed trapdoor.
“Hooah,” he muttered unconvincingly.
The door opened with that familiar yawn of springs, and Gus gazed at the landing. It was alive with rats moving in that jerky crawl of theirs. With a kick, he extended the stairs, then he grabbed the Benelli and descended. He jumped the last two steps and squashed several rats underfoot. Others converged on him. Shuffling through them, he got into position to see the main level.
Rats flooded the downstairs up to the second step. There was no way to reach the garage. He was cut off by a lake of vermin. Before his mind could argue, he slapped the visor down, readied the Benelli, and started firing as he went down the steps. Shredded bodies flew, bounced off the stairs by the shotgun’s semi-automatic scream. A
huge
rat, perhaps the size of a small dog and the biggest Gus had ever seen, rose above the horde like a monster surfacing from the deep. A stained snout turned in his direction, homing in and baring broken teeth. Formidable, scarred, and battle-ready, it seemed unhampered by its missing eye and lack of ears. Gus allowed it a whole five seconds of existence out of sheer awe before disintegrating its skull with one shot, spraying the rest of the pack in fleshy matter.
The gun clicked dry, and Gus mashed into the tide, the rats rising up above his ankles. He struggled against them, felt their maws bite down on the Nomex. His boot slipped off the back of several large rats, and he stumbled to his knees. The vermin rose to his chest in one frightening wave. Rats assaulted his head, banging off his visor. He brought the Benelli around, pushing off the writhing layers. They bit into his gloves and crawled up his thighs.
Using the Benelli as a crutch, Gus pushed himself to his feet. He stumbled again in the rising swell and crashed against a wall, one arm flayed out for balance. Rats scurried up and covered him, biting and clawing for purchase. He pawed them from his front and shoulders. He punched at the ones hanging off his hips. His hand grabbed one exceptionally large rat and smashed it snout-first into the wall. The garage door lay only ten feet ahead of him, and he pushed against the rush of bodies, heaving and straining, his legs burning from the exertion.
He fell a third time, face first, and a rush of dead animals enveloped him. A multitude of tiny feet scampered up his back while jaws fastened to his neck brace. Gus screamed and released the Benelli, lashing out with his fists. He pulled himself to his knees. Rats clung from the ruck sack by their jaws. It took several punches to dislodge the foul, twisting bodies, and he winced with each connection.
“
Jesus Christ!
” he roared. Only five feet away from the door, he stretched out with a gloved hand, slapping its wooden surface. Straining, he pulled the rest of his body through the ferocious tide. He gripped the doorknob, turned it, and lunged for the opening, balancing the trick of opening it enough for him to get through yet restricting as many of the rats as possible from following.
Vermin and man spilled into the garage, and Gus whirled, dug in both feet, and heaved the door closed with all he had left. Rats wormed through the shrinking gap until getting caught and crushed between the door and the jamb. Black blood oozed and spurted. He yanked out his Bowie and sawed at the more stubborn ones as he shouldered the door, covering the floor in gristly pieces.
With a click, the trembling door finally closed. The lower part bowed inward with a straining whine, already weakened by earlier gnawing. Panting, Gus rushed to his locker and tipped it toward the door. It landed with a metallic crash, and he shoved its weight up against the door, barricading it and buying a few minutes.
The several dozen rats that had slipped in when he opened the door attacked. He got to stomping, and a long, strength-depleting minute later, crushed the body and then head of the last one attempting to bite through the rubber covering his ankle.
Swallowing and wishing for a drink, Gus gazed upon the beast and the pickup. Wasting no time, he climbed into the back of the pickup and felt along the torpedo lengths of each of the four propane cylinders. He gripped the metal covers protecting the valves and removed them, one after the other, exposing knurled brass rings.
Gasping, he wrestled with the first propane cylinder and pushed it out of the truck. It landed on the concrete with a clatter. He upended the second one and let it strike and slide off the first, then did the same with the third. He opened the valve of the fourth cylinder and left it in the pickup. He didn’t know if the thing was hissing, as he couldn’t hear it over the racket at the inner door and the scratching outside of the garage.
He picked up the sledge hammer and hopped out of the truck bed. With one swing, he took the valve off the first tank with a frightening crack and rush of air. Discovering he was still alive, he knocked the valves off the other two before dropping the hammer. He moved some milk crates underneath each cylinder, allowing the liquefied gas to spurt onto the floor in an ever widening pool. He stood back, smelling the fumes as a cloud of milky vapor filled the garage. There was still time left, and he locked on to the remaining Molotovs on the work bench. He still had his lighter. He looked back into the pickup and saw the last length of fuse.
At the door, the barest of shavings, like drill bits on the verge of punching through, appeared in its surface just above the locker.
The idea popped into his head, and he laughed out loud. A laugh of a person knowing the end was very, very near, and that he was going to make the monsters outside of his door regret marching up the side of his mountain to make war on him. He only wished he had a drink of something to see things through.
The garage door splintered in places. White slivers of wood hung from points where teeth gnashed through.
“Red Rye!” He grabbed two of the assembled Molotovs. He cracked the necks across the bench and shook the fuses away. Glass fell tinkling to the floor.
He held the bottles over his head and doused himself with gasoline.
23
He emptied four of the Molotovs over the fire retardant Nomex before feeling for the lighter tucked inside his glove. He wouldn’t light up in the house, remembering the promise he’d made Tammy so long ago when he was given a cheap three-dollar cigar from a friend at work.
He twisted the ruck sack around to his front and packed eight of the Molotovs. The others he smashed on the floor. He got the fuse out of the truck—sixty feet of goodness, enough to get to the house and the yard. He tied one end of the fuse to the nearest propane cyclinder’s broken valve, stepping into a pool of the gas and catching a sweet whiff. He tethered the other end to his left forearm, suddenly wishing he still had the Benelli. The door to the house trembled as if a thousand tiny fists pounded upon it. Trailing the fuse from his arm, he went to the door and studied it. Every second he waited, the fumes from the spilled propane filled the garage a little more.
A mixture of fear and anger thrummed in his chest and limbs, and he channeled that new reserve of energy into pulling the locker away from the door. The door bulged; wood fibers crackled and snapped. Whole heads appeared.
Taking a deep breath, Gus opened the door.
Rats fell forward, writhing around his knees and boots. They filled the hallway, an unbelievable thigh-high black carpet of unliving, thrashing sewage. Rats flowed up from the stairway leading to the basement. Gus didn’t think about it; he only went forward. It was thirty feet to the windows in the living room, but with the waves of rats, that might as well be miles. The undead, some as large as kittens, embraced him with tooth and claw as he pushed forward into their angry surf. They swarmed his legs, crotch, and lower belly. His balls felt slowly mashed, causing an aching nausea to creep into his guts. He shoved against them, shuffling his feet forward into the mass.
They latched on to his arms, and he swung and crushed them against the walls. He felt some of them climb his back and bite onto his neck brace. Gus violently slapped them off, but more snapped on to his arms and hands. One rat scampered up his arm against a wall and slammed into the side of his helmet. Gus reached up and crushed its head in a fist, then slung it away.
Press forward
. It felt as if he were pushing against wet concrete.
This isn’t working
.
He got out his lighter only by waving his arms around over his head to avoid the maws snapping at him. He reached into the rucksack, pulled out a Molotov, and lit the fuse, intending to throw it.
He spotted the captain’s duct-taped ass on the distant sofa, far and away from his intended path. A layer of hairy backs was almost level with the cushion.
They’re inside the perimeter!
the captain roared.
“Wait!” Gus shouted and swung at his attackers. “I’ll get you––”
You’ll do no such thing!
the old sailor returned, and for the first time, Gus saw a look of concern on the foppish officer’s face.
Light the bastards up!
Then, the rats swarmed the captain’s armored form, and he was gone in a flurry of hair and rotting flesh.
Seeing his last friend disappear sent Gus over the edge. He lashed out at the rats with all the power left in his limbs, mashing several into the floor and walls.
“You little––.
The gasoline on his upper body ignited, and he transformed into a living torch. In frightened reflex, he smashed the Molotov against the nearby wall, and sent a wave of fire arcing over it like a bright orange stroke from a painter’s brush that ended in a mire of vermin. The flames scorched the rats, turning them into fiery lumps that popped and sizzled. A sheet of fire rose up in front of his visor, and seeing unchecked fire that close unnerved Gus and switched off all cohesive thought except for
stupid, stupid, stupid
.
Gus threw himself forward. Adrenalin spiked through him. Instead of shuffling along the floor, he dragged his feet up, using the bodies beneath him as squirming steps. He muscled his way through the shifting sea of rats, gaining five feet almost immediately. Rats
still
clawed onto his back, biting, scratching, digging. The flames scorched them. He reached the corner of the hallway, latched his hands onto it, and pulled himself around it. The fire burned though the thin straps of the ruck sack, and Gus felt them drag to his stomach.
Then, the rest of the Molotovs went up.
Gus felt the bottles break. He felt the heat of the fireball pressing into stomach. His entire body erupted in sweat as if he were melting. Dark fire coated his visor, licking it voraciously, causing blossoms of surreal patterns to explode and expand before his eyes. He screamed and scrambled forward. Another sheet of flame engulfed his head. The temperature rose, cooking him in his own gear. He got his feet under him and pushed into the living room. The fire gnawed through the gloves, licking his hands and making him squeal. A wall of glass loomed in front of him, and he threw himself toward it.
In mid-air, he heard a
whump
behind him and saw a reflection of himself and the living room in the dark surface of the window.
A gush of fire erupted from the hall, howling at its infernal birth and setting the sea of hair and tails ablaze. The very air became flame. Charcoaled lumps flew, consumed in the firestorm as it consumed everything in its path.
Including Gus.
He crashed through the window just as the explosion blew out most of the windows and engulfed the house in a bright fist of orange. He ran blindly, blazing from head to toe, transformed into a shrieking, feral thing, smoking as if dipped into the sun itself. Mindless and insane with agony, he sprinted toward the cliff’s edge, not knowing anything except
the painthepainohChristthePAIN!
His visor cracked and dissolved. Flames licked at his flesh, lighting up his facial hair, dissolving the gloves on his hands.
He didn’t know where he was going. In his self-immolating state, he didn’t care.
Gus screamed one last time as his feet unexpectedly left the ground.
And if anyone were standing below the cliff, looking up, they would have seen a spectacular flash of orange throwing back the dark…
And a howling figure streaking across the star-filled night sky, limbs flailing, like an angry comet crashing to earth.