The Fires of Atlantis (Purge of Babylon, Book 4) Read online

  Zachary pulled away from the window and faced the stairwell door. He stopped moving—even stopped breathing entirely—and listened. After a moment, he shook his head, eyes searching out Keo’s again. “I don’t hear anything. You sure you heard something?”

  “Pretty sure,” Keo nodded.

  “Shorty?”

  Shorty shook his head. “Maybe all those months being chased through the woods by that Pollard guy’s got him spooked.”

  “You didn’t hear anything?”

  “Nope.”

  Zachary looked back at Keo. “What do you think it was?”

  “I told you. Movement.”

  “From the floor below us? You mentioned the lobby…”

  “Somewhere below us.” Keo dropped the unfinished granola bar and tightened his hands around the MP5SD. “Definitely below us.”

  “Maybe you’re just imagining things,” Shorty said. “Maybe killing that bloodsucker’s got you overly excited.”

  “I don’t get overly excited.”

  “First time for everything, San Diego,” Shorty said.

  Keo flashed him a slightly annoyed look. He didn’t really like Shorty all that much, and he was sure the feeling was mutual. Keo preferred the older Zachary’s company. Shorty was a couple of years younger, and his insistence on calling Keo San Diego was getting old real fast. The only reason the kid had come along with them in the first place was because he was tied to the hip with Zachary, who had his own reasons for wanting to reach Song Island.

  “Are you guys loaded with silver?” Keo whispered.

  “We just made the nine mil rounds for your peashooter, remember?” Shorty said.

  Zachary’s eyes remained focused on the door across from them. If he heard or saw anything, he didn’t say it. After a while, he looked down at Keo, sitting to his right—Shorty was to his left—and said, “Are you sure—”

  He never finished because Zachary’s words became slurred, then stopped becoming words entirely, and instead took on the form of a scream as his body jerked backward toward the window, as if he were being sucked out by a vacuum.

  Keo lunged away from the wall and unslung the MP5SD as he watched, with a mixture of horror and disbelief, as two of the creatures clung to the windowsill outside the building and pulled Zachary through the opening.

  One of them had a fistful of Zachary’s scruffy long hair while the other had a viselike grip over the lower half of his jaw, quickly clamping down on Zachary’s screams and turning them into muffled cries for help instead.

  And all Keo could think was, How did they get up here? Did they…crawl up the side of the building?

  He didn’t know they could do that. He didn’t know the ghouls could do a lot of things.

  “Zachary, fuck!” Shorty screamed as he too stumbled away from the wall, spinning around and lifting his rifle.

  Shorty fired, his first shot splattering the left eyeball of one of the ghouls outside, the round punching through the back of its head and disappearing into the cold October air, continuing on. The creature, too, kept on going—pulling Zachary’s struggling body through the window along with its partner.

  Then Zachary disappeared from view.

  Keo stood, frozen, even as he heard Zachary screaming like a banshee from outside. The screaming went on for what must have been two or three seconds, though it sounded more like two to three minutes.

  Jesus Christ, how long does it take a man to fall down five floors?

  Both he and Shorty flinched involuntarily when they heard the thump! of flesh and bones striking the sidewalk outside.

  “Shorty,” Keo said. “We gotta go.”

  “Zachary,” Shorty said.

  If he had more to say, he never finished it. Instead, he might have gasped audibly when two of the creatures—different ones, this time (or were they?)—reached up from below the windowsill, grabbed the frames, and pulled themselves upward until their faces were visible in the opening. Grotesquely deformed features, like nothing that could possibly be mistaken for human, peered through the window at them.

  “We gotta go!” Keo shouted.

  Keo backpedaled from the glaring eyes, lifted the submachine, and fired. He hit one of them in the face and the creature let go of its grip, dropping back into the night. Keo was momentarily shocked by what had just happened. He had shot these things more times than he could count and they never reacted that way. He had even seen Shorty put a .308 round through one of them a few seconds ago, and it didn’t even flinch.

  But this one…this one went down.

  Silver bullets. Silver bullets!

  The second one had managed to hook its spindly legs into the window frame, like some kind of insect, and was in the process of pulling itself through the opening when Keo shot it in the chest. It let go and dropped backward, swallowed up by the darkness.

  “Shorty!” Keo shouted. “Let’s go!”

  But Shorty didn’t move, not even when deformed shapes began climbing through the windows to their left and right along the floor. It was too dark for him to see anything beyond moving shadows. Not that Keo had to guess what was happening around him, because as soon as he killed the first two bloodsuckers, two—three—five more were trying to crawl in through the exact same space that had just been vacated.

  Gather some supplies. Make some silver bullets. Go find Gillian.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  He flicked the fire selector on the submachine gun to full-auto and opened fire.

  “Shorty!” he shouted over the clink-clink-clink of bullet casings falling against the tiled floor around him.

  Silver 9mm bullets ripped through flesh and kept going, and the creatures fell like dominos in front of him, others swan diving back out of the window.

  Then Boom! Boom! as Shorty began shooting. It was a bolt-action rifle, and each shot required him to manually reload. Keo remembered all those days on the road trying to convince the kid to switch to something more practical. But Shorty wouldn’t go for it. He was married to his Winchester.

  Stupid kid, Keo thought, shouting again, “Shorty, come on!”

  Because Shorty’s .308, as devastating as it was to a human body, was like throwing pebbles at the ghouls. His bullets tore through them, and some even hit the ones behind them—and it still kept going even then—but it didn’t stop them. Not for a moment. Not even for a millisecond. Keo wasn’t sure if the creatures even felt the bullet impacts.

  “Shorty!”

  He was backpedaling and firing, spraying from left to right, watching the bounding forms stumbling and falling. They were converging from every side now, literally pouring in through the windows across the floor, the tap-tap-tap! of bare feet against the carpet like a dozen stampeding herds at once.

  Too many. Always too goddamn many…

  Even as they collapsed left and right and over each other, more were climbing through the windows every second. Every half-second. He found breathing difficult as the floor began filling up with their stench. There was a never-ending stream of them, and he guessed this must be what it was like trying to hold back a flood with your bare hands.

  And Shorty was standing in front of him, shooting and smashing the buttstock of his rifle into the creatures as they surged toward him. He was backpedaling, but not fast enough. Too slow. Way too slow.

  “Shorty, goddammit!”

  He didn’t know if the other man could hear him. Probably not. Shorty didn’t seem capable of moving any faster, and soon—

  They were on top of him. Driving him to the floor.

  Shorty started screaming.

  Then the sea of black tar began changing directions and converging on Shorty. He saw Shorty’s hand sticking out of the squirming mass of shriveled skin and bony limbs.

  Keo turned and ran, reloading at the same time, dropping the long, slender magazine. He didn’t have to look to perform the task. It was second nature by now.

  He made a beeline for the same stairwell door he had come
through earlier.

  The tsunami of bare feet slapping against the floor burst through his eardrums as the creatures gave chase. He guessed not every one of them was going for Shorty anymore. How many were back there on his heels? A dozen? Hundreds? How many undead things could fit into one floor, he wondered.

  Too many. Always too damn many…

  Keo didn’t look back. It was pointless because he knew what was back there. And he didn’t want to see Shorty’s death. He couldn’t even hear the kid’s screams anymore. He couldn’t hear his own breathing, for that matter—only the relentless pounding in his chest.

  Around him, their stench overwhelmed the stale odor of the abandoned floor.

  They were fast, but he was faster. A steady diet of beef jerky and protein had kept Keo lean, and the nearly three-month long jaunt through the woods, being hunted by psychos with assault rifles, had forced him into the best shape of his life. He was also blessed with a long stride, one of the benefits of being six-one.

  He grabbed for the stairwell door with his left hand, his right still wrapped around the MP5SD with the forefinger against the trigger. He twisted the doorknob with one fluid motion, pulled the door open with another, and was greeted by total darkness—

  —except for the pair of yellow, crooked teeth coming at him.

  He squeezed off a burst, slicing the creature in half. It fell soundlessly, thick clumps of black liquid splashing the wall behind it.

  Silver bullets. Silver fucking bullets!

  Keo jumped over the shriveled-up dead thing.

  Sounds—coming from below this time. That meant he couldn’t go down. Which wasn’t his first choice anyway, but it would have been nice to actually have a choice.

  So what was left?

  He glanced up the flight of stairs, just as—

  —THOOM-THOOM-THOOM as they crashed into the stairwell door behind him with the intensity of rabid dogs that hadn’t eaten in days, weeks, maybe months.

  He went up.

  They were coming. Fast-moving bastards. The manic tap-tap-tap! of bare feet slammed against the solid concrete of the stairwell, echoing along the length of the confined space. He didn’t look back, didn’t look down. The rush of wind caught up to him from behind as the fifth-floor stairwell door was flung open and they poured inside, the very distinctive splatter of feet against black blood spilled by the dead ghoul ringing in his ears.

  He reached the rooftop door faster than he expected and burst outside, boots crunching against familiar loose gravel. He darted across the wide-open spaces, intimately aware that he was going to run out of space soon.

  Very, very soon.

  Darkness, moonlight, and a pair of smaller buildings around him, including one directly in front. A two-story building, with a bar on the first floor and living quarters on the second. He had scouted it earlier in the day with Zachary but hadn’t gone inside because the windows and doors were locked. The most important thing, though, was that the windows were not covered, which meant there were no nests inside.

  That was the good news.

  The bad news? The building was three stories down, with just over four meters of empty space between rooftops. It was going to be a hell of a drop if he couldn’t make the jump.

  London Bridge is falling down, falling down…

  Shut up!

  They flooded out of the stairwell behind him and were battling against the loose gravel. He wondered if it looked nearly as comical as it sounded.

  I should have brought a camera.

  He unslung his pack, and with a meter left until he reached the end, flung it and watched it disappear into the night. He glimpsed the edge—was he running to it, or was it coming to him?—and lunged forward with his left leg, landed solidly, and catapulted himself up and over and forward through the cold, chilly Louisiana air.

  So this is what it feels like to fly.

  The rooftop of the building next door came into view as he plummeted back down through the darkness, way faster than he had anticipated. He tried to pick up where his pack had landed while he was still in the air so he wouldn’t have to waste time looking for it later—

  —If my legs aren’t broken when I land—

  —and saw it lying almost near the far edge. Jesus, how the hell had it gotten that far?

  I must be stronger than I look.

  He almost laughed out loud, but before he could put thought into action, the flat rooftop was there and he managed to land in a crouch, his momentum carrying him forward into a tuck and roll. He snapped back up on one bent knee, shocked and joyous that he was still alive, that neither one of his legs were broken even though pain shot through both and up his thighs, his entire body seeming to vibrate for a few seconds afterward.

  Daebak!

  He was on his feet instantly and rushing toward his pack. He snatched it up and slipped it through his arms as—thoomp! thoomp!—two of the creatures landed on the rooftop behind him.

  He glanced back, saw them floundering like fish out of water, bony arms and legs snapping in every direction and at one point actually became entangled with one another. But that didn’t last, and they quickly became two separate creatures again—

  He shot them and watched them drop, even as more fell out of the inky black sky like raindrops, landing one after another…after another. Bones snapped and broke, then another, then another still—not that it stopped any of them.

  They kept coming—falling over and over, then actually on top of one another when they ran out of space. And still they kept dropping out of the sky…

  Keo backed up until cold air was brushing against his backside. He looked over his shoulder at empty space, having nearly backpedaled right off the edge. There was a catwalk below him.

  He emptied the remaining 9mm rounds into the mass of creatures in front of him, watching as they stumbled and fell, still amazed that they were going down, that he was actually killing them for once.

  Killing them again? Re-kill? Whatever.

  When the submachine gun ran empty for the second time, he slung it and dropped off the edge without looking back. It wasn’t a steep fall, only a few meters, though it felt like more. He landed on the catwalk with a loud bang!, the structure threatening to buckle under him, to pry itself free from the brick wall it was fastened to.

  But it held. Miraculously, it held.

  The window in front of him was closed and Keo was prepared to smash it open with his weapon, but when he grabbed the bottom and tried to open it, it actually slid up for him.

  Hallelujah!

  He pushed it all the way up and dived inside, turned, and slammed the glass back down just as one—two—five of the creatures landed on the catwalk outside. Whomp-whomp-whomp! There were so many coming down at once that they started falling on top of each other’s heads and shoulders, then bounced off and tumbled over the railings.

  The first creature to right itself slammed its fist into the window and cracked it, but it must not have been strong enough because the window held. At least, until another one of the ghouls joined the first one with its own flailing fist. Then a third and a fourth began ramming their entire bodies—one was using its skull—until the glass panes began cracking under the frenzied assault.

  Keo took a couple of steps back, ejected the magazine, shoved it into his pack, and pulled out a fresh one from a pouch around his waist and slammed it home. He shot the first ghoul that made it through the jagged opening in one of the panes. It fell forward into the room, landing awkwardly on its skull.

  The others continued scrambling inside, undeterred, fighting to be the first one in.

  He strafed the window, emptying the magazine, and watched with morbid fascination as the mass of black, pruned flesh and skeletal bodies corralled within the four walls of the catwalk outside. The congestion didn’t slow them at all, and even more were falling out of the sky like endless raindrops.

  Silver bullets or not, he wasn’t going to stop them. Not even close.

 
; He fled, making a run for the door, grabbing it and pulling it open without a problem, and lunged into darkness. His eyes quickly adjusted, picking out the banisters at the other end of the hallway. Keo ran for it when his forehead hit something soft. He slid to a stop and looked up at a rope dangling from the ceiling.

  Crash!

  From below him on the first floor, the unmistakable noise of glass breaking.

  Then another crash!, followed by another…

  He grabbed the piece of rope and yanked it. The frame of the attic door appeared in the darkness as it opened up from the ceiling. Keo grabbed the ladder and pulled even as something smashed into the door behind him.

  Thoom-thoom-thoom!

  He shut the noises out—from below him, from behind him—everywhere.

  Scrambled up the stairs and ignored the last few steps and jumped upward onto the wooden scaffolding above. Clouds of dust that had been gathering for the last year erupted around him. Twisting, he grabbed the ladder and pulled it up, making sure to bring the dangling rope along with him. Before the door could slam shut and join the tumultuous symphony of chaos exploding below him, Keo grabbed it at the last second, slowing its speed, and cautiously—painfully slowly, almost as if in slow-motion—tapped it shut.

  Darkness swamped him, taking away what little light he had with the attic door open. The tap-tap-tap of bare feet against the wooded hallway floor filtered up from the room below him, overwhelming everything, including his own ragged breathing. There were no peepholes, so Keo had to only go with what his ears could pick up.

  Footsteps on the stairs, rushing down, then up, then down again.

  They were searching for him, an endless wave of the creatures moving through the hallway below, in and out of doors and rooms.

  Keo moved into a sitting position facing the door in the floor, the submachine gun resting between his legs. Something small and furry scrambled next to him in the darkness, brushing up against his right arm. It was all he could do not to open fire on it. Instead, he gritted his teeth and listened to the creature burrowing through attic insulation, more afraid of him than he was of it. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on his part.