The screams grew louder as they moved through the makeshift camping grounds.
They only made it thirty yards in when Lance spotted the first daywalker. A woman, her skin desecrated by cuts and jagged slashes from razor wire, gripped a man’s head in her hands and drank from his gouged neck.
Blood poured down the man’s back, soaking his shirt and dripping to the ground like a broken faucet. He stopped fighting back after a few seconds, his body going limp in the woman’s arms.
Lance stalked forward, ready to plunge his knife into her eye when her temple exploded outward, rigidity overtaking her limbs as she fell sideways.
Eifort came up from the right, an M16 in her hands.
“Thanks,” Lance said, barely hearing his own voice over the screams of the wounded.
She gave him a nod and fell in line beside them.
The three advanced slowly as people ran into them, begging for help or trying to take their weapons. Twice, Lance thought he would have to use his knife on someone to keep them from wrestling it away from him.
A massive gunfight ahead, still not visible to them, saturated the air with manmade thunder.
Cass lunged forward, startling Lance, and plunged her axe through the top of a tent. The fabric sliced away, splitting open. A daywalker lay inside, atop a teenager of no more than thirteen. The axe split the infected’s skull, almost cleaving the head in two.
The teen’s neck was a mass of seeping gore.
Lance looked away, fighting back the urge to vomit.
“How many of them are there?” Lance asked.
Cass pulled her axe free of the tent, unimaginable bodily fluid dripping from its blade. “A shitload.”
“Where did they come from?”
“Shut up and fight, dumbass!”
Three of the daywalkers tore through a tent, a man’s screams coming from inside. Eifort took the first with three bullets to the chest. Cass spun around as she had before, and swung the axe with all her might, slicing through the neck of the first. The blade lodged in the temple of the second, shorter infected.
Lance looked back and forth from the smaller knife in his hand to Eifort’s rifle and Cass’ axe. “I’m feeling a little emasculated right now.”
No one laughed as they continued forward, determined.
A soldier rushed past them, clutching at a gaping wound on his upper arm, his face a pale mask of terror.
This place can’t come back from this. They’ll have to kill too many of their own because of the infection.
They came upon a family of three backing away from two eyeless, vascular creatures. Their bodies were further along than most, the light of day just starting to bother their skin. Eifort couldn’t get a clear shot because of the people, so Lance charged forward, throwing his shoulder into the biggest.
He fell forward, tripping over the daywalker’s feet. They bounced off the concrete, grappling at each other’s arms. It snapped at him, distended canines gleaming in the rays of the setting sun.
Lance slashed with his knife, severing two elongated fingers. It wailed and lunged for him, mouth angling for his neck.
With all his might, he jammed the knife upward, catching it under the jaw. The blade plunged in, cutting through flesh and bone before the tip embedded in its brain. Blood gushed from the wound as Lance heaved its thrashing body to the side and scrambled back to his feet.
He pulled his knife free and spun around, looking for the other creature in time to see Cass lodge her axe in its chest. As the safe zone crumbled around him, Lance couldn’t help but marvel at her ferocity.
She never hesitated.
Eifort shouted someone’s name and ran ahead. Lance lost sight of her amid the throng of fighting people and monsters.
Something grabbed his shoulder and Lance spun around, knife raised.
Doc Brown stood behind him, face stricken and pale. “It’s lost. All of it.”
“No shit.” Lance turned back, facing the carnage. “Stick with us—we’re getting the hell out of here.”
“I have to help these people! They deserve everything I have.”
“There isn’t going to be anyone left to help.” Cass pointed at the sun, now inches above the horizon. “The big boys are going to come out to play soon. If we aren’t on the water by then, it’s game over. We can’t fight the Vladdies—no one can.”
The doc watched the bloodshed around them, a solitary tear spilling from a welled eye. “Ok.”
Lance took the lead, helping those he could and avoiding confrontations he knew he couldn’t win.
They got a clear sight of the barbed wire fence when they were halfway through the parking lots. Dozens of the infected climbed through. Without soldiers picking them off as they tried to enter, the daywalkers poured through the defenses.
“Where are the guards?” Lance asked.
“Up there,” Cass gestured to the shore with her axe. “I can see the top of a big ass boat. Looks like it might have been carrying the infected.”
That didn’t seem possible to Lance. How could the daywalkers pilot a boat? They were mindless, mad creatures that were only a day or two away from sulking in the shadow of night. Walking proved difficult for some of them, let alone utilizing a ship.
A gap in the fighting proved Cass correct. Lance caught sight of a large ship, two stories with a deck and cabin on top, floating off the shore. A long plank ran from the tip, resting on the rocks a few feet from the water’s edge.
“Isn’t that one of the Gateway Clipper ships?”
“Who gives a shit?” Cass took out the knee of an onrushing daywalker, severing the joint. She swung the axe overhead as it fell to the ground, and sliced through its upper back. “It’s our ticket out of here!”
“Can you drive it?” Lance didn’t know anything about boats.
“You grab the wheel and steer—how hard can it be?”
Brown knelt beside a woman whose neck was torn away. Her eyes rolled wildly in their sockets, hands grabbing onto his filthy coat. He whispered something into her ear as her movements grew sluggish. He held her, watching her face slacken, her eyes glaze over.
Lance felt sorry for the doctor, for all of them, because they thought this camp would protect them. They pretended that the nightmares outside couldn’t get in. What little hope remained in the world was dashed as the final refuge of the city fell.
Grabbing the doc’s coat, he lifted him away from the dead woman. “Come on, Emmett. We need to keep moving.”
Cass pushed ahead, straying off to the side for a moment as she freed a man from the grasp of two daywalkers. She cut them down with relative ease and moved on as the man ran away without thanking her.
Something whistled by Lance’s ear. He flinched away, ducking out of instinct.
Doc Brown grunted and fell to his knees. His coat soaked through by his left shoulder, a crimson stain spreading.
“Doc!” Lance reached for him when he heard something else zip past his head. He dove into the doctor, shoving him to his back.
Lance scanned the area in front them, trying to see if the shooter was aiming for them or if the shots were meant for the infected. He spotted the source a second later—the young soldier.
A sinister grin distorted his baby face.
He’s as mad as those with the Xavier virus.
Lance stared into the barrel of the man’s rifle as he stepped forward.
“Why?” Lance asked him as he sat up.
Brown clutched at his shoulder, teeth gritted.
“Why not? When the world goes to hell you can do whatever you want.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, I don’t think so. Now, tell me where the bitch is, and I’ll make this quick. She and I have a date.”
Past the man’s legs, Lance spotted Cass swinging at a creature hidden behind a tent. She hadn’t noticed yet that Lance and the doc weren’t with her.
“Are you deaf?” Lance held a hand to his ear, pressing the lobe forward. “All
the other soldiers around here are trying to help. You’re only destroying. So go fuck yourself.”
“Suit yourself. We’ll see if a gut shot loosens your—”
The soldier’s chest hitched. The barrel of the rifle wavered before falling by his side. Spittle fell from his lips, hanging from his chin.
He dropped to his knees, his eyebrows arching as he stared at the spreading dark patch in his uniform.
Eifort came up from behind him, rifle trained on his back.
The young man fell face first into the parking lot, his head thudding off the hard surface. He didn’t move again.
“I always hated that guy.” Eifort held a hand out to Lance, helping him up. “One of those assholes who joins the military so he can kill terrorists, not to keep people safe. He’s been flakey ever since we got here.”
“Thanks,” Lance said. “But he had a flunkey following him around. You see him anywhere?”
“I found his body over there. He was shot in the back.” She tapped the dead soldier’s boot. “Rodgers probably shot him.”
“Why the hell would he do that?”
“Because he could. The man was a psychopath.”
Lance looped his arm under Brown’s armpit and heaved him to his feet. “You going to make it, Doc?”
“I need to stop the bleeding,” he grunted through clenched teeth. “Hurts like hell.”
“Can you walk? We need to get to the boat.”
“I think so.”
“What about the boat?” Eifort asked.
“We’re using it to get the hell out of here.” Lance helped the doc pull his coat off.
“I don’t think that’s the best idea. That’s how those things got here. It pulled up to the shore, the bridge lowered, and they came pouring out.”
“What other choice do we have? If we can get on board and get it away from the shore, we’ll deal with whatever we find on there.”
“But—”
A bellow, long and high, encompassed the parking lot. It was more animalistic than any of the sounds made by the daywalkers. Goosebumps prickled on Lance’s arms. His fear of the daywalkers paled in comparison to the horror they saw at the church.
They were coming.
Cass ran up from behind Eifort, blood splattered across her heaving chest.
“What the hell are you doing? We need to move!”
“The doc was shot. Damn, you’re bossy.” Lance looked toward the sun, saw it had fallen below the tops of the trees, the sky already darkening. He wondered how much light those things could stand. Would they come out before the day fully gave way to the night?
“We don’t have time for bullshit banter. Let’s go, dumbass!”
“Hey, calling me dumbass is banter! Hypocrite!” Lance turned back to her, but she was already stalking across the parking lot. He found himself blathering as he tried to cope with his mounting fear.
Eifort fell in line behind Cass. Lance gave the doc a slight push, keeping him in front so he could take up the rear.
The other soldiers continued firing in bursts, cutting down the infected by the tents. They made significant progress, dwindling the man-eaters’ numbers as dusk set in. The battle ebbed rapidly once a mere dozen of them remained.
Military personal and civilians with melee weapons closed in on the last of the daywalkers, killing them off as Cass crossed into the final parking lot. Most of the tents there were shredded and bloody. Bodies littered the pavement, most with neck wounds. The injured, damned by their bites, staggered around, pleading for help.
Those who weren’t attacked looked at the bitten and gashed like the walking dead they would soon become. Lance wondered who would be the first to kill one of the wounded. Would it be out of mercy for the infected, or as self-preservation for those who weren’t?
Another shriek, alien and violent, shattered the perception that the threat had passed.
Louder and closer.
“Get the spot lights up! Start every generator we’ve got!” Major Reynolds separated away from a group of soldiers, shouting toward the stadium. “Everyone get to the fence!”
A drainage gate at the right side of the parking lot exploded out of its place. It flipped through the air and clattered on the sidewalk.
A muscled arm came through the opening, followed by the gray, eyeless head of a Vladdie. Its deformed skull and rounded, thick shoulders made it look more like a silverback gorilla than a human. It climbed out of the sewer system and took several steps forward on all fours.
Its back arched as it howled at the sky, long teeth visible in the fading light. More came up behind it, nude and hairless, their bodies grotesquely distorted and powerful.
“My god, they’re using the sewers to get around.” Lance stared at the creatures piling out of the drainage hole like ants coming from an anthill. “Are they intelligent enough to use a strategy?”
No one answered him.
Thousands of people by the stadium fell silent, watching as modern-day demons climbed out of hell.
Another grate flew up in the middle parking lot. More of them climbed out, inside of the fences.
“Run!” Cass screamed and sprinted for the boat.
Lance shoved the doctor in the back, getting him moving. His hunger and fatigue left his mind as he ran faster than he ever had. The pain in his foot was forgotten.
Eifort angled toward the major, shouting for the officer’s attention.
No one could have heard her over the roars and shrieks that exploded from the Vladdies.
Lance grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back to him, screaming in her ear. “This is fucked! Get on the boat with us!”
She cast one last glance at the monstrosities that came for them and nodded.
They weren’t the only ones who noticed the hopelessness of the situation. Major Reynolds fled to the stadium, sprinting toward a side door.
Those who stood in line, waiting for a helicopter ride, made a mad dash to gates, shoving against each other as they tried to squeeze into Heinz Field.
The turret on one of the tanks rotated, aiming at the tented parking lots. Fire burst from the barrel as it shot, the body rocking back on its tracks. The ground trembled from the blast.
A mass of the Vladdies exploded as the shell hit the ground at their feet. Limbs somersaulted into the night.
More of them filled the place within seconds. The oncoming hoard streamed from the grates. A side street leading into an alley darkened as a flood of the creatures filled it, marching toward the North Shore.
Half of the soldiers took aim and fired, holding their ground like the warriors they were. The others tried to follow the major, rushing to the stadium. Civilians panicked, running blindly in any direction, trampling each other as they tried to escape their inevitable deaths.
Spotlights flickered on from atop trucks stationed around the perimeter of the safe zone. They angled at the fences, but quickly swiveled around, their beams finding groups of the Vladdies. The muscle-bound horrors leaped out of the light, and charged forward.
The bellows of the mutated fell away, replaced by the pounding of their hands and feet as they stormed across the parking lot.
Lance recognized the sound as the death of Pittsburgh.
Chapter 24