Empire's End (24 page)

Voorhees sat bolt upright with a shriek. The
fabric shot out from his nasal cavity, followed by a shower of
blood. He spat and gagged and gnashed his teeth within a lipless
mouth. Meyer withdrew the cleaver. He started cutting the
ropes.

“This’ll make things interesting, yes?” The
ropes fell to the floor. Meyer pulled Voorhees from the chair and
cast him onto the floor. “Now GET UP! You’ve still got fight left
in you! Get on your feet!”

Voorhees just lay there, panting. Blood
pooled around his face and leg.

Meyer hacked into the meat of his buttock.
“UP!”

Voorhees barely made a sound. Meyer was
losing him.

“Fuck it then.” Meyer threw the cleaver at
the chair and sighed. “Guess I was wrong about you.”

His teeth clenched. He swung his foot into
Voorhees’ stomach, again and again and again, causing the cop to
cough up more blood before falling still.

“Fuck you, man.” Meyer opened the apartment
door. “I’ll just leave you for the rotters.”

He left. Voorhees lay utterly still, in
silence, the only sound a whistle as blood bubbles formed in the
hollow of his face.

Please let me die. Take me. Please, God.

But that just wasn’t God’s style, it seemed,
nor Voorhees’. He knew that.

He pushed himself to his knees. With his good
hand, he reached under the back of his coat and pulled the
widowmaker free.

Meyer hadn’t overestimated him at all. In
fact, he’d made a grave mistake.

Now it was time to pay.

If it was the last thing Voorhees ever
did—and he knew it would be—Meyer was going to pay.

“Where’s Lily?” Cam demanded.

Halstead got to her feet in the tunnel and
looked around haplessly. “I don’t know. She was right beside me,
and then I fell...”

“She must have taken off down the tunnel,”
Tripper muttered. “Lily!”

Taking Meyer’s lanterns from the floor, they
began the search. There wasn’t a sign of the girl anywhere. She
didn’t return their cries. And she didn’t have any reason to fear
them—did she?

“Wait.” Logan pointed up ahead with his
gib-covered chainsaw. “Movement.”

He motioned for everyone to move over against
the wall. Logan crouched and squinted, fighting to keep his
balance, still drunk.

“We’re human!” came a call. Three figures
appeared in the lantern light.

“Dalton!” Logan yelled.

A soldier, a cop and what looked like a
doctor.
Could’ve been worse,
Halstead thought to herself.
Could’ve been saddled with three lame geriatrics
.

That, of course, made her think of Voorhees.
She’d been trying not to think of him this entire time; indeed, as
Cam had so succinctly put it, she had concerned herself solely with
saving her own ass. Now the girl was missing because Halstead had
gone down the ladder first. And her partner, a good man, an honest
man, was lying bound and blind in a building that would soon be in
flames.

I’m shit. I couldn’t even finish the job
Thackeray entrusted me with... and now Gaylen burns. Somehow it’s
all my fault. It must be. I’ve let everyone down.

“Logan,” Dalton said, “we’ve got an evac
route through an old rail system. Do you have any other survivors
down here?”

“Maybe.” Logan burped. “Trying to find the
kid.”

“Are you drunk?” Zane asked in disbelief.

“I wish I was,” Rhodes grumbled.

Logan pointed down the tunnel behind himself.
“There’s a bar up there—”

“Shut up,” Tripper snapped. “We’ve gotta find
Lily. We can’t leave until we find her.”

Dalton eyed Tripper’s guns with suspicion.
“Where’d you get your hands on those?”

“Soldiers traded them,” Tripper answered.

“What for? Why would anyone trade away arms?
That’s a crime.”

“Ask him.” Tripper angled his thumb toward
Logan.

Dalton grimaced. “Logan. You didn’t.”

“I’m a man. I have needs.”

“All right,” Cam shouted, “back to Lily.
She’s about thirteen with long brown hair. She couldn’t have gone
far.”

“Then let’s find her,” said Dalton. He turned
to lead the way.

* * *

The search was fruitless.

They backtracked half a dozen times,
screaming Lily’s name until they were all hoarse—no response.

“What if she didn’t even come down here?”
Halstead gasped.

“Then we left her up there with what was left
of those kids,” Logan said. “Sorry. I really am.”

“We can’t just write her off like that!” Cam
cried. Tripper put his arms around her.

“I hear something.” Dropping into a crouch,
Dalton crept toward the next corner. He heard the snapping of bone.
A grunt. Blood splattering.

Dalton leapt around the bend and trained his
rifle on the figure hunched there.

It was a man—a living man. He looked elderly,
but based on the rotter at his feet, he still had some strength in
him. The man had torn the undead’s head clean off.

“Are you okay?” Dalton asked.
Bit?
he
thought.

The man held up his hands and said softly,
“Okay.”

“We can get you out of here. Are you with
anyone else?”

“No, alone.” The man looked down at the
rotter’s twitching remains.

“Don’t worry about that,” Dalton said, taking
the man by his elbow. “It’s not going anywhere. Nice work.”

The man nodded absently. Dalton led him back
around the corner, checking him for any bites or scrapes in the
lantern light. “Survivor!” he called to the others.

“What’s your name, pops?” Tripper asked.

“Eugene.”

“Well Eugene, we’re getting the hell out of
here. You with us?”

The old man nodded. Halstead frowned at
him.

What was he chewing?

* * *

Like a shadow on the wall, Adam stole into
the West Avenue Church of Christ and, kneeling behind the pulpit,
set Lily on the floor.

“I want you to stay right here until I
return.” As he spoke, Adam surveyed the enormous room with its rows
of pews and ornate stained-glass windows, newly restored since the
establishment of the Great Cities. It was filled with dark
places—but also silence. He didn’t sense a threat. Maybe God’s
presence still had some potency after all.

“Where are you going?” Lily asked.

“To take care of the undead,” he replied.
“I’ll be as quick as I can. Just stay here—don’t make a sound, and
wait for my return.”

He stood up. “Reaper!” she cried.

He knelt back down. “What is it?”

Leaning forward, Lily tenderly kissed his
fire-scarred face.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“And my name is Adam.”

* * *

A mob of rotters looked up to see a pale
horse standing in the middle of the road. Astride it was a dark man
with a gigantic blade made from bone, joined to his arm like an
extra appendage.

Before they had the time to blink, he was
bearing down on them.

The scythe plunged into zombie after zombie,
slicing clean through them, splitting decaying bodies in half and
sending gouts of gray entrails into the air. The horse tore through
the snow at a frenzied pace, driven by the kicks of its rider, and
the scythe cut trough air and flesh alike without resistance.

Adam turned at the end of the road and
started back. The remaining undead were scattering, flailing their
arms and moaning at the futility of their last moments. He skewered
heads, severed arms, sent torsos flying. Adam rounded a corner and
streaked down a side street to meet a new pack.

The Siamese was at the head of it. Scuttling
forward, it roared in twin tongues and made to tackle the horse.
Adam pulled back, causing his steed to rear up—and he swung around
its body to meet the Siamese mid-charge and split the twins from
sternum to waist. The thrashing halves of the Siamese tumbled into
the snow and lay still.

A torch struck Adam’s head. He fell from the
horse and rolled quickly to his feet. It was the Fire Juggler; the
rotter hurled another pair of torches at Adam. He spun aside,
avoiding both, and leapt to engage the monster.

A pike spread his abdomen. He snarled and
turned to see the Fakir drawing long needles from its throat. “Try
this,” Adam said, and slammed the scythe through the rotter’s
heart.

The Juggler caught Adam by the arms and
hurled him to the ground. More rotters crowded at the Juggler’s
back. Adam tried to lift the blade, but the undead pressed all his
weight down on Adam’s arm.

He made not a sound in his struggle; it was
eerily silent as the undead closed in and fell upon him.

Then they exploded outward in a wave of
fractured bodies, Adam rising up like a phoenix and sending the
scythe screaming through the horde. He caught the Juggler on the
tip and sent him crashing into a brick wall. Slumping down on one
of his own torches, the Juggler groaned. Fire spread across its
torso, and its pickled meat ignited like the wick of a candle.

There was an animal cry from the far end of
the street. Looking up, Adam saw the King of the Dead standing
there, clutching his cane and howling like a banshee.

You underestimate me, beast,
Adam
thought. Never again. He was more than a man, a force of nature,
and he would cleave the unnatural into pieces until there was none
left.

Eviscerato vanished from sight. Another two
dozen rotters took his place.

“Come to me,” Adam growled, and climbed atop
his horse.

Then he went to them.

The battle raged on beneath an ever-darkening
sky, with flames rising over the tops of buildings and the smell of
burning death no longer just a grim omen.

The buildings around Gaylen’s perimeter had
united in a single inferno, a new wall made from fire that struck
defiantly upward into the snowy sky. The storm had not relented,
yet Jeff Cullen didn’t feel the cold; bathed in the warmth of the
city, he watched without emotion as those who managed to make it
through the fire were gunned down.

As the shots rang out and bodies pitched
forward, other survivors were forced to turn back, to turn inward,
where the city’s festering core was clotted with undead; throngs
dragging the bodies of slain citizens to the amphitheater. There,
the corpses were being piled twenty deep in anticipation of the
great feast. The rotters could scarcely contain themselves as they
looked over the sea of flesh; but the King’s guidance had brought
them this far, and they would wait.

Those survivors still barricaded in buildings
were either smoked out or pulled from safety, necks broken, limbs
torn off, and their remains joined the rest. There was no shelter
to be found from the undead.

Those with guns began committing suicide.

Dozens of gunshots rang out in the city
center. Others, families trapped atop apartment buildings, leapt to
their deaths, plummeting into the waiting arms of the
predators.

Adam was working outward as he hunted down
the undead. He missed the amphitheater entirely.

At dusk, the feast began.

Eviscerato stood atop the mountain of corpses
and roared. His cry was picked up by ravenous followers, and one by
one they threw themselves into the meat.

Nickel dragged a warm child to the stage
where Eviscerato was perched. Taking the body in his arms,
Eviscerato closed his lipless jaws over the child’s blue lips.

Outside the amphitheater, the Petrified Man
looked up to see a new group approaching. Thin, desiccated rotters
with a peculiar gait, exposed bones coated with frost, joints
cracking as they shuffled through the snow.

The undead at the head of the pack nodded to
the Petrified Man. “Good evening. Or morning, as the case may be,”
it rasped in a hollow monotone. Reciting the speech that it had
practiced for radio—for Senator Gillies—the Brit said, “On behalf
of Prince George and the Prime Minister—”

The Brit paused and leaned forward,
scrutinizing the Petrified Man. It lifted a monocle to its
shriveled eyeball and, realizing it was addressing a zombie, said,
“Hmm. Right.”

The Petrified Man knocked the Brit’s head off
with an annoyed grunt. Then it set upon the other intruders.

* * *

Huddled in the church pulpit, Lily listened
intently for any sign of her friend’s arrival. All she heard were
faint booms, and the occasional scream.

Please let him be all right.

A window shattered.

Lily pulled her knees to her chest and froze,
refusing even to breathe as glass tinkled gently on carpet, and
tiny footsteps pattered across the floor.

The Dwarf leapt into view and splayed its
little claws with a venomous hiss.

Lily shrieked and drove both feet into its
chest, sending the rotter tumbling head over heels down the steps
into the pews.

Lily threw herself at the back wall,
searching frantically for a door. She didn’t want to run away where
Adam couldn’t find her—as she had with Cam and the others—but she
had to get out of here! There had to be a room where she could
hide. She found only locked doors.

The Dwarf hobbled toward her, shaking its
head vigorously. Eviscerato preferred the young meat, the soft
virgin flesh—but this was all for the Dwarf, its own little
feast.

Stumbling back from the rotter, Lily ran for
the pews. She dove into the second row and began pulling herself
along the floor, under the seats. She’d have to throw the monster
off her trail, moving from row to row as it searched for her, and
then double back to hide in the first row. Then it would give up,
leave in search of easier prey... she hoped.

Adam!
she silently screamed.

Broken fingernails scrabbled over carpet. She
heard a soft grunting at her back, and chanced a glance: the Dwarf
was crawling after her beneath the pews. Its horns scraped the
undersides of the seats as it strained to reach her feet.