39
Jakob held his fire. The shotgun he held would have little effect on the approaching creatures. Not until they were closer, at least. Anne arrived beside him with an M16 clutched in her arms. The gun looked massive in her hands. But like everything she did, Anne wielded the weapon without hesitation or fear, pushing the muzzle through the wooden planks and opening fire. Five rounds spat from the gun, the first three shattering glass and buzzing out into the open air. The last two struck the wooden barricade blocking the window as recoil punched her shoulder, sending her flying backward to the kitchen floor, sprawling atop a red-and-blue braided rug. Jakob dove to the side to avoid the spray of rounds, but didn’t make it more than a few feet before slamming into the wall.
“Did I hit anything?” Anne asked, pushing herself up and reaching for the weapon that now laid beside her.
“You mean besides the window?” Jakob moved back behind the overturned metal table and peeked outside.
“Don’t be an ass—”
Jakob flinched as a flash of brown fur filled his vision. “Holy shit!” Off balance and moving fast, Jakob shoved the shotgun barrel through the window and fired a single blast, just as the house shook from an explosive impact. The kickback knocked him back onto the floor beside Anne just as the front hallway exploded. The walls cracked. Plaster shattered. Pots and pans burst from shelves with an unholy racket.
Anne shouted in surprise, and though she’d probably never admit it, fright. Jakob did, too. His father had once described what it was like to be on the receiving end of a mortar round. As the boom receded and the house groaned, the kitchen shelves still disgorging their contents, he felt this might qualify as a similar experience. Except it wasn’t an explosive mortar round, it was a massive Woolie, its clumpy-haired body lodged firmly in the hallway, just to their left, blocking the living room door.
Jakob climbed to his feet and took a deep breath, willing the numb shaking of his limbs to stop. The Woolie, trapped partly in the floor, writhed and shook, trying to pull free of its self-imposed prison. It stopped, turning its jaundiced, bloodshot eye toward Jakob as he stepped toward it and pumped the shotgun. If it knew what was coming, it was incapable of showing it, even as Jakob raised the weapon.
He flinched when Anne opened fire behind him. His finger twitched and the shotgun punched his shoulder, sending a cloud of close-range pellets into the side of the beast’s head, folding it inward and stopping the monster’s gyrations.
Anne fired again, standing at the window, leaning into the weapon. It still nearly knocked her over, but the short burst and her stance kept her on her feet. But when she turned around, running toward the back of the kitchen, it appeared her effort had borne little fruit.
“Get back!” she shouted, sprinting around the table.
Jakob followed her without question. If she was running, there was a reason. Had he hesitated even a moment, the following impact would have knocked him to the floor and left him crushed beneath the body of a behemoth Woolie. The corner of the house bent inward and shattered. Wood and plaster flew, smacking Jakob’s back and shoving him to the ground. He had a fleeting image of what the impact would have done if he wasn’t wearing the tactical vest. The image wasn’t pretty, nor was it long lasting.
He turned around onto his back while Anne took hold of his vest, trying to drag him back like some wounded soldier on the battlefield.
“C’mon!” she shouted.
But Jakob’s attention remained fixated on the snorting and bloodied Woolie, which was pulling back out of the house. He could see the bit in its frothing mouth, the reins and the mount, but the Rider was nowhere to be seen.
It got off before the impact,
he thought. And as the Woolie inched back out of the house, he realized they were about to get company.
As the bulk of the monster slipped backward, the corner of the home’s second floor dipped down with a groan. The building couldn’t take much more abuse before caving in on itself. As daylight squeezed past the Woolie, Jakob scrambled to his feet and ran with Anne, heading toward the back of the house. They stopped at an intersection. Straight ahead was the biodome with its glass walls and vegetables for cover, not to mention Misha’s corpse. To the right was the back end of the home’s main hallway, giving them access to the second floor stairs.
Brant and Alia are up there
, Jakob thought,
and a lot more weapons
. He shoved Anne into the hall and shouted, “Up!”
There was a moment of annoyance at being pushed around, but Anne charged up the stairs, taking them one at a time in rapid fire, while Jakob took two at a time. They reached the metal door at the top together, pounding on its cool surface, neglecting the secret knock.
When Jakob shouted, “It’s us! Let us up!” his words had the same effect as the knock. Locks snapped open and the metal door swung away. Anne ran through, followed by Jakob. Alia stood next to the door, somehow looking both mortified and determined. She moved to shut the door, but then froze. And screamed.
Jakob spun around.
A single, male Rider surged up the staircase. His arms were coiled back, fingers open and hooked, jaw wide, brows furrowed, wild hair flailing. Here was a demon, straight from the pits of hell, charging up to consume them whole. Jakob shouted and pulled the shotgun’s trigger. The shotgun echoed strangely in the stairwell, stabbing Jakob’s ears. The pain sharpened the pitch of his shout, but it was pain replacing fear, which had diminished when the Rider’s body lifted up off the stairs and flew backward.
The airborne Rider slammed into the back wall, knocking down framed photos and leaving a splotch of blood where the hole in his torso struck the wallpaper. He crumpled into a heap at the bottom of the stairs. Jakob stood, looking at the man, remembering the similar scene of his mother being gunned down in the front yard. The event had shaken him to his core, but he also understood it, and he knew that his father had no choice. Not when he let her live the first time, when he’d been doing what he thought was right. And not when he shot her today, when he was doing what was necessary. Jakob didn’t think he’d ever have the fortitude to shoot someone he knew, but these horrible Riders? He could live with that.
Alia shouted again and slammed the door shut. Jakob caught a glimpse of three Riders rounding the corner below and scrambling up the stairs. She managed to get a single deadbolt in place before the door was struck from the far side. Jakob helped her lock the remaining three and turned around to find Anne, hands raised, staring down the barrel of an assault rifle.
“They don’t belong up here,” Brant said, a wild look in his eyes, sweat oozing from every pore on his face.
“Dad!” Alia shouted over the pounding on the door behind her. “Stop it!”
“Your mother doesn’t like company,” he said. “They’ll wake her.”
Wake her?
The noise booming throughout the house, from the door, and from a continued assault on the structure from outside, was enough to wake the dead. Jakob almost said so until he remembered that Misha was actually dead.
“They’re our friends,” Alia said. “They’re here to help. To protect Mom!”
Anne stepped forward, lifting her M16 without pointing it at Brant. “We’ll keep her safe.”
Brant looked unconvinced. The pounding on the door got louder, each boom twisting tension into Brant’s expression. When the door was struck loudly enough for a hinge to rattle loose, Brant looked down the sights of his weapon, aiming it at Jakob’s head. “No! They have to go! Your mom says they have to go!”
The way Brant’s voice cracked as he shouted told Jakob that the man had finally lost his mind. Between Misha’s death and the chaos of battle, the man had cracked. And that meant he might very well shoot Jakob and Anne. But there was nowhere Jakob could go. Opening the door meant certain death, not just for him, but for Anne, Alia
and
Brant.
“Sir,” Jakob said, but stopped short when Brant’s index finger slipped around the weapon’s trigger and started to squeeze.
“Dad!” Alia shouted. “No!”
The explosion that came next made everyone shout, and Jakob wondered why he’d heard it at all. He should have been missing his head, but instead, he felt the floor beneath him shift. He opened his eyes and looked through the open front of the house. A cloud of dust and smoke rose up from the left side of the downstairs floor, where the living room was. The second floor to his left hung at an angle, just like it did above the kitchen, and he knew another portion of the home’s support had been destroyed. He felt concerned for his father, but moved past it when Alia shouted, “Dad!”
Remembering the man with the gun to his head, Jakob turned and found empty space where Brant had stood. He was now sprawled on the floor, where he’d fallen when the floor shifted. But he looked startled, as though he’d seen a ghost. His weapon lay on the floor beside him.
Jakob knelt beside Alia and saw a shard of glass protruding through the tactical vest covering the man’s chest. “What?” he said. “How?”
“Shrapnel from the explosion,” Anne said, matter of fact. “Kevlar stops blunt impacts from bullets, but doesn’t work against things like knives, or flying glass.” She put her hand briefly on Alia’s shoulder, said, “I’m sorry,” and then stood, aiming her M16 at the door behind them, which was slowly rattling loose from the continued assault.
Jakob nearly shouted when Brant grabbed his arm with the speed and power of a striking anaconda. But the man’s strength was fleeting. With each word spoken, his grip fell more slack. “Take...care of my...girls.”
“I will,” Jakob said.
“Both...of them,” Brant said, tears running down his cheeks.
When Brant’s hand fell away, Jakob took hold of it. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll watch over Alia, if you take care of your wife.”
Brant smiled, his teeth stained red with blood. “Deal.” He turned to Alia, whispered, “Love you, girl,” and then fell limp.
Alia let out a single, gut-wrenching sob, but then she seemed to suck her emotion inside her. As the door shook and screws fell to the floor, she gripped Jakob’s arm and pulled. “We can get out the back!”
Jakob tapped Anne’s shoulder, shouting, “C’mon!” and following Alia. They ran to the back of the hall and entered her parents’ empty and perfectly kept bedroom. As Alia ran to the back of the room and unlocked the window, Anne slammed the door shut and shouted, “Help me!”
Working together, Jakob and Anne slid a full dresser in front of the door. Jakob then used the push button lock on the door and fastened a small hook and eye lock near the top of the door. He didn’t think the barricade would hold for more than a few moments, but they had no other choice. He took a step back, raising his shotgun, ready to shoot through the wooden door.
“Let’s go,” Alia shouted.
Jakob looked back to see a rope, tied to the bed, dangling out the back window. Alia climbed out the window and started lowering herself down, out of view. Anne hurried after her. Jakob paused for a moment, unsure about the plan, because while there were three Riders inside the house, there were five Woolies outside.
Then he heard gunfire, distant and outside the house. Two different kinds. His father and Ella had made it outside, too, and the realization jolted him into action, just as he heard the metal door at the top of the stairs slam open. Jakob reached the rope as Anne slipped out of view. He looked out and found the pair just eight feet below him, standing on the roof of the transitional hallway that led to the biodome. He heard the trumpeting call of the Woolies growing closer, perhaps tracking them by scent or sound, and he paused. But when the wooden door behind him shook and splintered, the dresser groaning as it shifted over the wood, Jakob slipped out the window, hung by his fingers and dropped down.
40
The impact at the front of the house created a pressure wave in the living room, hitting Peter like a stiff wind. Walls cracked. Swirling dust, mostly crushed and burst drywall, billowed into the room. Peter glanced toward the now bulging wall and found the bowed door frame blocked by an enormous, shaggy body. They were trapped, and the Woolie was still alive. The wall’s supports cracked and splintered, threatening to cave in. Peter raised his weapon, intending to end the monster’s life, and its struggle against the home’s foundation, but a blur of motion in his periphery caught his attention. He turned and looked out the front window.
A blur of dark brown nearly forced him back, but he held his ground when he realized the Woolie was simply rounding the corner of the house. A second followed, glancing at the window as it passed. If it saw him, it showed no reaction.
They have a plan
, Peter thought.
Only a few seconds had passed since the impact, and in those moments, Peter had lost track of Ella. That changed when she stood up from the floor, muttering curses and looking a little wild.
Muted gunfire vibrated through the house, coming from the kitchen. The sound froze Ella in place, but added an injection of intensity into her eyes. He felt his own pulse quicken when he heard voices: Anne’s and Jakob’s. Then with the suddenness of the front door’s destruction, the house shook violently, as though a wrecking ball had just struck.
And the sound had come from the kitchen.
A loud wrenching wailed through the house, nails pulling from wood, beams bending to the breaking point. For a moment, it sounded like the whole structure would collapse, but then it got quiet again.
Peter glanced out the window again. He’d lost track of the running beasts, but he could still hear voices. And then footsteps. The kids were running upstairs.
“Ella, lets—” Peter froze when he saw her. She stood at the front corner of the room, a fragmentation grenade in her hand, a finger looped through the pin. “What are you doing?”
The windows were too boarded up to throw the grenade outside, and he couldn’t conceive of any good reason why she might detonate the device in a closed room—with them inside it. But then he could see in her eyes that she was reacting more out of emotion than logic. And in that moment, he understood her intentions. With no way out, she was going to make a way.
She glanced back at him as though to ask, “You ready?”
He grabbed a metal table from the side of the room where it was positioned beneath a window and spun it around, the legs against the back wall, a makeshift foxhole. Before he could shout, ‘Ready,’ and duck down, she pulled the pin, dropped the grenade into the corner and ran. The grenade’s handle sprang away, igniting the fuse.
Ella ran toward him, no fear in her eyes. Just anger. She had four seconds from the moment the handle shot free until detonation. She leapt into the air at three, slammed into the wall and fell behind the metal table at four, hands already over her ears. Peter ducked down, hands covering his head, eyes closed, mouth open. He trusted that the new, militant Ella knew to open her mouth, too. The pressure from the grenade in such a cramped and enclosed space could be enough to rupture their lungs.
The ordinance exploded with the sound of twenty rifles firing in unison. The pressure built around them for a brief moment and then vented out the front of the house, as first windows, and then walls, ruptured outward.
When Peter opened his eyes, the table legs had been shoved into the wall behind them, cramping the space. He unblocked his ears and found them ringing.
“You alright?” he asked.
Ella looked up, but said nothing. She took her hands away from her head and closed her mouth. The sounds of pounding, harder than their kids could manage, came from somewhere in the house.
They’re inside
, Peter thought, but he didn’t bother saying it. Ella knew. And she reacted faster, standing up to leap over the table. But she stopped short, flinching back slightly.
Peter looked over the table and understood why. The old farmhouse hadn’t stood a chance against the grenade. The corner of the structure, two windows, drywall and the wood siding had been vomited outward, strewn over what remained of the farmer’s porch and the driveway beyond. Twisted coils of singed, pink insulation hung from the open walls, the home’s guts exposed. The five exposed support studs were shattered, all but the corner beam with gaps between top and bottom. The ruined corner support was cracked at an angle, slowly shifting downward with a groan. The ceiling bent, splitting and releasing clouds of debris.
“The corner’s coming down!” Peter shouted, shoving Ella from behind. She dove out from behind the overturned table, snatched up her AK-47 and made for the slowly crumbling hole in the wall. Peter, still clutching his M16, followed close behind her, watching the top half of the wall descend, its exposed beams looking like giant shattered teeth, closing to swallow them whole.
Ella reached the corner first and slipped between the 16-inch space between studs. Peter knew he’d never fit, so he aimed his weapon at the base of a stud, unleashed six rounds into it and then kicked. The ruined wood bent outward, but not enough for him to fit past. The house shook and the wall dropped a few inches. Peter slung the rifle over his shoulder, took a few steps back and then charged like a linebacker. He struck the bent beam hard, finishing the job a grenade, an assault rifle and his foot had started. He sprawled across the porch, rolled off the side and hit the pavement hard.
With a loud crack, the gaping jaws of the open corner of the house slammed shut. Windows on the second floor shattered, raining down glass. Peter rolled onto his stomach and closed his eyes, waiting for the shards to finish pelting his back and the pavement around him.
“Peter!” Ella shouted, just as he detected vibrations in the pavement beneath his hands.
He looked up and saw two Woolies charging through the faux debris and over carrots, pounding past the side of the house toward their position. Unlike the masterless Woolies they’d encountered before, who stood still without direction, these seemed to have been worked into some kind of kill-everything frenzy.
Staying prone, Peter brought his M16 to bear, shouted, “Aim for the knees!” and then opened fire, unleashing a merciless torrent of lead toward the nearest beast’s legs. Tufts of fur burst off the limbs. Blood followed. And then bone. The beast wailed, but continued forward—until its chipped and cracked femur gave out, spilling the monster to the side and onto its face. Its twisted horn scraped pavement for a moment before catching and shattering.
Ella opened fire beside him, missing the legs and growing quickly frustrated. Then she just fired on full-auto into the giant’s head until it suddenly slowed its assault, stumbled and fell over sideways, its massive tongue lolling out the side of its shattered mouth.
Peter ejected his spent magazine, reached under his chest for a fresh one, and slapped it in. He aimed at the still struggling Woolie he’d taken down, zeroing in on its eye. He pulled the trigger once. The bullet punched through the soft spot and silenced the monster.
He got to his feet and looked back at the house. The front porch was nearly non-existent. The front door was split wide and bent outward, a dead Woolie crammed into the space. Peter and Ella ran together, heading for the far corner, where a jagged hole gave entry to the kitchen. Like the damage to the living room, the support beams at the corner no longer existed, and the floor above had folded downward, but had yet to collapse. Banging echoed out of the hole, fists on the second floor’s metal door.
Ella took a step toward the hole, but Peter stopped her and said, “Look.”
At the back of the house were the three remaining Woolies. They stomped back and forth—looking up.
“They must have gone out the back,” Peter said.
Ella watched the Woolies’ behavior for just a moment before nodding in agreement. “But someone could still be inside.”
Her words were punctuated by the sound of a door slamming open, feet pounding on the floor above and then the sound of flesh striking a second locked door, one that sounded like wood.
“I’ll go inside,” Peter said. “You take the back.”
Without waiting to see if she agreed, Peter ducked into the house. He moved through the kitchen, weapon on his shoulder, sweeping the space like he would have if his old CSO team had been moving in behind him. He nearly said, ‘Clear,’ as he pushed through the kitchen toward the back hall, but he held his tongue to maintain the element of surprise. He stopped at the entryway to the biodome and glanced through the window. The decon space and the greenhouse beyond looked untouched. He moved into the back hall and started up the steps, moving steady and silent. At the top, he inched past the metal door, which hung at an angle. Then he scanned the open-faced hall above.
He noted Brant’s still body and saw the shard of glass protruding from his chest. Peter knew he’d been lucky to not be injured by the glass that fell on him. Brant’s death proved it. “Sorry, buddy,” Peter said, and he pushed past the ruined door.
He was about to turn left, but the sound of wood scratching over wood turned him around. He opened fire without thought, his subconscious identifying the mane of hair as belonging to the enemy. Three rounds punched into the Rider’s back. It dropped in a heap without a sound.
The falling Rider revealed a second, starting out the window.
In normal battle, most soldiers felt a pang of regret or mercy for enemy combatants they were about to kill. In a blazing firefight, such things never crossed the mind, but when a target was in sight and the outcome was predetermined, it could be hard to pull the trigger. Not so with the Rider.
It’s not even human
, Peter thought, thinking of the thing and the window, and Kristen. He pulled the trigger again, striking the thing in the head. It toppled forward out the opening, its heels flailing up and shattering the window. The body hung there for a moment, impaled on glass that gave way and dropped the corpse outside.
A scream from the open window revealed that the kids had fled in that direction. Peter started in, but only made it two steps before a blur emerged from a bright pink room and struck him in the side. He was lifted off the ground by the impact and slammed to the floor beside Brant.
Gasping for air, Peter tried to sit up, but a sudden heavy weight slammed onto his chest, pinning him back and shoving the rest of the air from his lungs. Pain lanced from his shoulders as the Rider atop him jabbed its long nails in Peter’s flesh. He stifled a shout and tried to shove the man away, but he was impossibly heavy despite his emaciated appearance. It was like the man’s muscles and bones had shrunk, but grown tighter and more dense. No matter how much he struggled, Peter wouldn’t be able to free himself from the Rider, and the man’s body blocked all access to his weapon.
Loops of drool dangled from the man’s mouth as he opened it wide, lowering the jaws toward Peter’s neck. Peter shouted in frustration as he fought against the man. But the Rider was too powerful, and Peter had no leverage. He turned away from the monster, looking into Brant’s vacant eyes, which were looking down, as though directing Peter.
While Peter couldn’t reach up, he could reach out. He bent his arm at an angle, pushing it a little farther than it was meant to go, but he found what he was looking for. He popped the button open, wrapped his hand around the handle and pulled. Moving in silence, Peter slammed his hand against the Rider’s back, plunging the blade into its flesh, all the way to the hilt.
The Rider, whose face was just inches from Peter, looked surprised and then confused. Peter pulled the knife out and jabbed again. Then again. And again, until the surprise melted away from the Rider’s face and its body fell backwards. The ExoGen man’s long fingernails slurped out of Peter’s shoulders. Warm blood dripped over his arms, but he paid no attention to it.
He climbed to his feet and ran for the back window, jumping over the king-sized bed and sticking his head out. Ella and the three kids were below, pinned down beside the biodome, the three remaining Woolies charging from three different directions. Ella shouted orders Peter couldn’t hear, but Jakob and Anne responded quickly, aiming at different beasts. But before any of them could fire, the thudding rumble that had been constantly growing louder over the past few moments, turned into a raging thunder.