The Hysteria: Book 4, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (23 page)

I heard engines roaring in the distance over the crash of thunder. I strained my eyes to see but I didn’t have to. My ears told me the story. Some very large vehicles were coming down the street.

Then the road behind the trees lit up, silhouetting all the knifers hiding beyond the parking lot. There were so many.

“They’ve got buses,” I said.

I remembered Quick telling me about the stolen buses. They’d taken them for transport.

The first school bus made a wide turn into the parking lot.

Dyer said, “Tires and windows!”

Everybody started shooting. The windshield spiderwebbed and then shattered a second later. But I couldn’t see the driver.

One tire blew out but the bus kept coming. It picked up speed and hurtled toward the front door beneath us.

The second bus turned into the lot and the driver gunned the engine.

“They’re coming! They’re coming!” somebody on the rear wall shouted.

I was already out of ammo. I reloaded. Megan had three gophers on the roof, waiting to supply the shooters with ammo. Eamon was helping them.

The whole building shook when the first bus crashed into the front door. No barricade was keeping that door in place.

“They’re hiding in the brush back here. About halfway. They have long sticks!” somebody shouted on the rear wall.

I couldn’t tear my eyes off the front parking lot as the second bus made a beeline for the row of panel windows along the front of the building. Dyer went to work on the driver’s window. Again, it shattered but I saw nobody.

“Have to be hiding behind the dash!” I said.

“We need to hold fire,” Dyer said. “This is all wasted ammo.”

Megan was behind us and heard him. “HOLD! Everybody HOLD!”

The gunfire stopped.

“Brace yourselves!” Megan said.

The second bus slammed into the front of the building.

Megan said, “Anybody in those buses other than the drivers?”

“Can’t see anybody!” the shooters on our flanks said.

Splash. Splash.

Something was landing on the roof. I looked behind me.

In time to see a man get skewered by a javelin.

It hit him in the shoulder and he pirouetted backward, making a splash in the overflow on the roof. Lightning lit up the sky, long enough for me to see the dark swirl of blood in the water.

“Cover!” I said.

But there was no cover to take. Nobody had anticipated spears.

Splash.             

Splash
.

A javelin thunked against the wall between me and Dyer. Against the stormy night sky, it was impossible to see the incoming projectiles.

“Parking lot!”

There was nothing to do except hope I didn’t get impaled. I picked up my rifle and secured it against the roof wall in my spot. Behind me, somebody took a spear badly. I heard agonizing screams that I would hear for the rest of my life in my worst nightmares.

Assuming there was a rest of my life.

The line of knifers were running toward us. Not in a straight line but in an intricate pattern that reminded me of the skating I’d seen thirty minutes ago downstairs. They zigged and zagged and looked like they would crash into each other at every turn, but nobody went down.

They reached the last row of parking spaces.

“Fire!” Megan said.

We did.

I put my sights on the biggest and slowest ones I could find. I didn’t expect to hit the fast ones. I fired and nobody went down.

“Remember to shoot when you’re breathing out!” Dyer said. He fired in a steady pattern. His rifle tracked slowly and he pulled the trigger again three seconds later.

I took his advice and resighted one of the slower runners. He was a big man, probably two hundred and seventy-five pounds. He wasn’t moving fast. I put my sights on him, breathed out, and fired.

I saw the red mist snipers talk about and the big man went down.

Another javelin hit the wall next to me. I forced myself to ignore it and kept my aim true on my next target. She was a she. From a rainy football field away, I couldn’t see any details. But she was definitely somebody’s daughter and she might have been somebody’s mother.

I pulled the trigger and she went down. I couldn’t process the true horror of what was happening.

Bodies were collecting in the wake of the first line.

Then the second line of knifers formed at the end of the parking lot. Three hundred more about to come our way.

“Bus!” Dyer shouted.

The emergency hatch on top of the second bus opened. The hatch opened toward the roof so I couldn’t see what was happening until it was too late.

A spear shot out of the second bus and hit a shooter in the corner of the roof.

The first bus’s engine revved and made a dozen horrible mechanical sounds. I thought the engine was wrecked, but the bus started backing up. Smoke poured out of the hood.

It backed up and turned so it was broadside to us, about ten feet from the building.

Megan stepped between me and Dyer. “That bus breached the front door.”

Another spear shot out of the second bus and nearly got somebody in the neck.

The survivors of the first line were inside one hundred feet and bounding toward the broadsided bus. I targeted a fast-moving guy in a trench coat, breathed out, and fired. I hit him in the leg and he face planted on the pavement.

The second line of knifers was moving fast too.

“Everybody move to the front of the roof!” Megan shouted.

Our other shooters followed her orders. Soon we were shoulder-to-shoulder on the front wall.

“What’s going on behind us?” I said.

Megan said, “Spears have stopped. I have Eamon keeping an eye. There’s only a couple hundred hiding back there. All the action’s out here.”

She forced a space between me and Dyer and drew her handgun.

“Can they get up the rear wall?” I said.

“Not without a ladder or a grappling hook.”

I looked over my shoulder. Eamon was on his knees, his head barely above the roof. He was keeping watch.

“Get somebody else back there too. I don’t trust that fucking kid,” I said.

“Everybody else is busy, Eddie! You have to learn how to deal with this.”

I went back to shooting. Every second or third shot, I mowed some poor sick person down. Best I could do with no training and the weather and absolute terror gripping me.

The second bus started backing up and turned its side toward us. Smoke poured out of its engine also. The driver nudged the nose of the bus against the rear of the other one. Both buses were about twenty feet away from the front door. The wind pushed the smoke from their engines toward our building.

Perfect. A fucking smokescreen.

The buses formed a line that was about eighty feet long. A lot of people could take cover under, inside, and behind them.

I nudged Megan. “Let’s take out all the windows. I want that smoke to get inside.”

“Good idea.”

I took my time and hit every window I looked at. So did she. By now a third line of knifers was coming out of the woods and sprinting across the parking lot.

We kept shooting. There were a lot of bodies in the parking lot. Many of them moving slowly, crawling. Their fallen comrades formed roadblocks for the next wave of knifers and slowed them down.

Dyer stopped shooting. “Take a breather, everybody!”

Megan echoed Dyer’s order. Everybody stopped firing. My shoulder was beginning to ache from the rifle’s kick.

The knifers had congregated behind the buses. We’d spent a lot of ammo trying to hit them as they ran across the parking lot. Now they were hiding, out of our line of fire.

“There’s twenty feet between those buses and the front door,” Dyer said. “If they want to cross the kill zone, let them.”

Megan ran to the hatch and shouted down. “How’s the barricade?”

I couldn’t hear the response but Megan relayed it.

“Barricade is being refortified. We’re okay.”

“How about behind us?” I said.

Somebody on the rear wall answered. “They’re still out there, taking cover.”

“How many?”

“Call it a hundred.”

Quick mental math. We’d seen three lines of knifers cross the parking lot. Nine hundred people. We’d killed a lot of them. Maybe most of them. I did the grim math.

Two to three hundred in front of us, one hundred behind us.

More still along the road and in the tree line.

“Can they get into the rink from behind us?” I was thinking about that back door Megan had shown me.

“No,” Megan said.

“You’re sure?”

“Asked and answered.”

Dyer picked up on what I was thinking. “Move all the shooters to the front here. If they’re out of spears behind us, I don’t give a shit about them.”

Megan shouted the order. The shooters from the rear wall filled in the gaps along the front wall.

Megan said, “Good, clean shots. Waste anybody that comes around those buses.”

We waited. The smoke was still coming out of the engines. I kept one eye on the buses and the other on the tree line. If I had time to stop and think, I wouldn’t have believed what was happening. Or what was about to happen.

Two squads came out from the sides of the bus line. We started mowing them down. Another group broke from the tree line for the buses because we were concentrating on the foreground.

One, two, three, four…I lost count. I was on autopilot, like in a video game. They just kept coming out from behind the buses. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. The butt of the rifle kicked my shoulder with each pull of the trigger.

The rain kept pouring.

“Everybody stay calm!” Megan shouted. “They can’t get in so even if they get to the buses we can pick them off when they come out.”

We focused on the knifers coming out from behind the buses. Let the others get close because it was easier to snipe them that way. Slow, methodical shooting. The bodies piled up. Lightning lit up the sky. The rainwater flooding the parking lot was filled with blood.

I couldn’t comprehend what was happening. And I didn’t want to.

“Jesus, that one was a kid!” somebody shouted.

I didn’t look. I couldn’t look.

“That kid was coming to kill you!” Megan said.

They kept coming. The next squad had crossed the parking lot and were crowding behind the buses. We could see their heads.

“Opportunity.” Dyer angled his rifle upward and snapped off three shots.

I brought my gun up too but he tapped my shoulder.

“Focus on the killing zone. I’ll get them.”

I did.

Dyer went to work on scoping the knifers who were too many to hide behind the bus. They fell one-by-one.

And they started to panic.

With nowhere to hide they all flooded around the buses, desperate to get inside the rink. Another line formed at the end of the parking lot but we ignored it.

Because there were hundreds of murderers moving as one big crowd toward the entrance.

It made the killing easier.

“They’re close!” somebody shouted. I heard the panic in his voice and didn’t understand it. We just had to hold them off. Even the world’s worst shooter could hit them now. They were too many, they were stuck in a choke point, they weren’t retreating.

Megan said, “Relax! Everybody, relax!”

Why were they so worried? Megan ran off and came back with the news the barricade was holding. We were winning. We were going to win. Without guns, the knifers couldn’t breach the rink. We were working through our ammo but nobody was panicked yet.

It was all going so well.

Until it wasn’t.

Dyer was the first to faint.

Then it was like dominoes.

“They’re getting too close!” Megan said.

All at once the shooting stopped. It seemed like I was the only one firing my rifle.

I said, “Check the barricade!”

But Megan didn’t answer.

I peeled my eyes away from the parking lot and saw her on the ground. She was face-up in the water. And then I realized the larger problem.

Many of the people that had fainted were face down in the three inches of water on the roof.

I slung the rifle around my shoulder and took out the smelling salts. I pulled one man out of the drink. He was choking, half-awake.

“Somebody help me!” I yelled.

But there was no one. They’d all fainted.

Fortunately it was only fainting. Syncope is defined as a transient loss of consciousness with a rapid onset, brief duration, and spontaneous recovery.

So they all came to. But half of them had water in their lungs because unconscious people don’t hold their breath.

The man I was helping hacked and threw up. He didn’t sound good but he was breathing. I used the smelling salts on Megan. She shot up like she’d been zapped, her eyes wide.

“Everybody fainted! Help them!” I said.

“Where are you…” She wasn’t quite with it yet.

“I have to make sure we’re holding downstairs.”

She came back to the moment and stood up. Half her shooters were nearly drowned. The others were just coming to.

“Are they just going to keep fainting?” I shouted at Megan. “Or is it one-and-done?”

“I don’t know.”

I put my rifle against the wall. It wasn’t good for close-quarters shooting. I’d use the handgun for that.

I hoped I didn’t need to.

***

I gripped the rails of the metal ladder and didn’t bother with the rungs. I slid down the ladder to the ground floor. I heard gunfire. That was good. At least some people were still shooting.

The door to the boiler room was still closed. I didn’t bother checking on Manetti, figured she was still in there. I hustled to the rink.

There were about six people on their feet. Two of them were shooting handguns through the slots in the boarded-up windows. The other four were at the barricade. Three of them trying to hold it in place and Mia shooting through it.

I had the smelling salts out and went person-to-person. I woke up ten and ordered four to work on the barricade, the other four to get back to shooting, and the remaining two to come with me.

I didn’t know them. They didn’t know me. But they listened.

“Stay on the other side of the rink so you’re not so close to the knifers. Your job is to keep from fainting and wake the others up when they do.”

They nodded. I didn’t know if it’d work but it was something.

We had six guns firing again on the ground floor. Over the downpour I heard the screams of the wounded and soon-to-be-dead outside. It was a slaughter.

The rest of them were waking up. More guns fired.

I went to the ladder. Megan was on the roof, looking down.

I gave her the thumbs-up. She reciprocated.

I decided to check on Manetti. Better to be safe than sorry. I went down the hallway to the boiler room and opened the door.

The chair was empty.

Manetti wasn’t in there.