Domino Falls (36 page)

As he spoke, his shot went wild, and Darius had to take out the bare-chested runner leading the pack to the tunnel entrance. It took six rapid shots to take down three of them. Then he could answer. “Gotta take the runners first.”

“Too many,” Dean said.

Their conversation was punctuated by rifle shots in quick succession while the woods vomited freaks. Runners led the charge, but a mass of shamblers would follow.

“Too many for us is
way
too many if you're in that tunnel,” Darius said.

Somewhere behind them, a low moan floated on the wind. “Told you before,” Dean said. “We're not all gonna make it.”

“Says you.” Darius fired again, and an overweight freak teetered and fell. “Take the runners. Can't be much more fresh meat around here. Then we go.” He'd taken out two more runners while he spoke, although the second needed two shots. Damn. He didn't have ammo to waste. No more distractions.

While seconds passed as hours, the cousins littered the ground with freaks of all shapes, sizes, and ages. Darius shut out his awareness of movement close to them, focusing only on making his shots. Any freak he missed might make it into the tunnel, and any freak who made it into the tunnel could kill his friends.

As he'd feared, the shamblers were coming next. He'd only seen three so far, approaching from different points, but they traveled in packs.

But none of them seemed to be running now.

Dean was already on his feet. “Let's move!” he said.

The moonlight and high grass came back into focus, and Darius realized that a half-dozen shadowed shamblers were approaching from a knoll twenty yards west of them. If the nearby freaks had blocked their way to the bikes, they might have had to waste precious ammo on them.

“We won't get them all,” Dean panted as they raced for the bikes, running awkwardly in the heavy ghillie suits. “But we can cut the numbers.”

“Drive fast, and we still might keep them out,” Darius said, straddling his bike.

Dean fired his engine, casting Darius a pitying gaze. “Don't look back, cuz,” he said. “They're already in.”

T
he
rifle shots had stopped, but the sound of the ringing bell filled the tunnel, sending the caged freaks around them into a riot. Cell doors rattled, ready to fly from their hinges. Terry was jogging so quickly that he tripped over a freak's forearm. Only Ursalina's quick reflexes kept him from falling to the floor, where a freak might have scratched his face.

“Terry?” Kendra said, frightened, grabbing his other arm.

“I'm fine,” Terry said. “Everybody keep moving.”

“What if they get out?” Sonia said.

“Take a look,” Piranha said. “Can't walk, see? Legs are broken. We just have to get to the door. The Twins should have our backs after that.”

“How do we know the Twins were the ones shooting?” Kendra said.

“I know their rifles,” Ursalina said. “It was them. They probably took off to draw Wales's men away.”

Terry hadn't been able to hear every shot over the tunnel's
noise, but he was sure he had heard at least ten, probably far more. Maybe Ursalina was right, or maybe the Twins had changed their firing position, but that didn't mean the Twins had taken out every Gold Shirt who might be waiting at the other end.

But so far, no one had challenged them. Did that mean Wales's men were waiting to ambush them, or was the way clear? Forging ahead into the tunnel didn't feel smart, but they couldn't go back after the way Rianne had been screaming.
Stick to the plan.

Terry had just worked up his nerve to run faster when the bright image in his flashlight's beam made them pile into one another and take a collective gasp. How?

At least three freaks, maybe more, stood tall and ominously uncaged in their path. Their bent posture and shuffling feet identified them as shamblers, but how the hell had they gotten out? And why weren't their legs broken?

Hippy barked valiantly, but he didn't charge. Somehow, he knew better, which Terry took as a very bad sign. Hippy yelped as if he were facing an army.

“Aw, damn,” Piranha said. “We didn't lock the gates when we came in.”

“You said their legs were broken!” Sonia said. Instinctively, they all drew closer together. Thank God the freaks were shamblers, but how many were there? How long would their ammo last?

Three guns chambered, ready to shoot. Terry held the light steady with one hand and aimed his Glock with the other.

“Nobody fire,” Ursalina said. “Not till we see how many there are.”

“Maybe we missed a few,” Terry said. “Maybe a cell door broke . . .”

They could handle three or four shamblers, easy. They might not even have to backtrack to the last freakproof gate they'd passed, which would cost them progress and might trap them in the tunnel. The shamblers were moving forward, leaning over eagerly as they dragged their near-dead legs, but they were still twenty feet away, which might as well be a mile, in shambler distance. So far, the three shamblers were alone.

“Okay,” Terry said, slowing his breathing. “I say we take them down and—”

Then the shambler on the far left was pushed aside, and a runner broke his way through at full speed. He'd been an old man before he was bitten, but freak juice had given him new legs. “Tax time!” the freak growled, leaping at them.

Three of them fired at him at once, an explosion, and the freaks jerked, spun, and fell against the walls, scrabbling at the air as they collapsed.

“Hold your fire!”
Ursalina yelled, but at least eight rounds had been spent before Terry realized she'd spoken. The discipline they'd had at the Barracks, and then with the Yreka pirates, had dissolved in the darkness.

Please let that be the end of it,
Terry prayed.

But even if he'd imagined the mass movement in his flashlight's beam, he recognized the sound of freaks' moans and countless feet shuffling toward them. It
couldn't
be, and yet . . .

Sonia cursed, the first to understand. “The bell! Wales did this! The bastard
called
them.”

They should have retreated as soon as they heard the gunshots. The Twins had been shooting freaks, not Gold Shirts. Who knew how many biters lurked in the surrounding woods? Wales had done worse than let the freaks in—he had invited them to feast. That was a dinner bell.

Come and get it!

“Back!” Terry yelled.

Rianne had curled herself in a ball on the floor, shrieking, while Kendra tried to pull her back to her feet. Where had the last freakproof gate been? Maybe twenty-five yards back? They could make it if—

As soon as Terry turned to retreat, the thunder of approaching footsteps told him there were at least two more runners coming fast.

“Runners!” Kendra shouted, still tugging on Rianne, not giving up on her. The terror in her voice made Terry wish he weren't so scared himself or that he knew how to protect any of them.

One runner seemed to duck Ursalina's shot, angling its head to the side, but Sonia slammed its head with the bat. The freak didn't fall, but its momentary misstep gave Piranha time to shoot it in the temple before it reached them. The freak had gotten so close that they smelled the sour
whoof
as its last breath escaped. Ursalina stopped the second runner in mid-step, before he broke past the wall of shamblers.

Terry's heart was beating so hard that his vision blurred and the walls seemed to collapse on him. How many freaks were there?

Outside, gunshots again.

“The Twins!” Ursalina said. “They repositioned.”

“I say we keep going!” Piranha said. “They're thinning the numbers.”

The shamblers were only fifteen feet away, lurching in a tangle of limbs.

“We can't,” Kendra said. She sounded like she was begging.

“No, he's right,” Ursalina agreed. “If we go back to the basement, we'll never leave here alive. This way, we've got a chance. We keep going and take them down.”

Terry nodded. The plan was terrifying, but it was the only one they had. “Everybody stay together. Nobody runs ahead or back.”

“I don't have a gun!” Rianne wailed.

“You and Kendra stick close to us,” Piranha said. “Gimme that bat, Sonia.”

“What?” Sonia protested.

Piranha offered her his gun instead. “Twelve rounds left. Don't waste them.”

Sonia traded weapons with Piranha. She wiped away a tear.

“Where's your extra clip?” Ursalina asked Piranha.

He tossed it to her. “We need a miracle,
chica.
Do what you do.”

“Give me your flashlight,” Kendra told Terry. “Rianne, take the other one. Let's make sure they can see.”

“How far till the end?” Ursalina said, shoving the clip in her bosom.

“Almost a hundred yards. A long way. So let's stay in a circle,” Terry said, trying to calculate his own ammo. Eight rounds in his clip, maybe, and another clip in his pocket. At an average of two shots apiece, that was ten or more dead freaks. “Keep the light where we need it. Ready, guys?”

None of them spoke. They weren't ready. If they'd had time, they might have hugged good-bye. But even the shamblers were too close now, and another runner was surely coming.

With a war cry, Piranha lunged ahead with his bat, smashing the skull of the stick-thin female freak closest to him. Without missing a beat, he charged the next one, a man dressed in a grimy Mickey Mouse shirt. For an instant, Piranha vanished in darkness, but Kendra followed him with her light and they all waded behind him.

A wiry teenage freak turned to grab Piranha, and the tunnel flashed white with Terry's gunshot. The kid's head snapped
back, a cratered third eye just above his nose. Ursalina's gunfire followed, taking down two freaks in quick succession.

“You shine left, I'll shine right,” Kendra told Rianne, and suddenly the path ahead looked clear and bright, crowded with approaching freaks. Terry was too busy shooting to try to count them.

“Watch where you step!” Terry said. “Even if they fall, they might not be dead.”

It was working! Somehow, they were bringing down enough freaks to keep moving forward at a steady pace, and no one had been touched.

“Light!” Ursalina called when Rianne's beam faltered, and Rianne shined the light left just in time for them to see a burly runner muscling his way past his slower cousins, his bearded face a mask of rage. The sight of him was so startling that all three shooters fired at him at once.

When the oversized freak fell, he pinned two shamblers beneath him.

“Watch it!” Ursalina called over her shoulder. “Somebody almost clipped me.”

“Sor-ry,” Sonia singsonged, or Terry thought she did. His ears were numbed, overwhelmed by the ringing bell and the gunshots in close quarters. His entire world was muzzle flashes and blurred motion. Hippy barked and whined, intelligent enough to stay behind them.

Terry never heard Kendra scream, but he saw her light swinging wildly, so he looked toward her in time to realize that one of the caged freaks had caught her by the ankle. He saw her mouth wide open with anguished terror. Terry ran to Kendra, stomping on the freak's wrist with all his strength, and felt bones snap.

“Go!” he told Kendra, his own voice muddy to his ears.

If Terry's hearing hadn't been impaired—if the light had been in place, if he hadn't been so preoccupied with Kendra—he might have noticed the runner sooner.

The oncoming freak had a mane of curly red hair, and he must have lost his balance, because he was pitching ahead on all fours instead of standing upright. Terry saw him only when he rose to his full height after skirting the mass behind him, and by then they were already wrestling. Terry's gun was trapped in his palm on the floor.

He's too strong. Oh God, oh God,
Terry thought, panic poisoning rational thought.

The freak was stronger, driven by something more than an individual's will to survive. Bucking didn't throw him, and the freak's rancid teeth gnashed near Terry's face, nearly touching the tip of his nose. Terry turned his head away and tried to roll far enough to free his gun.

Liquid pain swallowed Terry's left shoulder blade. The pain was liberating, infused him with strength. With a frantic yell, Terry wrenched his other shoulder free to bring out his Glock and shoot the beast in the side of the head. The freak shuddered against him and fell still.

“Got him!” Terry called to reassure the others, especially poor Kendra, whose scream was so loud that it penetrated the din. “I'm okay!”

Piranha helped pull Terry to his feet, and Terry scrambled away from his attacker as if the dead freak might spring back to his feet.

“You good?” Piranha said, close to Terry's face, searching his eyes for the truth. Terry saw him try to glance back toward his injured shoulder.

“I'm good!” With his adrenaline sizzling, Terry almost believed it. “Keep going!”

All three guns fired at the diminishing wave of freaks, and Piranha slammed heads with his bat until Terry was sure he would collapse from exhaustion. Every close call met a happy ending, and they stayed on their feet and fought their way forward.

By the time the last gun was empty, the moonlight on the other side of the tunnel was close enough to touch. Terry blinked away grateful tears, pulling Kendra close to him. He had just lived through a miracle worthy of its own unholy book.

Thank God,
he thought.
Nobody got bitten . . . but me.

M
yles
and Deirdre looked as shaken as Kendra felt when their car met them at the tunnel exit and they drove their bumpy passage over a field of fallen freaks. Only a few stragglers were still making their way from the woods, too far to threaten them.