The Walls of Lemuria (26 page)

Keo nodded. “That’s the plan.”

“What’s that?”

“Find a lot of time to waste.”

“I don’t understand.”

“If I have a lot of time on my hands, that means I’m still alive, Levy.”

“Oh,” Levy said.

*

Gillian was standing
in the right side hallway when they came through the back door.

“They turned,” she said. “Gavin and Bowe. They’ve both turned.”

“How long ago?” Keo asked.

“I don’t know, but they only started trying to break down their doors about five minutes ago. Norris is there, just in case they manage to get out.”

They crossed the living room to the left side hallway, where Norris stood guard outside Gavin’s room, watching the door moving in tune to the
thump-thump
coming from the other side. The doorknob jiggled as someone
(something)
pulled at it, but the lock they had put in last night was holding. The same thing was happening to Levy’s room down the hall, where they had put Gavin.

Norris looked over. “Gavin started up first, then Earl and Bowe joined in.”

“Did they communicate somehow?” Keo asked.

“Not that I heard.”

“Maybe whispered?”

“The walls are too thick for whispering,” Levy said. He looked from one door to the other and back again. His friends were in there. Keo didn’t pretend to know what it was like for him at the moment.

“What now?” Gillian asked. “What do we do with them?”

“They want to come out,” Keo said. “So we’ll let them come out.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Not at all,” Keo said, and looked over his shoulder at the open window across the living room. “We’ll need to close that up first.”

“You really think it’ll fall for it?” Norris said doubtfully.

“I don’t think they’re that smart.” He looked back at the door, moving against Bowe’s and Earl’s fists. “I think once they turn, they’re stuck operating on very primitive base instincts. And right now, they want to come out and feed. So let’s give them both.”

*

Keo had an
idea of how to do it, but it all depended on whether Earl, Gavin, and Bowe would cooperate. They decided to set their sights on the first room, the one with Earl and Bowe inside because it was closer, though Keo had a moment of doubt. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to deal with two of them at the same time. What if it all went sideways? They had barely survived Earl, and now they were going to risk it with Earl and Bowe?

To hell with it. Two for the price of one. Now that’s daebak.

“Go,” Keo said.

Norris slipped the key into the padlock over Gavin’s door, but didn’t turn it right away. Instead, he looked back at Keo, then over his shoulder at Levy. “We really going to do this?”

“Yeah,” Keo said.

“You answered kind of fast there.”

“It’ll work.”

The ex-cop sighed. “Easy for you to say. You’re over there and I’m over here.”

“Hey, you lost the coin toss.”

“Dammit,” Norris said, and returned his focus to the door in front of him.

Rachel and the kids were outside the house, but Gillian had insisted on staying behind. She watched from the living room with Levy, standing partially in shadows because they had closed the front door and all the windows back up, which gave the house a dark, cave-like feel. She looked tense, and he guessed she was having second thoughts about being in here at the moment.

“Do it,” Keo said.

“Yeah, yeah, hold your horses,” Norris grunted back.

Norris took another deep breath, then turned the key in the padlock and tugged it out of the loop and stepped back almost in the same motion.

The door remained closed, Earl and Bowe having given up banging on it a few minutes ago, almost as if they could sense
(Could they?)
what was about to happen outside. Norris backpedaled out of the hallway, not stopping until he was inside the living room with Gillian and Levy, who was clutching his AR-15 in front of him.

Keo remained where he was, partially hidden in the shadows next to the window that faced the left side hallway. He waited, but Gavin’s door remained closed. He listened for sounds of movement but could only hear Norris’s accelerated breathing across the room, and maybe Levy’s and Gillian’s, too.

“They’re not coming out,” Norris said. He was at an angle where he could look into the hallway and see the door.

“Give them time,” Keo said.

“How much time?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like I’ve done this before.”

“Oh, now you tell me.”

“If you’re so impatient, why don’t you go over there and open the door for them? Invite them out.”

Norris seemed to actually think about it. “Maybe I should.”

“Go on. I’ll wait.”

“I got a better idea,” Norris said. “Let’s flip for it again. Heads I go, tails you—”

Click!
as the door opened.

Norris took another (involuntary) step back and clutched his M4. Gillian might have gasped out loud, while Levy stood perfectly still, as if he were rooted to the floorboards and couldn’t move even if he wanted to.

“One of them’s coming out,” Norris said.

Keo didn’t have to move to see into the hallway from his spot, but it also gave him a very limited angle on the walls themselves. He couldn’t tell if Earl’s room was open since the door swung inward. So he waited and listened, but mostly he kept tabs on Norris, who had the better view.

“Any day now,” Norris said.

They didn’t have to wait too much longer before long, blackened fingers slipped out of the open door and grasped one side of the doorframe. The bony fingers dug in, taking a firm hold, before Earl’s head appeared in the hallway and tilted, black sockets and tiny slits where eyes used to be searching them out. His black flesh looked at home in the shadows, while sharp bones underneath tight skin moved at unnatural angles.

Then a second creature appeared in the doorway.

Bowe.

The sight of two of them, sticking their heads out of the open door, so far and yet so close that he could
smell
them—like rotting cabbage—made Keo rethink everything. Because this was a stupid plan that depended on too many factors to work. All it would take was one mistake and they would all die. God knew they couldn’t shoot the damn things.

Two pairs of black eyes rested on Norris, who stood the closest to them. Gillian and Levy, standing slightly behind Norris, both took an involuntary step further back. Keo didn’t think they even knew what they were doing when they did it. It was human nature to back away from overt danger. It was difficult to look at the two shriveled, unnatural things that used to be Earl and Bowe and not see death.

Living, breathing,
moving
death.

Norris seemed undeterred. Or maybe he was just putting up a really good front. Either way, he didn’t move from his spot and instead gritted his teeth back at the monsters eyeing him. “Come on out, you ugly sonofabitches. What are you waiting for?”

The creatures bared their teeth at him. Ugly teeth. Cracked, stained teeth. How the hell had they gotten so bad so fast? It was as if acid had chewed on them, turned them into jagged sticks jutting out from gooey, bleeding gums.

“Come on,” Norris said. “Come get me, you sonofa—” He didn’t get to finish because the creatures bounded out of the room and made a straight line for him.

They were fast. So fast.

Keo didn’t realize how fast they really were until he saw two of them moving side by side. He imagined cheetahs stalking prey on the plains.

And Norris was that prey, even as he stumbled back and shouted, “Now, kid, now!”

Norris was backing up so fast that he tripped over his own feet and fell down on his ass.

Just like Bowe did last night…

Keo pulled back on the chains that kept the wooden plate over the window next to him. It wasn’t exactly like jerking on a regular window curtain, because the damn thing weighed a ton. The barricade was halfway up, streaks of sunlight pouring in instantly, when the creatures were halfway to Norris. They might have actually made it if they had kept going, but the sudden brightness must have surprised them, and they stopped and their heads snapped in his direction almost in unison.

A splash of morning flashed across the room and hit Earl’s legs first because he was closest, and the creature let out a loud squeal as both bent legs turned ash white, the flesh becoming instantaneously brittle against direct contact with sunlight.

The creature that used to be Bowe turned and fled back into the hallway.

Keo kept pulling and the wooden plate kept rising, until a large swath of the living room was flooded with sunlight. Bowe, halfway back to the hallway, seemed to freeze in place and let out a pained noise. It might have even screamed if it had gotten the chance.

But it didn’t. Neither one of them did.

Their faces turned white, then gray, then brittle along with their torso and arms and they fell apart as if their entire being had come unglued. Flesh and muscle and organs evaporated in a puff of black-gray clouds, the exposed skeletal remains crumpling to the faux wooden floors in separate piles not far away from one another.

Norris scrambled back up to his feet, brushing at ash that had fallen over his pants. He coughed and so did Keo, the acidic stench of the creatures stinging his nostrils and eyes.

Levy and Gillian walked over, holding rags to their mouths and noses, and stood over the bony remains of the two creatures. They swiped at the lingering cloud and stared down wordlessly at what used to be Earl and Bowe.

“Damn, it worked,” Norris said.

“Told you,” Keo said.

“Right. You told me. I saw you almost peeing in your pants over there.”

Keo grinned back.

Norris crouched next to Earl’s bones and took out a hunting knife from a sheath. He jammed the blade into a part of the ribcage and pried something loose, then tossed it to Keo. “Souvenir,” Norris said.

“What is it?” Gillian asked, her voice muffled by the rag over her mouth.

“One of the 9mm bullets from last night,” Keo said. “It must have gotten lodged in Earl’s ribcage when I shot him.”

Norris straightened up and put his knife away, looking down the hallway at Levy’s room. “Two down, one to go…”

*

It was harder
with Gavin. The fact that he
(it)
didn’t come out of the room right away when Norris unlocked it wasn’t a surprise. Earl and Bowe hadn’t, either. But after an hour of waiting and he still hadn’t come out, Keo considered the very real possibility that the creature knew, somehow, what had happened to Earl and Bowe.

Curiouser and curiouser…

Eventually, they were able to lure Gavin out using Norris as bait once again. He stood outside the open door for five minutes, just waiting for Gavin to make his move.

“Come on, you stupid sonofabitch!” Norris shouted into the door. “I can you see in there. Come on out! You know you want this! Prime American beef here, asshole!”

That did it.

Norris practically dived out of the hallway, screaming, “Do it do it do it!” as Gavin lunged out of the open door after him.