Empire's End

Thirty-Eight / Little Things

Logan was wasted. He’d drained a bottle of Scotch and was slumped, bleary-eyed, against the bar.

“Dead weight,” Tripper muttered under his breath.

“Is Officer Voorhees going to be safe at your place?” Lily asked him. Tripper shrugged.

Shoving an elbow into his ribs, Cam stepped forward and said, “He’ll be fine. New locks.”

“But that man said they’re setting the city on fire.” Lily pointed to Logan.

“Lily,” said Halstead, kneeling beside the girl, “I’m sure he’ll be okay. We wouldn’t just leave him helpless like that…” Her voice trailed off. Even she couldn’t say it with a straight face.

Lily turned from the others and stalked across the room. Tripper walked over to the dead goons and collected their pistols. “We’re gonna have to get moving here. No time to waste.”

“We need a plan,” Halstead protested.

“Stay alive,” Tripper replied. “That’s the plan.”

“Like I said, we continue east. Using the tunnels,” Cam said. “If we run out of tunnels we’ll take to the streets. I’m not worried about the rotters — it’s the soldiers that have got me nervous.”

“They won’t let us out,” Logan said. “They’ll shoot us dead. I heard their orders. Have to stay underground.”

“Do you know of a way out of the city, Private?” Halstead asked.

“I don’t know.” Logan took a swig from a bottle of vodka.

Tripper swept it from his hand. It smashed into the mirror behind the bar. “We need you to stay sharp, asshole, or else you’re not coming with us!”

Logan laughed bitterly. “You’re not listening to me. We’re already dead! All of us! You, me, the kid — dead!”

Lily pushed open a door at the rear of the room. “Hey, I know this place.”

“Close that,” Halstead called.

“Wait,” said Cam. “Lily, how do you know this place?”

“I’ve been here. Upstairs is where the girls sleep.”

“Oh, God,” Tripper said.

“What girls?” said Halstead.

“Meyer’s prostitutes,” Cam answered.

“Fuck ‘em,” Logan slurred.

“They’re kids,” Cam snapped. Logan looked up at her. “Kids?”

“We ought to go up there,” Tripper said. “We have to. Try to get them out.”

“You want to add another dozen children to our group?” Halstead shook her head. “Tripper, I feel for them just as much as you do. But we’ve got to think logically. Safety in numbers doesn’t apply here. We’d only make ourselves more vulnerable.”

“I don’t know who you are,” Cam said to her. “Listen. Why did Thackeray send us here?”

“They’re burning Gaylen to the ground!” Halstead yelled. “We need to get out of here! Do you think Thackeray would rather that we stay and die trying to save people instead of relocating?”

“All you care about anymore is saving your own ass,” Cam said coldly. She walked over to Lily. “Will you show me where the girls are?”

“I’m going too,” Tripper said. Logan pulled his chainsaw off the bar and said, “What the hell.”

“I guess that’s it, then.” Halstead sighed and followed them through the door.

Lily led them upstairs to a set of doors. “All the beds were in here,” she said.

“Okay. Stand back.” Cam leaned against the door and cupped her hand to her ear. “I don’t hear anything.”

“They might not even be here,” Halstead said.

“Let’s make sure.” Cam took hold of the doorknob and turned it ever so slowly. Then she pushed the door open, just enough to stick her head through and have a look.

The room was very dark. She could barely make out the outlines of the beds. There wasn’t a soul to be seen. She pushed the door the rest of the way open. “Nothing?” Tripper whispered. She nodded.

Then a small shadow rose from behind one of the beds.

“Little girl?” Cam beckoned. “It’s okay. Come here.”

Another girl rose on the other side of the room. Then another, and another. They stood stock-still.

“Come here! We won’t hurt you.” Cam stepped into the room.

One of the girls walked out into the aisle. Behind her, like a doll, she dragged a severed arm.

“Oh fuck—”

Another half dozen girls rose and stalked into the aisle. Low, raspy growls escaped their throats. Then they ran at Cam.

She swung the machine gun up and cut into them, the muzzle flare lighting up their dead faces before they were kicked back into the darkness. They each hit the floor and struggled back up in turn, charging forward again.

Tripper knocked the other door open and sprayed them with Uzi fire. They kept coming — even those whose legs were sawed off by bullets simply pulled themselves along the floor, screaming ravenously.

Halstead grabbed Lily. “Downstairs! C’mon!”

Logan pushed past her and into the room. The chainsaw roared to life over his head. “Get back!” he yelled.

The girls surged at him. He tore into them at head level, cleaving through their little skulls with a metallic snarl. Brain matter gushed into the air. Their tiny hands clawed at his legs. He plunged the saw straight down into their chests, splitting them open and knocking their bodies back.

One girl leapt onto his arm, jaws snapping. He hurled her to the floor and cast the saw blade through her face. Logan turned away to avoid the rain of infected blood.

Downstairs, Halstead pushed Lily toward the bar entrance. “We’ve gotta get back into the tunnels!”

She threw open the trapdoor. “Go Lily!”

The girl looked toward the door through which they’d just come. The saw’s whine and Logan’s mad screaming could still be heard. “I want to wait!” she insisted.

Halstead started down the ladder. “Lily, I want you to come with me—”

Her foot slipped on a greasy rung and she toppled out of sight.

Lily looked down the hole and saw Halstead lying prone on the tunnel floor. She backed away, fear overtaking her. Gunfire erupted upstairs. Lily ran for the door on the other side of the room — the door leading out to the street — and started pulling chairs and tables away from it.

She had to get out. The children were going to kill Cam and Tripper and the soldier and then come spilling downstairs and into the tunnel. She had to get out of there. She jerked on the door handle in a panic. “Open! Open!”

It did.

She plunged into the snow.

Wading through the drift that had piled up against the building, Lily stumbled into the street and surveyed her surroundings. Distant booms could be heard; distant screams too.

A man ran toward her. She shrieked, thinking him undead, but he cried, “No! No! I’m not one of them!”

He reached out for her. Then something dropped onto his back from a ledge overhead and he fell, and Lily saw it was a hideous four-armed rotter, flaying the man’s back open with its black claws, making a terrible rattling sound like corpse-laughter and then the Geek’s eyes settled on her.

She ran down the middle of the street. Her fingers and toes were already numb. The wind drove tiny needles into her face, and as she turned her head away from it she tripped over a dead woman’s leg. Slamming into the asphalt, Lily rolled over to see the Geek lumbering after her. It was slow, relaxed, confident. Its arms swayed from side to side and it licked its lips with half a tongue.

Lily rose to her knees, her face covered in a thin layer of frost, expression blank, and waited for the end to come. It had always been coming, always right on her heels, a cold shadow nipping at her soul; and now it had her. It hadn’t mattered that she’d fled the dead girls. No escape, ever.

The Geek threw its arms open and howled.

The horse’s hooves kicked up a violent flurry of snow as Adam drove it down the street, the street from his dreams, slapping the side of the scythe against the ribs of his steed and hollering “EYAH! EYAH!”

She saw him. His skin was black and his cloak was white but it was him, her Reaper, and he was hurtling toward the Geek like a locomotive.

The rotter turned. It saw what was bearing down on it and crossed its arms before its face in mortal terror.

Adam swung down, clinging to the side of the horse with his legs, and drove the blade into the Geek’s stomach, lifting the undead off the ground and sending its dead body spinning through the air before it landed headfirst with a spine-shattering impact.

Adam swung to the other side of the horse and snatched Lily with his left hand, depositing her in front of him. He wrapped him arm securely around her waist.

“You came,” she said breathlessly.

“You knew I would,” he said.

“I know.”

She glanced over her shoulder. “You look different.”

“I am.”

“What do we do now?”

“First, I’m going to get you to safety,” Adam said, eyes on the road ahead. “Then I’m going to kill them.”