Empire's End

Forty-Three / Abattoir

A series of ear-splitting booms shook the library. For a second, Tripper thought it was all going to come down on them. “What the fuck is that?”

“Rockets,” said Logan. “They’re using the rockets. Jesus, this is really it. The end.”

The doors groaned as the undead continued their assault. Then there was a clattering on the roof. Falling debris? Running to the center of the room, Tripper peered at a boarded-up skylight and listened to the rhythmic sound: clop-clop-clop…

The skylight exploded. Wood and glass rained down on him.

A man, shrouded in white but blackened and burned underneath, dropped into the room. He held a child in his arms — Lily!

“You’re all right!” Halstead cried. She took a step forward, then narrowed her eyes at the man holding the girl. “Who are—what are—”

“His name is Adam,” Lily said, climbing out of the man’s arms. “He’s my friend.”

The old man, Eugene, cowered in the shadows and stared at the hooded figure.

Ian Gregory approached Adam with a curious expression. “You look different,” he said.

“We saw you come in here,” Adam replied. He’d walked his steed up a crumbling wall onto the roof, not wanting to further stir up the dead with his presence. At Lily’s request, really… that he save the other survivors, all of them, without incident. As if he were the old elf from winter legend who could grant a child’s any wish.

Dalton was silent. He remembered that night, in the badlands, when Hand of God had seen Death in the flesh. He didn’t know what to make of the apparition — did this mean salvation or certain death?

Logan backed up against the shelf blocking the window through which Gregory had made his entrance. “Well, I’m about ready to call it a night.”

Dead hands tore through the books and seized his head. He fumbled with the chainsaw’s starter cord and bellowed, “A little fucking help!”

Cam pried at the gray hands, but others reached through to grab at her wrists. The flesh was peeled from the backs of her hands. She fell to the floor in hysterics.

The saw started up. Logan, his head pulled into the shelf, unable to see, raised the weapon toward his head. “STOP!” Gregory yelled. “You’re gonna—”

The blade touched Logan’s throat and it blossomed like a flower of gore. His cries turned to a gurgling sputter as crimson showered down the front of his uniform. The saw fell idle at his feet. The dead hands in his hair and eyes tore his head from his shoulders and retreated with their prize.

Tripper cradled Cam, who was staring in horror at her hands. “God — I’m infected!”

“You don’t know that!”

“Yes I do! I feel it! Oh God!”

A window burst behind Eugene. He whirled to struggle with half a dozen rotting arms. Halstead ran to him. “I need a gun — NOW!”

One undead hand wavered uncertainly in the air, a shard of glass embedded in its palm. Then it swung down into Halstead’s eye.

She wailed as the glass tore a canyon through her cheek and into her jaw. The rotter’s fingers slipped into her flesh and tugged her forward. The hands holding Eugene left him and found her.

Lily grabbed Halstead’s legs. She screamed in protest as Adam pulled her away. Together, they watched the cop’s body slide out the window into the night.

Gregory shook Adam by the shoulder. “Can you help us get to the vehicle outside?”

Adam nodded. He pulled the scythe from under his cloak and strapped it on to his arm. “Where is it?”

“Out front.”

“Of course,” Adam sighed. He walked over to the barricaded doors and started pulling crates away.

Dalton pulled Cam to her feet. “We need you. C’mon.”

As Adam took down the barricade, he sensed something, something vague and threatening that gnawed at the back of his mind. What was it? The horde waiting outside? No, it was something worse.

As he pulled the last shelf away, the doors fell in beneath the weight of the undead. Zombies spilled into the room.

“Open fire!” Gregory shouted.

Adam sliced a pair of rotters in half and kicked their spurting remains away. He turned to grab Lily, pulling her onto his shoulders. He turned back just in time to be tackled to the floor. Lily tumbled away from him.

She scrambled past Gregory, who was busy shearing the heads off of rotters with his shotguns. He knelt to reload — cold hands clamped down on his shoulders. He batted them away and retreated further into the room.

The undead were still pouring in — far more than thirty now. It was a full-scale assault. Adam stood at the threshold and pared them down, but again and again he was overwhelmed by their numbers, and they broke through in waves. Such a wave swept over Ian Gregory. He discharged the shotguns as he fell, taking a couple more with him. He was fading fast beneath an onslaught of teeth, and fumbled through his uniform for the grenade there — released the pin — his last act of defiance.

The muffled explosion threw the dead straight up in a smoking geyser. They came down in pieces, only to be replaced by others. Every blast, every bullet — it meant nothing, the rotters were swarming in at an exponential rate.

Tripper and Cam were backed into the far corner of the room. They turned a shelf on its side and used it for cover until their guns were empty.

Tripper lit a joint, took a long drag and passed it to his lover. “I don’t know what to say,” he muttered, barely audible above the groans of the encroaching dead.

“There’s nothing to say.” Cam gently kissed his neck, then wrapped her arms around him.

The rotters pulled the shelf aside. Tripper glared at them over Cam’s shoulder. “Fuckers.” Then the pair was swallowed.

Lily cowered between a shelf and the rear wall. She screamed as a shadow swooped down to collect her. “It’s all right!” Dalton yelled. “We’re getting out of here!”

“Reaper!” he shouted. On the other side of the room, Adam turned to see the soldier and child surrounded by undead. He hurled himself into their midst like a torpedo, raking his scythe through flesh and bone and cutting a path to Lily. Dalton handed her over. “The car!”

He stayed glued to Adam’s back as the former Death made his way to the entrance. They ran out into the freezing cold, into the night — only to find the sky lit by flames as every building around them burned. Adam glanced up at the library’s roof and saw his horse’s head hanging over the edge, dead. It must have been struck by shrapnel. So, then, on to a new steed — Adam yanked open the Hummer’s passenger door and put Lily inside. Dalton was already behind the wheel. Gregory had left the keys inside. Knew he might not make it back. Good man to the end.

“WAIT!” a voice snarled. Adam turned — and was blown away by a volley of bullets.

Finn Meyer staggered toward the Hummer. “Get out!” he screamed at Dalton.

Dalton raised his hands and scooted out of the driver’s seat. “I have a child here!”

Meyer grimaced. “I don’t care!”

Then he heard a sound at his back — a ragged scream, but not that of the undead. No, it was a cry fraught with rage and grief and desperation, and Meyer managed to put his finger on the voice just before the widowmaker separated his head from his neck.

He fell into the snow; blinked a few times, in disbelief, at Voorhees, and at his own decapitated body; then his mind faded.

A zombie bit into Voorhees’ shoulder. He hacked into its skull and shoved it aside. Didn’t matter now. He’d followed Meyer’s gunshots and footfalls until he heard his voice and was sure. Now it was over.

“Voorhees!” Lily cried.

He held his hand out, clutching at the air. “Lily?”

Dalton put his arm around the half-dead man and dragged him to the Hummer. “Here. Get in.”

Adam got to his feet and grimaced as he felt the bullets searing his insides. He saw Voorhees, and that Lily was safe, and he left out a sigh of relief. At least it was finally done.

Then Eugene stepped around the front of the vehicle. Adam saw him for the first time, and that feeling of strange dread gripped him again.

“Who are you?” he called.

The old man opened his mouth. He did not speak, yet a voice—voices—poured forth like flies boiling from his lips. “We have many names.”

It was the Omega.

He’d fully regenerated.

And, with a strength unlike any man Adam had ever seen, the Omega surged forward and knocked him off his feet, driving him through a burning wall and into the mouth of Hell.