The Gates of Byzantium

CHAPTER 24 BLAINE

It was around five o’clock, with nightfall about three hours away, when they finished eating in the food court. Mason and Gerry were gone, checking on noises they had heard coming from the south side of the city. They kept in radio contact, but it would be a while before the two returned, even using a couple of ATVs. Lenny, the only one left at the mall who they had to worry about, was doing his rounds outside, something he did every day before nightfall, according to Maddie.

That left Blaine and Sandra time to talk to Maddie and Bobby in the Sortys employee lounge. Or just Maddie, since Bobby couldn’t say a word and stood guard at the door, looking over at them occasionally.

“Tomorrow, I’ll wake up early and come get you like I’m supposed to,” Maddie said. “I’ll give you my handgun, and Sandra can use Bobby’s. We’ll stick with the rifles.”

“How many magazines do you have for the handguns?” Blaine asked.

“Two. Counting the one already in the gun. So that gives you a total of thirty rounds each.”

“You can’t get more weapons?” Sandra asked. “I know there are four of us against three of them, but still, I’d feel better if we had more firepower on our side.”

“It’s not gonna happen. Believe me, I’ve tried. Mason keeps everything inside the jail in the security room, and he has the only key.”

“What happens if you use up your ammo?” Blaine asked.

“We don’t,” Maddie said. “I swear, the guy used to be a tight-ass CPA or something before all of this. He counts every bullet we have. He won’t even let us do target practice — that’s why most of these assholes can’t shoot the broad side of a barn.”

“That doesn’t sound very smart,” Sandra said.

“He says it’s also to keep us from exposing ourselves in case someone’s coming through the city. Which I guess makes sense. He likes to say that surprise is his friend.”

Blaine thought about how Mason snuck up on them outside Cavender’s.

He’s got a point there.

“Except for Gerry,” Maddie said.

“What about Gerry?” Blaine asked.

“Gerry is Mason’s little bitch. They argue like a married couple, but at the end of the day, Gerry is the only person Mason trusts. So Gerry gets all the ammo he can carry.”

“How many magazines do you think they have on them now?” Sandra asked. “Can’t be many. How much do those belts of theirs hold?”

“A half dozen, maybe. They get pretty heavy once you start loading them up.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll decide not to burden themselves with too many magazines tomorrow,” Blaine said.

Maddie grinned wryly at him. “Sure, there’s always that.”

“You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but he’s the optimist in this relationship,” Sandra smiled.

Blaine glanced at Bobby. “Can he shoot?”

“A little,” Maddie said.

“What about Mason and Gerry?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. Whenever we’ve gotten into scraps with people, I was always at the mall and they were out there.”

“Because he trusts Gerry and not you,” Sandra said.

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“How well can you shoot?”

“I’ve been hunting with my dad since I was a kid, like I said, but that’s with hunting rifles. Assault rifles aren’t the same thing. Plus, it’s different when someone’s shooting back at you, you know? I don’t know how I’d be in an actual gunfight, to tell you the truth. Too bad you two aren’t ex-Special Forces or something — then we’d give you our rifles.”

Blaine smiled. “We’re not, but those guys that came through earlier? The ones that killed Dirk?”

“What about them?”

“Two of them were Special Forces. Army Rangers.”

Maddie smirked at him. “So you do know them.”

“They saved my life. Too bad Mason didn’t try to take them on, because he’d have gotten his ass handed to him and saved us the trouble.”

“They’re headed to Song Island, too,” Sandra said. “We’re going to be joining up with them.”

That seemed to alarm Maddie.

She’s afraid of what they’ll think when they learn she used to wear a hazmat suit.

“They don’t have to know,” Blaine said.

Maddie looked at him, then over at Sandra, who nodded, too. “They don’t have to know,” Sandra said.

Maddie relaxed, then glanced at her watch. “It’s going to get dark in a few hours.” She looked over at Sandra. “Mason would shit a brick if he found out, but I stashed away some boxes of bottled water to take showers with every now and then. If you want…”

“God, yes,” Sandra said, before Maddie even finished.

Blaine discreetly sniffed the air around him and couldn’t disagree. He wondered if there were enough bottles for him, too, but decided to save the question for later, possibly after all the killing was done.

He walked through the mall with Maddie, the gas mask tapping against his hip. Bobby walked slowly behind them, quiet as a mouse. The mall didn’t just look cavernous, it felt it too, the sounds of their footsteps against the floor tiles echoing up and down the building.

“What happens at night?” he asked.

“You mean when the ghouls come out?”

“Yeah.”

“We stay out of their way. In our rooms. Sometimes Mason comes out to talk to them.”

“To the blue-eyed ghoul.”

“Yeah. You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

“No.”

She looked quickly over at him. “So you believe me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I saw one, too.”

“Is this you trying to be funny? Because if it is, I’m not laughing.”

“No, this is me being serious. I saw one myself a few days ago before we came here.”

Maddie looked relieved. “At first I thought I might have just imagined it. Mason says it comes and talks to him often, but I only saw it the one time with my own eyes, and that was months ago.”

“What was it doing the time you saw it?”

“It was just standing there, talking to Mason.”

“You heard it talk?”

“I think so.”

“You’re not sure.”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t like I was right next to them. But I could hear Mason talking to her. It. Whatever.”

“It’s hard to tell with them, but I think the one I saw used to be a woman, too.”

“For a moment, I thought it was a human woman, but then I realized it was a ghoul. I’d never seen one like that before, and I never saw it again after that.”

She shrugged, and Blaine let it go.

“So you just stay out of their way,” he said.

“Yeah. We’re just the day crew, is how Mason puts it. We stay out of their way, and they ignore us even if we’re caught outside. As long as we’re wearing these suits and gas masks. I don’t know how they know, but I guess they recognize the suit or something.”

“Maybe they’re told.”

“What do you mean?”

“By the blue-eyed ghoul.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I try not to think too much about it. Knowing those things are out there is bad enough. I don’t want to start thinking about what else is out there.” She shivered. “God, just thinking about—”

She was interrupted by a loud gunshot that seemed to explode across the silent mall.

They both turned back toward the Sortys department store.

Sandra.

He found Sandra in the women’s section of Sortys, sitting on the floor with her back against one of the clothing racks, holding a Glock in her hand and staring at a dead body crumpled on the floor in front of her.

Sandra looked up at him, her face plastered with shock. “He tried to…” she said, but didn’t finish. She didn’t have to. He knew what had happened as soon as he saw the look in her eyes.

Blaine kneeled down next to her and she fell into his arms. He held her, taking the gun away just to be safe.

He glanced at the body, which was lying on its stomach. Without having to see the man’s face, he knew it was Lenny, with blood pooling underneath him. Lenny’s hip holster was empty.

Maddie and Bobby arrived a few seconds later, both out of breath.

Maddie looked at Sandra, then at Blaine, before taking in Lenny. “Shit. This is going to complicate things.”

“We’ll deal with it,” Blaine said. He looked around the area. “Where’s his rifle? Wasn’t he carrying a rifle?”

“Yeah, an M4. All military stuff. Mason took about a dozen of them from a surplus shop nearby.”

“So where is it now?”

“It has to be around here somewhere. Bobby, spread out, look for Lenny’s rifle.”

They searched around the clothing racks, and when they couldn’t find it, spread out farther.

Blaine turned his attention back to Sandra. Her eyes drifted over to Lenny’s body. She looked calm, but there was an alertness, a barely controlled energy about her that he recognized as adrenaline.

“Where did he put his rifle, Sandra?”

“I didn’t see it.” He couldn’t detect any quivering in her voice. “Just the gun.” Her eyes went to the Glock in his hand. “I just saw the handgun.”

“How did you get it?”

“While he was on top of me…”

“Okay… Okay.”

He heard Maddie and Bobby walking back behind him. He looked over and caught Maddie’s eyes.

She shook her head. “I can’t find it. He must have put it somewhere else before he…” She stopped and said instead, “I can’t find it.”

“At least we have another gun now,” Blaine said.

“This changes everything. We can’t wait until morning now. You realize that, right?”

“Yeah. How long before they come back?”

“I don’t know—” Maddie began to say, when their radios squawked, cutting her off.

They heard Mason’s voice: “We’re on our way back. ETA thirty minutes.”

Everyone stood still, including Bobby, who didn’t look like he was breathing at all.

Seconds went by before they heard Mason’s voice through the radio again: “Anyone there?”

Maddie unclipped her radio and pressed the transmit lever: “Roger that. Thirty minutes.”

“What’s going on over there? What took you so long to answer?”

“Sorry, I had my hands full,” Maddie said, exchanging a look with Blaine.

He nodded, letting her know she was doing a good job. That seemed to help.

“Where’s Lenny?” Mason asked through the radio.

“He’s in the bathroom,” Maddie said. “You want me to fish him out?”

“Tell him we’re coming back in thirty minutes. Mason out.”

“Roger that.” Maddie ran her hand over her face and gave Blaine a look that barely concealed her nervousness. “Thirty minutes. They must be on the other side of town. If he didn’t hear the gunshot, they were probably on their ATVs at the time. Otherwise, he would be hauling ass over here.”

Maddie crouched next to Lenny’s body. She turned it over with some effort. He was skinny, but a lot heavier than he looked. Blaine saw a bullet hole in his chest. Maddie grabbed a spare magazine clipped to Lenny’s belt and tossed it over to Blaine.

“How are we going to do this?” Blaine asked.

“I don’t know,” Maddie said. “This kind of throws my plan out of whack. We don’t have the element of surprise anymore.”

“Maybe we still do.”

“How you figure?”

“They don’t know Lenny’s dead, and they still don’t know what we’re planning. They’re going to walk through that door blind, expecting everything to be just the way they left it.”

“Yeah. So?”

“What if everything is?”

“I’m listening…”

They heard the ATVs coming from a distance, the loud motors making a ruckus against the stillness of the city. Two Yamahas, yellow and black, appeared out of the parking lot and rode up the sidewalk, stopping in front of the doors into Sortys. The men climbed off and pushed their way inside, their rifles slung over their backs.

He was hiding behind a clothing rack lined with Nike sportswear, just close enough to the front doors to see both men as they entered, but far enough away not to be noticed. Or at least, he hoped he couldn’t be noticed.

Somewhere else in the department store, Bobby was hiding behind a counter, waiting to pop up with his M4. Even if the kid couldn’t shoot — or hit the broad side of a barn, according to Maddie — Blaine only needed him to aim in the right direction. The M4s had semi-automatic and three-shot burst capabilities.

As soon as Mason and Gerry entered the store, they stopped at the sight of Maddie, waiting in the aisle in front of them. She was too far away for Blaine to see her, but he knew where she would be and heard her just fine.

“We have a problem,” Maddie said.

“What kind of problem?” Mason asked.

“It’s Lenny.”

“What about Lenny?”

“He’s dead.”

“What?”

As Mason and Gerry started to process that bit of news, Blaine popped up from behind the clothing rack, took aim, and fired.

He realized he was still too far from his targets as soon as he shot and watched the bullet obliterate the head of a mannequin two feet behind Gerry’s head.

Shit!

Before he could get off a second shot, Mason and Gerry were moving, reacting amazingly fast to the ambush. One second they were standing in front of the doors, exchanging words with Maddie, and the next the glass doors behind them shattered as Maddie opened fire with her M4, letting the bullets fly in a loud, thunderous three-round burst.

Pieces of mannequins exploded and flew everywhere, and the ear-splitting sound of three assault rifles firing at the same time erupted like rolling thunder. Even though he had been anticipating it, the loud and continuous hammering of gunfire inside a confined building still managed to startle him.

Gerry turned slightly to his right, tracking where Blaine’s shot came from. Blaine didn’t know if the yokel actually saw him, but that didn’t stop the man from opening fire in his direction anyway. A pair of plastic mannequins exploded in front of Blaine, forcing him to crouch as he ran for cover.

Blaine got off a second and third shot — both going wild like the first one — even as he lunged to the floor in a desperate act of self-preservation. The Nike clothing rack above him was ripped apart by Gerry’s bullets, and pieces of clothing fell on top of him and bits of shredded fabric scattered into the air. He marveled at how much damage a thirty-bullet magazine could do in a series of nonstop three-round bursts.

He crawled away as quickly as he could, seeking shelter behind a shoe rack. As soon as he reached the hiding place, bullets punched through the wooden frame and slammed into jackets hanging on the wall behind him. Blaine rolled away along the carpeted floor and didn’t stop until he felt cold tiles under him.

Suddenly the three assault rifles were joined by a fourth (Bobby!), and Blaine couldn’t help but think to himself, Well, this isn’t going well at all.

He managed to scramble back up to his feet and dart across an aisle, clothes tearing and bullets ricocheting off steel frames around him. It had to be Gerry, trying to take him down. He didn’t think Mason would be so single-minded about trying to kill him.

Stupid country yokel.

Blaine fired back blindly as he ran, but he knew the three shots he had just wasted weren’t going to hit anything. Or anyone. Not even close. But they did do something, which was make Gerry stop shooting for a while and take cover. Or maybe Gerry was just reloading. Whatever he was doing, Gerry stopped shooting long enough for Blaine to find temporary safety.

He had made it all the way back to where the jewelry cases were. Blaine pushed himself up from the floor and leaned against one of the counters. He looked to his left and saw Maddie reloading her M4 while crouched behind another counter across the store from him. She looked over and grinned, but he saw fear and doubt in her eyes.

Maddie stood back up and fired another three-round burst in Mason’s direction before dipping back behind the counter. Blaine heard more windows breaking and glass shattering against floor tiles. He knew she was trying to conserve bullets because they had a limited amount. She was already on her second magazine. Her last magazine.

Blaine leaned out from behind the counter to try to find Gerry when two bullets zipped through the wooden counter and almost took his head off. Chipped wood flew inches from his face, spraying the floor and tossing slivers into his hair. He ducked and crawled backward away from the spot, expecting Gerry to keep shooting, but for some reason the man finally stopped.

Maybe he’s running out of bullets…

Yeah, right.

He looked over at Maddie again, back behind cover, biding her time. She seemed lost in thought, and he imagined she was probably counting how many shots she had fired. He saw her switching her rifle’s fire selector to semi-automatic.

“You still alive over there, Maddie?” Mason shouted from somewhere in the store.

“More alive than Lenny,” Maddie shouted back.

“Shit, you killed Lenny?”

“Damn right! We have his weapons, too.”

Blaine grinned.

Smart girl.

Someone fired off two quick shots, followed by silence. Bullet casings clattered around on the store tiles in the aftermath.

“You missed, Bobby!” Mason shouted. His voice echoed, and it was hard to pinpoint where it was coming from. “You never could shoot for shit, kid. Frankly, I’m disappointed you joined in on this fun exercise. I expected more from you.”

Blaine heard another couple of shots, then two more bullet casings clacking against the floor. Bobby, replying the only way he knew how, with his rifle.

“Miss me, miss me, now you gotta kiss me!” Mason shouted, then laughed hysterically.

The guy’s out of his fucking mind.

Blaine was counting how many bullets he had fired (Five…or six?) when he heard a loud crunch behind him and instantly knew it was boots stepping on broken glass. He shot up like a cannon, raising his gun—

And saw Gerry standing ten feet away, pointing his M4 in his face. Blaine’s gun was only halfway up and he knew he was dead. Gerry knew it, too, because he had the mother of all self-satisfied smirks on his face as he stared back at Blaine behind the iron sights of the rifle.

Before Gerry could fire, there was a gunshot and Gerry’s right shoulder seemed to explode and blood spurted out. He twisted sideways and as he did, he squeezed the trigger and the M4 raked the store in a series of three-round bursts that blew away mannequins and scarred racks of clothes and shattered counter tops.

Blaine finished raising his gun and shot Gerry twice in the side. This time he didn’t miss.

Gerry stumbled into racks of clothes and pulled them down with him to the floor until he was lying still, his body and face covered in pants and shirts.

Blaine hurried over to where the gunshot that had saved his life had come from. He found Sandra leaning against a full-length mirror that covered the door of a fitting room. She slid down to the floor as he rushed over. The Glock — Lenny’s Glock — dropped from her fingers.

His eyes widened at the sight of her hands holding her stomach, blood slipping through her fingers in bright red streams.

He kneeled next to her and put his hands over hers. “You’ll be fine,” he said, trying to smile, trying to convince her. To convince himself. It wasn’t working. “You’ll be fine. I’ve seen worse.”

“Really?” Her voice was soft and calm and came out almost as a whisper. She was smiling at him as she said it. “Where did you see worse, babe?”

“You’re talking to a guy who was shot three times, remember? You just got shot once. This is child’s play. You’ll be fine.”

“He got me pretty good, babe.”

“You’ll be fine,” he said again. “You’ll be fine.”

He grabbed some clothes draped over a rack and pulled them free. He took her hands and pried them from her stomach. She fought him, but he was stronger and she finally let go. Blood gushed out in the split second it took him to push the shirts over her wound. He wrapped the long sleeves of one of the shirts around her body to keep them in place. Blood instantly soaked the pink fabric and turned it a dark, violent red.

“See?” he said, smiling at her. Or trying to. He couldn’t hide the desperation in his voice, and he knew she could hear it, too. “Good as new. I told you. Good as new.”

She looked at him through pain and sweat, and she still looked beautiful. Amazingly beautiful. “You’re sweet, but you’re a lousy liar.”

“Who’s lying?”

“You are.”

“Bullshit. You’ll be fine.”

“Liar,” she whispered, “but I love you anyway.”

“I love you too,” he said.

The emotions came suddenly, washing over him in waves, and he felt terrified and impotent.

Sandra reached up with one bloodied hand and touched his cheek gently. “Go to Song Island,” she said, her voice so soft and weak he had to strain to hear her. “Take Maddie and Bobby. Go to Song Island and try to be happy.”

He shook his head. “Not without you. That’s the plan, remember?”

“I’m not coming back from this. Not this one. We’ve used up all our lives, baby. You and me. But you have to keep going. If you love me — if you care about me — you’ll keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.”

“I—” he started, but stopped.

Sandra closed her eyes, and she wasn’t breathing anymore. Her head tilted to one side, and all the life drained from her face. His beautiful Sandra, who had changed his life, given him the best gift anyone had ever given him by loving him back.

She was gone. Just like that, she was gone.

Blaine sat and stared at her. He wasn’t sure how long he kept that pose, unable to move, to feel. His brain might have shut down on him, and he wasn’t aware of actually breathing or thinking or even being. Even the continued sounds of gunfire behind him didn’t shake him loose. He could barely hear them anyway.

He willed Sandra’s eyes to open, for her lips to part and start breathing again. It might have been seconds, or minutes, or maybe hours.

The sounds of footsteps invaded his fog, followed by voices. He wasn’t sure who they belonged to. Maddie, perhaps, or maybe Mason come to finish what Gerry started. Maybe that was for the best. He couldn’t imagine going on without Sandra anyway.

So he waited for the bullet that never came.

Then Maddie was crouching next to him, nudging him on the shoulder, trying to get his attention. “Blaine. Blaine…”

He turned his head slowly to look at her, saw the whiteness of her face, the worry in her eyes, the thin sheet of stinging sweat. He looked back at Sandra, because he was afraid she might disappear if he took his eyes away from her for too long.

Come back, Sandra, come back to me…

“He’s gone,” Maddie was saying. “Mason. After you killed Gerry, he ran off. It’s almost nightfall. We need to get ready for tonight. I don’t know how this is going to affect them. The ghouls. We need to get ready, just in case.”

Hands grabbed and lifted him from the floor. Blaine wasn’t sure if he was supposed to fight them or not. So he did nothing. Bobby was surprisingly strong.

Then he was walking through the store, through the destroyed racks of clothing and bullet-riddled counters. Over shirts and pants and shoes and jewelry. There was glass everywhere. And more jewelry, and even more clothing, and bullet casings sliding under their shoes.

Silver. Take the silver. Make bullets. Silver bullets.

Then he was back inside the employee lounge and sitting on the couch. He didn’t know how he got there so quickly.

Bobby locked the door and leaned against it.

Maddie sat on the couch next to him. She wiped at a thick patch of sweat clinging to her face and she had an extra M4 rifle slung over her shoulder. “I don’t know what’s going to happen next. With the ghouls. I don’t know how they’re going to respond to the bodies in the store. Lenny’s and Gerry’s… and Sandra’s. So we have to be ready for anything.”

He didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure if he could talk.

“We have to put the suits back on,” Maddie said. “Just in case, okay?”

Bobby retrieved their suits from the corner where they had left them. Blaine heard the rustling of clothes and zippers, and a hazmat suit and gas mask somehow ended up in his hands. There was another suit and mask on the floor, like someone had abandoned it.

Sandra’s…

“Bobby, you gotta help me put it on him,” he heard Maddie say.

Bobby took Blaine’s suit and mask from him. They stood him up, directing his actions like he was a two-year-old. They raised his arms and lifted his legs, then someone — Bobby, probably — handed him back the gas mask and patted him lightly on the shoulder, like a father would his wounded son, as if to say, “You’ll be fine, my boy.”

Bobby, in his hazmat suit, walked back to the door and sat down, the rifle resting between his legs, the gas mask draped over one knee. He leaned back against the door and waited. He didn’t have to wait very long.

Darkness came quickly, and with it, the ghouls.

For the first time in the last eight months, Blaine discovered he didn’t really care that the ghouls were coming, that it was dark outside.

What did any of it matter without Sandra?