Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending (16 page)

Almost immediately, the sharp
crack
of a high
velocity 5.56 mm round shattered the night, and the red-eyed monster’s neck
snapped up and backwards. The lower pitch
boom
reaching their ears a
millisecond later coincided with the dull thump as the ghoul collapsed in a
heap.

Michelle counted to five silently as she watched for
movement. The ski jacket remained motionless.

“One down, one to go,” she mumbled half to herself.

“
Scott, the area to the left of the road . . . light
it up
.”

The massive beam of light—diffuse and uneven around
its perimeter but with a hot, white core—flooded a path thirty yards wide by
the time it tracked from the parking lot of the marina to where it stopped at the
left side of the roadway. In the nucleus of the blinding flare, an undulating
darkness began to ripple. As Eric and Michelle watched, the darkness flowed and
transformed as a single figure detached from the whole and stood, its vermilion
eyes quickly locking on Eric’s truck.

“Oh-oh . . .” Eric and Michelle both echoed in unison as
one by one, more figures separated from the mass and stood, their hellish gaze
focused intently toward the road.

“Get us out of here!” Michelle hissed as Eric let off
the brake began to accelerate backwards. Instantly, the murky hub surged and
fragmented—transforming itself into a swelling, rolling pack of howling
infected.

Michelle grabbed the radio as Eric shot the truck
backwards toward the marina, “
There’s more than one . . . it’s a whole
shitload of infected . . . fire at will—repeat—fire at will
!”

Halfway to the store, Eric slowed enough to cut the
truck in a ‘J’ turn before slamming it into gear and accelerating, this time
forward. Max was spread wide and anchored on the rubber bed liner, growling and
snarling at the pursuing throng of infected. In front of them they could see
flashes of light as Sam and Thompson fired round after round at the horde.

“Get ready to get up on the roof!” Eric said to
Michelle as he gauged the distance to the infected in the rearview mirror.

“What about you?”

“We’re all going to be on the roof—we’ll pull up the
ladder and pick them off from there.”

Several orange tracers cut glowing lines from the
rooftop to the road behind them as Michelle paused with a questioning look on
her face. “Can Max climb a ladder?”

Eric swore to himself as he turned onto the gravel
parking lot and cut down the side of the store, barely slowing down enough to
make the left turn around the back.

“LOOK OUT!” Michelle yelled.

Fifteen feet in front of them stood a man—a staggered
look on his face in the glare of Eric’s rapidly approaching headlights. He had
the long extension ladder cradled in a curled arm hold, and a bulbous—almost
comical—gauze band aid encasing his nose.

Eric slammed on the brakes and skidded to a gravel-crunching
stop less than a frog hair away from the shock frozen man.

“What the hell?” Eric sputtered.

“That son of a bitch,” Michelle swore; astonishment
blending with anger evident upon her face.

The small dust cloud of Eric’s skid washed briefly
over the man as Eric searched for the right words, the right action—even the
right thought process—to deal with the sudden comprehension of the scene in
front of him.

Michelle swore again as gunfire echoed above them, and
the man—shaken back to reality—dropped the aluminum ladder with a
clang
and
bolted back in the direction that Eric had just came from.

“NO!” Eric shouted through the closed window as the
figure scooted past—gaining additional speed at the sound of Max’s snarl and
incisor slamming lunge.

Eric and Michelle both spun in their seats, craning
their necks to follow as the man sprinted past the store, paused for less than
a second in indecision, and then ran for Walter’s idling truck. In the wash of
illumination, they saw at least a half dozen infected surge out of the weeds
along the lake and enter the parking lot. Three of the ghouls angled toward the
running man as more and more emerged from the weeds.

With surprising agility, the bandaged-nose man dodged
around the closest threat, and using his momentum, he hooked the lip of the
tailgate and shot himself toward the driver’s door. The second closest infected
grabbed for the man, but was temporarily blocked and pushed back as the ladder
thief threw the door open into its chest. By now, the first ghoul had
reoriented itself and made a diving pounce as the man practically jumped into
the driver’s seat. The third approaching infected made it almost to the front
of the truck before a streaking orange tracer round burned a hole in its left
temple.

Still entranced by the unfolding spectacle, they
watched as the man fought both the red-eyed ghoul and the truck, finally
yanking the pickup into gear as his attacker clawed and tore at his face.
Walter’s truck sprayed rooster tails of gravel as it accelerated rapidly,
careening in a slight left hand arc toward the boat launch. With a jarring
double wallop, the front and back wheels jumped over the line of cement curb
stops and bounced twice before the truck powered down the gradual incline of
the boat ramp. A huge geyser of cold lake water exploded upwards as the heavy, steel
and fiberglass vehicle buried itself up to its side mirrors in a watery grave.
For a moment, in the faint map light of the sinking, open-door truck, the
struggle could still be seen.

“
Eric . . . Eric . . . was that you? Are you OK
?
. . .
Can you hear me
?” Scott’s burst of questions erupted from the
radio.

“
No, that wasn’t me. I . . . we’re . . . all OK
.”

Behind them, several more pairs and trios of infected
materialized from the weeds and scuttled across the lot toward the store. Eric
spun and faced forward again, pausing only long enough to peek in the rearview
mirror and confirm Max’s presence before tromping on the gas.

As his truck rocketed out of the parking lot, he
grabbed the radio and called out, “
Scott, the ladder is down, repeat, the
ladder is down. Do you copy
?”

The sound of gunfire poured through as Scott replied,
“
Understood, the ladder is down
.”

Walter’s voice came across as Eric made it to the
highway and turned right, “
Eric, what’s the situation down there, do you
need help
?”

“
Hold on a second
.”

He sped away for a solid ten seconds before
heavy-footing the brake and turning back around towards the store. A flick of
the emerald green, illuminated toggle switch kicked on the truck’s off road
lights and showered the roadway with a mixture of white halogen driving lights
and brilliant yellow, wide angle fog lights.

“
OK . . . Sam . . . I’m holding position about 200
yards west of the store. What’s your situation
?”

It took a moment for Scott’s reply to come through, “
Um
. . . OK, I see your truck lights. Thompson says that they’ve put down at least
ten already, but they think there’s at least that many more still out there
.”

Amy’s hushed voice came over as soon as Scott paused,
“
Eric
,” her forced whisper sounded urgent over the partially muted
crying in the background, “
there’s some right outside the door. I think at
least two of them—maybe three
.”

“
Sam, did you copy that
?”

Another pause—longer this time—before Scott replied, “
Ahhh
Eric, we have a problem. Sam and Thompson say they have no line of sight
straight down, there’s a roof in the way . . . do you copy
?”

“
Eric, it’s Walter. Scott’s right, that wraparound
porch roof goes from the front side by the pumps all the way around to the side
by the boat ramp. It’s four feet the wide the whole way
.”

Eric shook his head in disgust as he envisioned the
outside of the store. He’d seen it hundreds of times before, but none of that
mattered right now. A few muttered curse words escape from his lips as he sat
in the idling truck trying to formulate a plan.

Michelle laid her hand on his forearm. “This isn’t
your fault.”

“No,” Eric agreed, anger and frustration showing
through in his response, “it’s not. But that doesn’t make me feel any less
responsible.” After another breath he added, “Or any less pissed.” He keyed the
radio, “
Amy, you’ve got two shotguns in there with you, correct
?”

“
Yes but . . . right now, I’ve got one of them. Mr.
Lee has the other one. He’s solid
,” she added at the last moment.

“
OK, hold on a second, we’re coming
.” Without
giving her a chance to reply he keyed to the radio again, “
Sam, how many
more targets can you eliminate before we try and make a run
?”

The rifle fire died off, and then a moment later Sam’s
voice came across, “
Eric, we have zero, repeat zero new targets within
visible range. The last minute or so we’ve been punching a few holes in the
ones that were already down. And just to make it interesting, the big spotlight
is dying. What’d you do out there, poke a big stick in a hornet’s nest? . . .
Wait, a sec
. .”

Sam’s voice trailed off, and was immediately replaced
with Amy’s frantic whisper, “
They’re right outside . . . oh crap, they know
we’re in here
.”

“
Amy, have everybody lay down on the floor right
now, we’re coming in. . . tell them to get flat on the floor right now
!”

Eric kept the transmit button mashed down to broadcast
as he gave the truck gas. Turning toward Michelle, he said, “I’m going to pull around
back and up close . . . when I get there, have your Glock ready to fire down
the length of the building. I’m going to try and line it up so our shots won’t
pass through the store if we miss. Don’t get out of the truck, OK? . . . ‘cause
if things somehow get worse than they are—if that’s even possible—I want to be
able to hightail it out of there and come around for a second run.”

Eric dropped the radio on the seat and drew the 10mm
Colt from its holster.

“Make sure you give me enough angle to shoot from,”
Michelle answered as she rolled down her window, “and don’t forget we need the
truck’s lights to shoot by.”

He gunned the V-8 back down the highway, cutting in to
the gravel as soon as he could. Flying in a straight line past the diesel pumps
took him to the narrow corridor beside the propane storage shed, and he had to
lock up the brakes in order to slow enough for the sharp right turn that would
take him past the boat warehouse and towards his goal.

The intense combined wattage of the truck’s lights
plowed through the dark path ahead, and Eric slowed as he broke between the
warehouse and Walter’s office.

“Ready?”

Michelle’s arm and shoulder were already extended out
the window as Eric cut the steering wheel right—quartering the truck toward the
store. The brilliant white and amber radiance lit up half of the parking lot as
the truck skidded to a stop thirty feet away from a cluster of figures pounding
bloody fists on the glass door. Eric threw the truck into park and pulled the
door latch as Michelle opened fire. Stepping out with one foot, he thrust the
Colt through the ‘V’ section between the windshield frame and open door. The
large, white ‘3-dot’ sight picture lined up on the face of a man with blood red
eyes, and he steadied the weapon for half a second before squeezing the
trigger. The roar of the large pistol accompanied a flash of white light that
exploded from the muzzle, and the target dropped like a brick.  Another one
crumpled to the ground outside as Michelle poured fire into the group.  The
remaining three walkers turned away from the store in an instant and scampered
toward the truck.  From the truck seat, Eric’s radio blared out garbled voices
as the thunder of gunshots echoed from Michelle and the roofline.

Eric adjusted his aim toward a shirtless teenage boy
with beady, red eyes visible behind gold, wire-rimmed glasses.  The first shot
hit low and wide, crashing into the boy’s upper left shoulder.  Compensating
with the recoil, he sent the next two rounds into the center of the boy’s
chest.  Incredibly, the bare-chested walker didn’t drop.  It was now at the
front corner of the pickup, barely five feet away and closing.  Eric compacted
his shoulders into a tight coil and tried to steady his adrenalized nerves as
the ghoul snarled.  Envisioning a single point on the tip of the boy’s nose, he
lined up the white dot of the front sight and snapped off a shot.  The 175
grain silvertip hollow point smashed through the bridge of the wire rimmed
glasses and blew out the back of the teenager’s skull.  The boy
collapsed—bouncing off the front quarter panel on his way to the gravel. 
Michelle had taken down another one, and Eric turned the Colt toward the final
walker—an elderly lady with stringy gray hair and bony fingers.  Twin
explosions boomed as Eric’s Colt and Michelle’s Glock turned the woman’s brain
into a crimson mist.

“TO YOUR LEFT . . .  LOOK TO YOUR LEFT!” Voices were shouting
from the rooftop, penetrating through the accompanying gunshots into Eric’s
half deafened ears.