Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending (64 page)

“You’re insane, you know that, right?”

“So I’ve been told on numerous occasions. But for now,
let’s put my mental status on hold and see about getting an invite to the
spooky looking house across the road with the ghostly floating binoculars.”

I heard Michelle bite back a giggle, and then she
replied,
“If this turns out to be one of those horror flick cabins filled
with cannibal midgets, you better hope they eat you to death before I get my
hands on you.”

My smile got even wider at her words, and I turned
again to face her.
“Eat me to death? That doesn’t make sense even to me! What
kind of a saying is that?”

She peeled off the wall and army crawled forward until
she was next to me. Her left hand descended on the back of my neck and she
squeezed lightly. “Promise me no cannibal midgets.”

“I think that can be arranged,” I chuckled, glad for
the little release of tension.

Another scan through the full range of our vision
revealed nothing moving, and I turned my attention back to the open blinds. The
darkness beyond the window concealed whatever figure held the binoculars, but
the important thing is that they were still looking at Michelle and I.

“Keep your binoculars focused on the window,” I said,
“I’m going to try and mime our intentions.”

“Got it.”

After another quick look around, I dropped my
binoculars down to my chest and began the charades. Apparently it was the only
party game I didn’t suck at, because almost immediately Michelle reported that
the binoculars in the window disappeared. Fifteen seconds later, the front door
cracked open.

“Wait for me right here until I call for you on the
radio, OK?” I said to Michelle.

“Who said you get to go first this time?”

“I thought you were afraid of cannibal midgets.”

“Rock, paper, scissors?” she asked.

I hesitated for a moment, and then rolled onto my
side. “OK, rock, pap . . .”

Halfway through paper Michelle bolted to her feet and
trotted across the road. Through my headset I heard a whispered,
“Scissors.”
I twisted back onto my stomach and stared as she crested the porch, glancing at
the trio of bodies off the side before pausing momentarily at the front door. Michelle’s
tentative
“hello”
came across the radio, and then she disappeared
through the door. Five seconds later, I heard a heavy, thumping
BANG
followed by a muted scream, and then the sound of gunfire exploded from the
cabin.

I vaulted to my feet and sprinted across the road,
bypassing the double step with a leap and using my momentum to shoulder through
the door. It crashed aside and I skewed into Michelle’s back, almost knocking
her down a long narrow staircase that descended into the basement of the cabin.
A blur of movement from my right jerked my aim that way, and Michelle’s frantic
cry of “ERIC, WAIT!” was almost lost as I swung the .22, locking the crosshairs
onto the face of a young girl with bright blue eyes and long, frizzy red hair.

Michelle shouldered into me, knocking my aim towards
the ceiling as she screamed, “NO . . . IN THE BASEMENT!” Her AR flared with
rapid fire muzzle blasts in the dim light of the cabin as she fired down the
stairs, and as I reoriented myself from her jarring, the young girl turned and
ran. I shifted towards the basement opening and crouched, raising my rifle and
pointing it down the stairs as Michelle continued to fire—each of her shots
flashing the darkness into a stop motion strobe effect. It was enough for me to
see several figures clawing at—and over top of—each other as they fought their
way up the stairs. I steadied my aim and fired at each hint of movement in the
knot of limbs as they wrestled against the incline, the barrage of high velocity
bullets that Michelle was dropping on them, and each other. A microscopic pause
in her thunder indicated a magazine change, and as it picked up again, my Ruger
ran dry. I dropped it to the side and drew my CZ and flashlight. With one click
of the tail cap, the dark basement stairs flooded into brilliant white, and my
arms went stiff as I held the 9mm at the ready, searching for any motion. There
was none.

In the stillness that followed the thunder, I twisted
to the left and right . . . my eyes frantically searching for a target. I found
none. The sound of Michelle switching to another fresh magazine registered deep
in my subconscious, but the adrenalin coursing through my system tunneled that
away as my senses were flaring into overdrive. I shot to my feet and kicked the
front door closed, but it rebounded off of the frame and swung back a few
inches. Michelle was now up and holding her own flashlight toward the dark
basement, and I shifted to the left and peeked into a room that was obviously
set up as a combination kitchen and small dining room. It looked like it had
been ransacked, but there was no movement.

“Clear on the left,” I called out, “passing behind
you.”

A series of quick sidesteps carried me behind Michelle
who was still directing her flashlight’s entire radiance down the stairs, and I
shouldered into the front door as I passed. It shut with a slam, but
immediately creaked open again. Apparently some moron had recently broken the
latch. My footsteps ended underneath the threshold of the small living room
where the red-haired girl had disappeared. I saw nothing.

“Clear on the right.”

“No movement from the basement,” Michelle yelled over
her shoulder at me, “but I can’t see anything but the stairs.”

I holstered my pistol, but kept my flashlight on and
ready as I reached down and grabbed the.22. After inserting a new magazine and
cycling the action, I stepped into the living room and looked out of the same
window that had been used to watch me. My stomach clinched tight with what I saw.

“We have more on the way . . . at least four that I
can see from here. They’re probably coming to the sound of our guns . . . well,
your gun.”

Michelle swore out loud, and then glanced briefly
toward the front door. “Won’t that stay shut?”

“No, the latch is broken . . . now.”

I took my eyes off the approaching ghouls long enough
to register that the door to the basement was splintered and mostly torn from
its hinges. No help for that.

“Where did the little girl go?” Michelle asked.

“Somewhere this way. Is she alone?”

“I don’t know . . . she’s the only one that I saw
before the basement door exploded in my face.”

“Son of a . . .,” I started, but cut myself off.

“What now?” Michelle's exasperated hiss reflected my
own frustration.

“I can only see three of the infected right now, but
I’m almost positive it’s three different ones than I saw a minute ago. Where
the heck are they all coming from?”

“Three more? That makes seven? I told you we should’ve
got back on the boat.”

“And what about ‘mini Michelle,’” I asked with another
glance into the living room.

Michelle said nothing, but she didn’t have to. I knew
she’d never leave the cabin without the little girl. I couldn’t resist a poke,
though. “Ten bucks says she’s a cannibal.”

A giant eye roll accompanied the shake of her head at
my words, but my amusement was short lived when the first footsteps thumped
onto the porch.

“Wedge the door shut with the side of your foot—you’ll
still be able to see if anything tries to move up the stairs. Stay in contact.
If things get worse, head to the boat and pull away from the shore.”

“Wait . . . where are you going?” Her green eyes were
wide with alarm at my statement.

I matched her gaze, burning it in to my memory as
something . . . everything . . . worth fighting for. The silencer on the end of
the barrel rose into the air, and my finger settled on the trigger as I
answered her with a grim face and one word.

“Hunting.”

Michelle’s expression froze for a moment, and then she
nodded slightly. “Hurry back Eric, I’m not leaving without you.”

I returned her nod, accompanying it with a quick wink
as the first dull thump landed on the cabin door. Gritting my teeth and taking
a deep breath, I spun and bounded through the living room, searching for a back
exit. I glided through the area, dodging the cushion-less skeletons of a pair
of Mennonite style rocking chairs, and the food-family-pet stained mess that
used to be a sofa in another lifetime. Its faded goldenrod color reminded me of
the first couch my roommate and I had acquired in college. We had found it
resting quietly at the edge of the curb next to a pair of overloaded trash
cans, and aside from a two semester long off-gassing of mysterious and highly
variable odors, it had served us well. We’d even found enough change in the
seams to do a load of wash. Not enough for the dryer, though. At the end of the
semester, and partly as a joke, we returned it to the exact place we had found
it. Its wobbly legs hadn’t even fully touched the sidewalk when a pickup truck
loaded with the college groundskeepers slowed down on the road. Thirty seconds
later it had been adopted, and its new family was already sunk deep in the
cushions, weed whackers held high like pirate flags.

When I slid past the couch, the mirror image of the
cabin front came into view, only the stairs slanted upwards and had no blocking
door. Then again, neither did the stairs to the basement now. At the top of the
stairs, curly tangles of red peeked around the corner, and I held a finger to
my lips as her blue eyes stared down at me.

“Shhhh . . . Stay upstairs and hide, OK. I’ll be back
in a minute to get you.” I didn’t know if I was lying.

The back door was a standard deadbolt and doorknob
affair that could be unlocked without a key from the inside. I turned the
deadbolt latch and the center nub of the doorknob, and then after a brief
glance outside, stepped through and pulled it shut behind me.

“I’m outside . . . and the girl is upstairs.”

“I heard. There’s at least two at the door Eric . . .
still nothing else from the basement yet.”

I immediately turned left and went to the corner. It
was another lesson from the academy, although it had been drilled into my head
by Uncle Andy for years before that.
“Stealth or combat, if you have a
choice, choose your approach around an obstacle so your weapon and eyes lead
the way, not your shoulder.”
I was right handed and right eye dominant in
shooting, so going counterclockwise around a building would always give me a
better chance to hide the majority of my body mass at the corners. I peeked around
and found myself staring at a pair of crimson eyes less than eight feet away.
Instinctively, I snapped the .22 into position and squeezed off a shot. At
first I thought I missed, but then a dark purple circle appeared above the
ghoul’s left eyebrow, and a steady trickle of ruby dark blood evolved to a spurt
against the cabin wall. His cheek dropped against the siding and followed the
blood trail down to the ground. My tunnel vision widened, and I saw three more
infected within range. Two of them were out on the road and stumbling towards
the cabin; the other one was already at the corner of the porch near the pile
of bodies. A single shot into his temple dropped him down to join them. I
steadied myself and lined up the reflex sight on the lead ghoul at the road. It
took three shots before he dropped, with my first two attempts striking him low
in the neck. His partner fell with one.

“Eric!”
Michelle's voice was strained with effort, and I could hear pounding from the
front of the cabin. It was followed by the shatter of glass.

“On my way—two seconds and I’m there!”
I darted forward to the next corner and spun left,
molding myself against the corner trim as I pushed the rifle into position.
There were two ghouls battering against the front door, and a third—a chunky
teenager wearing the tattered remains of full length footy pajamas—reaching
through the now broken window that lead into the dining room. I sent a volley
of five rounds smashing into the side of his head, and he collapsed into the
window, gruesomely impaling himself on a long sliver of glass through the
bottom of his jaw. My crosshairs leapt to the door just in time to see it flex
wildly inward with a concerted push by the two attackers, and I flung away several
rounds in my haste to take them out.

“I’m outside at the corner and firing. Hold on
Michelle!”
I’m almost positive my
words were directed more towards me than her.

All that came through my headset in response was
strained grunting, and the pounding reverberation of the red-eyed monsters
beating at the door. One of them had managed to wedge his arm through the door
jamb, and was practically stepping on the back of the other; a scrawny lady on
her hands and knees dressed in an expensive fur coat and broken high heels.
Movement on my peripheral tried to draw my eyes away from the door, but I
forced myself to focus on the glowing red holographic cross.

Ftackk-ftackk.

I drove two rounds just above the high collar of her
mink jacket, and she seized immediately before dropping flat onto the porch and
laying still. Her companion, his platform now taken out, became unbalanced and
slid downwards. Halfway down, his wrist got wedged in the narrow crack of the
door as Michelle heaved back against the pressure. Blood red eyes angled to
face me, and the monster began to thrash violently in his attempt to get free.
It took seven hurried shots from the silenced .22 before one finally connected
with a fatal area. My sense of alarm was screaming at me, and I managed to jerk
my head toward the road just in time to see a gut chilling sight heading my
way. A group of nine North Dakota state prisoners—still wearing the orange and
white striped jumpers that signified a work release crew—were surging in a
wavy, undulating line across the yard. They had all been handcuffed, and then
further tethered to a long, metal transport chain, the trailing end of which
was still attached to the dragging body of the corrections officer. Two of the
nine—one at the front end, and one almost dead center—were hanging limp. The other
seven were lunging in a series of uncoordinated heaves, trying to reach at me
with their grasping hands and slobbering mouths. The ghoul at the end of the
line closest to the deputy was spewing frothy pink bubbles that seemed to
congeal in a tumor-like mass underneath his throat, and as I spun away in
shock, the first wave of rotten fruit smell slammed into my nose. I ran.

“Stay inside and keep the door shut!”
I yelled into the radio as I sprinted through the
back yard of the cabin.

I heard Michelle say something, but I couldn’t quite
catch it as I huffed past a tractor tire sandbox outfitted with pink, plastic
construction equipment. My acceleration took me over the sandbox and into a
sparse growth of mixed hardwoods just as the line of convicts fought themselves
into a rhythm of sorts and howled in pursuit. I cut hard left into the scrub,
and then immediately one-handed a sapling and spun to the right, trying to set
up the chained pack of ghouls for a snag as they snarled in rage and crashed
after me. It worked. The dragging body of the corrections officer caught
against the sand filled tire and jerked the rest of the line to a halt. All
seven of the monsters shrieked in a frenzied struggle against the anchor, and I
hopped back another five yards before switching out the almost empty magazine
in the Ruger. My chest was heaving with exertion, and my first three shots went
somewhere besides my intended target.

“Eric, are you OK? . . . are you OK?”
Michelle’s voice cracked out of my headset, and the
vision of her emerald green eyes staring back at me as she braced against the
door sent a needed measure of focus through my brain. I took a quick set of
calming breaths, and then closed my eyes for a long heartbeat. When I snapped
them open, I leaned forward and let instinct take over—firing double taps at
the row of chained fiends.

Kthack-kthack . . . kthack-kthack . . . kthack-kthack
. . . kthack-kthack . . . kthack-kthack . . . kthack-kthack . . . kthack-kthack
. . .

Fourteen shots fired, seven infected put down. I
stepped out of the brush and into the backyard, answering Michelle as I lined
up the rifle on the prone figures.
“I’m OK . . . I’ll be there in a minute.
Are you still good?”

“Shaken, but not stirred.”

“Hang tight,”
I
replied. Maybe it was a waste, but I took the time to send another slug into
each of their heads just to be sure. When I turned to go, I saw a fluff of
bright red hair looking down at me from a narrow window near the peak of the
cabin’s roof. I dropped in a new magazine and tried to meet the position where
I estimated her bright blue eyes would be. A smile didn’t seem appropriate for
me to display after I had just slaughtered seven people in front of her,
infected or not, so I just nodded and stalked out towards the front. I located
three more confirmed ghouls on the road, but all of them were out of easy range
for the .22, and none seem to be making a beeline our way, so after pulling the
corpse out of the front door, I retreated around back and came in.

Michelle was still bracing against the door, and I
walked over and dropped my arm around her shoulder, pulling her close as my
breathing still worked its way downward.

Apparently sensing the question at the forefront of my
mind, she nodded toward the basement. “Nothing that I’ve seen or heard so far.”

“We still need to make sure.”

“Why, are you planning on staying here very long?”

“No, but until we leave, I don’t want either of us
stuck with the job of watching and waiting for something to crawl out of
there.” My head inclined toward the descending steps, and she automatically
followed with her gaze.

“Can we move some furniture to block it instead? Maybe
it won’t seal it up entirely, but it should at least slow anything down and
give us some warning,” she suggested.

I cocked my head to the right and studied the
dilapidated couch, crunching the mental geometry and logistics required to fit
the square peg into the not quite so square hole. It was possible, and a few
minutes later with Michelle’s help, it was done. Both of the rockers and one
end table had been incorporated into the design, and we ended up with a barrier
that not only blocked off most of the basement, but also wedged itself tight
against the front door. It wouldn’t last forever, but anything trying to get through
would be forced to make enough noise to alert us.

We circled around to the back of the house and went up
the stairs. They were made from unfinished wood planks, and each step we took
creaked noisily as we ascended. There was no door at the top, and the heavy smell
of sickness and decay permeated the air. After silently nodding at each other,
we stepped cautiously into the single room, adding the light from our
flashlights to the growing shafts of morning sunlight that poured in through
opposing sets of small paneled windows. The top floor had an angled ceiling
typical of A-frame construction, and it was sparsely yet functionally furnished
as a bedroom. In the center of the room against the wall, there were two single
beds laid out with a shared night stand between them. Both beds were occupied
with covered forms, and our little blue-eyed angel stood defiantly next to the
far bed, her white hand grasping a mottled purple and black forearm that
protruded from underneath the bedspread. She was dressed in a pink and white
ballerina dress complete with a tutu, and held a glitter sparkled wand capped
with a foam cutout in the shape of a star. Hanging around her neck was a pair
of child-sized binoculars made out of red plastic. Michelle immediately slung
her AR over her shoulder and stepped forward, crouching down to one knee at the
halfway point.

“Hey there sweetie . . . It’s OK, we won’t hurt you.”
Michelle opened her arms, and like magic, the little girl trotted forward on
her shoeless, leotard-covered feet. Without hesitation she crushed against
Michelle and hugged her—my new perspective now revealing a pair of lace fairy
wings that decorated the back of her costume.

“My name is Michelle, and that big guy over there,”
she turned her face toward me, “is Eric. Can you tell me your name?”

“Faith.”

“That’s a pretty name . . . and I love your hair.”

My Grinch heart was beginning to grow as I witnessed a
side of Michelle unfold that I had never seen before. The girl—Faith—appeared
to be about six years old, and as far as I could tell, was unwounded.
Physically, at least. I stepped forward and knelt down next to them, watching
as her tiny fingers wrapped themselves around Michelle’s ponytail. Her eyes
opened and met mine, and she smiled before scooting out of Michelle’s arms and
wrapping me up in a hug. I looked over at Michelle and saw her face stuck
midway between a beaming smirk and an amused laugh, and then she winked at me
and lifted one hand, miming the motion of taking a picture. I rolled my eyes
and then whispered to the little girl.