Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending (69 page)

As soon as I
stepped to the corner I saw the headlights from several vehicles at the “T”
intersection between the lemna plant and here. One of the vehicles was
definitely a scaled down version of a bus. What looked to be a pickup truck or
maybe a smaller flatbed was angled next to it. I couldn’t tell what the third
vehicle was because its headlights were pointing directly my way. The
illumination from the vehicle lights was enough that I could see a large pack
of ghouls circling at the edge of the darkness. They were behaving strangely
though . . . like they seemed to be waiting for something. Every few seconds a
gunshot would flash from one of the bus windows, but if it was having any
effect, I couldn’t tell from here. The entire scene was being played out almost
150 yards away, and that was too far for me to even consider using the .22. I
looked to the right at the bison pen—envisioning the boat beyond and my chance
at freedom—and then back toward the bus. More gunshots punctuated with the high
pitched wails of children sounded across the distance, and for a split second
the image of Faith looking down on me as I slaughtered the chain of infected
prisoners came to my mind. I reached into my jacket pocket and felt the cord of
red hair looping around my fingers, and then I took off across the parking lot
heading for the open barn.

There was barely
enough light for me to navigate across the blacktop and over to the barns
without using the night scope, but I made it just as the gunfire increased its
tempo. The partially open door stood in front of me, and I raised the rifle and
skulked through into the electronic green panorama brought to life by the
scope. Immediately I was hit by a wave of foul air—a combination of feces and
rot that penetrated down my nose and threatened to force my gag reflex. The gun
dropped against my chest and I pressed myself against the interior wall, as
much for cover as for stability in case the stench knocked me completely over
or buckled my knees. It was probably only a few seconds later that I heard a
low snarl. My rifle snapped back up and I searched, trying to locate the source
of the growl. It was easy to find. A ghoul was emerging from one of the cattle
stalls—the broken shaft of a pitchfork still impaling his upper thigh through
the denim overalls he wore. I was about to drill him through the forehead, but
something inside of me delayed my finger from the trigger. OK, lesson time for
anybody who finds my body, or at least this recorder. Advance night vision
equipment, like the scope on the .22, is an absolute power shift, or “force
multiplier” as they say in some circles. In other words, if you don’t have it
but your enemy does, in general you’re pretty much hosed. That said, there are
certain limitations with the use of night vision equipment. I don’t have a lot
of time to get into the different generations or systems for seeing in the
dark, but a lot of people confuse “night vision” with “thermal imaging.”
They’re totally different. Thermal actually sees heat radiating off of your
target . . . night vision, well, you might understand it better if I said it
another way. It’s not “night vision,” but rather “light amplification.” I’m not
a tech geek, but the simple way to explain it is that the scope gathers the
available light and intensifies it into an image that’s bright enough to see when
you look into the viewfinder. Each generation gets better at doing this, with
generation three being the current military standard. Where am I going with
this? Well, the green field of view that you see while looking through the
scope can also create a dim “back splash” of light reflecting off of your face.
This isn’t normally a problem in most combat situations, but it can be an issue
if you’re a solitary sniper in the dark of the desert surrounded by your
enemies, or a tired North Dakota game warden staring at a red-eyed monster in a
pitch black barn. Fortunately, there is a partial solution. Most of the latest
generations of scopes and goggles have a specialized eyepiece that opens the
aperture when you press your forehead against it, thereby creating a seal that
keeps the back splash to a minimum. Do you understand where I was going with
this, and why I held off from pulling the trigger? When I snapped the rifle to
my eye, I effectively eliminated the possibility that “Farmer Pitchfork” could
ferret me out by noticing the dim green back splash. But I was cautiously
curious to find out how an infected person behaved in total darkness. I’d
already seen the ghoul stumble over the body at the ranger station, so I was
reasonably sure they didn’t gain any mythical cat vision to go along with their
change in appetite, but I also learned years ago that the best way to learn
about the true behavior of a creature—human, animal, or otherwise – was to
observe it when it was unaware it was being watched. And so I kept my finger on
the trigger and the crosshairs on the ghoul’s head. Its crimson eyes were
darting back and forth in the wedge of the barn where I was standing, like it
had me, and then lost me . . . and then it began to stumble forward. I was
almost a million percent positive that it couldn’t see me, but the echo of screams
and gunshots from the outside convinced me that my experiment had gone on long
enough. I shot it through the left eye and followed it down, adding another
round into the top of its head for insurance, and then I moved over to the
built in wooden ladder that climbed upwards to the loft. Five seconds later I
was up and tiptoeing toward the back wall.

The barn
itself was constructed out of the typical materials you’d expect to find in
older barns everywhere—thick sawmill lumber, heavy square posts, and layers of
overlapping tin for a roof. Also, like almost every barn I’d ever been in, it
was a depository for all manners of strange, obscure, antiquated, or leftover
materials too bulky or rusty to be stored elsewhere. Several stacks of
forgotten hay bales fought for space in the loft with a sloping pile of rusty
cages; both of them seeming to erupt from an ankle deep layer of old feed bags.
Directly in front of me as I crested the ladder—guarded by a barrier made from
loosely hanging chicken wire—was the outside opening to the loft level. The
shutter-like doors that would normally be opened when you loaded or unloaded
hay bales were missing, and the chill night air was breezing unimpeded through
the wire. So were the screams. I tried to dodge around the obstacles on my way to
the chicken wire, but ended up knocking over a stack of empty paint cans that
were balanced on some loose pet carriers. They banged and rolled and bounced
with all the delicacy of a marching band, and I cringed along with the ruckus I
made, half expecting a pile of ghouls to materialize out of thin air and shred
me. None did, so I layed prone on the floor and poked the suppressor through a
ragged hole in the chicken wire. It took me almost another minute to shift and squirm
into a position with a good rest for the rifle, and then I began to search for
targets. I had at least a half dozen ghouls standing in a ragged line about
sixty yards away. They were facing the bus, which put their backs almost
directly toward me. It was odd, though, and I wondered why they weren’t moving
forward. My answer, such as it was, came a few moments later. I started with
the target on the far right. At this range and with a steady rest I almost
couldn’t miss, and he collapsed into the low grass and was still. The next one
in line followed fifteen seconds later. He kicked and spasmed after being shot,
but eventually his thrashing ceased. I was lining up on number three when I saw
it . . . when I saw her . . .

You know, I
still can’t seem to wrap my head around what’s happening. I have a basic
knowledge of microbiology and infectious disease, partly due to the curriculum
requirements when you’re a biology major, but also because of the genre of
television that I watched when I had time. I’ve even read a few books, believe
it or not. But there is nothing that I can think of that can even remotely
explain what’s happening with this disease, or virus, or whatever it is. Of
course, the fact that I’m bruised and bloody and tired and hungry and . . . and
. . . and . . . OK, I’ll stop, as Uncle Andy puts it, “bawling like a calf.”
Where was I? Oh yeah, lining up on number three. I was shifting the crosshairs
to the third ghoul in line when the small bus shook with impact. I jerked the
trigger anyhow, but missed. The bus shook again, and then from out of nowhere
it became swarmed with a layer of scuttling, grasping infected, like it was a
giant face that had all of a sudden sprouted clumps of moving, shifting hair.
My targets began walking to the left, and I managed to drop another one—the one
I had missed a second ago—before they . . ., well, I don’t even know what to
call it . . . “began gathering” maybe? The illumination from the headlights
showed enough of the scene that a cold hard ball of icy dread began to form in
my gut as I watched. A group of at least ten infected were moving away from the
bus and towards the edge of the light, each dragging the struggling form of a
child behind them. Some of them had two children. Like a macabre dance, they
merged with the remaining three walkers that I hadn’t shot, and then their
group swelled again as another eight or nine joined them from out of the
darkness. There were several ferals in with that group. All of that was bizarre
enough, but it was nothing compared to what happened next. As the groups
compounded their numbers, they began to swirl and sway, all of them seeming to
focus toward the highway and the darkness beyond. I angled my scope through the
chicken wire, and the lime green radiance revealed a solitary figure moving
slowly toward the undulating swarm. It was definitely female, and wore the
tattered remains of a camouflage uniform. Something about her sent another wave
of chills coursing down my spine, and I found myself drawn to the spectacle as
it unfolded in front of me. She walked toward the wavering mob of ghouls, and
they parted at her approach like a group of fat boys at the pool when the hot
lifeguard walks past. Once she was in the middle of the swarm she stopped . . .
and then all of the ones that weren’t holding a child surged forward—and I
swear to you—began to lick and bite at her. As stomach churning as that was, I
forced myself to line up the crosshairs on the monsters that were holding the
children. Two of them fell silently with a single bullet in the side of their
heads, and the children that were in their grasp struggled away and ran. I took
out another one that was holding a pair of kids, and then the opportunity
presented itself for a shot at a feral that was crawling on all fours toward
the ghoul I had just killed. As my crosshairs stabilized on his face, his
entire head exploded in a spray of bones and brain. A millisecond later, the
thundering
CRACK-BOOM
of a high powered rifle reached my ears. I had no
idea where the shot came from, and judging from the reaction of the swarm,
neither did they. The center mass of monsters dissolved sideways, and then the
entire mob began loping across the grass, heading straight for the barn I was
in. I was stunned on so many levels that I literally froze in place, unable to
even take a shot at the horde of infected that were trampling my way. I vaguely
recall hearing another rifle shot, but I have no clue if it scored. It didn’t
really matter, because just a few precious seconds later the ghouls began to
enter the barn.

I’ve been
scared before. Maybe not with the frequency, or to the same degree as a lot of
other people . . . or maybe I’m just too dumb to know when I should be afraid.
Let me tell you something—up in the loft of that barn I used up my entire lifetime
supply of bravery just to breathe. The stomp of multiple feet, the snarls and
hiss’s and moans . . . the rabid animalistic growling . . . the stench of
putrid flesh . . . it was too much for me to process, and I . . .  just . . . .
. . . shut . . . . . . . down. I couldn’t move. I mean, I literally found
myself paralyzed. I’d probably still be there if it hadn’t been for something
else. The kids. I could hear at least two of them still alive and screaming,
and the vision that my mind created of them suffering at the hands of the
fiends below boiled every ounce of terror out of my blood instantaneously.
Before I could even comprehend my actions, I was up and moving towards the edge
of the loft—rifle barrel pointed and leading the way. At the edge I stopped and
looked down into a churning vat of the raw source material for nightmares.
There had to be at least two dozen ghouls on the lower level, and they were feeling
their way around and gathering in small groups of threes and fours, tearing at the
tiny corpses that were scattered on the floor. The sound of a crying girl to my
right was abruptly stilled as a pair of swiftly moving ferals—almost as small
as the child was—converged on her with bone snapping ferocity. But even as the
entire scene began to knit together to beat at the doors of my sanity, I saw
something else . . . something dead center in my sight below . . . and it
turned my burning blood into streams of ice cold horror. It was the lady from
outside. She was stunningly beautiful and barely dressed in the shredded
remains of camouflaged overalls, and almost every square inch of her body below
her gorgeous face was
flooded with bite marks.
She was grasping a struggling young boy in an iron grip . . . and her eyes were
looking straight at me.

Her dazzling, malevolent
lips smiled up at me, and she lifted the child higher, placing his body as a
shield. And then she squeezed and shattered his neck, ending his life with an
audible
crack
. I fought through the shock and shifted my aim to the
right, sending a pair of double taps to the foreheads of the ferals that I knew
could outrun me, and they both dropped to the barn floor and spasmed violently
before laying still next to the remains of the little girl. I jerked the Ruger back
towards the monstrosity and fired off a half dozen shots, but most were
absorbed by the boy’s limp form in her arms. If any passed through and affected
her, it didn’t show. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying she didn’t react, it’s
just that what happened next is so far beyond my comprehension that I don’t
even know if I believe what I saw. But I know what I saw. The twenty-odd
infected that were fumbling around in the darkness below . . . they could
apparently sense that something was wrong, but they couldn’t see each other,
much less me up in the loft. But after my bullets smacked into the corpse that the
bite-marked lady was using as a barrier, she cut loose with a screeching hiss
and all of the ghouls froze for a split second . . . and then like the heads of
a hydra, every single one of them turned their red eyes directly towards me,
and I knew . . . I just knew that they could see me. As one, the entire swarm
began to scuttle forward. There were too many to track with the scope, so I
flung the rifle across my back and drew my CZ and flashlight. One press of the
tailcap was all it took to shatter the darkness and reveal the full color
terror below. The swarm—red, rage filled eyes,  bloody hands, and snapping
teeth—recoiled momentarily from the blast of white hot radiance, and as they
stumbled away shielding their eyes, I lined up my pistol on the unearthly
beauty standing at the core. My mind shivered in abject revulsion and terror as
the bright beam from my flashlight shocked the memory of my nightmare about
Michelle straight to the forefront. The beautiful-cruel dark angel was staring
up at me with soulless, ebony black eyes . . . just like in my dream. My fear
frozen trigger finger jerked once and the CZ barked, sending the 124 grain Speer
Gold Dot bullet blasting out of the barrel at over 1200 feet per second. It
slammed into her left shoulder and she let out an inhuman wail, and the sea of
ruby-eyed ghouls howled in fury and charged toward me. I emptied my magazine at
the ones surging up the ladder, and then reloaded and kept firing as others
began to climb the walls and posts. It was a battle that I knew I was going to
lose in just a matter of seconds. That’s when the truck came crashing through
the barn wall.