The Gates of Byzantium

CHAPTER 11


WILL




THE FIRST ASSEMBLY of the Lord building was a big, squat structure on the right of South Main Street, about four kilometers from the courthouse. Lancing had a surprisingly large number of houses of worship, most of them more elaborate and bigger than the First Assembly of the Lord. Will was sure they all had basements, but the others were too large and in the busier parts of town. That would draw attention, something they didn’t need at the moment.

Right now, he was purely in SERE mode—Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. The grunt in him wanted to stop and fight, to take the ghouls head-on and see what would happen. If it were just him and Danny, he might have done just that. But it wasn’t just them. There was Lara, Carly, and the girls to think about.

Sometimes it still amazed him what he had gotten himself into. Taking care of civilians was one thing, but Lara…she complicated matters. She made him think differently. Act differently. Take fewer risks. She was a game changer, and for the first time in his life, Will cared about living to be an old man.

So he knew exactly what Blaine was thinking when the big man had told them he was leaving. Danny knew, too, because Danny had Carly. Before they left the courthouse, they gave Blaine everything he would need to find a car and get it running. They also gave him as much ammo as he could carry. Will figured Blaine would probably end up needing it sooner or later, especially if he had the bad luck to get caught up in the wave of ghouls hunting them. Considering Blaine’s run of luck lately, that was highly likely.

The First Assembly of the Lord had a parking lot that was mostly gravel. Danny, behind the wheel of the Ranger, pulled into it now, and they heard the crunch of loose pebbles under the truck’s tires. They spotted a couple of cars in the parking lot, but apparently the end of the world hadn’t convinced any of the church’s followers to rush over for salvation. Or if it had, they hadn’t made it.

They climbed out of the Ranger and grabbed the Remington 870s from the back. The shotguns were always preferable in close-quarters situations, whereas the M4A1s, slung over their backs, were more for long-range work. They wore their stripped-down urban assault vest over T-shirts and cargo pants, and carried just enough equipment for emergencies, with the rest piled up back in the courthouse.

They entered the church through a side door and were relieved to find that the layout was very simple. It was essentially one big room up front, with a reception area/baptistery that stretched about three meters from the front door, seventy percent of the church made up of the nave and pews; and finally, the lectern. An empty choir section looked back at them from one side of the church as they moved quickly across the communion     area. All of it looked bright and sunny under large stained glass windows.

There were two rooms in the back. One led into a big office that apparently doubled as a sort of guest room, or possibly a consultation room, with couches, comfortable armchairs, and fold-out beds. The second room led into a big closet with janitorial supplies stacked on shelves and a large black piano covered by heavy tarp. Dust swarmed Will like thousands of floating termites when he pulled at the covers to see what was underneath.

He was surprised they had gone through almost the entire length of the church without encountering one ghoul. That was the case with most of Lancing. The city seemed to have very few of the creatures around, which was both a relief and eerie. Every city, regardless of size, had its share of ghouls. Lancing, on the other hand, was unnervingly lacking.

They went back into the nave and looked around, and it didn’t take Danny long to find it. He went up the sanctuary, past a dust-covered communion     table, and saw the big double doors on the floor, with metal rings for handles.

“Someone said they wanted a basement?” Danny announced.

“Big?” Will asked.

“Big enough.”

“What about the doors?”

“Might have to reinforce them on both sides. Everything looks doable.”

“Let’s open ’er up.”

Will stood next to Danny and they exchanged a brief nod, then grabbed a ringed handle each and pulled the doors free. Dust and time erupted into the air like a smoke grenade. They fought through the haze and took a quick step back, unslinging their shotguns in the same motion.

They stared down at complete darkness. There were no windows, so that was a plus.

Will grabbed three glow sticks from his pouch, snapped them, and tossed them into the basement, spreading the sticks around. Danny did the same with four more. Soon, they could see the basement’s interior—or most of it, anyway, from their angle—against the green neon light. What the glow sticks didn’t reveal, they swept with the tactical flashlights underneath their shotguns.

“Tornado basement,” Will said.

“Tornado taketh, God builds a basement to preventeth,” Danny said.

“That makes absolutely no sense.”

“Of course it does. Open your mind.”

It was a good-sized basement, essentially one big room about twenty meters across and just as wide. He saw a row of shelves to one side and more bulky, tarp-covered items along the walls. It was clear the church had been using the basement as a secondary storage area. A flight of metal stairs with big, wide steps led down.

“After you,” Will said.

“No, after you,” Danny said. “I insist. Besides, I’m the one with kids.”

“Point taken, grandpa.”

“Get off my lawn,” Danny said.

*

THEY CLEARED THE basement in less than five minutes, finding nothing down there but old shelves and older boxes and more old stuff hidden under faded tarps. A door at the back opened up into a small bathroom, which, like the rest of the basement, hadn’t been used in a while. There was a toilet and a sink, and little else.

Danny gave the bathroom a once-over. “A little backup water for flushing, some Drano to clear out the pipes, and maybe four or five weeks of intense cleaning with the strongest disinfectant known to man, and I wouldn’t mind spending a few reading hours in here.”


“Good luck with that,” Will said.

“I’m serious. It could work.”

“Captain Optimism.”

Danny grinned at him. “You got any magazines?”

“I’ll settle for some LED lamps.”

Danny went back to the truck to retrieve those LED lamps. When he returned, they hung the lights from dangling hooks along the ceiling and walls, lighting up the basement like it was day. Or brighter than day, actually, since the LED lamps were notoriously hard on the eyes.

The basement, with its high ceiling, looked cavernous against the light, and Will thought it would work, even if they had to stay down here for more than a few days. Maybe a week, depending on how much Lancing had to offer in terms of supplies and, more importantly, danger. He was certain they had lost the ghouls back at Grime, but with so much at stake, he couldn’t rely on gut instincts alone.

Not anymore…

*

THEY DROVE BACK to the courthouse, and Will saw Lara in the parking lot waiting for them. She had a shotgun slung over her shoulder, a sight that always made him smile.

“Blaine’s gone,” Lara said, as soon as he climbed out of the truck.

Will nodded. He had known Blaine would be gone by the time they came back.

“Should we go after him?” she asked.

“No,” Will said.

“Why not?”

“Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” Danny said, climbing out the other side of the truck. “Besides, he’s probably halfway back to Grime by now.”

“We don’t have any right to stop him,” Will said. “I’d go back for you, too, bullet holes or not.”

She smiled, pleased, and walked over and kissed him. “My hero.”

“Get a f*cking room,” Danny grunted.

“What else did you guys find besides the church?” Lara asked, ignoring Danny.

Will glanced down at his watch: 4:13 P.M. “There wasn’t much time for anything else. But Lancing’s a good-sized city; we should be able to stock up on the necessities before moving on to Beaufont Lake. For now, we need to do some work on the church before nightfall, so we should get over there as soon as we can.”

“I’ll get the others,” Lara said, and hurried back into the courthouse.

Will looked around them at the city. It was quiet. He hated when it was this quiet. Even the birds seemed to sense something was coming. A murder of crows circled the roof of the Wallbys, dark wings flapping wildly. Will wondered how much of Hiller was still up there.

“What?” Danny asked behind him.

“Hmm?”

“You got that look.”

“What look?”

“That ‘I smell shit in the air’ look.”

Will frowned. “Where are they?”

“Yeah, you noticed that, too, huh?”

“Hard not to.”

“Yup,” Danny said. “Where the hell are they?”

They looked around at the city in silence, mulling the same question over.

Where the hell are they?

*

THEY PACKED EVERYTHING back into the trucks, including the two new kids, and drove over to the First Assembly of the Lord. Both Rangers looked worse than they really were. The bullet holes and shattered windows could be patched up and replaced, the engines ran perfectly fine, and the bad guys hadn’t managed to shoot holes in the gas tank.

Thank God for amateurs.

The two new kids seemed to fit right in, but he wasn’t too surprised by that. They had been surviving on their own for the last eight months. You had to be tough to do that, possess the kind of mettle most adults didn’t have. The teenagers didn’t really have weapons, except the revolver Josh had gone back across the street to retrieve. The gun was silver, but the bullets weren’t.

“Silver bullets?” Josh said, when they told him about it. “I wish we had known about that. How did you guys know?”

Will told the story about being caught inside a derelict apartment building in Houston. It was the night of The Purge, and Will and Danny, along with their Harris County Sheriff’s Department SWAT brothers, were supposed to be clearing out a drug den. Instead, they had found a nest of ghouls, and Will and Danny had ended up fighting for their lives for most of the night, moving from floor to floor, room to room. Until, finally, they had stumbled across two silver-edged crosses, either abandoned or forgotten by their owners. They had been using silver ever since.

“That’s amazing,” Gaby said. “It’s like some kind of sign from God, isn’t it? Who just leaves two crosses behind when they move? And those specific crosses, with silver? When you need them the most, there they are.”

“Will doesn’t believe in God,” Lara said. “I didn’t use to, either, but now, I’m not so sure. Maybe not God, but some kind of divine being, watching out for us. I don’t know. It’s hard to just dismiss it. The silver, the crosses, these things that come out at night…” She shook her head. “I was raised in an atheist family. My mother would be horrified if she heard me waffling on this now,” she added with a smile.

“I don’t believe in God, either,” Josh said.

Gaby looked surprised. “But your family goes to church every Sunday.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I believe in it. It’s just that, I don’t know, I haven’t seen anything that tells me God exists.”

“Josh, there are bloodsucking creatures that come out at night. If those things can exist, why not God?”

“I don’t know,” Josh said. The kid was struggling to express himself. “I just don’t think the existence of one necessarily proves the other. Okay, I believe in bloodsucking monsters, or ghouls, or whatever you want to call them, but that’s because I’ve seen them. Show me something God has done, and I’ll believe in him, too.”

Gaby looked exasperated. “Whatever. You’re all crazy. You can’t see what’s right in front of you. I know there’s a God, and he’s looking out for us. He gave Will and Danny those silver crosses.”

“You’re just going on faith.”

“Of course I am. That’s what religion is, Josh. It’s faith.”

Josh was about to reply, but he stopped himself and reconsidered. He said instead, “Where do you even get silver bullets, anyway?”

Smart kid.

“You don’t,” Will said. “You make them. One of our main priorities when we go out on supply runs is to look for silver. When we get the chance, we melt the stuff down and cast it into bullets. That’s why we only carry three types of weapons. Nine-millimeter for the Glocks, 5.56 for the rifles, and buckshot for the shotguns. That means you’ll have to dump the fancy six-shooter.”

Josh nodded. “It’s not mine, anyway.”

Josh and Gaby exchanged a brief, private look. There were some bad memories associated with the gun, apparently.

“How have you guys been avoiding the ghouls?” Lara asked.

“By hiding, mostly,” Gaby said.

Josh added, “If we find a good hiding place in a town with enough food and supplies, we’ll stay for a while. It’s only until those things run out that we move on. It’s worked for us so far. Until a few days ago, anyway.”

“You’re both from Dallas?” Lara asked.

“Ridley, Texas,” Gaby said. “It’s close to Dallas.”

“Close enough that we get most of their TV,” Josh said. “That’s how I learned about what was happening. Reports coming out of Dallas, even before it hit Ridley.”


“What about your parents?” Lara asked them.

“I don’t know about mine,” Josh said. “They went out on one of their date nights and never came back.”

“My family didn’t make it,” Gaby said.

“I’m sorry,” Lara said.

The teenage girl nodded, then turned to look out the window. Josh reached over and put his hand over Gaby’s.

Lara sat back in her seat, clearly regretting having ever brought up the topic.

“Where were you when it happened?”

“How did you survive?”

Those were the questions on everyone’s mind when they met someone new. As if knowing how someone else had survived added to the information wall about the how, why, and when of the current world.

It was human nature. The need to know.

*

IT WAS 5:16 P.M. by the time they got everything transferred from the trucks and into the First Assembly of the Lord’s basement. There were no nearby garages and no real good choices to hide the trucks but the parking lot, so they decided to bring everything in rather than risk losing anything during the night. Thankfully, they had two additional pairs of hands in Josh and Gaby, so the transfer went much faster than usual.

While the others adjusted the supply crates along the walls and made room for eight people, Will and Danny left to visit a local hardware store a few blocks away. There, they loaded the Ranger with lumber—more than they needed, but Will didn’t feel like making a return trip if they fell short.

They didn’t bother with the stained glass windows or doors in the church. If the ghouls found them, they were coming in regardless. Instead, they reinforced the twin basement doors on the outside, then barricaded the interior side with two layers of lumber before sticking support beams under them in case of a prolonged assault. Through trial and error, they had found that basements were always the easiest to defend. Once you reinforced the doors, they were essentially impregnable.

When they were done, Danny turned to the others. “Bathroom’s through that door in the back. It’s a little icky—okay, I wouldn’t want to use it with a twenty-foot pole—but if you gotta go, you gotta go.”

They had crates full of the small 16.9-ounce water bottles, along with a couple of the five-gallon variety, the kind used for water coolers. The rest of the supplies were spread out, occupying nearly half the basement space. Bedrolls had been laid out, and Vera and Elise were already working on coloring books Danny had found for them during their stay in Grime a week earlier. Will wasn’t surprised to see Josh and Gaby sticking close together.

Kids in love in the apocalypse, he thought with a slight smile. That would make a great title for a book. Or maybe a TV show. Something on the CW, of course.

He glanced at his watch: 7:41 P.M.

*

NIGHTFALL, AND HE waited for them to attack.

But they didn’t.

An hour after nightfall, he was still waiting.

And they still didn’t attack.

Around ten at night, Will sat very still at the foot of the metal stairs, his back to the basement doors, and listened. He heard snoring around him, but the four oscillating fans, all set on low, dominated the room with their quiet, soothing whirring. They had turned off most of the LED lamps except for the one that sat next to his feet. The lamp was on its lowest setting, providing just enough light for Will to make out the sleeping forms in the basement.

Eleven o’clock came and went, and still no attack.

After midnight, Danny untangled himself from Carly, slipped on his assault vest and picked up his weapons, then walked over soundlessly. He sat down on the steps with a can of fruit. He pulled the tab and tossed the aluminum lid into a nearby heavy-duty trash bag hanging off the stairs, then poked at a pair of pineapple slices with a plastic spork.

“Anything?” Danny asked, keeping his voice low.

“Not a squeak.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Nope.”

“That doesn’t sound right. We lost them in Grime, but they must have picked up our scent by now.”

“Must have.”

“Maybe we’re just really, really that good.”

“Yeah, that’s the ticket.”

“Spooky.”

“Yeah.” Will picked up the Remington and stood. “Wake me when you get scared of the dark.”

“Sure thing, pa.”

Will walked over to Lara, asleep on top of her bedroll, rather than inside, because of the heat. She lay on her left side, slightly curled up with her back to him. He watched the fan nearby playing with her hair and smiled. She looked beautiful asleep.

He laid down the Remington and stripped off his vest and gun belt, then lowered himself next to her. Even asleep, she seemed to sense his presence and rolled over to her other side, her head coming to rest against his shoulder, while her right hand somehow ended up on his chest.

Will closed his eyes and thought about staying awake for a few more minutes. He couldn’t chase away the nagging feeling that the ghouls were planning an attack very soon. It didn’t make a damn lick of sense that there were no ghouls in Lancing, Texas. What the hell was going on out there? What were they waiting for?

But the attack never came, and soon Will drifted off to sleep.

And for the first time in a long time, he saw Kate.