The Gates of Byzantium

CHAPTER 37


WILL




A SHOT RANG out from behind them. Danny, firing from the Tower.

Will saw one of the spotlights on the incoming boats blink out of existence. Then another shot, and another light went out.

A third shot took out the final light.

The boats were close enough now that when Will looked through his night-vision binoculars, he could see four figures scrambling around on the darkened boat. He couldn’t tell if they were panicking or getting ready to land. They were heavily armed, he saw that much. Weapons swung around with their bodies.

He moved the binoculars over to his right and picked up four more men in another boat. The spotlights of the second boat were still shining, too bright, and made watching them difficult with the lights directly in his eyes.

Will heard another shot and looked back at the first boat just in time to see a man pitching off the side. The remaining three men were in full panic mode now, and suddenly he saw the man behind the steering wheel shove the throttle forward. The boat began pushing across the calm water at full speed. Will lost track of it for a moment before picking it up again, just in time to see a second man stumbled over the side of the boat, almost as if the wind had caught him by the shirt and jerked him free. He fell into the water and disappeared into the blackness.

Then they were suddenly there and Will dropped the binoculars, picked up the M4A1, and opened fire. His first shot hit the driver of the second boat in the chest, the bullet smashing through the clear screen guard. The man’s body jerked violently and he fell forward, his hand hitting the throttle. The boat took off, leaving the others behind.

Will pulled his eye back from the rifle’s sight to watch the boats coming. They were almost on top of them.

Thirty meters…

Twenty-five meters…

Blaine and Maddie took his cue and opened fire on the incoming boats. They were close enough now that Will could see bullets smashing into the sides and chopping off chunks of wood and fiberglass. The collaborators were firing back, but they were firing blind, trying in vain to gauge where the bullets were coming from.

Amateurs.

Then the first boat hit the beach and kept coming.

For a moment, Will thought it would continue to rake its way across the beach and right into the woods, but it stopped five meters up the sand and its occupants (three left) jumped out. Will shot the first one just as he landed—a tall man with a mustache and a Dallas Cowboys cap. The man fell face-first into the sand.

The other two opened fire in Will’s direction. He calmly lowered himself to the ground as tree bark above him cracked and snapped loose. The AK-47 fire continued for a while, joining the other gunfire erupting all over the beach. Will saw one of the men clutch at his chest and go down.

Nice shot, Danny.

Will, still on his stomach, shot the third man in the side. The man stumbled, but didn’t go down. Another shot from the Tower and the man collapsed.

Then the second boat hit the beach and this time it really did keep going. Will was about to pick up the Remington and run for his life when the boat finally stopped halfway up the beach and the three men inside scrambled out. Will heard a hellacious torrent of fire from his left (Blaine) firing on full-auto. He watched chunks of the boat’s side splinter and one of the men fall, try to get back up, then fall again. The remaining two returned fire into the woods in Blaine’s direction.

Will took the momentary distraction to sit up and shoot the closest man in the chest. The man fell, and as the third and last man turned toward him, Will shot him in the chest, too.

He heard intense gunfire from the right side of the beach and looked over, saw that the other two boats had made landfall and men were spilling out, kicking up sand as they scrambled forward, desperately trying to escape the beach. There were four in one boat and five in the other, and Will watched one of them stagger and fall as Maddie razed them from her hiding spot. In response, nearly all of the men turned in her direction and fired back.

Shit.

Will quickly switched the M4A1 to full-auto and unleashed a volley into the group of men. He caught one of them square in the chest, hit another one in the thigh, and dropped a third man with a lucky shot to the head.

They turned away from Maddie and toward him and sent their own fusillade his way, forcing him to snatch up the Remington and dart farther back into the woods. Behind him, the trees where he had been crouched were torn and reduced to green mist in the black night.

He was still moving through the woods, picking his way toward the cobblestone pathways to his left with the Remington in his hand, the M4A1 slung over his back, when he heard Lara’s voice, screaming into his right ear: “They’re here! They’re at the Tower!”

The Tower!

He reached for his PTT, but Blaine beat him to it: “Where?”

Will looked back toward the beach when a new round of gunfire drew his attention. He stopped, went back down into a crouch, and listened. He heard M4 rifle fire coming from his left, then responding AK-47 fire from his right, very close to him.


Blaine. Or Maddie. Engaging on the beach.

Will jumped the last few meters out of the woods and onto the cobblestone pathway. He didn’t expect them to be there, but they were. Right in front of him.

There were three of them, two looking back toward the beach at the sudden massive exchange of fire. They were big men in boots and camouflaged hunting clothes. The man directly in front of Will, who had a look of total surprise on his face when he saw Will leaping out of the woods, was wearing an assault vest with a radio in one pouch.

The man’s eyes widened as far as Will had ever seen in his life and the guy lifted his AR-15. Will shot him first from almost point-blank range with the Remington. The distance between them was nonexistent, and Will didn’t even have to lift the shotgun to aim. The man’s body seemed to sink right into the stones under his boots, exposing his two comrades standing behind him.

The two men were turning, lifting their weapons, when Will racked the Remington and shot one, then the other.

He didn’t even have time to ponder the bloody mess smeared across the cobblestones before he heard a thunderous boom! from behind him.

Will knew instantly what that meant. He spun around just in time to see thick white smoke sprouting up from the Tower’s third floor like chaotic smoke signals, while brick and concrete tumbled down all around the building like hail.

“What was that?” someone shouted in Will’s ear. Blaine again. “What the hell was that?”

Will began running up the cobblestone road, back to the hotel grounds, back to the Tower.

Bobby, where the hell are you?

He saw them moving across the grounds of the hotel almost as soon as he burst out of the woods and into the clearing. They were fanning out. Dark figures, looking for targets. They were smart enough to keep away from the LED lampposts, and he saw one of them randomly shooting at the solar-powered lamps scattered about the area. There might have been five, maybe more. A couple were already circling the Tower, while one was trying to kick in the front door.

Will slung the shotgun as he ran, pulling the M4A1 free. He could still hear gunfire behind him, from the beach. Blaine and Maddie, still slugging it out.

My amateurs are better than your amateurs, Kate.

He looked up at the Tower in the distance, his gut sinking. The initial explosion had sent most of the Tower’s roof down into the surrounding area around the base of the structure. The third-floor windows that he could see, amazingly enough, remained intact, along with the floodlights under them. Where there used to be a cap at the top, there was now only a jagged opening with smoke still rising lazily out of it as if it were a chimney.

His attention snapped back to the grounds around the Tower when he heard a series of gunshots. Rifles, then shotguns, firing back and forth. He looked up just in time to see sections around one of the Tower’s second-floor windows breaking free from a shotgun blast.

Will was halfway across the grounds when he caught sight of one of the attackers stepping into a pool of light. The man had on black face paint and was wearing a knit cap. Will shot the man in the back of the head from thirty meters away. The man crumpled into the grass as if he had simply been swallowed up.

A figure in front of Will turned and opened fire. Will saw flames stabbing out of the man’s weapon from forty meters away and felt bullets slashing past his head. Then something hit him in the left arm and for an instant he was tossed to one side.

He darted behind a big palm tree as the man kept firing. Tree bark shredded and bullets zip-zip-zip around him harmlessly. His left arm was bleeding and had gone numb, but he could still hold the rifle and shoot, so it couldn’t have been that bad.

When the man finally stopped shooting, Will stepped out from behind the tree and calmly shot him in the chest while he was struggling to reload.

Then he continued running toward the Tower.

He arrived in time to see a man armed with an M16 rifle feeding something into a tube attached to the bottom of the barrel. He recognized the M203 grenade launcher attached underneath the rifle. That was what had taken off the top of the Tower’s third floor.

Will glanced up and saw Lara appear in the second-floor window directly above the man loading the M203. The man saw her and took aim.

Will screamed, “No!”

That got the man’s attention. He looked over at Will, momentarily distracted, but quickly turned back to the window and fired. Will’s gut sank at the ploompt! sound as the M203 launched, and Will watched, horrified, as the grenade round smashed into the window frame just above Lara’s head—then ricocheted back down.

It didn’t arm!

The M203 fired impact grenades that needed to travel a certain distance before they armed themselves. The third floor had been far enough, but not the second-floor window. When Will saw the grenade hit the top of the window frame above Lara’s head, sending her stumbling back in shock, he knew it hadn’t achieved the proper distance.

As the grenade fell back down to earth, Will watched the man who had fired it scrambling to get away. But the man had misjudged the trajectory of the grenade and was going in the wrong direction. When the grenade landed two meters in front of him, the man shouted out a curse that was quickly swallowed up by an explosion that ripped out a piece of the Tower’s base along with it. Any closer, and it would have punched a hole in the Tower itself.

He caught a glimpse of Lara, alive and well, looking out the same window at the remains of the man below her. He wanted to laugh and run to her, grab her, and kiss her.

Instead, he crouched in the darkness and scanned the area. He didn’t see anything. Or anyone. Where had they come from? Probably the west side of the island, past the power station. It was the lowest point on the island other than the beach in the south.

Will got up and moved toward the Tower. He was ten meters away when he almost stepped over a body in the grass. He crouched next to it and looked down at the young face.

Bobby.

There was a big bloody spot on his chest where he had been shot at close range. His M4 rifle lay nearby, along with a man with camouflage on his face and a bullet hole in his left cheek. Will imagined the kid heard the attackers coming and ran over to intercept.

He looked up at the realization that the gunfire behind him, from the beach, had stopped, and the island had become ghostly quiet.

He clicked his PTT. “Situation report.”

“Beach is cleared,” Blaine said in his right ear. “Maddie’s hurt.”

“How bad?”

“She’s been shot a couple of times. Thigh and arm. The arm looks like a flesh wound. She wants to know if anyone’s seen Bobby.”

“Tell her I’m sorry. Bobby’s dead.”

“F*ck.” Blaine was silent for a moment. Then, “What about the Tower? What was that explosion I heard?”

“One of the attackers had an M203 grenade launcher. He took out the roof. I’m checking on it now.”

Will jogged the final distance to the Tower. He looked up at the smoke still puffing out of the remains of the third floor. It didn’t look like the grenade had gotten inside the building itself, which would have been catastrophic.

He pressed the PTT again as he neared the Tower. “Lara, can you hear me? Lara.”

There was no reply.

“Sarah. Danny. Gaby. Anyone in the Tower. Give me a situation report.”

Nothing.

Will reached the door and banged on it. There were more than twenty bullets embedded in the thick mahogany wood. But it had held.

“Open the door!” he shouted. “Whoever’s in there, if you can hear me, open the door!”


Mercifully, the door began to open, an inch at a time…

*

BLAINE LOOKED LIKE week-old shit under the morning sun. And frankly, so did he, if he were to look in a mirror. They were operating almost entirely on fumes and painkillers. Even so, Will’s body protested every movement, and he could only imagine how Blaine was feeling at the moment. The big man didn’t complain, though.

They glided swiftly across the lake in the same boat they had used yesterday. The Carver had proven itself sturdy, even with a dozen bullet holes in various parts of its frame, including five on the bottom that he had patched with caulk and spackling from the boat shack. Blaine steered from the middle while Will crouched at the bow with the M4A1, scanning the horizon for targets. He wanted to see someone, notice a head poking out from the ridgelines in front of him. He wanted to shoot something. Someone.

Anything, dammit.

The two-story house across from the marina looked dead and abandoned, even from a distance. Will scanned the yards and could find no one. The boathouse was empty—of people and boats. If there were people still at the house, they would be inside. They could certainly hear the Carver coming because Will hadn’t done anything to disguise their approach, with the outboard motor roaring in the still morning.

So where were they?

He didn’t believe for a second they had killed every single collaborator in last night’s attack. Twenty-five men, in all. The storming of the beach had been a diversion to keep them occupied as two other boats came along the west side and the men scaled the cliff. They had found ropes and hooks there this morning, the boats themselves drifting at anchor in the water. Three of the men who had tried to climb hadn’t made it. Two had fallen to their deaths against the rocks below and a third was floating nearby.

Twenty-five dead men…

Including Bobby.

Of everyone on the island, he and Blaine were the most mobile. The bullet wound in his left arm was easy to ignore with painkillers. He felt like sleeping for a week, but that wasn’t anything new. And like all the other times when he was tired and could barely walk, he soldiered through it. It wasn’t like he had any choice.

They went up the inlet, outboard motor piercing the clear morning air. Will expected to see the sun glinting off rifle barrels at any moment.

Any second now…

But it never happened.

He knew they were gone as soon as he jumped from the boat and set foot on the patch of land the house sat on. Blaine struggled with the boat for a moment but finally jumped out with a rope and tied it around a nearby tree.

They scanned the house. Will shot one of the windows just to let anyone inside know they were coming, then waited for a figure to appear so he could shoot it.

He saw no one.

“Gone?” Blaine asked, keeping his voice low.

Blaine gripped his M4, and like Will, he had a shotgun slung over his back. They had brought enough ammo with them to last a while in a stand-up firefight. Will was hoping he got to use all of it. Or most of it, at least.

“Let’s check the house,” Will said.

*

THERE WAS NO one in the house. The place looked heavily lived-in, and there was food in the kitchen and living room and cases of bottled water left on couches. Boxes of clothing, ammo, and guns lay scattered everywhere. The bedrooms were similarly used and abandoned.

There were trucks in the yard, parked in a kind of semi-circle, the grass around them trampled by heavy boots and bare feet. He saw a generator near the back of the house, and portable spotlights lined the yard.

They had been here last night. Gathering, waiting for the call to attack. And when the call came, they boarded their boats and charged.

A suicide run. Why would they do that?

Because they didn’t have a choice.

She was here. Kate. She sacrificed the collaborators to get to us.

“What now?” Blaine asked.

“Grab the ammo and guns from the house.”

Will siphoned gas out of the trucks into containers he found in the boathouse. When Blaine came back outside, Will handed him two of the containers.

“We’re going to burn the house?” Blaine asked.

“Yup.”

“Why not save it? In case we need it later?”

“We don’t need it. We have the island. The next time they come back, they should be as uncomfortable as possible.”

They doused the house with gas inside and out, added fuel to the boathouse and the big storage building across the yard, then lit a match and stood back and watched it all burn under the sun. The heat quickly became suffocating.

With the fire gutting the house behind them, Will and Blaine checked the garage in the marina. The crates they had left behind were still there, but they had been strafed with automatic gunfire. Perforated water bottles had leaked onto the ground.

“Anything we can salvage?” Blaine asked.

“Clothes, shoes…”

“Got holes in them.”

“Probably.”

They filled a crate with all the undamaged supplies they could find, then doused the garage with the remaining gas and lit it. For good measure, they burned down the gazebo, too.

Will noticed that the bodies were gone. The two men he had killed around the garage, and the three or so they had shot during the gunfight afterward.

Blaine noticed, too. “They took the bodies. They did that at the Willowstone Mall in Beaumont, too. Sandra’s body was gone the next morning. They can’t turn the dead, can they?”

“Not that I’ve seen.”

“So why did they take them?”

Will shook his head. Just another mystery to add to the pile of mysteries. Eight months had gone by, and they hardly knew anything about the creatures.

They walked to Blaine’s Jeep, parked in the ditch farther up the road. It wasn’t there anymore, though they did find a couple of silver candle holders lying in the grass nearby.

“Sonofabitch,” Blaine said. “That’s the second Jeep I’ve lost.”

“Should have known better than to leave your car unlocked on the side of the road,” Will said.

“Rub it in.”

They climbed back into the Carver and rode back to the island.

Will watched the house burning, half of the two-story structure already consumed by the large flames. The trucks in the yard had become blackened wrecks and some caught fire, their tanks adding more fuel to the bonfire raging next to them. The small boathouse had gone quickly, along with the garage and gazebo at the marina.

Will turned back toward Song Island and settled down in the stern of the boat, Blaine steering in front of him. He could feel the heat flaring against his back, even from a distance. It felt even warmer than the sun above them.

*

HE WAS SHORT on manpower, so he gave Maddie first watch, positioning her in what remained of the Tower’s third floor. She was wounded, but she could still shoot, and the painkillers helped. Blaine walked the island, circling it every few hours. Will didn’t know how he was even still up and about after last night, much less still moving. Danny was already conscious, but he wasn’t going to be useful for a while.

The next few days and weeks would be dangerous ones if the collaborators decided to attack again. His only hope was that they didn’t know how much he had lost last night. If Kate decided to risk more of her humans, their ownership of Song Island would prove short-lived.

Will located Danny’s remaining bundles of C4 in the basement underneath the Tower where Tom had left them. He planted them along the beach, and kept the detonator with him at all times.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.


Tonight. He would find out how much Kate wanted the island, how much she was willing to sacrifice.

He was lucky he still had Sarah around. Along with the girls, he and Sarah were able to keep an eye on the wounded—Carly, Danny, and Gaby, now lying side by side on the second floor of the Tower. It was still the safest and easiest-to-defend location on the entire island, even after last night’s grenade launcher attack.

An hour later, Will found Lara asleep in their room.

She was exhausted and slept in the same clothes from last night. Her right arm was covered in bandages she had put on herself—both of her arms were now covered in bandages—and her face was blackened and bruised, as were her legs and, he knew, most of her body.

She was curled up on her side on the bed, sleeping in a pool of sunlight pouring in from the open patio window. There was a light morning breeze, and the room felt strangely cool despite the oppressive heat outside.

He sat down on a chair next to the bed and watched her sleep. It was quiet. So quiet. The only sounds were the birds outside, water lapping against the island, and her soft breathing. He could look at her forever, he realized.

After a while, she stirred and opened her eyes.

She saw him immediately, and a ghost of a smile appeared across her bruised lips. “You’re back.”

“I’m back.”

“How did it go?”

“They were gone by the time we got there.”

“Figures.”

“Yeah.”

“Any signs of where they went?”

“No.”

“What about Blaine’s Jeep?”

“Gone.”

“Thieves.”

“Yeah.”

She lay still, and they were content to look at each other in silence for a moment.

“Carly woke up for a bit while you were gone,” she said. “She should be back on her feet soon, though she won’t be very chatty for a while. Danny and Gaby’s wounds aren’t too bad. Nothing life-threatening. And Maddie’s going to be gimpy for a few days.”

He nodded.

“How’s your arm?” she asked.

“It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

She reached out and stroked his cheek with her fingers. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks.”

“But I still love you.”

“You just love me for my body.”

“Who told you?”

“It’s obvious.”

She was quiet again.

“What is it?” he asked.

“What happens now?”

If they attack tonight, we’re probably all going to die, he thought, but he said instead, “We gave up a lot for this island, so we’re going to make the best of it. They might have lured us here on false pretenses, but they weren’t completely lying. Song Island is a haven, and it has everything we need to live out the rest of our lives.”

“Are you saying you want to grow old with me?” she said, smiling at him.

“I would like to see you with gray hair.”

She laughed. “It’s called Clairol Perfect 10, babe. The first sign of gray hair, and I’m sending you out there to fetch me a box.”

“The things I do for love.”

She took his hands in hers and pulled him onto the bed with her. “Come here.”

“You’re still hurt.”

“So are you. We’ll make it work. Adapt or perish, remember?”

“Adapt or perish,” he repeated, and lay down on the bed next to her.

She slipped comfortably against him and Will wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. He ignored the stabbing pain in his arm. It was a small price to pay for this moment with her, which could very well be their last.

“Will?” she whispered.

“Yeah?”

“If you dream about Kate again, I’m going to kick your ass.”

“Fair enough.”





EPILOGUE





“WE’RE GOING TO need a new leader,” Mason said, grinning through that big black hole in his front teeth.

It was dark outside the kid’s room. Very dark, despite the fact that there was moonlight and the spotlights, and the sound of the generator humming in the background could be heard. But it was very dark in the front yard, though Josh thought that might have been because of the ghouls.

They were everywhere, spread out across the yard, spilling over the driveway, flattening the grass as far as he could see. Their dark skin looked like black oceans of tar swaying slowly back and forth under the window. He wondered how terrified he would be if they turned and looked at him all at once.

He pushed the thought out of his head. They weren’t going to turn. They were focused on what was happening in the middle of the yard.

Josh felt a strange sense of fascination mixed with dread at the sight of it moving through the crowd of ghouls. It stood out because the other ghouls were homogenous, devoid of identity. But this ghoul was different. He could tell, even from a distance, that it was female. It walked straight, and if not for the supernatural fluidity with which it moved, he might have believed it was human.

No one had returned from the island. There had been a gun battle the likes of which he had never heard before. At one point he swore he even heard an explosion or two, and all he could think was, Gaby, please be safe, please be safe…

The gun battle seemed like it went on and on for hours, and it sounded like the end of the world all over again. He wasn’t sure how long it really lasted. Maybe twenty minutes, maybe ten minutes, maybe even less than that. It was hard to tell. He was so far away that the pop-pop-pop of gunfire sounded surreal, like listening to a movie. Not even watching a movie, just hearing the echoes of one playing in the theater next door.

She lied to me. Karen lied to me. She didn’t go there to save Gaby. She’s throwing everything at the island.

Lying bitch!

And when it was over and no one returned, he heard the loud rustling of movement outside his window and looked out and saw Karen on her knees, waiting, as ghouls appeared out of the darkness and surrounded her. They came from nowhere and everywhere, and he had forgotten momentarily that they were hiding in the night all around him.

No, that wasn’t true. They didn’t really “hide” anymore. It was where they lived. Where they dwelled. It was their home. He was the one hiding in a kid’s room. They, the humans, were the ones who didn’t belong anymore.

“What’s happening?” Josh asked.

“Karen didn’t follow orders. It told her not to attack the island, but she did it anyway.” Mason smirked. “See, kid, this is what happens when you overestimate your abilities, not to mention your importance in the larger scheme of things. When it’s all said and done, we’re just cogs in the machine. Remember that.”

The female ghoul stood over Karen, and Josh could see bright blue eyes piercing the darkness, almost glowing. The blue-eyed ghoul touched Karen’s hair, seemed to brush it like a mother would her child’s.

Karen was talking now. Talking fast.

The blue-eyed ghoul seemed to nod, then it put a hand under Karen’s chin, and Karen stood up slowly. Karen smiled, but it didn’t last long because suddenly the blue-eyed ghoul’s head was pressed against the side of Karen’s throat and Karen’s mouth opened in a wide, surprised O.

The ferocity and speed with which it happened made Josh take an involuntary step away from the window.

“Relax, kid,” Mason said. “If they wanted us dead, they’d have come in and gotten us already. Front door’s not locked.”


Josh didn’t know how to answer that. Was that supposed to make him feel better?

He walked over to the bed and sat down. The mattress underneath him was still damp from his wet clothes, but he hardly felt it. His whole body was numb. Jesus, was he even still breathing?

“Relax,” Mason said again. “You’re going to hyperventilate yourself to death, kid.”

“What if we run?” Josh asked suddenly.

“Run?”

“Sneak out the back door. Run away before they notice we’re in here.”

Mason laughed. “Have you looked outside? There are thousands of those things out there. Where do you think we’re going to run to? You got a Batmobile I don’t know about? We wouldn’t last a second outside this house.”

“But we can’t just stay here.”

“Of course we can, and we are. We’re not doing shit—”

He stopped suddenly.

Josh stared at him, wondering why he had stopped.

Mason’s eyes left Josh’s, and he turned his head back toward the door.

Josh felt something seize his chest, punch its way through flesh and bone, and wrap around where he thought his soul was. Josh didn’t use to think souls actually existed, but as he stared at the door, he realized how wrong he was.

We all have souls, because it’s staring straight into mine.

The blue-eyed ghoul stood in the doorway, its long, lean body covered in black prune skin like the thousands of others outside. It was the same, but different. He knew, without a doubt, that this creature—this thing—was more.

So much more.

It stood tall, and he could see the womanly curves of its hips, see where its breasts used to be when it had still possessed—and cared about—gender. And when it smiled at him, Josh thought it looked pleased with his response to its presence.

Something inside Josh died.

“Josh,” it said, in a soft, almost feminine voice that traveled across the small bedroom and seized him by the soul and refused to let go. “Josh…We have a lot of work to do, you and I. We’re going to change the world. Are you ready?”