Ayaan staggered to the door and pushed it open. There was no one there. Just darkness and cool, slightly salty air. A cavernous space lay out there, maybe an empty warehouse, perhaps an abandoned auditorium. She stepped outside, her bruised feet dragging over grimy concrete. A little light came from above her through a hole in the ceiling. It made a sort of natural spotlight on the floor. She could see dust motes spiraling in the shaft of sunlight. It almost, but not quite, illuminated an AK-47 assault rifle suspended from the ceiling by a length of string. Ayaan shuffled toward the weapon. She touched the cherry wood stock. It was not her own AK, she would have recognized the pattern of the stain on the wood, the scratches on the metal that had become as familiar to her over the years as the spots and blemishes on her own skin. Still. It was a Kalashnikov and she knew it would be a reliable, effective weapon. She yanked it down, snapping its cord, and examined the chamber then broke out the magazine. A full clip of ammunition. With fingers that felt unusually clumsy she slipped one of the bullets out of the magazine and examined it, almost dropping it when she held it up to her eye. She half expected the bullets to be blanks or somehow adulterated but they weren't. Just the standard 7.62 x 39 mm cartridge. She slapped the magazine back into place, moved the selector lever to single fire and released the cocking lever with a clang.
Something stirred in the corners of the big room. No, more than one something. She brought the weapon around to firing position, ready to aim as soon as a target presented itself. None did. Slowly, deliberately, she took a step toward the still-open bedroom door.
A shadow flicked across the door, slamming it shut. A shadow that moved faster than any living human being she'd ever seen. She knew what that meant. A fast ghoul'probably an entire squad of them. Which meant the green phantom had to be nearby to spur them on. 'Maybe you'll tell me your name now that we've got so much in common,' she announced, trying to flush him out.
It wasn't the green phantom who answered, however. It was the lipless wonder. 'Is test,' he told her, his voice bouncing around the ceiling, amplified electronically and broadcast from several directions at once. He could be anywhere.
'Is test,' he said again. 'Is very fair. Abilities special, some would call powers, they come out under great stress only. What greater stress than life-or-death, yes? Sometimes the lich has no power, nothing special, and then he must be put down. If he has powers then he can survive.'
'And making me do this in the dark, that's part of the fairness?' Ayaan demanded, but before she could finish the sentence something slapped her arm hard enough to make it sting. She grabbed her wrist and felt torn leather there.
Clearly the test had already begun. She could live or die by her own actions. If she was going to live she needed to shoot, and to shoot she needed to see. She remembered Sarah's gift. Ayaan would have that ability'all of the dead did. She could feel the accelerated ghouls whizzing around her, could hear them moving in the dark but she forced herself to calm down, to close her eyes, to' to feel.
It had nothing to do with the eyes, though her brain formed images of what she received. Her skin took in most of the information, sensitive areas of her body reacting with abhorrence to the presence of undead things.
And there they were. She understood, perhaps for the first time, just what ghouls were. Empty shells. Husks. Person-shaped receptacles. The energy that flowed into them and suffused them was the only thing keeping them upright. There were no minds, no souls inside them. She stared down at her own body, at her flesh wrapped up in the skin of some other dead beast and knew she was one of them. Her intelligence, her personality, were merely riding around in her' corpse.
One of the ghouls came at her, moving low and fast, bent almost parallel with the floor. Its sharpened bones flashed toward her but she could see them now, smoky and purple with stolen life energy. She ducked and spun and barely avoided impaling herself on his cut-down arms. She had time, just, to wonder if he was one of the ghouls butchered on the ship while she watched.
He came around again. She ducked and rolled away from him and watched as he skidded past her, sliding on the slick floor.
She could see them now'only three of them, their energy thrumming off the walls'but her special vision couldn't compensate for really seeing. She had little depth perception, she couldn't find their ranges in the dark. She knew it was day outside and the sun was shining'she could tell from the hole in the roof.
Ayaan waited for the next attack, a ghoul coming at her with arms flailing and legs pumping. She dropped to all fours and swung away from him, then dashed for the nearest wall. She felt old, dried-up wood, probably plywood installed over a broken window. There was no time to find a door.