“They sound closer,” Cassie said.
Annaliese nodded. They did sound closer. The dead were obviously on the move in their direction. She lifted her chin and angled in on where she thought the moaning was coming from. She’d already suspected the source, but now she was more or less certain. “It’s coming from the house,” she said. “Somebody’s let them out of Ripley Hall.”
“Shawcross,” Eve said, almost spitting the word out of her mouth.
“Probably,” Annaliese said. “He’s crazy enough.”
Up ahead was the park’s office building and the warehouse beside it. The doors to the warehouse were wide open and sounds came from inside.
“Is that one of them?” Pauline asked.
Annaliese wasn’t sure. It could have been Nick inside, shuffling about, so she called out for him.
There was no answer, but the noises from inside the warehouse abruptly stopped. Bradley’s truck was parked right in front and prevented Annaliese from getting a clear view inside.
“Hold on to Michelle,” she told Eve, then headed around the truck and towards the warehouse. The first thing she noticed was that the crates of fireworks, and some of the petrol, had been moved to the front of the storage building, by the entrance. The second thing she noticed was…
“Dash!”
Dash was bleeding from his left arm and the stains on his tracksuit looked black in the moonlight. The half-healed wound of his blinded eye glistened in the dark.
“Hey, baby,” he said. “You’s just in time for the show.”
Annaliese stared down at the fireworks and then back up at Dash. “What are you doing?” she said. “Just come out of there.”
“No can do, sweetheart. You fuckers blind me and then stab me in my arm! There’s gonna be payback.”
Dash pulled a lighter from his pocket and flicked it.
The flame seemed to hang in the air, flickering in the darkness and lighting up the shadows in a vibrating cone of light.
“You light those fireworks and every monster at the bottom of this hill is going to start making its way towards us. They’ll come from miles around.”
Dash grinned at her. “That’s the idea. If I can’t have this place, then neither can you.”
Dash dropped the lighter.
Annaliese stood in stunned silence as split-seconds seemed to pass like minutes. Eve and Pauline screamed from somewhere behind her.
The lit flame tumbled through the air, landing inside one of the crates.
There were a couple of second where nothing happened.
Then all hell broke loose.
Dash dived down onto the floor just as the first firework exploded. A split second later, a hundred more went off; some flying upwards and lighting up the starry sky and others whizzing around the warehouse like flies in a jar.
Beneath the sounds of exploding gun powder and igniting petrol, Dash cackled like a hyena. He sounded ready to die, so long as he took others with him.
Without realising it, Annaliese had hit the ground. Now she lay face down on the floor, her nose mere inches from the pavement. She daren’t move.
After what seemed like forever, the final fireworks hit the sky and fizzled out. Then there was near silence, but for the soft crackling of flames that began to take hold of the warehouse.
Annaliese was shaking, her stomach hot, her heart aching. She waited for the inevitable.
Hungry moans filled the air; not just from Ripley Hall, but from what seemed like everywhere. The collective sound carried on the wind from miles around, from all directions.
The dead were coming.
All of them.
Annaliese leapt to her feet and spun a circle. Pauline and Eve were climbing back up off the floor as well. Michelle remained slumped in a foetal position on the ground.