Empire's End (26 page)

Dalton pulled Cam to her feet. “We need you.
C’mon.”

As Adam took down the barricade, he sensed
something, something vague and threatening that gnawed at the back
of his mind. What was it? The horde waiting outside? No, it was
something worse.

As he pulled the last shelf away, the doors
fell in beneath the weight of the undead. Zombies spilled into the
room.

“Open fire!” Gregory shouted.

Adam sliced a pair of rotters in half and
kicked their spurting remains away. He turned to grab Lily, pulling
her onto his shoulders. He turned back just in time to be tackled
to the floor. Lily tumbled away from him.

She scrambled past Gregory, who was busy
shearing the heads off of rotters with his shotguns. He knelt to
reload—cold hands clamped down on his shoulders. He batted them
away and retreated further into the room.

The undead were still pouring in—far more
than thirty now. It was a full-scale assault. Adam stood at the
threshold and pared them down, but again and again he was
overwhelmed by their numbers, and they broke through in waves. Such
a wave swept over Ian Gregory. He discharged the shotguns as he
fell, taking a couple more with him. He was fading fast beneath an
onslaught of teeth, and fumbled through his uniform for the grenade
there—released the pin—his last act of defiance.

The muffled explosion threw the dead straight
up in a smoking geyser. They came down in pieces, only to be
replaced by others. Every blast, every bullet—it meant nothing, the
rotters were swarming in at an exponential rate.

Tripper and Cam were backed into the far
corner of the room. They turned a shelf on its side and used it for
cover until their guns were empty.

Tripper lit a joint, took a long drag and
passed it to his lover. “I don’t know what to say,” he muttered,
barely audible above the groans of the encroaching dead.

“There’s nothing to say.” Cam gently kissed
his neck, then wrapped her arms around him.

The rotters pulled the shelf aside. Tripper
glared at them over Cam’s shoulder. “Fuckers.” Then the pair was
swallowed.

Lily cowered between a shelf and the rear
wall. She screamed as a shadow swooped down to collect her. “It’s
all right!” Dalton yelled. “We’re getting out of here!”

“Reaper!” he shouted. On the other side of
the room, Adam turned to see the soldier and child surrounded by
undead. He hurled himself into their midst like a torpedo, raking
his scythe through flesh and bone and cutting a path to Lily.
Dalton handed her over. “The car!”

He stayed glued to Adam’s back as the former
Death made his way to the entrance. They ran out into the freezing
cold, into the night—only to find the sky lit by flames as every
building around them burned. Adam glanced up at the library’s roof
and saw his horse’s head hanging over the edge, dead. It must have
been struck by shrapnel. So, then, on to a new steed—Adam yanked
open the Hummer’s passenger door and put Lily inside. Dalton was
already behind the wheel. Gregory had left the keys inside. Knew he
might not make it back. Good man to the end.

“
WAIT!
” a voice snarled. Adam
turned—and was blown away by a volley of bullets.

Finn Meyer staggered toward the Hummer.
“
Get out!
” he screamed at Dalton.

Dalton raised his hands and scooted out of
the driver’s seat. “I have a child here!”

Meyer grimaced. “I don’t care!”

Then he heard a sound at his back—a ragged
scream, but not that of the undead. No, it was a cry fraught with
rage and grief and desperation, and Meyer managed to put his finger
on the voice just before the widowmaker separated his head from his
neck.

He fell into the snow; blinked a few times,
in disbelief, at Voorhees, and at his own decapitated body; then
his mind faded.

A zombie bit into Voorhees’ shoulder. He
hacked into its skull and shoved it aside. Didn’t matter now. He’d
followed Meyer’s gunshots and footfalls until he heard his voice
and was sure. Now it was over.

“Voorhees!” Lily cried.

He held his hand out, clutching at the air.
“Lily?”

Dalton put his arm around the half-dead man
and dragged him to the Hummer. “Here. Get in.”

Adam got to his feet and grimaced as he felt
the bullets searing his insides. He saw Voorhees, and that Lily was
safe, and he left out a sigh of relief. At least it was finally
done.

Then Eugene stepped around the front of the
vehicle. Adam saw him for the first time, and that feeling of
strange dread gripped him again.

“Who are you?” he called.

The old man opened his mouth. He did not
speak, yet a voice—
voices
—poured forth like flies boiling
from his lips. “
We have many names.
”

It was the Omega.

He’d fully regenerated.

And, with a strength unlike any man Adam had
ever seen, the Omega surged forward and knocked him off his feet,
driving him through a burning wall and into the mouth of Hell.

“
WE ARE ONE THOUSAND MILLION STRONG! WE
HAVE WAITED AN ETERNITY IN THE ABYSS FOR THIS MOMENT—WE ARE THE
END, REAPER, YOUR END, AND NOW WE SHALL REAP YOU!
”

Adam was half-conscious, barely aware of the
scorching heat enveloping him as he was carried through a burning
room. All was white around him, a swimming storm of flames, a
maelstrom without end. Then he was slammed down on a table of
glowing steel and the fissures of his burnt flesh opened to receive
the pain.

The Omega smashed Adam’s head into the table
in a mad frenzy. All the while his jaw hung open, hateful words
spouting forth: “
DEMON! FUCKING DEMON—NOW YOU JOIN US IN HELL!
NOW YOU’LL KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE!
” Hundreds of voices or more
were fighting to be heard, screaming over one another in various
languages, all of which Adam could understand—and all of which were
saying the same things. They were wrong, he was no demon, he had
once been a man himself. He pushed the Omega’s hands away from his
throat and tried to speak.

“
WE DON’T WANT YOUR LIES! WE WILL HAVE OUR
VENGEANCE!
”

The Omega tore the scythe from Adam’s arm;
wouldn’t have done him any good anyway. He tried to look around and
figure out just where they were. All he saw were flames.

The Omega overturned the table and sent Adam
sprawling. He splashed down in a hot, coppery liquid. Blood. The
floor was covered in blood.

Adam stood up. He was standing on the killing
floor of a slaughterhouse.

A white-hot chain was slung around his neck.
The Omega lifted him off the floor, its own hands blackening as it
pulled the chain taut. The façade of a healthy man was being
scorched away. It shook Adam violently, throttling him, and he felt
his flesh becoming brittle ash and falling away in flakes.
Can’t
take much more of this.

The Omega hurled him over a fiery conveyor
belt and into a steel wall. Adam landed on his hands and knees and
crawled toward an enormous block of machinery. He had to get out of
here. He could feel the heat searing the lenses of his eyes. His
body was falling apart. Had to keep moving.

The chain snapped against the side of his
head and sent him sliding through coagulated gore. He heard the
distant braying of livestock as the flames consumed them. Was he to
join them, just another servant-animal gutted and cast aside?

The Omega straddled Adam’s back. “
We’ll
burn here together, Reaper—back to the abyss!
” A cacophony of
insane laughter tore through the air. The old man’s meat was
cooking. His skin blistered and split open. “
We’re starting to
look alike, Reaper! Can you feel it—the burning? The terrible
burning? Do you feel it eating you alive? ANSWER US!
” Rising,
the Omega turned Adam over and kicked him in the chest.
“
SPEAK!
”

Adam coughed up ashy spittle and rasped,
“Enough talk.” He grabbed the chain hanging from the Omega’s hand
and yanked as hard as he could.

The Omega stumbled over him and into the
conveyor belt. It spun around, but not fast enough, not even
close—Adam leapt across the room and drove his knees into the
rotter’s ribs. Both flew over the belt and into the fire.

Adam sent his fist crashing through the
Omega’s teeth. Its head snapped back, bone tearing through flesh.
It laughed. Adam grabbed it by the wrist and swung it into the
wall. Its arm cracked loudly. Still the fiend cackled. “
We’re
already dead, demon!
”

Its hand found a meathook on the floor and
closed over the wooden handle. Adam saw it coming and caught the
Omega’s wrist. With a grim smile, he crushed it to powder inside
his fist.

He swung at its jaw again. This time, it
caught
his
fist in its broken teeth. Driving his thumb into
the underside of its jaw, he gritted his teeth and twisted...
twisted
. The Omega yelped. It struggled feebly with his
grip, and then it grunted and its jaw was ripped free with a wet
sound, its black tongue spilling down its chest.

The rotter’s eyes were wide with shock. It
clawed at Adam’s face, and still the voices poured out from the
hollow of its throat. “
No! You can’t do this! You have no
right!
”

“
YOU
have no right!” Adam snatched the
chain from the Omega’s hand, coiling it around his fist as the
rotter staggered away. “You’re already dead!” He charged after
it.

“
YOU HAVE NO RIGHT!
” he thundered
again. His fist sailed through tongues of flame and shattered the
Omega’s cheekbone. The voices inside screamed in horror—the
killers, the rapists, the corruptors of humanity were all wracked
with despair as Adam’s fist rained down on their shared limbs,
breaking kneecaps in two, driving splinters of ribs into bursting
organs, pulverizing joints and crushing tissue until there was a
pulpy, sagging bag of bones left dangling in Adam’s grip.

“
You can’t...”
the Omega pleaded.
Ichor ran from its punctured eyeballs and into the creases of its
smashed face. It raised broken fingers before itself and hissed,
“
YOU CAN’T!!
”

“I am,” Adam spat. He threw the crippled
corpse into the fire.

* * *

“No!, Adam!” Lily was crying. Dalton did his
best to ignore her as he sped down the street. She grabbed at the
wheel.

“Stop it!” Dalton barked. “He’ll be all
right! He’s not like us!”

“No, they’ll hurt him!” Lily protested.

Dalton was trying to think of a response when
a towering beast stepped into the road ahead. He swerved to the
left, felt himself losing control, the tires losing the road. Then
the impact.

Dalton fell out his door and onto the
sidewalk. Where was his gun? Drawing his combat knife, he crept
around the rear of the Hummer to see just what had run them off the
road.

The Petrified Man seized Dalton’s hand,
crushing the bones of his fingers within their tubes of flesh, and
lifted him to eye level.

“Run!” he shouted, praying Lily could hear
him. “Run!”

The Petrified Man glanced downward. Lily
started screaming. Dalton craned his neck to see her in the arms of
another rotter. “NO—”

The Petrified Man rammed his fist into
Dalton’s ribs. He was able to see his sternum buckle and split,
erupting through his tattered uniform. He was able to watch the
rotter pull his spine out through his chest, and lift it overhead
to suck the fluid from it. Then, and only then, did he die.

Voorhees heard another commotion outside the
Hummer. The door beside his head was torn open, and freeing cold
washed over him.

“Where is she?” cried Adam.

“I don’t know what happen,” Voorhees
breathed, enunciating as best he could. His strength was failing.
He’d held onto this fragile, broken body long enough to finish
Meyer; now, just when he thought he could finally lay his head to
rest, another crisis.
It never ends.

“I heard the driver yell at her to run,” he
told Adam. “Then I heard him die.”

Adam strapped the scythe on and turned to
face the empty street. Gaylen was an inferno. Somehow, the icy
winter winds were still cutting through this concrete canyon, but
its walls were all ablaze and flakes of snow were eroding away
before they touched the asphalt.

And, at the end of the street, a hunchbacked
rotter was dancing. Arms spread wide, head titled, a crazed grin on
its face, it writhed in dark celebration. It beckoned to him.

Adam broke into a run. Nickel stopped dancing
and lumbered into a mass of flames: a huge building that had been a
train station a century prior. Adam followed without hesitation. He
knew it was a trap. He knew it was the last trap, the end of this
grim campaign—but he knew they had her.

He ran into the station. Tongues of heat
crawled across a vaulted ceiling five stories overhead. He was
flanked by columns bathed in fire. All was silent but for the
crackling of the flames.

Nickel ran at him from the left. He turned
and plunged the scythe through the rotter’s black heart. Threw the
body aside. Too easy.

Eviscerato roared from the other end of the
room.

He crouched like a threatened animal, pacing
back and forth, Lily clutched against his chest.

“
Let her go!
” Adam bellowed.

The King of the Dead cocked his head and
clacked his teeth together:
CLACK-CLACK-CLACK
, like some
sort of primitive taunt. He tightened his grip on Lily. She
screamed.

“I said
LET HER GO GODDAMMIT!
”

Eviscerato held out his right arm. He shook
it violently, then pointed at Adam. The scythe. He wanted it
off.