Midnight City (16 page)

“Now we’ll always be connected,” Zoey said.

Mira nodded. “That’s right. Always.”

A sound suddenly came from one of the walls.

An odd sound, a sound that Mira didn’t instantly recognize. She, Zoey, and Max turned to the wall, looked at it warily.

It came again, a long, sustained vibration that ran down its length.

It was like … someone scratching. On the other side of their room. As if someone had dug in their fingers and clawed slowly from top to bottom.

The sound implied movement … and it also implied thought and intelligence.

Max dropped the taffy and stood up. He growled low in his throat, the hair on his back rising.

“Mira…,” Zoey said, and she pulled the girl close.

Something was in the next room from them, in the dark. And whatever it was, it was waking up.

*   *   *

HOLT STARED AT THE
scratch marks up and down the wall in front of him. Outside, the sunlight was completely gone. It was night, and inside the sunken drugstore everything was pitch black.

He could see only what his dim flashlight showed him, and that wasn’t much. As the darkness pressed in on him, Holt realized how much of it lay between him and the hole in the roof.

The water stirred beneath him.

Holt shone his light downward. The blackish liquid below stirred in circular waves, rolling back and forth, as if something had just moved through it.

Or
in
it.

A small splash, below and to the right. His flashlight darted over, but again, there was nothing. Only shadows and black water.

Something was in the dark with him. He had a sudden, intense desire to make himself scarce.

He reached for one of the radios and quickly grabbed it. There wasn’t time to get any more than that; he’d stayed too long already. In his greed, he’d ignored survival, had put himself at risk. He felt anger rising up, but pushed it back. This wasn’t the time.

Holt swung up to the rafter, made ready to start jumping back … and then stopped, realizing he was missing something.

Batteries. For the radio.

He looked back down to the shelves behind the register. The batteries lay on the same shelf, just below him.

More splashing … but now from several directions. The shadows pulsed and writhed under him, and this time when he shone his light down, he caught the briefest glimpse of something tall and dark as it darted behind one of the shelves.

Holt jolted in fright.

The blue pack stuffed with the treasure fell from his hand, tumbled down, hit the register, and slid across the counter.

Holt stared down at it. It wasn’t completely out of reach—he could jump down to the counter, it would probably hold him. Then he could—

More stirring of water, now all around him. He saw dark shapes rising slowly up and out of the murk, all throughout the store. If he didn’t leave now, Holt had a feeling he wouldn’t leave at all. The pack wasn’t worth it.

“Typical…,” he said in frustration, staring down at the pack below him.

But it didn’t have to be a total loss.

Holt rolled back over the edge of the rusty ceiling rafter, hanging by his knees. He reached for a pack of batteries and grabbed it …

… just as a human-shaped black shadow lunged at him from the dark, hissing and stammering in some crazed language.

Holt flinched, flexed his legs, and swung back onto the rafter. The shadow just missed him and slammed into the store’s wall, sending the radios and batteries flying everywhere.

The flashlight fell from Holt’s mouth, plummeting into the water. Everything went dark.

But Holt didn’t have time to care. More of the black shapes were moving below him, rising from the water, dozens and dozens of them.

He had to leave.
Now.

He shoved the batteries and radio into his main pack and leapt from one rafter to the next as fast as he could.

The things below him hissed and gurgled their strange sounds, moving after him.

Ahead of Holt was the rafter he’d first landed on, and above it the hole back to the roof. And two of the things, whatever they were, were crawling and scratching up onto it.

Without the flashlight, they were just dirty black shadows, but he didn’t need to see them to know they wanted him dead.

Holt leapt for the last rafter, landed, and drew his pistol, a Beretta 9, to fire off three rapid shots.

The first shadow took all three, spun crazily, fell, and crashed into the shelves below.

Holt aimed at the second thing crawling toward him, but it was too late.

It leapt on him, and the scent of it washed over Holt. He gagged at the powerful combination of rotted plants and meat, oil, sweat, and whatever else made up the black water below.

But it wasn’t the thing’s smell, as bad as it was, that shocked Holt. Or even the sight of its leathery, blackened, crazed human face, its mouth missing half its teeth. It was its eyes, set deep back into its skull.

They were a solid
white.
The opposite of the black eyes of the Succumbed.

The figure’s hand, its fingernails overgrown and curling, reached for Holt’s throat.

Holt rammed his head right into the thing’s face.

It hissed and wailed, stumbled off him. Holt kicked it backwards as hard as he could. The thing fell and crashed into two more of the dark, jittering shadows below.

Holt caught his breath, got to his knees. More of the shapes were climbing up the wall to get to him. The entire floor was crawling with them now. They’d been hiding in the water the whole time. The image of the white eyes was burned into his mind.

It can’t be.…

But Holt knew it was. Holt knew now what was in the water with him, knew what had made this entire ruined city its home, knew the reason why no one who entered the Drowning Plains ever returned.

He frantically leapt upward, grabbed the edge of the roof through the hole, and pulled himself out. He had to reach the others fast, had to get them out of here. Assuming they weren’t already dead …

*   *   *

MIRA STARED, WIDE EYED,
at the wall. The scratching had intensified. It wasn’t just louder; it seemed like it was coming from more than one place.

More scratching, this time from the opposite wall.

Mira’s breath caught in her throat. It was on both sides of them now.

“Mira…” Zoey, terrified, tried to push even farther into her grasp.

Mira had to get them out of here fast. “Zoey, sweetheart, let go for a second,” she said, pushing her off. “I’m going to open the window. When I do—”

The scratching sounds again, from a new place. The door to the room.

Zoey hugged her leg. Max barked loud and aggressive, staring at the door, ready to rush whatever came through. The sound echoed through the room, and Mira grimaced. If these things didn’t know they were here before, they knew now.

Mira got to her feet, reached for the window, gripped it, and yanked upward.

It moved maybe an inch … then jammed.

“Oh, you gotta be kidding,” Mira mumbled.

Why would it open from the outside and not now? She pulled up on the window as hard as she could. It rocked up, moved another inch, but no more. It felt even more tightly wedged than before.

The door handle at the other end of the room began to rattle. Something was trying to open it. The door was locked, but who knew what age had done to the dead bolt; it was probably ready to fall apart.

Mira looked around for anything she could break the glass with. An old armchair sat in pieces in front of a crumbling desk. She grabbed the biggest piece she could find and spun back around.

“Stay back,” she warned Zoey, swinging the chair leg into the window.

It shattered and sprayed glass everywhere. She used the chair to clear out the rest of the windowpane. Broken glass covered the floor like crushed ice.

Not the most elegant solution, but—

Zoey screamed as a dark shape appeared in the window. Mira raised the chair in defense.

It was Holt.

Mira sighed in relief. “Something’s—,” she started desperately.

“Forsaken,”
Holt said, cutting her off.

At the word, Mira felt icy terror grip her insides.

The Tone turned most people who heard it into the Succumbed, the mindless slaves of the Assembly. But for others it had unexpected effects. The Heedless were one: people like Holt who were immune.

Then there were the Forsaken. People who didn’t Succumb to the Tone, but rather were driven completely insane by it, reduced to horribly violent, animal-like monstrosities. They were drawn to one another somehow, lived in commune-like groups in various parts of the world. At least that was what the stories said. Few who found them lived to tell about it.

“Are you … are you sure?” she asked, disbelieving.

The front door exploded open. Two wild-eyed humanoid shapes burst inside, their eyes completely white. Their skin was leathery and black, their bodies covered in cuts and scrapes; what was left of their clothing hung around them in soiled tatters, their hair mangled and wild. They wailed insanely, leapt for the group with curled fingernails.

Holt ripped his shotgun free, blasted the two figures out of the room and back into the hall. “Yeah. Pretty sure,” he said. “Zoey, come on!”

The little girl flung herself into his arms, and he lifted her gingerly through the broken window.

“Why didn’t you just
open
it?” Holt asked Mira testily.

She glared at him in anger. “I was trying to, but—”

He grabbed her and yanked her through the window, followed quickly by Max.

Behind them, more crazed blackened figures rushed past the door, hissing and jabbering.

The four didn’t wait around: they rushed up the fire escape. The stairs shook and groaned as they ran and Mira could feel them ripping dangerously loose with each step.

Below them, more shadows leapt through the window, chasing after them. The stairs shook and contorted, pulling free from the brick wall.

They reached the roof. Holt ran forward, but Mira stopped short.

“Holt!” she yelled. The top of the fire escape was secured to the building by large rusted bolts, and they were barely holding on. They shook and pulled as the Forsaken rushed up the ladder below.

Mira kicked the top of the fire escape. It separated from the wall. But just a little.

She kicked it again.
“Holt!”

He saw what she was thinking, turned and ran back. They both kicked at the fire escape in unison, tearing it loose from the wall. When the top broke away, enough supports were gone below that the whole thing pulled free from the building. Mortar and plaster sprayed everywhere as it ripped off. There was a groaning as the rusted metal contorted and warped and fell in a fury of twisted debris.

The Forsaken screeched as the entire structure crashed down, spraying black water everywhere.

They were safe. For the moment.

“This might be easier than I thought,” Holt said, smiling. Mira smiled back.

They ran for the other edge of the hotel roof, where Zoey and Max stood stock-still, staring out over the breach. When they got there, Mira saw why. The hotel looked out on all of the flooded city, hundreds of buildings illuminated like ghosts in the bright moonlight.

And on every building, shapes moved. Pouring out of windows, climbing up the walls, swimming through the horrid water. Hundreds and hundreds of them, in every direction. Hissings and jabberings filled the air all around them as the Forsaken cried out in their nonsensical, insane voices.

And each one of them was rushing toward the hotel, desperate to reach them, eager to rip their curled fingernails into them.

“Then again … maybe not,” Mira said, instinctively moving closer to Holt. He put his arm around her. All four of them stared in terror at the wave of murderous insanity flowing toward them from all sides in the darkness.

20.
UNTIMELY RESCUE

HOLT STARED DOWN AT THE DARK SHAPES
of the Forsaken swarming below, hundreds (maybe thousands) of man-shaped shadows that dripped up and over the sunken buildings, surging toward them in the bright moonlight.

“What do we do?” Mira clung to him tightly, her voice strained.

The Tavern Inn was the tallest structure in the ruins, which meant the roofs of most other buildings were too far below to jump. There was only one that was close enough, an old office building. From there, they might have more choices of escape.

But escape seemed almost impossible then. The Forsaken were everywhere. No matter which direction they went, they’d run into them.

“We have to keep moving,” Holt said in spite of the circumstances. “If we stop, we die—they’ll overrun us.”

He moved for the other edge of the roof, staring at the office building next to them. It was maybe ten feet below, and six feet away. They could make it. Maybe.

“We don’t have the bridge anymore,” Mira said.

“Don’t have time to use it if we did.” Holt looked down at Zoey, grabbed her, and flung her up onto his back. Her arms circled his neck. “I’ll get Zoey, you take Max.”

Below, the jittering, gurgling shadows of the Forsaken reached the hotel. They started scaling straight up the walls, from all sides. Hundreds more were right behind them.

“I’m not carrying the dog,” Mira said with a scowl.

Max looked up at her, growled in response, echoing her sentiment.

“You have to take the Max!” Zoey cried.

Holt took a few steps back, stared at the edge of the roof ahead of him, and exhaled a long, slow breath.

“I’m
not
taking the
dog,
” Mira said with emphasis.

“I’m sure you two can work it out,” Holt said, almost smiling. “Close your eyes, kiddo.”

Zoey did.

Holt ran for the edge and leapt forward as hard as he could.

He sailed into the breach, legs kicking under him in the open air. He saw the sunken ground float by below, the squirming shadows.

And then he hit the roof. His knees almost buckled, but he managed to stay up, skidding to a stop in the gravel. When he had his balance back, he quickly let Zoey down. “Still with me?” he asked.