The 1000 Souls (Book 2): Generation Apocalypse (22 page)

There was dim light from the hall, enough to show student desks shoved and tossed to either side of the room. Tevy scrambled up, ignoring the pain and the sound of falling glass as others smashed into the classroom. He headed straight for the door, shotgun leveled and ready to fire, but now a figure rushed through the hall. Tevy peeked left and right out the door, not seeing the figure but discovering that the dim light came from a single bulb hanging from an electrical cord strung like a lazy clothes line down the hall. Farther down the hall another single bulb also hung.

Elliot moved up to the other side of the door. “They must have a generator going somewhere,” he said louder than necessary. “Where the hell are they all?”

“Let’s go!” Tevy charged into the hall, aware of his heartbeat but ignoring it as he searched for that first target. He found him at the staircase, rushing down from above and headed for the first floor, unaware of the intruders already on the second floor.

The Winchester kicked up when it fired, the shot unusually quiet to Tevy’s rocket-deafened ears, and the man stumbled, turning in surprise as the shot punched through the glass by the fire doors and into his side. He fell down the stairs, his own gun clattering across the tiles of the floor.

“He was a ripper,” shouted Elliot, reading Tevy’s mind.
Was he going to hell?

Shots came from the landing above now, from other rippers needing to get downstairs to join the fight at the main doors, where they assumed the Ericsians would all be attacking. They may have even wanted just to get to the basements, for the upper-floor windows weren’t bricked in against the pale light that would soon wash into the classrooms.

Muzzle flashes dazzled the combatants, and Tevy and Elliot hit the floor, going to either side of the fire doors where glass provided a view to shoot, although the wire embedded in the glass kept it from shattering, recording the incoming and outgoing shots with relatively neat bullet holes. Tevy’s shots punched big holes.

He fired at the dark forms as they ran down the stairs, turning at the landing where they were lit from above by a distant bulb that was not visible from this floor.
They were rippers
, Tevy promised himself as two and now three tumbled down the stairs, prompting a pump from his shotgun between each death.

In all, a dozen had fallen from their fire, others from the Ericsians joining to stand above Tevy and shoot. Finally, the flow of rippers stopped. Elliot leapt up and shoved at the fire door against a body, Tevy standing to join him while others shoved at the other fire door until they both stood wide.

“Let’s go!” shouted Tevy, but a woman’s hand caught him, the white bandana around her head showing that she was an Ericsian. Mabruke had made them all wear these bandanas, which had a circle with the number 1000 written in black marker in the center of each above the eyes. Elliot had complained about the fashion with a grin.

“Wait!” From her belt the woman pulled a grenade, a weapon both Tevy and Elliot earlier noted with envy that several of the Ericsians carried. She pulled the pin and tossed it down the staircase, the sound of its tumble distant and innocuous as it turned at the landing and disappeared.

The flash was brilliant, and for a moment every detail of the stairwell was sharp as nails, only to seem darker afterwards, but the moment was enough to show Tevy that one of the corpses was far from dead, sitting with its back to the wall, its handgun rising to point at Elliot. Tevy shot from the hip with no time to aim or think, but he was only a body-length from the ripper, and the blast took it in the chest.

“Whoa, shit!” Elliot had noticed too late. “I owe you.”

He charged for the stairs and Tevy rushed after him, leaping a splayed body near the landing and turning to find more corpses farther down. Gunfire from the main-floor hallway indicated that Kayla’s assault with her people was well under way. Tevy feared for her. What if she were shot, or worse, made a ripper? He charged into the main-floor hallway to find rippers behind banks of tumbled lockers or improvised defenses of broken doors turned sideways and supported with desks. The rippers were turning their way now, alerted by the grenade if not the gunfire that there were Loyalist humans in the building behind them, blocking any retreat to the basements.

Elliot grabbed Tevy by the collar and yanked him back into the stairwell before a dozen shots whizzed by them. It was such a mighty heave that Elliot tripped and they both went down, Tevy sprawling on his back on top of Elliot.

“We don’t go into the hall, remember,” shouted Elliot as they scrambled up.

Kayla had been specific.
Don’t go into that main floor hallway because we’ll be there and we’ll be as likely to shoot you as them. Hold the stairwells and don’t let them into the basement. You’ll have plenty of targets, don’t you worry about that.

And she was right, and now Tevy and Elliot retreated, backing down the stairs toward the basement, firing at rippers as they surged recklessly from the main floor into the stairwell. It was as close to a crossfire as the stairway could provide, with Ericsians on the first landing above the main floor shooting down, and Tevy and Elliot on the first landing below the main floor shooting up. The fire door to the main floor was the kill zone, and the rippers continued to pour into it, desperate to get to the basement now that true dawn had arrived. Some were clearly rippers, their figures gauntly nonhuman, their clothes little more than rags, their eyes mad with hunger. Others looked suspiciously normal, except that they were willing to risk everything to get to the basement, and some took more shots to kill than any human could withstand.

Tevy counted eight from his shotgun and dropped it to draw his Glock. It didn’t have the stopping power of the Winchester at close range, but it was better than his knife. One ripper made it right to him, taking three hits in the chest before falling, draping his bleeding body into Tevy’s arms. Tevy shoved him away and put a bullet through the skull for good measure.

“Tell me that wasn’t a ripper!” Elliot’s call was a challenge. He dropped a clip from his M16 and shoved in a new one, but no more rippers charged the doorway, which was now partially blocked with a pile of bodies, at least a dozen.

“Hold here!” shouted Tevy to the Ericsians still up one landing. But the woman with the grenades was already with them, slipping over the pile of ruined humanity.

“Allow me,” she said, obviously guessing that Tevy intended to assault the basement. She pulled a grenade from her belt but waited for agreement. Tevy waved her to the landing but put up one finger to indicate she wait. He retrieved his shotgun, pulled a fist full of shells from his vest pocket, and reloaded the gun as quickly as he could. Sporadic gunfire continued out in the corridor—Kayla’s troops polishing off the main floor.

Tevy gave the nod to the Ericsian trooper, the woman looking old, like forty, her dark hair tied up in a tight bun. She pulled the pin on the grenade and lobbed it around the next landing. This time Tevy closed his eyes and covered his ears. The flash still showed through the eyelids and the explosion was still deafening through his hands. He charged down the stairs, his shotgun ready. They were below the ground level now, and any windows high up were bricked in, but the Ericsian trooper had a small flashlight, and she turned it on now, guiding them into the hall. Lockers ran down the wall on each side.

“Seems like a weird place for lockers.” Elliot kept his voice low. “The basement?”

“No locks on them like upstairs. Maybe these were extras or something,” said the woman with the flashlight. “What does it matter, anyway?”

Farther down the hall, a light bulb had survived, and it provided enough white light for the flashlight batteries to be spared. They had almost reached this illumination when a dozen dark figures rushed from a doorway into the light, turning to flee. Tevy and company opened fire, chasing the rippers down the hall, shooting them in the back as they tried to escape the school. Some did make the far stairwell, but shooting from above stopped them in their tracks. They turned to face Tevy’s little squad, but it was too late for them to properly aim and shoot, because the humans already were firing, a steady and calm aim as opposed to the panicked shots from the trapped rippers. In a moment it was over, and Tevy drew his Glock and walked over to shoot each one in the head to ensure they stayed down.

“Repair that!” he shouted to the parasites in their bodies.

“Tev.” Elliot had returned to the doorway, and now he waved Tevy over.

Elliot’s wide-eyed expression of horror was enough to warn Tevy that the room held a gruesome sight, but he was still appalled when he turned the corner and found a gymnasium full of bodies hung upside down from the ceiling, tied by their ankles, their hands stretching toward the floor. The high windows were bricked in, the only light provided by bulbs strung from the ceiling on white electrical line.

The lights dimmed, and the sound of a generator outside puttering to a halt warned that the room would go dark, either because the generator was out of gas or someone had shut it down. But before the room went black, Tevy counted twelve people hung upside down with their throats slashed and buckets underneath them to catch every last drop of blood.

“I guess that’s why he calls himself Vlad Who Bleeds,” said Elliot.

A voice in the room disturbed them, a tortured plea with a familiar accent. The woman turned on her flashlight, and they entered the room ready to shoot, but the only conscious being sat naked and tied to a chair at the far end, his chest hair matted with blood.

“Rad!” Tevy hurried forward, elated to find him alive, and if he was tied to a chair that must mean he was still human. They had done it! They had saved Radu against all odds even if he was a bit bloodied. But as Tevy knelt down to untie him, the man shook his head.

“No.” His voice was a desperate wail. “I said, ‘please shoot me.’”

“What?” But as Tevy looked up he could see a lot of the blood around Radu’s lips and teeth.

“Get back.” Elliot aimed the M16 at Radu’s chest. “It’s not his blood. They made him drink. They converted him. He’s a ripper.”

Kayla was never in love with Radu, but she did like him. When she spurned his attempts to get her in the sack, he wasn’t the least put off, like Canadian men, many of whom seemed to think they were God’s gift to women. She never had to suggest that they “just be friends,” because after she said no to his shameless advance, he became a friend as naturally as if they were kids or seniors, and sex wasn’t an issue.

Sure, he always made it obvious that if she changed her mind he was willing, and he never failed to miss an opportunity to let her know how attracted he was to her, but somehow there was no pressure, no sense that he was expecting her to cave. He talked about other women freely, asked her advice, and even followed it, like when she said he should stay away from Rachel because she had her eye on a different man, the man she would later marry.

Now, Kayla stood before Radu’s bound and naked body and had to judge his fate. The room stank of blood and excrement, and a subtle scent of rot promised a lot more to come if they didn’t bury the corpses today.

“We’ve got to kill him,” she said. “What choice have we got? You can’t let a ripper live.”

Mabruke had come when summoned, and Tevy and Elliot and some other woman were there, but the rest of the troops were using the dynamite to blow out the concrete blocks sealing the ground-floor windows. Occasionally, the ground under Kayla’s feet trembled, but the school was old and built on strong foundations during the beginning of the twentieth century. There was no fear that it would collapse as long as only the ripper fortifications were destroyed.

Tevy stared at one of the swinging corpses. He reached up and tore off the victim’s shirt, then carried it over to drape Radu’s lap, hiding his genitals and giving him a modicum of privacy.

“Can’t we let him go if he promises not to feed on humans?” asked Tevy.

Kayla wished it could be so, and she understood Tevy’s need. He must feel responsible for not shooting the human traitors and saving Radu when he had a chance. But this was no time to be soft.

“And what the hell would he feed on then?” she asked, trying not to sound angry and failing.

Tevy met her eyes and she read an accusation in his expression. “Maybe you should ask Joyce,” he said. “Maybe she or her friend up at St. John’s knows the answer to that.”

Kayla swore that her heart skipped a beat. Did he know about Bertrand Allan? Had he seen him that night in the woods?

“Stop,” she said, before he could reveal the secret in front of everyone. She pleaded with her eyes, and Tevy gave a short nod. He would keep it secret, but Kayla sensed that he would be expecting explanations later.

“She’s right.” Radu’s voice had strengthened, and that wasn’t a good sign. The parasites were repairing his body.

“What happened?” she asked.

“They wanted information more than blood. They kept asking stupid questions like, ‘how many troops can the bitch call on?’ as if I would fucking know. They asked about tanks a lot, too. They beat me. They flogged me, but I tell them only that we came from St. John’s. I know I shouldn’t, but it hurt so very much.” His accent thickened as he spoke, his eyes roving around the corpses as if that was a better sight than his memories.

Kayla feared even that was too much. “What exactly did you tell them?”

Radu gave a slow and understanding smile. “Nothing important. I tell them we come by the buses. That we will fight under the general’s command. I tell them more buses are coming, many more and they are getting here today, now.”

It took Kayla a second. “That’s a lie.”

Radu nodded and smiled again, looking stronger by the minute. “Yes. Is a very good lie. They want information and I give it too them. I make them work for it, but I am hoping my death is good. I am hoping they are too scared to attack until they know about new troops.”

“That’s it.” Tevy turned to Kayla, and she could see that he could hardly suppress his excitement. “That’s why we let him go. He can be our spy, feed them disinformation and feed us information.”