After they'd disappeared around the corner, other tiny paws trailed along behind them, scurrying in the darkness.
Bates struggled to sit up, his back against a steel support pillar. The zombies battered at the doors. The racket was horrendous, and their cries were terrible. Something skittered through the air ducts over his head, searching for a way in.
Bates had known fear in his life. When he was eight and he'd almost stepped on a copperhead while walking through the woods behind his home.
When he was sixteen, asking Amy Schrum to the prom. He'd been frightened during his first night in boot camp-lying there on his rack in the dark barracks, and listening to the guy below him sobbing. In Iraq, as they advanced north toward Baghdad with winds whipping at fifty miles-per-hour, burying everything under a fine coat of sand. That was the first time Bates had seen combat, and he'd been terrified. And more recently, when he'd first seen the hints that his employer, Darren Ramsey, was slowly going insane from what was happening in the world around them.
Bates was no stranger to fear. Yet now, as the zombies smashed through the doors, he did not feel it. A strange sense of calm washed over him.
Nothing mattered, not even as the creatures descended upon him, surrounding him with their rotting forms.
Smiling, Bates tried to raise the pistol and found that he couldn't. He suddenly felt weak and cold. His stomach hurt. He tried to lift the pistol to his head again, but it clattered from his numb fingers. Bates closed his eyes as the zombies drew closer.
He didn't feel the blade of the handsaw as it ripped across his throat.
'It is finished, lord Ob. The humans are defeated.'
'None left alive in the building?'
'Our forces have just slain the last one, sire. We are victorious.'
Ob looked up at the burning building, a funeral pyre towering into the sky. The clouds spat rain, but still the fires roared, engulfing floor after floor. The buildings surrounding Ramsey Towers were also ablaze, and the smoking wreckage of the helicopter lay scattered in the streets.
'Well, if there are any left inside, cowering in some dark corner, they won't be for long. Gather our forces. Have them regroup. And set the rest of the necropolis alight.'
'But lord Ob, is this place not to be our base of operations?'
'If all the humans are destroyed, then our time here is done. We'll have no need of this city. It will be our kindred's turn, and we shall move on to conquer other worlds. The second wave can begin.'
A zombie stepped from the ruins, dressed in black leather pants and a bloodstained white shirt. Long, dark hair spilled down its back. The corpse was fresh. Its throat had been sawed open from ear to ear. It walked toward them.
'Lord Ob!'
'Yes?'
The thing inside Bates struggled to speak through its damaged vocal cords. 'I just took possession of this body mere moments ago. I have searched my host's memories.'
'And?'
'A number of the humans still live. They've escaped.'
'Where?' Ob growled.
'Under the city, my lord. Directly beneath our feet.'
'How many?'
'Ten of them, sire. Several of them are formidable warriors.'
'How so?'
'Three are trained soldiers. And one of them traveled several hundred miles in search of his son. His example rallies the others-gives them hope.'
'In search of his son?' Ob thought back to his previous host, the scientist, Baker. He'd had two companions: Jim, the father searching for his son, and Martin, the elderly holy man.
'This father-what is his name?'
'Jim. Jim Thurmond.'
Ob clenched his fist so hard that the fingernails punched through his palms.
'Was one of them an old black preacher?'
The Bates-thing shook its head. 'There are two black males, sire, but neither is a preacher. One is named Leroy, and the other, Forrest.'
'What is it, lord Ob?' the lieutenant asked.
'Unfinished business,' Ob said. 'Associates of one of my former hosts.
They escaped me in Hellertown. It's a trivial matter. Not really worth wasting time over. But still-it would be beautiful to destroy this father and son after everything they've been through. The irony, the violation, would burn the Creator's ears and eyes.'
'How shall we proceed?' The lieutenant stood ready.
'We didn't do all of this just to let ten of these creatures slip through our net. Order all of our forces into the tunnels beneath this city.'
