"Here!" Emmit cried again, out of breath, lungs aflame and aching for oxygen. "All of you, over here! Bunch of bad guys for you, right in this cabin!" He made a beeline right for the front door, or at least his best guess as to where it was. He could see the glowing cracks and openings again, and he hoped with a deep and broiling ferocity that the firelight would serve as a beacon to the Links, something glittering and pretty to guide them in like fish drawn to a reflective bobber.
Emmit cut left just before he slammed into the side of the cabin, extending his hand and dragging his fingers along the rough bark of the logs. When his hand touched cold open air again, he swerved back right. He could hear the Megahorde churning behind him, close behind him, and he smiled with his open, panting mouth.
The humming susurrus of stiff vocal cords was suddenly drowned out by hammering blows like distant and muffled gun shots; bare flesh and fists pounding on the walls of the cabin. The monotonous buzz of the corpses trying to speak droned on and on, swelling as their excitement grew until it was a deafening roar. They were now so numerous that their collective sound was like the roaring crowd at an NFL game, or maybe the fanatical fans at one of the big wrestling tours he had taken Deacon to (back when he had the spare cash). The ones where he and his boy had always tried desperately to get on TV, holding the signs they had made together high over their heads, jumping and screaming like raving lunatics.
Emmit admonished himself. He didn't have time to think about Deek. He didn't have time to acknowledge the fresh heartache trying to settle in behind his rib cage like a new, voracious cancer. Not all of the Links were focused on Roy's cabin— there were still too many to count that had simply ignored it in favor of him.
This is it. This is the end game. My enemies slain, I ride off into the night on my trusty steed and... well, freeze or starve to death, I suppose.
Food would an immediate problem if he managed to escape them (not that he would have eaten any of the available food anyway) but still more pressing was sheer exhaustion. Emmit didn't think he could run much longer; he had already slowed considerably, and though the creatures were slower than he was, they wouldn't tire out or give up. All they had to do was stay on his ass until he physically could not move anymore, and then they could turn him at their leisure.
Well, they're going to earn it, he thought determinedly, lowering his head and pressing on through the silent trees. Panic was nipping at his heels, but somehow, he kept it in its cage. Somehow, he was beginning to accept his poignant fate. The only thing he couldn't seem to accept was that he wouldn't get to say goodbye to his son, wouldn't get to give him one last hug or one last word of wisdom to guide him through his many coming years of life, wouldn't get to hear him giggle at another dumb Dad joke. And he also wouldn't get to make his peace with Kelly, wouldn't get to apologize for their fights and his anger and intermittent drinking binges, wouldn't get to tell her that after all of it, he still loved her just as much as he had at the end of their very first date.
There was a sudden sharp pain in his chest. Emmit cried out and brought a hand up to feel for whatever had stabbed him, but he found nothing but unmarred fabric. The pain was unbearable, as if someone had run him through a white-hot steel rod and left him skewered like a rabbit carcass on a spit.
Heart attack. Heart attack. Heart attack.
The intense pain near his heart was coupled with massive waves of pressure, like a pair of invisible hands shoving into his abdomen repeatedly, hard enough to push the wind out of him. It made it difficult to keep moving forward, especially when the rhythmic pumps felt like they might break his ribs, but the snarling and laughing and grating voices of the dead behind him kept his rubbery legs scissoring. The pressure on his chest stopped, just long enough for Emmit to wonder what the hell it had been, and then it was back with a vengeance. It felt like someone was driving punches into his midsection with huge, padded boxing gloves. The agony near his heart screamed out at him, demanding all his attention, and he began to feel faint.
Every joint in his body felt like a dental drill burrowing into a rotten tooth, every muscle filled with liquid fire and ready to tear themselves from his bones. His toes, imprisoned in the soaked and icy coffins that were his shoes, were so frozen that it felt like he was running on stilts. And the pain in his heart, god damn that pain in his heart. If he'd had the oxygen to spare, he would have screamed himself hoarse.
He was beginning to lose consciousness now, and he knew with a blunt and callous finality that his end was near. Right on cue, he saw a brilliant white pinpoint of light twinkling in the void ahead of him like a sympathetic eye, hovering before him like a miniature sun.
That's the tunnel... the tunnel everyone says you see when you die... not enough... oxygen...
