“Right,” Red said, nodding his head thoughtfully. “There’s just one problem with your theory.”“What?” Gabriel looked confused. “There is?”Red pulled a gun from his pants and aimed it straight at Gabriel . “Only my people are making a run for it.” He motioned with the gun to a nearby open door. “Your people are being locked in that room. As extra distraction.”“You can’t! They’ll kill us!”“That’s the idea,” Red said. “Now move!”Slowly he backed them up into the room, and once they were all inside he slammed the door shut. A moment later they heard the key click the lock into place, and a moment after that they heard the sound of the front door as it opened and closed.“Way to go, Gabriel ,” said Aliyah. “Now we’re locked into a tiny room.”“Yeah, yeah,” said Gabriel , distracted. He looked around the room. As he had hoped, it was a dining room. He stepped over to a cabinet displaying the fine china. “Let’s just work on getting our hands free.”“Oh, what’s the point?” whined Daina.
Mac, who had come into the lead, suddenly came to a stop, and several of the others were so distracted by the nightmare landscape that they ran into him and nearly knocked him over. After some shuffling, muttering, and grumbling, they all turned to see what had caused the delay.Up ahead of them, the driveway had come into view, and in the driveway sat the car that stood as their destination. Atop the car, highlighted dramatically by the full moon as though it were a spotlight on a stage, was a nightmare come to life: a fully formed, hairy, drooling aberration.A werewolf.It stood up straight, pulled back its head, and let out a howl.“Hole. Ly. Diver,” said Jay, his disbelief ef winning in the internal battle raging inside of him between the hope that voicing his surprise would dismiss the impossible and the fear that told him to keep silent to remain undetected.The werewolf snapped to attention in the direction of Jay’s voice. A low growl rumbled from inside of it as it knelt down
The werewolves both jumped and soared easily over the gate, but skidded as they landed and tried to get pointed back at the turning vehicle. Aliyah slammed on the gas and shot past them while they were still righting themselves.Mac let out a long and shrill “Woohoo!” as though the entire thing had been some sort of new exciting roller coaster. They shot down the road at top speed and slowly, ever so slowly, the wolves fell into the darkness behind them.The vehicle roared down the highway, pushing eighty, rocking this way and that as Aliyah attempted to dodge abandoned cars, loose debris, and even the occasional wandering zombie. Every movement was made with at best inches to spare, and occasionally there would be a terrible scraping sound or a sickening thump on those occasions when she didn’t quite manage to completely dodge the object in question. The single working headlight in the pitch black dark of an empty night made the navigation exceptionally difficult.“We can’t keep this
Then they were on them – biting, tearing, scratching, growling. For a long moment, everything was a blur of motion. One of the creatures came straight for Gabriel , and practically tackled him to the ground. They rolled around on the floor, with Gabriel focusing more on just pushing the creature away than trying to take it out completely. Around him he could tell the others were in much the same position.Jake, the only one with a weapon, had not been among the first attacked. She had swung at one of the creatures as it had passed, but it had not been a fatal blow, so it had carried on and slammed into Daina. Now the two women were trying to hold it off and get it into a position where Jake could deliver a killing swing.Gabriel managed to kick his assailant off, and as he tried to rise he felt hands grabbing at him. He tried to fight them off, but a reassuring voice calmed him.“Woah, woah, it’s just me.”Gabriel looked to see that Gabriel was standing above him, attempting to hel
Gabriel grimaced and took another look around the room. Suddenly, his face lit up with excitement. He pointed above his head and exclaimed, “The ceiling!”Everyone exchanged confused glances.“What about the ceiling?” asked Aliyah. “Do you want us to hide in it?”Gabriel sighed in frustration. Without another word he grabbed one of the desks and carried it over to the nearby wall. Pushing himself up on it, he explained, “I used to be in I.T., remember? At a school. We had drop ceilings exactly like this.”He pushed open one of the ceiling panels and raised his head up to get a look around. Frowning, he dropped down from the desk and then carried it to the wall on the opposite end of the room. Everyone followed behind him.As he climbed up and pushed open the ceiling from this new position, he continued explaining. “We did a lot of wiring from room to room, and in order to do that with these concrete walls, there were usually crawlspaces… Yes!”He looked back down from the open ceili
The plan had worked perfectly, and certainly enough the door to the office area was closed and most of the zombies had been trapped inside, unaware that Gabriel was no longer in there with them. A few stragglers were roaming about, having lost the scent of their prey a little earlier than the others, but Jake and the rest of the group were making quick work of these. By the time Mac and Gabriel dropped out of the ceiling, the others were finishing off the last of these stragglers.Their work done, Aliyah turned to Gabriel and gave him an annoyed look. “Señor Buffett?” she said, her tone dripping with irritation. “Really?”“What?” Gabriel asked, innocently. “It was all I could think of in the spur of the moment.”“Yeah,” Daina chimed in, stepping away from a zombie her and Jay had just taken out. “There’s a part of my old life I thought I’d never hear again.”“Well then, you’re welcome,” said Gabriel , a bit snippily.“Let’s just get out of here,” suggested Gabriel. “I have most ce
“When things go wrong, it is always easy to blame God. But when things go right, we always praise our own industriousness. But don’t you see it’s the same? God gave us free will. There cannot be strings attached. If he interferes at all, then that limits our free will. Like the old saying about teaching a man to fish, God gave us the tools to help ourselves. But while tools can be used to build, they can also be used to destroy. Just the same, man has the ability to do good, but he also has the same ability to do great evil. And you know as well as I do that this, as you say, the nightmare world in which we live, it was not created by God but by man.”“And so your god sees that as being fair? For the entire world to be punished for the sins of the few?”“We were all cast out of Eden for the sins of but a single person. You look at this, and all you see is the evil that has been created. But can you not also see the good that has been done? The people, complete strangers, coming togeth
Daina, Mac, and Aliyah cut left, while Gabriel, Gabriel , Jay, and Jake headed right. They each picked a zombie and began attacking. The zombies had noticed them and began heading toward them, but the group was ready. They each picked a zombie and approached it, weapons raised. Gabriel tried to focus on his zombie, but couldn’t help but watch his companions.As with previous times he had been in these situations, he was struck with the professionalism of the group. They worked so much in tandem that the coordination seemed impossible without communication, but there was none. He couldn’t help but wonder again if maybe Devin had taken everyone through some drills that he, with his need to be a loner, had missed out on. Whatever the reason, they were efficient. It was only a matter of moments before the stragglers had been cleared out.Gabriel straightened and rested his bat up on one shoulder. “Well, I guess that’s good,” he started to say, but a sharp cry of surprise from Jake cut h