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“The fuck is happening?” Steel says, taking a step back from the fence.
Recon grasps onto the chain-link, eyes fixed on the sad occupants in the enclosure. “They’re…decomposing.”
While we watch, the undead women begin changing. Their skin, sallow but supple, shrinks into brittle parchment. Teeth and cheekbones become more prominent. For those who are standing, joints buckle, sending them crashing to the floor. Fingers curl and skulls hit the cement, creating a terrible symphony of crackles and thuds. One woman crumbles into the fence, and as her skin turns to gritty powder, it settles like fine snow on our boots.
I take a step back, transfixed. “They’re dying.”
“Something must’ve happened to Lazarus,” Ghost says. “He’s lost his hold on them.” Recon, Steel, and I keep our distance as death reclaims what Lazarus stole. But, moving with purpose, Ghost passes through the fence. He floats through bodies actively turning to dust, and soon, he’s out of sight at the back of the enclosure.
“Where are you going?” I call out.
“To check on Hope!” he calls back.
That’s when we hear it. A feminine wail of despair. “Faith! No!”
A few yards away is a gate with a lock on it. The lock isn’t latched, as though the last person to use it didn’t take the time to secure it.
“Recon, cover the gate,” I say as I throw the lock aside and wrench open the door. It grinds with a squeal on the concrete, and I go inside. “Steel, you’re with me.”
The floor is strewn with debris that was only moments ago a bunch of living, breathing women. Steel and I do our best to tiptoe through the piles of bones and clothing caked with particulate matter. Lord knows I don’t want to add my desecration to what these poor women have been through. But I move with urgency, too. That voice. I need to get to the source of that voice.
It's not hard to spot Ghost. He has an unearthly glow to him that contrasts with the sickly greenish light coming from the bare bulb overhead. He’s crouched over a pile of bones and dust, and by his side, weeping, is a woman.
She’s young and frail with skin the color of coffee with cream beneath tattered jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt. Her face and arms are streaked with grime, and a few dark, corkscrew curls have escaped from a forest-green knitted hat, that, from its swollen size, seems to hide a significant mass of hair.
“It’s okay. It’s better this way,” Ghost says. His hand hovers like he wants to put an arm around the woman, but he pulls it back with a heavy sigh. “Hope,” he says, noticing me and Steel. “We have company.”
The woman, Hope, looks up and finds us with teary eyes that shine like aquamarine stones. There’s an inner light in those eyes that none of the other women had. There’s also fear in those eyes.
“They’re good guys,” Ghost says to Hope. “They want Raptor gone. I think—” He motions out over the sea of dust. “I think one of the others just killed Lazarus.”
“There’s more of them?” she says, gaze darting between me and Steel.
“There are thirteen of us,” I say, and I crouch down so I’m less intimidating. “We’re here to rescue one of our own that Raptor took from us. I’m Sarge. This is Steel. Recon’s over there. None of us will hurt you. You’re safe, now.”
If my words bring her any comfort, she doesn’t show it. She leans closer to Ghost until her shoulder is absorbed by his light. “There’s only one man I trust, and that’s him.” She jerks her head at Ghost.
“I trust them,” he says.
“Then you’re a fool,” she says. “They have guns.” She looks me up and down with about as much approval as a schoolmarm assessing a kid coming in from recess covered with mud. Steel gets the same treatment.
“So did the shitheads,” Ghost says. “These guys use their guns for good.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” she says, but her tone has lost its scathing quality.
“You’re safe now,” I say again. “You have my word.”
She harumphs but doesn’t argue. Instead, she looks down at the pile in front of her. Her delicate hands curl into fists. “Your group is taking out Raptor’s and Lazarus’s group?”
“One and all,” I promise. “Their reign in this city is over.”
A tear rolls down her cheek and splashes onto the dust. “Good.”
Chapter 22
Cora
Both sides of the helicopterare open as we lift off. Wind tosses my ponytail fringes around my face. X-Ray sits at the controls, and Target is strapped into a jump-seat, where he can fire out the door with the mother of all machine guns. The thing is so massive it’s mounted to the doorframe on a pivot thingy that lets him aim anywhere he wants.
