Free The Walls of Lemuria by Sam Sisavath Page A

turn.”
    “What about a side door into the morgue? They don’t bring bodies in through the lobby, do they?”
    “No. There’s a back door at the end of the hallway that they use, and the morgue is right next to it. But I don’t think you’re going to be able to use that one, either. Sorry.”
    Of course not. Why should it be that easy?
    “Keo, be careful,” Gillian said. “I don’t think they can be killed. I stabbed one of them in the head with a scalpel last night. Where the brain should be. It just…kept coming, like nothing happened.”
    Tell me something I don’t know, he thought, but said, “Understood. Stay put.”
    Keo clipped the radio back on his hip.
    What now?
    “How are we going to get to them?” Jake asked. “Through…that.”
    Keo shook his head. He had no answers for Jake. A part of him wanted to leave. Head back to the police station. Get on the road with Norris and the others and head to Fort Damper. Yes, he wanted those medical supplies, but he wasn’t going to get them. Not with all three hallways teeming with those undead things. And he wanted to help Gillian and the others trapped in the morgue. He liked the sound of her voice, her sense of humor. But that was another pipe dream filled with black-eyed creatures that refused to die.
    “See the world. Kill some people. Make some money.”
    Remember?
    Keo sighed.
    “Keo? Should we just go back?” Jake said, watching him closely.
    “Not yet.”
    “What are you going to do?”
    “I want to make sure.”
    “Make sure of what?”
    Keo didn’t answer. Instead, he took three quick steps toward the mouth of Hallway C, lifted the shotgun, and fired from a meter away. Fire stabbed forth from the barrel of the Remington, lighting up the interior of the passageway for a brief second.
    Two of the creatures closest to the blast were ripped apart by buckshot. Flesh tore and blood splattered, but neither of the inhuman things went down. Keo didn’t know what he was feeling—maybe acceptance, or possibly fascination—as he watched the smelly, pruned-skin forms glower at him. One of them had lost half of its head; black globs of something that probably used to be blood but couldn’t possibly be anymore slurped out of its shattered skull. The other one had lost its left arm in the blast—not that it seemed to notice.
    “Oh, Jesus,” Jake whispered behind him.
    Keo racked the shotgun and fired again, then again and again.
    Fingers flew off, a chest exploded, and the sound of bones crunched under buckshot. A leg buckled and the body collapsed before the creature picked itself back up and stood on one bent leg.
    When he stopped shooting, they looked back out at him.
    Waiting…
    Keo was already reloading the Remington with fresh shells from the pouch when the radio clipped to his hip squawked and he heard Gillian’s voice, slightly frightened. “Keo, what’s happening out there? Are you okay? We heard shooting.”
    “Everything’s fine,” he said into the radio.
    “Are you still coming to get us?”
    He didn’t answer her right away, and instead shoved another shell into the shotgun.
    “Keo? Are you still out there? Please answer me…”
    “I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it back there, Gillian.”
    There was a long silence from her end. Then: “I was afraid you were going to say that. We can still hear them through the door. I can’t be sure how many, but it sounds like a lot.”
    You have no idea.
    “And they can’t get through?” he asked.
    “No. The door’s solid steel, like I said. They stopped trying to break it down last night. I guess they just gave up.”
    They do that. If they can’t get through, they give up. And then they wait, because eventually you’ll have to come out. And they have all the time in the world. What does time mean to something that doesn’t care if you smash their skull in or obliterate their brains?
    “Hey, you still out there?” Gillian said.
    “I’m still here.”
    “I