The Horns of Avalon

1 Keo

Find Mercer. Kill Mercer.

It used to be that he could come up with three goals without having to work all that hard, but these days he was happy with two. These days, things had a way of blowing up in his face. Like with Gillian, like with Jordan…

Jordan…

He wished he could say watching someone he cared for bleeding out was a new thing. Over the years, he’d learned to detach himself, to avoid making friends, and to tune out when they started talking about their families “back home” or their dreams. A nod here, a forced smile there was all it took. Most of them just liked to hear themselves talk anyway, never mind if anyone actually heard them.

There wasn’t a whole lot he could do about the last few days of his life. They were done and gone, beyond his reach. All he had left was what was ahead of him: a place in the middle of nowhere called Lochlyn, Texas. Such a minor town that it was barely a blip on the map he carried in one of the pouches around his waist.

What were the chances Mercer was even in Lochlyn? God only knew (not that he believed in God or anything), but it gave him a place to go, a target to focus on. Keo was always at his best when he had someone to go up against. Pollard, Steve, and now Mercer. Men who brought death and misery. It was a good thing he was used to such men. Hell, if you were to ask some of the people he’d known in his life, they would say the same thing about him.

Find Mercer. Kill Mercer.

The former was going to take some doing, but the latter, well, he was an old hand when it came to that. The trick was to find the man first, though. It would have probably helped if he knew what Mercer looked like, but then Keo reasoned a man like that, who controlled an army of fearless killers (and they’d have to be fearless, to bring the battle to the collaborators, to scatter across the Texas countryside in two-men kill teams like they were doing right now) would stand out.

Pollard had. Steve had, too. They all did, if you knew what signs to look for. And Keo did. He had been around enough of them and taken orders from their ilk more times than he could stomach. They were always easy to spot.

The leader. The alpha.

So all he had to do was reach Lochlyn and go from there. No sweat. It was as easy as following the map, using the sun as his compass.

Find Mercer. Kill Mercer.

About four hours before nightfall, there was a noticeable drop in temperature. It had gotten colder these days, but Texas in December was still perversely illogical. Anywhere else and he would be freezing, but here, moving through a field of grass burnt brown by the sun, there was just enough wind against his exposed face to give him a slight chill.

It had taken him too long to get this far. A day now since he had buried Jordan in a nondescript part of the countryside under a grave of rocks to keep the elements (and other dead things) from desecrating her. He wished he could have spent more time, made a better (decent) final tomb, but he’d wanted to flee that place before it was too late.

“Too late” for what, he didn’t know, even now. He just had to go.

There wasn’t a lot around him now except large patches of untilled fields and the occasional house and accompanying red (always red) barn in the distance. He had lost sight of the highway or anything resembling a paved road about five miles back. Lochlyn was somewhere up ahead of him. Unless, of course, he had gotten lost and didn’t know it. That was entirely possible, too. A lot of things were possible these days.

He’d thought about checking the buildings for clues to his exact whereabouts but decided to bypass them. If he was hurting for guns, ammo, or food, he might have taken the time, but he was carrying enough of all three to last for a few weeks if he conserved. So he kept moving. Besides, if he were still running around out here a week from now, that probably meant he hadn’t found Mercer. Worse, he had no clue how to find Mercer. Either way, if he couldn’t locate and kill the man in the next couple of days, then the mission would be a scratch—

A man’s deep voice, arriving with a sudden gust of wind from up ahead: “How many?”

“She said three,” another voice said. Also male, but younger sounding.

“Shit, we lost three so far?” the first one said.

“That we know of.”

“More?”

“Maybe.”

“Shit.” Then, “On the upside, The Ranch’s going to be less crowded when we get back.”

“Dude…”

“What, too soon?”

Chuckling from both men.

Keo was already on one knee, the unslung AR-15 in his hands. He carefully eased off the rifle’s safety while listening to the conversation in front of him. How far? Twenty meters? Thirty?

“You got it?” Deep Voice asked.

“Again?” Younger said.

“I like listening to it.”

“You in love with her or something?”

“Or something.”

“Don’t you think that’s kind of weird?”

“What’s so weird about it?”

“What if she’s fat and ugly?”

“She doesn’t sound fat and ugly.”

“What does fat and ugly sound like?”

“I don’t know, but not like that. Besides, it’s better than talking about our MIAs. That shit’s just depressing.”

A short laugh, followed by a brief moment of silence.

Keo counted one second…five…

…twenty…

What the hell were they doing up there? He hadn’t moved since he heard them, but now he let his breath come out in short spurts, in tune to the sporadic gust of wind blowing through the stalks of dying grass around him. It wasn’t much cover, but the field did go all the way up to his waist, and on one knee he was almost invisible. Not entirely, but good enough that whoever was up there hadn’t spotted him yet. Some of that elusive luck was working in his favor for once, with the men not looking in his direction when he nearly walked right up to them like a blind idiot.

One minute became two, and still nothing.

What the hell are they doing?

He reached down to make sure the handgun was in its holster at his hip before rising back to his feet and, bent forward at almost a seventy-five-degree angle at the waist, took one step and stopped to listen.

Five seconds…ten…

Nothing.

He took a second step, then a third…

There was just the rustling of grass against the wind and the soft crunch-crunch of his boots on the sun-hardened ground. Every step sounded like banging drums, and Keo spent just as much time cringing at the noise he was making as he did trying to reassure himself it was just his mind magnifying them, that it was just his imagination on overdrive…

Shit, you almost convinced yourself that time, pal.

The sun was still high in the sky, the warmth giving him just enough assurance to keep moving steadily forward. Nightfall was coming, but it would be a while. He had plenty of time. Plenty of time…

Five meters…

A soft mechanical click, very clear against the natural countryside around him, froze him in mid-stride, and Keo went down on one knee for the second time.

“Almost out of batteries,” a voice said. Younger. “Did you bring yours?”

“Nah,” Deep Voice said. “You’re out?”

“Yup.”

“Ugh.”

“Sucks for you.”

A grunt. “You won’t believe this, but there was a time when these things could only hold ten songs at a time, and they cost twice as much.”

Younger chuckled. “You’re right; I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true.”

“How long before— What?”

“You smell that?”

“Smell what?”

Keo looked down at his clothes. His dirty clothes.

Sonofabitch.

He launched up from the ground and took the remaining ten meters at a dead run, the crunch-crunch of his boots exploding loudly under him, and this time he didn’t even try to pretend it was just his imagination.

Can you hear me now? he thought, almost laughing out loud.

The first head that popped up in front of him was balding and had what looked like a rash over his right cheek. He was in his forties and wearing nondescript camo clothing, and though Keo couldn’t see the rest of his body, the man looked in reasonably good shape. Fading white wires (earbuds?) dangled from his ears and connected to a small device in his hand. He turned his head, saw Keo, and his eyes went white and round like baseballs.

Keo snapped off a shot at five meters — close enough that he barely had to aim — and blew the man’s brains out.

The gunshot boomed and was just starting its echo across the landscape when the second head popped up.

Younger, with some kind of military buzz cut, was in the process of standing up when the older man collapsed next to him. Instead of reaching for his weapon, the man held up his hands and shouted, “Wait—”

But Keo didn’t wait. He couldn’t, even if he wanted to. He was moving too fast, the surge of adrenaline driving him forward with a full head of steam. He swung the AR-15 and connected solidly with the stock of his rifle. His victim dropped to the ground back onto the already bent stalks of grass where he and his now-dead friend had been sitting.

Keo sucked in a deep breath and spun around in a complete circle, searching for more targets among the wavy blades of grass and the sporadic lines of trees circling him. The gunshot. Someone would have heard that gunshot. It was simply impossible not to these days with the deadness of the world.

So where were they?

Was it possible there were only two in the entire area? Could he be that lucky?

First time for everything.

Satisfied there was no one else out there — or at least no one dumb enough to show themselves — Keo dropped down behind the makeshift wall of grass.

Mercer’s man — and he had to be one of Mercer’s men, because who else would be out here this close to Lochlyn? — was rolling around on the ground, both hands cupping his shattered nose. Blood oozed through his fingers, and the man’s eyes, soft blue, blinked erratically up at Keo.

“Relax; you’ll make it,” Keo said.

The man’s eyes dropped down to the holstered sidearm at his hip. It looked like a Sig Sauer, similar to the one Keo was carrying.

“Sure, why not?” Keo said, and grinned at him.

The man stopped rolling and wisely didn’t reach for his weapon.

“Are there more of you around?” Keo asked.

The man didn’t answer right away. Maybe he was trying to decide how much he should tell, if anything.

“Hey, what’s that?” Keo said, and pointed at a random spot on the ground.

The man predictably turned his head to look, and when he did, Keo punched him in the face. Of course, he wasn’t instantly knocked unconscious; he simply groaned against Keo’s fist, but before he could hold out his hands to ward off further attacks, Keo punched him again, and again…

“Who are you? What do you want?” the man asked, though it came out more like “Whaphuduuwhump?” because of the broken nose and busted lip. His face was an odd shade of purple and brown, which was a little hard to see in the darkened second floor of the barn where Keo had brought the man, about a hundred meters (give or take) from the field where they had clashed.

Keo could see the exact spot from one of the open doors; he had been staring at it for the last forty minutes, convinced more of Mercer’s men would be responding to the sound of his gunshot. That had been stupid. He’d fired without thinking of the consequences. He couldn’t even blame it on the dead man for popping up right in front of him like something out of a bad horror flick. He didn’t bother with the lie. He’d shot Deep Voice because he wanted to. After the week he’d had, he just wanted to kill someone.

“You got a name?” Keo asked.

“Davis,” the man said.

“What about your friend?”

“Butch.”

Keo chuckled. Davis and Butch. It sounded like a bad Hollywood Western.

“Where’s Mercer, Davis?” Keo asked, looking back at Davis, who was sitting behind him on an old block of hay.

The building around them smelled of year-old animal feces and mold. It was at least ten, maybe twenty times worse than the last barn he had been in (with Jordan) in terms of smell, but was still in relatively good shape. This building, along with the farmhouse next door, was going to outlive him; not that that was saying very much.

If it’s still here after this week, it might outlast me…

“Mercer?” Davis said.

“Your fearless leader.”

“What do you want with him?” Davis was still having difficulty speaking, especially when he had to string more than a few words together. It took Keo a few seconds to understand everything he said.

“Is he in Lochlyn?” Keo asked.

Davis didn’t answer. His hands and ankles were presently bound with duct tape, and Keo hadn’t been too worried about the man fleeing as they made their way here, then up to the second floor. Davis was in no shape to run, and certainly not while Keo had the AR. Out there, with wide-open spaces for hundreds of meters at a time, there weren’t a whole lot of places to hide. That was the only reason Keo felt comfortable enough to stop and wait for Mercer’s men.

Or, at least, that’s what he told himself.

Give me a break. You’re still here because you want them to show up. You can taste it, can’t you? You want this. Admit it.

Yes, he thought. I want this. It’s what I’m good at…

When Davis still hadn’t answered, Keo said, “Lochlyn. Mercer. Is he there?”

Davis finally shook his head.

“Where is he?” Keo asked.

“I don’t know.”

Keo casually took his hand off the barrel of the slung rifle and rested it on the butt of the Sig Sauer he’d taken from Davis earlier and had stuffed into his front waistband. Davis’s eyes — or his left, anyway, because the right was black and blue and puffy like a blowfish — were drawn to the not-so-subtle movement before snapping back up to Keo’s face.

“I don’t know where he is,” Davis said.

Keo didn’t take his hand off the gun. “When was the last time you saw him?”

“Back at The Ranch.”

“‘The ranch?’” Keo repeated, just in case he hadn’t made the words out correctly given Davis’s situation. Hadn’t the dead Butch said something about a “ranch” too, before Keo shot him?

“Home base,” Davis said. “That’s what we call it.”

“Where is home base?”

Davis shook his head.

“You don’t know?” Keo asked.

“I know. I’m just not telling you.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Davis nodded with something that could almost be mistaken for conviction, which if true was impressive given his current state. Even though both of them were mostly hidden in the darker corners of the barn, Keo could easily make out Davis’s injuries.

“What do you want with him?” Davis asked.

“I want to put a bullet between his eyes.”

Keo was watching Davis closely for a reaction, but he had to admit he wasn’t quite ready for the grin that broke out across Davis’s face.

“That’s an interesting response,” Keo said.

“You’re one of them. Collaborators.”

Keo shook his head. “No.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I couldn’t begin to tell you how little that means to me.”

Davis snorted. “Then why do you want to kill Mercer?”

“Personal reasons.”

The man leaned slightly forward, as if to get a better angle on Keo’s face. After the almost hour they had spent together, Keo thought that was another very interesting move from his hostage. At the moment, Davis looked more curious than he was afraid, which wasn’t quite what Keo was going for.

“What?” Keo said.

“I’m just trying to see if you look familiar.” Davis finally shook his head and sat back. “No. I don’t know you. I’d remember that face.”

“Scars give a man character.”

“So I hear.” He paused, then, “What’s wrong with your leg?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my leg.”

“Oh, I don’t believe that. You’re clearly favoring one side. Old wound?”

Not old enough, Keo thought, but said, “Where’s Mercer?”

“I told you, I don’t know where he is. The last time I saw him was back at The Ranch.”

“And you’re not going to tell me where this ranch is?”

“Nope,” Davis said, and grinned back at him.

Keo sighed and took his hand away from the gun. He snapped open one of the pockets along his pant leg and pulled something out.

“What the hell is that?” Davis asked, narrowing his eyes at the titanium eating utensil in Keo’s hand.

“Spork,” Keo said. “Though technically, it’s a scork.”

“Scork?”

“Spoon, fork, and cork. Get it?”

“Ah,” Davis said, though his eyes (or, at least, the good one) never left the object in Keo’s hand.

“But the word ‘scork’ makes me queasy,” Keo said. “So I prefer to call it a spork anyway and ignore the whole ‘cork’ part. Even though, obviously, it’s incorrect.”

“You’re a man of eccentricities.”

“No one’s ever called me that before.”

“So, what are you going to do with that…spork?”

“I’m going to see how much pain you can take.” Keo twirled the utensil between his fingers. “I would have used the Ka-Bar, but it wouldn’t hurt nearly as much and you might bleed out too soon. I can’t risk that.”

Davis stared at the spork, as if mesmerized by its movements. “And that’s…not risky?”

“It’s a lot harder to cut an artery with this.”

Davis swallowed. “I won’t tell you where he is.”

“You said you didn’t know where he is.”

“I don’t. Not at this very moment.”

Keo stopped twirling the spork and pressed his forefinger against the metallic tines. “They’re pretty sharp. Not that sharp, but pretty sharp. It’ll puncture skin, and even bone, if you push hard enough. I saw it go through a forehead once…”

Davis didn’t have to say anything, because his tensing body gave it away. The man looked as if he was mentally and physically preparing to spring up to defend himself, but either his bound arms and legs prevented him from taking action at the moment, or he knew it wouldn’t do any good. Instead, he remained nervously perched on the bale of hay.

“Tell me where to find Mercer,” Keo said. “Is he in Lochlyn?”

“No,” Davis said. “I told you. The last time I saw him was back at The Ranch, before all of this. I don’t know where he is now.”

“And you won’t tell me where this Ranch is…”

“No.”

Keo sighed and lowered his hand. “All right. This is getting ridiculous. I’m running out of sunlight, and you’re just pissing me off now.”

He began walking toward Davis.

The man pushed himself up from the haystack and attempted to move toward the stairs, but he predictably tripped on his bound legs and fell with a thump! to the debris-strewn floor on his face. He tried to roll over onto his back, but by the time he finally managed it, Keo was already standing over him. Even in this shadowy part of the barn, Keo swore the eating utensil actually gleamed.

“One last chance,” Keo said. “Tell me where to find Mercer.”

“Jesus, please,” Davis said.

Keo grinned. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but I have to admit I’ve never been mistaken for our Lord and Savior before. You a religious man, Davis?”

“Yes…”

“Me, I’ve never had much use for it. More of a hassle in my old line of work. So tell me, Davis. What did you used to do before all of this?”

“I was a teacher…”

“Cool. I killed a teacher once.” Keo sat down on Davis’s chest, put his hand on the man’s forehead, and easily pushed Davis’s head back against the rotten floor despite his attempt at resistance. “He screamed and screamed…”

“Oh, God…”

“It took a while, and it was messy…”

“Lochlyn,” Davis said, almost spitting the word out.

Keo sat back a bit. “Lochlyn?”

“You can find Mercer through Lochlyn.”

“You said he wasn’t there.”

“He’s not, but you can find him through there.”

Keo let go of Davis’s forehead. “Go on…”

“We’re using Lochlyn as an FOB. You know—”

“Yeah, I know what FOBs are. Go on.”

“The last flight out is tomorrow. Everyone involved in this area is supposed to be back by then. Including Butch and me.”

“What were you and the other guy doing out here, anyway?”

“Perimeter security. In case of collaborator counter-attacks.”

“What happens when you don’t come back?”

“I guess they’ll know something happened. They’ll be ready for you,” Davis said, and Keo thought the other man wanted badly to smile but was doing everything possible to swallow the urge.

“Where’s it going?” Keo asked. “The flight?”

“The Ranch. If you want Mercer, he’s probably going to be there.”

“Probably?”

“I’m a small cog in the machine. I’m not privy to all his movements. But it’s your best bet.” Davis let out a heavy sigh and closed his one good eye for a moment before opening it again. “If you’re going to kill me, just make it fast. I’d like to skip the prolonged pain part if at all possible.”

Keo stood up and put the spork away. “See, that wasn’t so hard. I knew you’d come around.”

“Fuck you.”

“Not right now; we both have headaches.”

Davis struggled to sit up, pushing against the floor using his elbows. Somehow, he managed it after a few tries.

“I’m curious,” Keo said. “What makes someone follow a man like Mercer?”

“You want the truth?”

“That would be nice.”

“There are three types of people running around out here. The true believers, the nonbelievers, and everyone else in the middle.”

“Which one are you?”

“Everyone else.”

“So why do the nonbelievers follow Mercer if they don’t buy what he’s selling? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s dangerous out there.”

Davis shrugged and looked toward the barn doors, as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear what he was about to say next. “He saved our lives. Most of us wouldn’t be here if not for him. That’s the kind of thing that buys a lot of loyalty.”

“But you don’t believe in his war.”

“What we’re doing out here…” He focused on Keo again. “You know? About the attacks on the towns?”

Keo nodded.

“I’m just a schoolteacher,” Davis continued. “I didn’t even know how to fire a gun until the world ended. Butch believed, though. He was one of the true believers. Me, I’m just trying to get by. Mercer saved my life. He saved all of our lives. I owe him…” He shook his head. “But I don’t owe him to kill old men and pregnant women and children.”

Keo crouched in front of Davis and stared at the man’s heavily bruised face.

Davis looked back at him. “I’m telling the truth. All of it.”

Keo ignored him and asked instead, “How’s the face?”

“It’s numb. Everything’s numb. I know my right eye is the size of my foot at the moment, but I can’t feel it. Or my nose. Or my mouth. I can hear how I sound, but thank God I can’t feel the reasons why.” He reached up with his bound hands and touched his cheek, wincing at the contact. “Were you really going to do it? Use that spork on me?”

Keo nodded. “Yeah, I was.”

“Well, fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“So, what now?”

“Tell me about Mercer.”

“And then?”

“Mercer. What does he look like?”

“And then?” Davis pressed.

“Then I move on to Lochlyn, and if Mercer’s not there, I go on to this ranch of yours.”

“What about me?”

“I don’t need you anymore, so you stay here.”

“I need a gun. If you’re going to leave me behind, I need a gun.” He held up his bound hands. “And you have to release me.”

“All right.”

“You swear.”

“Only on Fridays, but never on Sundays.”

“Fuck you,” Davis said. “I mean it. You swear you’re telling the truth.”

Keo raised his right hand and smiled at Davis. “Scout’s honor.”

2 Lara

“Port Arthur’s a no-go,” Danny said through the radio. “It’s locked tighter than a virgin’s sphincter.”

“You know a lot about virgin sphincters, babe?” Carly asked.

“Hey, I hear things.”

“I bet you have.”

“Any trouble getting from Starch to Port Arthur?” Lara asked, and Carly repeated the question into the microphone.

“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” Danny said, but didn’t expand on his answer.

He was somewhere outside the Texas port city with Gaby and Nate, though he hadn’t given any specifics just in case someone was listening in on their frequency. It was a small chance, but these days even the smallest something had the potential to blow up in your face.

Just in case, right, Will?

“What does he think the collaborators are doing in Port Arthur?” Lara asked, directing her question at Carly.

“What am I, your personal parrot?” Carly said, and handed the microphone over to her. “I already spent ten minutes talking to him before you showed up. That’s about nine minutes too much with Danny, in case you were wondering.”

Lara smiled. That wasn’t even close to being true, because she knew for a fact her friend had spent every day Danny was out there worrying about him. That was something they all did a lot of these days. Before Danny, it was her and Will.

Damn you, Will, you promised me…

She said into the radio, “Danny, what are they doing in Port Arthur?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Danny said. “The kid thinks they might be trying to block our path to open waters.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t see the point. We’re special, yeah — the special-est in my very humble opinion — but we’re not worth committing this much manpower to capturing, especially with all the fun and games going on out here right now.”

“Mercer…”

“Well, I didn’t want to say his name, in case he’s like the Candyman or something.”

“The what?”

“The Candyman. Clive Barker? Tony Todd? One of the best slasher flicks of the 1990s?”

“Is that like the bogeyman or something?”

Danny sighed loudly through the radio. “You kids and your lack of respect for the classics of cinema…”

She grinned. It wasn’t that she was that much younger than Danny, but every now and then it was fun to needle him. She remembered when she used to get the same kind of joy out of doing it to Will.

“Anyway, back to our marvelous road trip,” Danny continued. “I figured we’ll chug on along south-like, find another part of the coastline to link up with you guys. It’s a big state, should be lots of empty beaches for the linking. I’ll radio back as soon as we locate one of them, and you can come over and pick us up. Easy as Mother and apple pie.”

“Easy, huh?”

“Hey, good things happen to those who think positively, or so I’ve been told.”

“I’ll have to give that a try.”

“Give it a swing,” Danny said. Then, “Carly tells me you guys are doing just fine without us.”

“We’re getting by. Spend more time worrying about yourself.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice.”

“That’s my man,” Carly said.

“Speaking of worrying about oneself, where’s Keo now?” Danny asked.

“I don’t know, out there somewhere,” Lara said. “He and Jordan were headed back to one of the towns when I last saw them. T-something.”

“They’re all T-somethings. Well, if I run across him out here, I’ll let you know.”

“What about Mercer’s people? Any problems with them since Starch?”

“Luckily we’ve been able to avoid them, too. They seem to be confining their operations further inland. Probably have more FOBs out there all set up and ready even before they launched this little adventure of theirs.”

“FOBs?”

“Forward Operating Bases. Places they’re using to launch their attacks.”

“Like that airport outside of Larkin.”

“Exactamundo.”

“How many of those do you think they have?”

“As few as one more, as many as a hundred.”

“That’s…a big number, Danny.”

“Mercer’s had a year to think this up. The guy’s… Well, momma always says not to say anything if you don’t have something nice to say.”

“That’s never stopped you before.”

“I’m learning, Lara, I’m learning…”

She smiled. “Good to know. What about this Mason guy?”

“What about him?”

“How useful has he been?”

“Got us around a couple of ambushes, so he’s not been a terrible investment in time and duct tape. But I’m thinking I might have to cut him loose real soon the closer we get to a new and less soldier-infested exfil point.”

Lara didn’t press for details; she didn’t want to know. Images of Gage being tossed into the ocean while she slept flashed briefly across her mind. She only needed to know that Danny would do what he had to in order to come back just as she had on the Trident. Just as Will had before them…

“How’re you guys for fuel?” Danny asked. “You’ve been doing a lot of running around out there. Did the tank finally get topped off?”

She exchanged a brief look with Blaine standing behind the helm to her left. The fuel. How many times had they discussed the topic? How many times had she stood right here on the bridge and gone through all the scenarios with Carly and Maddie and Bonnie? Too often, and every single time the results were the same.

But Danny didn’t need to hear that right now, so she said into the radio, “We’re fine, Danny. Concentrate on finding your exit point, and we’ll be ready to pick you up.”

“Was it my imagination, or did it take you a while to answer that one?” Danny asked.

“It’s your imagination,” she said, hoping it was at least semi-convincing.

She watched the kids cannonballing off the swimming platform at the back of the Trident and into the crystal blue water of the Gulf of Mexico. Most of them were out there — Dwayne, Elise and Vera, and the other kids she had never really made time to get to know. Their energy was boundless, and the cold water didn’t seem to have much of an effect on them.

Lara found herself envying their carefree spirit and at the same time was glad they didn’t know what was happening in Texas at the moment — with Danny and Gaby, or what Mercer’s men were doing to the collaborator towns.

“To let everyone know there’s something worse than the ghouls out here,” a man named Gregson, one of Mercer’s men, had once said to her.

They know now, don’t they? They know now…

“Ah, to be young and clueless,” a voice said behind her.

Lara looked over as Zoe pushed against the railing next to her. They were on the uppermost deck of the yacht, which gave Lara a great view of her surroundings, including that of the kids jumping into the water in front of her.

“There’s definitely something to be said about not knowing too much,” Lara said. “Besides, they’ve seen enough horrors to last a few lifetimes.” She paused for a moment. “They deserve this. We all do.”

“You partaking?”

“Not in this weather.”

“I can’t believe they’re not freezing to death by now.” The doctor tightened her jacket’s collar around her neck. “I have a feeling I’m going to get some new patients very soon.”

“Do we have flu shots?”

“Fully stocked.”

“Good.”

“Don’t worry, boss, I got the sickbay handled. You just take care of…every single other thing that matters.”

Lara smiled and sneaked a look at Zoe. They hadn’t known each other all that long, but Zoe had come to her with the best reference — Will’s. Over the months she had proven invaluable, and Lara wasn’t sure if she’d even have Danny now if it wasn’t for Zoe.

We’re all doing our part, Will. You’d be proud of us.

“Danny?” Zoe asked.

“Still out there with Gaby and Nate.”

“But okay?”

“In one piece,” she nodded, and thought, Thank God, because I’m the one who sent them out there. If anything happens to them, it would be my fault.

“So are we,” Zoe said.

Lara gave her a curious look.

Zoe smiled sheepishly. “We were just talking…”

“Again?”

“We’re always talking behind your back, Lara. You should know that by now.”

“So what was on the agenda this time?”

“We decided to make it clear to you that we believe in and trust you. That whatever you decide, we’re behind you. We know you’re going to get us to the Bengal Islands one way or another. We have faith.”

“Jesus, how long was this meeting?”

Zoe laughed softly. “And we mean every word of it. We know you’ve been second-guessing yourself. About Keo, Danny, about everything. And I’m telling you—we’re telling you — that you don’t have to.”

“Don’t I?”

“No, because none of us could have done a better job. And most importantly, we know it.”

“I shouldn’t have sent Danny and Gaby out there.”

“You made a calculated decision, and Danny agreed.”

“If they don’t come back, it’ll be my fault.”

“They’ll come back. Danny’s an ex-Ranger. He’ll make it back.”

“I wasted a lot of fuel getting to Sunport…”

“Because Keo called. And Keo is… Keo.”

Lara pursed her lips and couldn’t help but smile appreciatively back at the other woman. “Question.”

“Shoot.”

“When do you guys have these chats, and why am I never invited?”

“Because besides talking about you, we do a lot of talking about you.”

“Makes sense.”

Zoe looked back across the Trident, past the kids and at the open waters beyond. “And, oh, we also talked about this Mercer guy. He sounds like real bad news.”

“From everything I’ve heard, he is.”

“What do you think’s going on out there right now?”

“I try not to think about it too much. Whatever’s happening, it’s out of our hands. Mercer, the collaborators…” She focused on Elise and Vera, the two girls holding hands as they cannonballed into the water side by side. “This is all that matters. The lives on this boat.”

Zoe nodded, and the two of them watched Dwayne landing hard enough into the water that it splashed not just everyone in the area, but also his mother Kendra and Carrie standing on the platform watching them.

“Thanks,” Lara said after a while. “For the pep talk.”

“Normally we’d let Carly do it, but we thought you might need to hear it from someone else from time to time.”

“Who’s up next?”

“Bonnie. Then Blaine. And I think Carrie called dibs after him.”

“I hope you guys at least wrote down the order.”

“Oh, we did. Sarah’s in charge of all the paperwork.” Zoe turned around. “If you want to talk, about anything, you know where to find me.”

“Thanks,” Lara nodded and realized she meant it.

“Sure,” Zoe said before pushing off the railing. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go tell Bonnie she’s up next.”

Lara glanced after the doctor before turning back around to look out at the clear blue horizon. The Trident was anchored far enough from land that she couldn’t make out Texas in the distance, which meant no one along the coastline could see them, either. At least not without high-powered binoculars, and what were the chances someone was scanning the ocean this moment?

Below her, Carrie let out a scream as Kendra grabbed her from behind and pushed her into the water. Carrie went under for a moment before resurfacing, wet clothes and rifle clinging to her.

Lara smiled to herself and thought, I’ll get them to the Bengal Islands, Will. I’ll keep them safe. I promise…

“You’re going to catch a cold. Again.”

Elise pouted but didn’t stop turning around in a circle so Lara could wipe her dry from head to toe. The girl didn’t completely stop shivering until she was wrapped in a big, fluffy cotton bath towel that Lara had laid out. She should have been annoyed at the puddles of water the girl had tracked into her cabin, but she was strangely okay with it. Maybe it was because it was Elise, and Lara had forgotten how much she enjoyed these moments.

She sat down on the end of her bed and watched Elise slip out of her bathing suit and into a pair of long pants and a sweater. She was growing up and filling out, and Lara barely recognized the skinny kid she had rescued from Dansby, Texas, nearly a year ago. Elise hadn’t gotten any taller — not yet, anyway — but she wasn’t as rail thin as before thanks to the plentiful food in the ocean that regularly graced their lunches and dinners.

“You’re getting better at swimming,” Lara said.

“Practice makes perfect,” Elise smiled back.

“You’re not there yet.”

“Maybe one day.”

“Maybe one day,” Lara nodded. “Until then, it’s going to get colder, so this might be the last time for a while.”

“It’s not that cold.”

“Cold enough. Doctor’s orders.”

“Zoe said so?”

Lara made a face. “Clever.”

Elise grinned. “When are Danny and Gaby coming back?”

“Soon.”

“I miss them.”

“Me too.”

“Hey,” Elise said suddenly, as if something had just occurred to her.

Lara smiled. The way the girl’s thoughts shifted from topic to topic was something to behold. “What?”

“We were outside one night, and we thought we saw something.”

“Who is ‘we’ and when was ‘one night?’”

“Me, Vera, and Jenny, and it was last night.” Elise’s head tilted slightly to one side, a clear indication she was lost in thought.

“What were you guys doing out at night?” Lara asked.

“Jenny said it was a boat,” Elise said, ignoring her question.

“Was it a boat?”

“I don’t know; it was kind of small.”

“What color was it?”

“Black, I think?”

“You’re not sure?”

Elise shook her head.

“Did you see it again today?” Lara asked.

“Nope.”

“And you’re sure it was a boat?”

“Maybe…”

“If you see it again — or something like it — you need to come and tell me or one of the adults right away, understand?”

Elise nodded. “Will do, boss.”

Lara rolled her eyes. “Not you, too.”

“A boat?” Blaine said.

Lara nodded. “She said Jenny thought she saw a boat.”

“But she’s not sure.”

“That’s the problem. It could have been a boat. Or it could have been anything. Or nothing.”

“Maybe it was Blaine,” Carly said. “He’s pretty dark.”

Blaine smirked. “What does Danny see in you?”

“Must be my winning personality.”

“It’s not that winning.”

“Personality is what I call my vagina.”

Blaine groaned. “I hate talking to you.”

“I love you, too,” Carly said, and blew him a kiss.

Lara ignored them, said, “If it was something, it was too far for either girls to make out. Who was on watch last night?”

“Carrie,” Blaine said. “But she would have said something if she saw a boat out there. The same for Maddie; she relieved me at midnight as usual and was up here until morning.”

“Vera didn’t mention seeing anything, either,” Carly said.

“Elise didn’t even want to mention it,” Lara said. “I think she just did because it came to her at the moment.” She shook her head. “We need to do a better job letting them know to report what they see.”

“Could be another body,” Blaine said.

He was looking through his binoculars at the surrounding ocean. From up here, on the upper deck of the Trident, they had the next best view of the Gulf of Mexico. The only better vantage point was on the roof above them. Lara didn’t need binoculars to know there was nothing out there right now. At least, nothing she could see with the naked eye.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? It wouldn’t be trouble if it didn’t sneak up on us.

“We still don’t know where that body came from,” Carly was saying. “Or what or who put it in the water in the first place.”

“There are a lot of things going on out there that we don’t know about,” Lara said. “For all we know, there’s more than one body floating around. It’s a big ocean. It was a one in a million chance that one would come close enough for us to see it.”

“Like winning the lotto,” Carly said, and wrinkled her nose. “A really smelly, bloated lotto.”

Blaine let his binoculars hang around his neck and glanced over at her.

“What’s wrong?” Lara asked.

“I don’t like the idea of another boat out there watching us.”

“I don’t like the idea of anything out there watching us,” Carly said, shivering slightly. “Maybe it was a perverted whale.”

“And Elise said it was black?” Blaine asked.

“She thinks it was black,” Lara nodded.

“That’s a good way to blend into the night if you were on a scouting mission. You don’t usually find a lot of black-painted boats precisely because you don’t want to get run through at night by another vessel.”

“You think someone painted their boat black as camouflage?” Carly asked.

Blaine shrugged. “That’s what I would do. Not exactly a lot of chances you’d run across another boat all the way out here. So what other reason would there be to paint a boat black?”

No one said anything for a while. Carly looked back out the bridge and Lara joined her.

After a while, Lara said, “Exactly how far are we from land, Blaine?”

“I’ve kept us steady at twenty miles out,” Blaine said. “No one should be able to spot us from the coastline. Especially at night with our lights manually shut off.”

“Damn, I wish Danny were here already,” Carly said, reflexively crossing her chest with her arms and rubbing her shoulders.

“Who’s got guard duty tonight?” Lara asked.

“Gwen,” Blaine said.

“Ask for volunteers to join her. I want to double all the sentries until otherwise noted. We’ll also need to post someone permanently at the back, too.”

“I’ll draw straws with whoever doesn’t volunteer to back up Gwen tonight,” Carly said.

“One last thing,” Lara said. “I want all the adults armed again, including Dwayne, even if they’re not on guard duty.”

“Dwayne too?” Blaine asked.

“He’s really good with that bolt-action rifle of his,” Carly said. “Scary good, for a thirteen-year-old.”

“I thought he was twelve,” Lara said.

“He turned thirteen three weeks ago, remember?”

No, she thought, but said, “I guess I forgot.”

“Well, you’ve had a lot on your mind.”

Lara nodded and gave her friend an appreciative nod.

“What about Claire?” Blaine asked. “Gaby’s been training her…”

Lara shook her head. “She’s not ready yet.”

“So it’s settled,” Carly said.

“I’ll bring my cot back up here and tighten the shift between me and Maddie,” Blaine said. “I’ll make sure someone’s always up here every hour of the day from now on.”

“Maybe bring two cots, one for Sarah,” Carly said. “You know, in case you guys want a little late-night boom-boom action.”

Blaine groaned. “Please don’t ever say ‘boom-boom action’ ever again.”

“Trouble in paradise?”

“Something like that.”

“You guys should do what I do. Send one of you out there. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, or some crap like that.”

“You get that out of a Hallmark card?” Blaine asked.

Lara stepped closer to the windshield and could barely hear them going back and forth behind her as she looked out at the never-ending expanse of blue ocean outside. Her mind swam with all the potential hidden dangers she hadn’t seen — or even tried to look for — before. She had almost convinced herself there was no one out here but them, even though she knew better. There had been the dead body they had fished out of the water off Sunport, and later, that voice on the radio asking her to make contact.

They had been floating around the Gulf of Mexico for so long, safe and sound onboard the Trident that she had almost made herself believe they could be safe so long as they stayed far away from Texas. She should have known it wouldn’t last forever, and maybe she always did but had just done a very good job of deceiving herself.

The girls could be wrong. There might not have been another boat out there last night watching us.

Yeah, right…

3 Gaby

This must be what God feels like.

The man’s head drifted slightly left, then right in her rifle’s ACOG scope. It had been a while since she found herself in possession of an optic that could shoot long distance, and this one had come courtesy of a dead man.

I can kill him right now. It would be so easy. Just squeeze the trigger…

She did it even as she thought it — tightened her forefinger around the cold steel. All it would take was a little more pressure. Just a little bit more. That was how easy it was to end a life. The Purge might have devastated the planet, but it hadn’t changed the way a gun could kill.

“How many?” Nate asked, his voice bringing her out of her own world.

She depressed the trigger and pulled slightly back from the eyepiece, if just to chase away the temptation. “Too many.”

“Again.”

“Uh huh.”

“When has it ever not been too many?” he said.

It was a common refrain these days. There were always too many. In the daytime, in the nighttime, there were always too many. Too many dangerous men in the day and too many undead things at night.

Too many. Always too many.

“Are they tracking us?” Nate asked. He sounded run down from the last few days, even a little annoyed, but not scared. Or, at least, she couldn’t detect any fear in his voice. “They must be tracking us…”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“First Port Arthur, and now here…” He shook his head. “Gotta be, right?”

“I don’t know, Nate.”

“Gotta be,” he repeated, mostly to himself that time.

She looked over at him lying against the edge of the rooftop next to her. The Mohawk was mostly gone, his hair grown in (out?) around the ridiculous stump in the middle. He had dirt on his cheeks and forehead but didn’t seem to notice it. The girl in her spent a moment being self-conscious about her own appearance, but the woman that had emerged easily dismissed the thought without much resistance.

Nate lowered his binoculars and met her gaze. “But why would they be tracking us? For Mason? I thought he was just another grunt these days.”

“I don’t think he was lying about that part. After Louisiana”—And Josh and that terrible night on Song Island—“he’s not what he used to be, and I know for a fact he wasn’t just another grunt back then.”

“Makes no sense,” Nate said. “We’re not that important, especially with Mercer’s people running around blowing up people. The three of us should be at the very bottom of their to-do list.”

She nodded because he was right. They weren’t important at all. What were three more people when the entire state was on high alert? The collaborators they’d (managed to avoid so far) run across in the last few days were on a war footing; they had their hands full with small teams of hit-and-run…what the hell were they? Rebels? Insurgents? Or maybe she should just think of them as Mercer’s killers, because that was exactly what they were.

Even now, she hadn’t dismissed the possibility that either Mercer’s men or the collaborators had found Taylor and Alice at their cabin in the woods outside of Larkin. The place had been empty when they showed up to collect the sisters for the trip home like they had promised. The door was open and there were no signs of the girls. More baffling, there was no evidence of a struggle. The sisters had simply…vanished. Nate thought it had to be ghouls, that the girls’ luck had finally run out, but she wasn’t so sure. Mason, of course, said he didn’t know anything about it, but the man was a liar and it was hard to believe anything that came out of his mouth.

In the end, they’d had to move on, with the sisters added to a long list of failures since returning to Texas.

We should have stayed on the Trident. We should never have come back.

We should never have come back…

She focused on the present, on the here and now, and looked through her M4’s optic again, picking up the same man she’d had in her crosshairs before. He was still leaning against the metal guardrail with his back to her. He had brown hair and spent most of his time working on a thick piece of beef jerky he’d fished out of a see-through bag earlier. He hadn’t come alone; his friend had climbed up onto the hood of the Jeep parked between the two highway lanes and was scanning the horizon with a pair of binoculars. They were both wearing black uniforms, and if she squinted, she could almost make out the Texas patch on their shoulders.

What the hell are you guys doing here?

Gallant, Texas, was a small town of about 3,200, surrounded by flat country land almost exactly halfway between Port Arthur and Galveston. The tiny city’s one major (only?) contribution was the slightly raised I-10 interstate road that joined it with Beaumont and Port Arthur to the east, Baytown to the west, and Galveston somewhere in the southwest.

The soldiers were loitering on that highway right now, looking for…something. They hadn’t found this place by accident. She was almost certain of that. So what were they doing here? Could Nate be right? Could these men have been tracking them?

What the hell are the two of you doing here?

She laid the rifle on the rooftop and rolled over onto her back, blinking up at the sun. She didn’t have to look at her watch to know they still had hours to go before nightfall. Her body was in tune to her environment and had been since they began picking their way south from Starch, skirting potential ambushes along the way, only to find Port Arthur crawling with collaborators.

“Hey,” Nate said.

She glanced over. He was holding a small piece of white paper and handed it to her. It was half the size of a regular writing sheet and was blank on one side. She had to turn it over to see the familiar writing:

JOIN THE FIGHT TO TAKE BACK TEXAS

WAR IS HERE PICK A SIDE

THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING

The words were clearly typed on the sheet using a machine, maybe even a computer printer. The idea that someone out there was printing out a bunch of propaganda flyers had been an interesting topic of discussion for a while, but after encountering more of them as they made their way southeast, it had become less interesting.

“First and only one I’ve seen in Gallant so far,” Nate said. “Wondered where it came from.”

“Probably from the same batch they dumped over Port Arthur,” she said. “It’d make sense for them to bypass the small cities for the bigger ones. Less wasteful that way.”

“How many you think have picked a side? Or, I guess, a new side?”

She shook her head. “Who knows? Maybe a lot, maybe very few, or maybe none.”

“After all that bombing? I don’t know, Gaby. If I were in those towns and I saw what happened to the next town over…”

The memories of what had happened to T29 were burned into her soul. She couldn’t forget what she had seen, and God did she want to so badly.

The town, the sisters, all the failures of the last few days…

She closed her eyes. “Can we not talk about this?”

“You okay?”

“Just a headache.”

“You should take some of the meds we have in the first-aid kits.”

“No.”

“That’s what they’re there for, Gaby.”

“They’re for emergencies. Besides, it always goes away.”

“You sure?” he asked, and she could hear the concern in his voice.

“I’ll be fine.” She opened her eyes and said, before he could argue the point, “We should head back.”

She crumpled up the piece of paper and tossed it, then turned around until she was lying on her stomach again. She picked up the rifle and began crawling backward away from the ledge. The distance between them and the highway was close enough (Shooting distance, at least with the ACOG) that she took every precaution. It only added a minute or so to their retreat anyway, and they had minutes to spare at the moment. Nate mirrored her crawl until they were almost on the other side, and only then did they stand up and take the ladder in the back down to the street below.

They had walked over to their position on top of the Waffle House, so that meant walking back to where Danny and Mason were. The area they were in was oddly divided with the stores and restaurants to one side and almost exclusively traveling hotels and inns on the other. The tallest building in the entire place was a Comfort Inn and Suites. The rooftop above the hotel’s three stories would have given them a much better spying perch, but the idea of going through those floors just to get to that perfect spot spiked the hairs on the back of her neck even now.

They wound their way through the streets and buildings using the businesses as cover whenever they could. Not that she expected to be spotted from the highway, but again, there was no point in taking unnecessary risks just to shave off a few seconds or minutes. So they took their time and moved along, through, and behind a fast food joint, then a gas station, and a dozen other buildings.

“Wanna get wasted?” Nate asked as they walked past one of the many brick and mortar stores. The sign outside was in gaudy neon, reading “Gallant Liquor Store.”

Not very creative, she thought, looking in at the hundreds of bottles still sitting on display shelves. The store was remarkably undisturbed and she couldn’t find any signs of ghoul occupation — there were no blankets on the windows or blood smears. Unlike most places they had traveled through, it was rare to find evidence of a ghoul nest in Gallant. It was another reason they had decided to make camp here. That same disregard for the town by the monsters was also why it didn’t make any sense for the two collaborators to be lingering around it.

What are you two doing here?

“Let’s relive our college years,” Nate was saying.

“I never went to college.”

“Oh, right. Sometimes I forget how young you are.”

“Are you saying I look old?”

“Well, yeah.”

“You’re lucky I already like you, or else…” She playfully put a hand on the butt of her sidearm.

He raised both hands in surrender and began walking backward, grinning at her. “If you want, we can pretend we’re in school. I’ll be the big man on campus, and you’ll be my cheerleader girlfriend. I bet if we look hard enough we might even be able to find a cheerleader uniform somewhere in this place, maybe at the high school we passed earlier…”

She shook her head but couldn’t help herself and smiled anyway. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you be my cheerleader boyfriend…”

They made their temporary base about a mile from the Waffle House inside the Gallant First Bank, one of the few buildings that had everything they needed in case they were forced to stay the night in town. Large white GFB letters were easily visible on the rooftop, welded to some kind of scaffolding. It wasn’t exactly subtle, but then it fit in with its surroundings, mostly department stores, restaurants, and she guessed the cream of the commercialism crop in Gallant. The bank had security bars over the windows and doors, and when they peeked inside, found it as pristine now as it had been a year ago.

She saw Danny peeking out at them from behind blinders on one of the front windows as they approached, then a few seconds later one of the doors clicked opened before they even reached it.

They slipped inside and Danny locked it back up. “What’s the word, birdies? Tell me you haven’t been giving each other disgusting hickeys out there while I was babysitting in here?”

“A Jeep with two soldiers,” Nate said. “They showed up and parked on the I-10 around ten in the morning and haven’t moved since. We think they’re looking for something.”

“Maybe us,” Gaby said.

“Has to be, right?”

“Did you go and ask them?” Danny asked.

“Uh, no,” Nate said.

“Maybe they’re just searching for property to rent or buy. Land’s pretty cheap these days, and property’s always a good investment. Always has been, always will be.”

“We thought they might have been the same two we saw outside of Port Arthur yesterday,” Gaby said.

“Were they?”

She shook her head. “Same uniforms but different vehicle, and one of the two from yesterday was blond. These two both had dark hair.”

“Dark-haired muchachos are seriously the worst.”

“Self-loathing?” Nate asked.

“Maybe a tad,” Danny said. Then, looking at her, “Why didn’t you just shoot them? I gave you that ACOG for a reason, you know.”

“It was tempting…” Gaby said.

“Next time when in doubt, shoot.”

I almost did, she thought, and tossed her pack on the island counter in the lobby, knocking down a few deposit slips that had been left behind. She unzipped the bag and pulled out a bottle of water and took a drink.

The place was remarkably clean when they had found it, with no evidence of a fight or blood anywhere, and Nate theorized it was closed when the town succumbed to The Purge. Like most small cities around the state, the citizens probably knew something had happened when the big metropolitans like Houston and Dallas went dark. It would have been terrifying as they waited for the second night. She knew the feeling, having lived through it herself a year ago.

There were still piles of money in the registers and safes when they looked around this morning, and the two offices in the back were in immaculate condition. She kept expecting someone to clock in for work whenever she glanced at the counters. There were plenty of lights coming through the closed blinds behind her to see with, but not enough to give their position away to someone passing by, like those two guys…

Maybe Nate’s right. Maybe they are following us.

But why?

When she finished drinking and put the bottle away, she looked back at Danny. “Nate is convinced they’re tracking us.”

“What do you think?” Danny asked her.

“I don’t know, maybe. It’s just too much coincidence that they — or one of their friends — keep showing up wherever we go.”

Danny nodded but didn’t say anything. He looked lost in thought, and whenever that happened, he always reminded her so much of Will. They looked nothing alike, of course, but when the usually jovial Danny went still, it was hard to shake the resemblance.

“Where’s Mason?” Nate asked.

“Dozing, the last time I saw him,” Danny said. “Being a hostage is hard work.”

“I should go check on him.”

“You think he’s going to try something?” she asked.

Nate shrugged as he walked past her. “I just don’t like the idea of that guy being somewhere where at least one of us can’t see him at all times.”

She watched him go into the back hallway, then open the door into one of the two offices and disappear inside. Gaby turned back to Danny, who had returned to looking out the blinders at the street outside.

“Did you talk to the Trident yet?” she asked.

“Still waiting to pick us up,” Danny said. “All we have to do is get to someplace where they can do exactly that, and then we’ll all be on the sundeck drinking piña coladas. Easy breezy.”

“Easy breezy, huh?” she said doubtfully.

“Have faith, Gabster. We’ll get there. Eventually.”

She didn’t doubt they would get home — she just hoped they all made it, and in one piece.

“I believe you,” she said.

“You should. I’m never wrong.”

“Never?”

“Well, mostly never.” He glanced up the street in the direction she and Nate had come. “You said two?”

“Two, yeah.”

“But one vehicle?”

“That I could see or hear.” When he didn’t ask or say anything, she continued: “What are you thinking?”

“That if we want to get out of here before nightfall and those two hombres are still hanging around on the highway, then we might have a problem.”

“Just one?”

“Okay, one of many. The biggest one is the noise factor. As soon as we fire up our ride, they’ll know we’re here. Then they’ll radio their friends, and who knows how many of them are between us and the coastline. We might have to wait them out.”

“How long?”

“Hopefully they won’t make us wait too long. I’m not a very patient guy when piña coladas are at stake.”

“How far is it between Gallant and the coast?”

“Twenty-five miles, give or take. The problem isn’t the distance — it’s the not knowing how many guys with guns and bad intentions are waiting for us between here and there.”

“Captain Optimism,” Gaby said.

“That’s what Carly said when I told her about our present dilemma.”

“They’ve been out there for a while. What’s their fuel situation?”

“I’ve been told that they’re dealing with it.”

“Is that good or bad?”

He shrugged. “That’s what I said.”

She heard voices from the back of the bank and glanced over. Nate had left the office door open, and she could hear him talking with Mason but couldn’t quite make out the conversation.

“What about Mason?” she asked.

“What about him?” Danny said.

“Does he know what’s waiting for us out there?”

“His knowledge is getting more limited the farther south we get. He only knows what he knew before Starch. Everything after that is all Greek to him.”

“Then why are we keeping him around?”

Danny gave her an amused look. “You sick of him already?”

“I’ve been sick of him since Starch, and I still don’t believe he doesn’t know anything about what happened to Alice and Taylor. I just don’t see any reason to keep dragging him along if he’s outlived his usefulness, Danny. ”

“Wow, talk about breaking my heart,” a voice said behind her.

She looked over at Mason coming out of the back hallway with Nate. The collaborator was still wearing the same black uniform they had captured him in back at Starch. His face was grimy with dirt and sweat — which ironically made him perfectly at home among them — and the only thing clean on him was the bandage around his right leg. He walked with a noticeable limp and a grimace, his reward for trying to kill them a few days ago.

“After all we’ve been through, too,” Mason added.

“Give me one reason why we should keep you around,” she said.

“Because I’m still more valuable to you alive than dead. You can use me — and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but what the hell — as a hostage, if it becomes necessary. And yes, I do think it’s going to be necessary.”

“Bullshit. You’re just trying to talk your way into staying alive. You’re not important to them. You never were.”

“Then why have they been tracking you all the way from Starch?”

There was just a ghost of a smile on his pale and cracked lips, probably because he knew a full-blown smile would have just pissed her off, and Mason, for all his faults — and the man had many of them — wasn’t stupid.

“Good question,” Danny said. “So, tell us, ol’ popular one, what makes you the bee’s knees? And don’t say it’s because of your stinky armpits, ’cause I’m sure I got you beat on that one.”

“It’s a secret,” Mason said.

“Is that right?”

“You can try to beat it out of me, but I’m still not going to tell you.”

“I don’t know, I’m pretty good at beating things out of people. Just ask Johnny Paulson back in middle school.”

“The difference between me and Johnny Paulson? I know keeping quiet is the only way to stay alive. The second I tell you, I’m a dead man. And I really, really like staying alive.”

Danny exchanged a look with her, then she did the same with Nate. She wasn’t sure if either one of the men believed Mason, but she got the feeling they were like her: They didn’t believe a thing that came out of his mouth, but they couldn’t disregard it out of hand, either. And that, ultimately, was what Mason was going for.

“You’re a tricky little bugger,” Danny said, pointing a finger at Mason. “You know what happens to tricky little buggers? They eventually overstay their welcome and end up being stuffed into ventilation shafts. And trust me, buddy, I know my ventilation shafts.”

“I don’t know what any of that means,” Mason said.

“Think about it.”

“I’ll pass.”

“I don’t believe you,” Gaby said.

The collaborator grinned at her. “Just ask yourself one question, sweetheart: How do you think I’ve stayed alive this long? It wasn’t because of my good looks.”

She bristled at the word sweetheart but pushed through it. The last thing she wanted was for Mason to see that he had an effect—any kind of an effect — on her with his words. It was a weak man’s weapon because right now, that was all he had.

Gaby stared at him. “The second you prove you’re no longer valuable, I’m going to end you.”

“I believe you,” Mason said.

“Good. Because when the time comes, you won’t be able to say I wasn’t honest with you.”

He smiled defiantly back at her, but she couldn’t help but notice that this time it wasn’t nearly as convincing.

Crack!

Danny, looking down at the well-worn map of Texas spread out on the bank’s island counter, snapped a quick glance at the windows that faced the street. He hadn’t said anything when two more shots, about three seconds apart, crackled across the city even before the first one had fully faded.

“Same rifle?” Gaby asked.

Danny nodded. “Bolt-action. Heavy caliber.”

“What are they shooting at—” Nate said, when the pop-pop-pop of an automatic rifle cut him off.

“Someone’s shooting back,” Gaby said.

“Is that good?” Nate asked.

“Good, bad, as long as they’re not shooting at us, that’s all that matters,” Danny said. He pushed off the counter and moved across the bank lobby to the front windows.

More gunfire washed up and down the street outside. It took her a moment, but there was enough of a sustained volley that Gaby managed to trace its origin back to the highway. Had the two collaborators in the Jeep found someone to shoot at, or had someone found them?

“Pack up,” Danny said.

Gaby folded up the map and pocketed it. “Are we leaving?”

“I don’t think we have a choice, kids. All that racket’s doing is drawing a whole lotta attention our way. Pretty soon we’ll be up our butts in bad boys in black uniforms, and I don’t know about you two, but I’d rather avoid that uncomfortableness.”

Gaby exchanged a nod with Nate, and he hurried into the back where they were keeping Mason. She snatched up her rifle leaning against the counter and grabbed her tactical pack from the floor. The weight of the ammo in the bag instantly reassured her.

A soldier who complains about too much ammo is a dead one, right, Will?

Danny was still peeking out the blinds, looking in the direction of the gunfire. The familiar crack of the high-powered rifle, followed by the torrent of pop-pop-pop of automatic return fire. Someone, somewhere, was wasting a lot of ammo. Will, she thought, would never approve.

“Danny, anything?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Can’t see shit, but they’re not outside, and that’s the good news. The bad news is that I can’t see shit from in here. Did I mention that?”

“It sounds like it’s coming from the highway. You think it might be Mercer’s people?”

“That would be my guess.” Danny glanced over as Nate brought Mason out from the back, keeping the shorter man in front of him. “Looks like we might be putting your supposed importance to test sooner than you think, Mason ol’ chum.”

“Looking forward to it,” Mason said.

She looked past the collaborator and at Nate behind him. “Ready?”

“Good to go,” Nate nodded.

Nate’s pack jutted out from behind his back, making him look like a hunchback. Unlike hers, his was bulkier, because aside from his own ammo, he was also carrying most of their emergency rations. They had more supplies in the truck outside, but they had learned the hard way it was a good idea to carry whatever you could on top of that because you never knew when you might lose your vehicle to an A-10 Warthog on a strafing run.

“Okay,” Danny said, “let’s blow this three-horse town.”

He rushed into the back hallway, Nate and Mason turning and following close behind, while Gaby brought up the rear. She glanced behind her at the closed blinders one last time before crossing the lobby after the others.

Outside the bank the firefight continued, the booming crack! of a bolt-action rifle now overlapping with the pop-pop-pop of return fire. Whoever was out there, they sounded determined to end one another.

Better them than us.

It was an older model red Toyota pickup, one that Danny had found in someone’s garage after the vehicle they had been using since Starch died on them. The Toyota looked nearly as beat up as the building it was hidden in, but its owner had kept it in good condition and it worked without any trouble once they replaced the battery and fed siphoned fuel into its tank.

It was still parked behind the Gallant First Bank where they had left it, dented cab hood reflecting back the sun. It wasn’t exactly the prettiest thing in town, and even before The Purge most thieves wouldn’t have looked twice at it.

Nate opened the back door and shoved Mason inside, then slid in beside him. Mason’s legs were free, but his wrists were bound with duct tape to keep him from getting any ideas. She kept expecting the man to make a run for it a dozen times since they began their trek, but he seemed oddly content to be their hostage, though she didn’t for one second believe that.

Don’t trust him. Whatever you do, don’t trust him.

Gaby tossed her pack on the floor before climbing into the front passenger seat while Danny settled in behind the wheel. He put the key in the ignition but didn’t turn it right away. Instead, he rolled down the window and listened, except there wasn’t anything to hear.

It was suddenly very quiet again.

“Sounds like someone finally won the brouhaha,” Danny said.

“I don’t hear any running vehicles,” Gaby said.

“If they called for reinforcements, it would take a while for them to get here,” Nate said. “Port Arthur’s a long way off.”

“Unless they have people closer…”

“There’s always that.”

She looked over at Danny. “Maybe we should be gone before they show up.”

“Works for me,” Mason chimed in from the backseat.

“Shut up,” Nate said and slapped Mason in the back of the head. “When we wanna hear a peep out of you, we’ll ask.”

Mason grunted and looked as if he wanted to say something back, but clenched his teeth in silence instead. Gaby smiled. It was a rare thing to see Nate so aggressive, but she couldn’t help herself; she liked it when he was.

Danny still hadn’t turned the key in the ignition. He continued leaning against the steering wheel and staring out at the empty street in front of them. Until the gunfight a few minutes ago, Gallant was the definition of a dead town. They hadn’t found a single soul living here when they arrived, not even an animal or two.

“What are you thinking?” Gaby asked.

“Cheeseburgers,” Danny said.

“Cheeseburgers?”

“With chives. And bacon.”

“And how does that help us?”

“It doesn’t, but you asked what I was thinking, and I was thinking about a nice big juicy cheeseburger.”

“With chives and bacon.”

“Yup.” He sat back, the car’s torn upholstery squishing under him. “When this is over, I think I’m going to open a cheeseburger joint. Call it Danny’s Cheeseburgers.”

“A little on the nose, don’t you think?”

“What can I say, I like to make a splash,” Danny said just before he turned the key in the ignition.

The truck didn’t roar; it meowed to life, but with the absence of any other sounds at the moment, the churning engine might as well be a loud monstrous bellow alerting anyone with ears to not just their existence but their location as well.

“Eyes wide, ears open, and guns hot,” Danny said as he put the truck in gear and slowly eased it out from behind the bank, peeking left then right at the empty streets, before turning right and pointing them south.

They hadn’t gone more than a mile down the road, passing a series of empty buildings and storefronts to both sides of them, when she heard a new noise and looked at her side mirror and sighed.

“Danny,” she said.

“I see them,” he said.

“Ah, man,” Nate said as he twisted around in his seat and glanced out the rear windshield.

“Better step on it, sport,” Mason said, though Gaby didn’t hear anything that even resembled triumph in his voice. If anything, he might have sounded a little…anxious?

The pickup gained speed while Gaby put her M4 in her lap and flicked the safety off, then stuck her head out the open window and looked back down the street.

It was the same Jeep from the interstate, she was sure of it, and it was far enough behind them that she couldn’t see the driver’s face, though she could make out a second figure in the front passenger seat. A part of her knew it was too much to expect they could just exit Gallant the way they had entered it — unnoticed — but she’d clung to the hope anyway.

“Company!” she shouted.

“Tell me something I don’t know!” Danny shouted back.

He hadn’t even gotten the word know out when a second car turned into the street behind the Jeep, and for just a brief second she entertained the possibility that it was going to ram the smaller vehicle in front of it, knock it into one of the buildings, and allow them to escape. Instead the Jeep’s passenger waved at the truck, which picked up speed and pulled up alongside it.

“Danny! More company!” she shouted.

“Yee haw! Now it’s a party!” he shouted back.

Sunlight bounced off the truck’s gleaming dark skin, and it was impossible to miss the machine gun mounted on top of its cab. A man stood behind the weapon, literally clinging to it to prevent the speeding vehicle from shedding him like some unwelcomed pest. He looked like a rag doll back there, and no amount of wishful thinking on her part ended with him flying through the air.

“It’s a technical, Danny!” she shouted.

“When it rains, it pours!” Danny said, and she thought he might have been laughing at the same time.

She pulled her head back into the pickup and looked at him. “Can we outrun them?”

“Not in this jalopy,” Danny said.

“What, then?”

He glanced over and grinned. “I got a plan.”

“A good plan?”

“Call it Plan Z.”

She groaned. “We’re going to die…”

4 Keo

He spent the night in an outside cellar at a farmhouse about half a mile from Lochlyn. You wouldn’t know the town even existed if you didn’t have a map and someone to point the way. Fortunately, he had the benefit of both. Even so, he ended up stumbling into the south end of the city limits and had to quickly retreat before he was spotted out in the open. If there had been a sniper on duty, he would have been dead. The enemy would be on high alert after Davis and Butch failed to check in, and that made him overly cautious.

Nightfall came quickly, giving him less than an hour to squirrel himself inside the cellar. The door was made of a simple wooden construction, nothing that would stand against a prolonged assault. The room itself was small and damp, and judging by the indentations, once held glass bottles, maybe even spirits. Or moonshine, perhaps. He was in the boondocks of southeast Texas, after all. Who the hell knew what people did down here to pass the time?

There were slits in the door that anyone with eyes (black, blue, or whatever color) could use to look into the cellar, so he grabbed clumps of dirt and plastered them over the vulnerable spots. Fortunately, the earth was wet enough to cling to the wooden slabs. He reinforced the latch on the door with Butch’s rifle that he had brought along just in case. It wasn’t like the man was going to need it or any of his supplies anytime soon.

The work done, he settled down on the soft ground and rested his back against the sticky wall and took a drink from a canteen. There was something else he had brought along — a small pink iPod barely the size of his thumb that Butch had been listening to when Keo shot him in the fields. The green light flickered when he pushed the on switch, and a voice drifted out of the white earbuds dangling from the device.

Keo placed his AR-15 on the ground and trained his eyes on the cellar door barely ten feet across from him. He had done a pretty good job sealing up the cracks, and the room was almost pitch dark except for a few random strands of inconsequential (fading) sunlight. He had positioned himself in the right spot, which in this case meant staying as far away from the stray slivers as possible.

He was surprised when he slipped one of the buds into his ear — left the other one dangling — and heard her voice. That surprise turned into a grin, because for some reason a part of him expected to see — well, hear, anyway — her again even all the way out here.

“…the traitors in uniforms that scour the countryside in the daylight for survivors, any bullet will do…”

Lara’s voice, clear as day. He had been on the bridge of the Trident when she recorded the message, and he still remembered the lines.

“…get to a place that is surrounded by bodies of water. Stock up on silver; if you know how, make silver bullets, or any silver-bladed weapons. The daylight is no longer your friend, but don’t be discouraged. As long as you’re breathing, as long as you are free, there is hope. We will adapt and keep going, because that’s what we do. This is Lara, and I’m still fighting alongside you.”

There was a brief pause before the message repeated itself.

Keo popped the bud out of his ear. Why had Butch and Davis gone through the trouble of recording the message, looping it, then uploading it to an iPod? He would have liked to ask Butch, but that wasn’t going to happen. Davis would have had the answer, in all likelihood, but that ship had sailed, too.

He made a mental note to tell Lara when he saw her again. He wasn’t sure if she was going to get a kick out of it or find it creepy. How many of Mercer’s men were carrying around her message on iPods out there?

Definitely creepy.

He flicked off the on switch and the little green light faded into nothingness, leaving him sitting in the dark all by himself again.

He didn’t get a whole lot of sleep, not helped by the fact he kept waking up every other hour to throbbing in his legs. Both of them. He didn’t know how that was possible and gave up trying to dismiss it as being just figments of imagination after the third time.

He got a total of two hours of shut-eye, spending the rest of the night listening to them moving on the other side of the door. They were going through the farmhouse behind him, racing up and down both stories. There was a barn on the other side of the property, and he heard them raiding it, too.

Did they know he was around? Smell him? Sense him somehow? Or maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe they were tracking Mercer’s men. That was more likely. Mercer’s goons might have managed to stay under the radar all this time, setting up their little FOBs around the state before they finally struck, but once the genie was out of the bag…

What were the chances the ghouls were going to get to whoever — and however many — were hiding just outside of Lochlyn at the moment?

He drifted in and out of sleep while waiting for the night to give way to morning, most of it spent staring at the door and listening for the first signs that he had been discovered. He was so used to hearing them out there, skittering across the open, that he found the sound of their movements almost…comforting?

It’s official: I’ve lost my fucking mind.

Around three in the morning, their numbers started to thin out and it became more difficult to pick them up. By four, they were almost completely gone except for the occasional strays that walked or ran or stopped just a little too close to the cellar entrance. He could see their shadowy figures flitting across the small openings, and a few of them paused just a bit too long for his liking.

He kept waiting to hear gunshots, which would be a sign that the creatures had found Mercer’s men. But there weren’t any. Not at midnight, or at three, or four, or when the first signs of morning finally began filtering through the cellar and the ground under him started warming up. Not a lot, just enough to be noticeable after sitting on the cold, damp earth all night.

The lack of shooting or hints of confrontation between Mercer’s men and the ghouls last night was a good sign, because it just meant more men for him to kill.

Yeah, we’re officially a little bloodthirsty now, aren’t we?

Mercer’s people weren’t inside Lochlyn itself, of course. They were hunkered down outside the city limits on the north end, hiding (almost) in plain sight, which was ballsy of them, but then again, what wasn’t about these people?

Instead of anything that remotely looked like an airfield, there was a two-story house with peeling white paint surrounded by woods. The only thing that made the homestead stand out from the one he had just spent the night in and the dozen others he’d passed while skirting the town proper was the large barn next door and a wide-open clearing.

Keo crouched near the tree line and watched the property for a good ten minutes. Ten became twenty, then a full half hour, and there were still no signs of people anywhere in the open or inside the house or the barn next door. No people, and no movement.

Could Davis have lied to him? Could Mercer’s men have left yesterday?

Shit. What if he had come all this way for nothing—

Two figures emerged out of the trees almost half a football field to his left, their movements flickering at the corner of his eye.

Now where had they come from?

Keo pressed against a tree trunk and watched the two men, both wearing black and green camo clothing, stride through the overgrown grass toward the main house. Sunlight glinted off the barrel of their rifles, and one of them had a second weapon, some kind of shotgun, slung over his back.

A bit overkill, Keo thought before remembering that he was carrying not just the AR-15 he had taken from Luke, but also Butch’s.

What the hell. A little overkill never hurts these days.

He watched the two men — Scouts? Perimeter guards? — bypass the house and continue on to the barn. There was an echoing click before a third figure stepped out of the red building, pushing at one of the twin doors. A fourth man soon appeared and helped with the other door. They wore identical black and green clothing, but nothing that looked like an actual uniform or red collar emblazoned with the familiar sun emblems. That didn’t really mean anything though; Luke and Bill hadn’t been wearing the uniform either, and he was 100 % sure they were Mercer’s men. The same for Davis and Butch.

The four men exchanged words, but Keo was too far away to hear the conversation. Instead, he sat back and watched the two new arrivals disappear into the barn with the other two before all four returned outside about five minutes later, this time pushing a large, heavy, tarp-covered object out into the morning sunlight with them.

At first Keo thought it was an old tractor, or some kind of farming equipment, given its size. That is, until he stared at it through his binoculars.

It was a helicopter with some kind of heavy netting draped over it. He could make out green metal glinting through the holes in the camouflage, and it was pretty clear the machine had wheels that made it easier to move despite its bulk.

“The last flight out is tomorrow. Everyone involved in this area is supposed to be back by then,” Davis had said.

The last flight back to The Ranch…

Four men became six when two more came out of the barn, but none of them were Mercer. Besides the fact everyone was too young to be Mercer, there was no reason for Davis to lie about the man not being here. But while Mercer might not be here right now, these men knew where he was and how to get there, and right now that was good enough for Keo.

Not all six were armed, but at least two of them were. Even if he could take out both of them from this distance, that still left four to make a run for the barn. Once inside, he was pretty sure they wouldn’t be unarmed for very long. And how many were inside right now that he couldn’t see?

So what, then? Wait for them to climb onboard that helicopter and leave?

No, that wasn’t going to work. Not one bit.

Find Mercer. Kill Mercer.

It was a pretty straightforward job. Not a breeze by any means, but he’d had tougher gigs, even if he couldn’t think of them right now.

He got up and backtracked into the woods until he couldn’t see the helicopter and the men pushing it, then turned and began moving right. He circled the clearing, sticking to the natural camo provided by the thick trees and foliage around him. Keo didn’t stop until he was looking out at the rear of the red barn.

He moved back toward the tree line, and crouching, looked out.

The barn was about thirty-five meters in front of him, and from his current angle he couldn’t see the front doors or the two-story house on the other side, but he could make out the nose of the helicopter as it was pushed into the wide-open space where it could power up and take off. He hadn’t spotted anything that looked like an LZ out there — makeshift or otherwise — but a good pilot probably didn’t need one.

He got up and slipped out of the trees and made a straight line for the red building. Closer now, he could hear grunts and voices coming from the other side as the six men put everything they had into pushing the aircraft. Equipped with wheels or not, that thing probably weighed close to 6,000 kilograms or more, not counting however much fuel it still had in the tank. That, he guessed, would depend on how far these men expected it to ferry them.

Keo made the back of the barn without incident but didn’t press up against the peeling red paint. Instead, he stopped just short of it and found a small sliver between two boards and looked in, glimpsing a pair of figures moving around on the other side.

So at least two more bodies. Swell. That made a total of eight, which was still less than he had been expecting, unless there were more hiding in the barn or somewhere out there in the woods.

The barn was big enough to have two stories and Keo tried to look up, but there wasn’t enough of a crack to see anything past the first floor. He moved along the back, searching for another peephole, but didn’t find anything good enough to see through by the time he reached the building’s right edge. The good news was, as soon as he rounded the corner, he spotted a side door.

What were the chances it was unlocked?

He put his hand on the rusted-over lever and tested it by pressing cautiously down with his thumb. The latch moved on the other side (unlocked!) without any noise, not even a telltale clack. He pulled his hand away and craned his head to eavesdrop on the voices coming from the other side of the building, somewhere between the barn and the main house. They weren’t really chatting up a storm, but there were a couple of ongoing conversations, though the topics eluded him.

Keo faced the side door again and took a breath.

Eight men that he knew of for sure, maybe (probably) more he couldn’t see. It wasn’t exactly the ideal situation, and God knew the prospect of shooting it out with eight men was intimidating enough that it made all of this seem like one big suicide run. Only an idiot would barge in there in hopes of getting to someone who wasn’t even present. Only a damn fool would do exactly what he was about to do against such overwhelming odds.

He almost laughed out loud trying to recall the last time someone had mistaken him for anything other than a damn fool.

Suck it up, pal, and get it done. Mercer’s not going to end himself, you know.

He reached for the rusted-over lever a second time, steeling himself for the charge. He’d have to take out the two inside first, then move toward the open front doors and waste the ones pushing the helicopter. Most of them, anyway. He’d need to keep at least one of them alive for interrogation, preferably the pilot. But he wouldn’t necessarily know who the pilot was unless the guy was wearing some kind of flight suit, which would be a dead giveaway, but unlikely.

Oh, fuck it. Now you’re just stalling.

He sighed, thought, This one’s for you, Jordan, and pushed his thumb down on the lever a split second before a big chunk of the already rotted wooden door in front of him cratered. Splinters exploded and filled the air (Gunshot!), every single piece seemingly gunning for his face.

Keo’s mind screamed, Gunshot! Where the hell did that gunshot come from? even as he spun and started dropping to the ground

It was a man, and he was wearing some kind of ghillie suit that would have made him blend effortlessly into his surroundings just beyond the tree line if not for the rifle in his hands. The muzzle was pointed in Keo’s direction, and the reason Keo hadn’t heard anything resembling a gunshot meant the weapon had a suppressor—

Keo dived left at the last second even as the man fired again, the second round smashing into the wall an inch from his head, so close that the sound of the weapon drilling through the vulnerable wood (Thwack!) and disappearing into the barn was the only noise the shot made. He had thrown himself down to avoid the bullet without thinking and had to stick out his hands — with the AR-15 clutched in them — or else he would have smashed face first into the ground.

There was a loud boom! from behind him, and Keo didn’t have to look back to know someone had just kicked the barn’s side door open. Not that he could have looked to be sure, because he was still falling—

He hit the ground, spun onto his back, and grimaced as the second rifle slung over his back dug into his flesh (Should have left it behind, dammit!), but the pain vanished quickly and was replaced by blinding fury when a steel-toed boot slammed into his side. He was pretty sure one of his ribs cracked. If he was really lucky, it would just be one.

He glimpsed figures flashing across his line of vision, blotting out the sun above him, just before the stock of a rifle cracked over his face.

There goes the nose again.

He tasted blood in his mouth and felt his rifle being yanked out of his hands as if he were some old man incapable of holding onto anything, then another boot (or was it the same one?) landing a second kick, but thankfully this time it only glanced off his thigh. It still hurt like a sonofabitch, and it was all he could do to grit his teeth to keep from crying out.

He waited for more, but his punisher had apparently decided that two (Or was that three? Four?) was enough and backed away, leaving Keo to lie on his back staring up at a glowing orange ball. At least it was warm and sunny this morning. He could think of worse ways to go — somewhere cold, for instance.

God bless freaky ass Texas weather, he thought with a wry grin.

“What are you smiling at?” a voice said. Female. Partially amused, but mostly confused. “I don’t think you should be smiling right now.”

“You sure that’s a smile?” a second voice asked. This one was a man and wasn’t nearly as pleasant-sounding.

“Looks like a smile.”

“Hard to tell with all the blood…”

Keo shifted his sight from the sun to the first silhouetted figure looming over him. For a moment he thought it might have been Marcy again, but it couldn’t have been because she was a collaborator and these were Mercer’s men. Or had he stumbled across the wrong group of people? Had Davis lied to him after all and sent him to his death?

Clever, Davis. Real clever, you jackass.

“You missed,” the man said. It didn’t sound as if he was directing the accusation at Keo. “Twice.”

“It’s the suppressor,” a second male voice said. “Threw off my aim.”

“Riiiight.”

“I’m serious, man.”

A third silhouette flanked the first two, except this one seemed to have the outline of a…bush? No, not a bush. He was looking at a ghillie suit…the guy with the rifle who had taken the shots at him.

“He’s seen better days, that’s for sure,” Ghillie Suit said. “Damn, look at that face.”

“That’s my bad,” the other man said.

“You did that?”

“Had to make sure he stayed down.”

“I think you made sure.”

“Damn straight.” Then, “Is that what I think it is?” The man crouched briefly before straightening back up, this time with a familiar white wire dangling from between his fingers. “Aw, shit, it’s Davis’s iPod, isn’t it? What the fuck’s he doing with Davis’s iPod?”

“I guess now we know what happened to him and Butch,” Ghillie Suit said.

“You think they’re dead?”

“I don’t think they gave it to him out of the goodness of their hearts.”

“Is he alone?” the woman asked.

“As far as I know,” Ghillie Suit said. “Could be more hiding in the woods.”

“I swore the nightcrawlers found us last night,” the other man said. “They might have sent their human lackeys to check. You think he’s a collaborator scumbag?”

“Maybe,” woman said. “Spread out; make sure he doesn’t have any friends hiding out there.”

The man who wasn’t Ghillie Suit left and Keo heard a radio squawking, but that was quickly drowned out by the sound of a machine roaring to life. First slowly, then gradually gaining speed and power until it was all he could hear and the ground under him began trembling, pebbles dancing near his right eye.

The helicopter. Wait for me, boys!

He must have grinned a second time, because the woman said, “There it is again. What’s so funny?”

He thought of a joke Danny had once told him about a priest, a rabbit, and a horse walking into a bar, but when he opened his mouth to tell it, the only sound that came out was a slightly labored wheeze.

“I guess not!” Ghillie Suit said. With the noise continuing to grow in the background, the man had to shout to be heard. “What’re we gonna do with him?”

“I don’t know yet!” the woman shouted back. She crouched next to Keo and her face slowly came into focus.

Not completely, but enough for him to know she wasn’t entirely bad looking.

“What’s he doing sneaking around out here by himself?” the woman asked, though Keo wasn’t sure if she was asking him or Ghillie Suit, or just talking mostly to herself.

Maybe I should ask her out for drinks. Get to know one another…

“He looks like he’s going to be way more trouble than he’s worth,” Ghillie Suit said.

“Maybe,” the woman said, standing back up. “We can always just throw him out of the hatch later if he becomes a pain in the ass.”

Or not.

5 Gaby

“Ready, kid?”

“No.”

“On the count of five…”

“Danny, I’m not ready!”

“One…”

“Not yet!”

“Two…”

“Danny!”

“…four…”

“What happened to three?”

“Go!”

She would have cursed him if she had the chance, but by the time his Go! echoed in her ears, the pickup’s tires were screaming and the smell of burning rubber filled her nostrils as the vehicle slammed to a stop in the middle of the road. She threw her body into the door, one hand jerking at the lever, praying she had timed it just right, because otherwise she was going to go splat on the pavement—

The door snapped open, rusted hinges working overtime, but was soon lost against the overwhelming squeal of tires under her and the quickly approaching engines of the two vehicles behind them. Her feet didn’t so much as touch the road as they graced it, and she was racing forward. A sheet of abandoned newspaper crumpled under her boots, the sound like gunshots despite all the other noises swirling around her at the moment.

The road out of Gallant, Texas, was a two-lane street separated by fading yellow lines, and their vehicle had turned slightly left as it skidded to a stop and she lunged out. That pointed her right toward the shoulder and the row of cars on the other side. They hadn’t made it very far out of town before Danny came up with his (not so) brilliant plan. She would have argued to keep going and hopefully lose their pursuers among the side streets, but Danny hadn’t given her any choice.

Her heartbeat thundered against her chest as she ran for all she was worth, the M4 clutched in her right hand, her left swinging back and forth as if that would somehow make her go faster. She couldn’t help herself and tossed a quick look to her right and down the street just as she crossed the shoulder.

They were still coming — both of them. The Jeep that she had seen on the I-10, which may or may not have been tracking them since Port Arthur, and the big black truck with the dark uniformed man perched behind the towering cab. It wasn’t the size of the second vehicle that made the pit of her stomach drop. No, it was the mounted machine gun. Gaby had seen what one of those things could do, and the thought of being on the wrong side of it made her run faster and faster.

She forced herself to turn forward and focus on the long white metal pole separating the car lot from the street. She reached out with her left hand and leapt over it, her momentum almost sending her right into the grill of a used Ford truck.

She stuck out both hands to protect herself, rifle clanging against the parked vehicle, and twisted her body until she slid against the dirt-caked side. She didn’t waste any time and leaned against it — ignoring the surprisingly cold contact! She raised the M4 and laid it across the hood and took just a second — maybe even a half-second, just long enough to see the Jeep filling up her ACOG — to aim before she pulled the trigger.

The rifle bucked and empty shell casings clink-clink-clinked against the truck and slid down like raindrops to scatter at her feet, but she never released the trigger. Gaby oscillated her fire left and right, sweeping the street as the Jeep swerved about fifty meters away (Jesus, how did they get so close so fast?) until it somehow ended up on the northbound lane. That left the southbound wide open and the big truck — a GMC, from the logo up front — taking up the entire lane as it continued barreling in her direction.

She was sending everything she had downrange because it was her job to slow them down (or stop them, but she didn’t think that was possible) in order to give Danny and Nate just enough time to—

The pop-pop-pop of automatic weapons coming from her right told her she had done her job and given her friends the time they needed. Danny and Nate were pouring it on, and the ping-ping-ping! of bullets punching through the truck’s body were some of the best sounds she’d ever heard in her life.

She kept shooting, waiting for the GMC to stop under the prolonged assault, but the damn thing kept coming. It wouldn’t stop or slow down even as bullets raked its front windshield and grill and hood. The pavement around it exploded, chunks of asphalt flickering into the air like missiles.

And then the thing she had been dreading: The ferocious roar of the machine gun finally coming alive, the brap-brap-brap of the MG drowning out her shots and Danny’s and Nate’s—

She ducked as bullets smashed into the other side of the Ford, the ping! ping! ping! like bombs going off next to her. It was all she could do to reload the M4, concentrating on getting a solid grip on a fresh magazine from one of her pouches even though her hands were covered in sweat. Every inch of her trembled every time a round slammed into the vehicles and road around her. The damn machine gun never seemed to run out of bullets and continued to rain long after she had finished loading her rifle and pulled back the charging handle.

And then, just like that, nothing.

The suddenness of it froze her in place, still crouched behind the bullet-riddled truck, her breath hammering out of her. It took her three full seconds before she allowed herself to finally believe what her ears were telling her.

It was quiet. Unbelievably quiet.

It took her another five full seconds to will herself to stand up — her legs were wobbly for some reason, and her hands trembling slightly — and look over the hood of the vehicle up the street.

The GMC had come to a stop (Thank God) at an odd angle in the middle of the road about twenty meters from the red pickup, its hood facing her end of the street, which allowed her to see the (at least) two dozen or so holes spread out from one side of the windshield to the other. Spilled gasoline tickled at her nostrils, and the painfully gradual drip-drip-drip sound of leaking fuel from somewhere at the back of the vehicle was the only thing she could hear other than her own labored breathing.

The enemy truck was so close that she didn’t have to look through her weapon’s optic to see the smoke coming out of holes along the grill and hood or the driver slouched over the steering wheel, unmoving. The machine gun on the cab was resting on its stock, the muzzle pointed up at the cloudless sky. Sunlight beat down on the shiny black coat of paint as if it had just come off the lot.

She was so focused on the dead-in-the-street truck that it took her a while to recognize the sound of an engine roaring to life. She scanned past the GMC and spotted the Jeep still fifty meters up the road. It was attempting to make a wide U-turn and almost crashed into a stop sign in the process. The driving was erratic, to put it mildly, which made her wonder if the driver was hurt.

Pop! as someone fired at it, the round hitting the back of the Jeep as it completed its desperate U-turn before speeding away. She thought about shooting after it, but it was already too far away and hitting a moving target — even one as big as a car — was never an easy shot, even if her hands weren’t shaking.

“Gaby!” a voice shouted. Danny.

“Yeah!” she shouted back. She didn’t take her eyes off the unmoving technical; a part of her expected it to come back to life as soon as she relaxed, the man in the back rising behind the machine gun like some unkillable monster.

“You good?” Danny asked.

“Yeah! You?”

“Right as rain.”

“Now what?”

“Clear the technical!”

She stepped away from the Ford and climbed over the metal pole barrier — keeping her eyes on the target the entire time — before finally moving up the street. The smell of spilled gasoline became more evident as she drew closer, and broken glass crunched under her shoes. Her heartbeat had slowed down, her breathing returning to (mostly) normal, and she picked up her pace to cover the remaining distance.

Gaby glimpsed the fading Jeep in the distance just before it vanished completely, taking the sound of its engines with it. With that threat gone, she turned her attention to the technical, her finger testing the M4’s trigger, ready to shoot anything that moved. Any goddamn thing at all.

But nothing moved in or around the truck. At least, nothing living.

She kicked empty brass casings around the vehicle before finding the soldier in the truck bed. His hands were clutched around his throat where he’d been shot. By the amount of blood pooled under him, she guessed he had bled out soon after he fell.

There were two more bodies in the truck — the driver and his passenger. They were both wearing black uniforms, and the passenger was crumpled on the floor in an impossible ball shape. For a moment Gaby thought the man was hiding, but no; he was just dead. She made sure by opening the door and nudging him in the shoulder with her rifle’s barrel until he toppled sideways in the other direction and didn’t move.

“Clear!” she shouted.

She gave the street one last look, listening for the Jeep’s engines, and when she didn’t see or hear any signs of it, she turned and jogged back to Danny and Nate.

She hadn’t seen the pickup earlier because she was so focused on the enemy, but if Danny thought it was a jalopy before, she wondered what he was going to call it now. The side facing her was covered in holes, and like the GMC’s, its tank was leaking gasoline. Sheets of glass covered the road and one of the back tires had been shot out, though she didn’t remember hearing anything that sounded like a tire blowing. Then again, given how fast she was emptying her rifle, she probably wouldn’t have heard a bomb going off next to her at the time.

The truck was there (mostly, anyway), but there were no signs of Danny or Nate. Or Mason, for that matter.

“Danny!” she called.

“Here,” Danny said, his voice coming from the other side of the truck.

She jogged the rest of the way and went around the pickup. Danny had his back to her, but she could see that he was crouched next to Nate, who sat with his back against the driver-side door. Their weapons were on the pavement.

“Nate,” she said.

He looked past Danny and smiled at her, but it was overly forced and that realization only made her run faster to him. She went around Danny and kneeled on the other side of Nate, her stomach dropping at the sight of blood gathered around his waist.

“How bad?” she asked.

“I’ll be okay,” Nate said.

She ignored him and fixed on Danny. “How bad?”

“Could have been worse,” Danny said. When she gave him a disbelieving look, he added, “He could be dead.” Then, “Press here,” and pulled his hands from a T-shirt he was holding against Nate’s left side.

She replaced his hand with her own, her fingers turning red as soon as she touched the fabric. She looked down at Nate.

He was smiling at her. Or trying to. “I’ll be fine. Just a scratch.”

“Right. Just a scratch,” she said quietly.

Danny had stood up and was looking around them, his rifle back in his blood-covered hands. “He’s gone.”

“Who?” she said, glancing over.

“Mason.”

She looked around them — at the car lots to both sides of the street, then the empty road out of town behind them. “He couldn’t have gotten far.”

Danny was too busy squinting at the cars in the dealerships to answer, as if he could magically pick up Mason’s scent if he made his eyes small enough. Gaby looked back at Nate, keeping her hands on the bloody bundle of clothing pressed against his wound. As much as the idea of Mason escaping made her furious, she found it easy to push it aside to concentrate on keeping Nate from bleeding to death.

“My fault,” Nate was saying, his voice so soft she barely heard him. “He was my responsibility. I wasn’t paying attention…”

“Shut up, it doesn’t matter.” She was trying to find the balance between pressing too hard and not hard enough against Nate’s side. She couldn’t even tell what color the T-shirt used to be anymore. “What about Nate, Danny?”

Danny slung his rifle. “We’re going to have to look for the bullet and take it out. Can’t leave it in there.”

“You’ve done this before?”

He shrugged.

“Danny,” she pressed. “You’ve done this before?”

“Well, there was that time in a diner, though Willie boy did most of the work. But I think I got the gist of it.”

Nate groaned.

Danny grinned at him. “Relax, Nathaniel-san. Back in college they used to call me Danny the Surgeon, and it wasn’t because I always wore white surgical gloves around campus, though yes, I could see the confusion. Those things are super soft, you know.”

The pickup may have been beaten up before it was shot up, but it was a tough old thing. Despite leaking fuel and brandishing new bullet holes along most of one side, once they replaced the blown tire, the truck was still serviceable, and the engine came alive when Danny turned the key.

“I told you I picked a winner,” Danny said before he righted the vehicle and pushed them down the street.

She sat in the back with Nate, keeping an eye on his paling face and the bandages around his waist. Like the shirt earlier, the white fabric was already soaked with blood and growing a darker shade of red every second.

She must have grimaced at the sight because Nate made an effort to smile up at her. “It looks worse than it really is.”

“Bullshit,” she said.

“No, really.”

“Stop lying.”

“What makes you think I’m lying?”

“Because I know you.”

He smiled again. Or tried to again. He was doing a very poor job of it, and she wished he would stop. The effort alone was probably causing him more harm than good.

“You know me too well,” he said.

“Not well enough,” she said, and kissed him on the forehead.

She kept her arms around his body to keep him from moving around too much. Danny was driving just fast enough to get them as quickly down the street as possible while glancing at the map of Gallant spread out on the front passenger seat next to him. He only swerved once or twice, which was amazing given everything he was multitasking. He was also amazingly calm, but she wondered how much of that was a façade, or maybe she was just projecting her own fears and emotions onto him. Danny was an ex-Ranger, after all. It wasn’t as if blood was anything new to him.

“How much farther, Danny?” she asked.

“A mile or two,” Danny said. “Can’t go too far in this thing, with your boyfriend back there bleeding all over the upholstery.”

“Sorry about that,” Nate said quietly.

“You’ll clean it up later.”

“Gotcha.”

She put a hand over Nate’s mouth to shush him, then said, “How much gas do we have left?”

“Not enough,” Danny said.

“Maybe we should have siphoned some from the GMC…”

“Maybe this, maybe that. Maybe it’s Maybelline. We’ll be fine.”

“Will we?”

“You betcha.”

He sounded confident, and that more than anything did a lot to ease her mind. This was the new Danny. The leader. Other than Lara, there was no one else Gaby would trust with her life. Except maybe Nate…

“See, we’re almost there,” Danny said as he slowed down and made a right turn.

The road under them went from smooth asphalt to uneven dirt road. Nate groaned in response.

“Danny,” she said.

“I know,” Danny said. “We’ll be there soon. Better he suffers a little now than die a lot later.”

A sheen of sweat had covered Nate’s face as he looked back up at her. She smiled at him, then bent down and kissed him softly on the lips. When she pulled back, he was smiling again, and this time it actually looked acceptably convincing.

“Gotta get us our own room on the Trident,” he said quietly.

She nodded. “Definitely.”

“It’ll be nice. Our own room. We can sleep in whenever we want. Finally.”

“You always want to sleep in.”

“Or maybe we won’t sleep at all.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, mister.”

“It’ll be nice,” he said again, and closed his eyes.

She fought the urge to tighten her arms around him, to keep his body steady against hers as the truck continued to rumble down the patch of dirt road, but she was afraid even too much additional pressure would just hurt him.

She kissed his unresponsive lips instead.

Stay alive, Nate. Please, stay alive.

I can’t bear to lose you too…

Gallant had more land than it did people, so the houses on the outskirts of the main commercial area were spread out. The dirt road Danny had turned into eventually became smooth asphalt again, and they passed a series of residential homes with large front and backyards.

Danny finally settled on a house with a dirt driveway and nothing but empty fields behind it. If not for the map, they would have driven right past this part of town and never known people lived here. The house had a white truck parked in the front yard and an unattached garage big enough for two cars, which was good because she didn’t think the jalopy was going anywhere after this. If they could even start it again with the drain on its already leaking fuel tank.

She stayed inside the truck with Nate while Danny cleared the house by himself, then did the same to the garage next door. When he came back, they hid the pickup in the garage, then carried Nate inside the house and put him down in the living room. The residence was a single-floor building with burglar bars outside the windows and over the front door. Those security measures were the main reason Danny had chosen it out of all the other houses in the area.

“I’m going to need your help,” Danny said as he shrugged off his pack, took out a bottle of water, and poured it over his hands.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

Nate lay on the couch with his eyes closed. His hair was soaked in sweat and his entire midsection was covered in blood, as were his pants and what was left of the shirt Danny hadn’t already cut away to put on the bandages earlier.

“Tell me you can do this,” she said to Danny.

“The first-aid kit has everything we need.”

“Danny, tell me you can do this.”

He nodded. “I can do this.”

She stared at him for a few long seconds before finally nodding. “Okay.”

“Let’s get to work,” Danny said, then handed her another bottle of water to clean her bloody hands with.

“Want a souvenir?” Danny asked.

She shook her head. “Be my guest.”

“Eh, souvenirs are for old people anyway.”

Danny flicked the bullet he had dug out of Nate into the bathroom sink. There was just enough light coming from the small rectangular opening behind her to see the 5.56 bullet as it clinked around the porcelain bowl before vanishing down the drain.

All that damage, from such a small thing…

Gaby concentrated on rubbing Nate’s dried blood off her fingers, but it didn’t seem like she was making any real progress. After a while, she gave up and grabbed a blue cotton towel hanging off a rack and forced herself to be satisfied with wiping the sweat off her face.

“He’s gonna be out the entire night from the morphine,” Danny said, “which means you and I get the privilege of guard duty.”

“Yay us.”

“What I said. Anyway, we have everything we need to survive the night. Burglar bars over the windows, extra food, and water. All we have to do is stay as quiet as mice and they won’t ever know we were here.”

“Who are we talking about? Ghouls or humans?”

“Both.”

“You think there’s more of them out there? Besides the guy in the Jeep?”

“I think that technical was already on its way here before the fun started. Maybe because of whoever they were exchanging fire with earlier.”

“It had to be Mercer’s people. They’re everywhere.”

Danny nodded. “Yeah. Mercer’s fun boys are becoming a real pain in my ass. Right now, though, I’m more concerned with why those boys in black were here in the first place. That technical came later.”

“The Jeep.”

“Uh huh.”

“What if Nate was right? What if they were tracking us?”

“The question is why.”

“Mason?”

“Maybe.”

“But you don’t believe it.”

“No. Something else is going on.” He shook his head. “I’d give my left pinky finger to find out what.”

Danny seemed to drift off, lost in thought, and Gaby did the same, staring at herself in the mirror above the sink. She was already covered in dirt and sweat, but now she’d added streaks of blood by touching her face with her bloodied hands. A year ago the sight of the girl looking back at her would have horrified her, but these days it barely registered. She wetted the towel with a dab of water from what was left in her bottle and went to work.

“He’s still out there,” she said after awhile. “Mason.”

“Yup,” Danny nodded.

“We should have killed him.”

“Probably.” Then, “Get some rest, kid. It’s been a long morning, and it’s going to be a long night. We can’t travel with Nate in his condition, at least not if you want to keep him alive for cuddling later.”

“I’d really like that.”

“A little cuddling, a little premarital sex…” Danny said before turning and leaving the bathroom.

She smiled wryly after him before returning to cleaning Nate’s blood off her cheeks and forehead. When she was (mostly) done, she tossed the towel into the overflowing trash bin, snatched up her rifle, and went outside to join Danny. She could already feel the temperature starting to drop around her.

It would be dark soon. Very soon…

6 Keo

Well, this didn’t quite go as planned.

Or maybe that wasn’t entirely true. The fact of the matter was, he was (somehow, some way) still alive, and more importantly, there was a good chance he was being taken to Mercer. Of course, that was the best-case scenario, and he had a feeling he knew what Danny would say if he ever caught wind of Keo’s presently overflowing optimism.

Not that he had much of a choice. It was either focus on the positive or wallow in the pain. Because there was a lot of pain.

His face was on fire, and moving even just a little bit sent jolts of electricity coursing through his body. But it wasn’t the type of pain that signaled a broken rib (or two), so that was the good news. The bad was that his captors hadn’t bothered to clean up his face, which explained the feeling of sandpaper scraping at his eyeballs. He still had a mouthful of blood, most of it coming from his broken nose. His forehead might have been slightly cut, though that was currently taking a backseat to the pounding originating from between his eyes.

The pain should have been worse with the helicopter pulsing continuously through him as it traveled over the state of Texas, the whup-whup-whup of its rotors like sledgehammers pounding nails into his skull. He had no idea where they were or where they were going, only that they were already in the air and moving when he opened his eyes and (discreetly) took stock of his situation.

He was surrounded by the same people he had seen back at the barn — three of them sat across from him while two more flanked him. A sixth, sporting aviator shades, was perched behind a machine gun mounted along the open starboard-side hatch. The weapon looked like an older model M240 with a box magazine; the man behind it pointed the weapon playfully at a flock of birds outside and mimed shooting them. The port-side door was closed and the only thing Keo could see out the windows were empty skies.

Six men and one woman, and two in the cockpit. It wasn’t even close to being manageable numbers; not that he had any ideas about escaping anyway, especially with his wrists and ankles duct taped together. Never mind the fact that he had never learned to fly, because going out one of the open doors was probably his only real option at the moment. They had removed everything he had on him, leaving just his clothes and the blood on his face.

He wasn’t sure how long the woman had known he was awake; she was watching him with a curious expression on her face. She looked tall even sitting down — maybe just a shade under five-ten, and like most women he had encountered since The Purge, carried very few if any excess pounds on her. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and that made the bags under her eyes more apparent.

Someone hasn’t been getting their beauty sleep lately.

She looked tired but was trying to power through the fatigue. He’d seen plenty of guys do that on jobs either with caffeine or pill-sized stimulants. She had short black hair, but he could imagine her with a long, flowing mane just a year ago. The obvious Parisian genes were easy to spot and she reminded him a little of Bonnie, the ex-model with whom he had spent a lot of time with back on the Trident. Like the men around her, the woman wasn’t wearing anything that looked like a uniform or a name tag, which made perfect sense if they were indeed Mercer’s men and were out here launching guerilla-style hit-and-run attacks on collaborator positions.

His ruse exposed, Keo gave up pretending to still be asleep and straightened up, or as much as he could manage while restrained. His nose felt as if there were cotton balls jammed into both nostrils, and the hard floor was sticky with fresh mud and dirt and (no doubt his contribution to the mess) blood.

“Where we going?” Keo asked, directing his question at the woman. He had to shout to be heard over the turbine engine that made every inch of the helicopter thrum as if it were going to come unglued at any second.

She didn’t answer him, but she didn’t take her eyes off him, either. The guy behind the machine gun glanced over at the sound of Keo’s voice before returning his gaze out the hatch as the helicopter caught up to another flock of birds.

“Can I get some water?” he asked the woman.

She stared but still didn’t say anything.

“Towel?”

Nothing.

“I smell jerky in the air. I wouldn’t mind some of that. I’m famished. Haven’t eaten all day and most of yesterday.”

“Shut up,” the man sitting to his left said.

Keo ignored him and said to the woman, “Ever heard the idiom ‘You catch more flies with honey?’”

“If I give you some jerky, will you shut up?” the man sitting to the woman’s left said.

“Absolutely,” Keo said.

“Too bad. I finished it off this morning. Chased it down with some coffee and an oatmeal cookie.”

“Sounds like fine dining.”

“It ain’t the Hilton, but it’ll do.”

He turned back to the woman. “Maybe you can tell one of these gentlemen to give me some water.”

“What makes you think she’s in charge?” Beef Jerky Guy asked.

“Oh, come on. It’s obvious she wears the pants around here.”

Something that looked almost like a smile flickered across the woman’s face, but it only lasted for a blink of an eye before vanishing.

“Right?” he said to her.

She ignored him, said instead, “What happened here?” and traced one side of her face with her forefinger. “Looks like it must have hurt.”

“It did,” Keo said, remembering the cold steel of Pollard’s knife as it sliced its way into his flesh. “You should see the other guy.”

“Prettier than you?” Beef Jerky Guy said.

“Not even a contest.”

“Considering how you look, that’s saying something.”

“I still have nightmares about it.”

“I bet.”

“Where we going?” he asked the woman again.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said.

“Give a guy a hint.”

She didn’t answer.

“Then can I at least get some water?” Keo asked.

“You already asked that,” she said.

“Figured I didn’t have anything to lose by asking a second time.”

She nodded at the man sitting next to Keo. The guy produced a canteen and leaned over. Keo opened his mouth gratefully and took as much water as he could, then swished it around to wash away the blood clinging to the walls of his mouth before swallowing the whole thing down.

“Thanks,” he said to the woman.

“Next thing you know Slaphappy Jerry here’ll want a change of clothes,” Beef Jerky Guy said.

“I’m Keo,” he said to the woman.

“Good for you,” she said.

He couldn’t help but smile back at her even though doing so made the entire lower half of his face hurt, as if someone were punching it repeatedly.

“Where we going?” he asked for the third time.

“Ask that again and I’m going to throw you out the hatch,” the woman said.

“I’d like to see that,” Beef Jerky Guy grinned.

“Only if you buy me dinner first,” Keo said.

“Smart guy, huh?”

“It’s my disguise. I’m actually very dumb. Hence my current situation.”

“Yeah, you really bungled that one, didn’t you?” He chortled. “Man, what were you doing showing up by yourself like that?”

Being the world’s biggest idiot, or something pretty goddamn close, Keo thought, but said, “You sure you’re out of those jerky?”

“Pretty sure,” the man said, and smacked his gums for effect.

“Too bad. There’s nothing better than two guys bonding over some meat.”

Beef Jerky Guy stared at him like he didn’t know how to respond to that. The woman next to him, Keo noticed, barely managed to suppress a snort.

A combination of pain and lack of sleep took its toll and he dozed off soon after, and didn’t wake up a second time until someone was nudging him on the shoulder. A gruff male voice half-shouted, “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty!”

Once the haze cleared, Keo opened his eyes to empty seats in front of him, just before Beef Jerky Guy and a second man yanked him out of his own seat and pushed him toward the open door. He stumbled, expecting to fall on his bound legs, until he noticed he was moving freely again, though he couldn’t say the same about his still-bound wrists.

One out of two ain’t bad.

“Don’t fall, princess,” Beef Jerky Guy said. “No one’s picking you up. We’ll make you crawl the rest of the way.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Keo said.

“Don’t say I never gave you nothin’.”

“You’re too kind. I would have settled for the jerky breath.”

“Heh. Funny guy. You a professional comedian or something?”

“No, but I’ve been told I can be a pretty stand-up guy.”

“Oh, funny,” Beef Jerky Guy said. “Now move.”

A third man was waiting for him outside the open hatch as Keo hopped out of the helicopter. It was a mistake, and he grunted against a sudden surge of pain as he landed in a slight crouch. The still-spinning rotors swarmed the area with cold winds that made every inch of his exposed face sting.

They were in a field surrounded by grass that went up to his knees, but all he had to do was sniff the air to know they were next to the ocean. Keo breathed in the fresh breeze and tried not to think about the last time he was this close to the sea and who he had been with at the time.

One of his captors, maybe Beef Jerky Guy, pushed him in the back, and Keo stumbled forward. He ducked his head reflexively, the way people do without thinking when they exit a helicopter. Of course the rotors didn’t come close to slicing off his head, but it made him feel better anyway as he struggled across the hard ground, grass slapping at his legs.

He didn’t have to look far to see where the woman and the rest of his traveling companions had gone. They were up ahead, beyond the field and on a long stretch of beach. The men had spread out to stand guard while the woman had a radio to her lips, one hand shielding her eyes as she looked out into the ocean. He wasn’t sure what she was looking at because he couldn’t see anything out there except blue waters. Given that it was still midday, it didn’t take a genius to know he was staring at the Gulf of Mexico.

“Wanna go for a swim?” Beef Jerky Guy asked from behind him. “Wash all that crap off your face?”

“Sure. Maybe you can help me clean it off,” Keo said.

“Maybe if you had a pair of tits I might think about it.”

“You’re all heart, pal.”

“I’m not your pal, dude.”

“And I was saving up for that friendship bracelet, too.”

They were in a very isolated part of the coastline without anything that looked like civilization, much less houses, within sight on either sides of the beach. There were no hints of industry further inland and the beach was littered with seaweed and trash, along with fish carcasses. They were probably the only souls around for miles, which made it a pretty good spot for an extraction point.

The woman glanced over as Keo and his guards reached her. “Keep an eye on him. If he makes one wrong move, shoot him.”

Keo stopped next to her, the sunbaked sand sinking under his boots. “Now why would I do a stupid thing like that?”

“We should shoot him now, Erin,” Beef Jerky Guy said.

“Don’t say that,” Keo said. “What about that friendship bracelet we were going to get?”

“Shut up.”

“Is that a no?”

“Erin,” Beef Jerky Guy said, ignoring Keo. “This guy doesn’t know anything. Whoever he is, he probably killed Davis and Butch.”

“Not yet,” Erin said.

“Give me one reason.”

“I don’t have to give you a damn thing, Troy,” Erin said, and it was hard to miss the finality in her voice.

Troy grunted but didn’t press the issue.

Keo suppressed a smile, when the roar of a turbine engine revving up made him look back, just in time to see the helicopter rising slowly into the air. The man with the aviator shades sitting behind the machine gun waved at them, and Erin returned it.

“See you when we see you,” Erin said into her radio.

“Have a safe trip,” a male voice answered.

It didn’t take the helicopter long to turn into a small dot in the sky, and soon Keo could barely hear its whup-whup-whup.

“Where’s it going?” Keo asked.

Erin ignored him and said, “Looks like we’re early.”

“That’s a first,” the man standing next to Troy, whose name Keo had never caught, said.

“ETA twenty minutes. Until then, I want the area secured. The last thing we need is someone sneaking up on us again.”

“Definitely wouldn’t want that,” Troy said. “What about him?”

“He’s not going anywhere.”

Footsteps faded behind Keo, along with Troy and the second man’s presence.

In the next few seconds, Keo ran through all the possible escape scenarios, but each time he always came to the same conclusion: Mercer. Find Mercer. And the only way to do that was to let these people take him to the man.

Should be easy enough…as long as I don’t get killed on the way over.

“So who’s picking us up?” he asked.

“You’ll see,” Erin said.

“A boat?”

“Unless you can swim very, very far.”

“I happen to be a very good swimmer.”

She ignored him, said instead, “What were you doing back at the barn?”

“Hunting game.”

“With two semi-automatic rifles,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“I was hunting big game.”

“There is no big game. Not anymore.”

“I’m an eternal optimist.”

She smirked, though he couldn’t tell if that was amusement or annoyance. Maybe a little of both. “You had Davis’s iPod on you.”

“There’s a lot of iPods just sitting around out there. What makes you think the one I had belonged to this Davis guy?”

She fixed him with a long look, and he was mostly convinced she didn’t believe a single thing he was saying. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to tell me now. We have people who are very good at extracting information. You’ll be telling me everything anyway, including what you were doing back there.”

“I told you—”

“I know, hunting game.”

“I get the feeling you don’t believe me.”

“You know what I think?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“I think you killed Davis and Butch, just like Troy said. Maybe Luke and Bill, too, but that’s a bit of a stretch. What I can’t figure out is what you were doing out there at the barn. Alone. You had to have seen the others pushing the helicopter. That’s six people. And you still moved on us anyway.” She squinted her eyes at him. “You’re either the dumbest man alive, or you’re looking to get yourself killed. So which one is it?”

Can’t it be both? he thought, but said with as much conviction as he could muster, “Neither. I was just curious what you guys were doing out there. If I had known people were going to start shooting at me, I would have kept going.”

“You’re going to stick to that?”

“It’s the truth.”

“Uh huh,” she said before turning back to the endless blue waters in front of them. “Of course, I’m not discounting the possibility you’re one of those guys with more balls than brain cells.”

“Have you been talking to my old girlfriends?”

She ignored him again, said, “You know how I know you were looking for us?”

“Even though I wasn’t?”

“You never asked who we were. That tells me you already knew.”

Well, shit, Keo thought, and wondered how long he was going to be able to keep this up before Erin finally agreed with Troy that it wasn’t worth taking him with them.

Erin had said the ETA was twenty minutes, but it was more like seventeen before the gray dot appeared in the horizon, followed by the slowly growing whine of twin outboard motors. Keo knew it was some kind of offshore fishing boat before it got big enough for him to make out its V-shaped hull. As soon as the boat appeared, the others began converging back on his and Erin’s location.

“Are we all going to fit in there?” Keo asked.

“We’ll make do,” Erin said. “And if not…”

“I know, I go over the side, right?”

She smiled but didn’t confirm or deny.

As the boat neared, Keo counted two guys onboard — one behind the helm and the other squatting at the bow with a rifle. On cue, the radio in Erin’s hand squawked and a male voice, almost entirely drowned out by the motors on the other end, shouted, “Any trouble?”

“You’re clear,” Erin said into the radio.

“Roger that,” the man answered.

Erin clipped the radio back to her hip. “I’m surprised you haven’t tried anything yet.”

Keo held up his bound hands. “Hard to try anything like this.”

“Still, knowing what you did, where you’re going, and what’s going to happen when you get there…”

“Maybe you’re assuming too much. Maybe I didn’t do the things you think I did, and as a result I have nothing to fear.”

“Sure, whatever you say, Keo.”

A hand clamped down on Keo’s shoulder, and he smelled the familiar odor of beef jerky in the air as Troy said, “Cheer up, buddy. It’s a nice, long trip back to The Ranch. Plenty to see and do on the way.”

“Hey, as long as you’re around I’m sure it’ll be a great time, Troy,” Keo said.

“That’s the spirit.”

Keo looked over at Erin, but she was busy watching a couple of the men slinging their weapons and stepping into the lapping waters of the Gulf of Mexico to wait for the boat. Keo focused on the moment — the here and now.

And right now, he was alive.

Hurt, sore, and bleeding, but alive. And as long as he stayed that way, he could still finish the mission: Find Mercer, then kill him.

Who’s Captain Optimism now?

This guy…

7 Lara

There were two of them, and they were olive drab, not black; though in the darkness of the night, they might as well be black.

“Jon boats,” Maddie whispered next to her.

“Jon boats?” Lara repeated.

“That’s what those are called. Looks like they have trolling motors in the back, but they’re keeping them quiet and rowing the old-fashioned way so they won’t make any noise.”

The better to sneak up on us, she thought, watching the two crafts as they glided smoothly across the water. If not for the half-moon, she wouldn’t have been able to see them at all. It was pretty clear where they were headed — right toward them.

The Trident was anchored like it had been the last few days with its lights shut off, which was standard operating procedure, because despite their distance from shore, it wasn’t a good idea to be the only lights blinking out here. But SOP or not, they had been spotted and had been since last night, maybe even longer. These men approaching them now knew exactly where they were and how to reach them without being seen or heard.

Or they thought they did, anyway. They were about to get a very rude awakening.

“What are those things made of?” Lara asked.

“Usually aluminum,” Maddie said. “Sometimes fiberglass or wood.”

“Wood?”

“But usually aluminum.”

There were three figures in each boat, with one sitting forward at the bow while the two behind him slowly rowed them forward with paddles. They were likely armed, since you didn’t try to sneak up on an anchored yacht in the middle of the ocean in the dead of night without bad intentions.

The radio resting between her and Maddie squawked — it was just a small sound with the volume turned almost all the way down, but it still made enough of an impression that she flinched a little bit.

“Wonder what they’re doing all the way out here at this time of the night,” Blaine said through the radio. He was somewhere above and to the left of them, hidden by the darkness of the bridge. In case they needed to abandon the charade, she wanted him up there and ready. She wanted everyone ready.

Just in case, right, Will?

“Maybe they just want to borrow some sugar,” Bonnie said. She was positioned on the upper deck and tasked with watching the other side of the boat in case there were more surprises coming their way.

“I guess we should greet them all friendly like,” Carly said. She was on the main deck behind them, keeping an eye on everyone else. “That would be the Christian thing to do.”

“Fuck that,” Blaine said.

“Hey, there are children present.”

“Oops.”

“Sucker,” Carly said. “Everyone’s locked inside their cabins, snug as bugs.” Lara could hear a slight echo from Carly’s radio, which meant she was in the hallway outside the rooms, probably pacing nervously back and forth and doing her very best not to let it show in her voice. “Just make sure to keep the collateral damage limited to outside, okay guys?”

“That’s going to depend on them,” Bonnie said.

“Shoot first and never mind the questions; isn’t that the Ranger way?” Blaine asked.

“Sounds familiar,” Carly said.

Lara picked up the radio and keyed it. “That’s enough chitchat. We’re going radio silent from now on. Everyone, wait for my signal.”

She had let them go back and forth because they needed it; there was something unnerving about sitting (or standing) around in the dark waiting for men with guns to slowly, oh so slowly, reach you. All that anxiety needed a release, and talking or joking always seemed to do the trick. She’d seen it work for Danny and Will plenty of times.

Next to her, Maddie was peering over the railing. “I still just count six. All armed, probably. I don’t know about you, but I don’t believe they’re coming here to borrow some sugar.”

Lara gave her a wry smile, then picked up her M4 and checked that the safety was off for the third time since she arrived at the spot next to Maddie on the boat’s port side. They were almost exactly in the middle of the main deck, hidden behind a wall section of the railing that provided plenty of cover in case of a firefight. The better shooting position was on the upper deck, and she already had Bonnie and Benny up there right now.

Maddie fidgeted and switched up her grip on her own carbine. “It’s times like these I miss having the Ranger around.”

“He’ll be back soon enough. Then you’ll be complaining about his bad jokes.”

“Yeah, probably.” She paused for a moment, then, “Too bad Keo didn’t come back with you. We could sure use him, too.”

She shared Maddie’s regret and wondered what Keo was doing right now. The last time she saw him, he and Jordan were on their way back to T18 to get the oft-talked about but never-seen Gillian out of Mercer’s destructive path. Had they made it? Where were they now? He knew exactly how to contact her, so why hadn’t he?

You still alive out there, Keo?

She pushed the question away and peeked over the railing. Without binoculars, the boats looked more like two long, black shapes bobbing slightly up and down against the ocean currents. They were still far enough away that she couldn’t hear the slosh-slosh of their paddles moving against the water, but close enough that she noticed a slight pang of anticipation and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of fear, which was something she hadn’t felt in a long time since coming out here.

“Who do you think they are?” Maddie whispered.

“I don’t know.”

“Can’t be collaborators…”

“Why not?”

“I’ve never known those guys to be this subtle. Remember the last time they assaulted Song Island?”

She nodded. How could she forget? That night still haunted her dreams. The blood, the deaths, the piles of bodies, then later the tide of ghouls…

“Maybe they’re pirates,” Maddie was saying.

“Pirates?”

“Not the Johnny Depp metrosexual type of pirates, but more like those Somali pirates you hear about on the news. They take over boats and hold the crew for ransom.” The smaller Texan shrugged. “But that was back when money was still, well, money.”

“Pirates,” Lara repeated. For some reason, just saying the word made her smile.

“Hey, stranger things have been happening these days. Ghouls, end of the world, blood towns… Why not a little pirate action?”

She looked over the railing at the jon boats again. The six figures inside them still lacked details even though they were closer than before, which probably meant they were all wisely wearing black clothes that helped them blend into their environment.

They had definitely come prepared. The question was: For what?

“Blaine,” she said into the radio. She wasn’t whispering, but it was close. “Call it.”

“Forty yards,” Blaine said. She couldn’t tell if he had changed his voice to match hers or if it was the result of the lowered volume on the two-way. Whatever the reason, she had to strain more than usual to hear him.

Next to her, Maddie shuffled her feet and there was a sharp click! as she thumbed her rifle’s fire selector off the safety position.

“Thirty-five,” Blaine said.

“They’re taking their sweet time,” Maddie whispered. She couldn’t — and maybe wasn’t even trying — to hide the anxiety in her voice.

“Thirty,” Blaine said. “They’re still on course to make contact almost directly below you, Lara.”

“Roger that,” she said into the radio. “Bonnie, anything on the other side?”

“Still nothing,” Bonnie said. She sounded anxious. “Should I go over to Benny’s and back him up?”

“Yes.”

“Moving!”

Thank God for Blaine, hidden on the bridge, observing as the two jon boats slowly crept toward them; she couldn’t see anything now that she was completely hidden behind the thick wall. It went up to three feet along the side of the yacht, and the only way to see over it would be to raise herself and peek. With the men so close, the chances of being spotted were just too good.

Even though she couldn’t see them, she could hear the quiet but persistent slosh-slosh of their plastic paddles moving against the water as they neared.

“Bonnie, where are you now?” she said into the radio.

“In position!” Bonnie said, her breathing coming through the radio in labored gasps.

“Twenty-five yards,” Blaine said.

Lara poised her thumb over the radio’s transmit lever and glanced briefly at Maddie. The other woman was watching her back, the M4 rifle gripped tightly in her hands.

“Twenty,” Blaine said.

“Cutting it a little close, aren’t we,” Maddie said. It may or may not have been a question.

“Fifteen,” Blaine said.

She keyed the radio and hissed into it, “Now!” and stood up.

The lights snapped on around her, the sudden switch from darkness to blinding brightness like sharp knives pricking at the corners of her eyes. This despite the fact she was prepared for it, so the effect on the men in the jon boats would have been even more dramatic.

And it was, she saw as she peered through the iron sights of her carbine at the smaller boats in front, and, as Blaine predicted, right below her. They were caught in the water about ten yards off the side of the yacht, both vessels moving side-by-side and close enough that the two men at the bows could have swapped places by jumping over. The four in the back still had their paddles in their hands and were leaning over their respective sides when the lights hit them in mid-row. They were all wearing black clothes like she had guessed, though she didn’t expect their faces to be painted black and green.

The two up front were the real problems, because there was a reason they weren’t rowing. It was why she focused on them first and instantly spotted the rifles in their hands, the weapons dangling off their shoulders by straps. Half of the men had one hand shielding their eyes from the bright lights blasting in their faces, but she knew that sudden disorientation wasn’t going to last forever.

And it didn’t. It took three eternally long seconds for the men to understand what had happened — that they had been caught in an ambush — and for the ones in the back to drop their paddles and reach for their rifles on the floors of the boats. Two of them actually let go of their paddles in mid-row and the plastic devices sank into the water. The two up front were already taking aim, swinging their weapons from side to side and up and down as Lara and Maddie, and Bonnie and Benny above them, then Carrie, Gwen, and Lorelei popped up along the sides of the Trident. Lara wondered what they must look like to the men, with the bright spotlights doing a number on their field of vision.

But they had to know, didn’t they? It may have just been six against seven, but it was more than that: They were at a great disadvantage on their small boats adrift in the ocean. They had no cover, no room to maneuver, and they were, for all intents and purposes, sitting ducks.

Sitting ducks with rifles.

“Hold your fire!” Lara shouted. “If you open fire, we will kill you!”

They didn’t react right away, but they also didn’t start shooting, either. Instead, they kept looking left and right, and up and down, maybe counting how many guns were pointed at them, maybe trying to decide if they could make it through this encounter alive. All the lights on the Trident weren’t turned on the boats, but there were enough to be hazards, and she could see the way the men below her were blinking, trying to focus on what they were facing.

They had to know they didn’t have any chance, didn’t they? Didn’t they?

“Put down your weapons!” Lara shouted. “You have ten seconds to comply before we open fire and kill every single one of you!”

Most of the six men began honing in on her voice.

“You now have five seconds!”

They didn’t move. A couple of them exchanged looks, the whites of their eyes visible thanks to the black paint covering their faces.

“Four!”

Before she could get to three, one of the men lowered his rifle and said something to the others. The other five didn’t seem to react until the man tossed his weapon off the side of the jon boat. It plopped into the Gulf of Mexico and sank. Maybe it was the noise, but the men suddenly realized what he had done and began looking at one another. If they were talking, she couldn’t hear it over her own racing heartbeat.

“Oh Jesus, come on, guys, come on,” Maddie whispered next to her.

Lara didn’t take her eyes or her weapon off the small open crafts below her or the men standing unsteadily on them. Maddie, despite her quiet pleading, also didn’t relax, and Lara hoped the rest of her people were equally stout right now. One man throwing his gun away didn’t mean anything when the other five hadn’t followed suit, and so many things could still go so, so wrong in the next few seconds.

“The rest of you!” Lara shouted. “Do it!”

Slowly, one by one, they grudgingly lowered their weapons.

“Thank you, Jesus,” Maddie whispered when the men began tossing their rifles into the ocean and raised their hands into the air.

“Your belts, too!” Lara shouted.

They obeyed, even though she kept waiting for at least one of them to rebel, to take his chances rather than be captured. But none of them did, and slowly as the gun belts slipped into the water, she blinked out the sweat in her eyes despite the cold night air. Her shirt under the assault vest was already drenched, though she hadn’t noticed it until now.

The man who had surrendered his weapon first had moved to the bow of his boat while the others remained in the back with their hands raised. “What now?” he shouted up at them — at her.

“Pick up your paddles and start rowing toward the back!” she shouted down. “Attempt to go in any other direction, and we will open fire! Do you understand?”

The man turned around and nodded at the others, and they sat back down and picked up their paddles. Or the ones that hadn’t dropped theirs into the ocean, anyway.

“Wow,” Maddie said breathlessly next to her. “That was too intense.”

Lara glanced over at Maddie, who was wiping sweat off her forehead with her shirt’s long sleeve. “Head to the back and get them onboard, Maddie.”

Maddie nodded and jogged off.

Alone, Lara lowered her rifle and leaned against the railing and wiped at her own dripping sweat. She sighed and willed her heartbeat to slow down, slow down…

Jesus, Will, how did you do this day in and day out?

Jesus, Jesus…

They pulled both small boats out of the water and left them in the back, and even as the six men were led through the lower deck (she wanted to keep them as far away from the upper decks and the kids as possible), Blaine powered up the Trident and got them moving again, just in case the men had friends who might come looking for them. Lara posted additional sentries on both sides of the yacht and equipped everyone with night-vision binoculars.

With their hands bound with duct tape, the captives were led through the lower deck and placed inside a small room where the boat’s crew usually ate their meals. Their ankles were bound, and five of the men sat down while Benny and Maddie stood guard outside the door. The sixth man, the one who had been first to surrender, left with Lara.

She led him, his hands still bound, to one of the crew cabins they had been using as an extra storage room, and closed the door after them. The man sat down on a box of military MREs and looked around him. He was older than the rest — late forties, with gray liberally sprinkled along a military-style haircut. He could have passed for her father, except he was lean and muscular and almost six feet.

It should have been imposing for her to be in a room alone with him, but she wasn’t afraid. She didn’t know why, exactly, but she wasn’t the least bit intimidated. Maybe it was the Glock in her hip holster; or maybe she was just tired of being afraid of people when there were so many other things out there to be scared of.

“You have a name?” she asked.

“Hart,” the man said.

“I’m Lara.”

“Nice to meet you, Lara.”

“Likewise, Hart. How old are you?”

“That’s my line,” he smiled. “What are you, twenty?”

She smiled back but didn’t answer him.

“Twenty-five?” he said.

“You’re getting warmer.”

“Gotta admit, you’re the last person I expected to find in charge of this boat.”

“What were you expecting?”

“Older. More male.”

“Happy to disappoint you.”

He sighed. “I guess we should get on with it, huh? It’s late, and I’m sure we’re both tired. Especially me. These bones aren’t made for sitting on those tiny boats for hours.”

“How long were you guys out there?”

“Long enough.”

“Where did you come from?”

“I can’t tell you that. At least, not yet.”

“‘Not yet?’”

He gave her a noncommittal shrug.

“You wanted the boat,” she said.

He nodded. “We wanted the boat.”

“You’re not even going to try to lie?”

“No point. You got us by the balls. I figure whether we live or die now depends on what I say next.”

“That’s a very astute observation.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“What?”

“Astute.”

“It means you’re right. Whether you live or die depends entirely on what you say now, in here.”

“Ah,” Hart said.

“Were you going to kill us?”

“No.”

“Then how were you going to take the boat from us?”

“Hopefully without bloodshed.”

“You were pretty heavily armed, if that was your hope.”

“The plan was to sneak onboard and take it over with minimal collateral damage. We needed the boat. The weapons were insurance.”

“I could have killed you and your men out there.”

“I know…”

“If one of your guys had opened fire…”

“I know,” Hart said again. “Trust me, I know.”

They let a few seconds of silence fall between them.

Five seconds became ten, then fifteen…

He wasn’t afraid of her, she could tell that much. Mostly he seemed completely resigned to his fate. She told herself not to believe him, that he wasn’t telling her the complete truth, but for whatever reason, she chose to ignore it.

“Where’s your base of operations?” she asked. “I know you didn’t come all the way from shore. We’re too far for that.”

“We didn’t.”

“So where did you come from?”

“I can’t tell you. At least, not yet.”

“That’s the second time you’ve said that.”

“Do you have a pen?”

“What would I need a pen for?”

“I’m going to give you a radio frequency,” Hart said. “The guy you’ll want to talk to will be on the other end.”

“Is he in charge?”

“Yes.”

“Why would I want to talk to him?”

“How long have you been on this boat?”

“That’s none of your business.”

He shrugged slowly, as if just doing that simple move was tiring. “What I’m trying to get at is you’re probably running low on fuel and supplies. Am I right?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Of course I am,” he said. “The collaborators have all the marinas and fueling stations along the coastline on lockdown. The ones they haven’t already destroyed, anyway.”

“You’re not a collaborator…”

“And neither are you, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. I’d be fish food at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Which is why I think we can make a deal.”

She stared at him but remained silent.

“Call my CO,” Hart said. When she still didn’t say anything, he leaned slightly forward, his eyes almost pleading with her now. “Please. I promise you, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

8 Gaby

She hated the sinking feeling that always came with waiting for night. There was a thickness in the air, as if the molecules that made up the world suddenly doubled in density. Even breathing seemed to get a little harder, and it didn’t help that the weather got immeasurably chillier as the sun disappeared. Darkness, unencumbered by artificial lights that once dotted the landscape, fell over everything.

They left the living room windows the way they had found them — dirty linen curtains over the glass panes on the inside, without any extra barriers that hadn’t been there when they found the house. Danny had locked the doors because a locked door wasn’t obvious like windows that were barricaded with furniture. The ghouls were dead, not stupid, as Will always used to say, and they knew when an environment had been altered. It was instinctive, a level of base intelligence that remained long after their humanity had been stripped away.

Eventually they retreated into the main bedroom in the back. There was a single window in the room, and thankfully it had blinders that were already closed earlier today. That made perfect sense. The previous owners wouldn’t have wanted their neighbors looking in at their bedroom. She and Danny upended the king-size bed and leaned the box spring and mattress against the window, then wedged them into place with a heavy wood armoire.

“Should hold,” Danny said.

“You think?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Probably.”

“That’s not very reassuring, Danny.”

“Oh well.”

They moved Nate into the master bedroom and placed a mattress from a smaller room on the floor for him to lie on. He hadn’t woken up from the morphine, and a part of her was glad he wasn’t going to be awake for this. Not just because of the pain, but in case things went from bad to worse. She hated the thought but the possibility was there, especially if the collaborators really had been tracking them since Starch.

What makes us so special? Hopefully we won’t have to find out.

They had brought all their supplies and weapons into the house, and while Danny called the Trident on the ham radio in the living room, she sat with Nate in the bedroom and watched him sleep. He was covered up with a throw blanket, but every now and then he would still shiver. She knew it wasn’t from the slowly building cold outside the house’s flimsy walls or from his wounds.

Nate suffered from nightmares where he would relive that night at the pawnshop in Louisiana and the days and nights afterward when she thought he was dead. It had taken a long time before he would confess it to her. She would have held him now, the way she did all those other nights, if not for his wound. She had to be satisfied with stroking his hair, and when that didn’t seemed to help, leaned close to him and whispered, “It’s okay. I’m here. You’re with me now. You’re safe, Nate. You’re safe. I’ll watch over you. I always will…”

His trembling subsided, whether because of her whispers or because the nightmares had run their course she didn’t know, and he slowly settled into a peaceful slumber. She kissed his forehead and ran her fingers along the sides of his neck, feeling the very distinct indentations that covered most of his body underneath his clothes. They were teeth marks, a daily reminder of what he had been through and why he was never going to outrun his nightmares.

It was dark enough inside the room that her wristwatch’s hands were glowing when Danny came back inside. He walked to the corner and put the radio away.

“How’s everyone?” she asked.

“Still waiting to pick us up,” Danny said. “Other than that, nothing they couldn’t handle.”

“Problems?”

“Maybe, maybe not. They’ll know for sure tonight.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“Eh, they’ll deal with it like they always do.” He sat down and rummaged through his pack. “They’re in good hands. I’m more worried about us tonight.”

“Did you tell them about Nate? Or why we’re not already waiting on a beach for them?”

He shook his head. “I just told them we got delayed. Accident on the road, and everyone’s slowing down to take a look. You know, the usual Texas traffic. Besides, nothing good’s going to come from them knowing what kind of creek we’re up without a paddle.”

“That good, huh?”

“Hey, we’ve been in worse situations. Compared to that whole Larkin snafu, this one’s a peach. At least no one’s trying to strafe us from above.”

“Good point.”

“That’s why they call me Good Point Danny.” He took a drink from a bottle before continuing. “The smart move would have been to adios outta here before dark. Take our chances on the road.”

“You know we couldn’t do that. Not with Nate’s situation.”

“Nate schmate.”

“You don’t mean that.”

He shrugged. “You might be overestimating my fondness for him.”

She didn’t believe him for a second. Danny would never leave her or Nate, just as she would never leave the two of them. And Nate…well, she knew Nate would never leave her. He had proven that twice now.

“Maybe it’s not too late to find a better hiding spot,” she said.

“I’m pretty sure this is as good as it’s gonna get. At least, in the time we have left.”

“That’s disheartening.”

“Just have to get through the night; then we’re home free.” He stood up and walked back over to the door. “If you hear something that sounds like bad news, you know what to do.”

“Take Nate into the bathroom.”

“I was gonna say run outside and see if I might need some assistance, but sure, do the other thing, too.”

Danny stepped outside and closed the door after him.

She looked down at Nate again and brushed specks of dirt out of his hair. Maybe it was the chaos of the day combined with the stress of almost losing him (again), but somewhere between six and seven o’clock she closed her eyes and went to sleep without realizing it.

Tap-tap.

Her hand was reaching for the M4 leaning against the wall next to her before she had fully opened both eyes. Nate was snoring lightly, the rise and fall of his chest underneath the flimsy throw blanket drawing her attention temporarily.

Tap-tap.

It came from above and slightly in front of her, which made sense because there was nothing behind her except the back of the house. She pulled her eyes away from Nate and turned them upward, trying to pinpoint the exact location—

Tap-tap.

More than one. Two at least, but likely more because where there were two there was usually a horde right behind them. They were moving back and forth on the roof of the residence directly above her. There was no pattern to their movements that she could detect, almost as if they were testing their footing, which didn’t make any sense. The creatures were almost reckless when it came to their lives.

She sat perfectly still on the mattress next to Nate, acutely aware of everything about her surroundings, including her own slightly labored breathing, which provided a stark contrast against Nate’s slow and steady heartbeat. She located the second rifle — Nate’s — nearby and reached for it, then laid it on the floor next to her. The fact that both weapons were loaded with regular bullets made her question why she was even arming herself.

Danny. Where was Danny?

The bedroom door was still closed and she craned her head slightly forward, hoping to hear something from the hallway on the other side, but there was nothing.

Did Danny know they were out (up) there? If she could hear it — if they had been loud enough to wake her up — it would have been impossible for Danny to miss them. Unless he had gone to sleep, too. Was that possible? Could Danny be asleep right this minute, oblivious to what was happening above them?

She started to get up when the door clicked open. She lifted the rifle as a silhouetted figure slipped inside and slid the door closed before leaning against it.

Danny.

The whites of his eyes searched her out in the darkness, but if he said anything, she didn’t hear it. Gaby finished getting up and tiptoed across the room toward him. Halfway to Danny, she glanced back at the window on the other side of the room. The armoire remained pressed against the bed, which was long enough that it covered up the entire window frame and didn’t allow any moonlight to penetrate inside.

She pushed up against the wall next to Danny, whose head was slightly tilted as he listened to the persistent tap-tap above them.

“Are they inside?” she whispered.

He shook his head and whispered back, “Not yet.”

“How many?”

“Don’t know. Dollars to donuts it’s a buttload.”

She looked back across the room again and could just make out Nate in the pitch darkness. With just his head sticking out from underneath the blanket, he looked like a bodiless head floating in the shadows. They had purposefully put the mattress with him in the corner closer to the bathroom to make moving him in there easier if they had to.

Tap-tap-tap.

She glanced up, drawn irresistibly by the noise. If there had only been a few before, they had just gotten some company. Five? Ten? Not that it mattered—

Tap-tap-tap!

“Danny,” she whispered.

“The bathroom,” he whispered back.

“And then?”

“We’ll cross that bathtub when we get to it.”

They hurried across the room to Nate. Gaby slung her rifle, then picked up the spare M4 and added it to her own. She grabbed their backpacks as Danny bent at the knees before standing back up with Nate cradled in his arms. She half-expected Nate to wake up as soon as Danny lifted him, but he remained limp as the ex-Ranger turned and, with some effort, carried him into the bathroom. Gaby hurried over to open the door for him.

“Much appreciated,” Danny said, grunting with the strain of Nate’s weight.

Danny went into the bathroom first, then gingerly laid Nate down on the small single-size mattress they had inserted into the bathtub earlier. She thought Nate might have groaned as Danny lowered him, or it might have actually been Danny sighing with relief.

“Guy weighs a ton,” Danny said. “Time to put him on a diet.”

“I’ll get on it as soon as we get back to the Trident.” She looked back at the bedroom. “What—”

A loud crash! tore through the house before she could finish. It came from their left and was soon followed by the unmistakable sound of glass breaking. On cue, the tap-tap noises above them ceased entirely.

“Danny,” she said breathlessly.

“I know, I know,” Danny said. “Maybe we should have barricaded those windows after all, huh?”

“Gee, ya think?”

He grinned back at her then nodded at Nate. “Keep an eye on him.”

“Where are you going?”

“Be right back.”

“Danny,” she said, but he had already vanished through the door, the darkness on the other side swallowing him up in a matter of seconds.

She unslung the rifles, laying one across the sink, then spent a few seconds pushing their backpacks and supplies into the crevices around the toilet so she didn’t accidentally trip on them if she had to scramble around the tight confines. It was dark enough inside that she couldn’t even see her own reflection in the mirror above the sink. She only knew where to find Nate because the white porcelain tub stood out—

Another loud crash! and Gaby thought, There goes the bedroom door…

She spun toward the open bathroom door at the same time the first gunshot rang out. It was followed by two more shots, both single shots but fired in such quick succession it was easy to mistake them for burst-fire. They seemed to have come from right outside the bathroom, except she didn’t see the telltale staccato flash of gunfire, so it couldn’t have been that—

The single shots became a volley as the shooter switched from semi-auto to full-auto, the pop-pop-pop blowing across the house and she thought, At least Nate won’t be awake to see this.

She ran back into the master bedroom and immediately made out a solitary figure (Danny) crouched in front of her and firing at where the door had once been. Something had shattered the slab of wood into pieces that were now spread across the room — something either very heavy or very, very strong.

Danny snapped a quick look behind him as he stood up, his hands busy with loading a fresh magazine. “Get back inside! We’re fu—”

She was pretty sure she knew what he was going to say but didn’t get the chance to, because one second he was standing up in front of her trying desperately to feed a magazine into his rifle, and the next he was on the floor and there was a ghoul perched on top of him.

Jesus!

The thing had moved so fast she hadn’t even seen it coming through what remained of the door. It was just suddenly there and on top of Danny, pinning him to the floor with one hand while ripping the rifle out of his grip and tossing it across the room as if he were a petulant child in need of discipline.

Then it turned its head, and deep, pulsating blue eyes bored into her soul.

“Run!” Danny shouted despite the creature’s hand wrapped tightly around his throat.

Run? Run where, Danny? Where can I run that it can’t find me?

Of course, she didn’t say any of those things out loud. She was too busy backpedaling, moving as fast as she could (though it didn’t seem to be nearly fast enough) toward the bathroom door behind her. She lifted her M4 (Go for the head! Shoot it in the head!), but before she could pull the trigger, something moved in the corner of her left eye.

She finished the pull anyway, but her aim was off and the round sailed past the creature’s head and disappeared into the shadows. She had missed! How the hell had she missed from such a short distance? Or had the thing simply moved its head to avoid her shot? Could it move that fast?

Yes. Yes, it could. She remembered that time at the farmhouse in Louisiana and how fast that blue-eyed monstrosity had been—

It was just a blur, but even before her eyes could report its presence to her brain, it had already reached her and broadsided her. It couldn’t have been flesh and blood because the blow was too strong, like being hit with a jackhammer, and it sent her flying across the room and into the armoire. She was still trying to comprehend why she was no longer holding her rifle (or standing) as she was falling and finally slammed into the floor.

She couldn’t find the wherewithal to stick her hands out in time to stop her fall, and the face-first blow with the floor sent pain rippling through her entire body. Which was just as well, because most of her bones were still rattling from being slammed into by that semi-trailer (Anyone get the license plate of that thing?), then not even a second later crashing into the armoire.

Which part of her wasn’t screaming at the moment?

She expected to hear gunshots, something to indicate Danny had gotten the upper hand on the monster that had knocked him to the floor, but there wasn’t any. Which were more bad signs. With Danny, silence was never a good thing.

Gaby managed to flatten her palms against the floor and pushed herself up, if just slightly, even as her face throbbed. She turned her head and saw two figures entering the room, stepping over splintered wood sprinkled across the floor. But they moved like men, not ghouls, and were wearing gas masks and carrying rifles.

A pair of bare feet entered her line of vision, blocking her view of the figures in gas masks. The legs in front of her were black but somehow still stood out against the suffocating darkness inside the room. She craned her head, her neck straining with the effort, until she was staring into a pair of blue eyes. They looked like crystal heartbeats hanging in the air, beating slowly. The thing’s skin emitted an unnatural combination of cold and heat that had little difficulty piercing through her thermal clothing, making every inch of her shiver uncontrollably.

“So frail,” the blue-eyed creature (hissed) said. Thin strips of purple lines on the lower part of its face twisted into a grotesque facsimile of what must have been a mocking smile.

She looked past the creature and at Danny, unmoving on the floor behind it. The blue-eyed ghoul that had been perched on top of him was gone — no, not gone; it had simply abandoned him after Danny was no longer a threat and was now standing over him.

“Danny,” she said, his name coming out as barely a whisper.

The creature in front of her bent, grabbed her by the throat, and lifted her up from the floor as if she weighed nothing. It held her effortlessly in the air, and she struggled to breathe even as the toes of her boots scraped the floor, desperately trying to find the solid footing that was no longer possible.

Being in such close proximity to the creature, being touched by it, made her almost gag. If not for the pain, she might have lost the battle. Its fingers were more bone than flesh, and she swore she could feel every single joint that made up all five digits. And as hard as it was to fathom, she didn’t think it was even using most of its strength, because it looked almost amused by her flailing. Its lips (or what passed for lips) again formed that twisted thing that might have been an attempt at a smile.

“How did you ever survive for so long, little thing?” it asked her, its voice a sharp hiss that left no room for doubt it was no longer human.

Did it expect her to answer? And if so, how? She couldn’t reply with its hand around her throat, constricting her ability to do something as simple as breathe, never mind articulating sounds into understandable words.

Behind the creature, the two figures in gas masks had grabbed Danny by the legs and were dragging him out of the room. His body was limp and she couldn’t tell if he was even still alive. Had the monster done something to him? And what about her? What were they going to do to her?

She remembered Nate in the bathroom behind her. She thought about the teeth marks that covered his body that he went to great lengths to hide unless he was with her. Maybe they were going to do just that to Danny, use him the way they had poor Nate after the pawnshop. And once they were done with him, she would be next. And there would be nothing she could do about it. Nothing. Not a goddamn thing.

No.

Hell no!

Her fingers brushed against the Glock holstered at her hip as she focused everything she had left on the ghoul in front of her. It seemed content to watch her struggling to breathe, finding some sick amusement in her pain, which it could clearly see on her face. It wasn’t as if she were trying to hide it; she couldn’t even if she wanted to.

Fuck you.

Fuck you!

The gun slid out easily—

The head!

— and she raised her arm and fired from almost point-blank range—

Shoot it in the head!

Its head seemed to twitch slightly, and the bullet vanished into the wall behind it.

No!

Before she could squeeze the trigger a second time, it casually grabbed the barrel with its other hand and twisted, and she somehow managed a scream despite its fingers wrapped impossibly tight around her throat, constricting everything from breathing to sounds. Or had she screamed at all? Was it all in her head?

It dropped her to the floor as if she were nothing, and Gaby forgot all about the fire burning in her throat because there was fresh, excruciating pain from her right wrist. She scooted back, away from the creature, cradling her hand in her lap, sure that it was broken, or if it wasn’t, then something was broken somewhere.

The second blue-eyed ghoul appeared behind the first (How the hell had it moved so fast?), and it too looked down at her as if she was barely worth its time. The mere presence of two of them in the same place, standing so close to one another, combined to give off an intense cold and heat pulse that threatened to drown her in some thick invisible ocean.

They looked down at her, blue eyes like living orbs against the darkness, but for some reason she didn’t think they were really seeing her at all. She had stopped mattering to them; they’d had their fun with her and now she had become…insignificant.

“How long until he comes?” the second one hissed.

“Not long,” the first one said. “He spies on us. The clever boy.”

“Not clever enough.”

“He’ll come for them soon.”

“Yes.”

“And when he does…”

“We’ll end him.”

“Finally…” the first one hissed, its thin lips worming their way into something that almost — almost — resembled a smile.

9 Frank

“We have him.”

He didn’t need the voice to tell him that. He had seen the black-eyed ghouls swarming on the small Texas town, waiting as the men in gas masks entered the house. He could taste the acrid smell of gunpowder on the tip of his tongue as the creatures swarmed the building only to hang back as the two blue eyes made their entry.

“But you already know, don’t you?”

He had hoped they would have made it back to the sea by now. Back to the safety of the ocean, where she waited. From Larkin to Starch and back again. It was risky, but if anyone could do it, it would be them. Danny was well trained, and Gaby had been a quick student. But Port Arthur was a nest of ghouls and collaborators, and they’d been forced to reroute.

“You saw us take him.”

The voice wasn’t Mabry’s. No, Mabry had gone silent these last few days. (Why? You know why.) It was someone else drawing him into the river of consciousness that connected the brood, showing him images in the aftermath of the assault on the house. The projection was vivid, which meant they were close, though sometimes distance could be deceptive when he was in the hive mind. They knew he would be listening and watching while hiding along the edges, always beyond their reach.

“And the girl.”

It was his fault. He had exposed them to the enemy because of what he had done outside of Larkin. He had revealed himself, but even worse, he had shown them his weaknesses. (Danny…Gaby…) He couldn’t sever those ties and didn’t want to, not if he had any hope of clinging onto what still made him who he was, and without that he might as well be one of the mindless husks that serviced Mabry’s will.

“She’s a weak one. She won’t last very long.”

They moved and prodded at the corners of his mind, always threatening to break through his defenses. But it was all a trick, a cheap mirage, because he had learned to camouflage himself from them. It had taken days, weeks, and months, with so many trials and errors and near-misses that nearly cost him everything. There were so many times when they almost had him, when one crucial mistake could have ended everything he was working toward.

“They’re both such frail things.”

If they only knew where he was now, what he was doing and had been for the last few nights. Moving in silence, sleeping in the day, drawing closer to the beginning and the end, while staying invisible. Always in the shadows. It hadn’t been easy, because the chances of being discovered increased exponentially the closer he got…

“It doesn’t take much to break them.”

Waiting. For him. A small town with a sign at the city limits reading: Gallant, Texas. They had let him see the markers, showed him the way in.

“Don’t make us wait very long.”

It was a trap. An obvious trap. Even a fool could see it, and he wasn’t a fool. He had never been one, and he wasn’t one now.

“You know how easily bored we can become.”

Danny. Gaby. He should resist and stick to the plan.

Stick to the plan!

But he couldn’t.

“Hurry,” the voice said inside his mind, “before it’s too late. They’re only human, after all.”

Danny. Gaby…

Smoke and gunpowder lingered in the air between Houston and Gallant. He recognized signs on overpasses and along the roads, and there were enough landmarks to know he was moving in the right direction.

“Mercer.”

The name reverberated inside his head, sometimes screamed out by the many consciousness — both strong and weak — that flowed through it day and night. The creatures knew the name, despised it. He was the cause of their pain, the man who brought fire from the skies and sent the armored machines into their carefully preserved towns. The man who was threatening their food supply, their future.

“Mercer!” they cried. “Mercer!”

He saw the evidence of Mercer’s victories wherever he went. Towns that once brimmed with life — many of them on the verge of bringing in new life — had been wiped out in torrents of violence. Survivors — and there were always survivors — scattered across other locations, always taking their stories of horror and blood with them.

“Mercer! Find him! Kill him!”

And each time the stories grew. Bigger and bloodier, the exaggerations mixed in with the truth. The fear was spreading among the food supply, taking root in the souls of men and women that had surrendered. They were becoming hesitant, doubts sprouting from their once-contented minds.

“Mercer! Stop him at all costs!”

He had to cross another town, and like the last few, he didn’t have to skirt around the edges to keep from being seen, because there was no one left to witness his passing by. It was just debris and the fading stench of smoke and gunpowder now, residues of a bloodbath from two days ago. The bodies were gone, removed to be fed on before the precious liquid in their veins became useless.

“Mercer!”

And as Mercer’s people rampaged, the agitation grew inside the hive. The brood was restless, the blue eyes swearing retribution, and yet their human collaborators seemed incapable of stopping the chaos. How, they wondered, could so few people cause so much destruction?

“Humans,” they said, “this is what they do.”

“This is what they’re capable of,” others agreed.

“Violence,” still others chimed in.

“Destruction.”

“They’ll slaughter even their own.”

“Even the ones bearing children.”

“They’re indiscriminate.”

“Animals.”

“Worse than animals.”

“Yes.”

“This is why we have to show them a better way.”

“Our way.”

“Yes…”

He moved along the piles of rubble, making sure not to touch the bullet casings that littered his path. The black eyes were out there (everywhere), watching and listening and feeling for every slight shift in the wind, every out-of-place item. They weren’t nearly as intuitive, their senses not nearly as heightened as his, but they made up for what they lacked in ability with sheer number. And there were so, so many of them.

The town receded into the distance behind him, and he circled buildings that once thrived with life. A faded yellow M seemed to almost glow in the distance, beckoning him, but he went the other way, avoiding the long, gray concrete highway that connected Houston to the cities along the coastline.

The voices had stopped calling to him hours ago, but even as he neared his destination, a surge rippled across his skin with the first hint of morning. It was coming, rising in the east as it always did night after night after night…

“Don’t make us wait very long,” the blue eyes had said. “You know how easily bored we can become.”

But he didn’t hurry. He knew they would wait for him. That was, after all, the whole point of last night. Capturing his friends. Danny and Gaby. And the boy.

What was his name again?

It would come to him, eventually. It always did.

He slept, and like all the other nights, he dreamt of her. The crystal blue of her eyes, the golden strands of her hair, the sweet taste of her lips, and most of all, the feel of her skin against his. She would cringe if she could see him now, he was sure of it. He wasn’t the man he once was. He wasn’t even a man at all.

Lara.

She was out there somewhere, waiting for Danny and Gaby. Maybe even waiting for him. No, not him. She would have given him up for dead long ago. Days ago. Weeks ago. Months (?) ago.

How long had it been since he died?

He couldn’t remember. The nights were a blur. Not that it mattered, anyway. The past was the past; he had to concentrate on the future. The here and now.

Mabry.

Out there, vulnerable. So, so vulnerable.

He had spent days in the city poking at their defenses, looking for ways in. A small sliver of access, a forgotten point of entry. Anything that would allow him to get close and do what he had to do.

Mabry.

He should have stuck to the plan and not left to come here. But it was Danny. And Gaby. And if he wanted to retain an ounce of his humanity (it was already so difficult; he could feel it slipping every night, every time he had to rest, to heal his wounds), he couldn’t leave them in the blue eyes’ hands.

“Don’t make us wait very long.”

He opened his eyes to gunfire in the distance, followed shortly by the very distinctive taste of blood in the air, carried to his position by the wind. He licked his lips, and every inch of him yearned to taste it. How many days had it been since he satiated himself on the raccoon? Too long ago, and it had been such a small creature; he’d been forced to spend so much of his energy on recovering from his wounds.

The gunfire rolled across the world like thunder. Close, but beyond his reach. He could feel the siren of daylight calling to him. He longed to embrace its warmth. It had been so, so long. It wouldn’t have taken much, and there was nothing to stop him.

Except her. And the future.

Not for him, no. The future was for her. Everything he did now was for her.

Lara.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on the blue of her eyes, the yellow of her hair, the sweetness of her lips…even as the pop-pop-pop echoed, then faded, only to start all over again…

Gallant, Texas.

A nothing city in a nothing part of the state. It was close enough to the ocean that the breeze teased at his skin. He ignored it — easy to do this far from the (killing) water — and pressed on through the darkness, moving toward the center of town.

The business district. Shops and glass storefronts. Car dealerships.

They were here somewhere. Danny and Gaby. Like mice, held against their will to draw him closer.

So he went.

There were nests in the bigger buildings around him. Fresh ones. They had only come here recently and were staying off the streets, though he spied a few of them on the rooftops leaning over the edges, watching and waiting to report in. The black eyes were always smarter when the blue eyes were around to command them.

“He’s here,” a voice said inside his head.

“Close,” another added.

Had they seen him? No. He was too careful, and he wasn’t “him” at the moment. Maybe they had sensed him. It was always a challenge to hide from the blue eyes when he was in close proximity, and “close” was a matter of perception. Distance, when connected to the consciousness the way he was right now, was not always easy to pinpoint.

“He’s wearing one of them.”

“The black eyes.”

“Clever boy.”

“Not clever enough…”

They knew. No.

No, no, no.

Hands reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders, and his arms snapped, the clacking of bones against loose skin as they converged, coming out of the shadows around him. Fingers groped at his face, slipping into his mouth and eyes for a foothold.

He abandoned the black-eyed ghoul he had been wearing, letting go of the creature’s mind and slipping back into the river that all the ghouls were connected to. He floated, spying visions and sounds and smells.

There, another one. It was alone, perched on a rooftop overlooking the center of Gallant. A lookout. He seized its mind, pushing it to the edge of its own existence and assuming command. It resisted, but not for long. Never for long. The black eyes were mere husks, as weak mentally as they were physically.

A horde stormed down the street below him, passing him by. They were searching for him, trying to locate the creature he had jumped into, unaware he was above them, watching—

Hands grabbed both his arms from behind, turned him against his will, and a fist punched through his chest.

Twin blue orbs pulsed in the darkness, surrounded by other blue eyes.

“There you are,” the creature said, its voice dripping with triumphant glee. It leaned forward while others held him in place. “Tell me, where are you hiding?”

Razor thin lips formed snakelike smiles.

“You’re close!”

He pulled back, back…

He opened his eyes. His real eyes.

“There you are,” the voices said inside his head. More than one, a dozen echoes overlapping, and as loud as if they were standing right next to him. “You didn’t think you could hide forever, did you?”

Footsteps converging on his location. Dozens? Hundreds?

“Take him!” the voices shouted. “Take him now!”

They poured in through the windows and doors, and some battered their way through the thin walls. He abandoned the darkened corner, legs that had been still for hours coming alive and pistoning under him. There was no hiding now. They knew where he was. They all knew where he was.

The black eyes were weak, slow things, and he snatched up a piece of metal from the floor and smashed his way through them, and when the floor turned into a writhing black tide of pruned flesh, he went into the air. Hands groped at him, fingers scraped against his arms and legs and sought out desperate pieces of the trench coat that fluttered behind him.

He crashed through the window and into the street. The gray concrete highway gleamed to his left, the city of Gallant to his right. He was close enough that he could smell the rest of the ghoul population moving toward him as one, coming out of the buildings. All the buildings.

Hundreds. Thousands.

He flung himself onto a car and used it to grab a windowsill and crawled up the side of a bakery. He hadn’t had the chance to swing up onto the ledge before there were three — four—five—throwing themselves at him.

“He’s ours!” the voices echoed inside his head. “There’s no escape for him! Not tonight!”

He shattered a ghoul’s skull with his fist and threw two more off the rooftop. The fourth and fifth attempted to wrestle him to the gravel floor by diving at his legs, but he caved in one’s chest with his foot, then twisted and decapitated the other one with the edge of his hand.

And he was free again, but not for long. The structure trembled as they raced up the stairs below him while more crawled up all four sides of the building, just as many plummeting back down to the street below when they lost their grip.

The wind whipped at his face as he ran, then leaped, across two rooftops. He sprung back up to his feet as they pulled themselves over the ledges around him. He raced past them and sailed into the air again—

Pop-pop-pop.

The sound of gunfire coming from nearby forced him to twist his body in mid jump until he was moving in that direction.

“Something’s wrong,” the blue eyes said inside his head.

Was it a trick? Another trap? No, not this time. There was no need because they had him where they wanted him. Here, now, within their grasp.

Pop-pop-pop.

He tasted blood in the air. Not tainted blood like the kind that flowed through his veins. No, fresh blood. Human blood.

Pop-pop-pop.

He leaped across rooftops and raced toward the source of gunfire even as they surged around him, clamoring against one another to be the first to reach him. But he was faster and he leaped when he had to, dodged when he could, and bashed a path through flesh and bones when it was the only way left to him.

The night was thick with their number. Ghouls. Black eyes. They had secured all the rooftops as far as he could see, and he was forced to go down. He plummeted, grabbed a windowsill, swung left, then right, and finally caved in the roof of a parked vehicle on the sidewalk.

And they were on him almost immediately. A wave of black flesh slamming into his body from all sides, bony fingers grabbing at the fabric of the trench coat while dead black eyes pooled around him. Jagged yellow and white and brown teeth bit into his arms and legs and neck in an attempt to slow him down, but still he fought.

He couldn’t let them stop him. Not here, not now. He fought, for Danny and Gaby. For Lara. For her future.

But there were so many, and they forced him to the cold, hard pavement. Blood gushed from fresh wounds and his legs weakened as they climbed over him, then over each other, their weight doubling, then tripling. And still they grew, until it became impossible to throw them off with mere physical strength.

Then something new and unexpected rippled across the sky, sending a ferocious gust of wind across him and the swarm that blanketed him. It froze them in place for a split second — which turned into a full second, then a full two seconds — as the noise grew and grew until it became unmistakable.

“No!” the voices screamed inside his head.

He managed to look up through a small sliver in the forest of wrinkled flesh just as the belly of the mechanical beast flashed overhead and its roar filled the world, shaking him — and the creatures around him — to the bones.

“No, no, no!”

As he watched it pass overhead, he was reminded that there were still things out there to fear that didn’t sleep in the shadows and hide from the sunlight.

Then the beast bellowed, and he might have smiled.

Brooooooooooorrrrttttttttt!