The Horns of Avalon

10 Lara

“I don’t want bloodshed,” the man said. Lara detected what might have been a Southern accent, but those things were tricky over the radio, so she couldn’t be absolutely sure. “We can resolve this in a way that avoids that. No one’s been hurt yet, and I’d rather keep it that way. ”

You should have thought of that before you sent them over here, she wanted to say, but resisted.

“Bottom line,” the man continued, “we can still come to an arrangement. Nothing’s happened yet that makes that impossible.”

“What if we had opened fire on your men?” she asked.

“But you didn’t.”

“I could have.”

“But you didn’t,” the man insisted. “That’s all that matters, and all I want to focus on right now.”

She exchanged a look with Carly, who was standing next to her with her hands on her hips, and then with Blaine at his usual spot behind the helm. Morning sunlight slowly filled up the bridge of the Trident, pushing away last night’s chill. Unlike the last time she was in the room, all three of them were armed and rifles leaned against the walls within easy reach.

It had taken her all of last night to decide whether to take Hart up on his offer. She was still too wary of a possible trick in case Hart and his CO had a backup plan if their boarding went awry and had ordered Blaine to keep moving all night, with a full guard rotation inside and outside the yacht.

“Mighty generous of him,” Carly was saying.

“You don’t believe him?” she asked.

“If being with Danny’s taught me anything, it’s that you can’t trust anyone who tries to sneak up on you in the middle of the night. It always ends badly — and painfully.”

Lara looked to Blaine. “What do you think?”

The big man shook his head. “I guess it depends on what he can offer us in return for sending his guys back. What did Hart say they had over there, wherever there is?”

“Supplies and fuel.”

“Like he knew exactly what we needed,” Carly said.

“He knew about the fueling stations and marinas being manned by collaborators,” Lara said. “They’ve been out there. They know what’s happening back on land.”

The bridge’s speakers squawked, and they heard the man’s voice again: “Are you still there?”

Lara held the microphone up to her lips and clicked the transmit button. “I’m still here.”

“You’re thinking about my offer.”

“We’re talking about it.”

“You’re in charge?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Riley, by the way,” the man said.

“Lara.”

“Nice to meet you, Lara. Wish it was under better circumstances.”

“The man’s a master of understatement,” Carly said. “First he spies on us, then tries to board us, and now he’s acting all ‘Golly gee, I just wanna be friends.’” She rolled her eyes. “Goes to show you guys are as trustworthy as a knife in the back.”

“Hey,” Blaine said.

“Present company excluded, of course.”

“Damn straight.”

Riley, of course, hadn’t heard any of the back and forth, and he said now, “I assume my man told you about what we can offer?”

Lara pressed the transmit button on the mic. “He did.”

“Supplies. Fuel. Guns and ammo too, if you need them, though I get the impression you don’t.”

“Where do you get your fuel from?”

“Does it matter? The important takeaway for you is that we have what you need.”

“Maybe he’s living on a big oil tanker,” Carly said.

“Oil tankers carry crude oil,” Blaine said. “They have to be processed into usable fuel.”

“What are you, an expert on oil now?”

“Hey, I get around.”

Lara said into the radio, “I need to know your location.”

“I’ll be happy to give you the coordinates as soon as you tell me we have a deal,” Riley said.

“That’s the problem. We don’t have a deal. Not until you can convince me I can trust you.”

Riley didn’t answer right away. Next to her, Carly began humming the Jeopardy theme song.

“Can he convince us of that?” Blaine asked. “After last night?”

“I don’t know,” Lara said, “but I’d like to see him try. Maybe he’ll end up telling me something he doesn’t want us to know.”

“You sly fox,” Carly said.

The speakers squawked again, and Riley finally said, “I think we need to do this face-to-face, Lara. I don’t see how this could work any other way.”

Carly smirked. “If he thinks we’re going to just show up at his front door after what he tried to pull last night, he’s got another thing coming.”

“You have six of my men,” Riley said, almost as if he had heard Carly, “so I’d say you have a pretty big bargaining chip.”

“He’s got a point,” Blaine said.

“What if he doesn’t give a crap about any of them?” Carly asked.

“We might have to take the risk.”

“No, we don’t.”

Blaine sighed. “Yes, we do, Carly.” He glanced at his dashboard’s readings, then back at them. “We’re running out of options here, guys. We need to refuel soon.”

Carly sighed and turned to Lara. “What about Danny and Gaby?”

“They’re not due to radio in for another two hours,” Lara said.

“You know Danny can barely tell time.”

Lara gave her friend a half-smile. “You think this is a bad idea.”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“Is your definition of bad also terrible?”

“We have the upper hand. Once he gives us his location, we’ll know where he is. We can show up from any angle and be ready for anything.”

“Bonnie’s awfully good with that M240,” Blaine said.

Lara nodded. “There’s that, too.”

“I still don’t like it,” Carly said.

“We’ll see what they have to offer. If the terms aren’t to our liking, then we’ll leave.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“What if they try to stop us? Do I have to keep mentioning last night’s shenanigans? We can’t trust these people.”

“They want the Trident,” Lara said. “Hart made that pretty clear last night. They’re not going to risk damaging it now. All we have to do is keep our distance.”

Blaine smiled. “I like it. We hold all the cards.”

“They could always change their minds about wanting the boat intact,” Carly said. “Shoot us with a rocket launcher or something. Plenty of those things just lying around.”

“Maybe,” Lara said, “but then why bring us over? If they don’t need the boat anymore, this seems like a lot of effort to go through. Besides, sinking us means sinking six of their own.”

“Again, boss lady, if he actually cares about his guys,” Carly said.

Lara nodded. “There’s that…”

Hart looked up when she stepped inside the room where they had been keeping him and the other five men below deck. The room was small enough that all six squeezed into the same narrow space made for an uncomfortable night, especially with their hands still bound.

“We need to talk,” she said to Hart.

“Did you call him?” Hart asked.

She nodded, then turned to Benny, who was standing guard outside the door with Carrie. “Any trouble?”

“Nope,” Benny said.

“They haven’t tried anything,” Carrie added.

Lara turned back to Hart. “Let’s go.”

He struggled up from the floor using the wall for support. The other five remained where they were, Benny eyeing them like a hawk with his M4 held at the ready in front of him. Lara stepped aside as Hart exited the room, and they closed the door and padlocked it from the hallway.

“Where to?” Hart asked.

“Follow me,” she said.

“What did Riley say?”

“He confirmed your story.”

She couldn’t tell if Hart had breathed a sigh of relief, because it was so loud below deck and she couldn’t even hear their footsteps as she led him through the engine room, then out and onto the lower deck of the moving yacht.

Hart blinked up at the clear skies and let out an almost blissful sigh (she heard that, that time), holding his bound hands up to shield his eyes from the sun. Above them, Maddie moved along the railing. Higher up, Bonnie was stationed behind the M240 machine gun that she had spent a lot of hours on, back when Keo and Danny were running all the adults (and Dwayne) through weapons training.

“Keep going,” she told Hart, who walked in front of her. She kept just enough distance between them that he couldn’t do something stupid like twist and try to grab her, or, more likely, the Glock in her hip holster.

“So what else did Riley say?” Hart asked.

“He gave us his location. We’re on our way there now.”

“No wonder we’re moving.” He stopped at the back of the boat when they reached the ladder leading down to the swimming platform below and turned around to face her. “So what are we doing out here, Lara?”

“Tell me about last night.”

He pursed his lips at her, and she thought he looked almost embarrassed. Hart didn’t have the face of a cold-blooded killer, but she couldn’t forget that he was the leader of the group that had tried to sneak up on them last night. That, more than anything, made her extremely cautious of him.

“What about last night?” he finally said.

“Riley sent you to board us.”

He nodded. “We couldn’t risk you saying no if we showed up and asked to borrow the Trident.”

“Why?”

“Why?” he repeated.

“Why do you need the Trident so badly?”

“You’ll have to talk to Riley about that.”

She shook her head and drew her Glock, then held the gun nonchalantly at her side. “I want you to tell me now.”

Hart looked immediately down at the gun, then back up to her face. He swallowed, and she saw the fear in his eyes and knew he wasn’t acting.

But he said anyway, “I can’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t. If Riley hadn’t told you already, then he wouldn’t want me to.”

“I need you to tell me right now, Hart.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. You just choose not to.”

“You’re right. I choose not to.”

She clenched and unclenched her grip on the gun. “You see my dilemma, don’t you?”

He nodded. “I do.”

“You came here last night to take our boat, and now your Mister Riley is telling me he’d be willing to trade fuel and supplies for you and your five friends. You’ll forgive me for being cynical, but that doesn’t jive.”

“It’s complicated.”

“What isn’t these days?”

He smiled, though it came out just a bit too forced. “You have to trust someone sometime, Lara.”

“I do. I just don’t trust people who try to board my boat in the dead of night.”

Hart looked down at the gun hanging at her side again. “Are you going to shoot me?”

“Do you want me to?”

“No. I don’t want to die.”

“That’s the most honest thing you’ve told me yet.”

“Not true. I’ve been honest with you since last night. I just haven’t told you everything you asked, but I haven’t lied once.”

“That’s the problem. I have no idea if you’re lying or not because I don’t really know you.”

“That can change. All you have to do is listen to what Riley has to say.”

“He sounds younger than you.”

“That’s because he is.” He glanced down at the gun again. “Are you going to shoot me, Lara? I’d really prefer it if you didn’t.”

“I haven’t decided yet,” she said.

It jutted out of the ocean like the torso of a mechanical beast, limbs stretching outward in every direction. It was impossible to miss, and she saw it as soon as she stepped back onto the bridge. The Trident had powered down, though the waves were still pushing it forward toward the object.

“Holy shit,” Lara said.

When Riley had given her the coordinates and Blaine punched it into the yacht’s computer, they had theorized what Riley’s location could be — an island, a marina, maybe even a fleet of boats — but she had to admit, this was not one of their guesses.

“That’s exactly what I said,” Carly said. “Blaine was telling me how they got something like that out here in the first place. Educate her, big man.”

“They build it along the coastline, then transport it out here before setting it down,” Blaine said. “They’re essentially self-sustaining cities with a crazy long shelf life. Most of the time they’ll still be sitting out here long after the wells they’re tapping have dried up.”

“Here’s a better look,” Carly said, handing her a pair of binoculars.

“I did a lot of odd jobs back when I was younger,” Blaine said. “One of them was construction; got to work on one of these, though that one was a lot smaller. It takes a huge crew to put them together, but the money was really good. Afterward, I applied to come offshore but didn’t get picked.”

“Did you tell them you were totally legal?” Carly asked.

Blaine grunted. “It’s a tough gig to get, that’s all.”

“Sure, sure…”

Lara stared through the binoculars and scanned it up and down. The thing was yellow and gray and rested on four massive columns that looked like meaty stumps sticking out of the water. A giant crane extended out of its right side, gray metal sticking out against the soft blue of the cloudless sky.

It was an offshore oil rig sitting in the middle of the ocean.

“You ever seen one in person all the way out here?” Carly was asking Blaine.

“Nah, but one of my uncles did time out here,” he said. “He would leave, and I wouldn’t see him for months at a time. Most of his work was overseas, but sometimes he’d be sent out to the Gulf.”

Lara lowered the binoculars. “How close are we, Blaine?”

“At least a mile,” Blaine said. “We’re safe. Current’s pushing us closer, but nothing to be concerned about yet.”

“How far were they from our last position?”

“Fifteen miles, give or take.”

“They rowed those pieces-of-shit boats fifteen miles to get to us?” Carly said.

“They probably used the trolling motor for most of the trip,” Blaine said, “then shut them off when they were close enough and rowed the rest of the way. They could afford to take their time. It wasn’t like we were going anywhere.”

“What’s our situation?” Lara asked.

“Everyone’s in position,” Carly said. “Like you said, boss lady, if this Riley guy thinks he’s going to lure us here and try to board us with our pants down a second time, he has another thing coming. The last time I saw her, Bonnie was literally chomping at the bit to let fly with that M240.”

“Champing,” Lara said.

“What?”

“It’s champing at the bit, not chomping. Common mistake.”

Carly sighed. “Have I told you how much I hate you lately?”

Lara smiled, then peered through the binoculars again. She couldn’t detect any signs of movement on the platform or along the raised crane. There was a tall tower-shaped object that was red and yellow at the very center of the rig. She knew it was large even if it looked practically quaint next to the towering crane.

“What is that thing in the middle?” Lara asked.

“That’s the derrick,” Blaine said. “The drill.”

“Can they see us yet?” Carly asked.

“If we can see them, it’s a good bet they can see us,” Blaine said. “Especially if there’s someone hanging off that crane.”

“I don’t see anyone,” Lara said.

“Sneaky people are good at being sneaky, remember?” Carly said.

Lara lowered the binoculars and looked at Blaine. “What do you think?”

He thought about it before answering. “Well, no one’s shot at us yet.”

“Jinx,” Carly said.

Lara glanced back at the rig. It looked empty. Looked, anyway. But of course she knew better. Riley wouldn’t have given her coordinates to an abandoned platform. There would be no point if the man was hoping to convince her to hand his men back to him.

A light flickered on the dashboard and Blaine said, “It’s him.”

“I guess they can see us after all,” Carly said.

Lara nodded, and Blaine pressed a button. Riley’s voice echoed through the speakers along the walls of the bridge a second later: “Thanks for coming.”

Lara picked up the microphone and pressed the transmit button. “So how is this going to work?”

“I don’t suppose you’d take my word that I mean you no harm and send my men back to me?”

“Captain Optimism, this guy,” Carly snickered.

Lara said into the microphone, “You supposed correctly.”

“Then I guess there’s nothing left but for us to talk face-to-face,” Riley said.

“Just you and me.”

“Yes.”

“And your men?”

“Since you’re not willing to return them to me yet, the only way I can see this working is for you to hold them onboard while you’re over here. Is that acceptable?”

She exchanged a long look with Carly and Blaine.

“I know I haven’t told you this recently,” Carly said, “but you’re worth more than six of them. Let’s turn around and leave. Danny’s going to radio in at any moment, and we need to be there to pick him up when he does.”

“Blaine?” Lara said.

He shook his head. “Carly’s right. You’re worth more to us than six of them.”

She couldn’t help but smile back at the two of them. “Stop it, guys, you’re making me blush.”

“We mean it,” Carly said. She was as serious as Lara had ever seen her. “Blaine, me, everyone on this boat — we don’t know this Riley from Adam. He may or may not give a crap about Hart and the others. I don’t think we should risk it if it means risking you.”

“I can go,” Blaine said.

“Or me,” Carly said. She shrugged, then smiled mischievously. “He doesn’t know what you look like.”

“He knows what I sound like,” Lara said.

“Hey, who sounds like themselves over the radio?”

“She’s got a point,” Blaine said.

“Gee, thanks, Blaine,” Carly said. “I don’t know whether to be happy-happy that you’re backing me up or kind of pissed off you’re willing to risk my life if it means keeping boss lady here.”

“I, uh…” Blaine said, but wisely didn’t finish.

“Anyway,” Carly said, turning back to Lara. “I’ll go. We can’t afford to lose you. Me, on the other hand…” She let it trail off with a shrug.

“Danny would kill me if I did that,” Lara said.

“Yeah, there’s that,” Carly smiled. “But he’ll get over it. I mean, look at all the single and available ladies on this tub. He’d probably forget about me within a week, that asshole.”

“No, he won’t,” Lara said. “Besides, this is why I get paid the big bucks, remember?”

Carly shook her head. “I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I, but I don’t see any other way unless we want to turn around and leave, and our fuel reserves can’t afford that right now.”

She looked over at Blaine, as if to ask him, “Right?”

He nodded back, even though she could see he didn’t want to.

Before Carly could argue, Lara pressed the microphone and said, “Riley.”

“I’m still here,” Riley answered.

“You’ve been awfully quiet.”

“I assumed you and whoever is on the bridge with you needed time to debate the pros and cons of accepting my offer.”

“He can definitely see us,” Carly said, lowering her voice for some reason while turning to look out the windshield at the oil rig.

“He probably has lookouts on that big ass crane out there,” Blaine said. “I would.”

“Did you come to a decision?” Riley asked through the speakers.

“One hour,” Lara said.

“I’ll send a boat to come get you. One man. Unarmed. You’re free to bring your weapons.”

“One boat, with one man on it. If I see more than one at any time between now and when I return to the Trident, the yacht will turn around and leave with or without me onboard. My people will then execute Hart and the others and toss their bodies overboard so you can pick them up. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” Riley said. Then, “Expect my man in one hour.”

Lara put the microphone back down on the dashboard. When she looked up, Blaine and Carly were staring at her.

“Tell me you weren’t serious,” Carly said. When Lara didn’t answer right away, she sighed. “God, I don’t whether to be impressed with the new and way more badass Lara, or hate you so much right now for taking this stupid risk.”

Lara smiled at her friend. “I love you, too.” Then, to both her and Blaine, “Now pay attention; this is how we’re going to do this…”

11 Gaby

She woke up to gunfire — or, at least, she thought it was gunfire. She couldn’t be entirely sure because of the sea of molasses swooshing around inside her head that made every part of her body heavy and at the same time disjointed. How was that even possible? Maybe it had a little something to do with the constant pounding—

“There she is,” a voice said. “Good morning, sunshine.”

It only took half a second for her to recognize the voice: Fucking Mason.

“Back to the land of the living,” Mason said. “Well, mostly anyway.”

“Fuck you,” she said. Or croaked. What mattered was that she got it out.

“Now where’d a pretty little thing like you learn to talk like that?”

She had opened her eyes to Mason’s face (Squirrelly, as Lara would say) hovering in front of her. He was crouched with his hands draped over his knees, but what she really noticed was the fresh black uniform he had on. The only thing missing was his name on the tag over his breast pocket; there was no cursive stenciling, just the word Mason written in what looked like permanent marker.

“Yeah, it’s a rental,” Mason said when he saw where her eyes were lingering. “Unfortunately, proper uniform distribution’s taken a bit of a hit recently. Can’t blame them, what with Mercer’s goons running around out there.”

The crack! of a rifle shot echoed in the background. She tried to figure out where it had come from, but it faded too quickly, replaced by the same pervading silence of a dead world that was all too familiar to her.

“Speaking of the devils,” Mason said, tilting his head a bit. “They’ve been at it all morning. Showed up as soon as the sun poked over the city. I guess all that action from yesterday drew them here. What’s that saying? Like moths to the flame? Making a real mess out there, too.”

They? she thought, but couldn’t push the word out this time.

Why was she so tired? She wasn’t in pain. Not really, even though her throat felt as if she had a rubber band around it, constricting airflow. She reached up and massaged the area where the creature had grabbed her last night, but it didn’t seem to help. She had to use both hands, because her wrists were bound together with plastic zip ties. Her legs were similarly restrained at the ankles. How long had she been like this? Tied up and sitting on the floor against a wall? Probably the entire night.

“I know how you feel,” Mason said. “The first time I met one of those things, I almost shat my pants. They still give me the willies.”

He shivered, but she couldn’t be certain if that was involuntary or for her benefit.

She stared at the man. Mason was short, and while not physically disgusting, he wasn’t exactly attractive, either. He had dark eyes and short dark hair, and although he had cleaned himself up since he was Danny’s and her prisoner, it hadn’t done anything to improve his looks. But why should it? The man was a piece of shit and nothing would change that—

“Oh, come on,” Mason said. He was eyeing her closely. “Cut me some slack. I’m just a guy trying to get by is all.”

“You’re a piece of shit,” she said, forcing the words out with some effort.

“But does that make me a bad guy?”

“Yeah, it does.”

He glanced to his right. She followed his gaze over to a bundle lying on the floor. She sat up straighter at the sight of Nate. He was swaddled in camping gear with only his head sticking out of the thick fabric. He looked sound asleep, and she breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of his chest rising and falling underneath the sleeping bag.

It took her a few seconds to realize they were back at the Gallant First Bank where she, Danny, and Nate had stayed previously. They were in one of the back rooms — the manager’s — with the familiar big oak desk still pushed off to one corner, giving them plenty of space. Except for herself and Nate, only Mason was inside with them. The door to her right was open, which was the only reason there was enough natural light for her to see not just Mason but Nate, since both offices were windowless. She thought she could hear voices drifting from the bank lobby outside, but she didn’t quite have the strength to focus on that part of the world.

“So tell me, sweetheart, would a piece of shit save his life?” Mason asked.

She gave him a disbelieving look. “You?”

“Yes, me. Is that so hard to believe?”

“Yes.”

He grunted. “They wanted to ‘play’”—he did air quotes—“with your boyfriend last night while they were waiting for him to show up. But I convinced them if having two of you as insurance was good, three’s even better. Took some convincing, but they bought it.”

She glared at him, trying to decide if she could believe this traitor to the human race. He looked back at her, a small smile playing across his lips. Mason was scum, and the idea that he would actually go to bat for Nate seemed absurd.

“I liked him,” Mason said, as if he could read the doubt on her face — and maybe he could since she wasn’t doing very much to hide it or her dislike for the man. “Most of the time, anyway. He was nicer to me when you and the Ranger weren’t around. Mostly when you weren’t around. I dunno, but maybe he didn’t want you to think he was weak.” He shrugged. “He was decent enough to me; I never had to ask him for a drink or some food. So when he wakes up, tell him I paid back my debt.”

“You’re lying.”

“Honest to God.”

She stared at him. “I don’t believe you.”

He sighed, as if he were disappointed with her. “Whatever. Just tell him. He knows the truth.”

She looked over at Nate again. If Mason was lying, he was doing a very good job of selling it, because the Nate she knew would absolutely do what Mason was saying, even for someone with Mason’s very questionable history. Nate had hardened noticeably since that first meeting in Louisiana, but maybe that was just an act for her benefit because deep down, even after everything he had been through, Nate was still the most decent man she knew.

She turned back to the collaborator. “Why would they listen to you?”

“You mean because I’m just another sack of meat to them?”

“Not the ‘sack’ I was thinking of.”

He chuckled. “Good one. But to answer your question, it’s because I’m not. Just ‘another sack of meat,’ I mean.”

“I never believed you were anyone important before, and I still don’t now.”

“The other guys in uniform couldn’t care less about what happens to me. But I’m talking about the real bosses here. How did you think they found you in the first place? Because Nate was right. They were tracking you — just not in the way you think.”

“How?”

“I’m connected to them. Well, one of them.”

“‘Them?’”

“Them,” he said, as if she should know — and Gaby guessed that she did. There wasn’t a lot of thems out there right now. There was only one them that mattered.

He’s talking about the ghouls.

The blue eyes…

“They have a way of getting into your head and sticking,” Mason said. “They’ve been in my head since the early days of what you call The Purge. After my demotion post-Louisiana debacle, I thought they had cut me loose. Turns out it really is true what they say: Once you go black you can never, ever go back.”

She watched his face closely, waiting for him to keep going, but he didn’t. Mason seemed to drift off as if all the talk about “them” had gotten him thinking about something else. Something that might not be entirely…pleasant.

When he returned his eyes to her, his mouth turned upward into a forced smile, and he might have been about to say something else — maybe even give her more information on how “they” had used him to track her and Danny all the way from Starch to Gallant — but before he could say a word, the very clear pop-pop-pop of automatic gunfire echoed from outside the bank’s walls. There was something that sounded like return volley before silence took over again.

“What’s happening out there?” she asked.

“Told you, Mercer’s men,” Mason said. “Turns out there’s not that many of them. A few hundred, give or take. But man, they’re kicking up one hell of a ruckus.”

“A few hundred?” Gaby asked, remembering all those soldiers outside of Larkin when they were captured. It had seemed like more than just “a few hundred” back then. “How do you know there’s only a few hundred of them?”

“They got ahold of one of his regulators. The blue eyes, I mean.” He tapped his temple. “Got into his head. He didn’t have to tell them anything after that.” He went quiet for a moment and looked almost…what? Thoughtful? Frightened? “They know everything that poor bastard knew, and as it happens, everything he’s ever going to know.”

“He’s dead…”

“Dead, not dead. Either way, death is a release.”

“So why don’t you ‘release’ yourself from them? End it now. That way you won’t have to worry about them”—she tapped her own temple with the back of her knuckles—“back in there anymore.”

He chortled. “I would, but I like this thing called living too much. What, you thought I was a believer or something? I’m just trying to stay alive here, sweetheart.”

She gritted her teeth, wanting badly to tell him to stop calling her sweetheart, but she managed to restrain herself. Showing him an emotional outburst would just give him something else to use against her, and the man already had too much ammunition as it was.

“They’re like cockroaches, showing up wherever you least expect them,” Mason said, taking a moment to listen to the pop-pop-pop from outside the building.

Gaby had to fight back the smile. Cockroaches would be exactly how she would describe Mason and his collaborator friends, and it was ironic to hear him referring to someone else as that.

“They’re not here to rescue you, in case you were wondering,” he said.

“I wasn’t,” she said.

“Maybe you’re smarter than you look, then. Brains and beauty, huh?”

She ignored his comment and said, “Where’s Danny?”

“He’s around.”

“Where is he?”

“Around,” Mason said before standing up.

She watched him and saw him grimacing as he stood up on slightly unsteady legs. Gaby took a lot of satisfaction in knowing that she had done that — gave him a lingering pain he wasn’t going to get rid of anytime soon.

“No one’s going anywhere,” he said. “We’re all going to camp out here until nightfall.”

“Maybe you won’t have a choice.”

“Cute. You think a couple of shooters are going to force us out?” He shook his head. “No can do, sweetheart. The bosses would have our heads if we abandoned this place. No, it’s going to take more than what they got out there right now to send us packing.”

“They don’t need more than a couple of guys to do that. Are you forgetting what they did outside of Larkin?”

“Oh, I remember. But it’s pretty obvious they don’t have a lot of planes. Or if they do have more than what they’ve shown so far, not a lot of pilots. They’re picking their targets, hitting some of the denser towns. It’s a real bloodbath out there, and the bosses are pissed. I didn’t know how much until they brain-jacked into me. They are really pissed.”

“You’re scared of them,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “The ghouls. You’re terrified of them.”

“Of course I am,” Mason said, staring back at her. “I’d be fucking crazy not to. And after last night, I’d think you would be, too.”

Where are you, Danny?

He had to be either in the lobby or in the room next to them, because there wasn’t anywhere else to be inside the building. Gallant First Bank was designed to serve a limited client pool, and there was no need for a larger space. So where were they keeping Danny? Were they separating them on purpose?

Without Danny to talk to, and with Mason gone, Gaby was left to watch Nate’s sleeping form. He was alive, and that meant everything to her, even if she couldn’t stop thinking about what Mason had said.

“They wanted to ‘play’ with your boyfriend last night while they were waiting for him to show up.”

“Him?” Who was the “him” Mason was referring to? And why were the blue-eyed ghouls waiting for “him?”

Mason had closed the door behind him, but if she pressed her ear against the wall she could just barely make out voices coming from the hallway. She had no trouble hearing the echoes of shooting outside the building, though. They remained sporadic, a series of attacks and returned volleys, followed by long periods of silence. Then they would start all over again, almost as if whoever was exchanging fire out there were constantly on the move. That was the only thing to explain why the shooting seemed to be coming from different directions every time she heard a new exchange.

“They’re like cockroaches, showing up wherever you least expect them,” Mason had said, referring to Mercer’s kill teams that were running around Texas at the moment, making life miserable for the collaborators. She had no doubt whatsoever they weren’t here to rescue her, Nate, or Danny, so why were they attacking a town like Gallant at all? There was nothing here that was of any value. No collaborator civilians to murder or resources to ruin.

Or maybe it was even simpler than that. Maybe she was overthinking it. Maybe it really was as basic as the continued presence of Mason and the others drawing them in like, as Mason had said, moths to the flame. They were, after all, called “kill teams.” And their goal right now was to kill collaborators.

Great. Trapped between two groups of psychos. This road trip just keeps getting better and better.

She sighed and took a moment to gather her thoughts before finally deciding there was nothing she could do about what was happening out there. Instead of wasting more time on a problem that was beyond her control, she gave up and scooted across the room until she was sitting next to Nate. Thankfully the floor was mostly devoid of debris or anything to get in her way as she clumsily moved sideways, doing her best not to trip over her own bound legs and relying on the wall behind her as much as possible.

Nate was unconscious, but he was breathing normally, which was a very good sign. Just to be sure, she unzipped his sleeping bag to check his wound. Whoever had tended to him since last night had done a very good job; the bandages she and Danny had wrapped around Nate had been replaced, and very recently, from the looks of it. He also wasn’t quite as pale as he had been yesterday. If anything, Nate’s physical appearance looked better and color had returned to his cheeks and lips.

The sleeping bag kept Nate (mostly) insulated from the cold that had gathered inside the room. She still had her own thermal clothing on underneath her jacket and boots, which was the only thing keeping her from trembling against the chill at the moment.

With the door closed, it was darker now than it had been when she first woke up. She leaned her head against the wall and listened to a new round of automatic gunfire. It had started up again a few minutes ago and hadn’t quieted like the last few times. She couldn’t quite make out if they were getting closer, though it sounded as if they were.

“They’re not here to rescue you, in case you were wondering,” Mason had said.

She didn’t doubt that whatsoever. Mercer’s men had their own agenda. A bloody one. She had seen that for herself outside of Larkin and had witnessed more of it as they picked their way south from Starch. Even now, as she closed her eyes, she could still smell the blood and smoke from T29. It had been a real town once upon a time, with a real name, but it was just T29 now. Or it had just been T29, because it wasn’t much of anything anymore…

She must have been more sluggish and tired from last night than she realized, because by the time she snapped her eyes open to the sound of approaching footsteps, the door was already opening and—

Danny entered the room with a collaborator in a black uniform walking behind him.

Danny saw her and smiled. “Hey, kid.”

“Hey, Danny,” she said, and gave him a half-smile back. It was all she could muster.

He started to sit down next to her when the soldier said, “Not there.”

“You said I could sit anywhere,” Danny said.

“When did I say that?” the man asked. He was in his thirties, with brown hair. The name stenciled across his name tag read: Lopez.

“On the way over here.”

“Bullshit. Sit across the room away from them.”

Danny got back up, walked across the room, and sat down next to the big desk. “Don’t be like that, Lopez. I thought we were becoming friends.”

“That’s what happens when you assume,” Lopez grinned.

“What?”

“What?” Lopez repeated.

“What happens when you assume?”

“You know.”

“I don’t,” Danny said, looking completely serious.

“Fuck off,” Lopez said, stepping back through the door and closing it behind him.

She waited to hear the collaborator walking away, but he didn’t, which probably meant Lopez had taken up a guard position outside their door. Neither office had locks anymore, but the carbine in Lopez’s hands solved that problem.

“How’s the Natester?” Danny asked.

“He’s better,” she said. “Where were you?”

“In the lobby. They had some questions for me.”

“About what?”

“This, that, everything in between.” He cocked his head when they both heard the sharp crack! of a rifle shot outside the walls. “And some of that, too.”

“Mercer’s men?”

“Yup. They wanted to make sure I didn’t know anything about it. I told them maybe.”

“But you don’t.”

“Yeah, but they don’t have to know that. Also, I wanted to see how far they’d push with the questioning.”

“How far did they push?”

“Not very, as you can see by my still-pretty face.”

“Ah.”

“I got the sense they were afraid to tune me up. At least, ol’ Danzinger was.”

“Danzinger?”

“The guy asking the questions. The leader of the pack, from the looks of it. His name sounds like a ’70s rock band front man, but the guy looks like an accountant.”

“I thought Mason was the leader.”

“He’s more like a floating consultant. Looks like Danzinger’s team just got saddled with him.”

“Mason told me he was connected to them. The blue-eyed ghouls. That that was how they always knew where we were. How they tracked us from Starch. Because he told them.”

“‘Told them?’”

“That’s what he said.”

“Hunh,” Danny said.

“I’m not sure if I believe him. Do you?”

“Will…” Danny started, but didn’t finish.

“What about Will?” she pressed.

“Kate used to visit him all the time. In his dreams. They would talk, hold whole conversations. The way he put it, the whole thing was beyond freaky. I’m glad I never slept with that bitch.”

“Is that how it works? You have to sleep with them to become — I don’t know the word — connected, I guess, to them?”

“Hey, nothing’s more powerful than swapping the ol’ baby-making spit.”

“Gross, Danny.”

“It’s a medical term. I swear.” Then, “Anyway, I hope I never find out. The thought of one of those things crawling around in my head…” He shivered. “Damn. I think I might have wet myself there. Wait, did I just say that out loud?”

“You think she’s still out there? Kate?”

“I hope never to find that out, either.”

“What else did they want to know?”

“Nothing worth repeating. Danzinger seemed more annoyed by the constant hit-and-run attacks than anything.”

A long series of pop-pop-pop crackled, but this time it actually sounded like it was coming from farther away than the last few back-and-forth. It went on for a few seconds, which stretched into a full two minutes before things fell quiet again.

Danny was looking down at his watch. “They’re biding their time. I don’t think we’re going anywhere anytime soon, kid.”

“Mason told me they — the blue eyes — are waiting for someone. They’re using us as bait to get this person here.”

“Our little buddy Mason seems to know more than he’s letting on. That sneaky little sneaky pussy…cat.”

“I told you, we should have killed him back at Starch.”

“Yeah, yeah, stop nagging. You’re starting to sound like Carly.”

“That’s a compliment.”

“It should be, she’s a wildcat in bed.” Danny glanced at the door. “Most of them are still in the lobby, including Lopez and Mason. At least eight more running around out there engaging Mercer’s boys.”

“Twelve in all?”

“Uh huh. That includes the driver of the Jeep that was chasing us earlier.”

“Twelve men is a lot of resources, Danny. If Mason’s to be believed — and I’m not one-hundred percent buying it — they’re here because of the blue eyes, and this person they’re trying to lure to Gallant.”

“He’ll come for them soon,” one of the creatures had said last night as it stood over her.

“Yes,” the other one had replied.

“And when he does…”

“We’ll end him.”

“Finally…”

Across from her, Danny was staring at the wall next to the door. She didn’t know how long he had been doing that, but it was obvious to her by the look on his face that it wasn’t the barren white wall that was on his mind. He was somewhere else…

“Danny,” she said.

He shook his head before she could say anything else. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”

“Yes, I do.”

“What was it, then?”

“He,” Danny said. “The person all of this is for. The reason we’re still alive.”

She nodded.

“I don’t know,” he said again.

“Are you sure?”

“Maybe…”

“Danny, what is it? What’s been on your mind since Starch?”

He shook his head, then started to speak, only to stop himself.

“Danny,” she pressed. “What is it?”

“The blue-eyed ghoul back in Starch,” he finally said. “And at the airport outside of Larkin before that.”

“Danny, what are you saying?”

Larkin and Starch were burned into her memory — two nights of confusion that she still struggled to understand even today. She didn’t know how she was going to tell Lara and the others about them if she couldn’t even make up her own mind what had happened. There was a reason Danny hadn’t mentioned all the details to their friends back on the Trident. He hadn’t known how, either.

“Are they related?” she asked. “What happened outside of Larkin, then in Starch?”

“I don’t know,” Danny said.

“Danny…”

He shook his head.

“Danny,” she said again, unsure if she actually wanted to hear the answer.

“Maybe,” he finally said. “Maybe…”

12 Lara

You should be here right now, Will, not me. This was never the plan.

Why did you have to go and ruin the plan?

The “man” Riley sent over was a girl named Faith, who couldn’t have been older than twenty, and arrived alone in a small ten-footer to pick Lara up.

They were halfway to the oil rig when Lara glanced back at the Trident. She couldn’t see Bonnie on the roof, but she’d be there right now watching her back with binoculars while Blaine kept guard on the other side of the wraparound windshield on the bridge. Carly, Benny, Carrie, Maddie, and everyone else would be at their stations and on full alert until she returned.

This is such a bad idea. You know that, right?

Everything about this was risky, but they were running out of choices. They had already exhausted most of the refueling locations on Gage’s list around the area — the ones that hadn’t been razed to the ground or occupied by collaborators, anyway. The only other place left to explore was down south along the Mexican coastline, and what were the chances collaborators hadn’t either destroyed or taken over those places, too?

Mercer. This was all because of him. Before his attacks on the towns, they hadn’t had any difficulty finding abandoned but plentiful fuel.

Mercer…

Even when she did everything possible to steer clear of the man, his war still somehow managed to affect her.

She faced forward and looked past Faith, standing behind the controls in front and slightly to the right of her, and at her destination.

The platform looked bigger and more imposing out here in the open sea. It was at least 500 feet long and probably half as wide, though she couldn’t be sure of the latter since she was looking at it from the front. It stood well over a hundred feet above the water and rested on four massive foundations made of solid concrete, the heavy gray color marred by bright yellow stripes.

“How many people are onboard?” she asked Faith, shouting over the roar of the engine to be heard.

“The Ocean Star,” Faith said.

“What?”

“That’s what it’s called. The Ocean Star.”

“They have names?”

“I don’t know if all of them do, but this one does. It was designed for about 150 crewmen.”

“Are there 150 people onboard?”

“Not exactly,” Faith said.

From what she could see, the rig consisted of four levels, including the top platform. The lower three were a tangled web of beams and tubing, with rows of yellow guardrails and stairs crisscrossing all four sections from end to end and top to bottom. She paid special attention to the massive crane towering over everything like some kind of metal tentacle rising out of the ocean. She expected to see the snipers that she knew were somewhere up there, but even closer now she still couldn’t spot them. Either they were very well hidden, or Riley had taken them down. Maybe that also explained the lack of visible people moving around on the platforms.

“You live here?” Lara asked.

Faith nodded. “We all do.”

“I noticed you’re not wearing a uniform.”

“We’re not soldiers,” Faith said. She had on khaki cargo pants and a long-sleeve plaid shirt underneath a thick winter coat. Long, stringy black hair poked out from under a hoodie and blew against the cold wind. Unlike Hart and the five with him, the young woman looked nothing like a soldier.

Faith was also not armed when she showed up, and Lara’s cursory inspection of the boat — made easier because she was standing at the stern behind Faith — had revealed no weapons, though of course Faith could have hidden something inside the compartment under the vessel’s middle console. Lara wore her gun belt, but she hadn’t bothered bringing a rifle. If Riley was setting her up for an ambush at the oil rig, whether she came with one M4 or ten wasn’t going to make a bit of difference. The logic behind her decision was a no-brainer, but the emotional part was less easy to swallow.

“Don’t go onto the bad man’s oil rig, Lara,” she imagined her mother telling her.

“Listen to your mother,” her dad would say.

She crossed her arms over her chest for warmth. It might have been her imagination, but she swore it had gotten noticeably colder since she climbed onto the small boat and began her trek to the oil platform.

“Why did he send you?” she asked the girl.

“I don’t know; he didn’t tell me why,” Faith said. “He asked if I would come get you, and I agreed.”

“He asked you,” Lara said. It wasn’t a question.

“I told you, we’re not soldiers, Lara.”

Then what are you? she wanted to ask, but didn’t. She said instead, “You’re survivors.”

“Yes.” Then, as if sensing her hesitation, the girl said, “Riley’s not trying to trick you, Lara. He wouldn’t do anything to risk Hart and the others.”

“He took plenty of risks when he sent them to take my boat last night.”

Faith seemed to hesitate, but Lara couldn’t see her face, so she didn’t know what the younger woman was thinking.

Finally, Faith said, “He regrets that. I don’t think he got any sleep at all last night.”

That makes two of us.

The girl slowed down the vessel as the Ocean Star loomed in front of them before finally killing the motor completely. She expertly used the boat’s forward momentum to ease it underneath the structure until they were alongside one of the docks. Riley may not have needed to order Faith to come get her, but it was pretty obvious the young woman knew her way around a boat.

Two men, both unarmed (at least as far as she could see without telling them to strip off their thick coats), were waiting for them underneath the platform.

“Riley’s orders,” Faith said, finally looking back at her for the first time since they started away from the Trident.

“What’s that?” Lara said.

“No one you meet on your way up to see him will be armed, but you’re free to keep your weapons on you at all times.”

“That’s awfully considerate of him.”

“He’s trying to make up for last night. Please let him, Lara.”

The plea caught her by surprise, and Lara didn’t answer right away.

Finally, she nodded. “Lead the way.”

Faith took her up along the winding stairs while the two men worked to secure the boat behind them. There were a dozen vessels of various models already in the water when they arrived, including a couple of fast boats. She didn’t see anything bigger than a fifteen-footer tied to any of the docks and had to wonder if that was the reason they were so desperate to get their hands on the Trident—it was easily many times bigger than all the vehicles they had combined.

“Can I ask?” Faith said hesitantly.

“Depends on what you’re going to ask,” Lara said.

“Our guys. Are they okay?”

“They’re all alive, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, I meant…” She paused, then, “I meant, was there any shooting last night? During the siege?”

“There was no siege. We took them prisoner before they even climbed aboard.”

“Oh.”

“What did Riley tell you?”

“Not a lot, but I thought something bad might have happened—” She stopped short and shook her head, then glanced over her shoulder with an almost apologetic look. “So there was no shooting? No violence?”

Depends on what you mean by “violence,” Lara thought, but said, “No. We took them prisoner and put them in a room all night.” She saw the relieved look on the girl’s face and said, “Who are you worried about?”

“What do you mean? I’m worried about all of them.”

“But there’s one in particular, right?”

Faith might have blushed. “My boyfriend. James. Do you know if he’s okay?”

“I don’t remember talking to anyone named James, but if he’s part of the crew, then he’s fine. Like I said, we didn’t hurt anyone. They were smart and surrendered when we caught them trying to sneak onboard.”

“Oh, thank God.”

God had nothing to do with it, Lara thought, remembering how close she had come to giving the order to open fire. If Hart hadn’t seen how badly out-positioned he had been and told his men to stand down, things might have gotten bad. The six-men-dead-in-the-water kind of bad.

“I guess everyone here knows what happened,” Lara said.

Faith nodded. “It’s not a very big place and Riley doesn’t hide many things from us, especially something this big.”

Lara was startled by a flock of birds that appeared out of nowhere and glided in for a landing along the railing next to her. They were small and purple, and she got the feeling she was more wary of them than they were of her. That is, if they noticed her presence at all.

“Oil rigs are magnets for birds,” Faith said, smiling back at her. “We get every kind.”

Faith wasn’t lying. Lara had seen flocks in the air as they were coming in. At first she thought they were going to swerve around the human-made monstrosity squatting in the middle of the ocean, but instead they honed in on it, landing all along the multiple levels.

“Where do they come from?” Lara asked.

“Everywhere,” Faith said. “By the time they reach us out here, they’ve been flying for so long they just crash. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Then, with a look that Lara wasn’t sure was a joke, Faith added, “Bird stew used to be on the menu until we realized how awful it tasted.”

They went up another set of stairs before finally reaching the top platform. As they climbed up, she took the opportunity to sneak a look at the ocean behind her before settling on the familiar white shape of the Trident about a mile away. From out here, the luxury yacht looked absolutely lonely surrounded by vast open ocean, which was exactly what she was hoping to see. It was going to take a lot (a miracle) to sneak up on the yacht’s crew. Anything other than a submarine was going to get shredded by gunfire before they even got close.

Seeing the solitary boat in the distance eased her mind tremendously. Even if everything went bad and Riley turned out to be the snake in the grass that a part of her expected him to be, at least she could say everyone onboard would be safe. Most of all, she could count on Blaine to put the Trident in gear and get out of there at the first sign of trouble. He wouldn’t want to do it and there would be all kinds of internal and external conflict, but Blaine would do the right thing. She had made damn sure of that before she left.

“That clearheaded rush you just got?” Faith said in front of her. “That’s the altitude. It’ll clear up any sinus problems you have. That’s the good news. The bad news is it’s friggin’ cold up here, so keep your jacket on at all times or you’ll end up in sickbay.”

When she turned around again, the first thing she saw — because it was simply impossible to miss — was the giant derrick in the center. It was red and white and looked like a shrunken version of the Eiffel Tower. The only thing taller than the drill was the massive crane to her right. She spent a few seconds looking it up and down but like all the other times, she couldn’t make out any figures perched along its many sections. Even so, she didn’t believe it was empty for a second. It was simply too perfect a location to not have someone up there, and if her civilian mind knew that, someone like Hart and Riley would, too.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

“To answer your question, no; we haven’t turned the drill back on,” a voice said.

She looked over as a tall man walked toward her. He was wearing green cargo pants and, like Faith, wasn’t armed in any way that she could see. His jacket’s collar stood up against the sides of his neck to protect him from the cold.

“I’m Riley,” the man said, sticking out his hand.

“Lara.”

“I know,” he smiled.

She didn’t return it. “Nice place you got here.”

“It’s got a great view and the rent’s cheap,” he said before nodding at Faith. “I’ll take her from here, Faith; thanks.”

“I’ll go wait with the boat,” Faith said. To Lara: “Please listen to what he has to say.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Lara said. She couldn’t decide if she was annoyed or genuinely touched by the girl’s earnestness.

“Thank you.”

“I’m not promising anything.”

“I know,” the younger woman said before heading back down the stairs.

Lara turned back to Riley and caught him looking her over.

He recovered quickly and said, “Come on; let’s go inside. I should have worn my thermal socks.”

“I can’t stay long.”

“One hour?”

She nodded. “One hour.”

“That’s more than enough time.”

He turned around and started off and she followed, leaving just enough space between them that she could still see every inch of him and the spaces around them at the same time. She had done it unconsciously, and recognizing it, thought, Is this what it’s like to be you all the time, Will? Always on 24/7?

“I’ll be perfectly frank with you, Lara. I’m surprised you came,” Riley was saying.

So you agree this is a stupid idea, too?

“But I’m glad you did,” he continued. “I know it took a lot of guts after everything that happened. But I wouldn’t have expected anything else from the Lara.”

He had glanced over his shoulder when he said that last part, and she gave him a wry look back.

“When did you figure it out?” she asked.

“That you’re the same Lara who sent out those messages over the radio? Not right away. I had to listen to our conversation a few times before it clicked.”

“You recorded our conversation?”

“The rig has a pretty impressive comm system. I had our talk recorded just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. A lot’s riding on this — six lives, for one — and I didn’t want to fuck it up the way I did last night.”

She smiled to herself because she knew he couldn’t see. “It takes a big man to admit when he fucks something up.”

“Thank you for not harming Hart and the others.”

“How can you be so sure that I didn’t?”

“You said you hadn’t.”

“I might have been lying.”

“Are you?”

She didn’t answer him.

He looked over his shoulder again. “Are you?”

“No,” she said finally.

“So my thank you stands.”

“People have gotten killed running around out here believing everything a stranger tells them.”

“But you’re not just any stranger, Lara. You’re Lara.”

She wasn’t entirely sure how to take that. The radio messages were therapy as much as they were an attempt to reach out to other survivors. She had only added her name to it with the second broadcast because, deep down, she still expected Will to be listening. It was stupid and desperate, but at the time she didn’t have anything to lose.

Riley led her through the platform and around the large drilling devices that occupied a good portion of the rig. They stepped over pipes of various shapes and sizes, a hard hat that someone had left behind, and passed a bright orange vessel hanging off the side. She guessed it was some kind of emergency raft. They entered a maze of pumps and tanks circling the derrick like army ants, each with their own command unit. She wasn’t paying attention to where she was going and almost stumbled into a group of heavy machinery but managed to swerve around them at the last second.

The remnants of spilled liquids — chemicals, additives, and fuel used to keep this place churning night and day back when it was still in operation — filled her nostrils. She could only imagine how loud it would be up here when everything was up and running. Right now she might as well be zigzagging through a museum, a showcase of how mankind once bled the earth for resources.

Riley didn’t seem to have the same kind of trouble, but then, he had probably gone through this maze so many times he didn’t even have to think about where he was going.

“How do you get around this place?” she asked.

“You get used to it,” he said. “We were running into everything the first few weeks. A lot of accidents, bumps, and bruises. But we’ve cleared up everything that isn’t nailed down and even took apart some of those that were. You should have seen it when we first got here. About fifty percent of all this open space didn’t exist.”

They passed a helicopter landing port to their right resting on its own raised platform. It was empty at the moment, but she could smell recently spilled fuel and was going to ask Riley where the aircraft was when there was a clink. She looked down just in time to catch a shiny lug nut skidding across the floor before disappearing underneath a machine painted blue and about the size of a car.

They had been walking for a while and didn’t look to be any closer to reaching their destination, and she was growing frustrated. That, and her legs were starting to tire, reminding her of just how good she had it back on the Trident

God, how did I get so out of shape?

“You brought me here to talk,” she said. “So let’s talk.”

“We’re almost there…”

“No, Riley.”

She stopped in the middle of two machines with dials and conduits sticking out of them to both sides of her. One was red and the other was white, and she couldn’t even begin to guess what either one did.

Riley stopped five feet in front of her and turned around. “This is the kind of discussion that we should take inside, Lara. Besides, it’s cold out here.”

“I’ve never felt more clearheaded.”

“It’s warmer inside.”

“It’s warm enough out here,” she said, fighting back a grimace as a particularly cold wind whipped through the valley of machinery around them. “Tell me what I’m doing here, Riley. Tell me now.”

Riley nodded, his blue eyes focusing on her as if he was afraid of missing every reaction on her face in the next few minutes. “I need your boat, Lara.”

“I have six of your men on my boat right now that already told me that. So what else do you want from me, Riley?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. Just the boat.”

“Why?”

“Don’t,” he said.

“Don’t what?”

His eyes had left her face and gone to her hip because her right hand had slid closer to her holstered sidearm. A year ago the notion that she would reach first for her gun when threatened — or even when she just felt threatened — would have terrified her. Now, she did it without even thinking.

“Don’t,” Riley said again.

“Don’t what?”

“Please don’t draw your gun.”

She didn’t know why, but Riley asking her not to do it made her want to do it. Again, without her realizing it, her fingers brushed against the grip of her sidearm.

“Lara,” Riley said, his eyes returning to hers, “I have a man on the crane, and he’s watching us right now.”

The crane…

“He can’t hear what we’re saying, but he can see everything,” Riley continued. “If you draw your weapon, he’ll shoot.”

It’s a trick! her mind screamed, but she had to exert every ounce of willpower to keep from turning around and zeroing in on the crane.

“There is no man on the crane,” she said. “I looked.”

“His name is Peters,” Riley said. “Trust me, he’s up there. I had to keep him up there, just in case things went sideways. He’s my insurance. My only insurance. Everyone else is staying out of the way on purpose.” He held his hands steady at his sides, the palms facing her as if he wanted her to see he had nothing in them. “I’m not armed, Lara. I can’t stop you if you decide to shoot me right now. But Peters will respond if you do that, and he never misses. Never.”

He’s lying. There is no man on the crane. You looked, remember?

But how easy would it have been to hide someone up there? Very easily, because there were so many metal parts and angles it would be impossible to see every single section of the crane. All a sniper would need was to find a perfect spot, and depending on how long Riley and his people had been here, they could easily have figured that part out a long time ago.

Then again, even if there were someone up there, the distance was too great and the man would be shooting from a high angle. Not to mention all the machinery around her, including the two flanking her right now. There were a lot of reasons why a shooter wouldn’t be able to make the shot, even if he “never misses.” The odds were all in her favor.

Right?

Maybe…

Lara exhaled a slow breath, but she didn’t take her hand away from her hip, though there was now an extra inch of space between her fingers and the Glock. She sneaked a quick look to her left, then her right in case Riley’s men were trying to outflank her. She tried to pick up sounds of footsteps behind her, but there was just her slightly racing heartbeat pounding in her ear.

“So talk,” she said finally.

“We should do this inside,” Riley said.

“No. Out here. Tell me why you need my boat and why in God’s name you think I’m going to give it to you.”

He nodded reluctantly. “I have people on the Ocean Star. Civilians.”

“Faith told me you were all civilians.”

“Some people are more civilian than others.”

“Is that supposed to make sense to me?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. This place, this platform, it was an FOB until just a few days ago.”

“FO what?”

“FOB. Forward Operating Base. It was used to launch an attack on the mainland very recently. You probably don’t know anything about it since you’ve been out here the entire time.”

Is he talking about…Mercer?

Something must have registered on her face, because Riley tilted his head slightly to one side. “Or do you?”

“No,” she said.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t give a damn what you believe.”

“Fair enough.”

“Get to the point.”

“I’m trying to.”

“Try harder.”

He sighed, took a breath, then continued. “I have people I need to transport off the Ocean Star and to safety.” He looked out toward the ocean in the direction where the Trident would have been if not for the wall of metal and tubes in his way. “Your boat showing up out of the blue was a godsend.”

“You have boats here. A lot of them.”

“I don’t have enough, and the ones I do have aren’t nearly big enough. If there were still bigger vessels at the ports, I might have risked launching a raid on them, but they’re gone. The collaborators sank them a long time ago.”

“So you risked boarding the Trident with six armed men.”

“I had no choice. It was the best and fastest option. I need your boat, Lara.”

She shook her head. “You can’t have it.”

“You don’t understand—”

“No, I understand perfectly. You want something I have, and I’m not willing to give it to you. What I do have are six of your men. And they’re the only things you’re going to get out of this.”

“And I want them back,” Riley said. “All six of them. They only did what I asked them to. Hart had doubts, but…” He shook his head.

“You should have listened to him.”

“I had no choice.”

“You already said that.”

“It’s the truth.”

“You’re still not getting my boat.”

He sighed. “Can I show you something?”

“What can you show me that will make me change my mind?”

“The Lara from the radio would change her mind.”

Lara walked toward him — saw his eyes go wide with surprise — and stopped only when she was less than a foot from bumping into his chest. Even though he was taller than her and she had to tilt her head to look him in the eyes, she could feel him wanting to take a step back, but somehow managing to hold his ground.

“Lara,” he began, almost stuttering out her name.

She cut him off: “You don’t know me. If you have any doubts that I’ve already given orders to shoot your men and throw them overboard and abandon this place when I don’t return within the hour, you should wipe it out of your mind right now. You may have heard something I broadcasted on the radio, but you don’t know me, or my crew. You don’t know what we’ve been through, or what we’ve done, or what we’ve lost. So when I tell you that you don’t know a damn thing about me, I want you to take it to heart, Riley, because you don’t have a clue what I’m capable of.”

“I believe you,” he said.

“Good,” she said, and glanced down at her watch. “You have thirty minutes left. I suggest you use them wisely.”

13 Gaby

The ongoing gun battle between Mercer’s men and the collaborators took on a strange ebb and flow — a hellacious five or so minutes of back-and-forth followed by an hour (sometimes two) of long silence where nothing happened.

Danny had gone uncharacteristically silent since their conversation following his return to the room, seemingly content to listen in on the barely-audible chatter coming from the lobby — not that they could really hear anything with the closed door and the sudden spurts of violence beyond the walls.

After he left her, Mason had yet to return. She wondered if he was running around out there with the rest of Danzinger’s people, trying to put an end to Mercer’s fighters. It was an odd thing to think about, mostly because she had no idea if she cared who won or lost or if she was hoping they might end up killing each other, which would leave just her, Danny, and Nate.

Best-case scenario. Which probably means it won’t happen in a million years.

Nate had woken up a couple of times, but the longest he had stayed awake was only a few minutes. That was just enough time for him to see her and smile before drifting off again. She checked his bandages every thirty minutes to make sure he wasn’t bleeding again and always had at least one ear open listening for any irregularities in his breathing.

“They gave him sedatives,” Danny told her the first time Nate opened his eyes. “I guess they don’t want him waking up between now and tonight. Keep him out of their hair.”

“Mason said he saved him,” she said.

“Did he?” And when she nodded, “You believe him?”

“I don’t know.” She told him about Mason’s claims. “It sounded like Nate.”

“He’s a good kid.”

“Does this mean you’re going to go easier on him from now on?”

Danny chuckled. “I didn’t say that.”

She smiled, and spent the next hour or so watching Nate sleep. After everything he had been through, he deserved as much rest as he could get. She wanted nothing more than to pack him into a car and drive to the coast where Lara and the Trident would be waiting for them. They could have done that days ago if Mercer’s people hadn’t begun their crusade against the collaborators.

Mercer.

Was it possible he was the “he” that the blue-eyed ghouls were hunting? No, because it didn’t make any sense. She, Nate, and Danny had nothing to do with Mercer, and holding them hostage wasn’t going to lure the man here. He couldn’t care less if they lived or died, and she would be surprised if he even still remembered them after Larkin. For all he knew, they were already dead and buried underneath what was left of the airfield.

“Whatcha thinking there?” Danny said, his voice breaking through her thoughts.

“What?” she said, looking over at him.

“You look like me when I’m being all thoughtful and whatnot. What’s up?”

“You tell me.”

“Come again?”

“You’re not telling me everything.” She let the rest go unsaid but didn’t take her eyes away from him.

Danny shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

“When is it not?”

“Well, this is even more complicated than usual.”

“What is it, Danny? What do you know that you aren’t telling me?”

“That’s the problem, kid; I don’t know anything. Not for sure, anyway. At least, nothing that would hold up in court.”

“We’re not in court. It’s just you and me and Nate in here.”

“To be fair, Nate’s barely here…”

“You know what I mean. So just tell me already.”

“I think…” he started, but didn’t finish.

She could see that he wanted to say it — this thing that had been spinning around inside his head for the last few days — but for whatever reason, he didn’t go through with it. Maybe he couldn’t, or he didn’t want to.

“Danny,” she said.

He shook his head. “It’s too crazy.”

“What’s too crazy?” She could feel her patience with him slipping, even if he didn’t seem to notice it. “Just tell—”

He held his hand up to shush her just before shouting erupted from outside the door. It came first from inside the hallway next to them, then all the way from the lobby. Pounding footsteps immediately followed, then someone screaming in pain. The cracks of gunfire from outside, sounding the closest they had been since the day began.

Gaby stood up and walked to the door, pressing her ear against it. Danny did the same with the wall across from her. She glanced over at him, wondering if he was hearing the same thing, when a loud boom! cut through the noise and the door vibrated, along with the walls and floor and ceiling around them.

She took an involuntary step back, but Danny didn’t move.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Sounded like an explosion,” Danny said.

Gunfire exploded, this time clearly coming from the lobby just beyond the back hallway, the pop-pop-pop of automatic rifle fire drowning out every other sound, including more screams and shouting.

“That’s not good,” Danny said.

“They’re inside,” she said.

“Or coming in…”

Then, just as fast as it had begun, it stopped; there was just the silence again.

Gaby hurried back to the door and pressed against it and listened, but there wasn’t anything loud enough happening out there for her to hear through the slab of wood. She looked down at her bound hands and wondered how far she and Danny could get in their current condition. Of course, it was all a moot point because there was Nate, and he hadn’t even opened his eyes through the explosion and gunfire.

A loud bang! drew her focus back to the door.

It was a gunshot, and it had come from the lobby. A single, purposeful gunshot.

She exchanged another look with Danny when they heard a second bang!

“Shit,” Danny whispered. “Get back.”

He pushed off the wall and retreated across the room. She did the same, returning to her spot next to Nate, but her butt hadn’t touched the floor yet when the door smashed open and a man with an AR-15 stood in the open doorway, pointing the weapon in at them. He saw Danny first, sitting across from him, before swinging his rifle over to her, then back at Danny.

She expected to see Lopez (or someone else who had taken his place at guard duty) lying dead outside the door, but there were no signs of casualties that she could see.

The man was tall and thin, and his face was covered in black and green camo paint. The rest of him matched his face, including thick camo pants and a long-sleeve shirt underneath a tactical vest with slots stuffed with spare magazines. Equally full pouches hung from his narrow hips, including a gun holster.

“Don’t even fucking flinch,” a gruff voice said from behind the painted face.

Gaby sat perfectly still, and so did Danny. She worried that the loud, crashing door might have woken Nate, but one look at him eased her fears, though it made her wonder what kind of meds the collaborators had given him to make him sleep through all of this.

The gunman saw her eyes going to Nate and said, “He dead?”

“No,” she said.

“You sure? He looks dead to me.”

“He’s just sedated.”

“We’re on the same side,” Danny said, and raised his bound hands slightly off his lap to let the guy see the zip ties.

“Oh yeah?” the guy said, though he sounded doubtful. The fact that he hadn’t loosened his grip on his rifle for even a second was proof of that. The weapon was very steady in his hands, which told Gaby all she needed to know about him.

“You’re part of Mercer’s army, right?” Danny asked.

The man cocked his head, a glint of curiosity showing through the paint. “What do you know about it?”

“We found the flyers. Join us or die, right?”

Not quite right, Gaby thought, realizing what Danny was doing. He already knew this man with the rifle was one of Mercer’s killers — everything about him gave that away — and if he was here inside the bank, then that meant the collaborators were dead. (For a very quick moment, the thought of Mason finally getting what he had coming made her heart race with triumph.) Danny was playing on the propaganda flyers they had been finding all over the state, like the one Nate had found earlier yesterday while they were scouting.

But Danny was wrong. It wasn’t “join us or die”; it was more like “join us to take back Texas.” Or something close. Not that it mattered, and she suspected Danny knew it, too. He just needed to get the man’s attention, to sow the seeds of the lie he was already cooking up.

And it seemed to work, because the man relaxed the hand that was clutched tightly around the pistol grip underneath his rifle’s barrel. He didn’t lower the weapon, though, but it was a good start.

“Close enough,” the gunman said, and grinned, showing impossibly white teeth.

Gaby couldn’t help but relax a little, even if a part of her didn’t believe they were any better off than before. What was that old saying?

Out of the frying pan and into the fire…

But maybe she was worried about nothing because it looked as if Mercer’s men were more concerned with the collaborators than they were of her, Danny, and Nate. The man who had found them in the back room called himself Fritz, and he led them to the front of the bank, leaving Nate where he was, but only after Fritz had checked to make sure Nate wasn’t playacting.

The lobby was in pieces, and she didn’t have to go very far to see the source of the explosion she had heard earlier: Almost one entire side of the bank’s front wall was gone, leaving behind a gaping hole in its wake. Brick and mortar had been blasted across the once-wide lobby space, covering a large chunk of the floor. The island counter that had been used for filling out deposit slips had been chipped by gunfire but was somehow still standing, and the same was true for the teller windows at the end of the lobby.

She counted five bodies, all men in black uniforms — Texas collaborators. One of them had the name Danzinger stenciled across his tag. The rest were either lying on their stomachs or were buried in rubble along with their names. She didn’t see anyone among the dead who was even remotely close to matching Mason’s short stature, which made her just a little bit ticked off.

He really is like a goddamn cockroach.

Besides Fritz, there were two others wearing similar clothing, their faces also covered in camo paint in the lobby. One was standing guard next to the hole while the second one sat in a chair with a bent metal leg spooning chunky food from a bag of MRE. Gaby got a whiff of beef ravioli in the air, but she was more concerned about the M4 rifle with the attached grenade launcher leaning next to the man.

A wall versus a grenade launcher. Easy win.

The third man looked up as Fritz led her and Danny across the lobby. “Prisoners?”

“They were like this when I found them,” Fritz said.

“So, prisoners.”

“They said they’re volunteers.”

“Volunteers?”

“We saw the flyer,” Danny said.

“Flyer?” the man said, confused.

“That shit we’ve been tossing out of planes since after R-Day,” Fritz said.

“Ah, the flyer.” The man took a moment to shake some salt from a packet into his bag before going back to work with a plastic spoon. “Names?”

“I’m Danny, she’s Gaby,” Danny said. “The one sleeping it off inside the back office is Nate.”

“Three?” the man said to Fritz.

“Basically two and a half,” Fritz said. “Second guy’s mostly dead.”

“He’s just been sedated,” Gaby said. “He was shot yesterday.”

“How’d that happen?” the obvious leader asked.

Gaby nodded at one of the collaborators. She had never seen the man before and didn’t know his name, but one was as good as another right now. “They’ve been chasing us for a while; finally caught up to us yesterday. Almost killed Nate in the process.”

“Why?” the man asked.

“Like we told Fritz here,” Danny said, “we left the town we were assigned to so we could sign up. Fight the good fight. Take back Texas. All that good stuff.”

“You went AWOL? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“AWOL, who-gives-a-shit-wol, whatever you wanna call it. We’re not risking our lives for those night-crawling fucks anymore.”

Damn, Danny, you almost convinced me that time.

But Gaby couldn’t decide if the man was convinced or not, and his response was all that mattered. Even with all that gunk over his face, she could tell he was older than Fritz by a few years, and it made sense that in this rankless army of Mercer’s that the oldest man probably ended up leading, if just by default. Of course, she could have been entirely off base and the one standing with his back to them, guarding what was left of the wall, was the real leader, even though he hadn’t said a peep.

She decided to focus on the man sitting in the chair when she said, “Is it true? What the flyers said?”

“What do they say?” the man asked.

“That you’re going to take back Texas. Because that’s why we risked everything to leave the town. Tell me it’s true,” she added, injecting just enough desperation into her voice to be convincing but without overdoing it. Or, at least, she hoped she wasn’t overdoing it.

“If it’s not, tell us now,” Danny said, picking up on where she left off.

“It’s true,” the man nodded.

Gaby watched the leader slowly finish up his meal and toss the bag to the floor. He pulled out another small packet from his pocket and fished out an oatmeal cookie. Gaby had to stop herself from drooling over the smell.

“We’re taking back Texas, and we’re always looking for new recruits,” the man finally finished.

“Thank God,” Gaby said, again putting just enough of the old Gaby — the girly high school Gaby — into her voice to be believable.

Jesus, when did I become such an actress?

“I’m Benford,” the man said. “You already met Fritz.” He hiked a thumb at the third man in the room. “That’s Kip.”

Kip tossed a glance over his shoulder and gave them a “what’s up” nod. He was much younger than both Benford and Fritz, and despite the paint caking his face couldn’t have been older than her. But then, age was hard to tell these days because everyone grew up so fast. You had to, or you didn’t survive.

Benford was smiling at them, white teeth poking through his camo and giving off a slightly sinister vibe. “Unfortunately, we can’t just take your word for it, you understand.”

“But I have such a trustworthy face,” Danny said.

“You won’t get any arguments from me. You get lost in Texas on your way back to California or something?”

“Nah, I’m just naturally sunny.”

“I can see that. But like I said, hard to trust people these days, so everyone has to pass a test first.”

“I suck at tests. Is it at least multiple choice?”

Benford ignored him and said, “Kip, bring him in.”

The kid disappeared through the wall.

“What’s going on?” Gaby asked.

“We need to make sure,” Fritz said.

“Make sure of what?”

“You’ll see,” Benford said.

Kip returned, but he wasn’t alone. A fourth man with camo on his face — another one of Mercer’s — along with Kip was flanking a black-clad figure between them. The man’s head was drooping like he didn’t have the strength to raise it, and his arms were duct taped behind his back. He was struggling with his footing, forcing Mercer’s men to drag and carry him at the same time.

Mason. Please let it be Mason.

The man lifted his head…and it wasn’t Mason.

Dammit.

Like the other dead men in the lobby, she had never seen the collaborator before. The part of his uniform where the name tag was supposed to be was missing, along with most of his right sleeve. Blood trickled down his face and thick, bloody clumps scarred both sides of his temple. He looked as if he were in tremendous pain, and she understood why he had so much difficulty walking: His right leg was broken, and blood dripped from both pant legs. When Benford and the others took out the bank wall, they had apparently claimed their share of collateral damage, and this man was one of them.

Kip and the fourth man dropped the collaborator to the floor in front of Benford. The man collapsed on his knees. Despite his weakened state, he somehow managed to stay upright, if just barely, and glanced first at her, then Danny, then around at the other faces in the room. Beyond the blood and bruises, defeat clouded his eyes, but there was a spark of defiance there, too.

Benford drew his sidearm and took out the magazine. Then he pulled back the slide and slid a bullet into it. “One round. Who’s it gonna be?”

“Me,” Danny said before Gaby could even process what Benford had just asked them.

“What’s wrong with the girl?” Benford asked.

“Not a thing,” Danny said, “but I talked her into this. The other kid, too.”

“Whatever,” Benford said, and tossed the gun to Danny. “Make it co—”

Danny caught the gun and shot the collaborator once in the chest before Benford could even finish.

“Well, shit,” Benford said, watching the man in black slump to the floor.

Gaby stared at the dead man while Fritz chuckled from somewhere behind her.

“Welcome to the Rebellion,” Benford said. “Your first assignment is to drag your old friends into the back office. They’re ruining the décor of the place.”

“We sticking around?” Fritz asked.

Benford glanced at his watch. “Got plenty of time before nightfall. Maybe we’ll get lucky and more of them will show up, give us extra target practice.”

The Rebellion was really just four people at the moment — Benford, Fritz, Kip, and the fourth man, Justin. To hear Fritz tell it, they never had any intentions of a prolonged engagement with Danzinger’s people, since that went against their mission of hitting and running.

“We kept waiting for them to get reinforcements,” Fritz said. He was perched on the island counter, feet swinging back and forth as if he were at the park. “But no one ever came. We were pretty sure they’d at least get a few extra bodies from that buildup in Port Arthur. We put two guys on the road, just in case, to do a little sniping. But nope. We hit them all day, poking at them from every angle, and no one ever showed up. I guess they’re stretched thin ever since R-Day. Probably keeping most of their forces in the towns.”

“R-Day?” Gaby asked.

“Resistance Day. Our little name for it. Nothing official or anything. He’s not a big fan of titles. Or rank, for that matter.”

“‘He?’” Danny said.

“Mercer,” Fritz said. “The Big Cheese.”

“Where’s he now?”

Fritz shrugged. “He’s around.”

“You don’t know?”

“I know, but you don’t need to know.”

“I thought we were all friends now. You guys even showed me the secret handshake and everything.”

Fritz grinned. “Not yet. But maybe if you keep proving yourself we might show you the secret lair.”

“Awesome. Do we get costumes, too?”

“Hey, what you do with your free time is your business.”

Danny grinned back at him. “Sweet,” he said, and went back to eating from the bag of MRE Mercer’s men had given them.

She concentrated on her own bag of Meal Ready-to-Eat, gobbling up the clumps of chicken pesto pasta with the cheap spoon that came with the food. It probably said a lot about how desensitized she had become to how the new world operated that her appetite only increased after dragging the dead bodies into the back room with Danny. She wished she could say she felt sorry for them, but besides Lopez, she didn’t know a single person or even their names, and she didn’t care enough to read their name tags.

They tried to kill us, and they shot Nate. Screw them.

The MRE tasted a bit bland at first, but a little salt and seasoning from the provided packets lent some life to it. She had pocketed the cookie and beef jerky and saved the coffee grounds for later. The last time she had coffee was on the Trident, where they regularly dipped into the reserves they’d brought from Song Island. She thought about Nate and how much he’d enjoy his own calories-heavy bag, but he was still asleep in the back office.

Despite having been “welcomed” to the Rebellion, Benford hadn’t given them weapons, and she used the opportunity to try to come up with a scenario where Nate wouldn’t be left behind when Benford finally decided it was time to move on, which he would eventually. Right now the only thing keeping them in the bank was Benford wanting to rest his men. They might not have lost anyone in the gunfight, but they had been at it all day and actually looked more tired than her and Danny.

Benford was outside on the sidewalk now with some kind of portable radio set on the hood of a bullet-riddled Jeep. She recognized it as the same one that had chased them yesterday, backed by the technical. The vehicle was damaged, its front windshield smashed and hood badly dented from, she guessed, the same explosion that had taken out the wall. Benford had his M4 with the grenade launcher slung over his back, and he didn’t seem all that concerned about standing out in the open, maybe because Justin and Kip were somewhere out there keeping watch while he and Fritz stayed back.

Benford was talking into the radio’s microphone and occasionally listening, but she couldn’t make out what was being said from inside the building. The radio didn’t look like the kind they had been carrying around with them and using to communicate with the Trident. Benford’s was probably military-issued, while theirs was a civilian model.

“He’s like a dog with a bone,” Fritz was saying while looking out at Benford. “He knows something’s not right about this place. The collaborators have no reason to stake a base all the way out here, and we’ve seen multiple nests in the bigger buildings. Those things don’t normally waste time in a no-nothing place like this, so why are there so many nightcrawlers around?”

“You saw them?” Danny asked.

“Couldn’t miss them. They were crammed into every store and building we passed. Had to be hundreds of them in the place. Maybe more…”

“How many did you guys kill?”

“Six in all, counting the one you popped. Why?”

“There were more than six earlier today,” Gaby said.

“If there were more, then they weren’t here when we hit the bank. And if they’re out there, Kip and Justin would have spotted them already.” He shrugged. “My guess is they knew they were beaten and took off.”

Gaby could picture Mason doing exactly that. The man was an opportunist and a survivor first and foremost. If he thought Danzinger was going to lose, he wouldn’t have any hesitation about abandoning them. The only other reason he wasn’t one of the dead was if he hadn’t been around when the fight got out of hand. She didn’t know which explanation she preferred, not that either one did anything to change the results: Mason was still out there, somewhere.

Like a goddamn cockroach that needs to be stepped on.

“Why’d you do that, by the way?” Danny was asking Fritz.

“You mean the bank?” Fritz said. When Danny nodded, “Benford’s decision. They had one on the roof and one on the sidewalk outside, but other than that it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Benford had us prodding them all day until he was finally convinced they didn’t know what the hell they were doing. It was like they were just satisfied to sit here and wait.” He eyed Benford, who looked like he was in the process of wrapping up his radio call outside. “Like I said, dog with a bone. He wants to know why they were here, why no one came to their rescue, and what the nightcrawlers are doing in a place like this.”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Danny said, looking out at Benford.

“Yeah, well, don’t say that to him,” Fritz chuckled.

“Mum’s the word.”

Gaby drank her bottle of water and dabbed some onto her fingers to clean them against her pants. Like Danny, she knew something Fritz and Benford didn’t — the collaborators hadn’t abandoned Gallant despite the constant attacks and lack of reinforcements because they couldn’t. She remembered how Mason had talked about them earlier and how unsettled he had looked. He had tried to hide it, but she could see through his façade.

She looked up when Benford came back inside the bank and put the radio away in his pack.

“What did they say?” Fritz asked.

“They don’t have any intel about this place,” Benford said. He looked and sounded disappointed. “As far as they know, there’s nothing important about Gallant, no reason why the enemy didn’t want to leave or why there are nightcrawlers all over the place.” He looked over at Danny. “What about you? You don’t know what they were doing down here?”

“Not a clue,” Danny said. “The only reason we’re here is because Port Arthur was crawling with soldiers. Your guess is as good as mine why they’re messing around this place.”

Benford seemed to believe him. Maybe it was the way Danny had told the story — while casually eating his prepackaged food without a care in the world — but even Gaby would have bought the lie if she didn’t know better.

“So that’s that, then,” Fritz said. “We bugging out or what?”

“Short of tearing the place apart?” Benford nodded. “We had our fun. Besides, there’s plenty of other targets out there to pick from.”

“I can dig that.”

Just then, the crack! of a gunshot echoed outside, and all four of them dropped to the floor instinctively.

Two more shots followed, then silence.

Gaby glimpsed Danny’s bag of MRE skidding across the tiled floor and looked over in time to see him reaching for his hip for a sidearm that didn’t exist. He looked over at her and mouthed an exaggerated sigh.

Benford had unclipped a two-way radio from behind his back and hurried over to the hole in the wall. “Justin, Kip,” he said into the radio, “give me a sitrep.” When they didn’t answer, “Justin, Kip. Give me a sitrep, goddammit.”

The radio in Benford’s hand and the one clipped to Fritz’s waist squawked in reply, and a male voice said, “You boys should have left town when you had the chance. This is what happens when you lollygag.”

Fuck me, Gaby thought when she recognized the voice.

“Do yourself a favor and let us go in there and collect your guns,” Mason said through the radio. “Trust me when I say it’s your best option, because you’re not going to like what happens when night falls. Nosirree, you are not.”

Then, because it was Mason and he knew exactly how to get on her nerves:

“Oh, and that hot blonde number who is no doubt listening in on this? Hey, sweetheart, you miss me yet?”

14 Lara

“The rig was designed to accommodate about 150 crewmen, but we don’t have nearly that many onboard right now,” Riley said as he led her off the top platform and into a stairwell, their boots clanging off heavy metal stairs as they went down.

She expected to feel claustrophobic as they entered the belly of the structure — like moving around in a submarine — but their path was lit by LED lights, and everything, including the walls, was surprisingly clean. She didn’t know why, but she thought a place that was supposed to house oil workers who slaved on heavy machinery for most of the day would be grimier…and smellier.

“Sounds like it should be pretty comfortable with all the extra space,” Lara said. “So why are you in such a hurry to abandon it?”

“Comfort isn’t the problem.”

“So what is?”

“We’ll get to that later.”

“You keep saying that, but I’m not hearing anything that would make me hand the Trident over to you.”

“I’m not asking you to hand it over to me, Lara. You just need to let me borrow it for a while.”

“I still haven’t heard anything that would make me do that, either.”

“I haven’t gotten to my sales pitch yet,” he said as he pushed through a door and they stepped inside a hallway lit by bright natural sunlight.

“Where are we?”

“The crew area, where the workers stay when they’re not working.”

She found out why the place was so bright when Riley led her past an open door and she looked in at two kids about Vera and Elise’s age, propping their chins and arms against an open window on the other side of the room. One of the children, a girl, glanced over and smiled at her, and Lara reflexively smiled back.

“You said you had civilians onboard, not children,” she said. “How many?”

“About a dozen in all.”

“Why are they here?”

“Because their family is here.”

They walked past a couple of closed doors, and Lara thought she could hear voices coming from the other side of both of them.

“Is this what you wanted to show me?” she asked. “Two kids in a room?”

“It’s a beginning.”

“So there’s more.”

“I wouldn’t be much of a salesman if I didn’t have more under my sleeve.”

He stopped at another open door, then took a couple of steps out of the way to let her look in.

It was some kind of exercise room, except the equipment had been removed and the space taken over by people. Sunlight streamed inside through windows along the far wall, and she counted at least twenty civilians either standing or sitting around. Some were occupied with card games while others were gathered around a TV watching some kind of movie on a Blu-ray player. A few had staked out private spots to read books. There was conversation, but it was of the hushed variety, as if they were all waiting for something — something bad, or big, or maybe both — to happen. A few of them glanced nervously over at her and Riley.

“Who are they?” she asked. “What are they doing here?”

“Everyone has their own rooms, but I guess they find it easier to all be in the same place,” Riley said.

“No. I mean, what are they doing here, on the Ocean Star?”

“They’re part of a support network. Cooks, mechanics — basically the lifeblood of every war effort. They’re here because this is an FOB and our job is to keep the war going.”

“What war are you talking about?”

Riley was looking at her intently. “I think you know.”

He’s talking about Mercer’s crusade in Texas.

She’d known who Riley was as soon as he began talking about what was happening back in Texas. He was a part of Mercer’s army. So were Hart and Faith, and now, the people in this room. She didn’t have any doubts anymore, but she couldn’t let Riley know that. At least, not until she had squeezed him for every piece of information.

“I don’t,” she said.

“Are you sure about that?” he asked, not taking his eyes off her.

“I should know what I know, Riley, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He nodded, but there was a ghost of a smile on his lips, as if he had just gotten what he had been waiting (looking?) for. “All right. Let’s stick to that story for now.” He turned and continued up the hallway. “Come on; I have more to show you.”

She looked into the room one more time before following him. “How many people are on the rig?”

“Thirty-two civilians.”

“I thought you said you were all civilians.”

“Some are more civilian than others.”

They turned a corner and passed another large room, this one equipped with flat screens along the walls, but unlike the previous room, none of the TVs in this one were turned on. There was a stack of red chairs in one corner because the space had been converted into living quarters. Instead of civilians, there were a half dozen men and women in assault vests sitting or lying down on spring cots. Everyone wore gun belts, and rifles leaned against their beds or the walls nearby.

They didn’t stop at the second room.

“So this is where you’re hiding the rest of your Harts,” she said.

“I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

“Which would be what?”

“That I was looking to jump you as soon as you were onboard.”

“They’re soldiers.”

“They’re the security force that’s supposed to keep the FOB safe.”

“How many?”

“Fifteen. I’m responsible for forty-seven lives in all, not counting myself.”

“They look a little jumpy.”

“Things are a little tense right now,” Riley said. “Not just here, but back in Texas, too. Which you don’t know anything about.”

She smirked at his back but if he heard or saw it, he didn’t react.

“There are more FOBs like the Ocean Star out there,” Riley continued. “Not quite like this one, and staffed differently, but we all serve the same purpose.”

“Which is?”

“Keep the war effort alive. Keep the fighting on course. Keep the killing going.” He stopped and turned around to look at her. “Mercer.”

“Mercer who?”

“Cut the shit, Lara. You know about Mercer,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

So here it is. The moment of truth.

“No more lies,” she said.

“No more lies,” he nodded.

“I’ve heard stories about Mercer, but I’ve never met him or seen what he’s doing out there in person.”

“Everything you’ve heard is true, and it’s the reason I need to get these people as far away from the Ocean Star as possible.”

“I’m listening…”

“We don’t want anything to do with the bloodbath that’s taking place in Texas right now. That’s why I need the Trident. It’s the only thing big enough to carry everyone here away.”

“So you’re running, is that it?”

“Yes,” Riley said without hesitation. “We’re running, Lara. I’m not ashamed of it. It’s why I volunteered for this job in the first place, why the people in the other rooms are here, too. Will you help us get as far away from Mercer as possible?”

She didn’t answer him, and Riley never took his eyes off her.

“Lara,” he said. “Please. I need your help. I’ll beg if you want.”

“I don’t want you to beg.”

“What do you want?”

“Tell me everything about Mercer. About this war of his. If you want a prayer of me saying yes, I want to know everything.”

“Everything?”

“Everything,” she said. “Start at the beginning…”

They sat across from one another in the Ocean Star’s galley — the only two people in the entire place — with chunks of SPAM and fried fish on plastic trays between them. Like life on the Trident, Riley’s people had no trouble fishing the Gulf of Mexico for a steady diet of fish every day. She took note that the kitchen in the back still had a working refrigerator, which meant Riley had plenty of diesel fuel to waste.

We could definitely use some of that.

“The people here and the ones out there fighting his war right now wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for him,” Riley said. “He saved our lives. Literally and figuratively. The first few weeks were the hardest, but I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. You were out there, too.”

She didn’t say anything. The first few weeks of The Purge were not something she liked to dwell on.

May you burn in hell, John Sunday. You and your brothers.

“He knew about the oil rigs,” Riley was saying. “He knew about a lot of other things that never occurred to me or most people. I don’t know how he knew. It’s one of the many mysteries surrounding Mercer. He doesn’t talk much about his past, and he doesn’t have to. His actions did all the speaking for him.” Riley paused and seemed to take a few seconds to search his thoughts. Then, “What you have to understand is, we followed him because we wanted to, because we believed in him. Nothing he did up until what they call R-Day affected that belief. For most of us, anyway.”

“What finally changed your mind?”

“The realization that it was happening. The war. It was actually happening. Before, it was just theory. And then…it wasn’t.”

“You said there are forty-seven people on the Ocean Star—forty-eight, counting yourself. How many are out there running around Texas?”

“Over 500,” Riley said. “That’s not including the people in the other FOBs.”

“In all?”

“Almost a thousand.”

It sounded like a lot, but even as she turned the number over in her head, she knew it wasn’t really. There was a colonel in Colorado who had over 4,000 civilians and military personnel hiding in a bunker called Bayonet Mountain with him at this very moment. Compared to that, “almost a thousand” people wasn’t nearly as impressive. Then again, it wasn’t as if you needed a lot of warm bodies to drop bombs and shell a helpless town filled with pregnant women and civilians.

“He managed to save that many all by himself?” she asked.

“Not by himself,” Riley said. “He started small, with a handful, but the numbers grew and soon they were able to cover more ground, pull more people out of their hiding places. In the beginning, there were just four of them. Mercer and three others. I made five.”

“You were there at the planning stages of his war.”

Riley shook his head. “It wasn’t a war then. Not really. Yes, he talked about it, but he never gave any specifics, and for the longest time it was just this abstract thing he would bring up every once in a while. Mostly it was just people trying to stay alive and help each other do the same. He found out about the silver a long time before we even heard your radio broadcast. But he didn’t know about water or UV lights, otherwise we would have used places like the Ocean Star a lot earlier.” Riley poked unenthusiastically at his food with a plastic spork before continuing. “Eventually we transitioned from survival mode to planning. We’d always been good at searching and loading up on food, supplies, and fuel, but I didn’t know what they were really for.”

“His war.”

Riley nodded. “He’s had it on his mind from day one; he just never let us in on any of the details. Back then, we were just glad to be alive and searching for other survivors, and we never knew any better. I guess you could say we were blissfully ignorant and loving it.”

“Where did you get the war machines? The planes?”

“The problem isn’t finding them; it’s training people to use them. We only had one pilot, a former Iraq War airman named Cole. He was able to train two others.”

“Why just two?”

“Not everyone can fly a plane, Lara. It’s not as easy as climbing into the cockpit and stepping on the gas pedal.”

“I guess not.”

“We located a unit of Abrams tanks at an Army base. All the ammo we needed was just sitting there for the taking. The tanks are easier to train for — all you really need is a manual and a lot of space — but they have limited range and they’re not exactly subtle. From the reports we’re getting out of Texas, Mercer’s already lost two of his tanks assaulting the towns. The kill squads will eventually do more damage to the collaborators than the war machines as the war goes on.”

“Kill squads?”

“Basically hit-and-run teams. They’re mostly autonomous, and their job — their only job — is to sow confusion among the enemy ranks, make them think there are more of us out there than there actually are. It’s a dangerous job, and the ones running around out there are all volunteers. The hardest of the hardcore Mercer believers.”

“Sounds like a bunch of nice guys.”

“Not really. Anyway, this is just the beginning. His version of shock and awe. Strike first and fast, before the enemy knows what’s happening.”

“By indiscriminately killing a lot of innocent people?”

“That part…” He shook his head. “It caught a lot of us by surprise. It’s why I’m here. Why everyone’s here.”

Lara considered that the look in his eyes might have been all for her benefit, but she didn’t think so. She hadn’t noticed it before, but now that she was sitting across from him and neither one of them had moved for a long time, she saw the bags under his eyes, proof that rest wasn’t something Riley was familiar with for a while now.

“Phase one was shock and awe,” she said. “What’s phase two?”

“Recruitment,” Riley said. “Mercer knows he can’t keep fighting this with just 500 soldiers, even as well-trained and committed as they are. Guns and ammo aren’t the issue. We cleaned up more than one Army depot before all of this. His plan was always to start with Texas, get the Texans behind him, before expanding to the other states. He thinks if he inflicts enough damage, make them fear him enough, that he can convert the collaborators, including all the townspeople that can pick up a gun and fight with him.”

“Why now? Why didn’t he just wait until he had more men?”

“He said we couldn’t, that the longer we waited the more comfortable the townspeople would become with their new life, and it would be harder to convince them. That, and with every FOB we establish, we increase our risk of being discovered. I don’t know how much of that was bullshit, honestly.”

“What if that doesn’t work?” Lara asked. “What if the collaborators won’t turn? What if they keep resisting him and he has to kill more and more people?”

Riley pursed his lips. “Then a lot of people are going to die for no reason.” He put his spork down and looked intently across the table at her. “Now you know why I have to get my people out of here. I won’t let Mercer throw them into the meat grinder. The only option is to run.”

“What exactly does he want from us again?” Blaine asked.

“To transport his people away from here,” Lara said.

“Where is this magical place he wants to take them?” Carly asked.

Lara shook her head. “He hasn’t told me yet.”

“In case you say no?” Blaine said.

“That would be my guess. I don’t blame him. I’d do the same.”

The warmth inside the bridge of the Trident was a welcome change from the chill of the oil rig and the stuffy air in its hallways. She stood inside the room with Blaine and Carly, the three of them staring out the windshield at the Ocean Star seemingly fastened permanently to the Gulf of Mexico. To look at it, she wouldn’t have known there were nervous civilians crowding its rooms and hallways or anxious commandos waiting to rebel against the man who saved them.

“I guess he’s not entirely dumb,” Carly said. “Last night notwithstanding.”

“He didn’t have a choice,” Lara said. “Or he didn’t think he did, anyway. He’s walking a razor’s wire. Playing the loyal soldier to Mercer while committing what amounts to treason behind his back.”

“Just from what I hear about this Mercer guy,” Blaine said, shaking his head, “I definitely don’t wanna end up on his shit list.”

“Neither does Riley.”

“So what do we get in return for playing chauffeur to his forty-seven people?” Carly asked.

“Forty-eight, including Riley,” Lara said. “The most important thing we’ll get is fuel, since a dead-in-the-water Trident won’t exactly help him execute his plans.”

“Execute,” Carly said. “Nice choice of words, boss lady.”

Lara smiled. “Point is, we can fit forty-eight more people onboard. At least temporarily.”

“You sure about that?”

“Blaine?” Lara said, looking over at the big man for confirmation.

He nodded. “It’ll be a tight squeeze, but it’s not impossible. We’ll fill up the cabins and open areas, and push comes to shove they can spill outside onto the decks. Lots of space on the aft and bow.”

“And hey, a little extra sun never hurt anyone, right?” Carly said.

“They’ll also be loading us with supplies, too,” Lara said.

“What kind of supplies?”

“Food, water, guns, and ammo. He’s agreed to let us have as much food as we can carry in our galley, but I told him he could keep his guns and ammo.”

“You can never have too much ammo,” Blaine said.

Carly chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” Blaine said.

“That sounds like something Will or Danny would say.”

Blaine smiled. “Best compliment I’ve gotten all year.”

“Speaking of Danny,” Lara said. “Did he radio in yet?”

Carly’s face sobered up and Lara got her answer. She glanced at the digital clock on the bridge’s dashboard: 9:17 a.m.

“He’s late,” Carly said. “And not the oh-shit-Aunt-Flow’s-late sort of late, either.”

“Did you try making contact with him?”

“He’s not answering, either. No one is.”

“They’re probably busy looking for a way down to the shoreline. You know how unpredictable it is out there. If he ran into trouble, he would have let us know yesterday. Did he say anything?”

“No, but…”

“But?”

“I don’t know,” Carly said. “I got the feeling he wanted to tell me something, but didn’t, for whatever reason.” She shook her head and put on a brave face. “Of course, when it comes to Danny, I’ve learned it’s not always a wise policy to assume he has more going on upstairs than meets the eye.”

Lara reached over and put a hand on Carly’s arm and got a pursed smile in return.

“How does transporting Riley’s people and waiting to pick up Danny work?” Blaine asked. “What if Danny boy calls while we’re en route to wherever Riley wants us to take them?”

“I don’t know,” Lara said. “But we’ll do what we always do — deal with what’s in front of us and pivot if something comes up after that.”

“So we’re definitely doing this?” Carly asked.

“We need their fuel,” Lara said. “It won’t hurt to restock our galley at the same time.”

“I assume this means you think we can trust him,” Blaine asked.

“I think so.”

“You need to be sure, Lara.”

Lara nodded, maybe more to convince herself than Blaine. “Yes, we can trust him.”

And she thought, God, I hope I’m right…

Faith, the girl who had been driving her back and forth between the Ocean Star and the Trident, was coming back to pick her up. This time Lara wouldn’t be alone, and stood at the swimming platform at the back of the yacht with Hart at her side and the other five men behind them. They were rubbing their wrists and blinking at the sun like prisoners who hadn’t been let out for years instead of less than twenty-four hours.

“You made the right choice,” Hart said. “I know it couldn’t have been an easy one, but then, you are Lara.”

“You figured that out too, huh?” she said.

“After our first talk last night,” he nodded. “You sound different in person, but I’ve heard your voice enough times that it’s stuck in a loop inside my head.”

She gave him a curious look.

“Some of the guys carry around iPods with your broadcasts on them,” Hart said and smiled almost shyly at her. “During a supply run in the early days, one of the groups raided an Apple store. They brought back stacks of those tiny iPods. They’re pretty good for loading with music, or in your case, inspirational messages. Doesn’t take much power to charge, either, and they last a ridiculously long time.”

“Are you telling me there are guys running around out there with iPods loaded with my broadcast?”

“Uh huh.”

“That’s…disturbing.”

“It’s hard to explain, but your messages, especially the first one — this stranger speaking to us through the airwaves one night, telling us how to fight back, that there’s hope as long as we don’t give up…” He shook his head and again looked almost embarrassed. “It had a profound effect on a lot of us, more than you’ll ever know.”

Lara felt a slight shiver run through her at the thought of Mercer’s (killers) men flying around in planes bombing civilians or rolling around in tanks shelling pregnant women while listening to and getting inspiration from her messages. The whole thing made her want to vomit, and it was all she could do to concentrate on the approaching vessel instead. Hart must have seen her discomfort, because he let the topic go.

She couldn’t be sure, but Faith looked like she was smiling widely as she got closer. The young woman had upgraded to a bigger boat now that she would be driving six extra bodies back to the oil rig instead of just Lara.

“What about Mercer?” she asked Hart.

“What about him?” Hart said.

“When did you figure out he wasn’t who he said he was?”

“That’s the thing. I can’t really say if he ever actually lied to us.”

“No?”

Hart scrunched his face in thought, his graying hair rising and falling against the cool wind. “He gave us everything he promised, and in return we gave him our loyalty. It wasn’t like he demanded it. We gave it to him willingly.”

“You still think you had a choice?”

Hart sighed. “Maybe not. Maybe it was one of those unspoken trade-offs. Whatever it was, I don’t think he ever lied to us. He might not have told us everything, but in the early days, as we were preparing for what the younger guys called R-Day, I don’t think most of us — or maybe it was just me — fully understood what he was asking us to do.”

“Slaughter innocents…”

“Yeah,” Hart said quietly, as if that one word drained all of his energy.

One of the five men behind them walked forward and waved at Faith. He was young, with short blond hair, and was beaming as Faith approached them.

James, I presume.

Lara looked past Faith at the Ocean Star waiting for them in the near distance. She ended up staring at the towering crane, which looked like a stray limb poking out of the sea. If she stared hard enough, she thought she might have spotted something moving around up there. But of course it could just be the bright sun playing tricks on her eyes.

“Riley told me there was a guy named Peters up there,” she said, pointing at the crane.

Hart nodded. “Uh huh.”

“He said Peters never misses.”

“He doesn’t.”

“First time for everything.”

Hart smiled. “Not with Peters.”

15 Gaby

Whatever confidence Benford and Fritz had while they assaulted the bank fizzled when their number was halved, with Kip and Justin likely dead somewhere out there. How else would Mason have gotten his hands on their radio?

Gaby couldn’t help but look down at her watch every few minutes. Nightfall came fast in Texas in the winter, and it would be pitch-dark by 5:30 p.m.

And right now…1:46 p.m.

Time flies when you’re outgunned.

She looked across the bank lobby at Fritz and Benford crouched at the front of the building. Fritz was peeking out of the hole in the wall while Benford moved from the still-intact front doors to the remaining windows. At some point during his back and forth, he took out his ham radio and spoke into it. He kept his voice low, as if he knew she was eavesdropping, but because of the short distance, she managed to hear snippets of the conversation anyway. Benford did most of the talking and she caught the words ghouls and torch it before he turned the radio off and slipped it back into his pack.

Gaby exchanged a look with Danny, both their backs against the island counter. They were close enough to see the empty street outside but far enough to stay out of the path of any stray bullets. Hopefully, anyway.

She mouthed at him, “Did he say ‘Torch it?’”

Danny nodded.

“What did he mean?” she mouthed.

Danny shrugged and she swore he mouthed back, “Tacos,” but that couldn’t have been right, because it didn’t make any sense.

She gave him a questioning look and he grinned, and she thought, Dammit, Danny, this is no time for one of your stupid jokes.

She sighed and looked forward at Fritz and Benford. Somewhere beyond the hole between the two men was Mason and who knew how many collaborators. Either he had finally gotten the reinforcements Benford had been waiting for, or Mason had left with enough men to take both Justin and Kip out. Either way, Mason was out there and he had the upper hand, because there was no way for them to leave Gallant First Bank without being shot.

She glanced back at the hallway and at the door on the other side of the dark passageway. What were the chances Mason didn’t already have someone waiting in the back alley just in case? The man was an opportunist scumbag and a dozen other unlikeable things, but the one word she would never use to describe him was stupid. But just in case Mason did decide to come through there, she and Danny had helped Fritz blockade it with a heavy metal filing cabinet from the manager’s office. It had bought them some goodwill, and, hopefully, further convinced Mercer’s men that they were on their side.

The silent lull inside the lobby and outside in the rest of Gallant was unbearable. In the aftermath of Mason’s mocking radio call, he had gone uncharacteristically quiet. When she looked over at Danny, he was staring at the pile of weapons resting in the corner across from them. Fritz, near the left side of the opening, stood in their way, but he was so focused on what was potentially outside that she wasn’t even sure if he remembered they were still in the room with him and Benford.

When Danny looked over at her, she shook her head and mouthed, “Too risky.”

He nodded, agreeing.

“Any other bright ideas?” she mouthed.

He shook his head, then shrugged before turning back to Benford and Fritz, and said out loud, “Um, guys?”

“What?” Benford said without bothering to look back at them.

“Don’t wanna be a downer here, but you are aware that the reason they’re not attacking is because they don’t have to, right?”

Fritz looked over his shoulder at them. “What’s that mean?”

“You know something we don’t?” Benford added, also looking back now.

“All those fresh ghoul nests in town that you saw while you were picking your way here,” Gaby said. “Remember?”

“Aw, fuck,” Fritz said. He shot Benford a quick, worried look. “They’re right. We’re sitting ducks in here. Those fuckers don’t have to come in to get us; if we’re still here when it gets dark, they’ll be the least of our problems.”

“I’m open to suggestions,” Benford said.

“The uniforms,” Danny said.

“What uniforms?” Fritz said.

“The ones in the office.”

“The dead guys?”

“That’s them.”

“What about them?” Benford said.

“The first thing you learn in the towns is that the ghouls respect the uniform. Hey, men in uniform, who doesn’t like them, amirite?” When neither Fritz nor Benford said anything, Danny continued: “Point is, they recognize the uniforms and steer clear. I don’t know how or why; they just do.”

“He’s right,” Gaby said, picking up where Danny left off. If they were going to play the collaborator-turned-defectors, she might as well embrace the role, too. “They told us to always keep the uniforms on at night, especially when we’re outside the town limits. It’s always worked.”

“Always?” Fritz said doubtfully.

“Always,” Gaby nodded, and thought, Probably.

Benford and Fritz exchanged a look, but from their mannerisms she could tell that neither men were convinced.

Danny must have seen it too, because he said, “Don’t think of it as wearing a dead man’s clothing. Think of it as putting on a dead man’s stink to keep back the wolves.”

“I got a better idea,” Benford said. “The Jeep.”

“The Jeep?” Fritz said.

“We get in that Jeep, and we take our chances on the road. Blast our way out of here.”

Gaby exchanged her own look with Danny and saw that he was thinking the exact same thing: “Are these guys serious?”

When she glanced back, Mercer’s men were grinning at each other as if they had just won the lottery. She didn’t know why she expected men who were going around Texas killing everything that moved to be open to logic, so it made some kind of warped sense that they would prefer to go out in a blaze of glory.

And our luck just keeps getting better…

“Fuck yeah,” Fritz was saying. “We’ll drive it right down their throats.”

“Can’t be too many of them out there,” Benford said. He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself and Fritz. “Maybe a half dozen, if that.”

“You sure? They did take Kip and Justin…”

“They could have sneaked up on them. We assumed they’d left the city, but what if they didn’t? What if they were just hiding out somewhere else in town when we hit the bank?”

“That’s possible, I guess.”

“We just need to find the key.”

“The key?” Fritz said, as if he didn’t understand the concept.

“For the Jeep,” Benford said, and peeked out at the vehicle in question still parked on the sidewalk outside, so close and yet so, so far away. “It wasn’t in the ignition when I was out there earlier.”

Danny turned to her, and Gaby saw the spark of something in his eyes — not mischievous, exactly, but there was something there.

Before she could ask him, Danny said to Benford and Fritz, “Whoever was driving it probably pocketed the key when he parked.” When the two men looked over, Danny jerked a thumb over his shoulder and at the back hallway. “It might still be there.”

“Worth a shot,” Benford said to Fritz.

Fritz frowned. “You mean, go through the bodies?”

“Don’t be so squeamish. They’re already dead.”

“That’s not helping.”

“I’ll give you a hand,” Danny said.

Fritz got up and jogged, slightly hunched, across the bank.

Danny started to get up, but Fritz pointed the muzzle of his AR at him and said, “You stay here.” Then, at her, “You come with me.”

“I thought we were besties now,” Danny said.

“Not quite.” Then, when he saw that Danny hadn’t sat back down, “Sit down.”

Danny did, while Gaby got up and followed Fritz into the back hallway.

As she went, she sneaked a look back and saw Danny watching her. He nodded, as if to say, “You can do it,” and she thought, No I can’t, Danny, no I can’t, but she returned his nod anyway, because there were no other options she could see.

Gaby turned around and glimpsed Fritz just before he disappeared through the first door in the back. She followed him and sucked in a breath and steeled herself for what was waiting for her in there. For some reason, dragging them into the room earlier — she could still see the dry bloody trails they’d left behind, leading all the way from the lobby — hadn’t affected her at all, but the prospect of seeing them again…

Stop it. You have work to do.

Focus!

Like the manager’s office in the back (where Nate was sleeping, blissfully oblivious to everything happening around him), there were no windows in the room, but there was still just enough light to see with once her eyes adjusted to the new environment. Semidarkness or not, there was no way she wouldn’t know about the bodies at the back, because she and Danny had put them there.

“Don’t get any ideas,” Fritz said as he grabbed one of the dead men and pulled him off the pile to rifle through his pockets.

“What ideas?” she said as she got ahold of a heavy man with a mustache. The thud! he made as he landed on the floor made her wince. She’d had a lot of experience with bodies these days, but she still had to fight back against her gag reflex.

“That’s a good girl,” Fritz said.

She didn’t bother responding and instead shoved her hands into the dead man’s pockets and rummaged around them. She found a pack of gum and spare 5.56 shells. The man also had random supplies in the pouches around his waist, but the ones designed to carry ammo were already empty, their contents currently sitting in one of the lobby corners right now along with all the weapons. She tossed the useless items and lifted the man up from the floor just enough to go through his back pockets.

“Gaby,” Fritz said.

“What?”

“That short for something? Gabrielle?”

“Does it matter?”

“Just making conversation.”

“Don’t feel like you have to put yourself out.”

He chuckled. “Come on; we’re on the same side now. Or what, you’re taken or something? You and the California surfer?”

“We’re just friends.”

“Ah,” he said, and she thought, Jesus, is he flirting with me?

The thought further nauseated her, especially given where they were and what they were doing at the moment. She was still trying to decide how to feel about Fritz’s comments when her hand touched cold steel in the dead man’s back pocket. She quickly wrapped her fingers around it and pulled her hand out.

“Nothing,” Fritz said. He was working so close to her that she could smell his sweat as he reached over and pulled another body toward him, handling the dead man as if he were a (heavy) bag of flour. “You get lucky?”

“No key yet,” she said, turning her body slightly so more of her back was to Fritz.

She opened her hand and looked down at the folded pocketknife. The handle was about four inches long, which meant the hidden blade would be around three inches or so.

There is a God.

She had been prepared to do this the hard way, by getting her hands on one of Fritz’s weapons — either his sidearm or the knife in a sheath strapped to his left hip. It wouldn’t have been easy; Fritz was bigger and stronger, and despite the element of surprise, she would have had to get really, really lucky. There would have been a lot of noise, maybe even a gunshot, and Danny would be at risk.

But what else was new? They were all at risk if they did nothing.

“Maybe it’s not here,” Fritz was saying. “Wouldn’t that be a kick in the balls? Might have to shoot our way out of here on foot. I guess that’ll be fun, too.”

Fun? That’s one way to put it.

“Other guys got into this because they believed in the cause,” Fritz continued, oblivious to what she was doing next to him, “but me and Benford? We just like the excitement. Be all you can be, right?”

She pocketed the knife and turned around. “Anything?”

“Zilch.” He wrinkled his nose. “And to top it off, they’re starting to reek, too.”

“We all reek.”

He grinned at her. “Some reek less than others.”

Jesus, he really is flirting with me.

She managed to force out a smile back at him before turning to the next body. It was heavy, but not too much that she couldn’t have dragged it closer with a little straining, and it certainly wasn’t heavy enough that she had to make noises as she edged it near her, trying to get it off the two bodies underneath it.

“Jesus, he’s a big one,” she said between grunts.

“Time to hit the gym,” Fritz said.

“Maybe after this.”

“Make an appointment. I’m always available for consultation.”

“Deal,” she said, and grunted again as she pulled at the body.

Fritz got up from the dead man he was searching and moved over and grabbed her man by the arm. Gaby had just enough time to glimpse the collaborator’s face — it was the same one that Danny had shot back in the lobby earlier. It might have been the lack of light, but she swore the man looked completely at peace.

“He’s not that heavy,” Fritz was saying.

“Heavy enough for me,” she said.

“I got it,” Fritz said, and pulled hard enough that he dumped the body on the floor with a loud thud.

While he was pulling, Gaby had taken a step back to give him room to work. At the same time, she slipped her hand into her pocket and took out the folded knife, then thumbed the stud sticking out of the side that allowed users to simply push the knife open with one hand — or more precisely, one thumb.

There was a slight click as the blade came out — about three inches worth, with a serrated section — but if Fritz heard it, he didn’t react. He stood in front and slightly to the left of her, almost exactly opposite the door behind them, which allowed a stream of pale light to splash across his back. She had no trouble whatsoever finding his neck, portions of it still layered with the face paint he hadn’t taken off since she first saw him. Whatever it was he and Benford had covered themselves in, it had stayed in place remarkably well.

Fritz crouched and reached for the dead man’s pockets, saying, “You’re taking the last two. No fair I have to do all of them. Equal opportunity and all that, right?”

He was chuckling, his back to her, when she jammed the knife into the side of his throat, aiming for the middle while at the same time wrapping her left arm around his head and seeking out his mouth with her palm. He let out a startled grunt and jerked back even as she pushed the knife in further, and his body slammed into her chest and knocked her off balance as they spilled to the floor. As she fell back, all Gaby could think about was locating Fritz’s mouth to silence him so he couldn’t let out a scream that would alert Benford outside.

A loud thump! as she slammed into the floor with Fritz’s thrashing body on top of her. There was pain, but she was too busy pulling the knife out of Fritz’s neck to properly feel it. An arc of blood spurted across the room, the fresh wetness mingling with the multiple trails of dry blood that smeared the floor from when they had dragged the bodies inside earlier. Fritz’s body continued to spaz on top of her as she gave up trying to find his mouth (Jesus, where the hell is his mouth?) and instead concentrated on locking her free arm around his throat to keep him from moving around too much as she plunged the knife once, twice, three times into his chest.

He continued flailing against her, his much bigger and heavier body making it hard for her to suck in air, even as she heard him letting out a gurgling sound. Warm blood splashed both of her arms, but mostly her left hand as it tightened around his throat in a vise grip. She held him in place even as he struggled, his legs kicking out between hers. The man seemed to never run out of strength, not even when she embedded the knife a fourth time into his chest.

Then finally, mercifully, his entire body went still.

She gasped for a lungful of much-needed air and pushed his body off her, then rolled over onto her side and stared at the darkening wall for the next two, five — ten seconds. Both of her fists and most of her long sleeves were covered in blood, along with her chest and chin. Her clothing clung, damp with Fritz’s life force, the fresh stink of death threatening to make her vomit back out the MRE she’d eaten earlier.

Get a hold of yourself!

Danny, remember? He’s still in the lobby with Benford!

She pushed up onto her knees and looked back at Fritz just to be sure he was dead. He wasn’t moving at all, though his eyes were wide open and staring up at the ceiling. She remembered how he was flirting with her just before she murdered him and could no longer hold back; she bent over to throw up.

But it was a dry heave, and the chicken pesto pasta didn’t come up. There was spittle, though, and she swiped at it with the back of her blood-covered palm.

Jesus, what part of her wasn’t covered in blood?

The sudden realization of voices, coming from the lobby, made her straighten up. She tightened her grip around the knife instinctively.

It was Danny, saying something about a “horse and a bar,” though she couldn’t make out every word. Maybe it was the ringing in her ears or the sound of her heart hammering against her chest as it tried to catch up to her labored breathing.

Danny was still talking when she shook off the nausea, then tossed the knife and hurried back over to Fritz’s body. She pushed it up, ignoring the warmth of his blood against her skin, and tugged the rifle off him, then did the same to the gun in his holster. A black Smith & Wesson semiautomatic, smaller than she would have expected given a man as big as Fritz.

She bypassed the long knife strapped to his left hip and collected all the spare magazines he had on him, including an extra for the pistol, and staggered back up to her feet, feeling much better with the ammo’s extra weight on her. She made sure the AR-15’s safety was off as she approached the door, listening for clues that Benford might have heard the scuffle with Fritz, but all she could hear was Danny still talking.

Was it just her, or did he seemed to be talking louder than usual? It was almost like he was trying to keep Benford’s attention so he wouldn’t hear—

Her. Danny was distracting Benford because if anyone could hear what was happening in here with the open door, it would be Danny, who was much closer than Benford.

She smiled to herself.

I love you, Danny. I really, really do.

She wiped her bloody hands on her pant legs so she would have a better grip on her weapons, then leaned out the door and glanced left toward the lobby.

“Oh, come on, that was funny,” Danny was saying.

Benford might have grunted, but he didn’t take his eyes off the street outside.

“I got another one,” Danny said. “It involves girls in bikinis. You like girls in bikinis, don’t you, Benford?”

“What I would like is for you to sit there and be quiet,” Benford said.

“Oh, you’re no fun,” Danny said, just as he looked back and saw her, and grinned.

She returned it before slipping the Smith & Wesson out of her front waistband. Danny nodded and began to slowly raise himself up from the floor. Gaby went into a slight crouch, took a breath, and then slid the pistol across the lobby to him.

She had put a lot of muster on it, thinking she needed to in order to clear the space between her and Danny, but it was probably too much and the gun made a skeeeeeee noise as it traveled to its destination—

And Benford heard it!

Mercer’s man turned around and started to get up, but by then Danny had already snatched the gun off the floor and, still on one knee, twisted and shot Benford twice in the chest. Benford seemed to stumble, as if he had just lost his balance, before sitting back down on the floor with the M4 landing perfectly in his lap.

Gaby hurried out from the back, focusing on the hole in the wall next to Benford’s awkwardly sitting form. She half expected Mason’s men to use the momentary distraction to attack, but they didn’t, and she made it to the front of the bank without having to dodge bullets. She leaned against the wall and peeked out at the street. When she couldn’t see another living soul outside, she pulled back behind cover.

“Anything?” Danny asked behind her.

“No,” she said.

“Of course not. Why make it easy for me? My luck’s not that good.”

“What now?”

“Gear up,” he said.

Danny slid the Smith & Wesson into his empty holster, then walked over to the pile of weapons in the corner and helped himself to an M4, slung it, and began snatching up magazines from the floor and stuffing them into his barren pouches.

“Grab that 203,” he said. “It might come in handy.”

Gaby crouched next to Benford, ignored his accusing stare, and picked up his rifle. She poked through his pouches but couldn’t find any ammo for the grenade launcher attached to the weapon.

“He must have used up all the grenade rounds,” she said.

Danny grunted. “Figures.”

She didn’t bother taking the spare magazines on Benford. She was already flush with Fritz’s, and they were interchangeable with the M4. She slung the rifle and stood up, then stared at the hole again.

The Jeep was still out there on the sidewalk, so tempting and yet so impossible.

“Did you find the key?” Danny asked.

“No, but we didn’t look through all the bodies yet.”

“Keep an eye out,” Danny said, and jogged through the lobby and disappeared into the back room.

Gaby leaned against the wall and this time took her time looking up and down the empty streets of Gallant, Texas. She let out an involuntary sigh as the reassuring warmth of sunlight brushed against her skin.

Something caught her eye as it traveled up the street, whipping past the parked Jeep. She glimpsed a small strip of paper with black lettering on it…it was another one of Mercer’s propaganda flyers. She followed the white sheet’s progress until it disappeared up the street, then realized she was leaning too far out and pulled herself quickly back inside.

Stupid. If there was a sniper out there, you’d be missing a head right now.

They had to be out there somewhere, close enough to the bank to keep an eye on Mercer’s men. The most obvious choice would be the two-story department store directly across from her. The sign above the front doors read “Gallant’s Best,” and the front exterior was painted red and white with shades of blue. A nod to the American flag, maybe. She squinted but couldn’t tell if there were things other than just curtains covering the building’s windows. But if Mason’s men were in there, the best spots to watch the bank would be either the roof or from behind one of the second-floor windows—

She heard a squawk behind her and glanced back at the two-way radio still clipped to Benford’s hip.

“Talk about a curious development,” a voice said through the radio.

Mason.

“Does this mean you and Danny boy got the upper hand on Mercer’s dickheads?” Mason asked.

She stared at the radio but didn’t reach for it.

“What’s the matter, kitty cat got your tongue, sweetheart? Don’t be shy. If I’d wanted to harm you, I would have done it when you stuck your head out a second ago.”

Goddammit.

“Go on,” Mason said. “I won’t bite. Much.”

She crouched and grabbed Benford’s radio but didn’t use it.

Mason didn’t seem to mind. “I know what you’re wondering: How did that handsome devil escape Mercer’s boys? Admit it. It’s been on your mind ever since you found out I’m still out here kicking and winning it.”

She couldn’t help herself and finally keyed the radio. “You’re confusing me with someone who give a shit.”

“She lives!”

“But I’ll tell you one sure thing, Mason: Your luck’s not going to last forever. One of these days you’re going to find yourself in a noose that you can’t slip out of.”

“Why so serious, sweetheart?”

“I’m not your sweetheart.”

“Sweetie, then?”

She looked up as Danny slid quietly across the lobby and pushed up against the wall on the other side of the hole. He looked over at her and shook his head: No key.

“I see Danny boy made it through okay, too,” Mason said through the radio.

Danny cocked his head questioningly.

“He can see us,” she said. “I don’t know where he is, but he can see us right now.”

“That sneaky little twat,” Danny said. “You’re right; I should have plucked out his lying tongue back in Starch.”

“I told you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Then, “You know, Benford and Fritz weren’t completely wrong. We could make a run for it.”

“What about Nate?”

“Right. Nate…”

“We can’t leave him here, Danny. I won’t do it.”

“There’s always Benny…”

“Danny…”

“Kidding!”

The radio squawked and Mason said, “I know what the two of you are discussing right now. ‘Should we make a run for it? Surely,’ you’re saying, ‘facing anything out there is better than staying put when it gets dark.’”

“Asshole’s kinda psychic, isn’t he?” Danny said.

“I don’t know about the psychic part, but the asshole part’s spot on,” Gaby said.

“Just remember,” Mason was saying, “I just need the two of you alive. They said nothing about keeping you in one piece. Do keep that in mind.”

Gaby looked across at Danny. “Promise me.”

He nodded. “We’re not going anywhere without Mal Reynolds.”

“Who?”

“Firefly?”

She shook her head.

“Never mind,” Danny said. “Point is, we’re not leaving without your boyfriend. And you can take that to the bank. Or, well, since we’re already at the bank…”

“Thank you,” she said, and got up and tossed Danny the two-way radio before dashing into the back of the building.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Danny asked after her.

“Sweet talk him to death.”

“I’ll give it a shot, I guess,” Danny said.

Gaby slipped inside the manager’s office in the back and caught her breath, because where Nate was supposed to be, there was just an empty sleeping bag—

“Gaby,” a voice said.

She spun around and found Nate behind her, leaning against the wall while clutching a large book in front of him. His face was pale and covered in sweat, and he didn’t look like he could stand at all if not for the wall propping him up.

“Jesus, Nate,” she said.

“I heard shooting. What happened? Where are we?” He glanced around the room. “Looks familiar…”

“We’re back at the bank,” she said, and went to him.

She helped him sit down on the floor, positioning his back against the wall to keep him from toppling over. He flinched with every movement, but just the fact that he was finally awake (and alive) made her overjoyed.

“What’s with the book?” she asked.

“My secret weapon,” he grinned.

“Looks dangerous.”

“I swear it weighs like 500 pounds.” He paused for a moment and looked down at his stomach. “By the way, I think I was shot.”

“Danny and I dug the bullet out. You don’t remember?”

He shook his head. “I don’t remember a thing.”

“That’s okay. What matters is that you’re awake and alive.”

She stroked his face and leaned forward and kissed him. Tenderly at first, afraid of breaking him, then just a little harder.

“Gaby,” he whispered.

She pulled back slightly. “Hmm?”

“You have blood all over you, babe.”

“I know.”

“Whose is it? Do I want to know?”

“It’s not mine or Danny’s, and this time it’s not yours, and that’s all that matters,” she said, and kissed him again.

16 Lara

The sign on the wall read “Roustabouts 5:00 A.M. sharp” with the “5:00 A.M.” in large blocky red letters. She had seen similar signs along the rig, but especially around the living quarters where, she assumed, the “roustabouts” congregated.

“Five a.m.?” Bonnie said, almost whispering. “I don’t think I’ve ever had to wake up at five a.m. even when I was flying around the world doing runway work.”

“Must be nice,” Lara said, matching Bonnie’s pitch.

“Being hot has its privileges, what can I say? You could have passed for a model, you know. What are you, five-seven?”

“Five-five.”

“Never mind, then.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Just being honest.”

They stood in the back of the communications room, watching Riley wearing a headset and standing over a console lined with buttons and monitors while a young woman who had introduced herself as Terry manipulated the controls. The woman, who looked to be in her late thirties with naturally curly hair, seemed to know what she was doing, even though Lara could see her fingers tapping nervously on the table. Lara could only hear snippets of the ongoing conversation, and all of it from the room’s side. While Terry was clearly nervous, Riley was calm and his voice remained steady throughout.

“Roger that,” Riley was saying into the mic sticking out of his headset. “We’ll be ready to receive you by then. Ocean Star out.”

Riley took off the headset and handed it back to Terry, whose hands were shaking as she took it. “Jesus Christ, Riley. I never want to do that again. I think I’m going to piss my pants.”

Riley put a comforting hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “You did good, Terry.”

“You think they suspect anything?”

“If they did, then they wouldn’t still be on their way here.”

“Where are they coming from?” Lara asked.

He looked over. “Texas. We’re going to be getting a lot more units coming our way for refueling and resupplying now that the first phase is reaching its end.”

“And then back to the war?”

“Some of them. But most will be heading back to The Ranch.”

“The Ranch?” Bonnie said.

“That’s what the younger guys call it,” Riley said. “It’s our main base of operations. It’s also where Mercer planned all of this and where we built up the forces that’re being used in Texas right now.”

“So what happens when this unit shows up?” Lara asked.

“We’ll pretend like everything’s okay and refuel and resupply them and send them on their way.”

“Just like that?”

“That’s the plan.”

Lara exchanged a look with Bonnie.

“What?” Riley said.

“What happens if they don’t buy it?” Lara asked.

“They will,” Riley said. “We’ve done this before. Besides, I know the unit that’s heading our way right now. One of them is a good friend of mine. I would know if they suspected anything,” he added, looking back at Terry when he said it. “We just carry on like business as usual, and everything will be fine.”

“You sound pretty certain,” Lara said.

“I am.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

He shook his head. “I’m not.”

“He’s cute,” Bonnie said.

“Who?” Lara asked.

“Riley. Baby blue eyes.”

“Is that what they call them?”

“Tall, broad-shouldered…”

“From what I can tell in the few hours I’ve been here, he’s not taken yet, so feel free to make your move.”

“I was thinking more about you.”

Lara sighed. “Bonnie, I brought you here to help me do inventory and figure out how much space we’ll need to clear on the Trident to accommodate Riley’s people, and because Carly can’t — and won’t — leave the bridge until Danny calls in — so don’t start with me.”

“I’m just saying; you could do worse.”

“I don’t have to do anything. And my love life — or lack thereof — is not up for debate.”

“Sorry,” Bonnie said.

The two of them turned a corner and pushed their way into the stairwell. Every step they took produced a loud clang, something that used to bother her — anything that made a lot of noise, especially when she was the cause of it, bothered her — but she had become used to it after going up and down the Ocean Star all morning.

“Sorry,” Bonnie said again. “You’re right; it’s none of my business. I’m just worried about you, that’s all. We all are.”

Again with the “we.”

“Tell everyone I’m fine,” Lara said.

“I know you are. That’s why we trust you with our lives.”

Maybe you shouldn’t, because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

“We’re behind you,” Bonnie said, apparently taking Lara’s silence as approval to keep going. “We know every decision you make is because you’re looking out for us. Everyone on the boat believes that. We have a lot of faith in you, Lara, and we care about your well-being.”

“Like getting me a boyfriend?” she said, and this time smiled at the ex-model.

“Something like that,” Bonnie smiled back. “Baby blue eyes, Lara. Baby blues.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said as they reached the landing at the top of the stairwell.

The door in front of them was a thick metal airtight structure with a round wheel instead of a traditional lever or knob. Bonnie gripped the wheel and spun it with both hands, then pushed the heavy door open.

They stepped outside and onto a staircase that overlooked the Ocean Star’s top deck. Lara tugged at her jacket’s collar as they made their way down and over to one of the edges overlooking the western part of the platform. They leaned against a chipped yellow railing with the water sloshing below them while signs around them warned of the importance of hard hats and holding onto the railings at all times.

She had no trouble locating the Trident anchored nearby, swaying slightly back and forth against the waves. It was only about a football field’s length from them, and if she stared hard enough she could just make out Blaine’s outline on the bridge and Carly pacing behind him.

“Carly’s going to burn a hole in the bridge’s floor,” Bonnie said.

“She’s worried about Danny,” Lara said.

“Hopefully he radios in soon. I’d hate to lose him, Gaby, and Nate.”

If we did, it’d be my fault for sending them out there in the first place.

“Yeah, me too,” she said instead.

There was a white tube connecting the Trident to an old gray refueling ship that was about a quarter of the yacht’s size. The vessel had been attached to the other side of the Ocean Star when they first approached the rig, so they hadn’t seen it before. For a while she wasn’t sure if Riley could live up to his promise of fuel, but he’d proven her wrong. The more she learned about the rig’s importance to Mercer’s war efforts, the easier it was for her to believe that Riley’s mutiny was not going to be well-received. The fact that Riley planned on taking the refueling boat with them, along with the inventory and armory, would only add to the insult.

He’s risking a lot.

No, that’s not true. He’s risking everything.

Two men wearing black tactical gear and carrying rifles walked past them. They were part of Riley’s security personnel and were back at their stations now that he didn’t need to hide them from her anymore. There was also someone on the crane in the background. Lara had seen the man’s silhouette every now and then, but never for too long. That would be the oft-mentioned, never-seen Peters.

She unclipped her radio and pressed the transmit lever. “Blaine, come in.”

“Blaine here,” the big man answered. “Everything good over there?”

“We’re on schedule. Faith’s taking Bonnie back to you with the first of the supply runs in a few minutes. Depending on how close Mercer’s men are from us, there might be one more, at least for now.”

“What about the refugees?”

Lara and Bonnie exchanged a grin.

“He’s not wrong,” Bonnie said. “They are sorta like refugees.”

Lara said into the radio, “They’ll come over later once Mercer’s people are gone. Missing civilians would be a huge tip-off that something’s not right on the Ocean Star.”

“Good point,” Blaine said.

“How long before the tank’s topped off?”

“Ten more minutes, give or take. Has Riley told you where we’re taking him yet? It’d be nice to know now so I can get started figuring out the best route there. It’d also give me something to do other than watch Carly wear out the carpet back here.”

“I’ll let you know when he tells me. Until then, be on the lookout for Bonnie in a few.”

“Roger that,” Blaine said.

She put the radio away. “You should get going,” she said to Bonnie. “They’re probably finished loading the supplies by now.”

Bonnie took out a notepad from her back pocket and scanned it. “That’ll be the cooking oil. He’s giving us half of his stock. Hot and generous.”

Lara rolled her eyes. “Get going.”

“Yes, sir, ma’am, sir,” Bonnie said.

She gave Lara a mock salute, then pushed off the railing and headed down the nearby stairs, her boots clanging off the steps after her.

“Where did you get that thing, anyway?” a voice asked behind her just before Riley appeared next to her a few seconds later, taking over the spot Bonnie had just vacated.

She knew Riley was only in his early thirties, but he looked so much older than that. It wasn’t just the lack of sleep either; there was a heaviness about everything he did and said. In another place, another time, he would be handsome and she might have gotten weak in the knees if they had met in a bar or at a party, but now, watching him staring at the Trident, she could only think about the burdens of leadership and the choices he’d made. Not just for him, but for forty-seven other souls.

I wonder if I could make that kind of choice in his shoes?

Will could have. But then, Will could do a lot of things…

“I guess you could say it sort of just showed up when we needed it most,” she said.

Riley chuckled.

“Did I say something funny?” she asked.

“The boat showed up when you needed it most, and now it’s here. I needed a way to get my people off the Ocean Star, and you showed up. There must be something special about that boat.”

Its previous owners would beg to disagree, she thought, but said, “I never asked you how you spotted us in the first place.”

“Peters.”

“Peters?” she said, and reflexively turned around and glanced up at the crane, though this time she couldn’t see anything that looked like a man up there.

“He’s got one of those amateur telescopes up there,” Riley said. “It’s supposed to be used for astronomy, but he’s adapted it for terrestrial surveillance. The damn thing weighed close to twenty pounds and it took forever getting it up there in one piece, not to mention welded into place. He spotted the Trident when it was still twenty miles away — even before you guys anchored — otherwise we’d never have met.”

“Lucky you.”

“Lucky us,” Riley said.

“Lucky you I didn’t give the order to shoot last night.”

He smiled. “Definitely lucky me, then.”

Neither one of them said anything for a while, and they were content to lean against the railing and let the cold wind whip around them. A fishing boat had already left the Ocean Star while they were talking and was now maneuvering toward the back of the yacht, where a couple of figures were waiting for it. Faith and Bonnie would be on that boat along with the first stack of supplies from Riley’s inventory.

Finally, she said, “Why an oil rig?”

“Probably the same reason you’ve been living off the yacht,” Riley said. “The Ocean Star has the benefit of being isolated. You would have just cruised right past us if I hadn’t pulled my idiotic stunt last night.”

She smiled and hoped he didn’t see it.

“These things were built to withstand time and anything Mother Nature can throw at it,” Riley continued. “And while it’s not exactly halfway between the Texas shoreline and The Ranch, it’s the next best thing.”

“You mentioned The Ranch before. Where is it, exactly? Or is that something else I don’t need to know yet?”

“Have you ever heard of Black Tide Island?”

“It doesn’t ring any bells.”

“It’s a U.S. government-owned piece of real estate in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. The military uses it for war games, and it’s equipped with a base big enough to have its own accompanying landing strip.”

“That’s where your planes took off from.”

“No. I mean, yes, the planes Mercer’s using during R-Day have the range, but the logistics made it impossible, not to mention all the fuel they would burn just getting from point A to point B. The ones they’re flying out there were already sitting in Texas air bases, gathering dust. We only used Black Tide to train the pilots.”

“You mean people were flying around out here all this time and no one noticed?”

“Like I said, Black Tide is in the middle of nowhere, on purpose. How many other people have you run across before us?”

She thought about the dead body they had fished out of the ocean, then later, the voice on the radio begging her for help but that she had chosen to ignore…

“None,” she said.

“It’s a big ocean,” Riley said. “Anyway, after the pilots were trained, it was just a matter of sneaking them back into Texas with the main force. We already knew where to get everything we needed for the operation. Of course, it took the teams weeks to get the planes working, but Mercer is blessed with men who know their way around machines.”

“Blessed,” she said, unable and unwilling to hide the derision in her voice. “Not quite the word I’d use to describe what’s happening out there right now.”

“They’re only doing what he asked of them.” He leaned closer against the railing, as if he were trying to make himself small. “I’m not proud of any of this, Lara. I wish I could say I was braver, but I wasn’t.” He looked over his shoulder as the same two guards she had seen earlier passed them by again on their rounds. “When all of this is over, I’ll take the blame.”

“The blame for what?”

“For not putting a stop to this nightmare before it ever got started. But I didn’t. None of us did. We could have done so much more—I could have done so much more — but we didn’t, and we’re going to have to live with that.”

She thought about the voice on the radio again, asking for her to make contact, asking for her help…

Lara closed her eyes and counted to five, then opened them again.

“The plan was always to bail once we got out here,” Riley was saying, “but my transportation never arrived.”

“What happened?”

“At the last minute, Mercer decided to reroute it to help with the war effort. I think he’s planning to attack Port Arthur from two sides — land and sea.”

“So you needed a replacement transportation, fast.”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“What about that refueling ship?”

“It’s not exactly designed to haul people around, Lara. And definitely not forty-eight people and all of our supplies.”

“How did you convince everyone here to abandon Mercer’s war, anyway? That must have been one hell of a discussion.”

“It didn’t take that much convincing, actually.”

“No?”

“As the CO, I was able to handpick everyone here with us right now. So I only took the ones that I knew could be convinced. Most of them are friends, and some are known acquaintances.”

“So you only selected people who were already pro-mutiny.”

“Exactly.”

“Smart.”

“One of the few smart things I did, I guess you could say. It took a lot of work and vetting, but I had help.”

“Hart.”

He nodded. “Hart, Faith, Terry, and a few others. I never told you this, but the Ocean Star, in terms of staff, is the smallest FOB out here. It’s not because the rig can only accommodate forty-eight people. These were just the ones I could be sure of.”

“Are you sure about that?”

He looked over at her. “What do you mean?”

“You said you handpicked everyone here, but how can you be absolutely sure everyone sees things the way you do?”

“I don’t understand…”

“Fine. You only chose the ones you thought would be the most open to your mutiny. But how can you be absolutely certain every single one of them didn’t just say yes when you revealed your plan, not because they agreed with you, but because they had no choice?”

“No choice? Of course they had a choice.”

“What if some of them are just going along with you because they’re afraid of what will happen if they say no? You said it yourself how difficult it was to do what you’re doing because of everything Mercer’s done for you. He saved your life. He saved all of your lives. What if not everyone is quite as willing as you to cross the line from having doubts to full-on mutiny?”

Riley didn’t say anything for the longest time, and she found it difficult to read his face. Was the notion that he could have miscalculated even registering? Maybe he really didn’t understand the possibility that one of the forty-seven people he had brought onboard so they could all escape Mercer’s insanity together might not actually want to escape after all.

She felt a little sorry for him for introducing all of these doubts, but she pushed through the guilt (You’re getting really good at that…). She was getting involved in something that could cost more than just Riley and his people, but also the lives of everyone on the Trident, and she’d be damned if she didn’t face it head-on.

“I’m assuming you’re 100 % sure about Hart and the other soldiers,” she asked.

He nodded. “I am.”

“That leaves the civilians. What are the chances they’re just going along with you because they know you have the full backing of the guys with guns? Don’t you think in that situation it would be a little intimidating for them to say no? After all, they know you’re the one who came up with this idea.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t pick these names out of a hat, Lara. I looked into the eyes of each and every single one of them when I told them what I was planning. The things Mercer is doing out there in the name of saving humanity…” He shook his head and she could see him growing with confidence. “Trust me, I know every single person on the Ocean Star right now, and they all want to wash their hands of this bloodbath.”

Lara didn’t know if she believed him, but Riley seemed to embrace it as the truth, and she didn’t know any of these people — hell, she barely knew Riley — well enough to question his (absolute?) certainty.

“All right,” she nodded. “They’re your people. I accept that you know them better than me, but I just wanted you to consider the possibility you could be wrong. All it would take is one mistake, Riley, and there’s more at stake here than just your people.”

“I didn’t make any mistakes, Lara. They’re all on board. I would stake my life on it. Hell, I am staking my life on it.”

Famous last words, she thought, but didn’t voice her doubt.

Instead, she followed his gaze back out into the ocean, to the Trident and the busy activity at its aft.

“I like Hart; he’s a good second-in-command,” Riley said, “but he doesn’t always challenge my decisions. It’s nice having someone second-guessing me for once.”

“Glad to be of service,” she said, and they exchanged a slightly awkward smile.

“I don’t know if you’ve already guessed, but this whole war and leadership thing is new to me. I’m flying by the seat of my pants most of the time, doing my best not to get everyone who depends on me killed.”

Join the club.

“How long before Mercer’s men arrive?” she asked.

Riley glanced at his watch. “Soon. We’ll need to send the Trident away so it’s not spotted. Five miles in the opposite direction should do it.”

“I’ll let Blaine know once they finish loading the supplies.”

“Hey, Riley,” a voice called behind them. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“You found me,” Riley said, and started to turn. He hadn’t gotten fully around when there was a bang! and a stream of blood spewed out from behind his back at the same time a bullet pinged! off the railing.

Lara spun around as Riley’s body sagged to the floor next to her. The only reason he didn’t slip right into the water below was because he was clutching the railing with both arms. His face was plastered with a sheen of confusion as he stared at his shooter.

Her mind screamed to Go for your gun, go for your gun, you idiot! while the man who had shot Riley took a step toward him and was about to shoot him again. She knew she would never get her pistol out in time to stop him.

So she screamed “Don’t!” instead.

The sound of her voice startled the man and he looked over at her, as if seeing her for the first time. She didn’t know who he was, but there was nothing strange about that. She hadn’t come close to meeting all of Riley’s people and could count on one hand the number of faces she would recognize.

He had dark brown eyes partially hidden underneath a dirty baseball cap, and they were focusing in on her even as he swung the gun gripped tightly in his right fist in her direction—

Bang!

The second shot exploded in the air like a crack of thunder at almost the exact same time the man’s head, along with the cap perched on top of it, seemed to come apart. He collapsed, gun and body clanging against the steel platform floor. The gunshot’s echo was still fading across the endless ocean when Lara looked up at the crane and saw a dark figure silhouetted against the sun, and Riley’s words rushed back to her:

“His name is Peters. I had to keep him up there, just in case things went sideways. He’s my insurance. My only insurance…and he never misses. Never.”

She turned back to Riley and found him on the floor, his back resting against the railing while blood pumped out of his right shoulder and dripped down the edge of the rig and into the ocean below. He was staring forward at the lifeless body, a large puddle of brains and skeletal fingers reaching toward him from his would-be assassin.

Lara crouched next to Riley, pulled off her jacket, and draped it over his shoulder, then pressed down hard from both sides. He grunted from the pain but never took his eyes off the dead man.

“Who is he?” she asked.

He wiped at his forehead with a bloodied hand before answering. “Andy. Jesus.”

“One of your security guys?”

Riley shook his head. “He’s a mechanic. Kept things running. Jesus. I didn’t think…” Riley blinked as if he had trouble believing what his eyes were showing him. “I was sure of him. I was so sure of him….”

I guess you weren’t sure enough, Lara thought, wondering how many other people were running around the Ocean Star right now that weren’t quite as all-in with Riley’s mutiny as he had proclaimed. Maybe the woman who had served them fish and SPAM in the galley, or the parent of the kid who had waved to her as she walked past their room earlier this morning…

Loud, clanging footsteps as people approached them. She looked up as Terry, the woman from the comm room, and two others — including Hart — raced around the maze of machinery and ran to them.

“Oh God, Riley, oh God,” Terry said.

The third person was an older man wearing wire-rimmed glasses and civilian clothes. He crouched next to them and reached for the bloody jacket she had pressed against Hart’s wound. “What happened?”

“He shot him,” she said, nodding at Andy’s mostly headless corpse.

“Andy?” Terry said.

“Fuck,” Hart said, gritting his teeth.

“You can let go now; I got him,” the man with glasses said.

She stood up and backed away as the man and Hart worked to lessen Riley’s bleeding. The older man seemed to know what he was doing, so he was probably a doctor or had experience with gunshots, because he didn’t look fazed by Riley’s injury. Two more men, both in tactical gear, appeared and hovered over them. The horrified look on their faces told her everything she needed to know: They didn’t think this could happen, and the fact that it had left them questioning everything.

After a while, and with so many bodies crowding around Riley, Lara couldn’t see him anymore. She walked over to where Andy was instead and stood over his remains.

It was a nice shot. Hell, it was a perfect shot, especially from so high up and at such a drastic angle. She remembered telling herself that there was no way someone up there could hit her all the way down here, that all the odds were in her favor, even as Riley told her not to reach for her gun.

Jesus, that was close.

The radio on her hip squawked and she heard Blaine’s anxious voice: “Lara. Lara, come in.”

She unclipped the radio and keyed it. “I’m here, Blaine.”

“What was that shooting?”

“Long story; I’ll explain later.”

“But you’re okay?”

“I’m okay.”

“Thank God.” Then, “There’s something else. I was going to call you before I heard the shots.”

She brushed at a bead of sweat with her hand, forgetting that it was still covered in Riley’s blood. “I could really use some good news right about now.”

“Danny finally radioed in,” Blaine said.

Oh, thank God.

“How is he?” she asked.

“I don’t know; Carly’s talking to him now. I’ve never seen her so happy.”

“Fill me in later.”

“But you’re okay?”

“I’m okay,” she said.

But Riley might be dead, and if he dies, where does that leave us?

She looked off at the Trident sitting where she last saw it.

At least I got him to refuel us first…

“Lara,” Terry said as she emerged out of the crowd and walked on wobbly legs over to her.

“Riley?” Lara asked.

They watched as the wall of bodies came apart and the two commandos picked up Riley and, with the man in glasses at their side, carried him off. Hart looked after them, wiping his blood-covered hands on his pant legs.

“Who’s the civilian?” Lara asked.

“George,” Terry said. “He’s our doctor. Or, well, the closest thing we have to one out here. He’s actually a veterinarian.”

Hart walked over to them. He looked in shock, and she swore he had aged five extra years since she last saw him. “You okay?” he asked her.

She nodded. “What about Riley?”

“George will do the best he can.”

“I have a doctor — a real doctor — on the Trident.”

“Can you bring him over?”

“Her. And yes. Until then, what happens now?”

“What do you mean?” Terry asked.

“I mean,” Lara said, “Mercer’s people will be showing up anytime now. Are they going to ask where Riley is if he’s not here to meet them?”

Hart and Terry exchanged a look.

“Well?” Lara said. “Are they?”

“Maybe,” Hart said.

Lara was annoyed by their uncertainty but managed to temper it down — at least, some of it. “Did the others meet with Riley when they came through here?”

“Yes,” Terry said. “I mean, they didn’t ask or demand it or anything, but he was always there when they showed up. You know, as the CO.”

“What about you?” Lara asked Hart. “Can you take his place?”

Hart was still trying to wipe the blood off his hands when he looked up at her. “I guess I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

“You’re going to have to do better than that.”

He didn’t answer her.

“Hart,” she pressed.

“Yeah,” he said. “I can do it.”

She wasn’t sure if Hart actually believed his own words, but it wasn’t like she had any other, better choices at the moment. It was either Hart or…who else was there? Terry? The thirty-something woman who was shaking next to her?

“You’re staying, right?” Terry asked her.

The idea that she would leave now — run away, essentially — had never occurred to her until Terry brought it up. She could hear the fear in the older woman’s voice, and it bugged her that people who should be telling her what to do were always deferring to her instead. There was something very wrong with that.

How did you handle it, Will?

God, I never knew how hard you had to work all the time to keep us alive.

“No,” Lara said. “We’re not going anywhere. I promised Riley I’d take you and the others away from here, and I’m not going to break my word.”

She saw the instant relief on Terry’s face, and even Hart seemed to stand just a little straighter.

Lara focused on Hart. “What’s your plan?”

He shook his head without even thinking about it. “I don’t have one.”

“None?”

“Riley was the brains of this operation. What about you?”

“Me?”

“I saw you back there on the yacht. Next to Riley, you probably have the most leadership experience. Which, yeah, is sad considering I can probably pass for your dad. But I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’m in over my head here, Lara. I could really use your help.”

She took a moment to wipe her hands, still covered in Riley’s blood, on her pant legs.

Then: “We’re going to proceed like everything’s normal. They’re going to show up on schedule and we’re going to resupply them, then watch them leave. If something happens that prevents that, then we’re going to kill them.” She stared at Hart when she added, “You okay with that?”

“Yeah,” Hart said.

“You might know some of them. Riley said he knew the ones that were on the way here now.”

“I do, too, but that won’t keep me from doing what I have to do.”

“Good.”

“What about me?” Terry asked.

“I need you to get people out here and clean up the blood and”—she looked back at Andy’s corpse, left where he had fallen—“the rest of this mess.” She glanced up at the crane and shielded her eyes against the sun. “Is he up there? Peters?”

“Only Peters could have made that shot,” Hart said.

“Tell him to come down,” Lara said. “I want to talk to him before Mercer’s men show up…”

17 Gaby

Despite the sunlight filtering into the lobby through the hole in the wall, she could feel the cold seeping through her jacket and the thermal layers underneath. The weight of the ammo around her waist and Benford’s M4 with the now-useless M203 grenade launcher helped to (mostly) keep her mind off what was coming very, very soon.

Tap-tap.

The sounds came from behind her, but she didn’t react with alarm. There was only one other person moving around in the bank lobby, and that was Danny, who appeared in the corner of her peripheral vision and settled into a crouch on the other side of the hole in the wall.

“How goes it?” he asked.

“Same-o, same-o.”

“That bad, huh?”

She smiled. “How’d it go with you?”

Danny had spent the last ten or so minutes in the back, using Benford’s military ham radio to contact the Trident and letting their friends know that they were still alive but weren’t going to make it for their pickup today. With her attention focused almost entirely on the city outside the bank, she hadn’t been able to hear as much of the conversation as she would have liked.

“As good as can be expected,” Danny said.

“That bad, huh?”

“And a bag of chips.” Danny leaned his carbine on the floor and made sure his jacket’s zipper was all the way up to his neck. “The big news of the day is that they ran across some of Benford’s friends out there in the Gulf and were pulled temporarily off course.”

“Everyone okay?”

“Lara seems to have it all under control. They finally got refueled and could have come and gotten us if we were somewhere gottenable.”

Danny opened a bottle of water that he had scavenged from Benford’s pack while looking for the radio and took a drink. When he was done, he tossed it across the opening to her. She caught it and took a few sips as he talked.

“But none of what’s happening out there’s gonna do us any good in here. Probably a given they have the back alley manned and the whole street locked down. Snipers on the rooftops would also be my guess.” He leaned out slightly and peered up at the rooftop ledge of Gallant’s Best across the street from them. “That’s a pretty big clothing store for such a small town. What do you think they sell in there? Cowboy boots? Belt buckles the size of my head?”

“Why, you looking for a belt buckle the size of your head?”

“Hey, accessories make the man. Besides, it’s not the taste in fashion that matters; it’s how big it is. Or so I’ve been told.”

She finished and tossed the bottle, with still half left, back to him.

“Too bad we couldn’t find the key to that Jeep,” Danny said, eyeing the parked vehicle on the sidewalk outside.

“Maybe it’s in the glove compartment.”

“Don’t you think ol’ Benford would’ve checked?”

“Possibly.”

“Well, finding out for sure would take anywhere from five to ten seconds. Maybe less if I really haul ass and don’t do something stupid like slip when I cross the sidewalk. Alas, that’s more than enough time even for these wannabe soldier boys to take their sweet time shooting me in the ass.”

“They don’t want to kill us, remember?”

“Even if they only tried to wound us, all it’d take is one shitty shot and I’m rolling around on the street, clutching my ass.”

“What’s the preoccupation with getting shot in the ass?”

“It hurts, kid. It really hurts.”

“Are we talking from experience?”

He snorted. “Maybe.” Then, still looking out at the Jeep, “Look at it.”

“What?”

“The Jeep.”

“What about it?”

“It’s just sitting there, mocking me.”

She smiled. “It’s an inanimate object, Danny. It’s not mocking you.”

“It’s definitely mocking me.”

“You’re just imagining things.”

“Hunh.” Then, looking across at her, “We all clear on the backup plan?”

She nodded. “Retreat into the manager’s office with Nate. Seal the door.”

“Nothing quite like a last stand in a podunk town.”

“I could think of better things to do with my time.”

“Well, sure, if you wanna be a Negative Nancy about it.”

“Sorry.”

“You’re forgiven.”

He went suddenly very quiet, his eyes never leaving the streets outside.

“What it is?” she asked.

“When I was hanging up, I told Carly that I loved her, and she cried.”

“She misses you.”

“I mean, yes, she misses me. Who wouldn’t? What I meant was, I think she knew the truth even though I tried to bullshit my way through it. That redhead knows me too well. When I said ‘I love you,’ she started crying and didn’t stop before I signed off.”

“I’m sorry, Danny.”

“Yeah, me too, kid.” He glanced back at the offices. “I think it’s time to try on some new clothes.”

She nodded, picked up the two collaborator uniforms waiting in a small pile next to her, and jogged across the lobby and into the back hallway. The clothes she was carrying were the least bloody ones she could find among the dead; even so, her stomach churned at the thought of having to wear them. But it had to be done. Even if it didn’t work (It has to work), they had to try, because what the hell else were they going to do? The only other option was to give up, and there wasn’t a single quitter among them.

Nate was sitting at the back of the office when she entered, a large pile of rifle magazines and bullets scattered between his legs. An M4 leaned against the wall next to him and he was wearing one of the collaborator’s gun belts.

He looked up when she stepped inside. “Everything okay?”

She nodded. “Time to get dressed.”

He looked at the bundle in her hands and sighed. “You know, you used to have much better taste in clothes.”

“I don’t like it any more than you do.”

He caught one of the uniforms she tossed over and grimaced at the sudden movement (Shit, I forgot; sorry, Nate), then wrinkled his nose at the stench of blood clinging to the fabric.

“Try not to think too much about it,” she said.

Nate stuck his finger through one of the bullet holes and wiggled it around. “Look at what I can do, Ma.”

She rolled her eyes. “Put it on.” Then, “You need help?”

“Nah, I mastered changing clothes when I was ten.”

“Ten?”

“I was a late bloomer,” Nate said, struggling to stand up.

She wanted desperately to reach over and help him but managed to restrain herself. Nate needed to do it himself; even more importantly, he needed to know that he could. Finally, he was able to stand up on both feet — they were a bit unsteady at first, but that went away after a few seconds — and began undressing.

She gave him as much privacy as possible — which wasn’t much since they were in the same room together — while changing into her own pair of blood-stained shirt and slacks.

When he was done, Nate sat gingerly back down and pinched his nose. “Ugh. I thought it’d be easier the second time, but not so much.”

He was referring to Starch, when they had used a similar tactic to survive the night. The fact that it had worked then was the only thing giving her any hope at the moment.

If it worked once, it should work again, right?

While working on the buttons of her shirt, she sneaked a quick glance across the room at Nate. He looked so much better since a night ago, and all the rest he’d gotten had definitely helped. He was still shaky on his feet and it would take a while before he was even close to being 100 % again, but she felt a lot better knowing that he had survived the worst of his wound.

Now all we have to do is survive everything else they’re going to throw at us tonight.

She finished with her shirt by pushing the hem into the waistband. It was a little loose everywhere, but it was the best fit she could find.

“Bandages still okay?” she asked him.

He nodded. “You said Danny stitched me?”

“Uh huh.”

“He did a pretty good job. It totally doesn’t feel like my guts are about to burst out whatsoever.”

“Not funny.”

“Too soon?”

“Way too soon,” she smiled.

“True, though,” he said, picking up a magazine from the floor and thumbing rounds into it.

“How’s the inventory look?”

“We have eleven magazines for the rifles and thirteen for the handguns. I separated them by caliber,” he added, indicating the smaller individualized sections.

“Nicely done.”

“Hey, you give me a job, I’m gonna do it gangbusters or not bother at all.”

“I never had any doubt.”

She walked over and sat down next to him, placing her rifle on the floor within easy reach.

Nate leaned over and sniffed her. “You stink worse than me.”

“I’m pretty sure we stink about the same amount.”

“Definitely not.”

“Whatever.”

He pinched his nose again and said, his voice slightly distorted, “I heard Danny on the radio earlier. How’s the Trident?”

“Better than us right now.” She sensed him watching her intensely and turned to meet his gaze. “What?”

“You’re so beautiful.”

“My nose hasn’t healed right…”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“The scars on my cheeks…”

“I don’t care about scars.”

“I’m wearing a dead man’s clothes…”

“So am I.”

“…and covered in his blood…”

“Ditto.”

“I haven’t showered in days…”

“You smell wonderful.”

She gave him a wry smile. “You’re too easily pleased.”

“Only when it comes to you,” he smiled back.

She leaned over and kissed him. His fingers slipped into her hair, and he tugged her closer. She tried to pull away, not wanting to aggravate his wound, but his mouth was so insistent that she gave up and just enjoyed it because, she told herself, this could very well be the last time they had the chance.

“Tick tock. Tick tock, goes the clock.”

The sun wasn’t completely gone, but it had dipped below the rooftop of Gallant’s Best, so she couldn’t see it anymore. The street outside the bank had darkened enough that she couldn’t tell if the Jeep was brand new or scarred by the same explosion that had taken out a large chunk of the wall.

Her watch ticked to 5:13 p.m.

“Time to check under the beds and in the closet for monsters.”

She could barely hear Mason’s voice with the two-way handheld radio’s volume set to almost its lowest setting. Turning it off completely to silence the man’s irritating voice was an option, but Mason talking meant Mason potentially giving away something they could use.

“Hear that?” Mason said. “That’s the sound of the real world starting to wake up.”

She thought she saw shadows moving behind one of the drawn curtains that covered a window along the department store across the street. Or was that just her imagination? How big was that building anyway? Big enough for a few hundred ghouls to be hiding inside right this moment? Maybe more if they crammed into both floors. And why wouldn’t they? The creatures couldn’t care less about comfort. That was a human thing, and they were well beyond that now.

“You think he knows?” Gaby asked.

“About the uniforms?” Danny said.

She nodded.

He shrugged. “He hasn’t mentioned it yet if he noticed, and that guy runs his mouth more than a fat guy on a treadmill in January.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t made a run for it yet,” Mason was saying through the radio. “If I were a betting man — and I’ve been known to lay a few shekels here and there on the roulette table — I’d put good money on the Ranger taking his chances before the sun sets. Of course he wouldn’t have made it, but he’d have gotten an A for effort.”

“Oh, for the love of God, shut him up,” Danny said from across the blasted opening in the wall. He was almost completely sitting in shadows, and if not for the white clouds of mist forming as he spoke, she wouldn’t know where he was.

Gaby reached down and switched off the radio, then picked it up and clipped it behind her belt. A radio was too valuable to just throw away these days, even if the only other person on the other side was Mason.

She glanced down at her watch again: 5:15 p.m.

Christ, where did the last two minutes go?

She searched out Danny in the darkness. “I don’t think they’re coming.”

“Doesn’t look that way.”

Despite every indication that Mason would stay back until nightfall, they couldn’t risk retreating into the backroom until they were absolutely certain. The man was a liar, after all, and couldn’t be trusted. But now that the sun had all but vanished and she thought she could feel the floor under her vibrating as…things began moving across Gallant…

“Time to boogie,” Danny said. He got up and began moving backward across the lobby.

She did the same, anxious to get the hell as far away from the opening as possible. But they didn’t rush it and backpedaled one step at a time while keeping their eyes on the wall and the doors and windows in front of them. She turned around only when she saw the island counter passing by to her left and rushed after Danny, past the first office (with the bodies, and Fritz), and toward the manager’s room in the back.

“Nate,” she called.

He poked his head out of the office, his M4 clutched in his hands. “Okay?”

She nodded. “You got guard duty.”

“Gotcha.”

Nate stepped out into the hallway and stood guard while she and Danny went all the way to the back and removed the large metal filing cabinet they had helped Fritz put over the alley entrance earlier. They took it into the office, with Nate retreating into the room after them. They closed the door, then leaned the heavy cabinet against it before pinning it in place with the desk.

It was a decent barricade, and if it was just the black eyes trying to get in, she thought their chances were pretty good the door would hold. But that was the problem. She knew very well it wouldn’t just be the black eyes. The blue-eyed ones would also be around tonight, just like they had last night, and that time at the farmhouse in Louisiana…

With the door closed, Gaby could barely make out Danny and Nate standing in the room with her. Danny had unslung Benford’s pack and was rummaging through it. A few seconds later there was a double cracking sound, and two glow sticks gradually filled the room.

Danny’s face, suddenly awash in fluorescent green, grinned at her. “And then God said, ‘Let there be awesome green disco lights, and so there was.’”

“Not quite sure that’s the line,” she smiled back at him.

“Eh, I never was much of a church goin’ boy.”

“Looks good,” Nate said, nodding his approval at their handiwork over the door. “Definitely looks like it could last through the night.”

“Winter springs eternal, kids,” Danny said.

“You don’t think so?”

“If it were just those black-eyed bastards? Yeah. But that’s not the case, is it?”

I guess I’m not the only one who remembers.

She looked at her watch, the white neon hand more green than white: 5:20 p.m.

If they thought Gallant was quiet before, listening to the excruciating silence from inside a small office in the back of a bank surrounded by four walls and a barricaded door was an entirely new experience.

She sat with Nate at the back, with the door in front and to her right. Danny sat to their left in the corner. No one had said a word since they settled down to wait, and as they listened to what Mason called “the real world” coming awake around them, they continued to maintain the quiet, the anticipation of what all three of them knew was coming (Anytime now, you bastards) almost suffocating.

The ghouls were out there by the hundreds, maybe the thousands, so why hadn’t they begun assaulting the door yet? Despite straining to hear, she couldn’t detect them outside in the hallway or the bank lobby. Which didn’t make any damn sense at all. They had to know the three of them were in here. Even the black-eyed creatures, with their limited intelligence (Dead, not stupid, right, Will?) could trace the new blood from the streets to the gaping hole in the wall and sniff their trail to the back of the building. And if even by some miracle they couldn’t, the presence of the blue eyes would make up for it.

“He’ll come for them soon.”

“Yes.”

“And when he does…”

“We’ll end him.”

“Finally…”

All of this was for one man. Who the hell were they waiting for?

The question turned over and over in her head and had been since last night. Except now it was so much louder and so much more persistent, with nothing for her to do but listen to the silence as she waited and waited for the creatures to show themselves.

What are you waiting for?

She looked over in Danny’s direction, his face covered in the green light from the glow sticks. He had his rifle between his legs, the muzzle pointed up at the roof, and was staring at the door across from him. She couldn’t tell if he was lost in his own thoughts or if he was just as mystified by the lack of an attack as she was.

She felt welcome warmth as Nate reached over and found her hand and squeezed. “Can’t wait to get our own room on the Trident,” he said quietly.

“It’s going to be loud down there with the engine next door,” she said, matching his soft pitch.

“Who cares. That’s what earplugs are for. Plus, no one will know what we’re doing down there. Know what I mean?”

“Not a clue.” She kissed him on the cheek, then pulling back slightly, whispered, “I love you.”

“Finally,” he whispered back. “I didn’t think you would ever say it.”

She smiled and kissed him again, then rested her head against his shoulder.

“Tired?” he asked.

She nodded. “You?”

“Like every part of me is about to go all Scanners.”

“Scanners?”

“You know, that movie where the guy’s head blows up?”

She shook her head.

“We’ll add it to the Netflix queue when we get back to the Trident,” Nate said.

“Deal.”

The office looked different swimming in green, almost surreal somehow. Nate slipped an arm around her, and she wanted to close her eyes and forget about what was going to happen in the next few minutes, or hours. But it was going to happen tonight. The blue eyes hadn’t gone through all this trouble to forget about them now.

“He’ll come for them soon,” one of the creatures had said.

He. Who the hell was he?

She allowed herself to close her eyes for a moment even as her ears kept listening for telltale signs that the creatures had finally arrived outside their door, or beyond the walls of the bank, or maybe even above them on the rooftop. Except they weren’t in any of those places because there was just dead silence all around them.

What in God’s name are they waiting for?

She had her eyes partially closed and was concentrating on the warmth of Nate’s body against hers when there was a massive boom! that tore through the room, so close and immediate that her ears were still ringing even as she struggled to open her eyes and move, move, move, dammit!

By the time she managed to fully open her eyes, green tendrils of smoke were already starting to fill the room at a dizzying speed. Then Danny was shooting, his face lit up by a staccato effect of green and white and orange as flames stabbed from his M4. He had somehow made it onto his feet before either she or Nate could react and was actually pushing his way into the smoke instead of running away from it like a sensible human being.

Since when does Danny qualify as “sensible?” she thought even as she scrambled to get ahold of her rifle, which she had dropped about the same time the explosion knocked Nate’s arm from its place around her body.

She wasn’t sure when she lost sight of Danny, but one second he was in front of her and in the next breath he had vanished into the spreading green smoke, and the only thing she could make out was the pop-pop-pop of his rifle assaulting her ears as the ringing from the explosion subsided. The M4s they were armed with were only capable of three-round bursts, but Danny was squeezing the trigger so fast that they sounded almost like one continuous full-auto blast.

She finally (finally!) got her numbed feet under her and scrambled up, gripping her rifle in one hand and shouting, “Stay here!” back at Nate.

He was coughing and trying not to gag against the smoke, but he somehow still managed to flash her a defiant look as he shook his head. “The hell I am!”

“Nate, please!”

“No!” he shouted back.

Loud crackles of gunfire reached them, coming from the hole in the wall that hadn’t been there before.

They blasted through from the other room. Jesus Christ!

Nate was already on his feet when she began moving forward. She could hear him coughing behind her as he followed, and Gaby lifted her rifle as—

A figure stumbled through the jagged opening in front of her. He was wearing black and she glimpsed the shiny lens of his gas mask—

She fired, and the man, moving between rooms, fell awkwardly, landing in the middle of the hole with one part of his body in their room and his legs in the manager’s office.

How the hell did he get past Danny?

It was impossible not to inhale the smoke — a combination of disintegrated Sheetrock and explosive powder swarming around the opening — and she started to cough along with Nate even as they kept pushing forward.

Questions swirled around in her head as she forced her legs to move:

Why did the collaborators attack? Why risk an explosion when Mason had strict orders to keep them alive? Or had the “him” that the blue-eyed ghouls were waiting for finally arrived, and their usefulness as bait had finally come to an end?

“Danny!” she shouted as she stepped over the dead man and into the connecting room. There had been a lot of smoke in the other office, but there was even more in here, almost as if the collaborators hadn’t properly executed their breach.

The only response to her shouting of Danny’s name was the pop-pop-pop of automatic gunfire coming from outside the room, through the open door to her right.

“Danny!” she shouted as she stumbled over bodies on the floor.

New bodies, and not the ones they had stacked in the back of the room. These were all black, with gas masks jutting out from their faces like plastic elephant tusks.

“Gaby!” Nate’s voice, shouting from behind her. “Wait!”

But she didn’t wait. She couldn’t. Danny was out there by himself, the continued banging of ferocious back-and-forth of automatic rifle fire forcing her to move faster and faster.

“Gaby, wait!”

She ignored Nate’s desperate plea and finally made it out the door and into the hallway, ready to see caverns of yellow and white and brown fangs coming at her. She twisted right toward the alley door, but it was still closed and there was just suffocating darkness back there. She turned left toward the lobby—

Pop-pop-pop!

A figure was shooting in the direction of the street while backing up toward her. She couldn’t tell what kind of clothes he was wearing — it looked dark, either black or blue, so it could have been Danny or a collaborator uniform. After all, weren’t they wearing the same colors right now?

She lifted her rifle and took aim when the man threw a glance over his shoulder. She couldn’t see his shadowed face, but there was nothing that looked like a gas mask, and that was the only reason she didn’t pull the trigger.

“Back, back!” the figure shouted. Danny! “We got incoming, kid! A shit ton of incoming!”

She looked past him and saw that something had swallowed up the hole in the front wall of the bank. No, not something, but some things.

Oh, so there they are.

She never believed they would make it through the night without the ghouls finding them. It was simply beyond the realm of possibility, the kind of optimism that only the old Gaby could have fallen prey to. And yet, and yet, she had wanted to believe. God, she had wanted to believe so badly.

But the truth stared her in the face as she took in the forest of pruned black flesh and heard their bones clacking as they surged through the opening and poured across the lobby floor like an endless ocean wave.

She turned and ran, and heard Danny’s footsteps close on her heels.

“Faster!” he shouted. “Faster!”

Up ahead, Nate had finally found his way out of the door, and his eyes widened at the sight of her and Danny racing back to him.

“Nate, run!” she shouted. “They’re inside! They’re inside the building!”

She saw the whites of Nate’s eyes, and he might have screamed something back at her but she couldn’t hear, because at that very moment the floor and the walls and the ceiling began vibrating uncontrollably. She heard the very distinct clink-clink-clink of empty brass casings (Danny’s, the collaborators, whoever’s) that were littering the floor began jumping around like beans.

At first she thought they were being hit by an earthquake, but then she heard it, and the sound sent a spear into the very center of her soul. The first time she was introduced to it was on the road, then again later, outside of Larkin. It was a sound that she would never forget for as long as she lived, whether that be the next few seconds, or minutes, or years from now.

Brooooooooooorrrrttttttttt!

18 Frank

He was close. So close. He could almost feel them nearby.

Danny and Gaby.

It was a trap. He knew that without a shred of doubt. Danny, Gaby, and the boy whose name he couldn’t remember were being used to lure him to the town of Gallant. They knew he would come, that he would have no choice because the (small) part of him that was still human demanded he come.

They were waiting for him. The blue eyes. And they wouldn’t be alone.

He knew all these things, and yet he had come because he had no choice. Simply no choice. Because they had Danny and Gaby, and if there was a shred of humanity left in him, he couldn’t ignore it.

They were so close and yet so far away. He wished he could pinpoint their exact location, but there was too much chaos inside his mind as well as outside in the physical world. The universe was breaking apart, death pouring from above, and he caught random flashes of memory from faraway places filled with sand where it was hot and cold and sometimes both at the same time.

Somewhere above him, Mercer’s warplane shook the heavens as it returned for another pass.

He didn’t know how he had gotten here, but he was sure Danny and Gaby were close even as he concentrated on the two black-clad figures, almost indistinguishable in the pitch-darkness of the floor. They were facing the far wall when he crashed through the window and tucked and rolled and snapped back up to his feet. They turned — fast, but not fast enough — and he saw the whites of their eyes shining through the clear glass of their gas masks.

Collaborators. Traitors.

The one on the left was the first to react, and he had almost fully lifted his rifle when his neck snapped. The second one was slower and dropped his weapon and stumbled back in mortal terror. It didn’t save him.

He grabbed the man by the uniform and flung him into the wall with one hand. There was a heavy crack! as bones shattered and the thump! as the limp body slid unconscious to the floor.

He turned his head at the sound of a few hundred stampeding feet surrounding the building outside. They poured themselves into the first floor below him, and more were coming from up and down the streets.

Moonlight glinted off one of the men’s fallen rifles, and he picked it up. It had a name. M-something. And a number. He couldn’t remember either details at the moment; not that it mattered, because it would come to him.

It always did, eventually.

The air shifted and the familiar gust of wind swamped the walls of the building, signaling the return of another kind of monster — this one made of metal and fire. The wall in front of him exploded, a tsunami of glass and brick and mortar reaching out at him like spidery tentacles. Shards sliced what remained of the trench coat as he lifted his arms to protect himself and spun at the same time, making himself as small as possible.

Then, a second after its armaments had razed the street outside and everything around it, there was the delayed sound of the plane’s roar:

Brooooooooooorrrrttttttttt!

He staggered away from the wall — or what was left of it. Blood dripped from his wounds, long pieces of glass jutting out of flesh, an extended gash across his right cheek, and something the size of his fist protruding from his chest. He picked and pulled at shards both big and small, like annoying wood splinters, the slurp of his blood spraying the already-filthy carpet.

Thomp-thomp-thomp!

They had finally made it to the second floor and were now racing through the hallway. In a matter of seconds, they would find the right room and overwhelm him.

“He’s inside!” the voices shouted. “Don’t let him escape!”

He didn’t have to break his way through the windows this time, because there weren’t any left — or even a wall to stand in his way. There was just a jagged hole, and he charged and leapt and shot free like a bullet through it. The cold night air flooded his hyper senses, the shredded remains of his coat snapping angrily like unwanted limbs behind him.

He sailed through the night air, free of the restraints of gravity, even of human logic, the rifle still clutched in his hands. Maybe he had clung to it as a token of his old self, a reminder of what he once was but could never be again.

As he slashed through the night air like a knife, he glimpsed rubble in the streets below. Vehicles had been reduced to junk, the concrete pavement a shell of its former self. The concentrated fire had left behind severed limbs and decapitated forms, still-intact bodies buried under the upended road. A carpet of (re?)death as far as he could see, and yet, miraculously, the buildings around the devastated killing field remained mostly intact. Clearly the sign of a highly skilled pilot at work.

Then he was across and crashing into metal scaffolding that was holding a white sign with letters on it. It buckled and snapped, the grinding of metal like nails on a chalkboard in his ears, so loud that no one could have missed it.

Noises—pop-pop-pop! — coursed through the soles of his feet like electricity. Gunfire, coming from the building below him.

Then a new noise—thump-thump-thump! — racing wildly.

Heartbeats, also from below.

Human heartbeats.

Had he found them after all? Danny and Gaby and the boy whose name he couldn’t remember? Were they below him now, fighting for their lives?

He managed a single step toward the edge when the world quaked as half of Gallant vanished in a ball of fire in the distance. Some kind of bomb. The heat washed across the air, forcing him to turn his shoulders against it. Unnatural warmth made his flesh tingle as the dead and dying filled his head with tortured screams, hundreds of ghouls blinking out of existence as flesh was stripped from bones, which were then pulverized into powder milliseconds later.

He managed to quiet the pained voices in his head, the relentless screams, just as the air above him quivered. He looked up as the creature fell down, smashing him with its fists and driving him to the graveled rooftop floor. Blue eyes glared at him as impossibly long, bony fingers tightened around his throat.

“There you are,” it said, even though its lips, inches from his own, didn’t move. “We’ve been looking for you for so long.”

He smashed the weapon he’d held onto since picking it up from the building across the street into the side of the creature’s head. The rifle disintegrated like brittle twigs, but it stunned the ghoul just enough to knock it off him.

He sprang up, realizing too late that the monster wasn’t alone.

They surrounded him, blocking his paths of escape.

“We knew you’d come,” they said, four voices forming one coherent thought inside his head.

“So predictable.”

“…so human.”

“Look at him…”

“…clinging to the façade.”

“Pathetic.”

“Now you’re going to die.”

“Again.”

“But this time…

“…for good.”

“And he’ll be pleased…”

“…that we finally ended you.”

“…so pleased…”

They attacked as one, and from all four sides simultaneously. They were faster than any of the black eyes could ever hope to be, and stronger. So, so much stronger. He didn’t have the element of surprise on his side, and there was no advantage to be had. None.

They went for his arms and legs. He managed to dislodge one, but his attempt to punch through its chest went wrong and he only landed a glancing blow.

His left arm had been grabbed and bent at an impossible angle, and he heard the crack! of bone breaking but didn’t feel it. Somehow he fell on one knee, then both, and a hand seized his throat before the grip became a forearm pressed against his neck, searching for and finding a hold that refused to yield.

“You shouldn’t have come,” they said inside his head.

“But we knew you would…”

“…knew you would.”

“They’ll be the death of you…”

“…again.”

“They’re only human…”

“They were made for this…”

“…destined…”

“They’re chattel…”

“…meat…”

“…storage…”

“Let it go.”

“Stop fighting.”

“Why are you still fighting?”

“You have no idea how long…”

“…he’s been planning this…”

“It’s all part of the plan.”

“Accept it.”

“Accept it!”

He somehow ended up staring at the sky. It was a strangely bright night, and the wind was cool against his flesh. He closed his mind from the pain as two of them pulled at his arms while a third, behind him, put pressure on his head until his neck was straining and he could feel the muscles stretching beyond their limits, hear the tendons tearing one by one, by one…

“It’s over,” they said.

“This is how it ends.”

“She wasted her life to turn you…”

“…such a mistake…”

“…remedied, now…”

“Thank her when you see her again.”

He refused to think of her. She was gone. Dead (again). Outside a gas station somewhere unimportant. Ironic that his last breaths would also happen on the rooftop of a building somewhere unimportant.

But he didn’t give in. It wasn’t in his nature.

“Still fighting,” they said.

“Give in…”

“…this is the end…”

“…inevitable.”

“It’s all part of the plan…”

“His plan…”

“…give in!”

Lara, he thought, his mind’s eye filling with memories of her. Images and sounds and sensations that he had held onto even though doing so weakened him and kept him unsure and hesitant. But he couldn’t let go because it was her. It was Lara. The natural and crystal blue of her eyes, always so full of life even at her lowest moments. The smooth touch of her skin and the warmth of her breath against his neck as they lay together.

The best nights of his life.

The best days.

Because she was there.

Lara.

Lara…

I’ve failed you.

Again.

Forgive me.

Forgive me…

Then something strange — a sudden uptick in the cold followed by the loud scream of metal piercing air.

Then something heavy falling from the sky.

Plummeting faster, faster, faster.

“No,” they said inside his head. “No!”

Yes, he thought, and closed his eyes as the heat of the expanding blast absorbed the buildings around him and the solid rooftop under him disintegrated and he tumbled, out of control, into a black void as his skin burned and peeled and screams from a hundred — a thousand—creatures filled his mind in a tsunami of pain and horror and, oddly enough, sweet release…

Blue eyes peered at him, but the shape was all wrong. Everything about it was wrong. It wasn’t thin enough and the smell coming off it was sweaty, dirty, and greasy, but not the chaos of cold and heat coexisting. Warm air flowed forth as it breathed in and out with some difficulty, the weapon clutched in one hand and draped over its knee almost too casually.

“Man, talk about dropping in without calling first,” it said.

No, not an it.

A he.

“Good thing we were in the other room when you showed up. Of course, you guys made a real mess, but I’ll let that one slide since I don’t think it was you that dropped the bomb. Or da bomb, as the kids say. On the plus side, you also buried all the corpses we had piling up in here, so thanks for that. They were becoming a real eyesore.”

It was a man and his voice was…familiar.

“It wasn’t easy, you know. I was this close to putting a bullet in your head and calling it a day,” the man said, pinching his forefinger and thumb together. “That trench coat — or what’s left of it — saved your life. Where do you do your shopping anyway, and do you get a discount if the stuff is only thirty — excuse me, I meant, ten — percent intact?”

The part of him that still recognized pain had shut down. It was an automatic response by his mind to spare the rest of him so he could keep functioning. He couldn’t turn his head, but he could sense the other blue eyes around him. Two of them. Except there was no cold or warmth coming from their skins, and their accusing voices had quieted inside his head.

They were gone. Dead. (Again?)

Thick, coagulated black blood covered the parts of his body that he was still able to retrieve sensations from. He was gashed and bleeding, even in the areas that he couldn’t see, and partially buried in rubble from the stomach down. Only the top half of him had been spared the crushing weight of the building as it came tumbling down after the concussive force of the blast took apart its roof. Massive blocks of concrete made a prisoner out of him, and he was certain his arms were no longer connected to his pulverized shoulder joints. His legs…no, he would have to turn the pain receptors back on to find out what had happened to them.

He couldn’t turn his head because it was twisted to one side, his chin resting against a drooping shoulder. The muscles and tendons along his neck had been severed, pulled until they snapped.

He was hurt. Badly.

The man crouched in front of him was gesturing with the gun. “Bullet to the head. Kind of a gyp, don’t you think? You’re faster, stronger, all kinds of crazy comic book supervillain shit, but all it takes is one little ol’ bullet to the ol’ noggin and you’re kaput. Doesn’t even have to be silver.”

He was alive. Why was he still alive? Because the man had chosen not to end him, even though he could with a simple (so simple) pull of the trigger. A slight pressure and it would be over, along with all the nights of stalking Mabry, finding his weaknesses, looking for the perfect angle to attack.

“In case you were wondering, yes, it looks like you’ve seen better days,” the man said. “I’d say you look like shit, but that would be an insult to poop everywhere.”

The man had mischievous blue eyes, and blond hair matted with dirt and sweat stuck to his forehead. Streaks of dried blood stretched from his right temple to his chin and curved around cracked lips. There was blood in the air. A lot of it. Old and fresh. The man was bleeding from multiple wounds. Painful, but not life-threatening. At least, not anymore. Medical ointment tingled his nostrils.

They were inside a partially darkened room, half of it lit by streams of moonlight invading from the gaping holes above them where the roof used to be. He reached out with his mind, but his range was limited in his current condition. It turned out he didn’t have to go very far after all.

There. They were outside the building. Immediately outside. Hundreds, thousands. They could sense his presence in return. Not just him, but the other blue-eyed ghouls, too. The two lifeless ones buried with him, and somewhere out there, two more. Not dead, but close. Dying.

The black eyes would not come in. They were confused and scared.

The man was still looking at him, the sparks of curiosity evident in his eyes. “You know, don’t you? They were out there beating on the door until you and your pals started dancing around up on the roof. Then they retreated back into the street. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.”

He didn’t answer. He wanted to, but when he sent the command, his mouth wouldn’t move and no sounds came out, not even the hiss that he despised so much.

“Ah, sorry about that,” the man said. “Forgot to tell you, but you don’t really have lips anymore. Or a mouth, for that matter. I guess you’re going to have to grow them back, huh? Can you grow them back?”

He blinked, and the man actually smiled.

“She wanted me to shoot you in the head,” the man said. “We’ve had a recent history of not shooting people when we should have, so I don’t blame her. But I had to know.” He leaned in closer. “Can you hear me in there? Blink twice for yes and, well, I guess you wouldn’t blink if you can’t understand me, right?”

The man stared at him, and there was a slight uptick in his heartbeat. He was anxious.

So he blinked once, then a second time.

“So you can hear me. Hot damn!” He rocked back on his feet. “What number am I thinking of?” A chuckle. “Just joshin’ ya, buddy. Or am I? You guys are psychic, right?”

He didn’t blink.

“No?”

He remained still, eyes fixed on the man’s beaten and bruised face.

“Just a bit?”

The man sat down on the floor, the gun in his hand still draped nonchalantly over one bent knee. He could smell the fresh gunpowder in the air. All it would take was a shot to the head, just like with the other two dead blue eyes.

“You were there, in Starch,” the man said.

Starch? Yes, he remembered. It was a town not far from here, and of some significance to him. Or was it? His mind was stuck between trying to battle the pain and digging deep for memories that were slippery to the touch.

Starch. Yes.

He blinked twice.

“What about outside of Larkin? In the airfield hangar? Did you have something to do with that, too?”

Airfield? Hangar? He didn’t recall a Larkin. But then his recollection was unreliable at the moment in his fugue state.

“No?”

No? Yes? He wasn’t sure. With parts of his mind shut down to prevent the pain overload, it was hard to concentrate. There was a way to remember, but it would hurt. It would hurt a lot.

“What are you doing?” Was that concern in the man’s voice? “Pain’s finally pulling into the station, huh? And here I thought you guys didn’t feel pain anymore. I guess it’s true what they say — you do learn something new every day.”

Yes. Pain. A lot of it. And there was going to be more as he released the clamps that kept them at bay and his body began to burn. It started as small sensations, like tiny flickers of fire being lit before growing in intensity and beginning to flood the rest of him one brutal inch by brutal inch.

But at the same time the fog began to lift and memories returned, and while he still had great difficulty sifting through them and recognizing what he was looking at, it became easier with every passing second.

“Hey, you going to die on me or what? Um, again?”

The events of tonight returned.

Then last night.

All the way back to a fortnight.

No, too far.

Back, back…

The pain. God, the pain…

Yes, Larkin. The airfield. The hangar. In the room…

The pain!

He blinked twice.

The man raised both eyebrows. “Well, slap me on the ass and call me Sally.” Then, leaning forward again, “Who the fuck are you, buddy? What are you?”

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He knew who he was, but he had no voice and no ability to respond in any meaningful way. So he remained silent even as flames roared through him like lightning, scorching everything in their path. It was unlike anything he had experienced since the transformation, and he hoped never to face it again.

Slowly, very slowly, he attempted to push them down, shutting off the pain receptors one by one by one…

“I guess that was a stupid question,” the man said. “You not having a mouth to answer with and all.”

No mouth. No lips. Or tongue. Could he regenerate a tongue?

Maybe. He would find out soon enough.

“Do you know me?” the man asked, his blue eyes watching him intently as if they could look into his soul.

Soul? Did he even have a soul anymore—

Wait. What did the man ask?

“Do you know me?”

Yes. He knew him.

Didn’t he?

Yes, it was in there somewhere, hidden in the deeper recesses of his mind. He had refused to let them go in all the weeks and months since she changed him. It was buried deep and stored at the very bottom where everything important resided. He didn’t go to them often because they were dangerous. Remembering the past, remembering her, was dangerous.

But he dug through them now. Searching, searching…

There.

He blinked twice.

“You know my name.”

He remained still.

“You know me, but you don’t remember my name?”

Two blinks.

“I don’t know if I should be insulted by that. I’m guessing I should, just a little.”

Crunching sounds before a second figure appeared behind the first. The newcomer was tall and slim. Despite the blood and sweat and dirt, the natural smell of a woman clung to her skin. Where had she come from?

“Are you done with it?” she asked. There was something in her voice — traces of fear and anger and…disgust? “Just put it out of its misery. Do they even still feel pain?”

“Apparently they do,” the man said.

“Shoot it and get it over with.”

“He knows me.”

“What?”

“He knows me,” the man repeated. “He was at Larkin. And Starch.”

“The one at Larkin looks nothing like this one. It had black eyes, remember?”

“I know, but it says it was there. And I believe it.”

“You believe it? Danny, for God’s sake, look at it.”

Danny.

The name was like precious cargo rising to the top of his mind after being buried in the ocean for a millennia. He grasped desperately for it and held on, afraid it would slip out of his reach. It was important, this name.

Danny.

“Sua Sponte.”

“Rangers lead the way.”

“Not yet,” the human named Danny said. “I don’t know what’ll happen if I shoot it.”

“It’ll die,” the woman said. Her name eluded him, but it was familiar, and down there somewhere, too.

Danny…

“Yes, it will,” Danny said, and turned to look at her, “but I don’t know what that’ll do to all the party people standing outside our walls right now.”

The woman shot a quick, nervous glance across the room. He didn’t know what she was looking at.

“I’m more concerned with our lack of a full roof at the moment,” Danny said, pointing at the open holes in the ceiling above him.

“You think they’ll come in if it dies?”

“I don’t know. That’s the point.”

“So what, then?”

Danny looked back at him and tilted his head slightly to one side, as if trying to mirror his unwitting pose.

“Danny,” the woman (girl?) said. “What are you going to do with it? We can’t just leave it there. What if it digs itself out?”

“I don’t think it can.”

“You sure about that?”

“Mostly sure.”

“Have you been…talking to it?”

“Yes and no. It’s been mostly a one-way conversation with a few blinks thrown in. Might be worth waiting for it to grow its mouth back so we can have a proper tête-à-tête.”

“Can it…do that?”

“I have no idea what it can or can’t do. That’s one reason I haven’t sent him to the big Blue Yonder yet. Maybe we can learn something from him. If that’s even possible; I don’t want to just throw the opportunity out the window.”

“‘Him?’”

“What?”

“You just called it ‘him,’ Danny.”

“Did I?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, technically I’m not wrong. It was a him, once upon a time.”

“But not anymore.”

“That boat would seem to have sailed a while ago, yup.”

The girl shivered in the darkness. “Are you just going to sit here all night and talk to it?”

“That’s the general idea. You should go keep Natmillian company. I’ll shout if I need a hand.”

The girl turned to leave, but not before looking back at him one last time. Then she was gone and he heard whispers, followed by the presence of a third heartbeat somewhere outside the room that he hadn’t noticed earlier because of his weakened state.

Danny had moved closer while he wasn’t paying attention and was now peering at him. There was a new intensity in his eyes as he stared, as if he was searching for something important.

What was he looking for? More importantly, what did he expect to find? What was there left to be found? What if all Danny saw was a lifeless corpse that refused to die, with an empty black hole where a soul used to be—

“Jesus Christ,” Danny said, his voice barely rising above a whisper.

Then, as if he was afraid to say the word out loud:

“Will?”