The Purge of Babylon: A Novel of Survival

EPILOGUE

Kate didn’t so much see the blood coursing through the veins as hear it and smell it. It was an odd sensation, to see with her other senses so clearly, so vividly, while her eyes were dull and weak and lazy. It was the same with the other ghouls. She didn’t hear or see them moving around her, she sensed them. It was a tricky concept to grasp at first, but Mabry told her she would get used to it soon enough.

Mabry revealed to her that he first became aware of the danger Will posed all the way back to their time in Houston, even before Will and Danny destroyed the Archers warehouse store and killed hundreds of Mabry’s soldiers. He first encountered them at the Wilshire Apartments, where they had discovered the silver. Mabry wasn’t there personally, but he watched from afar, through the eyes of those that were, as they attempted to kill the ex-Rangers. Mabry was too busy that night, painstakingly organizing the takeover of the city, to deal with the threat himself. It was one of his biggest regrets, he told her.

She learned that the war was all but won, except for small, annoying pockets of resistance around the country and in scattered parts of the world. Mabry was certain that the resistance wouldn’t last for very long. Eventually, as with Harold Campbell’s facility, humanity always found a way to do itself in.

She still remembered who she was, her name, and her life before being turned. But she was not surprised to realize that the “Kate” she knew was dead. She was wearing Kate’s skin now, and though she knew all the things that Kate did, she no longer felt like Kate. She was more of a historian of Kate’s extinguished life.

It was another odd concept, one that took time to grasp, but Kate — the new Kate — discovered that it wasn’t too hard to wrap her mind around once she accepted it. That was the key. Acceptance. After all, she was the one in control now, not the old Kate. That Kate had lost control long ago, allowed chaos to rule over order.

This Kate, this new version, had order again.

They were inside a warehouse, somewhere in Texas. Her first day as one of them was spent traveling, moving fast to beat the approaching sunlight. Mabry knew why Will had opened the facility door as sunup neared. It was a ceasefire, he told her, and Mabry gladly accepted if it meant he could save more of his soldiers. Mabry had many soldiers at his disposal, but he abhorred the idea of needlessly throwing their lives away. They were his to care for, after all, like children, and what parent wanted to sacrifice their children’s lives needlessly?

The warehouse had been converted into another blood farm. One of many. There were more around the state, around the country, and even around the world. So many more.

She stood among the ghouls, listening to the sound of blood as it coursed through the veins of a young girl who couldn’t possibly be older than thirteen. Kate knew that her old self would have been horrified by the sight of the girl on the floor. The girl was no more than a reservoir of blood now, flesh and bones harnessed for her ability to generate a constant flow of the precious liquid.

She leaned over and lifted the girl’s arm toward her mouth. There were no teeth marks on the arm. This one was fresh. She could feel Mabry standing behind her in the darkness. They didn’t need light to see, because they didn’t see with their eyes.

“I saved her for you,” Mabry said inside her head.

She opened her mouth and closed it around the girl’s arm. She bit into the girl’s skin, so hard that her teeth, still white and pristine, like Mabry’s, scraped against the bone underneath. The blood, like hundreds of tiny streams, flowed freely into her mouth. At first she didn’t think she could handle the flood, and she felt as if she were drowning in blood. Then something happened — it became easier, as the blood poured down her throat and she sighed with pleasure and suckled some more.

She lifted her head and tasted the wetness along the corners of her mouth with her tongue, which had gotten longer, almost reptilian. She swiped at the thin drops hanging from her chin, catching every little sweetness.

She didn’t have to use her eyes to see the men in green and yellow hazmat suits standing around the warehouse, trying to stay as much as they could within the shadows, as if that somehow could save them from witnessing what they had helped make happen. She could almost taste the disgust on their faces, hidden behind gas masks.

Instead of feeling ashamed or guilty, she reveled in it.

“Yes,” Mabry said inside her head. He sounded pleased.

Why do you let them live? she asked.

“They’re useful,” Mabry answered. “This is just the beginning, Kate. There is more to be done. Progress. Continuation. Expansion. All of it, to further the evolution of our species.”

You’ll tell me?

“Of course. In time…”

Around her, ghouls hunched over other human forms, the sound of sucking filling the warehouse a hundredfold. She was struck by how much like children the ghouls looked, feeding because their parents provided for them. Mabry was their parent, but of course he couldn’t do it alone. As with all households, it was always easier to have two parents around to shoulder the chores.

She lowered her head back down and bit harder into the girl’s arm, all the way to the bone underneath, and the blood started to flow again. She sighed audibly, loudly with intense pleasure.

Someone in a hazmat suit fidgeted uncomfortably in the darkness, and Kate smiled.