Author: Sam Sisavath
Date: 2019-12-25 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Post-Apocalyptic | Infected
Description: Book #9 in The Road to Babylon post-apocalyptic series. PROTECT THE HOMESTEAD, WHATEVER THE COSTS. Keo thought he’d killed it: a blue-eyed ghoul with a particularly sadistic streak unlike anything he has ever faced before. This creature enjoys toying with its victims, creating terrifying scenarios to keep the game going, just before it delivers the fatal blow. After their initial confrontation outside of Paxton, the ghoul has returned, very much alive and stronger than ever. This time, it’s also brought along friends. A lot of friends. But Keo won’t have to face the creature alone. He has Lara
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Press

The Ranch

Copyright © 2019 by Sam Sisavath

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Road to Babylon Media LLC
www.roadtobabylon.com

Edited by Jennifer Jensen, Wendy Chan, and Grace Kastens

Cover Art by Deranged Doctor Design

Contents

Books in the Road to Babylon Series

Also by Sam Sisavath

About The Ranch

Prelude

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Books in the Road to Babylon Series

Glory Box

Bombtrack

Rooster

Devil’s Haircut

Black

The Distance

Hollow

Daybreak

The Ranch

Also by Sam Sisavath

The Purge of Babylon Post-Apocalyptic Series

The Purge of Babylon: A Novel of Survival

The Gates of Byzantium

The Stones of Angkor

The Walls of Lemuria Collection (Keo Prequel)

The Fires of Atlantis

The Ashes of Pompeii

The Isles of Elysium

The Spears of Laconia

The Horns of Avalon

The Bones of Valhalla

Mason’s War (A Purge of Babylon Story)

The After the Purge Post-Apocalyptic Series

Requiem

Tokens

Requiem

Mist City

Run or Fight

The Allie Krycek Vigilante Series

Hunter/Prey

Saint/Sinner

Finders/Keepers

Savior/Corruptor

The Red Sky Conspiracy Series

Most Wanted

The Devil You Know

About The Ranch

PROTECT THE HOMESTEAD, WHATEVER THE COSTS.

Keo thought he’d killed it: a blue-eyed ghoul with a particularly sadistic streak unlike anything he has ever faced before. This creature enjoys toying with its victims, creating terrifying scenarios to keep the game going, just before it delivers the fatal blow.

After their initial confrontation outside of Paxton, the ghoul has returned, very much alive and stronger than ever. This time, it’s also brought along friends. A lot of friends.

But Keo won’t have to face the creature alone. He has Lara and Bunker to watch his back, and together they’re not just going to lie down and play dead. If the ghoul wants a fight, then it’ll get one.

Keo isn’t in the mood to play games. He’s defending not just the ranch, but also his family. It’ll be a fight to the end, and there will be no round three.

It’s time to make the donuts.

Prelude

2 Months Ago

Lara sat up in bed to the faint and just-barely audible beats of horse hooves and a voice calling out from the night. She might not have even heard them if she hadn’t been wide awake, her thoughts too focused on (and worried about) Keo for her to get a good night’s sleep. It helped that they were in a deathly quiet part of the country, and she could have heard anything that interrupted the by-now very familiar ebb and flow of nature’s sounds.

There was no way to see who it was, or how many there were, because the property was awash in moonlight. That was the point of being out here, after all: to avoid unnecessary contact as much as possible. Even the main house shut down all its lights by the time they went to bed. The only people who should have known they were out here were, well, the people who already knew they were out here.

Keo was one of those people.

Dammit, Keo, I told you no meandering, mister!

She was on her feet and grabbing the rifle off the wall before she’d fully slipped on the jacket over her sleeping wardrobe. Boots came next, followed by her gun belt, hanging off a notch on the wall. Lara had been out here for too long to ignore the importance of having your weapons close by. She’d made that mistake once, when she thought she could escape with Keo, but not again.

By the time Lara was outside her bedroom on the second floor, she could already hear Bunker moving through the main house below her. That meant he’d already beaten her down there because his room, like hers and Keo’s, was also upstairs.

She rushed downstairs, thankful she wasn’t late enough in her pregnancy that she couldn’t move swiftly when she needed to, like now. Bunker was already at one of the windows flanking the main entrance into the house.

“What did you hear?” she asked.

“Same thing you did, I’m guessing,” Bunker said. He was swapping the scope on his M4 rifle with a night vision counterpart out of a utility bag on the floor next to him. “Go back to your room.”

“Like hell,” Lara said, striding across the big room.

“Lara…”

“Don’t start with me.”

Bunker sighed and might have rolled his eyes, but the room was too dark—there were only a couple of dimmed night-lights along the floors, including the back hallway, but nothing that would be readily obvious from outside the house—for her to be sure.

“So what did you hear?” Bunker asked.

“A horse,” Lara said.

“That’s it?”

“And someone shouting. You?”

“Same.”

She settled calmly at the other window, across the front double doors from Bunker, and pulled open the steel plates over her window to get a ground-floor look at what was out there. There wasn’t a lot of moonlight to see, and the ranch grounds appeared particularly doused in darkness tonight. They could have fixed that by leaving the outside lights on, but that would have been a mistake. Even now, years after The Battle of Houston, and The Walk Out that followed it, you still had to be very careful treading around at night. Only idiots drew attention to themselves, especially when they were living in a stationary target like the ranch.

She leaned in closer and could pick up the clump-clump-clump of horse hooves again. It sounded louder than before, which made sense because the animal would have gotten closer since she first picked it up on the second floor, though it still sounded faded. So closer, but not too close, yet—

Then, the voice. The same voice she’d heard earlier.

Calling out from the darkness.

Is that…? Lara thought.

Bunker, peering through his rifle’s scope, pulled his head back slightly before glancing across the doorway at her. He echoed her thoughts with, “Is that…?”

“My name,” Lara said, not quite believing what she was hearing. “Someone’s shouting my name out there.”

“Friend of yours?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hunh,” Bunker said as he looked through his scope again.

Bunker’s weapon was designed to see in the dark, but Lara’s wasn’t. The rifle had a simple red dot optic on top and featured limited magnification. She could see some of the ranch property outside through it, but even that was difficult with so little light to work with.

They didn’t have to wait long before a horse and its rider appeared out of the night, coming straight toward them.

Keo?

The human being perched on top of the animal was still too far for Lara to identify him. But she didn’t think it was Keo. The voice, even faint, hadn’t sounded like Keo’s. In fact, it hadn’t sounded male at all.

“Lara!” the rider called out as they got closer.

Not Keo, Lara thought, because that was clearly a woman’s voice.

“Lara!” the rider shouted. “Don’t shoot! I’m looking for Lara!”

“You recognize the voice now?” Bunker asked without pulling his eye away from his scope.

“No,” Lara said.

“Well, they definitely know you.”

“Apparently.”

“Just so we’re on the same page—that’s not Keo, right?”

“No, it’s not Keo.”

“That’s what I thought. Sounded way too girly for our boy.”

Lara pulled back from her rifle and looked toward the double doors.

The rider shouted again, “Lara! Don’t shoot!”

“Gee, now why would she be afraid you’d shoot, just because she’s riding up on us in the middle of the night?” Bunker said in that tone Lara couldn’t decide was sarcasm or complete seriousness.

Then, the words from the rider that changed everything: “Keo sent me!”

“Keo?” Lara said. “Did she just say Keo?”

“She definitely said Keo,” Bunker said.

As if she could hear them, the rider shouted, “Keo’s in trouble! He needs help! Keo needs help!”

Keo!

Lara pulled her rifle out of the window’s murder hole and rushed to the doors.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Bunker asked, pulling back from his own rifle to glance over in her direction.

“You heard her; Keo’s in trouble.”

“It could be a trick. Let’s play this smart—” Bunker was saying before she finished pulling back the locks and threw the doors open. Then, when she was already halfway out the doors, “Lara! Wait! Goddammit, woman!”

But she was already in the cold night air and running to intercept the rider, the woman’s words echoing in her head:

“Keo’s in trouble! He needs help! Keo needs help!”

Keo! Goddammit, mister, I told you no meandering! Didn’t I tell you no meandering?

As the horse neared, Lara could make out more of the lone figure in the saddle. She was almost leaning down against the animal as it stormed across the ranch’s wide-open property toward her direction. The horse was a big black mare, and it was moving so fast Lara wondered if it’d been fleeing something.

The woman was African-American and clinging to the horse rather than riding it. She looked injured, but Lara couldn’t tell how badly. She had plenty of strength to shout out Lara’s and Keo’s names, though.

“Lara!” Bunker half-shouted and half-whispered from the safety of his murder hole behind her. “Get back in here, woman. Now!”

She ignored him and ran to meet the horse halfway. When the rider saw her coming, she pulled up on the reins, and the big black mare slowed down until it came to a complete stop.

“Where’s Keo?” Lara asked.

“Back there,” the woman said. She tried to sit up in the saddle but was obviously having a difficult time of it. Lara was still too far away to know why. “He’s still back there. He needs your help.”

“Where? Back where?”

“Not far from here,” the woman said as she attempted to climb down from the horse. “He sent me. Told me to come to you. You’re Lara?”

“Yes. I’m Lara.”

“Then I found you—” she said before she gave up trying to carefully unmount the horse and simply slid off the saddle and slammed into the hard ground like a lifeless sack of potatoes.

Lara rushed over to her, every instinct to take this cautiously vanishing at the thought of Keo out there, alone and hurt.

You promised me you wouldn’t meander, Keo. Get there, get what you need, and come back, remember?

I hate it when you don’t keep your promises!

She put down the rifle and crouched next to the woman. She was young—maybe late teens or early twenties—and she was bleeding badly. There was a knife—a KA-BAR from the looks of the handle—embedded in her shoulder. Blood dripped from the wound, and sheets of sweat covered the woman’s face. She had a dark complexion, but at the moment it was closer to ghostly white than black. There was a large backpack strapped behind her, and Lara instantly recognized the inguz rune emblazoned on the front.

Keo…

“What about Keo?” Lara said, lifting the woman’s head off the ground. “Is he okay? Is he alive?”

The woman tried to shake her head even as her lips quivered. She was trying to say something, maybe even answer Lara’s questions, but the only sounds that came out between her cracked and bleeding lips were weak wheezing sounds. Her entire body was trembling, but she was a fighter. Lara could see that in her eyes.

You sure know how to pick ’em, Keo.

Lara took a longer look at the knife in the girl’s shoulder. It had gone in deep. Very, very deep. Almost to the hilt. She tried to imagine what kind of strength it would take to make the blade go so far in. She had done the right thing—the smart thing—by not trying to pull the knife out. The open gash alone might have caused her to bleed out. Either she knew that, or she hadn’t had the strength to try to dislodge it.

Footsteps behind her as Bunker came outside the house. “Goddammit, woman, you need to do what I tell you for once.”

“Shut up, and help me get her into the house,” Lara said.

“Say what?”

“She’s hurt.”

“So? We don’t know who she is or where she came from. This smells like a trick.”

“She knows where Keo is. She said he told her to come here and ask for me.”

“Still smells like a trap.”

“Get your ass over here, Bunker, and help me get her into the house!”

“Okay, okay, geez.” Bunker hurried over. “Did she say where Keo went and got himself in trouble at?”

Lara was about to answer when the young woman’s eyes flicked back open. “Paxton,” she whispered.

“Paxton?” Lara said. “Who’s Paxton?”

“Keo. He’s outside of Paxton…”

Paxton?

Then: Not someone. Some place.

Lara glanced over at Bunker, crouching on the other side of the woman. “It’s a town? Paxton?”

“Yeah. A nothing town about a half day’s ride north of here,” Bunker said. “Makes sense Keo would have had to go through it to reach Galveston and back.”

“She says he’s in Paxton, and he’s in trouble.”

“Of course he is,” the rancher said. “He wouldn’t be Keo if he wasn’t in trouble somewhere during what should have been a routine supply run, now would he?”

“Help me get her into the house,” Lara said. “I need to get the knife out of her and treat her wound.”

“And then what?”

“What do you think, genius? And then we’re going after Keo,” Lara said.

* * *

They carried the young woman into the house, and while Lara tended to her wound, Bunker took care of the horse outside. After Lara had gotten the woman stabilized, she left her in one of the spare bedrooms and rejoined Bunker in the great room. The rancher was already gearing up and had an extra set of gear ready for her.

Lara fought back the grin as she put on her vest. It covered up her growing belly just fine, and if no one knew she was two months pregnant, they wouldn’t have figured it out by just looking at her.

“Didn’t think you’d stay behind, so I’m not even gonna bother,” Bunker was saying.

“Smart man.”

Bunker snorted, then nodded toward the back hallway. “She gonna make it? That was a pretty big knife sticking out of her.”

“She’s a fighter. I think she’ll make it.”

“She got a name?”

“Jackson.”

“Like Michael Jackson?”

“Yes.”

“Does she sing, too?”

“I didn’t ask for her resume, Bunker.”

“She probably sings.”

“You can find out when we come back with Keo.” Lara picked up the same rifle she’d used earlier in the night and slung it.

“You sure this isn’t a trick?”

“It’s not a trick.”

“Wanna fill me in on how you know that?”

“The backpack she was carrying. It had everything I needed. Everything Keo was supposed to go to Galveston to get for me.”

“So the good ol’ boy got the job done after all.”

“Keo always gets the job done. Sometimes it just takes a while.” She clipped her gun belt in place. “Can we reach this Paxton place by morning?”

Bunker glanced down at his wristwatch and its glowing green hands. “With an hour or two left for waffles, if we’re so inclined.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re no fun,” Bunker said, following her outside the house.

* * *

They found Keo by following the tendrils of smoke drifting up from an unfinished mall on the outskirts of Paxton, and they brought him back home around ten at night. They would have arrived sooner, but Keo’s wounds made traveling too fast too risky. Fortunately, they’d had the foresight to take an additional two horses with them, both carrying field emergency supplies in case Keo needed more than just a hand.

It turned out that he did. A lot more.

But he was alive, and that was all Lara cared about. His wounds would close, his scars would heal (Well, most of them; and the rest, she didn’t give a damn about anyway.), and his bones would mend.

Lara expected to find Jackson sleeping off the sedatives and morphine she had given the young woman in bed when they returned, but instead there was just an empty mattress and bloody footprints on the floor leading to the door, through the back hallway, then out into the night.

Jackson was gone.

From all the evidence, she’d left on her own power and hadn’t been taken.

Through Keo, Lara learned that the KA-BAR embedded in Jackson’s shoulder while she was riding all the way from Paxton to the ranch, that Lara had taken out of her, had been used on a blue-eyed ghoul previously. Its blood still coated the blade when the creature wounded Jackson with it.

Its blood was on the knife that had gone into Jackson…

“What are the chances she’s not going to come back tonight, or the next night, or the ones after that?” Bunker asked as he and Lara stood outside the bedroom where Keo was sleeping off a healthy cocktail of meds.

Lara shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“But we’re in agreement. She’s turned.”

“Yes. From everything Keo said, that seems like a fair conclusion.”

“Well, shit. Hopefully she won’t come back.”

“You think she will?” Lara asked.

Bunker shrugged. “Hell if I know. But if she does, we’ll be ready.”

One

It was a smiley face.

“Is that what I think it is?” Bunker asked.

“That’s blood,” Keo said.

It was human blood. Keo knew that because ghoul blood would have already disappeared with the morning sunlight. Well, it could have also been animal blood, but Keo didn’t think so.

No, that’s definitely human blood.

“Yeah, but the shape,” Bunker said. “What’s that called?”

“A smiley face.”

“That’s it. I forgot for a moment.”

“Really?”

“Hey, it’s not like I see a smiley face all the time, you know. Anyway, that’s pretty fucked up.”

“You can say that again.”

“That’s pretty fucked up.”

“Go ahead. Say it one more time.”

“Nah. I think I made my point.”

“You sure?”

“Yup. I’m a man of few words.”

“Since when?”

“Ask my momma. The first word I ever said was, ‘Shhh.’”

The smiley face was drawn on a fire-scorched wall, the bloody lines drawn either hastily or purposefully poorly, because the overall shape could best be described as sloppy. But there was no denying its intention: Someone had left it for them to find, and whoever the “artists” had been, they’d chosen the largest building still standing at the center of town. A half-burnt sign on the ground identified the place as the LONGMIRE MEETING HALL, though the ING HALL part was missing, along with the roof and every other part of the structure that wasn’t made of brick and mortar.

It’d been left here sometime last night, knowing they would find it. It was impossible to miss, after all. You couldn’t ride through all of Longmire without stumbling across it eventually. The bloody thing was ten feet wide and just as high, and almost radiant against the rising sun in the background.

“This is worse than I expected,” Bunker was saying.

“What were you expecting?”

“Bad, but not this bad. Hell, I think it’s safe to say it’s gone past bad and crossed over into real fucking bad territory now.”

Bunker tightened his grip on his AR-15 as he scanned the remains of Longmire. He was bundled up, his large Stetson hiding his eyes from the sunlight. Keo, like Bunker, had come to town fully armed, though he carried an MP5 submachine gun. He liked the compactness of the weapon and left the long-range shooting to Bunker.

Despite wearing a jacket, Keo still shivered underneath it. He wanted to think it was because of the Texas cold that had continued well into spring, but maybe he was just trying to assuage his ego just a little bit.

Like Bunker, he’d expected to find bad, but not this.

Not this.

Longmire was a town of 5,000 or so residents before The Purge. That number had been reduced to a lowly 500 or so during the year-long nightmare. That decline continued after The Battle of Houston chased the monsters back into the shadows, to an even lower 80 or so. Right now, there were no signs of any of those 80 or so anywhere, as if the residents had simply picked up and disappeared in the middle of the night.

Of course, Keo knew better. He’d heard the gunfire and screams last night. So had Bunker and Lara. Longmire’s citizens hadn’t gone willingly; they’d been taken. The culprits were pretty obvious, too. The fact that it had taken place at night was a dead giveaway. The lack of bodies in the streets or among the husks of still-standing buildings was the other clue. And if that wasn’t all the proof they needed that ghouls had attacked the town, there were the deformed bleach-white bones. Not a lot, but enough to tell them that Longmire hadn’t gone gently into that good night without a fight.

Most of the town’s walls were brick and mortar, which was the only reason they were still standing after last night’s flames. The roads were filled with debris, the streetlights charred black. The interiors of buildings that once had people living their lives inside, just trying to get by the best they can, were gone.

Lingering ashes made Keo blink as they fell on his head. He brushed at them and looked around, wondering just how the hell a town of 80 or so people had been reduced to…this in the space of just one night. He knew what ghouls were capable of—had seen them in action more times than he cared to remember—but this...

How many of them were there last night? How many would it take to do this?

A lot, was the answer.

A fucking lot.

Keo and Bunker stood at just about the center of town, the ground under their boots made of carefully put-together cobblestone. It, like the hollowed husks of buildings, would be the only things still standing long after they left this place. Across from them was the fountain that acted as Longmire’s centerpiece, featuring a statue of a man holding a musket in one hand while his other hand shielded his eyes as he gazed off into the distant hills. The figure wore buckskin and had a big knife in a sheath on one hip. John Longmire was an imposing fellow, and it was too bad he hadn’t been here last night to save the people who called this place home.

“Why’d they leave that behind, you think?” Bunker asked, staring at the bloody smiley that had waited for them this morning.

“For us to find, obviously.”

“Like what, some kind of mark? Like Kilroy was here?”

“Who’s Kilroy?”

“You know. Kilroy.”

“I don’t know any Kilroy.”

“You need to learn your history, Keo.”

“I don’t have time. I’m too busy worrying about the present.”

“Good point.”

Keo recalled the noise that had woken him up. The ranch was only a couple of miles south of Longmire, but even if it had been ten miles, he would have heard the chaos just fine. Sound traveled now, and it was even more obvious in the middle of a silent night, which most nights were these days.

First there was the shooting, as Longmire’s citizens fought back against the invasion. The fire came afterward. Keo could see the orange-red glow in the sky easily from the ranch, dominating the dark skies in the horizon. The colors were vibrant, almost dancing against the darkness.

Like an invitation…

His first instincts were to gear up and run to the town to help. It was the same with Lara and Bunker. But the voice of reason put the kibosh on that. As much as it pained them—Lara and Bunker more than Keo, if he was being honest with himself—they hung back and waited for sunup before heading over to see what had happened.

They’d expected bad, but it was worse.

It was way worse.

Standing on one of the many small rolling hills that littered the area like camel humps, and looking at Longmire from half a mile away, there was something oddly beautiful about the ruins under the rising morning sunlight. Not that Keo gave voice to that thought; he didn’t think Bunker, who had been living next to the town (along with its people) for much longer than he had, would have appreciated the sentiment.

“It’s been a while since we’ve had ghoul problems all the way down here,” Bunker was saying. “Maybe too long.”

“Too long?” Keo said.

“They weren’t ready for it.” The rancher shook his head as he continued to look around, hands on his hips. “They weren’t ready for it…” he said again, softly, as if to himself.

Keo looked at the smiley face again. The fact that he’d found that here, waiting for him, made him wonder if something else was responsible for this. Something from his not-too-distant past…

“It’s dead,” Lara would say, whenever they talked about it, which they rarely did, but sometimes it did come up.

“You don’t know that,” Keo would say. “I wish you were right. But you don’t know that for sure, Lara. You never found its body.”

“It was morning when we found you, Keo. If there was a body to be found, it’d just be bones.”

“Not if it was buried underneath the rubble.”

“It wasn’t like we could unearth the whole mall just to look for it. Besides, we had to bring you home. You were more important.”

He couldn’t disagree with that. Lara and Bunker had done what they needed to in order to give him the medical treatment his wounds demanded.

That was two months ago. Almost two months ago.

If it was the creature, come back to finish what it’d started with Keo back in Paxton, at least it’d given him time to mend his broken bones. He had extra scars on his face and body, but who didn’t these days? Besides, the only opinion about his looks that mattered was Lara’s, and she didn’t give a damn what he looked like.

But Keo couldn’t shake that image of the creature, out of Paxton…

You did this, didn’t you? I know you did this, you sick sonofabitch.

Keo glanced around at the smoldering remains of Longmire, the acidic taste of vaporized ghoul flesh scratching at his cheeks. The townspeople hadn’t gone down without a fight; they’d taken a few of the ghouls with them. Not enough, as it turned out. If it had been enough, Keo and Bunker wouldn’t have been walking through nothing but rubble for the last hour.

You’re out there, aren’t you? I know you’re out there. And you know that I know, don’t you? This is just another one of your games. You want me to see this. You want me to know you’re coming.

You sadistic fuck.

Of course, he could be wrong. The creature might have died in the mall outside of Paxton like he’d hoped, like Lara tried to convince him. This could be something else. Another ghoul raiding party. It was possible. It was very much poss—

Yeah, right.

He glanced back at Bunker. “How many people?”

“Eighty-two, at last count,” the rancher said. Then, furrowing his brows, “Make that eighty-three.”

“Eighty-three?”

“Angela gave birth while you were running around in Paxton, having fun without me.” He paused. Then, wrinkling his face as if he had an invisible itch he couldn’t get to, “Eighty-three people were here last night.”

Not anymore, Keo thought. Not anymore…

He looked over at Annabelle, waiting nearby. The big black horse shuffled her unshod feet occasionally, while big brown eyes scanned the remains of Longmire. The horse was imposing in the morning sunlight, even next to Bunker’s Paint, Lucille. The two horses were on high alert, clearly not liking what they were seeing, or smelling. Horses had much better sense of danger than humans did, from Keo’s experience.

He couldn’t say he blamed the animals for being jittery. He was too, and that was before he found the bloody smiley face waiting for him.

“Let’s get back to the ranch,” Keo said as he headed over to the horses. “I don’t like leaving Lara back there by herself.”

Bunker trailed behind him. “We haven’t searched the whole place yet.”

“Look around you, Bunker. There’s nothing to find.”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

Yeah, we do, Keo thought as he picked up Annabelle’s reins. The mare wasn’t always called Annabelle, but Keo had no idea what her original name was. Her former owner knew, but he was dead. Besides, Keo wasn’t the one who had named the big black. Bunker had, after Keo gifted him the horse to make up for losing Bunker’s other horse, Mirabelle, back in Paxton. Though he wouldn’t admit it, Keo guessed Bunker naming the horse Annabelle was in honor of the lost Arabian.

“Hey,” Bunker was saying behind him. “You know what happened here last night, don’t you?”

Keo climbed into Annabelle’s saddle. The horse instantly lifted her head and let out a slight snicker, approving of his need to get the hell out of Longmire as fast as possible. “I know as much as you do.”

“I don’t believe you. I think you know a hell of a lot more.”

Keo looked down at Bunker and shook his head. “It’s just a guess.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“I’m probably wrong…”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

Keo nodded and looked around at the remains of Longmire. “I think it was here last night. The same sick bastard I told you about.”

“Paxton. The same one that you said took out a group of slayers like they were just toys.”

“One and the same.”

“You said it took a C4 to the face. No one survives that. No thing survives that.”

“It did, somehow. And it was here last night. I can feel it.”

Bunker didn’t look convinced. “It’s been almost two months. Why did it wait so long to make its move?”

“It was injured. The slayers hurt it before it reached Paxton, and Felix nearly killed it at the mall. It was hurt and it needed to heal, and to rebuild its army. After what happened here last night, I’m guessing it’s accomplished both those things.”

“You think what happened with Jackson had something to do with it?”

“I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t care. I’m only thinking about tonight and the nights after this one.”

The rancher climbed onto Lucille. “You have any proof of this, or is this all just guesswork?”

“It’s all gut instinct.”

“So, no proof.”

“None.”

“You could be wrong.”

“Shit, Bunker, I hope I’m wrong. Goddammit, I hope I’m wrong.”

Keo tapped Annabelle on the flanks and pointed the mare up the road. Bunker caught up and rode alongside him. Neither one of them said anything for a while until they were halfway out of town.

“Supposing you’re right,” Bunker said. “Supposing it is the same one you ran into at Paxton. What do you think it wants?”

“It wants to play games,” Keo said.

“What kind of games?”

“The kind that makes you wish you were dead, and ends with you being dead.”

“That doesn’t sound very fun.”

“It’s not.”

He remembered the glowing eyes, trying to pierce his soul. But most of all, he remembered the words that came out of the creature’s mouth:

“I’m going to take everything from you. Everything, and everyone. Including those at the ranch. Yes, I know about the ranch, meat. I know all about the ranch…”

It had taken the sadistic fucker almost two months, but it was finally following through on its threat.

Two

Keo was anxious to get back to the ranch, not because he didn’t think Lara could handle herself if trouble found her, but because, well, he didn’t like the thought of her being alone. Especially in her current condition. She hadn’t wanted to stay behind, but he had to remind her it wasn’t just about her anymore; she was now looking out for two people.

Jesus Christ. I’m going to be a father. When did this happen?

He didn’t know the exact date of when that had happened, and neither did Lara. Not that dates mattered anymore. She was with child, and had been for almost four months now. Two months ago, she’d gotten sick and diagnosed herself with sepsis, or “blood poisoning.” That had sent Keo to collect antibiotics and other medical supplies for her. Galveston was the most obvious choice: He was guaranteed to find a working Black Tide clinic there, stocked with everything he’d need to bring back to Lara so she could cure herself.

He remembered arriving at the Texas island city, which had been turned into a working refinery for Black Tide fuel production. He’d found one of the clinics easily enough, but the lone staffer hadn’t been willing to fill his entire list. Lara had told him she didn’t need everything, but it would have been nice if she got them. That was good enough for Keo to persist.

“Who’s your commander?” Keo had asked the pimply-faced twenty-something kid who was on duty.

“What’s it to you?” the kid had answered. His name tag read LAWRENCE.

“I need to talk to them.”

“What if they don’t want to talk to you?” Then, softening his voice, Lawrence had added, “Look, I can give you some antibiotics, but not the drugs you want.”

“You don’t have them?”

“We do, but we don’t just give them out to anyone who comes in here asking for them.”

“Isn’t that the whole point of setting up a clinic for the locals?”

“Yeah, but like I said, we don’t just hand those out to anyone who comes through those doors.”

“So let me talk to your commander,” Keo had insisted.

Lawrence had shaken his head. “She’s busy. But even if she wasn’t, she’d tell you the same thing: We don’t give out those drugs without a reason.”

“I already told you a reason: My woman’s pregnant and has a sepsis infection. She needs everything on that list.”

“And how does she know all this?”

“She’s a doctor,” Keo had said. That wasn’t entirely true, but it was close enough.

“So she self-diagnosed?”

“That’s right.”

Lawrence had shaken his head again. “I still can’t give them to you.”

“Who’s your commander? Maybe I know her.”

“How would you know her? Who are you, anyway?”

“John Chow,” Keo said, repeating the fake name he’d given Lawrence when he first entered the clinic. “I used to be Black Tide.”

“Why didn’t you say that before?”

“I thought I didn’t have to.”

It took Lawrence an hour to get in touch with his CO. The blonde who finally showed up was in her late thirties—tall, with green eyes, and Keo didn’t recognize her. But then, there were hundreds of people at Black Tide when he was around and thousands more after he left. And most of his contacts were with the field operatives, not the medical staff.

“You asked for me?” the woman said. MANSFIELD was on her name tag.

“John Chow,” Keo said, shaking her hand. “I need to fill this list,” he added, showing her the list Lara had made for him.

Mansfield scanned the sheet of paper. “What does she have?”

“She’s pregnant and has a sepsis infection. Blood poisoning.”

“I know what sepsis is,” Mansfield said. She handed the list back to him. “You can have the antibiotics, but not the rest of the list without me diagnosing the patient first.”

“Like I already told Lawrence. My woman’s a doctor. She already self-diagnosed.”

“Not good enough. I need to see her in person.”

“That’s going to be a little hard to do. She’s five days’ ride from here.”

“Then you should have brought her with you.”

“Which part of ‘she’s pregnant’ don’t you understand, Captain?”

Mansfield was unmoved. She put her hands on her hips. “Those drugs aren’t candy. I need her here in person.”

Keo sighed. He was worried this might happen. “What about one of your helicopters?”

“What about them?” Mansfield said.

“What are the chances I can borrow one of them to take you to her?”

The captain shook her head. “Sorry, but that’s out of the question. You need to bring her here in person. Until then, I can only give you the antibiotics.”

Goddammit, Keo had thought.

He had only two options left. The first was to take what he needed by force, but that would have introduced other problems. Namely, getting on the bad side of the Black Tiders at Galveston. That wasn’t really something he saw himself doing, or wanted. Not that he thought Mansfield or Lawrence could stop him, but they weren’t the only ones on the island.

The other option didn’t involve violence, but it did mean telling the truth.

Mansfield must have seen the conflict on his face, but she read it as something else. Her voice softened a bit when she added, “You can bring your wife in here anytime. In fact, that’s probably a better option, don’t you think? Have you thought about who will deliver the baby when the time comes?”

Keo hadn’t—and as far as he knew, neither had Lara—but that wasn’t his concern right now.

He glanced back at the door behind them to make sure it was closed. There were other civilians in the clinic outside, but Lawrence and two other Black Tiders were taking care of them.

Keo turned back to Mansfield. “How long have you been with Black Tide?”

Mansfield was rifling through folders stacked high on her desk when she looked back up at him. “Why?”

“Because you don’t know who I am, do you?”

The captain narrowed her eyes at him. “Should I?”

“Yeah, you should.”

“I don’t recall any John Chow.”

“That’s not my real name.”

“So you gave Lawrence a fake name?”

“That’s right.”

“Wanna tell me why?”

“My real name’s Keo. You may have heard of me. I was with Black Tide in the early days. Hell, I was at The Battle of Houston.” He cocked his head slightly, trying to see if Mansfield recognized the name. “Any of this ring a bell?”

Mansfield stared at him for a while without saying a word.

“Anything?” Keo asked.

“I thought you looked familiar the first time I saw you,” Mansfield said. “The fake name threw me off.”

“You know who I am?”

The doctor nodded. “We never actually met, but I saw you around the island. I mean, the other island. Black Tide.”

“You were there?”

“In the early days. I was one of Commander Tilson’s trainees. You came to see her once or twice while I was around, but we never formally met.”

“Commander Tilson?” Keo said. “I don’t know who that is.”

“Zoe?”

“Ah.”

“You didn’t know her last name was Tilson?”

“No. But then, I didn’t even know Danny’s last name was Hartford until just recently. Surnames weren’t exactly a high priority back then.”

“No, they weren’t,” Mansfield said. She came out from behind her desk and sat down on the edge. She was still staring at him intently, but those green eyes of hers were a lot friendlier now. “Jesus, I can’t believe you’re still alive. I thought you were dead. We all did.”

Keo wasn’t too surprised to hear that. The last time he’d spoken to anyone at Black Tide was with Danny, almost a year and a half ago now. He hadn’t really been keeping up with what Black Tide was up to these days, and he assumed they hadn’t with him, either. Not that they’d know where to find him, which was exactly how he—and Lara—wanted it.

“I’m alive, and I need everything on this list,” Keo said, handing the piece of paper back to Mansfield.

She took it back. “You got married?”

“Not exactly.”

“Of course not. Who gets married anymore?” Mansfield took another look at the list before glancing back up at him. “How soon do you need this?”

“ASAP would be nice.”

“Give me ten minutes,” Mansfield said as she headed to the door.

“Mansfield,” Keo said. Then, when the doctor looked back at him, “Can we keep this to ourselves? You said everyone thought I was dead. If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep it that way.”

“If it were anyone else, I’d tell you to go jump in the Gulf.” She shrugged. “But what the hell. You’re Keo. The Keo.”

Keo grinned. “I don’t know what that means.”

“The stories I’ve heard about you…” Mansfield shook her head and chuckled. “Tell me something: Is it hard to walk around with balls that big?”

* * *

As far as Keo knew, Mansfield kept her word because no one had showed up at the ranch in the almost two months since he left Galveston. Of course, someone could still show up later, but he trusted that the captain hadn’t broken her promise. Even so, Keo kept expecting to see Black Tide helicopters in the sky, or a Jeep or two on the ground heading toward the ranch every morning.

None of those things ever happened, and he was glad. Lara and he had made a concerted effort to disengage themselves from what was happening out there, and the last thing they wanted was to be pulled back in. They had a good life going, even if it was being threatened at the moment by a certain blue-eyed bastard from Keo’s past.

Gotta learn to keep the past buried, pal. Gotta learn that little trick one of these days.

Keo thought about all that as he and Bunker rode out of the ruins of Longmire and continued through the valley alongside the flat highway. They hadn’t said very much since they left the town behind. Keo didn’t think there was much left to say, and apparently Bunker agreed. The rancher was rarely at a loss for words; maybe he wasn’t, now. More likely, Bunker was trying to mentally prepare for the nights to come.

You’re out there, aren’t you, you fucker? So what’s the game this time?

The thought of “playing” its game made him shiver slightly. He hadn’t liked it back in Paxton, and he didn’t like the idea of doing it again now. Especially not with so much more at stake. At least it was just his life on the line the first time; now, it was Lara’s, too.

…and the baby’s.

Fuck you, asshole. You come after my family, and I’m going to splatter your brains to the wall. That’s all it’s going to take. A bullet to the head, to end you once and for all.

One bullet to the head…

They were making good pace back to the ranch when Bunker, riding slightly ahead of Keo, pulled up on Lucille.

Keo did likewise. “What?”

“You hear that?” Bunker asked.

Instead of answering, Keo listened.

Really, really listened.

He heard cold winds howling between the hills in front of them. More, coming from the still-standing walls of Longmire in the background. But there was nothing out there that stood out.

He looked over at Bunker. “What did you hear?”

“Hoofbeats,” Bunker said before he turned Lucille and broke off from the road and toward one of the nearby hills.

Keo followed. He hadn’t heard what Bunker had, but the guy did have much better hearing than him. Keo didn’t dismiss the possibility he wasn’t fully 100 percent after his last encounter with Blue Eyes. His bones had mended and his wounds had healed, but he also hadn’t had to fight either in those times, so he wasn’t completely sure of himself. Yet, anyway.

The rancher reached the crest of the small hill up ahead and stopped. He peered down the other side, tipping his Stetson to keep the sunlight out of his eyes. Keo didn’t have a hat, so he had to use his hand to shield his face from the brightness as he reached Bunker.

He hadn’t heard it earlier, but he could see it now: A lone brown horse pulling a wagon behind it up a winding dirt road. He could just make out a single figure sitting in the front seat, guiding the horse by the reins. It was a woman, but she was still too far away for him to make out what she looked like.

“If she’s heading for Longmire, she’s going in the wrong direction,” Bunker said.

Keo nodded. He’d noticed the same thing: If it stayed on the path, the wagon would bypass Longmire completely. The rider wouldn’t even see the town’s remains with the hills blocking her view of the city.

As the wagon drew closer, Keo could just make out the clop-clop-clop of the lone horse. How Bunker had even heard it earlier, Keo couldn’t figure out. Maybe the rancher really did have much better hearing than him. Bunker also had a pair of binoculars, which he took out of his saddlebags now and looked through.

Keo sat patiently in his saddle, waiting. The wagon was at least half a mile away, and if the rider could make out Keo and Bunker on top of the hill watching her, she hadn’t reacted. With the morning sunlight, maybe she couldn’t see very well.

“Well?” Keo said when Bunker finally lowered his field glasses.

“One woman, with something in the back,” Bunker said.

“Can you be more specific?”

“Looked like bundles.”

“Bundles of what?”

“Bundles of something.”

“Well, that clears it up.”

“She saw us, though.”

“You sure?”

“Yup. Stared right back at me.” Then, almost absently, “She’s not a bad-looking gal.”

“You can tell that from all the way over here?”

“I have good eyes, amigo.”

Good ears, too, apparently, Keo thought.

Despite Bunker’s confirmation that the driver had seen them, the wagon remained pointed in their direction and didn’t stop or try to veer away in order to avoid them. If the woman kept going straight, there was a good chance she’d stumble across the ranch. Even if she didn’t know the exact location of Bunker’s property, she would be able to glimpse the solar collector cells on the rooftops of the buildings from a distance and might decide to investigate.

Unless she already knew where to find the ranch…

“You think she knows?” Keo asked.

“She’s definitely not looking for Longmire,” Bunker said.

“Have you seen her before?”

“She doesn’t look familiar.”

“I think she knows about the ranch.”

“Is that another hunch?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, only one way to find out…”

Bunker nudged Lucille, and the big Paint began moving down the hill. Keo followed, Annabelle easily maneuvering the slanted ground as the two of them went on an intercept course with the approaching wagon.

As they descended, Keo reached down and slid the slung MP5 from behind his back to his side, within easier reach. He still had the longer AR in a sheath alongside the big Morgan, but Keo wouldn’t need it as long as he had the submachine gun. But it was nice to have a backup piece in case he needed one. The last time he didn’t have that option was back in Paxton, and he could have really, really used one.

“It could be a trap,” Keo said.

“That’s what the cool-looking guns are for,” Bunker said. “Besides, what are you afraid of? It’s just one woman on a wagon by her little lonesome.”

“Yeah, just one woman on a wagon, in a morning when we just found Longmire razed to the ground.”

“You got a point,” Bunker said as he began to slow down a bit.

Keo did likewise with Annabelle. He scanned the area, looking for signs of a potential ambush. He hadn’t seen anything from the top of the hill, and didn’t, now, at the bottom of it. If there were shooters out there waiting for them to show themselves, they would have taken their shots earlier, wouldn’t they? Unless, of course, this was all just an elaborate way to draw them closer to the wagon, but that seemed unlikely.

The wagon didn’t stop until it was within five or so yards from where Keo and Bunker sat on their horses, waiting for it.

“Howdy,” Bunker said.

The woman didn’t answer, but she also didn’t move from her seat or reach for anything that might have been a weapon. Her face was slightly dark, and there was dry blood on her clothes. She was in her late twenties, and Asian. Vietnamese, he thought, but maybe Cambodian. She definitely had her roots in Southeast Asia, he could tell that much with certainty. Most importantly, though, Keo recognized the thousand-yard stare in her eyes. He’d seen it too many times in too many battlefields around the world.

When she didn’t answer him, Bunker continued. “Nice day for a wagon ride. Where you headed, if you don’t mind me asking?”

She may or may not have minded. It was impossible to read that flat expression on her face as she scrutinized Bunker back, then did the same to Keo. She stared at their faces wordlessly, as if she hadn’t heard a thing Bunker had said.

“You okay, miss?” Keo asked.

He didn’t get any response either.

“Hey, lady,” Bunker said. Then, when she still didn’t answer, he leaned slightly forward in his saddle and snapped his fingers to draw her attention. “Hey, laaaaaady. You there? Can you hear me now?”

If she was insulted by Bunker’s attempts, she didn’t show it. Instead, she glanced between them one more time before finally asking, “Which one of you is Keo?”

What the fuck? Keo thought.

“She speaks!” Bunker said. Then, jerking a thumb in Keo’s direction, “He’s the one with all the ugly scars.”

“How do you know my name?” Keo asked. He had, without realizing it, moved his right hand closer toward the slung submachine gun.

The woman put the reins down and reached into her jacket pocket.

“Whoa, whoa, watch the hands,” Bunker said, reaching for his holstered sidearm while holding up one hand to stop her. He stopped just short of pulling the pistol.

The woman ignored him and took something out of her pocket, before tossing that same something to Keo.

He caught it.

“What the hell’s that?” Bunker asked.

Keo didn’t answer him. He was too busy looking down at the squishy plastic object in his palm.

It was a baby pacifier, and there were small red speckles on the nipple that may or may not have been blood.

“Is that what I think it is?” Bunker said.

Keo looked up at the woman. “What is this? Why did you give me this? How do you even know my name?”

The woman met his gaze with that same thousand-yard stare. If anything, the pain in her eyes had intensified. “It told me to give it to you. It said you’d understand.”

“‘It?’” Bunker asked. “‘It’ who?”

The woman didn’t answer. Her eyes, soft brown, remained focused on Keo, and vice versa.

“What’s she talking about?” Bunker asked. “Hey, Keo, you still there?”

He was, but Keo wasn’t listening to Bunker. He was too busy remembering:

“I’m going to take everything from you,” the creature had said to him outside of Paxton, just as their little “game” was reaching its apex. “Everything, and everyone. Including those at the ranch. Yes, I know about the ranch, meat. I know all about the ranch…”

It had known about the ranch then. It had known about Lara.

And now, it was telling Keo through the pacifier that it knew about the baby growing inside of her, too.

Sonofabitch…

“What is going on here?” Bunker was asking. He sounded more than a little frustrated. “Anyone wanna fill me in? Pretty please? With cherry on top?”

“I have to get back to the ranch,” Keo said, even as he turned Annabelle around.

“What? Wait—”

Keo didn’t wait. He spurred the Morgan, and they were pounding up the valley along the dirt road a second later.

“Keo!” Bunker shouted from behind him.

Keo didn’t stop or look back. He had to get back to the ranch.

Back to Lara.

Because it knew about them.

The fucker knew everything about them!

Three

Bunker’s ranch was situated in a valley about two miles from Longmire, surrounded by sloping hills that provided it with plenty of natural camouflage. A huge connected fence circled the property, though Bunker could have added even more acres if he’d wanted to. He didn’t, because there was no point. Not anymore. Land ownership didn’t mean a damn thing if you couldn’t hold it with a gun these days. Besides, there was no one around to stake their claims.

Besides the main house, there was a barn on the right side and a half dozen more buildings for supplies and various storage needs. The biggest structure of the group was the stables, fifty yards and to the left of the house, where Bunker’s horses were kept day and night. There was a water tank resting on a tower in the back, its rocket-like shape mostly hidden by the big two-story house at the front of the property.

He found Lara where he expected to find her—waiting for him at the big double doors of the main house, shielding her eyes against the sun as he pulled up on Annabelle. She looked tiny against the house, which was spread out to encompass the square footage of two bungalows put together. The exterior was white, with a brown roof and Ionic columns out front. Glass windows from the two rooms on the top floor reflected sunlight back at Keo. Each window, like the ones on the first, had protective metal slats that could be pulled into place in case of an attack. Keo had been glad to have those before, but even more so now.

The house had sharp edges all around and was more modern and contemporary than classical. With the exception of a few touches here and there, the overall look was very much something you’d find in a traditional working ranch, with extra additions to help it brave the new world.

Keo wasn’t surprised Lara was already outside and waiting for him. He’d already radioed back to the house earlier to make sure she was fine. They all carried two-ways on them, including Bunker, but you couldn’t always count on them with so many hills in the area to block the signals.

“What’s wrong? You sounded worried,” Lara said as he jumped off the Morgan. “What happened at Longmire?”

“It’s gone,” Keo said.

“Gone? Gone how?”

“Gone. They burned it to the ground last night.”

“Oh, God. There were eighty-two people in that town, Keo.”

Eighty-three, according to Bunker, Keo thought but didn’t say. He didn’t want to mention the recent addition of a newborn because he was afraid of how that might affect her. He probably didn’t have to worry. Lara was the toughest woman he knew, but he didn’t feel like taking a chance.

Besides the gun belt—a new addition since this morning—she was wearing slacks and a sweater for the chilly weather, and had her long hair in a ponytail. Despite being four months into her pregnancy, it was still hard to tell she was with child just by looking at her. Her stomach wasn’t that big, but it would get bigger in the coming months.

“Last night’s fire,” Lara said.

He nodded. “There wasn’t very much left when we got there. I don’t know what they used to set the blaze, but they did a pretty damn good job on the place.”

“You keep saying ‘they.’ Who is ‘they,’ Keo?”

“Ghouls, led by the same Blue Eyes that I fought in Paxton. It survived Felix’s C4.”

Lara’s body tensed noticeably. “You’re sure?”

“We ran into a wagon with a woman on the way back here. Bunker’s on his way back with her.” Keo took out the pacifier. “She gave me this.”

Lara’s eyes widened at the sight of the baby toy. Maybe she might have even noticed the specks of blood on the plastic nipple. “Is that a pacifier?”

“Yeah. The woman said it told her to give it to me. It mentioned me by name, Lara. That’s how I know it’s here, that it was responsible for Longmire last night.”

Lara picked up the pacifier with trembling fingers. “Is that blood?”

“I think so.”

“God, Keo.” She stared at the object in her hand, almost as if she weren’t sure how it had gotten there. Lara looked up at him. “It’s coming here next, isn’t it?”

He nodded somberly. “Longmire was a message.”

“Why? Why not just attack us last night? Why even bother with Longmire at all if it knows about you? About us?” she added, even as she put a hand over her stomach. Keo didn’t think she was even aware she had done that.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it needs to make more ghouls, but…”

“But what? You know, don’t you?”

He sighed. “It’s part of a game. It wants me to know it’s coming. It gets off on messing with people’s heads. Back in Paxton, it made up ridiculous scenarios just to fuck with us. This is its MO.”

Lara looked past him, and Keo turned around.

Bunker had returned on Lucille, riding through the front gate, with the wagon and the woman on it following closely behind.

“That’s her?” Lara asked.

“Yeah,” Keo said.

“Where did she come from?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t stick around to question her.”

Lara reached over and took his hand, and squeezed. “We’ll be okay. All of us. If that thing comes here, we’ll kill it. We know how to do it. All it’ll take is a bullet to the head. What makes this one so different?”

Keo pursed a smile, but he thought, It’s different, Lara. This one is different.

They both looked over again as Bunker pulled up in front of them. The woman was still just halfway across the property behind him, her wagon moving slowly over the curving dirt road that led from the front gate all the way to the main house.

The rancher climbed off Lucille and took off his Stetson to run his gloved fingers through his hair. He glanced back at the approaching woman. “Invited her to stay with us. She looked like she could use some home cooking. Hope you guys don’t mind.”

“It’s your place, Bunker,” Lara said.

“So what’s the real reason you invited her back here?” Keo asked.

Bunker grinned. “Figured we should find out where she came from, what happened to her, and all that good stuff.” He nodded at the pacifier in Lara’s hand. “And how she ended up with that little gift for you.”

That reminded Lara she was still holding the pacifier, and she handed it back to Keo. He put it into his pocket. His instincts were to throw it as far away as he could, but that didn’t seem like the correct thing to do at the moment. He made a mental note to do exactly that, though, but at a later date.

“So it’s definitely the same one from Paxton,” Bunker said.

Keo nodded. “Yeah, it’s the same one.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Why? Were you hoping it was another blue-eyed ghoul?”

“Nah. I was hoping it wasn’t a blue-eyed ghoul at all, but given what happened to Longmire, that was probably wishful thinking. The Black Eyes aren’t usually that tactical when they descend on a place.”

Keo looked past him and at the woman riding up to them on the wagon. Her face remained as unreadable now as it’d been when they’d met on the road.

“What’s her name?” Lara was asking Bunker.

“Thuy,” Bunker said.

“Thuy?” Keo said.

“That’s what she said.”

“So she’s Vietnamese.”

“She sounded American to me.”

“I mean, she’s of Vietnamese ancestry, Bunker. I’m pretty sure she’s as American as you and me.”

Bunker lifted both eyebrows at him. “You’re American?”

“You didn’t know that?”

The rancher shrugged. “I always assumed you were a filthy illegal taking advantage of our great union for your own selfish benefits.”

“Thanks for that, Bunker.”

“You know me. Always making Texas great again.”

* * *

Things were going to get dicey when night fell, but that was still eight hours away.

“Dicey?” You think this is going to get dicey?

Yeah, it’s gonna get worse than that, pal.

Keo spent the remaining daylight cataloguing what he had at the ranch and how best to use it. The good news was that Bunker had had a lot of time to fortify the place. The rancher had been using the property as his Eden since The Purge, and he’d only added to the defenses since. That was the good news. The bad news was that the main house was easily defensible against black-eyed ghouls. The Blue Eyes were a different breed—and brought with them a whole different set of dangers—entirely.

Meanwhile, Lara helped Thuy settle into one of the spare rooms on the second floor. Like most people Keo had encountered out there, Thuy looked older than her age. Lara hadn’t said it, but Keo knew she’d be interrogating the newcomer for details while not giving away she was doing so. She was very good at that, among many other things.

It turned out the lump of “something” Bunker had spotted in the back of the wagon wasn’t a second hidden person but clothing and food, half of which was already on the verge of expiring. They threw most of it away and kept the rest, not that they needed it. The ranch was stocked with plenty of food for them and the horses. Too much, actually, and there was even more that they never touched and kept for emergencies.

Emergencies, like the upcoming nights.

Keo had no illusions that things were going to be as easy as shooting a blue-eyed ghoul in the head. Not that he let Lara know his doubts. She was easily the most mentally tough woman he knew, but she was also four months pregnant. Right now, he wanted to be the rock that she needed and deserved, and if that meant pretending he had everything taken care of, then so be it. He just considered it another little white lie, though if he were being honest with himself, it was probably yet another one that she probably saw through without even trying, even if she didn’t call him on it.

Maybe, just maybe, she wanted to believe that things would work out, too.

I guess maybe we’re both putting on Captain Optimism’s cape a lot these days.

He wondered if their impending parenthood had something to do with that. Maybe. How long they could keep it up, though, was going to depend a lot on what happened in the next few nights. Or, at least, he hoped it was going to come down to the next few nights. If this thing went longer than that…

One night at a time, pal.

One night at a time…

Keo was still inventorying their weapons and supplies in the ammo room, located near the back of the house, when Lara knocked on the door.

He looked up from a bench covered in guns and bullets. “What did you find out?”

Lara walked over. “She and her friends—seven of them—were camped in a park about five miles from here, three nights ago, when it attacked. When it was over, Thuy was the only one left. She didn’t understand why until it told her, last night, to head over in this direction with that pacifier. And to ask for you. You were right, Keo. It knows where we are. It told her exactly where to find us.”

Keo nodded and pursed his lips. He didn’t know what he was hoping to hear, but the confirmation from Lara on his worst fears felt a little anticlimactic.

“You want to know how it relayed all this information to her?” Lara asked.

The hows of it hadn’t occurred to Keo, but he said, “How?”

She tapped her temple. “In here.”

“I don’t understand…”

“It appeared to her inside her head. Psychically.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No. The Blue Eyes can do that. I’ve experienced it firsthand. So have others I know.” She sat down on a chair in front of him. “It’s the same ability that allows them to communicate over long distances with one another. They can also use it to get into a person’s head, and when that happens, they stick.”

“Stick, how?”

“Like glue.” She shook her head, and he could tell she was reliving something he’d rather not know anything about. “It’s not a pleasant experience, Keo.”

“This has happened to you…”

Lara nodded somberly.

Keo stared at her, waiting for her to continue, but she didn’t.

Instead, Lara leaned back slightly in the chair and seemed to stare off at nothing.

“What’s it like?” he asked.

“It’s like a parasite has attached itself to your brain. It’s always there, at the corner of your eyes, even when you’re awake. Waiting, waiting…”

“Even when you’re awake?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus.”

“I don’t wish it on my worst enemy, Keo.”

Keo had encountered the blue-eyed ghouls before. Gone toe to toe with them, even before this one from Paxton. And while it’d always been eerie and downright terrifying at times, he’d never felt what Lara described.

Looking at her face, he didn’t have any trouble believing those moments were still with her, even now. There were no windows in the room, but there were a pair of bright LED bulbs on the ceiling. The light, like all the electricity that powered the ranch, came from solar panels on the rooftops of every building on the grounds, including more in a field nearby. They were all linked to the same battery system that kept the lights on and heated the water, among other things.

“Did she describe the ghoul?” Keo asked.

“Not in so many words, but she said it was a Blue Eyes. I didn’t push her for more details than that. Given what it knows about you, about us, it’s clearly the same one from Paxton that you told us about.”

“Did she say how many ghouls it has with it?”

“She saw about twenty when they attacked the camp. She thinks there’s more, but she isn’t sure.”

“There has to be more. It had a small army in Paxton, and it’s had almost two months to rebuild it. Besides, it would take a lot to overcome Longmire in just one night. Those people weren’t pushovers. They’ve been out here for a while, and yet…”

“…they never stood a chance,” Lara finished.

“No, they didn’t.”

Keo put down the submachine gun he’d been cleaning and sat on another chair across from her. “What else did Thuy say?”

“That’s it. It gave her instructions and let her go.”

“Just like that? It let her go?”

Lara nodded. “Yeah.”

“Makes sense.”

“Does it?”

“It’s playing a game. The same game we were playing back at Paxton.” Keo paused for a moment before continuing. “I’ve met plenty of Blue Eyes—hell, too many—but this one…” He shook his head, searching for the right words. “It’s…different.”

“No, it’s not.”

“It is, Lara.”

“No, it’s not,” she said. Lara leaned forward and stared at him with that same steely determination that had allowed her to lead thousands of men to war in her previous life. “It’s just another ghoul. We’ll kill it, just like we killed the others.”

He smiled. “Just like that?”

She nodded. “Just like that.”

“Good. For a moment there, I was worried.”

There was a knock on the door from across the room, and they both glanced over to find Bunker leaning inside.

“Don’t mind me, folks, but I have some news that may be of interest to us,” the rancher said.

Keo and Lara stood up.

“Good news?” Lara asked. “Because we could really use some of that right now.”

“Depends,” Bunker said. “Could be good, could be bad. Could be a little of both.” He shrugged. “Probably a little of both.”

“So what’s the news?” Keo said.

Bunker held up the bulky long-range two-way portable radio that he was holding in his hand. “I reached out to Carlos to see if he’d made contact with our little ghoul problem.”

“Little” ghoul problem? Keo thought. This is definitely not all that little, Bunker.

But he said, “What did he say?”

“He hasn’t had any personal contact, but about six days ago they had some livestock go missing. They investigated and ran across tracks that he was sure were ghouls, on the outskirts of his property. He and his brother followed them back to Hamlock.”

Hamlock was a small town near the Texas-Mexico border about ten miles from where they were, and as far as Keo knew, had been abandoned for some time. Everything in the place that was useful had been looted years ago, and the population was a big fat zero. The last time they visited it, anyway.

“Carlos knows about Longmire, right?” Keo asked.

“Of course he knows,” Bunker said. “He saw the fireworks last night, just like we did. He showed up after we left.”

“What else did Carlos say about the ghouls?” Lara asked.

“The trail led into Hamlock, but he didn’t follow them inside. Which was awfully smart of him. Maybe we should try to be a little smart, too, huh?”

“He had any more cattle go missing since then?” Keo asked.

“Not as far as he knows. Things went back to normal, and he forgot about it. That is, until I radioed and inquired just a few minutes ago.”

“They feed on animals, too, when they have to.”

“I know. I told Carlos the same thing.”

“So he doesn’t know if there are actually ghouls in Hamlock right now?”

“Nope. But it has to be the same ones, right? It’s too much of a coincidence. Hamlock is close enough to us and Longmire for this to be another group of random ghouls. And you know how I feel about coincidences.”

“You don’t like them.”

“Not one iota, chamo.”

Keo looked over at Lara, and before he could even say anything, she shook her head.

“I didn’t say anything yet,” Keo said.

“You don’t have to, because I already know what you’re thinking,” Lara said.

“What am I thinking?”

“You want to go to Hamlock to see if it’s the same ones that attacked Longmire.”

“That’s not what I was thinking,” Keo was going to say but didn’t.

Because, well, it was.

He said instead, “If it is them, and they’re using Hamlock as a staging point, we need to know.” He glanced down at his watch. “We still have seven hours until nightfall. One hour to reach Hamlock, and one hour back. That gives us five hours to work with.”

“No,” Lara said.

“Lara—”

“No, Keo.”

He sighed. “Give me one reason why not.”

“Because I don’t want you to,” Lara said. She put her hands on his shoulders and leaned into him. “And because it’s too dangerous.”

“It’s daylight. We have the advantage. Hell, it might be our only advantage. Even if we can take out just a few of them, it’ll be worth it.”

“He’s not wrong,” Bunker said. He was leaning against the door, and Keo had almost forgotten he was even still in the room with them. “If nothing else, it’ll give us a better idea of what we’re dealing with. I don’t like the fact that they took out Longmire. There were eighty-plus people in that place, and we’re not talking about a bunch of hippies here. They survived The Purge. They survived everything that happened after that. And for them to go out in one night?” He shook his head. “We need to find out what we’re dealing with. If it takes going into Hamlock to do it, then so be it.”

“We need to do reconnaissance,” Keo said to Lara. “Right now, they’re calling all the shots, because they’ve had two months to prepare. We’ve had one day. Less than one day. We need intel, Lara. Bunker’s right. We need to know what we’re dealing with. We need something.”

She shook her head. “It’s too dangerous.”

“It’s probably the least dangerous thing that’s going to happen from this point forward.”

She took her hands away from him and sat back down, but didn’t say anything.

Keo kneeled in front of her and smiled. Or put on his best bluff, anyway. “In and out. No meandering.”

Lara frowned. “That’s what you said last time. And you almost died.”

“I didn’t exactly have any choice in the matter.”

“Excuses. This time, you better mean it.”

“I do.”

“You better.”

“I promise.”

“Barf,” Bunker said from the door. “I’ll be outside when you guys are done. This century, I hope.”

The rancher left, leaving Keo and Lara alone in the room again.

Keo picked up her hands and squeezed them. “We need to find out what kind of forces we’re dealing with. Right now, all we’re doing is playing defense. Blindly. We need intel. You know that. Wars are won and lost by intel.”

Lara didn’t answer.

“You know this is the right move,” Keo said.

She pursed her lips. “One hour.” She stared at him with the kind of look that other men would shrink under, but Keo knew it was just concern for his safety. “Do you understand me? You don’t waste more than one hour in Hamlock. I don’t care what you see or don’t see. You spend one hour there, find out what you can in that hour, and you head right back home. Do you understand me, mister?”

He smiled. “Yes, ma’am.”

Four

Bunker wanted to tag along, but Keo wouldn’t let him.

“I need you here,” he told the rancher.

“What for?” Bunker said.

“Lara.”

“You want me to babysit your girl?”

“She’s more than just my girl.”

“Same difference.”

“It’s a big difference. She’s going to be the mother of my child. Besides, you really trust Thuy? I don’t. Especially not after everything Lara told me about how it’s been communicating with her.”

“You mean all that stuff about psychic links and shit?”

“They’re not shit, Bunker. They’re real.”

“You know this for a fact?”

“I’ve heard stories of it happening to others. Besides, Lara wouldn’t make something like that up. The things she’s seen, done, and survived…” Keo shook his head. “She wouldn’t make any of those things up.”

“So I don’t just gotta worry about it tearing me apart limb from limb with its bare hands, I gotta worry about the fucker getting into my brain, too?”

“The good news is, you don’t have to worry about it getting into your brain if it does tear you apart limb from limb.”

“Yeah, that’s good to know.”

“Back to Thuy…”

“Don’t worry about her. She’s harmless. And I’m a very good judge of character. Especially the ladies.”

“You like her, don’t you?”

“I’m not going to say she’s not attractive… Besides, you should know by now, I’m into yellow fever. Why did you think I let you stay here in the first place?”

Keo narrowed his eyes back at the rancher. “Please don’t ever say anything even remotely close to that to me again, Bunker.”

Bunker chuckled. “It’s a compliment.”

“Yeah, no.”

“Whatever. Don’t get your balls shot off,” he said as Keo climbed onto Annabelle.

“Getting them shot off isn’t what I’m worried about.”

“Don’t get them chewed off, then.”

“I’ll be back ASAP.”

“That’s what you said last time. And we all know how well that worked out.”

Keo grunted. “Why does everyone have to keep reminding me of Paxton? It wasn’t like I had any choice in the matter.”

“Oh, you had plenty of choices. You just made all the wrong ones. As per usual, if Lara’s to be believed, and I’m wagering she is.”

Keo rolled his eyes. “Four hours, tops.”

“Swing by Carlos’s while you’re at it. I tried to convince him to come join us here, but he said thanks, no thanks.”

“He said that?”

“Something to that effect.”

“He knows what we’re dealing with, right?”

“You mean our blue-eyed problem?”

“Yeah.”

“He knows.”

“And he still isn’t coming here for the night?”

“I couldn’t convince him, but maybe you’ll have better luck in person.”

Keo nodded, but knowing Carlos as well as he did, he didn’t think that was highly likely at all.

* * *

Carlos’s spread was at least five times as big as Bunker’s, but of course Carlos also had five times the manpower to keep it running. Besides himself, the rancher had his brother Jose and their wives, Donna and Gwen, respectively. Like Bunker, the family had ended up on this patch of South Texas ground after The Purge and claimed it for their own. The people in Longmire hadn’t bothered to take care of the ranch and its surrounding property, and if not for Carlos and his people, this would just be another rundown section of Texas forgotten to history.

Instead, Carlos’s family had kept things churning, fixing the outer perimeter fences and raising livestock. The lack of other nearby ranches other than Bunker’s meant they had plenty of grazing land for their pigs and cattle. They had more than enough to feed themselves and traded with nearby settlements, including Longmire, with the rest. While they had horses, they weren’t the horse people that Bunker was. Then again, Keo hadn’t met many people who were.

He rode through the ranch’s front gate, sunlight glinting off the homemade CR sign, pounded from metal, on top of the wide arch in the center. Wandering pigs scattered as he rode up the driveway toward the two-story house. A big red barn on the left greeted him, but the place was mostly dotted with pens for livestock, including a massive one on the right for young cattle.

Jose, Carlos’s brother, was sitting on one of the corrals when Keo entered. The man glanced over and waved. Even from a distance, Keo could see that Jose wasn’t wearing his usual work clothes. He had an AR rifle slung over his back, and there was a pistol in a hip holster. The only thing missing were ammo pouches. The presence of guns was enough to let Keo know that the brothers were on high alert after what had happened to Longmire.

Keo returned Jose’s wave and watched the younger brother jump down before turning to help his son, Mikey. He gave the five-year-old a quick spank, and the boy raced off toward the house. To fetch Carlos, Keo guessed.

He slowed down as Jose walked over to meet him.

“Keo,” Jose said. “You come about those ghoul tracks we found?”

Keo nodded. “You told Bunker they were headed toward Hamlock?”

“Either that or some other place nearby, but if you put a gun to my head, I’m thinkin’ Hamlock.”

Mikey didn’t run all the way to the main house, but instead to a shack that was halfway across the big property. He’d gotten there fast, which was probably why everyone, including Bunker, called him Lightning Mikey. Keo, in Annabelle’s saddle, could make out Carlos as he came outside to stand with Mikey, before shielding his eyes in Keo’s direction.

Keo waved to him, and Carlos returned it.

He climbed off Annabelle and walked toward the rancher with Jose alongside him. Jose was a good foot shorter than Keo, but they were both shorter than Carlos. Jose made up for the lack of height with a wide chest and thick arms. He also had tree trunks for legs, and looking at him, Keo didn’t have any trouble believing Jose used to throw around livestock back in the Nuevo Laredo farm where the brothers both grew up and slaved away in the hot sun until The Purge upended society and opened up new opportunities for them.

“So you’re not 100 percent sure that the ghouls actually went into Hamlock?” Keo asked Jose.

“Nope,” Jose said. “After the trail died, we sort of gave up. You know, we get ghouls every now and then. Nothing we can’t handle. Usually they steal a pig or two, or one of the chickens. If we don’t nail them someone else does, so…” He shrugged. “We didn’t think much of it—pretty sure we forgot about it—until this morning.”

“How many are we talking about?”

“Not sure, maybe half dozen. Could be more. It rained that morning, so the tracks weren’t as easy to read.”

“Bunker said these ones attacked some livestock?”

“They took a couple of pigs and cow. Dragged one of them about half a mile. Carlos and me figured they only abandoned it because they ran out of night.”

Lightning Mikey had returned, having easily outrun his uncle. The kid, with a bushel of red hair like his Caucasian mother, raced past them without slowing down. Jose did get a good swipe at the boy’s behind just before he could get completely away. Mikey didn’t break stride for one second as he hustled back to the cattle pen.

“What do you feed that kid?” Keo asked, looking after the boy.

Jose chuckled. “His mom gave him some natural milk when he was feeding.”

“That’s all it takes?”

“That, and lots of protein and bacon.”

“Protein and bacon. Gotcha.”

“When’s Lara due?”

“Five, six months?”

“You not sure?”

Keo shrugged. “As long as it’s not the next few weeks. Things are a little messy these days.”

“Yeah, Longmire. Can’t believe that happened.” He looked over at Keo without making it too obvious. “Bunker says it might be a blue-eyed ghoul?”

“He said that? ‘Might?’”

“Something like that.”

“It’s a blue-eyed ghoul.”

“I hate those hijos de puta. If I never run across another one again in this lifetime or the next, it’ll be too soon.”

“Yeah, that about sums up how I feel, too.”

Keo looked over as they reached Carlos. Keo was no midget, but the Mexican rancher had him beat by a good two inches. He wasn’t nearly as strapping as his younger brother, and was longer than he was wide, but like Jose, he’d been raised on a farm, and the years since The Purge had only increased his country boy frame. Keo had no trouble seeing the older brother in Mexico’s National Army uniform.

“I used to blow stuff up,” Carlos had said when Keo asked him what he did in the army when they first met.

“That could be anything,” Keo had said.

“Exactly. Why did you think it was such a fun job?”

Keo had met another man who liked blowing things up recently. His name had been Felix, and he’d saved Keo’s life by doing just that.

Too bad you didn’t finish the job, Felix.

Too bad…

“Heard you got on the wrong side of a blue-eyed ghoul, amigo,” Carlos said as he stuck out his hand and Keo shook it. Like Jose, he had added a gun belt with a handgun in the holster to his wardrobe this morning.

“You heard right,” Keo said. “I was just asking Jose about those ghouls that took a bite out of your livestock six nights ago.”

“Yeah, we think they came from Hamlock, but I can’t be sure.”

“But in that direction?”

Carlos nodded. “In that direction. You going there?”

“I have to.”

“You ‘have’ to? You don’t gotta do anything, my friend. Not out here. Not anymore.”

“I gotta find out if they’re the same group that hit Longmire.”

Carlos exchanged a glance with his brother. Apparently Longmire, as with Keo, Bunker, and Lara, had been a big topic of discussion in the household all day. Keo guessed it was going to be that way for some time.

“Eighty-two people,” Carlos said. “In one night. Crazy.”

Eighty-three, Keo thought, but he said, “It’s a crazy world.”

“You think it’s the same ones that took shelter in Hamlock?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m going there. To find out one way or another.”

“Well, if you’re going to a ghoul nest, you picked the right time for it,” he said, glancing up at the bright sun.

“Where’s Bunker? He’s not going with you?” Jose asked.

“I need him back at the ranch,” Keo said.

“Lara,” Carlos said.

Keo nodded. He looked past Carlos at a blonde woman coming out of the house and shielding her eyes as she glanced over in their direction. Donna, Carlos’s wife. Not that the two had a piece of paper making it official or anything. Then again, no one did these days. Or cared if they did or didn’t.

“Lunchtime, guys!” Donna shouted. Then, “Hey, Keo! Where’s Lara?”

“She’s back at the ranch!” Keo shouted over.

“Tell her I said hi!”

“I will!”

“Stay for lunch,” Carlos said.

Keo shook his head. “Wish I could, but I only have a few hours to spare.”

Again, Carlos and Jose exchanged a knowing glance.

“This as bad as we think it is?” Carlos asked. “I guess that’s a dumb question after what happened to Longmire last night.”

“It’s pretty bad,” Keo said. “You went there?”

Carlos nodded. “We went this morning, after you guys left. Eighty-two people in that place.” He shook his head. “Eighty-two souls…”

“A Blue Eyes,” Jose said. “It’s been a long time.”

“You guys have gone up against one before?” Keo asked.

“Back in the day, outside of San Antonio,” Carlos said. “One of those ghoul collaborator towns. T-something; I forgot. We stayed there for a few months, “donating”—he made air quotes with his fingers—blood to the nightcrawlers until we finally got our chance to slip out one bright shiny morning. We never looked back.”

“They’re creepy motherfuckers,” Jose said, and Keo thought he might have shivered slightly but couldn’t be sure. “Don’t ever want to meet one of those again.”

“Bunker says one of them is here?” Carlos asked.

Keo nodded. “Yeah. At least one.”

“You say at least one? So there might be more than that?”

“There’s a good chance of that, yeah.”

“Madre de dios,” Jose said. “One’s bad enough…”

“You guys need to be careful,” Keo said.

He was looking past Carlos and at Donna as she corralled a couple of girls, both under ten, into the house. Gwen, Jose’s wife—and Mikey’s mom—was coming out of a supply building with a bucket. Keo only knew she was Gwen by her bright red hair.

“Jose!” Gwen called.

Jose waved over. “Yes, dulzura?”

“Get your son over here for lunch!”

“Right away!” Jose looked over at Keo. “You sure you not staying for lunch, Keo? We can talk about this more.”

“I can’t.” He smiled. “I’m on a time limit.”

“Well, if you change your mind…” He jogged over to where Mikey was, feeding the cattle back at the pen. “Hey, Mikey! Lunch time, mijo! Stop playing with the cattle and get your butt into the house pronto!”

Keo focused on Carlos, who was looking back at his family. “Do the girls know about Longmire, too?”

“They know,” Carlos said. “We’re trying to keep things normal-looking for the kids, but I think even they know.”

“They probably heard the shooting and saw the fires last night.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“Look, don’t take any chances at nightfall, okay? This thing is dangerous.”

Carlos looked almost offended. “You don’t have to tell me that, Keo. If I didn’t know they were dangerous, Longmire sealed the deal.”

“You guys have a shelter under that house, right?”

“In the basement, yeah.”

“How strong is it?”

“It’s strong.”

“How strong?”

Carlos gave him a questioning look before understanding what Keo was trying to ask him without actually doing so. “You’re talking about the Blue Eyes.”

“They’re strong, Carlos.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

Carlos nodded. “I’ve seen them, Keo. They’re strong. Stronger than the Black Eyes.”

“And what about this shelter of yours?”

“Compared to what you got over at Bunker’s, it’s not much to look at, but it’s not too shabby, either.”

“Are you sure about that? Because we have plenty of room back at Bunker’s. For you and the whole family, and five more if necessary.”

Carlos seemed to think about it for a moment, and didn’t answer right away. He glanced back at Donna as she stood waiting at the door, looking over in their direction.

“Come stay with us until this is over,” Keo said. “Grab the wives and the kids. The ranch is going to be here tomorrow and the day after that, and the day after that. You saw what happened at Longmire. It could happen here, too. Easily.”

Carlos shook his head. “We’ll be fine. Like Jose says, it’s not like we haven’t been around these things before. We can handle ourselves, Keo. And we’re prepared for whatever comes our way.”

“This Blue Eyes…”

“We’ll kill it if it comes here,” Carlos said. There was a finality to his voice, a That’s all there is to it, and nothing you say will change my mind.

Keo nodded reluctantly. “If you change your mind, you know where to find us.”

“Thanks. Maybe we’ll take you and Bunker up on your offer.”

Keo climbed back into Annabelle’s saddle. He didn’t ride off right away. Instead, he looked across the vast ranch grounds at Donna, already heading back into the house. He could see the figures moving around in the kitchen through the windows, not that he could tell who was who.

He looked back at Carlos. “If anything happens, give us a shout on the radio. We’re neighbors, right? And neighbors help each other in times of need.”

“Same to you,” Carlos said.

Keo leaned down to shake the man’s hand. He had a strong grip as usual. “Don’t be a hero. Think about your family.”

“I am thinking about my family,” Carlos said. “I’m always thinking about my family, Keo. First, second, and last.”

Keo didn’t say anything else. There wasn’t anything left to say, so he turned Annabelle around and led her back down the trail.

He slowed down as Lightning Mikey darted past him, his father laboring to catch up.

Jose stopped to catch his breath, hands on his knees. “That kid will be the death of me, Keo.”

Keo grinned. “Bacon and milk, huh?”

Jose chuckled. “That’s all it takes.”

“I’ll let Lara know.”

He glanced back at Carlos, who had already begun walking to the house. Mikey was well ahead of him, getting smaller as he dashed on ahead.

“What did he say?” Jose asked.

Keo looked over at Jose. “About what?”

“You told him to come join you guys at Bunker’s, right? To use that shelter of his?”

Keo smiled. “Yeah.”

“So what did he say?”

“He said no.”

Jose flashed him a wry Yeah, I figured he’d say that smile. “He’s stubborn, my brother.”

“But you’re not.”

“I know what Bunker has, and what we have.” He shook his head. “It’s no contest.”

“So talk to Carlos.”

“I did. All morning, ever since we got back from Longmire.”

“And?”

Jose shook his head. “Stubborn, my brother. It’s the ex-army in him. Makes him think he’s always right.”

“You can’t be always right all the time, Jose.”

“Tell him that. He sure doesn’t listen to us.”

“He says the women know.”

“They do.”

“What do they think about staying here?”

“Donna agrees with her man, of course.”

“And Gwen?”

Jose grinned. “She’s my dulzura, cuz. What do you think?”

Keo looked over at the main house again. Carlos was only halfway there, but Mikey was long gone.

“I’ll work on him,” Jose said. “Me and Gwen. I think she says Donna may be coming around.”

“Keep working on him,” Keo said. He leaned down to shake Jose’s hand. “Until then, watch each other’s six.”

“You too, man. You too.”

Keo rode off, leaving Jose to jog after his brother. Keo passed the pens with the cattle and pigs and went around some stray lines of chickens crossing the dirty road he was on.

The sun was still high in the sky, so he wasn’t too worried that the trip to Carlos had cost him any real time.

Next stop: Hamlock.

Five

Keo settled over the ridge overlooking the small town of Hamlock—a scattering of buildings with a single main road that ran through it. The country highway that led toward Longmire was within sight to his right, but that was only because he was so high up. Any lower, and he wouldn’t be able to see the blacktop at all. That made Hamlock mostly isolated, squatting at the base of a series of rolling hills. That lack of contact with the rest of the world had been why the town had never been resettled after The Purge. As far as Keo knew, there were only a few hundred people in the place before the world went to shit. That few hundred became zero quickly after.

The sun beating down on him was a soothing reminder that he was still working within his own timetable despite the side trip to Carlos’s, but the weather wasn’t nearly as warm against the chilly Texas weather as it had been just an hour ago. That was another gentle nudge that while he was still very much on schedule, time was slipping away.

Nightfall was coming. And with it…

Let’s not think about that right now.

Keo didn’t blame Carlos and his brothers for not following the ghoul tracks into Hamlock. There was something foreboding about the small town even in the brightness of day. The place just looked…dead.

Nice choice of words, pal. You trying to psych yourself out of this? This was your idea in the first place, remember?

Oh, he remembered. Despite the sudden bout of reluctance, he also knew it was the right call. They did need more intel on the enemy. Keo didn’t like having to go into a fight not knowing how many guns—or, in this case, fangs—the bad guys had to throw at him. For all he knew, Sadistic, Keo’s new name for it, had assembled itself a whole new army, one that was even bigger than the one he’d sicced on Keo back at Paxton. That would explain how it could have taken Longmire in one single night.

“I don’t like the fact that they took out Longmire,” Bunker had said. “There were eighty-plus people in that place, and we’re not talking about a bunch of hippies here. They survived The Purge. They survive everything that happened after that. And for them to go out in one night?”

Keo didn’t like how easily Longmire had gone down, either. He wasn’t nearly as familiar with the town’s citizenry as Bunker, but he had gotten to know plenty of them over the months. They were good people. More than that, they were tough.

And yet, they’d been taken in one night…

Not tough enough, I guess.

The answers weren’t going to come to him sitting on Annabelle looking down at Hamlock. They were inside the town. If not every answer he was hoping to find, then maybe something to justify coming out here. Right now, some was better than none.

Keo nudged Annabelle on the flanks, and the big black mare started forward. Annabelle had once belonged to a slayer named Martin, but the man was dead. He, along with a half dozen other slayers, had fallen victim to the ghoul Keo had come to call Sadistic back in Paxton. Keo would have joined them in the afterlife if not for the actions of one of Martin’s men. Not that Keo thought the man had done what he did on purpose, but the results were the same nonetheless.

Thanks again, Felix.

What was that Felix had said to him before he detonated the C4? Oh, right.

“Hey, Keo, time to make the donuts!”

Keo still didn’t know what the hell that meant, but it had sounded pretty good, especially coming out of Felix’s mouth. The phrase itself belonged to another slayer, one that wasn’t nearly as friendly to Keo as Felix had been.

It’s time to make the donuts, or something just as sweet, that will clog up my arteries and kill me early, Keo thought as he entered Hamlock from its southern end.

Hamlock was a silver town—or it used to be—and once mined the precious metal out of a nearby hill. Once the precious metal ran out, though, so had the town’s purpose. It looked bigger on the ground than when Keo had viewed it from the elevated perch. Not by much, but the difference was noticeable. Maybe it was the way the eaves hung off the rooftops, as if they were about to fall down at any moment, but somehow remained attached through the years.

The place showed obvious wear and tear and had been battered by time and the elements over the years. Wind whistled through gaping holes along walls, broken windows, and wide-open doors that hadn’t been closed for God only knew how many years now. There were a few cars sprinkled about, most of them parked along the sidewalks, but not as many as he was used to seeing in other towns. A couple of parking lots, grocery stores, and a big church farther up the road. That wasn’t unusual; all these small cities had churches. There were a few things Texans couldn’t live without, and religion was one of them. Guns were the other one. If he looked, Keo was sure he’d find plenty of weapons lying around waiting to be picked up.

He paid more attention to the windows of buildings he passed. There were very obvious telltale signs that ghouls had been around a certain area. The creatures didn’t understand subtlety and left evidence everywhere they went. Keo expected to find those hints of ghoul occupation here, but he didn’t. Either they were being very careful these days, or…

The Blue Eyes. I forgot about the Blue Eyes.

Then: How the hell did you forget about the Blue Eyes?

The difference between what the Black Eyes did and how they operated was night and day when one of their blue-eyed counterparts was around. It controlled them. It told them what to do. It was the commander to their grunts. When one of those vicious bastards was in the vicinity, the ghouls were unpredictable and acted in a manner that could almost be misinterpreted as intelligence. But of course they weren’t. They just seemed that way because the Blue Eyes were telling them what to do.

Is that why he couldn’t find any signs of ghoul occupation? Were the Blue Eyes being careful? It would make some sense. Sadistic wouldn’t allow Keo to just stumble across their hideout. It would be careful, especially in the daytime, when Keo had all the advantage.

“All the advantage?” Going a little overboard there, aren’t you, pal?

Okay, maybe a little advantage.

If Annabelle was suspicious of Hamlock’s seemingly empty nature, the horse didn’t show it. And animals were much more instinctive when it came to ghoul presence than humans, Keo concluded. After all, they’d not only survived The Purge, but the years since. Like their human counterparts, it took more than just dumb luck to achieve that. A little skill here and there helped, too.

Keo leaned down and rubbed the side of Annabelle’s head. “Anything, girl? You getting any whiffs of ghouls out there?”

The horse continued on her slow walk up the road, the clop-clop-clop of her hooves on the hard concrete the only sound other than the occasional howling winds. If she was even the least bit alert, Keo couldn’t detect it.

“I guess not,” he said, sitting back up on the saddle.

There were surprisingly few signs of looting around him, probably because Hamlock never had very much to give to begin with. There was a reason Carlos, whose ranch was only two miles to the south, and Bunker had never bothered to search the place for supplies.

“It’s dead city,” Bunker had said when he first told Keo about Hamlock’s existence. “Went through it once or twice—or maybe once and a half, but who’s counting?—and didn’t see any point in doing it again. It’s deader than dead.”

“How is something deader than dead?” Keo had said.

“You know dead?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, this is deader than that.”

“Okay, Bunker,” Keo had said, because trying to “get” Bunker was like trying to understand the Texas weather. It was flaky and you never knew what it would do—or not do—in any given day. Or hour.

Bunker was right, though. Keo would have thought he was inside an old Wild West town if not for the occasional vehicles and TV antennas that, though askew, still managed to remain propped up on a few of the rooftops around him. There were a surprisingly large number of satellite dishes, but that made sense. Even before The Purge, Hamlock was a hidden town, and getting fiber optic cable out here would have been diff—

Sunlight blinked off something along one of the rooftops just a split second before Keo heard the very loud pop! of a gunshot and was on the ground.

What the hell was that?

He’d landed on his left shoulder, which was a lot better than if it’d been his head or the back of his neck, and was rolling away even as another pop! rang out.

A round sailed over his head and struck the pavement a few yards in front of him, kicking up fragments of the street into the air. Keo rolled right underneath it, the need to keep going (Move move move! Don’t stop! Don’t make yourself an easy target!) overriding everything.

Another pop!, but this one missed by a mile, and Keo thought, Jesus Christ. Is the shooter just that bad, or are they not trying to hit me?

But then another voice said, If they’re not trying to hit you, why the hell are they shooting at you then, genius?

Good point!

He didn’t stop to find out one way or another. He couldn’t afford to, anyway, and didn’t stop rolling until he glimpsed dented chrome metal coming up fast. He was forced to scramble up from the ground and onto his knees as—

A pop!, followed a split second later by the ping! of the round as it struck the trunk of the Toyota Camry parked on the curb. That shot hadn’t been close, either. The bullet had struck the vehicle a good five feet or so to his left.

Bad shot or not really trying to hit me? Keo thought again even as he scrambled around the parked car and dropped down to his knees on the other side.

There was another late pop!, followed by the corresponding ping! as the round hit the Toyota on the other side.

The shot faded…then silence.

Just to be safe, Keo crab-walked to the flat tire, where any bullet that managed to puncture the body of the sedan couldn’t go right through him as he hid behind it. At least this way he’d have a second defensive wall.

Despite the whole thing taking place in less than ten or so seconds (Maybe even shorter than that? It wasn’t like he was timing it.), he was out of breath. If he was bruised and hurt from the fall, then the insane roll, scramble, and dive for cover, he didn’t feel it. Not yet, anyway. Good ol’ adrenaline was doing its job as usual, and despite his breath hammering out of him in chaotic spurts, Keo was reasonably certain he didn’t have any additional holes in him that he didn’t have before he arrived at Hamlock.

Just to be sure, though, he did a quick check.

He was good. At least, he wasn’t bleeding anywhere. Thank God he’d been carrying the MP5, with the AR-15 in its sheath, alongside Annabelle. While the short submachine gun had gotten in a few painful pricks into his body while he was rolling for his life, the longer-barreled AR would have made it twice as hazardous.

Wait. Annabelle. What about Annabelle?

Keo had been so busy falling, then moving to save his own hide, that he’d forgotten about the horse. Now that the shooting had stopped (Bad shot or not really trying to hit me?), Keo scooted farther down the length of the car before poking his head up to look through one of the grime-caked windows and out the other side—

Pop! and zip! as the sniper fired and a bullet sailed harmlessly over his head.

Another miss!

Badly, too.

He ducked back down anyway. In the second or two he was up, he hadn’t been able to fully scan the street or locate Annabelle. But he was able to confirm that the shooter was on the rooftop of a building directly across the street from him.

Keo dropped to the sidewalk instead of sticking his head up for another peek, even though, at this point, he had concluded that the shooter wasn’t trying to miss him on purpose, but was just a really bad shot. Not that he was complaining. He’d take a bad sniper over a good one any day of the week, especially when their weapon was pointed at him.

He peered underneath the Camry. All four tires were flat, which meant the car was lower to street than usual, but there was still plenty of space for Keo to see across—

The clop-clop-clop of horse shoes from up the street.

Keo scrambled back up and sought out the source of the noise.

Annabelle, very much alive, and in the process of fleeing through Hamlock.

Smart horse, Keo thought as he watched the big black mare getting smaller. He wasn’t too surprised the Morgan hadn’t stuck around. In her shoes, he would have done the same thing. It wasn’t like they’d bonded. Keo had spent nearly a month in bed recovering from his wounds. When all was said and done, he’d really been on his feet and feeling like he could stand without help for the last few weeks or so.

Keo needed to get a better look at the shooter, but he didn’t poke his head up to get it shot at again. The sniper might have been a bad shot, but there was no point in pushing his luck. Instead, he kept the MP5 in front of him as he scooted along the Toyota until he was nearer to the driver-side door. He was pretty sure the shooter couldn’t see him, or they would have fired again already. The sniper had the higher ground, and all it would take was one bad decision by Keo—or one poorly positioned angle—and he was a dead man.

And he didn’t want that. Nope. He didn’t want to be dead at all. Especially not with what was coming tonight.

Especially not with everything at stake.

With everyone at stake…

It’d been a few minutes since the first shot, and Keo didn’t hear or see any signs of a ground assault. That meant the sniper was either by themselves or their allies were taking things slowly. Either way, Keo kept his eyes and ears open for a full-frontal charge now that the ambush had failed.

Was it an ambush, though?

Of course it was. Why would they shoot at me if it wasn’t?

Unless there was another reason.

Which would be what?

He didn’t know. That was the problem. He didn’t know.

Not yet, anyway.

He wanted desperately to poke his head out to get another look but fought the temptation. But he had to know what he was dealing with. And besides, he couldn’t stay here forever. Sooner or later, he was going to have to run after Annabelle. That, or take off on foot and begin the long trek back to the ranch.

Yeah, don’t wanna be doing the latter.

Fortunately, while she’d run off, the big black mare had stopped about fifty yards away and was now loitering around in the middle of the street. The horse was even looking back in Keo’s direction as if to say, Well? Are you coming or not? I don’t got all day, you know.

I’ll be there in a jiff, Keo thought. Hold your horses.

He grinned to himself. Too bad Bunker wasn’t here. He was pretty sure the rancher would have appreciated that little pun.

Keo still wasn’t sure if the shooter was a bad shot or not, or if that made any difference. He replayed the action over in his head.

The first shot had startled him and Annabelle more than anything. The second one hadn’t come close. The third, fourth, and fifth…

Was he dealing with an inept gunman or someone who didn’t actually want to kill him? Which one made him feel better? Maybe a little of both; of course, the latter would be way more preferable.

So how was he going to find out one way or another?

“Hey!” Keo shouted. “Can you hear me?”

He knew the shooter could hear him even if he hadn’t shouted, but it seemed like the thing to ask. Besides, it was a good way to open a line of dialogue. Throw out an easy question and see if they bit.

He waited for an answer.

Five seconds…

Ten…

The only sounds were the wind continuing to move through the abandoned buildings around him and a door banging somewhere down the street.

Keo tried again: “Hey! I come in peace! Don’t shoot!”

He waited for a reply.

And again, he was disappointed.

After another ten seconds of silence…

“Why don’t we talk—”

“Who are you?” a voice shouted back.

Eureka.

The response told Keo three things immediately:

One: The shooter was willing to talk.

Two: They were female.

And three: They were young.

“Keo!” he shouted. “My name’s Keo!”

“What kinda stupid name is that?” the shooter shouted back.

Keo grinned. It wasn’t like he hadn’t heard worse responses to his name.

“It’s the one my momma gave me!” he shouted.

He waited for another insult, but there was just silence again.

“Hey, you still out there?” Keo asked.

“Of course I’m still here. Where would I go, dummy?” the young voice responded.

Another grin. He was definitely dealing with a kid. Maybe that explained why the first shot had gone so wide even though Keo had been moving slowly down the street on Annabelle. A decent shooter would have had him dead to rights.

“Why did you shoot at me?” Keo asked.

“Why not?” was the answer.

It was exactly what he’d expect from a kid who probably thought that was the bee’s knees of responses. Of course, the shooter probably didn’t even know what the expression bee’s knees was.

“What are you doing here?” Keo asked.

“What are you doing here?” the shooter said.

“I heard there were ghouls in town. I came to find out if that was true.”

“Ghouls?”

Keo wasn’t sure, but he thought he detected slight alarm in the voice. It was something that wasn’t there earlier.

“Yeah, ghouls,” Keo said. “You seen them around here?”

“No,” the shooter said.

“Are you sure?”

“Well…”

Definitely not sure, Keo thought.

He shouted, “Look, don’t shoot, okay? I’m not your enemy. I didn’t come here for you. I didn’t even know there was anyone home. I was just looking for ghouls.”

“What do you want with them?”

“What else? To kill them.”

“Oh.”

Oh? Keo thought. That was an odd response. It didn’t sound like a disappointed one, though; more like a Oh, but of course that was the obvious answer.

Unless, of course, he was wrong. He’d been wrong before.

Lots of times, actually.

“Don’t shoot, okay?” Keo said again.

“Why not?” the young girl shouted back. “Give me one good reason why not.”

“I told you, I’m not the enemy.”

“So you say.”

“It’s the truth.”

“So you say, mister!”

She’s got a good point.

There were a lot of bad people out there. Assholes, in a word. Keo was one of them, once upon a time (he liked to think that phase of his life was in the past, but maybe he was just being a tad generous on himself), so he recognized the breed when he saw it.

He took another tact instead, and shouted, “Because it’s a big world and there isn’t a lot of us left, and I’d rather be friends than shoot at each other. So, how about it?”

He thought that sounded pretty good, and maybe it did to the shooter, too, because there wasn’t any snappy smart-alecky comeback.

Keo continued: “Can we talk in person instead of shouting at each other like this?”

“Why?” was the response.

“Because it’s the civilized way to communicate. Shooting at each other? Not so much. Or if you don’t wanna talk, can I just get on my horse and ride outta here? I came here to find ghouls, but if you’re telling me they’re not here, then I’ll be on my way.”

Again, there wasn’t any immediate reply.

“You still there?” Keo asked, even though he knew they were still there. He imagined them mulling over his answers. That was a good sign, as far as he was concerned.

“Yeah,” came the answer. Then, “Okay.”

“Okay?” Keo said.

“Okay, you can get on your horse and leave. We won’t shoot ya.”

We? Keo thought. So there was more than one out there?

Or maybe there was just one, but the shooter wanted him to think she wasn’t alone. Either that, or…

Let’s find out, shall we?

He stood up and walked out from behind the Camry, his arms raised high above his head in the most non-threatening manner he could think of. He imagined Lara asking him why he’d done a foolish thing like that—take such a big risk on a hunch—and felt even dumber.

But no shots came as he revealed himself, and Keo breathed a sigh of relief.

Keo looked across the street, then to the rooftop of some kind of homemade donut store called Shelby’s. He waited for the shooter to reveal themselves.

It took six seconds before a small figure stood up behind Shelby’s sign—a big baby holding a donut above its head—with a rifle in its hands. It was a girl, all right, and she couldn’t have been more than twelve.

A few seconds later, another figure appeared next to the first one. Another girl, judging by her small shoulders and frame, and she was even smaller than the first.

Swell. Almost shot dead by a pair of kids with a rifle.

I’m definitely not telling Lara or Bunker about this…

Six

Two sisters, both under five feet tall, though the older of the two made up for her lack of height with a Henry lever action rifle. It wasn’t the most fearsome weapon he’d seen out here, but the .22 it was loaded with would have taken him out just the same. If not right away, then eventually, especially if she had managed to pump two or three of them into him while he was riding through town earlier.

“I’m Wilson, and this is Gummy,” the older girl said.

“Wilson?” Keo said.

“Yeah. What of it?”

Keo smiled. “Nothing. Just a weird name for a girl, that’s all.”

“So’s Keo.”

“Yes, well, I didn’t have a choice when my momma gave it to me.”

He waited for a snappy comeback, but Wilson didn’t have any. That led Keo to believe “Wilson” wasn’t her real name. She wasn’t willing to share what was, though, so he didn’t push his luck.

All things considered, his foray into Hamlock could have gone much worse. At least he didn’t have to dodge bullets; even more importantly, he hadn’t made the mistake of returning fire and potentially killing two kids who, from the looks of it, were just trying to survive on their own.

Wilson wouldn’t tell Keo how old she was. When he asked, she’d said (with that same smart-alecky tone), “Old enough to shoot you with this rifle, mister.”

He supposed that was a good point, though she’d gotten her chance and missed. Badly. More than once. That made him conclude that she was just a bad shot, and not because she was trying to purposefully miss him. He wasn’t sure if he should have been happy about that or not, though.

The younger of the two, Gummy, couldn’t have been more than ten, and she was dangerously malnourished. They both were. That led Keo to wonder how they’d gotten here or how long they’d been wandering around Texas without adult supervision. He was convinced that although Wilson knew how to use the rifle, it wasn’t hers. She just didn’t carry it like someone who was familiar with the weapon but had picked it up somewhere. Neither one of them wore gun belts, but they both had on backpacks that were too big for their thin frames.

“How’d you two end up here?” Keo asked them.

They stood in the streets with Keo rubbing down Annabelle’s mane. The horse had returned after Keo reappeared in the streets and the shooting stopped. The two girls stood on the other side of the mare, both appearing even smaller next to the tall animal.

“We found it yesterday; seemed as good a place as any to spend a few nights,” Wilson said.

“You’ve been here since yesterday?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“You were here last night, too?”

“Uh huh.”

“And you didn’t see any ghouls?”

Wilson shook her head. “We didn’t see, hear, or smell nothing.”

Keo took their word for it. After all, he didn’t see any reason for them to lie to him now. The fact that Wilson and Gummy had gone through all of last night without encountering the creatures might have been all the proof he needed that they weren’t here. Maybe they were, six nights ago when Carlos and his brother first tracked them here, but they were long gone. Or maybe they had never made a nest here, but had just gone through it. If there were no people—and Hamlock was as empty as Keo had ever seen a town, the two sisters notwithstanding—there would be no reason for ghouls to linger.

Which meant he’d come here for nothing.

Well, at least I’m still alive.

He glanced down at his watch. He was still under his own self-imposed time limit. Three hours before nightfall. It would still just take an hour to reach the ranch with Annabelle. So two hours to spare. Hell, he didn’t even have to tell Lara about this little side adventure.

He looked up at the girls. “Are you guys going to stay here?”

“We don’t know yet,” Wilson said.

“You were hunting for supplies?”

“Supplies, food, maybe some water.”

“What do you have in those packs of yours?”

“What’s it to ya?” she said quickly, defensively.

Keo smiled. “Kid, I don’t need anything you have.”

She gave him a I’ve heard that before, and I don’t believe you look.

“You don’t have to believe me,” Keo said. “I’m just trying to be friendly, that’s all. It’s up to you if you want to be friendly back.”

“Where’d you come from, mister?” Wilson asked.

“A ranch about an hour’s ride from here. Do you know where Longmire is?”

Wilson shook her head. “We’re not from around here.”

“Where are you from?”

“West.”

“Where west?”

“Just west.”

Like pulling teeth, Keo thought.

He said, “All right. You don’t have to tell me.”

“So where you going now?’ she asked.

“Home.”

“This ranch?”

“That’s right. You’re welcome to come with me if you want. Both of you.”

“Why’d we want to do that?” Wilson said quickly.

Keo smiled at her. “It’s not an order, kid. I’m just making an offer.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why’re you making an offer?”

“Because I can, and you both look like you could use a good meal or two.”

He looked from Wilson’s suspicious expression to Gummy’s not-quite-as-suspicious and cherubic face. The younger of the two had dirt on her cheeks, and her lips were dry and cracked. She was impossibly thin, and he assumed even thinner underneath her sagging earth-tone clothes.

“Your sister looks hungry,” Keo said. “You both look hungry.”

“We get by,” Wilson said.

“You got food in those packs of yours?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

Keo chuckled. “All right.” He opened up one of Annabelle’s saddlebags and took out a bundle of food and a full canteen. It wasn’t a lot, just enough in case he felt hungry on the way here and back. He passed them over to the kids. “You can have that. There’s plenty more at the ranch.”

Wilson took the canteen and Gummy reached, tentatively, for the bag of food. They could easily smell the beef jerky and bread inside the wrappings. He thought he saw Gummy lick her lips as her mouth visibly watered.

They’re starving. Jesus.

He sighed, knowing how much Lara would hate it if he didn’t do everything he could to convince these kids to come back to the ranch with him. Even before her pregnancy, Lara was the ultimate momma bear. She would never forgive him for allowing these two kids to wander around Texas—especially now, with the kind of trouble out there—by themselves when there was a perfectly good shelter for them, with plenty of food and water.

Then again, the ranch had its own problems, namely the imminent attack by a blue-eyed ghoul and its minions. Maybe not bringing these two kids back there was the best thing he could possibly do for them.

“Look,” Keo said, “I think it’s my job to tell you this: There are ghouls out there. Around this area. You need to be extra careful.”

“You said that’s why you came here, looking for them?” Wilson asked.

“Someone told me they’d tracked ghouls to Hamlock. I came here to see how many of them there were.”

“You found us instead.”

“That’s right.”

“But we didn’t see any ghouls last night.”

“That doesn’t mean they weren’t around before you two showed up.” He told them about what had happened to Longmire last night. “You can come back to the ranch with me if you want, but I’ll be honest with you, I’m not sure that’s a very good idea. It’s going to get dangerous tonight, and maybe you’re better off out here by yourselves.”

“You think they’re going to attack you next?”

“I know they’re going to attack us,” Keo said. “It’s just a matter of when, and how.” He paused and looked around Hamlock again. “Staying here, on your own, may be the safest option right now.”

“Maybe,” Wilson said, but she sounded doubtful.

That was surprising because she’d taken a very defensive posture up to now. But suddenly she’d not only softened up but seemed to be questioning her original stance.

Keo climbed onto Annabelle and looked down at the two of them. The young girl, Gummy, had to crane her neck almost to its limit in order to gaze back up at him. She blinked, the sun in her soft blue eyes. If he thought she looked delicate before, she was practically on the verge of breaking into a few million pieces now. He had to wonder, again, how the two of them had managed to survive all the way out here on their own for so long.

“You’re leaving?” Wilson asked him.

“I have to go back, get ready for tonight,” Keo said. “You kids be careful, okay?”

“Okay. You too, I guess.”

He pursed a smile back at her. “Take care of your sister.”

“I always do,” Wilson said.

Keo turned Annabelle around.

“Hey,” Wilson said.

Keo looked back at her. “Yeah?”

“This ranch of yours. Who else is there?”

“Me, my lady, another woman, and the guy that owns the place.”

“And you say it’s about to be attacked? Tonight?”

“That’s right. Tonight, or tomorrow night. But if I were a betting man, I’d put everything down on tonight.”

“By ghouls, you said?”

“Uh huh.”

“That doesn’t sound very good.”

He smiled, thought, Understatement of the century, kid.

“No, it’s not,” Keo said, and started to turn the horse around again.

“Hey, mister,” Wilson said.

Keo stopped and looked back at the sisters again. “Yeah?”

“You think all three of us can ride on your horse back to this ranch of yours?” Wilson asked.

The question surprised him. Not whether Annabelle could carry all three of them—he was sure she could, given the short distance and how little the two girls weighed—but that Wilson was all but requesting to return to the ranch with him. This, despite everything he’d told her. Either the kids were unafraid of a ghoul attack, or they thought the prospect of a sanctuary with free food and water was worth it.

Jesus Christ. How long have they been out here? And what the hell have they been through?

Keo nodded and smiled. “Yeah, I think she can carry all three of us.”

* * *

Lara asked the obvious question when he showed back up at the ranch with the sisters:

“You brought two kids here with you, knowing what’s going to be coming at us tonight, and how many other nights after this?”

Keo sighed. “I was very frank with them. I told them what we were dealing with.”

“Everything?”

“I tried to convince them they were safer on their own. But apparently they thought otherwise.”

“You really told them everything?”

“Yes, Lara. Everything.”

“And they still came back with you?”

“Uh huh.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

Lara glanced toward the back hallway of the main house as the sisters got settled into another one of the spare rooms. Theirs was next to Thuy’s, and across the hall from Keo and Lara’s. Bunker had his own room, and like Keo and Lara’s, it was at the front where they could keep an eye on the main grounds of the property. All the rooms were on the second floor and there were two more still available even farther back. Keo was hoping they wouldn’t need to use them anytime soon.

“From the looks of them, they haven’t had a decent meal in a while,” Lara said.

“Yeah, they look pretty bad off,” Keo said.

“Starving is more like it. Did you see them with the corned beef? I’ve never seen anyone attack a corned beef like that.”

Keo smiled. He had seen that. Wilson had been just as anxious to wolf down the food but hadn’t made it as obvious as her little sister. Gummy hadn’t cared that everyone was looking at her. Lara was right; the poor kid was starving, and had been for God knows how long before she and her sister ran into Keo back in Hamlock.

“What about Carlos?” Lara asked, turning back to him.

Keo shook his head. “I tried to convince him to bring his family here.”

“He said no.”

“Knowing what he knows? Including what happened to Longmire?”

“Yes.”

“Goddammit. That man is some kind of stubborn. What did the wives say?”

“They’re trying to convince him. Jose, too.”

“So it’s three against one?”

“It’s three against Carlos. He’s—”

“Stubborn,” Lara finished for him.

“Yeah,” Keo said. “But if they want it badly enough, they’ll convince him. If not…” He shook his head. “We can’t make them do something they don’t want to, Lara.”

“I know,” Lara said.

She leaned back against the wall and shook her head. He wasn’t sure if she was annoyed, irritated, or confused. Oh, who was he kidding? This was Lara being annoyed and irritated. There was no confusion at all.

“I don’t know how Donna puts up with him,” Lara said.

“Probably for the same reason you put up with me,” Keo said.

“You’re not that stubborn.”

“Aren’t I?”

“Well…”

“Who’s stubborn?” a voice asked from behind them.

They looked over as Bunker came up the stairs. He was wiping sweat and dirt on his gloves off on his denim jeans.

“Keo?” Bunker said. “Yeah, this bronco is pretty stubborn, all right.”

Keo rolled his eyes. “Everything good?”

The rancher shrugged. “Depends on your definition of good.”

“We doing that again?”

“Are we going to survive tonight?” Lara said.

“We’ll see about that.” He pulled off his working gloves and put them into one of his back pockets. “As for everything else, well, we’re as ‘good’ as we’re ever going to get. If your pal shows up, it’ll find that we’re a tougher out than the folks in Longmire.”

“It’s not my pal,” Keo said.

“It sure seems to awfully like you.”

“He’s got a good point,” Lara said, giving Keo a smile. “It does seem a little—what’s the word, obsessed?—with you.”

“I guess I made a big impression,” Keo said. “Unfortunately.”

“You’re too charming, that’s your problem.”

Keo smiled. “I know. It’s a curse.”

“Yeah, well, you might wanna turn it down some, Captain Charisma,” Bunker said.

The rancher peered down the hallway at the rooms in the back. They couldn’t see the girls, but they could hear Wilson and Gummy moving inside their room, possibly sliding furniture around.

“When did I give you guys the impression I was running an orphanage?” Bunker asked.

“They’re kids, Bunker,” Lara said. “It’s the right thing to do.”

“Bringing them here? With what’s coming tonight?”

“I gave them every opportunity to not take my offer,” Keo said. “They decided the risks were worth it.”

“We’ll see about that,” Bunker said. “But you couldn’t bring a couple of strapping young lads to help out? It had to be two itty bitty girls?”

“You could have turned them away.”

“Yeah, right. What am I, an uncaring monster?” Then, looking at Keo, “Come on, let’s finish up the man work while Lara here does the lady things.”

Lara grunted. “Then maybe you should stay up here while I take care of downstairs with Keo.”

Bunker grinned. “No offense.”

“Plenty taken,” Lara said.

Keo walked over to Bunker and slapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, before Lara throws you down your own stairs.”

Bunker did the wise thing and followed Keo down.

“How many times have you gone over everything?” Keo asked.

“Once or twice,” the rancher said.

“Just once or twice?”

“Multiply by four or five times. If it’s coming tonight—”

“It’s coming tonight.”

“—then we’ll be ready.”

Keo walked with Bunker to the front doors, then outside. The air had gotten noticeably chillier, a signal that nightfall wasn’t very far behind. He’d made good progress back from Hamlock and still had a good two hours before darkness.

Still, he didn’t like how the skies had turned a gloomy gray color. It was also strangely empty of birds. The same was true for the vast fields of grass that he could see with the naked eye. If he were being paranoid, he’d think the animals knew what was coming and were getting out of the way.

“I gave Carlos a ring after you came back,” Bunker said.

“Were you able to convince him to come here?” Keo asked.

“Nope. He didn’t go for it.”

“Stubborn.”

“Yup.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You don’t sound very concerned about what’s going to happen tonight.”

Bunker stood next to him, casually rolling a Backwoods Smokes cigar with some tobacco. It was something Bunker did often. While Keo could stomach the smell that the makeshift cigarette produced, Lara hated it, which was why Bunker usually only did it around him and not her.

“Should I be?” Bunker asked as he licked to moisten the dangling piece at the end of his roll to seal it. He fished out a lighter with a decal of Bevo, the Texas Longhorns mascot, on the side. “It’s just another ghoul. I’ve killed plenty of ghouls.”

“A blue-eyed one?”

“Well, no. Never had the pleasure.”

“‘Pleasure’ wouldn’t be the word I’d use.”

“What word would you use?”

“‘Unfortunate.’ ‘Really bad luck.’ ‘God hates me.’”

“Those are words, not word.”

“Close enough.”

“Point is, you’ve faced one of these things.”

“Uh huh.”

“So has Lara.”

“Yes.”

“Shoot it in the head, right?” Bunker said as he lit up.

“Decapitation works, too. As long as you sever the head from the rest of the body.”

“The brain.”

“Exactly. Obliterating the whole shebang with explosives seems to work, too.”

“Fire?”

“As long as you manage to roast the brain in the process.”

“The brain. Got it. Take out the brain.”

Keo sighed. He really did hope Bunker “got it,” because if he didn’t…

Have to trust the man.

Then: It’s not like you have much of a choice, pal.

“I just hope this place is as tough as you claim it is,” Keo said.

Bunker took a puff from his cigar. “She may not have gone head-to-head with one of those blue-eyed hombres yet, but I can assure you, she’s up to the task.”

In the months since he and Lara made a home at Bunker’s ranch, they’d been lucky to avoid any encounters with ghouls. There had been a couple of smaller problems with their fellow humans, but those had been easy to deal with. Through all those times, he always had a good idea of what the ranch had in its back pocket should the need call for its full capabilities. The problem, of course, was that those backup plans had never been tested. At least, not tested against what was coming at them tonight.

Trust Bunker. Trust this place.

Trust…because you don’t have any choice right now.

“This one we’re dealing with,” Bunker was saying. “How dangerous is it?”

The rancher puffed on his cigar as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Keo knew better. Like another easygoing blonde that Keo knew, Bunker hid his concerns behind a devil-may-care demeanor.

“It’s dangerous, Bunker.”

“How dangerous? Let’s say, on a scale of one to ten.”

“Are we really going to do this?”

“Humor me.”

“Then, eleven.”

“I said one to ten. Didn’t your momma teach you how to count?”

“Eleven,” Keo repeated without hesitation.

“Remind me to teach you how to properly count when this is over,” Bunker said.

Seven

Darkness fell over the ranch without fanfare, and if Keo didn’t know any better, he wouldn’t think there was an impending attack by an army of ghouls led by a Blue Eyes on the horizon. But of course he knew better. It was out there, and it was coming. If not now, then soon.

Very, very soon.

I know you’re out there, fucker. So show yourself, and let’s get this over with.

They ate dinner just before nightfall, loading up on carbs and protein. Lara cooked, but the newcomer, Thuy, helped. The girls, Wilson and Gummy, also lent a hand. Keo and Bunker did their part, too.

The meal was filling and they mostly ate at the dinner table in the back, with only the occasional chatter of conversation. Everyone seemed to know what was coming, even the two girls. Keo waited for the sisters to let him know that they were regretting their choice to come back to the ranch with him, but one look as they gulped down their food, and he didn’t think they had any such regrets. It made him wonder, again, just what kind of trouble they’d gotten into out there on their own, that being in here with them was preferable. He could tell that Lara had the same questions, and like him, didn’t seek the opportunity to ask them. There were just too many other, bigger things to worry about right now. Besides, if the girls wanted to talk, they would; and right now, they were satisfied to eat everything in sight.

Keo had been in situations where he knew a battle was coming but had to wait for the first bullets to start flying. He knew people who couldn’t stand it, who did various things to waste time until the action kicked in. Keo wasn’t one of them. He enjoyed the downtime, even though he knew it wasn’t going to last forever, and that when it did end, there would be screaming and shooting and blood. There was always a lot of blood. He just hoped this time those would be thick black sludges and not bright red.

After dinner, Lara saw to it Thuy and the girls knew where to go and what to do. Lara from four months ago, who wasn’t pregnant, would have been annoyed she’d been assigned “babysitting” duties. But this Lara was different. She was four months pregnant and, more than anyone, she had other priorities besides giving in to her pride.

The stairs were slightly dark, as was the rest of the house, because they’d turned off the lights. They did so the other times too, even when they weren’t expecting a ghoul attack, but usually not this early. It was only 7:15 p.m., and the sun was still visible over the hills in the horizon. The immediate grounds outside his window were only now starting to darken. It would be completely pitch black out there in less than thirty minutes, just like the rest of the world around them.

Heavy footsteps behind him as Bunker returned from the back, his boots moving loudly against the floorboards. Bunker was always a loud mover, but he was more so tonight because of all the gear he was wearing—an assault vest, gun belt, and pouches with extra ammo and equipment. He looked like a man in search of a war to fight.

Don’t worry, Bunker; that war’s coming to us very soon.

The rancher checked the front double doors to make sure all the bolts and locks and extra barricades were in place before sliding over to his window on the other side. He leaned his AR rifle against the wall and pushed aside the protective steel plates to peer out at the outside world. They still had dimmed nightlights along the floors, but it wasn’t enough for Keo to make out every detail on Bunker’s face across from him.

“Everything good?” Keo asked.

“How many times you gonna ask me that?” Bunker said.

“You can never be too sure.”

“Yeah, you can. That’s about the third time you asked the same stupid question. That’s when it’s crossed the too-sure threshold.”

“So…”

“Yeah, yeah, everything’s good.”

Keo smiled. Then, “You okay with losing the ranch?”

“Hell no. And who’s to say we’re going to lose the ranch?”

“No one. But it’s a possibility.”

“So let’s make sure it doesn’t happen.”

“That’s the plan. But it’s good to be prepared. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”

“That your personal motto?”

“Something like that.”

“It’s a stupid motto.”

“Hey, I’m making do with what I got.”

Bunker leaned back against the wall and took out another Backwoods Smokes from a baggie and began rolling himself a cigar. “But no, to answer your question. I’m not ready to give this place up. As long as she hasn’t burned down to the ground, I can fix her up again. It’s not like I got anything better to do after tonight. Do you?”

“No, sir, I don’t.”

“That settles that, then. We kill this blue-eyed buddy of yours—”

“It’s not my buddy.”

“—then we get on with our lives. Easy peasy.”

“‘Easy peasy,’ huh?”

Bunker licked the end of the cigar to dampen it. “Sure, easy peasy. Why you gotta make everything more complicated?”

“Easy peasy,” Keo said.

“That’s right, hombre. Easy peasy.”

Keo grinned to himself. He didn’t think tonight was going to be anything even remotely close to easy peasy, but he was hoping.

“You sure it’s coming?” Bunker asked after a while.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Keo said. “If not tonight, then tomorrow night. Or the night after that. But I think it’s going to start tonight.”

“It told you that?”

“In a matter of speaking. Longmire, Thuy with the pacifier… It wants me to know it’s coming.” He paused for a moment, before continuing. “It’s coming tonight, Bunker. Be ready.”

“I’m always ready,” the rancher said. “You think it’s bringing an army?”

“That’s a given. It sure as hell didn’t take Longmire by itself.”

“You think it turned all eighty-three people?”

“If not all of them, then most of them. Either way, it’s still a lot of people. A lot of ghouls.”

“Thuy’s folks, too. How many did Lara say there were?”

“Six.”

“Six more, on top of the eighty-three from Longmire. That’s ninety, if my math is right.”

Ninety souls, turned into ghouls. And they were coming here tonight.

Or if they didn’t show up in a few hours, then they would do so tomorrow night.

Or the night after that.

But they were coming. Keo had no doubts about that.

They were coming…

* * *

Nothing happened when the Howard Miller grandfather clock in the corner of the great room ticked and tocked its way to 8:00 p.m. The watch’s curving Tuscany Cherry veneer shone even in the darkness. The cost ran in the thousands, and Keo suspected Bunker had found it somewhere before “relocating” it here. Not that he asked, nor did the rancher offer details about the clock’s origins.

Tick-tock…

Tick-tock…

8:00 p.m. became 8:01 p.m.…

Which became 8:02 p.m.…

And there was no attack. The grounds outside remained pitch black as they’d been almost an hour ago when the last of the sunlight faded and nightfall completely overwhelmed the countryside beyond Keo’s window.

Where are you, you fucker? What are you waiting for?

The M4 rifle remained leaning against the wall next to him, but Keo hadn’t needed to reach for it yet. He kept the MP5 slung from one shoulder, extra ammo for both weapons, along with the Glock pistol at his hip—and a spare behind his back—weighing him down. He didn’t like having so many extra pounds on him, but as the saying went, it was always better to carry too much firepower than not enough.

Bunker hadn’t said a word since the world went dark, and he remained quiet across the double doors from Keo. The rancher had finished his cigar, leaving behind a surprisingly pleasant aroma in the room, and hadn’t rolled another one. He bided his time between peering outside his window and sitting back, lost with, Keo assumed, his own thoughts.

They were both waiting for something to happen.

“You see anything yet?” Keo finally asked.

“Nada,” Bunker said. “You?”

“No.”

“Maybe they’re not coming.”

“Maybe…”

“But you don’t believe it.”

“Nope.”

“Why?”

“Just a feeling.”

“Your feelings always right?”

“Sometimes.”

Bunker harrumphed. “Remind me why I let you stay here again?”

“My charming personality.”

“No, that’s not it.”

“My good looks.”

“That must be it,” Bunker said.

Keo grinned and continued listening to the world outside his window. He thought he could hear the whump-whump-whump of the windmill turning behind the house next to the water tower. He could detect the crickets in the grass and cicadas in the area easily enough. They were still out there making noise. That was good. It was when the crickets and cicadas stopped altogether that he needed to worry.

I know you’re out there. So what are you waiting for?

What the hell are you waiting for?

By the time the clock ticked and tocked to 9:00 p.m., Keo began wondering if they really were going to come. Maybe he was wrong; maybe Sadistic wasn’t ready yet. It’d attacked Longmire and taken its residents, but perhaps that was a gesture of intimidation. It wanted Keo to know it was here to create anxiety. From everything Keo knew about the creature, it had a thing for the theatrics. It really, really liked it when its victims feared it.

It likes to play games. Maybe that’s what it’s doing now.

Playing with me. Toying with me.

Keo turned around and sat on the floor with his back against the wall to give his knees some rest. He wasn’t as young as he used to be, and he could only stand for so long before both legs got tired. Besides, when the attack happened, he’d know. He didn’t actually need to see them coming.

Footsteps coming down the stairs, before shadows moved in front of him. Lara, appearing out of the back hallway. She’d been at her position on the second floor all night, watching the back of the house from one of the rear rooms.

She walked across the dark interior of the great room now, making very little noise in her sneakers. She was similarly geared up—assault vest, gun belt, and an MP5K with a folded buttstock hanging from a shoulder strap. Lara had become very good with the submachine gun. Like him, she now preferred the smaller barrel for maneuverability and the lower weight compared to a fully-loaded AR rifle.

Lara leaned against the wall next to him and peered out the window at the darkness outside. She didn’t say anything, but he could tell by her body language that she was just as anxious as he and Bunker were.

“Anything at our six o’clock?” Keo asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing yet. What about down here?”

“Not a peep.”

“That’s good, right?”

Keo shrugged. “I’d kind of like to get it over with.”

“Don’t be so impatient.”

“Can’t help it.” He looked at her seriously. “Remember the plan. No heroics.”

“Don’t worry about me. I know my priorities. I’m not going to be playing hero anytime soon.”

“Good.”

Lara tapped the Heckler & Koch hanging off her shoulder. “Besides, I got this and a magazine fully loaded with silver bullets. And there’s you out here. What more could a gal in my position ask for?”

“How about an army?”

“We do have an army, remember? They’re just not here.”

Keo smiled. She had a good point. They did have an army. Black Tide, to be specific. But they were somewhere else right now.

“How’s the baby doing?” Keo asked.

“He or she’s doing fine,” Lara said. She sat down next to him and leaned her head against his shoulder. “How about you?”

“Me? I’m hunky dory. Never been better.”

“‘Never been better,’ huh?”

“That’s right.”

“You couldn’t even get out of bed two months ago.”

“That was two months ago. Today I’m as fit as a fiddle and twice as spry.”

“Fiddles aren’t spry.”

“They’re not lying in bed aching all over, either.”

“That’s a good point.”

“Is it?”

“No, not really.”

He smiled, and she did, too.

“I’ve been thinking,” Lara said.

“What about?”

“When the baby’s born, we should probably recolor the room.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Definitely. Maybe baby blue.”

“That sounds appropriate.”

“I think so, too.”

Bunker cleared his throat from across the room. “Hey, it’s my house. You might wanna talk to me first before you go redecorating my place.”

Lara glanced over at him. “Hey, Bunker.”

“Yeah?”

“Can we recolor our room when the baby’s born?”

“Sure. Do what you want. Why’re you asking me?”

She looked back at Keo and grinned. “Baby blue, then?”

“If I can find a can of paint out there somewhere,” Keo said.

“Home Depot.”

“That’s at least fifty miles away. And how long do paints last, anyway?”

“I think they last for some time, if stored properly.”

“That’s the trick, isn’t it? If stored—” Keo stopped talking.

Lara stared at him. “What?”

“They’ve stopped,” he said, standing up and turning around.

“What’s stopped?” Lara asked.

“The crickets and cicadas.” He looked across at Bunker, who was also already on his feet and peering out the window. “You see anything?”

Bunker didn’t answer. Instead, he picked up a pair of binoculars and peered through them.

“Bunker?” Keo said.

“Nothing yet,” Bunker said.

Keo turned to Lara. “Time for you to go. Follow the plan. No meandering, got it?”

She smiled. “That’s my line.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.” She kissed him quickly on the lips before pulling back. “Be careful.”

“You too.”

She turned and ran across the room. She didn’t go back up the stairs to the second floor, but continued on toward the back of the hallway until he couldn’t see her anymore.

Keo looked back toward the window and out into the cold, dark night.

Christ, it was dark out there. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think the rest of the world had simply been swallowed up by a pitch-black void and that there was nothing out there but emptiness. But of course, he knew better.

Where are you, motherfucker? Show yourself…

“You sure they’re going to bypass the stables?” Bunker asked from across the doors.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Keo said.

That was a lie. He wasn’t sure. At all. But as much as Bunker cared for his four-legged friends, Keo cared more about the two-legged ones. At the moment, they didn’t have the manpower to protect the stables and the house at the same time. They’d locked down the stables, but the truth was, if the ghouls wanted in, they would probably get in. Certainly nothing was going to stop the Blue Eyes from breaking down the twin doors as if they were kindling. Keo was, though, counting on the creature wanting into the house more.

“Bunker?” Keo said.

“I see them,” Bunker said.

“How many?”

“Too many.”

Keo had to smile at that. Too many when it came to ghouls seemed to be a very common answer.

About fucking time, he thought as he checked the submachine gun one last time and took a deep, deep breath. Time to make the donuts…

Eight

They were on the roof, their movements like raindrops pelting the solar panels that provided juice to the night-lights on the floor behind Keo. As the echoes continued, dripping down to the great room, Keo and Bunker continued to wait.

They didn’t attack the front doors or any of the other access points right away, even though they’d converged on the house from all directions and climbed the walls along the sides and rear, careful to stay away from the windows so they couldn’t be shot. That was how Keo knew it was out there.

Sadistic.

It was giving commands, telling the Black Eyes what to do.

“This is what you were talking about,” Bunker said, his neck craned as he stared up at the ceiling, listening to the consistent but somehow unaggressive tap-tap-taps of footsteps coming from up there. “They’re not behaving like normal Black Eyes.”

“Yeah,” Keo said. He remained at his window while Bunker did the same with his. “When there’s one of them out there, the attacks are more organized. Less predictable. They’re not going to make it easy for us.”

“Hey, who wants easy, anyway?”

“I do.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not a fun guy, that’s why.”

“I didn’t know this was supposed to be fun.”

“You know how boring it gets out here? Yeah, this is fun. I’ll take it where I can get ’em.”

Keo smiled. Surprisingly, he had a good feeling about the situation. For one, he wasn’t saddled with a couple of know-nothing civilians that he’d have to look out for. Instead, he had a brash rancher who was good with a gun and a combat veteran in Lara. The three newcomers could have been a potential weakness, but Lara was taking care of them. All in all, things could have been much worse.

Is that Captain Optimism rearing his head? a voice asked from the back of his mind.

You’re damn right.

“What are they doing up there?” Bunker asked. He had stepped slightly away from his window and was trying to track the sounds of movements above him.

They were moving constantly, but there were no obvious tells in which direction, or why. They were just…moving around for the sake of moving around.

“I don’t know,” Keo said.

“I thought you’d done this before,” Bunker said.

“Every situation is different.”

“This blue-eyed ghoul. It’s got a name?”

It was a good question, and one Keo hadn’t actually thought about. He assumed that it did, but he’d just never asked the creature. For one, he didn’t care to know. And two… Well, he just didn’t give a damn what its name was.

“Sadistic,” Keo said.

“‘Sadistic?’” Bunker said. “That’s its name?”

“It’s the name I gave it. Figured, if you name something, it has less power over you. Or something psychological like that.”

“Is it working?”

“Nah.”

Bunker chuckled. “But they have names, right?”

“Yeah, they do. And I’m sure this one has a name, too. I just never asked it.”

“That’s rude.”

“Yeah, well, it can kiss my ass.”

“I’ll tell it you said that. Among other things.” Then, “So. Sadistic, huh?”

“Yup.”

“Sounds appropriate, considering everything you’ve told me about it.”

The portable radio clipped to Keo’s hip squawked, breaking through the momentary quiet between them.

“You guys hear that?” a voice asked through the tinny speakers. Lara.

Keo unclipped his radio and pressed the transmit lever. “They’re on the rooftop.”

“What are they doing?” Lara asked.

“We don’t know yet. Nothing, for now.”

“Nothing?”

“For now.”

“Are they attacking the doors yet?”

“Not yet.”

“The windows?”

“Negative on that one, too.”

It didn’t take Lara very long to figure it out. “You’re right. It’s out there. A Blue Eyes.”

“Yes,” Keo said.

“Be careful, Keo.”

“I will,” he was about to say but was interrupted by a very loud bam! as something struck the front doors behind him.

No, not the double doors themselves, but the extra wooden barricade on the other side of the entrance. It wasn’t the familiar flesh-heavy attacks Keo was used to when it came to black-eyed ghouls. This one was rapid-fire and struck again and again—bam-bam-bam!—and each time both doors moved against the pounding.

It wasn’t ghouls throwing themselves at the barricades, but something else. Something big and strong and effective.

Keo took an involuntary step back, as did Bunker.

“What the hell are they using out there?” Bunker asked.

“I don’t know,” Keo said.

The only way to see what the ghouls were using would be to open the metal slabs over the window to get a look. They’d closed both barriers as soon as the creatures showed themselves outside.

“Open your window and see,” Keo said.

“The hell with that!” Bunker said. “Maybe I don’t wanna see what’s out there right now.”

“Don’t be such a baby.”

“Wah wah,” Bunker said.

Keo’s radio squawked again, and Lara’s voice asked, “What’s that noise?”

“Something’s trying to come through the front doors,” Keo said into the radio.

“Maybe you guys should start back here.”

“Not yet.”

“I agree with Lara,” Bunker said.

Keo grinned across the room at him. “What’s the matter, Bunker? You scared?”

“Hell yeah,” the rancher said.

There was a massive crash!, louder than anything that preceded it, and the entire house seemed to shake from the impact.

Keo almost lost his footing, but managed to stay upright even as the double doors burst open against the assault. The doors, and the barricade on the other side, spilled into the great room.

Maybe they were right! Keo thought as he watched at least a dozen ghouls scrambling over the large steel object that had split the doors open.

Dark black eyes peered in at him from underneath hairless domed heads and pruned black flesh. It didn’t matter how many times Keo came face-to-face with a ghoul, the sight of them—like small children, many bent over because of their deformed bones—always made him take a slight pause.

It took Keo a couple of seconds to realize what that “object” they’d used to break open the door was: The four-legged 12-foot windmill that Bunker used to aerate a small pond behind the house. They had pulled the structure out of the ground and had used it as a battering ram.

Now that’s improvised thinking!

“Go go go!” Keo shouted even as he lifted the MP5 with one hand—the other was still holding onto the radio—and squeezed off a burst right at the now-wide open doors.

The first wave of ghouls trying to come inside fell, the silver-tipped 9mm rounds ripping through their soft flesh and tearing into the ones behind them. Loud pings! echoed as bullets ricocheted off bone and kept going, some vanishing into the night while others managed to strike even more creatures in the background.

Keo glimpsed Bunker running into the back out of the corner of one eye even as he himself backpedaled, sweeping the front entrance with the submachine gun. Wood chipped as his bullets struck the wall on the right side of the opening as he swung a bit too wide, but Keo didn’t care about that.

Ghouls were falling as he fired. The staccato muzzle flash of his weapon and the whirring sounds of the parts doing their jobs filled the slightly-dark living room of the main house. Keo kept the trigger depressed until the MP5 ran empty.

He heard Bunker’s voice, shouting, “What are you waiting for, an invitation?” from behind him just before the rancher’s AR-15 exploded from his left side.

Keo spun, using the momentary respite to put the radio away even as he ejected the spent magazine on the H&K with his other hand. Bunker’s rifle flashed on his now-right side even as Keo ran. He reached down for a fresh magazine and slammed it home between wide strides.

“Go go go!” he shouted.

Bunker immediately stopped firing and whirled around. Keo was already turning, facing the wide-open doors again.

There was a stack of twisted bodies on the floor and even more outside in the front yard. They lay on top of one another, carpeting the ground with their black flesh and oozing thick blood. The room was already starting to stink, and it’d only been a few seconds.

Only a few seconds!

Keo couldn’t begin to count the number of dead. Two dozen, at least. Possibly three, but there couldn’t have been more—

The sight of more ghouls running and stumbling over the fallen ones in their path reminded him this was no time to be counting. Keo lifted the MP5 for a better aim, left hand grabbing the underside of the weapon, and unloaded.

He took out a fresh wave of ghouls with the first volley even as they staggered their way inside. They collapsed as if they’d run into an invisible wall, limping to the floor to join the ones already down there.

Bullets pinged! off bones and vanished into the night outside, others pekking! into the house’s walls.

And more were still coming in.

Too many. Always too many.

Jesus. Where did they all come from?

Two months, he had to remind himself. Sadistic had had two months to prepare for tonight. While Keo was healing, not realizing their battle was still ongoing, the bastard was rebuilding its army.

And to look at the ones bounding their way into the house, it’d been successful.

Too goddamn successful!

He retreated, the submachine gun bucking in his hands.

“Again, what are you waiting for, an invitation?” Bunker shouted from behind him.

Keo continued backpedaling, the MP5 spitting fire at the opening. He trusted Bunker to be where he needed the rancher, and vice versa. Because if he couldn’t trust the other man, then all of this was going to be a very short night!

Ghouls collapsed in front of him, but more kept pouring inside.

“Now!” Bunker shouted.

Keo didn’t stop firing until the H&K was empty. He turned and darted toward the back hallway. Bunker wasn’t there. He was already moving toward the rear of the house, his silhouetted form running in front of Keo as he led the way.

He was running past the staircase up to the second floor when he heard dull thudding from upstairs. Ghouls, trying to break their way into the house through the windows. They were going to have a long night ahead of them, because like the windows downstairs, the ones up there also had metal slabs over the windows for protection against unwanted entry.

But it wasn’t the creatures upstairs that he was worried about. It was the ones downstairs with him right now!

Keo glanced over his shoulder as they swarmed inside the house, now unencumbered by Keo’s or Bunker’s bullets. They surged through the great room’s large space, their skeletal forms flickering against the dimmed night-lights all along the floors.

He stuck his hand with the MP5 backward and squeezed the trigger, and emptied the third magazine of the night.

Bullets ripped through the wall of black flesh, and ghouls tumbled and fell. More just jumped over the fallen ones and kept coming.

Keo had wildly oscillated his fire from left to right, and more than a few of his rounds glanced off the hallway walls. Bunker was going to be annoyed about that when he found out how Keo had unintentionally redecorated his house.

Haha, you think you’re going to live through this! a voice said from the back of his mind.

You’re goddamn right!

“Come on, come on!” Bunker was shouting.

Keo looked forward. Bunker was waiting for him on the other side of an open door. Moonlight gleamed off its metallic surface.

Shit, I hope it’s strong enough!

Bunker was reloading as he watched Keo run toward him. “Are you running slow on purpose, or what?”

“I’m running as fast as I can!” Keo shouted back.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“Everyone’s a critic!”

He dived through the door even as Bunker unleashed his second magazine.

Keo stopped on a dime, spun around, and grabbed the door—it was impossibly cold to the touch, sending a thrill up his spine—even as Bunker backpedaled further inside, his rifle spitting lead into the hallway beyond.

As soon as the rancher stopped firing, Keo pushed the door home with all the strength he could muster.

It was heavy. Christ, it was heavy.

(I hope it’s just heavy enough!)

But he dug his boots into the floorboards and pushed—and pushed some more!

Clang! as the door slammed home, the collision racing through Keo’s arms and all the way to his face, where it made his teeth chatter for seconds afterward.

Keo shoved the deadbolt into place—all three of them.

Chank-chank-chank! as the locks moved to secure the door against the walls that framed it.

Keo took a few steps back, careful not to fall off the short landing. The room was brightly lit, thanks to a string of LED light bulbs along the walls leading down the concrete steps to the basement below. He quickly reloaded with his fourth and final magazine, while Bunker did the same with his AR.

Well, this is familiar, Keo thought, remembering the last time he fled into a basement room to escape ghouls. That wasn’t very long ago, in fact. He’d done the same thing back at Paxton.

The more things changed and blah blah blah.

But this time there were major differences. He wasn’t alone, for one, and instead of a scared teenage girl, he had a battle-hardened Bunker at his side. This basement also wasn’t like all the others he’d taken refuge in over the years. This one had a secret, one that while Keo had hoped he would never have to use was glad it was there just in case. Instead of a wooden door that could easily crack under a sustained attack, he had a steel slab and walls designed to withstand natural disasters. Although the basement had a cement façade, it was in fact lined with steel slabs, with only the floor just made of concrete.

He’d take the upgrade any day of the week, and then some.

“That’s it?” Bunker was asking him.

Keo looked over at the rancher. Bunker was staring at him.

“What?” Keo said.

“That’s it? That’s all they got? They’ll never get through this door in a million years if that’s all they got.”

They both turned back to the door.

Keo hadn’t heard the sounds of assault he was waiting for, as if the creatures saw the door and simply…gave up.

No. They wouldn’t do that.

Would they?

But it didn’t matter how long he stood there and listened, and waited. There was nothing but silence outside the basement.

“That’s it?” Bunker asked again. Like Keo, the rancher was still breathing hard, his heartbeat pounding noticeably behind his vest.

Keo shook his head. He didn’t know how to answer Bunker. This was…new.

Because you’re out there, that’s why.

Aren’t you, you sadistic fuck?

“Now what?” Bunker asked. He’d lowered his voice for some reason, probably not even realizing he’d done it.

“I don’t know,” Keo said, matching the rancher’s pitch.

It wasn’t just the lack of attacks on the door, but the seeming absence of any noise whatsoever outside that confused Keo. There was nothing out there that even remotely hinted at the presence of ghouls moving around. Which couldn’t have been possible, because he’d seen them with his own eyes, running after him.

So where the hell were they? Or was this just another game?

“Is this good or bad?” Bunker asked.

“I don’t have a clue,” Keo said.

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

“You’re the expert. What are they doing outside now?”

“Like I said. I don’t have a clue.”

“Can you at least make an educated guess?”

Keo shook his head. “I got nothing.”

“You’re useless.”

“Pretty much.”

“Great,” Bunker said, looking back at the door.

The radios on their hips squawked at the same time. Keo unclipped his first, because he already knew who was calling.

It was Lara: “Are you guys in the basement yet?”

Keo pressed the transmit lever. “We’re in the basement now.”

“Thank God. Are you both okay?”

“We’re both good.”

Boom as something struck the door from the other side, the actual sound of the impact muted greatly by the strength of the door.

Not that it stopped both Keo and Bunker from taking a quick step back, before exchanging a confused glance.

Keo looked back at the door and pictured a Sherman tank ramming into it from the other side. Which, he guessed, was just about what it would take to knock the steel structure and its surrounding wall down.

“What the hell was that?” Lara asked through the radio.

Boom…

“You heard that?” Keo said into the radio.

“No, but I felt it,” Lara said.

Boom…

It wasn’t a black-eyed ghoul—or even a million of them. It was something else. Something stronger. So strong that the door and its frame trembled under every single impact and sent shockwaves across the entire house. All the way to where Lara and the girls were at the moment, which was a hell of a feat.

“Keo? Are you still there?” Lara asked through the radio.

“Um, I’ll have to get back to you, babe,” Keo said, and put the radio away.

“This is bad, right?” Bunker asked as he took another step backward and stopped just at the top of the stairs. Beads of sweat were dripping from his forehead. Keo hadn’t seen those earlier and wondered if he was suddenly perspiring, too.

“Yeah, I think so,” Keo said.

Boom as the door shook again, along with the wall surrounding it.

Uh oh, Keo thought when he noticed the dent in the center of the door. It was small, just an indentation, but it was something that hadn’t been there seconds ago.

Boom…

“Damn,” Bunker said. He’d almost whispered the word, as if afraid whatever was attacking would overhear him.

“You can say that again,” Keo said.

Bunker did, and louder this time: “Damn.”

“I was just kidding.”

“This is no time to be kidding.”

“When is a good time?”

“I’ll let you know, because goddamn.”

Keo didn’t blame Bunker’s growing disbelief, because the indentation that had appeared in the door was the result of a fist.

Boom…

A fist that was trying to punch its way through what had to be a good full inch of galvanized steel. And if it didn’t succeed in doing that, then it was going to tear the door right out of its frame trying.

Goddamn is right!

Nine

“This place once belonged to the McCann brothers, two of the most paranoid and crazy motherfuckers I’ve ever met. Ike and Henry,” Bunker said the first day Keo and Lara showed up at the property and the rancher showed them around. “This was all theirs, and their pop’s before them. After the old man passed away, the boys decided to carry on the tradition. They had the bucks to pay people to do most of the grunt work on the shelter, but they also tacked on a few walls here and there themselves. If you ask me, I actually think they were hoping for something to happen, given how much money and sweat they spent on this place. I mean, look at all this stuff. It’s insane.”

“That’s a hell of a family,” Keo said.

“And then some. You know what preppers are?”

“Guys who think the end of the world is coming.”

“That about sums it up. The McCanns were preppers, but that’s probably not doing them justice. They were good guys when you got to know them, but if you didn’t, you’d probably think they were a little wacky.”

“A little?”

“Okay, a lot wacky. But who’s laughing now, right? No big bombs or EMPs from North Korea or any of that nonsense, but plenty of bloodsucking monsters. Who would have seen that coming? I didn’t. Anyway, Ike and Henry spent decades adding on to this place, using money from the ranch’s cattle business to pay for it all. Neither one of them ended up married. Or maybe they just couldn’t find any Texas gal who’d put up with what most people thought was nonsense.”

“Were you a prepper?” Lara asked.

“Nah, but I knew plenty of people who did the lifestyle.”

“‘Lifestyle?’”

“That’s what it is, basically. Most of them just liked hiding out in the woods and pretending the end of the world was coming. Frankly, I think they just wanted an excuse to hide away from the family for a week or two. You know, get into the woods and chill.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Keo said.

“I found out there were conventions, websites, Facebook groups, you name it—all dedicated to prepping. It was big business selling things to them back in the day when people still thought money was a good idea.”

“So how did you know about the McCann brothers?”

“I met the big brother, Ike, in a dirty bar in Mexico City while he was doing business down there. Turned out we liked the same brand of tequila.”

“That’s all it took, huh?”

“What else is there? Anyway, he gave me a standing invitation to visit the ranch if I was ever in town. I took him up on it about three months later, and he showed me what he had cooking down here. He was pretty proud of it. I guess I’d be too, given how much they spent down here.”

“So what happened to them?” Lara asked.

“You mean after the end of the world?”

“Exactly.”

“As far as I know, they never made use of the bunkers themselves. I don’t think they were even in town when the shit went down. When I showed up again about six months into the whole mess, hoping to hide out for a while, the place was empty. So I figured, what the hell, someone should at least put it to good use. I’ve been upkeeping it ever since, even adding to it.”

“Reminds me of a man named Harold Campbell,” Lara said.

“Who was that?”

“A billionaire who built underground survival bunkers all across the country. During the early days of The Purge, a handful of survivors and I made use of one of his facilities. It’s probably the only reason I’m still alive now.”

“The McCanns weren’t billionaires, but they sure did a good job. The place is rough around the edges, but she’ll do. She’ll do. Mind you, I’ve been lucky; I’ve never had to make use of the place’s full potential.”

That luck, alas, wouldn’t last forever.

* * *

Boom…

“Is that what I think it is?”

“Yes. It’s exactly what you think it is.”

Boom…

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, Bunker.”

Boom…

“But just in case I’m seeing things…”

“That’s a fist trying to punch its way through the door.”

Boom…

“Okay, so it’s exactly what I thought it was. Holy shit.”

“You can say that again.”

Boom…

“Holy shit.”

“I was kidding. You can stop now.”

Boom…

“Fuck my life.”

Keo couldn’t help himself and grinned, even as—

Boom!

“Did that sound…?” Bunker said.

“Louder?” Keo said.

“I was going to say faster. And harder.”

“Yeah, those, too.”

Boom!

The rancher was right on both counts. It did sound and feel as if the impacts were getting louder, and harder, and growing in intensity all at the same time. And it was going to get through. There was no stopping it. It was going to keep pounding on the door until it got through.

Keo had no doubts whatsoever about what was on the other side.

A blue-eyed ghoul.

The blue-eyed ghoul.

Mr. Fucking Sadistic itself.

The same one that had played with him in Paxton, that had followed him here in order to finish what it’d started. The same bastard that had taken out Longmire and its eighty-three residents, many of whom were probably covering the floor of Bunker’s great room right now, except they weren’t people anymore.

It was striking the door repeatedly, each blow denting the 12-gauge steel with such force that the literal “fist”-shaped dent was growing, getting bigger and bigger. Chunks of the concrete façade broke free from the wall and sprinkled the basement landing.

Boom!

Every blow caused the entire house to tremble.

Boom!

It was going to get through. He knew that. Even if it couldn’t punch its way through the door, it was going to hammer it out of its frame.

One way or another, it was coming in.

By now, Keo and Bunker had backed up so much they were almost falling off the landing and tumbling down the stairs.

“What now?” Bunker asked.

“Same as when the night began,” Keo said. “Shoot for the head.”

“That’s it? Nothing else?”

“That’s about it.”

“It kinda sucks.”

“Kinda? It sucks pretty badly.”

“True, but I wanted to be nice about it.”

“Why start now?”

“Good—”

Boom! as a big chunk of the wall on the right side of the door cracked and fell, exposing the steel sheet behind it.

“What’s it got out there, a tank?” Bunker said.

“Nope,” Keo said. “Just its fist.”

“Damn.”

Boom! as another big piece fell down, landing with a solid thunk! against the landing, and revealing even more of the steel surrounding the basement.

“That was a loud one,” Bunker said.

“Uh huh,” Keo said.

“What should we do now?”

Boom! as more sections of the wall cracked and peeled off and the ceiling above them spiderwebbed.

“Go,” Keo said.

“Go?” Bunker said, looking over at him.

“Time to go!”

They both turned and fled down the stairs almost simultaneously.

The boom! echoed from behind them.

Then, as if it knew they had turned tail and ran (and maybe it did; the Blue Eyes did have hyper-hearing), the attacks seemed to increase even further in speed and intensity.

Boom!

BOOM!

Suddenly the world was full of sounds all pounding away at the same time. Falling concrete, impacts against the door, their boots on the stairs, and Lara’s voice shouting through their radios. Keo didn’t have time for any of it. He was too busy running.

“Are we really fleeing?” Bunker asked between spurts of labored breaths.

“Yes!” Keo shouted back, his own breathing just as ragged, and maybe even a little bit more so.

“Okay! Just wanted to make sure!”

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

Keo had no problems with running. This whole night had gone, as far as he was concerned, according to plan. He never had any delusions that they were ever going to keep the ghouls out of the house all night. Maybe if they were just facing a horde of Black Eyes, the barricades would have been more than enough. But it wasn’t just the Black Eyes. There was a Blue Eyes among them, and it could do things—get into places—that the others couldn’t dream of.

And right now, it was literally punching its way through an inch of solid steel.

So Keo and Bunker ran, hopping down the last couple of steps and onto the basement floor. Shelves of supplies and unused furniture flashed by on their right and left as they made a beeline for another door at the end of the room.

It was another stainless steel door, except this one was twice as thick and, in theory, should be able to withstand more blunt force than the one upstairs.

In theory, anyway.

Before tonight, it’d been hidden behind a shelf, and anyone who didn’t know it existed would never have found it. The basement was just a cover for what lay behind it.

“The pièce de résistance,” Bunker had said when he showed what was on the other side to them all those months ago.

Right now, it was the one thing standing between them and—

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

Bunker was the first one to the door. There was a keypad with a key slot backup in case the power went out, but they didn’t need either of those things right now because the door was already open. The rancher slung his rifle and slipped inside, then turned around and grabbed the round submarine wheel at the center and began pulling the heavy steel structure back into its frame.

Keo slid through the slowly-closing opening and into the brightly-lit hallway on the other side. The soles of his boots skidded against the concrete floor as he stopped, turned, then grabbed the other half of the wheel and pulled the door inward.

It took both of them to swing the 350-lb door into its frame, the bulky two-inch object landing home with an impressive clang! that was even louder than the basement door, which was only half its size. Bunker spun the submarine wheel, the locking mechanisms inside grinding as they did what they were supposed to do.

Clack-clack-clack!

When the last lock clacked! into place, the two of them took a half-dozen steps back from the door. Neither one of them said a word as they waited for the now-familiar boom of a blue-eyed ghoul’s fist landing on the other side.

Instead, there was silence.

Almost. Besides their hard breathing, the only other noise came from the low hum of the generators running in the background and the air infiltration system working down the hallway, cycling clean air from the outside world through a series of elaborate filters and blast-proof ducts that Keo had no idea even existed until Bunker showed them to him.

The passageway was made of solid concrete—ten feet high and fifteen feet wide. There was nothing about it that looked as if its builders had followed any building regulations. Instead, there was a strictly “build it however we want it” aesthetics to the place. Everything down here, from the hallway to the door, was done to the McCanns’ specifications according to Bunker.

Bunker finally broke the silence. “What do you think? Will it hold?”

“I don’t know,” Keo said.

“You’ve faced these things before, right?”

“Too many times to count.”

“So can they break through 350 pounds of galvanized two-inch steel door or not?”

“I have no fucking idea, Bunker,” Keo said, even as he thought, But God, I hope not.

They were still waiting for something—anything—when the radios on their hips squawked simultaneously.

Lara’s voice, through the speakers: “Guys? What’s happening out there? Someone give me a sitrep.”

“It’s your woman, you answer her,” Bunker said.

Keo unclipped his radio and spoke into it. “We’re underground, Lara.”

“Are you okay?”

“In one piece.”

“Thank God.”

“I’m fine too, thanks for asking,” Bunker said.

Keo said into the radio, “Bunker’s fine, too.”

“I guess that’s good,” Lara said.

“Ouch,” Bunker said.

Lara wasn’t in the hallway with them, but she was close by. There was another door down behind them and around a corner—the last line of defense, though Keo hated to think of it in that way. She had brought the sisters, Wilson and Gummy, along with Thuy, down here earlier in the night. It was part of the plan: Keo and Bunker would see what the ghouls did topside and react accordingly, retreating into the basement to access the tunnels when necessary. (It had proven necessary much faster than Keo would have liked.) Meanwhile, the women were safe and sound down here the entire time.

He wanted desperately to make his way to them, but Keo fought the urge. He would do so when the time was right, when he didn’t have any other choice. He just hoped the “last line of defense” was stronger than the basement door had proven. Of course, for them to fall back to the third option, they’d have to lose the second one first. And right now, the hallway door was still very much in play.

For now, anyway.

“The pounding I was feeling earlier. Did it stop?” Lara was asking through the radio. “I can’t feel it anymore.”

Keo gave Bunker a questioning look. The rancher shrugged back and leaned against the door. He didn’t move or say anything for a while.

“Well?” Keo said after about thirty seconds.

Bunker shook his head. “I can’t hear or feel shit.”

“Keo?” Lara was saying through the radio. “What’s happening now?”

“We don’t know yet, but we should stick to the plan,” Keo said into the radio. “Are you okay back there?”

“We’re fine. Everyone’s just anxious.” Then, the worry in her voice unmistakable, “Be careful, okay?”

“I will.”

Keo put the radio away and pushed his hands against the cold steel door. There were no vibrations, no impacts. Nothing to indicate the ghoul had started trying to break the structure down like it had the basement door. He pressed his ear against the smooth surface, a jolt of cold sweeping through him from the contact.

“You’re wasting your time,” Bunker said. He’d stepped back and was checking his rifle. “That’s 350 pounds and two inches of solid 12-gauge steel. Can’t hear shit through that thing.”

Keo stayed still and listened anyway.

Bunker was right. He couldn’t hear a damn thing through the door.

“Well?” Bunker said behind him.

Keo pulled back slightly and shook his head. “You’re right. I can’t hear anything.”

“Told you.” Then, “Maybe it didn’t make it through the top door.”

Keo recalled the image of the ghoul’s fist denting through the sheet of solid steel…

“Yeah, I don’t believe it, either,” Bunker said. “Maybe it was just wishful thinking. That’ll teach me.”

Keo took another step back and unclipped his radio. He pressed the transmit lever. “Lara.”

He waited, but she didn’t answer.

Keo tried again: “Lara.”

Again, there was no response.

Keo exchanged a look with Bunker before glancing down the hallway.

“Why isn’t she answering?” Bunker asked.

“I don’t—” Keo started to say when their radios squawked.

Lara’s voice, shouting through the radio, “Keo—”

The bang! of a gunshot reverberated through the radio, cutting her off.

“Lara?” Keo said into the radio.

“Was that a gunshot?” Bunker asked.

Keo didn’t answer him. He was too busy walking down the hallway, picking up his pace with every step. “Lara,” he said into the radio. “Lara? Lara!”

He glanced back at Bunker, but the rancher was waving him off. “Go, go!”

Keo spun around and took the turn up ahead. The soles of his boots slid slightly against the hard concrete floor as he did so, but he managed to stay upright as he picked up even more speed through the brightly-lit passageway. Gray concrete walls flashed by to both sides of him, light bulbs on the ceiling lighting his way to Lara…

Ten

Get to Lara!

The entrance into the McCanns’ underground shelter consisted of the main area at one end and the two-inch steel door that Bunker was currently guarding, the two areas linked together by a long hallway with a single turn in the middle. Each length of hallway was less than twenty yards apiece, but as Keo ran through the first, then the second and final one, the passageway seemed endless. He’d been running for only a few seconds, but it felt like a lifetime before he finally spotted another steel metal door on the other side: Beyond that door—the last line of defense—was the main shelter, and Lara.

Jesus! Why are you so slow?

There were two ways to gain entry into the main shelter area—either someone opened the door from the other side, or using the keypad. Keo used the latter, all but lunging at the door, fingers flying over the keys on the wall as he punched in the numbers Bunker had made him memorize all those months ago.

Get in there. Get to Lara!

Now now now!

Locking bolts retracted and the door popped open, but it was incredibly heavy—over three inches of solid steel—and took its precious time just initially snapping free from its frame. Keo helped it out, throwing his whole weight against it and pushing, pushing, pushing.

He had to get inside. He had to get inside now.

Now now now!

The door wasn’t even fully open—and it probably wouldn’t be for another ten or more seconds—but Keo couldn’t wait. He gave up pushing and squeezed through the partially open door instead, the MP5 in his hands by the time he set foot into the main entry room.

It was essentially one long foyer, made entirely of metal like the rest of the main shelter. The glossy surfaces reflected and diverted the bright LED lights into his eyes, and Keo struggled to see as he ran, praying he didn’t trip or run right into something very sharp that might puncture a lung, or worse.

Thankfully, he already had a good idea of the layout. He’d walked through the place months ago and had refreshed his memory earlier today with Lara and Bunker. There were cabinets and a bench to his left, sinks and wash bins to his right. A bathroom, then a closet—more storage areas. Like the rest of the underground shelter, everything was made of unyielding metal, including the hard floor pounding away underneath his running boots.

Why was he moving so slowly? Jesus Christ, it felt like he was fighting against quicksand. He had to go faster.

Faster!

He went straight to the door on the right side, at the end of the room. A regular steel door with a regular handle that he grabbed and yanked open, and lunged through with wild abandon, the voice in the back of his head shouting, Faster! You’re too slow! Lara needs help! You have to move faster!

“Lara!” he shouted even as he entered the adjoining room.

The common area was just that—probably the largest space in the entire complex, designed to be shared by everyone who had made it down here. There were sofas, a full-size kitchen, and a bench-style dining table. Shelves lined the walls, and an entertainment center with a 60-inch black no-brand TV hogged a large spot on the wall. Everything down here had a purpose, and aesthetics weren’t necessarily a big concern to the McCanns. There were doors along the sides leading to private living quarters, but Keo ignored them. He knew exactly where Lara was supposed to be.

And there she was, standing in the center of the wide-open space looking back at him.

She was okay.

Thank God. Thank God…

At least she looked okay. She was on her feet, and he didn’t see anything that looked like injuries. Or blood.

No blood. Thank God. No blood…

He glimpsed the sisters out of the corner of his eye. Wilson and Gummy were sitting on one of the couches on his right, clutching one another. He couldn’t spare the second or two it would have taken to confirm they were okay, because he was too busy focusing on Lara.

“Stop,” the figure standing behind Lara said. She stepped slightly to one side, revealing herself. She’d been hidden earlier, but not anymore.

It was Thuy.

Keo slid to a stop and immediately raised the MP5—pointing it at Thuy as she emerged from behind Lara, her smaller face just visible to the right of Lara’s shoulder. But it was the gun in her hand, not quite pressing against the back of Lara’s head, that drew Keo’s immediate attention—and kept it there.

Sonofabitch.

Sonofabitch.

“Don’t come any closer,” Thuy said.

“What are you doing?” Keo asked, even though what he really wanted to shout was, You hurt my woman, and I’ll put you down like a rabid dog, you bitch! But he bit his tongue, because he knew the outburst wouldn’t do a damn bit of good. Hell, it’d probably cause more harm than good.

He added instead, in as calm a voice as he could muster, “Who fired the shot?”

“I did,” Thuy said.

Keo’s eyes snapped from Thuy’s partially hidden face to Lara’s. She looked back at him, and if she was even the least bit scared, he couldn’t see it on her face. Then again, Lara always did have one hell of a poker face. It wasn’t all bluff, either; she’d been through more than most people and had come out of it all in one piece. To say Lara had been to hell and back would have been a slight understatement.

Lara was the toughest woman he knew, but even she had her limits. And right now, he could see it wavering a little as she met his gaze. He didn’t believe for a second it was because she was afraid for herself. No, it was more than that. It was the unborn child in her belly, which would have been more prominently visible if not for the vest she was wearing over the jacket.

Keo noticed immediately that Lara’s hip holster, where the Glock was supposed to be, was empty. It looked very much like the same weapon in Thuy’s hand at the moment. Lara was also not carrying the MP5K anymore. Instead, it was hanging off Thuy’s shoulder.

All the evidence snapped together, forming a very bad picture.

Keo’s eyes returned to Lara. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “We’re fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“She’s okay,” Thuy said. “Everyone’s okay. I just needed to get your attention.”

Oh, you have my attention, all right, Keo thought.

“She took me by surprise,” Lara said. “I’m sorry, Keo.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “You don’t ever have to be sorry to me.”

Keo looked past her and at Thuy. The other woman was clearly trying to make herself small, afraid Keo might open fire. If she only knew that Keo wouldn’t have done that in a million years. The only reason he kept the submachine aimed was because he was too afraid of what Thuy would do—to him, to Lara, to the kids—if he didn’t make himself into a potential threat.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Keo asked Thuy.

“I told you, I just wanted your attention,” Thuy said.

“Okay, so now you have it. What do you want?”

“I want you to go back outside and open the door into the basement.”

“What?”

“Open the door into the basement.”

“Why would you want me to do that? Do you know what’s out there? On the other side? Did you hear that pounding earlier?”

“Yes,” Thuy said.

That caught Keo by surprise. It wasn’t so much her answer but the way she’d said it—so matter-of-factly, as if she’d given it a lot of thought.

Keo’s radio—and Lara’s, on the floor between Keo and her—squawked, and they heard Bunker’s voice:

“Anyone wanna give me a sitrep? What’s going on in there?” Then, when no one answered him fast enough, “Bueller? Bueller?”

Keo unclipped his own radio with one hand, the other still holding the MP5, and brought it up to his lips. “Bunker.”

“What happened? Everything okay in there?” the rancher asked.

“It’s Thuy.”

“What about her?”

“She took Lara hostage.”

“Uh, can you repeat that? There must be something wrong with my radio. I thought you said Thuy took Lara hostage?”

“There’s nothing wrong with your radio. Thuy took Lara hostage.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m staring at her while she’s holding a gun to the back of Lara’s head right now,” Keo said.

“Oh,” Bunker said.

“Tell him to open the door,” Thuy said.

“The hell I will,” Keo said.

“Please.”

“What?”

“Please,” Thuy said again. “Tell him to open the door.”

Keo didn’t know how to respond to that. Had the woman holding a gun to Lara’s head just begged him to do something? That didn’t make a lick of sense.

“Tell me why,” Keo said.

“It wants me to open the door,” Thuy said. “It wants to come in.”

“Who?”

“You know who. You met it outside of Paxton. It sent me here.”

Fuck, Keo thought.

“Please,” Thuy said. “Tell Bunker to open the door.”

Keo didn’t answer her. Instead, he keyed the radio again. “Bunker.”

“I’m still here,” the rancher said.

“What’s the status on the door?”

“The same now as when you left.”

“They haven’t tried to come in yet?”

“If they are, they’re being mighty quiet about it. Does this have something to do with what’s going on in there?”

“Yeah, it does.”

“Well, you wanna fill me in or what?”

“Not right now.”

“Swell,” Bunker said.

“Tell him to open the door,” Thuy said. He thought her voice was cracking slightly, as if she didn’t want to be saying any of this.

“He’s not going to do that,” Lara said. Then, to Keo, “Right?”

“Right,” Keo said, even though he thought, But I may have to, if she doesn’t give me any choice. God knows I don’t want to, but if it’s between what’s out there and saving your life, it’ll be the easiest decision of my life.

But he’d agreed with her anyway because maybe, just maybe, there was another way out of this. Maybe, if he’d heard the waver in her voice correctly…

You better be right about this, pal. You better be right…

“Why are you doing this?” he asked Thuy.

“I don’t have any choice,” Thuy said. “I told you that. This is what it wants.”

“Why are you doing its bidding?”

“I don’t have any choice.”

“Tell me why. There has to be a reason.”

“What does it matter to you?”

Because you have a gun pointed at the most important woman in my life, and if anything were to happen to her, I’m not sure I can live.

He said, “I need to know why you’re doing this. Maybe we can help you.”

“What?” Thuy said.

“Maybe we can help you.”

“Why would you want to?”

“Because you look like you need help. You said it yourself: You don’t want to do this. You’re being forced to. Maybe we can help you. But we won’t know for sure if you don’t tell us.”

The part of Thuy’s face that he could see contorted noticeably, as if she were struggling with her thoughts…and maybe something else, too.

Keo locked eyes with Lara again. Her hands were at her sides, and she stood very still. There was concern on her face but still nothing that looked like terror.

That’s my girl.

The room wasn’t devoid of fear and terror, though. Those emotions were being taken up by Gummy and Wilson, still sitting quietly—almost as if they were too afraid to even breathe too loudly—on the couch nearby. The two sisters hadn’t moved at all and looked frozen in place.

That was good. As long as they stayed where they were, they were out of harm’s way—and out of his line of fire.

Keo focused on Thuy, still peering over one of Lara’s shoulders back at him. “What does it have on you?”

Thuy didn’t answer him.

“I know you don’t want to do this,” Keo continued. “I can see it on your face. So what does it have on you?”

Lara must have quickly figured out what he was trying to do, and she jumped in with both feet. “We can help you, Thuy. Whatever it has on you, we can help you get out of it.”

“You don’t understand,” Thuy said.

“What don’t we understand? Tell us.”

“It’s not me…”

Keo didn’t understand her response, but apparently Lara did.

“It has someone else,” she said. “Someone you care about. It’s holding them hostage, isn’t it? Is it one of the people you were traveling with? Is that it?”

Thuy didn’t respond, but she also didn’t deny it, either.

Lara seized on the opportunity (And Keo thought again, That’s my girl.). “We can help you get them back. We’ve done it before. We’ve beaten the Blue Eyes before.”

“Beat them?” Thuy said, as if the concept was impossibly alien to her.

“They can be beaten,” Lara said. “You just have to know how to go about it. We know how. We’ve done it before. Right, Keo?”

“Too many times to count,” Keo said, even though that was just a bit of a white lie.

Okay, so maybe it was a big lie. They’d defeated the Blue Eyes before, but he could count all those occasions on one hand.

“It’s not easy, but it can be done,” Keo continued. “But you need to work with us to make it happen. You can start by giving Lara back her gun.”

“I can’t…” Thuy said, but didn’t finish.

“You have to trust somebody, sometime,” Lara said.

“I can’t,” Thuy said again.

“You can’t what?”

“I can’t risk it!”

Thuy snapped her eyes closed for a moment, and Keo almost fired. Almost. His finger was on the trigger and he was so close to pulling the trigger, but he didn’t. He was still too far—way across the room, with at least a good ten meters separating them—and the H&K submachine gun was not designed for pinpoint accuracy at that range.

And it was Lara in the line of fire.

It was Lara!

If it had been anyone else, he might have taken his chances.

But it wasn’t anyone else.

It was Lara.

And even if there was a 1 percent chance he could hurt her and the baby inside her…

“I can’t risk it,” Thuy was saying, with more certainty than she’d shown in the last few minutes since their standoff began.

Shit, we’re losing her, Keo thought.

As if to confirm his suspicion, the Glock in Thuy’s hand waved slightly, erratically.

Oh, shit…

“Tell Bunker to open the door,” Thuy said, wiping at sweat dripping from her forehead with the back of her free hand. She looked almost close to tears. “Please. Just tell him to open the door.”

“I can’t do that,” Keo said.

“He can’t do that,” Lara added. “You know we can’t do that. It’s suicide.”

“He has to,” Thuy said.

“I won’t,” Keo said. “And Bunker wouldn’t do it anyway.”

“You have to. You all have to!”

“We don’t have to do anything.”

Thuy pressed the muzzle of the gun against the back of Lara’s head. Keo grimaced, then thought Get a handle on the situation. Get a handle on this now, goddammit!

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Keo said. “We can talk this out.”

“No, we can’t,” Thuy said. “Just tell Bunker to open the door. Please.” Then, with even more anguish, “Please.”

Keo shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.”

“Who does it have?” Lara asked. Her eyes moved to the corner in a futile effort to see Thuy standing behind her. “Is it your sister? Your brother? Husband? Tell us, Thuy. We can help you. We can get them back for you.”

Thuy shook her head, but she’d also pulled the gun back slightly. Keo’s heartbeat slowed down seeing that.

“It won’t let her go,” Thuy said. “I have to do this, or it won’t let her go.”

Her? Keo thought.

“It told you it’d let her go if you do this?” Lara asked.

“Yes,” Thuy said. “Yes…”

“It’s lying,” Keo said. “I know this blue-eyed ghoul. It’s a liar. It’s using you, and when it’s done using you, it’ll get rid of you and your friend. You can’t trust a single thing it’s promised you.”

“I don’t have a choice,” Thuy said.

“We can help you.”

“No, you can’t,” she said, shaking her head. She looked close to tears. That struck Keo as ironic because she wasn’t the one with a gun pointed at the back of her head.

“Give us a chance,” Keo said. “What do you have to lose?” he almost added, but he decided it wouldn’t strike the hopeful mood he was trying to get across.

“Listen to him, Thuy,” Lara said. “You can trust us.”

“I…” Thuy said.

“Trust us.”

“I can’t!”

At that very second, Keo caught a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye.

At first he thought it was the kids on the couch, but it wasn’t them. It was too subtle and was barely perceptible. He might not even have caught it if every single one of his senses wasn’t attuned to the entire room at the moment.

Whatever it was, it was coming from the far right side of the common room, past the couch that Gummy and Wilson were sitting on.

It was the door into the vault room.

And it was opening slowly…

Additional alarm bells went off inside Keo’s head, and it took every ounce of willpower he had not to turn to look. The fact that the door didn’t just burst open was even more confusing than why it was opening in the first place. Or had it always been ajar and wasn’t actually opening? Could that have been it? Could—

A gun barrel, part of a rifle, poking out of the thin, open slit.

What the hell?

Slowly, at first, because whoever was on the other side didn’t want Thuy to notice.

They didn’t want Thuy to notice.

Immediately, a thousand questions raced through Keo’s head.

Who was it? was the biggest one of them all.

It couldn’t have been Bunker. He was still in the entryway, guarding the outer door.

So who the hell was it?

Keo checked on Thuy and Lara. Both women were still staring back at him—

Something in Lara’s eyes. A sudden flicker of confusion, because she’d noticed his momentary distraction. It’d been minor, and Thuy had missed it, but Lara hadn’t.

He almost smiled. Try as he might, he hadn’t been able to disguise what he’d seen from Lara. Of course, she’d noticed it on his face. She noticed everything that took place on his face, especially when he was trying to hide something from her.

Fortunately, Thuy was still behind Lara and couldn’t see her expression clearly, so she had no idea—

The girl, Gummy, let out a slight yelp as she jumped up from the couch and turned to look at the vault room—at the gun poking out of its opening door.

Keo shouted, “Lara, get down!”

He was still shouting down when there was the very loud pop! of a gunshot echoing inside the metal-lined room and blood spraying the nearby wall as bodies fell.

Eleven

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Lara…”

“Keo, I’m okay. I’m okay.” She pursed a smile and held his head between her hands, then pulled him forward and down, and kissed him on the forehead. “I’m okay. We’re both okay. Everyone’s okay. Okay?”

He forced a smile. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

“You sure?”

The grin came easier this time. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Okay,” she said, and laid another long, lingering kiss on his forehead. “Okay,” she whispered. “Okay…”

Lara was okay, but not everyone was. Thuy wasn’t, but Keo didn’t really give a damn about that right now. After what she’d pulled, her health was the last thing on his mind.

The rifle that had appeared out of the vault room belonged to Bunker, who had somehow weaved his way through the complex without anyone seeing him and gotten, if not completely behind Thuy, then just far enough not to be noticed when he made his move, which was only spoiled when Gummy finally did catch a glimpse.

So how had Bunker managed to do all that?

“There are hidden security doors throughout the complex,” Bunker had said. “The McCanns weren’t just paranoid about the ending of the world showing up at their front doors sooner rather than later; they also weren’t completely trusting of the people that might end up down here with them when the shit hit the fan. So they had hidden security doors put in throughout the place, connecting the entry hallway to the bedrooms to the common area to, yes, the vault room.” Then, when Keo had stared at him without saying a word, “What? Do I have food in my teeth?”

“You didn’t tell me about any damn hidden security doors, Bunker,” Keo had said.

“I didn’t?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

“No, no, I’m sure I did.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“I don’t remember you telling us anything about any hidden security doors either, Bunker,” Lara had chimed in, looking even more pissed at Bunker than Keo had—and Keo was pretty damn angry to begin with.

“Oh. Must have slipped my mind,” Bunker had said.

The way the rancher had said it, with such a straight face, made Keo almost believe him. Almost. Except his memory wasn’t completely gone, and he distinctly recalled the first time Bunker walked him and Lara through the underground facility, giving them a thorough (or, at least, he thought it was thorough back then) tour. In the months since, they’d been down here a few times, bringing supplies and fixing things up, and there had never been any mentions of “hidden security doors” that linked all the rooms.

But, like the McCanns, maybe Bunker couldn’t completely trust them yet, which would explain his “forgetfulness.” Then, over the months when he changed his opinions about them (if he ever did), it really did slip his mind.

Either that or Bunker was just being a royal pain in the ass.

Whatever the answer, Keo was able to drop it for the meantime because he had other, more pressing business to deal with. Namely, making sure Lara was okay.

She was. Thank God she was. Despite having his surprise ruined by Gummy, Bunker had hit what he was aiming at—Thuy’s right forearm. The woman had dropped the Glock she was holding to Lara’s head when she was shot, and went down while blood—all hers—sprayed the wall and floor. The bullet had cracked Thuy’s ulna bone in half and sent her rolling around on the hard and cold floor in pain.

But she was alive because Bunker hadn’t gone for the killing shot.

“Why didn’t you go for the head shot?” Keo had asked him.

“Didn’t seem appropriate,” the man had said.

“The fuck you mean it wasn’t appropriate? You saw where she was pointing that gun?”

Bunker had shrugged. “I heard what she was saying. What you guys were all saying. She’s not doing this because she wanted to. She had to.” He had shrugged again. “I gave her the benefit of the doubt. I’m not an asshole like you, Keo. I don’t go around killing people if I don’t have to; unless they completely deserve it.”

“So in your summation, she didn’t completely deserve it?”

“Not completely, no.”

“And how’d you come to that conclusion? From my vantage point, she had a gun to my woman’s head. She might as well have one to the baby inside her belly, too.”

“She might have done a lot of things that could have hurt a lot of people, but she didn’t.”

“Because we didn’t give her the chance.”

“That’s good enough for me.”

“Dammit, Bunker.”

“What? You’d have gone for the head shot?”

“You’re goddamn right I would have.”

“What if it wasn’t Lara?”

“Doesn’t matter, because it was Lara.”

“I’m just saying. What if it wasn’t Lara, and you heard what Thuy said about being forced to do this?” Then, when Keo didn’t answer fast enough, “Hey, I get it, it was your woman. If it was mine, I might do the same thing.”

Keo had gritted his teeth at the man. “You and me are gonna have a long talk once this is over, Bunker.”

“About what?”

“Thuy, those hidden security doors you forgot to tell us about…”

“I swear I told you about those.”

“You didn’t.”

“I swear I did, though.”

“You can keep swearing all you want, but you didn’t.”

“Hunh.”

“That’s it?”

“What?”

“That’s all you have to say for yourself? ‘Hunh?’”

Bunker shrugged again. “What do you want me to say?”

Keo wanted to keep arguing with him—and throw out more choice name-calling—but he just didn’t have the patience to talk to Bunker for the rest of the night. Besides, he needed to make sure Lara was okay. She was all that mattered, and why he’d been truthful with Bunker when he said he would have taken the kill shot.

You’re goddamn right I would have. In a heartbeat.

* * *

After Bunker returned to the outer hallway to keep an eye on the door that connected the facility to the basement, Keo checked on the girls. They were both okay, with Wilson still playing the protector and rarely straying too far from Gummy’s side. Neither kid said very much when Keo talked to them, and though they were shaken by the events, they had calmed down noticeably. Wilson, in particular, might have been small, but he saw a lot of toughness in her face.

Kid’s got serious mettle, Keo thought. Too bad she can’t shoot for shit.

But aiming was something you could get better at; an interior toughness, on the other hand, wasn’t something you could learn. Wilson had that in spades.

Still, it made him wonder just what kind of hell the two sisters had gone through out there while they were on their own. Even now, after everything that had happened—the attack on the house, Thuy’s betrayal—he thought they would still have taken his offer to come back here to the ranch knowing all of what would happen.

Keo left the kids eating in the common area kitchen—they never seemed to stop eating, actually—to join Lara in the infirmary. It was really just another bedroom—one of the smaller ones—that had been converted by Lara months earlier.

“Just in case,” Lara had said when she told them what she was going to do with the empty room.

“Just in case?” Bunker had said.

“Just in case,” Lara had repeated. It was her motto from back in the days when she was still running Black Tide.

“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst” was her other favorite motto, born from the days when she was still running around out there with other survivors.

Thuy lay on the infirmary cot, unconscious. Lara had treated her wound and broken arm and put her under with some powerful sedatives. She stood next to the woman’s bed, checking her vitals manually with a stethoscope. There were no beeping machines or complicated medical devices down here. Lara had wanted to search Texas for some, but they just never got around to it.

That meant she was doing everything the old-fashioned way at the moment, including having hung a bag of IV fluids that dripped morphine into Thuy’s system to help with the pain. Keo couldn’t have given two shits about Thuy’s pain, but Lara didn’t share that sentiment, even if it was her who had been on the wrong end of Thuy’s gun not more than an hour ago.

“She gonna be ready for her hanging, Doc?” Keo asked when he entered the room.

“Hanging?” Lara said. “Who said anything about a hanging?”

“Just kidding,” Keo said, but he thought, Or am I?

“She’s stable. The bullet shattered her ulna, so that arm’s going to be in a cast for a while. Two months, maybe longer.”

“You’re assuming she’ll be wearing a cast.”

“She has to, or it won’t heal.”

“You’re assuming she’s going to get a chance to heal.”

Lara turned around to look at him, leaning against the wall next to the door. They locked eyes for a moment.

“We’re not going to kill her, Keo,” she finally said.

“She tried to kill you.”

“She took me hostage.”

“With your gun.”

“I don’t think it makes much of a difference whether it was my gun or yours or Bunker’s.”

“You don’t think so?”

“It doesn’t to me. Besides, you heard what she said: She didn’t have any choice.”

“Bullshit. Everyone has a choice. She just made the wrong one.”

“Yes, it was the wrong one, but you have to give her some leeway.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Keo…”

“No, I don’t, Lara.”

Lara walked over to a stool and dragged it to where he stood. She sat down in front of him. Then she took his hands and squeezed. “You’ve never had one of these things inside your head, have you?”

“No, but I hear it’s not pleasant.”

“It’s not. It’s far from pleasant.” She paused, seeming to struggle for the right words. Then, “It’s not like anything you’ve ever experienced, Keo.”

“So what is it like? And do you think it justifies what she did?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying this.”

“I can, because I know what she’s going through. You know the kind of experiences I have with these things...”

He nodded. “You never went into details.”

Lara started to reply but stopped short and shook her head softly. He could see her still struggling to find the right words.

“What’s it like?” he asked. “If you want to tell me. You don’t have to. I don’t need to know the nitty gritty to know that these fuckers are bad news.”

“They’re that, and more.”

“How much more?”

“It’s almost indescribable. I’ve had both kinds inside my head. The good and the bad.”

“The good?”

“Will…” She paused again. Then, “After he was infected and turned, he could do what they did. He could project himself into my head, and we could be having a conversation like you and me are doing right now. It felt very real.”

“Will could do that?”

She nodded. “And a lot of other things. Even now, after all these years, there are still some fragments of him in my head. Sometimes I have dreams about him, and it’s not like any other dream. It feels so…real.”

Keo was surprised to hear that. Not that there was some part of the ghoul Will—or as Keo always thought of him as, Frank—still lingering inside her, but that she continued to have dreams of him. Then again, maybe Keo shouldn’t have been so surprised. Her relationship with Will was, in many ways, much stronger than his and hers. Theirs was built during the early days of The Purge. In that kind of environment, everything was stronger, more vivid…and more memorable.

Even though his head accepted this and understood it, he still didn’t like it. But that was his problem, not Lara’s.

“What about the bad kind?” he asked. “How’s that different?”

“Disgusting,” Lara said. “Dark. Depressing. Degrading.”

“Are you purposefully just using words that begin with a D here?”

Lara smiled. It was the first time he’d seen that all day. “No. But they fit what the feeling was like. But if Will’s presence lingers, and he was one of the good guys, the other kind does, too. If not more so.” She glanced over her shoulder at the sleeping Thuy. “You don’t know what it’s like having one of those things inside your head, Keo. It’s not something I’d wish on even my worst enemies.”

Keo looked over at Thuy. He remembered the thousand-yard stare he’d seen on her when they first met outside of Longmire. She’d seemed so far away then, like she wasn’t present even when she was talking to him. That look had continued throughout the day, and Keo should have been more wary of her presence among them.

Dammit. How did I miss all the signs?

“Can it get to her in her current condition?” Keo asked.

“Yes,” Lara said. “They can get to you whether you’re sleeping, unconscious, or even wide awake.”

“Was that what happened earlier? When you guys came down here?”

“I don’t know, but maybe. Even now, we still don’t know everything the Blue Eyes are capable of. A part of me hopes we never do.” She might have shivered slightly when she said that. “Maybe I just don’t want to know.”

He didn’t blame her. Keo had come face to ugly face with these things before, but they had never entered his head and stayed there. Just the thought of being invaded by one of the creatures left him cold and the hairs on his arms and the back of the neck standing up.

He stared at Thuy again, this time with new understanding. What was it like for her to have that thing inside her head? The beast from Paxton was different from all the others. There was something more sadistic about this one.

Sadistic is really earning his name more and more, the fucker.

“What are we going to do with her?” Lara asked after a while.

Keo shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess we can talk about it. You, me, and Bunker. For now, let’s just keep her like that. If she’s not up and walking around, she can’t be a danger to us. Can you do that?”

“Easy enough. I’ll keep her under until this is over.” Then, “I think he likes her.”

“Who?”

“Bunker. You didn’t see how the two of them were together earlier?”

“I was a little busy.”

“He was flirting with her.”

Keo chuckled. “Bunker knows how to flirt?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“How did she respond?”

“I think she was a little confused, like she wasn’t sure what he was doing, or why.”

“Or maybe, now knowing what we know, she didn’t want him to get too close because she already knew what she had to do.”

“That’s probably true, too,” Lara said.

She got up and stood with her back to the wall next to him, before leaning her head against his shoulder. Keo slipped an arm around her body and pulled her closer.

“Are they still out there?” she asked.

“I think that’s a pretty safe bet.”

“They haven’t tried to come in yet.”

“No.”

“Why do you think that is? Why did they just stop?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because it knows it can’t get through the door. I think there’s a chance it could break down the one outside, but it hasn’t tried yet. I don’t know why.”

“It’s playing with us. With you.”

“Probably, yeah.”

“It likes to play games.”

“They all do, but this one…”

“Bunker said you gave it a name. What was it?”

“Sadistic.”

Lara nodded. “Sounds about right.”

“Yeah.”

They didn’t say anything for a moment, and Keo was fine with the silence. He wrapped his arm around her body tighter and pulled her closer. She could be stuck to him, side to side, and he would still think she wasn’t close enough.

“What was it like, having to go up against it out there by yourself?” Lara finally asked.

“Who?”

“Sadistic.”

“I wasn’t completely by myself.”

“You know what I mean. What was it like?”

He searched for the words. What had it been like fighting for his life against the beast?

“Desperate,” Keo finally said.

“Desperate?”

“Yeah, desperate.”

“I don’t understand…”

“I was desperate to get back to you. I was desperate to do anything to accomplish that. So…in a word, it was desperate.”

He paused for a moment, considering the question a second time, while staring across the infirmary at Thuy.

“Desperate,” he said again, thought quieter this time and maybe with just a little bit more understanding for the other woman’s plight.

Twelve

Bunker was sitting on the floor with his back against the door that connected the outer hallway with the basement on the other side. Keo had a brief flash of Sadistic breaking down the door and sending it tumbling over the rancher, crushing him underneath its weight, and wondered how long he’d mourn.

A day? Two? A week?

Keo wasn’t sure why he was still so pissed off at Bunker for not telling him and Lara everything there was to know about the underground shelter. It wasn’t like the not knowing had come back to haunt them. If anything, it’d probably saved Lara’s life. What would Keo have done differently if he’d known about the secret doors between the rooms? Maybe he might have involuntarily given the information away to Thuy.

But maybe it was the fact that Bunker had taken a big risk while Lara was at her most vulnerable. Yeah, that was probably it, more so than the lack of information about the secret doors.

The thought of losing Lara gnawed at Keo. He couldn’t afford to lose her. Not here, not now, not anytime.

Ever.

So maybe, when he really thought about it, none of it would have changed anything and he was being a big baby about the whole affair. Bunker certainly didn’t feel as if he had anything to apologize for.

Then again, Bunker was kind of an asshole, so…

“Anything?” Keo asked.

Bunker looked up from the bag of beef jerky he’d been nibbling on all night. The smell filled the hallway, but it was better than the alternative: Another kind of smell, one that was like hot garbage in the sun.

“A big fat zero, hombre,” Bunker said.

“Nothing at all?”

The rancher shook his head and talked through a mouthful of jerky. “Nada. They haven’t made a peep since the big bad boy pounded on the door upstairs. If they made it down into the basement, I can’t tell. They’re being awfully quiet, and I can’t smell a thing.”

Keo leaned toward the door and pushed his ear against the cold surface. He listened, but there was just the rhythmic (and reassuring) beating in his chest and the sound of Bunker tearing into another strip of dry venison behind him.

“You know, I’ve been meaning to put close-circuit cameras in there, and maybe all around the outer perimeter, too,” Bunker was saying. “In case we need to hightail it in here again, we’d be able to see what’s happening out there without having to poke our heads out and risk getting it chopped off.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“I dunno. Never got around to it, I guess.”

“You were lazy.”

“Hey, I’m a busy man.”

“Since when?”

“Good point.” Then, without missing a beat, “Anyway, shouldn’t be too difficult to find some cameras in one of the closer towns. As long as the generator’s running, we can hook them up over a weekend.”

Keo gave up listening for sounds from the basement and pulled back. “I don’t hear anything.”

“I told you,” Bunker said. “It doesn’t make any sense they’d stop the attack now. It’s not just me, right?”

“Maybe.”

“You know something I don’t?”

“Lots.”

“Clever. But let’s stick to the present, wiseass. What do you know that I don’t about what’s happening? Or in this case, not happening.”

“Maybe it knows it can’t get through the door,” Keo said. He tapped the thick slab of metal in front of him. Two inches of solid steel produced a solid but dull-sounding thump-thump against his knuckles. “Maybe, with time, it could get through this one, but not the one into the main shelter.”

“They call them blast doors for a reason.”

“Exactly. So maybe it knows that. Or suspects it.”

“It’s that smart?”

“It’s not dumb.”

“Gotcha.”

“That’s why it forced Thuy to try to get us to open the door. Maybe it knows that’s the only way it’s going to get inside.”

“She failed.”

“Right. And when it realized that, it didn’t see any reason to waste its time on this door.”

Keo narrowed his eyes, imagining he could see through it with X-rays and into the basement beyond. Maybe the creature was actually there, staring back at him. The thought sent a brief spurt of coldness up and down his spine.

“Maybe it’s regrouping,” Keo said. “Coming up with a new plan for tomorrow night.”

“Is that what we’re hoping for?” Bunker asked.

“A part of me wants to get it over with tonight, but the other part wouldn’t mind if tonight ends like this. Peacefully.”

Bunker pulled himself up to his feet and brushed his dirty hands on his pants legs. “Well, you were right about one thing…”

“What’s that?”

“This blue-eyed devil’s one intriguing fucker.”

“‘Intriguing’ wouldn’t exactly be the word I’d use to describe it.”

“Whatever you wanna call your Mr. Sadistic, it sure has its own way of doing things. I don’t know if that’s good or not, though. Mind you, not that I have experience in these matters like you and Lara.”

“Trust me, Bunker, you don’t want the kind of experience we got.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Anyway, if it wants to prolong this fight, that’s fine with me. We’ll just do it all over again tomorrow night.”

“Yeah, but maybe I got a date tomorrow night. You ever thought of that?”

“Do you?”

Bunker shrugged. “Stranger things have happened. Have you been paying attention to the last few days?”

“Good point.”

Bunker was staring at him.

“What?” Keo said.

“Would it really, I don’t know, give up?” Bunker asked.

“Give up? No. But would it quit attacking tonight, so we can do this all over again tomorrow night? Yeah. I think it would.” Keo clenched his teeth. “If I’ve learned one thing about this fucker, it’s that it can be really, really patient. Aggravatingly so, at times.”

* * *

They didn’t have close-circuit cameras in the basement or in the house to make sure the ghouls were gone and weren’t lurking in the shadows waiting for them. Just because it was morning didn’t mean the creatures had completely retreated. Sunlight could kill a ghoul just as easily as silver bullets, but it couldn’t do its job if it couldn’t touch them.

“Definitely need to install those CC cameras,” Bunker said.

“We’ll do it first chance we get,” Keo said.

“Look at you, being all Mr. Optimistic. Is that what you guys call it?”

“Captain Optimism.”

“Close enough.”

But there was another way to make sure there wasn’t an ambush waiting to be sprung on them in the basement or somewhere else inside the dark house. The McCanns had built an escape tunnel into the underground shelter that led to an alternative entry/exit. The entrance was in the vault room, the same room Bunker had used to sneak behind Thuy earlier in the night, and the exit was over a half mile away.

The doorway into the tunnel was just as thick and blast proof as the outer door and opened up into a concrete passageway that was ten feet high and five feet wide. It was essentially a skinnier version of the outer hallway and had remained undetected throughout The Purge and beyond. Keo had only seen the hatch on the other end once and wouldn’t have been able to locate it if Bunker hadn’t shown him its location. The half-mile distance from the main property was necessary; after all, it wouldn’t be much of a “secret” alternative way in and out if it was easy to discover.

The ceiling was tall enough for an adult male to traverse without hitting his head but not nearly wide enough to bring anything through beyond boxes of supplies. There were small lights along the walls that lit up when Bunker hit a switch, and a small rectangular security slot near the top, with a two-inch thick tempered glass material, slid open to reveal what was on the other side. That gave them visual confirmation nothing was waiting for them in the tunnel, but they still had to open the door a crack and take a quick whiff of the interior to know for sure.

The air was stale and hot, but there was nothing that even smelled like rotting garbage in the semidarkness.

“All clear,” Keo said.

“You first,” Bunker said.

Keo took the lead with his MP5 while Bunker brought up the rear. The trip across the length of the underground tunnel was uneventful, with only their heavy breathing and footsteps against the solid floor to occupy the time. Neither one of them spoke, which was just as well, as Keo’s lungs were having to work overtime to withstand the suffocating heat. Thankfully the corridor was tall enough that they didn’t have to crouch.

The air got noticeably hotter the farther they trekked through the semidarkness. It didn’t help that some of the light bulbs weren’t working, and Keo made a mental note to replace them the first chance he got. Fortunately, they were appropriately geared up for the trip and had brought along flashlights.

The tunnel wasn’t a straight shot to the other end—there were constant bends as their path curved left and right, the curves sometimes for long periods before Keo could be sure there wasn’t anything waiting around the bend. It was unnerving, but he kept reminding himself that as long as he couldn’t smell ghouls, that meant they weren’t down here with him and Bunker. Besides, even if they were, he had the appropriate ammo to deal with them.

God bless silver bullets.

By the time they reached the other end, they were both drenched in sweat. Keo stopped in front of a metal ladder that led up to a round steel hatch about ten foot off the ground. There was a keypad next to it, the numbers glowing softly. The presence of lights meant there was still power to the keypad, but should the main generator lose power for whatever reason, an emergency one would have turned on.

“Up you go,” Bunker said behind him.

Keo climbed up and punched in the six-digit PIN. If, for some reason, the main and emergency generators went offline, there was a slot for a key next to the pad that could be used to open the hatch. Bunker had the key in his pocket right now.

As soon as Keo punched in the final digit, the keypad glowed a soft green—the confirmation he’d entered the right code. He grabbed the submarine wheel and turned it without any real effort. With the locks disabled, the hatch opened easily for him.

They didn’t have to worry about the possibility of ghouls waiting for them on the other side of the hatch, since the round door opened up into a secluded and unused wooded area in broad daylight. The door was camouflaged by plenty of trees and natural foliage, with Bunker having kept it that way since he took over from the McCanns.

Keo climbed out first, sucking in a deep lungful of fresh air as he did so.

“Goddamn, Bunker, you need to take a shower,” Keo said when the rancher climbed out after him.

“Look who’s talking,” Bunker said. “You try being the caboose next time.”

“You wanted me to go first.”

“Yeah, but that was before I realized how much you stunk.”

“Live and learn, pal. Live and learn.”

“I’m learning, I’m learning…”

They hurried over to the edge of the clearing, scattering woodland creatures around them. Birds chirped above them, and generous pools of sunlight poured in from around the tree crowns. There hadn’t been any sort of human presence in this part of the prairie in years, and from what Keo could see, would stay that way for many more years. That was good news for the escape hatch.

Keo crouched next to a large oak tree and glanced out in the direction of the ranch. The distance to the fence that ringed the property was nearly 200 meters across an open field with knee-high grass. The main house, next to the stables, was even farther back, looking more like miniature toys from his current position.

Bunker sat down on his butt next to him and took it easy. He fished out a bag of jerky and passed it to Keo, and they ate and waited.

Then they waited some more…

After about thirty minutes, they finally got up and poked their heads out of the woods to get it shot—if there had been anyone out there to shoot at them. But there wasn’t, and they stepped out of the woods and began the long walk back to the house.

They hadn’t gone more than a few meters when Bunker stopped and glanced around.

“What?” Keo said.

“You smell that?” Bunker asked.

“Smell—” Keo started, but stopped, because he did smell it.

He turned completely around and looked past the field at tendrils of smoke drifting lazily into the sky behind them.

“Shit,” Keo said.

“That’s Carlos’s place,” Bunker said.

He’d forgotten all about Carlos. Bunker, too, from the surprised look on his face. Keo couldn’t be angry with himself, though; last night had been a whirlwind of action and terror, and he had more on his mind than how Carlos’s family was faring. Lara, Thuy, a blue-eyed ghoul trying to punch its way through an inch-thick steel door, were among his bigger fishes to fry.

But this morning, under the warmth of sunlight, he could afford to think about someone else again.

Like Carlos…

Keo thought about the man and his brother, Jose.

About their wives and their kids.

…their kids…

“Don’t be a hero. Think about your family,” Keo remembered saying to Carlos.

“I am thinking about my family,” Carlos had replied. “I’m always thinking about my family, Keo. First, second, and last.”

Goddammit, Carlos, Keo thought now. You stubborn bastard.

Keo turned to Bunker. The man looked visibly pained. “It wouldn’t take us more than an hour to reach them by foot.”

Bunker’s face cringed slightly, but whatever thoughts were rushing through his head, he pushed them away and turned around. “No. Let’s clear the property first. We’ll find out what happened to them after we’re done.”

“You sure, Bunker?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Bunker said as he started walking back toward his ranch.

Keo didn’t believe him for a second, but he didn’t put his doubts into words. He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of Carlos’s ranch one last time before turning and following Bunker through the field.

* * *

There were no overt signs that the ranch had been crawling with ghouls last night until they reached the fences, where Keo saw the footprints, clear as day in the sunlight. There were no creatures in sight, of course; the morning had chased them all away. The ghouls, as far as he could tell, had converged on the property from all sides. They’d either hopped the fences or gone underneath them.

Keo didn’t start sniffing the remnants of dead ghouls until they were halfway to the main house. He could make out the steel legs of the windmill that the creatures had pulled loose and used as a battering ram on the front doors. It was still there, along with a dozen or so ghoul remains on the ground. The flesh was gone, stripped clean by the sun and leaving behind just bleached white bones among the dirt and short grass.

Bunker tapped him on the arm, and when Keo looked back, the rancher held out one of his half masks to him. Keo took it gratefully and slipped it on. The light fabric didn’t completely block out all the stench, but it was a lot better than breathing it all in unopposed.

There were more clear signs of ghoul presence on the property leading to the house, and even more among the buildings scattered around it. Even the big stables nearby had seen activity, though the creatures hadn’t attempted to enter. Bunker had been concerned about the horses within, and he breathed a heavy sigh of relief when the doors and windows looked to be fully intact. While Bunker went to check on the horses, Keo continued on to the house.

He had to walk around the slightly-bent windmill and stepped over bones to get into the great room. Ghoul corpses, the ones that couldn’t be reached by sunlight, lined the floor—some intact, others only partially. The smell was unbearable even with the half mask covering his mouth and nostrils.

He went inside but didn’t venture too far until Bunker rejoined him.

“The horses okay?” Keo asked.

“Freaked out from all the scratches they put on their stalls, but they’re all still there,” Bunker said. “You were right; those creepy crawlers did bypass the stables last night.”

“Told you,” Keo said, but thought, I can’t believe they actually left the stables alone.

He didn’t say that out loud, of course. He was just glad he wasn’t wrong. He’d been ready to apologize to Bunker for losing his horses and mentally preparing himself for the shitstorm to follow.

Before he joined Keo inside the house, Bunker glanced behind him and back toward Carlos’s house. They could still see smoke in the distance, and Keo couldn’t imagine what was going through Bunker’s mind at the moment. Carlos’s family was more than just Bunker’s neighbors; they were his friends. And for a man who had very few friends, purposefully, that said a lot.

“You can go. I’ll clear the house,” Keo said.

Bunker looked back at him and shook his head. “Let’s get this done first.”

“You sure?”

The rancher nodded, and he said, “Yeah,” but his face said otherwise.

Like back when they were in the fields, Keo didn’t push the topic. Sooner or later, they would have to find out what happened to Carlos’s family. But that was for later. Right now, they had to make sure the house was safe for the others to come up from the shelter below.

They cleared the rooms on the first floor first, very cognizant of all the patches of shadows that had managed to hang on despite the coming morning. There were too many dark corners and open doors leading into even more dark rooms. That made some sense, since they’d left all the curtains closed and the windows barricaded in preparation for the attack.

There were tracks all over the floor—blood and mud and grass—along with bloody handprints smeared across the walls. Sunlight would have erased those from existence, but not if they couldn’t reach them. Which they couldn’t do this far back into the building.

They cleared the second floor—and its many, many shadowy corners and rooms—before returning to the first unmolested and not having fired a single shot. Eventually, they made it into the back hallway and basement at the end.

The light bulbs had been destroyed, but there was enough natural lighting for them to quickly make out the steel door lying on the landing, looking more like a twisted piece of cardboard instead of the 12-gauge galvanized steel that it was. It was pockmarked with fist-sized craters, all of them concentrated around a small area near the middle.

Jesus Christ, Keo thought, looking at the kind of damage the ghoul had managed. Thank God the door downstairs was twice as thick, and the one into the main shelter even stronger than that.

“You don’t suppose we can buff that out, do you?” Bunker was asking as he peered down at the basement door.

Keo smiled. “No, I don’t think so. We’re gonna need a bigger door.”

“Good luck with that. The McCanns had to special order all their doors from a company in Midland, Texas. Dollar to donuts it’s not in business anymore.”

“We can always take a trip to Midland when this is all over and find out.”

“But then we wouldn’t really need it once this was over, would we?”

“Now who’s being Captain Optimism?”

“Must be all the stinky stink,” Bunker said.

The rancher stepped over the door and leaned over to get a look down the stairs at what awaited them below. There was a distinct ghoul smell to the room, but then again, that was the case for the entire house. It was going to take a few hours, at least, to vent the whole building. From his spot behind Bunker, Keo could make out more footprints leading down the steps, so the creatures had ventured downstairs last night after all.

“You smell anything?” Bunker asked.

“Just you,” Keo said.

Bunker snorted. “We should probably go see what they did to the place, if anything.”

“After you.”

The other man headed down, his AR leading the way. Keo followed on his heels.

They got halfway down when Bunker stopped. “Hunh. Now that’s something you don’t see every day.”

“What?” Keo said.

“I think it’s for you.”

“What is?”

Keo scooted past Bunker and further down the steps.

There were no ghouls down here, even though the floor was covered in their tracks. There was still some remnants of ghoul stink in the air, but not enough to convince Keo he had to be worried about one of the creatures jumping out of the dark at him.

He stared across the room at what Bunker had been looking at. Keo couldn’t have missed it if he wanted to.

Someone—something—had written, in dripping ghoul blood on the walls and across the door into the shelter, the words:

ROUND ONE

And under that:

WELL PLAYED

Thirteen

They dragged the remains of dead ghouls that the morning sunlight couldn’t reach outside to let the sun take care of them. When they were finished, they brought out four of the horses and used them to drag the windmill to the back of the house. By the time they were done cleaning out the place, there were bones scattered across the front yard and they both reeked of spoiled vomit. The smell was everywhere—on their clothes and in their hair and clinging to their skin.

As they worked, they kept an eye on the horizon—toward Carlos’s place. There was still smoke in the air, drifting from where the ranch would be. Bunker, more than Keo, kept looking over there.

“Once we’re done, I’ll make contact on the radio,” Bunker said. “Hopefully they’re okay.”

Keo nodded, even as he thought, I’m not sure okay is the word, Bunker. Otherwise there wouldn’t be smoke coming from their place.

Afterward, Bunker remained topside with the sisters, Wilson and Gummy, who insisted on helping him clean the place while Keo headed back down to the shelter after taking a long, hot shower and changing clothes. He shoved his old shirt, pants, boots, even his socks and underwear, into a bag, cinched it up, and tossed it out the bedroom window to be burned later.

When Keo returned to the shelter and the infirmary, Thuy was awake and eating breakfast. Lara stood nearby, listening to her talk. When Keo entered, Thuy’s eyes immediately went to him, and he saw obvious fear in them.

You should be scared, he thought but didn’t say.

“Where are the girls?” Lara asked him.

“They’re helping Bunker with the cleanup,” Keo said.

“They volunteered?”

“Uh huh.”

“Wow.”

“I know.”

“What about the horses?”

“They left them alone.” Then, off Lara’s surprised look, “Yeah. I was surprised, too.”

“Bunker must have been relieved.”

“That’s an understatement.”

Lara turned back around to Thuy and saw the way she was staring at Keo. If she could hide underneath her blanket, the woman would have.

“It’s okay,” Lara said. “We talked about what you did last night. We both agree that you didn’t have any choice.”

Thuy looked over at her, before returning to Keo as if to ask, Is she right?

Keo nodded as he took a seat next to the door. “You did what you had to do. What we want to know is why, and how we can help.”

“Why would you want to?” Thuy asked.

“Like I said: You did what you thought you had to do. We’ve both been there. Lara and me. So has Bunker. So have the girls. We’ve all done things that we didn’t want to in order to survive.”

He wasn’t sure if she completely believed him—hell, he wasn’t sure if he completely believed himself—but she did look slightly relieved as she went back to eating her meal—mashed potatoes and bread with pieces of bacon. She ate with one hand, her right still encased in the brace that covered almost her entire arm from shoulder to wrist. The protective device was designed to keep her from moving, to allow the fractured bone underneath to heal. If she was in pain, Keo didn’t see it on her face. Then again, Lara had given her plenty of meds for that.

“So why don’t you tell us everything,” Keo continued.

“It wasn’t all a lie,” Thuy said. “There were seven of us, and they did ambush us in the park where we were staying. Except it didn’t kill everyone but me. It killed five of the people traveling with me, but it left two of us alive. Me…and Abby, my sister.”

“Your sister?” Lara said.

Thuy nodded. “It killed the others in front of us. It…” She paused, seeming to struggle with the right words. Finally, she finished, “It turned them.”

“But it spared you and Abby,” Keo said.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t know either, at first. But then it told me. It wanted me to come here. It wanted me to find out what you had at the ranch.”

“How did it know about the shelter?”

“It didn’t.”

“Ah,” Keo said.

“What does that mean?” Lara asked.

“It was using her to collect intel,” Keo said. “Same thing I was trying to do when I ran into Gummy and Wilson in Hamlock. It’s likely been watching the ranch for weeks now, but it wanted to know more. It wanted to know what kind of defenses we had.”

“Yes,” Thuy said. “It didn’t know about this place. The shelter underneath the house.”

“Because you didn’t know about it,” Lara said.

“Yes.”

“Then it told you to open the door.”

Thuy nodded. “But I couldn’t figure out how to do it. I panicked, and…”

“So you took me hostage.”

“I didn’t want to…”

“What would you have done if that hadn’t worked?” Keo asked.

His question apparently caught her off guard, because Thuy didn’t say anything for a while.

Finally, she said, “I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking that far ahead.”

“How did it know you failed?” Lara asked. “It stopped its attack almost right away because it knew it wasn’t going to be able to get in here. How did it know you failed?”

Thuy stared at the pieces of bacon on the plastic tray resting in her lap in silence for a moment, almost as if she hadn’t even heard Lara’s question. That wasn’t true, of course. Thuy either didn’t have the answer, or she didn’t want to tell them.

“Thuy?” Lara said. “We need to know. You need to tell us everything. Everything.”

“It came to me after I lost consciousness,” Thuy said. “It wanted to know what happened; if I had gotten the door open.”

“What did you tell it?”

“The truth. That I failed.”

“What did it do or say then?”

“Nothing. It just left.”

“It didn’t say anything about your sister?” Keo asked.

“No.”

“You think it’ll hurt her?”

“I don’t know.” Then, looking at him, “God, I hope it doesn’t. I hope it doesn’t punish her for my failure.”

Keo exchanged a quick glance with Lara.

Thuy saw it. “Do you think it’ll hurt her? Will it hurt Abby?”

“No,” Keo said. “Not as long as it still wants you to do its bidding.”

It wasn’t completely a lie. But it wasn’t the truth, either. If he were being completely honest with himself, he didn’t know for sure one way or another, but that was probably not the answer Thuy was hoping to hear.

He must not have been very convincing, because Thuy put the bacon she’d been nibbling on back down, looking very much as if she’d lost her appetite completely.

“Is it there right now? In your head?” Keo asked, and thought, Is it listening to us right now? Is that fucker eavesdropping this very second?

“No,” Thuy said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“How can you be sure?”

“When it’s in my head, I can feel it.” She paused and again seemed to be searching for the right words.

That seemed to happen a lot when people were trying to tell others about what it was like to deal with a blue-eyed ghoul. Lara had suffered through it last night, and so had he when talking to Bunker. The Blue Eyes were difficult to explain; even harder if the ones you were trying to convince had been spared their vile presence.

“You just know,” Lara said. “You just know when it’s there.”

Thuy turned to her. “Yes. You just know when it’s there. You can’t escape it. It’s like…”

“A kind of itching, at the back of your mind.”

“Yes…”

“Even when it’s not there, you feel it, like something moving at the corner of your eyes. But when you turn to look, it’s gone.”

Thuy nodded, and kept quiet. It was almost as if she were afraid to speak too loudly; terrified it would know that she was talking about it.

“Your sister,” Keo said. “Where is she now?”

“The last time I saw her, yesterday morning, she was still at the park,” Thuy said. “But…”

“But what?”

“I think they were already preparing to move.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure if she’s still there.” Then, almost hopefully, “Do you think she’s still there?”

“This is the state park, about five miles northwest from here.”

“Yes.” Then, trying and failing to sit up on the cot, “Do you think she’s okay? Do you think it’s hurt Abby?”

Keo and Lara exchanged another look, but neither one of them said anything. Thuy saw their reaction, but before she could press her question, their radios squawked, sparing them from having to lie to her.

It was Bunker: “Hey, guys. I got an update on Carlos.”

Keo unclipped his radio first. “Are they okay?”

“I don’t know; no one answered my call.”

Of course they didn’t. Why did I think they would?

“What do you want to do, Bunker?” Keo said into the radio.

“They’re my neighbors,” Bunker said. “The least I can do is find out if they might need a hand.”

If they’re even still alive, Keo thought.

He said instead, “I’ll see you topside.”

* * *

Bunker was waiting for him with two horses already saddled, one of them being Annabelle. The big Morgan gave Keo what might have been a Hey there, nice to see you again whinny as Bunker passed over the reins.

“Still nothing from Carlos?” Keo asked.

Bunker shook his head. “A bit fat zero. That’s never happened before. Either he or his brother usually answers. Or one of the wives, if the men are busy.”

“Always?”

“Always.”

That’s not good, Keo thought as he climbed into Annabelle’s saddle.

It didn’t take them very long to reach Carlos’s place, but they were moving pretty fast and hard across the hills. As they neared the neighboring ranch, the smoke had thinned out, becoming long wisps of gray in the sky instead of full-blown smoke. Keo was surprised whatever had started the fire had lasted so long to begin with. It had to have begun at night and carried through morning.

When they finally crossed through the front gate—it was still standing, and so was the fence that corralled the property—Keo saw why the smoke had lasted so long. Every single building in the place was gone, reduced to ashes. That included the pens that once housed the livestock. Instead of chickens, pigs, and cattle, there were bloody patches scattered across the grass as if a marauding army had slaughtered and eaten what they killed as they carried on their warpath. Which, Keo guessed, wasn’t too far from the truth.

They rode up the dirt trail toward what was left of the main house, moving slower than necessary. This was because of Bunker, who had slowed down noticeably, almost as if he didn’t want to reach the remains too fast. That was understandable. Bunker and Carlos’s family were friends and had been long before Keo and Lara entered the picture. The wives always welcomed Lara and Keo to the ranch. They were the first ones at Bunker’s with gifts when they learned Lara was pregnant. The kids were there, too.

…the kids…

Three of them: two girls and a boy, including Lightning Mikey, the fastest kid in Texas…

Bunker didn’t say anything all the way from the front gate to the first pile of burnt wood that had fallen off the pile of what used to be the main house. There were more prints on the ground and in the grass. An army of bare feet.

Ghouls.

Lingering smoke and ash and things Keo didn’t want to think of tickled at his nostrils, making breathing a little more difficult than it should have been. Keo took out another half mask he’d brought along just in case and slipped it on.

It didn’t really help this time, for some reason.

He still remembered, in vivid detail, what the monster had (hissed) said to him over eight long weeks ago:

“Pathetic. Did you really think this was a fight? You’re just my playthings, meat. You’re just my temporary cure against boredom.”

And when it was bored with Keo, when the cure ceased to become entertaining enough, it would seek out a new playmate.

A new victim…

But it wasn’t over yet. That message back in the basement was proof of that.

ROUND ONE

That meant there was going to be a round two.

Then a round three…

Unless I kill you first, motherfucker, Keo thought as he watched Bunker climb down from Lucille and stand in front of the ashes and smoldering ruins that used to be Carlos and Jose’s residence. There wasn’t anything left but burnt wood, scarred bricks, and charred grass around them.

“We’ll be fine,” Carlos had said. “Like Jose says, it’s not like we haven’t been around these things before. We can handle ourselves. And we’re prepared for whatever comes our way.”

Looking at the remains of the property now, Keo couldn’t tell if there had been a fight. Maybe Carlos and Jose were properly equipped to handle a ghoul invasion, but were they ready for a Blue Eyes? Keo hadn’t thought so then, and he didn’t now. Unless you’d come face to face with one of those ungodly things, it was hard to know what to expect—

Annabelle lifted her head and let out a surprised whinny. She’d smelled it first, but it didn’t take long for Keo to catch on.

He whirled the horse around, already unslinging the MP5 with his other hand.

What the fuck?

She looked back at him with big brown eyes, wearing tattered clothes that were covered in dirt and mud and God only knew what else. He wasn’t sure how she’d gotten behind him and so close. Maybe he was too preoccupied, like Bunker had been. She couldn’t have been more than twenty meters away, standing with her arms hanging loosely at her sides, long black hair draped over her dirty, oval-shaped face like an Asian ghost from those horror movies Danny liked to watch so much.

Keo pulled down the mask. “Bunker.”

“What?” Bunker said. Keo couldn’t see the rancher, but from the slightly annoyed tone of his voice, he had a feeling Bunker hadn’t turned around.

“Bunker, turn around.”

It took a couple of seconds before Bunker said, “What the fuck?”

That’s what I said, Keo thought as he let the submachine gun fall back on its strap.

He jumped down from Annabelle and held out one hand, palm up, toward the girl. He didn’t recognize her, which made her presence confusing. She was Asian, and there was a familiarity to her that Keo couldn’t quite place.

“Hi,” Keo said. “What—”

“She wants to meet you,” the girl said.

“What?”

“She wants to meet you,” the girl said again.

“Is she talking to you?” Bunker asked from behind Keo.

“I don’t know,” Keo said. Then, to the girl, “Are you talking to me?”

“She wants to meet you,” the girl said for the third time. Her voice was flat and monotone and as devoid of emotion the third time she repeated her sentence as it’d been the first. He might have believed she was a robot in a girl’s body, but of course he knew better. He could see it on her face: She was shell-shocked. The last time he saw that…

Thuy. She looks like Thuy.

“It wasn’t all a lie,” Thuy had said this morning. “There were seven of us, and they did ambush us in the park where we were staying. Except it didn’t kill everyone but me. It killed five of the people traveling with me, but it left two of us alive. Me…and Abby, my sister.”

“Abby,” Keo said. “Your name’s Abby, isn’t it?”

Something that could almost pass for emotion flickered across the girl’s eyes at the sound of her name. It was all the confirmation Keo needed.

He glanced back at Bunker, standing closer behind him. The rancher had one hand on his holstered sidearm, his AR still slung over his back. Keo gave Bunker a Don’t draw your gun look.

“You know her?” Bunker said. “’Cause I don’t. She’s not one of Carlos’s.”

Keo nodded. “She’s Thuy’s sister.”

Bunker raised both eyebrows. “You sure?”

“Yeah.”

He turned back around. Abby was still there, not having moved an inch. She looked like a statue. Or, again, a robot, waiting for instructions.

“Your sister—” Keo began.

“She wants to meet you,” Abby said, cutting him off.

“Who?”

“She wants to meet you.”

“Who? Who wants to meet me?”

A moment of confusion crossed Abby’s face. She was very young. Twelve, maybe even younger than that. It was hard to tell for sure with all the dirt and mud on her face and the paleness of her skin. Whatever the girl had been through, it had left a lasting impression, the kind that wasn’t going to go away anytime soon, if ever.

When Abby still didn’t answer him, Keo said, “Who, Abby? Who wants to meet with me?”

“Jackson,” Abby finally said.

Jackson? Keo thought. The name caught him by surprise. He hadn’t expected to hear it again.

“Jackson?” he said out loud.

“Jackson wants to meet you,” Abby said.

Fourteen

“So when exactly did I start an orphanage for lost girls and no one bothered to tell me about it?” Bunker asked.

“Probably about the same time you let us in,” Keo said.

“Yeah, I knew that was a bad idea.”

Keo grinned. “Live and learn, pal. Live and learn.”

“I’d rather not, thank you very much.”

“Be quiet, you two, this is a good thing,” Lara said.

“Says you,” Bunker said.

“Shut up.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now you’re learning,” Keo said, winking at him.

Bunker smirked but didn’t say anything else. He shut up and watched Thuy and Abby have their reunion inside the infirmary. Or Thuy was having the reunion, anyway. Abby, as far as Keo could tell, might not have even recognized her sister as she was embraced—or as much an embrace as Thuy could manage toward the smaller girl given she only had one arm to work with.

Keo, Lara, and Bunker watched the sisters from the door, which was as much privacy as they could give them. They didn’t think Thuy was going to do anything before, and certainly not now that she’d gotten her sister back, but you could never be too careful. She had, after all, almost killed Lara last night, and that was something Keo wasn’t ever going to forget.

Keo’s mind drifted back to Jackson.

He hadn’t thought of her in a long time, maybe not even once in the last month or so. Which, he guessed, made him something of an asshole since she had saved his life. If Jackson hadn’t made it to the ranch, with a KA-BAR knife sticking out of her, no less, he probably wouldn’t be alive right now.

Probably? Try for sure, pal.

It was Jackson who had told Lara and Bunker about his situation. If she’d given in on the way here, and didn’t fight tooth and nail to make it despite all the pain she was suffering that night, today would be much different. He wouldn’t be around to watch over Lara and their unborn child, for one.

And a blue-eyed ghoul wouldn’t have just sent him another message, this time through Abby.

And that was exactly what Jackson was, now. She’d been turned by the blood still dripping from the KA-BAR’s blade when it sank into her shoulder. The infection had made her into one of them. They hadn’t known if she’d just become another Black Eyes among many or something else.

If Abby was to be believed—and Keo believed her 100 percent—then Jackson was a Blue Eyes. She’d been turned that night and was probably here last night, too. Hell, she was probably also in Longmire when it was razed to the ground, not to mention Carlos’s.

“She wants to meet you,” Abby had said.

Not “They want to meet you.”

Or “It wants to meet you.”

Instead, she’d said, “She wants to meet you.”

“Why you?” Bunker had asked on the ride over.

“I don’t know,” Keo had said, and it was the truth.

He didn’t know. He understood the other Blue Eyes—to the extent you could really understand a supernatural creature like that, anyway—but Jackson was a completely different animal. For one, he actually knew this one’s name, and had known her before her turning. Was that it, then? Was it their history, however brief, that had started this…whatever this was?

“Have you figured out what it wants with you yet?” Bunker was asking Keo now as they continued to watch the sisters sitting on the cot together.

Thuy was clinging to her little sister as if she was afraid the other girl might try to get away. Abby didn’t so much as look uncomfortable as…confused by the whole thing.

“No,” Keo said.

“There’s a reason it asked for you,” Bunker said.

“I’m sure there is. I just don’t know what it is.”

“She said Jackson?” Lara said, watching the sisters. “She specifically said Jackson’s name?”

“Yes,” Keo said.

He watched Thuy running her fingers through Abby’s hair, picking out dirt and mud and flicking it away. The young girl sat still as her big sister cleaned her, looking across the infirmary back at Keo.

It was her eyes that bothered him. There was something wrong with them. There was a certain…deadness about those brown eyes that didn’t belong to a twelve-year-old girl, which was what she was. Thuy had confirmed her age.

He tried to remember what she’d been through—what both sisters had. It’d been enough for Thuy to almost kill Lara last night. So what was this little girl capable of?

Keep an eye on her.

Definitely gotta keep an eye on her…

Now all he had to do was figure out if this was a trap. Or if Blue Eyes was using Jackson to get to him. Maybe trying to manipulate him, the way it had done back at Paxton.

As if she could hear his thoughts, Abby said, directly at him, “The other one doesn’t know.”

The girl hadn’t spoken since they brought her down here, and to hear her again surprised everyone. Keo, Bunker, Lara—and Thuy.

“What did you just say, Abby?” Thuy asked.

“It’s just her,” Abby said. She hadn’t looked away from Keo or seem to have even heard Thuy’s question.

“Who are you talking about, Abby?” Thuy asked. “Her, who?”

“Her,” Abby said, finally turning to stare at her sister.

From the look on her face, it didn’t take Thuy very long to understand who “her” was.

“Who is she talking about, Thuy?” Lara asked, even though, like Keo, she already knew the answer as well.

“The other one,” Thuy said, looking across at them.

“‘The other one?’” Bunker said.

“The other blue-eyed ghoul. There were two of them.” She looked back at her sister. “Was she the one who let you go?”

“She wants to meet you,” Abby said. Those disturbing brown eyes had returned to lock in on Keo’s. “The other one doesn’t know. She wants to meet you alone…”

* * *

“How did she find you guys, anyway?” Lara asked, later, after they had left the sisters in the infirmary to continue their awkward and what appeared to be very one-sided reunion.

“It told her to look for smoke and to walk toward it,” Keo said. “It took her the entire morning to reach Carlos’s place.”

“Not exactly Google Maps, but I guess it worked,” Bunker said.

“I guess so.”

“So do we believe her about all the other stuff? This creature wanting a meeting in a neutral location?” Lara asked.

“I don’t think she’s lying, if that’s what you mean,” Keo said. “Is that what you mean?”

“Sort of,” Lara said, but he didn’t think she sounded entirely sure herself.

“If it is Jackson…”

“That’s a big if,” Bunker said. “It’s not like we knew what happened to her after we left her here that night. We’re just guessing, right? All of this is just one big guesswork?”

“It’s an educated guess,” Lara said. “That’s how the infection works. Their blood comes into contact with yours, and it’s over.” She shook her head. “If I’d known she was infected when we left that poor girl here…”

“You couldn’t have done anything anyway,” Keo said. “We’ve all seen how it works, Lara. Once you’re infected, there’s no turning back. That’s it. We’ve seen it too many times.”

She nodded but stayed quiet. Keo knew that Lara had always felt guilty about abandoning Jackson in order to rush with Bunker to rescue him outside of Paxton. That was Lara in a nutshell—always feeling responsible for everyone. It was one of the reasons why she was so much happier now, at Bunker’s ranch. Here, it was just her and him to worry about. Then, eventually, baby made three. But it was still just three souls instead of the thousands that depended on her, day in and day out, back at Black Tide. The responsibility had crushed her spirits until she couldn’t take it anymore.

“You’re not really going to do this, are you?” Bunker was asking him.

Keo didn’t answer him immediately.

“Well? Are you?” Bunker pressed.

“I don’t know,” Keo said.

Bunker rolled his eyes. “Yeah, you do. You’re gonna do it.”

“It wants to meet me.”

“And who says we have to give it what it wants? You saw that message in the basement. Round two’s coming, buddy.”

“That was from the other one. Not Jackson.”

“And you’re going to take the kid’s word for it that it’s two different people? With two different agendas? It sure didn’t feel like it last night. Carlos would tell you the same thing if he were here.”

“Are we sure about Carlos?” Lara asked.

Bunker nodded somberly. “There’s nothing left. I know that ranch like my own. We looked everywhere. Everywhere…”

They had looked all over Carlos’s place, including some spots that Keo hadn’t even known existed but Bunker did, and there were no bodies to be found, not even in what was left of the fortified basement. There was no Carlos, no Jose, and none of their family members. As much as Keo hated to admit it, it made sense that the ghouls would take the family. People, even dead ones, were still useful. At least, for a time.

“What reason would there be for her to lie?” Keo said.

“I don’t think the kid’s lying,” Bunker said. He glanced back toward the infirmary’s open door behind them. “I think the creature that sent her is.”

“It sent her for a reason. I want to find out what that reason is.”

“You’re nuts.”

“Probably.”

Keo turned to Lara. She hadn’t said very much, and she didn’t really have to. He could read everything in her eyes.

“You’re not seriously going to let him go, are you?” Bunker was asking her.

Lara pursed a smile at Keo. “Yes.”

“For the love of God. Tell me why?”

“Because he’s right. This ghoul wants to meet for a reason. Something it doesn’t want the other one to know about. We should find out what that is.”

Keo smiled back at her. He knew she’d understand. Lara, more than anyone out here, knew how hard it was to fight the Blue Eyes. She also knew that when you were offered a weapon that could be crucial to the battle, it was imperative you take it.

And this one smelled like a potential weapon to Keo.

Or maybe you just think that because it’s Jackson? a voice in the back of his mind said. Or it used to be Jackson, anyway.

That was possible too, but he didn’t think so.

He remembered another blue-eyed ghoul, not too long ago, who Keo would even call a “friend.” If he hadn’t taken the creature up on its offer of help, none of them would probably be here right now.

“We know what we’re doing,” Keo said. “This isn’t the first time this has happened.”

“Not the first time what has happened?” Bunker said.

“That we’ve seen a ghoul go against its own kind. It’s happened before.”

Lara nodded, because he knew she was thinking the same thing. She was also thinking about that “friend” from a long time ago.

“Yes,” Lara said.

“Seriously?” Bunker said. “They’ve turned on each other before?”

“Yeah,” Keo said. “It’s probably one of the biggest reasons why we’re still here right now.”

“You mean this ranch?”

“No. I mean alive.”

“How’s that?”

“Because one of those blue-eyed ghouls turned on the others,” Keo said, his eyes focused on Lara’s, and vice versa. “It helped us turn the tide of the war.”

“What war?”

“The only war that’s mattered in the last century, Bunker.”

“You mean the war?”

“Yeah. The war.”

“You weren’t there,” Lara said. “We couldn’t have done what we did without the ghoul. When it came over to our side, it changed everything. This one could provide us with the same advantage.”

“Hunh,” Bunker said. “The more you know, I guess. But I still think this is a very dumb idea.”

“You worry too much,” Keo said.

“It’s called being smart.”

“Paranoia is more like it.”

“It’s not paranoia if there’s a blue-eyed ghoul out there sending, literally, human messages to you.”

“It’s actually two blue-eyed ghouls, to be specific.”

“Specific-schematic.”

“Besides, I have the advantage.”

“How you figure that, hombre?”

Keo held up his watch. “You’ll be watching my back, and we still have five hours until nightfall.”

“Wait. I’m going there, too?”

“Well, yeah.”

“And who says I’m going there with you?”

“Lara can’t.”

“Why not?”

“She’s pregnant.”

“She’s only a little pregnant. She can handle this.”

Lara punched the rancher in the shoulder as hard as she could. “You’re going with him, Bunker, and you’re keeping my man alive. Got that?”

Bunker rubbed his shoulder. “Yes, ma’am.”

* * *

It was a traveling carnival, squatting at the bottom of a hillside about half a mile from the state highway that ran nearby, just over the horizon. There were no towns close enough to see with the naked eye, and the closest was Longmire over seven miles to the west. There was no reason for the group of buildings to be here, but there it was. It was almost as if the organizers had set up shop and were preparing to open when the world went to hell, leaving the rides in their partially unpacked states.

Keo sat on Annabelle with Bunker beside him, the two of them looking down at the scattering of rides, trucks, and portable buildings that occupied the land below. The biggest by far was a 100-foot tower that sprouted out from the center like a tree made of steel. It was surrounded by smaller attractions—a pair of Tilt-A-Whirls, bumper cars, and game booths in various stages of being assembled. Semis and trucks ringed the place, while grass had continued to grow unabated. In a decade or more, nature would swallow all of this up.

“You’re really gonna do this,” Bunker said. The rancher hadn’t said a word since they rode out and across the empty Texas countryside. Keo was starting to think he’d stay quiet for the entirety of their mission.

“Mission.” Is that what you call this?

Yes, that was exactly what he’d call this. As far as he knew, he had nothing to lose by taking this “meeting.”

God, he hoped he was right.

Keo glanced up at the bright sun staring back at them in the sky.

And as long as I have that…

“Yeah, I’m really gonna do this,” Keo said.

“Hey, it’s your funeral,” Bunker said. “But just to be clear: I get to woo Lara and have your baby call me ‘poppa’ if you don’t come back, right?”

Keo grinned. “Sure, if Lara will have you.”

“I can be pretty charming.”

“Since when?”

“You’re just saying that because I’ve never put the moves on you. Trust me, buddy, when I want to, I can make the ladies drop the panties.”

“Uh huh.”

“Honest to God.”

“I totally believe you.”

“Now why don’t I believe that you believe me?”

“Gee, I don’t know,” Keo said.

He tapped Annabelle on the flanks, and the mare began moving down the sloping hill toward the carnival. Sunlight glinted off the large 100-foot tower in the center like a lighthouse guiding him toward his destination.

“You’re certifiable,” Bunker said as he followed Keo down the hill. “If we still had asylums, I’d commit you. That’s how much I think you’re nuts.”

“I appreciate that.”

“I can’t believe Lara let you come here. And here I thought you guys were experts on these blue-eyed fucks.”

“We are,” Keo said. “That’s why she let me come here. She knows an opportunity when she sees one.”

“Because you’ve done this before…”

“Something like this.”

“You guys are both Looney Tunes. Maybe I won’t woo Lara when you don’t come back with me after all.”

Keo smiled, but he couldn’t help but wonder if Bunker wasn’t right. It had seemed like such a good idea back at the ranch. He was still pretty sure it was the right move on the way over here.

But now that he was here, heading through the tall grass toward the carnival…

“Having second thoughts?” Bunker asked from slightly behind him.

“Not at all,” Keo lied.

Fifteen

A large puppy with white and black spots and a few brown ones that wasn’t supposed to be there hung from a beam that had rusted over a few summers ago. A fading red tongue sticking out of the dog’s mouth stared back at Keo as he passed it by. Kid-size monster trucks, VW bugs, and ridiculously rendered yellow alligators with green “scales” greeted him along the way to the meeting point. He didn’t think real alligators wore blue berets like these plastic ones, though.

The building he was looking for was near the center of the carnival, squeezed between a ring toss booth and one with basketball hoops. Keo didn’t know what to expect when he found it, but he guessed it made sense why it had chosen this particular meeting point. It was one of the few buildings that had its own self-contained structure, with walls and a roof keeping the sunlight out. Two stories, with a bright red (or it used to be red, anyway) billboard on top, featuring the words: CRYSTAL LIL’S. There were balconies on the second floor and railings on the first to give it the impression it was some kind of… What? Saloon? A whorehouse? Or both?

The sides were murals featuring old timey cowboys wielding six-shooters and dancing girls in brightly-colored dresses doing a line dance. Like the Rockettes, but much, much cheaper and, well, less realistic. Steel flagpoles jutted out from the top of the building, but only one of them still had a flag to fly. The rest had either frayed and torn away long ago or were never properly put together before the end of the world.

Signs up front, Velcroed to the first-floor railing, declared FUN HAD BY ALL along with GLASS AND MIRROR MAZE. Another sign promised FUN TRICK MIRRORS and TWISTY SPIRAL SLIDE INSIDE.

“This is it?” Bunker asked.

Keo looked back at him, standing next to Lucille. They had walked their horses through the carnival for the last fifty or so meters, and both animals were fidgeting restlessly. Annabelle moved against her reins as she glanced around the dormant rides and empty booths with suspicion.

“The kid said a building called Crystal,” Keo said. “That says Crystal.”

“It says ‘Crystal Lil’s.’”

“Close enough.”

Keo focused on the “house.” There were steps leading up to the front entrance, but the windows were boarded up. Paint along the walls had been stripped clean, exposing scarred and termite-infested wood.

“You’re really gonna go in there?” Bunker asked.

“I didn’t come here to turn tail now, Bunker.”

“Why not?”

That’s a good question, Keo thought.

But he shook his head before handing Annabelle’s reins over to the rancher. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“No promises,” Bunker said as he took the ropes from Keo.

Keo grinned at him before sliding the strap of his MP5 until the submachine gun was in front of him instead of behind him. He checked the magazine, then made sure the safety was off, just in case.

“Nuts,” Bunker said. “You’re nuts.”

He’s definitely not wrong there, Keo thought as he took the first step up the stairs.

All three wooden steps creaked dangerously underneath his heavy boots, but Keo made it to the porch without anything breaking. The front door was closed, a fading image of a buxom “bar girl,” her dress lifted to reveal white stockings underneath, blowing a kiss at him.

Keo eased the door open with the barrel of the Heckler & Koch, letting sunlight reveal the hallway beyond slowly, one foot at a time—until it ran out of reach, leaving behind shadows about ten yards up the narrow passageway. Dirt-smeared mirrors on both sides of the wall revealed his hesitant form as he leaned in to get a better look at the interior of the place.

“Dum de dum dum dummm,” Bunker said behind him.

“That’s not helping,” Keo said without looking back.

“It wasn’t supposed to help. It was supposed to snap you back to your senses. Ready to head back now?”

Keo sighed, thought, Yes.

But he said, “Not yet.”

“You got balls of steel, I’ll give you that.”

“I’m just trying to find a way out of this, Bunker.”

“I don’t think it’s in there, hombre.”

“I have to find out.”

“Balls of steel,” Bunker said.

Balls of stupidity is more like it, Keo thought as he looked for something to wedge the door open, but there was nothing on the floor but dust and cobwebs and rotting wood.

Keo took out his backup knife, unsnapped it, and slipped it underneath the door frame. He tested the door just in case; it moved but wasn’t in any danger of closing in on him. It could, but it was going to take something way stronger than a gust of wind. As long as that didn’t happen, he had the safety of the sunlight at his back.

Yeah, as long as that didn’t happen…

“Holler if you want out,” Bunker said.

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” Keo said.

He would have liked nothing more than for Bunker to go into the building with him. Hell, he would have liked it even better if Bunker was up here holding the door open instead of standing out there, a good ten yards in the street. But the ghoul, through Abby, had made it very clear it was supposed to just be him and it inside.

So you’re taking orders from a ghoul now, huh?

I guess so…

Keo didn’t look back at Bunker. He knew what he was going to find—a disapproving rancher asking him what the hell he was doing and telling him it was time to vamos out of there.

But he couldn’t do that. He had to find out.

It’d worked once before, with Frank…

He took a step inside, the floorboard creaking loudly underneath him. He didn’t mind that. He wanted whoever was in there to know he was coming.

He took another one.

And a few more…

He stopped about five yards inside the building, leaving himself five extra yards of sunlight in front of him. The building was constructed in such a way that carnival goers were supposed to enter and walk through a long corridor lined with mirrors on the walls, beginning with about five feet from the doorway. It took Keo a few steps to notice that the reflections weren’t all the same; they distorted his image into different shapes and sizes. Fun house mirrors.

He couldn’t see very much ahead of him—just darkness, with the end of the hallway somewhere on the other side. Not too far from where he was standing. Maybe twenty—

His fingers tightened around the MP5 and he lifted it slightly, pointing it up the corridor at the darkness. He’d heard the unmistakable soft rustling of clothes, even if he still couldn’t see what had caused it.

“Come on out,” Keo said.

It moved in the darkness to reveal a silhouetted figure.

Here we go…

It stood in the shadows, safe from the reach of sunlight, wearing some kind of hooded robe that covered its head. Keo wouldn’t have really been able to tell where its body ended and its head began if not for the two glowing blue eyes that peered back at him.

There was a noticeable change in the air around him, a slight warmth that hadn’t been there before but was now filling up the moldy hallway. Something scurried past his boots, but Keo didn’t bother looking down to see what it was. It was big enough to be a rat, furry enough to be a cat, and it was scared of what stood in the building with him.

He didn’t blame whatever it was. Keo wasn’t sure what the hell he was doing here, either. Suddenly this didn’t feel all that good of an idea.

The presence of the MP5 was reassuring, as well as the brightness at his back. The narrowness of the hallway, in a lot of ways, gave him the advantage. If this was a trap and the creature came at him, there was only so much space for it to maneuver. Even if the submachine gun’s thirty silver-tipped rounds didn’t kill it, they would slow it down enough for him to use the machete he’d brought along to take its head off.

That was the plan, anyway.

What was that saying, though, about plans going to shit once you made contact with the enemy?

“So I got your message through Abby,” Keo said. “What do you want to talk about? It’s not about the weather, I hope. ’Cause I can get that kind of boring conversation back at the ranch.”

“Father,” it said. Hissed.

The unnaturalness of its voice was a reminder that this was a bad, bad idea. Why had he come here? What was he doing? Just because this had worked once, with Frank, why did he think it would again?

He should run. He should turn around and run.

Right now. Right now.

Or, better yet, he should shoot it. Then decapitate it.

Yeah, that was definitely the better plan. Make sure there was one less blue-eyed ghoul out there.

So why didn’t he?

“Don’t be scared,” it said.

“Who’s scared?” Keo said.

“You.”

“Why would I be scared of you? Can you smell the silver on me? Or on my pal out there in the street?”

“I can hear your heartbeat…”

“Must have been the breakfast I had this morning.”

“No, I don’t think it was.”

Keo smirked. Somehow the creature not “getting” his joke made it even more inhuman.

The already stale air in the hallway around him was fluctuating now, going from hot to cold, to hot again. It shouldn’t have been that hot with the chill coming through the open door behind him, but it was.

And the door was still open behind him. Keo knew that much. If it wasn’t, then there wouldn’t be a pool of sunlight between him and the creature. He thought he could feel Bunker’s eyes out there watching him. The rancher was being amazingly quiet even though he could undoubtedly hear Keo talking, and had probably already figured out the ghoul had finally made its appearance.

Stay out there, Bunker. Stay out there…for now.

Keo concentrated on the shadows in front of him. On the blue eyes as they pulsed as the creature peered back.

“I remember you,” it hissed. Its words weren’t threatening; it was just making a statement. “I remember…”

“Is that right?”

“In flashes. It comes and goes.”

“And here I thought I’d made an impression.”

“But if I concentrate,” it continued as if he hadn’t interrupted it, “I can remember the things we spoke to one another that night. The things that happened. The others… I don’t remember their names.”

“Sharon. Liz. Carter.”

“Yes. Yes…”

“You don’t remember them, but you remember me?”

“Yes…”

A slight shiver raced up and down his spine. He wasn’t sure he liked the idea of a blue-eyed ghoul remembering things about him when it couldn’t the names of friends that it had traveled with for years before meeting him.

No, that wasn’t true.

He was pretty goddamn sure he didn’t like it.

“Jackson,” Keo said.

“Not anymore,” it hissed.

“Yeah, well, I gotta call you something.”

“Call me whatever you want.”

“Jackson it is.” Then, when the creature didn’t say anything, “So why did you ask for this meeting, Jackson?”

“Father,” it hissed.

“Whose father?”

“Our father.”

“I don’t—”

The ghoul, Keo thought. It’s talking about the blue-eyed ghoul. Sadistic.

“Ah,” Keo said. “What about it?”

“He must be stopped.”

Keo wasn’t sure what he had expected when he first decided to come here, but maybe this was exactly it. Even so, it still caught him by surprise.

“Just to be sure we’re talking about the same thing,” Keo said. “We’re talking about the other blue-eyed ghoul. The one from Paxton.”

“Yes…” Jackson hissed.

“Does it have a name, by any chance?”

“Father.”

“Just Father.”

“Yes.”

I guess that’s a no on a name.

“Why do you want to stop him?” Keo asked.

“Does it matter?” it said.

“Oh yeah, I think it matters. It matters a lot.”

“Why does it matter? You want the same thing.”

“Yeah, well, you’re asking me to team up. I need a pretty goddamn good reason to do that. You do realize what you are, right?”

The creature’s robe rustled, and it looked away for a brief couple of seconds. Keo wasn’t sure if he had just insulted it or—

No, he had done exactly that.

“No offense,” he added.

“He must be stopped,” the ghoul said.

“You said that already. But you haven’t told me why.”

“What does it matter?”

“Oh, it matters. So, why?”

It didn’t answer right away. Instead, its eyes ebbed and flowed in the darkness. Intensely bright one second, dimmed the next, then back again.

“He’s sacrificing the children,” the ghoul finally said.

“What children?” Keo said.

“The others.”

“The black-eyed ones.”

“Yes…”

“What do you mean, it’s sacrificing them?”

“Last night…”

“What about it?”

“He wasted their lives attacking the house when it wasn’t necessary. We should never have gone through the front doors and allowed you to murder the children unnecessarily.”

“Murder?” Keo thought.

But he quickly understood. Of course this thing would view killing a swarm of attacking black-eyed ghouls as “murder.” To it, they were children—one of its own. To Keo and Bunker last night, they were just an unnatural horde of killers.

“He won’t stop,” the creature continued. “Father will waste their lives to taunt you. It’s his way. It’s his joy.”

“Yeah, your Father likes to play, doesn’t it?”

“Yes…”

“What about you? You like to play, too?”

It didn’t answer right away.

Five seconds…

Ten…

“No,” it finally said.

Bullshit, Keo thought, but he said, “So why don’t you tell your father to stop his fucking games and leave us alone?”

“He won’t listen. He won’t stop. He will play with you until he’s bored. And he’s not bored yet. You are…” It let the rest trail off.

“What?” Keo said. “I’m what?”

“…a challenge,” the ghoul said. “Father is having too much fun. He will needlessly waste the children’s lives to continue his games with you.”

“But not you. You actually care about the Black Eyes.”

“Yes…”

“Why?”

“Because they’re my children, too.”

“You created them.”

“Some of them, yes.”

“Longmire. You were there.”

“Yes…”

“How many—”

“Does it matter?” it hissed, cutting him off.

Keo shook his head. No, it didn’t matter. But if he ever needed a quick reminder that he was talking to a blue-eyed ghoul, one that he was going to kill the first chance he got, it had just given it to him.

“Eighty-two at last count,” Bunker had said about the number of souls in Longmire before the entire town was snuffed out of existence two nights ago. “No. Make that eighty-three. Angela gave birth while you were running around in Paxton, having fun without me.”

Eighty-three lives. Some of them were probably at the ranch last night, pouring through Bunker’s front doors. The rest would show up tonight, and the night after that, and the one after that…

“Does it know you’re here?” Keo asked. “Your father?”

“No,” the creature hissed.

“Are you sure about that?” He tapped his temple. “Isn’t it inside your head right now? Maybe it’s listening.”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“How are you so sure?”

“I’ve learned to control my thoughts, to put up barriers. He’s there. He’s always there, and he always will be. His blood flows through my veins, just as it flows through all of his children’s. But I can hide from him. I’m doing that now.”

Keo remembered Frank telling him the same thing, about erecting mental walls to keep the ghouls from reading his thoughts. They were even tracking him, using the psychic connection that linked all the ghouls. The closer they were to him, the easier he was to find. But Frank had managed to block them out, and eventually used that weakness to his advantage. To humankind’s advantage.

“Where is it now?” Keo asked. “Your father.”

“That isn’t important,” the creature said.

“If you tell me where it is, I can go there and put it out of its misery. That would solve both our problems.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“There are others with Father. You would harm them.”

You’re goddamn right I will.

He said, “But that’s exactly what you want me to do. That’s the whole point of this meeting. You want me to harm him.”

“Yes.”

“You want me to kill him.”

“He will sacrifice all the children. I can’t allow that.”

There was something in its voice that Keo couldn’t ignore. It came through loud and clear, so human-sounding that, for a moment—just a brief flash—Keo almost forgot this was a blue-eyed creature standing in front of him.

Its words, he realized, were dripping with regret.

“All right,” Keo said. “Then how are we going to stop it?”

“By working together,” it hissed.

“That’s easier—”

The crack!, then the resulting echo, of a gunshot stopped Keo in midsentence.

He spun around toward the open door.

The shot had come from outside—where Bunker was waiting for him.

Sixteen

Bunker.

Shit!

Keo was running toward the open door even as the shot continued to echo. It seemed to go on forever.

One second became five, then ten, then a minute.

Or maybe it was only a few seconds in total.

Halfway to the door, Keo glanced back over his shoulder at Jackson. Or the ghoul that Jackson had become.

Blue eyes glowed in the darkness, watching him back. The creature hadn’t gone anywhere. But of course it hadn’t, because it couldn’t. It was stuck here, in this building full of fun house mirrors, because of the sun outside. It would have to wait until nightfall to move again.

The crack! of another rifle shot drew Keo’s attention back to the street outside.

Bunker!

He finished his dash toward the opening, the bright sunlight from the other side giving the door an eerie glow like it was a portal to another universe instead of just a way out into the carnival grounds beyond.

Keo burst through the open door and onto the floor porch, scanning the empty dirty street outside for signs of Bunker, but the rancher wasn’t there. The horses were also gone—

A pool of blood in the dirt, just about where he’d last seen Bunker. It was fresh, the wetness glistening—

“Get back inside, you idiot!” a voice shouted.

He tracked the voice to the bumper car platform less than ten meters across from him. It was Bunker. He was crouched between two of the “cars”—a spotted white one and a striped yellow.

The man was waving frantically at him. “Inside! Get your ass back inside!”

Keo was going to ask him, “What happened?” when the crack! of a rifle shot pierced the chilly air, and Keo thought, Oh, fuck.

He expected to take the bullet in the head or somewhere else on his body, but instead he was thrown backwards even as he felt a heat trail slicing through the air at about the same spot where his head had been only milliseconds earlier. He heard the echoing pek! as the round buried itself into the termite-infested floorboards even as he was jerked, roughly, back into the building.

Keo landed on his ass, then his back, followed by his head. Pain coursed through him, but it was a hell of a lot better than eating a bullet, which was what he would have done if he hadn’t been pulled back into Crystal Lil’s.

…pulled back into Crystal Lil’s…

What the fuck just happened? Keo thought, even as he scrambled up to his feet, searching for—then quickly finding—the MP5 still slung over his shoulder.

He was on his knees when he spun around just in time to see the creature gliding, quickly, back into the shadows. It didn’t move nearly fast enough, though, and the acidic stench of vaporized ghoul flesh stung Keo’s nostrils as it filled the hallway around him.

The ghoul. Jackson. It had grabbed and pulled him back into the building in the nick of time.

It had saved his life.

…and in doing so, it had exposed parts of itself to sunlight.

Keo couldn’t just smell the strong stinging odor, but he could see bleached-white bones revealing itself just before the ghoul managed to pull itself completely back into the comforting safety of darkness on the other side of the hallway.

Jesus Christ. It saved my life.

A fucking blue-eyed ghoul saved my life!

“Keo!”

Bunker, shouting at him from outside.

Keo finished scrambling to his feet and turned around before running back to the door. He was shocked at how far the ghoul had pulled him back into the room. If it’d clamped its bony fingers around his head when it’d done that, it might have detached his head from his shoulders completely; a similar fate if it’d gone for one of his limbs. Instead, it had grabbed a handful of the back of his jacket to save his life.

…to save his life.

“Keo!”

Bunker again. For all Keo knew, Bunker might have thought he’d been shot and fallen through the door. It certainly felt that way to him at the time.

Keo ignored the presence of a blue-eyed ghoul behind him—he could feel its hot and warm presence, smell its still-fresh scorched flesh in the air—because he didn’t need to fear it anymore. God help him, but he’d quickly—and he thought, rightfully—concluded that he was safe in its company. After all, if it’d wanted him dead, all it would have had to do was not do anything and watch that bullet punch into his brain while he was standing outside like an idiot.

He crouched next to the wall, keeping about seven feet away from the opening. He was close enough that he could see his own reflection on dirt-smeared mirrors on the opposite wall from him, but whoever was out there wouldn’t be able to.

Or, at least, he hoped that was the case.

“Keo!” Bunker again.

“Yeah!” Keo shouted back.

“You alive in there?”

“No. You’re hearing a ghost shouting back at you, dumbass!”

Bunker laughed. That was a good sign. A laughing Bunker meant a still-in-the-fight Bunker. Keo hadn’t forgotten about that puddle of blood he’d spotted on the ground when he was outside. It hadn’t been there before, but the rancher had been.

“You okay?” Keo shouted.

“No! I got a hole in me that my momma didn’t give me!” Bunker said.

Keo grinned. “Who’s out there?”

“Beats the hell outta—”

The crack! of a rifle shot cut Bunker off in midsentence.

Keo heard it, followed by the ping! of the round ricocheting off something metallic.

“Fuck!” Bunker shouted.

“What happened?” Keo asked.

“Asshole took another shot at me.”

“You still good?”

“Let me check.” Then, about three seconds later, “Yeah, just the one extra hole still.”

Keo scooted a few more feet toward the door. There was plenty of sunlight around him, the heat warm against his face, chasing away some of the erratic hot-and-cold that was coming from the ghoul behind him.

…coming from the ghoul behind him.

He shook the uneasy feeling away. It was back there, yeah, and it wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. It couldn’t, even if it wanted to. It’d survived exposing itself to sunlight earlier, but that had cost it plenty of flesh. That wouldn’t last, though. Keo had seen it before—blue-eyed ghouls growing whole limbs back. So a little lost flesh here and there wasn’t going to be much of a problem for Jackson.

Keo stopped three feet from the opening. He didn’t lean out. That would have been stupid, and he had already done too many stupid things today. The shooter—if there were just one out there—already knew he was in the building. Hopefully they wouldn’t know if Keo was still alive or not. From their vantage point they might have just seen him suddenly reeling back into the building, as if he’d been shot.

Then again, he had been shouting back and forth with Bunker, so unless the shooter was deaf…

Goddammit, shoulda kept my mouth shut.

He moved closer to the door until he was just a foot away now, and there were no mirrors across the hallway from him to expose his presence. Keo peered out until he could see Bunker again, crouched behind one of the bumper cars. The rancher was almost completely bent over at the waist like some kind of turtle trying to seek shelter underneath its shell. Of course Keo knew why he was doing that—he was making himself as small a target as possible.

Keo hadn’t spotted them before, but now that things had slowed down and he wasn’t running around for his life, he could see the drops of blood leading from the pool in the street and toward the platform where Bunker was. He must have moved pretty quickly, seeking out the nearest shelter, because the bumper cars weren’t exactly the best cover right now. Keo could see a half dozen better options. Then again, he had the gift of not being shot at; Bunker hadn’t had that privilege earlier.

From his vantage point, Bunker looked okay. Not great, but he didn’t appear to be on the verge of dying, either. He’d been shot; Keo knew that much. All the blood that hadn’t been there before was evidence of that. How badly was the question. Keo didn’t shout the question out a second time because he didn’t want the shooter to know the answer, either.

He waved one hand to get Bunker’s attention. The rancher looked across at him, moving his body slightly so that Keo could see he had been working on his wound all this time. Bunker had unzipped his jacket and pressed a quick clotting pad to his left shoulder and wrapped it up with duct tape. That explained why Bunker hadn’t returned fire, and the only gunshots Keo had been picking up so far came from the sniper trying to finish the man off.

Keo gave Bunker a questioning look. The other man rolled his eyes dramatically before giving him a thumbs up back.

Translation: “I’ll live.”

Keo nodded. Then, this time not shouting but just loud enough for Bunker to hear (and, he was hoping, low enough that the sniper couldn’t; or if he could, then not clearly): “You got a bead on him?”

“He’s up on the Super Shot,” Bunker said.

“The what?”

“The Super Shot.”

Keo shook his head. “I don’t know what that is.”

“The fucking tower in the middle.”

“Why didn’t you just say that before?”

Bunker was referring to the 100-foot tower that hovered over the carnival grounds. It was the first thing Keo had seen when he rode up on the area; it was the tallest structure in the place by a mile and impossible to miss. Lack of maintenance and time hadn’t done anything to topple it, so it was still out there, in the hot sun.

And right now, it would make for one hell of a sniper’s perch.

Damn. He’s definitely got the high ground on us.

There was no way Keo was going to run out there and reach Bunker. There was no point in trying the stunt anyway. Getting to Bunker just meant exposing himself, then pinning himself down along with the rancher.

No, there had to be a better way. Time wasn’t on their side, which was something else that stuck out in Keo’s mind. A quick glance down at his watch said 3:11 p.m. Plenty of time to reach the ranch and get ready for tonight…if they were on their horses and headed back home within the next hour or so.

Hell, he didn’t even know where the horses were. Neither Lucille nor Annabelle were anywhere on the street outside—either dead or alive—so that was a good sign they were still loitering about, waiting to be rounded up. So the shooter hadn’t been sadistic enough to take down the animals, too. Then again, he could have done exactly that but the horses were lying dead somewhere else.

Keo preferred not to think about that possibility, mostly because it was unacceptable. He had to get home. He had to get back to Lara. Coming here, leaving here alone (Okay, not really alone, but close enough) had been a mistake.

So how many more mistakes are you going to make this week? a voice from the back of his mind asked.

Hopefully this is the last one.

The voice laughed. Hopefully, huh?

Yeah. Hopefully.

He stared at Bunker, willing the rancher to meet his gaze. Bunker must have sensed him, because he glanced over. Keo held up a hand for him to stay there. Bunker nodded, understanding. From the look on his face, Keo didn’t think the other man was going anywhere anytime soon anyway. Bunker wasn’t on the bumper car platform bleeding out, but he wasn’t exactly his full annoying jackass self, either.

Keo got up, turned around, and jogged down the hallway. There was no way out of Crystal Lil’s through the front door, but there had to be another way in and out. A back door. There couldn’t possibly just be one entryway/exit.

There was rustling in the darkness in front of him as Keo approached. The irony that he was moving voluntarily toward signs, smells, and feels of a ghoul instead of going the other way wasn’t lost on him. Right now, he didn’t have any choice; and besides, if the creature had wanted him dead…

Then I’d be dead right now.

Bright blue eyes reappeared in the shadows, watching him back. Keo couldn’t see the face underneath the hooded form, but if he could, he imagined it was probably a little—if not a lot—surprised to see where he was headed.

“Is there another way out of here?” Keo asked.

“Yes,” it hissed.

Keo slowed down until he was walking toward the ghoul. It continued to watch him, and he saw just enough of its face—the smooth, black skin seeming to gleam in the pitch blackness—to feel the slight shiver race up and down his spine.

“Someone’s out there, a sniper,” Keo said. “You have any ideas who that might be?”

“No,” it said.

“Are you sure about that?”

“Yes.”

“You told me the other Blue Eyes doesn’t know you’re here. Are you sure about that, too?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

This time the creature didn’t answer quite as quickly. It seemed to almost think about it as its eyes moved slightly downcast.

Keo stopped in front of it, fighting the urge to pull back, to recoil from the intense warm and cold that snaked out of the shadows and embraced him like physical tentacles. The air this close to the ghoul was thicker, the smell more intense. It took all of Keo’s willpower not to react, and he thought he succeeded.

He thought he did, anyway.

“I don’t know,” the creature finally said. “He could have sent them.”

“Your Father,” Keo said.

“Yes.”

“If it did, then it knows you’re here.”

“Yes,” the creature said.

Its hiss, when it had responded with that single word, hadn’t been nearly as pronounced for some reason. Maybe it was because it, like Keo, had just realized the full consequences of that possibility being true.

And more importantly, what it meant for their nascent partnership.

In a word: Not good.

Not fucking good at all.

There were a lot of topics for them to talk about, all of them important, but Keo couldn’t afford to waste time right now. He had way more important things to take care of.

“Stay put,” Keo said.

The ghoul didn’t answer as Keo walked past it and deeper into the shadows.

Soon, he was swallowed up by the darkness, but not for long. He took out the small portable ProTac flashlight and flicked it on. It was a tiny thing—five inches long and barely an inch round—but yielded a plentiful 500 lumens and ran on two small batteries that could be recharged back at the ranch using the solar power banks. Keo had resisted the urge to use it earlier because he didn’t think Jackson would have appreciated having a bright beam of light shining on her face.

He used the beam to guide his way through the corridor now. There was a turn up ahead and Keo took it, running the light near the top, looking for the familiar—

There. A red EXIT sign hanging off the ceiling with an arrow pointing down another corridor.

Keo went back to jogging, the time ticking away inside his head. He had to finish this, and finish it fast. He didn’t like Lara being at the ranch alone, and he liked the idea of her being under siege by herself even less. He had to remind himself that she wouldn’t really be alone. Thuy would be there, along with her sister, Abby. Then there were the two sisters, Wilson and Gummy.

Five women…

For some reason, it’d never occurred to him that he was leaving Lara at the ranch with four other women. Three of them were kids, and the only other adult had a broken arm.

Shit.

Shit, shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

He went faster, reaching the rear exit door a few seconds later. The lever moved with some difficulty, the gears grinding a bit from disuse, but it moved nevertheless, and the door squeaked open—Keo stopped, took a breath, then slowly pushed the door wider so it didn’t make nearly as much noise. It still produced some, but not nearly as much as it would have if he’d just plowed into it.

Streams of sunlight struck him in the eyes, some bouncing off corrugated metal on buildings around him. Direct slivers of light came through three rows of brightly painted horses circling a carousel about ten meters away. He put the flashlight back into his pocket, slid outside, and moved along the building’s rear.

Keo kept the MP5 in front of him the entire time, ready to shoot anything that moved. Fortunately, nothing did. The horses remained frozen in front, then to the left of him. The same was true for four giant dragons of different colors, part of something called Dizzy Dragon. Most of the colors on the dragons, like those on the carousel’s rides, had peeled away over the years. Or maybe they’d always looked that shabby even back in their heyday. Who knows.

He reached the side of Crystal Lil’s and pressed against the wooden boards, splinters pricking at his skin through his clothes. Keo ignored it and leaned out to get a better look at the rest of the carnival—and specifically the 100-foot tall steel tower in the center, not more than fifty meters away from his position.

Fifty meters. Damn. That might as well be a whole universe to traverse when a sniper was up there, waiting to shoot you dead. And whoever was up there, they’d managed to sneak into the place, then up the steel construction without being seen.

Sneaky bastard.

Keo focused on the very top, where the shooter would have put himself for a prime shooting spot. At night, and functioning properly, there would have been lights all along the steel girdles leading up to the top. Keo could make out a row of nonfunctioning spotlights up there, but the seats that passengers were supposed to sit in as they were lifted up and then dropped back down at dizzying speeds were resting on the ground. He could see plenty of hand and footholds for someone who was in decent shape to climb up the tower.

And there he was.

Gotcha.

Keo couldn’t see the man—or woman—all the way at the top of the Super Shot, but there was no mistaking a figure up there, crouched on a platform flanked by the four spotlights. The shooter, clad in all-black from head to toe, his face obscured by distance and the lights around him, had been lying down when Keo first glanced up there, so he hadn’t seen the sniper until the man or woman raised himself into a crouching position.

Sunlight glinted off the big scope on top of the shooter’s rifle. Keo was too far away to tell what kind of weapon, but from the cracks he’d heard earlier, it was some kind of high-powered bolt action rifle, the kind that fired one bullet at a time. If it’d been capable of a higher rate of fire, then Bunker would probably be dead. Keo, too, now that he thought about it.

If not for the ghoul that saved my life.

Jesus Christ. I can’t believe I just thought those words.

He pushed all of it away and concentrated on the moment at hand. First things first, he needed to get out of here alive, save Bunker’s life, and get back to the ranch.

Oh, that’s it?

Easy peasy. Right, Bunker?

Seventeen

There was no way Keo was going to drop the sniper from over fifty meters away with just a submachine gun. The Heckler & Koch was a damn fine weapon, but it was designed mainly for close-quarter combat and didn’t have much of a barrel to speak of. Keo hadn’t bothered to put a scope on top of it because of that; it would have just been overkill for a weapon that wasn’t meant to be used at long range.

Bunker’s weapon, on the other hand, was capable of long-distance shooting. But Bunker was trying not to bleed to death across the street from Crystal Lil’s right now.

What to do, what to do?

He took a mental picture of the sniper’s perch—100 feet of prime shooting real estate—before turning and running back to the rear exit of the funhouse. He jogged through the dark corridors, taking the turns, not even bothering to take out the flashlight.

And besides, he could smell Jackson somewhere up ahead.

The ghoul turned to look back at him, blue eyes glowing in the shadows, as he ran back toward it. He couldn’t quite see its hooded face, but from the parts that he could glimpse, he thought it looked surprised and maybe a little confused to see him back so soon.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Keo said as he slid past the creature. He brushed against the filthy cloth it was wearing, generating an icy shiver that raced up and down his spine as a result. If he had to put a phrase to it, it would probably feel like someone stepping on his grave.

Yeah, let’s not do that again. Ever.

He hurried up the corridor, back toward the still-open door. Bunker must have seen movement out of the corner of his eye, because he glanced over and gave Keo a Now what? look with both eyebrows.

Keo crouched in the middle of the hallway so Bunker could see easier. He mimed “shooting” with an invisible rifle, then pointed in the direction of the sniper. Bunker gave him a confused look. Keo pointed at himself, then back down the hallway, before holding up his right hand and “walked” his fore and middle fingers in the air.

The rancher grinned, amused, but he also nodded. Hopefully he’d understood everything—

Bunker mouthed the words “Your funeral, hombre,” and started checking his rifle before scooting around his limited cover to get into a better shooting position.

I guess he understood everything.

Keo got up and headed back into the shadows for the second time.

“What are you doing?” the ghoul hissed as he approached it.

“Trying to save our lives,” Keo said.

“How?”

“Don’t you worry your little hairless head over it. Just stay put. Unless, of course, you’d like to run out there and lend a hand.”

The ghoul that used to be Jackson didn’t reply.

“I guess not,” Keo said as he moved past it for a third time.

Goose bumps as the creature’s undulating wave of heat and cold (How is that even possible?), not to mention its smell, overwhelmed him as he neared—then passed—its dark presence.

He gladly sucked in a lungful of fresh Texas air as he exited the fun house again and hurried along the length of the building until he was at the same spot as before. He leaned out slowly, not willing to get his head shot off in case the sniper was up there waiting for him to show himself a second time.

There, the shooter, lying down on the platform now.

Keo could barely make him out, but there was only one black shape moving around up there. Now that he knew exactly where to look, it wasn’t hard to pick the figure up. The shiny sunlight blinking off the large scope mounted on top of the man’s bolt-action rifle didn’t hurt, either.

All right, Bunker. Don’t miss!

There were three ticket booths about five meters away from where he crouched, and Keo dashed toward them, even as he kept one eye up and toward the Super Shot—

Even more sunlight glinting off the sniper’s scope as he swiveled it around in Keo’s direction.

Fuck!

He hadn’t expected the man to pick him up so fast. Keo had been hoping to make up at least half the distance between him and the 100-foot tower. That would have been just enough space for him to move around, to force the shooter to stand up to get a better shot at him. In turn, that would have given Bunker a better look at his target.

Instead the guy saw him almost right away, even while Keo was still halfway to the booths—

The first and ridiculously loud crack! made Keo jump slightly even while he was in midstride. He also ducked his head even though it was a useless move, because if the shot was true, he would have been dead long before he even heard the gunshot ring out.

Instead there was an emphatic pek! as the round slammed into the hard ground somewhere behind him.

Keo all but lunged the rest of the way, landing on his stomach and eating just enough sun-scorched earth to know that he didn’t ever want to pull that stunt ever again. He rolled over onto his back as—

Crack! as a second shot slammed into one of the booths. The high-caliber bullet easily pierced through the structure like it was made of cardboard and sent a flurry of splinters into the air above Keo’s head before pekking! into the rough terrain five feet from where he lay.

Keo scrambled to his feet and scooted forward, toward the middle booth, just in case the sniper decided to try hitting him again. The man likely couldn’t see him with the trio of rectangular boxes in front of him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t pelt the immediate area with bullets in an attempt to get lucky.

Except the sniper didn’t do that, which either meant he was too smart to shoot at something he couldn’t see or he was conserving ammo. Or both. Yeah, there was a very good possibility it was both. What were the chances the guy might run out of bullets soon?

Keo moved toward the third and last booth and remained there to catch his breath. Now that the shooter knew he was back here, he probably wasn’t going to make it to his goal—halfway to the Super Shot—without being fired upon again.

That was…not good.

Nope. It wasn’t very good at all.

He’d been hoping…

Let’s give Captain Optimism a cape, folks! he imagined Danny’s voice chiding him.

Oh, shut up, Danny.

Keo rested and tried to figure out another approach.

The answer didn’t come after a minute.

…or two minutes…

Bunker hadn’t fired yet, probably because he’d been caught off guard when the sniper began shooting at Keo. So that meant the rancher was still in position to fire, and all Keo had to do was give him his opportunity.

Gee, that’s it?

Fuck my life.

“Keo!” Bunker’s voice, coming from across the street and slightly behind him. “You still alive over there? Did the bad man get you?”

Keo grinned, before shouting back, “Not yet!”

“Good to hear!” Then, “We still on for that date?”

Date? Keo thought.

Then: He’s talking about the plan. Right.

“Hell yes!” Keo shouted.

“You sure?” Bunker shouted back.

“Why? You got another date already?”

“Nah. Just wanted to make sure!”

“Sure as sure!” Keo said just as he jumped up to his feet and ran out from behind the booth and toward something called a Starship 3000 about ten meters away.

He’d made the move without thinking about it, knowing that he might change his mind if he did spend more than a few seconds considering just how dumb this was.

Crack! as the sniper fired again.

Keo didn’t stop, didn’t slow down, and didn’t turn left or right to see where the bullet had struck. He just knew—and cared—that it wasn’t him. He kept going forward at full speed until he’d gotten behind the carnival ride, which looked like a giant round saucer in the shape of a UFO. There was probably supposed to be a rainbow of lights arching over the ride, but the bulbs had all shattered years ago.

He stopped behind a flimsy-looking wooden ramp up to an entranceway ringed with Christmas lights and moved alongside the round object, waiting for the sniper to take another shot. Keo hadn’t heard Bunker fire yet, so the rancher didn’t have a good enough bead. It was very likely Bunker was waiting for his one and only chance to take out the shooter. Which was fine for Bunker, but not so much for Keo, who had to be the guinea pig.

The ride at his side was big enough—its length easily doubled his 6’1” frame—but he didn’t feel the least bit safe given how high the shooter was perched. You could see a hell of a lot and pretty damn far from 100 feet in the air, which was why the man had chosen the spot in the first place, no doubt.

So Keo stuck to the Starship 3000’s smooth curving outer wall, keeping his profile as low as possible. He wasn’t delusional enough to think that any part of the ride could stop a high-caliber bullet if the sniper knew exactly where he was. No. It was likely the round would punch right through the faux UFO and take his head off at the shoulders.

Of course, the man didn’t know where he was, exactly.

Keo hoped, anyway.

Because if he was wrong…

Yeah, better not be wrong, pal.

Better not be wrong…

Keo stopped when he reached the end of the ride. There was a series of concession stands in front of him. Two that he could see from his angle, though he distinctively remembered there being more when he’d walked Annabelle through the grounds earlier today. Two was good enough, though. All he’d have to do was make it behind one of them. That should be easy enough. The elongated booth was only about ten meters from where he stood.

Ten whole meters.

But Keo didn’t make the mad dash right away. The problem was that the sniper knew where he was and the direction he was going—sideways, inching his way closer toward the Super Shot. That meant Keo couldn’t keep on that track. Right now—right this very second—the guy was probably peering through his scope, waiting, just waiting for Keo to do exactly what he’d almost done just seconds earlier.

Fuck that shit.

So Keo didn’t do the obvious thing and retraced his steps until he was back on the other side of Starship 3000. He slinked around the curved shape of the ride until he could see the dirt street that herded people through the rest of the carnival. It was the same stretch of dirt road Keo and Bunker had used earlier. Crystal Lil’s was not that far up the road, and on the other side…

Bunker’s bumper car platform was somewhere to his right, partially obscured behind something called Chaos, which was shaped like a pyramid and attached with long metal arms that raised the seats at the ends up and down. Keo had no idea who would find something like that thrilling, but then again, he’d never been much of a carnival man.

If he was right, then he’d have just a few seconds head start before the sniper realized Keo had juked him and was zigging when he was supposed to be zagging. (Or something like that.)

Keo hoped he had a few seconds head start, anyway. It wasn’t like he had any other options.

He glanced down at his watch.

Keo sighed, thought, Time to make the donuts! and ran, ducking his head as low as it would go while not breaking his stride.

One meter, two—and still no gunshot.

Three meters—four—

Five—six!

That was as far as Keo got before the sniper opened fire. The first bullet screamed past the back of his head, and the second one struck one of Chaos’s extended metal arms as, Keo guessed, the shooter attempted to correct his fire, shooting at where Keo was going instead of where he’d been. So the guy wasn’t a total noob at this after all!

Swell! he thought even as sparks flicked into the air from another round bouncing off the hard surface of Chaos with a loud ping!

Keo was almost at the platform, getting ready to dive for cover behind one of the massive steel girdles, when he decided to sneak a look down the road and up—

The sniper, rising up from his perch in an attempt to get a better shot at him.

Oh, you mother—Keo was thinking when he heard the pop! of a gunshot.

Except this one had come from his right side instead of his left, and it had been much, much closer.

Keo was still looking when the sniper’s body jerked, then plummeted off the 100-foot tall Super Shot tower.

Happy landing, asshole!

Keo slid to a stop a foot or two from running right into the raised platform in front of him, then walked the remainder of the short distance and sat down on the cold, hard floor. He couldn’t see where the shooter had landed from where he was, but the man was down there, somewhere. Keo wasn’t too worried about him anymore; if he were still alive, he was probably wishing he wasn’t.

Bunker appeared, walking down the street toward him. For a guy who’d taken a bullet in the shoulder and had blood all over his clothes, he looked in amazing spirits. Then again, he had just nailed the sniper, so maybe Bunker was feeling very good at the moment. He certainly looked smug enough.

“You gonna have a heart attack?” Bunker asked.

“Not today,” Keo said.

“Good to know. While you’re catching your breath like an old man, I’ll make sure the other guy’s down.”

“You go do that. I’ll join you in a bit.”

“Take your time,” Bunker said as he walked past Keo.

Keo didn’t really take that much time. A minute, tops, before he picked himself up from the cold (and very dirty) platform and followed in Bunker’s steps all the way to the Super Shot. It took him a while because he wasn’t in any hurry. By the time he reached Bunker, most of the adrenaline was gone, and he could hear the wind howling through the rides around him again and taste the sun on his lips.

Bunker was standing over a body, not saying a word.

“He still alive?” Keo asked.

“Not anymore,” Bunker said.

Keo found out why Bunker seemed so fascinated by the sniper when he saw the man’s face.

It was Carlos.

“What the fuck?” Keo said.

The former rancher’s face was covered in sweat, his dark brown eyes wide open and staring back up at them as if he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened and was hoping for answers from Keo and Bunker.

Carlos was also no longer among the living. He lay on his back, his legs twisted at impossible angles behind and slightly underneath him. There were no signs of his rifle, not that Keo cared to really look for it.

“The fall snapped his spine,” Bunker said. He didn’t sound at all like someone who had just found out that his neighbor, a man whom he called friend and had for the last few years, had just tried to kill him. Keo attributed it to shock.

In comparison to Bunker, Keo didn’t know Carlos all that well, but he’d liked the man well enough. He and his brother—

His brother.

Keo glanced around, casually, in case he were being watched, swinging the MP5 around to in front of him. The idea that Jose could be out there waiting to take his shot danced across Keo’s mind. The two were rarely seen far from one another’s side, and after what had happened—and now, this—Keo felt suddenly like he was standing in someone’s crosshairs again.

“You think he was alone?” Keo asked quietly.

“He said he was,” Bunker said. He still hadn’t looked up or away from Carlos’s body. If Keo didn’t know any better, he’d think Bunker was waiting for Carlos to sit up and declare that it was all just a misunderstanding—including when he had shot Bunker and tried to kill Keo.

“You talked to him?” Keo asked.

“For a bit, before he died. Funny…”

“What’s that?”

“He didn’t look like he was in pain. He looked almost relieved, actually.”

“Did he say why he tried to kill us?”

“It sent him here. Told him to take us out.”

“Who?”

“Your blue-eyed buddy. Sadistic. I guess this is one reason why you called it that.”

It’s one reason, among many, Keo thought as he shot a quick look down the street, back toward Crystal Lil’s fun house.

“It didn’t kill Carlos’s family last night,” Bunker continued. “It took them, like we thought, but not for the reasons we were thinking.”

“All of them?”

“Jose, Donna, Gwen, the kids…”

Lightning Mikey, too, Keo thought.

He said, “It sent Carlos to kill us?”

“Seems that way,” Bunker said. “Was using them to do it.”

“Just like it used Thuy.”

“Mr. Fucking Sadistic.”

“What else did Carlos say?”

“That he didn’t have any choice. He had to do what it wanted, or it’d kill his family.”

They’d been standing there for a while now, and no one had fired. Keo relaxed a bit and looked back down at Carlos’s frozen face. He remembered his last conversation with the man, back at his ranch:

“Don’t be a hero. Think about your family,” he had told the Mexican rancher.

“I am thinking about my family,” Carlos had said. “I’m always thinking about my family, Keo. First, second, and last.”

Carlos was thinking about his family to the very last breath. He’d come here to kill Keo and Bunker because of his family, despite the fact that they were friends and neighbors. More so with Bunker, but Keo had gotten to know them, too.

And yet, here he was, with a rifle…

Keo wondered if he’d do the same thing in Carlos’s shoes. Would he take up arms and kill his friends to protect Lara and the baby? Would he—

Yes. Yes I would.

The answer came easily and without hesitation.

Yes, he would kill friends if it meant saving Lara and the baby’s life. He would do it, and he wouldn’t care if it was the right or wrong thing to do. He would lose countless nights’ sleep over it, but he would do it anyway.

In a heartbeat. In a fucking heartbeat.

“That means the other one knows it’s here, meeting with us,” Bunker was saying.

Keo looked up at his friend. “Jackson?”

“Yeah. Am I right?”

Keo sighed. He hadn’t thought about the repercussions of Carlos’s betrayal, but if he’d been sent here by Sadistic, to this place where they were meeting with Jackson…

“Shit,” Keo said. “It knows. It fucking already knows.”

Eighteen

“It knows about you. About this.”

“Yes.”

“How will it respond? It’s already sent Carlos to kill us. To kill you, too, for all we know.”

“I don’t know.”

“Just so there’s no misunderstanding. This plan of yours…it’s out the window now, right? Am I right about that?”

“Yes. He knows too much now. The element of surprise is gone.”

“Was that what you were counting on?”

“Yes.”

“That’s too bad. I was hoping to end this without every single one of us dying in the process.”

“Does that include my children?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you hate us.”

“I don’t hate you, Jackson.”

“Don’t you?”

“No. The truth is, I’ve never hated your kind. You’re just surviving. You’re doing what every sentient being has done since the dawn of time—trying to survive, no matter the cost. It just so happens that your survival interferes with ours.”

“You surprise me, Keo.”

“How is that?”

“You’re more…open-minded than most humans.”

“You were one of us two months ago.”

“Another lifetime, now.”

“I guess. So what will you do now? You can’t go back, can you?”

“No…”

“So what’s your next move?”

“I don’t know yet. Things are…fluid, now.”

“Let me ask you a question…”

“Can I stop you?”

“Probably not.”

“Then what’s your question?”

“Can you beat it?”

“I don’t understand…”

“In a fight. Can you beat it? Your father?”

“No.”

“You answered that pretty quickly.”

“Because the answer is an easy one. Father is stronger. Faster. And the children belong to him. His blood courses through their veins, just as it does mine. They will do whatever he says. If there is a fight, they will side with him. There is no question about that.”

“So by killing it, your father, you would have changed that. The others would follow you instead.”

“That was the plan, yes.”

“For what it’s worth, I really wanted this to happen.”

“Yes. Me too.”

“You know where this leaves us, right?”

“Yes…”

“Just to be sure… When your children come after us tonight, I’ll have to do what I have to, in order to protect my family.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“All right, then.”

“What else?”

“What else, what?”

“You have something else on your mind.”

“The horses…”

“What about them?”

“Why did you leave them alone?”

“I didn’t. Father did.”

“All right. Why did he leave them alone last night?”

“Because they’re not important to you. Father has watched you, Keo. He knows the horses mean nothing to you. Not as much as they mean to the other one.”

“Bunker.”

“Yes.”

“So he didn’t go after the horses because he knows I won’t, what, cry over them if he did, so it’s not worth his time?”

“Partly.”

“What’s the other reason?”

“When this is over, he plans to use the horses as food to feed more of the children that will come.”

“Your father is a real piece of work, you know that?”

“He’s…something.”

* * *

That was how the conversation between Keo and the ghoul that used to be Jackson ended. Without very much fanfare. There was nothing else to say by either one of them. Whatever plans Jackson had had when she came to meet with him, it was no longer viable after what happened with Carlos. Sadistic clearly knew about her, about this supposedly “secret” tête-à-tête.

The best laid plans of mice and men.

Or maybe that’s the best laid plans of ghouls and men…

Keo climbed onto Annabelle, Bunker on Lucille, and they rode back to the ranch with the falling sun at their backs. They could have gone faster, but Keo was taking Bunker’s wound into consideration, and they were only moving at moderate speed as a result. Bunker insisted he was fine, but Keo didn’t believe him for a second. He’d seemed fine initially, but the longer he stayed out here, the worse he looked.

Lara was standing in the front yard, the destroyed double doors into the main house behind her, when they arrived. The kids, along with Lara, had cleaned out a lot of the property while they were gone. It didn’t quite look like the aftermath of a war zone anymore, though Keo could still smell the stench of vaporized ghoul flesh lingering in the air. That, he thought, wasn’t going to go away anytime soon.

There was still a stack of ghoul bones behind the house, but they weren’t going to spend the effort to bury them until all of this was over. Besides, Keo was hoping the animals would take care of it for them, but he was probably being overly optimistic about that, considering how many bones there were.

Lara walked over to them as Keo and Bunker stopped their horses outside the stables and Keo helped the rancher down.

“I’m fine,” Bunker said.

“Sure you are,” Keo said.

“No, seriously.”

“Seriously, yeah.”

“What happened?” Lara said. She’d quickened her pace, probably after realizing that Bunker was hurt from the way he climbed off Lucille.

“I was shot,” Bunker said.

“I can see that. But what happened?”

“It sent Carlos after us,” Keo said.

“Carlos? Did you say Carlos?”

Keo nodded. “He’s not dead. Or, well, he is, now.”

Lara gave him a puzzled look even as she directed Bunker to stand still as she checked his wound.

“I’m fine,” Bunker said.

“Stand still,” Lara said.

“I said—”

“Still,” Lara snapped.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What happened?” Lara asked Keo again as she took off Bunker’s jacket to get a look at his handiwork.

Keo told her, everything from meeting with Jackson to Carlos trying to kill them.

“Carlos is dead for real this time,” Bunker finished.

“So that’s it?” Lara asked, looking across Bunker at Keo.

“Pretty much,” Keo said. “She can’t do anything now without the element of surprise on her side.”

“Where is it now?”

“We left her back at the carnival. I don’t know what she’s going to do after that.”

“Keo,” Lara said.

“Yeah?”

“You just called the blue-eyed ghoul ‘she.’”

Keo raised both eyebrows. “Did I?”

“More than once,’” Lara said.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“You definitely did,” Bunker said.

“Hunh,” Keo said.

Lara smiled at him. “So it is Jackson?”

“It was Jackson, yeah.”

“And it really did want to join forces? Against the other blue-eyed ghoul? What did you call it?”

“Sadistic,” Keo said.

“Right. Against Sadistic?”

“Apparently, yes.”

“Did she say why?”

“The children.”

“‘Children?’”

“That’s what she calls them. The other ghouls. It decided that Sadistic was wasting their lives all for its sick pleasure. Jackson didn’t like that. So she was attempting a coup d'état.”

“A coupe-day-what?” Bunker said.

“Coup d'état,” Lara said. “She was trying to overthrow the other ghoul’s dominance over the others.”

“Ah,” Bunker said. Then, “Now you’re doing it, too.”

“Doing what?”

“You’re calling that blue-eyed ghoul we just came from meeting ‘she,’ instead of ‘it.’”

“Oh.” She looked over at Keo. “So what does that mean?”

Keo shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

“Well, whatever it means, you two best figure it out, ’cause it’s gonna get dark real soon,” Bunker said.

* * *

Bunker wasn’t going to die on them, but Lara forced him into the shelter below and did a thorough examination, cleaning and redressing his wound. Keo, meanwhile, spent the remaining fifty or so minutes before nightfall making sure the ranch was ready for the second night.

Or, as the blue-eyed ghoul called it, round two.

He put Lucille and Annabelle into the stables and locked the building down, then did the same for the supply shacks and the other structures around the property. He had considered taking extra precautions with the horses to make sure they were safer than they had been last night, but after the conversation with the blue-eyed ghoul at the funhouse, it didn’t seem necessary anymore.

He and Bunker also hadn’t bothered putting the double doors back onto the main house because there was no point in that, either. The ghouls would just break it down again anyway. Besides, this time there would be no one topside to stop them. Before the darkness claimed the ranch, everyone would be in the shelter and behind locked doors. The really big and heavy and thick door.

Thuy and Wilson came topside later. Wilson had reclaimed her Henry lever action rifle, while Thuy remained unarmed. There was no reason for her to be a threat anymore now that she had her sister back, but Keo didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks. She was, in his mind, compromised. He would evaluate her usefulness later, when all of this was over.

“What are you two doing up here?” Keo asked them.

“Thought you might need some help,” Thuy said. “Lara wouldn’t let Bunker come up here, so we thought we would.”

“What can we do?” Wilson asked.

“Lara bundled up some clothes and left them upstairs,” Keo said. “If we need to spend more nights in the shelter, we’re going to need them.”

“We thought you might need more help out here, getting the place ready for tonight,” Thuy said.

Keo tossed her the canteen he’d been drinking out of all day. Thuy groped clumsily at it with her left hand, but it sailed past her and landed five yards behind her.

“You’ve never had to use your left hand, have you?” Keo asked.

Thuy looked down at her arm as if it was an appendage she didn’t know was even there until now.

“Those clothes aren’t going to move themselves,” Keo said.

Thuy nodded, looking defeated, and returned to the house. Keo felt a little bit sorry for her. A little bit. He might have been more understanding if she hadn’t held a gun to Lara’s head less than twenty-four hours ago. Something like that could taint a person’s feelings toward another one.

Wilson didn’t turn and leave with Thuy, though.

“What are you still doing here?” Keo asked her.

The kid walked over to the canteen and picked it up, then threw it back at him. She had a nice delivery.

Keo snatched it out of the air. “Your point?”

“I can help you up here,” Wilson said.

“Maybe you can, but there’s nothing to do. I did everything already.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

“Oh.”

He finished off the water in the canteen while eyeing her as she stood there with her rifle, staring off at the fences that surrounded the house. “How old are you?”

She turned back to him. “Does it matter?”

“It’s just a question. You don’t have to answer.”

The girl shrugged. “Thirteen. But I can take care of myself.”

Keo nodded. He’d been curious, but that was it. He had no doubts whatsoever that Wilson had seen some serious shit in her time, even as she wandered the countryside, dragging little Gummy along with her. After all, she’d been trying to shoot him back at Hamlock and the only reason she’d missed was, well, she wasn’t a very good shot.

“How long have you been using that thing?” Keo asked, nodding at her rifle.

“A few years,” Wilson said. “Why?”

“Back at Hamlock. Were you really trying to kill me?”

Wilson didn’t answer right away.

“Be honest,” Keo said.

She nodded. “I was.” Then, with an almost sheepish look, “Sorry.”

Keo chuckled. “No need to be sorry.”

“I tried to kill you.”

“You didn’t know who I was. And you were just trying to protect your sister.”

“I guess.”

“It’s a good thing you’re a terrible shot.”

“I’m not that bad.”

“You’re pretty bad, kid.”

She sighed. “I guess.”

“Have you ever actually shot anyone with that thing?”

“Once or twice.”

Keo squinted at her, standing in front of him under the fading sunlight. She looked so much younger now than when he first saw her.

“You don’t remember if it’s once or twice?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t always know if I’ve hit them. I never, you know, checked.”

“You just shoot and run, huh?”

“Pretty much. It’s safer that way.”

“Good point.” Then, “Let me see that thing.”

She walked over and handed him the rifle. Keo turned it around and worked the lever. It was chambered for .22 and was badly dented and scratched from barrel to stock. The weapon hadn’t been properly maintained over the years, either because Wilson didn’t know how to do that or its former owner didn’t.

“Where’d you get this, anyway?” he asked.

“I found it in a house in El Paso,” Wilson said.

“Where are you and your sister from?”

“I just said it. El Paso.”

“Right.” He gave the rifle back to her. “Are the .22s silver?”

“No.”

“You’ve been running around with that thing, and the bullets aren’t silver?”

“I don’t know how to make silver bullets. Besides, I’ve never had to shoot ghouls with it.”

Keo motioned for her to follow him. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“I’m going to teach you how to shoot. And to get that thing loaded with proper rounds.”

“You’re going to teach me how to shoot in one night?” Wilson asked doubtfully.

Keo glanced at his watch. “We’ll have to get it done in thirty minutes.”

* * *

He didn’t manage to teach the kid how to become an ace shot in thirty minutes. He gave her some breathing pointers and introduced the concept of shooting at where the target was going to be instead of where it was. The girl was a quick learner, and by the time their thirty minutes (twenty-eight, if he wanted to be pedantic about it) was over, she’d successfully hit half the clay targets he’d launched from the machine he and Bunker used for their own target practices. A 50 percent success rate was more than the zero she’d achieved when they first got started.

Keo counted that as a win, in a day where wins were few and far between.

“I’m good now?” Wilson asked as they walked back to the house.

It had gotten noticeably darker around them, and Keo could hear the horses moving around inside the stables. Even the animals were dreading the coming nightfall. He didn’t blame them one bit. The ghouls had ignored them last night, but there were no guarantees they were going to be so lucky this time.

“You’re better,” Keo said. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say good yet.”

“But I can get even better. You can teach me how.”

“Sure.”

“I mean it. I want to get better. A lot better.”

“You can’t possibly get any worse.”

“I know…”

“But we can make you better. At least, good enough that you might actually be able to hit what you’re shooting at in the near future. Hopefully when it’s not me.”

Wilson grinned at him. It was, he thought, the first time she’d done that.

“Just don’t sneak up on me again,” she said.

“Who was sneaking up on you?”

“You were.”

“Nonsense. I was just riding through town.”

“Same difference.”

“I guess it’s a matter of perspective,” Keo said. Then, as they walked through the empty house, “You regret coming here with me yet?”

Wilson shook her head. “No.”

“Really?”

“You don’t know what we’ve had to do to survive out there, Keo,” Wilson said.

The girl didn’t say anything else as they walked down the back hallway. Thuy was nowhere to be seen, so Keo assumed she’d already gone down before them, having finished her work up here. There were three bundles of clothes that needed to be moved and Thuy only had one good arm, but it wasn’t like she had a long way to walk back and forth. Thirty minutes was more than enough time to get the job done.

As they reached the basement and stepped over the broken door, Wilson said, “This is better than what’s out there.”

Jesus Christ. What did they have to deal with out there?

But Keo didn’t ask her that. He figured the girl would tell him—or, probably more likely, Lara—when the time was right. Which, in this case, was when she thought of them as more than just strangers. He wasn’t sure how long that was going to take but wasn’t holding his breath, either.

The basement was darker than it had been the last time he walked through it, but the ROUND ONE and below that WELL PLAYED were still easily visible. Keo had thought about taking the time to clean them off the wall and door but hadn’t. They were, he thought, a good reminder of what they were up against. Not that he really needed it, of course.

Keo nodded at Wilson and she went through the outer door first. He pulled it closed after her, slamming it home, then spinning the locks into place.

“That’s going to keep them out, right?” Wilson asked.

“It did last night,” Keo said. “Besides, if it doesn’t, the other one will.”

“I hope so.”

“Think positive, kid.”

“Does that work?”

Keo shrugged. “I dunno, but that’s what Lara keeps telling me.”

They walked down the dimly lit corridor. They’d lowered the wattage to conserve energy because they didn’t know how long they’d need to make use of the shelter. The creatures hadn’t gone after the panels on the roof of the buildings or the ones in the field nearby, but that could change at any moment.

Just like everything else, they were playing tonight by ear.

ROUND ONE, the message had said.

Which meant it was time for round two…

Nineteen

It was quiet inside the outer hallway.

Too damn quiet.

Keo sat with his back against the cold door, one of Bunker’s AR-15s resting between his bent legs. He kept the MP5 on a shoulder strap, but it was a backup. So was the machete at his left hip and the SIG Sauer on his right. Keo didn’t like carrying too many weapons, because every additional one meant spare ammo. He only had two for the AR in one of his pouches, with the mag in the drop leg pouch dedicated to the submachine gun. He figured that if he had to run and shoot and reload at the same time, he’d rather have a weapon designed for close quarters. And that was exactly what the H&K did very well.

He wished he could say having to stand (or, well, sit, in this case) guard all by his little lonesome was a new experience, but he’d been through it all before. Those other situations weren’t quite this extreme, of course, but then what was when compared to a horde of meth teeth-baring ghouls?

The lights along the corridor in front of him were dimmed, using up only half of their normal wattage. The generator hummed in the background, a reminder that if they had to stay down here for more than a week, they were probably going to run out of juice eventually. The fact that they even had a week was due to the batteries being able to store power for months and years without needing to be tapped into to run the underground shelter. The solar panels were efficient and easy to use, but they were also slow as hell to restore once drained.

But that was for another day. Another week.

Right now, he only had the present night to worry about. Survive the next ten or so hours, and he could decide what to do for the next few days, weeks, or months after. If push came to shove, they would abandon the shelter and the ranch altogether. Bunker wouldn’t like it, but he’d understand. Hopefully.

So what did Keo have right now at his disposal? Himself, for one. Fortunately he was at 100 percent strength. He didn’t think that was ever going to be possible after Paxton, but Lara had made damn sure he was fully healed up. For backup, he had a pregnant woman, an injured rancher, and four girls.

…a pregnant woman, an injured rancher, and four girls.

Yeah, it wasn’t exactly the best-case scenario he could have come up with. He would have liked at least another able-bodied shooter watching his back, but he’d have to settle for a gimpy Bunker and a possibly useful Wilson. He knew for a fact he couldn’t depend on Abby or Gummy, and Thuy was too much of a wild card.

Lara was as dependable as they came, but she was also hampered by her pregnancy. Not that he would have allowed her to do anything even remotely dangerous anyway. Besides the fact that he loved her, that she was his entire world, there was the issue of that baby inside her.

No. He was down to Bunker and Wilson.

And probably just Bunker…

But that was okay, as long as the doors held. He didn’t have any reasons to believe they wouldn’t. The blue-eyed ghoul hadn’t been able to—in fact, it hadn’t even tried—to break down the outer door. Instead, it’d tried to get Thuy to do the work for it. So as long as he had the door, literally, at his back…

Then there was the primary shelter door, which was twice as thick and tough as this one.

Yeah, he liked his odds, no matter how many—or in this case, how few—extra guns he had at his disposal. The trick was getting through tonight. Then the one after that.

And the one after that…

Gee, that’s it? Should be simple enough.

Yeah, right.

* * *

It was quiet outside. Why was it so quiet?

And his slightly rapid heartbeat didn’t count.

Calm down. It’s not like you’ve never done this before.

That was the problem. He’d done this too many times before. One of these days he wasn’t going to come out of it. He’d been lucky so far, but luck didn’t last forever. Otherwise they wouldn’t call it “luck.”

Keo checked his watch. He’d lost count of how many times he’d glanced down. (It might have been a dozen or so; or a few hundred.)

10:11 p.m.

Nightfall had come without an attack. At least, none that he was aware of. He didn’t hear anything that sounded like footsteps in the house above him or in the basement on the other side of the door at his back. Not that he would have been able to hear anyway if someone was tiptoeing around. Hell, even if there were a few hundred someones tiptoeing around.

He should have been thankful for the quiet, but he wasn’t. It was too good to be true. Too damn good to be true.

Keo listened for it. For something. For anything. He was waiting for the smallest hints, the slightest vibrations that would indicate living things were swarming the house.

But there was nothing.

Not a goddamn thing.

Come on. I know you’re out there.

So come on.

Then: Or maybe you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, pal.

He was still trying to decide which was the better approach—enjoy the peace and quiet, the non-action, or wish the bad guys would get on with it already—when he heard footsteps.

Lara, turning the corner in front of him. She was properly armed—AR rifle slung over her shoulder, gun belt, and spare ammo in drop leg pouches. The urban assault vest made it difficult to tell she was pregnant. Lara carried her pregnancy well and rarely complained about it. The first few weeks had been difficult, but she had quickly gotten used to the morning sickness. Then the sepsis had reared its head, but they’d dealt with that, too.

She smiled as she walked over, then sat down with a heavier-than-usual sigh next to him. She laid the rifle on the floor next to her, then leaned over and put her head against his shoulder.

Keo slipped an arm around her. “What are you doing out here?”

“Thought you could use the company.”

“You shouldn’t be here, Lara.”

“I left the door open, so if anything happens, I’ll just run back. You worry too much.”

“I worry too much so the two of you don’t have to.”

“My hero.”

“I’m surprised Bunker hasn’t shown his ugly face yet.”

“He tried. He got a few steps to the door before collapsing.”

“He okay?”

“He’s fine. But he lost more blood back there than he was willing to admit. I put him back in bed and sedated him.”

“He let you do that?”

“No.”

Keo smiled. Leave it to Lara to make someone as stubborn as Bunker do something he didn’t want to.

“He’s not going to like that when he wakes up,” Keo said.

“I know,” Lara said. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” Then, “I don’t hear anything. That’s good, right?”

“It should be.”

“It’s not?”

“I don’t know. When it comes to blue-eyed ghouls…” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“This one really has you spooked, doesn’t it? I’ve never seen you so indecisive about everything.” She lifted her head from his shoulder and looked over at him. “But you beat it once. You can do it again.”

“I had help in Paxton.”

“The slayers…”

“Yeah.”

“So now you have me and Bunker and the rest.”

“You mean Bunker, who is sleeping the night off, and the four other girls in the shelter?”

Lara gave him a sheepish grin. “Yes.”

“Not exactly my idea of backup.”

“Sorry we don’t live up to your expectations.”

He rolled his eyes at her. “You, I’d take any day of the week, and thrice on Sundays.”

She smiled. “‘Thrice on Sundays?’”

“Thrice on Sundays and frice on Mondays.”

“I don’t think frice is a word, babe.”

“No?”

“Nope.”

“You know what I mean.”

She leaned her head back against his shoulder before wrapping both arms around one of his. “Maybe it’s time we did the one thing we didn’t want to do.”

“Refresh my memory. What are we talking about?”

“Black Tide.”

“Oh.”

Neither one of them said anything for a while.

She was referring to Black Tide. Or, more specifically, the army at Black Tide. The same one that she once led but had given up to come live in obscurity in this very obscure part of the Texas countryside with him. The same group of men and women whose lives she couldn’t shoulder the responsibility for ever again after what had happened to Gaby at Darby Bay.

That Black Tide.

“You do recall that I suggested that two nights ago, right?” Keo said.

“I know.”

“And you said…?”

“I said no.”

“That’s right. You didn’t even want them to know you were alive, because if they did, they’d want you back there. They’d want the same Lara they know and love in charge of things.”

“I know,” Lara said quietly. Then, again, and this time even quieter, “I know.”

“If we radio them, they’ll come running. Danny would mobilize an army right now—in the dead of night—and there would be helos here before midnight.”

“We might not have a choice.”

“Nothing has changed since two nights ago.”

“Yes, there has.”

“What?”

“Bunker, for one. He’s not completely 100 percent anymore, and I need him to be. More importantly, you need him to be to watch your back. I can’t do it. Not anymore. Not in my…condition.”

He reached over and put his palm over her stomach. He could feel the slight bump underneath the vest.

“You need him,” Lara said. “I can’t do it. Thuy can’t. None of the girls can.”

“Wilson’s pretty tough.”

“She’s just a kid.”

“There are no ‘just’ kids anymore, Lara.”

“Yes, there are. And the four in there, including Thuy.” She wrapped her arms tighter around his. “You know how painful it is for me to admit all this? That I can’t be by your side when you need me most? To always have to stay behind and watch you leave with Bunker? I hate it, Keo. I hate it with every fiber of my being. But I have to. For your sake. For mine. For ours. The three of us.”

He pulled her closer to him. “Why don’t you see if you can ring them up with the emergency radio. I’ll wait here just in—”

Keo didn’t finish. Instead, he cocked his head slightly.

Lara sat up straight next to him. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I hear something.”

“I don’t hear anything.” Then, when he didn’t answer her, “Keo. I don’t hear anything. What did you hear?”

He shook his head before standing up.

Lara mirrored him. “Keo, you’re scaring me. What did you hear?”

He turned to look at the door. The very big and heavy steel door. “Something moving from the other side.”

Lara, the AR-15 in her hands, took two quick, involuntary steps away from the door. “I didn’t hear anything. Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

He slung the rifle and leaned toward the door, pressing his ear flush against the cold 12-gauge steel surface. Oh, how he wished Bunker had installed a close-circuit camera in the basement. Or anywhere else on the ranch property, for that matter. Despite how much of a godsend the McCanns’ underground shelter had become for them in the last forty-eight hours, Keo still hated being, essentially, blind in here.

“Keo,” Lara said quietly, impossibly patiently, behind him.

He shook his head before looking over his shoulder at her. “I think you should go back inside.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“Keo.”

“Please.”

He thought she would keep arguing, but she nodded and began backpedaling down the hallway. “Don’t take any chances, you got it? If someone tries to come through, you get your ass inside the shelter with me. I’m leaving the door open.”

Keo smiled. “I’ll be right behind you.”

She turned and walked quickly the rest of the way, vanishing around the corner. He didn’t look away, or feel relieved, until he couldn’t hear her footsteps anymore.

He turned back around to focus on the door.

He was certain he’d heard the noise earlier, even if he couldn’t now. Hell, he couldn’t even tell what it was he thought he’d heard.

But there had been something. He was sure of it.

Wasn’t he?

Wasn’t he?

Maybe the same paranoid mind that had been waiting anxiously for something to happen had conjured up something happening, when nothing was. That was entirely possible, too.

He pegged the chances at fifty-fifty that he had imagined the whole thing.

Okay, maybe it was more like forty-sixty…even if he couldn’t settle on which side the sixty fell on—paranoia or reality.

Or—

The wall in front of him exploded.

More specifically, the five feet of concrete wall to the right of the steel door.

Keo reeled, spinning away from the flying projectiles and chunks of concrete, some the size of his head as they pelted the hallway around him. The only reason he wasn’t on the ground from being bludgeoned by one of the bigger chunks was because he was pressed so close to the door that the heavy structure provided him with cover against the blast.

That did nothing to keep his ears from ringing, though. Keo couldn’t hear a goddamn thing as he stumbled away from the door, unslinging the AR as he did so. Or trying to get the weapon free. The ground was moving erratically underneath him, the flat surface having turned into a quicksand of loose rubble and concrete slabs.

Smoke filled the corridor, coming from the source of the blast like hungry fog monsters. They swallowed up the room around him, threatening to choke him to death. He was probably coughing, but he couldn’t hear anything through the ringing in his ears. The entirety of the blast had come from his right.

Or he thought so, anyway.

He couldn’t be sure about anything anymore, including what was happening around him other than the fact he couldn’t breathe or see very well, and there was a very real chance he was coughing his lungs out even as he tried not to slip on all the loose items carpeting the floor.

Christ, where did all the small pebbles come from? Why was there so much—

Flickers of movement in the corners of his eyes, and Keo spun around to face it.

To face them.

Ghouls.

They were slipping through a jagged hole that had appeared in the wall next to the still-standing door. They were coming from the basement on the other side, pruned black flesh dancing against the dimmed hallway lights. Or the ones that were still operating, anyway. Half of the bulbs had burst in the blast.

He couldn’t smell them (both his nostrils were clogged with soot and pulverized concrete) or hear them (his ears were still ringing nonstop), but he could see them just fine. More than fine, actually, because they were only a few feet away.

He stumbled backward, raising the AR even as he continued to struggle to stay upright. God, all he needed right now was to slip and fall on his ass. He wouldn’t make it back up because they’d be all over him.

All two—four—five of them.

And those were just the ones that had managed to squeeze their way through the slit in the wall. Whatever had caused the blast—some kind of explosion; the acrid stench of powder was starting to invade his sense of smell—hadn’t completely taken down the wall. Instead, it had created an opening, one that wasn’t quite big enough for everything on the other side to just pour through unopposed.

Thank God for that. Thank God for that!

Instead, the creatures had to fight their way in—the narrow opening and each other. Black-eyed ghouls grabbed and pulled at one another, trying to be the first one through. He could see the rabid intensity in their eyes—the raging bloodlust—as they zeroed in on him.

Prey. That was what he was. Nothing but prey.

He didn’t so much as hear the AR firing as he felt the rifle moving while he pulled the trigger. The rounds punched through the ghouls, easily piercing their weakened flesh and striking the ones squirming through the opening behind them. He fired in bursts, then another one, swinging left, then right to cover as much ground as possible.

And he continued to retreat even as they flopped inside, clambering over the ones already on the floor. He couldn’t see how many of them there were; it was like trying to see into the deepest, darkest part of the ocean. There was just a black wall of squirming flesh and gleaming black eyes and salivating mouths.

Thank God the hole wasn’t big enough for all of them to come in at once.

Thank God he was hidden behind the door when the blast detonated and was spared the brunt of the explosion.

Thank God he was still breathing, even if every breath was like swallowing a shovel of ash and dirt and shit.

He retreated and fired, but the hallway never seemed to end behind him.

And they kept coming inside, scrambling over the dead, blissfully ignorant of the silver rounds he sent their way. He was going to run out of bullets soon and was mentally preparing himself to have to reload. Once he wasted the remaining two AR mags, he would have to switch to the MP5. Even then, he wasn’t going to be able to take them all down before they reached the shelter door because there were just too many of them.

There were too many of them.

Always too goddamn many of them…

Twenty

“Keo!”

We’re gonna die.

“Yeah?”

Shit. We’re gonna die.

“Hurry!”

I couldn’t protect Lara.

“I am!”

I couldn’t protect my family.

“Faster!”

What good is a man if he can’t protect his own family?

“I’m moving as fast as I can!”

He might as well lie down and die, then.

“Move faster!”

Hell no.

“I’m moving as fast as I can, woman!”

Hell no!

“You need to move faster!”

Hell goddamn no!

“Yes, ma’am!”

Lara might have said something else in reply, but it was lost to the pop-pop-pop of automatic rifle fire and the resulting echoes as the gunshots reverberated up and down the concrete corridor. Keo hadn’t heard those echoes earlier because his ears were ringing, but now that his hearing had cleared up some, it was impossible to miss them. Some, but not altogether.

He ejected the magazine—the second one—and didn’t even bother to reload the AR with the third and final spare. Keo tossed it, grateful to be rid of the heavy weight, and reached for the MP5.

Lara was somewhere behind him, having come back out the door in response to the chaos. He’d been shocked to see her when he turned the corner. Shock and partially pissed off.

What the hell are you doing, woman? Get back inside! he wanted to shout at her but was too busy sucking in air through all the dust and vaporized concrete still trying to push its way into his mouth and down his throat.

He spun around and continued backpedaling as fast as he could without tripping on his own constantly moving legs and falling flat on his ass. If that were to happen, well, then the shit would really have hit the fan.

What? So the shit hasn’t hit the fan yet?

Not yet! Not until I’m dead, pal!

He watched the first couple of ghouls turning the corner in front of him. They were moving too fast, bare feet sliding on the hard pavement as they attempted to round the turn. A couple lost their footing and slid into a wall, a half dozen more got tangled up in each other’s limbs, but a few managed to make it around the bend upright.

Keo shot them, sweeping the submachine gun from left to right with a single burst. He dropped a half dozen with the first volley, then took out five more with the second one. Or he thought it was five, anyway. It was actually just three because two of them popped right back up from the floor and scrambled forward. He fired another burst, 9mm silver-tipped rounds ripping through the creatures like knife through butter.

He emptied the rest of the magazine, taking out another half dozen ghouls while the rest of his bullets pek-pek-pekked! off the thick cement walls. Some ricocheted off the corridor and slammed into ghouls, knocking them down—and they, in turn, swept others off their feet as they fell.

The air had begun to fill with gray-white clouds as sections of the wall loosened from bullet impacts. Not that they did anything to obscure the army of black eyes and fanged teeth coming toward him.

There were so many of them.

There were always so damn many.

So what are you waiting for? Kill them all!

Easier said than done, pal! he thought as the submachine gun was suddenly very light in his hands.

Time to go!

Keo spun around and Lara was right there, next to him.

“Go go go!” she shouted.

He went, went, went, lunging through the open shelter door and immediately turning, throwing his shoulder into the 500-lb blast door, and began pushing it closed. It was like trying to convince a herd of elephants to do something they didn’t want to do; the animals kicked and screamed and fought against him the entire way.

Inch by inch the door moved, but by God, it was so slow.

All the while, the hallway outside was filled with the pop-pop-pop of Lara’s rifle as she unleashed her magazine up the corridor. Ghouls were starting to pile up, covering the floor in a carpet of thick black flesh. Creatures were falling, tripping over twisted limbs jutting up ahead of them.

That’s my girl, he thought as he watched her standing her ground and mowing down ghoul after ghoul. He’d always considered Lara the bravest woman he knew; she was also the toughest too, and pregnant belly or not, she still was.

My girl. How did I get so lucky?

“Lara!” Keo shouted.

She began retreating, but never taking her eyes off the hallway or sending rounds in bursts through the wall of incoming ghouls. She was conserving ammo, picking her targets, and not wasting a single bullet.

Lara was effective, and the creatures kept falling. The ping-ping-ping! of bullets bouncing off flesh and pek-pek-pekking! the concrete that formed the passageway, creating an almost melodic symphony.

Not that it was easy for Keo to hear all of that with his breath crashing against his chest and Lara’s gunfire echoing in his still-ringing, though not as much as before, ears.

“Lara!” he shouted again, this time at the top of his lungs.

She finally turned. There was fear on her face, as there would be on any human being when confronted with the mad rush of flesh and teeth and unnatural eyes. But there was also grit and determination and the kind of bravery only she could show.

“Now, woman, now!” he shouted.

She might have grinned at him as she ran forward, then darted through the door even as he continued pushing it forward, his boots sliding against the floor. Then Lara was next to him, shoving her own shoulder into the door as they simultaneously heaved at the 1,000-lb elephant, forcing it to do something it didn’t want to do, but goddammit, it was going to do it anyway!

The door began to move faster and faster, even as the ghouls got closer and closer—

The clang! as all three inches of 12-gauge stainless steel finally—finally!—made it home, crushing a pair of ghouls in its frame as it did so. Bone was grounded into nothing, and black blood spurted out across the entry hallway. Keo ignored all of that and grabbed, then spun the round door wheel and listened to the gears of the dozen or so locking mechanisms snapping into place one by one by one. It was the sweetest sounds he’d ever heard in his life.

Keo stepped back, sucking in his breath with every step, before finally giving up and falling down to the floor on his ass. Lara did the same beside him, her breath hammering out of her chest. He was having just as much trouble breathing, but he could barely hear it. His ears had cleared up some, but not entirely.

Lara was wiping at black sludge oozing down her right cheek. More of the stuff dripped from the front of her vest and pants legs. Some of them were from the ghouls that had been crushed by the door. He looked down at similar liquids clinging to him. He brushed at them but only succeeded in smearing them over more of his vest. He gave up trying after that.

Neither one of them said anything. They were too tired, too busy trying to catch their breath. The entire thing hadn’t taken more than a few minutes.

No, not even that.

Seconds.

That was all it’d taken. It’d been seconds from the time they punched the hole into the wall (Who the hell did that? Ghouls? No way. Ghouls don’t use explosives!) and the creatures began swarming inside. Then he was running and shooting, and Lara was there as soon as he turned the corner.

Seconds.

That was it.

All of that had just taken seconds…

“You okay?” Keo finally said.

Lara nodded. She was already reloading her AR, placing the empty magazine down on the floor next to her as if she had every intention of retrieving it later for reuse. “You?”

“I’m okay. Thanks to you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not telling my baby I left his or her father out there to get eaten by ghouls.”

Keo chuckled. “We definitely don’t want that.”

They exchanged a smile.

“What happened?” Lara asked. “I heard an explosion…”

“Someone blew a hole in the basement wall next to the door.”

“So it was an explosion?”

“Yeah.”

“Ghouls know how to do that?”

“Not the last time I checked.”

Lara stared at him for a moment, digesting what he’d said.

Finally, she said, “Collaborators?”

“Must be,” Keo said. He pulled himself up from the floor with a groan, then spent a few seconds reloading the submachine gun. “Ghouls don’t use explosives.”

“Babe,” Lara said. When he looked down, she was holding up both hands to him. “A little help?”

He grinned and pulled her up. Then they turned around and leaned closer against the door.

They couldn’t hear anything. Not through 500 pounds of 3-inch-thick blast door material, anyway.

It wasn’t just the door that was built to withstand everything from a nuclear blast to every type of end-of-the-world scenario imaginable. The walls that surrounded the shelter were made of similarly tough material. Unlike the hallway outside, it wouldn’t be quite as easy to blast a hole into the shelter. Not that it was impossible, from his experience with bunker-busting weapons, but it was going to take a lot more than whatever had made a hole in the wall outside.

A hell of a lot more.

“You guys okay?” a voice asked from behind them.

Keo and Lara looked back at Wilson and Thuy. The two girls had come into the entry room from the connecting common area without either Keo or Lara noticing, probably because they were still, even now, breathing too hard to hear footsteps.

Lara nodded at the girls. “We’re okay. Everything’s okay.”

For now, Keo thought but didn’t say out loud.

“Will that door hold?” Thuy asked.

“Yes,” Lara said, before looking over at Keo.

He knew what she wanted, and he nodded, before saying to the girls, “It’ll hold. We’ll be safe in here.”

But he thought, I hope.

* * *

Bunker had slept through the breach in the hallway. Keo couldn’t imagine how that was even possible. There was the initial explosion, then all the gunfire. Even in here, with the thick walls and door, the noise would have been impossible for him to sleep through. Then again, he wasn’t doped up like Bunker was.

“What did you give him, babe?” Keo asked Lara.

He was washing his throat down with a canteen of water, having splashed his face and used a wet towel to wipe the ghoul blood off as much of his clothes as he could. Lara had done the same, though she looked a lot more refreshed than he did. He wasn’t sure how that was possible, though.

“He wouldn’t stay down, so I had to give him enough to keep him down,” Lara said. “He’s not going to wake up until tomorrow.”

“Was he really that bad?”

“He was really hurt, Keo. He lost a lot of blood. I’m still not sure how he got back here on his own.”

“He seemed okay back at the carnival.”

“He was putting on a front.”

“And yet, the guy still managed to shoot Carlos off a 100-foot tower.”

“People can do a lot of incredible things when lives are on the line. You should know that more than anyone, mister.”

“What can we do?” Wilson asked.

The teenager was standing at the infirmary’s door with Thuy, looking in on them. The two had followed Keo and Lara in. To be honest, Keo hadn’t realized they were even still there until now.

Wilson had her Henry rifle, but Thuy was unarmed. Keo still didn’t quite trust her enough to give her a gun even now. He’d also locked the vault room just in case she proved his instincts correct. With just one good arm, he wasn’t too worried about her forcefully wrestling the rifle from Wilson or weapons from any of them.

“I need you in the entry room with that rifle,” Keo said to Wilson. “You stay there until I give you permission to leave.” He picked up a radio from the nightstand next to Bunker’s cot and tossed it to the kid. “Keep this turned on and on you at all times. If you even think that door might open, you squawk. Got it?”

Wilson nodded, her lips pursed in a serious I won’t let you down expression. “Got it.”

“Go on, then.”

The teenager left, leaving Thuy behind. The Asian-American stared at Keo but didn’t say anything. She waited.

Keo let her wait.

“What about me?” Thuy finally said after about thirty seconds of silence.

“Go back to the common area,” Keo said.

“And do what?”

“Watch the kids.”

“That’s it?”

“Is that too much for you?”

“No. I was just…”

“What?’

“I can do more than that.”

“Can you?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means what you think it means,” Keo said. “Go back to the common area until I say otherwise.”

Thuy’s face flushed red and he fully expected an argument, but the woman surprised him by turning around and leaving without another word.

“That was a little harsh,” Lara said when Thuy was gone.

Keo looked back at her. “She put a gun to your head. I’m not trusting that woman with anything that even resembles a weapon. Which reminds me to restrict her from the kitchen. We have cutlery in there.”

Lara rolled her eyes. “Really?”

“You’re damn right, really.”

“Look, I agree with you, about everything she did and not trusting her. But you didn’t have to treat her like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like she’s the enemy.”

“She’s the enemy until she proves she’s not.”

“And how is she going to do that if you don’t give her a chance?” Lara stood up from the chair she’d been sitting on and walked over to him. She slid her arms around his waist and pressed her head against his chest. “Look, I know what she did. What she tried to do. I’m never going to forget that. But right now, we have to treat her as an asset instead of a liability.”

He smiled. “Asset? Were you in the CIA before all of this and kept that information from me?”

Lara grinned up at him. “I’ve seen spy movies, mister.”

She stood up on her tiptoes to kiss him on the lips. It wasn’t a quick peck, either, but a long, lingering kiss that reminded him why he thought she was the sexiest woman he’d ever met and would do just about anything for her.

When she finally released his lips, he couldn’t help the stupid smile on his face. “What was that for?”

“Just wanted to remind you that I love you.”

He put both arms around her waist and pulled her tighter against him. “In that case, I think you can do better than that.”

“Oh, barf,” a voice said.

They both glanced back at Bunker, blinking at them like a man trying to swim out of a deep, deep sleep. He looked as if he could barely keep both eyelids open at the same time.

“What the hell are you doing awake, Bunker?” Lara asked. “I gave you enough sedatives to put down a horse for a week.”

“You comparing me to a horse?” Bunker said. “Besides, listening to you two makes me wanna throw up, even while unconscious.”

The rancher made an attempt to sit up, but he might as well be trying to lift a fallen house off his chest. He didn’t even make it a few inches before giving up and lying right back down with an annoyed grunt.

“Shit, I’m tired,” Bunker said. “What did you give me exactly?”

Lara untangled herself from Keo and walked over to him. “What it took to keep you off your feet. Though now I see that I should have doubled the dose.”

“Why’d you go and do a fool thing like that?”

“Because you kept trying to leave. And falling down.”

“Oh.” He looked from Lara, checking his vitals, to Keo, standing in the middle of the room. “Holy hell. Look at you two. What were you guys doing, frolicking around in ghoul shit while I was checking out Never Never Land?”

Twenty-One

“Who blew up the wall?” Bunker asked.

“How the hell should I know?” Keo said.

“But someone blew up the wall? It didn’t, like, fall down on its own?”

“No. Someone definitely blew up the wall.”

“Well, it couldn’t have been ghouls, right?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Ghouls know how to use explosives now?”

“Maybe.”

“Lots of maybes.”

“Too many maybes.”

“Definitely too many maybes. You got any confirmations for me?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. Nice talking to you as always, Keo. Glad I woke up for this conversation.”

They were gathered in the common area, with Bunker sitting at the kitchen table with his AR rifle spread out in front of him as he meticulously cleaned it. For a man who only had one good arm—his left was in a sling—the rancher was surprisingly adept at using the brush, oils, and cloth to get into every nook and cranny of his weapon. Keo was good at maintaining his own firearms, but Bunker was on a whole other level.

The rest were scattered about, with the door connecting the common area to the entry hallway—and their last line of defense, the blast door—opened so they could see it at all times. Wilson remained on watch with a radio, not that she needed the two-way since they could see her just fine through the opening.

Thuy had taken out a box of Scrabble from a stack of board games they’d found in one of the supply closets and was playing with Abby and Gummy. It didn’t look like a terribly exciting game, with CAT, HAT, and other three-letter words (with the occasional four-letter ones thrown in for good measure) being the order of the day. More than anything, it kept their minds off what was out there, so neither Keo nor Lara disturbed them.

Bunker, for his part, spent his time eating beef jerky and slices of bread between cleaning his rifle and handgun. He looked refreshed, like he’d just woken up from a very long slumber instead of the few hours he’d gotten.

It was past midnight, and the ghouls hadn’t made any attempts to breach the main door or its walls. Keo wasn’t sure if that was because whoever the creatures had working for them (he had a suspicion he knew who it was, but he didn’t want to say it out loud) had decided they couldn’t blast their way into the shelter like they had back in the tunnel. He wished the lack of action made him feel better, but it didn’t. There’d been nothing last time, too…until there was.

After about ten minutes or so inside the room where they kept all the communications gear, Lara finally came outside. All he had to do was look at her face to know whether she’d succeeded in doing what she’d gone in there in the first place to do.

Bunker saw it, too. “That’s not a face that screams success.”

“What happened?” Keo asked her.

Lara sat down at the table between him and Bunker. “I couldn’t reach Black Tide. All I got was static.”

“Nothing at all?”

She shook her head. “I tried every frequency, but I couldn’t get any signals.”

“Ironic. We could have called for help when we had the chance, but didn’t. Now, when we want to…”

Lara pursed a smile. “I hate irony.”

Bunker stopped working on his guns and leaned back slightly. “They must have knocked down the antenna.”

“Where is it?” Keo asked.

“About a mile east. The McCanns built the tower themselves, ran the wires all the way down here.”

“Is it the only way to get a signal out of here?”

“All the way from down here? Yeah. There’s a reason those things can’t get in at us. It’s all those pounds of earth, concrete, and steel in the way.”

“They can’t get in, and we can’t get anything out.”

“Well, it’s not impossible, but it’d be pretty difficult.”

“How would they know about the antenna?”

Bunker shrugged. “Hell if I know. Maybe the same way they knew how to blast their way into the hallway outside.” He leaned forward and went back to work. “We know who it was that blew up the wall, don’t we?” He snapped his AR’s parts back together, having polished every piece until they were immaculate. He stood the rifle up and fixed the scope onto the rail. “It’s Jose.”

“Jose?” Lara said. She had turned to look at the kids playing Scrabble across the room from them, and now turned back. “What makes you think it’s Jose?” When Bunker didn’t answer her immediately, Lara glanced over at Keo. “You think it’s Jose, too?”

“Maybe,” Keo said.

“Yeah, he does,” Bunker said.

“Keo…?” Lara said.

Keo nodded. “It’s probably Jose.”

“It’s definitely Jose,” Bunker said with absolute certainty.

“Is this because of what happened with Carlos?” Lara asked.

“Partially,” Keo said. “But also because Carlos was a demolitions man in the Mexican Army. Stands to reason he’d have taught his little brother a thing or two about explosives in the years since.”

“Jose,” Lara said, almost as if she just needed to say the name out loud to make it real. “Are you guys sure it has to be him?”

“No, but it’s definitely him,” Bunker said.

“How can you say ‘no,’ then ‘it’s definitely him’ in the same breath?”

“What, that’s not allowed?”

“No. It has to be one or the other.”

Bunker shrugged. “Then yes, it’s definitely him. Better?”

“Better.” She looked back at Keo again. “You knew?”

“I suspected,” Keo said.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It doesn’t matter who it was.”

“How can you say that? Jose is our friend.”

“So was Carlos, and you know what happened with him.”

Keo looked across the room at the girls, sitting on the floor around the board game. If any of them had overheard the conversation, they didn’t react. Then again, none of them had ever met Carlos or his brother Jose, so the names didn’t mean anything to him. Keo wished he had that kind of response, but the truth was, he was disappointed with the brothers. Carlos then, and now Jose.

“He’s doing it for his family,” Bunker said. He laid the AR down and finished up with his Glock. “Can’t say I blame him.”

“No one blames him,” Keo said. “That doesn’t mean we lie down for him, either.”

“No, it doesn’t. I’m just saying, can’t blame the guy.”

“You’re talking about Jose like he’s the enemy,” Lara said. “He’s not.”

Keo gazed somberly back at her. “Yeah, he is, Lara. Yeah, he is.”

* * *

He hadn’t lied to Lara: Jose was now the enemy, and Keo would cross him off if he got the chance. Like the man’s brother had told Keo (“I am thinking about my family. I’m always thinking about my family, Keo. First, second, and last.”), protecting his family was all that mattered to Keo now.

First, second, and last, right.

Carlos was right about that, if not much else. The man should have brought his family over to Bunker’s, but he’d been too stubborn. Keo wasn’t sure if he entirely blamed the guy, though. Carlos had survived The Purge when so many others didn’t, and he’d made it through the years since with his family intact. He’d even grown that family. So he probably did think, with some confidence, that he could brave this, too.

He was wrong, as it turned out.

And I’m not making that mistake. No fucking way.

So yes, if Keo saw Jose trying to help the ghouls into the shelter, he’d shoot the man without a second thought. Hell, if Jose was here at all, he’d shoot the man, because there would be no reason for him to be here, tonight.

Sorry, Jose. If I see you, you’re a dead man, and that’s all there is to it.

But Jose didn’t show himself, and nothing else did, either, for the next few hours. Keo was left to watch the girls move on from Scrabble to Candyland, while Bunker walked around the shelter to make sure he hadn’t missed anything in the years since he took over the ranch from the long-missing McCanns. The man had gone through the place for the fifth time and found nothing. As many rooms as the underground facilities had, it was still limited to just six rooms.

Lara, meanwhile, filled up on the strips of bacon she had cooked up a few hours ago with the propane tanks. In the back of his mind, Keo wondered where they were going to get their bacon from now on, without Carlos and Jose to supply them. Most of the pigs were either scattered or, more likely, already eaten by the ghouls last night.

“You think they’re still out there? In the hallway?” Lara asked as she forced herself to eat another strip of bacon. She knew as well as he did that they all had to keep eating, if just to stay ready in case the night didn’t go as planned.

“I don’t know,” Keo said. “I guess it’ll depend on how long it wants to keep playing.”

“You really got on this thing’s bad side, didn’t you?”

“I don’t think it was anything I did. I think it was just looking for a playmate. I just happened to run across its path at the wrong place and the wrong time.”

Lara drank a glass of milk. “You really need to stop doing that, sweetheart. It’s not healthy.”

“Yeah, I’m working on that.” He reached over and put a hand over hers, and squeezed. Then, probably more serious than he’d intended, “I’ll do everything I have to in order to keep you safe. You know that.”

She pursed a smile. “I know you will.” She put her other hand over his. “That’s why I love you.”

He returned her smile. “That’s the only reason?”

“Well, you’re pretty good in bed, too, so that doesn’t hurt.”

“It’s not for my looks?”

“Honey, another couple of scars, and you’re going to look more like Frankenstein’s monster more than Frankenstein.”

“Ouch.”

“But I’ll still love you.”

They exchanged a brief smile, just before someone tapped his shoulder.

Keo glanced over to find Gummy standing behind him, her oval-shaped face almost beaming underneath the harsh LED lights. He was always shocked at how young she looked, or how she almost managed to have something on her cheeks and chin—this time there was some grease and pieces of bacon. It was almost as if the girl purposefully went around looking for ways to dirty herself.

“She’s gone,” the girl said.

Keo stared at her. He wasn’t sure if he was surprised to hear her talking or that she was talking to him. She’d always kept to herself or spoken only to her big sister. Lara had gotten her talking a few times, but even she admitted the girl had only said a few words to her.

Lara, sitting across the table from Keo, looked just as surprised to see Gummy standing next to him. “Who’s gone, honey?” she asked.

“The other lady,” Gummy said.

Keo turned around in his seat. “What other lady?”

“The other lady,” Gummy repeated.

Keo glanced at Lara with a Do you know what this crazy kid is talking about? look.

Lara shook her head and stood up, then walked the short distance to where Gummy was and crouched in front of her. “Who are you talking about, honey? What other lady?”

“The other one,” Gummy said.

“What other one?”

“The one that was playing with us,” the girl said.

She pointed at where they had been playing the Candyland board game. Except there was only Abby sitting there, lining up the colorful gingerbread men in a row. The other girl seemed oblivious to everything going on around her, or that she was the only one “playing” at the moment.

“Thuy,” Keo said. “She’s talking about Thuy.” He stood up and glanced around. “Where did she go?”

Lara did the same. “I don’t know.” She looked back down at Gummy. “Where did she go, sweetheart?”

Gummy turned and pointed at the door that separated the common area from the entry room. Keo wasn’t sure who had closed the door, because it wasn’t him. He distinctively remembered telling everyone to keep it open.

“Dammit,” Keo whispered, and began running toward the door.

“Keo,” Lara said from behind him.

He glanced back at her. “Stay there!”

“Be careful.”

He nodded and turned around—

—just as the door opened before he even reached it, and Wilson stumbled through. She was holding onto the lever with one hand. One bloody hand. Her other hand was equally covered in a coat of red paint as she clutched to her side.

The teenager’s face was a mask of pain. She could barely contain the scream Keo imagined was welling up inside her when she gasped out, “The door. She’s trying to open the door, Keo!”

Wilson’s bloodied hand slipped off the lever and she fell to the floor, pushing the door open at the same time. Keo stared through the opening and into the entry hallway, and across it.

Thuy was where he was afraid she would be. Her back was to him, and she was turning the round submarine wheel with her hand. She only had one good arm to work with, so it was slower than it should have been, and the effort was clearly taking a lot out of her.

There was a bloody knife on the floor next to Thuy’s feet. Like Wilson, Thuy’s right hand was bloody, but it wasn’t nearly as dramatically thick as the red that coated Wilson’s. And there, Wilson’s rifle, on the floor.

“Thuy!” Keo shouted even as his hand stabbed down for his holstered sidearm. “Stop!”

The woman did stop—just long enough to look over her shoulder at him. Even across the distance he could see how wide her eyes were, giving her the appearance of a feral animal. A desperate, feral animal.

“I have to!” Thuy shouted back as she returned to turning the wheel with her one arm. “It won’t let Abby and me go! It’ll never let us go! This is the only way! I have to give it what it wants! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

She was still shouting “I’m so sorry!” when Keo ran toward her.

A door into one of the private quarters opened to his left, and Bunker stepped through. “What’s with all the commotion out here?”

“Thuy’s trying to open the door!” Lara shouted from somewhere behind Keo.

“What the hell?” Bunker said.

Keo didn’t have time to fill him in. He ran past Bunker and jumped over Wilson’s crumpled form on the floor and landed in the entry hallway. He hated to do that—acting as if Wilson’s currently bloody state didn’t matter—but there was no choice. He had to reach Thuy. He had to reach her now.

Thuy had stopped turning the wheel, because she’d already unlocked it, and was now pulling, pulling it with everything she had. Which wasn’t very much. Besides the fact that she was a small woman and only had one good arm to work with, the door wouldn’t have been a last line of defense if it’d been easy to open by a lone, injured woman.

He was halfway across the room, consuming ten of the twenty yards as fast as he could, even while he raised the SIG Sauer and took aim.

“Stop!” he shouted. “This is your last chance!”

But Thuy didn’t stop. She continued to pull, both legs fighting against the smooth metal floor, her face straining. Maybe she might have gotten the door opened faster before he could reach her if she’d had both arms, but that was a moot point.

Even so, the door continued to open—if slowly.

So, so slowly.

Keo lined up the iron sights on Thuy.

“Stop!” he shouted.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she pulled even harder.

Keo fired, and the round entered her right temple and burst out of her left, and splattered everything in-between against the cold steel metal frame like a grotesque version of a Jackson Pollock painting, only with more muted red and black and brown.

He lowered the gun and kept running even as Thuy let go of the round wheel and she slid down to the floor. If there was any life left in her body, it faded quickly.

The door behind her continued to open.

What the fuck?

Not just opening, but swinging open at an even faster rate.

How was that possible? It was so heavy. It had nearly killed him and Lara to close it earlier, but to look at it now, he’d think the damn thing weighed next to nothing and was moving on springs.

Unless…there was something opening it that was stronger than both he and Lara combined.

Fuuuuuuuck.

Keo slid to a stop five yards from the door as it swung all the way open, crashing into the wall with a loud clannnnnnng! that echoed and vibrated through every inch of the underground shelter.

It strode through the opened door as if it owned the place.

Blue eyes glowed, dazzling underneath the shelter’s bright LED lights.

Razor-thin lips, like sentient creatures, wrapped into a joker-like smile that bordered on maniacal glee along the lower half of its unnaturally elongated face.

“Round three,” it hissed.

Twenty-Two

Five yards.

Five measly yards.

That was all that separated Keo from reaching the door and pushing it back into place and keeping everything that was supposed to be out there, out there. Except he couldn’t make up the distance in time.

And now there was a blue-eyed ghoul standing inside the shelter, and there was just five yards separating them.

Just five measly yards.

The creature could have made up that distance before Keo could even breathe. Before he could even start the process of breathing.

It was fast.

It was that fast.

But it just stood there, looking back at him, with that impossible grin (Was that a grin, though? Or was it something else? Something that was only an approximation of a grin, but wasn’t quite one, and would never, ever be?) on the smooth, hairless dark black flesh it called a face.

That’s not a face, either. That’s not even close to being a fucking face.

It stood in front of the wide-open door, Thuy’s lifeless body on the floor next to the twigs it called legs. He’d done that. Keo had killed Thuy. He’d shot her in the head, and she’d gone down like she was supposed to.

…shot her in the head.

Keo raised the SIG Sauer.

One shot. That was all it would take. One shot in the creature’s brain, and this was over.

That was all it would take.

He aimed.

Its freakish grin widened, the corners turning up even higher. (Was that even possible?)

What the hell are you so happy about, you piece of shit?

The answer came when the darkness on the other side of the open door began moving. At first Keo thought he was looking at a black ocean, but it was, in fact, a wall of skeletal figures as the ghouls outside came alive and surged forward on command.

They flooded in through the opening, moving like one continuous sentient entity instead of creatures made of deformed clacking bones and black flesh. They fell through the door, squeezing in between the limited space, fighting to be the first ones inside. Extra limbs wrapped around the blue-eyed ghoul, embracing it, pushing through, and through.

Ghouls forced themselves into the entry hallway one after another. They looked like fish flopping on the smooth floor, spreading their stench through the air until they reached all the way across the room and grabbed a hold of Keo’s senses.

He stumbled back, the gun bucking in his hand.

The blue-eyed ghoul turned its head, then its body, and Keo’s rounds sailed harmlessly past it…and struck the ones behind it.

Ghouls fell, but other black eyes simply replaced them.

Too many. There were always too goddamn many of them!

Keo backpedaled faster, switching his fire to the ones that had already made it into the room. They were bounding across the space toward him like rabid animals, baring fanged teeth that glinted disgusting yellow underneath the lights.

He shot the closest ghoul in the chest, heard the ping! as the round punched through its sunken chest and ricocheted off the floor before striking another one as it was leaping in the air. It fell like a dead bird, but before it’d even gotten the chance to settle on the floor, two—three—five ghouls were already trampling its lifeless corpse under their feet.

Keo was moving backwards at record speed now, all the while firing nonstop.

Bang!

Another ghoul fell.

Bang!

Two more this time.

Bang! Bang!

He stopped counting. Stopped looking.

And just pulled the trigger again and again.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Bang! Bang! Bang!

And they kept coming even while the blue-eyed creature stood at the door watching him, that fanatical grin on its face. It could still have taken him right then and there—made up the space in a heartbeat—but it didn’t.

Instead, it stood and watched, and enjoyed every second of Keo’s futility.

Because this was futile. There were simply too many of the Black Eyes, and Keo didn’t have unlimited ammo. Even if he did, the act of reloading would have cost him seconds between each magazine swap. And sooner or later, the seconds would add up. The numbers would go against him. The—

“Stop messing around, will you?” a voice (Bunker!) shouted from behind him.

Keo holstered the SIG Sauer and reached for the MP5.

“Today, hoss, today!” Bunker shouted.

Keo turned—and Bunker was right there, standing just a few feet to his left. The rancher had his AR in his hands. Both hands, because he had removed the sling off his left arm in order to raise the rifle to take aim.

“Git!” Bunker shouted at him even as he opened fire.

The brap-brap-brap! of Bunker’s AR unleashing its full-auto load was deafening, the gunshots echoing off the metal walls like Mini Cannon firecrackers. Keo’s ears were ringing as he ran past Bunker, somehow managing to avoid the empty brass casings flying out of the rifle’s ejection port as they filled the air in arcing waves.

He ran toward the open door in front of him, looking through it at Lara. She was trying to pick Wilson off the floor with Gummy’s help. Lara glanced up and met his eyes, and he saw the desperation on her face. Maybe she could see the same thing mirroring on his.

There were no signs of Abby, and at the moment, Keo didn’t have the luxury to care where she was.

“The vault room!” Keo shouted. “Get into the vault room!”

Lara nodded and dragged Wilson up to her feet. The teenager let out a scream of pain. Or, at least, Keo thought she did. The truth was he couldn’t hear anything over the roar of Bunker’s rifle firing nonstop behind him. Hell, he wasn’t even sure Lara had heard his shouts earlier, and all he really had to go on that she had was the nod she’d given him.

Keo spun around when he finally reached the door, but he didn’t go through it yet. Thank God he was wearing boots, because its soles gripped onto the metal surface of the floor and kept him from slipping on Wilson’s blood that caked a generous portion of it. Christ, the kid had bled out a lot.

He spun around just as Bunker’s rifle went silent. By the time Keo had finished his turn, the rancher was running toward him, reloading as he went. For a man who had his left arm in a sling almost the entire night, Bunker looked surprisingly unaffected by his wounded shoulder. Either that, or he was putting on a hell of a front.

“Go go go!” Keo shouted.

Bunker went, jumping through the open door as Keo focused on the entry hallway again.

For a second—just a split second—Keo had allowed himself to think that maybe Bunker had managed to fall the Blue Eyes, that it was down on the floor instead of—

It was still there, grinning back at him from the other side of the hallway.

Fuck you! Keo thought but didn’t waste the energy to actually put into sound as he lifted the MP5 and unloaded half the magazine in one pull.

He had no choice, because the ghouls were almost on top of him. Bunker had felled dozens—maybe dozens upon dozens, it was hard to tell with so many of the squirming black flesh and domed heads blinking underneath the bright lights—but not all of them.

It wasn’t even close to being all of them.

Keo filled the entry hallway with 9mm silver-tipped Parabellum bullets, swinging his fire left and right. He could just barely make out the ping-ping-ping! of rounds bouncing off the shelter’s metal floor and walls and ceiling and ghoul bones over the mechanical whirring of the submachine gun as it fired.

His ears were ringing, partially from Bunker’s gunfire, and now his own. The shelter’s construction made sure that every noise was given a proper echo, and for a brief couple of seconds, that was all Keo could hear—gunfire and the squealing of ghouls as they dropped in a never-ending wave before him.

God, there were so many of them. Why were there always so damn many of them?

By now he’d lost sight of the blue-eyed ghoul, but he knew it was back there somewhere, at the other end of the room. Keo couldn’t see it because all he could focus on was the tide of Black Eyes rushing forward even as he finished off the last of his 9mm rounds.

Too many. Too many!

“Go go go!” Bunker’s voice, behind him.

Keo spun and didn’t have very far to go to dive through the door and into the common area. Bunker immediately slid into his place and opened up, even as Keo grabbed the door and waited.

“Come on!” Keo shouted.

Bunker stopped shooting long enough to step back and through the door. Keo pushed and the steel door clanged! home, Keo jerked down the lever to lock it.

Almost immediately there was the heavy but dull thump-thump-thump! as ghouls reached and began beating on the door on the other side, their assault like gunfire instead of flesh and bone.

Keo stumbled back even as Bunker ejected his half-spent magazine and slammed home a new one. He glanced over at Lara and Gummy as the two women were halfway across the common area, on their way to the vault room, while doing everything possible to keep Wilson upright between them. It didn’t help that Gummy was much shorter than either one of them, and she didn’t so much as hold her sister up as she sort of clung to her leg, while Wilson kept an arm around her shoulder. Keo wasn’t sure who was holding who up at the moment.

Thump-thump-thump! from behind him.

He ignored it and looked for—

There. Abby. The girl was where Keo last saw her—sitting on the floor next to the Candyland board game, still lining up gingerbread men in rows. She was oblivious to what was happening around her.

“Abby!” Lara shouted. “Abby, come on!”

The girl didn’t even look up or acknowledge Lara.

Thump-thump-thump!

“Abby!” Lara shouted again.

“Forget her!” Keo said.

He ran over to Lara, slinging the reloaded MP5. He grabbed Wilson and pulled her away from both women and up into his arms. Wilson let out a pained grunt but clenched her teeth and kept the rest in. Keo could see how much all of this was hurting her, but she was being a trooper about it. Her clothes were soaked in blood, but Lara had, in the thirty or so seconds she’d been given, put a compress against her side where she’d been stabbed by Thuy and duct-taped it into place.

Thump-thump-thump!

Lara, meanwhile, was running over to Abby. “Come on, Abby, we have to go.”

Like before, the girl never looked up. That is, if she was even aware of Lara’s presence. It was if a switch had been triggered and she was gone.

Just…gone.

“Abby,” Lara said.

“Lara, forget about her, and come on!” Keo said.

But Lara couldn’t do that. She snatched the kid up from the floor. Abby didn’t exactly fight her, but she didn’t make it easy, either, and struggled against Lara’s grip. But Lara was stronger, and she held on.

“Dammit, woman,” Keo said.

“Shut up, and let’s go,” Lara said as she half-carried and half-dragged Abby past Keo and into the vault room.

“Go, kid, I got your sister,” Keo said to Gummy, who reluctantly followed Lara inside.

Keo, with Wilson in his arms, glanced back at Bunker as the rancher walked calmly toward him. Behind Bunker, the thump-thump-thump! of ghouls beating on the door continued unabated. They were going to keep at it forever if they had to, but Keo didn’t think they had to. The Black Eyes would never be able to open that door, but it wasn’t just them on the other side.

“That’s not gonna hold, is it?” Bunker said, glancing back at the door.

“Fuck no,” Keo said. “It’ll open it when it feels like it.”

“So why hasn’t it?”

“Because this is a game. It likes making grand entrances.”

“Fuck this thing,” Bunker said.

“Yeah, fuck it,” Keo said.

“Guys, shouldn’t we be running?” Wilson asked. She was staring at the door, unable to look away.

Thump-thump-thump!

Keo turned and followed Bunker to the vault room.

“You know there’s only one way out, right?” Bunker said. “And it’s—” He glanced down at his watch “—still dark on the other side? We’re a long way from morning, hombre.”

Thump-thump-thump!

“I don’t think we have a choice, Bunker,” Keo said.

“Um, where are we going?” Wilson asked.

“All right, let’s do this, then,” Bunker said.

“Guys?” Wilson said.

Thump-thump-thump!

Both Keo and Bunker ignored her question and headed into the vault room.

Lara had opened both vaults and taken out a pile of weapons, ammo, and supplies and laid them on a counter. The two girls were also inside with her. Gummy looked like she was ready to go now, but Abby’s face remained stoned. Keo wondered if the kid even knew about what her sister had done, or what had become of her? Was the ghoul that had commanded Thuy to act also inside her head, too?

“I have to!” Thuy had said, with that look of desperation on her face. “It won’t let Abby and me go! It’ll never let us go! This is the only way! I have to give it what it wants! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

He didn’t know what had happened, and maybe he didn’t want to know. He didn’t like the idea of a Blue Eyes being inside his head, which was exactly what had happened to Thuy and Abby. Maybe it was better for the younger sister because Jackson hadn’t been as malicious, but then again…

Keo put Wilson down and closed the vault room door. He locked it, silencing the thump-thump-thump! from the other door. Bunker, meanwhile, had walked to the door at the back that led into the escape tunnel. He opened the security slot, peered through it to make sure there was nothing waiting for them, before declaring it safe and opening the door.

The rancher grabbed some weapons and supplies off the pile Lara had placed for them and glanced over at Keo. “We going or what?”

“You first,” Keo said. “Lead the way.”

“Follow the leader, kids,” Bunker said, and slipped into the semi-dark tunnel first.

As Bunker disappeared, there was a very loud boom! from behind them—coming from the common area.

Wilson and Gummy started at the noise, both girls shaking. Keo wasn’t sure if they were more scared of what was outside the vault room or what was waiting for them inside the escape tunnel.

“Stick to Bunker, and everything will be fine,” Keo said to them.

He wasn’t sure if the sisters believed him, but they followed orders anyway. Wilson limped into the tunnel with her sister’s help, though again, Keo wasn’t quite sure who was holding who up at the moment.

Lara remained behind, one hand holding onto Abby’s as if she were afraid the girl might try to run off.

“You too,” Keo said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Lara, shotgun in hand, stared intently back at him.

Another boom! from the other side of the door startled Lara, and she jumped slightly. So did Abby, which surprised Keo. It was the first emotion the girl had shown all night.

“I’ll be right behind you,” Keo said to Lara again.

“Don’t be too long,” she said.

“I won’t.”

She disappeared into the tunnel after the others, dragging Abby with her.

Keo bypassed the piles Lara had put on the counter and went to the racks. He looked over the selection even as there was another very loud boom! from the common area.

Then, less than three seconds later, BOOM!

That last one was followed by the sound of something heavy and metal crashing to the floor, the impact echoing off, seemingly, every inch of the shelter.

Time to make the fucking donuts.

Twenty-Three

It’s a game. That’s all this is. It’s just a fucking game.

So relax.

Pfft!

The 9mm Parabellum round hit the middle of the ghoul’s face, where its nose used to be, and exited out the back with a sickening twack! that sounded more like someone stepping on a wet bag than a bullet punching through one side of a skull and out the other. The ghoul’s head snapped back, and its body collapsed to the concrete ground where it lay still.

Yeah, right. Relax.

Keo continued moving backwards, waiting for the next one to show itself. He’d expected a swarm of them, but they were coming at him one at a time for whatever reason. No, that wasn’t true. He knew exactly why they were jumping out of the shadows at him one by one. Because that was how it wanted this to go down. It was playing with him. Toying with him. Getting off on sacrificing one ghoul at a time.

Fuck you, motherfucker. Fuck you and whatever ghoul you rode in on.

Pfft-pfft! as the Daewoo K7 bucked in Keo’s hands.

Both gunshots should have crashed like thunder in the close confines of the tunnel, but the submachine gun’s built-in suppressor kept the noise to a much lower decibel than it otherwise would have generated. It wasn’t silenced by any means, but it was a hell of a lot better than a normal gunshot, which would have battered his eardrums.

The two ghouls he’d shot collapsed and stopped moving, their deformed limbs flashing underneath the round beam of the tactical flashlight he held in his left hand, pressed against the side of the K7’s barrel. The ejected bullet casings on the floor gleamed like gold nuggets against the yellow glow of the light sticks he wore in belt loops along the front of his vest. The empty cartridges disappeared back into the shadows along with the bodies as Keo took a few more steps backward.

The lights had gone out in the tunnel—and Keo guessed, the entire shelter beyond it—a minute or so after he’d started after the others. Sadistic could have let them race to the other side with the lights on, but then what would have been the fun of that? That was the whole point of this, after all.

Besides the narrow beam of the flashlight (Should have grabbed a bigger flashlight, dammit.), Keo had the light sticks to see with. He’d always had good night eyes, but there was no substitute for actual lights. He had more of the sticks, but activating them would have just been overkill. The two he had on generated a constant yellow halo immediately around him, moving as he moved.

Keo retreated slowly, purposefully, his flashlight beam moving along the curving tunnel in front of him. Which meant the parts of the tunnel behind him were curving as well. The ghouls seemed to know how to stay hidden and never attacked until the corridor straightened out and they couldn’t hide behind the occasional bends anymore.

Keo’s present universe was teeming with the stink of living, moving ghouls. Like spoiled cabbage, mixed with week-old grease, and dripped in the decaying blood of a graveyard. The only reason he hadn’t vomited yet was because he was too busy moving, too busy staying alive.

…too busy staying alive…

He continued to backtrack one foot at a time because that was all he could do. He couldn’t just turn and run. He’d smack right into the others—Bunker, Lara, and the girls. Among them was Wilson, who was limping along with the others. Keo thought he could smell the girl’s wound in the stale air around him, but that was probably giving himself too much credit considering what other, more pungent odors were floating around.

The tunnel in front of him was still curving, curving…

He could hear the shuffling of shoes against the hard and unyielding floor behind him, evidence that the others hadn’t encountered anything yet that had halted their progress to the other side. Despite the ten-feet length and five-feet width, the passageway felt very claustrophobic. Maybe it had a little something to do with what else was in the tunnel with them.

Yeah, that’s probably it.

Keo didn’t know for sure that Sadistic was the one that had taken out the generator. For all he knew, it might not have been something at all, but someone that had plunged them into total darkness. He hadn’t forgotten about Jose. Was he in the thick of those ghouls right now, following him up the tunnel? Keo hadn’t spotted the rancher back in the shelter, but then, he’d been so focused on not getting trampled—

Three ghouls this time, racing out of the blackness, their eyes flickering in the beam of light that danced across their shriveled faces.

Pfft! Pfft! as the first two fell sideways, while the third kept coming—

Pfft! as it, too, seemed to trip on an invisible wire and pitched forward, and lay still less than a foot from Keo’s boots. Its black flesh was rendered almost green in the yellow glow of the light sticks.

Keo scooted away from it and continued backtracking.

Easy does it. Easy does it…

That last attack had been just a little too close for comfort. The problem was that the flashlight was small and had limited range. It was bright, but that didn’t do him any good unless he put it on exactly the right spots. He could have activated the other light sticks and tossed them down the tunnel to light up the shadows, but he only had a limited number. Besides, once he retreated past the glows and couldn’t make them out anymore, they would be useless to him.

Keo wasn’t sure how long he was going to be stuck down here. It could have been his imagination—or maybe it was the fact he was moving so slowly, as were the others—but the tunnel seemed to be never-ending. It hadn’t felt this long the last time he’d gone through it, not even twenty-four hours ago. Of course, at the time, he didn’t have a swarm of ghouls on his tail, so maybe that had a little something to do with it.

Gee, ya think?

The K7 was heavy in his hands, so that was a good sign. From his own count, Keo had fired about ten times, and had fallen ten ghouls with those shots. He hadn’t missed once, mostly because they were almost always too close for him to do so. The narrow width also made them bunch up in the middle, making for easier shots.

He changed up his grip on the submachine gun. The Daewoo was essentially a South Korean version of the H&K MP5SD, complete with built-in suppressor. It had a telescopic buttstock that Keo didn’t utilize because he needed the weapon small and unobtrusive. It had iron sights but he didn’t really need it, not when the targets were so close. It was a good weapon, but it didn’t come close to matching its German equivalent—

A flash of teeth as a ghoul seemed to drop off the ceiling in front of him!

Pfft! as the round slammed into its chest and exited the back, striking two more coming up behind it. The first one fell to the right, while the other two both collapsed to the left as if they had synchronized their (re)death for his visual pleasure.

Jesus Christ, how had the first one gotten so close?

Another bend in the tunnel coming up. He didn’t remember there being this many the last time…

Continued shuffling behind him, along with the occasional back and forth between Lara and Bunker.

“…are we close?” she asked.

“Not yet,” he said.

“How much farther?”

“Not too much farther.”

“That’s what you said fifteen minutes ago.”

“Well, it’s not too much farther now.”

Fifteen minutes ago? Keo thought. He hadn’t realized they’d been inside the tunnel for over fifteen minutes now. It hadn’t seemed like more than…five minutes?

He was losing track of time.

Space and time.

Everything, basically.

And he was sweating like a whore in church. Keo reached up and wiped at a bead of sweat from his forehead. Quickly, so his hands could instantly return to pointing the submachine gun and flashlight down the tunnel where they needed to be—

A small group coming in fast!

He couldn’t make out their number—the flashlight beam was bouncing too much, and they were still beyond the reach of his light sticks—but there were a lot of them because the shadows shifted and danced and jumped—

He switched the fire selector on the K7 and fired a burst into the darkness, felling half of them with one swipe and getting the rest with the second. He also sent more than one bullet into the walls, heard the pek-pek-pek! as they either embedded themselves into the concrete structure or ricocheted off.

The submachine gun was suddenly very light, and Keo quickly ejected the magazine and slapped in a new one. He could have waited for the mag to run completely dry first, but he didn’t like the idea of being caught empty in the middle of another sudden attack. He was pretty sure he’d moved so fast he had worked the new magazine in before the ejected one had even clacked! off the floor. Of course, that could have just been wishful thinking on his part.

Urgent shuffling from behind him, followed by the growing sounds of someone breathing hard, but it was her smell that put him at ease.

Lara tapped him on the shoulder. “Are you okay?” She was whispering, not that it really did any good, because voices echoed off the walls and traveled long distances down here.

“I’m fine,” Keo said without looking back. “Keep moving.”

“We are. Bunker says we’re almost there, but he said that the last ten times I asked him, too.”

Keo grinned. He had no idea where they were or how close they were to the hatch on the other side, so he assumed Bunker was feeling similarly disoriented, especially with the lights off and only their flashlights to work with.

“How’s Wilson?” he asked.

“She’s okay for now,” Lara said.

“‘For now?’”

“She’s lost a lot of blood. I’m not sure…” She let the rest trail off.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. She’ll be fine.”

Somehow, he didn’t believe her. Maybe Lara wanted Wilson to be fine, but that wasn’t the reality they were dealing with. As quickly as Lara had worked to stop the bleeding, Keo still remembered just how much blood the teenager had lost before she could make it to them for help.

Keo occasionally bumped into Lara behind him, and sometimes the barrel of the semi-automatic Benelli pump-action shotgun that she had grabbed before entering the tunnel poked at his back. He didn’t mind. They were good reminders she was back there and not in front of him where it was dangerous.

“Lara,” Keo said. “If she can’t make it…”

“She’ll make it,” Lara said before he could finish.

“If…”

“We’re all going to make it.” She tapped him on the shoulder. “Be Captain Optimism for me, babe. Okay? I need him right now.”

“Okay. Captain Optimism it is.”

“I can’t see your face right now, so I don’t know if I should believe you.”

“You should.”

“Should I?”

“Yes. Because we’ll make it. All of us.”

Even as he said it, Keo didn’t know if he actually believed that.

Oh, who are you kidding? You don’t believe a word of it, pal.

And maybe Lara didn’t completely believe him, either, but she needed to hear it, and so he was happy to say them out loud.

As if the others could hear them talking, a voice from behind them screamed, “Wilson!”

“Oh no,” Lara said.

“Go,” Keo said.

He listened to Lara running away. The voice he’d heard earlier was Gummy’s, which meant something had happened to her sister. Keo stopped when he couldn’t hear the others moving behind him. They had bogged down in the tunnel to deal with Wilson’s situation.

Keo went into a slight crouch, the K7 pointed down the dark tunnel in front of him, and didn’t dare take his eyes off the shadows for even a heartbeat. He moved the flashlight around, trying to pick up a clear target. The beam only went so far. The creatures were back there, as if they knew exactly how far to stay away to remain undiscovered by the flashlight. He could have fired down the tunnel into the darkness, but the chances of missing, and wasting bullets, kept him from doing so. Right now, he had a feeling he was going to need every single bullet he’d carried into the tunnel with him.

So come on, you bastards, show yourselves.

What are you waiting for?

What the hell are you waiting for?

“Is she okay?” he heard Bunker asking behind him. They weren’t too far back—maybe ten yards, but that was just a guess. He could have confirmed it by looking back, but of course he didn’t.

Eyes down the tunnel, pal.

Eyes down the tunnel at all times!

“No, she’s not,” he heard Lara answer. “I don’t think she can walk. I’ll have to carry her.”

“I can walk,” Wilson said, though it sounded pathetically soft and weak. “You don’t have to carry me, Lara.”

“Be quiet. You don’t get a say in this.”

“But I can walk…”

“Give her to me,” Bunker said.

“Are you crazy? You can barely hold that rifle and the flashlight at the same time,” Lara said.

“Oh, ye of little faith.”

“Bunker…”

“Give ’er,” he said. “Okay, kid, this is gonna hurt both of us, but suck it up, okay?”

“Okay,” Keo heard Wilson say meekly.

That was followed by a very loud and pained grunt, though he couldn’t tell who it had originated from—Wilson or Bunker.

Maybe both of them…

“You going to be okay, Wilson?” Gummy was asking.

“I’m gonna be fine,” Wilson said, but judging by the severe lack of conviction in her voice, Keo didn’t believe her.

“Keo,” Lara said. She sounded closer. “We’re moving again.”

“Go,” he said, and straightened up—

Pfft-pfft-pfft! as the K7 bucked in his hands, his forefinger pulling the trigger three times so fast that he wasn’t even aware he had done it.

Not that he had any time to be proud of his reflexes, because as soon as the third round started echoing, even more creatures appeared out of the tunnel, seemingly lunging out of the darkness in manic kamikaze runs.

Here we go! Here we fucking go!

Keo stumbled back, flicked the fire selector on the K7 to full-auto again, and opened up.

The pfft-pfft-pfft! of thirty rounds emptying at a dizzying speed made the built-in suppressor almost irrelevant as the gunshots were as loud as Keo’s footsteps as he backtracked in a hurry, picking up speed with every dangerous unseen step, just hoping, hoping that the others realized why he had gone full-auto and weren’t lollygagging back there.

Just in case, though, he shouted, “Go go go! Go go go!”

He didn’t look back to make sure the others had gotten the “hint” after that. He was too busy firing, swiping the submachine left then right, then left again. Bullets pek-pek-pekked! off the walls, filling the already stale and wretched air with bursting clouds of pulverized concrete. Twisted and elongated faces of ghouls running toward him flashed across the flashlight’s beams while others jumped over the corpses of their fallen comrades. More of them ran straight into the flurries of gray and white clouds hovering in the air, giving them the appearance of wearing masks.

Kabuki dancers of death!

He guessed Sadistic had decided it was tired of playing games, because there were a lot more ghouls this time—and their attack was more sustained—than the previous forays. Maybe the bastard was finally getting bored?

Fuck you and your boredom, asshole! Keo wanted to shout out, but that would have taken too much effort and he didn’t have any to spare right now.

He didn’t even bother reloading the K7. That would have taken seconds that he couldn’t afford. Instead, he threw it at the closest ghoul, striking it in the chest and knocking it back and into two other night-crawlers. They fell, taking more down with them.

He was almost running backwards now as Keo unslung the MP5, switched the fire selector to full auto, and pulled the trigger. The H&K didn’t have the built-in suppressor of the K7, so there was nothing stopping its very bright—at least it was inside the intensely dark tunnel they were moving through—muzzle flashes as he ripped off a burst, then another, and another. Ghouls rushed and fell, but others jumped and even more began scrambling along the walls (How the hell are they even doing that?) to get past the piling numbers of dead that was clogging up the narrow passageway.

Then the MP5 was empty and Keo groped for a spare magazine to reload. He found it and pulled it out just as a ghoul leapt at him. It didn’t so much as land on top of him as it struck him in the chest with its head like some kind of battering ram, knocking him to the floor.

The blow, followed by the landing, probably should have hurt. Probably. But Keo didn’t feel a damn thing because he was too busy trying to stay alive.

Stay alive! Stay alive, you fool!

He smashed his left elbow into the creature’s throat as it squirmed on top of him, trying to get at his throat with saliva-dripping teeth. There was a solid crack! as bone snapped. The ghoul thrashed, unwilling to let go, until Keo grabbed it by the protruding ribs and shoved it off him. He scrambled to his feet just as the skeletal figure spun onto its back and spidered forward—

A shotgun blast boomed next to Keo’s right ear and the ghoul’s entire head exploded like a ripe watermelon.

Keo stumbled, more “hurt” by the closeness of the shotgun blast than he’d been when he was knocked to the ground seconds ago. His ears rang, a thousand chimes and bells and whistles and gunshots going off all at once inside his skull.

I’m deaf. That’s it. I’m deaf now! Good-bye, hearing!

A hand was tugging at the back of his shirt collar and someone might have been shouting his name, but he couldn’t hear anything. Not a goddamn thing.

Were his ears bleeding? Yeah, he was pretty sure his ears were bleeding. Did he even still have eardrums anymore?

Instead, Keo relied on his eyes and sense of touch, and they told them he had finished reloading—he couldn’t believe he had continued to reload through all that, way to go!—and that the ghouls were still coming.

But of course they were still coming, jumping into the halos of constant yellow glow generated by his light sticks.

One, two, three—hundreds.

Hundreds?

No, there couldn’t possibly be hundreds.

Could there?

He lifted the MP5 and fired off a burst, and ghouls fell left and right…

…and yet they kept coming…

…and coming…

Twenty-Four

We’re going to survive this.

We have to survive this.

Because the alternative was unacceptable.

There was no alternative.

They were going to survive this, or they were going to die trying.

Wait. No. That’s not right.

We’re going to survive this!

And no one’s going to die tonight!

Now all he had to do was make that come true. It didn’t help that he was deaf (or damn near close enough to it) as the events unfolded in front, above, behind, and seemingly underneath his boots, too.

He was probably bleeding out of one ear, if not both. Lara had fired her shotgun way too close to his head. Not that she had done it on purpose, but, well, the results were the same. He was either completely deaf and would be permanently, or it was going to last for a while.

Right now Keo couldn’t hear a damn thing even as Lara stepped up next to him and dragon fire spat from the barrel of her Benelli M3 shotgun. The weapon was a semiautomatic, which meant she didn’t have to rack the forend every time she fired to load a new shell into the chamber. It did it for her, which allowed Lara to pull the trigger over and over and over without stopping once.

Somewhere between the third and fourth shot, she glanced over at him and shouted something, but of course he couldn’t hear any of it. There was a persistent thrumming inside his skull, like a machine factory full of big burly men pounding away at sheets of metal with giant sledgehammers.

Keo shook his head and got what might have been a confused look back from Lara. Either that or the yellow glow of his light sticks against her face was making him see things. He didn’t think so, though.

Probably.

Lara turned and fired again, and the carpet of dead ghouls on the floor grew even as more of the creatures lurched out of the shadows, darting around his lonely single beam of light, and toward them. Whenever he could see them, it was a sign that they were too close, because they were invading the glow of his light sticks, which had very limited range.

He wasn’t sure when he had reloaded the MP5, but suddenly it was heavy again in his hands, and Keo fired a burst into the thick of the moving, twisting, surging wall of black flesh. They fell like dominos, bullets punching through their weakened bodies and striking the ones behind them, and felling them just as easily.

Not that that did anything to stop them.

They kept coming.

More of them, emerging out of the darkness.

Jesus Christ. Where did they all come from? Keo remembered thinking that exact thing back at Paxton. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so surprised by their endless number. After all, Sadistic had had two months to prepare for tonight.

Something tugged on Keo’s right elbow, and he glanced over his shoulder to find Lara back there. She was pulling him back as she backpedaled. Pulling him back because he had ground to a halt as he emptied the submachine gun.

Keo began backpedaling, even as he turned and fired another burst that dropped three—four—the rest disappeared around a turn. Another one. He didn’t remember there being this many curves in the tunnel when he’d gone through it earlier with Bunker. Was it just his imagination, or had more sprung up?

Lara was reloading as she backed up, not that Keo could hear the noises she made as she punched shells into the shotgun with the fluidity of someone who had been doing it all her life. That wasn’t true, but Lara was always a fast learner. He could feel her back there, her body heat pressing against his as she kept close. He wasn’t sure if that was because she couldn’t move backward fast enough or she didn’t want to leave him behind. Or maybe—

No, that was it. She didn’t want to leave him behind.

That’s my girl!

He had no idea what had happened to Bunker and the girls, Wilson, Gummy, and Abby. For all he knew, they were still back there somewhere waiting for them, but Keo didn’t think so. Bunker would have gotten the hint and ran off to find the other end of the tunnel. He wasn’t a dummy. Keo just hoped the rancher could make it with Wilson in his arms. He had, after all, just been shot in the shoulder this afternoon. Keo couldn’t imagine the kind of pain his friend was suffering through right now.

Suck it up, Bunker! Or you won’t be sucking anything after this!

Keo smashed the butt of the MP5 into the soft skull of a ghoul as it fell off the ceiling and landed barely a foot in front of him, saliva-dripping teeth a bright yellow in the pool of light sticks. It fell sideways, but that only offered up room to two other ghouls as they charged.

Keo fired. He didn’t even have to aim. He simply pulled the trigger, and blood and flesh and bone ripped through both ghouls and splattered the ones coming up behind them. A piece of shattered bone pierced a creature in the eyes, and its head snapped back.

For a second, anyway, before it righted itself and continued forward.

He hit the mag release switch and backed up even as Lara pulled at his elbow again. She was more insistent this time, and he kept retreating until he’d passed her by. Lara took his spot and began shooting, the spreading power of her shotgun erasing ghouls as they curved around the turn in the tunnel. He realized she’d been tugging harder on him because she likely already figured out he couldn’t hear. Lara was smart that way.

Keo found the sight of her shooting while retreating, flames from her weapon pouring into the wall of ghouls, mesmerizing. But he knew it wasn’t going to be enough. For every creature her silver-filled buckshot eviscerated, even more took their spot. He’d lost count of how many he and she had killed combined.

Twenty? Thirty? More?

Yeah, more sounded about right.

So how many more did the fucker have to throw at them?

How many did it have left after two nights?

He took the opportunity to reload the MP5 as he waited for Lara to finish firing. When he was done and Lara was still pouring it on, Keo used the extra seconds to grab and toss the remaining mag for the K7 that he hadn’t gotten time to employ. The added weight was minimal, but there was no point in hanging onto it now that he’d ditched the South Korean weapon. It wasn’t like he could use them for the German submachine gun.

Finally, Lara stopped shooting and turned around. He didn’t wait for her to mouth that she was empty (“Mouth,” because he wouldn’t have been able to hear a thing anyway with the constant thrumming inside his skull) and rushed forward to take her place. She ran past him as he squeezed off a burst down the tunnel.

Even as he recommenced killing, Keo couldn’t help but notice that the ghouls were thinning out. There weren’t as many of them lunging out of the shadows at him this time. Even the number of dead had decreased significantly to the point where he could actually make out the glowing yellow pavement again, and that they weren’t completely covered up in black sludge and pruned flesh.

Holy shit. They were going to survive this.

They were going to survive this!

That’s right, pal! Captain Optimism strikes again!

He felt like laughing but didn’t. Or maybe he did and just didn’t hear it.

Keo flicked the fire selector on the submachine back to 3-round burst to conserve ammo, and only squeezed the trigger when he saw a target. They were still coming, but not at the same rabid pace.

One here, two there; and once, three at the same time.

They were no longer climbing the walls or hanging onto the ceiling, which they’d been doing before because there were so many of them that there was no room for all of them to move forward at him and Lara at the same time. They had the superior number, but in the tight confines of the tunnel, it didn’t do them much good. At least, not as long as they had ammo, and they still did, even though his pouches were feeling extremely light.

Extremely light.

The same was true for Lara, apparently, because Keo stepped on her M3 on the floor as he backed up. She’d tossed the shotgun because, probably, she’d run out of shells for it. Which left her with—

He glanced back to be sure, using the momentary respite from lunging ghouls to get some bearings on his and her presence. Lara was a few yards behind him, holding her pistol in her hand. He didn’t see any other weapons on her, so the handgun was it. Besides the knife on her left hip, that is.

Keo looked back down the tunnel. He could only make out three ghouls, but he could see more shadows moving behind them. They had left the dead ones behind, but these weren’t quite willing to give up yet.

But they weren’t attacking, either. Maybe they knew they weren’t going to reach him without eating a bullet. Or maybe they were biding their time. Either options didn’t make any sense, though. The Black Eyes weren’t known for their patience. They were primal animals, and when they smelled or saw prey, they attacked with wild abandon. The only time they acted out of character was when a Blue Eyes was around.

…when a Blue Eyes was around…

Keo turned back at Lara, and shouted, “Go!”

“What?” Lara said.

He had actually heard her that time. Not just her voice, but his own. So he was getting his hearing back; if not completely, then some. And right now, some was a lot better than nothing.

“Run!” Keo screamed.

She gave him a confused look.

“It’s here!” Keo said. “It’s—”

It grabbed him from behind, cold bony fingers tightening around his throat, and threw him into a wall. Keo swore every one of his bones, from his skull all the way down to his toes, was broken on impact. He wasn’t even sure where the MP5 had gone or how he’d lost his grip on it, but it was suddenly gone.

He crumpled to the floor, hitting the hard concrete with his chest and one side of his face. That should have hurt, but he was too busy trying to come out of the other pain, the one that was still vibrating through his body from being slammed into the unyielding concrete wall.

The bang-bang-bang! of gunshots.

He raised his head and looked up the corridor. It was the only thing he could make himself do. The rest of his body was in pieces. Or if it wasn’t, then it sure as hell felt like it.

Lara, stumbling back and out of the ring of yellow lights produced by his light sticks. She was shooting, squeezing off round after round at—

A ghoul.

Not just any ghoul, but the ghoul.

Sadistic itself.

It had finally made its grand entrance and now stood between Keo and Lara. It stalked toward her. Slowly, calmly, with aggravating patience. Just like it’d done to Keo outside of Paxton, it was making her fear the anticipation, the inevitability of its presence. It would reach her, and there would be nothing she could do about it. She couldn’t hit it even though it seemed to be barely moving when it twisted its body left, then right, then left again.

Bang! as her bullet sailed harmlessly past it and struck a wall farther down the corridor, chipping away a big chunk of concrete.

Lara’s eyes snapped from the creature in front of her to Keo behind it. He could see the terror in her eyes, on every part of her face.

Get up, you idiot, he told himself.

Get up! Lara needs you!

Get the fuck up!

He got the fuck up. Or he tried, anyway. His legs were jelly, but thank God his arms were stronger, more resilient as he pressed his palms flush against the hard floor and pushed himself up. He’d lost the MP5 and the flashlight—he wasn’t even sure when the flashlight vanished, or where—but he still had the SIG Sauer—

Hot, tainted flesh overwhelmed him from behind, and Keo spun even as he was still rising, still drawing the pistol.

A ghoul was on top of him, catching him by surprise. It struck him in the chest with its body and knocked him back into the wall. The same wall that had, seconds ago, broken every bone in his body. But of course that couldn’t have been true because he was still on his feet and pulling the gun out and squeezing the trigger.

The creature twitched and fell, revealing two more coming out of the shadows, yellow fangs glinting against the glow of the light sticks.

Keo lifted the SIG and fired two shots, felling both of them.

But even as those two fell, he glimpsed shadows moving down the tunnel. He pointed the gun in their direction and squeezed off more shots.

The bang-bang! of gunshots coming from up the hallway.

Not his.

Lara!

Keo ignored the remaining ghouls and ran up the corridor even as something zipped! past his head and pekked! off the wall a few inches from his face.

One of Lara’s missed rounds.

Lara!

Keo saw it, its dark, impossibly thin frame appearing out of the shadows in front of him. Its back was turned, because it was preoccupied with something else. Someone else.

Where was Lara?

Where was Lara?

And why had she stopped shooting?

“Hey!” he shouted.

The creature didn’t respond.

“Hey, you motherfucker!” Keo shouted.

It stopped and turned, and grinned at him, even as it held Lara up in the air, its fingers around her throat. Blue eyes pulsated, beating in tune to Keo’s erratic heartbeat.

Thump-thump-thump!

Thump-thump-thump!

And that thing it was trying to pass off as a grin. That fucking, taunting grin.

Lara was struggling, her feet kicking empty air as it held her in the air. She seemed okay, or as “okay” as you could be when something like that was holding you by the throat.

But she was alive. She was still alive.

Keo didn’t shoot. He didn’t dare shoot for fear of hitting Lara. So he put the gun away and drew the KA-BAR instead. He couldn’t do this from a distance, so he’d have to get in close and personal. Real close and personal.

Keo fixed his eyes on the ghoul. “You fucker.”

Its eyes widened. Was that surprise? Was it even still capable of that human emotion?

“Now that’s not very nice,” it hissed, even as those things it called lips curved further. Straining, straining against that blackened, hairless face. Keo wasn’t sure where its chin began and its forehead stopped.

“Let her go,” he said.

“Her?” It turned its head to look at Lara, as if it had forgotten she was even there. “Her?” it asked again as it looked back at him. “Or the thing inside her belly? Why don’t I take both of them? Or all of you?”

“You won’t do anything.”

“Are you going to stop me?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Keo clenched the KA-BAR tighter. “I’m going to gut you like the miserable piece of shit you are, just like I promised I’d do back in Paxton.”

It smirked, eyes narrowing. “You failed then, Keo. You’ll fail now. And I’ll make you watch as I turn your—”

Keo saw it before the creature did, and that confused him because it was so fast and had heightened senses, so why didn’t it see or feel or hear the piece of the shadow coming alive on the other side of the tunnel until it was too late?

The Blue Eyes lost its grip on Lara when something struck it and sent it flailing down the tunnel. Lara looked as if she were momentarily suspended in the air—just before she started falling. Keo leapt forward, his arms outstretched, trying to catch her.

But he was much too far to reach her in time, and Lara slammed into the floor on her back and he saw the pain on her face as she rolled over. He pulled her up even as the entire tunnel around them vibrated with a loud thoom!, like the aftershock of an earthquake.

Keo looked back, the KA-BAR still gripped tightly in one hand, with Lara in the other.

At first he thought it was Sadistic fighting with one of the black-eyed ghouls, but when the second creature turned its head slightly—no, it wasn’t turning its head; Sadistic was trying to twist its head off its shoulders with its bare hands—Keo saw another pair of glowing blue eyes in the darkness.

There were two blue-eyed ghouls in the tunnel with him and Lara, and they were trying to kill each another.

Oh, now I’ve seen everything.

Twenty-Five

“Go!”

“What happened?”

“Go!”

“Keo! What happened? I saw—”

“Go go go!”

Lara didn’t go go go as he had implored her, but she did take the first couple of steps up the tunnel before stopping and turning back around, her eyes going right past him and toward—

Keo spun, looking in the same direction, as one of the Blue Eyes picked up the other one and slammed it into the ceiling. The entire tunnel shook under the impact, and chunks of concrete rained down on the two creatures.

…on the two creatures…

I’m looking at two blue-eyed ghouls fighting each other.

This is real. Isn’t it? I’m not imagining this?

No. This is definitely happening.

Keo glanced back at Lara. “Go! Now!”

Lara stared at him. She hadn’t moved since the last time he looked. In fact, she appeared immobilized, as if rooted to the ground.

“Now, goddammit! Get out of here now!” he shouted.

She snapped out of it, but still didn’t go. “What about you?”

“Go!”

“I’m not leaving you!”

“The baby!” Keo shouted. “The baby!”

That did it. Gripping her gun in one hand—he wasn’t sure when she’d retrieved it—Lara turned and ran up the corridor.

He kept his eyes on her the whole time, willing her to keep going, getting ready to scream at her about the baby again if she should stop and turn back around.

But she didn’t.

Thank God, she didn’t.

Finally, when he couldn’t make out her clothes in the shadows, Keo turned around and drew his SIG Sauer. He’d lost the KA-BAR while he was doing this action-movie dive to catch Lara—and failing. He scanned the floor, searching for it. The gun was a good backup, but blue-eyed ghouls had a habit of dodging bullets. They weren’t nearly as effective against a knife, probably because they tended to get very close—

Thoom! as something crashed into the concrete wall.

Keo gave up on finding the knife and glanced back down the hallway.

One of the Blue Eyes had the other one by the throat, and was—

Thoom! as it slammed the other one into the wall again, knocking loose even more fractured chunks of concrete.

In a hundred years, Keo didn’t think he’d be able to tell the ghouls apart, but looking at these two now, he didn’t have that trouble: The one being rammed into the wall was Jackson and the other one was Sadistic. He didn’t know how he knew; he just did.

“You should have kept running,” Sadistic hissed at Jackson. “You shouldn’t have come back. I gave you a chance. I gave you so many chances.”

“The children,” Jackson hissed.

“My children.”

“The children…”

“They are my children!” it shouted, pushing its head forward toward Jackson to get every single syllable into her face.

If the creatures remembered that Keo was down here with the two of them, neither ghoul showed it. Their entire attention was focused on one another. Even Jackson—

Wait. Jackson?

No, not Jackson anymore. Something else.

A ghoul now.

She’s—it’s just a ghoul.

Keo didn’t know why he was thinking about the other blue-eyed ghoul as Jackson. It hadn’t been her in over eight weeks, ever since Paxton.

And yet he found it easier to separate the two creatures. Maybe, because, he realized that the only thing standing between him (and Lara, and the others) and life and death was this unnatural thing.

This…ghoul.

That realization that made Keo shiver slightly, but he got over it quickly when he glimpsed the moving shadows on the other side of the two blue-eyed ghouls. There were still Black Eyes back there, but they weren’t attacking. Not him, or the other two. They were holding back, hesitating. Maybe they were trying to decide what to do or who to root for. Or maybe they were just as confused by what they were seeing as Keo was.

Keo started to back up, even as Sadistic continued pummeling Jackson into the wall, loosening more of the foundation around them. She had no chance. The other Blue Eyes was just stronger. Maybe faster, too.

“Father is stronger,” Jackson had said back at the fun house. “Faster. And the children belong to him. His blood courses through their veins, just as they do mine.”

That was why Jackson had tried to ally with him. She knew she couldn’t take the ghoul by herself, in a one-on-one fight.

And yet here she was, trying to do exactly just that.

Why, was the question. Why was Jackson here? It couldn’t have been just to save them, could it? She had come out of nowhere (How the hell did she get past Bunker and the kids?), rescuing Lara from Sadistic’s clutches. She hadn’t needed to do that, but she had.

Why?

Why?

“You shouldn’t have betrayed me,” Sadistic was hissing at Jackson even as she struggled against its viselike grip. She didn’t so much as fight it as she attempted to pry herself free, but to no avail.

“Father is stronger. Faster…”

Thoom! as Jackson was slammed back into the wall, each action so fast and fierce that Keo could barely follow them with his eyes.

“My child…” it hissed. “Oh, my wayward child. Why do you disappoint me so?”

Thoom!

“Betrayal has a cost. You’ll see.”

Thoom!

“Or maybe you won’t.”

Thoom!

“I’ll make new children. There are so many out there, waiting for me to claim them.”

Thoom!

“And they will be more grateful than you.”

Thoom!

“So, so much more grateful than you…”

Thoom!

They weren’t looking at him. Neither one of them. They didn’t even know he still existed. All he had to do was turn and run, and join the others farther up the tunnel. Lara would have caught up to Bunker and the kids by now.

If they were still alive. He wasn’t sure of that. Would Jackson have harmed Bunker and the girls on her way here? How the hell had she gotten past them in the first place? Keo hadn’t heard gunshots from up ahead, so Bunker hadn’t fired. Or maybe the rancher had, but Keo hadn’t heard it with the chaos going on around him? Besides, he’d only gotten his hearing back recently—

Thoom!

Keo looked back.

Jackson had stopped struggling, and the glow of her blue eyes had softened noticeably. It was as if the life was draining from her.

“Her?” Why do you keep calling it “her?” It’s an it. An it.

These were two ghouls that he was watching, not people. They might have been, at one point, but not anymore. There were two creatures fighting—No, not fighting. One was killing the other. There was no fight. It was over before it even started.

“Father is stronger. Faster…”

Jackson, or the thing that used to be her, had known that, and yet she’d come down here anyway. She’d saved Lara’s life, and, probably his, too.

Why had she done that?

Why?

Keo wasn’t sure when he made the decision, but suddenly the SIG was in his hand and he was aiming at Sadistic’s side profile, which wasn’t very easy considering how dark it was inside the tunnel and the two creatures were beyond the reach of his light sticks.

Don’t turn around, fucker.

He gauged the distance at twenty meters, maybe a little less. It wasn’t a terribly difficult shot even with a pistol, and the creature was being very still as it held Jackson against the wall, crushing her throat with its fingers.

That’s right. Don’t you fucking tu—

It turned its head to look at him, and that stupid grin (or what it was passing off as a grin) formed on its black face. “You’re still here,” it hissed.

Sonofa…

Keo pulled the trigger…

…and the bullet missed just as he had anticipated. Instead of striking the ghoul in the head and ending this once and for all, the round sailed harmlessly past its domed forehead and struck one of the Black Eyes hiding in the shadows down the tunnel.

“Nice—” the ghoul hissed.

Keo fired again—

“—try,” it finished even as its head blurred again.

The bullet struck the wall, ricocheted off it, and bounced into a ghoul standing nearby. It collapsed, but that only opened up space for the others. They scooted forward but continued to hang back.

Keo had missed with both shots, but his attempts had distracted Sadistic just enough for Jackson to grab its extended arm with both her hands and, somehow, broke it.

Sadistic screamed and staggered back, pulling its arm away as if in shock.

Keo followed it, firing.

Bang-bang-bang!

This time he didn’t go for the head. It was too small a target, and the combination of shadows and distance, not to mention the creature’s speed, made it difficult to hit. Instead, he went for its body. It was skinny and elongated, but it still gave him a much better—and longer—target.

He struck it a few times but missed with even more bullets. Still, he’d hit it enough that the creature looked disoriented as it backed up, right arm hanging loosely at its side as if it couldn’t figure out what to do with it. Jackson had done that. Somehow, despite being weaker than the thing she called “Father,” she’d manage to actually break its arm at the elbow—

Jackson launched herself across the five feet of tunnel and crashed her shoulder into Sadistic, knocking it back the small distance into the other side of the wall.

Thoom!

The entire passageway shook with the impact, and Keo almost lost his footing. He was righting himself when something bounced off his head. He looked up just as a small flurry of concrete came loose.

Keo jumped sideways as they crashed to the floor.

“No!” a voice screamed, the single word sending a piercing knife through Keo’s soul.

It was Sadistic. It’d somehow gotten the upper hand on Jackson again and had spun her around until she now had her back against the wall. Keo watched, horrified, as the blue-eyed ghoul struck Jackson in the chest with its unbroken hand—and its fist went right through her and into the wall behind her.

Jesus Christ!

Keo wasn’t sure how to react, and from the look on her face, neither did Jackson. Keo didn’t think the Blue Eyes could even emote anymore, that the transformation had taken all the humanity out of them. But to look at Jackson—or the thing that used to be Jackson—Keo was almost certain that, somewhere in there, she was still human.

He staggered back, his legs suddenly trying to give out underneath him of their own volition. He would have grabbed at the wall for support, but both his hands, slicked with sweat, were too busy reloading the SIG Sauer.

…too busy reloading the SIG Sauer…

Sadistic propped Jackson upright, its arm still embedded in her up to almost the shoulder. Its eyes were glued to her face even as the life drained from it. Jackson’s blue eyes continued to glow blue, but they were less vibrant now, less…lively.

It’s a ghoul. It’s already dead.

No, it’s not. It’s Jackson…and she’s dying.

Then Jackson’s head turned toward Keo at the same time her hands suddenly came back alive and grappled onto Sadistic’s extended arm. Keo wasn’t sure who was more surprised—him or Sadistic.

“Keo!” Jackson hissed. “Now!”

“What?” Sadistic said. There was confusion and shock and even something that possibly could have been fear all embedded in that one single, simple word.

Keo lifted the SIG Sauer.

“No!” Sadistic shouted.

“Now!” Jackson screamed even as she held onto the ghoul’s arm as it tried to pull it free.

Keo thought he saw the creatures on the other side of the tunnel start to move, but he was too focused on the two blue-eyed ghouls in front of him.

He pulled the trigger.

Even as it struggled against Jackson, Sadistic moved its head and Keo’s round glanced off the back of its skull. It jerked its head back, its body attempting to pull free from Jackson’s grasp.

Keo ran at it and pulled the trigger, getting closer with every shot.

Bang-bang-bang!

He squeezed off shot after shot after shot.

Bang-bang-bang!

9mm rounds pekked! off the wall, others went wide, and more clipped Sadistic’s face. One struck it in the neck, went right through like knife through paper, and exited the other side.

And Jackson held on. She even continued to do so when one of Keo’s bullet struck her in the cheek and a geyser of black blood poured out and splashed the other blue-eyed ghoul.

Keo kept count of his shots—

Bang!

Bang-bang!

Bang-bang-bang!

—and he was down to one more in the magazine when he found himself almost standing right next to Sadistic, just as the creature turned its head.

They locked eyes.

Keo pushed the muzzle into its temple.

It opened its mouth to say something.

Keo pulled the trigger before it could transform its thoughts into action and then, too late, sounds.

Twenty-Six

He expected the ghouls to attack, but they didn’t. Instead, they continued to linger in the background, black eyes frozen on Jackson—or the creature that was once Jackson—and Sadistic as they slumped on the floor. There was a hole big enough for Keo to push his fist through in Sadistic’s skull, which was awfully tempting.

Keo was too busy backing up to follow through on his urges, though. He quickly ejected, then slapped a fresh magazine into the SIG Sauer in case the ghouls decided they’d waited long enough and attacked.

Except they didn’t. None of them did.

He snapped a quick look down at the bodies on the floor in front of him. Jackson and Sadistic were twisted together, and if he were to stumble across them for the first time, he might think they were embracing. They were, in a sort of way—father and daughter coming together for the final time.

Jackson was definitely dead. Her blue eyes remained blue, visible against the semidarkness of the tunnel and beyond the reach of Keo’s light sticks, but they weren’t glowing anymore. The same was true for the other ghoul lying on top of her.

He continued to back up, keeping an eye on the creatures down the tunnel. They hadn’t moved, and a part of him wanted to pick them off with the pistol. It would have been easy with the silver-tipped rounds.

Except he didn’t, mostly because he wasn’t sure how many of them were still there, and if he fired, the loud gunshot might snap them out of their stupor. There was no point anyway, because they didn’t even look as if they knew he still existed. He remembered that day, underneath Houston, when Frank sacrificed everything to save them. It’d been like this, only on a much larger scale.

Keo finally turned and ran, every bone in his body aching. He hadn’t realized how much he hurt until now. Of course he hadn’t had time to recognize his pain earlier; he’d been too busy trying to stay alive, to keep breathing. But now that he wasn’t being pursued, (He glanced back just to make sure. Yup, there was nothing back there. Not yet, anyway.) it was impossible to ignore.

His chest was burning, his legs threatening to give out underneath him. Even his arms felt as if they might fall off at any second, or at least come loose from their sockets. He wasn’t even sure how he was holding the gun at his side.

The tunnel seemed to go on forever, but it was probably only twenty or thirty seconds before he finally saw moonlight pouring in through the open hatch up ahead. The light illuminated the metal ladder leading up toward it, and there were no signs of Lara, Bunker, or the girls. He looked down at the ground, searching for blood—or evidence that the others had encountered trouble on their way here.

There were a lot of booted footprints and what looked like bare feet among them, but no blood. There were no empty bullet casings either, and he would have been able to pick out the brass with his lights.

Keo shot a quick glance behind him to make sure he was still alone. He was. The black-eyed ghouls hadn’t pursued. They probably weren’t going to. He tried to picture what it was like, the sight of Sadistic and Jackson fighting. Maybe to their eyes it would be akin to watching mother and father trying to murder one another. One of these days, scientists were going to create curriculums to study how the ghouls’ psychic links worked.

One of these days, but not tonight!

He all but launched himself at the ladder and dragged himself up to the opening above. It wasn’t an easy feat, considering he hadn’t holstered the pistol but kept it in his right hand. Clang-clang-clang! as the gun banged on the metal rungs as he climbed up as fast as he could, with what little strength he had left.

Fresh air overwhelmed him, and for a second or two Keo had almost forgotten what it smelled like. He didn’t so much as climb out of the escape hatch as he grabbed the top and pulled himself up, then rolled out of the hole and onto the cold grass.

He was on his knees in no time and looking around, the SIG in his hand. Sticks of grass around him glowed against his yellow light sticks.

Where was Lara?

Where was Bunker?

Where were the girls?

Where was anyone?

The first thing he saw were ghoul bodies among the grass. They were spread out, some of the limbs poking up from the ground, locked in place in rigor mortis. That explained the tainted smell that Keo was just now noticing. The stench of ghoul presence didn’t completely overtake the fresh air, but it was noticeable, especially now that he’d gotten a half dozen lungfuls into him.

The moonlight made it easy to see his surroundings. Maybe it was the fact he’d been underground for so long (No, it hadn’t been that long, it’d only seemed like it.) but the ambiance topside made everything clear as day.

He got up onto his feet and jogged across the woods, following the trail of bodies. They led him toward the clearing, with ghouls falling to the right and left of him. Bunker and the others must have had to shoot their way through. They’d done a very good job of it, considering he hadn’t stumbled across one of their bodies yet.

Or Lara’s.

Thank God he hadn’t seen anything that even looked close to Lara on the ground yet.

Stay that way.

Stay that way!

There, the clearing, up ahead.

Forty meters…

Thirty…

Something popped out of the bush in front of him, and Keo almost shot it. Almost.

“Jesus Christ, Bunker,” Keo said.

Bunker grinned, the whites of his teeth showing brilliantly as he stepped out of his hiding spot. He was holding his AR and was alone. “Scared ya, hoss?”

“Goddammit,” Keo said. Then, “Where’s Lara?”

Bunker nodded toward the clearing. “Waiting with the others.”

Keo glanced around at the dead ghouls in the woods around them. “Everyone okay?”

“It got hairy for a second or two, but then they just stopped and it was a turkey shoot. They just stood there even after we started picking them off.”

Keo didn’t bother asking him when the ghouls stopped moving. He already knew the answer: It would be the same time Jackson and Sadistic started fighting.

He walked the rest of the way to Bunker instead. “You guys all clear?”

“Pretty clear,” Bunker said. He glanced past Keo at the open hatch. “What happened down there?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Keo said, and continued on to the clearing.

“Might wanna get rid of your light show.”

“Oh, shit,” Keo said. He pulled the two light sticks off his vest and tossed them as far as he could into the woods. He didn’t need them up here; if anything, they were now liabilities and, literally, lit him up like a Christmas tree.

Bunker fell in beside him. “There was a Blue Eyes. It dropped through the hatch after I opened it and vanished down the tunnel. It was moving so fast I didn’t even know what it was until it was gone.”

Keo nodded. “It was Jackson.”

“That was Jackson?”

“Yeah.”

“So what happened?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“You already said that.”

“Yeah, well, stop asking.”

A figure stood up from the shadows as he neared the clearing. He recognized the soft blue eyes when they moved over to meet him halfway.

“You okay?” Keo asked.

Lara didn’t stop until she was hugging him. He embraced her back, pulling her and her belly closer to him. He never wanted to let either one of them go, ever.

“You okay?” he asked again, whispering into her ear this time.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I’m okay.”

“Both of you?”

“Both of us.”

“We’re all okay, too, thanks for asking,” Bunker said as he walked past them.

Three other shadows stood up from the grass and stepped forward until moonlight highlighted their faces. Wilson and Gummy, along with Abby. They all looked to be in one piece. Even Wilson, who was favoring one side, and whose face was noticeably paler than the last time he saw her.

Keo pulled back from Lara and looked her up and down. She did look fine despite everything that had happened in the tunnel. There was obvious bruising along her throat, but her voice sounded unaffected.

“You sure?” he asked.

She nodded. “I’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine.”

Keo looked past her at Bunker, standing at the clearing looking out in the direction of the ranch. “What’s out there?”

“Nothing,” Bunker said. “The leftover nightcrawlers boogied just before you showed up. Either they’ve had enough or…” He shrugged. “I don’t know. They just took off.”

“How many were still up here?”

“Not many. A dozen? Maybe a little more. Nothing we couldn’t have handled even if they had gotten frisky.”

“And the house?”

“Still there. But my guess is it won’t look quite as intact up close.”

Keo and Lara walked to the others. He reached over and took her hand, and squeezed. She looked over at him and smiled, and he thought it was the greatest smile he’d ever seen. In fact, he almost forgot the stink of dead ghouls clinging to every inch of them, or the thick black liquid dripping from parts of their faces. There was some in Lara’s hair, but Keo didn’t care. She still smelled and looked like heaven to him.

“You sure you’re okay?” he whispered.

She nodded. “Yes. Stop asking.” She put her free hand over her belly. “But I don’t think the baby likes all this activity.”

“He’ll get used to it.”

“Or she.”

“Or she,” Keo said with a nod.

They’d almost reached the others when they both heard the familiar whup-whup-whup of machineries above, and looked up. Keo didn’t bother reaching for his holstered pistol, and neither did Lara. They both knew what it was.

Bright spotlights shone through the tree crowns and washed over them, followed by the underbelly of a metal flying machine seconds later.

A helicopter.

Not just one, but two of them.

Keo and Lara hurried to the end of the forest and looked out as the aircraft swooped past them and glided toward the main house. There was a lot of moonlight to see with but not enough for him to make out what kind of helicopters they were, or pick out any markings along their sides.

“Oh, wow, helicopters,” Wilson said. “I haven’t seen helicopters in a long time.”

Bunker looked back at Keo and Lara. “You think they’re here because of all the ghoul action?”

“Maybe,” Lara said, but there was clearly something else on her mind that she didn’t want to say.

“Lara?” Keo said. “What is it?”

“The radio message I sent out earlier, when we were underground. I thought it didn’t reach anyone, because I didn’t get any responses back. Maybe…”

“It did reach someone after all.”

“Yes.”

“Welp, we’re gonna find out pretty soon,” Bunker said.

Keo looked over to see what he was talking about.

One of the helicopters had broken off from its path and was making a wide U-turn. A few seconds later, it righted itself—and flew in their direction.

“I think that means it saw us,” Bunker said. He looked back at them. “Any suggestions?”

“Let’s see what they want,” Keo said. “Besides, we need to get Wilson some medical attention.”

“What if they open fire? That’s not going to do Wilson any good. Or me, for that matter.”

“They’re not going to open fire.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, but if they do open fire, you’re going to have to give a speech about how great I am at my funeral.”

“No promises.”

Bunker smirked, then slung his rifle and stepped out of the clearing. He waved both hands in the air to get the helicopter’s attention. Not that he had to, because by the way the spotlights turned toward him—then flashed over him—the pilots already knew he was down there.

Wilson, Gummy, and Abby followed the rancher out into the open, but Keo and Lara stayed behind.

“What if it’s them?” Lara asked.

“We can’t hide from them forever, Lara,” Keo said. “Sooner or later, this day was going to come. Anyway, it’d be nice to know if the baby’s going to be a boy or a girl.”

“That’s true, I guess.”

“Besides, there’s no guarantee anyone on that helicopter is going to know who you are. You’ve changed.”

“Have I?”

“You’re not the woman you once were.”

Lara pursed a smile. “So I guess this means I’m Edna again…right, Bob?”

He chuckled. He hadn’t heard that name in a while. “I’ve missed being Bob.”

“Well, come on then, Bob, let’s see what they want.”

They walked out of the clearing to join the others.

As the helicopter descended to the flat ground, Keo glimpsed the inguz rune decal on the aircraft’s side. It was, as he’d guessed, a Black Tide gunship, complete with a soldier manning a mini-gun along the side hatch.

A pair of dark silhouetted shapes hopped out of the opening, followed by a third. Only the first two were armed with rifles, and they fanned out as the third strode confidently toward them, one hand on their head to fight off the wind generated by the helicopter’s still-spinning rotor blades.

“Nice helicopter,” Bunker called out to the figure.

It was a man, wearing the blue colors of Black Tide. “Thanks. Got this one on layaway. Still trying to pay it off, so don’t shoot it. I can’t afford the insurance.”

“Don’t worry about that; my left arm barely works.” He nodded at Wilson. “And she needs some medical attention, if you can spare it.”

“We can spare it.” The man turned and waved to the helicopter.

A fourth figure jumped out and ran over.

The man walked the rest of the way and shook Bunker’s offered hand. Meanwhile, the fourth person, a woman also in a Black Tide uniform, arrived to look over Wilson.

“Ghoul problem?” the man asked Bunker.

“And then some,” Bunker said.

“We’ll try to help you take care of that, too.”

The man looked past Bunker and zeroed in on Lara and Keo, standing near the back.

“Hey,” Lara said.

“‘Hey?’” the man said. “That’s all you got to say to me? ‘Hey?’”

“Long time no see?”

The Black Tider walked around Bunker and over to them. “You know, they told me someone was calling for help using our old designated emergency channel, but I didn’t believe it. After all, there’s a reason it’s the old designated emergency channel. Only a few people still alive even knows of its existence.”

“Nice to see you again,” Keo said as he shook the man’s hand.

The man’s familiar sandy blond hair was shorter and in a buzz cut, but there was no mistaking that mischievous smile.

“Fuck you, Keo,” Danny said. “I should have known you’d be the one to steal Lara from us.”

“It’s not his fault,” Lara said, before she hugged Danny.

He grabbed her in an almost bear hug back, and refused to let go.

“Hey, hey, careful, she’s—” Keo started.

“I’m fragile these days,” Lara said, pulling back from Danny before Keo could finish.

“Bullshit,” Danny said. “You’re the least fragile person I know. Keo here included.”

“I’m not the woman I once was.”

“I call bullshit on that, too,” Danny said. He looked past them and at the nearest dead ghoul corpse. “So you guys still need my help, or what?”

“Maybe,” Keo said. “There’s a few things I could use a hand to clean up.”

“‘Clean up?’ What do I look like to you, Mr. Clean?”

“I have an underground shelter and a tunnel that may still be full of ghouls that I need to sweep. Then there’s the possibility of a ghoul collaborator running around out there. Also, maybe some hostages in the area. I could use some manpower if you can spare it.”

“We’ll see about that,” Danny said.

The medic had taken Bunker, Wilson, and the others over to the helicopter, where two others jumped down to assist her. Keo, Lara, and Danny walked across the knee-high grass to join them.

“How is everything?” Lara asked.

“Is that a serious question?” Danny said.

“I’m sorry. I really am.”

“You should be.”

“I had to do it. I don’t know how to explain it, but… I just had to go, Danny. After Darby Bay…”

Danny sighed. “I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah, really. Why do you think I never really tried to find you? I did enough to convince the others that I was, but Carly, me, and the old gang, we agreed to let you go live your life. We knew you didn’t want to be found.” He looked over at Keo. “And you…”

Keo raised both hands and took a quick step back. “Hey, I just did what she told me. I’m innocent in all of this.”

“My ass,” Danny said. “Besides, you can do something to make it all up to me. Both of you.”

Keo exchanged a nervous glance with Lara.

“Like what?” Keo said to Danny.

“Let’s talk back at the CP,” Danny said.

“Danny,” Lara said.

She stopped, and Keo did too.

Danny turned around. “Come back with me, if just for twenty-four hours.”

Lara shook her head. “I can’t, Danny. I just can’t. I’m sorry.” She put her hand over her stomach.

Danny saw where her hand was, and it took a few seconds for him to put the pieces together. “Really? I thought you’d just gained some weight.”

“Yes, really. So I can’t go back. Not now. Maybe never.”

“Just give me twenty-four hours. That’s all I ask.”

“What’s twenty-four hours going to change?” Keo said.

“A lot has happened since you guys left. I’ve been trying to hold it all together, but…” He shook his head. “I need you guys. Just give me twenty-four hours to explain why. After that, and if you still want to leave, I’ll fly you back here myself.”

Keo and Lara exchanged a quick look. He could see the doubt in her eyes, but also the softness she had for Danny, for the things they’d built back at Black Tide together. Those things, he knew, would never completely go away.

Lara turned back to Danny. “Twenty-four hours. And no one knows we’re there. I mean it, Danny. No one.”

“Does that include Carly?” Danny asked.

“Not even Carly.”

The Black Tider nodded. “All right. It’ll be just between the three of us.” Then he smiled, bright white teeth shining mischievously in the moonlight. “So does this mean the band’s back together?”

Lara sighed. “For twenty-four hours.”

“Yes!” Danny clapped his hands once, then turned around and jogged back to the helicopter like a kid running to get his favorite flavor of ice cream.

Lara and Keo walked after him, slowly. He saw the same look of instant regret on her face that he knew was also on his.

He pursed a smile anyway. “It’s just twenty-four hours. What could go wrong?”

She reached over, took his hand, and squeezed. “Right. What could go wrong?”