Author: Sam Sisavath
Date: 2021-09-30 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Post-Apocalyptic | Infected
Description: IT'S ALL FUBARATS FROM HERE. Your past has a way of coming back to haunt you. It's worse when you're a man like Keo, who has done a lot of very bad things, sometimes to very bad people. Those were the good ol' days. These days, everything is a little more complicated. Sent to Shaker Town on a spying mission, Keo has instead left the place on the run. The mission itself is an unmitigated failure. Now Keo has to evade an army of killers and a man with a very big grudge to settle with him. Hunted? Check. Fighting for his life? Double check. Unexpected allies and enemies? Triple check. Close to de
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Press

Nice Shot

Copyright © 2021 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

Cover Art by Deranged Doctor Design

Contents

Books in the Road to Babylon Series

Also by Sam Sisavath

About Nice Shot

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

Coming Soon

Books in the Road to Babylon Series

Glory Box

Bombtrack

Rooster

Devil’s Haircut

Black

The Distance

Hollow

Daybreak

The Ranch

100 Deep

Nice Shot

Ain’t Goin’ Down

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: Vendetta Trilogy

Requiem

Tokens

Remains

The After The Purge: AKA John Smith Post-Apocalyptic Series

Mist City

Run or Fight

Shoot Last

The Allie Krycek Vigilante Series

Hunter/Prey

Saint/Sinner

Finders/Keepers

Savior/Corruptor

The Red Sky Conspiracy Series

Most Wanted

The Devil You Know

The Fall of Man Post-Apocalyptic Series

The Break

Homefront

Firebase

The Tide

About Nice Shot

IT’S ALL FUBARATS FROM HERE.

Your past has a way of coming back to haunt you. It’s worse when you’re a man like Keo, who has done a lot of very bad things, sometimes to very bad people. Those were the good ol’ days.

These days, everything is a little more complicated.

Sent to Shaker Town on a spying mission, Keo has instead left the place on the run. The mission itself is an unmitigated failure. Now Keo has to evade an army of killers and a man with a very big grudge to settle with him.

Hunted? Check.

Fighting for his life? Double check.

Unexpected allies and enemies? Triple check.

Close to defeat? Hell no.

One

Keo once overheard someone saying that Shaker Town people smelled different. He hadn’t really understood it then; and in truth, he didn’t buy it. People were people, and people smelled like all other people. Unless, of course, they’d been sleeping in a room covered in smoke. Then, maybe, they would give off a different odor.

But Shaker Town folks smelling different from just being Shaker Town folks? That was a bit much.

That was then.

Now, he wasn’t so sure, because goddamn he could easily, without even trying, detect the strong stench radiating from the pores of the three walking underneath him. They didn’t just give off an obvious stink, they reeked of it. The stench of Shaker Town evaporated from their skin and through their clothes like a diffuser run amok.

It was bad. Bad enough that Keo knew they were coming even before he saw them.

Three. All wearing Atlanta Falcons caps. The preferred “uniform” of Shakers everywhere. One of them even had his with the bill turned backwards. The “outlaw” of the bunch, perhaps. Or just an asshole.

No, check that. Three assholes. Two white and one black. Why three? Obviously, because assholes only ran in threes. Well-armed, wearing boots that were thick and heavy enough to make as much noise as possible as they stomped their way through the woods, not giving a flying you-know-whatsoever they were making enough noise to wake the dead. Then again, they likely fancied themselves the hunters, with Keo and his two compatriots the prey.

They weren’t entirely wrong in that regard.

Keo had never once believed Buck when the old man had told him he’d wait until Keo, Claire, and Steven reached Arrowhead before he retaliated. Keo hadn’t believed the man, because Buck was a liar. And liars, well, tended to lie.

So Keo wasn’t the least bit surprised when his instincts turned out to be correct and these three yahoos appeared out of the foliage, moving with the grace of a herd of stampeding elephants. Not that they were that reckless, but from where he was sitting—or squatting, to be overly pedantic about it—they might as well be.

Keo was thinking about Lara and how he was going to survive all this in order to see her again and welcome that new life he’d created with her into this sucky ass world when he took aim at the first of three Shakers. They’d already passed underneath him and gotten ten yards ahead when he zeroed in on the back of the first one’s skull and pulled the trigger.

Pfft! as the round flew, struck the head, and the man pitched forward.

For an instant—two seconds, possibly three—the other two didn’t realize their friend had died, and kept going.

Boy, won’t they be surprised!

When they finally figured out they were one man short, the Shakers stopped and turned around. They stared like slack-jawed hillbillies at their dead friend. Dead, because Keo’s round had gone clean through his head and exited the bottom of his jaw, before pekking into the soft forest ground.

The two remaining men—one white, one black, all fuckheads—exchanged a confused look. Keo would have given anything to hear what they were thinking. Before the two dummies could figure out where the shot that had ended the life of their partner had come from, Keo tattooed the black guy in the chest with two rounds. As the man fell, the third and last one spun in a wild circle, AR rifle rising and sweeping the woods.

He was looking in the wrong direction. Which was to say, he was looking at the ground level and not up.

Keo put the man out of his misery with two more shots—pfft-pfft!—from the MP5SD. Both shots weren’t exactly silent—you could never completely suppress a gunshot even with a built-in suppressor such as the one the H&K weapon he was wielding had—but it was a clean enough kill. Just to be safe, Keo waited ten minutes for more Shakers to show up in response to the shooting.

None did.

Satisfied he’d achieved a clean ambush, Keo hopped off the branch and landed in a slight crouch. Twenty feet, give or take. It was a good thing he’d always been good at climbing, even now as an adult.

Keo spent the next few minutes going through the bodies. He didn’t recognize any of the three men, not that he thought he would. There had to be a few thousand people in Shaker Town, and half of those were men. In the three months since he began his mission, Keo hadn’t met everyone and probably never would.

Cap Turned Backwards guy had the best spoils of war—a radio, two spare mags for the SIG Sauer Keo was already carrying, and some useful supplies—while the other two had come not bearing gifts. The louts. He stripped one of them of his tactical backpack. He also found a pack of unopened chewing gum in one pocket. He tossed the weapons—he didn’t need the extra weight—and grabbed only the essentials. There wasn’t much of the latter, but enough he felt better about wasting the hour or so it’d taken to lie in wait for Buck’s men.

Keo walked off, scanning the woods around him for additional presence, but there was just him and the creatures going about daily life. If they noticed what Keo had done, not a single living thing had bothered to stop to watch. As for the bodies, if Buck’s people didn’t retrieve them, Keo was sure something else would when night fell.

And speaking of nightfall…

Later. He’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

Or came under it.

Either/or.

Keo raised the radio to his lips and pressed the transmit lever. He spoke into it. “Three down.”

There was no response.

Five seconds.

Ten…

“I had to give it a shot,” a voice finally said through the tinny speakers.

Keo smirked, but didn’t stop moving. For all he knew, the rest of Buck’s merry band of Shakers was right behind him. He was very aware that he was inside a heavily wooded area, and in order for the radio’s broadcast to reach another radio tuned to the same frequency, they had to be nearby.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Keo said into the radio.

Small laughter came through the two-way portable. The source, Buck, had done that for Keo’s benefit, since the man hadn’t had to transmit when he did it. “Would you believe me if I said those three was all there was?”

“No.”

“I swear on my momma’s grave.”

“You don’t have a momma.”

More laughter. “Pretty sure I did, Keo.”

“Maybe you can introduce me to her, then. I’ll tell her what a piece of shit her boy’s become.”

“Now, now, that’s not nice. I was hoping we could be friends.”

“Did you, now?”

“Sorta.”

“Well, as they say, hope springs eternal.”

“So you’re saying there’s a chance?”

“Nah. You burned that bridge when you came back from the dead.”

“I never said I was dead.”

That part was true. Keo, like most people who even knew Buck existed at all, had only assumed the man was dead.

And we all know what happens when you assume, don’t we?

“No, you didn’t,” Keo said. “I guess I’ll have to make sure of it this time. And it’s gonna hurt, Buck. It’s gonna hurt real bad, my friend.”

“Ouch,” the man said.

“Exactly.”

There was a brief moment of silence on the other end as Keo maneuvered his way through the woods. Trees of various sizes sprouted out of the ground all around him. From memory, he knew he was still many miles from the sanctuary of Arrowhead, even if a part of him wondered if he should even be going there. It wasn’t that he didn’t think the place was safe, but did he really want to bring the world of hurt that was Buck into their lives? Did he have that right?

Norris was not going to like this, that was for sure. Not one bit. But Keo didn’t have any choice. He had to reach Black Tide; had to tell Danny what he’d found out. Which was…

…what?

He didn’t know, even now. Three months of undercover work, coupled with a last-second dive into a stream, and he wasn’t any closer to learning what was going on in Shaker Town, or if the weapon they were said to be developing was, in fact, being developed.

So what exactly do you have, pal?

Not much. Not much at all.

He only knew one thing for certain: Buck was alive, and he was in Shaker Town. Maybe he was even the one pulling all the strings. So where did that leave John Deacon, a.k.a. The Deacon?

Keo didn’t know. That was the problem. One of many.

“I got a question that’s been bugging me,” Buck was saying through the radio.

Fuck your questions, Keo thought and wanted to say, but didn’t. He needed intel, and that meant learning what Buck knew—or, in this case, didn’t know.

“What’s that?” Keo said into the radio.

As he weaved his way around the trees and was careful not to disturb bushes, leaving as little evidence of his passing as possible, Keo kept one eye in front of him and the other around him. His ears, similarly, were at once tuned into the radio and on the sounds of the forest. He had already run into three of Buck’s men, and Keo didn’t have any illusions they were the only ones.

“Steven,” Buck said through the radio. Keo had turned the volume down slightly, just enough for him to hear, but not loud enough to alert anyone nearby. At least, not unless they were within eyesight of him already anyway.

“What about him?” Keo said.

“You kidnap the kid or something?”

Keo had to smile at that. If Buck only knew why Steven was with them, he’d know that force had nothing to do with it. He wasn’t sure if the man would laugh or grunt with disappointment if he learned the truth.

He said into the radio, “What do you think?”

“I’m wondering why you’d bother to take him with you,” Buck said. “He’s a liability. And you did kill his dad.”

No, I didn’t, Keo thought. As far as he knew, Steven’s dad was still very much alive back at Arrowhead. Unless, of course, Norris—or one of his people—had put the Shaker out of all their miseries. But Keo didn’t think so. For one, Norris wasn’t that kind of guy. And two… There was no two. Keo just didn’t believe Norris would allow Harvey to be murdered while in his custody. And as an ex-policeman, Norris would view his former enemy as a prisoner of war, with all the “privileges” that title entailed.

Of course, Norris also let Keo go to town on the man with a hammer, so…

50/50, Keo thought on the chances of Harvey still breathing back at Arrowhead.

“Harvey got what was coming to him,” Keo said into the radio. He’d quickly concluded it was more beneficial for Buck to think Harvey was dead. Why? He didn’t quite know at the moment, but perhaps Harvey knew something Buck didn’t want him spilling.

If he’s even still alive...

“We’ll all get what’s coming to us when the time comes, son,” Buck was saying.

“I’m not your son,” Keo said.

“It’s a figure of speech.”

“I got another figure of speech for you, Buckaroo. Wanna hear it?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Sure. You can say no.”

“Now what would be the fun in that?”

“Wanna hear it, or not?”

“Fire away.”

“When I see you, I’m gonna put a bullet between your eyes. Then I’m gonna cut off your head and walk around with it on a stick. That way, no one can question again what happened to you.”

The radio was silent for a few seconds.

About four seconds later, “That’s not much of a figure of speech,” Buck said. “In fact, I don’t think you quite know what a figure of speech is, son.”

“Fuck your son. The next time I see you, you’re a dead man.”

“Funny…”

“What’s that?”

“I was about to say the same thing to you.”

Keo smirked. “We’ll see who makes good on their threat first.”

“I got a bigger army than you.”

“Big whoops. I’m better at climbing trees.”

“What?”

Keo grinned. “I’ll see you when I see you, pal. Until then, better keep a close eye on the guy wearing the Falcons cap next to you. One of these days, it might just be me.”

He dropped the radio to the ground and stepped on it with his boot, hard enough that he cracked the cheap plastic shell and exposed some wires. Buck may or may not have had a comeback for Keo’s threats, but Keo didn’t wait to find out. It was useless anyway. As soon as Keo signed off, Buck would quickly order their frequency changed so he couldn’t eavesdrop. Buck was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them.

Keo moved around one of the biggest trees in the dense Georgian forest just before picking up his pace. Soon, he was jogging, heading back to where he’d told the kids he’d meet up with them.

They weren’t anywhere close to Arrowhead yet, and it wasn’t going to be smooth sailings the rest of the way. Buck had lied about leaving them alone until they reached their destination, but Keo had expected that. The man was a certified asshole, and if he’d learned anything in his many years of experience, it was that assholes tended to lie.

Keo was of two minds when it came to Buck’s deception. On the one hand, he liked being able to pick off the man’s soldiers one by one, and at his own pace. Slowly but surely thinning the man’s numbers. The woods provided the perfect environment to do that.

On the other hand, there was a hell of a lot of men back at Shaker Town, and as far as Keo knew, they were all at his back right now. That…was not a good thing. He’d gone up against bad odds before, but a town full of killers…

Yeah, hurrying his butt over to Norris’s Arrowhead was probably a better idea.

Keo picked up his pace until he was full-on sprinting, with only the sounds of squirrels scrambling along tree branches, birds in flight, and other woodland creatures rustling around his vicinity to accompany his pounding heartbeat.

It was going to be a long morning.

Two

“Remember Buck?”

“What about him?”

“Well, he’s still alive.”

“The fuck you say.”

“The fuck I do.”

“How?”

“You tell me. I thought you killed him.”

“Who said that?”

“Everyone.”

“Well, I didn’t; and I never said I did.”

That was at least how Keo imagined his conversation with Danny going when he finally caught up to the other man. Everyone had just assumed Danny had found and put Buck out of their misery post-Darby Bay that it’d just become a given. So it wasn’t really Danny’s fault. Not too much, anyway.

Buck.

Fucking Buck.

How the hell had Keo not seen that piece of shit roaming around the alleys and streets and sidewalks of Shaker Town? Keo had been in that place for three months, and he’d never caught a glimpse or even stink of anyone that looked even remotely like the man that used to lead Fenton. It was Buck’s unholy alliance with a blue-eyed ghoul similarly bent on vengeance that had nearly killed everyone Keo loved.

Buck was a Mercerian. One of Mercer’s true believers. He’d spent years plotting vengeance against everything Black Tide stood for. Keo even remembered what the man looked like: Fifties, hazel eyes, and a shock of white hair. It wasn’t Buck’s features that Keo couldn’t forget—it was what he represented. He was the reason Gaby was dead, along with a lot of other people Keo called friends.

If Buck had just been another Shaker, then Keo could have convinced himself he just wasn’t paying attention to every face he ran across or appeared in his peripheral vision in the last three months. But he wasn’t. The way Buck had talked, he was clearly in a power position. Maybe not the power—that was reserved for The Deacon—but a power.

So how had Keo never run across him? Not even once? Had Buck changed his appearance? (You could do a lot with a half-assed dye job.) Or maybe he’d learned from his mistakes and somehow made himself invisible, less noticeable than he’d been before.

Buck wasn’t even the man’s real name. It was a nickname.

“Marlon J. Jefferson,” the man had introduced himself when they’d finally met face-to-face for the first time. “But everyone just calls me Buck.”

Everyone’s just going to call you dead when I see you again, fucker, Keo thought as he slipped between two bushes and took off into a brisk jog.

* * *

The kids were waiting for him where he’d told them. Which was a little surprising to Keo since Claire hadn’t done a whole lot of things he’d told her to since they reunited in Shaker Town. He guessed he couldn’t really blame her. She’d gone through a lot. But then, who hadn’t? Nothing about their lives these days was a picnic.

“How many?” Claire asked as she stood up, the AR rifle gripped tightly in front of her. She looked like a soldier, one that was ready for combat. That was something the kid standing next to her couldn’t sell.

“Three,” Keo said.

“Just three?”

“Three that ran across me.”

“Where are they?”

“Who?”

“The three.”

“Dead.”

“Oh.”

“Dead?” Steven asked.

“Dead,” Keo said and walked past them.

The two young people turned and followed on his heels.

“How much farther to Arrowhead?” Claire asked.

“Not far now,” Keo said.

“How far is not far?”

“Not far.”

“God, you suck.”

“Keep walking. They’re on our tails.”

“How many?” Claire asked. Then, quickly, “Don’t say a lot, or I’m going to shoot you.”

“As few as a dozen and as many as a hundred,” Keo said. “Or more.”

“Ugh.”

He grinned to himself, glad she couldn’t see it.

“You don’t know, do you?” Claire said. It wasn’t really a question.

“Nope.”

“But he’s out there, too. Buck.”

“That’s an affirmative.”

“You sound really sure about that.”

“I talked to him before I caught up to you guys.” Keo glanced back at Steven, sticking close enough to Claire that Keo wasn’t sure who was protecting who, and from what—or whom. “You sure you don’t want to go back, kid?”

Steven shook his head. “It’s too late for that now.”

“No, it’s not. They don’t know you’re with us yet. You can still go back.”

The teenager didn’t answer right away.

“He’s right,” Claire said. She had lowered her voice noticeably, as if she were trying to whisper to the kid—and just him. “You can still go back. Pretend like none of this ever happened.”

“I can’t do that,” Steven said.

“Keo’s right. You still can. It’s not too late.”

“No, I can’t, Claire.”

Claire opened her mouth to argue, but she stopped herself. Maybe, like Keo, she knew why Steven couldn’t turn back now, and it had nothing to do with loyalty to Shaker Town, Buck, or anyone else. Not even the father that may or may not still be alive in Arrowhead.

No. Steven was still walking with them instead of running back to the only place he’d called “home” because of Claire. The kid was in love.

Neither Keo nor Claire made another attempt to convince the teen to leave. Keo didn’t think it would have worked anyway. Steven had made up his mind. Or his heart head. (Though maybe another part of him, lower down, might have also had a little—or a lot—to do with that decision.)

High school love in the apocalypse. Now I’ve seen everything.

Besides, the kid wasn’t his problem. It was Claire’s. Keo’s only objective was to reach Norris, make contact with Black Tide, and let Danny decide what to do from that point on. As far as he was concerned, his mission was done.

Finito. Over and out. See ya later, señorita.

“What happens after we reach Arrowhead?” Claire was asking him.

“I call Danny and hand this off to him,” Keo said.

“That’s it?”

“That’s about it.”

“The mission’s not finished yet.”

“It is for me.”

“We still don’t know what they’re doing in Shaker Town. What kind of weapon they have in that hotel.”

“If that weapon even exists.”

“It exists.”

Keo stopped and turned around. Claire stopped quickly, surprise registering on her face. Keo hadn’t realized he’d been so empathetic with the move.

“How do you know?” Keo asked her.

“Know what?” Claire said.

“That this supposed weapon even exists in the first place? Have you even seen it?”

“No, but…”

“But what?”

“People have talked about it.”

“What is it?”

“You know what it is.”

“Tell me.”

“A weapon.”

“What kind of weapon?”

Claire pursed her lips, and he could see her eyes struggling to find an answer. Not just any answer, but one that would convince him.

…and she came up blank.

“Exactly,” Keo said, turning back around and continuing on. “We go to Arrowhead and pass the baton to Black Tide. They’ll know how to handle this. Personally, I’d vote for a pair of Warthogs and gatling guns, but hey, that’s just me.”

Probably shouldn’t have added that last part, Keo thought, remembering that Steven was still back there and that the kid might have some friends back in Shaker Town he wouldn’t necessarily like to see turned into SPAM by an A-10 gun run.

They walked on in silence.

For a little while, anyway.

“You sure you know where you’re going?” Claire finally asked him.

“Of course,” Keo said.

“You’ve taken this path before?”

“Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“It’s close enough,” he said, but thought, Probably.

“Now why don’t I find that very reassuring.”

“Because you don’t have enough faith in me, kid.”

“Should I?”

“Of course you should.”

“Why?”

“I got us this far, haven’t I?”

“You mean when you almost drowned me in the river?”

“You survived. It’s not my fault you never learned to swim.”

“Give me a break. Swimming is hard.”

“So is drowning, kid.”

Keo liked Claire, but sometimes she could be a real pain in the ass. He supposed it might have had something to do with her mentor being Gaby, who could, in her own way, also be a real pain in the ass.

Besides, Keo knew where he was going. Or he was reasonably sure he was headed in the right direction. The right general-ish direction, anyway. He was retracing the same steps that he’d used with Harvey not very long ago. Or close enough to it. Some of the wooded area around him looked familiar, even if he couldn’t locate any of the markers he’d been looking for.

I’m not lost.

…much.

He kept those doubts to himself. The last thing he needed was Claire questioning—

The ground underneath shook slightly, and Keo froze. So did Claire and Steven behind him. The woman already had her rifle up and pointed back in the direction where they’d come. Keo did the same with his MP5SD even as he opened both ears and listened. He blocked out the flapping of bird feathers above him and the scurrying of animals on the branches.

It didn’t take long before he heard what had caused the slight tremors under his boots.

Clump-clump-clump.

“Horses!” Keo whispered even as he moved out of the open and behind a tree.

Claire and Steven went in the other direction, disappearing behind a pair of their own trees. The teenager was armed with his own AR and pistol, so Keo wasn’t worried about him being able to defend himself. What Keo was a tad concerned about was would Steven pull the trigger? He was, after all, a Shaker until just very recently. Until this very morning, in fact.

As for Claire… Keo didn’t worry too much about the girl.

Clump-clump-clump.

Getting closer now…

He looked across the clearing he’d just vacated and at Claire and Steven. He could only see the girl. She caught his gaze and nodded. Keo returned it. She gripped the rifle and turned around to say something to Steven. Keo couldn’t hear what, because she was whispering.

He’s your problem now, Claire, Keo thought as he focused on the world of trouble coming toward them.

Clump-clump-clump.

Closer, now.

Clump-clump-clump!

…and closer still…

Three

“Ronnie!”

Ronnie?

“Ronnie!”

The one doing the screaming was Steven. That was not what Keo had in mind when he told the kid to get behind cover with Claire. Keo had taken it on faith the girl would shut the teenager up or at least keep him from shouting someone’s name as Shaker Town’s killers rolled up on their position.

Wait. What was that Steven had shouted?

Ronnie?

He’d shouted Ronnie.

As in Verona?

Keo found his answer when he stuck his head out from behind the tree and saw her riding toward them at full gallop. Verona. The same woman that had saved his life back in town when, supposedly, Arrowhead suicide-bombed one of the bunkhouses.

“Verona. But everyone calls me Ronnie.”

Everyone included Steven, who had jumped out from behind his cover (So much for that idea!) and ran out into the open, hands waving wildly in the air as if he needed to do that in order to get Ronnie’s attention.

“Stop, Ronnie, stop!” the kid was shouting.

Keo groaned with annoyance, even though the prospect of killing Ronnie wasn’t something he was looking forward to. Then again, he had to remind himself that he’d done plenty of things—even before the world went kaput—that he didn’t particularly want to do, but did anyway because it was usually his job. Still, a part of him was glad that Steven had ruined Keo’s perfectly good ambush.

Ronnie was mounted on a big chestnut and appeared to be holding on for dear life. She did not look at all comfortable in the saddle. It probably didn’t help that the horse was moving at top speed. Somehow, though, she managed to pull up on the animal just before she ran over Steven, who continued waving his arms wildly in the air like one of those inflatable advertisements at car dealerships.

Keo had his finger on the trigger, red dot sight on Ronnie’s chest. He had a second to fire. No one would know. The suppressor would hide most of the shot. Even so, they’d have to boogie as soon as she went down.

His finger tightened.

Goddammit, he thought, releasing pressure on the trigger as Ronnie jumped off her horse and embraced Steven. Or he jumped into her arms. One or the other. It was hard to tell. They clearly were very happy to see one another.

Claire stepped out from behind her hiding spot and showed herself. “Hey, Ronnie.”

Ronnie looked shocked to see her. “Claire? Dammit. I should have known you’d be out here, too.”

“Where are the others?” Claire asked.

Keo hadn’t revealed himself, and as far as he knew, Ronnie hadn’t spotted him yet. Claire would have been able to see him out of the corner of one eye and knew what he was doing. Or not doing, in this case. He stayed hidden while she took point, gathering intel. As long as Ronnie could only see her, the older woman wouldn’t feel too threatened. At least, not just yet.

“What others?” Ronnie said.

“The Shakers hunting us,” Claire said.

Ronnie shot a quick glance over her shoulder, back into the woods. Then, returning her eyes to Claire, “They’re back there. Fanning out, looking for Chang.”

“How many are out there?”

“A lot.”

“How many is a lot?”

“A lot.”

Then Ronnie seemed to forget Claire was there and focused on Steven, placing both hands on either side of his cheeks and holding his gaze like a mother would a son. In fact, if the skin color between the two of them wasn’t so obviously different, Keo might have thought she was the kid’s mother.

“Are you okay?” she asked Steven.

Steven nodded. “I’m fine.”

“What are you doing out here? When they told me this Chang guy had taken you hostage, I almost had a heart attack.”

“They told you that?”

“Yes. Why? Didn’t he?”

“No,” Steven said, shaking his head. He looked over at Claire. “I came to find her.”

Keo thought Ronnie might have rolled her eyes slightly. “Of course you did. But of course you did.” Then, without missing a beat, “Where is he?”

“Who?” Claire asked.

“Chang. They say he’s dangerous.” As if for the first time, Ronnie saw the rifle in Claire’s hands. “What are you doing with that?”

Took her long enough to notice, Keo thought as he stepped out from behind cover. Whatever info Claire was hoping to get from Ronnie, she clearly didn’t have to give. “A lot” of Shakers didn’t tell them very much. Keo already knew there were a lot of them out there. Besides, now that they’d made plenty of noise, he didn’t like staying still.

Ronnie’s eyes widened at the sight of Keo, and she reached for her sidearm. She hadn’t come armed with anything else that Keo could see.

“Don’t do that,” Keo said. He didn’t lift the submachine gun, but he did tilt it slightly, and all it would have taken was a flick of his wrist to aim and shoot. Of course, he’d probably have to fire through Steven, who was standing in front of Ronnie, to get to the Shaker doctor. But that wasn’t Keo’s problem.

“You,” Ronnie said, even as she had her hand on her gun’s grip but, thankfully for her, didn’t pull it out.

“She’s with him,” Steven said.

“What?”

“Claire. She’s with him.”

Ronnie may or may not have relaxed at that information. It was hard to tell with Steven blocking Keo’s full view of her. He could see her holstered sidearm just fine, though, and she still hadn’t taken the weapon out yet.

Keep it that way and you’ll live longer, Ronnie.

Keo watched her with one eye while the other kept the rest of the forest under surveillance. It was quiet out there, which only meant the noise they were making with their conversation stood out even more.

“We gotta go,” Keo said. Then, focusing on Ronnie, “What are you going to tell them?”

“Who?” Ronnie said. He wasn’t sure if she was pretending not to know the answer or not.

“You know who.”

She glanced over her shoulder again, before returning it to Keo. She hadn’t moved an inch away from Steven, and vice versa. Apparently Ronnie’s time with Harvey hadn’t been a complete waste of time after all. Likewise for the kid.

“I came to find him,” Ronnie said.

“And now you’ve found him,” Keo said.

“I’m taking him home.”

“All right, then.”

“What?” Steven said. He turned around to face Ronnie. “I’m not leaving Claire.”

Ronnie sighed. “You’re going back home. It’s dangerous out here. Your father—”

Is probably dead or wishes he were dead, Keo thought, but of course kept it to himself.

“—will shit his pants if he found out you’re out there with this guy,” she said, looking past Steven at Keo.

“You’re not looking for me?” Keo asked.

“No. Just him. I don’t care what happens to you, or where you go from here. I just came to find him.”

Claire glanced over at Keo with a grin. “I don’t think that was a compliment.”

Keo chuckled. “Yeah, me neither.” To Ronnie, “How close are the others?”

Ronnie shook her head. “They made us split up to cover more ground. It was just dumb luck that I stumbled across you guys first.”

He nodded at her radio. “You gonna use that?”

She glanced down at the two-way clipped to her hip, like she didn’t even know it was there, before looking back up at him. “I told you, I’m just here for Steven. I don’t care about you, Chang.”

“Ouch,” Keo said.

“Double ouch,” Claire said.

“Don’t rub it in, kid.”

“Just sayin’.”

“You know what I mean,” Ronnie said.

Keo smirked. “Yeah. But still an ouchie.” He turned to Claire. “Come on, kid. We’re losing daylight, and more Shakers might get lucky and find us, too. We don’t want that to happen, do we?”

He didn’t stick around to see if Claire would follow, but he did hear footsteps right behind him.

“Claire!” That was Steven shouting out her name. Shouting out her name.

Keo sighed. The kid’s hormones were going to get him killed. Worse, he was going to get Keo killed right alongside him.

He walked faster when he heard, “Steven!” That was Ronnie.

Keo slowed down just enough to peek back. Steven was running over to Claire while Ronnie stood in the background, one hand on her horse’s reins, watching after him.

“Steven!” Ronnie shouted again.

Apparently, everyone didn’t get the memo that they needed to stay low.

Shoulda printed up a pamphlet.

The kid didn’t stop until he was at Claire’s side again. The two of them seemed to exchange a knowing nod—a sort of silent agreement that only they knew, not that it was hard for Keo to figure out—before they both turned and walked over to Keo.

Ronnie continued looking after them, not quite sure how to react.

Keo shrugged at her. “Kids. Amirite?”

“What?” she said.

“You should head back. They’ll be wondering where you went.”

“No, they won’t.”

“Why not?”

“There’re dozens of us out here. We’re only supposed to radio in when we find trails of you.”

“Just me?”

“Just you.”

“Nice to be wanted.”

Keo turned to go.

It took a few seconds before he heard Ronnie’s horse following behind them.

Then she was past the kids and walking beside him. “So where are we going?”

“We?” Keo said. “When did this become we?”

“I’m going wherever he is,” she said, giving a quick nod back at Claire and Steven following behind them.

“You’re not his mother.”

“I’m the closest thing he has to a mother.” She paused for a moment, before continuing. “And he’s the closest thing I have to a son.”

“Well, ain’t that sweet.”

She stared daggers at him.

Keo ignored it and said, “What about Shaker Town?”

“What about it?”

“You’re just going to abandon them?”

“I don’t have anything back there.”

“No family?”

“I told you. Steven’s the closest thing I have to family. Before him, it was his dad.”

“What about friends?”

“I keep a small circle of those. They won’t be very surprised to learn that I did what I did.”

“Lovers?”

More sideways daggers.

“Just wondering,” Keo said with a smile.

“Your name isn’t Chang, is it?”

“What gave it away?”

“I told you before. You don’t look Chinese.”

“What does a Chinese guy look like?”

“Chinese.”

“Very descriptive.”

“I know. I figure, if you can be a smartass, so can I.”

“It’s a talent, being a smartass. I’ve honed my abilities over a period of many years. Decades, even.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

Keo glanced back at the two lovebirds. They were holding hands, Claire with one hand on her rifle.

Claire caught his gaze and gave him a slight nod. Steven wouldn’t have noticed it if he weren’t staring at her, and he wasn’t.

“What did you do?” Ronnie was asking him.

He looked forward again. “Why did you think I did anything?”

“You’re being hunted. And I heard stories…”

“What kind of stories?”

“Someone attacked the hotel last night.”

“Is that right?”

“And you don’t know anything about that?”

Keo shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just an innocent Chinese guy walking around in the woods with a submachine gun.”

“Who’s left behind a trail of bodies.”

“They shot first… Most of the time.”

She rolled her eyes. “Uh huh.”

“You’re really abandoning Shaker Town?”

“Yes.”

“The kid means that much—”

“Yes,” she said before he could even finish.

He smiled. “Hey, the more the merrier. Besides, I can always use a good doctor on hand.”

“You planning on getting shot sometime soon?”

“No, but it usually happens anyway,” Keo said.

Four

“Keo.”

Buck.

“Hey, Keo.”

Fucking Buck.

“Or do you prefer Chang?”

Bucking Fuck?

“I can call you whatever you want.”

Either/or.

“What do you prefer? I’m nice that way.”

Sure you are, asshole.

“Keo, Chang, whatever. All the same to me. What use does a dead man have for a name anyway?”

The man sure likes the sound of his own voice.

“What is it with you and me and woods, my friend?”

I’m not your friend, dickhead.

“We really should stop doing this. It’s becoming a habit. One of those bad habits that needs to be kicked.”

I’ll kick you in the head. Then the balls. Then everywhere else.

“Come on, Keo. I know you can hear me. I know you have her radio.”

Buck was speaking through Ronnie’s radio, which was tuned into the new frequency as the one being used by the group of Shakers on their tail. As Keo had expected, Buck had ordered the switch after Keo killed the three guys and absconded with their two-way.

“You didn’t kill our good doctor, did you?” Buck asked through the radio now.

Keo and the others had stopped, and Keo exchanged a long look with Ronnie. He was trying to read her face, trying to figure out what she wanted him to say.

She beat him to it. “Tell him I’m dead.”

“You sure?” Keo asked.

She nodded. “I’m not going back there.”

The Shaker doctor looked over at Steven, standing, as usual, next to Claire.

“Alrighty then.” Keo held up Ronnie’s radio and pressed the transmit lever. “Sorry about that. She came up on me out of nowhere, and I had to take her out.”

“Well, damn,” Buck said. “You just cost me a whole lotta trouble there, son.”

“I’m not your son, old man. I thought we already cleared that up.”

Buck chuckled. “Still the same Keo.”

“And you’re still the same Buck. A big ol’ piece of buckshit.”

Another round of forced chuckles.

“Motherfucker,” Claire said just slightly under her breath.

“You know him?” Steven asked.

“He’s the reason Gaby’s dead.”

“Who’s Gaby?”

Claire started to answer, but stopped herself. It took a few seconds before she said, “A friend of mine. She’s gone now, because of that asshole on the radio.”

“Why do you call him Buck?” Ronnie asked Keo.

“Because that’s his name,” Keo said. “More specifically, Marlon J. Jefferson. Don’t ask me what the J in the middle stands for.”

“Everyone I know calls him Bell.”

“Bell, huh?”

“But you’re saying that’s not his real name. It’s this Buck. Or Marlon-whatever.”

“Hey, Keo,” Buck said through the radio. “Woodland critters got your tongue?”

Keo didn’t answer right away. He glanced around at their surroundings. He had the radio’s volume turned down just enough to hear Buck’s voice, but not too loud to risk giving away their positions. If he could hear Buck and vice versa, then the other man couldn’t be too far back.

Claire had come to the same conclusion by the way she gripped her rifle and was scanning the trees around them. As for Ronnie and Steven, they weren’t nearly as alert. Keo kept one eye on Ronnie’s chestnut. Horses had insane hearing, and if anyone was creeping up on them, it would likely pick them up first.

“Are you going to answer him?” Steven finally asked him.

“In time,” Keo said.

“He knows you.”

“Brilliant deduction, kid.”

“He means—Buck or Bell or whatever he’s calling himself—he really knows you,” Ronnie chimed in.

Keo didn’t confirm or deny, and he didn’t care to fill them in on his tumultuous history with Buck.

“You’re nearby, aren’t you, Keo?” Buck was asking through the radio.

Out of the corner of his eye, Keo saw the others tense up, while Claire began looking around them, more alert than before.

Keo pressed the radio’s transmit lever. “I’m already halfway to Arrowhead.”

“Doubtful,” Buck said. “You’re close by. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be talking right now.”

“Well, he’s not dumb,” Ronnie said.

“Buck is a lot of things, but dumb isn’t one of them,” Keo said.

“He’s a dead man when I see him,” Claire said. She gritted her teeth at Keo, as if challenging him to disagree.

He had no intentions of doing so. He said into the radio instead, “See ya when I see ya, Buckaroo.”

Buck laughed. “Was it something I said?”

“It’s your face.”

“My face?”

“Yeah. I’m imagining punching it to a pulp.”

“So violent, Keo. Why so violent, chum?”

“I’m not your chum, pal.”

A loud snicker from Buck’s side of the radio connection. “As the kids used to say, whatever, man. Later, alligator.”

Keo lowered the radio and looked over at the others.

“Well, that was interesting,” Claire said. “Like listening to two high school kids trying to sound cool, but failing miserably.”

“Glad you approve,” Keo said.

Keo turned to Ronnie and was about to tell her that he was keeping her radio so he could eavesdrop on conversations between Buck’s people when the radio squawked suddenly.

Buck, this time not actually talking to Keo. “Heads up, boys and girls. We’re switching to the third frequency. Wouldn’t want all the curious rabbits out there to hear what we’re saying.”

“Dammit,” Keo said.

“He’s definitely not stupid,” Claire said.

“No, he’s not.” Keo looked back at Ronnie. “I don’t suppose you know this third frequency he’s talking about?”

“I didn’t even know there were two others,” Ronnie said.

“If you don’t know, how do the others know?” Claire asked her.

Ronnie shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Buck probably told the leaders of the groups, but kept it from the rest,” Keo said. “That’s what I would do.”

“So you’re thinking like Buck now, huh?” Claire said, with more than just a little bit of sarcasm in her tone.

“Unfortunately, yeah,” Keo said. He turned to go. “Hopefully it’ll come in handy when I find a stick and shove it up his ass.”

“How’s that gonna help?” Steven asked.

Keo glanced back at the kid. “What?”

“How’s thinking like Buck or Bell or whatever his name is gonna help you put a stick up his ass?”

“He was being sarcastic, Steven,” Claire said.

“Oh.”

Keo smiled to himself.

“You really do know him,” Ronnie said. She had remained next to him, pulling her chestnut by the reins with one hand. “And vice versa, from the sounds of it.”

“We have a long history. Have you ever met him? The guy you know as Bell?”

“Once or twice. He’s usually where Harvey is.”

“What about The Deacon?”

“What about him?”

“Is Bell usually where The Deacon is, too?”

Ronnie thought about that for a moment. “I don’t recall. But then, I’ve never really been in the same room with the man. Most people haven’t.”

“What are you getting at, Keo?” Claire asked from behind them.

“Just a thought,” Keo said.

“Let’s hear it.”

“Buck isn’t a second-in-command type. He’s a leader. Granted, a fucking asshole of one, but still makes him a leader by nature. I don’t see him playing second—or even third—fiddle to anyone.”

“Even The Deacon?” Steven asked.

“Even your Deacon.” Keo said to Ronnie, “Was The Deacon back there? Leading the posse?”

The doctor shook her head. “No. But as far as I know, he usually doesn’t do these things himself. That’s why he has lieutenants like Harvey and, I guess, your old friend Bell.”

“I see.”

“Keo,” Claire said.

He glanced back at her.

“Say it,” the kid said.

“Say what?” Keo said.

“What’s on your mind.”

“I already said it.”

“Say what’s really on your mind.”

He couldn’t help but grin. She’d read between the lines and deduced he was leading to something that neither Ronnie nor Steven got. Then again, the two (former?) Shakers didn’t have the same history with Buck that Keo and Claire did.

“I’m just wondering…” Keo said.

“About?” Claire prompted.

“Who’s really leading Shaker Town. This Deacon guy or our old friend Buck.”

“It’s The Deacon,” Steven said.

“Yes, it’s The Deacon,” Ronnie said, nodding.

Keo didn’t reply to them, but he also didn’t look away from Claire’s intense gaze.

“What?” Ronnie said, looking from Keo to Claire. “What’s happening? Did I miss something?”

“No,” Keo said, turning back around and continuing on through the woods at a faster pace.

Ronnie had to run for a few seconds in order to catch up to him. Her chestnut whinnied in annoyance next to her. “That doesn’t sound like a no to me.”

“You must have misheard,” Keo said.

“I don’t think I did.”

“Think again,” Keo said, but he glanced over his shoulder at Claire and knew she was thinking the same thing.

Or if not the exact same thing, then something close to it:

Buck being in Shaker Town wasn’t an accident. Nothing that man did was an accident. He’d come here and ingratiated himself with The Deacon and his troops for a reason. Maybe it even had something to do with this weapon that Keo and Claire had been sent to sniff out. Or maybe it was something else entirely.

That was the problem with a guy like Buck: What you didn’t know could get you killed.

Which made getting to Arrowhead and contacting Black Tide even more important. If Danny and Lara knew Buck was still running around out here, any truce they’d brokered between Shaker Town and Arrowhead would go out the window.

But he had to reach Norris and Arrowhead first. Then he could worry about everything else.

One step at a time, pal. One step at a time…

Five

He could imagine the conversation with Lara now:

“So what happened?” she would say, with those crystal blue eyes that could tell when he was lying.

“Buck happened,” he would say.

“What’s that mean?”

“It means he’s not dead. I thought Danny killed him.”

“Did Danny say that?”

“Well, no.”

“So why did you think Danny killed him?”

“That’s what everyone told me.”

“They did?”

“Yeah.”

“Who, exactly?”

He would shrug. “Everyone.”

“Everyone isn’t a name, Keo. Who told you that Danny found and killed Buck after what happened at Darby Bay?”

“Okay, so maybe no one actually said it, but they hinted at it.”

She would sigh with exasperation, letting him know how disappointed she was in him. She would do it in a way that only Lara could, without making you feel less but at the same time not hiding her point. It was a gift he didn’t have and never would. And to think, Lara had started life as a drop-out medical student.

Or as she would have rolled her eyes and explained it, “I only dropped out because the end of the world happened and medical schools stopped existing.”

That was true enough.

And just as true was that Buck was, very much, still alive. He’d been hiding out in Shaker Town all this time. In fact, if Keo had to put the timeline on Shaker Town’s emergence into a regional power, it would perfectly match up with Buck’s “disappearance” after the events of Darby Bay.

Sneaky little fucker.

Of course Keo didn’t really know what Lara would say, because in order to find out he’d have to survive this little misadventure of his and get back to her.

And that was exactly what this had become: A simple espionage run that turned…complicated. Not that anything espionage-related was simple by any means. There was a reason Keo stuck to the wet works stuff back in the good ol’ days. It was always so much simpler. And contrary to the expression, the jobs were always cleaner. Ethically, morally, and physically.

Like right now, as Keo shot one of the Shakers in the back (Yeah, it was a little cowardly, but what the hell, dead people can’t exactly complain about fairness) and was already on his feet and rushing forward, MP5SD swinging up into firing position, when the second one turned around.

Young. Maybe early twenties. Tall and lanky, and looked a bit like Steven, if he was just older and not pussy whipped. He was wearing one of those Atlanta Falcons caps that Keo had been given when he went on the Arrowhead mission with Harvey a few days ago. This particular cap still had the sticker on the brim, albeit it was close to peeling off completely. A slight wind might have done the job.

The kid had an old beat-up Remington shotgun that he started to lift at the sight of Keo. It took him exactly two and a half seconds to locate Keo, but by then Keo was already in front of him.

Wham!

Right in the face with the butt of the submachine gun.

The kid went down. So he wasn’t really a kid, but everyone was a kid to Keo these days, which just reinforced the undeniable truth that he was getting old. Real, real old. And to think, it took him this long and the end of the world to get off his ass and produce a kid. Go figure.

The Shaker went down not quite like a ton of bricks; maybe half a ton. He let go of the shotgun as he did so, and Keo snatched it out of the air before it could fall down along with its previous owner. It was a nice move, if he did say so himself.

The kid wore a bandoleer around his waist with extra shells for his Remington, but no pistol. That was good. Keo already had both hands full. He tossed the shotgun into a nearby bush and sat down on the kid’s waist, shoving the suppressor of the MP5SD into his victim’s right eye. Blood from the Shaker’s broken nose ran down to his jaw on both sides as he tried to catch his breath. Keo hoped nothing was fatal. He needed the kid to answer some questions.

He didn’t bother with the Shaker’s companion. He was dead. The other man lay on his face and stomach, the two holes Keo had put into his back still fresh and trickling blood. Small amounts that, if you didn’t know someone had shot him, you might have even missed.

Keo focused on the kid lying like a mannequin underneath him. “Scream, and you die. Get it?”

The kid remained still. He didn’t nod or shake his head to indicate that he either got it or didn’t.

“I said, get it?”

This time, Keo received a nod in return. It was slight, but still counted.

“Good boy. Now, we’re going to get up, and you’re going to walk. Try to run, and I shoot you. Stop and I shoot you. Pee your pants, and I shoot you. Basically, do anything I don’t want you to do, and I shoot you. Get it?”

Another barely imperceptible nod.

“Very good. See? We’re getting along here. Now, stand up.”

Keo got up first, then took two quick steps back. The Shaker followed on wobbly feet. Blood continued to drip out of him, but he didn’t make any attempt to clean them up. Keo took the kid by the shoulder and turned him in the direction he wanted the Shaker to go.

“One step at a time,” Keo said.

The kid did as ordered. One step at a time. Keo followed from behind, just far enough so the Shaker didn’t get any stupid ideas about spinning and grabbing for his submachine gun, but close enough to squeeze off a couple of shots and hit dead center with every single one.

“What’s your name?” Keo asked.

“Jake,” the kid said.

“What’re you doing out here, Jake?”

“We—” He stopped short.

Keo grinned. “I’m just kidding. I know what you’re doing out here. Did they tell you what I looked like?”

A nod.

“Enlighten me.”

“Chinese,” Jake said.

“And?”

“And that’s it.”

“That’s it? Just Chinese?”

“Oh, and a big scar.”

“That’s me, all right. Chinese and a big scar. Anything about me being armed and dangerous?”

“Yes.”

“You know Bell?”

“Who?”

“Your boss.”

Jake shook his head. “Stems ordered me to come join the group with him. I don’t even know who you are or why we’re after you.”

Interesting, Keo thought. So that explained how Ronnie got into the posse. Not everyone chasing him right now was a Buck loyalist. Some were just Shakers recruited for the impromptu manhunt. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not, though, but Keo filed it in his mental Rolodex, just in case.

“Where is Stems?” he asked.

“Back there,” Jake said. “The one you shot.”

“Ah.”

Jake didn’t know where they were going, but Keo did. Claire, Ronnie, and Steven were waiting for him farther ahead. He’d backtracked to lie in wait for a couple of Shakers. It hadn’t been very hard; they were making a lot of noise. These two weren’t on horseback, which was unfortunate, because Keo would have liked a pair to carry him quicker to Arrowhead. Horses always beat walking any day of the week. Of course, he could always take Ronnie’s and ride double with Claire…

That’s an option open for consideration.

He walked and scanned the woods at the same time, his ears open for sounds of more Shakers in the area. According to Ronnie, they were heavily spread out, with a handful of men—she pegged the number at twenty or so, though she couldn’t guarantee it—covering as much ground as possible. Buck was going to need a lot more men than that to do the job. It was a damn big forest.

Keo wasn’t really afraid of Jake taking off on him. If he could see the kid’s face, he was sure fear would be all over it. Seeing your friend get shot, getting your own nose smashed, then having a submachine gun shoved into your face tended to elicit that kind of reaction from people.

“Counting you and Stems, how many are out there in this little posse of yours?” Keo asked his prisoner.

“Uh,” Jake said. Keo couldn’t quite tell if he was thinking about the answer or just not sure.

“Give me a rough estimate.”

“Thirty?”

“You sure?”

“Maybe forty.”

“You sure?”

“Uh…”

Keo smiled. Thirty or forty was good enough. More than he was hoping for, but less than he feared. The worst-case scenario had all of Shaker Town out here looking for him. Of course, he hadn’t thought that was a real possibility, but it was always better to plan for the worst and expect the best. Lara had taught him that.

“How many horses?” Keo asked.

“Not many,” Jake said.

“How many is not many.”

“Uh…”

“Ten?”

“Maybe.”

“Twenty?”

“Uh…”

“Jake. If you say uh one more time, I’m going to shoot you.”

“Uh—” the kid said before quickly stopping himself and nearly shouting, “I mean! Okay. Okay!”

“Stop shouting.”

“Huh?”

“Stop shouting.”

“Okay,” Jake said in a quieter voice. “Okay.”

“What’s the order?”

“The order?”

“Yeah. The order they gave you.”

“Um,” Jake said.

Keo smiled. He didn’t shoot the kid because um wasn’t the same as uh. So, technically, he hadn’t broken the rules.

“Shoot on sight,” Jake said. He turned his head slightly, probably wanting to see Keo’s reaction to that, but didn’t do the full turn to find out.

“I’m touched,” Keo said.

“You are?”

“No.”

“But you said—”

“I was kidding.”

“Oh.” Then, almost as if in afterthought, “Man, you really killed Stems.”

“You sound surprised.”

“Kinda.”

“They sent you and him out here to kill me on sight, and you’re surprised that I shot him on sight?”

“Well…”

“You’re funny, Jake.”

“I am?”

“No.”

“But you said—”

A scream.

Not from Jake, or Keo. But from somewhere in front of them. It sounded as if it’d come from exactly where Keo had left the others.

Jake, in front of Keo, stopped suddenly and gasped. “What was that?”

That was someone screaming. A girl. Either Claire or Ronnie. But Keo didn’t bother to tell Jake that. One, he didn’t need to know, and two—There was no two. His prisoner just didn’t need to know.

Keo grabbed the kid by the shoulder and pushed him down onto his knees.

Jake turned his head to glance back at him, eyes widening. “Don’t. Please, don’t.”

I guess he’s not as dumb as he looks, Keo thought.

“I have a kid,” Jake said. “I mean, I’m going to have a kid. My girl’s pregnant. It’s gonna be a boy. I mean, I hope it’s a boy. But if it’s not, that’s okay too. As long as it’s healthy. I just want a healthy baby.”

“Turn around,” Keo said.

“No, please.”

“I said turn around.”

Jake turned his head back around reluctantly, but he didn’t stop talking. “Please, please, don’t kill me. I don’t wanna be here. They brought me here. Stems ordered me here. I don’t wanna be here. I didn’t know any of these guys until today. I don’t even like them. Please. Please don’t kill me. I have a kid coming. God, I wanna be a father bad. I wanna be a father!”

Jake had spoken so fast—a man trying to desperately argue for his life—that it should have been hard for Keo to know what he was saying. Except it wasn’t. Keo heard the important words:

Kid.

Pregnant.

Healthy baby.

“Please,” Jake said. “Please. I don’t wanna leave my kid fatherless. Please, please.”

“You’re lying,” Keo said.

“No. No, I’m not. Please. I’m not. Don’t kill me. I’m not lying. I swear it, I’m not lying!”

“Shut up.”

“Please don’t kill me. Please.”

Keo sighed. He could do it. It wasn’t like this would be the first time he’d taken a father from his unborn child. Or a husband from his wife. Or even a son from his mother. Far from it. He’d done the deed plenty of times and never even thought about them afterward. Hell, Stems was someone’s son, too. Maybe even also someone’s husband and father.

Except…

“Run,” Keo said.

Jake swiveled his head to look back at him. Fear, uncertainty—but mostly fear—played across his face.

“I said, run,” Keo said.

Jake got up and did just that.

Keo lifted the MP5SD and aimed it at Jake’s fleeing back.

He should have pulled the trigger.

He almost pulled the trigger.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he lowered the submachine gun and sighed. He was getting soft in his old age. Real soft. He just hoped it didn’t come back to bite him in the ass, but with his luck…

“Goddammit,” he whispered, just before he took off running toward the source of the scream.

Six

He shouldn’t have left them alone. That was a bad move. But he’d wanted to gather some intelligence about Buck’s posse, and the best way to do that was to grab one of them and ask questions directly. Ronnie hadn’t been very helpful (“a lot” could have been anything), but Jake had provided some clarity. Not enough, as it turned out, to justify an emergency befalling Claire and the others.

And it had to be an emergency. Someone didn’t just scream because they felt like it. Especially now, knowing what was out there hunting for them.

He had all but dismissed the screams as Claire’s. The kid wouldn’t have done it. She was too tough. The kind of toughness that had survived The Purge when she was just a kid. The kind honed from years standing behind, then beside Lara and Gaby. But especially Gaby.

Keo was in full-sprint mode ever since he let Jake go (That’s gonna come back to bite me on the ass. I just know it.) and hadn’t stopped ever since. He ducked underneath low-hanging branches that scratched at the top of his head and went through overgrown grass that slapped at his legs. None of it stopped him; he was moving too fast, driven forward by the need to get back there before it’s too late.

Shouldn’t have left them alone.

Goddammit, shouldn’t have left them alone.

Lara’s gonna kill me if that kid dies!

The sudden pop-pop-pop of a semiautomatic rifle crackled across the crisp morning air, all of it coming from somewhere in front of him. Unlike Keo’s MP5SD, which had a built-in suppressor, whoever was shooting (Claire, most likely) had no such thing. Because of that, not only could Keo hear the gunfire, but so could everyone else in the vicinity. When the woods were this quiet, sound traveled, even if it had to ricochet off a sea of centuries-old tree bark to do it.

So he had to beat Buck’s people to Claire. Which meant he had to run faster—

A horse.

A friggin’ horse.

That was what broadsided Keo and knocked him a good ten yards or so sideways even while he was in mid-stride and partially in the air. The wind rushed out of his lungs as he sailed through the air, but that wasn’t his biggest problem.

It was the MP5SD. It flew from his grasp a split second after he was struck and went flying.

Keo wasn’t entirely sure which part of the horse hit him, but if he’d had to guess he would say all of it. Or it sure as hell felt that way.

He landed in a bush and rolled over, a voice shouting for him to Get up! Get up now before you’re a dead man! echoing relentlessly inside his head. Not that he needed the encouragement. He already knew he had to get up. Lying down now was a death sentence, and dying here, now, wasn’t in the cards.

Not now, not tomorrow, and not years from now.

Fortunately, he still had the Glock, and Keo drew it now—

A flash of metal in the sunlight, just before whatever it was stuck him in the right arm, a few inches above the elbow. Keo would have screamed if he had the presence of mind to do so. The truth was he was too shocked and moving on instinct, his need to survive overriding pretty much every other sense at the moment.

There was no pain, even though there should be. After all, there was a metal thing jutting out of his arm. Some kind of throwing knife that shouldn’t be there.

No sirree, that definitely shouldn’t be there.

It was about seven inches of smooth steel; the part that he could see, that wasn’t embedded inside his flesh. The bright-red fabric tied to the round hole at the end was a nice touch. Looking at the thing sticking out of him, the only thought that crossed Keo’s mind was the rather inane, Well, that’s no good.

It definitely was not good, and neither was the other one that flicked in the air and stopped only when it landed in his right thigh, almost exactly halfway up from the knee to his waistline.

That wasn’t good either.

No sirree Bob.

None of this was very good.

Keo was too busy looking down at the things sticking out of his body that he was slow to glance up—just in time to see a black-clad figure sprinting toward him. He managed to squeeze off a shot—bang!—when the rubber sole of a shoe smacked into his face and knocked him back and down.

Now that hurt.

He hadn’t felt the knives, but there was no mistaking what had just happened there: Someone had pulled off a flying kick to his face. Like something out of a kung fu movie. Not that Keo knew anything about kung fu; he’d always been a shoot ’em if you can, stab ’em if you can’t kind of guy.

Pain from his wrist as something struck it and he lost the Glock.

But he still had the knife in his left hip, and Keo reached for it with his left hand even as he pulled himself up from the ground.

Or tried to.

Another blur out of the corner of his eyes as a shoe struck the side of his head. He’d gotten a hand on the knife’s handle for just a split second before he lost it again.

He stuck out both hands to keep his face from smashing into the cold, hard Atlanta dirt. Thank God the knife sticking out of his thigh was in a slight angle so when his legs struck the ground, he didn’t jam the metal further into him. The same was true for the knife in his right arm.

A noticeable weight pressed down against the back of his neck, even as a male voice said, “Don’t make me break the rest of you.”

The voice was surprisingly soft while at the same time brimming with authority. Keo wasn’t sure how that was possible, but maybe the fact its owner had just laid him out with just his feet had a little something to do with that.

Keo remained where he was—palms and chest pushing against the ground—and trying to catch his breath. He still had the knife in his left hip—it’d dropped back into the sheath after he lost his grip on it—but he’d have to reach for it, and the speaker had already proven he was faster than Keo.

“Goddamn, did you see that?” someone said. Not Knife Guy. It was a deeper voice, somewhere in the background. “I got ’em right in the kisser.”

“You got ’em in the side,” Knife Guy said. Keo knew it was Knife Guy because the voice was closer to him. Close enough to kick his ass if he tried something.

“Nah. It was right in the kisser.”

“The kisser is the mouth, dummy.”

“It is?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.” Then, “Well, I got ’em is all that matters.”

“That you did.”

“What you think I’ll get for this?”

“You? What about me?”

“What about you?”

“I did all the work.”

“You just threw your pointy things at him.”

“That’s all you saw?”

“Just about.”

“You’re blind, then. Better get your eyes checked once we get back to town.”

Mr. Kisser snickered, but Keo was too busy focusing on the pain. The one buzzing from his thigh and the other one from his arm. Now that he wasn’t locked in a life-and-death situation, he was feeling both of them now. It hurt to have knives sticking out of you. It hurt a lot.

Footsteps as Mr. Kisser got closer. He was leading his horse, a black animal that seemed to shake the ground as it moved. No wonder that thing sent Keo flying; it had to be a big brute of a horse.

“You sure this is him?” Mr. Kisser asked. “He doesn’t look Chinese.”

“What’s a Chinese guy look like?” Knife Guy asked.

“You know. Chinese.”

“Oh, that explains it.” Keo imagined Knife Guy rolling his eyes even as he shifted the boot that was resting on the back of Keo’s neck just slightly to make breathing easier. “How the hell did you keep that thing quiet, anyway? He didn’t even see it coming.”

Mr. Kisser chuckled. “I know, right? Magnus here’s a real beaut. I taught him all kinds of tricks. This’s just one of them.”

“Well, shit, that was cool.”

Knife Guy finally took his boot off Keo’s neck so he could squat down. Keo turned his head and stared into large white eyes that peered back at him from a black face. African American. Maybe mid-twenties. He was wearing an Atlanta Falcons cap, as was Mr. Kisser standing nearby holding the reins of his “real beaut” of a horse. The animal was chewing grass, already having forgotten all about Keo.

“Your name’s Chang, right?” Knife Guy asked.

“Never heard of ’em,” Keo said.

Knife Guy grinned. “I think you’re lying.”

“He’s definitely lying,” Mr. Kisser said. “Look at that scar the size of a house. Just like the description. And he was definitely running from something.”

“There was a bear,” Keo said. “A big bear. I thought it best to flee before it ate me.”

Knife Guy chuckled. “Is that right?”

“Yup. In fact, if I were you guys, I’d run before it gets here. They say bears can track a human prey for miles.”

“I never heard that,” Mr. Kisser said.

“That’s because he’s just making shit up,” Knife Guy said. Like his partner, the black man wore a gun belt, but instead of a rifle slung over his back like Mr. Kisser, Knife Guy had a bandoleer of knives stretching from shoulder to waist. There were two empty slots, their former occupants sticking out of Keo at the moment.

Keo considered his options. Which were… What, exactly?

Nada. A big fat zero.

A scream pierced the air.

Keo turned his head toward it. It’d originated from the same location as the previous ones. In all the chaos of trying to survive the ambush, Keo had forgotten all about the others.

“Don’t worry about them,” Knife Guy said. “They’re not going anywhere.”

“Sure ain’t,” Mr. Kisser said.

“Worry more about yourself,” Knife Guy said. “I hear Bell’s anxious to get his hands on you. Had a dead or alive bounty on your pretty face and everything. First one that gets you to him alive gets double the prize. You should count yourself lucky. It was dead or alive before, but he changed his mind.”

Keo turned his head to look back at Knife Guy. “That’s me. Lucky. What kind of prize did he promise?”

“Dunno,” the man said before standing back up. “But it’s gonna be good. Bell always gives out the best prizes.”

“Sure does,” Mr. Kisser chimed in.

“Get up,” Knife Guy said to Keo.

“I don’t think I can,” Keo said.

“Oh, you can.” Knife Guy reached down and pulled out another knife from its slot. “You probably already know this by now, but I’m really good with these things.”

Keo sighed. “You don’t say.”

“Get up.”

Keo got up. It hurt. There was pain from his legs to his head. But mostly from his thigh and arm. He resisted the urge to pull the knives out. Not that he thought the two would stop him—especially the knives’ owner—but he didn’t feel like bleeding to death. At least the blades, in their current locations, were keeping that from happening.

“You wanna pull them out?” Knife Guy asked. He may or may not have been smiling at Keo as he asked the question.

“Gonna pass on that,” Keo said.

“Smart. You’d just bleed to death.”

“I figure.”

Mr. Kisser had produced a brush from somewhere and was working on his big black horse’s mane. It looked like a stallion. “Man, you’re one cool cucumber. It’s like you don’t even know what you’re getting yourself into.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Keo said. “Bell and me are old friends. He just wants to have a drink with me, is all. Why you think he wants me alive?”

“He wanted you dead this morning,” Knife Guy said.

“Nah, he was just kidding. Bell’s a real kidder.”

Knife Guy chuckled. “I’ve known Bell for a while now, and kidder ain’t one of the words I’d used to describe him.”

“That’s because you and he don’t go way back like I do.”

“Is that so?” Knife Guy said, before he picked up Keo’s fallen pistol and put it behind his waist. Neither he nor Mr. Kisser, as far as Keo could tell, had located his MP5SD. It was down there somewhere, maybe in one of the bushes. If only he could locate it…

“Let’s go,” Knife Guy said. “Time’s a’ wastin’.”

Now that they were all on their feet, Keo loomed over the much shorter Knife Guy. The man stood barely 5’5” and was rail thin. The fact that this little squirt had mopped the forest floor with him made Keo feel even more like a little useless. By comparison, Mr. Kisser was a muscular brute of a man. No wonder he could handle the horse. The two of them looked as if they’d been molded to be each other’s perfect partner.

“Walk,” Knife Guy said.

“Where we going?” Keo asked.

“Turn around and start walking. I’ll tell you if you need to make another turn.”

“Yes, sir,” Keo said, and turned around and started walking.

His head was throbbing, the pain coming from where he’d been kicked. He’d first thought his nose was broken (which would be ironic after what he did to Jake), but now that he was back on his feet, Keo didn’t think so. It felt intact when he touched it, and there was just a little bit of blood coming out of both nostrils.

He walked slowly, because he wasn’t sure he could do any other speed. Knife Guy followed closely behind him while Mr. Kisser rode his horse in the background. Whenever Keo glanced back, he saw Mr. Kisser’s stallion stopping occasionally to sniff at this and that. It was a very curious horse.

Soon, they’d reached the spot where Knife Guy had tied up his horse. The man swung back into the saddle and glared at Keo. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Think about what?” Keo said.

Knife Guy grinned. “Then again, it’d be fun. I like kicking your ass.”

Keo turned back around. “That makes one of us.”

But he thought, Sooner or later, Knife Guy. Sooner or later…

Seven

“From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

“Nice.”

“Right? I read it in a book.”

“I didn’t know you could read.”

“There’s tons about me you don’t know, Keo. I’m going with Keo, since I assume the Chang moniker was just to get into Shaker Town. After all, you are pretty famous.”

Keo couldn’t help but smile at that. “Am I?”

Buck shrugged. “Or should I say, infamous.”

“Either/or works for me.”

“You’re a man with a reputation, is the point I’m making.”

“Glad to hear it. All good, I hope.”

“Not quite. Thus the infamous possibility.”

“Ah. Well, it’s nice to be noticed. Speaking of which, why didn’t you kill me right away when you saw me? You had all the advantage.”

“Oh, come on, Keo, that would be too easy. What’s the fun in that? Besides, you’re working for Black Tide now. Playing the role of a spy, to my surprise. I already knew that. I’ve known that for a while.”

How the hell have you “known that for a while?” Keo thought and wanted to ask.

But he didn’t. Not yet. It was better to keep Buck talking. Guys like him always had trouble closing their mouths.

Keo said, “I’m not a spy. Never was, never will be.”

“I know. That’s why you fucked up.”

Keo smiled, but he thought, He’s got a point there.

Because Keo had fucked up the mission. He’d gone into Shaker Town to find out what was happening, to uncover The Deacon’s mysterious plot to overthrow Black Tide as the dominant power in what remained of this part of the United States. Instead, he was on the run and was no closer to achieving the mission. Worse, he’d gotten Claire caught, too.

Or he hoped she’d been caught, anyway. The other alternative was…not a good one. Right now, being captured was the preferable outcome. Keo didn’t have a whole lot of hope that he was going to see Lara’s beautiful face again. Or see the face of his son or daughter. And to think, he’d gone through life without wanting an offspring. The idea of bringing another life into this world was not something he’d often thought about, mostly because he couldn’t see it ever happening. Keo didn’t think he could be a good father. Hell, he was barely a good man, and even the barely part was up for debate, depending on who you asked.

And right this second, he was at Buck’s mercy. (Or Bell, as everyone called him.) Keo had been brought back from the woods, with knives sticking out of his arm and thigh. Those were eventually removed before he was handcuffed behind his back and put in ankle manacles. He sat on the slightly damp floor now, looking up at Buck as the man poured himself a steaming hot cup of coffee. It was already afternoon, and watching the white-haired man sip from his World’s Greatest Dad mug was odd. Then again, what wasn’t odd about Buck’s presence in Shaker Town?

There were a lot of questions swirling through Keo’s mind. Some involved Claire (Was she still alive? Why’d she start shooting? Why was Ronnie screaming?) but most of it was about the man munching on what looked like freshly baked bread. Keo wondered where the man got that. He knew Shaker Town had bread, but the one Buck was chowing on looked fresh. Keo thought he could smell every inch of it.

“You hungry?” Buck asked.

Keo smiled. “Nah. I’m good.”

“So why are you drooling?”

“I’m not drooling.”

“I can see you drooling, Keo.”

“There must be something wrong with your vision, Buck. You know how it is with old age. Things start to go bad.”

Buck grinned before biting off another chunk of bread. He chased it down with some slices of pork ham that he’d brought out of a lunchbox sitting on the floor between him and Keo. They were inside a tent that was barely big enough for one person, much less two. Keo guessed this was Buck’s personal temporary abode and Keo was the guest.

Since the last time he saw him, Buck had gotten noticeably older. His hair was still in the same military-style buzzcut as before, but he was balding around the temples. The face was leaner, the cheeks shallower, and the frame much, much thinner. Not that Buck looked weak by any stretch; rather, he had been working out. Either that, or he’d been on a very good diet since their first meeting in Fenton.

Keo wasn’t bleeding anymore, thanks to the not-really-a-medic medic that Buck had brought along with his posse. Knife Guy, whose name was Rand, had pulled out his blades before Keo was put in cuffs. Buck’s not-really-a-medic medic hadn’t bothered to cut through Keo’s clothes to get a better look at his wounds so he could seal it properly; the man had just wrapped duct tape around the area and called it a day. But it was good enough, and Keo wasn’t in any danger of bleeding to death.

Beggars can’t be choosers.

Buck seemed to have drifted off after turning to look out the slit of the tent at some movements outside. The Shakers had made camp in a wide clearing inside the woods, with a lot of men milling about outside, eating the lunch they’d packed with them. Keo could hear chatter and the thump-thump of unshod horse hooves. If they were in any hurry to do anything, Keo couldn’t see or feel it. Which was a bad thing, because that meant they weren’t chasing anyone anymore. Which, in turn, meant they’d achieved their goals.

“You know what that means?” Keo asked.

Buck glanced over one shoulder at him. “Hmmm?”

“The Moby-Dick quote.”

“What about it?”

“It doesn’t mean what you think it means.”

“No?”

“Nope.”

“Hunh.”

“Funny you’d say it to me, when you don’t even know what it means.”

“It just sounded cool.”

“That it does.”

“So what does it mean?”

“Ahab, the guy speaking, is cursing the whale one last time, but he knows it’s the end of the road for him. Not for the whale. It’s all about him. Ahab. He’s the one that’s already accepted his fate. ‘Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.’ Ahab got in the last word, but Moby-Dick got the last laugh. It won their war.”

Buck smiled, but didn’t say anything.

“So, you see,” Keo continued, “in your speech, I’m Moby-Dick and you’re Ahab. Which means that in the end I’ll win.”

“Is that what it means?”

“Uh huh.”

“Interesting.”

“You know what else is interesting?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me even if I say I don’t care.”

“The title. It was originally Moby-Dick, with a hyphen. But these days, everyone’s forgotten about that, so it just goes by Moby Dick, minus the hyphen. If you really wanted to get technical about it, Melville originally called it using the hyphen. Or it was the publisher’s decision. Either/or.”

“Is that right?”

“Yup.”

“You know a lot about this.”

“I know a lot about a lot of stuff that would shock you.”

“I’m starting to get that feeling.”

“Such as, this is going to end badly for you. So you might as well unlock these cuffs and let me go, then eat a bullet, because the outcome is inevitable.”

“Is it, now?”

“You can’t see it?”

Buck turned completely around to look at Keo. “Big talk, for a man sitting on a dirt floor with his legs and hands bound.”

“I’ve been in worse situations.”

“I doubt it.”

Keo grinned. “You shouldn’t. I wasn’t being sarcastic. I was simply stating a fact.”

Buck sipped his coffee, dark hazel eyes peering back at Keo over the brim. Wisps of smoke from the mug separated their hard, unyielding stares.

“I should probably just kill you now,” Buck finally said.

“You probably should,” Keo said. “So what’s stopping you?”

“I need you.”

“That’s funny, considering you sent some of your men to shoot me on sight just this morning. Unless I misheard them. Which is entirely possible. I did go for a swim last night, and boy, are my ears tired.”

Buck shrugged. “I changed my mind. It occurred to me that instead of just indulging in my revenge fantasies, I could come up with a better use for you. Turns out I was right.”

“I don’t have anything to tell you.”

“I don’t need you to tell me anything, Keo,” Buck said, and smiled.

Keo squinted back at the man, remembering something Buck had said just a few seconds ago:

“Oh, come on, Keo, that would be too easy. What’s the fun in that? Besides, you’re working for Black Tide now. Playing the role of a spy, to my surprise. I already knew that. I’ve known that for a while.”

He already knew. How the hell did he already know?

But he kept quiet. Again, he wanted to keep Buck talking.

Keo said out loud, “Like momma always says, it’s nice to be wanted.”

“You won’t think so when I tell you what I came up with,” Buck said.

“Maybe Mom was wrong.”

Buck chuckled, when a figure appeared on the other side of the tent slit behind him. “Sir?” a voice said. The speaker himself remained outside.

“What is it?” Buck asked.

“Got that news you were waiting for, sir,” the man said.

“It’s here?”

“It’s on the way. One klick out.”

Buck looked back at Keo. There was a grin on the other man’s face that Keo didn’t like. Not one bit.

“Be right back,” Buck said. “Don’t you go anywhere now, ya hear?”

“I feel like sticking around anyway,” Keo said.

The older man continued smiling as he slipped out of the tent, then led the speaker away. That last part was to keep Keo from eavesdropping, no doubt, which meant whatever the news was, it was something Buck didn’t want Keo to overhear. Maybe it was about Claire. Or Norris and his Arrowhead gang. Or Black Tide, for all Keo knew. Anything and everything was possible, which was the problem.

One of many for him right now.

It didn’t take long after Buck’s vanishing act that two shadows appeared outside the tent to stand guard. The same two that had brought Keo to Buck in the first place, though not Mr. Kisser and Rand the Knife Guy. Keo still didn’t have a clue what Mr. Kisser’s name was and didn’t particularly care to find out. He was pretty sure he had some internal bruises after being broadsided by the brute’s equally brutish horse. An hour after the incident, that hurt way more than getting stabbed by Rand’s knives.

Outside the tent was the chatter of bored Shakers. He couldn’t make out most of the conversations, but the ones he could pick up involved mundane topics. Most of all, they were wondering how much longer until they could go back to town. Horses continued to come and go, but there was no urgency; nothing to suggest Buck wasn’t in full control of the woods.

With nothing to do, Keo took a more in-depth stock of his situation. Not that it did any good. He was still handcuffed behind his back, and getting up was going to be difficult with the ankle manacles keeping both legs splayed in front of him. Not impossible, just not easy. Keo wondered if Buck had brought the restraints with him knowing he was going to truss Keo up like this or if it was just a happy coincidence.

Voices made Keo glance up.

No, not voices.

One voice…

…and it was coming from behind him.

Keo glanced over one shoulder. The fabric of the tent was three feet away, which made it easier to hear despite the fact the speaker was whispering. Keo could just barely make out the silhouette of a figure crouching on the other side, his hands busy with his shoelaces.

“Hey, can you hear me?” A man’s voice. Familiar somehow, but Keo couldn’t quite place it.

“Yeah,” Keo said. He kept his voice almost as low as the man’s and hoped he could be heard in turn.

“You okay?” the man asked.

I’m handcuffed and trussed up like a pig about to get roasted, Keo thought, but he whispered instead, “Yeah, sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Cause you’re in there.”

“Good point.” Then, “Do I know you?”

“I’m gonna help you,” the man said, as if Keo hadn’t asked the question. “You just gotta be ready, okay?”

“Ready for what?”

“Just be ready.”

“Hey,” Keo said when the figure straightened up and walked off.

Footsteps, this time coming from in front of him.

Keo turned back around as one of his guards poked his head through the slit and glared at him, before stepping inside. A big man—almost as big as Mr. Kisser, but wider—with his well-worn Atlanta Falcons cap pulled down over his pale forehead.

“What are you doing?” the man asked.

Keo stared back at him. “Come again?”

“I said, what are you doing?”

“Sitting here waiting for your boss to come back. What are you doing?”

The guy squinted. “Huh?”

“What are you doing?” Keo repeated.

“What do you mean, what am I doing?”

“Exactly.”

“Huh?”

“That’s right.”

The guard responded with a confused look. That was quickly replaced with a Whatever expression. The man turned and went back outside.

Keo shot a quick glance behind him, but his would-be savior was gone.

“I’m gonna help you,” the man had said. “You just gotta be ready, okay?”

Be ready? Be ready for what?

Keo guessed he would find out when it was time…whenever that was.

He sighed and relaxed against the cold ground. At least he had some kind of opportunity to get out of this alive. Unless this was all a big ruse by Buck to—what? Mess with him? Have a little fun at Keo’s expense?

No, that was unlikely. Buck was a man with a plan. More than that, he was a man with things going on that didn’t involve Keo. At least, not until Keo showed up at his doorstep on a silver platter.

And something else Buck had said gnawed at Keo:

“Oh, come on, Keo, that would be too easy. What’s the fun in that? Besides, you’re working for Black Tide now. Playing the role of a spy, to my surprise. I already knew that. I’ve known that for a while.”

It was that last part that Keo didn’t like:

“I’ve known that for a while.”

Buck had known for a while that Keo was in Shaker Town. He’d even known about Keo’s mission. Maybe not all the particulars, but the source of his assignment: Black Tide.

So how the hell did Buck know that?

Eight

“I’m gonna help you. You just gotta be ready, okay?”

Be ready? Keo thought then, and he thought again now as he was marched through the woods on foot.

Be ready for what? A signal? What kind of signal?

There were a lot of questions, and one wrong choice on his part could end up with him dead. It was a little difficult to get ready when he didn’t know what to get ready for. Or, for that matter, when.

His would-be-savior hadn’t reappeared after that first encounter. Buck, too, hadn’t reappeared.

“Got that news you were waiting for, sir,” the messenger had said.

“It’s here?” Buck had asked, barely able to contain the excitement in his voice. If Keo didn’t know better, he’d almost think Buck was a kid that had just been told Santa was ready to see him now.

Then, later, the messenger had said, “It’s on the way. One klick out.”

One kilometer out. What was one kilometer out, and why was Buck so excited to hear the news? Whatever it was, it was apparently a lot more deserving of Buck’s time than jawing with Keo. Keo didn’t know whether to be glad or insulted by such a dismissal. Maybe a little of both. If nothing else, it made him curious.

…just as he was curious about how Buck knew he was in Shaker Town, and why, to begin with…

As far as Keo knew, he was a loose end; one that Buck didn’t particularly care to nip in the bud the first chance he got. Cause the man had gotten his chance. Or chances, depending on how many times their paths had crossed back in Shaker Town without Keo even realizing it. More than once, he thought he was being watched, but had always dismissed it as paranoia. Or, more likely, a Shaker eyeballing him suspiciously. He was, after all, one of the new guys. And new guys always got the stink eye.

So why chase Keo into the woods? Was it on The Deacon’s orders? And what was Buck to The Deacon? Second in command? Third? Fourth? For that matter, why was Buck still proceeding toward Arrowhead even though he’d already found Keo?

Because you were never his priority, dumbass. He just used you as an excuse to bring his little army out here.

And now Buck was bringing something else out here.

“It’s on the way. One klick out.”

What was on the way?

Questions. Way too many questions. And even if he could answer any of them, it wouldn’t have done Keo any good as he walked at a leisurely pace, only occasionally moving right or left to avoid doing a header into one of the massive tree trunks that sprouted up from the ground all around him. There was no rush back to Shaker Town, which was where Keo was headed. He could tell that much from the direction they were headed.

His caretakers were four Shakers, including Rand the Knife Guy and Mr. Kisser himself, whose name was Tommy. His horse, Keo learned, was called Magnus. The other two were strangers to Keo, but he’d heard Rand refer to the blond-haired one as Morris. The fourth one hadn’t said very much and spent most of his time up ahead, leading the way. Every now and then, the man would disappear, only to come back. Keo guessed he was their scout; his job was to make sure there was nothing standing between them and their destination.

Keo didn’t like the idea of returning to Shaker Town. Not that he had any say in the matter. Buck hadn’t bothered to talk to him again after he was summoned away by his apparently very good news.

“It’s on the way. One klick out.”

There were a lot of things about his current situation that Keo didn’t like. He wasn’t bleeding anymore thanks to the duct tape, but there was still pain throbbing from one of his ribs, which might have been broken when Magnus lunged out of the brush at him like a battering ram. Keo hated that horse, even though he wouldn’t mind one like that for himself.

Note to self: Never go head-to-head with that big black beast.

Magnus seemed to psychically hear that Keo was thinking about it, and the horse turned its head slightly to glare at him.

Keo smiled back. “Good boy. That’s a good boy.”

“Shut up,” Tommy said.

Keo looked up at the horse’s rider. He’d already dismissed Big Tommy as the one who’d shown up at his tent to offer him salvation. The voice was all wrong, and Tommy had no reason to rescue Keo after trying to headbutt him to death with his horse.

“What?” Keo said as innocently as he could muster. “You saying he’s not a good boy?”

“Shut up,” Tommy said again.

“I think he’s a good boy.”

“I said, shut up.”

“You know any other words besides ‘Shut up?’”

“Yeah,” Tommy said. “Shut up.”

“That’s rude.”

Someone chuckled in the back. Keo glanced over at Rand, riding behind them.

“He doesn’t like it when people talk to his horse,” Rand said.

The knife man was on top of a brown chestnut. It was nothing extraordinary, or very big, unlike Tommy’s mount. Keo had also dismissed Rand as his would-be ally.

“He likes to pretend he’s the only one who can communicate with it,” Rand continued. “It’s weird, if you ask me.”

“It’s normal,” Tommy said.

“That’s because you’re weird.”

“Not weird, normal.”

“Okay, Tommy boy, okay.” Rand gave Keo a Can you believe this guy? look, before adding, “How you feeling down there, champ?”

“Pretty good,” Keo said.

“You sure? Howzabout the right thigh?”

“It’s fine and dandy and thrice on Sundays.”

“‘Fine and dandy and thrice on Sundays?’” Rand chuckled. “Now that’s not something I’d expect to hear from a Chinese guy.”

“Someone I knew said it. I’m just borrowing it.”

“With proper attribution, I hope.”

“Nah. He doesn’t care.”

“So he doesn’t know you’re going around using his slang like it ain’t no biggie?”

“That’s correct.”

“Nice guy.”

“His largesse is beyond compare.”

“His what?” the third guy, Morris, said. He was riding slightly ahead of the group but keeping the same slow, unhurried pace. He hadn’t spoken until now, but Keo guessed that was only because he hadn’t found anything interesting to butt in on. Unlike Rand and Tommy, Morris had potential as the man who had whispered for Keo to be ready, except he hadn’t shown any signs of being that person. Either he was a very good actor, or…

No, it was probably not him.

“Largesse,” Rand was saying.

“What’s that?” Morris asked.

“His generosity.”

“Oh,” Morris said, although Keo didn’t really think he actually understood, but just didn’t want to look like an idiot.

“Man, you’re a weird Chinese guy,” Rand said.

Keo glanced back. “How so?”

“You don’t even know kung fu,” Rand said.

Neither do you, Keo wanted to say, because he was pretty certain what Rand had pulled on him wasn’t kung fu or anything close. It was straight-up a series of well-timed kicks and punches. It might not have been actual kung fu—Keo didn’t have a clue what “real” kung fu was—but it sure as hell was effective. The bruises on his face were a testament to that.

“I used to,” Keo said. That was a lie, but he thought it was a better idea to keep them talking and give his whoever-it-was-rescuer the ability to sneak up on them during all the chatter. Of course, he could have just been overthinking the whole thing. Keo tended to do that every now and then.

“Used to, huh?” Rand said.

“Yeah, back when I was a youngster. Applied and got accepted into the Shaolin temple and everything.”

Rand chuckled. “Bullshit.”

“No, really. The application process was a real bitch. Had to write an essay and get a ton of recommendations. It was not easy, let me tell you.”

“So you got in, huh?” Rand said. Keo couldn’t quite tell if that was a genuine question or if the knife lover was just playing along. Maybe, like Tommy to Keo’s left and Morris in front of them, Rand was finding all this a little boring. To hear them tell it, they were being sent away from the action, not toward it.

The action being farther out—in Arrowhead.

“Of course I did,” Keo said, moving casually around a large tree.

His legs weren’t bound anymore—it would have been difficult for him to walk otherwise—but his hands were still handcuffed behind him. Not that Keo couldn’t run with handcuffed hands, but it made grabbing a weapon, not to mention using it, a major hassle.

So the first step to escaping was to get out of the handcuffs. The trick was figuring out how.

Yeah, that’s the trick, all right. One out of a few billion at the moment.

That was exaggerating it a tad. It was probably not one out of a few billion, but perhaps more like one out of a few million.

Yeah, that was it. That was the trick—

The resounding boom! of a shotgun was as clear cut as anything Keo had ever heard in his life. It had come from in front of him, exactly where their little party’s scout had disappeared off to about ten minutes earlier.

They weren’t the only ones to hear it. Tommy’s horse, Magnus, stopped in its tracks and lifted its head, as did the other horses around them. The birds above them took flight, and something that might have been a squirrel, or maybe a raccoon, raced along a branch in front of Keo. On the ground, something much, much bigger than either a squirrel or a raccoon dived into a bush to his right.

Even before the blast had finished its echo—it took a while, with the gunshot ricocheting, seemingly, off every tree trunk in the vicinity—the only thought that flashed across Keo’s mind was, Was that it? Was that the signal? Dammit! Was that it?

A blast of air as Rand moved up on his horse to Keo’s left, shouting, “What was that? What the fuck was that?”

“Sounded like a shotgun,” Tommy said.

“No shit, Einstein! I meant, who fired it?”

The big man shrugged. “Dunno.”

“Jesus,” Rand said, showing exasperation with Tommy for the first time. He turned to Morris. “Get up there! Find out what happened to Trevor!”

Trevor, Keo guessed, was the scout.

“Why me?” Morris said.

“Cause I fucking said so!” Rand shouted back.

Keo didn’t know Rand was in charge. Not only was he probably the youngest of the bunch, but he was also the smallest. Of course, he didn’t need a whole lot of size with his fancy knife moves and supposed kung fu. Keo guessed that must have impressed the others, because it certainly did to Morris, who grudgingly took off into the trees.

That left Keo standing with Tommy and Rand. The two Shakers sat on their horses in front of him, eyes forward. Rand had his hand on the butt of his holstered sidearm, but hadn’t drawn it. Tommy didn’t appear to be all that fazed; at least, he still had both hands on his reins. Keo wondered what it was going to take to get the man on high alert.

…Tommy and Rand, on their horses, in front of him, eyes forward…

…eyes forward…

They weren’t paying any attention to him. Both men only had eyes and ears and, from what Keo could tell, full attention on what was taking place in front of them. Not that they could see anything beyond the trees that Morris had just ridden past—

Shut up and run, idiot!

Keo turned around—slowly, oh so so slowly—and did just that.

He was launching himself between two ancient trees a few steps later, one of the large sentinels’ gnarled barks brushing against his cheeks as he squeezed his way between it and its longtime companion. He waited for gunfire and for something fast and hard and very heated to strike him in the back.

It didn’t happen.

No gunfire. Not yet. Either he’d gotten a better lead than he’d anticipated, or—

“Motherfucker!” That was Tommy shouting somewhere behind him.

“Now where do you think he’s going?” Rand said.

Anywhere but here, pal! Keo thought, but of course didn’t waste his breath shouting back at the duo.

Pek! as a bullet struck a tree to his right, followed by the zip-zip-zip of three more shots as they sailed over his head, vanishing into the green foliage all around him.

I guess Buck didn’t tell them he wanted me alive for whatever he had in mind!

He must not have, because Rand and Tommy weren’t firing warning shots at him. The only reason those bullets hadn’t landed in his back was because Keo was running as fast as he could, and he had trees everywhere to act as natural cover.

So he ran.

Faster, and faster, and faster.

Nine

Running for your life with your hands handcuffed behind your back was not an ideal situation. Then again, Keo had been in plenty of not-very-ideal situations—some even bordered on the dreaded this-really-really-sucks—and he’d always managed to get out of them, if sometimes just by the skin of his nose.

But he’d gotten out of them, and that was what mattered.

That was all that mattered.

Right now, he wasn’t so sure. It wasn’t the not-knowing-where-he-was-going part, but more the bullets-whizzing-past-his-head, which was the greater of two evils. Getting lost in the Georgian woods wasn’t such a big deal. He still had plenty of afternoon sunlight that he didn’t have to worry about the possibility of ghouls in the area.

“Now where do you think he’s going?” Rand had asked Tommy after Keo took off. It was more of a rhetorical question, one laced with amusement. Because there wasn’t any place for Keo to go. At least, not on foot and being chased by men on horseback.

Of course, he didn’t let that stop him and continued to run, dodging trees and ducking under branches and, when necessary, hopping over bushes. He probably should have gone right through those since he was constantly in danger of losing his balance whenever he landed on the other side. It was a little difficult maintaining his equilibrium with handcuffs on. Hell, it was a little difficult doing just about anything with handcuffs on unless you were in bed with a woman—

Oh, crap!

He was flying again. (He was doing that a lot these days.) Except it wasn’t a horse headbutting him in the side but a tree root sticking out of the ground. Or he thought it was a tree root. It could have been a bear trap for all he knew and, really, cared, because he was too busy trying not to eat dirt as he slammed face-first into the ground.

Sonofabitch!

He rolled over quickly. Or as quickly as he could manage. Which, truthfully, wasn’t so quickly at all. By the time he was on his back he could already hear the sounds of galloping horses pounding the ground like thunder.

He was a dead man. He’d gotten lucky to get this far. He’d only achieved that small feat because of his lead and being able to skirt around the thick foliage, whereas the horses had to sometimes go around them. But they’d always returned to his trail. It wasn’t very hard to track him since he wasn’t doing much to hide his path. There was just no time.

So it wasn’t a very big surprise that by the time Keo managed to roll over onto his back and look in the direction he’d been fleeing from, the first thing he saw was Tommy on that big horse of his bursting through a pair of stout trees like the Devil himself, minus a scythe and menacing black hood.

The big man pulled up on his mount from about ten yards away, a grin spreading across his plentiful face. He held his AR in one hand, the other clutching the reins of his horse. “Rand! I found him! Over here!”

There were no immediate signs of Rand, so Keo assumed the two had split up to cover more ground. That was surprising, given how easy he’d made it for them. Just his luck; the duo wasn’t nearly as observant as he’d given them credit for, and it didn’t matter a lick because of one damn tree root sticking out of the ground.

Keo sat up on his ass and waited. There was no point in trying to even get up. He wasn’t going to outrun Magnus.

It didn’t take long for Rand to arrive. He stopped alongside Tommy, and the two Shakers looked down at Keo, both smiling from ear to ear. “Well, aren’t you a sight. Did you really think you were going to get away?”

“Sorta, yeah,” Keo said.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“You must be delusional or something.”

“Or something.” Keo sighed. “I guess it worked out for the best in the end.”

“How’s that?” Rand said, leaning back in his saddle, face showing confusion, but also curiosity.

“I wanted the opportunity to teach you real kung fu anyway,” Keo said.

Rand’s eyebrows lifted slightly. Apparently, that wasn’t what he’d expected to hear. “Come again?”

“Your kung fu. It sucks.”

“It’s martial arts, not kung fu.”

“You called it kung fu.”

“I was being flippant.”

“Well, whatever you call it, it still sucks.”

Rand smirked. “Is that so?”

“Yes, that’s so.”

“And you know this...how?”

“I studied martial arts. I’m pretty good at it, actually.”

“Bullshit.”

“No bull or shit about it.”

“You didn’t look so good when I kicked your ass this morning.”

“You caught me off guard.” Keo nodded at Magnus. “More specifically, he caught me off guard. Knocked the wind out of me. I wasn’t ready for your silly little kicks and punches. Plus, you’d gotten me with the knives. That was some chickenshit stuff, I gotta tell you.”

“Chickenshit, huh?”

“Yeah. Stabbing a man before going mano a mano with him. Kind of like cheating. In fact, it is cheating.”

Rand didn’t say anything for a while, but Keo could see his eyes working. The man was trying to figure out what Keo’s game was. Was he going to bite? Keo wanted a very specific response from the Shaker, and he was almost there.

Keo smiled at the two of them. But mostly at Rand. “It’s okay. I get it.”

“You get what?” Rand said.

“You’re scared of me. You’re a kid that ‘learned’”—Keo used air quotes—“his kung fu from movies and TV shows. Whereas me, I actually studied it and went hand-to-hand with the best. I get it. You were scared. So you cheated. It’s cool. I don’t blame you. I would have wiped the ground with you in a minute, if it were a fair fight.” Keo shrugged. “I’m being overly generous. Call it thirty seconds.”

“Is that so?”

“That’s so.”

Rand glanced over at Tommy, who met his gaze with a blank What’s happening here? look of his own. The big man didn’t understand what was transpiring, and that was perfectly fine with Keo. He just needed Rand to “get it.”

The smaller of the two Shakers leaned forward in his saddle as if he needed to get a better look at Keo. “For a man handcuffed and sitting on his ass, you got a pretty big mouth.”

“You would know a thing or two about big mouths,” Keo said. “I mean, being small as you are. Probably why you had to cheat in the first place. You knew I’d whup your ass if we went at it in a straight-up fight.”

“You think so, huh?” Rand cracked a grin, but Keo didn’t think it was all that convincing.

Almost there…

“I don’t think anything,” Keo said. “I know so. I’ve seen guys like you all around the world. Small frame. Big mouth. They think they’re hot shit, but the truth is, they’re scared little boys. So they have to cheat—”

Keo stopped when Rand drew his sidearm.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” Tommy asked. “Bell wants him back in town alive.”

“Relax, Tommy boy, I’m not gonna shoot him.” Rand didn’t shoot Keo; instead, he handed the weapon, along with his rifle, over to Tommy. “Take this.”

“For what?” Tommy asked. He was still confused.

A regular Einstein, this guy, Keo thought as he started to get up from the ground. Again, it wasn’t very easy, but doable. He got it done after two tries.

Rand hopped off his horse. He’d gotten rid of his guns but was still wearing the bandoleer with the knives in them.

“You gonna fight me while I’m handcuffed?” Keo asked.

Rand produced a key from one of his pockets. He tossed it to the ground in front of Keo.

Keo looked down at it. “What? I’m supposed to use it myself?”

“What’s the matter? Big boy like you can’t manage it?” Rand asked.

Keo shrugged. “It was just a question. I thought we were being sporting about this.”

“This is as sporting as you’re gonna get, my man.”

“Fair enough.”

Keo sat down back down with a sigh, then spent the next few minutes fumbling to get the key—not easy since it was behind him along with his handcuffed hands, and he couldn’t see either one of them—and then working it into the lock.

While Keo was doing that, he heard Rand moving around and whispering with Tommy. Probably something along the lines of “Shoot him if he beats me,” or maybe “If it looks like he’s going to beat me, shoot him in the leg.”

Of course, Keo could have been wrong. They might have been discussing tomorrow’s lunch, for all he knew.

What he did know was that he’d gotten Rand off his horse, and instead of the two Shakers immediately marching him back to town, one of them and Keo were about to have a good old-fashioned throwdown. Keo wasn’t entirely certain if he could win against Rand. Sure, he had the size and bulk, but the guy was fast. Everything Keo had said—the cheating, the knives—was just to get the man’s goat.

And it’d worked.

And now he had to make it count.

Keo cast off the handcuffs and stood back up. He massaged his wrists to get the blood flowing again, while watching Rand as the man began walking over to him. He’d taken off his gun belt and the bandoleer with the knives. So it was going to be hand-to-hand, just the way Keo wanted it.

For the second time since their acrimonious first meeting, Keo took in his foe:

Five-five, maybe 120 soaking wet, but wily. Fast hands and even faster feet. No scars on any part of his body that Keo could see, so Rand wasn’t used to losing. Even without the knives, he was going to be a formidable opponent.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.

But it was too late for that now. Keo had to delay his return to Shaker Town. He had to give whoever had shot the group’s scout a chance to catch up to them. That, really, was the entire point of this. Somewhere out there was his would-be savior. Now all Keo had to do was let him catch up to them.

And that meant keeping Tommy and Rand busy.

Or, more specifically, Rand.

Keo smiled at the smaller man strutting confidently toward him. Or Rand wanted Keo to think he was confident, anyway. Keo didn’t completely buy it.

He said, “Tell me something, Rand. How many times in your life has someone called you ‘squirt?’”

Rand didn’t answer, and he didn’t have to. Keo saw the reaction on his face. It was small, almost imperceptible, unless you were looking for it. And Keo was doing exactly just that, and he got his answer.

“Well, don’t worry about it, squirt,” Keo said. “I won’t tell anyone about this ass-whuppin’ I’m about to give you.”

“Big mouth,” Rand said.

“You should see my—”

He never got the chance to finish, because Rand struck first.

Hard.

And fast, too.

Goddamn, the little bastard was fast!

Keo thought his chest had exploded as he reeled back from the blow. He hadn’t even seen it coming, but he sure as hell felt every bit of it.

Rand pushed his attack, moving with that lightning speed Keo had seen earlier this morning.

Knuckles ripped at Keo’s right cheek, then more of their cousins said hi to his left shoulder blade. At least it was the left shoulder and not the right, where he was still duct taped from Rand’s little throwing knives.

Hallelujah for the small miracles!

Keo continued to back up and managed to block a strike that was going for his throat. Or maybe Rand was aiming for Keo’s face, but the Shaker was just too short to reach it. Either way, Keo was able to parry that one and counter with his own.

One jab landed in Rand’s cheek, but Keo’s second one missed. The squirt had ducked, and Keo’s fist came up with empty air. Before Keo could recover, the Shaker drove two quick but powerful strikes into his side. Another rib might have popped, but there was no time to figure out for sure.

There was absolutely no way Keo could match Rand speed for speed. He knew that before any of this even began. And despite what Keo had said about Rand’s lack of “real” kung fu, the guy definitely knew how to use what he had. He may or may not have gotten them out of the movies, but he’d learned them pretty goddamn well.

So the idea was always to get up close and personal, which Keo managed, even if he had to take a few hard blows to the rib cage as payment. He pushed the pain back and kept moving, invading Rand’s personal space, before driving his entire body forward. He took everything Rand threw and kicked at him and kept going.

Wham! as he barreled into Rand and they went down to the ground.

Keo was immediately on top of Rand, who continued to throw fists at his head. That was fine. Head shots didn’t really do much damage. Hell, it probably hurt the hitter more than the target. The human skull had evolved to be the ultimate helmet, the protector of a living person’s most valuable asset: His brain.

Not that it didn’t hurt or Keo didn’t feel it. The ones that landed against his ears—both of them—left his head ringing. But Keo could see just fine, and he had gotten the upper hand using sheer force of will. He thought Rand might have realized that too by the way his eyes widened into saucers when he landed on the dirt ground. Thank God Keo was bigger and stronger. That, he thought, was easily the only thing that saved him from Rand’s vicious strikes.

Through the relentless punching, Keo managed to grin down at the smaller man.

Rand paused.

It was just a moment.

A brief moment of realization.

A second. Maybe not even that.

Half a second, perhaps.

Too late, pal, Keo thought before he rammed his right forearm into Rand’s throat and heard the satisfying crunch of something breaking underneath the flesh and muscle. Rand’s eyes bulged with fear and doubt even as his arms stopped their attack and flopped, uselessly, to his sides.

“Fuck!” That was Tommy. “Holy fuck!”

Keo looked up—Rand had gone still underneath him—as the big man scrambled to unsling his rifle. He had Rand’s AR slung over his other shoulder, and the combination of too many weapons made it more difficult than it should have been. It didn’t help that Tommy looked and was a clumsy oaf. But he was going to get to his weapon eventually.

Keo hopped up to his feet even as Tommy finally got one of the rifles free, righted himself in his saddle, and began to take aim.

“Don’t shoot! They want me alive, remember?”

Or that was what Keo was going to shout at the Shaker before there was an ear-ripping boom! from behind Tommy and the big Shaker dropped from his horse. Magnus whirled around and let out a violent hiss before taking off into the woods. The blast also scared Rand’s animal, and the chestnut vanished after the big black.

The horses!

Dammit, he could have used them.

Keo glanced over as a figure stepped out from between two trees, holding a pump-action shotgun in front of him. A man wearing an Atlanta Falcons cap with a bandage over a nose that was recently broken.

Jake.

The kid that Keo had spared earlier this morning.

Keo fought back a laugh. To think, he’d almost killed Jake, until the man started talking about his unborn child and being in Buck’s posse against his will.

Jake walked over and stared down at Rand’s lifeless body. “He dead?”

“Yeah,” Keo said.

Jake glanced over his shoulder. “There’s gonna be more of them coming. You should hightail it. Me too. I’m not supposed to be out here.”

“What about the other two?”

“I got them both.”

“Damn, Jake.”

Jake shrugged. “I didn’t like them much anyway. Buncha assholes.” Then, “We’re square, right?”

Keo grinned. “Yeah, we’re square.”

Jake returned his grin before turning and fleeing back into the woods.

Keo looked after him for a second or two, before walking over to Tommy’s body and removing his gun belt. Both AR rifles were still there, but the supplies they’d been carrying were on their saddles, which were long gone with the horses.

“I guess Magnus didn’t like you that much,” Keo said to Tommy’s lifeless corpse.

Keo took what he could use and discarded what he didn’t need. Jake was right: More Shakers were coming, so he couldn’t stay around forever. Not that he had any plans to.

Claire was out there.

So were Steven and Ronnie.

And, of course, Buck. They had unfinished business.

But first, he had to find Claire…

Ten

Buck.

Buck the Mercerian.

Now that was a name Keo hadn’t heard, said, or thought of in a while.

Mercerian.

Not that he was missing it. Or anyone he knew, for that matter. If Darby Bay was the pinnacle of the Mercerian existence, it was just fine with all of them. Not to mention, better for what was left of the country.

But, like a bad nightmare, the Mercerians simply refused to go away. And with it, all the bad things associated with them. Keo knew a lot about the man named Mercer. He was, after all, the one that had put the fucker out of their misery with a bullet to the head. There was nothing quite like an old-fashioned execution to put an end to a bad dream.

Buck was another bad dream that needed extinguishing. It was too bad Keo didn’t have a radio capable of reaching Black Tide so Danny and Lara could send a Warthog over here and strafe the Shaker camp. Keo had tried, too, using the two-way portable he’d taken off Tommy and climbing up the tallest tree he could find.

Result: He couldn’t reach anyone. Either the radio didn’t have enough power, or there weren’t any Black Tide assets in the area to receive his broadcast. That put a real damper on his plans to take out Buck and Co. in one efficient gun run.

Of course. Then this would be way too easy, and who wants that?

Him, for one. But then, when did he ever get what he wanted? So why should now be any different?

Without any other choice, Keo proceeded back toward the lion’s den. He didn’t like it, but then, no one ever gave much of a damn about what he liked or didn’t like. His days of doing whatever the hell he wanted were over. He was a good soldier now, and good soldiers did what they were told.

That last thought made him wince a little. It was something his father would have said. The old man was hardcore like that. It was also the reason Keo didn’t like him much. He was too rigid, too strident in his belief that the Army was the be-all-and-end-all of everything. Maybe that was why Keo pursued another path, one that he was sure, had the old man been alive when he did it, would have gotten him plenty of disapproving looks and some very choice words.

He remembered a conversation with his mother when he told her what he was going to do with his life. (Not all the gory details, just enough that she understood he probably wouldn’t be seeing her very often from that day on.)

“He would hate you,” she had said.

“Yeah, I know,” he had answered.

“But you’re doing it anyway.”

“Yes.”

“Because of that.”

“No.”

“Wonsungi,” she had said, using the Korean word for monkey, the nickname that only she knew because she was the one who gave it to him in the first place, “be honest.”

“Yes,” he’d relented.

The old man wouldn’t have approved of his decision, which was exactly why he’d done it.

Now, looking back at his choices, Keo had very few regrets. He’d almost died more times than he could count, but he’d had a hell of a time doing it. Now everything was different. He was a soldier now. A spy, just a few days ago. Another title he didn’t think he’d ever wear.

His father would laugh if the old man were still alive. It was a good thing he was long dead and Keo didn’t have to hear his I told you so’s.

There were two options for reaching Black Tide that Keo could see putting an end to this: One was back at Arrowhead. The other was at Buck’s camp. Keo was reasonably certain the Shakers would have brought along a strong-enough radio to keep contact with Shaker Town despite the woods and distance. Of course, asking the Shakers to let him borrow their radio was another matter. Not that he really intended on asking.

Keo didn’t make a straight path back to the camp. He took a very wide detour before circling back around. By now, Buck’s people would have already realized they’d lost him on the way back to town. That meant another posse was probably on his trail already. Unless, of course, Buck had other, more pressing matters, such as that “good news” he’d gotten earlier.

“It’s on the way. One klick out,” the messenger had said.

What was on the way? And why did it make Buck so happy?

More questions. Dammit, he wished he had some answers right about now.

Keo took precautions back to Buck’s camp, and it cost him over three hours of skulking about the woods, listening and watching for any noise that didn’t belong to the woodland creatures that had repopulated the woods since The Walk Out thinned the ghoul numbers. Except for a couple of deer and a wild boar, he didn’t cross anything else on the ground.

As it turned out, he needn’t have bothered with all the caution.

The camp was empty.

It was easy enough to pinpoint where it had been; the Shakers hadn’t bothered to clean up after themselves or cover their tracks. And those tracks told Keo they had picked up and gone toward Arrowhead instead of back to Shaker Town.

…toward Arrowhead instead of back to Shaker Town…

Just in case it was some kind of elaborate trap, Keo stayed behind cover as he waited for signs of Shakers in the area. He spent ten minutes doing that, then added ten more—as Lara would say—just in case.

No one.

Nothing.

Gone.

…toward Arrowhead instead of Shaker Town…

Shit, Keo thought as he got up and began moving again. He didn’t have to search very hard for clues to the Shakers’ movements. As with their campsite, they hadn’t been very friendly to their surroundings as they picked up and headed off. Snapped branches, stamped grass, and ruffled bushes all marked their passing.

He also saw something else that he hadn’t seen before: A series of tracks made by multiple large tires moving in unison. Some kind of vehicle.

A car? Had Buck been waiting for a car to show up? The tracks hinted at wheels that were big enough to move a van.

“It’s on the way. One klick out.”

Was that it? Was Buck waiting for a special vehicle to arrive before he headed off to Arrowhead?

He guessed he’d find out when he caught up to them.

Keo moved parallel to the Shaker trail, traversing the woods at a steady pace, but not too fast. Again, he was worried about an ambush. Would Buck do something like that? Hell yeah. The guy had come back from the dead, and a man who would go through that kind of trouble was capable of just about anything—

Blood on the ground.

Not quite dry, but not fresh, either.

Keo stopped and glanced around. He’d stumbled back to the spot where Rand and Tommy had ambushed him. Which meant…

He jogged away from Buck’s tracks and toward where he’d left Claire, Ronnie, and Steven. Where he’d been headed originally before he was knocked senseless by Magnus the horse and then stabbed like a pin cushion by Rand. He’d forgotten all about the kids. (Well, two kids and an adult.)

The Georgian woods were dotted with caves that were burrowed into the hillsides. They’d found one not too far away and it was there that he’d left the others. Keo returned to it now, rifle at the ready, and looked out from between a massive tree trunk at the cave opening.

Jagged and rough and empty.

At least empty from where he stood. There were no signs that a fight had taken place, at least not on the outside. But a fight had taken place because he’d heard shooting (probably by Claire) and screaming (probably by Ronnie; he still didn’t think the kid was capable of screaming like that).

Like with the Shaker campsite, Keo gave it a few minutes to see if anyone popped up.

A few minutes turned into ten…

…then twenty…

Finally, he moved forward, jogging across a small clearing and all but lunging inside the mouth of the cave.

Empty brass casings on the floor, but nothing that appeared to be blood. The ground was heavily trampled. Frantic movements had taken place while someone, likely Claire, was shooting.

Who was Claire shooting at? Whoever it was, they were approaching from outside the cave. He could tell that much from the way the casings were littered. She was backing up as she fired, leaving behind a string of empty brass.

But no blood.

Had she missed? From what he could see, she’d fired about half her magazine. Who was Claire shooting at, and how could she have missed every single shot? That wasn’t like her. The kid was well-trained. Most Black Tiders were. Basic Training was part of the deal when you signed up. Operatives like Claire went through even more than the regular grunts.

And yet…

Keo glanced back toward the woods to see if he might have missed signs of blood.

He hadn’t.

Whoever was out here—whoever Claire had been shooting at—hadn’t been hit. The funny part was, Keo couldn’t find tracks to indicate how many there were. Was Claire shooting at some kind of animal in the trees?

He couldn’t locate evidence of anything that would be big—or scary—enough to make Claire unload half of her mag at it. Especially not when they were supposed to stay low while he scouted for information—

The air.

There was something wrong with the air.

The hairs on the back of his neck bristled, and he flinched involuntarily.

There was something wrong with the air.

Something bad.

Something familiar.

And the familiarity brought back a host of emotions and memories.

Bad memories.

There was the unmistakable rotten stink of ghoul presence in the cave.

Eleven

Ghouls.

How?

Maybe one. Maybe two. Maybe more.

But how?

They hadn’t been inside the cave when Keo left. He’d searched the place. It wasn’t like there was a lot of space to hide in. And there were no tell-tale signs anywhere. Not in the air, and not on the ground. No stench of death.

So how?

But what he was smelling now was irrefutable evidence that ghouls were present in the cave sometime after he left. There were no tracks, but Claire had been shooting at something outside the cave as it (or they) approached her, Steven, and Ronnie. And why would Ronnie scream? Keo remembered the sound of her voice. That was fear. She’d been scared out of her mind. What could cause something like that?

A ghoul.

That was what.

But HOW?

That was the question. One he had no hopes of answering. At least, not here all by himself. Maybe Buck had the answers. Had the “good news” the Shaker leader had gotten earlier been about Claire’s capture? Or did that have to do with the vehicle they’d taken with them to Arrowhead? Or both?

Regardless, the facts remained the same: Claire was taken.

By a ghoul?

Impossible. It couldn’t have been a ghoul. Could it?

But the smell… There was no getting around that. Keo had come face-to-gruesome-face with too many of the undead bastards to ignore what was suffocating the very air around him. They’d been here. One, or two, or three. Not that it mattered.

So where were their tracks? Ghouls couldn’t fly. They always left behind clues. They didn’t care about hiding their stink from the natural surroundings.

Wait. The sun.

Keo glanced up for confirmation.

The sun. The high afternoon sun. A big bright ball above the tree canopies. There was no way for ghouls to be out at this time.

So how…?

How?

Maybe he was wrong? Maybe there wasn’t the smell of ghoul in the air.

He sniffed it.

No, it was there. Even out here, just outside the cave. It was impossible to miss.

But it’s daytime…

Keo reflexively took out the SIG Sauer pistol he’d taken from Rand and checked the magazine. No silver rounds. He wasn’t surprised by that. Ever since The Walk Out, silver bullets just weren’t a priority for most people, especially grunts like Rand and Tommy.

He checked the knife, this one taken off Tommy. The sharp blade was coated with just enough silver that Keo let out a slight sigh of relief. So he wouldn’t be completely defenseless—

“You smell that?” a voice said.

Keo spun toward the sound—then instantly realized he only had the knife in his hand. (Fuck me!) He quickly put it away and drew the SIG again.

If the speaker had been a Shaker or someone with ill-intent, Keo would have been dead, because the man, along with his partner, had popped up out of nowhere about twenty yards from where Keo stood. He hadn’t even heard them approaching, and Keo understood why after a few seconds of staring.

It was Don and Lon.

Those weren’t their real names, but the ones Keo had given them because the duo refused to reveal their identities to him. They were wearing ghillie suits (maybe even the same ones they had on when Keo first met them not too long ago outside of Arrowhead), with their bolt-action rifles slung, and looking toward the cave. They stood side by side, as if they were out for a walk in the park and Keo presented no danger to them.

He guessed they were probably right about that last part as he put the gun back into its holster. “Jesus Christ. I almost shot you.”

Don glanced over at Lon in amusement. (Or was that Lon glancing over at Don? With their faces impossible to see underneath their camo, they were essentially identical. It didn’t help they were almost the same height, give or take an inch or two.) “Get that; he thought he almost had the chance to shoot us.”

Lon chuckled. “Yeah. Ain’t that cute.” The man looked across the small clearing at Keo. “Ghouls.”

“You can smell it?” Keo said.

“Hard not to,” the one Keo had decided was Don said. “They stink worse than you Shakers.”

“I thought we already established I’m not a Shaker.”

“You still stink like them. Just a bit less this morning.”

“I took an early morning shower in the river.”

“Good for you,” Lon said as he walked closer to the cave opening and peered in. Keo watched the man’s eyes pick up the empty brass casings and then the frantic signs of movements. “There wasn’t much of a fight.”

“No,” Keo said.

“Who were they?”

“My friends.”

“How many?” Don asked.

“Three,” Lon said before Keo could answer.

Damn, they’re good, Keo thought.

He said, “I need to find them.”

“Not our problem,” Lon said, looking back at Keo. “Horatio sent us to find you.”

Horatio was the head of Arrowhead, and Lon and Don’s boss. In another lifetime, Keo knew the man as Norris.

“That’s why you guys are so far from home,” Keo said.

“Uh huh,” Don said. He was scanning the woods. Those eyes rarely stayed still.

“We took a bet on whether we’d find you alive or dead,” Lon said.

“Who won?” Keo asked.

Lon threw a quick nod at Don.

“I get his dinner tonight,” Don said.

“I hope it’s slop,” Lon said as he walked back to where his partner stood.

Keo didn’t move. Instead, he watched them for a moment, his mind turning, trying to process what was happening and how to proceed next.

“You coming?” Lon asked, looking back at him.

Keo shook his head. “I need to find my friends.”

“Again, not our problem,” Don said. “Our orders were to come fetch you.”

What am I, a dog? Keo thought, but he said, “I’m going to go look for my friends. You guys can do whatever you want.”

Before the two men could argue, Keo began to walk off.

He didn’t know where he was going, but that wasn’t the point. If he was right, then Lon and Don—

“Hold up there, hoss,” Lon said. (Or was that Don? They didn’t just look and act the same, but almost sounded similar, too.)

The partners walked over to catch up with him.

“I told you, I’m not going back to Arrowhead. At least not without my friends,” Keo said.

“Yeah, we figured that,” Don said.

“Horatio said to keep you alive,” Lon added. “That’s what we aim to do.”

“I didn’t know Horatio cared,” Keo said.

“Apparently, he does. Which means we can’t go back empty-handed. Or carrying your body. One, that wasn’t the order. And two, you look like a big boy, and carrying your body back would be very inconvenient.”

Keo smiled. “Whatever you say, boys.”

Don grunted and squinted back at him. “Nice play.”

“I had to try.”

“So where do we start, smart guy?”

“I have no idea.”

“Where were you headed?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“So you were just walking…to walk?”

“Pretty much.”

Lon and Don exchanged a quick glance.

“This guy,” Don said. He was clearly referring to Keo without saying Keo’s name or even eyeballing him.

“Yeah, this guy,” Lon agreed.

“You boys got any ideas?” Keo asked.

“You asking us?” Don said.

“I’m open to suggestions.”

“You think Shakers were behind this?” Lon asked.

“I don’t know. But who else would have taken them? They’ve been on our ass since morning. I was halfway back to Shaker Town with a few of them when I escaped.”

Don nodded at Keo’s duct tape “bandages.” “That explains those.”

“Doesn’t explain the lack of tracks,” Lon said.

“Nope. It doesn’t.”

“Some spooky stuff going on here.”

“Real spooky,” Don agreed.

Keo had to agree with that. Spooky was the right word, all right.

He said, “There was a Shaker camp not far from here. They’ve since picked up and were headed in your direction.”

“We crossed paths with them,” Don said. “Hard not to miss. Three or four dozen men. Half on horseback, others on foot. You think they’re beelining for Arrowhead?”

“That would be my guess.”

Again, the two men exchanged a quick glance.

“What?” Keo said.

“Horatio had a feeling this was going to happen,” Don said. “The town’s getting ready for a fight.”

“Which is why we should head back there,” Lon said.

Keo shook his head. “I told you. I can’t go back without my friends.”

“You’re really making this difficult,” Don said, squinting at Keo from behind his camo paint.

“Not my intention,” Keo said. It was only a half-lie. “But I’m not leaving my friends behind.”

That, too, was just a half-lie. He only had one friend—Claire—while he could give up on Ronnie and Steven if he had to. With the qualifier, of course, being if he had to. But there was absolutely no way in hell he was leaving these woods without Claire. The fact that she was still alive—there would be blood if she wasn’t—made rescue a real possibility. And if Lon and Don were right about Norris getting ready for a battle, then it was even more urgent he get to Claire before the bullets started flying.

“The way I see it, we can kill two birds with one stone,” Don said, looking off into the woods. “We can catch up to that caravan and maybe find your friends there, too.”

“It’s worth a shot,” Keo said. The truth was, he didn’t have any other ideas.

They walked back across the clearing together. No one said a word for a while.

Then, about twenty seconds of silence later, “About what happened back at the cave,” Don said. His voice had dropped significantly. Keo wondered if the man even noticed it. “We all agree? Ghouls were there?”

“Yes,” Keo said.

“How is that possible?” Lon said. He was looking up at the sun, but didn’t say what he was thinking. He didn’t have to. Keo had thought the same thing, and he was pretty sure Don had as well.

For the first time in a long time, Keo shivered at the thought of nightfall.

Twelve

Ghouls.

In the daytime.

That was something Keo didn’t think he’d ever say. Or even dare think.

But here he was, doing just that.

Ghouls in the daytime.

Maybe true, maybe not. But the possibility was there.

The impossible had become possible.

Or had it?

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe the hunters were wrong, too. Maybe they hadn’t really smelled ghoul presence at the cave.

Jesus Christ, he hoped they were all wrong.

“You good back there, sport?” Don was asking him.

Both men were in front of Keo, eyes forward. He trailed behind.

“Yeah, why?” Keo said.

“Just making sure. You’ve been quiet back there.”

“Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“The cave.”

“Yeah, the cave,” Lon said. He didn’t keep going, and Keo guessed he didn’t have to.

Yeah, the cave… Just about said it all.

They’d been walking through the woods for a while, the two hunters leading the way. Keo was more than happy to let them go first. Not only did they know the place better than he did, but given their keen senses they would likely hear any nearby Shakers long before he did. Or smell them first.

Which went back to the whole ghoul stink back at the cave…

“You guys carrying the right tools if we’re still out here in a few hours?” Keo asked.

They were creeping up on evening, with a max of two hours before nightfall. Keo hadn’t realized how long he’d been running around in the woods until he glanced down at his watch a few minutes ago. They were cutting it close.

“Depends on what you mean by ‘right tools,’” Don said.

“You know what I mean,” Keo said.

Lon nodded. “Knives are good to go.”

“Bullets?”

“Not so much.”

“Silver’s hard to come by,” Don added. “Can’t be handing out silver bullets to every yahoo with a gun.”

“Even you two?” Keo asked.

“Yup. Even us,” Don said.

So they had knives. He had Tommy’s, and the hunters had their own. So they weren’t completely unprepared in case they were still out here when night fell, which Keo had a feeling they were going to be.

There was surprisingly very little noise around them, except for the occasional birds in the sky and a squirrel on a branch. The creatures that couldn’t scale trees for safety had hopped, crawled, or slithered out of their path. Was it them or the Shakers whose trail they were following—

Don and Lon had stopped in front of him.

Keo did, too, AR lifting slightly in front of him. “What is it?” he whispered.

“Tracks,” Don said.

“The Shakers. So what?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” Don said, shaking his head while staring down at the ground.

Keo moved forward to stand next to him to get a better look at what the two men were gazing at. He couldn’t see anything that looked like tracks, whether made by humans or animals.

“I don’t see anything,” Keo said.

Lon crouched and pointed at something. “There.”

“Where?”

“Look closer.”

Keo did, squinting at where Lon was pointing.

There wasn’t much there, just something that looked like an indentation on the ground. But that was being more than just a little generous. But then, he wasn’t an experienced hunter who spent all his time in the woods, hiding from humans and animals alike.

“What is it?” Keo asked.

“Tracks,” Lon said.

“They don’t look like tracks to me.”

“They’re tracks, all right.”

“It barely looks like anything.”

“It’s something,” Don said.

“Which is what?” Keo asked.

“Something,” Lon said, standing up. “Too light for a human, too heavy for an animal. Everything about it is wrong.”

Keo stared at the two men. They were exchanging one of their We’ve been together so long we don’t need to speak; hell, we’re probably “speaking” telepathically right now as far as you know, sport glances.

“So what is it?” Keo said.

“Don’t know,” Lon said.

“Don’t know,” Don added.

“Well, that’s good to know,” Keo said.

Don looked over at him. “Was that a joke?”

“That sounded like a joke,” Lon said.

They both looked slightly amused.

Keo shrugged. “Maybe.”

“That was a joke,” Lon said to Don.

“Definitely a joke,” Don said. “A bad one. But still a joke.”

“Yup.”

Keo sighed. “Let’s get back to that,” he said, pointing at what Don and Lon called “tracks.”

“Don’t know,” Don said. “Only reason we spotted it is because whatever it was stepped on a soft patch of ground. Otherwise…” He shrugged.

“That’s not any animal I’ve seen,” Lon said.

“Nope.”

“Spooky.”

“Real spooky.”

Again with the spooky, Keo thought.

“Might be a good time to call Arrowhead,” Don said. He was looking up at the sky, visible between thick tree crowns above them. Evening was coming, and it was going to be dark sooner rather than later.

“Might be,” Lon said with a nod.

“And tell them what?” Keo asked.

“We got a wild card in the field,” Don said.

“‘Wild card?’ What’s that mean?”

“Dunno,” Lon said. “That’s why it’s called a ‘wild card.’”

Don had taken out a radio from inside his ghillie suit.

“You think you can reach them from in here?” Keo asked.

“Only one way to find out,” Don said.

And he did just that, pressing the radio’s transmit lever. “Bandit One to Arrowhead. Come in, Arrowhead.”

“You’re Bandit Two, I assume,” Keo said to Lon.

The hunter nodded. “Three.”

“Not two?”

“Nope.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’m allergic to the number two.”

Keo stared at him, waiting for the punchline. He didn’t get one.

“Really,” Keo said.

“Really,” Lon said.

Don was still waiting for a response through his radio. When he didn’t get it after about ten seconds, he tried again: “Bandit One to Arrowhead. Come in, Arrowhead. Can you hear me.”

He lowered the radio and waited.

Five seconds.

Ten…

“Too many trees,” Lon said.

“Yup, too many trees,” Don said.

“So what now?” Keo asked.

Don looked in the direction they’d been headed before they stopped. “Keep on keeping on. Bad guys are up ahead. Sooner or later, we’ll end up at Arrowhead anyway.”

“We could beat them there,” Lon said.

“We could,” Don said. Then, nodding at Keo, “But we gave sport here our word.”

“That we did.”

Damn right, you did, Keo thought, not liking the idea of having to face twenty or thirty or however many Shakers Buck had with him all by himself. He still didn’t like the thought of three against those numbers, but three was a sight better than one the last time he checked.

“But I don’t like it,” Don said, looking down at the indentation.

It didn’t matter how long Keo stared at it; he couldn’t understand what had gotten them so spooked. As far as he could see, it was just a mark in a soft patch of dirt. The hunters didn’t think it was human or animal, but Keo tended to think it might be the latter.

“It’s an aberration,” Lon said to Keo. “The woods make sense. Things are where they should be, work the way they should work. When something shows up that doesn’t fit, it screams out loud. This”—he nodded at the indentation again—“is screaming bloody murder.”

“It’s just a mark,” Keo said. “It could be anything. Are you telling me you know the tracks of every living thing that scurries around in here?”

“Just about,” Don said.

“Pretty much,” Lon agreed.

“Give me a break,” Keo said.

The two exchanged another one of their patented no-talk glances.

“What now?” Keo asked.

“We continue continuing on,” Don said. “Arrowhead already knows there are Shakers on approach. We clued them in before we found you.”

“It was pretty obvious where they were going,” Lon said. “So whatever happens, Horatio will have everyone ready for a possible fight.”

“Then our mission’s still a go,” Keo said.

“Looks like it,” Don said. He looked as if he was about to say something else but didn’t.

“What?” Keo said. “Spit it out.”

“It shouldn’t be there,” Don said, gazing intently down at the indentation one more time.

“Definitely shouldn’t be there,” Lon said, and there was a somberness about how they’d just stated those facts that made Keo more than a little…anxious.

Then, just like that, Don started moving again. “Let’s git. We’re losing daylight.”

Keo followed the two men. He could be wrong, but he swore he’d detected a little wavering in Don’s voice when he said the We’re losing daylight part. There might have even been something that could pass for…fear?

Of course, Keo could be wrong.

Thirteen

He had volunteered for a mission. In and out. No muss, no fuss. Thanks for offering me your daughter, good sir, but no thanks (as Danny would probably say).

It could have been fun. The kind he used to have back in the day. He ended up on the run instead. That wasn’t very fun at all.

And now, he was stuck with a mystery.

Or mysteries.

Keo hated mysteries.

To top it off, he still had Claire to rescue. He just hoped the kid was still alive.

That’s right, pal, think positive!

He almost laughed out loud, but just barely managed to hold it in. This was no time for laughing. It hadn’t been for the last few days. Claire was in trouble, and whether he liked it or not, Keo was responsible for getting her out alive and back to Black Tide.

Now, if only the rest of the world would cooperate…

That’s the trick, isn’t it?

Yes, it was, just like it always was.

Lon and Don had stopped and gone into a crouch in front of him, their ghillie suits helping them to blend in almost perfectly with their surroundings. Keo wasn’t quite as invisible—which was to say, he wasn’t invisible at all—as he went down on one knee behind them. Somewhere above and to the right of them, he heard animals scurrying away from their position.

Smart little critters.

Keo didn’t have to ask the hunters if they’d seen (or smelled) something when they suddenly stopped moving and went low. He didn’t have to. They wouldn’t have done so if they hadn’t gotten a whiff of something. Or, in this case, someones.

They’d been trekking for the last hour, watching the sun dip as they did so. Thirty minutes, tops, before evening enveloped the woods with darkness. It’d been a long time since Keo felt a slight shiver at the prospect of being caught outside without silver bullets. Hell, it’d been a long time since he dreaded nightfall.

He touched the handle of the knife on his left hip, just to make sure it—and its silver-coated blade—was still there. It was. He breathed a slight sigh of relief and was afraid even that would be heard. The woods were painfully quiet around them, almost as if all its natural inhabitants figured out something was about to go down and scampered out of the area. That was probably not too far from the truth. In Keo’s experience, the critters could always sense impending trouble. And nothing brought impending trouble quite like humans.

Keo waited in silence, because that was what Lon and Don were doing. He couldn’t see or hear anything, but they must have.

The snap of a twig breaking in half, like an explosion in the suddenly very silent woods.

Keo ducked lower—not that he really had that much lower to go—even as Don and Lon remained perfectly still in front of him. Feeling a tinge of embarrassment—thank God the hunters weren’t looking back in his direction—Keo rose back to his last position. He gripped the AR tighter, wishing very badly that he had an H&K MP5SD on him right now. Not that the submachine gun’s built-in suppressor would have made his gunshots completely silent, but it was a sight better than the loud ruckus the rifle was going to make.

He watched Lon and Don for signs to get up and run. He was hoping he didn’t have to do that, but if he did…

Footsteps, followed by voices.

Then, a convoy of men moving about fifty yards in front of them. Far enough that Keo hadn’t really had to almost hug the dirt floor seconds earlier. The fact that Keo had even heard the sound of a twig breaking, the harbinger to the approaching caravan of men, was because it was just so goddamn quiet inside the woods.

Keo moved up slowly to get a better look.

Shakers. All of them. They were moving in a jagged line, half of them on horseback, the other half on foot. Keo was worried one of the horses might stop and glance in their direction, but none of them did. If the animals ended up smelling anyone, it would be him. Don and Lon had covered themselves with the elements of the forest. They wouldn’t stand out among all the other creatures.

The enemy wasn’t in any hurry, as evidenced by their relaxed demeanor and casual conversations. To look and listen to them, Keo would never know they were walking to Arrowhead in order to start a war. And if that wasn’t what they were intent on doing, it was something damn close to it.

And there, in the middle, surrounded by horsemen, was something Keo hadn’t seen in a while:

A railcar, the kind you’d see back when trains crisscrossed America hauling goods and people alike, being pulled by four horses. It was covered in faded red paint that had seen plenty of action in its lifetime. Only parts of a company logo—a compass in the middle of a big square—along with the words South Railroad remained intact. The tires underneath it were massive, and not something that came with the car: They’d been welded on so the railcar could move easier on unstable ground. It would have been much easier to drag it on a paved road, but that would also have exposed it to the enemy.

There were no windows, and only a sliding door in the middle that appeared sealed shut. The makeshift construction was good enough that the car was being pulled smoothly across the forest floor without any trouble. By the looks of the four men riding around the wagon, two of them close to the pulling horses to keep them in the right direction, there was something valuable in the railcar.

Claire, maybe?

No. Because the car was on its way even before Claire was taken from the cave.

Keo remembered the messenger back at Buck’s tent:

“It’s on the way. One klick out.”

That was followed by the look of excitement on Buck’s face. The Shaker leader hadn’t even bothered to hide it from Keo.

This was it. The thing that was on the way. It was here, now, and being moved in the direction of Arrowhead.

The question was: What was inside it?

Not Claire, Keo was sure of that. Buck wouldn’t have gone to such great lengths to keep her captive. Maybe extra supplies. Weapons?

He was leaning toward the last one: Weapons. What else would Buck be dragging along with his army to Arrowhead?

“Look at that,” Don whispered. “You don’t see that every day.”

“Nope,” Lon agreed in the same pitch.

They sounded like they were discussing the weather and not a mystery that Keo desperately wanted the answers to.

Besides the railcar, there was something else odd about the Shaker caravan: The men were all wearing identical white Atlanta Falcons caps. Keo had seen black and red ones back in town; he’d even been given a black version. Jake and Stems had different colored hats on too when Keo ran into them. So did Rand and Tommy. But he’d never seen a white cap before. Not that there was anything particularly different about the color except for the fact all the headgear stood out as evening creeped up on the world.

So why had they changed to white caps suddenly? And where had Buck been keeping them all this time? Was it specifically for this occasion? Just like the car they were pulling toward Arrowhead?

“You guys said Arrowhead knows they’re coming?” Keo asked Don, who was the closest to him by just a few inches.

Don nodded. “Radioed them as soon as we spotted these lot.”

“So they’ll be ready.”

“I suspect so. Horatio’s not keen on getting sneaked up on.”

“Good,” Keo said, feeling a little better.

But not that much better. Knowing the enemy was coming wasn’t the same as being fully prepared for them. Keo had confidence in Norris, but even so…

“We could slow them down,” Lon said.

“Yeah?” Don said, looking over at his partner.

“Have a little fun while we’re at it.”

“What kind of fun?” Keo asked.

“A little fun,” Lon said.

“You wanna expound on that?”

“A little of this, a little of that,” the man said with a shrug.

Keo sighed and wondered if this was what it was like for other people when he delivered one of his ambiguous statements.

Lon started to move, crabwalking backward. Don joined him. Keo did likewise and kept at it until they had the Shakers completely out of their view. If they couldn’t see the bad guys, then the bad guys couldn’t see them.

They stood up and stretched. Keo listened as the group continued on, getting farther away from their position. He could still make out the creaks of the railcar as it was being dragged off by its four horses.

“What do you think is in that railcar?” Keo asked out loud.

“Food?” Lon said.

“Guns?” Don said.

“Girls?”

“Guys?”

“Donkeys?” Lon said.

Keo glanced over at him. “Donkeys?”

Lon shrugged. “What? Food, guns, girls, and guys are more acceptable?”

“Yes.”

“Says you,” Lon said. He turned to Don. “Whatcha got in mind?”

“A little hit and run,” Don said. “No reason we should let them get to Arrowhead unbothered.”

“Sounds good. It’s been a while since we’ve had a little fun.”

“Yup.”

“You didn’t call what happened with the Shakers a few days ago fun?” Keo asked.

“That was work,” Don said.

“Straight-up work.” Lon nodded. “This is fun.”

Keo shook his head. “You guys are nuts.”

“We just enjoy what we do.”

It didn’t take long to catch up to the Shaker caravan. They could hear them to their right, still bundled up like before with the railcar somewhere in the middle.

What’s in the car?

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he recalled a story Danny had once told him about a U-Haul trailer he and Will had come across during the early days of The Purge. Keo couldn’t quite remember all the details, but that was mostly Danny’s fault. When it came to Danny and his war stories, Keo didn’t always pay attention. The man had a tendency to ramble on and on about things that he thought were interesting but Keo, and everyone else as far as Keo knew, found boring.

Dammit, Danny, the one time I wish I had paid attention to your ramblings…

In front of him, both Don and Lon reached down to their hips and pulled out their knives. Keo was going to ask them what they were doing when they began fixing the blades to the barrels of their rifles. Bayonets. They’d turned knives into bayonets.

“You expecting close quarters fighting?” Keo asked. “No offense, but I was hoping to do this from a distance. Hit and run. That type of stuff.”

“Definitely,” Don said.

“So what’s with the bayonets?”

“Just in case.”

“Just in case of what?”

Lon turned around to face Keo and pointed up at the sky. “Slipped your mind, huh?”

Keo glanced up.

The sun had vanished behind the tree crowns. Evening wasn’t just creeping up on them, it was already there.

Lon was right; Keo had forgotten about the time.

“Just in case,” Lon said as he turned around and they continued on through the darkening woods.

Just in case, Keo thought again even as he reached down to touch the handle of the knife.

Just in case…

Fourteen

8:11 p.m.

Not exactly the hour of the wolf, but close enough that Keo felt a slight shiver race up and down his spine anyway. It’d been too long since he was afraid of the dark. Tonight was a very good reminder that, once upon a time, the night was the enemy, and he’d gone far too long not keeping that in mind.

He waited, because there was nothing left to do. It didn’t help that he was by himself and the forest had gotten chillier since the last time he sat down to wait. How long ago was that? An hour?

No, it hadn’t been more than a few minutes.

Ten minutes, tops.

…maybe more…

He shivered again and pulled his jacket tighter. Christ, what was wrong with him? He was acting like a little boy lost in the woods. He’d done this before.

But what they were about to do wasn’t the problem.

It was the night.

And the lack of silver weapons beside the knife on his left hip.

Despite the AR and the SIG Sauer pistol in its holster, he felt strangely…unarmed. Even naked. It wasn’t a very pleasant feeling.

Goddammit, get your shit together. You’ve done this before.

Yes, he had. It was just that…

Shut it!

He did, and focused on the task at hand.

Men. On foot and on horseback. They had just appeared in his line of sight like they were supposed to. They were still moving casually, not in any hurry. That was good; slow movers made for easier targets.

First a pair of horses, followed by about a dozen on foot, and then the railcar. Moonlight glinted off the faded red paint.

What’s inside that thing?

Again, he thought back to Danny’s story about the U-Haul. If only he could remember what was inside that thing…

Never mind. He’d find out eventually. For now…

He lifted the rifle to take aim.

A figure walked about fifty yards across his iron sights. Not close enough for a confirmed kill shot, but he couldn’t ask for a better would-be first victim.

He squeezed the trigger—pop!—then began pouring lead into the column of men. He didn’t know it would be so satisfying shooting at Shakers, and maybe that was why he nearly emptied the entire magazine from the AR before he knew it.

Some of his rounds pinged! off the metal side of the railcar in the middle. He hadn’t intended that, but had to admit the sound was music to his ears. He threw a few more rounds in its direction just in case.

Ping-ping-ping!

The car didn’t move. The horses dragging it didn’t take off like he’d been expecting. Instead, the animals remained still, seemingly unbothered by the sudden chaos. This, even while the other horses in the caravan tried to buck off their riders in fear.

And yet, the four pulling the railcar never moved.

Now that’s something you don’t see every day.

Keo got up and turned to go. Zip-zip-zip! as return fire ripped into the foliage around him. Most of the rounds didn’t even come close, because the shooters didn’t know where he was or where he’d fired from. Of course, all it would take was one bullet to get lucky for his luck to run out.

Let’s think positive, pal!

Keo ducked as low as he could go while still keeping his forward momentum. He was only partially effective and nearly tripped once, twice, three times.

He saw a tree coming up—

Pek-pek! as two bullets drilled into the brown-black trunk and bark kicked at his face even as he went around it.

Close one!

But close wasn’t good enough, and he was still on his feet. He didn’t think a Shaker had spotted him; more likely, someone had just almost gotten lucky.

Keo imagined Danny shouting (while laughing maniacally), “Almost only counts in grenades and horseshoes, my man! And I don’t see anyone throwing grenades or horseshoes at you yet!”

Imaginary Danny had a good point. Keo was still moving, still on his feet, even if he were on the constant precipice of losing his footing.

And then, just like that, the zip-zip-zip of stray bullets was interrupted by two very distinguishable crack-crack! of bolt-action rifle shots.

Don and Lon, finally getting into the action.

It’s about damn time!

The plan was for Keo to attack—really, just fire into the throng of Shakers—from one side while the hunters took up positions on the other side. Their goal was to find Buck, if possible, and to shoot anyone wearing an Atlanta Falcons cap if not. It wasn’t very hard to pick out the bad guys from the rest of the darkened forest. Their gleaming white headwear gave them away. Maybe that was why Buck had made them all wear it in the first place? So they could pick each other out in the darkness during a firefight in the dark?

Whatever Buck’s reasons, it’d given Keo and the two Arrowhead men easy targets. Keo wasn’t sure if he’d hit anyone with his volley; he’d fired from side to side, doing his best to pick off targets. Of course, he was squeezing the trigger so fast that he had, in all likelihood, missed everything he shot at. He would have been a little perturbed by that, except it was never really his job to drop anyone. That was Don and Lon’s. From what Keo had seen of the two men’s handiwork, they were very good at it.

Like now. The constant crack-crack of their rifles was a good indication the Shakers now had more to deal with than chasing Keo into the forest. Not that he thought he’d get off scot-free, but a guy could hope.

He slid to a stop and slipped behind a gnarled tree trunk to reload the AR. He hadn’t bothered to do so while fleeing for his life. The fleeing for his life part had taken precedence. Now, as he caught his breath, Keo slapped the new magazine in. The ammo pouches he’d taken off Tommy felt a lot lighter now that he was carrying one mag less.

Frantic rustling sounds, coming from directly behind him!

Keo pushed off the tree and spun around, the rifle rising as he took aim.

The movements had come from the ground. He zeroed in.

Keo didn’t shoot.

A creature burst out from a knee-high bush and vanished into the shadows. It was too low to the ground, not to mention fast and small, to be human. And right now, the only threats Keo cared about walked on two legs and carried guns.

Crack-crack, followed by the pop-pop-pop of return rifle fire. Don and Lon were still doing work against the Shakers. The return fire wasn’t a surprise. As good as the hunters were, they wouldn’t be able to take down thirty to forty Shakers within the space of—

Keo glanced down at his watch. The neon hands glowed 8:13 p.m.

Two minutes. Damn. It’d felt like two years since he emptied his mag into the moving caravan and then boogied out of there.

Of course, just because the Shakers were now preoccupied with Don and Lon (Good luck finding them, boys), it didn’t mean they would completely forget about Keo. Buck could have sent one or two—or more—to hunt him down. Not that Keo thought they knew it was him, but Buck wasn’t an idiot and he would have deduced by now—

Thump-thump-thump!

Footsteps. This time he was 100 percent sure it wasn’t an animal. He was listening to heavy boots pounding on the ground and coming right at him. Either he’d been correct about Buck sending someone over or multiple people were fleeing the ambush site, heading away from Don and Lon to save their own scalps.

Keo slid back behind the tree and turned around. The rough bark pricked at his back as he waited.

…and waited…

Two figures, appearing on both sides of the tree. That surprised him, and it took Keo about a second to look right, then left to confirm what he was seeing. He didn’t think they had done it on purpose. More likely, they’d split up to go around the tree and hadn’t told each other which side to take.

Not that it mattered.

Keo saw a flash of white fabric on their heads—Shakers.

And they hadn’t seen him.

He felt almost guilty shooting one, then the other, in the back. Three rounds, pulling the trigger as fast as he could, so that the three separate pop-pop-pop! sounded almost like one.

The first bullet knocked the left-side Shaker to the ground on his face, while the second and third took down the right-side one. Keo hurried forward and shot the first Shaker two more times in the back just in case his first bullet hadn’t been fatal.

The first one was lying on his stomach, arms and legs spread out from his body. Keo had caught him by surprise. The man’s face was covered by darkness and grass. Keo didn’t turn the man over, but he did spend another second or two—or three—hoping it wasn’t Jake, the Shaker that he’d spared and who paid him back by saving his life.

The second body was similarly facedown on the ground. Keo couldn’t see his face, either, and didn’t do anything to alter that fact. Again, he hoped it wasn’t Jake.

Ignorance is bliss, right?

Silence.

The shooting from behind him had stopped.

Keo was turning to look back when the radio he had clipped to his hip squawked. He’d already changed the frequency over to match Don and Lon’s so they could maintain contact.

And it was Don’s voice that came through now, calm and collected: “You still alive?”

Keo unclipped the radio and pressed the transmit lever. “Last time I checked. What about you?”

“Good to go. See you at the rendezvous point.”

“Roger that.”

Keo put the radio away.

So far, so good.

He started moving, then eventually launched into a quick run in the opposite direction of where Don and Lon—and, Keo presumed, anyone chasing them—were headed. The plan was to link up later, regather, replan, and then hit the Shakers again. By the time the bad guys finally reached Arrowhead, Keo figured they could hit the group two more times, if not more. Taking them all out was wishful thinking, but they could whittle the numbers down a little.

Or a lot.

Either/or worked for him.

Keo slid to a stop.

Something was wrong.

Not with him, but with the air that swirled around him. It had changed. The fresh aroma of untouched forest had become…stale.

Tainted.

It was coming from behind him, reaching out like physical tentacles.

Fuck me, Keo thought even as he spun around.

For some reason, he dropped the AR rifle instinctively and let the sling keep it from falling to the ground. In the same motion, he reached for his left hip, for the knife with the silver-coated blade.

A building collapsed on top of his head. His legs went weak as he was pummeled to the ground by the massive weight.

Keo let out a startled scream.

A pair of blue eyes gazed down at him from the night sky. Something that might pass for a pair of lips, if you slit them into ribbons and then dipped them into tar, squirmed to form a murderous, gleeful smile.

“Keo,” the dark figure said, its voice—its hiss—corrupting the already-stale air around them. “It’s been a long time.”

Fifteen

The ghouls were hard to kill unless you had the right tools. Silver was the most portable, but sunlight was the most powerful. The problem with sunlight is that it’s a lot more difficult to carry around. Certain types of water with certain properties would sink them, literally, like a stone. Even now, Keo imagined a few hundred thousand or so ghouls sitting on the ocean floors of the world like stone gargoyles.

But those three things didn’t work on every type of ghoul. Especially the blue-eyed variety. Those were…a little harder to kill. A bullet to the head was easily the most effective. Unlike in the movies, though, it was harder to shoot something—especially something that could move as fast as a Blue Eyes—in the noggin in real life. You could also cut off their heads, of course. That, alas, was just as difficult as just shooting them in the brain. Then there was always the tried-and-true method of severing their limbs and then taking out their brain or detaching their head at the neck. It was probably the most gruesome of all the methods, but, Keo had to admit, was impossibly satisfying.

In his lifetime, Keo had come face-to-gruesome-face with four blue-eyed ghouls. One was Frank, or as Lara and Danny knew him, Will. Good ol’ Frank had gone out in a blaze of glory. Most people had no idea of his sacrifice, and they never would. Maybe, one day, the history books would get around to giving credit where credit was due. But who was to say there would be historians around to write those books? As far as Keo could tell, the world wasn’t getting any better since The Walk Out. Sure, there were less undead things to deal with, but there were just as many living things to worry about.

Another Blue Eyes Keo didn’t have a name for. Or at least, Keo didn’t know what it called itself. It hadn’t been the most dangerous, but it’d been the most persistent. It’d almost gotten Keo and Lara, but they’d prevailed, if just barely. But barely was good enough when it came to the Blue Eyes.

The same time Keo dealt with Mr. Persistent (or Mr. Sadistic, as Keo knew him then), he’d come into contact with a third blue-eyed ghoul. It had once been a young woman named Jordan, a former slayer who had been turned by Mr. Sadistic. Like Frank, Jordan had defied Keo’s stereotypes of what a blue-eyed ghoul was and proved to be a valuable ally. Even now, he still didn’t know what had happened to her. It. Whatever.

And then there was Merrick. He’d come after Frank, and before Mr. Sadistic and Jordan. The blue-eyed ghoul had allied itself with Buck, and together they’d nearly wiped out Black Tide at Darby Bay. They were also responsible for taking Gaby from them. But Merrick was dead. (Again. Or however the hell that worked.) Gaby had called in an airstrike and wiped him off the face of the Earth for good.

Or that was what they thought, because there were no signs of the creature when they unearthed the rubble. There were also no signs of Gaby, but there wouldn’t be, considering how badly the building was destroyed.

“It’s dead,” he remembered Danny saying.

“Did you find the body?” Keo had asked. Lara was there at the time, but she hadn’t said much. She didn’t like talking about that night, didn’t like being reminded about what she’d lost in the short span of just twenty-four hours.

“No, but we wouldn’t,” Danny had said.

“Why’s that?”

“Ghouls don’t last in daylight. You know that. One ghoul skeleton looks the same as another. Even the Blue Eyes.”

“That’s not entirely true.”

“You know something I don’t?”

Keo had shaken his head. “They’re different. You would be able to tell the difference.”

“Doesn’t matter anyway. There were hundreds of ghoul bones in that pile. Maybe thousands. One of them would be Blue Eyes. What was it you called it?”

“Merrick.”

“Right. Him. It. Or whatever the proper pronoun is. Wouldn’t want to insult the blue-eyed fuckers.”

Keo had suspected that the Black Tiders just hadn’t wanted to search too hard. Like Lara, many of them were still in mourning over Gaby’s death and those of other friends the night before. Digging through the destruction of the building would have seemed like walking over their sacrifices.

So there were four Blue Eyes that Keo had come into contact with since The Purge. It was likely one more than most people still alive in the world today could say. Not that Keo was bragging; it wasn’t exactly something to put on your resume.

Frank, Mr. Persistent, Jordan, and Merrick.

It was that last name that stuck in Keo’s mind.

Merrick…

* * *

“Keo. It’s been a long time.”

Not long enough.

“You remember me, don’t you?”

How could he forget?

“Of course you do. After all we went through?”

It wasn’t its eyes. They all had the same pulsating blue eyes. Ethereal and unreal, as fascinating as they were terrifying.

It wasn’t its voice. They all had the same hissing that passed for sounds. Words were stretched and echoed as if it was speaking inside a chamber of horrors.

It wasn’t its appearance. They all looked the same: Elongated stick figures that seemed to bend with the wind. Unnatural and defying the laws of nature.

Something like it shouldn’t exist…and yet, it does.

Keo knew, without a shred of doubt, that this was Merrick. The blue-eyed ghoul that was supposed to be dead when Gaby sacrificed herself to kill it back in Darby Bay.

But here it was, as alive as…

Buck.

As alive as Buck.

Buck. You motherfucker. You brought it back. How the hell did you bring it back, you piece of shit?

There was no doubt about it: Buck’s reappearance had everything to do with Merrick’s own return. This was no coincidence. Not one goddamn bit. Buck was back, and so was Merrick. They were a team, after all. The unholiest of all unholy alliances.

“Oh, you remember me, all right,” it hissed, those things that it was passing off as lips but looked more like razor blades forming an even bigger smile. Not quite Joker-esque, but close. That is, if the Joker was on meth and insane. “I’m flattered. After all of our kind you’ve killed, I actually stood out to you.”

Keo clenched his teeth. He wanted to spit something back. Something witty. Smartass. The usual. But all he could do was keep from choking because it had its bony fingers around his throat. It was sitting on his chest, its body radiating that impossible glow of heat and cold simultaneously. Keo would have blotted out its stink by breathing through his mouth if he could. Instead, he had to lie on the ground and let the smell curl around him like a python moving in for the kill. The stench of its unnatural existence latched onto the pores of his skin and face. The big scar on his cheek tingled and vibrated as if trying to come to life so it could escape the wretched stench.

“You got uglier,” it hissed.

Keo almost smiled. Almost. He might have if he could, if his mouth wasn’t too busy trying to gasp for what little breath he could get to flow into his lungs. He imagined his face turning blue right about now. That was usually what happened when you couldn’t breathe properly. Thank God he still had his nose.

Then again, maybe that wasn’t such a great thing. The fact he could still smell meant he had to take the creature’s stink all in.

All of it.

Every last bit of it.

He wanted to vomit, but he couldn’t do much of anything except lie there and let it sit on him as if he were a floor mat. The cloudless sky drifted in and out in the background, barely visible behind the waving tree crowns. A nice breeze rushed through them, making Keo shiver slightly.

Was that from the wind or the thing sitting on him?

The pop-pop-pop of gunfire from somewhere in the distance. No, not too distant. That would be about where Lon and Don had gone. Which meant Buck’s remaining men were pursuing them. That was exactly what the hunters had wanted. This was their territory. The Shakers were trespassers. If they could get the bad guys into a running gunfight in the dark, Lon and Don were going to have a hell of a nice time tonight.

Keo, on the other hand…

“Don’t worry about your friends,” it hissed. “Or the ones in the town. In fact, you shouldn’t worry about any of them. Just worry about yourself.”

Thanks for the advice, Keo thought because that was precisely what he was doing. He could still hear gunfire in the background, but he wasn’t worried about Don and Lon at all.

No sirree.

He was worried about himself. Because he was fucked right now. FUBAR, as Danny would say. Fucked Up Beyond All Reason.

Keo stared up at the twisted and shiny face smiling down at him. It didn’t show any of the scars that he expected to find from something that had survived a missile from an A-10 Thunderbolt. Given the sad state of the building after Mayfield, the Warthog’s pilot, pulled the trigger, it had been safe to say everyone on that building at the time was dead. Everyone and everything.

Or, at least, it had been safe to say.

Now? Not so much.

“Hey,” Keo said. Or thought he said. He might have just croaked out an incoherent sound.

The ghoulish creature smirked. “What?”

Keo tried to get the words out, but they wouldn’t obey.

It cocked its head slightly, gazing down at him like a curious father would a son. Or, more appropriately, a tiger before its next meal. “You have something to say, Keo? Is that it? Are you going to indulge me with one of your whimsical retorts?”

Maybe, if you let me talk, Keo thought but couldn’t put into actual words.

It sat there, waiting.

Keo moved his mouth, trying to make sounds.

Nothing happened.

“Ah, I see,” it said. “You can’t talk.” The ghoul loosened its fingers around Keo’s throat just enough that he could finally suck in a much-needed breath of (filthy) air. “There. Better?”

Keo nodded as much as he could.

“So entertain me,” it hissed. “You’re good at that, I remember.”

“I have something,” Keo croaked.

“Do you, now?”

“Something you’ll like.”

“And what is that?”

“This.”

Its eyes widened in confusion, the twin blue orbs glowing brightly like stars in a sea of black tar.

In that same instant, Keo lifted his left hand and drove the knife inside his balled fist straight at the side of its head. He’d held onto it all this time, even after the monster had crashed into him like a meteorite. Thank God he’d held onto it. Thank God.

Except the knife and its silver-coated blade never got there.

Merrick’s other hand blurred, and there was a crack, followed by a slight and barely audible thump as the knife fell to the ground next to Keo.

Pain burned from Keo’s left arm. More specifically, from the spot where the hand joined the rest of his arm.

“Oh, come on, Keo. You can do better than that,” it hissed, wormlike lips slithering around to form a wide, wide wicked smile.

No, Keo thought. No, I can’t.

Sixteen

Keo wished he could say this was the most embarrassing moment of his life, but the truth was it only really rated a close number 5. Maybe the fact that he was about to die had a little something to do with that. When the Grim Reaper was within view, it was a little hard to feel something as trivial as embarrassment. Not that that kept him from feeling it anyway, if just on a number 5-level.

On the other hand, being dragged through the woods by the feet was not one of his finer moments. Truthfully, this would rate, oh, somewhere in the 99 to 100 scale, with 100 being the least fine moment of his life.

Of course, he couldn’t do anything about it. He was fucked. FUBAR, as Danny would say. Fucked up beyond all reason and then some. So what was that? FUBARATS? That sounded better, though it probably wasn’t going to catch on. Too…letter-y.

He chuckled. Or thought he did. It was a good sign that he still had his sense of humor, even if he was the only recipient of his cutting wit.

Cutting wit, huh? Getting a little carried away there, pal.

Maybe, but what else was he going to do while he was dragged through bushes and over roots and bumping against tree trunks? Keo figured that last part was on purpose; there was absolutely no reason for the blue-eyed bastard to go anywhere close to the trees except to introduce him to a face full of bark.

Not that it hurt. Much.

Somewhere between when Merrick sat on him like he was some legless doofus, Keo had lost the SIG Sauer. He didn’t know what had happened to it. The AR, too, was missing. The knife was also gone. He still had the use of his right hand, but his left dragged on the ground next to him as he was lazily “walked.”

Merrick stopped talking as soon as the dragging began. Which was too bad; Keo would have liked to know how the fucker had survived Darby Bay. Or where it’d been all this time. And if it was, in fact, the occupant of that railcar Buck’s crew was pulling toward Arrowhead. And speaking of Arrowhead, what exactly was he going to do once he got there?

Keo asked anyway, and the ghoul ignored him. This continued for a while. Keo wasn’t sure how long they’d been moving through the woods. It seemed like hours, but was probably just a few minutes. He couldn’t hear gunshots anymore, which he wasn’t quite sure was a good or bad sign.

The good: Don and Lon had made a clean getaway from their pursuers and were waiting for him right now at the rendezvous spot.

The bad: Don and Lon had made a clean getaway from their pursuers and were waiting for him right now at the rendezvous spot…while he was being dragged through the woods by a blue-eyed ghoul.

He was FUBAR.

Check that.

FUBARATS.

Yeah, that was the tick—

Thump as the right side of Keo’s head bounced off a particularly gnarly trunk. His head rang for a few seconds.

“Oh, come on!” he shouted. “Give me a break!”

The ghoul continued dragging him like a piece of meat. It didn’t even bother with a response. Keo didn’t know which was worse—the lack of recognition of his pain or the pain itself. Oh, who was he kidding? It was both.

“Give a guy a break, why dontcha,” Keo said.

Again, nothing.

The back of his head rolled over something that might have been an overgrown tree root. It was all he could do to keep his right leg slightly up from the ground or risk it getting stuck in something and ripped away as the ghoul kept on moving. It didn’t have the decency to drag him by both legs. He was pretty sure it was doing that on purpose, too.

Rude asshole.

The night had gone deathly silent. Keo couldn’t hear a peep from anything or anyone. Not Don or Lon, or Shakers, or animals. They’d all moved out of the blue-eyed ghoul’s path. No doubt all the woodland creatures could smell the creature coming. There was something that almost felt like an invisible aura pulsating around the monster. Keo didn’t blame the animals. He would have done the same, if he could.

But he couldn’t, so that was an irrelevant—

Merrick had stopped. Frozen in place.

What now?

The ghoul turned its head slightly to the right, the thing it was passing off as a nose sniffing the cool night air.

Keo looked in the same direction, but all he saw were trees.

And more trees.

“What?” Keo said. “Why’d you stop? Mind you, not that I’m complaining. My head is a little sore—”

“Shut up, meat,” the ghoul hissed.

It talks! Finally!

“I’m just making conversation,” Keo said. “Why’d we stop? I was starting to get used to being dragged—”

Its eyes snapped to him, and Keo shut up. He couldn’t help himself. He hadn’t done it on purpose, but his mind seized up and his jaw closed on instinct. The blue-eyed ghoul was pure evil, and being the recipient of its warning stare was…unsettling.

Merrick didn’t gloat. Instead, it turned its head back at…what?

What was out there? Nothing that Keo could see.

The night had gotten thicker, and there were so many trees. (He knew that last part for a fact; God knew he’d “accidentally” bumped into more than a handful since this little journey of his began.) There was no sound. No movement. Not unless Keo was counting his own racing heartbeats.

Christ, he was breathing hard!

Keo kept his mouth shut. He was too afraid to even open it a little. Right now, he was still alive, and if he irritated Merrick too much, the blue-eyed bastard might just decide he was better off quiet. Re: Dead.

And being alive meant he still had the opportunity to escape.

And escape meant returning to Lara.

Keo wasn’t about to ruin that possibility for anything.

And yet, and yet…

“What are we listening to?” Keo asked.

Merrick didn’t respond. It was staring off at…

Nothing. There was nothing Keo could see. But Keo knew that the Blue Eyes had supernatural senses. He’d learned that from his short time with Frank. The blue-eyed ghouls could smell, hear, and feel well beyond the human ability. Surely, infinitely better than Keo ever could.

So what was Merrick looking at? What was it seeing—or hearing, or smelling—that Keo wasn’t?

He wasn’t sure how long they stayed that way—Keo on his back on the ground like a useless sack of shit—while the ghoul looked off into the darkness. It didn’t move. It hadn’t, since it stopped. Moonlight gleamed off its hairless domed head, caressing the sharp edges and smooth texture of its flesh and the visibly deformed skull underneath.

The first gunshot was loud, like thunder crackling across the eerily quiet woods.

Crack!

Merrick’s head twitched slightly as the round sailed past his head and pekked into a tree somewhere in the shadows.

Crack-crack!

Two more shots, so quick they seemed to have come from the same weapon, but that couldn’t have been the case because Keo was hearing bolt-action rifles firing. And those weren’t the kind of guns that could shoot so quickly.

There were two shooters out there. Both with bolt-action rifles.

…two shooters…

…bolt-action rifles…

Don and Lon!

Keo didn’t know if Merrick knew that or not, or if it even cared. To it, one human was probably the same as another. “Meat sacks” for dining.

The first bullet might have missed the creature’s head—the hunters had gone for the killing shot—but the rest of the rounds went for its body. Center mass. The first was intended to kill it; the rest was to stop it, or slow it down enough for another headshot. It was textbook when dealing with a blue-eyed ghoul, and guys like Don and Lon would know that.

Merrick dropped Keo’s leg when rounds zipped past its twisted torso. It didn’t even bother to look at him when it scampered off. Keo watched it moving across the ground. Or attempted to keep it within sight. It was too fast—

What are you doing, idiot, get up and run!

Keo scrambled to his feet even as the cracks continued, even though Keo couldn’t see Merrick anymore. It was gone. Where? Easy: To wherever Don and Lon were. The hunters were trying to take it down.

And they were failing. Keo knew that because they were still firing, the cracks of their rifles echoing over and over, and over…

Good luck, boys!

Keo ran off in the opposite direction, left arm dangling uselessly at his side. He scanned the ground for a weapon—something, anything—but there wasn’t even a big enough piece of branch worth slowing down and grabbing.

So he ran faster instead, hoping to put enough space between him and Merrick when the Blue Eyes was done with Don and Lon. Or, if Keo was really lucky, the Arrowhead hunters would have somehow found the brain they were shooting for.

Yeah, if he were really lucky. And when was the last time he got that lucky?

Keo slid to a stop and turned around.

The shootings had stopped.

Don and Lon had gone quiet.

Keo waited.

Five seconds.

Ten…

Silence.

Continued, eerie silence.

Was that a good sign? Had Don and Lon taken out the creature? Or had it taken them out?

One or the other. It could only be one or the other.

I’m sorry, boys, but I got other things to worry about right now. Good luck!

That was all he could offer them. Keo had gone up against the Blue Eyes before, and good luck was all that he could manage for the hunters. Don and Lon were formidable fighters, even if they didn’t consider themselves soldiers. They were good, but were they good enough to survive one of these encounters?

Keo hoped so.

For their sake and, maybe, for his, too.

He turned around and started running again, praying he was headed in the right direction: To Arrowhead. It was a little hard to tell in the darkness. He imagined himself as a blind man fleeing through the night and hoping for the best. To have some sunlight at his back. Or, hell, a bazooka and flying car, while he was engaged in wishful thinking.

No sunlight. No bazooka. And definitely no flying car.

He’d make do. He always had.

Right now, his goal was Arrowhead.

“Hey Norris, guess what? I’m back! Miss me?”

Then, make contact with Black Tide.

“Hey, Danny, guess what? Merrick’s not dead! Whoops!”

And finally, Lara. That was the most important goal.

He wanted desperately to see Lara again…

Seventeen

Lon and Don were probably dead, and he was on his own. So what else was new?

Keo picked up speed as he went (or he assumed he was, but he could have been grossly exaggerating to make himself feel better), wanting to get as far, far away from Merrick as possible. In the back of his mind, he was glad the blue-eyed ghoul had someone else to occupy his night.

Ouch. Don’t tell Norris that, pal.

Yeah, he wasn’t going to. Hadn’t even given a first—never mind second—thought to that idiotic notion. If Lon and Don were dead, then they were dead because they’d come for him. However he sliced it, Keo was the reason the hunters weren’t going back home tonight, or any other night.

Keo didn’t slow down until he was almost out of breath. He had no choice. If he’d kept going at his current pace—running out of steam, with his vision starting to blur a bit (or a lot)—he would have crashed right into a tree. Or get clotheslined by a hanging branch. Neither possibility was particularly appealing.

He didn’t glance back. He didn’t have to. Keo sniffed the air instead.

Cold. But fresh.

More importantly, natural.

The animals had returned to the trees and branches around him. He could hear bird wings fluttering, the hooting of owls, and more than a few knee-high critters racing through bushes in front and to the right. Not afraid of his presence; just annoyed by it.

That was good. That was very good. Because animals weren’t annoyed by ghouls, they were terrified of them. And for good reason. Before The Walk Out, most of the population in the woods around the world had been greatly reduced by ghouls. The creatures, after all, didn’t distinguish between humans and animals. Blood was blood, even if they flowed from small creatures.

Keo didn’t stop completely. He continued at a slow but maintainable pace. He sucked in one deep breath after another, massaging his left wrist at the same time. It didn’t feel like a break along the ulna or radius, even though Merrick was more than strong enough to snap both bones if it had wanted.

Lights!

Keo froze in place, watching as a beam of light cut a swath across the darkness.

Might wanna move there, pal!

Right. Move.

He took two quick steps back and slipped to the right, gliding smoothly (or he liked to think he’d done it smoothly) behind a particularly massive tree, right as the light blasted across the other side of the trunk and continued on.

Keo followed the beam’s trajectory, then leaned out to try to find its source.

A flashlight, jiggling in the air as its owner moved toward him.

Keo edged back behind the tree and listened to the approaching figures.

Figures, not figure.

There were definitely more than one. Two, maybe three—or more. He didn’t like that or more part, but there it was.

…or more…

And all he had was one useful arm. That was it. He didn’t even have two arms to fight with, for God’s sake. Well, that wasn’t technically true. His left arm was still attached, and he could use it…mostly. It was just that the fist—when he did try to form one, the pain was excruciating—wasn’t going to be very effective. At least, not if he wanted to punch anything without howling in pain and, likely, passing out. Okay, probably not pass out, but the howling in pain part was definitely going to happen.

So that left him with…one good hand and two good legs. The latter, he could use. What was that saying about running when you can’t fight? He could still fight, just not very well. So that left him with…

He twisted around, sucked in a deep breath, and took off.

Almost immediately, someone noticed him.

“Over there!” someone shouted. Male.

That was followed by the rough patter of boots crashing against the leaves-strewn ground. Keo had been careful to go around as much of the natural debris as he could, but his pursuers (Dammit. There had to be more than one of them, didn’t there?) didn’t show any such caution.

“How many?” someone else shouted. This one was female.

“I just see one!” the first one replied.

“Where’s he going?” someone else said. Also male.

They were on his ass, getting closer. Keo couldn’t tell if he was just moving slower than them or—

No, there was no or about it. He was not moving nearly as fast as he could. That marathon trying to put as much distance between him and Merrick had drained him. How long had he been running? One hour? Two? More?

Instead of continuing back to where he did not want to be—which was anywhere Merrick was—Keo began angling left, hoping that if he got far enough he could start circling back around.

The first shot zipped over his head and pekked! into a nearby tree. Close enough that bark flicked at Keo’s face, forcing him to duck and, at the same time, slow down momentarily.

Shit! That was close!

“Stop shooting!” someone shouted. The woman he’d heard earlier. Keo recognized a leader when he heard one. “Goddammit, no one shoot until you can see what you’re shooting at!”

Now that’s good advice! Keo thought as he continued turning, turning…

And he tripped.

Goddammit, he tripped.

Again.

It was another tree root sticking out of the ground. One of thousands he’d spotted over the last few months. And he’d managed to avoid all of them. Every single one.

Every…single…goddamn…one.

Until this morning.

And now, tonight.

Even as he was cursing his luck, Keo landed on his face and ate a mouthful of fresh, damp earth. There was dirt in his eyes and falling off his nose when he spun himself around until he was staring up at the moonless sky beyond the tree crowns.

So many trees, and nary a treehouse for him to escape into.

It took him five long seconds to suck in a big enough breath in order to find the strength to just sit up on his ass. He didn’t bother jumping to his feet and taking off again. The last time he’d heard the voices, they had been way closer than before. Besides that, he was tired and out of wind, and they weren’t.

Keo watched as the flashlights—at least four that he could see—jumped up and down in the air as their owners arrived. The figures—he couldn’t make out anyone or even if they were wearing Falcons hats with, seemingly, every flashlight in the world shining right in his eyes—crowded in a semi-circle around him. He could, though, make out the silhouettes of rifles pointed at him, while others had drawn their handguns.

“Got ’em!” someone said. The same guy who had spotted him first. “We got ’em!”

You didn’t get me. The tree root did.

He was too tired to speak, and his face ached. Not to mention his chest and body and legs and, oh yeah, the broken left wrist. He was not having a very good night at all. Oh, who was he kidding? The whole day had been a mess, and then some.

They continued to circle him, as if afraid he might take off again. Keo wanted to tell them he wasn’t even entertaining the idea. Bright lights continued to poke him in the face, blinding him. Keo spent just as much time shielding his eyes as he did trying to regain what little energy he still had left.

And he was hungry, too. Really hungry. He couldn’t remember what he’d eaten this morning. Or if he’d had breakfast at all. That was the problem with running for your life from a blue-eyed ghoul. Things like time and hunger tended to blur by in the background.

“Right here,” someone said. Not to Keo, but to someone else coming up behind them.

The two bodies in front of Keo parted like the Red Sea as another silhouetted form appeared. This one, unlike the two, was female. Keo could tell that just by her shoulders and overall body shape. A tall woman, at that.

“Not much of a runner, are you?” the woman said.

Keo squinted up at her. He could only make out her womanly shape. “The root caught me.”

“Of course it did.”

“I swear.”

“Don’t. It’s Sunday. No swearing on Sundays.”

Keo grinned. He didn’t know it was Sunday. Hell, he rarely knew what day it was these days.

There were about a half dozen people gathered around him. All of them were men except the woman. The leader.

Keo leaned forward to get a better look at her. “Do I know you? Your voice sounds familiar.”

The woman walked closer. “Put them away, boys.”

“You sure, boss?” one of the men asked.

“He’s not the enemy.”

I’m not? Keo thought.

He squinted some more as the woman crouched in front of him. He caught a glimpse of blonde hair tied up in a ponytail flashing in the moonlight. The woman clicked on a flashlight and pointed it at her own face.

Lindsey.

Arrowhead’s Lindsey.

Keo smiled. “I was on my way to see you guys.”

“What took you so long?” Lindsey asked.

“Got held up. You know what’s out here with us?”

“Shakers.”

“Yeah, Shakers. But it’s not just them.”

“What else they got? More recruits?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“Horatio wondered if you were dead or alive.”

“I’m touched.”

“Don’t be. He looked more annoyed than concerned.”

Keo chuckled. “That’s Horatio, all right.”

“By the way, you comfortable down there?” Lindsey asked.

“Not really.”

He stuck out his hand, and she pulled him up. She was surprisingly strong for a woman. The others had gotten the hint that Keo wasn’t a bad guy and begun to wander off. Not too far. They were just forming a security cordon, which made them at least better trained than the Shakers. Not by much, of course; one of them did almost shoot his head off earlier.

“So what else is out here besides Shakers?” Lindsey asked.

“A ghoul,” Keo said.

Lindsey didn’t look all that concerned. “So what? We’ve dealt with ghouls before.”

“You fought the blue-eyed ones before?”

This time, Lindsey didn’t answer quite as quickly. A couple of her men, close enough to hear their conversation, turned to look at Keo. As with Lindsey, Keo didn’t have to hear the men’s answers; he could read it from their expressions.

“No,” Lindsey finally said. Quietly, as if she were afraid of being overheard. Then, gathering herself, “How many?”

“One,” Keo said. “But one is usually more than enough to be a real pain in the ass.” Then, looking her in the eyes, “Tell me you have some silver bullets on you…”

Eighteen

“You’ve met one before?”

“Yes, but I wouldn’t call it meeting one.”

“What would you call it?”

“Coming face-to-gruesome-face with one.”

“What’s the difference?”

“One implies the possibility of a pleasant experience. The other, not so much.”

Lindsey might have smirked. It was too dark for Keo to be sure. Also, he’d need to turn his head to look at her as she walked next to him.

“Horatio was right. You are a character,” Lindsey said.

“Is that what he called me? A character?”

“Amongst other things, yeah.”

Keo smiled at that. Horatio was also Norris, an ex-cop Keo had met in the early days of The Purge. They’d survived a number of scrapes together, and Keo didn’t think he’d ever see the old man’s face again until a few days ago when Keo showed up at Arrowhead, only to find that Norris was leading the group, and had been for some time now.

Instead of returning to Arrowhead, Lindsey and her men had continued on with their mission: They had been sent out here to find Don and Lon, whose real names turned out to be Kelly and Reynolds. Keo hadn’t asked who was who because he didn’t think it mattered. What were the chances the hunters were still breathing cold air right now anyway?

Zero to none.

Sorry, boys.

Lindsey, on the other hand, disagreed. “Doesn’t matter what’s out here. We came to find them, and that’s what we’ll do.” Then she’d added, “One way or another.”

Keo didn’t have to ask what One way or another meant. She could have said dead or alive, and it would have been the same thing. They had volunteered—all of them, including Lindsey—to find their friends. Keo wondered, but of course didn’t say out loud, if Norris would send more people out here to look for Lindsey and her six men should they, too, fail to report in.

One of Lindsey’s de facto corpsmen put a splint on his left hand, then wrapped it up with duct tape. The man did the same to Keo’s day-old wounds, unwrapping the Shaker not-really-a-medic medic’s tapes and washing out his wounds before covering them back up. Lindsey also slipped him some painkillers, which Keo took gratefully and downed with some lukewarm water.

He felt like an idiot going back instead of forward, but he told himself he didn’t have a choice. Lindsey’s people had done more than just patched him up so that he had a (mostly) useful left arm again, she’d also given him something even better: A sidearm. No rifle, though, because they didn’t have an extra to spare.

Of course, he could have just said Thanks and continued on his merry way to Arrowhead. That was the way smarter choice, but also one fraught with potential disasters. For one, he wasn’t entirely confident he could find the town in the dark. Or even reach it without help. There were a hell of a lot of Shakers crawling around the woods right now, not to mention a certain should-be-dead blue-eyed ghoul. Or maybe he was feeling a little guilty about running away while Don and Lon were fighting for their lives against Merrick.

Yeah, that last one was probably why he was walking besides Lindsey now and trying to tell himself he wasn’t a complete idiot.

Still an idiot, but just not a complete one.

“You think they’re dead, don’t you?” Lindsey was asking him.

Lindsey had two men up front leading the way through the dark woods. They were the most experienced members of the group, according to Lindsey. Two more trailed behind, while the remaining duo spread out to their sides. Keo believed they’d done this before, even if someone did try to take his head off earlier with a stray shot. They were decently trained, he’d give them that, though nowhere on par with Kelly and Reynolds. Then again, few people were, including Keo himself.

And look what still happened to them.

Sorry, boys.

He was saying that a lot. Or thinking it, anyway. Even so, he didn’t think it was enough.

Maybe a few more thousand sorrys will just about do it…

“If they were still alive, you would have heard from them by now,” Keo said.

“That doesn’t mean they’re dead.”

“Lindsey, have you ever gone up against a blue-eyed ghoul before?”

“No…”

“The chances…” He shook his head. “It’s not good.”

“You survived. Three times now, by your own count.”

More than that, actually, Keo thought. It was definitely more than three times spread out among those four Blue Eyes that he’d crossed in his lifetime. Four was more than enough. Hell, one was more than enough.

“I got lucky,” Keo said.

“All three times?” Lindsey said.

“Yeah.”

“Goddamn, Keo. You should go to a casino. You’d bring down the house.”

“They still have casinos?”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“Ah.”

This time he was sure she did smirk.

“Tell me everything,” she said.

“I already did,” Keo said.

“Everything?”

“Well, no.”

“So tell me everything.”

Keo nodded and did. He told her everything, ending with his, Kelly, and Reynolds’ attempts to slow down the Shaker caravan.

“How many Shakers did you guys get?” Lindsey asked.

“I don’t even know if I hit any of them.”

“You weren’t aiming or something?”

“No, I was aiming.”

“Then how do you not know if you hit anyone?”

“It was dark. And I was really just the decoy for Lon and Don.”

“Who?”

“Kelly and Reynolds.”

“Why did you just call them Lon and Don?”

“That was my name for them. I didn’t know their real names.”

Lindsey gave him a side glance that Keo wasn’t sure was amusement or annoyance. “You were with them all evening and you never bothered to ask them their real names?”

“Um, no.”

“Horatio was right. You are a character.”

“I do my best.”

“He said you guys went through a lot together. Back during the early days of The Purge.”

“We did.”

“Sounded fun, the way he was telling it.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it fun.”

“What would you call it?”

“Excruciatingly painful,” Keo said, reflexively reaching up and touching the big scar along his cheek. It was a reminder of those days.

“That’s when you got that beaut?” Lindsey asked.

He nodded. “Yup.” He looked over at her—or more specifically, the scar along her jawline. “How’d yours happen?”

“Maybe I’ll tell you one day. But not today.”

“Noted.”

“What kind of name is Keo, anyway?”

Keo smiled. Oh, if only he had a dollar for every time someone asked that question.

“Horatio was taken,” he said.

“That was a joke?”

“Kind of.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I’ll tell you what it means one day, but today is not that day.”

She smirked again. “Touché.”

He smiled and was about to say something else when the radio clipped to Lindsey’s hip squawked and a very familiar voice said through the speakers, “Stop.”

Keo did, and so did Lindsey next to him, along with the men in front. Like Keo, they would have heard the voice through their own radios. They froze in place, rifles rising to take aim at…nothing.

There was just the same moonlit darkness around them.

Shuffling feet behind them as the other two moved in closer.

Lindsey was scanning the woods, her pistol in her hand, as she unclipped her radio with the other hand and pressed the transmit lever. She said into it, “Kelly? You’re alive?”

“Go back,” the voice on the radio said. It hadn’t acknowledged the name Lindsey had used, so it could have been either Don or Lon. The speaker was whispering, making it difficult to pinpoint its identity.

“Kelly, is this you?” Lindsey said.

“Go back,” the voice said again. Keo couldn’t tell if it was in pain or not. “Before it’s too late.”

Lindsey exchanged quick glances with her men. They didn’t say the words, but Keo could see the question on their faces: What do we do?

The radio squawked again. “Hurry.”

“Kelly,” Lindsey said into the radio. “Where’s Reynolds? What happened to you guys?”

Keo had the Beretta in his hand and was looking around, searching for anything that even resembled a face in the darkness so he could shoot it. He didn’t see anything. Literally. It was too dark and they had turned off their flashlights to keep from being spotted from a distance.

The absence of something didn’t stop his paranoia from running wild. The voice on the radio—never mind the order to go back before it’s too late—didn’t exactly help to quell it.

Keo turned back to Lindsey. She continued to hold the radio to her lips, eyes still piercing the blackness around them for signs of…something.

“Maybe we should do what he says,” Keo said when no one responded to Lindsey’s questions.

Lindsey ignored him (What a shocker, Keo thought) and said into the radio, “Kelly, where are you? We’re not leaving without you or Reynolds.”

Then Keo smelled it.

The air.

It had changed again.

The freshness was gone. Replaced with…

“Ghouls,” he said. He didn’t know why, but the word only came out between his lips as a mere whisper. He wasn’t even sure if Lindsey had heard.

When he turned around, he knew that she hadn’t because she was still scanning the woods and holding the radio to her lips. “Kelly,” she said into the two-way. “Where are you? Where’s Reynolds? Kelly!”

Keo grabbed her shoulder and spun her around, and he was about to scream the word Ghouls! into her face, so loud that he could be 100 percent certain she heard him this time. But he didn’t because he didn’t get the chance.

One of the Arrowhead men up front screamed and suddenly the woods was shattered with gunfire…

…and more screaming…

…and more gunfire…

…and Keo remembered asking her earlier if she had silver bullets on her, and Lindsey had shaken her head, No.

Nineteen

FUBARATS.

That pretty much summed it up.

Everything went from okay to FUBARATS in a heartbeat.

It started with a voice on the radio, led to someone screaming, then just like that everyone was shooting.

Well, everyone except Keo, because he only had a Beretta holding a magazine with a limited number of bullets. Not even silver-tipped bullets at that. Lindsey and her men had knives with silver coating the blades but he didn’t, and they couldn’t spare him one.

So it was full FUBARATS and then some.

The two up front started shooting first, then the two behind them joined in on the fun. The ones on the sides, not wanting to be outdone, unloaded, too.

Then Lindsey was shouting, “Get back, get back! Form up! Form the fuck up!”

She was telling her people to circle the wagons. Except no one was listening. One of them actually took off.

Or the poor bastard tried to. He got almost exactly five yards before something fell out of the trees and landed on top of him, pummeling him to the ground so hard Keo swore he could hear every bone breaking.

“Knives!” Lindsey, shouting behind him. “Use your knives!”

Except her men couldn’t hear her. They (at least the ones still on their feet) were too busy shooting. One of the two in front of the group had switched to full-auto and was sending rounds into two ghouls that had fallen out of the trees and charging him.

The man’s bullets didn’t do a lick of good. Keo could have told him that, and he suspected the man already knew it too but in the heat of the moment simply panicked and forgot. Too bad for him, because it didn’t take long for the creatures to run, literally in this case, through his volley of lead and fall on top of hm, bony limbs and black flesh covering the squirming Arrowhead man like a blanket.

Ghouls. Black-eyed ghouls. There wasn’t as many as he’d feared. A dozen, maybe less, but it was difficult to get an accurate count because they were moving too fast.

Wait. Why were they moving so fast? He didn’t remember the Black Eyes being able to move this fast. Not that they had somehow gained the speed of the Blue Eyes, but they seemed to be a lot faster than he remembered.

Or was he misremembering? It was possible. It’d been a while since he was in any danger from one of these black-eyed undead things to really pay attention to how they moved. It was easy to forget that the creatures were still a threat, so many years after The Battle of Houston.

But they were very much a threat now as they swarmed Lindsey’s group.

“Keo!” Lindsey again.

He spun around just as she slashed at a ghoul lunging for her. She caught it with the blade of her KA-BAR and the creature staggered back…but didn’t go down.

What the fuck?

That shouldn’t have happened. The Black Eyes, unlike their Blue Eyes counterpart, should have gone immediately down after being struck with a silver-coated blade like the one Lindsey was wielding. Unless Lindsey had lied to him and they didn’t have the proper tools. But then why would she lie? She had no reason to.

So why didn’t the fucker go down?

Not that the ghoul looked completely unscathed because it did appear hurt. It just didn’t fall down like it was supposed to.

Keo could see it in Lindsey’s body language, even if her back was momentarily turned to him. She was just as stunned as he was by what had happened—or in this case, what didn’t happen.

Lindsey backed up and almost bumped into Keo. She spun around at the last second, eyes bulging so wide he thought they might pop out of their sockets. She didn’t have to say anything; Keo already knew because he was going through all the same emotions.

The black-eyed ghoul should have gone down.

Why didn’t it go down?

Why the hell didn’t it go down?

“We gotta go,” he said.

“My men,” Lindsey said.

“We gotta go!” he shouted, grabbing her by her arm and dragging her off.

The gunfire had lessened around them as the remainder of her men succumbed. One of two ghouls bent over the unmoving body of an Arrowhead man looked up as Keo and Lindsey started running. Moonlight glinted off its eyes and Keo swore he saw something in them that he hadn’t seen before.

Intelligence. Or something that looked like intelligence. But that couldn’t have been the case. The Black Eyes were primal creatures. They acted on instinct. There was nothing that remotely could pass for intelligence in whatever remained of their shell.

And yet, and yet…

The ghoul bounded to its feet and raced toward them. It moved with the same kind of not-supposed-to-be-possible speed as the others and had cut the 10-meter distance between them in less than a heartbeat. Again, not as fast as Merrick, or any of the other Blue Eyes Keo had had the misfortune to encounter, but the Black Eyes was still much faster than it should have been.

Lindsey reacted first, jerking her hand out of his grip and turning, the KA-BAR readying to fight. Except this time Keo saw a slight hesitation in her body language. She was, like him, remembering what had just happened when she’d slashed at the other ghoul and it didn’t go down right away. Hell, the damn thing hadn’t gone down at all. Keo could see it now, having abandoned its pursuit of them to join three others as they fed on two Arrowhead men nearby. One of the men was still alive; his legs kicked as they descended on him, the sound of tearing flesh and spurting blood as crisp as the night air.

The attacking ghoul launched itself at Lindsey. She didn’t so much as stab it in the chest as she stuck out her hand and the creature—driven forward by its momentum—impaled itself into the KA-BAR. The knife went completely through the undead thing’s sunken torso, along with Lindsey’s fist, with a sickening sound like someone stomping on a wet bag full of shit.

But like the last ghoul, Lindsey’s knife hadn’t instantly killed the ghoul. Instead, it flopped to the ground, dragging her partially with it. It might have pulled her down completely if it wasn’t so impossibly light. It flailed at her face as it went down until its bony fingers found purchase around her head.

Lindsey grabbed it with her other hand and pulled herself free. Her arm, along with the knife at the end, came out of the creature’s body with a distinctively wet, burping noise. The ghoul fell back to the ground, rolled over, and tried to get up.

Tried, because like the previous ghoul, this one hadn’t died immediately when Lindsey punched through its chest, but it was hurt. Keo could see that in the way it slowly tried to regain its footing, like a prized fighter trying to rise from the boxing mat.

It wasn’t dead, but it was hurt. The silver in Lindsey’s KA-BAR didn’t kill it on contact, but it had done something.

“The head,” Keo said. “Go for the head.”

Lindsey turned to look at him.

“The head,” Keo said again.

She nodded, turned, and went for the head.

The KA-BAR sliced right through the creature’s neck with barely any resistance. The decapitated skull rolled away as the body, halfway up, flopped back down to the dirt floor and went completely still.

Lindsey backed up, even as the other ghouls lifted their heads from what remained of her men and stared at her and Keo. Like with the dead one, the eyes of these creatures seemed to glow with something that shouldn’t be there. Maybe not quite intelligence, as Keo had thought, but some type of awareness that he hadn’t seen before.

These were different. Not just because they’d survived a silver-coated blade before Lindsey took the head off one, but in every other way that mattered.

“Let’s go,” Keo said, grabbing Lindsey’s arm, “before they change their minds.”

Lindsey didn’t need further encouragement. They turned and fled, running as fast as they could. Keo was getting used to running through these same woods by now, but that didn’t mean he liked doing it.

Keo wasn’t sure how far and how long they sprinted, but it was far and long enough that by the time they both ran out of breath, they couldn’t hear the screams of Lindsey’s men or smell the stench of the undead anymore. Keo didn’t slow down until he could see woodland creatures moving in the trees again. If they thought it was safe to be out in the open…

He stopped, bent over, and sucked in a deep breath.

Then another one.

Then a dozen more…

Lindsey leaned against a tree to keep from falling over. She still had her KA-BAR clenched tightly in her hand. She was staring at him even as she, too, gulped for fresh breath.

“What?” Keo said.

“You knew,” she said.

“Knew what?’

“Back there. You knew to go for the head.”

Keo shook his head. “I didn’t.”

“You told me to go for its head when cutting it didn’t work.”

Keo straightened up. “It worked with the Blue Eyes.”

“But those weren’t Blue Eyes back there.”

“I know. I was there, Lindsey, remember?”

“So how did you know?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t. But nothing seemed to be working and it made sense. I actually thought you were going to stab it in the brain, not cut off its head. But I guess that works, too.”

“The Blue Eyes…”

“What about them?”

“What people say about them is true? Shooting them in the brain works?”

“Yeah. Or take their heads off.”

“You’ve done it…”

“It’s…not nearly as easy as it sounds. They can move fast. Faster than—” He stopped and glanced back in the direction they’d fled.

Lindsey pushed off the tree and took up a fighting stance. “What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“Then what are you looking at?”

“Nothing.” He turned back to her. “The Black Eyes back there. It wasn’t just me, right? They were faster?”

Lindsey thought about it for a while..

Finally, she nodded. “They looked faster, yes.”

“Not as fast as the Blue Eyes, but definitely faster. And silver doesn’t instantly kill them anymore.”

“You’ve seen this before?”

“No.”

“God. That scares me.”

He gave her a confused look. “Why?”

“After everything I’ve heard about you, if even you haven’t seen this before…” She shook her head instead of finishing, her face pale in the moonlight.

Glad to know my reputation precedes me, Keo thought.

Not that he knew if it was a good thing or not. Usually in his experience, when people knew about him, it meant trouble.

“What do we do now?” Lindsey asked.

“We go back to Arrowhead,” Keo said.

He turned around and began walking off at a fast pace.

Lindsey ran to catch up. “What about Kelly and Reynolds?” He noticed she hadn’t mentioned her men. Keo guessed she knew, just as he did, that they were dead meat.

“What about them?” Keo said.

“That was Kelly on the radio.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. That was his voice. He was warning us about the ambush. That means he’s still alive.”

“He was.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was alive before he gave himself away to warn us.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No, I don’t. But it’s a safe assumption.”

Lindsey wasn’t buying it. She unclipped her radio (Keo was surprised she still had it on her after that long marathon of theirs) and tried to reach Kelly.

She got a lot of empty air instead.

“Let’s go,” Keo said. “Arrowhead needs to know about this. If Kelly survived that blue-eyed ghoul, he could survive the black eyes, too.”

Lindsey grudgingly nodded. “I guess that makes sense.”

It does? Keo thought but didn’t say out loud.

Right now, Kelly was probably dead, or worse. And in a world with undead things crawling around, even if there were fewer of them now, worse was still a fate not preferable to death.

They walked on. The woods around them ebbed with the sounds of life and to dead silence, then back again. Keo found that more than a little disturbing.

Scratch that. He found it a lot disturbing.

Finally, after almost two minutes of quiet, Lindsey said, “I wasn’t expecting this. An attack from Shaker Town, yes, but not this. This is…” She let the rest trail off.

“What?” Keo said, curious what she was thinking.

He saw her tremble slightly out of the corner of his eyes. “It’s been a while,” she said.

He nodded. Keo didn’t have to ask her what had been a while. He already knew.

The dark.

It had been a while since he was afraid of the dark, too, and he didn’t like the feeling one goddamn bit.

Twenty

Keo fully expected ghouls to be hot on their heels as they made their way back to Arrowhead, but the creatures never showed up. The air remained fresh and unspoiled and the hairs along the exposed parts of his body didn’t stand up at any time between the (massacre) ambush and when they finally reached their destination. Either the ghouls were busy feeding or—

No, there was no or about it. That was exactly what was happening.

Keo thought he knew the direction they needed to go in order to reach Arrowhead, but it was good to have a sure thing in Lindsey. They moved quickly, never resting for more than a few minutes each time. When the sun began to rise in the distance, they were already there.

Before they could approach the town head-on, Lindsey made a quick call on her radio. It was a smart move on Norris’s part considering what Shaker Town had tried just a few days ago. In the place of guys like Lon and Don (or Kelly and Reynolds, as Keo now knew them as) to watch the perimeter, there were armed patrol teams.

There were more Arrowhead men and women hiding in the woods, unseen by Keo, as the town waited for the inevitable attack. Keo wouldn’t put it past Norris to put a ring of fighters as a first line of defense. After that, any surviving attackers would have to go up against the bulk of Arrowhead’s citizenry.

The street was almost completely empty except for a few stragglers as Keo walked through with Lindsey underneath the early morning glow. He could see people inside buildings through windows; they were in constant motion, getting ready for a fight. Norris had his people ready, that was for sure. Keo just hoped it was enough to face what was coming.

They found Norris where Keo expected him to be—in the de facto command center (re: his place of residence) and on the second floor. Norris was surrounded by lieutenants, men and women, leaning over an old map of Georgia. From the looks of the bags under everyone’s eyes, including Norris’s, they had been at it for some time now. Keo wondered if any of them got any sleep. He wanted to tell them they should have, because there was no guarantee they would get any in the days and nights to come.

Keo and Lindsey were let in by Lewis, Norris’s “helper” (Keo still didn’t know what the kid’s job description was).

Norris glanced over, then dismissed the others. “Get some shut-eye if you can, but grab some food even if you’re not hungry. It’s gonna be a long few days.”

Keo wanted to add, “You don’t know the half of it, pal,” but refrained. It wasn’t his place.

When the others had left, Norris folded up the map and sighed at Keo and Lindsey. “From the long faces on you two, I’m guessing things didn’t exactly go as planned.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Keo said.

“What’s another?”

“Things didn’t quite go as planned.”

“I figured,” Norris said. He turned to Lindsey. “How bad was it?”

“I’m the only one here,” Lindsey said, and didn’t add anything else.

Norris nodded somberly at Lindsey. “Go get something warm in your belly. I’m going to need you later on.”

“Yes, sir,” Lindsey said, and turned around. She gave Keo a forced smile. “Glad you’re on our side.”

That’s a first, Keo thought, but he nodded back instead. “Yeah.”

She left, Lewis closing the door after her.

“Coffee?” Norris asked Keo.

“You got any food?” Keo said.

“Lewis.”

“I’ll see what they have in the kitchen, sir,” Lewis said, before he, too, left just the two of them in the big room.

Keo walked over and took a seat next to the large table where Norris and his lieutenants had been gathered earlier. He hadn’t realized it, but it was the first time he’d sat down in seemingly forever. Days. Maybe weeks. Okay, maybe not weeks, but definitely days. And lying on his back with a blue-eyed ghoul hovering over him didn’t count.

He brushed at dirt and leaves that were clinging to his clothes. “Sorry about the mess.”

“As long as you clean it up later,” Norris said. The other man was watching him closely. “You’ve had a hard few days.”

“I’ve had a hard few decades.”

“You and me both, kid.” Norris sat down opposite the table from him and let out a heavy sigh.

“I didn’t think you’d be so good at all this leadership stuff,” Keo said.

Norris shrugged. “I used to be on watch duty for a while. You get used to dealing with people carrying guns around all day.”

“Still…”

“But yeah, you’re right. It’s nothing like this.” He eyeballed Keo for a few silent seconds. Then, “I guess I don’t have to ask how your own mission went.”

Keo forced a grin. “As good as can be expected.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Yup.”

“Did you at least find out what The Deacon has in store for us?”

“I don’t think it’s The Deacon you have to worry about, Norris.”

“No?”

“Did you ever meet or hear of a Shaker named Bell?”

Norris didn’t think for very long before shaking his head. “Should I have?”

“He’s one of The Deacon’s lieutenants. And probably more than that.”

“How much more?”

“That remains to be seen.” Keo lapsed into thought for a moment, trying to find the right words to describe someone like Buck.

“Go on,” Norris prompted.

“His real name’s Buck.”

“A good ol’ boy?”

“Not quite.” Keo met the Arrowhead leader’s eyes over the heavy round table. “He’s dangerous, Norris.”

“Shocker. A Shaker boy is dangerous.”

“No, Norris. You don’t understand. I tried to kill this guy more than once.”

“And?”

“And he’s still out there.”

Norris leaned back in his seat. “Okay. That’s something.” Then, after another few moments of silence, “So he’s hard to kill.”

“He’s slippery.”

“But not bulletproof.”

“No one is.”

Norris smiled at him. “You included. What happened to you, and where did you get all the duct tape?”

Keo chuckled. “They were having a sale at Home Depot. Three for the price of one.”

“So you bought everything and slapped them all over yourself?”

“Something like that.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Not until now. Lindsey gave me some painkillers.” Keo rubbed the duct tape over his arm and the one over his thigh. “Pain’s coming back now that I’m not running on adrenaline.”

“Go to the clinic later for some work.”

“Yes, sir.”

Norris smirked. “So, tell me what’s coming for us. All of it. The more I know, the more I can get my people ready.”

Keo leaned forward, arms folded on the table. “Tell me something, Norris: How many times have you seen a blue-eyed ghoul up close?”

Norris didn’t answer him right away.

Finally, the older man said, “I’ve never had the pleasure.”

“Well, I have.”

“Now why am I not surprised?”

“More than once.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Nope.”

“How many times?”

“Technically, four.”

“Technically, four? What’s that even mean?”

“It’s a confusing world out there. Two of them tried to kill me. The other two didn’t.”

“Shit, Keo. How are you even still alive?”

Keo started laughing. It came out of nowhere. He wasn’t entirely sure why, because none of this was funny, but the way Norris had asked the question—“How are you even still alive?”—made him bust out a belly laugh. Because Norris was right: How was he still alive after having the displeasure of being in the company of not one, or two, or even three, but four Blue Eyes?

Norris cracked a smile. “That’s funny to you?”

Keo calmed down and sat back in his chair. “Yeah. It’s pretty funny. Because I can’t figure it out, either. I guess I’m just lucky.”

“You used to tell me you’re the unluckiest man alive. Remember?”

“I remember.”

“All right, so there’s blue-eyed undead running around out there,” Norris said. “That’s not good news. What else?”

“It’s working with Buck.”

“Working with Buck? You mean, with Shaker Town?”

“If Buck is a Shaker, then yeah, I guess it’s working with Shaker Town, too.”

Norris squinted at him. “You don’t sound too sure about that last part.”

“Don’t I?”

“No.”

“Hunh,” Keo said. This time it was his turn to lapse into momentary silence as he mulled over Norris’s point.

Wasn’t he sure? He thought he was.

Wasn’t he?

Finally, he said, “I guess I’m not 100 percent about the Shaker Town alliance. But he’s definitely working with Buck. I know that without a doubt.”

“I heard about this. Black Tide dealt with something like it a few years ago.”

Keo nodded. “Darby Bay.”

“Yeah. That was it. Let me guess: You were there?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Then, “So what happened?”

“Buck.”

“The same Buck?”

“Yup.”

“And this Blue Eyes?”

“The same ones. They’re continuing their unholy alliance.”

“Well, ain’t that sweet.”

Before Norris could say anything else, Lewis returned with a platter of breakfast. Eggs sunny side up and slices of bread. Strips of bacon complimented them, along with a mug of orange juice.

“OJ?” Keo said, looking across at Norris.

The Arrowhead leader grinned. “We have an entire field of them out back. Among other fruity delights.”

“Damn. You really have been busy.”

“You don’t know the half of it. Dig in. You look like you’re starving.”

“That’s because I am,” Keo said.

He picked up the utensils that came with the food and dug in. It was probably the best breakfast he’d ever had.

Norris watched him wolf down his food in peace for a moment, before continuing.

“Kelly and Reynolds,” Norris said. “What happened to them?”

“Why didn’t you ask Lindsey?” Keo said between bites.

“She didn’t look like she could handle giving me all the gory details right now.”

“I’m not sure if the details are all that gory, but…”

“But what?”

“They went toe-to-toe with a Blue Eyes. The same Blue Eyes.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“But so did you, and you’re sitting across from me eating breakfast.”

“It didn’t want to kill me.”

“Why not?”

Keo shook his head. “Hell if I know. These things… They’re peculiar.”

“Peculiar?” Norris looked on the verge of laughing himself. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard someone describe a Blue Eyes quite like that. Tell me…”

Keo picked up a white rag that had come with the platter and dabbed at his mouth and chin. “It’s hard to explain for anyone who hasn’t tried to survive against them. You know they’re different from the Black Eyes, right?”

“Who doesn’t? I’ve heard all the stories.”

“These things, they’re…” Keo put down the rag and leaned back. He searched for the right words. “They’re sadistic. I guess that’s the best way to put it. There is a mean streak about them that goes beyond psychotic. You know how kids put a magnifying glass to ants just to watch them burn?”

Norris nodded mutely.

“It’s like that, but these fuckers aren’t young kids with no comprehension of life and death,” Keo continued. “They know all too well about that. They thrive on it. They want it. They lust for it.”

Norris remained silent.

“And that,” Keo said, leaning forward against the table, his eyes glued to Norris’s, “is what’s coming toward you.”

“Fuck my life,” Norris said.

Keo laughed again.

The older man squinted at him. “What’s so funny now?”

“I didn’t even tell you about the other bad news yet.”

“You mean there’s more?”

“Oh yeah.”

Norris sighed. “Let’s hear it.”

“Lindsey and I just survived a horde of black-eyed ghouls that didn’t go down when she stabbed them with a silver-coated blade.”

Norris’s eyes widened. “Are you sure they were Black Eyes?”

“Pretty sure.”

“How sure is pretty sure?”

“So goddamn sure that I think you should call in Black Tide,” Keo said. “We’re gonna need major reinforcements on this one, pal.”

Twenty-One

Norris agreed with him. It was time to call in the big guns.

The problem was that they couldn’t. The radio tower that Arrowhead had used to communicate with Black Tide and other settlements beyond the scope of a two-way portable radio had been sabotaged sometime around midnight, last night.

“Someone or something took it down right in front of our faces,” Norris said.

Keo was more inclined to think it was something rather than someone, but he kept that to himself.

Instead, he said, “So you can’t contact Black Tide.”

“Can’t contact much of anyone that we can’t reach on the two-ways.”

Keo nodded. He knew. Two-way radios were extremely limited when you were surrounded by towering trees and all manner of barriers. The tower was meant to communicate with the outside world beyond the borders of the thick forest. It was the same reason Norris had been forced to send Lindsey’s team to go look for Don and Lon. Even with the tower active pre-sabotage, trying to reach someone in the forest was a crapshoot.

He hadn’t seen the shape of the tower when he walked through Arrowhead with Lindsey earlier, but he wasn’t really paying attention to much of anything at the time. Keo had just been happy to find a safe haven without people shooting him or things trying to eat him.

It was pretty obvious what had happened when he finally got a good look at the radio tower. Keo was partially right: It was something, just not the same something he was thinking of. Someone had sent a rocket into the base of the communications array and knocked it to the ground. Two more rockets—presumably a “just in case” measure—had landed around the same spot. The culprits were never caught.

Keo stood with Norris in front of what was left of his only way to contact Black Tide. The Arrowhead folks had cleaned up most of the mess, but there were still plenty of debris scattered about.

“We’ll get to the rest when this is over,” Norris said. “Right now, it’s all hands on deck. That means you too, kid. Can I count on you?”

“Do you even have to ask?” Keo said.

Norris cracked a smile. “Thought I’d get it out of the way. It’s been a while since I saw you. You might have changed.”

“I have.”

“For the better?”

“That’s still to be determined.”

Norris chuckled. “Go to the clinic and get those wounds of yours looked at. You gonna tell me who stabbed you like a pin cushion?”

“Doesn’t really matter. He’s dead.”

“Good to know. Everything you need will be in the armory.”

Keo had wanted to ask Norris if he was ready for what was coming—really, really ready—but he didn’t. Norris had been out here for years, fighting the good fight. To question his readiness now would be the same as insulting his competence.

“It’s gonna be a hell of a fight,” Norris said, almost wistfully.

“You’ve been at it for a while now,” Keo said.

“Yeah, but never like this. Never with a Blue Eyes involved. Or ghouls, for that matter. It was always just us and them. Arrowhead versus Shaker Town.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask about that…”

They walked back to the main path. The town continued its bustling, people going in and out of buildings. Men and women, young and old. Not everyone was armed, but most were. Keo was looking at a group of people that was used to fighting in order to keep what was theirs. He just hoped it was enough for their sake.

“Shoot,” Norris said.

“You and Shaker Town. What’s the deal?”

“Black Tide didn’t tell you?”

“They didn’t really go into details. Something about a clash of egos.”

“Not quite. More like they wanted to absorb us, make us one of their little satellite towns, and we said No. They didn’t take that too kindly.”

“The Deacon.”

“Yeah.” The older man glanced sideways at Keo. “But you’re telling me he might not even be the real power over there?”

“Maybe,” Keo said. He thought about it some more, before continuing. “Maybe he was, once.”

“Until this Buck or Bell or whatever he’s calling himself showed up.”

“Again, maybe. But it would fit Buck’s M.O.”

“You really got a hard-on for this guy, don’t you?”

“Hey, he had the hard-on for me first. I’m just repaying the favor.”

“Sounds like a lovely romance you guys got going there.”

“It’s something, all right.” Then, “So why didn’t you guys say Yes to Shaker Town’s offer?”

“It wasn’t much of an offer. ‘Join us or we’ll burn you to the ground.’ As you can imagine, we didn’t take it too kindly.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“Besides, they stink.”

“Shakers.”

“Yeah.” Norris sniffed the air as if he could smell them now. “Literally and figuratively. It was never an option. No was always the answer; and it will always be.”

“Glad to see you’re still a cranky old fart, Norris.”

Norris chuckled. “You know what they say: You can take the boy out of the cop uniform, but you can’t take the cop out of the boy.”

“Is that what they say?”

“Something like that.” Norris stopped them in front of a building labeled CLINIC. “Get yourself looked at. I need you at—” He stopped and grinned. “I was gonna say, I need you at full strength, but I’ll settle for 50 percent.”

“How about 40?”

“How about 45?”

“Deal,” Keo said.

Norris slapped him on the shoulder—thankfully, his right shoulder—before walking off to join a group of his men gathered in front of a building marked ARMORY. Keo’s next stop. Until then…

He went up the steps and into the clinic.

45 percent sounded good to him. 100 was better, but as the saying went, beggars couldn’t be choosers.

* * *

Keo didn’t spend a whole lot of time at the clinic. Most of the crew were busy getting ready for the upcoming fight, packing med kits and stuffing emergency supplies into bags. A pretty blonde that couldn’t have been more than twenty finally tended to him. She undid all his duct taped “bandages,” cleaned up his wounds, and fixed him up good and proper. She might have been young, but she knew what she was doing. Fortunately for Keo, while everything ached and hurt, the generous amount of painkillers she gave him allowed him to leave the clinic in better shape than he’d entered it.

Or he liked to think so, anyway, but it could have just been the meds talking. (It was probably the meds talking.)

The visit, along with the hearty breakfast earlier, gave him renewed energy. His limbs weren’t completely useless anymore. The injuries hurt, but everything did to some degree. He was used to that. Keo and pain were old friends. He just wished the bugger wouldn’t visit him so often.

So when have I ever gotten what I wanted?

The men that were gathered at the armory were gone when Keo arrived. There were two guards, but they didn’t bother to stop him. Either they’d already seen Keo walking by with Norris earlier, or they just assumed no one would be there if they didn’t belong.

Inside, Keo found racks of guns and piles of bullets on shelves. The setup looked very much like what he’d seen back in Shaker Town. In a lot of ways, the two rivals shared many similarities—but also a hell of a lot of differences.

As far as Keo knew, every member of Arrowhead had armed themselves. And yet, there were still a lot of guns left. A lot of them.

Looks like you’ve been busy collecting hardware, Norris ol’ pal.

Keo didn’t want to think about what would happen if someone dropped a bomb on the building, though. It’d probably take out the whole town right along with it. Keo made a mental note to talk to Norris about that.

Unfortunately for him, while there were a lot of guns left, there wasn’t a single one that he fancied. Keo had never been a particularly good long-distance shooter, so his weapons of choice were always the close-quarters variety. What he wouldn’t give to find an MP5SD among the gaggle of metal…

“We don’t have it,” a voice said.

Keo glanced back at Lindsey, walking toward him.

“You don’t have what?” he asked.

“H&K MP5SD. Horatio told me it’s your preferred gun.”

Keo grinned. “I’m surprised he remembered.”

“Why? Because he’s an old man?”

“Well, yeah.”

Lindsey chuckled. It was, he thought, the first time he’d ever seen her do that. “He’s old, but he’s got a pretty good memory still.”

She had changed clothes and washed her hair, and there wasn’t dirt on her face anymore. Maybe even a quick bath from the fresh smell coming off her skin as she walked past him.

“What’s your second choice?” she asked.

“MP5,” Keo said.

“We might have that. There are a few submachine guns in the back.” She led the way. “We tend to stick to the rifles and pistols.”

“What about silver bullets?”

“We have a limited supply of those. What we do have are being dispersed among the guys now. But mostly we’ll have to rely on our knives.”

Keo nodded. He’d expected that. Silver had always been a limited commodity since The Purge. Even years after The Walk Out, it was still too valuable to just keep lying around. He wondered if anyone pre-Purge would believe him if he told them that someday silver would outpace gold as the most valuable metal in the world. It had, and then some.

“Have you heard back from Kelly and Reynolds?” Keo asked.

“No,” Lindsey said, and didn’t say any more.

Keo didn’t ask anymore, either. He said instead, “What’s the sense out there?”

“What do you mean?”

“The others. What are they thinking?”

She thought about it for a second or two before answering. “They’re confident. Not overconfident, but confident. We’ve been through this before. I mean, not this, exactly, but we’ve fought for our lives before. So in that respect, they’re ready. I just hope…” She stopped herself and let the rest go unsaid.

They were still moving down the rows of guns and ammo and knives when Lindsey’s radio squawked.

Norris, through the speaker: “Lindsey.”

Lindsey stopped and answered. “Yes, sir.”

“Is Keo with you?”

“We’re in the armory now.”

“Tell him to head back to my place ASAP.”

“Yes, sir.” Lindsey put the radio away and nodded at Keo. “You heard the man.”

“I don’t have my gear yet,” Keo said.

“Tell me what you need, and I’ll bring it to you.”

Keo did, then left her in the armory to collect what he thought he’d need. The operative word being thought. He wasn’t entirely sure what he needed, but anything with silver seemed like a good bet.

* * *

It didn’t take him very long to return to Norris’s command center. Lewis was there to greet him in the lobby, but the young man didn’t follow Keo up to the second floor. Inside, Keo found Norris sitting at the table with a familiar face.

“Steven,” Keo said, walking over quickly.

The teenager glanced up from his platter of breakfast. His face was bruised and cut and his hair was matted with a generous amount of sweat and dirt. His cheeks ballooned with food as he chewed and tried to speak at the same time.

“Swallow first, kid, before you choke on your food,” Norris said.

Steven tried, grabbing a mug of coffee to flush it all down. The ex-Shaker teen didn’t look like he was in the best shape, but he was alive. Right now, that was more than Keo could say for Claire and Ronnie.

Keo said to Norris, “Where’d he come from?”

“Just showed up at our perimeter about an hour ago,” Norris said. “They didn’t bring him to me until now.”

Keo sat down across from Steven. “Where’s Claire, Steven?”

“That’s what I came here to tell you,” the kid said. “She’s still out there.”

“She’s alive?”

“Yes. Ronnie, too. It took us from the cave.”

Norris’s eyes lifted slightly at the it part, but the older man stayed silent and let Keo do the interrogating.

“They’re okay?” Keo asked Steven.

“Yes,” Steven said. His face was flushed, the scars on his cheeks fresh. More dirt and slightly wet grass clung to his clothes. “It wants you.”

“Me?”

“You.” Steven’s eyes held onto Keo’s even as his own face paled. “It said your name. Keo. Not Chang. It wants you to go back out there. If you don’t…”

Keo nodded. He didn’t need the kid to finish the threat. “Did it say when?”

“Tonight.”

Of course it would demand he go out there tonight. What did he expect?

“Where, exactly?” Keo asked.

“The cave,” Steven said. “Where it found us. It said it’ll be waiting for you.”

“And it didn’t say when?”

Steven shook his head. “It just said it’d be waiting for you. And if you don’t come, it’ll…it’ll…”

“I know,” Keo said. “Finish your breakfast.”

“You’ll go?” Steven asked. He was almost pleading.

“Yes,” Keo said. “You said it was at the cave yesterday. That it took the three of you. Was that what Claire was shooting at?”

Steven nodded. “Yes. But it was so fast…”

“How was it moving around in daylight, Steven?”

“It was wearing some kind of suit. You know, those things they wear when there’s a chemical spill?”

“HAZMAT suit?”

“I guess. I’m not sure. It covered its entire body, even its face. That’s how it was out there in the daylight.”

Keo nodded. “All right. Finish your breakfast.”

Steven nodded gratefully and went back to eating. Keo wondered if he had looked that famished earlier.

Keo glanced over at Norris, who understood immediately. The older man got up and led him out onto the balcony, leaving Steven alone with his food.

They stood side by side and stared out at the town. Preparations continued, and Keo could make out figures moving around in the woods surrounding Arrowhead.

They’ve definitely done this before.

“It’s the same one,” Norris finally said.

“There’s only one out there right now,” Keo said, and thought, Thank God.

“Damn, kid, you sure know how to make enemies, don’t you?”

Keo sighed. “It’s a natural talent.”

“I was thinking more of a curse.”

“Either/or.”

Norris shook his head. “So, HAZMAT suit? Like back in the old days when those collaborators would dress up in them.”

“That’s what I was thinking, too.”

“I didn’t know those things could protect them from the sun.”

“I didn’t, either. But it explains a lot.”

“You sure are taking this well, all things considered.”

Keo shrugged. “It’s not my first rodeo, as Danny would say. And like it or not, it probably won’t be my last.”

“I guess I don’t have to ask if you’re going out there to meet it tonight.”

“Nope.”

“I was hoping to have you here with me. Like the good old days.”

“The good old days were never that good, old timer.”

They stood still, looking out at the town in silence for a few seconds.

A few seconds became a few minutes.

The only sounds were from behind them as Steven continued to wolf down his food. Later, Lewis returned with another platter, and Steven attacked that, too.

Finally, Keo said, “You have anyone here who can make tools?”

“What kind of tools?” Norris said.

“The ones with a pointy end kind.”

“Knives?”

“Yeah.”

“We got plenty of knives in the armory. You don’t need to make new ones.”

“You don’t have the kind of knife I’m thinking about,” Keo said.

Twenty-Two

“You did what?”

That was exactly how he imagined Lara’s voice sounding—high-pitched and angry—when he eventually told her what he’d done in order to save Claire and Ronnie. (But mostly Claire, though he was going to leave that part out.) She would then proceed to throw things at him. Not that that would have been the first time. Of course, once she calmed down, she would accept that he’d done the right thing. Years later, Gaby’s death still haunted Lara. She felt responsible, just as she felt responsible for all the men and women who died under her leadership. And Claire, while not Gaby, was the next closest thing to one of “her girls.”

Keo was hoping she’d eventually come around to appreciating what he’d done, anyway. But maybe appreciating wasn’t the right word. More likely accepting.

Yeah, that was the ticket.

On the bright side, he was fully ready for what he was going to face when night fell. There was no MP5SD inside Norris’s town, but there were a pair of MP5Ks that Keo carried with him. He would have liked suppressors to go along with them, but that was asking a little too much. Fine. The MP5Ks were small submachine guns designed for mobility and speed. Exactly what he knew he’d need when he met Merrick again.

The bullets inside both guns, as well as the pistol on his hip, were silver-tipped. Norris hadn’t had a lot to go around, but knowing what he knew about Keo’s situation, his old friend had given him everything he needed. The KA-BAR on his left hip was also equipped with silver. If all else failed, Keo had a few small surprises up his sleeve.

He didn’t take much by way of supplies. He had a small pack for some food, but he’d already chowed down on even more carbs before he left Arrowhead. More important was the bottle of water. Just one, though. More than that would have weighed him down too much. He wanted speed on his side.

Keo would have liked a night (or two, or three) of peaceful sleep before he had to leave Arrowhead again. Instead, he was moving on pure adrenaline and painkillers. He’d managed an hour’s worth of power napping, but that’d left him groggier than refreshed.

All things considered, it could have been worse. How, he couldn’t say yet.

Before he’d left Arrowhead, Keo had had a little chat with Norris about Steven.

“You know who that is?” he’d asked his friend.

“No,” Norris had said. “Someone special?”

“Not really, but he’s the son of the guy you have locked in your prison. So, it might be a good idea to keep him away from there.”

“Are you shitting me?”

“Nope.”

“Damn. Small world.”

“Yup.”

And that had been the end of it. Norris would do his part to keep Steven from knowing how badly Keo had “tuned up” his old man. Even though Keo was pretty sure the pair weren’t a model father-son team, there was something to be said about sharing blood. And whatever Steven felt about dear dad, seeing the shape of his old man would probably elicit sympathy. And, likely, animosity for the guy who put him in that condition.

But Keo would deal with that when he got back—and if he had to. He was hoping he wouldn’t have to. Not that he was scared to confront what he’d done to Harvey. The guy deserved it. And then some.

Right now, he had bigger fish to fry.

Really big, really fast, and really hard-to-kill fish.

* * *

The cave looked just as unspectacular as the last time he’d seen it. The ghoul smell was gone, replaced by the crisp forest air. There were a few animals in the area—among the branches and leaves—but not as many as when he’d originally located the would-be shelter. The smart ones were staying away from this place.

They’re way smarter than me, apparently.

Smart, but they also had choices. He didn’t.

“It wants you to go back out there,” Steven had said. “If you don’t…”

The kid hadn’t said what would happen if Keo didn’t go back out there, but he hadn’t had to. Keo knew. Steven knew. And Merrick, most of all, knew what would be the consequences of Keo’s no-show.

So here I am, he thought as he stood inside the small clearing and looked around. He didn’t think Merrick would show up anytime soon, despite the fact the creature had, apparently, learned how to defeat sunlight. Keo would actually have liked for it to show up in its HAZMAT suit. That way, he wouldn’t have to kill the creature with his bullets; all he’d have to do was punch a few holes in the suit and let the sun do its work.

Which was why Keo didn’t think Merrick would show up just yet. No. It’d want nightfall behind it for maximum advantage. Creeping up on Claire and the others was one thing; Keo wasn’t going to be such an easy target in daylight.

He glanced down at his watch. Two more hours before sundown. There was nothing left to do but wait—

Keo froze.

Blood.

There was blood on the ground. A single drop. He would have missed it entirely if the sun hadn’t just moved over an inch to reveal it, a few inches outside the cave opening.

Keo unslung an MP5K. No need to slap the charging bolt; he’d already done that before he left Arrowhead.

The blood was red, not black. So not a ghoul. Keo hadn’t thought it was, anyway, or he would have smelled the stink in the air when he arrived. Ghoul blood evaporated in sunlight and left behind a very distinctive stench.

He moved cautiously into the cave, knowing there wasn’t a lot of room to go. When he’d surveyed the shelter the first time around, he’d only counted about 20 meters worth of space between the opening and the end. It wouldn’t have gotten any bigger since then.

Unless, of course, Keo had stumbled across the wrong cave. One cave did tend to look like another. It wasn’t like he’d staked it with markings or anything to tell them apart.

But he didn’t think so.

A small, just barely audible cough from somewhere in the shadows.

That was followed by a familiar voice: “What’re you doing back here, spud?”

Keo lowered the submachine gun as the man he knew as Don, but whose real name was Kelly, stepped out of the darkness. Or more like hobbled out.

Kelly was hurt and had wrapped himself in gauze. He’d also ditched his ghillie suit, probably in order to get to his wounds. There was tape around both his arms and right leg. Blood seeped from one of his leg bandages, which was why he had, despite his best efforts, left the drop of blood behind when he made his entrance.

Without the camo paint on his face and foliage covering him, Kelly was much older than Keo had thought. He was in his early fifties, with a grizzled face that was at home with the crow’s feet and wrinkles. Underneath his discarded ghillie suit, he was wearing cargo pants and a drab olive green long-sleeve shirt. He didn’t have his bolt-action rifle, but was instead carrying a Beretta pistol in one hand.

Kelly was wearing what looked like shoes made of twigs, leaves, and branches instead of the boots Keo had seen him in previously. So that was how he’d managed to hide his tracks as he moved about. He’d done a damn good job of it, too, except for that one stray little drop of blood.

“You don’t look so hot, Kelly,” Keo said.

Kelly grinned. “Makes sense, cause I don’t feel so hot, either.”

“What happened to Reynolds?”

Kelly shook his head.

Keo nodded and didn’t ask any more questions about Reynolds. He said, “How’d you get away?”

“It turned its attention to something else. Something more important than us.”

“What was it?”

“No clue. All I know is, whatever it was, it made me insignificant.” Kelly clenched his teeth. “Motherfucker actually grinned at me with that creepy ass thing it calls a mouth before it took off. I swear, I think it just let me go for the fun of it.”

Yeah, that sounds about right, Keo thought.

He said, “You should get back to Arrowhead. They’re getting ready for the fight of their lives over there.”

Kelly shook his head. “No can do.”

“Why not?”

“I can barely walk. And I’m definitely not making it back to Arrowhead.” He turned and hobbled back into the shadows.

Keo followed him. Unlike Kelly, Keo was leaving plenty of tracks behind.

“How bad was it?” Keo asked.

“Bad. I saw it pick up Reynolds and broke him in half against a tree. Just swung him like he was a piece of stick. Then it came for me.”

“Shit. I’m sorry, Kelly.”

“He had a kid, you know,” Kelly said as if Keo hadn’t just offered his condolences. “Five-year-old kid named Sean. His mother’s Christine. Against all odds, Reynolds found a family in this shit pile of a world.”

“What about you?”

“I never got that lucky. Thank God.”

Keo was going to ask him Why ‘Thank God?’ but then he understood. Because Reynolds had just left behind a fatherless son and a husbandless wife. Just like Keo would if he died tonight.

And boy, would Lara be pissed off at him if he did that.

The hunter stopped at the back of the cave and sat down. Keo couldn’t see it, but he thought he could smell blood. Kelly’s. He’d probably changed his bandages once or twice since last night’s encounter with Merrick.

Keo crouched next to the wounded man and took out the bottle of painkillers he’d gotten from Arrowhead. “This’ll take some of the edge off.”

“Hallelujah,” Kelly said, taking two of the pills and popping them into his mouth with some of Keo’s water.

Keo took two himself before putting the bottle away. “That was you last night. Trying to warn us about the ambush.”

“Fat lotta good that did,” Kelly said. He was wheezing a bit and struggling with his shallow breathing. “They took the bodies, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Of course you would. You know way more about them than anyone I know.”

“Unfortunately.”

“So what are you doing back here, anyway? Horatio couldn’t have sent you to look for me, not with the town about to come under attack.”

“He didn’t.”

“So what are you doing here?”

“It wants to see me.”

Keo could just barely make out Kelly’s eyes in the shadows when the man said, “‘It?’”

“It.”

“For real?”

“Yeah.”

“Hot dang, kid.”

“We have history, me and it.”

“Is that why it was dragging you around like a piece of meat last night?”

“To make a long story short, yes. How did you guys find me, anyway? I thought we had a plan.”

“We went looking after you didn’t answer your radio.”

“I think I lost it during my reacquaintance with the undead fucker. I’m not sure what happened to it.”

“This ain’t the first Blue Eyes for you, huh?”

“I wish I could say yes, but, no.”

“Reynolds was right. You are one weird guy, Keo.”

Keo couldn’t help himself and smiled. “I’ve had one hell of a weird life, Kelly.”

“So what’s gonna happen at this little tête-à-tête of yours?”

“Fuck if I know. But it has a friend of mine and I’m getting her back, even if I have to do it over its dead body.”

“You can do that, huh?”

“I’ve done it before.”

“This one?”

“Nope.”

“Another one?”

“Uh huh.”

“Dang,” Kelly said. “It’s gonna be an interesting night for everyone, I see.”

“Appears that way.” Keo looked over at him. “Speaking of which, you got any immediate plans?”

Kelly shrugged. “No hot dates or anything. Whatcha got in mind?”

“I could use some backup.”

“Can you use one that can barely move?”

“Beggars can’t be choosers.”

Kelly let out a small laugh. Then, after gathering his breath, “All right. What’s the plan? I’m guessing there’s a plan?”

“Sure, there is.”

“So let’s hear it.”

“I’ll let you know when I come up with one.”

Kelly’s laughter boomed off the wall of the cave. Keo, surprising himself, joined him.

It was going to be one hell of a night…

Twenty-Three

“I didn’t think you’d come.”

Merrick. Or, at least, its voice. Keo couldn’t see the creature itself, but he could hear the fucker just fine.

“Why?” Keo said. “You thought I was scared of you?”

“Yes.”

“You were wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“But it will be the last. At least for you.”

“You should have killed me when you had the chance last night.”

“My mistake. One that’s easily remedied.”

“Why didn’t you, anyway?”

“What can I say? I have a bad habit of playing with my food.”

“Too bad. It’s gonna cost you.”

“We’ll see about that,” it said. Or hissed. He’d gotten so used to the sound of the blue-eyed ghouls’ voice that he didn’t even wonder why they hissed instead of talked anymore. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not, though.

Oh, who was he kidding? It was definitely not a good thing. The problem was Keo’s choices. If he hadn’t decided Lara was a woman worth dying for, and by proxy, her causes, then he probably wouldn’t have come anywhere close to being in the presence of these blue-eyed abominations.

Alas, he’d made his choice: Lara.

Everything else just happened to come along with it.

In the back of his mind, Keo relived his conversation with Kelly:

“You sure you brought enough to take it out?” the hunter had asked.

“I think so,” Keo had said.

“You should probably be more certain, kid. I don’t think you’re gonna get another chance at this.”

“That’s the problem with these things: They have a bad habit of coming back from the dead.”

“That’s their only problem?”

“One of many.”

“So what’s the plan?”

Keo told him. He thought the older man would buck at such a shoddy “plan”—such as it was—but he didn’t.

Instead, Kelly had grinned and said, “Hell, who wants to live forever, anyway?”

Me, for one, Keo had thought then.

…and he did again, now.

Me. That’s who. I want to live forever. At least, long enough to see my child be born.

Holy shit. I can’t believe I just said that.

Er, thought that.

Either/or.

“Does the girl mean that much to you?” Merrick asked. Its voice, for some reason, boomed off the trees around Keo, who stood at the mouth of the cave, waiting.

“Where is she?” Keo asked.

“She’s around.”

“Can you be a little more specific?”

“No.”

“Pretty please?”

“Still no.”

“Why so stubborn?”

“Why not? We’re playing a game, aren’t we?”

“Not to me.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I don’t treat life and death as a game.”

“Oh, come on, Keo. Why lie to yourself? You’ve always treated it as a game.”

Keo smirked. “You don’t know me.”

“Don’t I?”

“No. Not even a little bit.”

“I beg to differ. I know you very well.”

“Beg all you want, but this is very unfair. I came here, like you asked. But you’re not holding up your part of the deal. Are you afraid?”

It laughed. Or Keo thought that was a laugh. It could have been anything. Ghouls were like that; they tried to mimic what it was like to be human—what it was like to be their former selves—but there was always something…not quite right about their attempts. It was as if they’d forgotten how to do the most basic human things, like laugh, and were struggling to remember.

“She’s here,” it said. “The other one, too.”

“They’re both alive, I take it,” Keo said, “otherwise I’m going to feel mighty silly standing out here all by my little lonesome.”

“Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“All by your little lonesome.”

Keo smiled. Of course the creature would know Kelly was out here with him. It could either smell his scent, hear his breathing, or sense his presence. There were so many things they still didn’t know about the ghouls. When it came to the Blue Eyes, it was even more vague.

Such as the fact they’ve learned to put on HAZMAT suits to move around in the daytime. Yeah, that one’s gonna get lots of eyes bugging.

“So where is she?” Keo said, ignoring the creature’s question. It knew, just as well as he did, that he was not alone, so what was the point in lying?

“She’s here,” it said.

“I’d like to see her.”

“You can’t always get what you want, Keo.”

“Now that doesn’t sound fair at all.”

“Cry me a river.” Again, it let out something that almost sounded like a laugh. Almost.

Keo tightened the fingers of his right hand around the grip of the MP5K, then loosened it. He felt the blood flowing, his forefinger close to the trigger but not inside the trigger guard. Not yet. Without a doubt, Keo knew the creature could sense the silver-tipped bullets in the submachine gun’s magazine. It knew what he had. Keo just hoped it didn’t know everything, because if it did, then this little impromptu meeting of theirs was going to end very, very badly for him.

“I wanna see her,” Keo said. “Show her to me, or I’m gone.”

“Go where?” it asked.

It’d been almost a minute since it “showed” itself, and Keo still couldn’t locate it. There was something…mesmerizing about its voice. It was everywhere at once…and nowhere at the same time. How was that even possible?

“Last chance,” Keo said.

It didn’t reply. Not right away.

“See ya,” Keo said, and began to turn around. He wasn’t entirely sure where he was going, but he figured it was somewhere.

There was a loud thump! behind him, followed by the sounds of whimpering.

Keo turned around.

A big brown canvas bag sat about ten meters from him. It was moving. Or more specifically, the figures inside it were moving. Keo couldn’t tell how many there were inside the bag, but it had to be more than one. There were multiple arms and legs pushing against the fabric, trying to break free.

“Help!” a voice screamed. “Please help us!”

Female, but muffled. It could have been Claire or Ronnie or both of them screaming for help at the same time. Or neither of them. He didn’t doubt the monster would lie about bringing Claire and Ronnie back to him. Whoever they were, Keo didn’t blame them for struggling to get out. It would have hurt like hell to be tossed into the edge of the clearing.

Keo scanned the branches around him, using the moonlight to search for something that might give him a hint to the creature’s whereabouts.

Nothing.

Not a goddamn thing.

“Go ahead,” it said. “Save your friends.”

The bag was less than 10 meters away, but it might as well be 100. Keo wouldn’t be able to reach it in time before the ghoul pounced. He’d faced its kind before and knew how fast they were. The fact that the blue-eyed devil hadn’t attacked yet was only because it was playing with him. Toying with him the way a cat would with its would-be mice dinner.

Keo didn’t fancy being a mouse.

Or dinner.

“What are you waiting for?” Keo asked. “Show yourself. Or are you scared?”

It laughed. It was a loud laugh, too.

“Do you really think I’m scared of you, Keo?’ it asked. Like the last dozen or so times it’d spoken, its voice ricocheted off the trees. Everywhere…and nowhere.

“You must be,” Keo said, “or you would have shown yourself by now. Whatsammata? You scared of the bad little human man?”

It didn’t respond. It didn’t laugh or speak or did anything.

“You must be,” Keo said again. “Hey, I don’t blame you. I’ve killed so many of your kind that I’ve lost count. And no, I’m not just talking about the black-eyed ones. You blue-eyed dickheads think you’re hot stuff, but truth be told, you’re just as easy. Hell, I’ve killed so many of your kind specifically, it’s becoming boring.”

Continued silence.

Cat got your tongue? Keo thought.

He said out loud, raising his voice noticeably, “Then again, a little girl did almost blow your ass into nonexistence back at Darby Bay. You remember her, don’t you?”

“Yes,” it said.

Keo scanned the trees.

Still nothing.

Still not a goddamn thing.

“So you do remember.” Keo said, and smiled. “Tell me something. How does it feel to be outsmarted by a kid?”

The darkness flickered.

Keo looked up as it arced across the darkened sky and landed next to the canvas sack it’d tossed easier.

Damn. I can’t believe that worked.

It straightened up, slowly, elongated form seemingly unwrapping from a smaller, twisted ball of flesh and bones. It was tall. Much taller than Keo remembered. Possibly seven feet. Or maybe that was just the shadows playing tricks with his eyes, giving it more height that it really had. Long, spindly arms hung at its sides, two more limbs jutting out like chopsticks from underneath its body. Oval-shaped head, devoid of hair, reflected off the moonlight above it.

But it was the blue eyes, like twin orbs of some distant neutron stars, pulsating as it peered across the night air at Keo. Threatening to collide, to shower the universe with their explosive materials.

A cold shiver raced up and down Keo’s spine and he knew the creature had seen it. He couldn’t help himself.

“Tell me, Keo,” it said, worm lips slithering into a wicked grin, “do you really think you are going to survive this encounter?”

Keo smiled. Or tried to. It was a bluff, and it mostly worked.

Or he thought it mostly worked.

(He was probably wrong.)

“No, not really,” Keo said. “But you know what they say…”

“What’s that?” it asked, head cocking slightly to one side in curiosity.

“Hope springs eternal.”

“Does it now?”

“So they say.”

Its eyes switched from Keo’s face to the submachine gun in his hands. “Are you going to use that? Do you really think those silver bullets will stop me?”

“No,” Keo said. “But it should slow you down!”

He fired.

Everything.

All 30 silver-tipped rounds in the magazine in one burst.

Seconds.

That was all it took. Mere seconds to empty the mag.

He didn’t expect every single precious bullet to find its way home, and he wasn’t wrong. He’d fired with a purpose—oscillating from left to right—hoping to catch the creature no matter where it moved when he pulled the trigger.

The strategy was mostly successful, and Keo caught the creature in the right shoulder with one round.

But that was it.

One lousy silver-tipped round blew a chunk of flesh off its shoulder and disappeared into the darkness beyond.

Thirty bullets.

One landed.

Well, shit!

Keo hadn’t expected to kill it. He would have been fine if one round smashed its brain in, but that would have been super lucky. He wasn’t that super lucky, alas.

But that was okay, because that wasn’t the plan anyway.

More gunfire, this time from the right and just about halfway between where Keo and Merrick stood.

Kelly.

The hunter had popped up like a jack-o’-lantern from where he’d been hiding all night, the other MP5K that Keo had brought with him in the older man’s hands as he unleashed. Kelly hadn’t gone unnoticed by Merrick, but either the creature couldn’t locate his exact spot or it’d been too overconfident.

Either/or worked for Keo.

Kelly’s volley, like Keo’s, mostly missed, but enough—One? Two? More?—landed that pieces of black flesh and thick, coagulated blood arced through the moonlit air.

And like Keo, Kelly unloaded everything his submachine gun had.

Merrick was hurt. It wasn’t going down, but it was hurt.

Click! as the magazine in Keo’s MP5K fell.

Snap! as the new one went in.

Slap! as he slapped the charging handle.

Merrick was turning toward Kelly when Keo fired, walking toward the creature as he did so. This time, Keo aimed as he let loose three-round bursts.

The ghoul’s body twitched as Keo nailed it over and over with more precision shooting. More thick blood flitted across the crisp night air.

Then it was in the air.

Keo tracked it—or tried to; its dark flesh, against the backdrop of night, made it nearly invisible—and continued firing—

Merrick smashed into him, driving Keo to the ground. His breath, along with just about everything else, burst out of Keo in a flood of pain. He imagined it might have been worse if Merrick wasn’t already dripping blood from a half dozen or so bullet wounds and was hurt itself.

Keo saw his life flash before his eyes.

His sordid past…

The Purge…

Meeting Lara for the first time…

Reuniting with her…

Learning he was going to be a dad…

Watching Lara’s belly get bigger…

Promising her he’d come back…

All of those things flashed across his mind’s eye in a nanosecond even as a pair of deep, deep eyes pulsed and grew, and the unyielding stench of death breathed down on Keo’s face.

Twenty-Four

Keo was staring up at the bluest eyes he’d ever seen. Except these weren’t the same crystal blue eyes that he loved looking into. Those belonged to Lara, who was back at Black Tide base right now, waiting for him to come home so he could stand by her side and hold her hand as she gave birth to their child.

I’m gonna be a dad.

Jesus, I can’t believe I’m gonna be a dad.

You poor, poor kid.

Knowing that he was going to become a dad and being there for him or her were two different universes right now. Keo wanted desperately to see his child be born, and he remembered what Kelly had said about Reynolds leaving behind a wife and child.

I’m sorry about that, Reynolds, but it’s not going to be me.

The disturbing pair of pulsating blue eyes glaring down at Keo looked frozen in time. It’d pounced on Keo just as he knew it would, because that was how the Blue Eyes liked to dominate their victims. It’d happened to him more than once, and Keo had a feeling it would happen again.

…and it did.

…and he was ready for it this time.

The knife—just barely half the size of the KA-BAR still sheathed on his left hip—had come out of his left shirt sleeve. Literally, the ace he’d been hiding under his sleeve. It was rigged to a spring device that launched the blade into Keo’s palm as soon as he struck the ground and the creature’s weight crashed into him. Norris hadn’t been sure one of his blacksmiths could put it together in the short time Keo had, but the man had succeeded. At the time, Keo hoped it would work when he needed it.

It did.

There was no time for Merrick to see the knife, no time for it to avoid its silver-coated blade. It was fast, but it wasn’t that fast. It’d wanted to get up close and personal, and it’d done exactly that. It just didn’t know Keo was not only ready for it but hoping for it.

Keo locked eyes with the creature. There wasn’t anything resembling triumph on its face, because there was no victory to be had. At least, not for it. It hadn’t been ready for Keo’s ace, and that realization was spreading across its gaunt face. The stink of its presence was everywhere, clogging up Keo’s nose and threatening to burrow all the way down to his soul. Instead of trying to get away, Keo embraced it.

Because this was what he wanted.

This was the plan.

The knife was embedded underneath the creature’s chin, every inch of its six-inch blade having pierced the monster’s flesh. When Merrick opened his mouth, Keo could see parts of the knife in the back, the sharp point glistening with thick, coagulated black blood.

“Fuck you,” Keo said and tried to drive the knife even farther up Merrick’s chin.

Of course, that was impossible. He’d gotten it as deep as it would go, but Merrick’s entire body tensed anyway. Keo imagined a runaway train of pain rushing through the creature’s very being. It could survive silver, but that didn’t mean it would go unscathed. Silver anywhere but in the brain didn’t kill it, but it still hurt.

And it was hurting now. Keo could see it as clear as day in its eyes and twisted face.

“Die,” Keo hissed. “Fucking die already!”

It didn’t, but it did raise its body off him and reached back—

—just as Kelly appeared behind it with his own knife.

Merrick grabbed Kelly’s hand, stopping the plunging knife halfway to its target.

Dammit! So close!

Kelly screamed as the blue-eyed ghoul raised itself completely off Keo, spun around, and picked the hunter off his feet with one hand.

Then Kelly was in the air and vanished into the dark woods.

That wasn’t part of the plan.

That was definitely not part of the plan.

“We’re probably gonna die tonight,” Kelly had said, not more than an hour ago.

“Yeah, probably,” Keo had answered.

“You sound okay with it.”

“I’m not.”

“You sound like you are.”

Keo had shrugged. “I guess I’m used to it.”

“What’s that?”

“This.”

“What is ‘this,’ exactly?”

“This is…” Keo had said, struggling to find the right words.

But how did you explain everything that your life had become in just a few words?

He’d said instead, “FUBURATS.”

“FUBARATS, huh?” Kelly had said with an amused grin. Then, when Keo explained what it stood for, the hunter had laughed again. “Yeah, sounds about right.”

“You wanna head over to Arrowhead?” Keo had asked him. “I’m sure they could use your help.”

“Nah. I wouldn’t make it halfway home.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” Then, grinning even bigger at Keo, “”Are you sure?”

Keo had chuckled before replying. “No. But since when have I ever gotten anything I wanted?”

And that was it. The last conversation he’d had with Kelly before they both got settled into their little plan to ambush the creature.

It’d been a good plan.

Damn good, if Keo did say so himself.

When Merrick rose from Keo to turn its attention to the charging Kelly, it’d taken the knife Keo had shoved up its chin with it. Keo had tried to hold on, but the combination of sweat and blood (the creature’s, mostly) had made it too slick.

Now, Keo reached down for the SIG Sauer holstered at his right hip.

Merrick was turning back to Keo when Keo opened up on it.

Bang!

Bang bang!

Bang bang bang!

Bang bang bang bang!

Keo kept pulling the trigger as long as the gun bucked in his hand. Merrick staggered from the gunshots, simultaneously hurt by the incoming silver-tipped bullets and trying to avoid a headshot by twisting its head left, right, back, and forward.

But it was moving backward. That was the important part. Keo was pushing it back.

A thunderous click, followed by the SIG’s slide snapping into place as it ran out of bullets to fire.

Keo didn’t bother trying to reload the pistol. He didn’t have time. He didn’t even have half the time he would have needed to reach down, grope for a spare mag, and slap it into the handgun.

Instead, he tossed the SIG and scrambled up to his feet, every inch of him throbbing with pain from head to toe.

He hurt.

Jesus Christ, did he hurt.

Everywhere.

Absolutely everywhere.

But so was Merrick.

Die already, you fucker!

Adrenaline kept Keo from falling back down and screaming. Instead, he sprang up to one knee, left hand reaching down for the KA-BAR. There, the grip. Slick with blood. His? Its? Who cares!

Merrick whirled back to Keo, pulling the knife out of its chin with one hand. Blood splashed the ground, and the creature’s face twisted in anguish.

Hah! Made you bleed, fucker!

Then a train broadsided Keo in the chest.

And he went flying. He didn’t know he could fly, but he was.

Backward.

Crack! as he struck one of the sides of the cave. He wasn’t sure which side, and really, it didn’t matter.

He flopped to the ground like a fish out of water.

And everything hurt.

Again.

FUBARATS!

Keo had somehow managed to land on one knee, the palm of one hand against the ground as he glanced up.

Merrick was coming. Or Keo thought it was Merrick. All he really saw was a black shadow splitting the darkness as it moved.

Keo lunged up and forward to meet it, slashing with the KA-BAR and hoping—and praying—that he caught something.

The knife met momentary resistance just as Merrick materialized in front of him. The ghoul, its blue eyes boring into Keo’s soul, made a noise that sounded almost like shock, and staggered back.

Blood poured from the gash in its throat, and even more slurped to the Georgian woods from the hole Keo had put underneath its chin. It opened its mouth as if to say something, but only thick blood, like ancient sludge, fell out from between its lips.

Keo smiled at it. “You like that? You want some more, fucker?”

Merrick glowered at him, throbbing blue eyes accusing Keo of a crime he had committed and was goddamn thankful he had.

Keo pushed off the side of the cave, KA-BAR gripped tightly in his hand, and stalked toward Merrick.

His legs hurt.

His arms ached.

Every inch of him shouted out for mercy.

But Keo pushed on.

One step at a time, KA-BAR in hand.

Merrick gagged, bony fingers gripping at his throat. His eyes, the only bright thing in the entire world at the moment, stayed focused on Keo.

But it was retreating.

It was hurt.

He’d hurt it.

Keo lunged and slashed, but Merrick somehow managed to duck underneath it. Then it twisted and began running.

Hey, get back here!

Keo chased it.

“Come back here, you motherfucker!”

It didn’t respond. Maybe it couldn’t. It jumped instead.

Keo cursed under his breath as the blue-eyed ghoul disappeared into the darkness.

“Where you going?” Keo shouted after it. “Come back here, you motherfucker! I’m not through with you yet! Get your slimy ass—”

He stopped shouting as soon as he saw them emerging out of the woods.

Ghouls.

Black-eyed ghouls.

They were running at him like moths to the flame.

He tightened his grip on the KA-BAR.

“Come on,” he muttered under his breath, eyes snapping left and right, then left again. They were coming from everywhere. “I’m just getting warmed up.”

Twenty-Five

About damn time.

He’d been wondering where the black-eyed ghouls were. The same ones that had ambushed Lindsey’s team the night before. Their lack of presence earlier had been a mystery, one that kept gnawing at the back of Keo’s mind.

Now, as he watched them racing out of the shadows, he thought he knew why they’d been hanging back: Merrick’s orders. It’d told them to do that, because that was how it works with the ghouls. The Blue Eyes controlled their black-eyed counterparts. Frank once told Keo it was some kind of telepathic hive mind where the Blue Eyes were the dominant voices.

Keo glanced from the closest ghoul—it was headed right for him and moving fast, faster than a Black Eyes should be able to move—to the canvas bag in the clearing. Claire and Ronnie were in there and he thought they could either smell or hear or feel the ghouls coming because they began moving even more frantically against the bags. Muffled female voices called out; Keo couldn’t parse any of the words, but they were dripping with fear.

He was afraid the ghouls might charge the bag, but they only had eyes for him. And only him. That was good, because he didn’t need to protect the girls in the bag at the same time he was trying to survive. It would have been easier if Kelly were here—or, hell, if he were even still alive. Keo had a feeling the hunter hadn’t survived his flight earlier.

There were six of them, which was exactly how many Keo remembered from last night. Seven, originally, but Lindsey had lopped off one Black Eyes’ head, killing it. That left six, which meant none of Lindsey’s men had managed to dispatch any of the others while Keo and Lindsey were fleeing.

That was too bad because while six was usually a manageable number, Keo was dealing with a new breed of Black Eyes here. These things were very different from the ones he was used to. They didn’t look any bigger, but they were clearly faster and more resistant to silver. Neither of those things boded well for a stand-up fight.

The night had vomited out two on his right side while two more came from his left. The remaining two shot straight out of the woods in front of him. Keo didn’t have to wonder if they’d planned it this way. They hadn’t, but Merrick had. It’d kept the creatures in reserve just in case it needed support.

Keo should have been happy with that notion (unless, of course, he was wrong; though he didn’t think so) but he was too busy switching the KA-BAR to his left hand, crouching and drawing the ankle gun, to gloat. The Glock 42 was a mini version of its bigger cousins, but the bullets in them were silver-tipped. Besides, he didn’t need to shoot the ghouls to kill them, just slow them down for the KA-BAR to do its work.

He did that now, firing at the closest one, which happened to be the two on his right. The first creature was within two meters when Keo hit it twice in the chest. It staggered but, as he’d guessed, didn’t go down.

The second one kept coming.

Keo raked it across the chest with the KA-BAR. The ghoul let out a howl of pain (Keo couldn’t remember if all the Black Eyes could still feel pain or if it was something new with these ones) but didn’t stop coming. Deformed bony figures groped the chilly air at Keo’s face as he ducked slightly, sidestepped, and chopped down on the back of its neck. There was so much neck it was impossible to miss.

The head flopped to the ground first, followed by the rest of it.

Keo turned just as the ghoul he’d shot continued moving toward him. He ignored the feel of air shifting around him as the others closed in. The two on his left were the next closest while the ones in front of him had to go around the bag.

And they were still ignoring the bag entirely. That was good for Claire and Ronnie, but not so much for him.

Keo took a risk and aimed for the head of the first ghoul.

Bang!

Black blood burst out of the back of the undead thing’s skull as the creature fell in a pile of clacking bones.

I guess that works, too.

Not that Keo killing two ghouls had stopped the others. Oh no. As far as he could tell, they hadn’t even slowed down.

He faced the two coming from his left.

He went for the head of the closest one—and missed. He couldn’t tell how badly he’d missed, but the creature was still coming.

That’ll teach me to be overconfident!

The truth was, hitting a moving figure in the head was a tricky shot. It was the same reason even special operators went for center mass first and then the headshot when the target was down. Keo should have done the same thing. Instead, he was now down to two rounds in the Glock.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda, pal!

The two on his left were 10 meters away, while the pair in front of him was lagging slightly behind at 15 meters, thanks to the woods being farther way from the cave.

Keo shot a ghoul in the face. That wasn’t his real target. He’d gone for the chest, but it was moving too much and went too high by a few inches. Blood poured out of the freshly made hole in the creature’s right cheek.

Keo fired again, and this time hit it square in the forehead.

And that was it. The Glock was empty.

He considered reloading—he still had an extra mag for it in one of his pouches—but that would have taken anywhere from two to three seconds.

Keo threw the Glock at the next nearest one instead. The gun clonked! off its forehead.

He almost laughed as the creature’s head snapped back slightly, the look of total surprise in its obsidian eyes filling Keo with amusement.

Great. I can hit them in the brain with a Glock, but not the Glock’s bullets!

By the time the ghoul he’d popped on the forehead could resume its charge toward him, Keo already had the other two to deal with. He had considered backing into the cave to give himself more time, but he shoved that into his back pocket as a last resort. He didn’t like the idea of being stuck in there, in the dark. Not that it wasn’t dark out here, but it wasn’t as dark as inside the cave right now.

Instead, Keo lunged for the knife that Merrick had discarded. Thank God the creature hadn’t bothered to throw it far away. It’d simply dropped it after pulling it out of its chin.

Thanks, Merrick!

Keo met the surging creatures halfway. There were just three left now. Manageable numbers. He focused on their vulnerable parts, swinging both knives like swords; gashing one, then stabbing at another.

A head rolled without fanfare.

Another lost a limb, then took the smaller knife, still coated with Merrick’s blood, to the skull. It fell with the blade embedded in its forehead.

The sixth and last one was easy. It fought with everything it had, but it was missing its right arm. Keo got it on the ground face-first and took off its two legs at the knees. The creature’s deformity had made it so frail that the KA-BAR barely felt any resistance as it sliced through flesh, what little muscle the thing had left, and then, ultimately, bone.

The mostly limbless creature thrashed on the ground, hissing up at him. He stepped on its sunken chest with his boot to pin it, then stared down at it. Not it, exactly, but the other pair of eyes behind it.

Merrick’s.

The blue-eyed ghoul could see him. That was how this worked; its mind was linked to the Black Eyes. It could see what they saw, hear what they heard, and feel what they felt. Right now, it could feel Keo’s boot on the creature’s chest.

“I know you can hear me,” he said. “I know you’re out there. Hurt. Licking your wounds. That’s what happens when you come after me. You’re gonna wish you had stayed dead, motherfucker. Tell Buck I’m coming after him, too.”

Keo let go of the ghoul’s chest, and as it tried to rise, crushed the creature’s head in with his boot. Brain—or whatever it was they still had in there—splashed the ground. The shattered skull looked more like broken chicken eggs than what used to be a human head.

He took a deep breath. The air around him was stuffed with the stink of ghouls. Dead ghouls. Every inch of him throbbed with pain, and the wounds he’d suffered the last few days screamed for attention.

He ignored them.

Keo walked to where his Glock had fallen and reclaimed, then reloaded it. Then, with the KA-BAR still in his hand, headed over to the canvas bag. It was still moving frantically, the occupants desperate to get out.

It was a simple enough bag, tied with a rope at the top. Keo sliced it open and pulled it apart, and one head, then another, popped out.

The first one was Ronnie.

She gasped for breath before stumbling out of the bag on her hands and knees. Keo was about to ask her if she was all right when she vomited whatever she had eaten today—and maybe eaten all of the week, judging by the sheer amount.

Keo focused on the second figure. “You okay, Claire?”

“What?” the voice said.

Keo squinted at the face. The shape was right, and she even had blonde hair. But everything else was wrong.

It wasn’t Claire.

It was a kid who could have passed for Claire in the dark, but it wasn’t Claire.

“You’re not Claire,” Keo said.

The girl shook her head. She sat still in what remained of the bag, looking back at him as if afraid to move. When her eyes finally left him, they went to the dead creatures scattered in the clearing.

“She’s gone,” Ronnie said. The older woman was on her knees now, trying to catch her breath while wiping at the stains on her chin. “Claire. She’s gone.”

“Gone where?” Keo asked.

Ronnie shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know…”

Keo wanted to laugh. Merrick had fucked him over. Not completely, but the parts that mattered. The part involving Claire.

“Sonofabitch,” he whispered instead. He walked over and helped Ronnie up from the ground. “You okay?”

She shook her head and brushed at vomit clinging to the front of her clothes. “Not even a little bit.”

He didn’t blame her. It wasn’t every day you got chased through the woods, kidnapped by a blue-eyed ghoul, then tossed into a bag with a total stranger.

“What now?” Ronnie asked.

Keo was about to answer when the ground trembled and the air pulsed with an energy that wasn’t there before. The trees around them shook, and leaves flitted away from branches as a gust of wind ripped through the small clearing, followed by the very loud roar of a massive machine overhead.

He looked up quickly, just in time to catch the metal belly of a plane as it passed by. It was there and gone in a heartbeat…

…before a second one appeared. Like the first, it, too, vanished from view just as quickly as it’d arrived.

Both aircraft had moved too fast, and it was too dark for Keo to have seen any distinguishing marks on their bellies. They could have been any type of planes and come from anywhere. He couldn’t even be sure of their color.

“What was that?” Ronnie said. She hadn’t looked up fast enough to spot either plane.

“Planes,” Keo said.

“Planes? Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

Whose planes, and why are they here, is the question.

He turned to look in the direction they’d gone.

Northwest…toward Arrowhead.

“Keo?” a voice said.

He looked back at the blonde girl that had been in the bag with Ronnie. She had stood up and was brushing at dirt and leaves clinging to her hair.

“How do you know my name?” Keo asked.

“She told me,” the girl said.

When Keo glanced over at Ronnie, the woman shook her head. “I didn’t tell her.”

Keo said to the girl, “Who told you my name?”

“She did,” the girl said. “Claire.”

Keo walked closer to her. The girl took a quick scared step back.

“It’s okay,” Keo said. “Did Claire say anything else to you?”

“She said that if you found me, to tell you that she’s gone after Buck. She says she’s going to kill him, and for you not to come after her.”

Keo sighed and looked over at Ronnie.

“We got separated,” Ronnie said. “I don’t know what happened to her.”

Keo looked off into the dark woods, thinking about the last few months.

He’d survived Merrick. Not once, but twice in as many days. He’d even managed to hurt the fucker badly. If he was really lucky, it was lying dead somewhere. Not that Keo was counting on that wishful thinking. Chances were, it was still out there…

…along with Claire.

Behind him was Arrowhead, with two unidentified planes headed toward his friend Norris.

In front of him was Claire, whom he had promised Lara he’d bring home.

And somewhere in the middle…were Merrick and Buck.

“Daebak.”

Coming Soon

Keo returns in AIN’T GOIN’ DOWN, the third and final part in this ROAD TO BABYLON storyline.

Expected release date late 2021.