Ain't Goin' Down (Road to Babylon, Book 12)
Author: Sam Sisavath
Date: 2023-05-11 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Post-Apocalyptic | Infected
Description: BOOK 12 IN THE POST-APOCALYPTIC ROAD TO BABYLON SERIES. NOTHING WILL EVER BE THE SAME. It was a simple job: In and out. No muss, no fuss. Except nothing ever works out that cleanly for a man like Keo. His cover blown, he's hunted through the woods before facing off against not one, but two old foes from his past; Keo has his hands full. And oh, there's a new threat looming on the horizon that no one saw coming, one that could change the course of every survivor. But first things first: Keo has to deal with what's directly in front of him. It's fight or flight, and Keo has never been one to run
Publisher: Independently published

Ain’t Goin’ Down

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 Ain’t Goin’ Down

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

Epilogue

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 Ain’t Goin’ Down

NOTHING WILL EVER BE THE SAME.

It was a simple job: In and out. No muss, no fuss. Except nothing ever works out that cleanly for a man like Keo.

His cover blown, he’s hunted through the woods before facing off against not one, but two old foes from his past; Keo has his hands full. And oh, there’s a new threat looming on the horizon that no one saw coming, one that could change the course of every survivor.

But first things first: Keo has to deal with what’s directly in front of him.

It’s fight or flight, and Keo has never been one to run. Then again, he’s never had to deal with something like this before…

The conclusion of the three-part Shaker Town storyline.

One

Two unidentifiable warplanes headed somewhere.

Probably Arrowhead.

His radio wasn’t working.

The woods are too goddamn thick.

And Claire was missing…again.

Goddammit, kid. Couldn’t you stay still for a while? I know a blue-eyed ghoul tossed you into a sack, but that didn’t mean you could just run off when I came to rescue you. Seriously. You think I’m doing this for my health? I’d rather be home. Hell, I’d rather be anywhere but here.

But here he was. It was a bad few months, and it wasn’t getting any better.

To say that the whole thing was annoying was an understatement. Things were getting on his nerves.

Planes. Arrowhead. Claire.

And he was stuck in the woods with a scared woman and a young girl whose name he still didn’t know and, frankly, didn’t want to know. Keo wanted nothing more than to send them on their way, but Ronnie wouldn’t budge. And though the girl didn’t know Ronnie until they surfaced from the bag a few minutes ago, she’d apparently arrived at the conclusion Ronnie was a safer ally than Keo.

He didn’t exactly blame her. She was probably right.

And he didn’t blame Ronnie, either, for not running off. She had nowhere to go. On one side was Arrowhead, either about to come under attack or already in the thick of it, and on the other…

Shadows. Darkness. And ghouls.

It was the last thing that made them stick to Keo. There could be a lot of ghouls out there, or just one. But the one that might be lurking was more dangerous than a legion of Black Eyes. This one glowed bright blue eyeballs that could stare into your very soul. Keo would know. He’d been at the wrong end of more than one pair.

Damn. Really, really have to rethink how you’re living your life, pal.

“It took us from the cave where you left us,” Ronnie had told him. “It was wearing some kind of…suit. I didn’t even know ghouls could survive in sunlight until yesterday.”

“They can’t,” Keo had said. “The HAZMAT suit protected it.”

“Is that what you call those?”

“Yes.”

After that, they’d spent a few moments talking about Steven. Keo assured her the kid was fine and safe in Arrowhead, even though in the back of his mind he wasn’t sure if the fine and safe part was actually true. Especially if those warplanes that had just flashed by overhead weren’t piloted by Black Tiders.

What were the chances of that though? Good to fair, if he had to place bets. It’d been years since The Walk Out, and there would have been plenty of time to train someone to fly one. And once you got one trained, he could train others. Even a novice (at least someone with an aptitude for such things) could probably learn the cockpit of a fighter jet with enough time and patience, along with the right tools at his disposal. God only knows there were plenty of jets still parked all around the world’s military bases, just waiting for someone to claim them.

So yeah, the chances were good to fair that those planes didn’t belong to Black Tide. Which, if true, would mean trouble for Norris and his folks. They would stand a great chance against a ground assault. They’d done it before, over the years, as they skirmished with the Shaker Town folks. But an attack from the air…

Keo didn’t like those odds, but he couldn’t do anything about it now. Not standing in the middle of the woods with a two-way portable radio and surrounded by trees that reached up so high he thought some of them might be scraping the bottom of the moon.

Wow. That was almost poetic.

Yeah, almost.

Not that he hadn’t tried to reach his friends through the radio. First Black Tide, then Arrowhead.

Nothing.

Nada.

No-can-do-sir.

He was on his own. No matter how he looked at it, it was him against whatever was out there. Of course, he could always turn and run back to Arrowhead. Keo was sure Norris could use his help, even if Keo was moving on little more than adrenaline and painkillers tonight. But hey, that strategy—such as it was—had been working so far, so why not ride it all the way to dawn?

Keo found Kelly about 30 meters from the clearing. The hunter was dead. Keo could tell that without bothering to feel for a pulse. Kelly lay on the ground, his body twisted into an impossible shape. Like a pretzel, only, well, more bony.

Oh yeah, he was dead, all right.

Keo wasn’t surprised he couldn’t locate the other MP5K that he’d given Kelly. It was too dark, and there was just too much green and black to see anything on the ground with any clarity. At certain points of the forest, where it was thickest, moonlight had trouble getting through. That made vision hazardous, even if Keo’s night eyes had already adjusted to his surroundings. There was a limit to what he could see.

He returned to the clearing, where Ronnie and the girl stood waiting, surrounded by the dead (again) corpses of black-eyed ghouls. The smell was getting worse as they lingered in the area, fouling the ground and grass and trees with their stench. Years ago, Keo would have flinched physically at the stink. These days, he just acknowledged it.

You’re getting way too used to this, pal.

Yeah, he was. He wasn’t sure if that was a bad thing or not, though.

Oh, who was he kidding? It was definitely a bad thing. You should never get used to undead things trying to kill you.

Keo half-expected the girls to take off when he went looking for Kelly in the darkness, but they hadn’t. Even the presence of dead creatures hadn’t made them move, from the looks of it, even a few feet from where he’d last spotted them.

Ronnie watched him walk back to them, obvious relief on her face. It’d been a long time since a woman other than Lara was happy to see him. “Did you find your friend?”

Keo nodded. “He’s dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t know him that well.”

“But he was still your friend.”

Keo shrugged. “Not really.”

She gave him a Wow, that’s cold look.

“I just met him,” Keo said by way of explanation, even as he thought, At least Kelly had the decency not to leave a fatherless kid and a husbandless wife in his wake.

That, unfortunately, was something he might end up doing if he didn’t survive this.

Positive thinking, pal. Positive thinking!

He focused on Ronnie. “You need to go.”

“Go where?” she asked.

“Arrowhead.”

She glanced over her shoulder for a brief half-second before looking back at him. “It’s too far. We’d never make it.”

“You won’t make it out here with me.”

“That’s not true.” She sounded very certain, which was a surprise to Keo. “We have a better chance out here with you than without.”

He wanted to keep arguing, but the truth was she was probably right. They did have a better chance of surviving the night if they were with him. Out there, just the two of them, they could become prey for any number of threats, and not all of them of the undead variety.

“I’m going after Claire,” Keo said.

“Okay,” Ronnie said.

“You’re okay with that?”

“Yes. Why shouldn’t I be? I liked her.”

“That’s not a good enough reason to risk your life to find her.”

“It is, for me.”

“All right, then.” It’s your funeral, he thought, but said, “It’s your choice.” He glanced down at the girl. “You stay close to her at all times. Do not wander off. If you do, I won’t come looking for you.”

“Becky,” Ronnie said.

“What?” Keo said.

“Her name’s Becky. Rebecca, but everyone calls her Becky.”

Great. Now I know the kid’s name. Swell.

He said out loud, “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going now?” Ronnie asked as he walked off.

“Be right back,” he said in lieu of answering.

Everything he’d left in the cave was still back there, including a few items that Kelly had managed to salvage after his near-fatal run-in with Merrick. The hunter had arrived at the cave with not just some of his own things, but a few of his partner Reynolds’ as well.

Keo grabbed what he thought would be useful and pushed them into his own pack. It was a snug fit, but everything in there was necessary. The only thing he didn’t have enough of, that he wished dearly for, were silver bullets. Both he and Kelly had fired nearly every round Keo had brought along with him from Arrowhead. He still had one magazine left, but it was for the small Glock 42 strapped to his ankle. The SIG Sauer remained on his right hip just in case he ran across a Shaker or two…or a dozen.

Right now, Keo would take those possible dozen Shakers over a ghoul. Men died much easier than the creatures. Any ol’ bullet would do. Hell, any ol’ knife or sharp object—or a really hard rock—could also do the job. Keo had once killed a man with a tree branch. It hadn’t been easy, but eventually the man had succumbed.

The good old days…

He returned to the girls, now standing at the mouth of the cave. Becky, with her long blonde hair and big eyes, really did look a lot like Claire. Maybe that was why Merrick had chosen her. Not that the creature really had to go to such great lengths to deceive Keo. Just tossing the kid into the bag along with Ronnie was enough, since Keo couldn’t identify its contents anyway.

Keo must have been staring at the kid for too long—and maybe just a tad too intensely—because she scooted behind Ronnie for cover.

He looked up at Ronnie. “Where’s she from?”

“Shaker Town,” Ronnie said.

“You know her?”

“No. But there’s a lot of kids in town. I don’t know all of them. Doesn’t help there’s more coming in every day.”

Keo nodded. He’d seen that for himself while he was there. Shaker Town’s combination of recruitment drive and conquests had brought more and more people to the place every day. Keo himself had shown up on one of those wagons and promptly given Shit Duty. Two months later, he was asshole-deep in a running gunfight with Shakers in the woods.

“When did they take Claire?” he asked Ronnie.

The doctor shook her head. “I don’t know. When I woke up, I was in the bag. I didn’t even know Becky was in there with me at first.”

“When did you realize it wasn’t Claire?”

“When I tried talking to her and she wouldn’t answer. Plus, she’s a bit smaller than Claire, and…” She didn’t finish.

“What?” Keo prompted.

Ronnie gave him a slightly embarrassed look. “The girls smell different.”

“Do they?”

“Don’t they to you?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“You need a better sense of smell.”

“Yeah, I’ll work on that.” He crouched to take out the Glock from his ankle holster and offered it to Ronnie. “Six silver bullets in the mag. Which also happens to be the only silver bullets we have at our disposal at the moment. Needless to say, pick your targets wisely.”

Ronnie took the gun hesitantly, but she did take it. “What about you?”

He tapped the SIG on his right hip. “I have this. And this,” he added, tapping the KA-BAR sheathed on his left side. “The blade is silver. Which reminds me…”

Keo unslung the backpack he’d brought out of the cave with him and unzipped it. He reached in and pulled out another sheathed knife. It was Reynolds’, something Kelly had taken great pains to locate as a memento of his friend’s death.

“The blade is coated with silver, too,” Keo said, handing it to Ronnie. “Use it if you have to. But let’s hope you don’t have to.”

Ronnie took the sheathed knife and held it in one hand while holding the small Glock in the other. She stared at them for a second or two, as if wondering what she was doing with them. Or maybe she was suddenly regretting not taking off for Arrowhead as he’d suggested earlier.

“You can still go to Arrowhead,” Keo said. “Take the knife and gun with you.”

“You’ll let me take them?” Ronnie asked. She sounded surprised.

She must really think I’m an asshole.

Then: She’s probably right. Mostly.

Keo nodded. “Yeah.”

She didn’t respond right away, but Keo could see it in her eyes: Ronnie was thinking about it. Before, it was just her and the girl. That combination was not conducive to surviving a night that had proven to have ghouls in them.

But now, with the knife and gun…

“Go on,” Keo said. “I’ll see you back at Arrowhead after I find Claire.”

He walked past them, giving the girl hiding behind Ronnie a brief and, he hoped, a not-at-all creepy smile. Judging by her response—she clutched onto Ronnie even tighter—Keo didn’t think he was successful.

It’s official: I have a way with kids. Lara’s gonna be so stoked.

He almost laughed out loud, but held it in. Instead, he kept walking, fully expecting Ronnie to head off in the other direction.

Keo was almost at the edge of the clearing when Ronnie shouted, “Hey, wait for us!”

He looked back as they jogged over to rejoin him.

“It’s safer at Arrowhead,” Keo said.

“Maybe,” Ronnie said. “But I don’t know that. I do know one thing, though…”

“Which is?”

She matched his intense stare. “You survived Shaker Town. You survived Bell, or Buck, or whatever the hell his real name is. You survived an army of Shakers trying to kill you. And you survived that blue-eyed ghoul.” She pursed a smile. “Maybe Arrowhead is safer, but I don’t know, and that’s a problem. But I do know what you can do.”

Keo chuckled. He couldn’t help it. How was he going to tell her that he’d barely survived any of those encounters? That he had ended up more scarred and hurt and, even now, could feel those broken bones from his left wrist all the way down to his rib cage and beyond?

“Let’s go find Claire,” Ronnie said, and led Becky into the darkness before he could say anything.

Keo sighed, before turning and following them. “Let’s.”

Two

“Is it dead?”

“No.”

“You didn’t even think about it.”

“Because I’m sure. It’s wounded, but it’s not dead. Far from it.”

“What would it take to kill one of those things?”

“The head is the key. Shoot it in the head or detach said head from its body. Voilà. You got yourself a dead blue-eyed ghoul.”

“What about the Black Eyes back there? You went for their heads, too. I thought all it took was silver to kill those things?”

“It used to.”

“‘Used to?’”

“The ones back there are…different. They’re harder to kill.”

“Oh God, just what we need: Ghouls that are even harder to kill.”

Keo had to smile at that. He was thinking the same thing: Great. Even more ghouls that are harder to kill than normal. As if the Blue Eyes weren’t enough of a pain in the ass…

They’d been walking for only a few minutes, but had put plenty of distance between them and the cave. Keo was retracing Merrick’s path, hoping to locate the creature and, if he were really lucky, find Claire right alongside it, alive and well. Or he thought he was following in the ghoul’s footsteps, anyway. It was a little hard to see in the dark, and there were only the occasional splatters of black blood on the grass, ground, and trees to mark the creature’s retreat. But there was just enough for Keo to have faith he was headed in the right direction.

Probably.

The girls were making a lot of noise behind him, especially Becky. It almost seemed as if she was purposefully stepping on every twig and kicking every rock that crossed her path. Keo wanted to tell her to be more careful, but bit his tongue. There was no point. If there were ghouls in the area, they would be able to smell them long before they heard them coming.

The thought made Keo reach down and touch the handle of his KA-BAR. The spring-loaded knife was back in its housing underneath the sleeve of his left shirt. It’d come in handier than Keo had anticipated when he asked Norris’s blacksmith to forge it for him. Keo had almost killed Merrick with it, too. The element of surprise—really, the only thing Keo had to his advantage at the time—had nearly finished off the bastard.

Nearly being the operative word.

Because Merrick was still alive. Still out there. Regardless of how much Keo wanted to tell Ronnie that he’d killed the fucker once and for all this time around, he couldn’t lie to her. Moreover, he couldn’t lie to himself.

The question was: How long would it take Merrick to heal from its injuries? The bullet wounds would have taken their pound of flesh, but it would be Keo’s knife going under the chin that had delivered the real pain. If only he’d been able to slice off its head. God only knew its neck was long enough to grant him access. He couldn’t have asked for a better target.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda, pal.

Right now, Merrick was hurt. It hadn’t been very long since their encounter, and the creature wouldn’t have had enough time to properly heal. Keo had seen it for himself how quickly the Blue Eyes could shake off their wounds. Merrick might have survived the volleys that Keo and Kelly had put into it, but it for damn sure felt every single round.

Now all he had to do was find it again, and kill it.

Sounds simple enough.

“Keo,” Ronnie said. She and the girl were close enough behind him that she had spoken his name in a soft whisper and he still heard her.

“Yeah?” he said, without glancing back. If she were in trouble, she would have screamed his name the same way she’d screamed when Merrick came for her and Claire back at the cave.

“What kind of name is that?”

Keo smirked to himself. Oh, if he only had a penny for every time someone asked him that question.

“It’s a name,” he said.

“Not a Chinese name,” she said.

“Nope. You were right the first time.”

“Korean?”

“Bingo.”

“You kind of look Korean.”

“Do I?”

“The Korean half. I’m guessing half-Caucasian?”

“You guessed correctly.” This time, he did glance back at her. She was smiling at him. “Personal experience?”

“I used to watch a lot of TV. Back, you know…”

He nodded. He knew. She meant to say Back in the old days, when the world wasn’t crawling with monsters. Or something along those lines.

“I was young,” Ronnie continued. “I was really into Asian stuff. K-pop, C-pop, J-pop…”

“What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“All those things you just said.”

“Seriously?” He didn’t need to look back this time to hear the doubt in her voice: She thought he was messing with her.

“What are they?” he said. “A lot of pops. Sounds dangerous.”

“I guess that depends on who you are. K-pop is Korean pop music. C-pop is Chinese. Et cetera.”

“Ah.”

“You didn’t know?”

“Why would I?”

“I dunno. I just thought you would know.”

“I’ve only ever been to Korea three times in my life. Once, to visit my grandparents with my mother when I was barely old enough to walk. And the other two times I was doing this thing for these guys, and I was in and out faster than you could say lickety-split.”

“Figures,” Ronnie said. “I finally meet a Korean guy in person, and he turns out to be barely Korean.”

Keo grinned. “I’ve been called worse.”

“I bet you have, judging by those scars.”

Keo didn’t reply to that. She wasn’t just talking about the scars on his face, but the ones on his body, too. Keo had plenty of them to remind him that he really, really should find a log cabin somewhere and settle down with a good woman, once and for all.

He smiled.

Oh, right. He’d tried that, and it hadn’t worked out all that well.

Ronnie, unlike Becky and everyone else, would have been able to see the evidence of his past troubles on his body because she’d treated him back in Shaker Town when he’d nearly been blown up by a suicide bomber.

…back in Shaker Town…

Keo stopped and turned. “Shaker Town…”

He must have done it too abruptly because Ronnie took a quick step back, a startled look on her face. “What about it?”

“You said you volunteered for the posse Buck was putting together to come after me.”

“Did I say that?”

“You did.”

She shrugged. “I guess I didn’t so much volunteered as I was conscripted. They needed a medic with them, and I was available. I didn’t know until I was in the woods that Steven was one of the people being hunted.”

“So you took off to find him.”

“Yes.” Then, “You said he’s okay? Back in Arrowhead?”

Keo nodded. “Last time I saw him, he was wolfing down enough breakfast for a family of five.”

Relief flooded Ronnie’s face. Keo thought that was strange because he’d already told her about Steven being okay. He wondered if she hadn’t believed him the first time he said it.

“So what about Shaker Town?” Ronnie asked.

“I met another guy in the posse who said he was basically conscripted, like you,” Keo said. “Who else knows about this?”

“Everyone.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand your question, Keo.”

“You said everyone?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Even The Deacon?”

This time, Ronnie didn’t answer as quickly. She seemed to think about it for a moment. Then, “I don’t know. I’d guess so.”

“Did you see him in the woods? With the hunt?”

“No. It was just Bell. Or Buck, as you call him. He was leading the group.”

“Interesting.”

“What is?”

“Everything,” Keo said. He turned back around and continued walking.

Ronnie and Becky hurried to join him.

“What’s interesting?” Ronnie asked.

“I’m trying to figure out just who is in charge of Shaker Town,” Keo said.

“That’s easy. It’s The Deacon.”

“That’s what everyone keeps saying.”

“Because he is.”

“Maybe,” Keo said, and didn’t say anything else.

Maybe The Deacon really was the man calling the shots in Shaker Town, and maybe he wasn’t. Not that the real answer—if there were such a thing as a “real answer” to this particular riddle—did Keo any good at the moment. Right now, he had to find where Merrick had slinked off to and hope Claire was there, too. Kill two birds with one stone, as it were.

“Are we going the right way?” Ronnie asked when Keo stayed quiet for a few more minutes.

Keo pointed at some dark liquid clinging to tree bark as they walked past.

“Blood,” Ronnie said.

“Ghoul blood,” Keo said.

“How do you know?”

“Look at it. The way it clings to the bark. That’s not normal blood.”

“Oh.”

The way she’d said Oh made Keo smile to himself again. It wasn’t quite the Oh good, so we’re going the right way after all that he had expected, but more along the lines of Oh shit, I guess we’re still going the right way after all.

“Arrowhead is still back there,” Keo said without stopping.

“No,” Ronnie said quickly. (He was surprised by the continued lack of hesitation in her answer.) “We’ll stay with you.”

“What about the kid?”

“What about her?”

“Did you ask her what she wants to do?”

“I did.”

“What did she say?”

“She’s too scared to go anywhere but with you. Or as she put it, ‘I want to go with the guy that a blue-eyed ghoul ran away from.’”

Keo couldn’t help himself and laughed out loud. In his long and not-so-storied existence, he’d been described in a lot of ways, but The guy that a blue-eyed ghoul ran away from was never one of them.

Keo had to admit, he liked it.

He liked it a lot.

Three

“Don’t be an idiot. Get in and get out.”

“I know. That’s what I plan to do.”

“Like last time?”

“What last time?”

“Like in Fenton? Or have you forgotten already?”

That was one of the many conversations between Keo and Lara the night before he left on his mission to Shaker Town. He had actually forgotten all about Fenton. Hell, he’d shoved every memory of Fenton, Buck, and Merrick out of his mind. It was ironic that Lara would bring up Fenton before he left. Not that she knew it at the time. Nor him, for that matter.

Keo could smell the irony now, just as he could sniff the crisp, cool night air around him. The woods were lively, with woodland creatures on the ground, around, and above him. They were everywhere, which meant there were no ghouls around. That was the good news. The bad news? The lack of ghouls in the vicinity meant Keo wasn’t any closer to locating Merrick.

He’d been walking for an hour now, with midnight come and gone a few minutes ago. The trails he’d been following—Merrick’s blood drops—had tapered off until Keo couldn’t locate them anymore. He had a small flashlight that he’d taken from Kelly’s bag—or maybe it was Reynolds’, not that it mattered—but it didn’t do him any good. Keo was hesitant to keep the light on for too long. The fact that he could see better in the dark with it meant others could see him just as easily.

He put the flashlight in his back pocket and kept moving, hoping to reconnect with Merrick’s path somewhere along the way. Keo didn’t think Merrick had wiped away its blood drops on purpose. More likely, the creature had simply healed those wounds. Either that, or it had stanched the bleeding. Keo wasn’t sure which possibility he preferred.

Neither works.

He had no illusions that Merrick would be weak forever. Even now, the blue-eyed bastard would be slowly regaining its health. It had survived a goddamn missile to the face back in Darby Bay. Compared to that, what was a knife up the chin and a few dozen bullets? But then, it hadn’t recovered from its adventures in Darby Bay quickly. That had taken time. A lot of time. Years.

So how long would it take the ghoul to heal from the wounds Keo and Kelly had inflicted upon it tonight?

Hopefully long enough.

He didn’t like to hope. Hoping was for suckers who couldn’t make it happen on their own. Keo didn’t think of himself as a sucker. He was the badass that had made a blue-eyed ghoul flee in mortal terror. (Well, maybe not mortal terror, but some kind of terror.)

He smiled to himself again. He couldn’t help it. Wait until he told Lara what Becky had said—

The snap! of a twig breaking in half.

Keo froze.

It’d come from in front of him instead of behind him. And that meant it wasn’t Becky.

Keo went down into a crouch, slipping the SIG Sauer out of its holster as he did so. Sudden rustling from behind him as Ronnie and the girl did the same. Or he hoped they were mirroring his actions.

He glanced back to be sure.

Ronnie was down on one knee with the Glock in her hand, while Becky had gone down on both knees for some reason. The girl, to Ronnie’s left and slightly behind her, peered from behind strands of long blonde hair at him.

Keo fixed his gaze on Ronnie. She met it, but didn’t say anything. From her expression, he could tell that she hadn’t heard the twig breaking, but instead had just gone down because he had.

He put one finger up to his lips to shush them and made sure the girl saw it, too.

Becky nodded her acknowledgement. Young, but not dumb. Then again, dumb ones didn’t last for very long out there. Not these days, anyway.

Keo returned his attention to what was in front of him, the SIG’s grip feeling suddenly slippery for some reason. He was low enough that he had to raise his head back up slightly to look over the field of grass that had grown unfettered over the years. Much of it had been slapping at Keo’s legs as he trudged through it, but only now, on his knee, did Keo really understand just how tall the grass had gotten.

He sniffed the air.

Cold. Fresh. And untainted.

…and untainted…

So a ghoul hadn’t snapped the twig. Maybe an animal. The critters didn’t care about making noises in here, especially if there weren’t any predators around to prey on them. But Keo didn’t think so. For one, that sound had been just a bit too loud. Only humans, wearing heavy boots, could produce something like that.

Or was he just overthinking it?

He wasn’t, because a big lump of a man had just stepped between two large trees about 50 meters in front of him.

Instinctively, Keo dropped completely to the ground until he was hugging the dirt and there was just a wall of grass in front and around him. He couldn’t see much of anything beyond his little world. Good, because if he couldn’t see out then no one could see in.

The SIG, along with his outstretched right hand, was in front of him. Low enough to the ground, but still able to angle upward for a shot if he had to. Keo hoped he didn’t have to because three more men had just appeared out of the night—two to the right of the human lump and one on his left. All three, like the man in the middle, were armed. Keo could tell that much by the moonlight glinting off the weapons in their hands, even if he couldn’t quite tell what kind of guns they were carrying from a distance.

In order to see them, Keo had to raise his torso slightly up from the ground, and even then he could only make out the men’s upper half, from midsection on up. Because of the overwhelming shadows and lack of moonlight in this part of the woods, he had no idea what they looked like beyond their silhouetted shape.

They were moving loudly, making so much noise that even the birds above them had taken flight at their sudden presence. Something small and fast enough to be a squirrel hopped down from the nearest branch and raced along the ground in front of Keo. It stopped momentarily about a meter away to glance curiously at him as if to ask, What are you doing down here, spud? before continuing on its merry way.

Keo wished he could do what the squirrel just did, but he couldn’t. He was stuck where he was—chest to dirt—while waiting to see if the newcomers would spot him. Fifty meters was a good distance, so he liked his chances.

He shot a quick look behind him.

Ronnie and Becky were on the ground, just like him. Ronnie had a hand resting on the girl’s back to keep her low. Keo locked eyes with Ronnie, and the other woman gave him a brief nod. Keo wasn’t entirely sure what that was, but he assumed it was her way of telling him that he didn’t have to worry about them.

He returned her nod before looking forward again. Ronnie’s calmness surprised him, especially after he’d heard her screaming for her life just a day ago when Merrick came for them at the cave. But that was a blue-eyed ghoul wearing a HAZMAT suit, which must have looked insane in the daylight. These guys, on the other hand, were just normal human beings.

Well-armed human beings, yes, but still just human.

Those humans were now about 40 meters away and still getting closer. They continued to make plenty of noise with their movements but not by flapping their gums. So they had some discipline to them.

There were four that Keo could see, but he expected more. These look like a part of a larger platoon. Shakers, maybe? That was the only possible answer at the moment. Arrowhead was behind Keo, whereas Shaker Town was somewhere in front of him. As for everything in-between…

Another snap!, this one coming from his left.

Keo turned his head slightly.

Two more men. This pair was closer to him than the four in front of Keo. Twenty-five meters, give or take. Unlike the others, these were close enough for Keo to make out the BDUs they were wearing. Green camo to fit in with their surroundings, along with laced boots and short-barreled M4s. Web belts around their waists and holstered pistols. No packs that he could see. And also no hats. No Atlanta Falcons caps that Buck had spread out among his posse.

So what did that mean? Were they not Shakers after all? If not, what were they?

The crunch-crunch of grass coming from his right.

Keo turned in that direction, expecting the worst.

He wasn’t entirely wrong.

Two more, this pair even closer than the one to his left. Fifteen meters, give or take. Similarly dressed and armed. On the bright side, they were moving forward and not angling toward him and the girls.

Some bright side.

Keo’s body tensed, ready for action as he gripped the SIG Sauer tighter. Not that the handgun was going to get him out of this. In a best-case scenario, it would be him and the pistol against eight men with semiautomatic rifles.

And the worst-case?

Well, this. This was it. There was no best- or worst-case. There was just this: Him, stuck in the middle of some kind of pseudo-military unit, moving northwest that would, if they kept going, take them all the way to Arrowhead.

Somewhere behind him, Keo heard Ronnie and the girl breathing. He hadn’t been able to hear them until now. That was because their breathing had picked up when they, too, saw the additional four men.

There was nowhere to go but backwards. But in order to use that escape, they had to get up and make a run for it. Keo didn’t fancy himself running through a volley of gunfire coming from behind, his right, and his left.

Yeah, that wasn’t going to work. That wasn’t going to work at all.

The pairs to his sides would walk right past him as long as Keo and the girls stayed as quiet as mice. The problem was the four in front of him. (One of many problems tonight.) Those men, led by The Lump in the middle, were going to walk right up to him if Keo and the girls continued to lie there.

That…was not good. Nope. That was not good at all.

If only he had more than just the SIG to work with. Not that Keo thought even two MP5Ks at his disposal would get him out of this, but it sure as hell would have given him a better chance. In his current state, he was a dead man if they were spotted.

Can’t let that happen. Lara would kill me.

“Keo.” A whisper, coming from behind him.

Keo glanced back at Ronnie. She was staring at him.

He gave her a What is it? look, with both eyebrows raised.

“The air,” she whispered.

He waited for her to continue, but she didn’t, as if she expected him to understand right away.

The air? What about—

Oh, fuck.

Keo sniffed the air.

It had gone stale. He’d been so busy concentrating on the human threat that he’d forgotten about everything else.

He’d forgotten he was in the woods past midnight and there were ghouls in the area.

…there were ghouls in the area…

“What’s that?” a voice said. One of the men in front of him. “You hear that?”

“No,” someone else said.

The four men had stopped in their tracks about 20 meters away. Keo could make them out from his position, but didn’t think they could see him this low to the ground, surrounded by knee-high grass. At least, he hoped they couldn’t. The only way he would give himself up would be to jump to his feet right about—

“Ghouls!” someone shouted. One of the two on Keo’s right. The closest pair.

Keo looked over just as the man opened fire, the staccato flash of his M4 lighting up the woods mere seconds before he vanished into the grass. It was as if something had pulled him down by the feet.

…something had pulled him down by the feet…

Keo glanced quickly back at Ronnie. She was looking at him, eyes wide.

“Get ready,” he hissed.

She gave him a Ready for what? look, but Keo was already looking forward again as the four in front of him opened up.

They were firing into their wings, toward the spot where the other two-men teams—

What other two-men teams?

Keo couldn’t see them anymore. They had vanished.

The gunfire rocked the night, coming from seemingly all around him. They weren’t shooting in his direction, but every now and then he heard a round zip over his head. They were always high enough that he was certain he and the girls weren’t the targets. The whole mess reminded him of the last time that happened: When Lindsey’s people was ambushed by ghouls.

…when Lindsey’s people were ambushed by ghouls…

Keo jumped up to his feet and spun around, shouting at Ronnie and the girl, “Run! Run run run!”

Four

“Run!” Keo shouted.

“Run where?” Ronnie shouted back from in front of him, because she’d been behind him when they took off. The girl, Becky, was running alongside her. Ronnie had the Glock in one hand and Becky’s wrist in the other. Keo wasn’t entirely sure who was going to trip feet-first—Ronnie or Becky. Maybe both at the same time.

“Doesn’t matter!” Keo shouted back. “Just run!”

She did just that, with Becky struggling to keep up with her. Keo thought just running the hell outta there was a pretty decent plan. Anywhere but where they were was just as good. Because right now where they were was not very good. Which was to say, anywhere there were ghouls was a place to avoid, if at all possible. Even a dummy knew that, and Keo was no dummy. (Most of the time, anyway.)

He could hear screams and gunfire coming from behind him, but thankfully none of the flying lead was coming for him. Keo hoped the other thing back there didn’t, either, but he wasn’t going to stop and find out. Right now, the priority was to run and put as much distance between them and—

The very loud boom! of an explosion behind him.

The ground shook slightly in the aftermath, and despite his better instincts, Keo slowed down just long enough to take a look.

Someone had either pulled a grenade unwittingly or did it purposefully. Whichever the case, the outcome was the same—a haze of smoke filled with charred stalks of grass and chunks of tree bark raining down from the sky.

A figure burst through the sheet of falling debris like a character out of an action movie. He looked pretty good doing it, too, and Keo wondered if he’d planned it that way. The man was firing behind him with a handgun even before he landed back on the ground and continued running for his life.

He didn’t get very far.

The action hero tripped on something Keo couldn’t see and disappeared into the tall grass. Keo caught a glimpse of a black shape rising only to fall a heartbeat later over the same spot. The rest of the Shakers (he was still going under the assumption that they were Shakers) had stopped shooting and either took off or…didn’t.

He was leaning toward didn’t.

Keo had been right to take off running, because it hadn’t been much of a fight. It was a massacre. Keo didn’t need to see all the gory details to know that. He imagined blood flowing and flesh ripping. A lot of flesh ripping.

He felt sorry for them, even if he didn’t know who they were or even if they were the enemy. They could have been Black Tiders, but Keo didn’t think so. The uniform was wrong. More than likely, they were exactly who he thought they were—Shakers. He couldn’t explain their attempts at a BDU or the lack of an Atlanta Falcons cap. Maybe they’d switched up “uniforms” again.

A bald black head popped out of the grass in front of him, spun around, and dark black eyes zeroed in on Keo.

Sonofabitch. Where did you come from?

It was a ghoul. Dark eyes glinting with moonlight. And it was staring back at Keo from a good 30 or so meters.

Thirty meters. That was a good head start, even against a fast-moving ghoul.

Keo turned—

—and almost crashed into Ronnie. She’d stopped running and walked back to where he was standing.

“Run!” Keo shouted.

She did just that, the girl still clinging to her side. “What happened back there?” Ronnie shouted at him.

“Just keep going until I tell you to stop!” Keo shouted back.

Keo checked to make sure Becky didn’t fall as she struggled to keep up with Ronnie. If she had gone down, he was ready to scoop her up without slowing down too much. If it wasn’t for Ronnie’s strong grip, the girl might have fallen already.

The stink of the ghoul caught up to him quickly.

Keo glanced back.

Shit.

It was right behind him and was as fast as the ones he’d encountered recently. It didn’t so much as run as it bounded across the floor, disappearing and reappearing out of the stacks of grass that carpeted this part of the woods like some kind of human-sized grasshopper.

But it wasn’t all bad news. There was some good news, too: There was only one of it. The rest had stayed behind with their victims. No doubt they were having a grand ol’ feast right about now back there. Whoever those men were, Keo hoped they’d kissed their loved ones good-bye before they’d stepped into the woods.

He focused on the one behind them. Just one. Good. More than manageable.

Keo slipped the SIG back into its holster and pulled the KA-BAR out of its sheath. The gun with its regular ammo did him no good. All it would have done was stopped the creature temporarily, but not completely. The knife with its silver-coated blade, on the other hand…

Keo counted to five.

One…two…three…four…

…five!

He stopped on a dime and spun around, the KA-BAR cocking back to slash. He would go for the head since just cutting these ghouls didn’t kill them like it used to. But if he could take the head…

Yeah, that would do it.

Except he didn’t get the chance, because there was nothing to swing at.

The ghoul was standing nearly 10 feet away from him. It had stopped the same time he did.

Mother…

It stared at him, black eyes gleaming with that spark of intelligence he’d spotted the night before. These things weren’t mindless creatures like the black-eyed ghouls he’d been killing for years now. No, they were different. It took more than silver to just kill them, almost as if they were Blue Eyes.

Except they weren’t. Their eyes were still jet black, like the ones he’d fought off with Lindsey and then, just earlier tonight, back at the cave.

These were Black Eyes, too, just like this one. Except they weren’t. Not really.

Black Eyes 2.0. Motherfuckers have upgraded.

It stood unmoving, easily out of Keo’s (KA-BAR) reach. It was as if it had realized what he was going to do when he put the pistol away and went for the knife even while he was running and it was chasing him.

…as if it had realized…

It sneered at him. It was such a human response that Keo was momentarily taken aback.

Keo didn’t move, and neither did the monster.

Behind him, he heard shuffling. Ronnie and Becky had also stopped. How far along had they gone before they noticed he’d turned to confront the ghoul? He’d have to glance back to find out that answer, and right now that was the last thing Keo wanted to do.

So he glared back at the ghoul.

And it returned the favor.

“What the fuck are you?” Keo said out loud.

It didn’t answer him. Not that he expected it to. The Black Eyes couldn’t talk anymore.

…but these weren’t ordinary Black Eyes, were they? So what else was different about them?

“Well?” Keo said.

He expected it to defy everything he knew about the Black Eyes and start talking.

But it didn’t.

Instead, it just stood there, long limbs hanging at its sides like useless bones connected by thin, sinewy muscle that looked dangerously close to tearing at any second. Its cheeks were sunken so much Keo could see the deformed skull underneath. Its mouth was slightly open, revealing jagged yellow teeth, similar to every Black Eyes he’d ever gone up against.

But it was the eyes that intrigued Keo. Was there really intelligence between them? There had to be, or the creature wouldn’t have stopped when it figured out what Keo was about to do.

“What’s the matter?” Keo said. “Dead meat got your tongue?”

When it didn’t answer, Keo took a step forward, KA-BAR clutched in one hand.

The ghoul took a step back.

Keo stopped, and it stopped, too.

“Clever little bastard,” Keo whispered.

The creature cocked its head slightly to one side, as if taking offense to his insult.

Keo smirked. “You understand me, don’t you?”

It might not have (re?)developed the ability to talk, but that didn’t mean it didn’t comprehend what Keo was saying. It had correctly deduced his intentions when it stopped far enough away that Keo couldn’t take its head. And now, it kept its distance, knowing the danger that the KA-BAR and its silver-coated blade represented.

“Keo?” Ronnie, behind him.

He snapped a quick glance back at her. She was a good 10 feet behind him, the girl clutching to her waist. But it wasn’t Keo they were staring back at. It was past him and at the ghoul. Like Keo, Ronnie had never seen a Black Eyes react the way this one was. Or, at the moment, not react at all.

Keo returned his focus to the creature. He’d expected—or was that hoped?—the thing would make a play for him while his attention was momentarily turned.

But it hadn’t.

Definitely a clever little bastard.

“What’s it doing?” Ronnie asked. She was breathless, her voice tinged with fear and confusion.

“I don’t know,” Keo said.

“Why’s it just standing there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why isn’t it attacking?”

Keo sighed. “I don’t know, Ronnie.”

He expected her to ask another dumb question that he didn’t have the answer to, but she remained quiet.

Keo squinted at the ghoul. It hadn’t moved. Hadn’t even flinched, as far as he could tell. Those twin black eyes, like seas of thick tar, glared back at him. It was far from scared of him, but not overly anxious to attack, either.

It was just…there.

“All right, then,” Keo said. “Let’s try this another way.”

Keo was about to follow through with that other way when the darkness behind the ghoul came alive.

More ghouls.

Incoming.

Fast.

Keo spun around and shouted at Ronnie, “Go!”

She went, dragging the girl with her. Keo ran after them, risking a peek over his shoulder—

The ghoul remained where it was, staring after him, even as the others got closer.

Keo looked forward and ran faster, catching up to Ronnie. It wasn’t much of an accomplishment since Ronnie was saddled with the kid and couldn’t run all-out. He slowed down as he caught up to them and exchanged a look with Ronnie, but before she could ask the inevitable questions (that he had no answers for), Keo shook his head and kept going.

He slowed down just long enough to glance back one final time.

The ghouls weren’t pursuing. They stood there—at least a half dozen of them now—around the first one. Stick figures in the night, more shadows than anything corporeal, watching Keo and the girls flee. He couldn’t see their eyes, but he knew exactly what it was that they were doing.

Watching them.

Watching him.

And Keo knew that Merrick was behind those eyes. The blue-eyed ghoul was the one that had sneered at Keo earlier. If the ghoul could talk it would have, and the words out of its mouth would have been Merrick’s.

The creatures remained perfectly still, watching him get farther away. Their lack of pursuit made him more paranoid, and Keo ran faster into the night.

Five

“What were those things back there?”

“Ghouls.”

“Those weren’t ghouls. I’ve never seen ghouls behave like that.”

“They’re ghouls. Just a different kind.”

Ronnie stared at him, looking very much at a loss for words. Maybe, like him when he first encountered this new breed of monsters, she didn’t quite know how to process the information. It’d taken him a while, too.

“I don’t have the answers you’re looking for, Ronnie,” Keo said. “I saw them for the first time last night.”

“Jesus,” Ronnie said. She slid along the trunk of the big tree she’d been leaning on to sit on the ground. Becky was next to her, as if she was connected at the hip with the former Shaker woman.

Ronnie didn’t say anything for a while, and Keo used the silence to scan the woods around them. The ghouls hadn’t pursued, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t track them. He and the girls had left plenty of footprints behind. The ground he was standing on now wasn’t as thickly covered in knee-high grass, and it was much easier to identify prints. Besides that, all three of them were covered in sweat, and he knew just how good the ghouls’ olfactory senses were, even the ones that didn’t have noses anymore. He had no clue how that even worked, but there it was.

He wasn’t sure how long they’d been running before all three of them ran out of steam. The only way to keep going was for either Keo or Ronnie to pick up Becky and hoist her onto their backs. (Oh, who was he kidding? It was going to be him.)

Instead, they’d slowed down, before finally stopping to take a breather. The lack of a ghoul chase made the decision easier.

Keo regulated his heartbeat back to normal and sucked in some more of the crisp, cool air. The freshness was a good sign that there were no undead things in the area, but the lack of moonlight in this part of the forest wasn’t as comforting. The trees grew tall and wide above him, blocking nearly everything. That was probably why the grass down here didn’t grow nearly as much as the patch they’d fled from.

It seems he was suffering from a string of failures lately. First the screwup in Shaker Town, and now this would-be rescue of Claire that barely got started before he had to retreat. Not that he had given up completely on her.

Not yet, anyway.

In the back of his mind, he could hear Lara’s voice:

“Was she dead?” she would ask.

“No,” he would say. “At least, I don’t think she was.”

“So you don’t know if she’s dead or alive, just that she’s out there somewhere, but you abandoned her anyway?”

Or something along those lines.

Technically, he didn’t abandon Claire. The kid had gone off on her own, without his input. So was he really responsible?

No.

Nope.

Nosirree.

Damn, almost convinced yourself that time, pal.

Yeah, he almost did.

Keo looked back at Ronnie and the girl. “You need to go to Arrowhead.”

Ronnie glanced up at him and didn’t answer. But she also didn’t appear ready to argue with him like last time, either.

She wants a reason to leave, Keo thought.

“I need to do this alone,” he said. “You and the kid are dragging me down. No offense.”

“Sounds offensive, though,” Ronnie said as she stood up with Becky. The girl was brushing at leaves and dirt that clung to her clothes and had somehow remained there even during their little marathon sprint.

“I need to move fast,” Keo said. “I can’t do that and worry about you two.”

“If you say so,” Ronnie said. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he detected more than a little relief in her voice.

She offered him the Glock back.

“Keep it,” Keo said. Then, based off her surprised look, “Hopefully you won’t need it, but it’s better to have and not need, than to need and not have.”

She put the Glock away. “You’re going after Claire by yourself.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t even know where she went. Or where she is now.”

“So nothing’s changed.” He pursed a smile. “I’ve been running around these woods for so long I think I’ve gotten a good lay of the land.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but it wasn’t a complete lie, either. Keo was feeling more familiar with the Georgian woods than the first time he stepped foot inside them. Not that he planned on staying in here any longer than he had to.

“Go on,” Keo said. Then, smiling more convincingly at the girl, “Stick to Ronnie, kid. Got that?”

Becky nodded back. As far as Keo could tell, she had never relinquished her grip on Ronnie’s hand.

“Quite the talker, aren’t you?” Keo said.

Becky gave him a confused look.

Keo chuckled, before looking back at Ronnie. “You know the way to Arrowhead?”

“I’ve been there before,” Ronnie said. She glanced around. “Not using these woods, but if I can find the highway, it shouldn’t be too hard.”

“You didn’t tell me you’ve been to Arrowhead before.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“I guess not. What were you doing there?”

“Before they started fighting, we did some trading with them.”

“How long ago was this?”

“I can’t remember, but it was before all the…hostilities.”

“Is that what you Shaker Town girls call it?”

Ronnie sighed. “I’m sure Arrowhead calls it something else. The point is, I can find it. Eventually.” She glanced skyward, not that she could see the sky through the thick tree crowns in the way. “I don’t suppose you’d wait until morning?”

“I can’t.”

“I didn’t think so.” She looked down at Becky. “Ready?”

The kid nodded back. “Ready.”

Even she wants to go, Keo thought with some amusement. Whatever happened to sticking by the guy who chased away a blue-eyed ghoul? Keo guessed seeing more Black Eyes in the woods had changed her mind. Not that he blamed her, or Ronnie. He wished he could do the same thing and head back to Arrowhead.

Keo watched the two of them head off, hand-in-hand. He wanted to wish them luck but thought that might jinx them. Besides, it wasn’t like he had any luck to give. Keo was all out of luck, as far as he was concerned.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. He’d survived more in the last two nights than most people would in two lifetimes. When he really thought about it, he probably was luckier than most people.

“Hey,” Keo said.

Ronnie stopped and looked back at him.

“Good luck,” Keo said.

She nodded and pursed her own smile at him. “I hope you find Claire.”

“I’ll find her, and we’ll be back to join you in Arrowhead in no time.”

“You actually believe that?”

Hell no, he thought but said out loud, “Yes. 100%.”

* * *

“I’ll find her, and we’ll be back to join you in Arrowhead in no time,” he’d said to Ronnie. He thought he was convincing enough that Ronnie probably believed him. Then again, by the somber look on her face, maybe not so much.

After the girls disappeared out of view, Keo headed off on his own. Instead of returning to the scene of the ghoul massacre, he went around it. His last trail of Merrick pointed westward, which would take the creature to Shaker Town, or somewhere around there, if he kept on the same direction.

Keo was simultaneously relieved and regretful that he’d let Ronnie and Becky go. On the one hand, he’d let Ronnie take the Glock with her. She might not have been a seasoned soldier, but that was one pair of eyes—with silver bullets, natch—that could be watching his six. And then, of course, there was that whole faster-than-a-bear thing, which went something like He didn’t have to outrun the bear; he just had to outrun Ronnie and Becky. Except, of course, switch up bear with ghouls.

That last part elicited a whole lot of guilt. The old Keo wouldn’t have cared, but this new him—this idiot that was on a mission to find a girl who may or may not be dead just because he didn’t want the mother of his unborn child to be pissed at him—did. He wasn’t just getting soft, he was getting downright gooey.

As he moved silently through the dark woods alone (it was a lot easier to be stealthy without Becky kicking or stepping on everything in her path), he couldn’t help but think about what Kelly had said about Reynolds, who had left behind a son and a wife. Keo didn’t want to be like Reynolds. He might not have ever wanted a child but now that he had one on the way, Keo couldn’t see himself not being there for the kid when he or she grew up. What kind of asshole would he be if he did that?

The dead kind, for one, because let’s face it, that’s the only way you won’t be there for the kid.

Yeah, that wasn’t going to work. Not at all.

It was lonelier without the girls. After a while, Keo started missing the kid’s constant noise. There was just his breathing, the movements of animals in the area, and an owl hooting somewhere above him.

It took him a good hour or two to return, roughly by his estimate, to where he’d last encountered the wayward men that became ghoul fodder. Keo thought he could almost smell the blood in the air. The night life, around here, had gone appropriately silent as not to attract the attention of whatever undead things that might still remain.

Erring on the side of caution, he angled left for a good half kilometer or more. When he couldn’t detect blood in the air anymore, he reoriented himself forward again.

Keo moved slowly. He wasn’t in any hurry. He didn’t even know where he would be in a hurry to, much less what he’d find when he got there. And while he could feel a ticking clock in the back of his head, there were no guarantees he’d find Claire. He was, as they used to say, giving it the good ol’ college try. When he returned home, he could tell Lara that he’d tried. He’d really, really tried. He could say that to her while looking her in the eyes and knowing that it was the truth—

Eureka.

Keo stopped suddenly and stared at it.

Tracks.

Not just any tracks, either, but the kind that could only be made by four massive tires hauling something big through the woods. Like, say, an old railcar that had been repurposed into a transport vehicle.

He crouched to get a better look. The trail cut across the forest, moving right to left. Keo knew that the state highway was somewhere in that direction. The same stretch of gray top he’d traversed before with Harvey’s crew. He was probably close to where they’d also ambushed the Arrowhead men in the road, though that was just a guess.

Keo stood up and glanced around. He hesitated, even though he knew there was only really one choice. He was looking for signs of where to find Claire, and this was as good of one as he was liable to get all night. Keo hadn’t known it before now, but he thought he had a pretty good idea of what was in that railcar.

That story Danny had told him about encountering something like it—a U-Haul in Danny’s version—came to mind again. This time, Keo could recall the specifics:

“Ghouls,” Danny had said. “Collaborators were moving them around in a U-Haul. They unleashed the fuckers on towns. Will and me barely got out of there alive when we ran across them.”

So Buck was using the same strategy that those collaborators had been using during The Purge. The question was: How many blood-sucking ghouls did Buck have inside that railcar? Merrick would be one of them, of course. That is, when he wasn’t wearing a HAZMAT suit and moving around in the daytime.

Keo headed off alongside the trail. It was a no-brainer.

“Sorry, Lara, I tried to find her. I really did.”

He’d say that to her with a straight face, because it would be the truth. But for him to be able to do that, he’d have to actually try to find the kid.

Keo sighed and whispered to himself, “Stupid kid. I’m going to drown you in a river when I find you.”

He would, of course, omit that last part when Lara debriefed him.

He followed the tracks until he ran out of dirt. Then the forest opened up, and Keo stepped out into a large clearing that had been there well before The Purge and would in all likelihood remain long after humanity disappeared.

And there, running through the middle of it, was a railroad track that looked as if it’d been spiked sometime when men still traveled by stagecoaches. The trail he’d been following turned and continued on parallel to the tracks.

So that was where Keo went, too.

Six

Oh yeah, that’s not creepy at all.

An old-timey looking passenger train sitting in the middle of nowhere. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. It was sitting on old railroad tracks. Not the entire train, but just a few sections of it, from what Keo could tell.

He stood out in the open, waiting for something to pop out of the darkness at him. Maybe they’d swarm from the lines of trees that flanked the tracks. Or come out of the railcars in packs, letting him know that he should have turned back earlier and was going to regret his lack of good decision-making skills.

Except none of those things happened.

He stood, quiet, and stared at the train.

There were three sections that he could see, with the one he’d been trailing resting beside it. The tracks themselves were slightly raised off the ground, making the cars on the tracks about the same size as the railcar that had been outfitted with inflated tires. Keo had never ridden a train in his life, but even he could tell that two of the three cars were for passengers, with the one up front the engine. (Or whatever it is you call that. The caboose, he knew, was the rear.)

The railcar he’d been trailing was definitely a part of the existing train, judging by their color scheme. Peeling red paint all over, though the passenger cars looked in somewhat better shape. There were windows, but they appeared tinted over. That was probably not OEM. Keo didn’t have to guess why the occupants didn’t want sunlight to enter the cabins.

Ghouls.

Of course there were ghouls inside.

What else would there be?

Keo sighed and glanced back in the direction he’d come. It would be easy to retreat now. No one—no thing—had seen him yet. He could flee right now, and no one would know.

“Sorry, Lara, I tried to find her, but I couldn’t. I don’t know what happened to the kid.”

That could work. He could sell that.

Keo had the KA-BAR in his left hand and the SIG in his right when he started walking forward.

Hey, you’re going the wrong way! a voice said, while laughing hysterically somewhere in the back of his mind.

Keo ignored it and focused on the task at hand.

There was a reason the wheeled railcar was here. There was also a reason the three-section train had been relocated. Did the engine still work? If not, how had they—whoever they were—brought this thing all the way out here? Or had it always been here? If so, where was the rest of it?

Three railcars, plus a fourth one transformed for off-track traveling. All alone on a track that ran through the Georgian forest, with no apparent origin or destination.

Yeah, it wasn’t creepy at all.

Nope.

So why did he keep walking toward it? Because it was there, and he had no other clues to find Claire, that was why.

And also because he was an idiot, obviously.

He gripped the KA-BAR tighter as he got closer. There was a smell about the track—oil and grease and shit—that pervaded the surrounding air. Something that might have been ghoul stink but not quite was also present. At least, not enough to set off his alarm bells.

The three cars and detached fourth remained quiet as he approached. There were no lights except what the moon provided, and even that wasn’t much. Still, it was enough for Keo to see what he needed to see.

Peeling red paint and rusted sides and wheels. He couldn’t tell what shape the wheels were in from a distance. He still didn’t have a clue what he was really looking at. It wasn’t a steam locomotive, but something more modern. There was probably a name for its type, but Keo didn’t know it.

There were no men with guns to stop Keo from walking up to the cars. He wished there were, then he’d have a good reason to turn tail and run.

But there wasn’t.

Just my luck.

He circled the repurposed railcar, SIG ready to shoot anything that popped out of it. The horses that had pulled the vehicle were gone. The jerry-rigged harness they’d used was on the ground where it’d been unceremoniously dumped. Keo could make out fresh hooves as the animals continued up alongside the railroad track. So someone had to have unlatched the harness from the railcar…

There was only one door on the vehicle—a sliding hatch on the side. It was closed, and there was no way to see inside.

This is such a bad move, he thought just before he grabbed the hatch and slung it open with a loud (Shit! Too loud!) clanging echo.

Keo peered into the shadows.

Nothing.

Empty.

But he could smell it: The unmistakable stench of ghouls. They’d been inside the car. More than one, from the thick odor that clung to every inch of the interior and, now, his body. And there, on the floor, a HAZMAT suit, complete with a gas mask and tinted visors. Everything an undead fucker needed to move around in the daylight.

And blood. Keo saw that right away. Dark black wetness pooling around the suit. Keo hadn’t seen it earlier, but there was blood on the opened hatch, too.

Merrick.

Bleed to death for me, you piece of shit.

Of course, he didn’t think Merrick was going to be that cooperative. Nope. If Keo wanted the creature dead, he was going to have to do it himself.

He stepped away from the railcar and went around it to get an up-close look at the train it used to be a part of. Two passenger cars in the back with the engine at the front, just as he’d guessed from afar. All three had closed doors and tinted windows. The only thing Keo could see was his reflection on that blacked-out glass as he neared.

There were steps leading up to both passenger cars. Like the rest of the train, the paint was hanging on for dear life, and parts of the metal had rusted over. Wear and tear was visible underneath the moonlight, and there was obvious foot traffic moving from the detached railcar over to these. Those same tracks went up the first passenger car.

Keo stopped for a moment and listened.

Just…listened.

The only sound he could hear was from inside his chest. His heart was racing, pounding away like a runaway train. (Oh, how apropos!) There was no other living thing in the area that he could sense. Nothing on the ground, nothing in the trees that flanked the rail tracks, and nothing in the air. Even the crickets had fled.

Just like you should.

So why aren’t you?

He let out another heavy sigh before taking his first step—clank, as his boot rested on the metal rung just a tad too loud for his own liking—up the passenger car. As he did so, Keo switched the SIG to his left hand while his right now occupied the KA-BAR with its much, much more effective silver-coated blade. If he had to fight in a close-quarters environment—and certainly the railcar would be close-quarters—then he needed his dominant hand to do it with.

Keo didn’t so much as open the passenger car hatch and step inside as he threw it open and lunged into the darkness.

He almost lost his footing but managed to somehow stay upright. There was mud on the floor, but not much else. There also wasn’t the overwhelming stench of death he’d expected. Instead, there was just the stink of abandonment.

Empty.

What the hell?

He’d seen the bloody footprints. They’d gone up the passenger car steps and inside. So where did they go?

There were a dozen seats to each side of the aisle, and all were empty. Except for some candy wrappers on the floor, the place looked as if it’d been kept in decent condition. Which didn’t make any sense. None of this made any sense. Not one bit—

“Keo.”

He raised the SIG as a shadow stirred in the back. It had been hiding behind the farthest seat and had just now made itself visible. A small head, unrecognizable in the darkness.

But there was just one, and the voice that had said his name was human.

The figure stepped forward, hands hanging unthreateningly at its side. Keo could see a rifle slung over the back, the barrel jutting out over one shoulder.

“Don’t shoot,” the figure said.

Keo squinted.

“Goddammit, kid,” he said after a few seconds.

Claire stepped close enough that he could see her face. Her cheeks were scratched, and there was drying blood along the right side of her neck. Her hair was a mess, and she looked as if she’d been to hell and back.

“Again with the kid,” Claire said.

“You are a kid,” Keo said.

“Not anymore.”

“You’ll always be a kid to me.”

“What are you, my father?”

No, or else I would put you over my knee and spank your misbehaving ass, Keo thought.

He said, “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for them. Buck and Merrick. The asshole duo.”

Keo smiled. He had to admit, that was a pretty good description of Buck and Merrick. “Where are they?”

“I don’t know. Whoever was here was gone by the time I showed up.” She flashed him an annoyed smirk. “Why did you come looking for me? I told that kid to tell you not to come looking for me.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not your call,” Keo said. “You shouldn’t have gone after them all by yourself. Are you crazy?”

“Just a little bit.”

Keo squinted at her.

She didn’t flinch.

He shook his head. “I guess we both are.”

“I guess so. That’s not a good thing, right?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Just my luck.”

Keo looked around again. “How did you find this place?”

“I followed the guys in that railcar with tires outside here,” Claire said. “I was hoping they’d lead me to Buck. They stopped here for a while, then headed off on the horses. I snuck in to see why they’d come here in the first place.”

“You said they were men?”

“Yeah. Pretty sure they were Buckies. That thing they’re riding on makes a lot of noise out in the woods.”

“And you just saw them come up here?”

“Yes.” She cocked her head slightly. “Why? How did you find this place?”

“I was following the tracks of the same railcar.”

“Small world,” Claire said.

Yeah, Keo thought. Small world.

Then: Unless it’s not.

A loud clang! as the hatch door slammed closed behind him.

Keo spun around, as did Claire, who drew her holstered sidearm as she did so. Keo made a mental note to ask her where she’d come across those weapons. Hell, he’d like to know how she’d gotten away from Merrick in the first place.

But right now he had other things on his mind. Such as a door that had just closed by itself.

Check that. The hatch had done no such thing. Someone or something had closed it. And that same someone or something was on the other side right now.

“I thought you came alone,” Claire said.

“I did,” Keo said.

“Then who…?”

He shook his head, and Claire understood. She turned, making sure nothing had creeped into the car behind them since she was back there.

Keo hurried forward, then reached for the door handle and yanked it open. Or tried to. It moved slightly, but didn’t open. Something was keeping it closed on the other side.

“Progress?” Claire asked. She hadn’t turned around, but kept her eyes on their six.

“Not quite,” Keo said.

“That’s no good.”

“Yup.”

Suddenly, the floor underneath Keo’s boots lurched violently, just before they started moving.

They were moving.

“Keo?” Claire said, finally glancing back at him.

“I don’t know,” he said.

He gave up on the door and hurried over to the nearest window. Even with the tint on—it looked like some kind of thick black film that allowed you to see out but not in—he could see the tree lines moving outside. Slowly at first, but gradually picking up speed.

I guess the train still works, Keo thought.

Seven

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Keo visualized an ugly-looking alien on a movie starship shouting, “It’s a trap!”

He wasn’t entirely sure where that image and that line came from. It was probably one of the movies that Danny liked to (force) allow the recruits to watch during Basic Training on Black Tide Island. Not that Keo was ever a recruit, but he did spend a fair amount of time with them. Danny and Lara knew exactly how to utilize his experience. They called it “training,” but Keo called it “teaching kids how to kill people.”

One of those kids was Claire, who was shouting at him now. “The train’s moving!”

Keo glanced back at her. “I know,” he said, before thinking, I can’t believe I fell for the trap. Holy crap. It was so obvious.

“Keo! The train’s moving!”

“Yeah, I know!”

Buck. It has to be Buck. That motherfucker.

“But the train’s moving!” Claire shouted.

“Claire, I know! I’m standing right here! I can tell that the train is moving without you having to shout it twenty times into my face!”

I’m gonna kill you, Buck. As soon as I kill Merrick. Then I’m gonna kill you. Kill you dead. Real dead, this time.

“I didn’t know it could move!” Claire was saying. He wasn’t sure if that was meant for him or for herself. Either/or.

It wasn’t as if Keo didn’t know the train was moving. It was a little hard to miss the fact that the train was moving all of a sudden. It’d simply jumped to life as if it’d been playing possum all this time. Which couldn’t have been the case, because trains didn’t just come to life on their own. And certainly nothing as old as the one they were standing inside of at the moment.

“How is it moving?” Claire again. This time he was sure it was meant for him.

It wasn’t just her shouting. They both were because the train was making a lot of noise as it churned its way up the track. Keo wasn’t sure if that was because it was so old that every piece of it was creaking and grinding as it moved, or if this was just how it sounded inside one of these things. He wouldn’t know. He’d never been inside a train before. Cars and planes served the same purpose, and were much faster and more convenient.

“Who’s driving this thing?” Claire was shouting.

“I don’t know that!”

“So what do you know?”

“Not much!”

“Goddammit, Keo!”

“Yeah, kid, I know, I know.”

Because she knew as well as he did that they’d been suckered. Both of them. It could have been Buck or Merrick, but one of them had dropped the bait, and both Keo and Claire had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. He was leaning toward Buck, but Merrick, as with all the Blue Eyes Keo had encountered so far, liked to toy with its prey. And the bastard definitely thought of Keo as prey. So was this whole thing set for him or Claire? It couldn’t have been both of them. It was probably for him, but Claire just fell into it, too.

Well, this is embarrassing.

It was, but it would be even more embarrassing if he died tonight.

“Here lies Keo: He fell for the most obvious trap in mankind’s history like a big fat sucker.”

Yeah, that wasn’t how Keo wanted to go. Not even close.

“Can you see anything outside?” Claire was asking him.

Keo peered out the train. He could see enough out the tinted window to not see anything. No wonder Claire hadn’t known it was him when Keo first arrived. He’d be hard-pressed to make out any details through this…whatever this was they’d used to cover up the windows. It wasn’t the kind of tinted film they put on car windows, but something thicker and, he guessed, more efficient for its intended guests.

But there were no ghouls in the car with them right now, and from the smell—or lack thereof—there never had been. So why did the detached fourth railcar make its way here? And where had its occupants gone? Claire said she only saw men—Buckies, she guessed—leave on horseback. So where did Merrick go? Or was it ever inside the transport to begin with? Had he been wrong?

One more wrong in a night full of wrongs, pal. Get used to it.

Given the direction of the tracks, it would likely take him northward. So what was northward? He had no idea. If it turned west as it traveled, there was a chance it could be headed somewhere close to Arrowhead. Now wouldn’t that be ironic?

Claire, apparently having decided there was nothing in the moving train with them—or the back of it—to guard against, appeared next to him and squinted out at the passing landscape. “What are we gonna do?”

“I don’t know,” Keo said.

“Can we shoot out the window?”

“And do what? Jump out?”

“Well, yeah.”

Keo thought about it. Why couldn’t they do that? What was the worst that could happen? They’d fall and get some new lumps and maybe a broken bone or two.

But they’d be alive.

Probably.

What were the chances of success? He did the numbers in his head.

It wasn’t good, but it was better than staying in here. He didn’t like not knowing where they were headed. There could be a few hundred Buckies waiting. Or a few hundred ghouls. Either way, there could be a few hundred something that wasn’t conducive to his survival.

“Okay,” Keo said.

She looked over at him. “Okay what?”

“Shoot out the window.”

“You sure?”

“Why not?”

“Why not? That’s it?”

He shrugged. “Why not.”

She grinned. “Yeah. Why not.”

Yeah, we’re both nuts, all right, Keo thought as he stepped away from the window and Claire to let the kid do her work.

She raised her AR and opened up on the window with a couple of rounds. The shots were deafening inside the railcar; it was, after all, essentially a metal container, and everything echoed and vibrated from the walls to the ceiling to the floor underneath his boots.

The tinted glass spiderwebbed but didn’t shatter.

Claire lowered her rifle. “What the hell is that thing made of?”

“Must be some kind of shatterproof glass,” Keo said. “The film’s helping it to stick, too. You good with ammo?”

“Good enough,” Claire said before emptying her magazine into the window.

It took nearly everything in her mag before enough holes were punctured and the spiderwebs connected to create a big crack. And yet, the tinted film continue to hold the window mostly in one piece. Mostly.

“Again?” Claire asked.

“Not yet,” Keo said.

She started reloading while Keo walked up and went to work on the remains of the glass with his KA-BAR. He punched a bigger hole, then slashed along the frames to get rid of jagged glass still sticking out of the sides, top, and bottom.

Keo stepped back to get a better look at his handiwork. He ignored the wall of trees zooming by in the background and focused on the window even as cool air poured inside and flooded over him. The window looked big enough for a person to climb through, though of course they’d have to be careful not to get cut on the many shards of glass that remained. He’d need more than just a few seconds to ensure that didn’t happen. The problem was, he didn’t know how much time he had.

Tap-tap-tap! as something moved on the roof of the moving train.

Keo took another step back. Too many, and he bumped into a seat on the other side of the aisle. Claire did the same next to him, their eyes immediately shooting up to the ceiling.

“You heard that?” Claire asked.

“I heard that,” Keo said.

“What was it?”

“I don’t—”

A flicker of movement from the corner of his eye as something appeared outside the broken window.

Sonofabitch.

It hung outside the smashed window like a bat, its smooth round head hanging upside down. Black eyes, filled with the same kind of intelligence he’d seen in the woods, peered in at them. Saliva dripped from yellow teeth that were as jagged as the shards of glass still poking dangerously out from the corners of the demolished window.

Pop-pop! as Claire fired next to him, and the creature vanished.

Claire lowered her rifle. “Did I get it?”

“No,” Keo said. “It went up.”

“It went up?”

“It went up.”

She gave him a confused look. “Why’d it do that? They never used to do that.”

“These aren’t the same Black Eyes we’ve seen before.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They’re…different.” Keo thought about telling her what he knew, but it would have taken too long. Instead, he turned to her. “You got silver bullets?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Knife?”

“Yeah. Silver-tipped.”

“Good enough.”

Tap-tap-tap! from above them.

Keo stepped to one side, and Claire went the other way to give each other room to react. He hadn’t told her to do that; she’d done it instinctively. Keo wanted to take credit for that; he had trained her back at Black Tide alongside Gaby for a month or two.

Claire had her rifle pointed at the ceiling, but Keo didn’t bother with his SIG. It wouldn’t have done any good anyway against these Black Eyes, and he had so few bullets to waste as it were.

“Don’t shoot unless you can get a headshot,” Keo said.

“But they’re Black Eyes,” Claire said.

“I know, kid. Like I said, these aren’t your daddy’s Black Eyes. You’ll need to get them in the brain or take off their heads.”

“Wait. They have brains?”

Keo sighed. “These ones do.”

“Well, that’s fucking swell,” Claire said.

Keo grinned as more tap-tap-tap! echoed from above them. There was more than one and they were moving around, as if searching for the perfect entry point. There weren’t any that Keo could see except the window Claire had shot out. Unless, of course, it was the creatures that had closed the door, in which case—

He spun around just as the hatch clanked! open and a powerful gust of wind swarmed the interior of the passenger car.

One, two—three ghouls fell inside.

And that was exactly what they did: They fell inside the car, having come from above.

The first one glared at him. Keo thought it looked familiar. Was it possible this was the same creature he’d confronted in the woods earlier tonight? The one that had chased him, only to stop when he turned to confront it? It was hard to tell because they all looked alike. Tall, skeletal, with limbs that jutted out of their frail-thin bodies like flesh-covered sticks and not appendages. Their faces, too, were identical. Even the eyes.

And these eyes gleamed in the darkness, the stench of their sagging skin reaching forward and wrapping around Keo’s senses and threatening to suffocate him. It always amazed him just how unnatural they looked up close.

“Keo!” Claire, shouting from behind him even as she opened fire.

Keo glanced back just long enough to see her shooting at a ghoul as it scampered in through the same window, cutting its flesh against the remaining glass. The black-eyed creature didn’t seem to care about its wounds as it flopped onto the plastic seat and tumbled to the floor, less from Claire’s gunfire than its own momentum against the still-moving train.

“The head!” Keo shouted. “Go for the head!”

Then he was turning, hoping that Claire could handle herself because he had three in front of him to deal with, and there was no way he could save both of them by himself if more came through the window.

Don’t let me down, kid, Keo thought as he tightened his grip on the KA-BAR in his right hand, with the SIG in his left, and began moving forward toward the ghouls.

The closest one glowered at him as it opened its mouth, and thick drops of saliva fell from its jagged yellow teeth and smacked the dirty metal floor. The stench of rotting garbage flooded out from its sunken nostrils as it sniffed the air. Or maybe it was sniffing him.

“Keo,” it grunted.

That froze Keo in place.

What the fuck?

“Keo,” the creature said again. His name hadn’t come out of the creature’s mouth as a hiss, like when the Blue Eyes spoke. This ghoul almost sounded pained when he spat out his name, as if the mere attempt—and accomplishment—took a lot out of it.

Behind him, Claire continued to shoot.

Don’t let me down, kid, Keo thought again as he continued moving forward.

Eight

“Keo!”

“Keo!”

“Keo!”

All three of them were saying his name now, one after another.

“Keo!”

“Keo!”

“Keo!”

Or chanting it would have been the more apt description. Eventually that was all he could hear, as their voices became one:

“Keo! Keo! Keo!”

Yeah, yeah, Keo thought as the first one lunged at him with the kind of wild devil-may-give-a-shit abandon he was used to seeing with the Black Eyes.

He swung for its head, aiming directly at that elongated neck that was so exposed it might as well have Cut me off right here! on it in big neon letters.

Keo obliged, and the head went flying. Black blood sprayed the seat upholstery, and more than a few splashes struck the wall all the way across the aisle.

He was surprised by that. He’d expected the creature to at least try to dodge the blade.

I guess they didn’t get that much smarter after all!

Even as the ghoul’s body collapsed lifelessly to the floor, the remaining two were already jumping over it. One of them reached for Keo’s head with icy-cold bony fingers, but he lopped that hand off at the wrist.

The ghoul howled as it fell into one of the seats, leaving Keo with the third and—he hoped—last one.

Behind him, Claire had gone silent.

Don’t let me down, kid! Keo thought for the tenth time in as many seconds.

He took a quick step back as the third ghoul came at him. Instead of using the forward attack method as its two brethren had (and failed), this one decided to leap up onto the seats on Keo’s right and use the plastic fabric to catapult itself at him.

Okay, so maybe they did get a little bit smarter.

Snikt! as the knife in Keo’s left hand sprang out of his shirt sleeve and into his palm. He slashed at the incoming ghoul and got the blade stuck in its neck. That hadn’t been where he’d aimed, but it was good enough. The creature let out a howl as it grabbed at Keo’s arm and tried to pry itself free, its sense of self-preservation suddenly overcoming its urge to kill him.

Keo helped it along by jerking the knife sideways, slicing through half of the Black Eye’s throat and out of its flesh. Blood flitted in the air as the ghoul slumped to the floor, even more black liquid pouring out of the gaping hole in its neck. Its head, barely hanging onto the rest of its body now, twitched erratically in its own pooling juices.

Keo took two steps back as the ghoul he’d delimbed scrambled back up and lunged at him. Sharp bony fingers scraped at Keo’s left cheek as it swiped at his face with its good hand. Keo slashed at it with the small knife in his left hand, catching it in the chest.

The ghoul fell to the floor, and even as it struggled to rise back up for a second time, Keo hacked at it with the KA-BAR. The head rolled off, landing in the aisle just half a heartbeat before the rest of its body.

Keo moved to finish off the remaining ghoul, but he didn’t have to. It, too, was dead. He hadn’t taken its head off, but the blood loss and injury had taken their toll. The monster lay dead on the floor among its two comrades, unnaturally twisted limbs over one another like deformed chopsticks.

Claire!

Keo spun around, ready to help the kid finish off her Black Eyes, but he didn’t have to. It was already on the floor in the aisle, and she was stabbing it in the brain.

Repeatedly.

Over and over.

Keo waited for her to stop, but Claire kept at it.

Over and over…

“Claire,” Keo said. Then, when she didn’t respond, and continued plunging her knife into the creature’s skull even though it had stopped moving, “Claire!”

That did it. Claire stepped back and away from the creature, before turning around to face him. Black blood dripped from her chin and the front of her clothes. He didn’t know how she’d gotten so much of the ghoul’s blood on her; Keo had gotten through his own fight relatively untarnished. Her eyes were unnaturally wide, and at that moment she looked like a wild child, her blonde hair cascading freely around her face. Her chest heaved as she breathed, every breath clearly taking a lot out of her.

“We’re good,” Keo said.

“What?” she said. It was more of a confused gasp.

“We’re good,” Keo said again.

He stepped aside to let her see the three dead Black Eyes he’d slayed. That seemed to get through to her, and her entire body relaxed noticeably, the hand with the knife falling to her side even though she continued to grip it tightly.

“We’re good,” she said.

“Yeah,” Keo said. “We’re good.” He looked down at the ghoul she’d killed. “You think it’s dead enough?”

Claire glanced at the creature before turning back to him. He could tell from her still-wide eyes that she didn’t get the joke. “I think it’s dead.”

“Good to know,” Keo said. “Watch the window.”

He didn’t wait for her to acknowledge the order. Keo stepped over the three twisted bodies and over to the open hatch door, moving as quickly as he could, the need to get the hell off this moving train taking over every other need at the moment.

The damn train was still going as fast as before, if not faster. Keo wasn’t entirely sure how he knew that, but it had to be the case. At least it felt as if they were picking up steam as they went.

The woods flashed by outside the open door, a never-ending wall of trees and branches and leaves. There was nothing that even remotely looked like civilization outside. But of course that wasn’t true. There was Arrowhead and Shaker Town somewhere out there. And then there was wherever this train was headed.

Keo grabbed the top of the opened door frame and leaned out, glancing toward the engine part of the train. Not that he could see anything. Whoever was in there driving the train was inside the car. And his instincts were right; they were picking up speed as they went. He wasn’t sure how that worked. What the hell was the train even being powered by?

“Keo?” Claire, appearing behind him. She was wiping at the blood clinging to her chin with the back of one hand. “What now?”

He looked back out the door. The what now part was pretty obvious. “Same deal. We jump out.”

“We could die.”

“Yup.”

“So it’s official.”

“What’s that?”

“We’re both a little crazy.”

He grinned at her. “Yeah. I suspect that’s the case.”

“Okay. You first.”

“Ladies first.”

“Like I said: You first.”

“Cute.”

He turned and took a good look at the ground alongside the track for the first time. Like when he’d first spotted the train at rest, there was green grass all around them and, hopefully, soft ground underneath that.

“Well?” Claire said behind him.

“Give me a sec.”

“It’s not going to get any easier.”

“Stop nagging me, kid.”

Claire snorted. “Let me go first, otherwise we’ll be here all day.”

“Nag nag nag,” Keo said just before he launched himself out the opened hatch and—

BAM! as he hit the ground on the back of his head and rolled over, and over, and over some more. He wasn’t entirely sure how many times he rolled, but it had to have been at least a dozen. He knew one thing for sure: By the time he’d stopped, he was covered in dirt and mud and there were stalks of grass in his mouth and hanging out of his nostrils. His joints ached, and just about everything that hadn’t hurt after the last two days decided they wanted to join in on the fun.

Keo sat up and spat grass out of his mouth. He quickly glanced right, searching for the train—

There.

Not that it was very hard to find. It was making quite the ruckus as it roared down the track, an old, tired metal beast disturbing the night as it went.

Where was Claire?

A head popped out of the ground about half a football length from where Keo sat. Claire. The speed of the train meant it had deposited her nearly 50 meters from where he sat trying to remember the last time every part of him didn’t scream in pain.

Keo took a moment to down some painkillers—Thank God he still had some left—before slowly standing up, brushing at his clothes, and making sure everything was where they should be.

SIG in the holster. Check.

KA-BAR. Check.

Pounding pain? Check, check, and triple check.

He started walking over to where Claire sat, staring after the vanishing train. If there was anyone in that engine guiding it, they either hadn’t noticed that Keo and Claire had made their escape, or if they did, didn’t care because the train continued into the night as if they didn’t exist.

Claire stood up as he got halfway to her. She was brushing at her clothes and looking around.

Then, spotting him, she shouted, “You alive?”

“Last time I checked,” Keo shouted back.

“Let’s never do that again!”

“I can’t make any promises!”

She might have laughed, but he couldn’t see much of her face with just the moonlight at his disposal. The night was dragging on and seemed never to end. This entire mission didn’t appear to have any ending that he could see. But at least he’d accomplished one thing: He’d found Claire.

“See, Lara? I told you I can be responsible.”

That would probably get a not-quite-agreeing smile from her. But he’d take it. Any smile from Lara was worth all the trouble he’d gotten into ever since he heard of the name Shaker Town.

Claire had looked away from him and toward the tree lines. Keo followed her gaze as they appeared out of the woods.

Silhouetted figures.

A lot of them.

Way, way too many for him and Claire to fight and survive.

Aw, hell.

Keo turned completely around, as did Claire. Like him, the girl had quickly figured out that they were vastly outnumbered, and didn’t do something stupid like go for her handgun. Her rifle was missing. Either she’d lost it in the jump or had tossed it back in the train. Not that it mattered, because even ten rifles wasn’t going to be enough.

He counted three dozen, but that was premature. It was more like four or five, and they came out of the woods cradling weapons.

Men. Not ghouls, but men.

And they’d spotted both him and Claire.

Keo glanced over at Claire. He couldn’t see her eyes, but her head was turned in his direction. Keo shook his head, then raised his hands into the air.

To his relief, Claire did the same.

A loud whine, followed by a horse bursting out of the woods and galloping toward Keo. It was followed by six others.

The man stopped in front of Keo and leaned forward in his saddle to get a good look at him. Keo stared back.

Mid-50s, short black hair and hard brown eyes that didn’t make friends easily. He was wearing a camo vest over a black shirt and cargo pants. He carried a pistol on his hip, but didn’t have a long rifle like the men waiting behind him. It was clear as day who was in charge here.

“You got a name?” the man asked.

“Sure I do,” Keo said.

The man waited for Keo to continue, and when he didn’t, cracked a grin. “You’re not going to tell me?”

“Nope.”

A chuckle. Keo couldn’t decide if that was genuine or not.

“You know who I am?” the man asked.

Keo nodded. “Yup.”

“We’ve met before?”

“Not exactly.”

The man sat back in his saddle. His men remained quiet, as did the ones on foot. A couple of them had rounded up Claire and were walking her over to Keo’s position. As she got closer, Keo caught her eyes, and the two of them exchanged a brief You okay? Yeah, I’m okay nod.

Keo was still focused on Claire when the ground underneath his boots shook. A second later, there was a loud BOOM in the distance, just before a ball of fire rose into the sky. It’d originated from the same direction the train had been headed.

A startled Claire spun around to look at the explosion, before turning back to Keo. “What was that?”

“The train,” Keo said. He turned back to the leader of the small army that had surrounded him. “You know something about that?”

“I should,” the man said. “I ordered it destroyed. You got out just in time.”

Keo smiled, and thought, Yup. That’s me. Lucky.

He said, “So what now?”

“Where’s Bell?” the man asked.

“How the hell should I know?” Keo said. “What do you want with him, anyway?”

“I’m going to execute him, then feed his intestines to the goats.”

The man turned and rode away slowly. His men on horseback followed, as did most of the ones on foot.

Claire walked over to stand beside Keo, just before they, too, were marched after the group of well-armed men.

“Is that…?” Claire said. She’d whispered the question, but there was little doubt the half dozen men walking behind them, keeping an eye—and weapons—on them had overheard anyway.

“Yeah,” Keo said. “That’s The Deacon.”

Nine

“What’s The Deacon doing out here?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, kid.”

“I don’t have any guesses.”

“Join the club.”

“I thought he’d be taller. Bigger. He looks just like a normal guy.”

Not quite, Keo thought. He’d seen a lot of men in his lifetime. Grunts, generals, and everyone in between. And The Deacon didn’t look like just a normal guy to him. This was a leader. A man that people followed.

So what the hell did he have to do with Buck, and what was going on in these woods right now?

Curiouser and curiouser…

They were following The Deacon and his small army of men. And army was the correct description. Everything from their numbers—at least 200, and those were only the ones Keo could see; he could hear more moving around them, hidden by the greens and darkness—to their “uniforms” were big clues. They were all heavily-armed and had the faces of men and women—though the men outnumbered the women by a huge margin—on the march.

Who they were marching against, was the question.

Not that The Deacon had any interest in filling Keo and Claire in. The man himself rode up front, trailed by his lieutenants on horseback. Keo knew the six men behind him were his second-in-commands because he’d seen them before. Harvey had been one of them, once upon a time, and, Keo assumed, so had Buck.

Buck.

Keo couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t see the former Fenton leader anywhere among the group. What did that mean, if anything?

Even more curiouser and curiouser…

Keo had a hard time understanding why The Deacon had destroyed the train. Did they know there were ghouls on board? Or were they trying to eliminate something else? Someone else? But weren’t the Shakers and ghouls working together?

A lot of questions and not many answers. That seemed to be a common thread these last few months ever since Keo started his mission.

Some mission. More failures than success.

At least he could count on one success: He’d located Claire.

The bad news? They were prisoners among a bunch of Shakers that didn’t look to be in any mood to negotiate his transfer back to Black Tide. The fact that he and Claire were still alive, though, was another mystery.

“We’re going northwest,” Claire said after a while.

Keo nodded. He’d already noticed that. Northwest would take them to Arrowhead.

So was that where The Deacon was leading his army? To attack Norris and his people? Did that mean The Deacon was going to link up with Buck’s forward group?

Time crept by during the long and slow walk to wherever. The night continued to get darker around them, and the Shakers stayed quiet, even with each other. There was a pervading glumness to the mood that told Keo something had happened to these boys and girls well before they ran across Keo and Claire. Something bad. Or traumatic. Now what could possibly have dampened the mood of hundreds of people?

Keo and Claire spent the respite cleaning themselves up. One of their Shaker guards was nice enough to hand over a bottle of lukewarm water for the effort. It probably helped that the person who asked was Claire and she wasn’t a bad-looking kid. Either that, or the men were ordered not to treat them as hostiles. Keo was leaning toward the Claire being attractive reason.

By the time they were done, a rider appeared from the front of the column to bring them over to The Deacon himself. They weren’t given a horse, so it took ten minutes just to reach the man himself on foot. Both Claire and Keo’s weapons had been taken earlier, so they weren’t much of a threat. They’d even found and removed Keo’s hidden spring-loaded knife rig. Not that Keo ever entertained any notions of fighting back. Not against these numbers. People often thought of him as crazy—and maybe he was—but he wasn’t that crazy.

Eventually, they reached the big man himself. The Deacon and his lieutenants had stopped and made camp in a wide clearing. His men were spread out, the foot soldiers either sitting around or standing guard. Keo was convinced there were more that he couldn’t see along the lines. It was still dark inside the Georgian woods, and The Deacon’s men didn’t use flashlights in order to stay hidden. Or as “hidden” as a few hundred men could be, anyway.

As the rest of the Shaker army settled down around them, Keo and Claire were led to The Deacon, who was eating freshly spit-roasted rabbit meat from a cafeteria tray. His lieutenants—Keo recognized two of them, but not the other four—stayed quiet and fed themselves while The Deacon scrutinized Keo from across the small campfire.

As Keo sat down on a log alongside Claire, he remembered what Norris had said about The Deacon:

“What can you tell me about the man that intel wouldn’t know?” he’d asked Norris.

“He’s interesting,” Norris had replied.

“Interesting how?”

“I’m not sure how to put it.”

“Try.”

“Unpredictable,” Norris had said. “The Deacon is very unpredictable.”

Unpredictable, Keo thought now, replaying the events of the night in his head.

“You’re Keo,” The Deacon finally said. He turned slightly to Claire. “And you’re Claire.”

Keo couldn’t help but show his surprise. He imagined it was the same with Claire. He thought about denying it, but didn’t. Either Buck had already told The Deacon or…

“Black Tide told you,” Keo said.

The Deacon didn’t so much as nod as he gave a slight up and down motion with his head while chewing on his rabbit meal. “They made contact.”

Keo and Claire exchanged a glance. She looked just as surprised as he was.

“Any subjects of interest I might wanna know?” Keo asked The Deacon.

“The bulk of the conversation isn’t important,” The Deacon said. “What matters is that we have the same enemy.”

Arrowhead? Keo thought, but quickly dismissed it. If Black Tide had indeed contacted him, then The Deacon would know Arrowhead, with its familiar leader, was nowhere close to being on Keo’s shit list.

On the other hand…

“Buck,” Keo said.

“Bell, as we know him,” The Deacon said.

Again, Claire glanced over at him, but Keo continued to focus on The Deacon. Regardless of what Claire had observed, to Keo The Deacon gave off an intimidating presence. He could easily see someone like this man forming an army of his own and holding power for a long, long time through sheer force of will.

Keo said, “The train. You were after the ghouls in it.”

“Yes,” The Deacon said.

Keo could feel Claire fidgeting slightly next to him. She was a bundle of energy, all of it begging her to scream out questions. Somehow, she was holding them in. She must have recognized that Keo knew more than she did and, in this case, it was better to listen than interrupt. He hoped so, anyway. Keo didn’t think The Deacon was the type of man who answered to kids, even if the kids didn’t think of themselves as kids.

“You didn’t know we were inside the train,” Keo said.

“No,” The Deacon said.

“You could have killed us.”

The man shrugged. “Could have, but we didn’t.”

“But you could have.”

“But we didn’t.”

“So what exactly did our mutual friend Buck do that brought you and all this firepower into the woods at night?”

“He did enough,” The Deacon said.

“Wanna elaborate?”

“No. The point is, we share an enemy. Buck and his followers.”

“Shakers.”

“Not anymore. Many of them were new to us. He brought most of them with him and recruited the rest. They’re loyal to only him.”

The Deacon bit down on his meal, as if trying to crush it under his teeth.

Someone’s pissed, Keo thought.

Keo guessed he wasn’t surprised. Buck had been working under The Deacon’s nose all this time. It was clear now that most of Shaker Town had no idea about the ghouls. Buck had brought Merrick with him, and the two had planned all this from the beginning, using Shaker Town’s resources to rebuild. All of it, in service of tonight.

And The Deacon was not happy that he’d been used.

“How many followers does he have?” Keo asked.

“Fifty or so,” The Deacon said. He took a sip from a canteen. “Including Harvey. Who is still missing.” He peered at Keo through the fire. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

Keo smiled. “Nah. No clue.”

“Right,” The Deacon said. He clearly didn’t believe Keo.

“You said Buck has fifty or so bad men with him.”

“Or so.”

“He has less than that, now.”

“Your doing?”

“Along with some friends.”

Another barely perceptible nod from The Deacon as he continued eating. “The human followers aren’t the problem. As you can see, I have plenty of men to deal with them.”

“The ghouls.”

Another nod.

“He played you,” Keo said. “All this time, working under your nose on his own agenda. He almost got Black Tide to attack you with those rumors of a new kind of weapon. Why didn’t you ever try to dispel those rumors?”

“You can’t disprove something that doesn’t exist,” The Deacon said. “Besides, would Black Tide have believed me?”

Keo chuckled. “Fair point.”

“What Bell did in Shaker Town before tonight is a moot point. He did it. And we’re here, now. You, me, and everyone else.”

“So where is our mutual pal now?”

“In these woods. He’s on the run.”

“From you?”

“From everyone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Black Tide has joined the hunt. Or, more specifically, their planes.”

Keo remembered the aircraft he’d seen back at the cave. So those were Black Tiders after all. He felt a whole lot better knowing that. There was nothing like potential death from above, where you couldn’t do a damn thing about it, that made him squirmy and very, very uncomfortable. It was good to know Black Tide still had air supremacy.

“We wouldn’t mind being able to talk to Black Tide,” Keo said.

“That can be arranged,” The Deacon said.

“How about now?”

“Not in here. We’ll need to get to a more open area to get a signal out of these woods.”

Keo nodded. He’d expected as much. “Black Tide has just sent planes? No ground forces?”

“Not yet.”

“You expect them to?”

“I don’t think that’s going to be necessary. We can handle this.”

You should be, since it’s your damn mess, Keo thought. Of course, he didn’t say that.

He said instead, “You say Buck’s on the run.”

“Him and whatever’s left of his followers,” The Deacon said. “That train was how they’d been transporting supplies and weapons back and forth from Shaker Town. I only learned about it earlier today.”

“So you took it out.”

“Yes.”

“Luckily me and Claire had already jumped.”

“Happy coincidence.”

Keo grunted.

“There wasn’t anything happy about that for us,” Claire said, speaking up for the first time.

The Deacon shrugged. “It’s war. There are always casualties. Some more accidental than others.”

Keo would have asked The Deacon what did he know about war, but just looking at the man, Keo knew that he did, in fact, know a lot. Maybe he hadn’t become good friends with it before The Purge, but he’d been very acquainted with it since.

“So what’s the plan?” Keo asked.

“Find Bell and his allies and kill them,” The Deacon said. “Arrowhead is pushing from the northwest, and we’re coming up on their flanks. Black Tide has the high ground. Sooner or later, we’ll pin them in. There’s only so much forest they can hide in.”

“Nice plan.”

A slight shrug from The Deacon. “It’s a plan.”

“And you know about his ghouls?”

“We sent some men out as advance scouts. They never returned. Another scout team eventually found their remains.”

Advanced scouts?

Then, remembering the men from earlier…

“I was there,” Keo said.

“Where?” The Deacon asked.

“When your men were killed. Your scouts. They were ambushed by ghouls.”

“So it would seem.”

“They’re not the same Black Eyes you’re used to, you know.”

“Again, so it would seem.”

“That doesn’t scare you?”

“Son, not a whole lot scares me these days.”

Keo smiled. Son? He was way too old to be The Deacon’s son. Hell, he was way too old to be anyone’s son.

“So it’s safe to say you brought the right tools?” Keo asked.

“Plenty,” The Deacon said.

“These new ones won’t go down from silver bullets. It’ll slow them, but it won’t stop them. You’ll need to take their heads off. Or destroy the brain.”

“We know. We’ve already encountered a few of them. It cost us more men than I would have liked, but we found out how to deal with them.”

“Not that you knew anything about them before tonight.”

“Not that I knew anything about them before tonight,” The Deacon said.

Keo matched the Shaker Town leader stare for stare. If The Deacon was lying, he was doing a damn fine job of it. Then again, it was nearly impossible to read much of anything on that stern face glaring back at him.

Finally, Keo said, “Well, shit, it sounds like you have everything all figured out. What do you need us for?”

“I don’t,” The Deacon said. “Whether you join the hunt, go back to Arrowhead, proceed on to Shaker Town, or return to your Black Tide comrades, is up to you.”

“You’re goddamn right we’re joining the hunt,” Claire said.

Keo grinned. “What she said.”

Ten

Since they were joining the hunt for Buck and his band of merry assholes, The Deacon allowed Keo and Claire to gear back up. Except this time they were going to get better equipment than what they had with them when they were disarmed. This included a camo vest that was similar to what everyone was wearing. Keo’s used to be black before it was repainted.

After indulging in a couple more painkillers, Keo stuffed his pockets with supplies and a few extra things he thought he might need. He also grabbed an MP5K from their traveling armory, which was a part of a wagon caravan near the center of the moving line. The bullets weren’t silver—even Shaker Town didn’t have an unlimited supply of those—but the KA-BAR, similar to the one that had been taken from him, featured a silver-lined blade.

Claire decided Keo’s choice of armament was a good idea and chose her own MP5K. They both added a pistol in a hip holster and web belt for more supplies. No backpacks because The Deacon’s men didn’t have those to spare. Keo also found the guy that had taken his hidden knife rig and retrieved it.

“Does that really work?” Claire asked as Keo slipped the spring-loaded knife back into place under his left shirt sleeve.

“A certain blue-eyed ghoul would say yes,” Keo said. “I almost killed it.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Have you ever tried to kill a Blue Eyes?”

“Well, no.”

“Let me assure you, kid; it’s not easy.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

You should, Keo thought. He had no doubts that Claire was a capable kid, but there was a big difference between going up against a human opponent and one of the Blue Eyes. Even experienced hunters like Don and Lon had found themselves lacking.

The man they’d been assigned to was named Barry. He was the one who had brought them over to the armory wagon where they loaded up. Early thirties, with short sandy blond hair that reminded Keo a little bit of Danny, minus the swagger and bad jokes. Barry spent most of his time looking miserable that he’d been given Keo and Claire.

“So what’s the plan?” Keo asked when he and Claire were done and they were walking through the camp of hunkered-down Shakers.

“Every hunter group has a section to clear,” Barry said. “Ours will be on the right side of the main group. We’ll split up with the others, then regather when we’re within a few miles of Arrowhead. The Deacon will signal the place and time.”

“How many people do you have here?” Keo asked.

“451,” Barry said.

Now that’s specific, Keo thought.

“Including the six that were ambushed earlier?” he asked.

“Including them…and others,” Barry said.

“Others?” Claire asked.

“The group you ran across wasn’t our first scout team. We lost two more after that. Eighteen men in all.”

“Did you find their bodies?” Keo asked.

“No.” The Shaker glanced over at Keo. “Should we have?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“What would they do with the bodies?”

“They’ll either feed on them or turn them.”

“Fuck,” Barry said.

“If they turn them, then that’s eighteen more ghouls for Merrick.”

“Who the fuck is Merrick?”

“The Blue Eyes you’re hunting.”

“Fuck me,” Barry said. “I didn’t even know they have names.”

Swell, Keo thought. These “hunters” don’t even know what they’re dealing with. This is going to end well.

* * *

Keo had doubts, but also plenty of incentives to join The Deacon’s army for the time being. The extra bodies—not to mention the guns they carried—would come in very handy. Keo wasn’t too concerned about Buck’s humans, but Merrick’s ghouls—those new breed of ghouls that it had created—had proven to be more dangerous than normal Black Eyes. Even though they could be killed, it took some effort. More effort than just shooting a Buck loyalist with a gun from 100 meters away. (Not that Keo was ever really good with long-range shots, of course.)

If push came to shove, he could use The Deacon’s people as a diversion. Buck was on the run. He and Merrick both. They had gone to Arrowhead to take it down, but instead had found themselves in the middle of a squeeze, with Norris’s people on one side and The Deacon’s on the other. That, combined with the firepower of Black Tide’s planes, had likely made tonight a very, very long night for them.

Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving pair of jackasses.

Now all Keo had to do was help The Deacon find and kill those jackasses. He had a feeling Buck would be the easier of the two to put down. Even injured, Merrick was formidable. Not to mention they were in its territory right now: In the woods, at night. It had soldiers with it. Maybe more than the handful Keo had seen up to now. He hadn’t lied when he told Barry that the ghouls didn’t always feed on their victims; they could also turn them. And right now, he imagined Merrick would want as many ghouls as it could make.

“What are you thinking?” Claire asked. She’d whispered the question, and Keo only heard her because he was walking alongside her.

Barry had taken the lead, with the fifteen men that had been assigned to him spread out on their flanks. Five of those were bringing up the rear. Keo could barely make out the Shakers to the left and right of him. Unlike Buck’s men, they weren’t wearing gleaming white Atlanta Falcons caps. Their camo vests—at least half of them were wearing camo shirts and pants, too—helped them to somewhat blend in with the foliage.

“I’m thinking we need to be careful,” Keo said. He’d whispered, even though he didn’t think he really had to. The closest Shaker was at least 10 meters in front of them, and the man spent most of his time glancing spastically left and right.

The paranoia is high with that one, Keo had thought when he first saw the head movements.

“I think that’s a given,” Claire said.

“And not to trust them,” Keo said.

“Shakers?”

“Who else?”

“Right.”

“When it goes down, stick close to me.”

“Gee, Keo, I didn’t think you cared.” She might have grinned mischievously at him when she said that.

“Give me a break, kid. If I don’t come back with you, Lara is going to kill me.”

“Lara told you that?”

“Something to that effect.”

“God, I love that woman.” This time Keo was sure Claire had grinned.

“So stick close to me, whatever happens.”

“I’m still going to kill Buck.”

“Yeah, I know. Just don’t…run off again.”

“I didn’t run off. I escaped.”

“How’d you do that, by the way?”

“It wasn’t that hard. After it took us from the cave, it gave us to a couple of Shakers to guard. I…convinced one of them to let me go.”

“‘Convinced,’ huh?”

“Guys are easy. Bat your eyelashes at them at just the right angles, and they’ll kill their mom to lick your boots.”

“Ouch,” Keo said, though he thought, Well, she’s not wrong…

“I would have taken Ronnie with me if I’d had the chance,” Claire continued. “But I didn’t. They’d separated us at the time, and I couldn’t risk coming back.”

“Plus, you don’t really know her anyway.”

“There’s also that.”

Keo smiled. Leave it to Claire to make a perfectly logical—but cold—decision about leaving Ronnie behind.

“Where did the girl come from?” he asked.

“They were using her to cook and clean for them,” Claire said. “I don’t know why, to be honest. She was pretty bad at both.”

“You knew it was going to replace you with her?”

“No, but I thought it might. We kind of look the same from a distance. And I overheard it telling someone what it was going to do with us.” She snarled. “I’m pretty sure it was talking to Buck.”

“So you gave me a message through the girl…”

“After I escaped, I came back. They already had her in the bag. I was hoping Ronnie would be there, but it was just her.”

“So why didn’t you help the kid escape?”

“I couldn’t,” Claire said.

Keo waited for her to continue, but she didn’t.

“‘Couldn’t?’” he pressed. “Why ‘couldn’t?’”

Claire didn’t answer for a moment. They walked in silence, the only sounds coming from the crunch-crunch of twenty-five pairs of boots stomping on fallen leaves. Barry was still somewhere up ahead, and his men remained equally spaced out. The Shaker in front of them remained 10 meters away, still as spastic as ever. Keo had a feeling Barry had ordered the kid—he couldn’t have been more than twenty—to stick close to them, either to watch them or—No, that was probably it.

“Claire?” Keo said. “Why didn’t you take the kid with you?”

“I couldn’t drag a kid along with me while going after Buck,” Claire said.

“So you left her behind.”

“I had no choice.”

Sure you did. You just chose the coldest option in order to complete your mission.

He said, “Damn, kid.”

“Give me a break. Tell me you’ve never had to do something like that.”

This time, it was Keo’s turn to go silent.

Shit. She’s got you there, pal.

“That’s what I figured,” Claire said.

“That was before.”

“Before what?”

“All of this.”

“And you haven’t done something like that since?”

“No.”

“Are you sure about that, Keo?”

Keo narrowed his eyes at her, not even trying to hide his annoyance. “What are you talking about?”

“I’ve heard all the stories about you.”

“What kind of stories?”

“The kind that tells me you shouldn’t be throwing stones right now.”

He sighed. “Kid…”

“I’m not a kid,” Claire said, matching his gaze. “I thought that was clear by now.”

She walked on ahead, eventually passing Mr. Spastic. Keo watched her go.

He sighed, and thought, She’s right. Damn, she’s right. She’s definitely not a kid anymore…

“Hey, you Keo?” The voice had come from behind him.

Keo stopped and turned around. A man with the kind of beard you’d only see in movies about trappers in the hills that liked to play with grizzlies walked up to him. Tall, at least six-five if not taller, and most of that was his red beard. The sight of the camo vest, along with the man’s nonchalant manner, silenced Keo’s alarms.

“That’s me,” Keo said. “The Deacon sent you to fetch me for my radio call?”

“Nah,” the man said. “Buck did.”

The knife flashed in the moonlight a split second before Keo felt its sharp point pierce his flesh.

Keo reached out instinctively with his right hand, grabbing the man by his long bright-red beard. Their eyes locked as the man twisted the knife and drove it in even deeper.

Snikt! as the spring-loaded knife slipped into Keo’s open left palm.

Keo pulled Grizzly Man toward him even as he struck out with the blade and plunged it into the middle of the other man’s exposed throat. Keo released his hold on the beard, and Grizzly Man choked on his own bile as he staggered backwards, then sideways, a fountain of blood spraying from the gash in his throat.

Oh man, that hurt, Keo thought as he fell to one knee while his would-be killer collapsed to the ground in front of him, the man’s big beefy hands clutching at his neck. Not that it did any good. Blood continued to pump through his fingers.

Keo looked down at his side. There was a knife sticking out of it. It wasn’t a very big knife. Maybe just slightly bigger than the one Keo was still holding in the palm of his left hand. At least he thought it wasn’t that big. Grizzly Man had stuck it all the way in, right up to the guard.

Strong motherfucker.

Keo could at least be thankful for one thing; he wasn’t bleeding like a stuck pig, unlike his assailant.

Voices, as people raced toward him.

One of them might have been Spastic.

The other might have been Claire.

Or not.

It was hard to focus. Why was it so hard to focus? It wasn’t like he’d never been stabbed before. Hell, he’d had two knives in him just a day ago. Compared to that, this one sticking out of his side was barely a scratch.

Okay, so it was more than just a scratch.

“Keo! Keo!”

Someone was screaming his name. Why were they screaming his name? What—

He was on the ground, one side of his face pressing against a nice comfy pile of dirt. For some reason, all he could see were the hard noses of boots as they gathered around him, making a lot of noises in the process.

So much noise.

And all he wanted was to rest.

…forever.

Eleven

“Jesus, what happened to him?” Claire? No, not Claire. Female, yes, but older-sounding.

“What do you mean?” This was Claire. He was sure of it.

“I mean, he’s got wounds everywhere,” the woman who wasn’t Claire said. “Wounds on top of wounds.”

“He’s been through a lot.”

“You don’t say.”

“He more than most.”

He couldn’t see, but he could hear, and he heard the very obvious concern in Claire’s voice. More than that, actually. The kid was scared. That did not bode well for him.

“Yeah, looks that way,” the woman said. Keo couldn’t place her voice, but it sounded like Ronnie. But what would Ronnie be doing back here? And Ronnie had already seen him naked, so she wouldn’t have been so surprised by his wounds on top of wounds.

“Is he okay?” Claire asked.

“No. He’s far from okay.”

Yeah, I think that’s an affirmative right there, Miss-whoever-you-are.

“This is all from the knife?” Claire was asking.

“Not the knife, though that didn’t help. But the poison on it.”

Poison?

“He was poisoned?” Claire said, as if hearing his thoughts.

“That would be my guess, since most people’s skin don’t turn purple and veins don’t pop out of their bodies like Mexican jumping beans.”

That didn’t sound very good at all.

“I think he’s waking up,” Claire said. A slight jump in her voice that time; more than just a little bit alarmed.

“No, he’s not.”

“What are you giving him?”

“Relax, this is just going to put him back to sleep. He doesn’t need to be awake for this.”

Lights flashed in his peripheral vision, but he couldn’t see what was causing them. His eyelids refused to cooperate and stayed closed.

“He doesn’t look in pain,” Claire said.

“His body doesn’t know he’s dying yet,” the woman said.

Dying? Hell no, lady. I’m not dying. Not now. Not for a long time. You’re mistaken.

“Does he have family?” the woman who thought he was dying but wasn’t, because he would know if he were dying, and he wasn’t, asked.

“Lara,” Claire said.

“Who’s Lara?”

“His girlfriend, I guess you’d call her.”

She’s more than that, Claire.

“Is she, or isn’t she?” the woman asked.

“Well, you know, they’re as close to married as you can get these days without paper to make it official.”

“Can you get ahold of her?”

Yes, do that. I could use some of Lara’s soothing voice right about now.

“Why?” Claire asked.

“Because this might be the only time he gets to hear her voice again.”

But not for that reason!

“You saying he’s dying?” Claire asked.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“That fucking Buck…”

That fucking Buck is right, Keo thought as the darkness swept over him.

* * *

An earthquake.

That must have been it, because his entire body was shaking as if every bone wanted to come apart at the marrow and say sayonara, suckahs! Certainly he wasn’t going to survive without bones, right?

Then it stopped, and everything was all right again.

Or as all right as you could get when you were poisoned via a knife to the side.

“The Deacon sent you to fetch me for my radio call?” Keo had said.

“Nah,” the man who had tried to assassinate him had said. “Buck did.”

Buck. Fucking Buck.

Keo had thought he was Moby Dick to the man’s Ahab, but maybe it was the other way around. Or maybe it was both, and their quest to kill one another would end up with both of them dead and gone, never to bother this world with their petulance ever again.

Wow, that was almost poetic.

Almost.

He opened his eyes—

Yay! I can still see!

—and stared up at Claire’s face.

It was worried. Very, very worried.

“What’s with the frown, Charlie Brown?” he asked.

His voice sounded all right. It was all the rest of him that wasn’t. He was lying down on something surprisingly soft, and while not quite like floating on clouds, was close. Of course that could just be his mind trying to lull him into a sense of comfort. He was, after all, poisoned and more dead than alive, according to the woman-who-wasn’t-Claire.

He couldn’t move his body, but that was okay. Keo felt like lying still anyway. It was…soothing.

He wasn’t sure where he and Claire were. It was some kind of room, but not a room. It was small. He could see the ceiling above her head—it seemed to be floating, too—as she leaned over him. There was fear in her eyes, but he didn’t think it was for herself. It was for…

Me.

Before Claire could answer him, something buzzed in the background, and the room-that-wasn’t-a-room shook again.

Claire glanced up, not that she could see anything beyond the ceiling. “They’ve been flying sorties all night.”

“Who?” Keo said.

“Black Tide. Mayfield’s squad.”

Mayfield? Ah, Mayfield. One of Black Tide’s more competent fighter pilots. The last time Keo had heard about her, she’d been assigned her own squadron.

Claire looked back down at him. “The Deacon has his hands full out there.”

“What happened?” Keo asked.

“It was a trick. Buck had this planned all along. While The Deacon and his army were hunting him in the woods, Merrick’s ghouls were in Shaker Town. The attack came out of nowhere.” She shook her head. “Last I heard, it’s gone.”

“What’s gone?”

“Shaker Town. Everyone in it. They’re just…gone.”

Buck. Fucking Buck.

“He had this all planned out from the beginning,” Claire continued. “He knew The Deacon would catch on to his plan sooner or later. He always meant to lure him out here. That’s pretty obvious now. And while they’re out here, with all these men, Shaker Town was pretty much undefended.” She shook her head, her face more somber than he’d ever seen it. “I thought he was just an asshole with a gun. But he’s not, is he?”

“No, he’s not,” Keo said.

She glanced around as if she could see through the walls that seemed to be floating, like the ceiling. Weird. “There are ghouls in the woods with us.”

As if on cue, there was a burst of automatic gunfire from outside. They were coming from enough of a distance that Keo could only hear them as faint pop-pop-pop cracks. It went on for some time.

Keo took in his surroundings again. He wasn’t in a room at all, but the back of a covered wagon. One of the many wagons The Deacon’s men were using. The “ceiling” was made of stitched-together fabric held up by metal struts. That was why every time one of Black Tide’s planes flashed by overhead, the “room” trembled in its wake and the “walls” and “ceiling” floated.

He’d woken up to night. He could tell that much from the darkness visible on the other side of some holes in the fabric just behind Claire’s head.

“How do you feel?’ Claire was asking him after the gunfire had ceased completely.

“I’ve been better,” Keo said. “How do I look?”

“Like shit.”

“That’s not too bad.”

“I wasn’t finished. Like shit, left out in the sun for too long.”

“Still not too bad.”

“…then baked in more shit. Then tossed down the sewers. And then reclaimed, and shit on again.”

Keo would have laughed if he could muster the energy. But he could only manage a mild chuckle. It wasn’t what Claire had said, but the expression on her face as she said it. She was scared. Again, not for herself, but for him.

“I’m not gonna die,” Keo said.

Claire didn’t answer. She just kept staring at him.

“I’m not gonna die,” Keo said again. “I have too much to live for.”

“Maybe,” Claire said.

“Which part?”

“The first. The I’m not gonna die part.”

“Have faith, kid.”

“I would, but I can see what you look like, and you can’t.”

“Is it really that bad?”

“However bad you think you look right now, it’s worse.”

“Okay. That’s pretty bad.”

“Yeah.”

The wagon shook again as another plane passed by overhead. Keo looked up, and so did Claire, not that either one of them could see anything. About ten seconds later, they both heard the unforgettable brrrrrrt! of an A-10’s minigun firing.

“Just the Warthogs?” Keo asked.

“For now,” Claire said. “The Deacon says Black Tide’s sending ground personnel over, but they won’t get here until morning.”

“It’s that bad, huh?”

She nodded. “Worse than bad.”

“What’s worse than bad?”

“You.”

Again, he wanted to laugh, but all he could get out was another slight chuckle. “You look worried. I thought you were all grown up and beyond all this caring stuff.”

She rolled her eyes. “Grown up doesn’t mean I don’t care anymore, Keo.” She glanced off. “They said they’re going to start moving us in about an hour.”

“Where we going? Since Shaker Town’s now out of the question.”

“Arrowhead.”

“No kidding?”

“Your friend Norris has been able to fend off Buck’s assaults with the help of the Warthogs. The Deacon’s people haven’t been as lucky. It’s a little hard to know what you’re shooting at when everything is covered in trees. Mayfield’s group has had to be selective. Unfortunately, for The Deacon’s people.”

“Norris knows they’re coming?”

“He knows. You know the old saying: ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ Right now, everyone’s enemy is Buck and his ghouls.”

“How many does he have out there?”

“I don’t know. A lot, would be my guess. As far as I can tell, The Deacon’s army is being routed. It’s a massacre, Keo.” She shook her head. “And after they raided Shaker Town for more bodies…”

“More ghouls.”

“Uh huh.” She sighed. “It’s not looking good.”

“You having second thoughts about joining the hunt now?”

“Damn straight.”

Keo looked over at the flap that acted as a door in and out of the wagon. It had a zipper that was zipped all the way up, blocking him from seeing anything outside. He could hear voices and the still-distant cracks of gunfire but not much else. Even though he was visually stymied, Keo thought he could feel the chaos seeping through every inch of the wagon’s covering.

“Fucking Buck,” Keo said after a while.

“We really have to kill that guy,” Claire said.

“His time’s coming.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Let’s hope.” Then, after a moment, “There’s a mirror. You wanna see what you look like?”

Keo shook his head without hesitation. “No, kid. I’ll take your word for it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Keo…”

“What is it?”

“You look different.”

“Well, I am dying, apparently.”

“No. Not that. I mean, that’s not good, either, but there’s something else…”

“What is it, kid? Spit it out.”

She hesitated.

“Go on, I can take it,” Keo said.

“You’re changing,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

Claire shook her head. “I don’t know how to explain it. Or put it into words. But you look like you’re changing.”

“I’m turning purple, apparently.”

“No, it’s not just that. And the purple has mostly gone away since they brought you here.”

“What, then?”

Again, she didn’t answer right away.

“Kid,” Keo said. “Say it.”

“I don’t know,” Claire said, and he could see the gears behind her eyes turning, trying to find just the right words and coming up short. “I can’t explain it, Keo. I don’t know how to explain it…”

Twelve

They were moving through a war zone. Or at least that was what it sounded like. The concentrated pop-pop-pop of rifles, usually interspersed with the very loud roar of some idiot letting loose with a burst of fully automatic gunfire. Keo hoped The Deacon brought enough ammo for the useful dummies that were firing off those rounds. Either that, or they at least hit something. Preferably something human, since regular bullets didn’t do very much against a ghoul.

Of course, Keo didn’t know who was shooting. It could have been The Deacon’s men or Buck’s newly-formed Buckies. Or a third party that had joined the fight without anyone telling him.

Buck.

Fucking Buck.

Keo wasn’t sure if he was impressed or irritated with the man. The head Bucky had bided his time, waiting until just the right moment to unleash his long-gestating hatred for all things Black Tide. And that was exactly what this was, Keo knew it now. It wasn’t about Arrowhead or Shaker Town or even him.

No. This was all about Black Tide. Buck was renewing the same war with Danny’s crew that he’d started and nearly finished in Darby Bay. Attacking Arrowhead was just to lure Black Tide into the fight. Buck may or may not have counted on The Deacon mobilizing against him—

“The population of Shaker Town,” Claire had said. “They’re gone. Just…gone.”

Or maybe he had.

Shit, he had.

That clever little fucker. Keo was going to have to really make sure the man died for good this time. He did not want a Round Three of their little grudge.

“What about Lara?” Keo asked.

Claire, sitting near the back of the wagon and peeking out at the dark woods beyond, glanced over her shoulder. “I couldn’t reach her. Or Black Tide. I got one of the pilots while he was flying overhead, but before I could really get any information to him, he was out of range.”

More gunfire. This time they sounded a little closer than the last few volleys. The wagon, too, seemed to have picked up speed. Keo could hear the creaking of the wooden wheels underneath him and the squeaking of the harness attached to the horses pulling it. It wasn’t just them, but more than one wagon in the caravan.

They had been moving through the woods for the last thirty minutes or so, headed northwest toward Arrowhead. With Shaker Town gone, The Deacon had no choice but to retreat to his longtime rival.

Oh, the irony.

Every now and then, Keo could see a bright flash outside the opened flap next to Claire, followed by the distant thoom of an explosion going off. Sometimes the explosions occurred just a bit too close for his liking. It would have been a different story if he wasn’t flat on his back and barely able to move.

His hands felt okay and he could make fists, but he wasn’t sure about his ability to grasp—never mind use—a weapon. Maybe a knife, but probably not a gun. That required aiming, and he wasn’t sure he could lift his arm high enough to do that. He wanted to think it was all the wounds he’d suffered the last few days finally coming home to roost, but the truth was, it had more to do with whatever poison Buck’s assassin had shoved into him.

Claire had offered to show him what he looked like two more times since they took off, and he’d refused both just as quickly as the first. He didn’t need to see to know that he was fucked.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” the kid had said. “Or put it into words. But you look like you’re changing.”

FUBAR’ed.

No, check that: FUBARATS’ed.

Big time.

And he couldn’t get in touch with Lara. If he was going to die—and it certainly felt like he was headed in that direction—Keo at least wanted to talk to her one last time. Tell her that he loved her, that he was sorry he couldn’t be there for her and their unborn child, and all the other gooey stuff dying men were supposed to say to their loved ones on their dying bed.

But the more he thought about it, the more he accepted his inability to reach her as a good thing. A blessing in disguise. It wouldn’t have done any good, for one. And two, the pain would stay with Lara. Keo didn’t want to subject her to that. She’d already been through so much in this life. More than enough for a dozen lifetimes.

“We can try the radio again when we’re at Arrowhead,” Claire was saying. “They seem to be able to contact Black Tide whenever they need to. From what the Shakers tell me, your friend Norris’s got the town pretty well-defended against the Buckies and Merrick’s ghouls.”

Keo nodded. He wanted to think he always knew Norris had it in him to lead this kind of resistance, but the truth was, he didn’t. He was just as surprised as anyone about what Norris was capable of. Maybe he didn’t really know the old man as well as he thought he did.

“I’m guessing things aren’t going well for The Deacon?” Keo asked.

Claire shook her head. “Not in the slightest. They’re all retreating back to Arrowhead with us. Black Tide warplanes are supplying air support—”

As if on cue, Keo heard the brrrrrrrt! of an A-10 Warthog unleashing its minigun nearby.

Damn, that sounded way too close!

“—and that’s probably the only reason he has any men left,” Claire finished after the gun run had faded.

“Is it ghouls or Buckies?”

“I think both.” She looked over at him and cracked an amused grin. “I haven’t heard or even thought of that in a while.”

“What’s that?”

“Buckies. That’s what you used to call Buck’s people back at Fenton. When I was on the train, I remembered it.” She looked off thoughtfully. “Buck’s been culling his own army of Buckies out of The Deacon’s men all these years. That’s got a lot of the Shakers questioning things.”

Another explosion, this one farther away than the previous.

Good. Let’s keep it that way, boys.

“What are they questioning?” Keo asked.

“Why any of this is happening,” Claire said. “They’re confused. They know each other. The Shakers. But now, all of a sudden, they’re on different sides. Then there’s Merrick’s ghouls. A lot of them had friends and family back in Shaker Town. And now…”

“They’re most likely ghouls.”

“That’s the big one: They know that when they’re shooting or stabbing at a ghoul, it could be a loved one.” She paused for a moment, before continuing. “Say what you want about the Shakers—and I’ve said a lot of shitty things about them—but they’re still human.”

Don and Lon wouldn’t agree with that, Keo thought.

Keo was about to ask her more about the battle raging outside their wagon when he heard a familiar sound beyond the thin fabrics covering their ride.

Not Warthogs, but something else.

Slowly but surely, the noise gained in volume.

“Choppers,” Keo said.

Claire looked over. “What?”

“Choppers incoming.”

“That sound?”

“Yeah.”

“You can tell what it is?”

“Can’t you?”

“No.” Claire craned her head to listen. “You think it’s Black Tide?”

“I hope so,” Keo said, not liking the idea of Buck having access to airpower whatsoever.

He couldn’t be sure if there were more than one of the aircraft out there. It was hard to make the distinction with just sound to go by.

Claire stuck her head out the flaps to get a better look.

“What do you see?” Keo asked.

“Two choppers,” Claire said. “I can’t be one hundred percent sure, but they might be Little Birds.”

Little Birds were the MH-6 choppers that Black Tide used almost exclusively for missions these days. It was limited by how many people it could carry, but made up for it with speed and agility. The last time Keo was at a Black Tide base, he’d seen Tiders training on a handful of them.

“Where are they headed?” he asked.

“Northwest. Same direction as us,” Claire said. She pulled her head back and glanced over at him. “Arrowhead?”

“That would be my guess.”

“Good to know Black Tide’s bringing more firepower to the fight. I have a feeling we’re gonna need everything they can offer.”

Keo nodded, when the wagon stopped suddenly and they heard the loud and clearly agitated whine of the horses pulling them. Someone screamed, followed by the bang-bang of handguns firing.

“Shit,” Claire said. She reached down for her AR rifle on the floor.

“Claire,” Keo said.

“Stay here.”

“What?”

“Stay here!” the girl said before she jumped out of the wagon.

Stay here? Keo thought. Where am I going to go?

Keo tried to get up. Or sit up, at least. He managed it after a half dozen painful grunts. Every bone ached and every muscle contracted inward, trying to kill him with every minor movement he made. He pushed on anyway, just in case Claire and the Shakers couldn’t deal with the threat outside without him.

He glanced around frantically.

There: web gun belt, holstered SIG, and an MP5K. His spring-loaded knife was also there, but Keo didn’t bother with it. If a ghoul got close enough for him to use it, never mind Merrick, then he was dead meat already, given his current condition.

He slipped the belt on even as gunfire continued outside and—

Zip-zip! as two subsonic rounds pierced the fabric in front of him and nearly took his head off as they vanished out the other side.

That was close!

Keo finished putting the belt on, then reached for the submachine gun. He’d gotten his hand on the cold grip when he heard:

“Keo!”

Claire. That was Claire. Why was she shouting his name? From what he could tell just by listening, there was a full-blown assault taking place outside.

Sudden movement out of the corner of one eye as the wagon flap opened.

Keo turned, expecting to see Claire, but instead saw a man’s face covered in black camo that almost made him completely invisible against the darkness. Almost, except the man had on a bright-white Atlanta Falcons cap.

He remembered that cap. It was what the men Buck had with him as they moved toward Arrowhead wore. Their new “uniform.” Keo understood now why they wore it, despite the fact the bright white color made them very obvious. It wasn’t just to distinguish themselves from The Deacon’s men, but also to let Merrick’s ghouls know they were “friendlies.” He’d seen collaborators use the same tactic before.

Keo wasn’t sure who was more shocked to see whom. Then again, what had the Bucky expected to find in here if not him? Judging by how wide the Bucky’s eyes exploded, Keo was guessing he wasn’t it.

That surprise discovery cost the man a good second or two of hesitation.

“Nice hat,” Keo said.

“What?” the man said.

Even as the man said What? Keo was sticking the MP5K across the front of his body—right to left—and pulling the trigger. He didn’t need to question if the mag was loaded or not. He could feel the weight. It was.

It took only one burst to drop the Bucky. Half of Keo’s bullets went into the fabric that made up the flap, while spent cartridges from the fired rounds arced through the air and ricocheted off the covering on the other side of the wagon.

Keo scrambled to his knees—and nearly fell over.

He righted himself, gasping with pain, and wondered for the hundredth time what the hell Buck’s man had stabbed him with. It hadn’t paralyzed him completely, but it also hadn’t left him feeling “dead.” This was not what it felt like to be dying. It was something else. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

He got halfway up and, on his knees, crawled to the fluttering flap.

Gunfire continued outside, some from very close and others farther away. Thankfully no more bullets punched their way through the wagon’s covering, which couldn’t even begin to offer up resistance. All it would take was one stray round—either from the defending Shakers or the attacking Buckies—and Keo was a dead man.

Or deader man, according to everyone that had seen him since he got stabbed.

Except, again, he didn’t feel dead. Or dying. He felt pretty good, even if his body told him otherwise. Was it just his imagination? His mind trying to convince him he wasn’t dying, even though he was?

Maybe.

Maybe…

Then, from outside:

“Keo!”

Claire again. He couldn’t tell how far she was to the wagon from just her voice, not with all the competing noises—screams and gunfire and what he thought was the sound of stampeding horses.

Keo continued crawling toward the flap. The wagon wasn’t very long, and it should have taken him only a few seconds to reach his destination. Except it didn’t. Why was it taking so long to get to where he needed to be? Was he really that slow?

Yes.

The answer was a resounding yes.

Claire again: “Stay inside! Don’t come out! You hear me? Don’t come out!”

Don’t come out? Keo thought, pausing in mid-crawl. But he had to get out. He couldn’t just stay in here—

The roar of a plane passing by, followed by the hellacious brrrrrrrrrrrt! of a minigun firing. The entire wagon quaked, and Keo fell off his knees and landed on his back. When he looked up, the wagon covering was gone, ripped off their struts in the plane’s wake. There was just the night sky and a full moon drawing his gaze.

In that instant, Keo thought about Lara, and how much he wanted to live.

He wanted to live.

He was going to live.

Thirteen

The caravan had a total of six wagons, and they were haphazardly spread out around the one Keo was in. The air around him was filled with gunfire and the occasional screams. Every one of his senses were buzzing from the chaos.

A pair of bodies lay on the ground next to his wagon, including the one he’d shot. There were more around the other transports. They all looked like Shakers, and only a few were still wearing white Falcons caps. There were a couple of the same caps in the grass, where their former owners had dropped them, so it was hard to tell Shakers from Buckies. Then again, they were all Shakers, weren’t they? Some were just more killable than others. At least at this point in time.

The horses were dead. The ambushers had gone for them first, which was the smart move, if cold. How do you shoot a defenseless animal? He guessed being a heartless motherfucker came with the Bucky moniker.

He scanned for Claire, but it was difficult to locate her among all the moving bodies and staccato flashes of gunfire. Bullets slammed into the wooden parts of the wagons and zipped all around his head. Keo ducked reflexively, not that it would have done him any good if just one stray round had gotten lucky.

The surviving Shakers had taken refuge behind their wagons. The ones that hadn’t done that quickly enough lay dead around them. There was something that almost looked like a “circling of the wagons” maneuver, just like back in the old days when Indians would attack wagon trains. Except this time the “Indians” had semiautomatic rifles. And, from the sounds of it, some of them had fully automatic ones, too.

His wagon had somehow ended up in the middle, with two more in front and the other three spaced out on his six. Not quite a perfect circle, but they seemed to function reasonably well as a manmade defilade to keep the Buckies at bay. At least the ones that hadn’t already gotten through, like the man Keo had killed. That Bucky still lay dead at the back of the wagon now, a look of shock frozen on his face.

Pek-pek! as two stray rounds slammed into the wooden boards behind him. More zipped past his head. Keo instinctively jumped forward and out of the transport. He’d forgotten that he didn’t have complete control over his legs and landed face-first into the ground.

It should have hurt, but for some reason his face was already numbed and there was just a mild amount of pain. He was still on his belly when a hand grabbed him by the left arm and tried to pull him up. Tried, because Keo was much heavier than the person doing the pulling.

“Goddammit, Keo, I told you to stay inside the wagon!”

Claire. That was definitely Claire.

Keo turned his head to make sure.

Yup, it was Claire, and she didn’t look very happy with him.

“Can’t,” Keo said.

“Can’t?” she said, still trying to pull him up and not having any luck. “Can’t what?”

“The wagon’s a death trap.”

Claire glanced back at the now-coverless wagon before returning her eyes quickly to him. She wasn’t convinced. “God, you’re heavy.”

“It’s water weight.”

She squinted at him in the way most people do when they were trying to decide if he was making a joke or just being a smartass. Keo wanted to let them in on a little secret: It was both.

Claire gave up and kneeled next to him. “Can you get up?”

“No,” Keo said. “I don’t think I can even feel my legs. Everything’s numb.”

“Which part?”

“Everything.”

“So how’d you jump out of the wagon?”

“Adrenaline?”

“Jesus, Keo.”

“Maybe him, too.”

Claire sighed and rose back up into a semi-crouch. She changed up her grip on his arm and began dragging him across the grass.

This is definitely not one of my best moments, Keo thought.

Despite their vastly different physical size, Claire somehow managed to get him at least twenty meters from where he’d fallen on his face and over to another wagon where two Shakers had taken up positions. There had been four of them before, but the other two were dead. One of them lay across the front seat of the wagon. Without the horses to pull them, the transport wasn’t going anywhere. Which was the idea behind shooting the horses.

Not that they could move at all, from what Keo could tell. Buckies seemed to be firing at them from everywhere and nowhere. They were using the darkness and trees to great effect, only appearing briefly to let loose a burst of gunfire before vanishing again. After the initial assault, the others were hanging back, satisfied to just harass the Shakers from afar.

And it wasn’t just their party engaging Buckies, either. There were other firefights going on around them. Some far enough that Keo could only hear the wet pop-pop-pop of their exchanges. Others were closer, and Keo kept waiting for rounds to zero in on him as he struggled to sit up with Claire’s help.

He plopped against one of the wagon’s heavy wooden tires. It was chipped by bullets, but was still (mostly) in one piece. After dumping him behind cover, Claire was already moving toward the back, and resumed returning fire into the woods.

Keo could only sit there and keep an eye on the other side of their little “circle.” The other Shakers were doing enough of a decent job defending their makeshift camp that no Buckies had made it inside the perimeter. Just in case, Keo had the MP5K in his lap, finger on the trigger, waiting for the sight of a white hat to start shooting.

Claire was to his left, and the Shakers were manning the front part of the wagon on his right. Or one of them was, anyway. A man with a ponytail was firing back at the Buckies while a girl sat next to Keo, mimicking (though he was sure, not on purpose) his posture against the wagon’s other wheel. She was staring at something out in the darkness, her AR in front of her with the barrel pointed in the wrong direction—up at the moonlit sky instead of toward the enemy.

Young, barely sixteen, if that. The look on her face said everything she couldn’t. Her lips quivered involuntarily, and when she sensed Keo staring, she glanced over and stared back at him, as if seeing him for the first time.

Keo wanted to think it was his ugly face, that had just gotten a whole lot uglier, that was leaving her speechless. But that wasn’t true. The girl was shellshocked. That was the Thousand Yard Stare looking back at him. He wasn’t sure if she’d even fired a shot. Probably not, judging by how full her pockets were of spare magazines.

“I know, right? Can’t even go out for a walk in the woods anymore,” Keo said, before grinning at her like a maniac.

She continued to stare at him, oblivious to what he’d said. Did she even hear him at all? Keo had seen plenty of kids like her on the battlefield. They thought they were ready for it; they’d been trained for it, after all. But training and the real deal were two beasts, and not everyone could adapt. This Shaker staring at him, her lips quivering, was one of those that couldn’t.

“It’s okay,” Keo said. “Just keep your head down.” And try not to get shot, he thought, but of course didn’t say out loud.

Keo had other words of wisdom for her when he heard the roar of a mechanical beast from hell spitting lead into the forest. That was a Warthog doing a gun run. It had come from somewhere behind him, too far to put them in any danger, but also too far to be of any help to them right now.

Could sure use you over here, pal.

A nice strafing run from an A-10 would easily thin out the Bucky ranks and allow the Shakers to get the upper hand. For just a moment, Keo wondered why no one had called in air support yet, until he realized they weren’t the only ones under siege. The entire Shaker Town army, or what was left of them, was fighting for their lives right now.

Claire returned and sat down next to him, snapping off her magazine and groping for a fresh one—and coming up empty. “Shit.”

“Empty?” Keo asked.

“Yeah.” She leaned the rifle against the wagon and drew her sidearm. A Beretta 9mm. “It’s going to be a long night.”

“It’s already been a long night, kid. It’s just getting longer.”

“This is a normal night for you, right?”

Keo smiled. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“What would you say?”

“If I don’t have a night like this one ever again in this lifetime, I’ll die a happy man.”

Claire suddenly put a hand on his shoulder.

“What?” Keo said. He’d whispered the question without realizing it.

Claire was looking across their “fort” made of wagons and dead horses. But she wasn’t staring at the Shakers on the other end. Her head was tilted slightly, eyes squinting up at the dark skies.

“What are you seeing?” Keo asked.

“Nothing,” Claire said.

“Then what—”

“You can’t hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“Listen.”

“I am.”

“Try harder.”

Keo did, craning his head slightly to let his ears explore a little bit more of the area. It wasn’t easy after all the gunfire going on. Shakers and Buckies continued to exchange bullets. All Keo could hear was the noise of rounds hitting the wooden frames of the wagons and pinging! off metal equipment they were carrying. And every now and then, rounds ricocheting off trees or sailed over his head—

Then he heard it.

It was a whistling sound. Low, but it was getting louder…

…as it got closer…

“Claire,” Keo said.

“What is that?” Claire asked. She looked irritated that she couldn’t define what she was hearing.

Keo reached over and grabbed her arm.

“Hey,” Claire said.

“Get out of here,” Keo said.

“What? Why?”

Before he could even understand how he was doing it, Keo was on his feet and shouting, “Incoming!”

The first mortar round landed a few feet from one of the wagons in front of him. A ball of fire ripped through the Shakers stationed there, tearing flesh from clothes and everything else in its path.

A second landed almost exactly between Keo and the first, throwing a wall of dirt and soot and grass everywhere. The concussive force of the blast was enough to toss Keo off his feet and into the wagon. Either the wooden boards shattered on impact, or his bones did. He wasn’t entirely sure which.

Even as he fell back down to earth, he heard more whistling…

…as more mortar rounds headed their way…

Fourteen

Fire, smoke, and blood.

But mostly fire…

…and a lot of smoke and blood, too.

The screaming had stopped, though. Thank God for small miracles.

The mortars had taken out the Shakers lining the two wagons across the makeshift “fort.” Keo assumed they were all dead, not that he could confirm any of it. There was too much fire. And smoke. And blood.

The Shaker girl with the Thousand Yard Stare was somewhere to Keo’s right. Or most of her was, anyway. Her right arm was missing, and so was half of her face. Shrapnel from the explosion had made the remaining half unrecognizable.

Some of that shrapnel had gone into Claire at multiple places. Like him, she had been knocked off her feet by the force of the blast. She was still on the ground, unconscious, when he grabbed her and tossed her over his shoulder. Keo had no idea what had happened to the Shaker male that had been at the wagon with them.

…grabbed her and tossed her over his shoulder…

He wasn’t sure how he did that. Hell, he wasn’t sure how he was doing any of this, but he was.

Then he was moving through the fire and smoke and blood.

…moving through the fire and smoke and blood…

How? No idea. He just was.

Because to stay still was to die. Most of the spot where he and Claire had found refuge with the Shakers was little more than a charred hole. The mortars had done their jobs too well. There was still gunfire around him, signaling that the threat wasn’t over. Far from it.

Or maybe that was abandoned ammo going off. Abandoned, because their owners were dead. And dead men and women didn’t need bullets.

There was no one in the woods to shoot at him. Did he just get lucky by running into just the perfect part of the forest where there was no Bucky? Or did the mortar rounds kill them off, too? It wouldn’t be the first case of friendly fire in the history of the world.

He changed up his grip on Claire. The girl felt surprisingly light on his shoulder. She was small, but she wasn’t that small. So how was he moving so quickly and so well? Hell, how was he moving at all?

Five minutes of fast-walking through the woods became ten, then fifteen, then twenty. Every now and then, he heard aircraft moving above him but never looked up to check on who they were. If it was Buckies and they saw him, he was dead. If it was Black Tide, and they saw him…well, they couldn’t really do anything for him anyway.

So he focused on what was in front of him and didn’t bother to look around. He had no help coming. Not from Black Tide and not from—

There were bodies on the ground, partially hiding among the tall grass. Blood covered the area, and the smell of fresh gunpowder was still strong in the air. Keo had sniffed it before he stumbled across the carnage, but hadn’t been sure.

He didn’t have any doubts now.

Shakers. He could tell that from their vests. The Deacon’s people. An ambush. A hell of an effective one, from the look of it. About a dozen men in all, shot to pieces. Their killers had left their weapons where they fell, and Keo lowered himself just low enough to pull a Beretta out of a dead Shaker’s holster. In the chaos of fleeing the bombed site with Claire, he had lost his own sidearm. He would have liked to grab more than just the pistol—there was a shotgun nearby—but he couldn’t spare the extra hand to carry it, too.

Pop-pop-pop from behind him.

Another firefight. Maybe another ambush. Who cares, as long as it wasn’t him in the middle of it.

He navigated his way through the dead Shakers. So many fresh faces. Young kids. The Deacon should really recruit older people. Keo hated to see kids die. Kids like Claire…

She’s not going to die tonight!

He picked up his pace. Keo didn’t know how he was doing any of this. Maybe it was like all those stories about mothers lifting a car in order to save a child that was stuck underneath the vehicle. Not that Claire was his child or anything, but the combination of desperately needing to save her and himself was perhaps all the motivation he needed.

His boots squished against stray pools of blood. How many of these were spread out across the woods right now? Shakers vs. Buckies. Once upon a time, they’d all been Shakers. But not anymore. What had Buck promised his followers to make them turn on their friends? What kind of bullshit story had he told them to get them to align with a goddamn blue-eyed ghoul?

Keo changed up his grip on Claire again, suddenly struggling to hold onto her. He wasn’t going to be able to keep this up forever. He could already feel himself becoming winded, the adrenaline that had pushed him through this last half hour starting to ebb. The pain was becoming more noticeable, and his legs were weakening, turning to jelly.

Keep moving. Keep moving!

He kept moving.

Keo wanted to wake Claire up and get her moving on her own two feet. But he couldn’t do that. Her injuries had knocked her unconscious. Unlike him, she wasn’t used to bleeding all over the place, which really said more about him than her, if he were being honest.

You really need to stop bleeding so much, pal. One of these days, you might not be able to stop the flow.

Yeah, one of these days.

But not today.

As he carried on, he started looking for a place to shelter. Maybe a cabin. Or maybe something natural, like a cave, similar to the one where he’d taken refuge in before.

Oh yeah, and that really worked out well, huh?

No, it hadn’t, but it was better than nothing. And right now, that was—

A gust of wind ripped across his area, and Keo had to stop and lean against a towering tree to keep from being thrown off his feet. He glanced up as a bright spotlight flashed in his face, nearly blinding him.

Keo would have shielded his eyes with his hands if he could have afforded to. But he couldn’t because he needed both hands to keep Claire from sliding off his shoulder. Both hands? When had he started using both hands?

It was a chopper, hovering over him, the wind from its rotor tearing into the overgrown stalks of grass and bending branches on trees within a huge radius.

Keo held on, not sure what to do. With the tree as support, he was able to take one hand off Claire’s body and reach down for the Beretta. Keo almost drew it, but didn’t. It was a gamble, but he thought a pretty reasonable one. (Mostly.) Whoever was up there—Bucky or Shaker or Black Tide—they had already spotted him. That was why there was a big spotlight on him at the moment, after all. If they wanted to kill him…

They didn’t because they hadn’t filled him with bullets yet. Which was good. Right now, it was the only good thing that had happened to him all night.

The chopper couldn’t land because there wasn’t enough room, but something did fall out of it.

A black-clad figure. It had rappelled down a rope attached to the chopper.

The man rushed toward Keo, holding out both hands at him. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

Keo grinned and wanted to tell the man, Hey, that’s my line!

Instead, he stood still as the man got closer. Black vest, ballistic helmet, and clear goggles.

Two more figures came down from the air behind the man, but instead of moving toward Keo, these two went the other direction, only to stop a moment later and unsling rifles. They were pulling security.

The first man stopped in front of Keo and waved his gloved hands in the air. The spotlight moved away, allowing Keo to (mostly) see again.

“Keo!” the man shouted over the roar of the chopper. “We’ve been looking for you!”

Keo didn’t bother to hide his shock. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m with Black Tide, sir!”

He wasn’t lying. The uniform was definitely Black Tide, right down to the inguz rune patch on the man’s shoulder. He was reaching for Claire. “I got her, sir. Give her to me.”

Keo did. He trusted the man. He didn’t know why—maybe it was the uniform—but he just did.

The Black Tider laid Claire on the ground and checked her pulse.

In the background, two more people had fast-roped down from the helicopter that continued to hover above them.

“Sir?” a woman said as she rushed over, reaching out gloved hands for his shoulders. “Sit down, sir. Let me take a look at you.”

Keo obeyed.

“It’s okay, sir,” the woman said. “You’re in good hands. We’ve been looking for you all night.”

Keo leaned back against the tree. Rough bark scraped at his back, but he ignored it. It felt good to be still in one place and sitting down again. Damn good. Maybe he should stay down here for a while.

Like a day.

Or a year.

The woman had taken out a small Maglite and was peering at his eyes and face. Unlike with the chopper’s lights earlier, he didn’t really feel the sharpness of these lights. “We gotta get him in, sir,” the woman was saying.

Keo thought she was talking to him at first, but quickly realized he was wrong. She was communicating with the man that had jumped down from the chopper first and was leaning over Claire’s unconscious form.

That man looked back at her. “How bad?”

“I don’t even know how he’s still alive, much less carrying her around,” the woman said.

Keo grinned and thought, You and me both, lady. You and me both.

He couldn’t say that out loud, of course, because he suddenly had a mouthful of grass and sod. For some reason, they both tasted a little bit like chicken.

Fifteen

“Is he dead?”

“No. He’s alive.”

“Are you sure? He looks…”

“I know, but he’s still got a heartbeat. It’s just not very strong.”

“What’s that mean?”

“He’s weak. They said he was poisoned. That took a lot out of him.”

“Poison did that?”

“That’s what the Shaker docs said.”

“That doesn’t look like any poison I’ve ever seen.”

“Me neither, but that’s what they said.”

“What do you say?”

“Nothing, until I can get him to someplace with better equipment. Whatever they hit him with, it was bad. Then there was all that running he did before we found him. He’s literally running on empty, and even that is being generous. Frankly, sir, I’m not sure how he’s even still alive.”

“So he might still die before the night’s out?”

“Chances aren’t good he’ll live to see the morning. Yes, sir.”

“He’s tough. Maybe he’ll prove you wrong. He’s proven a lot of people wrong before.”

“I hope so, sir. He’s a valuable asset.”

“You know him?”

“Not personally, but I’ve seen him a few times on the island. I’ve heard all about him, like everyone else. The stuff he’s done. They’re…”

“Crazy.”

“I was going to say legendary. But maybe crazy works, too.”

“He killed Mercer, you know.”

“I heard. Blew his brains out in his very own command center. Snuck onto the island to do it, too. They said it was some kind of suicide mission, but somehow he survived. He seems to do that a lot. Surviving when he’s not supposed to. Maybe he’ll pull that trick again.”

“Let’s hope he does it again this time. But I gotta tell the Commander.”

“What can he do?”

“Nothing, but I have my orders. You stay close to him. No one comes in or out of this place. Two guards outside at all times. They tried to kill him once, they could try again.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If he looks like he might go…”

“Sir? If he looks like he won’t make it, what should I do?”

“Don’t let him suffer.”

“Come again, sir?”

“You heard me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s a direct order from Black Tide Island.”

“Sir, may I ask?”

“What?”

“Does she know about him? His condition?”

“No. The Commander’s waiting for the right time to tell her.”

“When is the right time?”

“My guess is, he’s hoping never. And so am I. Like you said, he’s a valuable asset. I’d hate to lose a guy like him at a time like this…”

* * *

Someone once told him that life sucked, and then you die.

It was possible he was misremembering the exact wording, but he was pretty sure that was the gist of it.

Life, in general, just sucked. You got along just to get along until the time came when you didn’t have to anymore.

Or something to that effect. Bottom line was that he’d had better days.

Way, way better days.

He could hear, but his other senses came and went. Not being able to see or feel was heaven-sent. He didn’t particularly want to know what he looked like or in what kind of shape. (It was probably bad. Or whatever was worse than bad.)

Voices drifted back and forth, and he could only make out small snippets of conversation. Some words were clearer than others, but most of it was lost in a thick fog. They had given him enough sedatives to tranq a horse or two (or ten). He was grateful for that. He knew very well that the pain was still there and without the meds, he’d probably wish he were dead.

He wasn’t sure what had happened to Claire and could only assume the Black Tiders that found and rescued him had done the same for her. She was better off with them than him. All Keo could do was run around the woods with her over his shoulder. Not exactly a good idea when she was bleeding the way she was.

He thought he could hear the crackle of gunshots in the background but, like the voices, those came and went. He wasn’t sure where he was exactly, but it didn’t feel all too bad. Of course, that probably had more to do with the meds than anything.

So where were they taking him? To someplace safe, maybe.

Or not. What was safe these days?

Not much. Not with Buck and Merrick and their ghouls out there. Shakers and Buckies and Black Eyes 2.0.

Oh my!

He wanted to laugh. For all he knew, he might have. It was hard to know for sure.

Hard? Try impossible.

Then something out of the blue: The familiar sound of helicopter rotors.

Wait. Was he on a helicopter? It sure as heck didn’t feel like it. Whatever was underneath him was incredibly fluffy and comfortable, like clouds in heaven. Not that Keo thought he’d ever get to know the real thing. Oh, he was delusional at times, but he wasn’t that delusional.

Still, chopper blades. He was sure of it. He would recognize the whup-whup-whup anywhere.

He was on an aircraft, going somewhere. Where, was the question. There were a lot of questions, actually.

Such as, why was he still alive? What kind of poison had Buck’s assassin used on him? Why was it that everyone who took a look at him thought he wasn’t going to live through the night? Keo didn’t think he was 100% by any means, but he didn’t feel as if he was that bad off. Or maybe that was just his mind trying to trick him into not accepting the slow, creeping approach of death.

I should put that on a Hallmark card.

Keo couldn’t die tonight. He couldn’t die tomorrow or the days after that. It wasn’t just about him anymore. It was Lara and their unborn child.

God, what was he thinking, getting her pregnant? Not that it’d been on purpose. Condoms were in short supply these days (the ones that were still, well, viable, anyway), but Keo was confident he’d mastered the pull-out method a long time ago. Apparently he wasn’t quite as adept at it as he’d thought.

Live and learn, pal. Live and learn.

Precisely. Live and learn. He had every intention of doing both of those things, especially the living part.

Yessirree Bob. You bet he was going to keep on living—

Heat. There was heat all of a sudden.

And it was getting hot.

Hotter.

Why was it getting hotter?

Then, from the other side of the planet, a voice shouting, “Mayday! Mayday!”

Oh, that’s not good.

“Rotor’s gone! The rotor’s gone!”

Neither is that.

“Shit shit shit!”

My thoughts exactly, pal.

He tried to make his eyes open, but they wouldn’t comply. He tried to stand up, but that was a no-go, too. He wasn’t sure why he thought he could get up anyway; he could barely feel his hands and legs. That numb feeling he’d developed back in the wagon had come back with a vengeance.

“Mayday! Mayday!” The same guy shouting, still from the other side of the globe. Keo wanted to tell him to get closer so Keo could ask him some questions, like, what was he going all Maydaying about?

“We’re going down!” someone else shouted. A woman. Not familiar. “I repeat: We’re going down!”

If Keo thought the Mayday stuff was bad, then this was definitely badder.

Or worse. Worser?

One of those.

The heat had grown in intensity around him, even as people screamed and shouted incoherently. The same someone who kept repeating Mayday over and over again as if the last twenty times they said it weren’t enough was still at it. Keo wanted to tell him it was more than plenty, and he could stop now.

“Mayday! Mayday! We’re going down! I repeat: We’re going down! Mayday! Mayday!”

Oh, that’s definitely worsiest.

Christ, it was getting hot. Was he in an oven or something? Had they put him in an oven? How did that cure you of poison?

“Hold on!” someone shouted. The woman again, but this time she was closer, almost right next to him? “Everyone hold on!”

Hold on? Hold on to what? I can’t even feel my hands, lady!

Man, he hoped he still had his arms. Life would be so much harder if he’d lost them because of bucking Fuck.

Wait, that wasn’t right.

Bucking Fuck?

No, still wrong.

Fucking Buck?

Yeah, that was it. He got it right that time.

“Hold on! Hold on!” that same woman. She was so loud Keo swore she was right next to him.

Then the earth shook, and there was a cacophony of sounds: people screaming, the sound of metal grinding against metal, and every other thing that existed in the universe banging against one another.

And dooooooooown we go!

Sixteen

Wait. Didn’t I just do this?

Not quite, but it was close.

“How are you doing this?”

There were two of them—a man and a woman—but only the woman was conscious, so she was the one who had asked the question. Keo only knew that the man was still alive because he could hear his heartbeat. It was weak, but it was there.

…he could hear his heartbeat…

The woman’s name was Pierce. Keo only knew that because of the name tag on the front of her uniform. The man was Bronson. They were both crewmembers of the chopper that had gone down. The same aircraft Keo was a part of when it plummeted into the very forest he’d been trying to get out of for the last, oh, two or three or so days. Days tended to blur by when you were constantly on the run. Keo didn’t remember the last time he wasn’t fleeing someone or something.

He really, really needed to find something better to do with his life.

“You should be dead.” Pierce again.

Bronson didn’t say much. Or anything at all. Good, because Keo was getting tired of Pierce’s questions, especially since Keo didn’t have any answers for her.

He was dragging the two of them by their legs through the woods. He’d been doing that for the last half hour or so. Or maybe it was a few hours. Or less. Again, time had a way of being slippery when you had other things on your mind.

It wasn’t exactly the most ideal method to transport someone, but it wasn’t like Keo had any choice. He couldn’t carry them. Not both of them, anyway. It was one or the other, and Bronson was still alive.

…he could hear his heartbeat…

Dragging them by the feet wasn’t the most dignified way to make their escape (Keo knew that from firsthand experience), but Keo had to get them away from the chopper wreckage. The people that had shot it down would be on them at any moment to finish the job if he hesitated.

So he didn’t.

“Sir?” Pierce. “Sir, how are you doing this?”

He continued not answering her. He kept his eyes forward as he dragged the two bodies behind him. Pierce, despite her constant questions, didn’t struggle and thus made his job easier. Bronson…well, he didn’t do much of anything. He wished Pierce was just as compliant, then he would have been spared her voice.

His senses were sharper than he remembered, and apart from Bronson’s fading heartbeat, he could detect the sounds of squirrels moving along the branches above him. There was the flutter of feathers as birds took flight as he approached. There was a lot of fleeing, and not just by him. The animals in the woods wanted out, too.

I feel ya, pals. I feel ya.

It remained dark around him (God, this fucking night will never end), so it couldn’t have been very long since he had lost consciousness and was rescued by the Black Tiders. Or maybe it had been a long time ago and this was another night. Did that possibility make it better? No, not really.

The constant pops of gunfire in the background made him think it hadn’t been all that long ago. Because if it were, then the battle with Buck’s people was dragging on. That was entirely possible, but highly unlikely. With Black Tide forces in the fight, it shouldn’t have lasted very long.

The operative word, of course, being shouldn’t. Who knew what was possible these days?

Despite the fact it was night and the moonlight was hampered by the heavy tree crowns swaying in a cool breeze above him, Keo could see just fine. He wasn’t sure why that was the case. There were tracks on the ground from earlier; men in heavy boots moving across the same path he was treading. Still fresh, so it couldn’t have been all that long ago. His night eyes were surprisingly strong. Maybe they had just adapted and overcome.

Yeah, that was probably it.

“Keo.” The woman, Pierce, again. “Where are we going? Where are you taking—”

He spun around, dropping both hers and Bronson’s legs as he did so. Keo lifted one finger to his lips to shush her.

Her eyes widened in fear, but she didn’t need to do that. He wasn’t threatening her. He was just letting her know that they weren’t the only ones in the area.

Keo could hear them moving around out there, their boots crunching damp leaves and slapping at overgrown grass. He could smell them, too. They reeked.

Shakers.

Maybe The Deacon’s people or Buck’s. Buckies were former Shakers, and they all tended to stink the same.

Keo picked up both Bronson and Pierce by the legs again and dragged them over to a small crop of trees. He went into a slight crouch and scanned the woods.

Empty.

But not really. There were plenty of creatures around him, but he wasn’t worried about them. It was the men. The ones in boots and carrying weapons. He could smell the oils in their guns, different from their body odors.

Pierce had struggled up to a sitting position against the tree. She whispered, “What is it? What do you see?”

He shook his head. Keo didn’t know how to tell her. He didn’t actually see anything, but he could hear and smell them. There were men—A dozen? Maybe more?—walking toward their position. Unhurried. They were moving slowly, cautiously. Maybe they were even the men that had shot down the chopper. Lots of maybes.

“Keo?” Pierce said. She was still whispering, having already figured out there was someone out there other than them, even if she couldn’t see them.

He turned to her. “Stay here. Watch Bronson.”

“What about you?”

“Watch Bronson,” he said again before getting up.

“Hey,” Pierce said. Then, when he looked back at her, “Here.” Pierce leaned over and drew Bronson’s sidearm and held it, grip first, toward him. “You might need this.”

He was surprised to see the gun. It hadn’t occurred to him to arm himself before fleeing the crash. Pierce still had her own sidearm on her hip.

He took the Beretta.

“I don’t have any spares,” Pierce said.

“I’ll make do,” he said. He turned to go.

“Keo…”

He looked back at her.

“How?” she asked.

He cocked his head, confused by the question.

“How are you doing any of this?” she asked.

Keo shook his head. “I don’t know.” He turned and jogged off before she could ask any more questions he didn’t have answers to.

He could feel Pierce’s eyes on his back the entire time as he returned to the darkness, drawn deeper into the shadows by the smell of approaching men.

* * *

There were five of them and they were all Buckies. He could tell that from the bright-white Atlanta Falcons hat on their heads. A few of them had bloodied the brims of their headgear, and the others had dirtied theirs up. That was the pros and cons of wearing something that bright and new around in the middle of the night.

One of them was carrying an M72 LAW rocket launcher on his back. Keo wasn’t sure why the man was hanging onto it since the weapon was empty. The M72 was capable of only a single shot; it couldn’t be reloaded and reused. The only thing the launcher was good for now was to beat someone with it. Keo could taste the lingering odor of recent explosive residue clinging to the man’s clothes.

There was fresh blood on their clothes, and the tangy smell of more explosives and charred flesh clung to their individual outfits. They’d come from the wreckage. A few of them had stepped into pools of blood that squished as they moved across the woods in search of survivors. Keo had left plenty of evidence of escaping the crash.

They weren’t reckless as they marched, and a few even took time to watch their steps. Not that it helped. He could hear every clump their shoes made against the hard ground and the slightly elevated noise of their heartbeats. They weren’t afraid, but they were wary after a long night of fighting. Sour beads of sweat clung to their necks and other exposed parts of their body, despite the night chill. One of them let out a muffled cough every now and then, and the slap-slap-slap of tall grass against their pants legs might as well be bombs in his ears.

Keo flexed his fingers around the Beretta in his right hand as he watched them moving below him. He was high up and well-hidden. Unless one of them stood directly below him and looked up, Keo was all but invisible.

He let them pass by below first before he hopped down from the branch and landed in a slight crouch. He was halfway up when the first one—five meters away—turned around, alerted to the sound of Keo’s landing. He thought he’d been quiet as a mouse, but apparently not quite.

He shot the man in the face, then stepped forward and shot the second and third one even as they, too, started to turn. Keo didn’t bother with a second shot on either man. The 9mm Beretta only held ten rounds, and there were five of them.

Bang-bang-bang!

Three down, two to go.

Bang!

Four down, one to go.

The last one decided it was better to run instead of standing his ground. He’d gotten 20 meters away when he made the bad decision to slow down just enough to spin, raising his rifle as he did so.

Keo shot the man twice in the chest.

Six bullets. Five down.

Not bad.

He walked around the group of men and finished them off with one bullet to the head each. He didn’t really have to. Two of them were already dead—he couldn’t detect a heartbeat—and the other two were almost there. The first one didn’t have much of a face left to begin with. Still, it was better to be safe than sorry.

Keo tossed the Beretta and grabbed a belt off one of the dead Buckies and slipped it on. The belt came with a sheathed knife. Keo pulled the blade out. A KA-BAR with a silver coating. Just what the doctor ordered. He then took his time going through the others, picking up an M4 rifle and a Glock handgun from another dead Bucky. The one with the LAW slung over his back had landed on the missile launcher, which was buried behind him, making his prone body arch awkwardly. He also had a knife on him. It wasn’t a KA-BAR, but it did have silver along the blade. He put that one away for Pierce.

He thought about burying the bodies—or at least making them less obvious in case they were tracked down by their fellow Buckies—but decided he didn’t care enough to bother. Besides, if more of Buck’s people located him, then Keo would just kill them, too. It’d been relatively easy with these five. He didn’t think five more—or, hell, ten more—would make much of a difference.

…relatively easy with these five…

Why had it been so easy, though? Yes, he’d gotten the drop on them, but the way they’d moved… He swore it was like they were stuck in quicksand. He could have taken his sweet time picking them off one by one if he’d wanted to. They’d been that slow.

Why were they so slow? Or was he just that much faster? More prepared? More…something?

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

That was a good idea. He didn’t know how many other Buckies were still out here. He was certain these five were the ones that had brought down the Black Tide chopper. They could have radioed for support and there very well could be more men on their way. And that Beretta had made a hell of a lot of noises. Keo wasn’t fearful of more Buckies, but he’d rather avoid them if he could. He had Pierce and Bronson to think about.

Time to go.

He backtracked his way to where he’d left Pierce and Bronson, listening for hints of more Buckies in the woods.

Keo was halfway back to the Black Tiders when he heard something. A sound.

No, not a sound.

A voice.

It was a whisper.

He quickly slid behind the nearest tree and unslung the rifle, then scanned the woods for more Buckies.

There was nothing out there. Nothing on two feet, anyway.

But he was sure he’d heard a whisper. Where had it come from—

There it was again.

Faint, but it was there.

He looked left, then right, then behind him.

Then, because he had to be sure, above him.

Nothing.

Nothing anywhere.

And yet, he could still hear it.

Whispers.

Whispering…

…to him?

“Keo,” it said.

He spun around, ready to pull the trigger.

Where’d the sound come from? Where—

“Keo,” it said again.

It wasn’t his imagination. He’d heard it. Someone was saying his name. Whispering it.

But there was no one but him out here.

He slowed down his breathing in order to concentrate on listening, rifle still raised, his finger against the trigger and one eye behind the red dot sight. The gun was very light in his hands. He didn’t remember the M4s being this effortless to wield. Were there even still bullets in the mag?

He checked.

Yes, there were bullets. The Bucky he’d taken it off had kept it fully loaded.

Keo slid the mag back in and waited…

…and waited some more.

Ten seconds.

Twenty…

But there was just silence.

And yet, and yet, he was certain he’d heard someone say his name.

Keo lowered the M4. It was just his imagination. Or paranoia. (Either/or.) There was nothing out here but him. Nothing that could speak, anyway.

He slung the rifle and resumed walking back to Pierce and Bronson. A slight shiver raced up and down his spine as he did so, as if someone was walking on his grave. Except he wasn’t dead. He was very much alive.

His walk turned into a jog, then a full sprint seconds later.

Seventeen

Pierce and Bronson were where they were supposed to be, right where Keo left them. Pierce had a bead on Keo with her gun as he jogged out of the shadows. There was a brief hesitation on Pierce’s part as she watched him get closer. He wasn’t sure why that was; she could see it was him.

Finally, the woman lowered her gun. “What happened?”

“It’s over,” Keo said.

“What happened to them?”

“Does it matter?”

He thought she was about to say yes and ask some more questions, but instead she shook her head. “No. I guess it doesn’t.”

“How’s Bronson?”

“I patched up his wounds, but he’s not in good shape. We need to get him back to Arrowhead. That, or find some help around here.”

Keo thought about that. He didn’t even know where they were in relation to Arrowhead, or Shaker Town, for that matter. He didn’t know how long he’d been on the chopper before it was shot down. The immediate area didn’t look familiar. But then, every part of these woods tended to look the same. The only place where you could tell one section apart from another was closer to Arrowhead.

“Where are we?” he finally asked Pierce.

She stared at him.

“What?” Keo said.

“I thought you knew,” Pierce said.

He shook his head. “I was unconscious through most of the ride, remember?”

She nodded. “Yes. I remember.”

This time it was Keo’s turn to stare at her. The way she had said that—Yes. I remember—wasn’t as simple as it sounded. There was something else there, something hidden between the lines.

“What are you getting at?” Keo asked.

“You were unconscious, and then you weren’t,” Pierce said. “Then you were dragging me and Bronson away from the wreckage. How did you do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“How are you doing any of this? The last time I saw you, you weren’t even awake. We thought you were going to die on the way back to base to get medical help.”

Keo didn’t respond to her. Instead, he looked around, hoping to get a better feel for their location. It was a better option than trying to figure out what had happened to him before, during, and after the chopper crash. He didn’t like the way Pierce looked at him as she asked the questions. He also didn’t like that she’d almost shot him when she clearly saw it was him walking back to their position.

“Keo,” Pierce was saying. “How are you doing any of this?”

“I don’t know,” Keo said. Then, before she could ask anything else he didn’t have the answers for, “We need to keep moving. If there are more Buckies in the area, they would have heard the gunshots.” He looked back at her. “How far from Arrowhead are we?”

“I don’t know. Keeping track of our progress wasn’t my job.”

“What was your job?”

“Keeping you alive.” She paused, then, “Not that I really did anything. Or could.”

More questions couched as a statement, Keo thought. You know as much as I do, sister. Maybe more, ’cause I don’t know shit from shit.

He said, “Guess.”

“Twenty klicks?”

“So we’re still in Georgia.”

“That’s a given.”

“Shaker Town?”

Pierce shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve never been there. I just know that Arrowhead’s behind us. But…” She glanced around. “I don’t know where ‘behind us’ is at the moment.”

“All right. We need to find shelter for Bronson. Can you walk?”

Pierce struggled to stand up, but she did manage it even if it took a little longer than he would have liked. She favored her right leg, but didn’t have any visible wounds on her that he could see. Underneath her clothes was another matter, but he wasn’t going to ask her to show those to him.

“Can you walk?” he asked again.

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“We’ll find out, I guess.”

He crouched next to Bronson. The chopper pilot had remained unconscious throughout their trek. Unlike Pierce, Bronson had visible wounds along his face and legs. There was a big welt across his forehead where his helmet had smashed against him after the chopper he’d been flying met the ground. Keo himself had escaped mostly unscathed. At least he hadn’t walked out of the wreckage with anything he didn’t already have on his body or face before he got on it. It was less a miracle and more skill on the part of Bronson that all three of them were still alive. If nothing else, Keo owed the pilot that much.

Bronson was still breathing—albeit just as weakly—when Keo checked his vitals.

“He’s heavy,” Pierce said.

She wasn’t wrong. Bronson was in his fifties, gray hair, and had at least twenty pounds on him that the man didn’t really need. Pierce was shorter, younger (mid-thirties) and way thinner. Keo reminded himself to tell Danny to get his troops better conditioning.

Not that picking up Bronson and slinging the man’s limp body over his shoulder proved to be all that difficult.

“Or maybe not,” Pierce said, with that same It’s a question, but not a question tone.

“Let’s go,” Keo said.

“Where are we going?” Pierce asked as she hobbled after him.

“I told you. We need to find shelter.”

“Where is that?”

“I’ll tell you when we find it.”

“This reminds me of when we found you,” Pierce said.

Keo glanced back at her. “You were there?”

She nodded. “Same crew that was taking you back to base.”

“Who was in charge?”

“Captain Billicks.”

“Where is he?”

“Back there,” Pierce said, nodding toward the general direction of the crash site.

Should have known better than to ask, Keo thought.

He said, “Are you sure you can walk?”

“You’ll know it when I can’t anymore. I’ll be the one lying face-first on the ground.”

* * *

“Yeah, that doesn’t look creepy at all,” Pierce said.

Keo had to smile at that, even though he didn’t think it was that creepy.

It was a small building with two windows and a chimney, sitting inside a wide clearing that was in the process of being reclaimed by overgrown grass. Whoever had built the house had some skills. The outside was designed in a board-and-batten style, the lumber possibly made from the surrounding trees. The top edges were accented with strips of dark wood. Cedar, from the smell that still emanated from them. Not too old, so it clearly hadn’t existed before the end of the world.

Keo stood just within the tree line, beyond the clearing, with Bronson hoisted over his shoulder looking over the place. Pierce stood next to him, leaning against a tree for support. She had her Beretta in her hand and was slinging the M4 that Keo had taken off the dead Bucky. The extra knife with the silver blade he’d brought for her was on her left hip.

The cabin had a radio antenna on one side of the roof, but it was dangling off the side. Probably useless, but it wouldn’t hurt to take a look at it the first chance he got. There was also something that looked like a weathervane foundation, though whatever used to sit up there to point out the direction of the wind had long ago gone missing, Two windows at the front, but neither revealed anything with wooden slabs covering them. The same was true of the door, which had a secondary metal security gate over it. The gate, at the moment, was open. Even the chimney on top had rebars fastened over them.

Clearly, this was a home built by people used to uninvited guests, especially at night.

“Do you smell anything?” Pierce asked. She was sniffing the air as she asked the question.

“No,” Keo said. It was the first thing he did—made sure the area was clear of ghouls—when they approached the house.

“Not even a little bit?”

“No,” he said again.

He could also hear Pierce’s slightly accelerated heartbeat. It had been normal a few moments ago, before they stumbled across the cabin. She wasn’t afraid; not really, but she wasn’t confident, either.

“What now?” Pierce asked.

“You stay here and keep an eye on Bronson. I’ll check out the place.”

He laid the chopper pilot on the ground.

“Be careful,” Pierce said.

He stood up and walked out of the clearing and toward the house. Pierce had said Be careful, but what she really should have said was Don’t get shot dead because that was a very real possibility. Any second now, one of those wooden slabs over the windows could pop open and the barrel of a rifle might appear. Hell, if there was anyone inside, they wouldn’t even have to do that: Keo could see holes big enough for a rifle barrel to shoot him with the shooter never once having to reveal himself or his weapon.

So why was he walking nonchalantly toward the cabin anyway? Because he couldn’t hear anyone inside. There were no sounds, no heartbeats, and no smells. It was empty. He knew that without knowing how he knew, he just knew. Just like he also knew it was empty and no one had been inside for some time now. He could almost feel the heavy stink of abandonment coming off the building.

He wasn’t entirely alone, though. Besides Pierce and Bronson, a rabbit took off a few meters to his right as he approached. An owl watched him from a tall tree branch just behind the house, large eyes wondering what he was doing here.

Pierce’s heartbeat continued to be elevated behind him. Her heartbeat provided him with an interesting contrast to Bronson’s still-weak thump-thump-thump. Weak, but still there, and Keo owed it to the pilot to keep it that way. If he lived through the night to see Lara and his unborn child, it would be thanks to the Black Tider.

He focused on the cabin. He was less than 10 meters from it now, and no one had shot him yet. He couldn’t detect movement behind either windows, and the front door remained closed. The metal gate hung off one hinge and there were signs of damage to the doorframe. It was more a decoration now than something useful. Keo could see markings along the outside walls, like divots made by fingerprints digging into the wood. Dry blood from long ago clung to the door and parts of the slabs that covered the windows. Keo shouldn’t have been able to see that last part, but he could. He could also smell them, too. It didn’t matter how many years had passed; blood stood out to him like banging drums.

Behind him, Pierce’s breathing had gotten faster, more labored, as Keo reached for the door handle. There was a thumb latch at the top that he pressed down on and pushed inward. The door opened without resistance and with surprisingly very little creaking.

If this were a horror movie, something would lunge out at Keo right…about…now.

Nothing did, as Keo looked in.

There were no lights inside, and the place was darker than it had to be, with the boards over the windows keeping out moonlight. And yet, Keo could see just fine.

Layers of dust covered the floorboards and walls, and more flitted down from the ceiling. There was one big great room at the front and a small hallway in the back leading to what he guessed would be the bedrooms. A small kitchenette to the right, with a fireplace on the left side. There wasn’t anything that looked like furniture that he could see. So where had the previous owners sat? Apparently on the floor.

Once, long ago—a year, maybe more—someone had called this place home. Now it was an empty shell waiting for occupancy.

Good enough, Keo thought before looking back at Pierce and nodding. She relaxed noticeably, shoulders unloosening at the confirmation.

Keo walked back to where Pierce stood next to Bronson. “It’s empty. No one’s been inside for a while.”

“I don’t suppose it’s too much to ask for clean water in there?” Pierce asked.

“Probably just a tad.”

“Figures.”

“Look on the bright side…”

“There’s a bright side?”

“You’re still alive.”

“I guess there’s that.” She stared at him, her eyes saying words that she didn’t want to say. Or was too afraid to say.

Before she could change her mind, Keo picked Bronson up and slung the pilot over his shoulder. “Come on. We’ll hunker down and hope Black Tide sends someone to find us.”

“They’ll go to the crash site first,” Peirce said as she walked beside him, the Beretta still clutched in one hand. “It’s our last known location. Shouldn’t be too hard to find the Buckies you killed after that. I just hope they find us first.”

“Think positive.”

“What are you, Captain Optimism now?”

Keo grinned. “Sure, why not?”

Because I should be dead, he thought to himself. But I’m not. I don’t know why, or how, but I’m not.

And Goddamn if I don’t feel better now than I ever have in my entire life…

Eighteen

“This is cozy,” Pierce said as she settled behind one of the windows and leaned her rifle against the wall. “Reminds me of this place in Texas where we spent a few weeks after a mission. Our chopper ran into mechanical problems and we had to hunker down for a spell. That was after Darby Bay.”

“You were there?” Keo asked.

“Almost everyone I knew was, including me.” She glanced back at him. “So were you, from what I heard.”

“After. I didn’t get in until later.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I wish I was there when it went down.”

“Yeah, you would have made a big difference.”

She stared at him.

“What?” Keo said.

“Nothing,” Pierce said, and turned back to look out the hole in the wooden slab that covered the window.

That didn’t sound or look like nothing to me.

Instead of confronting Pierce, Keo turned to Bronson, who lay on the great room’s wooden floor. He hadn’t woken up since Keo dragged him away from the crash site and, from the looks of it, wasn’t going to anytime soon. There was a very good chance he might even die on them before the night was up. His heartbeat had remained weak. Too weak.

Keo left Bronson with Pierce and went to explore the small cabin. He didn’t think there was anyone hiding inside it, but you could never be too certain. Just in case, as the Black Tiders liked to say.

The walls were made from tongue and groove wood. Rough ones, from the looks of them, so the builder had done the job himself. Keo wondered how long it must have taken to build this place. However long, the guy (or guys) hadn’t taken shortcuts. This was as comfortable a “nowhere cabin” as he’d come across. The fireplace was a big plus, too, not that it got cold enough down here to necessitate one. Besides the small kitchenette, Keo guessed there was probably a larger area for cooking somewhere outside, possibly in the back. Many houses in Southeast Asia had what they called “dirty kitchens” for the really messy stuff.

He checked the two rooms in the back. Both bedrooms were small, barely bigger than a closet, and only one had a bed. It was old and musty, and he didn’t fancy sleeping in here overnight. He thought he could smell mold along the corners, and more than a few animals had made “deposits” in the dark spots. There were no clothes or anything remotely personal anywhere, so he had no idea what kind of people once used this place. There were no signs of a struggle or bloodstains despite the evidence he’d found outside noting the presence of ghouls. He guessed they never made it inside.

Besides the front door, there was a smaller back door. A small slot in the heavy oak wood could be opened by pushing aside a metal cover. Keo did that now and figured out why there wasn’t a bathroom inside: There was a wooden structure out back. Some kind of outhouse.

He returned to the great room. Pierce, like Bronson, didn’t look as if she’d moved even an inch while he was gone. The cabin had an arched ceiling with visible rafters that were covered with cobwebs and abandoned nests from birds that had somehow gotten inside. Signs that other creatures had also come and gone were everywhere.

Overall, it was a good place to spend the night.

A night, because Keo didn’t want to be here any longer than he had to.

He needed to go home.

He needed to return to Lara…

“Find anything useful?” Pierce asked without turning around.

“Nothing in the rooms,” Keo said. “There’s an outhouse out back if you need to go.”

“No thanks. I’ll just hold it until we’re rescued.”

“Now who’s Captain Optimistic?”

She snorted. “Can’t let you hog all the optimism.”

Keo walked to the other window and peeped out through the hole. There was no glass on either windows, just the wooden boards outside. Which made sense, since finding a replacement if someone broke the glass would have been a real pain in the ass. Besides, without air conditioning against the Georgian heat, two big openings would give the place plenty of breeze.

Looking out, he could see the clearing and the tree line on the other side clear as day. It wasn’t just the moonlight helping his vision, it was also that his night eyes had gotten better. Really, really better.

“There’s nothing out there,” Pierce was saying.

Oh, there’s something out there, all right. We just can’t see them yet.

Keo said out loud, “How long have you been with Black Tide, Pierce?”

“Three years. They recruited me out of my settlement in Florida.”

“Why’d you join?”

“Why not? Fun, adventure, and I get to fly around in a chopper. What more could a girl ask for?”

“A husband and a family?”

“Nah, not for me. Besides, I’m contributing to society. Black Tide’s a force for good out here, and I wanted to be a part of that. All I was doing back home was making bread and farming. That gets boring after a while. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Why’d you stay? I heard you’d left, but then you came back.”

Lara, Keo thought.

But he said out loud, “They needed help, so I helped.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“How long have you been out here? I mean, on this assignment?”

“Too long.”

“You miss home?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Keo said, although home wasn’t any place, but a person: Lara. Anywhere she was was home.

Keo looked back at Bronson, lying on the floor behind them next to the defunct fireplace. He remained unconscious, his heartbeat as weak as before.

He’s not going to make it. It’ll be a miracle if he makes it to morning.

“Keo,” Pierce said.

There was something in her voice that made him glance quickly across the cabin at her.

“I saw something,” Pierce said. “Outside.”

Keo turned back to his window and peered through the hole. “Where?”

“Near the tree line.”

Keo stared, but couldn’t see anything. It was dark, but his eyes were much better than they should be and he couldn’t make out a single thing beyond the trees and…more trees.

“I don’t see anything,” he said.

“It was movement,” Pierce said.

“Animals?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Too tall.”

Keo didn’t move a muscle and barely breathed as he eyed the tree line, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever it was that Pierce had seen. He didn’t doubt that she’d seen something out there. Pierce had survived a helicopter crash and made it through the night with him. She wasn’t prone to panic or hysteria, and if she said she saw something…

“It’s gone,” Pierce said. “I can’t find it anymore.”

Keo wasn’t just looking, but sniffing the air, too. There was no glass on the window to keep the outside world and its smells hidden from him, not that Keo thought he couldn’t overcome that obstacle anyway. Like every one of his senses, his olfactory was stronger than normal tonight.

And he found nothing.

“Maybe I was wrong,” Pierce said, although Keo didn’t think she completely believed that herself.

Keo gave up and sat down on the cabin’s wooden floor. “You should get some rest. I’ll take first watch and wake you up in—” He looked at his watch, but he wasn’t wearing one; they’d taken it off him before loading him into the chopper. “I don’t have a watch.”

Pierce still had hers, and she glanced down at it. “We’re almost there. Two hours until sunup.”

That surprised Keo. “Already?”

“What did you think the time was?”

“So I wasn’t at Arrowhead for even a single day?”

“No,” Pierce said. “An hour, tops, before we put you back into the chopper.”

“Goddammit.”

“What’s wrong?”

“This night…”

“What about it?”

“It’s never going to fucking end.”

“I thought you’d be used to it by now.”

“You would think so, right? But no.” He sighed, before remembering something else that had slipped his mind until now. “There was a girl with me when you guys found me in the woods. Claire. What happened to her?”

“She’s back at Arrowhead,” Pierce said. “Her wounds weren’t bad enough to transport her back to base with you. Last time I saw her, she was on her feet and getting ready to help defend the town from more attacks.”

Somehow, that didn’t surprise Keo at all. Claire, despite her injuries, would snap right back up even if she could barely stand, in order to help with the defense of Arrowhead. The kid had that kind of spunk, reminiscent of the women she modeled herself after.

I guess you got the better deal this time, kid.

From where he sat, Keo could see the back door on the other side of the cabin. It wasn’t very hard since the building wasn’t that big. He kept his ears and every one of his other senses open. He thought he could hear an owl—probably the same one he’d spotted earlier—hooting in the background. Above him, something scurried along the roof. Keo listened to it. He and squirrels went back a long way—

“Movement!” Pierce shouted from across the door.

Keo shot up to his feet and turned back to his own window, just in time to see two—three—four figures darting out of the tree line and racing across the clearing.

At first Keo thought it was an attack of some kind, but it didn’t make sense that one of them was a small girl. Why would anyone use a kid in an attack?

Pierce was already picking up the M4 from where she had leaned it when Keo said to her, “Don’t shoot.”

The Black Tider glanced over at him for confirmation.

“Don’t shoot,” Keo said again, even as he moved to the door and grabbed the latch to open it.

“What the hell are you doing?” Pierce shouted at him.

Keo ignored her and threw the door open. He did it for three reasons:

One: It didn’t make any sense that attackers would use a kid as part of their assault. Sure, they could have counted on her as some kind of human shield, but Keo didn’t think so. Even Buckies probably didn’t have that kind of cold-bloodedness in them. Probably.

Two: Besides the kid, there was one man and two women, and only the man and one of the women were armed with knives. Small knives, too, and not even a machete. The other woman was holding onto the kid’s hand as they ran.

And finally, three: They weren’t attacking the cabin, but were running from something. Keo could see the strain on their faces, hear the speeding thump-thump-thump of their heartbeats, and smell the fear oozing from their pores.

The man stopped in his tracks as Keo stepped outside, pulling the women back with him. They were out of breath, their faces white and covered with sweat. Other parts of them were similarly sweaty, but those were hidden under their clothes.

“Get inside,” Keo said.

They stared at him, then at each other, trying desperately to catch their breaths at the same time. The girl looked like she was about to fall over and never get up again. The man had blood on his forehead, and one of the women had a bloody rag wrapped around her left arm.

Keo looked past them and at the dark tree lines in the background. He hissed, much louder and with more emphasis than he really intended, “Inside. Now.”

They started moving again, and Keo stepped aside to let them in.

“Jesus Christ, what’s going on?” he heard Pierce say from inside the cabin.

Keo ignored the noises behind him to concentrate on what was in front of him.

On the shadows that were flickering in the darkness.

Dark black eyes appeared, one by one.

Two pairs…then three…more…

The stench of rotting flesh poured from their skin, the metallic taste of fresh blood dripping from their salivating mouths.

Ghouls.

A lot of ghouls.

Not the familiar Black Eyes he was used to before last night, but the other kind. The new variety. Which explained why they didn’t rush him the first second they spotted him outside the cabin.

They were waiting, watching him back silently.

“Keo?” Pierce, behind him.

“Don’t come outside,” Keo said.

“What—” Pierce started to say, but didn’t finish. He didn’t turn around to check, but he didn’t have to. She’d already seen the ghouls judging by her response: “Oh, fuck.”

Yeah, Keo thought as he retreated while never taking his eyes off the creatures in the woods. They remained inside the tree line, hiding in the shadows. Not that they could stay invisible to him. Keo’s eyes were better than they used to be. Even if they weren’t, he wouldn’t have missed their stench.

They glared at him and didn’t move, but they weren’t going anywhere, either.

Captain Optimism, Keo thought. Yeah, right.

Nineteen

“Why did you do that? Why did you let them in?”

Pierce was mad. Fuming. He didn’t even need to hear her speaking; he could see it on her face and the way her eyes bugged out as she glowered at him.

“They’re running from ghouls,” Keo said. “They weren’t attacking.”

“You didn’t know that.”

“I did.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I did,” Keo said. He considered telling her how he knew that but didn’t. Right now he was in charge, and she needed to accept it. “End of story. Go back to your window and keep an eye out. They’re going to attack soon.”

Pierce squinted at him. He wondered what was going through her head right at that moment. Was she thinking about using that Beretta in her hand on him? If not to shoot him, then maybe a love tap to the temple? Or was there something else? Maybe go back to the window and pick up the M4 he’d given her. Now wouldn’t that be ironic?

“Go,” Keo said, as gently as he could muster.

She didn’t. “How do you know they’ll attack soon?”

“What time is it?”

That did it. “Oh.”

“Don’t shoot unless you have to.”

“Why?”

“You have silver bullets? And spare mags?”

“Oh,” she said again.

“You don’t have a knife.”

“No. Neither do you.”

“So like I said: Conserve your ammo.”

Pierce’s body seemed to relax before she turned and walked back to camp out at her window. Not that she didn’t throw him a quick glance or two during the short walk between him and there.

Keo focused on the four people that had just joined them. One man, two women, and one girl. They huddled together, with the man the only one still standing. The women were catching their breath while the girl was staring at Bronson’s unconscious body, as if worried he might wake up at any second and attack them.

The man was in his late forties, with grays around the temple and sprinkled liberally among his long beard. He’d grown that beard out for some time, and there were leaves and other assorted items in it that he didn’t notice, but Keo did. His eyes were that good. The man gripped the knife like he knew how to use it. Keo couldn’t see, but he could smell blood on the blade.

Black blood. Ghoul blood.

The women were haggard, including the girl. They’d been running for their lives for quite some time now. Dirt and leaves clung to their clothes and shoes, and the girl had more than a few of everything in her hair. One of the women, maybe her mother—she was also blonde and in her late 30s—was cleaning up the girl, who continued to stare at Bronson’s unmoving form.

“Who are you?” the man asked. He hadn’t put the knife away and didn’t seem ready to do so anytime soon. Keo couldn’t say he blamed the man, given what had happened to them.

“You’re from Shaker Town,” Keo said.

The man’s eyes widened in surprise. “How did you know?”

I can smell the town on you, Keo thought.

He said, “Is it nearby?”

The man nodded. “About five miles from here.”

“You were there when the Buckies attacked,” Pierce said from the window.

“Buckies?” the man said.

“What’s a Buckies?” the woman who wasn’t cleaning up the girl asked. Late 20s with bright red hair. She had stood up next to the man, close enough that Keo guessed they were familiar with one another. Not really a couple; he didn’t get that vibe. Maybe siblings or good friends. She was the only other one in their group armed with her own knife.

“The Shakers that turned on the town,” Keo said. “We call them Buckies, after the man leading them. Who else is out there? How many survived the attack?”

The woman and man exchanged a look. From their somber expressions, Keo guessed the answer was not many.

“I don’t know,” the man said. “It was so chaotic. Lauren and me barely got out. We met Silvia and her daughter in the woods.”

The woman, Lauren, looked across the cabin at Pierce. “They’re still out there, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” Pierce said, peering out the hole in the wooden slab. “They’re just standing there. Why are they just standing there?”

“They’re waiting,” Keo said.

“Waiting for what?”

“Orders.” Then, to Lauren and the man, “So you four are the only ones that survived Shaker Town.”

“As far as we know,” the man said.

“What happened to your face?” the girl asked. She was now staring at Keo.

Keo looked down at her, momentarily caught off guard by not just her question, but the sound of her voice. It was squeaky and confident, which was surprising given what they had been doing—fleeing for their lives—all night.

“Mindy!” her mother Silvia said. She quickly glanced up at Keo. “I’m sorry. That was rude.”

Keo smiled. What else was he going to do? He’d gotten a pretty good idea that he didn’t look the same since he’d been in Pierce’s company, but he didn’t really know by how much. The truth was, he didn’t want to know. He felt good—better than good, actually—but he was very well aware that something wasn’t right with him.

“It’s been a long day,” Keo said to the girl. He turned back to the man. “Sit down and take a breather while you can. Sunup’s two hours away, give or take, but I doubt those skinnies out there are gonna let us see it without a fight.”

“Two hours,” Lauren said. “That’s close.”

“Not close enough,” Keo said.

* * *

Silvia and her daughter retreated into the bedroom with the bed while Keo took his position at his window. Lauren and the man, Brad, sat down near Bronson’s unresponsive body to gather their breaths. It turned out they were neighbors, though Keo thought he sensed there was something more than just that. It was in the way they stuck close to one another, like two people facing the world in tandem. Then again, it could have just been the fact they’d been fleeing ghouls all night and gotten to rely on one another as a result. Either way, they weren’t quite prepared to trust Keo and Pierce, but did so—to an extent—because they had no choice.

Keo didn’t really care too much about how they felt about him because he had bigger fish to fry. And that was the ghouls outside the cabin. He’d spotted four of them earlier, but he was sure there were more now. Not just in front, but out back, too. He could smell them, could feel the air parting, as if trying to escape, as they made their presence known.

Pierce couldn’t detect them the way Keo could, but she could clearly see the ones out front, hiding in the tree line. The Black Tider spent her time staring out there and checking her watch.

“How much longer?” Keo asked.

“Ninety minutes,” Pierce said.

“We’re almost there,” Lauren said. She sounded hopeful.

Keo didn’t want to dash that hope, so he tried to take their mind off it. “What happened back there? At Shaker Town?”

He’d heard the news from The Deacon’s men, via Claire, but Keo didn’t know the specifics.

“Ghouls,” Brad said. “They came out of nowhere. Swarmed the town.”

“‘Swarmed?’” Pierce said. “How many were there?”

“Too many,” Lauren said. She exchanged a look with Brad as if for confirmation. “The soldiers were gone and the only ones left weren’t ready to fight. We barely put up any resistance.”

“Why weren’t you with The Deacon’s army in the woods?” Keo asked Brad.

“I’m a baker,” Brad said. “Not exactly soldier material.”

Keo begged to differ. He’d seen the way Brad held his knife. He might have just been a baker, but he knew how to use that weapon. Many people didn’t; knives were just part of the uniform. It took real skill to survive with a blade. Brad had done that.

“They knew,” Pierce was saying. She was looking at Keo as she said it.

He nodded. “It was pre-planned. Buck knew what he was doing all along. Draw The Deacon’s forces out of Shaker Town and pounce. Add more soldiers to Merrick’s army.”

“Who’s Merrick?” Lauren asked.

“And who’s Buck?” Brad said.

“The people that took your town,” Keo said.

He didn’t bother to fill them in on his history with Buck and Merrick. The Shakers didn’t need to know because it did them no good. If anything, it might make them mistrust him even more than they already did.

“The same ones The Deacon was out there to fight,” Keo continued.

“I thought they were fighting the people at Arrowhead,” Lauren said.

“That was just a ploy. This was the endgame all along.”

“Black Tide,” Pierce said.

Keo nodded. “Draw you guys out here and finish it off with Merrick’s brood. He tried it before back in Texas. He hadn’t given up on that plan; he just revised it.”

He expected more questions from Lauren and Brad, but the two had lapsed into silence. Maybe they were just glad to be indoors again after their ordeal. Or maybe they were too afraid to know too much.

“They’re just standing there,” Pierce said after a while, her eyes fixed on the view outside.

“How many do you see?” Keo asked. He’d turned around and sat back down on the floor facing the Shakers to rest his eyes. He didn’t need to see the ghouls to know when they eventually attacked. It would be the most obvious thing in the world.

“I can make out five, but I think there’s more,” Pierce said. “It’s hard to pick them out from the darkness. They’re Black Eyes, but…”

“What?”

“They don’t behave like Black Eyes.” He sensed her eyes turning toward him as she continued. “What are they?”

“Black Eyes 2.0. A new breed of Black Eyes.”

Lauren sneaked glances across the room at him as she listened in on his conversation with Pierce. Not that she really needed to try. It wasn’t a particularly big cabin, and neither Keo nor Pierce were doing anything to keep their voices down.

“They’re faster, smarter, and tougher to kill,” Keo said, as much to Pierce as to Lauren and Brad. “You’ll need to shoot them in the brain or lop off their heads to kill them.”

“And more patient, apparently,” Pierce said.

“That, too.”

“They were at Shaker Town,” Brad said. “These 2.0 creatures you’re talking about. I tried to kill one of them with a bigger knife than this one, and it didn’t work. It just got up and attacked again. I barely got away.”

“The knife had silver?” Pierce asked.

“Yes. That’s why I was so shocked it didn’t go down.”

“Next time, go for the head,” Keo said.

“How do you know this?” Lauren asked. She was staring at him intently. Maybe she didn’t think he could see just how intense in the limited natural light of the cabin, but it was clear as day to Keo.

“I’ve fought them before,” Keo said. “Last night, and tonight. So next time you see them, go for the brain or take off their heads. It’s the only ways to kill them. Any other way just slows them down.”

“Keo,” Pierce said. Then, when Keo looked over at her (so did Lauren and Brad), “Something’s happening out there.”

Keo got up and turned around to peek out the wooden slab.

Pierce was right. There was new movement outside. The ghouls weren’t just standing among the trees anymore, but they were also in the trees, perched on the branches. They were so light and rail-thin that the trees didn’t even put up a fight against their weight.

A dozen in all, now. And that was just the ones in front of him. He could smell the ones back there. Another dozen.

“Keo.”

He glanced over at Pierce, who was staring out the window. He thought she’d said his name, but the way she was concentrating on what was outside at the moment…

“Keo.”

The voice again. It was in his head.

…it was in his head…

Keo reached up and tapped his temple with one palm.

“You okay?” Lauren, behind him.

He shook his head but didn’t answer her.

“What’s wrong?” This was Brad. He sounded on edge.

“Nothing,” Keo said, and looked back out the window. “Get ready. They’re going to attack soon.”

“Just over an hour before sunup,” Pierce said. “If we can hold them off till then…”

If, Keo thought.

He walked over to the two Shakers huddled in the back. He drew the Glock he’d taken off a dead Bucky and handed it to Lauren, along with a spare magazine.

“You know how to use it?” he asked.

She nodded. “Yes. But why?”

“You’ll need it. If they get in, make a run for the room. If we don’t join you…”

She nodded, and so did Brad. Neither one of them needed Keo to finish the rest. For a pair of civilians, they had good heads on their shoulders. He guessed that was why they’d survived when the rest of their town had succumbed.

Keo considered telling them that if neither he nor Pierce made it back there with them, then they wouldn’t stand much of a chance anyway. If the ghouls got inside, they could avoid the approaching sunlight and wait the civilians out. Keo had been inside both rooms, and there were no windows to escape through. So even that shelter was only temporary.

But he didn’t tell them that.

Keo walked back to his window and looked across at Pierce, who matched his gaze with her own. “Slow them down any way you can, then go for the head. It’s the only way. Silver doesn’t kill them anymore, but it does hurt them.”

Pierce nodded back, but didn’t say anything. He remembered what she’d told him about why she’d joined Black Tide.

“I’m contributing to society. Black Tide’s a force for good out here, and I wanted to be a part of that.”

He was wondering if she was regretting that statement right now. There was no doubt in his mind it was a hell of a lot safer in her boring Florida town tonight.

“Keo,” the voice said inside his head.

He ignored it and looked out the window.

There, among the Black Eyes, was a pair of glowing blue eyes that hadn’t been there before. They were impossible to miss, like a siren’s song calling to him, much like the voice in his head.

Merrick.

“Keo,” the blue-eyed ghoul said, its voice, somehow, echoing inside Keo’s head for only him to hear.

Twenty

“Keo.”

It’s you.

“You recognize my voice. I’m flattered.”

Don’t be.

“You don’t have a choice in this, I’m afraid.”

How is this possible?

“You know how. You just don’t want to accept it.”

I don’t…

“Yes, you do.”

I’m the only one who can hear you.

“Are you sure about that?”

You’re in my head.

“Am I?”

Yes.

“Maybe you’re just imagining my voice. Maybe none of this is real. Maybe, just maybe, this conversation is all in your mind.”

No. It’s not.

“Are you sure?”

Yes.

“Are you sure?”

Yes. I can hear you. You were the one saying my name all night.

“Ah, so you did hear me. I was beginning to doubt if our connection had actually developed.”

You’re in my head.

“Perhaps.”

Liar.

It laughed. Or something that sounded like laughter. “Everyone is a liar, Keo. And I was, once upon a time, everyone, too.”

What do you want?

“What do you think I want?”

I have no idea.

“Yes, you do.”

Just tell me already, goddammit.

It laughed again. “I need soldiers, Keo. More than that, I need someone to command them. I need your skills.”

This time it was Keo who laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Pierce, squinting at him from across the cabin door. Keo hadn’t realized he’d done it out loud.

“Nothing,” Keo said.

“That didn’t sound like nothing.”

“Just a stupid joke.”

“What was it?”

“You wouldn’t get it,” Keo said, and didn’t follow through. He was hoping Pierce would let it go.

She may or may not have, but she did turn to look out the window at the ghouls outside. Black-eyed ghouls, with one very familiar Blue Eyes standing among them.

Merrick.

The same bastard that was in his head right now.

“Oh, come on,” that bastard said (Thought?) inside his head. “That’s very rude of you, Keo. I was hoping we could be friends.”

Is that right, asshole?

It laughed. “Again, so rude. Didn’t your mom teach you better?”

You won’t think it’s very rude when I cut your head off.

“How ambitious of you.”

Is that why you brought so many ghouls with you? Because you’re scared of me?

“Is that what you think?”

Isn’t it?

“You think too highly of yourself.”

Nah. I’m just being honest.

Another attempt at a laugh by Merrick. Keo wondered if it had to do that physically as well as just inside his head. He could still see it out there, standing among the Black Eyes. Far enough that Keo couldn’t see its mouth moving when it “talked” to him.

“That’s a fucking blue-eyed ghoul,” Pierce said.

“Yes, it is,” Keo said.

“A what?” Lauren, moving behind him. “Did she just say a blue-eyed ghoul?”

“She did,” Keo said.

“Fuck me,” Brad said.

Keo smiled. Yeah, that about sums it up, pal.

“I see everyone’s talking about me,” Merrick said inside Keo’s head.

Motherfucker. Get out of my head.

It laughed. “Never.”

“How many?” Lauren, appearing next to him. She peered out the window.

“Lauren, what do you see?” Brad asked from the back.

“They’re right. There’s a Blue Eyes out there.”

“What’s it doing?”

“Nothing. It’s not doing anything. It’s just…standing there.” She looked over at Keo. “What does it want?”

“I don’t know,” Keo lied.

Or was he? Did he know what Merrick and its brood wanted? Besides the usual, which was their blood to feed their undying cravings? Did he know more than he was willing to tell them? More than he was willing to admit to himself?

“Keo,” Pierce said. Then, when he looked over in her direction, “What’s happening?”

He was going to say, How would I know, but he didn’t because he had a feeling Pierce knew more than she was willing to say out loud. Or at least, say in front of Brad and Lauren. She’d been with him for a while now—it’d only been hours, but it felt like an eternity since the crash—and had seen him do things that he shouldn’t have been able to. Lying to her now wasn’t going to work.

“It wants me,” Keo said.

“Why?” Pierce asked.

“It wants you?” Brad said. He’d stepped forward and, Keo couldn’t help but notice, had tightened his grip around his knife. “What do you mean it wants you?”

“It’s difficult to explain,” Keo said.

“Try.” And the Shaker took another step toward him.

Keo turned to face the man. Brad had the look of someone ready to kill. And he had the tool to do it, too.

“Back off,” Keo said.

“Tell me,” Brad said, and took another step. It was a small cabin, and he didn’t really have a lot of space left to go before he was right in front of Keo’s face. “Tell us what you know.” Then, “Lauren…”

The woman hurried away from Keo, her own knife out and gripped tightly in her hand. She hadn’t gone for the Glock stuffed in her front waistband. Now that would have been ironic if she’d ended up using the gun he’d given her on him.

Behind her, Pierce watched on, but didn’t interfere. Keo wasn’t sure how to take that: Was she on his side or theirs?

“Tell us,” Brad was saying. Demanding.

“You don’t want to do this,” Keo said.

“You have the answers.”

“No.”

“You’re lying,” Lauren said. She might as well have spat at him. She changed her grip on the knife. “Tell us!”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Keo said.

Whether they had planned it or not, Lauren was on his right and Brad on the left. Not exactly cornered, but they did have him outflanked.

And Pierce, at her window, wasn’t in the mood to intervene. Maybe she, too, wanted to know what Brad and Lauren did.

“Tell us!” Brad shouted as he took another step.

“I said, back off,” Keo said.

But Brad didn’t. Instead, he took yet another step toward Keo, the knife in his hand moving slightly. “I’m gonna ask you one last time, mister. Tell us what you know, or God help me—”

“You’ll do what?” Keo asked.

“I’ll beat it out of you!”

Click as one of the bedroom doors opened and Silvia peered out. “Is everything okay? I heard screaming…”

She’d gotten screaming out when Brad took the moment to charge. He was lifting his knife to slash when Keo grabbed him by the shirt collar, lifted him up, and flung him backward through the air.

There was a loud crack as Brad slammed into the wall on the other side of the cabin and slumped to the floor, his knife clattering away. The Shaker lay on his stomach, gasping for breath, as Lauren rushed to his side.

Pierce, meanwhile, was staring at him, the Beretta in her hand while the M4 leaned against the wall nearby, within easy reach. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. Her face said it all.

“How long before sunup?” Keo asked her.

She didn’t answer him.

“Pierce,” Keo said. “How long.”

“An hour,” Pierce said. “We’re not going to make it, are we?”

“We will. Just not all of us.”

Silvia, meanwhile, had quickly closed the door back up, and Keo heard the clack-clack of a deadbolt sliding into place.

Smart woman.

He turned to look out the window, at the blue-eyed ghoul staring back at him.

It was smiling.

Or sneering.

Either/or.

“You know now, don’t you?” Merrick said inside Keo’s head.

Know what?

“You know why your wounds have healed. Why you feel better tonight than you ever have in your entire life.”

I don’t…

“Yes, you do. You couldn’t fight like this in your best days.”

What are you saying?

“You know what I’m saying. Accept it.”

There’s nothing to accept.

“Isn’t there?”

No…

“You’ve been lying to yourself all night. You don’t want to admit it.”

I don’t…

“Stop lying to yourself, Keo. You know.”

He sighed. It was right. He did know.

It all went back to the knife. The same one that Buck’s assassin had tried to kill Keo with. It had been laced with poison.

Or that was what everyone thought.

It wasn’t poison, was it?

“No, it wasn’t,” Merrick said. “It was my blood on that blade. My blood that runs through your veins now. Did you think you’d just gotten stronger for no reason? Could see better? Hear better? Do everything better? You’ve been lying to yourself all night, Keo. You already knew, you just didn’t want to accept it.”

It laughed. It was a horrific sound that left Keo’s ears ringing.

“Welcome to the family, Keo.”

Twenty-One

“Keo.”

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.” Keo looked around. “Where are we? And how did I get here?”

“Relax. And pay attention.”

Merrick was talking. Or the person that used to be Merrick. The man was tall, but not spindly like a ghoul; his arms were properly proportioned and so were his legs, neck, and head.

The man (It’s not a man. It’s a thing. And this is a trick.) stood on top of a small hill gazing down at Keo with light (but not pulsating) blue eyes from underneath the brim of a fedora. A three-piece suit, white dress shirt, and blood-red tie. Dress shoes and white socks finished up the very human wardrobe.

“I was human, once upon a time,” Merrick said. “But those days are long gone. For the better.”

Keo knew it was Merrick even though he didn’t even know how. Or what Merrick used to be. The human that was transformed into a ghoul.

“I’ve been around longer than you’ve been alive, Keo,” the creature disguising himself as a man said. “And I’ll be here long after you and your kind are gone.”

“You’re putting the cart before the horse, pal. First you gotta survive me.”

“Funny, because I was going to say the same thing to you.”

Keo sneered. “We’ll see about that.”

“Yes, we will.” Merrick turned and looked down the other side of the hill. “It’s a nice view up here. You should take a look.”

“I’ll pass.”

“You really should, Keo.”

What I should do is grab the biggest rock and bash your fucking skull in with it, Keo thought even as he continued glancing around him.

Except there wasn’t anything here that looked even remotely like a weapon. It was an impossibly bright sunny day, one of those days that you only saw in pictures or movies. The heat against Keo’s skin was relaxing, and there was no denying that Merrick was walking around in sunlight.

Which meant this wasn’t real.

He was in some kind of dream. Or trance. Or hypnotic state. He wasn’t sure which answer made him feel better.

None sounds about right.

Merrick had been inside his head, talking to him, before this. The last thing Keo remembered was looking out the cabin window at the creature as it stood among its brood, staring back across the clearing at him.

And then he was here. Wherever here was.

A countryside. It didn’t look familiar, though. Then again, one country tended to look the same as another. There wasn’t anything that resembled civilization wherever he turned. Just hills and trees and grass. Yellow flowers sprinkled the landscape, rising high into the air as if trying to reach the sun itself. A slight breeze, both cold and hot, and just right.

It was just him and Merrick.

He closed his eyes and tried to escape. He wasn’t sure how, but there had to be a way out of this.

It didn’t work.

When he opened his eyes, he was still there.

Shit.

“You really should see this,” Merrick said from the top of the hill.

Keo sighed, before turning and walking up the hill toward the ghoul. It kept its back to him, unafraid Keo might attack it from behind. Keo imagined pushing it off the hill and watching it roll down. Now that would be fun.

“Don’t be so childish,” Merrick said.

Keo had forgotten that the ghoul could read his thoughts.

Sonofabitch.

“I heard that, too,” Merrick said.

“Fuck off,” Keo said aloud.

Merrick might have chuckled, but Keo couldn’t tell with the man’s back turned to him. Keo walked all the way up, fighting the urge to throw a shoulder into Merrick’s long and oh-so-inviting exposed back.

Instead, he stopped next to the (ghoul) man and followed his gaze down the other side of the hill, while also sneaking sideways glances at the man. Merrick had drooping shoulders and pale skin. Underneath the fedora, there were plain features. Crooked nose, thin lips, and shallow cheeks.

“What’s got your panties into a bunch? You ghouls still wear panties, by the way?” Keo asked.

Merrick ignored his taunting. “Look.”

Keo did.

There was a city in the distance. Looming skyscrapers circled by elevated highways. And beyond those, the glinting rooftops of homes in suburban subdivisions. Paved roads low to the ground extended out of the unnamed city and toward destinations unknown. Birds flew in patterns around the image, and Keo thought he could hear horns honking and people chattering, but they were all very…dreamlike.

“It’s a city, big whoops,” Keo said. “I’ve seen cities before.”

“Look closer,” Merrick said.

Keo wasn’t sure what the ghoul wanted him to see—until he saw it.

Or, to be more precise, them.

Two figures walking along the base of the same hill that Keo and Merrick were standing on. Far from the city, but it was clear they’d come from there. (Keo wasn’t sure how that was clear but it was, in his mind.) An adult woman and a little girl. They were setting up a blanket for a picnic, while a third figure—a man—flew a kite that Keo hadn’t seen before but now couldn’t miss. The kite had a very familiar pattern on its underbelly: An inguz rune.

Despite the fact the two women were very close to where he stood, Keo had difficulty making out their faces. It was the same with the man’s. He was looking at a family, that much was clear. A happy family. Mom, dad, and child.

…mom, dad, and child…

Slowly, the woman’s face began to clear up. Crystal blue eyes (Keo wasn’t sure how he could see that from where he stood, but he could) and long blonde hair in a ponytail. The girl helping her make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches had the same pale complexion and light blonde hair. The child was making a mess as her mother directed her on how to properly apply peanut butter to a piece of bread.

Lara. It was Lara.

A few years older, but it was her. Keo would recognize her anywhere.

Who was the kid? Or the man in the background?

Then, as before, the man’s face slowly came into focus as he headed toward the women, pulling the kite with him.

It was him. It was Keo.

Again, like Lara, the him down there was a few years older. But unlike Lara, he’d aged more noticeably. Grays along the temple and obvious crow’s feet. And there was something else about the him down there that Keo hadn’t seen in a long time: His scars were gone. Even Pollard’s good-bye gift was missing.

If the other him or Lara noticed Keo and Merrick standing on top of the hill watching them, neither of them paid any attention.

“What is this?” Keo asked.

He wasn’t sure how to react to what he was seeing. It was clearly a lie. As far as he knew, he was still at the cabin right this second, with Pierce and the surviving Shakers waiting for Merrick to attack before sunup. So whoever was down there—the man that looked like him, and the woman that resembled Lara—couldn’t be real.

“It’s what can be,” Merrick said.

“Can be what?”

“Your future.”

“The future I’m expecting looks a lot different than that.”

“You can have this.”

“Bullshit.”

“All you have to do is stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop fighting me.”

“And then?”

“Become one of my brood.”

“And how the hell is that going to help me get this?”

“It won’t be completely like this, but it will be close enough. This is just one possibility. There are many others. Stop fighting me, and you’ll be able to carve out your own future with her. With the child.”

The other him had tied the kite’s string to some kind of spike he’d pushed into the ground before sitting down on the blanket. The Lara that wasn’t Lara but looked like her was guiding a sandwich into his mouth even as he uncorked a bottle of red wine. It was a nice vintage bottle of Brunello di Montalcino. One of Keo’s favorites, but hard to find these days.

“Wine too, huh?” Keo said.

“Why not?” Merrick said.

“Because it’s impossible. All of this is impossible. Especially after what you did to me.”

Keo looked down at his hands. He clenched them into fists, then relaxed them. He could feel the blood flowing. But whose blood was it? His? Or Merrick’s?

“I made you more than what you used to be,” Merrick said.

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“Nonetheless, you’ve changed. Stronger, faster, and better at everything. All you have to do now is embrace who you’ve become.”

“You mean what I’ve become.”

“We are just another stage in evolution, Keo. As your species is to Homo erectus or Australopithecus before you. The same, but different. Mabry spent centuries trying to find a way to coexist with your kind. But eventually he came to the inevitable conclusion that it was an impossible feat. Our species cannot coexist. So one must replace the other.”

“Let me guess: You’re nominating yourselves?”

“One of us has to rise to the top.”

“Frank already made that choice when he took a bite out of Mabry in Houston.”

The mention of Mabry’s death made Merrick wince.

Keo grinned. “You weren’t there, were you?”

“No,” Merrick said. “I was busy elsewhere. But if I’d been there, I would have stopped your little party in the sewers. You would never have reached Mabry.”

“Easy for you to say now, but you weren’t there. I was, though. It was one hell of a party, let me tell you. Everyone who was anyone showed up. Except you. Which means…”

Merrick turned to face Keo. It was the first time the creature really glared at him from a close distance while disguised as a man.

Keo returned the intense gaze. There was nothing exceptional about Merrick. If anything, he came across as old and tired and frail. There was no fear in Keo. Whatever this was—this mirage—it elicited the exact opposite reaction from Keo that Merrick probably expected.

“You don’t look so good, Merrick,” Keo said. “Long night for you, too?”

Merrick smiled. It was unexpected, and Keo felt a slight chill race up and down his spine, and it was all he could do to hide it. He thought he was successful.

Mostly.

“Look at them, Keo,” Merrick said, nodding down the hill.

Keo did—for just a brief second or two. He didn’t need to look any longer, because what was down there wasn’t real. He knew that, just as he knew it was all Merrick’s doing. The creature was in his head, and all of this was nothing more than a fabrication. A trick. An illusion to appeal to his love for Lara and the child inside her.

“What about it?” Keo said.

“You can have that,” Merrick said.

“I will have that. After I kill you.” Keo grinned at the taller but skinnier figure in the fedora. “That’s why you brought me here. That’s why you’re doing this. You’re still scared of me.”

Keo took a step toward Merrick, and the ghoul took one quick step back in response. The sudden flash of confusion on his face was all Keo needed to know that he was on the right track.

“What do you think was going to happen when you had that Bucky stick his knife in me, with your blood on the blade?” Keo asked.

Merrick’s eyes grew impossibly small as he squinted out from underneath the brim of his fedora.

“I’ll tell you what happened: Nothing like what you were expecting,” Keo said as he took another step toward Merrick.

The ghoul retreated another step.

“You see, I knew this guy named Frank,” Keo continued. “Frank was a good guy. A great guy, actually. But he was turned. Except ol’ Frank didn’t like being a blue-eyed ghoul, so he fought it. He fought like hell. We spent a lot of nights together, and Frank told me all about it. You know how it is, boys talking over campfires.”

Keo stopped, and so did Merrick.

“You thought I would turn, but I didn’t,” Keo said. “Instead, I’m still me. Maybe not all me, but I’m still mostly me. I can feel it.”

“You’re lying to yourself,” Merrick said. It smiled. Or tried to. It wasn’t very convincing. “You’re one of us now.”

“So why bother with all of this?” Keo said, waving down the hill at the other him eating and drinking with a Lara that didn’t exist, with a little girl that wasn’t born yet. “Why would you waste your time trying to convince me with this bullshit if I’m already one of you?”

Keo grinned even wider.

“You fucked up, Merrick,” he said. “You took a chance at turning me because you’re scared of me. I can see it in your eyes. After I almost killed your ass back at the cave, you’ve been running from me. That shit on the train. That was you. You lured me there and tried to get your Black Eyes to finish me off, but they failed. Just like you’re failing now.” Keo’s grin turned into a smirk. “I gotta say, Merrick, I expected a lot more from you. This is pathetic.”

“Fine,” Merrick said. He reached down and buttoned up his suit like a distinguished man that had tripped and fallen into a puddle of mud in front of everyone, now trying to restore some of his dignity. “I tried to do this the easy way, but we can do this your way, too. The hard way.”

“Whatcha got in mind?” Keo asked.

This time it was Merrick who smiled widely. “‘Got in mind?’ Keo, it’s already started.”

Keo took a staggered step back, then another one, just before he heard a voice shouting his name:

“Keo!”

He spun around, searching for the voice.

“Keo!”

He glanced down the hillside at the other him and Lara, but they were gone. There was nothing down there. Even the city in the distance had disappeared.

“Get your shit together, Keo!”

The voice was coming from nowhere and everywhere. It sounded familiar.

It sounded like…Pierce?

“Keo, goddammit! Keo! We’re under attack! We’re under attack!”

Twenty-Two

“Keo, goddammit!”

Pierce.

“What are you doing?”

That was Pierce.

“Snap out of it!”

Screaming.

“Don’t just stand there!”

At the top of her lungs.

“Get your shit in the game!”

Damn, the woman was loud.

“Keo! Keo!”

But it worked, and Keo did snap out of it. He didn’t quite get his shit in the game just yet, because he was too busy trying to process what was happening around him.

Chaos.

Bloody chaos.

And completely FUBARATS.

They’d come down the chimney and taken Bronson. Or Keo assumed they’d absconded with the chopper pilot because he was missing, with only a thick bloody patch in the spot where Keo last saw him.

The Shakers were still around, but they were in over their heads. Both Brad and Lauren were swinging their knives, but there were too many ghouls coming out of the fireplace, pouring into the cabin one after another after another. Lauren fired a few shots from the Glock he’d given her, but she was smartly conserving as much ammo as possible and only shooting when one of the creatures got too close.

There were so many of the ghouls that they trampled over each other. The survivors of Shaker Town had retreated into the back hallway but hadn’t gone into the rooms yet. They were keeping it as a last resort. Keo wanted to tell them that this was it.

As for Pierce, the Black Tider was still on her feet and shooting. Her M4 spat fire as the ghouls charged her. Most of them staggered as they were hit, and a few fell and stayed down when Pierce managed to nail them in the head.

It wasn’t just the chimney. More were trying to squeeze their way through the window. Fortunately, whatever had made these new versions of Black Eyes more resilient to silver, it hadn’t made them any stronger, and they struggled with the wooden board that covered both windows. That gave Pierce time to shoot at them from almost point-blank range when she wasn’t busy with the ones charging her.

And that’s when the other ghouls started coming for Keo.

He wasn’t entirely sure why they hadn’t come for him before. As far as he knew he’d been standing next to his own window staring at nothing, stuck in whatever stupor Merrick had put him in. He had been the perfect prey.

Except they hadn’t attacked him right away. Instead, they’d gone for Bronson’s body (had he even woken up or fought back when they dragged him up the chimney?) before pursuing the Shakers and Pierce. The only possibility was that Merrick had told them not to attack him.

Until now.

It didn’t take long for Keo to be ready. The KA-BAR was in his hand in an instant—he wasn’t even sure when he’d reached for it; it was just suddenly there—and he slashed at the first ghoul to lunge at him.

Its head flicked to the left while the rest of its body flopped to the right, an arc of blood splashing against the floor and part of the wall with a satisfying slappp.

Keo looked over the throng of ghouls and shouted at the Shakers, “Get into the room! Now!”

He didn’t watch them obey or disobey. It was their decision whether they did or not. He had other things to worry about.

Namely the two—three—four ghouls charging at him.

Damn, Merrick, cut a guy some slack, why dontcha? he thought with a slight out-loud chuckle.

The blade in his hand sang as Keo waded into them, slicing off an arm at the elbow, another at the shoulder, and hacking into the very thin neck of a third. Not that he’d had to do it so aggressively. They were fast and hard to kill, but their bones and flesh were still incredibly frail and weak, and easy to cut through.

A ghoul leapt at him, catapulting itself over the ones in front of it. Keo snatched it out of the air with one hand, fingers grappling it around the thin neck (he thought something might have popped as he did so) and threw it into another pile of ghouls rushing toward Pierce. They fell like bowling pins.

That time Keo knew he’d laughed out loud, because Pierce, across the cabin, glanced over in his direction with a What the fuck is wrong with you? look on her face. Then she was shooting and slashing and kicking as they backed her into a corner. He considered going to help Pierce, but she appeared to be doing okay.

Then he realized it was he who should be more worried, because the Black Eyes began diverting their numbers from Pierce and toward him. With the Shakers gone (Keo hadn’t seen which bedroom door they’d gone through; he assumed it was the same one with the mother and daughter), there was only him and Pierce now to occupy the ghouls’ attention. But even with two people to choose from, they were intent on getting to him.

Fuck you, Merrick.

They were fast. Faster than the Black Eyes 1.0. But then, so was Keo. He didn’t know just how much faster he really was with Merrick’s blood pumping through his veins.

Goddamn, that sounds nasty.

Nasty or not, it was what it was and wanting it to be different wasn’t going to change it. Besides, right now being faster and, from what he could tell, stronger too, gave him a distinct advantage. Just as he’d tossed Brad across the cabin earlier with barely any effort, Keo did the same to every ghoul he couldn’t delimb or decapitate with the KA-BAR. It helped that the creatures, new versions or not, were still weak as paper and their bodies as thin as gossamer. Whatever Merrick’s blood had done to him, it hadn’t made Keo weak like these monsters.

You didn’t see this coming, did you, Merrick? That’s why you tried to bribe me with that bullshit vision. You’re scared of me. You tried to make me like you, but I became something else.

Well, buddy, that mistake’s going to cost you!

Every now and then, Keo sneaked a peek in Pierce’s direction. The Black Tider was still on her feet, still holding her own. She was picking off ghouls with her rifle (he assumed she’d run out of bullets for her Beretta), and smashing the butt of the weapon into them when one of them got too close. Whatever happened, she would still have the knife he’d taken off one of the Buckies for her.

Keo had to admit, he was impressed with Pierce. For a girl who had joined Black Tide because she felt bored—or, best-case, she wanted to do good—she was a hell of a fighter. She reminded him a little bit of Gaby. What was it about Black Tide’s female recruits that made them such fearsome fighters? He remembered the Thousand Yard Stare on the Shaker girl back in the woods. Whatever training she’d gotten—if any at all—it was nothing compared to Pierce.

You go, girl, Keo thought, remembering a silly expression from the old days.

Keo, meanwhile, had backed up against the swarming horde. Despite his best efforts, they were still coming out of the fireplace, but not as swiftly as before. Their numbers were dwindling even as they stampeded over their dead to reach him.

He swiped at a pair of ghouls lunging at him almost seemingly in synchronization, as if they’d planned it that way. Maybe they had, or maybe it was just a happy accident. Not that it mattered much. Keo caught them in the chest with the single slash. It didn’t kill them, but it made them howl as they staggered away.

It took a few seconds for Keo to realize that he wasn’t hearing the ghouls screaming in pain out loud, but inside his head.

Great. More noise!

They were trying to overwhelm him with their numbers. There was no strategy here, only blunt force. He imagined Merrick outside the cabin ordering the ghouls. And those orders? Simple: Pummel Keo into submission.

Not tonight, pal!

It helped tremendously that he was more resilient than he used to be, and when the creatures did land a blow against his head or body or one of his limbs, Keo shook it off and kept fighting. He barely felt them, actually. He wouldn’t even call them glancing blows, but more of wait-did-they-just-hit-me? ones.

Eventually, the wave began to recede, and Keo could see an end to the horde. He breathed easier. Or maybe that was the first time he’d breathed at all since all of this began. It was hard to be certain about anything.

There were just four more left to deal with, and they weren’t much of a threat.

…three more…

…two…

…zero.

Keo leaned back against the wall, black liquid dripping from the knife at his side and most of his right arm. His face was caked with the stuff, as was almost the entire front of his clothes. His side of the cabin hadn’t been spared. The floorboards were covered in black sludge and a sea of bony bodies, severed limbs, and decapitated heads. The creatures that were still intact had holes in their foreheads where he’d driven the knife through them.

It was over.

Keo looked across the room at Pierce. She was leaning against the wall, one hand holding against the windowsill to keep herself upright. She was panting, out of breath. She’d escaped the attack unscathed and, unlike him, mostly untainted by ghoul blood.

“You okay?” Keo asked.

She nodded. “You?” Then, before he could answer, “Never mind. I can see for myself.”

She stared at him and didn’t say anything else.

Keo returned it, and also remained silent.

“We gonna talk about this?” she finally said.

“Later,” Keo said. “It’s not over yet.”

He was turning when there was a massive BOOM! and the front door between him and Pierce flew across the room, vanished into the back hallway, and slammed against the rear exit with a resounding THOOM!

Moonlight poured inside the now-open front door, blanketing the floor and dead ghouls that lay in its path.

Keo looked across at Pierce.

She stared back at him, as if waiting for orders.

“Go,” he said.

She gave him a Go where? look.

He nodded toward the bedrooms before saying, again, “Go.”

Pierce went, backpedaling her way to the hallway. She stepped on and almost tripped herself on the lifeless limbs that peppered the cabin floor. She might have navigated them better if her eyes weren’t focused on the door and whatever was out there.

The Black Tider finally made it to her destination and grabbed one of the bedroom’s doorknobs before shouting, “Open up! It’s me!”

The door opened and Pierce stepped through it, but not before looking back at Keo one last time. She didn’t say a word, but her face did: You sure about this?

He nodded.

The door slammed shut, and Keo heard the clack-clack of the deadbolt sliding back into place, followed by voices. The others, questioning Pierce. He heard his name and the question, “What the hell is he doing?”

That’s a good question, Keo thought.

But of course, he knew what he was doing out here. It was inevitable.

He stepped over the dead ghouls and walked toward the front door, even as a single long black shadow, warped by the backlit moonlight, stretched from outside the cabin and inside.

“I killed your ghouls,” Keo said.

“I have more where they came from,” it said, stopping just short of entering the cabin.

Merrick. But of course it was Merrick. Who else would it be?

There was nothing behind it but trees. It had sent every ghoul it had into the cabin, and now it was alone.

One on one. I like those odds.

The creature looked in at Keo. It hadn’t even bothered to glance at the piles of dead Black Eyes that Keo and Pierce had put on the floor. If it even cared at all, Keo couldn’t detect anything on its gaunt face.

“You didn’t expect this, did you?” Keo asked.

Merrick smirked. Or it was something that might have been an attempt at one. Unlike the Merrick in Keo’s vision, this one didn’t quite know how to imitate those human expressions very well. “We both know the answer to that, meat sack.”

Keo smirked. “Sticks and stones and blah blah blah.” Then, “So you know what this means, right?”

Merrick tilted its head slightly to one side. Apparently, it didn’t know.

“I’m going to fucking cut off your head and shove a stick up your ass,” Keo said.

Merrick’s pulsating blue eyes narrowed as it squinted at him. “You’re meat. That’s all you are, and that’s all you’ll ever be.”

“So why did you try to recruit me if I’m just meat?”

“A moment of weakness.”

“Oh. Is that all?”

“It won’t happen again.”

“Now you’re hurting my feelings.”

It snorted. “I’ll hurt more than that, Keo.”

“All right then, now that we’ve got that out of the way,” Keo said, stepping toward the creature. “Sun’s coming up soon. Let’s finish this once and for all.”

Twenty-Three

It was like being hit by a Mack truck head-on, at full-speed.

No, scratch that.

Not Mack truck.

Mack trucks.

As in, plural.

As in, it hurt.

A lot.

It hurt more than when the Black Eyes were swinging at him all at once. Truth be told, he’d barely felt those. But he sure as hell felt this.

And Merrick was just getting started.

Maybe I should have taken its offer…

It was probably too late to reconsider. Besides, it didn’t look as if Merrick was in the mood to negotiate judging by how fast it followed up on that first blow with another one.

Then another.

And another.

Keo was bleeding. He had broken bones in places he didn’t know he had bones. How many ribs were broken? Two? Three? All of them? Maybe not all of them, but definitely a lot, because just breathing hurt.

At least he was still breathing.

Way to go all Captain Optimism, pal! Danny would be proud!

He might have laughed out loud from the look on Merrick’s shrunken face as the Blue Eyes briefly halted its attack to sneer at him. But as with all things brief, this respite didn’t last very long, and Keo was once again counting broken bones.

He gave back what Merrick dished out, but it was very clear whatever strength he’d gained from Merrick’s awry attempt to turn him wasn’t on par with the blue-eyed ghoul. Keo was outmatched, and he knew it within a few seconds of their brawl, such as it was. (It wasn’t much of a fight for him. Merrick, on the other hand, looked to be enjoying itself immensely.)

Crack! as he slammed into one of the cabin’s walls. He’d forgotten which side they were on. It was all a blur. He was also unsure about the origins of the cracking sound he’d heard. It could have been some of the cabin’s tongue and groove planks buckling against his impact or more of his bones deciding they’d had enough.

Fortunately for Keo, he was already in so much pain that a little more hardly registered. Once you were already drowning in the ocean, did it really matter if someone threw a bucket of water on your head from a boat?

At least, that’s what he told himself as he swung back and connected with Merrick’s cheek. He felt the creature’s skull underneath his knuckles and marveled at the inconsistency of being ghoul. (“Being Ghoul.” Ha! I should write a book. And maybe I will, if I survive this!) Merrick was impossibly fast and strong, but underneath its flimsy skin were still weak bones and malleable flesh. It was an odd conundrum, one of those things that shouldn’t exist, like how cold and heat both radiated from its pores as it pressed itself up against Keo and went for his throat with both hands.

As cold, bony fingers wrapped around Keo’s neck and began to squeeze, Keo reached back for the spare foldable knife he’d kept back there. He’d found it in one of Bronson’s pockets while carrying the pilot around. It was a smaller one than the KA-BAR that he’d lost almost immediately when their melee began. Size didn’t matter this up close. The last time Keo had gotten a knife in such proximity to Merrick, he’d almost done the creature in. Maybe this time he could finish the job.

Or not, he thought when Merrick grabbed his arm at the wrist just before Keo could plunge the knife into the side of its skull.

The ghoul grinned at him. Or something that might have passed for a grin, if you grimaced hard enough. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

With one hand around Keo’s neck and the other holding his right hand at bay, Merrick held Keo against the wall and leaned in close. It was the first time Keo had been this close to the creature since their skirmish back at the cave. There was nothing on Merrick that even looked like a mark, as if Keo had never almost killed it. It had fully healed, just as Keo had from all his wounds before and after the chopper crash. The ghoul blood worked miracles. That is, if you didn’t mind becoming a monster in the process.

“Tell me, Keo,” it hissed, rancid breath pushing against Keo’s face, making his flesh tingle, “are you having second thoughts about my offer yet?”

Keo almost laughed. Or he would if he could, but he only croaked out, “Actually, yeah. It’s not too late, is it?”

“I’m afraid it is,” the creature said. It turned its head slightly to look at the small knife in Keo’s right hand, frozen in midair against its much stronger grip. “Didn’t I already break this arm?”

“It was the other one, actually.”

“Ah.” Then, smiling, “Well, if one’s a good thing, then two is even better.”

“I don’t think that’s how the saying goes.”

It cocked its head. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Ah,” it said again. “My mistake.”

Talking hurt, but Keo didn’t have a choice. He needed to keep Merrick from not killing him. He had too many things to do, too many people to love, to die in this filthy cabin in the middle of nowhere. How long could he keep it up? It didn’t help that struggling to breathe only exacerbated all the parts of him that were broken and bruised and battered. He could heal from these wounds, he was sure of it, but it would take time.

And right now, time was something he didn’t have a whole lot of.

“It’s time, Keo,” the ghoul hissed, as if it could read his mind.

“Time for what?” Keo said.

“Time to go. For good.”

“Can I get a raincheck?”

It shook its head softly, almost regretfully. As if Keo believed it was capable of sympathy. “I’m afraid not.”

Well, shit, Keo thought.

“Disappointing,” Merrick said, except this time its voice was inside Keo’s head. “I thought you would put up a better fight than this.”

Get out of my head.

“I’ll be forever in your head until the day you die.”

Or maybe until you die.

It smirked, and its voice inside Keo’s head said, “As you meat sacks like to say, hope springs eternal.”

At least I took your ghouls with me. That was fun.

“Is that supposed to rankle me?”

Doesn’t it?

“No. They’re soldiers. I’ll make more. Better ones than these.”

Keo didn’t like the thought of Black Eyes 3.0 one bit. The 2.0 version was already hard enough to kill if you didn’t know what you were doing, but a more improved version?

Yeah, he didn’t like that idea. Not one goddamn bit.

“What are you going to do about it?” it asked inside his head. Then, before he could reply, either in thought or out loud, “Nothing. You’ll do nothing about it. Except die. You really should have taken my offer.”

“Fucking do it already,” Keo said, barely croaking the words out.

“You’re that anxious to die?” it asked.

Keo grinned. Or tried to. “I wasn’t talking to you, asshole.” Then, shouting, “Now!”

He hadn’t been speaking to Merrick the last few seconds, but to Pierce. Keo had spotted the Black Tider sneaking out of the bedroom in the back while Merrick was beating the shit out of him. Then Pierce was in the hallway and leaning out, gun in hand. Mouthing off at Merrick, both aloud and inside his head, had been a diversion to keep the creature’s attention on him, and only him, as Pierce got ready.

And Pierce was ready now.

The ghoul jerked its head to the left a split second before the bang! of Pierce’s gunshot. Keo didn’t have the luxury of moving to avoid the incoming bullet. In fact, he was pretty sure Merrick had held him steady, in the same place, just so—

The bullet burned through Keo’s left cheek, bounced off the bone underneath, and ricocheted into the far wall with a resounding pek!

Pierce, Beretta in hand, had an instantly horrified expression on her face.

The creature turned its head to look back at her, a wicked grin spreading impossibly wide across its face. “Nice shot.”

“Finish it!” Keo screamed.

Pierce didn’t hesitate. She took a step toward them, the Beretta in her hand taking aim. Before she could fire again, Merrick turned its body completely around, pulling Keo along with it, until he was now hanging in the air between the ghoul and Pierce. It was using him as a human shield.

Or, more likely, as a deterrent to stop Pierce from pulling the trigger again.

And it worked, because Keo didn’t hear any gunshots or feel more bullets burning their way through his back. He couldn’t see Pierce behind him, but he could see Merrick just fine. The ghoul was still grinning, enjoying every second of this.

“Meat,” Merrick hissed inside Keo’s head. “Nothing but meat. Fragile. Easy to break. Mentally and physically.”

It flung him like a piece of meat across the cabin.

Keo smashed into Pierce, heard her Beretta discharge once, before the two of them fell in a heap to the floor. Keo landed on his face, but he quickly spun around onto his back. That was something he couldn’t do before, but was now as simple as thinking it.

Shit. I’m like Jackie Chan on crack!

As he landed on his back, Keo paused for a brief half-second. It wasn’t anything that he saw, even though there was Merrick, walking toward them casually like he owned the whole fucking world.

It was something else that made him freeze. It wasn’t anything he saw but what he felt.

Warmth.

He felt a warm glow caressing his face. At first, he thought it might have been heat radiating from the double holes Pierce’s gunshot had punched into his cheek, but no, it wasn’t that. It was something else.

Something more…sublime.

Keo turned his head slightly. The window that Pierce had been guarding all night was next to him. And despite the closed slab of wood, he could see through the small opening at the outside world.

It was still dark, but it was getting lighter. The sun wasn’t here yet, but it was coming. Slowly but surely pushing away the darkness.

The sun.

Instantly, Keo knew what he had to do. He didn’t want to do it, but it wasn’t like he had any choice. It wasn’t just his and Pierce’s life on the line, but the Shaker refugees as well. And beyond this cabin, everyone who Merrick would one day terrorize.

People like Lara.

And the baby.

Keo’s mind flashed back to that fictional hill he’d stood on top of with Merrick, looking down at Lara and the girl as they made peanut butter sandwiches. The city wasn’t there anymore, and neither was the other him. It was just Lara and the girl. Her daughter. His child. Maybe she would grow up to look like that girl; maybe it wouldn’t even be a girl at all. It didn’t matter. The child would be born and Lara would care for it, and as long as it lived, Merrick would always be a threat to them.

Keo couldn’t allow that.

He wouldn’t allow that.

Merrick had stopped halfway to them, and its head turned slightly in the direction of the window. It could see—and feel—what Keo had.

The sun was coming. The one thing it couldn’t fight and hope to win.

…the one thing…

Keo turned to look at Pierce, hoping she could help. He shouldn’t have bothered. She was on the floor next to him, lying facedown in a pool of ghoul blood. She was still alive; Keo could hear her heartbeat beating away.

When Keo glanced back at Merrick, the ghoul had begun making a move toward the back hallway.

The bedrooms. It was going for the bedrooms. Not to find the Shakers, but for shelter. It was seeking refuge from the coming dawn. And if it could snack on the refugees while it waited, then Keo was sure it’d be more than delighted.

No, you don’t, fucker!

Keo jumped to his feet, even as bang-bang-bang! rang out from the back hallway.

The Shakers. Merrick had chosen the bedroom where they were hiding, and the civilians were unloading everything they had on it. Not that any of those bullets were going to kill it unless they went for the head.

Go for the head, guys! Go for the head!

If they did, they couldn’t find the target, because Merrick remained standing when Keo reached it. Small drops of blood squirted from the monster’s chest and neck and one of its cheek as it stepped back, shielding its head against the gunfire.

“Hey!” Keo shouted.

Merrick turned.

Keo grinned and lowered himself slightly even as he gained momentum. Merrick was moving, trying to get out of his path, when Keo caught him in the gut with his shoulder and the two of them flew across the hallway like one single missile.

The back door didn’t stand a chance. It exploded, wooden chunks flying into the clearing behind the cabin. Keo and Merrick burst outside, the creature struggling to get out of his grip the entire way. Keo drove it into the ground with his weight. He might not have been as strong as Merrick, or even as fast, but he was still heavier.

He thought the ghoul might have grunted in pain as Keo pummeled it into the dew-covered sod. Merrick was hurt. Dazed. Keo could see it in its twin blue orbs: the creature couldn’t understand what was happening, or what Keo was doing.

That, though, didn’t last for very long.

Its eyes widened so much that Keo thought it was comical. Not that he spent any time savoring the moment as he rained haymakers down on Merrick’s head. He wasn’t trying to kill it—he didn’t think he could, even if that was his intention—but to keep it down.

To keep it there.

To keep it from running off.

And Merrick knew what Keo was doing. It fought back like a cornered animal. Blood poured down Keo’s nose. Merrick had broken it twice in the space of a second. Keo’s fists had become bloody. The skin was mostly gone, exposing cartilage underneath. White. Bleach white. The same color as ghoul bones when they fell victim to the sun, and bones were all that remained.

Merrick fought through Keo’s blows and found his throat with both hands. It began to squeeze.

Keo lost the ability to breathe, just before he heard the crack of his windpipe breaking.

“Die,” Merrick said inside his head.

Keo stared down at it. He couldn’t speak, but he could think.

You first!

He wasn’t sure how long it went on. Maybe it was just a few seconds. Or it could have been an hour. Or, possibly, an eternity.

Keo lost the ability to breathe and toppled off Merrick. He landed in a thicket of overgrown grass, gasping for breath, and failing badly. He had no strength left. Nothing that could keep Merrick from fleeing.

He turned his head and, through the forest of wet high grass, caught a glimpse of Merrick as it fled toward the tree line.

It was fast. Faster than anything Keo had seen.

…but it wasn’t fast enough.

Merrick began to slow down just as he was about to reach the sanctuary of the tree line. A swath of orange had laid claim to the clearing at the back of the cabin, with Merrick and Keo in its embrace.

He lay unmoving and watched Merrick struggle. It trudged toward the trees, as if stuck in quicksand. Slowly. Too slowly. Tendrils of smoke swarmed the creature, pouring out from Merrick’s back and limbs and head. That only seemed to make it slower, until it stopped completely.

Keo stayed where he was, resigned to his own fate. If this was happening to Merrick, soon it would happen to him. He was, after all, one of them now. He turned to look up at the sun as it peeked out from behind the towering trees.

Large and round and gloriously warm.

He smiled and waited, even as the strong aroma of Merrick’s decaying body filled the clearing. Keo didn’t have to witness Merrick’s death to be sure it was, this time, really dead. He knew it without a doubt because he could hear the creature screaming in agony inside his head.

Screaming, and screaming…until there was just silence.

Sweet, sweet silence.

And he was next.

That was okay. He’d lived a good life. In fact, if you were to ask most people, he’d lived a better life than he deserved. A good woman like Lara, and a child on the way. What more could a man like him, with his sordid past, ask for?

Not much.

And yet here he was, with everything.

He should have been sad about leaving it all behind, but he wasn’t. It was okay. It was more than okay, actually. It was damn great. Merrick was dead, and there would be no Black Eyes 3.0 to terrorize the remnants of civilization. Lara was back where she belonged, and she had Danny and Carly and the others to lean on when she needed strength. She would be fine without him. Maybe not at first, but eventually. She was a strong woman. Way stronger than him, that was for sure.

So Keo lay back, surrounded by swaying grass, and closed his eyes.

It was all right. There was nothing FUBARATS about this.

He smiled, and faded.

Twenty-Four

The skin would go first. Then the layers underneath. Before he knew it, the bones would be all that were left. He wasn’t sure if his bones had twisted and become deformed like all the other ghouls. They didn’t feel different, but then, he didn’t know anything about the transformation. The closest he’d come was talking to Frank back in the day. And Frank was never that great of a talker. Which was to say, Keo did most of the lip flapping.

“What’s it like?” he remembered asking Frank.

The blue-eyed ghoul hadn’t answered right away. Maybe he was thinking about it. (He, and not it, because Frank had earned it.) Or maybe he didn’t really understand it himself. Eventually, Frank said, “Different.”

“I can see that. But what’s it like?”

Again, Frank had hesitated, before answering. “Like your soul is being ripped from you. Mile by mile. Yard by yard. Feet by feet. Inch by inch. Until there’s nothing left.”

“Sounds fun.”

“It’s…not.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“I know.”

And that was it. The first and only time they talked about what had happened to Frank and how he’d been changed. Keo didn’t ask any more questions on the topic because it was obvious Frank didn’t want to talk about it; and truthfully, pushing a blue-eyed ghoul, even one that was a “friend”, to do something he didn’t want to, wasn’t a good idea.

Now, as he lay in the clearing behind the cabin, contemplating the end of his life, Keo blinked up at the sky. The sun was big and amazingly round and incredibly bright. He remembered his mom telling him more than once never to stare at the sun or he would go blind. Keo hadn’t gone blind yet, though.

Not that it mattered if he did. Blindness was just a minor inconvenience when you were dead.

First, the skin would go. It would come apart, like clothing fabric unraveling at the seams. Or maybe the skin of a hog burning as it spit-roasted over a campfire was more appropriate. Either/or. Bottom line was that the skin would go first, then the rest of him. He wondered if he’d be able to smell his body as it evaporated, or if his olfactory senses would be shut down almost right away when it began?

Too bad he’d never get to find out.

Too bad…

Keo closed his eyes, and waited.

And waited some more.

He wasn’t sure how long his eyes were closed, but when he opened them again, he was still alive and the sun was still beating down on him and it was still hot and daylight and he was still alive.

He was still alive!

Keo sat up in the grass and glanced around, his mind spinning, trying to understand what was happening. Or more importantly, what hadn’t happened. He was alive, and intact. His skin was where it was supposed to be, over his muscles and the bones underneath. There wasn’t the acrid smell of vaporizing flesh that was coming from the edge of the clearing, where Merrick’s bones lay crumpled in a pile.

A flock of birds flew in a V-shape overhead, casting a brief shadow over Keo before they vanished from view. Keo looked after them anyway, his eyes eventually falling down on the back of the cabin as a figure stepped through. Or hobbled through.

Pierce. She’d seen way better days. Her face was bruised, and there were cuts on her cheeks and forehead. He imagined more damage to her body underneath her clothes by the way she was moving gingerly, shielding one hand against the sun and smiling brightly.

Then, looking down at him, “Where is he?”

“It,” Keo said, nodding to where the ghoul’s bones lay.

Pierce hobbled over to where Keo sat. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer asshole.”

“How’s everyone?”

“Alive.” She stopped for a moment, before continuing. “Except Bronson. I don’t know where they took him.”

I don’t think you want to know, either.

He said, “Something happened to me. Last night.”

Pierce might have snorted. “No shit. I know you have a reputation, Keo, but even I know you couldn’t have done most of the things you did last night unless something happened to you.” She squinted. “So what happened?” Then, glancing at Merrick’s bones, “And how the hell did you manage that?”

“I can’t take the credit. The sun did all the work.”

“No, Keo. I meant, how did you fight that thing last night?”

“It wasn’t much of a fight.”

“But it was a lot better than anyone could have done. How?”

Keo shook his head and stood up. He expected the task to be difficult, but it wasn’t. He rose to his feet and sucked in a lungful of crisp morning air. It felt good to be alive.

Pierce was still staring at him.

“What?” Keo said.

“You look different. From last night.”

“How?”

“Your eyes…”

“What about my eyes?”

“I couldn’t tell what color they were last night in the dark.”

“They’re brown the last time I checked.”

She shook her head. “Not anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your eyes. They’re not brown anymore. They look…”

“What?”

“They’re not quite blue, but they’re not brown, either. Somewhere in between. They’re not…”

“What?” Keo said, starting to get a little irritated. Or maybe he was just afraid and the fear was coming out as agitation.

“I don’t know how to explain it. You should see for yourself.”

Keo sighed and shook his head. “Later.”

“Keo, you need to see it. It’s not…”

He turned back to her.

“…normal,” she finished.

“Yeah, I already had that one figured out, Pierce. But I feel the same.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not even hurt anymore.”

Keo looked down at his body. She was right. He didn’t feel the bruises and bumps and broken bones from the fight with Merrick. There was a slight tingling sensation racing from his toes all the way to his head, but it wasn’t pain. It was…something else.

Something…different.

“What’s happening to you?” Pierce asked.

Keo shook his head and glanced in the direction of Merrick’s remains. “I don’t know. I don’t know…”

* * *

“All’s well that ends well, kid,” Norris said. “After Black Tide showed up, we took the fight to them, chased them through the woods. We were expecting those new ghouls you told me about to show up, but they never did.”

“None?” Keo asked.

“Maybe a few, not sure. Some of the boys reported encountering some Black Eyes that, according to them, were acting different. At least that’s what they said. But there weren’t enough of them to worry about. Most of the ones we crossed were the usual ghouls. Easy enough to kill with some silver bullets. You got any ideas what happened to this new batch?”

Merrick was using them to hunt me down.

He said, “Not a clue.”

“Now why don’t I believe you?” Norris said.

Keo was standing in the clearing in front of the cabin, using one of the long-range radios courtesy of The Deacon’s men. A group of Shakers, dirty and bloody from last night’s fight, had stumbled across them an hour earlier. Instead of the rest they were hoping for, they’d gone right to work dragging out the dead black-eyed ghouls, watching them evaporate in the sun, then burying the bones in one big mass graveyard out back. The heavy smell of vaporized flesh still hung in the air, tickling at Keo’s nose.

If any of the Shakers had noticed something different with his eyes—or any other part of him—no one had said a word. One of them was a radioman, and it was from him that Keo was able to reach Norris back at Arrowhead.

The connection wasn’t 100% clear, but it was good enough that Keo could understand everything Norris was telling him. It was all good news, except for one thing…

“Buck?” Keo asked.

“We’re still looking for him,” Norris said.

“Who is ‘we?’”

“My guys, your guys, and The Deacon’s guys. Basically, everyone in the state of Georgia. So far, we haven’t been able to locate him.”

“If he realized the fight was lost, he’d run for it. Like he did before.”

“What the hell was his plan anyway? I still can’t figure it out.”

“He was going to use Merrick’s ghouls to win the battle. Instead, Merrick brought them here.”

“To you.”

Keo smiled. “I didn’t say that.”

“Oh, come on, kid. We both know you and those blue-eyed ghouls have a weird thing going on.”

You have no idea, old man. No idea…

Keo said, “Yeah. They were here with me last night.”

“Why?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I got a lot of free time on my hands now.”

“I don’t.”

“What? You got a hot date or something?”

“No, but I do got me a guy to find and kill.”

“That poor bastard. Do I know him?”

“Yeah, you do,” Keo said.

* * *

After he was done talking to Norris, Keo radioed Black Tide and got in touch with Danny. After the Black Tider briefed Keo on what Black Tide had done and seen last night while Keo was stuck in the woods running for his life, then fighting for it at the cabin, Keo heard Lara’s voice.

“Come home,” she said. “It’s almost time.”

“I can’t,” Keo said. “Not yet.”

“Give me one good reason,” she said, not even trying to hide her annoyance with him.

“I have two. First, I need to find out if Merrick has any more Black Eyes 2.0 hiding around out here. Then there’s Buck. He’s still out there. I’m not going to sit by and wait for Round Three.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Find the ghouls if they’re out here, and kill them. Then find him, and kill him.”

“And then?”

“I’ll come home.”

“You need to come home soon.”

“I will.”

“Keo,” Lara said. Her voice had gone soft.

“Yes?”

“Is there something you want to tell me?”

He hesitated. Did she know? Had Pierce informed Danny and her on him?

Keo said, “Like what?”

“I don’t know. Anything. You know you can tell me anything.”

“I know. And I’ll tell you everything when I’m home.”

Keo glanced up at the warm sun. It washed over his face and eyes, whatever color they were right now. Keo hadn’t taken the time to find out. Mostly, though, he was a little afraid of what he’d see.

He pressed the transmit lever on the radio. “Did you find out if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“It’s a girl,” Lara said. “Are you happy?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Very.”

“Promise me you’ll come home soon.”

“I promise.”

“Good. Now go find Buck and kill that motherfucker so we don’t have to do this a third time.”

He grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”

Epilogue

He had to start all over.

Again.

That was fine. He’d done it before, and he could do it again. Hell, he’d done it more than once before. Three times, actually. First there was that whole Purge thing that forced him to restart. Then Fenton came along. And, more recently, Shaker Town.

So yeah, Marlon was used to starting over. He’d just do it all over again from the bottom, and this time be even more ready for Black Tide. They thought they’d beaten him, but they were wrong. Just like they were wrong in the aftermath of Darby Bay. They might have had the manpower and the planes, but Marlon had something they never would: grit and determination.

Hell yeah.

But for now, he had to make do with this Podunk town in the middle of nowhere. Literally in the middle of nowhere. Marlon didn’t even know what it was called. He only knew that there weren’t a whole lot of people and when he showed up, they were more than happy to let him stay.

First it was for a day, then two days, and now a week.

In a month or so, Marlon was sure he would already be set up and sitting pretty. Sure, it wasn’t leading an army of killers like back in Fenton or Shaker Town, but as they say, beggars can’t be choosers. Right now, whether he liked it or not, Marlon was in beggar territory. Not that the people in this place knew that, of course. All it really took was a strong voice and a whole lot of confidence and they couldn’t get rid of him—or wanted to.

He’d settled down with a nice woman named Barbara. She had a son. Marlon didn’t care for the kid—he was sixteen and a pain in the ass—and had spent the last week or so trying to figure out the best way to get rid of him. It was going to take some doing and a little bit of dancing to convince Barbara he had nothing to do with it, but Marlon thought he could pull it off. It wasn’t like this would be the first time he’d “disappeared” a pain-in-the-ass third wheel.

It wasn’t the best situation he’d ever landed in, but all in all, Marlon thought he could do a whole lot worse. Eventually, he found out the town was called Millers, after the guy who had founded it in the years after The Purge. It was hand-built from the ground up and situated in a valley, surrounded by hills. In a lot of ways, it reminded him of Arrowhead.

Fucking Arrowhead. He’d almost gotten it, too. Almost burned it to the ground, and Black Tide right along with it. But just when he thought things were going as planned—a plan that was years in the making, natch—it all came crashing down seemingly overnight.

He blamed it on Merrick. The bastard had gone after Keo with their new army of ghouls. Marlon had spent a lot of time and energy building it alongside the blue-eyed ghoul. He thought the creature had understood the plan. Instead, Merrick had gone after Keo.

That’s what you get for trusting a ghoul, he thought.

Oh well. He’d just start over again. He’d done it before…

* * *

Barbara was home when he returned from the fields. She was looking just as good as this morning, long blonde hair gleaming in the sunlight. She was a little older than he was used to, but at 42, she could have passed for 35.

“You’re home,” she said, smiling that big wide smile of hers. She was missing a few teeth, which wasn’t uncommon these days. Dentistry was not a big concern for most people, Buck included. “Just in time, too.”

“For what?” Marlon said.

He stepped inside and shook off the grime from his clothes. He hated working in the fields, but it was a temporary setback. After all, you couldn’t become king until you played the part of the peasant. The people of Millers wouldn’t have stood for him taking the throne after such a short time. He would have to be patient, just like he had been at Shaker Town.

“We have a guest,” Barbara was saying. “He says he knows you from way back.”

Alarms went off inside Marlon’s head. “What guest?”

“He says he knows you from way back.”

“You already said that.”

“I know, but that’s what he said.”

Marlon squinted at her. Barbara wasn’t a bad-looking woman for her age, but she could sometimes be overly dense.

He looked around the house. It wasn’t much, but then, nothing was in Millers. They made do with little and had managed to keep out of trouble. The great room wasn’t all that great, with the kitchen near the back. A flight of stairs led up to the second floor—

He was sitting in the middle of the stairs, using a knife to carve an apple. “Hey there, Marlon. Long time no see.”

Marlon stared. He wasn’t sure what to do.

Barbara walked in between Marlon and their “guest.” She was beaming. “You guys go ahead and get reacquainted. I’ll get dinner started.”

Marlon didn’t respond. He couldn’t. Everything he could think of to say died before the words could leave his mouth.

His guest smiled brightly. There was something about him that was different.

His scars. What happened to his scars?

And there was something else. His guest’s eyes were a different shade of color. Marlon couldn’t decide what they were. Blue? Brown? Gray? Whenever he thought he’d settled on a color, they seemed to shift and change.

It’s him, but not him.

“I hope I won’t be too much of a burden, ma’am,” the man was saying to Barbara.

“Of course not, don’t think anything of it!” Barbara’s voice tended to get singsong when she was happy.

Why was she so happy?

Of course. She thought the guest really was an old friend of Marlon’s. Nothing could be further from the truth.

“You guys just catch up, and I’ll be done in a jiff,” Barbara said.

“You look…different,” Marlon said to his guest.

“Experience has a way of changing a man.”

“Is that what it is? Experience?”

His guest shrugged before standing up. He slipped a chunk of sliced apple into his mouth before continuing. “Merrick was surprised, too. I guess it didn’t turn out quite as he had expected.”

“I told him he was playing with fire. Experimenting…”

“Is that what I am? An experiment?”

“One of many. He had a lot of time on his hands while he was recovering from that whole Darby Bay mess. I told him it was better to just kill you, but he couldn’t help himself. Fucker just couldn’t help himself.” He sighed. “How’d you find me, anyway?”

“You have a very distinct smell.”

“And here I thought I was slippery.”

“Not slippery enough.”

“Apparently not. So what happened to you? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I don’t.” The man gave him a noncommittal shrug. “As the old folks used to say, ‘Death is not the end, but only the beginning.’” Then, without missing a beat, “Shall we go talk outside?”

“What if I say no?”

“You wanna do it in front of your old lady? It might get messy, and she told me she already cleaned the floor today.”

Marlon didn’t answer right away. Did he care if Barbara’s floors got messy? No. He didn’t give a damn about that. But he also didn’t have any advantage in here. His only weapon was the knife at his left hip. It was the only weapon allowed in Millers, and one of the prerequisites for his inclusion into the community was to give up his guns. Most of the men in town carried a silver-coated blade.

Did the guest know that? Like Marlon, the man wasn’t armed with anything other than the knife he was using to skin the by-now half-eaten apple.

So, knife versus knife. Hell, Marlon had faced off against worse odds in his life and come out on top.

“Yeah, we wouldn’t want that,” Marlon said, before turning to the door. He called out, “We’ll be outside, hon.”

“Okay, you guys,” Barbara called back. “Give me one hour, then come back in!”

“Yes, ma’am,” the guest said as he climbed down the stairs and followed Marlon out of the house.

Marlon walked casually. He didn’t want the guest to think he was afraid, even though he was. He’d thought a Podunk town like Millers would go unnoticed, but he was wrong. And there was something about his guest that Marlon didn’t like. It was him, but it wasn’t him.

And those eyes… Those eyes gave Marlon the creeps.

Damn you, Merrick. I told you we should have just killed him. But nooooo. You wanted to play games.

Goddammit.

The guest followed Marlon outside. “Nice place you got here. You even adopted a son, huh?”

“Babs told you that?” Marlon asked.

“She’s very chatty.”

“Yeah. It’s not one of her better qualities.”

The guest chuckled. “Same ol’ Marlon.”

“Can’t say the same about you.”

“I don’t suppose you can.”

Marlon had slowed down on purpose to allow his guest to get closer. When Marlon could feel the man’s breath brushing up against the back of his neck, he reached down for his knife even as he whirled around—

—and stared into the barrel of a Glock.

Now where the hell had he been hiding that?

His guest was smiling broadly. “Oh, come on, you didn’t really think I’d fall for it, did you?”

“Well, yeah,” Marlon said.

The man’s smile turned into a smirk. “Same ol’ Buck. Always thinking he’s smarter than everyone in the room.”

The knife was in Marlon’s hand, but it was only partially out of its sheath. And he knew, without a doubt, that he didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of pulling it all the way out and attacking before his uninvited guest pulled the trigger. And at this range—barely five feet—there was no way the man would miss.

So Marlon did the smart thing and let the knife drop back into its sheath, then took his hand away from it as to appear nonthreatening. “So what now?”

“You should be thankful,” his guest said. “This is more merciful than what I’ve been thinking about doing to you.”

“Which was what?”

“Let’s just say it involves a lot of teeth and blood.”

Marlon squinted. “You really have changed.”

“I’m still figuring it all out, but I’ll never be the same, thanks to you and Merrick.”

“All’s fair in love and war, right?”

“Question.”

“Yeah?”

“You remember what happened to Mercer?”

Marlon thought about it for a second. As he recalled…

There was a loud bang! and he felt searing pain as something small but very fast punched its way through his forehead and out the back of his skull, taking most of his brains with it.