Date: 2017-10-15 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Humour
Description: HOUNDED, CORNERED, AND RUNNING OUT OF OPTIONS, BUT NEVER DEFEATED. Keo has been in tough situations before. Some have been tougher than others, but he’s always managed to come out on top thanks to an innate stubbornness, the skills he’s honed from a previous life, and a whole lot of Lady Luck. But Luck can sometimes be a fickle mistress, there are always people with more skills, and stubbornness has a tendency to bite you in the ass if you’re not careful. Since leaving Gaby at Axton, Keo finds himself being stalked by a highly-trained group of humans in the day and hordes of the undead at nigh
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Rights: Copyright 2017 Sam Sisavath. All rights reserved.

Rooster

Road To Babylon, Book 3

Sam Sisavath

Rooster

Copyright © 2017 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 Rooster

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Epilogue

Books in the Road to Babylon Series

Glory Box

Bombtrack

Rooster

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 Allie Krycek Vigilante Series

Hunter/Prey

Saint/Sinner

Finders/Keepers

The Red Sky Conspiracy Series

Most Wanted

The Devil You Know

About Rooster

HOUNDED, CORNERED, AND RUNNING OUT OF OPTIONS, BUT NEVER DEFEATED.

Keo has been in tough situations before. Some have been tougher than others, but he’s always managed to come out on top thanks to an innate stubbornness, the skills he’s honed from a previous life, and a whole lot of Lady Luck.

But Luck can sometimes be a fickle mistress, there are always people with more skills, and stubbornness has a tendency to bite you in the ass if you’re not careful.

Since leaving Gaby at Axton, Keo finds himself being stalked by a highly-trained group of humans in the day and hordes of the undead at night. Someone, something out there wants him, and it won’t be denied.

In Book 3 of The Road to Babylon series, a man who has survived against all odds will find his resolve tested like never before. But if anyone can do it, it’s Keo. After all, he simply refuses to lose…even if it kills him.

One

He was tired and dirty, and he hadn’t shaved in over a week. He’d been wearing the same clothes for over four days now, and everything was starting to stink from his toes all the way to his unkempt (and getting longer) hair. Fortunately, he’d been able to pick up a couple of new socks along the way. After all, there were much more important things to scavenge these days than a fresh pair of socks. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been so lucky with clothes that fit, or that were an upgrade from the ones he currently had on.

All things considered, he was in fine shape. Of course, people had often told Keo that his definition of fine could be a little skewed. But that was probably not the case this time. He was sure of it.

Mostly.

Things would have been even more fine if he could just ignore the scar along the left side of his face, which was tingling a lot more these days, like some kind of sixth sense trying to warn him of impending danger. As if he needed Pollard’s gift for that. Keo knew full well that he was balancing on a razor’s edge and had been ever since he left Gaby behind in Axton.

If he had any doubts, he had woken up this morning to a reminder of his precarious situation.

There were six of them. All humans. That one threw him for a loop. But then, it was day—thirty minutes past sunrise, to be exact—and this was the first time he’d seen them out in the open, and this close. They’d been careful the last two days, but so had he. They’d been sniffing his trail ever since he shot out of Axton like a bat out of hell.

Humans. Definitely humans.

He hadn’t been sure of their exact number the first day when he noticed the swirl of dust as they raced across the flat Texas land on his heels. They had spread out to cover as much ground as possible, and it was a damn good thing he took great pains to cover his tracks even before he knew they were out there. He thought he’d lost them a couple of times, but the following day had proven him wrong.

They were good. Too good.

Or maybe they’d just gotten lucky. That is, if they were even after him in the first place. Maybe it was just coincidence; they happened to be heading in the same direction as him. Which, of course, would be one hell of a coincidence given that he didn’t even know where he was going from hour to hour.

There were other questions, like who had sent them, if anyone? How many were there? But those could wait.

Keo peered out from his hiding place and, for the first time since they followed him out of Axton, got his best look at his pursuers yet. The sparkling sunlight gave away that they were humans, and the red facial hair sticking out underneath one of their ballistic helmets confirmed it. They were wearing urban assault gear—vests, boots, and tactical packs. Then there were the weapons. They had slung rifles and gun belts, with the rest of their stuff hanging off the horses tied to one of the crossing sign posts. They were flanked by buildings, store fronts, a lot of abandoned cars, and enough litter in the streets to fill up a dozen (or more) landfills.

He could see them, but was too far back to make out if there were any emblems or markers on their clothing. Keo had a pretty good idea who they were. They’d been on his ass ever since Axton.

Keo eased his forefinger off the trigger of the MP5SD and pulled the weapon back, away from the spreading sunlight. The Heckler & Koch submachine gun was matte black and would have been difficult to spot from all the way down the street, especially with the black tint on the tempered glass window in front of him, but there was no point in risking possible exposure if he didn’t have to. After all, despite his best efforts, they had still tracked him into the city.

Damn, they’re good.

Or just really lucky.

Either/or, pal.

From his position inside the building, lying on his stomach and looking through one of the dirt and elements-caked windows on the fifth floor, he was mostly (You hope) invisible to eyes looking from street level. That included the six figures about half a mile up the road. They had stopped in the open and exposed themselves as they rested to drink and eat. Two of them sat on the curb while two more stood guard, watching the empty two-lane downtown roads and scanning the buildings around them. The last two stood next to the hood of an abandoned truck looking over a map.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe they didn’t know he was here. Maybe they weren’t that good, after all.

Captain Optimism.

Keo chuckled, imagining the ex-Ranger smirking as he thought that.

He wondered what Lara would say. He’d come close to asking Gaby about her, beyond what she had been doing since he left almost five years ago. He couldn’t care less about all that saving the world stuff. He was dying to know more about Lara.

“She hasn’t been with anyone seriously since you left,” Gaby had said. “There’ve been a couple of guys on and off, but nothing serious.” Then, “Just in case you were wondering.”

He’d replied with “I wasn’t,” which was a lie, and he thought the kid knew it, too.

He took his hands off the MP5SD in order to reach behind him and unzip the well-used pack sitting nearby. He pulled out a pair of jerky strips and was chewing on one when he heard a soft nickering sound behind him.

Keo glanced over his shoulder. “Has anyone told you that you eat like a horse? Go easy, or we’ll both be starving in another day or two.”

He flipped the bigger piece of meat through the air, and Horse caught it in his mouth while barely moving from the floor, where it had been lying behind Keo. In fact, the thoroughbred had lazily lifted its head to snatch at the jerky before returning to the warm carpeting, resuming a pose it had been enjoying since night fell outside their sanctuary yesterday.

Getting the horse up all five floors of the office building had been a lot easier than Keo had anticipated. The animal had done most of its own work, with Keo only occasionally prodding it up the semi-dark flights of stairs. The horse was clearly glad to be out of the streets with night quickly catching up to them. Even after all they’d been through, the thoroughbred’s survival instincts still amazed him, and it wouldn’t have surprised Keo if mastering stairs was old hat to the animal.

Keo picked up the binoculars again. They were a present from Peters, who had said to him, “Go fast, and don’t stop,” two nights ago.

Gee, thanks for that advice, Peters, Keo had thought then, but he’d only smiled back and said instead, “Get the kid back to Black Tide.”

“I will,” Peters had said.

“Tell them what you found out. And make sure they don’t ignore it.”

“They’re not going to. I guarantee you that. If nothing else, she won’t ignore it.”

He’d been tempted to quiz Peters about what he’d found out about Fenton during his recon mission. “What the hell is going on in that place?” was a question that had been bouncing around in his head ever since he discovered Buck’s people were taking the women and children from the towns they were raiding.

What are they doing in there? Why are they taking the women and children?

But all of those questions took a backseat to keeping them alive. Especially Gaby. He liked the kid, even though she wasn’t really a kid anymore. She wasn’t even the same girl he’d last seen on Black Tide Island. She was prettier than he remembered, even with dirt and junk over her face. But it was more than the superficial. He’d always known Gaby was a good soldier—she’d been trained by two of the best, after all—but even he was surprised how efficient she’d become in combat. And that stunt she’d pulled, jumping from the second floor of the barn to save his hide…

You guys trained her well, Will and Danny. The kid’s all grown up and deadly.

More than the fact that he liked Gaby, he knew that Lara was fond of the kid even more and treated her like a little sister. And if something was important to Lara…

You’re getting soft in your old age. Real soft.

He shoved all of that into the back corner of his mind and concentrated on the here and now. And here and now, he was only concerned with surviving this morning. He would deal with everything else later.

Keo crawled back another couple of feet from the window to get away from a new shaft of sunlight that had fallen across the floor. When he felt the coolness of shadows again, he stopped and sat up, and returned to looking through the binoculars.

They were still out there, in the open, almost as if they were tempting him. It didn’t jive with the posse that he’d tried to shake for the last forty-eight hours but couldn’t. But this—just revealing themselves—was careless of them.

Or was it?

Were they trying to bait him? Trying to lure him into taking a shot and revealing his position? They had to know he was still in the city, that he hadn’t left. Which was why they also hadn’t left yet.

Or did they?

Oh, my head hurts.

He focused in on the two figures looking over the map. He had no chance of hearing or reading their lips from nearly eight hundred meters away, but they appeared animated as they pointed around them. He wasn’t sure how much of that was for his benefit, or…

It’s gotta be a trick.

Right?

Maybe. Maybe…

Cordine City, Texas, hadn’t been his intended destination. Hell, he hadn’t even known the place existed until he stumbled across it last evening. Not that Keo had any ideas where he was going after Axton; he’d just needed to get as far away—and as fast—as possible. It was a good-size city with an airport on its south side and a cartoonishly large golf course on its east, where he had approached it. Its main center was stuffed with everything a small Texas city would need to survive, including a Walmart superstore and a mall that Keo had skirted because dark malls were never a good idea even now, five years after The Walk Out.

Fifty or so thousand people once called this place home, but they were all missing this morning. He’d made it into the city with an hour before nightfall and hadn’t met a single soul. It was easy to believe everyone was gone and that the whole city was abandoned, but Keo had found that not everything was what it seemed these days. Especially when greeting a stranger riding like the devil was on his tail through the streets with fading sunlight at his back could get you a bullet in the head for your troubles. Keo also didn’t discount the fact that he’d only seen a small part of the city, with two-thirds of it still hidden from view, so there were plenty of other places where Cordine City’s residents could be calling home.

There were a lot of possibilities, but if all went well, he’d be out of this place before he could find out for sure one way or another. He wasn’t looking toward crossing paths with more people if he didn’t have to. But maybe he’d spend a few hours looking for some new clothes that fit first…

He spent more silent minutes eyeballing his six pursuers. Or the six that he could see, anyway. There were probably more out there waiting to pounce that he couldn’t see. Unless, of course, he was wrong about this whole thing.

Make up your mind already, will you?

Eight hundred meters was a safe distance in most situations, but the six individuals milling about out there wouldn’t necessarily know how far he was from their current position. With a favorable wind and a good enough scope, plus skills that were decent to good with a rifle… Which wasn’t him. Keo knew a few people who could pull it off, but he wasn’t one of them. Not by a long shot.

Hah. Long shot. Good one.

Behind him, Horse nickered again.

Keo looked back. “Already?”

The animal snorted while barely lifting its head from the cushy carpet. It was probably the most comfortable ground Horse had slept on in days, possibly months. After the animal had saved his hide in Axton, Keo thought he owed the thoroughbred that much. More, actually.

He hadn’t been sure it could even outrun the ghouls that night, but Horse had proven him wrong. The thoroughbred had been fast, cutting through nightcrawlers like Moses through the Red Sea. Keo hadn’t even had to do very much except pick off a dozen or so ghouls that had attempted to intercept them within the town limits. As fast as he could, he’d pointed Horse toward a river he’d scouted earlier to further separate himself from the horde. After that, it was just a matter of running until daylight, and Horse was more than up to the task. He would have been worm food now (or worse) if not for the animal.

It’s going to outlive me. Easily.

How sad is that?

“You’re going to eat me out of supplies, you know that, right?” Keo said, and this time tossed the whole bag to the thoroughbred.

The horse sniffed the contents before using its teeth to grab a piece of jerky.

“Go easy on that. It’s our last bag.”

Horse ignored him and tongued another strip of jerky.

“Good talk, Gene Simmons. You suck at conversation even more than I do, you know that? Of course you don’t. This is your world; we’re all just thumbing a ride.”

Keo looked back out the tinted window before reaching into the pack and taking out a small unlabeled pill bottle. It was light because there were only a few left inside.

Should have grabbed some of Gaby’s stash when she offered. This’ll teach you to be a white knight, you big idiot.

Keo shook out two of the remaining three and crunched them in his mouth for a while before swallowing them. He put the last painkiller into his front pocket and tossed the empty bottle. Then he sat back, and while waiting for the meds to work, took stock of his situation.

In a word: Precarious.

In two words: Really precarious.

The biggest problem was supplies. Or lack thereof. Another day, at the most, and he’d be out of both food and water. He could survive without food, but water was a must, and he had exactly one bottle left inside his pack. He could make that last, but the thoroughbred tended to drink like a, well, horse.

The places he’d stumbled across since Axton hadn’t been as generous with much-needed supplies or nonperishables as they had been five years ago. There were too many survivors running around out there these days, and he’d known more than a few towns that hoarded everything they could find around them so strangers passing by (Like you?) couldn’t loot them. The people calling Cordine City home now had likely done the same, if the empty Wallbys and Archers he’d searched before nightfall were any indication.

Should have asked Peters for more of their stuff.

Or better yet, should have stayed in Axton and taken my chances with them, Blue Eyes or not. Maybe I’d be back at Black Tide right now instead of hiding from people with guns. Now wouldn’t that be nice?

His stomach growled, and Horse lifted its head and glanced over.

“What?” Keo said. “Haven’t you ever seen a man regretting every decision he’s ever made in his life before?”

Two

It took another fifty minutes before the posse finally climbed back into their saddles and rode off, turning right into a street about two hundred meters farther up the road. Keo listened but couldn’t hear the telltale clop-clop-clop echoes of horseshoes on hard concrete, which meant their animals weren’t shod. And he would have heard the noise given how empty and silent the city around him was at the moment.

Keo finally allowed himself to relax before pushing up from the floor with a groan. He remembered someone once saying to him that they were Too old for this shit, and Keo was starting to sympathize lately. He really was getting too old for this shit. All the running and fighting could grind a man down.

So what else you got going on?

Not much, when he really thought about it, which was probably why he tried not to think too much about it. Right now he had goals that needed to be reached, and that was good enough for him.

Stay alive. Link up with Black Tide. Rescue Emma. And if there’s time, kill the fuck out of Buck.

Easy as pie.

Riiiiight.

He continued watching the downtown road from his high angle while sitting next to a cubicle wall. He was surrounded by cubicles, some having fallen down over the years, but most remained standing at attention, as if they were waiting for their old officemates to come back to work any day now.

Behind him, Horse had gone silent after eating their remaining jerky. Keo couldn’t blame the animal for being hungry after all the running he had been doing the last few days. And they were going to have to move again real soon. They had to, because there was no upside to staying in one spot for too long. He’d managed to stay one step ahead of the ghouls since Axton, but he didn’t fool himself into believing that would last forever.

Are they working together? Is that it?

He remembered what he had told Gaby back in Axton. It had seemed so ludicrous at the time, but now, after two full nights and three days of being hunted across Texas, the impossible was looking less so.

“Fenton and the blue-eyed ghoul. They were at all three places at about the same time. Four now, counting Axton. That’s a hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

Coincidence my ass.

Seven years ago, he would have laughed at the very thought. He might have even gotten a good chortle out of it five, maybe six years ago, despite everything he had seen. But these days, not so much.

Blue Eyes had been at Jonah’s, Winding Creek, and Axton—all at the same time as Buck’s men. And now, for two nights and three straight days, here they were again. Humans in the day, ghouls at night. It was almost as if they were passing a baton back and forth, picking up where the other left off.

He shivered at the unpleasant thought.

More like unnatural.

Humans and ghouls working together was nothing new. Thousands (millions?) of humans had done it in the year after The Purge. Even he had done it at one point with ol’ Frank—the only blue-eyed ghoul Keo wouldn’t automatically debrain, as far as he was concerned. Of course, when Keo allied himself with “the enemy,” it was for a good cause.

While the idea of Fenton working with Blue Eyes made him gag, at least it was just the black eyes on his tail the last two nights. He hadn’t glimpsed Blue Eyes itself since Axton, which should have made him feel better, but it didn’t.

I’ll feel better when I’m dead.

Jinx!

Keo opened the last bottle of water and drank a quarter of it, quenching a thirst that had been haunting him since last night before putting it away. He took the radio out of the pack and set it on the dirty carpet and stared at it. He willed it to squawk, to make a sound, but it remained as quiet this morning as it had since he fled Axton.

Small flakes of dust flitted in slow motion across a path of sunlight radiating through the dirty window in front of him. The place smelled of abandonment, but it was better than the other stink—the one that had ghouls hiding in dark corners. Another day in this place and his nose and throat might become choked with dust. That unpleasant thought reminded him to spit out something grimy that had been accumulating on his tongue since last night.

Keo picked up the radio and pressed the transmit lever. “Come in, Gaby. If you’re out there, if you can hear me, please respond.”

He kept his voice low enough so it didn’t travel too far beyond the floor, but loud enough to be heard by anyone listening on the other end. Not that he thought anyone out there could hear him, but it was good habit to stay as quiet as possible, whenever possible.

Like the dozen or so times he’d transmitted, there was no response. Either he was hopelessly beyond Gaby’s range, or…

She made it. They all made it. They’re at Black Tide right now, with Lara. And soon they’ll be knocking on Fenton’s door. Even if I die out here, they’ll rescue Emma. She’ll be safe, just like I promised her daughter.

Yeah, that’s it. Just keep telling yourself that, pal.

A soft nickering behind him, and Keo glanced back at Horse. The thoroughbred had lifted its head up from the floor and was staring toward the window.

“What?” Keo said.

The horse turned its head in his direction, big brown eyes squinting slightly against a ray of sunlight.

“What?” Keo said again.

He would have said it a third time, if the radio he’d set back down on the floor didn’t shatter as the subsonic round tore through it and sent its electronic guts flying in every direction, along with the handheld’s plastic shell that flicked at Keo’s face and chest.

Sniper!

He snatched the MP5SD off the carpet and jumped to his feet. He dove to his right, seeking the shelter of the closest cubicle wall. But cubicles were made of flimsy materials that weren’t going to stop a bullet, and Keo landed on his chest and quickly scrambled up to his knees and fast-crawled forward even as—pek! pek! pek!—bullets punched through the top half of the paneling above his head, spraying him with chipped wood and shredded dirty cloth.

“Shit shit shit!”

The clop-clop-clop! of Horse moving somewhere behind him, going in the other direction.

Smart horse! Get as far away from the idiot human as possible!

He didn’t stop moving until he’d finally gotten behind something that was made of brick and mortar. There was a line of holes in the cubicles he’d crawled past to his left, and flakes of wood were lingering in the morning sunlight.

I hate snipers. Hate them!

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He hated snipers when they were shooting at him, but they weren’t too bad if they were on his side. Which led to the question: Was it one sniper or more? He couldn’t tell by the number of subsonic rounds that had chased him all the way to his current cover. The number of holes in the tempered windows would seem to indicate more than one shooter, but someone with a fast trigger finger could have easily accomplished the same amount of damage.

But one or more didn’t really matter. What did matter was that they knew exactly where he was.

That’s not good. That’s not good at all.

Being behind thick cover allowed Keo to catch his breath and take stock of his (shitty) situation. He had the submachine gun, which was a major (Major!) plus. There was the SIG Sauer in his gun belt, but he’d left his pack with all the spare magazines inside and that last bottle of water behind.

That’s definitely not good.

It was still there, next to the remains of the radio about twenty meters across the floor—and exposed to the shooter. Shafts of sunlight streamed in through the holes in the windows, creating polka dot patterns across the floor and far wall.

Horse had smartly moved as far away from the windows as possible and now stood in a shadowy section of the room. The animal looked across the large space at him as if to ask, Now what?

Good question, Keo thought. Now what?

The biggest puzzle he had to solve was the sniper’s (snipers’?) identity. That would go a long way toward deciding what to do next. Of course, that was easier said than done. How was he going to find out the answer to that one if he was stuck behind a wall five floors up, with no way out? It was likely a given that the sniper (or snipers) had friends.

At least five of them, I bet.

He counted to ten, and on ten stuck his head out from behind the wall and looked out the nearest window and into the street, expecting to see at least a few figures charging toward the building. He saw nothing moving down there in the second (half a second?) he had exposed himself to gunfire before pulling his head back.

Keo looked across the room at the pieces of the radio again. So how was he going to make contact with Gaby or Black Tide now? Sure, the handheld portable had limited range, but limited was better than none. Now it was just plastic junk and wiring strewn across the dirty floor.

Too bad I don’t have duct tape. Maybe I can put it back together.

He almost laughed out loud at that one. Almost.

Keo took a moment to think about what he’d seen outside. Not much. Nothing, in fact, except what he’d seen when he woke up this morning. Empty streets, empty sidewalks, and empty buildings. Of course, he’d only gotten a second-long snapshot, and that wasn’t nearly enough time to confirm anything.

He counted to five, and on five stuck his head out from behind cover—

Pek! as a round pierced the window, leaving behind a hole in the tempered glass, and zipped! past his head and embedded itself into the far wall.

Christ!

Keo pulled his head back and ducked down into a crouch, expecting more incoming.

That was a close one. Too close!

He lifted his hand to his face and felt along his cheeks, then his forehead just to make sure the bullet hadn’t actually torn a piece of skin with it.

No holes. No blood.

He sighed with relief, shocked he wasn’t sporting an extra hole, because he had actually felt the heat of the bullet going past him. Which meant the shooter knew where he was. Exactly where he was. And if Keo tried to peek a third time, he wasn’t sure he was going to have anything to pull back behind the wall.

He glanced across the floor at his pack. He needed it. Not just the spare magazines, but the water bottle inside. Just twenty meters from his position, but at the moment it might as well be two hundred—

Pek! as another subsonic round punched its way through the same window and hit the same section of wall across the room.

Then a second one—pek!

Keo didn’t move, but he did crouch just a little bit lower and wondered if bullets could go through a thick brick wall.

Pek-pek-pek-pek-pek! as pieces of tempered glass flicked across the room, spraying the carpeted floor to Keo’s left.

Five rounds, so fast that they almost sounded more like two or three.

What the hell is he shooting at?

Keo glanced over at the points of impact.

The shooter had put the first two bullets above a lone bullet crater, while the last five were purposefully positioned below the hole and in some kind of upward arc—

Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.

A smiley face. The sonofabitch had “drawn” a smiley face on the wall of the office floor with bullets. Against the rays of sunlight filtering in through the fresh holes in the window, the caricature seemed to almost glow.

Keo grunted. The guy was taunting him.

Well done, asshole.

Keo stuck his left hand out into the open, middle finger up, and pulled it back just as quickly.

How you like that—

The boom! of a shotgun blast ripped across the city, followed by the sounds of glass pelting hard concrete.

Well, that didn’t take long.

It was all coming from directly below him, on street level, and Keo knew exactly what it was without having to think about it: Someone had just made themselves a door and were storming into the lobby.

Keo sighed, regripped the submachine gun, and thought, Here we go again!

Three

They played me. Sonsofbitches played me like a two-dollar piano at a garage sale.

What a sucker!

Knowing what had happened didn’t exactly make him feel any better, but at least it was the impetus Keo needed to get over his shock and move move move!

He was on his feet and running across the floor, back toward the stairwell door next to the elevator, even knowing full well the sniper (snipers?) was still out there and in position to perforate him a dozen times over.

But he didn’t have any choice. Staying still meant death.

To hell with that!

Keo bent at the waist as much as possible while he ran, hoping all the cubicle walls would partially conceal him. The better option would have been to slowly, very slowly, crawl his way over while sticking to the carpet, but that would have taken too much time, and time wasn’t something he had in abundance right now.

He was halfway toward his destination when it occurred to him that no one was shooting at him.

What the hell?

He glanced over at the windows just to be absolutely certain he wasn’t imagining how uneventful his mad dash across the floor was going. There were plenty of holes across the field of glass windows, especially where Mr. Smiley Face had done his best work, but there were no new ones.

Maybe he’s out of bullets? Can I be that lucky?

And the voice of reason charging forth from the back of his mind, shouting, Who cares, you idiot!

He only slowed down long enough to reach down and snatch the pack from the floor, then he was running full speed again. This time he didn’t slow down until he’d made it to where Horse stood, hidden behind a section of the floor that wasn’t exposed to the windows. The thoroughbred shuffled its feet and took a few steps back as Keo approached before letting out an annoyed snort.

“Hey, at least he’s not shooting at you,” Keo said before looking past Horse at the stairwell door farther down the floor.

The elevator was useless and had been for years now, but you didn’t need power to climb five flights of stairs. There was only one door in and out, which meant only one way up and down. That was good and bad for him. Good in that he only had one entry point to defend, but bad because it was the only way down. Unless, of course, he felt like jumping forty feet to the sidewalk below.

Yeah, not gonna happen, especially with Mr. Smiley Face out there.

Keo sneaked a peek across the room and toward the bullet holes that faced the street beyond. He couldn’t see much of anything from his current position, but there didn’t seem to be any movements in the road or on the sidewalks below.

Where are you, Mr. Smiley Face? Why didn’t you shoot?

Maybe the guy was playing with him. The smiley face with the bullets was a pretty good indicator the man had a sense of humor.

Unless it’s a woman. You’re such a sexist. A woman is perfectly capable of shooting you dead as any guy.

Keo pulled out two spare magazines from the pack—one for the submachine gun and one for the SIG—before moving past Horse and toward the stairwell door. He slung the MP5SD so he could remove the two monitors he’d stacked on top of the heaviest oak desk he could find last night before pushing it against the entrance. It wasn’t going to stop a full-blown assault, but its job was really just as an early warning system in case of a breach.

He set the monitors on the floor, then pushed the desk away. He grabbed the door and swung it open, the Heckler & Koch moving in front of him the entire time so that he could shoot the first thing he saw.

As soon as the door opened even a fraction, Keo heard them—heavy boots pounding on the same series of steps he’d taken with Horse last night. They were moving fast and with purpose, and weren’t trying to hide their approach.

Keo slipped through the slightly ajar door, making his steps light on purpose so the people charging up couldn’t hear him the way he was easily detecting them. The stairwell was dank and poorly lit, with more shadows than he would have liked in the corners immediately to his right and left and in front of him. Another flight of stairs led up to the rooftop access door, but there was nothing coming down from there.

No, everything was coming from below, and getting closer.

Keo leaned over the railing and peeked down, and glimpsed black, matte-domed helmets moving below him. They were rounding the second floor and were about to reach the third, and would have been on top of Keo if he hadn’t made his move when he did. A minute—even thirty seconds—of delay and they would have been on top of him.

Pek! as a bullet zipped past his face and struck the concrete wall above his head, sending a shower of pulverized gray and white dust down on him.

Way to go, Mr. Not-So-Sneaky!

There wasn’t enough powdery debris to interfere with his breathing or vision, but plenty to let him know that the big, jagged hole in the ceiling could have been his forehead if the shooter had aimed better.

Keo pulled his head away from the railing and fanned his face to get the clouds out of his eyes and nose. The round had come from below him, followed by the slight echoing pfft! of the suppressed gun that had sent it. Just like the sniper, the ones coming up the stairs now were using silenced weapons.

Great. There goes my one advantage.

Keo stuck the submachine gun over the railing, exposing just his hands, and squeezed the trigger. He moved the MP5SD side to side, then front and back to send as many rounds down and in as many directions as possible. He fully expected to have wasted an entire magazine, but it wasn’t about hitting a target (though that would have been a bonus), and instead about letting them know that he had the potential to.

The pfft-pfft-pfft! of his gunshots were overwhelmed by the whirring of the submachine’s metal parts and the clink-clink-clink! of empty brass casings pelting the landing around his boots. Some bounced and disappeared below, but whatever sounds they made down there were lost in the echoing ping-ping! of his rounds slamming into the confined space.

He jerked back when they responded, a couple of bullets ping-pinging! off the grease-smeared metal railing in front of him. Sparks lit up the stairwell for a split second before dying off.

Then, as the last ping! faded into nothingness, there was just the sound of Keo’s breathing…and silence from below him.

Mission accomplished, because although he might have just wasted half an entire magazine, he had stopped them in their tracks.

At least for now.

Keo took a couple of steps back toward the wall and reloaded, pocketing the empty magazine in his back pocket. You never knew when you’d need an empty spare. The good thing about the German gun was that it could be easily loaded with 9mm rounds, which were plentiful these days if you knew where to look, like that pawn shop in some no-name town Keo had passed yesterday morning. The fresh thirty rounds and the box of ammo in the pack were from that abandoned store.

He slowed down his breathing and moved slightly to his left so he could keep the rooftop access door above within sight at all times. Not that he expected anyone to be coming down from that end. He had checked, and there were no ladders or catwalks to reach the rooftop from outside, but you could never be too sure—especially when your life was on the line.

Just in case…

That was, unfortunately, another good news and bad news situation. Unless one of his attackers could scale walls, they weren’t going to be flanking him from the rooftop. But it also meant he had no way down from up there, either. Too bad he hadn’t learned to fly in the thirty-plus years he’d been alive. Or grown wings.

Still, it was an option, and Keo liked having options even if they were very poor ones. Like two nights ago, when he had left Gaby and the others at Axton. It still nagged at him that he didn’t know if they had made it back to Black Tide.

God, I hope it worked. I hope you’re still out there, Gaby. I hope you’re back on Black Tide Island. I hope you’re with Lara right now.

Gaby. Lara. They were always on his mind, each one for different reasons.

But especially Lara…

“What should I tell Lara?” Gaby had asked him after that firefight at the barn. “She’ll ask.”

“Tell her I said hey,” he had answered. It was a dumb thing to say, but then he always was a little tongue-tied when it came to her.

“It would be better if you did it in person.”

“Maybe one day.”

Maybe one day, he thought again now as he listened to the slightly labored breathing coming from below him.

Glad to see I’m not the only one, Keo thought even as he continued to get control of his increased heartbeat. Jesus. What was he, new at this? He’d been in firefights before. Probably too many to get all aflutter with this one.

Oh, to be a virgin again.

The people below him had stopped moving entirely and were now somewhere between the second and third floor. Maybe they had even managed to reach the third before he halted their progress.

Bottom line: He needed information. There was a very good quote about some guy named Sun-something that had to do with knowing your enemy. How did it go again?

“Know your enemy and…blah blah blah.”

Close enough.

“Hey there,” Keo said. He didn’t have to shout to be heard, not inside the stairwell.

He waited for a response, but there wasn’t one.

“I hope you guys didn’t leave too much of a mess in the lobby,” Keo continued. “Last time I checked, the janitors took off, so it’s going to be on you chaps to clean up after yourselves.”

He waited again, but there was still no response from below him.

“What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

Someone coughed. It was muted, like they were doing it from behind a cupped palm.

“I heard that,” Keo said. “Hope you boys aren’t allergic to bullets, ’cause I got plenty where those last thirty came from—”

He hadn’t finished the word from when he heard it—the slight tap-tap of footsteps. They were very faint, and he had almost missed them with his own voice filling up the stairwell at the same time.

He took a quick, light step forward and peeked over the railing just in time to spot a black-clad figure moving gradually up the stairs somewhere on the third floor. The man was wearing a black assault vest—

Fuck me.

The sight of the now-familiar circled M in almost the very center of the man’s chest answered all the questions Keo had been asking himself since Axton, since he realized he was being stalked in the daytime.

Better yet, fuck you, Buck.

The man froze when Keo saw him and began lifting his rifle when Keo shot him in the chest, using the M as a target. The man staggered into the wall but didn’t go down. Keo was about to shoot him again when a hand appeared and grabbed the figure by the arm and jerked him out of Keo’s line of sight.

Pfft-pfft-pfft! as three rounds sailed over Keo’s head and loosened more chunks of the concrete in the ceiling above him.

Keo pulled back and listened to someone hyperventilating, followed by someone else whispering, but the voice was too low for Keo to catch the words.

“Oops, that didn’t work!” Keo said, and injected a chuckle for effect.

His pursuers stayed mum.

Keo said anyway, “Your moms ever tell you it’s rude to ignore someone when they’re talking to you? Because it is, you know. Really, really rude.”

Nothing. Even the guy who had been hyperventilating earlier had stopped. Did that mean he was dead? Only if he wasn’t wearing Kevlar underneath his vest, and the way the man had moved after being shot, he likely was.

Suppressed weapons and body armor? Cheating bastards.

But Keo had definitely caught the circled M on the front of the man’s chest, which confirmed they were from Fenton. He’d always assumed that was the case, so finding out he’d been right all along didn’t quite come with the satisfaction he was expecting.

Still, now he knew with absolute certainty that they had been chasing him since that night in Axton. Maybe they had even been there at the same time as the ghouls. It would certainly fit the pattern.

“Fenton and the blue-eyed ghoul,” he had said to Gaby. “They were at all three places at about the same time. Four, now, counting Axton. That’s a hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

Something’s going on in Fenton. Something rotten.

“I saw that, you know,” Keo said. “The circled M. You boys from Fenton, huh? Did Buck send you?”

The same irritating silence from below.

“My old pal Buckaroo?”

Nothing.

“Yooohooo.”

A pair of boots shuffled slightly, then went silent.

“Okay, I’m starting to feel insulted here. I’m Keo, by the way, but you boys probably already know that.”

A sharp, metallic click! that could have been anything.

“Buckies. Buckers. Buckets of mud. Nothing?”

Nothing.

Disciplined bunch of assholes, Keo thought with a smirk. He wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or annoyed with them.

He slid down to the surprisingly cold stair landing and crawled forward, toward the railing. He didn’t peer down—chances were good they were waiting for him to do exactly that to take another shot at him—but he was hoping that being lower to the floor would allow him to hear what they were saying—if anything—better. He was wrong, because however many of them were below him, they were being incredibly quiet.

He glanced back at the door into the fifth floor. Horse was still in there waiting for him. The thoroughbred was probably getting a little antsy by now. The animal had some incredible survival instincts, but even it would know that the only way out of the building was through that door behind Keo.

He looked back and wished he had a grenade. Just one. A perfectly tossed frag could clear out the stairwell in one fell swoop.

While you’re at it, why not wish for a bazooka?

He sighed and was about to get back up when there was a bang! from somewhere outside. It hadn’t come from in front of the lobby like last time, but much farther down the street. But it was so quiet out there and in the stairwell that Keo could hear it just fine. And so could the men below him, if the sudden shuffling of (anxious?) boots were any evidence.

Bang-bang-bang!

Three more shots from a handgun, just as loud as the first one.

Keo pushed up to his knees but remained in a slight crouch next to the railing, the MP5SD in front of him, and listened as a male voice said, “James, come in. James.”

One second.

James? Who you be, James?

Five seconds…

“James,” the same voice said again. “Come in.”

Looks like James’s gone MIA, boys, Keo thought when footsteps echoed and he prepared himself for an assault, but quickly realized that instead of coming toward him, the boots were headed away.

Back down.

But Keo didn’t let down his guard and remained poised, ready to shoot anything that popped up on the steps in front of him. The heavy footsteps continued, getting farther and farther away, until a door creaked open then slammed shut a few seconds later.

It’s a trick. It’s gotta be a trick.

But if it were a trick, his pursuers were doing yeomen’s work to sell it because there wasn’t a single sound—or a peep of any kind—from below him for the next ten, twenty, then a full thirty seconds.

It’s a trick. Don’t fall for it.

He remained where he was, with the only sounds reaching his ears coming from inside his chest. His breathing was slow and measured, but he could still hear every heartbeat because it was so deathly quiet inside the stairwell.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, waiting for something—anything—to happen. But if the Buckies were somewhere on the floors below him, they were being even more quiet now than they had been before. Impossibly quiet for human beings that had to breathe.

A minute passed.

Two…

Five? Had it been five minutes already?

He sighed and thought, Oh, to hell with it.

Keo got up, turned, and pushed the door open and slipped back into the fifth floor.

Horse was there to greet him, letting out a loud whinny that might have either been a “Welcome back” or possibly a “Where the hell have you been? You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

Keo shoved the heavy oak desk back in front of the stairwell door, then grabbed the two computer monitors from the floor and stacked them on top of it, when the sudden rattle of automatic rifle fire—pop-pop-pop!—broke through the morning calm.

He glanced across the floor and thought, And the fun just keeps coming!

“Stay here,” Keo said to Horse before hurrying toward the windows, keeping the solid wall in front of him, with the perforated glass curtain walls to his left at all times just in case Mr. Smiley Face was still out there waiting for him to show himself again.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…

He didn’t know why he bothered telling the thoroughbred to stay put. The animal had outlived The Purge and everything that came along with it, and it wasn’t nearly dumb enough to stroll into the line of fire if it didn’t have to.

Definitely smarter than some people I know…

He slid up against the wall and inched his way toward the closest window, even as the gunfire continued unabated outside. Automatic rifle fire, so different from the singular gunshots he’d heard earlier. Someone—or someones, more than likely—was really pouring it on. The question was, at whom? And why?

He counted down to five, and thought with every number, The sniper’s going to take your head off as soon as you expose yourself, you know that, right?

You only live once! he thought when he got to five and stuck his head out into the open and looked out.

Whoa.

There was a figure wearing black clothing hanging from one of the sidewalk lampposts about fifty meters down the street. The dead man hadn’t been there the last time Keo looked, but it was unmissable now.

Pop-pop-pop!

More gunfire, and this time Keo was able to track the muzzle flashes to people hiding behind the windows of buildings on both sides of the streets. They were shooting in his direction, but not at him. The shooters were concentrating their fire on the lobby of the building underneath him. Keo could make out chunks of brick and glass breaking off as someone (Buckies) returned fire on the attackers’ positions, but of course Buck’s people were using suppressed weapons and he couldn’t hear a thing.

It was a full-blown firefight, and not a single soul was shooting at him.

“Daebak,” Keo said, and grinned.

Four

What was that other old saying he was also very fond of?

“The guys trying to shoot the guys trying to shoot me is all right in my book.”

That probably wasn’t it, but Keo wasn’t going to quibble with semantics, especially now that Buck’s men had something else on their mind other than rushing him. For all he knew, the Buckies might have even taken casualties after running back into the lobby to find out what had happened to “James,” who may or may not also be Mr. Smiley Face.

The figure hanging off the lamppost was clad in black from head to toe, but Keo couldn’t make out if he had a circled M somewhere on his person. Of course, he could have remedied that by making a dash for the binoculars on the floor where he had left them, but it was a good twenty feet away and out in the open.

Keo didn’t go for the glasses. He was in a prime spot to watch what was happening without drawing attention to himself. Once he lost that, who knew if the people shooting at the Buckies would also set their sights on him. Keo had met too many people since The Purge to blindly accept that these new ones were potential friendlies.

Where did they come from? Why are they attacking?

Who cares? The better question is, how am I going to get out of here without getting shot?

He remained where he was, safely behind cover, and watched as two men appeared out from an alley about five buildings down and charged up the sidewalk. They were both wearing civilian clothes—one in jeans, the other in cargo pants—and had what looked like balaclavas over their faces. They were clutching weapons—one had an AR and the other a shotgun—and had gotten a pretty good jump before the Buckies below Keo noticed them, too.

Keo never heard the gunshots from the lobby, but he didn’t have to. All he had to do was watch the two figures racing toward his position when they both suddenly fell, slamming down to the pavement as if they had run right into an invisible wall. One remained still on the sidewalk, but the one holding the shotgun attempted to get back up when a pinkish cloud appeared around his head and he slumped back down, and stayed there this time.

Nice shot. Really nice shot.

Of course, it probably helped the shooter (or shooters) that the two (dead) idiots hadn’t bothered to island hop between cover and had chosen instead to run right at the building. That was their first and biggest mistake. Their second was getting killed.

I hate it when that happens.

As soon as the two men fell, their comrades unleashed a torrent of gunfire up the street. A few stray rounds pek-pek! off the wall underneath Keo’s floor, but most went to where they were aimed: the lobby. The sounds of glass falling and the pek-pek-pek! of bullets digging holes into the office building’s front structure went on for a good thirty seconds.

Keo took the opportunity to get a better look at the shooters.

About a half dozen of them had wisely chosen the second or third floor windows of the buildings flanking the streets, while others had climbed onto rooftops. He saw them peeking their heads above the edges now, squeezing off a burst, then ducking back down. Another dozen or so remained on street level, leaning out from alleys or behind parked cars to fire off a quick round or two (or a dozen). There could have been more—and probably were—that he couldn’t see from his angle.

One thing was for sure: the newcomers clearly outnumbered the Buckies. Or at least, the six that he had seen this morning. Or five, if James was the dead man hanging off the lamppost down the street.

Is that good or bad for me?

I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

Of the attackers, Keo could see more than just their heads; he glimpsed more cargo and denim pants, long-sleeve shirts, sweaters, and jackets. More than a few sported balaclavas, and some wore backpacks weighed down with supplies. He thought about moving to a new spot to get an even better look but decided this was good enough. And right now “good enough” was where no one could see him.

It’s always better when the guys with guns can’t see you.

The attacking force looked somewhat coordinated, and there were hints that whoever was calling the shots knew what they were doing. Or, at least, they knew something about attacking a fixed position using interlocking fire—that is, a crossfire pattern. They were shooting from both sides of the streets, firing bursts toward the lobby while people attempted to slowly make their way up the road toward their ultimate objective.

Keo had seen more chaotic firefights, the kind where it was glaringly obvious absolutely no one knew what they were doing. This wasn’t one of them. The attackers had some kind of plan, though what, exactly, Keo couldn’t figure out. The Buckies below him also knew enough to make the attackers’ advances slow going.

As long as they’re not shooting at me…

Three figures, crouched behind an abandoned van, bolted into the open at the same time the outside forces unleashed a sudden onslaught at the building. The threesome got two—three—then five meters up the sidewalk before darting into an alleyway unmolested. Two men and a woman. He could tell that even though they all had their faces covered. You could hide a lot of things, but not a woman’s girlish figure.

Keo hadn’t seen the trio before now, but it was obvious they had been active much earlier because they were already halfway to the Buckies’ location and were, as far as he could tell, still undetected. As soon as the three figures made the alleyway, the shooting stopped, and people crouching next to vehicles in the streets reloaded.

Someone’s definitely got a plan.

The truth was, he wasn’t sure who to root for. What were the chances these civilians—whoever they were—were friendlies? He knew for a fact the Buckies weren’t.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?

Ah, there it is. That’s the right saying.

No one had resumed shooting after the last volley, and the three that had made it into the alley had kept out of view. As far as Keo could tell, the Buckies hadn’t returned fire or noticed the trio. They had paused between a bakery and what looked like a clothing store, and were biding their time until—

Another wave of gunfire, this one also directed at the lobby and coming from all directions.

Here we go again!

The whole thing was a highly choreographed attack, with the shooting being used as covering fire for the three figures to continue getting closer to their eventual target. Right on cue, the two men and one woman slipped out of the alleyway one by one and raced up the sidewalk, and didn’t stop until they’d reached the back bumper of a pickup truck about fifty meters from the lobby. There, they waited almost exactly five seconds before standing up and darting toward the mouth of another alley, this one on the other side of the bakery—

The man in front of the trio jerked his head back and collapsed. As he did that, the two behind him slid reflexively to a stop, shocked by the sight.

Shouldn’t have done that, Keo thought when bullets strafed the brick wall and glass window to the now-duo’s left. The woman fell first, collapsing next to her colleague, while the remaining man was smarter and jumped over his dead friends, only to crumple in midair and fall back down, face-planting on the concrete sidewalk. His body twitched for a few seconds, but then went very still.

Damn. They’re good.

Of course Buck had sent a bunch of professionals after him. It couldn’t be some weekend warriors like Hatch or Batch or whatever that guy’s name had been that Keo sent back into Fenton with a message. No, it had to be a handful of guys who knew what they were doing. Now it made perfect sense why he hadn’t been able to shake them since Axton.

Thanks, Buck. Thanks for making my life a little harder, you shithead.

I’m gonna have to thank you in person for this.

Movement, from farther down the street.

Keo looked over as a figure in a trench coat leaned out from behind a building and peered up the road toward the Buckies. The man was too far for Keo to get any real details without the assistance of field glasses. He was nearly a full hundred meters and well past the black-clad dead man dangling off the lamppost. Keo was able to make out that the man was surrounded by a half dozen people. No, make that a full dozen.

Some kind of mobile command post, and between them and the shooters holding their ground up and down the streets and along the buildings, there were a lot of people out there. More than Keo had managed to count earlier, and probably even more than what he was seeing now.

Who were these guys? Why were they attacking the Buckies? Did they even know who they were going up against?

Or maybe the better question was, did he care about their motivations? As long as they killed each other—or killed enough of one another—that might just be enough for him to slip out of here.

Boom-boom-boom!

Shotgun blasts, coming from behind and below him.

Keo hurried back across the floor and to the far wall. He leaned next to the stairwell door and flattened his ear against the wall and listened, but couldn’t hear anything moving on the other side. Then again, he was trying to hear through thick blocks of concrete. There could have been a dozen men sneaking around in the stairwell right now, and he wouldn’t be able to detect them.

But he was pretty sure the blasts had come from below—far below. Maybe even from the lobby. Three blasts, then nothing. What did that mean? It could be anything. That was the problem. It could be just about anything.

Had someone found another way into the building, and the Buckies had defended it? A shotgun could be suppressed, but it was more trouble than it was worth given how loud it still would have been when fired. So if there had been an attempted entry, the Buckies could have repelled it with shotguns of their own (he knew that at least one of them was carrying such a weapon) and small arms, but Keo would only be able to hear the loud blasts of the former.

The scenario was possible because there was a back door into the building. Keo had located it last night before settling down, but it was heavily fortified with a desk and metal shelves by the place’s previous occupants. It would have been difficult but not impossible for someone to knock down the barricade and enter from the back, only to find the Buckies waiting for them.

Then again, he could be wrong about everything, and he was on the verge of being overrun right now even as he tried in vain to hear through blocks of concrete.

Decisions, decisions!

He glanced over at the stairwell door nearby, with the desk still pushed up against it and the two monitors on top.

Don’t be stupid. Just stay up here and wait it out.

And then what?

What would happen once the battle was over? Did it even matter who won? The Buckies, or those unidentified shooters out there? The only way staying up here and waiting out the gunfight made any sense was if he knew he could trust at least one of the groups not to shoot him on sight.

Keo looked over at Horse, lying lazily on the floor nearby. It caught his gaze and stared back, and Keo could have been wrong, but the animal looked more annoyed by all the shooting than frightened by it.

“What do you think?” Keo asked. “Take our chances out there, or stick around up here and see what happens?”

The thoroughbred raised its head slightly to look at him before letting out a snort.

“No, I’m pretty sure that’s our only two choices right now. But feel free to let me know if you thought of something else.”

Horse laid its head back down and sniffed the filthy carpet.

“Exactly what I’m thinking, too.”

He sighed and thought, Why can’t it ever be easy? and slung his submachine gun before reaching for the computer monitors.

Five

His fresh new pair of socks weren’t quite as fresh as when he put them on yesterday, but they did the job of silencing his footsteps. Keo barely made any sounds as he took the first ten steps down the fifth floor to the fourth. In fact, the only non-ambient noise he could pick up was his slightly increased heartbeat inside his chest, but that was something only he could hear—pounding away in his ears—and would be undetectable to any external source.

He hoped, anyway.

He moved down with the submachine gun in front of him and his finger on the trigger. The gunfire continued outside the building, the pop-pop-pop of small arms as if the attackers would never run out of ammo. None of it was coming from directly below him or from the lobby. Of course, they could have been returning fire constantly, and he wouldn’t have heard it with the suppressors on their weapons.

Keo only began his descent when he was sure there was no one in the stairwell with him. At least, no one that he could see, hear, or smell. He didn’t ease the fifth-floor door closed behind him and make the first couple of tentative steps forward until he was satisfied there wasn’t a shooter waiting to end this very stupid stunt of his.

And it was stupid. It was so, so stupid.

So why are you doing it?

Because he couldn’t just sit back and wait. He couldn’t just twiddle his thumbs while the two sides tried to murder one another—and that was exactly what they were doing, even if he could only hear one side shooting. One way or another, someone was going to win, and he’d have to deal with them. This way, he was taking the fight to them, putting his life in his own hands.

It was a great plan.

Okay, maybe not “great.” But good.

…ish.

There was no one on the fourth floor, and when he pressed his ear against the stairwell door, didn’t hear anything on the other side. He was confident (You sure about that?) that the Buckies had all gone down to the lobby and were still there. They hadn’t left anyone on the second, third, or fourth floor to return fire into the street. He knew that because the attackers had never concentrated their fire on anything other than the lobby. There were a few stray rounds here and there, but no obvious indicators they were targeting anything other than people on street level.

A lot of assumptions there, pal, and we all know what happens when you assume.

Keo swept aside the nagging doubts and pushed on, taking the third floor without any issues. His breathing increased slightly, and he took a moment to calm himself down.

Then he was moving again, careful not to make any unnecessary sounds. He was hyper alert to everything including the soft taps of his socks against the hard concrete floor. Very, very soft taps.

Easy does it. Easy does it.

He eased around the third floor and peered down at the second.

Empty.

He stood like a statue to see if he could pick up anything beyond the thump-thump-thump of his heartbeat in his ears.

Nothing. Nothing at all.

Could I be this lucky?

Why not? It’s happened before, he thought when he reached the second-floor landing—

And froze in his tracks.

Voices.

They came from below him, and he would have missed them completely if he hadn’t stopped a second time to wipe at a bead of sweat. It was warm inside the stairwell, even though it was the exact opposite outside in the streets.

Keo stopped breathing entirely and listened, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. There was more than one voice—two very distinct ones, with the possibility of three. But it was hard to be absolutely sure because they were whispering back and forth in surprisingly calm voices. Even now, in the heat of a prolonged battle, the Buckies—and it was them, he was sure of it—weren’t panicking.

After a while (Ten seconds? Twenty?) there was the very noticeable clack! as a door opened directly below him and he heard voices, louder than before though still mostly gibberish, and movement flooding into the stairwell. Then the echoing clink-clink-clink of empty brass bouncing against hard tiles.

The lobby. It had to be, because that was the only room in the place with tiled flooring.

Keo tightened his grip on the MP5SD and waited. He slowly, very slowly, eased out a breath, then another one.

Voices again, and this time Keo could make them out, coming from below.

“Are you sure?” someone asked.

“I need you back in there,” a second voice answered.

“Boss, I think—”

“Remember your training and stick to the plan.”

“Boss—”

“Stick to the plan. Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” the first one said.

There was another clack, and the lobby noises faded into the ether. It was replaced by soft footsteps—the soles of boots scraping against hard concrete floor—and the very obvious noise of a rifle’s charging handle snapping into place.

The shooting outside hadn’t eased up for even a second as Keo tiptoed his way down the stairs again, but there was now a clear sense of ebb and flow. A back and forth as the two sides exchanged gunfire. If the Buckies were as good as Keo had given them credit for, they wouldn’t be throwing away rounds willy nilly at the attackers. They would be conserving ammo, shooting at things only when they could see them, just like how they had taken down the trio of advancing fighters earlier.

But that was the world outside, which was beyond Keo’s scope this very second. Right now, right here, he was only concerned with the lone figure below him. The man was probably standing somewhere next to the lobby door, waiting anxiously for either Keo to come down or a signal from his superiors to rejoin the fight. He had sounded young when Keo had heard him earlier. At least, younger than the one he had called “boss.”

“Remember your training and stick to the plan,” the “boss” had said.

What exactly was that plan, and did he really want to just stand around and wait to find out?

Nah. Let’s not do that.

More obvious movement from below, followed by the top of a dark black head appearing just out of the corner of Keo’s peripheral vision. Keo didn’t move or react because he was in a perfect spot around the turn in the stairwell—hidden, while being able to see out and down, but not be spotted in turn.

Five seconds, before the guard disappeared out of view.

Had the man decided to climb the steps to get a better look, Keo would have put him out of his misery, and this time he would have aimed for the face. It wouldn’t surprise him at all if Buck’s men were all wearing Kevlar underneath their vests. Keo hadn’t seen any blood on his way down, which meant the man he’d shot earlier wasn’t bleeding as the posse made their way back to the lobby.

Suppressed weapons and Kevlar. Now why didn’t I think of that?

The movements below him ceased altogether, and there was just the crackle of gunfire from outside to fill the emptiness again. Back and forth, with very little time for silence to filter through the streets. The attackers seemed to have brought plenty of guns and bullets with them, almost as if they had planned this out. Keo wondered if getting bogged down in a gunfight was part of the plan.

Probably not.

But that was the attackers’ problem, and not his.

Keo remained perfectly still, in the same spot he had been standing for the last few minutes. He didn’t move a muscle and barely breathed.

Another full minute passed.

Then two…

Five…

He wasn’t in any hurry. At least not while there was still shooting going on out there. The more rounds being exchanged, the more time he had.

Who exactly were the people exchanging gunfire with the Buckies? Were they locals? Cordine City was new to Keo. He didn’t even know the place existed until he stumbled across it yesterday evening. So if they were locals, where had they been hiding all this time? Or were they even hiding at all, and he just happened to enter a part of the city where there was no one around? That was possible. Cordine City did have a population of fifty thousand something people before The Purge, so it wasn’t exactly Mayberry.

Still, it bothered him that he hadn’t spotted a soul when he made his way into the place. The other possibility was that they had seen him but stayed hidden until they could gather their forces for an attack. The more likely scenario was that they had spotted the Buckies. They did, after all, enter with six people on horseback just as the sun was rising.

Keo knew one thing for certain: He didn’t like having other people be in charge of his destiny. Not the Buckies, and certainly not whoever this other group was. The way they had lynched James a.k.a Mr. Smiley Face in the street—and Keo was pretty sure that was the MIA James now—made him more than a little bit queasy. He couldn’t imagine anyone at Winding Creek doing something like that. But then again, Winding Creek was full of very decent people.

And looked what happened to them.

So what did that make the attackers? That was the question. The big unanswered question. The man in the trench coat and his army had likely done what they did to annoy the Buckies. Maybe even to piss them off and lure them outside the building into an ambush of some kind. Except Buck’s people hadn’t bit.

Why? Because they were too disciplined, that’s why.

All of that, and he was back at square one: One floor from the action. Or ten feet, to be more precise.

Hey, if Gaby could do it with a gimpy leg…

Keo slowly, very quietly, slung the MP5SD and took one step toward the railing. He inhaled a deep breath and thought, I wonder if Gaby realized how stupid this was when she was about to do it? just before he grabbed the metal (and very cold) railing and leapt over it, twisting his body back around while still in the air.

He landed in a slight crouch—a solid, echoing pap! like a bomb going off to his ears, but it was probably not very loud at all to anyone else—and facing the right direction: with the lobby door in front of him.

Including the man holding the AR rifle standing before it.

The Bucky was still in the process of spinning around when Keo popped back up—he ignored the shots of pain rippling across both thighs as he did so—and lunged forward at the same time. He reached behind him for the Ka-Bar knife, the voice in the back of his head screaming, The door! Don’t let him get to the door!

Keo jammed his left forearm into the man’s throat and drove him back, back until the Bucky let out a stunned “Oomph!” as his body slammed into the wall. The rifle was jammed between their bodies when the man squeezed off a shot—the single pfft! as the rifle fired, the gunshot muffled by the suppressor at the end of it—and a round sailed harmlessly into the ceiling of the second floor above them.

Before the man could make another sound, or scream out to his comrades in the lobby, Keo pressed the very sharp point of the Ka-Bar against his left cheek, just an inch under his dramatically-widening eyeball. Blood appeared at the tip of the knife, and the man ceased all movements. He might have also stopped breathing altogether.

“Tell me,” Keo whispered, his face barely an inch from the Bucky’s, “how much do you really want to keep this eye?”

Six

The Bucky was young. Early twenties, possibly mid-twenties. He had short blond hair in what looked like a week-old buzz cut. Keo had seen hundreds of kids like him—and that was what he was despite the assault vest and spare ammo crammed into every pouch. He was just a kid, but one with a rifle and blood on his hands. Maybe a little blood, maybe a lot. Even the purest souls he’d met since The Purge, since The Walk Out, had blood on their hands in one form or another. You had to, if you wanted to remain alive these days.

“Adapt or perish,” as the people of Black Tide liked to say.

This kid had clearly adapted, though how much remained to be seen. Judging by dark blue eyes that glared back at Keo, maybe the adaptation was by a large margin. There was intelligence in those eyes that told Keo the kid knew pulling the trigger again wasn’t going to do any good, but if he could get out a scream to alert the others…

Keo pressed harder with his forearm, and the Bucky gagged slightly.

“Don’t even think about it,” Keo hissed.

The kid’s eyes snapped toward the door to his left, to Keo’s right.

“I will fucking kill you,” Keo whispered. It was the most menacing he could make it, and he hoped the scar on his face helped to sell it, because he didn’t want to kill this kid.

Don’t make me kill you. Don’t you fucking make me kill you.

The Bucky looked back at him with defiant eyes, and Keo thought, He’s thinking about it. He’s actually thinking about it.

Christ, why do they all have to be so stubborn?

“Trust me, you don’t wanna die,” Keo said. “You don’t have to die. So don’t make me kill you. Because I will. They told you about me, didn’t they? Back at Fenton? It’s all true. I will kill you, and I will sleep just fine tonight. Better than fine. I will sleep like a goddamn baby sucking on his mom’s teats.”

The Bucky didn’t reply, not that he could with Keo’s forearm against his throat. But he also hadn’t squeezed off another shot, maybe because, like Keo, he knew it’d be a waste of a bullet.

Yeah, better save that bullet, pal. Never know when your buddies might need it with that army outside.

“What’s happening?” Keo asked. “Out there? Who’s attacking the lobby?”

The Bucky’s eyes narrowed, and there was something that looked like confusion on his face.

He doesn’t know. He’s just as clueless as I am.

Keo switched tactics to something else the kid would definitely know. “Who’s in charge of your little posse?”

The Bucky struggled to breathe, and Keo lessened the pressure slightly. Not a lot, just enough that his captive could talk.

“What’s his name?” Keo asked. “Your boss? The one you were talking to earlier?”

The Bucky shook his head.

“What?” Keo said. “What’s that mean?”

More head shaking, just before the rifle moved slightly between their bodies. Not too much, because the barrel remained pointed to the side and up at the ceiling. Keo didn’t care about that; anywhere was fine as long as it wasn’t at him.

“What are you doing?” Keo asked.

No response, just those dark eyes staring back at him. Still defiant.

“Hey, stop that,” Keo said, when he felt something brushing against his stomach, before quickly moving away, like it was groping around for something—

“Don’t,” Keo said.

The hand stopped moving, and Keo locked eyes with the Bucky.

“Don’t,” Keo said again. “Don’t you fucking do it.”

The kid swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing against Keo’s forearm.

“Don’t,” Keo said for the third time, just before he saw the flicker of decision in the kid’s eyes.

Goddammit, Keo thought, and shoved his forearm even harder against the Bucky’s neck, putting everything he had into it this time.

The man grunted, his face pained, and as he struggled to breathe, Keo pulled back his right hand and drove the knife into the Bucky’s gut. He pushed it in almost dead center, just under the navel and into that soft spot where the Kevlar underneath the assault vest ended and the waistline of his cargo pants began.

You stupid bastard.

Keo sighed and pulled his left arm back, then grabbed the barrel of the rifle and jerked it out of the Bucky’s suddenly weak grip. Not that the kid seemed to realize he’d just lost his weapon, because he was too busy looking down at his gut, even as he groped frantically at it with one hand. His left was holding a knife that he now dropped so he could use it to try to help stanch the bleeding. Blood oozed freely through his fingers anyway.

You stupid, stupid bastard.

Keo clasped his left palm against the kid’s mouth to keep him from screaming, even though he was certain his victim didn’t have any strength left to do it. But Keo couldn’t take that risk, and he pressed hard until the Bucky started hyperventilating through his nostrils.

Slowly, very slowly, Keo guided the dying man to the floor and sat him against the wall, bloodied hands clutching desperately at his stomach. Strips of blood trickled down his pant legs and pooled underneath him, and Keo could feel warm breath slamming desperately against his palm, over and over again.

Those same dark blue eyes, the light in them fading little by little, searched out Keo’s and locked on.

“I’m sorry,” Keo said. “You didn’t give me any choice. You went for the knife. You shouldn’t have gone for the knife, kid.”

The Bucky didn’t say anything—not that he could anyway, with Keo’s hand over his mouth. Instead, his eyes fell down to his gut again, and tears dripped down his cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” Keo whispered again, and took his hand away from the Bucky’s mouth, put away the knife, and unslung the MP5SD.

The kid was already drifting away, his eyes blinking rapidly in an attempt to stay awake, when Keo shot him once in the forehead, the clink! of the brass casing bouncing against the thick concrete floor much louder than the pff! of the suppressed gunshot.

Keo stood still and stared down at the kid. He wasn’t sure how long, but eventually he snapped out of it.

“You stupid bastard,” Keo whispered before he grabbed the AR from the floor, then went through the dead body and came away with two spares for the rifle. He would have taken more—the Bucky carried four total—but Keo didn’t need the extra weight. Besides, if he had to resort to the rifle, he was screwed anyway.

The Bucky was wearing a fancy radio system—rubber throat mic linked to a two-way portable Velcroed against his assault vest. The radio had limited range, but it was a decent alternative to the one he’d been carrying around and trying to reach Gaby with.

Decent? Try better than nothing.

Keo was unsnapping the comm rig from the body when the gunfire suddenly grew louder.

What now?

There was a reason he could suddenly hear every shot, because they were coming from inside the building.

Keo unslung the MP5SD and stayed in a crouch, gripping the submachine gun while he listened. He tried to pinpoint where the shooting was coming from exactly. It seemed to be concentrated nearby, somewhere on the other side of the stairwell door.

But the shooting didn’t last for very long. At least, not the one inside the building. Almost as quickly as it began, it ran its course and there was silence again, with just the faint pop-pop-pop of small arms originating from the street.

Had the Buckies repelled yet another attack? It certainly sounded like it—

The bang! of the stairwell door flying open made Keo jump, and he was standing up reflexively just as a man wearing all black—with an assault vest sporting a circled M on one of the pouches—strode inside. He looked harried and was bleeding from a bullet graze along his temple, and the first thing out of his mouth was, “Pete, get ready—”

He stopped when he saw Keo standing over the dead Bucky.

The next word out of the man’s mouth was, “Shit—” but he didn’t get the rest of the sentence out because Keo shot him three times in the chest from almost point-blank range.

The man stumbled into the door even as it was closing on its own behind him, but he didn’t go down.

Kevlar. Right.

Fucking cheaters.

Keo raised his submachine gun at the same time the man scrambled to do likewise with his own weapon, but Keo beat him to it and put the fourth round between his eyes. The man’s head snapped back and slammed with a reverberating thump! against the door behind him before he slid down to the floor.

Keo stood in front of the body, barely moving, and listened to see if anyone had heard the sound of the Bucky’s head colliding with the door.

He got his answer exactly thirteen seconds later when a voice called from the lobby, “John?” Then, shouting, “John!”

Keo glanced down at the first Bucky he’d killed, then at the second one. It didn’t take a genius to figure out who was who, especially after what the second man had said as he burst into the stairwell.

“John! Pete!” The same voice, but this time it was closer. “John, answer me!”

John’s dead, asshole.

“Pete!”

Oh, and so is Pete, for the record.

Keo was reaching for John’s weapon, a P90 submachine gun, when the first shot pierced the door and zipped! two feet in front of his face before hitting the metal railing behind him and pinging! off it.

He dove to the floor as another half dozen rounds punched through the slab of wood and filled the stairwell. Keo grunted as he crashed chest-first into the hard pavement and rolled away from the door. Not an easy feat with the MP5SD in his hands and the salvaged AR slung over his back, its sharp edges digging into his flesh. He didn’t stop until he’d gotten as far away from the line of fire as possible.

Ping-ping-ping! as more rounds bounced off the railing and pek-pek-pek! as the rest pounded the concrete around him, digging large divots into the walls and floor. Keo hadn’t heard the gunshots, but that wasn’t a surprise because of their silenced weaponry. Even the P90 he’d been reaching for had a suppressor, making the submachine gun’s normally small barrel slightly longer.

He scrambled to his feet and into a crouch before pointing his weapon at the door.

Come on in, pal! I got something waiting for you!

The shooter had ceased firing, leaving behind a door perforated with at least twenty or more holes spread evenly from top to bottom and right to left. Whoever was in the lobby didn’t just unload their entire magazine, they had also oscillated their fire to cover as much space as possible.

Smart motherfucker.

He waited for the shouter turned shooter to come inside to check if his gamble had paid off. Except the door remained closed, and although it had been badly shot up, still stayed in place by its hinges.

Well? What’re you waiting for? Come on in and say hi!

Keo thought he could see glimpses of black clothing moving across the holes, but he could only be sure that someone was definitely out there. Of course, he already knew that. After all, ghosts weren’t firing bullets at him.

The firefight outside the building had continued on, oblivious to what was happening to Keo inside the stairwell. There were the occasional sounds of glass breaking, which was surprising because Keo had assumed that by now every glass that could be broken around the lobby must have been already, but apparently not.

He wiped at a bead of sweat along his brow, then pushed all the way up to his feet and took a few more steps away from the door, not that it did anything to lessen his anxiety. And for good reason, too, because he was a sitting duck in here with only a thick wall behind him and nowhere to run if more than one person were to rush inside, guns blazing.

Hell, they didn’t even have to do that. What was he going to do if they tossed a grenade into the stairwell? Considering the shape of the door, they wouldn’t even need to pry it open first. Could you squeeze a grenade through one of those bullet holes? There were a couple near the bottom that were just big enough…

Keo glanced right, toward the stairs. Up was good. It was also the only direction left to him. He’d been hoping to find a better alternative down here, but that just went out the window. Besides the fact that the Buckies had, from the sounds of it, successfully pushed back another enemy charge, there was still that army out there waiting to say hi. He didn’t feel like introducing himself to strangers with guns. It was a good way to get killed.

And we definitely don’t want that.

So there was only one way left: up.

Horse was also up there. Keo wondered what the thoroughbred was thinking right about now. How long had he left it standing up there on the fifth floor by itself? Ten minutes? Longer? He’d lost track of time. He wondered if horses did, too.

Up. That was the way to go.

The only way to go.

He was counting the distance between the first step and his current location when the same man shouted from the other side of the stairwell door. “John! Pete! Answer me!”

They’re dead, asshole. If they weren’t dead before, your little spray-and-pray would have killed them.

“John! Pete!”

“They’re dead,” a second voice said. This one sounded female, but it was too muffled for Keo to be sure. “He’s in there. It’s gotta be him.”

My legend precedes me, Keo thought with a slight grin.

“Shit,” the shouter said.

“Do it,” the woman said, and the way she had said those two words, “Do it,” made Keo think she wasn’t talking about sewing.

“Do it?” Do what?

Then the lightbulb went off, and Keo’s grin faded.

Oh, hell.

He took off running toward the stairs.

Shoulda stayed on the fifth floor, you big dummy!

He had to jump over the first dead Bucky, which he did clumsily, and almost fell on his face but somehow managed to stay upright.

Shoulda!

He reached the first step and leapt up, passing the second step entirely and taking the third on the lunge, before aiming for the sixth one up ahead—

Coulda!

—when something crashed through the door, and before Keo could glance back to see what that “something” was, the explosion was ripping across the small room.

But didnta!

He was still in the air and about to land on that sixth step when the concussive force of the blast hit him from behind, along with a sea of concrete chunks that broadsided him from his left side.

The impact sent him flying forward and up (How was that even possible?) until he slammed into the wall where the stair turned and landed in a crumpled heap on the cold halfway point between floors.

His ears were ringing, and he wasn’t sure he still remembered how to breathe. His senses were overloaded, and thick gray and white clouds clogged up his senses. He couldn’t breathe without choking on pulverized concrete that covered him from head to toe, and he had to close his eyes to lessen the risk of damage to them.

Somehow, some way, he managed to turn over onto his back. He’d lost both the MP5SD and the AR during his Superman takeoff, but weapons were the least of his concerns at the moment. Right now he had to struggle to breathe every tiny breath, and drums pounded mercilessly in both of his ears.

Despite all that misery, he still heard the shooting. The incessant crackle of small arms, like someone was playing an orchestra, but instead of instruments they were using guns. He could hear them, but wasn’t able to tell if they were getting closer or not. They could have been coming from right next to him for all he knew. Or possibly even from the other side of the globe. Anything and everything was possible.

He would get up if he could, but he barely had any control over his arms and legs, which made turning over onto his back earlier a minor miracle. One, unfortunately, that he had no idea how to replicate.

Keo lay still and listened to the faded echoes of gunshots instead, letting everything be absorbed into the background. If he couldn’t get up and fight, at least he was going to enjoy the show…however long that lasted.

Seven

“You’re fucked.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“Look around you.”

“It’s a little hard to see. Who turned off the lights?”

“You’re fucked. I’m fucked. We’re both fucked.”

“Captain fucking Optimism.”

“What?”

“Just something a friend used to say in situations like these.”

“You’ve been in situations like this before?”

Keo chuckled and thought, Damn, how I wish I could say “no” to that one.

He said instead, “Yeah. Once or twice.”

“You better hope all that prior experience comes in handy if you wanna get out of this alive.”

“Don’t you worry about me. What’s your name, anyway?”

“Greengrass.”

“Seriously? Your name is Greengrass? Green like the color and grass like what my horse eats?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s a dumb name, that’s all. Is that your last name?”

“Does it sound like a first name?”

“How the hell should I know. We’re in Texas. I’ve seen crazier names. There was this guy near the panhandle named Thomas Tom. Swear to God. Of course, it wasn’t nearly as crazy as this guy in Mongolia where I was doing this thing for these people. Long story.”

“It’s my surname.”

“Everyone in Fenton uses surnames?”

“Just the important ones.”

“So what’re you doing with a surname?”

The man sitting directly across from him in the darkness smirked. Or Keo thought he did, anyway. All he could really tell for sure was an oval-shaped outline of a face topped with brown hair that was sprinkled generously with gray.

“And Keo’s any better?” the man who called himself Greengrass said. “How do you spell that, anyway?”

“Buck didn’t tell you?”

“It didn’t seem important at the time.”

“K as in kiss my ass, e as in eat me, and o as in oh no, she didn’t.”

Greengrass smirked again, and Keo was pretty sure of it that time. Either his night eyes had adapted to his surroundings—a ten-by-ten room built out of, from the feel of it against his back and butt, blocks of concrete. It might have been some kind of storage room, except there hadn’t been anything inside when Keo woke up about ten minutes ago.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Greengrass was there, along with a woman lying on the floor next to him. They were clearly together, but whereas Greengrass was fully awake, the woman hadn’t moved an inch since Keo opened his eyes. There weren’t any lights in the room—they were sitting in complete darkness—and Keo only knew the third person was a woman because of her pale white skin and red hair, which made her stand out. A dull white bandage was wrapped around her head, and she might have had more bandages on the rest of her, but he couldn’t see well enough to be absolutely sure.

Fading soot and gunpowder lingered in the air, coming from his own clothes as well as his roommates’. He was pretty sure there were other things emanating from his body at the moment, considering the explosion that had sent him flying into the wall like a human cannonball. The aches caused by moving even a little bit, regardless of which part of him did the moving, were proof of that. If he could peel off the layers of thick clothing, he would expect to find stretches of black and purple bruises from his legs up to his waist and beyond. The first time he lifted his hands to his face, he flinched when he touched his left cheek, and there were a couple of big welts along his forehead and temple.

All of that was the reason why he hadn’t moved very much since picking himself up from the floor where he had been lying inelegantly on one cheek, just like the woman was doing right now.

It was cold in the room, and that had the inadvertent benefit of numbing some of the pain. Not all of it—it wasn’t even close to being all of it—but enough that he didn’t feel like he was going to die from sheer misery. And it was plenty miserable. Jackhammers-constantly-pounding-away-at-his-body miserable.

His fellow prisoners were wearing black from head to toe, which made it difficult to pick them out. Someone had taken their assault vests, but it wasn’t difficult for Keo to piece together the clues to their identities. The man also had pale white strips around both arms and one leg. More bandages. Which meant he and the woman hadn’t escaped the office building unscathed, either.

“He did say you were a character,” Greengrass was saying from somewhere across the small room.

“‘He?’” Keo said.

“Buck.”

“Buck you right back.”

Greengrass grunted. “Does that ever get tiring?”

“What’s that?”

“Being so clever all the time.”

Sometimes, Keo thought, but he said instead, while injecting just the right amount of smartassness, “Never.”

“He also told me to be wary of you.”

“Is that why you kept quiet back in the stairwell?”

“That was one reason.”

“What were the others?”

“You were probing, digging for information. I wasn’t about to give you any.”

“I was just trying to be friendly.”

“Is that right? You always try to be friendly with people hunting you?”

“See, I didn’t know you were hunting me. I thought you guys were just looking to share a room. It was a pseudo interview.”

“Uh huh.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Why wouldn’t I? You’re so believable.”

Keo smiled. He had to admit, Greengrass was growing on him. Not that Keo wouldn’t shoot the man in the head right here, right now if he had a gun. Heck, he’d settle for a knife to plunge it right through that barely visible forehead of his.

Whoever had tossed him, Greengrass, and the woman into the room had taken everything they had except the clothes they had on. Someone had even snatched the pack of gum Keo had kept in his back pocket for a rainy day. It was strawberry-flavored. The one bright spot? They had left his socks, which was the only reason Keo wasn’t freezing to death.

“What’s her name?” Keo asked.

“You don’t need to know that,” Greengrass said.

“Don’t be rude. Besides, you told me yours. What’s one more name between friends?”

“Is that what we are now? Friends?”

“I figured.”

“And how’d you figure that?”

“Look around you…”

“I have…”

“What do you see?”

“Jack shit.”

“That’s not true. You see me. Well, mostly.”

“You?”

“Yeah, me.”

“What about you?”

“I’m sitting here, and your friend may or may not wake up. It’s way too dark in here to see what kind of shape she’s in, but I’m guessing not so great. That leaves just you and me.”

Greengrass kept quiet, so Keo continued:

“This is the point in time when the two bitter enemies put aside their animosities and team up to fight a common foe. It’s called cooperation, pal.”

The other man remained silent. Keo had no clue if he was thinking about what Keo had said or if he was just being overly dramatic.

Keo decided to use the silence to shift slightly and flex his arms and legs to get the blood flowing. Every slight movement still sent jolts of pain through his body, but he didn’t want to be caught sitting flatfooted if someone were to burst in on them at any second. Not that he could tell from which direction they would do that exactly, since he couldn’t even locate the door in all the darkness. He’d have to get up and feel around the walls, but that was for later, when his muscles didn’t make him clench his teeth every time he moved any one of his limbs.

At least there are no broken bones. God, I hope there are no broken bones.

It didn’t feel like anything was broken. He could breathe okay, could see the clouds forming in front of his face with every breath he took. And his arms and legs might have throbbed whenever he moved or rubbed them, but at least they were all intact.

Nothing like legs and arms where they’re supposed to be.

That’s right, think of the bright side. Which is…you’re still alive.

Now that’s a good bright side!

Greengrass still hadn’t spoken. He also hadn’t moved even a little bit, which made Keo wonder just how badly hurt the other man was. Keo had aches and bruises everywhere, including on his aches and bruises, but what was Greengrass’s condition? And how was it going to affect this nascent partnership of theirs?

“Who are they?” Keo asked.

“Who?” Greengrass finally said.

“Who do you think I’m talking about, Mr. ‘I’m So Important I Get To Use My Surname When Everyone’s Still Using Their First Names Only?’ Our captors, that’s who. Did you find out their identities?”

Greengrass turned his head slightly, as if he were afraid of being spied on. Then, looking back in Keo’s direction, “I don’t have any idea.”

“They attacked you first. Killed your sniper”—Mr. Smiley Face—“James.”

If there were lights in the room, Keo thought he would have seen Greengrass squinting back at him with a How do you know? on his face.

“I’m an idiot, but I’m not a total idiot,” Keo said. “I can put two and two together like any other bozo with half a brain. They took out the shooter and strung him up to lure you outside. Except you didn’t bite and stayed in the lobby. They were forced to assault you, but you repelled them. You were doing pretty good for a while there, but eventually they broke through. And here we are.”

“And here we are,” Greengrass said. “Which is where, exactly?”

“You tell me. You were awake long before I was.”

“Not too long before. About an hour.”

Keo looked around him, not that he could see much beyond dull gray walls. “Looks like a closet. Or storage room.” He glanced back at Greengrass. “What do you think?”

The man shook his head. “I was unconscious when they brought us here. This place… We could be anywhere. Maybe even underground.”

“Underground?”

“Some kind of bomb shelter. Or panic room. It could be anything.”

“But it was definitely the ones that attacked the building?”

“Yeah. They overran the lobby. Aaron, Janks, and Williams died during the assault. Pressley”—his head turned toward the woman—“and I were the only ones left at the end. I was out of bullets and fighting hand-to-hand when they overwhelmed us. Pretty sure we were both dead, too, but…” He paused for a moment. “I don’t know why they kept us alive.”

“Why did they attack you in the first place?”

“We were sure there were people in the city when we entered, but I assumed they’d stay out of the way while we hunted you down. I guess I was wrong.”

I guess you were. Lucky for me.

Or is it?

The truth was, he couldn’t be sure of anything right now. Not where he was or who had put him here. He wasn’t even certain about the man he was talking to or this little partnership he was trying to hash out.

Or maybe I should call it a “Let’s not kill each other until we’re both out of here” temporary team-up.

Yeah, sounds about right.

While Greengrass talked, Keo had been keeping track of the names. He’d mentioned someone named Aaron, Janks, and Williams.

Three Buckies go to town…

Then there was James.

A fourth decided to tag along…

Pressley and Greengrass himself made—

Six bozos that decided to track little ol’ me instead.

But that wasn’t all of them. There were also the two in the staircase that Keo had killed. What were their names again? Oh, right.

And John and Pete make eight dead weights.

Buck had sent eight men after him, and they had followed him all the way to Cordine City from Axton. They weren’t chumps, either; nothing like the Buckies he had dealt with on his way to Fenton, or the ones he faced alongside Gaby.

No, Greengrass was a pro. Maybe he’d even been one before all of this, but he was definitely one now. Keo didn’t know about Pressley, but he did remember hearing a woman telling someone to “Do it” outside the stairwell door. “It” had turned out to be firing a grenade round into the confined room.

Keo had a lot of questions for Greengrass, but most of the pressing ones would have stalled this—whatever “this” was—thing they had going on. Right now, Greengrass was voluntarily talking because he had (smartly) decided escaping their prison would require both of them. Unless, of course, Pressley woke up soon, but she had shown no interest in doing that in the thirty or so minutes since Keo had been awake. Even if she did finally gain consciousness, three people gave them better odds than two. Or, at least, Keo hoped Greengrass saw it the same way.

“So you don’t have a clue who they are?” Keo asked.

“No,” Greengrass said. “You?”

“How would I know? I’ve spent the last two days running from your little posse. Was starting to feel like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but obviously prettier and less Caucasian.”

Greengrass chuckled.

“What?” Keo said.

“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

“What about it?”

“It’s my favorite Western. Favorite movie, actually.”

“Glad to hear it. I didn’t particularly care for it myself.”

“Come again?”

“Only if you buy me dinner first.”

“What?”

Keo grinned, even though Greengrass probably couldn’t see it. “I was never really into Westerns. Too many hats. And boots. And cows.”

“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a classic.”

“So is the McRib sandwich, but I’m not a fan of that, either.”

“There’s no accounting for taste, I guess.”

“Fine dining aside, what did you see out there?”

“When?”

“During the gunfight.”

Greengrass didn’t answer right away, but this time Keo was certain he was seriously considering the question.

Finally, the man said, “They dressed like civilians. I didn’t see anything that looked like a uniform. But they didn’t exactly fight like civilians.”

“How so?”

“They tried coming in through the back door, and when that didn’t work, they tried the sides. Each time, we pushed them back. But they had a plan. All their early attempts were just sorties to see how we’d respond so they could adjust. By the time I realized that, they were all over us.”

“And you’ve never been to Cordine City before? You or anyone else from Fenton?”

“No. It’s never been on our radar.” He seemed to hesitate before continuing. “We try to avoid the cities. They’re too big, too hard to take even with the technicals. A city the size of Cordine would have taken too much effort and manpower.”

Easier to take the small towns like Winding Creek and slaughter everyone inside, Keo thought, but decided that little fact probably wasn’t going to help him get any closer to escaping or pulling more information out of Greengrass.

He said instead, “How many men did they have?”

“It looked like over fifty, but I couldn’t see all of them. There was probably more. A lot more.”

“Fifty-plus fighters.”

“Probably more.”

“That’s a lot.”

Keo thought about what he’d seen from the fifth floor of the office building during the battle. Heads popping up and down behind windows, figures in the streets… At least three dozen, but he was badly limited by his angle and desire to stay hidden.

“Yeah.” Greengrass nodded. “When they finally pulled the trigger and took the lobby, there were a lot of them. Too many to fend off.”

“And no one said anything to you?”

“They might have, but I was too busy being clubbed in the head to hear what they were saying. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“What did you see and hear back there?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Someone fired a grenade into the stairwell, and I was too busy running away from it.”

“Williams.”

“Was that his name?”

“Yeah.”

Keo wondered if Greengrass knew about John and Pete, the two Buckies he’d killed in the stairwell. The man hadn’t said anything about them—hadn’t even mentioned their names—but for all Keo knew, Greengrass was staring daggers at him right now and thinking of ways to roast him alive.

“Has anyone come in here?” Keo asked.

“Not since I woke up,” Greengrass said. “Did they take your watch?”

Keo looked down at his empty wrist. “Yeah. They took everything I had on me. Including a pack of gum.”

“Gum?”

“Uh huh.”

“Poor you.”

“I know. I’m pretty broken up about it, too.”

Something that sounded like a grunt came from Greengrass. “You were a hard man to track. We lost you multiple times after Axton. Did you know we were on your tail before Cordine City? You had to have known,” Greengrass added before Keo could answer. “You were taking precautions.”

“Apparently they weren’t good enough precautions, because you still kept finding me.”

“Janks was a tracker. He was ex-Army.”

“Like you?”

“What makes you think I’m ex-Army?”

“I’ve been around enough Army assholes to know when I’m sitting across from one.”

Greengrass chuckled. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Take it however you like. Is Buck ex-Army, too?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“So how did someone who used to be ex-Army end up taking orders from a civvie?”

“Buck is very capable. That’s all you need to know.”

I’m going to need to know a lot more than that if I’m going to put a bullet between his eyes, Keo thought, but again didn’t think that was going to help this little burgeoning team-up with Greengrass, so kept it to himself.

He said instead, “How is she?”

“She’s hurt,” Greengrass said. “We both are.”

“How bad?”

“I took a bullet in my right leg; it shattered my fibula. My left arm is broken somewhere between the shoulder and elbow. I think it’s the humerus bone. I have a cut in my left arm from a knife, but that’s barely worth mentioning. They were nice enough to stop the bleeding and wrap me up.”

“That’s mighty generous of them.”

“I guess I wouldn’t have been very good to them for intel purposes if they let me bleed to death. I’m guessing that’s the only reason we’re still alive. They’re going to interrogate us, find out what we’re doing in Cordine City.”

“You think they’re locals.”

“Has to be.”

“What about Pressley? She gonna live?”

“I’m not sure. I didn’t want to turn her over to get a better look at her wounds. But she hasn’t woken up since they put us in here, and her breathing’s weak. Steady, but weak.”

Hunh. Maybe I’m better off by myself.

But even as he thought that, Keo knew it wasn’t true. Greengrass might have been a walking dead man, but he was still capable of (slowly) walking, and that might come in handy. What was that old saying about only needing to be able to run faster than the other guy to outrun a bear?

He was hurt, but he wasn’t physically limited like Greengrass. Aches and bruises would heal, but it was going to take more than time to mend a busted fibula and a cracked humerus bone. So if he had to go mano a mano with the Bucky, it was going to be an easy win. It also wouldn’t exactly be a fair fight, but Keo wouldn’t lodge a complaint if it came to that.

“What about you?” Greengrass asked.

“Took a beating, but I’m pretty sure I can run if I have to. As to how far I can keep it up, well, that’s another matter.”

“There’s something else to consider…”

“What’s that?”

“They’re out there.”

“Our captors…”

“No,” Greengrass said. “Them.”

“Them who?” Keo was going to ask, when the answer came to him in a rush, and he thought, The night’s still not safe. They’re still out there. And some of them are still just as dangerous now as they were six years ago.

“What about them?” Keo said.

“They’ll know I’ve been captured by now. It already knows.”

Keo had a feeling he already knew who the it that Greengrass was referring to was, but he had to ask anyway. “‘It?’”

Greengrass grinned back at him through the darkness—not that Keo could actually see it, but he could feel it.

“Do I have to say it?” the Bucky asked.

This time, it was Keo’s turn to keep quiet.

“It’s out there right now, with that horde, looking for you,” Greengrass continued. “Whether we’re still in Cordine City or not, it’ll find you.”

“You’re working with them,” Keo said. “You have been, since all of this began. Since Axton.”

“Yeah…”

“That’s why you didn’t let the sniper kill me back at the office building. That’s why you risked coming up the stairs to get me.”

“It wants you alive,” Greengrass said. “I don’t know why. That’s not my business. I was given an order.” He paused. Then, “It’s nothing personal.”

“Easy for you to say,” Keo said.

Eight

“It wants you alive. I don’t know why. That’s not my business. I was given an order. It’s nothing personal.”

It also won’t be anything personal when I shoot your ass and leave you here to die, Keo thought, but he bit his tongue on that one, too.

Instead, he tried to think about what was happening out there beyond their little concrete prison. He didn’t know how long they had been in here or if there was still light outside. It had been morning when he almost died in the stairwell, and Greengrass didn’t have any better sense of the time. It could have been a day, or two—or more—since the gun battle.

Keo’s head was still swimming from being nearly buried in rubble, but he didn’t think there was any permanent damage. (Of course, if there were, he wouldn’t exactly know it, probably.) He had regained enough strength to stand up and walk around the room, and it was just as small and cramped and hard against his socked feet as it had been when he was sitting and trying not to move.

He found the door to his right—Greengrass’s left. It was a rectangular metal plate. Thick, too, from the dull thud that responded when he banged on it a couple of times with his fists. There was a lever, but it wouldn’t budge in any direction. There was no lock, which further convinced him he was inside a holding cell of some type. Maybe it had even been a closet or storage room at one point, but it wasn’t those things anymore.

Greengrass hasn’t said very much since telling Keo that hunting him down and trying to capture him alive for a blue-eyed ghoul was “nothing personal.” Keo hadn’t bothered to argue the point, mostly because Greengrass sounded like he was about to either fall asleep or lose consciousness.

Keo let the man rest while he explored their cell. It took only ten minutes for him to walk around the room four times. There wasn’t any other way in or out except the lone door, and pushing against it hadn’t done anything but given him a sore shoulder. He was able to move easier than he had expected, and while there was still pain, it wasn’t the same throbbing aches like when he first woke up. And he could walk well enough to feel better about his situation, something that Greengrass couldn’t claim.

“I took a bullet in my right leg; it shattered my fibula. My left arm is broken somewhere between the shoulder and elbow. I think it’s the humerus bone.”

Guy’s got more broken bones than a dog with a big backyard.

So how much help would Greengrass really be when Keo needed him? Or Pressley, for that matter? Ms. Do It still hadn’t woken up from her nap, and Keo was beginning to think she never would. Then again, giving his captors three targets to shoot at was better than giving them just one—namely him.

We’ll see, I guess. We’ll see.

He didn’t like what Greengrass had said about it being out there, somewhere, still looking for him. Just thinking about that made Keo shiver, and he was glad it was too dark for Greengrass to see even if he were awake, which Keo wasn’t convinced of.

When Keo glanced in his direction to check that theory, he found the Bucky in the same spot as the last time he’d looked. The older man’s eyes were closed and might have been for some time, but Keo only noticed now.

He walked over to the Buckies and crouched in front of Pressley.

He had to admit, she wasn’t bad looking, and although he had always favored blondes more, he’d always found gingers to be a close second. (The fact that she had encouraged Williams to “do” him in notwithstanding.) She hadn’t moved from the prone position they had left her in—on her stomach, resting on one cheek. Up close, he could make out the dry trails of blood along her temple. There was another bandage around her left thigh, and this one seemed to be bleeding, with a small pool of blood around the area. There was another bandage around her left arm, but it looked to be in better condition. Pressley was very much still alive and her breathing was constant, if a bit weak.

Keo scooted over to Greengrass.

The man was a lot older than Keo had thought at first—maybe mid-forties—and he had more grays in his hair than brown. Crow’s feet jutted out of the corners of both eyes, and he had a sharp nose—

Greengrass opened his eyes. “What the hell are you doing?”

Keo smiled. “Just making sure you’re still alive.”

“Are you sure now?”

“Pretty sure.”

“So get the hell away from me.”

Keo got up and walked back to the door. “You always this groggy after a nap?”

“Is that what you call almost dying? A nap?”

“Almost dirt nap?”

“Buck was right. I don’t know whether to buy you a beer or choke you to death with my bare hands.”

“Grumpy it is.” Keo nodded at the door. “I found it, by the way. We’re definitely in a prison cell of some type. You can only open or lock it from the other side.”

“How long was I out?” Greengrass asked. He rubbed at his face with his right hand. His entire left arm, Keo noticed, had never moved once.

“Twenty minutes, tops.”

“Feels longer.”

“It’s the room. The ambience.”

“Ambience?”

“Atmosphere? Either/or.”

“Anything happen while I was out because of the…ambience?”

“What’s the matter, Greengrass, you afraid I’ll fondle you in your sleep?”

“I wouldn’t put it past you. So did something happen or not?”

“Don’t get your panties into a bunch. Nothing happened.”

The Bucky glanced over at Pressley. “Did she wake?”

“No, and I’m not sure she’s going to.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No, I don’t. But we should probably assume that and not count on her helping us getting out of here.”

“So we’re still doing that,” Greengrass said. It didn’t sound like a question.

“Unless you’ve changed your mind. Have you?”

“Just wanted to make sure.”

“You sure now?”

“Touché.”

“Point is, whether she wakes up or not, there’s a good chance it’ll be up to you and me to get us out of here.”

“We’re not leaving without her.”

“I never said we would.”

“Just so we’re clear on that one, too.”

“Clear as day,” Keo was going to say, but before he could get the words out, the door next to him began moving.

“What—” Greengrass said.

“Company,” Keo said, and he walked quickly back to his spot and sat down on the floor. It didn’t take very long because of how small the room was. He made sure to fold his legs in front of him and draped his arms over his knees in case he needed to get back up in a hurry.

Just in case…

Both he and Greengrass kept quiet as someone swung the heavy door open from the other side. At the same time, yellow halogen lights flooded the ten-by-ten space from nowhere.

No, not lights, but light. There was just one, on the wall above the door. Keo hadn’t seen it in the darkness, and it was too high for him to touch while he was groping his way around the cell earlier. But it had lit up as the door opened, either triggered automatically or from a switch.

Now that he could finally see (Let there be light!), Keo got his first real good look at Greengrass and Pressley next to him.

Greengrass looked even more beat up than Keo was expecting. The man grimaced, a heavily lined face as his eyes tried to adjust to the sudden brightness. Pressley, on the floor next to him, stayed where she was and actually looked more peaceful in the light.

Keo turned to take in the opening door just as two figures standing in the widening doorframe came into view. Both men, wearing civilian clothes. They were in their twenties, with nothing even resembling a welcoming look on their faces. The tall and skinny one had come unarmed, while the shorter but just as skinny one held a pump-action shotgun in front of him.

“Move and you die,” Tall and Skinny said.

As if they had rehearsed it, Short and Skinny racked his shotgun and aimed it at Keo, then swung it over to Greengrass. Then, for good measure, at the unconscious Pressley.

“I don’t think she’s going to be much of a threat,” Keo said.

“You never know,” Tall and Skinny said.

The taller of the two stepped inside and grabbed Pressley by the arms and began dragging her across the floor over to the door.

“Jesus Christ, what are you doing?” Greengrass shouted and tried to get up.

He tried, anyway, but didn’t get very far. Keo thought he would have fallen right back down from his injuries by the way his face contorted as he attempted to get up, if Short and Skinny didn’t step into the room and strike Greengrass in the back with the buttstock of his shotgun first.

Greengrass grunted as he fell back down to the cold floor.

Short and Skinny whirled around and fixed Keo with a hard look, as if daring him to do something.

Keo shrugged back at him. “I don’t know them. Do what you want.” Then, when the man narrowed his eyes questioningly back at him, “Tell your boss that I don’t know these guys. Whatever grudges you have against them, I’m not a part of it.”

The man with the shotgun didn’t respond and instead backed up as his partner continued dragging the still-unconscious Pressley over to the door. Tall and Skinny wasn’t very gentle, and Pressley left behind jagged blood smears from one side of the cell to the other.

That would probably hurt if Pressley could actually feel anything, Keo thought, but he still winced at the sight.

Short and Skinny turned and followed his partner through the door, and Keo watched the heavy slab of metal swing back around, sliding into place with a loud bang!

Keo glanced over at Greengrass. The Bucky was picking himself up from the floor when the lone lightbulb disappeared, and Keo couldn’t see much of anything again.

“You okay?” Keo asked.

Greengrass sighed. “At least the fucker didn’t hit me in the arm.”

“Captain Optimism,” Keo chuckled.

“Fuck you.”

“Maybe after we get out of here, and only if you play your cards right.”

Greengrass’s shadowy outline leaned against the wall, and his head turned toward the door. “Why did they take Pressley?”

“I don’t know, but they went straight to her. You saw that, right?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“That’s the question. Feel free to ask them when they come back. I’m sure they’ll be all eager-like to answer.”

“I will.” Greengrass went silent for a moment. Then, with just a trace of barely contained anger, “What was that shit about?”

“What was what shit about?”

“What you said. About not being one of us, that they can do whatever they want with me and Pressley because you don’t care.”

Keo shrugged. “Hey, I’m just trying to increase my chances of getting out of here with my limbs still intact. If that means selling you out to do it, then so be it.” He smiled. “It’s nothing personal.”

Greengrass grunted, but kept silent.

Nine

He should have gotten a better look at what was outside the door when he had the chance, but he hadn’t been smart enough to do so. Of course, he blamed it on everything happening inside the room—Pressley being dragged out like she was a piece of meat, Greengrass being introduced to the buttstock of a shotgun—demanding his attention, but it was really just an excuse. By the time he realized he needed to gather intelligence, the lone light in the cell had gone out and there was just darkness again.

Excuses, excuses.

He spent the next hour or two (he wasn’t really sure which, maybe somewhere in-between) waiting for something else to happen. He’d gotten his legs underneath him again and stood next to the door trying to hear something happening outside the room, but the walls were just too thick. For all he knew, they could be underground somewhere like Greengrass had suggested or even in the back of a grocery store.

Probably not the back of a grocery store.

Greengrass hadn’t said a word since they took Pressley, and as far as Keo could tell—without sitting in front of him and making absolutely sure—the Bucky might have gone back to sleep. Or fallen unconscious.

Either/or, because one was the same as the other.

Keo didn’t mind the quiet too much, though. He liked being alone with his thoughts anyway, and given how weakly Greengrass had protested when the Skinny Brothers dragged Pressley out of the room, he had begun to rethink the Bucky’s value.

“I took a bullet in my right leg; it shattered my fibula. My left arm is broken somewhere between the shoulder and elbow. I think it’s the humerus bone.”

Two broken bones were nothing to sneeze at. Hell, one was bad enough, and Greengrass was dealing with two.

I have a feeling getting out of here’s going to come down more to me than us.

He was still thinking about that when the door began to move again.

Keo hurried back to his spot and sat down, and closed his eyes just before the halogen lamp switched on and once again bathed the room in a yellowish light. When Keo opened his eyes, he immediately turned his head toward the door and at the two familiar skinny figures as they looked in—and right at him. They were ignoring Greengrass completely, not that the Bucky noticed because he hadn’t woken up despite the light. His head was lolled slightly to one side—a hair’s breadth from toppling sideways and into the spot where Pressley had been an hour (two?) ago.

Unlike the last time, the men had shown up both fully armed—Tall and Skinny cradled an AR rifle in front of his elongated frame while his partner wielded the same pump-action shotgun he’d used on Greengrass earlier.

And they were definitely looking straight at him. There was no mistaking that. Just as they had come for Pressley last time.

I guess it’s my turn.

“Hey, boys, how’s it going?” Keo asked.

The two men exchanged a look before Tall and Skinny beckoned Keo over with his forefinger as if Keo were a puppy.

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

“Get your ass over here,” Tall and Skinny said. He wasn’t exactly menacing, especially with that rail-thin frame of his, but the rifle did add some gravitas.

“Ah, so that’s what that means.” Keo stood up slowly. “Where we going?”

“Boss wants to see you.”

That worked? Keo thought, but kept the surprise off his face when he asked, “What happened to Pressley? She talking to the boss now?”

The Skinny Brothers didn’t answer him. Instead, they stepped back as Keo approached. It wasn’t that they needed to make room for him, but more that they were giving him plenty of leeway so he couldn’t reach for their weapons. Not that Keo had any intentions of doing something stupid like that. Or, at least, he was pretty sure there was only a forty-sixty chance he wasn’t going to.

Fifty-fifty, if he was being really honest with himself.

Easy does it. No point in getting yourself killed now.

That’s right, because I’m sure there’ll be other opportunities to get yourself killed later.

He glanced back into the room at Greengrass just before he stepped outside. The Bucky was either asleep or unconscious. Keo had entertained the idea that Greengrass was faking it and waiting for the chance to act, but that didn’t appear to be the case. The man really was oblivious to what was happening.

When Keo looked back at his captors, he got his best look at the outside world.

Or, anyway, a long hallway constructed of the same pale gray walls that made up his ten-by-ten prison cell. Halogen bulbs inside protective coverings lined the sides of the ceiling and were good indicators he was being kept inside an old building. Newer construction preferred the brighter and longer-lasting LEDs now.

Only one out of every ten or so lights were currently humming, and the ones that were weren’t giving off that much power. There was enough to see with, if just barely. Keo wondered if it was the same with the bulb inside his cell and that he’d just been sitting in the dark for so long he thought it was a lot brighter than it actually was.

Before he could answer that question, Short and Skinny slammed the door shut behind him and locked it by cranking down on a lever. There was no light switch out here, so Keo guessed the lone bulb inside the cell was connected to the door.

Tall and Skinny nodded down the hallway. “Let’s go.”

Keo started walking. “The boss, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“What’s his name?”

Neither man answered.

“He has a name, doesn’t he?” Keo asked.

Nothing.

“I’m going to have to call him something.”

Silence.

“Or is Boss his name?” When there was still only quiet, Keo shrugged. “Hey, I’ve heard worse names. Ran into this guy in Afghanistan with three first names. How’d you like that? Said he was from New York, but I don’t know, looked and sounded a little Southern to me.”

His only response was the heavy tap-tap-tap of his guards’ shoes on the hard concrete floor behind him.

“Live and let live, I always say,” Keo said. “You want three first names? Go for it. Me, I’ll settle for one. Three letters, that’s all I need. K-e-o. That’s my name, by the way. Keo. Rhymes with mayo.”

Someone grunted, but Keo couldn’t be sure which one of the Skinny Brothers it was.

“Just to reiterate,” Keo said, “but I didn’t come with those guys in the cell. You’ll notice there wasn’t a circled M anywhere on my person when you guys found me. It’s not that I have anything personal against the letter M, mind you, but I’m just not one of them. Just sayin’.”

One of his guards coughed.

“Has anyone ever told you that you boys are great listeners?” Keo asked. “You should hire yourselves out as therapists. Listen to people’s problems. Hey, you know the difference between a psychiatrist and a psychologist? Only one of them can get you high.”

Tap-tap-tap.

Keo chuckled. “You boys are all right. Never change.”

The farther he went down the hallway, the more poorly lit it became, giving Keo the feeling of walking through a tunnel.

He shivered unwittingly at the thought. The last time he was in a tunnel, it was dark and smelly, and there were things all around him, closing in…

It might have been like walking through a series of forbidden caverns, but there was enough light for him to glimpse the streaks of red on the floor. Blood. It wasn’t very hard to figure out who they belonged to, either.

Pressley’s definitely dead. Or close.

Either way, that leaves me and Greengrass.

Keo glanced over his shoulder, past the Skinny Brothers and at the metal door at the end of the hallway, just barely visible under the low halogen lights.

Or not.

* * *

Hallways. A lot of hallways.

Damn, there’s a lot of hallways.

Oh look, another hallway!

What were the chances of that?

Pretty good, as it turned out. And they all looked the same, too, which made it somehow worse. But maybe that had a little something to do with all the patches of shadows where the lights didn’t reach. Which was to say, about half of everything around him. Even the parts where there was a working halogen lamp wasn’t quite as bright as they could or should have been. Certainly nothing like what an LED bulb could have provided, which only further convinced Keo he was walking through a building that had been constructed a long time ago.

Maybe Greengrass was right. Maybe this is an old bomb shelter.

Keo was almost certain he was underground—if not deep, deep underground, then maybe a subterranean floor or two. There was no way to tell for sure, and there were no clues along the walls. No markings, writings, or anything to hint at where he was or where he was going.

But he was definitely going somewhere, and the Skinny Brothers stayed behind him during the entire walk. Keo had sneaked a look back twice and found plenty of space between him and his guards both times. They were being cautious, almost as if they expected him to do something (stupid) like reach for their weapons. Keo had no intentions of doing anything like that. At least, not until he had a better understanding of who his captors were and what they wanted with him.

Pressley’s blood, which had started outside the prison cell, had vanished about three turns ago. Keo wasn’t sure if that made him feel better or worse; after all, it didn’t tell him anything at all about what had become of the female Bucky.

She’s probably dead. Or close to dead.

Either way, it’s me and Greengrass.

Oh, who are you kidding? It’s you. Greengrass can barely scratch his ass with those broken bones of his.

“We there yet?” Keo asked. It was the first time he’d spoken in—well, he’d lost track of time between trying to memorize (and failing badly) where he was going and figuring out just how deep in trouble he really was.

Like the last dozen or so times he attempted conversation, the Skinny Brothers didn’t oblige him.

“Seems like we’ve been walking for a while,” Keo said anyway. “You sure you guys know where we’re going?”

Nothing.

“Or did I take a wrong turn somewhere? Did we take a wrong turn somewhere?”

More silence except for the tap-tap-tap of their boots behind him.

“It’s dark in here. Easy to get lost,” Keo said. “I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”

“We’re not lost,” one of his guards finally said. It sounded like Skinny and Tall, but voices (including his own) had a tendency to come out flat with all the concrete around them. “Just keep walking.”

“My legs are getting tired,” Keo said. “I’ve had a very long day. Speaking of which, what time is it out there?”

“Time for you to get a watch,” the other one said (Short and Skinny this time, Keo was mostly sure of it), and they both chuckled.

Laugh away, boys. As long as you’re talking to me…

“I had one,” Keo said. “Someone took it. Along with a pack of gum. You wouldn’t happen to know who took my gum, would you?”

“Your gum?” Tall and Skinny (?) said.

“Yeah. A whole pack. It was in my pocket, but when I woke up, it was gone.”

“I don’t know what happened to your gum. Maybe you should be more worried about who took your shoes.”

“Nah, I know who took my shoes. Socks are more comfortable, anyway.”

“If you say so, buddy.”

“Back to that gum,” Keo said. “Can you ask around? Find out who took it? I’d really like it back.”

“It’s fucking gum,” one of them said. Was it Short and Skinny?

“Yeah, but it’s my fucking gum,” Keo said. “It’s the principle of the thing, you understand.”

“I seriously don’t give a shit.”

“Just you, or your friend, too?”

“I don’t give a shit, either,” the other one said.

Keo faked a sigh. “That’s too bad. I was hoping we could be friends.”

“You’re barking up the wrong tree, sport.”

“I dunno, I’m pretty good at climbing trees…”

“This guy thinks everything’s a joke,” one of them said. By now, Keo had lost track of who was who. Did it even matter?

“Fenton asshole,” the other one said.

“I’m not from Fenton,” Keo said.

“We’ll see about that. Keep walking.”

“Yes, sir,” Keo said, and thought, So I was right. Cordine City has no love for Fenton.

I can definitely work with that.

They continued for another five or so minutes (Jesus Christ, how big is this place?), taking two more turns and encountering yet more long and semi-dark hallways. They hadn’t run across another soul since they left the room with Greengrass, and as far as Keo could tell, it was just them in the entire place. He hadn’t heard a single voice other than theirs, and there was an eerie silence to the building that made him grimace slightly, imagining himself running around out here looking for a way out.

Another turn.

Then another…

Finally, Keo thought when they came to a metal door at the end of a corridor. This one was better lit thanks to a few more working lamps than the previous half dozen hallways they’d navigated.

“Stop,” one of the Skinny Brothers said, and as Keo obeyed, the man slid past him and walked over to the door about ten meters away. He rapped his knuckles on the door before pulling it open and looking back at Keo. “In you go.”

“Boss man?” Keo asked.

“Boss man,” the man nodded.

Well, it’s about fucking time, Keo thought before stepping forward and into the room.

Ten

He recalled a man with a trench coat in the street during the gun battle with the Buckies; the man might have been directing the attack on the lobby, but that was just a guess. Keo had been too far away to really see a face, and he had no idea if the man standing behind a big battleship of a desk pouring whiskey into two small shot glasses was that same man.

The “boss” nodded at the Skinny Brothers after they delivered Keo inside, and the two men stepped back and pulled the door closed. That was a surprise, especially since the man in front of Keo didn’t look armed. Didn’t look armed, anyway. He wasn’t wearing a gun belt and had no weapons on him that Keo could see.

What’s going on here?

Unlike in the endless hallways that Keo had traversed to get here, the room was well-lit with a pair of LED bulbs—a reading lamp in the corner to Keo’s right and another on the desk itself. Both lights complemented the weak halogen in the center of the room. There was more than enough visibility for Keo to scan the room and everything available to him.

There were no guns present, but that didn’t mean the place was devoid of weapons.

A stack of books on top of a cherry oak furniture, an industrial-size stapler on top of some folded maps being used as a paperweight, a bronze statue of a football player in old-timey gear giving someone the stiff arm. Then there were the two dozen or so other items that could easily be turned into either a stabbing or blunt weapon. Three number two pencils, along with four Bic pens, in a cup holder would also work in a pinch.

Keo had had to make do with less. Much, much less.

The only other man in the room with him was in his late forties, wearing slacks and a long-sleeve shirt with suspenders hitched to a belt. He looked like a farmer who had just come in after a long day’s work in the fields and not the “boss” of Cordine City’s civilian army. That is, if that was indeed who Keo was standing before. He didn’t even know if they were even still in Cordine City, for that matter.

The man had finished pouring and slid one of the glasses across the desk before gesturing at a lone chair. “Sit.”

“Mind if I stand?” Keo said. “I’ve been sitting for too long.”

“Suit yourself.”

Keo walked over, bypassing the chair, and picked up the drink. The glass was heavy (I bet you could take out a skull with this) and the drink went down like gasoline. Keo hissed, then took a second and a third sip before the whiskey was gone.

“Not a drinker,” the man grinned.

Keo shook his head and put the glass down. “Not so much. I prefer cabernet when I’m trying to dull the senses or get my date drunk.”

“We don’t do red wine around here.”

“Not enough Texan for you?”

“Something like that. More?” the man asked, holding up the bottle.

“Are you drinking?”

“What kind of host would I be if I didn’t?”

“Is that what you are? My host?”

“Of course. What else would I be?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of warden.”

“Never been called that before.” The man refilled Keo’s glass. “Cheers.”

Keo picked his glass back up. “Right back at ya.”

They took a long, silent drink, watching each other over the brim of their glasses.

Take a picture, why doncha, Keo thought, grimacing as the second round went down just as badly as the first.

“Nothing like Kentucky whiskey,” the man smiled. “Found cases of the stuff not far from here. Good thing whiskey doesn’t go bad when stored properly.” He reached a hand across the desk. “I’m Winston.”

Keo shook the man’s hand. “Keo.”

“Interesting name.”

“I had an interesting mother.”

“Your mom named you?”

“Yes.”

“What did your dad think?”

“He didn’t have much of a say in it, being out of the country at the time and all.”

“But he had to come back eventually.”

Keo shrugged. “I was told there were arguments afterward, but the ink was already dry on the birth certificate.”

Winston chuckled before sitting down on a swivel chair. Keo followed suit, though his chair wasn’t nearly as comfortable. It was metal and straight and didn’t have much by way of pitch. But it was better than the cramped ten-by-ten space of his prison cell.

Not that Keo took his eyes off all the items in the room—and on the desk directly in front of him, in particular—that were within easy reach. The only reasons he hadn’t already acted were, one: He had no idea who these people were, or if they were even the enemy. And two, he was pretty sure the Skinny Brothers were waiting outside the door right now. Keo didn’t particularly feel like facing those two bozos with nothing but a stapler or a football trophy to defend himself with.

He nodded at the bronze figurine. “You played football?”

“It’s a Heisman,” Winston said.

“So…is that a yes?”

Winston shook his head. “It’s not mine. I found it in a pawnshop about thirty miles from here. It was a shame to just leave it lying around out there, so I took it. My way of saving it.”

He leaned forward and turned the trophy around so Keo could read the inscription on the side of the wide base.

“I don’t know who that is,” Keo said.

“If you don’t recognize the name, then you obviously don’t watch a lot of football.”

“Just the kind where you actually use your feet to kick the ball.”

“Soccer.”

“Americans call it soccer, but the rest of the world calls it football.”

“True, but the Brits were the ones to popularize soccer, and they originally called it soccer. Legend has it they changed their tune when us less civilized Americans took to calling it soccer, too.”

“Brits, am I right?”

Winston grinned. “Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.” He leaned forward again and poured them another shot. “Every now and then I wonder what happened to them. The Brits, the Scots, all the UK folks. Not so much the rest of Europe.”

“Not a fan of Europe?”

“Nah. You know the worst thing about Europe?”

“What’s that?”

“Europeans.”

Keo smiled. “You sound like my dad.”

“He sounds like a great man.”

“That’s…open to interpretation.”

Winston saluted Keo and sipped his drink. He didn’t say anything for a while and seemed content to just watch Keo across the brim of his glass again.

Keo fought the urge to take another taste of his whiskey. Two shots were already making him a little tipsy (Damn, son, when did you become such a lightweight?) and he had a feeling he was going to need every ounce of concentration if he needed to pick up the Heisman Trophy and bash Winston’s head in with it, then take out the two Skinny Brothers outside the door.

“The boys outside said you wanted to see me,” Keo said.

“You’re the one who asked to talk to me,” Winston said.

“True enough. Honestly? I didn’t really think it would work.”

“You know what they say about opportunity. Be ready when it knocks.” He rapped his knuckles on the desk for effect. “So talk.”

“All right. First of all, I’m not one of them.”

“One of whom?”

“The two that woke up in the cell with me. The ones you and your army were shooting it out with yesterday morning.”

“No?” Winston said.

“No,” Keo said, and thought, So it has been over a day.

He had thrown “yesterday morning” out there to see if Winston would correct him, but the man hadn’t. Which meant it had been over a day since he was brought (down) here. Unless, of course, Winston knew what Keo was doing and purposefully didn’t correct him. Was he quick enough on the ball for that?

“You know who they are, don’t you?” Keo asked. “The ones in the cell with me. The ones from yesterday.”

“I do,” Winston nodded.

Again, he hadn’t corrected Keo’s use of yesterday.

“Who do you think they are?” Keo asked.

“They’re from Fenton,” Winston said.

Keo nodded. “And I’m not.”

“So you kept telling the boys outside. How do I know that for a fact?”

“For one, I wasn’t wearing their uniform.”

“They weren’t wearing uniforms, either. Just black clothes and assault vests.”

“That’s a uniform. Also, the circled M.”

“There is that. But you could have taken yours off at any time back there.”

“But I didn’t.”

“So you say.”

“I don’t mind continuing to say it. The truth shall set me free, as the saying goes.”

“Sayings can be wrong.”

“How about this one? Don’t trust anyone from Fenton. They’re bad news.”

Winston pursed a smile but didn’t say anything.

“So you know who they are,” Keo said. “What they’ve done. What they’re still doing out there.”

“Maybe,” Winston said.

“That would explain why you strung one of them up on a lamppost. Was that part of a larger strategy?”

Winston shrugged.

“Didn’t work, did it?” Keo asked.

Winston shook his head. “Not really, no.”

“What were they supposed to do? Rush out in a blind anger and get themselves shot up?”

“Something like that.”

“You kept two alive for intel, is that it?”

“Three,” Winston said.

“Two,” Keo said.

Winston chuckled. “We’ll see about that.” He stood up and finished off what was left of his drink. “You say you’re not one of them.”

“Hand to God,” Keo said, and lifted one hand to do just that.

“Anyone can raise their hand to God and swear.” Winston walked around the desk. “Come with me.”

Keo stood up. “Where we going?”

“Follow me.”

“I guess I’ll follow you, then.”

Keo started to turn, but not before giving the trophy another glance. It looked like a heavy sucker and could likely break through a man’s skull with one swing. Hell, he might not even have to put that much effort into it.

Not yet. Not yet…

He followed Winston to the door. As Keo had suspected, the Skinny Brothers were waiting for them outside.

“Stay close, Keo,” Winston said. “You don’t want to get lost out there.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” Keo said.

“The first time I came down here, I almost couldn’t find my way back up. It can get a little tricky.”

“How big is this place, anyway?”

“Big enough.”

“Big enough for what?”

Winston didn’t answer, and continued walking. Short and Skinny and his partner fell in behind them. They turned into a barely lit corridor, and Keo remembered again why it was so hard keeping track of his whereabouts in this place.

“You want shoes?” Winston, walking in front of him, asked.

“That would be nice,” Keo said.

“I’ll see what I can do once we’re done with this.”

“‘This?’”

Winston ignored the question and said instead, “The only reason I’m even entertaining the possibility that you’re telling the truth is how we found you. In that stairwell under a pile of rubble, along with those dead guys.”

“Like I keep telling you, I’m not one of them. I’m not from Fenton.”

“What were you doing in that building with them, then?”

“I got there first. They came later.”

“They were after you?”

“Yeah. They’ve been tracking me for the last two days.”

“Why?”

“I have an ongoing hate-hate relationship with Fenton. Mostly hate. The kind that involves guns. And bullets. And stabbings.”

“Now you’ve piqued my curiosity.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“But you’re going to have to tell me more than that.”

“I’d love to, as soon as I’m convinced you’re not going to execute me anyway.”

“I guess we’ll have to both wait and see.”

“Swell.”

They turned into another semi-dark corridor, and Keo thought, Did I walk through here before? Shit, I can’t tell.

“You conserving electricity?” Keo asked.

“We’re conserving everything,” Winston said. “There used to be more resources out there just lying around for the taking, but with more and more survivors roaming the land again, they’re dwindling. We’re running these lights on solar power, but if you know anything about that, you know it takes a lot of sun to power even the smallest battery.”

“Are we even still in Cordine City?”

“We are.”

“Under it?”

“What gave it away?”

“The ugly décor, for one.”

“They weren’t exactly concerned with aesthetics when they built this place more than forty years ago. But it served its purpose; still does, now.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“Survival, of course.”

“Of course.”

Keo expected them to keep walking for a while yet, but after another couple of turns (Christ, I really am lost…again) Winston stopped in front of a metal door that seemed to have popped out of nowhere. But that wasn’t true; it had more to do with his lack of familiarity with the place and all of its twists and turns. The fact that every corridor was identical to the two dozen or so ones he’d walked through so far didn’t help.

Winston didn’t open the door right away. Instead, he turned around to look at Keo. “So you keep insisting that you’re not from Fenton. That you’re enemies.”

“That’s right,” Keo said. “Want me to say it again? ’Cause I can.”

“Tell me what happened. How did you become enemies?”

“They killed some friends of mine, and I killed some friends of theirs.”

“And that’s it?”

“You need more than that?”

Winston shrugged.

“You know how it goes,” Keo said. “It’s a vicious cycle. Sooner or later, everyone ends up dead.”

“You’re not.”

“I’m just stubborn that way.” Keo looked over at the door. “So where are we?”

“I want you to meet someone.”

“The cooks? Is it the cooks? ’Cause I’m starving.”

“Not quite,” Winston said. He turned around and pulled open the door before stepping inside.

Keo followed.

“You recognize her?” Winston asked.

“Yeah,” Keo said.

He stared forward at Pressley. She was awake and bloody, and Keo had a pretty good idea why Winston had brought him here. Winston was going to make him prove that Keo wasn’t from Fenton.

He was going to make Keo kill Pressley.

Eleven

She sat in the middle of a room that looked almost identical to the one Keo had woken up to, and that Greengrass was probably still sleeping inside at the moment, except it was bigger. Maybe twice as big, but definitely wider and with extra spaces to move around, which only made Pressley appear more insignificant.

Keo wasn’t quite sure how Pressley remained upright since she could barely lift her head to look at him. Wet red hair draped over her bandaged forehead and bruised cheeks, and there were just as many sweat stains on her clothes as there was blood. It didn’t appear as if she’d been tortured or beaten, or physically harmed in any way since the last time he saw them dragging her out of the other cell.

The only source of light came from an LED bulb that was clearly new, placed in the very center of the room. It bathed the place in a bright glow, which only made Pressley’s current state all the more shocking. Not that she was in terrible physical shape, but that she was even still alive at all.

And he’s going to make me kill her to prove I’m not one of Buck’s boys.

Keo was pretty sure that was exactly why Winston had brought him here, and while the idea didn’t sit right with him, it didn’t completely come across as all that objectionable, either. He’d done worse things to survive. Way, way worse things than murdering someone who had been, just a day ago, trying to do the same to him.

What was that saying? What comes around, goes around? So why was there this uncomfortable hole in the pit of his stomach that seemed to be growing steadily?

“Does she have a name?” Winston, standing next to him, was asking.

The Skinny Brothers had followed them inside and closed the door, but they stayed back to give Keo and their leader some space to work. He could feel their eyes on his back, waiting to see how he would respond.

“You didn’t ask her?” Keo said.

“She wouldn’t tell us,” Winston said. “We could have made her talk—that was the original plan—but she didn’t look to be in any position to survive that kind of…nudging. At least, not yet. Maybe in a few days things might change.”

“I think you might need more than a few days there, boss man.”

“It could have been worse.”

“I don’t see how that’s possible.”

“She could be dead already.”

“Ah.”

“I could also have sent a few dozen RPGs into that lobby and not a single one of my man.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Because Cordine City is within a stone’s throw away from Fenton. I need to know what they’re doing over there, what plans—if any—they have for us. They came here for a reason. Maybe you were telling the truth and they were just after you. But maybe you’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“That remains to be seen. Either way, one of them is telling me what I want to know. The boys tell me the one still in the cell looks healthier. He’s also the leader, so that makes him infinitely more valuable than her.”

“You sound like you’ve got it all figured out. So what am I doing here?”

“Prove to me you’re not of them.”

Goddammit, I hate it when I’m right, Keo thought, but he said anyway (maybe because he was just trying to stall for time, he wasn’t sure), “How am I supposed to do that, exactly?”

Winston held out his hand, and Short and Skinny walked over and placed a Glock semiautomatic pistol in his palm. Winston took out the magazine and began thumbing bullets loose, the rounds clink-clink-clinking off the cement floor and ricocheting around their feet. One bounced off Keo’s socked foot and rolled toward Pressley’s unmoving form.

How is she even still upright?

“What size do you wear?” Winston was asking him.

Keo looked over, surprised by the question. “What?”

“What size shoes do you wear?”

“Why, you gonna fit me for a new pair of boots? I hope it’s not cowboy boots. I don’t do rodeos.”

“We have plenty of footwear in storage. One of them should fit you.”

“What else you got in storage?”

“You’ll find out when we’re done here.”

Keo turned around to face Pressley—

—and was surprised to find that she had opened her eyes and was staring back at him.

The hell?

Light blue eyes peered from behind a curtain of sticky red hair. Pressley’s eyes reminded him of someone else, though they weren’t quite as intoxicating. But then, few people had those qualities.

What is she doing?

If Pressley knew what was happening—or what was about to happen—to her, she didn’t say a word. Not to Keo or to Winston or anyone. She didn’t make a sound at all. And for whatever reason, she was only looking at him. Right at him.

Then something happened. A flicker of…something danced across Pressley’s eyes just before they snapped to the right, in Winston’s direction, before returning back to him. It was brief—barely half a heartbeat—and Keo would have missed it entirely if he hadn’t been staring straight at her when she did it.

What…the…hell?

His eyes—just his eyes—shifted down to her hands. Pressley was clutching her thighs, her fingers coiled, as if she was preparing herself for…what?

What exactly was going on here?

Or the better question was, what was it that Pressley was expecting from him?

The sound of Winston slipping the magazine back into the gun—click!—snapped him back to the present.

When he looked over, the older man was holding the weapon out toward him. “There’s one round in the pipe. You can use it to shoot me or one of the boys back there, or you can prove to me you’re not from Fenton.”

Keo stared at the gun, then up at Winston’s face. “You ever heard the saying, ‘Two is better than one?’ What if the one back in the cell dies while you’re…nudging him? Then what? No more intel.”

“I’m willing to take that risk.”

“Why would you, when you don’t have to?”

“Life is a risk.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“You’re stalling.”

“I’m just very curious by your decisions, that’s all.”

“You’re stalling,” Winston repeated. He nodded in Pressley’s direction without bothering to look over at her. “She’s probably not going to survive the day, anyway. You’ll be doing her a big favor.”

“You want me to kill her.”

“I thought that was understood. Do you need me to say it, too?”

“No.”

“So stop stalling and make your choice. Are you against Fenton, or with them?”

The hole in the pit of his stomach was growing when Keo focused on the gun in Winston’s palm, the grip turned toward him. He told himself that he’d done this before, that this was just another “must do” in a list of “must do’s” that kept him alive.

So what makes her so special?

The answer was nothing. He didn’t even know her name until Greengrass told him. Before that, she was just Ms. Do It, the one who had told Williams to blow him to hell in the stairwell.

So what did he owe her, exactly?

Nothing. Not a damn thing.

“Take it,” Winston said, watching Keo’s face closely. “You can help me talk to the other one later. Find out what Fenton is doing over there, what their plans are for Cordine City. A lot of people are curious what the hell they’re doing running around with all that firepower.”

“People? So you’re not alone in this?”

“You don’t need to know that. Not yet, anyway.” Winston sighed. “Make your choice, Keo. Are you with them, or are you with us?”

“That’s an easy choice.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“Good man,” Winston said.

Keo took the gun from Winston, and as the older man pulled his hand back—

—Keo lunged forward.

“What—” Winston got out when Keo slipped his left arm around his throat and pulled his body back until it was in front of him, even as Keo lifted his gun hand and pointed it toward the door.

The Skinny Brothers reacted quickly, both men moving much, much faster than Keo had expected. But he’d still caught them off guard, and that yielded almost exactly two seconds of a head start.

Even so, the closest of the duo—Short and Skinny—was already lifting his rifle. Except the Cordine City man didn’t pull the trigger because there was no shot with Keo hiding behind Winston. That extra second of hesitation cost him, and Keo shot him.

You idiot! a voice shouted inside the back of Keo’s mind even as he pulled the trigger and the Glock bucked.

Keo’s first and only round had hit Short and Skinny center mass in the chest, and the man dropped to his knees. He was still alive, somehow, but didn’t have the strength to return fire. He had also fallen directly in front of his partner, who had to go around him, all the while trying to line up a shot at Keo with his shotgun.

“Don’t shoot!” Winston shouted. “Goddammit, don’t shoot me!”

Tall and Skinny stepped around his partner and hesitated, and that once again gave Keo the opportunity to throw the now-empty Glock with everything he had. The gun’s Polymer grip hit the guard in the forehead, and the man’s snapped head back, even as he pulled the trigger on his shotgun and sent buckshot into the ceiling, loosening a chunk of white powder.

Winston attempted to duck in front of Keo when the shotgun went off, but Keo had too strong of a grip around his neck, and the man only managed a slight crouch. Keo changed up his grip, then tossed Winston aside like he was a nuisance before he dove forward at the stumbling Tall and Skinny.

The shotgun! Get the shotgun!

Tall and Skinny was fighting to stay upright after being hit by the gun in the face, while still managing to rack his shotgun. He kept blinking, trying desperately to focus as Keo charged him and crashed into his target, wrapping his arms around the man’s waist as he drove him back, back, and back into the closed metal door.

Grunts from behind him, mixed with boots scraping frantically against the floor.

Shit, Winston!

Keo glanced over his shoulder and was shocked to see Pressley on her feet and tackling Winston and the two of them flying down to the hard ground—

Boom! as the shotgun fired again, so close to Keo’s ears that he was pretty sure he had just gone deaf. But that couldn’t have been the case, because he could still hear Tall and Skinny letting out an almost animalistic roar as he attempted to push Keo away. Gray mist from the second buckshot impact drifted down on top of the two of them, covering their heads and shoulders.

Keo punched Tall and Skinny in the face with a balled fist, felt wetness splashing his knuckles as the man’s nose erupted in a geyser of blood. Not that it deterred the guard from pushing Keo back, just enough to dislodge the shotgun from between their bodies, and swinging it at Keo’s head.

Keo ducked under the shotgun, and even as Tall and Skinny began to bring the weapon back for another swing, Keo sprung up and drove the heel of his right hand into the man’s jaw with everything he had. The guard’s head snapped backward and struck the metal door behind him with a resounding bam!

The shotgun clattered to the floor and Keo snatched it up, racked it, and pointed it at its previous owner. But he didn’t pull the trigger because Tall and Skinny was done. A thick layer of blood covered most of the lower half of his face, and there was a patch of blood and hair clinging to the section of the door where the back of his head had collided seconds ago. He wasn’t dead yet, but there was nothing about the way he was looking at Keo that indicated he had anything left.

Keo turned around and stepped over Short and Skinny lying in an almost fetal position on the floor as blood pooled underneath his lifeless body. The man had actually fallen and died while Keo wasn’t looking. Thank God, because Keo wasn’t sure he could have taken both of the Skinny Brothers at the same time.

Winston and Pressley were trying to kill each other in the back of the room.

Or Winston was doing the “trying to kill” part while Pressley was doing most of the “trying not to die” part, anyway. Pressley was on the ground, attempting to get up and failing, even as she whaled at Winston’s head with her fists. Winston seemed impervious to her punches and was trying to strangle her with his hands around her neck. Pressley’s face had already turned a dangerous shade of blue as her eyes, bulging, looked past Winston’s shoulder and at Keo. Winston, on the other hand, was oblivious to Keo’s presence.

Keo racked the shotgun, ejecting a perfectly unused shell, and the sound was enough to draw Winston’s attention. The older man looked back at him, hands still wrapped around Pressley’s throat, and his eyes snapped from Keo to the Skinny Brothers, then back again.

“You done?” Keo asked.

Winston’s answer was to abandon Pressley and stumble to his feet. He’d gotten halfway up when Keo tapped the shotgun’s walnut buttstock against his temple and Winston fell like a lump of coal.

“Now you’re done,” Keo said, and walked over to the nearest wall and sat down.

He looked across the room at Pressley as she picked herself up from the floor with some difficulty. Once she made it to her knees, she lifted her head, her chest heaving, and looked across the room at him.

Keo saw the same thing in her eyes that she was probably seeing in his.

A question.

Now what?

Twelve

“You should have taken the easy way out.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“You’re going to regret this.”

“I’m regretting not having some duct tape to shut you up.”

“You should have taken the easy way out…”

Man’s on repeat, Keo thought as he walked past Winston, who leaned against the wall cupping his broken nose. That was a present from Pressley during their fight, but he’d gotten off mostly unscathed, if Keo didn’t count the bloody cut along his forehead thanks to the buttstock of the shotgun.

Keo went back to Short and Skinny and picked up the man’s rifle from the floor and slung it. He unbuckled the dead man’s gun belt and slipped it on, then checked the SIG Sauer 9mm in the holster. Fully loaded. Good. He pocketed a spare magazine for the AR and another for the handgun before retrieving the Glock he’d thrown and shoved it into his belt behind his back.

He straightened up and took stock of the situation.

So far, so good.

“We have to get out of here,” Pressley said behind him, between coughing spurts.

Keo glanced over at her. She leaned against the far wall, slightly bent over with her hands on her knees. She looked ready to fall down, and maybe that wasn’t far from the truth; her scuffle with Winston had opened up the wounds, and small patches of blood seeped through the white bandages at multiple spots.

“You gonna die on me?” Keo asked.

Pressley looked up and pursed her lips. “Not if I can help it.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not really the kind of thing where you get a choice in the matter.”

“I’m not gonna die.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“You look like shit.”

“Fuck you, Keo. And you don’t look any better.”

He grunted and reached up to touch the bruising along his cheek and forehead. No thanks to you, Ms. Do It, he thought, but said, “Well, at least you know my name. What else do you know about me?”

“Enough,” Pressley said.

“Enough for what?”

“Enough,” she repeated.

“What did Buck tell you?”

“That talking to you was a waste of time.”

“He really said that?”

“No. That’s just the conclusion I came up with after being in the same room with you for a few minutes.”

Keo smirked. He remembered the last time he had heard her voice, outside the stairwell door telling the Williams guy to “do it.” Williams had responded by sending a grenade into the room with Keo.

And I just saved her life.

What the hell is wrong with me?

“Listen,” Pressley said.

“Listen to what?” Keo said.

“Just listen.”

He was going to repeat his question when he suddenly understood what she was trying to get at. He could hear his own slightly accelerated heartbeat, along with Pressley’s wheezing and Winston’s labored breathing, but there was something else.

Or actually, there was nothing else.

There was nothing that sounded like a small army of well-armed men rushing the room right now. Which was exactly what should have been happening after all the gunfire of the last few minutes. One pistol gunshot and two shotgun blasts should have brought Winston’s people down on top of them.

So where were they? Where were all the Cordine City fighters that had taken out Greengrass’s unit earlier?

Keo glanced back at the door. Like the cell he had shared with Greengrass, there was a lever, but no way to lock it on this side. Which meant if there were people currently charging through the hallways toward them, there was no way for him to keep them out.

Well, that’s not exactly true. The human shield concept worked pretty well with the Skinny Brothers earlier.

He walked over to Winston. “Where are they?”

Winston stared back at him but didn’t answer.

“Your men,” Keo said. “Where are they? Why isn’t anyone responding to the gunshots?”

“Someone must have heard it,” Pressley said. Every word seemed to take a lot out of her, but she remained on her feet even if she had to use the wall for support.

Keo stopped in front of Winston and drew his newly acquired pistol. “Where are the rest of your men?”

Instead of answering, Winston reached up and swiped at some blood dripping down the side of his forehead.

“Tough guy, huh?” Keo said. The SIG Sauer was a P320 and had a hammer that Keo cocked back now for effect. “We’ll see about that.”

The other man stared back at him but remained silent.

“We can use him to get out of here,” Pressley said. She pushed off the wall and walked over to them. Keo thought she was going to collapse, but she somehow didn’t.

Ms. Do It’s tougher than she looks.

“His people won’t open up on us if he’s in the way,” Pressley said. “Those two guys already proved that.”

Brilliant minds think alike, apparently.

Keo holstered the SIG before looking over at Pressley. Really, really looked at her this time.

She was struggling to stand without the support of the wall, but she was still standing. That was a heck of a feat, especially considering how half-dead she’d looked back in the cell room with Greengrass and all that blood he’d seen in the hallway earlier.

“How are you still alive?” Keo asked.

Pressley blinked through what was probably a wave of pain, before answering him. “What do you mean?”

“I saw them dragging you, unconscious, out of the other room. You were bleeding all over the hallway.”

“I woke up when they slammed the door shut, but I pretended to be unconscious. The less of a threat they perceive you to be, the better your chances of fighting back when the opportunity presents itself. Like it just did with you.”

Keo grunted and thought, You have no idea how close you came to being killed, lady. No idea at all.

So why didn’t I kill you? Why did I pull this dumbass stunt instead?

He had been asking himself those questions for a while now.

Why, why, why?

The easier path out of this place alive was to play along with Winston. It wasn’t as if he had never shot someone to save his own hide before, and Pressley certainly had it coming. Ms. Do It was the reason he was here in the first place, as far as he was concerned.

So why didn’t he just pop her and go along with whatever Winston had in mind? Why in God’s name did he decide to throw all that away to help a Bucky? A Bucky?

It must be temporary insanity. That’s the only explanation.

But there was another possibility that he didn’t like to think about, because it hit too close to home.

Lara.

It was Lara. She was why he hadn’t killed Pressley. He could deny it all he wanted, but it was right there, clear as day.

Lara.

He had envisioned what she would say when she found out he had murdered a helpless woman (“Helpless.” Ha!) to save himself. Everything seemed to come down to Lara these days. Even when she wasn’t around, or would ever find out about any of the things he’d done, he was still thinking about her. About what she would say, how he would explain himself, about trying desperately not to be an asshole.

“Don’t be an asshole, Keo,” she had said to him, more than once, and he’d spent an awful lot of time trying to avoid being one as a result.

That woman’s going to be the death of me one of these days. The ironic part is, she’ll never even know it. How sad is that?

Pretty damn sad, pal.

“I need a gun,” Pressley was saying. “If we’re going to get out of here—together—then I need a gun.”

Keo looked over at Winston, who continued to stare silently at him. There was no fear in the man’s eyes. Hell, there was nothing that even looked remotely like fear.

He turned back to Pressley. Those blue eyes of hers (Not like Lara’s. No one’s eyes are like Lara’s.) gave off a friendlier vibe, but he didn’t believe that for a second. Ms. Do It had once tried to kill him, and she would do it again in a heartbeat.

So why was he taking the Glock out from behind his back and throwing it over to her?

Because you’re an idiot, that’s why. And Lara’s going to laugh her ass off when she finds out how you got yourself killed.

Pressley wasn’t expecting the gun and flinched with obvious pain when she scrambled to grab it out of the air. “Couldn’t you have just handed it to me?”

He grinned. Had he done that on purpose, just to stick it to her a little bit? Maybe…

“You know how to reload it?” he asked.

“What am I, a moron?”

No, but you might be looking at one, Keo thought, but said, “You gonna shoot me in the back the first chance you get, Pressley?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Greengrass told me who gave your unit your orders. That it came straight from the bucking top.”

“Yeah, well, we’re a long way from Fenton, aren’t we?”

Not far enough for my liking, Keo thought as he watched her snatch up the bullets from the floor around the room. Every step she took seemed to take a lot out of her, and just crouching or bending to pick up a stray round made her grimace noticeably. But she always managed to get back up and moved on to the next piece of ammo that Winston had thumbed free. Most of the bullets had scattered into the corners when he and Pressley were trying to punch each other into oblivion earlier.

Keo had to admit, he didn’t know a lot of people who could take more than one bullet and what was probably a concussion and still keep going. He was one, and now apparently Pressley was another.

“What about Greengrass?” Pressley asked.

Keo didn’t answer right away, but he thought, He’s got two broken bones and zero chance of being much help getting out of here.

But the words that came out of his mouth were, “He’s dead.”

Pressley paused briefly to absorb that before she finished picking another bullet up with a grunt. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I made sure. So did the guards.”

“What happened?”

“What do you think happened? He was shot. He was hurt and bleeding even before they brought him down here. They wrapped you guys up, but as you probably noticed, you weren’t exactly given A-class medical treatment.”

“Shit,” Pressley whispered.

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Keo glanced over at Winston, who was narrowing his eyes back at him. The man clearly knew that Keo was lying, but he kept silent, and Keo couldn’t be sure if that was curiosity on the other man’s face or…amusement.

As long as he keeps his mouth shut…

Thirteen

The reason Keo didn’t think Pressley was going to shoot him the instant she snapped the magazine into the Glock and worked the slide was what Greengrass had told him:

“It wants you alive.”

And Greengrass had done everything possible not to kill him back at the office building. He could have—the sniper, Mr. Smiley Face, could have put Keo out of his misery a thousand times over—but he hadn’t.

“It wants you alive.”

That order came directly from Buck, and Greengrass was determined to follow it. What were the chances Pressley felt the same way?

Of course, the other possibility was that she meant it when she said she needed him to get out of the facility alive. That was Self-Preservation 101, something Keo knew a little about himself.

You mean used to, don’t you? Because if you still knew it, you’d have shot her instead of turning on Winston.

Right? Right?

Whatever the reason, Pressley still hadn’t shot him once the Glock’s slide clacked back into position. There was nothing to stop her from pulling the trigger, but she didn’t do it, and that was all that mattered for the next few hours.

As they walked Winston to the door, stepping over Short and Skinny, then around Tall and Skinny, Keo tried very hard to ignore Greengrass’s voice in the back of his head.

“It wants you alive.”

There was no question who it was.

Not who. What.

It was still out there, with that horde it had used to surround Axton with. Maybe it hadn’t brought all of them, but Keo didn’t think Blue Eyes would bring just a few. The undead thing was definitely smarter than that. That was, after all, the reason why he had lured it away from Gaby and the others. He had done that to save them, because it was the unasshole thing to do.

“Don’t be an asshole, Keo,” Lara had said to him.

God, she really is going to be the death of me. It’s too bad she’ll never know it.

Keo shoved all of that into the back of his mind as he opened the door and peered out at the barely lit hallway outside. Behind him, Pressley waited with Winston, who still hadn’t said a word since telling Keo he had made the wrong choice.

“Anything?” Pressley asked.

“All clear,” Keo said. He closed the door back up and turned around to face Winston. “Where are they? Where’s the rest of your men? Why are there just the three of you down here?”

Winston stared back at him, but like all the other times, didn’t waste his breath with an answer.

“There must be more of them aboveground,” Pressley said. “They probably use this place as some kind of last resort when they’re not using the cells. That’s why it’s so empty. They’re all up there.”

“Are you just guessing?”

“Yeah, pretty much. You got any better ideas?”

“Did you hear them saying anything while you were playing possum?”

“No. But they weren’t really the chatty type.”

Keo looked over at Winston again. “Nothing to say? Yay, nay? Somewhere in between?”

“You made a mistake,” Winston said.

“He speaks!”

“A big mistake,” Winston added. He didn’t sound angry or even threatening. It was almost as if he were simply talking to a dumb kid.

Not too far from the truth, I guess. I did just hand a gun over to a woman who had tried to kill me not too long ago.

“You think so?” Keo asked Winston.

“We’re wasting time,” Pressley said. “We need to get out of here. They might be getting ready to assault us at any minute.”

“Hold your horses. The man wants to talk. So let him talk.”

“There’s nothing for you out there,” Winston said. He didn’t bother acknowledging Pressley, holding the Glock behind him.

“Your people are out there.”

“I’m talking about beyond the city. Even if you make it out of here, we’ll hunt you down. You made an enemy of us tonight, Keo. Out of me. You’re going to live to regret that. For however long that lasts.”

“Seems like that’s what I do best these days. Make enemies. Right, Pressley?”

Pressley smirked at him over Winston’s shoulder.

“You shouldn’t have made this one,” Winston said. “You won’t survive it. You’ll just live long enough to regret it.”

“Not the first time someone’s said that to me. But I’m still here.”

“For now.”

“How’s the head?”

“You said you weren’t one of them…”

“I’m not.”

“And then you did this.”

“I don’t shoot unarmed women. Even Ms. Do It over here.”

“What did you call me?” Pressley said.

“Pressley.”

“You didn’t say Pressley.”

“Of course I did. Get your ears checked.”

Pressley narrowed her eyes at him but didn’t say anything.

Keo ignored her and said to Winston, “I made a choice. That’s really the only thing any of us can do these days. Make a choice and live with it.”

“You’re right, you did make a choice,” Winston said. “But it was the wrong one.”

“Not the first time, either, and probably not even close to being the last.”

“You do that a lot? Make bad choices?”

“More than I’m willing to admit, alas.”

“Come on, let’s go,” Pressley said impatiently. “The more we stand around here chatting, the more chances his people have of coming down and discovering us.”

“She’s got a point,” Keo said to Winston. Then, looking past the Cordine City man and at Pressley, “Try not to shoot me in the back.”

Pressley smiled back at him. “I’ll do my best.”

Was that a “I’m fucking with you” smile or a “Why don’t you turn around and find out, dumbass?” smile?

Keo sighed, thought, I guess we’ll find out, and turned around.

He pulled open the door a second time and looked out at a still-empty corridor.

This can’t be right. Where are they? Where are the men with guns trying to stop me from leaving?

Keo waited for those men to charge around the corner, armed to the hilt, but they never came. Not after he waited ten seconds, and not after thirty seconds.

Around the minute mark, Pressley said, “Well?”

Keo shook his head and took his first tentative steps outside. Despite his best attempts, he couldn’t get rid of the negative thoughts swirling around in his head.

This can’t be right. Can it?

Is this really going to be easier than I thought?

Can’t be. It can’t be this easy.

No way, no how.

No way, Jose.

Can it?

He picked up his pace and moved on ahead of Winston and Pressley. The weight of the weapon in his hands made him feel a lot better. It was a 12-gauge Remington 870 with five shells. He had two spares in his front pocket, but that only made seven in all. Still, Keo preferred the shotgun over the AR, especially in closed confines where spreading power was a good thing.

And, of course, there was Pressley behind him with the Glock.

Assuming she doesn’t put one of those rounds into your back.

The thought kept him on his toes, listening just as much to what was happening in front of him (Nothing. Nothing’s happening in front of you. So where are they? Where are Winston’s people? It can’t possibly be this easy. Can it?) as he was to the shuffling movements of Winston and Pressley behind him. But the fact that Pressley hadn’t shot him in the back yet, and God only knew she’d had plenty of opportunities by now, was a very good sign.

See, Lara? I’m trying. I’m trying very, very hard not to be an asshole here.

He peeked around the corner, but there was nothing to find but another long and dimly lit corridor waiting for him. There were no signs of people and no possibility someone was going to pop out of a door along the hallway, because there were no doors. Whoever had built the place had been pretty stingy about putting in rooms—

Bang!

Keo spun around, just as—

Bang! another shot a split second later, reverberating up and down the hallway.

Keo had the shotgun up and was ready to squeeze the trigger, but he didn’t because there was just Pressley standing over Winston’s body. The Cordine City man’s eyes were open and staring up at the darkened ceiling while blood seeped through one round in his chest and another in his stomach. He looked just as shocked to be dead as Keo was to finding him that way.

Well, that was unexpected, Keo thought before focusing on Pressley. “What the fuck did you do?”

She looked up at him, and she was either just as confused by what had happened or she was a damn good actor. “He went for the gun. I didn’t have any choice. He went for the gun.”

Keo lowered the Remington—slightly. “Goddammit. Couldn’t you have just winged him?”

“There was no time. He was so fast.”

“Why did you shoot him a second time?”

“Training.” Pressley looked down at the gun in her hand, then at Winston’s lifeless body again. “I guess there goes our human shield—”

She stopped short, and for good reason, because she could hear the same thing he could.

Pounding footsteps, coming toward them.

Fast.

Keo hurried back to the turn and peeked around the corner. He fully expected it not to be so empty this time, but it still was, even though the noise was getting louder—

Two figures, rounding the turn, running full speed. They were wearing civilian clothes and gripping weapons in front of them.

The one in front saw Keo first and tried to put on the brakes. Too late. As Keo fired and buckshot tore into the man’s chest, a bloody splotch spread over his thermal sweater as he collapsed in a pile.

The second one staggered out of his partner’s path, barely able to maintain his balance. He was simultaneously trying to aim with his rifle and grope at stray buckshot wounds along his right cheek.

Keo racked the shotgun and put the man out of his misery, the shot booming in the hallway even more so than Pressley’s two gunshots earlier.

If they didn’t know we’re down here before, they do now!

“The rifle,” Pressley said. She was crouched next to Keo and leaning around the corner, and had spotted the carbine that one of the dead men had dropped. Keo wasn’t entirely sure when she had moved up the hallway from behind him.

Tough, and sneaky.

“Go for it,” Keo said.

The bodies were exactly halfway up the hallway from them—five meters, give or take. The distance was small enough to make Pressley anxious but just far enough that she didn’t “go for it,” like Keo had suggested right away.

“Well?” Keo said.

“Shut up, I’m thinking,” Pressley snapped.

“Think faster. More of them might be coming—”

Pressley got up and made a run for it before he could finish his sentence. Though she didn’t really “run.” It was more of a fast hobble.

Keo grinned. At the rate she was going, it was going to take all day—

Pressley slid to a stop halfway to her goal at about the same time a third figure turned the corner. The man spotted her and froze, and Keo wasn’t exactly sure how long they both stood there staring across at one another, but it must have been at least two full seconds before the new arrival snapped out of it first, lifted his AR, and fired.

The shot was too fast and too high, and the round sailed harmlessly over Pressley’s head and pinged! off the wrought iron covering the halogen lamp above Keo’s head.

Keo ducked, even as Pressley took aim and shot the man twice in the chest. She had done it calmly, without hurrying, not committing the same mistake that had cost Winston’s man his life.

Well, she’s certainly been well-trained.

That your doing, Buck? Or was that you, Greengrass?

Pressley had gone into a crouch in the hallway, the Glock in her hand aimed at the turn up ahead. She waited, like he did, for exactly ten seconds, during which time they didn’t hear anything except their own harried breathing.

Finally, Pressley glanced back at him and Keo nodded, mouthing, “Go for it.”

She returned a smirk before getting up and hurrying over to the closest fallen AR and snatching it up.

Great, Keo thought, now she can shoot me in the back with a rifle instead of just a handgun. Swell.

Fourteen

Keo moved up the corridor, the shotgun leading the way. The carbine thumped against his back (Just in case) while the heft of the gun belt and spares around his waist was reassuring. It would have been nice to have a proper pouch or ammo carrier instead of magazines stuffed into his front and back pockets, but he made do.

Pressley, still crouched over one of the dead men, glanced over her shoulder at him. “They definitely know we’re on the loose now.”

“Gee, you think so?”

She pocketed a spare magazine, shoving it into her back pocket. She had already unclasped a gun belt and slipped it on, and found a few spares for the Glock. Keo didn’t doubt that if Pressley could carry more weight, she would take everything from the dead guys she had found. And he wouldn’t have blamed her. There was no downside to loading up on bullets and guns when you were stuck in an underground bunker full of guys who wanted to kill you. Especially now, after they had murdered their boss.

But it wasn’t they who had done it, just Pressley. For some reason, Keo didn’t think Winston’s men would care about that little fact.

He looked back again to make sure Winston really was dead, but of course he couldn’t see the man around the bend in the hallway. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about Winston’s death. He hadn’t known the guy long enough to decide if he liked him or not; he did seem pretty affable, the fact that he was forcing Keo to kill Pressley notwithstanding. And he didn’t have any love for Fenton, which was another major plus.

I’ve met worse guys.

He turned back to Pressley as she was fishing something out of a pouch along the dead man’s waist. She turned it over in her hand before holding it up for Keo to see. It was a sheet of pills, with four white round shapes still left in the bottom row.

“Pills,” Keo said.

“I can see that,” Pressley said. “What is it?”

“Is there anything written on them?”

Pressley gave the sheet a closer look before answering. “319.”

“That’s Tramadol,” Keo said. “Give me half of that.”

“Tramadol? Are you sure?”

“If you’ve been shot as many times as I have, you would be, too.”

Pressley stood up and broke off two of the round pills and handed them to him. Keo didn’t bother looking for water; he tossed them into his mouth and crunched them into powder before letting his saliva do the rest.

He noticed Pressley watching him closely.

“What?” Keo said.

“You downed those pretty fast.”

“Desperate times, blah blah blah.” Keo nodded at the remaining two pills. “You want those?”

“If they’re what you say they are, then yeah.”

“I could always be wrong. It’s been known to happen once or twice.”

“Whatever,” Pressley said, before turning and walking on ahead. She had one rifle in her hands and another slung over her back. The sight made him a little hesitant (A fully armed Bucky is never a good thing), but there wasn’t exactly a lot he could do about it now.

Then again, Pressley’s back was turned to him…

Not yet. Not while there’s probably still a city full of people that’ll be trying to kill us.

Damn, another fine mess you got yourself into, pal!

Keo took Pressley’s place next to the dead Cordine City man. A quick glance at the boots told him it was good enough, and he began pulling the man’s shoes off.

“What are you doing?” Pressley asked. She had stopped to look back and had already punched the pills into her palm.

“What does it look like?”

“That’s disgusting.”

“So is taking his stuff, but you didn’t seem to mind that part.”

Pressley narrowed her eyes back at him but didn’t say anything. Instead, she popped the pills into her mouth and crunched them between her teeth.

“You still planning on not dying?” Keo asked as he sat down and slipped the first boot on. The dead man had an inch on him, but Keo had learned a long time ago that too-big shoes were way preferable to too-small ones.

“I’ll let you know in a few minutes,” Pressley said. “What about you?”

“Already feeling better.”

“So it’s working?”

Keo tapped his temple. “It is if I tell myself it is.”

She gave him a “Was that a joke?” look.

Keo grinned. “Besides, I’m not the one covered in bandages and bruises.”

“Have you seen your face lately?”

“Oh yeah. Forgot about that.”

“Sure you did,” Pressley said. She went up the hallway, stepping over another dead Cordine City man.

Keo paused briefly and reached up to touch his cheek. He flinched at the brief sensation of pain. It wasn’t a total lie; he had forgotten all about the bruises around his face. They had gone mostly numb (Thanks for the whiskey, Winston), but he was still reminded of the ones over his body, under his clothes, whenever he moved. Surprisingly, he had felt just fine when he was killing the Skinny Brothers, but that probably had a lot more to do with the adrenaline than anything.

Pressley had stopped in front of him to peek around the corner, and Keo approached her. He stepped around a couple of fresh drops of blood that were dripping from Pressley, but she didn’t seem to notice.

New shoes. Let’s not get them bloodied so fast!

He stopped next to her and leaned around the corner to get a good look. The adjoining hallway was empty, and when Keo slowed down his breathing and listened for telltale signs of enemy incoming, the only thing he could pick up was his own heartbeat and Pressley’s next to him.

“Where are they?” Pressley whispered.

He didn’t know why she was whispering, but he found himself mimicking her anyway. “No idea. Any more of your bright guesses?”

“Not a one.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand this. What’s keeping the rest of them? They definitely heard those gunshots.” Then, adding more to herself than to him, “There should be more of them out there.”

“How many more?”

“I don’t know, but more than what we’ve seen so far. Enough that they were able to overwhelm us back in the lobby.”

“Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth,” Keo said, and stepped out and into the hallway.

Pressley followed, sticking to his right side and just a few steps behind. “Why not? Sometimes the horse has a bomb inside its mouth.”

“You came up with that yourself?”

“Something someone I know used to say.”

Keo didn’t respond, but he wondered if that someone was named Greengrass.

You still alive in that cell, Greengrass?

He shoved that question aside and concentrated on getting out of here. As long as Greengrass was still locked away, he wasn’t a problem for Keo to concern himself with. It was maybe a tad harsh, but Keo couldn’t care less if the man ever saw daylight again.

Speaking of which…

How the hell was he going to get out of this place? Keo didn’t know where he and Pressley were or if he’d even been in this part of the building before. He assumed he had because there really weren’t that many intersections to force him to make a choice when it came to which directions to take. It was either left or right, and had been since they left the room where Pressley was being kept.

So why did every hallway so far look so different?

Man, I’m lost. I’m pretty sure I’m lost.

Or it could have just been the lights. Or lack thereof. The monotonous gray walls only added to that problem. Couldn’t the guy who built this place have put some kind of markers to let people know where they were? A nice You are here on a map like in any second-rate mall would have been ideal.

You know what would be even more ideal? Not being here, in this situation right now.

He sneaked a look over at Pressley, who had moved forward to walk beside him. Keo had purposefully slowed down enough that she didn’t have any choice but to catch up. If his present traveling companion was still feeling the effects of her wounds (and those tiny drops of blood she was still leaving in her wake, but appeared to be oblivious to), she was doing a very good job of hiding it. Either that, or her pills were working faster than his were.

“Greengrass,” Pressley said after a while.

“What about him?”

“You sure he’s dead?”

Sure? No. Hoping? Very much yes, Keo thought, but he said, “Yeah.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“I checked his vitals after they took you.”

Pressley didn’t respond right away.

Then, finally, “But are you sure.”

“I’ve been doing this long enough to know when a man is dead.”

“‘This?’ What is ‘this?’”

“Death, Pressley. I’ve been dealing in death even before you picked up your first carbine. Trust me, I know when someone’s dead, and Greengrass was dead when I last saw him.”

Pressley stared at him, clearly trying to read his face.

He looked right back at her. “But you’re free to go make sure, if you want. Don’t ask me to waste my time going with you, though. I’m not even sure I know where the hell I’m going right now.”

“If you’re sure he’s dead…” She let the rest trail off as she looked away. “Are you lost?”

“Can’t be lost if I don’t know where I’m going in the first place.”

“There has to be a way in and out of this place. There always is. Did you see one while they were walking you through it?”

Keo shook his head. “Every hallway they led me through was as dark as this one, but I don’t remember seeing a way in or out. Nothing obvious, anyway.”

“A door? A room?”

“I don’t recall.”

“Well, you’re useless.”

“I saved your life, didn’t I?”

“Except for that—”

Keo reached over and grabbed Pressley’s arm.

She glared at him. “What the hell are you doing?”

Keo nodded forward. “That’s new.”

“What?”

“The intersection.”

He let go of her arm, and Pressley looked up the hallway at the intersection—two hallways extending left and right.

“I don’t remember seeing that before,” Keo said. “But then it was dark—just like it is now—and I might have missed it the first time.”

“So which way?”

“Which part of ‘I don’t remember seeing that before’ didn’t you understand?”

Pressley grunted. He wasn’t quite sure if that was annoyance or pain. Maybe a little of both? “Just choose a direction.”

“That’s your big plan? Choose a random direction?”

“What’s yours?”

“I don’t know, maybe think about it first—”

The echoing pop-pop-pop of automatic rifle fire coming from somewhere in the left hallway made the decision for them. It was faded, distant, and not something that was immediate and dangerous.

They both quickly slid against the wall—Keo taking the right side while Pressley took the left—and aimed their weapons forward, waiting to blast the first body that appeared in front of them from either adjoined hallway.

Except no one emerged from around the turns even though the faint crackles of gunfire continued.

Pressley shot him a quick look. “Doesn’t sound close.”

Keo shook his head. “They’re not.”

“Outside?”

“Maybe we’re close to that exit.”

“But who are they shooting at?”

“Who cares? As long as it’s not at us.”

The pop-pop-pop of more small arms, still sounding like a world away.

“Maybe we should wait it out,” Keo said. “I’m not excited about running into the middle of a gun battle.”

“You want to just sit here and do nothing?” Pressley asked.

“Don’t you?”

“No,” Pressley said, and hurried forward, then around the corner.

Keo sighed, thought, Goddamned Buckies, and followed her around the turn with the shotgun—

—and almost bumped into Pressley.

She had stopped suddenly and was aiming her weapon at two figures (Civilian clothes. Armed. Cordine City locals.) trying desperately to close a heavy metal door. The two had no idea Pressley was there as they drove their entire bodies into the door, their boots fighting for leverage against the floor underneath them.

The gunfire Keo had heard earlier was coming from the other side of that door, and it hadn’t lessened for even a little bit. If anything, the pop-pop-pops seemed to be gaining in intensity with every second, getting louder as the fight drew closer to them.

Then Keo saw why the two Cordine City people were having so much trouble closing the door. He glimpsed bodies on the other side pushing back, even as an emaciated hand slid through the gap between the large slab of metal and the frame in the wall. First the hand, then the arm, followed by a face covered in dark flesh, hollowed black eyes peering inside at Keo.

Ghouls. A lot of them.

Greengrass’s words came back to him in a rush:

“It’s out there right now, with that horde, looking for you. Whether we’re still in Cordine City or not, it’ll find you.”

Well, Greengrass ol’ pal, looks like it’s found me! Keo thought even as he rushed forward. He wasn’t sure when he’d made the decision—or if there was a decision to be made. He acted on instinct because other people (even ones with guns) were preferable to ghouls.

One of the frantic figures trying to close the door heard him coming and glanced over. The look of shock on his face said it all, but it was quickly replaced by fear as he swatted and punched at the black hands (hands!) reaching through the slit in the door. Obsidian flesh squirmed on the other side, so many that Keo couldn’t tell where the night began and they ended.

The second Cordine City man wasn’t a man at all. She was a girl, her face drenched in sheets of sweat and what might have been blood, and she was straining so hard against the door that her boots were slipping against the floor. Keo knew from experience that the black-eyed ghouls had little strength, but that didn’t matter when there were literally hundreds (thousands?) of them pushing all at the same time.

“Help us!” the man (boy?) shouted.

What the hell do you think I’m doing? Keo thought even as he slung the shotgun and threw himself into the door next to the man.

Keo gritted his teeth, sucked in a deep breath, and shouted, “Push!”

“We’re pushing!” the man shouted back.

“Push harder!”

“There’s too many of them!” the girl shouted.

“Keep pushing!”

But they were trying to keep the ocean at bay and losing. Losing bad. Keo’s newly acquired boots couldn’t find purchase against the floor, and they were going backward instead of forward.

This isn’t going to work. This isn’t going to work!

Then a body appeared next to him.

Pressley!

Keo glanced over and caught her eyes as she embedded herself between the man and the girl. Her face was a mask of pain and sweat as she clenched her teeth and shouted, “Push! Push, goddammit!”

They did. They pushed together, and slowly, very slowly, they began moving forward instead of backward.

“Push!” Keo shouted. “Push harder!”

The door began to close.

An inch, then another, then another…

“Push!” someone shouted. Keo wasn’t sure who it was. It might have even been him or the man or Pressley or the girl—

Bam! as the door slammed home, and the boy grabbed the lever and yanked it down, and there was the very satisfying sound of gears within the door moving and the locks clanking into place one by one by one.

Fifteen

“Oh God, oh God, look out!”

The voice came from the girl as she stumbled back, even as the boy with her struggled to unsling his rifle.

“Look out?” Keo thought. Look out for what?

He found out “what” when he glanced down and saw a severed hand on the floor—a hand!—reaching for one of his boots.

Keo jumped back, shouting, “Holy crap! Shoot it! Shoot it!”

But he should have been shouting “shoot them” because there were two of them. Hands, both clipped at the elbows, moving around on the floor, their fingers like spider legs carrying them frantically around Keo’s and the others’ feet.

“Do it, do it!” Keo shouted just before bullets punched into the concrete and spit chunks big and small at his pant legs. More than a few pelted his waist and chest, but he was too busy backing away to notice even as the boy continued to spray the area on full-auto.

The teenager didn’t stop shooting until both limbs had ceased moving entirely, thick viscous blood leaking out of them in small puddles. A pair of fingers, shot off at the joints, had ricocheted further down the hallway where they lay still.

Keo kicked at the same hand that had been reaching for him earlier, and it flew through the air, blood leaking out of the wrist spraying the wall with dark liquid as it went.

“Shit,” Pressley, standing next to him, said. “Did we get them all?”

“I think so,” Keo said. “There was only two, right?”

“I don’t know. If you say so…”

“I got them all,” the boy said.

“Are you sure?” the girl asked, before turning around to look behind her. “Are you sure, Brett?”

“Yeah, I’m sure, I’m sure,” the boy said. He was out of breath as he ejected his rifle’s magazine and snapped in a new one. Then, “I think?”

“I think you did,” Keo said.

“Yeah, you did,” Pressley said, when the distant pop-pop-pop of automatic rifle fire made her look back at the door.

No, not “distant,” just faint because of the closed door. The entrance was a thick blast door, and although it wasn’t completely soundproofed, it did a lot to dampen the noises coming from outside. The battle that was raging out there right now, except unlike earlier at the office building, this wasn’t human against human. This was human against inhuman.

They stood silently in the hallway and listened, no one saying a word. The only sounds came from the girl’s slightly labored breathing and the continuous pop-pop-pop of small arms on the other side of the door.

Keo glanced over at Pressley and wondered if he had the same look on his face: Better them than me.

Then an explosion, breaking through the monotony of gunfire. It was a small detonation and close by, and Keo thought the door quivered slightly against it, but that could have just been a trick of the limited light.

It’s not a party until someone breaks out the grenades, Keo thought even as the gunfire continued to rage. The good news was that they never seemed to get any closer to their position, but then, it was difficult to really gauge distance surrounded by thick concrete walls.

Better them than me…

Keo waited for the inevitable, for the manic sounds of flesh and bones pounding against the door trying to get in. Because the ghouls knew they were down here. When one of them knew, the others did too through that hive mind of theirs. And there had definitely been more than one ghoul outside the door earlier. Way, way more than one.

So where were they? Why weren’t they attacking the door yet? Or maybe they were too preoccupied with other things. Other people...like the ones still firing automatic weapons at them right now.

Keo wasn’t sure how long they stood in front of the locked door and stared at it, listening to the chaos outside. He sneaked a look over at Pressley again. He was surprised she had helped out with the door earlier, but maybe he shouldn’t have been. Pressley was like him; she understood the concept of self-preservation. Though he had to question how much she really contributed given her walking wounded state. Still, he and the kids had been struggling until she showed up, so maybe he was underestimating her.

She played possum on Winston’s men. She might be doing it to you, too. Maybe she’s not quite as hurt as she looks.

Anything’s definitely possible with Ms. Do It here.

Keo finally took a step back, and the sound of his boots against the hard floor snapped the others out of their momentary stupor. The teenagers—and that was what they were, just kids—spun around, their faces suddenly flashing with alarm. They staggered backward, while at the same time lifting their rifles. Pressley also quickly acted, retreating half dozen steps down the corridor and aiming her weapon back at them.

Oh crap, Keo thought, because he suddenly found himself standing between them.

The boy had his AR pointed at Pressley while the girl had hers trained on him. Pressley was switching between the two teenagers, her rifle swinging past him each time. She wasn’t purposefully aiming at him, but if she unloaded and one of the kids responded, chances were very good Keo would catch a stray round.

This…is not good.

“Put down your gun,” the boy said.

“You put down your gun,” Pressley said.

“Put down your damn gun!” the girl shouted.

“No!” Pressley shouted back.

They went back and forth for a while, taking turns shouting orders at each other to lower their weapons and no one obeying. Or even coming close to obeying. Keo thought about ducking and crawling away, but the girl kept bringing her rifle back to him.

“You!” the girl said, her eyes on him. “Put down your weapon!”

“Really?” Keo said. “You can’t even get this one”—Keo nodded in Pressley’s direction—“to put down hers, and you want me to put down mine?”

The girl looked confused by his response, and Keo imagined her mind turning behind those dark blue eyes (Is it me, or does every girl I’m meeting have blue eyes these days? Is this some kind of conspiracy to remind me of Lara?), trying to figure out what was happening and coming up short. She looked diminutive standing beside the tall and lanky boy, but it was clear she had experience with the rifle by the way she held it. The boy did, too—all six feet and one hundred and twenty soaking wet pounds of him.

Keo hadn’t joined their little party with his shotgun, partly afraid any slight movement on his part would get him shot either by the teenagers or Pressley.

Easy does it. Easy does it…

The siege outside had continued unabated while Pressley and the teenagers pointed their guns and shouted at each other, though Keo was pretty sure he was the only one who still noticed. He thought the gunfire seemed to be moving away from them, but he didn’t completely dismiss the possibility that the underground facility was so concrete-heavy it made pinpointing exact locations of the action difficult. Hell, it was hard to figure out where he was inside the damn place, never mind what was happening beyond it.

How big was this building, anyway? And how deep were they underground? He hadn’t been able to get anything resembling a decent look at the outside world while the door was partially opened. Then again, he was too busy staring at undead eyes to see anything else at the time.

Undead eyes. Undead ghouls. They’re still out there. A shit ton of them.

Maybe I can use that…

He looked the kids up and down. Really, really look at them this time.

He guessed they were about sixteen or seventeen, which would mean they had come of age during the post-Purge years. Which meant they were very familiar with the dangers of the real monsters. They might even know enough to be more afraid of what was happening outside the facility right now than what was in here with them.

I can work with that.

“Don’t shoot,” Keo said. “I’m putting my weapon down.”

He slowly bent his knees and placed his shotgun on the floor. That brought a look of surprise from both the teenagers and Pressley.

“What the hell are you doing?” Pressley asked.

“Listen,” Keo said.

“Listen to what?”

“Just listen.”

She did, while still clutching and unclutching the rifle that was pointed across the hallway—with Keo still very much in the way—at the kids.

“You listening, too?” Keo asked the boy.

“To what?” the boy said.

“Out there. Outside. You hear it?”

He nodded. “Yeah. So?”

“You saw them.”

The teenager didn’t answer, but the girl beside him shuddered.

“They’re out there, and we’re in here,” Keo said. “You really think it matters who you are, who I am, or who she is? With what’s out there right now?”

The kids didn’t answer, and Keo wondered if they even understood what he was saying. Maybe he hadn’t explained it correctly. They were just teenagers, after all. He was a pretty dumb one at their age.

“He’s right,” the girl said, and tentatively lowered her rifle.

“What’re you doing?” the boy asked.

“He’s right,” the girl said again. “You saw them, Brett. You saw how many there were. You know he’s right.”

The boy, Brett, looked like he was about to argue, but he instead remained silent and kept his eyes focused on Pressley.

“Pressley,” Keo said.

“What?” Pressley snapped back.

“Put down your gun.”

“Fuck off, Keo.”

“Don’t be an idiot. You know what’s out there.” He looked over at her. “You know what’s out there.”

One corner of her mouth twitched, and Keo thought about Greengrass’s words:

“It’s out there right now, with that horde, looking for you. Whether we’re still in Cordine City or not, it’ll find you.”

If Greengrass knew what was out there, then so did Pressley. It wasn’t the type of thing you could keep a secret, especially after Axton. Keo had developed the impression that Greengrass’s unit was a close-knit group, maybe even Fenton’s version of an A-Team. They had certainly proven to be formidable enough back at the office building.

“Pressley,” Keo said, “you goddamn well know what’s out there.”

Behind him, Brett and the girl shuffled their boots, but neither one said a word. He thought he could feel the boy’s eyes on him, maybe wondering what Keo was talking about.

But Keo kept his attention fixed exclusively on Pressley. “Like you said, we’re a long way from Fenton. Everyone’s dead or dying out there right now. But we don’t have to join them. You understand?”

Pressley glanced briefly at the door, listening to the crackles of gunfire, before looking back at Keo, then past him at the teenagers.

“It’s just us now, in here,” Keo said. “You, me, and these kids. There’s a very good chance that’s all there will be at sunup tomorrow. Do you understand what I’m saying here, Pressley? Do you understand?”

Pressley’s eyes shifted back and forth between Keo and the Cordine City kids over Keo’s shoulder. Then, narrowing her eyes at him, “You better be right about this.”

“I am,” Keo nodded. “Trust me.”

Pressley gritted her teeth, and he expected a smartass retort about “trusting” him, but instead she slowly lowered her rifle until it was hanging next to her side.

Keo turned around and stared into the muzzle of Brett’s still-aimed carbine. “Kid, it’s your turn.”

“Huh?” Brett said, looking from Pressley to Keo.

“Weren’t you paying attention?”

“Not really…”

Great. Kid’s a meathead.

“Brett,” the girl said. She put a hand on his arm and gently guided it down. “Brett…”

The boy relented, but Keo didn’t sigh with relief until Brett’s AR was finally pointed at the floor.

Hallelujah!

The girl nodded at Keo. “What now, mister?”

Keo smiled back at her and thought, Now I do the smart thing and move the hell out from between the three of you, so when you start pointing guns at each other again, I’m not the one who eats a stray bullet.

“Call me Keo,” he said instead.

Sixteen

“What kind of name is that?” Brett asked.

“Hey, we can’t all be Bretts,” Keo said.

“Huh?”

“Exactly.”

Brett glanced over at the girl for help. She smiled back at him before looking past his shoulder at Keo. “I’m Scarlett, Mr. Keo.”

“Just Keo’s fine, kid.”

“Okay. Just Keo, then.”

“That’s Elvis,” Keo said.

Pressley narrowed her eyes. “What the hell are you talking about? My name’s Pressley.”

“Elvis Pressley, right?”

“Wrong spelling and wrong first name.”

Keo shrugged. “Close enough.”

“She’s one of them,” Brett said. “She’s from Fenton.”

“What makes you say that?” Keo asked.

“You said it.”

“I did?”

“Not in so many words, but it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. She came here with the others. The ones we fought yesterday.”

I guess the kid’s not a total meathead after all.

“She was,” Keo said.

“Was?” Scarlett said doubtfully.

“Her people are dead. She’s all that’s left.”

“How does that make her ‘was?’” Brett asked.

Keo glanced over at Pressley, but she looked through him and at the teenagers, and said, “As far as I’m concerned, Fenton or Cordine City doesn’t exist anymore. At least not while the four of us are down here and those monsters are out there.”

Brett didn’t look convinced, and neither did Scarlett, but the kids didn’t argue. They also kept their weapons pointed at the floor, which was really all Keo cared about. But just in case, he put his hands on his shotgun, laying across his lap.

He had somehow ended up in the middle of them again, when all four of them walked over to the wall opposite the blast door and sat down. Keo had thought about getting up and moving over to Pressley’s left side, but decided that maybe he needed to stay between them, almost as a buffer against further hostilities.

So you’re a peacemaker now, huh? Now that’s worth a chuckle or two.

Besides, he didn’t feel like standing or moving around more than he had to. The Tramadol was kicking in, he could feel it, but that didn’t mean he still wasn’t tired from all the running and fighting and trying to stay alive of the last hour.

Rest while you can, pal. You might not get the chance later on.

“How many did you see out there, exactly?” Keo asked the teenagers. He needed them to focus on the immediate danger—the ghouls—and not the potential threat of one another.

“A lot,” Brett said. “There was a lot.”

Scarlett was sitting on the other side of Brett, who was camped about five feet to Keo’s right. The girl was leaning her head against the boy’s shoulder, and they were clearly a couple by the way their hands kept finding one another’s.

Lovers of the apocalypse. Cute.

I hope it works out better for you two than it did for me, kids.

“How many is a lot?” Keo asked.

“I haven’t seen so many in one place since that first year,” Brett said. “I didn’t even know there were that many of them still out there, after The Walk Out.”

“There were so many,” Scarlett said. She was staring at the door. “One second there was nothing, then they were everywhere.”

“It’s out there right now, with that horde, looking for you. Whether we’re still in Cordine City or not, it’ll find you.”

Fucking horde is right, Greengrass.

Pressley, sitting seven or so feet to Keo’s left, remained silent. But like the teenagers, her eyes remained fixed on the door in front of them. The shooting on the other side had lessened noticeably, with only the occasional pop, and even those seemed to be coming from farther and farther away.

“What exactly happened out there?” Keo asked. “What did you guys see?”

Brett shook his head but didn’t say anything right away. He looked thoughtful—either that, or was having difficulty trying to remember what he’d seen.

Scarlett lifted her head off Brett’s shoulder. “They came out of nowhere and attacked the city. Like the night just spat them out. We saw some people running over here, and we followed them. Did you see anyone?” She glanced around. “Some of them must have made it down here before us.”

They did, Keo thought, remembering the three he and Pressley had stumbled into in the hallway earlier. He recalled the look of shock on their faces and had attributed that to seeing him and Pressley out and free, but maybe they were just surprised to see anyone down here at all because they were fleeing what was happening beyond the facility.

“Not sure, but we didn’t see anyone,” Keo lied.

He thought he might have heard Pressley stifling a cough to his left, but that could have just been his imagination. Or maybe Pressley was thinking the same thing he was: how long before either kid discovered the bodies in the other wings of the building? Of course, he could always find a way to keep them here in front of the door until sunup. Now that was going to take some verbal gymnastics.

“They might be around somewhere,” Keo continued. “How big is this facility, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Scarlett said. “We weren’t really supposed to come down here. I think it’s an old bomb shelter that the people who were in Cordine City during The Purge used to hide from the ghouls. After The Walk Out, we mostly used it for storage.”

Storage? I guess that’s one way to label a prison.

“Winston,” Brett said.

“What about him?” Keo asked.

“I think he might have had an office down here. Did you see him? Is he still alive?”

“I don’t know, kid. Sorry.”

“I can’t believe no one else made it down here except us.”

“Everyone knows this place is probably the most secure building in the city,” Scarlett said. “That’s why people were running toward it. I know that’s why Brett and I did.”

“Wait, we’re not inside the city?” Pressley asked.

“We’re on the outskirts,” Scarlett said.

So that’s why the shooting sounds so distant, Keo thought. The fighting’s still going on; just not directly above us.

“We saw a lot of people out there—some on horses, some in cars—trying to make it here,” Brett said. “I saw them going down. I’m not even sure how we made it.” He looked over at Scarlett and squeezed her hand. “But I’m glad we did.”

Scarlett smiled and laid her head back on his shoulder.

“Your guns,” Keo said. “They’re loaded with silver ammo?”

“Yeah,” Brett said. “Everyone’s is. Why?”

“Just wanted to make sure, that’s all.”

“Are yours?”

Keo nodded and refrained from telling Brett that his and Pressley’s weapons were loaded with the right ammo because they were Cordine City guns. That answer, though, would have needed an explanation—or, at least, the kind of talk Keo didn’t think any of them needed to explore at the moment.

“We’re good,” Keo said.

“Your guns all have silver bullets, but there were still too many of them for the city to take out?” Pressley said. There was something in her voice that made Keo flinch just a little bit—it sounded almost...condescending?

“There were just too many of them,” Brett said.

Either the lanky teen hadn’t heard the same thing from Pressley’s voice that Keo had, or he was willing to let it go. Or, maybe, the slightly offending tone was all in Keo’s head. That was entirely possible, though Keo didn’t buy it.

“It didn’t matter how many we killed; more just took their place,” Brett was saying. “They came out of nowhere.”

“That’s what guards are for,” Pressley said. “You didn’t have guards watching the perimeter?”

“We did…”

“Then how did they get inside the city so easily?”

“Easily? Who said anything about easily?” Brett’s voice had risen noticeably, either because he was getting angry or he had finally noticed Pressley’s unkind tone. “There were just too many of them. Which part of that don’t you understand, lady?”

Before Pressley could respond to Brett, Keo said, “There’s always too many of them. You kids did the right thing by making your way here. It was the smartest thing you could have done.”

Keo looked over at Pressley and narrowed his eyes. She gave him a What? look, but turned away and kept her mouth shut.

Keep it that way, woman. Jesus Christ. You trying to get me killed here?

“There were so many,” Scarlett was saying. She sounded very tired, like all the energy had been drained from her. “How are there still so many of them left? I thought The Walk Out killed most of them. We all thought that. We all thought it was over, that the worst was over…”

We all thought wrong. Every one of us.

They’re still out there, Lara.

The blue eyes, the black eyes... And there are still more of them than we thought, even after Will’s sacrifice.

So, so much more.

“Where the hell did they all come from?” Brett was asking. “God, they just swallowed up the city. Before we knew it, they were all around us.”

“You didn’t have any plans in place to deal with something like this?” Pressley asked.

“Plans?”

“Yeah. Contingencies. Just in case.”

Keo smiled. “Just in case.” Now who else used to always say that—

The loud bang! of a single gunshot shattered the rest of Keo’s thoughts.

He turned around just in time to see Scarlett’s body slumping awkwardly forward, her forehead thumping against the floor as blood pumped through a gaping hole in the right side of her head.

“Scarlett!” Brett shouted, a split second before there was a second bang! and the teenager’s own head snapped sideways, what was left of his brains splashing Keo in the face.

Keo flinched as his vision was suddenly swimming in a sea of red. It took him two seconds—two measly seconds—to process what had just happened, but it was two seconds that he should have spent lifting and turning the shotgun. Instead, those wasted seconds cost him the opportunity to return fire.

Even as he struggled to see through Brett’s blood, the shooter was coming up the hallway toward them, the muzzle of a gun pointed right at him. The approaching figure moved in a hobbling motion, dragging one seemingly useless leg behind him while leaving a trail of blood on the floor. There was more blood on the wall where the man had to hold onto with a bloody palm to keep himself upright.

But it wasn’t the blood or the pistol gripped tightly in the man’s right hand that Keo noticed with shocking clarity despite his partially blind vision. It was the eyes staring back at him.

They…were…pissed.

Greengrass.

Seventeen

Fuuuuuuuuuuck me.

Greengrass looked every bit like death warmed over and then some. It wasn’t just the useless stump he was dragging behind him or the obvious pain written all over his face, or even the way his eyes kept squinting in an attempt to retain focus. Keo could easily believe that Greengrass had crawled out of the pits of hell just to make sure he didn’t make it out of Cordine City alive.

How is he still alive? Better yet, how did he just murder Brett and Scarlett from the other side of the hallway?

The Glock Greengrass had used on the kids was now pointed at Keo’s head. The pistol was as steady as the arm that held it, even if the rest of Greengrass seemed to quiver and was on the verge of collapsing with every step he took.

Fall, damn you. Fall down and die already!

But he didn’t. Greengrass had the look of a man who was just too angry to just sit down and call it a day. If Keo had any doubts the man could make the shot from his current distance, all he had to do was look over at poor Brett’s and Scarlett’s bodies. The teenage lovers were as dead as dead could be, each with a bullet hole in the head. Greengrass had taken them both out with one round apiece, and most of what had been inside Brett’s skull was now dripping from Keo’s face.

God, this is disgusting. This is so disgusting.

Amazingly, Brett hadn’t toppled forward to the floor in death. His body remained somehow sitting even though his head was slightly tilted forward, chin against his chest. It almost looked like he was meditating, but of course the blood dripping from the side of his head told another story. Keo thought about reaching over and lowering the teenager to lie next to his girlfriend, but he didn’t have the heart to touch the kid.

Also, he was afraid Greengrass would shoot him if he did.

Instead, Keo wiped at the kid’s remains as they dripped from his face. He had abandoned any ideas of using the shotgun in his lap because the muzzle was pointed in the wrong direction—at Pressley to his left, instead of Greengrass moving toward him on his right. He hadn’t done that on purpose. The shotgun ended up pointing in the wrong direction when he laid it down; but of course, it wasn’t the “wrong” direction until Greengrass showed up.

All Keo could do now was wipe at Brett’s blood, concentrating on the parts around his eyes so he didn’t have to keep seeing everything through a permanent red filter, while Greengrass hobbled closer. Shooting Keo from this current distance would have been child’s play; not that the man had had any difficulty with Brett and Scarlett from three times that distance.

“Well?” Greengrass said when he finally stopped near the door and leaned against the wall. His gun hand hadn’t lowered, and the weapon was still pointed at Keo’s chest.

Christ, how is that gun hand not even moving? Is it made of cybernetic parts or something? Is the man even still human?

“Well what?” Keo said. He flicked at blood and…other things from his fingers. They splattered the floor and opposite wall and clung to them. “We both know you’re not going to shoot me. They want me alive, remember? It wants me alive.”

“Alive, but it’s not going to care what kind of shape you’re in.”

“Just make sure you hit the right part of the body. Don’t wanna puncture an artery and have me bleed out.”

“No, we wouldn’t want that. Still, I expected a little groveling.”

Keo smirked. “You want me to beg? Is that it?”

“I was hoping for something along those lines, yeah.”

“Would it make any difference if I obliged?”

Greengrass shrugged. “It never hurts to try.”

“It might. I have a very fragile ego.”

“Give it a try anyway.”

“I’ll pass.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Didn’t know it was my job to supply you with fun, Greengrass.”

“After all we’ve been through?”

“Hey, a few hours in a prison cell does not a relationship make.”

Greengrass took his eyes away from Keo and looked over at Pressley for the first time.

Pressley had been standing there for a while now, not saying a word, and Keo had almost forgotten she was even next to him. He glanced over at her now. She was staring past him and at the two teenagers, but mostly on Scarlett. There was something in her eyes that looked almost like regret. Or was he reading too much into it?

“Janet,” Greengrass said.

“Janet?” Keo thought. Then, Ah. I guess Pressley isn’t her first name after all.

Pressley looked up and over at Greengrass. “You’re alive, Jacob.”

“Hey, kid,” Greengrass smiled. It was overly forced, even though Keo could tell that the man clearly had some affinity for Pressley. “You okay?”

“I’ll live.”

“You’re bleeding.”

Pressley glanced down at her bandaged leg, at the barely visible trails of blood clinging to her dark pant leg. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“You sure?”

“I’m running on painkillers. I’ll let you know when they start fading.”

“Got any more?”

She shook her head.

“Too bad,” Greengrass said. He motioned at the door with the gun—just briefly, before bringing it back to line up with Keo’s chest. There was still shooting outside, but not nearly as much as before, and those they could hear were even more faint. “What’s going on out there?”

“They’re here,” Pressley said.

It took Greengrass a few seconds to understand. Then, “How many?”

“From the sounds of it, all of them.”

“That’s good. That’s good.” He grinned at Keo. “Not for you, of course.”

“Figures,” Keo said. He’d almost gotten most of Brett off his face—or, at least, out of his eyes—and was feeling less like a grotesque version of the Phantom of the Opera. “You had to shoot him while he was sitting right next to me, didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t part of the plan,” Greengrass said. He glanced down at Brett’s body, then over at Scarlett’s where, like Pressley, he lingered a little longer. “I didn’t know she was a girl.”

“What gave it away? The breasts?”

“I mean, I didn’t know until she was dead.”

As with Pressley, there might have been something that possibly resembled regret in Greengrass’s eyes, but Keo found it difficult to read the man with all the sweat and pain covering his face. Greengrass really did look like he would fall down at any second, but of course he never did. Supporting himself against the wall was a wise move given how blood-soaked his bandages were.

Whatever emotions Greengrass was feeling about Scarlett’s death, he quickly pushed them away when he turned his attention back on Keo. “Take his weapons, Janet. We wouldn’t want to leave Keo with too many temptations. He’s right; we still want him alive.”

“Ain’t I special,” Keo said.

“You’re special, all right. If I’d known just how special, I would have brought more men.”

“Or you could have just avoided me entirely.”

“No can do. That wasn’t part of the assignment.”

“Unfortunately for the rest of your unit.”

Greengrass frowned. “Yeah. Unfortunately.”

Pressley walked the short distance over and collected Keo’s guns. They locked eyes for a brief second—much too brief for Keo to really read anything in them—before she moved over to Brett and kicked his and Scarlett’s rifles away. The weapons skidded far enough up the corridor that Keo couldn’t have reached them if he had a five-second head start on both her and Greengrass.

Now that Keo was unarmed, Greengrass lowered his gun and slid down to the floor. He let out a loud, relieved sigh, before closing his eyes for a few seconds, then quickly opening them back again.

“You don’t look so hot, Greengrass,” Keo said.

“I’m going to look a lot better than you within the hour,” Greengrass said.

Pressley tossed Keo’s weapons up the hallway before sitting down next to Greengrass. “God, you look like shit, Jacob. And I thought I was in bad shape.”

“I’ll be fine,” Greengrass said.

“I’m not so sure about that…”

“I’m good, kid. I’m good.”

That second “I’m good,” Keo guessed, was mostly to convince himself.

“Okay,” Pressley said, but she obviously didn’t believe him.

Keo thought their little back and forth was ironic, as both of them looked like they could use a long stint in a hospital. Ironic, but impressive. Pressley was still dripping blood with every other step from her bandaged leg, and Greengrass, despite his very precarious physical state, seemed intent on giving death the middle finger.

Just my luck I have these guys after me.

Couldn’t you have sent someone less…badass, Buck, you piece of shit?

“What happened?” Pressley was asking Greengrass.

“One of them came into the cell they were holding me—holding us, before,” Greengrass said. “I think he thought it was some kind of refuge. I was hiding next to the door and got the jump on him. He fought—damn, did he fight—and I was in no shape to take on a baby, but what little element of surprise I had was just enough. Barely.”

“Is he dead?”

Greengrass nodded. “He had a rifle on him, but it was empty. Didn’t have any spares, so I left it behind and made do with this. Didn’t know where I was going there for a while, but then I heard voices and followed them here. You’re the first people I’ve met. I was beginning to think this place was abandoned.” He looked around the corridor, at Keo, then the two dead teenagers in front of him. “Is this everyone?”

“Everyone that made it down here,” Pressley nodded.

“Down here? So we are underground?”

“Supposed to be some kind of old bomb shelter. Winston’s people have been using it since The Purge.”

“Winston?”

“The guy in charge.”

“Where…?”

“He’s dead. I shot him.”

“Good. That’s good. One less to worry about.” He turned his full attention to Keo. “What happened to you? I woke up and you were gone.”

“Why, did you miss me?” Keo asked.

“I wouldn’t exactly call it that.”

“What would you call it?”

“Answer the fucking question.”

Keo shrugged. “They took me to see Winston.”

“And then?”

“And then he got dead. What does it matter ‘and then?’”

Greengrass chuckled. “I guess it doesn’t, does it? Dead’s dead.”

Not these days, Keo thought, but didn’t bother to say it out loud.

Greengrass turned to Pressley. “It’s time we put Keo out of his misery. Go open the door.”

“What?” Pressley said.

“The door. Open it and let them in.”

Pressley stared at him as if she thought he was joking, and didn’t move.

But of course Greengrass wasn’t kidding. “Janet, go open the door and let them in.”

“Let them in?” Pressley said.

Greengrass nodded and managed a little smile. “It’ll be okay. They’re not going to do anything as long as I’m here. Stay by my side, and everything will be fine.” He pointed at Keo with his gun. “Him, on the other hand—not so much.”

Pressley looked over at Keo, and there was something on her face that looked almost like…what? Sadness? Regret?

Is it possible Ms. Do It has a heart after all?

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to trust a monster?” Keo asked. “After the last six years, I’d thought that was a lesson everyone’s learned the hard way.”

“I don’t trust it,” Greengrass said. “I work with it. There’s a difference.”

“Not when it’s got its teeth over your neck.”

“It’s not going to do that. It knows me. It knows what we’re here to do.” He nodded at Keo. “You. It knows we’re out here to help it catch you.”

“Until it decides it’d rather use you and Pressley as a snack.”

Greengrass chuckled. “You have no idea, do you? What it is? What it’s doing out there?”

“I know exactly what it’s doing out there,” Keo said.

“Not out there, now, smartass. I’m talking about the big picture. You don’t have a clue. Not a whit. There’s a grand plan happening that you don’t even know exists. It’s kind of sad, really.”

“Yeah, it is. So feel free to fill me in. Help make me less sad.”

“No, I don’t think I will. You don’t need to know. It’s too bad, because I think you’d appreciate the scope—the complexity—of it. Buck’s been working hard to put it all together. Years of work, getting it ready.”

“Buck and Copenhagen?”

“Mostly Buck. He’s always been the real brains of the operation.”

“Too bad he’s got a two-bit name.”

Greengrass grinned. He didn’t look insulted, just amused. “I’ll tell him you said that, since you won’t be there to do it yourself.”

“Are you one of them?”

“That depends on what ‘them’ is.”

“A Mercerian.”

“Ah. But no, I never had the privilege of knowing Mercer.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call that a privilege…”

“That’s a matter of opinion. I’ve heard nothing but good things. Buck speaks about him with high regard.”

“He didn’t look all that special or highly regarded to me. But then again, the last time I saw him, his brains were splattered all over the floor.”

Greengrass narrowed his eyes, and Keo could see the pieces falling into place. “You. You were the one who killed Mercer on that island.”

“That’s me,” Keo said, and did a Ta da! gesture with his hands.

“Buck didn’t mention that…”

“No?”

Greengrass shook his head.

“I wonder why,” Keo said. “Maybe you guys aren’t nearly as tight as you think.”

“No, that’s not it. He tells me what I need to know. If he didn’t mention it, then I didn’t need to know it.”

“My, my, aren’t we the trusting type.” Keo turned to Pressley. “What about you, Pressley? You good with Buck not telling you guys all about me?”

Pressley didn’t answer, but Keo thought he could see a little uncertainty in her eyes.

“Don’t listen to him, Janet,” Greengrass said. “You did good.”

“He saved my life,” Pressley said.

She had said it without prompt, like it was something that had been roiling around in her head and she unconsciously blurted it out. But that wasn’t the case, because she was looking at Greengrass when she spoke.

“What did you just say?” Greengrass asked.

“Keo. He saved my life.” She glanced over at Keo before turning back to Greengrass a second later. “Winston gave him the opportunity to kill me, to prove that he wasn’t one of us. It was the easy road for him, but he didn’t take it. He saved my life, Jacob. I owe him.”

Greengrass sighed and shot Keo an almost accusing look, as if it were Keo making Pressley say everything that was coming out of her mouth.

Keo gave him a Hey, don’t blame me shrug, but he kept his lips sealed. Something was happening here, something good for him, and Keo didn’t want to stop it in its tracks. And that was exactly what would have happened if he started blabbing.

“Orders are orders, kid,” Greengrass said to Pressley. “We came here to do one thing, and one thing only. We can go home after this. Back to Fenton. But we have to finish the job first.”

“He saved my life,” Pressley said.

“Stop saying that,” Greengrass said, the annoyance in his voice coming through loud and clear.

“It’s the truth, Jacob.”

“Whatever he did, it was to save his own skin. Trust me on this, kid, I know guys like him. I’ve crossed paths with hundreds of them. They’ll do and say whatever it takes to save themselves, because that’s all they care about.”

Now that’s just rude, Keo thought, even as he sneaked a peek over at Brett “sitting” to his right.

Keo had glimpsed it earlier, but couldn’t be one hundred percent certain because he didn’t want to stare at it for too long for fear of being caught. But now, with Greengrass and Pressley focusing intently on one another, he finally had his opportunity.

Brett hadn’t escaped the outside world with just a rifle and pistol as Keo had first thought—he had a black six-shot revolver stuffed into the back of his waistband. Under the weak halogen lights scattered about the hallway, the hidden piece was almost invisible against his dark jeans and blue shirt. The only reason Keo could make it out, but Pressley had missed it, was because of the dead teenager’s odd posture, like a monk in deep meditation.

Five feet. That was all that separated him from the gun, except Keo was pretty damn sure he wouldn’t reach it in time. As bad as Greengrass looked, all it would take was two seconds, tops, for him to lift his Glock and shoot Keo dead. He wouldn’t even need to move any other part of his body except his right hand, and he had already proven how steady that hand was. Even now, the Bucky held the pistol in his lap, his forefinger near the trigger.

Would Greengrass remember his orders—his only order, to capture Keo alive for the blue-eyed ghoul—in the heat of the moment and shoot to wound? Greengrass and Pressley looked like shit with all their broken bones and bullet holes, and Keo wasn’t too interested in joining their ranks.

So where does that leave you, pal?

Shit. I wish I knew.

He refocused his attention on Greengrass and Pressley. They were still staring at one another. Or Greengrass was, while Pressley looked very much like a daughter trying not to wilt under her father’s intense gaze.

Stay strong, Pressley. Stay strong…or I’m dead!

“I’m sure you’re right, he did it for himself,” Pressley was saying. “But he still did it, and I’m alive because of him.”

“We have orders, Janet,” Greengrass said. “It came from Buck himself. You know that.”

“I know…”

“So do your job. Go open that door and let them in. Get this over with, and we can go home.”

Pressley didn’t answer, but she did look down the hallway at Keo again. It was a long, lingering look this time.

“Janet, look at me,” Greengrass said, and Keo could hear the noticeable shift from hard to soft in his voice. Greengrass was changing tactics to better get to Pressley. “I need you to go open the door for me, okay? Everyone’s dead except us. It’s just the two of us now, Janet. Don’t let their deaths be in vain. Let’s get it done, and let’s go home. Okay? Janet? Okay?”

Keo couldn’t decide if Greengrass just couldn’t get back up and do the job himself, or if he wanted Pressley, for whatever reason, to do it. Maybe it was his way of reasserting his authority over her, or maybe he really just didn’t have the strength to get up again and walk the short distance and pull that very, very heavy door open by himself.

At the moment, Keo didn’t care why Greengrass remained sitting against the wall because he could see it in Pressley’s face. She was losing. Greengrass was winning her over, little by little, and her resolve was slowly fading.

Which meant he was losing, too.

“Janet,” Greengrass was saying. “Let’s get this done, and let’s go home. We can start over. Rebuild the team. You and me, kid. Together.”

Damn, he’s convincing, Keo thought, and glanced quickly at the revolver behind Brett’s waistband again.

Five feet. Five friggin’ feet!

Why couldn’t it be five inches?

Why, why, why?

Across from him, Greengrass was smiling at Pressley as she stood up. “Let’s get the hell outta here, kid. Let’s go home.”

“Let’s go home,” Pressley nodded.

Keo lunged for the gun behind Brett’s back.

“Don’t!” someone screamed. Keo wasn’t sure who it was—Greengrass or Pressley—or even who it was directed at, and at that very second, he didn’t give a damn.

He stuck out his right hand toward Brett’s sitting form, his fingers extending. Five feet became one in the blink of an eye, and he was almost there—

The bang! of a gunshot filled the hallway.

Eighteen

The first gunshot was earsplitting, but he was prepared for it. It was the second bang! that caught him by surprise.

After that, there was silence except for the voice shouting in Keo’s head.

Jesus, I’m still alive!

How am I still alive?

Jesus, I’m still alive!

He scrambled frantically to his knees, Brett’s revolver gripped tightly in his right fist. Brett himself had completely toppled forward, face-first into the hard floor after Keo pulled the weapon out from behind his waist. Keo lifted the pistol, pointing it up the hallway, his finger on the trigger—

He didn’t shoot, because there was no danger.

It was over before it even started.

He located Greengrass first. The Bucky was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall where Keo last saw him. The Glock he had used to blow Brett’s and Scarlett’s brains out lay across his lap, still gripped in his right hand. His left palm was pressed against his stomach, where blood slipped between his fingers.

Fresh blood. Very fresh.

Greengrass didn’t give any indications that he even noticed Keo had armed himself or was pointing a gun at him. In fact, he didn’t look as if he even knew Keo still existed. Instead, he stared forward, blinking through beads of sweat at Pressley.

She stood across from Greengrass, leaning against the opposite wall. Pressley had her own pistol in her hand, but it hung loosely at her side, and Keo thought the gun would slide right through her fingers given how weakly she was holding it. Pressley’s face mirrored Greengrass’s stunned expression as she reached back and groped for the wall, then slid down to sit on the floor. Clack, as she finally let go of the gun and it landed next to her.

Keo stood up and checked himself for wounds. There wasn’t any because they hadn’t been shooting at him. Neither one of them. He had heard two shots, and one had come from Pressley, which explained the blood pumping out of Greengrass’s stomach. As for the other one…?

There, a small crater in the wall a foot above Pressley’s head that hadn’t been there before. A bullet hole.

“Pressley,” Keo said.

She turned her head in his direction. Slowly, like it took a lot of effort. But he didn’t think it was anything related to pain that made her move in almost slow motion. It was the fact she’d just shot Greengrass…to save him. Pressley hadn’t gotten off unscathed. A fresh trickle of blood ran down the length of her left arm, the wetness just barely visible against the black fabric of her long-sleeve shirt.

“You alive?” Keo asked her.

Pressley didn’t answer him. Instead, she looked back at Greengrass.

Keo did, too, before walking over to his unmoving body. He pried the gun out of Greengrass’s grip and tossed it up the corridor. Greengrass’s eyes remained fixed on Pressley, the way hers were on him. Not exactly a staring contest, but more of a...what?

“You shot me. I can’t believe you shot me.”

Something along those lines.

Keo moved the short distance over to Pressley. He crouched in front of her and checked her wound. It was a through-and-through, which explained the big divot in the wall above her head.

“Damn, Pressley, you’re bleeding like a faucet,” Keo said.

Pressley didn’t respond. She might not have even heard him that time.

The wound wasn’t too bad. The bullet had missed bone, but her arm was still leaking pretty good. He spent the next few minutes trying to keep Pressley from losing any more of the precious fluid. It was out of gratitude for her going against Greengrass to save his life…and because he might still need an extra gun to get the hell out of Cordine City later. Greengrass, on the other hand, Keo couldn’t care less about, and if the man died while he was busy keeping Pressley from bleeding to death, then that was one less problem for him to settle.

Keo tore off strips of cotton fabric from Brett’s shirt and used them to make a field tourniquet for Pressley. She winced and made a pained sound when he tightened the makeshift bandage around her arm, then spent some extra time re-bandaging her leg to keep it from losing more blood.

Pressley never moved the entire time, and neither did Greengrass, as far as Keo could tell. He glanced over at the man twice just to make sure he didn’t go for one of the many guns lying around in the hallway waiting to be picked up. And when Keo didn’t visually check up on him, he kept his ears open.

But Greengrass was still and silent throughout, and Keo found out why when he stood up and looked over one last time. The older Bucky’s head was lolled to one side and his hand, covered up to the wrist in blood, had fallen away from his stomach with the palm facing up. His eyes were closed, the sheen of sweat over his face even thicker and shinier despite the pale lights.

Daebak. Didn’t see that coming.

He wasn’t seeing a lot of things coming today. First with Winston, and now with Greengrass.

Not that I’m complaining.

Keo walked over and checked the man’s vitals just to be safe.

Dead.

So that’s what it takes to kill you, Greengrass. Your own team member.

Good to know, good to know…

Keo was standing back up when the lights went off. Not one at a time—but every single one at once.

Darkness.

Total darkness all around him.

Well, that’s not good.

He wasn’t too surprised that whatever Winston’s people were using to power the lights had finally given up. In fact, he’d been waiting for it to happen much sooner, and now that he thought about it, it was actually amazing the electricity had lasted this long since the siege began.

Keo stood in the pitch blackness for a few silent minutes, letting his eyes slowly adjust to their new environment. Pressley’s slightly elevated breathing next to him easily dominated his own, and the shooting from outside had seemed to have drifted so far away from their position that it took a lot of effort just to still hear them.

“Keo,” a voice said. Pressley.

Keo turned to look at her. “Yeah?”

“What happened?”

“Lights went off.”

“I can see that.”

“Can you?”

“Smartass.”

He grinned.

“Is he dead? Jacob?” Pressley asked.

Keo glanced back, not that he could really see Greengrass all that well in the darkness. “Yeah. He’s dead.”

“Are you sure this time?”

He chuckled. “Yeah, I’m sure this time.”

Keo walked over and sat down next to her. Brett’s and Scarlett’s bodies were somewhere to his left, far enough that Keo wouldn’t risk coming into contact with their, by now, clammy flesh in the dark. It wasn’t that he was squeamish around dead bodies, but that didn’t mean he liked touching them when he could avoid it.

They sat in silence for a minute before he finally said, “Thanks. I know it wasn’t an easy thing for you to do.”

“It wasn’t,” Pressley said quietly.

“I’m sorry you had to make that choice. But as a selfish asshole, I’m glad you did.”

“You’re right, you are an asshole.”

He smiled. “I’d love to say you were the first person to call me that, but I’d be lying. You’re not even the first woman.”

“It’s a big group, is it?”

“Bigger than I’d like to admit, alas.”

“Sounds like good company.”

“It’s not bad.”

He paused to let the silence filter in between them again.

Then, “So again, thanks.”

“We’re even now,” Pressley said.

“Understood. Does this mean we’re still friends?”

She sighed. “Don’t push it.”

“Consider it unpushed.”

“I don’t hear anything. From outside…”

“Listen closer.”

“I am…”

“There’s still action. It’s just farther away.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Why can’t I hear anything?”

That’s a good question, Keo thought, but he said instead, “The fighting’s moved away from us completely, from the sounds of it.”

“Is that good?”

“I’ll let you know tomorrow morning.” He glanced over at her dark form next to him. He could make out her bandages easier than her, despite their close proximity. “You gonna die on me?”

“How many times are you going to ask me that?”

“Until you stop answering.”

“No, I’m not going to die on you. I think those pills I took earlier are finally working. You said they were Tramadol?”

“Tramadol Hydrochloride, to be precise.”

“How do you know that?”

“Like I said, when you’ve been shot as many times as I have, it pays to keep tabs of your pill identifiers.” Keo looked back across the hallway, at Greengrass’s unmoving outline. “So, he trained you?”

“He trained all of us. Me, the others…”

“Your team.”

“He handpicked us. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him.”

Most of your team wouldn’t be dead if it weren’t for him, either, Keo thought, but decided it was wiser to keep that to himself.

He said instead, “Does this mean you’re not going back to Fenton?”

“Fenton?”

“Yeah. Wasn’t that the plan? Capture me, hand me over to Blue Eyes, then head back home?”

“Something like that.”

“So what now? You still going back?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t exactly think that far ahead. Everything…happened so fast. I saw him raising his gun and… Then it was over.” She let out a heavy, pained sigh. “I haven’t even thought about what that means when it comes to Fenton.”

“Buck doesn’t strike me as the very forgiving type. Mind you, not that I’ve met the man. Spoken to him over the radio once, though.”

“Just once?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I don’t know. The way he talked about you… It was like you guys knew each other from way back.”

“We don’t.”

“Hunh.”

“My guess is that, like with Greengrass over there, ol’ Buckaroo’s met plenty of guys like me before. And vice versa.”

“What’s a guy like you?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Is it?”

“No. Not really, now that I think about it.”

“What did you do before all of this?”

“This and that, and a lot of stuff in-between.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means I did a lot of things.”

“Like what?”

“Helped some people. Protected some people. Did a lot of things for other people they couldn’t do for themselves.”

“Killed some people?”

“Yeah, that too.”

“I’m glad I never met you before all of this. You sound like a real asshole.”

Keo smiled to himself. “Not the first time someone’s told me that, either. I’m trying very hard not to be one, though.”

“Is it working?”

“You tell me.”

She lifted her good arm and wobbled her palm from side to side. “Eh.”

He chuckled, then nodded across at Greengrass’s form. It was slowly coming into view as his night eyes adjusted to the new normal. “The way he spoke about Buck—were they friends or just comrades?”

“Buck recruited him after that whole mess with Mercer. They became good friends. I guess they had a lot in common.” She paused, before adding, “I don’t think I can go back to Fenton.”

Why would you want to? Keo thought. Something’s happening in Fenton, and that “something” is going to get them flattened. If Black Tide doesn’t get to them first, I will.

He said, “So don’t tell Buck about the specifics of what happened tonight. Tell him I killed Greengrass.”

“Why would I do that?”

“So you can go back home…if that’s what you want.”

“Home…”

“It’s your home, isn’t it?”

“No, not really. I’ve never once thought of it as my home. Just some place I’ve been staying in for the last two years.”

“I thought Buck’s been at Fenton for more than two years.”

“He has. But I haven’t. It’s only been two years for me, after Jacob recruited me. I’ve spent most of my time with him and the team. Janks, Williams, the others. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been in the same room or even general vicinity as Buck.”

“So does that mean you don’t know what he’s planning?”

“Are we still talking about Buck?”

“Yeah. What exactly is he doing over there in Fenton? Why is he attacking all the towns? Why is he taking the women and children?”

Pressley didn’t say anything.

“You know about the women and children, don’t you?” Keo asked.

“Yes,” Pressley said quietly, as if she was afraid of being overheard.

Of course she knows. What did you expect? There’s nothing pure or innocent about this woman sitting next to you. She may have saved your life, but she’s just as guilty as Greengrass and Buck.

So keep that in mind the next time you voluntarily hand her a gun and expose your back to her, you dumb idiot.

“What are they doing with them?” Keo asked. “Why are they taking the women and children and killing the men?”

“I don’t know,” Pressley said. “I’m not a part of Buck’s inner circle. Not a lot of people are. He keeps most of his plans close to the vest. Only a very small number of people know what’s really going on, why he’s in Fenton in the first place, and why they’re taking women and children from the towns.”

But you knew they were doing it. You knew, and you’re still running around out here in Buck’s name. So what does that make you?

Keo didn’t put those thoughts into words. He could already hear the hesitation in Pressley’s voice the more he probed the subject. Right now, he didn’t need her to shut down. He needed answers, and Greengrass certainly wasn’t going to provide them.

Easy does it. Easy does it…

“Did he know?” Keo asked, nodding across at Greengrass. “Was he part of Buck’s inner circle?”

“He was,” Pressley said. “Like I said, he and Buck were close, and Buck isn’t the kind of man who trusts easily. But if he did know about everything—about Buck’s plans—Jacob never told us.”

“Did you ever ask?”

Again, Pressley didn’t answer right away.

Finally, she said, “No.”

Because you didn’t want to know. Because it would be harder to lie to yourself when you know what’s happening out there, what you’re helping to happen by doing nothing about it.

But once again, Keo bit his tongue and thought about Emma. It had been a while since he thought of her. He blamed it on being too busy running for his life, trying to outrun ghouls and humans alike, but maybe she had just taken a small step down his ladder of importance now that old faces from his past had reentered his life. It was a shitty thing to consider—or admit to himself—but it was probably closer to the truth.

God, they’re right. I really am an asshole.

“You don’t have to go back to Fenton,” Keo said. “There are other roads to take that don’t put you right back with Buck. I know people who’d take you in. They’ll ask questions—about Fenton, about Buck, everything you may know about what’s going on in that place—but they’ll give you a second chance.”

“Friends of yours?” Pressley asked.

“Very good friends, yeah.”

“Are they part of the group that thinks you’re an asshole?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

Pressley went quiet for a moment.

Then, finally, “I don’t know, Keo. I honestly don’t know about what I’m going to do next. I guess I have a lot of thinking to do.”

“It’s better than the alternative, Pressley.”

“Maybe…”

“There’s a war coming, Janet. Can I call you Janet?”

“No.”

“Fair enough. But there’s a war coming, Pressley, and you’re going to need to choose a side. When we get out of here, let me introduce you to the right side. It’s the least I can do.”

“The ‘right’ side? Who decides what’s the right side? I bet Buck thinks he’s on the right side, too. So did Jacob and the others. So did the women who sold their souls to the ghouls and allowed themselves to be impregnated. Who decides what’s the ‘right side?’ You? Me? Buck?”

The one that isn’t murdering whole towns and stealing their women and children, Keo thought, and wanted badly to say it, but restrained himself.

Not yet. Don’t push her too hard.

Not yet…

“There’s always been right and wrong,” he said. “I know it and you know it. Don’t fool yourself.”

Pressley remained silent.

“Pressley—”

“Keo.”

“What?”

“Shut up. I’m sick and tired of listening to your stupid voice.”

Keo grinned. “Stupid voice?”

Pressley’s head slumped against his shoulder before he could finish the rest of his retort.

Shit. Is she…?

There. Her breathing. It was weak, but it was there.

She was alive…barely.

Keo sighed and thought, Well, at least I won’t be sitting here in the dark all by myself, surrounded by dead bodies.

“Captain Optimism, this guy,” he said quietly, before smiling to himself in the dark like an idiot.

Nineteen

Thump.

He opened his eyes to darkness. Nothing had changed since he was awake, which was…how long ago?

Thump.

There it was again. The sound that had woken him up.

Thump.

Keo looked to his left, where Brett’s body would be. There, the teenager’s watch, the hands glowing in the blackness. Two-fifty after midnight.

Thump.

It wasn’t a gunshot. Or an explosion. It sounded almost…muted. Unnatural.

So what is natural these days?

It was definitely coming from another part of the building. That was the only thing he could be absolutely sure of. That, and Pressley, leaning her entire body against him now.

Thump.

No way that was a gunshot. Keo had too many experiences around gunfire to be able to tell the difference, and this was not someone firing a gun. It also wasn’t something exploding. So what was it?

Thump.

It was a pounding sound, reverberated along the facility, coming from somewhere beyond the corner to his right. How far away from the turn? That was the answer he needed to find out.

Thump.

Keo picked up the large, torn piece of Brett’s shirt he had been using to wipe his face clean and tossed it aside. Then he eased Pressley’s body off him and back against the wall. He spent a few seconds making sure she wouldn’t topple sideways and hurt herself before standing up. He had the pump-action shotgun gripped in his hands, but he reached down and picked up one of the ARs and slung it over his shoulder. The revolver was shoved in his front waistband while the Glock hung comfortingly in the holster on his left hip. There were more weapons to choose from, but they would have just weighed him down.

Thump.

He faced the end of the hallway, not that he could really see much except dull gray walls. What he wouldn’t give for a flashlight. Better yet, one attached to the barrel of the shotgun.

Thump.

It wasn’t going to stop no matter how hard he wished it would. And he had a feeling that when it finally did cease, he wasn’t going to like what happened afterward.

So I guess you better keep praying it doesn’t stop.

Right?

Keo stepped over Pressley’s splayed legs and moved slowly up the corridor. He stopped a few feet later and glanced back at her darkened form. He hadn’t been keen on the idea of roaming around the bomb shelter’s pitch-dark hallways by himself earlier before he settled down and dozed off, and he still wasn’t, now. But what were the chances Pressley was going to be anything other than a hindrance in her current state? Sure, an extra pair of hands holding a rifle would come in handy, but not if he had to carry her over there and back.

Thump.

He looked forward, sighed, and started walking again.

Keo held the shotgun in his right hand and used his left to keep the wall next to him at all times. His eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness that he wasn’t in any danger of walking into a solid block of concrete and hurting himself, but the exact spaces were still mysteries to him. The turn was somewhere up ahead, slowly coming into view.

Thump.

What was making that noise? Was it someone (something) trying to break through…what? It sounded very much like something was beating on a solid structure. A door? It didn’t sound metal, and if it were wood it would have broken a long time ago. Was there another method into the facility that Brett and the others didn’t know about?

What was that Scarlett had said about the place?

“We weren’t really supposed to come down here. I think it’s an old bomb shelter that the people who were in Cordine City during The Purge used to hide from the ghouls. After The Walk Out, we mostly used it for storage.”

She and Brett had only fled to the building because they had seen the others doing it, and it was easily the most secure place in or around the city. But she didn’t really know anything else about it, and neither did Brett. Which meant there could have been more than one way in and out that the teenagers were clueless to.

Great. And here I thought I was safe and sound.

Keo had to chuckle at that. What exactly had his life become that sitting in a darkened building, waiting for sunlight while being surrounded by dead bodies, was the best-case scenario?

Better than being dead, pal.

Well, that was certainly true.

Thump.

Had the pounding sounded louder that time? Or was it just his imagination?

Probably just my imagination.

Maybe…

He was certain of one thing (Are you even sure about that?), and that was the intervals between thumps. They weren’t gaining in intensity and didn’t seem to be happening at a faster clip since he opened his eyes. There was an almost purposeful quality to them, like whoever (whatever) was causing them was being very, very deliberate.

Almost like they know I’m in here. Like they know every sound is driving me up the wall.

Was that possible? Was whoever was responsible doing it in such a way that they knew it would get to him? A sadistic method of getting on his nerves? Adding to his fear? Even taunting him?

What am I, Barbara from Night of the Living Dead?

Fuck that shit.

Keo picked up his pace even as another thump came from around the turn. He took his left hand off the wall and put it on the shotgun’s fore-end so he could rack the weapon faster if he needed to.

Shells. How many shells did he have left? He’d fired twice, reloaded once, so he was sitting on four rounds. That was fine, because he had a fully loaded AR and two pistols as backup. Though he regretted not swapping out Brett’s revolver for one of the semiautomatics. That was stupid. He was carrying an additional six shots when it could have been eight, or twelve, or more.

Live and learn, pal.

Hopefully…

Finally, after what seemed like a few hours of cautious walking, he reached the end of the hallway and turned right, the shotgun leading the way. He found nothing around the corner. Just a lot of darkness and more corridor.

Thump.

Keo tried to gauge if he was getting any closer to the origins of the noise as it faded past him slowly, slowly…gone.

Shit. I can’t tell if I’m getting closer…or farther away.

He soldiered on, suddenly very aware of the slightly increased beating in his chest.

Thump.

He was pretty sure that sounded a lot louder than all the other times. He was sure of it.

Really? You’re sure of it? Can you even see your shoes right now?

No, he couldn’t, but that didn’t mean he had lost his grip on his other senses. He could hear and feel just fine. Especially the feeling part, and right now he wasn’t very confident about anything.

The urge to turn around and go back to Pressley and wait it out was enticing, but the sound—thump—made that impossible. It had its claws in his head and wouldn’t allow him to turn tail and run in the opposite direction.

Gotta find out. One way or another, gotta find out.

He took another step forward, changing up his grip on the Remington for the tenth time in as many minutes.

Gotta find out…

* * *

Thump-thump.

It was getting louder and more insistent, and it couldn’t have had anything to do with the fact that he might be getting closer to it, because Keo didn’t even know if that was remotely true. It was more a sense that they—whoever they were—were getting close to their goal and they knew it, and that was encouraging them to work harder and faster.

Before Keo even realized he had made the decision, he was jogging through the darkness. He should have been bogged down with pain from the layers of aches and bruises building up over the course of yesterday and today, but he was feeling surprisingly spry. It was either the adrenaline or the Tramadol that Pressley had found earlier.

Either/or.

He almost ran into a wall more than once, but managed to see the grayness coming up just in time to avoid each collision. He didn’t know where he was going, and the turns seemed to pop up at random intervals. How many times had he gone right or left? He only slowed down when he reached an intersection—three times now—but it was easy to choose which direction to go: All he had to do was listen to the pounding and head right toward it.

Another corridor, and another turn.

Thump-thump.

Still loud, still insistent…and getting closer.

Gee, I wonder what Pressley is doing right now?

He didn’t get very far up this new corridor before he began making out a metal door at the very end. The metallic color slowly came into focus, standing out against the drab colors of the concrete that surrounded it.

And there it is. There it is…

The door was ajar, a sign that someone had abandoned the room in a rush.

Well, that’s not ominous at all.

So why are you still walking toward it instead of running in the other direction like a sane individual?

Because he had to know. He had to know.

Thump-thump.

It was definitely coming from inside the room, and it was so much louder now that Keo’s chest actually started moving in sync to the pounding. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not, though.

He walked toward it, the shotgun in front of him.

Thump-thump.

His mind spun with a hundred possibilities. A vent? Was there something trying to break its (their) way through a vent? Or another door inside the room? Was it some kind of office? It couldn’t have been Winston’s. He would have crossed bodies in the hallway if it were, instead of the nothingness he’d passed on the way over here.

Thump-thump.

He moved faster, the door in front of him seeming to glow like an eerie welcome sign. He was pretty sure that was just his imagination playing tricks with him, though, because doors didn’t glow.

Right?

Keo finally stopped at the slightly open door and eased the shotgun’s barrel through the small opening, before widening it an inch at a time.

Thump-thump.

…another inch…

Thump-thump.

…another…

Thump-thump.

There. Wide enough now that he didn’t have any more excuses. Keo leaned forward and looked into the room.

Thump-thump.

His night eyes had adjusted enough for him to make out some kind of armory, with stacks of long items (rifles? shotguns? Hell, they could have been swords or spears, for all he knew) hanging off racks along the walls. There were metal shelves covered in boxes of various shapes and sizes. Ammo, probably, and whatever else Winston’s people thought was important enough to store down here.

Thump-thump.

There, the pounding he’d been listening to for the last—what? Five minutes? Ten? No, it had to be longer than that. Twenty minutes? Did it really matter?

Thump-thump.

It was coming from the wall directly across the room from him, behind an empty rack. Empty, because most of its contents—it was still too dark for him to really make out what those were—had come loose and were scattered along the floor in small piles. Every time the thump echoed, the rack would quiver dangerously, threatening to fall. Any second now—

Thump!

Keo jumped as the rack finally gave, toppling almost in slow motion until the thunderous crash! as it hit the hard floor.

Thump-thump-thump!

Faster, stronger, and somehow more intense.

Is that possible?

Yeah, that’s possible, because it’s happening right now in front of you.

The entire back wall of the room was trembling, as if they would come unglued at any moment. A house of cards, ready to burst at the seams.

Thump-thump-thump!

What was back there? What was causing the pounding?

He had to know. He had to know.

Keo leaned farther into the room to get a better look. He didn’t want to do it, but he had to.

Thump-thump-thump!

Keo raised the shotgun and took another step inside.

Thump-thump-thump!

A section of the wall finally gave with a loud grinding noise, and something fell loose and smacked against the floor and exploded into a few hundred tiny pieces.

The pounding stopped—the external one, anyway. The one inside Keo’s chest was still going, even more harried than before. His ears were filled with his own heartbeat, and he didn’t think he could hear anything else through them, but he was very much wrong.

THOOM!

Keo ducked instinctively as the center of the wall exploded, sending chunks of concrete at him like missiles. But none of them came close enough to hurt him, and instead it pelted the floor between him and where the wall used to be.

When he looked last time, the far wall was a monotonous dull gray from end to end, but that had changed. There was now a solid black somewhere in the middle, as if a portal had opened up to another universe. Twin blue orbs pushed through the blackness, pouring forth from the opening, and found him all the way across the room even as Keo slowly raised himself back up.

No way.

Keo stopped breathing entirely and took a step back. He prayed that Winston’s people put silver in everything, including the buckshot that was loaded inside the Remington he was gripping right now as if his life depended on it, because it did. Oh, did it ever.

No goddamn way.

The eyes shifted and locked in on him. What might have been lips appeared underneath the two slits, arcing to form something that could reasonably be mistaken for a smile if one had never seen the facial expression before.

Keo shouldn’t have been able to see any of it with so much darkness around him and no light to speak of, but the eyes were so intense that they emanated a light source of their own. It was unnatural. Supernatural. And impossible.

And yet there it was.

A blue-eyed ghoul.

It couldn’t get to Keo through the blast door, so it had made its own entrance. It had found a way in because they always did. It was why he had risked everything in order to draw the blue-eyed ghoul away from Gaby back in Axton. Because the blue eyes were too smart, and they always found a way. Sooner or later, they always found a way in.

Keo turned and ran.

Behind him, there was silence…for about two seconds, before the rest of the wall caved in with a monstrous THOOM! and the world was filled with the stampede of hundreds (thousands?) of bare feet against the hard floor…

Twenty

It was the same one from the woods outside Jonah’s. The same bastard that had followed him to the cabin outside Winding Creek. And definitely the same blue-eyed prick that had stalked him all the way to Axton—and now, beyond.

He didn’t know how he knew it with a hundred percent absolute certainty—especially when all he’d seen was a pair of blue eyes, and damn if they didn’t all look the same anyway (That’s so racist)—but he did.

It followed me from Winding Creek.

To Axton.

And now, to Cordine City.

Sonofabitch really, really has a hard-on for me!

Greengrass’s words echoed in his head even as he fled down the corridor, doing his very best not to run right into a wall:

“It’s out there right now, with that horde, looking for you. Whether we’re still in Cordine City or not, it’ll find you. It wants you alive. I don’t know why.”

The Bucky didn’t know why, but Keo did. It had told him why, outside of Jonah’s:

“…you were there. With the others. You were close enough, at the end. I’ll find them, too, and I’ll make them all pay. Every last one of them, no matter how long it takes.”

“Every last one of them” was him, Gaby, and Danny. Who else had been down there that day? Hanson had also been down there. Who else?

The intersection appeared just as something that sounded like a wild beast letting out a mad shriek echoed from behind him.

What the hell was that? he thought, even as he tried to remember whether to turn right or left.

Right. Turn right!

He rounded the corner and sneaked a look back, waiting for the inevitable—for the wave of pruned black flesh to pour down the hallway behind him. It was coming. He knew it was coming. He’d seen the wall inside the armory disintegrating even as he ran away. Without the wall, there was now nothing to stop the horde from coming through. It was bad enough he was going to have to deal with a blue-eyed bastard, but all of its creepy crawlers, too.

What was that saying? When it rains, it pours?

More like when it rains, you’re shit out of luck, pal!

He felt them before he actually saw them. It was in the way the air shifted, the sudden stink of death piling up all around him. He shouldn’t have wasted the second it took to glance back, but he had to be sure. He knew they were coming, that they were so close, but he just had to be sure.

I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before.

He wasn’t wrong.

They vomited into the intersection, their black flesh so tightly packed into the corridor that they looked like one sentient blob. Except this “blob” had eyes and mouths and teeth, and they swallowed up any semblance of color that the darkened hallway had managed to yield until there was just an endless sea of soulless black.

Keo spun, and still backpedaling, fired up the hallway.

Fire licked from the shotgun’s barrel like dragon’s breath, lighting up the corridor for just a split second as buckshot ripped through the skeletal forms and an entire wall of them collapsed before his eyes. Not that it did anything to stop the rest, because the ones behind the fallen ghouls simply leapt over the dead and kept coming.

He racked the shotgun and fired again, and this time didn’t wait to see how many he had felled with the second shot before he turned back around and continued running at full speed.

Faster, faster, faster!

He was running as fast as he could, but even so, the hairs on the back of his neck spiked as they closed in.

Jesus, they’re fast. When did they get so fast?

But maybe they weren’t fast. Maybe he was just tired, his body finally giving in to all the abuse it had taken in the last few days. Even the Tramadol seemed to be fading. How else to explain why he was moving so slowly and only getting slower?

Keo glanced over his shoulder and looked right into the hollow black eyes of a ghoul. It was barely a foot behind him and reaching out with bony fingers that looked more like twigs—

Boom! as the shotgun tore through the creature’s paper-thin chest, ripping its right arm off at the shoulder blade. Buckshot dropped three more of the monsters behind it and they spilled to the floor, tripping those that were too close as they went down. It would have been comical if Keo’s life weren’t on the line.

Nothing like a slip-and-slide comedy routine to remind you you’re about to die!

Laugh, everyone. Let’s all get a little LOL going!

He might have actually laughed. He wasn’t sure. It was hard to do much of anything other than open his mouth and let out a series of desperate wheezing sounds as he struggled to catch his breath. His lungs were already burning (My God, am I out of shape? Is that it?), and his legs were starting to turn rubbery underneath him.

Just a little farther! Just a little farther!

He fired again, the brief flash of light allowing him to witness a half dozen ghouls eviscerated in a sea of buckshot.

That was four shots.

Four strikes and you’re out!

He tossed the shotgun and pulled the Glock from his hip holster, deciding to save the AR slung over his shoulder until he needed it.

What, you don’t need it now? a voice somewhere in the back of his mind laughed.

He stuck his hand behind him and pulled the trigger. He didn’t even look back to aim, because he didn’t have to. He could have closed his eyes completely and still hit one, two, maybe even more with every shot.

Bang-bang-bang!

He turned another corner—the third one? Or was it the fourth? He’d lost count, but he was about sixty percent sure he was moving in the right direction.

Sixty percent? My, aren’t we being optimistic!

More like forty percent, pal!

And they were still coming. Of course they were still coming. Did he actually think blowing away a dozen or more of them would make them change their minds? Did the bastards even still have minds to change?

He kept pulling the trigger on the Glock even as he ran, the bang-bang-bang fading slightly against his runaway heartbeat echoing in his ears. Christ, it sounded like he was about to have a stroke.

Bang-bang-bang!

The smell caught up to him, wrapping around his head like a cloud of garbage.

Bang-bang-bang!

He almost gagged on the stink but somehow kept from doing so as another corner came up. He reached up and grabbed it with his free fingers to slingshot himself around it.

“Keo?” a voice said in front of him.

Pressley!

She was standing in the middle of the hallway, one hand holding onto her wounded arm. He was surprised to see her there. He was pretty sure he had at least two more turns to go.

I guess not! Maybe I’m faster than I thought!

He couldn’t see her eyes in the darkness, but Keo could make out her pale white face, and she was definitely looking in his direction as he rushed toward her.

“What—” she began, but he cut her off.

“Run!” he shouted. “Run, run, run!”

But she didn’t run. Either she didn’t hear him (which was impossible; he was screaming at the top of his lungs) or was having trouble understanding what he was saying, because she continued to stand perfectly still.

“Run!” he shouted again. “Run run run run for God’s sake!”

He could just barely make out her eyes now as they looked past him. Keo didn’t have to follow her stare to know what she was seeing. He could hear them, he could feel them, he could smell them.

“Pressley!” he shouted. “Goddammit, run!”

Finally, Pressley snapped out of it, and turned and ran.

Or she tried to, anyway. She couldn’t really run in her current condition. The best she could manage was to hobble down the corridor, the way Greengrass had earlier.

She’ll never make it. Shit, she’ll never make it!

He was already running parallel to her when he shoved the dry Glock back into the holster and stopped, spun around, and unslung the AR all in one fluid motion. The thirty rounds in the rifle was a better option than wasting the few seconds it would have taken to reload the handgun. His fingers found the fire selector on the carbine, and he flicked it, and even as it clicked into place Keo lifted the rifle and shouted, “Go! Don’t stop! Go go go!”

Keo squeezed the trigger, and the rifle jumped in his hands as it unleashed everything it had on full-auto. He oscillated his fire left and right, then had to lift it toward the ceiling when a couple of the damned things leapt into the air using the ghouls in front of them as literal stepping stones.

They dropped like flies, and for every one he killed, two—sometimes three—more fell behind them as the silver-tipped rounds punched through their weak and sunken chests like they were little more than sheets of paper. The rifle’s muzzle flash lit up the hallway in a mesmerizing staccato effect, giving him half-second glimpses of the dead and dying and still coming.

Even as he watched them topple forward and sideways and backward, Keo knew it wasn’t going to be enough. It wasn’t even close to being enough. He could already feel the carbine getting lighter as he kept the trigger pulled and the magazine emptied—

Click!

He grabbed the spare from behind his back pocket and was reloading when a figure appeared next to him and the pop-pop-pop of another AR firing filled his eardrums.

Pressley!

Instead of fleeing like a smart human being (Unlike you!), she had come back and was shooting at the oncoming horde. Unlike his, her rifle was only capable of three-round bursts, and she squeezed the trigger over and over again, swinging left and right, then up to catch the ones trying to leap over the corpses that had begun to pile up in the narrow hallway.

Pressley didn’t look at him and didn’t waste time talking as she poured it on, but she began retreating just as he did. Keo opened up with the new magazine, once again not wasting time aiming or picking his targets and simply firing into the teeming mass of squirming black flesh, while Pressley continued sending round after round in the same direction beside him.

The clink-clink-clink of rounds pelting the hard concrete joined the thump-thump-thump of his heartbeat in his ears, with the pop-pop-pop of rifle fire threatening to overwhelm both noises. A trio of melodies fighting for his attention, but they were all losing because Keo’s senses were singularly focused on the swarm of undead surging across the hallway toward him and Pressley.

He kept the trigger pulled even as the rifle began to get light again. Once that happened, he would have to go back to the Glock because he hadn’t been forward thinking enough to carry more than just one spare when he went to check on the noise (Stupid. You’re such an idiot!).

It was going to happen soon. Five seconds soon.

Four seconds…

Three…

Despite both he and Pressley emptying everything they had into the advancing forms, it did nothing to stop their progress or cut down their numbers. It was easier now to see just how many there were (Too many. Always too friggin’ many.) with each flash from Pressley’s rifle and his own, but seeing only made the situation more depressing. Keo felt that slowly growing, grinding sickness in the pit of his stomach, that undeniable presence of the inevitable.

Of the end, approaching fast…

You’re a real Captain Optimism right now, pal!

Keo might have laughed again, because Pressley gave him a quick glance just before she dropped her rifle and pulled out her handgun and they both simultaneously bumped into a wall as they came to the end of the corridor.

“Go go go!” Keo shouted.

This time Pressley obeyed and hobbled down another stretch of dark hallway while Keo trailed behind her. He tossed his empty AR and pulled the Glock. He reloaded it in one second and began firing it a second later.

And still they came.

Unrelenting, unhesitating, even as they fell one by one by one in front of him.

Click!

He threw the Glock into the surging hell of pruned black flesh in frustration, and one of the creatures actually leapt to snatch the empty pistol out of the air like it was a prize. Too bad he hadn’t tossed a grenade instead!

Keo was reaching for Brett’s revolver when he saw it.

Twin blue suns appearing above the quivering mass of flesh and clacking bones and black eyes. The sudden presence of it made Keo pause for a second, and that was just enough time for the creature to pounce. It was all the way across the hallway from him one moment, then driving Keo into the floor and knocking the revolver out of his hand in the very next heartbeat.

No no no!

It perched on top of him, grinning down. A razor-thin mouth, more malleable strings than actual lips, forming something it probably thought was a triumphant smile but looked closer to a grotesque recollection of one.

“I told you I’d find you,” it hissed, its voice simultaneously icy cold and uncomfortably hot (How is that even possible?) against his face.

The rest of the ghouls had stopped on the other side of the corridor without warning. They milled about the floor now, like toddlers waiting for scraps of a meal from a parent. Black eyes watched Keo back even as they pushed against one another, filling up the narrow space—climbing on top of one another’s backs, heads, and almost stretching up to the ceiling—with their seemingly unending number.

Keo stared up at the elongated face, at those eerie blue eyes lording over him. Seeing its kind up close always sent a shiver through his entire being, a reminder that he’d rather deal with an army of the creatures than one of these blue-eyed devils.

“You didn’t think you could run from me forever, did you?” it hissed. Every word that came out of its mouth had an unnatural hissing quality, a stark reminder—as if he needed one—that as human as they still looked, they were far beyond that now.

But as strong and fast and smart as they were, they could still be killed. With a knife, with a gun—

The gun. Where the hell was Brett’s six-shooter?

He pulled his eyes away from the monster to search the floor around him, but he couldn’t find it.

Where the hell is that gun?

“This is the end,” the ghoul hissed. “But it won’t be fast. It won’t be easy. It’ll be long and hard, and it’ll hurt. We’ll have a lot of fun, you and I. Oh, the wonderful games we’ll play.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Keo was going to spit back, when the bang! of a gunshot thundered first, and Blue Eyes’s head twisted as a chunk of its cheek tore free, flesh and inky blood spraying the wall nearby.

Keo turned his head as a dark figure moved up the hallway toward them.

Pressley?

She hadn’t kept going like he’d told her. Instead, she was back and she fired again—bang!—but this time the creature was expecting it, and it jerked its head out of the bullet’s path and Pressley’s second round struck one of the black-eyed ghouls farther down the hallway instead.

“The brain, Pressley!” Keo shouted. “Shoot it in the brain!”

He had a feeling she already knew that, and that was why she’d hit Blue Eyes in the cheek with the first shot. It wasn’t her intended target, but maybe the combination of whatever pain she was suffering and the suffocating darkness made it difficult to put the bullet where she wanted it.

Pressley had gotten two shots off, and she managed to squeeze out a third and a fourth, but Blue Eyes was already moving (Jesus, it’s fast!) and bounding up the corridor toward her. And yet Pressley kept firing, her rounds missing and ricocheting off the ceiling.

Keo sat up and shouted, “Run, Pressley! Run!”

But she didn’t—or maybe she would have, had Blue Eyes not been almost on top of her. She staggered back and fired again, and the bullet punched through the creature’s chest, and like the others before it, bounced harmlessly off the ceiling. The creature never stopped moving, and the last Keo saw of Pressley was her body being pummeled to the floor.

He scrambled to his feet and searched the floor for Brett’s revolver. It couldn’t have gone very far, but without any lights he resorted to crawling around on his knees and groping the concrete with his hands like a blind man.

Where was it? Where the hell was that gun? There were six bullets in it, but he only needed one to end this. Just one would do it.

He knew he looked pathetic but didn’t care. He had to find that gun. He had to put a bullet in Blue Eyes’s head. Into its brain. It was the only way to kill them. Silver only hurt them, but it didn’t kill them the way it did the black eyes. They were too fast, too strong, but if you got them in the brain, none of it mattered. Keo had seen it work in person. Up close and personal.

Shoot it in the brain. Shoot it right in the fucking brain.

There was a blood-curdling scream, so loud that Keo abandoned his search and looked up while still on his hands and knees, just in time to see Blue Eyes raising itself off Pressley’s prone body. The monster seemed to keep rising and rising, as if its bony form were ten feet tall and its domed head would scrape against the very top of the corridor.

Oh no. Oh no…

The ghoul turned to face him, bright red blood trickling down its chest.

I told you to run, Pressley. Why didn’t you run like I told you?

It was holding something in its right hand, blood dripping from between its fingers. The object in the creature’s palm was slightly misshapen, and Keo swore it was still beating…

Twenty-One

Fuck…

Pressley’s heart seemed to glow in the darkness, even as bright blood slipped and slid and dripped between the skeletal fingers clutching it.

…me...

The creature stood over Pressley, who lay behind it, unmoving. Which made perfect sense, because how exactly was she going to move with her heart literally ripped out of her chest? Even the strongest man in the world would have a little trouble getting their limbs to do anything after that.

…over…

It grinned up the corridor at him. Or tried to. Those barely-there strings of rope it was trying to pass off as lips forming an obscene…something. The cut along its cheek that Pressley’s bullet had made was already healed, taking away any evidence that it almost nearly lost its life.

...and over…

And he couldn’t find the damn gun. The pistol that he’d dropped when it pounced on him and drove him to the floor. The one he had grabbed off Brett’s dead (Just like you’re about to be) body.

…and ten times on Sundays.

“What’s the matter?” the ghoul hissed. “No jokes for the occasion, funny man? No smartass comments? Cat got your tongue?”

It tossed Pressley’s heart at Keo—nonchalantly, as if it were playing hacky sack. He was still on his knees, and he scrambled out of the way. Blood from the artery sprayed him in the face as it passed and landed with a disgusting plop! on the hard concrete floor behind him. The wall of ghouls scrambled forward, grabbing and kicking and biting each other to be the first one to have what was left of Pressley.

Keo looked away. He didn’t want to see it. Didn’t want to acknowledge the sickening sound of teeth shredding—

The monster was there, standing in front of him.

How…?

The question popped into his head before he could really think about it. How? Because they were fast. They were inhumanly fast, that was how.

“Well?” it hissed. “Say something funny.”

He hit it in the side of the face with a balled fist, putting everything he had into it. It was a world-class swing, the kind that would have knocked out anyone, especially from barely a foot away. Except, of course, he wasn’t hitting just anyone.

The creature turned its head slightly—very slightly. If it felt the punch at all, it didn’t give him the satisfaction of letting it show on its impossibly gaunt face. Its eyes never left him, and he was pretty sure it even smirked.

Before Keo could get in another swing, it grabbed him by the throat and threw him into the wall. It did it so effortlessly, like a dog playing with a chew toy, that Keo was still marveling at how chilling and at the same time soothing its fingers were when they were wrapped around his neck when his back collided with the concrete, and then he wasn’t thinking about much of anything anymore.

He bounced off the wall and landed in a pile. He might have grunted, but he couldn’t be entirely sure with the sledgehammer pounding away in his ears and the searing pain from his neck where it had grabbed him.

Keo slowly pushed himself up onto his knees.

“Look at them,” it hissed. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

It was looking at the ghouls feasting on Pressley’s heart—or the chunks of it still left after being pulled and fought over by the horde. Only a few had gotten a taste, and the rest watched with envy. If they could feel anything at all, that was. Keo wasn’t sure. The blue eyes were different, but the black-eyed ones were simple, base beings. Did they even still feel? Did they understand jealousy?

Shut up, because you’re about to be next!

Keo lunged at the creature in front of him, swinging with both hands this time, and driving everything he had with his body. The monster’s head snapped back, but the rest of it remained firmly rooted to the floor. It might have even laughed at him—or what it probably thought was a laugh but came out more like a…something else entirely.

He couldn’t follow through with the attack because its bony fingers had somehow cupped his forehead and it was pressing so hard Keo thought his skull would turn to dust and crumble under the assault. It pushed down, and Keo’s legs began to buckle under the intense pressure.

No…

He was a helpless child battling a grown man who had spent a lifetime in a gym lifting weights and getting stronger with every passing year while he wasted away.

Not like this…

Except the blue-eyed ghoul didn’t look anything like a gym rat. Not with its long slender frame, its rail-thin limbs, and hairless domed head. It shouldn’t have been so strong, so impossible to hurt. It should have been brittle (Like your bones are right now?) and weak (Like you are right now?) and easy to break (Like you’re going to be soon?).

But it wasn’t. It was none of those things.

His vision blurred from the crushing pain coming from his forehead, and Keo imagined its fingers digging into his flesh and easily punching through his skull and into the brain underneath. Was that what was happening? Because it certainly felt like it.

Not like this…

Despite his difficulty focusing on any one thing, he couldn’t deny its presence as it pushed him down to the floor. The outline of its slim waist, its muscle-free frame, was all he could see. The heat that radiated from every pore of its flesh, comingling with freezing cold, threatened to engulf him. It defied all sense of logic.

No, no, no…

He wanted to fight it, to resist it, but it was so strong, and continued resistance would only snap his neck like a twig and maybe his spine right after that. His knees continued to give, until they finally slammed down on the hard concrete floor, sending a shot of pain through both legs.

Not like this…

He didn’t know why, but as he kneeled before it, Keo thought about Lara. She was somewhere out there, maybe even preparing to fight Fenton right now. That is, if Gaby had survived Axton and managed to reach her. And if Peters had delivered his intel. If she even decided to act after hearing everything.

If.

If, if, if.

Not that what Lara would or would not do in the coming days was going to matter a damn to him in the here and now. Not here, kneeling in front of an abomination against life itself, looking down at him with that satisfied smirk on its face. There was nothing natural about its very existence, and yet, at the same time, there was something so, so very natural about the thing’s smugness.

It was so inhuman, and yet at the same time, so human.

“You don’t have to say anything,” the creature hissed. “You won’t have to surrender your friends to me. I’ll take them from you. Here.” It touched his forehead with the forefinger of its other hand. Uneven fingernails, jagged in places, scraped against his skin. “Everything you are, everything you were, everything you wish to be; they’ll be open to me. Your secrets, all your secrets…”

He gagged at its presence, its very being. It didn’t really stink, at least not compared to the horde that waited like loyal children at the back of the hallway.

“Such a novelty,” the creature hissed. “It amazes me that you were able to survive all this time. You meat suits are so weak, so easy to puncture, to break. Why couldn’t you just stay in your place? Why did you have to be so difficult?”

Keo had something to say—a zinger that would make even Danny proud—but he couldn’t open his mouth to deliver it. It was the pressure from the monster’s fingers; it was clenching them, bringing them inward, knowing how much it was hurting him. His vision continued to blur, and his teeth began chattering. It had stopped pushing down, maybe because it knew it would break him in half if it didn’t, and it didn’t want to kill him.

Not yet. Not yet…

He closed his eyes. It was far easier than fighting the losing battle to keep them open. Besides, he was pretty sure his eyeballs were going to pop any second. How could five fingers, smaller than the smallest chopsticks, have so much strength in them? It was unreal. And yet, they were going to be the end of him. They were going to take everything he had.

No.

No, no, no.

Not like this.

Not like this!

He didn’t know where it came from, but it surged through his body from his toes to the shins and upward, upward until it was coursing through his body. Keo fired up from the floor like a missile. The creature lost its grip on his head—maybe from shock, maybe because he really was that strong all of a sudden—and Keo burst through its defenses and punched up with everything he had.

Crunch! as his balled hand made contact with its jaw.

Its head snapped back. Really, really snapped back this time, just before it staggered, taking one, then two steps back.

Look, ma, I can hurt it! I can hurt it!

Keo didn’t give it a chance to regroup. He lunged forward and hammered at its head with both fists clenched together into one weapon. The monster’s cheek shattered against the impact, and coagulated blood splashed Keo’s knuckles.

Go down, you bastard! Go down!

He hit it again, and again, swinging both hands like they were one fist instead of two joined at the fingers. Blue Eyes kept moving back with every blow, blood flitting across the space between them from open gashes and splashing the floor, the wall, even the ceiling.

Hit it again! Hit it again!

And he did, striking it over and over, raining punches on its cheeks, its jaw, its nose, its forehead—anything he could target.

It was backpedaling, but it wouldn’t go down.

Why aren’t you going down?

Go down, damn you!

Keo didn’t let that stop him and continued hitting it and hitting it and hitting it. He would have let out a ferocious scream with every swing if he could summon the energy, but he was putting everything he had into his fists. Into his legs to drive forward. Into his body to keep charging.

He struck it again, and again, and again.

And it laughed.

The undead thing was laughing at him.

Keo had to stop to gasp for breath. He didn’t want to, but he didn’t have any choice. He was drained, and his heart pounded in his chest and his legs were stuck in molasses. His hands, still welded together into one balled instrument, hung in front of him, so heavy for some reason, and he wasn’t sure he could even lift it again if he wanted to.

Not…good. Not good at all.

His struggled breaths echoed in his ears, but it didn’t stop him from hearing Blue Eyes’s laughter. It laughed at him even as the new cuts along its cheeks closed, even as it continued to stand tall (You’re not human, motherfucker!) and watched him, eyes pulsating in the blackness as if each had an entire unexplored galaxy of their own.

It smiled that painful smile and hissed. “Are you done? Did you get it all out of your system, meat suit?”

Keo stumbled back, his legs threatening to give way underneath him. Mercifully, the wall was there, and Keo slid down its length. He finally released his hands and let them drop to the floor at his sides.

He was spent, and it was gone. Whatever reservoir he had drawn the energy from seconds ago, it was now depleted. There was nothing there anymore. He couldn’t even summon the strength to stop his chest from heaving.

“Did you really think it would work?” the creature asked.

Yeah, I kinda did, Keo thought, but he didn’t put his thoughts into actual words. He couldn’t, anyway, not while struggling for every breath.

“Did you really think you could beat me with your fists?” it continued. “You’re pathetic.”

Don’t rub it in, asshole.

“But you’ll make a fine toy. We’re going to have lots of fun.”

Well, at least one of us will be having fun.

“You’ll see.”

Not if I can help it.

“You’ll see…”

“Oh, fuck off,” Keo spat out.

Whoa. Where did that come from?

His chest was slowing down, and he was able to lift his hands and make fists out of them at his sides again. Maybe he was stronger than he thought. Maybe, if he concentrated hard enough, he could get off another Hail Mary.

Who are you kidding?

Stop it.

Just…stop it.

It’s over.

It was over before it even started.

He let his fingers unfurl and let his hands fall to the cold floor.

Keo closed his eyes.

For just a moment. Just a brief second—

It was crouching in front of him.

How?

You know how, you idiot. You big, dumb idiot.

“I won’t turn you,” it hissed. “Oh no. You won’t get off that easy. We’ll bond. And play. And soon, you won’t remember what it was like not having me inside, right”—It pricked him in the forehead and pushed his head against the wall with a finger—“here.”

The cold and heat from its contact made him shiver.

“Are you ready?” it hissed.

Not in a million years.

“Are you ready for the rest of your miserable existence?”

Which part of “not in a million years” don’t you understand, you sonofabitch?

“It’s time—” it began, when it stopped.

The creature cocked its head, looking away from him and up the hallway, toward the gathered mass of ghouls.

“No,” it whispered.

“No?” No, what?

“No,” it hissed again before standing up. “Not now. Not now.”

Keo blinked up at the creature, confused by what was happening. Wasn’t he about to die? (Or worse?) What was happening? And what was it he was seeing in the monster’s face? In its eyes? Was that…?

No. It couldn’t be.

Could it?

Blue Eyes was afraid. It was afraid.

“No…” it whispered, just before the walls and floor and the ceiling shook—

KRA-BOOM!

Thunder?

No, not thunder.

Keo had heard that sound before. Too many times to count.

It was a bomb.

Someone had just dropped a bomb on Cordine City…

Twenty-Two

That doesn’t sound good.

Or does it?

Keo was wrestling with that question when something cracked above him. He glanced up just in time to see a section of the ceiling coming undone. He leapt out of its path—a chunk of concrete that smashed into the floor and instantly became smaller chunks. Nothing that would have killed him had it landed on top of his head, but it would have definitely hurt.

The blue-eyed ghoul glanced back at him, its eyes blazing, bony face contorted into another expression Keo hadn’t seen before on the blue eyes—conflict. If Keo didn’t know any better, he would swear the creature was trying to decide whether to continue its assault on him or— What? What was the other option?

God, I hope I don’t find out!

The monster turned and glided up the hallway, its slender form slicing through the darkness and disappearing into the wall of ghouls on the other side.

And just like that, it was gone.

What…?

Keo stared after it, trying and failing badly to understand what had just happened.

Why had Blue Eyes just left him sitting on the floor on his ass? Was it the bomb he’d heard? Was something happening outside the facility that demanded the bastard’s attention more than finishing what it had started? Why—

Shut up, you idiot. Shut up and run!

Keo snapped back to his senses at the same time the blob of black flesh began moving, surging forward—toward him.

Right. Run.

Run!

He scrambled to his feet and took off in the other direction.

Even as his legs pumped underneath him, he realized how much time he’d wasted. A second, maybe just barely two, but it had been long enough for cold fingers to wrap around his elbow when his arm swung backward in mid-stride.

Keo yanked his arm forward and the creature sailed past him, hollowed black eyes flashing by in a blur, saliva flitting from a cavern of jagged yellow and brown teeth. It reached for him with its other hand just before it slammed back first into the waiting wall. The collision loosened the ghoul’s grip on Keo’s arm before letting go completely as it flopped to the floor.

He risked a glance back while streaking down the adjoining hallway, even as a swarm of them turned the corner, stampeding over the one that had almost gotten Keo. The malformed beast vanished underneath the forest of legs, and Keo swore it might have let out a squeal as it was trampled.

Better you than me, pal!

The end of the corridor came up in a rush, and Keo reached out with both hands to stop himself from crashing into it. He glided right and went around another turn, even as he smelled their stink behind him, reaching across the distance like a physical hand.

He looked back again and was rewarded with the sight of creatures slamming into the walls, rail-thin bodies jostling for position in the limited space. There were so many of them, in such a small, contained room, that they were literally running into each other, pushing the ones to their left and right and in front of them in order to get one step ahead, to be the first to reach him. More than a few were trying to scale the walls, and one was somehow scurrying upside down on the ceiling.

Now that’s something you don’t see every day!

Others lost their balance or were knocked to the floor and ended up crushed under the surging wave. But they weren’t going to stop. It didn’t matter how many fell or were pinned against the sides or stumbled, there was always one, two—ten of them to take their place.

But they were still behind him, still playing catch up. Despite the fact he had squandered one, maybe two precious seconds trying to figure out why Blue Eyes had run off, Keo was still in the lead. It helped that there was nothing to weigh him down—not a single weapon or bullet—and even his burning lungs couldn’t keep him from running faster, faster, faster.

He was turning corners before they did and extending his lead. He didn’t know where the speed came from, but there was nothing quite like the thought of being underneath a pile of undead to keep you constantly searching for more, more, more.

I’m going to make it. I can’t believe I’m going to make it!

All because someone had dropped what sounded like a bomb on Cordine City. Or maybe no one had dropped it; maybe someone had set it off. That was possible. Winston and his people had been in control of the city for years now, and there were so many things out there just waiting to be picked up and repurposed for defense.

Tanks, airplanes, bombs…

Whatever it was—whatever was happening out there right now—it had drawn Blue Eyes back to the surface. And Keo was sure that was exactly where the prick had gone. Somewhere up there. Keo replayed the look on the monster’s face in his mind’s eye, the very real (human) conflict as it tried to decide what to do. Him, or what was taking place outside?

It had chosen the latter.

Thank you, Jesus! Hallelujah!

He was laughing as he flung himself around another corner. He’d lost track of how many turns he’d made, but he was pretty sure he had been running for a while. At least ten minutes.

No, that was stupid. It couldn’t have been ten whole minutes. More like five…or just one. Yeah, probably more like one—

KRA-BOOM!

Another explosion! Except this one actually felt more powerful. Either that or it was closer, because everything around Keo was shaking violently, even the floor under his feet.

Oh, shit!

He spilled forward and just managed to stick out both hands in time, or it would have been his face hitting the ground instead of just his chest.

Fortunately it wasn’t just Keo that had lost his balance in the aftershock of the blast. When he glanced over his shoulder while scrambling back to his feet (Get up, get up! This is no time to be lying down, pal!), he saw the ghouls spill across the hallway behind him in multiple mounds of frantic flesh and bones. They were fighting each other—clawing and kicking and biting—to get back up first.

Well, at least it wasn’t just me!

Then he was running again, charging toward yet another turn, even as his mind tried to understand what was happening. Not just down here, but out there, beyond the facility.

Two explosions. He was sure of that. Two bombs had gone off—big and strong enough that he could feel them all the way down here through the facility’s thick concrete construction. The first one had drawn Blue Eyes topside, leaving its minions behind to…do what? Capture him? Eat him?

Then there was the second bomb. Had Blue Eyes gone out there to try to stop it? If that was the case, it’d failed. Was it possible it had been caught in the blast? Ghouls, especially the blue-eyed ones, could survive a lot of things, but not the kind of explosion that could send Keo reeling down here.

It’s dead. Please let it be dead.

“I won’t turn you,” it had mocked him. “Oh no. You won’t get off that easy. We’ll bond. And play. And soon, you won’t remember what it was like not having me inside…”

Keo shivered just remembering its words, even as his lungs continued to burn and his legs began to weaken, but he didn’t let any of that stop him. He kept running faster and faster. Or, at least, he thought he was.

Yeah, that’s the ticket!

He stopped looking behind him—he didn’t have to, he could hear and smell and feel them gaining—and concentrated on one thing, and one thing only: running.

Faster, faster, faster.

He might not even be going any faster, for all he knew, because Keo’s awareness of the situation was slowly dwindling as sweat covered his face, and it took a Herculean effort just to keep his arms swinging forward and back to help with his strides.

I’m slowing down. Goddammit, I’m slowing down!

How much he was slowing down, though, wasn’t something he could answer. But he had to be, because the stink from behind him was getting worse—it was catching up to him, like a jilted lover trying to embrace him.

A door! Up ahead!

Even better, an open door!

He couldn’t tell if it was the same door that would lead him into Winston’s office or the room where they had been keeping Pressley. All the doors he’d seen so far were made of solid steel metal, the kind that could withstand explosive blasts. This one didn’t look any different, which made it difficult for him to prepare himself for what he’d find on the other side.

But anything was better than out here. A door meant shelter. All he had to do was reach it.

Reach it!

The best-case scenario would be Winston’s office. There were things in there that he could use as a weapon. The one where they had been keeping Pressley was a barren cell block. Even worse, it couldn’t be locked from the inside, which would be a problem. A big, big problem.

Please, let it be Winston’s office.

Please, please, please.

Please please please.

Pleasepleaseplease.

He glanced back one last time. They were turning the corner, the closest one still more than five meters behind him—No, scratch that. The closest ghoul had just been trampled by two others, and now they were just five meters behind him.

Keo looked back around just as the door appeared in front of him. He turned his body sideways and sliced through the open space without slowing down. If he had turned too far or too short, he would have slammed one of his shoulders into the metal door, and that would have been the end of it.

But he didn’t—and he was inside!

Winston’s office. It was Winston’s office!

OhthankGodohthankGod!

But he didn’t have time to wallow in his triumph. He was too busy stopping on a dime and spinning around and throwing everything he had into the door. A burst of pain as the bruises along his shoulder and chest, hidden underneath his clothes, slammed against the thick slab of metal.

Something (somethings?) flashed across his eyes as they slipped through the still-ajar door even as Keo pushed with everything he had. He couldn’t stop, couldn’t pause to see what had gotten through, because a few were better than that entire horde out there—

Bam! as the door slammed into place, and Keo grabbed the lever and cranked it and heard the (God is great. God is so great!) very satisfying sounds of the locks spinning and snapping into place.

He jumped back as they crashed into the door on the other side, the rapid fire thump-thump-thump like torrential rain. But it was the least of his concerns, because he was pretty sure he hadn’t been the only thing to make it through.

Loud, saliva-drenched hissing filled Keo’s ears as it leapt at him from the darkness, but before it could reach him, a second dark form broadsided it and sent the creature flying into a floor lamp that cracked in half.

Ghouls. Two of them.

One of the undead things snapped up from the floor and snarled at him before launching itself forward. Keo sidestepped, and it flew past him and collided with the wall. It bounced off like a rubber ball (I’ve seen that before!) and was already chasing him as Keo made a beeline for Winston’s desk.

The first ghoul that had gone flying into the lamp had picked itself up, and it stood in front of him and hissed. Keo never hesitated and ran right at it, taking off at the last second like a long jumper. The creature reached for him, fingers brushing against his pant legs as Keo sailed over its head and landed on the other side.

Ten points for the landing!

There, Winston’s prized possession.

“It’s a Heisman Trophy,” Winston had said. “It’s not mine. I found it in a pawnshop about thirty miles from here. It’s a shame to just leave it lying around out there, so I took it. My way of saving it.”

That was probably a lie. Keo wouldn’t have been surprised to learn the man had always wanted one but was never athletically gifted enough to sniff such a trophy. This was Texas, after all, where Friday Night Lights was a religion. Not that Winston was around to confirm or deny Keo’s theory.

Grab it! Shut the hell up and grab that fucking thing!

Keo did, snatching it off the desk by the figurine’s stretched back left leg. It was a lot heavier than he thought. Twenty pounds, at least, probably more like twenty-five. Which meant it was going to make a very good weapon.

He pivoted and swung, and caught one of the ghouls—he couldn’t tell which one it was and didn’t particularly care—in the face as it lunged at him. Thick streams of coagulated black blood splashed everything within five feet of the creature’s head as its entire body snapped to the side. Keo basked in the very clear crack! he’d heard—a bone, somewhere on the creature, snapping in two. It was either its neck or its spine, or if he was really lucky, both.

Gotta be both, ’cause I’m feeling really lucky right about now!

He couldn’t help himself. Not after Greengrass, then Blue Eyes in the corridor. He had been fully prepared to embrace death, to accept that this was the end of the line. Instead, here he was, inside Winston’s office duking it out with two ghouls that were so small they could have been mistaken for children.

Except these children wouldn’t die, even the one Keo had smashed in the head with the Heisman Trophy. Keo was sure it was still alive, trying to get back up even if he didn’t have the luxury of time to visually confirm that belief, because the second one was coming.

It hissed at him and opened its mouth, just before Keo caved its skull in with another swing. The ghoul’s spine gave and it collapsed to the floor on its knees, bones clacking loudly with the impact. Rivers of blood poured out of its forehead, and it was looking up at him when Keo took another massive swing and landed a devastating blow to the side of its face. The creature lifted off the floor and cannonballed across the room into a pile of boxes that spilled old LP records everywhere.

Fore!

He might have laughed, but that was doubtful because he was too busy sucking in some much-needed deep breaths and trying not to vomit at the sight of his hands and the front of his clothes covered in oozing liquid. The viscous wetness looked more like pus than blood, and the smell of rotting garbage attacked his nostrils. He switched to breathing through his mouth, which allowed him to gather himself just enough to search for—and locate—the first ghoul.

It was slowly, very slowly picking itself up from the floor behind him. Its head was no longer supported by its neck but resting on top of its left shoulder. Black eyes peered at Keo from an awkward sideways position—one on top of another instead of side to side.

“You want some more?” Keo asked.

It opened its mouth, and saliva dripped down its bloodied chest in response.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Keo stalked toward it and the creature struggled to make its legs obey, but it didn’t get very far before Keo reached it and swung, embedding one of the sharp edges of the Heisman’s base into the ghoul’s torso. The bronze punched its way easily through flesh and shattered ribcages on the other side, and the only reason it didn’t go completely through the ghoul was because Keo had pulled back at the last second.

The ghoul stumbled but wouldn’t go down.

“Tough guy, huh? Well, I’ve seen tougher hombres than you, pal.”

He hit it again, this time with a downward stroke, and decapitated its head at the neck while pile driving the ghoul into the floor. Its legs snapped under it with a sickening crack! and it fell in a pile of bones and flesh and slurping blood.

“And stay down.”

Scratching sounds from behind him.

Keo turned and watched the other ghoul rising from the floor. Its head was still attached but behind its back, somehow hanging onto the rest of its body by strings of stretching muscle and tendons.

“Look at you. Time to check your HMO, pal. I don’t think your current plan’s working too well for you.”

Keo wished he could have said he’d never seen something like it before, but that would have been a lie. He’d seen ghouls in worse conditions still remain on their feet, attacking.

Same shit, different day.

The ghoul hobbled toward him, but its legs weren’t working correctly, and even if Keo were to stand perfectly still for an hour, he wasn’t sure it would even reach him by then.

“Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

He looked over at the door. The others were still outside, still banging on the thick slab of metal, and had been since Keo engaged the two ghouls. He just hadn’t had the time to hear them at work, or to care. The blast door was solid. More than solid, actually, and nothing was getting through it. Not even Blue Eyes, which was why it had opted to break its way in through a wall instead. Of course, it could do that again if it weren’t preoccupied with something else out there.

Like whatever, or whoever, was setting off those explosions.

If he was lucky, Blue Eyes would have gotten caught in the second one.

If he was lucky.

Fresh sounds, coming from behind him.

Keo glanced over his shoulder to find that the first ghoul was moving again, trying to rise from the floor, and doing a piss poor job of it.

“All right, let’s get this over with.”

Keo changed up his grip on the Heisman.

“Let’s find out how many swings it takes to get to the middle of a ghoulipop bar…”

Twenty-Three

He didn’t even pay attention to the noises coming from the hallway outside the office. As long as they continued to be muted, they could keep whaling on the door until the cows came home, for all he cared. What he was waiting for was an indication that Blue Eyes had returned, that it was now punching its way through another wall to get to him. But there was just the thump-thump-thump of weak flesh against steel, which wasn’t worth a glance from him.

He waited and waited, but there were no signs Blue Eyes was back, that it was looking for a way in at this very moment. That should have filled him with relief, but it only made Keo more anxious.

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

One possibility for the creature’s continued absence was that it was dead, caught in that second explosion. Maybe that was just wishful thinking, but then where was it? Why wasn’t it here already?

It knew where he was. It wasn’t like Keo had vanished without a trace. It would have seen him fleeing its “children” through that hive mind of theirs. That was how it worked, how the blue eyes could be at multiple places at once without actually being there.

So where are you? What are you waiting for?

He continued to wait, but there was still just the thump-thump-thump, like machine-gun fire, from the other side of the door.

Thump-thump-thump.

Thump-thump-thump.

Thump-thump-thump…

Keo looked over at the big brown box in the corner of the room where he had stuffed the ghouls. Both of them.

Decapitating, then chopping them limb-by-limb, had been easy. Putting them inside the twenty-by-twenty inch cardboard box was the tricky part. The arms and legs and severed digits were afterthoughts, but the heads were a little more dangerous. All it would have taken was a bite from those jagged teeth and they could infect him with their tainted blood, so he’d had to be extra careful. It would have been much easier if they had hair for him to grab onto instead of just tight black skin that covered their bones like layers of film, but then again, what was easy these days?

They moved against the box now, tap-tap-tapping away from the inside. He’d covered up the whole thing with a roll of duct tape he’d found inside one of the drawers, but sooner or later one of those hands or feet or fingers were going to break through. They were sharp enough that slicing an opening in the cardboard and escaping was a very real possibility. The stacks of books on top kept it from moving too much, but not completely.

The room itself, in the aftermath of Keo’s tussle with the creatures, was covered in thick black blood. They were dripping from the walls, all over the floor, and some had even got onto the ceiling somehow. The desk had its share of pus-like fluids, and so did the chair that Winston had sat on before but Keo now occupied.

He leaned back and stared up at the ceiling but kept his ears open for the noise that would signal Blue Eyes’s return. But there wasn’t any, just the continued thump-thump-thump from the door across the room.

Forget the door. Don’t pay attention to the door.

The first hour went by without incident, with Keo’s entire body coiled into a living spring, waiting to explode. He kept the ooze-covered Heisman Trophy on the desk next to him within easy reach. It was definitely heavier than twenty pounds, and he was leaning toward twenty-five. Even if the ghouls’ heads hadn’t been deformed and their bones weakened by their transformation, Keo could easily bash his way through a regular man’s skull without much effort using the bronze statue.

Hour two caught him almost dozing in the chair, and Keo had to get up and pace the room to stay awake. He spent the majority of his time stepping around the still-wet puddles and small pieces of shattered bleach-white bones than he did listening to the weak pounding from the door.

So far, so good.

Hour three (or was that four?) found him back in the chair trying to stay awake, and losing. He blamed it on the constant thump-thump-thump; there was something seductive about it, almost hypnotic. Instead of keeping him awake and alert, it calmed his nerves.

He fell asleep twice and woke up each time with a start, unsure of how much time had passed. He didn’t have a watch on him (Should have taken Brett’s watch, dammit) but it felt like midnight. Or early morning.

Then something else caught his attention.

Silence, because the ghouls had stopped pounding on the door.

Keo got up and walked over to make sure.

Yes, they had stopped.

So what did that mean? He had no idea. There could be a myriad of reasons why they had abandoned their attack. It wasn’t because they had tired themselves out. Ghouls didn’t get tired. They didn’t feel anything at all.

Was it morning? Was that it? Had the coming morning chased them away?

No, he didn’t think that was it, either. He would have been able to feel it in the air if it had been morning outside. Even if he couldn’t see the rays of sunshine, Keo had spent the last six years fine-tuning his senses to the comings and goings of daylight, and it was not daylight out there right now.

So why did they stop?

He ceased moving and opened up his hearing.

Nothing. He couldn’t hear anything outside the room. The only noise was the soft scratching coming from the box across from him. The pieces of the two ghouls hadn’t successfully broken through the cardboard, and the books he’d used as a paperweight were still where they should be. He had been sure the ghouls would have managed to at least burrow their way out by now, but maybe the layers of duct tape he’d covered the box with were more effective than he gave them credit for.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, pal.

Horse…

Keo had forgotten all about the thoroughbred in all the chaos of the last few days. (Few days? Had it been a few days since he last saw Horse?) The last he saw of the animal, it was camping out on the fifth floor of the office building in Cordine City, waiting for him to return. Keo had never really gotten a solid bearing on his location when he first made his way into town, and finding that building again was going to be a real bitch.

Assuming, of course, Horse was still up there waiting for him. That was unlikely. Even if Winston’s people hadn’t found it, the thoroughbred would have come down eventually to seek out food and water.

What was Horse doing now, he wondered. Had it been captured by Winston’s men? Winston himself hadn’t said a word about it, but then, why would he? Why would he think Keo cared about the welfare of a horse? A horse was a horse, was a horse, wasn’t it?

Depends on the horse.

For some reason, he was sure the thoroughbred was fine. Horse had survived the crucial ghoul-infested first year of The Purge and had even thrived five years later. You couldn’t teach that kind of survival instinct. Some had it and some didn’t.

He didn’t want to fall asleep again, so he stayed on his feet and paced the room. Except this time he didn’t care about stepping into the pools of blood. Hours had passed, but most of the puddles still hadn’t dried, and Keo trekked boot prints across the room.

He checked the box up close just to be sure it was still intact, because you could never be too careful when undead things were involved. But it was still where it should have been, and every one of the books remained piled on top, even the one hardback he had left dangling on the edge, on purpose as an early warning system.

About an hour later, he went back to the chair with the intention of sitting down to let his feet rest for just a moment…and promptly fell asleep again.

* * *

He snapped awake and reached for the statue sitting on the desk. He almost dropped it, forgetting how heavy it was for a second. It would have been nice if Winston had left him with something to fight with other than an old football trophy, but something was better than nothing. And it had proved effective, so maybe he shouldn’t complain too much.

Keo got up and walked to the door to make sure it was still quiet on the other side. It was. The scratching noises from the box in the corner had also ceased, but Keo didn’t for one second believe the ghouls inside were dead. They might have been in pieces, but ghouls didn’t “die” just because their limbs and heads were no longer attached. It took silver—just a tiny drop would do—and that wasn’t something he had at his disposal at the moment. He had plenty of bronze, though. Twenty-five-something pounds of it.

So why had they stopped trying to get out of the box?

He walked over and crouched in front of the corner. He knew from experience that the ghouls inside could sense him. Or rather, the blood moving through his veins. He didn’t know how that worked, exactly. It was one of those undeniably crazy facts about the world that he now inhabited, where the impossible was very possible, and undead things couldn’t be (re)killed no matter what you did to them unless it involved silver.

He stood back up when another thought occurred to him. The ghouls were terrified of sunlight, and for good reason. Besides silver, the sun was their next worst enemy. And just as he was sure they could sense his blood, they could do the same with sunlight.

Which meant…

It was morning. It had to be. Even in here, the ghouls could feel it. Maybe even more than he could.

Unless, of course, he was wrong.

He went back to the door and leaned against it, pressing his ear to the surprisingly cold metal. He listened, but he couldn’t hear anything. At least, nothing over his slightly-accelerated heartbeat.

He pulled away and paused for a moment.

I’m alive.

Christ, I can’t believe I’m still alive.

He walked back to the desk and sat down. He closed his eyes and slowed his breathing, and waited.

He counted in his head to mark the passing of time.

One Mississippi…

Two Mississippi…

An hour passed.

One Mississippi…

Two Mississippi…

Two hours.

He opened his eyes, and he could feel it.

Heat. There wasn’t much of it, but it was in the air around him. It was getting warmer…

But how much warmer? A single degree? Two? Three? Was it actually possible to detect such minor rises in temperature? What were the chances it was all in his head? An attempt by his mind to convince him to stop waiting around because it was driving him crazy?

It’s warmer, I’m sure of it.

Probably…

Keo got up and walked back to the door.

Gotta find out. Either way, gotta find out.

He couldn’t stay down here forever. He had no food and no water. He could theoretically survive three weeks without food, but he wouldn’t last past day three without water. And did he really want to wait another full day just to be sure, all the while growing weaker? He was at his peak now, which wasn’t saying much, but it was better than five (or six or more hours) later without food or water.

Shut up and just do it.

Just do it!

He stopped at the door and sucked in a deep breath before starting to count down from ten.

He yanked the lever up on one, took another deep breath, then pulled the door open—

—and stared out at an empty corridor.

But there was a noticeable difference—it was the same hallway, but it wasn’t as suffocating as it had been last night. There was enough light now that he could make out the bloody footprints and handprints on the floor and walls and ceiling.

How the hell did they get up there?

Keo stepped outside and sniffed the air. It was thick with a very specific smell, but it wasn’t the right kind of smell—the telltale stink of ghoul presence.

Are you sure about that?

Maybe…

He kept the door slightly ajar behind him, just wide enough to slip back through in a hurry if necessary but not too wide that it would take time to close back up. He moved toward the end of the hallway, tiptoeing to lessen the sounds of his movements. All the while, he kept his ears open, listening for something—anything—that might be waiting for him around the corner. He gripped the Heisman with two hands and held it at his right side, ready to swing.

Better than a Louisville Slugger. Heavier, too.

As he neared the turn, Keo jumped the last few steps (Aha!) and got ready to fight, but there was nothing except an empty hallway waiting for him. Like the one he had just traversed, this one was also covered in bloody hand and footprints, and just enough natural sunlight that he could see the wall on the other end.

Keo relaxed slightly, but never relented his grip on the trophy.

There was enough eeriness around him, with only his heartbeat and soft breathing to stave off the utter silence, that his mind began to wander. Questions that he hadn’t asked since last night came back in a rush.

What happened last night?

Why did Blue Eyes take off?

Who was setting off bombs out there, and why did they stop?

Twenty-Four

They took the bodies of the dead ghouls in the hallways, along with Pressley. The only thing left to remind him of his mad dash for salvation was thick puddles of blood on the floor and bloody handprints along the walls. Empty brass casings stuck out from all the black liquid, partially submerged in pits of tar. Stepping around and over them was a nightmare until Keo gave up and simply walked through them.

It was the same in the corridor with the entrance. Greengrass, Brett, and Scarlett were gone, but the ghouls hadn’t bothered with the guns. Not that everything was where Keo last saw them, because all the foot traffic had taken some of the weapons with them. He did, though, find a half-loaded Glock and an AR-15 lying in thick, viscous blood near the turn up the hallway. If he hadn’t looked closer, he would have missed them entirely.

The next step was to find a way out, but that was the easy part. The blast door was where it should be, and it was still locked. Keo spent the next five or so minutes trying to convince himself that this wasn’t a dumb plan, that this was the only way unless he wanted to spend the rest of his life in here. Of course, there was another way out—the one Blue Eyes had created in the armory—but just the thought of taking that made his skin crawl.

He slung the rifle and drew the Glock, then used his dominant right hand to grab the lever. It was cold to the touch. He shook off the doubts and pushed up but didn’t pull the door open right away.

He took a deep breath first.

Then another one.

Just get it over with, will you? You wanna live forever?

Kinda, yeah, he answered himself, before pulling open the door with a grunt.

As the heavy slab of metal slowly swung open under its own momentum, he took a quick couple of steps back and lifted the Glock to chest level and aimed it straight ahead.

An ocean of white hit him in the face, and Keo blinked for half a second before taking in the slanted concrete floor in front of him. It was a gradual incline, covered in pools of warm sunlight. The entranceway was flanked by thick cement walls with about ten feet of space between them. It led upward toward the surface, but at the moment all Keo could glimpse was a sea of brightness filling up his vision.

That was the best sight he could have hoped for, because sunlight meant no ghouls. He didn’t even mind the smell of evaporated ghoul flesh that clung to the air like thick molasses that assaulted his senses from every direction as soon as he was exposed to the outside world once again. It was a fantastic smell, and he wallowed in it with a big smile that, had anyone been around to witness, would surely think he was a few marbles short of a set.

He sniffed the ghoul blood on his clothes as it turned into mist against the sunlight, the same for all the bloody patches on the floor behind him that couldn’t avoid the sun’s rays. In no time, the confined space of the hallway became thick with the familiar acrid stench.

God, I love that smell!

Keo holstered the pistol and unslung the rifle. There was enough space in the entranceway that he could swing the AR around without worrying about hitting walls, and a long gun was always preferable when you were stepping into a wide-open environment. Which he assumed was what was waiting for him out there at the end of however long the walkway ended up being.

He didn’t run straight up, of course, and instead took his sweet time. He’d pulled his shirt over his mouth and nose to help with the stink, but that did nothing to stop his eyes from stinging. He grimaced the slight discomfort away as he made the halfway point, stopping briefly to see if he could hear anything on the other side.

The chirping of birds. A lot of birds. But he couldn’t see them because there was a roof above the entranceway blocking out the sky (Keo assumed there was sky on the other side) and created a shaft-like entry point into the facility. The opening where the “shaft” ended was a wall of white, angled in a way that hid most of the outside world from view.

Keo continued up the incline.

He went into a slight crouch when he neared the end and listened again for any telltale signs of people in the area. He was close enough to the opening now, though, that he could make out the sky in front of him, along with a flock of birds winging by.

It was quiet out there. Maybe too quiet.

He stuck his head out and past the walls before quickly pulling it back down. A half second, at the most, and a sniper would have had to line his weapon exactly at the spot where Keo had revealed himself to get off a shot. But no shot came, and the risky move had given Keo a decent look at his surroundings. Or, at least, one side of it.

Flat land. Farming land? Maybe. He hadn’t gotten that good of a look, but what little he had seen appeared barren. Which was strange, because he had expected to emerge right in the middle of Cordine City.

Then he remembered something Scarlett had said:

“We’re on the edge of town. Close enough for people to run to it. For us to run to it.”

So he wasn’t literally in Cordine City, which meant the flat lands he’d spotted in that brief half second made sense.

He counted down from five, and on one burst through the opening and immediately felt uneven ground underneath him as he swung the rifle right, then center, then left—and back again. He kept moving forward as he did so, making it harder for a sniper (if they were out there) to pick him off. The last thing he wanted was to eat a bullet after surviving last night. Now that would suck.

But there was no one out there waiting for him, and when he glanced down, saw that he was standing on rubble. Small blocks of brick and mortar littered the floor next to the bomb shelter entrance and the immediate vicinity.

Right. A bomb hit this place.

Check that. Bombs.

Keo lowered the AR and looked across flat lands and was greeted by steel girdles jutting out in the bright morning sunlight to his east.

Cordine City. Or what was left of it.

Charred brick walls stood where offices, storefronts, and apartment buildings used to. Even from a distance and with just one side of the city open to him, he could tell it had taken the brunt of whatever had detonated last night. He would have to get closer to really see the full extent of the damage, but even from here he could see the soot and smoke still lingering in the air. There were skeletal remains of ghouls all around him, evidence of last night’s dead stretching from where he stood to the city beyond like jagged roads made of bleach-white bones.

Cordine City hadn’t looked all that impressive when Keo first approached it more than forty-eight hours ago, and it looked even less so now. Two explosive detonations had done that. The question was, who and why?

There were no answers to be found from where he stood. How last night’s siege went down, how it ended, and what happened afterward was something that didn’t impact him as of this morning. And besides, he didn’t care. He had other things to worry about besides what had happened to a bunch of strangers.

Keo looked around him instead. There had been a building here, on top of the bomb shelter entrance once upon a time, but it had been toppled, likely by the same explosions that had ripped across Cordine City last night. Remains of concrete walls, made of the same type of blocks that the below ground facility was constructed of, circled him. He recognized the partial remains of a farmhouse nearby and something that might have been a barn, along with two vehicles that were overturned not too far off—both trucks, their broken windows covered in bright red blood.

“We’re on the edge of town,” Scarlett had said about the bomb shelter. “Close enough for people to run to it. For us to run to it.”

She and Brett had made it, but not everyone had.

Keo stared at the nearest vehicle—a white Ford resting on its side, roof facing him—and thought he could probably push it back on its tires. Of course, then he’d have to get lucky and find keys—

Specks of the dirt erupted in front of him and pelted his pants legs.

Keo glanced down, thought, What the hell? just before the realization hit him about two seconds later, long enough for the shooter to get off a second shot.

The second round zipped past Keo’s head and landed somewhere behind him, kicking up another handful of dirt.

Sniper!

Keo turned and ran.

He didn’t know exactly where he was going, but it was always a good idea to run away from the bullets instead of toward them. Of course, he hadn’t always followed this very simple rule, but today was an exception. The thought that he’d survived the insanity of last night, only to get picked off out here while standing around like an idiot under the sun this morning, didn’t quite sit well with him.

So he ran, even as two more bullets zip-zipped! over his head as the shooter attempted to correct for the distance. Like the first two shots, Keo hadn’t heard any reports of gunshots, which meant the man was using a suppressor.

Everyone’s a copycat these days!

Fortunately for Keo, he had begun running in a zigzag pattern as soon as he took off. He burst left for five meters, then right for two, back left, then right again as bullets zip-zip-zipped! around him. They were landing to his left, then to his right, and a couple fell short—all signs that the shooter was having difficulty adjusting and might have been even trying to predict where he would go next, and failing badly.

Good luck with that! Keo thought, because even he didn’t know which direction he’d go and for how long before he actually did it.

So far, so good as the subsonic rounds kept missing, but the problem for Keo was that there was absolutely nothing but open ground in front of him. There was no shelter and nothing that could even be mistaken for a natural defilade to hold up and take a breath. He had seen just how desolate Cordine City was when he first approached it, with the main highway on the other side of town. Out there, as far as he could tell, there was nothing but endless brown grass and uneven land.

I’ll settle for a lousy tree right about now!

Keo kept running anyway, because the alternative was to stop and catch his breath and make himself into an even better target. He risked a glance over his shoulder just as a round fell well short and disappeared into the ground.

Then another, and another.

Keo finally slowed until he could turn around. He continued backpedaling and used the opportunity to catch his breath. The air was better out here, far from the bomb shelter and Cordine City. Which was probably where the shooter was at the moment because—

A cloud of dust lifted from the ground as a bullet impacted it. The round had landed a good ten meters in front of Keo. A few seconds later, another one hit at about the same spot, but by then Keo had already put five more meters between him and them.

Keo stuck a middle finger into the air. It didn’t matter if the shooter couldn’t see him—or if he could, he couldn’t make out the gesture—because it made Keo feel better. Just like it did the morning when Greengrass’s people cornered him in the office building.

Getting shot at by unseen snipers is becoming a real bad habit.

Time to get a new habit!

“You missed!” he shouted, then listened to his voice echoing for a moment before dying in the wind. “Better luck next time, pal!”

He turned around and resumed jogging. There were a lot of open spaces waiting for him. It was going to take another half hour, at least, before he found anything worthwhile—

The ground. It was shaking.

Keo kept moving but glanced back and cursed under his breath.

A thick cloud of dust had appeared behind him. But these weren’t the tiny puffs of bullets falling short—it was dirt being kicked up into the air by horses as they raced across the open land toward him.

“Oh, come on,” Keo said as he turned around and broke off into a full sprint. “This isn’t fair. This is so not fair!”

Twenty-Five

I’m running again. So much running. When was the last time I wasn’t running from something trying to kill me? Can’t remember.

And I hate running.

There had to be alternatives to running, but he couldn’t see any among all the empty fields that surrounded him, with the first signs of trees a good mile or so in the distance. And those could very well have just been mirages. With his luck, they were just that.

Definitely hate running.

Shouting from behind him, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He slowed down just enough to peek over his shoulder.

One of the men in pursuit of him had broken free of the others, and the voices were the other riders shouting after him. The lead rider had gotten close enough (Christ, how’d he get so close, so fast?) that Keo could make him out pulling at his reins, trying to stop his mount, but it only seemed to make the horse run faster.

What the hell?

The charging animal was fifty meters away and gaining fast, while the other five were struggling to catch up. For a while there, the rest of the posse (So what does that make me? Sundance or Butch?) had slowed down to try to figure out what was happening.

Forty meters…

Thirty…

Damn, that’s one fast horse!

There was no way he was going to outrun it. No way at all.

Keo stopped completely, planted both feet, and lifted the AR. He peered through the rifle’s red dot scope and zeroed in on the rider, but his eyes were drawn somewhere else. Down, to the animal, its brown fur glinting under the sunlight as both horse and man charged toward Keo’s position with wild abandon. The horse moved fluidly, gracefully, and was easily in complete control of the situation.

No way.

The sight of the horse—a thoroughbred—kept Keo from pulling the trigger.

No fucking way.

Was he seeing things? Was this another mirage? Maybe a nightmare? Was he actually still trapped underneath the bomb shelter and daydreaming all of this?

“Shit!” Keo shouted as he leapt out of the way just seconds before the horse could run him over.

He managed to pull a duck and roll against the hard ground at the last second, snapping back up to his feet with dust all over his clothes. But he’d hung onto the rifle and Keo lifted it again, pointing it at the horse and its rider—but mostly at the human—as they slid to a stop behind him, the big man in the saddle screaming something incoherent as he jerked on the reins with everything he had. Which was a lot, because the guy had to be a good two hundred pounds and six-feet-plus. That only made what the horse had done even more impressive.

The thoroughbred let out a loud whine even as its rider dropped one hand from the reins and reached for his holstered sidearm, eyes snapping to Keo from less than ten meters away. That was a mistake, because by taking one hand off the reins, the big man gave up whatever little control he had over the horse, and the animal bucked. The man went flying, screaming as he did so, and landed with a crashing thump! against the ground.

Horse hooves pounding the hard dirt from behind him made Keo spin around, just in time to see the posse pulling up in front of him. Unlike the big man, his friends had already drawn their weapons, and Keo found himself staring at two rifles and three pistols, and trigger fingers just looking for an excuse to shoot him dead.

He didn’t think about it for very long. A second, possibly two if he was being generous, before he tossed the rifle, then unhooked the gun belt and let it drop to the ground, along with the pistol inside the holster.

“Hold your fire!” Keo shouted.

The riders fanned out to surround him, and the only sounds were his slightly labored breathing and unshod horse hooves shuffling across the dirt. The riders were all wearing civilian clothes, and half of them hid their faces behind balaclavas.

Keo forced a big smile and said to the closest man, “Hey, how’s it going? Nice weather we’re having, huh?”

The riders stared back at him with hollow, tired eyes. A few of them had holstered their weapons now that they’d gotten a good look at him and saw he was no longer armed. The big one that had fallen off his horse picked up Keo’s rifle and gun belt.

Winston’s men. Or what’s left of them, after last night.

“What the hell happened, Wally?” a man on a big white horse that stood in front of Keo asked. He was talking to the big man, the one still breathing hard behind Keo. “Why’d you race ahead like that?”

The man named Wally sighed and tossed Keo’s weapons away, then spent the next few seconds batting at his pants and shirt and rifling dust out of his hair. “I didn’t. Damn animal just took off.”

“Why did it do that?”

“You think I did it on purpose?”

“Didn’t you?”

“Fuck off.”

The man on the white horse grunted before turning his attention back to Keo. “You were in the bomb shelter last night.” He was in his thirties with dark black hair, and the way the others flanked him, Keo knew the boss of a posse when he saw one.

“Yeah, I was,” Keo said.

He had considered lying, but it didn’t seem like the smart thing to do. They had clearly seen him leave the shelter—or, at least, the shooter had. Keo assumed the man (or woman) had relayed that info to the horsemen. The one in front of him had a radio clipped to his hip, as did some of the others.

“I don’t recognize him,” the only woman in the group said. Early thirties, with long blond hair tied back in a ponytail. She eyed Keo the whole time, as if she wanted to shoot him just to get it over with. “A face like that, I’d recognize him if I’d seen him before.”

“Handsome?” Keo said.

“Not the word I’d use. What happened? A building fall on top of you?”

“Ouch.”

“Anyone else?” the leader asked.

They shook their heads one by one, which didn’t come as a complete surprise to Keo. The only ones who had really been around him were the men stationed within the facility with Winston, and they were all dead. There was a possibility whoever had found him in the office building stairwell might have been among the six men, but that turned out not to be the case. He was, for all intents and purposes, a blank slate to these people.

I can work with that.

“Who are you?” the leader asked Keo. “What were you doing down there?”

“Keo. And I was passing through the city when someone grabbed me,” Keo said. “Next thing I know, I’m in some kind of cell with a bunch of assholes from Fenton. Then the building comes under attack and all hell’s breaking loose.”

“Fenton?” the woman asked. “Did you say Fenton?”

“Winston told me they were from Fenton, anyway. I don’t know. I’ve never been there. Or here, for that matter. If I’d known you guys were this sensitive to trespassers, I would have stayed clear of Cordine City.”

The woman and the leader exchanged a long look.

“I’m just trying to stay alive,” Keo said. “I don’t know who you guys are or what your beef is with Fenton. I don’t know what happened last night, either. I just wanna get out of here in one piece.”

The leader looked back to Keo. “You met with Winston.”

Keo nodded. “I did. We had a nice long talk.”

“About what?”

“Fenton, mostly.”

“What about Fenton?”

“He asked me if I was one of them. I said I wasn’t.”

“And then?”

“And then nothing. They took me back to my cell, and then the shit hit the fan. People were screaming, everyone was shooting, and the next thing I know, things are blowing up. I took the safe route and stayed indoors for as long as I could until this morning.”

This time the leader exchanged glances with the other four. Keo tried to read their faces and came up with…not much. Did they believe him? It was a good story, and if Cordine City was at war with Fenton, then appealing to their anti-Fenton feelings was his best bet.

He hoped, anyway.

“Look,” Keo said, “I don’t know what’s going on. I was just passing through, like I said. Then suddenly I’m down in that place, and there are ghouls everywhere. I barely got through last night alive.”

“How did you get out of your cell?” the woman asked.

“One of your guys opened it and let us out.”

“Who?”

Keo shook his head. “I don’t know. No one ever bothered to introduce themselves while I was down there except for Winston.”

“They’re still down there?” the leader asked. “Nightcrawlers?”

“They ditched the place last night. I don’t know why. I don’t know why anything happened. I was just happy to find a big enough door to keep them out. Then this morning I come outside and someone tries to snipe me. What the hell’s that about?”

Someone chuckled behind Keo. He glanced back to find Wally, the big man, still brushing at his clothes. “That’s Felix. He’s got a bit of an itchy finger.”

“Yeah, well, his itchy finger almost put a round in me for no reason,” Keo said, injecting just enough indignation to make it sound good.

“After last night, can’t blame him.”

“Sure I can.”

“He didn’t recognize you,” the leader said. “He was just doing his job.”

“Yeah, whatever. Tell him if I see him, I’m kicking his ass.”

“He said you gave him the finger,” Wally said.

“It seemed like the right reaction at the time.”

Wally chuckled again, while there was another brief exchange of looks between the leader and the woman.

“What happened to Winston?” the leader asked him.

“I don’t know,” Keo said. “I’m sorry, guys, but I don’t know. It was nuts down there last night. There were ghouls everywhere… I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many of the fuckers in one place since The Walk Out.”

The leader narrowed his eyes at him. “You better be telling the truth.”

“Go down there and see for yourself, if you don’t believe me.”

“We will,” the man said before he picked up his horse’s reins and turned the animal around. “In the meantime, you’re coming back with us.”

“Oh, come on. I just wanna get out of here.”

“Tough fucking luck.”

The leader rode off with the woman. Keo looked after them when he felt a nudge on the back of his shoulder.

He glanced back and saw big brown eyes staring at him.

Horse.

Keo grinned. The sight of the animal was the only reason he hadn’t opened fire when he had the chance earlier. He had spotted Horse running at him, with Wally bucking on top of its saddle.

Horse. Out here.

Why was Keo so surprised?

That animal’s definitely going to outlive me, alright.

The thoroughbred sniffed Keo before nudging him in the shoulder blade again.

“What’s it doing?” Wally asked. He was standing next to Keo and the horse, his fists on his hips.

“It’s my horse,” Keo said.

“What?” Wally said.

Keo ran a hand down Horse’s mane. The animal let out a loud, approving whinny.

“It’s my horse,” Keo said again. “His name is Horse.”

Wally stared at Keo for a moment. Then he looked over at the thoroughbred, back to Keo, and back again.

Finally, the big man grunted. “I don’t give a shit. I’m still riding it, so move.”

Keo took a couple of steps back as Wally grabbed Horse’s reins and put a boot in a stirrup. He grabbed the pommel and was in the middle of lifting himself up when Horse took a quick half dozen steps back.

“Whoa, whoa, you stupid horse!” Wally shouted just before he lost his grip and fell down on his butt again.

The three men who had stayed behind chortled, and one of them said, “I don’t think it likes you, Wally.”

Wally glanced over at Keo with an accusing stare. “Did you tell it to do that?”

Keo shrugged. “It’s a horse.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I don’t speak horse. Verbally or telepathically.”

The big man didn’t look convinced as he picked himself up for the second time. He turned to Horse, who stood nearby grazing at some sparse grass. Keo could see his mind working, trying to decide if it was worth another attempt.

“Second time’s the charm,” one of the three mounted men said.

Wally shook his head. “Hell no.” He turned back to Keo. “But that doesn’t mean you’re riding it, either. Start walking.”

“Whatever you say, boss,” Keo said.

He turned around and began walking back toward the bomb shelter. The leader and the woman were already at the building entrance and had disappeared down its square-shaped entranceway.

Wally appeared next to Keo, pulling Horse along by the reins. Keo glanced past the big man at the thoroughbred. Like the other horses, they had unshod Horse. The animal looked over and caught his gaze before letting out a snort.

“I saw that,” Wally said.

“Saw what?” Keo said as innocently as he could muster.

Twenty-Six

Wally didn’t look all that happy to be walking when there was a perfectly good horse with an empty saddle right next to him, but the last two times he tried to mount the thoroughbred had ended up with him on the ground. Horse had made it very clear he wasn’t going to be ridden.

After the second failed attempt, Wally gave up and walked the rest of the way on foot, but he still wouldn’t give the horse to Keo to ride. Not that Keo minded too much. As long as he wasn’t running for his life and bullets weren’t flying over his head, it wasn’t an entirely bad morning, with just the right amount of chill in the air.

Wally’s comrades didn’t have any issues with their horses, and one rode off while the other two remained with the group. Keo assumed the man had gone on to scout the area. There seemed to be enough communications between the Cordine City people through their radios to convince him whoever was in charge, now that Winston was KIA, had their shit together. At the moment, Keo was betting that was the posse leader who had taken off with the woman.

After about five minutes of walking in silence, Keo finally said, “At least one of us should get to ride Horse.”

“Yeah, me,” Wally said.

“I meant me.”

“I know you did.”

Keo smiled. “So we should both be punished, is that it?”

Wally grunted. “That’s exactly it.”

Better than running for my life, Keo thought, before asking the big man, “Where did you find him, anyway? The last time I saw him, he was on the fifth floor of an office building, waiting for me to come back.”

“Someone spotted him walking around the city yesterday; said he looked like he was searching for something.” He flashed Keo a wry look. “Or someone, I guess. You must have made a hell of an impression. I didn’t know horses were that loyal.”

“We’ve been through a few scrapes together, yeah.”

“I guess so. It was stubborn at first, didn’t want to be rounded up, I guess; but it played along pretty fast when we started feeding it.”

“Yeah, he eats like a horse.”

“Damned thing surprised the hell out of me when it just took off like that.”

Keo glanced over at Horse. The thoroughbred walked casually on the other side of Wally, oblivious to both of them.

“He’s faster than he looks,” Wally said.

Tell me about it, Keo thought, remembering their hair-raising escape from Axton.

He looked back over at the bomb shelter entrance. The area surrounding it actually looked like a real property from a distance. The devastated house and barn stood, and the remains of the building that once hid the underground bunker’s entranceway stuck out like sore thumbs among all the nothingness.

“What happened last night?” Keo asked. “I heard explosions.”

Wally didn’t answer.

“Oh come on,” Keo said. “We’re not enemies. I think you know that by now.”

“I don’t know shit,” the big man said.

“I could have shot you back there, but I didn’t.” Because the sight of Horse surprised the hell out of me, Keo thought, but he said instead, “That’s gotta count for something.”

Wally seemed to think about it.

“And it’s going to be a long walk,” Keo continued. “Might as well make it less boring.”

“We had the city rigged up in case of something like this,” Wally said. “Didn’t think we’d ever have to use it, though.”

“‘In case of something like this?’ What is ‘this?’”

“Ghouls. Invaders. Basically, in case we got overrun. It was a last-resort type of thing that Winston cooked up. Pretty much everything that happens in Cordine City is Winston’s idea.” He frowned. “So he’s dead?”

Deader than a doorknob, pal, Keo thought, but he said, “I don’t know. I was too busy running for my life to find out for sure.”

“But you saw him down there? Near the end?”

“I saw him, yeah. We had a nice long talk.”

“About Fenton.”

“Yeah. But mostly about me not being from Fenton. After that, he had me taken back to my cell. That was the last time I saw him.” Keo nodded forward at the remains of the property. “Maybe he’s still down there. I don’t know. I didn’t exactly do a thorough check of the place before I headed straight for the exit this morning.”

“Why not?”

“Are you kidding me? It was dark down there, and there was blood everywhere. After last night…” Keo shivered, and there was nothing fake about it. “Daylight is right. That’s always been my motto.”

Wally chuckled. “That’s a good motto.”

“I’d say so. It’s kept me alive this long.”

“Here,” Wally said. When Keo glanced over, he found the big man holding a half-full bottle of water toward him. “You need this more than I do.”

“Thanks,” Keo said, and took a drink. He didn’t realize how dry his throat was until he got some liquid down the pipe.

“For your face, dummy,” Wally said.

“What?”

“Your face. You still got blood over most of it.”

“Oh.”

He had forgotten all about Brett’s blood and…other things that had splattered his face that he’d spent most of last night trying to wipe off. Unsuccessfully, as it turned out.

“What happened? A building fall on top of you?” the woman had asked him earlier. Keo had thought she was talking about the scar.

The least of my beauty marks, as it turned out.

He poured some water into his palm and splashed his face, then used his shirt to clean off as much as he could. By the time he was done, his shirt was a mess, but better the mess on his clothes than on his face.

“Whose blood is that, anyway?” Wally asked. “Can’t be the nightcrawlers. Those go away in sunlight.”

“I don’t remember,” Keo lied.

He used up the last drops of water and tossed the bottle and took the opportunity to sneak a quick look at Wally’s sidearm jutting out almost haphazardly from his gun holster. Three feet separated him and the weapon, and they hadn’t bothered to tie his hands. All it would have taken was reaching over and…

Then what? There were two more behind him. Even if Keo could grab Wally’s gun and take him out, he’d have to turn and shoot the other two. He was a dead man if either one of the guys back there had his rifle out. And even if they didn’t, could he really take out three before one of them fired back? At this distance, it wouldn’t exactly take a dead shot.

Don’t do anything stupid. You can talk your way out of this.

“So you guys blew up your own city last night in order to save it. Do I have that right?” Keo asked.

“Didn’t exactly have a lot of choices,” Wally said. “They were everywhere. Christ, we didn’t think there were that many of them still out there. And all in one place? I mean, they were always around. Some would wander into the city, and we’d take care of them. But it was never like last night. Fuck, there were a lot of them last night.”

Keo wasn’t surprised to hear the disbelief in Wally’s voice, even after an entire day to process what had happened. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard before. The slayers outside of Winding Creek had expressed similar surprise. Peters’s guys had said pretty much the same thing back at Axton. Even he had said and thought it once or twice (or a dozen times) since Jonah’s.

They’re still out there. A lot of them. Way, way more than we thought.

The night is still not ours. Not by a long shot…

“So Winston had buildings rigged to explode in case you guys came under attack?” Keo asked.

“Yeah,” Wally said.

“Sounds a little dangerous for everyone.”

“It was. But like I said. Last resort.”

“What kind of explosives did you guys use?” Keo asked, remembering how much the underground facility shook, even this far from the main city center.

“They were mostly IEDs. You know what those are?”

“Improvised explosive devices. A terrorist’s best friend.”

“Yeah, pretty much. But…”

“But?”

“I think Winston and whoever the guys were that put the devices together underestimated the size of the explosions, ’cause they did way more damage than anyone was expecting.”

“You guys didn’t test them out first?”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Right,” Keo said. “Last resort.”

He looked past the open fields at the remains of Cordine City. Even out here, from a distance, the damage was obvious. Winston’s people—however many of them remained after last night—were going to have their work cut out for them if they wanted to fix the place up. If it were up to Keo, he’d just find another city.

“You guys only set off two,” Keo said. “Was that all you had?”

“No, but the first one really took out a lot of them. Hundreds.” He shook his head. “It was unreal. The second one wasn’t as effective, though.”

“What happened? Why’d you stop with just two?”

“We barely got off the second one. There were more, but the fuckers took off after that, so we shut it down.”

The big man paused, and Keo saw him looking off at nothing in particular.

“What?” Keo pressed. “What else happened last night?”

Wally squinted up at the sun. “Some of the guys swore they saw a blue-eyed nightcrawler running around out there. They said it killed some of our guys; that it tried to stop us from setting off the second bomb. But I didn’t see it myself, so I don’t know.” He looked over at Keo. “Did you see something like that down there?”

Up close and personal. Too up close and personal, thank you very much.

“No,” Keo lied. “I guess I got lucky.”

He’d been lucky, all right. Lucky that Cordine City’s fighters were willing to destroy their own city in order to “save” it. Lucky that Blue Eyes decided stopping them took priority over Keo’s measly life.

Yeah. Real lucky.

Let’s hope it lasts…

“Damn right you were lucky,” Wally was saying. “It was a bloodbath up here.”

“Did the guys who spotted the blue-eyed ghoul say what happened to it?”

Wally shook his head. “They said it took off. When it did that, every black eyes in the place followed. You know about that, right? The whole psychic-hive-mind thing they have?”

“Yeah, I know about that,” Keo nodded and thought, Of course it escaped. Of course the fucker escaped.

And it was still out there, somewhere…

“It’s out there right now, with that horde, looking for you,” Greengrass had said. “Whether we’re still in Cordine City or not, it’ll find you.”

Fucking Greengrass. Now I’m going to have nightmares for the rest of my life.

Keo sighed, and to take his mind off Greengrass’s words, said, “I take it Cordine City is full of bleach-white bones right now?”

“We’ve been burying them all morning, and we’re not even close to being done. And our manpower’s way down, too, so that doesn’t help.” He smirked. “You were lucky to be down there last night. It was a bloodbath up here before we detonated the first IED and sent a lot of the bastards to hell. I wish I could have been down there, too.”

No, you don’t, Keo thought, but he said, “So why weren’t you?”

“No time. I thought about taking the tunnel, but then I remembered that was a no-go.”

“What tunnel?”

“There used to be one other way into the shelter besides the front door. A tunnel that links it to another building in the city. But as far as I know, that was sealed up years ago.”

Not anymore, Keo thought.

“You are one lucky SOB,” Wally said. “I hope you’re thanking whatever God you believe in, sport.”

“Yeah, that’s me. Lucky Keo.”

“What kind of name is that, anyway?”

“Kyle was taken.”

“Huh?”

“That’s what Kyle said.”

Wally narrowed his eyes over at him. “You making fun of me?”

“I’d never do such a thing, Wally.”

“You sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“You better be.”

“Hey, you’re the one with the gun.”

Wally grunted. “You’re weird, man. You got a weird name, and you talk to horses.”

“I’ll cop to the first, but not the second.”

“No?”

Keo smiled. “I don’t actually talk to Horse…”

* * *

The man and woman that had gone on ahead of them to search Winston’s bomb shelter were named Nolan and Cassandra, and they were just stepping out of the underground facility when Wally and Keo finally reached them.

Nolan paused next to his horse to stare at Wally.

“What?” Wally said, annoyed.

“You walked all the way over here?” Nolan asked.

“The horse wouldn’t let me ride it.”

“Why not?”

“It’s his,” Wally said, nodding in Keo’s direction.

Nolan looked over at Keo for confirmation.

“His name is Horse,” Keo said.

“You named your horse, Horse?” Cassandra asked. There was just a trace of amusement in her voice.

Better than a trace of ‘I should shoot you dead now to save myself the trouble of doing it later.’

“I’m not very good at naming things,” Keo said.

“Considering your name’s Keo, I believe that,” Cassandra said.

“Forget about the horse or your shitty name,” Nolan said. “The bodies are gone. We didn’t find a single one of them down there.”

“Did you think they’d still be down there?” Keo asked. “Which part of ‘There were ghouls all over the place last night’ didn’t you understand?”

“That’s pretty convenient for you. With the bodies gone, you can weave any story you want and there’s no one—or any evidence—to contradict you.”

“Sure didn’t feel very convenient last night when I was running for my life. You found those two ghouls in Winston’s office?”

“Yeah, we did.”

“What did you do to them?” Cassandra asked.

“I bashed their heads in with that football statue.”

“Football statue?”

“Winston’s Heisman Trophy,” Nolan said.

“Oh.”

Nolan fixed Keo with a hard, suspicious look. “You may be telling the truth, or you may be full of shit. Either way, you’re not going anywhere for a while.”

Keo sighed. “What’s it going to take to convince you I’m not a threat?”

“What makes you think you can?” Nolan asked as he climbed back into his saddle. “As they used to say back in the old days—until we can verify your story, don’t leave town.”

“Got visitors,” Wally said, just as the familiar whup-whup-whup of a helicopter broke through the morning quiet.

Keo glanced up just as the chopper swooped past them. It was a Sikorsky UH-60, with a man leaning out one of its open sides manning a minigun. Keo shivered at the sight of the weapon. If the man wanted to, he could obliterate every single one of them down here in a heartbeat.

“Should we, uh, be standing out in the open like this?” Keo asked, not even trying to hide the very real worry in his voice.

“Relax, we’re expecting it,” Nolan said.

Relax. Right, Keo thought, watching as the helicopter began to slow down before starting to lower itself to the ground. It was far enough from them that the rotors-generated brownout only reached them as a brief hail of dirt.

Nolan and Cassandra were already riding toward the chopper, leaving Keo and the others behind.

Keo looked over at Wally, who had slipped a handkerchief over his mouth. “Friends of yours?”

“How do you think we knew about Fenton?” the big man said, his voice slightly muffled. “They told us.”

They were figures in dark blue fatigues jumping out of the big chopper as it settled on the uneven ground. There were four of them that Keo could see through the still-swirling clouds—all armed, sunlight glinting off their rifles and ballistic helmets. They moved with purpose, taking up defensive positions around the aircraft.

A fifth arrival had followed the soldiers down from the Sikorsky and stood waiting as Nolan and Cassandra neared. The Cordine City people hopped off their horses and shook the newcomer’s hand as the dust settled around them.

“Come on,” Wally said.

Keo followed him over to the helicopter. “So that’s why you guys attacked the Fenton people. You were warned about them.”

“Uh huh. They got in touch over the radio.”

“You believe everything you hear on the radio?”

“No, but it wasn’t just anyone on the radio.”

Keo kept quiet, but he had a feeling he already knew who Wally was talking about. It didn’t take very long to put a name and a face to the figure Nolan and Cassandra were talking to. She looked across the remaining twenty or so meters that separated them and smiled.

He wasn’t exactly sure how to respond. He hadn’t expected this. Keo wasn’t even sure if he wanted it, but there it was.

There she was.

Her hair was shorter than he remembered, but her eyes were just as blue as the last time he saw them. She watched him approach while Nolan and Cassandra spoke to her, and for a moment, just a moment, there was just the two of them staring across at one another.

“Keo,” she said when he finally reached them. “Gaby was convinced you’re still out here. I hear that bets were taken.”

“Captain Optimism, that kid,” Keo said.

“You know this joker?” Nolan asked, glancing back at Keo.

Lara smiled. “He’s an old friend. I just wish he’d call or write a letter sometimes.”

“You know I don’t write so good,” Keo said. “What are you doing all the way out here, anyway? Mind you, not that I’m complaining. You’ll be able to tell these guys I’m not from Fenton.”

“That’s why I’m here. Fenton.”

“Gaby told you?”

Lara nodded. “She and Peters gave me their reports.”

“Good to hear they both made it. So what happens now?”

“We get ready for war.”

“Sounds like fun.”

She pursed her lips. “No, it’s not, but it has to be done. Someone has to stop Fenton. Can I count on you?”

Keo nodded at one of the very well-armed figures that had hopped down the helicopter before her. “I don’t have to wear something like that, do I?”

“You’re Keo,” Lara smiled. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

Keo smiled back at her and nodded. “All right, then. But only if I can call dibs on Buck. I made him a promise, and I intend to follow through on it.”

Epilogue

They had hurt him. Wounded him. Made him bleed. For the first time in a long time, he remembered what it was like to be mortal. To be weak. To be human again. The last time was when he sensed The Father’s life slipping away, little by little, at the hands of The Traitor.

Merrick hadn’t moved for the last few hours, not even after the darkness chased the dreaded sun away and his children came out of the black woods and empty buildings. They were packed on the surface of the forest right now. They were worried for him, calling out to him, begging to hear his voice.

But Merrick kept quiet because it would have taken too much to reach out into the hive to ease their worry. Right now, he had to concentrate on himself.

On healing.

Because they had hurt him.

The meat suits had hurt him. They had chased him from his prey. He had been forced to flee. They had made him run for his life.

But it could have been worse. It could have been so much worse.

Humans. He despised them. Everything about them turned his stomach. The stink that emanated from every pore on their body. The clumsy way they moved. Even the loud—so, so loud—way they breathed.

You should have wiped them out when you had the chance, Father. You shouldn’t have let so many of them live.

But The Father was gone, if not forgotten. Merrick would never let him be forgotten. Not while he still drew breath.

We had everything in our palms, Father. But we let it all slip away.

You let it all slip away.

How? How did we lose everything because of a lone traitor?

Merrick chased the anger away. Anger did nothing to help him heal from his wounds. And the wounds were deep, the kind that scarred his bones. The second explosion had almost gotten him.

Too close. It should never have been that close.

He was alive, but many of his children weren’t. He had lost too many, even more than back at the town when the human fled on his animal. So much more than that night. Merrick could still hear their voices in his head, hear their screams, replaying over and over.

Hundreds. He had lost hundreds of the little ones.

It pained him, even more than his own injuries. These were his children, born from his blood, the way he was born from The Father’s. The ones above him now, clawing at the dirt, trying to reach his embrace, called him Father.

They were scared, frenzied, fighting each other to get to him, but he had buried himself too deep for them to reach. They were weak, his children. Faithful and insistent, and so, so loyal, but weak and easy to kill.

(Again.)

But they were his, not The Father’s, and Merrick felt every one of their losses. He had sacrificed too many to get to the human. He was the key—the door to the others.

They helped kill you, Father. They were there, when you died. They were allies with The Traitor. I’ll make them pay for their crimes.

The soft, cold earth was heavy against his eyelids as he opened them, not that he needed eyes to see. He could use his children’s eyes and witness the black of the forest through their senses. They were everywhere—on the ground, in the trees, moving across open plains. Scared, after last night, but faithful. So, so faithful.

Stay hidden, my children. Don’t let them see you. It’s not time yet.

But the time would come, and there would be nothing to stop Merrick from enjoying his vengeance. On the filthy humans who had been down there when Father died; on the ones that roamed the land now, believing they were safe from him, from his brothers.

Brothers. Where are you? Why won’t you come to me? Why won’t you join me in this struggle?

They were in hiding and refusing to answer his voice. They hunted the night, feasting on animals that had become plentiful again. They had gone back to the old ways, made themselves invisible for fear of hunters.

He had done the same, but for a different reason. He needed to build his army in secret.

Soon, my children. We’ll reclaim this paradise.

Soon, we’ll show them whose world this is.

Merrick closed his eyes and concentrated on the healing.

They had almost gotten him last night, but he yet lived.

And as long as he lived, he would make them pay. Every single one of them.

Painfully.

Eternally.

And it will be glorious, Father.

I will make you proud. I will make you proud…