The Rising Horde (The Last Storm Book 3)
Author: Sam Sisavath
Date: 2023-04-16 00:00:00+00:00
Description: FIGHT THE HORDE OR DIE. Cent and Torres have been trapped with evil before but this isn't quite the same thing. Stuck on Harold Campbell's island with nowhere to go and surrounded by a growing number of obayifo , they will have to find allies if they want to make it out. But not everyone can be trusted, and even those you think you can trust have ulterior motives. As the long night drags on, and with morning-and the promise of safety-still hours away, shadowy forces make their move, further complicating Cent and Torres's plans. This isn't the first time Cent and Torres have had to fight for th
Publisher: Independently published

CONTENTS

Books in The Last Storm Series

About The Rising Horde

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Epilogue

BOOKS IN THE LAST STORM SERIES

The Last Storm

The Gathering

The Rising Horde

ABOUT THE RISING HORDE

FIGHT THE HORDE OR DIE.

Cent and Torres have been trapped with evil before, but this isn’t quite the same thing. Stuck on Harold Campbell’s island with nowhere to go and surrounded by a growing number of obayifo, they will have to find allies if they want to make it out.

But not everyone can be trusted, and even those you think you can trust have ulterior motives. As the long night drags on, and with morning—and the promise of safety—still hours away, shadowy forces make their move, further complicating Cent and Torres’s plans.

This isn’t the first time Cent and Torres have had to fight for their lives against an unrelenting creature that doesn’t just want to kill them but also take away everything they hold dear. If they’re not careful, it might be their last time.

Beyond the Gathering, the Rising Horde will emerge…

PROLOGUE

Sarah Jenkins had been working under the umbrella of the all-encompassing Human Resources on Bird Island for just a little over a year. When she’d gotten the interview, she’d been ecstatic. She’d heard about how good the money was, and the location, just off the coast of Florida, was killer. She’d been born and raised in Florida but had moved to the northeast for school. The prospect of returning home—or close enough—was exciting. Being near the Sunshine State meant she could travel back and forth between work and her old stomping grounds pretty much at will. Word was that as long as you did your job Harold Campbell, the big boss that owned everything, was extremely lenient when it came to holidays and weekends off.

Then she’d landed the job. The money was just as good as she’d heard and the environment was more than she could have asked for. Whenever she stepped outside and onto the rooftop of the main building on her lunch breaks, she could just make out Florida in the horizon. The Sunshine State had never looked more…sunshine-y.

All of that wonder evaporated in the blink of an eye when Peter Mills, whose cubicle was next to hers, ran onto the third floor with blood coming out the side of his neck where he had something—it might have been a piece of tissue paper—pressed against it. It didn’t seem to be helping and the material was already soaked through and through.

Peter was screaming and spitting blood when he fell, as if he’d tripped on his own legs, and the three people that were on the second shift with Sarah rushed over to help. None of them knew what to do. They were glorified HR with accounting degrees, not medical personnel.

They tried their best but it was obviously not good enough. John Duncan was attempting to wrap a towel he’d gotten somewhere around Peter’s neck but was having difficulty. Peter kept thrashing, his legs spasming violently while his arms flailed. He actually struck Sarah in the face but fortunately it was only a glancing blow, and after an initial numbness, the pain went away.

The others—young Milly Sandberg, who had just graduated two months ago from Columbia University, and Jay Burke, who beat Milly out of college by just a few years—stood around Sarah and John, mouth agape. Sarah would have shouted at the two younger people to help if she knew what to tell them. She was out of her element too and could only assist John by holding Peter down.

Sarah looked up at John from time to time, marveling at the way he was handling the situation. He’d arrived on the island just a few months ago and was the “new kid on the block,” even though he didn’t act that way right now. She’d always had a bit of a crush on him but had been too afraid to act on it. She made a mental note to do that later when this was all over. She would use Peter’s situation as the opener to a conversation, then slowly slip in that she’d always found him interesting. That was a far better approach than letting him know she thought he was incredibly handsome—

Peter gurgled blood, spitting out a fountain’s worth as his body continued to spasm. Sarah was simultaneously horrified and mystified—where in the world did all the blood keep coming from? He’d lost so much already from the gash in his neck.

The gash. In the ten or so seconds she’d gotten a look at it, before John wrapped it up, Sarah thought it looked almost like a bite mark. A big one. She might have even glimpsed some teeth indentations along his neck. Bad teeth. Crooked. Maybe even jagged.

“Hold him down, hold him down,” John was saying. “We have to get him bandaged up.” He glanced up and around before settling his deep blue eyes on Milly and Jay. To Milly, he said, “Go find a first aid kit. There should be one in the bathroom.”

But Milly didn’t move.

“Milly!” John snapped.

The young woman finally looked away from Peter and over to John. Her face was pale, her body frozen in place.

“First aid kit in the bathroom!” John said, raising his voice. “Go!”

Milly did, though she stumbled the entire way to the bathroom at the end of the floor.

John focused on Jay. “Help Sarah hold him down.”

“What?” Jay said, as if John had just spoken to him in a foreign language he didn’t understand.

“Help her hold him down!”

“Why?”

What do you mean ‘why?’ Sarah thought.

It was such a stupid question. The why was obvious: Because Peter needs help, you idiot!

“Oh. Oh…” Jay said before he fell to his knees, banging them on the floor—Sarah winced for him even though he didn’t seem to have felt the impact—and grabbed Peter’s legs.

Sarah maintained her hold on the bleeding man’s arms, having dragged both of them over his head. They were now stretching Peter out as if he were being quartered in some medieval torture scene. She had flashbacks to a scene in Braveheart with Mel Gibson, but more…dramatic. It was all the blood. It just made everything more real.

Peter kept thrashing, and bleeding, and screaming. It didn’t seem possible that a man his size could let out such wild and terrified screams. Or bleed so much.

God, where is all the blood coming from?

“What happened to him?” Jay was asking. “Jesus Christ. Look at how much blood is coming out of him.”

Sarah didn’t have an answer for him. Neither did John, who locked his gaze with hers as he continued to struggle to stanch Peter’s bleeding. There was so much blood, spraying everywhere. It’d gotten all over the floor and the front of their clothes.

The blood. So much blood. Where were they all coming from? Did the human body really have this much blood in it? Was there a location on the body where you had to prick just right to get the whole thing to flood out like a dike in a dam?

Images of torrential bloody water washing over a countryside filled Sarah’s vision about the same time the lights around them switched from bright LED white to dark red.

Oh no. What now?

Then, from the speakers along the corners of the floor, an automated voice boomed:

“Attention. Attention. All personnel proceed to the nearest shelter. Attention. Attention. All personnel proceed to the nearest shelter. This is not a drill. This is not a drill.” Then, after a two-second pause, “Attention. Attention…”

The robotic-sounding voice repeated itself in an endless loop while Sarah, Jay, and John glanced around them, trying to make sense of what was happening. First Peter, now this—whatever “this” was.

“What’s happening?” Jay asked. “What’s happening now?”

It was a good question, and Sarah looked at the only person she thought she could trust right now: John. “John?”

He shook his head back at her. He didn’t know, either.

“What is that?” Jay was asking. “What is that? Why did the light change? And what shelter? What shelter?”

Without warning, Peter stopped kicking. He stopped moving completely and simply lay there. His head lolled to one side, the blood gurgling between John’s fingers making an odd wet sound that made Sarah shiver.

She reflexively took her hand away from Peter’s arms and stared down at her palms. They were covered in blood. Peter’s, of course, but for a split second she almost mistook them for her own. Jay did the same and even stood up and took a few steps back as he hurriedly looked around at their surroundings. Fear covered his entire face and maybe all his being.

John remained on his knees on the other side of Peter. Once again, they locked gazes.

“Is he dead?” she asked even though she already knew the answer. Maybe she just wanted John to confirm it.

Which he did. “Yes.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. Again, just so he could confirm it.

“Yes,” he said again, nodding.

“What do we do now?”

“I don’t know.”

John removed his hand, along with the rag from Peter’s neck. He let out a frustrated sigh before standing up. He craned his head slightly to listen to the announcement still repeating itself all over the floor and, Sarah suspected, the entire building. Maybe, even, the entire island.

“Attention. Attention. All personnel proceed to the nearest shelter. Attention. Attention. All personnel proceed to the nearest shelter. This is not a drill. This is not a drill…”

“We need to do what it says,” John said.

“What? Do what?” Jay asked.

“Find shelter.”

“Shelter?” Jay said. “Shelter from what?”

Sarah fought to stay upright. For some reason her legs were wobbling underneath her. She struggled more than she should have but thankfully, somehow, managed not to fall back down to the floor.

“…all personnel proceed to the nearest shelter. Attention. Attention. All personnel proceed to the nearest shelter. This is not a drill. This is not a drill…”

They stood silently, listening to the message repeat itself. It was automated, she knew that now. No one could sit or stand there and repeat the same message over and over, without any difference in tone each time.

John finally broke their mutual trance. “Where’s Milly?”

“Milly?’ Sarah said. In all the confusion, she’d forgotten all about the other woman. John had sent her to the bathroom at the end of the hallway to fetch the first aid kit, but she hadn’t returned. How long had that been? A few minutes? Seconds? Hours?

“She’s not back yet,” John said.

They all looked behind them, toward the rear of the floor. There was nothing back there but a sea of red lights and empty cubicles. They couldn’t make out the bathroom all the way from here but the silence, even with the automated voice still speaking, was deafening.

“Milly!” John shouted.

There was no response.

“Oh, man,” Jay muttered.

“Milly!” John shouted again, his voice fighting with the repeating broadcast.

“…proceed to the nearest shelter. Attention. Attention. All personnel proceed to the nearest shelter…”

Milly, if she was still back there, didn’t answer him. The only noise was their slightly labored breathing and the announcement over the speakers. The exposed parts of her skin prickled and a shiver raced up and down her spine. There were five floors in the main structure on Bird Island, each floor filled with employees, especially in the day, but at the moment it felt as if they were the last three people still alive.

Then, from somewhere below them, an unfamiliar popping sound.

Firecrackers? Who’s setting off firecrackers this time of the night?

The sound echoed for a moment, only to evaporate into nothingness seconds later, with only the announcement continuing to fill the empty space.

Jay didn’t know what the sound had been, either. “What was that?”

“That was gunfire,” John said. His face contorted into grim determination. “We need to find shelter. Now.”

“What about Milly?” Sarah asked.

Before he could answer, the ping of the elevator arriving to the left of the floor made all three of them turn in its direction. Again, they stood perfectly still and silently as they watched the elevator doors began to open. For some reason those doors seemed to be moving in slow motion, as if it would take days instead of seconds.

To her surprise, John reached over and took her hand, and squeezed it. He flashed her a reassuring smile. Everything’s going to be okay, he said without saying it.

She smiled back and nodded, wanting desperately to believe him.

God, let everything be okay. Let me get through this. Let us get through this so I can ask him out and get married and have kids and—

The elevator doors banged slightly as they slid fully into their sheath. Almost as one, all three of them took an instinctive step back. She wondered if their sudden but somehow amazingly synchronized retreat looked as comical as it felt to her.

Empty.

The elevator was empty.

They stared at the emptiness, surprise and fear replaced by relief.

Jay was the first one to actually breathe. “Well, that was…weird.”

More of what John had called “gunfire”—but to Sarah still sounded just like wet fireworks popping—broke the stillness, originating from somewhere below them.

“Come on,” John said, leading them forward, toward the elevator.

They followed him. Or at least, Sarah did. She didn’t have much of a choice since John was still holding her hand. Not that she would have said ‘No’ anyway. She wasn’t so sure about Jay, who was slightly behind them—

Screaming, this time coming from behind them. From the back of the floor.

They all turned—in unison once again.

Milly. That had sounded like Milly.

“Stay here,” John said before he let go of her hand and started running. With amazing fluidness he snatched something from one of the desks—was that a hole puncher?—without stopping completely. She didn’t know John could even move that fast.

They lost sight of John as soon as he turned a corner. The bathroom would be somewhere back there. If he’d kept running, he would have reached the employee lounge where they spent so much of their time. When there was just five of you on the second shift, stuck on a floor meant for hundreds, you developed a mutual appreciation for each other’s company.

“Geez, I didn’t know the new guy could move that fast,” Jay was saying.

“Me, neither.”

“So…I guess we stay here and wait for him?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Yeah. That’s what he said,” Jay repeated, a mixture of relief and concern in his voice. It was mainly relief, though.

More popping (Wet firecrackers) gunfire from below them. They seemed to be growing in intensity and frequency. Sarah wasn’t sure what that meant. Just like its own medical personnel, the island had a full team of security. She’d seen them around, in their black, almost soldiery uniforms. The only thing that distinguished them from the Field Technicians were the red tabs on their uniform’s shoulders.

“What’s going on down there?” Jay asked. Then, turning to her, “Should we go find out?”

She stared at him. “You really want to?”

Jay seemed to think about it for a moment. A second, max. “On second thought…”

“Maybe we can see what’s going on without going down there.”

“How?”

“Come on.”

Sarah hurried out of the aisle and through the sea of dark and temporarily abandoned cubicles. She eventually passed her own desk. The computer was still turned on because she’d abandoned it in the middle of work when Peter appeared. The monitor was giving off a surreal, almost otherworldly glare underneath the red ceiling lights. She’d never seen it quite like that before.

“Where are we going?” Jay asked between labored breaths.

“The windows.”

“You think it’s happening out there, too?”

“I won’t know until I get there,” she said, a bit more irritated by his questions than she’d expected.

They reached the far wall and Sarah immediately found a window to look out from. The lights that surrounded the main cluster of buildings were still on, covering the entire grounds and some of the nearby woods. She couldn’t make out any movements on the roads that wound through the forest even though there were a handful of vehicles parked just beyond the front entrance to the main building. They looked haphazardly abandoned, as if their owners hadn’t had time to find proper parking spots. It was a full moon tonight but the sea of black easily outnumbered the visible parts of the island. She remembered stories from her childhood, about monsters that lived under your bed, in your closet, and in the shadowy corners of your room.

Sarah shivered.

“I don’t see anything,” Jay was saying.

“I don’t either.”

“So it’s just in the main building.”

“Maybe.”

“What do you think is happening?”

Jesus. How am I supposed to know?

She was growing more irritated with Jay with every passing second. He was bigger and stronger and taller than her but the quiver in his voice every time he asked a question made her see him as smaller, weaker, and shorter.

Sarah looked back across the floor, over the cubicles and in the direction where John had gone. What she wouldn’t give to have him trade places with Jay. The man standing next to her was clueless…and increasingly making himself useless.

“Blood,” that soon-to-be useless man was saying.

Sarah looked over at him and watched Jay scraping his fingers, then trying to wipe away the blood that clung to them. He was wearing slacks and a white dress shirt and only ended up spreading Peter’s blood on more of his clothes. She looked down at her own hands. There wasn’t as much there, but Peter had bled over her wardrobe, too. Thank God she’d spared her white blouse most of it.

The popping of more gunfire made her jump slightly. She would have been embarrassed if it had just been her, but Jay had jumped, too. There was something different about the noise this time. They sounded…closer?

“Did that…” Jay said without saying the rest of it, as if afraid it might come true if he did.

“Second floor. That came from below us.”

“Oh, that’s not good.”

No shit, she thought.

Then, because she couldn’t help herself, I didn’t sign up for this. God, I’m just an accountant. What am I doing here?

Of course the answer was obvious. Money. She’d signed up for the money. The close proximity to the Sunshine State and the family she had there was second. A distant second, if she was being honest with herself. It had always been about the money. Nothing paid as much as what Harold Campbell was offering for doing basic HR work. How could she have said no?

But she should have.

Goddammit, she should have!

The sound of soft footsteps as a figure darted between cubicles in front of her.

John?

“He’s back,” Jay was saying as he turned around and started toward the noise.

“Wait, Jay,” Sarah said because the sound was all wrong. John was a big man and his footsteps wouldn’t have sounded so soft. Besides, if it was John, she would have seen him by now. He was well over six feet and would have easily been visible over the cubicle walls.

Except she couldn’t see him even as the sound of footsteps continued to get closer.

Jay turned to look back at her. “What is it?”

“Something’s not right—” she said. Or started to stay. She got right out just before something leapt onto Jay’s back and knocked him down.

Someone screamed as Sarah stumbled back, away from the shocking scene. Her. She was the one that had screamed. Then why did it sound as if someone else had?

She’d moved too quickly, not looking where she was going, and slammed into the wall, the back of her head hitting the window she’d been looking out earlier. The impact dazed her, which might have been why Sarah thought she was looking at a scrawny young child crawling over Jay’s writhing form on the floor.

What…?

It wasn’t a child. That realization, for some reason, made Sarah feel better. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the lack of clothing. Whatever was on top of Jay wasn’t wearing anything. This…thing didn’t appear to be human at all, even though it possessed similar traits. Skinny legs and arms, wrapped in thin black layers of pruned tissues. Something that might have been a ribcage protruded from its torso at various points, while a spine, like a shark’s fin, jutted out of its back.

It was a creature of some kind, though what, Sarah couldn’t begin to guess. It was mostly hairless except for a few strands that still clung to random parts of its domed head. Someone must have injured it in the right cheek because blood flitted freely as it shook its head left and right while Jay tried to push it off him. Dark blood. Why was its blood so dark?

Sarah pushed back against the wall, unable to will herself to flee. She was stuck somewhere between abject terror and mortal fascination at what she was witnessing. If the thing even knew she was there, it didn’t once acknowledge her presence. Instead, it was entirely focused on Jay, its mouth opening and closing, revealing filthy jagged teeth every time it did so. Something that almost sounded like a frustrated growl emanated from the bottom of its throat as Jay continued to fight it.

There was an obvious discrepancy in size between the two combatants. Jay was at least twice as big and tall as the thing on top of him. He had muscles, while the thing’s limbs looked more like deformed twigs instead of arms and legs. Maybe it was the shock of being jumped that kept Jay from being able to force his attacker off him. He was screaming, clearly fighting with everything he had, and yet the creature refused to yield.

It took a good ten or so seconds before Sarah finally recognized what it was trying to do: It was trying to reach his neck with its mouth.

Jay had one hand on the creature’s forehead, pushing it back every time it tried to lunge at his throat. His hand was so much bigger than the thing’s head that it was like he was palming a basketball. Jay’s other hand was punching it everywhere he could, as hard as he could, not that any of it seemed to do any good.

“Sarah!” Jay shouted. “Help me! Help me!”

Help him?

“Sarah! Please! Sarah!”

How was she supposed to help him? How—

Her name turned into an agonizing scream as the creature caught Jay’s flailing hand with its teeth and bit down on his forearm. Jay finally managed to grab the black-skinned thing and flung it violently off him. It sailed through the air and slammed into a cubicle wall and crumpled to the tiled floor in a pile of clacking bones.

That sound, for some reason, snapped Sarah out of it.

She ran forward to help Jay up even as the creature scrambled to right itself, before ending up on its hands and legs like some kind of human spider. Sarah hadn’t seen it earlier when it was on top of Jay, but now that it was glaring at her, she could make out dark black eyes housed inside sullen sockets. There was no sclera in either eye, just a blackness that meshed almost perfectly with its dark skin. Its face was so gaunt she could easily make out the impressions of its skull underneath.

“Get up, Jay,” Sarah said. She was whispering. She wasn’t sure why, but she was. Maybe she was afraid the creature might hear and pounce. Or maybe she just couldn’t make herself sound any louder. “Get up, Jay,” she said again. Then, as loud as she could muster, “Get up!”

She was desperately trying to pull Jay up while keeping both eyes on the creature as it squinted back at her. There was something that vaguely looked like annoyance on its face as it watched them, though she couldn’t be sure. Her eyes were glued to the thing’s own eyes, marveling at how deep, deep black they were.

What are you? What are you?

Jay was not getting up. Either he’d been hurt more than she thought or he was just taking his sweet damn time. She didn’t think it was the latter. More likely it was the blood spurting from his forearm, where the creature had bit him.

“Jay, come on! Come on!”

He was gasping, struggling for every breath. And he was so heavy, too, that she had difficulty maintaining her balance and dragging him up at the same time. If she wasn’t careful, it might be both of them on the floor instead of just him.

Finally—finally!—she managed to get both of Jay’s feet underneath him.

For a second or two, anyway.

It leapt again, landing on Jay’s chest and pummeling him back to the floor.

Sarah let go. She hadn’t intended to but it was reflexive—the combination of the creature’s impact and her own sense of self-preservation. And once again, Sarah stumbled in reverse until there was nowhere left to go.

A torturous sense of déjà vu swept through her as she watched the creature writhe manically on top of Jay. Unlike the first time, Jay was unable to hold the thing off, and it lunged for his jugular, mouth opening wide.

And it bit.

Jay’s scream was one long sound, ricocheting off the cubicles and walls on the floor and returning, in one tsunami of pain and suffering, to Sarah’s ears.

She ran.

And she didn’t stop running even when she heard Jay shouting her name, begging her to help.

She just ran faster…and never looked back.

1

TORRES

“Who are they?”

“They work for the government.”

“Do they?”

“What do you mean?”

“Really work for the government?”

“That’s what they said.”

“It’s a big government, Kerry.”

“I know that, Cent. Don’t you think I know that? I’ve been in the system for most of my life. I know about the bureaucracy. It’s why I’m down here with you, remember? Trust me, Cent. I know how big the official channels can be.”

They locked eyes. Yes, he did know all of what she’d said even if he wasn’t born in the country or spent as much time maneuvering around its governmental systems as she had. But the size of the U.S. government wasn’t what Cent was asking. What he was really asking was: Who are they, and how do you know you can trust them to save us?

The truth was, she didn’t have a good answer for him. Not about who Ana and her people were, or what they would do once they received the transmission. And they would receive it. According to Vicks, the device that Owen had given Torres was doing what it was supposed to do: gathering data from Harold Campbell’s computers and sending them to Ana’s people. It was what happened after that that she didn’t know.

Vicks and Banks had kept quiet as Cent confronted her. Or perhaps “confront” wasn’t the right word. He’d asked questions. A lot of them. Not that she blamed the young man. Certainly, Torres knew she had a lot to answer for. She’d kept so many secrets from him that she could read the betrayal on his face and in his eyes. Not accusing, exactly, but growing suspicion.

How did I lose his trust so quickly?

“I didn’t have any choice,” Torres said. “They’re using Macy against me.”

“How?” Cent asked.

“They can give her back to me.”

“I thought that was what Harold Campbell’s people were supposed to be doing.”

“Ana’s people put a stop to it. They’re in control of where Macy goes now.”

“You have evidence of this?”

“Yes.” She told him about talking to the girl on the phone. “They control the system, Cent, because they are the system. For all his money and influences, Harold Campbell is still limited to what a private citizen can do.”

“That’s a new one,” Banks finally said. It was the first time he’d spoken in almost five full minutes.

“What is?” Vicks asked him. She was the only one sitting, while the three of them stood around the security room.

Torres, Cent, and Banks were in an almost triangle-like shape. She hadn’t realized that until now. It seemed comical, but no one was laughing.

“Campbell and his money,” Banks said. “I didn’t know there was a limit to something like that.”

“There is,” Torres said, “when the government is involved.”

“What exactly do they want from you?” Cent asked.

She nodded at the device sticking out of a terminal in front of Vicks. It was some type of advanced transmitter in the casing of a faux pen. The cap at the end was still blinking green and had been for some time now. “That. They want to know what Campbell has been doing down here. On this island.”

“The obayifo.”

“I don’t know the specifics. They didn’t exactly elaborate. And they didn’t have to.”

“Because of Macy…”

“Yes.”

“Makes sense,” Vicks said. Then, when all three of them looked over at her, “I mean, from Uncle Sam’s perspective. Mr. Campbell is one of the wealthiest men in America. When he started buying up private islands and building bunkers all over the country, they were bound to get curious. Then he bought Bird Island. It’s in international waters so they don’t have any jurisdiction here. Another red flag. Uncle Sam doesn’t like red flags. Especially when they’re being hoisted by billionaires.”

“Not that international water’s ever stopped them before,” Banks said.

“What does that mean?” Cent asked him.

“Oh, come on. We all know they don’t always tell the public about all the questionable things they do in the name of” —he did air quotes—“national security.”

“So you think they’re coming?” Vicks asked him, swiveling around in her chair to glance at the device Owen had given Torres just one night previously.

“How the hell should I know? Depends on what they find in all that data being sent over would be my guess.”

That’s the question, isn’t it?

But Torres kept that to herself. She didn’t know what Owen or his boss, Ana, would do once they received the information. She didn’t know much of anything about their motivations. Maybe they were just curious about what Campbell was doing or maybe they knew more than they were telling her. Not that they would have told her anyway. They had her where they needed her, with her future and Macy’s in the balance.

Between a rock and a hard place, with Uncle Sam looking down from a cliff high above, holding a boulder over his head.

She still remembered her conversation with Ana, about the latter’s using of Macy as leverage.

“Since when did the U.S. government start using kids to get leverage?”

“Don’t be naïve, Kerry. It’s always been like this. When the security of the United States is the goal, anything goes.”

Torres guessed that was a good enough reason for her to do what she’d done. Anything went when Macy was on the line. She felt guilty about keeping all of it from Cent—but not so much the other two in the room with them—but she knew she would get over it. The ends might not have always justified the means, but in this case…

Cent had returned his attention to the monitors that lined the back of the room. Live video feeds from ten parts of the underground facility played out in real-time, though at the moment there was nothing “live” about what they were seeing. It was dead quiet outside, both in terms of sounds (or lack thereof) and movement.

They stared at the monitors for a while, no one saying a word. There wasn’t much left to say. Campbell’s underground had fallen to the obayifo, with, as far as they knew, only a handful of survivors sheltering in place. They didn’t have a specific number because the cameras didn’t extend into the living quarters for privacy reasons. They could see the remains of the battle inside the cafeteria and the hallways, along with the Cave, but little else.

There was one upside, though: Vicks had managed to access the security systems and turned off the automated emergency message. She still couldn’t do anything about the red lights that had accompanied it, washing the entire room—and every face she looked at—in a surreal and unnatural glow.

“Any change to the survivor count?” Torres finally asked.

Vicks shook her head. “Still don’t know how many made it to shelter. All the private quarters could be full or none of them.”

“That’s a huge range,” Banks said.

“Yup.”

“You can’t narrow it down some?”

“Nope.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yup.”

Banks snorted. Apparently he didn’t enjoy Vicks’s short and concise responses.

“We can’t just stay here and wait it out,” Cent said. He glanced down at his watch. “We don’t have that luxury.”

Vicks spun around in her chair to look at him. “What do you have in mind?”

“We need to get out of here.”

“And how do we do that?” Banks asked.

“Any way we can,” Cent said, but he was looking at Vicks as he said it.

She nodded. “I’m with you. I don’t much like waiting to see what happens if I can do something about it.”

“You mean we have a choice?” Banks asked.

“There’s always a choice,” Cent said.

“Like what? Cause I don’t see any from where I’m standing.”

“The Cave.”

“What about it?”

“The obayifo used it to leave the underground. If they can do it, then we can, too.” He turned to Vicks. “Right?”

She nodded. “Definitely.”

“How?” Banks asked. He didn’t sound convinced.

Vicks was already typing on the keyboard. Torres found the tapping of her fingers against the keys to be almost mesmerizing. In her best days she couldn’t type more than a few dozen words a minute, but Vicks was somewhere near the hundreds.

Some of the monitors had switched their images and were now showing different angles on the Cave as seen from four different cameras. The one that really stood out to Torres was the one with the platform near the back.

“The lift,” Vicks said. “It’s how we get the bulky items, like vehicles, down here from the surface, and vice versa. That’s what they used to get topside.”

“I still don’t know how the hell they knew to do that,” Banks said.

“Hillard,” Cent said.

“Hillard?”

“It had to be Hillard. He was turned. Ever since he encountered the Blue Eyes in the sewer if I had to guess. They used him to get down here. And he knows all about the lift.”

“A Trojan horse,” Torres said.

The young man nodded. “It wasn’t just him, but the other obayifo, too.”

“The Black Eyes that wasn’t a true Black Eyes,” Vicks said.

“Yes.”

“They had this planned out from the beginning,” Torres said. “Benton and the others didn’t capture the Blue Eyes back at the Archers. It let him.”

Cent nodded again. “I think so.”

“Makes sense,” Vicks said.

“It does?” Banks said. He looked confused. At the moment, he was the only one.

Because Torres agreed with Cent. The obayifo hadn’t been captured; they’d allowed it so they could reach Campbell’s facility. They’d learned about the man and his quest to exterminate them, and rather than sit back and wait, they’d gone on the attack.

The best defense is a good offense.

No one bothered to elaborate to Banks. Either he’d finally grasped what they were saying or, more likely, he didn’t want to open his mouth and embarrass himself with more questions.

“The lift can be controlled through a panel,” Vicks said. “All we need to do is get over there.”

“Gee. That’s all?” Banks said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Should be a walk in the park, then. Not.”

“You have any other ideas?” Vicks asked him.

“Yeah, I do, as a matter of fact.”

“So let’s hear it.”

“We stay here until”—he looked over at Torres—“her Uncle Sam contacts show up and rescue us.”

“You’re assuming they’ll come and rescue us,” Cent said.

“You’re assuming they won’t.”

“No, I’m not.”

“How you figure that, kid?”

The use of kid was clearly to fluster Cent, not that it seemed to have worked. Torres could tell that Cent was used to being called that and wasn’t the least bit affected.

He said, “We can stay here and wait to be rescued, or we can take the initiative and do it ourselves. One option puts our fates in our own hands; the other leaves everything in the hands of strangers that may or may not have our best interests at stake. You can decide what you want to do—it’s your skin—but I’d rather take charge of my destiny.”

“Me, too,” Vicks said.

“He’s right,” Torres said. She looked back at the “pen” that Owen had given her, its cap at the end continuing to blink green. “I don’t know what they’ll do—if anything. And I’m not going to stay down here and find out.”

“This is nuts,” Banks said.

“It’s your choice,” Cent said. “You should do what you feel is best. As for the rest of us, we’re going to the Cave and get out of here.”

“Not much of a choice…”

“Not much of a choice is still a choice. I know a lot of people who never had one.”

Banks grunted, more to himself than them, but didn’t say anything.

“Can you get us the shortest path to the Cave?” Cent was asking Vicks.

“I can do better than that,” Vicks said. Again, her fingers flew over the keyboard and the computer screen in front of her showed a schematic of the facility. Sections of hallways lit up in yellow, leading from where they were at the moment and over to the Cave. “There is exactly ten hallways between us. And this is the most efficient route from Point A to Point B.”

“We’ll need to pass the cafeteria…”

“Yes, we do.” Then, “Why? You think that’s going to be a problem?”

“Maybe. There was a lot of activity in there before, remember?”

“There’s another way. It’s longer, though.”

“How much longer?”

“Two extra hallways.”

It didn’t take Cent long to make up his mind. “We’ll stick to the original route.” He straightened up and looked over at Torres. “What do you think?”

Torres nodded. “I think it’s a good idea.”

“That makes one of us,” Banks said.

Torres turned to him. “You don’t have to come.”

“Oh come on. It’s not like I have a real choice. It’s go along with it or stay here all by my lonesome. And I’m a people person.”

Torres wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince them or himself. Maybe a little of both. Or, more likely, mostly the former.

“About the lift,” Torres said to Vicks. “Is it still operational with the emergency protocol in place?”

“Yeah, I was curious about that too, so I checked,” Vicks said. “It’s supposed to be shut down, but the security measures on it have been disengaged.”

“Someone turned it off?” Cent asked.

Vicks nodded. “Yes.”

“Who would have that kind of knowledge?”

Vicks shook her head. “Anything with access to the security codes would be my guess. The big boys.”

“What about Hillard?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

Torres turned to Banks. “What about you?”

“What about me?” Banks asked.

“Can you do what they’re talking about”

“You mean make the lift work during an emergency? No.”

“Well, someone knew how.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“One more mystery in a night of mysteries,” Vicks said. She didn’t sound nearly as bothered by the ramifications of this particular mystery as Torres—or Cent, from the look on his face—was.

Torres turned back to Banks. “What kind of weapons do we have? Besides what I’ve already seen?”

“What you see is what you get,” Banks said. “What are you looking for?”

“Anything that will make this easier.”

“What? Like a laser gun or something?”

“Do you have that?”

“It was a joke.”

“I know. So was my response.”

Banks might have rolled his eyes. “Clever.”

Torres ignored him and turned to Cent. “After we make it to the surface, then what?”

“We get off the island,” Cent said without hesitation.

“The boats we saw on the beach?”

“Yes. If they’re still there.”

“And if they’re not?”

“We find another way.”

“There’s the helicopter that brought you guys here,” Vicks said. “Assuming it’s still up there, I mean. Failing all those options, we can just swim for it. It’s only a dozen miles to the coastline.” She’d said that last part with a straight face, but Torres didn’t think she was being serious.

The thought of swimming out of danger made Torres remember the flood of Hurricane Matthew and what had happened back at the Wilshire Apartments. The same memories might have also returned to Cent from the not-at-all-looking-forward-to-it expression on his face.

“We can do it,” Torres said. “As long as we stick together. Safety in numbers.”

She exchanged a look with Cent again. The young man nodded. For the first time since she told him everything, she saw trust in Cent’s eyes. It wasn’t the all-or-nothing trust of before, but it was a good start.

“Guys,” Banks said. The former security man was staring at Owen’s “pen.” The green light that had been blinking nonstop on the cap had ceased and returned to looking like an ordinary plastic cap again.

“When did that happen?” Vicks asked.

“Dunno. I just noticed it now. What’s it mean?”

“My guess? It’s done. Torres’s buddies now have everything we have.”

“Would they know about the emergency protocol and the countdown?” Cent asked.

“How about a rescue?” Banks asked, sounding almost hopeful.

“Maybe, maybe not.” She shrugged. “You know what they say about assuming…”

“It doesn’t matter what the people on the other end of that transmission decides,” Torres said. “We’ll do what works for us, without relying on anyone else. That’s all we can control anyway.”

“The Cave, then,” Cent said.

She nodded back. “The Cave.”

“So I guess that’s settled,” Banks said. “Now, can we get there without dying? Or be ripped apart limb to limb? Can we at least try to do that?”

“Yeah, let’s try not to die,” Vicks said. She stood up and began stretching.

“What are you doing?” Banks asked.

“Stretching.”

“Why?”

“Duh. In case we have to run for it. You know that saying about outrunning a bear?”

Banks shook his head.

“You don’t have to outrun the bear; you just have to outrun the guy next to you.” She grinned. “How fast can you run, Banks?”

2

CENT

The smell had gotten worse since the last time he was in the hallways. There was a thickness to it that threatened to choke him if he sucked in the tainted air a little too long. It was difficult, though, to figure out how much was too long.

Thankfully Cent could count on his legs to keep moving one step at a time. He wasn’t running. Not yet. The knife with its silver-coated blade was gripped in his right hand, his fingers flexing again and again over the handle. He wore a gun in a holster on his right hip, but it was mostly for show. Cent hated guns, but it was better to have one and not need it than to not have it when he needed one.

“Dig the well before you need the water,” Richter used to say. It was good advice, one that Cent took to heart. It wasn’t just so he reminded himself to stay prepared at all times, but also to keep his friend alive in his thoughts.

What he wouldn’t give to have Richter and Dutch with him right now, instead of just Banks in front of him. The security man was put on point because he knew the place better than all of them with maybe the exception of Vicks, but putting her up front was out of the question. So she followed behind Cent while Torres brought up the rear.

Banks moved with the practiced fluidity of a well-trained soldier, even if he had never been one. He did have training though, that much was obvious. Remington shotgun in hand, he took them around one corner, then another, then another. The hallways got progressive less bloody with each one and as a result the air became less vomitous with the stench of blood and death. Even so, he found himself breathing through his mouth more than his nostrils.

Directly behind him, he could hear Vicks’s heartbeat pounding away against her chest. For all he knew, his own heartbeat could be matching hers beat for beat, but he couldn’t really tell. Besides, he didn’t want to find out anyway.

No one had said a word ever since they left the security room. They didn’t need to, either, because everything had already been said. Every now and then, Cent glanced over his shoulder at Torres, all the way in the back. The ex-cop had armed herself with a shotgun identical to Banks’s. Their weapon of choice was for spreading power, which gave them more room for error. The shells were loaded with silver buckshot, meaning all they needed was to hit an obayifo with one of the many small balls. It was more effective than trying to pick them off with a single bullet.

Like him, Vicks had put on a web gun belt with a pistol in the holster. The weapon hung unconvincingly at her side and Cent wondered if his own handgun looked just as odd on him. He didn’t like guns and neither did Vicks, but this was no time to be giving in to their personal biases.

They were turning the fourth out of ten corners when Banks suddenly stopped. He held up his right hand, fingers clenched into a fist. The signal to stop. Cent was used to it from working with Dutch and the old crew.

Banks didn’t say a word but he also didn’t retreat, either. Instead, he leaned slightly around the corner. Cent waited for the man to clue them in, but he didn’t seem to be in any hurry.

Anytime now, Banks, anytime now…

A tap on his shoulder from Vicks. Cent glanced back, saw the unasked questions in her eyes. He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Over Vicks’s right shoulder, he saw the same puzzlement on Torres’s face.

He shook his head at her, too.

Cent turned back around. Banks hadn’t moved and still didn’t seem ready to tell them what he was looking at. Cent decided to find out for himself and stepped slightly to the man’s right so he, too, could peer around the corner.

Obayifo.

A Black Eyes, crouched over a woman in a white lab coat. The creature was still wearing the same security uniform as Banks, with the red stripes on the shoulders. Those clothes hung off its skeletal frame as if they were two sizes too big. Its boots were gone; its legs, bone-thin, could no longer hold onto them even if it’d wanted to. It was drenched in blood, the smell of it reaching Cent all the way from across the hallway. If it even noticed them at all, the creature never raised its head to acknowledge their presence. It was too busy chewing through the woman’s neck, slurping at the rivulets of blood that broke free between sharp, jagged teeth.

It seemed odd to Cent that there would be just one of the creatures here. Where were the others? The Blue Eyes? Or had they all gone up to the surface? Was this the only obayifo still down here with them? Had it been abandoned? Or left behind to guard the hallways?

Banks was lifting his shotgun to take aim when Cent put his hand on the other man’s shoulder. Then, when Banks glanced quizzically at him, Cent shook his head and put a finger to his lips. Shhh.

Another perplexed look.

God, he’s dense, Cent thought even as he stepped forward and around the security man, then walked up the hallway.

He picked up his pace a full second later, then doubled it after three more seconds. By the time eight seconds had elapsed, Cent was already halfway to the obayifo.

It stopped what it was doing and lifted its head, then turned around. Dark black eyes widened at the sight of Cent moving steadily toward it. The red glow of the ceiling lights danced off its almost hairless domed head. It had only been turned recently and the remaining hair, matted with liquids, created an unflattering patch. Soon, even that would be gone, along with every vestige of humanity, making it indistinguishable from the rest of its kind.

Cent ran the last ten yards or so toward the creature. It watched him approach, something that could almost pass for confusion flashing across its pruned, gaunt face. Fresh blood dripped from its jawline, further dirtying the already blood-covered front of its clothing. Someone had shot it in the right cheek, leaving behind a gaping hole where black liquid oozed out. It was far from wounded, though, and once again Cent wondered why it had been left behind.

The creature straightened up slightly only when Cent was almost on top of it. The confusion on its face gave way to alarm as he struck. It didn’t react fast enough and Cent took its head off at the neck. The decapitated head went in one direction while the rest of its body went in the other. The arc of blood spurted from the headless torso and sprayed the nearby wall in a pattern almost reminiscent of a rainbow.

He stood over the dead body the obayifo had been feeding on for a moment, waiting for the others to catch up. The woman’s face was mostly missing, as if something had peeled the flesh clean off her skull, leaving only bits here and there. Blonde hair was splayed underneath her resting head, and a nametag was hidden underneath a glob of blood.

“Nice,” Banks said. He nodded at the knife in Cent’s hand. “Where can I get me one of those?”

“It’s custom made,” Cent said. “It’ll cost you three bars of silver.”

“Yikes. Too rich for my blood. They do layaway?”

“Probably not.”

“Bummer.”

Vicks and Torres caught up to them, with Vicks staring at the dead woman. “Oh, man.”

“You know her?” Banks asked.

“Angela. Nice lady. We threw her a birthday party two months ago.” Then, wincing a bit, “What happened to her face?”

“Let’s not stick around and find out,” Torres said.

Banks and Torres went on ahead, with Cent and Vicks turning to follow. Cent flicked the knife at the nearest wall, spraying it with a thin splatter of black liquid.

“How many does that make?” Vicks asked.

“How many what?”

“How many have you killed so far?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t keep count.”

“That many, huh?”

“I’m not sure.”

That was a lie. He knew exactly how many obayifo he had killed. He wasn’t entirely sure why he had lied to Vicks. Maybe he didn’t want her to think he was a bloodthirsty maniac, even if his victims were creatures that fed on humans. But why did he care so much if she thought poorly of him? Would they even meet again after this? Was there a future for them? For someone like him?

The next corridor, and the one after that, was empty. Except for the dry blood on the floor and along the walls, there were no signs of activity. Their only companion was the constant hum of the generator in the background, feeding the facility with power. According to Vicks, the structure could continue to generate electricity for years to come without any help from its human inhabitants. Except for the occasional repairs, the building was designed to be self-sustaining. But even that maintenance was designed to be easily accomplished by a layman.

“Mr. Campbell has underground buildings like this all over the country,” Vicks told them. “You’d be surprised where you’ll run across one.”

“Are they all like this?” Torres had asked. “Doing research on the creatures?”

“As far as I know, this is the only one. The others are more like survival bunkers.”

“Survival bunkers?” Cent had said. “From what?”

Vicks had shrugged. “Whatever it is Mr. Campbell is afraid will happen if we lose this war against the obayifo.”

Cent had to keep reminding himself that Harold Campbell was a man with too much money and too much time on his hands. Someone like that could do whatever he wanted, including having a decidedly apocalyptic view of the future. Even if there were as many—or more—of the creatures as Campbell’s people seemed to believe, Cent found it impossible they could ever overtake humankind as the planet’s dominant species. More likely, all those survival bunkers would be left to gather dust, similar to all the bomb shelters from the ‘50s and ‘60s that Cent had read about. Those had been built during the height of the Cold War, when every American (or so it seemed) thought a nuclear war with Russia was inevitable.

Too much time and too much money. I wonder what that’s like?

They had reached hallway number five when Banks, who had resumed point at the front of their little caravan, stopped once again and raised a fist. This time Cent didn’t have to wonder why he’d halted their progress. Hallway number five was where the cafeteria was.

A slight shiver streaked up and down his spine. He hated the idea of having to cross the cafeteria after what he’d seen on the monitors. It’d been chaos in there when the creatures first attacked.

There was a lot more blood in this hallway, which was appropriate given all the action Cent had witnessed. Streaks of dry blood clung to the walls and ceiling, and more than a half dozen or so trails led into the cafeteria. Trails made when the creatures dragged bodies into the large room from elsewhere.

They could have run past the open doors of the cafeteria, but instead Banks and Torres stopped to peek inside. Cent did too, despite his reservations. But curiosity got the better of him, especially after finding out that the creatures had destroyed the cameras within.

“Why would they do that?” Vicks had asked when she found out they couldn’t see into the cafeteria anymore.

“They must not want us to see what’s going on in there,” Cent had said.

“They do that? I mean, they can think like that?”

“They’re smarter than they look. Especially the Blue Eyes.”

Now, as he leaned around Torres, Cent’s confusion doubled: There was blood all over the floor and on the tables, but there were no signs of bodies, dead or alive. It was as if the entire room had been cleared out, leaving nothing but the signs of death behind.

“Where are the bodies?” Banks whispered. “Where did they take the bodies? This doesn’t make any sense.”

“Come on, let’s keep going,” Torres said.

“But where are the bodies?” Bank asked again anyway.

“Let’s go,” Torres said, putting just enough authority into her voice to pull Banks away from the cafeteria.

They followed her up the hallway, then around it. Torres, like Banks, knew her way around weapons, and she carried the shotgun like someone who had fired it hundreds of times in the past. Or an ex-police officer.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, which only made Cent more paranoid. Besides the one obayifo that he’d already dealt with, there wasn’t another one the entire way. There was something wrong with that. Even if the creatures had gone up to the surface to wreak havoc, why would there only be one down here? Had they really left it behind? Was it some kind of runt that couldn’t go with the others?

Cent was unconvinced. While it hadn’t mounted much of a defense against him, he could pass that off to it being in the middle of a feeding. The creatures were single-minded that way: When they fed, they fed, and almost always never allowed distractions to get in the way.

And yet, it’d been too easy.

Wasn’t it?

None of that mattered now as they turned a corner unopposed, then another one.

Soon, they had reached their destination: The hallway leading to the Cave itself.

Cent took a quick glance down at his Casio. Over nineteen hours before Campbell’s failsafe protocol did what it was supposed to. It was plenty of time to reach the lift and return to the surface, then find a way off the island. Plenty of time.

The Cave didn’t appear to be as wide and cavernous as the first time he’d stepped foot inside it, but Cent passed that off to the red emergency lights creating more shadows and darkness where there hadn’t been with the bright white LED lights. There was a hollowness about the room that made every sound they made echo, though Cent couldn’t completely discount that as being all in his head. A hyper imagination, made more active by the life-and-death stakes.

They stepped around puddles of blood on the floor. Evidence of a horrific slaughter was everywhere, but like in the cafeteria, there were no bodies to confirm what had happened. Some of them would have been infected and converted to obayifo, but not all, like Angela back in one of the hallways.

So where were the others? Was it really possible that the Blue Eyes had turned the majority of their victims?

The lift itself was on the far side of the massive room. At least fifty yards, if not more, of open space between where they were and where they needed to be. That made everyone more than a little anxious on the walk over. At least it was for Cent. And Vicks, from the sound of her suddenly louder breathing. He’d nudged her in front of him so he could watch their flank. Vicks was armed with a handgun, but she hadn’t drawn it once since they left the security room and that was how Cent wanted to keep it. If Vicks had to shoot, then they were in deep trouble.

After about a solid minute of walking, Banks picked up his pace. Torres was surprised at first, then hurried to catch up. So did Vicks, then Cent from the back.

“Watch your six,” Dutch, the former Marine, would have said if he were here.

And that was what Cent was doing, his eyes roaming the room from side to side, then back to front. Bulky objects underneath plastic tarps surrounded them, as did vehicles of every type. The floor was covered in dirt and mud-generated tracks, the natural elements fighting for dominance over recently spilled blood. Every now and then Cent stepped around spent casings, but those were far and few. The obayifo had clearly caught the Cave’s personnel by surprise. Like the ones in the cafeteria, they hadn’t stood a chance.

What about us? Do we stand a chance?

They did because they knew what they were dealing with. Harold Campbell’s people hadn’t. Oh, they’d had a clue, but they didn’t really know what the creatures were capable of. If anything, Campbell had underestimated them. Cent didn’t. He’d seen what one could do, never mind an entire horde—

“Oh, fuck.” That was Banks from in front of them.

Cent hurried over to see what he was cursing at. The security man was standing in front of the panel that controlled the lift.

Or the panel that used to control the giant platform that was supposed to take them up to the surface. It was in pieces, strips of different-colored wires hanging off the metal frame like gutted intestines.

“What the hell?” Vicks said as she rushed over to get a better look.

“Is that it?” Torres asked. “Is that the only thing controlling the lift?”

“That’s it,” Banks said. He turned around and ran his fingers through his hair. It was matted with sweat.

“Well, I didn’t see that coming,” Vicks said. She looked back at Cent. “Now what?”

“Can we fix it?” Cent asked.

“Sorry, but I don’t do electrical work.”

“What about you?” Torres said to Banks.

“I’m Security, not Maintenance,” Banks said.

Cent glanced quickly back in the direction they’d come, a good fifty yards of open space between them and the entrance to the Cave. There was still nothing there. Nothing to stand between them and retreating.

At least, not yet.

“We have to go back,” Torres said.

“Back?” Banks said. “Back where?”

“The security room.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know, Banks. You got any bright ideas?”

“No, but I didn’t want to come out here in the first place.” He shot accusing glances at Cent and Torres. “That was you two’s idea, remember?”

“No one forced you to come along.”

“Right. Like I had a fucking choice.”

“We all had a choice.”

They continued to argue, but Cent had tuned it out. Something was wrong with the air around him. It had grown stale, as if all life had been sucked from it and replaced with abnormal elements that didn’t belong.

He followed the stench to a hulking machine covered by a bright-red tarp behind him, then glanced upward. Slowly, at first, traveling a foot at a time.

Five feet became ten, then twenty…

It perched at the very top, glowering down at him. Obsidian eyes, at once invisible against the shadows that shrouded the upper parts of the Cave and somehow standing out like an obscene presence. Its mouth opened wide, gobs of saliva dripping from crooked fangs.

Plop-plop-plop as the undead thing’s spit landed on the floor.

“Um, guys?” Vicks, standing next to Cent again, and staring at the obayifo. “What do we do now?”

“There’s just one,” Torres said. “What’s it doing?”

They stood huddled together, finding strength in numbers, and stared at the creature as it did the same to them. Cent expected the thing to jump from the heights and at them, but it didn’t. Instead, it remained on its perch, drool continuing to drip from its teeth.

Banks took aim with his shotgun. “Just give me the word and I’ll end its miserable life.”

“No, don’t,” Torres said. “Let’s see what it does.”

“You serious?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, but I’m not taking my eyes off that thing…”

Cent turned slightly to look at Torres. “They’re not here. The rest. This one, and the one in the hallway, were left behind.”

“You’re probably right,” Torres said. “The question is, why is it still here?”

Before Cent could answer, Vicks leaned close to him and whispered into his ear.

“You sure?” he asked her.

She nodded.

Cent turned to Banks. “Kill it.”

He didn’t have to be told twice. Banks took a step forward and pulled the trigger. Cent had expected the monstrosity to scamper out of the shotgun’s path, but it didn’t. Buckshot ricocheted off the heavy machine underneath the tarp, but more than enough struck the creature that it careened off the top and landed with a solid and wet-sounding crunch on the floor.

“Wanna tell me why I just did that?” Banks asked.

“Vicks has an idea,” Cent said.

They all turned to her.

“The lift’s useless without the panel,” Vicks said, “but there’s another way up.” She looked into the darkness on the far side of the Cave. “An emergency escape hatch. It leads all the way topside.”

“What emergency hatch?” Banks asked.

“The one that leads topside in case of, duh, an emergency.” She stared at him. “You didn’t know?”

“I guess not.” He smirked. “What else don’t I know about this place?”

“How do you know about this hatch?” Torres asked Vicks.

“I saw it in the blueprints of the area earlier,” Vicks said.

“And you’re just telling us that now?” Banks asked.

“I mean, it’s for emergency usage for a reason. If we could have used the lift, that would have been the preferable way to get topside.”

Torres nodded at Vicks. “Fair enough. Lead the way.”

Vicks did, leading them around the large platform. Cent followed behind them, looking back at the dead creature one last time.

It lay perfectly still on its side, black liquid oozing out of the holes in its chest where buckshot had struck it. It was probably a trick of the lights, but Cent swore the damn thing was looking back at him, its eyes locked onto his.

He turned around and hurried to catch up to the others.

3

TORRES

“Oh yeah, this is much better,” Banks said.

“Shut up and keep climbing,” Torres said.

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have a face full of butt right now. Though I have to admit, it’s not a bad view by any means.”

“Banks…”

“Yes?”

“Shut up.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She groaned. Sometimes Banks really made her want to punch him in the face. She could imagine him grinning from ear to ear as he all but shouted out the ma’am part. The man was a pain in the ass, but he also happened to be the best shot in their group next to her. Hell, he might have even been the better shot between the two of them, but she wouldn’t know that until they stood next to one another at a gun range. Right now, she would be satisfied with making it up all five stories without slipping and falling back down to her death.

Way to be optimistic, girl.

“Damn, watch it, will ya?” Banks was saying.

Torres stopped momentarily to look down at him. He was wiping some liquid off his face with one hand while his other clung to a metal rung. Her sweat. Torres had been covered in a layer of it ever since the second floor. They were now somewhere between the third and fourth, with just one more to go.

The emergency escape hatch was exactly that: A long passageway that extended from the Cave all the way up to the surface of the island. It was square in dimension and suffocatingly claustrophobic. Three feet by three feet on all four sides, with the only extra space above and below them. There was no way up except to use the metal rungs, which they had been doing for, as far as she could tell, about ten minutes now. It wasn’t just hard work, but sweaty, too, and every single one of them was drenched in their own perspiration. Or, like Banks, some of hers, too.

Torres was leading the way, with Banks below her. Vicks followed him, with Cent bringing up the rear. She couldn’t even see the young man when she’d glanced down at Banks. It wasn’t just stuffy and hot inside the hatch but dark as well. The only reason she could even see Banks at all was because he’d gotten too close to her, leaving just one unused rung between his hand and her left shoe.

“Sorry,” Torres said, referring to her castoff sweat, even though she didn’t really mean it.

“You don’t mean that,” Banks said, smirking back at her.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Nah.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re right.”

“Bah. I knew it.”

She had to smile at that. It was a strange response. “Bah?” That was something an old miser would say. An old miser in jolly ol’ England circa the 19th century.

“Where are we now?” Vicks asked from somewhere behind Banks.

“Between the third and fourth floor,” Torres said as she refocused her eyes on the darkness above them.

It had taken an entire floor for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Until that point, she’d had to be very careful not to miss any of the rungs. One slip and she would fall, land on Banks below her, and likely take all four of them all the way down to the Cave with her. The rungs themselves were coated in dust and grime from lack of use and gripping them was a chore. A treacherous one at that. Apparently there hadn’t been any emergencies until now.

Just when I show up, too. If it weren’t for bad luck…

“That’s it?” Vicks said. “I thought we were almost there.”

“Not yet,” Torres said even as she pulled herself up another rung. “Maybe another ten minutes.”

Her damp clothes clung to her skin as she climbed. Besides the stifling heat and lack of light (Couldn’t have spent a few more bucks and put some lights down here, huh, Campbell? Jesus Christ, man.), the constant swirls of dust around her head made breathing difficult. Torres spent almost just as much time making sure she had a good grip on the next rung before lifting herself up as she did trying not to sneeze or cough from all the refuse floating in the air.

From somewhere below, someone lost that battle and let out a loud sneeze.

“Bless you, if you’re into that sort of thing,” Banks said.

“I’m not, but thanks anyway,” Vicks said.

Torres stopped briefly to look back at them. She could just barely make out Cent all the way in the back. The young man’s dark skin made him easily melt into their cramped surroundings, but she could make out the whites of his eyes as he looked past the two figures before him and met her gaze. She wondered what he was thinking now as Banks “blessed” Vicks.

He still believes. I’m not sure I blame him after tonight.

A day rarely went by that Torres didn’t think about the crosses they’d used back at the Wilshire Apartments to fight off the blue-eyed obayifo. Cent was convinced it was a sign from God that the items had been in their possession when they needed them. He was certain of it, which was why he’d launched his own crusade even before learning of Campbell’s private war against the creatures. Things hadn’t been as white and black for Torres, despite her wishing it was.

“What’s wrong?” Banks, below her.

“What?”

“What’s wrong?” he asked again.

“Nothing. Why?”

“You stopped moving.”

She looked back up the hatch. “Just wanted to make sure I got a good grip.”

She continued up before Banks could keep asking stupid questions. The man moved loudly below her, with Vicks and Cent somewhere after him.

It took another five minutes for them to climb the rest of the hatch. Which was a good thing because Torres was starting to get tired. The heat didn’t help with her stamina. Banks, who was wheezing by the time they reached the top, apparently felt the same way.

There was a round metal door directly above her, its submarine-style turning wheel just inches from her face. She reached up with one hand, the other clinging to the top-most rung, and tried to turn it.

It wouldn’t budge.

Oh, don’t tell me…

She thought she might not have put enough strength into it—God only knew the climb had sapped a lot from her—and tried again, this time with more effort.

The door handle didn’t move an inch.

Come on!

“What’s wrong?” Banks asked.

She lowered her arm to rest it. “It’s not moving.”

“The handle?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it stuck or something?”

“I don’t know.” She glanced past him and sought out Vicks. “Vicks.”

The other woman’s eyes slowly came into focus. “Yeah?”

“Did the blueprints say anything about the hatch door being locked automatically when the emergency protocol’s in place?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so, or you don’t know?”

“Uh…”

“I think that’s a I don’t know,” Banks said.

“Banksy’s right. I don’t know,” Vicks said. “Sorry.”

Yeah, me, too.

“Is it supposed to be locked?” Banks asked.

“Uh,” Vicks said again.

“Goddammit,” Banks said, and sighed perhaps too loudly and overly dramatically.

Not that she blamed him. If they couldn’t open the door, it meant all the climbing had been for nothing. Worse, they would have to return to the belowground facility and wait out the remaining hours before Harold Campbell’s failsafe protocol did what it was supposed to do. Torres hadn’t lied to the others when she said she didn’t want to just sit down there and wait to find out. The very thought of becoming, once again, subject to someone else’s decision-making filled her with anger.

“Is there another way to open it?” Cent asked from all the way below them. She could hear some strain in his voice, probably from all the climbing and, now, treading in place.

“I don’t see any,” Torres said.

“Maybe I should give it a shot,” Banks said. Then, with something that almost looked like an apologetic smile, “No offense.”

“None taken,” Torres said. This was no time for Girls get it done. Banks was clearly the strongest person among the four of them and would have the best chance of opening the hatch. Of course, if it was locked or sealed shut, then even ten of Banks wouldn’t be able to force it open.

It took some careful choreography for the two of them to trade places. Banks, his shotgun slung over his back, had to slide up along the side while she made herself as small as possible. Thank God she had always been thin—too thin, according to her mother—and was able to accommodate Banks’s bulkier form as he scooted past, then up to where she’d been just seconds earlier.

“What’s happening now?” Cent asked.

“They’re trading places,” Vicks said.

Torres lowered herself downward once Banks had settled in above her to give him more room to work. Her own Remington thumped against her back, and she could hear Vicks and Cent’s breathing below her.

She looked down at them. “How you guys doing?”

Vicks grinned pearly white teeth back up at her. “Peachy. Reminds me of the time I went on summer break and got stuck in an emergency escape hatch and couldn’t get out.”

“How’d you eventually get out?”

“I didn’t. You’re talking to a ghost right now. How about you?”

She grinned back. “It’s a real pain in the ass.”

“Oh yeah, it was that, too.”

Torres looked past her and at Cent. “What about you?”

The young man nodded. She could just make out the shape of his face, but it was easier to focus on the sclera of his eyes. “Hanging in there.”

“Was that a joke?”

“No.”

“That was a joke.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Yeah, it was,” Vicks said, and she exchanged another amused grin with Torres.

Cent sighed but stopped fighting them. He said instead, “What about the door?”

She looked back at Banks as he moved into a better position, one hand reaching up and grasping the round handle. He grunted and moved slightly forward to put as much of his body’s power into the attempt.

If the hatch moved at all, she couldn’t tell.

Oh, that’s definitely not good.

Banks took his hand off the handle and gathered himself. After a few seconds, he tried again.

More grunting, more effort, and even beads of smelly sweat dropped from his person and onto Torres.

But the hatch door remained closed.

“Holy shit,” Banks said as he put his hand back on the rungs to rest.

“No good?” Torres asked.

“She’s one tight bitch, that’s for sure.”

“Could you even budge it?”

“Maybe a little.” He glanced down at her with uncertain eyes. “I think.”

Torres nodded, even if she didn’t believe him. Banks didn’t need her to poke holes in his manhood at the moment.

“So are we screwed or what?” Vicks asked from below.

Most likely, Torres thought even if the words that actually came out of her mouth was, “Not yet.”

Torres caught Banks’s puzzled eyes. She imagined he was trying to understand why she had just lied to Vicks.

“You think we can shoot it open?” she asked him.

“This thing?” Banks reached up and banged on the heavy metal plate with his fist. Loud thudding sounds echoed. “It’s solid. Really solid. Only thing shooting it will do is get buckshot buzzing around us, and that’s not a good thing.”

Vicks sighed heavily. “I guess it was too good to be true.”

“I don’t see any electronics up here,” Torres said. “Not even any lights. Or anything that remotely looks like wiring.”

“So?” Banks said.

“That means it’s probably manually sealed.”

“So?” Banks said again.

“If it needs to be manually sealed, that means the computer system didn’t lock it automatically when the emergency protocol kicked in.”

Banks shrugged as much as possible with both hands still clinging to the metal rungs. “And?”

“That means if it needs to be sealed manually, it can be unsealed manually.”

“I told you, this thing won’t budge.”

“That only means it’s sealed from the other side. Maybe we can get the attention of someone up there.”

“A survivor?”

“Yes.”

“What makes you think there are survivors?”

“We survived. Why can’t someone else?”

“Like Sarah,” Vicks said from below her. “And if a desk jockey from Accounting can survive, others can, too. Maybe one of the security boys up there.”

Sarah! Torres had already forgotten about the woman they’d made contact with on the phone earlier. She hadn’t been thinking about anyone in particular when she’d made the suggestion to Banks.

“And how are we gonna get anyone’s attention?” Banks asked. “I told you, shooting it will only be bad for us.”

“We don’t have to shoot it,” Torres said. “What do you have on you that you can use to bang against the door? Make enough noise to attract someone’s attention?”

“I might have something,” Banks said. The former security man turned back around and slipped something out from one of his pockets. It was a small portable Maglite flashlight.

“How heavy is that thing?”

“Let’s hope it’s heavy enough.”

Let’s hope, she thought as she watched Banks bang one end of the flashlight against the hatch, producing a much louder noise than he’d managed with just his fist. She just hoped it was loud enough for someone on the other side to hear.

As Banks banged away, Vicks said, “Hey. Question.”

Banks stopped momentarily to look down. So did Torres.

“What if, uh, the person who hears you isn’t, you know, a person at all?” Vicks asked.

Banks exchanged a quick nervous glance with Torres.

“We don’t have any choice,” Torres said.

“You sure?” Banks asked as he swiped at a heavy bead of sweat on his brow.

She nodded, and said again, “We don’t have any choice.”

“Alrighty, then.” Banks turned back around, poised the Maglite just underneath the hatch, then swung it upward.

Another loud clang echoed up and down the passageway.

Something small and black fell past Torres’s eyes and disappeared below. “What was that?”

“What was what?” Banks asked as he stopped banging.

“I saw something fall down.”

“You did?” Banks glanced around before discovering what that something was. “My flashlight. A piece of it broke off.”

“I thought you said that thing was tough?”

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure they didn’t invent it to hammer on heavy gauge metal.”

I guess not.

“Keep trying,” she said. “We won’t need a flashlight anyway if we can’t get that thing open.”

Banks returned to banging what remained of his flashlight on the hatch door. Another loud clang.

Then another…

Each time Banks struck the hatch, another piece of his flashlight fell past Torres’s head and disappeared into the darkness underneath them. One landed in Vicks’s hair, which wasn’t quite as spiky as it’d been before they stepped inside the humid vertical tunnel.

“No, Mom, that’s not you-know-what in my hair, it’s just chunks of a flashlight,” Vicks said to no one in particular.

Torres smiled to herself. At least one of them was having a good time.

“How’s it going?” Cent asked from somewhere below them.

“It’s going,” Banks said, banging again. This time Torres thought he put more force on the blow, creating a bigger noise—and falling debris—as a result.

“Don’t get frustrated,” Torres said. “Take your time.”

“Frustrated? Who, me?”

“Yeah, you.”

He sighed. “Maybe me.” Then, hitting the door again—but this time, not quite as hard—he added, “I’m just wondering something.”

“What’s that?”

“How long we can last in here before we have to crawl back down.”

“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.” Then, wanting to get his mind off the possible defeat, “What else do you have on you that you can use?”

“My knife.”

“Is it heavy enough for the job?”

“Probably not.”

“So what else?”

“Let me think for a moment…”

“The shotgun?”

“I’d rather not lose it if I can help it.”

I second that.

“What about his head?” Vicks asked. “It looked sturdy enough to me.”

“Har har,” Banks said. “Real funny, Vicks.”

“Thanks. I’m trying to work on my stand-up routine.”

“It needs a lot more work. Better yet, I’d just give up if I were you.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” Vicks was saying when Banks suddenly stopped what he was doing and took a quick step down the ladder and almost stepped on her hand.

She pulled it away just in time as his boot settled on the rung. “What is it?”

“The hatch,” Banks said. “It just moved.”

“You moved it?”

“No. Someone else. From the other side.”

Banks quickly put what remained of his flashlight away and drew his sidearm. Torres did the same, while clinging to the rung with her other hand.

Above Banks, the submarine door handle was indeed moving. It turned slowly before starting to pick up speed as whoever was on the other side gathered momentum.

Banks’s breathing had picked up as he drew a bead on the round door with his Glock. Torres held her sidearm at the ready, trying to find a good angle to aim without Banks in her crosshairs. It was tricky because he was directly above her and any slight movement in any direction on his part would put him in her line of fire. At this range, a gunshot would likely kill Banks. Worse, he’d plummet down the rungs and take them right with him.

Torres calmed her breathing as the spinning submarine handle finally stopped. There was a series of loud clangs as whoever was on the other side worked the latches one by one.

Banks glanced down at her quickly. She saw the worry on his face despite the semidarkness. No doubt about it, Banks was suddenly regretting having traded places with her. She gave him a nod of assurance, not that it seemed to help.

The sound of metal grinding against metal as the door began to lift.

Rising, rising, and rising still…

Torres expected shafts of light but instead only glimpsed darkness. A slight creak as the door stopped moving and a figure stared down at them, the face hidden in shadows.

A human figure.

Torres breathed a sigh of relief, as did Banks.

“You folks need a hand?”

4

JOHN

Milly had stopped screaming by the time John reached the bathroom. Or maybe she would have kept on screaming if she could, if the creature hovering over her hadn’t already ripped out her throat, taking with it everything that allowed her to produce sounds.

John wasn’t quite prepared for the reality of what he was seeing. He’d been somewhat prepared—the briefing, while not complete, was thorough enough that he had a feeling he’d confront something that wasn’t quite…human. Even so, what crouched in front of him, slurping at blood coming out of Milly’s neck, was still a shock to his system.

Note to self: Next time get the whole story before you agree to a job, you fucking idiot.

Next time. If there was a next time. Staring at what was left of Milly, John wasn’t so sure about that.

Also next time, he should bring along a weapon, because all he had right now at his disposal was a hole puncher. A one-pound object designed to make holes in paper. A vital instrument to recordkeepers and office drones all around the world, even in today’s high-tech age, but not so much to a man like him, right this second.

The creature was small, maybe even child-like in size. It didn’t so much as feast on Milly as it slobbered over her corpse, greedily licking up the blood that oozed out of her and spilled across the floor like free-flowing spilled milk. The effect of the red ceiling lights on its pruned flesh was curious, and for a moment or two, John wondered if he was really seeing what he was seeing.

He blinked.

Yeah, it was still there, and so the theory that he was dreaming all of this went out the window. He would have so liked to wake up right about now.

A slight nauseous sensation ran through him. He’d seen worse, of course, but not by very much. There was something about this, something almost…primal that turned his stomach. It had been a long time now since he’d seen something he had never laid eyes on before. This was one of those.

Note to self: Increase your asking price.

The people who had sent him here hadn’t known very much about the creatures, only that they subsisted on blood. Where did they come from? What drove them other than hunger? How many of them were out there? What else could they do besides be very hard to kill?

Milly’s body lay spread on the floor of the bathroom, legs and arms splayed out from her sides as if she had been crucified on a cross. There was a large tear in her dress. Her blouse, once white, was now almost pink. She wasn’t a bad-looking girl, even in death.

John wasn’t sure how long he stood there at the open door, staring, trying to wrap his head around what he was seeing. More importantly, trying to come up with a plan to proceed. Scenarios clicked across his mind, some more palatable than others.

“Goddamn you’re ugly.”

He probably should have kept his mouth shut because up to this point the creature had all but ignored him. It was so focused on Milly that John wondered if it even knew he was there. It did, now, as it lifted its head. Dark black eyes, made even darker by the emergency red lights, peered across the small distance at him.

They locked eyes.

Or at least, John locked eyes with it. He wasn’t sure if it actually saw him because soon it turned away and resumed slurping up Milly’s blood.

Here goes nothing…

He took two quick steps forward, expecting the undead thing to raise its head a second time to acknowledge his sudden movement, but it never did. It continued to drink instead.

He took two more steps, followed by a final fifth one, before delivering a swing with the hole puncher that would have made his chums on the high school baseball team proud. The puncher was made of steel alloy, but it shouldn’t have been nearly tough enough to crater the side of the creature’s skull and lift it up and off Milly.

Shit! Maybe I’m stronger than I look!

Or maybe the creature was just weaker than it looked, that a hole puncher could drop it like a rock. Whatever the case, it didn’t stay down for very long. It was trying to get back up when John straddled it and began driving the puncher—now bent slightly at the top—into its head. He struck with two hands, plunging the office supply down with everything he had until the head was gone.

Or until he couldn’t recognize the head for what it was anymore.

John staggered up and retreated slightly, watching with dismay and fascination as the creature, despite the loss of most of its head, nevertheless continued to stare back at him with its eyes.

No, not eyes.

Eye.

It only had one eye left, the eyeball dangling an inch from its eye socket. One of his blows had cracked open its skull, finishing the job his baseball swing had started. Slow gobs of black ooze dripped from the remains of its head, reaching out and becoming one with Milly’s pool of blood.

The thing’s limbs continued to move, pressing against the tiles, trying to get back up. It was clearly having trouble. Was that because it didn’t really have much of a head left? How the hell was the creature even still moving without a brain?

Now I’ve seen everything.

A scream from behind him, coming from almost the other side of the floor, where he’d left Jay and Sarah.

A male voice.

Jay? Was that Jay screaming?

Voices shouting, but he couldn’t quite make them out.

The creature, somehow, heard it too even though it didn’t have anything resembling ears anymore, and the pupil on its remaining eyeball moved in the direction of the door.

Jesus fucking Christ.

He fought against the need to stomp its remaining eyeball into the bathroom floor. There was no point to it. If it could survive with no brain and barely a head, what would a smashed eyeball do?

John turned and fled back into the darkness.

“Sarah!” he shouted as he ran. “Jay!”

No response from either co-worker. He found out why when he arrived where he’d left them—and neither one of them were there. Except for Peter’s body, which remained spread-eagled in the aisle. He’d continued to bleed out, but there was something new: fresh bloody footprints that went up the aisle, toward the elevator.

The size of the prints were small. Pumps.

Sarah.

The sound of tearing flesh led him to the nearest wall, where he found Jay underneath another one of the undead things. It was chewing through his neck, slobbering as blood dripped messily from its chin. Like the one in the bathroom with Milly, this one didn’t bother to acknowledge his presence. It was too busy feeding.

That’s two…

More bloody shoe prints, leading away from Jay and his killer. Sarah’s. She’d fled when Jay was felled.

Smart girl.

He followed Sarah’s tracks back to Peter. She’d treaded not just Peter’s blood on her way off the floor but had also stepped in Jay’s, too. So where would she flee? One of the lower floors, in all likelihood. Would she take a chance and head for the roof? Maybe, if she thought there were others there. Except John knew from past days that the only floor that was occupied at night was theirs.

A burst of gunfire, coming from below him. Automatic gunfire. Someone had really let loose and probably drained an entire magazine with one pull of a trigger. Definitely not something John would have done. In a gun battle, the only thing worse than having no bullets was wasting the bullets you did have.

He hurried up the aisle toward the elevator. John glanced back once, just to make sure one of the creatures wasn’t on his tail. He was more worried about the one with Jay. The other one, in the bathroom, would take a while to get down here. That is, if it could even still move in its current state.

No one and nothing back there except darkness, empty desks, red cubicle walls, and powered-off computers. The only glow came from the four monitors where he, Sarah, Jay, and Milly were working when all of this happened. Their lights reminded him that he was, suddenly, all alone.

It was a good thing John was used to doing things all by himself.

The elevator had gone back down, not that John had any thoughts of using it anyway. He didn’t like the prospect of being trapped in there, then at the mercy of whatever awaited him on the other side, one bit. The stairwell was the better option. It would allow him space to change directions on a whim.

And fight, if he had to. He had a feeling he might have to.

The thunderous cracks of gunfire from below him, inside the stairwell itself. That meant someone had managed to retreat inside. Curiously, there was nothing from above. So the chaos was limited to the first, second, and third floors. It made the fourth and fifth potentially available to him.

He went down, drawn by the familiar noise of bullet casings ricocheting off hard concrete and muzzle flashes. He passed the second without a problem and didn’t stop long enough to listen for any action coming from the floor itself. Whoever had retreated into the stairwell at the bottom was still wasting a whole lot of bullets on something.

There were two of them on the landing—he recognized the red tabs on their shoulders as belonging to the island’s security personnel—and they were sending bullet after bullet into one of the creatures. They had severed both its legs and one of its arms, but the undead thing continued crawling toward them in a sea of its own black blood. The men had backed up until they had their backs against the wall with nowhere else to go. The creature was five feet away and, in its current state, not getting any closer anytime soon.

One of the men heard him coming and glanced over his shoulder. “What the fuck are you doing here? Get to shelter!”

John ignored him and hopped down the last two steps. “You’re wasting bullets. You can’t kill it.”

The other security man stopped firing just long enough to reload. He, too, glanced back at John. “What did you say?”

“You can’t kill it,” John said. He walked past them and toward the creature.

The thing might have snarled at him through a gaunt face riddled with bullets. Thick liquid oozed from the holes in its cheeks and forehead, and the lower half of its jaw was hanging on by threads of sinewy muscle.

John struck it in the face with the hole puncher, then kicked it in the chest as it reared up slightly from the first blow. The creature flopped backward and landed on its back…just before it started to try to right itself. Except it was a difficult task because it only had one arm left to work with. Not that that stopped it from trying anyway. Thick black blood dripped from its wounds as it moved about like a turtle on its back.

Behind John, the two security men hadn’t resumed firing. The first-floor landing was littered with their spent shell casings and at least two empty magazines. They were both armed with MP5 submachine guns, along with holstered sidearms. The one who had spotted John first was named WILLIAMS. The other one was CHASE. Both were in their late twenties, the black splashes on their dark uniforms standing out even underneath the red lights.

“What the fuck is that thing?” Williams said as he, like John and Chase, watched the creature try in vain to turn itself over onto its front. As it struggled, it spread even more of the black puddles of blood.

“I don’t know,” John said. “I just know that you can’t kill it. At least not with bullets.”

“And that works?” Chase asked, nodding at the hole puncher in John’s hand. It was clearly a rhetorical question since he’d seen John attack the creature with it and it hadn’t died. “What the hell is that?”

“It’s a hole puncher.”

“Doesn’t look like a hole puncher.”

“It used to be a hole puncher. And no, it doesn’t kill them, but it’s more effective.” He turned around to the two men. Their faces were covered in sweat and black goo. Blood, but not theirs. “What’s happening on the island?”

“Emergency shutdown protocol,” Williams said. “The whole island’s being sealed off until we get the all clear.”

“Why?”

“Something happened belowground. Then that something got up here.”

“How?”

“Beats the hell out of me.”

“Who would know?”

“Benson,” Chase said. “But he’s dead.” He nodded at the creature. “It fucking chewed through his neck, then came after us.”

“What about the rest of your guys?”

Williams and Chase exchanged a look.

“Right,” John said. They didn’t have to tell him that the situation was much worse than he’d thought. “So what now?”

“We’re heading to the rooftop,” Chase said.

“The helicopter?”

“Yeah,” Williams said. “The entire building…”

“What?”

“It’s fucked. It’s all fucked. These things”—he pointed his MP5 at the creature—“are everywhere.”

“Like you said, they don’t die,” Chase said. “Doesn’t matter how many times you shoot them. They just keep coming. That ain’t right.”

Now that’s an understatement.

A burst of gunfire, this time coming from the other side of the stairwell door. Both Williams and Chased tensed up but neither men moved. The creature, meanwhile, had finally managed to turn over, and was now crawling toward them. Slowly, pulling itself forward by its one remaining hand, smearing blood in its path.

John glanced around the landing, stopping at the heavy metal door that led belowground. He’d passed it over a hundred times in the last few months since arriving on the island. It was the reason he was down here in the first place. He hadn’t expected the two security guys to be standing in front of it, though.

“Sorry to tell you guys, but there’s no helicopter on the rooftop,” John said.

There was a latch on the door that didn’t budge when he tried, and the panel on the side was blinking red with the words EMERGENCY PROTOCOL ACTIVATED in bold letters. The door itself had to be at least a good half dozen inches of solid steel. There was no way he was getting into it without a tank.

Well, there goes that brilliant plan.

“You sure?” Chase was asking him. “The chopper’s gone?”

“It was the first thing I checked before I came down here,” John lied. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them…and would very much benefit him.

“Goddammit,” Williams said. “Now what?”

“The lower levels,” John said. He banged his fist on the metal door and got a dull thud in response. “We should head down there. It has to be safer than up here.”

“Can’t,” Case said.

“Why not?”

“It’s sealed. Emergency protocol. No one’s getting down there or coming up here until someone gives the all clear.”

“But you said those things got up here from down there.”

“Yeah, but we don’t know how.”

“How many ways up are there?” he asked. If he couldn’t access the belowground facility directly, there had to be an alternative.

“Just that door.” Then, remembering, “And the emergency hatch in the warehouse next door.”

“Emergency hatch?”

“Yeah. They might have come up through that.”

There was a soft thwacking sound, and when John looked back, saw that Williams had plunged a knife into the top of the creature’s skull. The security man stepped back and stared, mouth slightly agape, at the sight of the undead thing seeming to hiss back at him in annoyance, before it continued to pull itself forward again.

“Jesus Christ,” Chase said. “What are these things?”

“You don’t know?” John asked.

The two men exchanged another quick glance before shaking their heads. “You?”

“No,” John said. This time it wasn’t a complete lie. He clearly knew more about what Harold Campbell was doing on Bird Island than his fellow coworkers, but he didn’t have all the answers. Not even close, actually. “How many of them did you see?”

Chase shook his head. “A dozen. Maybe more. We didn’t exactly stand around counting.”

“More,” Williams said. “A lot more. Some of them…” He let the rest of it trail off.

“What?” John prompted.

“I think some of them were still wearing clothes. But not this one,” he said, turning back to the creature with the knife jutting from its skull. It had made up a few inches since the last time they checked, but no more. At this rate, it would probably reach them at the back of the stairwell landing by tomorrow afternoon.

“What kind of clothes?” John asked.

“Uniforms. They looked…” Again, he let the rest trail off.

“What? They looked what?”

“Like security uniforms.”

“How many of you security guys are on the island?”

“Twenty above and twenty below.”

Forty total, John thought, looking down at the creature and wondering what number it used to be. Because there was no doubt it was, once upon a time, a human being.

John watched Chase take aim and fire a burst into the skull of the creature with his MP5. Fragments of bone pelted the floor and wall, and the black-skinned thing slumped down into its own pool of blood.

Then it raised its head—or what was left of it; there wasn’t very much—and resumed crawling.

“Don’t waste your bullets,” John said, and thought to himself, Because I might need every one of them later.

Chase glared at him. “Who the hell are you anyway?”

“John Duncan. I work on the third floor.”

“You’re Human Resources?”

“Yup. Night shift.”

“Where are the others?”

“I don’t know. I was looking for them when I ran into you guys.”

Williams had stepped forward again and begun stomping on what was left of the creature’s head. His nostrils flared as he put everything he had into each blow. When he was done, there was just another puddle of flesh and bone and blood.

…and the undead thing, even minus most of its head, resumed pulling itself, inch by inch, toward him.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Chase said.

“I need a gun,” John said.

The two security men looked over at him.

“A gun,” John said. “Give me one of your guns.”

“Fuck off,” Chase said.

“No way you’re getting shit,” Williams.

“I just need one,” John said.

“No—” Williams said.

Or he started to say before John struck him in the throat with the edge of his palm. The security man gagged and stumbled, letting his MP5 fall in front of him. Fortunately it was on a sling and only thumped against his chest as he backed up against the stairwell wall.

Chase lifted his submachine gun, but John was quicker, stepping into the other man’s personal space in the blink of an eye. He grabbed and jerked Chase’s arm to one side while he punched the man in the kidney, then delivered another blow to his chest with his other hand. Chase somehow managed to squeeze the trigger anyway and another burst of gunfire rocked the stairwell, sending bullets into the wall and shell casings through the air.

Shit, John thought, mourning the loss of those stray bullets.

He struck Chase in the neck, similar to how he’d taken down Williams, but Chase proved more resilient and didn’t go down right away. Two more strikes to the solar plexus sent Chase down next to his fellow security man.

John wrestled the MP5 from Chase, then relieved him of his handgun. He didn’t do the same to Williams, who sat on the floor, back against the wall, struggling to breathe. The other man’s face had turned a shade of blue, but he didn’t look as if he was going to die anytime soon.

Probably.

He walked over to the creature and picked up the knife that had fallen loose when Chase stomped on its head. He crouched next to the pathetic thing—how the hell was it even still alive?—and chopped off its one remaining hand with the blade. The creature slumped.

It twitched, but without limbs to pull it, couldn’t resume its crawling.

He stood up and turned back to Williams. “Don’t say I didn’t do anything for you guys.”

With that, John opened the stairwell door and slipped into the darkness of the lobby. Armed with an MP5 and a Glock in his front waistband, he felt better about his predicament. Not a whole lot better, but better.

Note to self: Never, ever take a job without knowing all the details.

5

CENT

They climbed up one at a time. First Banks, then Torres, Vicks, and finally, Cent. The room they ended up in was barren, with a concrete floor and walls and ceiling. Red lights, with the same intensity as the emergency lights belowground, provided the illumination they needed to see with. Not that there was much to see. This wasn’t a room designed for comfort. Its singular purpose was to provide a second way to enter and exit the belowground facility.

“Benton,” Torres said, almost grudgingly shaking hands with the man that had opened the room’s submarine door for them, “what are you doing up here?”

“Same thing you guys are,” Benton said.

“How did you get out?”

“Same way, except the hatch wasn’t locked when I came up.”

“You locked it?”

“I didn’t want anything to get up here that wasn’t supposed to.”

“You camping in here or something?” Banks asked.

“No,” Benton said. “I heard the knocking. Good thing for you.”

“Lucky me.” Banks held up his flashlight. Or what was left of it. He tossed it to the floor. “I guess I won’t be using that anymore.”

For someone who had lived through the bloody chaos of the cafeteria, Benton was in surprisingly good shape. Except for the blood on his clothes (none of which appeared to be his) he appeared relatively unscathed.

Vicks noticed the same thing because she glanced over at Cent and they exchanged a curious look. He nodded but didn’t give voice to what was on his mind. She didn’t either. Something was going on here, something that Benton wasn’t telling them. But for now, they would keep it to themselves.

For now...

“Where are we exactly?” Torres was asking Benton.

“The warehouse next to the main building,” Benton said.

“That’s the motor pool,” Banks said.

“Indeed it is.” He led them to a door, then opened it a tiny crack and stepped aside to let them see.

Cent peeked over Torres’s shoulder at a dark and empty garage on the other side. The platform that had been used to lower and raise vehicles from the Cave was almost exactly in the very center, surrounded by offices with glass windows and all-terrain vehicles. There were no bodies that Cent could see and the air was surprisingly…fresh. That last part might have had something to do with the wide-open garage doors all the way across from them. And beyond that, the woods.

“Where is everybody?” Banks asked.

“I don’t know,” Benton said. “There was no one here when I came up. I thought about heading for the main building, but it didn’t sound like things were going well in there.”

“So you just stayed here?” Torres asked.

“Figured it was my best course of action.”

“Did you try calling for help?”

“You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

Benton looked over at Vicks. “She doesn’t know?”

The former lab coat shook her head, before saying, “There’s no phone service on the island. The only way to call in or out is using the main systems.”

“Like when we used that pen doohickey of hers,” Banks said.

“Exactly. You need to piggyback on the systems in order to get anything out.”

“So can we do that? But with a phone call?” Cent asked.

“Not from up here. And not while the emergency protocol is in effect. You’d need someone to give the all clear first.”

“But we just did that, didn’t we?”

“The systems down there and up here are different. It’s…complicated.” She gave him an almost apologetic smile. “Mr. Campbell’s idea. He wanted the two areas to be separated when it came to, well, times like this.”

“Great,” Banks said. “Back to square one.”

“You guys know what happened down there? How this all started?” Benton asked.

This time Cent exchanged a look with Torres. They had a pretty good idea what had happened, how the obayifo had gotten loose to wreak havoc on the underground facility, and it surprised Cent (and maybe it did Torres, too) that Benton didn’t know. Or was pretending he didn’t know. Either answer left Cent suspicious of the man.

“We don’t know for sure,” Torres said. “Somehow, one of those things got loose.”

“No shit? How did that happen?”

“Like I said: We don’t know for sure. But it happened, and this is the result.”

“What is ‘this?’”

“A shitstorm of shit, that’s what ‘this’ is,” Banks said. “You find out what happened to the aboveground Security?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Benton said. “I haven’t left the warehouse. I don’t have a clue what’s happening out there. Just that…”

“What?” Torres prompted.

“Earlier, and for a while there, it sounded like World War Three in the main building.”

“And now?”

“Now…” He mimed “listening.” “…This.”

This was the eerie silence. There didn’t seem to be any activity at all beyond the little hatch room they were in. For an island with hundreds of employees, one that was in the midst of what was clearly an emergency, the lack of noise, activity, or anything whatsoever to indicate there were still people out there, was more overwhelmingly disturbing.

No one said a word for a while. It was as if they were waiting to hear something that would prove Benton a liar.

Except they didn’t. The only sounds at all were the whistling of wind through the trees outside the metal building.

“What about the helicopter?” Banks finally asked.

“What about it?” Benton said.

“Is it still up there?”

“Again…”

“You never left,” Banks finished for him.

“Bingo.”

Cent peered out the crack in the door again, measuring the distance between the room they were in and the large garage doors all the way at the other side of the building. The first priority was to close those doors so nothing could get in. The urge to run out there and do just that was maddening, but he held back. Benton hadn’t done it for the same reason he couldn’t—it would attract the attention of the obayifo and alert them to fresh prey. Just because they couldn’t hear them out there didn’t mean they were all gone.

“What do they want with the island?” Benton was asking them.

“We don’t know,” Torres said. “It might not be the island itself.”

“Then what?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

She was being coy there. She had a better understanding of the creatures than Benton apparently did but was keeping them from him. Cent, too, knew this wasn’t about the island. What would the obayifo want with Harold Campbell’s island? He wasn’t thinking about the black-eyed ones, of course. It was obvious what those wanted. It was the Blue Eyes that he was concerned with. They weren’t single-minded in their need for blood. They had also proven belowground that they could think tactically.

He closed the door—there were no locks—and turned back to the others. They were still talking in low voices. As they did, Cent paid close attention to Benton. He’d never especially liked the man, and after what had happened in the last few hours, that dislike had only gotten stronger.

“I know one thing, we can’t just stay in here until tomorrow,” Banks was saying. “Without an all clear, that emergency protocol that locked us down is going to kick into gear. We better find a way off this hunk of rock before that happens.”

Cent looked down at his own watch. Ten minutes to midnight. The time surprised him. He thought it was much later than that. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on his part. The obayifo were creatures of the night and they thrived in the darkness. Daylight was his and the others’ salvation, and the creatures’ certain death.

“We should wait it out,” Cent said. “Sunup is just six hours away. As long as we’re in here, and they’re out there, we should be fine. In the morning, we can find a way off the island.”

“What about the boats?” Torres asked Benton.

The man shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Right. You never bothered to leave the warehouse.”

“You say that like it was the wrong move.”

“Did I?”

“Yeah.”

This time it was Torres’s turn to shrug. “It would have been nice if you had more information for us. As it stands, we’re making things up as we go because we don’t know what’s out there.” Before Benton could respond, she looked away from him and to the others. “But Cent is right. If we can make it to morning, we can take our time finding a way off the island if the boats aren’t where they’re supposed to be. We would still have plenty of time until whatever is supposed to happen, happens.”

“Wait, wait,” Banks said. “What’s the deal with sunlight? Why would it make any difference?”

Vicks answered him before Cent or Torres could. “The creatures have a fatal allergy to sunlight.”

“You serious?”

“Like a heart attack. If we can make it to morning, we’d have the luxury of getting off the island without having to fight for it every step of the way.”

“These things can’t survive sunlight? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“You didn’t know that?”

Banks snorted. “No one tells us anything.” He looked over at Benton. “You knew this, too?”

Benton nodded. “Of course. And they’re right: In the morning, we can use the boats at the beach. There should be plenty of them for everyone. So all we have to do is just wait the night out.”

“Sounds easy enough,” Banks said.

“And if the boats are still there,” Torres said.

There was more than just a statement there and Benton noticed it, too.

He smiled at Torres, even though there was nothing authentic about it. “We can only hope, right?”

“Yes. We can only hope.”

“Damn, that makes things a whole lot easier,” Banks said, apparently oblivious to the tension between Benton and Torres, something that both Cent and Vicks, from her curious glance over in his direction, had caught.

“Does it?” Torres asked.

“Yeah. Right?” Then, “Doesn’t it?”

“Maybe. All I know is that it’s not just the black-eyed obayifo out there, but the blue-eyed one, too. Those things are different. They’re smarter.”

“Too smart,” Vicks said. “They might not just let us wait till morning in here.”

“Then we don’t ask them,” Banks said. “Seal the building and hunker down. As long as they can’t get in, we don’t have anything to worry about. Come morning, we get the hell out of Dodge. Easy peasy.”

Cent stared at Banks for a moment, wondering if he really thought everything was going to be so “easy peasy.”

“Assuming there are still boats out there,” Vicks said. “I would say another option is the chopper, but I’m pretty sure no one in this room knows how to fly one.” She glanced around at them for conformation. No one said a word. “Boats or nothing it is.”

“If the boats are gone, I’ll swim,” Banks said.

“You know how to swim?”

“Of course I know how to swim. Who doesn’t?”

“Not everyone knows how to swim.”

“I don’t care. I’m not everyone.”

“We need to be careful, and quiet,” Torres said. “The longer we can go to avoid detection, the better chance we’ll have.”

“That’s if they’re still on the island,” Benton said. “It’s pretty damn quiet out there.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Banks said. “Or, in this case, don’t see those things.”

“All right, then. Sounds like a solid plan to me,” Benton said.

“Easy peasy,” Banks said again, sounding more convinced than the last time.

Cent looked across the room at Torres. He could see on her face that she was thinking the same thing he was: It’s not going to be that easy.

* * *

Whether it was going to be that easy to get off the island or not, it really didn’t matter. The bottom line was that hiding in the warehouse and waiting out the night was the best course of action. It was to that end that they left the room with the emergency hatch and did the best they could to fortify the warehouse.

The room itself was near the back, behind a door that looked like any other door, with the word HATCH spraypainted over it. According to Benton, the door, like the hatch itself, was unlocked when he made it up earlier.

“Someone opened them before I showed up,” Benton said. “Lucky me, or I wouldn’t have been able to get up here.”

“Any ideas who?” Torres had asked.

“None. Maybe some of the security boys.”

Torres had turned to Banks. “Would they do that? Try to access the underground in an emergency?”

Banks had shrugged. “It’s possible. They might have lost contact with us and was trying to figure out what happened. They would know about the emergency protocol, too.”

Cent didn’t buy the explanation, but no one asked for his opinion. From the look on her face, Torres didn’t, either. Not that they could do anything about it. Or if there was even anything to do. Whatever had happened—however it had happened—had benefited them. Cent remembered something Dutch liked to say, about looking at gift horses in the mouth. This was probably one of those times.

There were no bodies in the warehouse, which was unexpected. There wasn’t even anything that looked like a fight had occurred. The entire building was impossibly clean save for all the oil and grease that accompanied a place used exclusively for storing and maintaining vehicles. While the warehouse was next to the main building, it wasn’t actually attached to it, which made closing the doors easier without attracting attention. They did it by hand, pulling the long and heavy metal pieces into place without allowing them to slam.

The island remained unnervingly quiet around them. Even the animals in the woods seemed to have taken flight. He couldn’t detect birds or insects chirping anywhere. Granted, the buildings were separated from the woods by about fifty yards, but even so…

They’re gone. All the animals are gone, because they know exactly what’s happening on Bird Island.

Too bad we can’t just spread our wings and fly away, too.

After they closed, then locked the front garage doors, they retreated to the back. Cent went into an office with Vicks, who wanted to see if any of the equipment was still working. The power continued to hum around them but they hadn’t turned any lights on that wasn’t already on before. The goal was to stay hidden until morning.

There were a half dozen or so rooms in the building, most of them offices, but a few were employee lounges and a mini cafeteria. Vicks peeked in and found the main office, which also happened to be the biggest one by far, on the right side and about ten meters from the hatch room.

Vicks hopped into a chair and slid her way over to a computer. She powered it up, but it was as far as she got. A password prompt stopped her dead in her tracks. “Dang it.”

“Password.”

“Uh huh.”

“So that’s it?”

She leaned back in her chair and sighed. “Pretty much.” She spun around to face him. “Unless you know how to hack a computer.”

“Um…”

“Didn’t think so.” She stood up and walked over to the window and looked out at the others. But it wasn’t Torres or Banks she was focusing on, it was Benton. “I don’t trust that guy.”

Cent walked over to join her. “Neither do I.”

“You’ve met him before, right?”

“Not really. We met two nights ago for the first time, when the Blue Eyes was captured. He was the one who captured it.”

“By himself?”

“No. He had a team with him. But he led it.”

“He’s young.”

“Is that why you don’t trust him? His age?”

“Nah.”

“What is it?”

“His eyes. They’re squirrely.”

“Squirrely?”

“Something my uncle used to tell me. You can’t trust guys with squirrely eyes.”

“I’ve never heard that one before.”

“Unc Morton was in the Army. Special Forces, I was told. It might have been something they say over there.”

As if he could hear them talking about him, Benton glanced over and smiled.

Cent didn’t bother to return it. Neither did Vicks.

“Remember when we saw him on the monitors?” Cent said. “In the cafeteria?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“How did he get out of that?”

“Good question. Should we ask him?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think we should let him know that we saw what happened in the cafeteria. Not until we know more about him. Or…”

“Or?”

“Or we can trust him.”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

They stood watching Benton together, not saying anything for a while. Cent shared Vicks’s suspicion. He’d never particularly liked Benton, even when they’d first met. There was always something slightly “off” about the man. Something that he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but it lingered nonetheless.

Finally, he said, “Squirrely eyes, huh?”

Vicks chuckled. “Yeah.”

“I like Uncle Morton.”

“He’d like you, too.”

He gave her a surprise glance. “You think so?”

“Of course. Unc Morton likes everyone that I like. Despite our age difference, we have the same taste in things. Even men.”

“Always?”

“Always.”

“Definitely would like to meet your Uncle Morton one of these days.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Cent was smiling to himself when he saw something flicker in the corner of his eyes. He glanced over to where the rooftop and back wall ended.

“What is it?” Vicks asked.

“I saw something moving up there,” Cent said. He hurried over to the door, then outside.

Vicks ran after him. “What did you see?”

“I don’t know yet.”

The others glanced over at the sound of Cent’s voice.

“How’d it go?” Torres asked.

“Not good,” Vicks said. Then, quickly, “Cent saw something.”

All eyes turned to him, but Cent ignored them and half-ran toward the back. His knife was already in his hand, the sharp blade glistening underneath a stream of moonlight. Footsteps, as the others chased from behind.

There was something there, clinging to the wall near the window. It was already inside the building and as he neared it, Cent could make out a sliver in the window where it had been opened for whatever it was to slip through.

“I see it!” That was Banks.

“Where?” Benton, this time.

“Third window!”

“Don’t shoot!” Torres, almost shouting.

“Why the hell not?” Banks again.

“You’ll draw them to us.”

“They already know we’re here!”

“No, they don’t,” Cent said. “That’s not an obayifo.” He stared at the shadow clinging to the edge of the window. “That’s a man.”

The “man” began climbing down, utilizing parts of the warehouse’s supporting beams and joists. He moved like some kind of human-shaped spider and with the dexterity of someone who had done this exact thing his entire life. Finally, the man got close enough to the floor that he let go and jumped the last ten feet or so.

He straightened up. “Nice call, kid.”

The others hurried forward, Banks with his shotgun trained on the newcomer. “Who the hell are you, mister?”

The man stepped out of the shadows. “John Duncan. Human Resources.”

6

TORRES

The man who called himself John Duncan didn’t look like a desk jockey. For one, despite his clothes—white dress shirt and black slacks—he was clearly in very good shape. Not that office workers couldn’t be gym rats, too, but they were a rare breed. Besides his physical appearance, the man had just scaled the side of the warehouse on the exterior, then did the same once inside. How many people from Human Resources could do that?

Cent was equally unconvinced because he was watching the man carefully, often from the side where Duncan couldn’t return the favor. Cent had done the same to Benton ever since the “Field Technician” opened the hatch door for them. He’d even done it to her when he didn’t think she noticed. It was trademark Suspicious Cent.

And Cent had good instincts. She was uneasy around Benton as well and had spent most of the time trying to catch him in a lie. She could tell he was lying, though not about what, exactly. Torres had been around too many criminals, too many people with something to hide, to just ignore her BS Meter when it started going off.

For whatever reason, Benton had inserted himself into their group, as had Duncan. She took some solace in the knowledge she had weapons to deal with them should they show their true colors. The semiautomatic Remington and the Glock in her hip holster could deal with most things the two men sprung on her.

There was the possibility they could be partners. Or “in cahoots,” as Wheeler would have called it. She didn’t dismiss that outright because, if she’d learned anything after the Wilshire Apartments, it was that anything and everything was possible.

Torres was also comforted in the fact Cent thought the same. And if Cent thought it, then probably Vicks too since the two of them were inseparable. As for Banks, Torres could probably count on him. Unlike Benton or Duncan, the former security man had fought his way up from the belowground facility alongside her. That kind of shared experience tended to bond you to someone.

“Where were you when all of this started?” Torres asked Duncan. They stood in the dark interior of the warehouse, slightly spread out, but within hearing distance and no one needed to shout. Every now and then, Torres would scan the high windows around them, reminding herself how Duncan had gotten here and that an obayifo could do the same.

“Third floor,” Duncan said.

He was carrying an MP5, which looked odd hanging off a sling in front of him. The submachine gun was a strange contrast to his clothes. The same was true of the Glock in his front waistband.

Someone from Human Resources with a gun. Now that’s something you don’t see every day.

“The night shift,” the man continued. “There were four of us in the beginning, but it quickly became just me.”

“I didn’t know there was even a night shift,” Bank said.

“Me neither,” Vicks added.

Duncan chuckled. Apparently he’d heard this before. “You’d be surprised how much paperwork the island generates. Travel, expenses, accommodations… Trust me, there’s no shortage of things to file on a constant basis. Most of it gets done on the day shift, but we tackle whatever’s left and needs tending to.”

Paperwork, Torres thought amusingly to herself. Of course there would be paperwork. Even here, on an island in international waters, with an organization built to fight a supernatural race of creatures that the entire world didn’t even know existed, there was paperwork. She had a feeling forms would still need to be filled out and reports filed at the end of the world.

“Death and taxes,” Vicks said with a chuckle.

“What about them?” Cent asked.

“It’s a saying. The only two things you can count on is death and taxes.”

“Ah.”

“How did you get away?” Torres asked Duncan.

“A lot of running and hiding, and more running and hiding,” the man said. “I wasn’t sure where to go but eventually I ran across some security guys. That’s where I got these,” he added, patting the submachine gun.

“You know how to use that?” Banks asked. That reminded Torres of when he’d asked her the same thing earlier. She wondered if he’d sounded just as dismissive then.

“Can’t be that hard,” Duncan said. “Squeeze the trigger and it goes bang, right?”

Banks smirked. “Sure, man. Something like that.”

“What happened to the security guys you met?” Torres asked.

The man from HR shook his head. “I don’t know. We split up.”

“Why did you do that?”

“It wasn’t exactly planned. One of those things—what do you call them?”

“Obayifo,” Cent said.

“Yeah, those things. It came out of nowhere and attacked us. I was lucky to get away.” He gave them a suddenly very serious look. “You know that you can’t kill them, right? I tried. Shot one with a whole clip and it just kept coming.”

“Magazine,” Banks said.

“What about it?”

“The thing that holds bullets. They’re magazines, not clips.”

“Hunh. Didn’t know that.”

The way he’d said that made Torres not believe him. She didn’t know why. It was almost too…flippant.

“Let me guess,” Banks said, “no silver ammo in your guns?”

Duncan gave him a confused look. “Why would there be silver ammo?”

“It’s the only way to kill them,” Cent said. He drew his knife, showing the newcomer the razor-sharp and silver-coated blade. “Any silver, anywhere.”

“Their entire system is allergic to the compound,” Vicks added. “All you need is to introduce a small amount into their bloodstream and they fall down like fainting goats.”

“Fainting what?” Duncan said.

“Fainting goats.”

“What the hell are those?” Banks asked. “Another fucking thing I should be scared of at night?”

“Maybe.” Vicks grinned. “They’re just goats, but these have a genetic mutation that makes their muscles seize up when you scare them. They don’t actually ‘faint,’ but it can look like fainting. They have whole farms in the Midwest where you can pay to scare them and watch them fall down.”

Banks shook his head. “Great. That’s something to look forward to when I get out of here and hand in my resignation.”

“Speaking of which,” Duncan said, “you folks have a plan to get off this island?”

“We do,” Torres said. “It’s called morning.”

“What happens at morning?”

“The only thing we’ve found that’s as deadly to the creatures as silver is sunlight.”

“You’re kidding me. Silver, and now sunlight?” Duncan made an unconvinced face. “What the hell is going on here? Is all of this because of what’s going on underground?”

Torres looked across at Vicks, standing next to Cent. “The organization really is heavily compartmentalized, isn’t it?”

“Very,” Vicks said. “People know enough to do their jobs.”

“That doesn’t seem very smart.”

She shrugged almost apologetically. “It worked…until it didn’t.”

That’s probably what every bureaucracy has said in the history of the world when something went to shit, Torres thought. Maybe that was true of even the Houston Police Department that was, once upon a time, her home. The only thing they could agree on was that she had to go.

“So,” Duncan was saying, “fill me in, guys. What exactly are we dealing with here?”

Vicks did just that, giving him a Cliffs Notes version of what they were doing here on the island and what had happened up to now. Duncan listened intently until she finished, his face changing from shock to disbelief and back again.

When she was done, he let out a chuckle that was partly amusement and partly disbelief. “And to think, I was going to quit and find a more exciting job somewhere else.”

* * *

“Do you trust him?” Torres asked.

“No,” Cent said without reservation.

“Yeah, me neither,” Vicks said.

They were looking out the window of the main office at Benton, Banks, and Duncan. The three men were moving around the interior of the warehouse, searching for vulnerabilities in their surroundings and discussing strategy. Cent, Vicks, and Torres were supposed to be out there too, but Vicks had asked Torres and Cent to return to the office with her so they could “help” her try to access the computer. Of course, neither Torres nor Cent had any ideas on how to do that, but that wasn’t the real reason. Vicks wanted to talk about the newcomer.

“Makes no sense a guy like that could climb walls like friggin’ Spider-Man,” Vicks continued. “That dude’s no Human Resources.”

When they’d asked Duncan about his physical prowess, the man had simply smiled and said, “I do a lot of mountain climbing and hiking. I was actually going to try it on some of the hills on the island on my days off but haven’t got around to it yet. Anyone want to join me when I do?”

No one did.

“Mountain climbing my ass,” Vicks said.

“Paranoid minds think alike,” Torres said. “What do you think he really is? Or what he’s doing here?”

“I couldn’t tell you.” She glanced back at the computer, blinking the password prompt on the screen. “If I could get into that thing, maybe I could find out.”

“You can access the belowground servers from up here?”

“It would take some work, but I could probably do it.” She looked back out the window at the silhouettes of the three men. “But it’s a moot point anyway since I can’t get into it.”

“So who can we trust?” Cent asked. “Banks?”

“I think so,” Torres said.

“Yeah, he’s pretty dumb, but he doesn’t have squirrely eyes,” Vicks said.

“Squirrely what?”

Cent explained to her about Vicks’s “squirrely eyes” policy, dating back to an Uncle Morton who may or may not have been in the Army’s Special Forces.

“I see,” Torres said. “Does the new guy have squirrely eyes?”

“Kinda,” Vicks said.

“Does that count?” Cent asked.

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Well, now that’s settled…”

Vicks punched him playfully on the shoulder. Cent feigned hurt.

Torres smiled. She’d always known Cent as a serious young man—for good reason, given his history—and to see him so loose around other people, especially a girl like Vicks, made her feel almost…what? Proud?

Cent was staring down at his watch again. “You think we can make it to morning?”

“Why not?” Vicks said. “As long as we stay quiet as mouses and don’t attract attention.”

Torres looked out at the wide expanse of the warehouse. “It’s a big building. It’s probably a stretch to hope they’ll just ignore it completely.”

“Oh come on, Kerry, throw me a bone.”

Torres chuckled. Then, “Scratch that. I guarantee you we can avoid them until morning.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, when she glimpsed a figure moving toward them. It was Banks.

The former security man opened the office door and stuck his head in. He looked slightly out of breath, as if he’d been running a marathon. “Hey, you guys remember that chick, Sarah?”

“Sarah Jenkins,” Torres said. “What about her?”

“The new guy says she was on the third floor with him when the shit went down. Says she took off while he was busy somewhere else. He didn’t know she’s still alive until I told him.”

“She was alive when we talked to her,” Torres said. “That doesn’t mean she still is.”

“I know. That’s what I told him.” He stepped inside and looked out the window at Benton and Duncan, still talking about something. “But he wants to go out there and try to find her anyway now that he knows she’s still out there and where we last heard from her.”

“One of the security rooms,” Cent said.

“That’s it.”

Torres glanced out at Duncan. “Is he asking us to go with him?”

“Nah. I guess he wants permission to go. And…”

“And what?”

“Maybe borrow some of our silver bullets.”

“Gee, that’s it?” Vicks said. “Give him the only things we know for sure can kill these creatures?”

“He asked,” Banks said. “I didn’t say we’d give it to them.”

“What did you say?” Torres asked.

“That I’d talk to you guys. Which is what I’m doing now.”

Torres looked back out at Duncan. Did she really have the right not to give him the one thing he could use to stay alive out there?

“Maybe some,” Torres said.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking,” Banks said. “We can pool enough from everyone to give him a better chance out there.”

“And what else does he need?”

“He could use someone to watch his back if someone’s willing to volunteer.”

“To rescue Sarah Jenkins?” Vicks asked.

“Uh huh.”

“Has anyone volunteered yet?” Torres asked.

“Not yet.”

“Are you’re hoping one of us will?”

Banks shrugged. “Up to you guys.”

“What about you?”

“Are you kidding? I don’t even know who Sarah Jenkins is. Never met the woman in my life.”

“I’ll go,” Cent said.

Both Torres and Vicks looked over at him with mutual surprise.

“You serious?” Vicks asked first.

The young man nodded. “She needs help.”

“So do we.”

“But not as badly as her.”

“That’s the problem,” Torres said, “we don’t know if she’s even still alive out there. It’s been more than an hour since we last spoke to her.”

Even as she said those words, Torres recalled the panic in Sarah Jenkins’s voice, followed by silence. If the woman was still out there, wouldn’t she have tried to contact them? They’d tried to reach her multiple times but always failed.

“Hey, it’s your skin,” Banks was saying to Cent. “I’ll let the new guy know he’s got himself a volunteer.”

Banks left, leaving just the three of them in the office again.

“You sure about this, Cent?” Torres asked.

Cent nodded. “If she’s still out there, we should try to help her. But not all of us. That’s too risky.”

“You’re nuts,” Vicks said. She didn’t look or sound very happy. “You know that, right? Nuts. N-u-t-s. Nuts!”

“I know.”

“But you’re still doing it.”

“Yes.”

“Nuts!”

He looked past Vicks and at Torres. “I survived that night at the Wilshire for a reason. I can’t turn the other cheek now if I can help someone else do the same.”

“We don’t even know if she’s still alive, Cent,” Torres said.

“But the possibility exists that she is.”

“A low one.”

“But one nonetheless.”

“Nuts,” Vicks said again. “You’re nuts. Nuts!”

Torres couldn’t disagree with her, but at the same time, she didn’t think the Cent she knew, who had found his renewed faith in the aftermath of the Wilshire, could have made any other choice.

Vicks threw her hands into the air, shouted, “Nuts!” and stormed out of the office, leaving just Torres and Cent behind.

Cent looked after her. “I don’t think she likes me anymore.”

“You don’t know women, Cent. It’s the exact opposite.” Then, when he gave her a confused look, “If she didn’t like you as much as she did in the first place, she wouldn’t be so mad you were about to risk your life for someone you don’t even know. The fact that you are doing it, just makes her like you even more. She just doesn’t want you to know.”

“Why not?”

“That’s how women are.”

“Ah.”

Torres made sure no one was paying attention to them—the others had gone back to talking among themselves in the warehouse, with Vicks now joining them—before she knelt down on one knee and pulled up the leg of her right pants.

“What are you doing?” Cent asked.

“Insurance.”

She stood back up and handed him the Glock 42, which she’d kept in an ankle holster. Torres had been surprised to find it among the security room’s armaments. It was easily the smallest model in the Glock line by far, which was probably why it had earned the nickname Baby Glock. Its slim size made it easy to conceal, while the .380 caliber rounds made it just as easy to put down a threat.

Cent took the gun and turned it over in his hand. It looked like a child’s toy even in his skinny palm.

“Just one problem,” Torres said. “It’s chambered for .380. The security room only had silver ammo for .40, .45 and 9mm. But no .380.”

“I can’t use this on an obayifo.”

“Exactly.”

Cent looked up at her, just a ghost of a smile on his face. “Your insurance.”

“Yes.”

“Just not against the obayifo.”

Torres smiled and nodded. “Do what you have to to come back here. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good, because if you don’t, Vicks will probably kick your ass even if you are already dead.”

7

JOHN

The security man, Banks, gave him an extra magazine for the Glock, and the woman, Torres, offered up a second one. The only one who wasn’t interested in handing over any of his ammo was Benton.

“Sorry. I might need every bullet,” the man said.

“No worries,” John said. “I’ll make do with these two.”

He slipped the first mag into the handgun he’d acquired from the aboveground security boys and put the other one away. There wasn’t much in terms of conversation after that. John headed for the back of the warehouse with the kid, Cent, walking beside him. Banks followed in order to close the building after they left, while the others watched them go.

“So your name’s Cent?” John asked.

“Yes,” the young man said.

“What kind of name is Cent? If you don’t mind me asking.”

The kid shrugged. John had a feeling he’d been asked that question more than once in his lifetime. “It’s a name.”

John grinned.

“What’s so funny?” Cent asked.

“I knew a guy. Had a weird name, too. He’d also say the same thing when people asked him about his name.”

“Friend of yours?”

John thought about it for a moment. “Possibly.”

Unlike that other guy, Cent’s name was probably fake, which was something John knew a thing or two about. After all, his own name wasn’t really John Duncan. That was just an alias created from the ground up in order to get him a job at Campbell’s island. John didn’t know how Cent and the attractive black woman, Torres, ended up here, but Vicks, the young one with the red hair, was clearly another employee from belowground.

The warehouse had a door in the back that Banks opened for them. “See ya, boys, wouldn’t wanna be ya,” the man said as he closed the door. Locks click-clacked their way into place and John was suddenly standing out in the open once again, except this time he wasn’t alone.

“Is he always like that?” John asked, looking back at the closed door.

“I wouldn’t know,” the kid said. “I just met him last night.”

“When you were underground?”

“Yes.”

That was an interesting fact—that the kid (He wasn’t actually a “kid”; John was just used to calling anyone under thirty “kid.”) and Torres had access to Campbell’s secretive underground facility. It’d been three months since John himself came to the island and he hadn’t been able to sniff out what they were doing down there. The paperwork he was given gave him some ideas, but nothing solid. At least nothing he could take back to his employers and get a pat on the back for a job well done.

“You know where we’re going?” the kid asked.

“I got a pretty good idea.”

“Lead the way, then.”

“Follow me.”

John led the way. He wasn’t lying when he said he had a good idea of where to go. Over the months, he’d memorized the layout of not just all the buildings but the island itself. He knew just about where everything was and how to get there. He also knew about the emergency hatch in the warehouse, but had been hoping the security boys he’d run into in the stairwell knew some other way down. It turned out that they didn’t.

He hadn’t counted on people already beating him to the hatch. His first instincts had been to sneak around them and access the underground in secret, but that possibility flew the coop when they caught him. Or specifically, the kid spotted him.

Kid’s got the eye of an eagle.

Before they left the warehouse, the kid had shown John the knife he carried. A curved blade similar to a Gurkha carried by the Nepalese Army. It was a nasty little piece of work and had a long history in the Indian subcontinent. The way the kid held the weapon, he clearly knew how to use it. John made a mental note to watch out for the knife. He’d seen what the blade could do—silver-coated or not—and it wasn’t pretty.

There was about ten feet of space between the garage and the main building next to it. The alleyway wasn’t completely hidden from view but wasn’t out in the open, either. John essentially retraced his own steps, but this time heading in the other direction. They stopped twice when John thought he’d heard movement, but they turned out to be nothing. It was a full moon tonight and the area wasn’t nearly as dark as John would have liked. While the brightness made it easy to navigate and make as little noise as possible, it also made them too easy to spot for his liking.

The main building had its own rear exit. The pebbles—three of them, all three in very specific locations—were where he’d placed them earlier. If any of the three had moved even an inch in any direction, John would know someone else had also treaded the same path.

Still good to go.

He pushed the door open, peeking inside into a long and narrow back hallway. The red emergency lights allowed him to see everything he needed to say—and something he expected to see, about halfway up the passageway, but didn’t.

The kid, Cent, must have noticed his reaction even from behind. “What’s wrong?”

Kid’s definitely got the eye of an eagle. Better watch out for that, too.

“A body,” John said. “There was one in the hallway last time.”

“It’s not there now?”

“No.”

“That means they took it.”

John glanced back at his companion. “‘They?’”

“The obayifo.”

“Why do you call them that?”

Cent shrugged. “It’s a name.”

John chuckled softly. “Yeah. I guess it is.”

He turned back around and, still in a crouch, resumed focusing on the hallway in front of him. He couldn’t detect any movements in the wide lobby about thirty yards beyond that, but that didn’t mean much. He had a very limited view of the first floor from back here. The good news, though? The two other pebbles he’d placed on this side of the door were where they were supposed to be. So whoever had absconded with the body hadn’t bothered to check the door or the alley behind it.

“Did you see them?” Cent was asking him. He was whispering, as was John. “The obayifo.”

“Yeah. I saw them.”

“You tried to kill them.”

“‘Tried.’ I didn’t know about silver. Or sunlight. Or anything, really.”

“You took this job without knowing what you were getting into?”

“I’m just an accountant, Cent. I’m willing to bet most of the people who work aboveground have no idea what Campbell is doing down there.”

“I thought you worked in Human Resources.”

“I do. But I’m an accountant by trade.”

“I didn’t know that was a thing.”

John smiled to himself and thought, Me, neither.

He looked back at the young man again. He had to stop thinking of Cent as a “kid” because he wasn’t. Young, yes, but there was a lot of living behind those brown eyes. Cent had seen things; the kind of things that changed you irrevocably. He could see the suspicion looking back at him. Cent, like Torres, hadn’t bought his “I’m just another employee” act. Not that John fully expected them to; after all, he was the lone survivor of what had essentially become a massacre.

But there was something else about the young man’s looks. Something…hard.

Tread lightly with this guy. And again, watch out for that knife of his.

“What is it?” Cent asked, squinting back at him. He wasn’t so dark that John needed the light from the full moon to see him.

“Nothing.”

“You sure?”

John smiled. It was probably not all that convincing. “Yeah.”

He turned around and eyeballed the hallway for a few more seconds. There was no rush. Even after the others had told him about the emergency protocol, he still had hours left before whatever happened, happened. And he wasn’t convinced Campbell would willingly blow up the entire island. Billionaire or not, this was some expensive property. Then again, it wasn’t like he knew how billionaires thought. They were a rare breed, indeed.

“Follow me,” John said after a while. He stood up and slipped into the hallway, Cent close on his heels.

They skirted around puddles of blood on the tiled floor and trails that had been made when the bodies were dragged away. Dragged away to where, though? That was the question. But it wasn’t the question he needed to answer tonight. Or any other night, actually. John was here for a simple purpose, and none of it involved finding out the intricacies of these obayifo things.

Christ sake. Definitely need to ask more questions on the next job.

The whole situation was getting a little ridiculous. There were more things he didn’t know than there were things he did know. That wasn’t any way to run an assignment. But the money had been so good…

Note to self: Don’t make it all about the money.

Instead of continuing on to the large lobby in front of them, John turned slightly left and darted into an adjoining hallway. He’d used the same route on his way out and hadn’t encountered any obstacles. The security room would be somewhere up ahead. He hadn’t bothered with it earlier because getting belowground was more paramount. That was where the job was.

John had to admit, he was surprised to hear Sarah had made it this far. The fact that she’d gotten down here at all was an amazing feat. Maybe she was more resourceful than he gave her credit for.

They moved steadily along the hallway, stepping around more blood on the floor and walls. At certain points there was even blood on the ceiling, still dripping down. How the hell had blood gotten up there?

Cent didn’t say a word, but John could feel the young man’s eyes on his back. The kid was wary of him. John couldn’t really blame him. They were strangers to one another, stuck in a situation that could get them both killed at a moment’s notice. It wasn’t exactly the ideal scenario to indulge in something as potentially dangerous as “trust.”

When they finally reached the door—SECURITY was stenciled in almost glowing white letters next to it—John changed up his grip on the Glock. He’d thought it was nice to have a gun in his hand before, but now knowing that he had the right ammo in it made it doubly nice. Hell, maybe triple nice. He hadn’t spent much time mulling the science behind it. After everything he’d seen, science didn’t seem to have much place on Bird Island anymore.

Go with the flow, I always say.

He opened the security room’s door and stepped inside in one fluid motion, the Glock in his right hand while he kept his left on the door’s latch. In a worst-case scenario, he’d come face to gruesome face with one of those obayifo things and could shoot while pulling the door back close quickly.

He didn’t have to do either of those things because the room was empty. There were no signs of Sarah or any of the island’s security team. There was, though, plenty of evidence that people were here not too long ago, before they were taken against their will. Blood covered the floor, some still sticky underneath the soles of John’s shoes.

John moved farther into the room, Cent closing the door behind him with a barely audible click. There was a row of monitors on the far wall, hovering over a group of computers. Security monitors. Half of them were blank—a few had bullet holes in them—while the others were playing static. Either the cameras had gone offline or they were damaged.

He swept the room just in case there was a loitering threat. There was more than one place to hide, including what looked like a bathroom at the back. He rushed toward that room, peeking through the ajar door.

Blood, but no bodies.

He took a few steps back and glanced over at a shelf with weapons and ammo. Half of them had spilled to the floor but plenty remained in their racks, untouched. It took only a few seconds of exploration to discover that not a single one of the bullets were silver-tipped.

“Silver bullets?” Cent asked from behind him.

“None.”

“That explains how the obayifo took the island so fast.”

“Why didn’t they know about that?”

“It’s all compartmentalized. Harold Campbell didn’t want everyone knowing what he was doing here.”

“Makes sense. The security boys might wonder why they’re walking around with silver-tipped bullets.”

“Yes.”

“I guess that decision came back to bite him.”

“Apparently so.”

He looked over at the young man. Cent was bent over one of the keyboards, pressing random keys. He was trying to gain access to the computer but couldn’t get past the password screen.

“Any luck?” John asked.

“No.” He moved over to the next computer and hit the same roadblock. “They’re all password-protected.”

“You know computers?”

He glanced over at John. “Why? You don’t think a guy like me knows about computers?”

“That’s not what I said.”

Cent smiled. “I’m just playing with you, Duncan. Vicks told me what to do if I managed to get into the computers.”

John chuckled. “You got me.”

Cent went back to work. Or tried to. Another computer, and another password prompt.

John turned back to the weapons rack and picked up an extra magazine for the MP5. There were no silver bullets, but even regular ammo could slow down the creatures if you shot them in the right spots. It was hard to attack someone if you didn’t have any legs.

Cent had given up on the computers and was looking around the room now. He crouched next to a puddle of blood that still looked wet. “I wonder what happened to her…” He was talking about Sarah.

“Maybe she got away.”

Cent looked over. “You really believe that?”

“Anything’s possible. She got down here from the third floor, didn’t she? Maybe she got away from here, too.”

“How well did you know her?”

“We were coworkers. It’s not like we dated or hung out after work.” He glanced around and let out a slightly more dramatic sigh than he’d intended. “Maybe she headed for the beach with some of the security boys, found a boat, and got off the island.”

“Yeah,” Cent said, standing up. “Maybe.”

He doesn’t believe that any more than I do.

“What now?” Cent asked.

“I guess we head back to the others. There’s nothing we can do here.”

“Duncan…”

John turned around. Cent was staring at the monitors. At one in particular. The static had cleared up slightly and there was an image there that wasn’t present before. It was a live feed from somewhere in the building, with a figure jumping up and down in front of the camera trying to get their attention.

He walked over to get a better look. “Where is that?”

“Somewhere on the second floor,” Cent said. He’d read the letters on the bottom left-hand corner, which indicated each camera’s location.

There was more than one person on the screen, though only one of them was on their feet and waving at the camera. Four others huddled on the floor in the background, looking like refugees from a warzone. Despite the red lights washing out everything, it was easy to see how harried and terrified they all look.

“Did you do something?” John asked.

Cent shook his head. “No. It just cleared up.”

“They must have gotten it working. Or maybe the signal comes and goes.”

Even as he said those words, the video feed turned back to static…only to clear up again a few seconds later.

“I know the room. It’s an employee lounge,” John said. “They look the same on every floor.” He took a step closer, focusing on the woman jumping up and down in front of the camera, waving her arms. “They locked themselves inside. They’re safe, but they don’t know what to do next. As far as they know, the creatures don’t know they’re there, but it’s too risky to try to escape the building. They’re asking for help.”

“How do you know all that?”

He pointed at the woman.

“You can read lips?” Cent asked.

“Yes.”

He leaned forward to get a better look at the others in the room. He paid special attention to the two men. Neither one was Chase nor Williams, thank God. A good thing, because it would have been extremely awkward to run across those two again.

One of the other survivors in the room did manage to catch his attention.

He pointed. “Look.”

Cent stepped closer. “What am I looking at?”

“Near the back. In the pantsuit.”

It didn’t take long for Cent to see what John was indicating. His eyes widened in surprise. “Madeline. That’s Madeline. She’s still alive.”

“You said the emergency protocol can only be shut down by someone with authority? Someone like Harold Campbell himself, or…”

“His executive assistant. The one person who probably knows more about everything, maybe even more than the man himself.”

“Exactly.”

The two of them stared at the screen, focusing on Madeline. She was huddled in the background with the others, looking for all intents and purposes like a beaten woman. John remembered meeting her a few months ago, in passing. Madeline was impossible to miss. Tall, statuesque, and commanding authority. The woman on the monitor was a shell of that.

“If she can clear the emergency protocol, why hasn’t she done so already?” Cent asked.

“She’s a civilian, Cent.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“You ever see how most civilians deal with life-and-death emergencies? Most of them couldn’t tell the difference between up and down, never mind think clearly about how to resolve the situation.” He nodded at the screen—at Madeline. “Look at her. The woman’s traumatized. She probably doesn’t even remember her favorite color at the moment.”

Cent looked over at him. “You want to go get her. Use her to give the all clear.”

John nodded. “Or get us off this hunk of rock. Either/or is good enough for me.”

“We can’t make this decision without the others.”

“They’re not here, and we are.” Then, off Cent’s unconvinced look, “You really want to risk going back there, then coming back here a second time? You and I made it. We got lucky, but who’s to say our luck will hold up?”

“Rescuing Madeline without the others is just as risky.”

He could see it in the kid’s eyes—Cent wasn’t going to surrender his doubts. More than that, he clearly didn’t trust John enough to even consider it. Maybe letting the kid know that he could read lips hadn’t been a good idea.

He needed a new tack. “Fair enough. Then I have another option. You return to the others and I’ll rescue Madeline on my own. And I’ll bring her back to the warehouse with me.”

“Alone? You think you can do this alone?”

He shrugged. It was too flippant, which was exactly how he’d intended it. “What choice do I have?”

Cent eyed him. John could practically hear the gears turning inside his head, trying to figure out John’s true intentions.

Forget it, kid. Better and smarter men than you have tried and failed.

Cent didn’t say anything for a long time.

John decided to push his luck. “It’s your call. I know what I’m going to do.” He nodded at the screen. It was mostly static now, but they could still just barely make out the survivors on the second floor. “Those people need help and I’m not going to look the other way. You can decide what you want to do. As for me, the decision’s already made.”

He turned to go.

Cent grabbed his arm. It was a surprisingly strong grip. “Wait.”

John looked back and locked eyes with the young man. “What now?”

“We’ll go to the second floor together.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes.”

John nodded as Cent let go of his arm. “Glad to hear it.”

He walked over to the door, feeling Cent’s eyes on his back the entire time.

Note to self: Don’t push your luck too much with the kid.

8

TORRES

“I’m worried about Cent. I don’t think he should have gone with that dude.”

“Don’t worry about Cent.”

“But I am.”

“You shouldn’t.” Torres gave Vicks her best attempt at a motherly smile. Not that she knew what that entailed, but she used her experiences with Macy and hoped it was at least semi-convincing. “Cent has been through more in one lifetime than most of us will ever have to go through in a dozen lifetimes. Trust me, Vicks, he can take care of himself.”

“Lourdes,” the young woman said. “My name. It’s Lourdes. You keep calling me Vicks. Call me Lourdes.”

“Okay, Lourdes.”

Lourdes leaned slightly forward toward Torres while looking across the warehouse at the others. Or, more specifically, at Benton, standing with Banks near the front of the large building. “All right. Time to stop worrying about Cent and start worrying about us. Example one: I really don’t trust that guy.”

“Benton?”

“Yeah.”

“Me neither.”

“I mean. I really, really don’t trust him.”

“Because of the squirrely eyes?”

“That and the fact he was up here already. How’d he get up here in the first place? Cent and I saw him on the security monitors in the cafeteria when everything hit the fan. If you were to ask me about his chances, I’d put it at a snowball’s in h-e-double-hockey-sticks.”

As if he could hear them, Benton glanced over in their direction. The man smiled, but it was like seeing a snake bare its fans just as it was about to strike.

“I don’t like him,” Lourdes said again.

“Let’s keep an eye on him.” She looked down at the gun holster at Lourdes’s hip. It was an odd sight. “Can you use that?”

“The gun?”

“Yes.”

“Not really.”

“It’s not hard.”

“I know. Pull the trigger and it goes bang, right?” She smirked. “That seems to be the going consensus. Of course, knowing how a machine works doesn’t really help you deal with what happens when it does its job.”

“Hopefully you’ll never have to do that.”

“Hope springs eternal within the breasts of men. Isn’t that the quote?”

“Something like that.”

They looked over again as Benton and Banks began walking in their direction. The twin BBs had the appearance of two people that had just come to some kind of agreement. Torres didn’t like the thought of that. Banks, she could mostly trust, and didn’t need Benton corrupting him.

“Benton and me was thinking,” Banks started, “about how to get out of here.”

“Benton and I,” Lourdes said.

“Huh?”

“It’s Benton and I, not Benton and me.”

The former security man gave her an annoyed grunt. “Whatever.” Then, continuing as if she hadn’t interrupted him, “We’re thinking it might be worth a shot to make a run for the boats on the beach.”

“When?” Torres asked.

“Now’s as good a time as any,” Benton said.

“How you figure that?” Lourdes asked, with an edge to her voice that Torres hadn’t heard before.

She really doesn’t trust him at all.

Benton didn’t seem to have noticed, though. He smiled. “The longer we stay here, the more chances of things going wrong. All it takes is for one of those creatures to discover our presence. When that happens, they’ll swarm. And I’m not talking about the Black Eyes.”

“The Blue Eyes,” Banks said. “When they figure out we’re here…” He shook his head. “I don’t wanna be here when that happens. Do you?”

“And in your summation,” Torres said, “the better option is to make a run for the beach? Through the woods? In the dark?”

“Well, we don’t have to run, per se.” He nodded at the ATVs parked to one side of the warehouse. “We can use the roads.”

There was some legitimacy to what they were saying. She, too, didn’t like the idea of just sitting here and waiting hours for morning to arrive. As the men had said, so many things could go wrong and it really would just take one of the obayifo to discover them for everything to go to hell.

On the other hand, the thought of running out there, even on the ATVs, was filled with landmines. She’d seen how fast the Blue Eyes could move. Could they catch up to moving vehicles? Maybe. Maybe not. The question was, did she want to find out?

“You’re assuming the boats will still be there,” Lourdes was saying.

“Why wouldn’t they be?” Banks said.

“Why would they be?”

“What?”

“What, what?”

“You know something I don’t know?”

“No. But you also don’t know anything I don’t know.”

Banks stared at her. Torres could practically smell his brain imploding in on itself. “Whatever.” He turned to Torres. “Look, we think this is our best chance. All we have to do is reach the boats and get the hell out of here.”

“All we have to do,” huh? I wish it were that simple, Banks.

She said, “How far are we to the beach? If we were to use the ATVs?”

“You’re not seriously considering this,” Lourdes said, alarmed.

“Not yet, but we should all put it out there. That’s the only way to make a proper decision.”

Benton was looking a little too pleased with himself. “Mile and a half on wheels. We could reach it in minutes. Less than that if we haul ass.”

“You’re certain about that?”

“I’ve traveled back and forth on the road a hundred times by now. I’m sure.”

She eyed him. The man looked sure. Or maybe he’d just convinced himself he was. She’d seen the size of the island when they were arriving by helicopter and it’d looked big to her. Longer than it was wide, with enough woods between the clusters of buildings and beaches to give her pause.

“The woods,” Torres said. “We’d have to go through them.”

“We could go around…” Banks said.

“No. It would take too long.”

“She’s right,” Benton said. “It would take too long. Better to just use the road and go straight through them.”

“We won’t be on foot,” Banks said. “That gives us an advantage. Those things may be fast, but they can’t outrun an engine.”

Banks was clearly on board, but Lourdes wasn’t even close. “So why don’t you two bozos go, then? What do you need us for?”

“Obviously it’s not a good idea to leave without everyone,” Benton said. He sounded reconciliatory.

Torres wondered why that was. Did he actually need her and Lourdes to go with them? For what purpose?

“The noise alone will draw whatever obayifo is out there to this place,” Benton continued. “If only Banks and me took off, we’d be leaving you guys to fend for yourself against them.”

“Gee, didn’t know you cared, Benton,” Lourdes said.

“Of course I care,” Benton said, oblivious to Lourdes’s sarcasm. “We’re in this together, aren’t we?”

“What about Cent and Duncan?” Torres asked.

Banks glanced down at his watch. “We’ll give them an hour to come back before we move. I owe the kid that much.”

“Gee, how thoughtful of you,” Lourdes said.

Banks smirked but didn’t say anything. That was probably for the best.

“Just an hour?” Torres asked.

“I mean, if he doesn’t make it back after an hour…” Banks shrugged and left the rest of his sentence unspoken.

“What happens if they don’t make it back within an hour, Banks?” Lourdes asked. She was apparently unwilling to let it go unspoken.

“I mean, if they’re not back by then, they probably aren’t coming back.” He shrugged again. “That’s all I’m saying.”

The two of them stared daggers at each other.

It took Benton to break it up. “This is a group decision. All we ask is that you two think about it. I mean, really think about it.”

“We’ll do that,” Torres said.

“Good. That’s all we want.” He nodded at Banks and the two men walked over to the parked ATVs. It was a not-so-subtle way of telling them that this was going to happen whether they agreed to come along or not.

We’ll see about that.

Lourdes didn’t say anything until the men were far enough away not to eavesdrop. Even then, she kept her voice low. “I’m officially halfway to disliking Banks, too.”

“It’s not his fault. Benton convinced him.”

“It’s still his fault for falling for it. I mean, I knew he wasn’t very bright, but geez…”

“You think it’s a bad idea?”

Lourdes turned to look at her. “Don’t you?”

“It has some merit…”

“Like what?”

“The longer we stay here, the more chances we’re taking.”

“You’re not seriously…”

“No,” Torres said. “I’m not. I don’t care what they say, we’re not making any decisions until Cent comes back.”

Lourdes went silent.

“What’s wrong?” Torres asked.

“What if…?” Lourdes began but didn’t finish.

But Torres knew exactly what she was going to say. “What if Cent doesn’t come back?”

“He’ll come back,” she said. “Have faith.”

Lourdes sighed. “Faith. Running a little low on that these days…”

The two of them looked across the warehouse at Banks and Benton. The BBs were already pulling tarps off the covered ATVs and checking the gears.

They’ve already decided. All that conversation was just a formality.

She glanced down at her watch. Cent and Duncan had only been gone for just under thirty minutes, which left them with just over thirty minutes.

Come on, Cent. Do what you have to do and get back here pronto.

* * *

Whether Banks and Benton had already made up their minds or not, Torres wasn’t going to do anything until Cent returned. She owed the young man that much, if not more. Torres didn’t have to ask Lourdes if she would join her; the lab coat wasn’t going anywhere without Cent.

Thirty-nine minutes now since Cent and Duncan left and there were no hints that they were coming back anytime soon. Lourdes busied herself in the main office with trying to guess the password on the computer. She’d started by scouring the room for clues.

“The person who uses this computer would put a password that was easy for them to remember,” Lourdes had said by way of explanation. “A birthday. Some special date. One of those things. Human beings tend to be creatures of habit and we like to use familiar things. So, I’m going to guess the numbers to an important date.”

“What if it’s not numbers?” Torres had asked.

“Then it’ll be pretty much impossible to guess.”

Impossible, maybe, but that didn’t stop Lourdes. Besides, it gave her something to do while they waited for Cent.

As for Torres, there wasn’t much to do except watch the BBs as they continued to get the ATVs ready. They had found fuel and were refilling the vehicles’ gas tanks one by one. If she had any doubts they had already made up their minds, she no longer did after watching them working out there.

And it was all because of Benton. The man had put the idea in Banks’s head and the other man had bought in. The more pragmatic and less prone to sentiment part of her had to admit that it wasn’t a completely terrible idea. Sitting in the warehouse and waiting hours for morning was overly passive, with so many chances of things going wrong between now and sunup. If it had been anyone else who had brought up the idea, she might have been even more ready to agree.

Except it hadn’t been. Not Banks or Vicks, but Benton.

She recalled what Lourdes had said about the man:

“How’d he get up here in the first place? Cent and I saw him on the security monitors in the cafeteria. If you were to ask me about his chances, I’d put it at a snowball’s in h-e-double-hockey-sticks.”

That was a very good question. How had he gotten up here so quickly? And alone. Was he really that lucky? Or that good? Maybe a combination?

She wanted to interrogate him, get to the bottom of his miraculous escape from belowground, but that had to wait. Benton wouldn’t have reacted well anyway and now that Banks was on his side, she would have to deal with two potential threats.

Banks. Dammit. She’d been hoping to count on him.

The other thing that bothered Torres was the lack of obayifo presence. They hadn’t appeared anywhere around the warehouse since she and the others made it up the escape hatch. Were they all busy inside the main building? If so, what was going on over there? The only answer she could come up with—and one that made her stomach turn—was that they were feeding. Which meant they had taken the bodies to a makeshift nest somewhere and were enjoying the spoils of their victory.

Something’s not right. Something’s not right here.

She knew it, but didn’t know it. It was a strange feeling, telling yourself that you knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that something was amiss and yet be unable to actually confirm it with evidence.

And yet, and yet, she just knew that something wasn’t right about any of this…

She glanced down at her watch again. Forty-five minutes now since Cent left.

Come on, Cent. Move your ass, kid!

Behind her, inside the office, she could hear Lourdes’s fingers clicking on the keyboard. Torres glanced back to see if she’d made any progress. From the heavy sigh Lourdes made as she leaned back in the seat, the answer was an obvious no.

She was going to knock on the window and tell Lourdes to keep at it when something caught her eye. Torres looked toward the high windows that ringed the warehouse just as a flash of light spilled into the building and directly at her, almost blinding her in the process.

Torres shielded her eyes and ran across the warehouse, trying to keep up with the moving object that was broadcasting the lights. Gradually, she heard the sound of rotor blades spinning, batting the air above the island.

A helicopter.

It was a helicopter!

“Is that what I think it is?” Banks shouted as he ran over to join her.

She almost told him to stop shouting but realized it didn’t matter. Nothing out there—not even the obayifo—was going to focus on them now with a chopper flying overhead. Then it slowed down before stopping completely, and seemed to float in place high in the air. The helipad on the rooftop. The chopper was getting ready to land on the helipad. The lights were too bright, even if it wasn’t shining directly into her face anymore, and the distance too far for Torres to make out any details on the aircraft. She couldn’t even make out its color.

“It’s a chopper,” Torres said as Banks appeared next to her. Benton arrived soon after, then Lourdes, who had been drawn out of the office by all the commotion.

“Holy cow,” the young woman said. “Is that one of ours?”

“Can’t tell,” Banks said, shielding his own eyes with one hand and squinting through the high window at the hovering chopper.

“We need to find out,” Torres said.

“How?” Lourdes asked.

“Someone has to go out there.”

“Not it,” Banks said quickly.

Torres gave him an annoyed glance. The former security man grinned shyly back at her.

“Look, guys,” Lourdes said.

Torres turned back to the chopper as what looked like ropes fell out of it and hung in the air.

“Rappelling ropes,” Benton said.

“Why don’t they just land?” Lourdes asked.

“Probably doesn’t want to take the chance.”

Figures appeared on top of the ropes before sliding down. Torres could make out four ropes in all, two on each side of the aircraft. She counted the dark figures sliding down on them. Four, then four more after that. Eight in all.

It didn’t take long for them to hear the gunfire, even with the chopper’s blades loudly thrumming across the island’s warm air. That was followed by muzzle flashes as the newcomers found something on the rooftop either waiting for them or appearing to challenge their presence.

“Oh, no,” Lourdes whispered almost breathlessly.

“I guess the rooftop wasn’t empty,” Benton said.

“Welp,” Banks said, “whoever they are, I hope they brought more than just eight guys.”

9

CENT

Automatic gunfire coming from somewhere above them. Someone was unloading a ton of bullets at one time. Dutch, the former Marine, would have shaken his head disappointedly at that. “Hope they got what they were going for after that,” he would probably have said.

Cent didn’t know if they had or not, because he was too busy trying not to choke on the stench that filled the stairwell. It was horrific and suffocating and brought back so many bad memories.

The obayifo had been here. Even if he couldn’t smell them—which was impossible not to do—he could see the bloody trails they’d left in their wake as they dragged body after body up the steps. The trail kept going past the second floor, but it was on there that Cent and Duncan stopped.

For a good minute or so they stood perfectly still and listened to the sound of unbridled chaos ringing out from above them. Even with multiple floors between them and the rooftop, where the action was taking place, it felt like he could hear every gunshot and feel every bullet impact.

Duncan was the first one to catch the sound of an approaching chopper. Whatever was happening up there right now had everything to do with that arrival. If Duncan even entertained the idea of rushing up the steps to meet the chopper, he’d gotten rid of it as soon as the first burst of gunfire began. There was clearly no safety up there. The exact opposite, in fact.

For the duration of the trek up the stairs, they hadn’t said a word. Hadn’t made any sounds either. The only noise that accompanied them was Cent’s slightly quickened heartbeats. Or at least they sounded loud to his own ears. Duncan was the first to stop listening and refocus on the task at hand: the second floor, and Madeline within. They knew where she was—the employee lounge at the back. Duncan knew the layout of the building.

Because you work here, Cent thought, watching the man as he quietly opened the stairwell door and peeked out.

Cent didn’t believe for a second that Duncan was just another employee on Bird Island. The man carried himself like someone who’d been in this situation before, which was not possible because this was completely abnormal and nowhere within the universe of a supposed “accountant.” He had also seen the way Duncan moved; the man screamed “ex-military.” Dutch had the same snappy, always-on-the-alert movements.

Duncan glanced back and gave Cent the “all clear” nod before he slipped through the slightly ajar door. Cent grabbed the same door before it could close and followed him out onto the second floor of the five-floor building.

There was an eerie quietness to their immediate surrounding, made even more unsettling by the red emergency lights. Not that it was quiet everywhere; they could still easily pick up cracks of gunfire originating from three floors above them. Whoever was up there, whatever they were doing here, was having a hell of a hard time.

They moved quickly, or as quickly as possible without making too much noise. There was a long wall to their left and rows after row of cubicles to their left. Still-wet blood caked the floor and wall, though not nearly as much as Cent had been expecting. The takeover of Bird Island had mostly spared the second floor from the looks of it. There were only a few damaged workstations that he could make out.

The stink of death was there, but it wasn’t as suffocating as it had been inside the stairwell. There was nothing that smelled like the continuing presence of obayifo, which put Cent at ease. Somewhat. He didn’t completely relax, of course; there was no time for that while he was still on the island. He’d do that once he was back on the mainland or, better yet, had sunlight on his face.

He clutched his knife, ready for anything. Duncan had his MP5 and was constantly sweeping the area with it. The man definitely knew what he was doing with that submachine gun. His alert movements with the weapon, once again, was a sign that he was no average accountant.

So what are you doing here? And who do you really work for?

Because the man didn’t really work for Harold Campbell. There was someone else out there pulling his strings and signing his paychecks. The question was who? Or, perhaps more importantly, why?

But all of that would have to wait.

The presence of the chopper had drawn, seemingly, every single obayifo currently on the island onto the rooftop. That pretty much buried the theory that the creatures had abandoned the place after their victory. All this time, they were simply laying low. Or, probably more likely, too busy with feeding. It was just his and Duncan’s good fortune that the monsters had been busy on one of the higher floors when the chopper arrived or they would have been caught in the swarm.

It was clear to Cent now that while he and the others were trying to find ways up to the surface—then, later, off the island—the Blue Eyes were busy turning many of the missing Bird Island employees. They were very, very lucky none of the creatures had spotted them on the first-floor landing. Or maybe luck had nothing to do with it. In Cent’s experience, the creatures were cursed with the ability to focus on only one task at a time. And at that moment, it’d been the rooftop.

Duncan had stopped in front of him. The man was bent slightly over at the waist, his weapon aiming at something Cent couldn’t see. Cent moved slightly to his right and peered over Duncan’s shoulder.

An obayifo.

It was on the floor trying to crawl toward them. Trying, and doing a very poor job of it because it only had half a limb—its right arm, with the only remaining parts beginning at the shoulder and ending at the elbow. Its legs were gone, stumps replacing where they used to be, and so was half of its face. Someone had either shot it, stabbed it, or stomped on its head. Or, perhaps, all three. It did have one remaining eye that it used to stare across the darkness at them. So they hadn’t gone completely invisible after all.

Duncan got up and proceeded forward. He stepped over the creature—it reached out for him with its half-remaining appendage but only swiped air—and continued to the rear of the floor. Cent followed, but he looked at the creature a bit longer than Duncan had. Its remaining eye shifted to him and so did its half-arm. Black liquid oozed from the crater that was its half-face, dripping onto the tiled floor as it resumed its attempt to reach him.

Cent couldn’t help but feel sadness for it. It had, once upon a time, been a human being. He could even see patches of clothing clinging to its lower half, where a belt had cinched the fabric in place.

He wasn’t sure how long he stood there and watched the undead thing try to reach him, but it must have been long enough because Duncan whispered, “Cent. Come on.”

Cent looked up, then stepped over the creature.

Duncan was waiting for him. “You okay, kid?”

Cent nodded, when something that sounded like an explosion rocked the building. He instinctively reached for the wall to maintain his balance even though he didn’t really need to.

Duncan was looking up at the ceiling. “Looks like things just went from bad to worse up there.”

He was talking about the rooftop. Whoever had attempted to land had met resistance, and that resistance had just gotten more difficult.

“Let’s go,” Duncan said. “Whoever they are, they’re giving us the best distraction we could hope for. Let’s make it count.” He was moving with more deliberate speed now and Cent had to rush to catch up.

Soon, they were in front of a room marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. The metal door with the sign was heavy damaged, patches of blood and hair and what might have been mangled flesh clinging to its shiny surface. Puddles of blood were spread out across the floor in front of it, as if whatever had been trying to force their way in had bled everywhere before giving up.

The door remained fully intact.

Duncan skirted the pools of blood until he could reach the door. He didn’t bother trying to open it and instead knocked on it with the butt of his submachine gun.

There was no answer.

He knocked again, this time striking the door harder with the MP5.

Cent stood behind him about five feet away. He didn’t want to crowd Duncan or get too close to the door. He glanced back up the aisle.

He could just barely make out the obayifo all the way down there, its shape quivering in the red-tinted semidarkness. It might have been trying to turn itself around but Cent couldn’t be sure because of the distance. Whatever it was doing, it was not going to get any closer to them anytime soon.

That familiar pang of sadness and pity rushed through him, but he forced them away. This was no time for that. It wasn’t like this undead thing could even understand his sympathy toward it. It was gone, all traces of humanity removed. God no longer cared for it and there was no reason for Cent to, either.

And yet, and yet…

“Open up.” Duncan, having given up knocking and now talking to the door. “We saw you on the camera asking for help. Open the door. There’s no one out here but us.”

They waited, but no one answered.

He tried again, now combining knocking with vocal cajoling. “Come on, open the door. Let us help you. There’s no one out here but us. No creatures. You asked for help. That’s why we’re here. Open up or we’re going to leave. It’s up to you.”

Cent wasn’t sure if Duncan really meant that. Would he actually turn around and leave? Probably not, but the people inside the employee lounge didn’t know that.

The man raised his submachine gun to knock again when an explosion, this one much louder than the previous, shook the entire building once again. That was followed by something falling outside the windows, plummeting from very high up and all the way down to the ground.

That “something” was engulfed in flames.

A helicopter.

A burning, smoking helicopter.

It wasn’t the only thing falling outside the windows across the floor. Human bodies, flames licking from their flailing limbs, cascaded down like living debris.

Cent saw one, two, three people. He couldn’t tell if they were obayifo or humans. All he could see was flames and desperation as they realized certain death awaited them. If not from the flames, then the impact.

“Damn, you don’t see that every day,” Duncan said, staring across the floor as the falling chaos disappeared beyond their windows, leaving a trail of fiery objects to rain down like shooting meteors.

A third explosion, this one coming from below them, as the bulk of the aircraft crashed into the ground. The building shook for the third time before settling again.

Click as someone finally opened the employee lounge door.

Duncan took a quick step back, his submachine gun taking aim at a woman on the other side of the doorframe.

She quickly raised her hands and shouted, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

It was the same woman that Cent had seen on the security monitor. Early twenties, blonde, her hair tied behind her in a ponytail. She was dressed in the black tactical uniform of the island’s security team. A nametag on her chest read: KELLY.

There were other people behind Kelly, including ones Cent hadn’t seen on the monitor. Madeline was one of them, standing head and shoulders over the others. Six in all, all of them haggard and worn down.

“Cent,” Madeline said when she saw him. “You’re still alive!”

“So are you.”

Madeline hurried over but didn’t step through the door. Maybe it was all the blood between them. Or maybe she suspected something was wrong. Or, just maybe, it was Duncan and the MP5 in his hands.

“Torres,” Harold Campbell’s secretary said. “Did she get out, too?”

“She’s alive,” Cent said.

He looked past her and at the others. Besides Kelly, there were two more security people, both men. The rest were civilians.

“Come on,” Duncan said, stepping aside. “Let’s get out of here.”

Madeline finally stepped through the door. “We heard gunfire and explosions…”

“It was a helicopter,” Cent said.

“Was it ours?”

“I don’t know.” He nodded toward the windows. An orange glow radiated from the ground below them. “But I don’t think it matters anymore.”

The others filed out behind Madeline, a few of them stepping into the puddles of blood without realizing it. The other two former security people were Kordell and Mount, and both were unarmed. Only Kelly still had her sidearm, but by the way she didn’t even bother to draw it, Cent assumed it was empty. The civilians consisted of Madeline, a secretary named Nancy, and a man named Odenkirk, who was the oldest one in the group. Fifties, his face covered in a sheen of sweat. He was struggling to breathe after just walking a few steps.

Cent’s first instinct was to ask them how they’d managed to stay alive in the employee lounge when most people on the island had succumbed. Certainly, the door wouldn’t have stood a chance against the Blue Eyes if they’d wanted to come in. And yet they were still all in one piece, while the others weren’t.

Gunfire, coming from the stairwell. It wasn’t at the second floor yet, but it was only a matter of time.

Duncan glanced over. “Shit.”

“What is it?” Madeline asked.

“What I was afraid of.” He turned to Cent. “They’re moving back down the stairs.”

Cent nodded. He knew exactly what Duncan was getting at. Not everyone that had arrived in the chopper had fallen to their deaths earlier; they were now moving down the stairwell with, from the sounds of it, every obayifo chasing them.

And once they reached the second floor…

“Let’s go, before they get down here!” Duncan shouted as he started running.

Cent followed, as did Madeline and the others. Madeline, smartly, had taken off her pumps and was running barefoot. Only the secretary, Nancy, insisted on carrying hers with her as she struggled to catch up.

He wanted to shout at them to move faster, but that was the problem with a group: It was only as strong as its weakest link. And at the moment, the weakest link was clearly Odenkirk. He was gasping for breath with every step, and they hadn’t even made it halfway to their goal yet.

Meanwhile, the shooting in the stairwell was getting louder, as the chaos continued to edge closer to their floor.

“Faster!” Duncan shouted, slowing down just enough to twist and glance back at them. “We gotta move faster before they reach us!”

Madeline was close on Duncan’s heels, with the three former security people struggling to catch up to them. Cent had let himself lag behind to make sure the other two civilians could keep pace. Nancy stumbled and almost fell, but Cent grabbed her arm before she could and pushed her forward. He should have paid more attention to Odenkirk, because Cent heard a loud banging sound and looked back to find the man on the floor where he’d fallen.

“Tom!” It was Nancy. She’d stopped moving again and was looking back.

“Keep going!” Cent screamed at her.

She didn’t move. Instead, she pleaded with him with her eyes. “He’s got a heart condition. He can’t run.”

“Keep going! I got him!”

That was good enough for Nancy, and she turned and resumed running over to join the others.

Cent ran back to Odenkirk and grabbed his slick-stained arm. “Come on, come on.”

It was like trying to move an elephant. Odenkirk wasn’t overweight, but he was in terrible shape. Maybe it was all because of his heart condition, but Cent doubted if the man had ever run any great length in his life. Or at all, for that matter. Odenkirk wasn’t doing anything to help Cent pull him up any faster, either. If anything, he seemed to be fighting him, but Cent didn’t really think so. The man was just…immovable.

“Cent!” Duncan, who had stopped farther up the aisle. “Leave him!”

Cent didn’t bother responding. He had no intentions of abandoning the man, even if Odenkirk wasn’t helping him one bit.

“Cent!” Madeline, who had also stopped behind Duncan. She didn’t say to leave Odenkirk behind, but that was clearly why she’d shouted his name.

He ignored both of them and pulled Odenkirk up on two unsteady feet with a loud grunt. “Come on, you can do it.”

“I can do it,” Odenkirk mumbled.

“That’s right. You can do it. Now run!”

Cent all but threw the man forward to give him a head start. Odenkirk stumbled and nearly lost his balance and spill right back down, but somehow managed to stay on his feet. He stuttered forward, gasping for breath, as Cent easily caught up.

“I can do it,” Odenkirk muttered again under his breath. He was obviously trying to convince himself.

“You can do it,” Cent said. “But you gotta go faster.”

“Faster…”

“That’s right. Faster. Before they reach our floor.”

“Faster…”

“Faster!”

By now the others had stopped completely and was looking back at them. Even Nancy, who shouted, “Come on, Tom! You can do it! You can do it!”

Cent looked past Odenkirk and at Duncan. The “accountant” was staring at him, and Cent could see it on his face: Duncan didn’t think they were going to make it. At least, not with Odenkirk in tow.

Not on this floor, and not beyond.

Cent grabbed Odenkirk’s sweaty arm at the elbow. “Faster. Faster!”

Odenkirk grinned sideways at him. “I can do it.”

“Yes you can. But you have to move faster.”

“Faster…”

“That’s right. Fast—”

A gunshot, except this one hadn’t come from the stairwell but from directly in front of them.

Odenkirk’s body went slack and the office worker fell, nearly pulling Cent down to the floor with him. There was a hole in his forehead that wasn’t there before, a surprisingly small sliver of blood dripping from it.

No…

Cent stared at Odenkirk’s body, his brain trying to decipher what had just happened.

No, no, no…

“Cent,” Duncan said. When Cent looked back at him, the man was holstering his Glock. “We gotta go. Now.”

Duncan didn’t wait for Cent to respond. He turned and fled, and the others followed. Only Madeline wasted a second or two to lock eyes with Cent, but soon even she was jogging after the others as well.

Cent pried his fingers off Odenkirk’s wet elbow. It took more effort than it really should have, but eventually Cent was able to free himself.

“Cent!” Madeline, shouting from somewhere on the other side of the moon.

He ran and told himself not to look back.

And he didn’t, even after he effortlessly hopped over the obayifo on the floor, still trying, in vain, to turn itself over. As he sailed past it, Cent looked down and caught the creature’s remaining eye, and he swore the damn thing was laughing at him.

10

TORRES

The first explosion made them all take a step back from the rear of the warehouse, where they had been watching the action take place on the rooftop of the main building next door. The second one sent them sprawling to the floor, even though Torres, along with Lourdes, were already halfway there when they saw the flaming wreckage of the helicopter plummeting down from the sky. Banks and Benton hadn’t been as prepared, and both men went spilling to the hard concrete on Torres’s right.

“Holy shit!” Banks shouted. “There goes our rescue!”

“Better them than us!” Benton shouted back.

“Good point!”

Torres didn’t like how easy their back and forth was, and she also wasn’t so sure about the whole rescue part. The identity of the chopper’s occupants was still a mystery. They could have been Campbell’s people attempting a rescue, as Banks assumed, or Ana’s people acting on the information Torres had sent them.

Not that it mattered now because those men were either on the ground, among the hunks of burnt metal and fuel, or they were on the rooftop getting torn to ribbons. If, that is, they weren’t already dead. She was sure of one thing: Whoever they were, they hadn’t expected the kind of resistance they’d received. Unfortunately for the poor bastards.

Lourdes picked herself up slowly. “That didn’t go well.”

“It could have gone better,” Torres said, sitting up on her butt and wiping her hands on her pant legs.

An orange glow licked at the bottom of the warehouse’s high windows. That was from the crash outside. Whatever fuel remained in the aircraft would be spread across the grounds of the main building. As long as the fire didn’t spread to the woods beyond, it wasn’t a big threat. Not that a rampaging fire was the only thing they had to worry about. After all, that chopper hadn’t fallen on its own accord. Something—

The pops of gunfire, coming from the main building. Softer, duller, clearly coming from inside and not on the rooftop like previously. Did that mean some of the helicopter’s crew had survived? Who else—

Cent.

The young man was headed there with Duncan less than an hour ago, and Duncan was armed with an MP5.

She looked over at Benton and Banks. “Was that an MP5? The shooting?”

Banks shook his head. “No. That’s not a submachine gun.”

“Oh thank God,” Lourdes said. She had apparently been thinking the exact same thing as Torres.

Torres wanted to remind her that just because they weren’t listening to an MP5 shooting didn’t mean Cent wasn’t still in trouble. He was likely already inside the main building when the chopper attempted to land. What were the odds he didn’t find himself caught up in the chaos?

Lourdes might have once again been thinking the same thing because she was staring at the high window at the building next door.

She reached over and put a hand on Lourdes’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about Cent. He’s a survivor. He’ll be fine.”

Lourdes looked back at her and nodded. She also tried to smile. Tried.

“He’s been through worse things than this,” Torres continued. “The obayifo is scary, I know, but what man can do is scarier. I’ve seen it up close. So has Cent. These things out there, there’s a purity to their motivations.”

This time Lourdes gave her a more convincing half-smile.

“You sound like you admire them,” Benton said.

Torres turned to look at him. “I don’t.”

“Sounds like it.”

“I don’t admire them, but I understand them.”

“What’s to understand?” Banks said. “See one, shoot them. Done.”

“You have to understand your enemy in order to defeat him,” Benton said. “Sun Tzu. The Art of War.”

“Sun-what?”

“Sun Tzu. He’s an ancient Chinese military scholar. Wrote a book called The Art of War. All kinds of groovy ideas on how to defeat your enemy in that thing.”

“A book? I don’t read. Was there a movie?”

Benton chuckled. “I’m sure there was. The Chinese love making movies about their ancient heroes. And he was definitely one.”

While the two men were talking, Lourdes had walked closer to the rear of the building and was listening to the pops of gunfire from the adjoining structure. It was more sporadic than before, as if whoever was fighting was thinning in numbers.

As long as it’s not Cent, Torres thought as she walked over to join Lourdes. She put another reassuring hand on the younger woman’s shoulder.

“He’ll be fine,” Torres said.

“I hope so,” Lourdes said.

“You really like him, huh?”

“Maybe. Just a little.” She looked over and smiled. “Maybe a lot.”

Torres smiled back at her when they heard a noise that hadn’t been there before. Torres might have thought it was just her imagination, but the puzzled look on Lourdes’s face dispelled her of that possibility: She’d heard it too.

They both went absolutely silent.

There it was again. A thumping sound. Very soft, but persistent.

Thump-thump-thump.

“What is that?” Lourdes whispered, so low that Torres almost couldn’t hear her.

Thump-thump-thump.

Torres followed the sound to a door on her right. The one into the room with the escape hatch that linked the underground facility with the warehouse. “It’s coming from inside there.”

“The hatch…”

She glanced back at the two men. “We have a problem.” Then, when Banks and Benton looked over, “Something’s inside the hatch room.”

Torres and Lourdes ran over to the door while the BBs hurried to catch up.

Thump-thump-thump.

“What is that?” Banks asked.

“Thumping,” Lourdes said.

“Yeah, I can hear that, Vicks, but what’s causing it?”

“How the hell should I know,” Lourdes said with a groan of annoyance.

Torres had already unslung her shotgun as she neared the door marked HATCH. Banks was behind her and slightly to her right, while Lourdes took up position on her left, one hand awkwardly on her holstered gun. Benton was somewhere behind them, but Torres didn’t bother to check exactly where.

She nodded at Banks, who gave her a puzzled look.

Oh, for the love of God, can you be thicker?

She jerked her head in quick motions to the hatch door. A look of sudden understanding from the former security man, who moved forward and opened the door, then stepped quickly back.

Torres was the first one inside the room, the Remington swinging up, her forefinger on the trigger. Her police training came back with a vengeance and she swept the limited space, looking for something—anything—to shoot.

Nothing, except for—

Thump-thump-thump.

They were coming from the round submarine door in front of her. They had been sure to reseal it so nothing could follow them up. Someone had, apparently.

Thump-thump-thump.

They surrounded the hatch on all four sides on instinct. There was no obvious rhythm to the thumping, but it was persistent.

“Is it just me or am I getting a little déjà vu here,” Benton said.

“It’s just you,” Lourdes said.

“Should we open it?” Banks asked. He was looking at her as he said it, as if asking her permission directly. That surprised her a bit, especially since he’d become fast friends with Benton in the last hour or so. “Might be survivors trying to come up. Like us.”

“Or not,” Benton said. “Do we take that chance?”

“Don’t we have to?”

“Do we?”

The two men looked at each other, as if trying to will the other to agree with him.

“We can’t just ignore it,” Lourdes said. She turned to Torres. “It could be one of the people hiding in their quarters. Remember, the message said to take shelter. Most of the lab coats would have done that. Right about now, they might be trying to find their way out.”

Torres nodded. “I agree.” She turned back to the hatch. “Only one way to find out for sure.”

“Wait, wait,” Benton said. Apparently he wasn’t as convinced as Torres was. He glanced from face to face. “Are we sure we wanna be doing that? I mean, I’m all for helping anyone that needs help as the next guy, but what if it’s not, you know…”

“Human?” Banks finished for him.

“Exactly. What if it’s not humans on the other side?”

Even as they talked the thumping had continued.

Thump-thump-thump.

Thump-thump-thump…

“Well, whoever they are, it doesn’t sound like they’re going to go away,” Banks said. He caught Torres’s eyes. “What do you think?”

Again, he was asking for her opinions. More than that, it almost seemed as if he was asking her to make the decisions.

Maybe she was wrong about Banks after all. Maybe he hadn’t completely bought into Benton’s bullshit.

“We need to open it, find out if it’s survivors or not,” Torres said.

“Sounds like a bad idea to me,” Benton said.

“No one asked you,” Lourdes snapped.

Benton threw his hands up in mock surrender. “Sorrrrry. I mistook this for an open discussion.”

Lourdes glared at him but didn’t say anything. Benton grinned back.

What a fucking asshole, Torres thought.

To Banks, “We’re armed with the right weapons. If whoever’s knocking is inhuman, we kill it. If glowing blue eyes stare out at us, shoot it in the head, and don’t hesitate. Otherwise, don’t shoot.”

“Blue eyes equals headshot,” Banks said. “Got it.”

Torres nodded at Lourdes. “Step back.”

She didn’t have to tell the woman twice. Lourdes hurriedly took a couple of steps back, then decided that wasn’t enough, and took a few more. Soon she was practically outside the room, looking in at them through the open doorway.

“Benton, you open it,” Torres said.

“Why me?” Benton asked.

“Why not you?”

“Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer,” Benton mumbled as he walked over and took his spot next to the hatch and tightened his grip around the submarine handle. “Okay, boss lady, whenever you’re ready.”

“On the count of five,” Torres said.

She began counting down, even as the thump-thump-thump continued in front of her.

“One…”

Banks licked his lips and switched up his shooter’s stance.

Thump-thump-thump.

“Two…”

Torres aimed the Remington at the spot where the opening would be once Benton swung the hatch clear.

Thump-thump-thump.

“Three…”

Lourdes’s breathing had picked up noticeably behind her.

Thump-thump-thump.

“Four…”

Benton gave Torres a, “You still sure you wanna do this?” look.

Thump-thump-thump.

“Five!”

Benton spun the submarine wheel, grabbed the hatch by its handle, and jerked it open. He quickly shuffled backward as the heavy metal door banged into place, revealing a dark hole between the three of them.

And somehow, among that darkness, two black throbbing dark eyes peered out at them.

“Fuck!” Banks shouted even as he fired, the boom of his shotgun filling the room like a hundred thunderclaps going off simultaneously.

The creature reared up, let go of its grip on the rung, and disappeared into the nothingness below it.

Except there wasn’t nothingness. There was another creature already climbing up to take its place.

Banks fired again before Torres could stop him, his buckshot shattering the undead thing’s face—or the half of the face that remained—and sending it, too, tumbling backwards into the abyss.

Another one was already climbing up to take the second one’s place when Torres grabbed the hatch and swung it down. The metal lid slammed into place, crushing a hand that had attempted to grab onto the circular opening. Two fingers turned into mush and sprayed the room with black liquid, some splashing Torres’s shirt.

She turned the wheel to lock the hatch back up and stepped away.

Almost right away, the thumping resumed.

Thump-thump-thump.

Thump-thump-thump…

“Fuck me,” Banks was saying as he wiped at some of the black wetness dripping from his chin. Somehow, he’d managed to get more of the stuff on him than Torres had even though she’d been closer.

“Goddammit, Banks,” Torres said, staring daggers at him.

The former security man looked up and back at her, his fingers dripping with black goo. “What? What’d I do? You saw that, right? That was one of those things!”

“I told you don’t fucking shoot unless it’s a Blue Eyes!” She sighed and paced the room. “We could have just sealed it back up. Goddammit, Banks, we could have just sealed it back up!”

Banks stared confusingly at her. “So I shot them. So what? What’re you getting on my ass for?”

“Your shotgun blasts.”

“My—” Banks stopped short. Then, as the realization struck him, “Oh, shit.”

Oh shit is right, Torres thought as she glanced back at Lourdes.

The young woman was visible outside, but turned away from them and staring in the direction of the front doors.

“Lourdes,” Torres said. “What do you see?”

Lourdes held up a warning hand toward them, silencing all three figures inside the hatch room. She continued to stand perfectly still, listening and scanning the semi-dark warehouse in front of her.

“Lourdes,” Torres said again, this time whispering.

The other woman finally looked back at them—at Torres, specifically. Her eyes were wide, her face frozen in fear.

I know that look. Jesus Christ, I know that look!

Torres ran outside, the sound of the BBs chasing after her.

“Spread out,” Torres said. “Spread out!”

They had weapons at the ready—except for Lourdes, who remained standing as if rooted to the concrete floor—as they scanned the high windows that ringed the warehouse. The first window Torres landed on had a dark shadowy shape plastered against it. A moving, dark shadowy shape. Fortunately, it was still on the other side of the window.

Then another one, on another window...and another one…

“Shit,” Banks said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“That was definitely a bad idea,” Benton said. “Such a bad, bad idea.”

Torres bit her tongue. There was no point in arguing with him now. What was done was done. All they could do now was to survive it.

But Torres thought, Goddammit, Banks, anyway.

“They heard the shotgun,” Lourdes was saying quietly.

“Yeah,” Torres said just as quietly.

The obayifo continued to crawl around the window glass, skittering across the glass surfaces like mutated arachnids. There was a calmness to their movements, a lack of urgency, that bothered Torres.

“So what’s the plan?” Benton asked. There was an edge to his voice that made Torres uncomfortable. It was almost as if he wasn’t actually asking a question.

“The ATVs,” Banks said. “We can still take the ATVs.”

“No, not without Cent,” Lourdes said.

“The kid’s not here, and we are. And more importantly, they are.”

“And whose fault is that?”

Banks didn’t respond to that. He clenched his teeth and changed up his grip on his shotgun instead.

From behind her, Torres could still hear the creatures in the hatch continue to thump on the door. It even seemed to sound louder and faster and more intense.

Thump-thump-thump! Thump-thump-thump!

“Well, boss lady?” Benton said. “What’s the plan now?”

He was behind her so she couldn’t see his face as he asked the question, but Torres imagined the asshole was grinning, amused with the entire situation for some reason, at her.

But Torres didn’t waste her time with him. She was too busy staring at another shadowy figure as it crawled down from the rooftop and claimed a window of its own. How the hell were they even sticking to the windows?

“The ATVs,” Banks said almost breathlessly. “We gotta take the ATVs. We don’t have any other choice now.”

“No,” Torres said.

“There’s no choice, Torres.”

“There’s always a choice.”

“Oh yeah? Give me one, then,” he said, raising his voice to an almost shouting decibel.

“We follow the plan and wait for Cent, then make a decision as a group.”

“He’s not coming back,” Benton said. Unlike Banks, he sounded calm. Too calm for some reason.

“Shut up, Benton,” Lourdes said. She might have been gritting her teeth as she said it judging by the low growling sound of her voice.

“Make me,” Benton said.

“Motherfucker…”

“I said, make me.”

“He’s right,” Banks said. “If Cent’s even still alive, he’d have come back by now.”

“You’re both full of shit,” Lourdes said. She’d almost spat the words out. “No one’s leaving here until Cent comes back.”

“Now who’s talking shit?” Banks said as he took a step toward Lourdes, for the first time showing overt aggression toward the small woman. Or maybe he’d just gotten tired of being pushed around. “And who’s going to enforce that rule, little girl?”

Lourdes had an answer for Banks. Torres could see she was about to spit something back in his face when one of the high windows shattered and a black shape fell through the opening and crashed onto the floor.

The obayifo snapped up from the ground and onto its hands and knees as a human insect would, black eyes zeroing on them instantly from across the distance. Almost immediately, the other creatures scampered toward the fresh opening.

And just like that, the choice was made for them.

Torres spun and fired, and even as the creature was flung back by the impact of buckshot, she shouted, “The ATVs! Get to the ATVs!”

As much as she hated Benton—and increasingly, Banks, too—the man was right. If there had been a choice, it was gone. If they were still inside the warehouse when every obayifo in the area started to converge, it would be over. It would be all over.

And Torres couldn’t accept that fate. Macy was still out there, waiting for her.

But to get to the girl, she had to get off the island…

…and she couldn’t get off the island if she was caught in this building under a swarm of undead.

I’m sorry, Cent. I’m so sorry!

11

CENT

The stairwell was a bad idea. A really bad idea. Of course, they didn’t know just how bad of an idea until they finally reached it.

Kelly, who had somehow taken the lead in their sprint across the floor, found out first. Her two fellow security coworkers were next.

The rush of stale air as Kelly threw open the stairwell door.

A startled scream and cursing as Kelly fell with an obayifo’s jaw clenched tightly around her neck. She tried to throw it off, but the creature would not be removed. Instead, it bit down harder until Cent heard a popping sound, followed by a spray of blood.

The other two security men tried to help Kelly, grabbing the undead thing and attempting to pull it off her.

Then things went from bad to worse.

Someone shouted, “Get it off her! Get it off her!”

Someone else cursed, “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck!”

Then Duncan started shooting.

Except the man from Harold Campbell’s Human Resources department wasn’t shooting at the monstrosity with its mouth clamped around Kelly’s, or the two—three, four!—that had emerged out of the shadows of the stairwell and swarmed Kordell and Mount.

There was something else in the suffocating dark of the stairwell. Something with pulsating blue eyes. Duncan was shooting at it with his submachine gun, but nothing seemed to be hitting. Either he was missing with every round or it was dodging his bullets, but there was just too much blackness for Cent to make out anything with certainty.

Then the darkness twisted in the stairwell and black blobs flooded around the Blue Eyes and onto the floor. Instead of rushing down the aisle toward Cent and the others, they converged on the three writhing forms.

The three security people, down.

A Blue Eyes, in the stairwell.

Their escape, blocked.

“Run!” Duncan shouted as he twisted around, tossing the MP5 and pulling out his Glock as he did so. “Run run run!”

Run? Run where? There’s nowhere to go!

But that wasn’t true. There was somewhere to go—the employee lounge. The same place they’d just “rescued” the others from.

Some rescue.

Cent’s knife was already in his hand as he turned. His other hand grabbed Nancy’s wrist, the woman standing frozen in place, mouth agape at the sight of obayifo clambering over Kelly, Mount, and Kordell.

“Come on!” he shouted.

It didn’t work.

“Nancy!”

That did it. She turned to look at him, her mouth opening to say something. He didn’t let her; instead, he began dragging her down the aisle. She struggled to keep up, nearly stumbling on her own suddenly unreliable feet at least a good half dozen times. Miraculously, she always managed to stay upright. Mostly.

Duncan and Madeline were somewhere behind them, not that Cent glanced back to be sure. Madeline’s importance had just plummeted to almost nil and Cent would be lucky if he survived this floor, never mind Harold Campbell’s secretary.

“Where are we going?” Madeline, behind him.

“I don’t know!” Duncan.

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t know!”

“I thought you came here to rescue us!”

“Yeah well shit happens!”

Cent almost laughed at their exchange. He didn’t know what was more ludicrous, their back and forth while running for their lives, or that Duncan had murdered Odenkirk just so he wouldn’t hold them back. As it turned out, that had been unnecessary.

Odenkirk. He was in front of them, his body partially hidden in the semidarkness of the floor. The undead creature without limbs would also be there. Cent wasn’t looking forward to meeting up with them again.

Something flickered in the corner of his eyes and Cent glanced over while still keeping his stride. His hands, too, remained busy—one with Nancy’s wrist, the other gripped tightly around the handle of his knife.

Shadows were skittering across the surface of the windows along the far wall, scaling glass and brick and mortar as if they were born for the task. There had to be a dozen, maybe more, somehow to the outside, moving nearly as quickly as Cent did.

They were, literally, shadowing him.

“Oh my God,” Nancy said breathlessly. She’d seen them, too. “What are we going to do? What are we going to do?”

“Keep running,” Cent said. “Whatever you do, keep running.”

“Oh my God, oh my God…”

God. Cent had spent a lot of time wondering how God had allowed any of this to happen. The events at the Wilshire Apartments had opened his eyes in more ways than one. It’d made him reflect on everything he knew—or thought he knew—about how the world worked. More than that, it made him consider all the possibilities beyond the laws of man.

God. His mother’s God. Cent called to Him now for help.

I need you. We all need you.

Crashing glass drew his attention back to the windows across the floor.

One of the creatures had smashed its way through and was crawling inside, while others were clamoring toward the sudden opening. They looked every bit like multiple jagged lines of almost-human-sized ants scrambling toward the shortest path to their goal.

Them. He and Nancy, and Duncan and Madeline behind them. (Cent hoped the two were still behind them, anyway. He couldn’t waste the time, no matter how brief, to confirm that.)

Cent kept moving, kept running, because that was all he could do. It was difficult enough to maintain his pace while still holding onto Nancy, but somehow he managed it. Or at least, he thought he did. He could have just been giving himself way too much credit.

The ones that had already made their way inside the floor were hopping over cubicles, landing on desks, and launching themselves back into the air like rocks being slung by catapults. They were fast, their black skin more blurs than anything as they appeared in the corner of Cent’s eyes. Fortunately he’d put enough distance between them that the creatures had a large gap to cover. But that wouldn’t last forever.

The employee lounge. How had it gotten so far away? Had it moved? Had someone relocated it?

Gunfire from behind him.

Cent slowed down just enough to finally glance back. Duncan was shooting at the leaping obayifo. He caught one, two, three of them as they were in the air. The creatures dropped like flies, the life (Could you actually call what they had now “life?”) in them zapped empty within milliseconds of the silver-tipped bullet’s impact. Another one slammed into the corner of a cubicle and knocked the heavy paper wall down. A second one barreled into a darkened computer and cracked the screen.

Duncan was in the back, with Madeline running for all she was worth between him and Cent. Harold Campbell’s secretary was running with long strides, her hair, formerly secured behind her in a ponytail, now flying free. If there had been more than ten yards or so between the two of them, Cent might have thought her wild, flowing mane was a veil instead of hair.

For a brief second or two—maybe not even that—Cent locked eyes with Madeline. The woman’s face was contorted in intense concentration, the fear in her eyes as palpable as Cent’s own heartbeats crashing away in his chest.

Then, without warning, he lost his grip on Nancy’s wrist.

Cent spun around to find out what had happened—and tripped over the very same obayifo that he had passed by two times now. It’d been in front of him when he reached it, but it was now behind him. The creature’s remaining eye was focused on Nancy, only a few feet in front of it.

He lunged forward and did what he should have done when he had first encountered the miserable thing earlier: He stabbed it in its heavily scarred back and it went, finally, forever still.

Madeline reached them, slowing down just enough to reach down and grab Nancy to help her up. “Come on! Come on!”

Behind the secretary, Duncan was backing up, reloading as he did so.

Two—three—five creatures surged toward him, angling from the right side where the cubicles were stationed like soldiers.

Cent snapped back to his feet and ran to the women. “Go go go!”

Madeline didn’t need him to say more than that. With one hand clenched around Nancy’s wrist, they took off.

Duncan, still retreating, kept his eyes on the creatures as they hopped and climbed over the obstacles to get to him. He glanced back just long enough to see Cent. “What are you doing?”

“Save your bullets.”

“Say what?”

“Save your bullets.” Just in case the man still didn’t understand, Cent held up his knife. Black blood coated the sharp point and dripped from the silver-coated edge.

“It’s your funeral, kid,” Duncan said before he turned and ran after the women.

No, it’s not.

Cent stood still and waited for the obayifo to reach him. Until then, he looked down the aisle, at the squirming pile of black flesh. He couldn’t tell how many of them were down there. Enough, obviously, to take down all three former security people. And it was there they remained, feeding on the spoils of their victory. Kelly, Kordell, and Mount didn’t make any sounds. That is, if they even still could.

He refocused on the first creature to reach him. It was on the floor, bounding across the smooth tiles like a reckless dog in a slippery ice skating rink. He couldn’t tell if it was losing its footing or not, but eventually it reached him.

Cent slashed as it lunged.

Its head flew in one direction as its body went in the other.

He took a quick step backward as the next two arrived. Either this pair had made a concerted effort to attack him as one or it’d been a lucky coincidence. In Cent’s experience, the Black Eyes tended to have nothing resembling tactical awareness. They were, more often than not, creatures of basic instincts.

He waited for them, knowing that he was little more than food to them.

Cent hacked at one of the creature’s head and kicked the other one as it tried to go for his leg with vile and jagged teeth. The first one fell lifelessly to the floor, and before the second one could bounce off the wall and attack again, Cent was already attacking.

He took its head off with one swing.

Two shots from behind him as Duncan fired, sending two other obayifo crashing into two waiting cubicles before they could reach Cent.

Five down, but there were more incoming. It was impossible to miss the dark shapes moving through, around, and over the forest of cubicles that covered much of the floor.

He turned and ran past Duncan.

Odenkirk’s body came up quickly and Cent hopped over it without looking down.

I’m sorry, Tom.

Duncan was suddenly beside him. “Thought you could use a hand.”

“I didn’t.”

“My mistake.”

“You should have conserved your ammo. You’re going to need every bullet.”

Duncan glanced over his shoulder. He sighed when he looked forward again. “You’re probably right about that.”

Madeline was waiting for them at the employee lounge, with one hand holding the door. Nancy was nowhere to be seen, but Cent assumed she was already inside.

More glass breaking from their right.

Cent snapped a quick look as more obayifo scrambled across the surface of the glass, making a beeline for the spot that had just been smashed open. He counted at least five, but there could have been more. It was difficult to be sure. This part of the floor, for whatever reason, had more shadows than the rest.

“How many more of them are there?” Duncan asked. It may or may not have been a rhetorical question.

We’re going to find out soon enough.

He darted inside the lounge, heard the loud bang of the door slamming shut and the locks clacking into place behind him almost immediately.

Duncan was next to him, hands on his knees, sucking in air. As he’d expected, Nancy was already inside, standing in the corner looking back at them. There was something in her eyes that made him feel less than the savior he and Duncan were supposed to be.

“You almost got us killed,” her eyes said. “And for what? For nothing.”

It wasn’t quite nothing. They’d lost Odenkirk, Kelly, and two others. But Cent was sure that wasn’t the kind of “nothing” Nancy’s eyes was accusing him of.

Odenkirk. She was blaming them for Odenkirk.

And I don’t blame her.

He glanced back at Madeline, standing a few feet from the locked door. She was clearly anticipating an all-out assault on the door by the creatures. The new ones that had come through the window should have been outside by now.

Except there wasn’t anything that resembled an attack.

There was just…quiet.

When she looked back, he saw the same question on Madeline’s face that was running through his own mind: Why aren’t they attacking? Why are they just ignoring the lounge?

“How,” Cent said, struggling for breath, “did you guys keep them from coming in before?”

“What do you mean?” Madeline asked.

“How did you manage to keep those things out there before we showed up?”

“The door,” Madeline said, gesturing at just that—the door. “We locked the door.”

“And then?”

“And then nothing. We locked the door and they couldn’t get in.”

Cent walked over to the door and banged on it with a fist. The impacts produced a series of dull thudding sounds. “It’s heavy. But not heavy enough.”

“Not heavy enough for what?”

“You saw it back there. In the stairwell.”

Madeline’s eyes widened as she understood. “Oh my God.”

“What?” Duncan said behind them. “What are you two blabbing about? What was in the stairwell?”

“An obayifo,” Cent said, looking past her and at him. “But it wasn’t like the others. It had blue eyes. Did you see it?”

Duncan seemed to think about before answering. Cent didn’t understand why. He must have seen it. It was impossible not to see it. You had to be blind not to have seen those eyes as they glowed bright in the dark stairwell.

“I’m not sure,” Duncan finally said.

“I saw it,” Madeline said. “It was in the stairwell.”

“I saw it, too,” Nancy said. “It was there. Blue eyes that seemed to…glow.”

Duncan returned his gaze to Cent. He couldn’t tell if the man believed them or not. “So what? It has blue eyes while the other ones had black eyes. And?”

“It’s stronger than the others,” Cent said.

“A lot stronger,” Madeline added.

“How much stronger?” Duncan asked.

“Strong enough,” Cent said, looking back at the lounge door, “that if it wants, it’s going to break through this door like it was made of paper.”

“So why hasn’t it?”

“That is the question.” He turned to Madeline. “Did you see any of them earlier? Before we showed up?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“But they knew there were survivors in here.”

She nodded. “The Black Eyes did. I don’t know about the Blue Eyes. They tried to get in at first, but they gave up.”

“Why?” Cent asked.

“Why what?”

“Why did they give up?”

She shook her head again. Cent could see the frustration on her face as she mulled over everything she thought she knew about the night’s events in her mind. Madeline was not a stupid woman. Harold Campbell would never have entrusted her with all the things he had if she had been. Like him, Madeline was trying to understand the why of their survival up to this point.

Perhaps also like Cent, she was coming up empty.

“I don’t know, Cent,” she said finally. “They just did.”

“And the Blue Eyes…”

“They never appeared. Or at least I never saw them.” She looked to Nancy.

Nancy, too, shook her head.

Duncan walked over to the door and leaned against it. He placed his ear against the smooth surface and listened.

Cent, Madeline, and Nancy waited quietly.

Then, pulling his head away from the door, the man looked back at them. “I can’t hear anything.”

“They’re out there,” Cent said. “We saw them.”

“They were. Maybe they left.”

“Why would they just leave?”

“Fuck if I know.”

Duncan leaned against the wall next to the door. He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath, before opening them again…

…and looked straight into Cent’s face, now just a few inches away.

Cent’s knife, at Duncan’s throat, was even closer.

12

TORRES

Of the large array of all-terrain vehicles in the warehouse, Benton and Banks had chosen to pay most attention to the four-wheeled ATVs. Each vehicle was colored black and green, with three LED headlights on the front—a main one on top, in the center, and two more underneath it to give the field of light wider coverage. The four tires were massive and at least twenty-five inches, if not more. The main frame was wide and squat, with the undercarriage about twelve inches off the ground. The BBs had been working on three of the four-wheelers to get them ready, with the idea of riding two per vehicle. The only thing they couldn’t do was turn on the engines. That would have surely drawn every obayifo on the island to them. That, though, wasn’t an issue anymore.

The sound of 90 horsepower filled the cavernous building and thrummed off the metal sidings, vibrating every inch of the place. As soon as she shot the first creature and shouted for everyone to run for the ATVs, Torres had pivoted and went straight for the front garage doors. Gunfire from behind her as both Benton and Banks, straddling their vehicles, fired into the rear of the warehouse as more undead things fell through the cracked window. The high drop should have been painful but by the way they simply sprang back up—some with twisted limbs—Torres didn’t think they felt any bit of it.

“The door! Get the door!” That was Banks shouting at her as if she was an idiot and wasn’t already on her way to do just that.

What the hell do you think I’m doing? she thought and wanted to shout back at him, but decided it wasn’t worth the extra few seconds that bit of self-satisfaction would have cost her. Instead, she ran for the panel on the side of the doors and slammed her palm into the DOOR button. It was big and white and hard to miss even in the semidarkness.

Gears spun and the doors moved, first with a stuttering, which didn’t last for very long. Both large doors were well-oiled and maintained, and soon was sliding up smoothly. As the first foot of open island air revealed itself, Torres glimpsed legs already outside moving around.

More obayifo.

It couldn’t be helped. Not anymore. With the creatures filling the back of the warehouse there was only one way to go—forward and out. Even if that meant having to fight their way through the growing number already waiting.

One of the creatures couldn’t wait for the doors to open enough to accommodate its entire length and began crawling through. Torres backed up and away from it even as she heard the ATVs revving louder behind her. The creature, on its hands and knees, was starting to lift itself up when Torres shot it in the face from about ten yards away. Most of the buckshot missed, ricocheting off the floor and still-opening garage doors, but enough of the silver-coated ammo struck the Black Eyes that it fell down and ceased moving.

That, of course, didn’t do anything to stop the others from following in its footsteps. They began pouring through the widening opening, some crawling while others only needed to bend their knees and lunge through. Before long, they didn’t even need to do that.

“Go go go!” Benton behind her, shouting to be heard over the roar of his engine. Was he talking to her or—

No, not her, because a second later Banks and a terrified-looking Lourdes flashed past her on one of the vehicles.

“The beach!” Torres shouted after them. “Get to the beach!”

She wasn’t sure if Banks or Lourdes shouted anything back because soon they were outside the warehouse. Creatures bounced off the front grill of the vehicle like bowling pins, others getting caught underneath the large rubber tires and crushed. Limbs flailed in front of Torres even as the stink of death caught up to her from behind.

“Get on!” Benton, suddenly next to her.

But she didn’t get on right away. Instead, Torres took two quick steps past him and unloaded the remaining shells in the Remington into the rear of the warehouse. Black-skinned creatures, more animal than man, fell like dominos as she poured shell after shell into the darkness. Even as she pulled the trigger and one eye remained on her targets, her other eye kept watch on the windows that ringed the place.

A seemingly never-ending number of obayifo were falling down from multiple openings now like gobs of black rain.

Too many. There was just too many.

“Torres, goddammit!” Benton again. “Get the fuck on already!”

She slung the shotgun and ran back to him. She didn’t have a lot of distance to cover, thankfully. Torres hopped onto the back of the ATV just a split second before Benton twisted the throttle. If she had been a heartbeat slower, she would have missed it completely and fell on her ass. Instead, she lurched backward, nearly falling, but managed to reach out and grab something on the side of the long seat first.

“Took your sweet time!” Benton shouted.

“Shut up and drive!”

“Yes, boss lady!”

Just as they were knocked sideways by—or crushed underneath—Banks’s ATV, Benton’s did the same to the remaining creatures. One, then two forms flew to the right, while a third and fourth flailed underneath the heavy tires. An obayifo with half of its head freshly crushed by Banks’s ATV lost the other half as Benton went over it. Torres swore the thing actually squealed underneath their tires. Or maybe that was just the tires themselves grinding against loose flesh and deformed bones.

It was a full moon outside, and what the moon didn’t illuminate, the lamp posts that was part of the main complex’s landscape did. She quickly lost sight of Banks and Lourdes’s ATV as she and Benton swerved their way out of the warehouse.

Get to the boats, Lourdes. Get to the boats!

Benton did his best to keep on the paved road that wound around the island while also avoiding as many creatures as he could. The dull crunch of the ATV’s front grill colliding with a skeletal form standing in their way, sending it flying in one direction, while two more of its brethren lunged at them from the sides. One bounced off a handlebar, fingers swiping at empty air as it ricocheted off, while the other missed Torres’s head by a few inches and sailed over her.

“Goddamn!” Benton shouted. “I don’t know if I should be laughing my ass off or shitting my pants!”

Torres didn’t, either. There was an almost comical vibe to what she was going through at the moment. The creatures had no chance of stopping the speeding ATV, but that didn’t seem to stop them from trying anyway.

Another obayifo was crushed underneath the tires while two more vanished into the grass that was part of the main complex’s landscape. The whump-whump-whump sound of an undead caught underneath the right rear tire, being blended onto the road with each turn of the wheel. Until, mercifully, it peeled off, leaving a long streak of black liquid behind.

The wall of trees loomed in front of them like a castle promising relief. Soon, they were inside it.

Torres shot a quick glance over her shoulder, watching as obayifo jumped from the rooftops of the warehouse, slamming like rocks against the hard concrete, only to pick themselves up and hobble after them. The ones on ground level were already in pursuit, bounding across the paved road like giant, black-skinned grasshoppers.

And there, in front of the main building, was the remnants from the helicopter crash. She hadn’t seen it while they were making their escape from the warehouse because she was more focused on what was in front of her instead of behind. There was still a lot of smoke but not much of a fire thanks to the aircraft landing on concrete instead of grass. Wreckage was spread out all across the landscaping.

“Where to, boss lady?” Benton was asking her.

She looked forward. “The beach! That’s where Banks and Lourdes will be headed!”

“Just like we planned, huh?” She couldn’t see it, but Torres imagined he was grinning to himself as he said that.

Smug asshole, she thought, but said, “Yeah!”

“To the beach it is!”

Soon they were deep in the bowels of the woods, where tall trees and heavy crowns took away the illumination from the full moon. But they weren’t completely left in the dark. There were lamp posts in here as well, spaced out every fifty yards or so along the road to keep them company. And when they were in-between lights, the ATV’s trio of headlights took over. The vehicles were equipped with extremely bright LEDs that had a generous spread, revealing the entirety of the paved road directly in front of them from edge to edge.

Benton drove like he’d been born on an all-terrain vehicle, leaning slightly forward to get a better view of the road ahead of them. She had slung her shotgun and drew her Glock. The Remington needed to be reloaded, which was something she didn’t feel comfortable doing while on the back of a speeding ATV.

She glanced back, and to her unsurprise, saw that the creatures were behind them, giving chase. They were fast, but their vehicle was faster. Benton was putting more and more distance between them with every second. Ninety horsepower, it seemed, was more than enough to leave the obayifo in the dust.

“We’re losing them!” she shouted.

“Good!”

“How far to the beach?”

“Island’s not that long. I’d be shocked if Banks isn’t already there—”

He slammed on the brake and twisted the handles, causing their vehicle to swerve sideways until, somehow, they came to a stop…just a few feet from another ATV. Except this one was turned over on its side, the strong odor of spilled fuel loitering in the air around them.

“Shit!” Torres jumped off the seat and scanned the area for signs of Banks and Lourdes. She didn’t see either.

But there was an obayifo on the ground next to the overturned vehicle. Its legs were partially pinned underneath the heavy all-terrain and there was a hole in its face, the bullet that had caused it having gone through into the paved road underneath.

“What the hell are you doing?” Benton shouted. “Get back on!”

“They’re alive. They killed one of the creatures.”

“Good for them. Now get back here!”

Torres hurried off the road, following drips of blood that had been left behind. They were fresh and led into the trees. If not for the bright glare of Benton’s now-righted ATV, she might have missed it completely.

“Torres! Get on!”

“One or both of them’s hurt. They ran for the woods instead of continuing on the road to the beach.”

“I don’t care! You get back here!”

Again, she ignored him, and stepped off the paved road and took a few steps toward the trees—

A flurry of movements as the darkness in front of her seemed to quiver.

Obayifo!

A living one, this time. Dark pruned black skin and squirming lips, saliva flitting out from a row of crooked and jagged teeth as it opened its mouth wide while in midair.

Torres stumbled back, firing at the creature reflexively. It was almost on top of her when she squeezed off the shot and got it across the chest at almost point-blank range.

It flopped to the ground and didn’t move.

“Torres!” Benton. “Get the fuck back here! We’re not that far from the beach. They probably already made it there on foot!”

Bullshit.

She didn’t believe Benton for a second and she didn’t think he did, either. They might have been close to the beach, but Banks and Lourdes hadn’t gotten that big of a head start on them. There was no way they had made it to the beach on foot after the accident, especially when one or both of them were bleeding.

“Torres,” Benton said. Or started to say. He mostly just got Tor out before her name changed into a curse.

She glanced back and saw why.

The wave of obayifo they’d left in the dust had caught up to them, their numbers darting in and out of the lamp posts along the winding road. There were more in the woods, skirting around trees on the ground while some jumped from branch to branch like wild monkeys.

Torres instinctively holstered her Glock and began reloading the Remington. She slid shell after shell into the weapon, her eyes never leaving the road behind them.

“Torres!” Benton again. “Get back on!”

She ignored him. Or maybe she didn’t and just didn’t know how to respond. She heard him, of course.

“Get back on!”

But she couldn’t. Not with Lourdes and Banks still out there. She didn’t believe they had made it to the beach yet. They were in the woods right now, fleeing on foot. And wounded. One or both of them were wounded.

And her thoughts went back to Cent. She’d abandoned the kid when the creatures swarmed the warehouse. There hadn’t been any choice then, but she had choices now when it came to Banks and Lourdes. She couldn’t just abandon them, too. Not after the way she’d abandoned Cent…

The sound of engines revving behind her.

She’d slid the last shell into the Remington when she heard it. Torres turned around and watched as Benton sped away on the ATV, the red taillights of the vehicle the only thing she could see after a few seconds.

“Sonofabitch.”

Torres glanced back down the road at the wave of obayifo. Close enough now that she could smell them, their unnatural scent carried through the forest by a fresh breeze.

Fresh breeze?

The ocean! It was closer than she thought. Which meant that maybe Benton had been right after all. Maybe they were close enough to the beach that Banks and Lourdes had made it, even on foot.

Rustling branches coming from her right.

She pivoted just in time to see the creature sailing through the air like some kind of flying squirrel. A huge, black-skinned, dark-eyed flying squirrel.

Torres fired and sidestepped at the same time, allowing the obayifo to crash to the road behind her.

She spun and took off, staying on the road. If she was as close to the beach as she thought, it would have been a stupid idea to run through the woods. Which made her wonder why Banks and Lourdes didn’t know the same thing? Did they mistake the beach as being farther away than it was?

Benton was long gone. She couldn’t even make out the red taillights of his vehicle anymore. It was as if the woods had simply swallowed him whole.

Torres risked a glance over her shoulder.

Fuck.

They were closer. Much closer than they had been when she’d last looked. Thirty yards, maybe not even that, separated her from the horde. Close enough now that she could see the gleam in their eyes as they passed underneath a fresh pool of streetlamp.

She ignored the rustling of branches and trees to her left and right. More of the monsters. She only knew they were still coming from behind her. When the noises caught up to her, then she would do something about.

Right now, she could only run.

The stink behind her was getting thicker, more impossible to ignore. She didn’t have to look back to know they were catching up. She couldn’t just smell them but she could feel them, too. And there was the impossibly soft but intense sound of, seemingly, hundreds of bare feet pounding on the paved road.

How many? A dozen. Two dozen? Three? How many people were on the island that the Blue Eyes were able to turn? She remembered seeing so many faces as she walked around the complex yesterday. (Jesus. This place was full of living people just yesterday…) And that was just belowground. How many more were employed aboveground? On five floors?

Too many. That was the answer. Way too many.

She didn’t bother trying to pick them off. There were just too many targets to shoot. And she was running out of ammo. She had one more magazine for the Glock, but she’d given the other one to Duncan. The Remington, too, was running low. Besides the five shells she had left in the weapon, there were only three more in her back pocket. Eight in all.

Not enough. Not nearly enough.

And then, suddenly, a ray of hope. The full moon returned, reappearing out of nowhere as if part of some grand illusion for her eyes only. It emerged from behind a wall of trees to hover high above the sky, brightening what looked like the end of the road and promising escape from the woods.

The thought made her run even faster.

If not actually faster, then at least harder. At least harder…

Wild grunts, intermingled with the pounding of a thousand bare feet, catching up to her.

…catching up to her…

Faster.

She had to go faster.

Faster!

She threw the shotgun away to do just that. It disappeared into the darkness in the woods to her right.

Lighter. She was suddenly lighter.

Good. Good!

Then, in front of her, gray sand glistening underneath the full moon and the euphoric noise of waves crashing against shoreline. The crisp smell of the ocean breeze fighting through and winning the battle against the sea of stink behind her. That was enough incentive for her to push herself even more.

Faster.

Faster!

Faster!!

She sucked in the fresh air, letting it fill her lungs. Now, if she could only find the boats. Where were the boats? Where were—

A vehicle parked haphazardly on the side of the road in front of her, partially hidden in the darkness so she didn’t see it until she was almost on top of it. It looked very much like the same ATV that Benton had fled in.

Except where was Benton? She couldn’t see anything that looked like a fight had gone down. And no bodies, either—human or inhuman. So where was Benton?

“Get down!”

Figures had appeared dramatically in front of her, stepping out from both sides of the opening onto the beach like ghostly specters. She couldn’t tell if they were human or obayifo but she recognized their commands.

Because obayifo didn’t speak—at least not the black-eyed ones, and these definitely didn’t have glowing blue eyes—but humans did.

Humans did!

She leapt forward, smashing cheek-first into the road, even as the world exploded in a cacophony of crashing waves, gunfire, and clacking bones.

13

JOHN

The kid wasn’t happy. He hadn’t been very happy when John shot the slightly overweight and incredibly unathletic office worker. And he’d gotten even more unhappy when they were forced to retreat back into the employee lounge.

John saw the fire in the kid’s eyes now as he pressed his knife against John’s throat. A goddamn sharp knife, at that.

Note to self: Don’t fuck with the kid.

John didn’t swallow for fear of slicing his Adam’s apple on the blade. If he’d seen Cent act a second earlier, he could have avoided it. Except he hadn’t.

“Cent?” That was Madeline, the concern in her voice obvious.

The kid didn’t answer her, though. He was too busy staring into John’s soul. John could already feel a trickle of blood as the silver-coated edge scraped against his skin. It was a minor cut, nothing he hadn’t gotten a dozen times over his lifetime while shaving. Then again, those minor and not-at-all-concerning cuts weren’t put there by a clearly agitated human being.

“Cent, what are you doing?” Madeline, still trying to figure things out. John would have thought it was obvious by now what Cent was doing.

And stupid him, he’d put his gun back into his front waistband after they made it into the lounge. His hand was on it now, resting against the butt. It would only take a heartbeat or so, maybe even less than that if he really went for it, to draw the weapon. But that was a heartbeat (or so) he didn’t have. The knife was already there and all it would have taken was a simple flick of the wrist for Cent to slice him open from end to end.

The kid knew it, too, because he never bothered to glance down at John’s hand. If only John still had his MP5. He could have easily turned it and pulled the trigger. He wouldn’t have even had to lift it since it would have been hanging from a sling in front of him. At this range, he’d blow holes in the kid’s stomach without even having to aim.

Except he didn’t have the submachine gun so that was a moot point.

I should probably have seen this coming.

Crap.

For a few seconds—ten, maybe fifteen—John locked eyes with the kid, and neither one of them said a word. Madeline and Nancy huddled in the back, not quite sure what to do, if anything. John had a feeling they also weren’t certain whose side they were on at the moment.

Oh, who are you kidding, buddy. They’re definitely on his side.

“It had to be done,” John said. Just speaking was dangerous. Not because it might agitate the kid even further but because that damn knife might slice him open by accident.

Or accident-ish, anyway.

“You know that,” John continued. “It had to be done. He was holding us back. He would have held us back even more. He cost us the stairwell. We would have made it before those things got down to us if it wasn’t for him.”

“You don’t know that,” Cent finally said.

Good. Let’s keep him talking.

Because as long as Cent was talking, the kid couldn’t cut his throat.

Definitely a good plan, chum.

“Are you sure about that?” John asked. “Think about it. How long did it take you to run back and help him? How long did it take you to get him to where we were? We didn’t move an inch while you were busy with him. We had to wait.”

He could see it—the consideration in Cent’s eyes. Maybe the kid had managed to convince himself otherwise before but faced with the facts, he was starting to rethink his conclusions.

Or at least, John hoped that was what was happening.

“I had no choice,” John said. “It wasn’t an easy choice to make, but someone had to.”

“Wasn’t it?” Cent asked. “An easy choice for you?”

John almost shook his head but stopped in time. He could feel the blade scratching against his Adam’s apple again. Jesus, that was one sharp knife. “It wasn’t. But I had to make a decision in order to save the rest of us. Against the lives of many, the life of one is worth sacrificing.”

“And how did that plan of yours work out?”

“It…could have gone better.”

“Cent.” Madeline, in the back, having taken a few steps forward. “He’s right. He did what he had to.”

Cent cocked his head slightly without completely taking his eyes off John.

“It had to be done,” John said again before the kid could do something stupid…like move the knife too much to either side. “You know that. In your heart of hearts, you know that. It had to be done.”

“Cent…” Madeline said. “He’s right.” Then, softer, because maybe she didn’t like admitting it herself, “He’s right.”

The kid’s eyes returned to John fully. “Fine.”

“Fine?” John said.

Now this is progress!

“Fine,” the kid said again. “But that doesn’t explain who you are.”

“I’m John Duncan—”

The knife moved slightly and another trickle of blood dripped down John’s throat.

“Jesus Christ,” John whispered. “Careful with that thing, will ya?’

“Who are you?”

“John Duncan. Accountant extraordinaire and Human Resources part-timer,” were the words that was supposed to come out of his mouth. Of course, he’d dump the extraordinaire part. But the kid probably wasn’t in the mood for such a glib response.

He said instead, “My name’s John, but Duncan isn’t my last name.”

“You’re not an accountant, are you?”

“No.”

“Or work in Human Resources.”

“Well, that’s technically true. I really do work in Human Resources. I’m just not a real accountant.”

He saw the lack of surprise in Cent’s eyes. It wasn’t the same response from Madeline or Nancy.

The former walked over to them. “If you don’t really work for Harold, then who the hell are you, mister?”

“Like I said, it’s John.”

“John what?”

“Does it matter?”

“No,” Cent said. “What matters is what you’re doing here.” He inched his face closer to John’s. “So what are you doing here, John?”

John managed a smile. He liked the kid’s guts, but there was never a chance he would quiver under that menacing glare. He’d seen plenty of threatening assholes in his life and this kid wasn’t one of them. Then again, he didn’t really have to be with that knife pressed oh-so-closely against John’s neck.

“Same thing you are, I’m guessing,” John said.

“Which is?”

“Trying to figure out what Harold Campbell is doing on this island.”

“What are you talking about?” Madeline asked. She’d stopped about five feet behind Cent’s left shoulder. The other woman, Nancy, remained in the back, as if too afraid to wander into their little confrontation.

“Oh, come on,” John said, as much to Madeline as to Cent. “We both know there’s a reason Campbell bought an island that’s conveniently in international waters.”

“The U.S. government,” Cent said.

“That’s right. He wants freedom from Uncle Sam to do whatever he wants.”

“What do you know about that?” Madeline asked. Or, more accurately, demanded.

“Not nearly as much as you do, I’m sure.” Then, to Cent, “Or you. You might think you know everything Campbell has going on here, but I sincerely doubt that. They’re keeping things from you.”

“What things?” Cent asked.

“He’s lying, Cent,” Madeline said.

The kid ignored Campbell’s secretary and remained focused on John. “What things?”

“I don’t know,” John said. “But whatever it is—or was—it’s the reason this island is swarming with those nasty little fuckers right now.”

“It was an accident,” Madeline said. “We don’t know how they got out. We’re still trying to figure that out.”

For the first time, Cent turned to look back at Madeline, giving John his first real chance to act. All he had to do was draw the gun and he’d have the upper hand. After all, you didn’t bring a knife to a gunfight for a reason. Even a very sharp one.

Except he didn’t. He could see it in Cent’s eyes: The kid was just as dubious of Madeline’s claims as he was.

One of those the enemy of my enemy is my friend situations, I’m thinking.

“It wasn’t an accident,” Cent said to the woman.

“What are you talking about?” Madeline asked. “Of course it was. We don’t know what really happened. No one does.”

“The obayifo didn’t escape. They manipulated you. Allowed themselves to be captured. There were two Blue Eyes down there, not one.”

“What? No. There was only the one.”

“That’s what you saw because that’s what they wanted you to see. The other one was disguising itself as a Black Eyes.”

“No,” Madeline said. She took a step back. It looked involuntary.

“Yes,” Cent said. He sounded very sure.

Damn. Kid knows more than I do! More than her, too!

He had a lot of questions but didn’t interrupt the two of them. He had gotten more in the last few minutes than he’d managed in the last three months. In his experience, it didn’t matter how you got the intel as long as you got them.

So he shut up and let them continue.

“That’s impossible,” Madeline was saying, but John didn’t think she was entirely convinced of her own words.

“It’s not just possible, it’s what happened,” Cent said. “They tricked you. Harold revealed himself to them, showed his organization to be a threat. That’s why they’re here.”

John sensed the opening and took it. “The best defense is a good offense.”

Cent looked back at him. “Yes.”

Then, without preamble, the kid took the knife away from John’s throat and stepped back. John let out a sigh of relief and rubbed at his neck. His fingers came away with red on the tips. Not a lot, thank God.

He wiped his hands on his pant legs and looked past Cent at Madeline. “You thought you were in control, when you were being played all this time. How else would they have taken the entire island in just one night?”

“Not even one night,” Cent said. The kid had put his knife away. “It took them only a few hours. First the underground, then up here.”

“Now that’s efficiency.”

“It’s…something.” Then, refocusing his stare on Madeline, “Where is Harold?”

“He left,” Madeline said. She had walked back to the table near the back and sat down.

“When did he leave?”

“Thirty minutes or so after the experiments in the lab.”

“Why didn’t you leave with him?”

“I had some work to finish.” She shook her head, an expression of regret on her face. “I should have left with him. I was supposed to.”

“What about these black-eyed little buggers,” John said. “How many of them did you have down there?”

“Three. The three that Benton captured the night before.”

“Two,” Cent said. “There was just two Black Eyes. The other one was a Blue Eyes in disguise, remember?”

Madeline shook her head. She clearly didn’t fully believe him. Either that or she was in denial.

John wasn’t sure about Nancy. The other woman hadn’t said a word but had found another corner near the very back of the room and sat down. She folded her knees to her chest, placed her arms around them, and tried desperately to disappear.

Finally, Madeline said, “You said that already. But how is something like that possible? How do you know they can even do that?”

“Doesn’t matter if you believe they can do it or not,” Cent said. “Because they did.”

“But how? There has to be an explanation.”

“Madeline,” Cent said, as if he were talking to a child, “the obayifo doesn’t conform to the rules of God or nature. They are an abomination, a mutated species that feeds on our blood. And yet, we can kill the black-eyed ones with a touch of silver, but not the blue-eyed ones. How is any of this possible?”

Madeline nodded solemnly.

The kid’s got a way with words, John thought.

He said, “So they can turn them? The Blue Eyes, like the one I saw back there in the stairwell?”

“Yes,” Cent said. “You have to think about it like an infection. It’s the blood. It’s all about the blood. They infect you and turn you from the inside out.”

“Damn. That’s…something.”

“He’s telling the truth,” Madeline said. She looked straight at him. “They transform people into Black Eyes with their blood at a genetic level. We’ve been trying to figure out how they do it and how long it takes.”

“And?”

“And…” She shook her head. “It’s inconclusive. We just don’t know enough about them, about how they work. Like Cent said, we don’t even know how their species is even possible, much less any closer to explaining how they function. That’s the entire point of this island, and why we’re in international waters.”

“Right. You were running experiments down there. And not the legal kind, I’m guessing.”

“Legal? Illegal? We’re talking about creatures that shouldn’t even exist, that’s neither animal nor human. Who knows what’s legal or not when it comes to something like that. Mr. Campbell just preferred not to take any chances.”

“And how’s that working out for you?” he asked.

She glared back at him.

John ignored it and turned to Cent. “How long does it take? To turn someone into one of them?”

“I don’t know,” Cent said. “She’s right about that.”

“So what do you guys know?”

“That’s the point of this island.,” Madeline said. “To find out all those answers we don’t know yet. Which part of that don’t you get?”

“Oh, I get it, don’t you worry about that.” He said to Cent, “Are they out there? Beyond this island?”

The kid nodded. “Yes.”

“How is it that I’ve never heard about them?”

“They’re good at hiding.”

“And they’re smart,” Madeline added.

“Yeah, I can see that they’re smart,” John said. “Is it just in America? Or are they out there in the rest of the big bad world, too?”

“It’s not just America,” Madeline said.

“Where else?”

“We don’t know.”

John chuckled. “Right. You don’t know. That’s why you’re here, to find out the answers to those questions.”

“You’re not as dumb as you look.”

He smirked at her. “Too bad I can’t say the same thing to you or your boss, lady.”

Goddamn, John thought, remembering the briefing they’d given him before he started on this little misadventure. It’d involved everything his employers knew about Harold Campbell and the island. They’d known a lot about the former but not so much about the latter. That was the reason he was here in the first place. Now, as he recalled everything they’d told him about what was happening on Bird Island, John almost laughed.

His employers, as it turned out, knew exactly Jack Shit about what was happening here. Even the kid seemed to know much more.

He walked over to join that kid now. Cent was next to the door, listening with his ear against the nearby wall.

“Anything?” he asked.

Cent shook his head. “Nothing. It’s like they’ve all left.”

“Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know. Why did they do that the last time Madeline and the others were in here?”

“Good point.”

He leaned against the wall, across the door from Cent. “What do you think? How is any of this possible? How are these things possible.”

Cent stared back at him with an intense gaze. It wasn’t menacing, but more…curious, as if the young man was trying to read him, to gauge his potential response to anything he might say in the next few seconds.

“You know, don’t you?” John said.

“That depends…”

“On?”

“Whether you believe in God or not.”

14

TORRES

“We gotta stop meeting like this, Torres. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were stalking me. Look, if you’re interested, just say so, and we’ll go out on a date. See a movie, have dinner, go for a long walk on the beach. That sort of thing. Speaking of beach...”

Owen. It was fucking Owen.

Except he looked different. The smugness was still there even underneath the thick layer of black camo paint. He was wearing dark tactical gear, as were the dozen or so men scattered about the beach—some were standing guard while others were pulling three rubber boats out of the water and fastening them in place to keep the waves from reclaiming them.

Owen was mostly dry, with some wetness dripping from his pants legs. Unlike the gruff faces of the men around him, he looked almost genteel. These were soldiers, she realized almost right away, but not just any kind of soldiers; they wore thick facial hair and some, like Owen, had ballcaps on their heads, wide brims hiding their eyes from a sun that was hidden by the full moon. The ones that didn’t wear ballcaps made do with bucket hats, the kind she’d seen fishermen wear.

Torres was back on her feet, her shoes half buried in the wet sand, trying to get her bearings. Owen’s presence wasn’t a complete surprise, though his method of approach was. She’d expected helicopter gunships, not armless rubber boats you could buy at any Army surplus store.

“That wasn’t your guys in the chopper earlier?” Torres asked.

“What chopper? What guys?” the man said.

I guess not.

She told him about what she’d seen earlier back at the main complex.

Owen shook his head. “That wasn’t us. Must have been Harold’s men trying to retake the island.”

“I thought that was your job.”

“Nope.”

“So what is your job?”

Before he could reply, a radio squawked, and Owen reached down to the two-way housed inside a pouch along his MOLLE vest. Like the others, he was wearing a throat mic. “What’s the verdict, boys and girls?” He listened through his earpiece, but of course Torres couldn’t hear a thing. “All right, keep your eyes peeled. They know we’re here now.”

“Who is ‘they?’” she asked when he took his hand away from his radio.

“You know who ‘they’ are.”

“Obayifo.”

“Uh huh.”

She stared at him. Owen didn’t seem surprised by the existence of obayifo. Hell, he didn’t look very shocked by anything he’d seen and what his men had done in order to save her from the horde. They’d even arrived armed with silver-equipped ammo. How else could the two men that had intercepted her at the beach’s entrance wipe out the entire wave of obayifo about to fall on top of her?

They remained on the paved road just beyond the trees, a pile of pruned black flesh and twisted limbs. Four of Owen’s men were also there, watching for additional attacks, though there hadn’t been none. She knew the reason why and suspected that Owen did, too: The Blue Eyes. They were controlling the black-eyed ones like commanders on a field of battle, moving pieces around. Knowing that Owen’s men were armed with silver, they had sounded the retreat rather than pointlessly sacrifice more of their soldiers.

Smart. They’re too smart.

It was bright on the beach thanks to the lamp posts and full moon, allowing Torres to see far down the sandy strands to both sides. She had discovered, much to her disappointment, that there was no one there but them. The two artificial jetties that jutted out of the island were empty, the boats that had been there when she flew over them a day earlier now missing. Just…missing. It was as if they had never been there. The buildings that were there—the guard posts, equipment shacks, and other multipurpose structures—were unmanned.

“Was all ready to shoot our way onto shore and everything,” Owen said when he saw her looking around for signs of life other than them. “I’m guessing the rest of the island isn’t so empty?”

“You guessed currently,” Torres said.

“Wanna fill me in on what you’ve been up to?”

“I will.” She looked back at him. “But first, where’s Banks and Lourdes?”

“What about your banks and lords?”

“Banks and Lourdes. They were headed here with me when their ATV crashed. Did you see them?”

“Is that the ATV on the road?”

“Not that one. Benton was on that one.”

“What’s a Benton?”

She sighed. He was messing with her. “It’s not a thing, it’s a person. One of Campbell’s Field Technicians.”

“Field Technicians, huh? Is that what he’s calling them?”

“Yes, that’s what he’s calling them. His foot soldiers. Most of them are ex-military.”

“And one of them is named Benton?”

“That’s right. Did you see him? That ATV back there was his.”

Owen shook his head. “Nope. We just got here.” Then, with that familiar smug grin, “Luckily for you. Speaking of which, I haven’t heard anything that sounded like gratitude yet, but maybe I’m wrong. I did get some seawater in my ears on the ride over.”

“Thank you,” Torres said even though just saying the words made her want to retch.

He knew it, too. “You’re welcome.” Then, uncharacteristically not dwelling on his victory, “What happened to the kid? Cent?”

She looked back toward the woods, then over them at the five-story main building in the distance. It was hard to miss, sticking out like a sore thumb among the island’s thick blanket of trees.

“He’s back there,” she said, even as she thought, Because I left him there. God help me, I left the only person I can trust on this whole island back there.

“Alone?” Owen asked.

“No.” She told him about Duncan, then described the man’s appearance. “But I don’t think he’s really an accountant.”

“What do you think he is?”

“At first I thought he was one of your men. Someone Ana put in Harold Campbell’s organization before me. But he didn’t recognize me. Or if he did, he did a pretty damn good job of hiding it.”

“And you said he called himself John Duncan?”

“Yes.” She looked back at him. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Do you know him?”

Owen shrugged noncommittally. “Sounds familiar, but the guy I’m thinking of is dead.”

“You know him,” she said again. It wasn’t a question this time.

“Like I said, the guy I’m thinking about is dead. So it couldn’t be him.”

She squinted at him in silence.

“What?” Owen said.

You know him, you asshole, but you’re not going to tell me, are you? No. Instead, you’re going to keep it a secret because you have no reason to tell me anything that you don’t have to.

Fucking federals.

Before she could interrogate him, Owen turned away to watch his soldiers trudging up the slightly slanted beach over to them. Like Owen, they had come well-prepared, their MOLLE vests brimming with spare magazines and equipment. About half of them carried backpacks while the others shouldered heavy weapons. She recognized a SAW—a Squad Automatic Weapon—among them, as well as what looked like a radio pack.

Owen pressed his radio’s transmit lever. “Charlie Team, come in.” It took a few seconds before Charlie Team replied, speaking into Owen’s ear. “Roger that. Keep me apprised.”

“Who’s Charlie Team?” she asked when he took his hand away from his radio.

“My cousin Charlie and his team,” the man said. He grinned at her. “He makes his living exploring islands of wealthy billionaires with too much money and way too much time on their hands.”

She didn’t believe the bulk of that for even a second, of course. Not that she confronted him about it. He was giving her the answer she wanted, only in a long and torturous way. The man just liked messing with her.

“My cousin Charlie and his team. He makes his living exploring islands of wealthy billionaires with too much money and way too much time on their hands.”

All that meant was that there was another contingent of soldiers out there under the callsign Charlie Team that she hadn’t seen yet. So how many men did Owen bring with him? And would it be enough?

Christ, I hope it’s enough.

“Time to go earn my paycheck,” Owen said, heading toward the tree line.

Torres followed even though she didn’t want to. The idea of going back toward the fight instead of away from it made her nauseous. That was the reason she’d fled in the first place, wasn’t it? And now she was reversing course.

It was wrong. It was all wrong.

…and she had no choice. Not with Cent still back there, and now, Banks and Lourdes missing. God only knew what had happened to them. As for Benton, she couldn’t care less. The man could go to hell and suffer. But Banks, Lourdes, and Cent were a different matter. She’d fled because she had no choice. She didn’t have the luxury of that excuse anymore. Not with Owen and his small army of well-equipped soldiers at her back.

They didn’t have ammo for her Glock, but they did have spare magazines. She asked for a MOLLE vest to house some equipment, but they hadn’t come with one to give away. She wished she had kept her Remington—a few of Owen’s men were carrying them, too, and she could have asked for some shells to replenish her empty pockets—but it was somewhere on the paved road, well inside the woods.

Owen stopped and looked back at her. “What are you doing?”

She stopped, too. “What do you mean what am I doing?”

“Exactly as it sounds. What are you doing?”

“I’m going back there with you.”

“Are you nuts?” He nodded at the boats parked on the beach. “Grab one of those and get out of here. Your job’s done, Kerry. You did your part. Go back to Florida and contact Ana, and she’ll arrange for you to get your kid back. We’ll handle it from here.”

My “kid?”

Macy, of course. He was talking about Macy. And she wanted nothing more than to do exactly as he’d ordered, but she couldn’t.

Not yet, anyway.

“The job you gave me is done, but my job isn’t done,” she said.

“Cent.”

“Yes.”

“How did he get left behind, anyway?”

“It wasn’t exactly planned.”

“I see.”

From the way he looked at her as he said that, she had a feeling he did, in fact, see what she was saying without actually saying it. He might have even deduced what she’d done—abandoned Cent back there in order to save herself—or something close to it.

Showing uncharacteristic kindness, Owen didn’t rub it in.

He said instead, “All right. Just stick close and do as you’re told.”

“Yes, sir,” she said sarcastically, even as she thought, Maybe he’s not such an asshole after all.

He smirked, before turning and continuing off the beach. The others were already waiting for them near the paved road entrance.

Owen stopped suddenly and cupped the ear with the listening earpiece connected to his radio. “You don’t say.” He listened for five more seconds before responding again. “Give me a sec.” Then, turning back to Torres, “You mentioned a Benton earlier?”

She nodded. “One of Campbell’s field guys.”

“Charlie Team ran into him.” Owen grinned. “You wanna ask him why he took off and left you on the road on foot?”

She gritted her teeth. “Yes. Yes, I would.”

* * *

The sight of Benton in restraints, hands tied behind his back with zip ties, didn’t make up for everything that had happened tonight, but it did give her an unbridled sense of satisfaction. The man stood near a tree, flanked by two of Owen’s men. The rest of Charlie Team was somewhere on the outskirts of the area, standing guard.

Benton looked over as Torres and Owen stepped out from behind a brush. “Torres. You’re alive.”

“Are you surprised?” she asked.

“Not at all. I knew you’d make it.” He smiled. “You’re a survivor. Like me. That’s what we do, right? We find ways to survive.”

“Exactly,” she said, and punched him in the face as soon as she reached him.

Benton’s head snapped backward, struck the tree behind him, and actually returned to its original position. It was all Torres could do to keep herself from punching him a second time, wait for him to ricochet back once again, and make it three in a row.

Instead, she contained her anger and glared at him. “That’s for leaving me behind.”

He grinned back at her through a mouthful of bloody teeth. “Fair enough.”

They were deep in the woods, close enough to the main buildings but unable to see them with the thick tree crowns overhead. Benton had been caught about fifty yards from the beach by Charlie Team.

“What was he doing?” she’d asked.

“Skulking about,” Owen had said.

Yeah, that sounds about right, she had thought, putting all the pieces together.

Benton must have spotted Owen’s people just as he reached the beach entrance. He would have decided to ditch the ATV and seek shelter among the trees before he could be seen. He might have even known that he wasn’t looking at friendlies coming out of the Gulf of Mexico. Or, more likely, he’d played it safe and hid in the woods, when he was captured.

Owen walked over to Benton now and looked the man up and down. “You got a name?”

“Benton.”

“Your full name.”

“James Nathaniel Benton.”

“Okay, James Nathaniel Benton. How many of you are out here?”

“Just me, myself, and I.”

“Just you, huh? You’re the lucky one?”

“Like I told Torres, I’m a survivor.”

Owen glanced over at her. “Is he telling the truth?”

“As far as I know, yes,” Torres said. “Banks was part of security, Lourdes worked in the labs, and Duncan claims to be from Human Resources.”

“No one else?”

“There was a woman named Sarah, who we spoke to while we were underground. Cent and Duncan went to find her. After that…” She shook her head. “That’s it.”

“So what’s the plan, guys?” Benton asked. “We taking back the island or what?”

“‘We?’” Owen said, looking back at the man. “Who is this ‘we’ you’re talking about?”

“What? You’re not the rescue party?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Well, shit.”

Torres was watching Benton closely as he spoke and she didn’t believe a single word that came out of his mouth. The man was playing a role, trying to convince Owen he didn’t already know the other man wasn’t a friendly.

Owen nodded at her before leading her away from Benton. “You don’t believe him.”

“No.”

“Me, neither. He knew we weren’t reinforcements. Otherwise he wouldn’t have hidden from us.”

“I agree.”

“See? I told you we’d end up thinking the same eventually.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” She stopped when they were far enough away that she could be one hundred percent sure Benton couldn’t overhear. “The pen you gave me. What did you get out of it?”

“You’ll have to ask Ana that.”

“I’m asking you.”

“And I’m telling you, you’ll have to ask Ana that. She’s the boss. She tells me to run, I run. She says to go to Harold Campbell’s island, I go to Harold Campbell’s island.”

Torres squinted at him, trying to read his face.

He smiled. “Scout’s honor.”

“You were never in the Scouts.”

“And how would you know that?”

“No Scout troop in the world would let an asshole like you join.”

That got a big grin from him. It wasn’t quite as punchable as Benton’s face had been earlier, but it was close. “I should probably take offense to that, right?”

“Probably.”

“Shockingly, I’m not at all offended.”

“Because you know it’s true.”

“That, too.” He turned away, then clicked his radio and spoke into his throat mic. “Delta Team. Give me a sitrep.”

Torres didn’t have to be in the military to know that “sitrep” was “situation report.” Owen was asking for news from Delta Team, which had already gone ahead of them. From what she could gather, they were with Charlie Team now, with Delta, the members of which were at the beach with them earlier, moving on ahead toward the buildings. How many other teams had come ashore with Owen?

The man listened for a moment, before responding. “Proceed as planned.”

“What did you just tell them to do?” Torres asked.

“I told them to proceed as plan.”

“Which is…?”

“The plan.” Again, that grin, except this time it was very punchable.

She sighed, but instead of trying to force him to tell her, Torres said instead, “Can I get one of that?” as she nodded at his radio.

“Sorry, we don’t have spares.” He made circling motions with his forefinger in the air. “Tighten it up, boys. We’re moving.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“You’ll find out when we get there.”

Owen walked on ahead, leading some of his men. Benton peeled himself off the tree and followed, the two men that had been guarding him doing the same from a few yards away and slightly behind him. If Benton had any ideas about running off, he must have abandoned it a long time ago.

Campbell’s man glanced over his shoulder at Torres as she caught up to him. “What about Vicks and Banks? These yahoos wouldn’t tell me what happened to them.”

“Like you care what happens to them.”

“I do. They both seemed like swell folks.”

She didn’t reply, but Benton was undeterred.

“They didn’t make it to the beach?” he asked.

“No.”

“That’s too bad.”

“As if you give a damn.”

Benton shrugged. It wasn’t total denial but it wasn’t quite confirmation, either. The man turned around and continued walking. Besides the four of them trailing behind Owen, there were six more men in the edges of their little moving train. There were more already up ahead, leading the way, and, she was sure, still more she hadn’t seen yet.

Benton glanced back at her again.

“What?” she said, not bothering to hide the disdain in her voice.

“You know, don’t you?”

“Know what?”

“That this little army doesn’t stand a chance.” He looked over at his two guards. “No offense, boys, but you should have brought more warm bodies.”

The two guards exchanged a look. They were both in their thirties, facial hair covering rough faces. Their eyes were hard and they moved with the practiced ease of war veterans. They also didn’t bother to contradict Benton and continued walking in silence.

Benton wasn’t ready to let it go. “You know I’m right,” he said, this time to her. “This isn’t enough. This isn’t nearly enough.”

Torres stayed silent.

She hadn’t answered Benton, hadn’t taken his bait, but Torres didn’t think he was completely wrong. Torres wanted to think that Ana had sent enough men to deal with what was waiting for them back at the buildings, where she knew they were headed even without being told, but couldn’t quite make herself believe it.

Because the Blue Eyes were smart.

Too smart.

15

CENT

“Cent.”

Who is this?

“You know who this is.”

God?

Laughter. The kind that sent shivers across Cent’s entire being. Cold. Distant. Heartless…

…soulless.

“Wrong deity, Cent.”

Deity?

“In a manner of speaking. We’ve been called worse things.”

You.

“Yes. Me.”

You’re no deity. You’re not even close.

“Are you sure about that?”

You’re a plague. A disease.

“Are you sure about that?”

What else could you be?

“Evolution. A new breed.”

No.

“The man doth protests too much.”

The laughter again. Cent’s being quaked against it.

You’re not evolution. You’re a mistake.

“According to who?”

To Him.

“You put your faith in the wrong deities, Cent.”

Stop calling yourself that.

“Why should I?”

Because you’re nothing special. You’re nothing.

“Are you sure about that?”

Yes.

“Are you sure about that?”

The question echoed in Cent’s head even as he felt hands shaking him awake. “Cent. Wake up. Cent.”

He opened his eyes to Madeline kneeling in front of him. He’d sat down at the lunch table and gone to sleep without realizing it. His bones were tired, as was every inch of his muscle and joints and everything else that defined being a man.

“Are you sure about that?”

Yes, he thought, looking at Madeline but not seeing her. Instead, he saw something else.

Something with ghostly blue eyes.

“Cent?” Madeline tilted her head slightly to one side. “You okay?”

He stood up with some effort. Madeline finally took her hands away when he was fully on his feet. Both legs were wobbly, but he managed to shake that off by stretching a bit.

“You fell asleep,” Madeline said.

“How long?”

“Not too long. Maybe ten minutes?”

“Fifteen,” the man who called himself John said from the other side of the employee lounge. He was leaning against the wall next to the door, arms folded across his chest, looking across the room at Cent with a thoughtful gaze. “And you were talking in your sleep.”

Cent looked to Madeline for confirmation.

She nodded. “You were.”

“What did I say?”

“Not sure. You were whispering.”

“Something about being sure,” John said.

Cent squinted at the man, who returned the favor.

He looked to Madeline, again for confirmation.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Like I said, you were mostly whispering.” She glanced over at John. “The man must have bionic ears or something to have heard you from all the way over there.”

Cent turned to Nancy to ask what she’d heard but she was crumpled in the same corner at the back, snoring softly. She looked peaceful, and he wondered what good dreams she was having at the moment.

“Why didn’t you wake me sooner?” he asked Madeline.

“You look like you were tired,” Harold Campbell’s secretary said. “We all are. It’s been a long night.”

“What was your dream about?” John asked. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Cent.

“What makes you think I was dreaming?” Cent said.

“You were dreaming. It was obvious.”

He shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

It wasn’t a complete lie. He remembered and at the same time didn’t remember the dream. Was it possible to have a dream where there was only darkness and the voices of a conversation?

“Are you sure about that?” it had asked him. It. One of the Blue Eyes on the island. Cent didn’t know how he knew that, he just did. “Are you sure about that?”

John, across the room, scrutinizing him. “What was your dream?”

“I told you. I didn’t have a dream.”

“Why don’t you want to tell us?”

“There’s nothing to tell because there was no dream.”

“Uh huh.”

The man didn’t believe him. Clearly.

Cent got up and walked over to the front of the room. He leaned against the wall across the door from John and matched his stare.

John smiled, before shrugging. “Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Just okay.”

And that, apparently, was that. John was the first one to look away.

Cent turned to the door. It was still closed, still locked, and there were still no signs of an attack, or one on the way anytime soon. “They still haven’t tried to come in?”

“Nope. They’re either avoiding us or they’re ignoring us. I don’t know which one makes me feel better.”

“Neither one makes me feel better.”

“Yeah, I’m leaning toward that, too.”

He could see it on John’s face. He didn’t understand what was happening any more than Cent did. Ever since they retreated into the lounge, the obayifo hadn’t made any attempts to pry them out. Not even the black-eyed ones had tried, something they’d done previously when it was just Madeline and the others. But this time they had stayed away completely.

“Maybe they’re gone,” Madeline said. She’d remained sitting at the table behind them. “It’s been a while. Sooner or later, they’d have to leave. Morning is coming.”

“Morning ain’t coming for a while,” John said.

Cent glanced down at his watch. 2:11 AM. Sunup was at least four more hours away.

Four hours too far…

He said to Madeline, “The emergency protocol. Do you know how to turn it off?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“So why haven’t you?”

“I need access to one of the main systems.”

“Which is where?” John asked.

“Any of the security rooms.”

“What about one of the computers outside? On the floor?”

“They don’t have that kind of access.”

“Where’s the nearest security room?” Cent asked.

“There’s just one. In the lobby.”

John chuckled. “The one we left to come up here.”

“You guys were down there?” Madeline asked.

Cent pointed to the security camera. “That’s where we saw you and the others.”

“We weren’t sure if it was even still working. Kelly insisted on trying anyway just in case. I’m glad she did.”

Cent watched John closely. He wasn’t sure if the other man was “glad” that the camera was working, because if it hadn’t, they wouldn’t have been up here in the first place.

“What happened to Torres?” Madeline was asking.

“She’s alive,” Cent said. He told her about their escape from the underground facility.

“Benton? Benton’s alive, too?”

“He somehow got out before we did.”

“Amazing. We were sure that everyone underground was lost. Where are they now?”

“In the warehouse next door.”

“And they’re still there?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. We don’t have any way to contact them.”

“You know, I’ve always had this feeling you and Torres would have gotten out. I guess my gut instinct was right.”

“We haven’t made it anywhere yet.”

“No, but you’ve made it farther than most.”

“Let’s hold off on the congratulations,” John said. “We’ve still got a long way to go before sunup.”

Cent ignored him and said to Madeline, “About the emergency protocol. Can it be switched off elsewhere? Off the island?”

“Yes,” Madeline said. “It’s easy to do it from out there. That’s the whole point. It’s the island that’s compromised, remember?”

“So why hasn’t Campbell done it yet?” John asked. “Doesn’t he know there are still people on the island? His own people?”

Madeline shook her head. “I don’t know what’s going on out there, just like he doesn’t know what’s really happening in here. That’s the problem. If those were our people he sent on the chopper, and after what happened to them, he might not want to turn it off.”

“Why?” Cent asked.

“If the island’s been completely compromised, Harold wouldn’t risk it. He’d make a decision that this is the best course of action. But that’s if those were our men that came in the chopper.”

Cent glanced up at the red lights. It seemed like such a long time ago since they changed from bright white to red that he’d stopped thinking about them. In many ways, his eyes had become used to them, and it would take the lights changing back to white to get his attention.

“The all clear,” he said. “It would change the lights?”

“Yes,” Madeline said. “As long as the lights are red…”

“The island’s still in emergency protocol.”

“Yes.”

“What if—” he stopped short.

The lights.

They had suddenly turned from red to white, bathing the lounge in a bright radiance that didn’t quite seem real.

Cent stood up, the chair toppling behind him.

Wait. Chair? Why was he sitting down? Wasn’t he standing across from John just a second ago?

He focused on the lights. Why was it white? Did this mean the all clear signal had been given? Did Harold Campbell decide it was worth it to try to save them a second time?

“The lights,” he said. “What happened to the lights?”

He waited for Madeline to answer, or for John to make some smartass remark. Neither did.

Cent looked over at Madeline.

Except she wasn’t there.

Wasn’t she just there? Weren’t they just talking?

He looked toward the door.

It was closed, but John was gone.

As was Nancy, who had been snoring in the corner when Cent last saw her. She, too, was missing.

He was alone in the room.

How…?

“Everyone leaves you, Cent, sooner or later.”

He spun, the knife sliding quickly out of its sheath behind his back and into his hand. His legs bent slightly, ready to spring, his entire body from his toes to the top of his head alive with anticipation.

Except there was no one to attack.

“From Nigeria to America…”

He turned, searching for the voice, but finding only an empty room.

“…everyone leaves you, sooner or later.”

That voice. There was something familiar about it. And at the same time, unfamiliar. How could it be two things at once?

“Your father, your mother… Even your country.”

He moved quickly across the room, toward the door. There were no signs that there had been a fight. So where were John, Madeline, and Nancy? In fact, there were no signs that anyone else was ever in the same room with him. Ever.

“Your friends… Richter and Dutch…”

He grabbed the doorknob with one hand and tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. Was it locked? How? He couldn’t locate the deadbolts. Where did they go? How was the door even locked?

“…even Torres.”

Torres?

He whirled around, the knife clenched tightly in his fist. The room around him remained as abandoned now as it had when he raced through it.

“Yes. Even Torres.”

That voice. Why was it so familiar? And yet, he couldn’t put a name or a face to it. The answer picked at the corners of his mind, nibbling at his brain, begging to be revealed. And yet, and yet, refusing to make itself known.

“Who are you?” he said out loud.

“You know who I am.”

“I don’t know you.”

“Yes, you do.”

Cent paused.

Five seconds.

Ten…

“You’re one of the Blue Eyes.”

“See? You’ve always known.”

This was impossible. He was talking to a disemboweled voice that sounded at once familiar and unfamiliar. A voice that came from nowhere, and yet, everywhere. Human, and somehow, inhuman.

“You said Torres…”

“She left you.”

“She wouldn’t do that.”

“No?”

“She wouldn’t do that,” he said again, with more conviction.

Because she wouldn’t. Torres wouldn’t abandon him.

Would she?

“But she did. She left the warehouse. She embraced the one thing you humans are so good at. She fled to save her own skin.”

No. No, no, no.

“Oh, yes.”

“Torres wouldn’t have done that,” he said out loud.

“But she did, Cent. She did.”

He didn’t believe it…and yet, he did. There was something about its voice that convinced him it was telling the truth. Torres had left the warehouse next door. It would have happened after he and John left to go in search of Sarah.

“That’s the one trait in you humans that we admire. Your sense of self-preservation. It’s the one trait we share.”

“‘We?’”

“You know who ‘we’ are.”

“Obayifo.”

It laughed. Or he thought it laughed. Something that sounded like laughter reverberated inside the room. Inside the room, and inside his head.

How? How was this possible?

“You can call us whatever you want. We’ve been called a hundred different things over the centuries. What we are—what we really are—you couldn’t possibly imagine.”

Cent willed himself to be calm, the arm with the knife going slack at his side. It wasn’t here. The voice. The creature that spoke the words. It wasn’t here, in this room, with him. There was no immediate danger.

“You’re an abomination.”

“You say that as if you know it to be true.”

“Because I do.”

“Do you? Do you, really?”

“God knows who you are. He’s kept me alive this long to smite you down.”

It laughed.

“What do you want from me?”

“The same thing you want, Cent.”

The same thing? What did he want that the creature also desired? How could they even have anything in common?

“Survival,” it said. “We want to survive. Is that so wrong?”

* * *

“Cent.”

He opened his eyes.

Madeline was crouched in front of him again. “Are you okay?”

He glanced around. Suddenly there seemed to be balls of cobwebs inside his head, with spiders spinning new ones every second. His mouth was parched, as if he’d been speaking for days without end, while his temple throbbed relentlessly.

“What happened?” he asked, looking confusingly at Madeline, then at John. Even Nancy had woken up and was standing in her corner, staring at him alarmingly.

“You fell asleep again,” Madeline said.

“Did I?”

“Yes.”

“How long…?”

“Five minutes, give or take,” John said. “You don’t remember falling asleep?”

Cent shook his head. He kneaded his temple with his fingers. “Did I talk in my sleep again?”

“Not this time.”

Madeline was watching him curiously from across the table, “Did you think you did?”

“No,” Cent said. “It’s just…” He stopped short.

“Just what?” John prompted.

“Nothing.”

“You sure about that? It didn’t look like nothing to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“You were…” Madeline paused for a moment, before continuing. “You looked like you were having a bad dream. You were moving in your chair and your hand—Your right hand. It was clenched in a fist at your side. What was the dream about?”

“I don’t remember any of it.”

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He could still hear its voice, reverberating inside his head as if it had always been there and would, always, be there.

“Everyone leaves you, Cent, sooner or later.”

It was right about that. Everyone did leave him, sooner or later. First his father, then his mother. Even his friends.

And now Torres, too.

He didn’t know why he was so sure, but Cent believed the voice when it told him she had abandoned him in order to save herself. Of course he didn’t know the situation she’d been in, but the bottom line was inescapable: She’d left him to fend for himself.

“Everyone leaves you, Cent, sooner or later.”

It was right. Everyone did leave him, sooner or later.

“Cent.” Madeline, peering at him from across the table. “You sure you’re okay?”

He gave her a half-smile. “I’m fine.”

Judging by her reaction, Cent didn’t think he had been very convincing.

He didn’t dare close his eyes for fear of falling asleep again, so he opened them wide and stared up at the red lights that filled the employee lounge. Days seemed to have passed instead of minutes.

And the voice, in his head, repeating itself:

“What do you want from me?” he’d asked it.

“The same thing you want, Cent,” it had said. “Survival. We want to survive. Is that so wrong?”

No, he thought. That doesn’t sound so wrong at all.

16

TORRES

“You know these guys?” Benton, asking a question that she had no interest in answering. “Sounds like you know these guys. What are they, government? PMCs? Come on, you can tell me.”

She could, but she wasn’t going to. There was nothing she wanted to share with Benton even if it were just the two of them on the island and both their lives depended on it. Torres had already decided there was absolutely nothing she could trust with the man, least of all her life.

There was something wrong with Benton. The way he walked, flanked by Owen’s men, through the woods. He didn’t seem all that perturbed by his current situation. If anything, he seemed at ease. Too much so for someone who was bound with zip ties and watched with hawk-like eyes by two well-armed men.

But Benton’s question did make her think about Owen a little more. Was he really government, like he and his boss, Ana, had claimed? Or were they in fact PMCs—private military contractors—working for someone else? Someone who wanted what Harold Campbell had? Which would be what, exactly? She didn’t have a clue.

And that was the problem. She just didn’t have a better grasp of what was happening around her than when she initially took this “job” with Campbell. There were too many factors at play—too many disparate groups whose true intentions she couldn’t verify. Was she even sure that Campbell was who he said he was? If so, why hadn’t the man tried to retake the island? Or had he tried and she’d seen the fiery results of it when the chopper attempted to land on the rooftop?

Or maybe…

“PMCs,” Benton was saying. “They look like PMCs. Maybe government. But Uncle Sam has been known to hire a few PMCs here and there to do the odd dirty work they don’t want their name attached to.”

Benton walked in front of her, flanked by his two armed guards from a few feet away. Torres trailed behind them while a few more men followed in her footsteps. They moved quietly and would have been silent if Benton would keep his mouth shut. Torres didn’t try to stop him, though. Benton’s guards didn’t seem to care he was flapping his gums, and they probably knew more about what was happening than she did. Which meant they weren’t worried about him attracting unwanted attention.

Owen had wandered periodically back to her position as they continued their advance toward the main buildings, using the trees as cover. He hadn’t said much to her or to his men, but appeared confident in what he was doing.

She wished she could have said the same about herself. The idea of returning to the scene of the crime made her wince slightly. Torres kept expecting obayifo to leap out of the many patches of darkness, but none did. That should have made her feel better, but it only deepened her paranoia. More than anything, it told her that the Blue Eyes were in full control of their growing black-eyed army and they knew better than to waste them on Owen’s group.

It was all planned out. She knew that now. The Blue Eyes were reforming at the buildings, waiting for their imminent arrival. Everyone seemed to know that, from Torres to Benton to Owen to even the men scattered among the woods around their moving party.

And yet, they continued to march, getting closer.

The full moon was a pleasant companion in the sky. When she could see it, anyway. The island’s woods had been left unculled for some time and grew thick and dense in certain places. Torres watched her every step and gave scrutiny to every sound. From what she observed, Owen’s men did the same. These weren’t virgins to war; they knew what they were doing. That gave her some comfort.

“Come on, don’t be like that.” Benton, not getting the hint that she didn’t want to talk to him. “We’re in the same boat here.”

How you figure, asshole? she thought but, of course, didn’t say out loud.

“You really think these guys are here to rescue you?”

Maybe…

“They’re not.”

And how do you know that?

“Look at them, Torres. Look at their weapons. This isn’t a rescue party.”

Then what is it?

“You know that, right?”

She didn’t respond.

“Come on, you must know that. They’re not here to rescue you or Cent or anyone else. And why would they?”

Keep talking, asshole.

“They’re here—” Benton began but didn’t finish because Owen came out of nowhere and punched him in the gut. Benton doubled over at the waist and before he could catch his breath, Owen delivered another fist to his cheek.

Benton slumped to the slightly damp floor with a pained grunt. The sight should have made Torres smile, but instead it unnerved her. Not Benton groaning in pain on the ground but that Owen had shut him up. Had he gotten too close to the truth? What was he about to say?

“They’re here—” For what? They’re really here for what?

Owen took out a small roll of duct tape and tossed it to one of Benton’s guards. “No more talking. We’re almost there.”

Torres met Owen’s stare as the guard shut Benton up with the tape. “You ready?”

“Ready for what?”

Owen walked over to her. The others had also stopped and taken up sentry positions around them.

“They retreated back to the main building,” Owen said. “Looks like they’re not willing to engage us out in the open. That was unexpected.” He stopped in front of her, close enough that they could have whispered and still hear each other. “The Blue Eyes. Tell me everything you know about them.”

“There are essentially two species of obayifo that we know of. The ones with blue eyes and the ones with black eyes. From what I’ve observed, the Blue Eyes are smart. Way smarter than the Black Eyes. They’re unquestionably the leaders.”

“And the Black Eyes are soldiers? Grunts?”

“Yes. When the blue-eyed ones are around, you can expect the Black Eyes to be more strategic, more careful.”

“And without them around?”

“Straight-forward. Instinctive. They’ll go through a window to get to you.”

“How many of these things are in those buildings? These blue-eyed ones?”

“As far as I know, two.”

“As far as you know?”

“I can’t be sure. They’re capable of turning people through infection, making them one of them. The Black Eyes you’ve fought, and will be fighting soon, are mostly all former island employees, with a few exceptions.”

Owen looked back at Benton, who the guards had stood up. The other man averted his eyes, perhaps having learned that challenging Owen wasn’t a good idea.

Ana’s man turned back to Torres. “I read most of the data you transmitted. Got the Cliffs Notes on the rest. What they don’t tell me is how these things are possible.”

Torres almost laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Owen asked.

“You’re asking the Million Dollar Question.”

“And the answer is…?”

“I don’t know. Neither does Campbell. That’s the whole point of this island…if he’s to be believed.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know yet. The man is…”

“What?”

“Complicated.”

“Apparently.” He turned around. “That’s okay. I’ve dealt with complications before. There’s nothing a bullet can’t fix. Or, in this case, a silver-tipped bullet.”

“So what’s the plan?”

He didn’t answer right away.

“You want my help on this or not?” Torres asked.

Finally, the man said, “We’re going to take the underground facility and every single piece of information Campbell has collected since all of this began.”

“And then?”

“And then we’re going to blow the whole fucking island out of the Gulf of Mexico until there’s nothing left.”

“The island is in international waters. Beyond the law of the United States.”

He grinned at her.

“What?” Torres said, more than a little annoyed.

“You talk as if that’s ever stopped us before,” the man said. “We’re the U.S. government, Torres. Our jurisdiction ends where we say it does.”

* * *

Owen had come to Bird Island with eighteen men, separated into three teams: Alpha, Charlie, and Delta. Eighteen well-armed men against a horde of obayifo was more than Torres had had at her disposal when all of this began, but she wasn’t sure if it was enough. Especially with what Owen was expecting to accomplish:

“We’re going to take the underground facility and every single piece of information Campbell has collected since all of this began.”

The notion of returning to the buildings was hard enough to swallow, but to also go back down to the facility below it? No thanks. She was going to let Owen do that all by himself. She came back here to find Cent and, if they were still alive, then Lourdes and Banks as well. Owen was going to have to climb down there without her.

And the way down there was through the cluster of buildings directly in front of her.

The fire from the chopper crash had been reduced to embers on the front lawn of the main building. From her vantage point, hidden just inside the tree lines that ringed the buildings, Torres could make out broken windows from top to bottom. Some had been smashed in by obayifo from the outside while others were taken out by debris or bullets. The lights remained red on all five floors, giving the structure a foreboding glow.

The warehouse next door was equally quiet. The large steel doors at the front remained raised but there were no signs of the undead that she and the others had killed. The obayifo had taken their dead away, just as they had in the woods. The only ones that remained where they fell were near the beach entrance. The Blue Eyes hadn’t risked more of their black-eyed kind to retrieve those.

Torres kneeled next to one of the bigger trees, with Owen to her left and a couple of his men to her right. They were all wearing black face camo except her and Benton, who was somewhere far behind them with his two guards.

Owen glanced in her direction. “You ready?” he whispered.

“No,” she whispered back.

“It was a rhetorical question.”

“Yeah, Owen, I figured.”

He grinned that familiar grin, before reaching down to transmit on his radio. “Alpha Team, you have point. I’ll be right behind you with Charlie Team. Delta remains behind as QRF.”

She couldn’t hear but assumed the commanders of each of the teams had responded in the affirmative, because soon six figures appeared out of the tree lines around her and advanced across the open ground toward the main building’s front lobby. That would be Alpha Team. They moved with decent speed—not too quick and not too slow, but just right—with weapons at the ready. Their dark forms slipped in and out of the lamp posts that surrounded the place, but even when they weren’t directly underneath a lightbulb, the moon made them fully visible.

There was no hiding tonight. At least, not out here. If the creatures didn’t already know they were coming, they did, now. All they had to do was look out one of the many windows and see Alpha Team advancing steadily in their direction.

No cover. There’s no cover at all.

Perfect time for an attack…

She thought about warning Owen but didn’t get the chance. He was already speaking into his throat mic. “With me,” Owen said as he stood up and slipped out between the brush.

More figures appeared around Torres and stepped into the open.

Use it or lose it, I guess.

Torres followed, the Glock clenched tightly at her side. She didn’t bother to keep it aimed and at the ready. Owen and his men had rifles and they could easier take out anything coming at them.

…coming at them…

Nothing did. Not a single thing, alive or dead, or somewhere in-between, emerged from the main building or the warehouse or any of the smaller structures in the area. It was quiet. Too quiet. The only sound were the boots of the men around her and everyone’s slightly accelerated breathing.

Or was that just her breathing?

Owen had a Remington shotgun as he moved ahead of Charlie Team. The six men of Alpha had already reached the front of the main building ahead of them. Not that they’d had to clear a lot of ground. The slightly inclined distance between the woods and the raised buildings was less than fifty yards. Even so, every one of those fifty yards felt like a mile to Torres. She kept waiting for an attack to come from her flanks or in front of her or, somehow, from behind.

But they didn’t.

Nothing happened.

Why isn’t anything happening? Are they just going to let us waltz in there?

The answer was apparently yes, because members of Alpha Team were already moving through the lobby, the lights from their weapons—switched on now that they were inside the building and didn’t have the lamp posts to guide them—sweeping across the floor and walls and ceiling. She couldn’t make out any details from her current position.

As they neared the front doors, three of Owen’s men peeled off and headed to the warehouse next door in a pre-planned move. The rest remained with Owen and Torres as they reached the glass entrances.

Owen flicked on the flashlight underneath his shotgun and scanned the area. His men did the same. Torres was the only one without a flashlight. Not that she really needed one out here. The full moon was so bright she didn’t even need any of the lamps to see nearly every blade of grass around her.

It occurred to Torres that she’d never actually seen the lobby of the main building, whether from this angle or any other angle. She’d been led straight from the rooftop and down to the underground facility by Madeline when she’d arrived with Cent. Even later, she’d never had the chance to enter the lobby from the warehouse next door.

She didn’t have any excuses now as one of Owen’s men pulled open a glass door and the others slipped through it. Torres joined Owen as they followed from the rear. The men that had detoured to the warehouse had returned and taken up guard positions outside the main entrance. She hadn’t heard any gunfire so assumed they hadn’t found anything or anyone there. Then again, they had come back pretty quickly. What if they missed something?

The intense smell in the lobby converged on Torres from all sides. She started breathing through her mouth, but even that didn’t really help. The mingling odor of blood, sweat, and seemingly a hundred other types of liquids clawed at the exposed parts of her face. She blinked through beads of perspiration in order to watch Owen’s men moving steadily to the rear of the building, toward the elevator, stairwell, and an opening that led into more than one back hallway.

If the stink was bad, the sight was worse. Under the red emergency lights, the pools of blood that covered the floor everywhere she looked had an unreal quality to them, as if they didn’t actually exist but were just figments of her imagination. Of course she knew better. They were very much real. Tracks, made by everything from bare feet to boots to sneakers, crisscrossed every inch of the wide-open room from one wall to the other, even overlapping to the point where they came across as more blotches instead of definable prints. Not everything had walked or run through the puddles of liquid; many had been dragged across them.

“You okay?” Owen, standing next to her. She hadn’t realized it, but she’d stopped in place to gather herself.

Torres nodded. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“How do I look?”

“Blue.”

“How can you tell with the red light?”

“I got a good eye.”

He gave her a surprisingly sympathetic smile. Torres was about to return it when they both heard gunfire coming from outside the building.

Torres turned, as did Owen, glimpsing muzzle flashes coming from the woods fifty yards away.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

Owen didn’t answer. He was too busy cupping his earpiece with one hand, while the other pushed his radio PTT switch. “Delta Team. Come in. What’s happening out there? What are you shooting at?” He stopped to hear the response.

Torres, meanwhile, had returned to the front wall of the lobby. The muzzle flashes from the woods had continued, though they were more sporadic now. The three men that kneeled outside the main building hadn’t moved a muscle, even if their heads were turned in the direction of the shooting.

Combat veterans. This is definitely not their first time.

Then: God, I hope that’s good enough tonight.

She looked back at Owen, and from the look on his face, she guessed he either hadn’t heard anything back or didn’t like what he had heard.

The man saw the question on her face and shook his head.

“Nothing?” she asked.

“No response.”

He looked past her and outside.

She did, too, because the shooting had stopped. The disturbing silence that had accompanied them from the beach all the way to the buildings had returned. The lack of noise, or anything that even sounded like nature outside, made Torres shiver slightly.

“Jesus Christ,” Owen said.

He wasn’t talking to her. In fact, he wasn’t talking to anyone but himself, because he’d just seen what she’d also seen:

Something had been thrown out of the woods and into the air. There was a nice spiral to the object, reminding her of a football being tossed by a pro. It landed, fifty yards later, almost at the feet of the three Charlie Team soldiers outside. The object touched down on the soft grass and rolled forward for a few more inches before, finally, stopping.

It wasn’t a football.

It was a man’s severed head.

17

JOHN

John was worried about a lot of things, but the primary cause of his worry was the kid, Cent.

Note to self: Stop referring to him as “kid.”

There were a lot of reasons for that, but the main one was that there might come a time—maybe sooner rather than later—when he had to kill him, and John had a very strict code of not killing kids. So, no more “kid.” Just Cent.

He looked across the door at Cent now, leaning against the wall on the other side. The young man had his Nepalese Gurkha-inspired knife out and was eyeing him back. He’d been staring at John for a while now without speaking, almost as if he had something on his mind. Maybe, just maybe, it was the same something that John had.

“We can’t stay here forever,” he finally said.

“I don’t plan on staying here forever.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Does it include the rest of us?”

“Of course. I’m including all of us.”

All of us? John thought, wondering if that had a little something to do with what he’d done to Odenkirk.

Oh, who was he kidding. That was exactly what the use of the word “all” was about.

“You gonna let me know when you come up with something?” John asked.

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“I thought you’re including all of us.”

“There might be exceptions.”

He grinned. Oh yeah. We’re definitely talking about Odenkirk here.

He said, “You should hurry and do something, because I hate waiting.”

“Sometimes waiting is the right call.”

“Sometimes. And sometimes it’s just a pain in the ass.”

Cent shrugged. “Sometimes it’s the right call.”

Another threat.

Damn, this kid—scratch that; not a kid—won’t let go of what happened with Odenkirk.

John wondered what would have happened if Cent had actually known the dead man. Maybe he wouldn’t have thought waiting for was the right call and just did what he’d been thinking about doing for, John guessed, ever since they locked themselves in here. Then again, Cent had him by the throat earlier, but he hadn’t followed through. That didn’t surprise him too much, though. Civilians talked a good game when it came to killing, but not everyone could pull the trigger. Even Cent, who had killed his share of obayifo, hadn’t managed to do it.

It was a good thing that John didn’t have those kinds of scruples.

“You said it yourself: If the Blue Eyes want to come in, there’s nothing this door can do to stop them,” John said. “You see where I’m going with this?”

Cent nodded but didn’t say anything. He apparently wanted John to do all the work.

“You get where I’m going with this?” John asked. “We need to leave before they change their minds.”

“That’s your plan? Just step out of this door? And they’ll let you go?”

John shrugged. “I didn’t say it was a great plan. I just said it’s a plan.”

“It’s that, all right.”

“So, what do you think?”

“You’re right.”

“Which part?”

“If they wanted to come through the door, they would have already. This thing”—he tapped the door with his palm—“has no chance of stopping them. And we can’t stay here forever.”

“Glad we’re on the same wavelength.”

“What wavelength?” Madeline, walking over to join them.

Harold Campbell’s secretary had been sleeping at the table, where Nancy had joined her. John hadn’t realized she was already awake or that he and Cent were talking loud enough to rustle her from sleep. Nancy, on the other hand, remained with her head on the table, snoring. It would probably take a gunshot to wake her up.

“We agreed we can’t stay here forever,” John said.

Madeline glanced over at Cent as if for confirmation.

The young man nodded. “He’s right. We can’t stay here forever.”

Madeline nodded wearily. “I’ve been thinking a lot about that, too. It doesn’t make any sense that they haven’t tried to come through that door. The Blue Eyes are strong enough to kick it in without trying.”

“And yet they haven’t,” John said.

“And yet they haven’t,” Madeline repeated. She shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense. And I’m loathed to remain here until it does.”

That makes three of us, then.

Not that he really needed Madeline to agree. The way he viewed the situation, he only required Cent to be all-in on his plan. Madeline and Nancy would just get in the way. Worse, slow him down. A few hours ago he would have been willing to drag the executive assistant along with him. Madeline knew more about Campbell’s activities than anyone and would be a boon to his employers.

But that was then.

Right this second, John would be lucky to save his own skin, never mind complete his contract, too. He wasn’t sure about Cent’s opinion of Madeline when it came to their potential escape, but it was probably a lot more…generous than his own.

“You should wake her up,” Cent said to Madeline while nodding at Nancy.

Madeline went over to do just that.

“They’ll slow us down,” John said in a lower voice.

“Maybe,” Cent said. He hadn’t done the same with his voice. John wasn’t sure how to take that. Was it another warning? Or Cent’s way of saying he wasn’t interested in hiding anything from the women?

Tread carefully here…

“There’s no maybe about it,” John said. “They’ll slow us down.”

“You want to leave them behind.” It wasn’t a question.

“It’s the smart play.”

Cent didn’t answer. He looked across the room at Madeline as she woke Nancy up.

John read his facial expression and thought, Dammit. He didn’t buy it.

“Maybe,” Cent said again.

But John didn’t give up. When his life was at stake, he always turned over every stone. “We need to get off the island. That means reaching the beach and the boats there. There’s no other way. That’s going to be hard enough. We have almost no chance with them in tow. You know that.”

“We can make it.”

“You’re right. We can. You and me.”

“We can make it. All of us.”

“Are you trying to convince yourself or me?”

Cent stared daggers at him. “We’ll all make it.” Then, his voice rising slightly on purpose, “Or none of us will.”

* * *

Note to self: Kill Cent the first chance you get.

They didn’t spend a lot of time getting ready to leave now that everyone had come to an agreement. Nancy had only nodded when told about the plan and didn’t really give verbal assent. If anything, she looked pale and miserable, but hadn’t rebelled because doing so would mean staying in the lounge alone.

Cent opened the door while John stood waiting about five feet away, the Glock raised, his legs in a shooter’s stance. If there was something out there, Cent’s job was to quickly close the door after John shot it—or them.

But there was nothing beyond the door except a darkened hallway lit by the same red emergency lights as in the lounge. Shadows dotted the floor, with the familiar army of cubicles to the left and the same long, uninterrupted wall to the right. The blood had mostly coagulated, and as before, there were no bodies standing, crawling, or lying. The only things moving outside were papers and personal effects that had managed to escape their workstations.

He glanced at Cent, standing to the right with one hand on the doorknob and the other clutching his knife, and gave him the all clear nod. Cent returned it before stepping out from behind the door and into the hallway. Madeline and Nancy, waiting behind John, hurried to follow the young man out.

John joined them outside, shivering slightly at a breeze that whipped through the floor from the smashed-in windows. There were no signs of the undead things he or Cent had killed.

They retrieved their dead. Why?

After a few seconds of walking through the semi-dark corridor, he moved up their little line and took point as agreed. The Glock gave him better range while Cent’s Gurkha knife would be more effective in the rear. The women remained in between the two of them.

Their progress across the floor was more productive than he’d expected. No creatures jumped out from behind the still-standing cubicles or leapt at him from the many, many patches of darkness. Except for the wind entering through the broken windows and the leftover pools of wetness, there was nothing left to indicate they’d been pursued by monsters not more than a few hours ago.

Every now and then John glanced back to check on the others. He caught Madeline’s eyes more than once. Campbell’s secretary looked nervous but steady. He couldn’t say the same for Nancy, who somehow managed the incredible task of looking ghostly pale despite the red lights. He had a harder time making out Cent in the back. It didn’t help that the kid (Young man, not kid. Young man.) had the kind of dark skin that made him almost blend into their—

Movement from his left, flicking in the corner of his eye.

John stopped and turned, the gun swinging with him.

There was a gasp from behind him as Madeline and Nancy instinctively dropped to their knees.

Cent hurried forward. “What is it?”

“Movement.”

“Where?”

“Outside.”

“The building?”

John nodded. “I’m going to get a better look.”

He didn’t wait for Cent to agree before moving through the maze of cubicles—and stepping over some of the fallen walls—to get to the other side of the floor. Cent stayed behind with the women. John could feel the young man’s eyes, along with the women’s, on his back.

It was brighter on this side, with the full moon washing the area in a bright pool of light. John bent slightly at the waist as he neared his objective before sliding up against the wall next to one of the still-intact windows.

He looked out.

Black-clad figures were making their way across the grassy grounds toward the buildings. Men. Living men. He could tell that much from the way they moved. And oh, the weapons they were carrying also alleviated any concerns they might be obayifo. Those were definitely rifles and a few shotguns.

He counted four, but there could have been more that he didn’t get to the window in time to see. They were already halfway across the grounds, and soon even these four disappeared underneath his window.

Voices, drifting up from below him. Not too loud, just enough for John to hear from one floor up. Their voices, but not their words.

More movement, these coming from the tree lines.

More black-clad figures appeared and moved steadily toward the buildings.

The tap-tap of soft footsteps behind him, just before Cent and both women joined him. Nancy and Madeline kneeled inside one of the cubicles while Cent took up position against the wall across the window from him.

“What’s happening outside?” Madeline asked. She was whispering softly but was close enough that he could hear her just fine.

“New arrivals,” John said. “Looks like soldiers.”

“Soldiers?” Cent said.

He nodded.

“How many?” Cent asked even as he looked out the window and observed the new figures advancing on their target below. They were spread out in a slightly jagged line, weapons sweeping the grounds as they moved.

“Them and at least four more. They’re going into the lobby.”

“Who are they?”

John shook his head.

“Another rescue party?” Madeline asked.

“You tell me. It’s your island.”

“It’s not my island.”

“Close enough.”

“You think they could be yours?” Cent asked the secretary.

Madeline seemed to think about it for a moment. Finally, she shook her head. “I don’t know. They could be.”

“Would Harold make more than one rescue attempt?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe.”

“Are you that important to him?” John asked, watching the secretary’s face closely for her response.

“What does that mean?” Madeline said.

“You know what that means.”

This time, Cent and Nancy also waited for her answer.

Finally, the woman said, “Maybe.”

That sounds like a Yes to me.

He returned to spying out the window as the newcomers, like the first group, vanished underneath his windowsill.

“What do they look like to you?” Cent was asking him.

“Could be anyone.”

“What do you think they are?”

“Why are you asking me? How would I know?”

Cent didn’t respond. At least, not verbally. Instead, he continued to stare at John.

“Soldiers,” John said. “Maybe not now, but definitely at some point. They’re pros.”

“You can tell that from the way they moved?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting.”

John grinned. He’d given away a big fact about himself without realizing it: His ability to recognize military movements was a clear indication he himself had military experience of some kind.

Good one, Cent. You got me there.

He said, “The question is, what are they doing here? If they’re a rescue party, then it’s our lucky day.”

“And if they’re not?”

“Then perhaps it’s our not-so-lucky day.”

“It must be a rescue,” Madeline said. She sounded very sure of it.

John looked back at her. “So you are that valuable to him.” It wasn’t a question.

She gritted her teeth with clear annoyance. “What are you talking about?”

“Campbell. You’re that valuable to him.” Again, it wasn’t a question.

“What makes you think he’d send a rescue just for me? This is his island. It’s worth millions.”

John smiled at her, answering her question without saying a word.

Madeline matched his gaze but didn’t say anything.

“Look,” Cent said.

John turned back around. “What?”

“The trees…” He pointed at the woods, just a few meters from the tree line. “They moved.”

John peered out but didn’t see anything. There were some movements but they could have been the breeze pushing trees around. “It’s just the wind.”

“It’s not the wind,” Cent said just as gunfire crackled across the island and John glimpsed muzzle flashes within the woods in front of them.

“My bad,” John said. “That’s definitely more than just the wind.”

18

TORRES

The second member of what was once Delta Team landed short of the first one by at least five feet, not that any of the trio of Owen’s men outside reacted to it. Not one of them moved or, as far as Torres could tell, flinched at yet another one of their comrades’ decapitated head landing before them. Because it’d landed short, the head started rolling backward down the incline, putting another ten feet or so between it and the three motionless figures.

As if whoever—or, probably more likely, whatever—had thrown the head was attempting to adjust for the previous one’s shortfall, the third head sailed higher and farther, thwacking loudly off the glass in front of Torres. It left a bloody smudge behind as it dropped to the ground and settled.

Jesus Christ. This is unholy. This is…beyond unholy.

Torres took an involuntary step back at the impact, the grisly face of a man, his eyes wide open, staring at her as it struck the glass. Owen, on the other hand, hadn’t moved. His face remained stoic. Instead of fear—which was, no doubt, the hoped-for response from the killers—Owen just looked annoyed.

One by one, the remaining three heads of Delta Team joined their fellow teammates. Number four, five, and finally, number six, which bounced off another part of the lobby glass wall a few feet to the right of where Torres stood. The shock of what she was seeing thrummed through her, refusing to go away anytime soon.

Maybe you were right after all, Cent. Maybe this is the Devil himself we’re dealing with.

The three men of Alpha Team remained kneeling outside. All three had lowered their guns once it became apparent no one would shoot at them. Because they weren’t dealing with humans here, but obayifo. The ones with blue eyes, because only they would have been able to throw a human head over fifty yards away, something only a professional quarterback could do, and even then it would have taken some effort since a human head wasn’t, well, a football.

The heads had clearly been brutally removed from the rest of their bodies. Torres could tell that much by looking at the nearest one and seeing the bloodied remains. A knife or sharp blade hadn’t been responsible for that kind of wound. Something had torn them loose with the kind of strength that could only be described as inhuman.

“Alpha Team, hold your positions.” Owen, talking into his mic.

One of the men outside responded by reaching down to click his radio, but of course Torres couldn’t hear what he’d said to Owen. The other three men in Owen’s Alpha Team were behind them, along with the six members of Charlie Team that had reformed in the lobby. As far as she could tell, no one had said a word or even reacted overtly to the barbaric sights of headless “footballs.”

I guess Ana really did send professionals. I just hope they’re enough.

She turned to Owen. “It’s them. The Blue Eyes.”

Owen didn’t say anything. She guessed he’d already figured that out by himself. Instead of replying, he glanced back at his men gathered behind him. She did, too. Every men in the room with her and Owen had a strange look about them. It was hard to see their expressions behind their facial hairs and camo-painted faces.

“Relax, boys,” Owen said. “This isn’t our first rodeo. We’ve seen worse.”

You have? Torres thought.

She wasn’t sure if she actually believed that. How many times had Owen and his men seen something worse than severed heads being thrown at them?

Six heads in all, and not a single one of them was Benton. She could tell that because all six were wearing black camo paint on their faces.

Benton.

Could that asshole have been responsible for Delta Team? She didn’t think so. He hadn’t shown to be in possession of the kind of strength it would have taken to drop six professional soldiers. The Benton she’d been around the last few hours wasn’t capable of something like this.

No, it wasn’t Benton. It was the Blue Eyes.

So what happened to Benton? Was he even still alive?

“What do we do now?” she asked Owen.

“We stick to the plan. Nothing’s changed.”

“Are you kidding me? ‘Nothing’s changed’? They just took out six of your men.”

“And I still have twelve more.”

Yeah, but for how much longer?

She didn’t say that out loud, of course. Instead, Torres said, “We need to rethink this. You saw what they did. They’ve been waiting for us. They never retreated; they were just preparing a new front of attack.”

“Yeah, I figured that, Torres. But it doesn’t change anything. The mission’s still a go. And it’ll stay a go as long as at least one of us is breathing.”

“Six of your men are dead, Owen.”

“Noted.” He turned around to look at his men, reaching down to click his radio. “Charlie Team and I will proceed with the mission. Alpha Team will keep our egress clean.”

“Owen, this is stupid,” Torres said. “Just wait until morning. Right now, they have the upper hand. We need to take that back.”

As if he hadn’t heard a thing she’d said, Owen nodded at his gathered men. “Hold your ground. We’re counting on you.”

Three of the men—the members of Alpha Team inside the lobby—returned his nod and moved to take up positions along the front wall. The others were already doing last-second checks on their weapons.

Owen turned back to her. If she had any doubts he wasn’t going to be talked out of his plan, she didn’t anymore after seeing the steely determination on his face. “I suggest you stay up here with Alpha Team. It’s safer.”

“Are you kidding me? There is no safer on this island while it’s still dark out there.”

“I can’t watch over you the entire time, Torres.”

“I don’t need you to watch over me, Owen. I came here to look for Cent, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

“He’s probably dead.”

The way he’d said that, “He’s probably dead,” without any emotion whatsoever, made her want to punch him a few times in the face.

She said instead, “You don’t know that.”

“Look around you, Torres. The chances of anyone still alive in this place is zero to none. Stay in the lobby with Alpha.”

“But no bodies.”

“No.”

He sighed. Then, showing some emotion for the first time since the “flying heads” incident, “Why don’t you do as I say, woman?”

Instead of backing down, Torres gritted her teeth back at him. “I’m not your woman, and no one tells me what to fucking do.”

He let out another deep sigh before looking past her. “Bowmen. Get yourself over here.”

A member of Alpha Team left the entrance and jogged over to join them.

“You’re Torres’s chaperone for the night. Go where she goes. Shoot what she shoots. Got that?”

“Yes, sir,” the man named Bowmen said.

“Good luck,” Owen said to her before he turned and walked across the lobby to the rear of the building. The members of Charlie Team wordlessly fell in behind him.

Torres looked over at her “chaperone.” Early thirties, facial hair covering nearly half of his face, and a scar across one cheek. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Bowmen said.

“Getting stuck with me.”

Bowmen chuckled. “Don’t be. A job’s a job.” Then, without missing a beat, “So what’s the job?”

“To look for a friend.”

“In here?”

“Up there,” she said, pointing at the ceiling.

“All right, then,” the man said. He went down on one knee and pulled at a Velcro strap that released a sheathed knife strapped to his boot. He stood up and handed the weapon to her. “Silver-coated blade. In case you need it.”

She took it gratefully. It was better than going up with just the Glock at her disposal. The knife, unlike a gun, couldn’t run out of bullets.

Torres slipped it into her waistband behind her back. “Thanks.”

“De nada.”

Torres glanced over and watched Owen as he vanished into the stairwell with the others. From there, they would access the stairs down to the underground facility. She’d already told him about the emergency hatch, but Owen had dismissed it out of hand.

“Too claustrophobic and not enough space to maneuver. If we get caught in there, we’re done for.”

He was right. She couldn’t imagine being stuck in there if an obayifo discovered them. Not only would they not have any space to fight back, but they’d probably end up falling over each other just trying to defend themselves.

When she looked back, Bowmen was staring out the window at the heads with black camo paint. “So that’s what they do, huh?”

“Who?”

“The creatures. They can do that.”

“Yes. That’s them. And they can do that.”

“Hunh,” the man said. “And here I thought this gig was gonna be boring.”

* * *

Owen’s people had come prepared. She saw that with their silver-tipped ammo. They also knew what they would be dealing with in order to reach the underground facility. Instead of shooting or trying to blow their way down, they cut through the heavy metal door with some kind of torch. The thick smell of sulfur that filled every inch of the stairwell’s first-floor landing was almost unbearable when she stepped inside with Bowmen. She didn’t even notice all the blood on the floor, but just the door, which looked as if it had been carved up like a turkey at Thanksgiving. There was a hole in it that hadn’t been there before, big enough for a large man to step through without having to duck his head. The top of the stairwell on the other side, awash in red like every other part of the building, awaited her. Soft echoing clangs as Owen and his men, somewhere below already, headed down the five stories.

Bowmen had already taken up position at the first steps leading up, M4 rifle in hand, one eye looking through his weapon’s optic. “We’re clear.”

She thought about asking Bowmen what Owen had used to cut his way through the door but decided it wasn’t important. What was important was finding out if Cent was still alive. Owen’s men had already checked all of the rooms in the lobby and Cent wasn’t in any of them. Neither was Duncan. That left her with the above floors. Four of them.

She walked over to join Bowmen.

The man lowered his rifle slightly. “You sure you don’t wanna stay down here with Alpha Team instead?” Bowmen asked. It was a genuine question, and she couldn’t detect anything that sounded close to an insult in his voice.

“I need to find my friend,” she said as she took the first step up.

Bowmen followed with his rifle while she held the Glock at her side. The weight of the knife behind her back felt good, but she kept telling herself that it would feel even better if she never had to use it.

Torres didn’t stop moving or breathing through her mouth until she’d reached the turn in the stairs. Every one of the steps, the railing, and wall was covered in blood and…other things that she didn’t want to think about. Ironically, she thanked God for the lingering smell of Owen’s cutting torch, which helped to disperse the choking stink of death that was locked in the stairwell with them.

She pivoted and aimed up at the second-floor stairwell door directly above her. She craned her head slightly to look up at the three and a half remaining floors. Quiet, as if the entire building had been abandoned. Of course she knew that to be false. Owen’s men were headed down, some were in the lobby, and she was halfway between the first and second with Bowmen. The building was far from empty.

Far, far from it.

Torres went up, past the second-floor stairwell door, and kept going. She didn’t stop until she’d reached the turn in the stairs, between the second and third. She pivoted sharply to take aim at the third-floor stairwell door.

Empty. No signs of life.

That’s good, right?

It should be, but her paranoia was too much to ignore. Why was it so empty? Where were all the obayifo? Had they actually all abandoned the building to lay in wait for Owen’s men? What the hell kind of game were the Blue Eyes playing?

She headed back downstairs to rejoin Bowmen, who waited at the second-floor stairwell door.

Bowmen looked over at her. She shook her head before facing the door.

Torres put one hand on the stairwell door’s lever while Bowmen got into position with his rifle. They exchanged another look.

Bowmen gave her the go-head nod.

She returned it, then refocused on the door.

One breath.

Two…

She jerked the lever down and pushed the door open. Bowmen ran through almost immediately—and opened fire.

Shit! Shit shit shit!

She should have known it’d been too easy, that the obayifo wouldn’t completely abandon the building. But she’d hoped anyway because she still had so many more floors to go in search of Cent.

Torres rushed inside after Bowmen, letting the door swing shut behind her.

Darkness, shadows, and nothing but red lights.

Her chest, about to implode against the strength of her pounding heartbeats.

Bowmen, on the ground, struggling to regain control of his rifle with a second figure. They looked like children playing in the dark on the floor.

Obayifo?

She pointed her Glock at the second figure and slipped her forefinger into the trigger guard.

“Torres! Don’t shoot!”

The voice had come from her right. She spun in that direction—and almost pulled the trigger on Madeline.

Harold Campbell’s secretary stood a few feet away, holding what looked like a stapler in one hand as a weapon. She’d been hiding in the shadows until Torres showed herself. There was another woman behind Madeline, cowering in the corner.

“Don’t shoot!” Madeline shouted again.

Before Torres could ask why, there was another burst of gunfire from behind her.

Bowmen!

She spun back around, just as the second figure gained the upper hand and straddled Bowmen. Then the rifle was in the shadow’s hands and he was cocking it back to strike Bowmen with the butt.

Torres fired a shot into the ceiling.

The figure froze, the rifle halfway down. Only the head turned to look at Torres.

Duncan. John Duncan from Human Resources. His eyes widened at the sight of her. She imagined she must have reacted the same at the sight of him.

Bowmen used Duncan’s momentary hesitation to grab his rifle and jerked it away. Then he threw Duncan off him and stumbled back up to his feet.

A fourth shadow appeared behind Bowmen. “Torres, don’t shoot.”

Cent?

Bowmen whirled around, rifle taking aim.

“Bowmen, don’t!” Torres shouted.

Luckily Bowmen, despite having just fought for his life against Duncan seconds ago, didn’t pull the trigger. Instead, he took a few steps to the side, still struggling to regain his composure. “Friends of yours?”

“Yes,” Torres said.

Cent grinned at her as he stepped further out of the shadows. They were surrounded by cubicles to one side, a wall on the other, and paper everywhere.

“Torres,” Cent said.

“Cent.”

“You’re still alive.”

“So are you.”

“I guess both of us are just too stubborn to give up.”

She grinned. “I guess so.”

She met Cent halfway and shook his hand. The young man smiled at her. It looked, Torres thought, very genuine. She wondered if it’d stay that way once he knew she’d abandoned him earlier.

Duncan had already stood up and was wiping his hands on his pants legs. “Sorry to interrupt this happy reunion, but we have a situation, don’t we?”

Bowmen had lowered his rifle. “Depends on what you mean by ‘situation.’”

“Shit up a creek?’

“Sounds about right.”

“It was Owen’s men,” Torres said. “The obayifo killed them while they were in the woods.”

“Did you say Owen?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Owen…Randolph?”

She squinted at him. She had no idea if that was Owen’s surname—the man had never told her himself and she’d never bothered to ask—but the fact that Duncan had quickly deduced it was surprising and very revealing.

She recalled what Owen had said when she told him about Duncan, even describing his physical appearance:

“Sounds familiar, but the guy I’m thinking of is dead.”

Bowmen, too, had figured that out. “You know Owen.”

Duncan shrugged. “Nah. Wrong guy.”

“You sure about that?” Torres asked. “You knew his name.”

“Lucky guess.”

“Bullshit.”

Duncan smiled at her. “Can’t be the same guy. The one I’m thinking about is dead.”

That’s the same thing Owen said.

Then, squinting through the semidarkness at Duncan, Who are these guys?

Before she could dig any further, Madeline put a hand on her shoulder. “Kerry. Thank God you’re still alive. Cent told me you guys split up.”

She turned to look at Harold Campbell’s secretary. “We did. But why are you still here? I didn’t expect to find you still on the island.”

“I was supposed to leave when it all happened. Bad timing, I guess.”

“Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around.”

Madeline couldn’t have looked any more different than the last time Torres saw her. The tall, smartly-dressed woman who had recruited her had been replaced by a harried thirty-something wearing blood-stained clothes. Her hair was a mess and though Torres knew it to be impossible, it looked as if Madeline had aged ten years overnight.

She considered telling Madeline about Owen and what he was doing—or, to be exact, on his way to do at this very second. But that information would have just brought her more trouble, which was something she didn’t need currently. She already had enough on her plate.

She turned back to Cent. “Is this everyone?”

The young man nodded. “This is it.”

“Earlier, on the rooftop, we saw a helicopter attempt to land.”

“We think it was Harold Campbell’s people.”

“What happened to them?”

“You saw the crash site outside?”

“Right. Stupid question.”

“This is him?” Bowmen asked her.

She nodded. “Cent, this is Bowmen. He’s my…chaperone for the night.”

Cent gave her a questioning look, but let it go and shook Bowmen’s hand instead. Torres could see a dozen more questions on Cent’s face, but the young man probably realized this wasn’t the time to ask them.

I’ll tell you later, Cent. I promise.

“Hate to break up the happy reunion,” Duncan said. “What’s the situation downstairs?”

“Owen’s people are holding their ground in the lobby,” Torres said. “And there was no one in the stairwell when we came up.”

“None at all?”

“None that we saw. There’s a chance that the obayifo left the building to ambush Owen outside.”

“That would explain a lot of things,” Cent said.

“Like what?” she asked him.

“We were in the employee lounge across the floor. There was just a door between us and them, but the Blue Eyes never tried to come in.”

She nodded. “They were busy elsewhere.”

“Yes, I think so.”

Duncan, meanwhile, had turned to Bowmen. “How many warm bodies do you guys have?”

“None of your business,” Bowmen said.

“Just trying to get an idea about our resources, that’s all.”

“Not your job, pal.”

Duncan raised two hands in mock surrender and took a step back.

“Torres.” Cent, looking at her. “Where’s Vicks?”

Shit. Vicks.

She’d forgotten all about Lourdes. Or maybe she was hoping she wouldn’t come up. At least, not for a while. The longer they didn’t talk about Lourdes, the longer Torres could avoid what she knew would be a very uncomfortable conversation.

“Torres, where’s Vicks?” Cent asked again.

Torres shook her head. “I don’t know. We lost contact on the way to the beach.”

“The beach? You were headed for the beach?”

She sighed and took a breath. Dammit. She didn’t want to talk about this. Not here, not yet.

“Torres,” Cent said. “What happened?”

The others were looking at her, too, waiting for her answer. Even the woman still huddled in the corner seemed to be waiting with bated breath.

But before she was forced to answer, Bowmen cupped his ear with one hand, then looked across the small space at her. “Torres.”

“What?” she said.

“It’s for you.” He removed his earpiece and handed it to her, along with his radio and throat mic.

“Owen?”

“No.”

She struggled to put on the comm gear. Her fingers were a little clumsy for some reason. Maybe it was the fact that Cent was watching her intently, the disappointed look on his face as obvious as her own slightly accelerated heartbeats.

Eventually she had everything in place and clicked the PTT switch on the radio. “Torres.”

“Wow, I like the sound of your voice over the radio,” a familiar voice said. It was Benton.

Motherfucker. How are you still alive?

“What do you want?” said asked.

The others reacted surprised to the question, maybe because it was dripping with venom as she said it.

“You,” Benton said. He might have chuckled as he did it.

“What do you really want?”

“Madeline. I want Madeline.”

Torres glanced back at Harold Campbell’s secretary.

The other woman’s eyebrows raised in alarm. “What? What are you looking at me for?”

Torres ignored her and said into the mic, “I guess you’re going to be disappointed, then.”

“Are you sure about that?” Benton asked. “Someone wants to talk to you.” A few seconds went by before another familiar voice spoke through the earbud. “Torres?”

It was Lourdes! She was still alive!

A brief surge of relief, as if a boulder had been lifted off her chest, was quickly replaced by confusion. And then, just as quickly, fear.

Benton had returned to the radio. “Quid pro quo, Torres. Bring us Madeline and Vicks is yours. You have one hour.”

Torres clenched her teeth and looked over at Cent. The young man watched her closely, a hundred questions flashing across his face.

She said into the radio, “Where?”

“The beach.”

“Which one?”

“You know which one. Come alone with the woman.”

“That’s not going to happen. I’m not going anywhere alone. Least of all to you.”

Another chuckle. This one sounded too forced. “Fair enough. You can bring Cent along. I’m sure he’s anxious to be reunited with Vicks anyway.”

“How do I know you’ll keep your word?” she asked.

Torres let go of the radio’s transmit lever and waited for a reply.

It didn’t come.

Five seconds ticked by, then five more painful ones.

“Benton?” Torres said. “Benton.”

There was continued silence over the radio.

Torres removed the mic and earbud and handed them back to Bowmen.

“That was Benton,” Cent said. It wasn’t a question. “What did he want?”

“He has Vicks.”

This time it was Cent’s turn to lift his eyebrows in alarm. “How?”

“That doesn’t matter right now. What matters is that he wants to trade her”—she looked over at Madeline—“for her.”

“Me?” Madeline said. She took an involuntary step backward. “What’s he want with me?”

Torres ignored her again and turned back to Cent. “We have an hour to bring her to the beach.”

“Or…?” Cent said.

“I don’t want to find out. Do you?”

The young man shook his head. “No.” Then, with grim determination, “No, I don’t.”

19

CENT

Benton.

Cent had never trusted him. There was something about the man ever since that first night when they were introduced to him at the motel. Later, in the van, when his unit was being slaughtered, Benton hadn’t done anything to stop it. It wasn’t cowardice, either. Cent had seen cowardice before and that wasn’t Benton’s reaction that night. It was something else: Indifference. Benton couldn’t muster up the emotion to care about what happened to Kripke and the others.

And now Benton had Vicks, but was willing to trade her for Madeline.

To neither Cent nor Torres’s surprise, Madeline was not as agreeable about meeting Benton’s demands as the two of them.

“What the hell does he want with me?” Harold Campbell’s secretary asked. Her arms were folded defensively across her chest.

“Maybe because you’re worth a lot to Campbell,” Duncan said.

“I’m not worth that much.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes,” she said, with all the certainty in the world. “I’m an employee. That’s it.”

Not quite just that, Cent thought. He’d seen how Campbell relied on Madeline. The woman knew more about his operations than anyone in the world except for Campbell himself. Was that it, then? Did Benton want Madeline as a way to get to Campbell? But for what purpose?

What is your game, Benton? What do you really want?

“Unless you two are having an affair?” Duncan said. He may or may not have been kidding when he asked the question.

“What?” Madeline said. “Are you trying to get me to throw up?”

Duncan chuckled. “I guess not.”

Madeline turned to Torres. “Did he say what he wants with me?”

Torres shook her head. “No. You don’t have any ideas?”

“Of course not. I’ve barely spoken to the man in all the time he’s been here.”

“Who gave him his promotion after Florida?”

“Williamson. He runs the field units.”

“And you can’t think of any reason why he’d want you?”

“Not a clue.”

“Can you at least think about it first?”

“I don’t have to. There is no reason why he’d want to trade Vicks for me.”

“Benton knows why,” Cent said. “We’ll ask him when we find him.”

Torres nodded at him. “Yes, we will.”

“And where does that leave me?” Madeline asked. “You’re not going to take me to that madman, are you?”

Torres didn’t answer right away. For a moment—just the briefest of moments—Cent thought she might say that Yes, we are taking you to him in exchange for Vicks, but he knew better, and Torres proved him correct.

The ex-cop indicated Bowmen. “You and the others will go with Bowmen. Link back up with his people in the lobby. Then leave with them.”

“Who exactly are these people, anyway?”

“As far as I know, they’re the U.S. government.”

“The U.S. government?” Madeline said, her eyebrows rising in alarm. “What are they doing here? We’re in international waters!”

“Apparently they don’t care,” Torres said.

“Sounds about right,” Duncan said with a chuckle.

Torres threw a quick annoyed glance in his direction before continuing. “Right now, they’re your best chance to get off this island. But I’m not going to tell you what to do. That’s up to you.”

Madeline didn’t respond to that. Neither did Nancy, standing slightly behind her with her own arms folded across her chest. The woman hadn’t spoken a word since the others arrived. She hadn’t spoken much even before that. If Cent didn’t keep seeing her in the peripheral of his vision, he would have forgotten she was ever there completely.

Finally, Madeline shook her head, then walked over to a chair at an empty workstation and sat down. “This is crazy. All of this is crazy.” She looked over at Cent, as if asking for help.

He had none to give her. All he could think about was Vicks.

Torres hadn’t told him everything about what had happened that had sent Vicks into Benton’s arms. He didn’t ask, either. Sooner or later, she would tell him. He could see the conflict on her face every time either one of them brought up Vicks’s name.

Torres walked over to Bowmen. “I need your comm again.”

The man handed them over to her and this time Torres put them on without difficulty. She pressed the radio’s transmit lever. “Owen. It’s Torres.” She waited less than a few seconds for a response, then, “You heard my conversation with Benton?” Another pause. “How’s everything going down there?” The man named Owen had a lot to say this time and it took over ten seconds before Torres finally spoke into her throat mic. “What about your men?” Again, another pause. “Copy that.”

She took the comm gear off and handed them back to Bowmen.

Then, looking over at Cent. “Let’s go get Vicks back.”

* * *

They were going to go get Vicks back but they couldn’t—and wouldn’t—do it the way Benton demanded it be done. Even if Torres had been willing to offer up the quid pro quo, Cent wouldn’t have gone along with it. There was no justification for risking Madeline’s life for Vicks’s, even if Cent felt more toward the latter than the former. Madeline, for her part, seemed to appreciate their decision and even hugged Cent before he left with Torres, leaving Harold Campbell’s secretary, Nancy, and Duncan with Bowmen.

They went down the stairwell together, Torres with her Glock and Cent with his knife. The others would follow after a few minutes just in case there were obayifo inside so they didn’t all get stuck in there together. The man Torres had spoken to on the comm, Owen, had already cleared their path to the back of the building, which they took now, with a couple of Owen’s men following behind them from a discreet distance.

“How is this going to work?” Cent asked as they walked down the shadowy hallway toward the rear exit. He’d passed the same stretch of passageway earlier when he was looking for Sarah with Duncan.

“I’m not sure yet,” Torres said. “I just wanted to get out of the building without being seen, then hopefully come up with some kind of plan once we’re in the woods.”

“About Benton…”

“Why is he doing this?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know.”

“But you have some ideas…”

“What makes you say that?”

“I can see it on your face.”

She might have smiled to herself. “Some ideas…”

“Like?”

“I think he’s working with them.”

“Who?”

“Them.”

“Them?”

“Them.”

Cent thought about that as they walked the last few yards to the door. Owen’s two men took charge, unlocking the door and peeking out to make sure there was no one—no thing—waiting to jump them. It was much too bright outside thanks to the full moon and if Cent could see everything from here to the tree line fifty yards away, then so could anyone hiding within those trees.

One of the soldiers stepped back and nodded at them. “You’re clear.”

Cent wasn’t so sure about that, but no one fired a shot and no creatures swarmed them as he and Torres stepped outside. They were only a few steps away from the door when it closed back up and he heard locks clacking back into place.

Alone and out in the open, they jogged across the slightly damp grounds. Cent breathed in the fresh air as they picked up their pace. It seemed like a lifetime ago that he’d had the chance to fill his lungs with air that wasn’t suffocating with obayifo stench. In the distance, he thought he could even hear waves breaking against the island’s shoreline.

But it was Benton and the why of his demands that stayed with Cent as they neared the dark trees, branches swaying freely in the breeze. Could Torres’s theory be correct? Was Benton working with the creatures? Just the concept of that seemed impossible in a world where God watched over them.

And yet, and yet…

Not that that, whether true or not, was going to stop Cent from reaching Vicks. Torres hadn’t said anything about Banks, and Cent just assumed he’d either been lost during their unplanned escape from the warehouse or somewhere along the way. He didn’t need to know all the details. Banks was a decent guy, but it was Vicks that he couldn’t stop thinking about.

He shivered slightly as they took their first steps into the woods. It was colder in here than out in the open, which made sense since the tree crowns were thick enough to almost blunt the sun in the day and moonlight at night. It wasn’t as dark inside as he had anticipated, and he could see clearly enough to be aware of his surroundings. But there were still too many corners and angles trapped in shadows to give him hesitation.

They hadn’t said a word since running from the building to the woods, and they kept silent as they started moving again. Torres knew the way to the beach where Benton would be waiting for him with Vicks, which was on the other side of the island. They could have just stepped out of the lobby’s front doors but would have been seen if Benton had spies. After what had happened to Owen’s other team, that was highly likely.

So they took a more circuitous route, going in a half-circle before they could spot the paved road to the left of them, visible between two hulking trees. They continued forward, always keeping the road to one side at all times. As long as they could see it, it meant they were headed in the right direction.

Finally, Torres spoke in whispers. “Can you feel it?”

He didn’t have to ask her what it was. Cent already knew, and he already felt it the second they stepped into the woods.

The lingering presence of obayifo. Even the air was no longer so fresh and fulfilling, and had turned stale the farther they ventured. They were in enemy territory now, not that they weren’t already just by being on Bird Island.

“Yes,” he whispered back.

“I don’t see them.”

“I don’t, either. But they’re in here with us. Somewhere.”

“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

“It never was. But we’re doing it anyway.”

Torres might have grinned. He was to the right and slightly behind her so couldn’t confirm it visually. “So we’re idiots.”

“That goes without saying.”

This time he heard her chuckling softly. “Remind me never to ask you to babysit Macy when we get home. You’re a bad influence.”

“This Owen. He was the one that gave you the pen, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“He’s down there right now? The underground facility?”

“Yes. I thought it was a good idea to keep that from Madeline.”

“It probably was.” He paused for a few seconds before continuing. “You kept your part of the bargain.”

She nodded.

“So why are you still here, Torres? Why aren’t you on the mainland getting ready to be reunited with Macy?”

She didn’t answer right away.

They talked in silence for a moment, both of them still keeping tabs on the road to their left.

Finally, she said, “I owe you and Vicks.”

“You don’t owe us anything.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Why?” he asked again.

“Because you’re the only person I can trust in this world. And I like Lourdes.”

“Who’s Lourdes?”

“Vicks. Her first name is Lourdes.”

“Ah.”

“She never told you?”

“No.”

“She was probably waiting for a better time.”

“Yes,” he said. Or thought he said. He might not have said anything at all because he’d stopped moving.

For some reason, he’d stopped moving entirely.

“Cent.”

Torres, in front of him, had also stopped and looked back, her fingers tightening around the gun at her side. “What is it? Why did you stop?”

He stared back at her but didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure if he even still could.

“Cent.”

The voice. It was in his head. It’d spoken his name. And why did it sound so much like…his mother?

No, he was wrong. It wasn’t his mother’s voice.

It was…Richter’s?

Or was it Dutch’s?

Why did the voice sound simultaneously like his mother’s, Richter’s, and Dutch’s all at the same time? How was that even possible?

“Where’s the woman, Cent?” the voice asked.

It was in his head and only he could hear it, just like it’d been in his head while he slept in the employee lounge. Except he wasn’t asleep.

(Or was I? Was I actually awake the whole time? Am I awake now?)

He could make out the startled look on Torres’s face as she stared at him. Confusion, apprehension, and a lot of fear.

“You were supposed to bring the woman to us,” the voice said.

Woman? What woman?

Then: Madeline. It’s talking about Madeline.

“Yes. Madeline. Where is she, Cent?”

I don’t know.

“Liar.” It might have cackled. This thing that sounded, somehow, like his mother and his friends all at once. “You’re such a liar, Cent. Who taught you to lie so well? Was it Richter? Or Dutch? Or was it Dear Momma?”

None. None of them.

“More lies,” it said, and laughed again.

No. Not lies. I don’t know where Madeline is.

“Yes, you do.”

No.

“Yes, you do.”

I don’t—

“The building. She’s still at the building with the others.”

Wait—

“Wait? Wait for what, Cent?” Again, that mock laughter that only he could hear, reverberating inside his skull. “You can’t hide anything from me, you meat sack.”

Torres had taken a couple of tentative steps closer. “Cent. What’s wrong? What’s happening to you?”

“What?” he managed to somehow croak the word out loud.

“Are you okay?”

“No…”

“Cent, talk to me. What’s happening?” She reached out and grabbed one of his shoulders and shook him. “Cent.” Then, raising her voice slightly, “Cent!”

He grabbed Torres’s arm, the same one that was on his shoulder. “We have to go back.”

“Back? Back where?”

“Madeline. It’s going after Madeline.”

“‘It?’”

“Blue Eyes. One of the Blue Eyes.”

She squinted at him. There was more than just confusion there now. There was suspicion, too. “How do you know this?”

“We have to go back!”

“Cent, we’re almost at the beach…”

He threw her hand off his shoulder and retreated a few steps. “We have to go back. It knows Madeline’s back there. It knows we didn’t bring her with us to trade for Vicks.”

Cent turned to go.

“Cent, wait,” Torres shouted. He wasn’t sure why she was shouting.

Wait, hadn’t he been shouting, too?

Oh, no. What if he’d attracted—

The rustling of trees, followed by the ear-splitting bang of a nearby gunshot.

Cent spun back around, just in time to watch a skeletal black form pitch forward and down to the ground.

Torres, one hand holding her gun, looked back at him. “Run!”

He didn’t act right away. Instead, he watched as the shadows in front of Torres squirmed and shifted, then somehow formed individual moving objects that spilled out onto the patch of moonlight on the ground.

One, two—more.

“Cent!” Torres, grabbing his arm as she almost ran past him, then all but dragging him forcibly along with her. “Run!”

20

JOHN

Things had taken the turn for the unexpected. Even on a night when just about everything was unexpected, this was even more so.

First, his job was made harder when the creatures broke free downstairs. Then they got easier when he had the opportunity to grab Madeline. Unfortunately that didn’t go as planned, which pretty much about summed up John’s entire night.

Randolph showing up with a whole team of killers was the other wrench in the machine. John couldn’t exactly say he hadn’t expected that, but he’d be damned if his old buddy hadn’t gotten someone into Campbell’s organization. Someone who had even more access than John did. To top it off, she did all of that in a few days when he was still nibbling at the edges for the last three months.

That someone was Torres. The attractive African-American was an ex-cop more concerned with saving her friends than getting off the island. That was an admirable quality in a person, not that John would ever follow in her footsteps. After all that, John was almost back to square one. Almost, but not quite.

He was on the second floor with Madeline, Nancy, and Bowmen. Randolph’s man was the only dangerous one. John could see him whispering into his mic, conversing with whoever was on the other side. Randolph, no doubt. Since the throat mics worked through bone vibrations, it didn’t really matter how loud or softly he spoke; the person on the other end would be able to hear it just fine.

While Bowmen was sneaking around getting orders from his boss, John considered his next move. The main goal was to get off this damn island. The secondary one was taking Madeline with him. She, more than anyone, knew all about Harold Campbell’s activities in the last ten years. She was potentially more valuable than anything he could have stolen from the computers belowground. Obviously she wouldn’t go willingly with him. That is, if she knew his true motives. Fortunately, she didn’t.

With Bowmen whispering into his throat mic from twenty yards away, John sat down next to Madeline and Nancy. The two women had found seats among the cubicles, with the younger woman rubbing at her palms with a wet rag, trying to get some blood off. Madeline had found a half-full bottle of water on one of the workstations, and after drinking some, had given the rest to Nancy. Instead of drinking, Nancy had used all of it to clean herself.

Madeline was watching Bowmen, perhaps feeling some of the same paranoia that John did. Bowmen didn’t help his cause by keeping all of it to himself. The man was clearly up to something, and Madeline noticed, too.

That’s one approach.

He said, just low enough that Bowmen, in his current busy state, couldn’t overhear, “He’s talking to his boss.”

“I know,” Madeline said, matching his pitch. She squinted slightly and John thought, Oh yeah. The paranoia’s real, all right. “What do they want?”

“You.”

She turned to look at him. “Me again?”

“You’re Harold Campbell’s secretary.”

“What the hell does that even mean?” she said just a bit louder than John would have liked.

Too loud, in fact, because Bowmen glanced over and scowled at the sight of them conspiring across the floor.

Hey, if you can do it, I can do it too, buddy.

He said to Madeline, “Randolph has an entire team of mercenaries down there. They came here for one reason.”

“Which is…?”

“You know what that reason is.”

Madeline started to disagree but stopped short.

Oh yeah, you know, all right.

He said, “You’re more valuable than everything down there. I know it, you know it, and his boss”—he nodded across at Bowmen—“knows it.” Then, off Madeline’s somber expression, “The question is, what are you going to do about it?”

“If they were after me, they’d be up here already,” she said.

“They’re busy downstairs, taking your computers apart. When they’re done, they’ll turn their attention to you.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Who are you trying to convince? Me or you?”

Madeline didn’t answer. Instead, she glanced at Bowmen. “I’m a U.S. citizen. I have rights.”

John didn’t say anything.

“I am,” she said, turning to look at him.

“I know that. And they know that.” He shrugged. “And this island is in international waters, but they’re here anyway. What does that tell you?”

Again, Madeline didn’t respond right away.

And she didn’t get the chance to, because Bowmen had begun walking toward them. “Time to go, boys and girls.”

John stood up. “Where are we going?”

“Downstairs to hook up with the rest of Alpha Team.”

“And then?”

Bowmen shrugged. “And then we wait for further—”

John drew his sidearm and shot the man before he could finish.

Bowmen didn’t go down right away. He took one stumbling step backward while simultaneously clutching at his chest. He wasn’t wearing armor—his BDU wasn’t nearly bulky enough if were—but apparently Bowmen was a tough hombre.

Not tough enough, though, because John’s second shot, to Bowmen’s forehead, dropped him.

Randolph’s man collapsed to the floor, legs twisted awkwardly underneath his large form. John rushed over and snatched up the dead man’s rifle, then relieved him of his MOLLE vest. He also grabbed a second Glock, then plenty of spares for the M4. The comm gear was next. He slipped them on and made sure they were still working. Good to go.

Madeline had appeared behind him. “Jesus. Why did you do that?”

“You know why.”

“You killed him.”

“That was the idea.”

“What happens when the others find out?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

He slipped on the comm equipment and spent a few seconds waiting to hear voices over the earbud. Nothing came through, which meant no one from the lobby had alerted Randolph about the gunshots yet, and they definitely would have heard. The only other explanation was that they’d immediately switched radio channels in the seconds between when they heard the gunshots and before he could relieve Bowmen of his equipment.

John checked the M4’s magazine. Silver-tipped bullets. Nice. The same was true for the rest of the ammo. Randolph and his boys had come prepared.

“What now?” Madeline was asking him. She was staring down at Bowmen’s body, but John couldn’t tell if she was shocked or relieved.

The other woman, Nancy, had also stood up but hadn’t left the workstation. She looked like a deer caught in a car’s headlights. And had ever since the employee lounge.

He handed Madeline the Glock he’d taken from Bowmen. “Here.”

She didn’t move to take it.

“Take it,” he said, pushing the gun into her hand.

She took it reluctantly, then turned it over as if afraid it might jump up and bite her. Or explode on her. One of those, probably. “I don’t know how to use a gun.”

“It’s easy.” He mimed “pulling a trigger” with his forefinger. “Simple as pie. Just make sure you point that thing at something other than me when you do it.”

She nodded unconvincingly before letting the gun drop to her side.

“I’m getting off this island,” John said. “You can come with me if you want.” He looked past her and at Nancy. “Both of you.”

Nancy nodded mutely.

But it was Madeline’s response he was interested in. Campbell’s secretary seemed to be thinking about it.

A little too long for John’s liking.

Oh come on, lady! I played this great! Throw me a bone why doncha!

She eventually did. “How do we get past the ones downstairs?” she asked, looking down at Bowmen’s lifeless form again.

“Leave that to me,” John said. “Come on.” He led them into the aisle, then toward the stairwell. “Just stay close and do what I say.”

Madeline followed closely behind. John didn’t make sure to see if Nancy was back there too. The truth was, he was hoping she’d turn his offer down. He really just needed Madeline and Nancy wouldn’t just slow him down but, more dangerously when the chips were down, get in the way.

“Who are you?” Madeline was asking him.

Oh. Now she decides to ask! he thought while suppressing a laugh.

“John Duncan. Human Resources and part-time accountant.”

“You’re not in HR.”

“My check stubs say differently.”

“Who are you really.”

He smiled to himself, which she couldn’t see from behind. He was hoping to play the John Duncan from HR role for a while. At least until they were in the middle of the ocean and it was impossible for Madeline to run off.

He didn’t answer her as they neared the stairwell door—

The soft click, followed a heartbeat later by the gleaming metal barrel of a rifle poking out of the opening door.

“Down!” John hissed just before he darted to the right, flicking the fire selector on the M4 from semi to fully auto in the same motion.

He squeezed the trigger and stitched the stairwell door from left to right. Then, as he thumped against the wall and couldn’t go any farther, fired another volley, this time impacting the door from right to left even it began to swing in the other direction.

Screaming from the other side, audible just before the door clicked closed.

A burst of gunfire, this time coming from within the stairwell. Missiles zipped into the second floor, striking cubicles and walls around him. A few rounds came dangerously close to taking off his legs but thankfully missed by inches.

He returned fire, emptying the rest of the magazine into the door as he pushed off the wall and ran left, looking for cover before the men on the other side could send another volley his way.

He reached the cubicles safely and fell to the floor on his ass, back against the hard paper wall, with the stairwell ten yards away. He didn’t believe for a second that the cubicle was capable of protecting him from a bullet, but as long as he stayed low, it would take a lucky shot to get him.

John glanced to his right even as he ejected and slipped a fresh magazine into the M4. He had three left—two more at the front of his MOLLE and a final third in a pouch at his hip. Bowmen had come very prepared.

Madeline was kneeling about ten feet away from him, doing CPR on Nancy. Blood pooled underneath Nancy, but John couldn’t see anything that looked like bullet wounds in the semidarkness. From the lack of movement, she was either already dead or on the verge of death.

Well, that’s one way to solve my problem.

He waited for a response to his second fusillade but it was all quiet in the stairwell. It would have been dead silent if not for Madeline’s harried breathing as she whispered out numbers while pressing down on Nancy’s chest.

John peered out from behind the cubicle wall. The door was in pieces and yet somehow managed to stay attached to the wall. The top-most hinge was gone, leaving just the bottom two. More than three dozen holes gave him zero details on who was on the other side—or even whether they were still alive in there.

He wanted to believe his three volleys had put down every threat, but that was delusional. Randolph’s people wouldn’t be so easily taken down. He’d gotten lucky earlier. If he hadn’t been facing the door as it opened, they would have gotten the jump on him.

John looked down at the radio clipped to his vest. He guessed ol’ Randolph had switched channels on him after all. He should have known the man wouldn’t be so easily taken. Randolph was number one in Ana’s Rolodex for a reason, after all.

On cue, there was a squawk in his earbud, before he heard the familiar voice: “Torres told me you were on the island. What are you doing here?”

Randolph, returning to the old frequency for his sake.

John grinned as he keyed the radio. “Same thing you are, I’m guessing.”

Madeline had given up trying to revive Nancy and was sitting down with her hands on the floor between her splayed legs. She looked up and over when he began talking into the mic. She probably thought he was talking to her but seeing him with one hand on the radio, realized otherwise.

“It seems that way,” Randolph was saying through the radio. “You killed Bowmen?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“I knew you’d take his radio.”

“You always were a smart little bugger. Still running errands for Ana, I see.”

“You know how it is. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

“What’s the other?”

“There are better jobs out there. I could introduce you to a few people I know. Double the money. Maybe triple, if you let me do the talking.”

Another chuckle that was clearly for his benefit because Randolph hadn’t had to key his radio when he did it.

John glanced back at the stairwell just in case Randolph was trying to keep him occupied while his men launched another attack. He could hear noises from behind the bullet-riddled door. Movements, like scurrying rats, but nothing that hinted at an impending assault. More likely, Randolph’s men were evacuating their wounded or dead. He was hoping for the former. A wounded soldier cost an army three men—the dead one and the two needed to evacuate him. A KIA, on the other hand, only took one life off the battlefield—the dead man himself.

“We can work out a deal,” John said into the radio.

“I’m listening,” Randolph said even though John didn’t believe him. There was just a one percent chance Randolph would actually betray Ana. But, as the saying went, one percent wasn’t zero.

“We split everything in half,” he said, fully aware that Madeline was watching him—and listening closely—from not too far away. “That way, we both get what we want.”

“Interesting. Specifics?”

“We can discuss that when we meet face to face.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Bullshit, John thought.

But he said, “So let’s set a place and time.”

“The lobby, in one hour,” Randolph said. “How does that sound?”

“Sounds hunky dory to me.”

“See you then.”

“Yeah, see you then.”

“What’s happening,” Madeline finally asked when John took his hand away from the radio. “Who were you talking to?”

“The guy trying to kill us.”

“This Owen Randolph person.”

“That’s him. What about Nancy?”

“She’s dead.” Then, before he could further derail the conversation, “What kind of deals are you making with Randolph?”

“Don’t worry, I’m just trying to keep his men from storming the floor. I have no intentions of going through with it.”

“Going through with what?”

He was going to tell her not to worry her pretty little head off about the details (of course, he would keep out the pretty little head part, since that would only serve to annoy her), when there was a burst of gunfire. John turned, ready to return fire, except there was nothing coming through the stairwell door.

The shooting was ringing out from below him.

From the lobby.

Scrambling footsteps as Randolph’s men in the stairwell took off, the pounding of their heavy foots fading slowly as they headed back down.

“What’s happening now?” Madeline asked.

“Stay here!” John said as he jumped to his feet.

He ran to the window. Once there, and careful to stay hidden, John pressed against the wall before he looked out and down.

Dark figures were racing across the fifty yards of open field. Some were moving on all fours while others remained bipedal. The full moon gleamed off pruned dark flesh and slitted black eyes. Gunfire cracked and the speeding creatures fell in rows. There was already a jagged line of unmoving undead spread across the grass.

He was looking at a full-blown assault on the lobby.

Oh, nice. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as they say.

A chunk of grass and sod went up in an explosion, along with limbs and decapitated heads.

“Jesus, what was that?” Madeline said from where she remained behind him.

“That was a grenade.”

John hurried back across the floor.

“What are we going to do?” Madeline asked as she scrambled to her feet, wiping Nancy’s blood off her palms on her pant legs.

“We’re going to get off the island,” John said. He stopped in front of her and stared her in the eyes. “But I need you to do exactly as I say.”

Madeline stared back at him but didn’t reply.

“Do you understand?” he asked when she still hadn’t answered.

She nodded, but it looked too hesitant to him.

That won’t do at all.

“Exactly,” he said, putting every ounce of authority into that one word. “You have to do exactly what I say.”

She nodded again, and this time he actually believed her.

“Good,” John said. “Now let’s get the hell off this island.”

He led her to the stairs even as the continued rattle of gunfire and explosions continued to ring out. It seemed that Randolph’s men were having quite a difficult time down there.

That was bad news for them, but very good news for him.

21

TORRES

They came out of nowhere and everywhere.

A dozen.

Two.

Three.

More? How could there possibly be more? Where were the Blue Eyes finding victims to turn? Surely, sooner or later, Campbell’s island would run out of employees. Right?

Right?

But it didn’t seem that way as obayifo sprang from the shadows in front, behind, to the sides, and even above them. The flickering of spittle, the scratch of jagged and grinding teeth, and the thunderous pitter-patter of bare feet.

She was shooting, turning, and shooting again. Cent, somewhere behind her—then suddenly beside her?—was slashing, stabbing, and kicking. The young man was difficult to keep track of, a combination of his black skin against the dark woods and her own self-interest in keeping sight of every lunging creature around her.

Then suddenly the knife Bowmen had given her was in her hand because she’d run out of bullets. Two magazines, gone. She couldn’t even remember when she’d reloaded. Had she even reloaded? Or had she just tossed the gun as soon as the slide locked in place after the first mag?

Torres couldn’t remember. Couldn’t even begin to recall the series of events that led to her hip holster being empty and the knife appearing in her hand.

It was a good knife. A KA-BAR. The kind that military types like Bowmen preferred for its length and cutting prowess. Thirteen or so inches in all, with seven of those made of carbon steel. The blade itself was coated with a gleaming layer of silver. Light and at the same time sturdy in her hand. It was straight and not slightly curved like Cent’s, but it did the job just as well.

Obayifo fell as she stabbed, slashed, and hacked at them. It got to the point where the ground began to pile up with the dead. (Undead? Dead again? Re-dead?) Some of the creatures still had clothes on, remnants of their recent past as human beings. Tactical black outfits, a white silk blouse, slacks. Their former wardrobe draped over their skeletal frames, barely clinging on. Others were dragging them around like chains of an old life.

And yet they came.

Three dozen?

No. More. More than that.

How was there more than that? Were the Blue Eyes somehow reviving the ones she and the others had already killed? Was that why they dragged the bodies away? To perform some kind of supernatural resurrection?

How? How?

For that matter, how was any of this possible? Her, swinging the knife like a sword, listening to the satisfying song of blade cutting into weak flesh, oftentimes chipping the bones underneath, like something from days gone by. She’d never been particularly good with a knife. There was never any need to be. And yet, she was moving and cutting, then sidestepping as creatures lunged at her. She imagined herself a ballerina on stage, the bright beam of the full moon her spotlight, performing one daring feat of escape after another.

Cent, in front of her somehow, cutting in a wide arc like a farmer slashing away at weeds with his scythe. He was magnificent. Just as she didn’t know how she was doing any of this, she couldn’t fathom what the young man had been doing in all the months since they first met at the Wilshire. He looked…beautiful. Every one of his movements was graceful, as if someone was guiding him.

God? Was that it? Was God with them at the moment? Was it His hand that helped her to catch an obayifo as it jumped off of a nearby tree branch from above? Certainly, she hadn’t seen it up there until the very last second.

And how exactly did she know to slide to the left when another creature launched itself at her from behind? It landed on the slightly damp ground and snapped back up, but before it could throw itself at her a second time, she stabbed it in the chest and the creature slumped on top of two other dead (re-dead?) obayifo.

“Torres!” Cent, somewhere behind her now. Or was he in front of her now? She couldn’t tell anymore. There were too many things moving at once, too many shadows dancing around her, and a hundred drums beating away inside her chest.

And the creatures kept coming.

Four dozen? How many of them were there? How many were left?

“Torres!” Cent again. “We have to go!”

Go? Go where?

“The beach!” Cent shouted. “We have to go to the beach!”

The beach? Why the beach? Yes, that was where Benton had demanded they meet him with Madeline. Did Cent think the traitor would still be there, waiting with Lourdes?

“Come on! We have to go!”

But it was too late. Why didn’t he know that it was too late?

“Torres! Come on!”

A blur of motion to her left. She spun, ready to jab the knife into the belly of an attacking obayifo, but it was just Cent. The was there and gone in the blink of a heartbeat. She tracked his movement and watched him vanish into a thick five-foot-tall bush in front of her.

I guess we’re going to the beach!

Or she hoped they were anyway. The truth was, in all the whirling and fighting and chaos, Torres had lost all sense of direction. She didn’t know if they were running toward the beach or away from it. But Cent didn’t seem to have that confusion. The young man ran like his life depended on it—mainly because it did—and knew exactly where to go.

I hope you know where we’re going, Cent, because I don’t have a clue!

She only caught glimpses of Cent in front of her as the young man sped through the woods. Whenever he had to run around a towering tree or attacked a bush head-on, she lost sight of him momentarily, and was always relieved when he showed back up on the other side.

The obayifo chased them, some running parallel, barreling through everything in sight, including trees. Seeing them bounce off unyielding trees would have been comical if her life wasn’t on the line. She could smell the rest of them behind her, getting closer and closer. They were much faster than her or Cent, but speed didn’t mean much when there was an army of obstacles everywhere.

Cent continued to fight his way forward, that curved blade of his slicing left and right. He only ever slowed down when one of them got in front of him, forcing him to angle away from it, before picking up speed again. The kid was fast. Way faster than Torres. She was in good shape, but Cent was on another level.

Every now and then Cent shot a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure she was still behind him. The whites of his eyes were like lighthouse beacons, promising safety from the storm. Torres found them comforting and forced herself to go faster, faster, and faster still.

“Almost there!” Cent shouted.

Almost there? Almost where?

Right. The beach. They were almost at the beach.

How exactly did Cent even know that? Torres couldn’t see anything but trees and bushes and leaves and a wall of green in front, to the sides, and behind her. Heck, above her and below her feet too if she bothered to check, which she didn’t because she couldn’t afford—

She smelled it.

The fresh breeze of the ocean.

The Gulf of Mexico!

She’d always found the Gulf to be dirty, unlike the comparative blue and clarity of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, which had the advantage of vastness to help wash away the trash and filth of humanity. But now, as the scent filled her nostrils, chasing away the stink of the undead, it was the most glorious smell she’d ever encountered.

Torres still couldn’t see anything, but there was no denying the breeze that found its way through the thickets and washed over her. Even the creatures around her seemed to know it and she glimpsed them, out of the corners of both eyes, starting to slow down.

Why were they slowing down?

Then they were through!

She all but hopped out of the woods and onto the beach, scattering sand in every direction. For a second she thought she might sink into the softness underneath but that dangerous thought was fleeting, because soon she was halfway to the ocean water.

Wait. Now what?

Now what?

Cent had led them to the beach for some reason—maybe in the hopes of finding and rescuing Lourdes—but now that they were here…

Now what?

She slid to a sudden stop as Cent, in front of her, did the same. He glanced back at her, knife clutched tightly in one hand.

She was going to ask him Now what? when she saw his eyes. He wasn’t looking at her, but past her.

Torres whirled around even as fresh wind blew her hair over her face and eyes. She looked back at the tree line, at the black eyes that peered out of the shadows at her.

Black eyes…that didn’t move.

She could barely make out their dark skin hiding among bushes and trees. They were naturally camouflaged against the darkness, but not quite. Her skin prickled at the sight of so many. She counted five, ten—more. How many more? She couldn’t tell. They seemed to fill up the woods…

…and yet, not a single one stepped foot onto the beach.

“Cent,” she said, struggling to catch her breath.

“I know,” the young man said. He, too, was gasping. “I see it, too.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do we do now?”

“I don’t know that, either.”

Then what do you know? she thought but didn’t say.

Instead she waited for Cent to walk the short distance back to her position. He stopped next to her. She could see his chest rising and falling out of the corner of her eye. “What are they doing?”

She stared at the eyes hidden among the trees and felt as if every single one of them was staring back at her. Just her. “They’re just…watching us.” Then, just to be sure, “You see it too, right?”

“Yes. They’re just watching us.”

“Good. I was afraid I might be imagining this.”

“You’re not.”

It didn’t make sense that the creatures wouldn’t step onto the beach and finish the job. The only path left for her and Cent was to jump into the ocean and attempt to swim to the mainland’s shore, which would have been an impossible task. More likely, they would just drown before they even caught sight of Florida. They could have run down the length of the beach, but how long could they keep that up?

“Torres?” Cent said.

“What?”

“They had us.”

“I know.”

“Is it the beach? Are they scared of the beach?”

“Why would they be scared of the beach?”

“I don’t know. I’m just trying to make sense of why they would stop.”

“If you didn’t think they’d stop, why did you bring us here?”

Cent was silent. She waited for his response, unwilling to take her focus off the army of black beaded eyes that looked back at her, for even a split second.

“Cent?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Believe you about what?”

“You wouldn’t believe me,” he said again.

Before he could answer, one of the black eyes watching her back blinked out of existence. The rustling of leaves as its owner retreated into the woods.

Then another pair of eyes followed, then another one…

“Cent?” Torres said.

“I’m seeing it, too.”

Oh thank God, she thought, watching as more and more of the eyes vanished until, finally, there was nothing left but trees and leaves and grass.

Slowly, she was able to pay more attention to her other senses. Her olfactory was filled with something new, something other than the fresh sea air.

She glanced over at Cent next to her. There were dark splatters of coagulated blood on the front of his shirt and pants, and she could see more of the stuff clinging to the back as well. She looked down at herself and saw the same mess.

Blood.

Black blood.

Obayifo blood.

She swiped at the gobs that clung to her cheek and forehead. A string dripped from her chin and the tip of her nose. The smell and contact of the wetness made her nauseous and she was surprised she didn’t vomit right then and there. She swiped her filthy hands on the sandy beach, always keeping at least one eye on the dark—and now, deceptively lifeless—tree line in front of her.

Cent was smarter and walked over to where the Gulf of Mexico lapped against the island and begun cleaning himself. Torres went over to join him, crouching and more thoroughly cleaning the black liquids off her. She focused on her face, then her neck, before picking at the splatters on her clothes.

Slowly, the ocean claimed the stink and disgust.

Mostly.

“Vicks,” Cent said.

Torres thought he was calling to her and glanced up, expecting to see Lourdes somewhere behind him, having appeared out of nowhere. But she wasn’t there. Lourdes wasn’t anywhere on the beach that she could make out underneath the glow of the full moon.

She turned to Cent. “You saw her?”

“No.”

Then why did you say her name? she thought and wanted to ask but stopped herself. It wasn’t that Cent was calling to Lourdes. He was just saying her name to…say her name.

They finished washing up, then started walking down the beach. Torres remembered the spot where she’d met Owen and his men. It was only thirty yards farther down. She knew that by gauging the spot where the paved road—visible in front of them—joined the sand. There were still-fresh boot prints around them as they neared the location.

They walked past an empty guard’s post, then one of the towers. They were both empty, as were the manmade jetties to the right of them. There were no signs of Owen’s boats either.

“The boats,” Torres said.

“I don’t see any boats.”

“Exactly. Owen’s people came ashore on their own boats. Those are missing.”

“What about the ones that were supposed to be there?” he asked as they walked past the wooden jetty. There was a gate in front of the entrance but no one to man the guard shack next to it. She glimpsed a closed laptop and some open candy wrappers on the counter.

“They were already gone.”

“Survivors?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Or…?”

“Or someone destroyed them.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“I don’t know, Cent. I don’t know.”

They walked on for a few more seconds in silence.

Then, almost absently, Cent said, “We could always jump into the water. Swim for it.”

“I’m not that good of a swimmer.”

“Me neither.”

“Maybe we can make boats out of the trees?”

“You know how to do that?”

“Nope. But I’m sure we can figure it out.”

“I’m sure we could. But can we can make one and get off this island before Campbell blows it up?”

“Yeah. There’s that.” She glanced down at her watch. There was sludge on the casing that she cleaned off on her pants leg. “We’re close to morning. So there’s that.”

“Yeah,” Cent said, barely able to summon any enthusiasm, “there’s that.”

Torres glanced over at the never-ending tree line to their left. There were no signs that the obayifo had returned to shadow them. No black eyes peering out at her, and there wasn’t anything that smelled like death in the air. There was also no life whatsoever besides the two of them for as far as she could see.

And yet, Torres kept expecting the creatures to attack. Were they just biding their time? Or were they actually averse to stepping onto the beach for some reason? She remembered now that she’d never seen any obayifo prints on the sand when she’d met Owen earlier. It was as if this was the only place on the entire island they refused to tread.

Why? That was the question. Why?

“Vicks isn’t here, either,” Cent said quietly after a while. He sounded resigned to having lost her.

Torres didn’t want to give up just yet. She’d been hoping to find the young woman even after what had happened with Cent earlier in the woods.

And what was that about? For a while, the young man had looked as if he’d been caught in a trance of some kind. His eyes were present but he wasn’t. She hadn’t asked him about that yet and was waiting for the right time. But that, like everything else, could wait until they found Lourdes and got the hell off Campbell’s island.

“Benton said she’d be here,” Torres said. “You think he lied?”

“I don’t think he did.”

“Why?”

“They wanted Madeline, but she wasn’t with us. They wouldn’t have sent those Black Eyes if they thought the deal was still on.”

The crackle of gunfire, coming from a distance.

They both stopped and turned to look in the direction where the complex would be. Torres could just make out the highest floor on the main building. She couldn’t see anything that looked like a gunfight all the way out here, but she could hear the evidence of it just fine.

“They’re attacking the buildings,” Torres said.

“To get to Madeline.”

She turned to look at him. Cent had a somber look about him, the kind that both intrigued and unsettled her. She’d been waiting for the right moment and here it was. “What happened to you back there? In the woods?”

“It…was in my head.”

Her eyes widened slightly, and suddenly she regretted having asked the question. She didn’t have to ask him what it was. She already knew. There was only one it that concerned both of them. Hell, that concerned the entire island and everyone still on it.

And it had obscenely bright blue eyes.

“How?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I saw your face, Cent. You didn’t…seem to be there anymore. I mean, you were there but you weren’t really there. Does that make sense?”

He nodded. “It does.”

Good, because it didn’t sound like it made any sense to me even as I said it!

“What did it say?” she asked.

“It wanted Madeline. And when it found out she wasn’t with us—”

“It changed plans,” she finished for him.

Cent nodded again as he glanced around at the empty beach. “You were right. He is working with them. He’s doing their bidding.”

“Benton…”

“There’s no other explanation.”

“I was hoping I was wrong.”

“You weren’t.”

“Yeah, well, it doesn’t make me feel any better.”

It didn’t, especially because of what it meant for Lourdes. If Benton was truly working with the creatures, then what would he do to Lourdes once they—and he—figured out that she and Cent hadn’t come to the beach with Madeline as agreed?

“We’ll find her,” Torres said.

Cent looked back at her. The sadness in his eyes was as evident as his poor attempt at a smile. “Yes. We’ll find her.”

“Whatever it takes.”

“Whatever it takes,” he repeated.

As it turned out, Benton found them first.

22

JOHN

Truth be told, it could have been much worse. As things currently stood, John had been gifted a nice big ol’ grenade of goodies, and all he had to do was take advantage of it. Randolph’s boys were in for a hell of a fight in the lobby and John had no interest in getting involved. But in order to leave the building he would have to go down to the lobby and, quiet as a church mouse, slip out unnoticed. That…was going to take some effort. It would have been much easier if he could abscond with Madeline upward instead of downward, but that wasn’t to be.

As his mom always said, beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“Where are we going?” Madeline, asking the same question she’d asked since they stepped into the stairwell and made their way down to the first-floor landing below. They were only halfway there and she’d asked it three times now.

“Off the island,” he said.

“How are we going to do that?”

“Leave that to me.”

“I should know.”

“Leave it to me,” he said, even as he thought, Can’t tell you anyway, lady, since even I don’t know how we’re gonna do it!

Of course he didn’t let her know that. Right now Madeline was Team John instead of Team Randolph, and he wanted to keep it that way. The last thing he needed was to have to drag her with him.

They finally reached the first-floor landing, where John took a few moments to get a good look at the door into the underground facility. Randolph and his men had left bloody footprints in their wake. But, much to his relief, the prints only went in one direction: Into and down the stairs, and not back up again. Randolph was still downstairs in the underground facility.

Meanwhile, the war in the lobby next door continued, the gunfire and sporadic explosions much louder than before. John wondered how many grenades and explosives Randolph had brought along with him, and if they would be enough.

Better you than me, Randolph ‘ol pal.

“How?” Madeline asked as she, too, stared at what was left of the door.

“Some kind of cutting torch. High-tech stuff, from the looks of it.”

“That door is supposed to be strong enough to withstand a bomb blast.”

“I guess you better tell Campbell to make them stronger.”

“What are they doing down there?”

“What do you think?”

Madeline didn’t answer because, he suspected, she already knew. The secretary and her boss had been running their little operation without Uncle Sam’s permission for years now, and it was bound to catch up to them.

“Come on,” he said and led her to the other door.

“We’re going out there? Into that?” Madeline asked, the hesitation in her voice as clear as day.

He didn’t blame her reluctance. He didn’t like the idea of stepping into a warzone either, but there was no other way out of the building. It was through that door and sneak out the back entrance, or be stuck in here when the fight was over. Regardless of who won, it wasn’t in John’s best interests.

“We have to,” he said, looking back at Madeline. She hadn’t moved from the bottom of the stairs, leaving plenty of space between them.

“There must be another way…”

“There isn’t.”

“What about through there?” she said, nodding at the opened door to the belowground facility.

“Randolph’s down there. Trust me when I tell you, you don’t want to just hand yourself over to him.”

“But I’m a U.S. citizen. I have rights.”

“Yeah, you already said that, and my response is still the same. Yes to the former, but are you sure about the latter?” He paused for a brief moment to let that sink in. “Don’t be naïve, Madeline. You know what they can do when they’re convinced they have national security on their side.”

“I’m not a danger to national security.”

“You know that and I know that, but they think different. I’ll be surprised if they haven’t already grabbed Campbell on the mainland by now.”

“If that’s the case, what would they want with me?”

“Two in the hand is better than one in the bush.”

She smirked. “It’s the other way around. It’s one in the hand is better than two in the bush.”

“Randolph’s boss, Ana, thinks different.”

“You know them, don’t you?” Then, squinting at him suspiciously, “Just who the hell are you, mister?”

“The guy who’s trying to get you off this island. Now, do you want that to happen or not? Or would you prefer to take your chances by yourself?”

She didn’t answer him. Madeline was a smart woman and he could just about see that Ivy League education behind her eyes weighing her options, processing everything she knew—or thought she knew—and come up with a more desirable outcome.

He decided to push harder. “You have three choices that I can see. One, surrender to Randolph and his men, and pray they don’t put you in a black site until you tell them everything you know. Even then, they’d have to believe you first to let you go. And that’s if they let you go. Two, you can surrender to those creatures out there. Hey, you might look good with black skin and beady black eyes. Who knows? And then there’s three: You and me run like hell and get off this island. So what’s it going to be?”

“Okay,” she said, more quickly than he had expected. Of course, he didn’t dismiss the possibility that she’d already thought of all those options herself and decided that three was the right way to go.

Just to be sure, he said, “Okay what?”

“You and me run like hell and get off this island.”

“Good.” He turned around and faced the door. “Don’t stray. If you stray, you’re on your own.”

She didn’t respond to that. At least, not verbally, but the fact she walked over closer to join him at the door said it all.

Of course he didn’t burst out of the stairwell like a bat out of hell. Instead, John opened it a crack and peered out, MP5 at the ready.

The first thing he saw—and it was impossible to miss—was the seemingly endless waves of muzzle flashes from across the room. Randolph’s team was, to John’s surprise, holding their own along the front of the lobby. Much of the glass wall windows had been shattered, leaving the men to freely fire into the continuous horde of darting skeletons outside.

Every soldier’s back was turned to him, their attention entirely focused on the darting skeletal forms outside. There was a sea of dead creatures on the front lawn, so many that he had difficulty picking out the grass from the twisted corpses that covered them. Some laid in craters created by grenades. He lost count of the number of severed limbs. The obayifo had become more cautious as a result, running between buildings and what natural defilades that existed as they slowly but gradually made their way closer to the lobby. There were bodies in tactical gear on the floor, along with shriveled, black-skinned forms of creatures that had made it inside only to be felled.

But, for now, the soldiers were keeping the creatures back. For how much longer, though? That was something John wasn’t interested in waiting around to find out.

He glanced back at Madeline. “Let’s go. Stick close!”

She nodded.

He turned, opened the door wider, and stepped out. Slowly at first, and waited for Madeline to come out. She smartly kept the door from slamming back shut, and as the door clicked softly closed, he hurried toward the nearby back hallway. That hallway would lead him to a rear door that was probably locked but could be opened from this side. Then through the woods before reaching the beach. No doubt Randolph’s team had arrived using their own boats; all John needed was one of them.

“Almost there,” he said, glancing back at Madeline.

She nodded again, her face barely visible in the semidarkness of the room. That was good. The harder it was for him to see her, the harder it was for Randolph’s soldiers to spot them if one of them should happen to glance in their direction—

John slid to a stop, his entire body seizing up.

The entrance into the back hallway wasn’t empty. A pair of blue eyes peered out at him from the darkness, the contrast of blue against the red emergency lights simultaneously distracting and entrancing.

John stared, more out of shock than fear. There might have been some fear, especially when the creature’s stink slithered forward and wrapped around him, tightening their grip over his body and began strangling his senses. His olfactory was stuffed to the brim and alarm bells sounded, but there was nothing his body could do to respond.

He wasn’t so much as frozen in place as he was paralyzed.

It was close enough that John could have reached out and touched it with a fingertip. Of course, he did no such thing. He didn’t want to touch this thing. This creature. He didn’t want to be anywhere near it. Spotting one of them in the stairwell earlier had already guaranteed him all kinds of nightmares, but to be face to face with one sent every fiber of his being into involuntary spasm.

“Shoot it,” a voice said from somewhere deep, deep within the back of his mind. “What are you waiting for? Shoot it. Shoot it!”

Yes, that was a good idea. He should shoot it.

Except he couldn’t, because he was flying.

Somehow, he was flying across the lobby, and all his dumb mind could think was, Whoa. I’m flying! I’m actually flying! Look, Ma, no hands!

Not for long, as it turned out, as he fell back down to earth. He crashed back-first into the hard tile flooring and skidded a few feet backward. He slammed into the leg of a desk and bent like a pretzel. He hadn’t screamed, hadn’t even had the wherewithal to grunt out from pain.

“Jesus Christ!” someone shouted. It wasn’t him. He would have known if it was him.

“Where’d it come from?” someone else shouted. Also not him. It had to be one of Randolph’s goons, like the first one.

“Shoot it in the head! Shoot it in the fucking head!”

They weren’t talking about him. At least, he hoped they weren’t talking about him because he had no way to defend himself. Not in his current position, looking all pretzel-like on the floor. Was his back broken? What about the rest of him? It’d felt as if an airliner had run into his chest while going a thousand miles an hour—or however fast a plane could go at maximum speed.

It hurt.

Holy cow did it hurt.

Every part of him burned with the pain. He was sure a bone or two—or a dozen—was broken. The ribcage was probably gone also. Or maybe his chest was collapsed. That would explain why he could barely breathe, even as figures flitted to the left and right of him, moving toward the back.

Dragons.

He was looking at dragons. That was the only explanation for why they were spitting fire from their mouths.

More shouting.

Then screams.

Someone brought out a hammer and began swinging, producing thunderous booms that filled the lobby.

Or was that an explosion? Maybe both. Was it possibly both?

He was still on his back and trying to get up. Or he thought he was trying to get up, anyway. He couldn’t be sure. He only knew that he couldn’t stay down forever. Not with everything at stake, but especially his life.

John liked life. He liked living. He liked pineapple on his pizza and large helpings of mushroom and jalapeno. He wasn’t ready to give any of those things up, especially the pineapple and pizza combo.

More gunfire, more screams. This time they were much closer.

Someone flew over his head, screaming as he went. Poor bastard. John heard glass shattering into a few million pieces in the background.

He was sitting up. Wow. He wasn’t sure how he’d done that, but he had. Unfortunately the submachine gun was gone. How’d he lost it? No idea, but it wasn’t there anymore.

At least he still had the Glock—

Nope. Gone, too.

Well, shit.

He turned to look around him.

Chaos.

Utter chaos.

The click-click-click of bullet casings falling across the lobby floor from end to end. Obayifo leapt inside through the broken windows at the front of the lobby even as a volley of gunfire felled half of them. Instead of lessening, more just took their place.

Christ, how many more of them were there?

Too many was the answer.

Way too many.

He turned toward the back and saw men in shooting stances, firing at the front. A half dozen of them, with more in the background.

More? Where did the more come from? There hadn’t been this many soldiers the last time he looked.

Reinforcements? Had they gotten reinforcements?

“Come on,” a voice said at the same time hands grabbed him and attempted to pull him up.

Attempted because John was much heavier than his helper.

Madeline. It was Madeline.

Harold Campbell’s secretary was beside him, trying in vain to lift him off the floor. They were partially blocked by the guard’s desk that he’d crashed into earlier. Not exactly invisible, but enough that no one was paying much attention to them.

“Shit, you’re heavy,” Madeline was saying. “You gotta help me. You gotta help me, Duncan!”

Yes. He had to help her. There was no way she was going to pull him up all by her little lonesome. She was a tall woman, but not big. Not strong, either.

John struggled to get his feet underneath him. One, then the other.

Slowly, he rose, scanning the floor for his lost weapons. There were plenty of guns for the taking. A shotgun about ten yards away, with an M4 near that. At the moment, there were more unused guns than there were people to use them.

Randolph’s soldiers were everywhere, firing into the swarm of obayifo. A few had gone to their knives and KA-BARs flashed in the flood of moonlight. Creatures fell to the left and right, over and over.

And yet still more took their place.

Holy hell. How many of them are there?

The answer, like before, was many.

Near one side of the lobby, John caught sight of a familiar face.

Randolph!

His old buddy had returned aboveground. That explained the reinforcements that had saved the day. Or was trying to do just that if they didn’t all die first.

There were no signs of the blue-eyed creature that had nearly crushed every bone in his body, though. Or maybe it actually had done just that, but there was no way to tell right now.

“Come on, come on!” Madeline, her grunts and words partially lost in the pounding of gunshots and screams and falling bodies.

Now this was ironic. John thought he was the one who had to save Madeline, but it turned out the exact opposite. Go figure.

“Goddammit, you gotta help me!” Madeline, very annoyed. “Come on! Come on!”

Right. Help her. She wasn’t going to be able to carry him. Hell, he was surprised she was taking the time to do any of this; soon she might decide he wasn’t worth saving and run off on her own. That would certainly be the much easier path.

John started to move, forcing his legs to work.

Work, damn you, work!

And they did.

One, then the other.

One, then the other…

Something leapt out of the shadows in front of them, but before it could reach them, a loud crack sounded next to his ear.

Madeline, using the Glock he’d given her.

Nice!

Should he ask her for the gun back? He was probably better with it than someone’s secretary—

Another shadow moving, then not moving. It crumpled lifelessly to the floor with a hole in its chest.

Or not.

She was doing a pretty good, so he let her keep the gun. Besides, it took all of his concentration just to get his feet to work the way they were supposed so. He wasn’t quite sure which direction they were going, but it was away from all the shooting and screaming.

Away’s good. That’s definitely the right call!

Madeline did most of the work, but he helped. Some. They kept moving, with only the occasional obayifo attempting to stop them. Madeline kept shooting and hitting. It helped that the wrinkled little monsters weren’t usually very far, and sometimes they were almost on top of them before Madeline reacted.

“Madeline,” he managed to get out.

“What?” she said. Or shouted. She probably shouted.

“Shoot faster.”

She might have given him an annoyed glare before looking quickly away. “Backseat fucking shooter!”

He grinned, and thought, I like her. I really like her.

23

CENT

The gunshot came from among the trees, striking Torres in the thigh and dropping her to the sandy beach.

For a second or two, Cent wasn’t sure what had happened. At first he thought he was just hearing more gunshots coming from the buildings all the way across the island. They were still going at it, the continuous pop of gunfire and the occasional explosions ringing out nonstop as if he were listening to a party and not what was clearly a fight to the death.

But then Torres fell down and Cent knew what it was.

In the two dozen or so racing heartbeats that followed, Cent waited for the hammer to drop. He couldn’t do anything for Torres, not while he was waiting for his own bullet. They had walked right into their would-be killer’s crosshairs and didn’t even know it. He wanted to think the chaos across the island was responsible, but the truth was, he’d just let his guard down. Torres too, apparently.

Now, all Cent could do was wait for the inevitable.

Except a second shot never came. Not for Cent, and not for Torres.

“Cent?” Torres whispered. She was on one knee, one palm pressed tightly against her bleeding thigh. Blood seeped through her pants, but not enough to worry him. Of course, if they didn’t clean and bandage the bullet wound up, there would be something to worry about.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“No. Not okay.”

That was a stupid question and he didn’t know why he even asked it.

“If they wanted to kill us, they’d have done it already,” Torres said before she knelt on both knees and took out her knife. The ex-police officer cut a ribbon off her shirt, at the bottom, then applied it to the wound as a makeshift bandage.

Torres was right about one thing: If the shooter had wanted to—or had the ability to—kill them, then they would have done it already. Except they hadn’t, which either meant they didn’t want them dead—at least, not right away—or they couldn’t make it a reality. As Torres bandaged herself up, no other shots came.

He eyed the tree line about twenty yards away, his own knife in his hand. Twenty yards wasn’t very far, but it was too much distance to cover. A knife, after all, was no match for a gun from that range.

Then a figure appeared out of the darkness, stepping onto the beach. At first Cent thought it might have been an obayifo, but then he remembered the gunshot and how the creatures had avoided the sand earlier, and decided it couldn’t be.

And he was right. The figure that walked toward them out of the shadows was very much human.

“It’s him,” Torres said. She straightened back up with a slight groan, all the while eyeing the approaching figure.

“I know,” Cent said.

“Remember: If he’d wanted to kill us, he would have done so already. We still have a chance.”

He nodded, even as he thought, Maybe.

The man had a gun in one hand and was leading Vicks behind him with a rope. The long white rope—the kind used to moor boats—was looped around Vicks’s neck and connected to the knot around her wrists. The only limbs Vicks had that was still her own were her legs. Benton had tied one end of the rope to his own waist to keep her from running off.

Benton walked across the beach toward them and didn’t stop until he was almost exactly ten feet away. He hadn’t bothered to raise his gun, maybe because he didn’t have to. Neither Cent nor Torres had their guns on them anymore. Benton must have known that somehow.

“Let me guess, you guys like long walks on the beach, Sunday picnics, and date night?” the man said, his face contorting into a smug grin.

“Fuck you,” Torres said. She’d done a good job stanching her thigh’s bleeding, but Cent could still see small drops of blood running down her wounded leg. She looked as if she was ready to tear Benton’s head off with her bare hands, though.

Benton chuckled. “I’m game if you are.” Then, affecting a more serious tone, “The knives. Toss them.”

Torres didn’t argue. She threw hers weakly to the sand in front of them. It landed, handle jutting out, about five feet away. Close enough that she could lunge for it but maybe far enough that Benton didn’t know she’d thrown it there on purpose.

It didn’t work. “Nice try,” Benton said. “Pick it up and throw it into the ocean behind you. I want to see a big arc.”

Torres sighed, then limped over to the knife, picked it up, and this time tossed it end over end into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

“Good girl.” Benton nodded at Cent. “Now your turn.”

Cent hesitated. The knife was the only thing valuable on him. It was the only thing he had left that could keep them all alive.

“Don’t make me ask again,” Benton said when Cent still hadn’t done as ordered after about five seconds.

Cent looked past the man and at Vicks behind him. He was pulling her along from about five feet away. Vicks had looked better. Her face was pale, her spiky red hair no longer so spiky, the strands matted to her forehead. Thanks to the bright full moon, he could make out bruises along one cheek and a cut just above her right eye. Nothing looked life-threatening. Physically, anyway. Vicks’s eyes, slightly downcast, told a different story.

I’m going to kill you for that, Benton. I’m going to fucking kill you for that.

Benton didn’t say or do anything for a long moment. He looked at Cent, before turning those hard eyes on Torres, then back again. It almost looked like he was trying to decide what to do, as if he hadn’t thought this moment would come but now that it had, he didn’t quite know what to do. The man was making it up as he went.

“If he’d wanted to kill us, he would have done so already. We still have a chance.”

Torres was right about that. Benton could have killed both of them without revealing himself. He’d proven to be a good shot when he hit Torres from twenty yards away with only a pistol. Of course, he could have been aiming for somewhere else when he struck her thigh, but that was something he couldn’t count on.

And now, standing barely ten feet away, it would have been child’s play to kill both of them before either one—or both—of them could reach him.

Benton lifted his gun and aimed it at Cent’s head. “One, two…”

Cent turned and threw the knife as far into the ocean as he could. There was a slight splash, then nothing more. Cent couldn’t help but think just how weak that was compared to the importance of the knife. Then again, it was only important to him. The ocean couldn’t give a damn.

“That’s a good boy,” Benton said as Cent turned back around. He lowered his gun to his side again and feigned listening to the noise from the buildings behind him. “You guys hear that? That’s the sound of Bird Island turning into Dead Island.” He grinned, amused by his own joke. “Oh come on, laugh a little.”

Cent didn’t laugh. Neither did Torres.

“Fine. Be that way,” Benton said. Then, shaking his head, “Man, you two really messed things up, you know that? Why couldn’t you just be a good little boy and girl and do as you were told? All you had to do was bring me Madeline, then we could have all gone our little merry ways. You could have gotten Vicks back and it would have been all’s well that ends well.”

“Do you really expect us to believe that?” Torres asked.

“You should. It’s the truth.”

“Is that why you hid the boats? Because you were going to let us go?”

Cent thought that was a curious question. Why was Torres mentioning the boats? Had she done it on purpose just to find out what had happened to them?

“You could have had one of them,” Benton said.

Yes, she’d done it on purpose, and it had worked. Benton had just told them that the boats weren’t gone, just hidden.

Nice one, Torres.

“Bullshit,” Torres was saying.

“Which part?” Benton asked.

“All of it.”

“I’m hurt you don’t believe me.”

“I doubt that.”

Benton shrugged. “Believe what you want. But they were willing to let you leave the island with Vicks. Madeline was the only one they wanted. The only one that mattered.”

“‘They?’ Who is ‘they?’”

“You know who ‘they’ are.”

Torres shook her head. “I don’t.”

“You know.”

“I don’t.”

“You know.”

Torres stayed silent that time. Cent wasn’t sure if Torres didn’t really know or if she just wanted to be sure. He, on the other hand, already knew who ‘they’ were the first time Benton mentioned it. He had no doubts about it whatsoever.

“The Blue Eyes,” Torres finally said.

Benton nodded, before nervously glancing backward, into the dark woods behind him. He quickly looked back at them. “Yeah. Them.”

“You’re working for them. Why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“Why are you working for them? What did they promise you?”

“They promised…” Benton cocked his head slightly in thought. “They promised…”

Torres waited for his answer, as did Cent. But they might have had to wait a long time because Cent wasn’t entirely sure if Benton himself knew the answer. His eyes were…troubled.

He doesn’t know.

“What’s in it for you?” Torres pressed. “What did it take to convince you to betray your own kind?”

Benton righted his head but stayed silent. That cloud of confusion remained in his eyes, and was now expanding to the rest of his face.

“He doesn’t know,” Cent said. It was the first time he’d spoken, and both Benton and Torres glanced over.

Vicks, behind Benton, lifted her head at the sound of his voice. For the first time since she appeared on the beach with Benton, there was life in Vicks’s eyes again. They stared at one another for a few seconds, enough for Cent to know that Vicks was back. Maybe she wasn’t one hundred percent her old self, but she was no longer gone.

Then she nodded at him.

What…?

It was almost imperceptible, and certainly Benton hadn’t seen or felt it while standing in front of her. Except Cent was looking directly at Vicks and caught it. She was trying to tell him something. What was she trying to tell him?

She’s ready. She wants me to know she’s ready.

“He’s right, you don’t know,” Torres was saying to Benton.

“Wrong,” Benton said. “Wrong, wrong, wrong.”

Cent looked from Vicks to Benton. “They’ve corrupted him. He’s doing their bidding without even knowing why. It’s pathetic.”

“Fuck you,” Benton said. Spittle flew from his mouth and landed in the sand between them. “No one’s corrupted me.”

“They did.”

“And I say fuck you.”

“So why are you doing this?” Torres asked.

“Because…”

“Because what?” Then, before he could answer, “Because what, Benton?”

“Because!”

Torres smiled. “You don’t know. Jesus, you don’t have a clue. Cent is right. You’ve become their toy, Benton.”

“No…”

“Yes.”

“No!”

“Yes!” Torres shouted.

“Shut up!” Benton shouted back even as he lifted his gun in her direction. He’d gotten it halfway up when Vicks threw herself forward.

Torres lunged to her left and Cent, seeing that, went right. Benton either heard or felt Vicks coming and twisted around, but he wasn’t fast enough. She had already covered the five feet between them and struck Benton in the chest with her shoulder.

A gunshot as Benton pulled the trigger accidentally and the bullet sailed harmlessly into the night sky.

Benton staggered back, struggling to retain his footing, as Vicks fell to the sand in front of him. She was more winded than he was by the collision. Benton, for his part, was just temporarily stunned.

Then Benton stopped, his momentum suddenly disappearing when the rope connecting him to Vicks went taut. He looked confusedly down at his waist, apparently having already forgotten the rope was there.

“Benton!” Torres screamed from the other side.

The man instinctively whirled in her direction at the sound of his name. Torres threw something at him—sand. She’d grabbed a handful of sand!—and dived to one side as he fired. Cent didn’t know if he’d hit Torres or not—she landed on the sand on her chest and rolled over—because he was too focused on closing in on Benton.

Benton heard him coming and turned around, one hand wiping at his eyes, trying to see through the temporary blindness. “Fuck! You bitch!”

Cent smashed into Benton similar to how Vicks had earlier, except he was bigger and stronger, and knocked Benton to the beach on his ass. He’d lost the gun while in midair and it landed somewhere between him and Torres.

Benton groaned and blinked into the full moon. He was still dazed, struggling to see through eyes full of sand, when Cent straddled him and punched him in the face with a balled fist.

Benton’s nose broke on the first blow.

Then his upper lip split on the second one.

By the time Cent hit him a fifth time, Benton’s face was already covered in blood.

“Cent.” Torres, standing next to him with one hand on his shoulder. He couldn’t be sure how she’d gotten there or for how long. Benton’s gun was in her hand. “You got the fucker. Now go help Lourdes.”

Cent wasn’t sure he had “got” Benton yet, but Vicks’s first name was what made him get up and hurry over to her. She had sat up on the sand, her bound hands in front of her, smiling back at him. Vicks couldn’t have gone very far even if she wanted to, with her rope still attached to Benton’s waist.

“Took you long enough,” Vicks said as he kneeled in front of her and went to work untying the knot around her wrist.

He managed a grin. “Sorry. It’s been a crazy night.”

“Excuses, excuses. Don’t let it happen again.”

He looked up at her. She was still smiling. He returned it without even having to try. “Are you okay?”

“Fine, unless you count the part where I was ambushed then trussed up like some deer. How’s my face?’

“You look fine.”

“Liar.”

“What happened?”

“I got too close to Benton’s fist a couple of times.” Then Vicks smiled at him.

“What?” Cent said.

“You’re angry.”

“Of course I’m angry.”

“I mean at Benton, for what he did to me.”

“Yes.”

“That’s sweet.” Then, brightening up, “You gonna untie me or do I need to call for the Jaws of Life?”

Cent couldn’t help himself and chuckled. The truth was, he’d been trying his very best to untie her all this time. Trying, because Benton had made quite the knot. Cent had to take a few seconds just to figure out how the rope was tied.

“The guy’s a friggin’ Boy Scout or something,” Vicks said. “Too bad you don’t have that cool knife of yours.”

“Yeah, too bad,” Cent said. Maybe he could still retrieve it. He’d thrown it pretty far, but the knife was heavy enough it might have sunk straight to the bottom. And if the ocean wasn’t too deep, maybe he could locate it.

“This’ll help,” Torres said. She had walked over with a KA-BAR—Benton’s—and handed it to Cent.

Benton remained flat on his back on the sands, his face a grotesque mask of blood. Cent was surprised by that. He hadn’t realized he’d done that much damage. Then again, all he could see was red at the time. In which case, he was shocked the man was still alive. If he was even still breathing. Cent couldn’t tell and didn’t care enough to check.

Instead, he took the proffered knife and cut Vicks loose. She breathed a sigh of relief when he was finally able to lift the noose off her neck and toss it away.

Vicks looked over and scowled at Benton. “I hate that guy. He talks way too much. Yak-yak-yak. All night long. Made a few hours with him feel like a few decades.” She paused for a moment. Then, “What are we going to do with him? Should we put him out of his misery?”

“Fuck his misery,” Torres said. She scanned the beach and tree line in front of them, before looking back at Vicks. “Banks?”

Vicks shook her head.

Torres nodded. She didn’t need Vicks to say the words. Everything she and Cent needed to know about Banks’s fate was written on Vicks’s face.

Banks was dead. Or turned. Either way, both were death sentences.

Vicks stood up with Cent’s help. She was rubbing her wrists as she turned to look toward the buildings. Since Benton showed up, Cent had forgotten about what was happening on the other side of the island.

He stood silently with the two women and listened to the chaos. The nearest Cent had been to an actual warzone was while he was staying in the Nigeria refugee camps, and it’d sounded close to something like this.

Torres spoke first. “Owen’s people. After they found out we hadn’t brought Madeline with us, the creatures focused elsewhere.”

Vicks nodded. “He mentioned that. Benton. That I was supposed to be traded for Madeline. What did they want with her, anyway?”

“We don’t know.”

Cent turned to look at Torres and caught her gaze. He wasn’t sure why she had lied; they both knew what the creatures wanted with Madeline: She was the closest thing to Campbell, the man who had launched an all-out war against them. So why lie about that?

But he didn’t ask her and Torres didn’t offer an explanation.

I guess we’ll talk about that later, too…among other things.

The ex-cop squinted at the foreboding dark woods in front of them. “Benton said they hid the boats. Did you see him do it?”

“I saw a couple of them in the woods on the way here,” Vicks said. “Black rubber boats.”

“That’s them. Can you take us back there?”

“Yes, I think so.” Then, “Are we leaving the others behind?”

As if in answer, an explosion erupted from across the island. It was strong enough that it caused the sand underneath their feet to actually quake for a few seconds afterward. Even the trees bent slightly against the concussive force, only to snap back into place.

An orange glow lit up the black skies on the other side of the island.

“What was that?” Vicks asked.

“Someone just took out the buildings,” Torres said. “Which means there’s nothing—and no one—left for us to return to.”

They stood silently again, this time watching the glow in the distance start to fade. Slowly, slowly…

“Lourdes, the boats,” Torres said.

“Follow me,” Vicks said and started walking up the beach. “And if we get lost, no one say a word. I’ll figure it out. Eventually.”

Cent and Torres didn’t wait around. They walked after her. Or Cent walked, and Torres limped.

“You going to be okay?” he asked.

“It’s just a flesh wound.”

“It looks more than that.”

She shrugged. “I’ve been through worse. There was this hurricane once…”

24

JOHN

Up.

They were going up.

Why were they going up?

John had gotten his feet underneath him and could move on his own power, though Madeline was still giving him a hand as they went. His eyes, too, had stopped being blurry and he could make out more details now.

Details such as the red lights.

The stairwell steps.

And up.

They were going up.

Why were they going up?

It wasn’t just Madeline and him, either. Randolph was there, along with three of his men. Three, because that was all he had left. If Randolph had more men they’d be here, in the stairwell (Why are we in the stairwell? What the fuck happened?) with them. But they weren’t, so they were most definitely dead.

Or worse.

John didn’t use to think there was such a thing as “worse than death” but he’d learned different since arriving on Bird Island. Last night had changed more than just his thinking about life and death. He was starting to question a lot of other things, too, including the kinds of jobs he took from now on.

Note to self: Be more careful with the “open-ended” jobs. Get all the facts before you jump! And I do mean all the facts!

That is, if he survived to make those decisions. Right now, he wasn’t so sure.

Somewhere between the second and third floor someone had pressed a knife into his hand. It could have been Randolph or one of his men. They were all wearing black camo paint on their faces (So commando of you, Randolph ol’ chum!) and black tactical BDUs. It was difficult to tell them apart, which was strange because it hadn’t been difficult earlier, back in the lobby.

The lobby.

How the hell had they gotten out of the lobby?

Better question: Why were they in the stairwell and going up?

Spittle wetted the back of his neck and John turned, just in time to see a creature fall from the fourth floor above him. He didn’t so much as stab at it with the knife as he raised his right hand defensively and got it in the chest.

The sharp point of the KA-BAR made contact with the undead thing’s chest, almost exactly right in the center. The combination of its falling momentum and John’s upward thrust sent the blade straight through the creature and out its back. The black-skinned thing—it looked like an emaciated child, all bones and drooping skin, black eyes devoid of life—went limp and hung off his arm.

John stared, fascinated. A few seconds max, marveling at what he was seeing. It wasn’t very heavy. As fast as they were, and as unkillable unless you had the right tools in your toolbox, the obayifo was weak and light as a feather. It was a strange contradiction.

He lowered his arm numbly and the creature slid off, leaving behind black goo. Was that even blood? What happened to their biology when they were turned?

Questions. So many questions.

“Hey! Jackhole! Get your head outta your ass and get back in the game!”

“Jackhole?” Who’s calling me a “jackhole?”

It was Randolph, standing a few steps below him.

Ana’s whipping boy glowered up at him. “I didn’t give you that knife to pick your teeth with! Get back to work!”

John grinned. Or thought he did. It was probably more of a grunt. Not at Randolph but at this whole absurd situation. He’d come here on a mission but ended up on the same team as an old enemy. That was the same as going to work for Uncle Sam, something he’d sworn he’d never do again.

And yet here he was, stuck in a stairwell staving off wave after wave of undead things alongside Randolph and Co. Besides Randolph and another man, there were two more above John. The two soldiers were dripping with the same stuff that clung to his arm—black tar-like substance that should have been invisible against their own black clothes but, somehow, glistened like metallic liquid underneath the red emergency lights anyway. They were stabbing, slashing, and hacking their way up.

Again, going up.

Why were they going up? There was nothing up there but the rooftop. And once they reached it, nowhere to go but right back down.

Whose bright idea was this, anyway?

No one was going to answer that question because, frankly, no one had the time. The creatures were all over them, coming up from below and above. The one that John had skewered had been trampled under Randolph’s boots as the man continued to steadily advance upward. More obayifo were dropping down from the above floors, scaling the railings and plummeting downward like missiles. It was, as the jarheads liked to say, a target-rich environment.

Some of the falling figures missed their mark and continued down to the first-floor landing, striking the thick hard concrete with crunching thuds that really, really sounded like they hurt. But enough of the obayifo landed among the steps that it forced all of them, John included, to constantly fight to stay upright and moving up.

Always going up.

Why were they still going up?

Madeline was somewhere between him and the two soldiers at the front. She had lost her gun—either that or she’d thrown it away, probably when it was empty—and was unarmed at the moment. Randolph had given John a knife but hadn’t done the same for Harold Campbell’s secretary. Just as well, since she’d end up stabbing one of them by accident anyway. Especially in here, with all six of them crammed in so tightly there wasn’t a lot of space for anyone to move without rubbing shoulders.

He wanted to shout at Madeline and ask her what they were doing in here. Hadn’t they agreed to leave the building, not go up it? Or he thought they had come to an agreement, anyway. He couldn’t be sure. Things had been a little hazy after he’d been struck by that landing airplane.

The airplane with two blue eyes.

Now that had hurt. It still did, now, as he took another step up toward Madeline. Maybe startled by his suddenly close presence, she spun around, eyes wide. Fear gripped her facial features and she stumbled up, then down, then up again, stuck between John and Randolph’s two soldiers.

Screaming from below him.

John glanced down just in time to see Randolph’s third soldier, at the very end of their little moving caravan, get the rug pulled out from underneath him by two pairs of hands. The poor bastard slammed the back of his head into the sharp edge of a step as he landed. Two—no, three—of the creatures dragged his body downward even as he fought tooth and nail, slashing at empty air with the knife he’d managed to hold onto. Thump-thump-thump as his head smacked against the concrete steps as he was dragged down. And still the man fought. It was quite a sight, even if, in the end, it was all for a hopeless cause.

You poor bastard. You poor, poor bastard.

Randolph, standing two steps below John, made as if to go back for his man. Almost. He changed his mind at the last second and spun, staring John in the eyes. Sticky substance dangled from the man’s chin and jaw and forehead, and even more clung to the front of his clothes.

“Go go go! Go go go!” Randolph shouted.

Sure, buddy, I’ll go go go, but only because you told me to.

He might have laughed out loud because Randolph gave him a perplexed look. For a brief half-second, anyway, before the man turned and slashed at two obayifo leaping over the still-fighting soldier to get to him. Both of the creatures had black shirts draped over their skinny frame and red tabs on the shoulders. Members of the island’s former security team.

Randolph kicked one in the chest while it was in midair and hacked at the throat of the second one. His KA-BAR went straight through the creature’s neck and chopped its head off with barely any resistance. Head and body fell in separate directions, while the one he’d kicked fell backward and struck two others trying to lunge up the steps, knocking all three down like bowling pins.

Strike! John thought.

And again he might have laughed out loud, but between his hammering breaths and everyone else’s, as well as all the screaming and panting that drowned out his hearing, he could have been reciting every passage from the King James bible for all he knew.

More screaming, this time from above him.

Before John could fully turn back around. something caught the corner of his eye. A body, falling through the empty space in the middle of the stairwell.

Another creature?

No. This one was wearing black BDUs.

It was one of Randolph’s soldiers. The man plummeted down, hands reaching out desperately for the railing as he fell. For a split second, their eyes locked, and John stood, frozen, as the man screamed out for help. Or that was what John assumed he was screaming out because all he could really hear was screaming.

John followed the man’s progress as he continued falling, before finally slamming into the first-floor landing. A wave of creatures fell on top of him almost immediately, covering the soldier in a pile of squirming pruned black flesh. The man continued to scream long after John lost sight of him.

He glanced up to see what had happened to the soldier to cause him to fall.

Oh, motherfucker.

The remaining soldier was hovering in the air, back pressed into the wall. A blue-eyed obayifo stood before him, holding him up like an adult would a child, with hardly any effort. The soldier’s legs kicked wildly in the air even as his hands attempted in vain to pry loose the bony fingers that wrapped around his throat. A KA-BAR knife jutted out from almost the very center of the creature’s chest where the soldier had plunged it. The knife was buried to the hilt, not that it had done any good.

The Blue Eyes turned and looked down the short space, razor-thin lips squirming, forming what might have been a grin, but John couldn’t be certain. Were those even lips? Or were they actually snakes? Was this the same one that had nearly killed him in the lobby? It was impossible to tell. Like the Black Eyes, the Blue Eyes were nearly identical if not for the clothes some of them still wore. This one was naked from its feet to its domed head, not that nakedness or gender had anything to do with it. Prominent ribcage pressed against the flesh of its upper half, its skin pruned and dark as the bottom of the ocean. But it was its blue eyes that John couldn’t look away from. They glowed intensely like two galaxies in an all-black universe, searing through the red lights of the stairwell and seizing John’s soul without resistance.

John stopped breathing entirely. His legs seized up, as did his hands. It was a miracle he somehow clung to the knife because his palm was suddenly covered in sweat and blood and God only knew what else.

Someone gasped.

Madeline, just one step above him. She’d done it so loudly that he actually heard her even through all the echoing cacophony. It made him wonder what kind of sounds he was making.

Harold Campbell’s secretary spun around, twisting like a top, the upper half of her body moving well before her lower half, including her legs. Maybe, like him, her legs had developed a life of their own and were refusing to respond to the commands of her brain. For two impossibly long heartbeats their eyes locked, Madeline blotting out John’s view of the creature behind her.

“Run!” he shouted.

Or he was about to. He might have gotten the R out, and possibly the u, but not the n, because Madeline was lifted into the air and backward. The suddenness of it caused her to stick out both arms and legs as she was jerked backward toward the Blue Eyes, which had reappeared behind her.

John could only stare, helpless, as the obayifo grinned at him, as if daring him to stop it. Before he could decide whether he wanted to take up that challenge or not (He didn’t. God help him, John didn’t.), the monstrosity turned and bounded up the floors. It moved with superhuman speed, leaving John to watch and marvel at its grace and fluidity. For a second—just a second—John forgot that he was looking at an abomination.

“Jesus Christ!” Randolph, bursting past John’s unmoving form and up the steps in pursuit of the creature.

But it was too late. The Blue Eyes was gone. Long gone.

How had it moved so fast? For that matter, how had it done any of the things it did? How did such a thing even exist?

John thought this must be what people called an existential crisis. He’d always been a man who prided himself on his ability to be practical in even the most extreme circumstances. He’d managed to hold onto that despite all the insanity he’d seen since last night, but John would be damned if he wasn’t…questioning everything he thought he knew about the universe right about now.

God, are you up there? Can you hear me? Let me just say a big sorry for all the shitty things I’ve done in the past.

It was a foolish and random thought, and once again, he might have laughed out loud by the look on Randolph’s face as the man ran back down toward him, picked up a fallen KA-BAR from one of the steps, and glared.

“Snap out of it! Get your shit back into the game!”

John stared at the man, wondering what the point was. They were dead. Stuck inside a tight stairwell with nowhere to go but up. And there was nothing up there but open air and five floors back down. That was not John’s idea of a great escape.

But Randolph had already turned and was moving again, even as one, two, three creatures raced down from the upper steps straight at him. He stabbed one in the face, punched another, then pulling out the knife, gutted the third one. Before the second creature could gather itself, Randolph stepped on its chest and plunged his KA-BAR into its face.

Then, from somewhere beyond the walls, John heard it.

A familiar sound, getting louder with every passing heartbeat.

It was the whup-whup-whup of a chopper!

Oh. So that’s why we’re going up.

It all made sense now why they were in the stairwell instead of running for their lives outside the building. Either Randolph had called for an evacuation or someone had, and he knew about it. That was why they were going up.

“Come on!” Randolph, shouting as he raced up the stairs. “Or we’re gonna miss our ride off this goddamn island!”

John snapped out of his stupor and chased after Randolph. Suddenly he had renewed strength and a sense of urgency, of hope.

A chopper. Hot damn!

He glanced back when he heard the patter of bare feet behind him and saw four of the creatures giving chase. There was an entire floor between John and them. A dozen or so remained on the first-floor landing, a quivering mass of pruned black flesh fighting for access to the dead soldiers below, hidden from view.

John turned and ran faster, willing his legs to catch up to Randolph’s fleeing form.

“Is that yours?” John shouted up at Randolph even as he hopped over two more dead creatures and onto the final set of stairs.

“What?” Randolph shouted back.

“The chopper! Is that yours?”

“Well it ain’t yours, jackhole!”

John had to grin at that. He knew for a fact it was definitely not his. His employers had sent him here on a one-man mission. There was no way off this island that didn’t involve him taking care of it himself. Which meant the approaching helicopter had to be Randolph’s. While the prospect of being in the clutches of the U.S. government didn’t exactly make him sing with joy, it wasn’t like he had much of a choice.

Beggars can’t be choosers, right, Mom?

Mom would have definitely agreed, even if she was long gone.

As they took the last few steps, John slowed down just long enough to look over his shoulder one more time.

The creatures that had been following them had stopped and returned to the first-floor landing to join in the feeding. A few didn’t even bother to use the steps, they simply flung themselves over the railing and plummeted down, landing like a rock into a small pond made of black tar.

The loud bang of the metal rooftop door opening, then the sight of Randolph disappearing through the bright rectangular opening, brought him back to the moment. John raced upward, his mind suddenly wondering what had become of Madeline. The Blue Eyes had taken her somewhere, but he hadn’t picked up any clues as to where that was as he advanced up the stairwell. It was as if they had simply vanished.

The chilly air was spinning with the fury of the gods when he made it onto the rooftop, a MH-16 chopper hovering about ten feet off the helipad in front of him. The wind was almost enough to wipe away the soot and blood that covered the gravel floor from the earlier attempted rescue. Almost. There were pieces of bodies scattered about, including craters where explosions had gone off. But the rooftop remained intact and the dangerous holes weren’t big enough that John couldn’t navigate them.

Black-clad figures leaned out of both sides of the aircraft, rifles across their knees. They wore goggles that hid their faces. More appeared out of the open hatch in the back, jumping down to the rooftop even before the Little Bird had found a stable location to land, and took up defensive positions. John waited for the whole thing to cave in under the added weight of the chopper, but it never did.

Randolph ran over to join the new arrivals, shouting to be heard over the roar of the rotors. John couldn’t make out what they were saying, and as he jogged over, the thought of turning around and heading back into the building occurred to him.

Did he really want to surrender himself straight into the arms of Randolph and his boss, Ana?

He actually stopped and glanced back at the rooftop access door.

Decisions, decisions…

“Use it or lose it!” Randolph shouted from behind him.

John looked back. The man was already inside the Little Bird while the others piled back in around him. Soon, it would just be him on the rooftop.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. It would be him and all the black-eyed things back there. Of course, he could run back down and take refuge in one of the lower floors before they turned their attention back to him. There was always the employee lounges. It’d worked twice now, so it should work a third time.

In theory, anyway.

What to do, what to do?

“See you later, pal!” Randolph shouted, before turning to the pilots in the cockpit.

John spun and ran over. “Wait up!”

The chopper paused, then lowered back to the rooftop.

Beggars can’t be choosers, right, Mom?

He climbed in with the help of two black-clad soldiers. Two more were leaning over the open hatch, unslinging bulky backpacks that they let drop to the rooftop below. One of the soldiers took out a mustard-colored device and flicked the top lid open. It was a remote detonator.

“Wait until we’re clear of the blast!” Randolph shouted.

That took thirty seconds.

“Do it!” Randolph shouted when they could see the island’s shoreline appear below them.

The soldier with the remote clicked it, and John watched as the main building’s rooftop went up in flames. A bright orange glow filled the sky just before the fifth floor collapsed, taking the rest of the building with it like a house of cards, swallowing up everything within and around the area in a gigantic cloud of pulverized brick, concrete, and smoke. The concussive force of the blast and resulting collapse sent waves of pressured air through the woods, bending trees and snapping branches in its ever-widening circular path.

He continued to watch the island as it slowly receded into the distance. He couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to Torres and the kid, Cent. Had they made it? What about Madeline, for that matter. Why did the creatures take her? And how was Harold Campbell going to respond?

So many questions, and so few answers.

He looked over at Randolph. “Truce?”

Randolph grinned back at him from behind his black camo-painted and goo-stained face, but said nothing.

Note to self: I’m so fucked.

EPILOGUE

“They’re gone, sir. It looks like some kind of massive explosion collapsed the buildings. The underground facility is buried beneath five floors of rubble. It’ll take a while to dig through them. Until then, we can’t know the full extent of the damages.”

“Then you should start digging.”

“We’ll need more men.”

“So get them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What about the employees?”

“They’re gone, sir.”

“Gone? Gone how?”

“Gone, sir. Just gone.”

“How many?”

“All of them, sir.”

“All of them?”

“I’m afraid so.”

A beat.

“Madeline? Did you find her?”

“We’re still looking, sir, but it’s slow going.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. I asked you a very specific question.”

“No, sir. We haven’t found her yet.”

“Find her.”

“Of course, sir, but it’s going to take a while—”

“No excuses. Find her.”

* * *

He remembered Madeline when she first showed up at his main corporate office. She was young, highly motivated, and most of all, bright. He could see the intelligence behind her eyes when they first met; that hadn’t changed when they bumped into each other a few years later. Then, when the world turned upside down for Harold, she was the first name that sprang to mind.

“I’m about to tell you something that you will find hard to believe. You might even think I’m mad, and I wouldn’t blame you one bit. But everything I’m about to say is true, and I can prove all of it. Before we go any further, I have to ask you something: Do you believe in evil?”

She’d answered, without hesitation, “No.”

He’d smiled. “Good. Then come with me. I have something to show you.”

* * *

The ghoulish undead thing hid in the darkest corner of the room that it could find. But even that corner wasn’t very dark at all. In fact, there was no corner in the room that could pass for “dark.” The impossibly bright LED lights saw to that.

They looked in at the pathetic creature in all its unholy glory as it chewed on lunch, which today happened to be a dead mouse. The mouse was still alive when it was introduced into the room, but that hadn’t lasted very long. As with past observations, the creature seemed to enjoy its food more when its prey was still alive just moments before the feeding.

“My God. What is that thing?”

Madeline stood next to him behind the thick glass window, watching the black-eyed creature on the other side gnawing through rodent flesh and bone. Patches of hair clung to the areas around its mouth and fresh blood dripped from its chin. Its face was gaunt, the skull underneath pressing against the thin layer of flesh as if trying to break through. Its right arm ended in a stump at the shoulder, and there were cuts, gashes, and pockmarked holes along its chest and the three remaining limbs.

The creature couldn’t see or hear them, but it lifted its head anyway to glower at the one-way mirror in front of it. That had happened enough times to lead Harold’s scientists to believe the creature could sense their presence even if it couldn’t see or hear them.

Madeline reacted the way most people did when Harold introduced them to the room. She took a quick involuntary step back. “It can see us?”

“No. It’s one-way glass. The other side is a mirror.”

“But it’s looking at us.”

“We theorized that it can sense us. Some of the scientists think it’s not us, per se, but the blood in our veins. The creature hungers for it.”

“Our blood?”

“Yes. Or, as you can see with the mouse, blood in general. It doesn’t seem to have a preference. Blood, apparently, is blood regardless of the vessel that contains it.”

The creature had gone back to feeding, snapping through thin bone with jagged yellow teeth.

“What happened to its arm?” Madeline asked.

“We cut it off.”

She looked over at him, her face a mixture of shock and horror. “Why?”

“To see if it would regrow them.”

She stared at him for a moment.

Then, strangely enough, shock and horror was replaced by curiosity.

“And did it?” she asked.

“No.”

“Did you think it would?”

“Yes.”

“But it didn’t.”

“No. It didn’t.”

She turned back to the observation wall. “What is it?”

“That’s the question we’ve been trying to answer.”

“Where did it come from?”

“This one came from the Pacific Northwest. The Washington countryside, to be exact. Within the walls of a lakeside house located far enough from civilization that the owners could be guaranteed a measure of peace and quiet.”

Something like recognition flickered across her face as she looked back at Harold. “You have a lakeside house in Washington, don’t you, sir?”

He nodded, pleased that she was able to put two and two together without any further prompting from him. “That thing came from my house, Madeline. It killed my wife and it’s the reason I’m in this chair and will be, for the rest of my life.”

Madeline stared at him in silence.

Finally, she said, “What do you want from me, sir?”

“I want,” Harold said, leaning slightly forward in his wheelchair, “for you to help me find them. The thing in that room isn’t unique. There are more of them out there. I want you to help me locate every single one of them.”

“And then, sir? What then?”

“We’re going to kill them, Madeline. We’re going to kill every single last one of them. And we won’t stop until that is done.”