by Sam Sisavath
“Then you should be more specific.”
“You want your pills back?”
“You need them more than me. I’ll let you know if I do.”
She nodded and thought, Always the tough guy, huh, Keo?
Talking about aches and pains reminded her of her own, and Gaby took out the bottle and shook out two pills, then downed them with some warm water. Her headache had dwindled, but it wasn’t completely gone. She didn’t think it would be for a while. Every time she touched the bandage over her forehead, she could feel the large bump underneath. But at least the invisible elephant had gotten off her chest and breathing was a lot easier.
“Go easy on that; it’s my last stash,” Keo said.
“Here,” she said, and tossed the bottle back to him.
“You sure?”
“I’m good for a while. You look like you can use a couple.”
“Maybe later,” he said, and pocketed it.
Yup. Tough guy, she thought with a smile.
Keo went back to making a bed for himself on the floor with the bedsheets and pillows. “Back at the office. You said Buck wanted you alive.”
“He had questions about Black Tide. That’s probably why he told his men to take me alive in the woods. Otherwise I’d be dead right now.”
“Why?”
“Why?” she repeated.
“Is he afraid of Black Tide interfering with what he and Copenhagen’s got going on in Fenton? Why would he think you guys would get involved in his business?”
“It’s been a while since you left us, Keo. Things have changed.”
He got up, then walked over and leaned against the other side of the open loft doors from her. “So what exactly have you guys been up to that’s got Buck all sweating bullets?”
“Where should I begin?”
He shrugged. “Try from the beginning.”
She nodded. “After you left, we’ve been working on reestablishing ties with the other survivor groups around the country. You remember the colonel in Colorado?”
“The one hiding in the mountain?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it hiding…”
“He was hiding.”
“Whatever.”
“Beecher, right? What about him?”
“Colorado was one of the first states Lara worked on. They’ve gotten almost all of the towns onboard.”
“Onboard how?”
“Working together. Trading. Basically, being good neighbors to one another. The biggest obstacle was getting everyone to accept Beecher as the authority up there. Lara was instrumental in doing that. Everyone knows who she is. Everyone trusts her. Lara standing beside Beecher is like a stamp of approval.”
Keo chuckled. “The colonel must have loved that. After all the rank climbing he did in the military, to have a twenty-something civilian vouch for him.”
“It doesn’t matter what he thinks. All that matters is what the Coloradoans thought. And the only reason they accepted Beecher is because of her. It wasn’t easy, and there were a lot of missteps and distrust, but she kept at it and overcame them. You know her—once she gets it in her mind to do something, she’s going to get done.”
“So she did good in Colorado. What’s that got to do with Fenton?”
“She’s been doing the same thing in a half dozen other states. She spends more time out there than at Black Tide these days. The point is, she’s made a lot of friends.”
“Any enemies?”
“Maybe a few. There’ve been a lot of failures to go along with all the successes. But she keeps plugging away.”
“How does this come back to Fenton?”
“I think Buck knows, or at least suspects, that if Lara goes to war with Fenton, then she can bring a lot of friends with her.”
“Friends like Beecher.”
Gaby nodded. “Beecher, along with a dozen others who would drop everything to come down to Texas and kick Buck’s ass all over Fenton if she asked them to.”
“She’s been that busy?”
“And then some.” Gaby peered at him curiously. “How is it that Buck knows more about what we’ve been doing out there than you do?”
He gave her an almost embarrassed look. “I haven’t exactly been keeping up on the news. Wi-Fi connection is shit at my cabin, and the newspaper boy’s been neglecting his duties.”
“So you’ve just been, what, hiding out, minding your own business?”
“Of course.”
“All this time?”
“Why do you find that so hard to believe?”
“Because I know you, Keo.”
“Honest to God. I’ve been a Boy Scout.”
Gaby smirked at him. “Right. A Boy Scout.”
“Which part of ‘honest to God’ are you not buying?”
“All three words of it.”
“Ouch. That hurts, Gaby.”
She rolled her eyes before continuing. “Anyway, Lara and the other diplomatic teams have been working their way steadily north and east. You’ve been out there, you know how much worse it is in the other states. Texas, by comparison, is Eden. We didn’t even know Fenton existed. Texas is just too big, and the towns too far apart to keep track of everyone. Most of these places that popped up after The Purge never existed before.”
“How did you eventually learn about what Fenton was doing?”
“We heard rumors about attacks on towns along the coastline. But that’s all they were before yesterday—just rumors. I was sent to Kohl’s Port to gather intelligence.”
“And here you are.”
“And here I am…”
“I guess it makes sense for Buck and this Copenhagen guy to be wary of Lara. Of Black Tide.”
“He’s been keeping tabs on our activities. Because of that, he knows we’d never allow him to keep doing what he’s been doing. It goes against everything we set out to do after Houston.” She dug into her pocket and took out one of her patches, with the inguz, and showed him. “It goes against what this stands for.”
“Fancy stitching?” Keo said.
Gaby smiled. “It’s a Nordic rune called an inguz. It stands for fertility and new beginnings.”
“Fancy.”
“We came up with it after you left.” She put the patch back into her pocket. “I told you; you missed out on a lot by running off on us.”
“I didn’t exactly run off…”
“Didn’t you?”
He sighed. “It’s complicated.”
“Does Lara know that?”
“Yeah.”
She stared at him, and believed him.
Gaby nodded. “As long as she knows.”
“She does,” Keo said. Then, “So Buck wanted you for intelligence.”
“Apparently, he has some guy named Sloan who can get answers.”
“Interrogator?”
“That would be my guess.”
“Makes sense. The more you know about the enemy…”
“I think Buck and this Copenhagen guy always knew they’d run afoul of us sooner or later, and that we wouldn’t look the other way. Maybe that’s why Fenton is constantly under construction. Who knows what they’re building over there, or what they’ve been stocking up on in preparation for clashing with Black Tide.”
“Like when they shot down Lightning Two?”
She nodded somberly. “Yeah.”
Keo seemed to think about what she’d told him for a moment, before asking, “Would she do it? Would Lara interfere with Fenton?”
“You know Lara as well as I do. What do you think?”
Keo chuckled. “I guess Buckaroo’s got a good reason to be afraid. Very afraid.” Then, “Have you tried contacting Black Tide?”
“Tried and failed.”
“Well, just in case…” Keo walked back to his pack. He took out a portable two-way radio and tossed it over to her.
She didn’t have to look at it for very long to know the reach wasn’t even close. “I need something stronger.”
“You’ll need a ham radio, at least.”
“Any better options in the main house?”
“Nothing that could reach Black Tide from out here.”
“What about in Fenton?”
“You tell me. I haven’t been inside the city yet.”
She was pretty sure there was something in there that could get her closer to Black Tide. The trick was getting her hands on it without having to fight her way back in, because Gaby wasn’t sure she could make it out a second time.
“I guess we’ll just have to keep looking,” she said.
“Any chance they’ve already tracked you from Kohl’s Port all the way up here?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. There are no main highways linking the two towns. Like I said, Fenton was never on our map. Whatever they’ve been doing up here, they’ve managed to stay under everyone’s radar.”
“Until now.”
“Until now, yeah.”
A whinnying sound from below made Gaby look back over and down the loft doors.
Keo’s horse was standing underneath her, looking back up at her.
Horse’s de facto owner walked over and glanced down. “He wants to come in.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s getting dark. He knows better than to stay outside if he doesn’t have to.”
“Smart horse.”
“Oh yeah. Smarter than a lot of people I know,” Keo said, walking back to the ladder before climbing down.
Gaby looked out past the yard and checked the wide lanes of State Highway 359 one more time. It was as empty and silent as the last five times she had peeked.
She drew the SIG Sauer from her holster and checked the magazine, then did the same to the AR leaning against the wall next to her. It was instinct. Night wasn’t the danger it used to be, but it was still capable of killing you if you didn’t give it enough attention. June would be able to attest to that.
Below her, Keo threw open the alley doors and Horse stepped inside the barn. She thought she heard him talking to the thoroughbred, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. Well, what Keo was saying, anyway, since horses didn’t talk.
Or, at least, she hadn’t met one that could, yet.
Keo’s horse stayed down on the first floor while Keo climbed back up to the loft. Gaby had already closed the second-floor doors and barricaded them, and Keo had done likewise to the ones below. Both sets of doors were made of thick wood, and the previous owners had hammered in extra latches on the sides to hold two wooden beams for additional protection. She could still see out the small windows above the doors, but they were too narrow to allow anything to squeeze through.
She leaned her rifle against the wall, then picked up the extra AR that Keo had brought with him. Besides his own MP5SD, Keo was hauling around the rifle and a handful of spare magazines for it, along with supplies in a second pack. She was going to ask him how he had managed all the weight, but then remembered the horse. Gaby made sure the second carbine was loaded and laid it on the floor next to the pallet where she would be sleeping.
Keo had made a place for himself with the blankets and sheets, and he sat down on it now to eat a package of MRE. Gaby dug into hers, pork patty with rice, with the provided utensils, and neither one of them said anything for a while.
The loft got dark quickly, and soon she could barely make out Keo sitting nearby. She also couldn’t hear the horse below them through the open trapdoor on the other side of the room, so the animal knew how to stay quiet at night. She guessed it would have had to develop those skills in order to have survived for this long.
Adapt or perish. Works for horses too, apparently.
Her MRE tasted fine, though she questioned how much nutritional value it still had after all these years. Gaby finished it anyway before tossing it into the corner with the old cans. She spent the next few minutes peering out through the loft doors’ small windows.
The asphalt on the state highway looked dull gray under the moonlight, and the parts of the yard that she could make out were covered in darkness and shadows. She couldn’t see anything of Sandy-something anymore down the road.
After a while, she looked back at Keo. Her night eyes had adapted enough for her to make out his form lying in the makeshift bed on the floor. “You’re not going back to Black Tide with me, are you?”
“I can’t,” Keo said. “I promised Buck I’d go into Fenton and introduce myself.”
“I thought this was about rescuing your friend.”
“That, too.”
“So this isn’t personal…”
“Maybe a little.”
“Will would say not to make it personal.”
“Yeah, well, Will’s not here.”
No, he’s not, Gaby thought, looking back out at the darkness. I wish he were. Every day, I wish he were still with us.
“How’s she doing? Lara?” Keo asked.
Gaby glanced back at him. She’d been waiting for that question since this afternoon and was surprised it took Keo this long. “Busy, but she’s good. Better than good, actually. We’re more worried that she’ll wear herself down than anything, but it hasn’t happened yet. Carly, Danny, and everyone’s keeping an eye on her to make sure it stays that way.”
She waited for Keo to ask another question, or to say something else, but he had gone silent on her. She couldn’t quite make out his face well enough to see if he was thinking. Heck, he might have actually gone to sleep, for all she knew.
“She hasn’t been with anyone seriously since you left,” Gaby said. “There’ve been a couple of guys on and off, but nothing serious.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Keo said.
“Just in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Not even a little bit?”
“What Lara does with her love life is her business.”
“So you don’t care?”
“I care about her as a friend. That’s all.” He shifted in the darkness. “Did you and Nate finally make up?”
Gaby frowned. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“So that’s a no?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Keo.”
“Didn’t know it was a sore subject.”
“Yeah, well, it is.” She gave him a wry look, even though he probably couldn’t see it. “And don’t think I don’t know what you just did.”
“What did I just do?”
“Changed the subject.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Keo said. “I was just curious about you, and—”
“Don’t,” she said.
He chuckled before going quiet across the room.
Fair enough, Gaby thought.
She turned around to look outside again—and stiffened suddenly.
What was that?
Something had been moving out there, on the other side of the highway, but she’d only caught the tail end of it.
Or had she?
Gaby stood perfectly still and stared, waiting to see it again.
Had she actually seen something? Or was the night playing tricks with her eyes? Or was it the still fresh memories of what had happened to June…
She waited five seconds.
Then ten…
“What is it?” Keo asked behind her.
“I thought…” She paused and waited another five seconds, before finishing. “I thought I saw something moving around out there, but I don’t see it anymore.”
Footsteps, as Keo got up and hurried over to stand next to her.
He peered out using the other small window. “Where?”
“Between the trees on the other side of the highway. Directly ahead.”
Keo looked and didn’t say anything for a while. Then, “I don’t see anything.”
“I don’t see anything now, either.” She shook her head. “It was probably nothing.”
Keo glanced over at her. “You were out in the woods by
yourself last night?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“No?”
She sighed, then reluctantly told him the entire story, including the details about June.
Across the short distance, with moonlight filtering in through the windows between them, she saw the change on Keo’s face when she was finished.
“What is it?” Gaby asked.
He didn’t say anything.
“Keo, what is it?”
He pursed his lips. “Down south, outside of Jonah’s…”
“What about it?”
He remained quiet, and it looked like he was thinking about it. Or maybe reliving what had happened.
“Keo, goddammit. Tell me.”
“There was a blue-eyed ghoul,” he finally said.
Gaby might have shivered and prayed Keo didn’t notice, but he probably had with the two of them standing so close. Just the words blue-eyed ghoul brought back all kinds of bad memories, ones that trumped what had happened to her last night in the woods with June.
One bad memory in particular, at a farmhouse very much like this one, in the middle of the night, and surrounded by three of the creatures…
“It was hunting something,” Keo continued. He had lowered his voice noticeably. “It wasn’t there by accident.”
“What was it hunting?”
“I don’t know.”
“You said ‘something…’”
“Yeah.”
“Something? Or someone?”
Keo didn’t answer right away.
“Keo…” Gaby pressed.
“I don’t know. I can’t be sure. I’m still not sure now, and I’ve thought about it a hundred times since.”
She saw the very real conflict on his face. Keo didn’t know, and that frightened him almost as much as it did her.
“I think it followed me from Jonah’s,” Keo said.
The hairs along her arms and back of her neck stiffened, and she could feel the cold brush of air against her skin. “It…followed you?”
“I think it was the same one. I’m not sure. But I think it was the same one.” He was looking at her, but she wasn’t even sure if he was actually seeing her, or something else. “I spent a night outside Winding Creek, and there was another blue-eyed ghoul there. It would have gotten me if some slayers passing by the area hadn’t gotten involved. They saved my life.”
Gaby stared at him, not quite sure how to respond to any of this. Anything that crossed her mind seemed so insignificant against everything he had just told her.