by Sam Sisavath
She put her other hand on his other cheek and held him steady. Even as her mind processed everything he had said—the magnitude behind his words—she clung onto him for as long as possible.
“You’re leaving me,” she whispered. “You’re leaving me again.”
“I have to,” he whispered back, covering her hands with his and squeezing, hard. “It’s the only way.”
“Why?”
“Because Mabry’s dead. I killed him. His death will leave a hole, and someone has to fill it.”
“You.”
“Yes. They saw me kill him. They heard him crying in pain before his last moments.”
“You overthrew him,” she said, and pursed a smile at the thought.
“It was the only way to make them listen. To make them pay attention. Not all of them will do it—obey me—but enough will to make a difference in the days to come. Enough to give you and everyone a fresh start.”
“And what about you?”
He squeezed her hand even tighter, then leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead.
“Will,” she whispered. “What about you?”
“I have to show them,” he whispered. “They won’t do it unless I show them that there’s nothing to fear. It’s the only way.”
“Why you?”
“Because…I love you.”
He pulled away, but she wouldn’t let him go. She held onto his hands, but he somehow slipped through anyway and stepped back, and back…
“Will,” she said. “Don’t go.”
“It’s the only way it’ll work,” he said. “I have to show them. I have to lead them.”
“Do something else.”
“I would if I could, you must know that. But this is the only way.”
“Will, no.”
He stopped, but the dozen or so feet between them might as well be an ocean. The sun played tricks with her eyes, and she could barely make out his face for some reason. She wanted to run over to him, to hold onto him and never let go, but her legs refused to obey her.
Move! Why won’t you move?
“Lara,” he said, the sound of her name on his lips filled with so much joy that her heart ached just to hear it. “Take care of our friends. Take care of Danny. Take care of everyone for me.”
She held out a hand toward him, pleading for him to take it. “Don’t go.”
“I have to.”
“No…”
“I love you. I’ll always love you.”
She tried to force her legs to move, but they wouldn’t, even as Will got smaller, slipping further and further away from her.
“You have more important things to do now,” he said. Though it shouldn’t have been possible with the crashing waves and the growing distance, she could hear his voice just fine, as if he were standing right next to her and not slowly but surely vanishing before her eyes. “They’re going to come to you, ask you to lead them. You should, because you can. You’re stronger than you think you are. Even now, after all you’ve done, all you’ve accomplished, you’re still capable of so much more. I believe in you, Lara. Now you have to keep believing in yourself.”
“Stop!” she screamed. “Will, stop!”
But he didn’t, and he turned, and continued walking away.
As the waves splashed against her bare feet and the wind whipped at her hair, she knew he was never coming back, that this would be it—the final time she got to see him. Not just as the Will she always remembered and loved, but the new Will too, the one in Houston right now with Danny.
He was leaving her…and this time he wouldn’t come back.
She opened her eyes to Keo’s voice coming through the speakers, the sound of helicopter blades whup-whup-whupping in the background.
“I can’t believe what I’m seeing. They’re just… They’re just walking out of the buildings and into the sun. Jesus, there’s so many of them. I had no idea there were so many… God, what is this? What’s happening?”
She looked over at Carly, standing next to her, one hand gripping the headrest of her chair so tightly that her fingers were ghost-white.
Rhett had the microphone and said into it, “Eagle One, can you confirm what Striker’s seeing?”
“Striker’s right; I’m seeing the same thing,” Cole said. “There are just ashes down there. Ashes and bones. It’s like a graveyard. And they’re still coming out of the buildings. Every single building in the city. Goddamn. They’re just walking outside and dying by the hundreds, thousands…”
“I have to show them,” Will had said. “They won’t do it unless I show them that there’s nothing to fear. It’s the only way.”
“Rolling Thunder,” Rhett said into the mic, “can you confirm what they’re seeing?”
“Fuck yeah, I can,” Peele said. He sounded almost delirious. “When they started coming out of the buildings, I thought for sure we were fucked. But they’re just dead. Again. Whatever. You know what I mean. They’re just stepping outside and burning and poof, like that, gone. Never seen anything like it. Jesus Fuck.”
“That man’s got a way with words,” Carly said, and Lara wasn’t sure if her friend was going to cry or laugh, or do both.
Lara reached for the second mic. “Keo, can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” Keo said.
“What about Gaby and Blaine? What about Danny?”
“Gaby’s right beside me…”
She waited for him to add Danny’s and Blaine’s names, but he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t say anything else.
“Keo,” she said, too afraid to say the rest of it.
“Blaine didn’t make it,” Keo said. “And Danny’s MIA.”
Lara glanced over at Carly, her friend’s face as pale as she had ever seen it.
“We lost sight of him when we were hightailing it out of the tunnel,” Keo said. “Gaby thinks he went back for Frank. But I don’t know.”
“What do you know?”
“Nothing. Nothing for sure. We’re circling now, heading back to the Dome.”
Lara leaned into the mic, but she didn’t say anything right away. She dreaded what she was going to say next, with the dream still fresh in her mind. Even now she could taste the crisp air, hear the wave coming onto the beach and lapping at her toes…
“I have to show them… It’s the only way.”
“Keo,” she said into the mic, “what happened to Frank?”
“I don’t know,” Keo said. “It was chaotic down there. Chances are he’s with Danny like Gaby says, so when we find one we’ll find the other, too.”
“Gaby’s right; Danny would never just leave him,” Carly said quietly behind her.
“We’re circling the HC Dome now,” Keo said through the radio.
“Collaborators?” Lara asked.
“They’re bugging out. Whatever’s left of them, anyway. They can see what’s happening just as we can. The ghouls coming out of the buildings, then frying in the sun. There are bones everywhere, Lara. Jesus Christ, there are piles of bones everywhere.”
“Find them,” Lara said. “Find them, Keo.”
“I will,” Keo said, and there wasn’t a single shred of doubt in his voice. “One way or another, we’re not leaving empty-handed, I can fucking guarantee you that.”
Carrie. Bonnie. And Blaine.
Maybe she should have been happy it wasn’t more. How close had Gaby, Keo, and Danny come to joining that list? How many others had lost their lives helping Will do what he needed to do in order to save them? To save all of them?
She thought of them. Her friends…
Blaine, whom she knew longer than the others, but Bonnie had become a good friend. Carrie too, in her own way. But she would miss Blaine most of all, and maybe that was why she had avoided going to the bridge when she made her way back to the Trident, because everything in there reminded her of him.
But she knew she needed to be back on the yacht. More than that, she wanted to be here. There wasn’t the feeling of triumph she was hop
ing for as Peele and the others confirmed what they had initially seen—that the ghouls had simply stepped out of their hiding places to burn in the sun.
“I have to show them,” Will had said. “They won’t do it unless I show them that there’s nothing to fear. It’s the only way.”
But there was a lightness in her, brought forth by a sense of accomplishment. There wasn’t quite the pangs of regret and guilt from her losses that she had been fully prepared to confront, even though she continued to feel it in her very soul.
Carrie. Bonnie. Blaine…and Will.
And who else whose names she didn’t know? Even now, Riley and Rhett were trying to get a head count of the people they had lost in the mission. The tankers, Wheeler, the members of Keo and Danny’s Striker team…
She was leaning against the railing on the main deck, watching Elise, Vera, Jenny, and some of the other kids running around on Black Tide’s beach in the near distance, when her radio’s squawk broke in through the serenity of the moment.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Ten minutes out,” Danny answered. “I heard you were looking for me. What can I do you for?”
Danny was putting on an act, but she appreciated it anyway, and said, “Are you okay?”
“In one piece. At least until I get back there and Carly tears me a new one.”
“Justifiable homicide, some would say.”
“No arguments from me,” Danny said. Then, quietly, “About Will…”
“I know, Danny.”
He didn’t say anything right away. Then: “How?”
“I’ll tell you when you get back here. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Broken leg, maybe a punctured lung. Whatever. I’ll get by.”
“I know you will.”
“He didn’t, you know,” Danny said. “Will. He didn’t suffer at the end. Of course, I could have just misread that stupid smile on his face.”
“He was smiling…”
“Yeah. A big ol’ grin. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Willie boy smile that big in my life. Like he was going on vacation with three high-priced escorts or something equally awesome fantastic super duper.”
Lara couldn’t help but smile. “Did he say anything?”
“He told me to look after you, on account of how you’re always getting into trouble and whatnot. So, that’s on my plate.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Eh, that’s why God gave me an extra arm, amirite?” Then, without missing a beat, “By the way, I think we should try to convince Keo to stick around. That guy’s pretty useful. Ugly as sin with those scars of his, but pretty useful in a pinch.”
Somewhere on Danny’s side of the connection, she heard Keo’s voice: “Hey, you know I’m sitting right here, right?”
“Did you hear that?” Danny said. “Some weird buzzing noise. Shoo, fly, shoo!”
“Tell her about the other thing,” Keo shouted in the background.
“What other thing?” Lara asked.
“Keester had a thought,” Danny said. “I know, dangerous, right? But it might be worth spending a sleepless night or two on it.”
“What is it?”
“The time zone differences.”
“Time zones?”
“Willie boy timed it to kill the black eyes in our area, when it was still bright and shiny out. What Kilo was wondering was, what about in the rest of the world, where it was dark when Will sent out the call? Are those buggers still going to follow through, even after knowing what happened to the others? And they would know, right? With that whole connected hive mind of theirs?”
Lara didn’t answer him right away. She didn’t know how to, because the mere thought that all of this might have been for nothing, that for every million or so ghouls Will’s death (again) had erased from the world there was still countless more out there, made her want to retch.
“I know, sorry to poop on the party,” Danny said through the radio. “I told Kimbo Slice over here he was being a real buzzkill.”
“Tomorrow,” she said finally. “We’ll find out what’s happening out in the rest of the world when people start talking again. For now, let’s just enjoy this.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Hurry back. I’ll be waiting on the Trident.”
“Roger that,” Danny said. “Striker and company outro.”
Lara put the radio away and continued leaning against the railing.
Was it possible? Could Will’s sacrifice have been in vain?
No, she couldn’t believe it. She wouldn’t believe it. Will would have known about something like that. He would have taken it—along with countless other factors she hadn’t even thought about or realized even existed—into consideration when he came up with his plan.
Right?
Elise and Vera were in the water now, trying to splash Jenny and the other kids. They had decided to team up and looked to have victory well in hand.
She thought of what Will had said on the beach, in the dream that only she would ever know about.
“Take care of our friends. Take care of Danny. Take care of everyone for me.”
She would do that. She would take care of their friends and everyone else who needed her help.
She would do it, because she had it in her.
And because she wanted to.
Lara smiled again and looked up at the sun. It was bright. As bright as she had ever seen it. How was it so bright? It didn’t matter, as long as it was there and she could close her eyes and let the warmth wash over her.
And she did that now, and thought about her next move…
Epilogue
“This is Lara, and if you’re listening to this, then you’ve survived the unimaginable. It doesn’t matter how you did it, just that you did when so many didn’t. By now you’ve seen the endless piles of bones outside and you’ve heard the rumors. They’re true. All of them. We’ve struck a crippling blow against the ghouls, but it’s not over. It’s far from over. They’re still out there, along with the blue-eyed ones. But they don’t control us anymore, and we know how to defeat them. It’s their turn to be afraid. We’re going to organize and we’re going to hunt them down and destroy every single one of them, and they’re going to find out that the night is no longer theirs. Make no mistake, this is the chance we’ve been waiting for—this is the start of a new beginning. For all of us. Because we’re in this together, whether we called ourselves collaborators or rebels, or didn’t call ourselves anything at all in the last year. None of it matters. Not anymore. A lot of very good and brave people paid the ultimate sacrifice to give us this second chance. Don’t waste it like we did before with endless bickering and petty grievances. Let the past die with the past. This is our chance to make the world ours again. Help me—join me—and we’ll take it back. I’m Lara, and I’m a survivor. If you’re listening to this, then so are you…”
A Word From the Author
(About The Past and the Future of The Babylon Universe)
The Bones of Valhalla closes out a story I had originally started writing while in college and worked on over the years (back when it was just a solo book called The Road to Babylon). I never envisioned it would become a series, never mind one with a fan base. For those of you hoping I would somehow find ways to save certain characters or reverse the end of the world, all I can say is that this was always the ending I had in mind; I just didn’t know how long it would take to get here. (The original Road to Babylon was over 800 pages long…and unfinished.)
With the storyline now at its natural conclusion, I wanted to thank all of you for sticking with me for nine books (okay, ten if you count the Keo prequel), and let you know about what I have planned. Because yes, there are plans afoot.
The original idea was always to introduce and expand on an (in gaming parlance) open-world universe. Moving forward, I hope to pick up where Bones left off, with brand-new standalone storylines that new and longtime readers alike can climb aboard
. But of course fans of the series who have read the previous books will get much, much more out of them.
How are the survivors going to deal with those very dangerous blue-eyed ghouls still roaming the land? What about all those collaborator towns with their own isolated ecosystems? And what is going to prevent another Pollard or Mercer from rising up and trying to fill the power vacuum now that the ghouls are no longer calling the shots?
But those questions will have to wait.
Besides building a bridge to future adventures, the ending of Bones serves another purpose—as a possible jumping off point for readers who would rather not stick around, but still wanted a conclusion before telling me to go bleep myself (judging by some of your emails and Facebook messages, and Amazon reviews). I hope I’ve rewarded your patience, and if not, all I can say is, I’m sorry, but I truly did my best.
For everyone else, I look forward to telling more stories in The Purge of Babylon universe for years (dare I say, decades?) to come, and hope you’ll keep revisiting this world with me. I always knew exactly how things were going to end before I dusted off The Road to Babylon and turned it into The Purge of Babylon, but now that that particular storyline has wrapped…
Well, let’s just say, I’m as excited to find out what happens next as the rest of you!
Sincerely and with the greatest of thanks for allowing me to write stories for a living,
Sam
Blog: roadtobabylon.com
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