by Sam Sisavath
Then it turned back around and bent its head and resumed feeding.
He racked the shotgun and fired again, this time aiming for the head of the closest one. It flopped forward but picked itself up, moving unsteadily with the top of its head mostly gone. Unlike the previous one, this creature didn’t bother to cast him an annoying glance.
Riley stumbled back, back, every step like pedaling through quicksand, the (Useless. It’s useless!) weapon in his hands impossibly heavy. What good was a gun if it couldn’t kill these things? Why did he carry so many on him? Why did he spend so much time arguing with himself about letting her carry a small pistol—
Hannah.
Jesus, Hannah, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.
He turned, groping the walls for support, and staggered his way down the length of the hallway. There was no railing, or he might have keeled over it and plummeted to his death below. Maybe that would have been the humane thing—the right thing—to do. At least it would prevent him from replaying the look on Hannah’s face—that odd expression of sadness—as she realized what was about to happen in the split second before it did.
He fumbled down the stairs, not sure how he was able to keep from falling—clutching to the banister with an iron grip probably helped—while dragging the shotgun behind him, the weapon clacking and thumping against every carpeted step, still connected to him by the long strap.
The first floor was covered in swaths of sunlight, the air so warm that when it hit him it was like moving through an inferno. There were signs everywhere that they had been inside the house while he and Hannah had hidden in the attic. It was in the air (The smell. God, the smell!) and the toppled furniture, the open door, and the broken windows. But they had been here the previous nights, too, and always left. So why didn’t they leave this time?
He was blaming them—the creatures—when he should be blaming himself. Because he should have known better than to spend three nights in a row in the same place. He should have known better.
I’m sorry, Hannah. I’m sorry…
He was irresistibly drawn to the open door, crashing into furniture and knocking down a vase, though he didn’t hear it shatter. His ears rang with the shotgun clattering behind him as the weapon bounced off walls and the legs of a nightstand until it was finally scraping against the concrete driveway outside.
He blinked against the sun, unable to process why it was so bright this morning or why the always-welcoming heat was now trying to suffocate him. Breathing was difficult, and he had the sensation of drowning. He fell to his knees, so numbed that he didn’t even feel the impact. He kept blinking, trying to chase the last image of Hannah’s face out of his (memories) eyes…
“You okay, son?”
He opened his eyes back up. Someone was standing in front of him.
A man. Tall.
Or maybe not so tall, because Riley was on his knees and his perspective was skewed. The sun hung high behind the man, the flow of light bending around his broad shoulders as if it were afraid to touch him. The brown of his eyes as they looked up at the house, then back at him. There was sadness there, understanding. This was a man who knew what Riley had been through, who understood Riley’s pain.
“Your friend didn’t make it,” the man said quietly.
Riley shook his head, but when he tried to open his mouth, he only sucked in much-needed oxygen.
“Was she your wife?” the man asked.
He somehow managed to shake his head again.
“Friend,” the man said.
Riley nodded.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” the man said. “But you’re alive. You need to stay that way.”
He blinked up at the man. “Why?” he said, the single word coming out almost as a croak.
“Because we’re all that’s left,” the man said. “One of these days we’re going to take it all back, but until that day comes, we have to stay alive, whatever it takes.”
The man held out his hand. Riley looked at it, then at the man’s face. Fifties, at least, almost as old as his father had been when he passed.
“Time to get back up, son,” the man said.
Riley reached for the proffered hand and let himself be pulled up. He was very light on his feet for some reason. Either that, or the man was impossibly strong.
“What’s your name?” the man asked.
“Riley…”
“Good to meet you, Riley.”
The man looked behind him at three others standing on the sidewalk beyond the front yard of the house. Two men and one woman. They were cradling the kind of military rifles Riley had seen in some of the pawn shops around town while he and Hannah were scavenging, but that they’d always been too intimidated by to pick up. A beat-up white truck was parked in the road, the engine still churning.
How was it possible he hadn’t seen or heard these people until now? Where had they come from?
“Check the house,” the man said to the others. “Kill everything.”
The three didn’t hesitate. They jogged up the driveway, passing Riley and the man, and vanished into the house one by one. They moved as if they had been training for this one moment all their lives.
“It’s dangerous,” Riley said. He wasn’t sure if the man had heard him, though, because his own voice sounded lifeless to his own ears. “They’re in there. The creatures.”
“We know,” the man said. “We heard you shooting while we were down the street. Sound travels these days.”
“But they don’t die,” Riley said, trying to get the man to understand. “They don’t die.”
Riley looked back and up at the second floor when he heard the gunshots. Rapid-fire, like how machine guns always sounded in the movies. He flinched when a bullet pierced one of the master-bedroom windows and sent glass plummeting to the driveway in front of him. More rounds punched through the walls and vanished across the street.
The man put a reassuring hand on Riley’s arm and led him back to the sidewalk. “Just in case.”
“They don’t die,” he said as he let himself be pulled back.
“There are ways to kill them. I’ll teach you.”
The shooting had stopped. In fact, it had ended a while ago, and he could hear the three coming back down the stairs. He expected to see just one or maybe two if they were lucky, but instead all three returned. Their eyes searched him out, and Riley saw that they were full of sympathy, especially the woman’s.
“Good to go, sir,” one of the men said as they passed.
“Well done,” the older man said. Then, to Riley, “It’s time to go, son.”
“Go where?” he asked quietly, the image of Hannah’s last expression burned into his mind’s eye, replaying over and over and over.
“Away from here,” the older man said. “We need time to grow, to train, to prepare. And when we’re ready—and only then—we’ll finally act.”
“Ready?” He looked back at the man, unable to understand what was happening, what he was trying to say. “Ready for what?”
“All that can wait. For now, you should come home with us. There’s not a lot of us left anymore and we have to stick together.” He pointed at the other three: “That’s Benford, Rhett, and Erin.”
The two men and the woman nodded back at him, and Riley had never felt more welcomed in his life.
“And you can call me Mercer,” the older man said. He squeezed Riley’s shoulder and gave him a comforting smile. “We have a lot of work ahead of us, Riley. Are you in? Will you help me take back what belongs to us, whatever it takes?”
“Yes,” Riley answered breathlessly.
Book One
Port of Call
1
Keo
Find Mercer. Kill Mercer.
It used to be that he could come up with three goals without having to work all that hard, but these days he was happy with two. These days, things had a way of blowing up in his face. Like with Gillian, like with Jordan...
Jordan
...
He wished he could say watching someone he cared for bleeding out was a new thing. Over the years, he’d learned to detach himself, to avoid making friends, and to tune out when they started talking about their families “back home” or their dreams. A nod here, a forced smile there was all it took. Most of them just liked to hear themselves talk anyway, never mind if anyone actually heard them.
There wasn’t a whole lot he could do about the last few days of his life. They were done and gone, beyond his reach. All he had left was what was ahead of him: a place in the middle of nowhere called Lochlyn, Texas. Such a minor town that it was barely a blip on the map he carried in one of the pouches around his waist.
What were the chances Mercer was even in Lochlyn? God only knew (not that he believed in God or anything), but it gave him a place to go, a target to focus on. Keo was always at his best when he had someone to go up against. Pollard, Steve, and now Mercer. Men who brought death and misery. It was a good thing he was used to such men. Hell, if you were to ask some of the people he’d known in his life, they would say the same thing about him.
Find Mercer. Kill Mercer.
The former was going to take some doing, but the latter, well, he was an old hand when it came to that. The trick was to find the man first, though. It would have probably helped if he knew what Mercer looked like, but then Keo reasoned a man like that, who controlled an army of fearless killers (and they’d have to be fearless, to bring the battle to the collaborators, to scatter across the Texas countryside in two-men kill teams like they were doing right now) would stand out.
Pollard had. Steve had, too. They all did, if you knew what signs to look for. And Keo did. He had been around enough of them and taken orders from their ilk more times than he could stomach. They were always easy to spot.
The leader. The alpha.
So all he had to do was reach Lochlyn and go from there. No sweat. It was as easy as following the map, using the sun as his compass.
Find Mercer. Kill Mercer.
About four hours before nightfall, there was a noticeable drop in temperature. It had gotten colder these days, but Texas in December was still perversely illogical. Anywhere else and he would be freezing, but here, moving through a field of grass burnt brown by the sun, there was just enough wind against his exposed face to give him a slight chill.
It had taken him too long to get this far. A day now since he had buried Jordan in a nondescript part of the countryside under a grave of rocks to keep the elements (and other dead things) from desecrating her. He wished he could have spent more time, made a better (decent) final tomb, but he’d wanted to flee that place before it was too late.
“Too late” for what, he didn’t know, even now. He just had to go.
There wasn’t a lot around him now except large patches of untilled fields and the occasional house and accompanying red (always red) barn in the distance. He had lost sight of the highway or anything resembling a paved road about five miles back. Lochlyn was somewhere up ahead of him. Unless, of course, he had gotten lost and didn’t know it. That was entirely possible, too. A lot of things were possible these days.
He’d thought about checking the buildings for clues to his exact whereabouts but decided to bypass them. If he was hurting for guns, ammo, or food, he might have taken the time, but he was carrying enough of all three to last for a few weeks if he conserved. So he kept moving. Besides, if he were still running around out here a week from now, that probably meant he hadn’t found Mercer. Worse, he had no clue how to find Mercer. Either way, if he couldn’t locate and kill the man in the next couple of days, then the mission would be a scratch—
A man’s deep voice, arriving with a sudden gust of wind from up ahead: “How many?”
“She said three,” another voice said. Also male, but younger sounding.
“Shit, we lost three so far?” the first one said.
“That we know of.”
“More?”
“Maybe.”
“Shit.” Then, “On the upside, The Ranch’s going to be less crowded when we get back.”
“Dude…”
“What, too soon?”
Chuckling from both men.
Keo was already on one knee, the unslung AR-15 in his hands. He carefully eased off the rifle’s safety while listening to the conversation in front of him. How far? Twenty meters? Thirty?
“You got it?” Deep Voice asked.
“Again?” Younger said.
“I like listening to it.”
“You in love with her or something?”
“Or something.”
“Don’t you think that’s kind of weird?”
“What’s so weird about it?”
“What if she’s fat and ugly?”
“She doesn’t sound fat and ugly.”
“What does fat and ugly sound like?”
“I don’t know, but not like that. Besides, it’s better than talking about our MIAs. That shit’s just depressing.”
A short laugh, followed by a brief moment of silence.
Keo counted one second...five...
…twenty...
What the hell were they doing up there? He hadn’t moved since he heard them, but now he let his breath come out in short spurts, in tune to the sporadic gust of wind blowing through the stalks of dying grass around him. It wasn’t much cover, but the field did go all the way up to his waist, and on one knee he was almost invisible. Not entirely, but good enough that whoever was up there hadn’t spotted him yet. Some of that elusive luck was working in his favor for once, with the men not looking in his direction when he nearly walked right up to them like a blind idiot.
One minute became two, and still nothing.
What the hell are they doing?
He reached down to make sure the handgun was in its holster at his hip before rising back to his feet and, bent forward at almost a seventy-five-degree angle at the waist, took one step and stopped to listen.
Five seconds…ten…
Nothing.
He took a second step, then a third...
There was just the rustling of grass against the wind and the soft crunch-crunch of his boots on the sun-hardened ground. Every step sounded like banging drums, and Keo spent just as much time cringing at the noise he was making as he did trying to reassure himself it was just his mind magnifying them, that it was just his imagination on overdrive…
Shit, you almost convinced yourself that time, pal.
The sun was still high in the sky, the warmth giving him just enough assurance to keep moving steadily forward. Nightfall was coming, but it would be a while. He had plenty of time. Plenty of time…
Five meters...
A soft mechanical click, very clear against the natural countryside around him, froze him in mid-stride, and Keo went down on one knee for the second time.
“Almost out of batteries,” a voice said. Younger. “Did you bring yours?”
“Nah,” Deep Voice said. “You’re out?”
“Yup.”
“Ugh.”
“Sucks for you.”
A grunt. “You won’t believe this, but there was a time when these things could only hold ten songs at a time, and they cost twice as much.”
Younger chuckled. “You’re right; I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true.”
“How long before— What?”
“You smell that?”
“Smell what?”
Keo looked down at his clothes. His dirty clothes.
Sonofabitch.
He launched up from the ground and took the remaining ten meters at a dead run, the crunch-crunch of his boots exploding loudly under him, and this time he didn’t even try to pretend it was just his imagination.
Can you hear me now? he thought, almost laughing out loud.
The first head that popped up in front of him was balding and had what looked like a rash over his right cheek. He was in his forties and wearing nondescript camo clothing, and t
hough Keo couldn’t see the rest of his body, the man looked in reasonably good shape. Fading white wires (earbuds?) dangled from his ears and connected to a small device in his hand. He turned his head, saw Keo, and his eyes went white and round like baseballs.
Keo snapped off a shot at five meters—close enough that he barely had to aim—and blew the man’s brains out.
The gunshot boomed and was just starting its echo across the landscape when the second head popped up.
Younger, with some kind of military buzz cut, was in the process of standing up when the older man collapsed next to him. Instead of reaching for his weapon, the man held up his hands and shouted, “Wait—”
But Keo didn’t wait. He couldn’t, even if he wanted to. He was moving too fast, the surge of adrenaline driving him forward with a full head of steam. He swung the AR-15 and connected solidly with the stock of his rifle. His victim dropped to the ground back onto the already bent stalks of grass where he and his now-dead friend had been sitting.
Keo sucked in a deep breath and spun around in a complete circle, searching for more targets among the wavy blades of grass and the sporadic lines of trees circling him. The gunshot. Someone would have heard that gunshot. It was simply impossible not to these days with the deadness of the world.
So where were they?
Was it possible there were only two in the entire area? Could he be that lucky?
First time for everything.
Satisfied there was no one else out there—or at least no one dumb enough to show themselves—Keo dropped down behind the makeshift wall of grass.
Mercer’s man—and he had to be one of Mercer’s men, because who else would be out here this close to Lochlyn?—was rolling around on the ground, both hands cupping his shattered nose. Blood oozed through his fingers, and the man’s eyes, soft blue, blinked erratically up at Keo.
“Relax; you’ll make it,” Keo said.
The man’s eyes dropped down to the holstered sidearm at his hip. It looked like a Sig Sauer, similar to the one Keo was carrying.