by Sam Sisavath
The black eyes were weak, slow things, and he snatched up a piece of metal from the floor and smashed his way through them, and when the floor turned into a writhing black tide of pruned flesh, he went into the air. Hands groped at him, fingers scraped against his arms and legs and sought out desperate pieces of the trench coat that fluttered behind him.
He crashed through the window and into the street. The gray concrete highway gleamed to his left, the city of Gallant to his right. He was close enough that he could smell the rest of the ghoul population moving toward him as one, coming out of the buildings. All the buildings.
Hundreds. Thousands.
He flung himself onto a car and used it to grab a windowsill and crawled up the side of a bakery. He hadn’t had the chance to swing up onto the ledge before there were three—four—five—throwing themselves at him.
“He’s ours!” the voices echoed inside his head. “There’s no escape for him! Not tonight!”
He shattered a ghoul’s skull with his fist and threw two more off the rooftop. The fourth and fifth attempted to wrestle him to the gravel floor by diving at his legs, but he caved in one’s chest with his foot, then twisted and decapitated the other one with the edge of his hand.
And he was free again, but not for long. The structure trembled as they raced up the stairs below him while more crawled up all four sides of the building, just as many plummeting back down to the street below when they lost their grip.
The wind whipped at his face as he ran, then leaped, across two rooftops. He sprung back up to his feet as they pulled themselves over the ledges around him. He raced past them and sailed into the air again—
Pop-pop-pop.
The sound of gunfire coming from nearby forced him to twist his body in mid jump until he was moving in that direction.
“Something’s wrong,” the blue eyes said inside his head.
Was it a trick? Another trap? No, not this time. There was no need because they had him where they wanted him. Here, now, within their grasp.
Pop-pop-pop.
He tasted blood in the air. Not tainted blood like the kind that flowed through his veins. No, fresh blood. Human blood.
Pop-pop-pop.
He leaped across rooftops and raced toward the source of gunfire even as they surged around him, clamoring against one another to be the first to reach him. But he was faster and he leaped when he had to, dodged when he could, and bashed a path through flesh and bones when it was the only way left to him.
The night was thick with their number. Ghouls. Black eyes. They had secured all the rooftops as far as he could see, and he was forced to go down. He plummeted, grabbed a windowsill, swung left, then right, and finally caved in the roof of a parked vehicle on the sidewalk.
And they were on him almost immediately. A wave of black flesh slamming into his body from all sides, bony fingers grabbing at the fabric of the trench coat while dead black eyes pooled around him. Jagged yellow and white and brown teeth bit into his arms and legs and neck in an attempt to slow him down, but still he fought.
He couldn’t let them stop him. Not here, not now. He fought, for Danny and Gaby. For Lara. For her future.
But there were so many, and they forced him to the cold, hard pavement. Blood gushed from fresh wounds and his legs weakened as they climbed over him, then over each other, their weight doubling, then tripling. And still they grew, until it became impossible to throw them off with mere physical strength.
Then something new and unexpected rippled across the sky, sending a ferocious gust of wind across him and the swarm that blanketed him. It froze them in place for a split second—which turned into a full second, then a full two seconds—as the noise grew and grew until it became unmistakable.
“No!” the voices screamed inside his head.
He managed to look up through a small sliver in the forest of wrinkled flesh just as the belly of the mechanical beast flashed overhead and its roar filled the world, shaking him—and the creatures around him—to the bones.
“No, no, no!”
As he watched it pass overhead, he was reminded that there were still things out there to fear that didn’t sleep in the shadows and hide from the sunlight.
Then the beast bellowed, and he might have smiled.
Brooooooooooorrrrttttttttt!
Book Two
On a Pale Horse
10
Lara
“I don’t want bloodshed,” the man said. Lara detected what might have been a Southern accent, but those things were tricky over the radio, so she couldn’t be absolutely sure. “We can resolve this in a way that avoids that. No one’s been hurt yet, and I’d rather keep it that way. ”
You should have thought of that before you sent them over here, she wanted to say, but resisted.
“Bottom line,” the man continued, “we can still come to an arrangement. Nothing’s happened yet that makes that impossible.”
“What if we had opened fire on your men?” she asked.
“But you didn’t.”
“I could have.”
“But you didn’t,” the man insisted. “That’s all that matters, and all I want to focus on right now.”
She exchanged a look with Carly, who was standing next to her with her hands on her hips, and then with Blaine at his usual spot behind the helm. Morning sunlight slowly filled up the bridge of the Trident, pushing away last night’s chill. Unlike the last time she was in the room, all three of them were armed and rifles leaned against the walls within easy reach.
It had taken her all of last night to decide whether to take Hart up on his offer. She was still too wary of a possible trick in case Hart and his CO had a backup plan if their boarding went awry and had ordered Blaine to keep moving all night, with a full guard rotation inside and outside the yacht.
“Mighty generous of him,” Carly was saying.
“You don’t believe him?” she asked.
“If being with Danny’s taught me anything, it’s that you can’t trust anyone who tries to sneak up on you in the middle of the night. It always ends badly—and painfully.”
Lara looked to Blaine. “What do you think?”
The big man shook his head. “I guess it depends on what he can offer us in return for sending his guys back. What did Hart say they had over there, wherever there is?”
“Supplies and fuel.”
“Like he knew exactly what we needed,” Carly said.
“He knew about the fueling stations and marinas being manned by collaborators,” Lara said. “They’ve been out there. They know what’s happening back on land.”
The bridge’s speakers squawked, and they heard the man’s voice again: “Are you still there?”
Lara held the microphone up to her lips and clicked the transmit button. “I’m still here.”
“You’re thinking about my offer.”
“We’re talking about it.”
“You’re in charge?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Riley, by the way,” the man said.
“Lara.”
“Nice to meet you, Lara. Wish it was under better circumstances.”
“The man’s a master of understatement,” Carly said. “First he spies on us, then tries to board us, and now he’s acting all ‘Golly gee, I just wanna be friends.’” She rolled her eyes. “Goes to show you guys are as trustworthy as a knife in the back.”
“Hey,” Blaine said.
“Present company excluded, of course.”
“Damn straight.”
Riley, of course, hadn’t heard any of the back and forth, and he said now, “I assume my man told you about what we can offer?”
Lara pressed the transmit button on the mic. “He did.”
“Supplies. Fuel. Guns and ammo too, if you need them, though I get the impression you don’t.”
“Where do you get your fuel from?”
“Does it matter? The important takeaway for you is that we have what you need.”
“Oil tankers carry crude oil,” Blaine said. “They have to be processed into usable fuel.”
“What are you, an expert on oil now?”
“Hey, I get around.”
Lara said into the radio, “I need to know your location.”
“I’ll be happy to give you the coordinates as soon as you tell me we have a deal,” Riley said.
“That’s the problem. We don’t have a deal. Not until you can convince me I can trust you.”
Riley didn’t answer right away. Next to her, Carly began humming the Jeopardy theme song.
“Can he convince us of that?” Blaine asked. “After last night?”
“I don’t know,” Lara said, “but I’d like to see him try. Maybe he’ll end up telling me something he doesn’t want us to know.”
“You sly fox,” Carly said.
The speakers squawked again, and Riley finally said, “I think we need to do this face-to-face, Lara. I don’t see how this could work any other way.”
Carly smirked. “If he thinks we’re going to just show up at his front door after what he tried to pull last night, he’s got another thing coming.”
“You have six of my men,” Riley said, almost as if he had heard Carly, “so I’d say you have a pretty big bargaining chip.”
“He’s got a point,” Blaine said.
“What if he doesn’t give a crap about any of them?” Carly asked.
“We might have to take the risk.”
“No, we don’t.”
Blaine sighed. “Yes, we do, Carly.” He glanced at his dashboard’s readings, then back at them. “We’re running out of options here, guys. We need to refuel soon.”
Carly sighed and turned to Lara. “What about Danny and Gaby?”
“They’re not due to radio in for another two hours,” Lara said.
“You know Danny can barely tell time.”
Lara gave her friend a half-smile. “You think this is a bad idea.”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“Is your definition of bad also terrible?”
“We have the upper hand. Once he gives us his location, we’ll know where he is. We can show up from any angle and be ready for anything.”
“Bonnie’s awfully good with that M240,” Blaine said.
Lara nodded. “There’s that, too.”
“I still don’t like it,” Carly said.
“We’ll see what they have to offer. If the terms aren’t to our liking, then we’ll leave.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“What if they try to stop us? Do I have to keep mentioning last night’s shenanigans? We can’t trust these people.”
“They want the Trident,” Lara said. “Hart made that pretty clear last night. They’re not going to risk damaging it now. All we have to do is keep our distance.”
Blaine smiled. “I like it. We hold all the cards.”
“They could always change their minds about wanting the boat intact,” Carly said. “Shoot us with a rocket launcher or something. Plenty of those things just lying around.”
“Maybe,” Lara said, “but then why bring us over? If they don’t need the boat anymore, this seems like a lot of effort to go through. Besides, sinking us means sinking six of their own.”
“Again, boss lady, if he actually cares about his guys,” Carly said.
Lara nodded. “There’s that…”
* * *
Hart looked up when she stepped inside the room where they had been keeping him and the other five men below deck. The room was small enough that all six squeezed into the same narrow space made for an uncomfortable night, especially with their hands still bound.
“We need to talk,” she said to Hart.
“Did you call him?” Hart asked.
She nodded, then turned to Benny, who was standing guard outside the door with Carrie. “Any trouble?”
“Nope,” Benny said.
“They haven’t tried anything,” Carrie added.
Lara turned back to Hart. “Let’s go.”
He struggled up from the floor using the wall for support. The other five remained where they were, Benny eyeing them like a hawk with his M4 held at the ready in front of him. Lara stepped aside as Hart exited the room, and they closed the door and padlocked it from the hallway.
“Where to?” Hart asked.
“Follow me,” she said.
“What did Riley say?”
“He confirmed your story.”
She couldn’t tell if Hart had breathed a sigh of relief, because it was so loud below deck and she couldn’t even hear their footsteps as she led him through the engine room, then out and onto the lower deck of the moving yacht.
Hart blinked up at the clear skies and let out an almost blissful sigh (she heard that, that time), holding his bound hands up to shield his eyes from the sun. Above them, Maddie moved along the railing. Higher up, Bonnie was stationed behind the M240 machine gun that she had spent a lot of hours on, back when Keo and Danny were running all the adults (and Dwayne) through weapons training.
“Keep going,” she told Hart, who walked in front of her. She kept just enough distance between them that he couldn’t do something stupid like twist and try to grab her, or, more likely, the Glock in her hip holster.
“So what else did Riley say?” Hart asked.
“He gave us his location. We’re on our way there now.”
“No wonder we’re moving.” He stopped at the back of the boat when they reached the ladder leading down to the swimming platform below and turned around to face her. “So what are we doing out here, Lara?”
“Tell me about last night.”
He pursed his lips at her, and she thought he looked almost embarrassed. Hart didn’t have the face of a cold-blooded killer, but she couldn’t forget that he was the leader of the group that had tried to sneak up on them last night. That, more than anything, made her extremely cautious of him.
“What about last night?” he finally said.
“Riley sent you to board us.”
He nodded. “We couldn’t risk you saying no if we showed up and asked to borrow the Trident.”
“Why?”
“Why?” he repeated.
“Why do you need the Trident so badly?”
“You’ll have to talk to Riley about that.”
She shook her head and drew her Glock, then held the gun nonchalantly at her side. “I want you to tell me now.”
Hart looked immediately down at the gun, then back up to her face. He swallowed, and she saw the fear in his eyes and knew he wasn’t acting.
But he said anyway, “I can’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t. If Riley hadn’t told you already, then he wouldn’t want me to.”
“I need you to tell me right now, Hart.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. You just choose not to.”
“You’re right. I choose not to.”
She clenched and unclenched her grip on the gun. “You see my dilemma, don’t you?”
He nodded. “I do.”
“You came here last night to take our boat, and now your Mister Riley is telling me he’d be willing to trade fuel and supplies for you and your five friends. You’ll forgive me for being cynical, but that doesn’t jive.”
“It’s complicated.”
“What isn’t these days?”
He smiled, though it came out just a bit too forced. “You have to trust someone sometime, Lara.”
“I do. I just don’t trust people who try to board my boat in the dead of night.”
Hart looked down at the gun hanging at her side again. “Are you going to shoot me?”
“Do you want me to?”
“No. I don’t want to die.”
“That’s the most honest thing you’ve told me yet.”
“Not true. I’ve been honest with you since last night. I
just haven’t told you everything you asked, but I haven’t lied once.”
“That’s the problem. I have no idea if you’re lying or not because I don’t really know you.”
“That can change. All you have to do is listen to what Riley has to say.”
“He sounds younger than you.”
“That’s because he is.” He glanced down at the gun again. “Are you going to shoot me, Lara? I’d really prefer it if you didn’t.”
“I haven’t decided yet,” she said.
* * *
It jutted out of the ocean like the torso of a mechanical beast, limbs stretching outward in every direction. It was impossible to miss, and she saw it as soon as she stepped back onto the bridge. The Trident had powered down, though the waves were still pushing it forward toward the object.
“Holy shit,” Lara said.
When Riley had given her the coordinates and Blaine punched it into the yacht’s computer, they had theorized what Riley’s location could be—an island, a marina, maybe even a fleet of boats—but she had to admit, this was not one of their guesses.
“That’s exactly what I said,” Carly said. “Blaine was telling me how they got something like that out here in the first place. Educate her, big man.”
“They build it along the coastline, then transport it out here before setting it down,” Blaine said. “They’re essentially self-sustaining cities with a crazy long shelf life. Most of the time they’ll still be sitting out here long after the wells they’re tapping have dried up.”
“Here’s a better look,” Carly said, handing her a pair of binoculars.
“I did a lot of odd jobs back when I was younger,” Blaine said. “One of them was construction; got to work on one of these, though that one was a lot smaller. It takes a huge crew to put them together, but the money was really good. Afterward, I applied to come offshore but didn’t get picked.”
“Did you tell them you were totally legal?” Carly asked.
Blaine grunted. “It’s a tough gig to get, that’s all.”