The Horns of Avalon (Purge of Babylon, Book 8)

by Sam Sisavath

  “You good with this?” he asked.

  She looked back at him and saw the way he was eyeing her. She pursed her lips into a forced smile. “No. Not at all.”

  “What does that—”

  “I mean, I’m not good with what we’re about to do,” she interrupted, “but yeah, I’m good with this this.” She faced forward again. “It has to be done. If he’s gone, there’s a chance we can pull the others back and stop this war and save lives.”

  “Whose lives?”

  “Theirs, ours, all of us.”

  Keo nodded. He didn’t want to tell her that the chances of that actually happening were low, that even with Mercer gone there were probably going to be true believers determined to carry on the fight in their dead commander’s memory, or something equally ill-conceived.

  But right now Erin didn’t need to know about his doubts. He couldn’t afford for her to start having second (third?) thoughts. God knew this was going to be tough enough without having to worry about her, too.

  “How are we going to do this?” he asked.

  “There’s nothing special about it. I already radioed ahead when we were on the Ocean Star and told them we were coming. They’re expecting us”—she glanced at her watch—“about now.”

  “That’s the whole procedure? Call ahead and then show up?”

  “It’s not Get Smart, Keo. There are no hidden doors or passwords to go through. If you found the island, then you were meant to be here.”

  “What about defenses?”

  “There are guards along the beaches and around the main facility, but that’s about it in terms of potential trouble spots. Everyone who can fight is either in Texas or on their way back.”

  “Will they care it’s only the two of us showing up?”

  “The guys I made contact with on the radio will, but they won’t be on the beach waiting for us. The guards who will be won’t know any different.”

  He nodded and looked up at the sky. Pitch dark, but it wouldn’t stay that way for very long. Not that he needed a lot of time, but darkness was always better for wet work. There wouldn’t be nearly as many people standing guard, and those who were would be staving off fatigue and sleep. In his experience, even the most capable soldier wasn’t at his full alertness in the early morning hours. Best-case? The people here would be used to long, peaceful night sleeps, which would give him even more room to work.

  Worse-case? Everything blows up in his face, and he was dead before morning.

  Either/or.

  “All right,” he said, slipping the balaclava back down over his face. “Let’s get you home.”

  * * *

  There were two of them—men, from the way they stood and the shape of their outlines—and they were waiting on the beach as Erin cut the engine a second time and let the currents push them forward. Keo could make out night-vision goggles over the guards’ faces, which meant they had seen him crouched at the bow of the offshore vessel even better than he could see them.

  He glanced back at Erin. “Is this going to work?”

  She didn’t answer right away, but the obvious concern on her face, lit by the dashboard lights, didn’t exactly give him confidence.

  “Yeah, sure,” she said finally.

  “You don’t sound very convincing, Erin,” he said, just barely suppressing a laugh. Because what else could he do in this situation but laugh?

  “It’ll work,” she said. She followed that up with a nod, though he wasn’t sure if that was for his benefit or hers. Then again, given the way she was staring at the two guards waiting for them (likely armed to the teeth), he could probably figure out the answer.

  Keo turned back around to face the beach. He had his rifle slung behind him and still wore his gun belt because it wouldn’t make sense for a Mercer man to return “home” unarmed. Judging by the relaxed posture of the two, it was the right move. The guards stood watching, but he didn’t see anything about their forms to indicate they were anxious or alert, and they certainly weren’t holding the rifles dangling in front of them with anything even close to resembling menace.

  So far, so good.

  “We won’t be the first one to come back,” Erin said behind him. “They’ll be used to this by now. The fact that there are just two of us may raise some questions later, but not from these two. If your plan works, this will be all over by the time enough people have woken up to start asking those questions.”

  They were less than twenty meters from the sand when one of the guards waved, while the second one turned his head to look up the beach as if he found something more interesting up there. That was exactly the reaction Keo was hoping for, and seeing it did more to convince him than Erin’s assurance had a few moments ago.

  Keo returned the wave and stood up as the surf carried them closer. He jumped off the boat as soon as he felt the fiberglass hull sliding against soft sand and landed knee-high in freezing cold water.

  The guard laughed, night-vision goggle perched on top of his forehead. “Nice jump, Geronimo.”

  There wasn’t a lot of light on the beach, at least nothing like he was used to back on Song Island in the old days. The guards were clearly relying mostly on moonlight and their gear to see with, and the closest light emanated from an LED lantern hanging off a tree about thirty meters behind them. It wasn’t nearly enough to reveal the entire stretch of beach, which made Keo think he could have swam to shore just fine under the cover of darkness.

  Keo grinned back at the soldier. “Hey, I almost had it.”

  “Almost only counts in horseshoes and grenades, dude,” the man said.

  “Tell me about it,” Keo said, and turned around and grabbed the boat’s V-shaped bow and pulled it in.

  The guard helped with the other side, but the second one was more concerned about not getting caught in the waves that were washing ashore than lending a hand. As Keo and the Good Samaritan pulled the boat up, Erin walked to the front and picked up the line from the floor.

  Keo backpedaled up the beach, his soaked boots squishing under him. Erin tossed him the line, and Keo pulled the boat further in. The guard was too busy talking to Erin and the other guy had wandered off.

  Definitely so far, so good.

  There was a metal spike to which Keo tied the boat’s line. It wasn’t exactly a sophisticated docking system, but then they were landing on the backside of the island.

  “Just you two?” the guard was asking Erin behind him.

  “Just us,” Erin said.

  “How’s the war going? We don’t get a lot of information. Heard it was going well, though.”

  “Yeah, we’re bulldozing through the collaborators,” Erin said. “Pretty soon there’ll just be the monsters to deal with.”

  “That’s when all the silver bullets come in, right?”

  Erin nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Can’t wait for that. I’m tired of playing security guard over here.”

  “Don’t worry; you’ll get your chance soon enough.”

  “Looking forward to it,” the man said.

  As he was tightening the rope around the spike, Keo took a moment to scan the rest of the island. There wasn’t much in the way of defenses that he could see except for the two guards he had already met, though Keo did glimpse two more figures farther up the beach to his right. Still, four people weren’t nearly enough to cover the entire two-kilometer span of the island on this side, but maybe there were more people than he could see with the naked eye. Either that, or Mercer really was stretched thin. Which, if true, meant the man was definitely putting all his eggs on the collaborators turning on their ghoul masters and bulking up his ranks.

  Good luck with that, pal.

  Erin had walked over to join him, and she handed him his pack and asked, “You ready?”

  He nodded and said in a low voice so the closest guard didn’t hear, “You good?”

  “Yes,” she said, louder than he would have liked. “Let’s go; I wanna grab some
shut-eye before sunup.”

  That last part, he guessed, was for the guard’s benefit.

  Keo followed her up the beach, sliding the pack’s strap over his left shoulder only in order to keep his right arm free. The M4 with the grenade launcher thumped reassuringly against his back, within easy reach. When he looked back at the water, the guy who had helped him pull the boat up had already returned his NVD over his eyes and was walking off to join his buddy.

  “What about the boat?” Keo asked.

  “Someone will take care of it later,” Erin said.

  They waded through knee-high grass in a field on the other side of the beach. It was easy to pick up the signs that Uncle Sam had been here and had chopped down a lot of the scenery, leaving a mostly unobstructed view of the place. Keo spied the roofs of buildings jutting out of the ground in the distance, and though he expected to see planes taking off and landing, the only sounds came from the crickets in the woods and birds in the trees around him.

  “What that guy said about silver bullets,” Keo said.

  “What about it?” Erin asked.

  “I can understand why people on the Ocean Star weren’t equipped with them, but what about the teams in the fields? The ones in Texas right now?”

  “Mercer’s orders.”

  “Why?”

  “Their job is to strike at the collaborators, not fight ghouls. If they had silver ammo, they’d be tempted to do the very thing he told them not to do. This way, they’re forced to stay on course. Hide at night, fight in the day. And you don’t need silver bullets to do that.”

  Four guys in a tank apparently didn’t get that message.

  “That’s a pretty hardcore way to ensure your soldiers do exactly what you tell them,” Keo said. “And all the kill teams went along with it?”

  “A lot of them protested—I was one of them. But he stuck to his guns and we found ways to be okay with it, like we always do. I heard rumors that some of the teams stole silver bullets from the armory and took them with them. But I never actually met any that did.”

  “The funny thing is, I agree with him.”

  Erin looked over, surprised. “You do?”

  “Not his no-silver policy even if you die because of it part. That’s just stupid. But on the not engaging the ghouls part, yeah, I get that. It’s pointless.”

  She nodded. “He said it was a losing battle. There are so many of them, killing a hundred here, a thousand there wouldn’t even make a dent in their number. He said we’d just use up all the silver ammo we spent so much time and sweat making. He wanted to save it for emergencies, but mostly for when we finally took the fight directly to the monsters. That’s why we still have people out there whose only job is to collect silver.”

  “He’s playing the long game.”

  “Always. From day one, his goal was to first take away the ghoul’s greatest resource—cut their supply line, as he put it.”

  “Humans.”

  “He’ll kill as many as he needs to get them to turn on their masters.”

  “What if he ends up killing everyone instead?”

  “That’s why I’m here on Black Tide with you, Keo. To make sure that doesn’t happen.” She ground her teeth together, and he heard the conviction in her voice for the very first time when she added, “There has to be a better way to take the planet back. There has to be.”

  Maybe there was and maybe there wasn’t, but Keo wasn’t too concerned with the answer at the moment. Right here and now, he could only concentrate on one thing:

  Find Mercer. Kill Mercer.

  He replayed the look on Jordan’s face as she bled out in his arms next to the highway; the oddly contented smile she gave him as he held her, forever frozen in his mind’s eye. Days later, and he still didn’t know how he felt about her, but he knew that he liked her and knew exactly how he felt about watching her die.

  Somewhere on the other side of the field they were moving through, lights shone from a series of blocky gray buildings. Mercer would be in one of those right now, oblivious to what was coming for him.

  Keo glanced down at his watch.

  3:36 a.m.

  He smiled.

  The hour of the wolf…

  24

  Lara

  When Riley opened his eyes, the first thing he said was, “Andy shot me.”

  Lara nodded. “Yes, he did.”

  “Then someone shot him…”

  “Peters.”

  “I told you he never misses.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Lara smiled.

  Riley closed his eyes for a brief few seconds, then opened them again. “You’re still here. How long has it been?”

  “I am, and it’s past midnight. You’ve been heavily sedated. I’m surprised you’re already talking.”

  He squinted. “Feels like an elephant’s sitting on me.”

  “But you’re alive.”

  “Yeah, there’s that.” Riley looked pale and in pain, but his voice was surprisingly stronger than it should have been for a man who had been shot very recently. “I had a dream…”

  “What was it about?”

  “The Ocean Star was sinking.”

  “Sounds more like a nightmare.”

  “I guess it was.” He peeked down at his bandaged side. “Andy shot me,” he said again.

  “How much do you remember?”

  “I remember that it hurt like hell.” He sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “It’s quiet. Why is it so quiet?”

  “It’s one in the morning, Riley.”

  “No wonder it’s so quiet.” He turned his head to look at her. “Is everything…okay?”

  “You mean has Mercer sent anyone to attack the Ocean Star yet?”

  He nodded.

  She shook her head. “Not yet.”

  “Thank God.” Then, “Did I almost die or something?”

  “No,” Lara said, and sat back in her chair while trying to decide how much to tell him.

  They were the only two people in sickbay at the moment, and except for Riley’s slightly labored breathing, it was as if the world outside didn’t exist beyond the thick walls. Zoe had returned to the Trident a few hours ago, satisfied that Riley was in good hands with the rig’s vet/doctor, George, taking over. Like everyone onboard the yacht, Zoe had a lot of work ahead of her.

  “Hart took charge after you went down,” Lara said.

  “Where is he now?”

  “Overseeing the transports.”

  “Transports?”

  “We’re shuttling your people to my boat.”

  “In the middle of the night?” he asked, eyebrows rising in either curiosity or alarm, she couldn’t really tell.

  “We didn’t think it was prudent to wait any longer, in case more of Mercer’s men showed up on their way back to Black Tide.”

  “Something happened, didn’t it? Besides Andy shooting me. What else happened while I was out?”

  “Erin’s group came through. Hart did the best he could in your place, but they didn’t buy it. Something about the lack of civilians on the top deck spooked them.”

  “Erin noticed,” Riley said. It wasn’t a question.

  Lara nodded. “According to Hart, yes.”

  “Is she…?”

  “No. But you did lose a man, and someone named Troy was killed by Peters.”

  “But Erin’s alive?”

  “Yes,” she said, noticing the relief on his face. “It was bad, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.”

  “Who was it? My guy.”

  “I don’t know his name. You’ll have to ask Hart.”

  “Was it a man or a woman?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes.” He ran his hands over his face. “I brought them here, Lara. They’re my responsibility. Every single one of them. Even Andy…”

  The burden of leadership, Will. How did you ever shoulder it for so long? I’ve been at this for only a few months, and I already feel a million yea
rs old.

  “Hart handled it,” she said. “He’s not a bad second-in-command.”

  “He’d rather be fishing,” Riley said, and smiled. “You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to convince him to lead the mission to your boat.”

  “It’s a good thing you did. If someone else were in charge, that night might have gone differently. We might not be having this talk right now.”

  Riley nodded and scooted up to a sitting position, stuffing pillows between him and the wall. He grimaced the entire time but kept at it until it was done. She resisted the instinct to lend him a hand, mostly for his ego’s sake.

  After finally settling back down, he said, “How’s it going? Moving everyone over to the Trident?”

  “It’s going,” Lara said. “Everyone’s been very cooperative. We should be done by sunup, if not before then. I’m having Hart transfer the rest of the supplies over at the same time on different boats, but they’re going to take much longer than the people. Everyone’s handling the move surprisingly well. You could even say enthusiastically.”

  “Must be the idea of cruising around in that sweet ride of yours,” Riley said, looking over at the sickbay’s only window, not that he could see anything but darkness on the other side. “Is there a reason you’re doing this now?”

  “Between the time Andy shot you and now, we’ve already gotten five radio calls from Mercer’s people in Texas. The first group is supposed to be here by ten in the morning. There’ll be more by midday.”

  “They’re moving much faster than I expected…”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “For the war effort, it’s good,” Riley said. “But not for the people caught in the middle. If they’re already starting to return to Black Island en masse, it means they’re having a lot of success in Texas.”

  I wonder how Mercer measures “success.” Maybe in body bags.

  “Thank you,” Riley said, looking back at her. “I mean it, Lara. You could have bailed, but you didn’t.” He smiled, and it was probably a little too smug for her liking. “I knew the Lara wouldn’t back out of the deal.”

  She frowned. “Please stop calling me that.”