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

by Sam Sisavath

  “I asked before what he would do when he found out,” Lara said. “Did you come up with an answer yet?”

  “I don’t know what he’ll do,” Riley said. “I really don’t.”

  “Maybe he won’t get the chance to do anything,” Hart said. He was standing next to them, one hand on the railing to steady himself as they moved across the slightly bumpy water. “If Keo gets the job done, I mean.”

  She nodded, though she didn’t really like to think about Keo succeeding, because it meant he wasn’t coming back. She remembered watching him leaving with Erin and thinking that she was never going to see him again.

  “Who’s Keo?” Riley asked.

  Lara told him about Keo and him leaving with Erin.

  “Are you surprised she’s helping him?” Lara asked him.

  There was almost a ghost of a smile on his lips when he said, “Not at all.”

  “What do you think?” Hart asked.

  “About what?” Riley said.

  “He means Keo killing Mercer,” Lara said. “Is that going to stop the war?”

  Riley took a moment to think about it. She couldn’t tell if it was such a foreign concept that he was having trouble grasping the question or if he really was running through all the scenarios before answering.

  “Maybe,” he finally said. “There are a lot of people who’ll throw down their guns, but there’s also a lot who won’t.”

  “What about Rhett?” Hart asked.

  “I think he’ll argue for stopping the bombings, definitely. Bellamy, Jerkins, and Taylor might feel differently.”

  “But there is a chance,” Lara said.

  He nodded. “If your friend can kill Mercer, then yes, there’s a chance.” He looked over at her. “Can he do it?”

  “Keo’s very good.”

  “But can he do it?”

  “Yes,” she said. “If anyone can do it, it’s Keo.”

  Even if it kills him, she thought, but didn’t say that part out loud.

  25

  Keo

  He didn’t know if he should be pleased, disturbed, or slightly annoyed at how easy it was to move around the main building. As with the beach, there weren’t nearly enough people left behind on the island to post on every corner or watch every hallway, and accessing the facility was a simple matter of checking in at the guard station, where Erin did most of the talking; she was, after all, one of Mercer’s easily recognized lieutenants, and that came with a lot of respect.

  Once Keo separated from Erin on their way to the communal living quarters for the non-married people, he simply followed the numbers on the walls, which also happened to have helpful arrows pointing the way toward his destination. There wasn’t a single soul in sight to question, much less stop him. There wasn’t even an occasional soldier for him to worry about getting past; everyone who wasn’t sound asleep was already outside standing guard.

  “Technically he should be sleeping in the communal area because he’s single, but I guess even he couldn’t bring himself to justify that,” Erin had said before they went their separate ways. “It’s part of the role he’s playing. I recognize that now.”

  “The Everyman,” Keo had said.

  “Yes.”

  “What about guards?”

  “What you see is what you get. The rest will be coming back later today or the days after. Like you said, you’ll have to get it done before the sun comes up or it’s going to get a hell of a lot harder.”

  “No pressure.”

  “I’m serious, Keo,” she had said, stopping at a door marked Quarters and fixing him with a hard stare that was meant to deliver just how serious she was. Then, lowering her voice slightly to an almost whisper, “You were right to come here now, in the middle of the night. Everyone is either asleep or dead on their feet. What did you call it?”

  “The hour of the wolf.”

  She snapped a quick look past him and up the hallway. “Sooner or later, someone’s going to ask who you are. Mercer’s going to want an after-action report, and I’m going to have to explain what happened to Troy and the others. You understand?”

  “Relax,” Keo had said. “This isn’t my first rodeo.”

  “We have to stop him, Keo. I should have done it months ago when I had the chance, but I didn’t. That’s on me, and I’m going to have to live with the consequences for the rest of my life. So please, stop him. Do what I and Riley and everyone else couldn’t bring ourselves to do. End this.”

  Keo had nodded. “I will.”

  He was thinking of Jordan bleeding to death in his arms when he finally located the room he had been looking for, in the exact part of the building where Erin had told him he’d find it. There were no guards posted outside, or anywhere in this or the previous three hallways he had walked through, and when Keo tried the lever, it moved without resistance.

  Too easy. Way too easy.

  He put his hand on the Sig Sauer P250 and looked left, then right, then left again. He stood perfectly still and listened for sounds of running feet, shouting voices, and safeties being clicked off. Some indication that his trip from the singles living quarters to Mercer’s room had not gone completely unnoticed.

  But there was nothing.

  There would be dead silence if not for the hum of lights above him and the vibrations from generators in the background. No one was coming, rushing around the corners, or converging on his position so he couldn’t enter this room and take the life of the man on the other side.

  Way, way too easy.

  It had to be a trick. Maybe Erin had gotten some of the details wrong, or gotten the hallways mixed up. After all, except for the numbers marking each door, they all looked the same in the last four hallways he had walked down.

  “Are you sure?” he had asked her.

  “506,” she had said for the second time.

  “What if he moved?”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “What if he did?”

  “Why would he? He’s been in that room since we got to the island. He was there when we left for the mainland, and he’ll be there after returning.”

  He was staring at the number now.

  It had to be a trick, because this was too easy. It was just too goddamn easy.

  He sighed, thought, Fuck it, and pushed the door open and slipped inside, palming and drawing the Sig in one smooth motion as he did so.

  Once inside, he stood perfectly still, mostly because he couldn’t see a damn thing. After moving around in the brightly lit corridors the last five minutes, it took Keo a while for his eyes to adjust to near darkness. When he could finally make out gray floors, walls, and the shape of a small (much too small for someone of his position) cot at the back of the room, Keo searched out and found the light switch on the wall behind him and flicked it into the on position.

  In the second or two after the light bulb buzzed to life, Keo glimpsed the room’s Spartan design in a glance.

  It was essentially a big concrete box—nothing fancy or very big, but perfect for a grunt who needed a place—any place—to rest. There was nothing comfortable about it, but he’d been in worse places during jobs. Besides the cot at the far side, there was a flimsy-looking nightstand in the corner to his right with a canteen and a two-way radio sitting on top of it. A complete wardrobe was folded over the back of a wooden chair at the foot of the bed, with a pair of polished boots next to it. There was a closet carved out of the wall with just enough space for a dozen or so articles of clothing to dangle from hangers. A gun belt hung from a hook next to the bed with a pistol in the holster, but there wasn’t a rifle anywhere in the room that he could see.

  The springs on the bed creaked as the body on top of it moved suddenly, and Keo found himself wishing the pistol in his hand had a hammer so he could do the oh-so-dramatic click! like in the movies. He briefly thought about jerking back the gun’s slide to achieve the same drama, but that would have just ejected a perfectly good bullet.

  Instead, he had t
o make do with holding the gun at waist level and aiming forward at the figure sitting up in front of him, whipping a wool blanket sideways. From the looks of it, the man had fallen asleep while still wearing his uniform—the familiar tan color topped with a red collar and the white sun emblems stitched along the sides.

  The man swung his legs off the cot and stared across the narrow space at Keo while trying to blink sleep from his eyes. After what seemed like forever, he finally said, “Are you sure you have the right room, son?”

  Keo nodded. “Pretty sure.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I have an inside man.”

  “Ah.”

  Keo didn’t know why he didn’t just pull the trigger right then and there. The man wasn’t even armed, so it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

  So do it and get it over with. That’s what you came here to do, isn’t it? So get it over with already. Maybe you can still catch up to Lara and the Trident afterward…

  Except he didn’t. Not yet.

  The truth was, the whole thing threw him for a loop and Keo had to readjust on the fly. It wasn’t how he had pictured any of this going down at all, not even close. It didn’t help that the man in front of him looked nothing like how Keo had imagined him. For one thing, he was missing horns and hooves and a tail with a long pointy arrow at the end. His skin was more tanned than it was a shade of devil red, and he leaned more toward grandfatherly than mass murderer or war criminal.

  The man was in his fifties, with brown hair that looked almost blond against the slightly yellow ceiling light, and looked fit enough to be dangerous. In so many ways, Keo was reminded of Pollard, another ex-military officer who had made Keo’s life difficult. Just thinking about the other man made the scar along the side of Keo’s face tingle.

  He didn’t need to see the name Mercer stenciled across the man’s shirt to know who he was pointing a gun at. He was in the right room, all right; there was no question about that. Keo could read every line on the grizzled face, and even heavy with sleep there was intelligence and a certain (madness?) something about the eyes. Keo imagined the cogs spinning behind the worry lines that crisscrossed the man’s forehead, processing information and coming up with and discarding scenarios, even as the man gazed back at him.

  “I don’t recognize you,” Mercer finally said.

  “You know everyone on the island?” Keo asked.

  “Yes.” He stared at the gun in Keo’s hand for a brief second, then perhaps deciding there was nothing he could do about it, refocused on Keo’s face. “At least tell me your name, son.”

  I’m not your fucking son, asshole, Keo thought but didn’t say. Even the slightest bit of annoyance might give Mercer something to use against him.

  He willed himself to stay calm before answering, “Keo.”

  “Interesting name.”

  “It gets me free drinks in the bars.”

  “Does it really?”

  “Nah.”

  If Mercer was the least bit amused by that, it didn’t show on his face. “So what’s this all about, Keo?”

  “Oh, I think you know.”

  He sighed tiredly. “Maybe if you gave me some hints. Then again, it is the middle of the night, and I’m not exactly at my best.”

  “Your mom ever told you never to sleep in your clothes?”

  “Yes, but sleep is a precious commodity these days. You take it when it comes.” He paused, then, “I give up.”

  “Already?”

  “I’m very tired. Why don’t you just tell me why there’s a stranger with a gun pointed at me in my own quarters, and we’ll move on from there.”

  “I’ll give you a hint,” Keo said, and pulled a piece of paper out of his back pocket and crumpled it into a ball before tossing it over.

  Mercer caught it and opened it before taking a few seconds to straighten the sheet over one knee, then looked down at it. Keo thought the man might have been stalling for time, but he dismissed it. Mercer was simply letting him know that he would not be rushed, even with a gun pointed at him.

  “I hear Texas frowns on littering,” Keo said. “They even have an official motto and everything.”

  Mercer ignored him and laid the piece of paper on the cot next to him before looking back at Keo. “I take it you’re not here to enlist.”

  “’Fraid not, boss.” Keo gestured with the Sig Sauer. “But I am here to join the bullets in this gun with your brain.”

  Mercer’s mouth curved into a slight smile.

  “Her name was Jordan,” Keo said.

  “Was it?” Mercer said.

  “Your men killed her. She died in my arms.”

  “She was a collaborator.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. She was fighting them. We both were.”

  “Then I’m sorry.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes,” Mercer said. “But mistakes happen in war.”

  “Collateral damage?”

  “That’s right.” He narrowed his eyes at Keo. “I can tell you know a thing or two about that. But you’re not a soldier.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Yes. I can always tell just by looking at someone if they’re ex-military. It’s in their eyes, on their face, even in the way they stand or hold a gun. You know the Army, but you were never one of us. My guess is, someone you knew was. A parent, maybe. Or siblings. You grew up around the Army and maybe that’s why you steered clear of it, though in many ways you simply joined another Army, one with less strict…guidelines.”

  “Keep going…”

  “You’re a man of violence, with a long history of blood on his hands.”

  “You got all that just from looking at me, huh?”

  “I’m a fast study. And I’ve always been good at reading people.”

  “What else do you see?”

  “I don’t know how you got in here, but you don’t expect to leave alive. Not that you’re too worried about it. In fact, you’ve already accepted that things will end here for you, so long as you can take me with you.”

  “Not bad.”

  Mercer shrugged. “I have my moments.”

  “You should go on the road. Become a carnie.”

  “Not quite the future I had in mind,” Mercer said, and stood up.

  Keo watched the older man walk the short distance to the canteen sitting on the nightstand. He passed the gun belt hanging on the wall but never looked at it. Mercer opened the cap and took a slow, purposeful drink.

  “So this is personal,” Mercer said, lowering the canteen and brushing his lips with the back of a shirt sleeve. “Simple bloodthirsty revenge?”

  “Revenge gets a bad rap. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”

  “I’d rather waste my energy on more productive things.”

  Mercer spun the lid back into place before returning to the cot, passing the gun hanging off the wall a second time and sitting back down in almost the exact same spot. The springs creaked under him, the only other noise in the room besides the hum of the single light bulb, the generators in the background, and the sounds of their breathing.

  “You want to ask me something,” Mercer said. It wasn’t a question.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You haven’t shot me yet, so I assumed you have something else on your mind other than just killing me. Please, do go ahead. I’ll answer, if I’m able.”

  “Aren’t you the giving kind.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to leave this room feeling unfulfilled. After all, we both know you’re not going to get off the island alive.”

  “You’ve said that already.”

  “Because it’s true.”

  “I don’t know, I’m pretty good at this,” he said, gesturing with the Sig again.

  “Oh, I don’t have any doubts whatsoever about that, Keo. I know you’re an old hand at this.”

  Keo stared at the man. He could see now why people like Eri
n, Gregson, and even Hart would view Mercer as some kind of potential savior. The man was unsettlingly calm, even with a gun pointed at him. Mercer wasn’t the very least bit scared. He didn’t even seem slightly disturbed by what was happening, as if this was a regular occurrence for him.

  So shoot him and get it over with. What the hell are you waiting for?

  Because I have to know. I have to know…

  “Are you crazy?” Keo asked.

  The older man gave Keo a wry (disappointed?) look, as if to say, “That’s it? That’s all you could come up with?”

  “No,” Mercer said.

  “You must be crazy.”

  “Why ‘must’ I be?”

  “What you did in Texas, what you’re planning on doing next.”

  “Someone has to do something. It might as well be us. I don’t take any of this lightly, but—”

  “Someone has to do it,” Keo finished for him.

  Mercer nodded. “Yes. Someone had to do it.”

  “What happened, did you lose someone? Is that why you’ve gone cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs?”

  “Not at all.”

  “You didn’t lose anyone?”

  “We’ve all lost someone. Even you have, I’m sure. But that’s not anything new. It’s the cycle of life. We’re born and we die, and others are born and take our place. It’s how nature works. But there’s nothing natural about what’s happening in those towns. Man was not born to be enslaved at birth, Keo. We were not created to provide sustenance for monsters that shouldn’t exist. It’s unnatural.”

  “Some would say what you’re doing is unnatural.”

  “They’d be wrong. I’m trying to bring back the natural order of things. Fate saw fit to appoint that role to me, but I never asked for it.”

  “Fate?”

  “Fate. Destiny. God. Whatever you want to call what’s behind this.”

  “There’s nothing behind this.”

  “Of course there is. Just because you can’t grasp it, or see or feel it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

  “So God’s telling you to do this?”

  “Would it make you feel better to think of me as some Bible-thumping nutcase, Keo?”

  “Are you?”