The Purge of Babylon Series Box Set, Vol. 2 | Books 4-6

by Sisavath, Sam

  “Is that it?” Gaby said, looking down at the map. It was covered in Lara’s notes, with a barely-visible dot in the middle of the ocean heavily circled. “Bengal Island?”

  “Bengal Islands. There’s a main one and a smaller companion island.”

  Lara hadn’t said it with a lot of enthusiasm—or, at least, not as much as Gaby had expected when talking about a place that was supposed to be their salvation.

  “What’s wrong?” Gaby asked.

  “We don’t know what’s waiting for us there,” she said, staring at the map as if she could see all the bad things lurking if she just stared hard and deep enough.

  “Isn’t it like that everywhere?”

  “Yes, but this place…it has everything we need, and everything we don’t want.”

  “Like?”

  “People with guns. A lot of guns. Bad people.”

  “Badder than us?” Gaby smiled.

  “According to Keo…yes. Way badder.”

  They didn’t say anything for a moment, and Lara seemed to drift off with her thoughts again. They were standing across the table from each other, but her friend might as well be on the other side of the continent.

  “So what do we do?” Gaby finally asked.

  “We’ll figure it out,” Lara said. “Whatever happens, whatever’s out there, we’ll adapt and survive.”

  “He said something similar to me back on Route 13.” Again, she didn’t have to say who “he” was. “He said, ‘Whatever happens, keep moving forward. Don’t stop to look back. Keep moving forward, because that’s how we survive.’”

  Lara pursed her lips, then walked around the table and embraced her. Gaby wrapped as much of her arms around Lara as possible, careful to avoid her bandages. She was fighting back tears and could tell Lara was doing the same thing, Lara’s body trembling noticeably against hers.

  “Adapt or perish,” Gaby said, just barely able to contain herself. “We should make a banner and hang it somewhere.”

  Lara laughed and pulled back. The two of them took turns exchanging embarrassed smiles. “I like the sound of that.”

  Gaby pushed off the table, needing to go before she ended up bawling like a little kid. She couldn’t allow that to happen, because that childish version of her had been excised and she couldn’t afford to let her back in. Not now.

  “Anyway, I’m going to go keep Blaine company,” Gaby said. “I don’t think he’s slept at all the last couple of days.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  Gaby walked to the door.

  “Hey,” Lara said.

  She stopped and looked back.

  “He saved us,” Lara said. “Josh. Despite what he did to Danny, if he hadn’t pushed the boat off the beach…”

  Gaby smiled at her and was surprised how easily it came out. “That was the Josh I always wanted you to meet. That was him back there. Not the one in the uniform, or the one that shot Danny, but the one that I grew up across the street from.”

  “He was a good kid, that Josh.”

  “He was.”

  Lara nodded. “Okay, enough chick talk. Go check on Blaine, make sure he doesn’t nod off and drop into the Gulf of Mexico.”

  “Aye aye, boss,” Gaby said, giving her a mock salute as she left.

  She closed the door behind her and walked along the hallway, her footsteps seemingly louder than even the hum vibrating along every inch of the yacht, originating from the engine room three levels below.

  “Whatever happens,” Will had said, “keep moving forward. Don’t stop to look back. Keep moving forward, because that’s how we survive.”

  She owed it to Will to keep going. And Josh too, because for all his faults—and there were many—the boy she knew had returned to her last night when it mattered. And there was Nate, and Carly, and Danny, and everyone else onboard the Trident at the moment. She owed it to them, and to herself, too.

  We’ll keep going, Will, because that’s what you taught us.

  We’ll adapt, and we’ll keep going...and we’ll survive.

  Epilogue

  “Come home.”

  Night after night, and sometimes even in the day, they chased him. Hunted him. It didn’t matter how many times he got away; they always picked up his scent again, and the chase would resume.

  It wasn’t the other blue eyes he had to worry about. They weren’t any faster or stronger or smarter than him. No, it was really just the one person (thing) he couldn’t escape, regardless of how high he climbed, how deep he dug, or how long he ran.

  Mabry.

  The name echoed inside his head. It was always there, lingering at the corners of his mind, waiting to spring. Its voice was like that of a patient father, whispering to him, cajoling him to do things he didn’t want to.

  “Come home,” it would say. “You took her from me. Now you have to take her place.”

  He wouldn’t answer, because responding would be to give himself away. He didn’t know how he knew, he just did.

  “You can’t run forever.”

  Escape was impossible, because Mabry was a part of him, the way he (it) was a part of Kate and the ghouls that stalked the darkness, that chased him even now. They all came from Mabry, like the veins of a river.

  Thousands of veins.

  Tens of thousands.

  Millions.

  The war was lost. He knew that now, even though he once tried to delude himself into thinking otherwise. Or maybe he had really, truly wanted to believe it. Not for himself, but for her. For the others, too. He had come to his senses days ago.

  Or was it weeks ago?

  Months?

  Impossible. It couldn’t have been months. Or even weeks.

  Could it?

  How long had he been running, trying to stay one step ahead of them, one step ahead of Mabry? Time was fluid, especially when all he could see was darkness. That was his life now. Racing through the blackness, the nothingness. He had forgotten the feel of the sun against his skin, the warmth caressing his flesh…

  Flesh.

  …and bones.

  Thinking about it only made it worse, so he concentrated on surviving instead. He was good at it. Had always been. Even now, when he was a remnant of what he used to be, he still knew how to stay alive.

  He crouched in that always present darkness now, listening to them moving in front of him. They had come down the stairs a few seconds ago, somehow tracking him across the last three cities and dozen towns and hundreds of miles of countryside and woods. All the way down to this basement, in a house that hadn’t been lived in for a year. It didn’t matter how far he went, how deep he hid, they always found him.

  “You can’t hide forever.”

  A small splash of moonlight intruded on the basement from a high window just above his head. Not that he needed light of any kind to see with. His eyes were different now—they were made for the darkness.

  There were two of them, and he recognized what they were almost immediately, even before he saw the deep blue glow of their eyes. He could feel them. Sense them when they were nearby. It wasn’t the same as with the black-eyed ones. Their thoughts may have been shut off from him, but the air was different—it smelled and even moved differently—when they were around. He could always tell how many there were just by the way the wind moved, their aura like a living thing pressing against his flesh.

  They were talking, but their lips weren’t moving. No. They had a more efficient method of communication now. Sometimes, when he was close enough and they let their guards down, he could hear their thoughts and eavesdrop on their conversations.

  And he learned.

  “How did you ever think you could beat us when you know so little?” she had said to him once.

  But he was learning. Slowly, he was learning.

  In the quiet moments when he found shelter and was safe from pursuit, he let himself think about all the things he knew about them. He knew so much now that he didn’t know before, but it still wasn�
�t enough. Not nearly enough.

  Not yet, anyway.

  That was always the tricky part: Seeing the options and choosing the right one to exploit. But in order to do that, he had to have more information.

  More. Always more—

  One of the creatures had turned its head in his direction. It had sensed him, maybe in the same way he could always tell when they were around. Why hadn’t he realized that possibility earlier?

  Before the first blue eyes could act, he leaped out of the corner and straight at it. He was fast. So much faster than he used to be. At first it had frightened him, but now he embraced it because his survival depended on it. The speed, the ferocity, the ability to move almost instantly as soon as his mind conjured up the idea.

  The skinny thing, eyes blazing blue, made to lift its arms in defense, but he smashed into it with everything he had. It crashed into the second one, and all three of them tumbled in a tangle of limbs and clacking bones to the floor.

  Before the first one could right itself underneath him, he drove his fingers—all five digits pressed flat against each other like steel knives—into the side of its neck and pushed, pushed, pushed until it came out the other side. With his other hand, he gripped the creature’s head, fingers digging into its eye sockets, and pulled.

  There was a soft wet pop! as the head came free, and black blood arced through the air, splashing the walls and floor of the basement and his chest. He ignored the thick liquid, the taste of it against his lips, and flung the head across the room. The body slumped back to the floor with a dull thoomp, black tainted blood slurping out of the stump that used to be a neck.

  The second blue-eyed ghoul had risen, and it looked at its dead brethren. Then it sneered at him.

  “Come home,” it said inside his head.

  But it wasn’t this creature standing in front of him talking. No, it was someone (something) else.

  Mabry.

  He (it) was speaking through the blue-eyed ghoul standing in front of him now.

  “It doesn’t matter where you run,” it said. “I can follow you to the ends of the Earth. Come home. Come take her place by my side. You belong with us now.”

  “Never,” he hissed, and leaped at the creature.

  About The Isles of Elysium

  Copyright (c) 2015 Sam Sisavath

  Every journey has an ending.

  He’s survived the Purge and battled overwhelming odds, but now Keo is back on the road and more determined than ever to fulfill a promise made nearly half a year ago.

  What he didn’t expect—or want—was to end up in another bloody conflict.

  With the help of some old friends and some dangerous new ones, Keo must figure out a way to keep everyone he cares for alive. In a world where creatures maintain unquestioned dominion over the night and opportunists lord over the day, that’s easier said than done.

  Keo is not the devil-may-care mercenary he once was, but he’s never backed down from a fight before, and he’s not going to start now.

  A year after The Purge, mankind is still an endangered species, but the Isles may finally offer the path to victory…

  Book One

  Welcome to Texas

  Chapter One

  I should have stayed on the Trident.

  That thought rushed through Keo’s head as he watched water from Galveston Bay pool around his boots. The only thing standing between him and the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico at the moment was the fiberglass hull of the boat that had been his home for the last three days and two nights.

  And the morning had started off so well, too.

  He was halfway through a bag of roast beef MRE, and Santa Marie Island—the place he had been chasing for half a year—was finally within sight. There were times when he didn’t think he’d ever actually make it here. After all the days and nights, weeks and months, and the pile of trouble that he’d had to overcome, there it was.

  Pollard, Song Island, and ghouls.

  Lots of ghouls.

  A hell of a lot of ghouls.

  But there it was, at last, and he was so close he could almost feel the sharp edges of the rocks that haloed the ridgeline of the island. The rooftops of houses poked out from one side to the other, and there was a raised hill in the center of the place with a couple of residences on top of it. One of those homes would have made a perfect sniper’s perch.

  I bet Danny and Gaby could hold off an army from up there.

  He had approached the island from the east and could just make out the marina with the naked eye. It extended out from near the bottom of the oval-shaped landmass and was a welcoming sight, even if he couldn’t spot a single boat among the slips. Not that he expected to find any. If previous experience was any indication, boats were few and far between these days. Or, at least, ones that weren’t already being used by ghoul collaborators, guys he’d rather avoid whenever possible.

  Santa Marie Island was coveted real estate, and according to Rachel, he was looking at an island that was eight kilometers long and one and a half wide. The size made it easy to spot from a distance once he slipped into Galveston Bay. There it was, sticking out of the ocean like a fabled land, with the Texas coastline (Everything’s bigger in Texas) surrounding it in the background.

  He was a few minutes away from finally reaching land, finding Gillian, and finally (finally!) running in slow motion up the beach and into her arms like in the movies. Keo should have felt dumb running that kind of scenario through his head, but what the hell, he was feeling a little giddy at that moment.

  That was when the guy came out of nowhere and started shooting at him.

  Keo assumed it was a guy, anyway. The shooter was positioned on the ridge to the left of the marina. The man was a decent shot and the round plopped! into the water just a few feet from Keo’s starboard.

  For about four seconds after the shot, Keo had a rare moment of indecision.

  Maybe it was the fact that he had finally (finally!) reached Santa Marie Island after months of traveling that slowed his reaction time, or maybe he just hadn’t expected the first person he would see after three days on the ocean would try to kill him. Considering the past year, he really shouldn’t have been that surprised. Who wasn’t shooting at him these days?

  He was back to his old self just as the second loud crack! rang out and was followed by a bullet punching into the floor of his twenty-two-footer just a couple of feet from the nose of his boots.

  Water instantly began to spring inside, pooling around his feet.

  Oh, hell.

  The third shot nearly took his head off. It was so close that Keo heard the zip! as the large-caliber round slashed through the air a few inches from his right ear. He finally did what he should have done when he heard the first shot and dropped to his stomach, bracing with his hands against the now-wet floor of the boat.

  He reached to his right and grabbed the steering end of the trolling motor, jerking it left until the boat started to turn. The good news was due to the motor’s low power, he had only traveled another twenty meters toward the island after the first shot. The bad news was that it was taking longer to turn than he would have liked, and meanwhile the guy had a perfect (and closer) bead on him.

  Crack! Crack! Crack!

  Three more shots, about three seconds apart. That meant the guy was using a bolt-action rifle. It took at least one second to eject the spent shell casing, another second to punch in a new round, then a third second to take aim and squeeze the trigger. Three seconds was impressive, but it also meant the guy wasn’t taking his time. He was shooting too fast, either because he was an amateur and was rushing it, or he was really good.

  Keo leaned toward the former when a fourth bullet sailed harmlessly over his head and a fifth punched into the starboard because Keo was forced to present that side of the boat as he completed the U-turn. The last round missed by a mile.

  Then the boat had finished its turn, and Keo kept it pointed away from the island. He waited for more s
hots—he was still well within range of a bolt-action with a good scope—but none came. The shooter had apparently decided to save his ammo. Or maybe the idea was just to scare Keo away. He wasn’t exactly scared (Okay, maybe just a little), but he had definitely gotten the hint: He wasn’t welcome on Santa Marie Island.

  He turned his attention to the Gulf of Mexico making its way into his boat. The craft had continued to take in water while he was scrambling to keep his head attached to his shoulders, and the shiny half-empty bag of MRE he had been eating a moment ago was now floating in front of him.

  Damn. I should have stayed on the Trident…

  He didn’t stop completely until he had put another 200 meters between him and the shooter and felt safe enough to cut off the trolling motor and pick himself up from the wet floor. Keo plugged up the bullet holes with wooden plugs from an emergency kit, then spent the next twenty minutes collecting and tossing the water back into Galveston Bay using a ceramic mug with “The World’s Greatest Boat Captain” written on the side. The mug was a good-bye gift from Lara before he left her and the Trident behind. There was still water in the boat when he finally stopped to rest, but at least he wasn’t sinking anymore.

  After the short rest, Keo walked up to the bow and looked back at the island with a pair of binoculars. He could just make out the lone figure standing at the same part of the ridge as before, watching him back with his own binoculars. If the man expected him to just turn around and leave, he was very disappointed right now, because Keo wasn’t going anywhere.

  Gillian was on that island. Or she was supposed to be. Either way, he wasn’t leaving, not after all the trouble he’d gone through to get here.

  Keo was still too far away to make out the face or any distinguishing features on his nemesis. At first he thought it might have been Mark shooting at him, but he dismissed that idea because Mark couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, much less a moving boat. Of course, it didn’t take a well-trained sniper to hit a slow-moving target like his twenty-two-footer, especially if that rifle was equipped with a really good scope.