The Purge of Babylon Series Box Set, Vol. 3 | Books 7-9

by Sisavath, Sam

  There. They were outside the building. Immediately outside. Hundreds, thousands. They could sense his presence in return. Not just him, but the other blue-eyed ghouls, too. The two lifeless ones buried with him, and somewhere out there, two more. Not dead, but close. Dying.

  The black eyes would not come in. They were confused and scared.

  The man was still looking at him, the sparks of curiosity evident in his eyes. “You know, don’t you? They were out there beating on the door until you and your pals started dancing around up on the roof. Then they retreated back into the street. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.”

  He didn’t answer. He wanted to, but when he sent the command, his mouth wouldn’t move and no sounds came out, not even the hiss that he despised so much.

  “Ah, sorry about that,” the man said. “Forgot to tell you, but you don’t really have lips anymore. Or a mouth, for that matter. I guess you’re going to have to grow them back, huh? Can you grow them back?”

  He blinked, and the man actually smiled.

  “She wanted me to shoot you in the head,” the man said. “We’ve had a recent history of not shooting people when we should have, so I don’t blame her. But I had to know.” He leaned in closer. “Can you hear me in there? Blink twice for yes and, well, I guess you wouldn’t blink if you can’t understand me, right?”

  The man stared at him, and there was a slight uptick in his heartbeat. He was anxious.

  So he blinked once, then a second time.

  “So you can hear me. Hot damn!” He rocked back on his feet. “What number am I thinking of?” A chuckle. “Just joshin’ ya, buddy. Or am I? You guys are psychic, right?”

  He didn’t blink.

  “No?”

  He remained still, eyes fixed on the man’s beaten and bruised face.

  “Just a bit?”

  The man sat down on the floor, the gun in his hand still draped nonchalantly over one bent knee. He could smell the fresh gunpowder in the air. All it would take was a shot to the head, just like with the other two dead blue eyes.

  “You were there, in Starch,” the man said.

  Starch? Yes, he remembered. It was a town not far from here, and of some significance to him. Or was it? His mind was stuck between trying to battle the pain and digging deep for memories that were slippery to the touch.

  Starch. Yes.

  He blinked twice.

  “What about outside of Larkin? In the airfield hangar? Did you have something to do with that, too?”

  Airfield? Hangar? He didn’t recall a Larkin. But then his recollection was unreliable at the moment in his fugue state.

  “No?”

  No? Yes? He wasn’t sure. With parts of his mind shut down to prevent the pain overload, it was hard to concentrate. There was a way to remember, but it would hurt. It would hurt a lot.

  “What are you doing?” Was that concern in the man’s voice? “Pain’s finally pulling into the station, huh? And here I thought you guys didn’t feel pain anymore. I guess it’s true what they say—you do learn something new every day.”

  Yes. Pain. A lot of it. And there was going to be more as he released the clamps that kept them at bay and his body began to burn. It started as small sensations, like tiny flickers of fire being lit before growing in intensity and beginning to flood the rest of him one brutal inch by brutal inch.

  But at the same time the fog began to lift and memories returned, and while he still had great difficulty sifting through them and recognizing what he was looking at, it became easier with every passing second.

  “Hey, you going to die on me or what? Um, again?”

  The events of tonight returned.

  Then last night.

  All the way back to a fortnight.

  No, too far.

  Back, back…

  The pain. God, the pain…

  Yes, Larkin. The airfield. The hangar. In the room…

  The pain!

  He blinked twice.

  The man raised both eyebrows. “Well, slap me on the ass and call me Sally.” Then, leaning forward again, “Who the fuck are you, buddy? What are you?”

  He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He knew who he was, but he had no voice and no ability to respond in any meaningful way. So he remained silent even as flames roared through him like lightning, scorching everything in their path. It was unlike anything he had experienced since the transformation, and he hoped never to face it again.

  Slowly, very slowly, he attempted to push them down, shutting off the pain receptors one by one by one…

  “I guess that was a stupid question,” the man said. “You not having a mouth to answer with and all.”

  No mouth. No lips. Or tongue. Could he regenerate a tongue?

  Maybe. He would find out soon enough.

  “Do you know me?” the man asked, his blue eyes watching him intently as if they could look into his soul.

  Soul? Did he even have a soul anymore—

  Wait. What did the man ask?

  “Do you know me?”

  Yes. He knew him.

  Didn’t he?

  Yes, it was in there somewhere, hidden in the deeper recesses of his mind. He had refused to let them go in all the weeks and months since she changed him. It was buried deep and stored at the very bottom where everything important resided. He didn’t go to them often because they were dangerous. Remembering the past, remembering her, was dangerous.

  But he dug through them now. Searching, searching…

  There.

  He blinked twice.

  “You know my name.”

  He remained still.

  “You know me, but you don’t remember my name?”

  Two blinks.

  “I don’t know if I should be insulted by that. I’m guessing I should, just a little.”

  Crunching sounds before a second figure appeared behind the first. The newcomer was tall and slim. Despite the blood and sweat and dirt, the natural smell of a woman clung to her skin. Where had she come from?

  “Are you done with it?” she asked. There was something in her voice—traces of fear and anger and…disgust? “Just put it out of its misery. Do they even still feel pain?”

  “Apparently they do,” the man said.

  “Shoot it and get it over with.”

  “He knows me.”

  “What?”

  “He knows me,” the man repeated. “He was at Larkin. And Starch.”

  “The one at Larkin looks nothing like this one. It had black eyes, remember?”

  “I know, but it says it was there. And I believe it.”

  “You believe it? Danny, for God’s sake, look at it.”

  Danny.

  The name was like precious cargo rising to the top of his mind after being buried in the ocean for a millennia. He grasped desperately for it and held on, afraid it would slip out of his reach. It was important, this name.

  Danny.

  “Sua Sponte.”

  “Rangers lead the way.”

  “Not yet,” the human named Danny said. “I don’t know what’ll happen if I shoot it.”

  “It’ll die,” the woman said. Her name eluded him, but it was familiar, and down there somewhere, too.

  Danny…

  “Yes, it will,” Danny said, and turned to look at her, “but I don’t know what that’ll do to all the party people standing outside our walls right now.”

  The woman shot a quick, nervous glance across the room. He didn’t know what she was looking at.

  “I’m more concerned with our lack of a full roof at the moment,” Danny said, pointing at the open holes in the ceiling above him.

  “You think they’ll come in if it dies?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the point.”

  “So what, then?”

  Danny looked back at him and tilted his head slightly to one side, as if trying to mirror his unwitting pose.

  “Danny,” the woman (girl?) said. “What are you going to do with it? W
e can’t just leave it there. What if it digs itself out?”

  “I don’t think it can.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Mostly sure.”

  “Have you been…talking to it?”

  “Yes and no. It’s been mostly a one-way conversation with a few blinks thrown in. Might be worth waiting for it to grow its mouth back so we can have a proper tête-à-tête.”

  “Can it…do that?”

  “I have no idea what it can or can’t do. That’s one reason I haven’t sent him to the big Blue Yonder yet. Maybe we can learn something from him. If that’s even possible; I don’t want to just throw the opportunity out the window.”

  “‘Him?’”

  “What?”

  “You just called it ‘him,’ Danny.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Well, technically I’m not wrong. It was a him, once upon a time.”

  “But not anymore.”

  “That boat would seem to have sailed a while ago, yup.”

  The girl shivered in the darkness. “Are you just going to sit here all night and talk to it?”

  “That’s the general idea. You should go keep Natmillian company. I’ll shout if I need a hand.”

  The girl turned to leave, but not before looking back at him one last time. Then she was gone and he heard whispers, followed by the presence of a third heartbeat somewhere outside the room that he hadn’t noticed earlier because of his weakened state.

  Danny had moved closer while he wasn’t paying attention and was now peering at him. There was a new intensity in his eyes as he stared, as if he was searching for something important.

  What was he looking for? More importantly, what did he expect to find? What was there left to be found? What if all Danny saw was a lifeless corpse that refused to die, with an empty black hole where a soul used to be—

  “Jesus Christ,” Danny said, his voice barely rising above a whisper.

  Then, as if he was afraid to say the word out loud:

  “Will?”

  Book Three

  Shoot The Messenger

  19

  Keo

  Once in the boat and on their way, Keo paid attention to his surroundings for the first ten or so minutes, but after a while his mind started to wander. After all, there were only so many identical stretches of ocean you could stare at until it got old real fast, which in Keo’s case was around the twenty-or-so-minute mark.

  Instead, he spent his time observing Erin, Troy, and the other four in the boat with him. The only time they stopped was to pour gas into the boat’s tank from the generous supply they had brought with them. Keo couldn’t begin to guess where they were headed, though he’d never thought of The Ranch as being out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Just the name alone had him envisioning fields of grass and grazing cattle and possibly a horse or two. But no, they were definitely heading farther and farther out to sea.

  Maybe The Ranch was a submarine or a ship. Maybe even one of the many Navy destroyers or aircraft carriers that no one had seen since The Purge. What about an adrift oil tanker being commanded by a one-eyed maniac? The possible identity of The Ranch became more elaborate as the sights (What sights?) around him remained the same and boredom set in again.

  Keo sat at the stern of the offshore vessel with his hands and legs duct taped, empty red gasoline cans tapping against his boots as the boat moved against the waves. They had restrained his legs only after he had climbed onboard, as if he could escape with his hands bound. He wasn’t even sure he could swim if he fell overboard. How long could he tread water before he succumbed to fatigue and drowned? He was a good swimmer, but he wasn’t that good.

  The good news was that he had stopped bleeding and no longer needed a wad of paper stuffed up his nostrils. His exposed forehead and nose had gone mostly numb from the chill of the winds plastering him nonstop. He would have liked a painkiller or two to dull the remaining pain, but that wasn’t one of the options offered up by his captors. Which was to say, they didn’t offer up any options whatsoever.

  Troy and Erin sat on both sides of him on raised chairs, while the unnamed two that had come with him from Texas sat on a bench at the front. No one had said a word since they cast off, and the only noise was the wind roaring in Keo’s face. Although they had been traveling for some time, it didn’t look as if they had made any progress. Of course, that could have just been because the damn scenery never seemed to change.

  Eventually the never-ending blur of ocean and nothingness took their toll, and Keo stopped fighting the boredom and closed his eyes, only to wake up with a start when a hand pushed at his shoulder. He opened his eyes to the sight of Erin leaning in front of him with what almost looked like a smile.

  “What?” he said, shouting over the wind to be heard.

  “First and last warning,” she shouted back. “You nod off and fall overboard, and we’re not stopping to fish you out. Without your arms and legs, I’m guessing you’ll sink right to the bottom.”

  “Unless the sharks mistake you for snacks first,” Troy said. “Might be the most merciful thing. I hear drowning sucks.”

  “Sharks, huh?” Keo said.

  “It’s an ocean, numbnuts. There are sharks and a lot of other things out here you don’t wanna come face-to-face with.”

  Keo stared at Troy for a moment, wondering if the man actually believed that or if this was just a bad attempt at intimidation. He decided it might have been a little of the former and a lot of the latter.

  Troy grinned, proving him correct. “Just fucking with you, Bruce.”

  “Bruce?” Keo said.

  “He thinks you’re Chinese,” Erin said. “Bruce Lee?”

  “I’ve been mistaken for worse.”

  “Like what?” Troy asked.

  “A guy named Fred who I used to know back in the day.”

  “What’s so bad about Fred?”

  “That’s what Fred asked himself every day.”

  Troy gave him a puzzled look.

  Erin flashed Keo another almost smile. “Give him a minute. Troy can be slow on the uptake sometimes.”

  “Fuck off,” Troy said, and turned back into the wind.

  Keo took a second to scan his surroundings in case things had changed since he last had his eyes open. He shouldn’t have bothered. There was still just water—lots and lots of water—shimmering underneath the afternoon sun.

  “Almost there,” Erin said, as if reading his mind.

  “The Ranch?” Keo asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “So, what’s ‘there?’”

  “You’ll find out when we get there.”

  Keo looked ahead, and he didn’t see anything but an empty horizon and an endless field of blue water. “I don’t see anything…”

  “It’s out there.”

  “And what’s going to happen when we get there? Are you going to kill me, Erin?”

  “That’s not my call.”

  “Whose call is it?”

  “You’ll find out.”

  “When we get there.”

  She nodded. “That’s right.”

  Keo sat back and checked to make sure his jacket’s zipper was done all the way up to his neck. It might have been his imagination, but he swore it had gotten a lot colder since he was last awake.

  “I don’t think Troy likes me,” he shouted to Erin.

  This time she came so close to a smile that Keo decided to go ahead and call it one anyway, as she said, “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  It was an oil rig in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.

  Keo had to admit, of all the possible locations for The Ranch he had considered, an oil rig had never occurred to him. Though, as he stared at the gray concrete foundations and yellow stripes crisscrossing the platforms, he thought it made perfect sense. It was isolated and surrounded by water, and even if it ever came under attack by collaborators, you wouldn’t need that many people to defend it. I
n fact, he counted at least a half dozen locations where snipers could hold off an assault force by inflicting enough damage to dissuade them. The crane sticking out of the side of the massive structure was one of those places.

  Keo looked over at Erin. “The Ranch?”

  “No. Just the ‘there’ before the real ‘there,’” Erin said. “It’s called the Ocean Star, and it’s just a waypoint station.” She kicked at one of the empty cans near his feet. “We need to refuel.”

  “So not The Ranch.”

  “I guess you’re not as dumb as you look,” Troy said.

  “A lot of people would disagree.”

  “I bet.”

  “Give it a rest,” Erin said. “You two sound like an old married couple.”

  “I call groom,” Keo said.

  Erin ignored him and climbed off her raised chair and walked the short distance to the center, where the two men who had picked them up stood at the helm. The rushing wind prevented Keo from hearing what they were saying, not that he needed to know to get the gist of it. They were going to dock underneath the oil rig.

  “City on the sea,” Erin said as she walked back to him. “That’s what they call these things. They’ll be here long after we’re gone. Of course, by then the birds will have taken over. At least that way they won’t be a total blight on nature.”

  Keo glanced up at a flock of birds flashing by overhead, making a straight line for the metal structure in the near distance.

  “How many of these do you guys have out here?” he asked Erin.

  “Need-to-know,” Erin said.

  “That’s why I asked. I need to know.”

  She smirked and grabbed her things off the floor and slung her pack while Troy did the same on Keo’s other side. Neither one looked nearly as impressed as he had been with the rig’s continually growing size, which told him they had been here before. Likewise for the four in front of him as they guided the boat under the Ocean Star and prepared to dock.

  “Am I going up there, too?” Keo asked.

  “Unless you’d rather wait for us down here,” Erin said.

  “The weather’s nice, and maybe I can borrow a fishing pole, get us some chow while you guys go do your thing up there.”