The Spears of Laconia (Purge of Babylon, Book 7) (41 page)

“Call him,”
it hissed, louder this time.

Jordan stirred and shivered in his lap. Something about its voice must have dug all the way into her subconscious. Keo stroked her hair to calm her. If they were going to die tonight, he’d rather she didn’t see it coming. He wished he could have taken that option himself.

Hell, he was wishing for a lot of things at the moment. Though, for some reason he still couldn’t explain,
he wasn’t afraid
.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” he said to the creature.

The blue-eyed ghoul cocked its head to one side. Reading him? Maybe trying to gauge if he was lying. The “smile” had vanished in the meantime.

“No,” it said. “You don’t know, do you? Because he’s spared you.” It might have laughed; it was an unnatural and choked sound that could, in the right circumstances, be mistaken for laughter. “He’s still trying to hold onto his humanity, trying to deny his real nature. But that doesn’t mean I can’t still use you to bring him to us, meat.”

Frank. It’s talking about Frank.

Maybe he was still alive out there after all. Why was he so surprised? He had seen Frank survive a lot of things. What was one more impossible situation?

Frank. You out there, pal? I could really use your help right now.

But it wasn’t Frank who was gripping one of the cage bars in front of him. Keo could actually hear its bony fingers tightening against the metal—just before it gave a swift pull and the padlock broke off, and the door swung open.

“I won’t be nearly as gentle,” it hissed as it stepped inside the cage.

FRANK

He’d tracked them
from the hangar and into the woods, then to a cottage with two girls sleeping inside, and finally back here, where, in so many ways, his old life found its real purpose. The trees were just as thick as he remembered; the ground as unruly; and there, on the other side of the woods, the bitter wetness of lake water against his tongue. They were using an old truck, and it had been leaking motor oil and a variety of other fluids all the way from Larkin.

As he sat perched on a tree, hidden in a fold of darkness, he could smell them all around him. The woods were teeming with them. Thousands. Tens of thousands. The canopies so thick and high they sheltered them from the sunlight even in the daytime.

He jumped down now and picked his way through the shadows, slipping and hiding when necessary. He knew where it was. The town. He’d been through it so many times with Danny in the past. It was just as deserted now as when they’d first found it almost a year ago. Even the surrounding areas had been raided, the few survivors plucked from their holes and basements and fed to Mabry’s machinations.

He moved cautiously through the heart of Starch, darting between homes and buildings and apartments, picking his way around the shadows and alleyways and always staying one step ahead—or behind—the black eyes. They were out there, searching among the town, beyond it; all across the state. He could sense the anxiousness in them, in the voices that echoed inside his head.

“Find them, kill them,”
the voices said.
“These humans have to be taught a lesson. This is our world now.”

The man named Mercer had done that. He and his army of silver-armed killers. His attacks yesterday had been unexpected, the first time Mabry was ever caught off guard. It was less the destruction, the deaths, and the waste of resources that had bothered Mabry; it was that he hadn’t seen it coming. They’d had it so easy this last year. The humans were cooperating, the towns were thriving, and the blood was flowing freely.

And then, and then, a wrench in the cog named Mercer.

“You’re grasping at straws,”
Mabry had said to him.

Perhaps not. Perhaps not, after all…

He had to be very careful because there were blue eyes in the area. Not in Starch, but close enough. He could feel their close proximity in the way the air shifted. They could easily converge if he was exposed, so he couldn’t be seen.

Then something else—a new smell. Sweat against dirty skin.
Humans.

He paused to listen in the shadows. They couldn’t see him, because human senses were limited. They were bundles of nervous energy tonight, their hands slicked with perspiration even in the cold weather. The months had been too good to them, and they had reverted to their old selves—fat, lazy, and privileged—and they were no longer used to being in the darkness at the same time as the black eyes.

They turned their heads too fast and kept their voices low as they talked amongst each other, as if afraid of being overhead. Their words were muffled by the various-shaped gas masks snapped too tightly over their faces. Why the masks? Because they were told to, in order to make it easier on the black eyes to tell the difference between the uniforms, because Mercer’s people wore uniforms too, and the black eyes were easily fooled.

“Stay away,”
the voices had said.
“Stay away from the soldiers with masks.”

They were searching the buildings along Main Street, yet another part of the town he was familiar with. He had gone into every building and checked every room with Danny and the others. A long time ago now. Was this where Danny had gone? He had lost their track somewhere in a parking lot a few streets back, where they had abandoned the leaking vehicle.

Beams from flashlights sliced across the endless waves of darkness. The crackle of radios back and forth, the loud
crunch
of heavy boots. And every now and then, nervous conversation between the small group. He was so close to them he could have reached out and snapped their necks. It was tempting. So, so tempting.

“The airfield,” one of them was saying. “Shit, it was a fucking massacre. Everyone’s fucking dead.”

“How many?” someone asked.

“Hundreds. I lost count. We didn’t even bother to pull out the bodies.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“No, man, I’m telling you, the whole airfield was just gone. Bodies everywhere under all that mess. I think they rigged the ground with bombs or something.”

“Jesus,” someone else said.

“Maybe we’re on the wrong side,” the second one said, dropping his voice to barely a hushed whisper.

The first one laughed softly. Or tried to. It came out choked and desperate to be convincing. “Look around you. It doesn’t matter how many tanks or planes they have, or how many bombs they drop. They’re never going to beat this. Trust me: we chose the right side.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” the second one said. He had a bit of confidence that time. “The planet’s theirs. Nothing we can do about it now.”

“How’s Rachel coming along?”

“Good, good. Two more months and she’s gonna pop that kid right out.”

A brief exchange of nervous laughter before they moved on, entering a new building as a group. Quick and efficient movements, clear signs they had practiced this. He was almost impressed.

A
bang!
tore through the street, so loud he would have heard it from across the city.

The soldiers that had gone into the building rushed out, their heavy boots pounding against the pavement like explosions.

“What was that? Who fired?” someone shouted. “Where’d that shot come from?”

The squawk of a radio, but by then he was already pushing up the side of a brick apartment and blocking out the voices. He reached the edge, pulled himself up, then raced across the rooftop.

The air around him shifted as the black eyes, somewhere in the outskirts of the city, reacted to the sound.

More gunshots, like rolling thunder, poured up the street one after another. Automatic rifles.

There, a hardware store in a strip mall. It looked familiar…

The gunshots got louder as he neared. One after another, after another. Like a ringing dinner bell to every set of black eyes in the area. The blue eyes had noticed too, but they hadn’t converged. Why not? Because random gunfire wasn’t something they concerned themselves with. Besides, the humans were here. They’d take care of it. And if they couldn’t, the black eyes would.

Good. That would give him some time.

He flung himself off the roof and landed in the parking lot, then raced toward the store. Silhouetted figures moved on the other side of the windows, the staccato flashes of discharging weapons blinking on and off inside the darkened building.

A blast of warm air as he entered the store and skipped over a rotating rack that had fallen, spilling cheap trinkets across the floor. One of the three figures turned around, sensing him. Wide eyes attempted to focus on his moving form as he slipped between two aisles. The man was confused by his presence—or maybe the trench coat that fluttered around him, or possibly the sight of the hoodie draped over his head—and didn’t know whether to shoot or welcome him.

Before the collaborator could decide, three shots exploded behind him. One after another. Evenly spaced, clearly from the hands of an expert.

The sounds of crumpling bodies followed by…silence.

“Fuck me on a stick,” a voice whispered.

Danny.

Boots squeaked as Danny turned, trying to track him with a rifle. All it would take was a single headshot. Danny was good, and fully capable.

He swerved around the racks, but Danny didn’t shoot. Not yet. He wouldn’t commit until he had a target—

Bang!

His left ear disappeared against the bullet, but he kept moving.

A second shot. This one sailed harmlessly past him while he was in midair.

Faster!

He landed on top of Danny, grabbed the rifle by the barrel, and threw it away. Danny let out a startled gasp, but that didn’t last, and his right hand reached down for the handgun stuffed into his front waistband.

He grabbed Danny’s wrist and pinned it to the floor. An unceremonious grunt, but no screaming. Not from Danny, whose own blue eyes glared up at him, daring him. But these blue eyes were filled with life and humanity, unlike his own.

Danny swung, hitting him in the side of the face with a balled fist. He barely felt it the first time, the second time, or the third time.

“Stop it,” he hissed.

Danny stopped punching him. He stopped moving completely.

He could see it in those very human blue eyes—the confusion, the realization that once again everything he thought he knew about the universe had changed.

“They’re coming,” he hissed. “The uniforms and gas masks. Put them on. Let them see you. It’s the only way.”

More confusion swept across Danny’s face.

“It’ll work,” he hissed, hating the sound that came out of his mouth, the
unnaturalness
of every word.

He wrestled the gun out of Danny’s hand and climbed off, bounding over the counter. He dropped the gun on the floor as he went and pushed through the door.

Cold air attacked him at the same time as the jungle of arms and legs and teeth. He’d misjudged their distance. The black eyes had been much closer and converged much, much faster than he had anticipated.

“There you are.”
Mabry’s voice, echoing triumphantly inside his head.
“I told you, sooner or later I’d find you.”

He fought through the limbs collapsing all around him, but there were too many. They climbed over him and dragged him down to the street, pummeling him to the pavement with their sheer numbers.

“I always do.”

He grabbed the closest creature and snapped its neck, then detached the head from the spinal cord with a soft
pop!
He dug two fingers into its eye sockets and swung it like a bowling ball. A head cratered, another jerked out of his path, but still they scrambled over him, biting and clawing and holding on.

“Haven’t you tired of running yet?”

He swung and punched and kicked. Clumps of black blood erupted and savaged the air, covering him. He drove his fist through a sunken chest, the resistance like flimsy plastic wrap, and speared flesh and bone with his sharp elbows.

“You can’t save them. You can’t even save yourself.”

The skull in his hand turned brittle and fell apart. He let it go and grabbed two of the black eyes and whipped them right and left, then forward, before pushing, pushing with both feet and for all he was worth.

“All your plans. Your Plan Z’s. What good are they now?”

Push. Don’t stop. Push. Push!
Push!

“Look at you. You’re pathetic.”

Finally! He was out of the pile and racing up the street. Except they were everywhere, reaching for his arms and legs and head. They were doing whatever they could to stall him until the blue eyes could arrive. And they were coming. He could feel their drawing presence in the air.

“Why do you keep fighting me?”

Fingers cut into his flesh, and bone cracked against him as he leapt onto a vehicle, the roof caving under him as he landed. He didn’t stop, didn’t hesitate, and immediately jumped again and grappled onto the streetlight above. He had momentum on his side and flung himself up toward the edge of a nearby rooftop. Reached out—and almost missed the edge!

“Why won’t you admit the truth?”

He pulled himself up, the loud patter of footsteps around him like thunderbolts. They were already inside the building and racing up the stairs. There were even more climbing up the wall below him.

“You can’t win. You could never win.”

He didn’t look down the side of the building to see how many of them were coming up. The answer would be too many. There were always too many. So he ran instead.

“There are no second chances. No happy endings.”

He ran faster.
Faster. Faster!

“Not for you.”

Another leap of faith, the wind brushing against his face, the flaps of the trench coat fluttering behind him as he cut through the night air like a spear, unencumbered by all the things that used to make him human, that once limited what he could do.

“Wherever you go, however far, I will always be there. Always…”

He closed his eyes and plummeted headfirst into the dark woods. He could already sense them below—an ocean of black eyes—waiting for him with open arms.