The Spears of Laconia (Purge of Babylon, Book 7) (43 page)

“This is going to hurt,” it hissed. “But don’t worry. You won’t die. We have ways to stave off death. You’ll thank me.”

It cocked its head, and again, that goddamn grin. He hated the
fuck
out of that goddamn grin.

“Or not,” it hissed.

Then the blue-eyed ghoul did an odd thing. It was pulling back—to get into a better position to render his arms from their sockets, he assumed—when its eyes suddenly abandoned Keo’s face and snapped left—

And Keo thought,
Wait, where’s Jordan?

There was a dull
thunk!
from somewhere in the cage, and the ghoul released both his arms. The sudden absence of its impossibly strong grip was so swift that Keo was sinking to the floor
(Again? Jesus, I can’t stay off this floor.)
before he could wrap his mind around what had happened, what
was
happening, and why both his arms were flopping uselessly to his sides instead of lying on the cage floor in a pool of blood.

Fortunately, he was staring forward the entire time, even as he was dropping to his knees. Keo saw the ghoul let out something that sounded almost like a guttural squeal before it vanished out of his peripheral vision. There was another loud
clanging!
as something bounced against the cage bars yet again. Except this time, thankfully, it wasn’t him.

Keo found the strength to turn his head until it settled on the ghoul, which was sitting on the floor with its back against the rods. Its eyes were wide open and staring forward, as if it was still trying to focus on something and having a difficult time. But of course it wasn’t, because there was a metal object sticking out of the center of its forehead between its eyes.

So that’s where the spork went.

The shiny metal had gone in deep, its handle buried halfway in the creature’s skull after having penetrated not just bone, but whatever was still back there. Small rivulets of blood poked through the point of impact and dripped along the titanium eating utensil.

A figure was crouching on the other side of him—Jordan, her face flushed with worry, brown eyes focused entirely on him. “Keo…”

“Shit, Jordan,” he said. Or croaked. Or coughed the words. One of those.

“You dropped the spork,” she said, barely managing a smile, even though he could see her lips quivering and her hands were shaking uncontrollably as she stroked his cheeks.

He smiled back at her before he saw it. The cage door. It was wide open, and the padlock was lost somewhere in the darkness of the barn.

Darkness. The barn. Night.

“Jordan,” he said.

“Shhh,” she said, peering at him. “I can’t even tell what color your neck is at the moment. Did it—”

He shook his head. “Outside. The barn. Night. Remember?”

It took a second—just a second—before she understood. Her eyes flew open, and she glanced back at the open cage door. “Oh, God. What do we do?”

“Danny told me a story,” he said, looking at the dead ghoul. “It’s about a farmhouse in Louisiana…”

*

They didn’t have
ropes or duct tape to tie the creature up, but its bony arms and legs were pliable enough for them to shove the limbs through the bars and pull and prod them into position, at least enough to keep it in place. For something that had been unfathomably strong, its body was light enough that Jordan did most of the carrying, while he helped out the best he could with arms that had all the strength of spaghetti strings.

If it were only his arms or aching body, he would have been happy. His throat throbbed too, the windpipe bruised, and God knew what other damage he had suffered. He took some comfort in the fact he could still breathe, so at least he wasn’t wheezing anymore.

“You think they’re out there?” Jordan asked.

She sat next to him at the back of the cage, both of them wearing their jackets. She had helped him put his on, Keo flinching with pain the entire time. The spot gave them a perfect view of the dead
(again?)
blue-eyed ghoul’s malformed ass and back. Its head was tilted to one side, the way it had done more than once during its interrogation of him. It almost looked as if it were embracing the cage, arms and legs wrapped around the bars, refusing to let go.

“Willie boy cut off their heads and stuck them on pikes,”
Danny had told him.
“I don’t know why, but they responded to it. The black eyes. They stayed away from the farmhouse all night.”

Gaby had confirmed Danny’s story. Not that Keo ever doubted it, though he had to admit that sometimes the ex-Ranger had a tendency to exaggerate. He hadn’t, that time.

“This is crazy,” Jordan said. “Why would they stay away just because we killed him?
It.
Whatever.”

He glanced down at his watch. 10:11 
P.M.
It wasn’t even midnight yet. There were still nine hours before sunrise.

Goddamn Texas winters.

Jordan moved closer so they could share their body heat. “It wanted him, didn’t it? Frank.”

He nodded.

“Does that mean he’s still alive?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he said softly.

“Hopefully?”

“Maybe that, too.”

You out there, Frank? You still alive, buddy?

Can you hear me now?

He smiled.

“What?” Jordan said. When he gave her a questioning look: “You had a stupid grin on your face.”

He shook his head. “Just thinking of a joke—”

Tap-tap-tap.

He stopped in mid-sentence.

The sounds had come from above them. From the roof.

They both looked up in time to see a pair of figures flitting across the cracks, temporarily blocking the streams of moonlight. Next to him, Jordan’s body went rigid before she reached down and picked up the spork from the floor. Blood, like mud, caked the stumpy tines.

Tap-tap-tap.

That came from outside the barn.

Tap-tap-tap.

From all around them.

Tap-tap-tap…

He and Jordan sat in silence and waited. He could hear her accelerated heartbeat, the sound of her fingers tightening around the spork’s handle.

Saved by a spork, he thought. Never in a million years did he ever think he’d have to rely on an eating utensil to survive the end of the world.

They waited and waited, but the creatures never made any attempts to enter the barn, though he could hear them easily enough through the rotting barn walls. They sounded agitated and restless, and yet they
never tried to come inside.
Maybe they could see through the cracks and saw the dead blue-eyed ghoul hanging off the cage door. Or maybe they just, somehow,
knew.

After a while, he noticed the ones on the roof above them had simply…left.

“This is freaky,” Jordan whispered.

Better than dead.

“I don’t think they’re coming in,” she added, just a trace of barely restrained hope in her voice. “God, I can’t believe we’re going to survive this. Jesus, Keo, Jesus…”

He looked over and was surprised to see her crying silently next to him. He reached over and brushed the wet drops off her cheeks, even though doing so made his entire arm feel like it was going to fall off at the socket.

She gave him a pursed smile and shook her head. “I’m ten years old again,” she said, alternating between choking back tears and laughing.

He smiled and put his arm around her, grimacing with pain, and pulled her to him. She came willingly, leaning her head against his shoulder. It hurt like a sonofabitch, but he didn’t let her know that.

In the semidarkness, with little to do and even less to hear, he found himself thinking about the last few weeks. It was funny how things had worked out. He had come to Texas to find Gillian, but had found Jordan instead.

He had to admit, it wasn’t an entirely bad trade. Not bad at all.

GABY

She landed on
the tiled floor with a loud
thump!
and, in a crouch, immediately sprang up. The suffocating blackness was the first thing she noticed, followed by the two figures lying on the floor in front of her, their outlines visible in what little moonlight had managed to punch through the front windows of the hardware store. Her forefinger tightened against the trigger and she almost pulled it but stopped herself just in time because neither body was moving.

She hadn’t stood up for more than a second before there was another
thump!
behind her. Nate, falling through the attic door after her. He was so close as he landed that he probably had to do some fancy maneuvering at the last second to avoid crashing into her. It was her fault; she had forgotten to move out of his way.

She did that now, taking a step forward, the rifle in front of her. She swung it left, then right, scanning the darkness.

Christ, it was dark.

“Danny!”
she hissed.

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” a voice said, just before a lone shadow appeared from around one of the many shelves that separated the back of the store from the front. If she hadn’t heard his voice first, Gaby might have fired because she could only see a dark specter blanketed in shadows, moving toward her.

“Jesus, Danny,” she said.

“No, just Danny.” He stopped and crouched before reaching her.

“What are you doing?”

“Those other two—start stripping them.”

“What?”

“Their clothes. Grab them quick, before they come back.”

“Before who comes back?” Nate said behind her.

“Spider-Man and his amazing friends, who else?”

She glanced back at Nate, who was slowly lowering his rifle. She could just barely make out his soft blue eyes in the darkened store.

He met her gaze and shrugged. “I should have known he was too stupid to die.”

“I heard that,” Danny said.

“You were supposed to.”

The dead man closest to her was lying on his stomach, his head turned to one side so that the protruding breathing apparatus of a gas mask over his face was easy to make out. He had on a brown jacket, and a rifle lay next to him, within reach of his extended fingers. Gleaming brass casings surrounded him like a police chalk outline.

When she turned the dead man over onto his back, he had on a black uniform underneath. There was a name tag, but she didn’t waste the second it would have taken trying to squint out the letters. He was a collaborator—a dead one—and that was all she needed to know.

Nate moved past her and toward the second body. He crouched and pulled off the man’s jacket to get at the uniform underneath. He glanced back at her before the two of them looked over the counter at Danny on the other side. He was already unbuckling the third dead man’s gun belt while keeping one eye on the front door.

She followed his gaze, but couldn’t see anything out there.

“Danny,” she said.

“Less talk, more stripping,” he said.

“Is this going to work? The uniforms?”

He didn’t answer her.

“Danny…”

“Sure,” he said, his grin just barely visible in the semidarkness. “Put everything on. Uniform, gun belt, and gas mask—the works.”

She wasn’t sure if she believed him, or if
he
even believed it himself, but she turned back to her man anyway. Her fingers were trembling slightly as she pulled down the jacket’s zipper.

The collaborator was younger up close, probably in his mid-twenties, with short black hair and hazel eyes. There was a hole in the middle of his forehead, where blood pooled. His face looked frozen in a state of shock.

Better you than me,
she thought, and pulled off his jacket.

*

The pants and
shirt were a size too big for her, but she fixed both at the same time by tucking the hem of the shirt into her waistband and tightening the gun belt another notch. There was surprisingly little blood on the clothes. At least, in the darkness of the hardware store. It would probably look different in the morning.

If
she was still alive to see morning.

Nate hadn’t been quite as lucky. His man had bled out so much he made a face the whole time he was pulling the shirt on, then zipped up a jacket over it. He picked up a gas mask from the floor next. “Is this really going to work?”