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The part of him that still recognized pain had shut down. It was an automatic response by his mind to spare the rest of him so he could keep functioning. He couldn’t turn his head, but he could sense the other blue eyes around him. Two of them. Except there was no cold or warmth coming from their skins, and their accusing voices had quieted inside his head.

They were gone. Dead.
(Again?)

Thick, coagulated black blood covered the parts of his body that he was still able to retrieve sensations from. He was gashed and bleeding, even in the areas that he couldn’t see, and partially buried in rubble from the stomach down. Only the top half of him had been spared the crushing weight of the building as it came tumbling down after the concussive force of the blast took apart its roof. Massive blocks of concrete made a prisoner out of him, and he was certain his arms were no longer connected to his pulverized shoulder joints. His legs…no, he would have to turn the pain receptors back on to find out what had happened to them.

He couldn’t turn his head because it was twisted to one side, his chin resting against a drooping shoulder. The muscles and tendons along his neck had been severed, pulled until they snapped.

He was hurt. Badly.

The man crouched in front of him was gesturing with the gun. “Bullet to the head. Kind of a gyp, don’t you think? You’re faster, stronger, all kinds of crazy comic book supervillain shit, but all it takes is one little ol’ bullet to the ol’ noggin and you’re kaput. Doesn’t even have to be silver.”

He was alive. Why was he still alive? Because the man had chosen not to end him, even though he could with a simple
(so simple)
pull of the trigger. A slight pressure and it would be over, along with all the nights of stalking Mabry, finding his weaknesses, looking for the perfect angle to attack.

“In case you were wondering, yes, it looks like you’ve seen better days,” the man said. “I’d say you look like shit, but that would be an insult to poop everywhere.”

The man had mischievous blue eyes, and blond hair matted with dirt and sweat stuck to his forehead. Streaks of dried blood stretched from his right temple to his chin and curved around cracked lips. There was blood in the air. A lot of it. Old and fresh. The man was bleeding from multiple wounds. Painful, but not life-threatening. At least, not anymore. Medical ointment tingled his nostrils.

They were inside a partially darkened room, half of it lit by streams of moonlight invading from the gaping holes above them where the roof used to be. He reached out with his mind, but his range was limited in his current condition. It turned out he didn’t have to go very far after all.

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? We 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

O
NCE 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.