The Bones of Valhalla (Purge of Babylon, Book 9) (17 page)

There were so many of them that their number actually drowned out the sunburnt grass that had reclaimed the property in the year since their owners were taken. She might as well be looking at a moving ocean wave made of quivering pruned black flesh.

“God,” Blaine whispered, “I’d forgotten how many of them there are out here.”

I haven’t
, she thought, and said, “They’re going after Will. That’s why he left us. He’s leading them away.”

Blaine nodded and didn’t say anything. Like her, he was unable to pry his eyes away from the endless horde flowing past below them. Moonlight glinted off their domed heads like flickering beacons, and they kept coming, and coming, and coming…

“There’s more of them,” Blaine whispered. “Over there, where we’re going. You know that, right? We’re walking right into a viper’s nest.”

She didn’t say anything. Gaby recognized the long odds the moment she went over it with Lara and Danny. So she didn’t know why Blaine was bringing it up now because they all knew what was out there waiting for them when they volunteered. Or at least, she did. Maybe Blaine and Bonnie didn’t fully grasp the mission, but she never had any delusions it was going to be easy. Far from it.

If it works, it’ll be worth it. If Will’s right, three lives will be worth it…

The wave of ghouls kept coming, appearing from one side of the loft window and out the other. She willed them to keep going, despite knowing the object of their pursuit. But Will could take care of himself now that he was fully healed up. It was them she was worried about.

Don’t stop now, you bastards. Don’t stop—

“No, no, no
no
,” Blaine hissed, because he had seen the same thing she had:

Two of the creatures had stopped almost exactly in front of the large twin barn doors and turned to face them. Not her and Blaine, but
the doors.

“Keep going, you fucks,” Blaine whispered.
“Keep going.”

But they didn’t, and instead the ghouls moved toward the doors and disappeared out of their field of vision.

“Bonnie,” Gaby whispered, and hurried across the floor to the ladder on the other side. She started trying to tiptoe at first, to lessen the noise, but she was moving much too slowly and began sprinting a few seconds later.

Blaine was right behind her.

Gaby was about to stab her foot down on the first rung on the ladder when she heard the unmistakable sound of a suppressed rifle shot—the
pfft!
barely audible, but with nothing else making noise inside the barn except her (and Blaine’s, behind her) labored gasps against the cold air, her ears were able to pick it up.

Then a second—and a third—shot, very close together.

Pfft-Pfft!

Gaby grabbed the ladder and hurried down, this time ignoring the creaks that every single one of her steps produced, and instead of waiting until the last few rungs to jump like last time, she let go around remaining step number five and landed with a
(Too loud!) thump
against the hard barn floor.

She straightened up and spun around, unslinging her rifle as fast as humanly possible. Dormant pain lanced through her left shoulder, but she gritted her teeth through it. The long suppressor that added to the length of her M4’s barrel still made the carbine less comfortable in her hands, but she was glad for its silent capabilities, especially with God only knew how many creatures still outside the barn right this second.

She ran forward, passing the empty stalls one by one, making a beeline for the front of the building. The first thing she saw was the big, bulky Ford F-150 parked in the largest part of the barn up front. She could just make out the tops of the twin doors on the other side of the vehicle, along with the machine gun jutting out the back like some freakish appendage—

A flicker of movement, before she realized Bonnie was crouched in front of her in the darkness, aiming her rifle at something lying on the floor about ten yards up ahead. Whatever it was, it had come inside the barn through the side entrance, the same one that Will had used earlier, which was still partially ajar. That was the only way in because they had barricaded the front entrance.

Bonnie glanced over her shoulder and hissed, “There’s one more!”

Gaby was about to say
“Where?”
when a black shape the size of a small child fell out of the corner of the first floor ceiling and landed on top of Bonnie, who squeezed off two more shots as she went down.
Pfft-pfft!
as silver rounds vanished into the second floor above her.

Oh, Jesus!
raced through Gaby’s mind, but she was unable to put them into actual sounds as she took aim, but it was impossible to separate the creature from Bonnie because their two bodies were so entwined on the floor while lost in the shadows.

Then a startled cry—
Bonnie!

Shoot! What are you waiting for? Shoot it!

She had to chance it, even if she couldn’t be sure where Bonnie ended and the ghoul began—

There! A sliver of separation between the two forms at last!

Gaby squeezed off a shot from five feet away and the creature’s head exploded like a watermelon, a chunk of it flitting across the blackened air before splattering a stall door. The ghoul’s body simply toppled sideways, allowing Bonnie to grab its spindly legs, which were wrapped around her waist, and pry them free so she could scramble out from underneath the sickly frame.

“Bonnie!” Blaine hissed as he rushed past Gaby.

Bonnie seemed to have trouble standing and had to lean back against the wall for support once she was finally on her feet. Blaine reached her and grabbed her just as Bonnie’s legs gave and she threatened to slide back down.

Gaby stepped over the dead ghoul and spotted the second one lying in a pile in front of the still-open side door. A cold draft invaded the barn as Gaby glimpsed blackness on the other side before she grabbed the thin slab of wood and cautiously pushed it shut with a soft
click.

She glanced over at the front doors just to make sure they were still closed and that the two wooden beams held in place by brackets hadn’t been removed. Satisfied, she hurried back to where Bonnie and Blaine were. She stepped over the first dead ghoul a second time—it was such a small creature, like a sleeping child with half of its head missing.

Blaine had guided Bonnie to the back and was crouched in front of her now. Bonnie was staring forward, eyes wide, as if she was seeing something in the shadows that neither Gaby nor Blaine could. Gaby noticed Blaine’s hands, holding a rag to Bonnie’s neck.

Oh, God.

Blaine looked back at her, but he didn’t have to say anything. Gaby slung her rifle and crouched next to Bonnie, then took over holding the rag against Bonnie’s neck. The cloth was already heavy with wetness, because Bonnie was bleeding. A lot.

As Blaine scrambled for the first-aid kit inside his pack, Gaby leaned toward Bonnie and smiled. Or did the best she could. “Think about Jo. Think about going back home to her.”

Bonnie turned to look back at her, the simple act of turning her head seemingly too much. Her face was already covered in a sheen of sweat, and Gaby used her free hand to wipe it from the other woman’s forehead.

“It was too fast,” Bonnie said.

“What was too fast?” Gaby asked, even though she knew the answer. She just wanted to keep Bonnie talking, because talking meant she was fighting, that she wasn’t going to just sit back and take this lying down.

Fight it, Bonnie. Fight it!

“The ghoul,” Bonnie said. “I got the first one, but the second was too fast.”

“I know. I saw it.”

“…I lost track of it when they came inside.”

“It was fast, Bonnie. It was really fast.”

“But you got it.”

“It was a lucky shot.”

“Yeah, right.” Her lips curved into a barely-there smile. “You were always the better shot. I’m glad you came along.”

“Wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

“Still?”

“It’s boring back on the
Trident
anyway.”

Another attempt at a smile from both of them.

Then Bonnie’s expression turned somber. “Don’t turn back, Gaby. You and Blaine have to keep going. We have to stop them now, or we never will. Finish the mission. You understand?
Finish the mission.
”

“I will,” Gaby said. “
We
will. You, me, and Blaine.”

“You, me, and Blaine,” Bonnie repeated.

“That’s right. The three of us.”

“We’ll finish the mission,” Bonnie said, and nodded. Or tried to. “We have to finish the mission or it’ll never end. This nightmare can’t go on. For Jo’s sake. For all of our sakes.” Bonnie’s voice had dropped with each word and her eyes were struggling to stay open. Gaby wasn’t even sure if she was talking to her anymore.

Blaine scooted back over and she moved aside to let him treat Bonnie’s wound, then, with her help, put a thick pad against the hole in Bonnie’s neck and wrapped gauze around it. Blaine worked silently and quickly, but he was also applying too much pressure and Bonnie grunted with pain.

“Not too tight,” Gaby said. “It’s not going to help if she can’t breathe.”

Blaine nodded and eased up a little. He continued gritting his teeth and focusing on the work, doing everything possible not to look Bonnie in the eyes. Not that Bonnie was aware he was avoiding her. She was staring off again at that invisible something that neither Gaby nor Blaine could see.

“You’ll be okay,” Gaby said, realizing how stupid it sounded, but unable to stop herself. Or wanting to. “Think about Jo. She’s going to be pissed if you don’t come back. You promised her you would, right?”

Bonnie nodded.

“So make sure you do,” Gaby said. “You don’t want that girl mad at you. I know I don’t.”

Bonnie almost managed another smile. Almost. “God, I’m sleepy,” she said, and closed her eyes completely. “I’m going to go to sleep now, guys. Wake me when we get to Houston.”

Blaine finished and sat down on the ground and spent the next few seconds wiping his bloody hands on his pants legs. Anything at all to avoid looking Bonnie in the eyes.

Gaby sat down next to him and watched Bonnie falling asleep, her memories of her friend Matt coming back in a flood. It had been a dank basement then, and Josh was there. It felt like such a long time ago, but she could still remember every terrifying second of it.

Neither she nor Blaine said anything for the longest time, and Gaby even forgot that not long ago there had been a horde of ghouls on the other side of the thin, rotting walls around them. None of that seemed to matter very much anymore.

Finally, after what seemed like hours but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes
(Seconds?),
she whispered, “Blaine.”

“I know,” he whispered back, even as his body sagged, every ounce of strength seemingly sapped from his big frame.

H
e had a belly
full of food (real honest-to-goodness food, not those leftovers they had been feeding him back in the brig) and a nice, comfortable bed in the facility’s sickbay, and Lara and his friends were on their way. Things were definitely looking up. Of course, compared to his situation just twenty-four hours ago, simply getting a block of cheese would have been cause for celebration. And on top of that, he was pretty sure Mary was coming around.

So he should have slept through the night without a care in the world, except he opened his eyes to semidarkness and knew they were outside the door.

More than one, from the sound of it, even if they were being pretty light on their feet. But it was going to take floating in the air to escape Keo’s notice, given how impossibly silent the island was at the moment. That, and the fact Mercer’s true believers had already tried to kill him once already. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind that there were more of them out there, waiting to make him pay for what he had done to their dear leader.

You blow one guy’s brains out and suddenly you’re the bad guy. Geez.

Keo glanced down at the watch Rhett had given him. The hands didn’t glow, but his eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness to see that it was just a shade over three in the morning. He grinned.

The hour of the wolf.

He slowly sat up on the bed and looked across the room at Kelly, the girl who had replaced Henry around ten o’clock yesterday. She was at her chair where he had last seen her before he drifted off to sleep, her head leaning back against the wall about a foot from the door. Her rifle lay nonchalantly across her lap, and she was snoring blissfully. They were the only two people in the entire room.

His eyes shifted back to the door. It was gray metal and stood out in the blackness. It had a lever handle and Keo waited for it to move, but it didn’t.

Not yet, anyway, because he had definitely heard noises from the other side. Not the kind of sounds made by people just walking by in the hallway, either. Those would be obvious and clear. No, these were very soft and just barely audible, the result of people moving but trying not to be heard. But they couldn’t help but make sounds because Keo’s second guard, Jackson, was out there. Jackson had replaced Pete at the same time Kelly showed up for Henry.

Which meant Jackson was either dead or was in on it. Keo was inclined to believe the former after the last attempt on his life. Unless Rhett was a complete idiot (and nothing Keo had seen from the guy pointed to that conclusion) he would have only assigned people he could absolutely trust to guard Keo from now on. Of course, that was assuming Rhett actually knew his people as well as Keo was hoping he did, because if Jackson was in on this too, along with Kelly…

He remembered Donovan, his brig guard, opening the door for Bellamy and Calvin. He hadn’t seen Donovan again since. With any luck, the guy was occupying the same cell Keo had spent time in. It would be poetic justice.

He focused on Kelly. She was definitely asleep, which either meant she didn’t know what was going on or…well, she was literally sleeping on the job. The question was: What was that “job?”

He calmly swung his legs off the bed, then lowered them until his bare feet touched the cold, hard floor, and stood up—and almost fell right back down. He managed to grab the wall to steady himself first and remain upright, then spent the next few seconds trying to shake away the dizziness. Maybe it was the getting shot in the head, or having the bandages wrapped way too tightly—

Oh, who was he kidding. It was definitely the getting shot in the head from almost point-blank range that was the real culprit here. He was lucky he was even still able to stand at all after the painkillers Mary had graciously given him before leaving her shift.

He didn’t move again until the stars had disappeared and he could see the concrete wall across from him. He refocused on Kelly’s slumped-over form. She wasn’t a bad-looking girl if she got a decent haircut. She’d been friendly enough when she tagged in for Henry and they’d even had a nice conversation about China, where she thought he was from. Keo hadn’t bothered to correct her.

He had taken two steps toward Kelly—really, toward that rifle of hers—when he glimpsed shadows flitting across the narrow slit under the door, where a generous pool of artificial light spilled inside the darkened room, courtesy of the hallway beyond.

Shit.

He knew exactly what the shadows were doing without having to think about it: They were positioning themselves to enter, and there was definitely more than one. Two that he could see, possibly more hiding behind the walls either waiting for their turn or pulling security. Which meant Jackson was definitely dead.

Or in on it.

Either/or.

Voices followed—incoherent (to him, anyway) whispers—just before the door lever started to move.

Now or never!

He gave up on stealth and launched into a half-run. He made it halfway to Kelly when her eyes flew open, waking up to the sound of him running. That was bad news, because if Kelly could hear him while asleep, then there was a good chance the men lining up outside the door could, too. But that might be the least of his worries if it turned out Kelly was also a secret Mercer loyalist, because he wasn’t going to reach her or the door in time. He was fast, but he wasn’t
that
fast, so Keo did the only thing he could think of: He took a chance.

“The door!” he shouted about half a heartbeat before the door in question swung open to reveal two silhouetted figures standing in the open doorframe.

Kelly bolted up from the chair, at the same time grabbing her M4 rifle as it was falling off her lap. Keo braced himself for the inevitable—for Kelly to turn her weapon on him—but instead she began to spin toward the wide-open door to her right and he thought,
Oh, thank God something’s going right for once!

Either the invaders didn’t know where Kelly was stationed inside the room or they had no clue she was even there, because the first man through the door was clearly searching for—and finding—him and never looked anywhere else. The hallway lights danced off the long, smooth barrel of the suppressor attached to the end of the man’s submachine gun as he raised it in Keo’s direction.

The
bang!
of Kelly’s rifle shattered the quiet, but instead of waiting to see what happened next, Keo kept running even as the first man through the door collapsed in front of him, revealing his partner in the background. The second man was also armed with some kind of submachine gun, but he wasn’t nearly as ready as the first, and his eyes went down instead of up and it took him awhile to see Keo’s charging form.

So Keo kept running, except this time he was focused entirely on the door
(You picked the right guards this time, Rhett!)
even as Kelly tried to step away from the wall to get a look at the second would-be killer. The man finally glanced up and saw Keo and began to raise his weapon when Keo launched himself and barreled into the man, striking him perfectly in the chest with his shoulder.

Fuck me!
Keo’s mind screamed as a nuke went off inside his skull as he and his victim tumbled through the open door and into the hallway beyond. Keo landed on his chest and chin (but thank God not his forehead!) and let out a pained grunt.

The first thing he saw was Jackson slumped awkwardly nearby, back against the wall, a red line running from one side of his neck to the other, and blood dripping down his tanned uniform. The poor bastard probably never knew who had sneaked up behind him and slit his throat, or if he did, he hadn’t been able to do anything to defend himself against it.

Pounding footsteps alerted Keo to a fourth person inside the hallway. He twisted his head just in time to witness a pair of fleeing boots going the other direction and he wanted to shout,
Yeah, you better run!

But he didn’t get the chance because the man he had slammed into was already scrambling to his knees in front of him. The man had dropped his weapon during the collision
(Second time’s the charm!)
, but instead of going for his holstered sidearm, he went for the knife in his left hip, and Keo glimpsed small strips of blood clinging to the blade’s edge as it came out of its sheath.

The man was in his thirties with dark brown hair, and if there was a name on his tag, it was impossible to read with what looked like black tape placed over it.

“Fucking die!” the man spat out through clenched teeth as he lunged at Keo.

Keo rocked backward on his heels as the blade went for his chest, slashing from left to right.

It missed—
barely!

The man didn’t let his first failed attack stop him and was already moving again, bringing the combat knife—all twelve inches of it, seven of that making up the actual killing part—back up for another strike. Before he could, Keo reached forward with his left hand and grabbed the wrist with the knife and jerked the hand up, then drove his fist into the man’s chest, aiming for the spot where his target’s heart would be.

The assassin’s face seemed to bug almost comically for a split second as his heart skipped a beat. He also lost all momentum and strength in his knife hand, which allowed Keo to push forward and invade the man’s defenses and punch him in the nose. Blood splashed Keo’s knuckles, but he ignored it and hit the man again. And
again.

He didn’t stop until the body went slack and fell to the floor, the knife
clanging
to the hard floor next to it.

Keo let out a sigh and sat down next to the door. He checked the hallways to make sure no one else was coming—or that the guy who had fled, returned—before allowing himself to lean against the wall to catch his breath. He thought about reaching for the dead man’s weapon, but his head was pounding, not helped by the large dose of adrenaline still racing through every inch of him.

He barely noticed Kelly coming out of the door to his left. She swept the hallway with her rifle, said something when she saw Jackson, then stepped over Keo’s splayed legs and crouched next to the other guard.

Kelly didn’t do something stupid, like feel for a pulse. She didn’t have to. One look at Jackson’s throat told her all she needed to know. Instead, she stood back up and glanced down at the second attacker. “Is he dead?”

“Not yet,” Keo said.

The man just looked dead with the thick layer of blood covering most of his face, almost all of it coming from his shattered nose. But he was still very much alive, even if he was barely breathing, and didn’t seem to be moving at all except for the slight rise and fall of his chest.

“Jesus, how many times did you hit him?” Kelly asked.

“Relax, he’s alive. Thought Rhett might want to ask him some questions.”

Kelly crouched next to the man.

“You know him?” Keo asked.

“Pollack,” Kelly said. “The other guy”—she looked back into the door—“is Stans. Or
was
Stans.” She poked at Pollack’s name tag with the barrel of her rifle, noting the black tape over it. “Why’d they cover their names?”

“I’d guess it has something to do with that,” Keo said, pointing at Pollack’s right arm.

He had seen it earlier when the man was trying to slice him with the knife—a black patch with a white letter
M
written on it, surrounded by a white circle. The patch looked homemade, as if Pollack had cut out a piece from a black T-shirt and found a white permanent marker to make the emblem.

“That’s new,” Kelly said. She stood up and went back into the room, then came out a few seconds later. “Stans is wearing the same thing. What do you think it means?”

“Beats the shit outta me,” Keo said. He was out of breath for some reason and struggled to regain his composure. “There was a third guy. He took off when Pollack and me took our argument into the hallway. I don’t think he’s coming back—” He stopped when he heard footsteps approaching from around the corner and quickly reached for Pollack’s fallen weapon. “Spoke too soon.”

“It’s okay,” Kelly said next to him. “I radioed in while you were out here with Pollack. They’re friendlies.”

“You sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

Keo grunted, wondering how sure “pretty sure”
was when half of the island wanted you dead. Of course, Kelly was probably not taking that into consideration when she offered up her “pretty sure.”

She was right, though, when a group of tan-colored uniforms turned the corner led by Henry and Pete. The group of men jogged down the hallway toward them.

Keo relaxed his grip on the gun but was apparently smiling stupidly down at the weapon because Kelly said, sounding more than slightly annoyed, “Why are you so happy?”

“Things are looking up,” he said, and ran his hands over the smooth side of the Heckler & Koch MP5SD resting comfortably in his lap.

* * *

“
G
oddammit
, Keo, will you fucking stop killing my people?”

“Tell your people to stop fucking trying to kill me.”

Rhett let out a deep sigh, though at this point Keo wasn’t sure if that was frustration with him or his own people. He guessed it was probably fifty-fifty, depending on what Rhett had found out before he showed up in sickbay two hours after Pollack and Stans were carried off.