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She finished the pull anyway, but her aim was off and the round sailed past the creature’s head and disappeared into the shadows. She had missed! How the hell had she missed from such a short distance? Or had the thing simply moved its head to avoid her shot? Could it move that fast?

Yes. Yes, it could. She remembered that time at the farmhouse in Louisiana and how fast that blue-eyed monstrosity had been—

It was just a blur, but even before her eyes could report its presence to her brain, it had already reached her and broadsided her. It couldn’t have been flesh and blood because the blow was too strong, like being hit with a jackhammer, and it sent her flying across the room and into the armoire. She was still trying to comprehend why she was no longer holding her rifle (or standing) as she was falling and finally slammed into the floor.

She couldn’t find the wherewithal to stick her hands out in time to stop her fall, and the face-first blow with the floor sent pain rippling through her entire body. Which was just as well, because most of her bones were still rattling from being slammed into by that semi-trailer
(Anyone get the license plate of that thing?)
, then not even a second later crashing into the armoire.

Which part of her
wasn’t
screaming at the moment?

She expected to hear gunshots, something to indicate Danny had gotten the upper hand on the monster that had knocked him to the floor, but there wasn’t any. Which were more bad signs. With Danny, silence was never a good thing.

Gaby managed to flatten her palms against the floor and pushed herself up, if just slightly, even as her face throbbed. She turned her head and saw two figures entering the room, stepping over splintered wood sprinkled across the floor. But they moved like men, not ghouls, and were wearing gas masks and carrying rifles.

A pair of bare feet entered her line of vision, blocking her view of the figures in gas masks. The legs in front of her were black but somehow still stood out against the suffocating darkness inside the room. She craned her head, her neck straining with the effort, until she was staring into a pair of blue eyes. They looked like crystal heartbeats hanging in the air, beating slowly. The thing’s skin emitted an unnatural combination of cold and heat that had little difficulty piercing through her thermal clothing, making every inch of her shiver uncontrollably.

“So frail,” the blue-eyed creature
(hissed)
said. Thin strips of purple lines on the lower part of its face twisted into a grotesque facsimile of what must have been a mocking smile.

She looked past the creature and at Danny, unmoving on the floor behind it. The blue-eyed ghoul that had been perched on top of him was gone—no, not gone; it had simply abandoned him after Danny was no longer a threat and was now standing over him.

“Danny,” she said, his name coming out as barely a whisper.

The creature in front of her bent, grabbed her by the throat, and lifted her up from the floor as if she weighed nothing. It held her effortlessly in the air, and she struggled to breathe even as the toes of her boots scraped the floor, desperately trying to find the solid footing that was no longer possible.

Being in such close proximity to the creature, being
touched
by it, made her almost gag. If not for the pain, she might have lost the battle. Its fingers were more bone than flesh, and she swore she could feel every single joint that made up all five digits. And as hard as it was to fathom, she didn’t think it was even using most of its strength, because it looked almost amused by her flailing. Its lips (or what passed for lips) again formed that twisted thing that might have been an attempt at a smile.

“How did you ever survive for so long, little thing?” it asked her, its voice a sharp hiss that left no room for doubt it was no longer human.

Did it expect her to answer? And if so, how? She couldn’t reply with its hand around her throat, constricting her ability to do something as simple as breathe, never mind articulating sounds into understandable words.

Behind the creature, the two figures in gas masks had grabbed Danny by the legs and were dragging him out of the room. His body was limp and she couldn’t tell if he was even still alive. Had the monster done something to him? And what about her? What were they going to do to her?

She remembered Nate in the bathroom behind her. She thought about the teeth marks that covered his body that he went to great lengths to hide unless he was with her. Maybe they were going to do just that to Danny, use him the way they had poor Nate after the pawnshop. And once they were done with him, she would be next. And there would be nothing she could do about it. Nothing. Not a goddamn thing.

No.

Hell no!

Her fingers brushed against the Glock holstered at her hip as she focused everything she had left on the ghoul in front of her. It seemed content to watch her struggling to breathe, finding some sick amusement in her pain, which it could clearly see on her face. It wasn’t as if she were trying to hide it; she couldn’t even if she wanted to.

Fuck you.

Fuck you!

The gun slid out easily—

The head!

—and she raised her arm and fired from almost point-blank range—

Shoot it in the head!

Its head seemed to twitch slightly, and the bullet vanished into the wall behind it.

No!

Before she could squeeze the trigger a second time, it casually grabbed the barrel with its other hand and twisted, and she somehow managed a scream despite its fingers wrapped impossibly tight around her throat, constricting everything from breathing to sounds. Or had she screamed at all? Was it all in her head?

It dropped her to the floor as if she were nothing, and Gaby forgot all about the fire burning in her throat because there was fresh, excruciating pain from her right wrist. She scooted back, away from the creature, cradling her hand in her lap, sure that it was broken, or if it wasn’t, then
something
was broken
somewhere.

The second blue-eyed ghoul appeared behind the first (How the hell had it moved so fast?), and it too looked down at her as if she was barely worth its time. The mere presence of two of them in the same place, standing so close to one another, combined to give off an intense cold and heat pulse that threatened to drown her in some thick invisible ocean.

They looked down at her, blue eyes like living orbs against the darkness, but for some reason she didn’t think they were really seeing her at all. She had stopped mattering to them; they’d had their fun with her and now she had become…insignificant.

“How long until he comes?” the second one hissed.

“Not long,” the first one said. “He spies on us. The clever boy.”

“Not clever enough.”

“He’ll come for them soon.”

“Yes.”

“And when he does…”

“We’ll end him.”

“Finally…” the first one hissed, its thin lips worming their way into something that almost—almost—resembled a smile.

9

FRANK

“
W
E HAVE HIM
.”

He didn’t need the voice to tell him that. He had seen the black-eyed ghouls swarming on the small Texas town, waiting as the men in gas masks entered the house. He could taste the acrid smell of gunpowder on the tip of his tongue as the creatures swarmed the building only to hang back as the two blue eyes made their entry.

“But you already know, don’t you?”

He had hoped they would have made it back to the sea by now. Back to the safety of the ocean, where she waited. From Larkin to Starch and back again. It was risky, but if anyone could do it, it would be them. Danny was well trained, and Gaby had been a quick student. But Port Arthur was a nest of ghouls and collaborators, and they’d been forced to reroute.

“You saw us take him.”

The voice wasn’t Mabry’s. No, Mabry had gone silent these last few days.
(Why? You know why.)
It was someone else drawing him into the river of consciousness that connected the brood, showing him images in the aftermath of the assault on the house. The projection was vivid, which meant they were close, though sometimes distance could be deceptive when he was in the hive mind. They knew he would be listening and watching while hiding along the edges, always beyond their reach.

“And the girl.”

It was his fault. He had exposed them to the enemy because of what he had done outside of Larkin. He had revealed himself, but even worse, he had shown them his weaknesses.
(Danny…Gaby…)
He couldn’t sever those ties and didn’t want to, not if he had any hope of clinging onto what still made him who he was, and without that he might as well be one of the mindless husks that serviced Mabry’s will.

“She’s a weak one. She won’t last very long.”

They moved and prodded at the corners of his mind, always threatening to break through his defenses. But it was all a trick, a cheap mirage, because he had learned to camouflage himself from them. It had taken days, weeks, and months, with so many trials and errors and near-misses that nearly cost him everything. There were so many times when they almost had him, when one crucial mistake could have ended everything he was working toward.

“They’re both such frail things.”

If they only knew where he was now, what he was doing and had been for the last few nights. Moving in silence, sleeping in the day, drawing closer to the beginning and the end, while staying invisible. Always in the shadows. It hadn’t been easy, because the chances of being discovered increased exponentially the closer he got…

“It doesn’t take much to break them.”

Waiting. For him. A small town with a sign at the city limits reading: Gallant, Texas. They had let him see the markers, showed him the way in.

“Don’t make us wait very long.”

It was a trap. An obvious trap. Even a fool could see it, and he wasn’t a fool. He had never been one, and he wasn’t one now.

“You know how easily bored we can become.”

Danny. Gaby. He should resist and stick to the plan.

Stick to the plan!

But he couldn’t.

“Hurry,”
the voice said inside his mind,
“before it’s too late. They’re only human, after all.”

Danny. Gaby…

S
MOKE AND GUNPOWDER
lingered in the air between Houston and Gallant. He recognized signs on overpasses and along the roads, and there were enough landmarks to know he was moving in the right direction.

“Mercer.”

The name reverberated inside his head, sometimes screamed out by the many consciousness—both strong and weak—that flowed through it day and night. The creatures knew the name, despised it. He was the cause of their pain, the man who brought fire from the skies and sent the armored machines into their carefully preserved towns. The man who was threatening their food supply, their future.

“Mercer!”
they cried.
“Mercer!”

He saw the evidence of Mercer’s victories wherever he went. Towns that once brimmed with life—many of them on the verge of bringing in new life—had been wiped out in torrents of violence. Survivors—and there were always survivors—scattered across other locations, always taking their stories of horror and blood with them.

“Mercer! Find him! Kill him!”

And each time the stories grew. Bigger and bloodier, the exaggerations mixed in with the truth. The fear was spreading among the food supply, taking root in the souls of men and women that had surrendered. They were becoming hesitant, doubts sprouting from their once-contented minds.

“Mercer! Stop him at all costs!”

He had to cross another town, and like the last few, he didn’t have to skirt around the edges to keep from being seen, because there was no one left to witness his passing by. It was just debris and the fading stench of smoke and gunpowder now, residues of a bloodbath from two days ago. The bodies were gone, removed to be fed on before the precious liquid in their veins became useless.

“
Mercer!”

And as Mercer’s people rampaged, the agitation grew inside the hive. The brood was restless, the blue eyes swearing retribution, and yet their human collaborators seemed incapable of stopping the chaos. How, they wondered, could so few people cause so much destruction?

“Humans,”
they said,
“this is what they do.”

“This is what they’re capable of,”
others agreed.

“Violence,”
still others chimed in.

“Destruction.”

“They’ll slaughter even their own.”

“Even the ones bearing children.”

“They’re indiscriminate.”

“Animals.”

“Worse than animals.”

“Yes.”

“This is why we have to show them a better way.”

“Our way.”

“Yes…”

He moved along the piles of rubble, making sure not to touch the bullet casings that littered his path. The black eyes were out there (everywhere), watching and listening and feeling for every slight shift in the wind, every out-of-place item. They weren’t nearly as intuitive, their senses not nearly as heightened as his, but they made up for what they lacked in ability with sheer number. And there were so, so many of them.

The town receded into the distance behind him, and he circled buildings that once thrived with life. A faded yellow
M
seemed to almost glow in the distance, beckoning him, but he went the other way, avoiding the long, gray concrete highway that connected Houston to the cities along the coastline.

The voices had stopped calling to him hours ago, but even as he neared his destination, a surge rippled across his skin with the first hint of morning. It was coming, rising in the east as it always did night after night after night…