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  “What the hell?” Springer said behind them.

  To the left of them, Gholston mouthed the words in Keo’s direction, “Did he just say your name? What the hell?”

  Keo sighed and thought, Well, I’m glad we’re all on the same wavelength, at least.

  Two

  “Keo! Give me a shout back if you can hear me. I didn’t plug you by accident, did I? Now that would be a crying shame!”

  It was coming from in front of them. The shooter. It was a he, and his voice sounded firm but also…echoey, like every syllable was being bounced off a tree then ricocheted off another one before they finally reached Keo. He didn’t know how that was possible.

  “You know this guy?” Rita asked.

  “No,” Keo said.

  “How does he know your name?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “He’s talking like he knows you,” Springer said.

  “Yeah, I noticed that,” Keo said.

  “So does he or doesn’t he?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t tell by the voice.”

  Keo glanced across the woods and saw the same question on Gholston’s and Rudolph’s faces. Wells was too busy trying to find the sniper to join in on the fun.

  “Can you…” Keo started to ask.

  “No,” Rita said before he could finish.

  “Not at all?”

  “Not at all.” She paused, then, “Keep him talking.”

  “Keo!” the sniper shouted. “Can you hear me? Say something, if you’re still alive!”

  “He knows your name,” Springer said behind them. “How does he know your name?”

  Keo ignored him and instead tried to match a face to the voice, but nothing popped. It didn’t help that he had difficulty placing the origin of the voice. At first he thought it was coming from his left, but every word the man shouted out gave a new location.

  “I don’t know,” Keo finally said.

  “You sure?” Springer asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “But he knows you.”

  “I heard you the first three times, Springer. Now shut up.” Keo sighed, then, leaning slightly out from behind the tree, shouted back, “Yeah? What do you want?”

  “It is you!” the sniper shouted. Was that coming from his left? His right? Or both? “I knew it!”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “I wasn’t sure.” The man said, as if Keo hadn’t asked a question. He might have also laughed. It was short and died too quickly for Keo to even try to pinpoint it. “But you match the description. Tall. Asian. A big ass ugly scar down one side of your face. And he said you might be coming back here.”

  “He said…”

  Keo didn’t have to think very hard to know who he was.

  “I don’t think your scar’s that ugly,” Rita said. “Scars give a man character.”

  “That’s what I keep telling everyone,” Keo said.

  Rita chuckled but never took her eye away from the scope. She kept moving her Mk 14. Searching, searching… For such a small person, she didn’t look at all fatigued from holding the rifle against the tree for long periods.

  She must be stronger than she looks, Keo thought. The Mk 14 was over eleven pounds unloaded. Heavier, with a full mag. It wasn’t exactly a weapon made for a small man, never mind a small woman.

  “Keo!” the sniper shouted.

  “What?” Keo shouted back.

  “I could have killed you, you know.”

  “Is that right?”

  “That first shot? I didn’t have to take out the other Asian guy. That wasn’t your brother or cousin or anything, was it?”

  “No.”

  “Good. ’Cause I have a hard time telling Asians apart. No offense.”

  Keo smirked. “None taken.”

  “You’re Chinese, right?” the man shouted.

  “You don’t know?”

  “There was some discussion. Which is why I’m asking. Not that it matters, mind you. Just curious.”

  Keo glanced over at Gholston and Rudolph. They looked over and shook their heads. They couldn’t locate the sniper, either.

  “Curiosity killed the cat!” Keo shouted.

  The sniper let out another laugh. This one was louder and lasted longer, but it still didn’t yield anything that felt like a real location. “I just wanted to let you know that I could have taken you out anytime while you were running around out there in the open, but I didn’t.”

  “How nice of you.”

  “I could have put a couple of rounds in your legs. Put you down without putting you down, know what I mean?”

  “I’ll be sure to send you a Christmas card in a few months. Look for it in the mail.”

  “Will do.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You don’t know me, but I know a lot about you.”

  “Rita?” Keo whispered.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know how he’s doing it, but I can’t pin his voice down to any spot. Can you?”

  “No. Maybe he’s using some kind of machine to throw his voice?”

  “Does something like that exist?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  “Well, however he’s doing it, he’s good. Keep him talking, if you can. Maybe he’ll slip up and I can pop him like a zit.”

  Yeah, that’s gonna happen, Keo thought, but he shouted out from behind the tree anyway, “Should I be flattered you know so much about me, but I don’t know bupkis about you?”

  “That depends,” the sniper shouted back.

  “On what?”

  “About how you feel about me taking you back alive, where you’ll no doubt end up wishing I’d killed you out here. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

  Keo didn’t have to think about that question for too long as a voice from the not-too-distant past came rushing back, except instead of a normal voice it was a series of unnatural hisses:

  “I won’t turn you. Oh no. You won’t get off that easy. We’ll bond. And play. And soon, you won’t remember what it was like not having me inside, right here.”

  It had touched his forehead with its finger when it had said right here, and Keo remembered the wild fluctuations of warm and cold that traveled from that bony finger and onto his skin from the contact. That sense of impossibility, of being close to something so unnatural, filled him with the same dread now as it did then.

  Keo flinched unwittingly, then checked to see if the others had noticed. Rita hadn’t, because she was too busy staring through her scope, while Springer was dabbing at blood along his arm behind them. Gholston, Wells, and Rudolph had their eyes elsewhere.

  “Oh yeah, you know what I’m talking about,” the sniper was shouting.

  “What’s that lunatic talking about?” Rita asked.

  “I don’t know,” Keo lied. Then, throwing his voice forward at the (Too goddamn well) hidden Fenton man, “That doesn’t sound like fun at all.”

  The man laughed again. Keo was starting to hate that laughter.

  “You got a name?” Keo shouted.

  “Calvin!” the sniper shouted back.

  “Calvin?” Springer said. “His name is Calvin?”

  Keo shrugged. “Hey, let’s not start making fun of people’s names, okay?”

  Rita might have snorted next to him.

  “What?” Keo said.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Rita said.

  “Uh huh.”

  He gave Springer a longer look. The young blond hadn’t done a very good job of putting a field tourniquet around his wound. Blood oozed around the edges of the gauze, and his face was pale; if he wasn’t already sitting on the grass, Keo would have been afraid of him falling down.

  “You okay?” Keo asked him.

  Springer nodded and gave him a half-hearted attempt at a convincing smile. “Yeah, I’m peachy.”

  “No, you’re not,” Gholston said from his tree across from them.

  “I’ll be fine,” Springer said.


  Keo and Gholston locked eyes, and the other man nodded his understanding.

  “Keo, you still there?” the man named Calvin shouted. “I’m not boring you, am I?”

  “Not yet!” Keo shouted back. “You radioed in for help yet, Calvin?”

  He didn’t expect the man to answer, but he did. “I tried, but I’m either out of range or the trees are blocking my signal. But I’m pretty sure someone heard all that noise your boys made, though, so I don’t doubt that I have reinforcements on the way as we speak.”

  “You think he’s lying?” Springer asked.

  “Does it matter?” Rita said. “Either way, someone’s coming.”

  “She’s right,” Keo said. “The fact that they’re not here yet just means they’re on their way. But they’re coming. It’s just a matter of time.”

  “We’re gonna have to move soon,” Rita said.

  “I know.”

  “What about Chang and Banner?” Springer asked. “We can’t just leave them lying out there.”

  Keo glanced the short distance at the two bodies. There was some poetry to the two men lying on top of one another. They were a two-man machine gun team and were, as far as Keo knew, good friends. They’d joked all the way from the FOB and seemed like they’d known each other long before The Purge.

  But they were dead now, and there was nothing he could do about it. All that was left was to tell Lara how he’d lost two men and almost a third. Now that was something he wasn’t looking forward to.

  See, this is why you should never have agreed to lead this little expedition. Or gotten involved with leading anything in the first place. Nothing good ever comes from it. Nothing good whatsoever.

  He looked across at Gholston, then over at Rudolph and Wells, even though only Rudolph caught his gaze.

  Two down, six to go.

  He hated when the numbers went against him. It was easier (Okay, maybe not “easier”) when it was the other guys who were losing men.

  So this is how it feels to be on the other side.

  He nodded at Rudolph and Gholston, before mouthing, “Get ready to move on my signal.”

  Gholston nodded back, and Rudolph did the same, before tapping Wells on the shoulder to let him know.

  Keo put a hand on Rita’s arm and squeezed. “Get ready.”

  “Whenever you are, boss,” Rita said.

  “Stop calling me that.”

  “What?”

  “You know what.”

  “Whatever you say, boss.”

  He sighed. “Danny told me you’d be a handful.”

  “My legend precedes me.”

  “That’s one way to put it.” Keo glanced back at Springer, who had stood up on slightly wobbly legs. “You first. Then Gholston. We’ll cover you. Rita—”

  “Will shoot the motherfucker when he pops out of whatever hole he’s hiding in,” Rita finished for him.

  “What she said.”

  “What if he doesn’t do that?” Springer said. “He hasn’t taken a shot since he took out Chang and Banner. This guy…” Springer shook his head. “He’s good. He knows when to shoot and when not to.”

  “He’s not that good,” Rita said, and Keo thought she was grinding her teeth.

  “You still haven’t gotten him,” Springer said. “You can’t even see him.”

  “He’s using a hide. No telling how long he’s been out here getting ready for a group of suckers to walk right into him.”

  “Suckers like us?”

  “I thought that was implied.”

  “Can it,” Keo said. Then, fixing Springer with a hard glare, “You ready?”

  “No,” Springer said.

  “Too bad,” Keo said. Then, “Go!”

  Springer turned and fled into the woods, with Gholston mirroring him a second later. Keo turned and fired into the trees in front of him while Rita remained poised, searching, searching through her rifle’s scope for a shot.

  Farther across from them, Rudolph and Wells unleashed with their own weapons.

  Branches snapped, pieces of bark flicked across the air, and leaves disintegrated against the torrent of bullets, the pop-pop-pop of fully automatic rifle fire once again filling up the woods.

  Keo stopped shooting briefly to check behind him. Gholston was in the process of grabbing Springer, who was stumbling and nearly tripped on his own legs more than once. If the sniper was trying to pick them off, he was failing badly, and both men made it into the thick of the woods unscathed.

  “Rita,” Keo said.

  “I don’t see him,” Rita said. There was a slight edge to her voice—a mixture of confusion and annoyance.

  “Forget about him. Time for you to go.”

  “Maybe he’ll try to take a shot—”

  “Do what you’re told, woman!”

  “Goddammit,” Rita said, and pulled up her rifle, turned, and flashed an annoyed glance in his direction, fleeing after Springer and Gholston.

  Keo fired off the last few rounds in his magazine, then exchanged a nod with Rudolph before turning and running after Rita.

  He heard shooting for another few seconds before the last shots died and there was just the heavy crunch-crunch of Rudolph and Wells pounding ground with their boots to the left and slightly behind him.

  “Hey, Keo!”

  It was the sniper.

  Keo stopped on a dime and slid behind a tree to catch his breath. Wells disappeared into the woods after Rita, but Rudolph stayed behind another trunk and reloaded his rifle. Keo kept waiting for bullets to hit their trees, but they never did. Either the sniper didn’t have a shot, or he just didn’t feel like it.

  Who the hell is this guy?

  “You’re not saying good-bye already, are you?” Calvin shouted, his voice still as echoey and impossible to locate as they had been all day. “And here I thought we were just getting started!”

  “Why don’t you come on out, and we’ll get this over with!” Keo shouted back.

  “Now what would be the fun in that?”

  “You scared, Calvin?”

  Calvin laughed. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. Bullets, on the other hand, can and will. Especially the kind you don’t see or hear coming. You know a thing or two about that, don’t you?”

  Keo exchanged a glance with Rudolph. The look on the older man’s face was a clear indication he was sharing a growing dislike for Calvin’s stupid voice.

  “You sure you don’t know this guy?” Rudolph asked.

  Keo shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “But it’s possible.”

  “Anything’s possible. It’s also possible I’m dreaming this entire nightmare.”

  “You and me both.” Then, “It’s your call, boss.”

  I wish everyone would stop calling me that, Keo thought, but he said, “Go. I’ll cover you.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Rudolph nodded, counted to three, then pushed off the tree and ran after the others.

  Keo turned around, looking for something to shoot, but there was nothing. Calvin, if that was even his real name, was giving him nothing.

  Not a goddamn thing.

  When he couldn’t hear Rudolph’s footsteps behind him anymore, Keo counted down from five, and on one turned and fled after the others.

  He kept waiting for the shot—the silent bullet that would prove Calvin was a liar about wanting him alive—but it never came.

  He had gotten twenty steps into his retreat when he heard Calvin’s voice, booming across the woods. “I’ll be seeing you, Keo! I’ll be seeing you again real soon, buddy!”

  Not unless I see you first, pal. Not unless I see you first!

  Three

  One Week Ago

  “You don’t have to do it. You know that. After everything you’ve told me about what happened at Winding Creek, then Cordine City… It’s terrifying, Keo. And I didn’t have to live through it. You
did. So when I tell you that you don’t have to do it, you need to understand that I mean it. But I’m asking you anyway, because I think you give us the best chance at success. You’re really good at this. You know it, and I know it. Having said that, you don’t have to say yes. I have people who have experience, who I can send instead.”

  “You have people with experience in this?”

  “Well, not this, this. But something close to this. I don’t think anyone’s ever gone through what you have, or has the kind of experience.”

  “Who are they? Are they any good?”

  “They were trained by the best.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Danny.”

  “When you said ‘the best,’ I assumed it was someone other than Danny.”

  She smiled, and Keo thought, I’ll never get tired of seeing that.

  Maybe it was because she rarely smiled in the time he knew her before his undramatic exit from her life. Not that she had a lot of reasons to smile very much back then. They’d just come out of The Purge, and The Battle of Houston had claimed the life of someone very important to her. Beyond those monumental events in her life, she had found herself in command, something he was sure she never saw coming.

  In the five years since he last saw her, Lara looked noticeably older, and her face had more lines than he remembered. Her hair was shorter, her skin tanner, and when she looked at him, the crystal blue of her eyes wasn’t quite as radiant as the last time he saw her, waving to him as he lifted off in the chopper.

  Five years, now, but he always knew he’d be back here one day. Not here, here. But here, with her. He hadn’t expected—or wanted—it to be like this, under these circumstances. Then again, considering his luck, Keo wasn’t too surprised he was still fresh off a bullet wound when it finally happened. That seemed to be how things went for him these days, all a part of the wealth of “experience” she was talking about.

  They hadn’t talked much since the chopper ride from Cordine City and over to the newly formed forward operating base along the southeast coast of Texas. Keo hadn’t kept track of the landmarks underneath them—not that there had been anything of note to keep track of; mostly it was wide-open prairies and abandoned country highways—so he wasn’t exactly sure where they were at the moment. Besides, he’d been too busy trying to figure out his next move.