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  As long as they’re not shooting at me…

  Three figures, crouched behind an abandoned van, bolted into the open at the same time the outside forces unleashed a sudden onslaught at the building. The threesome got two—three—then five meters up the sidewalk before darting into an alleyway unmolested. Two men and a woman. He could tell that even though they all had their faces covered. You could hide a lot of things, but not a woman’s girlish figure.

  Keo hadn’t seen the trio before now, but it was obvious they had been active much earlier because they were already halfway to the Buckies’ location and were, as far as he could tell, still undetected. As soon as the three figures made the alleyway, the shooting stopped, and people crouching next to vehicles in the streets reloaded.

  Someone’s definitely got a plan.

  The truth was, he wasn’t sure who to root for. What were the chances these civilians—whoever they were—were friendlies? He knew for a fact the Buckies weren’t.

  The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?

  Ah, there it is. That’s the right saying.

  No one had resumed shooting after the last volley, and the three that had made it into the alley had kept out of view. As far as Keo could tell, the Buckies hadn’t returned fire or noticed the trio. They had paused between a bakery and what looked like a clothing store, and were biding their time until—

  Another wave of gunfire, this one also directed at the lobby and coming from all directions.

  Here we go again!

  The whole thing was a highly choreographed attack, with the shooting being used as covering fire for the three figures to continue getting closer to their eventual target. Right on cue, the two men and one woman slipped out of the alleyway one by one and raced up the sidewalk, and didn’t stop until they’d reached the back bumper of a pickup truck about fifty meters from the lobby. There, they waited almost exactly five seconds before standing up and darting toward the mouth of another alley, this one on the other side of the bakery—

  The man in front of the trio jerked his head back and collapsed. As he did that, the two behind him slid reflexively to a stop, shocked by the sight.

  Shouldn’t have done that, Keo thought when bullets strafed the brick wall and glass window to the now-duo’s left. The woman fell first, collapsing next to her colleague, while the remaining man was smarter and jumped over his dead friends, only to crumple in midair and fall back down, face-planting on the concrete sidewalk. His body twitched for a few seconds, but then went very still.

  Damn. They’re good.

  Of course Buck had sent a bunch of professionals after him. It couldn’t be some weekend warriors like Hatch or Batch or whatever that guy’s name had been that Keo sent back into Fenton with a message. No, it had to be a handful of guys who knew what they were doing. Now it made perfect sense why he hadn’t been able to shake them since Axton.

  Thanks, Buck. Thanks for making my life a little harder, you shithead.

  I’m gonna have to thank you in person for this.

  Movement, from farther down the street.

  Keo looked over as a figure in a trench coat leaned out from behind a building and peered up the road toward the Buckies. The man was too far for Keo to get any real details without the assistance of field glasses. He was nearly a full hundred meters and well past the black-clad dead man dangling off the lamppost. Keo was able to make out that the man was surrounded by a half dozen people. No, make that a full dozen.

  Some kind of mobile command post, and between them and the shooters holding their ground up and down the streets and along the buildings, there were a lot of people out there. More than Keo had managed to count earlier, and probably even more than what he was seeing now.

  Who were these guys? Why were they attacking the Buckies? Did they even know who they were going up against?

  Or maybe the better question was, did he care about their motivations? As long as they killed each other—or killed enough of one another—that might just be enough for him to slip out of here.

  Boom-boom-boom!

  Shotgun blasts, coming from behind and below him.

  Keo hurried back across the floor and to the far wall. He leaned next to the stairwell door and flattened his ear against the wall and listened, but couldn’t hear anything moving on the other side. Then again, he was trying to hear through thick blocks of concrete. There could have been a dozen men sneaking around in the stairwell right now, and he wouldn’t be able to detect them.

  But he was pretty sure the blasts had come from below—far below. Maybe even from the lobby. Three blasts, then nothing. What did that mean? It could be anything. That was the problem. It could be just about anything.

  Had someone found another way into the building, and the Buckies had defended it? A shotgun could be suppressed, but it was more trouble than it was worth given how loud it still would have been when fired. So if there had been an attempted entry, the Buckies could have repelled it with shotguns of their own (he knew that at least one of them was carrying such a weapon) and small arms, but Keo would only be able to hear the loud blasts of the former.

  The scenario was possible because there was a back door into the building. Keo had located it last night before settling down, but it was heavily fortified with a desk and metal shelves by the place’s previous occupants. It would have been difficult but not impossible for someone to knock down the barricade and enter from the back, only to find the Buckies waiting for them.

  Then again, he could be wrong about everything, and he was on the verge of being overrun right now even as he tried in vain to hear through blocks of concrete.

  Decisions, decisions!

  He glanced over at the stairwell door nearby, with the desk still pushed up against it and the two monitors on top.

  Don’t be stupid. Just stay up here and wait it out.

  And then what?

  What would happen once the battle was over? Did it even matter who won? The Buckies, or those unidentified shooters out there? The only way staying up here and waiting out the gunfight made any sense was if he knew he could trust at least one of the groups not to shoot him on sight.

  Keo looked over at Horse, lying lazily on the floor nearby. It caught his gaze and stared back, and Keo could have been wrong, but the animal looked more annoyed by all the shooting than frightened by it.

  “What do you think?” Keo asked. “Take our chances out there, or stick around up here and see what happens?”

  The thoroughbred raised its head slightly to look at him before letting out a snort.

  “No, I’m pretty sure that’s our only two choices right now. But feel free to let me know if you thought of something else.”

  Horse laid its head back down and sniffed the filthy carpet.

  “Exactly what I’m thinking, too.”

  He sighed and thought, Why can’t it ever be easy? and slung his submachine gun before reaching for the computer monitors.

  Five

  His fresh new pair of socks weren’t quite as fresh as when he put them on yesterday, but they did the job of silencing his footsteps. Keo barely made any sounds as he took the first ten steps down the fifth floor to the fourth. In fact, the only non-ambient noise he could pick up was his slightly increased heartbeat inside his chest, but that was something only he could hear—pounding away in his ears—and would be undetectable to any external source.

  He hoped, anyway.

  He moved down with the submachine gun in front of him and his finger on the trigger. The gunfire continued outside the building, the pop-pop-pop of small arms as if the attackers would never run out of ammo. None of it was coming from directly below him or from the lobby. Of course, they could have been returning fire constantly, and he wouldn’t have heard it with the suppressors on their weapons.

  Keo only began his descent when he was sure there was no one in the stairwell with him. At least, no one that he could see, hear, or smell. He didn’t ease the fifth-floor door closed behind
him and make the first couple of tentative steps forward until he was satisfied there wasn’t a shooter waiting to end this very stupid stunt of his.

  And it was stupid. It was so, so stupid.

  So why are you doing it?

  Because he couldn’t just sit back and wait. He couldn’t just twiddle his thumbs while the two sides tried to murder one another—and that was exactly what they were doing, even if he could only hear one side shooting. One way or another, someone was going to win, and he’d have to deal with them. This way, he was taking the fight to them, putting his life in his own hands.

  It was a great plan.

  Okay, maybe not “great.” But good.

  …ish.

  There was no one on the fourth floor, and when he pressed his ear against the stairwell door, didn’t hear anything on the other side. He was confident (You sure about that?) that the Buckies had all gone down to the lobby and were still there. They hadn’t left anyone on the second, third, or fourth floor to return fire into the street. He knew that because the attackers had never concentrated their fire on anything other than the lobby. There were a few stray rounds here and there, but no obvious indicators they were targeting anything other than people on street level.

  A lot of assumptions there, pal, and we all know what happens when you assume.

  Keo swept aside the nagging doubts and pushed on, taking the third floor without any issues. His breathing increased slightly, and he took a moment to calm himself down.

  Then he was moving again, careful not to make any unnecessary sounds. He was hyper alert to everything including the soft taps of his socks against the hard concrete floor. Very, very soft taps.

  Easy does it. Easy does it.

  He eased around the third floor and peered down at the second.

  Empty.

  He stood like a statue to see if he could pick up anything beyond the thump-thump-thump of his heartbeat in his ears.

  Nothing. Nothing at all.

  Could I be this lucky?

  Why not? It’s happened before, he thought when he reached the second-floor landing—

  And froze in his tracks.

  Voices.

  They came from below him, and he would have missed them completely if he hadn’t stopped a second time to wipe at a bead of sweat. It was warm inside the stairwell, even though it was the exact opposite outside in the streets.

  Keo stopped breathing entirely and listened, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. There was more than one voice—two very distinct ones, with the possibility of three. But it was hard to be absolutely sure because they were whispering back and forth in surprisingly calm voices. Even now, in the heat of a prolonged battle, the Buckies—and it was them, he was sure of it—weren’t panicking.

  After a while (Ten seconds? Twenty?) there was the very noticeable clack! as a door opened directly below him and he heard voices, louder than before though still mostly gibberish, and movement flooding into the stairwell. Then the echoing clink-clink-clink of empty brass bouncing against hard tiles.

  The lobby. It had to be, because that was the only room in the place with tiled flooring.

  Keo tightened his grip on the MP5SD and waited. He slowly, very slowly, eased out a breath, then another one.

  Voices again, and this time Keo could make them out, coming from below.

  “Are you sure?” someone asked.

  “I need you back in there,” a second voice answered.

  “Boss, I think—”

  “Remember your training and stick to the plan.”

  “Boss—”

  “Stick to the plan. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” the first one said.

  There was another clack, and the lobby noises faded into the ether. It was replaced by soft footsteps—the soles of boots scraping against hard concrete floor—and the very obvious noise of a rifle’s charging handle snapping into place.

  The shooting outside hadn’t eased up for even a second as Keo tiptoed his way down the stairs again, but there was now a clear sense of ebb and flow. A back and forth as the two sides exchanged gunfire. If the Buckies were as good as Keo had given them credit for, they wouldn’t be throwing away rounds willy nilly at the attackers. They would be conserving ammo, shooting at things only when they could see them, just like how they had taken down the trio of advancing fighters earlier.

  But that was the world outside, which was beyond Keo’s scope this very second. Right now, right here, he was only concerned with the lone figure below him. The man was probably standing somewhere next to the lobby door, waiting anxiously for either Keo to come down or a signal from his superiors to rejoin the fight. He had sounded young when Keo had heard him earlier. At least, younger than the one he had called “boss.”

  “Remember your training and stick to the plan,” the “boss” had said.

  What exactly was that plan, and did he really want to just stand around and wait to find out?

  Nah. Let’s not do that.

  More obvious movement from below, followed by the top of a dark black head appearing just out of the corner of Keo’s peripheral vision. Keo didn’t move or react because he was in a perfect spot around the turn in the stairwell—hidden, while being able to see out and down, but not be spotted in turn.

  Five seconds, before the guard disappeared out of view.

  Had the man decided to climb the steps to get a better look, Keo would have put him out of his misery, and this time he would have aimed for the face. It wouldn’t surprise him at all if Buck’s men were all wearing Kevlar underneath their vests. Keo hadn’t seen any blood on his way down, which meant the man he’d shot earlier wasn’t bleeding as the posse made their way back to the lobby.

  Suppressed weapons and Kevlar. Now why didn’t I think of that?

  The movements below him ceased altogether, and there was just the crackle of gunfire from outside to fill the emptiness again. Back and forth, with very little time for silence to filter through the streets. The attackers seemed to have brought plenty of guns and bullets with them, almost as if they had planned this out. Keo wondered if getting bogged down in a gunfight was part of the plan.

  Probably not.

  But that was the attackers’ problem, and not his.

  Keo remained perfectly still, in the same spot he had been standing for the last few minutes. He didn’t move a muscle and barely breathed.

  Another full minute passed.

  Then two…

  Five…

  He wasn’t in any hurry. At least not while there was still shooting going on out there. The more rounds being exchanged, the more time he had.

  Who exactly were the people exchanging gunfire with the Buckies? Were they locals? Cordine City was new to Keo. He didn’t even know the place existed until he stumbled across it yesterday evening. So if they were locals, where had they been hiding all this time? Or were they even hiding at all, and he just happened to enter a part of the city where there was no one around? That was possible. Cordine City did have a population of fifty thousand something people before The Purge, so it wasn’t exactly Mayberry.

  Still, it bothered him that he hadn’t spotted a soul when he made his way into the place. The other possibility was that they had seen him but stayed hidden until they could gather their forces for an attack. The more likely scenario was that they had spotted the Buckies. They did, after all, enter with six people on horseback just as the sun was rising.

  Keo knew one thing for certain: He didn’t like having other people be in charge of his destiny. Not the Buckies, and certainly not whoever this other group was. The way they had lynched James a.k.a Mr. Smiley Face in the street—and Keo was pretty sure that was the MIA James now—made him more than a little bit queasy. He couldn’t imagine anyone at Winding Creek doing something like that. But then again, Winding Creek was full of very decent people.

  And looked what happened to them.

  So what did that make the attackers? That was the question.
The big unanswered question. The man in the trench coat and his army had likely done what they did to annoy the Buckies. Maybe even to piss them off and lure them outside the building into an ambush of some kind. Except Buck’s people hadn’t bit.

  Why? Because they were too disciplined, that’s why.

  All of that, and he was back at square one: One floor from the action. Or ten feet, to be more precise.

  Hey, if Gaby could do it with a gimpy leg…

  Keo slowly, very quietly, slung the MP5SD and took one step toward the railing. He inhaled a deep breath and thought, I wonder if Gaby realized how stupid this was when she was about to do it? just before he grabbed the metal (and very cold) railing and leapt over it, twisting his body back around while still in the air.

  He landed in a slight crouch—a solid, echoing pap! like a bomb going off to his ears, but it was probably not very loud at all to anyone else—and facing the right direction: with the lobby door in front of him.

  Including the man holding the AR rifle standing before it.

  The Bucky was still in the process of spinning around when Keo popped back up—he ignored the shots of pain rippling across both thighs as he did so—and lunged forward at the same time. He reached behind him for the Ka-Bar knife, the voice in the back of his head screaming, The door! Don’t let him get to the door!

  Keo jammed his left forearm into the man’s throat and drove him back, back until the Bucky let out a stunned “Oomph!” as his body slammed into the wall. The rifle was jammed between their bodies when the man squeezed off a shot—the single pfft! as the rifle fired, the gunshot muffled by the suppressor at the end of it—and a round sailed harmlessly into the ceiling of the second floor above them.

  Before the man could make another sound, or scream out to his comrades in the lobby, Keo pressed the very sharp point of the Ka-Bar against his left cheek, just an inch under his dramatically-widening eyeball. Blood appeared at the tip of the knife, and the man ceased all movements. He might have also stopped breathing altogether.