Riley stumbled back, back, every step like pedaling through quicksand, the (Useless. It’s useless!) weapon in his hands impossibly heavy. What good was a gun if it couldn’t kill these things? Why did he carry so many on him? Why did he spend so much time arguing with himself about letting her carry a small pistol—
Hannah.
Jesus, Hannah, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.
He turned, groping the walls for support, and staggered his way down the length of the hallway. There was no railing, or he might have keeled over it and plummeted to his death below. Maybe that would have been the humane thing — the right thing — to do. At least it would prevent him from replaying the look on Hannah’s face — that odd expression of sadness — as she realized what was about to happen in the split second before it did.
He fumbled down the stairs, not sure how he was able to keep from falling — clutching to the banister with an iron grip probably helped — while dragging the shotgun behind him, the weapon clacking and thumping against every carpeted step, still connected to him by the long strap.
The first floor was covered in swaths of sunlight, the air so warm that when it hit him it was like moving through an inferno. There were signs everywhere that they had been inside the house while he and Hannah had hidden in the attic. It was in the air (The smell. God, the smell!) and the toppled furniture, the open door, and the broken windows. But they had been here the previous nights, too, and always left. So why didn’t they leave this time?
He was blaming them — the creatures — when he should be blaming himself. Because he should have known better than to spend three nights in a row in the same place. He should have known better.
I’m sorry, Hannah. I’m sorry…
He was irresistibly drawn to the open door, crashing into furniture and knocking down a vase, though he didn’t hear it shatter. His ears rang with the shotgun clattering behind him as the weapon bounced off walls and the legs of a nightstand until it was finally scraping against the concrete driveway outside.
He blinked against the sun, unable to process why it was so bright this morning or why the always-welcoming heat was now trying to suffocate him. Breathing was difficult, and he had the sensation of drowning. He fell to his knees, so numbed that he didn’t even feel the impact. He kept blinking, trying to chase the last image of Hannah’s face out of his (memories) eyes…
“You okay, son?”
He opened his eyes back up. Someone was standing in front of him.
A man. Tall.
Or maybe not so tall, because Riley was on his knees and his perspective was skewed. The sun hung high behind the man, the flow of light bending around his broad shoulders as if it were afraid to touch him. The brown of his eyes as they looked up at the house, then back at him. There was sadness there, understanding. This was a man who knew what Riley had been through, who understood Riley’s pain.
“Your friend didn’t make it,” the man said quietly.
Riley shook his head, but when he tried to open his mouth, he only sucked in much-needed oxygen.
“Was she your wife?” the man asked.
He somehow managed to shake his head again.
“Friend,” the man said.
Riley nodded.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” the man said. “But you’re alive. You need to stay that way.”
He blinked up at the man. “Why?” he said, the single word coming out almost as a croak.
“Because we’re all that’s left,” the man said. “One of these days we’re going to take it all back, but until that day comes, we have to stay alive, whatever it takes.”
The man held out his hand. Riley looked at it, then at the man’s face. Fifties, at least, almost as old as his father had been when he passed.
“Time to get back up, son,” the man said.
Riley reached for the proffered hand and let himself be pulled up. He was very light on his feet for some reason. Either that, or the man was impossibly strong.
“What’s your name?” the man asked.
“Riley…”
“Good to meet you, Riley.”
The man looked behind him at three others standing on the sidewalk beyond the front yard of the house. Two men and one woman. They were cradling the kind of military rifles Riley had seen in some of the pawn shops around town while he and Hannah were scavenging, but that they’d always been too intimidated by to pick up. A beat-up white truck was parked in the road, the engine still churning.
How was it possible he hadn’t seen or heard these people until now? Where had they come from?
“Check the house,” the man said to the others. “Kill everything.”
The three didn’t hesitate. They jogged up the driveway, passing Riley and the man, and vanished into the house one by one. They moved as if they had been training for this one moment all their lives.
“It’s dangerous,” Riley said. He wasn’t sure if the man had heard him, though, because his own voice sounded lifeless to his own ears. “They’re in there. The creatures.”
“We know,” the man said. “We heard you shooting while we were down the street. Sound travels these days.”
“But they don’t die,” Riley said, trying to get the man to understand. “They don’t die.”
Riley looked back and up at the second floor when he heard the gunshots. Rapid-fire, like how machine guns always sounded in the movies. He flinched when a bullet pierced one of the master-bedroom windows and sent glass plummeting to the driveway in front of him. More rounds punched through the walls and vanished across the street.
The man put a reassuring hand on Riley’s arm and led him back to the sidewalk. “Just in case.”
“They don’t die,” he said as he let himself be pulled back.
“There are ways to kill them. I’ll teach you.”
The shooting had stopped. In fact, it had ended a while ago, and he could hear the three coming back down the stairs. He expected to see just one or maybe two if they were lucky, but instead all three returned. Their eyes searched him out, and Riley saw that they were full of sympathy, especially the woman’s.
“Good to go, sir,” one of the men said as they passed.
“Well done,” the older man said. Then, to Riley, “It’s time to go, son.”
“Go where?” he asked quietly, the image of Hannah’s last expression burned into his mind’s eye, replaying over and over and over.
“Away from here,” the older man said. “We need time to grow, to train, to prepare. And when we’re ready — and only then — we’ll finally act.”
“Ready?” He looked back at the man, unable to understand what was happening, what he was trying to say. “Ready for what?”
“All that can wait. For now, you should come home with us. There’s not a lot of us left anymore and we have to stick together.” He pointed at the other three: “That’s Benford, Rhett, and Erin.”
The two men and the woman nodded back at him, and Riley had never felt more welcomed in his life.
“And you can call me Mercer,” the older man said. He squeezed Riley’s shoulder and gave him a comforting smile. “We have a lot of work ahead of us, Riley. Are you in? Will you help me take back what belongs to us, whatever it takes?”
“Yes,” Riley answered breathlessly.
Book One
Port of Call
1
Keo