by Sam Sisavath
“Bengal Islands. There’s a main one and a smaller companion island.”
Lara hadn’t said it with a lot of enthusiasm—or, at least, not as much as Gaby had expected when talking about a place that was supposed to be their salvation.
“What’s wrong?” Gaby asked.
“We don’t know what’s waiting for us there,” she said, staring at the map as if she could see all the bad things lurking if she just stared hard and deep enough.
“Isn’t it like that everywhere?”
“Yes, but this place…it has everything we need, and everything we don’t want.”
“Like?”
“People with guns. A lot of guns. Bad people.”
“Badder than us?” Gaby smiled.
“According to Keo…yes. Way badder.”
They didn’t say anything for a moment, and Lara seemed to drift off with her thoughts again. They were standing across the table from each other, but her friend might as well be on the other side of the continent.
“So what do we do?” Gaby finally asked.
“We’ll figure it out,” Lara said. “Whatever happens, whatever’s out there, we’ll adapt and survive.”
“He said something similar to me back on Route 13.” Again, she didn’t have to say who “he” was. “He said, ‘Whatever happens, keep moving forward. Don’t stop to look back. Keep moving forward, because that’s how we survive.’”
Lara pursed her lips, then walked around the table and embraced her. Gaby wrapped as much of her arms around Lara as possible, careful to avoid her bandages. She was fighting back tears and could tell Lara was doing the same thing, Lara’s body trembling noticeably against hers.
“Adapt or perish,” Gaby said, just barely able to contain herself. “We should make a banner and hang it somewhere.”
Lara laughed and pulled back. The two of them took turns exchanging embarrassed smiles. “I like the sound of that.”
Gaby pushed off the table, needing to go before she ended up bawling like a little kid. She couldn’t allow that to happen, because that childish version of her had been excised and she couldn’t afford to let her back in. Not now.
“Anyway, I’m going to go keep Blaine company,” Gaby said. “I don’t think he’s slept at all the last couple of days.”
“That’s a good idea.”
Gaby walked to the door.
“Hey,” Lara said.
She stopped and looked back.
“He saved us,” Lara said. “Josh. Despite what he did to Danny, if he hadn’t pushed the boat off the beach…”
Gaby smiled at her and was surprised how easily it came out. “That was the Josh I always wanted you to meet. That was him back there. Not the one in the uniform, or the one that shot Danny, but the one that I grew up across the street from.”
“He was a good kid, that Josh.”
“He was.”
Lara nodded. “Okay, enough chick talk. Go check on Blaine, make sure he doesn’t nod off and drop into the Gulf of Mexico.”
“Aye aye, boss,” Gaby said, giving her a mock salute as she left.
She closed the door behind her and walked along the hallway, her footsteps seemingly louder than even the hum vibrating along every inch of the yacht, originating from the engine room three levels below.
“Whatever happens,” Will had said, “keep moving forward. Don’t stop to look back. Keep moving forward, because that’s how we survive.”
She owed it to Will to keep going. And Josh too, because for all his faults—and there were many—the boy she knew had returned to her last night when it mattered. And there was Nate, and Carly, and Danny, and everyone else onboard the Trident at the moment. She owed it to them, and to herself, too.
We’ll keep going, Will, because that’s what you taught us.
We’ll adapt, and we’ll keep going…and we’ll survive.
EPILOGUE
“Come home.”
Night after night, and sometimes even in the day, they chased him. Hunted him. It didn’t matter how many times he got away; they always picked up his scent again, and the chase would resume. It wasn’t the other blue eyes he had to worry about. They weren’t any faster or stronger or smarter than him. No, it was really just the one person (thing) he couldn’t escape, regardless of how high he climbed, how deep he dug, or how long he ran.
Mabry.
The name echoed inside his head. It was always there, lingering at the corners of his mind, waiting to spring. Its voice was like that of a patient father, whispering to him, cajoling him to do things he didn’t want to.
“Come home,” it would say. “You took her from me. Now you have to take her place.”
He wouldn’t answer, because responding would be to give himself away. He didn’t know how he knew, he just did.
“You can’t run forever.”
Escape was impossible, because Mabry was a part of him, the way he (it) was a part of Kate and the ghouls that stalked the darkness, that chased him even now. They all came from Mabry, like the veins of a river.
Thousands of veins.
Tens of thousands.
Millions.
The war was lost. He knew that now, even though he once tried to delude himself into thinking otherwise. Or maybe he had really, truly wanted to believe it. Not for himself, but for her. For the others, too. He had come to his senses days ago.
Or was it weeks ago?
Months?
Impossible. It couldn’t have been months. Or even weeks.
Could it?
How long had he been running, trying to stay one step ahead of them, one step ahead of Mabry? Time was fluid, especially when all he could see was darkness. That was his life now. Racing through the blackness, the nothingness. He had forgotten the feel of the sun against his skin, the warmth caressing his flesh…
Flesh.
…and bones.
Thinking about it only made it worse, so he concentrated on surviving instead. He was good at it. Had always been. Even now, when he was a remnant of what he used to be, he still knew how to stay alive.
He crouched in that always present darkness now, listening to them moving in front of him. They had come down the stairs a few seconds ago, somehow tracking him across the last three cities and dozen towns and hundreds of miles of countryside and woods. All the way down to this basement, in a house that hadn’t been lived in for a year. It didn’t matter how far he went, how deep he hid, they always found him.
“You can’t hide forever.”
A small splash of moonlight intruded on the basement from a high window just above his head. Not that he needed light of any kind to see with. His eyes were different now—they were made for the darkness.
There were two of them, and he recognized what they were almost immediately, even before he saw the deep blue glow of their eyes. He could feel them. Sense them when they were nearby. It wasn’t the same as with the black-eyed ones. Their thoughts may have been shut off from him, but the air was different—it smelled and even moved differently—when they were around. He could always tell how many there were just by the way the wind moved, their aura like a living thing pressing against his flesh.
They were talking, but their lips weren’t moving. No. They had a more efficient method of communication now. Sometimes, when he was close enough and they let their guards down, he could hear their thoughts and eavesdrop on their conversations.
And he learned.
“How did you ever think you could beat us when you know so little?” she had said to him once.
But he was learning. Slowly, he was learning.
In the quiet moments when he found shelter and was safe from pursuit, he let himself think about all the things he knew about them. He knew so much now that he didn’t know before, but it still wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
Not yet, anyway.
That was always the tricky part: Seeing the options and choosing the right one to exploit. But in order to do that, he had to have m
ore information.
More. Always more—
One of the creatures had turned its head in his direction. It had sensed him, maybe in the same way he could always tell when they were around. Why hadn’t he realized that possibility earlier?
Before the first blue eyes could act, he leaped out of the corner and straight at it. He was fast. So much faster than he used to be. At first it had frightened him, but now he embraced it because his survival depended on it. The speed, the ferocity, the ability to move almost instantly as soon as his mind conjured up the idea.
The skinny thing, eyes blazing blue, made to lift its arms in defense, but he smashed into it with everything he had. It crashed into the second one, and all three of them tumbled in a tangle of limbs and clacking bones to the floor.
Before the first one could right itself underneath him, he drove his fingers—all five digits pressed flat against each other like steel knives—into the side of its neck and pushed, pushed, pushed until it came out the other side. With his other hand, he gripped the creature’s head, fingers digging into its eye sockets, and pulled.
There was a soft wet pop! as the head came free, and black blood arced through the air, splashing the walls and floor of the basement and his chest. He ignored the thick liquid, the taste of it against his lips, and flung the head across the room. The body slumped back to the floor with a dull thoomp, black tainted blood slurping out of the stump that used to be a neck.
The second blue-eyed ghoul had risen, and it looked at its dead brethren. Then it sneered at him.
“Come home,” it said inside his head.
But it wasn’t this creature standing in front of him talking. No, it was someone (something) else.
Mabry.
He (it) was speaking through the blue-eyed ghoul standing in front of him now.
“It doesn’t matter where you run,” it said. “I can follow you to the ends of the Earth. Come home. Come take her place by my side. You belong with us now.”
“Never,” he hissed, and leaped at the creature.
Seven books later and we’re still chugging along!
You’ve probably figured it out by now, but The Ashes of Pompeii represents a major turn in the storyline. Admittedly, it took a few more books to get to this point than I had originally planned, but well, we’re here now.
Nothing will ever be the same again.
As always, if you have a moment please consider leaving a review for the book at a bookseller of your choice. Even a very short review would be great. Although we’re already seven books in, can you believe there are people who still haven’t heard of the series? I know, right? Nuts!
As for what’s next, the end of the road is within sight in…
The Isles of Elysium
(Book 6 in the Babylon Series)
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www.roadtobabylon.com
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
About The Ashes of Pompeii
Prelude
Book One – The Rundown
1: Keo
2: Lara
3: Will
4: Gaby
5: Lara
6: Will
7: Keo
8: Gaby
9: Will
10: Gaby
11: Will
Book Two – The Guns of Song Island
12: Lara
13: Keo
14: Gaby
15: Josh
16: Lara
17: Gaby
18: Keo
19: Josh
20: Lara
Book Three – All Good Things…
21: Will
22: Gaby
23: Keo
24: Will
25: Lara
26: Will
27: Keo
28: Gaby
Epilogue
