The Fires of Atlantis
Book 4 in the Babylon Series
Sam Sisavath
To everyone who helped make the series what it is — THANK YOU.
Prelude
“To any survivors out there, if you’re hearing this, you are not alone. There are things you need to know about our enemy — these creatures of the night, these ghouls. They are not invincible, and they have weaknesses other than sunlight. One: you can kill them with silver. Stab them, shoot them, or cut them with any silver weapon, and they will die. Two: they will not cross bodies of water. An island, a boat — get to anything that can separate you from land. Three: some ultraviolet light has proven effective, but flashlights and lightbulbs with UV don’t seem to have any effect. We don’t know why, so use this information with caution. If you’re hearing this message, you are not alone. Stay strong, stay smart, and adapt. We owe it to those we’ve lost to keep fighting, to never give up. Good luck.”
Book One
S.E.R.E
1
Keo
The scar tingled whenever it got cold. And it was cold at night, even in October in south Louisiana. If he thought about something else — like Gillian, or better yet, Gillian in a bikini walking along a stretch of beach waiting for him — it was easy to forget that someone had very recently tried to carve his face like a jack-o’-lantern. The scar was a reminder of three months of running and fighting.
Remember when you didn’t give a damn about anyone but yourself?
You’re really getting soft, pal.
The earbud in his right ear clicked, interrupting the silence he had been enjoying for the last hour while waiting for darkness to fall. A voice said, “You’re putting your life in the hands of some girl you don’t know from Adam. If that doesn’t make you the dumbest man still alive, it’s gotta be pretty close.”
“You know what they say about lives,” Keo whispered into the throat mic. “The only thing certain is death and taxes. And since good ol’ Uncle Sam isn’t around anymore to collect the latter, where does that leave us?”
“You and us up a creek, San Diego.”
“So what else is new?”
“Leave the man alone with his death wish, Shorty,” a second voice said.
“We should be on Song Island right now, Zach,” Shorty said. “Wasn’t that the point of coming down here in the first place? But instead, we’re stealing people’s silver and turning them into bullets. What a big ol’ waste of time.”
“Song Island’s not going anywhere,” Zachary said. “It’ll be there when we get there. Besides, if the lady on the radio’s right, this could change everything. We might actually be able to kill these things. What did she call them?”
“Ghouls,” Keo said.
“Sounds about right.”
“We could have at least tried this closer to the water,” Shorty said. “Safer.”
“Since when did you start playing it safe?” Keo asked.
Shorty snorted. “We should have stayed on the boat. Wait for one of them to get close to the pier and test this theory out. Coming out here is stupid, Zach.”
“We tried that last night,” Keo said.
“This is too risky…” Shorty insisted.
“Life’s a risk, especially now,” Zachary said.
Keo couldn’t help but smile to himself. Shorty called him crazy, but he wasn’t the one who had voluntarily spent his nights in the ground wearing a ghillie suit while the bloodsuckers were running around — sometimes on top of them. He had been calling them creatures, monsters, and bloodsuckers, but the woman on the radio referred to them as ghouls. He guessed it was as good a name as any.
The woman on the radio also told him silver would kill these things.
I guess we’ll find out tonight…
He focused on the creature in the center of his weapon’s optic. It had been a good nine seconds since he acquired his target and laid the red dot directly over something that used to be a forehead. It was pruned, like someone’s asshole. He shouldn’t have been able to see the creature from this distance, but there was a full moon out tonight and he had a good perch.
“You guys could have stayed on the boat,” Keo whispered. “You didn’t actually have to come out here with me. I could have done this myself.”
“Someone had to watch your ass,” Zachary said in his right ear. “You’re used to working alone, kid, but we’re not.”
“Your funeral.”
“What a nice thing to say,” Shorty said. “I should have stayed at the park. You know what’s the best thing about sleeping on a boat? Not being surrounded by a few thousand ghouls.”
“A few thousand?” You’re being overly generous there, Shorty. There’s got to be a few tens of thousands of the bloodsuckers out tonight…
“Well?” Zachary said.
“Well, what?” Keo whispered back.
“The one you got in your crosshairs right now. I assume it’s the same one I’m looking at. You going to shoot it or not?”
“Why so anxious? The two of you don’t even believe it’ll work.”
“Can you blame us?” Shorty said. “Silver bullets? Come on. That’s crazy.”
“Right. Silver bullets is crazy,” Keo said. “Because all of this is perfectly sane.”
Zachary chuckled. “He’s got you there, Shorty.”
Shorty wasn’t buying it. “I’m just saying. Why would silver bullets work when good ol’-fashioned lead don’t?”
“The lady on the radio says it works,” Keo said.
“You don’t even know who she is.”
“She sounded pretty sure of it. And she got the rest of it right. Sunlight, bodies of water… We know for a fact those work, too.”
“All right, all right,” Zachary said impatiently. “So get it over with and let’s see once and for all. I’m freezing my ass off out here, and Shorty’s all pruned up so much I might not be able to tell the difference between him and those ghouls pretty soon.”
“Just don’t accidentally shoot me in the ass,” Shorty said.
“No promises.”
“Relax,” Keo said. “You’re hiding inside the building while I’m up here on the rooftop. The only one who should be worried right now is me.”
“Don’t miss,” Shorty said. “As I recall, you’re not much of a long-distance shooter.”
“This isn’t much of a shot.”
“You hope.”
He tuned out the two men, along with the soft wind blowing through his hair and across the rooftop, scattering loose gravel around him.
Nice and slow. Breathe.
Keo tightened his forefinger against the trigger of the MP5SD. The long barrel of the submachine gun was steady against the brick edge in front of him. From his vantage point, he had a clear look at everything for a good block and a half. There were, at the moment, a handful of the creatures moving from building to building, but he didn’t have any illusions that that was the full extent of their numbers.
Where you find one, you find a hundred…or a thousand…
The one he was staring at stood underneath a streetlight. He imagined a pool of white circling the thing’s head, but of course there was no such thing. The city was pitch black at night, and had been for the last few days ever since he and Allie’s two boys arrived.