The Fires of Atlantis (Purge of Babylon, Book 4) by Sam Sisavath Page A

there,” Keo said, “the ones that went looking for my boat. You said they were taking you somewhere?”
    “They were taking us back to the town.”
    “What town?”
    “L11.”
    “Never heard of it.”
    “It’s what they call it,” she said and shrugged.
    “L11,” Keo repeated. “Sounds like something the military would come up with.”
    “You were in the military?”
    “God, no.” Then, “Those guys back there. They weren’t soldiers, either.”
    “No. They just started dressing in those uniforms recently. Before then, they ran around in hazmat suits and gas masks.”
    Hazmat suits and gas masks? Now that rings a bell…
    “You say there are more of them around?” Keo said. “Besides the ones we’ve seen already?”
    “A lot more.” She looked anxiously toward the window. “How long are we going to stay here?”
    “Until I’m sure no one else is going to pop up. Then we’ll leave.” He glanced at his watch. “Still six more hours until nightfall. Relax.”
    “Relax. Right.”
    “Do your best.”
    Carrie went back to scooping syrup-drenched pieces of fruit into her mouth with one of the cheap plastic sporks they had found in the back of the Ridgeline. Lorelei, meanwhile, ate ravenously from a can of SPAM.
    “Tell me about this town,” Keo said to Carrie.
    “What about it?”
    “Why did you run away?”
    “You really don’t know? About the towns?”
    “‘Towns’? So there is more than one?”
    “That’s why it’s called L11,” she said, watching him carefully, maybe trying to gauge if he was messing with her. When she was certain he wasn’t, she continued. “There are dozens of them in Louisiana alone. That’s what I heard, anyway. The one we escaped from was called L11.”
    “L11,” Keo repeated again. “So there are ten more before it. And more after it?”
    “Yes, I think so. I don’t know for sure, but I’ve heard the stories.”
    “And there are people in these towns? How is that possible? What happens at night? How do they keep the bloodsuckers out?”
    “You don’t know?” she said again. “Where have you been all this time?”
    “In the woods. I guess I’m a little behind the times.”
    “Have you ever been to the camps?”
    “These are different from the towns?”
    She nodded and told him, and Keo listened intently.
    Carrie explained the camps filled with survivors. The towns like L11, where the creatures stayed out. And humans donating blood every day. “The agreement,” as Carrie put it. Then there were the pregnant women. He found that the hardest to swallow, but when he stared at the women and saw the very real fear on Lorelei’s face underneath her hair, he believed it. Every single word of it.
    “Goddamn,” he said when she was finished. “So they’re working for those things? The enemy?”
    “Yes,” Carrie said. “They watch over us in the daytime.”
    “But that’s not all they do.”
    “No. They do a lot of other…things.”
    Keo nodded. Suddenly the presence of those men in hazmat suits and gas masks trying to kill him in Robertson Park made sense. Or as much “sense” as selling out your own species to bloodsucking creatures made any sense, anyway.
    “You’re taking this well,” Carrie said, watching him closely.
    He shrugged. “I’ve seen some crazy things in my life.”
    “Crazier than this?”
    “Not this, but I’ve seen people do some crazy things to survive.”
    He spent a few minutes rolling all the information he had just absorbed over in his head in silence. A year ago he wouldn’t have believed a single thing Carrie had just said, but what was possible and impossible had been upended for good in the last eleven months. These days it seemed anything was not only possible, but likely.
    After a while, he glanced back at her. “You said they wanted to impregnate you.”
    “Yeah. That’s why we ran.”
    “Were the guys too ugly?”
    Carrie rolled her eyes. “It’s not the sex. It’s what happens afterward. With