The Fires of Atlantis (Purge of Babylon, Book 4) (17 page)

“No, over his back.”

“Oh, yeah.” Danny looked for a moment, then, “Looks like they’re up to no good, these two.”

“Yep.”

“Should we stop them?”

“Nah. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Besides, I really wanna know what’s in that U-Haul.”

“What if it’s people?”

“People?”

“Like captives.”

That hadn’t occurred to him. “Good point.”

“Really?”

“Hey, even the sun’s gotta shine up a dog’s asshole at least once.”

“And I got a pretty bright asshole, too.”

“Good to know, good to know.”

The two men moved back over to the edge overlooking the street. The fat one put down the duffel bag and unzipped it. He reached in and took out something long and metal. Will knew what it was before the sun glinted off the green camouflage barrel of the M40 rifle. Not the original M40, but a later model. Likely an M40A3 from the looks of it.

The fat man handed the Marine sniper rifle over to his friend, who took it and extended the tripod underneath the barrel before lying down on the rooftop on his stomach. He settled in behind the long scope and positioned his shoulder against the stock.

The kid’s done this before.

“It’s all fun and games until someone breaks out the peashooters,” Danny said. “Then it’s eyes and balls getting popped. Never good.”

“They got friends, too.”

Will nodded down the street, where two more men had appeared and were leaning out from the side of Tom’s Billiard. One had an AR-15 with an ACOG scope and he was zeroing in, while the second one stood behind him peering down the street with binoculars while talking into a radio.

“Oh boy,” Danny said. “Looks like we done run right into a good ol’-fashioned gunfight at the OK Corral. Question is, we wanna get involved in this?”

“Let’s steer clear and see who comes out on top. The Clantons, or Doc Holliday and the Earps.”

“Which one is the Clantons and which ones are the Earps, though?”

“Hell if I know. Does it matter?”

“Hey, you’re the one who made the half-assed analogy. You tell me.” Danny peered up and down the street for a moment. “You think there are more of them hanging around?”

“Gotta be. Whoever’s coordinating this seems to know what they’re doing. Probably a couple more snipers on a few more rooftops. If they’re locals and this is their city, they’ll know all the good spots, including all the ins and outs of the surrounding buildings.”

“Ambush.”

“Looks like it, yeah.”

“Can’t say I’m feeling sorry for the Earps.”

Will grinned. “Josh’s boys are the Earps?”

“They have the uniforms and the lot down there kinda look like outlaws, what with their sweat-stained shirts and AR-15s and whatnot.”

“Let’s go with that, then.”

The sniper on the rooftop fired, the gunshot impossibly loud in the still city. The shot was still echoing when the man with the AR-15 below them began sending rounds up the street, the
clink-clink-clink
of his bullet casings flickering into the air and dropping one after another like loud metallic raindrops on the sidewalk.

“I wish we had popcorn,” Danny said, dipping into another bag of Oberto and pulling out a big stick of jerky. “But I guess this’ll have to do.”

“Seriously, how many of those things do you have?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

The gunfire continued unabated, the steady
pow!
, pause,
pow!
of the sniper rifle banging out a tune with the rapid
pop-pop-pop!
of the AR-15 as its melodic companion. They were clearly shooting at something, and Will wished he could see what, but his angle was all wrong.

He thought about moving, going to find another window in the building, when someone up the street unleashed with another rifle and the brick wall the two men were hiding behind flew apart. One of the men ducked behind cover, while the second one calmly pulled himself back and reloaded.

Then all hell broke loose, and the all-too-familiar rattle of dozens of assault rifles firing at the same time on full-auto filled the air. It was like rolling thunder, sweeping up and down the streets of Dunbar, Louisiana.

And all the while, Will’s thoughts kept going back to the parking lot. To Josh’s soldiers. And that one vehicle they seemed to be surrounding like precious cargo.

What’s in the U-Haul?

C
laire returned
to the basement about ten minutes after disappearing up the stairs. She came back with a tall blonde girl, the two of them racing down the steps as if they were afraid of being caught. Which, Gaby guessed, wasn’t too far from the truth.

The new girl looked all of seventeen and fresh-faced. Gaby couldn’t remember when she last looked that innocent. The girls were definitely sisters—blonde, slender, and one of these days (probably soon) Claire was going to sprout and become just as tall as her sister. In the time it had taken them to come back, Gaby could tell Claire had already filled Donna in.

“When are we leaving?” Donna asked as soon as she climbed down the stairs.

“Now,” Gaby said.

While waiting for the sisters, Gaby had time to take stock of their surroundings. She and Peter were being kept in the basement of a Veterans of Foreign Wars building somewhere in the center of Dunbar. Someone had converted the room into a bomb shelter, with two sections—the interior where she and Peter were being kept and an exterior portion with the stairs. There was plenty of light out here thanks to LED lamps hanging from hooks. Nearly thirty percent of the space was filled with weapons and ammo, with the rest reserved for nonperishable canned goods, cases of bottled water, plastic red cans of gasoline, an entire corner of propane tanks, and stacks of MREs in crates.

Gaby had grabbed one of the M4 rifles off the rack as soon as she saw them. The carbine had a nice pistol grip under the barrel and a decent, if not great, red dot scope mounted on top. She’d worked with worse all day, so this was definitely an upgrade. She had also snatched up a web belt and began stuffing the pouches with magazines. She was still choosing and adding supplies, shoving them into tactical packs and feeling better with every additional pound, when the girls returned.

“Grab Peter,” she told them.

Claire and Donna helped Peter up from the floor and he hung between them, looking even paler and weaker than when Gaby had first managed to shoulder him into the outer room. His right eye was almost completely shut now, the skin around it giving off an abnormal appearance. Donna looked uncomfortable being this close to Peter, but she didn’t say anything.

Gaby picked up a heavy-duty nylon bag from the floor and stuffed food and water into it before handing it to Donna. “Can you carry this?”

Donna nodded, taking the bag with her free hand. “It’s either me or Claire, right? I mean look at her. She can barely carry herself.”

“Hey, I can carry myself just fine,” Claire said. “I’m still growing.”

Gaby turned back to the gun racks and picked up an additional Glock, this one smaller than the one she already had in her hip holster, and held it out, butt-first, to Donna.

The girl looked at the gun, then at her. “I don’t know how to use that.”

“You want a rifle instead?”

“I don’t know how to use one of those, either.”

Gaby glanced over at Claire and the rifle slung over her back.

“Claire’s been using that since we were kids,” Donna said, picking up on Gaby’s unasked question. “Our dad taught her.”

“And he didn’t teach you?”

“I didn’t want to learn. I wasn’t a tomboy like her.”

“You were just lazy,” Claire said.

“Keep telling yourself that, daddy’s girl,” Donna said.

Gaby stared at them for a moment. If she had any doubts they were actually sisters before, that would have gone away after listening to them. Only siblings bickered like that. She was pretty sure they weren’t even aware of it because it came so naturally at this point.

“I’ll take it,” Claire said, nodding at the gun in Gaby’s hand. “You can teach me how to use it.”

“Later,” Gaby said.

She shoved the spare Glock into her tactical pack, then flicked the safety off the M4. She walked over to the stair landing and glanced up at the closed door at the top. She stood perfectly still and listened but couldn’t hear voices or sounds of any kind from the other side. Definitely no telltale signs that Claire and Donna’s arrival had triggered some kind of an alert from upstairs.

“How many men did Harrison leave behind?” she asked.

“None,” Donna said. “Just the women and children. Harrison took all the men to the north side of town.”

“What’s happening there?”

“Some soldiers showed up.”

“Soldiers?”

“They looked like soldiers, anyway, but I don’t know what soldiers would be doing around here. I didn’t even know they were still around.”

Because they’re not. They’re Josh’s people.

She remembered the town guards in their nice and clean uniforms. She knew they weren’t actually soldiers, just collaborators playing dress up. Not that it mattered now. What was important was that Harrison had marshaled all his forces to deal with it.

What was that saying?
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend”?

“Are the women up there armed?” Gaby asked.

“Some of them,” Donna said, before adding with some concern, “You’re not going to shoot them, are you?”

“Only if I have to.”

“They’re good people. You don’t need to hurt them.”

“I won’t if I don’t have to.” Donna didn’t look convinced, but Gaby didn’t care at the moment. “What’s Harrison going to do? With the soldiers?”

“He’s going to attack them.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what he does.”

“He’s done it before,” Gaby said. It wasn’t a question.

“He says this is our city, that we have to fight to keep it.”

Like with Peter, Harrison?

Gaby looked back and stared at the three people standing behind her. Really,
really
stared at them.

They looked back at her intently, anxiously.

Except for Peter, who hadn’t looked any better since she handed him off to the girls. Despite their size, Donna and Claire were holding Peter up surprisingly well, but she could see Claire grimacing with the heavy weight. Peter was limp between them, as if he would fall and never get up again if they let go even just a little bit.

At first she had thought Harrison’s people had only beaten Peter around the face during the interrogation (because Harrison
“needed to know for sure”
), but she knew better now. When she had helped him up from the floor, he had flinched with every contact regardless of where she touched him. And walking from one side of the basement to the other had been an ordeal she wasn’t sure he would even survive.

At the moment, Peter was looking back at her with his one good eye. His right was never going to open again. He seemed to know what she was thinking, and he nodded. Or, at least, he motioned with his head in something that resembled a nod. It was mostly just a slight tremble.

“It’s not just the broken ribs,” he said. His voice was very low, coming out almost a whisper, because that was all he could manage, and even that seemed to take a great deal out of him. “I’m bleeding internally, too. This is the end of the road for me, kid.”

“Peter…”

“My right eye’s gone. I can barely see out of the left. I can’t walk without feeling like every bone in my body’s going to break apart at any second. I don’t think I’ll even make it up those stairs.”

“What are you saying, Peter?”

“I want you to go. Take the girls, find Milly, and go.”

He struggled against the sisters then somehow managed to untangle himself from them. They looked on worriedly as he stumbled over to the nearest wall and sat down. He let out a loud sigh, actually managing to smile back at the girls.

“Go,” Peter said. “I’ll be all right.”

“You’re going to die down here, Peter,” Gaby said. She was surprised by her own matter-of-fact tone.

Damn. When had she gotten so cold?

He shrugged back, almost indifferently. “I’m thirty-six. You’re just kids. This is your world now.
Go.
”

“Peter…”

“I’m not having this conversation, Gaby. Go, now, before it’s too late.”

“Too late for what?”
Gaby was about to say when the first gunshot reached them as a slight echo—a wet, barely noticeable
pop
noise.

She knew it hadn’t come from the hall above them. It originated from across the city, and it was quickly followed by a burst from an assault rifle. Then there was another shot and suddenly the city of Dunbar exploded with gunfire, the noise so intense that Gaby and the sisters found themselves standing perfectly still and listening to it, transfixed, for almost an entire minute.

Gaby finally snapped out of it. “How many soldiers are out there?” she asked Donna.

“I didn’t see all of them,” Donna said, “but it couldn’t have been that many if Harrison thinks he can take them.”

“How many men does he have?”

“Twenty-five.”

Gaby glanced up at the basement door, this time with more urgency. “Is Milly out there, Claire?”

“Yes,” Claire said.

“Are you sure?”

“I saw her.”

“Okay.”

Gaby looked back at Peter. He was holding his hand under his chin and there was blood in his palm. More red liquid coated his bloated, pale lips, and some trickled down his chin.

“Peter,” she said softly.

He wiped the blood off on the floor and met her eyes. She saw resoluteness in them. A courage she didn’t know he even possessed. “Get Milly, Gaby, and get her to the island. Please do that for me.”

She took a step toward him. “Peter…”

He held up his hand to stop her. “I’m going to stay down here for a while. Rest.” Then, he cracked a grin. Or tried to, anyway. “Enjoy the show for a while. Sounds like they’re really having a blast, huh?”

She gave him a half-smile back. It was the only response she could come up with.

How did you say good-bye to a man whom you barely knew, but who had saved your life? And now she was going to leave him down here to die, because she knew there was no way Peter was going to get out of the basement.

Not alive, anyway.

A loud, suddenly intense burst of
pop-pop-pop
from outside drew their attention again. The gunfire seemed to be coming at a faster clip now as more people were adding to the chaos. Twenty-five of Harrison’s people were out there, according to Donna, and how many of Josh’s soldiers?

All those people, all those guns, gathered in one place…

But she noticed something very clear about it, though: it was all coming from the
north
side, just like Donna had said. That left the rest of the city as a viable escape route, with the south in particular being, at this very moment, wide open.

“Go,” Peter said. “Go now, Gaby. Save Milly, please.”

Gaby nodded. She looked at him one last time, then turned and headed back to the stairs. “Let’s go, girls.”

Donna and Claire followed.

Gaby took the steps one at a time, her eyes fixed on the door, the M4 at the ready, the fingers of her left hand tightening around the pistol grip. She wondered if Peter was looking after them, if he would scream for her to stop at the last moment, just before she reached the exit. She didn’t know if she wanted him to or if she was afraid he would.

Could she keep walking if he began calling her name? Could she just abandon him down here to die?

The hellacious back and forth continued outside, indifferent to what was happening with them in the basement at the moment. Those combatants out there didn’t know and didn’t care that a good man was dying, and that they
(me)
were going to leave him down here because he had become useless.

And in this new world, useless was the same as dead…

T
he basement door
opened up into a back hallway that joined with the main area of the VFW hall. There was another door to their left leading to some kind of office. The sound of gunfire, no longer constricted by the basement’s concrete walls, was much louder and harder to ignore up here.

Gaby closed the door behind them and looked over at Donna. The girl wore shorts and a plaid long-sleeve work shirt, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She had on a belt with a knife in a sheath but no other weapons. Donna seemed to be carrying the bulky supply bag just fine—at least, for now. Gaby would have to keep an eye on her. She didn’t want to lose anything in that bag, depending on how long it was going to take them to get to Song Island. If they couldn’t locate a working vehicle along the way, it was going to be a hell of a walk.

Claire still had her lever-action rifle, which she gripped tightly in both hands. Gaby couldn’t tell if the girl had ever used the weapon before (or at least, on a real live person), but she certainly held it as if she had and was willing and ready to put that experience to work if need be. Gaby wasn’t quite sure if entrusting her life to a thirteen-year-old-girl and her seventeen-year-old sister was madness or desperation.

Oh, who are you kidding. It’s definitely a lot of both.

The three of them stood very quiet for a moment and listened to the gunfire raging back and forth from the other side of the city. She couldn’t tell who was winning. Hell, she couldn’t even tell how many sides there were at the moment. There could just be two—Harrison’s and Josh’s—or a dozen, for all she knew. She was sure of one thing, though: it was definitely coming from behind them—not too far away, but not close, either.

“We need to head south,” Gaby said. She glanced down at her watch: 5:09 p.m. “We’re going to be cutting it pretty close, but we can’t stay here tonight or we might never leave. So let’s get Milly and get out of here.”

She headed up the hallway toward the opening. Donna and Claire followed silently behind her.

“It’s just the women and kids?” Gaby asked.

“Last time I was up here, yes,” Donna said behind her.

As it turned out, the last time Donna checked wasn’t recent enough, because when Gaby stepped out of the hallway and into the large main area of the VFW hall, the first thing she saw was a tall man sitting on a chair next to the twin front doors all the way across the room. He was cradling an AK-47 and looked bored, his head craned to one side as he listened to the gun battle outside with an almost wistful expression on his face.