The Fires of Atlantis (Purge of Babylon, Book 4) (30 page)

She got up again and kept going.

110 yards…

The second one was walking back around the truck and handed the first one a bottle of water. They drank while looking down the highway, back toward Dunbar. They were clearly waiting for someone and weren’t going anywhere soon.

130 yards…

She took a second to make sure the fire selector on the M4 was set to semi-auto.

150 yards…

She was close enough now that she could hear them talking. They sounded young, and she could make out blond hair on one soldier, while the other one had a long black ponytail.

160 yards…

She wasn’t sure what happened. Maybe she wasn’t being nearly as quiet as she thought she was. Or maybe one of them, by some fluke, saw something that alerted him to her presence, the way she had seen the reflection of their truck under the sun earlier.

Either way, one of them saw her, said something, and both men began unslinging their rifles.

Gaby immediately stopped, took aim through the red dot scope, and fired—and
missed
.

Her bullet
pinged!
harmlessly off the hood of the truck. It was a bad shot, but it still made one of them dart for cover, so at least it had some impact. The one that didn’t move opened fire on her, the
pop-pop-pop
of his three-round burst filling the air even before her own shot’s echo had faded.

Gaby forced herself to stand perfectly still and reacquire her target even as the ground to her right, at shoulder level, exploded and she was showered with loosened dirt and grass. The man was firing too fast, too wildly, probably trying to fight against the same adrenaline that was pumping through every inch of her at the moment.

Whoever these men were, they didn’t have the advantage of being trained by a pair of Army Rangers. Will and Danny hadn’t held back—not once in the three months they broke her down and built her back up on the island.

She summoned that experience now and forced one of her senses to ignore the sound of bullets
buzzing
past her head.

She corrected her aim, swiveling slightly to the right, and fired again.

This time she hit the man in the waist, and he dropped his rifle and grabbed at the spot where he had been shot. When the man tried to run around the truck for cover, Gaby calmly took aim again and shot him in the back.

The man stumbled and slammed into the hood of the truck and slid down the smooth surface, but by then Gaby was already rushing up the ditch again. This time she dispensed with the slow jog and was in a full sprint mode, peering through her weapon’s sight the entire time and searching for another target.

Where’s the other one? Where’s the other one?

Running forward was the only path open to her. She couldn’t retreat, not with one of the (fake) soldiers still alive. He had the truck and she needed it. She knew exactly where the resolve came from: the very real desire to get back home to Song Island at all costs.

That’s my truck, asshole!

The second man was moving along the length of the truck, smartly keeping behind cover. Unfortunately for him, thanks to her lowered vantage point inside the ditch, she easily spotted his boots moving underneath the vehicle. The man was clearly trying to reach the back of the truck (a Chevy, as it turned out), probably in hopes of catching her by surprise. Either he didn’t know she could see his feet or he was counting on her not picking it up.

When he poked his head out the back, she snapped off a shot. Her bullet shattered one of the taillights and the man jerked his head back instinctively.

Gaby picked up the pace. She was twenty yards away now and she could still see the man’s boots, this time holding their position at the middle of the truck. Gaby laid the M4 on top of the ditch, took careful aim, and shot the man in the right ankle. There was a loud scream and the figure crumpled to the ground on the other side of the Chevy.

Gotcha.

She climbed up the ditch and scrambled up the road. The first man she had shot was dead, lying facedown on the hot asphalt in a pool of his own blood. Gaby scanned all the sides of the highway, looking for any potential threats. She hadn’t seen any before, but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t heard the shots and was responding. It was a big road and seemed to go on endlessly in both directions. She hadn’t properly realized what a huge task it would have been to travel it on foot until now.

I definitely need that truck.

She skirted around the hood of the Chevy, the rifle ready to shoot the second man on sight. He must have had plenty of time to prepare for her by now. It had taken her how long to climb up the ditch and then jog over? Twenty seconds? Maybe thirty?

More than enough time. Maybe he was going to make a final bloody stand, hoping to take her with him. She wasn’t going to give him that chance if she could help it. She was tired of giving people the benefit of the doubt. They always ended up disappointing her, like Josh…

But the man wasn’t a threat. Not anymore.

He sat on the highway, back against the driver side door, trying desperately to tie a handkerchief around his bleeding ankle. His face was locked in a tight grimace, sweat pouring down his temple and chin, and he didn’t seemed to notice her at all. He was young, too. He couldn’t have been more than twenty, and “Darren” was stenciled over his nametag.

Gaby tightened her finger on the M4’s trigger.

Darren finally realized she was there and looked up. He didn’t make a move for his weapons and only clenched his teeth in pain. “Please, please don’t shoot.”

Gaby stared at him. He had soft blue eyes and a burgeoning stubble. He didn’t look dangerous, but then, none of them did. It wasn’t what they did that made them her enemy; it was what they were committed to.

“Please,” Darren said again. “God, please, don’t kill me.”

She wanted to shoot him. It was the smart thing to do. He was the enemy and she was, without a doubt, stuck behind enemy lines. If she let him go, he would alert the others to her presence. If Josh had sent him, he would go back and tell him where she was. Josh would immediately know where she was heading, and what roads she would take.

Letting this man
(boy)
go would be the dumbest thing she could do at this very moment. Will would shoot him. He wouldn’t even hesitate.

So why was she?

Gaby breathed for the first time in what seemed like hours and took her finger off the trigger. Darren, seeing her response, sighed with great relief.

“Don’t move,” Gaby said.

He nodded.

She scooted over and picked up his assault rifle. She pulled his sidearm out of its holster and shoved it into her waistband, then took a step back. “I need your magazines.”

Darren began removing them from his pouches and placing them on the road without hesitation. Gaby stepped back a little bit more and gave Darren a quick look, then glanced down the road and waved with both hands at the girls. She hoped they would understand and was grateful to see all three rising and running up the road as fast as they could. From this distance, they looked like stick figures twinkling against the sun.

She looked back at Darren as he took out the last magazine. “Is there gas in the truck?”

He nodded. “We filled it up this morning.”

“From where?”

“In town.”

“Dunbar?”

“Yes.”

“You were there last night?”

“No, I arrived this morning.”

“What are you doing out here? Are you looking for someone?”

He looked reluctant to answer.

“Are you really going to make me ask twice?” she said, trying to inject as much menace as she could into her voice. Will wouldn’t have had a problem with it, but then, she wasn’t an ex-Army Ranger.

“There were people still left in the city,” Darren said. “We were supposed to make sure no one tried to leave.”

“Did Josh send you?”

“Who?”

She stared at his face. Was he lying to her? The way he had answered the question—quickly, without even taking a second to think about it—made him either the world’s best liar or he was telling the truth. Josh hadn’t sent him. He didn’t even seem to know who Josh was.

If Josh didn’t send you, then who did?

“Never mind,” she said.

Gaby glanced over again. She could make out Claire in the lead, with Milly behind her, and Donna lagging in the back because of the heavy supply bag she was carrying.

“Where’s the key?” she asked Darren.

“Inside,” he said. Then, blinking in the sun at her, “Are you going to kill me?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

His face turned ghostly white. “Please…”

“Stop begging,” she said, fighting the growing irritation.

“Be a man,”
she wanted to say.
“Accept the consequences of your decisions and your actions. You and Josh and the rest of them.”

Instead, she motioned for him to get away from the truck. He struggled to his feet, then dragged one leg behind him as he hobbled away, leaving a bloody trail in his wake. His eyes shifted down the road for a brief moment.

“Expecting reinforcements?” she asked.

He shook his head quickly. “No, I was just…” He didn’t finish and instead looked down at nothing.

She slung her rifle and drew the Glock, then opened the driver side door. The key was in the ignition. She pulled it out and pocketed it, then opened the back door and looked in. There were two cases of refilled water bottles in the back, unopened bags of MREs, and spare magazines thrown haphazardly across the seats.

“How many others are out here?” she asked.

He seemed to think about it. “This far out? Just us.”

She fixed him with a hard look.

He swallowed. “I swear.”

She didn’t know whether to believe him or not. She had never been particularly good at reading faces anyway, but Darren looked too scared to lie.

“I’m going to take your truck,” she said.

“Take it,” he said quickly.

The girls had reached them by now, Claire clutching her rifle at the sight of Darren. Donna was out of breath and leaned against the hood for support. Milly looked winded but was too busy being queasy at the sight of the dead soldier.

Claire returned Gaby’s pack, but her eyes were fixed on Darren. “What are we going to do with him?”

“I don’t know yet,” Gaby said. “What do you think?”

The girl was eyeballing Darren like a predator. Although he was five-ten and probably had one hundred pounds on the thirteen-year-old, Darren still shrunk back from her intense stare. He glanced from Claire to Gaby, then back again.

Gaby couldn’t tell if he was more afraid of her or the kid.

Definitely the kid,
she thought with a smile.

“
A
m I dead
?”

“Almost,” Will said.

“Thank God,” Danny groaned. “Because if I’m dead and your ugly mug’s the first thing I see, it’s a pretty good bet I didn’t go, you know, up there.” He hiked a thumb upward, then looked down at his shirt, which was covered in a thick film of dry blood from last night. “All this red stuff mine?”

“Yup. There’s more on your face.”

“Shit.”

“Yup.”

“So that explains the sore joints, aching bones, and this wicked pounding inside my skull.”

Danny winced as he sat up, pushing back against the wall for support. In the glow of morning that filled up the bathroom, his face was covered in dried blood, and to look at him, it was unfathomable that he was still alive. His nose was crooked and broken at the bridge. Will had stuffed two wads of year-old toilet paper into each nostril.

“Morning?” Danny said.

“Morning.”

“We made it.”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s not do last night again.”

“Deal.”

Danny pulled the tissue paper out and flicked them away. “I hate nosebleeds.”

“I wouldn’t call what you had last night nosebleeds. More like a blood-gushing torrent.”

“That bad, huh?”

“I was pretty sure you were dead. I had a speech prepared for Carly and everything.”

“I kinda wish I was.” He glanced over at Will, sitting to his right. “You look like how I feel.”

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

Will didn’t feel like moving from where he had been sitting for the last few hours. In-between chewing on a pair of granola bars from one of his pockets, he had downed two more painkillers. His side throbbed and his neck hurt, but he was alive, even if every inch of him claimed otherwise.

“Water?” Danny said.

“Back in Ennis’s basement.”

He looked over at one of the stalls. “I can’t believe I’m asking this, but…toilet water?”

“Went dry a long time ago.”

“So what’s the good news?”

“We’re still alive.”

“That’ll work. So, you got anymore of the good stuff?”

Will pulled out the light bottle of painkillers and tossed it over. “Finish it off.”

“This everything?”

“More in the packs…”

“…back at Ennis’s,” Danny finished. He shook out two, then decided four was the better number and popped them into his mouth and chewed on them as if they were rock candy. He tossed the empty bottle away and watched it skid across the room. “It wasn’t my imagination, right? There was one of those blue-eyed buggers in the hallway.”

“Yup.”

“I shot it.”

“You did.”

“With silver bullets.”

“Uh huh.”

“I mean, I shot the crap out of it. A dozen rounds. At least six.”

“Give or take.”

“So how the mother truckin’ hell did it keep coming?”

“I was going to tell you,” Will said. “I saw one of them outside the bar last night. I shot it with a silver bullet and it didn’t go down.”

Danny smirked. “And you were saving this for…when?”

Will shrugged. “Eventually. We were sort of preoccupied with other things last night. Like trying to keep Rachel from killing us. Then I fell asleep. And you know what happened after that.”

“Excuses, excuses.” Danny paused, then, “So why are we still alive?”

“Shooting them doesn’t work, not even with silver bullets. But taking out the brain seems to work just fine.”

“You still need silver for that, or will any ol’ bullet do?”

“I have no idea. Let’s just use silver to be sure.”

“Sounds good to me. That’s what they used to call me back in college, you know. Sure Thing Danny.” He paused again to catch his breath. “Damn, I could use some water.”

“Yup.”

They sat in silence for a moment, staring at nothing in particular. Talking was easier than moving, but it seemed to have tired Danny out almost as much as it had Will.

Danny touched the gash along his left temple, fingers sticky from the ointment and disinfectant Will had used to cover it up when there was enough light to work with. He had wiped as much blood off Danny’s face as he could, but even so, Danny looked like the result of a plastic surgery gone awry.

Danny flinched. “Goddamn, that hurts.”

“So don’t touch it.”

“Yeah, good idea. You’re full of good ideas this morning.” Danny nodded at the long trail of dried blood that led to the door. “Is that mine or Tommy’s?”

“Both.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. I think one of them found another way in. Waited for Tommy, then…you know.” He added, almost as if in afterthought, “It took his head.”

“It took his head?”

“Yeah. It took his head.”

“The fuck?”

“What I said.”

“Did you…find it?”

“No. I don’t want to, either.”

The bathroom smelled of something rotten, and it wasn’t just from their sweat and blood. Will had been breathing mostly through his mouth ever since he struggled to drag Danny inside about four hours ago. Even though there were no windows, visibility had greatly improved and he could feel the warmth of the sun against his skin and face coming into the room from…somewhere.

“So,” Danny said after a while.

“So…”

“Blue-eyes.”

“Yeah.”

“Two?”

“Four.”

“Four?”

He told Danny about his dream, the one Kate had shown him. About how they had ambushed Harrison’s people.

“Smart buggers,” Danny said.

“Bratt had it right.”

“What’s that?”

“He called them shock troops. The tip of the spear, sent behind enemy lines to break the resistance. That’s what they did. Harrison and his people have been causing problems for the ghouls, attacking their convoys, that sort of thing. So Kate sent the four blue-eyed ones to take Dunbar.”

“And it was all your ghoulfriend’s idea?”

Will sighed. He hated that word. “She claims it was. She was a former ad executive, you know. It’s what she used to do for a living. Getting people to do what she wants.”

“That how she got you into bed?”

“All she had to do was take her clothes off to accomplish that.”

Danny snorted. “Tits and ass is all it takes with you, huh?”

“Pretty much.”

“You’re such a dude, dude.”

“Dude, right?”

Danny chuckled for a moment, then smacked his dry, cracked lips together. “So, four?”

“I saw four.”

“In the dream.”

“Uh huh.”

“And we’re sure the dream was real?”

“It didn’t feel so much like a dream as they were…memories.”

“Whose?”

“She said one of the ghouls’.”

“She can do that now?”

“I guess so.”

“Man.”

“Yeah,” Will said.

A few more seconds of silence passed between them before Danny said, “But there were only two last night.”

“Two minus four is indeed two.”

“So Mrs. Miller was right. Math really does come in handy in real life. So where are the other two?”

“I have no idea.”

“Does that worry you?”

“Every second of last night.”

Danny’s stomach growled. “Excuse me.”

“Hungry?” Will smiled.

“Just a tad.”

“Well, we know where our packs are…”

“Ennis’s.”

“Yup.”

Danny sighed and reached over and picked up his rifle. “What are we just sitting around here twiddling our thumbs for, then? Let’s get this show on the road.”

T
ommy’s
headless body wasn’t in the hallway when Will and Danny emerged from the bathroom, weapons at the ready. There wasn’t a whole lot of light back here, and patches of shadows jumped out at them from both sides of the passageway.

They swung left, then right, then stood with their backs together, rifles pointing into the darkness on both sides of them, waiting for something to happen. There should have been an attack from a nest of waiting ghouls, only there wasn’t.

“Shoot for the head?” Danny asked.

“Shoot for the head,” Will nodded.

“Should have told me that last night.”

“I didn’t know last night.”

“Yeah, well, this broken face is still your fault.”

“Relax. You still look pretty.”

“That goes without saying…”

Even among the shadows, multiple streaks of blood ran up and down the hallway, including a long jagged trail from when Will dragged Danny to the bathroom. And another big swath of blood, where Tommy’s body used to be.

“They take the bodies, right?” Danny said.

“As far as I know.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea.”

“We should really sit down one of these days and talk about everything we know about them. I’ll dictate and you type.”

“What makes you think I can type?”

“I dunno, but you look like the typing kind.”

“What kind is that?”

“You know, with dainty fingers and such.”

They moved toward the lobby, passing the spot where he had last seen the blue-eyed ghouls. He wasn’t surprised to find them gone, leaving behind only smeared, clumpy black blood in their wake, too far from the sunlight to have evaporated. There was still a wet quality about the liquid, which shouldn’t have been possible given how many hours since they had bled out.

“That them?” Danny asked.

“Yup.”

“Blood’s still wet.”

“Yup.”

“How’s that possible?”

“Hell if I know.”

“Do you know anything?”

Will pointed at the patch of dried red blood on the wall. “I know that’s you.”

“Damn. Are you sure I’m still alive? Maybe this is just one big freaky
Jacob’s Ladder
type of scenario?”

“Are you saying you’re Tim Robbins?”

“Hell no. I’m much handsomer.”

“Keep telling yourself that, buddy.”

“I do every day. Someone’s gotta.”

They stepped over the blood—a difficult feat, since there was so much spread around the narrow passageway—and continued down toward the lobby, drawn forward by the warmth of the morning heat. There was just enough sunlight as they neared the half-circle arched entrance that they began to relax.

“Right in the head?” Danny said.

“How many times are you going to ask me?”

“So it’s the brain.”

“I think so, yeah.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”

“When will that be, you think?”

“Five years, two months, one week, and three days from now.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that. Anything else you wanna share, now that we’re both in a sharing mood?”

“I think Kate’s going to attack the island.”

Danny sighed. “How many times have I told you? Stop dating the psycho bitches. But do you ever listen to me? Noooooo.”

“In my defense, we barely dated.”

“You know what I always say about those one-night stands, man. They’re killer.”

The lobby looked like a war zone, with shards of glass covering most of the tiled floor, scattered among dozens of bleached-white bones. The acrid smell of evaporated flesh and tainted blood hung in the air.

Will started breathing through his mouth again. It seemed like he was doing a lot of that lately.

They maneuvered around the chaos and death and stepped outside onto the sidewalk and into the hot sun. The street looked even more empty this morning, and the city of Dunbar was eerily quiet, with hardly any wind at all. Debris and spent shell casings littered the streets.

Except for the two of them, there were no sounds or signs of any other survivors.

Danny looked over at Ennis’s next door. “You think any of them made it?”

“Doubt it.”

“Maybe Rachel got out.”

“You think?”

Danny thought about it, then shook his head. “Nah, I can’t even muster up enough optimism for that one.”

“Some Captain Optimism.”

“I know, I’m really not living up to the title these days. You wanna give it a try for a while?”

“No thanks.”

Danny glanced around him for a moment, then said, “So, what else did your ghoulfriend say about attacking the island?”

E
nnis’s basement
was covered in swaths of dried red blood. Or, at least, the part of it that they could see using the light pouring in from the side door. There were still large sections of the room covered in darkness, and Will and Danny scanned the place with their flashlights first and were surprised to find it empty.

They headed straight into the back, where Rachel’s people had taken their packs last night. They found what they needed in a corner, some of the contents spilled around the area. Everything was still there, including the radio.

They hurried out and climbed back up to the alley next door, then stepped through another graveyard of bones, this one thicker and deeper and longer than the one in the Dunbar museum. It was impossible to take a step without crunching a femur or snapping a finger or pulverizing ribcages. The lingering acrid smell of dead ghouls was overwhelming, and they had to put handkerchiefs over their mouths and nose to get through the alley on their way in and out.

Will took a moment to gather himself back out on the sidewalk, pulling out a warm bottle of water from one of the packs and quenching his thirst. He spent the rest of it washing as much of the blood and grime off his face and hands as possible. Danny had already wasted two bottles cleaning the dry blood off his face, grimacing and hissing each time he touched his broken nose.

The city hadn’t gotten any livelier since they stepped outside the museum thirty minutes ago, though it seemed to have gotten hotter, the streets on both sides of him flickering like mirages.

He found a beat-up red truck on the curb and sat the portable ham radio down on the hood and powered it on. He pressed the pre-set button to bring up the island’s designated emergency frequency and adjusted the attached antenna as high as it would go.

“How’s this going to work?” Danny asked, drinking the rest of his second bottle. Mostly free of his bloody mask, he actually looked even more bruised and battered in the sunlight, if that was possible.

“What do you mean?”