The Fires of Atlantis (Purge of Babylon, Book 4) (34 page)

S
he should have killed
the kid. Darren. Well, he wasn’t really a kid. He was older than her by a few years, but to Gaby, anyone with a rifle who couldn’t put up a fight was a kid. Of course, killing Darren went out the window as soon as he started crying. Even Claire had looked almost sickened by the sight of that.

So they had left the collaborator on the side of the road and taken his truck. It was a Chevy Silverado, though one truck was the same as another to Gaby. It had a high perch, which allowed her to see a lot of the road up ahead, something that she liked. It was also powerful, and she finally understood why boys loved their trucks so much. It was hard not to feel as if you could run over just about anything behind the wheel of one of these monsters because, in all likelihood, you probably could. All she needed from it at the moment was to get her to Song Island.

Donna and Milly were stuffing themselves with food and refilled bottles of water in the back. Claire, who sat shotgun in the front passenger seat, leaned over every now and then to grab some for herself. Each time she did, Gaby resisted the instinct to tell her to put on her seat belt. She had to keep reminding herself that she wasn’t the girl’s mom, though she felt a strange connection to her, even more so than to Milly, whom she had known longer.

It was still morning, and the sun baked the empty vastness to both sides of them. The hot asphalt road shimmered and looked like water in front of her, and the nothingness made her feel like she was daydreaming. It should have made her comfortable and lulled her into something resembling serenity, but instead it only made her more alert and sit up straighter in the leather seat.

It was Josh. She couldn’t stop thinking about him. About what he had become, what he was doing. She kept looking at her side mirror, expecting to see him coming up behind her at any moment, declaring his love for her, that he was doing all of this for her, while bringing along a small army of lackeys.

Keep lying to yourself, Josh. Maybe one day you’ll actually believe it.

“Is it far from here?” Claire asked after a while. She talked through a mouthful of bread and pieces of sausage.

“Where’d you get that?” Gaby asked.

“Back here,” Donna said, holding up a blue plastic Tupperware with more sausages inside. “It’s pork.”

“How’s the bread?”

“It’s about a day old. Still pretty good, though.”

Donna pulled off a chunk and leaned forward. Gaby gobbled it up and chewed for a moment, keeping one hand on the steering wheel and her eyes outside the windshield the entire time. The last thing she needed was to run them into a ditch while trying to eat. All those “Don’t Text and Drive” commercials flashed through her mind all of a sudden. That and those “Click it or Ticket” billboards.

The good old days…

Donna was right. The bread was still pretty good. Then again, it had been a while since she had last eaten some. They had frozen dough on the island, but these actually tasted fresh. Or, at least, one-day fresh. Donna handed her one of the pork sausages and Gaby devoured that, too. It was even better when she stuffed the remaining parts into the bread and ate it like a hot dog.

“They must have a pig farm or something,” Donna said. “And fresh flour.”

Gaby nodded. She wondered how much Donna knew about what was happening out there, with the collaborators and the towns, while she was stuck in Dunbar all this time with her sister under Harrison’s protection. But she decided not to ask. The sisters knew enough to be scared of the soldiers and what was out there at night, and those were the only two things she needed them to know at the moment.

“You know how to cook?” she asked Donna.

Donna shrugged. “A little.”

“She thinks she’s good, but she’s terrible at it,” Claire said.

“At least I can cook,” Donna said.

“Barely.”

“Ugh, you’re never eating anything I cook again.”

“Promise?”

“You say that now—”

“Look!” Milly shouted, leaning between the front seats and pointing not up the road, but to the right of the highway.

Gaby took her foot off the gas slightly and the Chevy slowed down, going from forty to thirty, then twenty, as she saw what Milly was pointing at: a white two-story house being ravaged by a raging fire. The building was part of a farm, flanked by a red barn and some kind of storage shack. After leaving the cemetery behind, farmland and the houses of the people that tilled them had begun popping up.

“Whoa,” Claire said, leaning against her door. She had rolled down the window and the girl stuck her head out a bit. “It’s really burning that sucker up.”

They were almost past the house, and Gaby swore she could feel the flames all the way over here, adding to the already terrible morning heat. Donna and Milly moved toward the back right window to get a better look at the flames.

“Should we stop?” Donna asked.

“No,” Gaby said without hesitation.

“What if someone needs help?” Milly said.

“It’s too dangerous. After what happened with the soldiers, I don’t want to take any chances.”

Gaby gave the house one last look, scanning the grounds around it. She couldn’t detect any signs of movements or vehicles in motion in the front yard or along the manmade dirt road that connected it to the highway.

She added pressure to the accelerator and the Chevy began to pick up speed again.

Donna and Milly continued gazing out at the burning house, eventually moving from the side window to the rear windshield as they passed it by. Gaby looked briefly over at Claire, and the girl, bread stuffed into her mouth, gave her an approving nod.

Gaby smiled back.

“
H
ow much further to
Beaufont Lake?” Donna asked.

“I’m not sure,” Gaby said. “After we reach I-10, it’s about half a day, I think. The good news is that the road out here is pretty empty, so we should make good time. But depending on how long it takes us to reach Salvani, we might have to find a place to spend the night.”

“I was hoping we’d get there today.”

“Me too,” Milly said.

“But you know where to go?” Claire asked. “Even without a map?”

Gaby nodded. “Once we hit I-10, we turn right, then left on Salvani. After that, it’s a straight drive down south.”

She glanced at Claire, then at Donna and Milly in the backseat, and hoped she had been convincing enough. They looked satisfied, so she probably had been.

The truth was, without a map, she was just guessing. She had traveled from Texas to Louisiana with Will and Lara, but she had never taken the wheel during any part of the drive. She even spent most of that trip asleep in the backseat
(with Josh).
Even during the helicopter ride with Jen, she was just a passenger, and she slept through most of that, too.

But it seemed like a pretty straightforward trip. Hopefully.

“I can’t wait for a hot shower,” Donna said wistfully. She took a sip from a bottle of water and made a face. “And cold water. With ice. That would probably be the best thing ever.”

“It’s not bad,” Gaby said. “The soft bed and your own room is a close number three and four.”

“I’ve never stayed in a hotel before,” Claire said. “Is it a nice hotel?”

“The parts that are finished are.”

“How unfinished is it?” Donna asked.

“You’ll hardly notice.”

“She’ll notice,” Claire said. “She complains about everything.”

“I only complain about
you
,” Donna said.

Claire smirked. “See?”

They went back and forth for a few more minutes, but by then Gaby had automatically tuned them out. She found it easy to do after the tenth time they started in on each other. Not that she ever thought about telling them to stop. She just assumed this was their way of coping, the same reason Danny joked his way through a firefight. It was their natural response, their sanctuary.

She couldn’t help but share Donna’s enthusiasm. How long had it been since she tasted cold water? Or stood under a hot shower? Had it really been weeks since she laid down on her own soft bed? God, she missed that the most.

Thinking about all the comforts waiting for her back on the island only made her long to see signs of the I-10 highway in the distance. Any sign at all. It would be hard to miss: a tall concrete structure rising up from the flat landscape she had been traveling for the last—how long had it been?

Gaby glanced at her watch. 9:15 a.m.

Had they only been on the road for less than forty minutes? Of course, she had only been driving at forty miles per hour. The slow speed was a combination of not being entirely confident in her driving skills and a wariness of what lay ahead. She had very little experience driving, but even more so when it came to these big trucks—

Sunlight reflected off something metallic in the road, and her left leg went down on the brake before she realized what it was: a barricade, consisting of two vehicles parked across the lanes and spilling onto the shoulders on both sides. It wasn’t an accident; she could tell that much even from a distance. The cars had been parked on purpose to block the road.

Claire saw it, too, and immediately stopped her back and forth with Donna.

“What?” Donna said. Then she, too, saw it. “Oh no, that can’t be good.”

Gaby slowly eased her foot off the gas pedal until the truck was moving at a snail’s pace. Claire had already picked up her rifle and put it in her lap.

“Power up your window,” Gaby said. Claire did, and Gaby did hers at the same time. “Girls,” Gaby said, looking up at the rearview mirror, “move behind the seats. Milly, get on the floor. Stay hidden.”

Donna moved behind Gaby while Milly did as she was told. She was small enough that she was able to sink all the way down to the floor on her bent knees until she was hidden completely behind Claire.

Gaby checked to make sure her rifle was still leaning against her seat, the stock resting on Claire’s side so it wouldn’t accidentally fall and become tangled with her feet while she was busy with the gas and brake.

Outside, the vehicles took the shape of a white four-door sedan and a beat-up red truck. Both cars looked like they had seen plenty of use; the sedan’s paint was peeling and its windows were rolled down. The truck’s windows were down too, and both looked empty.

Looked
empty, anyway.

Gaby knew better. Cars didn’t stop in the middle of nowhere and park themselves nose to bumper. Certainly not out here, with only the spread-out land and farmhouses (including one that was burning somewhere behind them) resembling civilization. She guessed they were either halfway to the I-10 by now, or pretty close.

God, she hoped they were almost there.

The Chevy was thirty yards from the obstruction when Gaby came to a complete stop. She kept both hands on the steering wheel because if she had to jam down on the gas pedal, the truck was going to shoot forward like a rocket. When that happened, it was going to fight her with everything it had, which was a hell of a lot.

She did what Will taught her and turned the options in front of her over in her head.

There were a few that she could think of right away. The sedan and truck were no match for the larger Chevy, and she could probably power her way right through them without suffering too much damage. But there would be some damage, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to risk that. At least, not yet. Not as long as she had other options.

Which were…?

The ditches, she knew from earlier, were too deep to drive across. That seemed to be the entire point of positioning the two cars across the road in the first place. Even if they couldn’t completely overlap the shoulders, enough of them did that it left little space for her to maneuver the wide truck around without ramming the bumper on one car or the front hood on the other. So she would have to go down the ditch and come up on the other side if she wanted to avoid impacting the vehicles entirely. Was the Silverado powerful enough to pull that off? She had no idea.

She could retreat. That was the third option. She didn’t particularly like it, but it was there. Going backward meant heading in the wrong direction, though. Home was up ahead, not behind her. So that was out of the question.

“Gaby?” Donna said. She was pressed so tightly against the seat that Gaby heard her even though she was whispering. “What are we going to do?”

“We can ram them,” Claire said.

“Ram them?” Donna said. “You’re crazy.”

“Why not? I bet we could.”

It had been less than thirty seconds since she had stepped on the brake. In that time, the highway remained empty except for their vehicle and the two in front of them. She expected a head, followed by a weapon, to appear behind one of the cars at any second, signaling that this was an ambush as she
(knew)
feared. The Silverado’s raised seat gave her a good view of her surroundings, but at the moment she couldn’t see anything to indicate this wasn’t just some freak accident.

Yeah, right. And I’m on a Sunday drive in the park with some kids.

She waited, but nothing happened.

There were no heads, no weapons, and no signs that someone was hiding behind the vehicles. Or around them. There were just two dead cars that shouldn’t be there but were and an empty field to the right and left of her.

Up ahead was I-10…

Maybe she was overthinking this. Or maybe someone
had
set up an ambush here a while ago but gave up when they didn’t find any takers. That was possible, too. You could only wait so long until you got tired and moved on. Maybe those vehicles were actually dead.

Maybe. So many maybes.

It was starting to get hot inside the truck with the windows rolled up, and Gaby glanced down at the AC controller when she caught a flicker of movement in the rearview mirror.

A man, cradling a rifle, was sneaking up on them from behind—

“Get down!” Gaby shouted, at the same time shoving the gear into reverse and slamming her foot down on the gas pedal. The truck lurched backward with such awkward force that Gaby was thrown forward into the steering wheel and had to hold on with everything she had.