The Fires of Atlantis (Purge of Babylon, Book 4) (35 page)

The Silverado’s tires screamed as it reversed. Or was that more of a shrill? She swore she could also smell rubber burning, but that could have just been something her frenzied mind was making up on the spot.

She felt rather than heard the
THUMP!
as the truck rammed into the figure behind them and she glimpsed something flying through the air, flashing across her side mirror. It was big and dark and seemed to be failing wildly, and it was there one split-second and gone the next.

Keep going! Don’t stop! Don’t stop!

She didn’t stop and she kept going, pushing back against the seat while gripping the steering wheel with all her might. A dark black lump flashed by to her left, lying on the road
(I guess he landed)
, just as a flurry of movement tore her eyes away to a
second man
emerging out of the ditch to her left. She didn’t get a good look at his face—the truck was moving too fast—but he was definitely wearing slacks and a T-shirt, so he wasn’t one of Josh’s people. Not that it mattered at the moment. The shotgun clutched in his hands was what was important.

Then Claire screamed her name.

Gaby snapped a look in the girl’s direction and saw a
third
figure climbing—lumbering, really, because the man was huge and moved with great difficulty—out of the ditch to their right. The AR-15 looked like a toy in his hands. The man stopped and took aim and opened fire.

“Stay down!” Gaby screamed.

She kept her hands tight around the steering wheel even as the truck continued to reverse, the sound of peeling tires now lost in the string of shotgun blasts pounding the air, joining the AR-15 as it pelted the truck. She hoped and prayed she was going in a straight line back down Route 13 even as the front windshield shattered and glass shards
zip-zip-zipped
around her head. In another second, the entire windshield seemed to disintegrate until there was nothing left.

“Gaby!” Claire shouted. “Watch out—”

Before the girl could finish, the ground gave out under them and they were going down. Then her view out of the rectangular hole that used to be the windshield changed positions and she found herself staring up at the cloudless sky, bright sun hitting her full in the face. Without the glass to protect her, the full force of the heat was overwhelming and she had to blink even as the sound of the truck’s rear tires spinning fruitlessly against the ground forced its way into her senses. She still had her foot pressed down on the gas pedal, though she wasn’t sure why because they didn’t seem to be moving at all.

They were upended, with the truck’s bumper resting on the bottom of the ditch and the tires fighting for purchase against the dirt wall. She looked to her right and saw Claire clinging to her seat, hands over her head, dazed and confused.

Gaby pulled her foot off the gas pedal and reached for the M4 lying across her and Claire’s seats just as the driver side door was yanked open with a loud squeal of metal grinding against metal. The man had to be immensely strong because opening a door
upward
took a hell of a lot of strength, and yet he had done it almost effortlessly.

She gave up on the rifle and went for her Glock instead.

The large man with the AR-15 was trying to pull her out with one hand even while he kept the door pried open with one bulging shoulder. Trying? No. He was succeeding. Meaty fingers dug into her flesh, and she couldn’t have fought him even if she wanted to. He was so much stronger that she didn’t think he was even exerting any force whatsoever as he yanked her toward the open door.

She twisted in her seat and saw his eyes go wide at the sight of the gun in her right fist. He opened his mouth to say something—maybe to ask her not to shoot—but before he could get a word out she shot him in the chest, the discharge deafening in the tight confines of the vehicle.

Behind her, either Donna or Milly began screaming. By the shrill noise, she guessed it was probably Milly. Gaby had been wondering when the girl would finally let it all out. She guessed this was as good a time as any.

The big man—who was probably shorter than her, though he made up for it with width and at least one hundred pounds—let go of her arm before stumbling back, looking more stunned than hurt. The door slammed back down, but Gaby could still see him through the cracked driver side window. The man’s rifle was slung over his shoulder and he was clawing for it. He looked confused, as if he couldn’t quite figure out where the rifle was, or remember how to breathe.

She shot him a second time in the chest, shattering the driver side window in the process.

“Aim for center mass,”
Will always said.
“The biggest part of the body is your best target. Only delusional idiots aim for the head in a gunfight.”

The man crumpled to the bottom of the ditch on his stomach.

She was about to leap out of her seat
(Get out of the car! It’s a death trap! Get out of it now!)
, when she heard glass shattering behind her, from across the front seat, and Claire screaming. Gaby twisted back in that direction. She hadn’t gotten completely around when she saw a familiar face, the same shade of red hair, leaning in Claire’s suddenly open passenger side window with a shotgun in his hands.

But she was still halfway around when the man ruthlessly shoved the barrel of his weapon against Claire’s cheek, then glared at her from behind the girl’s head. “Go ahead, see if I don’t blow this little girl’s head open like a melon before you get that gun all the way around.”

Gaby froze.

Harrison.

She stared at him, then at Claire, fastened to her seat as if she was glued to it, too afraid to even move. There was a big bump in the girl’s forehead where she had slammed into the dashboard because she wasn’t wearing her seatbelt. For the first time since she had met her, Gaby saw very real fear in the thirteen-year-old’s eyes.

“It’s okay, Claire,” Gaby said. “Everything will be okay.”

“Don’t lie to the girl,” Harrison said. “It’s unbecoming.”

Gaby gripped the Glock. It was still pointed in the wrong direction—at her steering wheel—but it wouldn’t have taken much to swing it sixty more degrees, lift it slightly, and shoot Harrison on the other side of Claire. Of course, that would require better aim than she had proven herself capable of with a handgun. And he was standing
right behind Claire
, using her small head as a shield.

The crying continued in the backseat. Gaby couldn’t be sure if it was still just Milly or if Donna had joined in.

Options. What were her options?

Will said there were always options. She just had to see them.

So what were her options now?

She couldn’t see them. God help her, she couldn’t see any of them.

“Don’t make me say it again,” Harrison said. “Put down the gun or I’m going to splash this little girl’s brains all over you. You know I’ll do it.”

“Yeah,” Gaby said. “I know you’ll do it.”

“So what are you waiting for?”

She threw the Glock out her window. “Don’t hurt her.”

Harrison kept the shotgun pressed into Claire’s cheek with one hand and reached down with the other. He brought the hand back up and tossed something to her.

Gaby looked down at a pair of steel handcuffs in her lap.

“Put one around your right wrist and the other around the steering wheel,” Harrison said.

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

Options? What are my options?

None. I don’t see any.

God help me, I don’t see any…

She picked up the handcuffs and did as he instructed. The metal bit into her wrist and she instantly regretted it. “Now what?”

“You’re going to sit tight,” Harrison said.

He snatched up Claire’s rifle and tossed it into the ditch. Then he grabbed her M4, which had slid into Claire’s side of the truck, and stepped backward before disappearing completely from her field of vision. She heard him moving around the ditch, climbing up and then scrambling over to the other side, though she couldn’t see him because the truck was pointing up at the sky at the moment.

She looked into the backseat, at the weapons that Darren and his friend had brought with them. There, an AR-15, lying between Donna and Milly— “Donna, the rifle, hurry.”

Donna stared back at her as if she couldn’t understand what she was saying.

“The rifle!” Gaby said, just loud enough to get through to her.

She could hear Harrison moving around the truck, reaching the other side…

“Give me the rifle!” Gaby said again, louder this time.

Donna finally understood and reached for the rifle. She picked it up by the barrel and was holding it out to Gaby when the back passenger window exploded and showered the teenager and Milly with glass shards. Both girls screamed and the rifle fell. The girls threw their arms over their heads while Milly sank even lower into the floor behind Claire’s seat. Gaby couldn’t tell if they were hurt or just terrified, but she saw fresh blood on the upholstery in the backseat.

The loud, unmistakable sound of a shotgun being racked filled the air, then Harrison was standing next to her on the other side of her shattered window. “Nice try,” he said, then hit her in the face with the stock of his weapon.

Gaby actually heard her nose breaking, then tasted blood in her mouth as her head laid back against the comfortable headrest. She tried to shut off her senses. She wanted to go to sleep, but the sun was still beating down on her and she was able to open her eyes just in time to see Harrison pulling open the door with some effort.

He reached in and unlocked the handcuff around the steering wheel. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out of the truck roughly, throwing her down into the ditch. She landed on top of the short but large man she had shot earlier and scrambled to get away.

She was straightening up when Harrison hit her in the gut with a balled fist. She doubled over from the pain before falling back down to her knees in the grass. Thick blood dripped down around her in clumpy streams.

Are those mine? Yes. I think so.

Harrison towered over her, his bigger frame blotting out the sun. “You should have stayed out of my city. Everything was going fine until you showed up. Everything that’s happened, it’s all your fault.”

She looked up at him and shook her head. “No,” she said, but before she could continue defending herself, he punched her in the face—right in her broken nose. All the pain in the world seemed to come down on her at that very moment.

Someone screamed, then someone else joined in.

She heard her name just before the loud roar of another shotgun blast silenced it.

“
T
hat’s one nasty scar
,” the woman, Bonnie, said.

“You should have seen the other guy,” Keo said.

“Worse than that?”

“He’s dead, and I’m not.”

“Hunh.”

“That’s what he said.”

The redhead
(Auburn hair? Close enough)
with the supermodel good looks was crouched on one knee at the bow of the eighteen-footer, as if she expected someone to start shooting at them from the shoreline at any moment. She had a Remington tactical shotgun slung over her shoulder and wore a gun belt with a sidearm, though the combination of the deadly items on someone that gorgeous struck him as somehow unnatural.

The boat they were traveling in was used primarily for bass fishing, with two seats in the middle, one behind the steering wheel, and two pedestal seats—one in the back next to the loud outboard motor and the other up front where Bonnie was crouched next to at the moment. It was also the same boat they had used to intercept Carrie and Lorelei last night. No wonder it hadn’t been much of a chase. The damn thing was fast.

The big guy, Blaine, was maneuvering them toward the shoreline. His target was a spot about half a kilometer up the road from a burnt out marina and what looked like the blackened foundations of a fire-gutted house.

“Coming up,” Blaine announced.

Keo freed his MP5SD and moved from his seat and toward the bow, then crouched next to Bonnie. He still had the M16 with the M203 grenade launcher. It was a heavier weapon—about nine pounds loaded—than the submachine gun and felt like a baseball bat thumping against his back.

Bonnie glanced nervously at him. “You’ve done this before, right?”

“What’s that?”

“This, what you’re about to do.”

He shrugged. “First time for everything.”

She gave him a horrified look. “Are you kidding me right now? Tell me you’re just kidding me.”

He looked back at Blaine instead. “Bring her in easy. Fifty meters.”

Blaine nodded, then pulled back on the throttle. The boat slowed noticeably before continuing forward on a glide. A tall ridge and muddy banks greeted them, but no signs of another living soul anywhere. There was a long field on the other side crowded with overgrown and sun-bleached grass. That would come in handy if there was a sniper out there waiting to pick him off. If he was lucky, Blaine’s bigger form would make a more tempting target and give him the early warning he needed to retreat.

I’d shoot him first, too.

It was hot and Keo was already sweating under his T-shirt. Both Bonnie and Blaine looked similarly drenched and uncomfortable under the unrelenting heat.

“Shore’s coming up,” Blaine announced.

Keo stood up and put his submachine gun away. He waited until the boat slipped onto the muddy bank before leaping out. He grabbed a line Bonnie tossed to him and tied it around a boulder nearby. After the islanders climbed out after him, he tightened the rope and made sure it wasn’t going anywhere. The last thing he wanted was to swim back to the island. Once was enough, and he was closer last night.

He glanced at his watch: 11:13 a.m. “There and back again by five should give us a ninety-minute cushion.”

“It’s your operation,” Blaine said.

“As long as we’re on the water by the time the sun goes down,” Bonnie said. She might have involuntarily shivered when she added, “I don’t like the idea of being caught out here at night.”

Keo took point. He climbed up the ridge and went into a crouch before scanning the area. Despite the oppressive weather and lack of shade, the grass had grown three feet high from the ridgeline all the way to the road on the other side. Route 27, according to a map Lara had shown him. Blaine and Bonnie climbed up behind him.

“I don’t see it,” Keo said. “You sure this is the right spot?”

Blaine nodded. “Should be.”

“‘Should be’?”

“It’s here,” Blaine said, with just a little more conviction that time. He stood up to survey the area before crouching back down. “I see it. It’s where it should be.”

“Take the lead, then.”

Blaine picked up a car battery he had brought with him, got up, and jogged through the grass. Keo followed, Bonnie right behind him with two red plastic cans of gas in each hand. She was surprisingly strong for such a skinny beanpole.

The big man was leading them toward an old tree about thirty meters from the flat highway. As they neared it, Keo began making out a large object. Square-shaped, covered in some kind of brown tarp and repurposed grass that blended it, if not perfectly, then just enough into the surrounding field to make it mostly invisible to passing eyeballs unless you knew what you were looking for and where.

They slowed down as they reached the vehicle sitting underneath the makeshift camouflage. Blaine grabbed one side of the tarp and pulled it, revealing a black Dodge Ram that looked to be in reasonably good condition.

Blaine tossed Keo a key. “Pop the hood.”

Keo got a whiff of stale air when he opened the door. Apparently they hadn’t needed to use the Ram in a while. He leaned in and pulled the lever. “How many of these things do you guys have stashed around the lake?”

“About a half dozen,” Blaine said. He stuffed the battery back into its slot and reconnected the wires. “Most of them still have some gas left in the tanks, but we bring enough extra just to be sure.”

Behind him, Bonnie had finished pouring the two cans of gasoline into the tank. She closed it back up now and tossed the empty cans into the back, then wiped her hands on her shirt and made a face at the smell.

When Lara had told him that Blaine knew where to get a vehicle and they would need a battery for it, Keo hadn’t been convinced. But the more he got to know these people, the more he realized he was dealing with seasoned survivors and not civilians fumbling their way through the end of the world.

Most of that, he thought, was the result of good leadership. Lara, and this Will guy whom Keo hadn’t met yet. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to, either. Keo had never gotten along especially well with Army guys. His father had been proof of that, and subsequent encounters with grunts during his career with the organization had never turned out especially well. As much as he didn’t have any use for career soldiers, Keo suspected they thought the same about him and his ilk.

Blaine slammed the hood down and walked back over. “How far up the road?”

Keo did the calculations in his head, replaying snapshots of the map and where he had encountered the weekend warriors. Or collaborators, as Lara called them. “Twenty kilometers north, but since we’re on the wrong side of the lake and we’ll need to loop around the south end, add in an extra ten. Thirty kilometers, give or take.”

“How much is that in miles?” Bonnie asked.

“Just a shade over eighteen,” Keo said.

“Eighteen miles,” Blaine nodded. “As long as we don’t get held up by anything, we shouldn’t have any problems making it back down here by five, and we’ll be on the island thirty minutes later.”

“Sounds like a plan. Let them know we’re off.”

Blaine unclipped his radio and keyed it. “Song Island. Can you read me. Over.”

“Loud and clear, Blaine,” a voice answered. It was one of the women, Maddie. Song Island, Keo discovered, had a lot of very capable women. Gillian and Jordan would definitely have fit in like gangbusters.

“We’re heading off now, Maddie,” Blaine said. “Wish us luck.”

“Good luck and see you when you get back,” Maddie said.

Keo climbed into the front passenger seat while Blaine slipped in behind the wheel. Bonnie settled into the back and leaned in between the two front seats. She gave Keo a long, curious look.

“What?” he said.

“Are you sure this is going to work?” she asked.

“No, but it’ll be fun to find out.”

Bonnie sat back with a heavy sigh. “Oh God, you’re going to get me killed, aren’t you?”

“That’s the spirit,” Keo said.

Y
ou really thought
it was going to be that easy, huh? Think again, pal.

They were exactly where he last saw them yesterday, gathered around the red two-story house near the shoreline. Except this time there were more vehicles and more men guarding the roads and standing along the docks. He counted almost two dozen uniforms, likely more scattered elsewhere that he couldn’t see.

The radio clipped to his hip squawked, and Blaine’s voice came through at half volume because he had lowered the volume halfway. “How’s it look up close?”

He told Blaine about what he could see and what he couldn’t.

“Damn,” Blaine said.

“Yeah.”

“What’s the plan now?”

If I’m smart, I’ll go back and shoot you and the girl and take the truck and not look back until I’m halfway to Texas.

“Sit tight,” he said instead.

Blaine and Bonnie were waiting for him about three kilometers up Route 410. They had stopped even further back than that before pushing the vehicle with the gear on neutral for almost two extra kilometers so they wouldn’t give away their approach. Well, he and Blaine had pushed anyway, while Bonnie steered. Keo had hiked the rest of the way. It was a pain in the ass, but necessary since sound traveled these days, especially car engines. Even with all those precautions, he kept expecting gunfire coming his direction at any moment.

He was probably 200 meters from the red house, just further back than when he was last here with Carrie and Lorelei, and well hidden behind a brown building that was once a house before a fire gutted it years ago, leaving behind three walls and not much else. Keo was crouched along one of those still-standing sides, peering through his binoculars up the road at men transferring supplies from the house and parked trucks over to the docks. One of the men was looking through a box and pulled out night-vision goggles and tried it on.

Looks like they’re getting ready for a night assault.

The sentries at the two-story structure, including the one on the rooftop, looked alert. Two men paced the road almost exactly halfway between him and the shoreline. One of them was carrying an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, an ammo belt wrapped around his shoulder and waist like he was a bandito out of a Western. That was the first time Keo had seen a machine gun in the last year, and he wondered where they found that little beauty.

“Are we still good?” Blaine said through the radio. “Keo?”

Keo didn’t answer right away. Then, “Nothing’s changed. Just more targets.”

“Maybe we should come up with another plan,” Bonnie said.

“I’m listening…”

“I didn’t say I had any ideas. I just think we should go back to the island and talk it over with Lara. Or wait for Will and Danny to come back tomorrow.”

“They’re going to attack tonight,” Keo said.

“How do you know that?” Blaine said.

“They brought night-vision goggles.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah,” Keo said.

He put the MP5SD away and reached for the M16. Besides the extra two pounds, he also disliked the length of the rifle, but the M203 grenade launcher more than made up for that. Keo opened the ammo pouch along his right hip and took out a 40mm grenade round—the size of a deodorant dispenser, except cylindrical and with a bulbous head—and fed it into the tube under the barrel.

The M203 had an effective range of 400 meters, which was more than enough to take out the house and maybe a few of the trucks. They were still moving supplies back and forth, so if he could knock out the vehicles and what they were carrying, all the better. Maybe they had ammo in there, or if he was really lucky, things that went
boom
. Some secondary fireworks might even result in collateral damage.

The house, though, was the main objective. Besides being the biggest and easiest target, he counted at least a dozen soldiers inside (and the one on top of it). If he could take it out, that would probably cut the invasion force in half, or close enough. Hell, if he was really lucky, he’d take out their command and control, too. That would really cripple them. Even weekend warriors needed someone to give the orders.

It wasn’t a bad plan. Best of all, it was a
safe
plan, with minimal risk to his scalp. He felt even a little bit like a coward shooting from a distance hidden behind the gutted house, but what the hell, these soldiers were about to invade an island full of women and children. Keo had done a lot of bad things in his life, but he wasn’t going to sit by and let that happen.

I’m an asshole, but I’m not a
fucking
asshole.

The M16 came with a second sight for the grenade launcher toward the front of the barrel, and Keo flicked it into position now. He remained crouched but scooted a bit further out from behind the building, then moved left toward the road until he could see (and shoot) around the wall. He spent a few seconds adjusting for wind and elevation.

It was going to be a hell of a shot, but firing a grenade launcher wasn’t quite the same as shooting a rifle. It was mostly about angles and adjustments and letting the round do all the work. Unlike shooting a rifle from long-distance, an explosion was easier to “miss” with and still be effective. He was also comforted by the fact that he had extra ammo in his pouch if the first shot went astray.

See, adjust, and fire again. So simple even a baby could do it.

Of course, he would have loved to get closer. Maybe another fifty meters. Oh, who was he kidding. A nice, round hundred meters would have been ideal.

He aimed for the roof, hoping to land a round somewhere in that vicinity so the resulting impact would take out the second floor and collapse it down onto the first. If not, a second shot into one of the walls would just about do it. The one thing Keo knew for sure was that if one grenade didn’t accomplish its goal, two—or hell, three—usually got the job done. Usually—

Clink!

The sharp sound of metal grinding against metal made Keo stand up and spin around, his finger sliding away from the grenade launcher to the main trigger. He was prepared to fire, to spray and pray (Thank God he had kept the fire selector on three-round burst), but instead Keo lost a second processing what he was seeing.