The Fires of Atlantis (Purge of Babylon, Book 4) (36 page)

It was a kid.

A goddamn kid.

He was sitting on a shiny new bicycle in the middle of the road, wearing one of those plastic shell helmets that was supposed to protect him from cracking his head if he fell. He had on wrist and knee pads and brand new Nike sneakers. The kid couldn’t have been older than ten, sporting a white T-shirt that was stained in equal measure with sweat and what looked like chocolate.

He stared at Keo, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Join the party, pal.

Then the brat reached down and unclipped a rectangle black object housed inside a holder along the bike’s down tube, where a water bottle was supposed to go. The kid pulled out a walkie
talkie, and Keo remembered what Carrie had told him after the marina shootout back at Lake Dulcet. It was how the soldiers knew there was a boat at the marina in the first place.

“They’re spies. Lookouts. Their job is to go around the city looking for survivors. The guys in uniform come later. That’s how they found us. One of those stupid kids spotted us and the trucks swooped in.”

“No,” Keo said, taking his finger off the M16’s trigger, hoping that would have some kind of effect. “Don’t do that, kid. You don’t want to do that.”

The little bastard didn’t hear a word he said. Or if he did, it never registered, because he lifted the walkie talkie to his lips, pressed the transmit lever, and shouted into it, “There’s someone here! There’s someone down the road! And he’s got a machine gun!”

Aw, hell.

Keo turned back around and saw the two soldiers in the road looking in his direction. Because he was standing now, they saw him immediately and started pointing.

When Keo glanced back at the kid, the little tyke was bicycling away at full speed, the
clink-clink-clink
of his chains against heavy metal frame.

“Yeah, you better run, you little bastard!” Keo shouted after him, but he hadn’t gotten “bastard” completely out when gunfire split the air and bullets
buzzed
past his head.

He ducked instinctively and moved back behind the wall, which started coming apart piece by piece in front of his face. He slipped down to one knee and tried to wait out the
pop-pop-pop
of a carbine shooting, which meant the guy with the M249 hadn’t opened up yet. Of course, it was only a matter of time. Chances were the guy was waiting to get closer. Either that, or he wasn’t comfortable firing that heavy weapon standing up—

The wall behind him disintegrated before he could finish the thought, ripped apart by a barrage of
brap-brap-brap
gunfire that seemed to go on and on and on.

The M249 light machine gun had just joined the party.

“Keo!” Blaine shouted through the radio. “What’s going on? Keo!”

Keo could barely hear Blaine’s voice over the roar of the machine gun fire. He didn’t know how far the two soldiers were at the moment, but he guessed they would keep together, which meant slowly moving up the road toward him. At the moment, staying down and keeping his head from being detached from his shoulders by one of the SAW’s 5.56mm rounds seemed the more prudent move.

He swapped the M16 for the MP5SD then glanced to his left, wondering if there were more pieces of the house still standing back there when the machine gun suddenly stopped firing.

Keo sucked in a breath, thought,
The hell with it, you only live once,
and stood up behind what was left of the wall. There wasn’t much remaining, just about four feet of brick and mortar reaching up from the ground.

The two soldiers were still on the road. One of them was slightly crouched over and moving cautiously forward, but he was a good fifty meters away still. His partner was farther back and struggling to feed the ammo belt into the M249. That was the problem with belt-fed weapons. You never know when the next round was going to jam and ruin your day.

The one with the M4 saw Keo stand up and snapped off a shot. Too quick and the round missed by a wide margin, not even hitting what was left of the house wall. Of course, in the guy’s defense, there really wasn’t
much
left to hit.

As the man adjusted his aim, Keo returned fire. The man staggered down to one knee, so Keo guessed he had hit something. He kept pulling the trigger because fifty meters was a hell of a distance for the MP5SD, and Keo wasn’t taking any chances. He only stopped shooting when the soldier collapsed to the road on his stomach and didn’t move.

The one with the light machine gun saw his partner go down in front of him and tossed his jammed weapon and took off running back down the road. Keo was taking aim at his fleeing form when he saw something else—two of the trucks parked in front of the red house had fired their engines and were starting to move, their tires peeling and tossing dirt into the air around them.

“Keo!” Blaine was still shouting through the radio. “What’s going on? Are you alive?”

He didn’t waste time responding. Instead, he slung the MP5SD and brought out the M16 again, then calmly stepped out from behind what was left of the house wall and carefully took aim with the rifle.

One hundred meters for a grenade launcher designed to blow the crap out of something from four times that distance was almost child’s play. It was such an easy shot even a baby could have pulled it off. And he was definitely more skilled than a baby.

Nice, you almost believed it that time!

The trucks were burning rubber up the road, men in uniforms hanging on for dear life in the back, swarms of dust scattering in their wake. The soldier who had ditched the SAW had to dive out of the path of the oncoming vehicles when they were almost on top of him. He rolled comically sideways and landed somewhere in the ditch.

“Keo!” Blaine shouted through the radio. “Answer me, dammit!”

Blaine might have said something else, but his words were lost against the sound of the grenade launcher belching out a dull but incredibly satisfying
ploompt!

The 40mm round landed near the closest truck as it was halfway to him. The driver, predictably, reacted badly to the sight of an explosion ripping a hole in the road directly in front of him and showering his windshield with chunks of asphalt. The man jerked on the wheel and the truck looked as if it had hit an invisible wall, turning sharply to the left and then rolling over onto its side before spinning forward once, twice, three times. It finally settled back down on its roof, sending showers of glass everywhere.

The second truck, seeing the first one spinning out of control in front of it—peppering the road with metal and plastic and aluminum, along with the two sad bastards who were in the back—came to a screeching stop, the smell of burning rubber filling the air.

Keo pulled back his right hand and found the main trigger on the M16 and fired, stitching the second vehicle’s front windshield with a series of three-round bursts. They were close enough now—less than fifty meters, he guessed—that it wasn’t too hard of a target. Of course, he was firing again and again just to be sure. God knew he had realized his shortcomings with long-range shooting recently.

Two men inside the front cab ducked as their windshield caved in on them. Men in the back dropped out of sight and one jumped down from the truck, lost his footing, and started crawling toward the back bumper for cover.

Keo backpedaled as he fired again and again, glimpsing more figures racing up the road behind the vehicles, weapons swinging wildly in front of them. There were simply too many of them. Way too many. So what else was new?

His eyes darted briefly to the two-story red house in the background. He thought about sending a 40mm grenade toward it, but that choice went out the window when he saw sunlight flashing off additional trucks blasting up the road.

Then he heard something—coming
from behind him.

He glanced back, wondering how the hell they had outflanked him, and was shocked to see the Dodge Ram coming up on him fast. Blaine was behind the wheel, Bonnie in the front passenger’s seat holding onto the dashboard for dear life.

I guess they’re more useful than I thought.

Keo grinned at them—saw their terrified faces staring back—before he turned around and looked up the road. He grabbed a second 40mm grenade out of his pouch and reloaded the launcher. He did his best to ignore the sound of the Ram’s brakes squealing behind him as it came to a stop inches away. He was guessing it was inches away, because he actually felt the wind pushing against the back of his neck as Blaine nearly ran him over with the Dodge.

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

The men from the house were about to reach the first two dead-in-the-road trucks while the driver and his passenger took the opportunity as Keo reloaded to scramble outside and run for cover behind the back bumper.

Wrong hiding spot,
Keo thought, and fired and listened to the equally satisfying second
ploompt!
as the second round sailed.

This time the grenade hit its intended target, vanishing through the windshield of the second truck. The resulting explosion ripped across the vehicle and shredded the two men hiding behind it and tossed two more into the road, their clothes and hair and skin on fire. They might have been screaming, but it was hard to hear over the roar of flames and tires.

“Keo!” Bonnie, shouting behind him. “Come on!”

He tossed the M16 onto the ground and turned and nearly ran into the scorching hot hood of the truck. It was
inches
behind him. Jesus Christ. Blaine really did almost run him over seconds ago. He stared across the hood at Blaine, who stared back at him wide-eyed.

“Keo!” Bonnie shouted again.

Keo snapped out of it and ran around the Ram.

Bonnie saw him coming and threw the passenger side door open and he jumped inside, landing in her lap. She grabbed him with one hand, her other arm reaching across him and slamming the door shut, shouting, “Go, Blaine, go!”

Blaine didn’t need any encouragement. He shoved his foot down on the gas pedal and the Ram began reversing up the road, the big man’s hands gripping the steering wheel with such intensity Keo wondered what it would take to pry them loose if he needed to.

Bonnie struggled out from under him and scooted over to the middle of the front seats. “Jesus, we thought you were dead.”

He was about to answer when bullets punched through the front windshield and
zipped
past his head and tore into the truck upholstery around them.

“Christ!” Blaine shouted.

The big man spun the steering wheel even as rounds slammed into the vehicle’s side and front hood, the constant ring of
ping! ping! ping!
filling the air. Then a second later they were facing the right direction—back down the road—and the truck was picking up speed again with every breath Keo took.

Bonnie screamed when the back windshield exploded under a hail of bullets and they were showered with glass. She threw her hands over her head and kept it down, unwilling to come up even after the last piece of glass fell away.

“We’re good, we’re good,” Keo said, looking back up. Then to Blaine, “Nice driving.”

“Thanks,” Blaine said, though he hadn’t looked away from the road or even relinquished an ounce of pressure on the steering wheel.

Keo glanced out the blown back window. He didn’t see any pursuing vehicles, just the two wasted ones blocking the road. The first was still resting on its roof, while the second one was engulfed in flames. Two trucks were trying to get around them, but one had run into a ditch and men were trying to push it out to no avail. The fourth truck didn’t even make the attempt.

“Are they following us?” Bonnie asked.

“No,” Keo said. He glanced at his watch. “Get to the island by six, right?”

“Yeah,” Blaine said, almost breathless.

Keo reached into the back and pulled his pack over. He unzipped it and took out a bottle of water. It was freezing cold a few hours ago and was just cold enough now. Hell, that was more than he’d had in almost a year.

He sat back in his seat and took a sip, flicking broken glass off his clothes and picking them from his hair. He hoped he hadn’t been cut by flying shards. God knew he already looked like a mess with the scar and a broken nose that hadn’t entirely healed properly yet. The last thing he needed was a piece of glass sticking out of the other cheek.

After a while, he realized Bonnie was staring at him. “What?” he said.

“Did that go as you planned it?” She wasn’t being sarcastic, either; he could see it in her eyes. She was hoping he would say yes, because that would mean it was mission accomplished. Or close enough.

“The idea was to stall them until the Army Rangers get back and you can put up a proper defense for the island, right?”

“Yes…”

He looked at the truck’s side mirror, back at the flaming wreckage behind them. “Then maybe. I guess we’ll find out tonight one way or another…”

T
wo down
, two to go.

So where were the other two blue-eyed ghouls?

The question nagged at him from the time they climbed into the Bronco to when they were halfway up Route 13, with I-10 still hidden somewhere in the distance.

According to the map, thirty minutes would take them to the interstate, and from there another hour on the highway before hopping off for the small roads at the town of Salvani. Song Island lay further south. Another hour, give or take, thanks to the nonexistent traffic. If they could locate Gaby somewhere along the way, there was no reason why they couldn’t be home by nightfall. He was looking forward to that. More than anything, he wanted to see Lara again. Imagining her in his mind’s eye had become harder with each passing day.

And yet…

Two down, two to go.

Where did the other two go? Why weren’t they in Dunbar last night? The only explanation he could think of was that they had split up. Which had benefited Danny and him. He wasn’t sure he could have fended off four at once, even knowing a bullet to the head
(Silver bullets? Or would any ol’ bullet do?)
could finish them off, whereas they simply shrugged off everything else.

That was good and bad news. The good news was that you could kill them with a bullet to the head. The bad news was that you had to shoot them
in the head
and destroy the brain. The average human melon had a circumference of fifty-six centimeters (give or take), with the brain residing in the top portion. So take fifty percent away from the initial size, leaving the shooter with, at best, a target circumference of twenty-eight centimeters.

Not a difficult shot in and of itself, but when the target was moving—and there was no way in hell those blue-eyed bastards were going to stand still and let him zero in on them—it was another matter entirely. He had gotten lucky with the two from last night. The first one by way of the cross-knife when it was standing still, gloating over its victory, and he had caught the second one at almost point-blank range with the creature coming right at him. Even an amateur could have made that shot.

Shoot them in the head. Right. Easy peasy.

“At the risk of sounding like Carly,” Danny said, “what are you thinking?”

“Where did the other two blue-eyed ghouls go?”

“And you definitely saw four in that, uh, walkabout of yours.”

“Definitely. I mastered counting in elementary school.”

“I wouldn’t know. I was too busy making out with Suzy by the jungle gym.”

Danny had both hands on the steering wheel. His broken nose and bruised face looked even more noticeable against the burning sun and dry wind blowing through the open windows. Both of their clothes, weighed down by the gear they were carrying, were damp against their seats. Will would have preferred to drive with the air conditioner blasting, but knowing Gaby was out there somewhere made that impossible. They were also driving much slower than before—barely forty miles per hour now—just so they wouldn’t miss seeing or hearing anything that could point them to Gaby’s whereabouts. The idea of driving past her now, after all but giving her up for dead thirty minutes ago, was an unsettling thought.

“Given their whole hive mind thing,” Danny said, “it doesn’t make sense they didn’t launch a second attack after you took out the first two.”

“That’s what concerns me.”

“So maybe they weren’t in Dunbar. Maybe they were out here in Nowheresville doing…something else.”

“Or tracking someone else.”

“Gaby?”

“Best-case scenario.”

Danny chuckled. “Our best scenario is that two blue-eyed ghouls are hot on Gaby’s trail. Didn’t think I’d be saying that anytime soon.”

“Desperate times call for desperate best-case scenarios.”

“So we know she left L15 with two locals, then left Dunbar with three. Where do you think she picked up the third stray?”

“In Dunbar, maybe. Or—” Will stopped when he saw the smoke rising in the distance. “Slow down, Danny. Two o’clock.”

Danny eased the Bronco down to thirty-five, then twenty, miles per hour. They leaned forward at the sight of smoke hovering over the remains of a house. Recently, from the looks of it.

“Someone must have left the oven on,” Danny said.

“I see a road,” Will said, pointing.

Danny pulled the truck off the highway and onto a manmade dirt road, past an open gate, and drove them toward a farm. The remnants of the house were flanked by a red barn to one side and what looked like an unattached garage or possibly a supply shack on the other. There were a couple of vehicles parked in the wide, expansive yard.

Will picked up his M4A1 from the floor and scanned the property. Like most of the land they had passed since leaving Dunbar behind, the ground was flat and baked brown. There were no animals grazing, no signs of horses or cows, or whatever it was the owners had been raising before The Purge. Then again, he hadn’t seen a large land animal running free for almost a year now, so the complete lack of livestock didn’t add to the potential (if any) threat around the area.

The road was rough, but the Bronco’s tires traversed it without trouble. They reached a front yard covered in dead grass, and Danny parked behind a white pickup that was so old Will couldn’t place its make or model. A black minivan that looked out of place sat on the other side of the property. It had Mississippi license plates.

“Someone’s far from home,” Danny said. “Hell of a time to take a vacation.”

“It might be worse where they’re from.”

“I somehow doubt that, Kemosabe.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

They climbed out of the Bronco, weapons at the ready, and spent another few minutes giving the property a cautious look-over. There was a slight breeze, but not enough to chase away the sweltering heat or keep the ruins of the house from smoldering in the aftermath of what looked like a ravaging fire. There were no bodies that he could see or signs of a battle.

So what started the fire?

“No Silverado,” Will said.

Darren, the twenty-something soldier who Gaby had shot in the ankle earlier in the day, told them Gaby had continued up Route 13 in his and his dead partner’s Chevy Silverado truck. They were hoping to run across it sooner or later.

“Fire must have been raging something purty when she came through here earlier,” Danny said. “You think she kept going?”

Will thought about it. “She’s a smart girl. And taking into account she’s dragging along three people…” He nodded certainly. “I don’t think she’d stop. We taught her better than that.”

“We would totally rock as parents. Separately, I mean. With, you know, girls. Not that there’s anything wrong with the other thing.”

“How about we make sure no one’s in the minivan first before we start making marital plans, Mrs. Doubtfire.”

“Certainly,” Danny said, mimicking a high-pitched female voice

They approached the van from separate angles. Will peered into the open front passenger window while Danny did the same on the driver’s side. A pink watermelon-flavored Little Tree Air Freshener, long past its smell-by date, hung from the rearview mirror. Will used that same mirror to look into the back of the van before opening the side hatch to make sure it was really empty.

Old soda cans and water bottles littered the floor. A pair of men’s shirts, shorts, and sandals. He picked up old footsteps in the ground from the side hatch outward, but they were barely noticeable.

“It’s been a while since they used the van,” Will said. “It would make sense if they came all the way from Mississippi. Maybe they exited the interstate to see what was out here, found the house, and decided it was as good a place as any to settle down.”

“Here?” Danny said. “There’s nothing here, buddy.”

“Maybe that’s the point. This far from civilization, if they hunkered down, they could go unnoticed for a while.”

Danny circled the van. “Dunbar’s nearby.”

“They might not know that.”

“So where are they now?”

Will looked back at what was left of the house. The charred frames that were still standing told him it used to be a two-story building. They moved toward it, trying to glimpse anything that might give an impression of who had been in there or what had caused the fire. The flames had mostly burned themselves out, leaving behind embers to give off more than enough heat to make getting too close uncomfortable. They stopped about ten meters away from what used to be a front wooden deck. There wasn’t much left except for the concrete steps that led up to the front door.

“Guess no one’s home,” Danny said.

“But something—or someone—had to have started the fire.”

“Spontaneous combustion?”

“That’s one theory.”

“What’s another one?”

“No idea.”

“Hunh. So what now?”

Will glanced back toward the road. “Come on, we’re burning daylight. Gaby was smart not to stop, and we should have done the same thing.”

“Too late for that.”

“Just don’t tell her when we finally catch up.”

“Mum’s the word.”

They started walking back to the Bronco when a flicker of movement—
from the barn—
caught the corner of Will’s eye and he stopped on a dime and spun. Danny did the same, and they stared across forty meters at the large twin doors that had swung open.

“I guess someone’s home after all,” Will said.

“Awesome,” Danny said. “Let’s go see if we can borrow some milk and sugar.”

They changed direction and moved toward the barn, approaching it from two different angles the way they had the minivan earlier. Will kept his eyes on the open alley doors in front and the closed loft door directly above those. If there was a sniper inside, he would use the higher perch to shoot from, but Will couldn’t make out any holes or makeshift gun ports.

The barn doors remained open, but no one had shown themselves yet.

They took the first twenty meters without fanfare, taking their time but moving steadily forward. Will scooted slightly right to eyeball the bottom of and along the slanted roof. Danny did the same on his side.

“Anything?” Will asked.

“Squadoosh,” Danny said. “Unless they have an invisible sniper. If they do, that would really suck.”

Finally, one of the barn doors opened even wider and a pair of tanned arms appeared in the sunlight. “Don’t shoot!” someone shouted. Young and male. “We’re not armed!”

“Step outside!” Will shouted back.

The owner of the outstretched hands stepped out of the barn. Tall, jeans and a white T-shirt stained with something red.
Blood.
The man squinted in the sunlight and his hair was a mess. Will couldn’t see a gun belt or a weapon, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something behind his waist.

The man had moved a foot outside the building when Will said, “Stop.”

He did.

“Turn around,” Will said.

The guy gave him a confused look.

“Like Cinderella,” Danny said.

Another confused look.

“Just to make sure you’re not armed,” Will said.

He understood that and turned around a full 360 before facing Will again. He had wisely not lowered his arms the entire time.

“You said ‘we,’” Will said. “Who else is inside?”

“My girlfriend,” the man said.

“Her name wouldn’t happen to be Gaby, would it?” Danny asked.

The guy shook his head. “Um, no. It’s Annie.”

“Oh well, worth a shot,” Danny said.

L
ance and Annie
hadn’t arrived from Mississippi by themselves. There had been six of them four months ago. That number was trimmed to two after last night.

“They had blue eyes,” Lance said, trembling noticeably as he talked. “They played with them. I mean, they
played
with them. I’d never seen anything like it.”

“There were two,” Annie said.

Will and Danny exchanged a knowing look.

They stood around the Bronco with the weary couple. Both Lance and Annie still looked shell-shocked from last night’s harrowing encounter with the ghouls.

“What do you mean by ‘they played with them’?” Will asked.

“They let Toby out of the house,” Lance said. “Then they made him run into the fields. At first I thought the black-eyed ones would be all over him, but they weren’t. They just stood around and watched. Then the new ones—the ones with blue eyes—ran after him. Then…there was a lot of screaming. Toby. I would know his voice anywhere.”

“They gave him a head start?” Danny said.

“Yeah,” Lance said, as if he could barely believe his own story. “Those things… they didn’t act like the others. I think they were controlling them. I know that sounds crazy…right?”

“It’s not that crazy,” Danny said.

“You’ve seen them too, haven’t you?” Annie said, staring at them.

“Yeah,” Will nodded. “What happened to the rest of your people?”

“They killed them,” Lance said. “One after another. They started with Toby, then Danielle, then Sally…”

“…then Howard,” Annie finished.

“We hid in a room under the floorboards inside the main bedroom when they first attacked the house. I guess the homeowners were using it to store valuables. We saw bundles of money in there.”

“There was jewelry, too.”

“We stumbled across it by accident when we first moved in. We didn’t really have any uses for it until last night when they came. Usually they don’t bother with the house. We make sure the place is completely dark at night and we seal ourselves into the rooms. We had barricaded the windows and doors, too.”

“Every night?” Will said.

Lance nodded. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it. Until last night.”

“What happened last night?”

“Usually the black-eyed ones might sniff around. Sometimes they’ll even bang on the doors or windows. But then they always leave when we don’t show ourselves. But last night, they didn’t stop. They just kept at it. I don’t know how, but they managed to break down one of the windows.”

It’s the blue-eyed ghouls. The others become unpredictable when they’re around…

“We barely got into the hidden room in time,” Annie said. “Then the screaming started…”