The Gates of Byzantium (Purge of Babylon, Book 2) (6 page)

Carly and Lara came out of the house with more carry-on luggage as they pulled up to the curb.

“Silverware?” Will shouted over at them.

Lara held up one of her luggage bags and jingled it. “I cleaned the place out. The Millers will be super pissed when they get home.”

“It’s a good thing they’re all dead.”

“Sucks to be them,” Danny said.

*

They turned right
off Main Street and headed south on Route 69/US 287, and before long, Grime, Texas, faded into their rearview mirror. Will drove the black Ranger up front with Lara in the passenger seat, while Danny followed in the blue Ranger with the girls. They kept twenty meters between them in case Will had to make an emergency stop.

Months after the end of the world, there were signs other survivors had begun using the roads again. They saw it in the dwindling cans of non-perishables in store shelves, empty boxes of beef jerky, and suddenly empty store refrigerators that used to be piled high with warm drinks. There were also more obvious signs, like cars recently pushed to the sides of roads or old pile-ups untangled in order to get big vehicles through.

Lara was engrossed with the ham radio in her lap. She was making minor adjustments to the dial, honing in on the familiar Federal Emergency Management Agency frequency, where they had first encountered the looped message. She stopped only when the soothing female voice drifted through the speakers. Like all the other times, they found it while the message was in the middle of its pre-recorded loop:

“…Song Island in Beaufont Lake in Louisiana. We are broadcasting on the FEMA frequency to any survivors out there. We want you to know there is hope. There are survivors on Song Island. We have food, supplies, electricity, and protection against the darkness. If you are receiving this recorded message, we encourage you to make your way to us. I repeat: we have food, supplies, electricity, and protection against the darkness.”

There was a pause of a few seconds, then the message resumed from the very top:

“Hello. If anyone can hear me out there. This is Song Island in Beaufont Lake in Louisiana. We are broadcasting on the FEMA frequency to any survivors out there…”

The message was broadcasted day and night, every day. It was unchanged from the time they had originally picked it up four months earlier. It was probably appropriate that Elise had been the one to discover the message while showing Vera how to work the ham radio. Elise had, after all, come to them because she was playing with a ham radio.

Beaufont Lake was not on Will’s radar, but finding it on a map was easy enough. It was about twenty-five kilometers from the Texas-Louisiana border, past Sabine Lake and close enough to Interstate 10 that they would be able to take the long stretch of road once they joined it off Route 69.

They were traveling cautiously, like they always did, with the Rangers moving at a steady thirty miles per hour—sometimes forty if they were feeling especially brave that day. Speed was not an option here.

Slow and steady survives the darkness.

And besides, Song Island was advertising safety and protection. If it really was safe, the island would still be there a week or a month from now. And if wasn’t, then it was never as safe as the people broadcasting claimed in the first place. Either way, Will wasn’t going to be hurried. Not now, not with so much at stake.

Lara turned the radio off and put it back down on the floor. “Is it possible? Can an island be that safe?”

“It could be. We’ve never thought about ghouls and water. Maybe they can’t swim.”

“Why wouldn’t they be able to swim? Nothing about their physiology indicates an adverse reaction to lake water. I think they might even float better than us. They’re mostly just skin and bones.”

“Why do they melt in sunlight? Why do they fold up and die if you prick them with a little bit of silver?” He shrugged. “Eight months later, what do we really know about them?”

“You’re right,” Lara said, and she leaned back against her seat. “We should know more about them by now.
I
should have discovered more. I feel like I’m the one dropping the ball here.”

“Take it easy. You’ve done pretty well for a third-year medical student.”

“Ah, to be a fourth-year medical student,” she said wistfully, and allowed herself a rare smile. “I wonder how Song Island is broadcasting the signal?”

“There could be a radio tower on the island or nearby that they’re bouncing their signal off. It doesn’t have to be that strong of a signal. Without all the usual traffic, you could probably contact someone on the other side of the world these days and get a perfect connection.”

“It has to be someone who knows about the FEMA frequency.”

“That makes sense. Maybe military, or ex-military. A former government official. They did promise protection, so maybe they even have a standing army on the island. Or a civilian army of some type.”

“That would be nice, wouldn’t it? An army?”

“I wouldn’t mind one.”

“Maybe you can finally make captain,” she teased.

“I’ve always wanted to be a captain.”

“Why stop at captain? How about General Will?”

He laughed. “I’ll settle for major.”

*

It was a
body in the middle of the road, and Will almost ran over it.

He was maneuvering around a beat-up Jeep parked in his lane when he saw it, popping up out of nowhere not much farther up the road. It looked like a big lump of road kill rotting in the sun, but he had seen bodies before—too many to mention—and he knew instinctively it was a man.

Will jammed on the brake and fought the steering wheel. Lara let out a shocked gasp as the seatbelt clenched against her body. Will quickly glanced at this side mirror and saw Danny pulling up behind him. If he had been going any faster than thirty-five, he would have easily run the body right over.

Slow and steady survives the darkness…

Will put the Ranger in park and grabbed the M4A1 resting against his seat. “Stay here and keep low.”

“Be careful,” Lara said, catching her breath as she pried the seatbelt free.

He hopped out of the truck but stayed behind the open door. He heard another door opening behind him, then Danny’s voice from his vest radio: “Don’t tell me you almost got us into a wreck over a squirrel.”

“Body,” Will said. “Make that bodies.”

There was a second body nearby, closer to the side of the road. An older man, face up, sun-beaten white face staring at the bright, cloudless sky. Congealed blood underneath his head, and the telltale signs of a bullet hole in his left temple.

“Dead?” Danny asked.

“One for sure. The other one undetermined.”

“Well, let’s determine it, then.”

Will scanned the areas to his left, then right. The highway had four lanes, with the north- and southbound lanes separated by walls of trees to both sides. He instinctively flashed back to the early days after The Purge, when they had been caught in a road ambush.

Never again…

He glanced back at Lara, crouched low in front of her seat, clutching her Glock in one hand. She mouthed,
“What now?”

He shook his head, then looked back at Danny standing behind his truck’s open door, M4A1 at the ready, eyes scanning the road and trees. Carly was crouched low in the passenger seat of the second truck, and the two girls were invisible in the back, just the way they were trained.

“I don’t see anything,” Danny said.

Will looked down the road at the bodies again. He focused on the one in the center. Big, about six-two, with a thick, shaggy beard and dark curly hair. The man lay on the road with his face toward Will. He had been shot. More than once, from the placement of blood underneath his body. A hole in the man’s leg, another one somewhere along his shoulder. Dull black eyes were staring back at him—
dead?

“I see two bodies,” Will said into the radio. “Gunshots. One’s one hundred percent dead. The other one is probably dead. Wait—”

He saw movement from the big man. It hadn’t been much—just enough to get his attention. He focused on the man’s right hand, waiting—
there.
The man had moved his pinky finger. As Will watched, the finger moved again, then a third time.

“Looks like the second body’s still kicking,” Will said.

“I see bullet holes in the Jeep behind us,” Danny said. “Shell casings along the shoulder. Looks like a firefight.”

Will scanned the trees to his left and right again, then made up his mind. “Cover me.”

“Go for it,” Danny said.

Will slipped out from behind the door and rushed toward the man in the middle of the road. He passed the first body, which didn’t move as he glided past it. As he moved forward, he heard a truck door slam farther behind him, then quick footsteps chasing—Danny, moving forward from his truck to take over the position at the door of Will’s Ranger.

Will moved quickly, keeping low, toward the survivor in the road.

The man looked worse up close, though not by much. The hot sun had been baking him for a while. Amazingly, he was still alive, chest moving, if just slightly. Will crouched next to him and felt for a pulse. There. It wasn’t very strong, but it was enough.

The man’s eyes fixed on Will. Cracked lips struggled to make a sound.

“You don’t look like a decoy,” Will said, smiling down at the man.

The man moved his head side to side. Or tried to, anyway.

No.

“You sure?” Will asked.

The man nodded. Or something that resembled a nod.

Yes.

Will watched the man for a moment, trying to read his soul through dull brown eyes. He was in his mid-thirties, but there was a lot of mileage there. Will saw a stubbornness that bordered on being impressive.

His radio squawked and he heard Lara’s voice: “Will, if he’s still alive, we can’t just leave him out here.”

Will considered his options. Saving this man’s life didn’t fit into his priorities, which were simple: stay alive, and keep everyone else alive, too. Will could leave him now and not think about it ever again. Smart people with medical degrees called it triage. Will called it practical survival.

His radio squawked again, and he heard Danny’s voice this time: “What’s the call, Kemosabe?”

“I’m trying to decide,” Will said.

“Decide faster. I hate standing out here with my nuts in my hands.”

“Uh, great visual, babe,” Carly said through the radio.

“I love you, too,” Danny said.

Will realized the man was saying something. Or trying to. He was drooling blood, and would have been coughing up blood, too, if he had the strength.

How was this guy even still alive?

Will leaned in closer. “I can’t hear you. Say again.”

“Sandra,” the man said, with as much life as he could muster. “Sandra…”

JOSH

He remembered that
night vividly. How could he forget? It was the night the world as he knew it died. Oh sure, the planet kept turning and the sun kept rising in the east and setting in the west, and the oceans certainly kept lapping (or whatever it was that oceans did), but everything else was irrevocably changed.

It was Thursday, which meant Date Night for his parents. He was left home alone—because it would be Family Night if he went along, and that defeated the purpose of Date Night—which was fine with him. He didn’t feel the need to see his parents canoodling or exchanging baby talk over a meal…and in public. No, thanks.

It didn’t happen right away.

At first there was the news about police actions from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. As soon as night fell, the news seemed to just shut down, and Josh resorted to following reports on the Internet, which was blowing up with rumors of crazy stuff happening around the world. Twitter, Facebook, and guys uploading videos onto YouTube. The word “impossible” kept coming up over and over again.

Josh remembered sitting in his room, staring slack-jawed and taking it all in. It was almost like watching a movie, because things like that didn’t happen in his small town of Ridley, Texas. And if it didn’t happen outside his window, then it didn’t feel real.