Purge of Babylon (Book 3): The Stones of Angkor Read online

  You have the patience of a saint, Will.

  Roy crouched next to her and looked forward. She glanced over and was surprised how young he looked. Maybe it was the water and shower, wiping the grime from his face; she’d had him pegged as being in his late twenties when they first met, but that couldn’t have been right.

  “How old are you, Roy?” she whispered.

  “What?” he said, straining to hear her.

  “How old are you?” she said, raising her voice just a little bit.

  “Twenty-eight. Why?”

  “Are you sure?”

  He gave her an amused look. “Pretty sure, yeah.”

  “You look younger.”

  “I have one of those faces. My friends used to make fun of me. When I was an infant, I looked like an egg, they said.”

  She smiled.

  He saw it and looked pleased. “You’re pretty when you smile.”

  Uh oh.

  “I’m taken, Roy.”

  “I know. I just had to say it.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. Of course, it didn’t last, just as she knew it wouldn’t.

  “So, this Will guy…” he started.

  “What are you doing here, Roy?” she said, cutting him off. “You should be back at the hotel with the others.”

  “I didn’t feel right letting you chase West out here alone.”

  “Danny’s doing most of the chasing. I’m just backing him up.”

  “I know, but what happened to Blaine was our fault. I keep wondering if I could have warned you sooner that Brody and West were dangerous. I should have told you about the watch…”

  “The gold watch that West wore?”

  “You know about that?”

  “Bonnie told me. She said she wasn’t sure, but she thought that maybe West killed the guy who owned it.”

  “He did,” Roy said.

  She looked over at him. “What are you saying, Roy?”

  “I wasn’t there when they did it or anything, but they told me about it afterward. Brody was gloating about how they got the drop on them. Jesus, one of them was just a kid…”

  “It’s okay, Roy. Bonnie warned us. She warned me. It’s my fault for not acting on it earlier. I should have—”

  “Ahem,” Danny said in her right ear. “I don’t mean to cut in on your little chat with Geek Wonder over there, but I can hear you all the way across the island.”

  “Sorry,” she whispered.

  “For what?” Roy said.

  She started to answer, but shook her head and put a forefinger to her lips instead. He nodded, understanding.

  Another click, and Danny said, “Lara and Roy, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.”

  She sighed. This was going to be a long morning.

  *

  ROY WAS GETTING antsy next to her, shifting back and forth, going from one knee to both knees, then back again. The last two times she had ordered him back to the hotel, he’d insisted on staying with her. His version of gallantry, she supposed. Not that she needed him. He was more of a burden at the moment, but she couldn’t help but feel slightly impressed with his stick-to-itiveness.

  Salvation finally came in the form of a click in her right ear, and Danny’s voice: “He’s moving. Push ahead and cut him off. Fire three shots into the air.”

  “Stay here!” Lara said sharply to Roy, lunging up to her feet and racing away before he could respond.

  She fired one shot into the air, heard the echo, then fired a second and a third time.

  She was still moving when she heard gunshots in front of her. Not too far away, but far enough that she didn’t have to dive for cover. She heard footsteps, threw a quick look over her shoulder, and saw Roy giving chase. He was surprisingly fast for a former tech geek.

  She heard two more shots in front of her, then nothing.

  Lara slid to a stop, and Roy almost crashed into her. He was breathing hard, out of breath. She had to wonder how Roy had managed to survive so long when he was so clearly out of shape.

  Click. “Forty meters,” Danny said. “Your twelve o’clock.”

  “Danny,” she said.

  “Sorry. Directly ahead.”

  She looked over at Roy and nodded, and they both climbed back to their feet and began jogging forward through the brush. Roy was already huffing and puffing again by the time they reached a clearing.

  Danny was sitting on a boulder, facing West, who sat slumped against a tree trunk. There were bullet holes in the tree over West’s head, though at the moment those were the least of his worries. West was holding on to his right side, where he had been shot. His right thigh, where he had caught some of Blaine’s buckshot from last night, was covered in mud and pieces of his shirt that he had been using as a tourniquet. The stolen M4 with the ACOG scope lay a few yards beyond his reach.

  Danny was chewing on a twig. “West decided he’d like to give up.”

  “Is he armed?” she asked.

  “Not anymore.”

  Lara turned to Roy and handed him her shotgun. He took it hesitantly. She also drew her Glock and handed it to him as well.

  “I need to take a look at that wound,” she said, walking toward West and crouching in front of him.

  He looked tired, his face a mess of mud and blood and dirt. He had been running around the woods all night, trying to stay one step ahead of Danny. It showed in his hollowed eyes and all over his slackened, beaten body. He was barely breathing; whether from his tired condition or a lack of desire, she didn’t know and didn’t particularly care at the moment.

  Lara took a handkerchief out of her pocket. “I’m going to remove your hand. Don’t fight me.”

  He didn’t say anything. Instead, he continued to watch her curiously.

  She ignored his stare and pulled his hand away from his side. Blood oozed out, and she quickly pushed the handkerchief against it. The orange fabric turned dark red and West flinched a bit, though he was clearly trying not to show it.

  Tough guy, huh? Not tough enough.

  “I need to get you back to the hotel and sew this up, or you’re going to die,” she said.

  West’s eyebrows furrowed. “I thought that was the plan. Letting me die.”

  “It was never my intention to kill you or Brody.”

  “Sending us back out there is the same thing.”

  “Not to me. You have no future on this island, but you have a chance out there.”

  He snorted. “I don’t have a shit ounce of chance out there. Especially not now, without Brody watching my back.”

  She met his eyes with her own harsh glare. “You should have thought about that before you tried to murder Blaine last night.”

  He looked away, but Lara didn’t feel the flush of triumph she had expected. If anything, there was just overwhelming sadness. For him…and for herself.

  She looked back at Roy. “Give the weapons to Danny, then I need you to help me get him back to the hotel.” While looking straight at West, she added, “Danny, if he tries anything, you have my permission to end his miserable life.”

  *

  THERE WERE NO holding cells in the hotel, but there were two extra beds in the makeshift infirmary. She had Danny zip tie West’s hands and legs down on one of the beds while she kept him from bleeding to death. Blaine was snoring lightly on the next bed over, oblivious to West’s presence. Just to make sure West behaved, Danny, eating breakfast, stood watch as she worked.

  West was already developing an infection along his thigh thanks to the buckshot Blaine had put into him back in the Tower, something he further inflamed by spending the night in the woods rolling around in dirt and mud. The wound on his right side, courtesy of Danny’s rifle, was fresh, and it only required cleaning and dressing.

  West didn’t say a word as she worked on him, and she couldn’t summon the strength to care.

  She sent Roy, Bonnie, and the girls down to one of the supply rooms in the back of the hotel, past the laundry room, to clear it out
. They didn’t leave until the room was just concrete walls and a floor. Then Roy came back, and with Danny, they carried West—still strapped down to his bed—over to the same supply room and laid him in the center.

  As Danny cut his zip ties, West looked at her from across the room. “So how is this going to work? You can’t keep me in here forever.”

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

  West sat up gingerly and rubbed his wrists and ankles. “You haven’t thought this through, have you?”

  “Like I said, I’ll let you know when I figure it out. Until then, sit tight.”

  She waited for Danny to come out, then closed the door and locked it, putting the key into her pocket.

  Danny was leaning against the wall ten feet up the hallway, watching her.

  “Go ahead, say it,” she said as she walked past him.

  He fell in beside her. “Say what?”

  “That I’m weak. That I’m not cut out for this whole leadership thing. That Will would have put a bullet in him back in the woods. Or last night. Or when he saw them at the marina. Say it, Danny.”

  “I wasn’t thinking any of those things.”

  “Then what were you thinking?”

  “Handcuffs.”

  “Handcuffs?”

  “Yeah. The old-fashioned kind. With a key, that we can reuse over and over.”

  She gave him a wry look. “You really think we’ll have that many prisoners, we’ll start needing reusable handcuffs?”

  “Who says they’re for holding prisoners?” Danny said. “Do you have any idea what kind of kinky stuff Carly’s into?”

  *

  IT WAS TEN in the morning, and she sat in front of the ham radio and waited, but didn’t hear Will’s voice from the other end. For the fifth time in as many minutes, she made sure the dial was set to the correct frequency.

  Lara passed the time by looking down at the floor. They had wiped the floorboards clean of Brody’s blood and scraped his brains off the wall. Mostly. There was still plenty of evidence, but she had gotten used to the sight of dried blood.

  She glanced down at her watch again. Five minutes after ten.

  She wasn’t the only one who had noticed the silence. Maddie was standing overwatch at the south window. “What time is Will supposed to call in?” she asked.

  “Ten,” Lara said.

  “What time is it now?”

  “Five after ten.”

  “Maybe he forgot?”

  “Maybe…”

  “Did you get any sleep last night?”

  “A little bit. Why?”

  “You look tired.”

  “I do?”

  “You could definitely use a little more shut-eye.”

  “We all could.”

  “We all could, yeah, but you more than most,” Maddie said. “You should go take a nap.”

  “Maybe later.”

  “Well, if you’re not going to go to bed, then try the radio again. All this waiting is getting on my nerves.”

  Lara gladly picked up the receiver and clicked the transmit lever. She took a breath, then leaned toward it: “Mercy Hospital, come in, this is Song Island. Over.”

  She waited, but there was no response.

  “Mercy Hospital, this is Song Island. Can you hear me? Over.”

  Again, there was no response.

  “That’s not good,” Maddie said.

  “No,” she said softly.

  That’s not good at all…

  Lara checked the piece of paper with the list of frequencies taped to the tabletop next to the radio. She spun the dial over to the one for Jen’s helicopter, then pressed the transmit lever.

  “Jen, this is Lara from Song Island. Can you hear me? Over.”

  She released the lever and waited, but there was no response.

  “Jen, this is Lara from Song Island. Tell me you’re receiving this. Over.”

  Nothing. Not a damn thing.

  Please, someone, answer…

  She was about to press the transmit lever again when the radio squawked and she heard a male voice—thick, guttural, deep, and definitely not Jen: “Who is this?”

  Lara leaned into the receiver: “Who is this?”

  “I asked you first,” the man said.

  Lara glanced back at Maddie, just to be sure she wasn’t the only one who had heard the voice. Maddie was watching with concern. There was something about the voice that bothered her, and Maddie too, from the look on the other woman’s face. It was too cavalier, like this was all a big joke, like the man was enjoying himself.

  “I’m looking for someone at Mercy Hospital,” she said into the receiver.

  “You’re a little late,” the man said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “I’m afraid no one at Mercy Hospital is currently available to take your call right now. They’re too busy being dead.”

  She couldn’t speak immediately, as a variety of scenarios—good and bad and terrifying—whipped across her mind with dizzying speed. It was all she could do to hold on to the receiver, her other hand clutching the edge of the table without realizing it.

  “Who is this?” she said into the radio.

  “I’m the guy who just took over Mercy Hospital,” the man said. “That’s who the fuck I am.”

  CHAPTER 11

  WILL

  IT TOOK THEM almost an hour to clear the entire Archers. Once Mike, Paul, and Johnson realized the silver worked as promised, Will could feel their unrestrained enthusiasm as they went through the store aisle by aisle, like wild men on a blood hunt long denied them. He almost felt sorry for the creatures that got in their way.

  Will was more than willing to let them do the bulk of the work. By the time they were done, the tiled floor was slick with sticky congealed ghoul blood, splattered flesh, and shattered bone. He walked in black ooze, the clump-clump-clump under his boots not nearly as disturbing as the smell. He thought he would have gotten used to the stench of dead ghouls by now, but he was very much wrong.

  While Mike and his men filled up on what they came for, Will wandered over to the shoe aisle. He maneuvered by flashlight and located the women’s section. Locating the right shoes in the right size took another few minutes. He grabbed two pairs, one in white and one in black, and stuffed them into his gym bag. Her birthday was coming up, and she had been wearing the same pair for the last few months.

  I’m shopping for Lara now. Danny would definitely have a field day with this.

  He went looking for Mike, finding the former lieutenant behind the gun display on the other side of the store, the glass counter dripping with thick black blood. Mike had turned on an LED lamp to see with and was tossing boxes of 9mm, 5x56mm, and shotgun shells into his already overstuffed bag.

  “You might need another one,” Will said.

  Mike grinned and produced a second bag from his back pocket. “The good thing about an Archers? Plenty of bags to go around. Where did you wander off to?”

  “Shoe aisle.”

  “What’s over there?”

  “Shoes.”

  “Boots?”

  “No, just tennis shoes.”

  Mike gave him a curious look.

  “It’s for Lara,” Will said.

  “The girlfriend?”

  “She’s more than that.”

  “Say no more. What’s it like over there? The island?”

  “What do you wanna know?”

  “Jen made it sound like paradise.” He gave Will a skeptical look. “Is it paradise? Between the two of us. Man to man. Grunt to grunt.”

  Will grinned. “That’s the first time an officer’s ever referred to himself as a grunt in front of me. But yeah, it’s pretty damn close to paradise.”

  “How’s the fishing?”

  “You fish?”

  “Every now and then.”

  “You know how when you go fishing, sometimes you catch something and sometimes you don’t?”

  “I know that
feeling too well. Mostly the latter.”

  “You won’t have that problem on the island. You could dip a bucket into the lake and you’d scoop up enough fish to eat for a week.”

  “You’re not fucking with me, are you?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  “Damn. I could get used to that.” He held up a box of bullets. “You need some for that rifle?”

  “Nah, I stocked up before I left the island.”

  “What’s that, M4A1? That thing looks like it’s been through the wringer.”

  “It’s been with me since Afghanistan.”

  “No kidding. How’d you get Uncle Sam to let you keep it?”

  “I know a guy who knows a guy, who made it happen.”

  Mike chuckled. “Say no more.” He finished up and walked out from behind the counter. The soles of his boots squeaked, leaving bloodied prints in his wake. He sniffed himself. “Jesus, they smell. I had no idea they smelled worse when they’re dead.”

  They could hear Paul and Johnson farther back in the store, making a ruckus, and what sounded like something falling down from a high place on a shelf and crashing.

  Like going shopping with Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox.

  “I wish we could lock this place up,” Mike said.

  “Your private stash?”

  “Something like that.” He shook his head. “It’s not just the ghouls we have to worry about coming back here tomorrow night. Those marauders I told you about. I wouldn’t be surprised if they heard all the shooting. With the city this dead, you’d probably be able to hear a fart from a mile away.”

  “Good to know,” Will said. He glanced at his watch. “It’s early. You can come back for more later. Bring more people.”

  “I might have to seriously consider that.”

  Johnson appeared in the aisle behind them, flashlight bouncing wildly. He was carrying two gym bags.

  “We good?” Mike called over.

  “We good,” Johnson called back.

  “Where’s Paul?”

  “He’s on his way.”

  They headed toward the front of the store, Paul appearing out of nowhere and falling in behind them along the way. He was hauling two bags too, though they looked like toys against his huge frame.