The Purge of Babylon: A Novel of Survival Read online

  But that was impossible.

  Wasn’t it?

  CHAPTER 2

  KATE

  SHE HEARD SIRENS blaring along Interstate 45, the long stretch of highway that cut through the heart of Houston and was visible outside her tenth floor office windows. There was nothing major happening out there in the real world that she knew about. At least, there was nothing on TV or the Internet. Houston was not exactly Los Angeles; something as minor as a car chase with some idiot who refused to stop for a simple traffic ticket usually ended up on the news.

  She glanced at the clock on her wall. 5:14 p.m.

  Rush hour would be thinning out about now, and if she waited another thirty minutes, she would have clear sailing from the office to home. If there was lingering traffic—and there usually was—she could always take the tollway. Ironically, that would add an extra five minutes to her normal drive because the tollway was out of the way, but it was better than sitting in traffic. Houston was a notoriously car-heavy city, and not everyone had mastered the art of driving. She had seen tiny drops of rain turn a steadily moving highway into a parking lot.

  Kate sat back down at her desk and stared at the stack of DVDs, next to the equally large pile of folders. Audition tapes, commercials that needed approval, and the pleasures of paperwork. All of it would have driven her crazy if she hadn’t asked for it by opening her own business.

  Be careful what you wish for, Kate.

  She grabbed the brown bag that today’s lunch had come in and tossed it into the trash bin nearby. A nice arcing hook shot landed the crumpled bag on a stack of used newspapers and discarded folders. That struck her as odd. Usually the janitors were already up here by around five o’clock to start their rounds. The Amegy Bank building shut down completely by then, with most of the pedestrian foot traffic non-existent after three o’clock when the bank closed its lobby. The rest of the floors, like Kate’s, became a ghost town as soon as the clock hit five.

  There were no signs of the janitors now, though. No Mel or Francis. Or was it Mac and Francis? Something with an “M.”

  A flicker of failing sunlight outside the window caught her attention, and Kate wasted a pointless second or two staring out at the evening shade, towering over the heavy traffic on the 45. She would have been shocked by how fast it was darkening outside if she hadn’t spent most of her life here. Late November in Houston meant sunset before 5:30 p.m. and sunrise before 7:00 a.m. It was one of those times of the year where it got dark before you wanted it to, and bright before you needed it to.

  Kate shook off the randomness of the moment, got up, walked to the window, and closed the blinds. Out of sight, out of mind.

  Pathetic. It’s Friday and you’re still at the office after five. This might actually be a new low.

  She grabbed the first DVD case off the top of the pile. The plastic container felt cheap, and the DVD inside had the production name scribbled in permanent marker. She sighed.

  Amateur hour.

  She pushed the disk into her laptop, picked up her earbuds, slipped them on, and waited for the DVD to load. It took too slow to load, which usually meant they formatted the disk wrong. That was annoying. How did they expect her to hire them when they couldn’t even send their audition tapes in the right format?

  While she waited, Kate glanced up and out of her inner office window and saw Donald across the floor, packing paperwork into a faded hand-stitched leather satchel that he always carried. No one stayed longer than they had to on a Friday, and the fact that she and Donald were the only two people still on the floor felt oddly reassuring. Soon it would just be her (Pathetic, Kate, really pathetic), but for now…

  He must have sensed her watching, because he looked up. Before she could turn away, he waved. Caught, Kate waved back as casually as she could.

  Ugh. I’m back in high school all over again.

  Donald was twenty-two, blond, and impossibly handsome. Just thinking about where he had been only a few months ago, lining up in the University of Houston’s Hofheinz Pavilion building to pick up his bachelor’s degree, made her feel ancient. It had never occurred to her that thirty-one was old until Donald smiled at her one day when they were alone in her office.

  She looked away momentarily, feigned being busy by flicking her fingers over the laptop’s keys. By the time she glanced back out the window, Donald had stepped into the elevator and the doors were closing on his perfectly chiseled face.

  The DVD finally started to play; loud, bombastic music blasting through her earbuds. That wasn’t a good sign, either.

  Kate turned down the volume slightly, then with one eye on the laptop, picked up the first folder and opened it, scanning through the paperwork before signing her name at the bottom.

  Don’t complain, you asked for this.

  She sighed.

  Two hours. She’d spend two hours on this and go home…

  *

  She ended up staying much longer, and didn’t look up from the laptop, rubbing at her eyes, until it was almost eight.

  By 8:17 p.m., she had ripped the earbuds free, signed the last forms from the pile, then gathered up her things and deposited the folders on her secretary’s desk outside. Kate soaked up the silence as she walked across to the elevator.

  The ride down was uneventful. Kate passed the time going over ad jobs that had come into the office in the last week, slotting them in terms of importance, pay rate, and future investment. The Sears job automatically went to the front of the line. Department stores were hard to come by, and ones with almost 100 years in the bank even rarer. She would have to put Donald on that one. Evelyn generally did a decent job, but Kate didn’t need decent, she needed greatness. Donald could be great with the right tutelage. Hers.

  Should have caught him before he left, Kate.

  Kate pushed aside the lost moment as the elevator stopped, pinged, and the doors opened onto the third floor of the garage structure next to the Amegy building. She was immediately greeted by ugly gray concrete on every side, thick solid walls that isolated the structure from the rest of the Downtown noise.

  Not that there were a lot of noises at the moment. Which was curious. Friday night in Downtown, Houston was usually a sea of activity, with the businesses shutting down and the clubs starting up.

  But not tonight. Tonight, it was quiet.

  Why is it so quiet outside?

  More oddities in Kate’s life. Things that just didn’t add up.

  Ugh.

  She desperately longed for home. Order always came more easily to her soaking in a hot tub filled with Deep Steep Honey bubbles. Maybe Rosemary Mint tonight…

  The garage was relatively new, and smelled and looked the part. The only sound was the steady, rhythmic click-clack of her heels as she walked across the floor. Most of the parking spaces were empty, leaving a big gray field with only the occasional car to break the monotony. Kate found the emptiness suffocating, and searched her purse for her key fob. The laptop bag was draped over her right shoulder from a strap, and Kate fancied that if she was ever attacked, she could swing the bag as a weapon. That was the idea, anyway.

  Kate fumbled inside the purse, realized she was being absurd and slowed down, and finally found the fob buried underneath make-up and paperwork. She pressed it and listened to the familiar breep-breep! from across the garage. She couldn’t see the Mazda yet, but she knew exactly where it was.

  She made a beeline for it and found herself thinking of Donald again. He would be home by now. Or at a club with a pretty girl. Younger girls than her.

  She sighed. When did thirty-one become old?

  Should have stopped him before he got into the elevator. “Hey, Donald, you wanna grab a drink?” Purely as friends, of course.

  She smiled to herself, feeling silly.

  “Kate,” a voice said behind her.

  Kate jumped, but then she recognized the voice.

  She turned around, excited, smiling.

  He waited for me. Somehow,
I knew he’d be waiting for me.

  He staggered toward her, his face pale, mouth slightly open, as if he was about to say something but couldn’t remember what. The handsome young man she had recruited out of the University of Houston looked deathly ill and twenty years older, glaring wrinkles readily apparent underneath harsh and bright garage lights. And he was bleeding, blood spurting out between the fingers of his right hand pressed against his neck, leaving a jagged trail of blood in his wake.

  Donald reached out toward her with his free hand, and in a garbled voice that sounded pained, croaked, “Kate, go back, go back…”

  Kate dropped her purse and the laptop bag without thinking, and rushed forward and grabbed him just as he stumbled and fell. Kate grimaced as the concrete scraped her right knee, tearing skin and drawing a trickle of blood.

  She struggled to hold onto Donald, his body pressed up against hers like a big lump of unyielding flesh. He was too heavy. He always looked so trim and thin: where was all the weight coming from? It was all Kate could do to push him into a sitting position against one of the garage’s support columns.

  She sat back on the floor to gather her breath. “My God, Donald, what happened?”

  Kate flinched at the sound of blood squirting through his fingers.

  “Kate, be careful, don’t go outside,” he whispered. For a moment she thought he was going to start laughing. He grimaced and groaned instead. “Don’t go outside, Kate. It’s everywhere. They’re everywhere.”

  She couldn’t process what he was saying. Her eyes, her focus, were on the blood squirting through his fingers.

  He’s bleeding so much…

  “Who did this to you, Donald?”

  “Jack. Jack bit me.” His eyes sought hers and held on. “Don’t go outside, Kate. I came back to warn you. I came back to warn you…”

  She shook her head. He wasn’t making any sense.

  Warn her? About what? About going outside?

  “I’m calling for an ambulance,” she said. “Sit still and try not to move, okay?”

  “No, Kate, no, you can’t stay here. Jack’s coming. Jack bit me…”

  Kate stood up and grabbed her purse from the floor. She took out her phone and dialed 9-1-1. “Why did Jack bite you?”

  He shook his head. “You’re not listening to me, Kate. You have to run, hide. I came back to warn you. It’s…don’t go out there…they’re everywhere…”

  “I don’t understand, Donald. What’s out there? What’s happening?”

  “Can’t explain it.” He leaned back against the support column as two streams of blood squirted free between his fingers. “They’re everywhere…”

  Where is all that blood coming from?

  Kate heard the call connecting and turned back to it. She was surprised to hear a recorded message on the other end: “You have reached 9-1-1. We are currently experiencing a high volume of calls. If this is an emergency, please remain on the line.”

  The message repeated itself, but Kate wasn’t listening anymore.

  What the hell was happening out there?

  Kate looked around her, at thick concrete walls separating her from the eerily quiet Downtown beyond.

  Get away! something inside her screamed. Get away before it’s too late!

  She fought against the urge and turned back to Donald. He seemed to have gotten paler since the last time she looked at him just seconds ago. “Donald, I’m getting a recorded message. The police aren’t answering.”

  He made a noise that might have been a chuckle. “I know,” he whispered, exhaling deeply. “I tried to call. That’s why I came back to get you. Kate, you have to go back to the office. Lock yourself in and don’t come out for anything.”

  “Donald, stop talking. You’re bleeding so much.”

  My God, how deep is that wound?

  “So much bad luck,” he groaned, breathless, and his eyes seemed to fade a bit. “So much bad luck in my life, but it was turning around when you hired me.” She thought he was going to lean back, to rest, but instead he lunged forward and grabbed her arm with his free left hand. “Get out of here, Kate.” His voice was low, guttural, and she had to strain to hear every little word. “He’s coming.”

  “Who? Who is coming?”

  “Jack. Jack’s coming. Go, Kate.” His voice grew stronger suddenly. “They’re everywhere, Kate. In the buildings. In the streets. Go back to your office and hide.”

  Kate shook her head. This was wrong. None of this made any sense. Kate was always good at making sense of nonsense, but this… None of this was making any sense. There was no order here. It was chaos. Pure chaos.

  This must be some kind of a joke. Donald is playing a joke on me. He has someone hiding in the garage recording all of this. We’ll probably end up on America’s Funniest Home Video. Or YouTube. Maybe we’ll go viral.

  But she stared at him and knew it wasn’t a joke. This was Donald, looking impossibly older. Bleeding. Dying. In front of her.

  He’s aged twenty years…

  “Kate,” he said, barely getting her name out, “you have to go. He’s coming.”

  He was talking about Jack. There was only one Jack that they both knew. The parking garage security guard. Jack was the easygoing father of two who gave her a friendly smile every morning, always quick with the small talk and a wave. And unlike the other guards that staffed the front gate when he was out, Jack never tried to look down her blouse when she drove through the gate. Not once. He was too much of a gentleman for that.

  She liked Jack. The Jack she knew couldn’t have done this.

  And what had Donald said? Jack bit him? That made even less sense.

  “Stay still,” Kate said, “don’t try to talk, you’re really hurt. God, you’re bleeding so much.”

  “He bit me. I can’t believe he bit me, Kate.”

  “How bad is it? Can I see?”

  As soon as the words left her mouth Kate wished them back. She didn’t want to see it. She was terrified to see it, because he was bleeding so much, and she couldn’t even imagine what the wound must be like to cause that kind of bleeding.

  Donald shook his head and opened his mouth to speak, but it was too much effort and he stopped himself, leaned farther back against the concrete structure behind him and seemed to drift off.

  “Donald,” she said, kneeling in front of him. “Can you hear me? Donald, don’t go to sleep. You have to stay awake.”

  He didn’t move at all, and he looked as if he was going to sleep. Or maybe he was already asleep. Kate felt panic rising from the pit of her gut. She tried listening to the phone again, but the same recorded message was repeating itself in the same feminine, robotic voice:

  “… are currently experiencing a high volume of calls. If this is an emergency, please remain on the line. You have reached 9-1-1. We are currently experiencing a high volume of calls. If this is an emergency, please remain on the line…”

  “Oh God,” Kate whispered softly.

  What now? WHAT NOW?

  There was a soft plopping sound and every inch of her body flinched at the sight of the gaping wound in Donald’s neck. The hand he had been using to hold against the wound had fallen away, and blood was flowing freely down his shoulder. Down the front of his suit—his expensive suit, the one that she knew he’d bought with the advance she had given him—into his lap, and pooled on the floor underneath him.

  The sight of the wound mesmerized her. It was red and black and ugly, and there were very noticeable indentations: teeth marks. Donald hadn’t just been bitten, she realized, someone had actually bitten a whole chunk out of his neck.

  Kate dropped the phone, heard the clatter of the screen breaking, and desperately grabbed for Donald’s neck, pushing both hands against the ghastly wound in an attempt to stem the flow of blood. Her fingers turned instantly red and became wet and slippery. Trying to keep one hand over the wound was impossible, but with two hands it was almost doable. Blood found ways through her fingers and she
grew queasy as it dribbled down her wrists and along her forearms.

  My God, where is all the blood coming from?

  She was pondering that deranged question when she heard the soft sound of bare feet against hard concrete behind her. The smell—like rotting vegetables—instantly hit her, choking her down to her core. She fought against the overwhelming instinct to grab at her nose and mouth in order to shut out the stench, because doing that would mean removing her hands from Donald’s neck.

  How many pints are in the human body?

  Kate turned her head slowly, careful to keep both hands on Donald’s neck. The blood had become slick and made her grip more tenuous, but she scrambled to hold on. She told herself not to turn around, but she couldn’t stop herself. There was something back there. She could smell and feel it.

  Death.

  It stood behind her in the form of Jack. The security guard. The one with the friendly smile every morning, who never tried to look down her blouse as she drove underneath his security booth. The same man who always shared pictures of his six-year-old daughter from some game she was playing or some play she was in.

  Jack. Friendly Jack.

  She recognized the guard uniform he was wearing. He looked different—rail thin. The man she had said “Hi” to this morning and exchanged small talk about the U.S. debt to China looked as if he had lost fifty pounds between then and now. His guard’s uniform hung absurdly on him, as if it was two sizes too big, the nametag drooping halfway down to his waist. And his eyes. They were black, deep and dark, like the bottom of a forbidden well. The thick patch of hair from this morning was gone, replaced by a few hundred strands that clung pointlessly to his pinkish scalp that was slowly turning mud black.

  It was his mouth that grabbed Kate’s eyes. It was covered in thick blood that drooled down his chin and onto his sunken chest, and crooked and brown-stained teeth jutting off in different directions. He didn’t have those this morning, either.