Purge of Babylon (Book 7): The Spears of Laconia Read online

  She wiped her face with a towel and left the cabin. She found Blaine at his post inside the bridge, standing behind the helm even though the Trident was anchored in place.

  Lara shivered a bit despite her thermal clothing, the December air ventilating from the open sky roof much chillier than the breeze inside her cabin. Fortunately there was always plenty of sun up here in this part of the boat. Blaine, who practically lived on the Upper Deck these days, didn’t seem to mind or even feel the lower temperature.

  “Showed up a few hours ago,” Blaine said. “I wasn’t sure what it was at first, but the waves kept bringing it closer.”

  Lara picked up a pair of binoculars from the dashboard and peered through it. She had to take a couple of steps to one side to see past the holes that dotted the windshield, the result of stray buckshot. One of these days they’d get around to replacing the glass, but that day was still far off.

  “See it?” Blaine asked.

  It was hard to miss even from a distance, because it was the only black thing in the clear blue Gulf of Mexico waters for miles around. The body was wearing some kind of black uniform. Now where had she seen that before?

  “Collaborator?” she asked. “I can’t make out the pattern of the uniform from here.”

  “Could be.”

  “Danny said the ones in Texas wear black. That looks black to me.” She lowered the binoculars. “How far are we from the coastline?”

  “Still twenty miles out. But it didn’t come from Sunport.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure. It’s been steadily drifting westward—from the east.”

  “Farther out to sea?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Could be part of a long-range boat patrol. Maybe it capsized. What was the weather like last night?”

  “Like this morning, but just a bit windier.” He paused for a moment, maybe replaying last night’s conditions in his head to be sure. “Even if Mother Nature did that, it doesn’t explain what it’s doing this far out.”

  Blaine’s voice was calm, as if seeing a uniformed body floating all the way out here, with no obvious point of origin, happened every day. It didn’t, but after all she—they—had been through, this wasn’t even at the top of their WTF list.

  She watched the corpse drift nearer, completely at the mercy of the waves that kept it afloat. If the Trident hadn’t been anchored, it might have washed right past them. It certainly would have last night in the dark. If she had learned one thing since being out here, it was that the vastness of the ocean was not to be underestimated.

  “If there was a collaborator boat out here last night, they might have been communicating through the radio,” she said. “Did you hear anything?”

  “Not a peep.”

  “You were up here all night?”

  “Maddie relieved me after midnight.”

  She stared at the blackened body in silence for a moment, its presence triggering alarm bells. They had done everything possible to avoid running across civilization since Song Island, opting instead to keep their heads down. Sending Danny, Gaby, and Nate back out there hadn’t been easy. It had cost her a lot of sleepless nights, and she wasn’t the only one suffering.

  “Speaking of the radio,” Blaine said, “not a peep from the expedition yet.”

  She glanced down at her watch: 7:45 A.M. “They’ll radio in when they’re awake.”

  “You think they’re still asleep?”

  “Time works differently out there.” She unclipped her radio and pressed the transmit lever. “Maddie.”

  “What’s up?” Maddie answered.

  “You see it?”

  “Hard to miss. That’s a uniform, right?”

  “Looks like it. Grab Benny and bring it in.”

  “Sweet,” Maddie said. “A can of SPAM for breakfast, and I get to fish a body out of the water. Best morning evah.”

  *

  LARA STOOD AT the back of the Lower Deck, bracing against the bite of a hard wind and trying not to catch the cold that Elise and Vera had come down with a few days ago, a condition that kept the girls mostly confined to their rooms on the Main Deck. She watched Maddie deftly maneuver the inflatable boat toward them, with Benny sitting at the stern and the body they had fished out of the water just a black, indistinguishable lump around his legs. The tender was nineteen feet long, and it bounced against the active waves.

  “Ah, the smell of rotting corpses in the morning,” a voice said. “Now this is the life.”

  “Don’t exaggerate; it’s just one corpse,” Lara said.

  “Po-tay-to, po-tah-to,” Carly said, walking up next to her.

  Her friend shaded her eyes and peered at the approaching boat. Carly’s hair had turned a darker shade of red since they had begun living on the yacht, and, like everyone else, she had developed a noticeable tan.

  “By the way, when was the last time you changed clothes?” Carly asked.

  Lara sighed. “Don’t start with me.”

  “I’m just saying. As our fearless leader, you should at least comport yourself in a more scent-friendly manner.”

  “‘Comport’?”

  “What, didn’t I use it correctly?”

  “Eh,” she shrugged.

  “Give me a break; I didn’t have any fancy educumacallit,” Carly said. Then, “Speaking of illiterate ne’er-do-wells, when are we picking up Keo?”

  Lara smiled. “He hasn’t radioed in yet.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “That seems to be the consensus.”

  “But you don’t think so?”

  “I don’t want to jump to conclusions. He said they had a good place to stay last night. He could have just run into some trouble making his way to the beach this morning. Maybe a dead battery or something minor like that. The small things have a way of ballooning into big deals these days.”

  “I guess he deserves the benefit of the doubt, being that he sort of saved our bacon a few times and all.”

  “He said he’s been taking a lot of precautions since Galveston.”

  “Undead trouble?”

  “Them, too.”

  “That’s K-pop for ya. Guy knows how to get himself into trouble, doesn’t he?”

  “He’s not the only one.”

  She owed Keo. They all did, but her in particular. In the first few weeks after Song Island, there were times when she hadn’t thought she would be able to keep it together, keep everyone together. Danny’s condition, Will’s absence, and the chaos of the gun battle had all made her doubt every decision she made. If Keo hadn’t been there…

  You would have liked him, Will.

  “You think it’s a good idea bringing it onboard?” Carly asked, squinting her eyes at the tender as it drew closer to the Trident’s aft. “What if it has diseases or something? The kids are already sick.”

  “We’ll keep it away from the others, find out what we can, then toss it back into the ocean when we’re done.”

  “Tough boat,” Carly chuckled. Then, turning around, “You kids have fun. I’m going to the bridge to wait for Danny to call in.”

  *

  “THAT’S A SHARK,” Zoe said, pointing at what was left of the man’s right leg—a stump that ended at the knee. “The missing fingers are fish nibbles. And these two—” she pointed first at the man’s cheek, then his neck “—are your department.”

  “Gunshot wounds,” Lara said, looking down at the two small holes barely visible against the rest of the man’s bloated flesh, which was pretty much every part of him that wasn’t covered up by clothing.

  The man wore some kind of urban assault vest, and water still drained from his empty ammo pouches long after they brought him on deck. A tactical gun belt with an empty holster sagged against his waist and thigh, the Velcro starting to lose its effectiveness after being drowned in the ocean for so long. There were two hollow slits where his eyes used to be, though he still had most of his left ear and the bridge part of his nose. T
here was a knee guard on his remaining leg and his black cargo pants were shredded, the tears revealing glistening pale skin on the other side.

  “He’s not dressed like a collaborator,” Maddie said. “No patches or name tags.”

  “Looks like a commando or something,” Benny said.

  Maddie and Benny had deposited the body on the slick swimming pool area at the back of the yacht. Zoe was crouched next to it now, holding a rag against her mouth and nose. Lara wished she had been that forward thinking. The body was bloated and had been in the water long enough that the face was deformed and fleshy and looked as if it would melt off if she so much as touched it. Zoe did all of her prodding with a pair of surgical gloves.

  “How long do you think it’s been in the water, doc?” Maddie asked.

  Zoe stood up, pulled the rag back, and took a breath of fresh air. “Hard to tell. The cold water probably kept it together longer than normal, and there’s still gas in the body, which resulted in floating, so if I had to guess…” She thought about it for a moment. “Anywhere from a few days to a week?”

  “Why didn’t the sharks finish it off?” Benny asked.

  “Contrary to what you see on TV, humans aren’t very high on a shark’s menu. There are a lot more manageable and easier-to-digest prey in the ocean. Imagine trying to eat a whole cow when there are burgers all around you.”

  “Which still leaves us with a lot of questions,” Maddie said. “What happened to the poor sap, who was he, and where did he come from?”

  “Well, Sunport’s the closest city,” Benny said.

  “It didn’t come from Sunport,” Maddie said. “Blaine said it was moving with the currents from farther out.”

  “It couldn’t have come from very far,” Zoe said. “When he was shot, he sank, then the gas raised him back up to the surface and the waves finally brought him to us.”

  “A ship, maybe?” Maddie said. “We always wondered who else was out here besides us. I mean, it’s a big ocean. There’s got to be more people, right? Before us, there was Gage and his friends.”

  “Maybe it’s the Navy,” Benny said. He sounded almost hopeful. “He really does look like some kind of commando. Maybe the U.S. Navy is still out there somewhere.”

  “For some reason, he doesn’t look military to me,” Maddie said.

  “Then maybe he’s from those Bengal Islands that Keo talked about. He said there were a lot of people there.”

  “The clothes he’s wearing, the gunshots…” Maddie shook her head. “It had to have been one hell of a gunfight.”

  “I still think it’s the military,” Benny said. “Blaine and I talked about it a lot, about what happened to all the Navy ships that were caught out here when everything went down. The aircraft carriers, battleships and destroyers, all those guys. They had to have gone somewhere.”

  “It’s been a year,” Maddie said. “If they’re still out there, we would have heard from them by now, don’t you think?”

  “What about the one in Colorado?” Zoe asked. “Carly said there was a colonel hiding in a mountain somewhere.”

  “Beecher,” Maddie nodded. “We made contact with him on the radio.”

  “What did he say about the rest of the military?”

  “He knew as much as we did. Which wasn’t very much.”

  There was a moment of silence until the others looked over at her. Maybe they finally realized she hadn’t said anything in a while.

  “What’s the next play, boss?” Maddie asked. “It might be worth it to find out where this guy came from.”

  “Maybe not,” Zoe said. “People with guns, wearing combat gear, running around out here shooting each other?” The doctor shook her head. “I’m not sure those are the kinds of people we’d necessarily want to cross paths with. Not now. Not after Song Island.”

  “Doc’s got a good point,” Benny said.

  They were still looking at her, waiting for her to say something.

  What would Will do?

  “Can you learn anything else from him?” she finally asked Zoe.

  The older woman shook her head. “I don’t see the point. We know how he died. GSWs. Anything else he can tell us would be in his pockets.”

  “Already went through them,” Maddie said. “Empty.”

  “All right,” Lara said. “Throw him back into the ocean. Wherever he came from, however he got here, or what happened to him, let the Gulf keep his secrets. We have other things to worry about.”

  *

  SHE WAS IN the captain’s cabin, looking at the same old heavily annotated map of the Gulf of Mexico spread out on a table, that she had been using since they boarded the Trident back on Song Island. She had circled Sunport, twenty miles in front of them at the moment, and Port Arthur, where Danny, Gaby, and Nate had made land a few days ago. If it hadn’t been Keo who had called, she would never have strayed far from Port Arthur. Just the idea of leaving the expedition behind to come south made her feel sick to her stomach.

  This better be important, Keo.

  If he was even still alive out there. The last time she had talked to him, he had given her the impression he and his companions were barely a step ahead of their pursuers. What if they had finally run out of luck?

  She glanced at her watch. She didn’t know what she was expecting, but the silence from Keo nagged at her. Unlike Danny, who had already radioed in from some town called Wilden an hour ago, it was all quiet from the Keo front. The man was unpredictable and prone to rash decisions, but then again a lot of those questionable choices he’d made had been in her favor, so maybe she should be grateful—

  A knock on the cabin door interrupted her thoughts.

  “Come in,” she said.

  Bonnie stepped inside in loose-fitting cargo pants and an olive thermal sweater, looking more like a soldier than even Benny or Blaine. Lara was still amazed by the transformation Bonnie had gone through since they first met on Song Island. Then again, she could probably say the same thing about all of them, including herself, though the others didn’t quite look at home with an M4 slung over their backs and a gun belt hanging off their hips. Bonnie did, and even managed to pull off the short haircut.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “I heard Keo still hasn’t called yet,” Bonnie said.

  “Not yet.”

  “You think he’s okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Bonnie walked over and leaned against the table, then stared down at the map even though Lara could tell it wasn’t her chicken scratch notes that were on the ex-model’s mind at the moment.

  “What is it, Bonnie?” she asked.

  “Carrie’s worried about him,” Bonnie said.

  “Keo can handle himself. I’m more worried about the others.”

  “The—what do you call it?”

  “Expedition.”

  “Right. The expedition. Are they okay?”

  “Alive and well. I talked to Danny earlier.”

  “Good. That’s good.”

  “How’s everyone doing? I know I haven’t been moving through the decks as much as before.”

  “Everyone’s good, doing their part. Don’t worry about us. You already have a lot on your mind.”

  “So no secret meetings about overthrowing my rule?”

  Bonnie chuckled. “Not since two weeks ago. You’re safe for at least another few days.”

  “Good to hear.” She walked over to her small fridge in the corner and came back with two cold water bottles, handing one to Bonnie. “So why did you really come here?”

  “That obvious, huh?”

  Lara shrugged.

  “It’s Gage,” Bonnie said.

  Of course it would be Gage. She knew the man would come back to haunt her eventually. She had been dreading it, but at the same time knowing it was inevitable, that the sooner she dealt with it the easier she would be able to sleep at night.

  Or, at least, that’s what she told herself.

  “Wha
t about him?” Lara asked.

  “After Carrie asked me to come see you about Keo, she told me that when she took Gage his breakfast this morning, she left his room with a bad feeling.”

  “What did she say exactly?”

  Bonnie paused for a moment. Then, “She couldn’t put it into words, just that he didn’t seem right. Like he was waiting for her to make a mistake. She left as soon as she could, but she hasn’t been able to shake it.”

  She sighed.

  Gage. The Trident’s former captain.

  What would Will do?

  “He’s been down there for a while,” Bonnie continued. “Long enough that I think he’s figured out by now we don’t need him to run the yacht anymore.”

  She nodded, remembering the look on the man’s face when she took him off the bridge and gave the helm to Blaine. He knows, she remembered thinking at the time. His usefulness has come to an end, and he knows.

  “What are you doing to do?” Bonnie asked. There was a slight wavering in her voice, as if she was afraid to hear the answer.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Lara said.

  CHAPTER 4

  KEO

  ANOTHER FINE MESS you’ve got yourself into. Shoulda taken the easy way out when you had the chance, pal. And you had a lot of chances, didn’t you?

  Live and learn…maybe.

  He expected ghouls in the shadows, but the floor was empty when he took his first tentative step outside the janitor’s closet at the end of the hallway, silver bullet-loaded M4 in front of him and one eye fixed behind the weapon’s red dot sight. The trigger felt good against his finger, and the warmth of morning sunlight was like a comforting embrace. The pain in his leg—the result of a bullet hole—had resurfaced thanks to last night’s mad dash; running for your life, apparently, didn’t contribute to the healing process.

  Jordan moved quietly behind him, watching his six. They weren’t quite moving in stacking formation, but he could feel the fabric of her sweaty clothes every time she turned too quickly to sweep an open door or one of the (too many) hallways to their left and right. He was doing the same, watching and listening for signs of something to shoot, watching for things that didn’t belong, and doing his very best to shut out her persistent haggard breathing.