The Gates of Byzantium (Purge of Babylon, Book 2) Read online

  “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…”

  CHAPTER 4

  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.

  Then it got real, real fast when he heard police sirens start up around town. It wasn’t like Ridley had a big police department. They had a sheriff and five deputies, and even that was overkill. So it was a rarity to hear police sirens, especially one that didn’t seem to ever end.

  But it still didn’t feel real until he heard the loud pounding on the front door. He ran down, expecting to see his parents, but instead there was Gaby, all five-seven and long blonde hair of her, screaming, makeup smeared and bawling her eyes out, and yet somehow still managing to look like the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She stood in his doorway and the rush of information came between spurts of crying and hysterics. Her parents were dead—or dying—and something, some creature, was in her house.

  That was when Josh saw it.

  This thing, all black pruned skin, hairless, racing across the street toward his house. The street lights were still on then, and the sight of the bloodsucker made Josh freeze in place. It was such an anomaly, like one of those bad B-movies he sometimes caught late at night suddenly come to life.

  Gaby must have seen the look on his face, because she turned and saw the bloodsucker. She rushed inside the house, almost pushing him out of the way. “Close the door, Josh! Close the door!” she screamed at him.

  Josh didn’t close the door. He couldn’t move. He was frozen and he couldn’t take his eyes off the bloodsucker as it bounded across the street toward him. Gaby was the one who grabbed him by the arm and dragged him away, then snatched the door and slammed it shut and pushed the deadbolt in place.

  Almost right away, the creature crashed into the door and they felt the wall shaking against the impact. It was then Josh snapped out of it, just in time to hear the living room window shattering.

  Josh saw Gaby’s face, even more terrified than his own. Then something must have kicked in and he knew what he had to do. He grabbed Gaby’s hand, stunning her for a moment, and led her toward the back of the house.

  She might have asked him where they were going, but he couldn’t hear anything at the moment. His ears were pounding and his heart was rampaging against his chest. He thought he might have heard glass breaking behind them. He wasn’t sure. But he was sure of where to go, and that was the basement. He saw the door coming up and pushed at it and it opened, because his dad never locked it.

  “Go down the stairs!” he shouted, and turned and slammed the door shut behind them and locked it.

  The basement door was solid steel, and the basement was built with reinforced concrete. It was his father’s idea, his old man’s emergency plan in case of a tornado. God knew there were plenty of those things around the area whenever it got too warm. The basement was built to withstand a tornado, so it stood to reason it could withstand one ugly, skinny thing, couldn’t it?

  Josh took an involuntary step back as something crashed into the door on the other side, but the steel door didn’t move at all. It held solidly, the way it was supposed to. Almost just as quickly, the thing seemed to give up, as if it just knew it wasn’t getting into the basement in a million years. Josh heard quick, rabid footsteps racing away.

  Josh turned, numbed, and looked down the stairs at Gaby, standing at the bottom looking back up at him, arms clutched around her chest. Their faces were illuminated by soft, yellow-tinted lightbulbs that had come on automatically, activated by motion sensors as soon as they had entered the basement.

  They stared at each other in silence, and Josh realized, quite suddenly, that this was the first time he had ever been this close to Gaby for longer than a few minutes. Her family had moved in across the str
eet almost eight years ago, and in all that time, he had always watched her from afar, too shy and too afraid of rejection to approach her. Even when they passed each other in the streets, or in school hallways, they always just exchanged a courteous “hey” and went on their way.

  But he stared at her now, into those green eyes. Eighteen-year-old Gaby was the loveliest thing Josh had ever seen, from afar or up close, but it wasn’t love or lust he was feeling at the moment. It was gnawing, growing terror, because he could hear it, too.

  Screams, and the sounds of gunshots, from the world outside the basement.

  He thought they both knew, at that very instant, staring at each other in horrified silence, that everything had changed forever.

  *

  He saw that same look of horror on Gaby’s face now as Josh hurried inside the basement with Matt hanging onto his arms. It was all Josh could do to keep his knees from buckling, because Matt was so much bigger and goddammit, he was really heavy. Josh hadn’t realized how much heavier Matt was until he had to drag the guy back to their hideout.

  Gaby had opened the basement door immediately when he had pounded on it, as if she had been waiting for them all this time. When she saw the blood-soaked shirt Josh had wrapped around Matt’s left arm to stanch the bleeding, Josh expected her to start screaming, but instead she reached for Matt to help him stay upright.

  Together, they carried Matt down the creaky wooden steps, Matt’s body a limp, useless thing hanging between them. They were both out of breath and sweating in the swelteringly hot basement by the time they got Matt down and carried him over to his bedroll in the corner.

  The basement wasn’t particularly big, but it had everything they needed, including no window access and enough comfortable space for all three of them. Portable LED lamps hung from a couple of hooks, with two more on top of boxes in the corners. The LED lights were godsends—surprisingly bright despite weighing almost nothing, powered by lithium batteries that could be recharged every day by putting them outside in the sun.

  They laid Matt down on his bedroll and Josh stumbled away, finally able to catch his breath. He wiped at Matt’s blood clinging to his shirt and pants but only ended up making more of a mess.

  Gaby kneeled next to Matt, tightening the shirt around Matt’s left arm. She was wearing khaki shorts and a cotton undershirt with a long-sleeved plaid shirt over it, and Matt’s blood had already gotten on them during the short trip from the door. Matt shook violently on the bedroll, like he was suffering through a seizure. He was covered in sweat and had been since they left the grocery store.

  “What happened?” Gaby asked. She grabbed a towel from her backpack and dripped water from a bottle onto it, then placed it over Matt’s head.

  “One of them bit him,” Josh said.

  “Oh my God. How?”

  “It was hiding inside a back room. I went in and it attacked me. Matt came in to help, and I guess during the fight it bit him. I don’t know how it happened, it was so fast.”

  “Josh, Jesus.” He could hear the disappointment in her voice. “I told you to be careful about that. How many times did I tell you? You never listen to me.”

  “I know, but …”

  “What was so important in there you had to risk your life and Matt’s?”

  “There were canned fruits inside,” he blurted out.

  “They’re not worth this, Josh. God, you have to know better!”

  “I’m sorry…”

  Gaby continued dabbing the wet towel against Matt’s forehead and wiping at the blood clinging to his face. Josh stood quietly behind her. He felt like a little kid again, hoping his parents didn’t notice he was still there and wouldn’t remember how badly he had messed up.

  “He’s lost so much blood,” Gaby said softly.

  “I didn’t know what to do. I just grabbed a shirt that was on the ground and tied it around his arm.”

  “You did good.” She looked back at him and smiled. He knew she was making an effort, and he could feel pity in her eyes. Somehow that stung even more than when she was chastising him a moment ago.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “You didn’t mean for him to get hurt.”

  “I didn’t…” Though I thought about it. “I didn’t,” he repeated.

  “I know.” She picked up another rag and the same bottle of water and held them out to him. “You have blood on you.”

  He clumsily took the rag and bottle.

  Gaby went back to stroking Matt’s head. She had that deep, worried look on her face that always made her appear older than her eighteen years. “He’s really burning up, Josh. I don’t know what to do. The towel isn’t helping…”

  He walked over to his corner and sat down on his bedroll, feeling heavy and tired and thankful to finally be off his feet. Josh wiped at the blood on his neck and cheek with the wet rag, then realized he had blood in his hair, too. It was while he was pulling at the sticky clumps of hair that Josh realized what he had done.

  “I shouldn’t have brought him back here,” he said softly, not even realizing he had said it out loud.

  “What?” Gaby said, looking over at him. “What did you say, Josh?”

  “I made a mistake, Gaby. I shouldn’t have brought Matt back here.”

  “Of course you should have. He’s Matt. He’s one of us.”

  “Look at him, Gaby,” Josh said, trying to make her see. Didn’t she understand? “He’s already infected. The blood… That’s how it works. They bite you, get their blood into your system somehow. That’s how they turn people. It usually happens faster, but the bloodsucker at the store, it looked weak, maybe that’s why it’s taking so long for Matt to…turn.”

  “You don’t know that,” Gaby said.

  “You know I’m right, Gaby,” he insisted.

  She shook her head. “No, Josh.”

  “Gaby…”

  “No!”

  She looked back at Matt, as if afraid she had woken him up. She hadn’t. Josh didn’t think anything could wake Matt up now.

  Gaby went back to dabbing Matt’s forehead with the wet towel, as if she expected him to wake up at any moment and prove Josh wrong.

  But he didn’t. He didn’t…

  *

  Pros and cons: What were they?

  Pros: He liked Matt. Gaby liked Matt. Matt was their friend. Is their friend.

  Cons: Matt was bitten. He was probably infected. That was how it worked. Josh had seen it up close, more than once. When they bit you, they turned you. Wasn’t that how it worked? Though he didn’t understand why it was taking Matt so long to turn. Did it usually take this long?

  Conclusion: Uncertain, because Matt hadn’t turned yet. He was still Matt. Mostly. Maybe Josh was wrong after all? Shouldn’t Matt have turned by now if he was infected? Could he risk it, though? Could he risk Gaby’s life on a hunch? What if he was wrong about everything? But what if he was right about everything?

  Matt hadn’t gotten better since Josh had brought him back to the basement an hour ago. If anything, he looked worse, and even Gaby, sitting by his side, seemed to realize that. She continued wetting the towel and wiping the sweat off Matt’s forehead and face, but Josh knew it was pointless. There wasn’t a whole lot they could to do help poor Matt now. The bloodsucker’s tainted blood was inside him, coursing through his veins this very moment.

  But why hasn’t Matt turned yet?

  Gaby finally looked over at Josh, and he was struck by how tired she looked. “Why didn’t you guys take the truck?”

  The question surprised him, and it took him a moment to understand it. “We didn’t think we would be going out that far. By the time we were a block away…”

  She nodded. “Did you get anything from the store?”

  “No. I was about to, but …”

  “This happened.”

  “Yeah.” Josh paused. “Matt was throwing a bunch of stuff into his backpack, but I forgot it at the store when we ran out. I can go back for
it. It’s probably still there.”

  “No. Not today. Maybe tomorrow, once Matt’s feeling better.”

  “Yeah, once Matt gets better,” Josh said, not believing a single word of it.

  Neither one of them said anything for a while, and the basement felt as if it were squeezing Josh. He started to perspire and wiped at a bead of sweat on his forehead.

  “But just in case,” Gaby said.

  “In case of what?”

  She didn’t answer him. Instead, she got up and walked over to where they had stacked a half-dozen brown moving boxes filled with supplies. Whenever they found a new place to hide out, they always transferred their supplies from Matt’s pickup truck, which they had been using since Ridley. It was better than leaving the food outside, where anyone could just take it. And besides, it saved them the trouble of going back and forth, especially since they usually spent a lot of time in one spot anyway.

  Gaby rifled through a backpack on top of the boxes. He recognized it as another one of Matt’s backpacks. She took something out. When she turned around, he was surprised to see her holding a gun—a silver chrome revolver.

  “Is that yours?” he asked.

  “It’s Matt’s,” Gaby said. “I think it’s his dad’s. He showed it to me once. I don’t think he’s ever actually used it.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  Gaby walked over and held the gun out to him. Josh stared at it like it was some third arm Gaby wanted him to have.

  “Why me?” he asked.

  “You’re the guy,” she said, as if that answered everything.

  He stared at her for a moment, then back at the gun. Then over at Matt.

  I’m the guy…

  Josh took it. The gun felt big, unwieldy, and cold, and he didn’t think he could wrap his fingers around the handle, but when he tried, he found that he could. Josh looked down at the steel object and couldn’t shake the very alien feel of it against his skin.

  “There’s a safety,” Gaby said. “My dad showed me. He had a gun for home protection, and when he bought it, he had us all gather in the living room and showed it to us. He wanted us to know what it was, how to hold it if we had to—if he wasn’t home and someone broke in—and things like that. Here.” She took the gun back and showed him a switch near the trigger. She flicked it with her thumb. “It’s the safety, see? And the red button? If you switch it there, that means the gun is ready to fire.”