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

  Jordan sat down next to him and began massaging her toes. She opened one of the warm water bottles and finished it off before flinging it toward a trash barrel nearby, but the wind caught it before it even had a chance to hit its mark.

  “Don’t mess with Texas,” Keo said.

  “Huh?” she said.

  “Isn’t that the state motto?”

  “Texas can sue me.”

  “I hear tort reform’s a big thing down here.”

  The beach stretched for miles to both sides of them, with the only buildings he could see sprinkled in the distance to his left. Their right was almost entirely barren except for a couple of abandoned vehicles parked dangerously close to the water. If he just stared forward, he could almost fool himself into thinking that civilization didn’t exist at all out here.

  Keo leaned back on his elbows and soaked in the sun, watching the endless waves of ocean foam attempting to reach up the beach about thirty meters in front of him. Blue skies hovered over the Gulf of Mexico, and there were few clouds to obscure the scenery. It was a hell of a sight, and he wouldn’t have minded a house out here for summer vacations.

  “What do you think those trucks were doing out here?” Jordan said after a while.

  “Sightseeing?”

  “You think it’s worth taking the time to search them?”

  “Be my guest.”

  “Maybe later.”

  Keo closed his eyes and listened to her breathing softly next to him. Jordan was sticky with sweat, but he thought she smelled just fine against the fresh ocean breeze.

  “I can’t help but notice that I don’t see a luxury yacht anchored anywhere out there,” Jordan said. “How about you? You see a boat out there, Keo? Maybe it’s me. My parents had cataracts. Maybe I’m getting them, too.”

  He smiled to himself. “I don’t see them.”

  “So we’re screwed.”

  “Even if they’re out there, we couldn’t see them anyway. We agreed they’d anchor twenty miles out to stay out of view. I was supposed to radio them when we reached the beach so they could swing by and pick us up.”

  “Ah,” she said, almost wistfully, “the best-laid plans and blah blah blah.”

  “It’s not all bad.”

  “No?”

  “We’re the only two souls on a beach, staring at a glorious sky and listening to waves crashing. I could think of worse places to be right now.”

  “I can’t tell if you’re serious.”

  “I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you serious? This last week could have been for nothing, especially if Frank’s dead.”

  Keo sat up and brushed sand off his elbows. “Jordan…”

  “What?”

  He reached into the gym bag and took out two bottles of water, opening them and handing one to her. “Salute,” he said, holding up his.

  She rolled her eyes but smiled anyway and bumped his bottle with hers. “A tall glass and some ice would be nice.”

  “How about a bottle of red wine while we’re at it?”

  “Cabernet?”

  “Of course.”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  He took a long drink before lying back down. He buried the bottle halfway into the sand next to him, then closed his eyes again. The warmth of the sun against his face was like a soothing pair of massaging hands, and Keo let himself embrace it. If he was going to die out here, right now, he could think of worse ways to go.

  “Hey,” Jordan said after a while.

  He didn’t open his eyes, but said, “Hmm?”

  “What do you think Gillian’s doing right now, back in T18?”

  Fucking Jay, he thought, and said, “I don’t know. Why?”

  “I was just wondering.”

  “Jordan…”

  “What?”

  “Shut up and enjoy the beach,” he said, letting his body sink deeper into the soft sand underneath him.

  After a while, all he could hear was the sloshing waves in front of him and the soft, comforting sound of Jordan’s breathing next to him.

  CHAPTER 5

  GABY

  IT WAS A small town on the outskirts of Cleveland, Texas, hidden away from prying eyes, or anyone who might have been traveling along US59. Once upon a time it’d had a name, but it had since been given a letter and a number and been resettled with survivors—men, women, and children who had accepted that the world was no longer a safe place, that surviving was better than fighting.

  The A-10, or Warthog, as Danny called it, had been thorough. If it had left survivors behind, she couldn’t see them from the hillside where she was crouched alongside Danny and Nate. The buildings that once lined an unnamed main street had been reduced to rubble, the result of the 30mm cannon she had heard belching out something that sounded like a creature from a monster movie. What the plane’s Gatling gun hadn’t obliterated, the air-to-surface missiles underneath its wings had taken care of. There were four large craters spread across the length of the resettlement from south to north, and thick plumes of smoke hovered above it like storm clouds.

  Gaby thought about those old World War II documentaries her dad used to love watching, remembered marveling at the unreal sight of cities buried under the remains of buildings that once stood so proud. Despite all that property damage, she never saw the bodies, or the real carnage. Maybe her dad never allowed her to see the grisly footage or it had been edited out. The raw details had always remained hidden, but she couldn’t ignore them now.

  She could see the bodies from the hillside—or, at least, parts of them. The arms and legs of victims jutting unceremoniously out of rubble as shredded clothing clung to jagged piles of brick and mortar. Skeletal shells of what used to be buildings somehow managed to remain upright, though it was difficult to tell what they used to be. Pockets of fire dotted the landscape, as if marking where the town began and ended. The air was thick with sulfur and she found herself breathing through her mouth to keep from gagging, despite the fact she was still far enough away that she shouldn’t have been affected by the smell.

  Next to her, Nate and Danny had gone very quiet and still. Except for the occasional wind howling through the carcass of buildings below them, there was almost no other noise except for her shallow breathing and slightly accelerated heartbeat.

  “We should go,” Nate said. He sounded almost breathless. “We shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be seeing this.”

  “He’s got a point,” Danny said. “That hog might come back. Or it might have friends.”

  “Christ, how much armament does one of those things carry, anyway?”

  “Depends on its objective. There’s a reason it was so goddamn effective in the Stan.”

  Gaby stood up. She didn’t know what she was going to do until it was already too late to stop. Her joints popped as she moved, but she ignored them and gripped the M4 tightly in front of her.

  “Gaby, wait,” Nate said.

  “There might be survivors,” she said, and hurried down the hill.

  “There’s nothing down there, Gaby. Not anymore.”

  She kept going, her boots fighting for purchase against the sloping hillside, until Nate’s voice was lost against the scraping noises. Or maybe she had just effectively shut him out as she hopped the last few feet; it helped that her heartbeat had gone from slightly raised to hammering out of control against her chest.

  *

  “THERE MIGHT BE survivors,” she had said, knowing what a terrible lie that was even as the words tumbled out of her mouth.

  Reaching the beginning of the town just confirmed it. Nothing could have survived what she was looking at. The gun runs, as Danny called them, had been incredibly efficient. The Warthogs were effective at their jobs, he said, which was why they were so good at providing close-quarter air support. That was their specialty, after all.

  She stepped around the craters that pockmarked the main street that ran through town
, the curvatures of the unnatural holes still darkened with wet blood. The 30mm rounds that hadn’t landed on the buildings had instead dug gaping holes in the pavements and reduced the sidewalks into disorganized slabs. A sea of broken glass and small concrete chunks crunched under her boots with every step. Gaby held a handkerchief over her mouth to keep out the choking sting of smoke and blood.

  The bodies were almost all hidden under the remains of buildings, charred wooden frames, and structural steel beams. The sight of an exposed belly, the pregnant mother’s head missing, inside what used to be a bakery, almost made her retch. She kept moving, pushing on, resisting the urge to look back at the body, telling herself the woman (and the child inside her) would still be dead if she looked a second or third time.

  Her eyes stung and she fought back tears, too afraid of what would come out if she failed to suppress the emotions. The prospect of Danny and Nate seeing her break down was enough, and she pushed on. She couldn’t allow the men to see her be reduced to the Gaby from a year ago, the little girl who had to rely on Matt and Josh to keep her safe. That girl was long, long gone.

  “Gaby.” Nate’s voice from behind her. “Wait up.”

  She started to turn back when something emerged from behind a dead horse in front of her. Gaby tensed, raising the M4. She stopped when she saw bristling brown and white hair as a cat darted across the street. Its coat of fur was singed black, and there were parts of the animal that had been burned off, exposing flaring red skin underneath.

  “What the hell was that?” Nate said.

  “Cat,” she said.

  “Jesus, I thought it was a giant rat or something.”

  Gaby looked after the animal for a moment before turning back to the horse. Or at the figure trapped underneath it…still moving.

  “I got a live one!” she shouted, before jogging forward with her carbine at the ready.

  The earbud in her right ear clicked, and she heard Nate’s voice: “Danny, we got survivors.”

  “How many?” Danny asked through the earbud.

  “Just one so far,” Nate said.

  “Be careful. It could be a trap.”

  “Will do.”

  But it wasn’t a trap, Gaby found, when she stopped next to the horse and its rider, a woman in a North Face jacket open to reveal a black uniform underneath. There was a patch of Texas on the jacket’s right shoulder and a name tag that read “Morris.” One half of her face was covered in blood, the wetness matting short black hair to her skin, and she was busy trying to push the horse off her. Even if the dead animal were still alive to obey—there was a hole from a large caliber round in the belly of Morris’s mount—Gaby doubted the woman would have found freedom to her liking: There was a large pool of blood under her, which she might not even have noticed yet.

  The soldier finally gave up and instead locked eyes with Gaby. Then she sighed and lay back, letting both hands drop to her sides. She hadn’t tried reaching for her holstered weapon, which was the only reason Gaby hadn’t shot her yet. Pieces of an M4 rifle were sprinkled liberally among what looked like the remains of a wooden toy train set.

  The air around them was thick with a red, black, and white cloud coming from a nearby apartment building. Gaby was glad for the handkerchief over her mouth, something the soldier didn’t have. Then again, choking on pulverized concrete and brick was the least of the injured woman’s concerns at the moment.

  “Gaby?” Nate said as he jogged over to her.

  “She’s injured,” Gaby said.

  Nate peered down at Morris, holding his own piece of cloth to his mouth.

  “What are you looking at?” the woman said.

  Nate pulled back. “She’s not going to make it.”

  “Says you,” Morris said.

  “I got her,” Gaby said. “Keep looking for other survivors.”

  Nate nodded and walked off.

  “Mohawk boy’s not wrong; I can’t move,” Morris said, turning dull brown eyes back to Gaby. She sounded surprisingly nonchalant, as if they were old friends wasting away a lazy Sunday. “I think my legs are broken. I can’t feel anything down there.”

  “What happened?” Gaby asked.

  Morris blinked up at her, trying to see through blood that had covered up a part of her right eye. “You don’t know?”

  Gaby shook her head. “Why did it attack you?”

  “I would tell you if I knew, but I don’t. Did I mention my legs are probably broken?”

  Gaby nodded. She waited for the woman to continue, but Morris looked like she had lost interest in the conversation. She let her head loll to one side and stared down the street at nothing in particular. The only sound, other than Gaby’s still quickening heartbeat, was Nate’s boots moving among the ruins on the other side of the street.

  “Four hundred people,” Morris said quietly.

  “Four hundred?” Gaby repeated.

  Morris nodded. Or tilted her head slightly up, then down, in something that resembled a nodding motion.

  “Here?” Gaby said. “In this place?”

  “Four hundred people,” Morris said again. Her lips quivered, as if she was going to say something else, but instead she just closed her eyes…and stopped breathing.

  Gaby stared at the woman in silence for a moment. A part of her thought Morris might be playacting, but that wasn’t true because ten, then fifteen seconds later, and Morris’s chest still hadn’t moved again.

  “What did she say?” Nate asked, coming back over.

  “Four hundred,” Gaby said.

  “Four hundred?”

  Gaby slung her rifle and looked around them at the toppled buildings, at the visible body parts. “They were inside when the plane hit.”

  “Someone probably ordered them into the buildings,” Nate said. “They would have been able to hear it coming for miles.” He shook his head. “They would have been better off making a run for it; they were sitting ducks inside those buildings.” He wiped at some soot underneath his chin. “She said 400?”

  Gaby nodded.

  “Christ,” Nate said. “This isn’t right. Whoever did this—whoever ordered this…” He shook his head again. “This isn’t right.”

  She didn’t know how to reply, didn’t know if anything she said would be even remotely enough, so she turned around and maneuvered past Morris and her mount instead.

  “Come on,” she said, “there might be more survivors up the street.”

  Nate followed, their boots crunching broken glass and concrete chunks as they stepped through puddles of blood.

  And they hadn’t even hit the halfway mark through town yet…

  *

  “WHEN IT FINISHED with the town, it did an extra gun run along a country road that runs parallel to a creek,” Danny said. “There are more bodies out there.”

  “Survivors?” Nate asked.

  “Maybe a half dozen vehicles made it through.”

  “Thank God.”

  Danny glanced down at his watch. “We should avoid the state highway from now on. Skip around using the smaller roads until we hit US59, then pick our way north to Starch. It’ll take longer, but better late than dead.”

  “How many?” Gaby asked.

  “How many what?”

  “How many got caught out there? That didn’t get away?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  Danny didn’t answer her.

  “How many, Danny?” she pressed.

  “It doesn’t matter, Gaby,” he said again. For a brief moment, he reminded her so much of Will, who could end a conversation with just a few words and the right inflection in his voice. “Let’s get going,” Danny continued. “I want to be in Starch by noon. Nate, it’s your turn at the reins.”

  Nate nodded and slipped into the truck behind the steering wheel while she took a moment to look back one last time at the town. The clouds of black and gray smoke still loitered above it, as if they would never leave. From a
distance, the carnage looked almost poetic, but she knew better; there was nothing artful about the bloodbath below those dull colors.

  “Gaby,” Danny said behind her. “We gotta go.”

  She turned around and climbed into the backseat as Nate fired up the engine, then maneuvered across the empty lanes toward the feeder road exit to get them off the highway. Danny was right: What had earlier been clear sailing to Starch—there was no such thing as traffic out here, far from the nearest big city—was now a wide-open potential kill zone.

  Gaby leaned back against her seat, feeling impossibly drained by the long walk from one end of the destroyed town to the other. She closed her eyes and placed her cheek against the door, the interior of the truck swamped by the cold weather. In front of her, Nate’s Mohawk battled against the breeze, a sight that made her smile despite everything she had seen the last few hours.

  “They don’t miss,” Danny had said as they approached the town, all the while listening to the series of chaotic explosions that were so loud even the road had trembled under their truck. “The Avengers are straight-on Gatling guns; they’re right in front of the cockpit so the pilots have to see exactly what they’re shooting at. And they hardly ever miss.”

  “Four hundred…”

  Gaby replayed Morris’s words in her head, heard again the anger and something that sounded almost like disbelief in the woman’s voice. She saw again the sadness and regret in Morris’s eyes as she stared off, as if she could see something down the street that wasn’t just ruins and body parts and blood. Four hundred people, except for however many had been in those “half dozen” vehicles that had managed to escape along the creek.

  She opened her eyes when Nate said from the front seat, “What are we dealing with here?”

  “I don’t have a clue,” Danny said.

  “That Warthog. Where would something like that come from?”