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

  “Okay, so guys with squirrelly eyes are bad.”

  “I’m not saying they’re bad. I’m saying they’re untrustworthy.”

  “Untrustworthy, then. But what if you’re wrong?”

  What if I’m wrong for even letting any of them on the island?

  I should have called Will…

  Danny looked back at the women. “That’s been known to happen once or twice, sure. After all, I’m making assumptions based on a couple of minutes with them. But I bet those women know them more than we do. You can learn a lot about someone after spending months on the road with them.”

  “You think we should ask them?”

  “Not ‘we,’ you.”

  “Why me?”

  “You guys share similar sensibilities. By which I mean, you both have boobies.”

  “Nice of you to notice.”

  “I got eyes.”

  “Even if I did ask, how could I trust their answers? What if those two can’t be trusted, but they feel a sense of loyalty to lie about them anyway? Like you said, they’ve been on the road together for months now. That kind of experience builds bonds, Danny.”

  “Call it a hunch, but when I saw them together, the women—especially the big redhead—seemed overly protective of the others.”

  “From you?”

  Danny shook his head. “No. From the other two. The ones with squirrelly eyes. I got the sense she was happy to leave them behind back there at the marina. You gotta wonder why, after all this time on the road together.”

  Lara looked back inside the dining room at Bonnie. “You think we can trust her?”

  “She’s one of your species,” Danny said. “You tell me.”

  “How would I even approach the topic?”

  “Let her know she’s safe now, that whatever happens, she and the others aren’t going anywhere. That might get her to open up.”

  She smiled back at him. “For a guy who doesn’t know anything about women, you sure know a lot.”

  “It’s my secret weapon,” Danny grinned. “How do you think I convinced Carly to do all the creative—”

  “Enough,” she said, pressing her palm against his mouth. “She’s my little sister. I don’t need to hear all the vile things you’ve been doing to her in bed.”

  *

  LARA EXPECTED THE two men Danny described as “squirrelly” to look, well, squirrelly. But apparently her definition of “squirrelly” wasn’t quite the same as his, because the two men looked like cowboys, complete with jeans and Levi’s shirts and empty gun belts, as if they had just returned from the range…in the mid-1800s.

  One of the men introduced himself as Brody. He was in his early thirties, with one of those ridiculous jawlines she used to think only existed in movies starring action heroes from the ’80s. He was well over six feet tall, and the only thing missing on him was a big Stetson hat. Instead, he wore a bandana around his neck to help soak up the sweat.

  “Thank you for letting us on this island,” Brody said, his thick (exaggerated?) Texas drawl coming through. He shook her proffered hand lightly, as if he were afraid he might break her. “You don’t know what this means to us. It’s dangerous out there.”

  Don’t get ahead of yourself, buddy.

  Brody’s friend was named West. Like Brody, West looked as if he had just stepped out of an old-fashioned Western about righteous Texas cowboys who worked hard and played harder. When he leaned over to shake her hand, he towered over her like a giant. His hand felt rough, and the bright sun glinted off a gold watch around his wrist.

  “I second what Brody said,” West said. “You won’t regret your decision.”

  “We’ll see how it goes,” Lara said. “Nice watch.”

  “Thanks,” he smiled. “My dad gave it to me.”

  “Miss,” a voice said.

  Lara looked between the two cowboys at a third man. Compared to Brody and West, he was tiny, but he was actually about Will’s height. He was wearing a sweat-stained white dress shirt and black slacks, as if he had just come from work in an office. She found that oddly amusing.

  He leaned between Brody and West to shake her hand. “I’m Roy. Thank you for letting us on the island. I know it’s not easy trusting complete strangers these days. This is Derek—” He pointed at a teenager standing awkwardly behind them, in jeans and a hoodie. It wasn’t nearly cool enough for a hoodie, so she found that a bit strange.

  “Hey,” Derek said, lifting a half-wave.

  “Hi, Derek,” Lara said.

  She hadn’t failed to notice that Danny had strategically placed himself on the other side of the pier, behind the newcomers. He was holding a thick leather bag stuffed with weapons.

  “Are you guys hungry?” Lara asked the men.

  “Starving,” Brody said.

  “Whatever you can spare,” West added.

  She gave them her best hostess smile. “Follow me to the hotel. The women are already getting settled in.”

  “Wait, you have a hotel?” Roy said. “I was just hoping for a soft patch of ground to sleep on where I don’t have to worry about bloodsuckers.”

  “We have a hotel,” Danny said, “but only basic cable, so it’s sort of like sleeping on dirt if you really think about it.”

  Roy glanced back at Danny, not sure how to take that.

  “He’s kidding,” Maddie said, following them from the back. “He does that a lot. He’s got an unlimited supply of jokes. Very, very bad jokes.”

  “You know you love it,” Danny said.

  “When do we get our guns back?” Brody asked Lara.

  “Why? Do you need them back?” she asked.

  He smiled widely. “We’ve depended on them for so long, we feel naked walking around with an empty holster. I’m sure you guys know what that’s like.”

  “Like Roy said, trust is hard to come by these days. This is our house, so if you want to stay, you’ll have to play by our rules. And right now, our rule is no guns until we decide we can trust you to have them back.”

  “That sounds fine with me,” West said. “You, Brody?”

  Brody shrugged. “Makes sense.”

  “So we’re good, then,” he said, smiling at her.

  “It’s not like we need them, right?” Roy said, sounding overly anxious. “The creatures, they can’t cross the water. Is that right?”

  “That’s right,” Lara nodded.

  “Then we don’t need our weapons,” Roy said, and she thought that last statement was directed more at Brody and West than her.

  Roy moved ahead of the others until he was walking beside her. He was carrying a backpack, as were the other three. She assumed Danny had checked their bags before letting them on the pontoon.

  “Thanks again for letting us on the island,” Roy said as they walked down the pier. “You don’t know what this means.”

  “Like I said, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll see how it goes.”

  “Absolutely, I understand.”

  “Danny says you guys came all the way from Oklahoma.”

  “Most of us, except for Brody and West. We started out from Tulsa.”

  “I’ve never been up that far.”

  “It’s a city of about 400,000 people, about two hours from Oklahoma City, give or take. Home of the Tulsa Hurricane.”

  “You get a lot of hurricanes there?”

  He grinned. “No, the Golden Hurricane is the mascot of the University of Tulsa. I’m an alumnus.”

  “Oh. What did you major in?”

  “Computer science. Basically, the most useless degree you can think of these days, and I have it.”

  “So you know how to fix computers?” Danny asked from behind them.

  “Sure, I was an IT manager in my old job,” Roy said, sensing the sudden interest. “Why? You guys have a working computer on the island you need fixing?”

  “Not on the island, no,” Lara said. “Though we do have a couple of laptops.”

  “Working laptops?” />
  “Well, we have power…”

  “But no Internet, sorry, kid,” Danny said. “You’ll have to get your porn elsewhere.”

  Lara exchanged a brief look with Danny and smiled. She was pretty sure they were thinking the exact same thing at that moment: Harold Campbell’s facility back in Starch, Texas, was still waiting for them to reclaim it. They had left so much behind, from the supplies to those ultraviolet lamps inside the Green Room that had saved their lives. If they only had the time and the right personnel to fix what was broken, the facility would make for an invaluable backup plan. Jen’s helicopter was the key, though. Without it, braving the highways again was simply too risky.

  “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst,” as Will would say.

  *

  DANNY STAYED BEHIND with the men as they took their turn in the dining room. Sarah and Carly had whipped up a new batch of fish and cold drinks. The men attacked the cold drinks even more ferociously than the food, which wasn’t that surprising. Ice was the new currency in today’s world.

  While the men ate, Lara went to check on the women. As expected, they had grabbed rooms next to each other near the middle of Hallway A. It was instinct. When she, Will, and the others had arrived at the hotel, they had done the exact same thing.

  So when Lara found Jo’s room, she didn’t have to go far to find Jo’s sister, Bonnie, in the room next door. Bonnie’s door wasn’t closed, and when Lara leaned in, the older woman was pulling clothes out of her backpack. She had washed her face and hair, and she looked more stunning than when Lara had seen her earlier in the day. An open luggage stuffed with undergarments and personal hygiene products sat on the bed.

  Lara saw a portable sonic toothbrush and toothpaste among Bonnie’s things. “You too, huh?”

  Bonnie looked over. “Which one?”

  “Toothbrush.”

  “Oh God, I would end it all now if I couldn’t brush my teeth at least once a day.” She pulled out a fresh batch of batteries still in shrink wrap. “That’s all these are for, you know. The toothbrush. The trick is finding enough toothpaste.”

  “You’re in luck. We have boxes of the stuff in storage.”

  “You don’t know how happy I am to hear that.” She held up an almost empty tube of toothpaste. “I’m not kidding.”

  “I’ll show you guys where to grab everything you’ll need later.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You and Jo are sisters, right?”

  “How did you know?”

  “There’s a resemblance.”

  “She’s my little sister, yeah.”

  Lara closed the door behind her.

  Bonnie stopped what she was doing and looked over. She must have seen the seriousness on Lara’s face. “You have questions.”

  “I do.”

  “About the men.”

  Lara nodded.

  Bonnie pursed her lips.

  She knows what I’m about to ask. She’s been waiting for it.

  No, that’s not true. She’s been dreading it.

  “Can I trust them?” Lara asked.

  Bonnie sat down on the bed. She seemed to be thinking about her answer. Or maybe she was trying to decide how much to say.

  Lara didn’t push her, letting her take her time. There was a reason she had decided to trust Bonnie. She had seen how the other woman acted around Mae, and how she made sure Lucy and Kylie and the boy Logan ate while they were in the dining room. Once, Bonnie gave the last piece of a fish to Logan, and sat for ten minutes waiting for the next round of food to show up. All the while, she hadn’t complained, hadn’t made a scene, and simply kept the conversation going, laughing all the while, even though Lara could tell she was still hungry.

  She’s a good woman, Lara remembered thinking.

  After a while, Bonnie met her gaze. “Roy’s a good guy.”

  “What about the other two?”

  “It was just Roy, me, and the girls in the beginning,” Bonnie said.

  Lara didn’t interrupt. She understood; Bonnie was telling her this because she thought Lara needed to know the background, the context of what she would say next. So Lara stood against the wall and listened.

  “It was hard,” Bonnie said. “Roy’s a really good guy, but you can tell by the way he dresses, this isn’t his thing.” She gave Lara a small but endearing smile. “It’s not our thing either, but it’s really not Roy’s thing. He worked in an office fixing computers, you know. But we got by. Barely. We were skin and bones when we ran across Brody and West. Those two guys could have survived in the pioneer days. Me, Jo, and Roy, and the others? I don’t know how long we would have lasted.”

  “Brody and West saved you.”

  “They did, yes. In the very real sense that we wouldn’t be here without them. Roy pitched in whenever he could, but it was mostly Brody and West. They went out for supplies, came back with food, kept us basically alive.”

  “How did you guys meet?”

  “They were heading up north when we crossed paths with them in southern Oklahoma. We were on our way down here after we picked up the radio broadcast. We convinced them to come down with us because we needed them in the worst way.” Bonnie paused. She looked down at her hands. “From the very first week, we made an arrangement. It was between me and Gwen, and Brody and West. They agreed not to touch Jo or the kids. And they didn’t.”

  Lara didn’t have to ask what kind of “arrangement” Bonnie was talking about. “You did what you had to do,” she said.

  Bonnie nodded. “I know. And I don’t regret doing it. I’m not going to be writing about it in my journal or anything, but it’s a different world out there. You have to do things you might not otherwise have done before in order to survive.”

  “You don’t need them anymore, Bonnie. You’re not going anywhere. Neither are the girls, or the kids. But I need to know—can I trust them? Can I trust Brody and West to stay here on the island and not cause trouble?”

  Bonnie didn’t answer right away. She met Lara’s eyes and held them.

  “I don’t think you should, no,” Bonnie said finally.

  “Are they dangerous?”

  “They can be.”

  “Were they ever violent with you and Gwen?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I might have to eventually give them back their weapons.”

  “I wouldn’t, if I were you. At least, not while they’re still on the island.”

  “Why?”

  “We weren’t always alone on the road. The eleven of us. We met other survivors.”

  “What happened?”

  “They had things West and Brody wanted. Supplies.” She paused. “One day, those supplies just showed up in the house we were staying in. I asked West where they got them, but he told me they found them.”

  “How do you know he lied?”

  “When you met him earlier, did you see the watch West had on?”

  “The gold one?”

  “Yeah. It used to belong to one of the survivors we ran across.”

  “Did you ask him about it?”

  “He said he traded for it.”

  “Could he have?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “When we first met the others, West asked about the watch, but the man who had it—he was young, in his twenties—said it was his father’s. West kept pestering him to trade for it, but the guy wouldn’t budge. Then one day we have extra supplies and West is wearing the watch.”

  “He killed a man for a watch?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Bonnie said. “Maybe the guy changed his mind.” She shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, Lara, you know?”

  “How many people were in the other group?”

  “Four. Two men and two women. One of them was just a girl.”

  They didn’t say anything else for a while.

  “Thank you, Bonnie,” Lara said finally, and she turned to go.

  “Lara.” Bonnie was standing when Lara looked back. “Is Danny good
with those weapons?”

  “Danny was an Army Ranger. After that, he was a SWAT commando. Yeah, Bonnie, he’s really good with those weapons.”

  “Then he should think about using them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If Brody and West think they’ll never get their guns back, that you’ll never trust them enough to let them stay on the island, they might do something drastic. Something you won’t like.”

  “What do you think they’ll do?”

  “I don’t know,” Bonnie said, the fear clearly visible on her face. “That’s the problem. I don’t know what they’ll do if you push them into a corner. I just know that they’re capable of anything in order to get what they want. After seeing what the island has to offer, I don’t think they’re going to want to leave. Would you?”

  No. No, I wouldn’t…

  CHAPTER 7

  WILL

  “YOU SOUND BEAUTIFUL.”

  “Oh, you can hear that through the radio, can you?” Lara asked playfully.

  “Only because it’s you,” Will said.

  He was alone inside a small administrative office in the east tower of Mercy Hospital’s tenth floor. It was almost dark outside, with maybe thirty minutes of sunlight left. Will could sense the falling darkness, draping over the city of Lafayette inch by inch.

  “Tell me about the new people,” Will said.

  “Six women and five men, including two cowboys.”

  “Cowboys?”

  “Bona fide Texas cowboys. You know how, when everyone thinks of Texas, they picture us all wearing giant belt buckles, ten-gallon Stetson hats, and boots?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, they haven’t called me ‘ma’am’ or ‘darlin’’ yet, but that’s basically them. And minus the hats.”

  “So your biggest knock against them is that they look too much like cowboys?”

  “That, and Danny says they have squirrelly eyes.”

  “Hunh.”

  “That mean something to you, too?”