The Ashes of Pompeii (Purge of Babylon, Book 5) Read online

  “But I can tell I’m not going to change your mind,” he continued. “I hate to say it, but I’m a selfish bastard, and I can’t die for a cause I don’t believe in.”

  She could see he was struggling with it, which actually surprised her. Will had called Keo a mercenary, and maybe he had been once upon a time. But he had clearly changed a lot since The Purge, even if he didn’t want to admit it.

  Lara decided to take pity on him. She keyed her radio and said into it, “Maddie, come in.”

  “Are they attacking?” Maddie asked through the radio.

  “No. They left.”

  “They just left?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  “For now.” Then, “Maddie, I need you to prep one of the boats for Keo, like we talked about before.”

  Maddie didn’t say anything for a moment. It took about five seconds, and Keo was watching her closely the entire time. Or was there something else going through his mind at the moment that she couldn’t read? She hated to admit it, but the only thing obvious on the man’s face was that long scar along the left side of his cheek. Other than that, she couldn’t read a damn thing from his expression.

  “Roger that,” Maddie finally said.

  “Thank you,” Lara said. “Sarah, come in.”

  “Yes,” Sarah answered. She was back at the hotel with the kids, Bonnie, and the others.

  “Put some supplies together for Keo. At least a month’s worth.”

  “Is he leaving?” Sarah asked. It was impossible to miss the disappointment in her voice.

  “Yes. I need it within the hour, okay?”

  “Okay,” Sarah said.

  Lara clipped the radio back to her hip.

  “I could use some more weapons and ammo, too,” Keo said.

  “You can take whatever you need from the basement.”

  “The Army Rangers won’t mind if I raid their stash?”

  “They probably will a little bit, but I won’t tell them and since you won’t be here to say otherwise…”

  “Works for me. I guess all that’s left is to say good luck.”

  “You too.” She shook his hand. “Thanks for everything. We couldn’t have gotten this far without you.”

  “Yeah, watch yourself out there, K-Pop,” Carly said.

  He smiled awkwardly back at her. If Lara thought Keo was bad at expressing his thoughts, he was even worse at saying good-bye, apparently.

  She decided to take pity on him again. “I hope you find Gillian, Keo. I mean that.”

  He nodded. “Thanks.”

  She watched him step through the door, his footsteps clanging against the cast-iron stairs as he went down, and down… She didn’t know why, but Lara kept expecting him to pop back up through the opening and confess he wasn’t really leaving after all.

  He didn’t, of course.

  When they could barely hear his footsteps, she looked across at Carly. “We need to get ready for tonight.”

  “Will and Danny should be back by then,” Carly said.

  “I know, but we need to get everything and everyone ready anyway until they do get here. Besides, it’ll give everyone something to do, keep their minds off other things.”

  “You’re the boss, boss.”

  “Until then, I’ll get Stan up here with you.”

  “What about Benny?”

  “Keo had the right idea. He’s better out there making sure they don’t sneak up on us before nightfall. I should have thought of it myself.”

  “Yeah, but Stan?” Carly said. “He’s an electrician, Lara.”

  “He’s an electrician, I’m a failed medical student, and you were a teenager before all of this. We adapt or perish, remember?”

  Carly sighed. “I hate it when you get all bossy.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who made me boss, remember?”

  “Me and my big mouth.”

  Lara glanced at her watch. 11:30 A.M.

  It wouldn’t be long now until Will radioed to tell them he was almost at the shoreline and for her to get a boat ready to pick him up. She would probably need to use the pontoon, because Will was coming with more than just him, Danny, and Gaby. And there were those M240 machine guns he had promised her.

  In just three—maybe four—hours, she would see him again. Finally.

  It’s about time, Will. You’ve kept me waiting long enough…

  CHAPTER 6

  WILL

  They were talking amongst themselves when he woke up, and they were still chattering away when he finally summoned enough strength (A few minutes later? A few hours later?) to sit up on the dirty tiled floor. He was in some kind of back room, with the only ventilation coming from a small vent along the top wall in front of him. Except the AC had stopped working a year ago, leaving behind just unrecycled, musty air. Slivers of sunlight shined through a closed high window above him, but most of it came from the open door across the room.

  His movements were limited by the zip ties around his ankles, though they were nice enough to let him have his hands folded in front of him instead of bent behind his back. He was uncomfortable, but it could have been a worse. A lot worse.

  Yeah, that’s the ticket.

  He was breathing, which was all that mattered. As long as he was alive, there was a way out of this. He just had to see it. Then he would be back on his way, back to Song Island. Back to Lara.

  His current surroundings weren’t much to look at. The wallpapers were peeling, and debris was strewn along the floor. A pair of empty boxes sat in a corner, but the room was otherwise empty. Figures moved back and forth across the open door, and he could just make out the rest of a store beyond. He guessed he was inside one of the gas stations along Route 13. Either the Palermo or the Chevron.

  His head throbbed like someone was inside his skull kicking up a ruckus. Dried blood clung to one side of his face and ran all the way down to his neck. He looked down at his waistline to make sure the nagging wound he was most worried about hadn’t resurfaced, but breathed easier at the lack of blood at that particular spot. That meant Zoe’s stitches were still holding. Good, because the last thing he needed right now was to start bleeding down there, too.

  “Do you always carry thread and needle around with you?” Zoe had once asked him.

  Expect the best, prepare for the worst, Zoe.

  They had taken his weapons, of course. The gun belt, the pouches, the sidearm, and the sheathed knife. The Motorola radio and comm gear were also gone. When he moved his legs back and forth he didn’t hear the familiar clink-clink, so they had taken the pills, too. That, more than anything, was problematic. He was still sore from the last few days, and without the relief of the meds, it was going to be tough sledding.

  They were nice enough to leave him his watch, though, and Will looked down at it now: 11:05 A.M.

  Cutting it close. Lara’s going to be so pissed when I don’t show up later today as promised.

  Sorry, babe, but it couldn’t be helped. I did send Danny and Gaby on ahead. At least two of us will be there for you tonight, so don’t be too mad at me.

  He looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps, just before a man appeared in the doorframe. Will assumed it was a man, though he was much shorter than any soldier he had ever seen. Of course, these men weren’t actually soldiers, either, so his past experiences in Uncle Sam’s armed forces was probably irrelevant to the current situation.

  Shorty leaned against the door and looked in at him. The man was casually shining a red apple against the front of his uniform and stood about five-five, but Will figured that was partially thanks to the boots. Without those, he was five-three, max. He had short black hair and dark beady eyes and a smirk that looked permanently fixed on his face. Even the sidearm appeared to be too big for him, though the uniform seemed to be tailored for his size.

  They must have a sweat shop in one of the towns, cranking out these uniforms. Custom made, too. That must be nice.r />
  “Will, right?” the man said. The name “Mason” was stenciled across his name tag. Like the others Will had seen walking by the open door in the last few minutes, Mason’s uniform had the Louisiana patch and white star in prominent locations. “How the hell are ya?”

  “I had a bottle on me,” Will said.

  “What, no ‘Hey, how you doing?’”

  “Hey, how you doing?”

  Mason grinned. “That’s better.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the familiar white bottle. He shook it, the pills clink-clinking inside. “This one?”

  “That’s it.”

  “You need it?”

  “I could use it.”

  “Say ‘please.’”

  “Please.”

  “Pretty please with a cherry on top?”

  Will gritted his teeth. “Pretty please with a cherry on top.”

  “Good boy.”

  Mason tossed it over to him. Will caught it with both bound hands. He was surprised when he twisted off the cap and saw the pills inside and not the small rocks he had been expecting. For some reason, he didn’t think it would be this easy, and Mason, smirking at him from across the room, seemed to get a kick out of proving him wrong.

  “Thanks,” Will said.

  He tilted back his head and dropped two of the pills into his mouth, then swallowed without chewing.

  “Damn, just like candy, huh?” Mason said.

  Will ignored the comment, said instead, “You want it back?”

  “Nah. You look like you need them more than me.”

  “That’s awfully civilized of you.”

  Mason chuckled, then took a big bite out of the apple. Juice flowed down his chin and he wiped at it with the sleeve of his shirt. Will’s stomach might have growled a bit at the sight.

  Definitely not officer material, this one.

  “Hey, we’re all just trying to get by, right?” Mason said.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Besides, she made it pretty clear she wants you alive. You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Will said.

  It took a while before he finally matched Mason’s voice to that of the man who had given the orders earlier when they pulled him out of the truck. Mason was the one who had responded, when asked about pursuing Danny and Gaby’s vehicle, “Don’t worry about them. They’re not gonna get far.”

  Officer material or not, the man was definitely in charge. Or, at least, in the daylight.

  “What about my friends?” Will asked.

  “You should be more worried about yourself right now,” Mason said.

  “I’m multitasking.”

  “Be careful; you can get hurt doing that.” Mason shrugged, giving the impression of indifference, even though Will suspected the man knew—and cared—more about what was happening around him than he wanted to let on. “Don’t worry about your friends. I know it looks like we’re running a Scooby-Doo operation around here, but there are actual brains at work. What, you thought we were just going to let you get to the interstate and keep going after last night?”

  “I was hoping.”

  “Hope springs eternal. But no.” He took another large bite of the apple. “What you saw out there when you tried to come through was just a small part of it. We have people everywhere. If you’d tried to go back to Dunbar, it would have ended the same way. Even if you’d tried to bail through the fields? Same difference. You wouldn’t believe the number of guys with rifles I got running around out there. Like cockroaches. With, you know, assault rifles.” He chuckled. “You really thought we’d just leave you alone after last night?”

  “So you’ve got it all figured out, huh?”

  “Not me. I’m just following orders.”

  “Hers,” Will said.

  Mason grinned. “Yeah. Hers.” Then, as if he were conspiring with Will, he leaned slightly forward. “You know her, don’t you? I mean, really know her.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess she wasn’t always like that. What do you people call them? Ghouls?”

  “Sounded like a good name at the time.”

  “Well they are a little…ghoulish. The black-eyed ones, anyway. The others, like her? I don’t even know how to describe them.”

  Mason had gone back to chewing on his apple when the radio clipped to his hip squawked and a male voice said, “Mason, come in.”

  Will didn’t recognize the voice, but the reception was staticky, clearly transmitting just outside the two-way portable’s range.

  Mason unclipped the radio. “How goes it out there, boys?”

  “I just got word from Reeves,” the voice said.

  “And?”

  “He just reached the ambush point, and he says they’re gone.”

  “Who’s gone?”

  “The others,” the man on the radio said. “They made it through the ambush.”

  “They.” He means Gaby and Danny.

  Will almost smiled outwardly, but managed to hold it in just barely.

  He watched Mason closely instead, waiting to see the flash of anger, but the man’s only reaction was to curl one corner of his mouth into a half-smirk. Will had always thought of the collaborators as more opportunists than true believers; people who were in it for themselves, using the situation to their advantage. He’d always believed there were more Kellersons among them than Joshes. Mason, without a doubt, fell into the former group.

  “Well, shit,” Mason was saying. “How’d they do that?”

  “Reeves found Harry and Douglas dead,” the man said through the radio.

  “What about the targets?”

  “They ditched the Titan and took one of our vehicles.”

  Something seemed to bother Mason, or occurred to him suddenly. “Wait, weren’t there supposed to be three people down there?”

  “Yeah. Nate’s missing.”

  The name made Will straighten up slightly. He hoped Mason hadn’t noticed.

  Nate? Did he just say Nate?

  “Reeves wanted to know what he should do now?” the man on the other end of the radio asked.

  “I guess he better find them again,” Mason said.

  “We have more people waiting in Salvani, right?”

  “Last time I checked.” He glanced at his watch. “Whatever you do, you better do it fast. You have exactly six hours before it gets dark, and then you’ll be answering to her.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  You’ve got them running scared, Kate. Didn’t anyone ever tell you a scared soldier is a poor soldier?

  “Hey, I did my part,” Mason said into the radio. He looked amused, like all of this was fun and games. “I got what she wanted. You’re the one who screwed up with the girl.”

  ‘Girl’? Were they talking about Gaby, or Annie, or one of the kids?

  Will sat silently and waited for more clues.

  “You heard what I said?” Mason said into the radio.

  “Yeah, I heard you,” the other man finally answered. “Out.”

  Now that’s one hell of a chain of command there, boys.

  Mason put the radio away and gave Will that smirk again. “These radios don’t work for shit. We had to put in relays just so we can keep in contact with the ones spread out too far. What do you guys have on that island? Ham radios? Now, that’s smart.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Maybe that’s why she wants you so bad. To take over this sad mess we have going on here. You think?”

  Will shrugged.

  “I guess it doesn’t matter,” Mason said. “All that stuff’s way above my pay grade, anyway.”

  “I’ve always wondered what they’re paying you.”

  Mason grinned. “Life.”

  “Life?”

  “Duh. I get to live. Self-preservation, my man. It’s a hell of an incentive to do anything, but especially these days.” He glanced over his shoulder at the store for a moment before looking back at Will. “Damn, no rest for the weary
. We’ll have to continue this chat later. I hope you don’t mind, but I never had the privilege of asking an Army Ranger for advice before, and I wanna pick that brain of yours later if you got the time.”

  “Sure,” Will said. “I got no plans.”

  “Hah,” Mason said. “I’ll be back.”

  The short man turned and left, closing the door after him. Will listened to the sound of a deadbolt click-clacking into place on the other side.

  Alone again, he took inventory of his situation.

  What did he know with absolute certainty? A couple of things.

  First, Gaby and Danny had survived a second attempted ambush further up the interstate. Which meant they were still en route to Song Island. All they’d have to do now was get past Salvani, which, according to the conversation Will had just overheard, meant there were more soldiers waiting for them there.

  Secondly, there was that thing about someone named Nate.

  Could it be…?

  That would depend on how optimistic he was willing to be at the moment.

  I’m not ready to take over Captain Optimism just yet, Danny.

  Not that knowing what was happening out there did him any good in here. He could hear them moving around outside the door, along with the occasional sounds of car engines in the streets beyond. He tried to re-orient himself with his surroundings, to get a better sense of direction and where everything was. He was still at Route 13, he knew that much. Everything else was open to debate.

  Bottom line: He needed more information, and he wasn’t going to get it locked in here.

  He leaned back against the wall. It was still noon, so there were still over six hours until sunset. Nightfall was the enemy—had always been, would always be. Besides the darkness, and the creatures lurking inside it, she would come, too.

  “Don’t worry,” the blue-eyed ghoul had hissed at him last night. “It’s not going to end that easily for you, Will. Kate made us promise her this time. I think she has big plans for you.”

  Kate.

  Where are you now, Kate? What are you doing? Are you waiting for nightfall, too? Or are you on your way here now, the way you made the soldiers transport your shock troopers to Dunbar in the U-haul?