She’s like me. We haven’t been kids for a long time now.
“How’s everyone doing back there?” Gaby asked.
“Scared,” Claire said, “but we’re okay.”
“We’re okay,” Milly said to the right of Claire.
Milly was thirteen too, with a round face and large eyes. One of these days, Milly would grow up and turn boys’ heads. Seeing the two girls side-by-side was always such an amazing contrast. Milly looked fragile and unready for the world, especially sitting next to Claire, with her dirty hair and steely resolve.
“Annie?” Gaby said, looking to Claire’s left.
Annie had been staring out the window the whole time, and she flinched noticeably at the sound of her name. She gathered herself and gave Gaby something that was supposed to be a smile. “I’m okay. You?”
“I’m in one piece. We all are, thank God.”
“I don’t know how,” the older woman said. “They were shooting from everywhere. I wasn’t this scared back at the farmhouse last night. All those guns, all those bullets… It’s a miracle we’re still alive. How are we even still alive?”
“I don’t know. Lucky, I guess.”
“I haven’t felt very lucky these last few days.” She attempted another smile, and it came out equally bad. “But I guess we’re owed a little, huh?”
“Yeah,” Gaby said. She thought about Lance. The other Lance. Annie’s boyfriend, and not one of the soldiers who had guarded her back in L15. The good Lance had died last night in a pile of rubble. “Song Island’s not far now. We have plenty of gas, and we’ll be there by noon today. Right, Danny?”
“Oh sure, you betcha,” Danny said without hesitation. “Smooth sailing now, kids. You got ’em, I suggest you smoke ’em.”
“Smoke what?” Claire asked.
“He’s just being funny,” Gaby said. “We’re getting there. Just hang on a bit more.”
Claire nodded. Annie, next to her, had already looked back outside the window at the seemingly never-ending wave of concrete dividers that separated the east and westbound lanes. Will had once told her about the thousand-yard stare that soldiers would get after a firefight, the result of being shell-shocked by combat. Annie looked like she was having one of those at the moment.
Gaby sat back in her seat and looked at Danny. “Were they just bad shots back there? Was that how we survived?”
“No one’s that bad,” Danny said. “They were aiming for the tires.”
“The tires?”
She took a moment to digest what he had said. The tires? They were shooting at their tires? Was that why they had missed the windshield? Every second during the ordeal, she had waited and waited for the first bullet to punch through the glass or the roof and kill her, Danny, and the girls in the back. It would have been easy, because the snipers were firing down on them without anything at all blocking their view.
Instead, all she could remember was the ping-ping-ping! of bullets hitting the sides of the vehicles.
He’s right. They were trying to shoot out the tires.
“Why were they doing that?” she asked him.
“Because they were trying to stop us, not kill us,” Danny said. “The only reason we survived back there was because they were trying to take us alive.”
“They didn’t seem to care whether we lived or died yesterday.”
“Different day, new orders. The only thing you can count on as a grunt in the field is the higher-ups sitting around in their comfy chairs back at headquarters, changing their minds from day to day.”
“So someone changed the orders. Who?”
Danny didn’t answer right away. Gaby watched him closely. She looked past the bruises, the broken nose that was still healing, and the cuts that covered a face that always used to remind her of a transplanted California surfer, even though she knew for a fact Danny had never lived anywhere else outside of Texas after his Army days.
“Danny,” she pressed. “Whose orders were they following back there?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“Bullshit. I know you well enough to know when you’re lying.”
He looked over and grinned. It was a valiant attempt, but it wasn’t anywhere close to being the usual Danny grin, and she thought he probably knew it, too.
“You sound like Carly,” he said.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Then, “Tell me, Danny.”
“I don’t know for sure…”
“But you know something.”
“Willie boy and I talked about it on and off. She’s been dogging him since she went turncoat.”
Gaby knew who Danny was talking about without hearing the name. She had heard it often enough. Not from Will or Danny, but from Lara and Carly. The topic never came up on purpose, but something would happen that reminded them she was out there. Both women had known her in the early days of The Purge, especially Carly, and they knew what she had become later, and still was now.
Out there, somewhere.
“You know about her and us,” Danny said. “More specifically, her and him.”
“They were at the underground bunker in Starch, Texas, together. You all were.”
“She came back with a vengeance while we were out there looking for you. A few nights ago, she made one of her patented appearances in his dream. Or nightmare. Foggy walkabout.” He shrugged. “Whatever you want to call it. She was there, and she showed him that whole mess in Dunbar.”
“With Harrison…”
“Uh huh.”
She paused. Gaby didn’t want to say the woman’s name, but she had to make sure. “Are we talking about the same person, Danny?”
He looked at her and mouthed the word, “Kate.”
She knew the name, but hearing Danny say it—even if he didn’t actually say it out loud—made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
Kate.
Will’s Kate.
And now her men—her human hands and feet in the daylight—had him. That was the bad news. The good news was that knowing that Kate was behind all of this made it easier to accept that Will was still alive back there, and that, ironically enough, buoyed her spirits. Because he was Will, and as long as he was still breathing, there was a chance.
“Someone once told me I’m too stubborn to die,” he had said to her not all that long ago. “Okay, more than one person, actually. There’s a good chance it could be true.”
For the first time since the shooting stopped, Gaby found herself smiling into the wind.
*
They didn’t stop for another thirty minutes, when Milly declared she couldn’t go another mile without using the bathroom. Of course, there wasn’t a bathroom or a roadside rest stop anywhere nearby, so Danny parked the Titan in the middle of the highway, and Milly jumped out and ran behind a blue sedan.
Gaby climbed out to stretch and look over the damage from the ambush. Danny was right when he said the shooters had been trying to disable the car instead of killing them. The bullet holes were all concentrated around the four tires, which by some miracle had all made it through in one piece. She didn’t know what they would have done if one of the shooters had actually managed to puncture a tire. Did they even have a spare in the back somewhere? What would have happened if they had lost two tires?
Danny hobbled out of the truck on the other side. For a guy moving on one good leg—the one encased in a makeshift split that was really just floorboards and duct tape—he had driven amazingly well throughout. He was still grimacing with every step, and when he turned his back to her, she heard the clinking of pills in a bottle he had retrieved from one of his cargo pants pockets.
She wished she could say seeing Danny hurt was a novel thing, but the sad truth was they were all hurt. Their entire life since The Purge had been a series of running and fighting, and that kind of existence tended to leave scars and bruises. If they weren’t struggling against the cre
atures in the night, they were braving their human lackeys in the day. Thank God those same men couldn’t shoot for crap, or they might have been dead a dozen times over by now.
The sun beat down on her as she peered down the highway. Will was back there, somewhere, captured by those very fallible humans right now.
“Someone once told me I’m too stubborn to die.”
She smiled again. Those same men were going to find out just how stubborn he was very soon. As long as Will was breathing, she had faith he’d find his way back to the island. Or wherever Lara ended up, anyway.
Gaby glanced around her to make sure they were alone. I-10 consisted of four lanes, two on each side, and had become low to the ground as they left Route 13 far behind. The east- and westbound lanes were separated by a tall divider with a healthy stretch of shoulder on both sides of the concrete barricade. Tall walls of wood flanked them, and it had been ten minutes since they last drove past a business advertising seafood and “Good Eats.” There hadn’t been anything else since, which made stopping here ideal.
With the truck’s engine turned off, they would be able to hear another vehicle coming for miles. More than enough warning to get back in and flee. It still nagged at her that the soldiers hadn’t pursued them from Route 13. They had chased after them on foot for a while, but those large trucks that had tried to block their path, the same ones Will had barreled into with the Tacoma, or the ones that had cut off their retreat, hadn’t pursued.
They have a plan. Whoever’s leading them, has a plan.
Is that you out there calling the shots, Josh? Is that you doing Kate’s bidding?
She looked down at her watch: 10:16 A.M.
It felt like evening already. The temperature had lessened noticeably when they stepped out of the farmhouse this morning. It was hovering around seventy degrees at the moment, pleasant enough that she almost didn’t realize for the first time in a long time that she wasn’t sweating profusely under her clothes while standing out in the open.
According to the map they carried with them, they were already halfway to Lake Charles. It would take another hour of driving at a decent rate of speed to get there. From there, the town of Salvani wasn’t far off. Once they made it past that, it was south toward Song Island. Smooth sailing.
Because everything up to this point has been smooth sailing so far, right?
Danny leaned against the driver side door and looked across the hood at her. “How’re you holding up, kid?”
“I’m still standing,” she said. “You?”
“Got me a busted face, with a busted nose, and a busted leg. Other than that, I feel super duper awesome.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Danny was looking past her at the girls. Annie had walked over to join Milly behind the sedan, while Claire was standing watch with that shotgun of hers and looking back down the highway, as if she, too, expected someone to appear in pursuit of them at any moment.
“Where are they, Danny?” Gaby asked. “They had trucks. Maybe more, stashed behind those buildings. But they just let us go. Why?”
“I don’t know,” Danny said. “Maybe because they got what they wanted.”
“Will.”
“Yeah.”
“That would make sense, if she’s the one pulling the strings like you thought.”
“Oh, it’s her, all right,” Danny said with absolute certainty. “I told him never to pick up the psychos. They have separation issues. Plus, he shot her. That tends to sour a relationship, which is why I always try to avoid shooting my girlfriends.”
Gaby smiled. It came out easily that time, and Danny looked pleased with himself as a result.
I guess we both needed that.
“Come on,” Danny said, “let’s keep truckin’. Mother always said not to look a gift horse in the mouth. If we can get to Song Island by three or four, I’ll be a happy little boy with bells on his feet.”
“Should we radio ahead? Tell them we’re coming?”
Danny shook his head. “Not yet.”
“We should tell them we’re coming.”
“We will, when we’re closer, but…not yet.”
“Why—”
“I don’t know what to tell her,” he said, and climbed back into the Titan without another word.
Lara. Danny was talking about Lara. As much as they both believed that Will would be fine, that as long as he was breathing he would find them (Maybe even beat us to Song Island), a part of Danny had doubts.
But she didn’t.
Did she?
“Girls!” Gaby called. “Let’s go!”
Milly and Annie headed back, clinging to one another and looking like mother and daughter. Claire stayed behind until the two had passed her, then she turned and jogged over.
“Next stop, Song Island?” Milly asked, looking brighter than she had all day. Or maybe that was just the sun shining in her face.
“Next stop, Song Island,” Gaby nodded.
“Sweet,” Claire said. “I’m going to drink cold water until I barf.”
*
The part of her that had been trained by Will and Danny, and that had been surviving out here by herself without them, knew that they weren’t going to reach Salvani without encountering resistance. The nineteen-year-old in her that was barely a year removed from her senior year of high school was holding out hope that it was a possibility.
She should have known better.
The first shot hadn’t finished its echo before the bullet punched through the front grill of the Nissan and Danny jammed on the brake. The truck swerved slightly, Danny fighting the steering wheel for control, face contorted into a tight grimace. He finally managed to stop the vehicle, freezing it in place across the two-lane highway, the nose barely a foot from ramming into the concrete divider.
That allowed Gaby to look out her glassless window and up the road at two nondescript trucks parked about fifty yards from them. They had looked like all the other derelict vehicles they had passed since Route 13, with nothing about them standing out. Which was why Danny had almost driven right up to them when the first shot shattered the calm midday air.
Except these cars weren’t abandoned, because there was a man peering back at her from behind a scope, the long barrel of his rifle leaning over the hood of the parked white Ford truck. The other vehicle was some kind of Chevy, and it sat along the shoulder. She thought she caught a glimpse of another figure moving around on the other side of its windows.
A flicker of movement drew her attention, and she didn’t have to turn very far to see a third man moving on the other side of the concrete divider, jogging up the highway toward them. The man’s head was bobbing up and down as he attempted to stay as low as possible, but he was doing a very poor job of it.
She twisted in her seat and shouted, “Get out the other side! Now now now!”
Then she was turning back around, opening her car door, and lunging out before she even realized what she was doing.
The other side, you idiot! Go out the other side!
Too late. Her M4 rifle was clutched tightly in her hands, though she didn’t remember when she had picked it up from where it had fallen during Danny’s chaotic struggle to regain control of the vehicle. As soon as her foot landed on the hard highway floor, she expected to pay for her dumb decision. When she heard the crack! of the rifle, instead of feeling pain in her chest, there was a buzzing sensation right next to her right ear. The bullet sailed past her and hit the roof of the car behind her before ricocheting into the air.
Two more shots rang out as she darted toward the back of the Nissan, the ping! ping! coming from behind her. She swore she could smell metal against metal. Maybe that was just her imagination, though she didn’t stop to ponder it. Instead, she grabbed at the top of the truck bed and used it to slingshot herself around the corner until she saw the back bumper and kept running until she was on the other side.
She was happy to see that Danny was on the highway and pulli
ng Milly out after him with one hand, the other holding his beat-up M4A1. Claire and Annie were already huddled against the truck, using it as a shield.
“You okay?” Claire asked when Gaby crouched down next to her.
Hey, that’s my job, Gaby thought, but it took her a few seconds to stop her racing heartbeat long enough to respond. “I’m good. You?”
“I don’t think I was hit.”
She looked past Claire at Danny, who was depositing Milly next to Annie. “Danny…”
“I saw two,” he said.
“I saw three.”
“Where?”
“On the other side of the divider—”
“Check.”
“—behind the white truck—”
“Double check.”
“And behind the red Chevy.”
“Didn’t see that one,” Danny said. “You still running around with just the holes God gave you?”
She managed a smile. “Yes.”
“Good.”
Crack! A bullet punctured the front tire on the front passenger side of the Nissan. The truck dipped slightly just before a second shot rang out and the back passenger tire joined it.
“Sonsofbitches,” Danny grunted. “And I misplaced my Triple A card, too. Now how are we gonna get to Song Island on just two good tires?”
“Maybe we have some spares in the trunk?” Annie said.
Danny looked over at her, then grinned at Gaby. “Captain Optimism, this one.”
“I thought you were Captain Optimism,” Gaby grinned back.
“I’ve since decided to relinquish the title. It’s too much work—”
Crack! A third shot cut Danny off, and they heard the ping! as the bullet pierced the other side of the vehicle.
It didn’t take long for Gaby to smell it: gasoline.
She dropped to the ground and looked under the car and saw liquid pouring to the highway on the other side. “Danny, they shot the gas tank.”
“Oh my God, is the car going to explode?” Annie said, her eyes wide with terror.
Purge of Babylon (Book 5): The Ashes of Pompeii Page 6