Black (Road To Babylon, Book 5)

by Sam Sisavath

  “You recognize the voice?” Peters asked her.

  She shook her head. “Maybe. I’m not sure.”

  “He sounds like he’s one of the leaders.”

  “Did he just call them ‘punters?’” Jones said. “Like, football punters?”

  “Beats the hell out of me,” Peters said.

  “Where did you get that?” Gaby asked, nodding at the radio in his hand.

  Peters turned the two-way’s volume back down. “Took it off one of the dead Buckies. Channel’s still tuned into their comm. Figured it might come in handy while we’re trying to avoid them out there.”

  “Don’t let the gray hairs fool you; Peters is smarter than he looks,” Jolly said from behind her.

  Peters chuckled. “I have my moments.”

  “Not nearly enough, old timer.”

  Whoever had shouted through the radio must have gotten through to the other Mercerians, because the sounds of machine gun fire had stopped. Instead, it was quiet again except for the occasional whoosh! of an A-10 passing by above them.

  “Damn, I was hoping they’d keep trying to swat at those Warthogs and get smashed,” Jolly said. “That’ll teach me to be Captain Optimism.”

  Gaby couldn’t help but smile at that. Captain Optimism was a Danny trademark, and Jolly had definitely learned more than just soldiering from his mentor over the years.

  Peters had put the radio away and took out another one.

  “How many radios are you carrying?” Gaby asked.

  Peters smiled. “Just two. This one’s ours.”

  “Lara?”

  The older man shook his head. “Not yet, but I haven’t given it a shot in a few minutes.” He held the radio up to his lips and pressed the transmit lever. “This is Peters, to any Black Tiders who can hear me. Please respond.” He paused, exchanging a look with Gaby, before trying again: “This is Peters, to any Black Tiders monitoring this channel. If you can hear me, please respond.”

  “Welp, that didn’t work,” Jolly said.

  “It was worth a try,” Gaby said.

  The gray belly of a Warthog flashed in front of them as it banked over the city before disappearing out of range. It was flying lower than usual.

  “What’s it doing?” Jones asked from the back.

  “It’s trying to bait them into shooting at it,” Peters said.

  “Why?”

  “Why else? So it can kill them.”

  “Oh.”

  Peters had turned his attention back to the radio. “This is Peters, to any Black Tiders monitoring this frequency. If you’re out there, please respond.”

  They waited, anxious to hear something—anything.

  But there was just silence.

  “We should get moving,” Gaby said. “We’ve been in one place for too long.”

  Peters nodded and started to get up when the radio in his hand squawked. It was probably a little too loud, and Gaby instinctively glanced toward the street to make sure no one out there had overheard it.

  “Peters,” a voice said through the radio, “shut up.”

  Behind Gaby, Jolly chuckled. “That’s Parrish. I guess he’s still alive, too. I knew he was too mean to die.”

  “If Parrish is alive, that means Lara is, too,” Gaby said.

  “Parrish?” Peters said into the radio. “Is that you?”

  “The channel’s been compromised,” the man said. He hadn’t answered Peters’s question, but it did sound like Parrish. “Switch to the secondary backup channel.”

  “Roger that.” Peters fiddled with the radio before clicking the transmit lever again. “Where are you guys?”

  “Safe, for now,” Parrish said.

  “Ask him if one of those Warthogs can come down and give me a ride outta this hellhole,” Jolly said.

  Peters ignored him and said into the radio, “Lara?”

  “Hold,” Parrish said.

  Then, a few seconds later, a female voice came through the radio. “Peters. Did you find her?”

  Gaby thought she heard a sigh of relief coming from behind her. It might have been either Jolly or Jones.

  “Yes ma’am, we did,” Peters said into the radio.

  “Let me talk to her,” Lara said.

  Peters handed the radio to Gaby. “It’s for you.”

  Gaby took it. “Lara.”

  “Are you okay?” Lara asked.

  Gaby felt a slight moment of embarrassment. There were four of them crouched inside the alley, surrounded by enemies, but Lara hadn’t bothered to ask about the others. Then there was the undeniable fact that Peters and Jolly had been sent to get her. And before them, there was Becker and Goldman, then Mueller and the others. So many people had died tonight because of her. Because they were ordered to save her.

  So this is what guilt feels like.

  She clicked the radio. “I’m in one piece. Peters saved my life.”

  “Hey, I was there too,” Jolly said.

  “And Jolly,” Gaby added.

  “Where are you?” Lara asked.

  “About a block from the halfway point.”

  “What’s your situation?”

  “We’re okay, for now. Staying out of sight.” She glanced up at the dark skies. “Looks like those Warthogs are giving the Mercerians something else to worry about. How many are up there?”

  “Not nearly enough,” Lara said.

  “What about you? Are you safe?”

  “As safe as anyone can be tonight, which isn’t very safe at all.” She paused. Then, “I’ve made contact with the planes and some of the other units. Not all of them, unfortunately. We’re coordinating something right now.”

  “You have something up your sleeve?”

  “It’s going to get messy, and I need you and the others here with us so you don’t get caught in the crossfire.”

  It’s going to get messy? You mean it hasn’t been messy yet?

  She said into the radio, “So you do have a plan.”

  “Buck’s people think they’ve won, but they’re going to find out that it’s not over yet,” Lara said.

  “I never had any doubts,” Jolly said behind her.

  “What’s the plan?” Jones asked.

  “Whatever it is, it’ll be a doozy, I’m sure,” Peters said.

  Gaby said into the radio, “What’s our next move?”

  “Your next move is to get here in one piece,” Lara said through the radio. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

  Sixteen

  “It’s going to get messy,” Lara had said, and it did, while Gaby and the others were still halfway to where they needed to be.

  It started with two Warthogs rumbling by overhead, heading south toward the Gulf of Mexico. Then it was followed by what sounded like the end of the world as a series of nearly simultaneous explosions—but were actually one or two seconds apart if you listened closely enough and could get past the booms—rocking the city of Darby Bay. The ground shook, and the buildings around them trembled while loosened chunks of rooftop edges dropped onto the pavement of the back alley where they were moving in the darkness for the last half hour or so.

  “Jesus Christ, what was that?” Jones asked as they stopped behind a building and slid against the shadows to keep from being pelted by the falling debris.

  No one answered Jones, and instead they listened to what Gaby guessed were follow-up explosions, probably from all the fuel that was stored along the marina and the technicals that were parked up and down the street next to the shoreline. Mercerian vehicles. She imagined the sight of them, spotting the Warthogs coming, then wishing they hadn’t when the bombs dropped.

  The sky lit up behind them, more than one fiery mushroom rising high enough that they were visible behind the two-story building they were currently hunkered against. Peters had taken out the radio he’d salvaged from a dead Bucky somewhere and turned it on, putting the volume just high enough to hear but not to be overheard by anyone that wasn’t them.

  “…give m
e a sitrep,” a voice said. It was male and calm. Surprisingly calm, considering what had just happened.

  “Fuck me dead, man. The sitrep is that the whole fuckin’ marina’s gone,” someone responded. This one was also male, and Gaby had heard it before. Earlier, when it was shouting at the Mercerians to stop shooting at the Warthogs.

  I know that voice…

  “What do you mean, ‘gone?’” the first one said.

  “Gone. Vanished. All over, red rover,” the second one answered. “That clear enough for you?”

  “He’s right; they nuked the fucking marina and all our guys in the area,” a third voice said.

  “Clusterfucked is more like it,” the second one said. “As in, they dropped two cluster bombs on the place.”

  “Fuck,” the first one said.

  “I bet that’s what the poor bastards who were down there said just before they were turned into hamburgers,” the second man said, and Gaby thought, Clive. That’s the fucker who called himself Clive down in the tunnel.

  “Goddammit,” the first man said. “Garner, see if we can salvage anything.”

  The man named Garner, the third voice, laughed. “Are you shitting me? There’s nothing down there anymore, man. Everything’s gone, and everyone’s dead. There’s nothing to salvage.”

  “Fuck it,” the first one said.

  “You can say that again,” Clive said, and laughed.

  Peters turned down the volume on the radio and looked over at Gaby. “There were at least fifty or more Buckies down there. A dozen technicals, the last time I checked.”

  “Not anymore,” Jolly said.

  “How many technicals did you guys see throughout the night?” Gaby asked.

  “More than twelve, that’s for sure.”

  “How many more?”

  “At least two dozen that we saw,” Peters said. “That bombing just took out a whole mess of them.”

  “I guess when Lara said she had a plan, she wasn’t messing around,” Jolly said. “I knew I liked her for a reason.”

  I could have told you that, Gaby thought, smiling back at him. “Let’s keep moving.”

  “Roger that,” Peters said. He put the radio away and stood up.

  Peters continued leading the way, with Gaby behind him and Jolly with Jones in the back. They jogged across an alley with a good view of the street to their right at the same time that a Jeep flashed by, heading south toward the chaos. The vehicle was moving too fast for her to get a good look—and Gaby hoped, vice versa. A few seconds later and she still hadn’t heard brakes being applied, so she concluded they were safe.

  They were making good time, even though they had to stop constantly to let Mercerian patrols pass them by. The enemy were moving around frantically in vehicles, but there were also foot teams kicking in buildings and searching alleys. But the latter made a lot of noise, and Gaby and the others always heard them coming first, and were able to hide well ahead of their arrivals.

  Gaby was more concerned with ghouls, especially back here away from the lights. Their sudden absence was disturbing, to say the least. Were they gone for good, or were they somewhere out there, just waiting for orders to reenter Darby Bay? She had seen hundreds of them down in the tunnels, but she didn’t for one second believe that was all there was. Maybe a month ago she might have been persuaded, but not after Axton and not after everything Keo had told her.

  “There’s a lot of them out there,” Keo had said. “I don’t know how many, but more than I thought still existed in one state, never mind in one location. I don’t know how it did it—how it managed to keep everything under the radar—but that blue-eyed bastard’s been building up an army of ghouls in secret for years.”

  If she thought the idea of ghouls building a massive secret army was farfetched, all she had to do was think about that very first night of The Purge when the dead appeared out of nowhere. The truth was, they hadn’t come “out of nowhere”—they had always been there. Hiding, waiting, and preparing. Whatever this blue-eyed ghoul was, it had taken a page out of Mabry’s playbook.

  “…but that blue-eyed bastard’s been building up an army of ghouls in secret for years.”

  Keo. She kept thinking about him. Was he even still alive? What about Claire? What was happening in Fenton right now?

  But she couldn’t do anything for them. Heck, she was having trouble keeping herself alive.

  Get through tonight first, then you can worry about someone else.

  They were preparing to cross another alley with a wide open view of the street to their right when Peters stopped suddenly and went into a crouch. Gaby mirrored his actions, Jolly doing the same behind her. She didn’t actually see Jolly doing it, but she assumed he had. The man was as professional as they come. He had, after all, been trained by Danny himself. Jones, she thought, would just do everything Jolly did, so she wasn’t too worried about him.

  Gaby, her rifle in hand, leaned slightly forward to get a better look.

  There, the reason Peters had stopped: Two bodies, one sitting against the wall with its head resting on its shoulder. The dead man’s face was slightly visible, but Gaby didn’t recognize it, though there was no mistaking the patch on his shoulder with the two X’s of the Inguz rune on it. A Black Tider.

  The second body was lying on the filthy floor on its back with a ghoul crouched over it. The creature’s head was bent over the dead man, its face (mouth) buried in his neck. The slurp-slurp-slurp filled the alley; it wasn’t a very loud sound, but now that Gaby had seen the ghoul, she couldn’t help but hear the slurp-slurp-slurp as if they were coming through a speaker. Peters had seen and heard it right away, though, which was why he had stopped—

  No. Not one ghoul, but three.

  The other two were in the shadows behind the first one, and they were only now emerging, dragging a third victim with them. They let it go and immediately bent over it. There was the sound of tearing flesh, followed by more slurp-slurp-slurp as they suckled on their prize.

  Gaby’s stomach turned, but she refused to look away.

  Only the man sitting against the wall was a Black Tider. The other two were Darby Bay civilians. The third was a woman, and she might have been wearing jeans—

  Pfft! as Peters fired and the nearest ghoul, bent over the civilian, collapsed on top of its prey.

  Gaby waited for the other two ghouls to be alerted, but they were so consumed by what they were doing that they didn’t even notice the first one dying (again) nearby.

  Pfft! as Peters shot the second one in the head with his suppressed rifle. The creature fell on top of the dead woman.

  That, finally, got the final ghoul’s attention, and it lifted its malformed head, turned around in search of the cause, and when it saw Peters, bared its teeth at him. Bright red blood dripped from its devastated brown and yellow teeth, and it started to get up when Peters shot it in the chest. It, too, fell and never got back up.

  “I guess not all of them got the message to vamos,” Jolly said quietly behind her.

  I guess not, Gaby thought, getting up and following Peters as the man darted across the alleyway and onto the other side.

  They moved around the bodies, careful not to get the thick sludge of ghoul blood on their boots. She paid attention to the Black Tider a little longer than necessary as they passed him by. His name tag read: Patterson.

  “You know him?” Jolly asked.

  “No,” Gaby said.

  They stepped around the next two ghouls and their victim. One side of the woman’s face was covered in black and red blood, her eyes wide open and staring back at Gaby, almost as if she could see into Gaby’s soul.

  A slight shiver, followed by the thought, There by the grace of God, and Gaby hurried into the patch of shadows up ahead.

  For the next twenty minutes, Peters maintained the same pace in front of her, neither moving too fast nor too slowly, but always cautiously. They were striking a balance between reaching Lara as quickly as possible while avo
iding a gun battle doing it. There was no need to hurry because they didn’t figure into Lara’s plans. Right now, they were just potential collateral damage.

  “How much farther?” she whispered after a few more minutes.

  “Three more blocks,” Peters said. “The tricky part will be coming up.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A park. We’ll have to go through it.”

  “Why is that tricky?”

  “It’s a lot of wide open spaces. And lights.”

  “Maybe we can get one of those ’hogs to take out the lights before we get there,” Jolly said behind her.

  “We could do that,” Peters said, “or we could just be careful and make as little noise as possible while Lara’s got the rest of them running around on the other side of town.”

  “Sure, if you wanna be boring.”

  “I prefer boring over dead, Jolly.”

  “Of course you would say that. You’re old.”

  Peters chuckled. “Exactly. Keep that in mind if you want to live to be as old as I am.”

  Gaby found their back and forth amusing, especially since Peters wasn’t that old. He was probably younger than Jones in the back of their little pack, even if Peters did have more white hair around the temples.

  They continued on, moving behind buildings that looked identical to the last dozen or so they’d already passed. Gaby wished she could say she had a good idea of where they were within the Darby Bay city limits, but all the brick and walls were the same to her. Except for the occasional forays into town, she’d spent almost all of her time recovering in or around the school and barracks where Black Tide made their command post and hadn’t really mingled with the locals. Peters and Jolly apparently had, and they knew their way around the place.

  After a while, Peters began to slow down again, before finally stopping completely and sliding against the side of a building. Gaby did the same, looking over Peters’s shoulder at another alley in front of them. It appeared the same as all the others they’d already passed, except with one major difference: This one was awash in bright moonlight.

  They crouched in the shadows for a good minute without moving or speaking before Gaby finally tapped Peters on the shoulder and whispered, “What are we waiting for?”