The Purge of Babylon: A Novel of Survival

by Sam Sisavath

  The top structure finally stopped moving.

  They leaned forward and looked down. The steps only went down for about ten feet, before they met a concrete floor inside a long, brightly lit hallway. Halogen lights lined the walls below, but they didn’t see anyone.

  “A brightly lit hallway with no signs of people,” Lara said. “That’s not ominous at all.”

  Danny glanced over and grinned at Will. “You’re the one who brought us here, Kemosabe. This is your party invitation, so after you.”

  Will smirked back at him.

  Then facing front, he took a tentative step forward…then down…

  BOOK THREE

  SAFE

  CHAPTER 29

  WILL

  THE HECKLER & Koch G36 assault rifle was a German weapon capable of unleashing its thirty-round magazine in less than five seconds flat. It had a modern, even futuristic, look.

  Will was staring down the barrel of a G36 now, except instead of the usual thirty-round magazine, this one was loaded with a C-mag drum that held 100 bullets. So in theory, if things went to shit, he—and Danny, to his right—would have to only avoid getting perforated by 100 bullets for the fifteen seconds it would take the shooter to empty his weapon on full-auto.

  Bad odds. Really bad odds.

  They were at the foot of the concrete steps facing three men holding G36s, but thankfully only one had the drum attached. Two of the men looked nervous, one of whom couldn’t have been older than seventeen. The other one looked in his early forties, with a scraggly beard and almost no hair on top. The beard had an orange tint to it. The kid had on a plaid shirt and khaki shorts; he looked absurd behind the big G36 assault rifle.

  The third man, the one with the drum, was tall and wore combat boots, and of the three his hands were the only ones not shaking. The man was in his late thirties, and had calm, dark blue eyes. Will instantly recognized the look of a soldier.

  He and Danny had reached the bottom of the steps when the men arrived, turning the corner with weapons raised. This part of the facility was one big concrete block, bright halogen lamps along the walls breaking the monotony of gray scenery. The turn in the hallway was twenty meters ahead, ten behind where the three men now stood.

  “Here’s how it’s going to go down,” the third man said. “You drop your weapons and we don’t kill you. Do anything other than drop your weapons, and we kill you. Any part of that you don’t get?”

  “Sounds pretty clear to me,” Danny said. “What about you? You get it?”

  “Yup.” Will nodded. “I got it.”

  “So it’s settled then. We both get it. So what now?”

  “Drop your weapons,” the third man said.

  “That’s not going to happen,” Danny said.

  “No one has to get hurt,” Will said.

  He could hear Kate and the others above them, back up on the surface, through the square opening. The Door. As soon as the men appeared around the corner, he shouted at them to retreat back up, which they did, thankfully, without arguing.

  That left just the two of them down here. Two against three. And that C-mag.

  100 bullets. Shit. Bad odds…

  “You’re outmanned and outgunned,” the third man said. “The only way you make it out of this in one piece is with your weapons down on the floor. You get that part, too?”

  “That’s not going to happen, either,” Danny said.

  The other two men hadn’t said a word. Had either one ever fired the G36s they were holding? It had a hell of a kick, and by the way the kid was holding it the answer was pretty obvious. The older man had probably shot rifles before, but he, too, looked new to the G36.

  So that left the third man. The soldier.

  Will figured he would shoot him first and take their chances on the other two not being able to hit anything from this distance. Thirty rounds per second or not, it still took some skill to hit a moving target, and he planned to be moving a lot when the shooting started.

  “Let’s talk about this,” Will said.

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” the soldier said. “This is our facility. No one’s taking it away from us.”

  “No one’s taking anything away. But this place is big enough for six more people.”

  “We have limited resources.”

  “We have our own supplies. And like I said, we’ll work for our keep. We’ll go out and scavenge in the day, eat only what we bring back if that’s how you want it.”

  “We don’t know you. We can’t trust people we don’t know.”

  “It’s not like you have a choice here, bub,” Danny said.

  “I beg to differ,” the soldier said. “Three against two.”

  “One against two,” Will said. “In our favor.”

  “How you figure?”

  “This guy to my right has four tours of duty in Afghanistan. I have four myself. That gives us eight. We’ve also spent the last three years in SWAT breaking down doors and shooting people for a living.”

  The teenager’s face paled. The one with the beard might have groaned, but Will couldn’t be sure.

  “On the other hand,” Will continued, “I’m guessing you’re the only one who has ever fired a G36 before. These other two? I don’t think they’re ready for the kickback. I think if bullets start flying, Danny and I are going to take you out with a chest round and then take our chances with those two being unable to hit the broad side of a barn. What do you think? Sound plan?”

  Will caught the soldier shooting a quick glance at the other two. It was a subtle move, barely noticeable unless you were waiting for it.

  Will had been waiting for it.

  “Hell, I don’t think the kid will even be standing when he pulls that trigger,” Will continued. “I think the G36 is going to knock him on his ass and he’s going to be sending half of his magazine into the ceiling. After that happens, we’ll be forced to put a bullet in his head. Which we will. We don’t want to, mind you, but there won’t be any choice, and we’re going to sleep perfectly fine afterwards.”

  “Like a big fat baby with his tummy full of Jell-O,” Danny added.

  The kid looked nervously at the big assault weapon in his hands, as if he weren’t sure how it had gotten there. The older man with the beard looked equally unsure of himself.

  Will almost felt sorry for them.

  The soldier remained harden. “They know where the trigger is and how to pull it. That’s all that matters.”

  “Bullshit,” Will said. “You know as well as I do shooting someone from ten meters away is more than just pulling a trigger. I’m guessing they have those rifles on semi-automatic. I’m pretty sure we can take you down then take them down afterwards before either one of them can manage a second shot. What do you think, Danny?”

  “It’s almost unfair,” Danny said.

  “Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way. Where did you serve?”

  “None of your fucking business,” the soldier grunted back.

  “Fair enough.”

  I’m going to have to kill this man, but I don’t want to.

  There’s only one way around that…

  “Here,” Will said, “I’ll make it easy for you.”

  He relaxed and came out of his shooting stance. He was careful not to move too fast, and he could almost feel the soldier’s finger tightening around the G36’s trigger. Will held the M4A1 in front of him by the barrel, the stock of the weapon pointed down at the floor.

  The three men tensed up, and the soldier looked confused for a split second, before regaining his composure. The teen looked almost relieved, though the older man didn’t know whether to shoot or throw down his own weapon.

  “My name’s Will. Seventy-fifth Ranger Regiment, Third Battalion out of Fort Benning. The man next to me is Danny. Also Seventy-fifth Ranger Regiment, Third Battalion out of Fort Benning. We’re at your mercy, soldier. What say you?”

  He sensed the soldier softening—just a bit—but not enou
gh to take his eye out from behind the G36’s rear iron sights. “What’s to stop me from putting one between your eyes now?”

  “Nothing,” Will said. “But you do that, and Danny here is going to shoot you. That’s not a threat, that’s just how this guy operates.”

  “God knows this guy next to me’s annoying,” Danny said. “I’ll concede that point to ya. And he’s a terrible tipper to boot. But you shoot him, and I’m obligated to shoot you back still.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be that way,” Will said. “Like I said before—this isn’t a zero sum game. One of us doesn’t have to lose for the other to win. Give us a chance to prove ourselves. That’s all we ask.”

  The soldier didn’t reply.

  Long seconds went by.

  Five seconds. Then ten.

  Then twenty…

  The soldier suddenly came out of his shooting stance and let the G36 fall to his side. “Ben,” he said. “Of the Seventy-fifth Ranger Regiment, Second Battalion out of Fort Lewis. You boys are a long way from Georgia.”

  Danny grinned and lowered his weapon. The kid and the bearded man did the same, both breathing huge sighs of relief.

  “You’re a long way from Washington,” Will said.

  “I guess we’re all a long way from where we started,” Ben said. “Tell your friends to come down.” He glanced at his watch. “Three more hours until sundown. The night isn’t our friend anymore, but you probably already know that.”

  *

  Everyone had bits and pieces of what happened on the night of The Purge, and once Will added in Ben’s, he learned that Starch wasn’t taken until the night after Houston fell. The ghouls had overwhelmed the big cities first, the major population clusters, before spreading out into the smaller, surrounding areas. Starch, like most small cities, felt rather than knew what was happening in places like Houston and Dallas. All communications were severed by the morning after The Purge, leaving the rural areas to wonder what was happening.

  They got their answer on the second night.

  As for the rest of the country, things were murky. Like Will, Ben hadn’t been able to make contact with anyone beyond his immediate group of survivors, and by the third night, it was clear they were on their own.

  The part of Will that was able to appreciate the insurgents’ tactics in Afghanistan, the guerrilla attacks and roadside bombs that took countless lives, admired the ghouls for what they had accomplished.

  The enemy had won the war in a single night.

  It was hard to fathom, but it was the reality, and the more he thought about it, the more sense it made.

  Once the cities fell, it was essentially over. States were run in big cities, not in small rural communities. Besides increasing the size of their army using the cities’ population, the ghouls also stripped the smaller areas of resources and, probably most crucial of all, help.

  It was elegant and brilliant, and the logistics and size of the operation were mind-boggling.

  We never stood a chance…

  *

  Without guns pointing at him, Will was able to get a better look at the Door, the only entrance in and out of Harold Campbell’s facility. He quickly realized how wrong he had been about blowing it up. Besides the thick slab of concrete, there was a five-inch titanium steel plate at the bottom. It was those heavy plates that needed the powerful gears to open and close them. Even if they had blown up the concrete block on top, the C4s wouldn’t have made a dent in the titanium underneath.

  Ben, like Will and Danny, was an enlisted man who joined the Rangers out of Fort Lewis in Washington state. He served in Iraq, then did a couple of tours in Afghanistan when the war moved over there following Saddam Hussein’s fall from grace. He left the Army as a sergeant, forced out by a bad knee, the gift of roadside bomb shrapnel that made him walk with a noticeable limp. He wore a knee brace hidden underneath cargo khakis, but there was nothing wrong with his hands or his aim. If bullets had been fired in that hallway, Will was sure either he or Danny would be dead.

  “So the C4s wouldn’t have taken the Door out?” he asked.

  “Probably not,” Ben said.

  “So why’d you open the Door?” Danny asked.

  “I couldn’t take the chance,” Ben said. “Who the hell knows what you two morons would have tried blowing up next if I didn’t open it. Besides, I figured what the hell, you had three women and a kid with you, and they didn’t look like they were being dragged around against their will.”

  “So why did you come around the corner full-bore?” Will asked.

  “We didn’t. At least, that wasn’t the plan. I told those two morons to follow my lead, but by the time we were around the corner and they got a look at you two, they decided to take aim, and it was all over. Rest assured, I’m never giving guns to them again.”

  “We almost killed you.”

  Ben sighed. “Trust me, I know.”

  They were inside the Control Room, a four-by-seven-meter room accessible by a stainless steel door, like all the important rooms in the Operations area of the facility. It had a row of small monitors along one entire wall that looked out at the circle clearing on the surface above them. There were four cameras on each side of the four-sided structure, capturing every inch of clearing from top to bottom, including the trees beyond. They could also zoom in and out by manipulating a toggle stick on the control board. There was sound, but the volume was down.

  A big LED clock kept time on the wall above the monitors.

  Rick, perched on a swivel chair in front of the control board, was responsible for monitoring the cameras. He was sixteen, not seventeen as Will had guessed in the hallway earlier. When it had looked as if there wasn’t going to be any shooting, Rick had started laughing, then leaned against the wall and put his hands in his face and started hyperventilating.

  Will was glad he didn’t have to shoot the kid. He would have felt bad about it.

  “We saw tracks,” Will said. “All around the clearing when we arrived.”

  “Yeah, they come here at night,” Ben said. “Don’t stay long, though. Once they see that the Door is still in place, they disappear. But every night they show up, like clockwork.”

  “From where?”

  “We’re pretty sure they’re hiding in the woods. God knows where. We’ve never found the stones to go in there looking for them.”

  “Probably a smart idea.”

  “There’s smart and there’s good luck trying to find volunteers to go with you. Even in the daytime, it’s dark as hell in those woods.”

  “No kidding,” Rick said. “You’d never get me in there.”

  Will told Ben about their encounter at the Cleveland Savings and Loan Bank just down the 59 Highway.

  Ben listened intently, then nodded. “Makes sense. It would explain how they could do all of this in one night. If they had a command and control structure in place from the very beginning…”

  “Makes you feel optimistic about your chances, doesn’t it?” Danny chuckled.

  “Out there? Not so much. Down here? I’d give you even odds.”

  “Thank God for Harold Campbell,” Rick said. “I remember when he first came here, with work crews coming and going at all hours of the night, for years. Most people in town loved it, though. He brought a lot of business with him.”

  “He probably greased plenty of city officials, too,” Ben said.

  “Goes without saying,” Will said. “How long did it take him to finish this facility?”

  “Four years,” Rick said. “People weren’t so happy after that. Business dried up real fast after his workers left.”

  Ben glanced over at Will and Danny. “You guys look like shit. We got hot showers in the Quarters and plenty of rooms to pick from, feel free to grab whatever meets your fancy. There’re only twenty-four of us down here and this place was built for 100, but you probably already know that.”

  “I skimmed a floor plan or two when I was here,” Will said.

 
“You actually helped build this place?” Rick asked.

  “I poured some concrete and put in some electrical wiring, that’s all. Most of the real hard work happened after I left.”

  “Is it everything you hoped for?”

  “It’s actually a lot bigger than I had envisioned. A hell of a lot bigger, actually.”

  *

  The facility was thick slabs of concrete from top to bottom, with a distinctive half-circle layout. It was designed to complement the circular nature of the surface above, or at least, half of it. The Control Room was located on the right side of the complex, designated Operations, with the living quarters on the left, designated Quarters. Using the Entrance Hallway in the center as a marker, Will sectioned off the two distinctive sides—east and west, with the Entrance Hallway exactly in the center, leading to the stairs that led up to the Door.

  There were maps of the facility, with a helpful You Are Here indicator, along the walls every twenty-five meters. Not that he needed them. Once he created a layout of the facility’s half-circle in his head, it was easy to navigate the place. Everything was slotted where it should be—sleeping areas, Cafeteria, and Gym in Quarters, with the Control Room and other work areas in Operations.

  The place was designed with military efficiency, something he knew Harold Campbell prided himself on, even though, according to Tom Lerner, the man never actually served. But that was alright. Will knew from experience that some of the most ardent supporters of the military style had never sniffed the barracks of boot camp.

  The soft rumbling of the facility’s power source was audible everywhere he went. It vibrated through every inch of the facility, and he heard it when he first stepped down through the Door, though he didn’t know what it was at the time. It wasn’t a particularly loud sound, and after a while he stopped noticing it.

  Unlike Operations, laid out to accommodate the big rooms like the Cafeteria, Turbine Room, and Green Room, the Quarters section looked like a maze, with hallways that turned left and right and back again. The rooms were evenly spaced out along three major hallways, with communal bathrooms at the end of each one.