The Gates of Byzantium (Purge of Babylon, Book 2)

by Sam Sisavath

  “Are we close?” Lara asked.

  “We’re almost there,” Will said. “Ruth Street becomes Route 27 and keeps going until we’re alongside Beaufont Lake. Sixty klicks, give or take.” He added quickly, “About forty miles.”

  She smiled. “Thanks.”

  “Sure.”

  “People actually live out here?” Gaby asked. “What do they do for fun?”

  “People can get used to a lot of things when there aren’t any other options,” Lara said. “Adapt or perish.”

  They were up to forty miles per hour now, traveling down a two-lane road with nothing but farmland and sun-bleached acres to one side—occasionally broken up with more dying, brown foliage—and a string of ancient-looking telephone poles on the other. She thought the poles made for a strangely poetic sight, stretching into what seemed like infinity in an almost perfect line.

  She looked up at the wide-open sky. “How are we for time?”

  “Three-fifteen,” Will said. “We’re doing good.”

  After a while, Route 27 curved slightly left before straightening back out again. They drove in silence for another thirty minutes, and Lara started to see bayous below them whenever they drove over a bridge.

  We’re getting closer…

  She saw a big body of water to their left, on Will’s side of the truck. Josh and Gaby saw it, too, and they moved anxiously toward the driver’s side to look out their window.

  Beaufont Lake was big and visible from Route 27, and it looked like it went on endlessly. The water had a nice blue tint to it, not the brown of the Texas lakes she was used to. Lara felt her heart quickening in her chest, the anticipation and exhilaration returning after lying dormant for so long.

  “Beaufont Lake,” Gaby said, almost as if she couldn’t quite believe it.

  They drove past a massive power station with huge, domed towers sparkling under the hot sun. Maybe a hydro power station, like the kind Harold Campbell built into his underground facility. It was right next to the lake, so that was a possibility. There were no signs of people, but the fencing and entrance gate looked intact. Lara wondered if there were people hiding in there. It was certainly big enough. She decided there probably weren’t. Sanctuary was only as good as the supplies you had, and she didn’t think anyone could survive with the supplies scattered around this mostly deserted area of the world.

  They kept going, and for a while they didn’t see anything of note again. That was, until a small town rose out of the nothingness. There was a sign for a marina on the other side of a bridge they were crossing, reading, “Jackson-Miller Marina” in faded letters next to a turn. Will drove across the bridge, and Lara saw boats in the marina.

  “We need boats, right?” Lara said.

  “We’re still too far from Song Island to launch here,” Will said. “We need to get closer.”

  “What if we don’t find another marina farther down?”

  “There has to be one. If not, we’ll come back.”

  Lara never caught a sign that introduced the small town they were driving through, and soon they were making a huge left turn before turning right a little bit later. They were going south again, still traveling on Route 27. The town disappeared behind them, and Jackson-Miller Marina along with it.

  They drove for another thirty minutes, passing marshlands and swamps on both sides of them. Nothingness became the order of the day once more. Trees became rare sights, shade from the harsh glare of the sun even rarer still. She wondered how long she would last out here, on the road without a car.

  Probably ten minutes…best-case scenario.

  After a while, the road started to curve right, and Will slowed down to twenty miles per hour.

  He picked up the radio from the dashboard. “Danny.”

  Danny answered from the other end: “What’s the word?”

  “We’re almost there. Slow down.”

  “Roger that.”

  Will put the radio back on the dashboard. “Start looking for a marina.”

  “Which side?” Lara asked.

  “It’ll be on my side. Look for buildings, warehouses, parked trucks. Any signs of civilization.”

  “I haven’t seen signs of civilization for the last hour, Will.”

  “There should be something here.”

  “What if—” She didn’t finish, because she saw the sun glinting off metal rooftops up ahead on Will’s side of the road. “Buildings,” she said, somehow managing to keep herself from shouting it out.

  “I see it,” Will nodded.

  There were two buildings—a big garage and what looked like a gazebo in the middle of nowhere. As they got closer, Lara saw a wooden sign pointing into an asphalt parking lot. She tried to read the sign, but it was so badly scarred by time that she could only make out the word “Marina.” There were numbers, which she guessed was a phone number, or possibly hours of operation.

  Will turned left into the parking lot.

  There were two white trucks parked next to the gazebo, and the garage was bigger up close, and longer. At least a four-car garage. There were a half-dozen vehicles, mostly trucks, parked near the shores in orderly fashion. She expected to see trailer hitches with boats in the back, but there weren’t any. She did see boat ramps to their right.

  Where are all the boats?

  They parked and Lara climbed out, stretching her legs, grateful to finally be moving again. The pain in her left shoulder had mostly disappeared overnight, and what remained had continued to fade during the long drive, thanks to a combination of rest, water, and painkillers. She could move the arm easily enough without the sling, though she still felt some throbbing every now and then and did her best to keep as much pressure off it as possible.

  Walking closer to the edge of the parking lot, she could see where the launches fed boats into a small, man-made inlet that continued south, connecting to the main body of Beaufont Lake. Directly across from the inlet, farther up the road, was the first livable spread she had seen for miles. It was a white, two-story house surrounded by hurricane fencing. A green boathouse stood out to its left, and she could just barely make out two boats hanging from the rafters. The house had a big, wide-open parking lot, though no garages; and farther back, a big gray, plain-looking building that was too long to be another house. Storage, she assumed.

  “I wouldn’t mind a place like that,” Gaby said, shielding her eyes from the sun as she looked across the inlet at the house.

  “I guess we know where we’re staying if Song Island doesn’t pan out,” Lara said. “Speaking of which… Where is it?”

  “Where’s what?”

  “Song Island.”

  “Oh. I guess it’d be out there…?” Gaby pointed toward the large expanse of calm water, blinking against the sun. “Shouldn’t it be out there somewhere? It is an island, right?”

  “Should be…”

  Gaby drifted back to where Josh was standing, gazing off into the distance, probably looking for the mythical Song Island, too.

  So where the hell is it?

  The suddenly very real possibility that they might have come all this way for nothing made her chest tighten a bit. It took the sight of Carly, walking toward her with a big grin on her face, to get Lara to push those downbeat thoughts away.

  “We made it,” Carly said. “I can’t believe we actually made it.”

  Lara smiled back at her. “Never doubted it.”

  “Never?”

  “Okay, maybe once or twice.”

  “I knew it.”

  Carly laughed and wrapped Lara up in a big hug, slipping her arms around Lara’s waist instead of over her arms. Lara laughed, too, because she knew exactly what Carly was feeling. The road from Harold Campbell’s facility had felt, at times, never ending, with one roadblock after another. Doubts had begun to creep into her thoughts even if she had refused to acknowledge them until now.

  Lara heard a fake clicking sound next to them and looked over at Danny, miming taking a picture
of them with his fingers. “This is going into the Rolodex for tonight.”

  “Way to ruin a great moment, babe,” Carly said.

  Lara saw Will nearby, peering through a pair of binoculars at something in the distance. She walked over to him, trying to see what he was looking at. The sun was in her eyes, and she couldn’t see much except calm, glistening water under an empty sky.

  “Do you see it?” she asked, unable to keep back the anxiousness in her voice.

  He lowered the binoculars and handed them over to her. “Have a look.”

  “Is it out there, Will? Song Island?”

  “Just look.”

  She took the binoculars from him, her hand shaking a bit. Will stood next to her as she held them up to her eyes and looked across the lake. “Where am I looking?” she asked, frustrated. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Here,” Will said. He stood behind her and guided her slightly to the left. “There. See it?”

  She saw it—a big structure rising out from the lake itself. It was tall and looked a bit like a pencil, getting smaller the higher it went, though it was barely discernible in the distance and was surrounded by water. There was something else, like a ring of children’s glitter sparkling under the sun, encircling the structure.

  “It’s a lighthouse,” Will said behind her. “Doesn’t look completely finished, but I’m pretty sure that’s a radio antenna sticking out of it. That’s where the FEMA broadcasts are coming from.”

  Lara realized, breathlessly, that the lighthouse wasn’t rising out of the water on its own. It was jutting up from a patch of land in the middle of the lake, previously obscured by the rippling heat against the surface of the water. Now that she was staring at it, the land seemed to sprout before her eyes, rising and rising until it presented itself to her in all its glory.

  She caught her breath, afraid it would disappear like a mirage if she lowered the binoculars or looked away for even a second.

  Song Island…

  CHAPTER 22

  BLAINE

  They appeared as soon as the sun abandoned the world for another day. They weren’t just on the rooftop of the Sortys department store, they were all around them. He couldn’t see them, so he didn’t know how many there actually were, but he could hear and feel them along the walls, the floor, and every inch of the building, and that told him everything he needed to know.

  Sandra lay on the couch in his arms, as quiet as he had ever seen her. With the painkillers still kicking around in his system, Blaine didn’t feel a whole lot of pain, but the drugs also kept him wide awake for most of the night, listening to the ghouls as they traveled back and forth, through, above, around, and, he swore, underneath him, too.

  He tried not to think about what was happening on the second floor of the mall. He tried not to picture those poor souls up there. Did his best to shut out the images of teeth marks along arms and legs and necks of prone victims, hanging somewhere between life and death.

  Did they know what was happening to them? Were they crying out right now, tormented by the fact that no one could hear them?

  His skin rippled with a sensation Blaine hadn’t felt in a long time. A combination of fear and shame and hopelessness.

  “Is it the pain?” Sandra asked.

  “No,” he whispered back.

  “Oh.”

  It stayed with him until he finally fell asleep around three in the morning. He closed his eyes, and when he woke up, the feeling was still with him, in his mouth, like a lingering bad meal regurgitated over and over.

  He also felt the renewed, unwanted sensation in his side. He quietly pulled his pill bottle from his pocket and shook two pills out, then popped them into his mouth.

  “Go easy on them,” Sandra said, lying against him, her eyes still closed.

  “Just two.”

  “How many do you have left?”

  “Not a lot.”

  “Go easy,” she said again.

  They heard footsteps approaching, and Sandra untangled herself from him and stood up just as the door opened and Mason came in. He was wearing his hazmat suit, but not the gas mask, looking absurd with his head sticking out of the shiny gray uniform. Maddie was behind him, but Lenny, who sometimes watched the door, wasn’t outside this morning. Blaine had learned last night that the yahoo with the country accent was Gerry. He wasn’t there, either.

  “Rise and shine,” Mason said. “Decision time. Are you with us or are you against us?”

  He smiled at them, but Blaine didn’t believe there was anything remotely heartfelt about the smile. Just to prove Blaine’s thoughts correct, Mason casually laid his right palm over the butt of his holstered Browning.

  Blaine looked past Mason at Maddie. The two of them were almost the same height and looked like teenagers playing at being soldiers. Maddie was clearly uncomfortable with what was happening, but she looked committed nevertheless. If not to Mason, then to survival, and that meant standing behind the man with the gun.

  Blaine wondered if he could get to Mason and end this, but the man was too far enough away. Even on his best days—and he was far from that at the moment—there was no way he could take that distance before Mason shot him dead.

  “I don’t think we have much of a choice,” Blaine said.

  “You speak for her, too?” Mason asked, eyes going to Sandra.

  “Yes,” Sandra said quietly.

  “Are you sure?” Mason smiled. “You don’t sound like you’re very sure.”

  He sounds like a fucking game show host. All of this is just fun and games to him.

  “Yes,” Sandra said again, louder, though not necessarily with any more conviction than the first time.

  “All right, then.” Mason clapped his hands. “First order of business is breakfast. Then we’ll get the two of you fitted for suits. You look like the kind of gal who could make the color gray work. You certainly got the tits and hips for it.”

  Sandra glanced over briefly at Blaine and frowned.

  He tried to smile reassuringly back at her.

  God, I hope this works…

  *

  It didn’t take much to convince Blaine that Mason didn’t really trust them. For one, the man wouldn’t give them their guns back. Or let them carry any kind of weapons at all. The only thing he issued them, other than their ugly gray hazmat suits and gas masks, were radios.

  “What about our guns?” Blaine asked.

  “You won’t need them,” Mason said. “You see anything, you hop on the radio and we come running.”

  “You get guns when you prove you deserve them,” Gerry added.

  Mason left them with the cowboy, who sat by himself at a table across the food court from them. Gerry ate greedily from a can of SPAM. Blaine wondered how long it would take before the cowboy accidentally stuffed too much of the canned meat into his mouth and choked on it.

  With my luck, never sounds about right.

  “When would that be?” Blaine asked instead.

  “When you deserve them,” Gerry said. “Which part of that don’t you understand? You want I should speak slower so you can habla?”

  Blaine grinned back at him. He wasn’t sure which part of Gerry he disliked more—his face or his country twang.

  “What exactly will we be doing?” Sandra asked Maddie, who was sitting at another table nearby.

  Sandra sat next to Blaine, both of them in their hazmat suits, the gas masks on the round metal table in front of them. The seat was uncomfortable and dug into Blaine’s ass even through the suit. He picked at the can of tuna with a flimsy plastic spork while Sandra ate a can of chicken. There was plenty of canned food to go around, Maddie told them, showing them boxes and boxes of the stuff in a storage room next to the Sortys employee lounge.

  “Guard duty, mostly,” Maddie said.

  “Without weapons?” Blaine asked.

  “Guard watch,” Maddie corrected herself. “You don’t need weapons for that.”

  The food court was
next to the non-working escalator they had previously taken up to the second floor, and Blaine could see the guy Maddie had been standing guard with yesterday still up there. His name was Bobby, and he had yet to take the gas mask off, so Blaine still didn’t know what he looked like underneath it.

  “It’s not that bad,” Maddie said. For a second, Blaine thought she was trying to convince herself more than them. “After a while, you get used to it. It’s boring work. When it’s your turn, you stand on the second floor and watch the sleepers. That’s what we call them.”

  “Food” is more like it.

  “What happens if one of them wakes up?” Sandra asked.

  “They don’t,” Maddie said.

  “But what happens if they do?”

  “They don’t,” Maddie repeated. “At least, none of them have woken up before in all the time I’ve been here.”

  “You don’t know what the ghouls did to them?” Blaine asked.

  “Not a clue,” she said. Then, “‘Ghouls’?”

  “That’s what they look like to me,” he lied. “Ghouls.”

  Maddie smiled a bit. “Yeah, you’re kind of right. They are ghoulish looking, aren’t they?”

  Everything about this is ghoulish.

  “What now?” Blaine asked.

  “I’ll show you the rest of the mall first,” Maddie said.

  “Bullshit,” Gerry said, his voice coming out of nowhere. For a moment Blaine had forgotten he was even there. “Why the fuck are you showing them where everything is?”

  Maddie flashed him an annoyed glance. “They already joined us, dickhead. What’s the point of hiding things from them now?”

  “Just because they say they’re ‘with us’ doesn’t mean they’re actually with us, you idiot.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Maddie spat back.

  Gerry shot up from his seat, so fast he almost knocked the can of SPAM from his hands. Blaine instinctively reached for his hip, for the gun that wasn’t there. Not that Maddie needed his help. She sprang up from the table and glared back at Gerry.