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

by Sam Sisavath

  Will looked over at Danny. “Ready?”

  Danny grunted. “No.”

  “Good.”

  Will picked up the shotgun and took two quick steps toward the open door and fired. The buckshot ripped the faces off the two closest ghouls and they stumbled back into the others behind them. Even before the rest of the creatures had a chance to respond, Will fired again and kept firing until he had emptied the entire weapon. Each blast shoved the creatures back little by little. It wasn’t much, but it was just enough.

  As soon as Will fired his last shot, he stepped aside as Danny lunged forward and grabbed the door by the lever. The closest ghoul started forward, but before it could get close, Danny slammed the door shut and held on. Almost immediately, ghouls crashed into the door on the other side, banging relentlessly against the steel. The lever moved under Danny’s grip, but he held on while Will grabbed the key, turned it, and heard the deadbolt latching into place.

  They both stepped back and listened to the ghouls continue to rain blows against the door.

  Danny sucked in a big breath. “Let’s not do that again. Ever.”

  “It’s all in the wrists,” Will said, pocketing the key.

  “That’s what she said,” Danny grinned.

  It took them the rest of the morning to put up a concrete wall directly over the steel door, covering up the entire front of the shack just to be safe. By the time they were done, they were covered in flakes of concrete and rivers of sweat. Will didn’t know what smelled worse—the state he was in this morning, or the way he had been last night while he was running with ghoul flesh and blood stuck to his face.

  At ten minutes past noon, they tossed the trowels to the ground and gave the shack a long look.

  “You think it’ll hold?” Danny asked.

  “They’d need a tank to get through that,” Will said.

  “Need I remind you about that unfortunate incident with a car?”

  “I doubt that tunnel’s big enough for a car.”

  They paused for a moment.

  “Has to be a tunnel down there, right?” Danny said.

  “Has to be,” Will said.

  “Which means it comes out on the other side, on land.”

  “Sounds logical.”

  “We should find out where that is and close it up like a virgin’s legs.”

  “We should, yeah. But not yet. This should hold for a while.”

  “You got a hot date I don’t know about?”

  Will was about to answer when his radio, sitting on one of the unused concrete blocks, squawked and they heard Gaby’s voice: “Will, Danny, I see movement on land.”

  Will snatched up the radio. “Where?”

  “At the marina.”

  “Cars?”

  “Trucks. More than one.”

  “Stay with them.”

  “Will do.”

  They picked up their shotguns and gun belts and began jogging back toward the hotel.

  “And here I thought it was going to be a quiet morning,” Danny said.

  *

  The door to the Tower was gone, shattered from last night’s assault. They hadn’t bothered to fix it yet, so Will and Danny ran through it and up the spiral staircase to the second floor, then kept going all the way up to the third floor.

  Gaby was at the south window, peering through binoculars. “Two trucks.”

  “Marina?” Will asked.

  “No. They drove past it and went straight to the house.”

  Will walked to the window and picked up a second pair of binoculars dangling from a hook on the wall. He peered through them at the house and spotted two new trucks parked in the front yard, like toys left out in the sun.

  He lowered the binoculars and glanced down at his watch: 12:36 p.m.

  Danny was peering through Gaby’s binoculars. “More of us, or more like Karen?”

  Will looked over at the computer station behind them. Josh had put it back together earlier, but it looked turned off. “Is that thing still broadcasting?”

  “No,” Gaby said. “Josh said you told him not to turn it back on yet.”

  “Maybe Karen’s in that house,” Danny said. “If we’re lucky, we should start hearing gunshots any time now.” He put down his binoculars and waited silently. Then, after about ten seconds, “Or not.”

  “You’re assuming she made it off the island,” Gaby said.

  “Of course she did,” Danny said.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “She’s a bitch. They don’t die that easily.”

  Lara climbed up the stairs behind them. “I heard more survivors showed up?”

  “Maybe,” Will said.

  She walked over and he handed her his binoculars. She peered through them for a moment. “What could they be, then?”

  “That’s the question,” Will said.

  “More collaborators?” Danny said.

  “There’s always that.”

  “God, how many of them are out there?” Lara said. She sounded exasperated.

  “Probably as many as the ghouls need,” Will said.

  He had once tried to imagine how many blood farms were out there just to feed the millions (billions) of ghouls roaming the planet at the moment, but he had given up after the number became too incomprehensible. It was something he didn’t want to waste too much of his time thinking about. The truth was, it didn’t matter, because it didn’t factor into keeping everyone alive right now.

  Will looked over at Danny. “Grab the ACOG. You’ve got sentry duty.”

  “You sure you don’t need me out there?” Danny asked.

  “I’ll take Josh. Where is Josh, anyway?”

  “He went to the hotel to get us something to eat,” Gaby said. She looked over at them, and added, “Can I stay here in the Tower with Danny? I want him to teach me how to shoot.”

  “You noticed that she didn’t ask you?” Danny grinned at Will. “That’s because she recognizes skill when she sees it.”

  “I just thought because Will was leaving,” Gaby said.

  “Ouch,” Danny said.

  *

  He walked back to the beach with Josh and Lara in tow, their shoes clacking against the cobblestone pathway. Will had washed off the grime from this morning’s labor and put on his urban assault vest and comm gear. He carried his M4A1 and was thankful there was plenty of 5.56x45mm ammo in the basement underneath the Tower, enough to feed his and Danny’s rifles for weeks to come. Finding ammo at the end of the world was always the easy part; turning it into silver was the challenge. It was also the priority.

  “I’m not sure you should be leaving us right now,” Lara said. “At least take Danny with you.”

  “I need Danny’s rifle in the Tower,” Will said.

  “Then wait for tomorrow. The marina will still be there in twenty-four hours.”

  “We need silver, Lara. Everything we need to make that happen is back in the marina.”

  Lara wasn’t convinced. Neither was Josh, who walked quietly next to them. Will imagined the kid must feel caught up in a parental spat. He had given Josh a stripped-down version of their urban assault vest and hadn’t realized how awkward the kid looked until he had strapped it on. Besides his gun belt, Josh carried the Remington over his shoulder. Will didn’t expect the kid to use the shotgun. Fact was, if Josh started shooting at all, they were already in deep trouble.

  “You already sealed the power station,” Lara said. “They’re not getting back on the island, so we don’t need silver yet.”

  “We don’t know what other kind of access they have, and I don’t want to take the chance.”

  “Sarah doesn’t think there are any other ways onto the island.”

  “Sarah didn’t know about the power station, either.” He glanced down at his watch: 2:10 p.m. “Josh is coming with me, Lara. We’ll be fine.”

  “Be serious, Will,” Lara said, exasperated. Then she quickly glanced over at Josh. “No offense.”

&nbs
p; “Hey, I agree with you,” Josh said. “I’ll let you guys hash it out.”

  He walked on ahead, leaving them on the beach.

  “That wasn’t very nice,” Will smiled at her. “Now you’ve hurt his feelings.”

  “Will, this isn’t the time to leave,” she said, undeterred.

  “It’s the only time. We’re stuck here on this island. We need something to defend ourselves with. We need silver.”

  “Okay, let me rephrase that. After last night, I don’t want you to leave.”

  He brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “I’m not doing this because I want to. I’m doing this because I have to. You know that.”

  “I hate you,” she said, and pulled him to her and kissed him deeply.

  Will slipped his arms around her and held her against him, lingering against her lips. She tasted warm, like the sun. Kissing her was always like coming home.

  After a while, he had to pull free. “I have to go.”

  “Then go,” she said. “And come back. Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  “Do you mean it?”

  He looked deeply into her blue eyes. “Nothing in this world can keep me from you. Face it, you’re stuck with me, lady.”

  She smiled, then leaned in close and whispered, “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” he whispered back.

  He left her on the beach and joined Josh, who was on one of the piers, staring off at the water. The kid looked scared even from a distance.

  “That was sweet,” Danny said through the earbud in Will’s right ear. “Make that goodbye a little bit longer and I was ready to call the Guinness Book of World Records. That, or barf into my binoculars. Either/or.”

  “You can see me from the Tower?” Will asked.

  “The ACOG’s got four-by-thirty-two magnification. I can see the mole on the back of your neck from here. Want me to shoot it off?”

  “Maybe later.”

  The Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight—or ACOG—mounted on Danny’s M4A1 was a rifle scope that made the red dot sights they had been using up till now look like kids’ toys. It could shoot targets at a much longer range and with more accuracy, with an optimal distance of 800 meters. At over $1,500 apiece—if you could get one for cheap—the ACOG was a luxury.

  Will heard Gaby’s voice in his earbud, cutting in on Danny: “Don’t listen to him, Will. That was very sweet.”

  “Kids these days,” Danny said.

  When Will reached him, Josh tossed him a key attached to a round fishing float. “You know how to drive a boat, right?”

  “Just like driving a car.”

  There were five boats still tied along the three piers, but they could only find keys to one of them in the boat shack. Will made a mental note to look for the rest of the keys when they had time.

  “What if they’re friendlies?” Josh asked. “The people at the house. Why do we have to go around them?”

  “We can’t take the chance. Not now. Not after last night.”

  “And everything we need is stored in the garage at the marina?”

  “Should be.”

  “Should be?” Josh frowned. “What if it’s gone when we get there? What if the people at the house raided the garage and took it?”

  “They didn’t.”

  “But how can you be sure?”

  “Because it’s not valuable to anyone but us.”

  The boat was a slightly beat-up Carver that didn’t look like much, but it was in one piece and it ran. It had a one-person seat in the middle and an outboard motor at the back that had worked reasonably well when Will had tried it earlier. They were fortunate Debra kept all the boats in good working shape, with plenty of oil to mix and gasoline stored in the boat shack, along with batteries that were being trickle-charged using the solar panels.

  “Get in,” Will said.

  Josh climbed gingerly into the docked boat, stumbling a bit as the craft shifted in the water under him.

  “Relax,” Will said.

  Josh gave him a pursed smile as if to say, “I would if I could,” and continued fumbling his way to the seat in the center.

  Will untied the anchor rope and tossed it into the boat, then climbed in. He set up the small trolling motor in the back, connecting it to a reserve battery. The trolling motor looked like a long, skinny paddle with propellers at one end and a small hand-held motor on the other. It was battery-powered, which meant it was slower than the main outboard motor. But it was also quiet, especially when the propellers were under water. The purpose of a trolling motor wasn’t to go fast, it was simply to go while making as few waves and as little noise as possible.

  Will put his rifle on the floor and sat down on the bench at the back. He flicked the switch and the trolling motor powered up with a slow whine. When Will dipped the propellers into the water, the whine became a quiet hum that vibrated through the thin fiberglass of the boat. They heard and felt it because they were connected to it.

  Will pressed his radio’s PTT. “Can you hear us?”

  “Not a peep,” Danny said through his earbud.

  “All right, we’re heading out.”

  “Vaya con dios. And tell Josh to relax. I can see the kid through the ACOG, and he looks like he’s about to shit a brick. Or a dozen.”

  Will looked over at Lara, watching him from the beach. She hadn’t moved from the spot where he had left her a few minutes ago. She waved tentatively, and he waved back.

  “I’ll see you when I see you,” Will said. “Watch Lara for me.”

  “Okay, but Carly’s already a handful. I’m not sure I can add another hot babe to my harem. But I’ll give it a shot. What are friends for?”

  Will maneuvered the Carver from the pier, then turned completely around and aimed it west, away from the marina and the house.

  They hadn’t gone very far before Josh glanced back at him. “Is this the fastest this thing can go?”

  “It’s a trolling motor, Josh. It’s not meant to go fast. It’s meant to go quietly.”

  “Yeah, but this is it?”

  “This is it. What’s on your mind?”

  He hesitated, then said, “It seems awfully slow, that’s all.”

  “You got somewhere else to be?”

  “Nah, not really,” Josh said, and turned back around.

  Will’s earbud clicked and he heard Danny’s voice again: “Hey, old-timer, you left your turn signal blinking.”

  Will smiled.

  He looked at the wide-open lake in front of him and for a moment allowed himself to enjoy the picturesque surroundings. There was a slight breeze, but not enough to rock the Carver. Pelicans flew overhead. A big striped fish showed itself a few meters to his right, only to dive back into the water a second later. If Will closed his eyes, he could almost believe there was absolutely nothing wrong with the world.

  *

  After a while, Will decided they had gone out far enough and began angling the Carver back toward land. He could see Route 27 in the distance, flat and empty. The inlet connecting the lake to the marina was also visible.

  “I didn’t think we would ever turn back around,” Josh said.

  “You play a lot of videogames, Josh?”

  “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  “Just a lucky guess.”

  They traveled for another long stretch, the trolling motor doing its job, barely creating any ripples in their wake. Will eyed the inlet entrance in the distance, though that wasn’t his destination. The inlet was too close to the house, easily visible, especially from the house’s second floor. He would have preferred to do the work under the cover of night, the way he was trained, but darkness had ceased to be his friend months ago.

  Adapt or perish.

  Will heard them before he saw the sun glinting off their roofs. They were moving fast down Route 27, which ran parallel to the shoreline.

  He reached back and flicked off the trolling motor and said, “Down, Josh.”

 
; Josh looked back, confused. Will lowered himself to the bottom of the boat, making himself small. Josh got the hint and almost leaped to the floor of the Carver as the trucks flashed by on the road.

  Will counted one, two…three.

  They were moving fast. Too fast.

  Fifty miles per hour. At least.

  He took it as a good sign when none of the vehicles slowed down, because that would have meant they had spotted the boat adrift in the lake to their left. All three vehicles eventually slowed down before turning into the yard of the two-story house.

  Will heard his right ear click, and Danny said, “You see that?”

  “Yeah,” Will said.

  “I counted three from a distance.”

  “Three. All trucks.”

  “Did you see how many per?”

  “No, too far.”

  “Where are you now? I can’t see you through the binoculars.”

  “Southwest from your position. About 1,500 meters from the mouth of the inlet, 500 meters from the shoreline.”

  After a moment, Danny said, “Ah, there you are. A tiny, unremarkable speck. Is Josh still there? I can’t tell if that’s another person in the boat with you or a pelican.”

  Will smiled. “He’s here.”

  Josh, who had picked himself back up from the floor of the boat, glanced back anxiously. “Is something wrong?”

  “Relax,” Will said. “We’re almost there. No one’s seen us yet.”

  “Yet,” Josh said, flashing Will a nervous smile.

  “Stay low, just in case.”

  Josh got into an uncomfortable-looking crouch next to the seat. Will wanted to tell him to relax again, but that probably wasn’t going to help. It was liable to just wind the kid up even more.

  Will turned the trolling motor back on and eased the Carver forward. He angled the boat southeast, making a beeline for the shore. The ridgelines of the lake were raised high enough that if he could get the boat there without being seen, they could then travel south, closer to the marina, without being spotted the rest of the way.

  Eventually, as Will turned the Carver to run parallel to the raised shoreline, he heard the unmistakable sound of outboard motors roaring to life from the house. Not one, but two. Will remembered seeing a boathouse across the inlet and two boats inside when they had arrived at the marina yesterday.