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

by Sam Sisavath

  “I guess not everyone has a radio,” Marcus said. “Or listens to the old FEMA frequency. I think more will show up in time.”

  A large, nondescript concrete building, aesthetically incomplete and the size of a four-door garage—and just as squat—sat at the end of the piers, the four windows facing them propped open. Will glimpsed boat supplies, machinery, and shelves with cartons of gasoline, oil, and thick, three-strand twisted ropes inside. The shape and construction of the boat shack reminded him of Harold Campbell’s facility.

  They finally reached the end of the pier, where Vera and Elise instantly broke off from the group and hopped onto the beach and began racing around, laughing and kicking gobs of sand around them. The entire group found themselves stopping as one and staring after the girls, and for a moment, no one said a word.

  Will exchanged a look with Lara. She gave him the kind of smile he hadn’t seen in a long time—happy and utterly content. She reached over and took his hand and squeezed. He smiled back at her.

  “Haven’t heard that in a while,” Marcus said.

  “There are no children on the island?” Lara asked.

  “Two, but they’re not exactly the outdoorsy type.”

  “We’re definitely coming back here and going for a swim later,” Carly said with a big grin.

  “Oh hell yeah,” Gaby laughed.

  “It’s not bad,” Marcus said. “But you’ll really love the hotel.”

  “Girls!” Lara called.

  Elise and Vera reluctantly ran back, but not before grabbing handfuls of sand and flinging them into the air and running through them. They were still picking sand out of each other’s hair as the group continued along a man-made cobblestone pathway connecting the end of the piers with the boat shack and leading across the beach. The pathway was about five meters wide, the same width as the piers. It was big enough for vehicles and a gaggle of civilians to come and go without getting sand in their shoes.

  “You don’t have any guards?” Will asked.

  “Don’t need any,” Marcus said. “Why? You plan on giving us trouble?”

  Will smiled back, though he could imagine his smile wasn’t nearly as winning as Marcus’s.

  The cobblestone pathway led them off the beach and through the woods. Will instantly became alarmed by the darkness within the trees to both sides of him and had to force himself to temper his instincts. Instead, he listened to birds chirping, the rustling of animals scurrying around branches and foliage. It was quiet, almost peaceful, and for a moment he was able to let himself go, become lost in the natural beauty of his surroundings. The only intrusions were the loud clack-clacks of their shoes on the hard stones.

  He noticed black lampposts positioned every two meters along the pathway. There had been similar ones posted along the piers and beach. Each lamppost housed a lightbulb inside a glass container at the top.

  “Solar-powered lampposts?” Will asked.

  “Good guess,” Marcus said. “LED lights. You can’t beat it.”

  “We carry portable LED lights with us.”

  “Then you know how bright they can be. Wait til sundown. This island will be lit up like a Christmas tree, and none of it costs anything except the sun rays in the day.”

  “That’s efficient.”

  “There are lampposts like this all around the island,” Marcus added. “They store power by day, light up at night. We never have to worry about them as long as the power cells have the sun to draw from. So basically, it’s all good unless the sun blows up, which, hopefully, won’t be for a while yet.”

  The leisurely welcoming walk through Mother Nature lasted for about fifty meters before they emerged onto the hotel grounds. It was quite a sight, even (as Marcus had put it) in its “finished-ish” state.

  The resort hotel and its surrounding area were designed to take up nearly two football fields’ worth of space. He imagined the resort would have looked pretty spectacular when completed, but at the moment he saw a pair of unfinished swimming pools out front, each shaped into a giant peach and separated by the cobblestone pathway. On an island surrounded by water, swimming pools were the type of thing only rich people could come up with.

  Likewise with the ornate water fountains scattered around the yard, in the shape of various fishes—catfish, bass, and what looked like bigmouth buffalo. The ceramic sea life was dried and cracked, the fountains devoid of water, the mouths homes to birds and their nests. Someone had attempted to turn a big section of the front yard into a garden before giving up.

  Will expected to see a thick jungle where the yard used to be, but instead he smelled freshly cut grass. “You guys mow the lawn?”

  “Tom and Jake take turns every other week,” Marcus said.

  “Where do you get the gas?”

  “There was a lot stored in the supply shacks, and we make supply runs on land every few weeks or so, whenever we run low on something. Things are spread out around here, but we can usually get what we need in less than a day’s drive.”

  “Using the vehicles in the marina?”

  “We have keys for every one of them,” Marcus said.

  “Aren’t you afraid someone will steal them?”

  “Not a chance. We stripped the batteries and there’s barely any gas in the tanks. We bring the keys, including the batteries and gas, when we need to use them. No one would bother stealing those cars. Too much hassle.”

  The cobblestone pathway serpentined its way from the beach, through the trees, and all the way to the hotel’s large twin front doors sitting on a raised patio. Before it reached the doors, it branched off in a half-dozen separate directions around the hotel grounds, circling the water fountains, swimming pools, and building foundations laid out but never built upon. A small army of palm trees stood at attention around the hotel to give the resort a faux tropical theme.

  The hotel wasn’t even close to being done, with much of the exterior aesthetics still missing. In its current state, the huge, sprawling building looked almost generic, and its second floor was missing. Will saw work equipment on the rooftop and wondered what else was up there that they could use. The developers had managed to erect a sign, held in place by scaffolding and metal mounts, over the front doors of the hotel. It read, “Kilbrew Hotel and Resorts” in big white letters.

  The Tower loomed in the background and slightly to the right, near the northeast cliff of the island. The building was entirely white, without the colored stripes or design patterns usually used to distinguish lighthouses. He guessed the developers had never gotten around to painting the conical structure. Closer now, he could see four windows from his limited angle, two on the second and two more on the third floor. With the four other windows he couldn’t see, the Tower gave its inhabitants a maximum 360 view of the surrounding lake and island.

  Using the Tower’s distance from them, and adding in the walk from the beach, Will pegged the island’s width at under a quarter of a kilometer, or 250 meters, give or take. The island was definitely longer than it was wide, which made the Tower’s view all the more important.

  A sniper’s dream.

  “The radio that’s broadcasting the message,” Lara said. “You said it’s coming from the Tower?”

  “That’s right,” Marcus said. “There’s a computer set up on the third floor.”

  “Who’s up there now?” Will asked.

  “Tom’s usually up there,” Marcus said. “He comes and goes, but that’s his usual haunt.”

  “How much power is needed to keep the broadcast going twenty-four-seven?”

  “Surprisingly, not a lot. We monitored the heck out of it the first week, but it’s incredibly efficient. This entire island is. I think that was the whole point.”

  They approached the raised patio.

  “But never mind all that,” Marcus said. “Let’s get you folks out of the sun. I’m sure you’re sick and tired of it by now.”

  “Hallelujah,” Gaby said.

  “The others are all w
aiting in the hotel. You can’t blame them, it’s probably 105 degrees out here.” He wiped a bead of sweat on his forehead for effect. “Welcome to Louisiana in the summer, folks.”

  “It’s got nothing on Texas,” Lara said.

  “Are we comparing heat indexes for state pride now?” Will smiled over at her.

  She smiled back. “Texas proud, baby.”

  They walked up a half-dozen marble steps, covered slightly in dust and dirt and bird excrement, to the two big doors of the hotel. The patio was constructed of the same shiny black marble and surrounded by a meter-tall wooden railing. A pair of solar-powered LED floodlights hung above them.

  A woman in her late thirties stood at the top of the steps waiting to greet them. For a moment, she reminded him a bit of Kate. She was tall and attractive, with dark hair and piercing brown eyes, and something about the way she stood told him she used to be someone important before The Purge and she was reluctant to give that up.

  Marcus introduced the woman, saying, “This is Karen, our fearless leader. She’s the reason we’re all here in the first place.”

  “Welcome to Song Island,” Karen smiled. “We’re glad to finally get some new faces around here. If you need anything, just let me know. Anything at all.”

  Politician, Will thought right away.

  “I could use a bath,” Carly said.

  “We have that, too.”

  “What is that humming in the background?” Lara asked.

  “That,” Karen said, “is air conditioning.”

  Marcus grabbed one of the doors and pulled it open, and Will was instantly swamped with cold air seeking escape from the building. He was pretty sure Lara involuntarily sighed with pleasure next to him.

  *

  TWO OF THE people calling Song Island home were in the lobby, including a man named Tom, that Marcus had mentioned earlier. Tom was wearing khaki shorts and a gun belt, making him the first person Will had seen on the island who carried a weapon out in the open.

  Tom was eating an apple and reading a book while sitting in an armchair behind the reception desk. He came over and shook their hands. The man had a strong grip, which fit his huge six-two frame. Will pegged Tom at 250, most of that muscle, which was quite a feat given the quality of food available these days.

  Will thought right away, Ex-cop.

  “Mi casa es su casa,” Tom said. “Or whatever the Spanish word for island is.”

  “Isla,” Lara said.

  “Me isla es su isla, then,” he smiled. It wasn’t quite as winning a smile as Marcus’s, of course.

  The other person they met was a young kid playing some kind of space game on a fifty-inch LED TV in one corner of the lobby. He looked all of twelve. Marcus introduced him as Kyle, and the kid, hearing his name, glanced over and gave them a cursory look, though Will noticed he gave Gaby a little bit more time than the rest of them.

  Kyle raised a lazy hand and said, “Hey.”

  “What is that, an Xbox?” Josh asked.

  “Yeah,” Kyle said. “You play?”

  “A little.”

  “I got Halo and Call of Duty and bunch of other games here.”

  “Cool.”

  And just like that, Kyle looked back at his game, the rest of the lobby instantly forgotten. He was moving some kind of soldier through a futuristic battlefield.

  Marcus chuckled. “Kid plays that thing day and night. I’d say he’s doing it to escape reality, but frankly, his mom says he was like that before this mess.”

  “Kyle is Debra’s kid,” Karen explained. “You can’t blame the boy. Everyone has to cope in their own way.”

  “There’s enough electricity from the solar panels to waste on games?” Will asked.

  “We have more than we need here,” Karen said proudly. “Marcus, why don’t you show them to the rooms. I have a feeling the ladies are dying to see them.”

  “Follow me,” Marcus said.

  He led them past Tom, who had gone back to the reception desk and his book. Will glanced at the cover as they passed, catching the name of the author, Ludlum something, but not the title. Tom looked up and caught his eye, and they exchanged a brief, perfunctory nod.

  Marcus continued into a hallway, leaving the lobby behind. “Basically, pick whichever room you want—there are plenty to go around. Obviously you should try to stick to the completed sections of the hotel. There’re a lot of nails and construction leftovers scattered throughout the unfinished portions. So if you’re feeling adventurous and end up stepping on a rusted nail, we might have to cut off a limb, and no one wants that.”

  The hallway curved slightly to the right the farther they went. Most of the flooring was completed with more of the shiny black marble tiles, but the walls were plain white, and there was still uncovered Sheetrock lined with dried caulk in certain sections, and heavy doses of spackling over drywall. Some light fixtures above them didn’t have covers or lightbulbs, and wires dangled from drilled holes. And these, he reminded himself, were the finished sections of the hotel.

  Marcus told them about the hotel’s construction as they went.

  The hotel’s floor plan consisted of a long hallway marked “Hallway A” (the one they were in now), with rooms to the left and right, the door numbers staring with A100 and counting upward. Hallway A was designed for fifty rooms, twenty-five on each side, and it was the only completed section of the entire building. There was supposed to be a complementing hallway running parallel to their left (“Hallway B”), connected by a series of hallways and hotel event rooms, but the developers had never gotten around to laying foundations. It was now impossible to tell where the other planned half of the hotel was supposed to go, thanks to the overgrowth of weeds.

  As they moved through Hallway A, people began coming out of rooms to greet them. He wondered what they had been doing before now. Didn’t they already know newcomers were arriving on the island?

  A young woman named Sarah came out of her room first. She was in her late twenties and had a daughter, Jenny, who was blonde and the spitting image of her mother. Sarah was friendly, while her daughter shyly introduced herself to Elise and Vera. The two girls enthusiastically introduced themselves back, but that didn’t seem to win the girl over, and Jenny slowly wandered behind her mother before disappearing into their room without a word.

  “Don’t mind her, she’s a little shy,” Sarah said.

  Will thought her voice sounded familiar, and Lara picked up on it, too. “You’re the voice on the recorded message,” Lara said.

  “Guilty.”

  “You don’t know how often we listened to that recording on the way over here.”

  “Oh, God, I don’t know how to respond to that,” Sarah said, looking both pleased and a little embarrassed. “You guys should get settled in. Al and I are cooking up something good for tonight. I hope you like fish. That’s Al’s specialty.”

  “As long as it doesn’t come in a can,” Lara smiled.

  “Would fresh from the lake work?”

  “God, yes.”

  They continued up the hallway, where they met a man in his fifties—the Al that Sarah had mentioned. Al had a bit of a gut, and for some reason was trying to hide his bald spot with a comb-over. Will found that both odd and amusing.

  “Finally, new blood!” Al bellowed at the sight of them.

  Al’s belly shook a bit as he said it, from either too much food or too much beer, or maybe both. If it was the latter, Will wondered where Al was hiding the good stuff. In his room, maybe. He and Danny had lost their taste for beer over the last eight months. Beers were simply not meant to be drunk warm.

  “Just got here myself,” Al said. “You guys play poker?”

  “I only gamble with my life,” Danny said.

  Al laughed. “When you guys get settled, look me up. I can’t get anyone here to give me a decent game.”

  “We hear you’re a good cook,” Lara said.

  “Good is subjective,” Al said. “But since I’m t
he only cook on this island, I guess that makes me technically the only good cook.”

  Al chewed their ears off about fish and cooking for another five minutes until Marcus butted in and dragged them away.

  Farther up the hallway, they met a young man named Jake, who came out of his room to meet them, along with his girlfriend Sienna. They were both in their early twenties, though Sienna, with her round, cherubic face, could have passed for a teenager. Both looked friendly enough.

  “You cut the grass,” Will said to Jake.

  The young man nodded. “Just the front grounds, mostly. We don’t mess with the back areas too much—no point since there’s nothing back there.”

  “Welcome to Song Island. You’ll love it here,” Sienna said.

  Carly sniffed Sienna. “I smell shampoo.”

  “The hotel stocked up on shampoo and soap before all of this happened,” Marcus said, “so there’s plenty to go around. There are stacks and stacks of the stuff in the storage closets, and some in your rooms, I’m sure.”

  “Oh, I think I’m going to love it here,” Carly said, smiling brightly at them.

  Marcus led them farther up the hallway. “Let’s get you guys settled in. I know you’re all worn out just getting here.”

  “How long ago did the others get here?” Lara asked.

  “Al got here just two weeks ago, and Jake and Sienna were the first people who actually made it here because of the broadcast. That was about three months ago.”

  Marcus finally stopped and turned around. “This is it. As far as we go. Feel free to choose any rooms you want. Most of them already have everything you’ll need—towels, blankets, et cetera—and everything else can be found in the supply closets that we passed earlier. Any questions?”

  “Just one,” Danny said, way in the back.

  “Yes, Danny?”

  “You got hot showers here? My BO is even getting on my nerves.”

  Carly sighed. “He’s not kidding.”

  “Thanks, babe.”

  “I got your back,” Carly smiled.

  *

  THERE WERE TWO nightstands, one on each side of the bed, and a big dresser across the room. Metal brackets jutted out of the wall where a flat-screen LED TV was supposed to go. A big oval mirror hung from the wall next to the bathroom.