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

by Sam Sisavath

  But Josh didn’t say any of that out loud. The guy had given him an apple. Hell, he had even fished Josh out of the lake. That counted for something.

  “She’s got a real mouth on her,” Mason was saying. “But hey, politicians, right? They can talk and talk and talk.”

  “I guess.”

  Mason turned to go. “Anyway, you stay in here. I’ll go outside and ‘guard’—” he made air quotes with his fingers “—you.”

  “Thanks,” Josh said again. “For everything.”

  “Don’t mention it, kid. Hey, we’re all in the same boat, right? Just trying to survive another day.”

  Josh nodded. He couldn’t have put it better himself.

  *

  JOSH FINISHED OFF the apple but continued to spend his time at the window, peering out, careful not to be seen, as the men continued to get ready in the front yard. It didn’t take a genius to know what they were getting ready for. They were going to attack the island, except this time there were more men and more guns, and they weren’t going to be chased away by Danny shooting at them from the Tower.

  It was going to be a massacre. People would die. He just hoped Gaby wasn’t one of them.

  Every now and then, he saw Karen outside, sending one of the men here and there. They seemed to listen to her. Karen was tall and imposing, sure, but there were men out there who looked rough and dangerous. There were some big ones with no necks who filled out their camo pants and hunting vests like they were born to them. But they all obeyed Karen just the same. He wondered why.

  Josh had seen trucks arriving with boats. First just two, then three, then four. From his vantage point inside the kid’s room, he tracked them heading down the driveway and toward the boathouse at the back, where he lost sight of them.

  He glanced up at the sky. It was still bright, but it looked like the heat was letting up. He didn’t have his watch with him, and the clock on the wall had died a while back. But if he had to guess, it was probably evening. Six or seven o’clock. That meant darkness wasn’t too far away.

  So was that it, then? Was Karen’s big plan to attack the island at night? He supposed that was probably better than driving their boats right up to the beach in daylight. The last time they had tried that, Danny had shot them up. And he was just one man. Now Will was back there, and he had three more guns with him in Blaine, Maddie, and the mute guy, Bobby.

  Whatever Karen’s plans, Josh hoped Gaby stayed out of the way. He didn’t want to have done all this for nothing.

  Just thinking about what he had done made him feel physically sick. He wanted to heave it out, that troubling, agitating feeling deep inside him, but when he opened his mouth, only breath that still smelled like filthy lake water puffed out.

  I’m sorry, Carly. I’m sorry, Will. I’m sorry, Danny.

  I’m sorry, everyone…

  *

  HE WASN’T SURE how long he stood at the window. Eventually he got bored and hobbled around the room, heavily favoring his left leg. He kicked at a yellow toy car and it went skating across the room and under the bed. Josh eventually ended back at the car bed, sitting down and staring at a giant poster of Optimus Prime.

  That was when he noticed that the slits of sunlight coming into his room had started to taper off. He glanced toward the window and saw that it was darkening fast.

  He stood back up, alarmed, his natural instincts reacting to the coming darkness. He moved quickly back to the window and looked out, and he could tell the men outside were getting a little nervous, too. They began collecting their things, picking up their weapons, as if preparing for something. Their eyes darted around and their voices became muted whispers, if they talked at all. Most of them pretended they weren’t looking around. All of them were, though.

  Josh heard a generator start up. It was a low, rumbling noise at first, then got louder as tall spotlights strategically placed around the property began snapping to life. The men in the yard grimaced at the sudden brightness.

  He glimpsed the first one from the corner of his right eye. It came out of nowhere, sliding around the trucks, moving into one of the spotlights, then quickly out again. He thought the men were going to start shooting it. A man in a camo hunting cap actually started to lift his rifle a bit.

  Then there were two more—before two became a dozen—and before Josh knew it, the yard was filled with them.

  Hundreds.

  They came out of the grass beyond the road, gliding into the space around the house, swarming the men in the yard but ignoring them, as if the men didn’t exist, didn’t have the blood the ghouls so desperately desired. Even so, Josh could see the men watching, eyes darting, terror washing across their faces.

  The ghouls kept going, moving toward the edge of the lake, spreading out in a long jagged line. They looked across the water, craning their necks, leaning their bodies, all toward one object.

  Song Island.

  He could see the island’s lights in the distance. The solar-powered lampposts and floodlights had trickled on one by one. The easiest feature to pick up with the naked eye was the Tower in the east. There were four floodlights up there under the third-floor windows, and they lit up the tall structure like the beacon that was never completed.

  Josh knew, though he didn’t know how, that Gaby was in the Tower right that moment.

  I did this for you, Gaby. I hope you’ll understand…

  *

  HE MUST HAVE wandered back to the bed and dozed off, because when he opened his eyes again, he could tell it was much later in the night. He wasn’t sure how much later, but there was a thickness in the room, a heaviness in the air that hadn’t been there before.

  Josh yawned and climbed off the bed and gimped his way back to the window. His clothes had started to dry, but he could still feel his boxers clinging to his butt.

  He peered out the window. Most of the men loitering around the yard were gone. There were just five left, but they seemed busy with their vehicles. Seeing men outside at night, without a care in the world struck Josh as unnatural somehow. Didn’t they know there were creatures out there?

  But of course they knew. They were collaborators…just like him. And collaborators didn’t need to fear the night.

  He wondered if the others were on their way to Song Island. He tried to listen for the sounds of boat motors or gunfire, but the only thing he heard was the stillness in the room and the occasional clinking sound of the men outside tinkering with their vehicles. There was also the hum of the generators around them.

  Josh jumped when something appeared in front of him on the other side of the window. He took a couple of steps back as the creature pressed its pruned black face into the glass pane and seemed to sneer at him. Black eyes stared through the blinds, but there wasn’t the rabid hunger he usually saw in them.

  This one just looked…curious.

  Josh didn’t know whether to run out of the room or leap to the floor or race to hide beside the window. So he did nothing. The ghoul looked back at him with cold, detached eyes. Then it seemed to lose interest and moved on, leaving an impression of its deformed face on the glass.

  “Freaky, huh?” a voice said behind him.

  Josh looked over at Mason, leaning in the doorway, grinning at him over another apple.

  “You think you’re used to them, and then one of them goes and does something like that,” Mason said casually. “Then you remember they’re not really your friends after all. Don’t worry, we’re safe in here. Boss lady’s given them the order not to mess with the house.”

  “Karen?”

  “Not even close. Skin and bones. Blue eyes. That boss lady.”

  “Oh.”

  “You ever seen it before?”

  “No.”

  “You think those little fuckers are freaky? Wait ’til you meet the boss lady. Nothing about it feels right. The way it talks, the way it looks…” He shivered. “Creeps me out every time.”

  “What’s going on out there?” Josh as
ked, hoping to steer the conversation somewhere else, somewhere less likely to raise the hairs on the back of his neck.

  “Boys are getting ready to take back the island.” Mason walked over to the window and peered out. “Or at least, that’s the plan.”

  “You don’t think it’s going to work?”

  “I don’t give a shit if it works or not. I just care that those little bastards don’t come in here tonight.”

  Mason looked toward the part of the yard still covered in darkness, safe from the spotlights powered by the generator. It occurred to Josh that he was actually taller than Mason by almost two inches.

  “She’s out there, you know,” Mason said.

  “Who?”

  “You know. It.”

  The real boss lady.

  “How do you know?” Josh asked.

  “Because we’re not wearing hazmat suits. We have to wear those things when it’s not around, just to be safe. But when it’s nearby, it has full command of the little buggers. It’s some kind of psychic link, right out of the comic books. The link is stronger the closer it is to its soldiers.”

  “Soldiers?”

  “Foot soldiers. It’s a war, you know. A war between humanity and these undead fucks.”

  He hates them. He works for them, but he hates them.

  “When’s the attack?” Josh asked.

  “Around midnight, I think.”

  “Why not now?”

  Mason shrugged. “I didn’t bother to get all the details.”

  “Are you going, too?”

  Mason grinned, and they were so close this time that Mason’s missing front tooth looked like a big black stain in an otherwise white sea of pearls. “Nah. I got babysitting duty, remember? I gotta thank you for that.”

  “Sorry.”

  He chuckled. “For what? Keeping me from storming that beach and getting my nuts shot off? No, I mean it. Thanks, man.”

  Josh smiled awkwardly back at him. “You’re welcome, I guess.”

  “In fact,” Mason said, “I was going to—”

  He stopped in mid-sentence and went back to the window. He looked out for a moment, before pulling the blinds up, exposing the two of them to the yard and the men milling outside.

  “What is it?” Josh asked.

  “You see that?” Mason pointed up at the sky.

  Josh looked out, following Mason’s finger. He didn’t see anything at first, but then slowly it came into view.

  It was a bright light in the sky, getting bigger every second.

  Even the ghouls seemed to notice the quickly approaching light, and Josh saw stirring among the shadows. The men also stopped what they were doing and stared up at the sky.

  After all, it wasn’t like you saw that every day. At least, not since The Purge.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Josh asked, straining to see details against the black sky.

  “Holy shit,” Mason said. “That’s a helicopter, kid.”

  CHAPTER 36

  LARA

  THEY STARTED THE attack thirty minutes after midnight.

  Lara could hear them coming from a distance, even through the thick concrete walls of the Tower, where she was staying on the second floor standing watch over Carly and the girls. It was the sound of their boat motors. They were loud and screeching, announcing their arrival well in advance. As Will had predicted, they were making a beeline for the beach.

  It’s a beach landing. Like something out of World War II.

  How did we come to this?

  At first, Lara had thought they might not attack at all tonight, especially after the helicopter had shown up out of nowhere. Her fear that the helicopter was part of the attack quickly gave way to curiosity when it circled them twice before turning and heading off, vanishing into the distance, never to be seen again. She would have chalked it up to an overactive imagination, except everyone on the island had seen it, too.

  About twenty minutes after the helicopter appeared and flew away, the people from the house attacked.

  “They’re coming, aren’t they?” Sarah asked from the first floor.

  Lara stood at the south window, and she could see the tiny dots of light dancing across the water in the distance. They were still too far away for her to make out any details, even through the binoculars. They could have been anything. Fireflies, small campfires in the distance. Except she knew better.

  “It’s the water,” Will had told her. “Sound travels better away from shore.”

  That, and it was night, and there were no other sounds at all. There was hardly any wind, and the waters were calm, the waves pushing tirelessly against the beach. It was like the night knew what was coming and didn’t want to interrupt, didn’t want to interject its own soundtrack into the furious violence to come.

  Lara walked back to the open door in the floor and looked down at Sarah, standing anxiously below her. “Yes, I think so.”

  “I can hear them,” Sarah said. “I don’t know how, but I can hear them. Boat motors. Can you see how many?”

  “I can’t be sure. Four, I think. But I can’t be sure.”

  “What does Will say?”

  “He’s not going to see a lot from his vantage point. Danny should know more soon.”

  Sarah nodded and put on a brave face, but Lara saw fear in her eyes. She didn’t blame the other woman. Sarah, like the rest of them, hadn’t gotten much sleep in the last couple of days, and it was beginning to show on all of their faces.

  Lara looked over at the three girls, trying bravely to ignore everything happening around them. They sat in a corner on the floor, at the foot of Carly’s bed. Vera was the ringleader and sat in the middle holding both girls’ hands. The eight-year-old caught Lara’s eyes and smiled. Lara found the strength to smile back, hoping to comfort her, but she realized, ironically, that it was the eight-year-old who was comforting her.

  Always the brave soldier. Carly would be proud.

  Lara walked back to Carly to check her vitals. She was still pale, but she looked much better than she had that afternoon. She had lost a lot of blood, but Lara had been prudent enough during their stay at Harold Campbell’s facility to get everyone’s blood type. Carly was B negative, which was bad, because B negative was rare. Fortunately for them, Danny was O negative, which made him a universal blood donor. He had sat patiently for two hours cracking one bad joke after another as she had transfused his blood into Carly.

  Lara watched her best friend, who looked strangely at peace. And why not? This was probably the most sleep Carly had gotten in the last few weeks. She wasn’t going to wake up for anything, even if the world ended tonight. The sedatives would make sure of that.

  Get all the sleep you can, girl. You might not get another chance after tonight.

  The radio clipped to Lara’s hip squawked, and she heard Will’s voice, utterly calm in the face of what she knew he could see coming right at him: “I count four.”

  “So do I,” Danny said through the radio.

  Danny was up on the third floor with Gaby at his side, providing what Will called “overwatch” with his ACOG-mounted rifle. Gaby was on her night-vision binoculars next to him, and her job was to search out targets for Danny to shoot. Lara didn’t know how she felt about using Gaby that way, but the teenager had agreed so quickly that Lara didn’t know how to argue against it.

  They’re all growing so fast. Her, the girls…

  Adapt or perish.

  “There should be more than that,” Will said. “Six. You saw four new boats this afternoon.”

  “That’s an affirmative,” Danny said.

  “So there should be six. Where are the other two?”

  “Maybe they couldn’t fix the motor I shot?”

  “That still leaves five.”

  “Dammit, you and your counting.”

  She went to the window and picked up her binoculars and peered through them. She picked up the four boats she had seen earlier. They were closer and their lights looked
bigger. Each boat had headlights and additional lights along its sides. The boats were coming in a horizontal line, spread out four wide, moving side by side. It was easy to tell how far apart they were from each other—about twenty yards each—because of their lights. And they were so loud. It was amazing how loud and obnoxious they were being as they approached the beach.

  So loud…and so bright…

  And so obvious…

  She unclipped the radio and pressed the transmit lever: “Will. Something’s wrong.”

  “I know,” Will said. “Two boats are missing.”

  “No. I mean, yes, two boats are missing. But it’s not just that. Something else is wrong.”

  “What do you see?”

  “They’re making it too obvious. Look at them. Why do they even have lights on? They don’t need them. They know exactly where we are. Song Island is covered in lights. So is the beach.”

  “So they don’t crash into each other?” Blaine said through the radio.

  “No, it’s not that,” Lara insisted. “They’re too far apart to start ramming each other now.”

  “She’s right,” Will said. “It’s a diversion.”

  “Yes,” Lara said quickly. “It’s got to be some kind of diversion, right?”

  “Danny,” Will said, “keep an eye on the incoming four. Gaby, start scanning the rest of the approaches to the island. Concentrate on our six.”

  “Our what?” Gaby said through the radio.

  “Behind us,” Will said.

  “Oh. I’m doing it now.”

  “Nice call, Lara,” Will said. She could hear the pride in his voice, and she found herself strangely exhilarated by the compliment, mostly because he gave them out so rarely.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Get a fucking room,” Danny said.

  “After this,” Will said.

  Lara smiled, then hurried over to the other windows and peered out. The solar-powered lampposts only reached so far, and there were whole sections of the western part of the island that were pitch-black. Lara found it difficult to separate the water from the island. She wondered if Gaby was having better luck.