by Sam Sisavath
The Ashes of Pompeii
Copyright © 2015 by Sam Sisavath
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Published by Road to Babylon Media LLC
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Edited by Jennifer Jensen and Wendy Chan
Cover Art by Creative Paramita
Formatting by BB eBooks
Thanks go to my last line of defense against bad writing. You guys know who you are.
Every war requires sacrifices.
The only way to survive in a post-Purge world is to keep your head down, but that’s not always an option.
Still stranded in the Louisiana countryside, Will, Danny, and Gaby race against the clock to get back to their friends, but the road home is treacherous and enemies lie in wait.
Meanwhile, Lara and the survivors at Song Island continue preparations for an inevitable attack. But what does a third-year medical student know about fending off a full-frontal assault?
As enemies close in on all sides, Will and Lara will be faced with life-and-death decisions. The lives of their friends—and possibly the future of humanity—will rest on the choices they make.
A year after The Purge, the Gates have held, the Stones have crumbled, and the Fires have burned, but now the Ashes will consume…
PRELUDE
The little girl begged her not to do it.
Not with words, because the fear was too much and the simple act of uttering a sound was beyond her ability at the moment. Instead, dirt-caked lips trembled and light brown eyes (large as saucers, as her father used to say) stared back at her as if the girl couldn’t comprehend what was happening or why.
Her father. When was the last time she had thought of him? Sometimes, when she least expected it, memories from her past rushed back to remind her of what once was but could never be again. Sometimes these disjointed flashes would stay awhile, but often they were fleeting.
The girl was still staring intently at her.
Brown eyes, large as saucers…
But her father wasn’t the reason she lingered on the girl’s face. Those eyes, they reminded her of him. Every pair of brown eyes she encountered these days did. She didn’t know why exactly, and the not knowing gnawed at her like an elusive tick. There was nothing extraordinary about him. Nothing that she couldn’t find in a hundred other men. A thousand. Tens of thousands.
And yet, and yet…
They’d found the girl hiding in the woods outside one of the towns. How she had managed to stray this far, for this long, was a mystery. Moonlight glinted off her large-as-saucers eyes as she peered out from her hiding place, a thick patch of undergrowth that had formed years ago, and would continue to grow as the planet consumed the remains of humanity. Even now, you could barely tell man used to tread these areas.
The ones who had found the girl swayed back and forth in the background. Her brood. They made very little noise. She once thought they were empty husks, useless flesh draped over frail bones, but she had been mistaken. There were still shreds of humanity in them, somewhere; they were just pushed into the background. Unlike her and the other chosen ones, it was difficult for her brood to reclaim what they had lost.
She crouched in front of the girl and watched the little figure shrink back in response, as if she could disappear into the thickets if she tried hard enough. The fear trembled across the parts of her rail-thin body that were visible, and the smell of fresh urine lingered. The girl wore dirty clothes and was barefoot, dried mud clinging to her toes. She folded her arms around scraped knees and peered up while periodically sneaking glances at the things moving quietly in the darkness around them.
“You’re safe,” she said to the girl. Her voice came out as a hiss and she hated it, but it was beyond her control. The transformation did things to her body at the cellular level, all the way up to the noises she made.
The girl didn’t believe her, and her eyes darted to the darkness again before returning. If she was terrified, the little thing was handling it well. She reminded her of Vera, Carly’s little sister. Carly had been her friend too, once upon a time.
“Yes,” she whispered, trying her best to lessen the hissing. It was difficult, a monumental task, and she didn’t know why she was making the effort. But there was something about the girl that she wanted to draw out. “You’re safe now. With me.” She couldn’t tell if the girl believed her that time. “What’s your name?”
The dirt-tinged lips quivered and a squeaky voice, like that of a mouse, said, “Mary.”
“Hello, Mary. My name is Kate.”
She smiled—or thought she did. Her lips didn’t always do what she wanted them to these days. It was so much easier to communicate with the others, with her brood. This old form of talking was crude and cumbersome and took too much effort.
“What are you doing out here by yourself, Mary?”
“My dad…” the girl said, her voice growing stronger with each word, her fear slipping little by little.
“Where is he?”
“Out there…”
Gone, a voice whispered inside her head. We took him two nights ago.
It wasn’t one voice, but many—a cacophony of fractured thoughts that clashed and merged and somehow formed meaning anyway. It came from the swaying figures behind her, from the ones keeping out of sight, as well as the hundreds racing across the darkened woods like children playing. There was no individuality among the brood; there was just the collective, the us. It was one of the few things that she still struggled with.
“Let me take you to him,” she said, and held out her hand.
The girl hesitated.
“You’ll be safe with me, Mary. I promise.”
“You’re not like them…”
“No. I’m different. I’m…something else.”
“You won’t hurt me?”
“No. I promise. Do you believe me?”
A slight tremor from the girl turned into a weak nod.
“Now, take my hand, and let me take you to your father.”
Soft fingers caked with a generous layer of dirt wrapped around her own long, slender ones. She was sure the girl’s fear would reclaim her and that she would retreat at any second, but the surprising toughness that reminded her so much of Vera caused the girl to tighten her grip instead.
“You’re such a brave girl, Mary. So brave.”
She pulled the girl out of her hiding place slowly, gently. Long, stringy auburn hair fell over a round face. One day, she would grow up to be a beautiful young woman. One day, boys would flock to her and other girls would be jealous and whisper cruel words behind her back. One day, those big brown eyes (big as saucers) would make her popular.
“Where’s my dad?” Mary asked. Her voice had continued to grow stronger, more confident.
“We’ll find him,” she said. She stood up too, extending her long thin frame, the joints clacking slightly as she did so.
The girl had to crane her neck to look up at her. “They won’t hurt us? The monsters
in the shadows?”
“No. They’re my children. And they’re very obedient.”
“You’re their mother?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“You have so many questions.”
Mary smiled. It was delicate and radiant. “You’re not like the others.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re friendly.”
“Yes…”
“But they’re not.”
The girl glanced at the dozen or so of the brood that hadn’t hidden themselves well enough. Upon discovery, her children scurried back until it was just the night and her and the girl again in the clearing.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You’re with me now. They won’t hurt you.”
Mary looked up at her again, her smile widening. In the moonlight, she looked cherubic and pure. “We’re going to find my dad now?”
“Yes.”
“Where did he go? I thought he’d left me.”
“No. He would never leave you. No parent would leave their brood.”
“Brood?”
“My children…”
“Oh.”
She tightened her grip around Mary’s wrist and led her toward the darker parts of the woods. There was stirring in the shadows as her children stepped back to make room. She didn’t have to tell them. They knew her wants and needs, and they obeyed without question.
“Kate?” Mary said. Her voice had gotten smaller, and she could practically hear (sense) the fear creeping back into every inch of her small frame. “You’re hurting my hand. Kate? Kate?”
“Shhh,” she said, putting one long, bony finger to her lips and looking down at the girl. “It’ll be over soon, little Mary. Shhh…”
BOOK ONE
‡
THE RUNDOWN
CHAPTER 1
KEO
“See the world. Kill some people. Make some money.”
Well, one out of three wasn’t bad.
Okay, so it was downright pitiful, but then Keo was used to making lemonade out of lemons these days. First there was that whole end of the world curveball, then getting stuck with strangers in a cabin in the woods. He compounded those problems by falling in (lust) something with a girl named Gillian.
And now this.
“This” being stuck on a luxury yacht adrift in the middle of the lake with Song Island behind him and God only knew how many guys with guns in front of him. On the plus side, he was well-armed; besides the shotgun, he still had the Heckler & Koch MP5SD submachine gun, and he had added an AK-47 and a silver-chromed revolver with five bullets left to his arsenal. If life before everything went kaput had taught him anything, it was that there was no such thing as having “too many” guns.
Have bullets, will make mess.
In some ways, his life now wasn’t all that different than it was a year ago. These days, though, people weren’t paying him a lot of money to risk his hide. These days, he was voluntarily risking his precious limbs for…what again? A bunch of people he didn’t really know? Sure, he respected them, but was that really worth dying for?
Then again, maybe he had just finally developed something approaching a conscience.
Say it ain’t so.
The big guy with the melon for a head was lying half-on and half-off the floor of the upper deck. Or what was left of the head, anyway. The shotgun in Keo’s hands had removed most of the top portion, leaving behind something that looked suspiciously like a badly carved jack-o’-lantern. Clumps of blood and brains were spilled across the floorboards on the other side of the spiral stairwell that connected the upper and the main deck directly below.
There had been footsteps pounding up those same stairs a few seconds ago, but they quickly stopped after Melon Head took the buckshot to the side of the face. The hard chargers decided to retreat after that, then went very quiet soon after. They were tiptoeing around down there, most likely getting ready for an assault on his position. So they weren’t complete idiots, after all. Too bad. He liked dealing with amateurs.
Keo was crouched in the semidarkness of the Trident, the boat continuing to move even with the anchor lowered. He had turned off the whisper quiet engine at the same time, allowing him to hear everything around and underneath him, including his own slightly racing heartbeat.
Jesus, calm down. What is this, your first time in a firefight?
He leaned back from the turn in the hallway that connected the bulk of the deck’s floor with the bridge behind him. Keo spent a few seconds slowing down his breathing while keeping one ear open for noises.
Come on, boys, let’s not keep daddy waiting. He’s getting antsy.
Song Island was directly behind him, but Keo hadn’t had the opportunity to check how far he still was from the beach before he dropped the anchor to keep the boat from running aground by accident. They were close, he could tell that from the halo of lights visible on the other side of the bridge’s curving windshield, the swath of intense brightness reaching all the way across the room and into the hallway.
There was no doubt Lara and the others would have heard the shooting by now. Even muffled by the walls around him, there was no mistaking a shotgun blast against the quiet night. Just to make sure, though, Keo leaned out from the corner and fired another shot at the wall across the deck, squinting involuntarily at the thunderous boom!
There. They’d have to be deaf not to hear that.
He recalled his last conversation with Lara (a.k.a. kid leader), just before he went for a swim (again) in the cold lake water:
“Don’t shoot unless you have to,” she had said.
“Trust me,” he had replied, “if you hear shooting on the boat, there’s a very damn good reason for it.”
He didn’t know why, but Keo trusted her. She had proven to be a tough customer with some big brass ones. That was hard to find in a woman, but especially the civilian variety. He didn’t even mind that she had manipulated him into helping with the island’s defense the last few days. Now that was smooth. Keo was a shoot-first-and-what-was-the-question type of guy, but he’d always had a lot of grudging respect for people who could think two, three steps ahead and give orders with lives at stake (usually his).
He pressed his back against the wall and tried to pick up any slight vibrations that could signal an incoming attack.
Nothing. A big fat zero. Nada. Zilch.
That should have comforted him, but instead it just made him more paranoid.
Come on, boys, what are you waiting for? An engraved invitation?
To keep his mind off what may or may not be happening out there right now, Keo spent a few seconds taking inventory.
He counted four victims, but only three bodies. There were the two in the bridge—the captain (or the guy wearing a captain’s hat, anyway), his first mate, and a third man who had come up the stairs. And Melon Head made three stiffs. The captain was kneecapped and whimpering softly in one of the bridge’s corners. Alive, but whipped. Just the way Keo liked them.
That was four down and an unknown number still to go. The vanishing footsteps he had heard earlier were proof of that. There was also someone named Rod, a sniper who had been watching the island when the boat was on approach earlier tonight. He was likely on a high perch—possibly on top of Keo right this moment, or maybe somewhere along the side rails. Someplace high to shoot from.
Counting Rod, there were at least two more still running around out there. His one big advantage was that they were going to have to come to him if they wanted to get the Trident moving again. That meant retaking the controls on the bridge.
Keo waited for ten more seconds.
Then ten became twenty…
…and still no attack.
At thirty, he got up and moved, slightly bent over at the waist just in case (you could never be too careful when there were assholes running around with loaded guns), making a beeline back to the bridge. The assault rifle and submachine gun thumping against his back made more
noise than he would have liked; the eerie quiet made them sound like firecrackers, and he wished he had tightened their straps before moving.
Live and learn, pal. Live and learn.
He slipped back inside the bridge and closed the door, then locked it. Not that he expected to keep out a half dozen determined assaulters, but it would give him time to prepare a proper defense. Which, in this case, meant waiting with the shotgun for the first target to appear so he could pull the trigger. Keo was a simple guy that way.
The “captain” was still in the corner, where Keo had left him earlier. The man had taken off his shirt (it turned out he had an undershirt beneath, though it, too, was now stained with blood) and wrapped it over his right kneecap, trying desperately to stop the bleeding. Keo couldn’t tell if the man was more freaked out by his injury, the pain, or the inability to stop blood from dripping through his makeshift tourniquet.
Or it could have been the sight of his first mate’s body, sitting on the floor with his back against the long console that covered nearly the entire front half of the room. The man, like Melon Head outside, was missing most of his noggin, with pieces of it clinging to the curving glass windshield behind him. It was a hell of a mess, made more surreal against the wash of the island’s LED and multicolored lights from the boat’s computer screens and buttons. The fragments of a destroyed handheld radio were sprinkled around the body. Too bad, because Keo would have liked to use it to contact the island.
If wishes were assholes…
Bottom line, he was cut off. Or, at least, until either the remains of the boat’s crew got their act together and assaulted the bridge or Lara decided to do something from her end. Frankly, he hated the idea of waiting for one of them to do something already. Patience had never been his strongest trait.
The captain flinched even before Keo got close enough to do anything to him. “Don’t kill me!”
Keo put a finger to his lips, and the man clenched his mouth shut. He picked up the white captain’s hat from the floor and put it back on the man’s damp head, then gave him a slight tap on the cheek.