The Horns of Avalon (Purge of Babylon, Book 8)

by Sam Sisavath

  “And I want them back,” Riley said. “All six of them. They only did what I asked them to. Hart had doubts, but…” He shook his head.

  “You should have listened to him.”

  “I had no choice.”

  “You already said that.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “You’re still not getting my boat.”

  He sighed. “Can I show you something?”

  “What can you show me that will make me change my mind?”

  “The Lara from the radio would change her mind.”

  Lara walked toward him—saw his eyes go wide with surprise—and stopped only when she was less than a foot from bumping into his chest. Even though he was taller than her and she had to tilt her head to look him in the eyes, she could feel him wanting to take a step back, but somehow managing to hold his ground.

  “Lara,” he began, almost stuttering out her name.

  She cut him off: “You don’t know me. If you have any doubts that I’ve already given orders to shoot your men and throw them overboard and abandon this place when I don’t return within the hour, you should wipe it out of your mind right now. You may have heard something I broadcasted on the radio, but you don’t know me, or my crew. You don’t know what we’ve been through, or what we’ve done, or what we’ve lost. So when I tell you that you don’t know a damn thing about me, I want you to take it to heart, Riley, because you don’t have a clue what I’m capable of.”

  “I believe you,” he said.

  “Good,” she said, and glanced down at her watch. “You have thirty minutes left. I suggest you use them wisely.”

  13

  Gaby

  The ongoing gun battle between Mercer’s men and the collaborators took on a strange ebb and flow—a hellacious five or so minutes of back-and-forth followed by an hour (sometimes two) of long silence where nothing happened.

  Danny had gone uncharacteristically silent since their conversation following his return to the room, seemingly content to listen in on the barely-audible chatter coming from the lobby—not that they could really hear anything with the closed door and the sudden spurts of violence beyond the walls.

  After he left her, Mason had yet to return. She wondered if he was running around out there with the rest of Danzinger’s people, trying to put an end to Mercer’s fighters. It was an odd thing to think about, mostly because she had no idea if she cared who won or lost or if she was hoping they might end up killing each other, which would leave just her, Danny, and Nate.

  Best-case scenario. Which probably means it won’t happen in a million years.

  Nate had woken up a couple of times, but the longest he had stayed awake was only a few minutes. That was just enough time for him to see her and smile before drifting off again. She checked his bandages every thirty minutes to make sure he wasn’t bleeding again and always had at least one ear open listening for any irregularities in his breathing.

  “They gave him sedatives,” Danny told her the first time Nate opened his eyes. “I guess they don’t want him waking up between now and tonight. Keep him out of their hair.”

  “Mason said he saved him,” she said.

  “Did he?” And when she nodded, “You believe him?”

  “I don’t know.” She told him about Mason’s claims. “It sounded like Nate.”

  “He’s a good kid.”

  “Does this mean you’re going to go easier on him from now on?”

  Danny chuckled. “I didn’t say that.”

  She smiled, and spent the next hour or so watching Nate sleep. After everything he had been through, he deserved as much rest as he could get. She wanted nothing more than to pack him into a car and drive to the coast where Lara and the Trident would be waiting for them. They could have done that days ago if Mercer’s people hadn’t begun their crusade against the collaborators.

  Mercer.

  Was it possible he was the “he” that the blue-eyed ghouls were hunting? No, because it didn’t make any sense. She, Nate, and Danny had nothing to do with Mercer, and holding them hostage wasn’t going to lure the man here. He couldn’t care less if they lived or died, and she would be surprised if he even still remembered them after Larkin. For all he knew, they were already dead and buried underneath what was left of the airfield.

  “Whatcha thinking there?” Danny said, his voice breaking through her thoughts.

  “What?” she said, looking over at him.

  “You look like me when I’m being all thoughtful and whatnot. What’s up?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Come again?”

  “You’re not telling me everything.” She let the rest go unsaid but didn’t take her eyes away from him.

  Danny shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

  “When is it not?”

  “Well, this is even more complicated than usual.”

  “What is it, Danny? What do you know that you aren’t telling me?”

  “That’s the problem, kid; I don’t know anything. Not for sure, anyway. At least, nothing that would hold up in court.”

  “We’re not in court. It’s just you and me and Nate in here.”

  “To be fair, Nate’s barely here…”

  “You know what I mean. So just tell me already.”

  “I think…” he started, but didn’t finish.

  She could see that he wanted to say it—this thing that had been spinning around inside his head for the last few days—but for whatever reason, he didn’t go through with it. Maybe he couldn’t, or he didn’t want to.

  “Danny,” she said.

  He shook his head. “It’s too crazy.”

  “What’s too crazy?” She could feel her patience with him slipping, even if he didn’t seem to notice it. “Just tell—”

  He held his hand up to shush her just before shouting erupted from outside the door. It came first from inside the hallway next to them, then all the way from the lobby. Pounding footsteps immediately followed, then someone screaming in pain. The cracks of gunfire from outside, sounding the closest they had been since the day began.

  Gaby stood up and walked to the door, pressing her ear against it. Danny did the same with the wall across from her. She glanced over at him, wondering if he was hearing the same thing, when a loud boom! cut through the noise and the door vibrated, along with the walls and floor and ceiling around them.

  She took an involuntary step back, but Danny didn’t move.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “Sounded like an explosion,” Danny said.

  Gunfire exploded, this time clearly coming from the lobby just beyond the back hallway, the pop-pop-pop of automatic rifle fire drowning out every other sound, including more screams and shouting.

  “That’s not good,” Danny said.

  “They’re inside,” she said.

  “Or coming in…”

  Then, just as fast as it had begun, it stopped; there was just the silence again.

  Gaby hurried back to the door and pressed against it and listened, but there wasn’t anything loud enough happening out there for her to hear through the slab of wood. She looked down at her bound hands and wondered how far she and Danny could get in their current condition. Of course, it was all a moot point because there was Nate, and he hadn’t even opened his eyes through the explosion and gunfire.

  A loud bang! drew her focus back to the door.

  It was a gunshot, and it had come from the lobby. A single, purposeful gunshot.

  She exchanged another look with Danny when they heard a second bang!

  “Shit,” Danny whispered. “Get back.”

  He pushed off the wall and retreated across the room. She did the same, returning to her spot next to Nate, but her butt hadn’t touched the floor yet when the door smashed open and a man with an AR-15 stood in the open doorway, pointing the weapon in at them. He saw Danny first, sitting across from him, before swinging his rifle over to her, then back at Danny.

  She
expected to see Lopez (or someone else who had taken his place at guard duty) lying dead outside the door, but there were no signs of casualties that she could see.

  The man was tall and thin, and his face was covered in black and green camo paint. The rest of him matched his face, including thick camo pants and a long-sleeve shirt underneath a tactical vest with slots stuffed with spare magazines. Equally full pouches hung from his narrow hips, including a gun holster.

  “Don’t even fucking flinch,” a gruff voice said from behind the painted face.

  Gaby sat perfectly still, and so did Danny. She worried that the loud, crashing door might have woken Nate, but one look at him eased her fears, though it made her wonder what kind of meds the collaborators had given him to make him sleep through all of this.

  The gunman saw her eyes going to Nate and said, “He dead?”

  “No,” she said.

  “You sure? He looks dead to me.”

  “He’s just sedated.”

  “We’re on the same side,” Danny said, and raised his bound hands slightly off his lap to let the guy see the zip ties.

  “Oh yeah?” the guy said, though he sounded doubtful. The fact that he hadn’t loosened his grip on his rifle for even a second was proof of that. The weapon was very steady in his hands, which told Gaby all she needed to know about him.

  “You’re part of Mercer’s army, right?” Danny asked.

  The man cocked his head, a glint of curiosity showing through the paint. “What do you know about it?”

  “We found the flyers. Join us or die, right?”

  Not quite right, Gaby thought, realizing what Danny was doing. He already knew this man with the rifle was one of Mercer’s killers—everything about him gave that away—and if he was here inside the bank, then that meant the collaborators were dead. (For a very quick moment, the thought of Mason finally getting what he had coming made her heart race with triumph.) Danny was playing on the propaganda flyers they had been finding all over the state, like the one Nate had found earlier yesterday while they were scouting.

  But Danny was wrong. It wasn’t “join us or die”; it was more like “join us to take back Texas.” Or something close. Not that it mattered, and she suspected Danny knew it, too. He just needed to get the man’s attention, to sow the seeds of the lie he was already cooking up.

  And it seemed to work, because the man relaxed the hand that was clutched tightly around the pistol grip underneath his rifle’s barrel. He didn’t lower the weapon, though, but it was a good start.

  “Close enough,” the gunman said, and grinned, showing impossibly white teeth.

  Gaby couldn’t help but relax a little, even if a part of her didn’t believe they were any better off than before. What was that old saying?

  Out of the frying pan and into the fire…

  * * *

  But maybe she was worried about nothing because it looked as if Mercer’s men were more concerned with the collaborators than they were of her, Danny, and Nate. The man who had found them in the back room called himself Fritz, and he led them to the front of the bank, leaving Nate where he was, but only after Fritz had checked to make sure Nate wasn’t playacting.

  The lobby was in pieces, and she didn’t have to go very far to see the source of the explosion she had heard earlier: Almost one entire side of the bank’s front wall was gone, leaving behind a gaping hole in its wake. Brick and mortar had been blasted across the once-wide lobby space, covering a large chunk of the floor. The island counter that had been used for filling out deposit slips had been chipped by gunfire but was somehow still standing, and the same was true for the teller windows at the end of the lobby.

  She counted five bodies, all men in black uniforms—Texas collaborators. One of them had the name Danzinger stenciled across his tag. The rest were either lying on their stomachs or were buried in rubble along with their names. She didn’t see anyone among the dead who was even remotely close to matching Mason’s short stature, which made her just a little bit ticked off.

  He really is like a goddamn cockroach.

  Besides Fritz, there were two others wearing similar clothing, their faces also covered in camo paint in the lobby. One was standing guard next to the hole while the second one sat in a chair with a bent metal leg spooning chunky food from a bag of MRE. Gaby got a whiff of beef ravioli in the air, but she was more concerned about the M4 rifle with the attached grenade launcher leaning next to the man.

  A wall versus a grenade launcher. Easy win.

  The third man looked up as Fritz led her and Danny across the lobby. “Prisoners?”

  “They were like this when I found them,” Fritz said.

  “So, prisoners.”

  “They said they’re volunteers.”

  “Volunteers?”

  “We saw the flyer,” Danny said.

  “Flyer?” the man said, confused.

  “That shit we’ve been tossing out of planes since after R-Day,” Fritz said.

  “Ah, the flyer.” The man took a moment to shake some salt from a packet into his bag before going back to work with a plastic spoon. “Names?”

  “I’m Danny, she’s Gaby,” Danny said. “The one sleeping it off inside the back office is Nate.”

  “Three?” the man said to Fritz.

  “Basically two and a half,” Fritz said. “Second guy’s mostly dead.”

  “He’s just been sedated,” Gaby said. “He was shot yesterday.”

  “How’d that happen?” the obvious leader asked.

  Gaby nodded at one of the collaborators. She had never seen the man before and didn’t know his name, but one was as good as another right now. “They’ve been chasing us for a while; finally caught up to us yesterday. Almost killed Nate in the process.”

  “Why?” the man asked.

  “Like we told Fritz here,” Danny said, “we left the town we were assigned to so we could sign up. Fight the good fight. Take back Texas. All that good stuff.”

  “You went AWOL? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “AWOL, who-gives-a-shit-wol, whatever you wanna call it. We’re not risking our lives for those night-crawling fucks anymore.”

  Damn, Danny, you almost convinced me that time.

  But Gaby couldn’t decide if the man was convinced or not, and his response was all that mattered. Even with all that gunk over his face, she could tell he was older than Fritz by a few years, and it made sense that in this rankless army of Mercer’s that the oldest man probably ended up leading, if just by default. Of course, she could have been entirely off base and the one standing with his back to them, guarding what was left of the wall, was the real leader, even though he hadn’t said a peep.

  She decided to focus on the man sitting in the chair when she said, “Is it true? What the flyers said?”

  “What do they say?” the man asked.

  “That you’re going to take back Texas. Because that’s why we risked everything to leave the town. Tell me it’s true,” she added, injecting just enough desperation into her voice to be convincing but without overdoing it. Or, at least, she hoped she wasn’t overdoing it.

  “If it’s not, tell us now,” Danny said, picking up on where she left off.

  “It’s true,” the man nodded.

  Gaby watched the leader slowly finish up his meal and toss the bag to the floor. He pulled out another small packet from his pocket and fished out an oatmeal cookie. Gaby had to stop herself from drooling over the smell.

  “We’re taking back Texas, and we’re always looking for new recruits,” the man finally finished.

  “Thank God,” Gaby said, again putting just enough of the old Gaby—the girly high school Gaby—into her voice to be believable.

  Jesus, when did I become such an actress?

  “I’m Benford,” the man said. “You already met Fritz.” He hiked a thumb at the third man in the room. “That’s Kip.”

  Kip tossed a glance over his shoulder and gave them a “what’s up” nod.
He was much younger than both Benford and Fritz, and despite the paint caking his face couldn’t have been older than her. But then, age was hard to tell these days because everyone grew up so fast. You had to, or you didn’t survive.

  Benford was smiling at them, white teeth poking through his camo and giving off a slightly sinister vibe. “Unfortunately, we can’t just take your word for it, you understand.”

  “But I have such a trustworthy face,” Danny said.

  “You won’t get any arguments from me. You get lost in Texas on your way back to California or something?”

  “Nah, I’m just naturally sunny.”

  “I can see that. But like I said, hard to trust people these days, so everyone has to pass a test first.”

  “I suck at tests. Is it at least multiple choice?”

  Benford ignored him and said, “Kip, bring him in.”

  The kid disappeared through the wall.

  “What’s going on?” Gaby asked.

  “We need to make sure,” Fritz said.

  “Make sure of what?”

  “You’ll see,” Benford said.

  Kip returned, but he wasn’t alone. A fourth man with camo on his face—another one of Mercer’s—along with Kip was flanking a black-clad figure between them. The man’s head was drooping like he didn’t have the strength to raise it, and his arms were duct taped behind his back. He was struggling with his footing, forcing Mercer’s men to drag and carry him at the same time.

  Mason. Please let it be Mason.

  The man lifted his head…and it wasn’t Mason.

  Dammit.

  Like the other dead men in the lobby, she had never seen the collaborator before. The part of his uniform where the name tag was supposed to be was missing, along with most of his right sleeve. Blood trickled down his face and thick, bloody clumps scarred both sides of his temple. He looked as if he were in tremendous pain, and she understood why he had so much difficulty walking: His right leg was broken, and blood dripped from both pant legs. When Benford and the others took out the bank wall, they had apparently claimed their share of collateral damage, and this man was one of them.