The man had lost his rifle as he went down, and he was scrambling to find it when Gaby shot him in the back, right over the ass. Or did she actually hit him in one of his cheeks? The man screamed, whether in surprise or pain, she wasn’t sure. He gave up on locating his weapon and began crawling to safety, his bleeding backside in the air, facing her.
Now that’s a sight.
She lifted her rifle to shoot when the man somehow half-crawled, half-lunged behind a big tree.
Gaby took a step forward to finish the wounded man off when another horse pushed its way through a thick bush in front of her, with another uniformed figure swaying in the saddle. They were still far away—almost eighty yards—and hadn’t seen her yet. Gaby decided not to risk a shot at this distance and instead turned and fled in the same direction that Peter and Milly had gone.
Or, at least, the same general vicinity. Her only hope was that Peter was smart enough to grab the girl before she could get too far ahead of him and lead her somewhere safe.
The first thing she had noticed when she fled into the woods earlier was that it was a massive place. It reminded her of Sandwhite Wildlife State Park, but minus the trails, which made it wilder and more unpredictable. If she thought every inch of Sandwhite looked exactly the same, she couldn’t imagine getting lost in here. Thankfully, there was Hillman Lake to her right, so if nothing else, she always knew which direction would lead her away from the town and the pursuit.
She had been running for two straight minutes at a full sprint before she finally heard the noise she had been waiting for. The clop-clop-clop of horseshoes, bearing down on her fast.
She looked over her shoulder. Nothing. But not being able to see the incoming rider wasn’t the same as him not being there. She could almost feel him gaining on her, and she could definitely still hear him getting closer.
Clop-clop-clop!
Clop-clop-clop!
Gaby pulled up to a stop and slid behind a tree. She hugged the gnarled trunk and waited, using the momentary respite to suck in air and did her best to control her breathing, but it was like trying to hold back a freight train.
She was still gasping for breath, trying to temper the adrenaline coursing through her like wildfire, when a man on a horse galloped past her. Like the others, this one was wearing a camo uniform and he was holding onto the reins for dear life with one hand while clutching an M4 rifle at his side. He didn’t look entirely comfortable in the half-second or so that it took him to ride past her.
Gaby didn’t let him get too far ahead. She pushed away from the tree, took aim, and shot the man in the back. He must have pulled on the reins reflexively because the horse let out a furious whine as it slid to a stop, horseshoes digging trenches into the ground.
As the animal settled and the man on top of it hung on, Gaby took two quick steps forward and took aim again, but before she could squeeze off another shot, the man collapsed from the saddle. He crumpled onto the ground on his belly, legs twisted awkwardly under him, and lay still.
The horse didn’t stick around. It turned and ran back—right at her!
Gaby stepped into the animal’s path and threw her hands into the air, waving them wildly to gets its attention. She got it, all right, not that the large brown charging thing with magnificent flowing mane had any intentions of stopping for her.
“Whoa!” Gaby shouted. “Whoa, horse!”
She didn’t have time to process how stupid she must have looked (or sounded) before the horse came within a foot of running her over like she was an annoying gnat. She lunged out of its path, going sideways at the last second, losing the AK-47 at the same time she crashed into some underbrush headfirst.
By the time she picked herself back up, the horse was running freely through the woods until there was nothing left of it but the gradually fading clop-clop-clop echoing back and forth among the trees.
She sighed and struggled to her feet. “Stupid horse.”
Right. The horse is the stupid animal and not you, who just tried to flag it down like it was a taxi. Keep telling yourself that, girl.
She snatched up the assault rifle and jogged over to the dead rider. Gaby robbed him of the M4 and pocketed his spare ammos and a small first-aid kit. She pulled out his holstered sidearm—a 9mm Glock—and stuffed it into her waistband.
Voices, coming from behind her. “Greg! Where the hell are you?”
She didn’t hear galloping, so the man had to be on foot. Gaby didn’t stick around to find out for sure. She slung the newly acquired carbine and hurried off, feeling much better with her pouches stuffed with spare magazines and an extra handgun in her waist. The extra weight made her move slower, but she didn’t want to risk throwing anything away.
“A soldier who complains about having to carry too much firepower is a dead one,” Will liked to say.
Will and Danny had taught her a lot of things on the island, but tracking people wasn’t one of them. She had no idea where Milly and Peter had gone, and although there were clues—a broken branch here, a snapped twig there—each time she thought she had picked up their trail, it suddenly changed again.
She entertained but quickly dismissed the idea that Peter was purposefully mixing up his footprints in order to throw her off. He didn’t strike her as someone who had a lot of experience in the woods. She didn’t either, but compared to him she might as well be one of those frontier woodsmen she had learned about in school. Peter was one of the town’s cooks, for God’s sake. A guy like that probably didn’t spend a whole lot of time learning tracking—or in this case, hiding his tracks—from pursuers.
Of course, she could be wrong. What did she really know about them, anyway? What did she know about the girl? Besides the fact they were both clearly desperate to leave L15. They were the only two, from the looks of it. Was that suspicious? Maybe. Right now, though, she owed them for saving her life. Maybe she would have gotten out anyway on her own, but they had made it easier.
Even so, after about fifteen minutes of fruitless searching, the idea of heading off by herself was becoming more and more feasible.
What did she really owe them, anyway? Yes, they had helped her escape, but if they had run off on their own, they were beyond her help. The smart thing would be to keep going, cross Hillman Lake, and somehow reorient herself and head back south, back toward Beaufont Lake…
…and Song Island.
How long had it been? It felt like years since she had seen the white beaches and eaten the fresh fish and stood watch in the Tower’s third floor—
Snap!
She spun around, lifting the AK-47 to fire—
“It’s just me!” Peter shouted.
She sighed and lowered the rifle. He had come close to dying. Too close.
“Where’s Milly?” she asked, keeping her voice low.
“Follow me,” he said, lowering his voice to match her pitch. He started off and Gaby followed.
“Where’s Milly?” she asked again.
“We found a place to stay not far from here.”
“Is it safe?”
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
“It looked pretty safe.”
They walked in silence for a while, and Peter seemed to know where he was going.
“You’re pretty good with that rifle,” he said finally.
She remembered missing the horseman with her first shot. “I’m not that good with the AK. I was trained on an M4.”
“Which one is that?”
“The black one.”
“Oh.”
“Where did you put Milly, Peter?”
“It’s a cave, but it’s pretty well hidden. I left her to come look for you.”
Gaby grabbed his arm and spun him around. “You left her inside a cave?”
He didn’t answer right away, and she could tell he didn’t understand the accusatory tone in her voice. “Why? Isn’t a cave safe?”
“Caves are dark, Peter.”
The real
ization spread across his face. “Oh God,” he said, and jerked his hand away before running off at full speed.
She fell in behind him, keeping one eye in front of her and the other scanning the woods. Her ears were up, listening for the familiar clop-clop-clop of horse hooves on soft earth. She didn’t believe for a minute the remaining two guards on horseback hadn’t converged toward all the gunfire. The fact that they weren’t here yet worried her. Then again, maybe like Peter, they were more terrible at this whole woods thing than she initially attributed to them.
“Are we close?” she asked Peter.
“Almost there,” he said, already sucking in air with every step.
She didn’t know why he was breathing so hard. She was the one carrying two rifles, two handguns, and nearly half a dozen magazines. Even with all that weight, she was still matching him stride for stride. A part of her wanted to ask him what he did before all of this, but the other part—the survivor in her—didn’t want to know. If he and Milly died today or tomorrow, it was better if she didn’t know too much about them. It was a cold thought, but Gaby had gotten progressively good at detaching herself from her emotions these days.
Except with Nate.
What happened to you, Nate? Are you dead…or worse?
Peter finally slowed down as they came up on the mouth of a cave, partially hidden among the trees and bushes. It was impossible not to notice the suffocating darkness staring back out at her.
“Milly,” Peter whispered. He had stopped near the entrance. When there was no answer, he whispered louder, “Milly.”
Gaby moved past him with the AK-47 in front of her, wishing badly for the magazine to be full of silver bullets. She flicked the fire selector to full-auto. Regular bullets didn’t do a damn thing against the ghouls, but maybe enough of them at once…
“She’s not answering,” Peter said.
No shit, Peter.
Gaby took a deep breath and stepped into the pitch-black. Peter moved behind her, his footsteps tentative, his breathing too loud despite the fact he had stopped running more than a minute ago.
She stepped cautiously, allowing her eyes to adjust to the nothingness. The sunlight only penetrated the cave for a few precious yards, and it wasn’t nearly enough to see with. She only managed four, then five steps before she was swallowed up by the pitch-black nothingness.
What are you doing? You don’t know these people. You don’t owe them this. You don’t owe them dying.
Go back. Go back now!
She kept moving forward instead.
“Milly,” Peter whispered behind her. “Where are you?” Then, much louder than he should, “Milly!”
Even as Milly’s name echoed off the walls, the creature lunged out of the darkness at her, reaching with one hand, black eyes glistening (That shouldn’t be possible) and a mouth full of devastating brown and yellow teeth lit up in a staccato effect as she pulled the trigger and the AK-47 leaped in her hands.
The creature jerked as bullets riddled its chest at almost point-blank range, and she heard a ping! as a round bounced off bone. That, more than anything, stunned and sent the ghoul tumbling to the damp cave floor. Not that it stayed down there for very long. It was back on its feet and moving toward her again a heartbeat later.
“Go!” she shouted. “Get out of here, Peter!”
Peter might have turned and ran, or maybe he just backpedaled. She didn’t look back to make sure because she was too busy firing again. Split-second lightning flashed with every round she discharged, allowing her to see—
Them.
Because there was a nest. They had stepped right into a nest.
She fired from side to side, backing up, always moving, never standing still. The assault rifle got lighter in her hands as the magazine emptied. She held on and kept shooting and moving until she finally felt the warmth of the sun (mercifully) against the back of her neck.
Click!
She didn’t stop moving, didn’t think about the empty magazine, and instead swung with the empty rifle. She caught a creature in the cheek—its face broke in front of her, cheekbone crunching—and the blow tossed the ghoul into two others in the process of lunging at her.
Gaby swung again—this time to the right—and the barrel pierced the chest of a ghoul and impaled it all the way up to the hand guard. The creature staggered back, stunned by the blow, but somehow still managed to rip the assault rifle out of her hands as it fell away to the side.
She stumbled her way out of the cave and lost her balance, landing on her ass.
The sun! She was outside!
One of the creatures followed her out, mouth opening, jagged teeth snapping in an attempt to clamp down on her exposed arm—
The creature squealed as sunlight descended on it. The ghoul’s flesh turned ashen and it vaporized before her eyes, and a second later bleached white bones that looked deformed for some reason tumbled out of the air and landed on the ground in a pile. The acidic smell enveloped the surroundings, and Gaby forced herself to start breathing through her mouth to keep from choking.
Hands grabbed her from behind and pulled her back, back, then finally up.
She unslung the M4 and pointed it at the silhouetted forms squirming inside the darkened mouth of the cave, just beyond the reach of sunlight. They had stopped their pursuit, the sun holding them at bay. She could sense their desperation, their rabid desire to get at her. It drove them crazy and they squirmed restlessly, and for a moment, just a moment, she thought one or two—or possibly all of them—might try to get her anyway.
But they didn’t.
“Dead, not stupid,” Will always said.
How many were in there right now, looking back at her and Peter? A dozen? A hundred? Was Milly one of them? The girl with the round face. Thirteen. Or twelve. She didn’t know for sure. She should have asked, but Gaby hadn’t wanted to know, didn’t want to get too involved, to become committed to people who could die on her at any moment.
Because everyone died these days. Everyone…
Like Nate.
“Peter?” a soft female voice said behind them.
They spun around and saw Milly, wide-eyed and standing there, looking back at them.
Peter ran to her and scooped her up in a bear hug. She wasn’t prepared for it and barely had time to register what Peter was doing before she was in his arms. Confusion gave way to happiness, and Gaby watched them embrace each other for a long five seconds.
Peter finally put her down. “You left the cave…”
“I heard noises,” Milly said. “It was too spooky, so I left to wait for you out here. Then I heard all the shooting. What happened? What’s in there?” She looked past them and toward the mouth of the cave and saw the bones, twisted and white against the daylight. “Oh.”
“Come on, we have to go,” Gaby said. “Everyone heard those gunshots.”
She hurried off, and Peter and Milly followed.
“Where to now?” Peter asked.
“I don’t know,” Gaby said. “You have any ideas? You live here.”
“But we’ve never actually been this far out of town.”
“Never mind, then. We’ll figure it out as we go.”
She glanced down at her watch: 9:41 a.m.
Still plenty of time…
8
Lara
“Kinkasan Island,” Takeshi said. His English was good and came through crystal clear over the radio. “There are a few thousand of us here. Most are from Ishinomaki, but I’ve met some from Sendai and as far as Osaki.”
“How did you know to get to an island?” Lara asked.
“We didn’t,” Takeshi said. “Not consciously. I think most of us just thought we needed to get as far away from the cities as possible. The ferries were running for hours…until they just stopped. That was the last I’ve seen of anyone from the mainland.”
Lara looked over at Bonnie leaning next to the window with the binoculars. The former model had been listening to her co
nversation with Takeshi for the last few minutes, both of them riveted by his story. All these months of trying to survive on the road and to finally get confirmation that there were others out there like them who had managed to continue on, despite the odds, was exhilarating.
Takeshi, like the last few strangers who had contacted them over the radio, had responded only because of her broadcast. In so many ways, something she hadn’t even wanted to do but did anyway at Danny and Roy’s urging was becoming the most important thing she had ever done since The Purge. She couldn’t help but feel a little pride in that.
“How did you know about FEMA, Takeshi?” she said into the microphone.
“American history,” Takeshi said. “I’ve always been fascinated with your country. I told my girlfriend that once I graduated university, we would get married and move to Silicon Valley and start a new life. I’d work at one of your tech companies and she would teach Japanese in school.”
“Is your girlfriend…?”
“Mako’s here. We fled together. It was actually her idea to come to the island, where her family still lives.”
Another pair of lovers lives on!
She smiled at the silly thought and was glad Bonnie couldn’t see.
“Have you made contact with anyone else before you heard our recording?” she asked.
“Yes, there were a couple of Frenchmen, a few Englishmen, and I think some Chinese,” Takeshi said. “It’s been a while since I heard back from the Chinese, though. I didn’t know about the islands, how the creatures—ghouls, as you call them—couldn’t cross water. Which leads me to this thought, Lara; there are other islands nearby. Aji and Tashiro, to name just two. I should bring this up with the elders, tell them what I’ve learned. There must be survivors there, too. If not from the mainland, then those who never left.”
“I hope so, Takeshi. It’s worth finding out. Just…be careful.”
“Yes. Always. We’re always careful these days.”
The Purge of Babylon Series Box Set, Vol. 2 | Books 4-6 Page 10