“And you definitely saw four in that, uh, walkabout of yours.”
“Definitely. I mastered counting in elementary school.”
“I wouldn’t know. I was too busy making out with Suzy by the jungle gym.”
Danny had both hands on the steering wheel. His broken nose and bruised face looked even more noticeable against the burning sun and dry wind blowing through the open windows. Both of their clothes, weighed down by the gear they were carrying, were damp against their seats. Will would have preferred to drive with the air conditioner blasting, but knowing Gaby was out there somewhere made that impossible. They were also driving much slower than before—barely forty miles per hour now—just so they wouldn’t miss seeing or hearing anything that could point them to Gaby’s whereabouts. The idea of driving past her now, after all but giving her up for dead thirty minutes ago, was an unsettling thought.
“Given their whole hive mind thing,” Danny said, “it doesn’t make sense they didn’t launch a second attack after you took out the first two.”
“That’s what concerns me.”
“So maybe they weren’t in Dunbar. Maybe they were out here in Nowheresville doing…something else.”
“Or tracking someone else.”
“Gaby?”
“Best-case scenario.”
Danny chuckled. “Our best scenario is that two blue-eyed ghouls are hot on Gaby’s trail. Didn’t think I’d be saying that anytime soon.”
“Desperate times call for desperate best-case scenarios.”
“So we know she left L15 with two locals, then left Dunbar with three. Where do you think she picked up the third stray?”
“In Dunbar, maybe. Or—” Will stopped when he saw the smoke rising in the distance. “Slow down, Danny. Two o’clock.”
Danny eased the Bronco down to thirty-five, then twenty, miles per hour. They leaned forward at the sight of smoke hovering over the remains of a house. Recently, from the looks of it.
“Someone must have left the oven on,” Danny said.
“I see a road,” Will said, pointing.
Danny pulled the truck off the highway and onto a manmade dirt road, past an open gate, and drove them toward a farm. The remnants of the house were flanked by a red barn to one side and what looked like an unattached garage or possibly a supply shack on the other. There were a couple of vehicles parked in the wide, expansive yard.
Will picked up his M4A1 from the floor and scanned the property. Like most of the land they had passed since leaving Dunbar behind, the ground was flat and baked brown. There were no animals grazing, no signs of horses or cows, or whatever it was the owners had been raising before The Purge. Then again, he hadn’t seen a large land animal running free for almost a year now, so the complete lack of livestock didn’t add to the potential (if any) threat around the area.
The road was rough, but the Bronco’s tires traversed it without trouble. They reached a front yard covered in dead grass, and Danny parked behind a white pickup that was so old Will couldn’t place its make or model. A black minivan that looked out of place sat on the other side of the property. It had Mississippi license plates.
“Someone’s far from home,” Danny said. “Hell of a time to take a vacation.”
“It might be worse where they’re from.”
“I somehow doubt that, Kemosabe.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
They climbed out of the Bronco, weapons at the ready, and spent another few minutes giving the property a cautious look-over. There was a slight breeze, but not enough to chase away the sweltering heat or keep the ruins of the house from smoldering in the aftermath of what looked like a ravaging fire. There were no bodies that he could see or signs of a battle.
So what started the fire?
“No Silverado,” Will said.
Darren, the twenty-something soldier who Gaby had shot in the ankle earlier in the day, told them Gaby had continued up Route 13 in his and his dead partner’s Chevy Silverado truck. They were hoping to run across it sooner or later.
“Fire must have been raging something purty when she came through here earlier,” Danny said. “You think she kept going?”
Will thought about it. “She’s a smart girl. And taking into account she’s dragging along three people…” He nodded certainly. “I don’t think she’d stop. We taught her better than that.”
“We would totally rock as parents. Separately, I mean. With, you know, girls. Not that there’s anything wrong with the other thing.”
“How about we make sure no one’s in the minivan first before we start making marital plans, Mrs. Doubtfire.”
“Certainly,” Danny said, mimicking a high-pitched female voice
They approached the van from separate angles. Will peered into the open front passenger window while Danny did the same on the driver’s side. A pink watermelon-flavored Little Tree Air Freshener, long past its smell-by date, hung from the rearview mirror. Will used that same mirror to look into the back of the van before opening the side hatch to make sure it was really empty.
Old soda cans and water bottles littered the floor. A pair of men’s shirts, shorts, and sandals. He picked up old footsteps in the ground from the side hatch outward, but they were barely noticeable.
“It’s been a while since they used the van,” Will said. “It would make sense if they came all the way from Mississippi. Maybe they exited the interstate to see what was out here, found the house, and decided it was as good a place as any to settle down.”
“Here?” Danny said. “There’s nothing here, buddy.”
“Maybe that’s the point. This far from civilization, if they hunkered down, they could go unnoticed for a while.”
Danny circled the van. “Dunbar’s nearby.”
“They might not know that.”
“So where are they now?”
Will looked back at what was left of the house. The charred frames that were still standing told him it used to be a two-story building. They moved toward it, trying to glimpse anything that might give an impression of who had been in there or what had caused the fire. The flames had mostly burned themselves out, leaving behind embers to give off more than enough heat to make getting too close uncomfortable. They stopped about ten meters away from what used to be a front wooden deck. There wasn’t much left except for the concrete steps that led up to the front door.
“Guess no one’s home,” Danny said.
“But something—or someone—had to have started the fire.”
“Spontaneous combustion?”
“That’s one theory.”
“What’s another one?”
“No idea.”
“Hunh. So what now?”
Will glanced back toward the road. “Come on, we’re burning daylight. Gaby was smart not to stop, and we should have done the same thing.”
“Too late for that.”
“Just don’t tell her when we finally catch up.”
“Mum’s the word.”
They started walking back to the Bronco when a flicker of movement—from the barn—caught the corner of Will’s eye and he stopped on a dime and spun. Danny did the same, and they stared across forty meters at the large twin doors that had swung open.
“I guess someone’s home after all,” Will said.
“Awesome,” Danny said. “Let’s go see if we can borrow some milk and sugar.”
They changed direction and moved toward the barn, approaching it from two different angles the way they had the minivan earlier. Will kept his eyes on the open alley doors in front and the closed loft door directly above those. If there was a sniper inside, he would use the higher perch to shoot from, but Will couldn’t make out any holes or makeshift gun ports.
The barn doors remained open, but no one had shown themselves yet.
They took the first twenty meters without fanfare, taking their time but moving steadily forward. Will scooted slightly right to eyeball the bottom of and along the slanted r
oof. Danny did the same on his side.
“Anything?” Will asked.
“Squadoosh,” Danny said. “Unless they have an invisible sniper. If they do, that would really suck.”
Finally, one of the barn doors opened even wider and a pair of tanned arms appeared in the sunlight. “Don’t shoot!” someone shouted. Young and male. “We’re not armed!”
“Step outside!” Will shouted back.
The owner of the outstretched hands stepped out of the barn. Tall, jeans and a white T-shirt stained with something red. Blood. The man squinted in the sunlight and his hair was a mess. Will couldn’t see a gun belt or a weapon, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something behind his waist.
The man had moved a foot outside the building when Will said, “Stop.”
He did.
“Turn around,” Will said.
The guy gave him a confused look.
“Like Cinderella,” Danny said.
Another confused look.
“Just to make sure you’re not armed,” Will said.
He understood that and turned around a full 360 before facing Will again. He had wisely not lowered his arms the entire time.
“You said ‘we,’” Will said. “Who else is inside?”
“My girlfriend,” the man said.
“Her name wouldn’t happen to be Gaby, would it?” Danny asked.
The guy shook his head. “Um, no. It’s Annie.”
“Oh well, worth a shot,” Danny said.
Lance and Annie hadn’t arrived from Mississippi by themselves. There had been six of them four months ago. That number was trimmed to two after last night.
“They had blue eyes,” Lance said, trembling noticeably as he talked. “They played with them. I mean, they played with them. I’d never seen anything like it.”
“There were two,” Annie said.
Will and Danny exchanged a knowing look.
They stood around the Bronco with the weary couple. Both Lance and Annie still looked shell-shocked from last night’s harrowing encounter with the ghouls.
“What do you mean by ‘they played with them’?” Will asked.
“They let Toby out of the house,” Lance said. “Then they made him run into the fields. At first I thought the black-eyed ones would be all over him, but they weren’t. They just stood around and watched. Then the new ones—the ones with blue eyes—ran after him. Then…there was a lot of screaming. Toby. I would know his voice anywhere.”
“They gave him a head start?” Danny said.
“Yeah,” Lance said, as if he could barely believe his own story. “Those things… they didn’t act like the others. I think they were controlling them. I know that sounds crazy…right?”
“It’s not that crazy,” Danny said.
“You’ve seen them too, haven’t you?” Annie said, staring at them.
“Yeah,” Will nodded. “What happened to the rest of your people?”
“They killed them,” Lance said. “One after another. They started with Toby, then Danielle, then Sally…”
“…then Howard,” Annie finished.
“We hid in a room under the floorboards inside the main bedroom when they first attacked the house. I guess the homeowners were using it to store valuables. We saw bundles of money in there.”
“There was jewelry, too.”
“We stumbled across it by accident when we first moved in. We didn’t really have any uses for it until last night when they came. Usually they don’t bother with the house. We make sure the place is completely dark at night and we seal ourselves into the rooms. We had barricaded the windows and doors, too.”
“Every night?” Will said.
Lance nodded. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it. Until last night.”
“What happened last night?”
“Usually the black-eyed ones might sniff around. Sometimes they’ll even bang on the doors or windows. But then they always leave when we don’t show ourselves. But last night, they didn’t stop. They just kept at it. I don’t know how, but they managed to break down one of the windows.”
It’s the blue-eyed ghouls. The others become unpredictable when they’re around…
“We barely got into the hidden room in time,” Annie said. “Then the screaming started…”
“They played games with them,” Lance said, and his eyes drifted over into the fields that surrounded the property. “It’s so quiet at night, you can hear a long way even through walls.”
Annie reached over and squeezed Lance’s hand.
“What about the house?” Will asked. “What happened to it?”
“We burned it down,” Lance said. “After last night, there wasn’t any point in staying. And they were in there…”
“They?”
“The creatures. They were hiding in the basement. When we came out of the secret room, we could hear them moving around under the house.”
“Lance thought we might be able to kill a few of them,” Annie said. She was staring back at the house now. The smoke had all but vanished, leaving behind just a twisted, blackened carcass. “I don’t know if it worked, or if the basement is still down there under all that. Should we…find out?”
Will exchanged another look with Danny.
“There could be a couple of Mister Blue Eyes down there,” Danny said. “Might be worth it to find out.”
“Through that?” Will said. “It’d take the whole day to sift through the wreckage. We don’t have that kind of time with Gaby still out there.”
“You mentioned her before,” Lance said. “Who’s Gaby?”
“A friend of ours. We’ve been looking for her since Dunbar.”
“We saw a lot of vehicles coming from Dunbar all morning.”
“Was one of them a Silverado truck?” Danny asked.
“I don’t know, I didn’t see one. Annie?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what a Silverado looks like. And I only got glimpses of them from the barn.”
“But there was something else,” Lance said. “We heard shooting from farther up the road.”
“How long ago?” Danny asked.
“I don’t know, I think thirty or forty minutes?”
“The timing’s about right,” Will said. He looked back at Lance and Annie. “You guys can come—”
“Yes,” Annie said before Will could even finish.
Lance grinned sheepishly. “What she said.”
The Chevy Silverado was inside a ditch, resting on its back bumper with the front grill facing the cloudless sky. Harsh sun beat down on its chrome and hood, streams of sunlight piercing bullet holes that stitched the front windshield. There was a dead man outside the driver side door with two bullet holes in his chest. All the car windows were broken, with glass sprinkled liberally over the seats and spread out among the splashes of blood.
Will climbed up the ditch and back onto the highway, where the Bronco idled in the road. Lance and Annie were standing outside in the sun glancing around.
“Bad news?” Lance said, looking over.
“Not good news,” Will said.
He blinked up the road at Danny, walking back from a lone red pickup parked across one of the two-lane roads. He was dropping spent bullet casings from one hand.
“Anything?” Will called.
“There was a second car,” Danny shouted back. “Some kind of half-assed roadside ambush.”
“To stop the Silverado.”
“Looks like it. And these,” he said, flicking one of the bullet casings in Will’s direction.
Will crouched and picked up a 5.56x45mm brass casing. Assault rifles. Probably M4 or AR-15. God knew there were plenty of those just lying around these days.
God bless the Second Amendment.
“There’s a dead body up there,” Danny said. “Poor bastard decided to go up against the Silverado and—surprise—lost. Any signs of Gaby?”
“No, and that’s a good thing.”
“Pray t
ell.”
“No body means she’s still alive.”
Danny peered up the road. “They must have taken off in the third car. That thing’s leaking motor oil. I get the feeling they intended to dump it, grab the first vehicle that came across their little slapdash barricade, but—” he looked over at the undercarriage of the Silverado “—I’m thinking that didn’t quite work out as planned. That car can’t be moving very fast at all. If we haul ass…”
“So let’s get to hauling,” Will said.
Danny was able to track the motor oil stain on the highway from the Bronco’s driver seat. This way, they would know if the vehicle unexpectedly left the road. It hadn’t so far. Will just hoped they could catch up to it before it reached the interstate up ahead. It was going to be difficult, leaking motor oil or not, after that.
He hung out the window listening for sounds that didn’t belong and scanned the horizon just in case the trail they were following proved deceptive. Lance and Annie pitched in, the couple leaning out their windows while armed with Will’s and Danny’s binoculars.
They were ten minutes into the pursuit when Will said, “How’s it looking?”
“It’s looking,” Danny said. “Whatever they’re driving, it’s leaking good. No wonder they were so hot to switch vehicles. I’m guessing the red pickup must have been in worse condition or else they would have taken it instead.”
“We’re pushing up on time here, Danny. If we don’t find her and hit the interstate soon, we’re not reaching Song Island by tonight.”
“I know, I know.”
They drove on for another few minutes, the only sound coming from the wind rushing through the vehicle and the engine churning under them.
Behind them, Lance asked, “Anything?”
“Nothing,” Annie said. “Just a lot of empty land. God, there is so much emptiness out here. We were so lucky to find the house.”
“Yeah, lucky.”
“I mean before last night,” Annie said softly.
“I know what you meant, babe. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Will imagined them smiling at each other back there, trying to comfort one another as best they could. The same way he would do with Lara...
The Purge of Babylon Series Box Set, Vol. 2 | Books 4-6 Page 39