“Here?” Gaby said. “In this place?”
“Four hundred people,” Morris said again. Her lips quivered, as if she was going to say something else, but instead she just closed her eyes…and stopped breathing.
Gaby stared at the woman in silence for a moment. A part of her thought Morris might be playacting, but that wasn’t true because ten, then fifteen seconds later, and Morris’s chest still hadn’t moved again.
“What did she say?” Nate asked, coming back over.
“Four hundred,” Gaby said.
“Four hundred?”
Gaby slung her rifle and looked around them at the toppled buildings, at the visible body parts. “They were inside when the plane hit.”
“Someone probably ordered them into the buildings,” Nate said. “They would have been able to hear it coming for miles.” He shook his head. “They would have been better off making a run for it; they were sitting ducks inside those buildings.” He wiped at some soot underneath his chin. “She said 400?”
Gaby nodded.
“Christ,” Nate said. “This isn’t right. Whoever did this—whoever ordered this…” He shook his head again. “This isn’t right.”
She didn’t know how to reply, didn’t know if anything she said would be even remotely enough, so she turned around and maneuvered past Morris and her mount instead.
“Come on,” she said, “there might be more survivors up the street.”
Nate followed, their boots crunching broken glass and concrete chunks as they stepped through puddles of blood.
And they hadn’t even hit the halfway mark through town yet…
“When it finished with the town, it did an extra gun run along a country road that runs parallel to a creek,” Danny said. “There are more bodies out there.”
“Survivors?” Nate asked.
“Maybe a half dozen vehicles made it through.”
“Thank God.”
Danny glanced down at his watch. “We should avoid the state highway from now on. Skip around using the smaller roads until we hit US59, then pick our way north to Starch. It’ll take longer, but better late than dead.”
“How many?” Gaby asked.
“How many what?”
“How many got caught out there? That didn’t get away?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does.”
Danny didn’t answer her.
“How many, Danny?” she pressed.
“It doesn’t matter, Gaby,” he said again. For a brief moment, he reminded her so much of Will, who could end a conversation with just a few words and the right inflection in his voice. “Let’s get going,” Danny continued. “I want to be in Starch by noon. Nate, it’s your turn at the reins.”
Nate nodded and slipped into the truck behind the steering wheel while she took a moment to look back one last time at the town. The clouds of black and gray smoke still loitered above it, as if they would never leave. From a distance, the carnage looked almost poetic, but she knew better; there was nothing artful about the bloodbath below those dull colors.
“Gaby,” Danny said behind her. “We gotta go.”
She turned around and climbed into the backseat as Nate fired up the engine, then maneuvered across the empty lanes toward the feeder road exit to get them off the highway. Danny was right: What had earlier been clear sailing to Starch—there was no such thing as traffic out here, far from the nearest big city—was now a wide-open potential kill zone.
Gaby leaned back against her seat, feeling impossibly drained by the long walk from one end of the destroyed town to the other. She closed her eyes and placed her cheek against the door, the interior of the truck swamped by the cold weather. In front of her, Nate’s Mohawk battled against the breeze, a sight that made her smile despite everything she had seen the last few hours.
“They don’t miss,” Danny had said as they approached the town, all the while listening to the series of chaotic explosions that were so loud even the road had trembled under their truck. “The Avengers are straight-on Gatling guns; they’re right in front of the cockpit so the pilots have to see exactly what they’re shooting at. And they hardly ever miss.”
“Four hundred…”
Gaby replayed Morris’s words in her head, heard again the anger and something that sounded almost like disbelief in the woman’s voice. She saw again the sadness and regret in Morris’s eyes as she stared off, as if she could see something down the street that wasn’t just ruins and body parts and blood. Four hundred people, except for however many had been in those “half dozen” vehicles that had managed to escape along the creek.
She opened her eyes when Nate said from the front seat, “What are we dealing with here?”
“I don’t have a clue,” Danny said.
“That Warthog. Where would something like that come from?”
“There are three Air Force bases in Texas that I know of for certain, probably more I haven’t heard of or been to. That A-10 could have come from any number of places. It’s not like Uncle Sam’s still around to keep them under lock and key. Frankly, I’m surprised this is the first time we’ve seen one of those things since Happy Times went bye-bye.”
“So why didn’t you and Will ever go looking for one? Or hell, maybe something more up-to-date, like an Apache?”
“Can you fly an Apache, kid?”
“Well, no…”
“Yeah, neither could we. There could be a fleet of AC-130s sitting around just waiting for us, and we wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing with them ’cause we don’t know our cockpits from our cockheads. Why do you think a commercial pilot makes more money than the guy who digs ditches?”
“Sorry, stupid question.”
“There are no stupid questions, just stupid people that ask them.”
Nate grunted before slowing down the F-150 and turning, taking them even further away from the highway. They were headed north now and soon would have to turn back west so they wouldn’t pass Starch by completely. The longer route, but the safer one, especially with that Warthog still up there, somewhere…
“Those people back there,” Nate was saying. “They didn’t deserve that. Even if they were collaborating with the ghouls.”
“No one deserves that,” Danny said.
“What are you going to tell Lara?”
“Hell if I know.”
“Are you going to tell her?”
Danny didn’t answer right away. Gaby found herself waiting anxiously for the answer, too.
“I don’t know,” Danny finally said. “I’ll decide when we contact them again, hopefully from the warmth and comfort of Harold Campbell’s facility this time.”
Gaby didn’t have the strength to join their conversation, and instead closed her eyes again and leaned tighter against the door. Winter was already here, but in Texas it was sometimes difficult to tell. Christmas was somewhere over the horizon, and with it another New Year’s Eve where no one would be celebrating, or singing Auld Lang Syne. Maybe the cold would help wash away the smell of smoke and blood that still clung to her hair and skin and every inch of her clothing. God, she needed a bath in the worst—
“Fuck, shit!” Danny shouted from the front seat.
Her eyes flew open and she sat up straight, was about to say something when she saw it—sunlight reflecting off the gray of its wings as it streaked toward them from the other side of the small feeder road.
“Out!” Danny shouted. “Get the fuck out and find cover now!”
She wasn’t even certain if the truck was still moving or if it had stopped when Danny threw open his passenger side door and leaped out. She reached for her own door handle with one hand, the other grabbing her rifle leaning against the seat. The door was opening and she was almost out when she remembered her pack and all the equipment—
“Gaby!” Danny’s voice, from the other side of the vehicle, booming in her ears. “Move your ass!”
She moved her ass, flinging the door w
ide open and throwing the rest of her out, one hand clutching her rifle.
Never lose your rifle. Never lose your rifle!
She stumbled and fell, saw the highway floor rushing up at a million miles an hour, and had to stick out both hands to stop her fall. She lost her grip on the M4 in the process and cursed herself (What would Will say?) when the road began trembling as if it was getting ready to split open.
She couldn’t help herself and turned her head and looked up, wondering idly if the Warthog streaking toward them right now was the same one that had laid waste to Morris’s town—
“Gaby!” Nate’s voice, piercing through her idiotic thoughts, as he snatched her up from the road with one strong hand.
Gaby fumbled with her footing, groping the air for her carbine lying just out of her reach on the road.
No, no, no! Never lose your rifle! Never lose your rifle!
Before she could break free from Nate’s grip to retrieve her weapon—he was much stronger than she remembered, his arms clutching to her in a viselike grip—they were both falling backward off the road and into a ditch.
She was flailing through empty air, trying to get her bearings, when she heard the terrible brooooooooooorrrrttttttttt of the A-10 as its primary weapon, the 30mm cannon, started spinning—
She landed in the bottom of the ditch, eating a mouthful of grass and dirt as she did so. Before she could spit out the earthly contents, the road behind her came apart and her bones shook violently. The Warthog swooped over them and she looked up, somehow seeing past the blades of grass covering her face.
The sight was almost magnificent—a gray metal eagle, its fixed wings spread wide and proud, flying much lower than any plane should. She expected to see bombs or missiles, but there weren’t any. Then she remembered: Of course it wasn’t carrying any spare armaments, because it had spent everything on the town. On those poor people.
“Four hundred…”
“Gaby, move it!” Nate shouted, pulling her up from the ditch floor.
She struggled to do just that, hating herself for reverting back to the eighteen-year-old girl she thought she had buried a year ago under Will and Danny’s tutelage. The refined Gaby, who had survived Dunbar and the farmhouse and the assault on Song Island, was nowhere to be found as she stumbled into the cold side of the ditch to keep herself upright.
Standing now, she could see the remains of the F-150 in front of her. It was a flaming wreck in the middle of the cratered road, its twisted metal frame little more than a barely recognizable shell of its former self.
No, no, she thought, because everything was in there. The gas cans, the supplies, the boxes of silver ammo…
Crack! as a piece of dirt and grass spit into the air less than a foot in front of her face as a bullet chopped into the ground.
Gaby looked up the road as sunlight gleamed off the hood of a black truck racing toward them. Erratic figures clung to the back, one of them aiming at her behind a rifle resting on the roof of the cab.
No, not one truck. Two.
Then the ground began shaking again as the Warthog swooped over them one more time, the wake of its passing nearly throwing her off her already wobbly feet. Nate, next to her, had to grab onto the ditch wall to keep upright. Her first instincts were to duck, as if that would save her from the plane’s weapons.
The A-10 hadn’t gone very far before it started turning. The sight of it, getting ready to come back for yet another pass, did something unexplainable to her. Gaby felt rising anger at the plane’s presence, the arrogance of the man—and she thought it had to be a man—inside the cockpit at this very moment.
She reached down and drew her Glock.
“Don’t!” Nate said, grabbing her wrist.
“What?” It was the only thing she could think of to say, just before he snatched the gun out of her hand and threw it up to the burning road.
Nate did the same thing to his sidearm before throwing both arms into the air, shouting, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” He looked over at her, saw the flash of anger on her face, and said, “Trust me, you gotta trust me.”
She did trust him, but she was also angry. Not just with him, but with everything that had happened. The town, the bodies, Morris, and that goddamn plane as it swooped by over them one more time.
But he was right. Nate was right. The Warthog. The two trucks. The men with assault rifles in the back of them.
Slowly, very slowly, the anger fizzled, and she turned around and mimicked Nate, raising both arms into the air just as the first truck—a dirt-caked GMC—stopped above them. The second vehicle—a slightly more beat-up white Silverado—squealed to a stop next to it. Men in tan military-style uniforms leaped out and swarmed them, rifles bouncing dangerously in their hands.
“Get up here!” one of the men shouted.
“Keep your hands up!” another one said, spittle flying out of his lips. “Keep them fucking up!”
Gaby and Nate climbed up, keeping their hands raised as high as they could make them. It was difficult to navigate the sloping side of the ditch without the use of their hands, but they both managed it anyway, though she had to use her elbows for leverage.
When she and Nate were back on the road, the men circled them, weapons pointed at their faces. They looked wild, almost out of control, and she realized at that moment just how close she had come to being killed if Nate hadn’t wrestled the gun from her.
She looked back at the men, searching for all the things she was used to seeing on collaborators, like Morris back in town. Instead, she saw bright red collars with a white circle in the middle, surrounded by sharp lines that were clearly supposed to represent sun rays. The emblem stood out against the pale drab of their fatigues, as did the all-white patch of the state of Texas over their right breasts with their names stenciled in the center.
Gaby’s eyes were pulled back to an AK-47 pointed in her face. The man behind it was in his late twenties, tall, and he stared back at her even as his forefinger moved dangerously (nervously?) back and forth against the trigger.
I don’t want to die. God, I don’t want to die.
She heard voices and looked across the road, past the flaming ball that used to be their F-150, and saw Danny, hands raised, being patted down by another soldier while the man’s comrades kept the ex-Ranger under their guns.
Danny must have sensed her, because he looked over and nodded, as if to say, “We’ll be okay.”
She wanted to believe him, even as one of the men grabbed and twisted her arms painfully behind her back. She let out a small grunt as someone else ran his hands over her ribcage, then turned her pockets inside out. Two others were doing the same to Nate next to her. Their captors couldn’t have been rougher if they tried.
Above them, the Warthog swooped low as it passed them by, the rush of icy cold air against her face a stark reminder of what had happened to the town behind them and the hell they had involuntarily walked right into.
We should have stayed out of Texas. God, why did we ever come back?
Will would never have let us come back here…
6
Lara
“This is bullshit,” Gage said. “I did everything you asked. I even taught the Mexican how to drive the damn boat. I answered every question he and that midget had. I did everything you asked.”
The ‘midget’? Oh, he means Maddie.
She fully expected this reaction from Gage but wasn’t quite prepared for the emotion behind it. If she closed her eyes and didn’t know who he was, or what he had done, she could almost believe he was being unjustly treated. Almost.
But of course she knew exactly who the man was; more importantly, what he had been prepared to do at Song Island if Keo hadn’t boarded the Trident and taken it over. She knew all of that, and yet she couldn’t help but ask herself for the twentieth time since she stepped inside the room:
What would Will do?
The problem with that was she knew exactly what Will would have done
, and none of it included locking Gage inside a cabin on the lower decks of the yacht away from the rest of the population. Will also wouldn’t have fed Gage twice a day and let him out to see the sun every other day. Will wouldn’t have done any of those things, because once Gage’s usefulness came to an end, so did the man’s reason for being.
But she wasn’t Will, and she would never be. One of these days she’d know once and for all if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
For now, it was just her inside a slightly too-dark room, trying not to gag on the musky stench that lingered over everything despite the open portside window. The cabin was big enough for two people, with a single cot in a corner and its own small toilet and sink. It probably had better amenities than Gage had given his past victims.
“You know that, right?” Gage was saying. “I did everything you asked of me. You wouldn’t have gotten off Song Island if it wasn’t for me. Who kept this boat running after that? Me, Lara. I did. Me.”
What exactly did he expect her to say? She knew what he had done, which was precisely the problem. She knew what he had done after Song Island, but she also knew, if not all the gory details, of what he had done before they ever met him.
Gage was not a good man. He was a killer, a thief, a liar, and an opportunist. Which was why she couldn’t allow him to mingle with the rest of the crew and wouldn’t let him go near the kids. That was also why he spent his days down here eating alone, watching the ocean from his window, and counting down the hours until either Bonnie or Benny came down to take him up for his hour-long alone time in the sunlight above deck.
“Where’s my reward?” Gage asked. “Where’s the gratitude? I deserve something, don’t I?”
“There is no reward,” she said.
“You promised me.”
“I didn’t promise you anything, except that you’d keep living. And you have.”
She wasn’t sure if that deflated him or if it just made him angrier. Gage stood across the room from her, watching her back with an intensity that probably should have intimidated her. He shouldn’t have wasted his time; she’d faced worse things in her life since The Purge, and she’d survived them all. Gage was, after all, only human.
The Purge of Babylon Series Box Set, Vol. 3 | Books 7-9 Page 7