The Ashes of Pompeii (Purge of Babylon, Book 5) (36 page)

Keo flicked the fire selector on his M4 to full-auto and emptied the remaining magazine into the group of black-clad figures directly in front of him. They were already angling left toward the opening in the woods that led to the hotel grounds. Most of the soldiers were irresistibly drawn to it like moths to the flame, while only a few stayed behind to use the beached boats as cover and to return fire into the woods.

He didn’t know how many had already fallen, and he didn’t bother counting. He just knew that men were going down as he oscillated his fire from left to right, shearing the leaves and branches that had kept him hidden until now. The smell of burning foliage filled his nostrils and Keo was still smelling it as he emptied his weapon.

He hustled to his right, ejecting the magazine and slamming in a new one as he went.

A group of charging men was returning fire. They didn’t know where he was exactly inside the tree line, but even an idiot could tell his general vicinity after his last barrage. And that was where they were concentrating their fire now. Fortunately he wasn’t there anymore, and was still moving right, continuing to use the woods to his advantage.

He took a step closer toward the beach, stopping only when he could see out again, and went down on one knee, ignoring the
zip-zip-zip
of bullets slamming into the section of the woods where he had been just seconds ago. He was now a good twenty meters from his last position and the soldiers were still stuck in no-man’s land. The group of battle-dressed figures that had unleashed on him was reloading, while others continued running toward the passageway.

Fallen black-clad bodies zig-zagged the length of the beach, stretching from the parked boats to the trees. That was a sign Danny and Gaby were doing their part. Not that he expected any less from the soldier, though the girl continued to be a revelation. The
pop-pop-pop
of automatic gunfire continued back and forth, still smashing against the roar of motors that had been left unattended as their drivers darted for safety.

The group that had returned fire on his last position had just finished reloading when Keo stepped outside of the trees and onto the beach, opening up on them. He felt the sand sinking under his boots as he pulled the trigger. He was so close to them that he didn’t even need to use the red dot this time; he just kept the trigger depressed until all four men had fallen down and stopped moving.

Keo quickly searched for more targets, but there were none to be found. The rest had already made it into the opening at the center of the beach and were on their way to the hotel grounds right this moment.

How many had gotten through? He couldn’t tell. If there were at least four per boat (five in some), that meant over forty soldiers, easily. And he was pretty damn sure he didn’t see forty-plus bodies lying on the beach at the moment.

He tossed the carbine, then unslung the MP5SD. The familiar feel of the submachine gun immediately reassured him, and Keo took hurried steps back into the tree line where he wouldn’t be exposed. He hadn’t gotten completely back inside cover when he heard the hellacious explosion of gunfire coming from the cobblestone pathway to his right.

It seemed to go on forever, and Keo found himself standing still and listening, wondering how many were dead or dying. That would depend on how many had managed to survive the beach.

Ten? Twenty?

A lot.

He looked back at the bodies lying under the moonlight. Too many to count. Some were his, some were Danny’s, some were Gaby’s. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before. Soldiers died—often. Even weekend warriors. And these poor bastards were only shot with small-arms fire. It beat having an arm or leg amputated by a large-caliber round from close range. He’d seen plenty of that, too.

You pick up a gun, this is what happens. Sooner or later, someone has a bigger gun, or has a better fighting position. Either way, live by the gun, die by the gun.

One of these days, that same thing would happen to him. Keo was fully prepared for it. He had been ready, even before the world ended. Surviving when so many had perished that first night had been a miraculous event. It was akin to making it through the Rapture. He was pretty sure someone, somewhere, had screwed up.

Keo looked back at the beach, past the unmoving figures and at the boats. Almost all of the motors had shut down except for a couple still running, still sending streams of sand and water into the air behind them.

He could take one of those boats and leave right now, take his chances back at the channel…again.
(Second time’s the charm, right?)
Would the sniper still be there? What about the men in the Jeep? Or was everybody already here, storming the beach? It made sense for the collaborators to throw everyone at them at the same time. That’s what he would have done—

BOOM!

The island shook under his boots and continued for at least two full seconds before settling again.

An explosion. Not a big one, judging by the short duration of the aftershock, but big enough for him to hear it over the continued churning of the few remaining motors on the beach.

Keo looked back into the woods, toward the northwest part of the island. He knew the sound (and feel) of an explosive device going off when he heard one, even from a distance.

“What was that?” a voice gasped in his right ear.
Lara.
“Anyone know what that was or where it came from? Someone answer me!”

No one answered for the longest time. Or maybe it just seemed like a long time. It could have been only a few seconds.

Keo looked back at the boats again. Nine of the vessels had gone silent, leaving a lone one to continue spinning sand into the air. It was a nice white bass fishing boat, just big enough to take him wherever he wanted to go.

So what was he waiting for?

He sighed, turned around, and waded through a sea of black and green and shadows, dodging trees and pushing his way north as fast as he could. He was carrying a noticeably lighter load now without the M4 and most of its ammo. The MP5SD was gripped tightly in front of him, and he used it to bat at branches in his path.

“The shack!” Carly finally shouted through the radio. “It’s the shack!”

“Shack?” someone else said. Male. It sounded like Nate, but it was hard to tell because his heart was beating too hard against his chest. “What shack?”

“The one at the power station!” Carly shouted. “It’s open! Lara, the shack’s open!”

JOSH

“It’s dark; I
think they turned off the lights,” Travis said, his voice partially obscured by the harsh sound of wind rushing against him. “I can’t see shit.”

“It’s an island,” Josh said, his own voice slightly muffled by the gas mask over his face. “It’s not going to start moving now. Just keep going straight and you’ll run into it eventually. Besides, that’s why I ordered everyone to pack night-vision goggles.”

“Have you ever assaulted an island with night vision?”

“Just get the job done,” Josh said, slightly irritated.

Travis might have laughed at the other end of the radio. Or snickered. It was a little difficult to tell, because sounds echoed inside the close confines of the tunnel.

“This is a stupid plan,” Travis said.

That’s your part of the plan, but it’s not
the
plan.

“Keep going,” he said. “We’re taking Song Island tonight—”
even if I have to sacrifice you to do it
“—because that’s what she wants.”

That did it. Just mentioning her was enough to shut Travis up.

Next to him, Sonia shifted her legs again, the soft
plopping
sound of her boots moving against the puddles of water that had settled and still continued to
drip-drip-drip
lazily from the ceiling above them. It wasn’t nearly as bad as when they were moving through the length of the tunnel about an hour ago. He was glad he was wearing combat boots because there was no telling what types of infestation had taken root inside the concrete structure ever since Will and the others sealed it up months ago. Or thought they had, anyway.

The gas mask he was wearing helped, the breathing apparatus filtering out all the suffocating stink of the long tube that connected the shoreline with Song Island, eventually opening up onto a large shack next to the power station.

Josh glanced down at his watch and was glad it had glow-in-the-dark hands. Travis and the boats had just started off from the marina a few minutes ago. It would take them a while moving at their current speed to reach their destination. Making them take off from the familiar marina was on purpose; Josh wanted the island to see them coming, to draw all their attention.

“How long?” Sonia called up the stairs.

“Five minutes!” a voice shouted back down at them.

Josh could see and feel the staccato glow of the cutting torches working their way against the steel shack door above the stairs right now. At one point, the people responsible for constructing Song Island had used the tunnel to bring supplies over from the mainland, transporting them by trucks to this cavernous room that looked like some kind of tomb at the moment, even with strategically placed LED portable lamps to light their way. The door was going to be a tight fit, and he would have preferred to use the wider cargo elevators, but those weren’t going to work without any power available down here. No, it would have to be the stairs and the shack.

He spent the next few minutes glancing at the gas-masked faces standing, sitting, or leaning against the thick walls around him. Thirty. That was how many heavily armed soldiers in battle gear he had brought with him through the tunnel, unnoticed by whoever was in the Tower at the time.

It hadn’t been easy, but once darkness fell and the island, predictably, went into action to get ready for the impending attack on the beach, Josh’s people were able to sneak over to the tunnel entrance and remove just enough of the rubble to gain entry. Under the cover of night, and wearing all-black while carrying nothing that would give them away against the blackness, they had made the almost mile-long walk from their vehicles to the tunnel entrance. Josh had been counting on whoever was in the Tower tonight being accustomed to movement on land by Kate’s creatures as soon as darkness fell. Removing the debris took time, but he had plenty of men to make short work of the necessary labor.

After that, it was a matter of jogging through the tunnel that extended under Beaufont Lake like an unused limb. The thought of moving under the large body of water had been unnerving at first, but that was just the side effect of having once “died” out here. It had been one of his worst experiences, and the idea of being trapped down here was almost paralyzing. But all he had to do was remind himself that the others were watching him, waiting for signs of weakness, and he was able to power through.

Drip-drip-drip.

Most of the men gathered round him looked anxious, and some were clearly terrified. They tried to hide it by looking away or chatting quietly among themselves, but he could hear the quivering in their voices even behind their gas masks. They had every right to be afraid. Even if their approach to the tunnel entrance had been discovered, Josh would have still stuck to the plan. He had brought plenty of men for just that possibility. Even if every gun on Song Island was concentrated outside the power station at the moment, Josh would have ordered these men out there anyway.

And they would have gone through with it, because
she
had given the order through him, and these men had sold their souls. Guns were scary, but a legion of mangled teeth coming at you relentlessly, night after night, was more terrifying.

Josh didn’t blame them. He remembered those nights before he saw the light and stopped fighting the inevitable. This wasn’t a war, as Will falsely believed; this was conquest. It was already over, and only the stubborn kept pretending it wasn’t.

Except for Sonia and a few others crouched nearby, Josh didn’t know the names of most of these people he was leading at the moment. If not for the name tags, he wouldn’t be able to tell one man from another, which, Josh had found, was a good idea. What was the point of memorizing the names of dead men?

What’s that old saying? Can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Or killing a few guys.

Okay, a lot of guys.

He remembered the looks on their faces when he told them their roles in the attack. Half of them wanted to curse him, and the other half wanted to shoot him right then and there. Travis, he was certain, wanted to do both.

But they did neither of those things. Because they knew who Josh was. He was one of the chosen ones. To disobey him was to disobey the ghouls. To disobey
her.

“Take the island,”
Kate had said to him last night in his dream
(nightmare?).

“I will,”
he had replied.

“Whatever it takes,”
she had said,
“Song Island has to fall. It’s become a symbol. It has to fall at all costs.”

But not at the cost of Gaby’s life,
Josh thought to himself now.

Drip-drip-drip.

She was on the island right now. His Gaby. He knew it with absolute certainly, even if he had no visual confirmation. She would have returned with Danny and the new arrivals from earlier, all because Mason had screwed him over and was solely concentrating on capturing Will. Josh guess he couldn’t really blame the guy. Mason was doing Kate’s bidding, just like he was. Just like they all were. At the end of the day, Kate’s needs were the only things that mattered.

He looked back at Sonia. “How much longer?”

She leaned into the stairwell and glanced up. “How much longer?”

“Almost done!” a voice shouted back down.

“Almost there,” she repeated to him.

Josh nodded and turned back to the gathered men. They had heard, too, and the ones who were sitting had stood and the ones leaning were straightening. Electricity filled the room, emanating from the almost three dozen bodies squeezed into the tunnel. They were ready, anxious, and terrified at the same time.