The Spears of Laconia (Purge of Babylon, Book 7) (11 page)

“You—” he said, looking back at her.

She shot him again, this time in the chest, before he could finish what he was about to say. The second gunshot sounded curiously softer than the first, which didn’t make a lot of sense, but then maybe her racing heartbeat, so loud that both her ears seemed to be thrumming, had something to do with that.

Gage fell back through the open cabin door and slammed into the floor with a heavy
thump!
, followed a split second later by the clattering of the knife at his booted feet.

The heavy pounding of footsteps came from another part of the boat, then someone was shouting her name.

She was still trying to figure out what was happening, or how she had ended up sitting in a pool of blood, when a voice gasped, “Jesus, Lara, Jesus,” followed by a sharp squawking noise and someone shouting Zoe’s name.

*

“So that was
your brilliant plan?” Carly asked. “You were going to West him? Girl, you should have talked to me about it first. I would have advised you to just shoot the fucker and throw him overboard. No muss, no fuss.”

Lara looked up quizzically at her friend. She found it hard to focus on her face for some reason, so had to settle for Carly’s bright red hair as a marker.

“What?” Carly said.

“‘West him’?” Lara said, her voice hoarse. “What does that even mean?”

“You remember West, don’t you? Yee-haw? You smashed his head in with a radio when he snuck into your room with a gun back at the hotel?”

“Oh.”

West. Jesus, she had forgotten all about West. He had come to Song Island with Bonnie and the others. There had been another man with him, but for the life of her, Lara couldn’t recall his name at the moment.

“You really did forget,” Carly was saying. “Is this one of Danny and Will’s famous compartmentalization thingies?”

“No, I just forgot about him.”

“Really.”

She nodded.

“I wonder what happened to him,” Carly said. “You think he ever made it after you and Danny sent him out into the world with just his boxers and a pair of socks?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really care, either.”

“Fair enough. He and his buddy did try to gut Blaine.”

She glanced around the room. She was glad to see harsh sunlight coming in through a window to one side
(Still daylight)
. Considering the unspectacular decorations along the walls and the slightly hard bed she was lying on at the moment, they had taken her back to her cabin.

“He used a piece of his cot, in case you were wondering,” Carly said. “One of the frames, according to Maddie. He must have spent days sharpening that thing. I guess when you’re down there with just that hole to look out of, you need to find ways to fill your time. Like making shanks. What an asshole.”

Lara looked down at her left hand, then lifted it as much as she could. It was covered in gauze, and the complete absence of pain was a surprise. In fact, she didn’t feel much of anything at all. A combination of painkillers and…something.

“What did Zoe give me?” she asked.

Carly shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me. You’re the third-year medical student; you tell me.”

“That was a long time ago. Feels like another lifetime…”

“Anyway, you bled all over the place. Freaked all of us out. Imagine what we’d do without you to boss us around.”

Lara managed a weak smile. “You would have gotten by.”

“I don’t know about that.”

There was something on Carly’s face, a seriousness that Lara rarely saw, and it made her wonder just how close to death’s door she had been outside of Gage’s cabin. She remembered pain, a lot of screaming, and wetness…

“I’m okay,” Lara said.

“No, you’re not,” Carly said, “but you will be. We’ll see to that. So you need to get some rest and we’ll do our best to keep this floating barge running in the meantime. I know it’s hard to believe, but we’re not all dopes. Well, not completely.”

“Danny?”

“Still nothing from that idiot. But he’s got four more hours until nightfall, so I’m delaying panic time until then.”

“What about Keo?”

“Also nada.” She frowned. “That’s worrying, right? It’s noon, Lara. He should have radioed in by now. We did come all the way down here just to pick his sorry ass up.”

She nodded. Or thought she did. Maybe a slight up and down motion.

“Blaine wants to go look for him,” Carly continued. “Or at least go closer to the coast, in case he lost his radio but is waiting for us on the beach or something.”

“No,” she said.

“Why not?”

“If we’re close enough to the beach to see him, then someone can see us, too.”

“Oh. Good point. I guess that’s why you get paid the big bucks.”

“Something like that. Besides, Keo can take care of himself.” She forced herself to focus on Carly’s face. “Tell Blaine not to expose us unnecessarily, understand?”

Carly nodded. “You’re the boss, boss.”

Lara saw something else on her friend’s face. It was something that had been there for a long time now, and that she had seen on the others’ faces as well. She knew this moment would come—had, in fact, expected it much earlier.

“What’s on your mind?” she asked.

Carly looked hesitant, like someone preparing to pick her way through a minefield. “Maybe it’s time we finally talk about why we’re still hanging around the Gulf of Mexico, why you keep delaying going to the Bengal Islands.”

Will…

“We need to talk about it sooner or later,” Carly continued.

Will… I waited for you. I waited days and weeks for you.

Goddamn you. You promised me. You
promised
me.

“But it can wait until you’re better,” Carly said. “Zoe and I will look in on you through the day, make sure you don’t try to sneak off on us. I don’t think we can afford to lose you, too.”

The way we lost Will…

Carly turned to go.

“Carly…” she said when Carly was at the door. “When Danny and the others come back, we’ll go.”

“Are you sure?” Carly asked.

She nodded. Or tried to.

Carly pursed her lips into a sympathetic smile. “I’ll let the others know.”

“What about Gage?” she asked.

“We tossed him overboard. Gage being a piece of shit human being and all, we thought it was about time he contributed to the world by feeding the fishes.”

“Good,” she said, closing her eyes.

Will’s voice echoing inside her head, the way it had ever since that last night on Song Island:

“Whatever happens, keep moving forward. Don’t stop to look back. Keep moving forward, because that’s how we survive.”

*

It was dark
outside her window when she opened her eyes a second time. Alarm bells immediately went off and didn’t stop until she could hear the low howl of the wind outside, the gentle slapping of water against the
Trident
’s hull.

Safe. Still safe.

There was a wall clock, but she didn’t bother looking for it in the semidarkness. There was enough moonlight that she could make out the foot of her bed and a small figure huddled in the corner under a blanket.

It took her a moment to piece together Elise’s round face, the girl’s head resting against the armchair, long hair draped across her oval-shaped face. She thought about calling to Elise, telling the girl to go back to the room she shared with Vera, where she wouldn’t have to twist herself into a pretzel to fit into a chair. But she saw the way Elise was sleeping, as peaceful as she had ever seen the girl, and decided against it.

Lara was already on her back, so she didn’t have to do very much to look up at the shadows dancing across the ceiling. Instead of making her nervous, they soothed her nerves, and she didn’t move for the longest time. The drugs Zoe had given her prevented her from fully concentrating on any one thing, including all the rambling thoughts inside her head, for which she was grateful for.

A soft
thoom
from somewhere in the distance made her glance toward the door. She only heard it because everything else was so quiet. If she thought the nights on Song Island could be deathly still, out here among the waves it was even more pronounced.

There it was again:
thoom.

A low rumbling, almost like thunder, coming from a distance. Except there were no hints of raindrops pelting the roof above her. The
Trident
had had to move through two rainstorms in the last month, and she knew what rain sounded and felt like; this wasn’t it.

She climbed out of bed, relieved Zoe hadn’t connected her to any of the field equipment she had set up to take care of their walking wounded. Danny had been Zoe’s first and
(Thank God)
only customer so far. Someone had put her into one of her cotton jogging pants and sweatshirts, which explained why her body was so warm despite the open window.

Lara padded across the room, thankful her injury was confined to her left arm. How long had she been asleep? It was hard to gauge time by the darkness, especially with her head still swimming around in a medication-infused fog.

She passed Elise’s sleeping form, the girl completely oblivious—

Thoom.

Definitely not thunder. Or rain. It wasn’t loud or ferocious enough to be gunshots on the boat. Or nearby, which would have meant a second boat. And they were still out in the ocean. Or were they? Had Blaine moved them closer to shore?

“Blaine wants to go look for him,”
Carly had said, referring to Keo.

The door opened before she even reached for it, and Bonnie’s tall frame blocked her path into the hallway. The other woman looked shocked to see Lara standing there, her left arm bent at the elbow, held tight against her chest.

“You heard it, too?” Bonnie asked.

Lara nodded. “What was it?”

“Explosions.”

“Explosions?”

“From the beach. From Sunport.”

Keo.

“Where’s everyone?” she asked.

Bonnie held up her radio. “On the bridge.”

They turned right and went up the darkened hallway. Why was it so dark? Usually there were one or two LED lights set on dim along the corridors.

Next to her, Bonnie looked like she wanted to wrap an arm around Lara’s waist to keep her upright, but Lara was moving just fine. That was the good news. The bad news was that she was starting to feel a slight tingle coming from her left arm, a clear indication the pain meds were losing their effectiveness.

“Can you walk okay?” Bonnie asked.

“I’m fine. What happened to the lights?”

“Blaine switched them off.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t say.”

Lara could hear voices—Blaine’s and someone else’s—from the other side of the open bridge door in front of them.

“Did Keo radio in yet?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” Bonnie said. “But you’ll have to ask Blaine. That’s his and Carly’s department.”

The other voice belonged to Carly, and she was standing with Blaine in front of the console, looking out the wraparound windshield. They stood in complete darkness, with only streams of moonlight and the occasional blinking dashboard buttons to see with. Blaine was peering behind a pair of binoculars, and though she couldn’t actually make out the Texas coastline outside, she couldn’t shake the feeling they were much closer than they had been earlier today.

Carly glanced over her shoulder. “Hey, what are you doing up?”

“We’ve moved,” Lara said.

“I moved us closer to shore,” Blaine said. “Don’t worry; I switched off the lights before I got close enough to be spotted.”

She nodded, relieved. “What’s going on?”

“I’m betting my nonexistent week’s salary on World War III,” Carly said.

There was another
thoom!
in the distance, and like the previous ones, this came from the Texas shoreline, exactly where Sunport would be. As she peered out the windshield at the darkened world, a stream of red and orange flames appeared as if from a dragon’s mouth and slashed from left to right, before seeming to diffuse and disappear, leaving behind small pockets of fire that seemed to be…
moving around?

There was another
thoom!
This one was so loud, she swore she could feel the impact causing the boat to shake slightly under her bare feet, but that couldn’t have been possible given their distance…could it?