The Stones of Angkor (Purge of Babylon, Book 3) (26 page)

*

“Comm’s down,” Jen
said when she saw Will putting on his headset.

“What happened?” Will asked.

“See for yourself.”

She had discovered it back on the rooftop—someone had put a bullet through the box that controlled the helicopter’s communications system. The damage had been limited, and according to Jen, everything she needed to fly was still intact.

Will put down the headset and glanced back at her. “You didn’t grab the ham radio too, did you?”

“It didn’t occur to me, sorry,” Gaby said. “Should we go back for it?”

“No, it’ll take too much time, and the attackers already have too big a lead on us. We can always come back for it later.”

Gaby nodded, even though the idea of returning to Mercy Hospital made her squeamish. After the gunfight on the rooftop, she had raced back downstairs for her pack, in her room, which thankfully the collaborators hadn’t bothered to raid. That had meant running through the bloodied hallways, and she didn’t feel like doing it all over again.

“Let’s go, Jen,” Will said. “We’re burning daylight.”

Jen lifted them back into the air and angled the helicopter north. Benny, sitting next to Gaby, was staring out the window, looking back at the hospital. She could only imagine all the emotions going through him at the moment. Tom was back there, along with all of his other friends. Dead now, all of them.

Nothing lasts forever out here. I learned that with Matt and Josh.

“Will, your arm,” Amy said, leaning forward in her seat, her movements constrained by the kid in her lap. “Let me look at it.”

“It’s fine, just a scratch,” Will said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Will picked up his pack from the floor and put it on his lap, then took out a bottle of water. He unwound the bloodied handkerchief from around his arm and poured water over the wound, then wiped it down with a new, clean handkerchief.

Gaby leaned forward. “Will, I have the medical supplies back here.”

“We might need them later.”

He disinfected the wound, then wrapped gauze tape tightly around it, before shoving everything back into the pack. It didn’t look like much of a dressing at all, but Will didn’t seem bothered by its lack of aesthetics.

They didn’t know where the Humvees were going, but using their last known direction, Jen guessed they were heading toward Interstate 10 about two miles north. The highway was still the fastest route in and out of the city, but the Humvees weren’t exactly made to travel in heavy, unmoving traffic. Gaby wondered how they expected to maneuver through the car-strewn roads.

They found out when they saw cars along the thicker parts of the highway stacked up along the sides, where they had been pushed to clear a path for a Humvee-sized vehicle to move through freely. The attackers were heading east on I-10.

“Humvees can do that?” Gaby asked.

“No, but the ones I saw had thick sheets of metal soldered onto the front grills,” Will said, “like you’d see on snow plows. It looked like they’ve been using that method for a while.”

“So they’re literally just pushing cars out of their path.”

“Looks like it.”

“Makes it easy to track them,” Jen said.

“In the city, yes,” Will said, “but once they reach the countryside, they wouldn’t need to push cars around anymore.”

“I guess we better catch them before then.”

Gaby sat in the back with Amy, Benny, and the button-nose kid. The Bell 407 helicopter was designed for two in the cockpit and three in the back. The two gym bags filled with medical supplies, along with her backpack, were on the floor around their feet, further limiting their ability to move around. Benny was in the middle between her and Amy, his rifle between his legs.

She leaned against her window to get a better look at the highway stretched out below them, straining to see what lay ahead. The wall of vehicles pushed to the sides went on endlessly, and she wondered how far they could have gotten in the forty-minute head start they had on the helicopter.

“Any ideas where they might have gone?” Will was asking Jen.

“I-10 joins up with I-49 in about a mile,” Jen said. “If they keep straight after that, it’s sixty miles to Baton Rouge, the closest big city.”

“What if they turn off I-49?”

“Alexandria is the first big city, about ninety miles up the Interstate, and lots of smaller cities in between. There’s also Sandwhite Wildlife State Park.”

“What’s there?”

“About 15,000 acres of state-run woods, give or take.”

“So they’re probably not going there.”

“Who the hell knows. I didn’t even know these people existed until two days ago.”

Gaby looked over at Benny. He was staring straight ahead, trying to concentrate on something outside the cockpit window. Maybe the bugs hitting the glass. He looked so young and unprepared for all of this, but she had to remind herself that he had saved her life on the rooftop.

He’s full of surprises.

She put her hand over his. He flinched at the surprise contact, then softened when she gave him her most comforting smile. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. When she pulled back, he was blushing.

“You’ll love the island,” she said.

“Does this mean you’re taking me there?” he asked, grinning awkwardly back at her.

“One hundred percent.” Gaby looked across Benny at Amy. “Does he have a name?” she asked, nodding at the boy.

“Freddie,” Amy said.

“Hey, Freddie,” Gaby said to the boy.

He looked over at her for a moment, seemed to think about responding, but decided against it and looked back out the window instead.

“I’ve tried all day,” Amy said. “Nothing.”

“What about his parents?”

Amy shook her head. She didn’t have to elaborate, because they both knew what that meant.

“The loop’s up ahead,” Jen announced.

They were coming up to the intersection of I-10 and I-49, which, according to a big sign, met at a large loop called the Marabond Throughway. They saw right away that the trail of vehicles pushed to the sides didn’t continue along I-10, but instead moved toward the curving ramp that joined up with I-49. Because the off-ramp was a tight squeeze, some of the cars had been pushed off the highway completely and were now scattered along the ground below.

“I-49,” Will said. “They’re heading north.”

“Looks like it,” Jen nodded.

“The closest big city is Alexandria?”

“Yeah.”

“How many people?”

“Two hundred thousand, give or take.”

“A lot of people means a lot of ghouls,” Will said. Then, “How are you for fuel?”

Jen checked her gauges. “If we catch them before Alexandria, I should be fine.” Then Jen saw something else outside the cockpit window: “Do you see that? Is that one of the Humvees we’ve been chasing?”

Will leaned forward to get a better view.

“How many did you see take off?” Jen asked.

“Two.”

“Could that be one of them?”

“It’s possible.”

Gaby leaned against her window, trying to spot the Humvee among the cars. Instead, she caught a glint of something metallic—and a man leaning out the open side hatch of a parked van on the highway below them. He was wearing some kind of camouflage uniform and had something that looked like a long, green tube resting on his right shoulder. He was pointing it up at the sky—
right at them.

“Will!” Gaby shouted. “Down there!”

Will glanced back at her, saw where she was pointing, and looked down and immediately saw the man. “Rocket launcher!” he shouted. “Jen, evasive maneuvers!”

Jen jerked reflexively on the control stick and the helicopter banked left just as Gaby saw a rocket slash across the sky, trailing white smoke behind it. She looked over and saw Benny staring back at her, eyes wide with terror. On the other side of Benny, Amy was clutching the boy.

The helicopter kept turning, and though Gaby had no idea what a helicopter could and couldn’t do, she had a feeling this wasn’t something it was
supposed
to do.

“Hold on!” Will shouted from the cockpit. “Everyone hold on to something!”

Gaby grabbed Benny and he reciprocated, clutching on to her so tightly she almost couldn’t breathe. Then her world shook as something violently slammed into the helicopter and there was a loud, strange scream—not human, but more like metal cutting metal.

In the part of her mind where logical thought was still possible, she guessed that the rocket hadn’t landed a direct hit, because she was still alive and not incinerated. But it was close enough that the helicopter was spinning out of control and was clearly falling out of the sky. She had the strangest feeling of being weightless.

The helicopter was now emitting a loud, screeching noise around her. Or maybe that was Amy screaming. Benny’s grip on her was so tight, almost cutting off her oxygen, that she wasn’t entirely certain if everything she was hearing was coming from outside or inside her head.

She looked over her shoulder and back at the window just in time to see the rotor blades—still spinning at impossible speeds—plummeting out of the sky alongside them. It had come completely detached from the helicopter and was engulfed in flames…

‡

GIMME SHELTER

LARA

She spent most
of the afternoon trying to ignore the fact that she couldn’t reach Will at Mercy Hospital. Or reach anyone there at all. The only time she made contact was through Jen’s helicopter, but the man with the deep voice who answered hadn’t picked up the second time.

Her last contact with Mercy Hospital had been two hours ago.

Lara paced the Tower’s third floor, looking at the ham radio every few minutes. She willed it to squawk, for Will’s voice to come through. If not Will’s, then Gaby’s or Jen’s. She would have settled for just about anyone at the moment.

But there was nothing.

What the hell is going on over there?

Either they had turned off their radios, or they were purposefully ignoring her call. Neither answer made any sense. Had she allowed Will to walk into an ambush? Will was certain Jen could be trusted, and Lara had learned to trust his instincts. There was nothing “squirrelly” about Jen. Will would have noticed, just as Danny noticed it from West and Brody in the first few seconds after meeting them. The two of them just
knew
when something wasn’t right.

There had to be another explanation.

What the hell is going on over there?

“Still nothing from Mercy Hospital?” Danny asked, coming through the door behind her.

She shook her head and continued pacing.

“Nothing,” Maddie, standing at the window, said.

“What about our designated emergency frequency?” Danny asked. “If Mercy Hospital’s MIA, Will or Gaby would be using it to try to contact us.”

“I tried that, too,” Lara said, grinding her teeth. “Nothing.”

Maddie and Danny exchanged a brief look that they were probably hoping she didn’t catch.

“What’s going on?” she asked Danny.

“You’ve been up here for two hours,” he said. “Go back to the hotel. Go eat something.”

“Soon.”

“When?”

“
Soon,
Danny.”

Maddie put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “He’ll be fine, Lara. It’s Will. He’s pretty good at being fine.”

“I know,” she said, smiling. She hoped it was at least semi-convincing.

“Come downstairs and get something to eat with me. Danny will call if he gets anything on the radio.”

Lara nodded. “I’ll be right down.”

Maddie gave her a pursed smile that said she didn’t entirely believe her, but the smaller woman left anyway. Lara waited until she couldn’t hear Maddie’s footsteps before looking over at Danny. He was watching her closely.

“He’s in trouble,” she said.

“What else did the guy say?”

“That was it. He cut the connection and hasn’t picked up again. No one has. Someone
should
have, Danny.”

“It doesn’t mean Will’s in trouble.”

“Then why hasn’t he called back? He knows we’d be monitoring the emergency frequency by now.”