The Stones of Angkor (Purge of Babylon, Book 3) (52 page)

“Song Island?” he said.

She nodded. “Why not? Song Island or bust—” She hadn’t finished when a drop of water hit her on the head. Gaby sighed. “Or not.”

It had gotten much darker while they weren’t paying attention, and as soon as she looked up, more drops of rain splattered the car’s dirty roof.

“Well, at least the car’ll be clean by the time we get to Song Island,” Nate said.

“Captain Optimist,” Gaby smirked.

“Captain what?”

“Nothing. Get in.”

They climbed back into the Toyota just as the rain really began coming down, pelting and washing away the dust and grime from the front windshield.

“Let’s drive it around to charge up the battery,” Nate said. “We can decide what to do in the meantime.”

She drove in circles along the parking lot while the rain poured down around them, the unrelenting tapping against the roof sounding like gunfire. Twenty minutes later, with the rain still making puddles over the parking lot, Gaby drove back to Leroy’s and put the Yaris into park.

She looked over at Nate. “Tomorrow?”

“Probably the smart thing to do.”

“Should we look for another place?”

“We might not find one with burglar bars.”

“Yeah, but those burglar bars aren’t exactly in place.”

“I could bend them back into place.”

She gave him a doubtful look.

“What?” he said. “I absolutely could, even with just one good arm.”

“What about the house you guys were staying in?”

“It’s up to you. I’m good either way. Pawnshop or dank basement?”

She thought about it. “I used to live out of dank basements. Never was a big fan of it. Besides, they didn’t bother with the pawnshop before, even with the bent bars. There shouldn’t be any reason for them to pay attention to it now. Right?”

“Are you trying to convince yourself or me?”

“Both?”

He shrugged. “There was a door at the back. Looked like an office. It would probably be a lot more comfortable than a basement.”

She thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “All right. Let’s hope it has a couch at least.”

Gaby grabbed her rifle and pack and hurried out, rushing through the wall of rain. Nate followed her into the pawnshop, the two of them crawling through inch-high puddles. Water had flooded in through the broken glass opening and reached all the way to the back in thick, cold rivulets.

They were shivering from the wetness and the cold chilly air by the time they made their way into an office in the back, where they found a big desk with bags of old chips that had gone rancid months ago inside one of the drawers. A small fridge in the corner held warm bottled water along with some spoiled food.

Gaby left the office door open to ventilate the room of the thick smell of abandonment. There was just enough sunlight from outside to light their movements. The room had two doors—the one into the pawnshop and another one in the back. There were, thankfully, no windows to worry about, and the place hadn’t been touched in eleven months, which put her mind further at ease.

She opened the back door by sliding the deadlock and leaning out, saw a large forest clearing behind the strip mall. A bulldozer sat in the middle, surrounded by muddy water. Two trash dumpsters stood sentry at the end of the lot, rainwater bouncing off their lids.

“Anything good back there?” Nate asked from behind her.

“Just a couple of dumpsters.”

She closed the door and locked it, then walked over to an old leather couch next to the desk and fell down with a loud, satisfied
whump!

Nate sat down next to her and handed her one of the warm bottles from the fridge. “This is the life, huh? How could you possibly ask for anything more than this?” He sniffed the air. “What in God’s name is that smell, anyway?”

“Abandonment,” Gaby said.

“Oh. I was afraid it was me.”

She drank from her bottle, then opened her pack and took out some beef jerky Will had given her earlier. She handed one to Nate.

“I must have eaten a hundred of these things,” Nate said. “They’re starting to taste really gamey.”

“Better than nothing, so stop complaining.”

“Why are you always so bossy?”

She smiled and ate her beef jerky without any hurry, listening to the
tap-tap-tap
of the rain against the roof.

“How’s your arm?” she asked.

“A little sore.”

“You have any pills left?”

He fished out the bottle of generic Vicodin from his pants pocket and shook it, listened to the
clink-clink
of pills inside. “Should get me to the island in one piece. Lara’s a doctor, right?”

“Third-year medical student.”

“Close enough.”

He opened the bottle and swallowed a couple of pills, then sat back with a sigh. She sat quietly next to him, enjoying the
tap-tap-tap
of the rain above them and the stillness of the building.

“What do you think Will’s doing now?” Nate said after a while. “You think it’s raining where he’s at?”

“I don’t know. It looks like a pretty big storm. Danny could see it from the island.”

“Good,” Nate said. “This city could use a little cleansing flood.”

WILL

Will had almost
died—really,
really
almost died—only once in his life. That was thirty years ago when he had been born. The doctors told his parents he was a complicated pregnancy and that there was a very good chance he would die during childbirth, along with his mother. His parents, perhaps with more than a little of the famous stubbornness people often accused him of, refused to accept the diagnosis. Especially Will’s mother, Charlene (Charlie to her friends). Will was born one week early, fighting and screaming and gasping for air. He lived, and so did his mother.

So death wasn’t anything new to Will, even if he didn’t exactly remember any of the details of the last time it had come for him.

This time, though, he remembered every second of it in excruciating detail.

The bullet chopped into his side, just above the waist. It was a through-and-through, which was the good news. The bad news was the ground exploding and clumps of dirt and grass cascading all around him like waterfalls.

Will continued squeezing the trigger on the M4A1. The magazine burned through half of its load in a matter of seconds, and the carbine felt lighter in his hands with every passing heartbeat as a result.

It was a Ford Bronco, maybe ten years old by the looks of its paint job and well-worn front grill, and Will aimed for the front windshield. He stitched it from forty meters away and kept firing as it kept coming. The truck’s entire front windshield crumpled under the volley, and the driver jerked on the steering wheel as bullets slammed into him.

The truck made a sharp (too sharp) turn and spun, sending the two men in hazmat suits in the back flying across the air as if they had been shot out of a cannon. It helped that the two idiots were too busy shooting at him to hold on to the vehicle. One of the men landed on the ground a split second before the truck came tumbling over and crushed him into the dirt as if he were an ant. The truck continued rolling until it finally smashed into a meter-deep ditch that cut across the farmland, depositing window fragments and pieces of sheared metal into the surrounding grass.

Will quickly searched out and found the other man who had been tossed from the truck. He lay twenty-five meters away and looked unconscious.

He didn’t have a lot of time to take in the wreckage before the air was filled with new gunfire and the land erupted with dirt and grass again.

The three men who had been chasing him from the hill were coming, but they were still a good fifty meters away. They were also running and shooting at the same time, which from experience Will knew wasn’t exactly the best way to hit a target—even one that was standing still the way he was.

He calmly ejected the spent magazine and slipped in a new one, then flicked the fire selector to semi-auto. He willed his breathing to slow down, pushing aside the adrenaline keeping him upright despite the flow of blood pouring out of him.

Lara could deal with that later.

He took a deep breath and shot the closest man in the chest. The man looked as if someone had tied a rope around his neck and had suddenly yanked on it. One second he was on his feet, running full-speed, and the next he was lying in the thick grass, unmoving.

Will swiveled, and as he took aim on another target, a bullet came dangerously close to scalping him. He flinched and shot the second man, aiming for the chest, but got him in the hip instead. The man stumbled and went into a crouch. Will blinked sweat out of his eyes, then shot the man again, this time getting him in the chest. The man toppled forward and into the tall blades of grass.

The third man had reached the overturned Bronco and he dived behind it for cover.

Will turned and resumed jogging back toward the barn, ignoring the scorching pain from his right side. He put a hand down there, hoping to slow the bleeding at least just a little bit. He shouldn’t have bothered, because his hand was soaked with gushing blood almost immediately. What didn’t cover up his hand poured out behind him. He was probably leaving a wet, bloody trail that even a blind man could follow.

The third guy found his courage and leaned out far enough to take a shot at him. A bullet buzzed past his head, but Will ignored it and kept jogging. The guy shot again, but the bullet landed well off target this time.

Someone needs target practice
, he thought, chuckling to himself. Or did he?

Will slowed down until he was just walking now. Briskly. Maybe. It felt like a brisk walking pace, but he could have been just imagining that part. Just like he was probably making up the sudden reemergence of pain from that piece of glass he had pulled out of his leg two days ago.

Phantom pain. That’s all it is.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

He couldn’t hear any more shooting behind him. Maybe the guy had given up? Or maybe he was waiting to get closer so he could put a bullet in the back of Will’s head. Either/or. Will just didn’t feel like running anymore. This brisk walking pace was good enough. Probably.

The burnt orange barn with the stashed Ford F-150 was visible in the distance, still about half a kilometer away. It looked like a tiny red dot under the clear, bright sky.

The sun was very high up today, raining heat mercilessly down on him. God, it was hot all of a sudden. Will blinked once, twice, and for a moment almost lost his bearing against sunspots forming and bursting repeatedly in his line of sight.

He reached into his pack and pulled out the first bottle his fingers groped. He didn’t bother reading the label. He twisted off the cap with some effort, swaying a bit, and shook two pills into his mouth.

He paused for a second, then gulped down two more.

Better safe than sorry, right?

He snapped the cap back on the bottle and shoved it into one of the empty pockets on his cargo pants. He had a feeling he’d need it again pretty soon anyway. Easier access and all that.

His vision started to blur, and he thought he could hear the sound of water dripping against the grass. Like rain on a rooftop. He wasn’t even moving that fast anymore, and he still kept expecting the third guy to finally catch up and shoot him in the back of the head from point blank range.

Any moment now, buddy. Any moment now…

How far had he walked, anyway? Ten meters? Twenty? Fifty? It felt like half a day.

Surely, he was almost at the barn?

Then why was the goddamn red dot still a tiny red dot in the distance?

Every other second he expected to hear gunshots. Or the familiar drone of a pursuing vehicle. Did they only have one truck in the entire town? Probably not. He remembered seeing those five-tons. What other vehicles were in the town? Maybe not that many. He remembered the empty streets, people walking around. Like that couple with those two kids…

Back to the Stone Age. The only thing missing are horses and carriages. Yee haw.

The red dot in the distance started jumping from left to right, then right to left. Or was that him? When did he stop moving in a straight line?

It wasn’t long before he heard voices. At first he thought he was muttering to himself. That was a bad sign. Talking to yourself was not good, especially after you’d been shot.

But then he noticed the sound was coming from behind him.

Finally caught up, huh, buddy? Good for you. Good for you…

But the voice sounded familiar and female, and he distinctively remembered the third guy being male. A big guy. Kind of fat. Definitely not female.

Lara?

What the hell was Lara doing all the way out here? She was supposed to be on Song Island, safe and sound. He did a lot to get her there, because he cared for her. Hell, he loved her. Had he told her that before he left the island? God, he hoped he had. It would suck if she didn’t know how he felt.

She probably hated his guts by now. He didn’t blame her. He should have called her days ago. He should have waited for Gaby to come back with the radio and called her. She would have understood.

Lara…

The voice was insistent and calling his name. And it was getting closer.

Lara, for God’s sake, what are you doing out here? It’s not safe.

He couldn’t put his thoughts into words, because when he opened his mouth, only haggard breathing came out.

And it was painful. And difficult.

And really,
really
painful.

So he stopped trying.

But the voice persisted, and soon Will felt something against his left arm. He tried to lift his rifle to fight back, but it was too hard, and he surrendered. Something warm and soft pushed against him, and Will looked over, but he couldn’t see much of anything through the sheets of sweat covering his eyes.

Or was that blood?

God, he hoped he wasn’t bleeding from the head. That would really suck.