The Stones of Angkor (Purge of Babylon, Book 3) (8 page)

“What do you think?”

“If none of this had happened, Gaby would be getting ready for the prom and college, not learning to shoot and fight. I bet she never thought she’d be doing that a year ago.”

“I don’t think any of us thought we’d be doing this a year ago.”

“Yeah, laundry was never in any of my plans,” Carly said.

“Well, you’re really good at it.”

“Shut up, that’s not funny. How long did Will say he’ll be gone, anyway?”

“He should know by tonight. Right now, he’s talking to Mike—the guy leading the group over there.”

“Their version of Will.”

“Uh huh. He says—”

She didn’t get to finish because the radio clipped to her hip squawked, and they heard Danny’s voice: “Heads up, we have vehicles on approach.”

Lara unclipped her radio. “How many, Danny?”

“Four. Three trucks and one van.” He paused, then added, “They’re pulling into the marina.”

“I’m on the way.”

Carly abandoned the laundry and jogged out of the room with Lara, who headed for the closest side exit.

“I thought we shut down the FEMA broadcast?” Carly said.

“We did,” Lara said. “Even before it got blown up. Whoever these people are, if they’re here because of Karen’s broadcast, they’re three months late.”

*

Lara reached the
Tower and found Danny at the south window on the third floor, looking out with binoculars. Carly had separated from her outside the hotel, making a beeline for the beach to gather up the kids and bring them back to the hotel. It was a system Will had put in place, and everyone knew their roles.

Lara snatched the spare binoculars off a hook and peered out across the lake at the marina.

Or what was left of it. Will had burned it down, along with a storage garage. He had also set ablaze the two-story house across a small inlet from the marina at the same time, leaving only old trampled hurricane fencing behind. There were exactly eleven vehicles in the marina parking lot at the moment. A few hours ago, there had only been seven.

She saw tiny black dots climbing out of the newly arrived vehicles, the figures gathering near the water’s edge. She could tell they had spotted the Tower and Song Island by the glint of binocular lenses staring back in their direction.

“How many do you count, Danny?”

“Seven from the trucks, four out of the van,” Danny said.

Lara swung the binoculars toward the beach, at Maddie on the roof of the boat shack.

On cue, her radio squawked, and she heard Maddie’s voice: “What are we looking at?”

“Eleven people so far,” Lara said into the radio.

“Any ideas what they want?” Carly asked from somewhere else on the island, likely the hotel where she, Blaine, and Sarah were guarding the girls.

“Not yet,” Danny said. He glanced over at Lara. “What do you think?”

“Why are you asking me?” she said, meeting his gaze.

“Well, Will’s not here, so that kind of leaves you in charge.”

She stared speechlessly back at him.

Her face must have also looked stunned, because he grinned and said, “Oh come on, that’s surprising to you? Look, I don’t say this a lot, but Willie boy’s really good at this sort of stuff. Me, I’m just a lover and a fighter. Got a farmer’s daughter you want seduced? I’m your man. Need a way out of an Afghanistan mountainside covered in Taliban? Uh, ask Will. Failing that, ask Lara.”

It took her a moment to answer, but when she finally found her voice, the only thing that came out was an almost disbelieving, “Since when?”

“Since Will left four hours ago.”

Lara peered through the binoculars again, if just to hide her sudden—but quickly growing—anxiety. The idea of being in charge in Will’s absence terrified her. She was a third-year medical student, for God’s sake. They taught her how to sew up wounds and take care of colds, not to make decisions that could, potentially, lead to other people’s deaths.

“What do you think?” she asked uncertainly.

“We should at least find out what they want,” Danny said.

“I think we know what they want.”

“They’re a little late for that.”

“Which sort of makes it unlikely this could be a trap.”

“You think?”

“Think about it. If they’re collaborators, and this is some elaborate scheme to get back on the island, this is kind of…dumb, don’t you think? Show up three months after the last radio broadcast?”

“That’s a good point.”

“Or I could be overthinking it,” she added quickly. “I don’t know what I’m talking about, Danny. Maybe we should radio Will back and ask him.”

“Nah, I think you’re on to something.”

He said it with such absolute certainty she almost believed him.
Almost.

“I’ll take a boat over with Maddie and suss them out,” Danny continued. “Can’t very well just ignore them, can we?” He glanced at his watch. “Seven hours till sunset, give or take.”

Lara nodded reluctantly. “Be careful.”

“Don’t sweat it, doc. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“They end up being ghoul collaborators and kill everyone on the island as soon as they set foot on the beach.”

“Sure, there’s
that,
” Danny said.

GABY

She thought she
would have gotten used to the smell after a few hours, but four hours later Gaby was still unable to fully breathe through her nose without feeling overwhelmed. It wasn’t just the presence of forty bodies crammed onto one floor, because the tenth floor was certainly massive enough to accommodate ten times that number. There was something else about the place, about the whole hospital. Something in the air she hadn’t felt in a long time, and it took her a while to remember what it was.

Desperation.

She didn’t like how these people lived. Even before she found Will and Lara, Gaby had had a better existence than this. Sure, going from town to town, hiding in basements, didn’t sound like such a great time, but when you compared it to hiding
(stuck)
on the tenth floor of a hospital, with ghouls waiting in the nine floors below, it was a hell of a better alternative.

This isn’t a sanctuary. It’s a prison.

To escape it, she went up to the rooftop. There were a couple of guys outside smoking cigarettes. One of them was Benny, who had learned his lesson and hardly stared when she came outside. Instead, he offered her a cigarette.

“I don’t smoke,” she said. “It’s a filthy habit.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So why don’t you quit?”

“I guess I’m weak.” He gave her a shy smile. “I’m Benny, by the way.”

“Gaby,” she said, shaking his hand.

She had thought he was in his twenties when she first met him earlier, but up close she realized he was just a nice-looking eighteen-year-old kid. He sported amusing facial hair that did more harm than good, and he had pleasant enough light-blue eyes. The other boy, Mack, gave her a brief nod and turned away.

Gaby walked to the edge of the north tower rooftop, while Mack and Benny stayed behind near the access building. She wasn’t sure what their jobs were, exactly. Who was going to invade the building from the rooftop? The only danger came at night…

She looked off at the city around her. The domed building—some kind of basketball arena, probably—was visible across the street, along with the baseball and football stadiums to either sides of it. They were definitely in some kind of college town.

College.

She used to have plans for college. She’d had everything worked out, too. Good grades, after school programs, extra credits, stacks of college preparation books, and admissions forms from every school around the country.

What was that old saying?
“The plans of mice and men…”
Or something like that.

“There you are,” a voice said behind her.

Gaby looked back at Amy, who walked over with two cans of diet soda.

Gaby took one. “Thanks.”

She opened her can. There was no fizz, of course, and the taste was sludgy and warm, and she suddenly missed the freezer back at the hotel. She did her best to hide her disappointment and hoped Amy hadn’t caught it.

“Jen says you guys have a freezer on the island,” Amy said. “That would be nice right about now.”

“Refrigerators in our rooms, too.”

“So, ice and cold drinks?”

“Uh huh.”

“I’ve forgotten what that’s like.” She took a sip from her soda and made a face. “Yeah, I could really go for a little ice right about now.”

“Where’s Jen?”

“Asleep in her room. She always crashes after every trip. I personally think she does it on purpose—keeps going out there to tire herself out, because it’s so hard to sleep day after day in here. There’s not a lot to do, and you know hospitals…”

Gaby replayed the faces of the people on the tenth floor in her mind. Droopy, sleep-deprived, and pale. It was a depressing thought, and she pushed it away.

“What’s out there?” she asked instead.

“The University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Go Ragin’ Cajuns.”

“I’ve never seen a Ragin’ Cajun before.”

“They’re like your average Cajun. Only ragin’.”

“Ah.”

They shared an awkward smile.

Amy took another sip from her flat soda and made another face. “Ugh. This thing tastes terrible. You swear you guys have ice over there?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Good enough for me.”

“Are you going?”

“To Song Island?” She seemed to think about it. “If everyone’s going, I guess there’s no reason for me to stay behind.”

“Jen doesn’t seem to care either way.”

“It’s ‘have helicopter, will fly’ with her. I don’t think she cares about anything else, to be perfectly honest.”

“Was she in the Army, too?”

“She was the news chopper pilot for one of the local stations around here. You should have seen her at the beginning of all this. Ferrying people to the hospital like some kind of aerial avenger. It was beautiful.”

Gaby took another sip from the soda, thought about spitting it out, but didn’t want to hurt Amy’s feelings, so she forced herself to swallow it instead.

“Can you hear it?” Amy asked.

“What’s that?”

“The city.”

Gaby thought that was a strange question. She tried to listen to the city, but she only heard the whistling of the wind, the occasional
flap-flap-flap
of trash moving around the street and the parking lot below them.

“I don’t hear anything,” Gaby said.

“Yeah,” Amy said. “We heard them in the first few months. Dogs and cats. But we haven’t heard a single one of them for months now. The only animals that are safe are the birds.”

Gaby watched a flock of birds glide gracefully across the skyline in front of them, far from the reaches of the streets below…

*

She found Will
in his room, next to hers along the north tower. There weren’t nearly enough people for the tenth floor’s 200 rooms, so they had their pick. She guessed Will had chosen two rooms within twenty yards of the stairs for the quick rooftop access.

“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst”
was his and Danny’s motto. They did almost everything with it in mind, something she had slowly begun to adopt. It was a new way of not just thinking, but living, and it took more effort than she had expected, mostly because Will and Danny made it look so effortless.

He stood next to his window, staring out through rusted rebars. Every room on the floor had the same long, rectangle windows that stretched almost the entire width of the back wall. Will had dumped his pack on an uncomfortable-looking pull-out sofa, and his beaten up M4A1 rifle lay across the patient bed behind him. The good thing about staying in a hospital was that every room had its own bed and bathroom. Unfortunately, the bathroom didn’t have running water or working plumbing, but the bed was clean enough, if not entirely comfortable.

Will glanced over. “Settled in?”

“Lumpy bed, window you can’t open, and the smell of desperation in the air. What’s not to like?”

He chuckled. “What’s up?”

“About Mike’s people…”