The Purge of Babylon Series Box Set, Vol. 3 | Books 7-9 Page 4

  “You think it saw us?” she asked.

  “Definitely,” Danny said. “We’re the only things moving down here for miles. The pilot’d have to be blind not to see us, and last time I checked, Uncle Sam doesn’t let blind folks fly his warplanes.”

  “Uncle Sam,” Nate said, looking at Danny. “You don’t think…?”

  “That the U.S. government’s back in play?” Danny shrugged. “I’ll be honest with you kids. I don’t know if I want that to be true or not.”

  “Why not?” Gaby asked.

  “Because it’s been a year since everything went tits up, and the Uncle Sam that shows up now isn’t going to be the one I remembered. Or necessarily want.”

  Gaby pulled out her map and laid it on the truck’s warm hood, the engine still churning underneath the paper. She glanced down at it, then in the direction the plane had gone.

  “Where’s it headed?” Nate asked. “Starch?”

  “If it keeps going in that direction and turns right,” Gaby said. “But why would it be headed there? No one knows we’re out here.” She looked back at Danny. “Right?”

  He nodded. “Last time I checked.”

  “So what’s it doing out here?” Nate asked, looking in the direction of the plane.

  Danny opened his mouth to answer, but he hadn’t gotten a word out when they heard something that sounded like a mechanical roar in the distance. It was a long string of noises, so distinctive and loud that even though it had clearly originated miles away, they could still hear it as if it were right in front of them.

  Brooooooooooorrrrttttttttt!

  “Danny,” Gaby said, breathless. “What the hell is that?”

  “The Warthog,” Danny said, looking off into the distance. “That thing I said about Godzilla farting? That wasn’t a joke. That’s it right there. That’s the sound of an A-10 raining death and destruction with 30mm Gatling guns.”

  The pavement under her trembled as another long string of brooooooooooorrrrttttttttt! filled the sky, like the bellowing of a great beast that had finally awakened after a long slumber.

  3

  Lara

  “Lara.”

  Will was back. Finally. After all the days and weeks of fearing the worst and almost giving up, he was finally here and calling her name, just as she knew he would if she waited long enough. It was all about faith, after all; not so much in things working out, but in Will keeping his promise because she knew he would if there was even an ounce of strength left in his body.

  Thank God you’re back. You had me worried there for a moment.

  “Lara, you there?”

  No. It wasn’t Will. It was familiar, but it wasn’t Will.

  She opened her eyes and blinked against the bright sunlight pouring through an open window. She had rolled into the rays’ path, somehow moving from one side of the bed to the other during the night without realizing it.

  “Lara.”

  She glanced at the two-way portable radio sitting atop the nightstand.

  “Lara,” Blaine’s familiar gruff voice said through the radio. “You awake yet? There’s something you need to see.”

  She leaned over, picking up the radio and pressing the transmit lever. “What is it?”

  “It’s a body.”

  “Did you say a body?”

  “Yeah. Showed up along with this morning’s currents.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  She threw the covers off and stumbled out of bed with the radio in one hand. A cool breeze from the window kept her from (mostly) having to smell yesterday’s clothing, still clinging to her. Falling asleep fully dressed was nothing new; if anyone ever noticed, no one said anything.

  “Has Keo made contact yet?” she said into the radio while standing between the bed and the small bathroom on the other side of the captain’s cabin.

  “Haven’t heard a peep from him since yesterday,” Blaine said. “Bad sign?”

  “It’s still early.”

  In the bathroom, she splashed her face with cold water from the sink, then gave herself a quick glance in the mirror. Puffy eyes. Dry hair. Pale and slightly cracked lips to complement dangerously tanned skin. Even the blue of her eyes looked duller than usual.

  The boat was quiet around her, like it always was early in the morning. Even more so these days with Danny, Gaby, and Nate gone.

  Because I sent them out there. Would you have done the same thing, Will?

  She wiped her face with a towel and left the cabin. She found Blaine at his post inside the bridge, standing behind the helm even though the Trident was anchored in place.

  Lara shivered a bit despite her thermal clothing, the December air ventilating from the open sky roof much chillier than the breeze inside her cabin. Fortunately there was always plenty of sun up here in this part of the boat. Blaine, who practically lived on the Upper Deck these days, didn’t seem to mind or even feel the lower temperature.

  “Showed up a few hours ago,” Blaine said. “I wasn’t sure what it was at first, but the waves kept bringing it closer.”

  Lara picked up a pair of binoculars from the dashboard and peered through it. She had to take a couple of steps to one side to see past the holes that dotted the windshield, the result of stray buckshot. One of these days they’d get around to replacing the glass, but that day was still far off.

  “See it?” Blaine asked.

  It was hard to miss even from a distance, because it was the only black thing in the clear blue Gulf of Mexico waters for miles around. The body was wearing some kind of black uniform. Now where had she seen that before?

  “Collaborator?” she asked. “I can’t make out the pattern of the uniform from here.”

  “Could be.”

  “Danny said the ones in Texas wear black. That looks black to me.” She lowered the binoculars. “How far are we from the coastline?”

  “Still twenty miles out. But it didn’t come from Sunport.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure. It’s been steadily drifting westward—from the east.”

  “Farther out to sea?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Could be part of a long-range boat patrol. Maybe it capsized. What was the weather like last night?”

  “Like this morning, but just a bit windier.” He paused for a moment, maybe replaying last night’s conditions in his head to be sure. “Even if Mother Nature did that, it doesn’t explain what it’s doing this far out.”

  Blaine’s voice was calm, as if seeing a uniformed body floating all the way out here, with no obvious point of origin, happened every day. It didn’t, but after all she—they—had been through, this wasn’t even at the top of their WTF list.

  She watched the corpse drift nearer, completely at the mercy of the waves that kept it afloat. If the Trident hadn’t been anchored, it might have washed right past them. It certainly would have last night in the dark. If she had learned one thing since being out here, it was that the vastness of the ocean was not to be underestimated.

  “If there was a collaborator boat out here last night, they might have been communicating through the radio,” she said. “Did you hear anything?”

  “Not a peep.”

  “You were up here all night?”

  “Maddie relieved me after midnight.”

  She stared at the blackened body in silence for a moment, its presence triggering alarm bells. They had done everything possible to avoid running across civilization since Song Island, opting instead to keep their heads down. Sending Danny, Gaby, and Nate back out there hadn’t been easy. It had cost her a lot of sleepless nights, and she wasn’t the only one suffering.

  “Speaking of the radio,” Blaine said, “not a peep from the expedition yet.”

  She glanced down at her watch: 7:45 a.m. “They’ll radio in when they’re awake.”

  “You think they’re still asleep?”

  “Time works differently out there.” She unclipped her radio and pressed the transmit
lever. “Maddie.”

  “What’s up?” Maddie answered.

  “You see it?”

  “Hard to miss. That’s a uniform, right?”

  “Looks like it. Grab Benny and bring it in.”

  “Sweet,” Maddie said. “A can of SPAM for breakfast, and I get to fish a body out of the water. Best morning evah.”

  Lara stood at the back of the Lower Deck, bracing against the bite of a hard wind and trying not to catch the cold that Elise and Vera had come down with a few days ago, a condition that kept the girls mostly confined to their rooms on the Main Deck. She watched Maddie deftly maneuver the inflatable boat toward them, with Benny sitting at the stern and the body they had fished out of the water just a black, indistinguishable lump around his legs. The tender was nineteen feet long, and it bounced against the active waves.

  “Ah, the smell of rotting corpses in the morning,” a voice said. “Now this is the life.”

  “Don’t exaggerate; it’s just one corpse,” Lara said.

  “Po-tay-to, po-tah-to,” Carly said, walking up next to her.

  Her friend shaded her eyes and peered at the approaching boat. Carly’s hair had turned a darker shade of red since they had begun living on the yacht, and, like everyone else, she had developed a noticeable tan.

  “By the way, when was the last time you changed clothes?” Carly asked.

  Lara sighed. “Don’t start with me.”

  “I’m just saying. As our fearless leader, you should at least comport yourself in a more scent-friendly manner.”

  “‘Comport’?”

  “What, didn’t I use it correctly?”

  “Eh,” she shrugged.

  “Give me a break; I didn’t have any fancy educumacallit,” Carly said. Then, “Speaking of illiterate ne’er-do-wells, when are we picking up Keo?”

  Lara smiled. “He hasn’t radioed in yet.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “That seems to be the consensus.”

  “But you don’t think so?”

  “I don’t want to jump to conclusions. He said they had a good place to stay last night. He could have just run into some trouble making his way to the beach this morning. Maybe a dead battery or something minor like that. The small things have a way of ballooning into big deals these days.”

  “I guess he deserves the benefit of the doubt, being that he sort of saved our bacon a few times and all.”

  “He said he’s been taking a lot of precautions since Galveston.”

  “Undead trouble?”

  “Them, too.”

  “That’s K-pop for ya. Guy knows how to get himself into trouble, doesn’t he?”

  “He’s not the only one.”

  She owed Keo. They all did, but her in particular. In the first few weeks after Song Island, there were times when she hadn’t thought she would be able to keep it together, keep everyone together. Danny’s condition, Will’s absence, and the chaos of the gun battle had all made her doubt every decision she made. If Keo hadn’t been there…

  You would have liked him, Will.

  “You think it’s a good idea bringing it onboard?” Carly asked, squinting her eyes at the tender as it drew closer to the Trident’s aft. “What if it has diseases or something? The kids are already sick.”

  “We’ll keep it away from the others, find out what we can, then toss it back into the ocean when we’re done.”

  “Tough boat,” Carly chuckled. Then, turning around, “You kids have fun. I’m going to the bridge to wait for Danny to call in.”

  “That’s a shark,” Zoe said, pointing at what was left of the man’s right leg—a stump that ended at the knee. “The missing fingers are fish nibbles. And these two—” she pointed first at the man’s cheek, then his neck “—are your department.”

  “Gunshot wounds,” Lara said, looking down at the two small holes barely visible against the rest of the man’s bloated flesh, which was pretty much every part of him that wasn’t covered up by clothing.

  The man wore some kind of urban assault vest, and water still drained from his empty ammo pouches long after they brought him on deck. A tactical gun belt with an empty holster sagged against his waist and thigh, the Velcro starting to lose its effectiveness after being drowned in the ocean for so long. There were two hollow slits where his eyes used to be, though he still had most of his left ear and the bridge part of his nose. There was a knee guard on his remaining leg and his black cargo pants were shredded, the tears revealing glistening pale skin on the other side.

  “He’s not dressed like a collaborator,” Maddie said. “No patches or name tags.”

  “Looks like a commando or something,” Benny said.

  Maddie and Benny had deposited the body on the slick swimming pool area at the back of the yacht. Zoe was crouched next to it now, holding a rag against her mouth and nose. Lara wished she had been that forward thinking. The body was bloated and had been in the water long enough that the face was deformed and fleshy and looked as if it would melt off if she so much as touched it. Zoe did all of her prodding with a pair of surgical gloves.

  “How long do you think it’s been in the water, doc?” Maddie asked.

  Zoe stood up, pulled the rag back, and took a breath of fresh air. “Hard to tell. The cold water probably kept it together longer than normal, and there’s still gas in the body, which resulted in floating, so if I had to guess…” She thought about it for a moment. “Anywhere from a few days to a week?”

  “Why didn’t the sharks finish it off?” Benny asked.

  “Contrary to what you see on TV, humans aren’t very high on a shark’s menu. There are a lot more manageable and easier-to-digest prey in the ocean. Imagine trying to eat a whole cow when there are burgers all around you.”

  “Which still leaves us with a lot of questions,” Maddie said. “What happened to the poor sap, who was he, and where did he come from?”

  “Well, Sunport’s the closest city,” Benny said.

  “It didn’t come from Sunport,” Maddie said. “Blaine said it was moving with the currents from farther out.”

  “It couldn’t have come from very far,” Zoe said. “When he was shot, he sank, then the gas raised him back up to the surface and the waves finally brought him to us.”

  “A ship, maybe?” Maddie said. “We always wondered who else was out here besides us. I mean, it’s a big ocean. There’s got to be more people, right? Before us, there was Gage and his friends.”

  “Maybe it’s the Navy,” Benny said. He sounded almost hopeful. “He really does look like some kind of commando. Maybe the U.S. Navy is still out there somewhere.”

  “For some reason, he doesn’t look military to me,” Maddie said.

  “Then maybe he’s from those Bengal Islands that Keo talked about. He said there were a lot of people there.”

  “The clothes he’s wearing, the gunshots…” Maddie shook her head. “It had to have been one hell of a gunfight.”

  “I still think it’s the military,” Benny said. “Blaine and I talked about it a lot, about what happened to all the Navy ships that were caught out here when everything went down. The aircraft carriers, battleships and destroyers, all those guys. They had to have gone somewhere.”

  “It’s been a year,” Maddie said. “If they’re still out there, we would have heard from them by now, don’t you think?”

  “What about the one in Colorado?” Zoe asked. “Carly said there was a colonel hiding in a mountain somewhere.”

  “Beecher,” Maddie nodded. “We made contact with him on the radio.”

  “What did he say about the rest of the military?”

  “He knew as much as we did. Which wasn’t very much.”

  There was a moment of silence until the others looked over at her. Maybe they finally realized she hadn’t said anything in a while.

  “What’s the next play, boss?” Maddie asked. “It might be worth it to find out where this guy came from.”

  “Maybe n
ot,” Zoe said. “People with guns, wearing combat gear, running around out here shooting each other?” The doctor shook her head. “I’m not sure those are the kinds of people we’d necessarily want to cross paths with. Not now. Not after Song Island.”

  “Doc’s got a good point,” Benny said.

  They were still looking at her, waiting for her to say something.

  What would Will do?

  “Can you learn anything else from him?” she finally asked Zoe.

  The older woman shook her head. “I don’t see the point. We know how he died. GSWs. Anything else he can tell us would be in his pockets.”

  “Already went through them,” Maddie said. “Empty.”

  “All right,” Lara said. “Throw him back into the ocean. Wherever he came from, however he got here, or what happened to him, let the Gulf keep his secrets. We have other things to worry about.”

  She was in the captain’s cabin, looking at the same old heavily annotated map of the Gulf of Mexico spread out on a table, that she had been using since they boarded the Trident back on Song Island. She had circled Sunport, twenty miles in front of them at the moment, and Port Arthur, where Danny, Gaby, and Nate had made land a few days ago. If it hadn’t been Keo who had called, she would never have strayed far from Port Arthur. Just the idea of leaving the expedition behind to come south made her feel sick to her stomach.

  This better be important, Keo.

  If he was even still alive out there. The last time she had talked to him, he had given her the impression he and his companions were barely a step ahead of their pursuers. What if they had finally run out of luck?

  She glanced at her watch. She didn’t know what she was expecting, but the silence from Keo nagged at her. Unlike Danny, who had already radioed in from some town called Wilden an hour ago, it was all quiet from the Keo front. The man was unpredictable and prone to rash decisions, but then again a lot of those questionable choices he’d made had been in her favor, so maybe she should be grateful—