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

  “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?

  “You need to see this,” Blaine said, and handed her his binoculars.

  She stepped closer toward the windshield and looked through the lens.

  The binocular had night vision, which allowed her to see further than she could have with the naked eye. They were still too far away for her to make out every single detail, but she had no problems picking up the objects moving around in the fields beyond the beach. They looked to be on fire.

  There was another thoom! and for just a split second, the explosion lit up what looked like a vehicle surrounded by hordes of ghouls.

  “Is that…?” she said.

  “It’s a tank,” Blaine said, barely able to contain his excitement. “It’s a fucking U.S. Army tank.”

  7

  Gaby

  It seemed to take forever to get to wherever they were going, with Gaby blindfolded and lying in the back of a moving truck the entire time. Her legs were bound at the ankles, her arms twisted painfully behind her back. Nate and Danny were somewhere to her right, their familiar scents a welcome distraction from the constant bumps in the road. At least they hadn’t gagged her, thank God.

  She could also sniff the other two in the back of the truck with them.

  Soldiers. More soldiers.

  But not the same ones from Louisiana or the ones in black uniforms they had encountered in Hellion when they first made their way inland a few days ago. No, these were different men. Different loyalties. And different agendas.

  “What happened?” she had asked Morris.

  “You don’t know?” Morris had replied, blinking up at her through a layer of blood.

  No, she didn’t know, and neither had Morris. Because these men weren’t collaborators, and neither was the pilot that had laid waste to Morris’s town. These men were something else completely. Something more…dangerous.

  Her captors hadn’t said a word since she, Danny, and Nate were unceremoniously tossed into the back of the truck, and every now and then she could hear the Warthog in the background. Or, at least, she thought it was the same warplane that had destroyed their vehicle. The possibility that there could be more than one of them out there made her shiver involuntarily.

  Every now and then, voices managed to rise over the clatter of the moving truck. Muffled sounds, men talking through radios.

  One of the soldiers said into the wind, “Three, all still kicking.”

  “Collaborators?” a male voice asked.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” the man said. He was somewhere to her right, probably sitting on the wheel housing.

  “What do they look like?” the voice asked.

  “I dunno. Civilians. No uniforms, but they were packing serious heat. Probably had more in the truck before Cole wasted it. We haven’t asked them any questions yet.”

  “Okay, make sure they’re still breathing when you get back.”

  “Roger that,” the man said.

  Gaby waited to hear more, but there was just the continuous thump-thump of the truck’s tires going up and down the unpaved road under them. Each time they hit a hole or had to go over a bump, Gaby’s head lifted slightly, only to slam back down against the cold (and dirty) truck bed. She tried to time the rise and falls but could never get it right and gave up after half a dozen failed attempts.

  They must have been moving through a wooded area, because the temperature dropped noticeably despite the combined sweating of her, Nate, Danny, and their two guards. High tree canopies, enough to block out the sun in this part of the countryside, embraced her in cool shadows.

  She did her best to keep track of time, but it was difficult without her eyes. Besides, her ears were filled with nothing but the thump-thump of the tires. It could have been a few hours or less than that since they were captured. The warmth of the sun against one side of her face kept her calm, the usual dread of incoming nightfall staved off momentarily. She hadn’t realized how much living on the Trident this last month had dulled her survival instincts until she set foot back on land earlier this week. That mess in Hellion was proof of that.

  We got soft…and this is what happens when you get soft.

  She was angry at herself, at how she had handled the ambush on the road, and how close to dying she had been in that ditch if it hadn’t been for Nate’s fast thinking. She despised the feeling of helplessness, something she had tried to beat out of her ever since losing Josh to the collaborators and realized the only person she could afford to depend on was herself.

  You would have been so disappointed in me, Will. At least you weren’t here to see me screw up so badly.

  She was still trying to come to terms with her failures when the vehicle began to noticeably slow down. A little later, the sharp squeal and slightly burning aroma of well-worn tires braking wafted into her realm of smell.

  Footsteps as the two men in the back maneuvered around her, Danny, and Nate on their way to the back. The loud clank! of the tailgate being unlatched, followed by the bang! as it slammed down. A stream of voices, vehicles in motion, the extra body odor of a lot of people perspiring in the sun despite the cool air, and the clicks and clacks of…what was that? Metal? Trinkets?

  Bullets. She was listening to the sound of bullets being moved around in crates. Not just that, but they were making them, too. The evidence was in the thick taste of smelting metal in the air. The question was: Were they making silver bullets?

  Rough hands grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around before they began dragging her backward like a slab of meat. Then there was just empty air and for a moment she thought she was going to fall, but the same pair of hands maintained their grip and turned her around again.

  “Feet down,” a gruff voice said. Not the same man she had heard earlier on the radio.

  Gaby lowered her feet, touching nothing for the longest time until—there, solid ground. Dirt, not concrete.

  The same pair of hands pulled her slightly forward, off the open tailgate, and stood her up. “Don’t move and you won’t fall,” the man said.

  She stood still and
listened to more clinking and clacking going on all around her. There were a lot of people squeezed into a small area, and every single one of them seemed to be in constant motion.

  A man next to her grunted, then a familiar voice said, “Are we there yet?”

  Danny.

  She almost smiled, but didn’t. There was no telling who was watching and how they would react.

  “Where are we?” someone else said. Nate.

  “Shut up,” the voice from the radio said. “You’ll speak when spoken to. Got it?”

  “Can you run that by me again?” Danny said.

  The whump! of something hitting flesh.

  Danny’s voice again, but this time sounding like he had his teeth clenched in pain, “So that’s a no?”

  “Smartass,” the gruff voice said. Then, “Where does he want them?”

  “He’s in the hangar,” another voice said. “Take them over.”

  “On foot?”

  “We need the truck for transportation. Besides, you need to lose some weight anyway. The walk’ll do you good.”

  “Fuck you.”

  The other voice laughed.

  A hand grabbed Gaby’s right arm and held her steady as someone else cut the zip tie around her ankles. The same hand then pushed her forward. She took that as a sign they wanted her to walk, so she did. Hopefully she didn’t run into something, like one of the many vehicles moving around her.

  Her escort walked slightly behind her. A woman. Gaby could tell even with blindfolds on, because there was no mistaking the sudden difference in bodily smell between the guys who had brought her here and the one who had taken over.

  “This would be easier if I could see,” Gaby said, picking her way over uneven dirt floor, the rising heat of the sun beating down on her.

  “No talking,” her escort said. Gaby was right; it was a woman.

  “You have a name?” she asked anyway.

  There was no response.

  “Are we at an airport?” Gaby asked.

  Still no response.

  “Not the most talkative bunch,” Danny said somewhere to her right.

  “You okay?” Nate said from her left.

  “I’m fine, dear; don’t worry about me,” Danny said.

  “Gaby,” Nate said.

  She smiled before realizing he couldn’t see through his own blindfold. “I’m okay. You?”

  “Trying not to trip. And a little sore all over.”

  “That’s what she said,” Danny said.

  “Shut up and keep walking straight,” Gaby’s female escort snapped. She was sure the woman wasn’t alone, though her companions were keeping their distance.

  After about thirty seconds of walking silently across what felt like an open field, the woman finally said, “How did you know?” just as Gaby felt the ground under her switch from soft dirt to hard concrete.

  “Know what?” Gaby said.

  “That we’re at an airfield.”

  “Someone said to take us to the hangar.”

  “Ah.”

  “What’s going on? Are you guys making bullets?”

  The woman didn’t answer.

  “I thought we were talking,” Gaby said.

  “You thought wrong,” the woman said.

  “That’s what they used to call me in college,” Danny chimed in. “Thought Wrong Danny. Wanna know why?”

  “No,” the woman said.

  “Sure you do.”

  “I have a gun that says I don’t.”

  “Well, since it’s my personal motto that the gun is always right, I’ll save the explanation for later.”

  “You do that,” their guard said.

  They walked on for another five minutes, until the loud chatter of people, machines, and vehicles began to fade behind them. She wasn’t sure how far the paved ground went, but it seemed to stretch on endlessly. She was trying to remember how far they had walked when the ground began to vibrate and a loud rush of air hit her with such surprising force she started to fall over, and would have, if a pair of hands didn’t grab her from behind first.

  “Easy there,” the woman said.

  Gaby found her footing again and turned her head in a vain attempt to follow the object’s trajectory. “What was that?”

  “One of the Warthogs coming in for a landing. It’s on the other side of the runway, but they pack quite a punch.”

  Jesus, did she just say ‘one of the Warthogs’? Gaby thought, before saying out loud, trying to keep her voice as steady as possible, “How many of them do you have?”

  “Need to know, Erin,” a familiar male gruff voice said from behind them.

  “I’m not an idiot, Louis,” the woman, Erin, said. Then, with a push against Gaby’s back that seemed to indicate the friendly chatter was over, “We’re almost there. Keep straight.”

  Bright sunlight flooded the wide hangar through a series of high windows along all four sides. The arched roof looked overly tall, though the fact she’d just had her blindfold removed for the first time in a long time might have had a little something to do with her inability to properly judge dimensions at the moment.

  Catwalks extended from the bottom of the structure all the way to the windows, ending in platforms that looked big enough for a dozen or so men to keep an eye out on the surrounding area. There were metal bars over the windows, which, like the walkways, appeared to have been tacked on very recently. They definitely didn’t look as if they were part of the building’s original blueprints.

  The floor was coated in some kind of shiny material that reflected her face, along with everyone else standing around her, including Danny to her right and Nate to her left. She didn’t know if they were flanking her on purpose, or if that was just how they had been escorted inside. Not that she minded. She liked having them there at her sides, though she would never say it out loud.

  They had been led across an airfield and into a hangar, but there were no planes inside. Instead, the cavernous space had been converted into some kind of storage warehouse, with a small army of people in tan uniforms loading a pair of green Army trucks with plastic moving boxes, wooden crates, and metal containers. A woman with a long ponytail (That’s definitely not Army regulation) handed luggage over to a man crouched at the back of one of the trucks, and Gaby heard more of the clicks and clacks of loose items moving around inside.

  There were just as many sneakers as there were combat boots squeaking against the glossy floor as the flurry of people went about their business. More boxes, along with garbage bags and just about anything that could have been used as containers, lined the far wall of the building, waiting to be loaded. Duct tape, ropes, and strips of cloth hid the contents, though one of the boxes was slightly see-through, and Gaby was trying to peek at the objects on the other side—

  A loud crash! made her look away.

  One of the soldiers in the trucks had missed a handoff, and a gray plastic box had broken against the floor. Candleholders, pens, and silverware were rolling around. They were all silver. Every single one of them.

  They’re making silver bullets, which means they know about the silver.

  There was no panic—no angry voices or barking orders—and people got to work gathering up the spilled items and putting them back into other containers. More than a few of them, she noticed, looked too young to be wearing military uniforms of any sort.

  A boy who couldn’t have been more than fifteen, his tan pants hanging loosely off a slim waist, picked up a crate from the far wall and grunted his way over to a truck. The teenager’s shirt collar was green and featured the same white sun emblem that was on the collars of the men who had captured her on the road. Those men, she remembered, had red collars. Like the other workers inside the warehouse at the moment, the boy wasn’t armed.

  When one of the trucks had filled up, someone slammed the tailgate closed. The truck roared to life, then drove out of the hangar. As soon as it was out, another Army truck began backing into position.


  Gaby took the opportunity to look behind her at a steady stream of vehicles moving like busy bees around the airfield. She couldn’t see the entirety of the place from her angle, but what she could see told her she was dealing with a very organized group of people who clearly knew what they were doing.

  The presence of the sun eased her mind a bit, but she badly wished she knew the exact time. Besides taking their weapons, radios, and gun belts, their captors had also taken their watches. She hated not knowing how many hours she had before nightfall, especially out here. Things were so much simpler back on the Trident, where nightfall didn’t arrive with the same kind of crawling dread.

  She turned back around when a voice said, “Did you find any uniforms on them?”

  A lone figure broke off from the group of people in front of her. He had been there this entire time, she realized, with his back to them as he shuffled items between the back of the building and the trucks. The man pulled off work gloves and wiped sweat from his face with the back of his hand as he walked over. He wore the same tan uniform as the others, along with the Texas patch over his right breast, and the only thing that stood out about him was the black collar with the white sun emblem in the center.

  Red, green, and now black.

  The man was in his late fifties and stood eye-to-eye with Danny, but there was something imposing about him that had nothing to do with his height or size. It was in the way he carried himself, the stern, almost paternal look in his eyes. His name tag read: “Mercer.”

  “No, sir,” the gruff voice answered from somewhere behind her. “We searched the truck. Or what was left of it. Cole got a little trigger-happy and blasted the thing before we could take them into custody.”

  Mercer nodded, then looked at all three of them one at a time. He casually put his gloves into his back pocket before finally asking, “Who’s in charge?”

  “I guess that would be me,” Danny said.

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “Danny, but my mother calls me Daniel. You can call me that, too, but I’ll have to insist on at least fifteen years of child-rearing first.”