The Fires of Atlantis (Purge of Babylon, Book 4) (38 page)

Gaby jerked the steering wheel left, knowing full well she was overcompensating but unable to relay that information to her hands.

“No, no, your right, your right!” Claire shouted.

Gaby righted the steering wheel and saw the ditch flashing by in her rearview mirror.

“Straight, straight!” Claire shouted.

Gaby grinned. Her own personal highway traffic controller. Now if only she could find Claire a pair of bright orange sticks—

Pek-pek-pek!

The front windshield cracked and Gaby heard a
whistling
sound as a bullet sliced past her right ear—an inch from taking it off completely? Two?—and tore off a piece of her seat’s upholstery. More rounds slammed into the hood, the
ping-ping!
of metallic ricochets echoing in the air.

“Get down, get down!” Gaby shouted.

She didn’t look back to make sure both Claire and Milly had obeyed orders because Gaby was too busy looking forward at the horsemen galloping up on them. Jesus, were horses supposed to be able to move that fast?

They were close enough now that she could make out six of them, like camo-wearing cowboys, a couple sporting baseball caps to keep out the sun. The country sky was thick with gunfire, bullets screaming around the car, digging chunks out of the road outside her window. The only reason she was still alive, she imagined, was because the soldiers were riding and shooting at the same time. It looked easier in the movies, but was apparently not so in real life.

But they weren’t completely terrible shots, either. Enough bullets were hitting the Dodge that smoke began venting out of the hood, and Gaby kept hearing glass breaking. The headlights, the windshield… Where else did the car have glass? And how long before every single one of them was shattered?

We’re going to die. We’re going to die on this miserable piece of sun-drenched highway. I’ll never get to drink ice cold water or sleep in my own bed again, or take a hot shower. I should have never gotten on that damn helicopter…

Then she heard an explosion and braced herself for the car to be engulfed in flames. But that didn’t happen. The hood was still in one piece and though smoke continued to rush out from underneath it, the sound hadn’t come from in front of her. It had come from under the car, which meant—

The Neon began fighting her and she knew one of the front tires had been punctured. Oh great. She had barely managed to get this far on four good tires, now she was swerving dangerously left, then right, then left again on just three.

What else can go wrong?

“Gaby!” Claire shouted.

“I know, I know!” Gaby shouted back.

She struggled with the steering wheel and searched out the shotgun and found it on the floor of the front passenger seat. There was no choice now. If she kept backing up, she would end up in the ditch again and that would be it. If the Silverado hadn’t been able to survive that kind of drop, there was no way the sedan, in its current sad state, would even come close.

“Stay down!” Gaby shouted just before she slammed down on the brake.

The car swerved, coming to a stop with the front bumper pointing at the left side shoulder and the front passenger side facing up the highway. Gaby put the car in park and lunged for the shotgun. In order to reach the weapon, she had to lay across both front seats, and when she scrambled up on her knees, the first thing she saw was one of the horsemen
right outside the window
.

Gaby pulled the trigger, prayed that Harrison had a shell already racked, and was rewarded with a loud blast that, in the closed confines of the car, was ear-splitting. The buckshot tore off pieces of the open window, but enough of them made it through and hit their intended target. Red splotches spread across the rider’s shirt as he fell out of the saddle.

The other soldiers, seeing one of their own go down, reined up twenty, maybe thirty yards away. Gaby threw herself back down to the seats as gunfire filled the air once again.

The
ping-ping-ping!
of bullets punching through the Dodge’s side, the warbling shrill of Milly screaming at the top of her lungs and her own labored breathing filling her ears all in one loud rush. Then there was another
boom!
as one more tire exploded and the car dipped slightly behind her.

Gaby gripped the shotgun and kept her head down. Glass pelted her from every direction, the noise of bullets
whistling
above her head like missiles. It was impossible to rack the shotgun and load a new shell while still handcuffed, so she had to grab the forend with both hands and pulled it back before returning her finger to the trigger.

She bided her time, keeping her eyes on the open front passenger door window above her, waiting for a head to appear on the other side like last time. But they had apparently learned their lesson and no one came close enough for her to shoot. They didn’t have to, either, because they could destroy the car from a distance just fine, which seemed to be what they were trying to do. The seats around her were perforated, the dashboard to her left literally coming apart by the second, and glass continued to rain down on her, cutting her arms. She might have been bleeding from her face
(again)
, but she couldn’t be sure.

She didn’t know how long she lay there across the two front seats holding the shotgun, small and large shards of glass falling off her body with every slight movement she made or breath she took. It could have been a minute. Or a few seconds. Hell, it could have been an hour for all she knew.

We’re going to die. We’re all going to die.

There was a silver lining, though. If she died out here, she wouldn’t have to face Josh again. So there was that—

Silence.

She looked up, shocked by what she was hearing—or
not
hearing.

The shooting had stopped.

A trick? Were they moving toward her now? Maybe they wanted her alive after all. Or maybe they thought she was already dead. All she had to do was look around her at what was left of the Dodge’s interior and realize it was a miracle she wasn’t already bleeding to death from a dozen bullet holes—

Pop-pop-pop
as a new round of gunfire erupted, but this time the walls of the car were unaffected. They were shooting
over
her.

What the hell?

She was still trying to figure out what was happening when another volley joined in, except these new ones were coming
from behind her.

At first she thought some of the horsemen had somehow managed to outflank her. Those horses could probably maneuver over the deep ditches better than a car, but if that was the case, why didn’t they just run up and shoot her through the driver side window?

She was about to flip over onto her back and face her attacker when she felt a rush of wind and the door creaked open first. Gaby had no choice and scrambled up to her knees, turning the shotgun around.

A familiar voice said, “Whoa there, G.I. Jane.”

A hand grabbed her by the shirt collar and jerked her off the seats and through the open door like she weighed less than Milly. She was unceremoniously deposited onto the hot asphalt road, where she gasped for breath and looked up, then grinned at the figure crouched next to her, firing with an M4A1 rifle across the Neon’s hood.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” she said.

Danny didn’t take his eyes off his scope as he continued shooting, calmly pulling the trigger again and again. “We’ll talk about your terrible choice of fighting positions later, missy. Right now, grab the kids and head back to Big Willie.”

She looked over at Will, positioned behind the open door of a parked truck behind them, also firing calmly over her and at the horsemen farther up the highway.

Gaby scrambled up and opened the Dodge’s back door. Claire, her small body practically merged with the floor, looked up at her with wide eyes. “Come on,” Gaby said, and held out her hand. Claire took it and Gaby pulled her out. “Run to the truck!”

Claire glanced past her at Will.

“They’re my friends,” Gaby smiled.

Claire nodded and ran off, smartly keeping herself as low as possible.

Gaby looked back into the car and found Milly on the floor behind the front passenger seat. “Milly, come on.”

The girl hesitantly held out her hand and Gaby took it, pulling her toward the door. Milly leaped into her arms and Gaby, holding her tight, began backpedaling.

“Danny,” Gaby said.

“Right behind you,” Danny said. He fired two more shots before ejecting his magazine, making sure to catch it and put it away before slamming in a fresh one. “Go go go.”

Gaby turned around and ran, Milly clutching her so tightly she could barely breathe. She kept as low as possible while still running, which was amazingly hard with Milly’s weight pulling her down to the road.

Will said, “Hey, kid,” as she ran past him.

“Hey, Will,” Gaby said. “You look like shit.”

“Don’t tell Lara.”

“I won’t if you don’t tell her about my face.”

“Deal.” Will switched his rifle to full-auto, said, “Danny,” before firing off a single, continuous burst.

Danny ran toward them, using Will’s fire as cover. When Danny was back at the truck with her, Will switched back to semi-auto and continued firing off one round at a time again.

Gaby put Milly down behind the back bumper of the truck next to Claire. She took a moment to compose herself, her chest pounding so loudly she had difficulty hearing Milly’s sniffling. Gaby had to put one hand against the truck to steady herself before leaning back out to look up the highway.

There were four riderless horses out there now, two moving along the right side shoulder while the other two had escaped into the ditches and were grazing on sunburned grass. Their riders lay still on the road. The remaining two soldiers were fleeing up Route 13 at a fast gallop as Will fired casually after them, but by now they were already too far away to be picked off.

“What happened to your face?” Danny said to her.

“What happened to yours?” she said.

“Touché.”

Will fired a final shot, then walked back to them, reloading his rifle as he did so. “Anyone missing an arm or a leg or have holes where there shouldn’t be extra holes?”

Gaby shook her head and wiped at trickles of blood along her arms where falling glass had cut her. None of them were too deep, thankfully. “Just a couple of scratches. I’m good.”

“Yeah?” Will said, watching her carefully.

She gave him her best smile. “Good enough for now. Thanks for the rescue.”

“It’s a good thing we didn’t stop at that sushi place down the road,” Danny said. “You know how much I love roadside sushi.”

She looked at Will, then at Danny, this time more closely. They were still the same guys she knew, but in the week or so since she had last seen them, they looked beaten up, bruised, and battered. Danny, in particular, had a broken nose and cuts along his face, as far removed from the California blond surfer she was so used to. Will still looked like Will, which was to say, tired and weary, but somehow still moving around. But then, Will always did hide his wounds well.

“Man, you guys look like total crap,” she said.

“You should see the other guy,” Danny said.

“Bad?”

“Worse.”

“What could be worse than the sight of you two?”

“Dead.”

“Yeah, that’s definitely worse.”

Will had turned back up the highway. She walked over and stood next to him and looked over the roof of the Dodge. She hadn’t realized just what bad shape the vehicle was in until she got enough distance from it. All four tires were punctured and every window was broken. There had to be dozens of holes across the length of the car that she could see and probably more that she couldn’t on the other side.

My God. How did we survive
that?

Will fished out a pair of binoculars from his pack and peered through them.

“The interstate,” Gaby said. “They’re guarding it, aren’t they?”

“Looks like it.”

“How many are up there?”

“A dozen,” Will said, lowering the binoculars. “Horses aren’t the only thing they’re riding around on. Looks like they have technicals, too.”

“Technicals?”

“Improvised fighting vehicles,” Danny said, walking over. “Basically, they put a machine gun on top of a truck.”

“Oh.”

“How many?” Danny asked.

“Two that I can see,” Will said.

She saw a vehicle—maybe a truck—moving up the road toward them. She could just barely register the silhouette of a man standing in the back. Then a second truck appeared and joined the first, the two of them riding side by side.

“Here they come,” Gaby said.

“Come on,” Will said. “We’re not going to survive a stand-up firefight against those.”

Danny circled the vehicle over to the driver side while Will slipped into the front passenger seat. Gaby opened the back door and was surprised to find two people already inside. A man and a woman, both in their twenties.

“Oh yeah,” Danny said. “It’s a little crowded back there. But that’s what laps are for, right?”

Gaby held open the door for Milly and Claire as they squeezed into the back. “Milly, sit on my lap.”

The girl nodded. She had stopped crying and her cheeks were covered in dried tears, but she looked ready to start all over again at a moment’s notice.

Gaby closed the door as Danny started up the truck and reversed. Then he somehow swung the vehicle around until he had it turned a full 180 degrees. He stepped on the gas and they were flying down the highway, away from Josh’s approaching soldiers.

It was a tight fit in the back. Even though the other two people were doing their best to make themselves small, they had to fight for space with weapons and boxes of supplies piled on the floor. Claire ended up sitting on one of the boxes while Gaby had to place her legs over another one, with the edge of crates poking into her ribcage.

Danny looked up at them in the rearview mirror. “Just think of it as a studio apartment and ignore the smell. Annie and Lance, that’s Gaby. I have no idea who those kids are, so don’t ask.”