The Fires of Atlantis (Purge of Babylon, Book 4) (40 page)

O
nce they realized
they weren’t going to catch up to the Bronco, the technicals slowed down, then stopped completely. An hour after that, they resumed traveling cautiously up Route 13, showing surprising patience. Then again, he guessed they could afford to take it slow and easy—the night was their ally.

Will checked his watch for the third time in the last hour: 3:16 p.m.

Three and a half hours before nightfall, give or take.

Josh’s soldiers were a kilometer out before he could actually see their vehicles as more than just flickering mirages under the sun. One was a bright cherry red mid-size Toyota Tacoma. The other was a gray full-size Nissan Titan. Both trucks moved on large tires and each had a soldier in the back positioned over an M240 machine gun
(Where the hell did they find those, and where can I get one, too?)
mounted on the roof by bipods. There was a driver and a passenger in each vehicle, making the total number six, unless there was additional personnel in the truck beds that he couldn’t see from his position. That was unlikely. It was way too hot to be lying down back there.

Not that he could see everything from the side of the ditch where he had been positioned for the last hour, bathing in his own sweat. Wearing the assault vest didn’t help, but Will was used to discomfort, especially with the smell of upcoming combat lingering over the horizon.

He lowered the binoculars and keyed his radio. “They’re on approach. One klick.”

Danny’s voice came through Will’s right ear. “Two little piggies went to market, while the other little piggies stayed home. Two little piggies in trucks, with more little piggies in the back with machine guns. Two little piggies are about to get shot, and they’ll be crying
wee wee wee
all the way home.”

Will opened one of his pouches, pulled out a granola bar, and took a bite.

“What are the chances we’re making it to the island today?” Gaby asked through his earbud.

“Not while they’re out here,” Will said.

The problem was the flat terrain around them. It didn’t matter where they drove, on or off the highway, because the soldiers would be able to spot them from a safe distance. That would lead to a car chase and a running gunfight. The Bronco was a decent vehicle, but it wasn’t going to stand up against two trucks with mounted machine guns. And those were just the bad guys they could see. There were probably
(likely)
more waiting closer to the interstate. A radio call later and they could easily run into an ambush without realizing it.

No, they weren’t going to avoid this. That much was clear now. The soldiers knew exactly where the Bronco had turned off the road, and it was there they were moving toward at the moment. Hopefully, they hadn’t also seen him and Danny making their way back up Route 13 on foot using the ditches as cover.

Hopefully.

“Better to shoot our way through, anyway,” Danny was saying. “Funner.”

“‘Funner’ isn’t a word,” Gaby said.

“You’re wrong and I’m righter,” Danny said.

Will imagined Gaby rolling her eyes back at their temporary base, where she was staying at the moment with the girls and Lance and Annie. The farmhouse was the best they could do in a pinch, since retreating all the way back to Dunbar was a non-starter. Gaby had mentioned a cemetery, but that was too far back, though he was impressed when she told him she had stayed in a crypt the previous night.

The enemy trucks were close enough now that Will could hear the sounds of their engines, even at their current slow, almost painfully deliberate pace. He swallowed the last piece of nearly stale granola down.

He didn’t have to use the binoculars to see them this time, with the Tacoma in one lane and the Titan in the other. The men in the back were swiveling the mounted LMGs around, looking for targets. They were scanning the ditches, fully expecting some kind of an ambush. The bipods holding up the weapons looked firmly attached to the roof.

He slipped the binoculars into his pack and scooted backward until the curved angle of the ditch allowed him to slide all the way down to the floor. He unslung the M4A1 and leaned back against the cool earth wall and waited.

“They’ll be on top of you in five,” Danny said in his right ear. “Try not to screw this up like you always do.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“That reminds me of a joke…”

“Of course it does.”

“Two high school best friends are sick and tired of being virgins, so one day they cook up a scheme to both get laid at the same time. One of the boys comes up with the perfect girl to seduce. So they go on the Internet and watch hundreds of videos about what girls like. When they’re finally ready, they plot their move. One day, as their target is walking home from school, our virgins jump out of a bush and both shout at the same time, ‘Hey, you wanna have hot sex? We guarantee we’ll please you!’ The girl squeals, ‘Ew, gross!’ Then she points at virgin number one and says, ‘I’m going to tell mom, Rob!’ And runs off. Virgin number two is understandably confused. He turns to his buddy and says, ‘Dude, we are so screwed! Why didn’t you tell me she was your sister?’ To which virgin number one replies, ‘Well, her room’s right next to mine and she’s always screwing guys every night, so I figured she’d be pretty easy!’”

“Gross, Danny,” Gaby said.

“You gotta be there, I guess.” Then, “Speaking of which, one minute until they’re on top of you, Kemosabe.”

“Roger that,” Will said.

Not that he needed Danny to tell him. He could hear the tires crunching against the hard asphalt. He guessed they were moving ten, maybe fifteen, miles an hour. From this distance, the drivers could see the bright red barn and the two-story house where Gaby was currently watching from, along with the Bronco parked in the front yard.

“I counted six,” Will whispered into his throat mic.

“Sounds about right,” Danny said. “Four inside, two in the rear. Speaking of rears—”

“Be careful, guys,” Gaby said, cutting him off. “I don’t like the look of those machine guns.”

“Neither do I,” Danny said. “950 rounds per minute is not my idea of a fun prom date.”

“What’s the range on that thing?”

“Don’t worry; they’re not going to be shooting at the house until they’re way closer.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better, Danny.” She sighed, then, “Where did they get something like that, anyway?”

“Probably the same place they got the rifles and ammo, and army boots, and MREs…”

Will glanced up just as the first truck—the Tacoma—was directly on the road in front of him. There was a slight squeak as the gunner swiveled the machine gun around on its bipod. The M240 was a heavy weapon at just under twenty-eight pounds, which was why it was more effective when mounted instead of being carried by a single soldier. It utilized an ammo belt, which was the source of the
clink-clink
noise he was hearing now as the dangling bullets tapped against the metal of the car.

“You good?” Danny said in his right ear.

“Go for it,” Will whispered back.

“I call shotgun,” Danny said just before a loud
crack!
rang out.

Will was moving even before the shot had finished its echo. He stretched up to his full five-eleven height and his vision filled with the cab of the Tacoma that had stopped directly in front of him.

Danny fired again, then again, and again. Calmly, putting every bullet where he intended them.

The driver was fumbling with the gear, trying to reverse, when Will shot him in the left temple, shattering the closed window in the process. The man slumped forward, his head slamming into the horn and causing it to fill up the countryside with a headache-inducing blare.

Then the
brap-brap-brap-brap
of one of the M240s firing, overpowering even the loud car horn. Bullets weren’t hitting the ditch around him, so Will assumed the man was trying to hit something else
(Danny)
down the road and still didn’t know he existed.

Will couldn’t see the Titan from his position, with the Tacoma in the way. He had to climb out of the ditch before he could see the rest of the road.

The Tacoma wasn’t going anywhere. He had shot the driver and Danny had taken out the front passenger and the one manning the machine gun in the back. But while the Tacoma was down, the Titan was still alive and kicking, its machine gun firing at Danny’s position, the
clink-clink-clink
of bullet casings pelting the bed of the truck like falling rain. A second soldier was adding his own fire, standing behind the open driver side door. Will couldn’t tell if the passenger was still alive on the other side of the truck. Not that he wasted too much time thinking about it.

He shot the machine gunner in the back, then put a second bullet into the man’s collarbone as he was falling down. The sudden silence of the M240 must have surprised the driver, because he stopped shooting up the highway and looked back, saw Will, and swiveled his rifle around just before a bullet chopped through the door’s open window behind him. The soldier stumbled forward, looked surprised, then collapsed to the ground in a heap.

Will maneuvered around the Tacoma, sweeping it for signs of movement, before moving on to the Titan. There was no body outside the front passenger side door, and when Will got closer, he saw the third man slumped over the dashboard with a neat bullet hole drilled through the windshield in front of him.

“We good?” Danny said in his right ear, his voice barely audible over the blaring horn.

Will didn’t answer until he had completed a full circle around the two vehicles. He reached into the driver side window of the Tacoma and pulled the dead man off the horn. Blessed silence.

“Right as rain,” he said into his mic.

“Anyone hurt?” Gaby asked.

“My butt’s a little sore from sitting down for the last hour and change,” Danny said.

“So what? You want me to massage it for you or something?”

“Would you, please?” Danny said.

T
hey dumped
the bodies on the highway and drove the trucks back to the farm where the others were holed up. They had been careful not to damage the vehicles during the firefight (bullet holes in windshields and broken car windows didn’t count) and as Will expected, there were more 7.62x51mm ammo for the M240s and supplies in the backseats. The machine guns would come in handy, and Will had no intention of giving them up now. He was already thinking about ways to set them up along the island’s perimeters in preparation for one of Kate’s assaults…

Gaby and the others came out of the house while they were driving up the dirt road. The farm was surrounded by fields of dry grass, which made it like every other homestead they had passed since starting up Route 13 out of Dunbar. At one point he imagined that horses, cows, and other livestock grazed the vast acres and kept the family fed. They might have even raised enough to sell at the market.

The two-story house wasn’t anything special, but it looked sturdy, with a front porch and peeling paint, along with evidence of rotting foundations if you looked closely enough. For their purposes, it would work just fine.

The thirteen-year-old girls, Claire and Milly, stayed close to Gaby the entire time. Milly looked just as shell-shocked now as when Will first saw her, but Claire seemed to be amazingly composed for someone who had just lost a loved one. According to Gaby, the girl he and Danny had found on the road earlier was Claire’s sister, Donna. In so many ways, Claire looked like a younger version of Gaby—strong, determined, and way tougher than most people probably had given her credit for in her pre-Purge life.

“Nice rides,” Gaby said.

“The machine guns will come in handy on the island,” Will said.

“Pump out some silver rounds for those belts and we got ourselves a bona fide ass kicker or two,” Danny said.

“We can’t use our silver bullets for them now?” Gaby asked.

“Wrong caliber,” Will said. “We’ll fix that when we get back to the island—”

He was cut off by the distant sound of car engines.

“Or not,” Danny said.

Will took out his binoculars and turned back to the highway. Men on horseback, maybe a half dozen, were galloping alongside a light green truck heading in their direction.

“How many?” Gaby asked behind him.

“At least six on horseback and a technical,” Will said.

The caravan stopped about half a kilometer away, and men climbed out of the back of the trucks and began taking up positions, the vehicle moving to straddle the two lanes. The riders climbed off their horses and began spreading out, some sliding down the ditches along the shoulders. They were already passing around bottles of water.

“Are those little rascals doing what I think they’re doing?” Danny said.

“Yeah,” Will said. “Looks like they’ve come prepared to stay a while.”

“Does that mean they’re not attacking?” Lance asked. He sounded almost hopeful.

“Maybe their friends have the answer,” Danny said.

He was looking down the other side of the highway as another technical appeared and parked across the lanes, while more men in uniforms climbed out of the back. There were no horsemen on this side, but Will counted seven men in all, including one perched behind another machine gun mounted on the roof of the vehicle.

“What are they doing?” Annie asked, sounding already panicked.

“They’re boxing us in,” Will said.

“Why?” Lance asked.

Will glanced at his watch. 3:59 p.m.

“Does this mean we’re not going to the island?” Milly asked, her voice on the verge of cracking.

“I don’t know,” Gaby said. She walked up beside Will and exchanged a look with him. “What now?”

He glanced back at the house, the barn next to it, and a smaller building they had checked earlier that contained farming equipment. Then he looked at both sides of the highway one more time to make sure the soldiers still weren’t moving. They weren’t. His first instincts were correct: they were settling in.

Night is their ally. But it’s not ours.

“Will?” Gaby said. “What now?”