The Gates of Byzantium (Purge of Babylon, Book 2) (14 page)

“How’s the patient?” the guy asked Lara.

“As long as he doesn’t go running around, he should be fine,” she said. Then she looked over at Blaine. “Will, this is Blaine. Blaine, this is Will.”

Blaine exchanged a nod with Will. “You saved my life.”

“I almost ran you over. Lara is the one who saved your life.”

“Thank you, for everything. If I can do anything…”

“You wouldn’t happen to know how to fix a computer, would you?”

“A computer?” Blaine shook his head. “I barely know how to turn one on.”

“Yeah,” Will said, disappointed. “Me, too.”

*

He heard children
laughing, which confused him.

There were two of them, and the way they talked and whispered to each other, like everything they said was their own private little secret, made him think they were actually closer than sisters. It was the kind of closeness only possible after you had seen what was lurking out there in the darkness.

Their names were Vera and Elise, and the young, pretty redhead who watched protectively over them was Carly. The other man in the group, Danny, had short blond hair and looked like a surfer, but didn’t talk or act like one. One look at him and Blaine knew that, just like with Will, he was ex-military. It was easy to see the difference between men like them and Folger.

When everyone was up, Carly and Lara prepared a big breakfast, using plates and silverware from the kitchen.

“We try to eat as big a breakfast as possible every morning,” Lara told him. “You never know when you might be forced to miss out on a meal later in the day.”

As Blaine stood at the foot of the stairs watching them get ready to eat, all he could think about was Sandra. He was certain Folger had found her in the woods, and that certainty was like a black hole in his gut.

Will came out of the garage next door with a big crate of supplies.

“Will,” Blaine said. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

Will nodded. “Give me a sec.” He walked over to the kitchen, put the crate down, then came back. “How are the stitches holding?”

“I’m not bleeding, which is a good sign, I guess.”

“Good. What did you want to talk about?”

“Outside?”

Blaine headed for the door, grimacing the whole time, and was glad Will couldn’t see his face. Walking was painful, but not nearly as painful as climbing down the stairs. He didn’t think those damn steps would ever end. His entire right side was so heavily bandaged he felt like a walking mummy—clumsy and awkward.

Will followed him outside and they stood in the sun for a moment. Blaine looked over the tall blades of grass that covered the unmowed lawn, then at the empty and silent road beyond. The thought of Folger with his filthy hands on Sandra gnawed at him.

“I need to go,” Blaine said. “I appreciate what you and Lara did for me. And I’m going to repay you guys back when I can. But I need to go. Sandra is out there, and I need to find her.”

“You can barely walk,” Will said.

“Doesn’t matter. I still need to go. Sandra’s out there.”

“You even know where?”

“Up the road somewhere. I saw those trucks in the back of the house. I can take one of them if you can spare some gas.”

“Gas and cars aren’t the problem, Blaine. The fact that you can barely walk without grimacing in pain is. How many did you say there were? Six?”

“Maybe six, yeah.”

“Let’s assume for the moment you found them. And that’s a big ‘if.’ You think you can take on all six?”

“I…” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t stay here. I can’t sit down and have a big breakfast when I know she’s out there. What would you do if it was Lara?”

“I’d make sure I could actually do something about it instead of just rushing off to die.”

“Bullshit. You’d do what I’m doing now.”

Will picked up one of the ceramic Labrador dogs squatting in front of the house and walked across the lawn. He placed the animal about twenty yards away. The dog stood one foot wide and three feet tall, and it stared back at Blaine with its tongue sticking out of its mouth like it was waiting for a treat.

Will walked back, drew his sidearm—a Glock—and handed it to Blaine. “Eighteen meters, give or take. Can you hit it?”

“What will this prove?”

“Don’t you want to know you can at least shoot something once you run across Folger’s gang? Or do you plan on sneaking up and whacking them from behind with a hammer? All six of them?”

Blaine automatically reached for the Glock with his right hand before wincing in pain. He took the gun with his left hand instead and turned to face the ceramic guard dog. It looked a hell of a lot farther than twenty yards. He held up the Glock and took aim.

Will stood silently next to him.

Blaine fired—and missed the damn dog by a good five feet. The gun kicked too hard. No, that wasn’t true. The gun kicked the way it always did, but he wasn’t used to dealing with it with his left hand.

He heard Will’s radio squawk. Danny’s voice: “Don’t tell me, accidental discharge?”

“We’re good,” Will said.

“Roger that.”

“Again,” Will said, to Blaine.

Blaine squared up this time and took aim again, resisting the maddening urge to switch the gun over to his right hand.

He took careful aim and shot again.

“Shit,” he whispered.

“Empty the magazine,” Will said.

Blaine fired again, and again, and again.

After the last bullet burrowed its way into the dirt next to the dog, Blaine let the gun drop to his side. He was tired. Not from all the recoil, but from the effort, from the missing. From not even coming close.

He handed the gun back to Will and waited to be chastised. Instead, Will silently reloaded the Glock and holstered it.

“It’s too far,” Blaine said.

“Is it?”

“No one could hit—”

Will casually drew the Glock, turned slightly, and shot the dog’s head off its shoulder with the first shot. Then he holstered the gun again.

“Shit,” Blaine said.

“We’ll eat a big breakfast first,” Will said. “Then we’ll get in our trucks, and we’ll go see if we can track this Folger asshole down.”

Blaine nodded back mutely.

*

The big breakfast
was canned corn, sweet peas, sausages, macaroni and cheese, and slices of SPAM. They finished it off with pineapple slices and a fruit salad.

Blaine felt stuffed just looking at the food and was able to eat only a little bit. The two girls more than made up for his lack of an appetite by devouring every canned product Carly opened and put in front of them. When Danny broke out some MREs for himself and Will, Blaine tried one for Chicken Pesto Pasta and managed to swallow half of it before his stomach started actively resisting him. He flushed it down with two bottles of warm water and instantly felt guilty about using up two for himself while everyone else seemed to be making do with one.

“Plenty to go around,” Danny said, seeing his reluctance. “Besides, when it rains, we just stick the bottles out and refill them.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Carly said. “The only good thing about the end of the world is there are unopened cases of bottled water everywhere. You can’t go into a store without kicking one over by accident.”

Blaine felt better, because she was right. He had found the same thing while traveling with Deeks and Sandra. Food went bad, but water always stayed the same. It had never occurred to him there were so many different varieties of spring water, and most of them tasted exactly the same. Warm.

After the big breakfast, they gathered up their supplies, including the portable fans from the rooms, while Will and Danny retrieved the trucks from the attached garage.

When Lara saw Blaine trying to help out with one of the carry-ons, she shot him a quick look and snapped, “Don’t even think about it. Go wait outside with the girls.”

Blaine sighed and went outside, where Elise and Vera were chasing each other around a group of trees nearby. Blaine watched them in silence for a moment, not quite sure what he was feeling. There was something so out of place about the girls that it took him a moment to realize it was because he hadn’t heard children’s laughter in almost a year, and he was still having a hard time processing it.

“They remind us of everything we’ve lost,” Lara said, coming out of the house behind him. “And what we stand to gain if we can find someplace where they’ll be safe.” She stood next to him, watching Vera and Elise, their heads barely visible in the field. “Things will never be the same, but maybe there’s a little bit of hope. They seem to think so.”

“Sandra thought so, too.”

“What’s she like?”

“Blonde. Tall. Green eyes. The most beautiful woman in the world.”

She smiled. “Hopefully I’ll get to meet her soon.”

That made him smile, too. “I would love for that to happen.”

Will and Danny pulled up in two Ford Ranger trucks, one black and one blue. Will climbed out of the black Ranger and waved him over.

Will pulled a map out of his vest pocket and spread it out on top of the Ranger’s hood. “We’re here,” he said, indicating a point on the map along US 287/Route 69. “This is where we found you.” He moved backward a little bit, then forward again. “Lancing’s up here, about twenty klicks from where we are now.”

“What’s a click?” Blaine asked.

“Kilometer. Klick. With a ‘k’.”

Lara, who was tossing a carry-on into the back of the Ranger, said, “You’ll get used to it. It’s always klicks and meters with these guys.”

“A klick is .62 miles,” Will said. “Twelve miles to Lancing, give or take. If this Folger isn’t a total moron, he would’ve looked for a place to bed down for the night—somewhere in Lancing.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s 8:17 
a.m.
You said he’s traveling with three vehicles?”

“Three vehicles and a big rig.”

“Big rigs are slow,” Danny said, leaning on the other side of the hood. “Even if they hike out of Lancing before we get there, they’ll be moving slow. The road’s too dangerous to go any faster.”

Blaine frowned.

It was my fault. The flat tire didn’t have to happen. I was going too fast. It’s all my fault Deeks is dead and Sandra is out there now.

Will folded the map and slipped it back into his vest pocket. “Let Lara take a look at your stitches one more time before we head off. In the meantime, I’ll give you something you can’t possibly miss with.”

“You got a bazooka?” Blaine asked wryly.

“No, but I have the next best thing.”

*

That “next best
thing” was a 12-gauge shotgun with the barrels sawed down to half its original length and a pistol grip that made it ideal for holding and firing with one hand.

Blaine shot at one of the big trees that Elise and Vera had been running around earlier, and found that he could hit his target—as long as the tree was only five yards away. Beyond that, he might as well be throwing pebbles. With the shorter barrel, the shotgun just didn’t have the same range.

As for reloading, if he used his right arm as a wedge, he could open the shotgun, shake out the spent shells, and push in new ones. He tried it a couple of times just to make sure it was doable. Satisfied, he grabbed a pouch of shells that Danny offered and settled into the roomy back of the black Ford Ranger, where he had been lying, bleeding, just a day earlier.