The Gates of Byzantium (Purge of Babylon, Book 2) (16 page)

His second shot hit the man in the chest and the dark silhouette seemed to stagger for a moment before dropping down to the rooftop.

“One down,” Will said into the radio.

“You’re my hero,” Danny said.

“I never doubted it.”

He glanced across the road at Blaine, peering out from behind the small white building that housed the Shell. Will gave him the “A-okay” sign and saw Blaine acknowledge with one of his own, bending over at the waist to catch his breath.

“What about the water tower?” Will said into the radio.

“Still can’t see the bugger,” Danny said. “Haven’t heard from him in a while, though.”

“You think he bugged out?”

“He’s a bugger. They do tend to bug.”

Will stayed behind cover, peering out occasionally across the street, expecting someone to either replace the shooter on the Wallbys rooftop or appear somewhere else to take his chances. The only positive he could see was that besides the water tower behind them and the Wallbys in front, there weren’t a lot of other high places for a sniper to shoot from.

He looked back into the truck at Lara. She was still crouched on the floor in front of her seat, picking broken glass out of her hair. He smiled at the sight.

“Shut up,” she said, but smiled back. Then he saw her frown. “You’re bleeding.”

Will hadn’t realized it, but a piece of flying glass had cut his cheek. It wasn’t much, just a miniscule trickle of blood. He wiped at it with the back of one hand. “Just a scratch. Are you okay?”

She nodded back. “In one piece. What about Blaine?”

Will looked over in Blaine’s direction again. The big man was still behind the Shell, looking back at him before turning his attention up the street. Like Will and Danny, he was waiting for something to happen, for someone else to take a shot.

“He’s alive,” Will said.

“I should take a look at his wounds,” Lara said. “He must have torn open some stitches running that fast.”

“Later.”

Will heard a faint buzzing sound, and he thought,
Dirt bike.

The buzzing got louder just before the dirt bike appeared in the road about 120 meters behind them, coming out of a concrete parking lot. It turned left and took off in the opposite direction. There was only one rider that Will could see.

“Bugger’s got a motorcycle,” Danny said through the radio.

“What do you wanna do?” Will asked.

“He shot my truck. No one shoots my truck. I love this truck.”

“I’ll watch the girls,” Will said.

He jogged toward the blue Ranger as Danny was helping Carly and the girls out of it. The vehicle looked like it had been through a war zone. There were a couple of bullet holes in the front windshield, but it was still in one piece. Carly and the girls looked as if they were in shock, but were otherwise okay. Danny climbed back into the Ranger, turned on the engine, and reversed, spinning the truck around and taking off after the motorcycle.

Will motioned Blaine over. Blaine glanced up and down the street, just to be sure, before jogging back. This time he was moving noticeably slower and holding on to his right side.

“Lara,” Will said. “Blaine needs your help.”

Lara hurried out of the truck, looked around to be sure no one was shooting at her, then rushed over to meet Blaine halfway. He almost fell into her arms. She grabbed him, but his weight pulled her down to the road with him. Will ran over to help, and together with Lara, he carried Blaine back to the Ranger.

“His wounds are open again,” Lara said between labored breaths. “God, he’s a lot heavier than he looks.”

Blaine’s face was covered in sweat and his eyes were rolling in their sockets.

“He’s going to pass out,” Will said, just before Blaine passed out.

*

The shooters’ base
of operations was just past the intersection and across the street from the Wallbys. There was a group of city buildings there, including the public library, which was the big building he had glimpsed earlier. Next to it was the city’s police department, which also doubled as a courthouse. Lancing’s city hall was next door, though it looked remarkably small for a city of 12,000 people.

He saw the tracks of three vehicles that had recently called the parking lot home, including the multiple tire marks of a big rig pulling a semitrailer. The shooters were clearly part of Folger’s contingent, the same group that had shot Blaine and taken Sandra. The pools of leaked engine oil and air coolant still gathering in the parking lot told him Folger’s group hadn’t left the area all that long ago. Less than an hour, give or take.

They’re still here somewhere.

Up on the Wallbys rooftop, Will found a short man in military fatigues lying next to an AR-15 rifle, along with a pouch full of magazines. A cheap pair of binoculars and a Motorola radio were scattered nearby. Will collected the rifle and magazines, then searched the dead man. He found a wallet in the back pocket, which made him chuckle. Will hadn’t bothered with a wallet since the morning of The Purge.

Inside the dead man’s wallet, Will pulled out a Texas driver’s license that identified the owner as Hiller, thirty-four, from Fort Worth. Will tossed the wallet and climbed back down the rooftop.

He kept in touch with Danny throughout the hour. The radios were still working fine, even though Danny was getting farther and farther away. After about half an hour of silence, Danny’s voice finally came through the radio again: “On my way back now.”

“How did it go?”

“He’s alive.”

“Blaine will appreciate that. What about the bike?”

“Ugh, not so much.”

“One out of two ain’t bad.”

“What I said.”

Will jogged across the street, back toward the Lancing courthouse building. Carly came out of the door with a shotgun.

“You heard?” he asked. They all carried radios, except for the girls and Blaine. It was the easiest way to keep in contact when they were on the road.

She nodded. “He’s on his way back.”

The others were inside the courthouse’s reception area. Blaine sat on an uncomfortable-looking bench, his bloodied shirt on the seat next to him. Earlier, Will had cleared out the building by himself with a shotgun loaded with silver buckshot. There were a half-dozen empty jail cells in the back, along with offices that hadn’t been used in a while. The courthouse was really one big building with a couple of offices along the sides.

They had spread out the portable fans along the floors and on the reception desk to cover as much of the room as possible. The heat was still suffocating, even with the windows and front door open. They drank every half hour just to keep dehydration at bay.

Elise and Vera had settled into some chairs in front of a fan and were drawing stick figures on the wall with markers as their long hair blew around them like confetti. They looked like they had gotten through the shoot-out just fine, which both worried and amazed him. Then again, maybe being shot at by a bunch of
men
was nothing compared to what they had seen and lived through in the last eight months. This, he thought, almost amused, probably didn’t rate very high in terms of nightmare potential.

“You were pretty fast out there,” he said to Blaine.

Lara had re-stitched Blaine’s side and left thigh. Blaine told them he had busted both sets of stitches about halfway across the street while the sniper was shooting at him.

“It felt like I was running in quicksand,” Blaine said.

Will leaned the AR-15 against the lobby desk and tossed the pouch of ammo on the floor. “Danny’s coming back with the other shooter.”

“He actually caught that asshole?” Blaine asked.

“It’s a dirt bike. You’re not going to outrun a Ford Ranger with 200 cc’s.”

“So he’s still alive,” Blaine said. It wasn’t a question.

“For now,” Will nodded.

Lara came out of a hallway in the back. She was wiping her hands with a white rag. Or it used to be white; it was now slightly pink from Blaine’s blood. “Danny?” she asked.

“He’s on his way back with a prisoner.”

“Was it them? The ones that took Sandra?”

“It was them,” Blaine said. He stood up and instantly grimaced with pain. “We should keep going, press them while we still can.”

“We don’t know if they’ve even left the city,” Will said. “They could still be out there. There are about a dozen residential subdivisions they could be hiding in at this very moment. It wouldn’t make sense for them to just leave their friends behind.”

“Maybe they’re not that tight…”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Will said.

*

Danny’s prisoner looked
like he had seen better days. Any day, in fact, was probably better than today. Danny had the guy trussed up like a hog in the back of the Ford Ranger, the man’s wrists and legs bound by unbreakable zip ties. He was bleeding from a nasty gash in his right cheek, and one eye was covered by a massive bruise. He had a dark complexion, and Will guessed Mexican-American.

“Jesus, Danny,” Will said, when he saw the guy lying in the back of the Ranger.

“That wasn’t me,” Danny said. “He sort of flew off the bike.”

“How did he do that?”

“I tapped him lightly in the back with the Ranger.
Lightly.
It’s not my fault he couldn’t fly.”

The guy was alive and alert, though he had the look of a wounded animal, dark eyes darting left and right, from face to face, as if he expected to eat a bullet any second. Maybe he wasn’t very far off, Will thought, as they dragged the guy up from the truck bed and lifted him down to the parking lot to stand on his own two feet.

“He had a radio on him,” Danny said. “Unfortunately, it didn’t survive his flight.”

“The one on the Wallbys rooftop had one, too,” Will said. “Rifle?”

“Rest in pieces.”

“Jesus, Danny, remind me never to send you to fetch anything that I don’t want smashed to smithereens.”

“Quit yer naggin’.”

Blaine came out of the courthouse behind them. He had put on a new shirt and was still wincing with every step, but Will knew there was no way in hell he was going to be able to talk the guy out of this, so he didn’t even bother.

“Seen him before?” Will asked Blaine, turning the prisoner slightly so Blaine could see his face.

Blaine shook his head. “Maybe, I don’t know. I only saw Folger up close. The rest were a blur during the firefight.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Danny said. “This guy can’t wait to tell us everything he knows.” Danny pulled the prisoner closer to him and smiled. “Right?”

*

Not that it
took very much
to get the man talking.

They sat the prisoner, whose name was Miguel, on the lowered gate of the blue Ranger and handed him a bottle of water after they cut off the zip ties. He was in no shape to fight back, not that he had much fight left in him. Miguel had acquiesced to his situation, both in spirit and body. The man just wanted it to be over.

“Where are your friends?” Will asked.

“Hiding,” Miguel said. “Probably, I don’t know. They were supposed to help Hiller and me, but they never showed. They kept promising they would over the radio, but they never came. Then you guys killed Hiller, and I bailed.”