The Gates of Byzantium (Purge of Babylon, Book 2) (19 page)

Pros and cons:
What were they?

Pros: He was still in one piece, and so was Gaby. They were in a place Folger and his people couldn’t find. He liked their chances of staying hidden for a while, living off food in the house. Eventually, they could probably do something about the heat.

Cons: They couldn’t stay down there forever. Eventually they would have to come out. The food would eventually run out. The basement would eventually get too hot as summertime churned on. And cabin fever would eventually get to them. It was why they had never stayed in one town for too long, back when it was just him and Gaby and Matt, and why they had kept moving ever since the end of the world.
Eventually
, everything ran its course.

Conclusion: He had no choice. He had to find out what had happened along Main Street. He had to find out if Folger and the others were still out there, and who the people they were trading gunfire with were. God knew he didn’t want to leave the basement, leave Gaby, but there was no choice. Sooner or later, they would have to venture back out into the real world.

Or what was left of it, anyway.

The good news? He had Gaby.

Well, he didn’t
have
her, but he was
with
her, and that was a pretty good start.

Josh moved through the subdivision slowly, taking his time. The heat was already becoming insufferable, and he didn’t want to think about how much hotter it was going to get in another few hours. He darted between houses, heading south, which would take him back to Chance Road, and from there he could pick his way toward the municipal area. It made sense that the new arrivals would stumble across Folger’s people there, and a shoot-out would erupt. It must have been like stumbling across a nest of snakes. He just hoped the new arrivals weren’t snakes, too, or it was back to the basement.

He peeked into houses as he passed, filing them away for future reference in case they did have to stay in the basement a little longer. He saw empty homes, some with fading brown stains along the windowsills. Blood splatters. Josh was surprised that so many of the houses looked undisturbed, as if their owners had simply decided to abandon them. He liked to think most of them got away, but of course that was bullshit.

He moved at a brisk pace, staying behind houses whenever he could, though there were long spots where he had to run across open spaces because there was no shelter or places to hide behind. He walked through the tall, overgrown grass of the lodges and was relieved when he finally reached the more wooded areas again.

Josh trudged through someone’s farm and skirted around a barn that looked just a bit too creepy. There was no telling what was hiding in there, watching him through holes along the rotted wall. Just the thought made him shiver involuntarily. Eight months later, and he still couldn’t get used to the idea of
things
hiding behind every window, in every building, waiting for the first hint of darkness to come out. How he managed to keep going, without going crazy, was a mystery, but he figured it probably had something to do with Gaby.

He slowed down when he finally reached one of the half-dozen or so houses along Chance Road that sat directly across the street from the municipal area. Hiding behind a house with brown and white bricks, he could see the three buildings across the street, sitting side by side. It was quiet, and the silence unnerved Josh more than he wanted to admit.

The first thing he noticed was that the semitrailer where he, Gaby, and Sandra had been held last night was gone. There were no signs of it, and he wondered if Folger and the others had in fact taken off after the shoot-out. In its place, there were two trucks he hadn’t seen before—one blue and the other black. They both looked shot up, with broken windows.

Suddenly there was a loud explosion
from behind him
and Josh almost pissed his pants. He fell to the ground so fast he smacked his face into the dirt and stunned himself, but he quickly got over it because someone wasn’t just behind him, they were
close to him
. He felt sick to his stomach. How had he managed to walk all the way from the woods to the house without seeing them? Better yet, how had they managed not to see
him?

Josh kept very still, pressed flat against the warm dirt. The wall of the house was to his left, but there was only overgrown grass to his right. He prayed it was high and thick enough to conceal him when he heard footsteps approaching. He closed his eyes and willed his entire body not to move. He might have forgotten to breathe, though he couldn’t really be sure at the moment.

Then the sounds of footsteps mercifully faded, and Josh finally managed to summon enough courage to force his eyes open again.

He could see a figure moving in front of him.
Away
from him.

Oh, thank you, God.

He lifted his head slightly, watching as the man—a big man, though he looked like he was in pain and was leaning a bit on one leg as he walked—crossed the street, holding something in his left hand. Josh looked for a long time before he decided it was a gun. A shotgun. One of those sawed-offs that Mel Gibson carried in
The Road Warrior.
That shotgun was responsible for the big boom he had heard moments ago.

The man was walking back toward the courthouse.

Josh pushed himself up into a crouch. He looked over his shoulder, in the direction he thought the man had come from. What was back there? What had the man shot? He considered backtracking to find out. Maybe an animal…or a person.

The gun battle was over a long time ago, even before he had started off from the house. Folger and the others seemed to have left, or maybe they were hiding in another part of town, waiting to strike. Folger struck him as that kind of conniving asshole. If Folger was still around, the man with the shotgun hadn’t seemed particularly concerned about it. And Josh was sure he hadn’t seen the man before—he would remember someone that big—so he wasn’t part of Folger’s crew.

Josh remained still and went over his options. The way he saw it, he didn’t really have a whole lot of choices. It was either stay here or go back.

He decided to stay put for a while, to see who else came out of the buildings across the street. He remembered what the Hispanic had said over the radio. There were a “lot” of people in the two trucks, but only two men were shooting back at them.

He reminded himself that Gaby and Sandra were waiting for him back at the subdivision. By now, they would be worried, especially Gaby. How long had he been gone? Josh checked his watch.

A little over fifty minutes.

He decided to give it thirty more minutes before heading back.

*

Instead, he stayed
for forty minutes.

Then forty became an hour.

He couldn’t leave. Not yet. Gaby was probably hysterical by now, but he reasoned he had to stick it out. He had to make sure he saw them first, this new group of people. The fact that they had fought it out with Folger was a good sign. What was that old saying?

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

He just hoped his enemy’s enemy didn’t turn out to be his enemy, too. That was a very real possibility. But he didn’t have many choices at the moment. This was the world he lived in now. And here, he had to take chances, like back in the semitrailer with Gaby and Betts. He had put her in harm’s way by playing a hunch. The old Josh would never have done something so reckless, so risky. But the old Josh was dead, replaced by Josh 2.0. Time would tell which version of him was better.

Finally, Josh’s patience was rewarded when the police station/courthouse doors opened and he saw two men emerge. Neither one was the same big man with the shotgun Josh had seen earlier. He could tell because they were thinner (not skinny, just leaner) and carried assault rifles, sidearms, and looked like they had some kind of assault vests on, though Josh was still too far away to make out details.

Josh got off his butt and went into a crouch. He watched one of the men close the tailgate of the blue truck before they started talking about something. Strategy, maybe. He couldn’t quite tell who was in charge. Maybe they both were. Maybe neither.

A moment later, the big man with the sawed-off shotgun came out, still walking gingerly on one good leg. Josh wondered if the man’s limp was from this afternoon’s gun battle with Folger. The big man joined the first two at the truck, and they looked at a map spread out across the black truck’s hood.

The three men were talking, pointing at the map and up and down the street, when the courthouse doors opened again and two women came out. Then behind them, two little girls. They ran around the trucks, chasing each other. They looked to be seven or eight, and they were
laughing.

Josh waited and listened and watched.

He considered all the new evidence and weighed his options again.

Pros and cons: What were they?

Pros: These could be potential allies. People who took care of kids who were obviously not afraid of them were the exact opposite of people like Folger and Manley and the others. Maybe these new people were even married and those were their children. Even better. That meant family, loyalty, and bonding. People like that might welcome additions to their group.

Cons: Or they might not. Just because the people in front of him looked decent, it didn’t mean they were. Maybe instead of a semitrailer, they were keeping their victims locked way inside the courthouse. And these people were obviously violent. They were good at it, too, to have fought off Folger’s people. Even killed one of them. Could he really trust his life, and by extension, Gaby’s, to people who were so good with guns?

Conclusion:
Fuck it.

Josh pulled Matt’s gun out of his waistband and laid it down on the dirt and stood up and began walking across the street. He did it quickly, trying to think as little as possible, because he knew if he thought about it too much, he would change his mind.

Have to risk it. Have to risk everything…

One of the kids saw him first. She said something and pointed, and the men turned. The first two men unslung their rifles. The two women were staring. The big man with the shotgun seemed to be making sure he had shells in his weapon.

This is a mistake. I’m going to die.

Oh God, I’m going to die.

“Don’t shoot!” he shouted across the street, raising his hands as far above his head as they would go. “I’m not armed! Don’t shoot!”

They watched him for a moment, then one of the men jogged forward. “Stop!” the man shouted.

Josh stopped in his tracks and didn’t move. He was in the middle of the street, and instinctively glanced left and right before realizing,
Oh, right, no traffic.

The man moving toward Josh looked young and had slightly brown-ish blond hair. He moved smoothly toward Josh, then circled him, the point of his rifle aimed low. Not threatening, but ready.

Please, don’t shoot me
, he thought, but was too afraid to say the words out loud.

The man continued circling him, looking him over, probably checking him for weapons. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Josh.”

“What are you doing here, Josh? You alone?”

“Yes,” he lied, his heart racing. “Josh. My name’s Josh. Please don’t shoot me.”

“You already said that,” the man said, looking slightly amused.

“I did?”

“Yep.”

“Oh. Please don’t shoot me.”

“Only if you tell me your name.”

“But I—” Josh realized the guy was messing with him and stopped. “Oh.”

The man chuckled, then motioned for Josh to move forward. Josh did, but it took a few seconds before his feet would start behaving normally enough that he didn’t almost fall on his face with every step.

Josh heard the man moving behind him, but he decided to concentrate on the group waiting for them instead. The other man with the rifle was scanning the roads and the area, while the women had gathered up the kids and put them into one of the trucks. The girls peered curiously out at him through one of the few windows that was still intact.

“Hey, kid,” the man behind him said.

“Yes?” Josh said.

Please don’t shoot me.

“You know anything about computers?” the man asked.

“What?”

“Computers,” the man said, as if that was the most normal topic in the world to be talking about at the moment. “You know anything about computers? You look like you do.”

I do?

“A little,” he said.

“You know how to fix them?”

“A little,” he said again. This conversation was going in a very odd direction. “Why?”

“Just wondering. You can put your hands down now.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“No sweat. Hey, you wanna hear a joke?”

“Um, okay.”

Just as long as you don’t shoot me.

“So these two subway conductors are out to lunch one day, and one of them says to the other, ‘You know what, I think my sex life is getting too boring.’ The other guy asks, ‘Why do you say that?’ The first train conductor groans, then says, ‘Well, it’s always the same thing. In and out, in and out, and I never get anywhere!’”