The Stones of Angkor (Purge of Babylon, Book 3) (29 page)

His left arm was fine. Well, not fine, exactly, but workable. The wound was bleeding again, but it wasn’t too bad. Eventually, he would have to suture it to make sure he didn’t bleed to death later. His legs weren’t broken, which was very good news. He wouldn’t have gone very far with broken legs. It was a simple matter of removing the glass shard, then cleaning the wound in his right leg. Disinfectant would keep out infection, and he could stitch it the same time he did his arm.

Doable.

He freed himself from the seatbelt, then reached down and touched the glass with a finger and tried pushing on it. Stabbing pain. He grimaced through it.

Gaby came back, knees scraping against the highway. “Ready?”

He nodded.

Gaby rolled the water bottle first. Then a fresh rag, the edges taped into the middle. He opened it, taking out a white packet, gauze in shrink wrapping, and a roll of gray duct tape.

“You sure you don’t need a hand?” she asked.

“I’ll manage.”

Will slid the cross-knife out of its sheath and sliced his pant leg open around the embedded glass, careful not to cut too wide, but enough to see—and eventually get at—the wound underneath. Surprisingly very little blood, but that was going to change when he pulled the glass out.

He laid down the knife and opened the water bottle, then set it back down. He picked up the rag with one hand, took hold of the shard of glass with the other. He didn’t think about it, just pulled it out with a grunt. Blood spurted and he quickly shoved the rag down against the opening, pressing down hard.

“How’s Benny?” he asked.

“Hobbling around,” Gaby said. Her eyes were glued to his leg.

“Any threats out there?”

“None that I could see. The Humvee that we saw earlier is gone. What was that, some kind of rocket launcher?”

“M72 Law anti-tank rocket launcher, yeah. I guess it works just as well on helicopters. We were lucky.”

“You call this lucky?”

“The M72 is unguided. If he had something more sophisticated, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Where the hell did they get something like that, anyway?”

“Army base would be my guess. Louisiana has plenty of them around. They probably looted them about the same time they picked up the Humvees and all those M4s. Those are military grade stuff.”

Will lifted the rag and peeked at the wound before pouring water over it. The warmth helped him with the pain. He wiped at the wet blood, clearing it from the opening, then used his teeth to tear the package and squeezed out the antiseptic ointment that he then spread liberally over the hole.

“Weapons?” he asked.

Gaby didn’t answer right away. She was too busy staring at the blood.

“Gaby, weapons?” he asked again.

“I still have my M4, and another one the others took from Mike. Also, all the magazines in my pack and yours. Found mine about twenty yards up the highway.”

Will pressed the gauze over the wound, careful to position it under the pant leg, then wrapped the whole thing with two revolutions of duct tape.

“Did you find my rifle?” he asked.

“It’s behind you. I remember stepping on it when I was climbing out earlier.”

“Catch,” Will said, and tossed the duct tape back to her. Then he drank what was left in the water bottle and sat back for a moment to catch his breath.

“You okay?” Gaby asked.

“I’ll be fine. Get ready to move.”

She nodded and disappeared from the opening again.

Will turned around in his seat and saw the barrel of his M4A1 behind him, amazingly still in one piece. From Afghanistan, to Harris County SWAT, to the end of the world. And now to this.

Will wasn’t a superstitious man, but if he were…

*

There was a
certain order to the destruction when viewed from inside the wreckage. It was a much different story on the outside.

Pieces of the helicopter were strewn across nearly a 200-meter length and along both sides of the highway. Two of the rotor blades were buried in the thick concrete not far from the main bulk of what was left of the fuselage. The landing skids, in four sections, had ripped through a dozen cars and impaled a minivan’s engine block. There were little impact craters everywhere.

Will climbed down from the police cruiser, wincing a bit as his right leg touched down.

Benny had seen better days, too. The kid’s face, like his and Gaby’s, was bruised and cut, and he had a large scar across one cheek that he had treated. All the first aid they had wasn’t much help for a broken leg that made him limp everywhere, though Gaby had made a splint for him using two pieces of wooden sticks cinched in place with duct tape. He remembered teaching her that during one of those two weeks they had spent together in the woods back on the island.

Benny stood gazing off at the highway, Mike’s M4 and a bag only half full with the medical supplies they had managed to salvage slung over his shoulders. He moved with the help of a makeshift crutch—a wooden baseball bat with the headrest from a car seat duct taped to the top. Again, another impromptu creation by Gaby.

It had taken Will longer to crawl out of the wreckage than he had anticipated. It was already 4:11 
p.m.
by the time he emerged and looked up at the sky. Late September in Louisiana meant 7:00 
p.m.
sunsets, give or take.

Gaby walked over to him, carrying her pack and rifle. “Do we go after them?”

Will shook his head. “We’ll never catch them on foot. Not in our condition.”

“What about the kids?” Benny asked.

Will didn’t answer right away. He looked up the highway, in the direction the Humvees had gone. Then glanced back at Benny, limping on a makeshift crutch, and at Gaby, her face a mess of bruises and cuts. All three of them looked like hell, and there wasn’t an inch of him that wasn’t in pain at the moment.

“We can’t do anything for them now,” Will said after a while. “Right now, we need to find shelter. We have three hours before it gets dark.”

“The closest off-ramp is back there,” Gaby said.

“Take point.”

She headed west, and they followed on foot. There wasn’t any need to weave around vehicles abandoned eleven months ago because the Humvees had done such an efficient job of clearing everything to the sides, creating a single, almost-perfect lane to drive—or walk—through.

Will found that if he focused on something else, like Lara’s image in his head, or the lake breeze around the island, he could
almost
ignore the stabbing pain in his right leg. Thank God for the numbness in his left arm. He wasn’t sure if he could fight through both wounds at the moment.

He caught up with Gaby, who was moving slowly—on purpose for their benefit, he guessed. “How far?”

“Half a mile,” she said.

“That’s too far.” He glanced at his watch, then looked up at the sun for confirmation. “We need to pick it up.”

“Your leg and Benny’s…”

“We’ll be fine. It’ll be worse if we’re caught out here at night.”

She nodded and began moving faster.

Will waited for Benny to catch up. “Lean on me, Benny.”

Will took his crutch and slipped his left arm around Benny’s waist. He used the crutch for himself, and surprisingly, with Benny on one side and the crutch on the other, he walked relatively pain-free.

Or at least, that’s what he told himself. The trick to ignoring pain was conviction.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

*

It took them
nearly thirty minutes to reach the off-ramp, which was much too long. They stuck to the shoulder to maneuver around the parked vehicles frozen in their lanes, dried blood clinging to dashboards and steering wheels and seats baking in the sun.

With the help of gravity, it didn’t take them nearly as long to reach the bottom of the off-ramp. As they were walking down, Will scanned the feeder road, looking for buildings they could use. Gas stations, strip malls—nothing that made him happy. There was a motel about half a kilometer up the street, but just walking there would easily take them another half an hour. They didn’t have that much time.

“Gaby,” he said, “the gas station.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “It doesn’t look that safe.”

“We just need one room that can be defended.”

She jogged on ahead toward a Valero gas station, and Will followed with Benny. They passed a red Chevy waiting in line at the pump, and Will skirted around a white, overturned Bronco in the parking lot.

The Valero, like most gas stations, had glass windows, so he could see into the store before they ever reached the front doors.

“Silver ammo?” he asked Gaby.

She nodded back. “Nothing but.”

“Give me a moment.” Will sat Benny down on the curb outside the store. “Stay here. We’ll clear the store, then come back for you.”

“Take your time,” Benny said. He looked over at Gaby. “Grab me a bag of Funyuns, will ya?”

“They’re probably all stale by now,” Gaby said.

“Just as good.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Will unslung his M4A1 and walked over to Gaby, who was already waiting for him at the doors. He nodded, and she pulled the door open. Will slipped inside first, rifle raised. He glimpsed the aisles, then stopped and listened for noises. There was very little chance the ghouls would be using the gas station as a nest. It was too small and too inconvenient; they preferred bigger places with thick walls
(like Mercy Hospital)
.

Will nodded right, and Gaby disappeared down the aisle. He took left.

After about ten minutes of going from aisle to aisle and looking through an employee lounge in the back and a bathroom next door, they met up again at the front. Gaby had grabbed a bag of Funyuns sometime during the trip back.

“Stale?” he asked.

“Expired eight months ago. Maybe he won’t notice the difference.”

“Must be love,” Will teased.

“He did save my life on the rooftop.”

“That always helps, sure.”

*

Benny didn’t seem
to mind the expired Funyuns, digging into the bag as if he hadn’t eaten in days. Will left them in the employee lounge, a big block of concrete with some Brad Pitt movie posters and old hunting magazines stacked on a flimsy fold-out portable table. The only other furniture was an old lime-green couch.

The good news was that there was only one way into the lounge—through a sturdy steel door that had been painted over at least four times in its lifetime, judging by the eclectic mix of colors visible underneath the peeling paint.

Will grabbed a couple of plastic bags from behind the front counter and filled them with water bottles from the freezers, all the beef jerky he could find, and five cans of Vienna sausages with pull tabs from the shelves. The sun was already starting to fall outside, casting an orange-red glow across the highway as Will walked back to the lounge.

He handed Gaby the bags, then went through the gym bag they were hauling around and pulled out what he needed.

“You need a hand?” Gaby asked, looking worriedly at him.

“I’ll call if I do.” He pulled out a bottle of Vicodin and handed it to Gaby. “Give Benny two, and don’t let him move around on that leg.”