The Stones of Angkor (Purge of Babylon, Book 3) (31 page)

“Do us both a favor,” Danny shouted. “Go for the bag. Pretty please?”

West didn’t go for the bag.

“You’re no fun,” Danny said.

She guided the boat out of the inlet and back onto the lake. It was like driving a car, only each slight jerk of the steering wheel was more dramatic. She could almost feel West’s eyes on her back, but she never turned around.

“You did the right thing,” Danny said behind her. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. If Will was here, West would never have survived the woods. The idiot doesn’t know it, but he’s lucky he got to deal with you instead.”

“Thanks, Danny,” she said quietly.

*

Once they were
back on the island, she waited for Danny to return to the Tower to relieve Maddie before calling him on her radio. It was the longest, most excruciating ten minutes of her life.

“Anything from Will?”

“Nothing, sorry,” he said.

Dammit, Will, where are you?

“Get some sleep, Lara. I’ll send Carly to bang on your door when Willie boy calls. And he will. Have faith.”

Faith.

Yeah, I’m finding a shortage of that lately, Danny.

She ate dinner with everyone in the dining room, trying her best to engage in their conversation. Sarah was in the Infirmary with Blaine and had been since Lara left them a few hours ago. Sarah would probably be there all night, since Mae, Bonnie, and Gwen had taken over the kitchen. The food, a bit spicier than Sarah’s, was still delicious, though about halfway through Lara realized she was more tired than hungry.

After dinner, she took her half-empty dishes into the kitchen, where Bonnie was pouring Coke from a two-liter plastic bottle into a dozen tall glasses on a tray. Each glass was topped with ice, and by the time Bonnie finished pouring, there was more ice than Coke in each glass.

“Got enough ice there?” Lara smiled.

Bonnie laughed. “When you’ve been drinking warm soda for as long as we have, you can never get enough ice.”

Bonnie handed her one of the glasses and Lara took it gratefully. “Mae said you were a model before all of this.”

Bonnie looked embarrassed. “Talk about a useless career, huh?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I was thinking about opening an island magazine, call it
Island Breeze
, or something like that.”

“Are you saying you’re looking for a model?”

“That depends. Are you expensive?”

“I had a pretty lucrative career. Did you used to read a lot of fashion magazines before all this?”

“Did the
New England Journal of Medicine
ever put out a fashion issue?”

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say no?”

“Figures. My roommate used to buy stacks of them, though.”

“Is she…?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t know what happened to her.”

Bonnie nodded. Lara didn’t have to say anything else. They all knew people who either didn’t make it or were unaccounted for.

“I guess I was lucky,” Bonnie said. “With Jo, I mean. So many people have lost so much, and somehow we still have each other. You were lucky, too.”

“I was?”

“You found Will. Treasure that, Lara. This kind of thing was a rarity back when the world made sense, but now, it’s a miracle.”

Lara nodded. “I guess you’re right. It’s good to be reminded of that every now and then. Thanks.”

“Glad to do it.”

“Anyway,” Lara said, brightening up. “How much would it cost to book you for a fashion shoot?”

Bonnie laughed. “Since I know you, I’ll cut you in for a discount. Give me your cell and I’ll get my people to call your people and we’ll work something out.”

They talked for a bit longer, before Bonnie finally had to take the drinks out before the ice melted.

Lara walked through Hallway A by herself. Her joints ached and she had difficultly trying to keep her mind focused on one thing. By the time she reached her room, her body was already half asleep.

Seconds after lying down on the bed and closing her eyes, she didn’t even remember if she had closed the door behind her. She realized she didn’t really care either, and went to sleep, her last jumbled thoughts of Will.

GABY

The warm morning
sunlight on her face was somehow more soothing out here, beyond the safety of the island. She guessed it had something to do with the precarious nature of their situation. Out here, beyond the white beaches of Song Island or the purview of the Tower’s watchful eye, there were no guarantees.

Benny hobbled out of the Valero behind her. His face remained scratched up and bruised, but he had lost the pale, hollowed look of yesterday. She hoped she was equally improved, but had been too scared to actually glance at anything too shiny for fear of seeing the truth.

“Hey there, gimpy,” she said.

“Funny,” Benny smirked back. “Let’s see you break a leg and not gimp around.” He sat down and leaned back against the store, then opened a gym bag and took out a long Slim Jim stick. “Breakfast?”

“Whatcha got?”

Benny tossed her a bag of Jack Link’s turkey-flavored jerky. “Where’s Will?” he asked. “He wasn’t in the lounge when I woke up.”

“He’ll be back soon.”

Benny opened a bottle of water and poured it over his head, then dabbed his face with a rag from the store’s racks, wincing with every contact.

“Did they find us last night?” he asked.

“Will said they searched the gas station, but didn’t try to break down the door. I wouldn’t know. He didn’t wake me up last night.”

“He probably thought you needed the sleep.”

“We all needed the sleep. He was just being Will.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

She shrugged, but didn’t feel like explaining. Instead, she walked over and sat down next to him and dug out a bottle of water from her pack, then wet a towel with it to clean her face. Unlike Benny, she was more careful and managed to clean up most of her face without too much pain. She fought the urge to look at herself in the glass window behind her.

“What now?” Benny asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Will didn’t say?”

“No.”

Benny looked toward the highway. Gaby knew he was trying to locate the remains of the helicopter. She had done the same thing when she first emerged from the store earlier.

“I’m the only one left,” Benny said quietly. “Out of forty people. Mike, Tom, Amy… I’m the only one left. Crazy how it worked out. I wasn’t even supposed to be alive, you know.” He shook his head and looked as if he were on the verge of laughing. Or crying. “When it happened… I didn’t know what to do. I was lucky Mike and the others were there. They took me in and taught me how to fend for myself. And now… God, I’m the only one left, Gaby.”

“You’ll like the island,” she said. “White beaches. Nice breeze. More fish than you can eat.”

“And you.”

“We’ll see.”

“But you’re not against it?”

“We’ll see,” she said again.

*

Will came back
a few minutes later. He wasn’t hobbling quite as much, even though she knew the strongest painkiller he took last night was some tramadol. Benny, who took the same pills this morning, wanted something stronger, but they couldn’t afford for him to fall asleep in the daytime. That, and neither she nor Will felt like carrying him more than they already had.

They headed west on foot along the I-10 feeder road, back in the direction of Mercy Hospital and, beyond that, Song Island. There was no point in chasing Kellerson or his collaborators. Not on foot, anyway. Even if they could find a ride, the Humvees were long gone, and it would be difficult—if not downright impossible—to locate them once they left the city, and there were no longer cars pushed to the sides of the road to track by. Kellerson had also proven that he wasn’t a total idiot. Leaving the man with the rocket launcher behind to ambush them was proof of that.

As much as she hated to abandon the chase—and the kids—Gaby didn’t have to look any farther than Will and Benny to know that they were in no position to keep going. Even so, the decision to head back made her feel empty and dirty, as if she were betraying not just those kids but herself as well.

“What about all the cars?” Benny asked after a while. “Shouldn’t we be looking for a car that’ll run?”

There were a lot of cars along the streets. Sedans, trucks, semitrailers, and a dozen others. Most of them still had keys stuck in the ignitions.

“Waste of time,” Will said. “Batteries don’t work after eleven months. Gas is another issue. Better to just look for something else, like a bicycle.”

“A bicycle?” Benny sighed. “I’m not sure I could even pedal on this leg.”

“Better than walking on that leg.”

“At this rate, it’ll take us most of the day to reach Mercy Hospital. Then what? Are we staying at the hospital? I’m not sure I want to go back there after what happened.”

“Less talk, more walk.”

“I’m just saying…”

“Say less, walk more.”

Benny sighed again.

Gaby gave him a disappointed look. She accepted that he was injured, but so was Will. She had seen Will pull a chunk of glass out of his right leg, for God’s sake, but he wasn’t being nearly as dramatic about it as Benny. She felt growing irritation and did her best to temper it. Telling herself that Benny was new to all of this helped a little bit, but it was difficult to reconcile this whiny Benny with the same one who had saved her yesterday on the rooftop.

They hadn’t gone more than five minutes when Will stopped in the middle of the road and snapped, “Cover!”

Gaby unslung her M4 and rushed behind a red Camaro, sliding up against the driver’s side door. She looked back and was horrified to see Benny standing out in the open, frozen in place.

“Benny!” she hissed.

He snapped out of it and hobbled over to her. “What’s going on?”

“Get down!”

She glanced over at Will, crouched behind a white pickup truck. He was peering over the hood at something up the road. She followed his gaze and saw a figure standing on the rooftop of an auto body shop. The figure had binoculars and was looking in their direction. It was a man, but he was too far for her to make out any details. Something that looked like a rifle was slung over his back.

She looked back at Will, who seemed to be considering his options. Then, finally, he made a decision and slung his rifle and looked back at her.

She surprised herself by knowing exactly what he was going to do, and nodded back at him.

“What’s going on?” Benny asked.

“I’m going to cover Will,” she said. “Stay down and don’t do anything, okay?”

“What’s he going to do?”

“Just stay down, Benny,” she said, putting just enough annoyance in her voice to get through to him.

Will stood up and walked out from behind the pickup truck. The figure on the rooftop watched him curiously, perhaps trying to guess Will’s intentions. The man hadn’t reached for his rifle yet, which she took to be a good sign.

Gaby kept her M4 at the ready anyway. She guessed her target was maybe 100 yards, give or take. Will and Danny could probably hit someone from that distance, but her best shot had come at just under eighty. She was at least somewhat comforted in the knowledge that if she couldn’t hit the guy, maybe he couldn’t hit her or Will, either. Of course, all that went out the window if the guy was a really good shot.

“Don’t shoot!” Will shouted.

His voice echoed up and down the feeder road. Birds perched on top of the highway’s concrete barriers burst into flight.

She watched the figure on the rooftop carefully, waiting for signs—any signs at all—of aggression. But the man hadn’t moved from his spot and hadn’t gone for his rifle. Maybe the guy understood what Will was doing. Or maybe he was a decoy, and there were other men hiding up the street, waiting for Will to get closer so they could take a shot—

She gripped her rifle tighter, her legs a bundle of energy, ready to spring up from behind the Camaro and start shooting.

Be ready. Be ready…

“I have two more people behind me!” Will shouted, stopping twenty yards up the street.