The Bones of Valhalla (Purge of Babylon, Book 9) (15 page)

He snapped a quick look back at Bonnie, then over to her. “We’re going to have to take a chance sooner or later.”

“It could be a trap.”

“I don’t think so,” Blaine said. “No one knows we’re out here. At least, no one we can’t trust. And I don’t see how it makes any sense for anyone to leave a truck out here on the off chance someone would walk across it.”

She thought about it for a moment. Blaine wasn’t wrong. There was a very small number of people who knew their itinerary, though Lara might have already told Riley and possibly Hart, his second-in-command. And Blaine was right about the other thing, too: Sooner or later they were going to need a ride.

And here it was…assuming it still ran and there was fuel in the tank. These days, those two things weren’t always a given.

Finally, Gaby said, “We go at the same time. You take the right side, and I’ll take the left. Bonnie keeps an eye out for snipers, just in case.”

Blaine grinned. “You sound like you’ve done this before.”

“Once or twice.”

“I’ll go fill Bonnie in,” Blaine said, then got up and jogged, slightly hunched over at the waist, back to Bonnie.

Gaby pulled at the straps of her pack to make sure they were tight. Her heartbeat had picked up slightly, but not nearly as much as she would have thought.

Maybe I really am getting used to all of this.

Blaine returned a few seconds later. “Ready?”

She nodded.

“Be careful,” Blaine said, and was on his feet and moving forward toward the parked truck in the next breath.

She launched to her feet and was on his heels before starting to angle to the left side and didn’t stop until she had put almost ten yards between them. Her eyes snapped left and right and forward, never staying still in one direction for longer than a second each time.

The country road they had been following for the last couple of hours was to her left, but there were too many fields of grass to see it at the moment. To the right of Blaine was the wall of trees, and she couldn’t help but feel like eyes were watching her every movement, listening to every haggard breath she took…

Focus!

She trained her eyes back on the truck and kept moving, matching Blaine’s pace.

Eighty yards…

Seventy…

She glanced left again, toward the road, but still couldn’t see it. Back to the truck and the tree on the other side of it. It was a nice shaded area, the perfect spot for a pair of lovebirds to park and do whatever it was that lovebirds did. She had an image of two naked people in the truck bed popping up suddenly as they neared it.

Sixty yards left, and nothing except for the slight swaying of the branches in the background.

Fifty yards…

She sensed eyes watching her and snapped a quick look over at Blaine, but he was concentrating on their target. She looked past him, at the trees in the background.

Dark, black trees, so thick she wondered if the sun could even penetrate their crowns.

Thirty yards…

Closer now, she could see the Ford
emblem up front, and there, the splashes of blood
on the chrome grill.

“Blood!” she snapped, half-shouting and half-whispering.

Blaine nodded, but neither one of them stopped. Like her, he had already assumed the vehicle wasn’t just sitting there on purpose. Something had happened to its occupants, and out here these days that “something” usually involved guns and blood and bodies.

She lifted her carbine and took a quick look through the red dot sight, then lowered the weapon, all the while continuously moving. Blaine hadn’t stopped or slowed down to her right, and he had actually picked up his pace, which forced her to do likewise in order to keep up with him.

She finally reached the Ford and circled the front hood, sweeping the blood caked over the grill and on the dirt floor directly below.

A body.

Male. Young. Maybe in his early twenties, though it was difficult to tell for sure with the blood on his face. He was crumpled on the ground and half-hidden under the front bumper, either because he had attempted to crawl to safety after being shot or his momentum had rolled him into that position after falling off the hood. The blood on the truck was clearly his because there was a hole in the side of his head.

Jesus, that’s some shot.

“I got a body!” she said, using the same half-shouting and half-whispering voice.

“Back here, too,” Blaine said, matching her pitch.

She rounded the truck onto the other side, where a second man sat awkwardly against the trunk of the large elm tree. He was older than the first body, with gray in his hair. His head was lolled to one side, and if not for the patch of thick red that covered his chest, turning the uniform he wore an even darker shade of black, she might have thought he was just tired and decided to sit down to take a nap. A pair of empty beer cans lay at the man’s feet, and sunlight glinted off the shards of glass sprinkled around the Ford.

“I hope those beers were at least cold,” Blaine said.

“I don’t see a cooler,” Gaby said.

Blaine made a face. “You couldn’t pay me enough to drink warm beer.” Then, “Your guy wearing a uniform, too?”

Gaby nodded. “They’re collaborators.”

Blaine glanced around at their surroundings, then hurried to the back bumper and waved at Bonnie, still hiding in the grass across the field. Gaby walked over to where the second dead man sat and quickly noticed the tree behind him.

“Blaine,” she said.

He walked over. “Find something?”

She pointed at the large indentations in the trunk just above the dead man’s head. There were three of them, and they had gone in deep. Gaby took out the cross-knife and picked at the bark until she could see what had caused one of the jagged holes.

“What is that?” Blaine asked.

“Bullets,” Gaby said. “Someone was shooting at the tree.”

“Why was something shooting at a tree?”

“It wasn’t because of him,” Gaby said, nodding at the dead man. “I think he was standing in front of it when he was shot. The shooter took him out by going through the two front truck windows.”

“Yeah, I saw that,” Blaine said, looking back at the shattered windows. “That’s a Danny shot right there.”

“These guys might not have even seen him when he picked them off.”

“Then the sniper was shooting at someone else if it wasn’t this poor bastard,” Blaine said. He turned and looked around them before settling on the wall of trees in the distance. “There’s a third one still out there somewhere.”

“What do you think they we doing out here?”

“Beer, a nice shade… Looks like they had some downtime.”

“That means the town’s nearby.”

“Not close enough.”

“No?”

“The gunshots,” Blaine said. “No one’s responded to the shooting yet. These guys still look pretty fresh.”

“Unless the shooter was using some kind of suppressor. We are.”

“There’s that,” Blaine nodded, before walking around the tree to get a better look at the other side.

“Nice truck,” Bonnie said as she came around the hood. Like Blaine, she had left her heavy cargo behind in the field to free her hands for her carbine.

“We got it cheap,” Gaby said. “Free.”

“My favorite price tag. Does it run?”

“Let’s find out.”

Gaby opened the passenger-side door. There was glass scattered across the seats but no blood. A two-way handheld radio lay on the dashboard, and someone had left their AR-15 behind. She looked across at the steering wheel and saw a key dangling from the ignition.

“Key,” she said, before climbing inside.

She reached over and turned the key—but not all the way—and smiled when the dashboard lights turned on, along with a chime to indicate the door was open. Even better, the fuel gauge rose almost three quarters of the way before stopping.

“Hallelujah,” Bonnie said, leaning in the exposed driver-side door. “I was starting to think we were going to have to walk all the way to Houston.”

Blaine reappeared behind Gaby. “They couldn’t have been out here for very long. Less than an hour, give or take.”

Gaby climbed out of the Ford. “Did you find anything back there?”

“Some traces of the third guy,” Blaine said. “My guess is, he was hiding behind the tree and the sniper tried to pick him off. After that, he ran for it.” He nodded at the wooded area. “In there.”

“I’d rather take my chances out here than go in there,” Bonnie said, not even trying to hide the slight tremor in her voice. “Was it another collaborator?”

“Makes sense, considering the other two. The sniper was picking them off one by one.” He walked around the truck to look at the first body. “He went first. Then the guy in front of the tree. Number three got the hint after that.” He took in the endless fields around them. “The question is: What happened to the sniper? And who was he?”

“One of Mercer’s people?” Bonnie said.

“Who cares,” Gaby said. “Let’s get the hell out of here before someone comes back for the truck.”

“I’m all for that,” Bonnie said.

Blaine and Bonnie left her to retrieve their belongings, and Gaby took another look inside the Ford—a F-150, as it turned out—and went through its glove compartment. She found a bag of jerky and a folded map of Texas, and pocketed both. There was a cooler on the passenger-side floor, and when she flipped it open found three more cans of beer, but no ice. She didn’t have a lot of uses for beer, but water was water, and she tossed the cooler into the backseat.

The AR-15 leaning against the seat also went into the back, but she picked up the radio and checked the power to make sure it was still turned off. She clicked it on, but there was only silence. Gaby put it away and got out, then opened the back door to search the backseats. Boxes of supplies, MREs, and six more warm beers on the floor. There were two backpacks on the seats, each containing additional supplies and loaded magazines. Both packs had blood and what looked like bullet holes in them.

She peered out the shattered driver-side window as Bonnie and Blaine came back. The two of them looked like they were on a nervous stroll through a dangerous park, armed to the teeth and carrying their luggage for some reason.

She exited the vehicle and looked into the truck bed. There were more empty beer cans back there, though these looked as if they had been exposed to the elements for much longer than the others. There were also two ammo cans for the machine gun. She climbed up and checked the weapon.

It was a different model than the M240 they had back on the
Trident
, but it didn’t take a genius to know how it operated. Every weapon was the same—the bullets went in one hole and out the other when you pulled the trigger. It was a no-brainer. The box of bullets attached underneath made the machine gun heavy when she moved it around on its tripod, which was welded to the top of the cab. There were spare casings around her feet, so someone had definitely been putting the gun to use.

From her high vantage point, Gaby took a moment to stare at the dark woods across the field one more time, the hairs along her arms spiking at the thought of running headfirst into that thing.

“How’s the view from up there?” Bonnie asked.

“Nice, but empty,” Gaby said, and jumped off the truck.

“Come on; let’s get the hell out of here,” Blaine said, opening the back door and throwing his pack inside first. “Houston’s not gonna come to us.”

“
C
an you do it
?”

“Yes.”

“You want to at least think about it first?”

“Do you want me to at least think about it?”

“It would be nice, yes. They used to be your friends.”

“They’re still my friends. But not if they’re trying to shoot me.”

“What if I asked you to shoot first?”

Peters didn’t answer that one as quickly. Lara looked across the map table and watched his expression. Peters was a tall, stocky man in his early thirties, as unassuming as they come, with short black hair poking out underneath the Houston Astros ball cap that he always seemed to have on. Or at least in the three times she’d seen him up close. The thing looked well worn, and she had no trouble whatsoever believing he had been wearing it even before The Purge. A rifle jutted out from behind his back. Some kind of bolt-action.

“I’m not saying I’m going to need you to do anything,” Lara said. “We’re talking worst-case scenarios.”

“I understand,” Peters nodded. For such a dangerous man, he was surprisingly soft-spoken, and even in a room with just the two of them she had to put some effort to hear him.

“If I need you to, can you do it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why?” he repeated.

“Why are you so willing?”

He stared back at her with hazel eyes. “I signed up with Mercer because I thought he was the right man, the right leader. But I discovered that wasn’t the case, even before Riley came to me. Everyone needs to believe in something, Lara. I chose badly with Mercer, but I rectified that. Now I’m choosing to believe in you.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe you’re making another mistake.”

“Maybe I am. And if that turns out to be the case, I’ll deal with it. But for now, you asked me for my loyalty and I’m telling you that you have it, whether you think you deserve it or not.”

Lara could only nod, because everything she had planned to say sounded wholly underwhelming against that response from him. She had called him to the conference room to talk about what lay ahead, but she hadn’t expected this. The fact that it came from Peters made it even more astonishing, and at the same time terrifying.

The only thing she could think of to say was, “Thank you. That means a lot, Peters.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “Is that all you wanted to talk about?”

“Not quite.” She looked down at the map, at the small speck that was supposed to represent Black Tide Island. It really was in the middle of nowhere, and they would never have gotten within a hundred miles of it if they didn’t know it was even out there. “How familiar are you with the place?”

“We trained on it for months. Except for the missions into Texas, most of us spent our time there. So I know it pretty well.”

“If this whole thing is a trap, how would they attack us? Where are the boats, and how fast can they hit the water and swarm us?”

“Lara, if this is a trap, Cole and the other Warthogs could strafe you before you’re even within sight of Black Tide.”

Well damn, Peters, at least make an attempt to lie to me!
she wanted to say, but she didn’t, because she knew he was right. So why wasn’t she more afraid?

Peters was still looking at her closely when he shrugged. “But if you want me to work up some scenarios, I can do that.”

“How soon can you have it for me?”

“I got a few hours to kill.”

A few hours to kill
, she thought, wondering if Peters had meant that as some kind of joke, especially considering the two bodies she knew belonged to him on the
Ocean Star.
But Peters didn’t appear to be joking, not that she could really tell just by looking at the man’s face.

God, I’m glad he’s on my side.

“Anything else?” Peters asked when she didn’t say anything.

“You said you went on missions for Mercer. What did you do on them?”

“Mostly overwatch for the scouts. Keep people—and things—from getting in their way. We were fortunate; we never really ran into any major obstacles.”

“Never?”

“The few times we had run-ins, we dealt with them.”

“And the collaborators never knew?”

“Not as far as we know. But it wasn’t like we stayed in one place. The job was to map out their network, and once we did that, we moved on. The problem with the collaborators, and the towns themselves, is that they’re largely isolated and self-sustaining organisms. Without modern technology at their disposal, they don’t really have much communication with each other, with the other towns. So we were able to get away with fighting skirmishes when we couldn’t avoid them and still stay under the radar.”

Self-sustaining organisms
,
she thought. That was the last thing she expected to come out of Peters’s mouth. It wasn’t that she thought he was stupid—far from it, in fact—but it sounded so… What was the word? Scientific
(?)
coming from a man who could kill you before you even knew he was there.

“And no one ever connected the dots?” she asked.

“Apparently not.”

“Okay,” Lara said. “Come see me when you’re done with those scenarios. I know you think they’re useless, but I’d rather have something in place, just in case.”

“Will do,” he said, and turned to go.

“Marines, right?” she said after him.

He stopped at the door and glanced back. “Marines?”

“Danny said you used to be a Marine.”

There was just a bit of a grin on his face when he answered. “No one
used
to be a Marine, Lara. You’re either a Marine for life, or you never were.”

“So you’re a Marine.”

“No. I never had much use for the regimens of modern military life. Why did Danny think I was a Marine?”

“Because of your rifle. He’s only seen Marines carry it.”

“Ah,” Peters said, and left the conference room without another word.

Lara looked after him for a moment, almost expecting him to come back and elaborate on that answer, but of course he didn’t.

She shook her head and thought again,
God, I’m glad he’s on our side.

She looked back down at the map. She didn’t know what she was looking for, or if any of Peters’s scenarios were going to make a bit of difference, but it felt good to be doing something during the trip.

“Lara, if this is a trap, Cole and the other Warthogs could strafe you before you’re even within sight of Black Tide,”
Peters had said.

Tell me something I don’t already know…a hundred times over.

There was no escaping it: She was taking a very big risk by going to Black Tide. As soon as they showed themselves, it would be impossible to turn away. How much did she trust Rhett? How much could you trust someone you’ve never met in person?

The X factor was Keo. He had trusted Rhett enough to give the man their emergency frequency in order to make contact. He wouldn’t have done that without a reason. Someone who didn’t know Keo might think he would have done it to save himself, but she knew better. Keo had gone to Black Tide to kill Mercer and was willing to die in order to do it. He wasn’t the kind of man who would sacrifice her and the
Trident
to save his own hide.

“You better not be wrong about this, Keo,” she said out loud to the empty room.

Lara didn’t know how long she stared at the map, thinking about all the things that could go wrong, all the lives that were in her hands, and wondering if this wasn’t the worst decision she’d ever made.

Wouldn’t be the first time. And it probably won’t be the last.

“Squid for your thoughts?” a voice said. She looked up at Carly, poking her head into the room. “You sleep conferencing again?”

Lara smiled at her friend. “I know, it’s a real problem.”

“You should see Zoe about that. There’s probably a pill for it or something.”

“Or something. What’s up?”

Carly came in and closed the door after her. “What’s up is that I’ve been trying to get your attention for the last half a minute or so.”

“You were?”

“You were out of it,” Carly said, doing jazz hands in the air. “Big, heady thoughts, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“I ran across the Shootist on the way here.”

“The what?”

“Peters. That’s what Danny calls him. Something to do with a John Wayne movie.” When Lara gave her an even more confused look, Carly sighed. “Danny’s old, Lara. He knows old man stuff.”

“He’s not that old.”

“Old enough to qualify for Medicare, if there were such things as Medicare still around.” Carly leaned against the table and looked down at the spot where Black Tide would be. “By the way, speaking of being a pain in the ass, Nate’s still bugging me about Gaby. I’m liable to punch that kid in the face if he asks me one more time.”

“You didn’t tell him, did you?”

“Of course not. That fool would just steal a boat and try to catch up to her.” Carly rolled her eyes. “Kids in love in the apocalypse. What will they think of next?”

“Kids, huh? Nate’s older than you.”

“Semantics.”

“That’s not really what semantics mean.”

“Shut up,” Carly said. Then, “So that’s it?”

Lara nodded. “That’s it.”

“Doesn’t look like much.”

“Nope.”

“And we’re going there.”

“Uh huh.”

“To ask them to join our little Scooby-Doo gang.”

“That’s the plan.”

“What if they say no?”

“I guess we say thanks and leave.”

“And they’re going to just let us head off into the sunset? Remember, we are carrying around over forty people that mutinied against them. Is that the right word? Mutinied?”

Lara nodded. “You’re becoming a regular Webster’s Dictionary.”

“What can I say? I have a lot of free time on my hands.” She put a finger over Black Tide. “Doesn’t look like much, does it? I can practically squish it with just one little pinky.”

“It’s apparently bigger in person. There’s even an airfield that runs through the middle.”

“Airfield means planes. Warplanes.”

“Yup.”

“Dangerous.”

“Definitely.”

“And we’re still going there.”

“We are.”

“Because Will says we need them.”

“He didn’t say we need them, but he said it’d be nice to have them.”

“He said that? Ghoul Will? ‘It’d be nice to have them?’”

“Something like that.”

“But that wasn’t the original plan.”

“No. He adapted.”

“Adapt or perish,” Carly said. “Now where have I heard that one before?” Carly looked across the table at her. “Okay, now that all the genius military talk is out of the way. How are you doing?”

“I’m fine, Carly,” she said, and hoped the forced smile was at least semi-convincing.

It wasn’t if the frown on her friend’s face was any indication. “Danny told me you were surprisingly okay with Will leaving again so soon. But he said he understood why.”

“What else did he say?”

“That he felt the same way. As much as he was happy Will was still alive—well, sort of, you know what I mean—he’s not the same man who left Song Island all those months ago. Hell, he’s not even a man
anymore. He’s…something else. That’s reality. Danny says they could never go back to the way things were. It was hard for him to admit it, but Danny can be very pragmatic sometimes when he puts his mind to it. Is that the right word?”

She nodded. “He’s right. Will’s not the man he used to be.”

“What was it like? Talking to him again?”

What was it like, Carly? Thrilling and frightening and discombobulating, all at the same time. I still can’t decide even now.

“It was…strange,” she said. “Will’s there—he’s finally back—but he’s not really there. When I hear him talk, when he brings up the things from our past, it’s like I’m listening to a recording of our history together. It doesn’t feel real.”

“I’m sorry,” Carly said.

“For what?”

“For everything. I would have looked for you sooner and did all the girly stuff—you know, cry over ice cream and bad rom-coms on Blu-ray—but I knew you were busy with Black Tide and all the other stuff we’re not supposed to tell anyone who hasn’t been on this boat longer than a few days.”

“It’s okay. Really.”

“Danny wanted to go, of course. With Will. But I told him he couldn’t.”

“He told me.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“He said you wanted to be the one to tell me.”

Carly sighed. “The only way I could make him stay was by telling him that I’m carrying his devil child.”

Lara stared at her friend, speechless. She waited for the punchline, but Carly only smiled back at her.

“Really?” Lara finally said.

“Really,” Carly nodded.

Lara hurried around the table and slipped her arms around Carly, and the other woman laughed as she hugged her back. They might have also been on the verge of tears, but at the moment neither one of them cared, though Lara did glance at the door to make sure it was closed.

“Danny hinted at it,” Lara said.

“I’m surprised he managed to keep it a secret this long,” Carly said. “I guess threatening him with his own shotgun worked after all.”

Lara pulled back and looked down at Carly’s belly. She wasn’t showing yet and wouldn’t for a while. “You’re going to be a great mom.”

“I’m going to get fat,” Carly frowned.

Lara laughed. “So we’ll get you a big jacket. It’s winter, anyway. No one will suspect a thing.”

“Yeah, but there goes my fashionista cred.”

They laughed and hugged again, and this time Lara was pretty sure they were both sobbing like little girls. Good news was so hard to find these days, and after everything they had been through, she was glad there was at least one unquestionably good
(great)
thing happening in the world.