The Stones of Angkor (Purge of Babylon, Book 3) (2 page)

Blaine moved closer to get a better look. The hulking, six-two Blaine had a good three inches on Will, and looked like some kind of alien insect with the protruding lens of the night-vision goggles.

Blaine craned his head to look up the stairs. “I see a door.”

“That’ll be the shack.”

There was a steel door at the top of the stairs, slathered with dry skin and thick clumps of coagulated liquid. Will went up the steps first, skirting around still-gooey layers of flesh in his path. The stairs were wide, designed to accommodate more than one person at a time, but it got noticeably narrower the higher it went. A door gleamed against his night vision, even underneath the cake of dried blood.

When he finally reached the top, he banged on the door as hard as he could. There were barely any echoes, just the dull thuds of flesh against unyielding steel.

“Can you hear that?” he asked.

“Barely,” Danny said in his ear. “Do it again.”

Will banged his fists against the door a second time.

“Okay,” Danny said. “Now do
Camptown Races
.”

*

They climbed out
of the makeshift hole—a one-by-two meter-long jagged opening near the top—and slipped and slid their way down the loose pile of rubble. The tunnel entrance, or what remained of it, squatted along the eastern shore of Beaufont Lake and was little more than a wall of destroyed concrete. It would have looked like just another unfinished construction site—gray and uninteresting—if you didn’t know what was on the other side.

He had been seeing the world through the night-vision goggles for so long that the sudden afternoon glare gave him an excruciating headache. The scorching late-September heat didn’t help, a reminder that there wasn’t much of a difference between Texas and Louisiana when it came to climate.

Maddie was waiting for them with a baseball cap to keep the brightness out of her eyes. She seemed even smaller than usual against the expansive, barren landscape behind her. “What were they doing down there?”

“Good question,” Will said.

“It looked like they were waiting,” Blaine said.

“Waiting for what?” Maddie asked.

“I don’t know,” Will said, “they weren’t in a conversational mood. Come on, let’s get this thing sealed back up.”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t say that,” Maddie sighed.

It took them two hours laboring in the heat until they could replace all the concrete slabs that the ghouls had removed from the rubble to regain entrance into the tunnel. It was heavy work, and they created an assembly line, passing pieces big and small between them, with Blaine tossing them up into the pile until they couldn’t see the opening anymore.

“Will that hold?” Maddie asked later.

“Not in this lifetime,” Will said. “But it’ll slow them down. When they get it open again, we’ll close it back up. Next time, we’ll just seal the fuckers in.”

“The fun never ends,” Blaine said.

“Sorry I couldn’t lend a hand,” Danny said in their ears, “but you know, island duty…and stuff.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Maddie grunted. “Rub it in, surfer boy.”

“It doesn’t look like much, does it?” Blaine said, looking the tunnel over.

He wasn’t wrong. The entrance, before Danny blew it up, was a large, wide open half-circle surrounded by a concrete bunker. There were no doors and it was big enough for a truck to drive through, and when they had first located it three months ago, they saw old tracks and faded footprints leading in and out. The land around it was flat and sun-bleached, with a few shacks scattered among the dead, brown grass. There were signs that a construction crew had once been here, including an abandoned Port-A-Potty lying on its side and a trailer with deflated tires. But there were no vehicles now, as if everyone had simply packed up and went home one day.

Will glanced at his watch: 2:15 
p.m.

He clicked the PTT. “Gaby, we’re on our way back. Anything?”

Will looked west, across the lake and at the easily identifiable long structure jutting out of Song Island. The Tower. A combination lighthouse and radio tower, with windows along the second and third floors that offered a perfect view of the island and the surrounding shorelines to the east, north, and south. There was nothing in the west except water.

“Lots of big, fat nothings,” Gaby said. “Well, except for you guys.”

He couldn’t see Gaby, but knew she was on the third floor of the Tower right now, providing overwatch with her M4, probably peering through the ACOG—the Advanced Optical Combat Gunsight—riflescope at him at this very moment. The ACOG gave them long-distance shooting capability, something at which Gaby had proven surprisingly efficient.

From shoo-in high school prom queen to military-trained sniper. I wonder where you put that on the college admissions form.

“All quiet?” he asked.

“Good to go,” Gaby said.

Will looked back at Blaine and Maddie, both still catching their breath, all three of them standing in shirts and pants drenched in sweat.

“We’ll keep an eye on it from the Tower,” Will said. “Until we can get it permanently sealed, this’ll have to do for now.”

They headed back to the Jeep parked nearby. The land around them was flat but impossibly bumpy, with the nearest paved road, Route 27, a good five kilometers away. The Jeep made the trip bearable, if just barely.

They were halfway to the vehicle when Will stopped suddenly.

Blaine almost crashed into him. “What?”

“Listen,” Will said.

It was like the flutter of feathers in the air—a soft, teasing
whup-whup-whup
. Will knew what it was, because he had heard it often enough in Afghanistan. And he remembered that night on the island while waiting for the collaborators to attack the beach. It had come and gone, never to be seen again…until now.

It was tiny, but that was only because it was still far away. The only reason he could even hear it at all was due to the stillness of the world around him. Sound traveled these days, especially the very odd, foreign noise of helicopter rotor blades whipping across the air.

“Holy shit,” Blaine said. “Is that what I think it is?”

“It is,” Will said.

“Is it the same one from last time?” Maddie asked.

“Maybe,” Will said. “Gaby, what do you see?”

“Helicopter,” Gaby said.

“But what do you
see
?”

“Looking.” Then a few seconds later, “White.” He could hear frustration in her voice. “That’s all I got, Will, sorry. It’s still too far away.”

“Okay. Keep your finger on the trigger.”

“Will do.”

Will slung the Remington and pulled the M4A1 free. Blaine did the same thing with his M4.

There were no doubts about it; the helicopter was moving in their direction. If it was armed and had hostile intentions, they were pretty much out of luck, even if they could make the Jeep.

The helicopter began to slow down as it neared them, its tail turning slightly as the pilot eased up on the controls. It was close enough now that Will could see it was a civilian chopper. Best of all, there were no signs of a shooter leaning out of the open side door.

“What should we do?” Maddie asked.

“Don’t shoot unless it shoots first,” Will said.

He walked past the Jeep and watched the helicopter hovering for a moment, as if the pilot was trying to gauge the reaction to its presence. Eventually, it started lowering itself to the ground forty meters from him.

“That’s a good sign, right?” Blaine shouted after him.

Hope for the best…

Will covered his eyes at the swirling storm of dust and dirt biting into his exposed face and neck. “Stay here!” he shouted back at Maddie and Blaine.

They took up positions behind the Jeep, shielding their eyes from the debris.

Will waited for the helicopter to fully touch down, its landing pads rocking slightly as they settled on the uneven earth.

A
click
in Will’s right ear, then Danny’s voice: “Nice ride. You gonna bring it over so we can all go for a spin, too?”

“Looks pretty friendly.”

“I can’t see anything but a white bird. A big-ass white bird.”

“It’s civilian, and no armaments as far as I can see.”

“That’s a good sign.”

“But just in case, stay frosty.”

“I’m so frosty, Gaby’s catching a cold over here.”

“Oh my God,” Gaby said. “I don’t know what Carly sees in you.”

“I go places where other guys don’t dare, or can.”

“I think I just threw up in my mouth,” Gaby said.

Will tuned them out and walked toward the helicopter. He saw only one person inside the cockpit, a ponytail whipping behind her as she pulled off her helmet and climbed out of her seat.

The helicopter had blue stripes and sported a big, round number 3 inside a red circle, along with the letters KTBC. The Bell 407, a popular helicopter brand with news channels, looked weathered from time and the elements.

The woman climbed out wearing khaki cargo pants and a sweat-stained white T-shirt. She moved across the flat land toward him, careful to keep her hands at her sides, just far enough away from a holstered sidearm—and the black pistol inside it—but still close enough to go for it if everything went to shit.

“Don’t shoot,” she called. “I come in peace.”

Now that she was closer, he guessed she was in her early thirties, with an athletic five-eight frame. He slung his rifle and saw her let out a noticeable sigh of relief.

Will met her halfway and stuck out his hand.

“Jen,” she said, shaking his hand.

“Will.” He pointed back at the Jeep. “Blaine and Maddie.”

“They’re not gonna shoot, are they?”

“Hopefully not. You took a risk coming down like this, alone.”

“Yeah, well, end of the world and everything, what’s a little risk, right? Besides, you folks are the first moving things on two feet I’ve seen in days.”

“Can you use that thing?” he asked, nodding at her holstered sidearm.

“Haven’t had any reasons to use it yet.”

“You’ve been lucky, then.”

“Really lucky, yeah.” She looked past Will, across the lake, and at the Tower. “You folks from the island?”

“We are. Why didn’t you go straight there?”

“I didn’t see any safe landing zones when I made my passes three months ago. Overgrown grass, lampposts, and palm trees everywhere. There was a beach, but that’s always risky. Plus, I saw a lot of people with guns outside a house farther down the shoreline. What happened to that house, anyway?”

“I burned it down.”

“Ah.” She waited for him to continue, and when he didn’t, “Got a reason, right?”

“Yes.”

He got something back that looked halfway between an amused smirk and a grin.

“A man of few words; I can dig it,” she said. “By the way, where did you people get palm trees in Louisiana?”

“I have no idea. We found the place like that.”

A
click
and he heard Lara’s excited voice: “Danny said the helicopter came back?”

Will let Jen know he was keying his radio. She nodded and waited, as he said, “I’m speaking to the pilot now.”

“What does he want?”

“She. And I haven’t asked her what she wants yet.”

“Maybe we can do some kind of a trade,” Jen said. “I don’t have much inside the helicopter, but if you need medicine, or medical equipment, I have a hospital.”

“How much of the hospital?” he asked.

She grinned. “How’d you know?”

“Hospitals are big places. You’d need an army to hold all of it. Do you have an army?”

“No army, and we only have the top floor.”

“Maybe we can work something out. We happen to be running a little low on medical supplies these days.”

“Should I ask why?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Does it have anything to do with that house you burned down?”

Will smiled. “Maybe.”

LARA

Lara watched the
helicopter swoop over the island, with Maddie peering out from the cockpit passenger seat, before angling toward a makeshift landing zone Will, Danny, and Blaine had carved out of the hotel grounds. It had taken about an hour to chop down three trees and saw two lampposts within the 100x100 feet square box in front of the two pear-shaped swimming pools.

The kids—Elise, Vera, and Jenny—stood next to Carly and Lara on the raised, open patio outside the front doors of the Kilbrew Hotel and Resorts. She couldn’t blame them for being excited. It wasn’t every day you saw a helicopter at the end of the world. As the helicopter landed, its rotor blades threw around a healthy chunk of grass and dirt, some landing on the roof of the unfinished hotel behind them.

Jen, the pilot, climbed out with Maddie.

“Oh, great,” Carly said. “She’s blonde, hotter, and taller than us, too.”

“Hey, I’m blonde, too,” Lara said.

“But she’s taller.”

“Don’t worry, you’re safe. Danny likes ’em young.”

“Well, I’m good for a few more years, then.”

Danny had gone back to pull overwatch in the Tower, on the eastern side of the island behind the hotel. That left Will and Blaine to greet Jen and walk her over to the patio.