Purge of Babylon (Short Story): Mason's War
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MASON’S WAR
A PURGE OF BABYLON STORY
SAM SISAVATH
CONTENTS
The Completed Purge of Babylon Series
About Mason’s War
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
A Word From The Author
Fun Stuff
MASON’S WAR: A PURGE OF BABYLON STORY
Copyright © 2016 by Sam Sisavath
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Road to Babylon Media LLC
www.roadtobabylon.com
Edited by Jennifer Jensen & Wendy Chan
Cover by Duong Covers
THE COMPLETED PURGE OF BABYLON SERIES
(RECOMMENDED READING ORDER)
The Purge of Babylon: A Novel of Survival
The Gates of Byzantium
The Stones of Angkor
A Purge of Babylon Prequel: Keo (The Walls of Lemuria)
The Fires of Atlantis
The Ashes of Pompeii
The Isles of Elysium
The Spears of Laconia
The Horns of Avalon
The Bones of Valhalla
Mason’s War: A Purge of Babylon Story
ABOUT MASON’S WAR
Everyone has a story. Even the bad guys.
Mason has always been good at surviving—adaptable, opportunistic, and, when necessary, ruthless. He’s thrived when so many have fallen, but no one stays on top forever.
After a string of failures, Mason finds himself in a small Texas town under someone else’s command. Fine. He’s had to fight his way up the ladder before, and he can do it again.
But even Mason can’t foresee the trouble that befalls him when he crosses paths with a sharpshooting teenage girl. For a guy who has never given a damn about anyone but himself, it’s a whole new world—one that even someone as bad as Mason might not survive.
Is there such a thing as redemption in a post-Purge world?
Mason is about to find out.
ONE
“THIS IS The Tide to every unit still in the field. Effective immediately, you are to stand down and cease all operations. If you’re already on your way home, continue doing so. I repeat: If you’re in the middle of operations, you are to abandon them and fall back and await further instructions.”
“The Tide?” Rummy said. “What’s ‘The Tide?’”
“My mom used Tide detergent to wash clothes,” Lyle said.
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s what he meant.”
“There’s that college football team. Won everything for a few years there.”
“I don’t think it’s that, either.”
Lyle shrugged. “You asked for suggestions and I gave you some. If you didn’t want them, you shouldn’t have asked in the first place.”
“Thanks; lesson learned. ‘Don’t ask Lyle for suggestions ever again.’ Gotcha.”
“Whatever,” Lyle said, and went back to eating the energy bar that had probably expired months ago. The chunk he’d bitten off didn’t look like it was going to go down without a fight, and Mason cringed outwardly as the twenty-something struggled with it.
“He’s going to choke on that thing.”
Wouldn’t that be a sight?
“Better him than us.”
That goes without saying.
“Hey,” a voice said. Mason glanced over at Rummy, who was looking at him. “You’ve been quiet.”
“You two were having such a lovely conversation, I didn’t want to interrupt,” Mason said.
“How long do you think it’s been broadcasting?”
“A day. Two days. A month. How the hell should I know?”
Rummy picked up the radio and turned it off. They had found it sitting on the ground with the volume turned almost all the way down, with bullet holes in the dirt around it. The fact that it was still in one piece was a minor miracle.
Not a lot of that going around these days.
“You’re still alive.”
Not what I meant.
“What did you mean?”
Never mind. I don’t know why I talk to you.
A voice somewhere in his head, that only Mason could hear, laughed. “Are you saying you have a choice?” it asked.
Mason sighed. Someone once told him that the first sign you were going crazy was when you started hearing voices in your head.
The second clue? You began answering and having whole conversations with it.
“Aw, now you’ve gone and hurt my feelings,” the voice said.
Mason ignored it that time and concentrated instead on the smell of burnt grass around him, the result of too many bullets that, mere moments ago, had chopped through the area when Lyle opened up. Calling Lyle’s generous field of fire an “area” was appropriate. The man hadn’t been very stingy about putting rounds downrange.
I guess they have plenty of ammo down here, too.
A guy decked out in camo, his body and limbs twisted into at least a half-dozen awkward angles, lay next to his similarly-dressed friend. They’d been positioned almost next to one another when Lyle unloaded with the fully automatic SAW. Saying they had been reduced to a “bloody pulp” would be an understatement. Mason had seen worse, but not by very much. The last time he saw a mess like this was…
Mason glanced up at the cloudless sky to check it for warplanes. A slight shiver raced up and down his spine at the thought of being caught out here while one of those things swooped in. He remembered the sound they made and—
“So don’t think about it,” the voice said. “What are you, an idiot?”
I’m talking to you, aren’t I?
“Touché.”
He wrinkled his nose and headed back to the F-150 parked about thirty yards away in the grass.
“What’s the matter, you squeamish?” Rummy asked after him.
Mason didn’t bother with a rebuttal. Two dead guys he didn’t know from Adam, hiding in a shallow ditch as they drove by on the highway, wasn’t even close to pushing at Mason’s Squeamish Meter. If only they knew about the things he’d seen, the things he’d done for them, it would probably cost these two yahoos a few sleepless nights.
He was halfway to the truck when Lyle caught up to him. “What do you think they were doing out here?”
Mason didn’t have to think; he knew exactly what the two Mercer men were doing out here, just fifty yards from the blacktop road while covered in green and gray camo that helped them to blend in with the sunburnt fields. If their clothes and position didn’t tell the complete tale, the pieces of the sniper rifles they had on them filled in the rest. It was too bad the retreat message that came through the radio was late by about five minutes. Then again, considering how diehard Mercer’s boys were, maybe they wouldn’t have canceled their little ambush even if they’d heard it.
“You did good back there,” Mason said.
“I sure got them good, didn’t I?” Lyle grinned back.
<
br /> “Yup. You did.”
“I owe them, too.” His face darkened. “I was in T15 when one of those hogs came through and strafed the place. They killed a lot of people that day. I was one of the lucky ones that made it out.”
“Lucky, huh?”
“I’d always been lucky, though. I mean, I survived the end of the world. Talk about luck!”
“That’s one way to look at it,” Mason said.
Luck had something to do with Lyle surviving T15, but it wasn’t the only thing. Mercer’s men never killed everyone in the towns; not that they could have anyway even when they sent two of their Thunderbolts at the same time. There were always too many targets and not enough bullets, even when they rolled in the tanks. But Mason had guessed that killing everyone in the towns was never their goal in the first place—they wanted survivors to spread the word about what had happened.
Classic psy ops right there. Clever boys.
“Maybe we picked the wrong side,” the voice said.
Too late for that now.
“It’s never too late to choose a winner.”
Ever heard of a little concept called loyalty?
“And I guess you still believe in Santa Claus, too?” The voice chuckled, because it could do that. It could also sneer and snicker and laugh at him, too. “Grow up.”
The voice (as much as he hated to admit it) had a point. Mason had seen the kind of long-term planning Mercer was clearly operating under first-hand. It was almost enough to make him think the man could possibly pull it off. He’d met the man himself, been questioned by him…
Almost. But he’ll fail. The war’s already over. There’s nothing to do now but adapt.
“Are you trying to convince yourself or me?” the voice asked.
You are me.
“Don’t tell you that,” the voice laughed.
No, there was no victory to be had here. The ghouls had something Mercer would never have, that even a thousand Rangers could never beat: numbers. And when you got right down to it, that was all that mattered. Two Warthogs and a bunch of random men in camo weren’t going to change that.
Mason glanced back. Rummy was going through the bullet-riddled packs that the dead men had brought with them. Lyle had gone on ahead and was now perched in the back of the truck, where he’d been the triggerman when they charged the snipers’ position with the kind of reckless abandon that was going to get them killed one of these days. Maybe soon, though Mason hoped to rein that in a little bit. After all, it wasn’t just their hides on the line anymore.
“You should be ordering these morons around, not driving on patrols with him,” the voice said. “Remember when you were in charge? Ah, the good ol’ days.”
The voice was his own, but it hadn’t always been. Once upon a time, something else (something else) spoke to him. At first it had been just her, but then she died (re-died?), and was replaced by someone else, another one of them. They used him to tell the others what to do, how they wanted it done. In return, he led. Someone called it being “chosen,” and Mason guessed it was as good a definition as any.
But the voices had since disappeared, and now the only sound in Mason’s head was his own. Or he thought it was his. Unless, of course, he really had gone crazy, but he didn’t think so. Mason would know.
Wouldn’t he?
“I think they call this a conundrum,” the voice said. “But of course, that’s a mighty big word for us, so who knows.”
Mason ignored it and tugged at his uniform’s collars, before calling back to Rummy, “You coming, old man?”
Rummy looked up. “Did you just call me an old man?”
“You heard me.”
Rummy smirked. “In a sec, peckerhead.”
“Heh,” Lyle said. “He must like you.”
“Yeah?” Mason said.
“He never calls me a peckerhead.”
“Are you saying you want him to?”
Lyle gave a noncommittal shrug.
Great. I’m riding patrols with an old redneck from the sixties and a kid who longs to be called a peckerhead by him. This is gonna work out great.
Mason sneaked a look up at the bright cloudless sky a second time.
Still empty, just the way he liked it.
“Heard you used to run some of the towns,” Lyle was saying.
“Used to, yeah,” Mason nodded.
“So what happened?”
“Talk about a loaded question,” the voice said. “Answer the kid, idiot. Tell him how you got from there to here, and don’t skimp on the details.”
Mason said, “You know the problem with being on top?”
“What’s that?” Lyle asked.
“When you’re up there, there’s only one place left to go.”
“Where?”
“What?” Mason said.
He gave Lyle a good, long look (How old was he, anyway? Nineteen? Twenty? It didn’t help that he was too skinny and his black uniform hung off him as if he were wearing his dad’s clothes) just to make sure he wasn’t being messed with.
Lyle was serious. “What’s the other place left to go?”
“Down,” Mason said. “When you’re already at the top, the only place left is down.”
“Oh.”
Mason looked away before Lyle could catch his half eye-roll.
Rummy was walking back to them, carrying a damaged pack in one hand and the radio in the other. He had two extra handguns stuffed into his waistband, one of the pistols’ chrome bodies obvious against his black uniform.
“Found anything good?” Lyle asked.
“Yup, and they’re mine,” Rummy said.
“Don’t be like that.”
“Finders keepers.”
“We’re partners, though.”
“You and I are partners. I just met this peckerhead two days ago.”
Mason didn’t bother with a reply. What did Rummy think he was going to do with two extra handguns and some supplies, anyway? They had all the weapons and food (and everything else) they needed back at T10.
Mason climbed into the truck while Rummy slid into the front passenger seat. “Head back to town,” the older man said.
“I thought we still had ten more miles to patrol,” Mason said.
“We just killed two of Mercer’s men—shot the living shit out of them.” Rummy grinned, showing stained and missing teeth. “Jocelyn won’t mind if we cut our patrol short after this.”
AS IT TURNED OUT, Jocelyn did, in fact, mind.
“When I give you a fucking job, you do the whole fucking job,” she said when Rummy told her about the two dead Mercer men and how they had cut their patrol short. “No more, no less. You got it?”
Rummy grunted. “Yeah, I got it. Anything else, boss?” He’d said the boss part with as much derision as he could muster.
But if Jocelyn noticed (or cared, was probably more like it), she didn’t show it and kept both eyes on the map spread out on the table in front of her. Two other men who had been in the room when they entered stood on the other side, arms across their chest. It was those two, Mason thought, that Rummy was really playing to. Unfortunately for him, they didn’t look all that impressed, either.
“I got guys running around the state shooting everything that crosses their path,” Jocelyn said. “I don’t need cowboys disobeying orders while that’s going on.”
“Your point?” Rummy said.
You’re pushing it, old man, Mason thought. If I were in charge, you wouldn’t even get this far.
“But you’re not in charge anymore,” the voice said. “You screwed that one up, just like you screw everything up.”
Shut up, peckerhead.
The voice snickered. “Is that your favorite word now? Peckerhead?”
For you? Yes.
“Just remember who you’re really calling a peckerhead.”
“So go back out there and finish your goddamn patrol,” Jocelyn was saying. She still hadn’t looked up. “Then you can come back her
e and crow about shooting two guys in a ditch.”
“They weren’t in a ditch,” Rummy said. “They were in the fields.”
“I don’t care if they were riding around on unicorns. Go finish your job.”
Now Jocelyn glanced up and glared at Rummy, and for a moment Mason couldn’t tell that Rummy was twenty years older and a foot taller with at least fifty pounds on her. He wasn’t exactly imposing, but standing in front of the five-one Jocelyn, the difference was stark. There was nothing about Jocelyn that screamed “special.”
“I bet everyone you’ve bossed around could say the same about you, shorty,” the voice laughed.
“Get out of here, we have work to do,” Jocelyn said, and turned her back to them again.
For a moment Rummy looked as if he might keep the conversation going, but instead he chose the safer route and turned to leave. If Rummy was barely worth her time, Jocelyn didn’t even acknowledge Mason’s presence inside the room, never mind his exit.
He stepped out into a semi-dark hallway after Rummy, with the only lights flooding the room from the open windows in the lobby up ahead.
“You didn’t tell her about the message on the radio,” Mason said.
“Fuck her,” Rummy grunted.
“Not my type.”
“What is your type?”
“Tall and blonde.”
“Tall?”
Mason smirked. “Just because I’m vertically-challenged doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate people who aren’t.”
Rummy chuckled. “That’s one way to put it.”
“How long has she been in charge, anyway?”
“As long as I can remember.” He glanced back at the office door. “What a bitch. You’d think we’d get a medal for taking out two of Mercer’s men; instead, we get chewed out. This town’s going to hell.”
“She looks pretty stressed.”
“Everyone’s a little stressed these days.”
“I guess so,” Mason said.
“The possibility of getting strafed by warplanes and shelled by tanks without seeing them coming will do that to you,” the voice piped up.
For once, Mason couldn’t disagree with the voice in his head.
There wasn’t a whole lot of T10 to see when Mason first arrived, and that hadn’t changed in the two days since he’d been here. The place consisted of three subdivisions and long stretches of farmland, with men in black uniforms patrolling on horseback or on foot, and groups like Mason’s using vehicles to keep an eye on the surrounding roads.