by Sam Sisavath
“Everyone’s scattered across the city,” Peters said. He nodded at the two men in front of them. “They’re not unique. After the uglies came out to play, everyone hunkered down and stayed out of sight. I couldn’t tell you where anyone is right now, including Lara.”
“Lara will figure it out,” Gaby said. “It doesn’t matter how bad things get, she’ll come up with a plan. She always does. She’s at her best when everything’s gone to shit.”
“I don’t doubt that at all. She is Lara, after all.”
Gaby smiled. “Yeah. She is Lara.”
“What about Larabie and Galveston?” Becker asked. “Any word from them?”
Peters shook his head. “Not as far as I know.”
Gaby looked over at Becker. She knew why he had asked about Galveston. Cindy, Goldman’s wife, was there. Becker was their child’s godfather. She didn’t know if the kid was also there, but what were the chances he or she wasn’t if the mom was?
“What about Danny in Louisiana?” Gaby asked Peters.
“That’s the only good news so far,” Peters said. “Looks like the attacks are only in Texas. Danny’s put all the cavalry into the air, but anything on the ground won’t get here till morning. But I figure those planes can still make a difference.”
Gaby glanced down at her watch for the first time in a long time, and was surprised to see the numbers staring back at her.
12:26 a.m.
Jesus. That’s it?
Had it only just been a little over two hours since the attack began? It had seemed like so much longer. Maybe it was all the running and fighting and trying not to die.
“You know about Black Tide Island?” Peters was asking her.
Gaby shook her head. “Lara told me they’d lost contact with them.”
“It’s under attack, too. Danny’s headed there now with every boat he had with him in Louisiana.”
“Why the hell is he going there instead of coming here?” Becker asked. “Galveston and Larabie could use some help, too.”
Peters exchanged a look with Gaby.
“What?” Becker said.
“Danny’s wife Carly is on the island,” Gaby said. “Along with their son.”
“Shit,” Becker said, and looked away.
“It’s okay. You didn’t know.”
Becker nodded but didn’t say anything.
They walked along the corridor in silence for a moment. Moonlight from the high windows on their left side lit their way and gave them plenty to see with. Gaby couldn’t hear anything from outside the warehouse’s metal walls, and if not for the tap-tap-tap of their boots, there would have been an eerie silence all around. Where was all the gunfire? And what did it mean that she couldn’t hear anything at the moment?
Up ahead, Jones and Walton turned the corner, and they followed. The side door she had come through earlier was somewhere up ahead. It didn’t escape her that she was going in circles all night. First she had been fighting her way to the warehouse, and now she was fighting her way out of it.
Round and round we go, where we end up…I hope Lara knows.
“What’s the status of all the other units?” she asked Peters.
“Your guess is as good as mine, kid,” Peters said. “That’s Lara’s job. I just go where she sends me and shoot whoever she tells me to.”
“It’s a good gig, if you can get ’em,” Jolly said.
“He had it all planned out,” Gaby said somberly. “The attack on Darby Bay, taking Larabie and Galveston at the same time, and God only knows what they’re doing at Black Tide right now. He’s been ahead of us this entire time.”
“You mean him, don’t you?” Becker said, looking over at her. “Buck.”
She nodded. “Keo told me he’s been planning for years. He’s been watching us, following our every move. The fucker basically told me the same thing himself when I was in Fenton. This has been his endgame the whole time.” She clenched her teeth, the anger rising from the pit of her gut. “He lured Lara here. Made himself look like a two-bit wannabe warlord, nothing we haven’t stomped out a dozen times over in the last five years. But all this time, he’d been hiding his real forces. His alliances…”
“How many people did you see when you were in Fenton?” Peters asked.
Gaby shook her head. “A lot, but that couldn’t have been all of them. Not if he can take Larabie and Galveston and Darby Bay in one night.”
“He doesn’t need a lot of manpower if he has those creepy crawlers helping him out,” Jolly said.
“Jesus Christ, what are we talking about here?” Becker said. He looked to Peters. “How many ghouls did you see out there when they were still in the city?”
“More than what we saw in Axton,” Peters said, looking at Gaby.
“A lot more?” Gaby asked.
“As Danny is fond of saying, a fuck ton more, yeah.”
“That’s a lot,” Becker said.
That’s a hell of a lot, Gaby thought while looking forward at Jones and Walton. The two men were slowing down as they neared the side door. Gaby kept expecting Mercerians to pop out of the shadows and start shooting, but there was no one waiting for them.
“Like you said, he planned this whole night out,” Peters was saying. “You don’t take down Larabie and Galveston with a handful of men and some technicals. You need overwhelming force. The dead or alive variety.”
“He had spies in Darby Bay,” Gaby said. “It stands to reason he would have them in the other FOBs, too. Maybe even on Black Tide.”
Gaby thought about what Keo had said, about how they had grown too much, too fast in the aftermath of Mercer’s death. There had simply been too many recruits, too many people joining up to vet them all.
We weren’t ready. You were right, Keo. We weren’t ready for this.
“Spies?” Becker said. “Like the two that tried to kill Lara?”
“That was a crime of opportunity,” Gaby said. “They couldn’t pass it up. Who knows how many more Bidens and Lomans are out there who haven’t revealed themselves yet. They knew about the bomb shelters. Not just that, but how to access it in places even we didn’t know.”
“Smart motherfucker,” Jolly said with a grunt. “I hate it when the bad guys are smarter than us.”
He had five years to plan this. Five goddamn years.
“Yeah, me too,” Gaby said.
“So how’re we gonna do this?” Becker was asking Peters. “You came here to rescue us, right?”
“Who said anything about rescuing you, pal?” Jolly said, chuckling.
“Okay. You came here to rescue her,” Becker said. “So how are we getting out of here if the city’s still crawling with bad guys?”
“The same way we got here,” Peters said. “There may still be pockets of ghouls hanging around, but it’s the ones with guns I’m more worried about. The right clothes will help us to blend in with the winning team while we try to find Lara.”
The “winning team?” Gaby thought.
Then, gritting her teeth: Dammit, he’s right.
The realization stung, but there was no getting around it. Peters was right: The Mercerians were the winning team. Black Tide had lost Darby Bay. If that wasn’t clear before, it was crystal now.
And it wasn’t just this one city, but two others, too. And how many more? Black Tide Island as well?
He played us, Keo. Buck played us like a fiddle.
Keo…
Where was he now? Still in Fenton? She wondered if he even knew what was happening over here, not that he could have done anything about it. He was miles away and behind enemy lines. Maybe it was for the best that he wasn’t here. Gaby wasn’t even confident of their ability to get out of Darby Bay alive.
Then there was Claire…
Gaby had forgotten all about the kid, too, even though she wasn’t really a “kid” anymore. Like Keo, Claire was in Fenton. Twenty-four hours ago, she thought Fenton was the most dangerous place for a Black Tider, but right now it m
ight very well be the safest. How was that for irony?
“That’ll work for you guys, but what about us?” Becker was saying to Peters. “You noticed we’re still in our original colors, right?”
“Crap, I didn’t think of that,” Peters said.
“You didn’t bring any extras?” Gaby asked.
“Didn’t occur to us.” He glanced over at Jolly, standing behind Gaby. “You?”
Jolly shrugged. “Hey, I’m just the muscle. You’re responsible for the plan, Stan.”
“Well, shit,” Peters said. He seemed to think about it for a moment. “We passed a dozen or so dead Buckies on our way here. There were three in an alley half a block from here. Still in their fancy suits.”
“You wanna go out there and strip them naked?” Jolly asked.
“You got a better idea?”
“Not really.”
Gaby glanced back down the hallway. “What about the three Buckies down there?”
“Back in the tunnel?” Peters asked.
Gaby nodded.
“You forget the thousand or so undead suckers still down there with them?” Becker asked.
“Yeah, that’s not going to work,” Peters said. He glanced down at his watch before looking up at Gaby. “Give us thirty minutes. If we’re not back by then, we probably aren’t coming back.”
“That’s not what I wanna hear right now, Peters,” Gaby said with a frown.
The older man chuckled. “If it helps, running around out there in the bad guys’ jammies ain’t exactly my speed either, kid, but this is the kind of night where we gotta do what we gotta do. So sit back, relax, and we’ll be back in a jiffy.”
Thirteen
A jiffy turned out to be ten minutes…and counting.
Before they left, Peters and Jolly shared what they could with Gaby and Becker. That meant splitting their ammo, which amounted to two mags each for their pistols. Unfortunately they’d only been carrying a rifle apiece, so Gaby and Becker were stuck with their handguns. Peters also left behind Jones and Walton and their ARs, and the four of them stayed close to the side door and waited.
Jones and Walton stood guard, moving back and forth along the length of the hallway while Gaby sat down to give her body some much deserved rest. She was tired, and if the way Becker plopped himself down next to her with a big sigh was any indication, so was he. They had been constantly on the move ever since the attack began, and her muscles were knotted and she had bumps and bruises all over. She didn’t even want to think about what she looked like underneath her clothes.
But at least she had Jolly’s packet of pills, which she thumbed out two more of and swallowed.
“Wanna go easy on that?” Becker said next to her.
“Give me a break,” Gaby said. “It’s been a long night, and it’s not even over yet.”
“Exactly. You might wanna save some for later.”
“Thanks for the advice.” She put the pills away and leaned her head against the cold warehouse wall. “I’m sorry about your friends.”
“Thanks.”
“You knew them well? I don’t just mean Goldman. I know that you guys were friends. But Mueller, the others…”
“We crossed paths every now and then during that whole Georgia fiasco. But mostly it was Goldman and me. We didn’t get assigned to the big boss until we shuttled back into Texas for this.” He chuckled. “We thought it was going to be the world’s boringest job. Prestigious, obviously, given the charge, but boring as hell. Man, were we wrong.”
“Parrish probably saved Lara’s life. If he hadn’t forced her out of the barracks when he did…”
“Yeah, she definitely wasn’t happy about that. I’m pretty sure the captain was ready to throw her over his shoulder and carry her out if she didn’t come around eventually.”
Gaby smiled at the image of someone throwing Lara over their shoulder and forcing her to do something she didn’t want to. Maybe exactly one person could have done that, but anyone else was going to have the fight of their life on their hands.
“It’s all gone FUBAR, huh?” Becker said. “This is it. The night everything changes. Again.”
Gaby didn’t answer him right away. The truth was she hadn’t thought about it in quite those terms. Her mind had been too busy trying to stay alive, trying to figure out what Buck was doing, and how badly ill-prepared they were for it all.
But there was something to what Becker was saying, and it took him voicing it out loud to make her realize she had been thinking about it, she just didn’t want to admit it.
Was this it? Was this the beginning of the end?
Her life, along with the world, had changed forever six years ago in the space of one night. So what was to prevent it from happening again? Once more, in the span of one long, bloody night?
Gaby glanced down at her watch. It hadn’t changed very much since the last time she looked.
“Morning sure is taking its sweet time,” Becker said, as if he could read her thoughts.
“It’s being a real bitch, all right.”
“When are those planes going to get here from Louisiana, anyway?”
“I don’t know, and I’m not sure we should be waiting for them anyway.”
“Why not?”
“If we’re still having radio trouble when they get here, it won’t be easy directing them to the bad guys.”
“Good point. And we will be wearing the wrong clothes out there.”
“Exactly.”
“How ironic would it be if a Black Tider saw us, then tells a Warthog to strafe us?”
“I don’t know if the right word for that is ironic, Becker.”
“No?”
“Maybe tragic.”
“Yeah, that sounds better.” He went quiet for a moment. Then, “Joe.”
“Hmm?”
“Joe. That’s my name. Since I’m calling you Gaby, you should call me by my first name.”
“You mean your first name isn’t Becker?”
“Why would my parents name me Becker?” Then, seeing the grin on her face, “Ah. You got me.”
She smiled. “Hey, Becker’s not such a bad name. I know a guy with a worse first name than that.”
“Who?”
“Keo.”
“Oh yeah, that guy. He still alive?”
God, I hope so.
“I don’t know,” she said instead.
“Heard he was here, but never got to meet him.”
“Did you want to meet him?”
“The guy who blew out Mercer’s brains? Hell yeah.”
“Not a fan of Mercer, I take it?”
“Not after what he did to my town.”
“He did a lot of that.”
Up the hallway, Jones let out a muffled cough. He was leaning against the wall next to the corner while Walton was somewhere in the opposite direction. Gaby couldn’t see Walton because there weren’t any windows over there and it was pitch dark, but she could hear him moving around every now and then.
“Didn’t think it’d end this way,” Becker was saying.
“It’s not over yet. Not while we’re still alive,” Gaby said even as she thought to herself, You actually believe that? Do you really, really believe that?
“It sure feels like it’s the end. Or damn close to it.”
She couldn’t disagree with that. Even the long bouts of silence outside the warehouse contributed to the pessimism she was feeling. There was still shooting, but it was rare now, coming in spurts and then going quiet for long stretches.
Gaby had no way of knowing if Lara was in the middle of any of those sporadic firefights. They hadn’t been able to reach her or any other members of Parrish’s remaining unit through the radio. It was as if they had simply disappeared. And the worst part was that they didn’t know why. Had they been captured? Killed? Or were they just out of radio range, or hiding somewhere that prevented radio signals from reaching them?
Was Becker right? Was this it? Was she witnessing th
e end of what they had started five years ago?
Some Captain Optimism you turned out to be. Danny would be so disappointed.
Danny… She couldn’t imagine what he was going through. Where was he? Halfway to Black Tide? Maybe already there. What would he find when he got there?
He played us like fools, Danny. While we were running around out here trying to save the world, he was plotting and planning and building his army. How many spies did he manage to plant? How many Lomans and Bidens are out there waiting to be activated?
She was convinced now that it wasn’t the attackers who had destroyed the airfield earlier. They would never have gotten close enough to set off the kind of explosions that could devastate the place, or know where to put them in the first place for maximum effect. No. It had to be someone who knew about the airfield’s vulnerabilities. Someone who was already in the city, already in their midst…
“You okay?” Becker was asking her.
She nodded. “The painkillers are helping.”
He gave her a pursed smile. “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about everything else. I know you’re close to Lara. You and her, and Commander Hartford; the three of you basically created this new version of Black Tide from the ashes. As much as what’s happening is affecting me and Peters and the others, it must be worse for you.”
“It’s not easy.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What do you have to be sorry for? You didn’t do any of this.”
He shrugged. “Felt like the right thing to say—”
A loud thoom! from the door next to them.
Gaby stood up—too fast, and flinched as pain stabbed through her—before moving away from the door, her Glock instantly in her hand. Becker was also up and backtracking beside her, his SIG Sauer also out of its holster.
Thoom!
It was definitely coming from outside the warehouse—something was banging on the door.
Walton, who had been down the hallway, jogged back toward them, while Jones appeared from behind her and Becker. The two men had their rifles in front of them, and Gaby quickly gave them the shhh motion. They froze in place, weapons aimed at the door.
Gaby and Becker took three steps away from the entrance just as the lever moved slightly. Someone on the other side was trying to open the door but couldn’t because it was locked from the inside. They thought they could hear voices, but the warehouse’s metal construction made it tricky to be absolutely sure.
