The Purge of Babylon: A Novel of Survival (Purge of Babylon, Book 1)

by Sam Sisavath

  “Captain Optimism,” Will smirked.

  “Yeah,” Danny said with a frown. “Probably not.” He looked back outside. “I’m going to have nightmares about this. For days. Maybe weeks. Months, even. I might even need therapy. You think the department will pay for my therapy sessions?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “It’ll be cool. I can talk about how my parents screwed me over and finally figure out why Betty Johnson didn’t say yes when I asked her to the Junior Prom. That still haunts me, you know.”

  “Betty Johnson, who you said blew up into a 200-pound housewife and that thank God you didn’t get with her?”

  “Yeah, but she was really slim and hot back in the day.”

  “Keep dreaming.”

  “I…” Danny stopped and glanced back across the room, at what was left of the door.

  Sunlight poured into the hallway beyond, but there were still dark patches everywhere. Will wondered if it took direct sunlight to kill the ghouls, to turn their skin into white ash.

  So many questions…

  Then he heard the sounds. He couldn’t see them, but he could hear them moving around beyond the door. They were in the hallway, staying beyond the fatal reach of sunlight. There had to be a dozen of them out there, maybe more.

  They sounded agitated, even angry. He expected them to start charging into the room at any moment, but they didn’t. They were content to wait, bide their time. And why not? Sooner or later, it would be dark again.

  Sooner or later, the sun always sets.

  “I don’t suppose they’ll let us just walk down to the lobby and out the door,” Danny said. “Call this whole thing a big misunderstanding?”

  “I dunno. Go ask them.”

  “Pass.”

  “Chicken shit.”

  “Guilty. So how are we going to do this? We can’t stay here forever.”

  Will turned back to the window, stuck his head outside, and looked down at the sidewalk below. He measured the distance in his head.

  Danny shook his head. “Goddammit. You know I hate heights.”

  “You’ll be fine.”

  Danny sighed, unconvinced.

  *

  They ripped the curtains off the window in the living room, then acquired more in the kitchen and the bedroom next door. They also found a queen-size bed and old, soiled sheets that held together when Will tried to tear them with his bare hands. There were no bath towels in the bathrooms, and what cleaning rags they found were too small. So they tied together what they had, cutting strips to stretch out the length.

  It looked decent by the time they were done, but Will guessed they would still have to jump the last few meters to the ground.

  Doable.

  Probably…

  “Shit,” Danny said, looking at the makeshift rope in Will’s hands. “That’s never going to hold.”

  “It’ll hold.”

  “That thing’s going to tear, and I’m going to fall and break my neck, and that’s all she wrote.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Is this about that thing with Gina?”

  “I liked Gina.”

  “It’s not my fault she liked me more.”

  They grabbed the three-legged table from the floor where it had been tossed the night before and used it as a makeshift grappling hook, positioning two of the legs against the wall under the window and tying the rope to the third leg. With the table held firmly—or firm-ish at least—in place against the wall, the two lower legs even digging into the weak Sheetrock and braced against the rotten wood underneath, they tossed the rope down from the window and measured the jump.

  “How far?” Danny asked. He didn’t want to look.

  “About three meters,” Will said. It was more like fifteen, but he could see the terrified look on Danny’s face and decided he wouldn’t know the difference once he was on the rope. Probably. “Give or take. You can do it.”

  “Yeah, sure. You gonna carry me to the hospital after I break both my legs?”

  “No promises.”

  “This is definitely about Gina. I knew you haven’t forgiven me.”

  Will grinned back.

  They took off their web belts and, along with their equipment and holstered handguns, tossed them down first to reduce the load on the rope. With his M4A1 slung over his shoulder, Will climbed out onto the windowsill, where he took a moment to balance himself. The wind seemed to have picked up a bit, and he was struck by how the silence of the city was more disturbing outside than inside. Who knew a few inches either way could change perceptions so much?

  He took a breath, then grabbed the rope, tested it for strength and, closing his eyes, swung down before he had a chance to change his mind. Danny was right. The rope was going to give, and he was going to plummet to his death. The irony of surviving last night only to die in the safety of the morning made him want to let out a few choice guffaws.

  He opened his eyes and found himself dangling from the rope, which miraculously hadn’t snapped into two pieces yet.

  Yet.

  He grinned up at Danny, watching him with a look of pure, unadulterated terror from the window above.

  “You’re going to die, you know,” Danny said with a frown.

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Just saying.”

  Will started down, lowering himself hand over hand, feeling every inch of the Frankenstein rope against his palm. By the time he had nearly reached the end, with the street almost directly below him, he felt the rope starting to tear.

  Shit.

  He said a quick prayer and let go, jumping down in a straight drop and somehow managing to land in a low crouch without, miraculously, breaking his neck.

  He straightened up instantly and unslung the M4A1. He scanned the streets and buildings around him, but there was nothing to shoot. He spun quickly and saw that someone—some things—had covered the inside of the Wilshire Apartments’ lobby windows with thick, dirty blankets. Those hadn’t been there yesterday when he had arrived with SWAT. Eight of them had gone inside the building, and only two were now coming out. Will couldn’t help but feel more than a little sadness at that realization.

  He pushed the thought aside and glanced up at Danny. The tenth floor looked a hell of a lot higher from the ground. “Nothing to it!”

  Danny didn’t look convinced. “You sure?”

  “Come on, you pussy! You want me to go up there and hold your hand?”

  “Would you?”

  “Not today, sweetheart. I got things to do.”

  Danny smirked, then climbed up onto the windowsill. He balanced himself against the wind, then reached out and took a tentative grip on the rope.

  “You sure this thing’s going to hold?” he called down.

  “Pretty sure,” Will said.

  “Pretty sure? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Mostly sure,” Will said, grinning up at him.

  CHAPTER 9

  KATE

  Kate woke up to streams of bright sunlight piercing through holes in the steel garage door in front of her. In the three seconds it took her to realize she had fallen asleep inside the Buick, fear filled her at a dizzying speed, and she sat up so fast she hit her knees against the steering wheel. Pain shot through her legs.

  She rubbed her knees as the smell of motor oil drifted into her nostrils. The garage was part of the auto body shop she had taken refuge in last night. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. At least she was no longer roaming the streets alone in a large, loud Buick.

  The clock on the dashboard read 11:45 a.m.

  She had slept almost the entire morning.

  She turned the key to power the radio, then scrolled through the dial, hoping to find a station that was broadcasting. She expected to hear the Emergency Alert System, the long beeping sound followed by a recorded male voice assuring her that everything was fine,
that help was coming, and all she had to do was hang on.

  But there was nothing, only static.

  That’s impossible.

  Someone had to be broadcasting. If not the radio stations, then the city, or the government. Whatever happened, the United States government would still be functioning. Or at the very least broadcasting the Emergency Alert System. That was the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s job, right? Wasn’t this the sum of their entire existence?

  She was angry, and it came boiling up in a stream of emotion. Angry at getting nothing on the radio. Angry at Donald, at Jack, at the woman in the Mercedes. Most of all, she was angry with herself, because the fear from last night still lingered and wouldn’t go away. She hated the feeling of being out of control, being at the mercy of someone else.

  Some thing else.

  She switched the radio to AM and turned the dial again, hoping to find something, anything. Where was all the chatter? There was always chatter on the AM dial. Right-wingers, left-wingers, and all the nuts in between. But even they were gone.

  Where the hell is everyone?

  She gave up and leaned back in the seat. She felt restless and frantic. She needed to move.

  Kate opened the big car door, the loud squeal magnified in the closed confines of the garage.

  She walked to the steel door, old and new motor oil on the floor clinging to her bare feet. Her skirt had an inch-long tear along one side, and she was missing some buttons along the hem of her blouse, now untucked. It struck her how nonchalantly she noticed these things when just a day ago she would have been horrified. Appearances were everything in her profession.

  Used to be…

  She pressed her ear against the steel door. Hearing nothing that could be mistaken for humanity or activity of any kind, she frowned in the semidarkness.

  She crouched, gripped the metal handle, and jerked the door upwards. It slid up along the two railings at its sides, and she grunted as she pushed the steel sheet farther up, and up some more. It was much harder to open than close, or maybe it was because her arms felt like jelly after last night. She noticed, for the first time, bruises along her elbows and forearms. When had she gotten those? Her scraped right knee had scabbed over and begun to itch.

  She wondered how she looked but was too afraid to check in the mirror. Torn clothes, scars along her body, and her hair probably a mess, too. Her make-up was gone, washed away by tears. She didn’t even remember crying.

  Sunlight flashed across the opened garage door and bathed her in its heat. She sighed, stumbled out of the garage, and closed her eyes for a moment, allowing herself to believe that everything was all right. The caress of the warm sun was rapturous, and she dreaded the moment when she finally had to open her eyes again.

  The barren streets greeted her first. Then the still, silent traffic lights.

  The city looked like some felled capacious beast, now content to dwell in a long, deep slumber. She had expected the sight of the familiar skyscrapers and expanded sea of gray, lesser buildings to fill her with hope, but there was none. Instead, she felt an overwhelming emptiness and sadness…

  But mostly sadness.

  There was no help coming. There were no helicopters in the sky. No Army trucks in the streets. No police cars blocking traffic or National Guardsmen directing people to safety.

  A piece of newspaper, covered in dried blood, blew past her, and she stared after it in silence, wondering where it was going, and if there would be any salvation once it got there.

  *

  The Buick’s gas gauge was still hovering over the big red ‘E’ when she checked for the third time in the last ten minutes.

  She flipped the visor down to shield her eyes from the sun and drove the Buick out of the garage, going slowly at first, searching the street in front of her. She exited the driveway and eased back onto Milam Street before heading left.

  She glimpsed the I-45 in the distance, its long stretch of concrete visible between the tall buildings that sprouted out of Downtown like trees. The I-45 became her beacon. Where there was a highway, there were cars. And where there were cars, there were people. She couldn’t possibly be the only person still in the city. The numbers didn’t add up. It was illogical—vain, even—to think she might be the only person who had survived the night.

  The odds are in my favor. They have to be.

  She drove slowly, easing around cars parked in the streets, surprised by how many more cars there were in the daylight. Or maybe they had always been there. It was a disturbing thought. How had she avoided an accident when she hadn’t even seen the cars? Was it the lack of seeing, or the not noticing that made her slightly sick?

  There were cars on the curbs and sidewalks as well. Not accidents, just haphazardly parked. She maneuvered around familiar pileups at intersections. She saw blood along the sidewalks, on the streets, splashed against car doors, windshields, and car hoods. She felt suddenly very safe inside the big, expansive Buick.

  So much blood, but no bodies. She wasn’t surprised, because she knew why.

  They’ve been turned. Like Donald, Jack, and “S8UpFun.”

  The blinking dashboard fuel light pulled Kate out of her thoughts.

  She stared at the small black dial, willing it to move, dammit, move.

  But it didn’t.

  She leaned back and sighed, and closed her eyes for a brief second when there was a loud thump!

  She snapped upright in her seat and saw a man standing next to the Buick holding a baseball bat. He stepped quickly aside as Kate drove ahead a few yards before stepping on the brake.

  He was young, just a teenager, really. She guessed he couldn’t be more than sixteen, maybe seventeen, though he was tall. He was African-American, wearing a bloodied white T-shirt and baggy cargo jeans. Kate saw weary eyes looking back at her in the car’s side mirror.

  After some hesitation, the teenager walked toward her car door, the baseball bat—caked in dried blood and recently chipped—hung loosely, threateningly at his side. She watched him through the mirror, both hands on the steering wheel.

  He was much younger up close. Maybe fifteen…

  When he was close enough, he stopped and stared through the closed window. “You going to open the door, or what?”

  She didn’t respond. She stared back at him through the window, aware of her foot on the gas pedal. She was buoyed by the fact that the Buick was still in drive, though her other foot was on the brake. Still, all she had to do was release one foot and press down on the other—

  “Look, there’s nobody here,” he said. He looked up the empty street for effect. “You’re the first person I’ve found since last night. You can come out.” He paused for a moment. “It’s the sunlight…they don’t like it. I think they’re hiding…or sleeping… I don’t know, but I haven’t seen a single one of them since last night.”

  The killings didn’t start until nightfall…

  He waited for her to answer, to lower the window or come out—to acknowledge him. She didn’t. Instead, she remained mute behind the safety of the glass, though the rational part of her wasn’t sure if there was much safety there at all. The bat could probably smash right through the window…

  “You gonna open the door or what?” he asked again.

  She didn’t respond.

  “Come on, lady, there’s no one else out here. You’re the first person I’ve seen all morning. Have you seen anyone?”

  She managed to shake her head.

  “Yeah, me, neither. You got a name, at least?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, sounding exasperated now. Then he threw his hands up. “Okay, whatever. You don’t want to come out. Good luck out there.”

  He began walking away.

  She watched him in the side mirror. Her right foot was still poised over the gas pedal, and she thought she was going to step on it and leave, but was shocked to find herself putting the Buick in park, opening t
he door, and stepping out into the street instead.

  He stopped and looked back.

  “Kate,” she said. “My name’s Kate.”

  He stared back at her for a moment, and she realized he was pouting.

  He’s just a kid.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do. After last night…”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  She could see it in his eyes, in the blood on his clothes, the sticky flesh that caked his baseball bat. He knew all about last night.

  His eyes shifted over to her car and he pointed with the baseball bat. “Your grill’s all messed up.”

  “What?”

  “Your grill.”

  She walked to the front of the car and saw that the Buick’s grill was miraculously hanging on by a couple of hooks. How had it stayed on all night? How had she missed it this morning? She shook her head and managed a small smile. “It’s not mine.”

  “You stole it or something?” He looked amused.

  “No, I…” She smiled again. “I guess I did.”

  “I grabbed this, too.” He held up the baseball bat. “Took what I could when it all happened.” His face darkened. “You saw it, right? You saw them?”

  Kate looked back at him and nodded. “Yes.”

  His face flushed with relief. “Where you headed?” he asked.

  “I need gas.”

  “I passed a gas station a block from here. I can show you if you want.”

  “Okay.”

  “What happened to your shoes?”

  “What?”

  “You’re not wearing shoes,” he said, pointing with the bat again.

  “Oh. I guess I lost them.”

  *

  His name was Luke, and he was right. The creatures weren’t outside in the sunlight. They had gone into hiding.

  The attacks didn’t happen until nightfall…

  Kate drove the Buick, Luke sitting in the passenger’s seat with the window rolled down, his bat on the floor within each reach. She saw the newly covered windows around them. She hadn’t noticed them earlier, but now that Luke pointed them out, they became obvious. Every window of the bigger buildings they passed—stores, offices, and strip malls—was covered over with blankets, fabric, newspapers, or, in some cases, big, blocky furniture.