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

by Sam Sisavath

  He rolled over and went back to sleep for another hour.

  CHAPTER 15

  KATE

  Kate and Luke emerged from the pawnshop in the morning. Luke stretched and yawned next to her, making noises she hadn’t heard before. She had finally given in to sleep at around three in the morning, though Luke had drifted off an hour before that.

  She emptied a bottle of water over her head and drank the remainder in the sunlight. She was amazed by the little things she had begun to miss—like cold water straight from the fridge, showers, clothing that didn’t smell…

  Some were more important than others.

  “You think we should keep going, try to find that police car?” Luke asked.

  “You don’t think we should?”

  “We have this place now. What if we don’t find them?”

  “We could always come back here.”

  He wasn’t convinced, and she didn’t blame him. The pawnshop had been their salvation last night, and he was reluctant to give it up so easily. It was safe.

  “We just have to time it right,” she added. “Make sure we don’t stray too far, so we can come back in time.”

  He nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, that doesn’t sound too bad.”

  She looked northward, where the gunshots had come from last night. Luke did the same thing.

  “What do you think happened to them?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, but I’d like to find out.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  They spent the next few hours looking for things they could use back in the pawn shop. Kate sifted through rings in an unlocked security box hidden underneath the counter. Cheap, nothing worth more than $100 in even the best economy. The expensive stuff would be in those two massive safes in the back, the ones that had almost given Luke a rotator cuff tear when he tried to break into them with a sledgehammer yesterday.

  Luke found more potential weapons—a high-tech hunting bow and arrows, some spring-loaded knives, and what looked like a battle-axe from some bygone medieval century.

  “Check it out,” he said, holding up the bow. He tried to notch an arrow, but it dropped to the floor. He tried again, and this time managed to hold on, although the shot hit the ceiling instead of the wall.

  “Probably not,” Kate said.

  “Yeah, probably not.” He picked up a pair of knives and handed one to her. “For emergencies.”

  She took it warily. It wasn’t big, about five inches long, with a button on the side that when pressed, released a sharp, double-edged blade. She felt somewhat badass pocketing it.

  Luke picked up the battle-axe and made practice swings. They were wild and uneven, and after a while he gave up.

  “I’ll stick with the sword,” he said.

  “Another good choice,” she smiled.

  *

  They loaded the Jeep with bottled water and beef jerky, the only food they could find in the entire place. There was a big two-by-two box of the stuff in the back room, underneath some old armor. It all came in just one flavor—jalapeno. She had never been a fan of jalapeno, and now she knew why.

  Luke slid into the passenger’s seat with his sword, which had replaced his baseball bat. Kate leaned the machete, still in its scabbard, between the two front seats. The thought of brandishing it was frightening.

  She drove through the parking lot, enjoying the sun and wind against her skin. The gas gauge was already halfway down, and the reality that they would soon have to swap it for another vehicle disappointed her. Unless, of course, she could find a way to siphon gas out of another car’s tank. They would need the proper equipment, and some guts wouldn’t hurt. Sucking gasoline through a hose was potentially hazardous work, and not something she was looking forward to.

  She turned up Richmond Avenue. It was the best route in absence of an actual plan. Maybe they would stumble onto more survivors. Maybe even find the police car they had been chasing yesterday, like Ahab and his whale. Or maybe nothing at all.

  “We’ll probably never find them,” she said.

  “You’re probably right. Chances are pretty low.”

  “Pretty low, yeah.”

  “Then again, it’s not like we have anything to lose.”

  “Not a whole lot, no.”

  “So…”

  “Yeah.”

  She kept driving.

  *

  Kate was thinking about hope and despair and what they would do if they didn’t find the police car, when Luke bolted upright in his seat. They had been driving for a while, and she was starting to count down the minutes until she had to make a U-turn and head back to the pawnshop.

  “What?” she said.

  “Can you hear it?” He looked over, eyes wide with excitement. “Kate, can you hear it?” he asked again.

  She shook her head. “Hear what?”

  “The siren! You don’t hear it?”

  She didn’t, and wondered if he wanted so badly to hear the police siren that he had imagined it out of thin air. Because as hard as she tried, she couldn’t hear anything but the stillness around her and the turning of the Jeep’s engine.

  She stopped the Jeep and got out and listened. Luke did the same on the other side. They were parked in the middle of the street, surrounded by abandoned cars and stores with covered windows. An overturned van rested nearby, and what was left of a taco truck.

  Then she heard it. It was barely audible.

  It came from in front of them, farther up Richmond Avenue.

  “I hear it,” she said.

  “You hear it?” Luke asked, just to be sure.

  “I can hear it!”

  She hurried back into the Jeep, Luke scrambling to keep up. She aimed the Jeep forward, suddenly doing forty miles per hour, swerving dangerously around immobile cars.

  “I told you we’d find them again!” Luke shouted over the roar of the wind and engine. “Never had a doubt in my mind!”

  “Never a doubt?” she smiled back at him.

  “Never a doubt!” he insisted.

  *

  The siren grew louder. She had no idea if it was the same one from yesterday or another one entirely—one police siren was indistinguishable from another.

  But it had to be. What were the chances there were two police cars driving around town blaring their sirens?

  They approached a strip mall that looked like every other strip mall they had passed for the last two days, only this one was bigger, with a massive parking lot housing a Home Depot. Next to it was a 24-hour Walmart Superstore.

  “I think this is it,” Luke said.

  She came to a stop at one of the entrances. There was an Archers Sports and Outdoor store on the other side of the Walmart. It had been hidden from the street by a Wendy’s and smaller outlet stores closer to the street.

  “There!” he shouted, pointing in the direction of the Archers.

  She saw it—a police car, its lights spinning and siren shrieking, parked in front of the warehouse store.

  “I see it.”

  She nosed the Jeep into the strip mall, sticking to the looping driveway to avoid the cars parked in front of the Walmart. As she neared the Archers, the traffic lessened and she was able to leave the driveway and cut across the parking lot. She came to a stop by the police car parked across the No Parking lanes in front of the store.

  Kate put the Jeep in park but didn’t get out or turn off the engine. She looked over at Luke, who had reached for the lever on his door. “Wait.”

  He froze. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. But just wait a moment.”

  He took his hand off the lever and sat back in his seat. He stared forward with Kate. At the police car, and the Archers behind it. They could see through the glass windows and doors and into the store beyond. Clothing racks and gym equipment. In the sunlight, it looked inviting and open and homely.

  And empty.

  She couldn’t see signs of people inside, and that worried her. With the sir
en on and the lights spinning, there should be people here. Other survivors lured over, the way she and Luke had been. She remembered the gunshots from last night. Were they from the same people?

  “Are we going to just sit here all day?” Luke asked.

  “Where is everyone? Where are the guys who turned on the siren? They should be here.”

  “Maybe they’re inside.”

  He was probably right. The noise of the siren would have prevented anyone inside from hearing their approach. No one was coming out to greet them, because no one knew they were there.

  It all made sense, but it also did nothing to comfort her.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “Let’s stay as close to the Jeep as possible, just in case.”

  “Just in case,” Luke repeated.

  She left the Jeep running (just in case), opened her door, and stepped outside. Luke followed suit, but she detected a little hesitancy in the way he opened the door. She glanced back at the machete lying between their seats where she had left it, but thought better of it. One person with a sword was enough. Two might give the wrong impression.

  “We’re being watched,” Luke said.

  He pointed up at the roof, where a man stood at the edge with a rifle. It looked like a military rifle, the kind Kate had seen soldiers carry in news reports on Afghanistan. The man wore cargo pants, T-shirt, and some kind of assault vest. Stray blond hair stuck out from underneath a wool cap. She was relieved he wasn’t pointing the rifle at them, but kept it aimed at the sky in a non-threatening manner.

  Luke’s sword against a rifle. I wonder who’d win?

  The man waved down to them. She looked across at Luke, who looked as relieved as she was. She shrugged, and they both waved back.

  It was all so absurd. The two of them standing by the Jeep, Luke with his sword, waving back at a stranger with a rifle standing on the roof of a store.

  She looked back down at the store’s front doors as another man in similar dress stepped outside. He had a shotgun at his side and wore a gun belt around his waist, a holstered gun on his right hip and a knife, which actually looked more like a cross, in a sheath on his left leg. Short brown hair blew in the breeze.

  He walked over to the squad car, leaned inside, and turned off the siren. Blessed silence.

  The man walked around the hood of the police car toward them. He had an easy smile. Closer, he was handsome. Tall, like the one on the roof, with a confident gait that was dangerously close to swagger. He had soft brown eyes and some kind of black plastic band wrapped around his throat. A wire ran up to his right ear, where an earbud dangled, and another wire connected to a radio clipped to the front of the assault vest.

  “Nice katana,” the man said to Luke.

  Luke glanced down at the sword, gripped tightly in his hands. “Thanks. Nice shotgun.”

  “It has its moments.” The man looked over at Kate. “My name’s Will. The guy on the roof is Danny.”

  She gazed up at Danny, already looking through binoculars at the street beyond.

  She turned back to Will. “I’m Kate. This is Luke.”

  “We’ve been chasing your siren since yesterday,” Luke said.

  “Danny’s idea,” Will said. “You guys hungry?”

  “Depends,” she said. “Is it jalapeno flavored?”

  He gave her a quizzical look. “No.”

  “Thank God,” she said.

  *

  The black band around his neck was a throat mic, the wire connected to a receiver in his ear, and a Velcro strap held the radio in. The gear ran on batteries, which allowed them to communicate even with the rest of the city blacked out.

  Luke said, “You got anymore of those?”

  “Couple,” Will said. “I’ll grab you one.”

  “Thanks. You guys cops or something?”

  “We were SWAT before all of this.”

  “Cool.”

  “Are you two the only ones left of the police?” she asked.

  “Pretty much,” Will said. “We barely got out alive ourselves.”

  He led them through the aisles, passing racks of clothing, hats, and sports gear. She resisted the temptation to run off and look for clothes to replace the second-hand shirt and pants from the pawnshop.

  “Do you know what happened?” she asked. “Why this is happening?”

  “We know as much as you do,” Will said. “We rolled out to this building the morning it went down. After that, it was run and fight and try to stay alive. Sorry. I know that’s not what you were hoping to hear.”

  “Is this it? Everyone who survived?”

  “Everyone we’ve managed to find so far.”

  “What about Uncle Sam?” Luke asked.

  Will shook his head. “We haven’t been able to reach anyone in the state government, much less the federal government.”

  “So it’s not just here, it’s everywhere,” she said.

  “Seems that way,” Will nodded.

  Will led them to the back, where clothing racks had been pushed aside to make room for a small circle of camping gear and tents. A little girl looked up from the floor where she was lying on her stomach, coloring in a book. She had large blue eyes and blonde hair and reminded Kate of a cartoon come to life.

  “How’s it hanging, Vera?” Will asked the girl.

  “It’s hanging,” the girl said, returning her attention to her coloring book.

  “That’s Vera,” he said to Luke and Kate.

  A young woman came out of a tent next to Vera. Despite the baggy hunting clothes, she was pretty, with a shock of red hair and brown eyes. She walked over with her hand outstretched. “Let me guess—the police siren? Us, too. I’m Carly.”

  Kate shook her hand. “Kate. This is Luke.”

  “Hey, Luke.”

  “Hey,” he said. Kate thought he might have stuttered a bit (?).

  “You guys hungry?” Carly asked.

  “Famished,” Kate said.

  “Come on, we liberated some tacos from the Taco Bell across the street earlier. Might as well eat as many as we can before everything goes bad.” She glanced down at Vera. “You wanna come?”

  Vera shook her head.

  “I’ll bring you a couple, okay?”

  Vera nodded, but was already back at work coloring in Dora’s rain boots.

  “Come on,” Carly said to them.

  “You guys go ahead,” Will said, “I’ll be on the rooftop with Danny.”

  Carly nodded and led Kate and Luke down the aisle. Kate looked back at Will as he headed off in the opposite direction.

  Carly said, “There’s a staircase that leads up to a second floor catwalk. It’s actually pretty scary, really high up, with just this metal walkway keeping you from going splat against the floor below. From there, you can climb up to the roof.”

  “How many of you guys are here?” Kate asked.

  “Me, Vera, Danny, and Will. Oh, and Ted. So, five. Well, seven now. You guys meet any other survivors out there?”

  “You’re our first. But we did hear gunshots last night.”

  “Will and Danny heard them, too. They think the guys who were shooting are dead.”

  “Why?” Luke asked.

  “Because they were shooting,” Carly said, as if that explained everything. When they didn’t respond, she added, “You make that much noise, you’re just drawing them to you. And with so many of them out there…”

  Kate nodded. Like moths to a flame.

  “You know that Walmart next door?” Carly asked.

  “We passed it on the way here,” Kate said.

  “There must be thousands of them in there. I mean thousands.” Carly shivered. “I get the creeps every time I think about how many of them are right next door to us. That’s why once Will and Danny finish making their bullets, we’re going to leave.”

  “There’re not enough bullets here already? I thought that’s all they sold here. Bullets and guns.”

  “Kate doesn’t exactly shop at Ar
chers a lot,” Luke smiled.

  She smiled, too, feeling a little embarrassed. Her life had changed so much in just a few short days, it sometimes took her a while to realize that the life she knew was gone, replaced by something foreign and dangerous.

  “They’re making silver bullets,” Carly said.

  “Why?” Kate asked.

  “The creatures are allergic to silver or something. Will and Danny say you can empty a whole clip into the buggers and they’ll just keep coming. But you shoot them with one silver bullet and down they go. So they’re making as many silver bullets as they can.”

  Kate remembered Donald, smiling at her after she had driven the three inches of heel into the side of his head…

  “Luke and I were staying at a pawnshop before we came here,” she said. “There was plenty of silver back there. There were also a couple of safes in the back that probably contain a lot of valuables, maybe even more silver.”

  “I’ll let them know,” Carly said.

  “So they’re going to finish making the bullets soon?”

  “Danny says they should have most of the silver melted down and recast into bullets by tonight. Once they’re done, we’re outta here,” Carly added, sounding relieved.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Into the countryside. Will says there’s a place near Lake Livingston that’s like some kind of underground bunker, built by this guy named Harold Campbell. Have you ever heard of him?”

  “No,” Kate said.

  “Doesn’t ring a bell,” Luke added.

  “Supposed to be this crazy millionaire,” Carly said. “Anyway, after Will left the Army, he went to work for this Campbell guy building his bunker for a while. It’s supposed to be impregnable.”

  “Sounds almost too good to be true,” Luke said.

  He looked over at her, as if to ask, Are we going, too? She didn’t know how to answer, so she kept her face as neutral as possible. An impregnable underground facility somewhere in the countryside? It really did sound too good to be true.

  Carly led them into a hallway at the very back of the Archers, then into an employee lounge. Inside, a big man in cargo pants and a sweater was eating tacos.

  Carly said, “That’s Ted. As you can see, he likes him some tacos.”