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

by Sam Sisavath

  What’s the point?

  Kate was numb. Her legs seemed to move on their own as she traveled from what was left of the bank, up the side of the small hill, and finally to where they buried Luke and Ted. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say or do, so she stood in front of Luke’s makeshift grave and waited for it to all be over. It wasn’t much of a grave—just some freshly dug dirt and a cross made from two pieces of two-by-fours, with Luke’s name scribbled on top in marker. It was better than nothing, though she had a hard time wondering what the point of it was.

  They were probably expecting her to cry, maybe even say a few words. But no one else was saying anything, though Carly and Vera cried quietly over Ted’s grave while Danny stood slightly off to one side and patiently waited. She did think about crying, but it never really happened.

  Her eyes felt numb, like the rest of her body. Her soul.

  Finally, mercifully, they started back down the hill. She was grateful to grab what she could find of her things or dig out of the rubble. She tossed them into the back of the Tacoma truck that Will had found as a replacement and climbed into the front passenger’s seat. The others would drive with Danny in a Dodge Ram, another vehicle they had salvaged from the streets. Without Luke and Ted, they didn’t need as many vehicles. It occurred to her that they were really just minus one person, since they had picked up Lara yesterday and lost Ted and Luke today.

  Luke. She was supposed to be crying, bawling her eyes out for him. It was what they expected. Will and Danny and the girls. She caught Will watching her from time to time, the look of concern on his face so clear he might as well be wearing a sign that read “Everyone keep an eye on Kate. I don’t think she’s doing very well.”

  Not that he would have been wrong.

  She felt great relief when they finally started off in the trucks, though she had lost all enthusiasm for the idea of reaching Starch, Texas, and hidden in its woods, Harold Campbell’s mysterious, life-saving facility. Or as Luke used to call it, the “bomb shelter.”

  Will took the feeder road and merged back onto Highway 59, heading north. “Two hours, worst-case scenario,” he announced into the radio.

  “That gives us five hours to find shelter if Harold Campbell’s fabled Land of Oz turns out to be more fable than actual land,” Danny said through the radio.

  “It’s there,” Will insisted.

  “I’m not doubting you, chief, I’m doubting Harold Campbell.” Then he added, “And I’m doubting you a little bit, too. Wait, did I just say that out loud?”

  Danny, joking again. Because Danny always joked, even when the world was crumbling around them. It used to be comforting to her. Now, she wasn’t so sure anymore.

  Will was watching her closely again. “You okay? You haven’t said a lot this morning. Does your head still hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  Luke’s dead. Ted’s dead. And I can’t even force myself to cry over their deaths. I’m just fine, Will, why do you ask?

  “Kate,” he said, in that voice that let her know he wanted her to keep talking.

  She wasn’t in the mood for it, though. “I’m fine. I really am.”

  We’re all going to die. What does it matter if I’m fine or not? We’re all going to die.

  Like Luke. And Ted.

  And Donald. And Jack…

  They drove the first thirty minutes in silence, and for a while she almost managed to trick herself into thinking they were on a Sunday drive through the Texas countryside. The air was filled with birds, all the usual sounds of humanity replaced by nature, with only the unwanted noise of their truck engines to ruin the mood.

  They reached Starch, Texas, faster than she expected, but then, there really wasn’t a whole lot of traffic out here. Starch was a town off Highway 59, connected to civilization by a feeder road that was under construction. The lanes looked haphazardly thrown together, as if the person designing them hadn’t really given it much thought. In usual traffic, it would have been a pain to maneuver around, but there was nothing usual about today.

  They passed a Texas state patrol car parked along the shoulder, its doors open, blood-splattered window and driver’s side seat visible in the sun. Along the unfinished sidewalks there were discarded hard hats, construction equipment, and vehicles. They passed a charred human body, not the white skeletal remains of a dead ghoul exposed to the sun. She couldn’t help but wonder how it had burned. Had the person done it on purpose? Chose painful death by fire over turning? Could she summon that kind of courage when her time came…?

  They took a small highway—little more than asphalt on an old country road—off the main thoroughfare and were almost immediately swallowed up by walls of trees on both sides. The “hub” of Starch, Texas, was a long stretch of road crisscrossed with smaller streets. Houses and RV parks flanked them, then a church, what looked like a community center, and a house with a big poster on the front lawn advertising the services of a lawyer.

  They came up to a four-way intersection, where they found the city courthouse on one street corner. The courthouse was also the city police department, essentially a two-floor building next to a fire station and a post office. She saw several purple-themed signs reading “Pirates Proud” before she realized Pirates were the local high school football team’s mascot.

  A left turn took them over a railroad track, then past more houses and RV parks. She saw an impossibly large number of old trucks and boats sitting in front lawns, some rusted over and probably unusable now. The farther they went, the fewer homes they encountered. Most of the roads curved and twisted at odd angles, and after five minutes of driving, the houses on the sides of the road seemed to get older and more spread out, until there was just one house—if they were lucky—for every minute of traveling.

  “How much farther?” Danny asked through the radio.

  “Almost there,” Will said. “The facility was designed to take advantage of Lake Livingston. Campbell paid off some Texas law legislators and got permission to build a small hydro dam as part of the facility. The idea was to use the lake as an unlimited power source.”

  “That must have cost him a pretty penny.”

  “It’s a good thing he had lots of pretty pennies to spare.”

  They went down a spur road that curved up and down, then left to right without rhyme or reason. The trees were becoming more constant now, rarely giving way to a house or farm. They drove along the stretch of road for about ten minutes, and the road was so empty they rarely saw any signs of civilization except for the occasional hurricane fencing. She imagined Starch, Texas, probably looked like this even without the end of the world bearing down on them.

  Finally, Will slowed down. “We’re almost there, ease up on the throttle,” he said into the radio.

  Will slowed down even more as they came up on a man-made dirt road on their left leading into a large wooded area. The sign read: “Route 19.”

  They had passed a dozen roads with a dozen signs like this one, and each time Kate had wondered where they led. Sometimes she saw a house not far from the road, but other times the roads just kept going before turning left or right.

  Will turned into the dirt road, easing the speedometer down to five miles per hour. Almost immediately, the truck started bouncing and she was thrown around by the unpaved road underneath them.

  They were surrounded by trees. Towering, centuries-old trees. She had never seen so many big, old trees in her life. Not that she could really concentrate on the view. The road was simply miserable, and she remembered what Will had said, about not wanting to bring an injured Luke here yesterday. He was right. Luke would have bled out a minute after they turned into this Godless stretch of road.

  “Damn,” Danny said through the radio. “Harold Campbell has a sick sense of humor. I think Vera is about to barf in her seat. How far down is this place?”

  “Three klicks, give or take.”

  “Sonofabitch.”

  The road turne
d slightly a minute later, then went straight for another half mile. They were moving so slowly now that she lost track of how far they had come, especially as all the trees looked the same, and one patch of dirt road looked like the other dozen or so patches of dirt road. She spent most of her time clinging to the handle above her door to keep from being flung onto the dashboard or against the window.

  Danny’s voice came through the radio again: “Are you sure you know where we’re going?”

  “Pretty much,” Will said.

  “We’re driving down the Devil’s own version of a dirt road because you’re ‘pretty much’ sure?”

  “Relax, I’m sure. We had to travel back and forth to the building site the entire time I was working with Tom, and you got used to it. It’s Route 19 all the way to the end.”

  “You mean there’s an end to this? It doesn’t keep going until we fall off a cliff or, even better, straight into Lake Livingston?”

  “It’s coming up. Have faith.”

  “I have faith in you, bub. I just don’t have faith in this road ending. Ever. Or us surviving it. Did I tell you Vera just barfed into Carly’s lap?”

  Without warning, a large shaft of sunlight poured through the trees in front of them, and suddenly the Tacoma was past the hellish road and moving on a soft, even patch of dirt again. She breathed a sigh of relief despite herself.

  They entered a wide-circled clearing surrounded by hurricane fencing, parts of which looked like they had come tumbling down a while back, while the rest stubbornly held on, if just barely. There was a gate in front of them, but it too had come down probably a while ago, and Will drove the Tacoma over it, passing an unmanned guard’s shack along the way. Intercoms and cameras, still perched on top of poles that had fallen, were now half-buried in the soft earth.

  And there, in the middle of the rough circle, was a concrete structure. It was ten feet high and looked like a big, ugly rectangular box, resting on top of a wider slab of concrete that extended thirty yards out to either side. The block itself was long, maybe about ten yards in length and five yards wide. There wasn’t anything there that looked like a door, or windows, or any kind of entrance whatsoever.

  There was only the block of concrete in the center. It looked rough and ugly and inhospitable, the kind of building that didn’t have any personality or cared to have one. The structure screamed plain, nothing that millions of dollars had bought.

  Will stopped the Tacoma in front of the structure. “That’s not the whole thing,” he said, as if reading her mind. “That’s just the entrance. The facility is underneath. I was one of the guys pouring concrete on a building that takes up half of this circle. This patch of dirt under us? It was poured in later to cover the facility.”

  He turned off the engine and grabbed his M4A1 from the back seat, then climbed out of the Tacoma. She followed him outside just as Danny pulled up in the Ram alongside them.

  Danny leaned out of his opened window and grinned. “Okay, you got me. It’s here. There, now you can get in the ‘told you so’.”

  “Told you so,” Will said.

  “Happy? Good. Now stop beaming like a virgin on prom night—it doesn’t become you.”

  She gave the structure another long look as Danny and the others piled out of the Ram. Up close, it still didn’t look all that impressive. If anything, it was the opposite.

  It was a big lump of concrete in the middle of nowhere. No, that wasn’t really true. They were somewhere—in the middle of a clearing surrounded by old, dark trees, hiding dark things inside. Did sunlight even penetrate the thick crowns of those trees? How many ghouls were in there now, watching them at this very moment?

  The structure did look a bit bigger than she had initially thought, and the concrete was a lot smoother the closer she got to it, as if it had been sanded down to take out all the edges. It looked almost like marble, and if she looked hard enough, she could see their rough, tired reflections on the surface.

  “What is it?” Carly asked behind her.

  “It’s a door,” Will said. “Think of this as the top of a very big pyramid. There is a much bigger structure underneath that is only accessible through here.”

  “How do we get in?” Lara asked.

  Will felt along the smooth wall of the structure before finding what he was looking for. Kate saw it, too—a small round lens embedded inside the surface, covered by thick clear glass. Will tapped on the glass with his knuckles and they heard a solid but dull echo.

  “Camera?” Danny asked.

  “Security camera,” Will said. “One of many embedded in the structure, in case the perimeter surveillance cameras went down.”

  Looking closer at the structure, she could see small cameras embedded along its sides. There were four on this side alone, and she imagined there would be others on the other three sides as well.

  Will was saying: “In theory, there should be someone on the other end of that camera looking at us right now.”

  “In theory,” Carly said. “What if there’s no one inside? You said it yourself, Will, you weren’t even sure if Campbell or anyone else would have had time to make it to the facility.”

  “I think there’s someone in there,” Will said. He tapped the glass covering again, and this time spoke directly to it: “If you can hear me in there, you need to open up.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Lara asked.

  “The fence,” Will said. “And the gate. And the footprints.”

  “Footprints…?”

  She took a step back. Barefoot tracks covered the dirt ground surrounding the structure. The more she expanded her view of the clearing, the more tracks she saw. There had to be hundreds. They had come from all around, converging on the structure like moths to a flame.

  Ghouls.

  Danny said, “They’ve been here. Last night, from the look of the tracks. And the nights before that.”

  “So where are they now?” Carly asked, sounding suddenly nervous.

  “Probably in the woods, waiting for the sun to go down. The foliage looks pretty thick in there.”

  Of course they’re in the woods, Danny. Where else would they be? They’re all around us, just waiting…

  She instinctively glanced at her watch. 1:14 p.m.

  Will was tapping on the glass over the security camera again while talking directly to it: “I know you’re reluctant, but you need to let us in. We can help. We have supplies. Weapons. A doctor.”

  She noticed Lara look up, surprised to hear that last part.

  “I know there’s a lot of room down there,” Will continued. “More than enough for a few hundred people. My guess is there’s not a few hundred down there, so there’s plenty of room left for us. We can pay our own way. We’ll salvage supplies in the day, help pull security at night. This isn’t a zero sum decision. You’ll gain everything and lose nothing.”

  Will paused, as if waiting for whoever was behind that camera lens, if indeed there was anyone—she had her doubts—to absorb what he had already said.

  She tried to see if the camera was moving, but couldn’t detect anything.

  “You need to understand that we’re not going anywhere,” Will said at the camera again. “We can’t. This is our objective. You need to understand our situation. You know what’s out here. You’ve seen it yourself. So you need to open this door.”

  They waited, but there was no response of any kind. The structure didn’t move. The camera didn’t blink. The only sounds were birds chirping from the trees around them and insects chattering in the air.

  Kate looked around at the faces of the people standing next to her. There had been two more faces yesterday, but they were down to six now. Their little bit of hope was slipping away with each second that no one responded to Will.

  She couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for them. They still thought things could get better. She wasn’t so sure about that anymore.

  What’s the point?

  Will said to the camera, �
�All right, don’t say I didn’t give you a chance. Trust me, this isn’t how I wanted to do this. But you’ve left us no choice.” He stood back. “Danny.”

  Danny was holding a familiar looking backpack. He opened it and pulled out slabs of C4 explosives.

  Oh. So it’s Plan Z all over again?

  That’s such an awful name, Will.

  Danny held one stick of C4 up for the camera to see. Then he lifted the entire backpack and showed its contents to the camera.

  Will was talking to the camera again: “My friends and I have come a long way, and we’re not turning back now. Open the door, or we’re going to make our own. You don’t want that. This door is the only thing between you and what’s waiting out here in the dark. You and I both know that. So you’re going to open up and let us in, or we’re going to see how long the facility lasts without this structure on top of it. What do you think? Fifty-fifty? Less? Let’s find out together.”

  Will took a step back. Instinctively, she and the others did the same. All except Danny, who began pressing slabs of C4 to the structure, then attaching what looked like bronze tubes to each one. Danny put two on one side before moving on to another side, where he slapped two more against the smooth surface.

  Will turned back to the camera: “Remember, you’re forcing our hand. What happens in the next few minutes is all on you. But it’s still not too late. You can still open the door.”

  Danny reappeared on the other side of the structure, his empty backpack in one hand, a remote detonator in the other. “Everyone back. You don’t want to be anywhere close to this sucker when it goes.”

  “Let’s move the cars first,” Will said, and they started walking back toward their vehicles.

  She had one hand on the Tacoma’s door and one foot poised to climb up when something very loud and unnatural broke the quiet air behind her and the ground underneath her began to vibrate noticeably.

  She looked back.

  The rectangle structure was moving. It was sliding to the right, letting out a loud grinding noise, as if giant blocks of granite were in motion. She could hear what sounded like heavy machinery and giant gears turning underneath the dirt.