Purge of Babylon (Book 9): The Bones of Valhalla

by Sam Sisavath

  The enemy vehicle hadn’t made it very far into the lot—a hundred meters, give or take—when Vince’s rounds caught it in the grill and spiderwebbed its windshield. Keo glimpsed a man in the back holding on for dear life as the driver lost control. The Chevy rammed into a parked sedan, and the man in the back looked as if he had been fired out of a cannon and disappeared between two other parked cars.

  “Ouch,” Danny said. Without the helicopter blasting wind in their faces and ears, he no longer had to shout. “Poor bastard.”

  “Fuck him,” Keo said.

  “Harsh!”

  Keo didn’t have a chance to see what became of the driver and his passenger, because carbines began pop-pop-popping to the right of him. He spun in that direction as Angie and Mackey fired on two trucks coming from the west side of the parking lot. They had fired much too soon because both vehicles were still too far away, and they were just throwing rounds downrange and not hitting their targets, though they were doing plenty of (unnecessary) damage to everything else

  “They’re abandoning the perimeters and converging on us,” Danny said before getting up and jogging over to Angie and Mackey’s position. Keo watched the ex-Ranger tap Angie on the shoulder. “Hold your fire. Let them get closer. Those bullets cost money, you know.”

  Angie and Mackey stopped shooting and slid down behind the car they had been using as cover.

  “Hanson!” Danny shouted. “You’re with me!”

  Hanson picked up his M249 and jogged over to Danny, the big man carrying the MG as if it were a toy and not something that weighed almost twenty pounds empty. The two of them set the weapon up on the hood of a car next to the one Angie and Mackey were using.

  Keo checked in on their east side. James and Delaware were supposed to be watching that direction, but they were too busy staring anxiously at the two vehicles coming at them from the west.

  “Hey, eyes forward!” Keo shouted.

  The two men snapped out of it and turned back around just as a fresh torrent of gunfire exploded from the west. Hanson had opened up with his SAW before Angie and Mackey joined in. Danny was directing Hanson’s fire, but not shooting himself.

  The collaborators were almost within a hundred meters when the closest truck was ripped to shreds by machine-gun fire. The vehicle slowed down, then slammed into a lamppost, cutting it in half as someone—maybe the driver—slammed into the windshield headfirst and left a bloody stain behind.

  The second truck kept coming, though for some reason it seemed much slower than the first. A uniformed man was swiveling around an MG welded in the truck bed and began opening up on the car Angie and Mackey were hiding behind, the ping-ping-ping! of rounds hitting the sedan’s other side like out-of-control pinball machines.

  Danny was shouting, but his voice was lost in the continuous roar of Hanson’s M249, busy pouring everything at the approaching vehicle. The twin MGs going off at the same time—literally firing at one another—created the kind of strange cacophony of noise and rhythm that Keo had never seen replicated anywhere except on the battlefield.

  “Keo!” someone shouted.

  Keo looked back at Vince, staring at him. He didn’t have to hear what Vince was going to say next to know what he wanted.

  “Stay where you are!” Keo shouted at him.

  Vince gritted his teeth, but stayed put.

  Now that the vehicle was closer—fifty meters and closing!—Keo saw why it wasn’t stopping: It had armor plates on its front grill and sides, and there might have been two (two?) slabs of glass over its front windshield. The tires were massive to accommodate the extra weight, which also explained why it was moving so damn slow.

  But slow or not, the technical wasn’t going to stop because Hanson’s machine-gun rounds were landing but ricocheting off the metal plates. Danny had begun firing too, now that the enemy vehicle was closer, for all the good it did.

  Keo was about to turn back to Vince and give him the okay to join the fray when a gust of wind slammed into him, and a split-second later the unstoppable enemy vehicle speeding toward them simply evaporated against a flood of 30mm rounds pouring down from the sky.

  Then came the delayed brooooooooooorrrrttttttttt! as the A-10 swept past the parking lot and kept going, and Keo remembered Vince saying back in the helicopter as they were approaching the city, “Jesus Christ, I’m glad those things are on our side.”

  No shit, pal. No shit!

  The devastated vehicle actually kept moving for a while on its oversize tires, even though there was absolutely nothing left of it but a carcass. Then it simply rolled to a stop. There were no signs of the driver or his mates, and Keo was glad he couldn’t see what had become of them.

  He didn’t have a lot of time to process the destruction anyway, because he heard Vince shouting from behind him, “Incoming! We got more incoming!”

  Keo turned around and cursed under his breath.

  Collaborators. Two sets of them, converging on the south entrance from two separate directions.

  He counted two—four—six.

  “Hanson!” Keo shouted. “Get your ass back into position!”

  “Yeah, Hanson, move that sweet ass!” Danny chimed in.

  Hanson was struggling to reload his machine gun when Keo called his name. The man grunted, snapped a new ammo box into place, then lifted the heavy weapon and jogged back to his old spot. Keo couldn’t fathom how he was carrying all that load and didn’t seem to be even breaking a sweat.

  “James, Mackey!” Keo shouted.

  Neither James nor Mackey needed Keo to say the rest. They stumbled to their feet and ran over, James leaning against the trunk of the Wrangler while Mackey joined Hanson at the sedan.

  Behind him, Danny shouted, “Angie, Rhode Island—stay where you are!”

  “It’s Delaware!” Delaware shouted.

  “Close enough!” Danny said before running over to Keo’s position. “Any word from Willie Boy?”

  Keo shook his head. “Not a peep.”

  “That means they’re still on their way.”

  “They’ve been on their way here for two days now.”

  “Hey, you can’t rush Plan G. Didn’t anyone tell you that?” Danny slipped a new magazine into his carbine. “And to think, I almost missed out on this!”

  “Lucky you!”

  “I know, right? Good things really do happen to good people!”

  Keo snorted, then turned around just as the collaborator trucks began pouring inside the parking lot. “Pick a target and keep shooting until they stop moving!”

  “Brilliant strategy!” Danny laughed as he stood up and began shooting over the vehicles in their path. “George Not-So Patton this guy!”

  Danny’s laughter was quickly drowned out by the ping-ping-ping of rounds hitting automobiles, interspersed with the brap-brap-brap of machine guns and the pop-pop-pop of carbines. Keo had been through plenty of battlefields, but he had to admit he’d never had to fight in a place congested with this many cars. Glass shattered all around them and he was pretty sure tanks were being punctured because he could suddenly smell gasoline over the still-lingering acrid stench of dead ghouls.

  Keo darted over to Vince’s position and opened fire with the MP5SD, his suppressed gunfire comically quiet against all the clatter of unsuppressed weapons around him. If he had any ideas about getting a good chuckle out of that, though, the sight of six—five now, with one having just stopped, its windshield riddled with bullets and blood—collaborator trucks coming toward them ended that notion.

  Then, without warning, four of the remaining five broke off from the main pathway, leaving just one to come straight up the middle at them. Two went east and two more went west, the drivers bent low over their steering wheels while the men in the back simultaneously hung on and fired their mounted MGs.

  The continuous roar of small arms fire and light machine guns was dizzying, fraying Keo’s senses to the point where he couldn’t even feel the adrenaline that he knew must be
surging through his veins right about now. It always happened during a stand-up gunfight, and this was as stand-up a gunfight as he’d ever been in.

  Danny appeared next to him, his M4A1 clattering loudly, but he somehow managed to shout over it anyway: “Where the hell are those A-10s?”

  “Maybe they’re out of bullets!” Keo shouted back.

  “Hell of a time to be running out of bullets! Remind me to give them a stern talking to after this! Spankings may be in order, too!”

  “You got it!”

  Keo focused on a white GMC zig-zagging its way around the parking lot, squeezing between stalled cars when it could and slamming grill-first to move them when it couldn’t. He couldn’t see how many men were in the vehicle—not that it mattered, because the only one worth keeping an eye on was the uniformed guy behind the machine gun.

  Finally the GMC seemed to jerk off course about fifty meters from their position and buried its nose into the side of a gray Prius. It hadn’t stopped for more than a second before Vince stitched the side with 5.56 rounds. Keo couldn’t see the collaborator in the back or any of the ones in the front, so they were either dead or out of the fight. Either/or worked for him just fine.

  Just as Keo was turning to pick up the remaining vehicle coming from the east side, it slammed on its brakes about sixty meters away and people lunged out of the truck. James had stopped firing to reload, and Keo stepped over next to him and emptied the rest of his magazine into the black Nissan with white stripes, but he had no clear target and was just wasting bullets. It was a good thing, he told himself, that he’d brought plenty this time.

  He didn’t stop shooting until James had finished reloading and began firing to his left. Keo went down into a crouch and was reaching for a fresh magazine when a body to his right jerked and collapsed to the parking lot floor.

  Vince!

  Keo slung his submachine gun and hurried over. He leaned over the big man and was reaching for him when he saw Vince’s wide-open eyes staring up at the cloudless sky, a surprisingly small thin trail of blood trickling out of a hole in his forehead.

  One down…

  He glanced up at Danny, now crouched across the open space next to Hanson. Danny was reloading and watching Keo, who shook his head. Danny let out a silent sigh, then nodded to his left—Keo’s right.

  Keo looked over at Mackey, on the ground next to the trunk of another vehicle that looked like it had been shredded by a few hundred rounds. The barrage had taken Mackey with it, blood pooling over his chest and under him.

  Two down…

  Keo stood up and snapped a quick look over the Wrangler: One of the collaborator trucks had been stopped by their weapons fire, but the other one, taking a cue from their comrades, had abandoned their bullet-riddled vehicle and taken cover behind the parked cars that dotted the lot about seventy meters away. They were now exchanging fire with Hanson, James, and Danny.

  He ducked back down, bullets zip-zip-zipping over his head, and maneuvered over Vince’s body and was preparing to take over his SAW, still perched on the hood of the Wrangler, when the radio clipped to his hip squawked and a familiar voice said, just barely audible through the roar of gunfire, “Striker, come in. Striker, this is Willie Boy.”

  Keo stayed down behind the hood and took out the radio, even as Blaine continued calling out through the two-way: “Can you hear me? Answer if you can hear me. Striker, Striker, this is Willie Boy, do you read—”

  He keyed the radio and interrupted Blaine. “Yeah, yeah, I heard you the first time.” Keo glanced over at Danny, who was watching him back and simultaneously reloading his rifle. “Took your sweet ass time,” Keo said into the radio. “We got tangos coming at us in waves over here. What’s your position?”

  “We’re right below you,” Blaine said. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  About fucking time.

  “Coming to you!” he shouted.

  Danny got up and streaked over, keeping low as bullets buzzed over his head. “Willie Boy?”

  “They’re in position and waiting for us!” Keo shouted.

  “About fucking time.”

  “What I said.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for? An engraved invitation?”

  “Cover me!”

  “Gee, I was just going to do my nails, but since you asked so nicely…” Danny stood up and resumed shooting, and somewhere between when he pulled the trigger and when he stopped firing, he managed to shout out, “Go! We’ll be right behind you once we take care of these pecker heads!”

  “James, you’re with me!” Keo shouted, and darted across the open space.

  James was immediately on his heels, both of them keeping low as they raced out of their area of operation and across the parking lot. Keo led him into the open, the strangling smell of vaporized ghouls getting thicker with every step closer to the rubble that used to be the HC Dome.

  “Christ!” James shouted behind him, just as something zipped! over Keo’s head.

  Too close!

  They finally reached their objective while still far from the remains of the domed sports building: A manhole covering out in the open near the very end of the parking lot.

  Keo snapped a quick look left, then right, just in case there were more collaborators trying to outflank them. As bad as having to survive a dozen technicals was, it could—and would—have been worse if they didn’t have the tanks and A-10s to lend a hand. A hell of a lot worse.

  “This is it?” James asked, sliding to a stop next to him.

  “This is it,” Keo said, and crouched on one side of the round metal object embedded in the concrete floor while James scooted over to the opposite side.

  The young man looked across at him and swallowed.

  “You okay?” Keo asked.

  “No,” James said. “I should have stayed on the island with my wife.”

  Keo had a humdinger of a retort, something even Danny would have been proud of, except before he could say it there was a thunderous THOOM! from behind him.

  He glanced up just in time to see a fireball falling out of the sky in the distance.

  29

  WILL

  SILVER.

  There was silver everywhere.

  If he remembered how to gag, he might have.

  The ones that clung to his hips and stuck out from the gauntlets over his hands were the worst of them. But the silver in all the weapons around him was just as bad.

  Silver.

  So much silver.

  He was grateful for the helmet, because it hid his discomfort. He pushed through it, flexing his fingers underneath the gloves, knowing that he would need them very soon. Not yet, but soon, because this was the end of the line. The tunnel continued and bent left, but he didn’t need to go left; he needed to go straight.

  They came down the ladder one by one. Racing heartbeats and gasping breaths pounded in his ears, followed by gasps as the smell hit them. It was such a human response, and for a moment he was glad he was beyond all of it.

  “Oh God,” the young blond who came down first said as he reached up to make sure the mask was still firmly placed over his mouth. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

  “Not yet, kid,” Blaine said. “How bad is it up there?”

  “It could be worse,” a familiar voice said as its owner skipped the remaining rungs and leaped down to the platform. “Make room, there’s more coming.”

  “Sounds like you guys got a hell of a party going on up there,” Gaby said.

  “A handful of technicals, but it could have been a lot worse.”

  “Mercer’s army came through after all?”

  “Looks like it. But our luck might have run out. I saw an aircraft go down. Not sure if it was our ride out of here or one of the Thunderbolts.”

  “You’re fucking me,” Blaine said.

  “Nope.”

  “Well, shit.”

  “Ditto,” the man said (What was his name? It was there, just underneath the surface�
�� There. Keo. His name was Keo.) as he and the blond unslung their packs and pulled out night-vision goggles and snapped them on.

  “You guys okay?” Gaby asked.

  “We took some casualties,” Keo said, “but in one piece, for the most part.”

  “We’ll wait for the others. Go ahead with Wi—Frank.”

  Keo climbed off the platform and sighed when the sewage sloshed around his knees.

  “I think I’m going to throw up again,” the blond said as he stepped down beside Keo.

  “Keep it together,” Keo said before looking up the tunnel, allowing his artificial third eye to adjust to the darkness. “Long time no see.”

  “Yes,” he said, grateful that the helmet obscured his voice and tamed the hiss.

  “Nice outfit.”

  “Danny.”

  “Of course Danny.”

  “That’s him?” the kid asked. No, not a kid. Just young.

  “That’s him,” Keo said. “Frank, James. James, Frank. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to work so we can all get the hell out of this literal steaming pile of shit.”

  Behind them, another figure climbed down onto the platform, the clank-clank of boots on the metal rungs even louder than the continued gunfire from above. Another familiar voice, urging the figure on, “Move faster, Hanson! Or do you want me to go down there and give you a hand, princess?”

  “Hey, I’m going as fast as I can!” a gruff voice answered. “You try climbing with fifty pounds of gear!”

  “Excuses, excuses!” the familiar voice said.

  “I got you,” Blaine said, and helped the climber off the steps.

  They made room for a woman. She was wounded, and he licked his lips at the taste of fresh blood in the air.

  “You’re hurt,” Blaine said.

  “I’ll live,” the woman said. “It’s just a scratch.”

  “Looks like a hell of a lot more than a scratch to me. Can you walk?”

  “She’s a big girl, she’ll be fine,” the familiar voice said, just before its owner landed on the platform. Danny. He pinched his nose and his voice was muffled when he said, “I’ve heard of being knee-deep in shit before, but this takes the cake.”