The Gates of Byzantium (Purge of Babylon, Book 2)

by Sam Sisavath

  “It’s not like you have much choice, Will,” Kate had said in his dream. “When you wake up from this, you’ll realize that Song Island isn’t the sanctuary you thought it was. Far from it, in fact.”

  He crouched next to Lara and felt her pulse. It was steady, and she looked blissfully asleep. He brushed at a strand of blonde hair and watched her for a brief moment before standing up. His legs were wobbly, and it took a while to get blood circulating to all the correct parts.

  Will said, “Tom and the others. Where are they now?”

  “Tom’s in the Tower,” Sarah said. “The others are asleep. It was a lot of work, getting you guys here. I guess they’re tired.”

  Will nodded. He had plenty of choice words for Sarah, but he didn’t say any of them at the moment. She was here, helping them. For now, that made her an ally. He would circle back to the topic when this was all over. Right now, he had a hard time just staying upright.

  “Rohypnol?” he said.

  “Not in its pure form,” Sarah said. “I made some changes to it.”

  She’s done this before.

  “You’re a chemist?” he asked.

  “I worked at a pharmacy.”

  He nodded. He would circle back to that one later, too. “Our clothes?”

  “There’s a room we’ve been using for storage at the very back of the hotel. Berg is going over your stuff now, looking for valuables or something we can use. Tom has your weapons.”

  They’ve definitely done this before.

  “Tom’s alone in the Tower?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know where he keeps the weapons, though.”

  “There are three floors,” Josh said. “First floor, with a staircase that goes up to the second floor, in the middle. Then a final third floor.”

  “What about a basement?” Will asked.

  “I saw a door in the first floor. Could have been it.”

  Will nodded, absorbing all the information as best he could through a plume of sleep that clung persistently. He looked over at Danny, asleep on the hard concrete floor. “Hit him harder.”

  “What if…” she started.

  “He’s drugged. You need to hit him harder, or he’s never going to wake up.”

  “Okay,” she said, but she sounded unconvinced. Or maybe she was just afraid.

  “I need that knife,” Will said, and picked up a knife someone had laid down on the floor nearby. “Stay here and wake the adults up. But not the girls. It’s better if they stay asleep through this.” He sighed, blinked a couple of times, then added, “I’ll be back.”

  “Where are you going?” Josh asked, sounding alarmed.

  “To get some clothes and then our weapons. Tell Danny where I’m going and what’s happened as soon as he wakes up. And both of you, stay here until I come back. Don’t wander out of this room.”

  “What if you don’t come back?”

  “I’ll come back.”

  “Okay,” Josh said, but like Sarah, he didn’t sound completely convinced.

  Will couldn’t be bothered with their reluctance right now. He felt naked without his weapons, and wearing nothing but his boxers didn’t help. He walked across the big room and pushed through the door and into the dimly lit hallway. He found that if he kept moving, the fog cleared up faster.

  The lights were working at half their normal brightness, and Will picked his way up the hallway, stepping around anything suspicious lurking on the floor. He listened for the slightest noise, hearing only silence around him. Of course Karen and Marcus were asleep. Why not? They had done this before.

  Will thought back to the dream. To Kate. What had she said to him, with that beaming, proud smile of hers?

  “I was always good at selling dreams to desperate people.”

  She had sold them the dream that was Song Island. Not just them, but other people before them. How many other victims? How many times had Sarah spiked the wine during a feast of fish and friendly chatter and talks about what they used to do back in the old days?

  It was all so damn perfect. The island. The food. The AC. The working indoor plumbing. He had done his best to stay wary, to look for the hidden troubles, but in the end, even he had been suckered in. He and Danny both.

  Fuck.

  Will forced himself to keep moving, push aside his failure. It hung over him like a black cloud, fouling up his mood. At least he was still alive. So there was that. And Lara, too, along with the others. He had failed them, but it hadn’t cost them. Yet. That could change in a heartbeat, unless he made sure it didn’t.

  As he kept moving through the hallway, he thought about something else Kate had said to him in the dream. It was part of her sales pitch, and it stuck with him:

  “Because Texas isn’t the only place where people like you are still fighting.”

  It was always at the back of his mind that there had to be others out there, still fighting, still surviving. Now he knew for sure. There were people in New York, California, and who knew where else across the United States. In the heartland. The mountains. The hills and valleys and small towns. Possibly in other countries. That made him feel better. It even chipped a bit at the self-recriminations running through his mind.

  A bit, anyway.

  Soon, the hallway became more hazardous, and he had to actively skirt around nails, stray strands of duct tape, and broken two-by-fours on the floor.

  He turned a final corner and saw a plastic see-through sheet hanging across a doorway. On the other side was darkness, though he detected the small glow of a soft light somewhere in the back and a shadowy figure moving in front of it.

  Berg.

  Will changed his grip on the knife and hid it behind his back. He pushed quietly through the plastic covering, slipping into the dark room unnoticed.

  The room was supposed to be some kind of office. There was only a bright night-light in the corner, creating a halo effect around a two-meter area. In the middle was Berg, crouched in front of boxes, rifling through their contents. He wore a gun belt, with a Glock in a hip holster.

  Will walked into the room. He was quiet. He was always good at being quiet when he had to be. It helped that he had honed the skill while weighed down with weapons and heavy equipment, so keeping silent in his bare feet and boxers was almost no challenge.

  Berg didn’t know he was coming until Will was just a meter away. When he finally sensed danger, Berg stood up and started to turn, right hand reaching for the Glock. Berg might have even managed to brush his fingers against the handgun’s grip before Will slapped his left hand over Berg’s mouth. At the same time, Will drove Berg back and into the unfinished wall and jammed the sharp point of the knife against his left eyeball.

  Berg might have screamed against Will’s hand, or he might have just let out a low wheezing sound. Either way, nothing came out while his eyes darted to the cold, slightly dented steel pressing dangerously close to his eye. In the glow of the night-light, the sharp edge probably looked extra menacing.

  “It’s going to hurt,” Will said, keeping his voice low, but not so low Berg couldn’t hear the venom dripping from every word. “Do you understand? It will hurt. A lot.”

  Berg nodded. Or tried to. It was mostly a slight tremble.

  “Stand very still,” Will said. “My hand’s been asleep for the last few hours. It could slip very easily.”

  Will took his hand away from Berg’s mouth. Berg snapped his mouth shut willingly, perhaps afraid he would involuntarily make a sound. His eyeballs were focused on the knife, and he might not even have noticed when Will slipped the Glock out of the holster before taking a step back.

  Berg let out a loud sigh of relief. “Please don’t kill me,” were the first words out of his mouth.

  “That depends.”

  “On what?” Berg seemed to regret the question as soon as it came out of his mouth.

  “Zip ties. Where are they?”

  “In one of my pouches.”

  “Let’s see them.”

/>   Berg took out a handful. “Here,” he said, and offered them to Will with a shaking hand.

  Will tossed the knife away and saw Berg’s eyes, predictably, following its path. Will smashed the Glock into Berg’s temple as he was looking and the man crumpled to the floor in a heap. Will crouched and picked up the fallen zip ties and looped them around Berg’s feet and hands. He pulled them tight while Berg groaned on the floor. He wasn’t sure if Berg was too stunned to attempt anything or too scared to try. Not that it mattered.

  Will grabbed a pair of silk panties and stuffed them into Berg’s mouth. Berg tried to spit them out but was unable to. There was already blood along his temple, dripping down to his cheek.

  It took Will a few minutes to find a crate with his clothes. Or at least they looked like his clothes in the soft light. They could very well have been Danny’s since they were about the same size. Will pulled on cargo pants and a T-shirt, then socks, but had to hunt around for some boots that would fit. He slipped them on, then took a moment to re-orient himself with the hotel’s layout.

  Will glanced down at his left hand, expecting to find his watch, but it wasn’t there. He spent another few minutes looking for it among the crates, but couldn’t find it anywhere. He gave up after about four minutes and headed for the back door instead.

  Maybe Tom had a watch he could take off his dead body…

  *

  Will stepped out of the hotel and into the night with the Glock. He saw the Tower right away. It was hard to miss. LED floodlights below the third-floor windowsills lit the structure like the beacon it was supposed to be, even with the unfinished top. He had initially pegged the Tower at forty meters high, and now that he was closer, it looked more like forty-five, give or take.

  The island itself was surprisingly bright, thanks to the strategically placed lampposts covering the hotel grounds. Karen was right when she said you could see the lights from the shores. There were more floodlights jutting out of the sides of the hotel, creating a halo effect around the structure.

  Will stuck to the shadows. Eventually he was able to use the palm trees for cover. He slowed down, then stopped completely when he was ten meters from the Tower and sat on his haunches in the darkness next to some shrubbery. He couldn’t see any lights coming from the second floor of the building, but there were soft lights coming from one of the third-floor windows.

  He counted to one hundred, then began jogging toward the Tower, keeping as low as possible, though he didn’t think it was necessary as long as Tom didn’t peer out the window at that exact moment. Even then, Tom would have to look down. Will was still thinking about those possibilities when he reached the structure and leaned against the fat, curving concrete base.

  He was close enough to the door that he didn’t have to reach very far to touch the lever. He gripped it and spent a second wondering if Tom had alarms on the door, but he hadn’t even finished that thought before he cranked the lever down, pulled the door open, and slipped through, the Glock rising to chest level.

  A split second later, he was inside the first floor of the Tower.

  A soft yellow light above the door made the interior look claustrophobic, despite being the biggest section of the structure. It was the size of a small studio apartment, with shelves in one corner filled with books, trinkets, and what looked like a stack of board games. Tom hadn’t struck him as the board-game-playing type. A spiral cast-iron staircase along the wall led upward. Will spotted the door in the floor Josh had mentioned. It had a ring handle and a padlock.

  He glanced up toward the second floor and stopped breathing for a few seconds and listened, but couldn’t hear anything moving around above him.

  Will walked over to where the staircase started. The steps looked solid enough. He put one foot on the stairs and heard a slight creak, but it wasn’t loud enough to wake someone from sleep. At least, he hoped not. Will took a second step, then a third, and was halfway to the second floor a few seconds later.

  He kept the gun aimed at the thick wooden door above and across the room from him. Because the stairs arced along the wall, he started at one side of the Tower and ended up on the other side by the time he was halfway up the stairs. He wouldn’t be directly below the door until he had gone another full revolution.

  Halfway up, he stopped and listened again, but still couldn’t hear anything from above him. It was much darker up here, as the small lightbulb below didn’t reach this far. The door had no locks, which meant it opened upward and could only be locked from the other side.

  He started up again and stopped only when he was directly under the door. It was more like a hatch.

  Who the hell designed this thing?

  He had no real choice. Tom was too dangerous to take slowly. The faster he could get up there and confront the man, the better.

  Will positioned himself below the door. He gripped the ring handle with his left hand, careful not to jingle the metal base. He adjusted his stance on the steps so his left shoulder was just barely touching the door. With the Glock in his right hand lifted up to chest level, Will took a deep breath, then a second one, then finally a third before shoving his body upward, driving everything he had not into the door, but through it.

  He emerged through the hole in the second floor and into darkness and knew instinctively he had screwed up.

  His eyes hadn’t adjusted to the pitch blackness yet when he heard movement behind him.

  There was no choice now. Will lunged all the way out of the door and onto the floor and spun around just as Tom attacked, throwing his full weight into Will’s chest like the brawler Will knew he was.

  The Glock flew from Will’s grip as Tom crashed into him, driving his shoulder straight into Will’s chest, his entire bulk crashing down like a sledgehammer. Then Tom’s arms wrapped around Will’s waist and the man carried both of them across the room and right into the wall, smashing Will hard against the concrete, the impact sending something clattering to the floor next to them in the dark.

  Tom didn’t waste a second. He pressed his attack, and Will felt one, two—four quick uppercuts connecting with his ribcage, pounding on his kidneys in the darkness. Before he could fully absorb the pain from those blows, Tom’s left fist caught him in the right cheek and Will staggered sideways, the world suddenly exploding in a burst of pain and colors and sound.

  Will fought for breath, trying to get control of his legs, forcing them to stop moving. It wasn’t working. He felt the air inside the room shift as Tom followed, stalking him like a hunter after wounded prey.

  He raised his arms in a weak attempt at making a shield, unable to find Tom in the darkness. Tom punched through his defenses and connected again, and Will heard his nose breaking, the skin tearing, and blood spraying the cool air of the second floor. Will fell face-first onto something soft (thankfully soft).

  Will pushed himself up just as he heard a soft click and an LED lightbulb on the ceiling buzzed to life, illuminating the room and the cot he had been lying on, bleeding onto a white pillow.

  He spun around and saw Tom in cargo pants and T-shirt, picking up the Glock from the floor. Will sat down on the bed and wiped at the blood dripping from his nose. There was a break on the bridge, with some blood there, too, but he didn’t worry about that at the moment. Instead, he tried to catch his breath and watched Tom turning the Glock over in his hands.

  “Nice gun,” Tom said. “Looks familiar. Berg’s? That stupid kid. I knew we shouldn’t have given him a gun.” Tom reached behind his back and pulled out a second Glock. He grinned at Will, and the only thing missing was him shouting, “Ta-da!” Instead, Tom said, “I could have shot you when you stuck your head through the door, you know. I was waiting in the back, where you couldn’t see me. No one ever looks behind them when they come through the door. See, this is basically my house. I know where all the blind spots are.”

  “So why didn’t you?” Will asked. His voice sounded muffled for some reason.

  “Too easy. Way,
way too easy. Besides, you’re the leader, right?”

  Will didn’t answer. He took the respite to slow his breathing down and gather himself.

  “I’m actually kind of disappointed,” Tom said. He tossed Will’s Glock back on the floor and it slid into a corner, next to a bookcase filled with hardcover books, magazines, and more board games. “I thought you’d be tougher. But I guess toughness is defined by the people you hang out with. I bet those girls and that other soldier boy think you’re pretty hot shit.”

  “You gonna shoot me or talk me to death?” Will said, and spat a mouthful of blood out onto the floor.

  Tom laughed. “Don’t be in such a hurry. This is the best time I’ve had in months. This probably won’t come as too much of a surprise, but it’s hard to find someone decent to go a few rounds with on this island. Marcus can barely throw a punch. And Berg, well, you know kids these days. Hell, Karen gives me a better fight in the sack. She likes it rough, you know.”

  “I really couldn’t care less.”

  “Hah, yeah. I guess she’s not your type.” He grinned, as if he had just thought of something wonderful. “Lara, that her name? A little too skinny for my taste, but hey, I might give it a try anyway. You gotta spice life up every now and then, right? Otherwise it’s not worth living.”

  “She’d eat you for dinner.”

  “We’ll see. She looks like she might be ready for a trade-up. What do you think?”

  “I think you should shoot me now, because it’s going to hurt if we go round two.”

  Tom grinned at him. “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  “Prove it.”

  Tom tossed his Glock away, and it skidded along the floor and landed a few inches from the other one.

  Will grinned at him.

  Tom saw the grin and returned it. “I like the confidence. So show me, tough guy. Show me what the Rangers taught you.”

  Will stood up from the cot and began walking toward him. Tom stood his ground and watched him come.