Road To Babylon Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Sisavath, Sam

  She’d had so many questions (“What does the circled M stand for? Where have I seen it before? Why did you attack Kohl’s Port? Did you really kill everyone in my team?”) but it was too late to ask them now. All she could do was salvage what was left of Duncan Bollman.

  She took a moment to pull the vest off the dead man. It was heavy with spare magazines and equipment, and she quickly slipped it on and latched it into place. She grabbed his radio and replaced the empty spot along his hip with the one she had been carrying.

  She took a second to check the two-way’s frequency. It was on a different dial, which meant Redman had made his men switch it up in order to keep her from eavesdropping on their communications.

  Not a complete idiot after all.

  Gaby switched the frequency on the radio she’d swapped onto the dead man with the new one. It was a minor detail, but if Redman had been smart enough to figure out she’d stolen the radio and switched channels to keep her in the dark, he might take the time to check Bollman’s radio.

  Just in case…

  She stood up and glanced back to make sure no one was behind her before rushing off. They weren’t back there yet, but they would be very soon, because there was absolutely no way they hadn’t heard her gunshots.

  After a few seconds of jogging, she shifted into a full sprint and slipped between two elm trees and moved even deeper into the woods.

  Four

  Trees. Nothing but trees. But at least she wasn’t being pursued. If Redman’s people had heard her gunshots (Of course they had. They’d have to be deaf and living in a cave not to.), they hadn’t resumed their hunt of her. Maybe it had something to do with that brief back and forth she had heard earlier…

  About twenty minutes after leaving Bollman’s body behind, she stopped to listen to the sudden sounds of faraway car engines. They were coming from behind her. Was there a road somewhere inside the woods that she hadn’t run across yet?

  She crouched and waited, but the engines grew more distant instead of closer. If there were roads—or trails big enough for vehicles—out there somewhere, then they weren’t close enough to her current position to pose a threat.

  Gaby got up and continued on foot.

  She kept expecting visible pursuit at any minute but was grateful there wasn’t. At least, not yet. There was no way for her to contact base, not armed only with a two-way portable with limited range—five miles on its best day, and that was without a wall of trees blocking the signal. She still had so many more questions (Why Kohl’s Port? What does the circled M stand for?), but it was less than she’d had when she first fled the seaside town, thanks to her encounter with Bollman.

  If nothing else, she had a name. Buck. He was the leader of the group of which Redman was a lieutenant. She remembered the way Redman’s troops had moved in town and had thought, They’ve had training. Good training.

  Maybe it wasn’t the kind of brutal training she’d endured from two Army Rangers on Song Island all those years ago, or the challenging days on Black Tide Island since, but Redman’s men had been good enough that she almost didn’t get away. Geoff hadn’t, and if Redman was to be believed, neither had Kylie, Martin, and Berryman.

  The reminder that she might be the only survivor of her team stung. What was the saying about the captain going down with the ship? So what did you call a team leader who outlived their team?

  “Stay alive. That’s your job. Dead men can’t do anything or help anyone.”

  Remembering Will’s words didn’t stop her from clutching the M4 tighter. The more she thought about what had happened, the angrier she got. She hadn’t had the chance (or allowed herself) to feel the emotions while trying to stay alive in Kohl’s Port, then later when she was being chased through the woods. But now that she was alone with her thoughts, Gaby couldn’t hide from the guilt.

  They’re dead. Your team. And you’re not.

  What would Will think? Better yet, what are you going to tell Lara?

  The clop-clop-clop of horseshoes broke through her thoughts. They came from nearby, very close to her current position.

  Wait. Horses? Not car engines?

  Yes. She was definitely listening to horseshoes on hard pavement.

  She crouched and looked forward at streams of sunlight piercing the thick foliage through two large elm streets that stood like sentries more than fifty meters in front of her. And between them, through the sun—

  A road, with an object moving from right to left on the other side. Not a car. It was too quiet, and she swore she’d heard horseshoes just seconds ago.

  All this time, and she hadn’t known where she was going, only that she needed to get as far away from Redman as possible. Instead of venturing deeper into the woods, she had unwittingly been angling toward the edge of the forest.

  Better lucky than good, I guess.

  She moved closer until she could get a better look at the road beyond. There, a pair of horses pulling some kind of wagon. The sight didn’t surprise her; horsepower was a good way to get around these days, with still-usable fuel being so valuable and hard to find. All you needed to keep a horse around was grass, and there was plenty of that to go around these days.

  So where did Redman’s people get gas for those technicals back at Kohl’s Port?

  It was a good question, and she wished there were someone to answer it. But there wasn’t, so Gaby got up and eased even closer toward the tree line, just as the horse-drawn wagon passed completely by in front of her. She was about to peek out and get a better look when she heard it again—clop-clop-clop as another pair of horses pulled a second wagon up the road.

  She hugged the nearest tree, keeping about five meters between her and the two-lane country, with another wall of trees on the other side. The Gulf of Mexico would be somewhere out there; she could feel the breeze against her skin and taste the saltwater on her tongue.

  Gaby focused on the gray asphalt and the two large brown horses pulling a wagon with oversized black tires and mud-caked yellow rims, while a man sat alone in the front seat steering with reins. The driver wore a black assault vest, but there were too many obstructions for Gaby to make out if it had a circled M anywhere on it.

  She had a much easier time glimpsing the frightened faces of six or seven women (maybe more?) in the back of the wagon. For a second, she allowed herself to hope that one of the figures might have been Kylie.

  Kylie’s dead. Along with the others.

  You lost your team. Accept it and move on.

  Two men—armed guards—in similar assault vests as the driver sat on benches while the women were confined to the jostling floor. Sunlight glinted off rifles in the men’s hands (the driver had his slung), and when she focused on one of the two in the back, Gaby was able to get a good look at the white circled M near the top of his vest.

  Redman’s men.

  As the wagon disappeared up the curving road and out of her line of sight, Gaby moved closer to the edge of the tree line and listened for a third horse-drawn wagon, but there wasn’t one.

  Who were the women? And where had they come from?

  The easiest explanation (and most obvious, given the proximity) was that they had come from Kohl’s Port, which would be south from her current location. She hadn’t gotten a good enough look at the first wagon to know if it, too, was carrying women in the back.

  The radio on her hip squawked, just loud enough to make her jump slightly. Gaby had lowered the volume just in case, and was glad she had. She unclipped the two-way and held it close to her ear so she could hear the familiar voice speaking through the tinny speakers.

  “Give me a sitrep.”

  Redman.

  “We lost her tracks about thirty minutes ago,” a man answered through the radio.

  “Yeah, nothing here, either,” a different man said.

  “Anyone got any good news for once?” Redman asked, the irritation in his voice coming through clearly.

  No one answered.

  �
��Dammit,” Redman said. Then, sounding resigned, “All right, get back here and help with the supplies. As far as I’m concerned, it’s mission accomplished.”

  “Mission accomplished,” huh? Not quite, Redman. Not quite…

  She waited for someone else to respond, or for Redman to continue giving orders, but the radio remained silent.

  After about a minute of nothing, she lowered the two-way and sat next to the large tree and waited for something to happen. She kept expecting to see more of Redman’s people come up the road carrying even more scared women in the back, but the lanes remained empty, and the clop-clop-clop of horseshoes began to fade.

  Gaby got up and took one step through two trees in front of her, but for some reason didn’t follow through. Instead, she stared out at the road—there was nothing in her path, nothing to keep her from the Gulf of Mexico on the other side.

  What am I doing?

  She took a step back and looked north, up the road. The images of the frightened women in the back of the second wagon flashed across her mind’s eye.

  She thought about Lara and all the women and girls on Black Tide. What would she do if one of her friends were on that wagon? Captured and scared, being led to God only knew where right now?

  But they weren’t her friends. They were strangers.

  And she had to return to base. Or try to reach it and report in. Danny had to know how badly the mission had gone. That was her job. Her obligation. Her duty.

  So why didn’t she step out into the road and keep going east?

  Goddammit, Gaby thought, and turned and began jogging north.

  She kept the tree line to her right as a guide so that she remained inside the woods as she chased the two wagons. Both horse-drawn vehicles hadn’t been moving very fast, either because they were pulling too much weight or there was no hurry. Either way, if she picked up her pace, there was a very good possibility she could catch up to them before they got to wherever they were going.

  Another town? A temporary camp? What was around this area that could be either one?

  She had no idea. This part of South Texas might as well be Mars to her.

  It took longer than she expected, but after about ten minutes of steady running, Gaby was able to pick up the steady clop-clop-clop of horse hooves on hard asphalt again. It was faint at first, but eventually grew louder, and soon she was able to glimpse the colors of the brown wagon and the figures resting on top of it, slightly in front and to the right of her through the trees.

  She jumped over bushes and ducked low-hanging branches, and soon she had caught up to the second wagon. There were no other cars or vehicles on the road, and it was easy to spot the sunlight reflecting off the metal pieces, including the yellow rims on her target.

  Gaby poured on the speed until she had passed the trailing wagon completely—and there, the first one, nearly a hundred meters up ahead, its tailgate coming into view just as she rounded the curve in the road. There was no one in the back (Thank God) and there were only two men sitting up front. Instead of people, the first wagon was carrying bulky objects that jutted out from underneath a heavy tan tarp.

  The spoils of war.

  No. The spoils of a massacre.

  She was running now and didn’t stop until she was between the two vehicles. She bided her time, letting the first one get farther ahead, all the while the second wagon got closer.

  Gaby remained crouched while willing her breathing to slow down. She had always been in good shape, even before the end of the world, and Ranger training had pushed her physical abilities beyond their limits. But she had survived those hard days and nights with two maniacs who wanted to turn her into a finely-tuned soldier like they were. She even thrived, and those successes were the reason why she could slow her heart rate on command now, as she waited.

  In and out…

  Her mouth was parched from the lack of water, and licking her lips only seemed to exacerbate the problem. But it was a minor annoyance and she pushed through it.

  In and out…

  She had all but normalized her breathing when the second wagon finally appeared in the road in front of her. At the same time, the first horse-drawn vehicle had vanished out of sight around a bend to her left.

  In and out.

  She waited for the trailing wagon to get closer, and when it was about ten meters away, Gaby stood up, stepped forward, and slid between two trees and into the road.

  Without the trees for cover, the sun hit her eyes immediately, but she was prepared for it and blinked once, then twice, even as she lifted the M4 and pointed it at the driver.

  The man’s hands were full with both reins, and he did exactly what Gaby expected him to: He jerked the animals to a stop and stared across the road at her, and was opening his mouth to say something when she pulled the trigger.

  Gaby’s mind was a blank slate (It’s a target. Nothing more.) when she fired two shots, so close together that they almost sounded like one—pop-pop!—and hit the driver both times in the chest. The man toppled sideways and lay on his wooden seat.

  The horses let out a wild whinny, but neither took off, which told her they might not have liked the idea of bullets flying over their heads but were apparently used to it. That didn’t stop the animals from moving around on the road, though, the clop-clop of their shoes mostly drowned out by the echoes of her two shots.

  She moved forward with the rifle still aimed, even as one of the two men in the back stood up to get a better look up the road. He saw her a split second before Gaby shot him, hitting him once in the shoulder. Then, when he turned slightly, she put a second round into his neck. The man careened backward and onto the road, where a spray of blood arced from his neck as he flopped around on the hot concrete.

  Gaby moved past the horses, praying that neither animal decided to retaliate and deliver a swift kick in her direction. It wouldn’t have mattered where they landed, because both brown beasts were huge and a single blow would probably be enough to if not kill her, then knock her down for the count.

  Fortunately for her, the horses didn’t lash out, and Gaby was able to quickly get by them, though she did put just enough distance between herself and the shuffling animals so she didn’t tempt them—or fate.

  She had been waiting for the third and final man to either make himself visible by now or jump down and come around the wagon, but he did neither of those things. Instead, she heard pounding footsteps, and when she sidestepped to the left to get a better look, saw a black-clad figure fleeing down the road.

  And where are you going?

  Redman’s soldier had already managed thirty meters—thirty-five—when she spotted him. Apparently the man’s first (and maybe only) instinct had been to run, or else he wouldn’t have already put so much distance between them.

  But he was still well within range of Geoff’s rifle.

  Gaby scoped her target with the red dot sight and was about to pull the trigger when the man threw a quick, harried glance over his shoulder.

  Yeah, that’s right. Take a good look at the person who’s going to end you.

  The man’s eyes widened at the sight of Gaby aiming her rifle at him. She thought she could actually see the whites of his eyeballs, but maybe that was just the sun. He seemed to slow before turning around. He continued backpedaling as he clumsily unslung his rifle…then threw it down to the road and raised both hands into the air.

  He couldn’t have been more than twenty, but that could have just been the mask of fear on his face making him look older.

  Why do they always have to be so young?

  He kept backpedaling, stumbling over his own legs every two or three steps, but somehow remained upright. His eyes were locked on hers, as if he were afraid she would shoot him if he broke contact.

  Shoot him.

  Her forefinger was on the trigger, and she was pulling it, pulling it—but there was no shot.

  Shoot him!

  There was no shot, because she didn’t finish t
he pull.

  Do it.

  Like all the other times when she was faced with a difficult choice, Gaby thought about Will and what he would do in this situation.

  The answer was an easy one.

  Will would shoot the man regardless of how young he was, because Will would know that if he let the man go, he was going to run right back to Redman. Back into the ranks of the killers who had massacred Kohl’s Port. Who knew how much blood this one had on his hands? He might have looked young (Was he even really that young?), but there were no age limitations on who could pull a trigger these days.

  So what are you waiting for? Shoot him.

  Shoot him!

  But she didn’t, because she wasn’t Will. And she would never be Will no matter how hard she tried or wanted to become like him. She couldn’t bring herself to kill a kid—and that was all this guy was, just a kid—no matter how hard this life had made her.

  I’m sorry, Will. Please don’t be too disappointed in me.

  Gaby lowered the M4, and Redman’s man turned and fled.

  She finally lost sight of him as the road curved and he disappeared behind a row of trees—

  Footsteps, from behind her.

  The first wagon!

  She had been waiting for them, knowing full well they could easily hear her gunshots from up ahead. And yet she had become so preoccupied with the third (kid) man that she had lost track—

  “They’re coming!” someone shouted. A woman. No, a girl. It sounded like just a girl.

  Gaby didn’t have time to look over at the speaker to confirm her age, but she could see most of the women hugging the bottom of the wagon out of the corner of one eye even as she spun around and hurried back toward the horses.

  The two men from the first wagon were on foot and rounding the road at a fast jog when she shot the first one—the bigger of the two—from fifty meters away. The man jerked back as if someone had pulled on strings attached to both shoulders and collapsed to the road on his back.

  That caused his partner to stop and glance down briefly, and by the time he had gathered himself and turned back around, Gaby fired again—pop-pop!—and put two into his chest. The man dropped and lay still, even though the first one was still moving around. Barely.