The Gates of Byzantium

CHAPTER 18


WILL




THEY REACHED THE outskirts of Beaumont, Texas, by two o’clock in the afternoon, which was better time than Will had expected, given they were stuck at thirty-five miles per hour on the road. There were a couple of reasons for that. The roads got more dangerous the closer they got to a major city—and Beaumont definitely qualified, with its 118,000 population within an eighty-five-square-mile radius. There was also more debris, leftovers from the days even before The Purge. The leftovers piled up, and wind and time added to the growing menace. There was also the cargo trailer to worry about, and losing that would have been calamitous.

It was easy to tell when you were nearing a big city. The roads started to clog up with abandoned cars and personal items left behind, twisting and turning in the wind, bleached dry in the sun.

During the trip, Lara would pick up the ham radio and turn it on, and they would listen to the same recorded message from Song Island. Will wondered if Lara was afraid the message would stop, and if it did, what that would mean. He wasn’t entirely sold on Song Island, but it seemed to give her and the others hope, and who was he to take that away from them.

Hope was good. Hope kept you fighting. No one knew that more intimately than a soldier who had been in a war zone.

As they neared Beaumont, Will began looking for possible safe harbors along the feeder roads. There were plenty of buildings, stores, homes, and brand-new subdivisions. But he couldn’t settle, not with the knowledge of what was chasing them.


Kate, of all people…

They were alongside Willowstone Mall, the city’s main shopping center, when the highway suddenly became impassable, and Will pulled over to the shoulder and stopped. There were simply too many vehicles in front of them now, and the big trucks weren’t going to be able to maneuver around the wall of metal, cast iron, aluminum, chrome, and rubber.

Will grabbed the radio off the dashboard: “Danny, I think we’re stuck.”

“We haven’t tried going over them yet,” Danny said through the radio.

“I don’t think that’s going to work.”

“Oh come on, we won’t know until we try. The girls will love it.”

“Maybe next time.”

Gaby was leaning against her window, smiling at the familiar gathering of department stores that made up the Willowstone Mall to their right. “Wow, I’d kill to do some shopping right about now.”

“You’d definitely have to kill a lot to do any shopping,” Josh said. “There are probably a gazillion of those bloodsuckers in there.”

“Josh is right,” Lara said. “The ghouls are everywhere. They use the department stores as nests.”

“Figures,” Gaby sighed.

Lara looked over at Will. “If we can’t go around this traffic, where does that leave us?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “Let’s get a better look outside.”

Will climbed out of the Ridgeline while Danny walked over from the Frontier.

“Monster trucks,” Danny said. “We need monster trucks. Then we could just go right over these suckers. I even came up with a name. The Danny-ator.”

“The Danny-ator?”

“Yeah, you know, like the Terminator. But with my name. Don’t steal it.”

“Try and stop me.”

Will climbed onto the hood of his Ridgeline and took a pair of binoculars from one of his pouches. The sea of cars stretched endlessly across all four lanes—two northbound and two southbound. The only positive was that the highway wasn’t elevated, so they would be able to break off and take the feeder roads whenever they needed to. But even the feeders were congested with vehicles.

Lara climbed out behind them. “What do you see?”

“Cars. Lots of cars,” Will said.

“The man has a flair for understatement,” Danny said. “Monster trucks,” he said to Lara. “That’s the ticket.”

“God help us,” Lara said.

“That’s what Carly said when I told her. What’s the deal with you girls? No love for the monster trucks?”

“No, just the thought of you behind the wheel of one, Danny.”

“Hey, I’m an excellent driver.”

“Whatever, Rain Man,” Lara said.

Will climbed down from the hood of the Ridgeline as the others climbed out of the trucks and formed a mini-circle around him. They hadn’t been outside for more than a few minutes, and everyone was already sweating in the heat.

“How are we going to get around that?” Carly asked, looking at the traffic.

Will had to admit, it was an imposing sight, as if all of Beaumont had decided to leave at the same time. And maybe they had. Beaumont was a smaller city compared to Houston or Dallas, and the ghouls might have saved them for the second wave of attacks. That would have given the residents time to digest what was happening elsewhere—on TV, the radio, or the Net—before eventually deciding to converge on the highways in a mass exodus. He had seen it happen during hurricanes.

Will glanced down at his watch: 2:26 P.M.

“How are we for time?” Lara asked.

“Six hours and counting before nightfall,” Will said. Thank God for Texas summers. “We have time.”

“We’re not getting around that in six hours,” Danny said.

Will shook his head. He would have preferred to pass Beaumont in a day and be well beyond the city limits by nightfall. He remembered how many threats they’d had to deal with in Houston. Beaumont had a fraction of Houston’s population, but 118,000 was still an impressive number of potential ghouls hiding in darkness, waiting for night. And that wasn’t counting how many Kate would bring with her.

Kate. It had to be Kate, too.

“We’ll use the feeders and look for a place to hole up for the night,” Will said.

“What kind of places are we looking for?” Josh asked.

“Small, defensible, and preferably not close to places like a mall. Keep an eye out.”

They nodded and anxiously climbed back into the trucks, thankful to return to the air conditioners. Danny lingered behind until it was just the two of them on the highway.

“Kate?” Danny asked.

“Yeah,” Will nodded.

“Psychic dreams. Jesus. What’s next? Undead creatures from the pits of Hell?”

“That’ll be the day,” Will said.

*

HE GOT LUCKY and found what he was looking for a few miles up the highway. It was along the feeder road, inside a strip mall with an Exxon gas station up front and three other buildings flanking it. The place was surrounded by giant car lots selling new and used vehicles.

“See it?” Will said into the radio.

“I see it,” Danny said through the radio. “God bless Miguel. He was a piece of shit human being who insisted on shooting other people in the back, but at least he gave away valuable information freely.”

Will led them off the feeder road and into the strip mall, passing the Exxon. They drove by a Discount Tire Shop and then an Auto Zone before turning a corner with a Budget Rent-a-Car. It was behind a small furniture store called Elmo’s, in an open parking lot with contents visible all the way from the elevated highway.

“Are you kidding?” Lara said. “We’re spending the night in those things?”

“Whoa,” Josh said, leaning between the front seats. “I never once thought about using those.”

“What?” Gaby said. Then, “Oh, no, not those again.”

Will stopped the Ridgeline in front of the first semitrailer, one of many lining a truck stop in the back of the plaza. The area took up nearly half of the concrete space, with one big building in a corner surrounded by at least fifty, possibly sixty, trailers resting on back tires and propped up by their landing gear. Their solid steel sides gleamed in the sun.

They climbed out of the trucks.

Will glanced over at Gaby. She looked pained. “You good?”

She looked over and nodded. “If we have to, then we have to.”

“Just this once.”

She nodded again, trying to convince herself. “Okay.”

Tough girl.

“Spread out,” Will said, “and look for one that doesn’t have a lock on the doors. We’ll need two, preferably side by side. If you find one unlocked, be careful. You don’t know what might be hiding inside.”

Will drew his Glock and replaced the magazine with one marked with an “X.” Danny and the others did the same thing.

“You’re with me, kid,” Danny said to Josh.

Gaby stayed behind with Carly and the girls. “We’ll just wait here and soak up the sun,” Carly said. “Whistle if you need anything.”

“Lara,” Will said, “you should stay behind, too.”

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Your arm…”

“It’s a lot better. Besides, I’m a righty, anyway.”

He thought about arguing but saw the look on her face and decided against it.

She walked next to him as they moved through a row of about twenty trailers, testing the back doors as they went. Most of the trailers had simple locks that could be opened with a key, though some had more expensive-looking security devices on them. They went along the row, pulling at doors but finding none that would yield.


Danny said through the radio: “Locked, locked, and locked. Any luck on your end?”

“Not a one,” Will said into the radio.

“We might have to break into one of these things.”

“Looks like.”

“Good thing I packed that bolt cutter…”

Danny was probably right. The owners of the trailers hadn’t been sloppy enough to leave their property unlocked, even if there was nothing inside to steal. He guessed it was because no one liked the idea of someone playing around in their things.

“Semitrailers?” Lara said after a while.

“It’s not an entirely bad idea, and I wish I had thought of it.”

“Wouldn’t it get claustrophobic in there?”

“Maybe after a while, but we’re not going to be spending that much time in them. We should be able to cross into Louisiana by tomorrow, then Beaufont Lake later the same day.” He noticed she was looking at him closely. “What?”

“I’ve never seen you this anxious to get to Song Island.”

“I’m not.”

“So what is it? This thing with Kate? The dream?”

“That’s part of it.”

“That’s most of it, you mean.”

He wrinkled his nose at her. “One person invading my thoughts is more than enough, thank you very much. I don’t need you in there, too.”

She looked like she was warming to the idea. “Can you imagine? Your ex-girlfriend and your current girlfriend knowing everything you’re thinking?”

“Heaven forbid,” he said, and faked shivering.

She laughed. “But I’m a lot nicer than Kate. At least, my skin is probably softer.”

“Only in real life.”

“What does that mean?”

“When I dreamt about her, she was the old Kate.”

“Oh.”

He smiled. “It was just a dream, Lara.”

“Still, I don’t know how I feel about you spending quality time with your ex-girlfriend in a park. Dream or not, a girl can get a little nervous.”

He grabbed her by the waist. She let out a surprised yelp as he pulled her to him, very careful not to touch her left arm in the sling. He kissed her deeply, passionately, and she moaned against him. They were still lip-locked and sweating under the sun when Will’s radio squawked and they heard Danny’s voice.

“I think it’s time for that bolt cutter,” Danny said. He waited for a response, and when he didn’t get one: “Guys? You still there? Ghouls get ya? Oh, man, you’re doing something bad to one another, aren’t you? Gross. She’s wearing bandages, too. Double gross.”

*

“WHAT CAN’T BOLT cutters do?” Danny said, as he clamped the sharp metal teeth down over a lock and snapped it in two with a solid crunch. “Not a whole lot, that’s what. Anyone got a sandwich they want split in half?”

“Danny and sharp objects,” Carly said, shaking her head.

Lara laughed, and so did Gaby and the girls.

“What?” Danny said, and stepped away from the truck.

Will grabbed the doors and threw them open. He didn’t worry about the possibility of ghouls waiting for him on the other side. Ghouls didn’t do locks, and they certainly didn’t bother locking a room back up after they left.

The musty odor of time and dust swarmed them in a thick fine mist. Everyone coughed and backed away from the trailer. The vehicle itself was empty, its floor, sides, and ceiling heavily scratched by past cargos. The trailer sat in the middle of the lot, where it had been wallowing in the heat for months now, and there was nothing to make it stand out from the others. Which was what Will wanted.

He grabbed the ramp and lowered it to the ground, then climbed up with an LED lamp, hanging it on a hook along the ceiling. He pegged the trailer’s length at twenty-two meters long and four meters high, more than enough room to move around comfortably.

He walked back to the opening. “All right, let’s start moving what we need in here while Danny cracks open the second trailer.”

Everyone moved with purpose, including the girls. They transported the ammo, guns, food, and personal items from the trucks over to the trailers. They had done it so many times now it was second nature, and Will found he didn’t have to tell anyone what to bring. They just knew. Even Josh and Gaby got with the program in no time.

Will climbed down the ramp and walked over a meter and threw open the second trailer once Danny broke the lock. The others were piling boxes and moving crates into the first trailer behind him, their boots and sneakers clanging loudly back and forth.

Too loud. It’s too loud.

Danny saw the look on his face. “What now?”

“Footsteps,” Will said.

“Where?”

“In the trailer. It’s too loud.”

“So?”

“Noises, Danny.”

Danny listened to the others moving noisily around in the trailer behind them. “Yeah. Way too loud.”

“Let’s go shopping.”

“Awesome. You going to buy me something pretty this time?”

“We’ll see,” Will said.

*

ELMO’S NEXT DOOR had what they were looking for—mattresses. They carried what they needed over to the semitrailers until they had enough to cover most of the floors.

“Really? Mattresses?” Lara asked.

“To keep the noises down,” Will said.

“And sleep like a baby,” Danny added. “These things are expensive. Who can afford these things?”

“Rich people,” Josh said, helping Will carry one of the mattresses up the first trailer’s ramp.

“God, I love being rich,” Danny said.

Once the mattresses were in place, Will had them move around inside while he listened, and he was pleased with the result.

“We’re good to go,” he announced. “Drill ’em.”

Danny brought out a battery-powered drill and went up and down the trailers, creating holes in the floor and along the sides, far enough apart to not be readily obvious if someone went searching under the vehicles. It was going to be claustrophobic enough inside without trying to fight for air. The holes, as small as they were, would fix that problem without giving their positions away.

Dead, not stupid.

Will and Danny drove the trucks over to the Discount Tire store and parked inside the garage. They slammed the doors shut and locked them from the inside, then slipped out through a side entrance. Even if other survivors stumbled across the trucks and raided the supplies in the cargo trailer, the loss wasn’t anything that couldn’t be replaced by raiding nearby stores and buildings. They had become, much to his surprise (but very much to his approval), brutally efficient in the last few months.

It was almost five in the evening by the time Will and Danny began walking back to the others. He took a moment to glance over his shoulder at the highway behind them. Quiet and congested, with cars frozen in place, it made for an eerie sight.

“You think your girlfriend’s going to find us?” Danny asked. “Kate struck me as the persistent type.”

“Ex-girlfriend.”

“Same difference. What’s with you and the crazy ones, anyway?”

“Lara’s not crazy.”

“Not yet.”

“I’m going to tell her you said that.”

“Hey, hey, let’s not start throwing each other under the bus now,” Danny said.

*

THEY WAITED UNTIL an hour before sundown before entering their respective trailers. Will and Lara, with Josh and Gaby, in one, and Danny with Carly and the girls in the other. They pulled the doors closed, and with the LED lamps hanging from the ceiling, the interior of the trailer looked like some otherworldly cave with blindingly white lights.


The semitrailer doors didn’t have locks on the inside, but Will had made sure to choose trailers with simple door designs that could be chained in place from the inside. They slid steel bars across the latches as a secondary measure. The chains were taut enough that they could probably withstand most assaults, but it never hurt to have a backup plan.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

Will heard Danny doing the same with his trailer’s lock next door. He said into the radio, “We good?”

“We’re spiffy and dandy,” Danny said through the radio.

“All right, let’s go silent. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“Try not to wake me up unless it’s absolutely necessary. A man needs his beauty rest, you know. The ladies, too, I guess.”

Will glanced briefly his watch: 7:56 P.M. “Thirty minutes, give or take.”

Josh and Gaby settled into the back. Will watched Gaby closely. He didn’t blame her for her reluctance to climb back into a semitrailer. It was more than that, though. Gaby had killed a man during their escape. And yet, she hadn’t made a scene about his plan.

She has no idea how tough she really is, or what she’s capable of.

He glanced over at Lara, trying to stave off sleep next to him. “With any luck, we’ll be in Beaufont Lake by tomorrow evening.”

She nodded and leaned tiredly against him. He slipped his arm around her waist, careful to avoid putting any pressure on her left arm.

“Go to sleep,” he whispered.

“I will if you promise not to dream about your ex-girlfriend again,” she whispered back.

He smiled. “I’ll do my best.”

*

DARKNESS CAME AT 8:29 P.M. on the dot.

The temperature dropped noticeably, even inside their steel confines. He turned off the LED lamps, and his world would have been pitch-black if he weren’t wearing the night-vision goggles. He used them to navigate back to Lara.

He sat down next to her, the Remington shotgun in his left hand. The M4A1 rested on another mattress nearby, along with a second Remington and half the ammo they carried with them. Danny had the other half.

Will felt Lara slide against him as he took the night-vision goggles off. It wasn’t nearly as hot inside as he had feared, and with nightfall coming, the temperature would be just north of bearable. At least, bearable enough to sleep through, though Will didn’t think he would be getting a lot of sleep anyway.

What was that Kate had said? “Your mind is tired, Will. You’re exhausted.”

She was right. He was exhausted down to his bones, and had been for the last few months, ever since they were forced to abandon Harold Campbell’s facility. He was moving on fumes, warm bottles of Red Bull, pure black coffee that tasted more like sludge, and energy bars. Not to mention fear. Not for himself, but for Lara. For Carly. For Danny and the girls. He stayed awake because he had to.

He thought about Song Island. Maybe things would change once they got there.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

He couldn’t really make out Josh and Gaby behind him without the night-vision goggles, though he could hear their slight movements against the mattress. They weren’t asleep, not yet, and maybe they were purposely trying to stay awake. He didn’t really need them awake, but he wasn’t going to tell them what to do. They had survived out here for eight months on their own, and Will figured they had earned the right to be as paranoid as he was.

It took thirty minutes before he heard the first one moving outside, bare feet slapping against concrete as it went down the row of semitrailers. Lara heard it, too, because her body stiffened next to him, and he felt her hand reaching for her Glock.

Will slipped his hand around her waist to let her know he was there. She relaxed a bit, but not much. He kept his other hand on the Remington, lying on the mattress next to him.

He felt safe in here, surrounded by the preparations they had put in place. Even if they were discovered, getting in was another matter entirely.

What had Miguel said? “Have you seen those semitrailers? You can’t tear into those things. They’re like a moving safe.”

Thanks for the idea, Folger, you dead piece of shit.

The noises outside became more obvious as a single ghoul became two, then two became a dozen. Then he heard them moving on the roof above him. They were hopping from trailer to trailer, and each time one of them landed and leaped off, the steel container trembled slightly in their wake.

On cue, his right ear clicked, and he heard Danny’s voice, soft and calm, but clearly whispering on his end: “I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your semitrailer down.”

“You felt that, huh?” Will whispered.

“Felt it, heard it, and smelt it. How many do you think? A dozen?”

“At least.”

“They can’t sniff us, right? Cause I haven’t taken a shower in a while.”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“Good. Carly says I reek. Maximum BO.”

“Go to sleep. Nothing’s going to happen tonight.”

“Sleep. Right. That’s going to happen.” Danny paused, then added, “A clown wakes up one morning and decides to visit his doctor. His doctor takes one look at him and asks, ‘So what’s the problem? Why are you here?’ To which the clown replies, ‘I dunno, doc, I woke up this morning and I just felt funny.’”

“Go to sleep,” Will said.

Lara was looking at him in the darkness.

He shook his head and whispered, “Just Danny being Danny.”

She laid her cheek against his chest, and Will tightened his arm around her. His hand accidentally brushed against her breasts. “Not tonight, dear, we have company,” she whispered, her words slurred by the Percocet she had taken for the pain earlier.

He smiled and wondered how the kids were doing back there. He couldn’t tell if they were moving, or even breathing.

Will caught a flicker of movement from the corner of his left eye. He looked over at the breathing hole about a meter from the end of his mattress and saw something flitting across the other side of the opening.

Black eyes stared up through the hole, searching, searching…

Dead, not stupid.

Will lifted the Remington to his lap and slipped his finger into the trigger guard, but he didn’t thumb off the safety yet. From his angle, he could see the tiny drilled hole, but the ghoul wouldn’t be able to see much of anything except for the ceiling directly above it. And there was nothing up there to give away their position or indicate there was anything inside. The closest LED lamp was three meters away, but the creature wouldn’t be able to pick it up with the naked eye given its limited angle.

Hopefully.

Ten seconds later, and the damn thing was still there, under the trailer, looking through the hole.

Had it smelled something? Seen something? Sensed something?

They weren’t stupid. Turning hadn’t robbed them of their intelligence, even if it had reverted them to an almost primal, animalistic state of being.

And animals could sometimes sense their prey…

Will inched his forefinger toward the safety switch of the Remington and was about to slide it into firing position when the black eyes on the other side of the breathing hole disappeared.

He had started to relax when he heard footsteps on the roof above him again, and this time they didn’t disappear right away like before. These new sounds were lingering.

Will flicked the safety off the Remington, mindful of the soft click it made, such a minor noise sounding like an explosion in the stillness.


They were still up there, moving around lazily. What the hell were they doing up there? He fought back the urge to start firing with the Remington. He could probably pick them all off with a few choice blasts from down here.

Tempting…

When he looked back down at the breathing hole, the black eyes were back.

Will didn’t move, didn’t make a sound.

Go away, you sonofabitch. Shoo.

After about thirty seconds, the searching eyes obeyed and disappeared again, replaced by dark asphalt in the background.

A moment later, the footsteps above him also vanished.

Will waited, wondering if this was some kind of feint.

Dead, not stupid.

Ten seconds.

Twenty.

Thirty…

And still just asphalt below him through the hole, and no hints of a tremor above him on the roof.

Will allowed himself to breathe again and lessened his grip on the shotgun after flicking the safety back on. He slowly lowered the weapon down to the mattress next to him, still within easy reach.

After a while, the ghouls must have been convinced the semitrailer lot was clear, because there was a loud flurry of movement, fading away from them…

…and then silence.

He relaxed a bit.

Lara had gone to sleep next to him. He could also hear the teenagers snoring lightly in the back. Or maybe it was just one of them. It was hard to tell.

He sat awake and waited, listening, trying to feel the slightest vibrations from outside. Soft wind against the steel walls of the containers, debris blowing across the concrete parking lot. What may or may not have been a car horn in the distance, or possibly just his imagination playing tricks on him.

He lost the battle to stay awake around three in the morning, and was surprised he didn’t dream of Kate again.