The Ashes of Pompeii (Purge of Babylon, Book 5) (48 page)

My God, it was still so far away.

The water—she could see it, even smell and taste it in the air, but it was still so far away. Why was it so damn far away?

She thought about handing Danny off to Josh. He was a man now—bigger and taller and stronger. He could help Gaby carry Danny faster than she could. The two of them were uninjured and would have a better chance of reaching the boat than with her. Besides, she was pretty sure she was bleeding again. The question was, was it both her wounds or just one? Given how badly her night was going, it was probably both.

Her left shoulder and thigh were screaming at her at unimaginable decibels. It had started when she first picked Danny up, and it had only gotten worse—and louder—as she trudged across the length of the beach. Her shoulder in particular howled and bounced off the insides of her skull. Both of her legs were throbbing—and not just the one that was injured and wrapped in gauze at the moment.

She wanted to stop and sit down. No, lie down. That would be so much better. It was time to rest, anyway. She had been fighting for so long, and now she just wanted to stop for a moment and take a breath that wasn’t so labored that it felt as if her chest would cave in with every gasp of air.

Why fight it? We can’t win.

Why didn’t you tell me, Will? Why didn’t you ever tell me the truth?

We can’t win. We can’t—

She looked across and saw Gaby on the other side of Danny. Her face was locked in a tight grimace, and every inch of her was flushed with pain. But she hadn’t stopped—not even for a second. She pushed on, fighting through whatever physical hell was trying to suffocate her at the moment.

The sight of Gaby filled Lara with pride.

You’re right, Will. We have to keep fighting. Not just for us, but for everyone. For all the Gabys of the world. The Elises and the Veras and the Dwaynes.

Goddammit, you’re right. You’re always so damn right…

She could do it. She could take the pain and keep moving, because there were no other choices. It was stop and die, or keep moving and live. It didn’t matter if they only survived for another second. Or minute. Or hour.

Survive!

“The boat!” Josh’s voice, so much louder than before, as if he was almost on top of her. Had she and Gaby really slowed down that much? “Get on the boat!”

“Lara!”
Gaby?
Why was Gaby shouting at her? “Ready?”

Ready? Ready for wha—

Oh.

The boat. One of the ten boats that lined the beach, coming up on them. It was one of the smaller ones, and it had only partially slid up onto the sand before its occupants bailed. There was blood along the sides, and a man in a black uniform lay half-in and half-out of the water nearby, like a permanent fixture.

Then she did a stupid thing and looked back again.

They were coming out of the trees, an oozing black blob of moving limbs and black eyes. There wasn’t a single part of the beach behind her that she could see that wasn’t already turning black, as if someone had poured a giant bottle of ink that was now swallowing up the white sand inch by inch.

She couldn’t take her eyes off them—these impossibly twisted and emaciated things that were once human beings. Their speed was incomprehensible, and for a moment she was sure her eyes were lying to her. But no, they really were that fast, it was just that she hadn’t seen them for so long that she had forgotten.

“Lara!” Gaby’s voice again. “Hurry!”

She looked forward just as wetness swamped her feet.

Water?

The lake!

The boat wasn’t so tall that they couldn’t have climbed over without help, but Danny was heavy and all the running had tired her out, and her wounds were screaming inside her like banshees. Every inch of her ached, so Lara had no idea where both she and Gaby found the strength, but they hoisted Danny up—

—he went over and landed on the other side of the beached boat with a loud
thump!
that she hoped wasn’t a bad sign. To have gone through all the trouble to save him, only to have him land on something sharp, was a terrifying thought.

Gaby grabbed the side of the boat and disappeared up it with surprising fluidity. Lara wondered where she’d learned that. She’d ask her later…if there was a later.

She gripped the side and pulled herself up, somehow managing not to cry out as pain exploded across her body, her left arm feeling as if it would snap in two—or maybe three or four—pieces at any second.

She might have either cried or screamed (or both) as she climbed over the side and dropped to the floor on the other side. She didn’t remember, because she was scrambling to her knees next to Danny, who had fallen on top of an M4 rifle that had been left behind by one of the assaulters.

Lara grabbed the rifle and jerked it out from underneath Danny, then she made the mistake of looking back up the beach again.

They were still coming (of course they were, what did she think, they were going to give up when she wasn’t looking?) and there was so many that she imagined this must be what it was like to stare into the heart of a living and breathing black hole. There was nothing in front of her but death.

Josh. Where’s Josh?

Not far, as it turned out. He was in front of her, firing the last of his bullets into the incoming horde before dropping the gun.

He spun around, his face wild, screaming. “Go! Go!”

Go?
she wanted to ask him.
Go where? We’re stuck. The boat won’t move—

The roar of the engine filled the air as Josh rammed himself into the front of the boat. What was he doing? What—

“Go!” Josh was shouting. He was pushing and screaming, digging his boots into the sand for leverage and howling like a madman. “Go, get out of here! Get out of here!”

He was
pushing them back into the water.

She didn’t know how he was doing it. This skinny kid who had come to her and Will months ago, who couldn’t do much of anything right. It was Gaby who had saved his life not once, but twice, because Josh was one of those kids in school who you ignored. He was average in every way—not tall enough, not big enough, and certainly not handsome enough for a girl like Gaby—and there shouldn’t have been any possible way he could actually be
pushing the boat back into the water.

“Josh, what are you doing?” Gaby screamed, most of it lost over the roar of the outboard motor.

The boat kept moving, because Josh was still pushing even though she couldn’t see him in front of the vessel anymore.

This isn’t possible. How is this even possible?

And the beach got darker and darker, until there was nothing left—

Then the sound of the motor changed noticeably as the propeller finally found water to churn against, and the boat was now reversing faster off the beach and into the lake.

She could finally see Josh again. He stood on the beach, his legs buried in the sand up to his knees. He was looking after them, gasping for breath, his chest heaving with all the effort and strain of what he had just done. And yet there was something strange on his face.

It wasn’t fear. Or terror.

Was he smiling? No, not smiling. Josh was beaming as he looked back at her—or maybe he was trying to find Gaby behind her. That was probably it. At that moment, Lara didn’t think she actually existed in the teenager’s eyes. He was so serene, as if his entire life had led to this moment and he had finally achieved something that had eluded him all this time.

Then he was gone.

Josh disappeared under the tidal wave of surging pruned flesh and hollow eyes. He didn’t scream, but simply vanished under the pile of twisted limbs and blackened flesh, as if he had never existed at all.

But Josh had done it. The boat was reversing at faster speeds, moving back, back,
back
from the beach and away from the unending tide of creatures that blanketed it—

Not all the creatures were converging on Josh. There wasn’t enough space for all of them, so the rest kept coming. She didn’t know what they were doing.

The water. They couldn’t go into the water…could they?

As she looked on, breathless, one of the ghouls launched itself into the air and at the boat. It spilled against the side of the vessel and groped desperately for something to hold onto, but couldn’t, and went tumbling into the water.

Two—no,
three
more—catapulted themselves at the V-shaped front of the boat, but they too didn’t land at the right spots and failed to find something to hold onto and disappeared over the side.

The rest began
plop-plop-plopping
into the lake around them. They looked like kamikaze pilots sailing through the night air only to miss their target. She watched them sink into the lake water and thrash about. A few managed to break the surface again, only to drop back under like…
stones?

She was still staring off the side, trying to process what she was seeing
(The water! They really can’t survive in the water!)
, when one of them sailed across the distance and managed to land on the boat in a ball of
clacking
bones. It rolled forward and slammed into the bench in front of the steering console, unraveling its limbs.

As soon as it lifted its head, Lara shoved the barrel of the M4 toward it and pulled the trigger. The first half dozen bullets obliterated its eyes and nose and mouth, and the next half dozen shattered its skull and sent it stumbling back, back. She didn’t expect it to go down
(no silver bullets)
, and it didn’t disappoint her.

Mostly headless now, it continued coming.

Lara spun the rifle around and smashed the stock into its chest. That, more than the bullets, made it reel backward. She followed it and hit it again, this time aiming for what remained of its lower jaw, sticking out like one half of a crushed watermelon. That kept it staggering back and off balance. She hit it a third time on the side of its leftover “head” and heard the stock of her rifle
cracking
with the impact.

She kicked it squarely in the chest, putting as much strength as she could muster (or as much as the rippling pain from her thigh would allow her) into the blow. The creature had nowhere else to go, and the force of the kick sent it toppling over the side. There was a satisfying
plop!
as it disappeared into the water.

Lara hurried over and looked down and could see the creature sinking, reaching out with its bony arms for her. Then it was gone, and the waters of Beaufont Lake settled over the spot where it had vanished.

“Lara,” Gaby said behind her.

She looked back at Gaby, saw her staring past her and at the island. She followed Gaby’s gaze back to the beach—or where she thought it was supposed to be. Normally she would be able to see the long stretch of white sand from anywhere, even at night without lights. That wasn’t the case this time. Everywhere she looked, there was just shifting, moving darkness.

Lara shivered, even though they were already forty to fifty yards from land and there was no way they could throw themselves that far. Or, at least, she hoped not.

She looked away. She didn’t need to see anymore. The island was gone. Lost. She had fought against it—tried like mad to keep it—but the truth was staring back at her now.

Song Island was lost. Truly, truly lost.

She crouched next to Danny instead and felt along the side of his neck. To her great relief, he still had a pulse, but it was very weak. He was alive, though, something she hadn’t been entirely certain of earlier.

“Is he okay?” Gaby asked.

“He’s alive,” Lara said.

She looked up at Gaby, who was still staring back at the island. But Lara knew what she was really looking for. Josh.

Lara couldn’t wrap her mind around what he had done. He had saved their lives. Pushed the boat back into the water. How? That was the question. Could Will, even at full strength, have done something like that? She remembered seeing Josh buried up to his knees in the sand as they were backing up. What kind of strength had the kid possessed to do something like that?

“Gaby, we need to go,” she said. “Blaine and the others will be waiting for us.”

Gaby nodded and spun the steering wheel. She looked back at the island as long as she could until they had turned completely around. The boat started moving smoothly under her, and Lara fumbled her way to the bench at the front and sat down.

She was tired, and sitting down seemed to help, even though every part of her was threatening to come apart at any second.

“Lara,” Gaby said. She looked back as Gaby threw her a white pill bottle. “Don’t read the label; just take two.”

Lara nodded. She didn’t have the strength to argue, anyway. She opened the bottle, took out two pills, and swallowed them. She had never been good about taking medicine without a glass of water, so she felt a little proud of herself when the pills went down surprisingly easy.

“I think I saw someone on the other side of beach,” Gaby said. “At the same time we were running for the boat.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. He was wearing dark clothes.” She shook her head. “It could have been one of Josh’s…” Gaby stopped in mid-sentence, then said instead, “How long will Blaine wait for us? I don’t want to leave anyone behind, Lara. Not again. Not ever again…”

WILL

Kate.

He used the wall behind him as a crutch, because he wasn’t confident in his legs. The sight of her in person after all this time left him speechless, confused, and unable to fully understand how the last few months had all ended up with him here, face to face with her.

She was taller than he remembered. Thin, but not quite as skeletal as the others. He recalled seeing this new version of her in the town of Harvest that morning at the water tower. But that was from afar, and though he recognized her (even now, he didn’t know how, he just did), it wasn’t the same as seeing her standing before him.

The blue of her eyes was ethereal and nothing like the crystal blue of Lara’s. These seemed to actually pulsate, as if they were living organisms in and of themselves.