The Spears of Laconia (Purge of Babylon, Book 7) (27 page)

“Shit,” the guy said.

“Yeah,” Keo said.

*

“U.S. Army?” Keo
asked.

The soldier, who said his name was Gregson, shook his head.

“Collaborator?”

“Hell no,” Gregson said, looking almost insulted.

“Guess not,” Jordan said.

She stood next to Keo, holding another T-shirt from the storage shed over her mouth. Keo hadn’t needed his since hauling Gregson out of the tank. He wasn’t entirely sure what that said about his sense of smell that he could “get used” to his current environment.

Gregson sat on the ground with his back against the wheels of the Abrams. He had looked older when Keo first saw him inside the cramped space of the tank, but under the morning sun he was a man in his mid-twenties, with light blue eyes and dirty brown hair. His arms, covered in sleeves of tattoos, were draped over his knees. If he ever had any thoughts about escaping, he let it go when he saw the uniformed body on the ground with the hole in its chest.

“So if you’re not U.S. Army and you’re not collaborators, who are you?” Keo asked.

Gregson didn’t answer right away, as if he was trying to decide whether or not he should say anything to them. Keo could have told him that only delusional idiots tried to withstand interrogation. Sooner or later, you broke. Everyone did. Which was precisely why his old organization never bothered to rescue captured operatives.

“The way I see it, we’re on the same side,” Keo continued.

That elicited a snort from Gregson. “Was that before or after you killed my friends?”

“I had no choice. You should thank me for having the self-control not to shoot you back there.”

Gregson seemed to think about that before finally saying, “I guess.”

“So, let’s start at the beginning. Who are you, and what were you doing running around out here last night, shooting up the beach?”

“I was following orders.”

“Whose?”

“Mercer’s.”

“Never heard of him.” He turned to Jordan: “You?”

She shook her head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“So, who’s Mercer?” Keo asked Gregson.

“He’s a great man,” Gregson said. “That’s all you need to know.”

“And this great man told you to come down here and empty 120mm shells on an innocent beach?”

“Not exactly.”

“So what, exactly?”

Gregson hesitated.

Keo sighed and drew his sidearm. “I’ve tried to do this the easy way, but you’re just wasting my time now.”

“I thought you said we were on the same side,” Gregson said quickly.

“Not if you keep making me ask twice. I
hate
having to ask twice.”

“All right.”

“All right?”

“Yeah, all right.” Then, after Keo had holstered his sidearm: “We overshot our mark yesterday, ended up having to fight it out with those collaborator assholes. Then we saw the beach and thought, what the hell. We couldn’t link back up with our forces anyway, so we figured we’d go out with a bang. Worst-case scenario, we were prepared to drive right into the ocean a la
Thelma and Louise.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Keo said.

“The movie?”

Keo shook his head.

“I’ve heard of it,” Jordan said.

“Good?” Keo asked.

She shrugged. “It was an oldie. I liked the car, though.”

“I guess that’s all that counts,” he chuckled before turning back to Gregson. “Where are the rest of your forces?”

“Sorry, can’t do,” Gregson smiled back. “Need-to-know, and you don’t need to know. Shoot me if you want, but I’m not telling you shit about that.”

“Tough guy.”

“When it comes to that? Fuck yeah, tough enough.”

Keo nodded. He believed the man. “So what were you doing out here yesterday? Can’t hurt to tell us that, right?”

Gregson thought about that for a moment too, before nodding. “We were doing our part.”

“Which was what, exactly?”

“Take out one of the towns.”

“The collaborator towns?”

“What other kinds are there?”

Keo exchanged a glance with Jordan, and he could tell she was thinking the exact same thing:
Gillian. T18.

He turned back to Gregson. “What do you mean, ‘take out’ one of the towns?”

“What do you think I meant?” Gregson said. He reached back and banged on the tank. “This thing’s designed to do one thing, and it ain’t making pies.”

“You shelled it? The town?”

“We flattened the fuck out of it, yeah.”

“And the people in it?” Jordan asked.

Gregson shrugged.

“What the hell does that mean?” she said, a noticeable warning edge creeping into her voice.

“We destroyed it,” Gregson said. “Most of it, anyway. That was the mission. Only spent half of our ammo too, tore the place down like a bulldozer, and wasted everything we had for the M240. But we got unlucky; they had reinforcements nearby, and we had to make a run for it.”

“What were you running from?” Keo asked.

“Technicals and rocket launchers. I mean, our armor could have survived a lot, but there were a lot of them, and who knows what else they had. Besides, our orders were to hit and run, then link back up with the rest of our forces. Failing that…well, it’s been a while since we saw the beach. We knew they’d follow us here. Didn’t think they’d send the skin meats, though.”

“Skin meats?”

“Those ghouls. That’s what some of us call them.”

Keo raised an eyebrow. “You also call them ghouls?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Where’d you get the name from?”

Gregson looked confused; either that, or he had another piece of information he thought was need-to-know. “It’s just a name. Who cares?”

“Just curious,” Keo said.

“How many people did you kill in the town?” Jordan asked.

Gregson didn’t answer her.

“How many?” she asked again.

“I don’t know; we didn’t exactly get close enough to count,” Gregson said. “A lot, I guess. I just drove. The others did the shooting. The mission was to leave just enough behind.”

“‘Just enough’ for what?” Keo asked.

“So they can tell the others what happened.”

“You want them to know. The other collaborators, in the other towns.”

“Yeah,” Gregson nodded. “To let everyone know there’s something worse than the ghouls out here.
Us.
We killed just enough to make our point.”

“Hundreds?” Jordan said. “Did you kill hundreds?”

“Maybe. It doesn’t matter.”

“Why doesn’t it matter?”

“Because they’re the enemy,” Gregson said. “You’re either with us, or you’re against us. If you’re against us, then you’re the enemy, and the enemy doesn’t deserve mercy. This is war, lady. We’re trying to take back the planet.” He looked to Keo. “You should understand that. How long have you been fighting these assholes out here?”

“You sonofabitch,” Jordan said. “There are women and children in those towns!”

“Bullshit.”

“Bullshit?” Jordan was almost screaming at him now. “What the
hell does that mean?
”

Gregson craned his head toward her, shouting back, “Bullshit, that’s what that means! They stopped being women and children the moment they agreed to become food for the skin meats! They’re just targets now!”

“You bastard…”

“Fuck off!”

Jordan reached for her gun as Gregson scrambled up from the ground, the two of them moving almost simultaneously. Keo beat them both to the punch by hitting Gregson in the side of the face with the stock of his M4, sending the tank driver collapsing back to the ground.

“Don’t,” Keo said, putting one hand over Jordan’s arm as she aimed her Glock at Gregson.

“Why the hell not?” Jordan asked, almost spitting the words out.

Why the hell not?
Keo thought, realizing he didn’t really have a good answer for her. He had been worried he had just killed three U.S. Army soldiers earlier, but that turned out not to be the case. Gregson and his friends were something else entirely. Something that was either bad news or very bad news. He still hadn’t decided yet.

He pushed Jordan’s gun hand down. She resisted at first—he could see the defiance in her eyes, how badly she wanted to pull the trigger—but eventually relented.

“Why
not?
” she asked again, staring back at him. “You heard what he did. He killed God knows how many people back there. There are pregnant women and children in all those towns, Keo. He slaughtered
pregnant women.
”

“They were the enemy,” Gregson said softly. He had pushed himself back up to a sitting position against the tank and was wiping his bloody mouth with his shirt. “They made their choice, now they have to pay for it. This is just the beginning. If you thought yesterday was bloody, you haven’t seen anything yet.” He grinned at them; it was a grotesque sight with his teeth covered in blood. “Mercer’s got plans. Big plans.”

“What was it called?” Keo asked him.

“What?” Gregson said.

“The town you were assigned to attack.”

“T-something. Benoit knew the exact name, but one town sounds the same as all the others to me. T-this, T-that.”

“Was it T18?”

Gregson shrugged. “You’ll have to ask Benoit.” He glanced over at the first uniformed body Keo had shot. The man lay on his stomach among the blackened grass a few meters away, the back of his bald head reflecting the bright sun. “Oh, I guess you can’t.”

“I guess not,” Keo said.

He drew his Glock a second time and shot Gregson in the right thigh.

“Shit!” Gregson shouted, falling sideways to the ground while clutching his leg. “What’d you do that for?”

Keo ignored him and looked at Jordan. She was staring at Gregson, the hate from a few seconds ago mostly gone from her face, replaced by something that looked almost like sympathy.

“Why didn’t you let me shoot him?” she asked quietly.

“You’re a good person, Jordan,” Keo said. “I’m not.”

*

Gregson wasn’t lying
about the tank being out of fuel. It was bone dry. They had also burned through their entire armory yesterday, including the flamethrower, and were just left with small arms. Keo salvaged four AR-15 rifles and a can of ammo with 5.56 rounds, which would go a long way in backing up his M4’s dwindling magazine, though he was more grateful to find MREs and water bottles tucked inside two storage compartments. There was a pile of civilian clothes in the back, but they were splattered with blood from the two tankers Keo had shot through the hatch.

He collected the rifles and stuffed the water and food into a couple of tactical backpacks when he saw the edge of a brown paper sticking out of a pants pocket on one of the dead man. Keo tugged it out, then unfolded it.

It was a map of Texas, with black markers circling towns around the southeast part of the state. Not the big cities like Sunport or Galveston, or even Houston, but the smaller, surrounding ones. There were red X’s over some of them—about a dozen in all—but the rest were just circled.

“Shit,” he said under his breath when he recognized one of the towns that had been circled.

Wilmont. Or, as he had come to know it the last few weeks, T18.

Gillian.
Pregnant
Gillian.

He had left her behind with Jay because there was no other choice, and after the week he’d been through, he was convinced it was the right decision. But now…

Keo put everything down and concentrated on the map. One of the places with an X over it was marked as T22, and it was somewhere on the other side of Sunport.

What was that Gregson had said?

“We destroyed it. Most of it, anyway. That was the mission. Only spent half of our ammo too, tore the place down like a bulldozer, and wasted everything we had for the M240. But we got unlucky; they had reinforcements nearby, and we had to make a run for it.”

So what did that mean for T18, which was missing an X? Maybe nothing, maybe everything. Or maybe as far as Gregson’s crew knew, T18 wasn’t their concern because it was someone else’s job.

A lot of maybes, and most of them bad.

So what else is new?

Footsteps, just before Jordan’s head appeared in the opening above him. “Find anything useful?”

“Just one,” he said, and handed the map up to her.