Free The Gates of Byzantium (Purge of Babylon, Book 2) by Sam Sisavath

his left and right. There was nowhere to go. There was the house behind them, but Matt was in there. The good news was, Matt was in the basement, which still left the rest of the house. If he and Gaby could make it back inside, he could open the backpack and grab more bullets. If there were more bullets to be grabbed. He wasn’t even sure about that.
    It was a plan. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was a plan. He only knew he couldn’t let these men get their hands on Gaby. He saw the way all three of them were looking at her, and he didn’t like it one bit.
    “Five bullets,” Folger was saying. “At least. The way you were firing it, over and over again, my guess is you didn’t have time to reload before the two of you bolted out of that house. So, I’m willing to bet you either have one bullet left in that gun, or none.”
    “You don’t want to find out,” Josh said.
    “I think I do,” Del said.
    “No, you don’t—”
    But he never got the chance to finish before Del walked forward and snatched the gun out of his hand with such swiftness for a man of his size that it stunned Josh. He was still trying to come to terms with what had happened when Folger drew his gun and stepped forward and hit him across the face.
    Josh felt a massive stabbing pain, like someone had thrown ten tons of rocks on his head, and he was aware of falling. Then darkness.
    From somewhere in the blackness, the sound of screaming cut through.
    It wasn’t him screaming, though, it was Gaby…
    No, no, I’m the guy… I’m the guy…

CHAPTER 5
    LARA
    Will considered continuing on to Lancing, a city farther down the road, before stopping for the day, but eventually they decided to pull off Route 69, turning into the driveway of a sprawling estate on the side of the road. It was an impressive house and looked relatively new, with a huge surrounding yard filled with something they had seen plenty of recently—an overgrown lawn that in a year or two would probably end up covering half of the house. They went up a concrete driveway, and Lara saw an attached two-car garage.
    She looked back at the man they had picked up, literally, from the road, just to make sure he was still alive. She hadn’t been sure he would even survive the short trip, but he had. The man looked back at her through a mask of pain.
    “Man’s got something to live for ,” Will had said when they carried him off the road.
    She had done the best she could with his wounds, but she didn’t give him much of a chance. The man had, after all, been shot three times and was lying on the road for God knew how long. Fortunately, there was only one bullet still in him—in the right shoulder, about half an inch from shattering his humerus bone, which would have completely taken away the use of his right arm. He was lucky, or as lucky as any man could be with three bullet holes in him.
    “Will says you’ve got something to live for,” Lara said to the man.
    He looked back at her, and she could tell he wanted to respond, but he couldn’t. His lips quivered and he blinked once, twice, but even that seemed to take a lot out of him.
    “Don’t try to speak,” she told him. “We’re going to stop for the day and I’m going to sew you back up. You’ve already survived this long, stay with me for a few more hours and I promise, you’ll live through the night. Do you understand?”
    He moved his head. Yes.
    Tough guy. Let’s see if he’s tough enough to last the night…
    *
    Lara waited outside the house with Carly, both of them armed with shotguns. It wasn’t just for show. They were trained on the weapons—had been ever since the ghouls had laid siege to Harold Campbell’s facility in Starch. During the first few days of training, she had gone to sleep with throbbing pain in her shoulders, which wasn’t too bad since every other part of her body from the waist up was also aching. If she thought the Glock had a kick, the shotgun was like getting body-slammed by a