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

mule.
    Slowly but surely she had gotten used to it, and though she still felt it every time they did target practice, the ear-shattering blast didn’t surprise her anymore and she was able to hit her target. Most of the time, anyway. That was the point of a shotgun. It had spreading power, which made it invaluable in close-quarters battles.
    Lara and Carly stood watch at the trucks, with the girls still inside Danny’s Ranger. The man from the road was in the black Ranger, unconscious in the back seat. Lara kept her eyes on the road behind them, a good fifty yards away. The house was big, and she could see at least three bedrooms from the front. She guessed there were probably more inside. Five, maybe six in all.
    She glanced down at her watch: 2:11  p.m.
    Will and Danny had gone inside ten minutes ago, and she considered it a good sign that they hadn’t fired a single shot. It never took them more than twenty minutes to clear a building, depending on how many rooms they were confronted with.
    Lara found herself staring at two Labrador dog statues perched on their hind legs, standing guard at the front doors like dutiful sentries.
    “Cute dogs,” Carly said. “If I ever get a house, I’d like one of those. Or maybe one of those weiner dogs. What do you call them?”
    “Chihuahuas? I don’t know my dogs.”
    “Sounds right.”
    “Not much of guard dogs, though.”
    “Danny with a shotgun should make up for that.”
    Lara smiled at the image of Danny standing permanently outside a house with a shotgun, boyish blond hair fluttering in the breeze. “Now that’s an image.”
    “I know, right?” Carly looked over at the black Ranger. “Has he said anything yet? Like his name?”
    “He’s trying.”
    “Danny said he was shot three times.”
    “He was.”
    “How do you survive being shot three times?”
    “Determination. Guts. A reason to keep living…”
    “Who do you think Sandra is?”
    “Probably a girlfriend. Or a wife. Someone he met on the road after The Purge, maybe. There’s a lot of that going on.”
    Carly chuckled. “Tell me about it.”
    Lara’s radio, resting on the hood of the black Ford Ranger, squawked and they heard Danny’s voice: “All clear. And I call the master bedroom.”
    “That’s my man,” Carly said.
    *
    She was close. The house had five bedrooms—one on the first floor and four more, including the master bedroom, on the second floor. Will and Danny carried the wounded man inside, putting him into one of the smaller rooms on the second floor before heading back downstairs to move the trucks into the parking garage next door.
    There was a fenced-in section at the back of the house, with two trucks parked in the dirt and a third with lumber stuffed in the back. The ground was flattened and trees chopped down to make room for whatever grand plans the family never got to put into action. For once, they didn’t find any blood or signs of struggle inside the house. The front door was unlocked and the windows intact. There were also no cars in the garage. It all pointed to the family abandoning the house in a hurry.
    Like she always did whenever they took over someone’s house for the night, Lara wondered where the family had gone. Were they still alive? Maybe they were even on Song Island in Beaufont Lake. Wouldn’t that be something?
    Lara and the girls brought in their personal carry-ons first, stuffed with clothes and personal items. The big plastic crates with the emergency rations came next. After that, they lugged in the thick, heavy bags of guns and ammo.
    And finally, they brought in the four portable fans they carried with them everywhere, dividing them up between rooms on the second floor. The fans were the only things keeping the Texas summer at bay and made whatever room they were bedding down in for the night mercifully breathable. All four ten-inch oscillating fans ran on a ridiculous eight D cell batteries and could, conceivably, work continuously for forty