Free The Spears of Laconia (Purge of Babylon, Book 7) by Sam Sisavath Page B

process and cursed herself (What would Will say?) when the road began trembling as if it was getting ready to split open.
    She couldn’t help herself and turned her head and looked up, wondering idly if the Warthog streaking toward them right now was the same one that had laid waste to Morris’s town—
    “Gaby!” Nate’s voice, piercing through her idiotic thoughts, as he snatched her up from the road with one strong hand.
    Gaby fumbled with her footing, groping the air for her carbine lying just out of her reach on the road.
    No, no, no! Never lose your rifle! Never lose your rifle!
    Before she could break free from Nate’s grip to retrieve her weapon—he was much stronger than she remembered, his arms clutching to her in a viselike grip—they were both falling backward off the road and into a ditch.
    She was flailing through empty air, trying to get her bearings, when she heard the terrible brooooooooooorrrrttttttttt of the A-10 as its primary weapon, the 30mm cannon, started spinning—
    She landed in the bottom of the ditch, eating a mouthful of grass and dirt as she did so. Before she could spit out the earthly contents, the road behind her came apart and her bones shook violently. The Warthog swooped over them and she looked up, somehow seeing past the blades of grass covering her face.
    The sight was almost magnificent—a gray metal eagle, its fixed wings spread wide and proud, flying much lower than any plane should. She expected to see bombs or missiles, but there weren’t any. Then she remembered: Of course it wasn’t carrying any spare armaments, because it had spent everything on the town. On those poor people.
    “Four hundred…”
    “Gaby, move it!” Nate shouted, pulling her up from the ditch floor.
    She struggled to do just that, hating herself for reverting back to the eighteen-year-old girl she thought she had buried a year ago under Will and Danny’s tutelage. The refined Gaby, who had survived Dunbar and the farmhouse and the assault on Song Island, was nowhere to be found as she stumbled into the cold side of the ditch to keep herself upright.
    Standing now, she could see the remains of the F-150 in front of her. It was a flaming wreck in the middle of the cratered road, its twisted metal frame little more than a barely recognizable shell of its former self.
    No, no, she thought, because everything was in there. The gas cans, the supplies, the boxes of silver ammo…
    Crack! as a piece of dirt and grass spit into the air less than a foot in front of her face as a bullet chopped into the ground.
    Gaby looked up the road as sunlight gleamed off the hood of a black truck racing toward them. Erratic figures clung to the back, one of them aiming at her behind a rifle resting on the roof of the cab.
    No, not one truck. Two.
    Then the ground began shaking again as the Warthog swooped over them one more time, the wake of its passing nearly throwing her off her already wobbly feet. Nate, next to her, had to grab onto the ditch wall to keep upright. Her first instincts were to duck, as if that would save her from the plane’s weapons.
    The A-10 hadn’t gone very far before it started turning. The sight of it, getting ready to come back for yet another pass, did something unexplainable to her. Gaby felt rising anger at the plane’s presence, the arrogance of the man—and she thought it had to be a man—inside the cockpit at this very moment.
    She reached down and drew her Glock.
    “Don’t!” Nate said, grabbing her wrist.
    “What?” It was the only thing she could think of to say, just before he snatched the gun out of her hand and threw it up to the burning road.
    Nate did the same thing to his sidearm before throwing both arms into the air, shouting, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” He looked over at her, saw the flash of anger on her face, and said, “Trust me, you gotta trust me.”
    She did trust him, but she was also angry. Not just with him, but with everything that had happened.