THE PURGE OF BABYLON
A Novel of Survival
Sam Sisavath
Books in the Babylon Series
The Purge of Babylon: A Novel of Survival
The Gates of Byzantium
The Stones of Angkor
The Walls of Lemuria (Keo Book 1)
The Fields of Lemuria (Keo Book 2)
The Fires of Atlantis
The Ashes of Pompeii
The Isles of Elysium
BOOK ONE
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THE PURGE
CHAPTER 1
WILL
It was sweaty and stuffy, and death likely awaited them beyond the door at the end of the staircase, so of course Danny was making with the jokes.
“A couple is out celebrating their ten year anniversary. Things haven’t been going well, but the night starts off great, and the wife can’t believe how attentive her husband is. He orders the best wine and the most expensive food. She thinks, ‘I’ve never been happier!’ Then the husband hands her a note and says, ‘Sweetheart, I wrote you this letter because I couldn’t bring myself to say it.’ She takes the letter, but before she can read it, the husband starts gagging on some lamb. She throws the letter into her purse and yells, ‘Help! Help! My husband is choking!’ But help doesn’t come fast enough, and the husband keels over. At the funeral, the wife throws herself at the casket, screaming, ‘Why? Oh why? It was all going so well!’ Then suddenly she remembers! ‘Wait, my husband left me this letter and wanted me to read it!’ So she whips out the letter and begins to read. ‘Dearest wife,’ it says, ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’m sleeping with your sister and I want a divorce.’”
“Old joke,” Will said. “You told that one already.”
“Bullshit. I came up with it this morning.”
“You’re repeating yourself and you don’t even know it. That’s a sign of dementia.”
“I got your dementia right here,” Danny said, grabbing his crotch.
Four heavily armed bodies up the line, Marker glanced back and scowled. “Shut the fuck up, I’m trying to hear what Command’s saying.”
An earbud wire dangled from Marker’s right ear, connected to a throat mic and a Motorola radio clipped to the front lapel of his urban assault vest. Everyone squeezed into the stairwell at that moment was wearing the same rig.
Will and Danny said simultaneously, “Sorry, sir.”
Danny’s sandy blond hair was matted to his forehead by sweat and dirt, blue eyes glinting with mischief when he shot Will a quick grin. To Will, looking at Danny was like looking into a funhouse mirror and seeing his exact opposite. The fact that they were friends was a mystery to most people, including Will himself.
Danny whispered, “Still better than the Stan, right? No sand in the crack.”
Will grinned back. Compared to trudging around in the scorching mountains of Afghanistan in Uncle Sam’s Army, working SWAT with the Harris County Sheriff’s Department was a cakewalk. It was a lot of downtime and training occasionally broken up by a nutcase locked in a house or a junkie with a knife stumbling around someone’s backyard in the middle of the night, usually buck naked. Most of their time was spent writing tickets or sitting in patrol cars underneath highways, watching increasingly strange porn on Danny’s iPad.
At the moment they were stacked eight men long inside the hot stairwell, and no one had moved more than a few inches at a time in the last ten minutes. Marker, all 250 pounds and fifty grizzled years of him — and every single year of it readily apparent on his grimacing face — was up front, sweating through his goggles.
Will glanced down at his watch, if only to break the monotony of staring up at Marker’s back: 5:04 p.m.
It was November — a hot November, even by Houston standards — but that didn’t matter inside a stairwell covered with the refuse of thousands of people that used to call this place home.
It smells like it, too.
Will could feel his goggles starting to fog up and had to swipe at the lenses with the sleeve of his shirt.
Marker finally looked back at Peeks, standing directly behind him, and nodded. “All right, just got word from Command. We have a green light.”
“Fucking finally,” Peeks grunted, and wiped at a thick sheet of sweat dripping down his goggles.
“Everyone, get into position,” Marker said.
Peeks slung his Remington 870 tactical shotgun over his back and unlatched the sledgehammer from his left shoulder. At thirty-five, Peeks was square shaped and solidly built, with a robust chest and legs that looked like tree trunks. He had six years on Will and Danny but was a foot shorter than both of them. Peeks looked like a Hobbit next to Marker’s six-three frame, though what Peeks lacked in height, he made up for in width.
Will watched Peeks grip the twenty-pound sledgehammer in his two hands as if it were a toy, and idly wondered if Peeks ever tried that trick at home when his kids didn’t behave. Peeks’s two favorite pastimes were working out and bitching about his kids. Sometimes he would get creative and bitch about his kids while working out. And when he was really inspired, Peeks would throw the old lady in there, too.
Will and Danny were in the middle, squeezed between Jenkins in front and Lambert behind them. They slipped the safeties off their M4A1 assault rifles, the barrels pointed low in the ready position. They exchanged a brief look and nod. Ten minutes inside a stuffy apartment stairwell was a breeze compared to some of their past call outs, which usually boiled down to ten hours of waiting followed by ten minutes of action — that is, if they were lucky.
Marker, up front, opened the staircase door and started out first. Peeks was right behind him with the sledgehammer, Ross and Jenkins following, with Will and Danny behind them. Lambert kept pace behind Danny, with Hollins bringing up the rear.
Standard stacking procedure. They had done it hundreds of times.
The Wilshire Apartments looked bigger on the outside, though the aesthetics were pretty much the same inside. It was twenty floors of 1950s brick-and-mortar low-income housing that should have been torn down decades ago, if anyone had cared enough to voice an opinion. The building had finally been condemned and abandoned in 2004, about thirty years too late if you asked Will.
They were on the twentieth floor now; the march up the stairwell had been a royal pain in the ass. There was an elevator, but the building didn’t have power, so that was moot. The fact that they were wearing thirty pounds of equipment, weapons, and extra ammo didn’t help, either. And this was their lighter setup. Unlike most of their other call outs, the plan was to hit the place and leave. Wham, bam, thank you, but I won’t have time to make sweet lovin’ to your daughter today, ma’am.
The twentieth floor hallway looked abandoned. The whole building gave off a graveyard vibe. But it was the smell that got his attention. It stung his nostrils and made his eyes water. This morning’s breakfast made a show of force and, looking back, Will saw Danny trying not to gag from the same stench.
Danny mouthed at him, “What the fuck is that smell?”
Will mouthed back, “Did you take a shower this morning?”
“Your mom didn’t seem to mind.”
“Fuck you.”
“That’s what she said.”
Will grinned and looked back up front.
Graffiti covered the walls and doors — what didn’t graffiti cover in this place? — and the floor was littered with garbage. All the doors showed signs of wear and tear and rotted wood damage. The wallpaper had ripped free years ago, and there were jagged, dangerous-looking cracks along the length of the ceiling above them.