The Gates of Byzantium (Purge of Babylon, Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

cover. Even while he was shooting, Blaine saw from the corner of his eye Sandra running out from behind the Jeep and racing into the ditch, then up and over it and toward the woods.
    She was running fast, his Sandra, like the wind.
    Faster, girl, faster!
    He was afraid they would start shooting at her, but they didn’t. Instead, they concentrated all their fire on him, and Blaine kept moving to his right, drawing their attention away from Sandra.
    She was halfway to the woods now, and she was still moving fast. He smiled. She would make it. If nothing else, at least she would make it.
    He felt a burst of happiness that was short-lived when a third bullet tore through his right shoulder, and suddenly he could no longer hold the AR-15. Blaine crumpled to the highway on his knees and lowered his head, and waited for the fourth and final bullet to find its mark.
    He waited, and waited, but the final bullet never came.
    Instead, the shooting stopped, and he heard the guy with white hair shouting. “That’s enough! Hold your fire!”
    Blaine couldn’t find the strength to lift his head. He wasn’t even sure how he was still on his knees. Shouldn’t he have fallen by now? He was bleeding pretty badly. Not just from the wound in his side, but the one that had taken a big chunk out of his thigh, too. The third one, in the shoulder, had hurt the most, and the bullet had probably shattered a bone or two. It had to be his right arm, too. What the hell was he going to do without his right arm?
    Nothing but die.
    Footsteps approaching, then the guy with white hair crouched in front of him, the Mossberg shotgun draped lazily over his lap. “I know what you’re thinking, but don’t you worry about the girl. We’ll find her for you. Hell, you didn’t think we chased you down for you and the old man, did you?” The guy laughed. “Nah. It was always for the girl. How did a bum like you land her, anyway? Must be pretty slim pickings for a ten like that to voluntarily go with a two—generously speaking—like you. No offense.”
    Sandra, run like the wind, girl, run like the wind…
    More footsteps approaching along the highway, then a new male voice said, “Should we put the poor sucker out of his misery?”
    White hair stood up. “No point. Look at him. He’s not going anywhere. If he makes it to tonight, then what?”
    “Tasty treat,” someone else said.
    Another voice: “What about the girl, Folger?”
    The guy with white hair, Folger, said, “We got plenty of daylight. Spread out and start looking. She couldn’t have gone far.”
    “She took off like a fucking deer,” another guy said, and there was laughter. “That girl can run.”
    “First guy who catches her gets dibs,” Folger said.
    “She’s mine, boys!” someone shouted.
    Running footsteps all around him. Into the grass. Or maybe already in the woods. No, that was impossible. They couldn’t move that fast. Even Sandra hadn’t been able to move that fast.
    He heard Folger’s voice, coming from somewhere very far away now: “Don’t worry, amigo, we’ll treat her nice. We treat them all nice. At first, anyway. Guys get bored easy, you know?”
    Then Blaine couldn’t hear anymore, because everything became dark and he must have finally toppled sideways. Suddenly the side of his head was pressed into the hot highway surface, and the only sensations were heat and hardness and the sound of blood pumping free.
    His blood. Who knew bleeding to death could be so damn noisy?
    Run, Sandra, run…run like the wind, girl…

CHAPTER 3
    WILL
    They showed up sometime around ten at night. He guessed between 300 to 400, maybe more because his vantage point was limited. Grime, Texas, like most small towns around the state, was surrounded by trees, and you never knew how many of them were in the darkness of the woods.
    He watched through night-vision goggles as they spread out across the street below him. Darting, hunched over, black-shaped moving things— ghouls .