Read Online The Ashes of Pompeii (Purge of Babylon, Book 5) by Sam Sisavath - Free Book Online

said. “They were shooting from everywhere. I wasn’t this scared back at the farmhouse last night. All those guns, all those bullets… It’s a miracle we’re still alive. How are we even still alive?”
    “I don’t know. Lucky, I guess.”
    “I haven’t felt very lucky these last few days.” She attempted another smile, and it came out equally bad. “But I guess we’re owed a little, huh?”
    “Yeah,” Gaby said. She thought about Lance. The other Lance. Annie’s boyfriend, and not one of the soldiers who had guarded her back in L15. The good Lance had died last night in a pile of rubble. “Song Island’s not far now. We have plenty of gas, and we’ll be there by noon today. Right, Danny?”
    “Oh sure, you betcha,” Danny said without hesitation. “Smooth sailing now, kids. You got ’em, I suggest you smoke ’em.”
    “Smoke what?” Claire asked.
    “He’s just being funny,” Gaby said. “We’re getting there. Just hang on a bit more.”
    Claire nodded. Annie, next to her, had already looked back outside the window at the seemingly never-ending wave of concrete dividers that separated the east and westbound lanes. Will had once told her about the thousand-yard stare that soldiers would get after a firefight, the result of being shell-shocked by combat. Annie looked like she was having one of those at the moment.
    Gaby sat back in her seat and looked at Danny. “Were they just bad shots back there? Was that how we survived?”
    “No one’s that bad,” Danny said. “They were aiming for the tires.”
    “The tires?”
    She took a moment to digest what he had said. The tires? They were shooting at their tires? Was that why they had missed the windshield? Every second during the ordeal, she had waited and waited for the first bullet to punch through the glass or the roof and kill her, Danny, and the girls in the back. It would have been easy, because the snipers were firing down on them without anything at all blocking their view.
    Instead, all she could remember was the ping-ping-ping! of bullets hitting the sides of the vehicles.
    He’s right. They were trying to shoot out the tires.
    “Why were they doing that?” she asked him.
    “Because they were trying to stop us, not kill us,” Danny said. “The only reason we survived back there was because they were trying to take us alive.”
    “They didn’t seem to care whether we lived or died yesterday.”
    “Different day, new orders. The only thing you can count on as a grunt in the field is the higher-ups sitting around in their comfy chairs back at headquarters, changing their minds from day to day.”
    “So someone changed the orders. Who?”
    Danny didn’t answer right away. Gaby watched him closely. She looked past the bruises, the broken nose that was still healing, and the cuts that covered a face that always used to remind her of a transplanted California surfer, even though she knew for a fact Danny had never lived anywhere else outside of Texas after his Army days.
    “Danny,” she pressed. “Whose orders were they following back there?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You’re lying.”
    “I’m not.”
    “Bullshit. I know you well enough to know when you’re lying.”
    He looked over and grinned. It was a valiant attempt, but it wasn’t anywhere close to being the usual Danny grin, and she thought he probably knew it, too.
    “You sound like Carly,” he said.
    “I’ll take that as a compliment.” Then, “Tell me, Danny.”
    “I don’t know for sure…”
    “But you know something.”
    “Willie boy and I talked about it on and off. She’s been dogging him since she went turncoat.”
    Gaby knew who Danny was talking about without hearing the name. She had heard it often enough. Not from Will or Danny, but from Lara and Carly. The topic never came up on purpose, but something would happen that reminded them she was out there. Both women had known her in the early days of The Purge, especially Carly, and they knew