He waited for this Mandy person to show up and get this over with. Though, if he had his choice, he was hoping for Blake instead. Eventually, the room around him started to dim noticeably, signaling the coming of evening. The shadows outside got darker, and both his guards were replaced by two new ones. Both guys this time, and they weren’t any chattier than Gramps and the other one had been.
Smith wasn’t sure when he drifted off. One moment he was awake, and the next he was in la la land. He blamed it on the wound, but that was probably just an excuse. He was just tired, though he wasn’t entirely sure why.
When he opened his eyes a second time, there were two people standing in front of him, both of whom he’d never seen before.
The first was a woman in her fifties, with almost entirely gray hair. She stood next to a young man in his twenties. They were both wearing gun belts and holstered pistols and were in the middle of a conversation before he woke up.
The interior of the shack was almost completely dark, and Smith wouldn’t have been able to see his new guests if one of them—the man—wasn’t holding an LED lantern in one hand. It was night outside the building, with only a few scattered lights here and there to keep the junkyard from becoming a complete sea of black. Smith guessed he’d slept through the entire day, which explained why he was feeling much, much better.
“Looks like Sleeping Beauty’s awake,” the man said.
The woman turned to look at Smith. “It’s about time. We thought you were going to sleep all day.”
“It’s been a long day,” Smith said. Then, looking from the woman to the younger man, “So, what have I missed?”
“We’re trying to decide what to do with you,” the woman said.
“Do I have a say in the matter?”
“No.”
“Just wonderin’.”
Smith had seen plenty of leaders and followers in his time, and it was very clear who was who here. The woman was the leader, even if she was an entire foot shorter than the man. It wasn’t the huge gap in their age, either, but the way she stood and stared at Smith, very much as if she was trying to decide what to do with him.
She was trying to decide, and not the “we” she had claimed earlier.
“Billy spotted you at Lucky’s when he was killed,” the woman said.
“You’re Mandy?” Smith asked.
“That I am. Now, tell me about Lucky.”
“I don’t have anything to tell you. Billy’s wrong. The house was already burning when I stumbled across it. I didn’t know there was anyone inside. Or who started the fire. Or why.”
“You’re saying Billy lied?”
“I’m saying Billy jumped to conclusions. Ask him again. I bet if you press him, he’ll admit to it.”
Mandy and the man exchanged a brief look. Smith couldn’t tell if they believed him or not. He was hoping his very honest face was believable, because it would have certainly been ironic if it wasn’t since, well, it was the truth.
The woman looked back at Smith. “Say we believe you about Lucky. And that’s a big if. When did you decide to steal Sally?”
“I wouldn’t call it stealing,” Smith said. “The horse was there, and I took it.”
“What do you call taking something that doesn’t belong to you, wise guy?” the man asked.
“Opportunity. I didn’t know what happened, or why. I just saw a horse that no one was using. It would have been a waste to just let it wander off.”
“So you took it.”
“Yeah, I took it.”
The man chuckled, before saying to Mandy, “Well, at least he’s not a complete liar.”
“I don’t have any reasons to lie,” Smith said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You took what wasn’t yours,” Mandy said.
“I didn’t know that at the time.”
“You should have assumed.”
“You know what happens when you assume?”
“Who shot you?” the man asked.
“I don’t know,” Smith said. “I was hoping you guys might be able to tell me. Maybe it was the same guy who burned down your friend Lucky’s house.”
Mandy and the man exchanged another look. For some reason, Smith had a feeling they already knew everything he’d just told them, but either wanted him to confirm or…
Something else was going on that they were keeping from him.
Oh, who was he kidding. There were a lot of “somethings” going on here that he didn’t know but had stumbled into.
Hobson and that posse of his, for one.
This Judge person back at Gaffney, for another.
And thirdly, the death of someone named Lucky, whom Smith had never even met.
“You guys want to tell me what’s going on around here?” Smith asked.
Mandy looked back at him. “What do you know about Gaffney?”
“Nothing. I’ve never been there.”
“And the Judge?”
“I’ve heard the name, but that’s it.”
“Where did you hear it from?”
“Some guys on horses. One of them called himself Hobson.”
“You know Hobson,” the man said.
“I met the guy. I wouldn’t call that ‘knowing’ him.”
“How did you meet Hobson, and why?” Mandy asked.
“It’s a long story.”
“Look around you. You’re in no position to hold anything back from us, Mister…”
“Smith.”
“Smith?”
Smith sighed. “Yeah.”
The man chuckled. “Couldn’t have come up with something better, huh?”
“It’s a name,” Smith said. Then, to Mandy, “Blake told me Gaffney isn’t a nice place to be, but she didn’t elaborate. Is she right?”
“Depends,” Mandy said.
“On?”
“On whether you agree with the Judge or not.”
“I don’t know what any of that means,” Smith said.
“No, I don’t suspect you do.”
“What’s wrong with Gaffney? Who is this Judge person everyone keeps talking about?”
Mandy ignored him and turned back to the man. “We need to think this through. What we do next may set off a chain of events that we can’t take back.”
“This was a long time coming,” the man said. “We were never going to avoid this forever, Mandy.”
“I know, but it’s not something to take lightly.”
“You know I’m not taking this lightly. But it was going to happen, sooner or later.” Then, “Do we tell the others?”
“We have to. We don’t keep secrets from one another here, remember?”
Smith had a feeling they’d forgotten all about him. “What about me?” he asked. “What happens to me now?”
“We haven’t decided yet,” Mandy said.
“Don’t leave town,” the man said.
“Funny,” Smith said.
The man grinned, before he turned around and left the shack with Mandy.
“Hey,” Smith called after them.
They ignored him and closed the door. He heard chains jangling, then a lock snapping into place.
Swell, Smith thought as the shack around him started to darken even further now that they’d taken the only source of light away.
Outside, he could hear the crickets chirping, along with the shuffling of boots against the grounds.
Other than that, it was just him in the dark, lost with his own thoughts.
Most of all, the image of Mary and her son, Aaron, riding off to Gaffney, where he thought they would be safe.
“Shit,” Smith said out loud.
Twelve
Smith wasn’t sure when he dozed off for the second time (technically the third time he lost consciousness, but who was counting?), but it wasn’t long after Mandy and the guy whose name he didn’t know left. He was either very tired or the bullet had taken more out of him than he’d admitted, because he couldn’t remember the last ti
me he fell asleep without realizing it twice in one day.
This time, it was different.
This time he didn’t open his eyes because he woke up. He was startled awake by the sound of gunfire, and Smith’s immediate thought was, That’s not good. That’s definitely not good.
Smith didn’t need to be able to see more than what he could at the moment—which wasn’t very much at all—to know there was a back and forth going on outside. The shack was lightless, which meant he was essentially sitting in the dark. That in itself was already an eerie feeling, but now he was stuck in the middle of a gun battle—
Pek! as a round slammed into the wall to his right.
The bullet easily punctured through the thin wooden board and exited the other side of the shack.
Close one!
Okay, so it probably hadn’t been that close, but when you were tied to a pole and sitting on the floor without the ability to do anything to save yourself, even a couple of yards was way too close a call.
He was listening to handguns and rifles firing back and forth, along with pings! of those rounds ricocheting off the vehicles and other metal junk that surrounded him. Someone—or, more likely, someones—was attacking Mandy’s group.
The question was who and why?
Or maybe the big question was, how was he going to—
Pek! as another bullet entered the shack from his right and embedded itself into the pole about a foot above Smith’s head. Splinters flicked across the air, a few of them landing in his lap.
Now that was closer, and it wasn’t just his imagination this time.
“Hey!” Smith shouted. “Someone out there? Hey!”
He couldn’t see his guards anymore through the cracks in the walls, but he did glimpse moving figures outside.
“Anyone!” Smith shouted. “Hey, I’m still in here! Anyone out there? Anyone?”
Apparently no one could hear him. Or, if they could, they were ignoring him. He wasn’t sure which answer made him feel worse.
Both sounds about right.
The moving figures weren’t close enough that he could tell who they were or what they were doing, but they were clearly in a hurry to do something. Anything and everything, from the sounds of it, except come and check in on him.
His night eyes had adjusted so he could see where the door was, directly in front of him. Not that he could do anything to open it, because he couldn’t even move. Goddammit, whoever had tied him up had done a hell of a job. Smith reminded himself to give the guy or gal a medal when this was over.
If he survived this. Right now, sitting here while people were shooting at each other around him, that was one bit if.
Imagine dying in here. In this dingy little shack. What a way to go, huh?
Not quite. He could think of a hundred different ways to go that would have been a vast improvement.
Beggars can’t be choosers.
That was true, too. Right now, he had no choice—
A figure flashed by across the thin slits in the door.
“Hey!” Smith shouted. “Hey! Let me outta here! Hey!”
But the runner didn’t stop, and soon Smith couldn’t see him or her anymore.
“Dammit…”
Around him the shooting continued, but it wasn’t the constant roar of gunfire that he was used to in battle. These sounded more concentrated, purposeful, as if the shooters were picking their targets carefully before pulling the trigger. Which made him wonder what idiot was shooting at the shack he was in. Maybe the ones that’d struck the wall were just stray shots. Again, he wasn’t sure which answer made him feel better, though.
Neither. It’s definitely neither.
More gunshots, these sounding even closer, and seemed to be coming from just behind him.
Getting closer. That’s not good.
Nope. That’s not good whatsoever.
Smith still had no idea where his shack was in relation to the rest of the junkyard, or even in which direction he was facing. The back? The front? The sides? All he knew was that he was stuck in here while a gunfight was going on out there, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. The helplessness was maddening, and all he wanted to do was bang his head into the pole behind him until it cracked so he could slide free.
Except, of course, he didn’t do that. He could feel the girth of the structure behind him and knew it’d take more than his head—as thick and stubborn as most people keep telling him it was—to break it in half. Or if not halve it, then enough to escape.
No, he’d need help to get out of this. That was the problem. He didn’t see help coming from anywhere. The only person he even thought might care if he made it out of here alive or not was Blake, and maybe that was just his penis talking again.
There was no clear, sustained back-and-forth volleys to the gunfire he was listening to, nothing that would indicate a full-blown assault was taking place outside. More likely, there were two factions shooting at each other from cover. And every now and then, one of them kept sending bullets in Smith’s direction.
That was the real problem.
Gee, just one real problem?
Well, one of many, anyway.
Bottom online: he had to get out. He had to get free.
He tried to wiggle out of the rawhide rope again, but it was just too thick and too strong and too taut. Jesus Christ. Who was the guy that tied him to the pole, Hercules himself? There was no slack in the rope whatsoever. At least, none that he could detect. That had been the case all day, and nothing had changed now.
Fucking Hercules, the rope magician, Smith thought, smirking at the darkness.
Then, for the first time, voices.
They were coming from somewhere to his right—or was that to his left? Behind him? In front?
Like with the shooting, it was hard to tell for sure. Sound was echoing, bouncing off all the abandoned cars and all the other junk stacked outside. Strangely enough, for a junkyard, the place really didn’t smell all that badly. There was a smell, but it wasn’t the putrid odor that usually accompanied something like a landfill. Smith guessed that made some sense; Mandy and her people wouldn’t have been able to stand it if there was a vicious stench in the air 24/7.
The pop-pop-pop! of someone unleashing with a burst rifle fire.
That’s new…
That was the first time he’d heard something beyond semiautomatic gunshots. Either someone was trying to pick off more than one target, or they were getting sick and tired of trading single rounds.
Smith’s only concern, though, was that none of that burst had found its way to his current location. He tried to imagine a worse way to die, but sitting here, tied to a pole, had to be at the bottom of the list. It wouldn’t exactly be painful, but it would still royally suck—
Shadows, as someone ran along the side of the shack.
Smith tracked the figure as it rounded the building.
“Hey!” Smith shouted. “Hey! In here!”
Even as he called out, he fully expected the figure to keep going—but he was wrong. Whoever was out there this time stopped at the door, and he heard jingling as they fumbled with the chains and padlock.
Smith tried to sit up straighter, to gather himself and get ready for what came next.
The door flew open, and Blake ran inside.
He breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe it was his penis talking again, but the sight of her was the best thing he’d seen all night. Hell, it might be the best thing he’d seen in weeks.
Yeah, that’s definitely the penis talking.
The shack was small enough that Smith didn’t have to strain his eyes to see the flowing blonde hair around Blake as she ran over to him. Flowing, because she’d undone her ponytail. From the looks of it, she’d been roused out of bed and ran straight here because she was still wearing what looked like pajamas and a long-sleeve nightshirt. The hem of one of her pajama legs was stuffed into her boots as if she’d put them on too quickly. Unlike the last time he
saw her, there was a sheathed knife at her hip.
“Blake,” Smith said. “What’s happening? What’s going on out there?”
“We’re under attack,” Blake said.
“By who?”
“Sit still.”
“What?”
“Sit still.”
She had left the door open behind her, and a cold breeze swept over Smith, making him shiver slightly. He was surprised it was so cold out there, but he guessed the large holes along the walls of his prison still provided some cover from the elements.
Blake ran past him, and he was momentarily caught off guard, until he realized what she was about to do just before she did it. The sound of a knife coming out of a sheath, and then Blake was cutting the rope behind him.
“Blake,” Smith said. “Who’s attacking?”
“Gaffney,” Blake said.
She was close enough that he could hear her labored breathing, as if she’d been running a marathon just to reach his shack. For all he knew, that was exactly what she had done.
“Gaffney’s attacking,” Blake said.
Gaffney. Shit.
Smith thought again about Mary and Aaron, and how he’d essentially handed mother and son over to Hobson and his posse. They had taken the duo back to Gaffney with them, where he thought they’d be safe.
But maybe Smith was being too hard on himself. Mary herself had thought the same, and there was a good chance she would have gone with Hobson anyway, even if he had told her otherwise.
Then again, maybe he was just making excuses for himself.
Yeah, that’s probably it.
“Why is Gaffney attacking?” Smith asked even as he felt his arms loosening and thought, Haha, Mr. Hercules, I’m finally free of your binds!
His body followed suit quickly, and Smith breathed another large sigh of relief. You never really knew what freedom meant until it was taken from you.
“They were always going to come here,” Blake was saying. “We just didn’t know when. I guess tonight’s the answer.”
The ropes fell to the ground and Smith started to get up, but his legs were jelly and he almost fell back down.
“Easy; you’ve been sitting all day,” Blake said as she put the knife away and helped him up from the ground. “Mandy told me to get you to safety.”
After The Purge, AKA John Smith (Book 2): Run or Fight Page 8