The ghoul was already back on its rail-thin legs a second later.
“Whoa, you see that?” a voice said. The less-gruff voice Smith had been hearing all this time, but was unable to trace.
“Nice one!” the gruffer of the two voices laughed. “He’s a regular Mike Tyson.”
“Who?”
“Mike Tyson.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“Fuck, you’re young.”
Laughter, but Smith wasn’t sure who it was from, and he didn’t have the opportunity to give a damn because the ghoul was coming at him.
It charged like a runaway train, arms outstretched toward him. Saliva flitted from its mouth, which was wide open to reveal crooked yellowing spikes that were more caverns of fangs than anything resembling teeth. Black goo, like gobs of tar, dripped from the gash in its cheek where Smith had punched and tore through its flesh as if they were tissue paper.
Not that any of that stopped the creature. Nothing was going to stop it except silver. And Smith didn’t have an ounce of the precious metal on him right now. All he would have needed was just a tiny bit to introduce into its bloodstream and the ghoul would stop. Just like that, it would stop.
But he didn’t, and it wouldn’t.
Smith kicked out with his right foot and struck it in the chest with the sole of his boot. (At least they let him keep his boots.) The creature snapped back like a marionette with its strings pulled and slammed down to the floor.
Now what? How did he keep it down?
“Nice!” a voice shouted. Maybe the gruff voice, or possibly the less gruff one. Smith had given up trying to distinguish the two. All he knew was that they were having a hell of a good time at his expense.
The creature was spinning, limbs twisting as it began to rise back up. Smith didn’t let it and charged. He struck out with his right knee, catching it in almost exactly in the middle of its chest. The ghoul flung back and slammed into the bars. The entire cage rattled for a few seconds, and maybe it would have kept right on rattling, but Smith wasn’t waiting to find out.
He ran for the door.
He got halfway when he lost his footing.
No, he didn’t lose his footing. Something had grabbed him and pulled his feet out from underneath him.
The ghoul, its cold, bony fingers wrapped tightly around his ankle.
Shit!
Smith went from running to flying to crashing chest-first into the hard cement. He twisted his entire body, imagining himself flopping around like a fish out of water, but somehow managing to land on his back.
The creature was still holding onto his right ankle with one hand, its bony fingers seemingly digging into his flesh through the fabric of his pant legs.
He stared at it.
It sneered back. Its only good eye might have squinted, but maybe that was just the darkness in the room playing tricks with Smith’s vision. The smell stretched from every pore of the creature’s skin and reached across the space between them like physical tentacles that grabbed a hold of him and refused to let go.
Smith tried his best not to vomit, but he might have dry heaved.
Don’t throw up. This is no time to be throwing up!
But dear God, it smelled. It was impossible to ignore. The entire room seemed to be simmering with its stench, like garbage piled upon garbage inside a box that was then sealed tight and never opened again. And then someone shoved him inside.
Smith turned his head slightly with revulsion.
The creature reached for his left leg with its other hand, but Smith kicked out with his boot first and caught it in the face. The nose shattered, black goo spraying the floor and the sole of Smith’s shoe. Not that that did anything to make it let go of his right leg. If anything, it clung on even tighter.
Was that possible?
Apparently, yes.
“He’s done for now!” a voice said.
“No way. He still has some fight in him!” the other one said.
“We’ll see about that!”
“He looks like a fighter, this one!”
“They all look like a fighter until it’s over!”
Again, Smith wasn’t able to distinguish who was saying what, and he didn’t give a damn, either. The identities of the speakers were less important than what was happening to him inside the cage.
And right now, the ghoul was trying to claw its way up his leg. Fortunately, it only had a grip on his right leg, which meant Smith’s left was free to cock back and strike forward. He landed a shot to its temple.
The creature’s head reared back and that stopped its forward momentum temporarily. Before it could right itself, Smith struck again.
Thwap!
Again, the ghoul’s head snapped back, its grotesque and misshapen skull jerking against its elongated neck.
Before it could gather itself, Smith kicked it again.
Thwap!
And again.
Thwap!
He heard the very solid crack! as the creature’s neck finally snapped on the fourth kick, and felt it loosening its grip on his right ankle slightly.
Smith didn’t wait to see if it would release its hold on him completely. He pulled his leg free, then scrambled to his feet. The creature did the same, even as its head flung back and seemed to hang off its shoulders, the neck bone that formerly held it in place having been shattered by Smith’s last kick.
It was wobbly on its feet when Smith drove himself into it, catching it in the chest with his shoulder and slamming it into the bars on the other side. The entire cage shook, but Smith was too busy stumbling back, back—
He spun and darted toward the open door—and lunged outside the cage!
Smith turned and slammed the door shut. Heard the click! as the lock snapped into place. He hadn’t expected that, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He stumbled back as the creature flung itself into the door.
Bang!
The cage trembled again against the impact, but the door remained closed.
Not that that stopped the ghoul. It reared back, its head dangling off the back of its shoulders like a hoodie instead of a head, and rammed itself into the door again.
Bang!
And again.
Bang!
Bang!
But the door held.
Bang!
Somehow, it held. Smith didn’t know why, or how, but the door wouldn’t budge.
He bent over at the waist and sucked in a deep breath, cold air flooding his lungs.
The bang! bang! of the creature throwing itself into the cage echoed inside the room around him.
Bang!
Bang!
“Goddammit,” a voice said.
Smith straightened up and turned around just as two figures stepped out of the shadows behind him.
“You got my shift tonight,” a second voice said, followed by a chuckle.
Two men appeared out of the darkness, and one of them was holding something in his right hand. Smith squinted, trying to make out what that “something” was, when about 50,000 watts of electrical current coursed through him and he flopped to the floor, where he lay shaking. There were two prongs sticking out of his chest that weren’t there earlier, connected to wiring that ran along the ground then up toward a device being held in one of the men’s hands.
“He’s a fighter,” the less-gruff of the two voices said. Smith couldn’t lift his head to see the speaker’s face. He was too busy trying not to bite his tongue off.
“Not anymore,” the gruffer of the two voices said.
“So what now?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did the Judge say?”
“Nothing about this.”
“You should probably radio him and ask.”
“It’s almost five in the morning. Fat man’s probably sound asleep by now. He’d have my hide if I woke him up.”
“Good point,” the less gruff of the two voices said.
Sm
ith would have liked to keep eavesdropping on their conversation, but he was too busy trying to maintain his focus, even if the only thing he could see was the ghoul, still locked in the cage, flinging itself wildly against the bars.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang…!
Fourteen
“Mr. Smith.”
A female voice.
“John.”
It sounded familiar.
“Can you hear me?”
He snapped awake and sat up. He did it so violently that he heard a gasp and the sound of shuffling feet in response.
“John. It’s okay.”
Was it okay?
“Give it time.”
Where was he?
“You’re hurt.”
Yes, he was.
“But you’re safe now.”
No, he wasn’t. Smith didn’t know a lot of things, but he knew that much. He wasn’t safe. And he wasn’t going to be safe for a while.
“Don’t try to move too fast, too soon.”
He knew that voice. Now if only he could place it…
Smith opened his eyes to…darkness. (So what else was new?) Except there were silhouetted figures gathered in the room with him—
Ghouls!
“John, John. It’s okay. They’re human.”
Human? How did the speaker know he thought the figures were ghouls?
“They’re human, John. It’s okay.”
Slowly, the silhouettes took the shape of humans. Women. He could tell that from the shape of their shoulders, their forms.
So not ghouls.
Not ghouls…
He managed to sit up on solid and slightly cold floor. Concrete. The walls around him—or the parts of them that he could see, because there wasn’t much light in the room—were made of the same dark gray and ugly material.
They were inside a room encased in hard concrete.
The cage.
The cage!
No, no cage. He was out of the cage and in another room. A bigger room. Or it felt bigger to him, anyway.
He sniffed the air, searching for the telltale signs of ghouls.
None. Just sweat and dirt and…
Fear. He smelled fear all around him.
“John. It’s okay.”
Smith glanced behind him. Mary. She had a familiar voice. She was kneeling next to him, one hand holding him by the shoulder to keep him upright. He might not have even recognized her face in the darkness if she wasn’t so close.
“Mary,” Smith said.
She managed a smile, but he could tell it was very forced. “Yes, John, it’s me.”
“Where are we?”
“Underneath the barn.”
“What barn?”
“On the ranch.”
Oh. That barn.
“Your head,” Mary was saying. “It looks like blood.”
“Yeah,” Smith said, reaching behind the back of his head. At least he wasn’t bleeding anymore even if it probably looked like a real mess back there. The blood had coagulated and become tangled with his hair.
“What happened?” Mary asked.
“I came looking for you.”
“How did that work out?”
He looked back at her again and found her smiling.
He chuckled. “Not very well.”
“Well, at least you tried. I didn’t think you’d come back.”
“I promised I would.”
“I know, but…” She shrugged. “Not everyone keeps their promises these days.”
Smith spent a few extra seconds looking at her. As far as he could tell, she didn’t appear to be hurt. Her hair was slightly disheveled, but that was true for everyone inside the room with them, including himself.
The others, as he had guessed, were all women—three that Smith could see right away and a fourth one that had retreated to the back, in the farthest corner of the room.
…all women…
He remembered what Blake had told him, about how the Judge gave the women of Gaffney very few choices. Blake had also said—
Blake.
Jesus, Blake.
She was dead. Shot by the crazy woman with the shotgun. Well, maybe she wasn’t so crazy. She was looking for Peter, whoever that was. Maybe her husband. Or lover. Or brother. She’d been certain Smith and Blake had something to do with his absence, which was true. And she’d shot Blake for it.
I’m sorry, Blake. I should have made you head back to the junkyard.
I’m so sorry.
Smith sat by himself for a moment. Now that he didn’t feel endangered—or not in any immediate danger, anyway—he allowed himself a few precious seconds to take stock of his situation. Of everything that had happened. It was a long thirty or so seconds.
He hadn’t had very much time to dwell on Blake’s death, not after waking up in that cage and being confronted with the ghoul. He still remembered the two voices—Gruff and Not-So-Gruff—and how entertained they were about Smith’s ordeal. The bastards had even made a bet on how long he’d last against the nightcrawler.
But it was Blake that stuck out in Smith’s mind now. He remembered the green of her eyes, the way she moved…
Shouldn’t have gotten involved. Why do I always get involved?
Mary remained next to him. She looked poised to reach over and grab him at any second, should he threaten to topple back to the hard floor.
He glanced over at her. “How long have you been down here?”
“They brought me here yesterday, after you left,” Mary said.
“Why?”
“Punishment.”
“For what?”
“One of the Judge’s men tried to force himself on me. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. I think his name was Dunham.”
“Dunham?”
Mary nodded. “I think so.”
Dunham…
The man was dead. Smith had shot him inside Amy’s clinic back in Gaffney last night. That was after he’d stumbled into the place while Smith was talking to the doctor.
Dunham…
Smith remembered the scar on the man’s face. The very fresh scar that ran down his right cheek.
I guess now I know how he got that.
“They brought me here to be reeducated,” Mary said.
“Reeducated?”
“That’s what the Judge said, before he delivered his sentence.”
“They put you on trial?”
“It wasn’t much of one. They brought me into his office at the courthouse and he spent a minute asking Dunham what happened.”
“Let me guess: He didn’t ask for your side?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think he cares one way or another.”
Mary’s story explained Dunham’s scar, but why had Hobson lied to him? Certainly he would have known about her troubles.
“What about Hobson?” he asked.
“What about him?”
“Did he know what happened?”
“He was the one who led me to the Judge.”
Lying asshole, Smith thought, suddenly not feeling so bad about having shot the man in his own home anymore. Not that he was really feeling bad about it in the first place, but, well, he’d had second thoughts since. Not anymore.
Smith turned back to the other women.
Two of them stood huddled against a wall, almost leaning against one another, while a third had laid back down on the floor on her side, her back to Smith. The fourth one remained in the far corner, her knees pulled up to her chest. It was too dark—there weren’t any lights that Smith could detect, just his night eyes to see with—for him to tell what kind of shape the women were in, but he didn’t sense any fight in them.
Mary, on the other hand…
Smith turned back to her. “Are you okay?”
She pursed her lips. “I’ve been here less than a day. Some of them…” She stared past Smith and at the other women in the room with them. “They’ve been here longer. The one back ther
e? In the corner? They told me she’s been here for almost three months.” Mary nodded at the one lying on the floor on her side. “She’s been here for a week. The other two”—nodding at the two standing against the wall—“have been here for just a few days. I think they’re sisters.”
It was too dark for Smith to see the facial resemblance in the two possible sisters, but it was hard to miss the protective way they stood together, away from everyone else. If any of the women heard Smith and Mary talking, no one said a word.
“So this is their idea of reeducation?” he asked Mary.
“I guess so.”
“What did they do to you?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing yet.” She shook her head, then indicating the one lying on her side, “Since I’ve been here, they’ve only come for her.”
“What did they do to her?”
“I don’t know. They brought her back a few hours later. She looked even worse off than when she left, and she looked pretty bad then.”
Smith couldn’t see the woman’s face, but the way she lay there, unmoving…
“What did they do to you?” Mary was asking him.
He told her about the cage and the ghoul.
“You beat it?” Mary asked.
“Kind of,” Smith said.
He stood up. Or tried.
He lost his balance and his feet went wobbly, and Smith collapsed back into Mary’s lap. She grabbed him, but he was much heavier, and she almost toppled sideways with him tangled up in her arms. Somehow, though, she managed to hold the both of them up.
“Easy, John. Easy,” Mary said. “You look like you’ve been through hell.”
Smith sighed. That wasn’t far from the truth. He’d been shot, shot at numerous times, and lost consciousness more than once. Nebraska was becoming a real pain in the ass, and Smith didn’t like it one bit. On second thought, and with the benefit of hindsight, he should have continued on his path after the run-in with Travis and the other two back at Lucky’s burned-down homestead. Instead, he’d come back to Gaffney on his own, looking for a little payback.
Shoulda done a lot of things these last few days, I guess.
“Okay?” Mary asked.
No, Smith thought, but he said, “I’ll be okay.”
“You sure?”
After The Purge, AKA John Smith (Book 3): Shoot Last Page 9