by Sam Sisavath
“Good question,” Danny said. “So, tell us, ol’ popular one, what makes you the bee’s knees? And don’t say it’s because of your stinky armpits, ’cause I’m sure I got you beat on that one.”
“It’s a secret,” Mason said.
“Is that right?”
“You can try to beat it out of me, but I’m still not going to tell you.”
“I don’t know, I’m pretty good at beating things out of people. Just ask Johnny Paulson back in middle school.”
“The difference between me and Johnny Paulson? I know keeping quiet is the only way to stay alive. The second I tell you, I’m a dead man. And I really, really like staying alive.”
Danny exchanged a look with her, then she did the same with Nate. She wasn’t sure if either one of the men believed Mason, but she got the feeling they were like her: They didn’t believe a thing that came out of his mouth, but they couldn’t disregard it out of hand, either. And that, ultimately, was what Mason was going for.
“You’re a tricky little bugger,” Danny said, pointing a finger at Mason. “You know what happens to tricky little buggers? They eventually overstay their welcome and end up being stuffed into ventilation shafts. And trust me, buddy, I know my ventilation shafts.”
“I don’t know what any of that means,” Mason said.
“Think about it.”
“I’ll pass.”
“I don’t believe you,” Gaby said.
The collaborator grinned at her. “Just ask yourself one question, sweetheart: How do you think I’ve stayed alive this long? It wasn’t because of my good looks.”
She bristled at the word sweetheart but pushed through it. The last thing she wanted was for Mason to see that he had an effect—any kind of an effect—on her with his words. It was a weak man’s weapon because right now, that was all he had.
Gaby stared at him. “The second you prove you’re no longer valuable, I’m going to end you.”
“I believe you,” Mason said.
“Good. Because when the time comes, you won’t be able to say I wasn’t honest with you.”
He smiled defiantly back at her, but she couldn’t help but notice that this time it wasn’t nearly as convincing.
* * *
CRACK!
Danny, looking down at the well-worn map of Texas spread out on the bank’s island counter, snapped a quick glance at the windows that faced the street. He hadn’t said anything when two more shots, about three seconds apart, crackled across the city even before the first one had fully faded.
“Same rifle?” Gaby asked.
Danny nodded. “Bolt-action. Heavy caliber.”
“What are they shooting at—” Nate said, when the pop-pop-pop of an automatic rifle cut him off.
“Someone’s shooting back,” Gaby said.
“Is that good?” Nate asked.
“Good, bad, as long as they’re not shooting at us, that’s all that matters,” Danny said. He pushed off the counter and moved across the bank lobby to the front windows.
More gunfire washed up and down the street outside. It took her a moment, but there was enough of a sustained volley that Gaby managed to trace its origin back to the highway. Had the two collaborators in the Jeep found someone to shoot at, or had someone found them?
“Pack up,” Danny said.
Gaby folded up the map and pocketed it. “Are we leaving?”
“I don’t think we have a choice, kids. All that racket’s doing is drawing a whole lotta attention our way. Pretty soon we’ll be up our butts in bad boys in black uniforms, and I don’t know about you two, but I’d rather avoid that uncomfortableness.”
Gaby exchanged a nod with Nate, and he hurried into the back where they were keeping Mason. She snatched up her rifle leaning against the counter and grabbed her tactical pack from the floor. The weight of the ammo in the bag instantly reassured her.
A soldier who complains about too much ammo is a dead one, right, Will?
Danny was still peeking out the blinds, looking in the direction of the gunfire. The familiar crack of the high-powered rifle, followed by the torrent of pop-pop-pop of automatic return fire. Someone, somewhere, was wasting a lot of ammo. Will, she thought, would never approve.
“Danny, anything?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Can’t see shit, but they’re not outside, and that’s the good news. The bad news is that I can’t see shit from in here. Did I mention that?”
“It sounds like it’s coming from the highway. You think it might be Mercer’s people?”
“That would be my guess.” Danny glanced over as Nate brought Mason out from the back, keeping the shorter man in front of him. “Looks like we might be putting your supposed importance to test sooner than you think, Mason ol’ chum.”
“Looking forward to it,” Mason said.
She looked past the collaborator and at Nate behind him. “Ready?”
“Good to go,” Nate nodded.
Nate’s pack jutted out from behind his back, making him look like a hunchback. Unlike hers, his was bulkier, because aside from his own ammo, he was also carrying most of their emergency rations. They had more supplies in the truck outside, but they had learned the hard way it was a good idea to carry whatever you could on top of that because you never knew when you might lose your vehicle to an A-10 Warthog on a strafing run.
“Okay,” Danny said, “let’s blow this three-horse town.”
He rushed into the back hallway, Nate and Mason turning and following close behind, while Gaby brought up the rear. She glanced behind her at the closed blinders one last time before crossing the lobby after the others.
Outside the bank the firefight continued, the booming crack! of a bolt-action rifle now overlapping with the pop-pop-pop of return fire. Whoever was out there, they sounded determined to end one another.
Better them than us.
* * *
IT WAS AN OLDER model red Toyota pickup, one that Danny had found in someone’s garage after the vehicle they had been using since Starch died on them. The Toyota looked nearly as beat up as the building it was hidden in, but its owner had kept it in good condition and it worked without any trouble once they replaced the battery and fed siphoned fuel into its tank.
It was still parked behind the Gallant First Bank where they had left it, dented cab hood reflecting back the sun. It wasn’t exactly the prettiest thing in town, and even before The Purge most thieves wouldn’t have looked twice at it.
Nate opened the back door and shoved Mason inside, then slid in beside him. Mason’s legs were free, but his wrists were bound with duct tape to keep him from getting any ideas. She kept expecting the man to make a run for it a dozen times since they began their trek, but he seemed oddly content to be their hostage, though she didn’t for one second believe that.
Don’t trust him. Whatever you do, don’t trust him.
Gaby tossed her pack on the floor before climbing into the front passenger seat while Danny settled in behind the wheel. He put the key in the ignition but didn’t turn it right away. Instead, he rolled down the window and listened, except there wasn’t anything to hear.
It was suddenly very quiet again.
“Sounds like someone finally won the brouhaha,” Danny said.
“I don’t hear any running vehicles,” Gaby said.
“If they called for reinforcements, it would take a while for them to get here,” Nate said. “Port Arthur’s a long way off.”
“Unless they have people closer...”
“There’s always that.”
She looked over at Danny. “Maybe we should be gone before they show up.”
“Works for me,” Mason chimed in from the backseat.
“Shut up,” Nate said and slapped Mason in the back of the head. “When we wanna hear a peep out of you, we’ll ask.”
Mason grunted and looked as if he wanted to say something back, but clenched his teeth in silence instead. Gaby smiled. It was a rare thing to see Nate
so aggressive, but she couldn’t help herself; she liked it when he was.
Danny still hadn’t turned the key in the ignition. He continued leaning against the steering wheel and staring out at the empty street in front of them. Until the gunfight a few minutes ago, Gallant was the definition of a dead town. They hadn’t found a single soul living here when they arrived, not even an animal or two.
“What are you thinking?” Gaby asked.
“Cheeseburgers,” Danny said.
“Cheeseburgers?”
“With chives. And bacon.”
“And how does that help us?”
“It doesn’t, but you asked what I was thinking, and I was thinking about a nice big juicy cheeseburger.”
“With chives and bacon.”
“Yup.” He sat back, the car’s torn upholstery squishing under him. “When this is over, I think I’m going to open a cheeseburger joint. Call it Danny’s Cheeseburgers.”
“A little on the nose, don’t you think?”
“What can I say, I like to make a splash,” Danny said just before he turned the key in the ignition.
The truck didn’t roar; it meowed to life, but with the absence of any other sounds at the moment, the churning engine might as well be a loud monstrous bellow alerting anyone with ears to not just their existence but their location as well.
“Eyes wide, ears open, and guns hot,” Danny said as he put the truck in gear and slowly eased it out from behind the bank, peeking left then right at the empty streets, before turning right and pointing them south.
They hadn’t gone more than a mile down the road, passing a series of empty buildings and storefronts to both sides of them, when she heard a new noise and looked at her side mirror and sighed.
“Danny,” she said.
“I see them,” he said.
“Ah, man,” Nate said as he twisted around in his seat and glanced out the rear windshield.
“Better step on it, sport,” Mason said, though Gaby didn’t hear anything that even resembled triumph in his voice. If anything, he might have sounded a little…anxious?
The pickup gained speed while Gaby put her M4 in her lap and flicked the safety off, then stuck her head out the open window and looked back down the street.
It was the same Jeep from the interstate, she was sure of it, and it was far enough behind them that she couldn’t see the driver’s face, though she could make out a second figure in the front passenger seat. A part of her knew it was too much to expect they could just exit Gallant the way they had entered it—unnoticed—but she’d clung to the hope anyway.
“Company!” she shouted.
“Tell me something I don’t know!” Danny shouted back.
He hadn’t even gotten the word know out when a second car turned into the street behind the Jeep, and for just a brief second she entertained the possibility that it was going to ram the smaller vehicle in front of it, knock it into one of the buildings, and allow them to escape. Instead the Jeep’s passenger waved at the truck, which picked up speed and pulled up alongside it.
“Danny! More company!” she shouted.
“Yee haw! Now it’s a party!” he shouted back.
Sunlight bounced off the truck’s gleaming dark skin, and it was impossible to miss the machine gun mounted on top of its cab. A man stood behind the weapon, literally clinging to it to prevent the speeding vehicle from shedding him like some unwelcomed pest. He looked like a rag doll back there, and no amount of wishful thinking on her part ended with him flying through the air.
“It’s a technical, Danny!” she shouted.
“When it rains, it pours!” Danny said, and she thought he might have been laughing at the same time.
She pulled her head back into the pickup and looked at him. “Can we outrun them?”
“Not in this jalopy,” Danny said.
“What, then?”
He glanced over and grinned. “I got a plan.”
“A good plan?”
“Call it Plan Z.”
She groaned. “We’re going to die…”
4
KEO
HE SPENT the night in an outside cellar at a farmhouse about half a mile from Lochlyn. You wouldn’t know the town even existed if you didn’t have a map and someone to point the way. Fortunately, he had the benefit of both. Even so, he ended up stumbling into the south end of the city limits and had to quickly retreat before he was spotted out in the open. If there had been a sniper on duty, he would have been dead. The enemy would be on high alert after Davis and Butch failed to check in, and that made him overly cautious.
Nightfall came quickly, giving him less than an hour to squirrel himself inside the cellar. The door was made of a simple wooden construction, nothing that would stand against a prolonged assault. The room itself was small and damp, and judging by the indentations, once held glass bottles, maybe even spirits. Or moonshine, perhaps. He was in the boondocks of southeast Texas, after all. Who the hell knew what people did down here to pass the time?
There were slits in the door that anyone with eyes (black, blue, or whatever color) could use to look into the cellar, so he grabbed clumps of dirt and plastered them over the vulnerable spots. Fortunately, the earth was wet enough to cling to the wooden slabs. He reinforced the latch on the door with Butch’s rifle that he had brought along just in case. It wasn’t like the man was going to need it or any of his supplies anytime soon.
The work done, he settled down on the soft ground and rested his back against the sticky wall and took a drink from a canteen. There was something else he had brought along—a small pink iPod barely the size of his thumb that Butch had been listening to when Keo shot him in the fields. The green light flickered when he pushed the on switch, and a voice drifted out of the white earbuds dangling from the device.
Keo placed his AR-15 on the ground and trained his eyes on the cellar door barely ten feet across from him. He had done a pretty good job sealing up the cracks, and the room was almost pitch dark except for a few random strands of inconsequential (fading) sunlight. He had positioned himself in the right spot, which in this case meant staying as far away from the stray slivers as possible.
He was surprised when he slipped one of the buds into his ear—left the other one dangling—and heard her voice. That surprise turned into a grin, because for some reason a part of him expected to see—well, hear, anyway—her again even all the way out here.
“…the traitors in uniforms that scour the countryside in the daylight for survivors, any bullet will do…”
Lara’s voice, clear as day. He had been on the bridge of the Trident when she recorded the message, and he still remembered the lines.
“…get to a place that is surrounded by bodies of water. Stock up on silver; if you know how, make silver bullets, or any silver-bladed weapons. The daylight is no longer your friend, but don’t be discouraged. As long as you’re breathing, as long as you are free, there is hope. We will adapt and keep going, because that’s what we do. This is Lara, and I’m still fighting alongside you.”
There was a brief pause before the message repeated itself.
Keo popped the bud out of his ear. Why had Butch and Davis gone through the trouble of recording the message, looping it, then uploading it to an iPod? He would have liked to ask Butch, but that wasn’t going to happen. Davis would have had the answer, in all likelihood, but that ship had sailed, too.
He made a mental note to tell Lara when he saw her again. He wasn’t sure if she was going to get a kick out of it or find it creepy. How many of Mercer’s men were carrying around her message on iPods out there?
Definitely creepy.
He flicked off the on switch and the little green light faded into nothingness, leaving him sitting in the dark all by himself again.
* * *
HE DIDN’T GET a whole lot of sleep, not helped by the fact he kept waking up every other hour to throbbing in his legs. Both of them. He didn’t know how that was possible and gave up try
ing to dismiss it as being just figments of imagination after the third time.
He got a total of two hours of shut-eye, spending the rest of the night listening to them moving on the other side of the door. They were going through the farmhouse behind him, racing up and down both stories. There was a barn on the other side of the property, and he heard them raiding it, too.
Did they know he was around? Smell him? Sense him somehow? Or maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe they were tracking Mercer’s men. That was more likely. Mercer’s goons might have managed to stay under the radar all this time, setting up their little FOBs around the state before they finally struck, but once the genie was out of the bag…
What were the chances the ghouls were going to get to whoever—and however many—were hiding just outside of Lochlyn at the moment?
He drifted in and out of sleep while waiting for the night to give way to morning, most of it spent staring at the door and listening for the first signs that he had been discovered. He was so used to hearing them out there, skittering across the open, that he found the sound of their movements almost…comforting?
It’s official: I’ve lost my fucking mind.
Around three in the morning, their numbers started to thin out and it became more difficult to pick them up. By four, they were almost completely gone except for the occasional strays that walked or ran or stopped just a little too close to the cellar entrance. He could see their shadowy figures flitting across the small openings, and a few of them paused just a bit too long for his liking.
He kept waiting to hear gunshots, which would be a sign that the creatures had found Mercer’s men. But there weren’t any. Not at midnight, or at three, or four, or when the first signs of morning finally began filtering through the cellar and the ground under him started warming up. Not a lot, just enough to be noticeable after sitting on the cold, damp earth all night.
The lack of shooting or hints of confrontation between Mercer’s men and the ghouls last night was a good sign, because it just meant more men for him to kill.