A season was a season, was a season…
He walked underneath large green billboard signs with names and numbers that weren’t familiar and that he didn’t care to commit to memory. He wouldn’t be in Mist City long enough to bother. There were plenty of vehicles on the highway, but the parallel feeder roads along both sides were mostly clear. Moving waves of mist revealed sedans and trucks and vans and semis, populating the world around him as he approached them one by one like some kind of impromptu magic act.
It was eerie how thick the mist was, but calming at the same time.
The highway was eight lanes deep, not counting the center lanes and shoulders, divided by a giant three-foot-high concrete wall. There were four lanes on the northbound side that Smith was currently on and four more on the southbound. Like most cities, the direction out of town was more congested than the one in as civilians sought escape during that miserable night where everything changed.
No one had bothered to clear out Mist City’s lanes in the years since The Purge. That in itself wasn’t too unusual. Smith had gone through plenty of places, even smaller towns, where things were still seemingly frozen in time, a daily reminder of when the universe stopped making sense and people realized monsters were real after all. Usually, though, there had been some activity, an attempt to drive through the sea of aluminum and metal. Mist City had been “spared” that.
He passed clusters of buildings in strip malls alongside the highway and spent the murky morning peering into the army of parked vehicles. Smith had enough supplies in the tactical backpack he’d been carrying with him since Texas to last for another week or so, but it was never a bad idea to add to it. Like bullets, there was no such thing as “too much” food and necessities. People who thought that way were like the three Bozos that had tried to take what Smith had last night.
Unfortunately, the cars he wasted time searching didn’t produce anything worth taking. He found plenty of very old and faded blood on upholsteries as well as useless clothing, jewelry, and other nonessentials. The scene around him wasn’t anything new—as if the drivers and their passengers had simply stopped their vehicles, gotten out, and disappeared into the mist. These days, a carpet of abandoned metal didn’t even register as odd. It would have been odd not to see them.
There were bones to be found, but not as many as he had been expecting. Usually big cities contained obvious signs of ghoul presence, and where you found nightcrawlers, there were deformed skeletal remains. He stumbled across only a half dozen or so in the two hours since he’d entered the city limits, which was a very low number. Were the creatures avoiding Mist City? If so, there could only be one reason for that: The lack of humans to feed on. Ghouls could subsist on animals, but that prey was more difficult to catch these days, as they usually had the good sense to shelter at night. Humans, on the other hand, weren’t always known for their judgement.
The highway seemed to just keep going, and Smith kept walking aimlessly on it until he spotted the familiar sight to his right alongside the feeder road. It was a three-floorer. That was a rare find. Usually it was two floors, tops. The box-like design, different from everything else around it, made the structure obvious even with all the mist partially hiding it from him. Someone in a pickup had bulldozed the sign up front, but there was no mistaking the modern and contemporary architecture and fluorescent chartreuse-on-white color scheme.
It was a Private Store-It, still in front of Smith. Unfortunately, he’d walked past the ramp that would take him down to the feeder road about ten minutes back. The only other way off the highway was to hop the guardrail and slide down the slanted side, but he’d need to reach one of the underpasses for that.
Smith backtracked instead, then went down the entry ramp and onto the street below. There weren’t nearly as many cars down here—the occasional truck or sedan—and it was impossible to miss the Private Store-It, nestled between Crankshaft—some kind of autobody shop—and a McDonald’s. He’d mentally noted a Walmart behind him earlier, but Smith had learned to avoid large retail stores like that years ago.
The city itself remained quiet around him, with only Smith’s footsteps to keep him company. He couldn’t pick up any sounds of animals or humans—or nonhumans—in the area, even after he stopped moving and listened for a good five minutes. That might have made Smith uneasy a few years ago, but it was a familiar companion these days.
He enjoyed the silence. He enjoyed the emptiness. Other humans would have just ruined the ambiance.
He walked past an Archers Sports and Outdoor, its parking lot sprinkled with haphazardly parked vehicles. Smith made another mental note of the store’s location. The Archers was only about one-tenth the size of the Walmart, and while that still left a lot of dark corners and spots for ghouls to lie in wait for some sucker, the risks were usually worth it. Besides, his Merrell boots were starting to get a little loose around the ankles. It was probably time for replacements.
He reached the Private Store-It after a nice, uneventful stroll. (That was always the best kind of stroll.) The pickup that had knocked down the sign up front was empty, its doors thrown wide open. The front windshield was cracked, and the maroon paint job had begun to peel after being left out in the sun for too long. It was an old sucker—at least twenty years—and probably wouldn’t have kept running even if The Purge hadn’t retired it early.
Smith went around the crashed car and up the driveway to the storage building. There was always something so gaudy and yet at the same time so charming about the chartreuse color that made up the Private Store-It buildings. Smith used to think it was a stupid idea, but he’d learned otherwise. The vibrant, almost neon-glowing shade wasn’t by accident, but a brilliant way to make the structure stand out from the more generally colored retailers around it. The sharp edges of its construction also lent a certain pizazz.
“You don’t get to be their size by accident, kid,” his mentor once said.
He was right. At one point, the company had convinced enough people to store all the unused shit they couldn’t bring themselves to throw away that they became worth nearly thirty-six billion dollars. Once upon a time, its stock was trading at over $200 dollars per share. Not that Smith had any frame of references for those types of things, but even he knew that thirty-six billion of something was a hell of a lot.
There was a reason he always took time out to explore Private Store-Its whenever he ran across them. There was always something decent to find, including a lot of very useful gear that people had put away because they no longer fit in with all the smart watches and smart phones and all the other smart technologies of a world before The Purge. These days, all those antiques were potential goldmines.
Smith passed the office at the front and its black-and-brown-smeared windows to check out the entrance gate. It was made of thick wrought metal and was, surprisingly, still locked in place, resting on rollers that were rusted over but intact. From experience, Smith knew that the only way to open them was with good ol’-fashioned muscle, but there was always a better option. The side door next to the long gate was not only also closed but locked. That was also surprising. Smith had gone through a half dozen Private Store-Its in his lifetime, and he’d never stumbled across one that was still secured like this one.
Not that “secured” was the right word, when Smith could just climb up the gate and hop onto the other side, which was what he did. The other way in was through the front office, but that was going to require opening a lot of doors, including the heavy and more reinforced metal ones near the back to gain access to the storage areas. The best and easiest way in was always through the path designed for customers. The idea was that if you were allowed through the heavy metal gate in the first place, then you were supposed to be here.
This particular Store-It had an access lobby with two elevators to reach the upper floors. Most places only had one floor with lines of garages spread out across a wide swath of land. This one had those, too, for bigger items like ve
hicles or whole living rooms. The second and third floors would be mostly used for smaller valuables that could be carried up. Smith had no use for cars even if he could get his hands on gasoline, but those goodies inside…
The small access lobby had an automatic sliding door activated by motion sensors that had, of course, stopped working a long time ago. The glass doors themselves were closed and, when Smith tested them, appeared to still be sealed tight. Another surprise. The room itself looked to be in good condition, so Mist City had never flooded or been the victim of a natural disaster.
The overly secured nature of the place had piqued Smith’s alarms early on, and it stayed that way as he circled the rest of the property. He was used to seeing thrown-open garage doors, and he saw those here. Looters had beaten him to the punch, but most of the storage boxes remained stuffed with their original renters’ contents. No one needed old clothes or old furniture or old vehicles or old arcade machines anymore.
Smith didn’t go into any of the garages. He was convinced his time was better spent inside the building. There would be smaller containers in there, on the first floor and above, that had much more potential to hold valuables. He could spend all day here. More than that, if necessary. It wasn’t like he was pressed for time or anything.
He had all the time in the world.
He returned to the access lobby, checking the black Casio G-Shock on his wrist along the way. Almost noon. He’d spent more time walking on the highway and then checking out the place than he’d thought. He tested the doors again, somehow expecting them to have come unlocked since the last time.
They hadn’t, which was entirely sane.
Smith stood back and thought about a way in. He could shoot the locks or even shatter the glass, but that would take away the security, and he wasn’t interested in keeping one eye on the lobby while he was upstairs poking around.
No, there had to be another way in without damaging the integrity of the doors.
Smith thought about all the things he’d seen in the ground-floor garages. It took a couple of minutes of scanning through his memory bank before he remembered the crowbar in a container filled with power tools. He could definitely use that to pry the doors open, but that would definitely damage the locks.
So how was he going to get in without breaking anything? Maybe he really should just—
Smith looked up, his right hand stabbing down toward his Glock on pure instinct.
What…
It was a big fluffy brown teddy bear, and it had jumped off the rooftop and was plummeting right down at him, as if it had been aimed at him.
Smith quickly backpedaled, and that quick reaction might have been the only thing that saved his life. The teddy bear’s furry foot glanced off his temple as it passed him before smashing into the concrete pavement in front of him with a crunchy thunk!
…the hell?
Smith took another step back.
No, he wasn’t stepping back; he was staggering backward. Both his legs weren’t responding to his commands. He managed to grab a pole indicating a Wheelchair-Only parking spot next to the ramp up to the front doors to steady himself. He reached up with one hand and swiped at his forehead.
When he brought the hand back down and looked at it, Smith saw blood on his palm.
Friggin’ teddy bear, Smith thought, staring at the toy. It looked horribly misshapen, and its legs were much bigger than its arms. There seemed to be bulky objects with extremely sharp edges poking out from inside its belly as it lay still, grinning stupidly at him.
Smith stumbled forward until he was leaning against the brick wall. He slowly slid down the jagged brick and mortar until he was sitting on the slightly damp concrete sidewalk, blood dripping down his forehead.
That had hurt. That had really hurt.
A friggin’ teddy bear, Smith thought again, blinking at the furry creature and its grotesquely-misaligned butt.
A child’s toy, of all things. His mentor would have laughed his ass off if he knew about this, and Smith wouldn’t blame him one bit.
Done in by a friggin’ teddy bear.
Jesus H. Christ.
Three
“Is he dead?”
“Nah, he’s alive.”
“How can you tell?”
“See the way his shirt is moving? That means he’s still breathing.”
“Oh. You’re so smart, Matt.”
“Thanks.”
Smith opened his eyes and stared at two small faces peering back at him. They were just kids. A boy and a girl. The boy was crouched in front of Smith, while the girl stood next to him, small hands on her hips while her head was cocked curiously to one side.
“Go get Ma. He’s awake,” the boy, Matt, said.
“I don’t know where she is,” the girl said.
“She’s cleaning up his blood outside.”
The girl pouted. She had short blonde hair that looked as if someone had taken a pair of scissors and blindly cut around her oval-shaped head instead of adhering to any actual styles.
“What if she makes me help her?” the girl asked.
Her face was scarred along the cheeks and chin. No, not scars, Smith realized when he stared a little bit longer. They were lesions and tissue damage. Smith remembered classmates back in high school who had bad skin. The girl looked like that, except a hundred times worse.
“Then help her,” the boy said.
His face was also as bad as the girl’s and was ravaged with acne scars, including two very fresh and big red bumps on the bridge of his nose. He had massive blue eyes that seemed to glow in the semidarkness of the room.
The room?
Smith was hogtied and sitting in one of the storage units inside the Private Store-It. His legs were in front of him, bound together with rope, and his arms were behind him. From the stickiness and texture of his bindings back there, he guessed duct tape around his wrists. Someone had set one of those small solar-powered LED lamps on the floor next to the crouching boy. It didn’t look like it had a full charge at the moment.
Smith was woozy and had trouble focusing on the two small figures, but eventually his vision improved enough that he could see past them and at the wide rectangular opening in the background. There was another storage unit directly across the hallway from them, its steel curtain door rolled halfway up. There was another source of light out there, probably another lamp. From the size of the other room, Smith guessed he was in a mirroring 10x10 space along with his captors.
His captors.
Friggin’ teddy bear.
Images of the furry toy dropping from the edge of the building and nearly lopping his head off flashed across his mind’s eye. If he hadn’t moved when he did, he’d probably be dead right now instead of just hurt. His skull was pounding, and he was pretty sure the boy and girl weren’t swaying back and forth. They were “moving” way too in sync for that.
“But I don’t wanna,” the girl was saying. “I hate cleaning up blood.”
“It’s not that bad,” Matt said. “He only bled a little.”
The boy reached over and flicked at Smith’s forehead. Smith tried to jerk his head away, but his instincts were slow to respond and he reacted too late. The boy got him across the temple, and a jolt of pain sliced through him.
Matt chuckled triumphantly.
You little shit, Smith thought but couldn’t make his mouth say. He had trouble feeling his tongue and had to work just to generate some saliva. Why was he so parched, as if he hadn’t drank anything in weeks?
Matt was standing up and turning to the girl. Shockingly, they were about the same size—barely five feet tall and visibly thin underneath their oversized clothes. “Go help Ma,” the boy said.
The girl frowned but obeyed. She stopped at the door and looked back. “Don’t do anything to him until we come back.”
“Just go,” Matt said, sounding annoyed.
“Promise?”
“Okay, okay. I ain’t gonna do anything unless Ma say
s anyway.”
“Good!”
The girl beamed before racing off, leaving Smith with the boy.
“Don’t do anything to him until we come back?” Smith thought. What the hell did she mean by that?
Smith focused on the boy standing with his back to him instead. Smith had a hard time trying to settle on an age, but he guessed Matt was probably twelve or thirteen. Of course, he could have been entirely off base, because his mind still wasn’t where it should be.
Matt turned back around to stare at him. “How’s your head?”
My head?
Then: Right. My head.
That friggin’ teddy bear…
He would have felt his temple if he could. There was some pain along the skin, but it had mostly numbed over. There was some kind of bandage over the wound because he could feel the fabric rubbing against the cut. The only real evidence that he’d almost gotten bludgeoned by a falling stuffed child’s toy was a general buzzing sensation that originated from around his forehead to the rest of his body. That, and his continued inability to think clearly and focus.
And, oh, his skull was still pounding…
Smith knew now that it wasn’t just a teddy bear that had almost killed him. These kids—or their ma—had filled the damned thing with either bricks or other hard lumps of metal. That was the reason for the toy’s misshapen looks.
Almost done in by a teddy bear.
Jesus.
Smith gazed back at Matt, trying his best to read his captor’s face. Besides the two big red bumps on his nose and the heavy evidence of acne scarring, Matt was a bit too small and short for his age. Smith was pretty sure now that Matt was older than thirteen. He might have even been fourteen or fifteen but had clearly suffered from malnutrition.
After The Purge, AKA John Smith Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 2