Two ghostly figures came around the vehicle, parting mists in their path.
Hello, boys!
One of the newcomers was struggling to unjam an AR rifle while his partner was squeezing rounds down the highway as he moved. Like the first one Smith had killed, these two were also wearing black assault vests, except theirs didn’t have any telltale signs of what used to be emblazoned on the front.
“I’m jammed, I’m jammed!” one of them was shouting.
“Then fucking unjam it!” the other one said just before he fired off two more shots—pop-pop!—and ducked down behind the hood of the van.
Ping-ping! as two rounds returned fire, drilling into the other side of the vehicle.
“I’m trying—” the one with the troubled rifle said when he looked up.
Smith strode toward them and shot the one with the working rifle through the back first. Then, as the man staggered into the front part of the van while trying to turn around, Smith put two more shots into his gut.
The other ambusher gave up on his weapon and dropped it, then went for his holstered sidearm. He’d gotten his fingers around the butt of the pistol when Smith shot him once in the face.
The man fell but somehow continued to move on the pavement. Smith walked past him, but not before putting two more bullets into the wounded man’s spasming backside.
Ping-ping-ping! as bullets punched into the other side of the van. Two buried themselves in the vehicle, but the third smashed through a window and zipped a few inches from Smith’s head.
Jesus Christ! Almost got me again!
He ducked behind cover, sucking in an exasperated breath. The more he waded into this, the more trouble he was begging for. Chances were pretty good now that he was just as liable to get shot by friendly fire as by the enemy.
So how was he going to change that? There was only one way he could think of…
“Margo!” Smith shouted. “Clark!”
He waited for a response, but there was just silence.
He tried again: “Black van! Don’t shoot the black van! That’s me!”
Then, from somewhere to the left of him—and close enough to his current position that Smith was taken aback—a voice said, “Who the fuck was that?”
No one answered. At least not with words.
Instead, there was the sudden explosion of gunfire as people began shooting at the black van he was crouched next to from the other side of the highway!
Smith lunged to the pavement, slamming chest first against the hard concrete, as bullets pounded the car next to him. Rounds sliced through metal with ear-piercing ping-ping-pings! and it was all Smith could do to clench his teeth and curse himself for making such a stupid, stupid mistake.
Eighteen
The torrent of bullets went on for what seemed like hours but was probably just a few minutes. No, not even that. Thirty seconds, tops. The only reason they stopped at all was because the shooters ran out of bullets and had to reload. He could hear the clacky noises of magazines being swapped in the sudden silence.
Smith used the temporary respite to crawl away from the bullet-riddled van, scattering empty brass casings that the men he’d shot had left behind on the ground. All four tires of the targeted vehicle had been punctured, and there wasn’t a single inch of glass still clinging to its frame. They were all on the ground that Smith was moving across, which meant he had to be careful not to cut himself on the shards. He still managed to get nicked once or twice anyway, but he accepted that as punishment for being a dumbass and shouting out his location to the ambushers.
He got back up on his feet only when he was two cars away and slid behind the front passenger-side door of a Prius that was permanently wedged between a BMW and a pickup truck. His breathing was slightly accelerated, and it took Smith a few seconds—five, ten—to calm it down to an acceptable rate.
“Horace!” someone shouted from nearby. Male. Hoarse. Smith couldn’t be sure if it was the same one that had started the shooting a few minutes ago.
When no one answered to the name, the same voice shouted out:
“Mike! Dunbar!”
Again, no response.
Horace, Mike, and Dunbar. Smith guessed those were the names of the three he’d taken out. One of them lay a few feet from Smith now, his hands still frozen around his blood-caked throat. Smith wondered if that was Horace, Mike, or Dunbar. Not that it mattered. Dead was dead.
Whoever had shouted out the names had gone silent, and for nearly a full minute afterward, no one said a word or fired a shot. There were just the occasional sounds of shoes squeaking against the highway pavement from somewhere in the mist. Smith couldn’t quite place the exact location where all the activity was coming from, but if he had to guess, it was somewhere behind him, close to the center concrete divider.
Smith swapped guns, putting the 9mm SIG behind his back and slipping the .45 into the holster. Truthfully, he should have done it earlier instead of wasting the silver-tipped rounds on Freddy’s goons.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda.
His ears perked up when someone shouted, “Freddy!”
It wasn’t the same voice that had called out the names earlier, which made Smith wonder if that had been Freddy himself. This second speaker didn’t sound any closer than the previous one, which was the only reason Smith didn’t immediately search around him for someone to shoot.
Instead, he got up and abandoned his cover to move behind a nearby SUV. He made sure his Merrells didn’t squeak against the pavement by taking it slow. The last thing he wanted was to be just as obvious as whoever was talking right now. Did they think he was dead? If not, they sure as hell were being reckless about giving their positions away.
Smith wasn’t the only one to think that, apparently, because someone else snapped, “Lower your goddamn voice.”
It was the same gruff voice from earlier.
Freddy, is that you?
Smith tried to peek through all the grayness that covered up the entire city, but he might as well be trying to see through lead. Whenever a piece of the highway revealed itself, it was almost instantly blanketed right back up by another flurry of moving mist.
“We gotta go,” the second speaker was saying. Smith had gotten a little closer to the voices and could hear the conversation with more clarity. “It’s all gone pear-shaped, man. We gotta go. We gotta go now.”
“She’s still out there,” the first one said. Smith put two and two together and accepted that this was, indeed, Freddy. “I’m not leaving without her.”
“She?”
Was Freddy talking about Margo or Donna? And did not leaving without her mean he wasn’t going anywhere until the she in question was dead or captured?
Smith left the SUV and picked his way toward a Mercedes, careful not to kick at empty brass casings that littered the ground like pebbles, making his trekking harder than it had to be.
It was so far, so good, because whoever was talking didn’t know he was getting closer to them. Unless, of course, they did know and were playing games to lure him in.
Nah.
Then: Hopefully nah.
“She’s dead,” the second voice was saying. “Mack said he popped her.”
“Popped her?”
“Gotta make sure,” the guy, who Smith had determined was Freddy, responded.
Smith reached the Mercedes and slid against it. He peered over its hood toward where the center divider was and was just able to make out the big slab of concrete. The fact that the chunk of cement was pretty much the same color as the mist made that a little tricky.
“Mack was sure,” the second voice was saying, still somewhere in front of Smith. Somewhere, but where exactly?
“Gotta make sure,” Freddy repeated, as if he hadn’t heard anything the other man had said.
“Goddammit. Mack said he’s sure.” Then, “Mack, tell him.”
A third voice spoke up. “I got her, Freddy. Swear to God. Got her in my sights and saw her go down.�
��
“What about Clark?” Freddy asked.
“Dunbar said he got him,” the second man said.
“Dunbar’s not answering.”
“Before he went silent. He told me he got Clark.”
The one named Mack said, “Come on, let’s get outta here. All this mist is freaking me out, man. I can’t see shit.”
“She could still be alive,” Freddy said.
“Then why hasn’t she fired a shot?” the second voice said. “I’m telling you, she’s dead. We got what we came for, didn’t we? We already lost too many men. You want to lose more? We got what we came for, Freddy. So let’s go.”
Smith was about to leave the Mercedes and continue toward the divider when Freddy said, “Let’s go.”
“Thank fucking God,” the second one, whose name remained a mystery, muttered under his breath—and Smith had still heard him!
He was close! Smith thought about rushing forward and taking all three of them out, but then it occurred to him: He’d only heard three voices, but what if there were more that hadn’t spoken up?
What was that Margo and Clark had said about Freddy’s gang? That there were ten or more of them?
Smith knew for a fact that two were dead, back in the Archers. And he had taken three out earlier. That left how many?
Five…or more.
It was the or more part that kept Smith from acting. He could be an idiot at times, but he wasn’t an idiot all the time.
Smith remained where he was and listened to Freddy, Mack, and the third guy (and however many else were out there with them) moving around. The sounds of their shoes scraping against the highway as they retreated was hard to miss. They were so close to him.
Slowly, very slowly, Smith lost track of the footsteps.
Then he couldn’t hear anything, except his own breath against the slightly chilled morning air.
Just to be safe, Smith remained where he was, crouched next to the luxury sedan, ears and eyes open. Or mostly just his ears since there wasn’t much his eyes could pick up but the mud-caked exteriors of dead cars around his immediate vicinity.
He thought about the conversation he’d overheard, including what the unknown second voice had said:
“We got what we came for, didn’t we?”
What exactly had they come for? That was the question.
Whatever it was, they’d gotten it. They’d achieved their goal. Was that the entire reason they had stalked Margo and the other two into Mist City to begin with? Was all of this just for a singular purpose? Which was what?
Smith didn’t get up for another ten minutes and only did so when he couldn’t hear anything but his own continued breathing. He finally stood up and let his legs stretch for a bit before backtracking down the highway.
He picked his way around vehicles, cursing the swirling fog around him. His vision was severely limited, and Smith bumped into two cars along the way, forcing him to move even slower. He told himself that with Freddy and his gang retreating, he had plenty of time to find Margo, Clark, and Donna.
Did he expect to locate all three of them, though? He wasn’t sure about that.
The fact that Margo hadn’t responded to his calls earlier was a bad sign. Freddy and his boys had heard him just fine, though, and unleashed on the van as a result.
But he hadn’t heard a peep from Margo or Clark during or after the onslaught. That was a bad sign. That was a really bad sign.
And the third guy, Mack, had been pretty sure he’d hit Margo, either before or during the firefight. The second guy had claimed someone else had taken down Clark. But no one had mentioned Donna.
Smith stopped when he almost stepped into a fresh puddle of blood on the ground. It was on the pavement and smeared against the front passenger-side door of a bullet-riddled Ford sedan. The wounded person had dragged themselves down the highway, leaving a trail so obvious even the dumbest person alive could track it.
He followed the dark red stains, making sure to walk alongside them to spare his Merrells a future cleanup. He didn’t know what he’d find on the other end, but Smith couldn’t bring himself to even hope for the best.
There was too much blood.
There was just too much damn blood…
Nineteen
“Smith.” Then, softer, “John…”
“You look like shit.”
“Can’t be. I feel worse than shit right about now.”
Yeah, that sounds about right, Smith thought as he crouched next to Margo.
She smiled at him. Or tried to, but the mask of pain was too much to overcome, and he could see her giving up just as quickly as she had attempted it. Sweat covered her pale face, and those soft brown eyes had faded noticeably since the last time he stared into them.
Margo lowered the handgun she’d been pointing at him as he stepped out of the mist and let it clank to the pavement. He suspected that just holding the weapon up had taken everything she had left. Did she even have the strength to pull the trigger if she had to? He guessed he’d never know.
Smith gave her wound a long, hard look. No. Wounds. She’d been shot in the right temple and in the left side of her stomach. But it was the head wound that looked the worst. Looked, anyway, because if it were worse, she would be dead right now. Blood trickled down the side of her face and collected under her chin before dripping down to the floor. It was nothing compared to all the wetness squirting out around the fingers of her left hand, pressed tightly against her side.
“I need to fix you up,” Smith said.
“You know how?” Margo asked.
“They taught us basic first aid at Black Tide.”
“My pack…”
He helped her lean forward, away from the trunk of the pickup she had been using as a crutch, and unslung her backpack. Smith unzipped it and took out what he needed.
“I need to remove your hand,” he said.
“My head…”
“That’s not going to kill you. But the hole in your side will.”
“You sure?” She blinked at him. “It feels like I’m bleeding out up there.”
“It just feels that way.” He focused on her stomach. “Ready?”
“No,” Margo said.
He forcefully removed her hand, then pulled her shirt out from her waistline and undid half of the lower buttons, enough to give him access to the wound. She was wearing a bra, so he didn’t have to worry about embarrassment on top of everything else they had to deal with.
Margo sagged against the car and closed her eyes as he worked. He cleaned, medicated, then bandaged up the bullet hole. The round had gone through her, which was the reason she had bled out so much. She didn’t know that, though, and was only stanching the front with her hand. Smith treated both sides, recalling everything they had taught him during basic. It was a good thing he had gotten over his queasiness around blood a long time ago.
He worked methodically and silently, not even sure why he was doing it. She had lost too much blood. That was a cold, hard fact staring back at him. Her face was mostly drained of color, her eyes all but lifeless. She barely moved as he stopped the bleeding with a clotting sponge and tied it in place with tape. Most people would have been grimacing or groaning in pain, but Margo hardly reacted.
She even dozed off a couple of times, always waking right back up with a start. Her eyes would snap left and right in alarm, while her hand searched for and found the handgun resting on the pavement next to her. Then, when she saw him, she calmed down again.
When he was done with her side, Smith cleaned his hands with water and a wipe, then fixed the graze along her temple. He could see bone underneath the opening, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as her side. The only danger up there was a possible infection.
Smith didn’t waste time putting the first-aid kit away. He left it on the ground next to them and made her drink some water.
“Clark?” Margo asked.
Smith shook his head. “You’re the only one I’ve found so far
.”
“I saw him go down…”
“It was an ambush?”
She nodded. Barely. “They were waiting for us.”
“Freddy.”
Another just-barely nodding motion. “I guess he outthought us. Knew we’d go the opposite direction of where he went last night.” Her cracked and blood-smeared lips made something that might have been a smirk. “That fucker was always too clever for his own good.”
“I heard them talking. They said they’d gotten what they came for. What was that?”
Margo’s eyes widened, and she tried to get up.
Smith grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back in place. “Don’t be stupid. Stay still.”
“Donna,” Margo said. “They took Donna…”
“Donna? What do they want with her?”
“Not them. Him.”
“Freddy?”
Another nod as Margo stared up the highway, as if she could see Freddy and the others out there among the gray haze.
“Margo,” Smith said. “What does Freddy want with Donna?”
“She’s his,” Margo said.
“His? How is she his?”
“She’s his daughter.”
The revelation came as a shock to Smith. He’d never considered that possibility. And why would he? Nothing Margo or Clark, or even Donna, had said about Freddy’s pursuit of them had indicated this was anything other than a personal grudge against the two adults. It turned out that the man had been chasing his daughter this entire time. So why was she with Margo and Clark in the first place?
“You wanna tell me about it?” Smith asked.
Margo shook her head.
Smith sat down on the pavement in front of her. She finally looked back over to meet his gaze.
“What?” Margo said.
“You lost a lot of blood.”
“I know that. What’s your point?”
“My point is…”
“I know what your point is,” Margo said. She smiled. Or, again, tried to. “I can feel it, Smith.” Then, without missing a beat, “Is that really your name? John Smith?”
After The Purge, AKA John Smith Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 12