After The Purge, AKA John Smith Box Set | Books 1-3

by Sisavath, Sam

  Everyone, except him.

  What was one more stupid choice in a week full of them?

  Squinty’s eyes went from Smith’s face to his holstered sidearm, then to his hands hanging at his sides, and finally to the blood dripping from Smith’s waist. Smith was hoping that it still looked worse than it really was, because he felt fine. Or maybe that was just his mind playing tricks on him. Adrenaline had a way of convincing you that you weren’t bleeding to death, even if you were.

  Smith’s state did make Squinty slightly relax, not that the man let Donna go or came out from behind the already-injured teenager. He continued standing behind the girl, even bending his legs slightly to make sure she was completely in front of him and he was shielded. He was taller than her, so that must have taken some effort, especially since, like Smith, Squinty was also bleeding from almost the same exact spot.

  And there was Squinty’s Glock—it was in his hand and aimed squarely at Smith’s face.

  And yet, the man didn’t pull the trigger.

  Why didn’t he just pull the trigger and get it over with? Maybe he really was shocked by what Smith had done and was still trying to process every little bit of it before making a decision.

  Even he can’t believe you would make such a stupid move, buddy.

  “You still need the girl?” Smith asked.

  He didn’t look at Donna when he said it. His eyes were focused entirely on Squinty’s, well, squinting eyes, though of course he couldn’t completely ignore the girl. Or the sheer terror on her face as she stared back at him, her chest heaving against her clothes as Squinty clung to her, one forearm wrapped so tight around her throat that Smith wasn’t sure if the poor girl could even breathe. Her face was turning a shade of blue, but that could have just been from the pain. Fortunately, Squinty’s forearm wasn’t pressing down against the spot where she’d been shot and bandaged. In a world of bad news, that was the best he could find.

  “I can just shoot you right now,” Squinty said. His forefinger was in the trigger guard, and he could do exactly that.

  Except he didn’t.

  Instead, Squinty flexed the rest of his fingers around the Glock’s grip. “Bang. One bullet, and I put an end to this.”

  “Yeah, you could do that,” Smith said. “Or you could let the kid go and try your luck.”

  “And why would I do something stupid like that?”

  “Maybe because you’re not a pussy?”

  Squinty chuckled, but his eyes betrayed him. Smith saw the killer instinct in the man warring with his pride.

  Or, at least, Smith hoped that was what he was seeing.

  “Well?” Smith asked.

  “Well what?” Squinty said.

  “Are you or aren’t you a pussy?”

  Squinty grinned.

  “That’s not an answer,” Smith said.

  “You really wanna die, don’t you?” Squinty asked.

  “No, I don’t. In fact, I could have left here and gone my own merry way and never looked back.”

  “But you didn’t…”

  “…but I didn’t.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I wanted to find out how good you really were.”

  “Good?” Squinty asked. “What does that mean?”

  “With that gun.”

  “I’m good enough.”

  “Show me.”

  Squinty chuckled again.

  And again, Smith didn’t believe him.

  “Prove it,” Smith said.

  “Fuck off,” Squinty said. “I don’t have to prove shit to you.”

  Smith looked down at Freddy’s body, crumpled up on the wet pavement. As far as Smith knew, the redhead had died where he fell. The other guy, the blond, was still near the makeshift firepit, his rat-on-a-stick lying next to his prone body.

  “That’s Freddy?” Smith asked.

  “What?” Squinty said.

  Smith nodded at the redhead. “Is that Freddy? I didn’t know what he looked like.”

  “Yeah, that’s Freddy.”

  “And I guess that’s Mack,” Smith said, nodding at the other guy.

  Squinty narrowed his eyes some more. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m the guy who killed your friends back on the highway earlier. Dunbar and two other meatheads. I don’t remember their names.”

  “That was you?”

  “Yeah. That was me.”

  Smith allowed his gaze to wander slightly over to Donna. The girl had big eyes, and she hadn’t looked away from him ever since he stepped back underneath the highway. Maybe, like Squinty, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing because it really, really, really was a dumb thing to do.

  Then Smith recognized something else in her eyes. It was fear, but also something else—

  Determination.

  Grim determination.

  Shit. She’s going to do something.

  She’s going to do something!

  “This isn’t the Old West, and we’re not cowboys,” Squinty was saying. “And you shouldn’t have come back—”

  Donna bit down on Squinty’s forearm. The man howled in pain and instinctively lessened his grip around Donna’s throat. She jerked her entire body downward, slipping free of Squinty’s grasp even as he groped for her with his hand—

  Smith drew, and Squinty fired at almost exactly the same time.

  Squinty’s round drilled through Smith’s left shoulder, and he was twisting slightly to that side when he fired from the hip. Instead of Squinty’s forehead, Smith’s bullet struck the man’s left ear, taking a chunk of flesh with it. The round continued and pekked! into the concrete wall farther back of the underpass.

  Squinty jerked his head back and shot again, but Smith had sidestepped in the right direction, and something hot zipped! harmlessly past Smith’s body and vanished into the cascading rain outside. If he’d gone left instead of right, Squinty’s bullet would have hit Smith square in the chest.

  Smith squeezed off two more shots in quick succession, hitting Squinty both times in the stomach. The man doubled over, blood dripping from his destroyed ear and midsection. Somehow, he managed to remain on his feet.

  At least just long enough to look up a split second before Smith shot him in the face.

  Twenty-Four

  “Sorry about your dad.”

  “It’s okay. He wasn’t a very nice guy anyway.”

  Smith smiled. “Anyways…”

  “Anyways,” Donna said.

  They sat in the two front seats of an old SUV that smelled faintly of dead animals. It wasn’t enough to send them outside into the rain, though. The thunderstorm raged against the windows around them even as it wracked Mist City from end to end. It hadn’t slowed down since it began, and looking out at the harsh downpour, Smith wondered if it was going to take longer than a day for it to ease up. Fortunately, they had enough supplies that if it did take more than twenty-four hours, they would be fine.

  Smith’s shoulder itched, and the hole in his side had numbed over thanks to the meds he’d taken. There was a little bit of pain, but he’d take a little bit any day of the week. Donna had been surprisingly adept at bandaging him up despite her own wound, though he’d had to talk her through a couple of steps. Still, the girl didn’t seem especially perturbed that Smith had just shot her dad to death in front of her, and his body still lay on the ground behind her as she helped Smith to not bleed out.

  But, like she said, Freddy hadn’t been a very nice guy. Smith guessed she’d know more than him, having seen the man kill her mother—his own wife—and all. Smith had been right, though; the redhead was Freddy. Mack was the one with the rat on the stick, and Squinty’s real name was Harrison.

  Smith didn’t ask Donna any details about any of the three dead men. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to lose sleep over killing them, and it was probably best for the teenager that she wasn’t forced to dwell on it.

  What’s done was done, and dead was
dead.

  They sat in the SUV and watched the rain cascade down the windshield, washing away every little inch of dirt and grime still clinging to the vehicle when they found it parked a few meters from the highway underpass. The car was turned in the opposite direction, so they didn’t have to keep seeing the bodies behind them. Of course, all Smith had to do was glance at the side mirror to ensure they were still back there.

  The last five times he’d looked, they were.

  Donna hadn’t asked him anything about Margo or Clark, and Smith suspected that the teenager already knew. Either she’d seen them get shot or had heard the conversation between Freddy and the others about what had happened to them. Possibly, she had guessed all of it just by Smith’s lone presence.

  However she knew, the kid didn’t bring the topic up, and Smith left it alone, too. Instead, he fell asleep to the rhythmic pek-pek-pek of rain against the roof of the SUV. That, and the medicine he’d taken made it easy to drift off.

  When he opened his eyes again, it was dark and there was a slight drizzle outside.

  Smith immediately looked over at the driver-side door to check the lock. He couldn’t remember if he’d locked it before drifting off and was relieved when he saw that it was. Had he done that?

  “I locked all the doors,” Donna said from the front passenger seat next to him.

  He glanced over. She was looking at a map that she’d found in the glove compartment earlier. She had it spread out in her lap and seemed wide awake despite the early morning hours. To look at her, he wouldn’t even know she was wounded, or that she’d just lost her dad in a violent shootout.

  Tough kid, Smith thought.

  He said, “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for someplace to go.”

  “Why?”

  “I have to go somewhere, don’t I?”

  “I guess.”

  She gave him an amused smile that reminded him just a little bit of Margo. “You don’t know where you’re going after this?”

  Smith shook his head. “Haven’t thought about it.”

  “Where were you headed when you bumped into us?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “Nowhere?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “Then you can come with me, if you don’t have anywhere to go.”

  “You don’t even know where you’re going.”

  “That’s why it’ll be fun.”

  Smith chuckled. “I’m not looking for fun.”

  “What are you looking for, then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you don’t know what you’re looking for, then how do you know it’s not fun?”

  Smith stared at her in silence for a moment.

  Then he said, “Why would you want me to come along with you anyway?”

  “Duh,” Donna said. “Maybe because I’m fourteen and female, and I’ll be alone? I’m all for girl power and all that jazz, but it’s dangerous out there, dude.”

  He smiled. “Yeah, it is.”

  “So come on along. You don’t know where you’re going anyway. This way, you don’t have to think too hard about it.”

  “You have a point.”

  “Yup. Thinking’s hard.”

  “Thinking’s very hard.”

  Smith sat back in his seat. He looked out the wet windshield, watching Mist City start to fill up again in the aftermath of the torrential downpour. Just about anything could come out of all that universe of swirling gray clouds…

  “You’re right; it is dangerous out there,” Smith said. He wasn’t sure if that was meant for Donna or himself.

  “Yup,” Donna said quietly. Then, looking over at him, “What’s your real name, anyway?”

  “Does it matter?”

  She seemed to think about it for a second or two before shaking her head. “I guess it doesn’t. What’s a name, anyway?”

  “A name’s a name, is a name.”

  “In that case, I think I’ll change mine to Margo.”

  Smith reached over to shake her hand. “Nice to meet you, Margo.”

  “Yeah, nice to meet you, too, John Smith.”

  “So,” Smith said, sitting back, “you find anyplace interesting on that map? Preferably someplace that isn’t covered in mist?”

  About Run or Fight

  Copyright (c) 2020 by Sam Sisavath

  THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS.

  All the man who calls himself John Smith wants to do is continue with his wandering ways. Explore the country and stay out of trouble, especially when it’s none of his business. Easier said than done.

  His life gets overly complicated when Smith runs afoul of a man who calls himself the Judge, as well as the people who are opposed to the Judge’s tyrannical rule. Two sides, both looking for an advantage over the other, and Smith has just landed smack dab in the middle of their ongoing feud.

  It’s a conflict that has simmered for years and is about to explode into all-out violence. All it will take is a match to light the powder keg.

  What’s a wandering post-apocalyptic ronin to do? For Smith, there are only two available options: Run or fight.

  One

  Don’t get involved.

  There were three of them, because they always came in threes. There had to be something about the number. Maybe a magical formula, only known to the wicked, that told them two were too few and four were too much.

  Three, then, was the perfect number, for men like them.

  It’s none of your business.

  Not that Smith knew anything about how men like them thought or what drove them to do the things they did. He wasn’t one of them. He had killed, yes, but only when he had do. And certainly he had never done to the boy and the woman what this trio was planning to do, or might have already done.

  Better yet, hide while they still haven’t spotted you.

  It didn’t take long for Smith to conclude that the gang was going to kill the boy and rape the woman. Or maybe they would rape the woman first and then kill the boy. The other option was to kill the boy while raping the woman. Either way, the boy was going to die, and the woman was going to wish she had.

  He’d seen it all before. Too many times to count. The world was full of these men. It’d always been, but the devastation wrought upon society by The Purge allowed them to let out their inner demons. Once upon a time, he’d been part of a group that tried to stop men like these.

  Those days are long over. This isn’t your job anymore. You know what will happen if you get involved.

  So don’t get involved.

  The voice was right. The voice was always right.

  All he had to do was just sit and watch but not get involved.

  So that’s what he did. He sat and watched.

  One was short and balding, and stocky in appearance. He could have just stepped out of a CPA office. Though, of course the wardrobe didn’t match the look. Sweat-stained cargo pants, boots (to give him some extra height, maybe), and there was a pump-action shotgun cradled in his arms. The exact opposite of dangerous-looking.

  The second one was tall and lanky, almost skeletal from a distance. His leanness wasn’t because of the food he’d had to eat, because anything that could make you fat didn’t last since the world went to shit. No, the scarcity of fattening foods wasn’t why the man was so thin. He was probably like that long before he grabbed the woman by the hair and pulled her up from the ground with enough force to make her scream.

  The third and last of the gang was the biggest by far, because of course there always had to be the big one. It was how the makeup of such a group was built—the small one, the medium one, and the big one to rule them all.

  This one was broad-shouldered with short blond hair, holding an AR-15-type rifle in one hand as if it were a toy and not something that could kill another human being with the simple (so, so simple) pull of a trigger. Early forties, with obvious scars on his face that looked more like war paint. Smith wondered where the man ha
d gotten those, though no doubt they lent credence to his status as alpha dog.

  The leader had his back turned to his comrades as they manhandled the woman and boy, and seemed fixated on the sun setting in the horizon. Like his friends, he carried a bulging pack on his back, but he wore his effortlessly, whereas the other two seemed to struggle with theirs. The packs, along with the extra rifles they had slung over their shoulders, made all three men look more like pack mules.

  It was a pretty part of the Midwest, not that Smith knew where exactly he was. He’d lost track of how far north he’d wandered after leaving Donna—or Margo, as she preferred to be called these days—behind with that friendly old couple a few weeks back. He imagined the girl looking for him after he snuck out of the cabin in the middle of the night, but it wouldn’t be long before she forgot about him. He wasn’t that memorable, after all.

  He had a simple destination: North.

  Once he found an ocean he couldn’t cross, he’d figure out his next step. That was the good thing about not having a home. No one to go back to, no one waiting for him, and no one to disappoint.

  After a long day’s walk, he’d found a nice place to sit and watch the sun as it cast a thick orange glow across the field of swaying grass and solidago flowers, some so yellow that they looked almost golden against the setting sun. Thus the flower’s nickname “goldenrod,” he guessed. Smith had been here for half a day, sitting underneath the large elm tree and enjoying the shade and crisp air. He’d been alone all day—just how he liked it—until now.

  Humans had a bad habit of ruining Smith’s day.

  The boy was whaling on the stubby man who looked like an accountant. The guy was in his fifties as far as Smith could tell, and stood very still while staring at the boy, as if he couldn’t understand what was happening. The kid seemed to take the lack of action on the man’s part as permission and began swinging harder and even wilder at the Accountant’s legs. It wasn’t until he landed a little too high, near the crotch area, that the man finally took a few annoyed steps back.