Now that was closer, and it wasn’t just his imagination this time.
“Hey!” Smith shouted. “Someone out there? Hey!”
He couldn’t see his guards anymore through the cracks in the walls, but he did glimpse moving figures outside.
“Anyone!” Smith shouted. “Hey, I’m still in here! Anyone out there? Anyone?”
Apparently no one could hear him. Or, if they could, they were ignoring him. He wasn’t sure which answer made him feel worse.
Both sounds about right.
The moving figures weren’t close enough that he could tell who they were or what they were doing, but they were clearly in a hurry to do something. Anything and everything, from the sounds of it, except come and check in on him.
His night eyes had adjusted so he could see where the door was, directly in front of him. Not that he could do anything to open it, because he couldn’t even move. Goddammit, whoever had tied him up had done a hell of a job. Smith reminded himself to give the guy or gal a medal when this was over.
If he survived this. Right now, sitting here while people were shooting at each other around him, that was one bit if.
Imagine dying in here. In this dingy little shack. What a way to go, huh?
Not quite. He could think of a hundred different ways to go that would have been a vast improvement.
Beggars can’t be choosers.
That was true, too. Right now, he had no choice—
A figure flashed by across the thin slits in the door.
“Hey!” Smith shouted. “Hey! Let me outta here! Hey!”
But the runner didn’t stop, and soon Smith couldn’t see him or her anymore.
“Dammit…”
Around him the shooting continued, but it wasn’t the constant roar of gunfire that he was used to in battle. These sounded more concentrated, purposeful, as if the shooters were picking their targets carefully before pulling the trigger. Which made him wonder what idiot was shooting at the shack he was in. Maybe the ones that’d struck the wall were just stray shots. Again, he wasn’t sure which answer made him feel better, though.
Neither. It’s definitely neither.
More gunshots, these sounding even closer, and seemed to be coming from just behind him.
Getting closer. That’s not good.
Nope. That’s not good whatsoever.
Smith still had no idea where his shack was in relation to the rest of the junkyard, or even in which direction he was facing. The back? The front? The sides? All he knew was that he was stuck in here while a gunfight was going on out there, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. The helplessness was maddening, and all he wanted to do was bang his head into the pole behind him until it cracked so he could slide free.
Except, of course, he didn’t do that. He could feel the girth of the structure behind him and knew it’d take more than his head—as thick and stubborn as most people keep telling him it was—to break it in half. Or if not halve it, then enough to escape.
No, he’d need help to get out of this. That was the problem. He didn’t see help coming from anywhere. The only person he even thought might care if he made it out of here alive or not was Blake, and maybe that was just his penis talking again.
There was no clear, sustained back-and-forth volleys to the gunfire he was listening to, nothing that would indicate a full-blown assault was taking place outside. More likely, there were two factions shooting at each other from cover. And every now and then, one of them kept sending bullets in Smith’s direction.
That was the real problem.
Gee, just one real problem?
Well, one of many, anyway.
Bottom online: he had to get out. He had to get free.
He tried to wiggle out of the rawhide rope again, but it was just too thick and too strong and too taut. Jesus Christ. Who was the guy that tied him to the pole, Hercules himself? There was no slack in the rope whatsoever. At least, none that he could detect. That had been the case all day, and nothing had changed now.
Fucking Hercules, the rope magician, Smith thought, smirking at the darkness.
Then, for the first time, voices.
They were coming from somewhere to his right—or was that to his left? Behind him? In front?
Like with the shooting, it was hard to tell for sure. Sound was echoing, bouncing off all the abandoned cars and all the other junk stacked outside. Strangely enough, for a junkyard, the place really didn’t smell all that badly. There was a smell, but it wasn’t the putrid odor that usually accompanied something like a landfill. Smith guessed that made some sense; Mandy and her people wouldn’t have been able to stand it if there was a vicious stench in the air 24/7.
The pop-pop-pop! of someone unleashing with a burst rifle fire.
That’s new…
That was the first time he’d heard something beyond semiautomatic gunshots. Either someone was trying to pick off more than one target, or they were getting sick and tired of trading single rounds.
Smith’s only concern, though, was that none of that burst had found its way to his current location. He tried to imagine a worse way to die, but sitting here, tied to a pole, had to be at the bottom of the list. It wouldn’t exactly be painful, but it would still royally suck—
Shadows, as someone ran along the side of the shack.
Smith tracked the figure as it rounded the building.
“Hey!” Smith shouted. “Hey! In here!”
Even as he called out, he fully expected the figure to keep going—but he was wrong. Whoever was out there this time stopped at the door, and he heard jingling as they fumbled with the chains and padlock.
Smith tried to sit up straighter, to gather himself and get ready for what came next.
The door flew open, and Blake ran inside.
He breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe it was his penis talking again, but the sight of her was the best thing he’d seen all night. Hell, it might be the best thing he’d seen in weeks.
Yeah, that’s definitely the penis talking.
The shack was small enough that Smith didn’t have to strain his eyes to see the flowing blonde hair around Blake as she ran over to him. Flowing, because she’d undone her ponytail. From the looks of it, she’d been roused out of bed and ran straight here because she was still wearing what looked like pajamas and a long-sleeve nightshirt. The hem of one of her pajama legs was stuffed into her boots as if she’d put them on too quickly. Unlike the last time he saw her, there was a sheathed knife at her hip.
“Blake,” Smith said. “What’s happening? What’s going on out there?”
“We’re under attack,” Blake said.
“By who?”
“Sit still.”
“What?”
“Sit still.”
She had left the door open behind her, and a cold breeze swept over Smith, making him shiver slightly. He was surprised it was so cold out there, but he guessed the large holes along the walls of his prison still provided some cover from the elements.
Blake ran past him, and he was momentarily caught off guard, until he realized what she was about to do just before she did it. The sound of a knife coming out of a sheath, and then Blake was cutting the rope behind him.
“Blake,” Smith said. “Who’s attacking?”
“Gaffney,” Blake said.
She was close enough that he could hear her labored breathing, as if she’d been running a marathon just to reach his shack. For all he knew, that was exactly what she had done.
“Gaffney’s attacking,” Blake said.
Gaffney. Shit.
Smith thought again about Mary and Aaron, and how he’d essentially handed mother and son over to Hobson and his posse. They had taken the duo back to Gaffney with them, where he thought they’d be safe.
But maybe Smith was being too hard on himself. Mary herself had thought the same, and there was a good chance she would have gone with Hobson anyway, even if he had told her otherwise.
Then again, maybe
he was just making excuses for himself.
Yeah, that’s probably it.
“Why is Gaffney attacking?” Smith asked even as he felt his arms loosening and thought, Haha, Mr. Hercules, I’m finally free of your binds!
His body followed suit quickly, and Smith breathed another large sigh of relief. You never really knew what freedom meant until it was taken from you.
“They were always going to come here,” Blake was saying. “We just didn’t know when. I guess tonight’s the answer.”
The ropes fell to the ground and Smith started to get up, but his legs were jelly and he almost fell back down.
“Easy; you’ve been sitting all day,” Blake said as she put the knife away and helped him up from the ground. “Mandy told me to get you to safety.”
Smith didn’t argue. After all, there were two bullets in the shack tonight that hadn’t been here earlier. There was nothing safe about his prison.
He managed to stand up, and this time stayed upright. Blake was tall for a woman—about 5’10”—but he still had a few inches on her. He couldn’t help but notice how good she smelled standing so close to him, even though he was pretty sure it was just soap and water.
“You okay?” she asked, watching him with some concern.
He nodded. “I’ll be fine.” He looked past her at the open door. “So does this mean I’m a free man?”
“Mandy decided you weren’t dangerous. She told me to come get you herself.”
“Where is she now?”
“Back at the main building with the others.”
“Where is that—”
The pek! of a round striking the wall behind him, followed quickly by the zip! of something very hot and fast slicing through the air about a foot to the right of his head.
Blake ducked instinctively, though of course that wouldn’t have done any good if the bullet had been true.
Thank God it hadn’t been.
“Geez, that was close,” Blake said.
“Where are we, anyway?” Smith asked. “I mean, in terms of this place. Middle? Back? Side?”
“Somewhere in the back. Why?”
“I just like to know where I am at all times. Let’s get out of here,” Smith said, when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye.
Another dark figure, this one racing past the side of the shack before turning the corner to where the open door was.
“Someone’s coming,” Smith said.
Blake turned around just as the smell hit Smith, and he thought, That’s not human. That’s not a human smell!
He reached out and grabbed Blake’s hand before she could walk the short distance to the door. She whirled around, eyes widening in a What the hell are you doing? expression, but before she could say anything, she smelled it, too.
Blake spun around as it peered in at them from the darkness beyond the open door.
It was a ghoul.
A lone ghoul.
It looked in at them, thick drops of saliva dripping from jagged teeth that seemed to flash in the moonlight as it opened its mouth wide, wide, and wider still.
Thirteen
“Tell me that knife of yours has silver.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. It doesn’t have silver.”
“Why doesn’t it have silver?”
“Um, I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t know, okay?”
Smith sighed. He might have continued the back and forth with Blake if the ghoul didn’t pounce. When it did that, both of them stopped talking.
Blake had drawn her knife and taken a step toward the creature just before it made its move, but Smith grabbed her from behind and pushed her out of the way. She let out a surprised yelp and might have shouted something else, but Smith couldn’t hear it because he was too busy falling after the ghoul leapt at him and knocked him down.
It wasn’t so much that it was heavy, because it wasn’t, but rather the force of the impact that made Smith lose his footing.
And the stink. God, the stink. It was like spoiled garbage roasting in the hot sun. The stench invaded every pore along Smith’s face as the creature thrashed on top of him, scrambling to rise while at the same time lunging toward his face.
No, not his face. His neck.
It was going for his neck with its fanged teeth. Thick, sloppy wetness flicked across Smith’s cheeks and forehead, more of the rotten stuff splashing his shirt as it clawed its way up the length of his body, cold, bony fingers looking for footholds wherever it could find.
Smith would have thrown up if he could afford to, if he wasn’t too busy fighting for his life. Its putrid smell was simultaneously intoxicating and retch-inducing, and he had to fight through both sensations to start crawling backward, out of the thing’s reach. That wasn’t easy to do since he’d landed on his ass and back, but he managed to get his legs under him anyway and pushed off on the ground, his boots skirting the hard surface as he propelled himself back and—
Thwack! as his head slammed into the pole that had held him prisoner for the better part of a day. He’d forgotten it was back there.
He remembered now, as he tried to fight off the sudden burst of pain. It had to be the back of his head, too, that had impacted the unyielding piece of lumber. Jesus Christ, did Mandy’s people actually use a telephone pole to tie him up? If that was the case, did they bring the damn thing here or build the shack around it? Or—
The ghoul! It’s going to eat you!
Focus on the ghoul, you idiot!
He focused on the creature as it lumbered clumsily up the length of his body, using every part of him to grab onto and propel itself forward. Smith’s momentary halt after backing into the pole had given the monster the extra two or three seconds it needed to regroup.
Blake let out something that sounded like an insane yell just before she started stabbing the creature in the back with her knife. Smith wanted to tell her, Stop it! You’re just pissing it off! but he didn’t get the chance. Mostly, he was too busy holding up his hands to keep the ghoul’s blood from spraying him each time Blake pulled the knife out of its body and slashed again, then repeated the process over and over.
Her knife—her silverless knife—didn’t kill the ghoul, but it did draw its attention. The creature whirled around and leapt off Smith’s body and at Blake.
She stumbled back, slashing with the knife.
It was a big knife—just a shade over eight inches in length, about four or so of that making up the sharp metal part—and Blake wielded it like she knew what she was doing. It was probably that familiarity with the knife that allowed her to cut the ghoul’s right hand off at the wrist as it groped for her. The severed hand flopped to the ground, the fingers twitching as if still alive, while the thing that it was once attached to continued charging Blake.
The shack’s door, somehow, had closed in the aftermath of the ghoul’s entry—a big gust of wind, perhaps?—and Blake bumped into it. The entire structure shook slightly on impact, but she didn’t let that stop her and stabbed forward, the knife going into the creature’s chest and out its back.
Not that that was going to stop it. The undead thing simply pushed forward, letting the knife sink even deeper into its chest and out its back, as it reached for her with its remaining hand. Meanwhile, thick arcs of blood spurted out of the stump on its right hand, splashing Blake and the door and parts of the shack.
Blake screamed. It was even louder than when she’d launched her initial attack. This time it was full of fear and horror and just about every other emotion she could conjure up as black blood dripped from her cheeks and forehead and clothes.
Smith was on his feet and running toward them. He grabbed the creature from behind, wrapping both arms around its rail-thin body just as it managed to get its fingers around Blake’s face. He jerked it off her and swung it away, the very thought of touching the ghoul sending all kinds of sickening sensations through him.
It liked it just fine, because almost as soon as it landed on the floor, it snapped back up and whirled around. It bared its teeth at him even as blood squirted from the stump on its right arm. Black eyes gleamed in the semidarkness of the shack’s interior, almost as if there was a soul behind them, but of course Smith knew better.
Ghouls were undead things, devoid of intelligence, and driven almost purely by the basic need to survive. Unfortunately for him and Blake, and the human race as a whole, their survival meant feeding on the thing flowing through their veins.
Smith had forgotten just how ugly, how unnatural the creatures were up close. This one was in a slight crouch as it raised itself up on its thin legs, but maybe that had more to do with the deformity that had befallen its skeletal frame. It didn’t so much as stand as it hunched over, drops of black liquid dripping from the cuts that Blake had inflicted on its body.
Not that the creature looked even remotely hurt. Or wounded. Or slowed down.
It charged without hesitation, half-running, half-scampering across the ground, flicking black blood all around it as it moved.
What was Smith going to do? He didn’t have a gun. He didn’t even have a knife. And even if he had one of those things, he’d need something with silver to stop it. Because the creature wouldn’t stop. Nothing in this world would end its attack permanently but silver and sunlight, and he didn’t have either right now.
“Move!” Blake shouted just before she swept him aside—similar to how he’d done to her earlier, he thought ironically—and jumped in front of him.
Blake swung with the knife in a wide arc as the ghoul launched itself at her. The blade sliced through the thing’s neck, cutting through it like a bullet through Jell-O. The creature’s momentum continued forward and it crashed into Blake and knocked her back and into Smith, and the two of them bumped into the shack’s closed door.
The ghoul’s body crumpled to the ground, where it began twitching even as blood poured from the stump where its head was, once upon a time, attached. That head was a few feet away, having bounced off a wall, blood leaking out of its neck.
After The Purge, AKA John Smith Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 23