Travis unfurled his fingers around the pistol grip, and Smith kicked the weapon away. Smith took a step back before sitting down on the back bumper of the Jeep and, finally, looked down at his hip.
A graze, similar to the one that had taken Travis down, except Smith’s was in the right place. Travis had taken his on the forehead, which was probably interfering with his ability to focus right about now, because Travis kept blinking at Smith.
“Jesus Christ,” Travis was saying. “You’re crazy. Fucking nuts.”
Smith looked over at him. “Am I?”
“Yeah, you are.”
“Not the first time I’ve been called that.”
“Crazy…”
“Why? Because I defended myself?”
“Coming out like that…three against one…” He shook his head. Or tried to. “Who does that? A crazy guy. Fucking crazy guy does that.”
“That’s your problem, Travis. You’ve had it too good for too long. You’ve become too reliant on numbers.”
“Crazy fucker,” Travis said, as if Smith hadn’t said a word. “Crazy motherfucker.”
“Blah blah blah. So was this the plan all along?” Smith said. “Get me to bring Mandy out, then ambush us?”
Travis kept blinking at Smith and saying, “Crazy asshole. You’re fucking crazy.”
“Yeah, yeah, we’ve already established that. Moving on.”
“Who does that? Who does that?”
“Travis, pay attention. We’ve already moved on.”
“Crazy…”
Smith snapped his fingers in front of the man’s face to get his attention. “Hey, Travis, listen to what I’m saying.”
“…crazy…”
“Travis. Listen. Focus.”
“…crazy…”
“Focus. Was this the plan all along? If I don’t kill Mandy at the junkyard, then get me to bring her out—”
He stopped talking because Travis had closed his eyes.
“Shit,” Smith said, and crouched next to the man.
He felt for a pulse…and found one. Travis wasn’t dead, just unconscious. Smith made sure the guy wasn’t pretending by relieving him of his weapons—a gun behind his back and a knife in a sheath at his hip—before getting up and walking around the Jeep to check on the other two.
Kyle lay on his back, eyes wide open and staring up at the cloudless sky. He was dead. Smith didn’t know how long he’d been dead but dead was dead, so what did it matter? He couldn’t bring himself to feel any sympathy for the kid.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Still, he was young, and unlike Travis, there was nothing squirrely about the kid. Maybe Smith felt some sympathy for him after all.
Mr. Sniper was nearby, and he was a different story. Smith would have shot him again if he were still alive, but he wasn’t. A thin trickle of blood came down his forehead where Smith had shot him. The tiny amount of blood that had ended Mr. Sniper’s life was an interesting contrast to all the red that had dripped down Travis’s forehead from what was, essentially, a bullet graze.
Smith took a moment to check out the rifle. The scope, as Smith had guessed, was a powerful one, capable of shooting someone from a great distance. Smith still didn’t know if it was the same weapon that had nearly killed him—twice, now—and had taken Mandy’s life. For all he knew, it had also taken Lucky’s, since Mr. Sniper was up there in the hills waiting when Smith showed up. That seemed to be a favorite place of his.
Smith stared at the face. He didn’t know the man; didn’t even know his name. Not that it mattered anymore. Dead was dead, was dead. It’d always been the case, and it was even more so now.
He walked back to where Travis lay and took the keys to the Jeep from his pocket, then looked for and found a first-aid kit in the car’s glove compartment. Smith took off his pants and tended to his hip wound, washing and then taping up the cut. It wasn’t bad—he’d had a lot worse—though it felt like fire burning down there anyway. He swallowed some painkillers that came with the kit to help with that.
Next, Smith relieved Kyle and Mr. Sniper of their weapons and anything else useful on their persons, tossing them all into the back of the Jeep. He was surprised none of them carried radios, which meant Travis and Kyle were nearby when Mr. Sniper took his shots at Smith and Mandy.
That lent credence to his belief that this had been the plan all along. The Judge had sent him here to kill Mandy or bring her out. One way or another, the ultimate goal was always to take out Mandy.
“So what changed yesterday?” he had asked Mandy.
“I don’t know,” she had said. “Maybe the Judge just got tired of him helping us.”
Smith picked up Travis and dragged him to the car before pushing his unresponsive body into the front passenger seat. He located a roll of duct tape and fastened Travis to the seat, making it as tight as possible just, well, because.
Then he drove around looking for the horses.
Twenty-Three
The Jeep had a recent coat of wax on it, but the gas tank was only a quarter full when Smith took it for a drive. Instead of heading to Gaffney and the Judge and putting a bullet between his eyes, he instead headed south—back toward the junkyard.
Before that, he’d retrieved Mandy’s body and put her into the back of the car. He’d toyed with the idea of “sitting” her back there with Travis, her head on his shoulder, just to get a kick out of the man’s reaction when he woke up. But that was probably a little too much of dark humor for Mandy’s people when he drove up to the junkyard’s front gate.
He found the horses about a mile away, but only the Paint didn’t take off immediately when he approached them in the car. Smith tied the animal’s reins to the Jeep, then drove south slowly to allow the horse to keep pace.
The junkyard looked as uninviting and ready for a fight as the first time Smith had seen it clearly this morning. It was a large area with piles of metal and steel and chrome. Three modular homes—more modern versions of the old mobile homes, but these were designed for office space—sat in a U-shape in the very center. One of those belonged to Mandy, but the other two had been converted into living quarters. The buildings were visible as he drove over the hill but wouldn’t be so readily obvious from ground level until you got closer.
There were guards on the grounds, but they stayed away from the open areas where they could be picked off by a sniper from the nearby hills. Fortunately for them, most of the land around the junkyard was relatively flat. After last night’s intense battle with Gaffney’s men, Mandy hadn’t taken any chances. Smith was certain there were eyeballs watching him—along with a rifle or two, or three—as he drove over.
Smith parked the car in front of the gate and climbed out, his hands raised. He called out, “Don’t shoot!”
It took about twenty seconds before two figures appeared out from behind a pile of old appliances and rushed toward the entrance. One of them was Gramps, but Smith didn’t recognize the other one, another woman. They rushed over, rifles pointed at him.
Smith kept his hands raised as they approached the other side of the gate. He glanced to his left and right as more heads popped up from behind the larger piles to scan the outside area in case he wasn’t alone. They’d clearly been up there for a while but had stayed hidden until now.
He imagined they would have been able to hear the Wrangler coming for miles out here, and were probably just as shocked to see it as he had been earlier. Or maybe they weren’t. Did they know Gaffney had these kinds of resources and didn’t tell him?
Gramps lowered her rifle slightly as she reached the gate. “What the hell are you doing back here so soon? Where did you get that car?” Then, spotting Travis in the front passenger seat, “And what the hell is he doing here?”
“It’s about Mandy,” Smith said.
“What about her?” Gramps narrowed her eyes at him before looking around. The other woman with her—she was smaller, younger, with short blonde hair—did the same. “W
here’s Mandy? Where the hell is Mandy!”
“She’s in the Jeep,” Smith said.
Gramps looked past him at the parked vehicle. “Where?”
“In the back,” Smith said. “She’s dead.”
“What?”
“She’s dead. One of the Judge’s men shot her.” Smith turned and nodded at Travis. “He was there. Ask him what happened.”
Smith walked back to the Jeep, then past it.
“Don’t be too gentle,” he added.
“Hey!” Gramps shouted after him. “Where the hell are you going now?”
Smith glanced back at her. “Gaffney. I have unfinished business to take care of. Give Roger my condolences, and tell him that he’s in charge now.”
He untied the Paint’s reins from the Jeep and walked her up the road.
“Hey!” Gramps shouted after him. “Hey, you can’t just leave like this! Hey!”
Smith ignored her. He climbed onto the Paint and hoped no one in the junkyard was feeling trigger-happy this morning. When no one shot at him, he spurred the horse and it took off.
“Smith!” Gramps, still shouting after him. “Goddammit, Smith! You can’t just leave like this! Wait! Wait!”
He didn’t wait, but he did look back when he was about fifty yards away. They had opened the gate, and Gramps, along with the other woman, were at the parked Jeep. Smith spotted Roger in the background, along with a couple of others, rushing over to join the two women.
He turned around and urged the horse north.
Back to Gaffney.
To unfinished business…
About Shoot Last
Copyright (c) 2020 by Sam Sisavath
FINAL JUDGEMENT COMES FOR EVERY MAN.
He wasn’t looking for a fight, and he did everything possible to avoid one, but the Judge and his lackeys refused to let John Smith go about his way. Things got out of hand, people ended up dead, and now Smith is on the offensive.
After being double-crossed, Smith returns to Gaffney, determined to conclude all unfinished business. It will mean taking the fight to the enemy at their own doorsteps, but Smith is just angry enough not to give a damn.
They should have left him alone. But they didn’t.
Now they’re going to learn that it’s not who shoots first that counts, but who shoots last.
One
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“What the hell does it look like I’m doing here?”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“And yet here I am.”
“You shouldn’t be here…”
“You already said that.”
“You got away. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Yeah, well, that wasn’t my decision, was it?”
“You trying to get killed? Is that it? That must be it, or you wouldn’t have come back. You should have kept on walking.”
“Oh, I think we’re well past that, don’t you think?”
Hobson smirked. “You got a big set on you, son.”
“I’m not your fucking son,” Smith said. He motioned with the gun in his hand but otherwise didn’t bother getting up from the nice comfortable leather armchair that Hobson had in the corner of his living room. “What were you, raised in a barn? Close the door and lock it before all the mosquitoes get inside.”
Hobson did as he was told. The door clicked into place, followed by the clack as the deadbolt slid home. The de facto sheriff of Gaffney turned around and resumed staring at Smith from across the room.
“Now what?” Hobson asked.
“Now you tell me where the Judge lives,” Smith said.
“And why would I do that?”
“So I can go there and put him out of my misery.”
“You’re going to kill the Judge?”
“I ain’t going there to rock him to sleep.”
“That’s murder.”
“It’s justice.”
“For who?”
“Me, Mandy, Lucky.” Smith shrugged. “Your pick. Frankly, I don’t give a shit why he has to die. But he’s gonna die, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Wait. Mandy? What happened with Mandy?”
Smith squinted across the semidarkness at the man, trying to decide if Hobson was attempting to pull one over him.
Hobson lived alone in a small two-bedroom house on the southern edge of town. It was just close enough to the main center for him to walk to “work,” but far enough that he had some privacy. The residence was surrounded by bigger houses that Hobson could have chosen, but he had elected for this cozy place instead. The doors were closed but not locked, and Smith could have come through a half-dozen entry points besides simply opening the front door. Smith guessed you didn’t need to lock your doors in a place like Gaffney; it wasn’t like they had much trouble with outsiders.
At least, not until he showed up.
“What happened to Mandy?” Hobson was asking him now.
Smith still hadn’t gotten up from the armchair. It was brown and cool when he sat down but had warmed up noticeably while he waited for Hobson to come home. Sneaking back into Gaffney hadn’t been all that difficult. The town was just too big to be fully watched over by guards; the Judge would have needed ten times the number of lackeys in order to keep an eye on every possible way in. And with three less pairs of eyeballs at his disposal, what was originally difficult had become impossible. Smith had simply waited until dark, using the time to scout the area, and then picked a blind spot. He’d had plenty of choices.
“You know damn well what happened to Mandy,” Smith said.
Hobson shook his head. “I don’t.”
“Bullshit.”
“I don’t, son.”
Again with the ‘son,’ Smith thought, wondering if Hobson was doing that on purpose to get his goat. Sure, the man was old enough to be his father, but did Hobson really think Smith was going to feel any sympathy because of their age difference? Smith had shot older men.
“She’s dead,” Smith said.
He didn’t believe for one second that Hobson didn’t already know that fact, but if this was some kind of game Hobson wanted to play, then Smith would accommodate him. Worst case, he wasted a few minutes; best case, he gleaned some information from Hobson, whether the man wittingly gave it up or not.
“Mandy is dead?” Hobson said, looking very much surprised.
Or maybe he was just a good actor.
No, Hobson wasn’t that. The man didn’t look like he had an ounce of artistic ability in him. Certainly, he couldn’t act his way out of a wet paper bag.
What Smith was seeing now, on the sheriff’s face, was genuine surprise.
He doesn’t know about Mandy.
What exactly did that mean, though, in the large scheme of things?
Smith was trying to figure out an answer when Hobson continued. “How did she die?”
“She was shot.”
“When?”
“While I was bringing her back here, per the Judge’s orders.”
“The Judge’s orders…”
“That’s right. He got me to bring her out of the junkyard, and when she was in the open, his sniper took her out. Probably the same asshat that shot me earlier. He’s dead, too, by the way.”
“Who?”
“The sniper.”
“Roman?”
“Is that his name?”
Hobson nodded. “He’s the best shot we have; that’s why he’s out there.”
Smith shrugged. He didn’t know the sniper’s name, and it didn’t matter anyway. The man was dead, along with the kid, Kyle. Travis Clarence, the man with the two first names, was still alive, but he probably wished he wasn’t right now.
“Not anymore, I guess,” Hobson said.
Smith wasn’t sure if the other man sounded sad or was just stating a fact with that one. Maybe a little of both, which told Smith Hobson and this Roman character weren’t exactly drinking buddies. Not that he thought Hobson was drinking budd
ies with anyone. If the man even drank at all. Hobson looked way too much like a straight arrow to indulge in anything that could even pass for a filthy habit. Then again, a standup guy wouldn’t be doing the Judge’s bidding, so maybe Smith was all wrong about Hobson…again. He’d been wrong about a lot of things lately, and one of these days, those errors in judgement were going to get him dead.
One of these days, but not tonight.
Smith motioned again with the gun. “Have a seat, Sheriff. You’re making me a little anxious just standing there.”
“What about my gun?” Hobson asked.
“What about it?”
“You want me to put it on the floor? Kick it over? Isn’t that how these things work in the movies?”
Smith smiled. “Sheriff, I could shoot you before you clear leather even if I had my own pistol holstered. Having my gun already out is just for intimidation.”
“I believe you.”
“You should.”
As if to prove his point, Smith holstered the SIG Sauer.
The older man cracked a smile. “Balls, son. You got real balls.”
“Sit down.”
Hobson walked over to a sofa in front of the windows and sat down across from Smith. He’d kept his hands away from his holstered revolver the entire time, almost as if he expected Smith to be looking for an excuse to shoot him. Smith wanted to tell the man that he didn’t need another excuse. He already had a dozen reasons to put a round in Hobson even before he showed up at the older man’s residence.
The sheriff sighed as he sat down, hands pressing flat against his legs. All it would have taken was a quick jerk of his right hand toward his hip, and he’d be armed. Of course, Smith would have shot him well before he even touched his weapon.
Smith knew that without a shred of doubt in his mind.
And maybe Hobson did, too.
“The Judge,” Smith said. “Where do I find him?”
“You don’t know?”
“If I knew, why would I be here?”
“Just to say hi, maybe.”
After The Purge, AKA John Smith Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 30