“Jesus Christ,” Smith muttered under his breath.
Somewhere behind him—and he was sure it had come from behind him this time—someone laughed. Then a second voice joined in.
His captors. Gruff and Less-Gruff.
Glad you’re finding this very amusing, boys, Smith thought even as he stared back at the ghoul. There was no need to worry about his human problem right now; not with this inhuman thing in front of him.
The creature peered in at him even as it clung to the bars, its body seeming to hover in the air. But, of course, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t hovering; it was clutching to the steel metal rods, bony fingers wrapped around two of them while two equally bony legs did the same nearer the bottom.
The suddenly very overwhelming stink made Smith want to vomit, but he held it in. Barely.
The ghoul glared at him for a few seconds before it attempted to push its elongated head through two of the bars, but couldn’t. Closer now, it exposed one hollowed socket to Smith. Its right eye was missing, leaving it with only one. There was nothing wrong with the rest of its body, though. Its chest was sunken, pruned black flesh seemingly rippling against the semidarkness. Smith didn’t need lights to see what the creature wanted.
Him.
The hairs on the back of his neck and all along his arms and legs spiked as its one good eye zeroed in on him. One eye was all it needed. Even if it couldn’t see him, it would have been able to smell his presence.
Or, more specifically, the blood pumping through Smith’s veins.
Smith waited for more to appear out of the darkness, but there was just the one. That was the only good news that he could see. If there were more, they would have made their presence known already. Ghouls weren’t known for their ability to hang back when there was prey on the table. And that was what he was right now. Prey.
So why was the creature trying to push its way through the bars? Why didn’t it just use…
…the door.
The door!
Where the hell was the door?
Smith spun around, looking for it. His eyes had mostly adjusted to the darkness, but he couldn’t find the door. But, of course, there had to be one. Didn’t there? How else would they have put him in here?
So where was it?
He started moving frantically around the cage, looking for a way in and out. Or anything that even remotely resembled a door. He could feel the ghoul staring after him, maybe wondering what he was doing. It remained clinging to the bars on the other side of the prison, still trying to push its way in, but failing.
For now. For now…
Focus on the door!
The door. Right. The door. Where was the door?
Smith felt along the bars, hoping to find some indication—
A soft, echoing click came from somewhere behind him. Smith whirled around just in time to see a part of the cage coming apart.
No, not coming apart, but opening.
The door.
The goddamn door. It was exactly where he didn’t want it to be.
…right underneath the ghoul on the other side of the cage…
Thirteen
He’d faced ghouls before. More than once, and more than one ghoul at a time. There had been about a dozen of them earlier tonight, and he’d gotten through that one unscathed. It’d been a little dicey at times, but he never thought he was in trouble. Blake’s presence helped, but he could have handled the whole thing if it’d just been him. Of course, at the time he had a silver-coated knife. He would have loved to have that right about now.
Among other things.
Many, many other things.
For a second or two—maybe three or four seconds max—the creature hopped down from the bars and squatted on the floor, looking as perplexed as Smith was that the door into the cage had suddenly snapped open by an unseen hand.
It peered in at him, almost as if it was suspicious. Was that possible? Were the creatures even capable of suspicious thoughts? The ones he’d encountered in the past didn’t; they were primal animals that streaked toward their prey when one was available. They didn’t sit back on their haunches the way this one was doing and seemed to narrow its one remaining eye at him, as if trying to decide if all of this was a trick or…
It must have decided pretty quickly that it wasn’t, because the creature lunged toward the opening.
Smith did the same, trying to reach the door before the nightcrawler did—
He lost.
Smith stopped at the last second and tried to pivot out of the way but—too late—as the creature entered the cage and slammed into him, knocking him to the floor. He landed on his right shoulder, the ghoul scrambling on top of him. It was all Smith could do to roll away, the ghoul falling off him and onto the hard ground.
He managed to scramble to one knee, but the creature beat him by half a heartbeat. Before he could react, it launched itself into him again with wild abandon. Its stink invaded his space and infiltrated his nostrils until the stench of rotting garbage filled every inch of Smith’s universe.
He fought through it—there were no other choices—and punched it with a balled fist. He got it across the left cheek and felt his hand sinking into the flesh, then striking the cheekbone underneath. The creature’s head snapped back, then sideways, and its body followed suit.
Smith pushed up onto his feet as the ghoul slammed into one side of the cage and collapsed to the hard floor. He wished he could say that the solid punch—which would have put down most men—did the job, but it wasn’t even close.
The ghoul was already back on its rail-thin legs a second later.
“Whoa, you see that?” a voice said. The less-gruff voice Smith had been hearing all this time, but was unable to trace.
“Nice one!” the gruffer of the two voices laughed. “He’s a regular Mike Tyson.”
“Who?”
“Mike Tyson.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“Fuck, you’re young.”
Laughter, but Smith wasn’t sure who it was from, and he didn’t have the opportunity to give a damn because the ghoul was coming at him.
It charged like a runaway train, arms outstretched toward him. Saliva flitted from its mouth, which was wide open to reveal crooked yellowing spikes that were more caverns of fangs than anything resembling teeth. Black goo, like gobs of tar, dripped from the gash in its cheek where Smith had punched and tore through its flesh as if they were tissue paper.
Not that any of that stopped the creature. Nothing was going to stop it except silver. And Smith didn’t have an ounce of the precious metal on him right now. All he would have needed was just a tiny bit to introduce into its bloodstream and the ghoul would stop. Just like that, it would stop.
But he didn’t, and it wouldn’t.
Smith kicked out with his right foot and struck it in the chest with the sole of his boot. (At least they let him keep his boots.) The creature snapped back like a marionette with its strings pulled and slammed down to the floor.
Now what? How did he keep it down?
“Nice!” a voice shouted. Maybe the gruff voice, or possibly the less gruff one. Smith had given up trying to distinguish the two. All he knew was that they were having a hell of a good time at his expense.
The creature was spinning, limbs twisting as it began to rise back up. Smith didn’t let it and charged. He struck out with his right knee, catching it in almost exactly in the middle of its chest. The ghoul flung back and slammed into the bars. The entire cage rattled for a few seconds, and maybe it would have kept right on rattling, but Smith wasn’t waiting to find out.
He ran for the door.
He got halfway when he lost his footing.
No, he didn’t lose his footing. Something had grabbed him and pulled his feet out from underneath him.
The ghoul, its cold, bony fingers wrapped tightly around his ankle.
Shit!
Smith went from running to flying to crashing chest-f
irst into the hard cement. He twisted his entire body, imagining himself flopping around like a fish out of water, but somehow managing to land on his back.
The creature was still holding onto his right ankle with one hand, its bony fingers seemingly digging into his flesh through the fabric of his pant legs.
He stared at it.
It sneered back. Its only good eye might have squinted, but maybe that was just the darkness in the room playing tricks with Smith’s vision. The smell stretched from every pore of the creature’s skin and reached across the space between them like physical tentacles that grabbed a hold of him and refused to let go.
Smith tried his best not to vomit, but he might have dry heaved.
Don’t throw up. This is no time to be throwing up!
But dear God, it smelled. It was impossible to ignore. The entire room seemed to be simmering with its stench, like garbage piled upon garbage inside a box that was then sealed tight and never opened again. And then someone shoved him inside.
Smith turned his head slightly with revulsion.
The creature reached for his left leg with its other hand, but Smith kicked out with his boot first and caught it in the face. The nose shattered, black goo spraying the floor and the sole of Smith’s shoe. Not that that did anything to make it let go of his right leg. If anything, it clung on even tighter.
Was that possible?
Apparently, yes.
“He’s done for now!” a voice said.
“No way. He still has some fight in him!” the other one said.
“We’ll see about that!”
“He looks like a fighter, this one!”
“They all look like a fighter until it’s over!”
Again, Smith wasn’t able to distinguish who was saying what, and he didn’t give a damn, either. The identities of the speakers were less important than what was happening to him inside the cage.
And right now, the ghoul was trying to claw its way up his leg. Fortunately, it only had a grip on his right leg, which meant Smith’s left was free to cock back and strike forward. He landed a shot to its temple.
The creature’s head reared back and that stopped its forward momentum temporarily. Before it could right itself, Smith struck again.
Thwap!
Again, the ghoul’s head snapped back, its grotesque and misshapen skull jerking against its elongated neck.
Before it could gather itself, Smith kicked it again.
Thwap!
And again.
Thwap!
He heard the very solid crack! as the creature’s neck finally snapped on the fourth kick, and felt it loosening its grip on his right ankle slightly.
Smith didn’t wait to see if it would release its hold on him completely. He pulled his leg free, then scrambled to his feet. The creature did the same, even as its head flung back and seemed to hang off its shoulders, the neck bone that formerly held it in place having been shattered by Smith’s last kick.
It was wobbly on its feet when Smith drove himself into it, catching it in the chest with his shoulder and slamming it into the bars on the other side. The entire cage shook, but Smith was too busy stumbling back, back—
He spun and darted toward the open door—and lunged outside the cage!
Smith turned and slammed the door shut. Heard the click! as the lock snapped into place. He hadn’t expected that, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He stumbled back as the creature flung itself into the door.
Bang!
The cage trembled again against the impact, but the door remained closed.
Not that that stopped the ghoul. It reared back, its head dangling off the back of its shoulders like a hoodie instead of a head, and rammed itself into the door again.
Bang!
And again.
Bang!
Bang!
But the door held.
Bang!
Somehow, it held. Smith didn’t know why, or how, but the door wouldn’t budge.
He bent over at the waist and sucked in a deep breath, cold air flooding his lungs.
The bang! bang! of the creature throwing itself into the cage echoed inside the room around him.
Bang!
Bang!
“Goddammit,” a voice said.
Smith straightened up and turned around just as two figures stepped out of the shadows behind him.
“You got my shift tonight,” a second voice said, followed by a chuckle.
Two men appeared out of the darkness, and one of them was holding something in his right hand. Smith squinted, trying to make out what that “something” was, when about 50,000 watts of electrical current coursed through him and he flopped to the floor, where he lay shaking. There were two prongs sticking out of his chest that weren’t there earlier, connected to wiring that ran along the ground then up toward a device being held in one of the men’s hands.
“He’s a fighter,” the less-gruff of the two voices said. Smith couldn’t lift his head to see the speaker’s face. He was too busy trying not to bite his tongue off.
“Not anymore,” the gruffer of the two voices said.
“So what now?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did the Judge say?”
“Nothing about this.”
“You should probably radio him and ask.”
“It’s almost five in the morning. Fat man’s probably sound asleep by now. He’d have my hide if I woke him up.”
“Good point,” the less gruff of the two voices said.
Smith would have liked to keep eavesdropping on their conversation, but he was too busy trying to maintain his focus, even if the only thing he could see was the ghoul, still locked in the cage, flinging itself wildly against the bars.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang…!
Fourteen
“Mr. Smith.”
A female voice.
“John.”
It sounded familiar.
“Can you hear me?”
He snapped awake and sat up. He did it so violently that he heard a gasp and the sound of shuffling feet in response.
“John. It’s okay.”
Was it okay?
“Give it time.”
Where was he?
“You’re hurt.”
Yes, he was.
“But you’re safe now.”
No, he wasn’t. Smith didn’t know a lot of things, but he knew that much. He wasn’t safe. And he wasn’t going to be safe for a while.
“Don’t try to move too fast, too soon.”
He knew that voice. Now if only he could place it…
Smith opened his eyes to…darkness. (So what else was new?) Except there were silhouetted figures gathered in the room with him—
Ghouls!
“John, John. It’s okay. They’re human.”
Human? How did the speaker know he thought the figures were ghouls?
“They’re human, John. It’s okay.”
Slowly, the silhouettes took the shape of humans. Women. He could tell that from the shape of their shoulders, their forms.
So not ghouls.
Not ghouls…
He managed to sit up on solid and slightly cold floor. Concrete. The walls around him—or the parts of them that he could see, because there wasn’t much light in the room—were made of the same dark gray and ugly material.
They were inside a room encased in hard concrete.
The cage.
The cage!
No, no cage. He was out of the cage and in another room. A bigger room. Or it felt bigger to him, anyway.
He sniffed the air, searching for the telltale signs of ghouls.
None. Just sweat and dirt and…
Fear. He smelled fear all around him.
“John. It’s okay.”
Smith glanced behind him. Mary. She had a familiar voice. She was kneeling next to him, one hand holding him by the shoulder to keep him upright. He might not have e
ven recognized her face in the darkness if she wasn’t so close.
“Mary,” Smith said.
She managed a smile, but he could tell it was very forced. “Yes, John, it’s me.”
“Where are we?”
“Underneath the barn.”
“What barn?”
“On the ranch.”
Oh. That barn.
“Your head,” Mary was saying. “It looks like blood.”
“Yeah,” Smith said, reaching behind the back of his head. At least he wasn’t bleeding anymore even if it probably looked like a real mess back there. The blood had coagulated and become tangled with his hair.
“What happened?” Mary asked.
“I came looking for you.”
“How did that work out?”
He looked back at her again and found her smiling.
He chuckled. “Not very well.”
“Well, at least you tried. I didn’t think you’d come back.”
“I promised I would.”
“I know, but…” She shrugged. “Not everyone keeps their promises these days.”
Smith spent a few extra seconds looking at her. As far as he could tell, she didn’t appear to be hurt. Her hair was slightly disheveled, but that was true for everyone inside the room with them, including himself.
The others, as he had guessed, were all women—three that Smith could see right away and a fourth one that had retreated to the back, in the farthest corner of the room.
…all women…
He remembered what Blake had told him, about how the Judge gave the women of Gaffney very few choices. Blake had also said—
Blake.
Jesus, Blake.
She was dead. Shot by the crazy woman with the shotgun. Well, maybe she wasn’t so crazy. She was looking for Peter, whoever that was. Maybe her husband. Or lover. Or brother. She’d been certain Smith and Blake had something to do with his absence, which was true. And she’d shot Blake for it.
I’m sorry, Blake. I should have made you head back to the junkyard.
After The Purge, AKA John Smith Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 38