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

by Sisavath, Sam

  “By the way, you couldn’t get me a bed? Or a cot, at least?”

  “You’re lucky I found that futon for you.” Roger got up from the couch and walked across the building.

  “Hey,” Smith said after him.

  Roger stopped at the door and looked back. “What? More complaints?”

  “I wanted to say thanks.”

  The other man raised both eyebrows. Smith guessed he was surprised to hear that. “For what?”

  “You know what.”

  Roger grunted. “Okay, tough guy.” Then, turning away, “Try not to die on my floor, okay?”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  Roger left. Smith heard voices from outside. Roger, calling out to someone. Silhouetted figures moved across the windows to his right as they responded to the junkyard’s new leader.

  Smith turned back to Mary. She remained where she was on the floor next to him. He wondered how long she’d been there, taking care of him while he was recuperating. She hadn’t said very much during his conversation with Roger, and he didn’t have to wonder what she was thinking about then; and still was, now.

  “Aaron,” Smith said.

  Mary stopped what she was doing—wringing water out of the same damp towel she’d been using to clean him, into a bowl next to her—and looked over.

  “I’ll get him back,” Smith said.

  “How?”

  “Whatever it takes.”

  Mary pursed her lips. He wasn’t sure if she believed him or not.

  She was wiping down his face when Smith reached up and took her hand. He squeezed as hard as he could. It was probably not all that hard, seeing as how he wasn’t even close to being 100 percent yet.

  “I’ll get him back,” he said.

  She didn’t say anything.

  “I swear to God,” Smith said.

  She smiled. “I believe you.”

  He returned her smile, glad that she did believe him, because he really had meant it. Every single word of it: He would get Aaron back, even if it killed him.

  Now all he had to do was figure out how…without actually getting killed in the process.

  Twenty-Two

  Roger had attacked the ranch with twelve people and left with the three they’d been looking for—Jackie and the sisters—along with Carol, who decided to come along. He’d taken two wounded but no KIAs. Roger was certain they’d killed at least one of the Judge’s men and wounded three others, but couldn’t be sure about the latter.

  “Saw them dragging away one body, but I don’t know about the rest,” Roger said. “Maybe two dead? I don’t know. Can’t be sure.”

  “So the goal was never to take the ranch?” Smith asked.

  “No. It was always just to get our friends back.”

  “Mission accomplished.”

  “You’re damn straight.”

  Smith didn’t think Roger should have been that proud of last night’s raid. One confirmed kill and two, possibly three wounded wasn’t really the kind of enemy casualties he would have called a success. Especially since Roger had the ranch outnumbered and outgunned, not to mention attacking with the element of surprise on his side.

  But Smith didn’t bring those points up. Roger was a new leader, taking over for, from what Smith could tell, a beloved predecessor in Mandy. He’d done his best, and for a first time, well, it wasn’t too bad. At the very least it hadn’t been a clusterfuck, which it could have very well been if the Judge had counterattacked from behind the junkyard folks last night. Instead, the Judge had hung back, either confident in his belief the ranch could hold out, or he just didn’t care what happened to them.

  Frankly, Smith was leaning toward the latter.

  Smith also didn’t mention that he’d taken out four of the ranch’s manpower nearly singlehandedly. He had two confirmed kills alone with a possible third, not to mention a fourth that was incapacitated. Probably four in all, because he didn’t think Not-So-Gruff was going to wake up from his wounds anytime soon, but that wasn’t a given. Three was a safe number.

  “What are you gonna do with him?” Roger asked as they walked through the junkyard.

  “Ask him some questions,” Smith said.

  “You sure you’re up to it? I mean, no offense, but you look like shit.”

  Smith grunted. Roger wasn’t wrong. The first few steps from the building where he’d been sleeping off his wound for the majority of the day had been an adventure. Mary hadn’t wanted him to leave and insisted on holding onto him as he climbed down the steps. She’d wanted to come along, too, but Smith told her not to. He didn’t want her to see what he was going to do. Reluctantly, she had acquiesced.

  He didn’t so much as walk alongside Roger as he limped. Or hobbled. A mixture of the two. He wasn’t feeling 100 percent. Hell, he’d be lucky if he was 50 percent.

  Right now, he felt more like…30 percent?

  Feeling a little generous, eh?

  More like 20 percent, maybe.

  …or just shy of 10 percent...

  “I can do this, you know,” Roger said. “You just have to talk me through it.”

  “No,” Smith said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because he wouldn’t believe you.”

  “And he’d believe you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Looking like that?”

  “Especially looking like this.”

  “Come again?”

  Smith shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”

  He thought Roger would argue, but instead the man kept quiet. Maybe he really didn’t want to do what Smith had proposed and had just offered to be nice. Or maybe he didn’t want Smith to think he wasn’t up to the task.

  They walked on, Smith taking the time to glance around him at Roger’s small army of young women and even younger men. There were lookouts all around them, some perched on the piles of junk that littered the place. They were mostly silhouettes in the dwindling sunlight, hidden against the shadows cast by their hulking stations. The fences were still intact, and no one strayed out into the open where they could be picked off. Roger had organized the place with an eye toward safety in the aftermath of their attack on the ranch. Smith guessed the younger man had learned well at the feet of his former leader.

  To stay out of the sights of any snipers that might have been out there, Smith and Roger walked along the rear of the manufactured buildings. It was a good thing they didn’t have to run from cover to cover, because Smith didn’t think he could. Hobbling/limping, or whatever he wanted to call it, wasn’t exactly effective for dodging bullets.

  It didn’t take them long to reach the shack. It was the same one that Smith had been kept in not all too long ago. It was just as small and nondescript and ugly as the last time he’d seen it. There were two people standing guard outside, with one of them being Gramps. The young woman sat on the ground, cleaning an AR with a rag. The weapon had a big scope on top. It was probably the same rifle she’d used to shoot him earlier this morning.

  Smith didn’t recognize the other woman, who was just a little older than Gramps.

  When she heard them coming, Gramps looked up and grinned at Smith. “You looking good for someone who was just shot today.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?” Smith asked.

  “Who, me?”

  “Yeah, you.”

  Gramps shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “That’s Lorna,” Roger said, nodding at the tall and attractive brunette standing next to Gramps. She was cleaning her nails with the point of a knife.

  Lorna glanced up and gave Smith a What’s up? nod.

  Smith returned it, before asking her, “Can I borrow that?”

  “What?” Lorna said.

  “That,” Smith said, nodding at her knife.

  It was about five inches of rubber handle and five more inches of a double-edged stainless steel blade. Nothing special at all, but it would get
the job done.

  “What’d you need it for?” Lorna asked.

  “I have to ask someone some questions,” Smith said.

  Lorna turned to Roger, who nodded.

  “I want it back,” Lorna said as she handed the knife to Smith.

  “I won’t need it for very long,” Smith said.

  “What are you gonna do?” Gramps asked.

  “He’s gonna interrogate Travis,” Roger said.

  “He’s not talking. We already tried.”

  “He’ll talk to me,” Smith said.

  “To you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I’m gonna ask him nicely,” Smith said. “Really, really nicely.”

  Travis Clarence, the man with two first names, sat on the floor inside the shack, fastened to the same heavy telephone pole that Smith had been when he was last in here. And like Smith before him, the only part of Travis the man could move was his head, which he lifted up when Smith stepped inside and closed the door softly behind him.

  The Gaffney man’s wound, the bullet crease on his forehead courtesy of Smith, had been treated, but the original bandage they’d put on the gash remained. Blood had turned it a mostly pale shade of pink, and it was long overdue for a changing.

  “Sonofabitch,” Travis said. “I was wondering if you’d gone and gotten yourself killed yet.”

  “Why would you say that?” Smith asked.

  “Figured you had headed back to Gaffney to get your woman back.”

  “You did, huh?”

  “So, did you?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

  “Barely, from the looks of it.”

  Smith smirked. He wasn’t trying to hide his condition from Travis. He knew that even with the gauze hidden inside his shirt he was still moving gingerly and was barely at 30 percent strength.

  Okay, more like 10 percent.

  “Hobson’s dead,” Smith said as he walked toward Travis.

  “What happened to him?” Travis asked.

  “I shot him.”

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “He went for his gun.”

  “Goddamn. Tough guy, huh?”

  “Me or Hobson?”

  “You.”

  “Nah. Just faster.”

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Travis asked, turning his head and trying to follow Smith’s movements as he walked past before disappearing behind the man.

  Smith tugged at the thick rawhide rope tying Travis into place. It was as tight and impossible to break free as when Smith had been caught in the same position.

  They have friggin’ Hercules tying these things.

  Smith made a mental note to ask Roger who that mysterious Hercules was, but that was for later. Right now, he took out Lorna’s knife and went down on one knee so he could place the sharp—and cold—edge against one of Travis’s fingers.

  “Hey, what’s that? What are you doing?” Travis asked. The sudden alarm in his voice was impossible to miss. “Stop doing that! Is that a knife? Hey!”

  “I’m going to ask you some questions,” Smith said. “You’re going to answer them.”

  “Is that a knife? Hey, take that knife away! Hey!”

  Smith cut off the forefinger on Travis’s right hand, and the man screamed.

  It was an incoherent scream, and it went on for some time.

  While Travis struggled futilely against his bounds, Smith took out the duct tape from his jacket pocket and wrapped it around the finger. It was a little difficult because Travis didn’t have very big fingers, and covering the small stump to stanch the spurting blood took more effort than Smith had expected. He had to put down the knife next to the severed piece of finger to make sure Travis wouldn’t bleed to death on him.

  “Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!” Travis was screaming. “Jesus Christ! What did you do? Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!”

  “Oh, relax,” Smith said. He pinched the duct tape to ensure there were no gaps for the blood to squirt through. Travis screamed louder as Smith put pressure on the wound. “You still have four perfectly good fingers left. Well, three and a thumb. And that’s not even counting the five on your other hand. What’s one less?”

  When he was done, and was sure Travis wouldn’t bleed to death on him, Smith picked the knife back up.

  “Now, I want you to concentrate,” Smith said. “Are you concentrating?”

  “Jesus Christ!” Travis said, half-shouting and half-screaming. “You’re fucking insane! You’re fucking insane, you know that?”

  “I need you to calm down.”

  “What? Fuck calming down! You cut off my finger, you goddamn maniac!”

  “I need you to calm down quickly.”

  “What? What? Fuck you!”

  Smith placed the cold—and now blood-smeared—edge of the knife against Travis’s middle finger.

  Travis shut up quickly and stopped moving entirely.

  “You calm now?” Smith asked.

  “Yes,” Travis said. Or squeaked out. It was mostly a squeak.

  Smith couldn’t see Travis’s face, but he assumed the other man was sweating despite it being quite chilly inside the shack. Travis’s entire body seemed suddenly frozen in place, incapable of even the slightest movement.

  “You ready to answer my questions?” Smith asked.

  “Yes,” Travis squeaked.

  “Question number one: Is the Jeep the only vehicle the Judge has at his disposal?”

  “Yes.”

  That was easy, Smith thought, before he said, “Question number two: Who is the most dangerous man among the Judge’s men?”

  Travis didn’t answer right away, but not, Smith was pretty sure, because he didn’t want to. The man was, in all likelihood, thinking about the answer. Smith could have confirmed that by coming out from behind Travis to glare at his face, but he didn’t want Travis to see him—or how weak he was feeling.

  Because he was feeling a little sick and wanted to vomit. Maybe it was the painkillers he’d been swallowing all day or the two he’d taken before leaving the building where he’d been sleeping for most of the day, where Mary was still waiting for him. Walking from there to here hadn’t felt very good, but Smith didn’t really know how taxing it’d be for his currently depleted health until now.

  Then again, maybe it was looking at the stump that used to be Travis’s forefinger. Smith was used to killing and death and blood, but he’d never actually had to interrogate someone like this before. He never had to. But he also knew that there was only one way to get Travis talking, and this was it.

  “Roman,” Travis finally said. “It’s Roman.”

  “The sniper,” Smith said.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s dead. Remember? I shot him at Lucky’s.”

  “Oh.”

  Smith smiled. Either Travis had forgotten about that little incident, or he thought Roman had survived. Not that it mattered.

  “Who’s next, after Roman?” Smith asked.

  “Stephens,” Travis said without hesitation.

  “Not you?”

  “Huh?”

  “You don’t think you’re very dangerous?”

  Travis shook his head. “I assumed we weren’t including me in this.”

  Smith chuckled. “Good point.”

  Travis might have swallowed. Smith saw his throat moving up and down slightly. “That’s it? That’s all you want to know?”

  “Are you kidding? I have about twenty more questions for you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do I even need to say it? Make me ask any of them more than once, and I’ll cut off another finger.”

  “No,” Travis said, shaking his head quickly, even violently. “No, you don’t have to say it. Just ask. Just ask!”

  Smith smiled. “Question number three…”

  He handed Lorna her knife back.

  “Jes
us Christ, what did you do to him?” Lorna asked as she stared at the knife, almost reluctant to reach for it.

  It wasn’t really the knife itself that made Lorna hesitant, but the blood on it. Travis’s blood. Fortunately, there wasn’t a lot, because Travis hadn’t forced Smith to cut off another finger. He’d been extremely compliant after losing just one.

  Roger and Gramps were also outside the shack, waiting for him. In total, Smith had spent about an hour inside, and by the time he stepped back out, the air had grown a whole lot chillier and night had fallen around them.

  It was dark, but it was easy to see the look on Gramps’s face. She was almost beaming. “How many fingers did you cut off?”

  “Just the one,” Smith said.

  “Just one?”

  “Yeah.”

  Gramps chortled. “Fucking pussy. I would have held out for at least three fingers.”

  Smith grinned at her. “He’s not as tough as you.”

  “No shit.”

  “What did he tell you?” Roger asked.

  “Everything,” Smith said.

  “Everything?”

  “Yeah, everything.”

  “So what now?”

  “Now, I go get some rest, because I don’t feel so good.”

  “What’s—” Roger began to ask but never finished.

  Or maybe he did finish, but Smith just didn’t hear him because he was too busy falling, falling—

  —and landing on the hard junkyard ground on his face, for God only knew how many times in the last week.

  Like all the other times, he was pretty sure this one looked pretty embarrassing, too.

  Twenty-Three

  “You really wanna do this?”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s dangerous, for one.”

  “Have you looked around you? Everything is dangerous out there.”

  “But this is more dangerous.”

  “How you figure?”

  “Well, for one, you’re going to drive right into a town where there are rifles on the rooftops waiting to pick you off.”

  “They gotta hit me first.”

  “All it’ll take is one lucky shot.”

  “You mean, unlucky shot?”

  “Either/or.”