by Sam Sisavath
If he wants to make sure you live through this, why are you fighting it? that familiar voice asked somewhere at the back of her mind.
It was a good point. Besides, she had a very good reason to ensure that she survived this: Reaching Texas, finding Wash, and then, when she’d returned the favor by helping him do whatever it was he was dead set on doing, return to Emily and take her home.
That last one was the real goal. The only goal.
She took the small SIG Sauer out of her jacket pocket and held it in her palm. She had small hands, but the gun fit almost perfectly anyway. Too bad she hadn’t insisted Chuck give her more than one magazine for the pistol. Six shots. That was all she had for now.
Better make them count, I guess.
The slight quaking underneath her boots was becoming more insistent, and their side of the parked Ford was starting to tremble more noticeably as the riders grew nearer. If that alarmed Chuck at all, she couldn’t tell by the way he remained kneeling next to the front driver-side tire with one knee in the dirt. Behind her, Shelby was squatting next to the back bumper, still looking through his rifle’s scope. The way both men were handling the chaos that had befallen them made her wish she’d had them at her side when she was chasing after Mathison. Wash had been a great stand-in, but if she’d had Chuck, Shelby, and Randall along, too…
“Give me a sitrep, Shelby,” Chuck said after a while.
“One hundred meters and closing,” Shelby said.
“Still just three riders?”
“Still just three riders, boss.”
“They’re making a hell of a mess out there for just three riders.”
“Still just three riders, though.”
Ana wanted to ask Are you sure? but then remembered Shelby was the first one to hear the horses coming. Maybe it was his youth, but Shelby just had better ears and eyesight than all of them.
Oh, to be young again, she thought when she turned back to Chuck and found him staring at her.
She mouthed “What?”
“If there’s shooting, Shelby and I will take out as many of them as we can,” Chuck said. “If we don’t get all of them, it’ll be up to you to dispatch the leftovers. After that, you get in this truck and you drive and don’t stop.”
“Where would I drive to?”
“Mayfield.”
“But that’ll mean going through the shooters.”
“It’s better than backtracking to the highway.” He banged his fist on the Ford. “She’ll get you five—maybe six miles, if you’re lucky—on two tires. After that, you’ll be on your own and have to fight however many are left out there. Alone. But if you reach Mayfield, it’s a different story.”
Ana sighed. “So let’s hope those guys coming toward us are friendlies and I don’t have to do any of that.”
Chuck grinned. “Adapt or perish, kid. Someone real smart once told me that.”
“Fifty meters,” Shelby called out behind her. Then, “Forty…”
Chuck nodded at her as if to say, Here goes nothing, before he turned around, seemed to count silently to himself again—“One, two, three…”—then stood up behind the hood and took aim with his rifle.
There was a single gunshot—pop!—but Ana was ready for it, because the shot had come from Chuck’s rifle. It echoed, devouring the sound of approaching horses for a few seconds until…
The Oklahoma countryside was suddenly dead quiet again.
Well, almost quiet. She could hear her heavy breathing and the loud thumping in her chest.
“That’s far enough!” Chuck shouted.
Ana clenched her teeth and waited for return fire—either from the horsemen that were so close to them now that she thought she could taste all the dirt and dust their horses had kicked up as they approached, or the snipers that had taken shots at them earlier.
Except it didn’t happen, and Chuck remained standing.
When she glanced back at Shelby, the young man was crouched next to the bumper and using his rifle’s scope to look out. He did it in such a way that only his weapon was exposed. It was an awkward angle, but he seemed to have done it before.
“Don’t shoot!” a voice shouted from the other side of the truck. It sounded very close. Too close, in fact. Hadn’t Shelby said they were still forty meters away just before Chuck acted?
No, that wasn’t quite right. Chuck had counted down before he made his move, which probably put the riders at…thirty, maybe twenty meters from them? Was twenty meters a long way? How long was that in football field terms?
“Give me one good reason why!” Chuck was shouting back at the riders.
“We’re not here to fight you,” the same voice answered him. “We’re from Mayfield. Heard shooting and came over to see if we could lend a hand. From the looks of it, the answer’s yes.”
“I’ll be the judge of that!” Chuck said. “How many of you are there?”
“What you see is what you get,” the voice said.
“What about the shooter?”
“What shooter?”
“The one that shot up our truck?”
“We don’t know anything about that.”
“He was laying in wait in the same direction you came from.”
Lying in wait, Ana thought, but decided Chuck probably didn’t need her correcting his grammar right about now, and kept quiet.
“We didn’t see anyone on the way here,” the stranger said. There was a brief moment of silence before the man continued. “I swear, mister. We’re here to help. Heard the shooting all the way from town. Sounds travel these days, especially out here.”
Ana couldn’t tell if Chuck was convinced or not. Then again, she could only see one side of his face as he kept aim at the three riders in front of them with his rifle.
“Look,” the stranger said, “if you don’t want our help, that’s fine and dandy with us. We’ll turn around and go right back to town. No skin off our noses.”
“You from Mayfield?” Chuck asked.
“That’s what I said.” A beat, then, “Now, do you want help or not?”
“Only if you put your guns down.”
“That’s not gonna happen. You won’t put your guns down, and neither will we. Ain’t no one got time for that, mister. You want help or not?”
“Well, shit. How am I gonna trust you, then?”
Someone laughed. Ana assumed it was one of the three riders.
“I got a better idea,” the same unseen voice said. “Can that truck of yours still drive?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Chuck said.
“Well, if it can, you get in it and ride to Mayfield with us. Behind us, if it’ll make you feel all safe like. That way, you can keep an eye on us the entire time. It looks in bad shape, but I’m guessing it should make it. Or close enough.”
“And drive right through your ambush up ahead?” Chuck asked.
The man laughed again. “Mister, you can stay out here all day and night if you want, I don’t really care. We came out here to do the Christian thing and lend a hand, but if you don’t want it, that’s up to you. We’ll be on our way now.”
“Wait,” Chuck said.
“What now?” the man asked.
“Give us five minutes to get ready to move.”
“All right, then,” the man said.
Chuck lowered his rifle and kneeled down next to the front tire. “Shelby, keep an eye on them.”
“Will do,” Shelby said.
Chuck looked to Ana. “I don’t think they’re the killers.”
“How do you know that?” Ana asked.
“They don’t look like the type.”
“You know what killers look like?”
“How long have you been out here, kid? I mean, really been out here?”
“I’ve been around…”
“I’m sure you have, but so have I. More than you, I’m willing to bet.”
That’s debatable, Ana thought.
“I’ve run across a lot of people,�
� Chuck was saying. “Slayers, regular citizens; sometimes the worst of the worst. Trust me when I tell you, I can sniff out a killer a mile away.” He nodded his head toward the hood. “These three don’t give off that scent.”
She thought about Mark, about how she knew he was a bad seed as soon as she saw him. Even so, the idea of blindly trusting three strangers after all they’d been subjected to, after what had happened to Randall…
Ana sighed. “You better be right about this.”
Chuck nodded. “I am. Trust me.”
Sorry, Chuck, but the only person I trust is me…and maybe one other person, but he’s not here right now, Ana thought, but she nodded back at Chuck and said, “I’ll keep my gun in my jacket pocket.”
“Damn right you are.” Chuck grinned before standing back up. He turned around to face the riders—or at least Ana assumed the riders were still somewhere on the other side of the Ford. “We got a wounded man. It’s gonna take time for us to load him into the truck.”
“So more than five minutes?” the same unseen voice asked.
“More like ten. Maybe fifteen.”
“Hey, take as long as you want. You need a hand?”
“No, we got it handled. I’ll let you know when we’re ready to move.”
“Just holler,” the man said.
Chuck looked down at Ana and nodded, then did the same to Shelby. “Help me with Rand, Shelby.”
The young slayer finally came out of his position and hurried over, while Ana moved to get out of his way. She was still leery of gunshots when she stood up and looked across the Ford’s truck bed at the riders.
Shelby was right: There were just three people on the other side. One was a woman, and she, along with a big, burly man, flanked the figure who Ana assumed was their leader. The man sat on a big thoroughbred in the center, wearing jeans and chaps. The big Stetson hat on his head completed his cowboy wardrobe. The gun belt didn’t hurt the image, and neither did the pistol in the holster. Except the gun wasn’t one of those six-shot revolvers but a semiautomatic.
The cowboy sat on top of a big chestnut thoroughbred and tipped his hat at her. “Ma’am,” he said, and she recognized his voice as the same one that had been speaking to Chuck this entire time.
My, my, a cowboy to the rescue, Ana thought as she smiled back at him. I’ve always wanted my very own cowboy…
Seven
The cowboy’s name was Gabriel, and he rode in front of them along with the other two, Kelloway (the woman) and Mitchell (the other man). Kelloway was in her thirties, short blonde hair and freckles to complement pale cheeks that looked even paler in the sunlight. Mitchell looked a little bit like Chuck, except older and more covered in dust.
They rode their mounts at a trot across the uneven Oklahoma plains while the Ford, moving on two good wheels and tilted to one side as a result, followed behind them. The vehicle’s two blown tires dug divots into the ground and threw up an obscene amount of cloud in its wake. There was so much, in fact, that every time Ana looked out at the front passenger side mirror, all she could see was a brown wall behind them.
Now that’s what I call a brownout…
She concentrated on Randall instead. He lay on two-thirds of the backseat next to her while Shelby occupied the front passenger seat and Chuck drove. Which was to say, Chuck spent most of his time fighting the steering wheel to keep the truck moving straight ahead. They were going slow as a result, only keeping pace with Mayfield’s riders because the horses weren’t going full-speed for their benefit. Randall hadn’t woken up when the other two slayers loaded him into the Ford, but he had groaned and continued to make noises. The combination of morphine and blood loss kept him under, which at the moment was the best thing for all of them, Randall himself included.
As it turned out, Gabriel had been telling the truth and it wasn’t a trap. Whoever had shot at them earlier was either gone or remained hidden when Mayfield’s cowboys rode out to investigate the reports of gunfire. Ana didn’t care either way, as long as no one was shooting anywhere in her direction.
After a while, she began to make out buildings popping up from the ground in the distance. The town of Mayfield looked insignificant against the mountains in the background, which continued to give off the appearance of a water painting instead of anything real. It was easy to imagine the whole thing as some kind of artificial backdrop, that maybe they were driving through a fake Hollywood set.
“How is he?” Chuck asked, throwing a quick glance over his shoulder.
“He’s stable,” Ana said. “But we’re going to have to take care of his wound once we get to Mayfield.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll have a doctor.”
“If they don’t, I can take care of it.”
“You know how?”
“I’ve been around my share of bullet holes, yeah.”
“You’re full of surprises, kid.”
You don’t know the half of it, Ana thought, but she smiled back at him instead and said, “You’ve been to Mayfield before?”
“No, but it’s on the map, so past slayers have gone through it. As far as I know, there’s no red flags.”
Ana looked out the front windshield at the three riders leading the way. “What about them?”
“What about them?” Chuck said.
“You still trust them?”
“I don’t have a choice right now. Neither does Randall.”
Ana nodded before briefly patting her jacket pocket to make sure the gun was still inside. It was, and she couldn’t help but smile to herself. She’d never been keen to spend time around guns. She’d gone to great lengths to avoid becoming familiar with them, but the last few days had forced her to get comfortable real fast. She still hadn’t decided if that was a good thing or not.
“What’s he doing?” Shelby said from the seat in front of her.
Ana looked up as one of the horses broke away from the pack and moved over to the left side, slowing down just enough to let the Ford catch up to it. It was the head cowboy, Gabriel. He was holding the reins of his horse with one hand while the other kept his Stetson in place.
“Keep an eye on him, Shelby,” Chuck said.
“You smell something fishy?” Shelby asked.
“No, but let’s stay frosty anyway.”
“Gotcha, boss.”
The truck finally reached Gabriel, who rode his thoroughbred on the left side of the vehicle, away from the clouds of dust that continued to fill up the air on the right side. The cowboy had to lower himself slightly to look in through the broken window at Shelby and Chuck.
“How are things going?” Gabriel asked, shouting to be heard over the engine and noise.
“It’s going,” Chuck said.
“How’s your man doing?”
“He’s still alive. You have a doctor in town?”
“Got two.”
“Two? No one has two doctors.”
“We do. I guess we’re just lucky.” He slowed down a bit more until he was now riding alongside the backseat and looking through the window at Ana. “You doing okay back there, ma’am?”
She looked out at him. “Ana.”
“What’s that?”
“My name’s Ana. You can stop calling me ma’am.”
“My ma taught me to always call a woman ma’am, ma’am. It’s the proper thing to do, end of the world or not.”
“I didn’t expect to find an honest-to-goodness cowboy at the end of the world.”
“Stranger things have happened.”
He smiled, tipped his hat, and rode on forward until he had rejoined his two companions.
“I think he likes you,” Shelby said, turning around in his seat and grinning at her.
“What gave you that idea?” Ana asked.
“He’s got good taste,” Chuck said.
Ana rolled her eyes. “Give it a rest, boys. Let’s just get into town and make sure Randall survives first before we start sending out the wedding invitations.”<
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According to Gabriel, Mayfield was once a booming mining town in the mid-1800s, with the railroad at one point even making plans to lay tracks through it. But all that changed when the metal deposits dried up, and the place was on the verge of being completely abandoned by the early 1900s. It somehow survived anyway, hanging on for dear life through both World Wars and eventually making something of a resurgence, thanks to a half dozen local ranchers that had decided to settle in the area in the 1960s.
Then The Purge happened and Mayfield became O61—another ghoul collaborator town in a world full of them. Post-Walk Out, the survivors reclaimed the old name, and Mayfield was reborn. Thanks to a stream that flowed from a nearby mountain, there were generous amounts of grass for the farmland and the cattle that had made it through the dark times. In many ways, a town that was once on the precipice of death had suddenly become a prize, at least to those who knew it existed.
Ana saw some of those herds of cattle grazing on green fields now, along with the cowboys minding them as the Ford drove along a dirt road—the only way into Mayfield from its western end. There was a main country road that connected it to another state highway, but that was on the east side of town.
“I bet they eat plenty of steaks here,” Shelby said as they passed healthy-looking cows that lifted their heads to glare after them. “Big, fat steaks. Man, it’s been a while since I’ve had steak.”
“You hungry, Shelby?” Chuck asked with a grin.
“Aren’t you?”
“I could use a good steak, I won’t lie. It’s definitely been a while.”
“Like years. Years and years,” Shelby said, licking his lips.
Like most former ghoul collaborator towns she’d been through—including her own Newton—Mayfield was small and contained, which allowed it to be easily resettled by people who weren’t local to the area. The residents had added to the place since, that much was obvious, but it still only had a single main road that all the buildings, alleyways, and side streets were connected to.
As they reached the first few buildings, Gabriel slowed down and waved them toward a garage on their right. Chuck turned into the lot, passing gas pumps that didn’t look as if they had been used for a few years, and where two men in overalls waited for them. Apparently the cowboy had radioed ahead, and they were expected.