by Sam Sisavath
Sniper!
She snapped to her feet and looked south, thought, Jesus, because there was nothing in front of her except open prairie. There wasn’t even a dying scrub tree for her to run to and attempt to hide behind.
Goddammit, why is this fucking state so flat?
She glanced back—and saw the same thing.
Jesus Christ, God, give me a tree or something!
But there was just flat, empty Oklahoma countryside. There were mountains, but they were far, far in the distance and of no use to her.
Another crack! and this time instead of a cloud of dirt at her feet, there was the zip! of something buzzing past her right ear.
A bullet. That was a bullet!
She turned and ran even before she knew she had made the decision.
Where are you going?
Who cares! Just run!
She summoned everything she had to run faster, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. She was already breathing hard, her chest pounding, but she was still moving too slow, dragged down by—
The pack. It was too heavy because it was full of things she needed—like food, like medical supplies, like maps—
Too heavy! It’s too heavy! I’ll never make it!
As if to encourage her, another crack!, followed by another zip! past her head.
Ana pulled off the pack and let it drop and noticed the increased speed right away. Or, at least, she thought she was going faster than before. For all she knew, it could have been entirely in her head.
Don’t let it all be in my head. Don’t let it all be in my head!
The shooting had stopped, but she didn’t let that slow her down. She glanced over her shoulder, but there was nothing back there. No, that wasn’t true. There wasn’t nothing—there was a wounded horse lying on the ground, wheezing as it struggled to breathe, and bright sunlight flashing in her eyes.
The shooter, whoever he was, had smartly positioned himself with the sun at his back—
Crack!, followed by dirt kicking up from the ground to her left.
She looked forward and kept running, knowing full well there was only one direction to go—east.
Toward Talico.
There was nothing but open fields everywhere else. Long, long stretches of nothing, and no place to hide.
What were the chances the slayers were wrong about Talico? That Wash was being overly dramatic when he told her to avoid cities at every opportunity?
“They’re not happy places, Ana. Best to avoid them at all costs, if possible.”
He was talking about big cities like Oklahoma City, like Tulsa, like Norman. Surely he wasn’t referring to a place like Talico, which was barely a blip on a map? How many people lived in this place? A few hundred? A couple of thousand, at the most? How bad could it be?
It was still daylight, with hours to go before nightfall, and she wouldn’t necessarily have to hide in Talico forever. A few hours, at the most, or until the shooter got what he wanted. Which was what? The bags on the horse. The pack that she had dropped. There was nothing else on her that was worth pursuing her into Talico for.
So how bad could Talico really be?
“The towns with red X’s over them?” Shelby had said. “Do I even have to explain what those X’s mean?”
And Talico had an X over it on the map…
The actual city itself loomed in front of her, growing larger with every breath she struggled to get through her lungs. There were a lot more buildings than she had given it credit for—a few of them were two stories, and one might have been bigger than that. The water tower in the background began to lose its rocket shape and took on a more traditional form—a large cylindrical ball at the top, with a thin base holding it up.
Ana risked a glance back over her shoulder. She might have caught something that looked like a human figure flickering against the sunlight like a mirage, but it was hard to tell with the sun in her eyes.
She looked forward instead, focusing on the city as it continued to expand in length and width in front of her.
“The towns with red X’s over them? Do I even have to explain what those X’s mean?”
Please be wrong, Shelby, she thought as she ran, as her legs pistoned and her heartbeat slammed against her chest. God, please be wrong…
Fifteen
Talico was a self-contained city in the middle of nowhere. The state highway ran right through its middle, and as a result most of the commercial buildings were confined to those areas, including a couple of motels, strip malls, and not one but two Dairy Queens two blocks apart. There was a school behind her, next to a baseball field covered in overgrown grass that she’d had to run across in order to reach what she assumed was the center of town.
Ana was in one of the Dairy Queens, peering out from behind a window at the four-lane highway outside. Somewhere out there was the man who had shot her horse out from under her and then tried to kill her as she fled. A couple of those rounds had come too close to this being anything but attempted murder.
She was glad she’d kept the SIG Sauer, which she held next to her with the hammer cocked back. Whoever was out there, he wasn’t taking prisoners, and the “poor unarmed girl traveling alone in a dangerous world” routine wasn’t going to work on him. It was a little hard to convince someone you weren’t a threat when they were trying to kill you from a distance.
The fact that this was the second time in as many days that she’d almost died at the hands of a sniper didn’t escape her. What made it worse was that she didn’t have to be here; in fact, she should have been on her way back to Newton with Em right now.
So why aren’t you? that voice in the back of her mind asked.
Because of Wash. Because she owed him.
And because…maybe more.
Goddamn you, Wash. You should have waited for me. Why didn’t you wait for me?
She glanced back toward the rear of the restaurant. She’d closed and locked the door, but there wasn’t truly anything holding anyone back if they wanted in. A shotgun blast would take out the lock. Or a hard enough kick would equally suffice.
She changed up her grip on the SIG and returned her nervous gaze to the street outside. It was quiet, and the vehicles along the shoulders of the road (someone had clearly pushed them out of the way a long time ago) hadn’t moved since the last time she looked. There was a blue pickup truck out there, along with a red sedan, a bicycle missing its front tire for some reason, and plenty more. None of them would work, of course. None of them would whisk her out of here.
Seeking shelter in the Dairy Queen had allowed her to catch her breath, which she needed after the long dash across the open fields and into town. She had glimpsed homes on the east side of the roads. There were no ranches or farmland anywhere nearby, unlike Mayfield. Whatever Talico was or had been before The Purge, she had a feeling she was looking at all of it right now. This place hadn’t really changed, except for its population.
Whoever the sniper was, either he hadn’t followed her into Talico, or he was taking his sweet time. Maybe he already had what he wanted—the supplies she’d left behind with the thoroughbred—and wouldn’t be pursuing her into the city. That was the best-case scenario, anyway. She didn’t want to think about the worst-case.
Ten more silent minutes ticked by on her watch.
Then twenty…
Ana gave herself permission to finally relax a little when the view outside remained empty of anything even closely resembling a man with a rifle. There was absolutely nothing out there. At least, nothing alive. Even the dogs and cats, which had begun to resurface since The Purge, were nowhere to be seen in Talico.
I guess even they’re too smart to come into this city.
That led her back to the X on the map Shelby had given her. (The map that she’d tossed away, along with everything in the pack… Shit.) Why had the slayers marked it as a place to avoid? There had to be a reason.
As she scanned the visible parts of the city from the safet
y of her window, Ana couldn’t find anything that looked like a threat. There were no bodies out there and nothing to indicate ghouls were using the place as a nest. The world outside just looked…empty.
So what was it? What was the reason for the big X?
“My map is different than yours,” Wash had said about his own slayer-coded map. “When slayers meet up, we usually spend some time trading information about what’s out there. Ghoul activity, potential jobs, quicksands. Stuff like that.”
But there was nothing out there that was setting off her alarms. Even the Dairy Queen she was in was mostly intact. Almost all of the buildings she’d passed to get here were in the same situation, including the car dealership just up the street and the pawnshop directly across from her. Talico, from what she’d seen as she raced through it, was unspectacular in every way.
So what was the reason for the big red X? That was the question that lingered in the back of her mind.
Ana checked her watch again. Ten minutes before three. She’d made great time since leaving Shelby and the others behind, and if everything had gone according to plan, should have been on the lookout for shelter from the coming nightfall about now. If everything had gone according to plan.
She thought about Gabriel and what he’d said about best-laid plans.
“As the saying goes, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”
You got that right, you piece of sh—
A sudden flicker of movement from the street outside made her stop breathing entirely. She would have missed it if she wasn’t so wired and her eyes weren’t constantly shifting, seeking out something—anything—out there that might even give off a mild sign of being a potential threat.
Her body tightened as she pushed against the wall she was already leaning on, literally hugging the peeling wallpaper while doing her best to lower her profile even further. Thank God she already had a good angle to see out of the restaurant without having to move too much, because if she could see out at them, there was a very good chance they could see in at her if they decided to look hard enough.
“They” being three men that had appeared out of nowhere (Where the hell did they come from?) about fifty yards from the Dairy Queen and were walking up the street. She knew they were men from the broadness of their shoulders and thick forms. That, and the way they moved. They didn’t so much as walk as they strode up the empty road like they owned the place.
I guess Talico isn’t so empty after all.
The men were still too far from her position for her to make out more than just how big and broad their shoulders were. Not that it would have been easy if they were closer given what they were wearing. All three were covered in dark trench coats with the tails dragging behind them. They wore gloves and boots, and their faces were covered with rags. Or they looked like rags. Whatever they were, the fabrics wrapped around their foreheads, noses, and mouths, leaving just an oval-shaped slit for their eyes.
One of them was dragging a baseball bat along the ground, but the other two didn’t look to be armed. Or at least she couldn’t see anything in their hands or on their persons, which didn’t make a lot of sense. Everyone was armed these days. Even she had a gun.
She could have gotten a better look at them when they neared, then walked by her and the Dairy Queen, but that would have required shifting her position and exposing herself more than she was comfortable with. Right now they couldn’t see her, and she wanted to keep it that way.
Ana only allowed herself to move, sliding along the length of the wall to follow them, when they were twenty yards or more down the block and their backs were to her. The three men continued on, oblivious to her presence, their dark shapes still as menacing from behind as they had been from the front. She couldn’t help but wonder what exactly those coats of theirs were made of. They looked frayed and almost falling apart, not to mention raggedy.
Now that she had a better angle and could stare long and hard without fear of being caught, it was easier to make out that besides the baseball bat, the other two were carrying a crowbar that looked wrapped up in black tape and a metal rod that the man held like it was a sword.
A baseball bat, a crowbar, and a metal stick.
But no guns. Or knives. Not that you couldn’t bludgeon a man to death with any of those three weapons, but why would anyone choose them when there were so many other options available? These men almost looked like a street gang. Was that what they were?
Ana watched them disappear up the street at the same unhurried pace. They moved so deliberately that she still couldn’t figure out how they had just appeared out of nowhere earlier.
Where the hell did they come from?
They continued on, never breaking formation to check any of the structures around them. Either they didn’t care, or… Well, she didn’t really know what the other possibilities were. So far, nothing about Talico made sense, including the sniper who hadn’t followed her in as far as she knew.
Sunlight glinting off the windows of a Valero gas station across the street drew her eyes. There was still a lot of light out there, but it wouldn’t last forever. That thought prompted her to glance down at her watch again.
Twenty minutes after three. Three hours, give or take, before sundown.
Normally that would have been cutting it close, but here, trapped in Talico with a sniper somewhere out there and three guys in coats seemingly patrolling the streets, things were a little more complicated. But at least no one was shooting or chasing her, so there was that. If she had to spend the night in the Dairy Queen, she could make it work. She’d spent nights in less secure places. Much, much less secure places. Compared to those times, having four walls was an upgrade. If necessary, there was that supply closet near the back with the very solid door…
She sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall. Her stomach growled, and she thought about the pack she’d ditched out there. Did she really have to do that? The answer was an unqualified yes at the time. But now, sitting in a restaurant with nothing edible around her, she was starting to question that decision. Thank God she had eaten earlier in the day. That meal, along with the breakfast at Mayfield, could last her for a few more days, if necessary. She wasn’t looking forward to testing out that theory, though.
I should have stayed in Kanter 11 with Em.
“Shoulda, woulda, coulda,” she whispered quietly to herself. “Should have done a lot of things, girl. A lot of things.”
She stared at the dirty floor, noticing the layers of dust that covered it, that were only broken by her boot prints.
Shit.
She had to be more careful in the future. If anyone had come inside the building, they would have immediately known the place wasn’t as empty as it should have been just by looking at the floor and seeing her prints—
A loud, piercing scream from outside made her snap her head back up. It had come from the same direction that the three men in coats had been headed earlier.
Ana stood up and was moving to get a better look out the window next to her when the pop-pop-pop of gunfire rattled the city of Talico and seemed to keep going and going.
Five seconds…
Ten…
At around twelve seconds, the last gunshot began to fade, and in its place was the same dead silence that had been her companion for the last hour or so since she entered Talico.
What just happened?
She moved over to another window to get a better look down the street. There was nothing out there besides the same auto body shop next door and the empty four-lane highway that cut across the city. There was a red van parked along the shoulder that she hadn’t seen before, along with newspaper debris clinging to a fence. But that was it.
And yet someone had screamed. Then someone had fired automatic rifles. She was sure there had been more than one. It would have been easier if she could go outside to look for answers, but the problem with that was the going outside part. There was no way she was going to voluntar
ily expose herself unless she absolutely had to. Whoever was out there, whoever had screamed and fired those guns, was on their own.
I learned my lesson back at Mayfield, thank you very much.
Ana remained at the window, looking out from behind cover, hoping to hear or see something that might give her some hints as to what had happened. If she knew, then she could actively avoid getting involved. The lack of clues left her annoyed and anxious at the same time, and the next half hour seemed to drag on endlessly…
To keep herself occupied and her mind focused on her immediate surroundings, Ana painstakingly went through every room and pantry and shelf in the Dairy Queen, hoping for something that might be edible, that she might have missed the first time she scoured the place. But there was nothing that even remotely came close to fitting the bill. Five years since The Walk Out and six years since The Purge had left the restaurant a barren wasteland of rotted food, with anything and everything that could be eaten or taken, already eaten and taken. Even the packages of condiments that weren’t yet open were gone, and those that weren’t were lying on the floor, with their contents spread and faded around them. For some reason, someone had even emptied the cash register, along with a small safety deposit box in the manager’s office in the back.
Around four-thirty, Ana decided there wasn’t going to be anything left to find and settled down for the night. That meant looking for a better spot than the back closet she’d noted earlier, but as with her search for food, came up empty.
Supply closet it is.
She loitered in the dining area while there was still sunlight, keeping as low a profile as possible and staying away from the windows most of the time to limit her exposure. There had been enough dirt in the place when she showed up that she was convinced no one had entered the restaurant for a long time. If not a few years, then a lot of months; enough time for the counters, booths, and kitchen appliances to get a new coat of dust.