Tokens

by Sam Sisavath

  He squinted at her, either because he had a hard time seeing through the semidarkness or he was trying very hard to read her.

  I’m just a little redheaded girl. What are you so afraid of?

  “Bullshit,” he said. “You’re trying to talk your way out of it. You’ll shoot me in the back the first chance you get.”

  “Not if you don’t give me the shotgun.”

  “You saying you don’t want it now?”

  “Yeah, I still want it. I need it to save Chris.” Before he could retort, she quickly added, “Here’s my final offer; stop me if you’ve heard it before. When morning comes, I go to the clinic just like we previously agreed and bring back what I find. In return, you give me the shotgun. After that, we go our separate ways.” This time, she paused to let him digest her words. “It’s the best deal you’re going to get.”

  “Just like that, huh?”

  “Yeah. Just like that.”

  “And the slayers?”

  “I already told you; I barely knew them.”

  “What about the campers?”

  “I barely knew them, too.”

  “And it matters diddly to you what we did to them? What I did to them?”

  “Like I said, you’re a piece of shit for what you did, but I can’t change anything that’s happened already. I’m trying to survive. Right now, this city is going to kill the both of us unless we work together.”

  Again, he took a few seconds before answering. “Nice try. But I don’t believe—”

  There was a soft, echoey bang from somewhere in the building. It wasn’t anywhere close to their position but near enough that they could both hear it, and Sullivan stopped in midsentence while his eyes turned slightly, leaving her for just a second—

  Now, now, now!

  She grabbed the knife by the handle and was pulling it out of her jacket sleeve when Sullivan began turning back to her, raising the gun from his lap at the same time.

  Shit! He’s too fast!

  She was cocking her right arm back as far as it would go to generate all the power she’d need when he fired.

  No!

  Despite the suppressor, the sound of the gunshot was a lot louder than she had anticipated. She couldn’t remember if it had been just as loud back in the classroom when he had killed the Raggedy Man or if the closed confines of the attic had increased the noise.

  There was something that sounded like a mild cough followed by a sharp sting on her left arm as the bullet found its mark. There was pain, but it wasn’t enough to stop Ana from finishing her cocking motion with her right arm.

  Sullivan fired again a split second later—another louder than expected pfft!—but this time the bullet missed her head by inches and embedded into the wall behind her. Before he could squeeze off a third shot, she nailed him in the left shoulder blade with the knife from six or seven feet away.

  The former Mayfield man recoiled, shouted, “Goddammit, woman!” and reached for the plastic handle of the knife jutting out of his shoulder.

  Ana was already lunging across the open space, ignoring the throbbing pain coming from her left arm, telling herself that if she didn’t get to him now now now Goddammit now now now! it was going to be too late.

  Sullivan was trying desperately to get a grip on the knife’s handle while simultaneously clutching his silenced pistol. She hadn’t counted on that, but the sight gave her even more hope.

  It didn’t take long for him to see her coming, and he gave up on the knife and was taking aim at her with his gun when, at the last second, Ana realized she wouldn’t get to the shotgun in time. Not only would she have to snatch it up from the floor, but she’d have to turn it around, too, and there was just no time. There was no time!

  So instead, she went for the SIG Sauer stuffed in front of Sullivan’s waistband even as he fired. There was another pfft!, followed by something buzzing! past her right ear. Ana ignored all of it (The gun! Get the gun, or you’re going to die!) and barreled into his chest, knocking him back and into the wall.

  “Bitch!” he shouted even as he tried to line up another shot.

  She grabbed the gun and pulled it out from his waistband and squeezed the trigger without really aiming. There was no time, and she was so close anyway—

  There was a loud bang! (Too loud. That was way too loud!) and Sullivan bucked slightly up from the floor before falling back down. Ana dropped the SIG and grabbed Sullivan’s gun by the long suppressor and yanked it out of his hand. It was surprisingly easy, and he hardly fought, but she wasn’t complaining as she stumbled backward, turning the gun around and pointing his own gun at him.

  She didn’t really have to. The only reason Sullivan hadn’t collapsed to the floor was the wall behind him. His face was white with pain, and he was clutching his stomach with both hands even as blood pumped through his fingers. His eyes were on her the entire time, his lips curled into something that looked like anger but could have just been—Oh, who was she kidding? It was pure, unadulterated hate.

  “Fucking bitch,” he whispered.

  “Yeah,” Ana said, before leaning forward and pulling the knife out of his shoulder.

  He grunted as a stream of blood sprayed the attic air. But that wound must not have hurt nearly as much, because Sullivan never took his hands away from his stomach.

  “Bitch,” he said again.

  Ana put the knife away, then picked up the shotgun and retreated all the way back to her side of the attic.

  “Fucking bitch,” Sullivan said.

  She continued to ignore him and turned toward the trapdoor, grabbed the ring handle, and swung it up. Fresh cold air swamped her immediately—or at least for the second or two it took her to step forward and drop through the opening.

  There was a ladder in the attic, but she couldn’t afford to use it. It would have taken about ten seconds—maybe five, if she was really fast—and she didn’t have that to spare. The gunshot had been loud. Too loud. And she already knew there was a Raggedy Man in the school—or had been earlier. Even if there wasn’t, they might be close enough to have heard the SIG. It was so deathly quiet out there that even an isolated bang would travel.

  Which left her little time. So, so little time.

  She landed in the supply closet on both feet and thought her legs might snap on contact, but thank God they didn’t. Thank God she was used to walking and running and was in as excellent physical shape as she could possibly be, and both legs absorbed the ten-foot drop with just the bare minimum of pain. But it was nothing compared to the pulsating sting coming from her left arm, where Sullivan had shot her.

  Ana shoved the suppressed handgun into her front waistband and was surprised by how impossibly heavy it was, how uncomfortable it felt. How in the world did Sullivan go around with the gun stuffed in his waistband like this? She might as well be carrying a heavy metal bat stuffed in her pants.

  With her left hand, Ana clutched the shotgun while she snatched up the first thing she saw—a filthy rag—from the floor. She wouldn’t have spotted it if it wasn’t white and didn’t stand out against the semidarkness of the room. She shoved it against her bleeding arm, flinching at the contact. She hadn’t gotten a good look at how bad the wound was, but there was probably a good reason the entire length of her arm was burning.

  Move, move, move!

  She pushed back the growing misery and exited the closet and stepped tentatively out into the darkened hallway. It was a lot colder out here, and her breath exploded into clouds of mist in front of her face despite her best efforts to control her breathing so she could focus on her hearing.

  Calm down. Jesus, calm down.

  There, the echoey thoomp-thoomp-thoomp! of heavy boots as they raced through the building toward her position.

  Already?

  Ana took off in the other direction. She was hurting all over, but she found that if she pictured Chris, still alive in a warehouse somewhere in the city waiting to be rescued, that she could ignore the pain. Not all o
f it, and it wasn’t going to be forever, but enough to carry her through the hallways, passing lockers and classrooms, and more lockers, and more classrooms…

  Stay alive. The girl’s dead if you don’t survive the night.

  So stay alive!

  Stay alive!

  Twenty-Two

  She was bleeding, but the rag—it used to be white but was mostly a pinkish color now—kept her from dripping blood and leaving a trail as she raced down the hallway and out a side door, careful not to let the door slam when it closed back up behind her. She was already out of breath, which was an indication she was either out of shape (Can’t be; not after the last few weeks) or she was weaker than she thought after everything she had gone through in the last twenty-four hours.

  The pain from her left arm where Sullivan had shot her (A graze. It’s just a graze. God, let it be just a graze.) would have been unbearable if she wasn’t struggling to simply breathe against the cold, hard Talico night. The tall grass in the fields that surrounded the school slapped at her legs, some reaching as high as her waistline. Ana bent over slightly as she ran, hoping that would lower her profile against the moonlight that pooled around her.

  She clutched the shotgun while checking that Sullivan’s pistol was still securely stuffed in her front waistband. She didn’t trust the gun not to fall right through her belt and down one of her pant legs.

  Sullivan…

  She couldn’t help but wonder if he was still alive in the attic, and if the Raggedy Men had found him after all the noise she had made. Sullivan was seriously hurt—it was hard to come through a gut shot—and in all likelihood, dead. But even if he somehow managed to survive, he wasn’t going to be a problem for her anymore.

  Better you than me, Sullivan.

  Her heart was racing with every step, but despite all the fatigue and pain and bruising that covered her from head to toe, Ana didn’t—couldn’t—stop. She had to get as far away from the school as possible, as fast as possible. Even more urgently, she had to find a suitable place to camp and treat her injuries.

  She wasn’t sure how long and how far she ran. It could have been half a mile or a whole mile, or way less than that. It was hard to get her bearings or know where she was going. All she could really do was focus on the shapes of buildings in front and around her until she finally located an alley entrance and slipped through, grateful to finally be out of the open.

  Ana moved through the dark corridor, keeping as quiet as she could manage, but constantly aware of her haggard breathing every step of the way. Something crunched under her boots, then something else cracked and she felt dampness along her ankles. She ignored everything and kept moving.

  She couldn’t stop. Stopping meant dying, and she couldn’t die. Not yet.

  Not yet.

  Then she found it. A barbershop. She had passed it twice before—once when she first entered the city limits, then again when she and Chris were fleeing the Dairy Queen to find refuge at the school. She had noticed it because of the striped “barber’s pole” at the front of the building. There was a similar barber’s pole sticker on the back door, nearly twenty or so percent of it scraped away by time and the elements, but there was still enough to stand out against the back alley that surrounded her like a cold blanket.

  She placed the shotgun against the wall and pressed her ear against the barbershop’s back door. She used the moment to catch her breath (When was the last time she stopped moving? She couldn’t remember.) all the while listening for something—anything—that could be present on the other side. She gave up after about ten seconds of fruitless effort; the only noise she could hear was her own racing heartbeat pounding in her ears.

  She tried the doorknob, and it moved without resistance.

  Ana glanced back in the direction of the school—or, at least, where she thought it was. The truth was she couldn’t see anything and could just barely make out the brick wall of another building behind her.

  She turned around, opened the door, and all but fell her way inside.

  It wasn’t bad. In fact, it could have been a lot worse. It wasn’t quite the graze she was hoping for, and although the bullet had taken a chunk of flesh with it, that was only because it had entered about an inch from the side. That had resulted in the unusually large blood loss that had weakened and left her dizzy as she settled into the back room of the barbershop.

  Ana sat next to the door, keeping it slightly ajar to use some of the moonlight that shone in through the large front windows so she could see what she was working with. She’d tossed the rag after locating an old cotton hand towel from the bathroom. There was no water to be found, so she had to make do with a lot of spit to clean up the blood just so she could get a really good look at Sullivan’s handiwork.

  The phrase It could have been a lot worse ran through her mind as she tore strips off the towel and made bandages out of them. She had blood on almost the entire length of her left arm, and plenty had splashed on her chin and the front of her clothes. Most of it was her own, but a generous amount came from Sullivan during their struggle. She shrugged the jacket back on, grimacing with the pain. The long sleeve would help keep the bandages in place. Absently, she thought it was funny that she could tell exactly where she’d been shot by the hole about two inches above the elbow joint.

  She was tired and wanted nothing more than to just lay down on the filthy linoleum floor and go to sleep, but she couldn’t allow herself that indulgence. She’d have to be satisfied with the two hours she’d managed back at the school before waking up to Sullivan’s gun pressed against her cheek.

  Better two hours than nothing.

  She fought back the drowsiness and concentrated on the shotgun and handgun. She took the magazine out of the pistol first, thought about thumbing out the rounds to count them, but didn’t think she would have the energy to put them back in afterward. Besides, the magazine, and the gun once she reloaded it, felt pretty heavy, so that had to be a good sign, right? She didn’t have to expend as much energy figuring out the shotgun. Sullivan had already told her all about it, with the most important part being the four shells it still held.

  She peered through the open door and out the front of the barbershop. There was a counter with a cash register separating her and the rest of the building, but she could see the top half of the glass walls on the other side. A quick scout of the place had revealed what she already knew—anything that was worth taking was gone. Everything, anyway, except for an old rough hand towel in the bathroom.

  Thank God no one wanted that.

  Ana slowly eased the door closed, then scooted backward across the smooth floor until her back was against the wall. She placed the shotgun in her lap, then put Sullivan’s handgun with the suppressor still attached on the floor next to her. There were no windows inside the back office, so it was hard to see much of anything except for the sharp corners of a cherry oak desk on the other side and a wall calendar that was forever frozen from six years ago.

  All the running and fighting (and killing) had worn her down, and Ana found it easy to close her eyes. Forcing them back open in order to stay awake was the hard part, but she did it anyway because she couldn’t afford to go to sleep.

  It worked for the first dozen or so times.

  Then it didn’t.

  She opened her eyes to sunlight swarming the backroom, her mind screaming, You fell asleep! You idiot, you fell asleep!

  But she was alone, and the Remington shotgun, along with the pistol, were where they were supposed to be.

  Lucky. You got lucky.

  Ana ran her dirty hands over her equally stained face and allowed herself to slowly decompress. The morning calm, like a sea of light around her, helped with the cold weather, but she was still glad for the jacket.

  She sat still and didn’t move for the next ten minutes.

  Then thirty…

  Then an hour…

  Finally, she picked up the gun and gave it a good, long look. She hadn’t ha
d the chance before and wanted to make sure there was nothing out of the ordinary about it besides the long suppressor at the end.

  She hadn’t seen it last night, but there was writing on the gun. Smith & Wesson was written along the length of the barrel, along with Springfield, MA, U.S.A. underneath that. There was more writing on the suppressor, but the letters were too small and Ana didn’t bother getting a closer look. The damned thing worked if last night was any indication, and that was all she needed to know.

  Ana picked herself up from the floor, groaning with every inch. Every joint on both legs popped as she moved. There was still pain from her left arm, but most of it had gone numb. That was good. She’d take numb over soul-wrenching pain any day of the week. When she was finally on her feet, she picked up the Smith & Wesson and put it into her waistband behind her back. It was a better fit, and she was less afraid it would fall down whenever she moved.

  She eased the door open and peered out. There was so much sunlight in the rest of the barbershop that she wasn’t ready for it and blinked a half dozen or so times before her eyes finally adjusted. Ana slipped outside and hurried over to the counter nearby. She kneeled behind it and listened.

  Wind outside, howling through the buildings, but nothing else.

  She peered over the counter, out the windows, and into the streets. It was empty this morning, just as it had been last night, with no signs of activity. And most of all, no Raggedy Men. At least, none that she could see.

  But they were out there. Somewhere…

  Ana sat back down on the floor and leaned against the counter. She was very aware of her current weakened state, a combination of a lot of things, from her injuries to the lack of food and water. Her mouth was parched, and there may or may not have been a slug worming its way up and down her throat. She had difficulty generating even a little bit of saliva to wet her lips and wondered if she had used it all up last night.

  And yet, she couldn’t just leave Talico. Not with Chris still out there. If she knew for sure that the girl was dead, then maybe Ana could have convinced herself to run to the city limits instead of back into it last night.