by Sam Sisavath
Either/or.
Just to be sure, he’d just shoot them in the head until there wasn’t a head anymore.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
CHAPTER 22
GABY
THE CEMETERY DIDN’T look any less inhospitable in the daylight, but that could just have been the plentiful weeds and scattered debris that had overtaken the place since it had last seen a caretaker. Nothing ever looked the same these days; the cities were always too hollow and unwelcoming, the houses too dark and depressing, and the streets too wide and empty. There was no reason a place where the dead resided would be any different.
Gaby kept to the winding path, staying out of the grass with the girls following closely behind. Donna kept pace behind her, followed by Milly, and Claire brought up the rear with her Winchester clutched tightly in her small hands. Though Donna was older and taller, Gaby had no doubt that when things went sideways—and they usually did, these days—she wanted Claire to be the one standing beside her, shooting.
She didn’t remember the front gate of the cemetery being as far as it was or the place being so big. She couldn’t see Route 13 from here, but the sunlight danced off a pair of large buildings to her right. Not far, maybe half a mile.
“What’s over there?” she asked, pointing.
“Dunbar Airport,” Donna said.
“Big airport?”
“Not really. Just a couple of hangars and a waiting room in one of the buildings. Not much to look at, and most of the planes that land there are those small ones. Why?”
“It’s always a good idea to reload on supplies whenever you can.”
“I remember a couple of vending machines. Drinks and stuff.”
Gaby shook her head. “Not worth walking all that way for just drinks and stuff. We’ll make do with the supplies we took from the VFW hall.”
“You think that’ll be enough?”
If it’s not, that means we didn’t make it to Song Island, Gaby thought, but she decided the girls didn’t need to hear that. She said instead, “It should be.”
She looked back at Milly. The girl had been quiet since they woke up in the crypt this morning. Not the best morning she’d faced before or since the end of the world, and it had to be worse for Milly, who had just lost Peter. The two of them weren’t related, but they shared a stronger connection, one created from survival. She knew what that was like. Her link with Will, Danny, and Lara—those were the kind of bonds she could never have created with her friends or even family before The Purge. It was the kind cemented in fire and combat.
“Hey, are you hungry?” she asked Milly.
The girl looked up, big eyes peering through long, dirty hair. She shook her head silently.
“If you are, tell me, and we can stop and eat again,” Gaby said.
Milly nodded. She looked as if she were moving in a stupor, not connected to the world the way Gaby and the sisters were. Gaby would have to keep an eye on her. She owed Peter that at least.
“Claire said you guys had been wanting to leave Dunbar even before I arrived,” she said to Donna. “Why?”
“It’s Claire’s idea,” Donna said. “Ever since she heard that radio broadcast, she’s been obsessed with it. She plays the tape recorder once every hour, and to anyone who’ll listen. It’s kind of annoying.”
“That’s the only reason?”
Donna shrugged. “Harrison… I never liked him. My dad used to teach us about what kind of man to stay away from. You know, when we got older. Harrison fit his description perfectly.”
“So why did you stay with them for so long?”
“Dunbar’s the only place we know. And besides, the others were pretty cool. Rachel, for one.”
“Was she back at the VFW hall?”
“No. She was outside with Harrison. She’s like his second-in-command.”
“She’s really your friend?” Claire asked from behind them. “The woman on the radio?”
“She is,” Gaby said.
“She sounds cool.”
“She is pretty cool.”
“And the island is safe?” Donna said doubtfully. “The creatures—these ghoul things—can’t get to it?”
“I was there for three months and they never crossed the water,” Gaby said.
“What about the hotel? Tell me about the hotel. You said it had power, which means hot showers, right?”
Gaby nodded. “All the hot showers you want.”
“Oh my God,” Donna smiled widely. “It’s been so long since I’ve had an honest to goodness real shower.”
“You smell it, too,” Claire said.
Donna rolled her eyes. “It’s not like you smell any better.”
“Better than you.”
“Oh, shut up.”
Claire snorted, but didn’t have any comeback for that one. The thirteen-year-old continued to keep watch behind them, eyes roaming the cemetery for potential threats or surprises.
“Can she really use that rifle?” Gaby asked Donna.
“She was good with it before all of this,” Donna said. “Now, she goes to sleep with that thing in her arms. It’s creepy.”
“I heard that,” Claire said.
“You were supposed to.”
“Whatever.”
Gaby smiled. It had been a while since she heard sisterly bickering. In some strange way, she liked it. It reminded her that, whatever happened, sisters would still be sisters even at the end of the world.
“Come on,” Gaby said, glancing up at the sun. “The faster we get up Route 13, the faster we’ll hit Interstate 10.”
“And Song Island after that,” Donna said.
“And Song Island after that. Meanwhile, keep an eye out for any vehicles. It’d be nice not to have to walk the entire way there.”
“Can you drive?”
“A little.”
“Good, because I never got my driver’s license.”
“I doubt anyone’s going to ticket you, Donna.”
“No, but she might drive into a ditch and kill us all,” Claire said.
Donna groaned. “God, you’re stupid, Claire.”
“Whatever.”
They finally reached the front gates of the cemetery and stepped through it. They turned left, heading back toward the highway in the distance.
*
THEY HADN’T GONE very far toward the highway when Gaby saw sunlight glinting off the metal dome of a vehicle parked at the intersection between Route 13 and the country road that had led them to the cemetery. The car hadn’t been there last night.
She grabbed Donna’s arm and pulled her left, toward the ditch and off the road, snapping, “Car.”
Behind them, Milly and Claire smartly followed without a word. Gaby slipped to one knee and unslung the M4, flicking off the safety.
Donna was on both knees in the grass, peering forward. “Is that a truck?”
Gaby nodded. It was a big silver truck, about 200 yards further up the road and parked along the shoulder. She couldn’t tell what kind of vehicle from this distance, not that she had ever been particularly good at distinguishing one car from another. The end of the world hadn’t done a whole lot to fill in that particular knowledge gap.
A man was climbing out of the front passenger seat of the truck now and did something she couldn’t quite make out from this distance. Too bad she hadn’t grabbed a pair of binoculars. She remembered seeing a few of them on the shelf in the basement under the VFW hall. Will and Danny would have picked one up just in case.
“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst,” they would say.
“What should we do?” Donna whispered. She didn’t really have to, given how far they were from the highway. Then again, sound did travel these days, so maybe the girl was wiser than Gaby gave her credit for.
She glanced back at Claire and Milly. They were crouched behind them, Claire with her rifle in front of her, looking ready for action. Milly was a quivering mess, and Gaby expected her to jump up and ru
n off at any second.
She looked back at the truck just in time to catch a second figure approaching from the other side of the road. Both men. She could tell by the way they moved. After a while, she began to make out the multiple colors of their camo uniforms.
Josh’s soldiers.
Were they looking for her? Had Josh sent them? He would have been informed by now of her escape. There was one thing about Josh—the old and the new—that she knew with absolute certainty: he didn’t give up when he set his mind on achieving a goal. Unfortunately, that was her at the moment.
Whatever he had become, whatever he had deluded himself into believing, he was still, at heart, the kid who fell in love with her the day she moved in across the street from him. She knew that because he had told her.
Kid? Did I just call him a kid?
He’s not a kid anymore. He’s nineteen. Old enough to know better. Old enough to stop lying to himself.
“Gaby?” Donna whispered. “What should we do?”
They were watching her curiously. Donna next to her and the two girls behind them.
Good question.
Options. What were her available options?
She could look at this as a stroke of bad luck, but that was probably not what Will or Danny would have done. No, they would see the soldiers and the truck (but especially the truck) as an opportunity.
Besides, she didn’t feel like walking the rest of the way to Beaufont Lake, anyway.
“Stay here,” Gaby said, looking first at Donna, then at the thirteen-year-olds. “Don’t move from this position, and stay as low as you can until I give you the word.”
“I can help,” Claire said eagerly.
“Yes, you can—by keeping everyone here safe with that rifle.”
She fixed the girl with a hard look and Claire, understanding—which didn’t mean she liked it one bit by the way she gritted her teeth—nodded reluctantly.
“Remember, keep low,” Gaby said. “Don’t make a sound. If anything happens and I don’t come back, wait until they leave, then keep going south until you reach Beaufont Lake. Understand?”
Donna nodded without any enthusiasm. Like her sister, she apparently didn’t see any point in arguing. Milly just looked mortified by the whole thing.
“Okay,” Gaby said. “I’ll be back.”
She gave them her best smile, then shrugged off her pack and handed it to Milly since Donna was already carrying the supply bag. She got up and began jogging up the country road, back toward the highway. With just the rifle, her holstered sidearm, and spare magazines around her waist, she felt lighter on her feet, though of course that could just be the adrenaline trying to convince her she could, possibly, survive this.
Captain Optimism, right, Danny?
They needed the truck. It was going to make returning to Beaufont Lake easier, faster, and safer. There was no way around it. That truck had a working battery and likely a full tank of gas to be out here by itself. She needed that damn truck in the worst way.
Gaby was fortunate the country road had ditches on both sides, each about four feet deep. That allowed her to slide all the way down to the bottom of one of them and, hunched slightly over, move up the road without being seen.
Or, at least, she hoped she couldn’t be seen.
The morning heat had picked up noticeably and Gaby was already sweating after twenty yards of bent-over running. She kept the M4 in front of her the entire time, ready to use at a moment’s notice. Her legs carried her forward on automatic pilot, and she kept her eyes focused straight-ahead at all times. She prayed something didn’t pop up in front of her—like a tree root—and trip her up. It wouldn’t have taken much, given how little attention she was paying to what was on the ground at the moment.
Thirty yards…
…forty…
She watched the soldiers the entire time. There were definitely just the two of them, which was the good news.
The bad news was, there were still two of them, and just one of her.
She gripped the carbine tighter, wishing she had her own weapon. The rifle she had now had proven decent back at the VFW hall, but she understood why Will and Danny were so adamant about holding onto their M4A1s all the way from Afghanistan. Soldiers weren’t supposed to bring weapons back home with them, but the two had managed it anyway. “We knew someone who knew someone,” was all Will would say when she asked how he had managed that.
She missed her old M4. The feel of this one wasn’t quite right, though she imagined it was all in her mind. Probably.
Sixty yards…
She concentrated on the two soldiers to take her mind off the things she didn’t have but wished that she did. She still couldn’t make out a whole lot of details, but they were definitely both men. Gaby had only killed men so far, but she didn’t think she would have trouble pulling the trigger on a woman. A collaborator was a collaborator. And uniform or not, these were still members of the human race that had sold out their kind. She couldn’t summon any sympathy for them even if she tried.
Eighty…
They hadn’t spotted her yet and seemed to be too busy talking to really pay any attention to their surroundings.
After moving steadily up the ditch for a while, she stopped and went into a crouch. She took the opportunity to glance back at the girls. They were lying on their stomachs and watching her back. Or she assumed they were looking in her direction. She could only really see three lumps in the grass, and that was only because she knew where to look.
She faced forward again and caught her breath: one of the soldiers was turning in her direction when he stopped and seemed to stare right at her from across the distance.
She gripped the M4 tighter and mentally prepped herself to launch into battle—
False alarm.
The man hadn’t seen her. He was looking down while trying to open some kind of bag. Then he was turning away, stuffing something into his mouth as he did so.
She forced her fingers to loosen around the rifle.
Jumpy. She was way too jumpy.
When the man had turned his back to her again, she got up and continued along the ditch at a half-trot while slightly bent over at the waist to lower her profile.
Ninety yards…
She was at one hundred when she stopped a second time to get her bearings. The man on her side of the silver vehicle was leaning against the front grill and staring off down the road at nothing in particular. Their lack of attention to the land around them was incredible.
You need better “soldiers,” Josh.
She got up again and kept going.
110 yards…
The second one was walking back around the truck and handed the first one a bottle of water. They drank while looking down the highway, back toward Dunbar. They were clearly waiting for someone and weren’t going anywhere soon.
130 yards…
She took a second to make sure the fire selector on the M4 was set to semi-auto.
150 yards…
She was close enough now that she could hear them talking. They sounded young, and she could make out blond hair on one soldier, while the other one had a long black ponytail.
160 yards…
She wasn’t sure what happened. Maybe she wasn’t being nearly as quiet as she thought she was. Or maybe one of them, by some fluke, saw something that alerted him to her presence, the way she had seen the reflection of their truck under the sun earlier.
Either way, one of them saw her, said something, and both men began unslinging their rifles.
Gaby immediately stopped, took aim through the red dot scope, and fired—and missed.
Her bullet pinged! harmlessly off the hood of the truck. It was a bad shot, but it still made one of them dart for cover, so at least it had some impact. The one that didn’t move opened fire on her, the pop-pop-pop of his three-round burst filling the air even before her own shot’s echo had faded.
Gaby forced herself to stand perfectly still and
reacquire her target even as the ground to her right, at shoulder level, exploded and she was showered with loosened dirt and grass. The man was firing too fast, too wildly, probably trying to fight against the same adrenaline that was pumping through every inch of her at the moment.
Whoever these men were, they didn’t have the advantage of being trained by a pair of Army Rangers. Will and Danny hadn’t held back—not once in the three months they broke her down and built her back up on the island.
She summoned that experience now and forced one of her senses to ignore the sound of bullets buzzing past her head.
She corrected her aim, swiveling slightly to the right, and fired again.
This time she hit the man in the waist, and he dropped his rifle and grabbed at the spot where he had been shot. When the man tried to run around the truck for cover, Gaby calmly took aim again and shot him in the back.
The man stumbled and slammed into the hood of the truck and slid down the smooth surface, but by then Gaby was already rushing up the ditch again. This time she dispensed with the slow jog and was in a full sprint mode, peering through her weapon’s sight the entire time and searching for another target.
Where’s the other one? Where’s the other one?
Running forward was the only path open to her. She couldn’t retreat, not with one of the (fake) soldiers still alive. He had the truck and she needed it. She knew exactly where the resolve came from: the very real desire to get back home to Song Island at all costs.
That’s my truck, asshole!
The second man was moving along the length of the truck, smartly keeping behind cover. Unfortunately for him, thanks to her lowered vantage point inside the ditch, she easily spotted his boots moving underneath the vehicle. The man was clearly trying to reach the back of the truck (a Chevy, as it turned out), probably in hopes of catching her by surprise. Either he didn’t know she could see his feet or he was counting on her not picking it up.
When he poked his head out the back, she snapped off a shot. Her bullet shattered one of the taillights and the man jerked his head back instinctively.
Gaby picked up the pace. She was twenty yards away now and she could still see the man’s boots, this time holding their position at the middle of the truck. Gaby laid the M4 on top of the ditch, took careful aim, and shot the man in the right ankle. There was a loud scream and the figure crumpled to the ground on the other side of the Chevy.