by Sam Sisavath
Will scrambled to the ground on his stomach and fired the AR-15 in the direction of the three men. They scrambled to get cover when Davies suddenly opened fire with the G36 again, sending the men running back to where they had just fled from. It was funny, and Will almost chuckled when another large-caliber rifle round punched through the tire he had been hiding behind seconds ago and embedded itself into the parking lot twenty meters away. Things stopped being funny after that.
He reached for his radio. “Whenever you’re ready, Danny! Now would be nice!”
On cue, two shots rang out from a Glock, then a split second later, a loud burst from an M4A1, the gunfire coming from the other side of the school.
As soon as the last of the M4A1 shots faded, he leaned out and fired across the parking lot at the trucks again. He took a moment to watch the three men scrambling around. They were clearly uncertain about where to go, with gunfire coming from all around them now. Davies was still firing blindly from the doors and a black figure was standing behind the pick-up truck where the sniper had been. The sniper was hanging off the side, his arms dangling lifelessly. The black figure took his place.
Danny.
Will was about to click his radio and tell Davies to cease fire when the G36 went silent. He had finally run out of bullets.
Will heard Danny’s M4A1 pinging off the dented sides of the Tacoma and Ram. He leaned out from behind the flat tire, and using the dead hazmat body as a prop, he sighted in on the three men in the middle of the parking lot.
The one he had shot earlier in the auditorium was crouched behind the Tacoma, and even from this distance Will could see him shaking, which was something to behold, because the man was still wearing a hazmat suit. Will pulled the red dot away from him, moving slightly to his left, to the one standing, firing calmly back at Danny.
Will shot him once in the back of the head and quickly rolled away as a third man turned in his direction and began firing back. The dead man in the hazmat suit next to Will twitched as two bullets found him, surprising Will.
Nice shot, buddy.
Will clicked his radio. “Danny, leave the one with the bandages.”
“I would never hurt a wounded dog,” Danny said.
Will sat calmly behind the flat tire and waited out the shooting. The man would have to reload sooner or later.
Instead, he heard a single shot from an M4A1 and then silence.
Or not.
Danny’s voice came through the radio: “Nine down, one to go. Looks like we have a volunteer. You think he’ll join up? Lie to him about the pension plan. They always fall for that.”
He leaned out and saw the man with the bandaged leg standing, or trying his best to stand, groping the truck for support, and turning around in a wild circle. His rifle lay on the floor at his feet next to his gas mask. He was shouting something. It took Will a moment to hear what he was saying: “I surrender! Don’t shoot!”
Will wasn’t sure, but the man might have also been crying.
He clicked his radio: “Lara, talk to me.”
“I’m fine,” she answered.
“Davies?”
“Good, good,” Davies said, though his voice was still quivering a bit, and he sounded a little out of breath.
“I’m fine, too, in case anyone cares,” Danny said.
Will glanced down his watch: 10:43 a.m.
CHAPTER 36
LARA
His name was Kevin. He was twenty years old, and a blue-eyed ghoul came to him one night and asked him if he wanted to keep living. Kevin, who somehow survived The Purge, and kept surviving almost purely by accident—or as he put it, “Dumb-ass luck and more dumb-ass luck”—said yes. And that was how he became one of the ten men in hazmat suits who by day made sure the blood farm wasn’t disturbed, and by night…well, at night, they tried to stay out of the way.
Lara spent the hour after the gunfight listening to Kevin explain things as best he could. He wasn’t the leader. Far from it. The leader was a man named Troy, who was also the first man Will shot, thus sending the group into something of a free fall. After that, a man named Peter sort of took over the group, directing the attacks, but proved wanting.
For his part, Kevin managed to survive so long because he kept his head down and did what he was told. He was thankful to still be alive, knowing that so many were already dead or dying.
“It wasn’t like I had a choice,” he explained. “It was either that or get used like those other guys. I mean, what was I supposed to do? I’m no hero.”
He looked at the field of emaciated bodies around him as he spoke. They were in one corner of the auditorium, close enough to the bodies for Kevin to squirm uncomfortably on the floor. Without his gas mask, he didn’t look very menacing. He looked exactly like what he was—a scared kid.
She was in the auditorium with Will, who was casually picking his nails with the sharp point of his cross-knife. She knew it was an act. Letting Kevin see it was a psychological tactic—a covert threat. Kevin’s eyes kept darting from Lara to Will to the cross-knife to the bodies and back again.
“And there are only ten of you?” Will asked. He barely looked at Kevin, but the threat was implicit: I’m so disinterested in you, I can kill you at any moment and not give a shit.
“As far as I know,” Kevin said.
She hadn’t been able to detect a lie from him since they began the questioning. She didn’t think he was smart enough to know when to fib and when to tell the whole truth. That, and he had just seen Will and Danny kill nine of his comrades. That probably made an impression, too.
“What about the other towns?” Will said. “Are there other blood farms like this one? How many do you know about?”
“I don’t know,” Kevin said. “We were told to just watch over this one. We’ve never even left the town since it all started. That’s part of the deal.”
“Where did you get the people?” Lara asked.
“They brought them to us.”
“They’re not all from here?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you from here?”
“Yeah.”
“You said ‘they’ brought the people here. Who is ‘they’?”
“You know. Them. The creatures. The ones you call ghouls.”
“They were still alive when they were brought here?” Will asked.
“Yeah. Like that. They were just sort of asleep.”
“What is it that you do?” she asked. “With the bodies? You just watch over them?”
Kevin nodded. “That’s it. I swear. We just watch them, make sure they’re still here when they, you know, need them at night.”
“How often do they need them?” Will asked.
“Every night.”
“Every night?” Lara said.
“Pretty much, yeah,” Kevin nodded.
“You said he came to you,” Will said. “The blue-eyed ghoul. He talked? The way you and I are talking right now?”
“Yeah. He’s not like the others. He walks straight and he talks. He kind of looks human, too. From, you know, certain angles.”
She looked up at Will. Was he thinking the same thing: Was it the same blue-eyed ghoul, or were there more of them out there?
“Did he have a name?” Will asked. “This blue-eyed ghoul?”
“What?” Kevin shook his head, as if that was the most ludicrous thing he had been asked yet. “No. At least, none that he told us. We never asked. Why would you ask, you know? It wasn’t like it was hard to pick him out from the others. He had blue eyes.”
“How do you contact him?”
“We don’t. He comes to us, tells us what to do. It’s been a while since we heard from him, though.”
“How long has it been?”
“About two weeks.”
“When did you start all this?” Lara asked.
“About three months ago,” Kevin said. He suddenly looked from her to Will, then back to her. “You’re not going to kill me, are
you?”
She wasn’t surprised he looked at her when he asked that. It was a shrewd move, something she hadn’t thought he was capable of. Asking her and not Will was a sign he knew any chance he had of survival lay with her, the woman. She almost respected him for such a blatant, tactical move. Maybe he wasn’t so dumb after all.
“That’s not my call,” she said.
The words came out easily, emotionless. Kevin heard it, too, and the disappointment was obvious on his face. She expected to feel sorry for him, but it never happened.
Their radios squawked with Danny’s voice: “I got good news, and I got bad news. Which one you want first?”
“What’s the good news?” Will said.
“The good news is Davies turned out to be a pretty decent mechanic. At least, he knows his way underneath a hood, which is more than I can say for, well, me.”
“So what’s the bad news?”
“The bad news is there’s not a whole lot for him to work on. Every single vehicle we’ve come across is no good. There are bullets in everything. Engine blocks, tires, doors. One guess who was responsible, and no cheating.”
Will looked at Kevin. “The cars in town. Why did you destroy them?”
“Me?” he said, as if they had just accused him of something unthinkable.
“You and the others. Why?”
“Because he told us to.”
“Who?”
“You know. Him.”
The blue-eyed ghoul…
Part of her wanted to see the creature for herself, to finally lay eyes on the ghoul that the others had seen. It was like listening to everyone talk about coming face to face with Bigfoot and having drinks with it, and all she had were footprints in the mud and flimsy videos to go by. It was maddening.
“Plus,” Kevin was saying, almost apologetically, “we were bored. There’s not a lot to do here, you know? We had to watch the school in the day, and we couldn’t leave town. And we had all these guns…”
“You were bored,” Will said. He sounded almost amused, like a parent accepting his young child’s bad behavior. He turned back to his radio and clicked it: “Keep looking, Danny, but settle if you have to. It just has to drive.”
“Will do,” Danny said.
Will looked back at Kevin. “Tell me one last thing. The hazmat suits. What’s the deal with those?”
“The blue-eyed ghoul brought them over,” Kevin said. “He said we should wear them, so the other ghouls wouldn’t attack us at night.”
“Do they work?”
“Yeah. They just ignore us.”
“So why were you wearing them in the daytime?”
Kevin looked confused by the question. “What?”
“I get it,” Will said. “You wear them at night, so the ghouls won’t attack you. But why were you still wearing them in the daytime? There are no ghouls around in the daytime.”
Kevin shrugged. “We decided to keep wearing them, because you never know when you might get caught outside at night. Better safe than sorry, you know? Plus, they’re pretty comfortable. Heat, cold—doesn’t matter.”
“I see. Besides, they kind of look cool, right?”
Kevin grinned. “Yeah, that, too.”
Will looked over at Lara. She found it impossible to read his thoughts. “I think we’re done with him, don’t you?”
“One more question.” She turned back to Kevin. “There was a boy. A teenager named Todd. Did you see him? He’s been hiding under the school since it all began.”
“A kid?” Kevin shook his head. “I don’t think so. But we always thought there was someone stealing our supplies.”
“Your supplies?” Will said, with a slight smirk.
“I mean, the supplies we gathered up,” Kevin said, looking sheepish. “Things would go missing. Food. Water. Even a ham radio.”
So that’s where she got it.
“And you never saw him?” Will asked. “The kid?”
“No. I guess he was really good at sneaking around.”
“I promised Elise we’d find him,” Lara said to Will.
“Give me a few minutes, then bring the girl back in here. Maybe we’ll get lucky and Todd is one of these people. I think we’re due for some good luck, don’t you?”
She nodded.
Kevin, who had been listening and watching, suddenly became alarmed and blurted out, “Wait, where are you going?” He focused his eyes on her and pleaded, “Please don’t go. Please.”
She avoided his eyes, because she knew what she would find if she looked. She had seen those eyes before, when she looked in the mirror during her days with the Sundays.
She got up and walked away, leaving Kevin in the auditorium with Will.
Lara understood from the very first minute why they brought Kevin in here to question him, away from Elise and Megan. He was a liability now, and he couldn’t be trusted. She expected to be a little troubled when the time came, but as she walked away, she realized, with a bit of shock, that she wasn’t.
Mother would be so proud.
*
Elise and Megan were eating energy bars and drinking warm Gatorade in the hallway near the destroyed front doors. They looked over as Lara came back.
“Danny’s not back yet,” Megan said, worried.
“I know,” Lara nodded. “He’ll be back when he finds a car that can carry all of us.”
They had already decided it was impossible to take everyone in the auditorium, so when Danny found the vehicles, they would only take as many as they could carry. That wouldn’t be very much, even if all four of them drove a different vehicle. Still, it was better than nothing, and there was absolutely no positive side to being caught in Dansby when the sun went down.
Megan was looking past Lara, down the hallway. “What are you guys going to do with him? That guy in the hazmat suit?”
“Will’s handling it.”
“He doesn’t deserve to live,” Megan said, her voice dripping with ice. “Not for what he’s done. To me, to all those people. He doesn’t deserve to live.”
I don’t think you have to worry about that.
Lara sat down next to Elise and put a hand on her shoulder. The eight-year-old looked up and smiled at her, showing stained yellow teeth. How long had it been since she last had a toothbrush? It wasn’t as if clean teeth were a priority while she and her brother were hiding in the school’s basement all these months.
“Are we leaving now?” Elise asked, worry creasing her young face.
Lara had cleaned Elise up as much as she could, using undamaged bottles of water from the trucks, and the little girl looked like a little girl again. Almost. She would look even better after a shower and new clothes back at the facility. Then again, so would Lara.
“Not yet, sweetheart. But soon.”
“We haven’t found Todd yet,” Elise frowned.
“I know. Soon, I want you to come into the auditorium with me and see if you can find Todd in there, okay?”
She nodded enthusiastically.
Was she doing the right thing, bringing Elise into the auditorium? She had no choice. She didn’t know what Todd looked like, and if Todd had been captured, the ghouls wouldn’t waste him, not with their dwindling supply of humans. They would plug him into their “farm.”
As she watched Elise chewing on a granola bar, Lara was at least comforted by how Vera, Carly’s sister, had accepted the new situation and even thrived. Kids were highly adaptable and tougher than adults tended to give them credit for.
About five minutes later, Will’s voice came through her radio: “Lara, you can bring her in now.”
She stood up and held out one hand to Elise. “Come on, let’s go see if we can find Todd.”
Elise took her hand and stood up hesitantly.
“It’s all right,” Lara said. “I’ll be with you the entire time. And we can stop whenever you want, okay?”
The girl nodded mutely.
Lara led her back to the auditorium. The gi
rl walked stiffly beside her, and Lara felt her little fingers tightening as they neared the doors.
“It’s okay,” she said, trying to inject as much confidence as she could into her voice.
When they entered the auditorium, Will was walking toward them through the rows of frail bodies. There were no signs of Kevin. “Try to find Todd first. Depending on what Danny and Davies can find, we won’t know how many we can take with us.”
Lara nodded. “Okay.”
Will left them inside the auditorium.
She knelt in front of Elise and took both her small hands into hers. “Ready? Let’s find Todd. I don’t know what he looks like, so it’s up to you to look very carefully at all of these faces. Just pretend they’re sleeping, having good dreams. Okay?”
Elise nodded, but there was obvious fear on her face. She didn’t blame the girl. Being in here with these sleeping, skeletal figures still made her uncomfortable, as if she were barging through a funeral home while people were mourning. She couldn’t fathom what it must be like for an eight-year-old who had lost the one thing she had been holding onto all these months—her brother.
Elise was trembling as they walked through the first two rows, looking from left to right, moving as slowly as possible. Her shaking lessened noticeably by the third and fourth rows, and disappeared almost completely by the tenth.
“Take your time,” Lara said.
Elise nodded and slowed down. “Is he here? I don’t see Todd, Lara. Where is Todd?”
“We have to keep looking, sweetheart. That’s all we can do. Keep looking…”
*
It was well after one in the afternoon when Danny and Davies finally came back with a vehicle, pulling into the school parking lot and stopping behind the destroyed Tacoma and Ram.
Davies was behind the wheel of an old, brown minivan that had been riddled with bullets, its windows blown out. Even without the bullet holes, the van looked old and decrepit, yet it was somehow still running.
Will, standing next to her, shouted at Danny, “How is that thing even still running?”
“We had to swap out the tires, which were a bitch to find,” Danny said, climbing out of the van’s front passenger’s side. The door creaked loudly as he pried it open then slammed it shut again. “Luckily, the jackasses never got around to shooting up the engine block, and we found the keys inside.”