by Sam Sisavath
She nodded. “Besides what Marla told me—about how they took her friend Kenny but never came back for her—I didn’t see it in their eyes, Wash.”
“See what?”
“You know what. That thing that all men have.” She stared back at him. “That you had when you first saw me in the woods. Then again, on the road. And you still have now,” she added with a slight smile.
“Maybe they have another room. A hidden one, like the dungeon in the back.”
“Besides the kitchen, I found a game room and an armory. There may be more rooms that I haven’t gotten around to yet. I wanted to bring some things back to you first.” She snapped another quick look over at the bag of jerky. “There were a dozen of those things back there…”
“There has to be a fridge. Maybe another underground room like that dungeon of theirs. Where would they put all the meat they haven’t gotten a chance to dry out yet?”
“I don’t know.” She shivered slightly and didn’t try to hide it. “And I’m not too excited about looking for it, either.”
“Don’t you wanna know?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
Wash didn’t answer her. He wasn’t sure he needed all the grisly details, either.
Ana had begun glancing around the warehouse, as if expecting that mysterious fifth man to suddenly appear.
“Forget about the food,” Wash finally said.
She turned back to him. “You’re not hungry?”
“Not anymore,” he lied.
She scooted over and sat down next to him, laying the shotgun across her lap.
“You comfortable with that thing yet?” Wash asked.
“I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. I like that I don’t have to aim, though.”
“Shooting takes practice.”
“I’ve done that. A lot.”
“And?”
“I got blisters from pulling the trigger so many times.”
“There are shooting gloves...”
“That’s not the point.” She sighed and stared across the room. “If he’s still out there, and he’s alive, he’ll make his way back here…”
“You still think that dead guy’s not him?”
“Yes.”
“Because you saw four guys with dark hair, and that one’s a blondie.”
“Exactly.”
“If you’re right, then there’s definitely five of them instead of four. If you’re right.”
She sighed. “I could be wrong. I guess we’ll find out for sure by morning. If he doesn’t come out by then…”
“Yeah. Morning’s good.”
Wash leaned his head back against the cold wall and fought through a new surge of pain. He reached down and placed his hand over his side, then glanced over at the bag in the corner. Did it really matter if the meat in there was deer or…something else? He was hungry, and he needed protein in the worst way.
So did it really matter?
Hell yeah, it matters.
“You okay?” Ana asked. She was looking at him intently, trying to gauge his reaction.
“If I’m still alive by morning, you can ask me that question again.”
“That’s not very reassuring, Wash.”
“Sorry. I didn’t know reassuring you was my job.”
“I’m a girl. You’re a guy. That is your job.”
He smirked. “Yeah, right.”
She grinned, before returning her eyes to the door that led into the other side of the warehouse.
“Does it hurt?” Wash asked, touching his neck.
“Shit, I forgot all about that,” Ana said, reaching up to caress the redness around her throat. She flinched a bit. “I have blood on my face, too, don’t I?”
“Cheeks and jaw.”
She took out another bottle of water, then dampened one of her shirtsleeves and wiped at the blood on her face before doing the same to her fingers and palm.
“Marla was okay?” Wash asked.
“She was alive the last time I saw her. I’ll try to see if I can find her tomorrow morning. Maybe pick up her tracks.”
Ana went suddenly quiet and stared off.
“What?” Wash asked.
“Nothing,” Ana said.
“What is it?” he pressed.
Ana didn’t answer right away. Then finally, “She reminds me of someone.”
“Your friend?”
“Yes.”
Wash had been watching her closely, and he caught the glimmer of uncertainty on her face. “Tell me the truth. All of it.”
She looked over and they locked eyes.
“The truth,” Wash said.
Ana nodded. “Her name’s Emily.”
“Your friend…”
“My sister.”
“Who took her?”
She stared at him for a moment. Then, “You don’t care that I lied to you? That I didn’t tell you I was looking for my sister in the first place?”
Wash shrugged. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, but that he always assumed she was lying, that there were things she wasn’t telling him. To find out that he’d been right all along wasn’t all that surprising as a result. It wasn’t about her, but about the world they lived in, where everyone lied. Everyone.
“Not really,” Wash said.
She smiled. “You’re full of surprises, Washateria.”
“I thought we went over this.”
“You know you like it.”
“Goes to show you don’t know me that well.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Tell me what happened with your sister.”
Ana’s face grew noticeably darker under the warehouse’s soft lights. “Some people took her, along with three others.”
“When was this?”
“Over a month ago.”
“You’ve been chasing them for a month?”
“One month, three weeks, and five days. Sometimes it feels like it’s been years since I left home.”
“How exactly have you been surviving out here with nothing but that little knife of yours?”
“It’s easier than you think.”
“How’s that?”
“I have certain advantages that you don’t.”
He sneaked a sideways look at her, but he didn’t have to think about it for very long. She was pretty, and young, and very capable—he’d since come to learn—of talking her way out of just about anything.
“The closest I’ve gotten to them was two—no, three days, now—about two miles north of Harrisonville,” Ana was saying. “I found their campsite, and those ghoul tracks that led me to the woods outside Harrisonville.”
“Where we met.”
“Uh huh.”
“You told me you were headed south. So that means you know where they’re going.”
“I have a pretty good idea. They traded with some guys at a cabin, and one of the asshats let slip that they were heading south. I guess they were all drunk on bourbon at the time.”
“South is a big place.”
“They’re going all the way down to the Texas-Mexico border. Some place called Brownsville, close to the Gulf of Mexico. It’s their final stop.”
“Brownsville…”
“Have you been there?”
“No, but I know where it is. It’s a long way south.”
“That’s why I needed one of your horses. I knew you were headed south, too. Texas, to be precise, so the odds were in my favor.”
He snapped her a quick, alarmed glance. “How did you know that?”
“Harrisonville told me.”
“They told you?”
“Well, the guy who runs the place. I went in there right after you left.”
“And he just told you where I was headed?”
“Wash, I’m just an unarmed and helpless young woman traveling alone in a very dangerous world. He thought he was helping me. Even suggested I hurry to catch up to you before you got too far ahead.”
“How did you catc
h up to me, anyway?”
“I ran.”
“You ran?”
“I’m faster than I look. Actually, I’m a lot faster than most people. Anyway, it wasn’t like you were moving very fast up that road. Still, it wasn’t easy running through the woods so you wouldn’t see me coming.”
He sighed. “Tell me something. You used to be an actress before all of this or something?”
“What makes you say that?”
“You’re really good at it.”
“At what?”
“Convincing people of whatever you want them to believe. Some would even call it being manipulative.”
“And what would you call it?”
“Let me get back to you on that.”
She smiled. “No, I wasn’t an actress. I worked in an office.”
“Now why don’t I believe you?”
“I’m hurt, Wash. Really hurt.”
“Uh huh.”
His stomach growled, and he looked across Ana at the bag of beef. What were the chances…?
No. No way in hell.
“So what’s the plan?” he asked instead, hoping to take his mind off his hunger. “Try to catch them on the way down to Brownsville?”
“That’s the best-case scenario. If that doesn’t happen, at least I know where they’ll be eventually.”
“Unless those guys at the cabin lied to you.”
“They didn’t lie to me.”
“How are you so sure? People lie all the time, Ana. Especially out here.”
She stared across the room at the dead man lying underneath the two nightcrawlers. “They didn’t lie to me, Wash. I made sure of that.”
“How?” he was going to ask, but decided to keep his mouth shut.
He said instead, “What are you going to do when you finally catch up to them?”
She didn’t answer, but she didn’t really have to. The answer was so obvious Wash didn’t know why he bothered to ask in the first place.
They sat still, backs against the cold metal wall, and listened to the hum of the light bulbs around them. It was still dark outside—Wash could feel it without having to see it—but it would be light soon.
“I need your help,” Ana finally said.
“Yeah, I figured,” Wash said, and pictured the Old Man grinning at him:
“Everyone wants something, kid. Sometimes you’ll realize you knew what they wanted even before they say it; and sometimes you won’t see it coming. But always remember: No one does anything for free. Everyone always wants something in return.”
Ten
The fifth guy never materialized—if he ever existed in the first place. Which was just fine with Wash. He didn’t have the time or inclination—never mind the strength—to get into another gunfight, anyway. The painkillers he’d taken were doing their job (it helped that he’d popped two more about three hours after the first couple), and he was feeling better. A lot better. Ana found bags of nuts and berries to replace the uneaten jerky still lying crumpled in the corner, and Wash devoured them while she wandered off again.
He fell asleep sometime after Ana left and didn’t wake up until the next morning. When he picked himself from the cold concrete floor, he found himself alone inside the large room. Sunlight peeked inside through the high windows above the doors, and the acrid smell of vaporized ghoul flesh stung his nostrils.
Wash looked toward the trio of bodies near the door and wasn’t surprised to find nothing left of the ghouls but bleached white bones lying on top of the dead mountain man, as if some pranksters had stolen a pair of science lab skeletons and draped them over a drunken frat boy. It didn’t matter how many times Wash saw it, it always seemed like such a magic trick. The sun simply stripped away every inch of flesh that covered the creatures, reducing skin and muscle to gray dust that still hung in the air and flitted across the fields of sunlight. The blood, too, was gone, but only the tainted fluids that had leaked out of the ghouls. Their victim still lay where Wash last saw him, as dead this morning as he had been last night.
“There you go again, wasting your time thinking about it,” the Old Man would say whenever he brought it up. “It is what it is, kid. Why does the sun destroy them? Why does silver kill the black eyes but not the blue eyes? That’s just how it is. That’s the world we live in. Next!”
It wasn’t much of an explanation, but then Wash never really expected one from the Old Man. The old timer rarely wasted a second thinking about things he couldn’t control. That didn’t mean he was stupid. Far from it. The Old Man was one of the smartest men Wash knew. But he was someone who also accepted his limitations. And understanding how and why ghouls reacted to sunlight the way they did, or why silver dropped the black eyes when decapitating them did nothing, wasn’t something that concerned him. He was too busy killing ghouls.
If someone told me six years ago it was black magic, I’d have believed them, Wash thought as the thick stench in the room stung his eyes. Next!
He wiped at his eyes before picking up a half-empty bottle of water nearby and drank the rest of it. He looked toward the stable at the back, where the nightcrawler that was hanging between the bars last night had fallen to the floor in a pile of bones. The horses were standing around looking bored.
There wasn’t much about the warehouse that Wash could see in the morning that he hadn’t already gotten a good look at last night, including the stacks of moving crates underneath the heavy tarps. They were filled with vehicle parts and horse equipment, as well as bags, blankets, and backpacks. Maybe some of those—or maybe all of them—came from all the poor bastards that’d had the misfortune of stumbling across the building’s previous owners before Wash did.
The ATVs and off-road vehicles next to the boxes might come in handy. That is, if there was fuel for them. There was a reason horsepower had become the preferred mode of transportation for a lot of people. Horses didn’t need still-usable gasoline, which was harder and harder to come by these days. But Wash preferred horses anyway; all they needed was a patch of grass to keep them going.
The loud, almost echoing clank! of the front door opening made him glance over, at the same time reaching down for the Beretta lying on the floor next to him, beside the 1911. He relaxed when Ana stepped back inside the warehouse.
She had found her black leather jacket, and her hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she would have looked identical to the woman he’d run across in the woods outside of Harrisonville two nights ago if not for the heavy shotgun thumping against her back and the gun belt she had hanging off her slim hips.
“Finally awake, huh?” Ana called over.
“How long ago did you leave?” Wash asked, putting the handgun back down.
“Sunup.” Ana left the door open behind her—to help filter out the smell, he guessed—before stepping around the dead body and bones on the way over to him. She sat down with a tired sigh and placed the shotgun on her lap. “I found Marla’s tracks, but I lost them about half a mile from here when she crossed a small stream.”
“There’s water nearby?”
“Uh huh. Probably the reason the mountain men decided to set up shop here. It looked pretty hidden, like the warehouse. I’m sure that was the other big selling point.”
“You think she got away?”
“I didn’t see any blood, so that’s a good sign.”
“What about the guy you saw chasing after her? The young one?”
“He followed her all the way to the stream, but I lost him after that, too. I thought about crossing over to see if I could pick them back up, but I didn’t want to risk it.”
“You think she made it?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
“Would she come back if she thinks it’s safe?”
“After everything she’s been through? Getting abducted and losing her boyfriend?” Ana shook her head. “I wouldn’t, if I were her. She hardly knows us.”
“You saved her life.”
“I did, but she played
her part. As far as I’m concerned, we’re even.” Ana paused. Then, “Maybe she’ll end up at Harrisonville. It’s what, ten miles from here?”
“Give or take,” Wash said. “You think the folks at Harrisonville knew the mountain men were out here all this time?”
“Did the mayor say anything to you about them?”
“No. You?”
“No. Then again, we didn’t ask him, did we?”
“No, I guess we didn’t.”
“So you can’t really blame him for not mentioning them.”
“Fuck him. I’ll blame him anyway.”
“Hey, it’s your prerogative, tough guy. Until then…” Ana took out another small see-through bag from her pocket and handed it to him. “Flax seeds. They’re good for you, and you’re going to need a lot of them until we can find some variety in their pantry.”
“How big is that pantry, anyway?” Wash asked as he scooped out a handful of seeds.
“A whole room. Almost as big as their armory.”
“Did you find the rest of my stuff?”
“Yours and God knows how many other people’s stuff.” She picked out some seeds and popped them into her mouth. “Clothes, too. A lot of it. I don’t know why they’re still keeping them.”
So what happened to their owners? Wash thought, glancing past Ana at the bag of jerky crumpled in the corner.
“You’re still thinking about that?” Ana asked.
“Aren’t you?”
“Yeah. I guess I am, too. All night.”
“Did you find anything that might give us any clues about what they’ve been doing out here?”
“I thought we already know what they’ve been doing out here.”
“I mean, evidence. Something that confirms what we think.”
She shook her head. “No, and I’m not sure I want to, either.” She grabbed another handful of seeds and chewed on them. “I just want to get out of this place as fast as possible, Wash.”
He shared her discomfort, and maybe he didn’t really want to know, too. It wasn’t just the clothes, the piles of unused and seemingly superfluous supplies, or even the mysterious meat. It was everything.
Wash glanced down at his empty wrist. “Did you find my watch while you were looking around?”
“Again with the watch,” Ana said.