Remains (After The Purge: Vendetta, Book 3)

by Sam Sisavath

  “You want some water?” Roy asked.

  “I’m good,” Wash said.

  He scooted backward until he could prop himself up against the cold upholstery of the booth that half-circled the table on his side of the RV. He looked across at the two kids. They really did look like brother and sister.

  As he watched them, they returned the favor.

  “I guess it is yours,” Roy said after a while and reached for Wash’s pack.

  “I don’t need everything inside it,” Wash said. He held up the bottle. “I’m going to need all of this, though. And maybe one of the water bottles.”

  “There’s food inside…”

  “We can split it up later.”

  Roy nodded, while June pulled out a see-through bag of beef jerky, one of many that Marie had gifted him before he left Kanter 11.

  “Can I eat this?” June asked.

  “Go for it,” Wash said.

  June beamed and opened the bag. Venison aroma filled the spaces of the large RV, and Wash watched the siblings chew on sticks of jerky for a moment. It was obvious they hadn’t had this kind of “luxury” in a while. For some reason, even though he hadn’t eaten since yesterday, Wash wasn’t all that hungry and didn’t join in.

  “Where did you find it?” Wash asked.

  “About thirty minutes down the road from where the bones were,” Roy said. He bit into a thick piece of deer meat. “I was about to give up when I saw it lying on the ground. If it wasn’t black, I might have missed it.”

  “What were you doing all the way out there?”

  “What I do every day. Looking for supplies.”

  Wash glanced around them at the interior of the RV. They were sitting near the front, leaving a surprisingly large back portion, including a dining area in a kitchenette. Farther back were shelves, pantries, and a refrigerator. A slightly ajar door was visible even farther back, probably leading into the sleeping areas.

  “How long have you guys been here?” Wash asked.

  “Week or so,” Roy said. “We stumbled across it, like you did. We had some supplies and decided to hang out for a while. Got everything we need, including a soft bed. Only thing it doesn’t have is food and water, and I’ve been scavenging the area for that.”

  “There are towns around here?”

  “A few. But I avoid those. People are dangerous.”

  Can’t disagree with that, Wash thought, before asking, “Where do you get supplies, then?”

  He grinned at Wash. “You never know when stuff will just fall into your lap.”

  “Good point,” Wash said. Then, “So you’re not from here?”

  Roy chuckled. “No one’s from here. It’s a Winnebago.”

  “A what?”

  “A Winnebago. That’s the company that makes these RVs.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Old Stu told us all about them. People used to ride around in cars like this all the time before The Purge. Mostly old folks. They’d go from city to city, state to state, just exploring and stuff. I don’t know where this one came from, but they were probably doing the same thing before, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Wash said. “What happened to Old Stu?”

  “Same thing that happened to the guy who made you this,” Roy said, picking the kukri back up and holding it out to Wash.

  Wash took the machete and slipped it back into its sheath. “So where did you guys come from?”

  “No place you know. Far south. We did spend a couple days at a place a few miles down the road from here. A town called Jasper.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Neither did we, until we stumbled across it. They weren’t exactly looking to get noticed, if you know what I mean.”

  Wash nodded. “So how’d you find it?”

  “Like I said, I do a lot of scavenging. Just ran across it one day.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “It seemed like a nice place. Had nice people.”

  “If it’s so nice, why did the two of you leave?”

  Roy and June exchanged a glance. June, a stick of jerky half in her mouth, didn’t say anything. But then she didn’t really have to. Wash could read the signs on both of their faces.

  “What happened?” Wash asked.

  “Nothing, really,” Roy said.

  “That look June just gave you didn’t look like nothing.”

  The boy shrugged. “It looked like a good place, but…” He let the rest trail off.

  “But what?” Wash prompted.

  “Then it wasn’t. Everything told me to get June out of there, so I did. That’s it. Haven’t seen the place or been back since.”

  Wash had never heard of Jasper, and he would have if any slayers had gone through it in the past. There was also no Jasper in the official maps of the state that he’d been carrying around with him in his other now-lost pack.

  “You’ve been out there, right?” Roy was asking him.

  “Yeah, I have,” Wash said.

  “So you know.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “Jasper.”

  “What about it?”

  “There was something not right about it.” He shook his head, and Wash could see him struggling for the right words. “You just know, you know? You just know.”

  Wash thought about all the towns he’d passed over the years, all the situations he’d gotten stuck in despite knowing—even when he didn’t know how he knew, he just knew—things were wrong. Some of those times, he’d had the advantage of the Old Man fighting next to him, but that wasn’t always the case.

  “You mean like last night, kid?” the Old Man asked.

  Oh, shut up.

  “Yeah,” Wash said. “I know.”

  Roy nodded. He stared past Wash and out the window behind him, and didn’t say anything else for a while.

  Jasper, Wash thought. The name didn’t ring any bells. But then, he was at the very northern tip of Texas, and there were plenty of small towns that barely registered as a blip on a map before The Purge, never mind now, when information had reverted back to word of mouth.

  “Here,” Roy said. The teenager had produced the Kahr semiautomatic from his own backpack.

  Wash took the gun back. He knew it still had a mostly full magazine by the weight.

  “You don’t want it?” he asked the kid.

  “It’s yours,” Roy said. “Wouldn’t be right to just take it from you. Old Stu taught us right and wrong.”

  “Thanks, kid.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Where’s your snub nose?”

  “My what?”

  “Your revolver.”

  “Oh.” Roy wiped his hands on his pant legs before reaching into one of his jacket pockets and taking out the pistol. “Old Stu gave me this. Taught me how to use it, too. Before that, I’d never shot a gun. Or even held one.”

  “So I guess you’re good with that thing?”

  “I’m decent. There’s one problem with it, though…”

  “What’s that?”

  The teenager flicked open the cylinder and let one of the bullets fall out and into his palm. He pinched it with two fingers and held it up for Wash to see.

  It was an empty shell casing.

  “I fired the last good round I had about two weeks back,” Roy said. “Haven’t been able to find more in the same caliber since.”

  Wash grunted before smiling. “Well played, kid. Well played…”

  Five

  He thought he’d be ready to leave the kids in a few hours, but he was wrong. He came to that conclusion when every time he turned to look at the door, his bones ached and his side gave off a pulsing pain. It was very much possible the entire thing was in his head, but Wash didn’t feel like finding out for sure one way or another. After all, the road wasn’t going anywhere, whether he got back on it today or tomorrow.

  And you’ll still be there, won’t you?

  You’re not going anywhere either, are yo
u?

  You sent that Blue Eyes to wait for me. That was you. I know that was you.

  He didn’t know where “there” was—maybe this place called Jasper that Roy and June had gone through recently, or maybe another no-name town that wasn’t on any map or even existed until The Purge—but he would find it, because it wanted him to. It was all part of the game.

  You’re waiting for me. You’re down there, somewhere, waiting for me.

  Maybe you’re even laughing your ass off right now, knowing that your blue-eyed patsy almost killed me last night.

  Well, fuck you, I’m still alive.

  The idea that a blue-eyed ghoul was somewhere out there waiting for him should have made Wash afraid. If he were a regular person, it would have, but he wasn’t. The Purge had stripped most of the fear emotion from him, and the years since under the Old Man’s tutelage had taught him to tame the remaining parts. It wasn’t all gone, of course, because that was impossible; as long as you were alive, there would always be some fear.

  Wash thought silently about all of that as he sat on the floor of the old RV, watching the sun slowly descend outside the muck-covered window across from him.

  “So you’re a slayer, huh?” Roy was asking him.

  Wash looked over at the teen, who was sitting in a booth next to him. June was somewhere in the back in one of the bedrooms. The two kids seemed to have an ebb and flow, understanding what the other needed without having to verbally communicate. Wash guessed it made sense, given how long they’d been out here together. He’d had something similar with the Old Man.

  “Yeah,” Wash said.

  “I met a few of you guys outside of Dallas,” Roy said. “Cool.”

  “Cool?”

  “What you do. It’s cool.”

  “Thanks. I guess.”

  “You don’t look like one, though.”

  “No?”

  “I didn’t see any scars on you when I was dragging you up here. I mean, you have some, but they’re not slayer scars.”

  “What are slayer scars?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Wash nodded. He did know, and he was fully aware of how different he was from all the other slayers he’d crossed paths with. “I guess I’m not like other slayers,” he said.

  “I guess not,” Roy said.

  Wash hated talking about himself, because invariably it led to more questions, some that he’d rather not address. He could see it in the kid’s eyes—the questions were coming—so he said, before Roy could ask them, “Tell me about Jasper.”

  “What about it?”

  “How far is it from here?”

  “Half a day’s walk, I think.”

  “That’s a lot of walking.”

  “Not for us.”

  “You and June walk everywhere?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Is she your sister?”

  “Yup.”

  Roy had answered quickly and confidently, and Wash nodded. Not that he fully believed the teenager. There were plenty of makeshift families out here, and the truth was, there was nothing and no one’s right to say they weren’t any more legitimate than someone who shared the same parents. Life after the monsters was all about adaptation.

  “Where are you two going next?” Wash asked.

  “Dunno,” Roy said. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

  “You can’t stay here forever. Sooner or later, you’ll need to venture out too far to find food, and that’s going to be hard. For both of you.”

  “I figured I’ll deal with that when I get to it.” Then, “You came from up north?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s up there?”

  “The same thing that’s down here. A lot of empty spaces and dangerous roads and not a whole lot of us.”

  “That good, huh?”

  “But maybe it’s just me. Who knows, you might have better luck finding something worthwhile,” Wash said, thinking about Ana even as he said it.

  “You believe that?”

  “No, but I thought it was the thing to say.”

  “I know what’s out there. I know it’s not safe. But there’s not a whole lot of ‘safe’ anymore these days, is there?”

  “That’s not entirely true.”

  “You know something I don’t?”

  “There’s a town called Kanter 11 in Kansas. It’s pretty safe.”

  “Is it far from here?”

  “If you’re walking? Yes.”

  “What other way is there?”

  “Horses. Or cars.”

  “Don’t have neither.”

  “My horse is probably still wandering around out there somewhere…”

  “I saw its tracks,” Roy said. “Thought about trying to run it down, but I don’t like leaving June alone by herself for too long.”

  “She wasn’t alone.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t really know you. Still don’t.”

  “Fair enough,” Wash said. “When you’re ready to leave this Winnebago behind, head north to Kanter 11. Ask for Ana. If she’s not there, ask for Marie.”

  “Maybe I’ll do that,” Roy said.

  “It’s a good place. With good people. It’ll be a nice change of pace for June to settle down in one location for a while, where she’ll be safe.”

  “Maybe,” Roy said again.

  Wash didn’t try to change the kid’s mind. What right did he have to even do so? Roy had been out here during The Purge and the years after it; he had earned every right to make his own choices. Besides, Wash didn’t think the kid could be persuaded anyway. If Roy was going to do something, it would be because he thought it was good for him and his sister.

  Of course, that didn’t mean Wash couldn’t try to point them in the right direction anyway. He owed them that much for saving his life.

  “I’ve been there,” he said. “Kanter 11. Good folks. You don’t see a lot of that out here these days. You should really look them up.”

  Roy nodded. “I’ll think about it. It’s not like we have plans or anything.”

  “How long have the two of you been out here?”

  “Long enough.”

  Roy didn’t say Long enough for what, but if Wash had to guess, it might have been something along the lines of, “Long enough that we don’t need you holding our hands, Mr. I’d-be-dead-if-not-for-you-kids.”

  “And the kid would have a point,” the Old Man said.

  Yeah.

  “You look tired,” Roy was saying.

  Wash sighed. “That’s because I am.”

  “You took a pounding out there, huh? And not just last night, too. You been doing a lot of fighting lately?”

  “That’s the understatement of the century, kid.”

  “Ghouls?”

  “Not always.”

  “Yeah, it ain’t just the nightcrawlers that’s a threat out there.”

  Wash thought about what Roy had said previously, about a man named Phil and his friends…

  “Wonder what happened?” the Old Man said.

  Do we really want to find out?

  “Probably not. They look okay. Mostly.”

  Yeah, mostly.

  Roy was nodding at him. “Go ahead. Nod off. I’ll keep an eye out.”

  “Only if you wake me in a few hours to take over,” Wash said.

  “Sure,” Roy said, though for some reason, Wash didn’t quite believe him.

  “I mean it, kid,” Wash said.

  “I said sure. Go ahead. You look like shit.”

  I feel worse, Wash thought, allowing himself to sink further to the floor of the RV and close his eyes.

  It didn’t take very long at all for him to go right to sleep with the sun still descending outside the mud-caked windows.

  He must have been more tired than he thought or was willing to admit, because when he opened his eyes again, the same window he’d been staring at before nodding off was dark and there was something out there.

  He couldn’t h
ear it, or see it, or even smell it, but he could feel it.

  It was in the way the air moved, causing the hairs along the backs of his exposed palms to bristle. The same thing happened all the way up the length of his arms and to the nape of his neck. He didn’t need his corporeal senses to know there was something unnatural in the area. It was very, very close by. Enough that his body had tightened, ready to spring, even before his mind could catch up.

  And then there it was: Tap.

  The first overt evidence that he wasn’t the only thing awake tonight.

  Tap-tap.

  It was footsteps from outside the vehicle. On top of it.

  Tap-tap-tap-tap…

  Whoever it was—whatever it was—was moving slowly at first before gradually picking up speed.

  Tap-tap-tap-tap!

  Wash craned his head slightly toward the ceiling, even as his hand searched for and found the grip of the kukri and slipped it out of its sheath. He didn’t have to wonder where Roy was. The teenager was asleep on the booth across the short distance from Wash, in mostly the same posture he’d been in when Wash last saw him—sitting upright with his head lolled slightly to one side. The boy was snoring, but he wasn’t making nearly as much noise as June in one of the bedrooms at the back of the RV—

  Tap-tap-tap! from above him, now near the center of the Winnebago.

  There was more than one up there, he was sure of it.

  Tap-tap-tap!

  Tap-tap-tap!

  Wash tracked them with his ears while his eyes slowly adjusted to the new darkness. There was plenty of light thanks to what might have been a full moon outside. He didn’t bother to look down at his watch to confirm the time. He didn’t have to. Dark was dark, and when it got dark, things that would normally hide were free to roam.

  He knew what was out there, right now, without having to think too much about it. Two of them, at least, but likely more, because that was how it usually worked—they tended to nest in groups. And they also hunted in groups.

  The silver-coated machete blade gleamed against a stream of moonlight. He still had the Kahr and its mostly-full magazine, but he wanted to preserve that for as long as possible. Besides, if there were just two (or three, or more) out there, it was manageable numbers. Even in his current state, Wash didn’t think he’d need the gun to deal with them.