by Sam Sisavath
If he hadn’t detoured somewhere between Kanter 11 and here.
If he was even still alive…
Where are you, Wash? Are you out there? Or am I chasing a ghost?
God, tell me I’m not chasing a dead man through Texas…
“What’s on your mind?” Randall was asking her.
Ana glanced over. The slayer drove with one hand, the other dangling out the open window. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think Randall was on a pleasant Sunday drive through the countryside. Maybe that wasn’t too far from the truth; the man did make his living killing monsters in the dark. Next to something that dangerous, driving down an empty road in the middle of a bright morning (Was it Sunday? Monday? She’d lost track of the days a long time ago) with nothing in view for miles was worth savoring.
“Just thinking,” Ana said.
“About what?”
“Wash.”
“Your slayer boyfriend.”
She pursed her lips. “He’s a friend.”
“A boy who is also a friend. Thus, boyfriend.”
Ana shot him an annoyed look. “We’re both too old for this, Randall. Act your age.”
Randall glanced up at the rearview mirror at Chris in the back. The teen sat between the two front seats, eating three-day-old bread that crunched every time she bit down. There were bags of supplies around her, along with guns and ammo. The pink Hello Kitty bag she’d found was somewhere on the floor at her feet.
“You met her boyfriend yet, kid?” Randall asked Chris.
Chris shook her head. “Not yet.”
“How’s your shoulder?” Ana asked him.
“Are you changing the conversation?” he said, grinning at her.
“Yes.”
Randall chuckled before rubbing his right shoulder gently with his left hand. He’d been shot there not too long ago by a sniper. “I’ve had worse.”
“Tough guy, huh?”
“It’s a tough gig. Wussies need not apply.”
“I bet. Are all you slayers this tough?”
“I don’t know. Did you ask your boyfriend that question?”
Ana groaned, but she ignored him and turned around in her seat to look back at Chris. “What about you?”
Crunch, as Chris bit into another tough piece of bread. “Good.”
“Everything’s good?”
Chris nodded, but Ana didn’t completely believe her. She didn’t know everything the teenager had gone through, but she knew enough. Even now, days later, Ana still had flashbacks to that Raggedy Men lair where they had taken Chris. And she’d only been down there for a few minutes; Chris had been abducted and taken against her will overnight.
But she saw the resilience in Chris’s face now and knew the kid would be fine. She might have even survived worse than Talico, though Ana didn’t want to think about what could have been worse than that.
“Maybe it’s time to give that bread a rest,” Ana said.
“It’s still good,” Chris said. Crunch, as she took another bite.
“I don’t think—”
“Heads up,” Randall said.
Ana turned around in her seat and looked out the front windshield. She was about to ask What? when she saw them.
A series of structures slowly glimmered out of thin air like a mirage.
Ana squinted to make sure they were real. They were. What might have been rooftops glinted underneath the clear skies. It was a town, far enough from the road that all it would have taken was a few clouds in the sky to make them miss it.
“How far are we from the RV?” Ana asked.
“About five miles,” Randall said as he slowed the truck until they had stopped completely.
“So it’s not Sanderson.”
“Definitely not.”
“And you didn’t know it was out here?”
“It’s not on any map I’m carrying.”
Randall put the truck in park. They weren’t in any danger of being rear-ended by another vehicle—there was no “another” vehicle for miles—but it still made Ana a little anxious. The term sitting ducks popped into her head for some reason.
Ana leaned forward against the dashboard to get a better look at the buildings. Her view didn’t really improve by very much. “It does look like a town. A small one.”
“Yup,” Randall said. He opened his car door and said to Shelby, somewhere in the back, “Take a gander, and see what you can gander.”
Ana climbed out of the truck and found Shelby already standing in the truck bed, peering through his binoculars. She waited for the young man to finish his recon.
Then, when Shelby lowered his field glasses, “What do you see, Shelby?”
“A dozen buildings, maybe more,” Shelby said. “Couldn’t make out any signs, though.”
“You see anything moving?” Randall asked. He’d also climbed out of the truck.
“Nope. But we’re too far. Gotta get a little closer for that.”
“What about a road?”
“I didn’t see one. Dirt, asphalt, or otherwise.”
Randall looked across the hood of the Ford at Ana. “There should be a road connecting it to this one.”
“What does it mean that there isn’t?” she asked.
“Maybe it’s new,” Randall said. “Maybe something that popped up after The Purge. There’s plenty of that out here.”
She gave him a doubtful look. “Out here? There’s nothing out here but dirt, Randall. I don’t think you could even grow weeds.”
Chris leaned out the back seat’s open window. “Are we going in there?”
“I don’t know,” Ana said. She looked across at Randall. “What do you think?”
“It’s not like we have to,” the slayer said. “We’re still heavy on supplies, and the real action is farther south.”
“That’s what you call a bunch of ghoul hordes? ‘Action?’”
“You do know what we do for a living, right?”
“My mistake.”
“What do you think? Should we waste a few minutes checking on the place, or just keep going?”
Wash might be there, Ana thought.
It was a small chance, and for it to even be remotely possible, he had to have been using the same stretch of roads they’d taken into Texas. There were so many ways in and out of the state, and so many possibilities, that the odds were against her.
Ana said, “That ghoul attack on the RV…”
“What about it?” Randall said.
“Those people could have come from that town.”
“That’s possible. It’s within walking distance.”
“Even if they weren’t from there, those people might not know there are ghouls in the area. If that’s the case, we owe it to them to warn them.”
“If there’s even anyone to warn.”
“It wouldn’t take long. Thirty minutes out of our time. In and out.”
“I say we check it out,” Shelby said. “There might be a lonely farmer’s daughter in there that needs some comfortin’ from yours truly.”
“There ain’t no damn farmers around here,” Randall said. “Land’s as dead as a nun’s sexual drive.” The slayer turned around and nodded at Ana. “But you’re right; warning them about what happened at that RV’s the Christian thing to do.”
“I didn’t know you were a Christian,” Ana said.
“I’m a man of many secrets.” Then, “Thirty minutes. We can spare that.”
Ana nodded before looking across the open field at the rooftops in the distance. What were the odds Wash was underneath one of those right now?
Wash, you asshat. I’m out here because of you.
She climbed back into the truck and slammed the door shut. Randall did likewise and put the Ford into drive.
“So we’re going in there?” Chris asked from the back.
“We’ll be quick,” Ana said. “In and out. If there’s nothing there, we’re gone. If there’s people, we’ll tell them about what we fou
nd at the RV.” She turned around in her seat and gave the teenager a pursed smile. “Just stay close to me, okay?”
Chris nodded and sat back in her seat, but Ana could read the wariness on her face. The kid was thinking about Talico and what it had cost her. Ana was, too, but she was trying to push through it.
She sat back in her own seat as Randall turned off the road and onto the bumpy earth. The unknown town loomed before them, getting closer with every passing second.
“You sure it’s not on your map?” Ana asked Randall.
The slayer nodded. “I’m sure. Checked it just this morning before we saw the RV.”
“Just wanted to make sure.”
Randall leaned over, picked up a pump-action shotgun resting between their seats, and put it in her lap. “Just in case.”
Ana smiled and put her hands over the weapon. Ol’ Pumpy, as Randall called it.
“Just in case,” she repeated.
“Try not to shoot me in the back, okay?”
She smirked at him. “What was that? Try to shoot you in the back?”
Randall grinned at her, but decided, wisely, not to push his luck.
Nine
That’s not a town.
That’s a ghost town.
They were looking at a group of buildings that, once upon a time, resembled something people might have called a “town.” These days, it looked and gave off the vibe of hastily put-together structures, their walls ugly and scarred by the sun and harsh climate that seemed to dominate this part of northern Texas. The glinting rooftops that Ana had seen from a distance were rusted and brown up close, and the corrugated metal lining the sides was caked in elements.
“Well, it’s a town,” Randall said.
“Sort of,” Ana said.
“Mostly. Probably hasn’t been one in a while, though.”
“How does a place go this bad, this fast? It’s been what? Only six years?”
“Out here, things go bad pretty fast. You get used to it.”
I don’t think I’ll ever get used to being out here.
“It was probably on its way here,” Randall continued. “The end of the world just rushed it along.”
They leaned forward in their seats, peering out the slightly tinted windshield of the Ford. Chris leaned between them in the back, and Ana didn’t have to look over at the teen to notice her apprehension. She could tell that from the way Chris gripped the seats.
She’s thinking about what happened in Talico. And so am I…
Next to her, Randall seemed to be gathering his thoughts, maybe trying to figure out what to do next. They were parked about fifty yards from the nearest structure—close enough to see how miserable it and its companions looked, but still too far to make out the patches of shadows between buildings. If there was anyone inside the place that had heard their approach, no one had come out to greet them. Ana wasn’t sure if that should have relaxed her or made her more alert.
Definitely more of the latter…
She counted two, maybe three dozen buildings that she could make out. She couldn’t see more of it; for that, they’d have to go inside, and she wasn’t sure she was looking forward to that. But then what was the other option? Just turn around and go around it?
“What do you think?” she asked Randall.
The slayer glanced over. “I don’t know. What do you think?”
“Well, we did come here for a reason…”
“You wanna go in there?”
“Isn’t that why we came here?”
Randall didn’t answer right away. She could see his mind working, maybe like her, trying to figure out the pros and cons.
What pros? The only pro to going in there is…
What pros?
Then, after a few more seconds, Randall said, “We could go around it.”
We could, and we should, Ana thought. If we were smart, we would do exactly that.
Except the words that came out of her mouth were, “If there’s anyone in there, we have to warn them about what had happened at the RV.”
“You really think there’s anyone in that place?” Randall asked. “Look at it. Dead as a cemetery.”
Nice choice of words, Randall.
“If there was anyone in there, they’d have heard us coming and shown themselves,” Randall continued.
“They could be scared,” Ana said.
“Of us?”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
“I dunno.”
Shelby’s face appeared outside Randall’s window, the young slayer leaning upside down as he looked in at them. “So, we goin’ in or what?”
“What, for now,” Randall said.
“Oh, come on. Don’t be wussies.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being cautious, Shelby,” Ana said.
“Cautious smalcious,” Shelby said. “Let’s go in there and see what we can see. Might be some pretty girls who haven’t seen a slayer before. I got my best clothes on and everything.”
Randall sniffed the air. “You mean your best smell?”
“Yeah, that too.”
Randall snorted before looking over at Ana. “We drive in slowly, and if no one comes out to say boo, we leave. If someone does, we stay just long enough to tell them what we came to tell them, then it’s see ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya. Agreed?”
Ana nodded. “Sounds good. You want Ol’ Pumpy back?”
“You hang onto it for now.”
“I’m not very good with a shotgun.”
“It’s a shotgun. You point and pull the trigger. Wham, bam, thank you, Ol’ Pumpy.”
Ana smiled. “Slowly does it, then.”
“Good. At least I didn’t get dressed up for nuthin,” Shelby said before he vanished from Randall’s window.
Randall put the truck back in gear, and the Ford began moving again—slowly, toward the nearest building.
The more the place exposed itself, the more Ana was certain they were looking at a ghost town.
Now why doesn’t that make me feel any better?
As they drove slowly into the unnamed town, Ana heard Shelby moving around in the rear of the vehicle. She glanced back and could make out the young slayer’s legs standing near the cab’s window, probably leaning over the roof to get a better look at what lay ahead of them. Chris had sat back and was clutching the backpack Randall had given her as if waiting for the opportunity to jump out of the Ford and take off. After everything she had been through—everything they had been through—Ana couldn’t say she blamed the teenager.
“You doing okay back there?” she asked Chris.
Chris nodded, but what Ana saw in the teen’s eyes was far from “okay.”
“We’ll be in and out in a flash,” Ana said. “We just have to warn them about what happened at the RV. We’d want someone to warn us too, right?”
“Uh huh,” Chris said, looking wholly unconvinced.
And she’s right; we should probably keep going, Ana thought as she turned around in her seat and adjusted the pump-action shotgun in her lap.
She refocused on the town in front of her. The view hadn’t gotten any better now that they were closer. If anything, the run-down nature of the buildings was even more apparent. There were still no movements except for a flurry of pebbles ricocheting off one of the building’s walls as they drove past it. How long, she wondered, since this whole place was abandoned? The vibe it gave off screamed more than six years. Maybe The Purge had hastened the exile, but it couldn’t have been the cause.
There wasn’t anything that resembled a proper street for them to take, so Randall simply guided the Ford between two buildings. There was plenty of space to maneuver, so they didn’t worry about hitting anything on their way in. More rusted and corrugated walls greeted them, and for a moment Ana was convinced this was some kind of industrial area. Except that didn’t explain the presence of brick and mortar structures mixed in with all the metal construction.
What the hell is this place?
/> Ana had been through a lot of towns since The Purge—some bigger than others—and the appearance of this one left her baffled. Everything about the place screamed abandoned, from the buildings to the hardened and cracked earth underneath the Ford’s tires. Earth, because there wasn’t anything close to a road. So how did whoever used to live here drive back and forth? Or did they drive at all? She hadn’t spotted a single car since they entered town. That was another oddity. Even the smallest towns had at least one or two vehicles left over from the days when everyone had a car and gas was plentiful.
The more they saw, the more it looked like the whole area was built to form a rough circle around a single structure in the very middle: a church.
Now who would put that there? Or was it here first, and everything else came after?
There was no mistaking the church, with its towering steeple over the front twin doors. There was once a cross at the very top, but it was gone, leaving behind a jagged spire. No wonder they hadn’t seen it as they approached. A cross would have been unmissable even from a distance.
The rest of the unnamed town was just over three dozen buildings—at least the ones that she could see from her open truck window—of various shapes and sizes. She guessed the bigger ones were intended for communal use, while others could have passed for multi-family homes or storage. Most of the ones within immediate view were small one-floor structures. The church was the tallest thing by far, its steeple rising ominously in front of them. Sunlight reflected off the white paint, casting a large and exaggerated shadow across the hard ground.
Randall leaned against his steering wheel, still slowly letting the truck crawl through town. Because of the almost circular nature of the place, it was natural for him to head straight toward the church. Maybe that was the point? If there was a point to any of this.
“Figured the church would be the most prominent building in the place,” Randall said.
“Why’s that?” Ana asked.
“Small towns like this, they take their religion seriously.”
“You’ve been through small towns like this before?”
“Not quite. This is pretty…”
“Creepy?”
“Unique,” Randall finished. Then, chuckling, “But I guess creepy works, too. Ever seen that movie Children of the Corn?”