by Sam Sisavath
Ana stopped fighting with the door and leaned against it, peeking through a wide opening between two boards. She got an eyeful of sun-scorched earth and more corrugated metal in the background, but nothing that looked like a guard—
A brown eye appeared in front of her, and Ana jerked her head back in shock.
Someone laughed, before a man’s voice said, “Gotcha.”
Sonofabitch.
She sucked in a breath and willed herself to calm down. Then, “Who are you?”
The figure outside didn’t answer. The voice had belonged to a man, and she could see him—not all of him, but enough—straightening back up and taking a couple of steps away from the door.
“Hey,” Ana said, louder this time. “Who are you? Why did you attack us?”
No answer except for the sound of something clicking, but she couldn’t place what it was. A lighter, maybe? But she didn’t smell cigarette smoke. Unless, of course, the man was just playing with a lighter, flicking the cover open and closed.
“Hey!” she said again, even louder.
“I heard you the first time,” the man said.
“Why did you attack us?” Then, when she didn’t get an answer after five seconds, “Hey!”
“You might wanna save your voice,” her guard said. “You’re going to need it later.”
“Need it for what?”
Silence, except for that clicking noise. What the hell was that? She still couldn’t see what was making it, and it was driving her a little crazy.
“We came here to warn you,” Ana said, forcing herself to be calm again. She wasn’t going to get anywhere shouting at her captor. No, the correct approach here was to reason with him. “There was an RV out there. It was attacked by ghouls last night. We came here because we thought you might be in danger.”
Her guard remained silent.
“Did you hear me?” Ana said. “We were doing you a favor. We came here to warn you about ghouls in the area. Why did you attack us?”
She was hoping for some response, but the man remained silent. She couldn’t tell from the quick glimpse of the eyeball that had startled her earlier if it belonged to one of the two men that had attacked them outside the church, but the guard’s voice had sounded young, so it could have been the one in the ball cap. The guy outside was wearing some kind of hat…
Ana shook the lever again, just to get the man’s attention. “Hey. Did you hear what I said? We came here to do you a favor. So why did you attack us?”
Her captor didn’t answer and never turned around. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he couldn’t hear her, but that was impossible given his close proximity.
The asshat’s just ignoring me.
“Hey!” Ana shouted.
Still, no response.
She pulled back from the door. “Asshat.”
“Hey, what’s with all the racket?” a voice said behind her.
Ana turned around to find Shelby sitting on the floor. He was touching his temple with his right hand and grimacing at the contact.
“Ouchie,” Shelby said.
“You’re hurt. Don’t try to move too fast,” Ana said, kneeling next to him. “What happened to you?”
“Something hit me,” Shelby said. He wiped the blood on his palms off on his pants leg. “Some kid with a slingshot, I think.”
“A slingshot?”
“Yeah.” He mimed “firing” a slingshot. “Got me right in the ol’ noggin. Lucky thing I have a hard head.”
“Yeah, lucky.”
Shelby glanced over at Randall, lying nearby. “He don’t look so good.”
“No, he doesn’t, but he’s alive,” Ana said.
“What happened to his face?”
“Someone hit him with the butt of their shotgun.” Just saying the words out loud reminded her of her own pain, and Ana winced slightly.
“You okay?” Shelby asked.
“My head’s pounding, but I’ll be okay.”
“Seems like ‘okay’ is good enough for now.”
“For now, yeah.”
Shelby stood up and looked around them. He didn’t seem to have any trouble moving. “Where are we?”
“A shed.”
“Looks more like a shack.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Potato, potato.” Then, “We’re still in that rickety ass town, aren’t we?”
“I don’t know. But I think so.”
“I was hoping it was all just a nightmare.” He touched his scarred forehead again. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. It all happened so fast. One second, we’re parked in front of the church; the next, someone’s shooting.”
“Shotguns.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s all I remember.”
“There wasn’t a whole lot after that. We were ambushed.” She stood up next to him. She was feeling a little better and didn’t have to reach for the wall this time. “One of them is outside now.”
Shelby glanced toward the door. They could both see the guard’s silhouetted form through the gaps in the wood.
He turned back to her, and, dropping his voice to almost a whisper, “Armed?”
“That would be my guess,” Ana said, matching his pitch.
“What do they want?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Did you tell them why we came here?” Shelby asked, this time letting his voice grow louder. Ana assumed that was because he wanted the guard to hear this part of their conversation.
Ana nodded. “I did.”
“And?”
“I don’t think he cares.”
“Bummer.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
She walked back over to the door and peered out at their captor. All she could see was his back and a lot of brightness in front of him. She looked over at Shelby, crouching next to Randall and feeling his pulse.
“How is he?” she asked.
Shelby nodded. “He ain’t croaked yet. What more could you ask for?”
A lot, actually, she thought, but said, “We need to keep an eye on him. They really hit him hard.”
“What about you?”
Ana felt the lump behind her head again. “It’s getting better,” she lied.
The truth was, it still hurt, and every time she thought about it, the intensity notched up a little bit more.
So stop thinking about it.
But that was easier said than done, especially with the continuous lancing pain coming from back there every few seconds.
Shelby stood up and glanced around him with his hands on his hips. “Boards don’t look all that tough,” he said, again dropping his voice to almost a whisper.
Ana nodded toward the door—at the guard outside.
Shelby held up one finger, as if to say, “Just one?”
She nodded and was going to say something else when she caught a flicker of movement coming from her left, opposite the door.
“Looks like we have a visitor,” Shelby said.
Someone was peering in at her and Shelby from the back of the shed, a single, blinking round eye at about chest level, going from Ana to Shelby and back again. Either the owner was kneeling, or it was a small person. For a second, Ana thought it was Chris, but the eye color was wrong—brown where Chris’s was blue.
Ana took one step forward, expecting the figure to flee.
But it didn’t. Instead, the eye focused in on her.
Someone’s very curious.
Ana took another step forward. “Hi,” she said, in a voice loud enough to be heard by the girl, but not by the guard on the other side of the shed. She had a feeling their captors didn’t know this Curious George (Curious Georgette?) was here right now.
Ana glimpsed pale lips underneath the single eye. “Hi,” they said back. It was a soft, almost squeaky whisper.
She knows about the guard. She doesn’t want him to hear, either.
Smart kid.
“Do you have a name?” Ana asked.
The girl didn’t answer that one as readily.
“Mine’s Ana. What’s yours?”
Still no answer, even though the eye never left Ana as she crouched in front of the wooden boards.
Easy does it. Don’t spook her.
Ana decided to try a different question. “How old are you?”
“Eight,” the figure whispered.
Ana smiled. “I’m older than that.” She thought she might have heard Shelby chuckling behind her, but ignored him and continued. “Do you have a name?”
“Betsy,” was the answer.
“Betsy’s an old lady’s name,” Shelby said.
Ana glanced back and gave him a That’s not helping look. He lifted his hands and made an Oops face back at her.
She turned back to Betsy, who hadn’t moved from her spot. “Hi, Betsy. I’m Ana. That loudmouth’s Shelby.”
The girl giggled.
Ana smiled. “What—”
“Hey!” a voice shouted, just before Ana caught the guard’s shadow flitting across the holes in the boards to her left, running from the front of the shack to the rear.
Ana stood up as Betsy fled. She expected their captor to run after the girl, but he stopped and stood looking after her instead. Then the man turned around and walked back to the front. She glimpsed sunlight reflecting off the barrel of his weapon, hanging off one shoulder as he passed her by.
“Welp, that almost worked,” Shelby said. “You were trying to get her to help us, right?”
Ana sighed. “Something like that.”
She stared at the guard’s shadowed form in silence and tried to figure out what Betsy’s presence meant. The only thing she could come up with that was even slightly useful was that there were kids here. Was there anything else?
Shelby had sat back down on the cold floor, his legs splayed out in front of him. “We should have stayed on the road. This is what happens when you try to do something nice for someone. Chuck used to say—” He stopped short. “Well, Chuck used to say lots.”
Ana walked over and sat down next to him. They both stared at Randall’s unconscious form for a moment. The older slayer hadn’t moved at all, but he looked to be breathing normally again. At least, he didn’t look as if he was struggling like earlier.
“So this guy you’re looking for,” Shelby was saying.
“Wash,” Ana said.
“Yeah, Washateria.”
She smiled.
“You think he’s still out there?” Shelby asked.
“Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Sounds complicated.”
“It is.” She sighed. “I’m just playing it by ear.”
“Your ears starting to hurt yet?”
“You’re an ass.”
Shelby grinned. “Just doing my job.”
Ana glanced over at the door, at the silhouetted figure partially visible outside. The man hadn’t moved since the last time she looked. What the hell was he waiting for? What was the point of all of this?
The attack, locking them up in here.
Taking Chris from her…
“It’s just one guy,” Shelby said. He had dropped his voice again.
“He’s armed,” Ana said.
“Still just one guy.”
“It only takes one guy to shoot both of us.”
“Be more glass half empty, why doncha.”
Ana looked back at Randall, then at the far wall. She was hoping Betsy might have come back, but there were no signs of the girl. And even if there were, how exactly was an eight-year-old kid going to help them get out of this mess?
“She said she was eight?” Shelby asked.
“Yeah,” Ana said.
“That would mean she was born before The Purge.”
“So you know a little math. And?”
“Just barely,” Shelby said. “And nothing. I see a lot of kids born after that whole mess, but few kids that were that young when it went down are still around now. I thought that was just an interesting little tidbit, is all.”
Ana didn’t know how interesting any of it was, and right now it didn’t do her or the slayers any good. They were still stuck inside a shack in some run-down town that didn’t even have a name, while a man with a gun stood guard outside. She had no doubts he would shoot her and Shelby if they tried anything. The two that had attacked them earlier hadn’t been very hesitant about using their weapons. Any one of their shotgun blasts could have killed her or Randall, or both, at any time during the assault.
“Your head still hurting?” Shelby asked after a while.
“Yes,” Ana said, the pain coming back as soon as Shelby brought the subject up. “Yours?”
“Like someone’s playing bongos on my skull.”
Better than someone playing a complete set of drums, she thought, leaning her head back against the wall and closing her eyes.
“Ana,” Shelby whispered.
She opened her eyes. “What?”
“She’s baaaaaaack.”
Across from them, a familiar large brown eye looked in between two wooden boards at her.
Betsy.
The pain ebbed away as Ana concentrated on the girl.
“Hey,” Ana said. “You’re back.”
“Uh huh,” the girl said.
Good start, Ana thought. Now let’s see where this goes…
Eleven
Betsy’s return didn’t yield very much to help Ana and Shelby escape. It did, though, provide some more information, just nothing they could use while still stuck inside the shack.
The girl had returned despite the scare with the guard, but the close encounter must have stuck in her mind, because she didn’t stay around for very long. Ana could see the way the girl’s eye kept shifting to the side. They had exactly eleven minutes, during which time Ana attempted to get as much out of the kid as she could. It was like pulling teeth; either the girl didn’t know very much about the attack (or anything, really), or she just…
No, Ana was almost certain Betsy didn’t know anything that could help them. Ana did learn that there were other people in the unnamed town besides Betsy and the two shotgun-wielding asshats. There were other women and kids somewhere out there, probably in one of the many buildings they’d driven past earlier in the day.
Eventually, they both heard footsteps moving around the shack, and Betsy vanished. This time, Ana didn’t hear their captor screaming after the girl; either he realized it wouldn’t do any good, or the kid had been quick and managed to escape unseen.
Ana sat back on the ground next to Shelby and watched the guard’s shadow moving back to the front to resume his post.
“That was disappointing,” Shelby said.
“At least we know it’s not just her and the asshat outside now,” Ana said.
“But how does that help us?”
“It doesn’t.”
“So I was right. It’s disappointing.”
Well, he’s not wrong, she thought, looking over at Randall’s unmoving form and expecting him to wake up at any moment. He never did. From time to time, Ana checked on Randall’s status. His pulse seesawed between steady and erratic, but the rest of him remained unchanged.
“Man, we are really screwed,” Shelby was saying next to her.
Definitely screwed, Ana thought as she reran everything that had happened to them since spotting the RV.
If only they hadn’t detoured to investigate.
If only they had kept going.
If, if, if…
But none of that wishful thinking did her or Shelby or Randall any good now.
And yet…
Should have kept right on going.
Should have kept right on going.
She said out loud, “We’ll be fine.”
“How you figure that?” Shelby asked.
“We just have to find out what they want.”
She glanced over at the door. She couldn’t see the guard from this a
ngle but was sure he was out there. Where would he go, after all?
“Kinda obvious what they want,” Shelby said.
He was rubbing at the scar along his temple. It was more purple than red now and looked nastier than before. She didn’t want to think about what the back of her head looked like. The pain had numbed, but that was only because she stopped touching it.
“Is it?” she said.
“Isn’t it?”
“Not to me. Unless you discovered something that I missed.”
Shelby started to answer but stopped himself. He seemed to think about it for a bit before finally shrugging. “Maybe it’s not so obvious.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“So, what do they want?”
“I don’t know. That’s the problem. We can’t figure a way out of this until we get that answer. And they’re not talking. At least, the guy out there isn’t talking.”
“There’s a name for that, right? Something Chuck used to say. Catch…something.”
“Catch-22.”
“Catch-22? You sure?”
“Uh huh.”
“Where’s the 22 come from?”
“I don’t know. It’s just something some writer made up in a book years ago. But it fits our current predicament.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Haven’t read a book since… Well, it’s been a while.”
“I’m sure you had other things to do besides cracking open a book, Shelby.”
“Killing nightcrawlers is a full-time job…”
Ana smiled, her thoughts wandering off to Wash. He was the reason she was down here in the first place, but she couldn’t find it in herself to be mad at him. She’d tried—God knows she’d tried, and often—but she could never really embrace it. He was the reason she still had a sister, after all. Ana had a lot of belief in her ability to survive out here, but even she knew that successfully rescuing Emily from Mathison by herself would have been a minor miracle. But Wash had changed that equation. He had skills she couldn’t hope to match. The way he fought, the way he attacked the enemy…
I could use you right now, Wash. I could really, really use you right about now.