by Sam Sisavath
She was still thinking about Wash when the door moved and the chains outside jingled. Ana quickly scrambled up to her feet, Shelby doing likewise next to her.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Ana said under her breath to Shelby.
“Who, me?” Shelby said, matching her pitch.
“Yeah, you.”
Shelby grunted as they both watched the door open and the man in the Houston Astros ball cap appear on the other side. He didn’t step through the opening and instead kept about three feet between himself and the shack. If Ana had any illusions about trying anything, the pump-action shotgun—it looked almost identical to Randall’s Ol’ Pumpy, but was more beat up—gripped casually in the man’s hands erased those foolish notions.
Shelby, thank God, came to the same conclusion. For now, anyway.
Easy does it, Shelby.
Please, please don’t get me killed.
Ball Cap didn’t step into the room or come any closer when he said, “Is he dead?” while briefly eyeing Randall’s unmoving form.
“No,” Ana said.
“You sure?” Ball Cap said. “He looks pretty dead to me.”
“He’s not.”
“You checked him?”
“Yes. Often. He’s alive. Hurt, but alive.”
Ball Cap didn’t look as if he believed her. Ana took the opportunity to stare at the man. He was young, about Shelby’s age, and the dirty strands of blond hair that sneaked out from underneath his cap made him appear even more youthful. He was dressed in dirty jeans and a drab olive green jacket with a gun holster on his right hip and shells for the shotgun in loops around his belt. Despite his age, Ana recognized the hardness on his face. He was like Shelby in that regard—young, but experienced in blood.
“He could use some water,” Shelby was saying. “You got any water?”
“Yeah, we got water,” their captor said.
When the man didn’t continue, Shelby said, “So can we have some, or what?”
“No,” Ball Cap said, and turned to go.
“Hey,” Ana said.
Ball Cap stopped.
“Why did you attack us?” Ana asked. “We came here to warn you about ghouls in the area. We were no danger to you.”
“You’ll find out,” Ball Cap said, and before Ana could respond, a second figure (Where the hell did he come from?) slammed the door in her face. They heard the chains jingling outside again.
Ana moved closer to the door and peered out at Ball Cap as he walked away, leaving behind a new guard to take his place. Ana could only see the man’s back, but he looked shorter, wearing some kind of thick camouflage jacket.
“Well, that was informative,” Shelby said. The young slayer was crouched next to Randall, checking his vitals.
“How is he?” she asked.
“Still in La La Land,” Shelby said. He looked up. “You still think we’ll be fine?”
I’m not sure any of us is going to be fine, Shelby.
She nodded at him instead. “Yeah. He’ll be fine. And so will we.”
She couldn’t tell if Shelby believed her, and Ana turned back to the door. She replayed Ball Cap’s reaction when she told him about ghouls in the area. He hadn’t even flinched or done anything to indicate he was worried. In fact, he didn’t give even the slightest hint that she was telling him anything he didn’t already know.
He knows. He knows all about the ghouls…
Seconds became minutes, and minutes became hours. Betsy didn’t come back, and neither did Ball Cap. No one came to check on Randall or to talk to them and provide answers. The man who had replaced Ball Cap didn’t say a word or respond to her and Shelby’s attempts to engage him in conversation. Their new guard acted as if he couldn’t hear them, which of course was bullshit. Though the man did occasionally walk around the building (maybe Ball Cap had told him to look out for Betsy), he never strayed more than a few feet from their walls.
The walls. Ana thought about the walls more and more. They were flimsy enough that she could hear every pekking sound whenever a stray pebble struck the outside. Just as Shelby had said when he first woke up, it wouldn’t take very much to break through them. Hell, she could do it with a few strategic kicks.
But the problem was the guard. Ball Cap had been armed, and his replacement was, too. Ana couldn’t tell for sure what he was carrying—there were slivers in the walls to see through, but the man had an uncanny ability to always keep his back to them—but a weapon was a weapon.
And right now, he had one and they didn’t.
So yes, they could very easily bust their way out of their prison. Shelby, especially. He was big and strong enough and could make a door with one good kick in the right spot. But then he’d have to get outside. Even if Shelby were to attack the back of their shed while their captor was at the front, how long before the man ran around the very, very small building to intercept the slayer?
It didn’t matter what kind of scenarios she ran through her head; it always ended up the same way: Violent, and with either her or Shelby, or both of them, on the wrong side of a firearm.
And I can’t die here. Not out here, not without finding Wash first.
…Or going back to Em.
To do either of those two things, she had to change their situation. That was the problem. There was something about the way Ball Cap had acted and spoken earlier that told Ana they had a reason for everything they’d done so far. The ambush, the imprisonment…
What the hell do they want?
If she could only get her hands on that answer, she’d have a better chance of talking her way out of this. Ana was good at that. She’d always been. Verbal gymnastics was a skill she’d learned since she was a kid, and high school and college had sharpened it. But it was hard to convince someone to see things your way if they never told you what they wanted. She had no ammunition. None whatsoever.
Catch-22. Goddammit.
It was still morning when they were ambushed, and when she opened her eyes in the shack, the hours had quickly given way to midday.
Then afternoon came and went.
And now, the temperatures were starting to fall noticeably, and the world outside had begun to pale. With those changes, the slow understanding that things were about to get really, really bad grew in the pit of Ana’s gut.
They occasionally checked on Randall, making sure he was still alive while trying not to let their stomachs growl too much. No one had come to feed them or offer water. Ana’s lips were already parched this morning, and the situation got worse as afternoon became evening.
Out of frustration, Ana walked to the door and pulled on it. “Hey! Hey, I’m talking to you!”
Her guard turned his head slightly, but not all the way. She still hadn’t gotten a good look at his face, just the back of his dirt-speckled short black hair. She did, though, glimpse the long barrel of a shotgun before it disappeared again.
“Hey!” Ana shouted, pulling on the door. The chains and door quaked with her efforts. “I know you can hear me! Who are you people? What do you want with us? Why aren’t you saying anything?”
Like the last six or so hours, she didn’t hear a peep out of the man.
“What did he say?” Shelby asked.
She glanced over and caught him grinning mischievously at her.
She grunted. “This isn’t funny, Shelby.”
“Who’s laughing?” the young slayer said. He stood up and walked the short distance over to her. Then, dropping his voice to almost a whisper, “I think it’s time.”
She stared at him but didn’t ask what he meant by it’s time. She already knew. He had come to the same conclusions as she had. Their captors weren’t going to tell them a damn thing, and by the time they discovered the reason for the ambush, it was going to be too late. She knew it and Shelby knew it, even without either one of them putting their thoughts into words.
Ana nodded, and they walked away from the door, putting more space between them and the lone figure
outside.
When they were as far as they could go, Ana leaned close to Shelby. “What about Randall?”
Shelby looked briefly over at his friend. There was a steely look on his face that she hadn’t seen before. The jocular kid was gone, replaced by a man who slayed monsters for a living.
God, he looks so much like Wash.
“I don’t wanna leave him. Trust me, I don’t,” Shelby said. “It’s the last thing I wanna be doing right now. But we don’t have any choice. We can’t do anything for him if we’re all locked up in here when those jackoffs finally show their true colors. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t have very good feelings about what they’ve got planned for us. We need to get out there, get our hands on some weapons, and then come back. What are they gonna do, shoot him while he’s unconscious? If they were gonna do that, they’d have done it already. No, I got a feeling they kept us here for a reason, and whatever that reason is, it’s gonna happen when night falls.” He shook his head and pursed his lips. “I don’t wanna be stuck in here when that happens. Rand would understand. He’d do the exact same thing in our shoes. This is the only move, Ana. I wish it wasn’t, but it is what it is.”
Wow. Is this the same kid I’ve been traveling with the last few days? Ana thought, but didn’t say anything.
Instead, she gazed intently at Shelby and knew that he meant every word of what he’d just said. This wasn’t a spur of the moment thing, but a course of action he had been thinking about for hours now. It was dangerous, and they would have to leave Randall behind, if just temporarily, because what other options did they have?
She thought about all the things that could go wrong, running the scenarios over and over in her head. And single every time, Ana arrived at the same conclusion: He’s right. We don’t have any choice. It’s stay here or die, or… Fight back and maybe die anyway. But at least it’ll happen on our own terms.
She glanced at the door one more time. “What about Chris?”
“I’m not leaving her behind, either,” Shelby said. “I’m not leaving anyone behind. But we can’t do anything for them from in here.”
Ana nodded. “No, we can’t.” Then, “You know how to do it?”
“I’ve been checking out the walls.” He took a couple of steps back before stopping and placing his palm against a moldy section of a board. “Termites have done most of the work for us. I can finish it off.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Shelby. You sure?” She sneaked another look at the door. “We might only get one chance at this.”
Shelby rubbed the board with his palm before pulling his hand back and wiping dirt on his pants leg. “We’re running out of time.” He glanced down at his watch. “An hour, maybe less, before sundown. You know what happens then.”
“All right,” Ana said. “Whenever you’re—”
Shelby smashed his boot into the board he’d been touching only seconds ago, and a big, jagged hole opened up in the back of the shack.
Goddammit, Shelby! Ana thought but didn’t get the chance to turn it into a shout before the young slayer threw his entire body into the opening and snapped three of the connecting boards in half as he lunged outside.
Despite Ana’s original fears, the shack remained standing even though every inch of it was trembling and layers of dust from the ceiling rained down on top of her head and shoulders. But she was already turning and practically threw herself out of the exit that Shelby had created for them.
Night was coming, but it wasn’t here yet, and there was still strong sunlight outside to temporarily blind Ana as she stumbled her way out of their prison. Even as she gathered herself, blinking away the stinging light, the only thought that raced across her mind was, The guard definitely heard that. He’d have to be dumb and blind and dead not to have heard that!
Just as she thought that, Ana wondered who else had heard Shelby’s exit and snapped a look over her shoulder and back into the shack—
Randall, on the floor, as still as he’d been when she’d checked on him last time, only minutes ago. Seeing him like that, oblivious to the world—to the craziness happening all around him—made her wonder for the umpteenth time if he wasn’t actually dead or in some kind of coma. How hard had Ball Cap’s partner struck Randall with that shotgun of his?
Ana’s attention snapped back to the present when she heard footsteps coming from nearby. She turned to her left just in time to see the barrel of a shotgun appearing, then heartbeats later, going from being pointed at the ground to rising, rising—
Shelby, fleeing across the wide-open spaces, with only ten or so meters between him and the cover of a run-down-looking warehouse. But he wasn’t there yet, and there was no way he was going to make it in time—
“No!” Ana shouted, just before she slapped both extended hands against the shotgun barrel as it took aim at Shelby.
The boom! was earsplitting, and Ana didn’t know if she’d done enough to throw off the man’s aim because she was too busy falling, falling, until she finally crashed into the ground. Dirt erupted around her as she rolled onto her back and grimaced, pain slashing through her body from everywhere.
She coughed as dirt swarmed her, the sun above shining down like a big spotlight. There was relief when a silhouette appeared above her and a dark face looked down. Ana’s eyes abandoned the detail-free face and dropped slightly to the shotgun in the man’s hands as he racked it. An empty shell ejected and arced through the air, and Ana stared after it, mesmerized by its flight path.
“That was a stupid thing to do,” the shadow said, before he turned the shotgun and pointed it at her face.
Ana sighed and closed her eyes, waiting for the inevitable.
Wash
Twelve
He regained consciousness to the tick-tick-tick-tick of the watch on his left wrist.
I’m dead. (Or worse.)
But he wasn’t.
Aren’t I?
No. He wasn’t. He was still alive, because he could still hear the tick-tick-tick-tick. Dead men couldn’t hear. He also couldn’t wrinkle his nostrils at the overwhelming stench of death. He could hear and smell, which meant he was still alive.
Why aren’t I dead?
Unless he was wrong. Unless he was dead but just didn’t know it. Could you retain your sense of smell and hearing after death? He didn’t know the answer to that one. He’d never died before. He’d come close a few times. (A lot of times, actually.) But he’d never actually succumbed. Sooner or later, that would change when his luck ran out. Sooner or later, he would lose, and it would be all over.
But not yet.
Despite the wave of ghouls stuffing themselves in the RV, into the small bedroom in the back, he wasn’t dead yet.
Why aren’t I dead?
He opened his eyes. It was harder than it should have been. There were sticky fluids over his eyelids. More, dripping down his cheeks and jaw.
Thick. And smelly. Disgusting.
Ghoul blood. I’m covered in ghoul blood.
He closed up his sense of smell and began breathing through his mouth. Another sniff of the foul odor might have made Wash gag. Or throw up. Or throw up while gagging. None of those possibilities were very appealing.
I’m still alive. Why am I still alive?
He remembered fighting for his life, then being overwhelmed. Roy and June screaming, but mostly June. He recalled the terror coming from the little girl. And then he was on the floor, scrambling and trying to fight, but losing, losing against the tide.
And now he was here.
Why aren’t I dead?
That was the question that bounced around in his head, even as he opened his eyes fully and took in his dark surroundings. He was in a building, with just enough streams of moonlight coming from holes and slits along the walls to see with.
Wash blinked, forcing his night eyes to adapt to his new environment. He became aware of a painful straining along his arms. Both of them. His
legs, too, were overly outstretched, and he could barely touch the dirt ground with his toes. Paling strands of old hay were scattered around the floor—or the sections he could make out with his still-adjusting eyes.
He was in some kind of barn or stable. That would explain the random strips of hay. But it didn’t explain why he was still alive.
WHY AREN’T I DEAD?
Wait. His toes. Who took off his boots? He wasn’t even wearing socks anymore. A small, lazy bubble of liquid hung off the big toe of his right foot, just before it let go and fell the short distance and joined a bigger puddle waiting below it. Sweat. It was cold, and he was still sweating for some reason.
Wash glanced up. Or as much as he could. His arms were extended upward, his shoulder joints twisted at impossible angles. A thick rawhide rope dangled from a pair of scarred rafters above. His arms were pressed against one another and held in place by the end of the rope, wrapped so tightly around his wrists that just breathing hurt.
I’m alive.
That was the only thing that mattered. He was still alive, and though every bone in his body ached and every inch of muscle felt as if it were on fire, he was alive. And as long as he stayed that way, he could still finish what he’d promised the Old Man. He could still kill it.
“Maybe you should concentrate on surviving this first, kid,” the Old Man said. “Everything else can wait.”
That was a good idea. He was still breathing, even if it was laborous and his chest was working overtime. That was the good news. The bad? He was strung up and covered in ghoul blood.
I’m alive. I’m still alive…
He clung to that. It was the only thing he had going for him, but it was a big one, even if he couldn’t breathe properly. Having to suck in and expel air using just his mouth didn’t help.
But at least he was alive. At least he had that.
Slowly, his new world revealed itself further. Old wooden walls to his right and left and in front of him (and he assumed, also behind him), along with stacks of hay. Old hay. The ones immediately to his right, about half a dozen feet away, gave off a slightly grayish-white tint. It was probably also sending out a moldy aroma too, if he’d allowed himself to smell anything, which he didn’t. There were empty stalls farther to his left, but no animals in them. There was nothing inside but him.