by Sam Sisavath
…fuck…
Wash staggered back and reached behind him for the 1911 that Keith had given him. He’d managed to wrap his fingers around the grip, when the monster touched his right arm and Wash lost all feeling in it.
…me.
“There’ll be none of that,” the creature hissed.
The clatter of the pistol as it dropped from his numbed fingers and banged against the wooden sidewalk.
What? How’d he lost his grip on the weapon? Better yet, why couldn’t he feel anything along the entire length of his right arm?
Wash continued to stumble back—it was the only move left to him—and the one-eyed ghoul followed.
“You knew it would end this way,” it hissed. “How many times have I told you? You should have listened…kid.”
Twenty-Five
THEN
By morning, all that was left for Wash to do was drag the bodies out of the bungalow and let the sunlight take care of them. The flesh and blood, anyway. He did the blue-eyed ghoul in the red cloak last, telling himself there was a reason for it but wasn’t sure what it was. Wash was numbed and moving on autopilot, doing the things he knew had to be done, things he’d done countless times. It was mundane and passionless work, but they kept him busy and his thoughts from straying.
He didn’t bother digging holes to bury the remaining ghoul bones. The carrions and insects needed to eat, too. There was a reason you didn’t find a lot of ghoul remains after The Walk Out. All Wash had to do was listen to the wildlife around him to know these four leftovers would be gone before the end of the week.
When he returned to the house, the Old Man’s body was still wrapped in his sleeping blanket and bundled with duct tape. The Old Man used to say there was nothing a roll of duct tape couldn’t fix, and Wash had found that to be true for the most part. It worked wonders to keep a body hidden.
He spent the remainder of the morning getting ready to leave and doing his best to pretend the Old Man’s body wasn’t there, resting on the floor in a corner, waiting for him to finally deal with it. When he was done packing, it was time to do the inevitable, even if the thought made him sick to his stomach.
He dragged the mummified body out into the back and dug a grave just deep enough to keep the animals away, then put the Old Man inside. He didn’t bother with a cross—the Old Man was the least religious person Wash knew—or markers. The Old Man had no family, and besides the occasional slayers they would partner up with on the road, no close friends who would come looking for him. No one, anyway, except Wash.
Morning was fading when Wash glimpsed two mounted figures through one of the windows, sunlight blinking off a pair of aviator shades one of them was wearing. He hadn’t heard them approaching because the riders were on unshod horses and the animals barely made any noise against the damp earth.
Wash grabbed his pack and went outside to meet them. He was carrying more this afternoon than when he’d showed up last night, even though he’d left most of the Old Man’s stuff behind. He didn’t need more guns or bullets; they were too heavy, and the payment from Oakville was more valuable anyway. You could always find more unclaimed ammo and weapons out there just lying around.
The two slayers were waiting outside. Wash hadn’t realized how dirty he was or how tired he looked until he saw his own reflection in the lenses of Taggert’s glasses.
“You look like shit, kid,” Williams said, as if reading Wash’s thoughts.
“Didn’t think you guys would still be around,” Taggert said. “You weren’t waiting for us, were you?”
“No,” Wash said.
“Is that the Old Man’s pack?” Williams asked.
“Yeah.”
“He using you as a pack mule now?” Williams said with a chuckle.
Taggert pushed his glasses down the bridge of his nose and leaned forward to get a better look at Wash. “Something happened.” Then, “What happened, kid?”
“He’s dead,” Wash said.
“Who’s dead?” Williams said.
“The Old Man.”
“Did you say the Old Man’s dead?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Wash said, and walked past the two mounted slayers.
“Kid,” Taggert said from behind him, but Wash didn’t stop. “Kid, what happened? Kid!”
Wash kept going and never looked back.
He didn’t know what Taggert and Williams did after their encounter, and Wash didn’t really care, either. He kept walking, heading west. He wasn’t sure where he was going exactly, and it didn’t matter anyway; he just had to get as far away from the bungalow as possible.
He avoided a couple of towns before the day was over. There were people in one, but the other might have been empty. Maybe. Wash didn’t feel like human contact and went around both. He didn’t need a new job so soon after Oakville, not with the Old Man’s share. Not that slayers really did what they did for payment; it was always just a byproduct of what they did instead of the why.
With an hour or so before nightfall and his legs tired from the nonstop walking—his arms were also fatigued from the digging earlier—Wash began looking for a place to take shelter. He considered going back to the last town he’d passed about an hour or so back. It would be a close one, but he thought he could make it. Besides, even if he couldn’t and found himself on the road when it got dark, it wouldn’t be the first time.
Instead, Wash decided not to waste time doing anything. He stashed his packs inside a brush to keep it from prying eyes and climbed up a large tree nearby, choosing a hefty branch about ten feet up from the ground. He latched himself into place with some rope and settled in.
It had been a long time since he used a tree to get through the night. The last time he could remember was a few months before he met the Old Man. That meeting had changed everything. Before, Wash got by, but the Old Man taught him how to survive.
He thought about their first encounter and all the years since, and how it only took one day before he reverted back to his old ways. But he was by himself now, so maybe it was a good thing he knew how to get by without someone to watch his back. Slayers rarely worked alone, and for good reason. When a partner died, you either found another one, or you joined an existing group. Wash couldn’t see himself doing either.
He wasn’t entirely sure what he felt. Sadness, yes, because the Old Man was an important fixture in his life, and he’d taught Wash more about the world than anyone ever had before or after The Purge. And now he was gone, because Wash didn’t look closely enough at the closet in the bungalow. It was his fault, but he didn’t dwell on that. If he were alive, the Old Man would tell him that regrets were meaningless, that the past can’t be altered, so it was better to just get on with it.
“Shit happens to everyone, good or bad,” the Old Man once said. “No one ever said life was fair. You learn from the shitty things, and you move on. Doing anything else is just a big fat waste of time.”
Wash closed his eyes and went to sleep with birds chirping in his ears and land animals scurrying on the ground below. He woke up intermittently through the night but was always lulled back to sleep by the continued noise of nature going about its business around him.
“Get on with it,” the Old Man would say. “Just get on with it, kid.”
He lurched wide awake, his right hand reaching across his waist for the handle of the kukri on pure instinct. He didn’t pull the machete right away, and instead listened…to nothing.
And that was the problem.
The living beings around him had gone quiet, and except for the rustling of branches and a wind howling between the stationary trees, there was heavy silence.
Wash was still perfectly situated on the branch where he’d put himself, so he hadn’t moved very much during the night. He had to admit, he’d been a little worried he might not be able to go right back to his old ways, but that doubt had proven unnecessary.
Why is it so quiet?
He carefully pulled the knot on t
he rope—all it took was one simple tug, exactly how it was supposed to work for quick disengagement—and let it dangle off the side of the branch. He could move again, but he didn’t.
The crunch-crunch of brittle leaves breaking as something walked over them, like firecrackers in the suddenly still woods. Whoever it was—whatever it was—wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding their presence. Either that, or they weren’t trying. Wash wasn’t sure which answer made him feel better.
He kept the kukri in its sheath as he scanned the woods. There were too many black shadows for him to see everything, the tall tree crowns above keeping most of the moonlight at bay and further adding to the darkness below. The lack of animal noise was what got his alarm bells ringing.
Crunch-crunch.
It sounded like a pair of feet moving down there, but that was just a guess. He could have been wrong—he could have been very wrong—but Wash didn’t think so. With so little happening, it wasn’t hard to pinpoint where the footsteps were coming from.
Crunch-crunch.
East, which was the same direction as the last town—and beyond that, the bungalow.
Crunch-crunch.
Wash slowly eased the machete out of its sheath.
Crunch-crunch.
He was high up enough that he could go unnoticed by anyone passing by below him. Unless, of course, they looked up, which they would have no reason to do. The branches around him were extra camouflage from everything except the squirrels and birds already up here with him.
Crunch-crunch.
Wash focused on the ground, the kukri gripped tightly in front of him, its very sharp silver-coated blade glinting against a stream of moonlight that had managed to penetrate the crowns above. Not a lot, but enough.
Crunch-crunch.
Wash stared, his eyes widening at the sight.
A ghoul.
It was a blue-eyed ghoul.
What…
Wash knew what he was looking at because of the way it walked—slow and purposeful, its body long and straight, sinewy muscles almost glistening in the darkness. He would know even if he wasn’t staring down at its hairless domed head, the skull underneath the flesh peeking through at deformed angles.
…the…
It stopped almost directly below him and seemed to look around for a moment.
…fuck…
Then it craned its head and looked up at him.
…is…
It looked straight up at him.
…happening?
It was wearing glasses. But not just any glasses—aviator shades, the lenses so scratched up that Wash wondered how it could see anything from behind them. Then the damn thing smiled at him with thin strings that could only be mistaken for lips if you had never seen human mouths before. Its nose was shrunken against its gaunt cheeks, and Wash didn’t know how the glasses stayed perched on its face and didn’t just slide off.
The shades, with their scratched lenses…
Taggert’s. He was looking at the same aviator shades that Taggert always wore and had been wearing when Wash saw him this afternoon. So why was the creature below him wearing Taggert’s sunglasses?
Like every ghoul Wash had crossed paths with, this one was naked, its elongated frame giving the impression it was more plastic mannequin than actual flesh and blood. Slippery, pruned black skin wrapped tightly around its protruding bones, as if every movement it made should hurt.
Wash couldn’t see its eyes with the shades on, but he thought he could just make out a glowing blue orb behind the right lens…
One glowing blue orb.
There had to be something wrong with the angle, because Wash could only make out one pulsating object behind the glasses. Eyes came in pairs. Wash had seen black-eyed ghouls with just one eye—sometimes with none—but it was different with the blue eyes. They could regenerate limbs and heal from bullet wounds. They didn’t lose eyeballs.
Unless he was wrong. Unless this wasn’t a blue-eyed ghoul.
But then, what the hell was it?
Wash was reaching for his holstered SIG when the creature slid the shades off its face to reveal its eyes.
No, not eyes.
Its one glowing blue eye.
What the fuck? Wash thought when the monster lifted a slightly crooked forefinger to its lips.
Then it winked at him—it winked at him—before darting off, leaving the aviator shades on the ground in its wake.
Wash looked after the monster, the kukri and gun in his hands, trying to understand what had just happened.
Or had it happened at all? Had he dreamt the whole thing up? Was he still asleep?
Wake up. Wake up!
But he was awake. He was wide awake and sweating despite the cold night air, despite the fact that every breath he took produced small white clouds.
And then there were the shades, on the ground below him, staring back up at him…
He didn’t close his eyes or go back to sleep again that night. He couldn’t, even if he wanted to, and he didn’t.
As soon as the first hints of sunlight began spreading across the woods around him, Wash jumped down from the tree. He picked up the aviator shades from the ground where they’d been dropped, not having moved all night. He’d been certain they were Taggert’s from ten feet up, and up close that certainty proved correct. There were specks of blood on the inside of the lenses and more along the temples. Human blood.
Wash looked in the direction the ghoul had gone, but instead of chasing it, he turned and retrieved his packs, then began running back in the direction of the bungalow. It took him all morning and most of the afternoon, bypassing the same two towns from last night.
By the time he reached the house, he was tired and ready to sit down and never get back up. But he forced himself to keep going, pushing open the closed door with the barrel of his shotgun. The absence of horses outside the bungalow wasn’t too surprising because like most people, the slayers would have put their mounts indoors with them to keep them out of harm’s way. Horses were a more precious commodity these days than most people.
The smell of human blood—so distinct from that of a ghoul’s—immediately set Wash’s alarm bells ringing. He stepped inside, leaving the door wide open behind him to let air in and help with the stink.
Williams’s body was the first one to greet him. It lay stiffly in the great room on its back next to a machete. The slayer was missing almost his entire right arm, and for some reason, Williams’s eyes were open and staring up at the cobwebbed ceiling. His wide-brim hat hung from a hook along the wall nearby. If not for the missing arm and all the coagulated blood that surrounded him, Wash might have thought Williams was just resting awkwardly on the floor.
The same couldn’t be said for Taggert, who sat next to the hearth, almost in the same spot where the Old Man had spent his last few seconds the night before. There was a hole in Taggert’s chest, and his head was lolled to one side, his eyes mercifully closed. His shades were missing, and there was writing on the wall above his head, written in big blocky, bloody letters.
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN KID
Wash replayed last night over in his head:
The blue-eyed ghoul—a one-eyed, blue-eyed ghoul—smiling up at him, taunting him.
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN KID, the letters read. They were written in Taggert’s blood; or maybe both his and Williams’s. There was so much of it that they had to have come from both slayers.
Wash jumped over Williams’s body on his way to the back hallway. He burst out of the rear door and into the yard behind the bungalow.
There was a hole where the grave he’d dug yesterday for the Old Man used to be. A sleeping bag, the same one he’d wrapped the Old Man in, was unfurled on the ground, pieces of duct tape still clinging to parts of it. Footprints led from the hole and back to the door behind Wash, along with shredded clothes that suggested someone had pulled them off strip by strip.
He ran back into the house, but there was nothing for him to
see, nothing to discover that would lead to any conclusions different from what was already reverberating around inside his head.
He walked over to Taggert’s body and stared at the bloody words on the wall.
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN KID
Wash replayed the last few seconds of last night when the Old Man squeezed the trigger on the SIG Sauer that he’d pressed against his own temple. Wash had screamed and lunged at him, trying to stop the gunshot, to get to the gun, but he had no hopes of reaching him in time. He wasn’t faster than a bullet, and all he’d managed to do was rush the Old Man slightly.
And that, maybe, just maybe, had thrown off the bullet’s trajectory enough that instead of going through the Old Man’s brain and out the other temple, it had exited his left eye. The Old Man had slumped to the floor then, blood oozing out of the hole on the side of his head, but most of it coming out of the much bigger one where his left eye used to be.
…where his left eye used to be…
The bullet might not have gone straight through the Old Man’s brain, but it had killed him all the same. Wash knew that, because he had checked the Old Man’s pulse and sat there staring at his unmoving body for the remainder of the night, a small part of him expecting all of it to be one big joke.
But it wasn’t. The Old Man was dead, and he stayed dead. Wash had buried him in the back of the house the next morning. His arms were still tired from all the digging.
He looked up at the jagged, bloody letters hanging over Taggert’s head, exactly where it knew Wash would be sure to look:
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN KID, it read, the same now as it did the first ten times he read it.
That was what the Old Man called him, ever since they first met. Kid. The Old Man rarely called Wash by his name.
“CATCH ME IF YOU CAN KID”
“CATCH ME IF YOU CAN…”
“…KID…”