by Sam Sisavath
“Last night must have been scary,” Gaby said.
Taylor nodded. “It was like listening to World War III out there. Every time those planes went by, it sounded like they were right on top of us.”
“They were flying low,” Danny said. “Warthogs do their best work at close range.”
“It helped that the collaborators didn’t show up with anti-aircraft guns,” Nate added. “I guess they didn’t know what they were dealing with.”
“They do now. Which means we have to be more careful on the roads. They’re going to be shooting first and fuck the questions.” He glanced quickly at Alice. “I mean, forget the questions.”
Alice smiled back. “I’ve heard worse.”
“I bet you have.”
“Come on,” Taylor said, and the girls drifted over to the other side of the kitchen, where Taylor opened a can of pineapple for the younger girl using a manual can opener. Alice’s mouth was already watering before Taylor even got the lid all the way off.
In the year since The Purge, Gaby could see that the two sisters had made a decent life for themselves out here. The cottage itself was located in a wooded area with a small pond behind them. The girls had no idea how to fish twelve months ago, but Taylor had learned pretty fast.
“There’s no refrigeration, so we pretty much cook and eat them the same day after I catch them,” Taylor had explained.
Adapt or perish, right, Lara?
The cottage had faded yellow walls and dirt-covered floors, with two bedrooms in the back and a shack for supplies outside. It was out of the way, with no actual roads leading to its front doors, which was how the sisters had managed to avoid detection from both humans and ghouls. She hadn’t asked if this was their place or if they had just stumbled across it; the fact was, those things just didn’t matter anymore.
Gaby looked back at the weapons on the counter between her, Danny, and Nate. There were three hunting rifles, a pump-action shotgun, and two AR-15s in the pile. Danny snatched up one of the rifles—it was tanned and looked well-worn, with chips along the sides and stock. He pulled out the magazine, found it empty, and began reloading it with rounds from one of the ammo boxes.
Nate picked up the other rifle and offered it to her across the counter.
“And it’s not even my birthday,” she smiled at him.
“Just remember that when I actually forget your birthday,” Nate said.
“Charming.”
“Just trying to score bonus points for future screwups.”
“Oh, you said screwups,” Danny said. “I thought you said something else.”
“Not in front of the kids,” Gaby smirked.
The rifle was matte black, and unlike the one Danny was turning over in his hands, hers looked almost new. It had a collapsible stock, which she thought was a nice touch. Both had simple red dot sights unlike the hunting rifles, which were equipped with very long scopes. They were good for long-distance shooting, but she’d learned to appreciate the semi-automatic capabilities of an AR. The ability to send a lot of rounds downrange in a short amount of time, she’d found, couldn’t be beat in a gunfight.
Gaby looked over at Taylor. “You’ve never used any of these?”
The girl shook her head. “Those things are too complicated. The one I have is easier. Just pull that thingie back and shoot.”
Gaby smiled. Was she ever that innocent when it came to weapons?
“So there wasn’t anything there?” Taylor asked. “Back at the airfield?”
“Just a lot of rubble,” Gaby said. “What were you hoping to find?”
“Anything useful. I thought about waiting a couple of days, but I guess I was too curious about last night.”
“You know what they say,” Danny said, “curiosity killed the kid in the cottage.”
“Now you tell me,” Taylor said.
Gaby liked the girl. She would have been pretty if she let her hair grow out; or, at least, stopped cutting it herself. The fact that Taylor had managed to keep her little sister alive out here all by herself made her even more impressive.
“We’ll be heading back this way when we’re done with our thing,” Gaby said. “If you want, we can pick you two up, take you back to the Trident with us.”
“You mean, and live on a boat?” Taylor said doubtfully.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds. In fact, it’s pretty great.”
“It’d be cool to live on the ocean,” Alice said wistfully between mouthfuls of pineapple.
Gaby’s mouth watered just looking at the syrup dripping down the girl’s chin. When was the last time she had some of that? It was probably before that mess at Mercy Hospital, back in Louisiana. It seemed like a lifetime ago now.
“I’m just giving you the option,” she said to Taylor. “It’s up to you, but you don’t have to decide now.”
Taylor nodded. “We’ll think about it. When will you guys be back?”
Gaby glanced at Danny.
He shrugged. “As early as a day, as late as a week.”
“Basically, whenever,” Nate said.
“What I said.”
“Not really.”
“Close enough.”
“We don’t know for sure,” Gaby said, seeing the confusion on Taylor’s face. “But it shouldn’t be more than a few days.”
“Is it safer out there?” Taylor asked.
“On the Trident? Yes. Out there, on the ocean, you don’t have worry about people—or other things—showing up at your front door.”
“Or bad men on the road trying to steal your ride,” Danny added.
“And that, too.”
Taylor didn’t say anything. Gaby could see the indecision on her face, that struggle between burgeoning hope and trying to stamp it down because hope was a hard thing to embrace these days. She’d learned that the hard way, too. There was a time when she hoped Will would finally contact them, to tell Lara that he was okay, and come back.
I should have known better. Even Will can’t survive out here by himself.
“When you come back, we’ll know for sure,” Taylor said. She sounded certain; either that, or she was putting on a very good front.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a ham radio, would you, kid?” Danny asked her.
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“It’s definitely not a radio made out of ham.”
“Is there a Radio Shack or electronic store in town?” Nate asked. “They might carry one.”
“I don’t really remember,” Taylor said. “There’s a couple of strip malls, but I don’t remember a place that sells just radios.”
“Should we look anyway?” Gaby asked Danny. “We need to let the Trident know we’re still alive. They must be crazy with worry right now.”
Danny shook his head. “Starch is sixty miles from here. We can get there in a few hours even using just the smaller roads. All we have to do is stay out of trouble until then.”
“That’s the trick, isn’t it?” Nate said.
“Indeed it is, Nate-ometer. The facility will have everything we need. Best part: no poking around Hicksville, USA, for them.” He slung the AR-15 and looked back at Taylor. “This everything, kid?”
“That’s all I found,” Taylor said. “What, you want more?”
“Normally this would be enough, but after what we’ve seen? Hells yeah. I’ll take whatever else you got.”
“That’s it, sorry.”
“No grenades?”
“Grenades? Um, no.”
“Hey, couldn’t hurt to ask.” Danny started to go, but stopped and turned back to the counter and picked up the pump-action shotgun. “Just in case…”
*
WITH ONLY SIXTY miles between them and Starch, a mostly serviceable ride, and now armed, they felt good enough about their situation that they decided to eat first before taking off. They didn’t want to dig further into the sisters’ stash, so Danny and Nate spent a few minutes outside at the pond with a pair of
fishing poles, catching a dozen fish in less than ten minutes. A year’s worth of spawning, with only the two girls to cut into the inventory, meant fish were attacking the plastic lures as soon as they hit the water.
Like shooting fish in a barrel, she thought.
They were in the beat-up truck and back on the road by midday, with more than five hours left to reach Harold Campbell’s facility. More than enough time, unless they encountered obstacles along the road, which after yesterday was a very real possibility. It wasn’t just collaborators they had to worry about, though; it was Mercer’s men, too. Texas had become impossibly deadlier since the last time they set foot on it, something she didn’t think she would ever say a year ago.
We should have stayed on the Trident. I wonder if Lara is saying the same thing to herself right now?
“Tough kids,” Nate was saying from the backseat. “Did we ever ask them if that was their place?”
“No,” Gaby said.
“I guess it doesn’t matter.”
Nate was looking out the rear window, even though the cottage had long disappeared behind a wall of trees. Danny picked their way through the unpaved dirt trails, eventually locating a stretch of empty country road that, according to a sign, would take them away from Larkin and westward. The idea was to avoid the main highways completely.
As they headed back toward civilization, Gaby found herself listening for the telltale signs of approaching warplanes from above.
“Warthogs do their best work at close range,” Danny had said.
She had seen that for herself yesterday, and just the memory of it made her shiver unwittingly. She hoped the men in the truck with her hadn’t noticed, and when neither one of them said anything—especially Nate behind her—she guessed she was safe.
Nate had one of the bolt-action hunting rifles in his lap, the backpack with the extra ammo next to him, and they each had one of the handguns. She had the Glock in her front waistband (what she wouldn’t have given for a tactical gun belt at the moment), Nate liked the Smith & Wesson revolver, while Danny had chosen the Sig Sauer. She wasn’t going to complain about the extra weapon or the spare magazines, but the fact was, if they had to rely on them today, it meant her hope of a smooth sailing to Starch had been dashed.
If the truck was visually unimpressive on the outside, it sounded worse inside. No wonder they had heard the vehicle coming back at the airport. The pickup made too much noise, and she swore the tires squeaked every time they found a pothole or went over something as minor as a hill of dirt, which given the countrified nature of the road, was often.
She didn’t say anything for the longest time, and neither did Nate or Danny. She didn’t know what was going through their minds at the moment, but she kept expecting uniformed men to come out of hiding in front of them, springing an ambush the way they had done to poor Taylor this morning. The only question was whether those men would be wearing tan or black uniforms. Either way, the thought made her grip the AR-15 just a little bit tighter, her right forefinger rubbing against the trigger.
After about half an hour of driving in silence, with nothing but the trees and woods for company and the wind whistling in their ears, Gaby finally said, “Are we going to talk about it?”
“Talk about what?” Danny said.
“Mercer.”
“What about him?”
“This war of his.”
“What about it?”
“They’re killing people, Danny. Civilians. If it was just the soldiers, I wouldn’t care. But they’re being indiscriminate.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Danny said.
“Do we just look the other way?” she asked.
“You’re assuming we can do something about it.”
“Can’t we?”
“The three of us? Not a chance in hell. Mercer’s got an army. We just saw a small part of it back there at the airfield. He’s got moving pieces all across the state. The man has been planning this for months now. Hell, he might have been cooking it up since the night everything went to shit, for all I know. A guy like that…” Danny shook his head. “It’s going to take more than just the three of us to stop him.”
He was right, and the worst part was, she’d known for a while now, but knowing and accepting weren’t the same thing. The idea of not doing anything at all made her shift in her seat.
“We have to worry about the Trident right now,” Danny continued. “And the people on it. Carly, Vera and Elise, the others. What happens in Texas isn’t our problem. Mercer’s right about one thing: The people in those towns made their choice.”
“They didn’t ask to be bombed from the air,” she said.
“No, they didn’t. But there’s nothing we can do about that. We’re outgunned six ways to Sunday.” He sighed, his voice growing more somber, and for a moment she could almost imagine Will talking, and not Danny. “We’ll get what we came for, and then we’ll go home. We’ll swing by on our way and get the sisters, and we’ll call that a victory. As for everything else, let God sort them out. It’s time he earned his pay, anyway.”
*
STARCH, TEXAS, WAS exactly how she had pictured it: a small town of a few thousand people (or it used to be, anyway) along a main highway, and no one would have realized it even existed if not for Lake Livingston somewhere behind it. That lake was why an eccentric millionaire had built an underground facility designed to withstand just about any calamity. To hear Lara tell it, the place had done exactly that, until one night when everything came undone.
After an hour of driving through barren streets, over railroad tracks, and down spur roads that never seemed to end, they finally hit the road to hell that would take them to the end of their journey—the reason they had come back to Texas in the first place.
She didn’t need to ask Danny what time it was; she could keep track of the sun by looking out her window. By her count, it was around 3:00. Soon, very soon, it would be dark again, but they had made good time and she was feeling buoyed by their progress.
Too bad the road to Harold Campbell’s facility was doing its damnedest to ruin her good mood. The massive walls of trees to the left and right of them didn’t help, either. They were so thick that Gaby couldn’t see past them, and they cast such an imposing shadow over everything she could almost believe they were driving through a tunnel instead of a country road.
The craters under them weren’t accidents of nature, but put there by Campbell to deter people from doing exactly what they were doing at the moment. After about ten minutes of struggling to hold onto her seat and not throwing up, she had to grudgingly admit that Campbell might have known what he was doing. After all, he had access to a helicopter and would never have had to use the road himself. She wasn’t so lucky.
If she thought there was a possibility Taylor’s truck might not survive the sixty-mile trip from Larkin to Starch, she was now almost certain it wouldn’t survive the three kilometer-long hike up this pothole-infested hell. Gaby swore she could hear pieces of the vehicle crunching and clanging off the undercarriage with every bump they hit.
“This is nuts!” she shouted.
“Which part of eccentric millionaire didn’t you understand?” Danny shouted back.
“Crazy assholes with money!” Nate shouted behind them.
“How much further”—she started to ask, when the road suddenly smoothed out and she could hear herself just fine again—“to go?”
“There. We’ve survived the Trip of Doom,” Danny said. “Which means the facility should be up ahead.”
“‘Should be’?”
“It’s definitely up ahead.”
“I think I’m going to throw up,” Nate said quietly from the backseat.
“Out the window, so you don’t get it on the upholstery,” Danny said. “This thing’s a classic, after all.”
“This thing’s a piece of junk,” Nate said.
“Same difference.”
She turned around in her sea
t and smiled at Nate. He returned it, looking boyish and handsome back there by himself, one hand holding his stomach and his Mohawk flopping too much to one side.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Good,” he said. “You?”
“Hanging in there.”
“I’m fine too, thanks for asking,” Danny said.
“You okay, Danny?” she asked.
“Great, thanks for asking,” he said.
She turned back around and picked her rifle up from the floor, then focused on the road ahead. “Almost there?”
“Almost there,” Danny said.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Almost almost there.”
Now that the road was even again and she wasn’t bouncing in her seat, it was easier to pay attention to the dancing shadows and overly chilly air around them. She wished she could see what was hiding in the woods to the left and right of the road, but it was just one continuous black wall. She thought she might have seen something moving inside—something fast—but Danny had picked up speed and they were past it before she could be sure.
“What’s wrong?” Nate said, leaning forward between the two front seats.
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“You sure?”
“I thought I saw something…”
“Where?”
“In the woods.”
He looked out his side window.
“Back down the road,” she said. Then, hoping it was at least convincing, “It was probably nothing.”
“Eyes forward, kids,” Danny said.
She looked out the front windshield as they came up to an opening—a wide field carved out of the woods. They passed what look like the remains of a front gate, with an old guard shack on Danny’s side. A wild jungle had grown since the last time anyone was here, and they had to stop the truck about twenty yards past the nonexistent gate.
Danny put the vehicle in park and leaned forward against the steering wheel. He had clearly seen something that disturbed him when he said, “Hunh.”
“What?” she said.
“Those weren’t here last time.”
She followed his gaze out the windshield and across the field.
They were impossible to miss: a small cluster of vehicles, all yellow, sitting in the open. One had a scooper-type arm, and she was pretty sure another one was some kind of bulldozer. Grass had grown around their heavy tires, a clear indication they had been brought here and abandoned a while ago.