by Sam Sisavath
“Do I?” he said.
“I’m guessing you’re either thinking about Gillian or Frank.”
“It’s not Gillian.”
“No?”
He shook his head. “I haven’t thought about Gillian all night.”
“Was it something I said?”
“Something you did.”
“Ah,” she said, and he thought she looked pleased with his answer.
“You did it very well,” he said.
“I’ve had practice. Though probably not nearly as much as you.”
“Are you calling me a whore?”
“Adventurous,” she smiled.
“Sounds better,” he smiled back.
“The arms?”
“Like a fat man’s sitting on them.”
“Try not to move them.”
“Sound advice,” he said, peering through the half-an-inch of viewing space between the door and the side of the barn.
He could see just enough of the farmhouse’s front yard to know that all the vehicles that were still capable of moving had done just that last night, taking along with them any visible signs of soldiers on the premises. There also wasn’t any of the familiar aroma of vaporized flesh outside, unlike behind him and Jordan at the moment.
They had opened their eyes to the sight of the blue-eyed ghoul, still fastened over the cage door, slowly turning to ash as morning sunlight claimed it. The creature had simply wasted away, leaving just bleached white limbs to continue clinging to the bars.
A few minutes after that and they were running through the barn, trying to figure out how they were going to fight their way through men with guns who already thought they were a part of Mercer’s murderous brigand. Except they didn’t have to, because the collaborators really had abandoned the place last night, which was probably also why Marcy had never come back for the spork.
“Don’t resist,” she had said last night. “Answer every question you’re asked, and don’t lie. Because they’ll know.”
Keo got the feeling Marcy didn’t expect to ever see him again after last night. He didn’t blame her; he wasn’t even sure how he had survived himself. But all he had to do was look across the barn doors at Jordan, leaning across from him and peering out at the empty front yard, for his answer.
“What?” Jordan said.
“Just thinking—”
“Uh oh.”
“—how you saved my life last night.”
“Oh,” she said. Then, “What did you come up with?”
“I’m glad you were here.”
She chuckled. “Because I saved your life?”
“Yeah, that too.”
She rolled her eyes. “Are we talking about the sex again?”
“It was very good sex.”
“Save it for later, Romeo.”
“The sex, or talking about it?”
“Both. For now, what are our options?”
“What options? I just see one. They’re not out there right now, but that doesn’t mean they won’t come back.”
“You think they’re coming back?”
“I don’t see why they’d just abandon this place.”
“I don’t, either.” She paused for a moment, then, “Are you sure you can do this in your condition?”
“I’m fine,” he lied. He reached into his back pocket and produced the spork. “Besides, I’m in possession of a very lethal weapon.”
“Watch where you’re pointing that thing.”
“Are you talking about the spork?”
“Cute.” She looked back at the door. “Ready?”
“On five?”
“On five,” she said.
He faced the door and began silently counting down from five. On one he pushed his door open, Jordan doing the same to hers.
He had put on a game face when Jordan asked if he was all right, but pressing his shoulder into the door made him wonder if the blue-eyed bastard hadn’t actually broken every single bone in his body last night, given the relentless throbbing and wobbly knees that suddenly made their presence known. He grunted through the pulsing pain and kept pushing, until the warmth of the sun surrounded him and he blinked up at the wide-open skies.
He had the spork gripped tightly in one hand and ready to fight, as if it was going to do a damn bit of good if someone with a gun was standing outside waiting for them. Then again, he bet the dead blue-eyed ghoul probably hadn’t thought the eating utensil was much of a weapon, either, but it had since learned otherwise.
Fortunately for both of them, the farmhouse was just as deserted as it had appeared from inside the barn. The only reminder that there had been men and women here yesterday was a white pickup truck parked at the edge of the wide clearing. Keo hurried over to it, but he already knew what he’d find—or not—before he even reached it.
There was no convenient car key dangling from the steering wheel, and when he opened the hood, there was no battery. He lowered the hood back down, careful not to let it slam, just in case there were people in the area. Sound traveled these days.
“Can we use it?” Jordan called from the front porch of the main house. She had been peering through the windows but hadn’t tried to go in yet.
“They abandoned it for a reason. Anything over there?”
“It’s too dark inside, but I’m pretty sure I saw something moving in the back hallway. Maybe we should risk it. There might be weapons, food…”
“Move on. It’s too risky.”
She gave one of the windows another quick glance before hopping off the porch and walking back to him.
Keo had climbed into the pickup, in search of something, anything, he could use. He found a rusty tire iron on the floor and pulled it outside with him. It wasn’t a gun or a knife, but he wasn’t going to complain about a melee weapon. If nothing else, it had better reach than the spork.
“Whatcha got there?” Jordan asked.
He tossed the tire iron over to her.
“Ah, you shouldn’t have,” she said, catching and turning the rusted object over in her hands, before wiping some (though not all, by any means) of the rust off on her pants. “Could be a little cleaner.”
“Could be a gun, too, but we can’t always get what we want.”
“No kidding. I was hoping to wake up on a nice comfy bed this morning.”
“Such an optimist.”
“And someone with less scars on his face.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Eh, I’ll live.” She smiled at him, before her eyes dropped to his feet. “What’s that?”
“What?”
She pointed and Keo looked down at a white piece of paper, about half the size of normal writing paper, trapped under one of his boots. He took a step back and picked it up. It would have been pristine if not for his boot print, and there was lettering on it in big, blocky capital letters, as if it had been cranked out by a printer.
Jordan leaned in to get a better look. “What’s it say?”
It read, in three separate rows:
JOIN THE FIGHT TO TAKE BACK TEXAS
WAR IS HERE PICK A SIDE
THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING
Keo read it out loud, then handed her the paper. Jordan peered at it, as if she could see more than what was printed on the page. He walked over and glanced into the back of the pickup and saw two more identical pieces of paper inside.
He scooped them up and walked back to her. “Saw them back there earlier, but I thought they were just litter.”
“Mercer?” Jordan said.
“I’d bet my spork on it.”
“So, what, they’re driving around throwing these things out of their car windows? I hope they’re getting good gas mileage, because it’s a big state.”
“They wouldn’t need to hit the entire state; just the areas where they’ve struck. Remember the map from Gregson’s tank? The towns they were attacking were almost entirely clustered around the southeast.” He glanced up at the clear skies. “Besid
es, maybe they have a better delivery system.”
“Planes?”
“It would take a lot to hide planes from the collaborators for all this time, but they managed exactly that with the tanks and themselves, so maybe…”
Jordan turned the paper over, but it was blank on the other side. “So this is some kind of propaganda?”
“Gregson did say Mercer has a plan. I guess this is part of it.”
“What’s that? Bomb the shit out of people, then ask them to join you?” She stared at the paper. “It says to ‘pick a side,’ but doesn’t say how, or where to go.”
“Maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll run into more of Mercer’s people between here and T18, and you can ask them for all the details.”
“Again with the warped definition of luck.” She crumpled the flyer and flung it across the yard with everything she could muster. “So what do you think?”
“About?”
“‘Pick a side.’ What happens if we don’t?”
He didn’t answer right away. Keo had never had any problems choosing sides—it was usually the people who paid him the most. But that kind of no-brainer decision wasn’t going to work anymore. Which was too bad; he liked it better when things were simpler.
“We might not have a choice,” he said. “The people who get hurt the most in a war are usually the ones caught in the middle.”
“Like the civilians in the towns. Like Gillian.”
He nodded.
“There’s some sense to it, I guess,” Jordan said. “What Mercer’s doing. The townspeople would have heard about what had happened to the other places by now. Even if the ones in charge of the towns managed to stick all the survivors from the attacks into a dark room somewhere, there’s still the soldiers. They wouldn’t be able to stop blabbing about it. That’s how it is in T18, and I’m guessing in the other settlements, too: the soldiers are just civilians with uniforms. Most of them are married or living with someone. You’re encouraged to, because being a couple means getting out of the dorms and into your own house.”
“Coupling plus sex plus babies?”
“Pretty much. Anyway, you can’t hide something like this. This kind of news will spread like wildfire.” She paused, then, “What was that Gregson said? Something about letting everyone know there were other things out there scarier than the ghouls? He was talking about them. Mercer’s troops.”
“Sounds like it.”
“So what do you think?”
“About what?”
“About everything. Mercer. This plan of his. The war with the collaborators. All of it.”
Keo shook his head. “I think this Mercer guy knows exactly what he’s doing. Either that, or he’s fucking insane.”
“Can’t it be both?” Jordan asked.
He chuckled. “Definitely.”
*
HIS INSTINCTS WERE to leave as quickly as possible, just in case Marcy and the others did return, but there was still too much of the place left to explore for potential weapons. The optimism in him was hoping to find something useful the collaborators might have forgotten or left behind, maybe either because they were in a hurry or were just clueless. He was, after all, just dealing with, when you got right down to it, conscripted soldiers.
They spent half an hour searching the parts of the farmhouse that they could be sure didn’t have any ghouls hiding inside, including a storage shack in one corner of the property. Inside, Keo found a lot of tools, an old tractor that might have still worked if there were gas, and enough parts to probably make two more of the machine. He also discovered an old, rusted over machete on a shelf near some piles of lug nuts and spare tires.
“Got a knife,” he said when he came back out of the shack.
“Looks more like a sword,” Jordan said.
“Technically a machete.”
“Can you even cut anything with that?”
“Sure, if you hit them hard and often enough,” he said, and switched the machete for her tire iron.
“Aw, you get me all the bestest gifts, Keo.”
“I like to show my appreciation when a woman does me the honor of boinking me in a barn.”
“If I knew boinking guys in barns would get me this much gratitude, I’d have done it throughout college.”
“I have a feeling you didn’t have a lot of problems getting guys to do what you wanted in college, Jordan.”
She smiled at him. “You don’t have to kiss my ass anymore. You already got in my pants, remember?”
“It never hurts to lube up.”
“Sounds like the prelude to something painful.”
He chuckled. “We’ll see.”
“Promises, promises.”
She gave the machete the once-over, then put it through a few practice swings. In the sunlight, the blade was more rusted over than it had looked inside the building, but it was still a decent weapon. Even if that edge couldn’t cut as well as it used to, it was nevertheless going to hurt coming down on an arm or a leg.
“Not bad,” she said when she was done. “If I can’t kill someone with this thing, I can at least give them tetanus.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“So,” she said, fixing him with a serious look. He could tell she had been thinking about it ever since they woke up this morning, and even more since. “After everything we’ve seen—Gregson, those collaborators yesterday, that blue-eyed thing last night—what are the chances we’re going to even make it to Gillian alive, much less actually be in a position to save her when we get there?”
Good question, he thought, and looked around at their surroundings.
It was the same now as the last time he had checked: A flat and open land, and somewhere out there was the highway. The problem wasn’t finding it—just follow the dirt road connected to the house. It was the very long road (and when you were moving on foot, everything took too long) between here and T18 that was going to be a problem.
Marcy and her collaborators were on high alert, if all the firepower he had seen yesterday was any indication. Besides the technicals, they were carrying around LAWs, no doubt as a response to Mercer’s tanks. What were the chances he and Jordan could make it to Tobias, and then Gillian, without ever running across another group of well-armed men with itchy trigger fingers?
You just walked right back into a warzone, pal. Congratulations.
He sighed out loud.
“I take it the chances are pretty piss poor,” Jordan said.
“I’ve been in worse situations,” he said. “Come on; let’s find the highway.”
“There are people with guns and rocket launchers on the highway, remember? Maybe we should stay out of the open as much as possible.”
“Look at you, being all tactical.”
She smirked. “I just don’t wanna get blown up again.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t very fun, was it?” He glanced in the direction of the highway. “I guess we start walking.”
“That’s your big plan?”
“We’ll figure it out between here and there, wherever ‘there’ ends up being for now.”
“I could have come up with that plan,” Jordan said.
“Yup,” he said, and started off.
Jordan followed behind him, and they didn’t say anything for a while. He was hoping it would stay that way, but of course he should have known better.
Less than thirty seconds later, Jordan said, “What are you going to tell Gillian?”
“About what?”
“You and me. Is there a you and me?”
“After last night, you still have to ask?”
“Yes.”
He stopped and looked back at her. “I gave up on Gillian a week ago.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes,” he lied.
He wasn’t entirely sure if she believed him, but she gave him a pursed smile anyway. “I should tell you something.”
“What’s that?”
“I expect a promise ring.
”
He chuckled. “Will you settle for my letterman jacket?”
“Depends. What did you letter in?”
“Pure badassness.”
“Impressive.”
He smiled and turned around and continued walking. She followed, picking up her pace until she was walking beside him stride for stride.
“It’s going to be a long walk,” she said.
“Uh huh.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a working car on the road.”
“Ever the optimist.”
“Of course. How do you think I finally landed you?” she said, and smiled at nothing in particular.
CHAPTER 28
GABY
“I SEE TWO vehicles,” Nate said. “How many do you see?”
“Two, too,” she said.
He chuckled.
“This isn’t funny, Nate. We’re probably going to die in the next few minutes.”
“Sorry.”
She was crouched beside one of the windows at the front of the hardware store watching the vehicles coming up the street. Nate mirrored her pose on the other side of the building, his breath fogging up the glass surface in front of him. She flexed her fingers around the pistol grip under the barrel of the M4 to keep it from going numb. The weapon had a red dot sight, which was more than good enough for daylight fighting. The dead collaborator she had taken it off had been carrying two extra magazines, and counting the two she already had for the AR-15, gave her a total of five. She’d had to make do with much less.
“Maybe they’ll pass us by,” Nate said.
“Maybe,” she said, though she didn’t believe it for one second.
They were close enough that she could have heard him (and vice versa) even if he were whispering, which he wasn’t because he didn’t have to. The soldiers were still a good hundred yards down the street, and they didn’t seem to be in any hurry.
She paid very close attention to the four figures moving on foot as they peeked into windows and kicked in doors on both sides of the street. The vehicles stopped each time they made entry, then resumed when they re-emerged. At this rate, she didn’t think they would reach her and Nate for another half an hour.
They don’t have to rush, because the night belongs to them. They can take all day if they want to.