by Sam Sisavath
“Don’t know, don’t care.” He glanced up at the sun and shielded his eyes. “Angleton’s close by. We should hit it before nightfall, then figure out our next move after that.”
“So you’re saying we should be angling toward Angleton?”
She was smiling triumphantly as she said it, and Keo hated himself for not having noticed much, much earlier what a beautiful woman Jordan was. Or maybe he always knew? He remembered really liking her when they had first met outside of Earl’s cabin many months ago, but Gillian had been there at the time. Gillian was still around now, but it wasn’t the same.
He smiled back at her. “Been saving that one up, huh?”
“Just a wee bit,” she said, pinching her fingers together.
He exaggerated an eye roll. “Let’s get going before I throw you more softballs.”
“I love your softballs, Keo. But then, I’ve always had small hands.”
He groaned. “Seriously?”
She laughed. “Hey, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do to amuse herself. It’s really, really boring out here.”
“Can I at least be in on the joke, too?”
“I’ll think about it,” she said, and turned back up the highway.
She took one step, then two, when there was a loud, ear-shattering crack! and Jordan crumpled like a marionette with its strings cut. The painful thump! as her head hit the pavement at the same time he dropped to one knee and grabbed at, and caught, her limp body, the gunshot still echoing all around him—
A second crack! and a bullet zipped! past his head, so close that he swore his left ear was left flaming hot in the aftermath of the near miss.
He should be running, heading for cover, anything to get out of the open, but instead he dropped the tire iron and frantically slipped both hands under Jordan’s armpits and began dragging her sagging body backward. His body screamed with pain, and both arms threatened to fall off again. It seemed to take forever (Jesus Christ, how long was this goddamn road?) before he finally reached the other side, and he deposited both of them into the ditch, gasping for breath as he landed on the cold soft dirt, Jordan’s body twumping next to his.
He crawled over and grabbed her, suddenly aware that his clothes were clinging to his chest and sticky with blood. Was he bleeding? No. It wasn’t his. It was Jordan’s. It was all Jordan’s. She was struggling to breathe, her eyes blinking uncontrollably, fading brown eyes snapping frantically all around until they finally found his face.
He smiled down at her. Or tried to. “You’ll be all right. Gotta find the wound and patch you up. Give me a second, okay?”
She didn’t answer, even though her lips were quivering, as if constantly on the verge of making a sound but never succeeding. Her face was impossibly pale, every inch of her body trembling in his lap.
He couldn’t find the bullet hole in her jacket through all the blood, so he had to unzip it and pull it off her. There, the source of all the bleeding, just over her left breast. The bullet was still in there somewhere, pumping blood out through the single wound.
There was so much blood. Jesus, why was there so much blood?
Keo picked her jacket back up and pushed it against her chest. She seemed to seize up, maybe from the pressure he was putting on her, but he didn’t ease up because the bleeding needed to be stopped at all cost.
“Shoot for center mass. Then take out the brain to make sure.”
Everyone knew that, from the cops to the military grunts to guys like him. You always shot for center mass—the chest—to get the target down, then you finished him off with a head shot. It was SOP. Whoever was out there—whoever had taken the shot—had done exactly that.
Jordan continued to blink up at him, and there was a hollowness to her eyes that didn’t belong. The Jordan he knew—who had kept her friends alive after the end of the world, who had saved his miserable life last night—was full of life. But he didn’t see that right now. There was only sadness looking back up at him.
“You’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ve stopped the bleeding. No one boinks me in a barn and gets to just run away.”
Her eyes widened, that familiar Jordan life coming back, if just for a split second, and her lips somehow managed to form a smile.
He returned it, or thought he did. He focused on her eyes, on her pained face, and forgot (and didn’t care) to react to the pounding footsteps crossing the highway, just a few seconds before a figure leaped into the ditch in front of him.
He heard similar sounds behind him and knew another one was back there.
“Shit, got one,” a voice said. Male. Young. Keo could practically feel the giddiness dripping from his every word.
He tore his eyes away from Jordan’s paling face and looked up as a man (boy) moved cautiously toward him. He had black, brown, and green paint over his face and was wearing some kind of Ghillie suit stuffed with brown straw and grass. He was cradling an AR-15 with a large scope on top, the weapon covered in the same camo pattern as his face. A gun belt, with a holstered sidearm, stuck out of his right hip.
“Don’t fucking move,” the man said. He was trying to sound menacing and doing a poor job of it. Despite the face paint, he couldn’t have been more than twenty.
Behind Keo, the second ambusher shuffled closer, too.
Keo looked back down at Jordan, at the thin smile frozen on her lips. There was a peaceful expression on her face, belying the fact she had just been shot in the chest and had bled enough for both of them.
The man in front of him leaned forward and peeked down at Jordan. “Dead center, Bill. Nice shot.”
Bill, the man behind Keo, said, “Told you. And yours went wide.”
“Not my fault; he dropped on me.”
“What’s that, two for me and one for you?”
“Sounds right.”
“You see a uniform on them?”
“Nope,” the one in front of him said. “Civilian?”
“Don’t take any chances. These collaborators can be sneaky.”
They’re Mercer’s men, Keo thought as he listened to their back and forth.
But even as his mind processed that information, he couldn’t take his eyes off Jordan, lying in his lap. Her body had gone completely still, but her face remained serene as he stroked her cheeks and brushed at strings of tears falling from the corners of her eyes. There was blood on her lips, and he thumbed them away gently.
He sighed and closed his eyes. Just for a brief second.
When he opened them again, he focused on his surroundings. The young one in front of him, the older-sounding one behind him. The soft wind blowing through the fields around all three of them, causing the grass to sway to his left and skirting across the highway to his right, picking up some of the debris from the crash. But most of all, the bright red of Jordan’s blood on his hands, sticking to his fingers.
“The flyer,” Keo said.
“What?” the young one said.
“The flyer,” he said again, pulling the piece of paper out of Jordan’s back pocket and holding it up. It was wet with her blood.
The one in front of him took two steps forward and snatched the paper out of Keo’s hand. He flicked it open, glanced at it once, then looked past Keo at Bill. “It’s one of ours.”
“‘Join the fight to take back Texas,’” Keo said. “‘War is here. Pick a side.’ That’s what we did. We picked a side.”
“The fuck is he saying, Luke?” Bill asked.
“It’s from the flyer,” the man named Luke said, holding the paper, covered in Jordan’s blood and tire tracks, up for the other man to see. “I guess he’s saying he came looking for us, to sign up?”
“Bullshit. It’s a trick.”
Luke had let both arms drop to his sides, including the right hand with the AR-15. “But that’s why we dropped them in the first place, right? To get recruits?”
“They didn’t say anything about bringing in recruits,” Bill said. “That’s not our job.”
Keo wondered how much older Bill was compared to Luke. Maybe he should interject, say something to help push Luke along. He had a feeling whether he lived or died was going to be decided in the next few seconds, and Luke was going to play a very big part of it.
“Yeah, but the flyer,” Luke said, holding it up again.
Bill sighed. “Shit.” Then, clearly annoyed, “You checked him for weapons?”
“He only had that tire iron, and he dropped it back on the road.” He looked down at Keo. “So, you wanna join up, huh?”
Keo ignored his question, and said instead, “I need help with her.”
“What for? She’s dead.”
“She’s still alive.”
“No way.” Luke leaned in to get a better look. He was close enough Keo could smell dirt and sweat on his body underneath the Ghillie suit. “You sure?”
“She’s still alive,” Keo said, looking up at him. “I stopped the bleeding, but I need to dress the wound. The bullet missed vital organs, from what I can tell. You got a first-aid kit?”
“Damn,” Luke said, and slung his rifle.
“What are you doing?” Bill asked, alarmed.
“Relax; I told you, he’s unarmed,” Luke said. “I was watching him the whole time, remember?”
“Be careful.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The young man knelt in front of Keo and reached into one of the pouches along his belt. He leaned in closer to get a better look at Jordan at the same time. “You sure she’s even breathing, man?”
“Dammit, kid, don’t get too close,” Bill said.
Luke might have been on the verge of saying something back, but he never got the chance because Keo brought out his right hand, the one with the spork, and jammed it into the side of Luke’s neck.
“Fuck!” Bill shouted.
Keo lunged forward while simultaneously pulling Luke toward him, using the handle of the lodged spork as leverage. He jerked his legs out from under Jordan’s limp form and slid behind Luke.
“Fuck!” Bill shouted again.
Keo slid one arm around Luke’s neck, clamping his struggling body against his own, while his right hand dropped to Luke’s hip, blood-covered fingers searching out the young man’s holstered gun among the grass and straws.
“Let him go!” Bill shouted.
Bill had lifted his rifle—another AR-15—and was shuffling his feet less than two meters away. Keo hadn’t realized how close the man had been to him. Bill was wearing a Ghillie suit that was almost identical to Luke’s, and his face was covered in the same camo pattern. He clutched and unclutched his rifle even as he swayed left and right, trying to line up a shot on Keo.
But Bill didn’t shoot, because Keo was using Luke as a shield and doing everything possible not to expose his head for a clear shot. Luke’s body spasmed uncontrollably in front of him, the younger man’s hands groping for the spork sticking out of the side of his throat like some cancerous appendage.
By the time Bill realized what Keo was doing, Keo already had Luke’s gun out of its holster. Bill finally fired—and struck Luke in the stomach. Keo didn’t give him the chance to pull the trigger again and shot Bill in the chest with the handgun. He didn’t stop shooting until Bill had collapsed to the ditch floor on his face.
Keo finally allowed himself to breathe again, the gun still pointed, and watched Bill’s body the entire time, in case the guy was wearing some kind of bulletproof vest underneath his suit and tried to get back up.
A second, then two—before Keo shot Bill in the top of his exposed head just to make sure.
Satisfied now that Bill wasn’t getting back up, Keo sat down and pushed Luke off him with one of his boots. The body careened forward and landed on its stomach, mirroring Bill’s posture in front of them. Keo lay down and stared up at the sun, and inhaled in and exhaled out the chilly winter air in silence.
He didn’t know how long he stayed down, blinking up at the clear skies. It could have been a few seconds, or a few minutes, or possibly a few hours.
Finally, he sat back up, then crawled over to Jordan and knelt next to her. She still had that strangely contented look on her face, and if not for all the blood and the balled up jacket crushed against her chest, he might have been able to convince himself she was just asleep.
He stole a quick look up at the sun again. He had plenty of hours left, but it wouldn’t last.
Nothing ever did, these days.
*
HE LEFT LUKE and Bill in the ditch and carried Jordan into the fields about fifty meters from the highway before digging a shallow grave using two Ka-Bar knives he’d salvaged from the dead men. It took longer than expected, and his palms were raw and blistered by the time he was done. He buried Jordan and covered her up to keep any animals that might still be roaming around out there from getting to her, then sat down next to her grave for about half an hour, with just the silence and the wind to keep him company.
Afterward, he walked back to the bodies and went through their pockets. They were carrying identical AR-15s, each one mounted with a large scope for long-distance shooting. He slung Bill’s rifle, then threw Luke’s as far into the grass as he could. He had a feeling he had a long walk ahead of him, and each rifle was already at least seven pounds of extra weight. He slapped on a gun belt, then put the Sig Sauer he had taken from Luke in the holster. Keo pulled the spork out of Luke’s neck and wiped off the blood, then pocketed it. The damn thing had saved his life twice now; the least he could do was keep it around.
He couldn’t find any tactical packs on either men, which meant they had left them behind somewhere. Keo climbed back up to the highway and reoriented himself, remembering where he and Jordan had been standing when the shots came. Then he backtracked the source of the gunshots into the endless fields and kept walking until he found two camouflage packs among the grass about 150 meters away.
He unzipped them one by one, pulling out MREs, canned beans, and extra magazines. They were both too heavy to take, so he tossed most of the canned goods and extra ammo and kept just the MREs and the spare magazines he could carry without overburdening himself. The load was still too heavy, but he figured it’d get lighter as he used up the supplies along the way. If not, he’d just eject what he didn’t need, as needed.
He spent another hour looking for Luke and Bill’s vehicle. He was sure it was out there somewhere, like their packs. They couldn’t have humped all the way out here on foot, could they? It was possible, but where would they have stayed last night? He was obviously dealing with a two-man kill team. He wouldn’t have been surprised to learn there were identical squads crawling all over Texas at the moment, making life miserable for the collaborators.
But despite his confidence, he didn’t find a vehicle anywhere in the vicinity. Either the men had hidden it too well, or they really had been dropped off. Both were possible, and neither one did him any good at the moment. He considered expanding his search range, but that would have taken much too long, and time was, as always, not on his side.
Keo walked about a mile up the highway, sticking to the ditch alongside it to stay mostly hidden, before finally stopping when his stomach growled again. He took a break and opened one of the cans, devouring the beans inside using the spork. He noticed there was still blood along one of the tines but ignored it.
He opened one of the pouches around his waist and took out the map he had spotted earlier while removing the belt from Luke. It was heavily marked, with collaborator towns circled in red ink, including T18 just outside of League City. The new map was almost identical to the one he had taken from Gregson, but with a few notable additions. One had a rough drawing of a star within a circle next to a town called Larkin, Texas. A second star-within-a-circle marked Lochlyn, about twenty miles northwest of his current location. As far as he could tell, Lochlyn was a small place in the middle of nowhere. Both new locations had crude drawings of planes next to them.
Airfields. That’s how they’re getting in and out of Texas. U
sing private, isolated airfields hidden in the countryside.
He glanced up at the sky, then down at his watch. Five hours of sunlight left. If he didn’t stop to rest again, he could easily make Lochlyn before nightfall.
And then what?
He had limited options, but one of them was to continue on to T18 and try to rescue Gillian, which would mean fighting his way back into a town he had already barely survived the first time. But she was in there, and she was in danger, and goddammit, he owed it to her and Jordan to get her out before Mercer’s people attacked again.
What was the alternative?
Go to Lochlyn, find Mercer, and kill him.
If the man was even there, and if putting a bullet between Mercer’s eyes stopped this—whatever “this” was. But then again, what was a snake without its head? If killing Mercer stopped the war, then Gillian would be safe. Her and the baby and (Fuck you) Jay.
Two possibilities. Two directions. They weren’t much, but there it was.
Lochlyn was closer, but what were the odds Mercer was even there? Fifty-fifty? Ten-ninety, against? Maybe he’d get to Lochlyn and there wouldn’t be anyone there at all. Those plane markers, for all he knew, could have just been doodling, Luke’s way of passing the time.
The odds that Mercer was even there, that killing him would change anything, was slim. On the other hand, getting back into T18—even with Tobias’s help—and rescuing Gillian while the town was on lockdown was going to be a hell of a feat.
Shit. It was bad odds either way.
But he’d had worse.
He checked his watch again.
Keo got up, tossed away the empty can of beans, and climbed out of the ditch, jogging across the highway.
Fuck it, he thought as he headed northwest.
EPILOGUE
“IRONY”?
Was that the word? Sometimes he had difficulty grasping the easiest things. He blamed it on having too many voices inhabiting the same space inside his head, an unending tide of chatter, almost like being stuck in a small box with a few million other people, but maybe the answer was simpler. A lack of focus on things that didn’t matter, that was pushed into the background, because everything else in the forefront was crucial to his survival.