Wash lunged, slashing with the machete.
Two
He caught the first one across the face with the kukri, gashing it from temple to jawline, and popping one of its eyeballs at the same time. Blood splattered the front of his thermal sweater, but the viscous, dark liquid was mostly lost in the black of its fabric.
One down...
Instead of stopping or pausing for even a second, Wash pushed through the falling nightcrawler as the other two attacked.
He felt sorry for them. He really did. They were pathetic things—thin and frail and twisted from the inside out—and the chest of the second one folded like papier-mâché when he punched his gloved left hand through it, the silver studs along the knuckles and finger joints raking its flesh with the ease of a knife through butter. He saw the lights go out of its eyes, whatever remnants of humanity doused in a blink, and the body simply sagged even as his hand exited its back.
Two down…
Wash realized his mistake as soon as the creature fell to the ground and almost took his left hand, embedded through its chest, down with it. But he was strong enough that he refused to let it and gravity slow him down, and despite being one-handed, he swung and decapitated the third ghoul with the kukri.
It wasn’t the best of swings, and he actually got more of the lower jaw than he wanted, not that the extra bone provided any added resistance to the machete’s curved blade. He lopped the creature’s head cleanly off at the neck.
And three makes a full day’s work!
The headless nightcrawler went limp, but its momentum carried it forward and into Wash. He backhanded it across the chest just in time to knock its trajectory slightly astray, and it toppled past him, but it still jettisoned enough inky black liquid from its severed neck into the air. Wash snapped his eyes and mouth shut just as the creature’s blood sprayed his face and shoulder before it fell with a lifeless thump to the ground behind him.
And just like that, the world resumed its normal speed.
Wash held his breath and slid the ghoul off his left hand, then spent some time cleaning the blood off the machete using the grass before slipping it back into a sheath on his left hip. His right was reserved for the Beretta, still nestled in its holster. He was carrying a light load—kukri and 9mm—because he knew he’d need the extra speed. Had there been more than four, he would have been in trouble. A little trouble, anyway, and nothing Wash hadn’t gotten himself out of before. Of course, if he were here, the Old Man would have offered up a completely different assessment.
“You got lucky, kid,” he would say. “Just remember: Luck has a bad way of coming and going.”
I’m still alive, old timer. That’s all that matters.
He pulled the rag from one of his cargo pants pockets and wiped at the sludge on his cheeks and forehead. He was covered in the filth, but the contact of ghoul blood on his skin wasn’t anywhere close to the abhorrent smell of it clinging to him. The blood was tainted like the creatures it sprayed out of, and washing it off…
There goes another wardrobe.
He swiped the blood off the silver studs on the glove—or “gauntlet,” as a kid in Wyoming called it. Wash preferred gloves, because that was what they were—black leather motorcycle riding gloves he had repurposed for this very specific usage.
While he cleaned himself up, Wash looked down at the bodies, at the identical faces. He would think it was the same nightcrawler copied three times over, but of course he knew better. The same thing that turned them into ghouls, that changed their eyes to solid black, robbed them of every hair follicle and made them little more than bags of deformed bones also made them into a single homogenous species. But there were exceptions. There were the ones with blue eyes…
“Don’t fuck with them,” the Old Man always said. “If you see those blue-eyed fucks coming, you run the other way, you understand? I don’t care how many slayers you got with you; I don’t care how loud or big they talk, you run the fuck the other way.”
I can’t do that, old timer, Wash thought as he used the toe of one boot to turn a severed head over so he could see the front of its face.
Black eyes, mouth open wide in a comical O shape. Wash didn’t really blame this one. It was the same nightcrawler the girl—
The girl. Where’s the girl?
No sooner did the question pop into his head than Wash heard her moving behind him. He turned around and got another good look at those wild green eyes—they were impossible to miss against the night background—as she walked over to where he stood.
“Hey, you okay?” he asked, just before she hit him in the face.
It was a nice punch, but he’d been hit by bigger and stronger men, and compared to them, a balled fist from a five-two-something girl just stunned him. Even so, he hadn’t seen it coming, which was the part that stuck out to him.
Wash took a couple of steps back before gathering himself. “What the fuck!” he shouted, even as he felt along the bridge of his nose to make sure nothing was broken. It stung, but everything was still where they should be. “What is your problem, kid?”
“My problem?” the girl said. “And did you just call me a ‘kid,’ you asshat?”
Again with the asshat, Wash thought even as he hopped another step back and brushed at her fist as she swung at him a second time.
He was more than ready for this one and pushed her to the side, using her forward momentum against her while he skipped out of her path. He could have hit her back—she was wide open for a blow to the back of the head or neck, or even the kidney, if he were feeling vicious—but Wash had never hit a woman before, and he wasn’t about to start now. Especially someone who barely came up to his chin.
“Calm the fuck down, kid!” Wash shouted.
She whirled back on him. “Stop calling me kid, you asshat!”
“I will if you stop calling me asshat!” he shouted back.
She pursed her lips at him, her hands making fists at her sides. He waited for her to try again (Third time’s the charm, right?), but she thought better of it and allowed herself to relax—slightly. She was still in her fighting stance, even if she was trying to hide it. But Wash had been in too many fights to be fooled.
“Who the hell are you, anyway?” she asked. “What are you doing out here?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
She glanced up at one of the trees. “Were you sitting up there the whole time, like some weirdo?”
“Weirdo?” He grunted. “I was surveying the area.”
“For what?”
“What do you think, genius?”
He rubbed at his nose again, then took another couple of steps away from her. It wasn’t that he was afraid, but she was such a tiny thing that if she insisted on trying to deck him a third time, he’d have no choice but to put her down. The only other option was to let her hit him, and he wasn’t about to do that.
“Women are men with tits,” the Old Man liked to say, usually when he was drunk, which was often. “They can stab you in the back or take you out from the front just as quick as any guy. Remember that.”
He remembered, just as he remembered everything else the Old Man had said to him. Sometimes it amazed Wash how well he could recall the old timer’s little sayings as if they were recordings playing in an endless loop inside his head. Sometimes he even mixed them up with the things he imagined the old man saying.
Wash took another quick step back when the girl took one forward in his direction, but instead of assaulting him, she crouched next to one of the severed heads on the ground. She leaned over the pruned black face and stared down at its twin hollow eyes.
“What are you doing?” Wash asked.
She ignored him and got up, then walked over to the one he’d punched through the chest with his glove.
“What are you doing?” he asked again.
The girl stood up and put her hands on her hips. She shook her head, but Wash thought she looked almost…relieved?
&n
bsp; “It’s not them,” she said.
“Not who?” he asked.
“Not whom.”
“Whatever.”
“If a question’s worth asking, it’s worth asking correctly.”
“What are you, an English teacher?”
“If I were, I’d fail your ass on the first day of class.”
She turned to look at him. Really, really stare at him from head to toe, and Wash took the opportunity to respond in kind.
She was a lot older than he had first thought, even though age was a difficult thing to pin down these days. The Purge made you grow up fast, or you didn’t grow up at all. Mid-twenties, maybe late twenties, but she hadn’t hit her thirties yet; he was sure of that. She was older than him by a few years, which he guessed might have been why she was so annoyed at him for calling her kid.
That doesn’t excuse the whole asshat thing, though.
He had guessed five-two or three, but now that he could see her standing still for longer than a few seconds, he thought those small black boots of hers probably gave her an additional few inches. So five foot nothing, really. Her hair looked redder at the moment, and for some reason he didn’t think her green eyes quite meshed with her color of her pale skin.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.
“What?”
“You’re staring.”
He smirked. “You were doing the same thing. Don’t get all high and mighty on me, kid.”
“I told you to stop calling me kid.”
“What are you, fifteen?” he asked. He couldn’t help himself; it was easy, and he got some satisfaction in watching her nostrils flare in annoyance.
She pursed her lips again but didn’t respond. Instead, she walked over to the two remaining nightcrawlers and looked down at the first one’s face. “Where’s your partner?”
“My what?” Wash said.
“Your partner. Don’t you slayers always work in pairs?”
“I don’t have a partner.”
“That’s a first.”
“What are you looking for?” Wash asked.
She glanced over at him and might have snickered, like she knew he was changing the subject on purpose. She still didn’t answer him, though, and instead moved on to the fourth and final one.
“They all look the same,” Wash said. “You know that, right? One nightcrawler’s the same as another.”
“Not all of them.”
“You talking about the blue eyes?”
She kept quiet and crouched next to the last ghoul, turning its head over so she could see its face better.
“Have you seen them?” Wash asked. “The blue eyes? Have you run into them around here?”
She continued to ignore him and took out her knife and wiped the five-inch blade on the grass to clean it before sliding it back into her jacket’s shirt sleeve.
So that’s where that came from.
He wondered how she did that. Some kind of wrist rig, maybe. It was worth looking into later. Wash was always looking for a fresh method for arming himself. Innovating kept you ahead of the monsters.
“Hey,” Wash said. “I asked you a question. Have you seen one of those blue eyes around here or not?”
She glanced over. “Maybe I have. What’s it to you?”
“I’m looking for one of them.”
She stared at him with something that almost looked like amusement. “You’re looking for one of them? No one looks for the blue eyes.”
“The one I’m looking for’s got one eye. The right one. Have you seen it or heard someone seeing something like that around here?”
“What makes you think I’m from around here?”
“Aren’t you?”
She shrugged. “So you were sitting in a tree in the middle of the night looking for a blue-eyed ghoul with one eye, is that it?”
Close enough, he thought, but said, “Have you seen or heard about it or not?”
She continued giving him that curious look for a brief second or two before shaking her head. “No.”
“No what? No, you haven’t heard about anyone seeing something like that, or no, you haven’t seen it yourself?”
“Both. But then again, I don’t hang around idiots that go around hunting blue-eyed ghouls. You suicidal or something?”
“I can ask you the same thing. What are you doing out here? You from Harrisonville?”
She shrugged again and stood up. “You’re a slayer.”
“Gee, you figured that out yourself?”
She smirked. “See you around, slayer boy.”
She was turning to go when he reached over for her arm, but she spun away before he could get a grip.
She took a couple of steps away and scowled. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, asshat?”
“Jesus, you kiss your mom with that mouth?”
“No, just yours.”
“Jesus, woman, I’m trying to be civilized here. I saved your life.”
“I didn’t need you to save my life.”
“There were four of them. You telling me you knew that?”
She didn’t answer, but he read it in her face anyway. She didn’t know that.
Instead of confirming it, she said, “Sorry. I just don’t like guys touching me without permission.”
“Maybe it’s your attitude.”
“Maybe. There are a lot of dangerous people out there these days. You can never be too careful.”
Then she smiled at him. It came out of nowhere, as if they hadn’t been bickering like children seconds ago, or that she wasn’t seriously ready to cut him if he’d gotten too close. He had seen the way she held her right hand, with the palm open, ready to receive the knife hidden inside her sleeve.
“Nice gauntlet,” she said, looking down at his left hand.
“It’s a glove,” Wash said.
“Looks like a gauntlet to me. You make that yourself?”
“It’s a glove. And yeah.”
“Poh-tay-to, poh-tah-to.”
She turned and jogged off.
“Hey!” Wash said.
But she didn’t stop or look back.
“Hey, who are you?” he shouted after her.
She didn’t answer and slipped under a branch. He stared after her, at the way she moved, the way she slid around tree trunks before simply vanishing a few seconds later. She was going in the opposite direction of Harrisonville, which meant she wasn’t from the town.
“See you later, lady,” he said quietly to himself, even though he knew the chances of that happening were slim, especially if she was going to make a habit of walking around out here in the dark by herself.
Wash turned back to the dead ghouls on the ground. He took out the kukri and crouched next to the one with the hole in its chest. He could have used the sawback on the blade to cut his way through the neck, but he didn’t have to. The bone was fragile underneath the thin layer of flesh, and all it took was one easy swing to chop his way clean through.
He picked up the head by the nostrils and walked back to the tree where he’d been camped out, and pulled his pack from the bush nearby. He dug out the plain gray sack and tossed the severed head inside, then returned to collect the others. People sometimes didn’t feel like paying up unless you showed them irrefutable evidence you’d done the job they hired you for.
“Another day, another dollar,” the Old Man used to say. It was something from the old days before The Purge made idioms like it, along with so many things people used to think were important, obsolete.
“Another day, another dollar,” Wash said quietly to the empty night around him.
Three
Harrisonville was twenty miles from the closest abandoned city. It was a small town of about four hundred people, almost all of them brought there against their will six years ago during the height of The Purge. Some left after The Walk Out, but many chose to stay and make the place a real home.
“Make lemonade out of lemons,” as the Old Ma
n would say.
It wasn’t a bad home, especially considering what was out there. These days if you could find four walls and a roof, enough food to get by, and friends to watch your back during the night (and sometimes in the day), you were ahead of a lot of other people.
Despite all that, Wash wasn’t even close to saying yes when the mayor made the offer for him to stay.
“Can’t,” he said. “I got things to do down south.”
“Oklahoma?” the mayor asked.
“Texas.”
“What’re you gonna find in Texas that you can’t find here?”
A one-eyed, blue-eyed ghoul, Wash thought, but he shook his head and remembered how badly the conversation had gone with the woman in the woods. He said instead, “Just something I gotta do, that’s all. No offense.”
The older man nodded. He was in his fifties, balding, a half-hearted attempt at a comb-over, and a paunch underneath his sweater that poked out like a pregnant woman’s belly. Wash thought of him as Harrisonville’s mayor even though the man didn’t call himself that. He had a name, but Wash had forgotten it, mostly because he hadn’t paid that close attention when they first met yesterday morning. Remembering people’s names took too much effort, especially when you were probably never going to see them again anyway.
“That’s all of them?” the older man asked as he looked across the room at the brown bag sitting in the corner. Creamy black blood had leaked and formed underneath and around the bundle.
“It was a pack,” Wash said. “They wouldn’t leave one behind. That’s all of them.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
Wash nodded. “Yes,” he lied.
The truth was he wasn’t sure, because there was no such thing as being “sure” when it came to nightcrawlers. While it was true that they always traveled in packs when there were more than one of them around, there were exceptions. He didn’t give voice to that, though, because it would have just delayed his exit in the morning.
After The Purge: Vendetta Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 2