“If it’s so nice, why did the two of you leave?”
Roy and June exchanged a glance. June, a stick of jerky half in her mouth, didn’t say anything. But then she didn’t really have to. Wash could read the signs on both of their faces.
“What happened?” Wash asked.
“Nothing, really,” Roy said.
“That look June just gave you didn’t look like nothing.”
The boy shrugged. “It looked like a good place, but…” He let the rest trail off.
“But what?” Wash prompted.
“Then it wasn’t. Everything told me to get June out of there, so I did. That’s it. Haven’t seen the place or been back since.”
Wash had never heard of Jasper, and he would have if any slayers had gone through it in the past. There was also no Jasper in the official maps of the state that he’d been carrying around with him in his other now-lost pack.
“You’ve been out there, right?” Roy was asking him.
“Yeah, I have,” Wash said.
“So you know.”
“I don’t understand…”
“Jasper.”
“What about it?”
“There was something not right about it.” He shook his head, and Wash could see him struggling for the right words. “You just know, you know? You just know.”
Wash thought about all the towns he’d passed over the years, all the situations he’d gotten stuck in despite knowing—even when he didn’t know how he knew, he just knew—things were wrong. Some of those times, he’d had the advantage of the Old Man fighting next to him, but that wasn’t always the case.
“You mean like last night, kid?” the Old Man asked.
Oh, shut up.
“Yeah,” Wash said. “I know.”
Roy nodded. He stared past Wash and out the window behind him, and didn’t say anything else for a while.
Jasper, Wash thought. The name didn’t ring any bells. But then, he was at the very northern tip of Texas, and there were plenty of small towns that barely registered as a blip on a map before The Purge, never mind now, when information had reverted back to word of mouth.
“Here,” Roy said. The teenager had produced the Kahr semiautomatic from his own backpack.
Wash took the gun back. He knew it still had a mostly full magazine by the weight.
“You don’t want it?” he asked the kid.
“It’s yours,” Roy said. “Wouldn’t be right to just take it from you. Old Stu taught us right and wrong.”
“Thanks, kid.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Where’s your snub nose?”
“My what?”
“Your revolver.”
“Oh.” Roy wiped his hands on his pant legs before reaching into one of his jacket pockets and taking out the pistol. “Old Stu gave me this. Taught me how to use it, too. Before that, I’d never shot a gun. Or even held one.”
“So I guess you’re good with that thing?”
“I’m decent. There’s one problem with it, though…”
“What’s that?”
The teenager flicked open the cylinder and let one of the bullets fall out and into his palm. He pinched it with two fingers and held it up for Wash to see.
It was an empty shell casing.
“I fired the last good round I had about two weeks back,” Roy said. “Haven’t been able to find more in the same caliber since.”
Wash grunted before smiling. “Well played, kid. Well played…”
Five
He thought he’d be ready to leave the kids in a few hours, but he was wrong. He came to that conclusion when every time he turned to look at the door, his bones ached and his side gave off a pulsing pain. It was very much possible the entire thing was in his head, but Wash didn’t feel like finding out for sure one way or another. After all, the road wasn’t going anywhere, whether he got back on it today or tomorrow.
And you’ll still be there, won’t you?
You’re not going anywhere either, are you?
You sent that Blue Eyes to wait for me. That was you. I know that was you.
He didn’t know where “there” was—maybe this place called Jasper that Roy and June had gone through recently, or maybe another no-name town that wasn’t on any map or even existed until The Purge—but he would find it, because it wanted him to. It was all part of the game.
You’re waiting for me. You’re down there, somewhere, waiting for me.
Maybe you’re even laughing your ass off right now, knowing that your blue-eyed patsy almost killed me last night.
Well, fuck you, I’m still alive.
The idea that a blue-eyed ghoul was somewhere out there waiting for him should have made Wash afraid. If he were a regular person, it would have, but he wasn’t. The Purge had stripped most of the fear emotion from him, and the years since under the Old Man’s tutelage had taught him to tame the remaining parts. It wasn’t all gone, of course, because that was impossible; as long as you were alive, there would always be some fear.
Wash thought silently about all of that as he sat on the floor of the old RV, watching the sun slowly descend outside the muck-covered window across from him.
“So you’re a slayer, huh?” Roy was asking him.
Wash looked over at the teen, who was sitting in a booth next to him. June was somewhere in the back in one of the bedrooms. The two kids seemed to have an ebb and flow, understanding what the other needed without having to verbally communicate. Wash guessed it made sense, given how long they’d been out here together. He’d had something similar with the Old Man.
“Yeah,” Wash said.
“I met a few of you guys outside of Dallas,” Roy said. “Cool.”
“Cool?”
“What you do. It’s cool.”
“Thanks. I guess.”
“You don’t look like one, though.”
“No?”
“I didn’t see any scars on you when I was dragging you up here. I mean, you have some, but they’re not slayer scars.”
“What are slayer scars?”
“You know what I mean.”
Wash nodded. He did know, and he was fully aware of how different he was from all the other slayers he’d crossed paths with. “I guess I’m not like other slayers,” he said.
“I guess not,” Roy said.
Wash hated talking about himself, because invariably it led to more questions, some that he’d rather not address. He could see it in the kid’s eyes—the questions were coming—so he said, before Roy could ask them, “Tell me about Jasper.”
“What about it?”
“How far is it from here?”
“Half a day’s walk, I think.”
“That’s a lot of walking.”
“Not for us.”
“You and June walk everywhere?”
“Pretty much.”
“Is she your sister?”
“Yup.”
Roy had answered quickly and confidently, and Wash nodded. Not that he fully believed the teenager. There were plenty of makeshift families out here, and the truth was, there was nothing and no one’s right to say they weren’t any more legitimate than someone who shared the same parents. Life after the monsters was all about adaptation.
“Where are you two going next?” Wash asked.
“Dunno,” Roy said. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
“You can’t stay here forever. Sooner or later, you’ll need to venture out too far to find food, and that’s going to be hard. For both of you.”
“I figured I’ll deal with that when I get to it.” Then, “You came from up north?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s up there?”
“The same thing that’s down here. A lot of empty spaces and dangerous roads and not a whole lot of us.”
“That good, huh?”
“But maybe it’s just me. Who knows, you might have better luck finding something worthwhile,” Wash said, thinking about Ana e
ven as he said it.
“You believe that?”
“No, but I thought it was the thing to say.”
“I know what’s out there. I know it’s not safe. But there’s not a whole lot of ‘safe’ anymore these days, is there?”
“That’s not entirely true.”
“You know something I don’t?”
“There’s a town called Kanter 11 in Kansas. It’s pretty safe.”
“Is it far from here?”
“If you’re walking? Yes.”
“What other way is there?”
“Horses. Or cars.”
“Don’t have neither.”
“My horse is probably still wandering around out there somewhere…”
“I saw its tracks,” Roy said. “Thought about trying to run it down, but I don’t like leaving June alone by herself for too long.”
“She wasn’t alone.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t really know you. Still don’t.”
“Fair enough,” Wash said. “When you’re ready to leave this Winnebago behind, head north to Kanter 11. Ask for Ana. If she’s not there, ask for Marie.”
“Maybe I’ll do that,” Roy said.
“It’s a good place. With good people. It’ll be a nice change of pace for June to settle down in one location for a while, where she’ll be safe.”
“Maybe,” Roy said again.
Wash didn’t try to change the kid’s mind. What right did he have to even do so? Roy had been out here during The Purge and the years after it; he had earned every right to make his own choices. Besides, Wash didn’t think the kid could be persuaded anyway. If Roy was going to do something, it would be because he thought it was good for him and his sister.
Of course, that didn’t mean Wash couldn’t try to point them in the right direction anyway. He owed them that much for saving his life.
“I’ve been there,” he said. “Kanter 11. Good folks. You don’t see a lot of that out here these days. You should really look them up.”
Roy nodded. “I’ll think about it. It’s not like we have plans or anything.”
“How long have the two of you been out here?”
“Long enough.”
Roy didn’t say Long enough for what, but if Wash had to guess, it might have been something along the lines of, “Long enough that we don’t need you holding our hands, Mr. I’d-be-dead-if-not-for-you-kids.”
“And the kid would have a point,” the Old Man said.
Yeah.
“You look tired,” Roy was saying.
Wash sighed. “That’s because I am.”
“You took a pounding out there, huh? And not just last night, too. You been doing a lot of fighting lately?”
“That’s the understatement of the century, kid.”
“Ghouls?”
“Not always.”
“Yeah, it ain’t just the nightcrawlers that’s a threat out there.”
Wash thought about what Roy had said previously, about a man named Phil and his friends…
“Wonder what happened?” the Old Man said.
Do we really want to find out?
“Probably not. They look okay. Mostly.”
Yeah, mostly.
Roy was nodding at him. “Go ahead. Nod off. I’ll keep an eye out.”
“Only if you wake me in a few hours to take over,” Wash said.
“Sure,” Roy said, though for some reason, Wash didn’t quite believe him.
“I mean it, kid,” Wash said.
“I said sure. Go ahead. You look like shit.”
I feel worse, Wash thought, allowing himself to sink further to the floor of the RV and close his eyes.
It didn’t take very long at all for him to go right to sleep with the sun still descending outside the mud-caked windows.
He must have been more tired than he thought or was willing to admit, because when he opened his eyes again, the same window he’d been staring at before nodding off was dark and there was something out there.
He couldn’t hear it, or see it, or even smell it, but he could feel it.
It was in the way the air moved, causing the hairs along the backs of his exposed palms to bristle. The same thing happened all the way up the length of his arms and to the nape of his neck. He didn’t need his corporeal senses to know there was something unnatural in the area. It was very, very close by. Enough that his body had tightened, ready to spring, even before his mind could catch up.
And then there it was: Tap.
The first overt evidence that he wasn’t the only thing awake tonight.
Tap-tap.
It was footsteps from outside the vehicle. On top of it.
Tap-tap-tap-tap…
Whoever it was—whatever it was—was moving slowly at first before gradually picking up speed.
Tap-tap-tap-tap!
Wash craned his head slightly toward the ceiling, even as his hand searched for and found the grip of the kukri and slipped it out of its sheath. He didn’t have to wonder where Roy was. The teenager was asleep on the booth across the short distance from Wash, in mostly the same posture he’d been in when Wash last saw him—sitting upright with his head lolled slightly to one side. The boy was snoring, but he wasn’t making nearly as much noise as June in one of the bedrooms at the back of the RV—
Tap-tap-tap! from above him, now near the center of the Winnebago.
There was more than one up there, he was sure of it.
Tap-tap-tap!
Tap-tap-tap!
Wash tracked them with his ears while his eyes slowly adjusted to the new darkness. There was plenty of light thanks to what might have been a full moon outside. He didn’t bother to look down at his watch to confirm the time. He didn’t have to. Dark was dark, and when it got dark, things that would normally hide were free to roam.
He knew what was out there, right now, without having to think too much about it. Two of them, at least, but likely more, because that was how it usually worked—they tended to nest in groups. And they also hunted in groups.
The silver-coated machete blade gleamed against a stream of moonlight. He still had the Kahr and its mostly-full magazine, but he wanted to preserve that for as long as possible. Besides, if there were just two (or three, or more) out there, it was manageable numbers. Even in his current state, Wash didn’t think he’d need the gun to deal with them.
Have kukri, will slay.
He turned his head slowly, taking in the tinted windows across from him behind Roy’s sleeping frame. There was plenty of natural brightness in the background, and he thought he might have glimpsed shadows gliding past the windowpanes, but that could have just been his imagination trying to piece together what he already knew—
Silence.
It was suddenly silent above him.
The creatures had stopped moving. Why had they stopped moving?
Wash looked toward the door on his right, locating it among the shadows just as it moved slightly, followed by a long but whispery creeeeeak as someone (something) tried to pull it open from the other side.
Then nothing, as the door settled back into place.
Wash tightened his grip on the kukri, making sure he could feel every ridge of the handle. He didn’t have any doubts that he was still weakened from his encounter with the blue-eyed ghoul in the red cloak from last night, but a full day’s rest had done him a lot of good. The painkillers Roy had rescued had really done him a lot of good. Enough that if he had to move quickly and with purpose, he could do it.
“You almost convinced yourself that time, kid,” the Old Man said.
Because it’s true.
“Are you sure?”
He didn’t answer the imaginary voice.
“Cat got your tongue, kid?” the Old Man asked. Then, with what might have been a chuckle, “Or does something else have your tongue? Would it have pruned black skin, perhaps?”
It might. It just might.
Clack-clack as the door moved again.
Then, louder and with more urgency: Clack-clack-clack!
The door shook against its frame as something tried desperately to get inside. It wasn’t exactly a solid steel door on a submarine, and hell, it wasn’t even as strong as an average car door. Or a home door. It was light and malleable, and it wouldn’t have taken much force for a normal man to break inside.
Of course Wash knew he wasn’t dealing with a normal man out there. Not any “man” at all, in fact. The creatures were weak; the same disease that turned them had also zapped the strength from them. The black-eyed ones, anyway.
The Blue Eyes, on the other hand…
Clack-clack-clack!
Clack-clack-clack!
“What’s going on?” a voice asked.
Wash glanced quickly back at Roy, sitting up on the booth and rubbing his eyes.
Roy must have read the answer on Wash’s face, because the teenager’s eyes went from Wash and over to the front of the RV.
“Shit!” Roy shouted, before reaching for the snub-nosed revolver he had laid down on the table in front of him before dozing off.
Wash wanted to ask the kid what he was doing since he had no bullets for the gun. Then again, maybe Roy was going with the assumption that whoever was out there didn’t know that, and he could pull the same trick he’d gotten away with on Wash earlier. Wash wanted to tell him it wasn’t whoever out there, but whatever, and they weren’t going to care if the kid was armed with a loaded gun or not.
But Wash didn’t get the chance to say any of those things, because even as Roy launched up from the booth, they both heard the bone-chilling shriek of metal grinding against metal, and the first thing that popped into Wash’s head was, What is that? What are they doing to the door?
The answer wasn’t going to magically come to him, so Wash scrambled up from the floor. He grimaced as pain lanced through his body, and thought, Maybe I’m not that much better after last night after all!
He clenched his teeth as he ran toward the front of the RV, just in time to see the crowbar—
A crowbar?
That’s a crowbar!
—or at least a small section of it—sticking through the space where the door met the wall, and was moving, prying—
After The Purge: Vendetta Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 53