Lyla stayed silent, but he thought she might have been thinking about the answers instead of just ignoring him. Or maybe she was weighing whether to respond or not.
“Do you have any family?” he asked. “What about a husband? You must have a boyfriend. You’re too pretty not to have a boyfriend.”
That last one got a smirk from her. It was a small thing, but it was a response—the first response to his myriad of questions.
“Open up,” Lyla said.
Wash did, taking another chunk of SPAM, while noticing that the tin was running low. Two more sporks, and he would be out of time.
Better make them count, then.
“I’ve never heard of Jasper, and I’ve been everywhere,” Wash said.
“Everywhere?” Lyla said.
“Almost everywhere.”
“No one’s been everywhere. Even before everything happened.”
“And that is what gets her talking?” the Old Man said.
Hey, whatever works, Wash thought.
He said out loud, “Okay, maybe not everywhere, but I’ve been to a lot of places. A lot of states and a whole lot of towns.”
He opened his mouth for another bite.
One left…
“But I’ve never heard of Jasper,” Wash said as he chewed, then forced the meat (or whatever SPAM was made of) down his throat a little at a time. He was hungry, but the damn thing just tasted so bad. He wondered if that was because it had already gone bad. He couldn’t remember if SPAM had an expiration date.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to talk with your mouth full?” Lyla asked.
“Nope. No one has.”
“Well, someone should have.”
“I guess you just did.”
“I guess I did.” She sporked the last piece and held it up. “Ready?”
“Is it just you and Keith here?” Wash asked.
“Open your mouth.”
“Tell me who else is in Jasper first. I can’t hear anyone out there. Is there anyone other than you and Keith out there?”
“Open your mouth.”
“Not until you tell me more about this place.”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “If you don’t open your mouth and eat this last bite, I’ll leave with it. I don’t think you want that, because it’s the last thing you’ll get today.”
Wash relented and opened his mouth, and she fed him.
He was still chewing, trying to swallow the last of the food down, when she turned around and said, “No.”
“No?” Wash said as he forced down the SPAM.
“No, it’s not just Keith and me.” She walked back to the door. “There’s a lot of other people in Jasper.”
“Why can’t I see or hear any of them?”
“They’re scared of you.”
“Me? Why would they be scared of me?”
She stopped halfway to the door but didn’t turn around.
“Lyla?” Wash said. “Why are they scared of me?”
“Because of who you are,” Lyla said.
“And what’s that? What am I?”
“Because of why Keith brought you here,” she said, and turned to go.
“Where is Keith?”
Lyla didn’t answer him and opened the door.
“Where is Keith?” Wash asked again. “He said we’d be out of each other’s hair by morning. It’s morning. So where’s Keith? Lyla, where’s Keith?”
The door clicked shut after Lyla.
He couldn’t force or trick or cajole more answers out of Lyla because she didn’t come back after his feast of SPAM. Instead, Wash was left to hang from the barn’s rafters, a posture his body had adapted to, mostly because he had lost feeling in both arms. He wouldn’t even know his arms were stretched over his head if he didn’t look up, and it made him wonder if he’d be able to do anything if someone showed up and cut him down in the next few seconds.
Hopefully I’ll get to find out.
Because the alternative was…not good.
“That’s an understatement,” the Old Man said.
I’m trying to be optimistic.
“This is your idea of ‘optimism?’”
Something like that.
The Old Man laughed, but Wash ignored it.
“You know you’re just ignoring yourself, right?” the Old Man asked.
Wash ignored that, too.
Eventually, night arrived, and the town of Jasper…didn’t change whatsoever. The only difference that Wash could detect was darker air inside the barn that forced the dirty floor and random carpets of old hay he knew were scattered around him into the shadows. He kept waiting for Lyla to come back, or for Keith to show up and make good on his ominous promises, but neither one did.
Left to his own devices, and unable to do anything but hang around (Har har, now that’s a good one.), Wash thought about the last thing Lyla had said before she left:
“They’re scared of you,” she had said.
“Me? Why would they be scared of me?” he had asked.
“Because of who you are,” Lyla said. “Because of why Keith brought you here.”
That last sentence stuck in his mind. That, and what Keith had said to him last night:
“My orders were to bring you here.”
Wash didn’t have to think too long or too hard to understand what they were saying, even if they didn’t come right out and say it. He had to admit, though, that he didn’t think it would work out quite this way. He’d imagined it bloody and violent, not with him hanging from a barn’s rafters all day long, bored out of his mind.
“Better bored than dead,” the Old Man said. “And look, it’s getting darker. Maybe you won’t have to be bored for very much longer.”
Yeah, maybe.
The barn had become colder as more shadows appeared in its corners. Eventually the day disappeared, and Wash waited to hear the telltale signs of nightcrawlers finally coming out of their hiding holes, finally making good on Keith’s promise. But the night dragged on, and he couldn’t hear or couldn’t make them out through the slivers along the sides. The doors also remained closed.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.
Nothing. Nothing out there, and nothing in here with him.
No ghouls, or Keith, or Lyla—
The faded, distant pop-pop-pop of gunfire, coming from beyond the walls.
Now what?
Wash turned toward the sound. They were faint, obviously coming from far away, but there was no denying what they were. He’d heard them too many times, in too many situations, not to recognize the bursts of semiautomatic gunfire when he heard it.
Pop-pop-pop…
Pop-pop-pop…
Wash looked back at the door, expecting Lyla or Keith (or maybe someone else—something else) to burst inside, but no one did.
Pop-pop-pop…
Pop-pop-pop…
It wasn’t coming from nearby, he knew that much. Definitely not in the town of Jasper itself, or anywhere around it, but from much farther away. Sound carried these days, and in this flat part of Texas, without even a shrub to provide any kind of obstacle, he could have been eavesdropping on a gun battle from many miles away.
“Someone’s having a party, and they didn’t invite you,” the Old Man said. “Now that’s just rude.”
Maybe my invitation got lost in the mail.
“Good one,” the Old Man said, and Wash was smiling dumbly to himself when—
Bang! as one of the twin barn doors slammed open and a black figure rushed inside. Moonlight flooded into the barn, silhouetting the figure as it hurried across the open space toward him—
Lyla.
She was wearing a jacket over pants, and instead of sandals she had on boots that looked a size or so too big for her. Her face was flushed as she approached him, but Wash forgot all about that when the knife appeared in her hand.
“Wait—” He got out just before she slashed—
And he fell, his limp legs fo
lding underneath him. His knees slammed into the cold, hard ground, and his arms, formerly extended over his head, flopped uselessly in his lap. Wash wasn’t even sure if he could feel them anymore, much less get them to do anything. The rope that had been holding him up all last night and most of today was severed about a foot from his still-bound wrists.
Lyla crouched next to him, white clouds rushing out between pale lips as she hyperventilated. She had either been running before she reached the barn or—
Scared. She was scared.
No, more than that. She was terrified.
“We have to go,” Lyla said. “Can you walk?”
“What’s happening?” Wash asked.
“Can you walk?”
He nodded, even though it was a lie. He didn’t know if he could actually walk until he tried, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. The poor woman looked as if she’d been to hell and back, and he couldn’t tell which one of them had been hanging in the barn for the last twenty-four hours.
“Come on,” Lyla said, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him up with a heavy grunt.
Wash tried to help out as much as he could, but getting the circulation back in both legs took longer than the few seconds he had. Eventually, he managed to stumble up to his feet and wobbled for a few seconds, but he could feel himself getting stronger, more in control of his appendages with every passing heartbeat. His arms, too, were coming back, but thank God the bruising and bleeding around his wrists were still mostly numb and he hardly felt the tingling against the cold air. Mostly.
“My wrists,” Wash said.
“Later,” Lyla said, and turned to go.
“Lyla, I need my hands free.”
“Later.”
“No, Lyla, now.”
She faced him again, and he thought she might argue, or get mad and run away, leaving him behind. Instead, she sighed and began cutting into the rope with her knife. It was a tactical blade, the kind Wash had seen other slayers carry. It was black and sharp, with a serrated back, and not something he’d ever associate with a skinny woman like Lyla. A big, burly ex-Marine, maybe.
“Marine, kid,” the Old Man said. “How many times have I told you? There are no ex-Marines, there are just Marines.”
Yeah, yeah.
Lyla was still cutting him free when he asked, “What’s happening out there? Who’s shooting?”
He could still hear the echoing action in the background. The continued, almost dry pop-pop-pop of automatic rifle fire. It was either one hell of a gunfight or one hell of a last stand.
“Lyla,” Wash said when she didn’t answer him. “What’s happening out there?”
“He’s back, and he’ll be coming here soon,” Lyla said, her voice dropping to almost a whisper.
She was trying desperately to cut him loose. It should have been an easy task—the knife looked sharp enough, the blade gleaming dangerously in the moonlight—but it wasn’t, mostly because her hands were shaking so badly.
Jesus. What’s she so afraid of?
“Are you really asking that question?” the Old Man said.
Oh, right.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Lyla was saying, still whispering.
“How long do we have?” he asked.
“I don’t know. We just have to get out of here.”
She looked up at him, her eyes wide, the fear plastered on every inch of her face. “You understand, right?” Then, her voice almost cracking, “You understand, right?”
“Yes,” Wash said. “I understand.”
Relief washed across her face, and Lyla finally managed to cut through the last inch of rope. She immediately turned and ran toward the door.
Wash followed on her heels, even as the Old Man said, “Isn’t this what you wanted, kid? Isn’t this why you chased it all the way down south?”
Yes, it is.
“Well, you’ve found it,” the Old Man said. “Or should we say, it’s found you. The real question is: Now what are you going to do about it?”
Fourteen
Jasper remained eerily quiet, even when Wash finally managed to escape the barn. The only sounds were still the gunfire in the distant background, the echoey pop-pop-pop reaching out to them from a far enough distance that Wash couldn’t even see hints of muzzle flashes in the suffocating blackness.
“Where’s all that shooting coming from?” he asked Lyla.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
She had answered too fast, and Wash didn’t believe her.
“What are they shooting at?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
What do you know? he almost asked but didn’t. Right now she was helping him, and Wash didn’t want to introduce anything that could even remotely be interpreted as conflict between the two of them.
There’ll be time for that later, he thought, remembering where he’d been—or actually, how he’d been—the last day or so.
He concentrated on the town around him instead. Jasper wasn’t exactly a big place, but he could make out buildings. The barn where they’d been keeping him was at the edge of town, with almost everything else behind him and nothing except a lot of flat, open land—at least the parts of the area that he could make out with the naked eye—on the other side.
The closest building looked as decrepit as the barn he’d been kept in all day. Flickering lights from lamps emanated from a few of them, but the rest were dark. He could make out a street—just one—that ran through Jasper proper. More buildings up ahead, but it was hard to get a better look without any lights. Jasper, whether on purpose or not, was dark and in lockdown. Wash could recognize people who were trying very hard not to be noticed when he saw one.
With only moonlight to see with, Wash couldn’t really gauge the true size of Jasper, but if anyone had noticed his escape, no one came out of their homes to stop him. That, he thought, was the takeaway here, not how hidden Jasper was. He was finally free.
“Now let’s keep it that way,” the Old Man said. “We got things to do, nightcrawlers to kill.”
You’re goddamn right.
Then Lyla was moving, going around the corner. Wash jogged after her and didn’t stop until he’d caught up. His legs were working fine now that he’d gotten them used to walking again. He was getting feeling back in his arms even though his wrists remained numbed, but numb was better than pain.
Definitely better than pain.
“Where are we going?” Wash asked, glancing behind him, when a new burst of automatic gunfire ripped across the night. This time he saw something he hadn’t seen before.
Well, that’s new.
Or maybe it wasn’t new, but he’d just noticed it now because his eyes had finally adjusted to the new normal outside. It was a brightness in the distance, flickering in the darkness like a wick candle flustered by the Texas wind. It was rising, slowly rising, into the pitch blackness from the same general direction where Wash had determined all the shooting was coming from.
“That’s a fire,” Wash said. “Something’s on fire.”
“Forget about it,” Lyla said.
Wash turned back to her. “That’s where the shooting’s coming from. Where is that?”
“Just forget about it,” Lyla said. “We have to go. We have to get away.”
She definitely knows something she doesn’t want to tell me, Wash thought, but said, “Away where? Where are we going?”
“Away from here.”
“Lyla, what’s—”
She stopped suddenly and turned around. Wash took a step back, surprised by her quickness, and fully expected her to tell him to shut the hell up and just follow her.
Instead, she took something out from behind her back that was hidden under her jacket. “I couldn’t get everything of yours, but I got this,” she said, and held it out to him.
His sheathed kukri. “The last time I saw this, Keith had it. Where is he, by the way?”
Lyla didn’t answer. She turned around and
kept going.
Wash, now feeling less naked with the machete, hurried after her. “What happened to Keith? Lyla. What happened to Keith?”
She shook her head but didn’t look back at him.
“Lyla,” Wash said. “What’s going on? Why did you help me escape?”
She stayed quiet.
“Lyla. Hey, Lyla!”
He reached over and grabbed her wrist. She whirled on him, her eyes wide with shock, and struggled to get free.
Despite everything he’d gone through, Wash was much stronger, and he didn’t let go of her. “Keith. Where is Keith?” Then, when she still wouldn’t answer, he said again, louder this time to let her know he meant business, “Where is Keith?”
She glared at him and kept trying to pull free.
“We’re not going anywhere until you tell me where Keith is,” Wash said. He didn’t let go of her wrist but did relax his grip a bit. “Lyla. Where is Keith?”
She seemed to finally accept that she couldn’t pull free and stopped fighting him. Then she looked past him.
Wash glanced over his shoulder, back toward the small fire (or, at least, it looked insignificant from where he stood) and the shooting. He could still hear the faint pop-pop-pop of automatic gunfire.
He turned back to Lyla. “Keith’s there, now. It’s another town, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “I don’t think it has a name. Maybe it used to, but no one remembers it. It’s just a bunch of old buildings around a church now. It’s been abandoned for a long time, but…”
“Not anymore?”
“Not anymore.”
Wash let go of her wrist. She stepped back and rubbed at it, giving him a look that told him she was hurt, both physically and emotionally, by his aggression.
“I’m sorry,” Wash said.
“You should be,” she snapped back.
“Always the ladies’ man, aren’t you, kid?” the Old Man said, laughing.
Oh, shut up, Wash thought, and said to Lyla, “Tell me about the town. What’s happening there now?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you know Keith is there.”
She nodded.
After The Purge: Vendetta Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 62