He continued toward the truck, trying to see as much of the vehicle as possible, but the angle was all wrong and he ended up staring at the bent back bumper and a Texas license plate hanging on by just one remaining screw. He was fully prepared to break someone’s head open with the tire iron should they lunge out at him from the wreckage, but he didn’t have to, no matter how much noise he was making with all the crunching glass under his boots.
When he finally reached the damaged vehicle, Keo sneaked a quick look into the shattered back passenger window by exposing his head for a brief half second before pulling it back and waited for the gunshots that never came.
Breathing easier now, he crouched and took a longer look this time. There was no one inside the back or the front seats. Shredded upholstery, more broken glass, and splashes of blood covered the driver’s seat and front passenger’s. He figured out where most of that blood came from when he spotted the two spiderwebbed bullet holes in the front windshield. There was plenty of evidence that whoever was in the vehicle when it ran off course hadn’t left unscathed, but there were no signs of the people themselves.
Keo stood up and looked around him again. This was the first time he had gotten a good view at the open land on this side of the highway, not that there was much of a difference; it looked just as brown and sun-bleached on this side as it had on the other.
He swept the immediate area around the truck, trying to find traces of where the driver and passenger had gone. There was a lot of blood in the grass around him, but no clear indications the men (or women) had been pulled out and then dragged away.
So where the hell were the bodies?
He turned back to the highway. “Clear,” he said, just loud enough for Jordan to hear.
She climbed out of the ditch. “Bodies?”
“They must have either been thrown clear or taken.”
“Who would take them?”
“I don’t know. But they bled all over the place.”
“I’ll see if they’re back there,” she said. “They might have things we can use, like real weapons.”
“Good luck.”
Keo watched her walking down the highway for a moment before crouching again and pulling open the back driver-side door and crawling inside. He had to pick his way through two dozen or so stray cartridges scattered along the ceiling just to find a couple of empty MRE bags. He could still smell their contents—lasagna in one, mashed potatoes and turkey in the other. His stomach growled at the aroma. Close, but no cigar.
There wasn’t much in the front except some empty water bottles and candy bar wrappers. He spotted more abandoned 5.56 rounds, but no hints of the weapons they were meant to load. The fact that he couldn’t find a single spent shell casing told him the truck’s owners hadn’t fired back when they were ambushed.
And this was definitely an ambush. The only thing that didn’t make any sense was the bodies. Where the hell were the bodies?
“There’s nothing back there,” Jordan said when he crawled back outside the vehicle. She was perched on the highway behind him. “Anything useful?”
“Not a thing.”
“Food?”
“See first answer.”
“Bummer.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I didn’t completely come back empty-handed,” she said, holding out a familiar piece of white paper—more of the flyers they had found back at the farmhouse, except this one had fresh tire tracks over it. “They’re going to get such a stern talking to when Texas finds out they’re littering out here.”
The white sheet had the same blocky capital letters as the others, and read:
JOIN THE FIGHT TO TAKE BACK TEXAS
WAR IS HERE PICK A SIDE
THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING
Keo climbed up from the ditch and stood on the highway. Jordan stretched next to him, then folded the piece of paper and slipped it into her back pocket.
“Are you collecting them now?” he asked.
“I’m going to take a look at them again later.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “There might be a secret code or something we’re just not seeing.”
“Seriously?”
She smiled. “It’ll give me something to do. Better than staring at your ugly face all the time.”
“Damn,” he said.
“Just kidding. Your face is beautiful. Even with all those unsightly things on it.”
She flicked some dirt off his forehead and leaned in and kissed him. She tasted of sun and day-old tuna, but that didn’t stop him from kissing her back. She rubbed her hands playfully against his butt, and he might have thrown her to the highway and had his way with her right then and there if she didn’t pull away, laughing as she did so.
“Let’s make a promise,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Next time, it has to be on a bed.”
“Not a lot of beds around here, Jordan…”
“So when we finally find one, it’ll be even more spectacular.”
“‘Spectacular’?” he smiled. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“I never do,” she said, and gave him a quick kiss on the lips before looking back down at the truck in the ditch. “So what happened to it?”
He smiled, amused she could switch topics so easily when they were just making out like teenagers a moment ago.
“Bullet holes in the front windshield took out the driver and his passenger,” he said. “Or maybe just the driver, who lost control of the car and ended up there. Same difference.”
“So where are the bodies?”
“That’s a good question.”
“Maybe the animals took them?”
“That’s assuming there are still wild animals out here.”
“There has to be, right? There was that dog back at the beach outside of Sunport. Anyway, who do you think they were?”
“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, gasp
ing 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 costs.
“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.
The Purge of Babylon Series Box Set, Vol. 3 | Books 7-9 Page 36