Shoot Last: A Post-Apocalyptic Western
Author: Sam Sisavath
Date: 2020-07-25 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Post-Apocalyptic | Horror | Infected
Description: FINAL JUDGEMENT COMES FOR EVERY MAN. He wasn't looking for a fight, and he did everything possible to avoid one, but the Judge and his lackeys refused to let John Smith go about his way. Things got out of hand, people ended up dead, and now Smith is on the offensive. After being double-crossed, Smith returns to Gaffney, determined to conclude all unfinished business. It will mean taking the fight to the enemy at their own doorsteps, but Smith is just angry enough not to give a damn. They should have left him alone. But they didn't. Now they're going to learn that it's not who shoots first that
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Press

Shoot Last: AKA John Smith

Copyright © 2020 by Sam Sisavath

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Road to Babylon Media LLC
www.roadtobabylon.com

Edited by Jennifer Jensen, Wendy Chan & Grace Kastens

Cover Art by Deranged Doctor Design

Contents

Books in the After the Purge Series

Also by Sam Sisavath

About Shoot Last

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Books in the After the Purge Series

The Vendetta Trilogy

Requiem

Tokens

Remains

AKA John Smith

Mist City

Run or Fight

Shoot Last

Also by Sam Sisavath

The Purge of Babylon Post-Apocalyptic Series

The Purge of Babylon: A Novel of Survival

The Gates of Byzantium

The Stones of Angkor

The Walls of Lemuria Collection (Keo Prequel)

The Fires of Atlantis

The Ashes of Pompeii

The Isles of Elysium

The Spears of Laconia

The Horns of Avalon

The Bones of Valhalla

Mason’s War (A Purge of Babylon Story)

The Road to Babylon Post-Apocalyptic Series

Glory Box

Bombtrack

Rooster

Devil’s Haircut

Black

The Distance

Hollow

Daybreak

The Ranch

The Allie Krycek Vigilante Series

Hunter/Prey

Saint/Sinner

Finders/Keepers

Savior/Corruptor

The Red Sky Conspiracy Series

Most Wanted

The Devil You Know

About Shoot Last

FINAL JUDGEMENT COMES FOR EVERY MAN.

He wasn’t looking for a fight, and he did everything possible to avoid one, but the Judge and his lackeys refused to let John Smith go about his way. Things got out of hand, people ended up dead, and now Smith is on the offensive.

After being double-crossed, Smith returns to Gaffney, determined to conclude all unfinished business. It will mean taking the fight to the enemy at their own doorsteps, but Smith is just angry enough not to give a damn.

They should have left him alone. But they didn’t.

Now they’re going to learn that it’s not who shoots first that counts, but who shoots last.

One

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“What the hell does it look like I’m doing here?”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“And yet here I am.”

“You shouldn’t be here…”

“You already said that.”

“You got away. You shouldn’t be here.”

“Yeah, well, that wasn’t my decision, was it?”

“You trying to get killed? Is that it? That must be it, or you wouldn’t have come back. You should have kept on walking.”

“Oh, I think we’re well past that, don’t you think?”

Hobson smirked. “You got a big set on you, son.”

“I’m not your fucking son,” Smith said. He motioned with the gun in his hand but otherwise didn’t bother getting up from the nice comfortable leather armchair that Hobson had in the corner of his living room. “What were you, raised in a barn? Close the door and lock it before all the mosquitoes get inside.”

Hobson did as he was told. The door clicked into place, followed by the clack as the deadbolt slid home. The de facto sheriff of Gaffney turned around and resumed staring at Smith from across the room.

“Now what?” Hobson asked.

“Now you tell me where the Judge lives,” Smith said.

“And why would I do that?”

“So I can go there and put him out of my misery.”

“You’re going to kill the Judge?”

“I ain’t going there to rock him to sleep.”

“That’s murder.”

“It’s justice.”

“For who?”

“Me, Mandy, Lucky.” Smith shrugged. “Your pick. Frankly, I don’t give a shit why he has to die. But he’s gonna die, and that’s all there is to it.”

“Wait. Mandy? What happened with Mandy?”

Smith squinted across the semidarkness at the man, trying to decide if Hobson was attempting to pull one over him.

Hobson lived alone in a small two-bedroom house on the southern edge of town. It was just close enough to the main center for him to walk to “work,” but far enough that he had some privacy. The residence was surrounded by bigger houses that Hobson could have chosen, but he had elected for this cozy place instead. The doors were closed but not locked, and Smith could have come through a half-dozen entry points besides simply opening the front door. Smith guessed you didn’t need to lock your doors in a place like Gaffney; it wasn’t like they had much trouble with outsiders.

At least, not until he showed up.

“What happened to Mandy?” Hobson was asking him now.

Smith still hadn’t gotten up from the armchair. It was brown and cool when he sat down but had warmed up noticeably while he waited for Hobson to come home. Sneaking back into Gaffney hadn’t been all that difficult. The town was just too big to be fully watched over by guards; the Judge would have needed ten times the number of lackeys in order to keep an eye on every possible way in. And with three less pairs of eyeballs at his disposal, what was originally difficult had become impossible. Smith had simply waited until dark, using the time to scout the area, and then picked a blind spot. He’d had plenty of choices.

“You know damn well what happened to Mandy,” Smith said.

Hobson shook his head. “I don’t.”

“Bullshit.”

“I don’t, son.”

Again with the ‘son,’ Smith thought, wondering if Hobson was doing that on purpose to get his goat. Sure, the man was old enough to be his father, but did Hobson really think Smith was going to feel any sympathy because of their age difference? Smith had shot older men.

“She’s dead,” Smith said.

He didn’t believe for one second that Hobson didn’t already know that fact, but if this was some kind of game Hobson wanted to play, then Smith would accommodate him. Worst case, he wasted a few minutes; best case, he gleaned some information from Hobson, whether the man wittingly gave it up or not.

“Mandy is dead?” Hobson said, looking very much surprised.

Or maybe he was just a good actor.

No, Hobson wasn’t that. The man didn’t look like he had an ounce of artistic ability in him. Certainly, he couldn’t act his way out of a wet paper bag.

What Smith was seeing now, on the sheriff’s face, was genuine surprise.

He doesn’t know about Mandy.

What exactly did that mean, though, in the large scheme of things?

Smith was trying to figure out an answer when Hobson continued. “How did she die?”

“She was shot.”

“When?”

“While I was bringing her back here, per the Judge’s orders.”

“The Judge’s orders…”

“That’s right. He got me to bring her out of the junkyard, and when she was in the open, his sniper took her out. Probably the same asshat that shot me earlier. He’s dead, too, by the way.”

“Who?”

“The sniper.”

“Roman?”

“Is that his name?”

Hobson nodded. “He’s the best shot we have; that’s why he’s out there.”

Smith shrugged. He didn’t know the sniper’s name, and it didn’t matter anyway. The man was dead, along with the kid, Kyle. Travis Clarence, the man with the two first names, was still alive, but he probably wished he wasn’t right now.

“Not anymore, I guess,” Hobson said.

Smith wasn’t sure if the other man sounded sad or was just stating a fact with that one. Maybe a little of both, which told Smith Hobson and this Roman character weren’t exactly drinking buddies. Not that he thought Hobson was drinking buddies with anyone. If the man even drank at all. Hobson looked way too much like a straight arrow to indulge in anything that could even pass for a filthy habit. Then again, a standup guy wouldn’t be doing the Judge’s bidding, so maybe Smith was all wrong about Hobson…again. He’d been wrong about a lot of things lately, and one of these days, those errors in judgement were going to get him dead.

One of these days, but not tonight.

Smith motioned again with the gun. “Have a seat, Sheriff. You’re making me a little anxious just standing there.”

“What about my gun?” Hobson asked.

“What about it?”

“You want me to put it on the floor? Kick it over? Isn’t that how these things work in the movies?”

Smith smiled. “Sheriff, I could shoot you before you clear leather even if I had my own pistol holstered. Having my gun already out is just for intimidation.”

“I believe you.”

“You should.”

As if to prove his point, Smith holstered the SIG Sauer.

The older man cracked a smile. “Balls, son. You got real balls.”

“Sit down.”

Hobson walked over to a sofa in front of the windows and sat down across from Smith. He’d kept his hands away from his holstered revolver the entire time, almost as if he expected Smith to be looking for an excuse to shoot him. Smith wanted to tell the man that he didn’t need another excuse. He already had a dozen reasons to put a round in Hobson even before he showed up at the older man’s residence.

The sheriff sighed as he sat down, hands pressing flat against his legs. All it would have taken was a quick jerk of his right hand toward his hip, and he’d be armed. Of course, Smith would have shot him well before he even touched his weapon.

Smith knew that without a shred of doubt in his mind.

And maybe Hobson did, too.

“The Judge,” Smith said. “Where do I find him?”

“You don’t know?”

“If I knew, why would I be here?”

“Just to say hi, maybe.”

“I don’t like you that much.”

“Ouch.” Then, his head cocking to one side slightly, “How did you find out where I lived, anyway?”

“The mailbox.”

“The mailbox?”

“You put your name on the mailbox outside.”

Hobson chuckled. “Right. The mailbox. I forgot about that.”

“Stumbling across it was an accident. Like a sign from God, if you will. But it did make me curious. Why the mailbox?”

The sheriff shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I wanted to make this place mine. Putting my name on the mailbox up front seemed like a thing to do.”

“It’s not your house.”

“It is now.”

“You get mail?”

“Of course not. Who gets mail these days?” Then, “So it’s just my bad luck you found my mailbox, huh?”

“Pretty much.”

“Swell.”

“The Judge,” Smith said. “Where do I find him? He’s not at the courthouse. It was the first place I looked. And I don’t suppose he’d lower himself to staying in the same buildings as some of the other residents.”

“No, he wouldn’t do that.”

“So where is he?”

“The big white house, about two blocks north from here. The one with the guards outside. I don’t know how you missed it in the first place.”

“It’s dark. You guys need more lights.”

“More lights bring more trouble.”

“Ghoul trouble?”

“We get them every now and then.”

Smith wanted to ask Hobson about the ghoul “trouble” that had plagued the junkyard exactly one night ago, when the Judge’s men attacked Mandy’s people. But he didn’t because it didn’t matter. Right now, only one thing mattered.

The Judge.

“So, the big white house,” Smith said, standing up.

“Yes,” Hobson said. His eyes tracked Smith the entire time. “What are you going to do?”

“I already told you.”

“Murder him?”

“You say murder, I say justified homicide.”

“You won’t be able to get to him anyway.”

“How many guards does he have?”

“I won’t tell you that.”

“Why not?”

“Call it loyalty.”

“To a man like the Judge?”

Hobson seemed to sigh. Or maybe Smith just misheard him. “Something like that. Whatever you think of him, he did bring law and order to this area after everything went to shit. If nothing else, he deserves credit for that.”

“That’s not what Mandy’s people think.”

“Yeah, well, opinions are like assholes. You know?”

“Yeah. Lots of those around these days, too.”

“So you’re going to go kill the Judge, huh?”

Smith ignored the question. He asked instead, “Mary and her son. Where are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe you.”

The sheriff shrugged. “That’s your prerogative, but it’s the truth.”

“You’re the sheriff. Aren’t you supposed to know everything that happens in your town?”

“Most of the time, but my area of responsibility doesn’t include where people are housed.” He shook his head. “I don’t know where the woman and her son are being kept.”

“Being kept?” Smith thought. Hobson hadn’t said where Mary and Aaron were “living.” Instead, he’d used the words “being kept.” There was a huge difference.

“Who would know?” Smith asked.

“Amy,” Hobson said.

“The doctor?”

“Yes. She’s also in charge of housing.”

“Interesting.”

“Most people here have multiple titles. It’s how we keep the place running. There’s not enough people to go around.”

“You mean, other than through intimidation?”

Hobson almost smiled that time. “Yeah.” Then, still staring across the semidarkness at Smith, with only a patch of moonlight coming in through the curtains of the windows behind him, “So what now?”

“You have two options.”

“What’s that?”

“Convince me you won’t alert anyone after I leave now, or I shoot you.”

“You shoot me, and everyone will be alerted to your presence.”

“Yeah, well, that’s a risk I’m willing to take.” Then, his eyes glued on Hobson’s face, “So convince me, Sheriff.”

“I can’t.”

“I figured.”

Hobson went for his gun.

Smith drew and shot him dead.

Two

Maybe killing Hobson was the wrong thing to do. After all, the gunshot would have alerted the people of Gaffney. Sound traveled these days, especially in the middle of the night with nothing else to blunt the noise.

Then again, Hobson had gotten on Smith’s bad side, and Smith was only human. He’d already concluded the sheriff wasn’t the good man Smith had taken him for when they first met. Everything Hobson had done since had only confirmed that. Maybe, once upon a time, he had been decent, but that wasn’t the man Smith had shot tonight.

That was his excuse, anyway.

Still, the gunshot would alert the Judge’s remaining men to Smith’s presence. Which was fine with him; he needed to get a better look at what he was dealing with anyway. He was pretty sure he hadn’t seen everything—or everyone—while he was scouting the place earlier, searching for a way in. He didn’t think he’d develop that full picture in the next few hours, but firsthand intelligence was always better than secondhand.

“You know how many of them there are?” Roger, Mandy’s righthand man, had asked him yesterday when Smith showed up at their junkyard and told them about his plan to return to Gaffney.

“Six,” Smith had said.

“More than six,” Mandy had said.

“How many more?”

“At least ten,” Roger had said.

“At least ten” wasn’t exactly a specific number. “At least” could be eleven or fifteen or fifty. Not that Smith thought the Judge had fifty men on the payroll, or whatever he was using to keep them to stay loyal to him. But “at least” could be as few as eleven and as many as twenty…or more.

Smith needed to find out one way or another. He was good with a gun, but even he didn’t think he could take on twenty men. At least, not in a straight-up fight, which was what he preferred. At least now he had one less man to deal with.

No, that wasn’t quite correct. Three less men to deal with, actually. He had forgotten to count Travis, the kid, Kyle, and the sniper, Roman. Travis was still alive but out of the game. (There was the possibility Travis was still alive. Who knew what Roger and company were doing to him now?)

Smith stood next to the window on the second floor of the house across the street from Hobson’s and watched as shadowy figures arrived. There were four of them—two on horseback, the other two on foot. All men, of course. The two on foot were carrying LED lanterns, the kind with solar-rechargeable batteries that Smith had seen often out here, while the two mounted ones had similarly bright LED flashlights fixed to the barrels of their weapons—one rifle and one shotgun.

They charged up to Hobson’s home, coming from two separate directions, almost as if they had orchestrated the approach. And maybe they had, for all Smith knew. It took them almost twenty-five minutes to respond, which was pretty fast given the size of the town and the fact they would have had to get together, figure out what had happened, and then assembled.

And where the hell did they keep the horses, anyway? Smith still didn’t know the answer to that one. Then again, he also didn’t know where they had kept the Jeep that Travis had tried to run him down with yesterday. There had to be a garage, or stables, somewhere in town that he hadn’t seen yet.

He concentrated on what was happening out in the darkened streets as the Judge’s men carefully entered Hobson’s home. Two of them went inside while the other two remained outside as guards. Smith glimpsed flashlight beams slicing across the home’s front windows within. It wouldn’t have taken the men long to find Hobson’s body. Smith had left him sitting on the sofa where he’d died.

The two sentries on Hobson’s front lawn were eyeballing the street, alleys, and buildings around them. They looked jumpy, clutching their weapons. It was too dark outside, with only the moonlight and limited glows of the lanterns that the men held in their hands for Smith to see with, so he couldn’t tell if any of the faces were familiar. The men actually scanned the home Smith was hiding in a couple of times, but if they saw him, they didn’t react. He was pretty sure he was well-hidden.

Pretty sure.

Or maybe he wasn’t that well-hidden and was hoping to be spotted. Maybe he wanted them to come into the house so he could take down a few more of them. Knock a few of those “at least” down a couple more notches. Was that why he’d remained so close to Hobson’s place after shooting the man to death?

Of course not.

Probably.

Voices, as the two that had gone into the house came back outside. The four men milled about the one-story structure, eyes scanning the area as if they expected to find him out here, as he watched them back.

Oh, if you only knew, boys.

If you only knew…

Two of them climbed back onto their horses, turned the animals, then proceeded down the street. The two on foot loitered around the property, still scanning for signs of him. Smith noticed that they hadn’t removed Hobson’s body; for all he knew, they had just left the sheriff sitting where he’d been shot.

He listened to the clop-clop-clop of shod horse hooves as they faded down one side of the block, while the lights from the LED lanterns of the ones on foot remained where they were. If they had noticed him and were planning some sneaky rear attack, he couldn’t detect it. He stayed ready anyway, a part of him still hoping they would try something.

Got ourselves a little death wish tonight, don’t we?

Maybe. Just maybe.

He was surprised there weren’t armed men roaming around Gaffney looking for him. There were two of them outside and two more on horseback, but where were the others? Asleep? Guarding the Judge? If he was the paranoid type, Smith would almost think they were setting him up and waiting to spring an elaborate ambush. What was it going to take to wake all of Gaffney up? A full-blown attack?

Maybe I should have blown up a building or two to really get their attention.

He waited patiently, but no one tried to sneak up on him or flank the house he was hidden inside. Smith didn’t keep listening for signs of something happening anyway. When he’d entered the place earlier, it’d smelled and looked abandoned. The uncovered mattress behind him was stained with rainwater from old leaks in the ceiling, and the wallpaper was peeling. The floor crunched as he walked across it, a combination of debris and fallen Sheetrock.

Smith didn’t move from the window or go anywhere, and about forty or so minutes later, the horsemen returned. This time they were dragging a wagon between them, with a third figure sitting on it.

A woman. Smith could tell that much by her shape.

The group stopped in front of Hobson’s house, and the woman climbed off, then disappeared inside.

Amy.

It had to be Amy, the former Black Tider turned Gaffney’s resident doctor. It made sense. Who else would be roused from sleep to take care of Hobson’s body? Unless, of course, the town had its own undertaker, but that was unlikely.

“Most people here have multiple titles. It’s how we keep the place running,” Hobson had said.

So it was a good bet Amy was also the undertaker when called for. The fact that she was in charge of housing as well was a little more out of the ordinary for someone of her skill set, but like Hobson had said, that was how they kept the place running.

He watched the group return outside Hobson’s home about ten minutes later, with Hobson’s body wrapped in a sheet and carried between two of the four men. They loaded him onto the back of the wagon while Amy watched on. She was looking around the street, and for an instant or two, settled her eyes on the window Smith was hidden alongside.

Can she see me?

Nah.

Probably nah.

Then Amy looked away, said something to one of the horsemen, and they moved on. The two on foot followed.

Smith stepped away from the window before moving silently across the bedroom. He remembered where the clinic was in relation to Hobson’s house, so it wouldn’t be hard to find again. Where else would they take the sheriff’s body? Unless he was wrong, but he didn’t think he was.

It was dark outside the house, but Smith could still hear the clop-clop-clop of horse hooves on the street behind him. He slipped out of the dark structure and into an alleyway, then made his way across the darkness.

Gaffney remained pitch-black and silent around him, reminding Smith to be very careful about every step he took. He kept his eyes on the rooftops of the buildings around him in case there were lookouts up there.

He didn’t see anyone. Not above him and not on the street. But he could still hear the fading clop-clop-clop of horse hooves. Smith followed them while sticking to the shadows. The air had grown chilly, but there were no telltale signs of ghoul presence in the vicinity.

He kept his senses alert anyway. You could never tell when the bastards would decide to pop out of the shadows at you.

Three

He wasn’t sure if he was surprised there were no guards outside the clinic—the same one he’d been in the day before—where they took Hobson’s body or not. He supposed it made sense; there was no reason to post anyone outside or inside, for that matter. From what he could see, the Judge’s men—a half dozen, now—were moving through town looking for something.

Someone.

If they even knew he was the one responsible for Hobson. After Travis had failed to show up after ambushing Mandy, maybe the Judge would have already assumed things hadn’t gone as well as he had hoped. Either way, his men were looking for someone out there.

Smith easily avoided them by sticking to the back alleys of Gaffney, winding his way through the shadows and brick buildings until he found himself at the rear of the clinic. There was a door, but it was unlocked, so Smith let himself in. There were two main rooms inside—the entry lobby and the back, the two spaces separated by nothing more than a curtain like before.

He found Amy standing next to Hobson’s body, jotting down notes on a clipboard. The sheriff lay on a gurney, his naked body exposed, with the hole in his chest where Smith had shot him underneath a single LED light.

Amy spun around when she heard his footsteps, dropping the clipboard and reaching for a scalpel on a tray nearby. Her eyes widened at the sight of him, and the words, “Jesus, Smith,” came out between her lips.

Smith wasn’t sure if she was scared to see him or relieved. “You’re up late,” he said.

“What the hell are you doing back here?”

He noticed she hadn’t relaxed her grip on the scalpel even a little bit after recognizing him. In fact, it was still clutched in her hand and in front of her—a clearly defensive posture.

“I’m looking for my friends,” Smith said. “I was told you’d know where they were.”

“What friends? And told by who?”

Smith nodded at Hobson. “Him.”

Amy glanced back at the dead man briefly. From the look on her face, it didn’t take long for her to put two and two together. “You killed Hobson.”

Smith nodded.

“Why?” she asked.

“He went for his gun.”

“That’s all?”

Was that all?

No, that wasn’t all, but he didn’t think the doctor needed to know that.

Smith had been careful about keeping his hands away from his holstered weapon. He knew he was taking a chance here; all it would have taken was for Amy to scream for help and the Judge’s men would swarm the place. Of course, it’d take them a while, and he was reasonably confident he could escape before then.

But still, he was taking unnecessary chances here. And yet, Smith didn’t really feel endangered. Something about his encounter with Amy before convinced him she was a potential ally rather than an enemy. Maybe it was their shared history with Black Tide.

His instincts were rewarded when Amy relaxed and put the knife back on the tray. “Did you have to kill him?”

No, Smith thought, but he said, “Yes. He didn’t give me a choice.”

She looked back at the sheriff and shook her head. “He wasn’t a bad guy. Not completely.”

Bad enough, Smith thought, but he hadn’t come here to talk about Hobson. Besides, if the doc had warm feelings toward the sheriff, Smith didn’t have any issues with that. And he certainly wasn’t going to try to change her mind. Not now, anyway.

“He told me you knew where to find my friends,” Smith said.

Amy turned back to him. “The woman and her son, that came in here yesterday.”

Smith nodded. “Where are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“He told me you did.”

“I did, when they first showed up. But I don’t know where they are now.”

“They were moved?”

Amy nodded. “After you left.”

Dammit.

He wasn’t sure why he was so surprised by the news. The Judge wasn’t a stupid man, and if he’d willingly used Mary and Aaron as incentives for Smith to do his bidding, why wouldn’t he take extra measures just in case Smith turned on him? Which, seeing as how Smith had done just that…

“You don’t have any ideas where they might be?” Smith asked.

Amy shook her head. “No. I’m sorry.”

“Who moved them?”

“Stephens and a couple of men.”

“Not Hobson?”

“I don’t think so.”

Well, at least the sheriff hadn’t lied about that part.

“What are you going to do now?” Amy asked.

“The Judge.”

“What about him?”

“I’m going to kill him.”

“Just like that?”

Smith shrugged. “Why not?”

“Is that why he’s so heavily guarded all of a sudden?”

“How heavily are we talking about?”

“There were at least a half dozen men with him when I last saw him before nightfall. It was the first time I’ve seen him with so many guns.”

“…before nightfall.”

That would have been more than enough time for the Judge to have found out that his ambush of Smith and Mandy hadn’t gone according to plan. The sniper, Roman, had managed to kill Mandy—his primary target—but Smith had slipped free. Smith wouldn’t have been surprised to know the Judge had men watching the junkyard; those same men would have seen Smith arriving in the Jeep with Travis. The fat man might not have known Smith would come back for him, but he was apparently not taking any chances.

Smart fucker.

“How many men does the Judge have?” Smith asked, Roger’s “ten or more” still echoing inside his head. “How many guns can he count on to do his dirty work?”

Amy thought about it, before glancing back at Hobson’s body. “Now?”

“Now.”

“Thirteen.”

“Thirteen?”

“Yes. Why?”

Oh, nothing. I’m just trying to figure out how many I’m going to have to kill to get to the Judge.

Smith said instead, “You sure about that number?”

“Yes.”

“Does it include Travis, Kyle, and Roman?”

Amy’s eyes widened slightly. Was that surprise? Yes, it looked like surprise. But surprised by what?

“Are they dead?” Amy asked.

“Let’s assume they’re no longer in the mix. How many guns does the Judge have left now?”

“Without those three? Then ten.”

“Ten? You sure about that?”

Again, Amy seemed to think about it. “I think so.”

“You think so?”

“People come and go. I can’t keep track of everyone.”

“I thought that was your job.”

“One of my jobs.”

Smith nodded. “Fair enough.” Then, because it just occurred to him, “You’re not married to any of them, are you?”

“What?”

“I heard the Judge likes to marry people off.”

“God, no.”

The way she had said it, “God, no,” made Smith think he’d chosen correctly to come to Amy, not just for information on Mary and Aaron but to gather intel about what he was up to.

At least I was right about one thing tonight.

“About my friends,” Smith said. “Where would they take Mary and Aaron?”

Amy shook her head again. “I don’t know.”

“You must have some ideas.”

“I don’t. I’m sorry.”

“How long have you been in Gaffney?”

“Long enough.”

“How long?”

“Two years.”

“And you don’t know where they would take Mary and her son? You don’t even have a single clue?”

Amy opened her mouth to answer, but nothing came out. She closed her mouth back up and seemed to think about it for a moment instead.

A moment turned into ten seconds.

Then twenty…

“Anything,” Smith said. “Tell me anything.”

“The ranch,” Amy finally said.

“What ranch?”

“Where they take people for what the Judge calls reeducation.”

Now where have I heard that before?

Ah, right. Blake.

“Where’s this ranch?” he asked.

“It’s nearby.”

“How near—”

The click of a door opening, followed by the sound of a man’s voice calling out, “Doc. You in there?”

Smith quickly stepped to his left, far enough that he was suddenly hidden behind the half-open curtain that separated the lobby and back of the clinic. The plastic sheet went all the way down to the floor, so he was assured his boots weren’t showing as whoever was on the other side walked over, the sound of their footsteps loud enough to wake the dead.

“Doc?”

“Yes,” Amy said, looking from Smith to the male figure approaching her.

“I heard voices,” the man said. “Who were you talking to?”

“Voices?”

“Yeah.” Then, with slightly more alarm in his voice, “Who were you talking to?”

“No one,” Amy said. “I was talking to myself.”

The voice belonged to Dunham, the man Smith had seen standing guard outside the Judge’s chambers back at the courthouse yesterday. He was still wearing the same faded Cornhuskers cap and had one palm resting on the butt of his holstered pistol as he stepped past the curtain and into the back room.

“You were talking to yourself?” Dunham asked.

“Yes,” Amy said. “I—” she continued, when her eyes shifted slightly to the right—right at Smith.

He didn’t think she’d done it on purpose. Or, at least, Smith didn’t want to think she had. It was probably a nervous tic on her part, trying to make sure if Smith was hidden well enough from Dunham.

Whatever the reason, the results were the same.

Dunham saw it and spun in Smith’s direction even as his hand grabbed and began drawing his sidearm. The first thing Smith noticed was the widening eyes, followed by the big nasty—and fresh-looking—scar that ran down his right cheek, starting from the bottom of one eye and ending next to the corner of his mouth. The man hadn’t had that when Smith saw him last time.

The surprised presence of the scar cost Smith almost half a second. Almost. But it didn’t stop Smith from drawing first and shooting Dunham once in the chest before the other man could even clear leather.

Well, this night’s going off the rails fast, Smith thought as he took a step toward Dunham’s body even as the man fell to his knees.

Smith shot the Judge’s man a second time, this one in the face because, fuck it, you could never be too sure these days.

Four

Footsteps around him, along with the echoing clop-clop-clop of shod horse hooves. Most of it was concentrated in the roads to his right even as Smith moved deeper into the darker parts of Gaffney. It was a good thing there were no lights along most of the buildings; the town concentrated most of their limited solar-powered LED light sources along the streets.

…a good thing there were no lights…

In another place, another time, Smith might have felt some trepidation about that little fact. Except he didn’t tonight, because the Judge’s men didn’t seem to have any concerns about moving around loudly—very, very loudly—as they hunted for him.

And that was exactly what they were doing: hunting. He was their prey.

Find me if you can, boys.

Smith thought about his brief conversation with Amy just before Dunham poked his nose into the clinic. Then, after Dunham was down for the count:

“You have to go,” Amy had said.

No kidding, he had thought but had answered her with, “This ranch. Give me a direction,” instead.

“South from here. You can’t miss it. It’s the only thing out there for miles.”

“How far?”

“Half a mile, maybe?”

“You’ve been there?”

“A few times, when they needed a doctor. But they wouldn’t let me see everything.”

“And that’s where they take people for reeducation?”

“Yes.”

“What else?”

Amy had shaken her head. “I don’t know. We’re not allowed out there without guards.” Then, quickly, as they heard the clop-clop-clop of approaching horse hooves, “You have to go.”

He didn’t go right away. First, he stared at her. “Are you going to tell them I was here?”

“I have to. But I won’t tell them what we talked about.”

“What will you tell them?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t figured that part out.”

“Painkillers.”

“Painkillers?”

“Tell them I came here looking for painkillers, but Dunham interrupted me first.”

“Okay.” Then, as Smith turned to leave, “You used to be Black Tide too, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Smith said, looking back at her.

“What happened to you?”

“Same as you, I’m guessing. I lost faith in the cause.”

Amy had nodded in reply but hadn’t said anything. She didn’t have to, either. Smith could read it on her face.

Then he left.

* * *

Mary and Aaron.

He was partially (Just partially? Okay, maybe more than partially.) responsible for them being here. And now, in danger. The Judge had put them in his crosshairs, and after what had transpired with Travis and the others, no doubt mother and son weren’t going to be allowed to just assimilate into Gaffney.

That was on Smith. He’d crossed the Judge, hoping he could end the man’s tyranny with a bullet. That hadn’t worked out, mostly because the Judge had had his own plans. One that didn’t include Smith returning to town alive.

You fucked up, fat man. You fucked up real good.

It was up to Smith to make the man pay, but not yet.

Not yet.

So Smith was headed toward the south end of town. To this ranch, wherever it was. He couldn’t remember seeing anything that would indicate there was a ranch out there. Then again, he didn’t even know Gaffney existed until he had his run-in with the Judge’s posse. When he’d scouted the town earlier, looking for a way in, he hadn’t ventured out far enough south to see everything. There hadn’t been any need to.

“The ranch,” Amy had said. “Where they take people for what the Judge calls reeducation.”

What was that Blake had told him about the Judge’s idea of reeducation?

“The Judge reeducates them,” she had said.

“‘Reeducates them’ how?” he had asked.

“It’s basically brainwashing. By the time he’s through with them, they think the Judge is the greatest person in the world.”

“How, exactly?”

“I don’t know. But I’ve seen the results. They’re not the same afterwards.”

Smith didn’t like the sound of that. His mind flashed through images of concentration camps and barbed wires. Was that what he would find once he reached this ranch? Anything was possible these days.

He listened to sounds of movements coming from his right. As long as they were on the other side of the buildings, he was in good shape. A part of him was hoping they’d confront him so he could thin their numbers some more. According to Amy, he was now dealing with ten.

Well, nine now, minus Dunham.

Nine was still a lot, but not as many as it had been just a few minutes ago. Smith wasn’t a math whiz by any means, but even he knew that nine was better than ten.

Now, if he could knock that number down some more…

Voices!

Smith stopped on a dime and all but lunged into a dark corner between two brick buildings, his right hand immediately stabbing down toward the holstered SIG Sauer. He didn’t draw the weapon, but he let it hover, waiting as he listened to the voices get closer.

They were approaching his position and making a hell of a lot of noises doing it, too. Either they wanted him to know they were coming, or they were just really bad at sneaking up on a target.

“Here?” someone said. Male. Young-sounding.

“Around here,” another voice said. Also male, also young-sounding.

“Where, exactly?”

“Nearby.”

“Be more specific.”

“I can’t.”

“You sure you even heard something?”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

“You’re the asshole.”

“Really? I call you an asshole, and you call me an asshole back? That’s mature.”

“You’re mature.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“Huh?”

“Exactly.”

“Whatever, man.”

Smith smirked to himself. Just what he needed tonight: A shitty comedy routine by two assholes.

“Where?” the first asshole said. He sounded much closer than the last time Smith heard his voice. “Here?”

“I already said nearby,” Asshole #2 said. “Now shut up. He might hear us.”

“If he’s here. You probably just saw a cat.”

“When was the last time you saw a cat in town?”

“Yesterday.”

“Where?”

“Behind the courthouse. Ask Tom.”

“I will.”

“You do that.”

Scintillating conversation, Smith thought. Simply scintillating.

He wanted to step out of hiding and put them both out of his misery out of pure spite, for forcing him to listen to them, but he didn’t. He could hear the clop-clop-clop of multiple horses nearby, on the other side of the approaching duo. That meant more men—more heavily-armed men—within earshot. He was eager to knock down the Judge’s numbers by a few more guns, but not if it meant having to outrun horses.

Of course, if he stuck to the back alleys, horses wouldn’t necessarily be that much of an advantage…

“Come on,” Asshole #1 was saying. “There’s nothing back there.”

“I heard something,” Asshole #2 insisted.

“No, you didn’t.”

“I did.”

“No, you didn’t. Or else there’d be something here. But there’s nothing here.”

“We should look some more.”

“We already have.”

“I mean, some more.”

“I’m bored.”

“You’re always bored.”

“I’m also sleepy.”

“You’re always sleepy.”

“Exactly. So why are you making me walk around back here when I’m bored and sleepy?”

The duo were standing about a dozen yards from where Smith hid in the shadows, but he could hear their breathing as well as their chatter as if they were right next to him. He could also see the shadowed barrels of their rifles across the dirty cement floor, the images elongated by the moon casting above them. He was reasonably certain he could take both out before they got off a shot, but it would have been pretty noisy.

Mary and Aaron. Find Mary and Aaron.

As much as he wanted to dispatch both assholes, Smith didn’t move. Right now, getting to Mary and Aaron was more important. As far as he knew, Amy hadn’t given him away. But that was just Smith having faith that she was on his side rather than the Judge’s. What if he was wrong?

He wasn’t.

Probably.

Footsteps again as the duo headed back in the direction they’d come from earlier. Back to the streets. Smith remained where he was, listening to them go. They were just as loud leaving as they had been coming.

Be a little louder why dontcha, boys.

When he couldn’t hear them anymore, Smith continued on his way, slipping through a series of back alleys and sticking to the rear of buildings. Stores, apartments, a VFW hall. Most of them were empty, like the majority of Gaffney. There was simply too much space and not enough people to occupy them. That was another reason he was confident he could avoid the Judge’s men as he made his way south.

A part of Smith wanted to turn back, to find the Judge instead of going after Mary and Aaron. After all, if he could take out the fat man, then all of this would be over. He could simply walk to the ranch and take Mary and her son. (Or he thought he could, anyway. It would probably not be that easy.)

But he didn’t.

Right now, he had to concentrate on getting Mary and Aaron back. He had to make sure they were safe. Even if he didn’t feel completely responsible for them being here, (Still trying to convince yourself, huh?) he had some culpability. That was all the reminder Smith needed to keep his nose out of other people’s business. How different would his last few days have been if he had stayed hidden when Peoples and his two pals showed up on the road?

But that was a moot point now. He was here, in Gaffney, and everything that had happened the last few days—Mary, Gaffney, Blake, and—

Blake.

Shit. He’d forgotten all about Blake.

Smith stopped and glanced north.

Toward the police station.

Blake was probably still inside it even now.

It took him about thirty seconds to decide what to do. Mary was south, but Blake was north. And Blake was closer…

Smith turned around and headed north. He told himself it wasn’t the blonde hair, the beautiful green eyes, or the amazing body, but who was he kidding? It was all those things. He was, after all, only human.

Five

Finding the police station was easy. Smith remembered it was in the center of town, which made it easy to locate even with just the moonlight to navigate with. He could have found it easier if he had access to the streets, but that was out of the question with the Judge’s men roaming around looking for him. Having decided to avoid conflict until it was absolutely necessary, Smith had to stay in the shadows.

There were no guards outside the station, but as Smith approached it, he glimpsed a figure on the rooftop. Smith quickly slid behind cover and watched as a man with a rifle appeared near the edge of the rooftop, looked around for a bit, before vanishing again.

The man was too far away and there was too much darkness for Smith to make out a face, but it was clearly a man. A lone guard. That was expected, given that the rest of the Judge’s guns were searching the town for Smith. Even now, he could hear them moving about the streets and the occasional doors opening and closing. What mattered was that they were behind him and not in front.

Smith waited for the guard to appear a second time, then didn’t move until the man had vanished once more. He hurried out from behind cover and made his way toward the police station, skirting around the corners of buildings until he was at the rear.

There was a back door, but it was locked. Smith took out his knife and waited.

There, the guard somewhere above him, crunching gravel under his boots as he neared Smith’s part of the building. After a while, the boots moved away, and when Smith couldn’t hear it anymore, he went to work on the lock.

It didn’t take long. There was just a simple tumbler lock that Smith was able to pry open with the point of the knife. He pushed the door open and stepped into a dark hallway on the other side.

He remembered the layout of the building from when he was last inside it, before Hobson came to fetch him to see the Judge. Smith fully expected a second guard—maybe even a third, but that was unlikely given the lack of manpower—inside. He got silence instead. Still, he made his way through the first corridor cautiously, listening for sounds of a presence other than his own.

It took him a good half hour just to traverse the first couple of hallways, but it couldn’t be avoided. Besides, he had plenty of time on his side. His watch had barely ticked past midnight, which still left him with a good six or so hours before sunrise. That was more than enough time to do everything he needed.

Easy does it.

Easy does it…

* * *

He wasn’t sure if it was surprise or relief on Blake’s face when Smith finally showed himself. The doors between the hallways were unlocked, so he hadn’t had any difficulty finding his way to the holding cells.

Blake jumped off the bench and ran over to the cell bars. “Jesus, you’re back!”

Smith quickly put a forefinger to his lips to shush her.

Blake understood and mouthed, “Oops. Sorry.” Then, in a lower voice, “I thought you were dead. Or being reeducated.”

Smith shook his head as he stared at her. Even locked behind bars as she had been for the last two days, she was…quite the sight. They hadn’t given her anything new to wear, and he could still smell lingering vomit on her clothes, and yet…

“What?” Blake said, squinting through the bars at him. There was just a small light hanging off the wall down the hallway, which was more than enough for him to make her out and vice versa.

“Nothing,” Smith said.

“No, there was something. What was it?”

“Just glad you’re okay, that’s all.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Have you seen where you are right now?”

“Good point.” Then, leaning even further against the bars until her cheeks were pressing against them, she peered down the hallway. Or tried to, anyway. “You snuck back in here?”

“Pretty much.”

“How’d you get away?”

“I made a deal with the Judge.”

“What kind of deal?”

The kind that got Mandy killed, Smith thought but didn’t say. Blake wouldn’t have reacted positively to the news of Mandy’s death and may even blame him for it.

Oh, who was he kidding? She would definitely blame him for it.

“Smith?” Blake asked. “What kind of deal did you make with that blob of a man?”

“The kind that got me out of town. But I’m back now.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Yeah, why? If you got out, why are you back?” She looked him up and down, her eyes lingering on the gun in its holster. Then, squinting at his face, “What’s going on? What are you doing back here?”

“I came back to make sure you were okay.”

“That’s all?”

“Among other things.”

“What other things?”

“I’m looking for my friend, Mary. I was told she was taken to be reeducated at the ranch.”

“The ranch?”

She knows about it, Smith thought, watching her carefully.

“Yeah, the ranch,” Smith said. “She’s at the ranch with her son right now. I’m going there to look for her. But I could use some help.”

“Me?”

“Why not?”

Blake didn’t take very long to think about it. “You have to get me out of here first.”

“I can do that.”

“How?”

“There should be a key.”

“It’s probably inside the lobby.”

Smith nodded. He’d thought the same thing. It didn’t make any sense for Hobson or the lone guard on the rooftop to carry the keys on him.

He was about to turn to go in search of those keys when Blake said, “Smith.” Then, when he stopped and turned back around, “I heard shooting earlier. Was that you?”

“Yeah.”

“So how many of the Judge’s men are we dealing with now?”

“Ten.”

“Did one of your victims happen to be Clarence?”

“He’s still alive, as far as I know.”

“As far as you know? What does that mean?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I have time.”

“Later,” Smith said, and hurried down the hallway before she could ask him any more questions.

The less he told her about Travis and yesterday’s ambush, the better. Because if he told her everything, he might have to reveal Mandy’s death, too. And right now, Smith wasn’t sure about how to do that quite yet. Maybe, if he was lucky, he would never have to.

Yeah, right. As if he’d been that lucky so far.

He made his way through the corridors and out into the lobby, but like before, not until he’d made damn sure he was the only one moving around inside the police station. He’d closed the door into the holding cells so he didn’t have to separate Blake’s movements from the rest of the building’s. Or his own. He could still hear the lone guard moving around on the rooftop above him, the man’s circular path crossing Smith’s twice as Smith made his way to the door that separated him from the lobby. If the guard had noticed anything going on below him, there was nothing about his steady movements that Smith could detect. Certainly, the guy didn’t sound very excited to be up there. The phrase going through the motions came to mind.

The keys to the cell doors were hanging from hooks near the door into the holding area. They were properly labeled, and Smith pocketed the one to Blake’s cell. Then he spotted the gun racks. Rifles, shotguns, and handguns. Smith helped himself to a few of them, including a Glock that he put behind his waistband, along with a spare magazine. Any more and he would have weighed himself down too much. Besides, if he needed to reach for the secondary pistol, he was probably already in trouble.

Blake was where he’d last seen her when Smith returned—leaning against the cell bars. “You’re back.”

He smiled. “You sound surprised.”

She shrugged. “I thought you might keep going.”

“Why would I do that? After coming here in the first place?”

“I dunno. Maybe you realized coming back here was a stupid idea and decided to rectify it.”

“You’re overthinking things.”

“Maybe. I tend to do that, sometimes.”

Smith opened her cell door, and Blake stepped outside.

“Do I get a gun?” she asked.

He handed her the Glock and the spare magazine, then the shotgun he’d also brought along. Blake gave him a surprised look as she took them.

“What?” Smith said.

“You’re giving them to me?”

“Yes.”

“What about you?”

Smith tapped his holstered SIG. “I have this.”

“Just the one?”

“How many do you think I need?”

She shrugged as she slipped the Glock behind her back, then turned the pump-action shotgun over in her hands. It was a Benelli M4 semiauto and looked a bit cumbersome in Blake’s smaller hands. She didn’t give it back to him, though.

“So what now?” Blake asked.

“The ranch,” Smith said.

“The ranch?”

“I’m going to the ranch.”

“What about me?”

“You can come with me, or you can go home. It’s up to you.”

Blake seemed to think about it. Then, “I’m coming with you.”

“You sure?”

“No, but it’s dark out there, and I don’t feel like walking around in the dark. I mean, it’s not like it used to be, but still…” She might have shivered slightly, but he couldn’t be entirely sure. “Safer with you.”

Smith chuckled. “You sure about that?”

“For now.”

You sure about that? he wanted to ask her but didn’t. If she wanted to stick around as he made his way to the ranch, who was he to tell her otherwise? Besides, he could use the backup. The Judge still had nine men that he knew about, even if he didn’t quite know how many more would be waiting for him at the ranch.

“All right,” Smith said. He glanced down at his watch. “We have five hours before sunlight. But I hear the ranch is nearby.”

“About half a mile,” Blake said.

“You know where it is?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been there.”

“Sort of.”

“‘Sort of?’”

“I’ve seen it from a distance, but I’ve never been inside the property.”

“But you know where to find it.”

She nodded, if clearly reluctantly. “Yeah.”

“You sure you wouldn’t rather head right back to the junkyard? Last chance.”

Blake clutched the shotgun and looked down the hallway. “If I change my mind on the way there, I’ll let you know.”

She headed off, and Smith followed.

“You’ve been back at the junkyard?” Blake asked.

“Yes,” Smith said.

“How’s everything? How’s everyone doing?”

“Good, as far as I know,” Smith lied without missing a beat.

Six

“That’s it?”

“What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know. Barbed wire? Perimeter guards? This looks…”

“What?”

“Just like a hundred other ranches I’ve seen.”

“It’s not the exterior, but what’s inside it.”

“And what is inside it?”

“A place you want to avoid, because no one leaves the same.”

“Reeducation.”

“Yeah.”

“What exactly is that?”

“I don’t know, but when they come out of this place, they’re not the same.”

“But you don’t know exactly what happens in there.”

“No.”

So how do you know it’s as bad as you keep saying? Smith wanted to ask her but didn’t. He didn’t think it mattered anyway.

Blake, like most of Mandy’s people, had been taught to believe everything the Judge and Gaffney did were evil. For all Smith knew, it was true, but nothing he’d seen had really reinforced that. Sure, they weren’t exactly the greatest people, but he’d encountered plenty of folks in post-Purge America that were worse. Some were much, much worse.

But again, he kept those opinions to himself. Right now, Blake was providing him with backup. Not that Smith thought he needed it, but, well, it was better to have an extra gun watching your back than none at all. She seemed to believe everything she was saying, which was her prerogative, as long as she pointed the shotgun in the right direction.

He had to admit, though, that the ranch really didn’t look like much—a group of buildings spread out across a field, with two big two-story structures near the center and smaller ones surrounding them. There was a wooden fence that ringed the property, but Smith figured that was mostly for show because they certainly weren’t going to stop anyone from entering. A few lights dotted the place, but nothing that would point to the ranch’s existence from a distance if you didn’t already know it was here.

Fortunately for Smith, Blake knew where they were going, and they’d found it easily enough after about an hour of skulking their way out of Gaffney. They could have gotten here much sooner, but Smith had plenty of darkness to work with, so he was more than happy to take his time. Besides, morning was still a long way off.

“So what’s the plan?” Blake asked.

“Go in there, and find Mary and Aaron,” Smith said.

“And then what?”

“Get them out of there.”

“It’s not going to be that easy, you know.”

“Why not?”

“Why not?”

“Yeah, why not? I have surprise on my side. As far as the Judge’s people know, I’m still in Gaffney.”

“What about me?”

“What about you?”

“What happens when they find out I’m not in my cell anymore?”

“I don’t know. Probably that you’d run right back to the junkyard.”

“Makes sense. That would be the smart thing to do.”

Smith smiled. He was wondering how long it was going to take Blake to have second thoughts about following him out here.

He checked his watch just to be sure he still had plenty of nighttime to work with: 2:14 a.m. At least three hours, maybe a little more, before sunup. He didn’t think he’d need all of it; especially out here, in the open.

The open prairies were a lot safer these days in the aftermath of The Walk Out, but you still had to be careful. There were plenty of ghouls roaming about, some more daring than others when it came to potential prey. All he had to do was remind himself what had happened back at the junkyard when Gaffney attacked two nights ago.

Smith looked over at Blake, lying on the hillside next to him. They’d been at the same spot for about ten minutes now, waiting for signs that the ranch had guards on the perimeter. There were none that Smith could see, and Blake confirmed it. They were a good 200 meters (maybe more; it was hard to gauge distance accurately in the middle of the night) from the place, far enough that Smith felt good about not being spotted but close enough to see what he needed to. Or most of it, anyway. He considered getting closer but saved that for later. Right now, he just needed to get the lay of the land.

The hill they were on was wider than it was high. About twenty meters up and at least a football field at its base. It looked like a hump, sticking out of a mostly flat Nebraska field. There were similar ones around them, but this one was, by far, the highest; not that it was all that high to begin with.

“The house,” Smith said. “That’s where the reeducation takes place?”

Blake shook her head. “I don’t know. This is as close as I’ve ever gotten. I don’t know what happens in there, or where, exactly.”

There were lights hanging off the front of the big two-story building that was almost exactly in the middle of the property. Every ranch Smith had ever seen had a main structure that the ranchers lived in. This was it. The next-to-biggest building slightly to the left of it would be the barn. Smith could tell that by the red sides. Most barns out here were red.

Smith turned over until he was lying on his back. He looked up at the moon above them and thought about his next move.

“What are you thinking?” Blake asked.

“If Mary and Aaron are in there, I need to get to them. The problem is…”

“What?”

“I don’t know if they’re in danger or not. If they’re just being held here, then I could do more harm than good.”

“Smith, everyone who is brought here is in danger.”

So you keep saying, Smith thought but didn’t say.

He said out loud instead, “Maybe.”

He turned over until he was lying on the grass on his chest and belly again. Smith peered down the hillside at the property. It was certainly spread out, and it would be easy to get past the fence. After that, he could hop between the smaller buildings—supply sheds, he assumed—until he reached either the house or the barn.

The barn was two stories, with an arched second floor, and red all around. It was big enough to house a few hundred people—or plenty of stables for horses. That was likely where Gaffney kept their horses, and who knew what else. Smith was still wondering where the Jeep Travis had tried to run him down with had come from. That big barn was a good bet.

“It sounded like you didn’t believe me,” Blake was saying.

He looked over at her. “About what?”

“That this place is dangerous. That people don’t come here willingly.” She shook her head. “You didn’t sound like you believed me.”

“I believe you,” Smith said. It wasn’t a complete lie…but it wasn’t the complete truth, either.

“You sure about that, Smith?”

Mostly, he thought but said, “Yes.”

“Somehow, I don’t believe you.”

“Does it matter? You’re here. I’m here. And they’re here.”

Blake squinted back at him before smirking. “What does that even mean?”

“It means we’re on the same—”

He smelled it before he saw it.

“Blake!” Smith hissed even as he reached down for the SIG Sauer at his hip—and remembered that it didn’t have silver bullets.

Blake must have smelled it too, because she was already rolling over onto her back while reaching for the Benelli lying next to her on the ground, before he could completely get her name out.

It staggered up the incline toward them, the stink wafting off its body as it traveled.

A ghoul.

A lone ghoul.

It might have moved faster if it’d had two legs instead of the one and a half it was using to trudge up the hillside. Its right leg ended in a stump at the knee, but there was nothing wrong with its arms. Glossy black eyes, like glass marbles, glinted in the moonlight even as saliva flitted from its open mouth.

It could taste them. No, not them, but the blood pumping through their veins. Smith could see the hunger in its eyes, and he thought, How the hell didn’t I smell it before? Jesus Christ. How did it get so close?

Blake was lifting the shotgun and taking aim at the creature when Smith reached over and grabbed it before she could pull the trigger. Her eyes widened in shock as he wrestled the weapon from her grasp.

“What the hell are you doing?” Blake shouted. Too loud.

I hope no one back at the ranch heard that, Smith thought as he pulled the Benelli away from her.

“The ranch,” Smith said. “They’ll hear the blast.”

Blake instantly understood, not that Smith waited for the confirmation. He put the shotgun on the ground and drew the same knife he’d been using to pry his way through Gaffney’s locks all night from his left hip. The blade was coated with silver, which was the only thing that was going to stop the ghoul. And stop it quietly, which was the important part at the moment.

Fortunately for both of them, the creature was still far enough away that Smith didn’t have to rush. The knife was out and in his hand before the undead thing even did ten yards. It wasn’t exactly moving slowly, just awkwardly. He guessed that was what happened when you only had one good leg and a stump for the other one.

Not that the ghoul let its disability stop it. It scrambled up the hillside, eyes snapping from Smith to Blake and back again, as if it couldn’t quite decide which one of them to attack first. Finally, its hollowed-out black eyes settled on Smith—or maybe the silver-coated knife in his hand. It could probably smell the material, but if it was afraid of it, the ghoul didn’t stop. It kept coming.

“Stay here,” Smith said as he got up.

“Silver?” Blake asked.

“Uh huh.”

“Where’s mine?”

“I don’t know. Back at the police station?”

“You couldn’t have grabbed me one?”

“You didn’t ask.”

“Still...”

Smith scooted down the hill to meet the creature. It reached for him, and Smith lopped its right hand off at the wrist. Black blood spurted, but Smith managed to avoid the liquid as the creature toppled harmlessly to the side, then rolled back down the hillside—

Fuck, Smith thought as he smelled it.

Not the ghoul he’d just killed (re-killed?), but even more stink.

A lot more.

Three more ghouls, appearing out of the night at the base of the hill. These three had all their limbs and were scampering up the sloped ground, propelling themselves toward Smith with hands and legs working in unison. They looked more like crab monsters than things that used to be bipedal humans.

“Oh, shit,” Blake whispered behind him.

That sounds about right, Smith thought as he clutched the knife handle. Thank God for silver, otherwise he’d be forced to make a hell of a lot of noise to deal with these things.

The question, Where the hell did they come from? flashed across his mind for just a brief second before the threat of the moment took over and he stopped thinking and simply acted.

There were just three more of them, which he was grateful for. Any more, and he might question if he could handle them with just a knife. A small knife, at that. He couldn’t have used the SIG even if the bullets were silver; the gunshots would have alerted the ranch behind him, and that would ruin the element of surprise Smith was clinging to.

“Stay where you are,” Smith said without looking back at Blake. He heard movement back there as, he guessed, she rearmed herself with the Benelli.

“There’s three of them,” Blake said.

“I can deal with three.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

The ghouls didn’t show any tactical sense as they clambered up the hill toward him. There was no tact, no subtlety to their approach. Which was exactly how ghouls operated. They were base creatures that existed on primal instincts. They needed to feed, and he was the closest meal.

Well, he and Blake. But at the moment he stood between them and her, and if they even had eyes for her, he couldn’t see it in the almost rabid look on their pruned black faces as they zeroed in on him.

They were ugly. They’d always been ugly. It’d been years since The Walk Out, even longer since The Purge, but these things always reminded Smith that no matter how “normal” things seemed out here, they were far from what used to be. The world was irrevocably changed, and this was just a reminder of that sad fact.

“Smith?” Blake said from behind him. She sounded worried for some reason. Was she afraid he couldn’t handle three ghouls?

“Don’t do anything,” Smith said. “I’ll handle—”

The boom! of a shotgun blast left his ears ringing, and Smith spun around, ready to scream at Blake.

Except nothing came out of his mouth, because he knew why she’d fired. She didn’t have a choice, because there were ghouls climbing up the other side of the hill toward her.

There were three of them.

No, not three.

Four—five—more.

Blake was already on her feet and trying to keep her footing as she backed down the slanted ground toward him. The Benelli was a semiautomatic, so she didn’t have to rack the forend to reload the weapon. It was already reloaded, and all she had to do was pull the trigger to fire again.

Which she did now, and a ghoul about five yards from her stumbled as its head disappeared in a shower of buckshot. Not that that stopped the creature, as it continued to stagger after Blake, even minus a head.

Smith wished he could have said he’d never seen a sight like that before, but it would have been a lie. His time with Black Tide had exposed him to a lot more horrific sights, and this wasn’t even close to some of those.

Even so, it took him a second or two—or five—to get a handle on what was happening.

Not only were there ghouls behind him, but they were now in front of him, too. The creatures were coming at them from two sides. And whether they had purposefully tried to outflank them or not, that was exactly what had happened.

And oh, now that Blake had fired her shotgun—twice—it was a good bet the folks at the ranch were awake. If the Judge’s men didn’t know what was happening out here, they would get a pretty good idea very soon.

And just like that, Smith’s element of surprise went out the window.

Seven

It had never occurred to him that the shotgun he’d handed to Blake back at the police station might not have been loaded with silver buckshot. He’d just assumed they weren’t. After all, why would they be? Silver wasn’t exactly readily available before The Purge, and that hadn’t changed after. His instincts were proven correct when Blake blew the ghoul’s head off and it kept coming after her.

Well, this is going well.

It wasn’t, of course, but the snarky part of Smith couldn’t help but take it all in with a sense of resignation: The whole week hadn’t gone very well, so why would tonight be any different? Sure, he’d managed to skirt around Gaffney without getting shot and had even managed to thin out the Judge’s ranks some, but he had no illusions his luck was going to continue all day.

As it turned out, he was right.

Another boom! as Blake fired a second time, creating a hole in the sunken chest of the same ghoul that was charging her and sending the creature reeling backward on its heels. Not, Smith noticed with some amusement, because the blast had ended its life, but because the force of the 12-gauge shell had knocked it to the ground.

Not that Blake had any time to celebrate her sorta-victory. The other ghouls were already swarming, appearing over the top of the hill in front of her.

Christ, there were a lot of them. At least six that Smith could see, but the air was thick with their stench, telling him that there were a lot more in the area than just the ones he could pick out with the naked eye—

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and Smith spun around, knife at the ready, as one of the three ghouls charging him from the base of the hill finally reached its target. He slashed, catching it across the bony chest. Normally that wouldn’t have stopped an attacking man, but this wasn’t a man. It was a ghoul, and to the creature, anything with silver was kryptonite.

It collapsed in front of Smith, going from lively (well, in a way) to lifeless in the blink of an eye. Frail legs ceased moving, and its thin body, the appearance of a malnourished child, tumbled to the grass in a heap of clacking bones.

Smith stepped to his right as the remaining two ghouls kept coming, even as Blake’s shotgun boomed once again behind him. Smith tuned her out and concentrated on the ghouls in front of him.

He stabbed a second undead thing in the face, the knife going right through the twin holes that used to be its nostrils and nearly out the back of its skull. Its bones were so weak, like papier-mâché, that it hadn’t taken very much force at all. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an advantage for Smith, because he’d struck with too much force and the knife went in too far and became lodged in the falling body, leaving him exposed as—

The third ghoul reached for him, icy cold fingers scraping against his right cheek as Smith jerked his upper body back to avoid it. He tried to pull the knife out of the second ghoul, but it was embedded too deeply, and ended up dragging the scraggly body with him instead. Thank God it was so light and weak, and it was like carrying a fake biology class skeleton instead of a real body, one that had some heft to it.

Smith lifted his right boot and kicked it against the dead ghoul’s chest—

Boom! from behind him, closer this time, as Blake fired again—

—and shoved it back, finally releasing the knife just as the third ghoul staggered toward him. It was having some difficulty maneuvering the incline up the hillside. Smith was too, but not nearly as much since he had two perfectly good working legs. The ghoul, on the other hand, was dragging its right leg behind it. Its face was smashed, like it’d been broadsided by a Mack truck before tonight. There wasn’t much left of its face at all except for two hollowed holes that used to house eyeballs, but no longer.

Goddamn that’s one ugly motherfucker, Smith thought even as he lunged at the ghoul and stabbed it in the chest, putting it out of its misery once and for all.

His right hand, gripping the knife tightly, was covered in black sludge. He wasn’t sure when that had gotten there. Probably when he’d stabbed one of the ghouls in the face, or maybe when he sank the knife into the third one’s chest—

Boom! Boom!

Blake, behind him, firing away.

Smith turned around just as she stumbled blindly into him. She was scrambling backward, not looking where she was going, only knowing that anywhere was better than the top of the hill where skeletal shadows were appearing, undeterred by however many shotgun blasts she’d sent their way.

“Smith!” Blake shouted. “I’m almost out!”

“Run!” Smith shouted.

She glanced over at him, eyes wide. “What?”

“Run!”

“Run?”

“Run!”

Smith ran, and Blake followed.

He hopped over two of the bodies, nearly lost his footing and fell on his face when he landed, but somehow managed to stay upright. Barely. The hill wasn’t very high, but it seemed to take way longer to get down to the base than it’d taken when they were climbing up it earlier.

“Smith!” Blake shouted.

Smith glanced over at her, running alongside him. She was reloading, shoving shells into the Benelli as she ran. And doing it very well, too, as if she’d done it many times before. For all he knew, she had, not that he wasted breath asking for confirmation.

“Where are we going?” Blake shouted.

“I don’t know!”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t know!”

He shot a quick look over his shoulder at the dark figures pursuing them.

Five—six—ten.

He spent a second or two trying to comprehend their presence. How were there ten ghouls out here? And what were they doing out here in the first place? Did it have anything to do with the ranch? The creatures were drawn to human presence, but why hadn’t they attacked until now? Or did he and Blake just have the misfortune to stumble into their path while they were about to do just that? Why—

Two of the ghouls stumbled and lost their footing and began rolling down the hill. The sight would have been comical in any other situation, but not tonight.

“Watch out!” Smith shouted, pushing Blake out of the way.

He must have put too much effort into his shove, because she went down sideways on the grass even as one of the ghouls rolled between them and landed at the base of the hill. The creature unfurled its elongated limbs and snapped back up to its feet, turning just as Smith jumped down the last few yards and stabbed it in the forehead with the knife.

Boom! from behind him.

Smith spun around as Blake fired again—boom!—and tore a hole the size of his fist through the sunken chest of the second ghoul that had rolled down the hill after them. It staggered back but didn’t go down.

She fired a third time, and the creature’s head, already missing one side of its skull, vanished in a shower of buckshot.

“Blake, run!” Smith shouted.

She did just that, turning and following on his heels even as the rest of the ghouls came down the hillside after them. Another one tumbled down like a boulder, but the rest somehow managed to remain upright. They were fast, their lack of weight giving them additional speed, but Smith was in great shape, and so was Blake. He had no doubt they could outrun the creatures. Besides, even if they couldn’t, he still had the knife.

Smith clutched the blade, wishing badly he had silver bullets to use instead. A knife was fine, but he would have preferred to take out the ghouls from a distance instead of having to get up close and personal. All it would take was a bite or a scratch, and he could have easily been infected. Smith knew about men and women that went around the country killing ghouls as a profession. They called themselves slayers. It was a hell of a way to make a living and took some balls. Or a death wish.

“Smith!” Blake shouted.

“What?” Smith said.

“This is my last shell!” she said even as she shoved that last shell into the Benelli. She’d been carrying the spare rounds for the weapon in a pouch; that same pouch was bouncing freely and empty against her waist now.

He hadn’t seen it before, but there were speckles of black goo on Blake’s chin and cheek, and more clinging to the front of her clothes. He hadn’t realized how close the ghouls had gotten to her until now, but they’d been near enough for backsplash from the shotgun blasts to rain thick, coagulated blood on her. She looked okay, though, and was keeping up with him just fine. In fact, she was barely breathing hard.

No, that wasn’t true. She was starting to breathe hard.

And so was he.

Smith threw another glance over his shoulder.

There were six of them that he could see immediately, more in the back that he could only glimpse because they were either crawling or hobbling, having lost limbs—some, their heads—to Blake’s shotgun fire earlier. The ones with all their appendages were still coming but not catching up. They were fast, but Smith and Blake were faster.

For now, anyway. Sooner or later, they were going to get tired. They were only human, after all.

Meanwhile, the ghouls…

Not humans. Not anymore.

That was fine, though. Smith wasn’t panicking. At least, not yet. He still had the silver-coated knife, and Blake, her shotgun. True, the Benelli wasn’t going to kill a ghoul, but it could slow them down, especially if the buckshot was aimed at the right locations—like their legs. Ghouls could keep coming without legs, but they wouldn’t be nearly as fast anymore.

“Blake!” Smith shouted.

“What?” she shouted back.

“Get ready!”

“Get ready for what?”

“Aim for the legs!”

“What?”

“Aim for the legs!”

She squinted at him even as her breath hammered out between pale lips. “Are you crazy? Just keep running!”

“We can’t outrun them forever!”

She opened her mouth to argue—but stopped short. She understood exactly what he was getting at. It had taken a few seconds, but she got there eventually.

“Shit,” Blake said.

“Ready?”

“No!”

“On the count of three!”

“Wait, wait.”

“What?”

“Is that one-two-three, or three-two-one?”

Smith couldn’t help but laugh. “One-two-three.”

“Okay. Gotcha. Just wanted to make sure.”

“You sure, now?”

“Yup.”

“Sure, sure?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Just do it, smartass!”

Smith grinned, then glanced back again to check on their pursuers. He couldn’t smell them anymore. The air was too crisp, too clean, and the creatures hadn’t managed to taint all of their surroundings yet.

Four of the ghouls were getting closer. Close enough that Smith could see the black of their eyes widening at the sight of him looking at them.

Damn, they’re ugly.

“One!” he shouted.

He glimpsed Blake clutching the Benelli next to him, getting ready. Like him, she didn’t break stride for one second.

“Two!”

Smith mentally prepared himself, and thought, I hope this works.

“Three!”

Eight

Smith acted first, stopping on a dime and spinning around. The knife was already back in its sheath on his left hip even before he drew the SIG Sauer with his right hand. The gun came out smoothly, like it always did. The move was instinctive, like breathing. He could have done it in his sleep, with his eyes closed, and without any feelings in any of his extremities.

He shot the first ghoul while it was about fifteen yards away, and the creature stumbled as its right leg buckled underneath it, the tibia bone cracking audibly as the 9mm round shattered it on impact. The nightcrawler pitched forward and slammed into the ground on its face, and was instantly attempting to pick itself back up. He fired again, striking it in the kneecap of its other leg, and the creature fell back down on its chest.

Smith felt queasy watching it, once again, attempt to get up. Instead, it began dragging itself forward with its hands, its head angled and eyes glaring back at him almost accusingly.

He retreated even while focusing on the next ghoul as it ran past the first one.

Boom! from his right as Blake fired and the left leg of the second undead thing vanished in a shower of buckshot. The creature collapsed to the ground. Like the one Smith had fallen, this one quickly attempted to pick itself up but found the task difficult now that it only had one functioning leg to work with.

The ghoul raised its right hand as if to ward off Blake’s next shot. It didn’t work. Buckshot tore away its fingers and continued on, also taking most of its right leg.

The creature slumped harmlessly to the grass.

A third ghoul leapt over its fallen brethren, but even before it had landed back on the slightly damp ground, Smith shot it—and missed. The bullet pierced the creature’s left leg but missed the bone entirely, before exiting the other side.

Dammit, he thought, hating the very idea of wasting a bullet, even though the gun was still heavy in his hand with its mostly-full magazine.

Blake did the job for him, taking the speeding creature’s left leg out from underneath it. The emaciated figure fell five yards from Smith, who was still backpedaling. Before it could stagger back on its one remaining leg, Smith crippled it at the kneecap with, this time, a sure shot.

“You owe me,” Blake said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Smith said.

Two more, coming fast.

Smith pivoted and fired, and this time hit his target where he aimed. Even before the ghoul could completely collapse to the ground, Smith shot it again, taking out its other leg from underneath it.

Blake finished off the last one with two blasts, and it, too, fell in a pile to the tall grass. A brief second later it was trying to claw its way toward them, dragging its elongated form by its hands, one inch at a time.

“Go!” Smith said, even as he turned and went back to running.

Blake jogged next to him. She had already thrown away the Benelli and was now holding the Glock. Like Smith’s SIG, her pistol was loaded with regular bullets. That wasn’t going to help them if more able-bodied ghouls showed up.

Fortunately, Smith couldn’t see more behind, to the sides, or in front of them. That was the good news. The bad news was that they had made a hell of a lot of noise, and there was no way the people at the ranch hadn’t heard all the commotion. No way in hell. The shotgun blasts by themselves was bad enough, but Smith had joined in with his pistol.

Yup. They definitely heard that, all right.

Which left him with only two options that he could see:

One was to keep retreating and hope no one from the ranch pursued them. If there was even a pursuit, that is. At the moment, Smith wasn’t sure. Would the Judge’s men come out of their sanctuary in the middle of the night, or would they take precautions? People that survived The Purge, while still not fearing the night the way they used to, were smart to be wary of it.

The other option…

Smith began to slow down.

Blake didn’t notice until she was a few paces ahead of him. After a few yards, she slowed down too, and looked back at him. “What are you doing?”

“Wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“Wait a minute.”

“Why?”

Smith slowed into a walk. He turned around and looked back toward the pursuing ghouls. He could still see them back there, but the threat was gone. The one-legged ones were hobbling in their direction while the headless ones were still far, far away. So much so that Smith could barely make out their thin outlines in the background.

Blake waited for him to catch up to her. “What? What is it?”

“The ranch,” Smith said.

“What about it? They would have heard all that. We have to get out of here before they come out to check.”

“Right. That’s what I’m counting on.”

Smith turned and went up the side of the hill, back toward the top. He thought he might have heard Blake sighing, just before hearing her moving behind him on his heels. If she’d kept running, he wouldn’t have blamed her one bit because even he wasn’t entirely sure what the hell he was doing.

And what was he doing?

Probably something stupid.

Again.

“Keep an eye on them,” Smith said even as he climbed the last few feet to the top of the hill and flopped down on his belly. He hadn’t bothered to elaborate on what “them” was. He assumed it would be obvious to Blake. He hoped it was, anyway.

Smith didn’t glance back to check on her but instead peered through the darkness at the ranch spread out about two hundred yards, give or take, in front of him.

Lights had come on along the house in the center, as well as around the big red barn nearby. He thought he could see shadows flitting across the windows of the two-story house but couldn’t be certain from this distance. He knew one thing for sure: His and Blake’s little adventure hadn’t gone unnoticed.

“Smith,” Blake said from behind him.

He glanced back at her. She was crouched a few feet away, the Glock in her hand, while her eyes were glued down the hill and toward the approaching ghouls. Smith couldn’t quite see them, but he thought he could smell them. Barely.

“What are we doing?” Blake asked.

“My guess is they’re going to send a party out here to find out what’s happening,” Smith said.

“So, shouldn’t we be running?”

“No.”

“No? What do you mean, no?”

“I mean, if they’re going to send people out here, there’s a good chance they might spot us, then run us down. I can’t outrun horses. Can you?”

“Of course not. I’m fast, but I’m not that fast.”

“It’s a big ranch,” Smith said, turning back around. He still couldn’t see anyone outside on the ranch property, but there was definitely activity happening inside the barn. He pictured the Judge’s men saddling up. Or maybe getting another car ready. How many cars did they have, anyway?

“And?” Blake was saying.

“And they can’t watch every inch of it. If they send people out here to see what’s going on, that’s less people to notice us going in.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“You are serious.”

“I just said yes.”

“But they’ll be alert now, not sleeping like before.”

She’s got a good point.

Even so, Smith thought his plan was a decent one. He didn’t like the idea of running around out here in the open, and potentially being run down by men on horses. The people at the ranch may have been alerted, but that still didn’t mean they could watch every corner of the place. And it was a big place, too, surrounded by rickety fencing that couldn’t keep out a crawling toddler.

“Smith?” Blake said. “This is a dumb idea.”

“I need to find out what’s happening in that place. Don’t you? Have any of you guys been in there?”

“No…”

“So here’s your chance to find out what this ‘reeducation’ is all about.”

“Yeah, but…”

“This is our best chance.”

“How you figure that?”

“We have a distraction. The ghouls. When they get out here, the Judge’s men will be dealing with them.”

“That’s not going to take them very long. Unlike us, they probably have silver bullets.”

Smith couldn’t help but agree with that. Out here, in the open, the people at the ranch would be dumb not to at least have silver bullets lying around, just in case.

“Long enough,” he said.

“You hope.”

“Yup.”

He picked himself up from the ground, then turned around and took the knife out of its sheath and handed it to her. “Take it.”

“What?” Blake said, staring at the knife.

“I’m going to the ranch to find my friends. I owe it to them. But you don’t owe them anything, so you can take off. You already paid me back by coming here with me. You don’t need to do anything else.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

She squinted at him. It was dark but not dark enough for him to see the momentary confusion, followed quickly by annoyance on her face.

“Go,” Smith said, motioning with the knife for her to take it.

Blake shook her head. “No.”

“No?”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Are you?”

He grinned. That was a good question.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said.

She smirked. “I know that. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to, but I’m doing it anyway.”

“Why?”

“I want to know what’s happening in there, once and for all.”

“That’s all?”

“You need more?”

“No,” Smith said, and put the knife away.

He stood up on the hill, looking back down at the base. He could see a couple of ghouls getting closer, but they were still just silhouetted stick figures underneath the moonlight. Not dangerous whatsoever to them.

He turned back around and stared at the ranch.

There was continued activity inside the big red barn, but no one had shown themselves yet. That wasn’t going to be the case all night, though. The Judge’s men would come out to investigate the shooting. If he were lucky, they’d bring a lot of men, leaving just a few to watch all the many ways into the property behind them.

If he were lucky.

“Let’s go,” Smith said, and began hopping down the side of the hill.

“Smith,” Blake said behind him.

“What?”

“If you get me killed, I’m going to kill you.”

Smith grinned to himself. He hadn’t thought it was possible, but he was liking Blake more and more. Of course, it could just be his little head talking, but he didn’t think so.

Not entirely, anyway.

Nine

Three horses left the barn and trotted across the ranch grounds, heading for the hills. It was too dark for Smith to get a proper look at the makeup of the riders. It didn’t help that he and Blake were hidden about fifty meters away, hiding among the tall grass as the ranchers streaked toward the source of the gunfire earlier. If any of them even noticed Smith and Blake, no one stopped to investigate.

“They don’t see us,” Blake whispered. She didn’t really have to since they were so far away from the closest rider.

“No,” Smith said. “Let’s keep it that way.”

“Am I being too loud?”

“No.”

“It feels like I’m being loud.”

“You’re not. Relax.”

“Relax. Right. Just a walk in the park.”

Not quite, Smith thought as he pushed himself up onto his knees, then scanned the ranch in front of them.

The lights he’d seen come on earlier had remained lit, but there wasn’t any additional illumination. Three warm bodies had come out of the place, so how many were left? That was the question. One that he wasn’t particularly interested in finding out. If Smith had his way, he’d find Mary and her son and get the hell out of here.

Like you’ve had things go your way all week.

He checked his watch, the hour and minute hands glowing along with the indices in the darkness. Three-fifteen. He still had plenty of time before sunrise. Not a lot, but enough to do everything he needed to.

Blake got up onto her knees next to him and brushed at dirt clinging to her clothes. “So we’re really going to do this?”

“Having second thoughts?”

“Second thoughts? I’m already on fifth thoughts.”

Smith smiled. “You can still turn back.”

“Nah. I came this far; I might as well go through with it.”

“You know you don’t have to.”

“You keep telling me that.”

“It’s true, though.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve always wondered what was going on in this place.”

“You guys never tried to find out?”

“We scouted the place lots of times, but there were always too many guns around. Mandy decided the best way to free the people here was to take out the Judge. That was the plan, anyway.”

“Having fifth thoughts about that, too?”

“No.” She paused for a moment. Then, “Maybe a little.”

“Let’s find out what’s going on in this place,” Smith said, and got up.

He jogged across the field toward the nearest fence. There wasn’t any barbed wire, and it was easy to slip through two of the three pieces of rickety lumber. Blake followed suit and did likewise until they were both inside the perimeter.

Smith went down on one knee again, his right hand casually next to his holstered SIG. Oh, how he wished he had silver bullets. Not that he needed them to take out another warm-blooded human being, but he didn’t know what was waiting for him further inside the ranch.

That was the problem: He just didn’t know what he’d find.

He eyeballed the distance to the closest building. About 70 meters, give or take. It looked like some kind of supply shack. Not very big at all, but perhaps just enough room for a couple of shelves and tools on top of them. Wooden sides, faded white paint making it just barely stand out in the semidarkness.

“Ready?” Smith said.

“Yeah,” Blake said.

They got up and jogged over to the shack, when the first pop! of a rifle shot rang out from behind them.

Smith immediately went down on one knee even as his right hand dipped to his holstered sidearm. He didn’t draw the pistol, though, because the shot hadn’t been directed at him.

It had come from the other side of the hill.

Two more shots: Pop-pop!

Then the bang! of a handgun.

A series of shots, about a dozen in all, followed.

He exchanged a glance with Blake, crouched next to him. She had the Glock in her hand.

“They definitely have silver bullets,” she said.

Smith nodded. “Yeah, sounds like it.”

He knew that because the riders hadn’t continued shooting. Instead, they had only fired about a dozen times—which was about the same number of ghouls that Smith and Blake had left in their wake around the base of the hill. If the riders weren’t properly armed, then they would have been forced to keep shooting since the nightcrawlers wouldn’t have stayed down.

But they hadn’t. There was just silence in the fields around them again.

“Come on, before they come back,” Smith said.

He got up and jogged the rest of the way over to the shack. Blake was right behind him, then beside him when he finally reached his destination. They slid up against the cold wall, keeping to the darkest part of the building.

Smith glanced back toward the hill—a big hump in an otherwise flat land—but there were no signs of the riders. Right now, he imagined them performing some kind of investigation, trying to figure out what had happened earlier. They would have no doubt noticed the way the ghouls were crippled and put two and two together.

He looked over at the big barn, about fifty meters away. The house was in front of it—another fifty meters or so. The other structures—some bigger than the one they were hiding behind now, others about the same size—were spread out, though they were clustered around the eastern part of the ranch. Smith hadn’t realized that when he was looking at the place from the hillside. He guessed that had something to do with his angled perspective while he was up there.

The barn wasn’t much to look at up close—big, red, and ugly. The colors along the walls and slanted roof on the second floor were badly faded and peeling, with just as much strips of brown and white as there were sheets of red. Twin double doors at the front, with two large windows above them that gave the front of the structure the appearance of a menacing creature with wooden teeth.

“What now?” Blake asked. She was still whispering, small wisps of white clouds coming out between her lips every time she spoke. It had gotten noticeably colder, though not enough for Smith to wish for a jacket.

“The house,” Smith said.

“That’s pretty far away.”

“It’s not that far.”

“It’s pretty far.”

“Is it?”

She gave him a look that might have been annoyance. Or worry. “Is there something wrong with your eyes?”

“I don’t think so.”

He got up and hustled around the shack, moving in a straight line toward the next closest one. It was also white but had recently been repainted, and seemed to almost glow in the shadows. Smith slid up against it, with Blake doing likewise next to him a second later.

“Might want to give me a heads-up next time you move, handsome,” she said.

Smith glanced over at her. “Handsome?”

“What?” Blake said.

Smith smiled, and said, “Ready?”

“Where are we going now?”

“The house.”

“Not the barn? It’s closer.”

He shook his head. “We’d need to run across the property to reach the barn. The house may be farther, but we won’t have to expose ourselves to reach it. Stick to the shadows.”

She nodded. “Makes sense.”

“Does it?”

Blake shrugged. “As much as anything that’s happened tonight makes any sense, I guess.”

He moved again, and they hopped from building to building, eventually passing the barn all the way across the property. To reach it, they would have had to race across open grounds. It was still dark enough and there weren’t any bright lights to illuminate them if they’d tried it, but it was more risk than he was willing to take. This way, they could remain along the outskirts of the ranch by sticking to its darker parts.

It wasn’t hard to key in on the house—besides the barn, it was the only one with lights illuminating its frame. There were three that Smith could see: One above the double front entrance and two hanging off the corners from posts. He could also make out additional lights on the other side of a window along the first floor. There were more windows on the second, but those remained dark.

There was only one more shack before the house—this one was double the size of the first and had a fading mural of what looked like two kids playing on the side—and Smith and Blake reached it just as—

Voices, coming from the other side.

Smith flattened his back against the cold, wooden wall, his right hand dipping and scraping the butt of the SIG Sauer. Blake stiffened next to him, the Glock still clutched tightly in her right hand.

They exchanged a look, even as they heard a male voice speaking—not quite crisply but clearly enough to indicate he wasn’t very far—to someone: “…how many?”

The “someone” that answered was electronically muffled, telling Smith the other party was talking through a radio speaker: “A dozen.”

“That’s more than last time,” the nearby voice said. “They must know about the barn.”

“Yeah, but how?” the muffled voice said.

“I don’t know. Maybe they can smell each other.”

“They can do that?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“You said it.”

“It’s just a guess.”

Smith’s mind raced, trying to piece together the conversation.

“…a dozen…”

“…more than last time…”

“…smell each other…”

Ghouls, he thought. They’re talking about the ghouls at the hill. I guess this isn’t the first time ghouls have shown up at the ranch.

Then there was this:

“…they must know about the barn…”

The barn. The big, red barn that Smith and Blake had run past, because trying to reach it was too risky. (And now, knowing that there was a man outside, somehow hidden from them until now, was confirmation Smith had made the right choice.)

What was inside the barn? And why had it attracted ghouls? And not for the first time either, apparently.

What’s inside that barn?

Smith could see the puzzled look on Blake’s face. Maybe she’d even put the same pieces together as he had.

The man talking didn’t sound very far from them. Maybe twenty or so meters, standing somewhere between them and house. They might not have been able to hear him so clearly if the night wasn’t so quiet around them. He had to have come from the house. He was also alone as far as Smith could tell, because Smith hadn’t heard a second voice out there piping up. If there was someone else, they were being extremely quiet. Smith didn’t think so, though.

“…what happened?” that same man asked now.

“Looked like a fight,” the muffled voice answered, still coming through a radio speaker. “They didn’t have the right ammo. Shot the legs from under the ghouls. Looked like it worked; nightcrawlers were hobbling around while they skedaddled.”

“Can you track them?”

“It’s too dark. I can barely see shit out here.”

“You have flashlights.”

“There’s just three of us. Don’t know if we should even bother.”

“They came here for a reason. If those ghouls didn’t stumble across them, who knows what they were up to.”

“What did Gaffney say?”

“About what?”

“The shooting we heard earlier.”

“Some guy with a gun.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all they told me.”

Sounds like they’re talking about me, Smith thought. If true, he was surprised that he was just “some guy with a gun.” Heck, a man might be justified in feeling a little insulted by that description.

I guess I didn’t make the kind of impression I thought I did.

“Far as I know, they might still be around here,” the man on the other side of the radio said. “You see anything over there?”

There wasn’t an immediate answer. Smith imagined the man standing in front of the house, scanning the ranch grounds looking for potential intruders.

Finally, the man answered. “No. All quiet.” Then, “Get back to the ranch.”

“Roger that,” the voice on the radio said.

Smith remained still, his right hand close enough to the SIG he could draw it without even thinking about it. He listened to the soft crunch of boots moving around the hard Nebraska ground on the other side of the shack.

Next to him, Blake was just as silent and still, even if the look on her face told him everything: If she’d been having second thoughts (or fifth, as she had claimed earlier), then it was onto the sixth now.

The very loud squawk of a radio, followed by the same man asking, “You ready?”

“Ready?” Smith thought. Who is he talking to now?

There was no answer.

Instead, the man said, “Hit it.”

“Hit it?” Smith thought, just before floodlights snapped on all around them, and suddenly they were no longer so “hidden” next to the shack.

Smith sighed, and thought, And there goes my final element of surprise!

Ten

Smith only had two choices that he could see: Run or fight.

The former was the smarter choice. He was still unexposed, even if he was surrounded by pools of bright artificial light. In theory, he and Blake could take off east, away from the shack they were hiding behind. If they ran fast enough, and if the man they were listening to happened to be staring in the wrong direction—that was, anywhere but toward them—they could make it to the dark parts of the ranch and out of the lights before he could spot them.

Like cockroaches, running away from the light.

Is that it? Am I a cockroach now?

He didn’t like that idea. Even if the man didn’t notice them right away, he would likely hear them fleeing. He would turn, and the gig would be up. He’d radio his friends back at the hillside, and they’d come storming on horseback.

And then what?

Smith couldn’t outrun a horse. He was fast, but he wasn’t that fast.

And neither was Blake.

So what about the latter option? Fight?

The problem with that one was that, yeah, he could take out the speaker, but what about whoever—or however many—were still in the house? There could be two or three or ten of them in there, just waiting for an excuse to come out and shoot him dead. That is, if they heard him taking out their guy.

Smith still had the knife, and if he could reach the man before he was spotted…

“What the hell are you doing?” Blake hissed.

Smith wasn’t aware that he’d made his decision even while he was doing it, but suddenly he had pushed away from the wooden siding of the shack and stepped out into the open.

No turning back now!

His eyes blinked violently, trying to fight back the spotlights attacking him from different angles. There were at least a dozen lights strategically placed around him, encircling the ranch property, on tall poles that he hadn’t seen before in the dark. Or as much “encircling” as was possible with only twelve of them against such a big swath of land. They were wisely concentrated around the house and barn, along with the shack Smith and Blake had been hiding behind. There was the very loud hum of a generator in the background, coming from somewhere behind the house.

But Smith could only focus on the stabbing pain in his eyeballs, because goddamn it was bright all around him. Or maybe it wasn’t that bright but only appeared so because he’d been skulking around in the darkness for so long. Whatever the truth was, his head was spinning as he pushed through the discomfort.

There was no choice now. It was run or fight.

And he didn’t feel like running.

Smith’s right hand hovered over his holstered sidearm even as his left dipped, found, and jerked on the handle of the knife in its sheath along his left hip. The weapon—the same one he’d been using to stab ghouls all night—was nine inches long, with five of that made up of a double-edged, silver-coated blade. The handle was black rubber and cold against his palm but also strangely very reassuring as he slid it out of its housing.

When he made his move, Smith had turned toward where he’d last heard the owner of the voice speaking to the other man on the radio. He was hoping the guy was still there and hadn’t moved very much.

He was.

Tall and gangly, wearing a black jacket and cargo pants that might have made him blend in with the night if he wasn’t standing in a thick pool of bright light. He had a long beard that drooped down halfway to his chest and was, of course, armed. The man had a gun belt with a pistol still in its holster, and there was a rifle slung over his back, the black plastic buttstock jutting out from behind his right shoulder. He held a radio in his right hand even as he scanned the property, left hand shielding his eyes because apparently even he was somewhat caught off guard by the sudden flood of lights.

Well, at least it’s not just me!

It didn’t take the man very long to either hear, sense, or smell Smith’s presence, though. He began turning around, even as his right hand—with the radio—fell to his side. That was going to be problematic, Smith thought, because the man would have to drop the portable two-way first before he could grab his weapon.

A problem for the guy, but good for Smith, because it gave him additional time to take four quick steps toward the man, cutting the distance between them even further. Twenty meters became eighteen, then sixteen, then fifteen before the man’s hand released the radio and he went for his gun. He was at least smart enough to reach for the pistol instead of trying to unsling his rifle, which would have taken even more time.

The knife was already in Smith’s hand. He switched it to his right—he was shit with his left and had never made any effort to be ambidextrous—and raised it while gripping the sharp silver-coated point. He wasn’t going to need the precious silver for this, because his target was very much human.

Smith flung the blade and it—embedded into the man’s left palm.

Sonofabitch, Smith thought even as he watched the Gaffney man open his mouth and let out a surprised grunt. It didn’t actually sound like pain, but more surprise, if the look on his face was any indication.

Smith shared that emotion, because he hadn’t expected the guy to lift his left hand in an attempt to ward off the knife. But he had, and instead of landing in his chest where Smith was aiming, the blade had gone through the guy’s palm, the sharp end coming out the other end.

All right. Let’s do this the hard way, then.

Not that he had any choice now. He was still too far away to make up the distance and reach the man first before he could pull his gun. Thirteen meters, give or take. Not far, but not close enough, either.

And the guy was already drawing his weapon. It looked like a Glock.

Smith beat him to it, pulling the SIG and shooting the man in the forehead even as Tall and Gangly dropped his left hand—with the knife sticking out of it—while he raised his own weapon with his right.

He ran toward Tall and Gangly even as the man slumped to the ground, his drawn gun falling soundlessly beside him.

“Blake!” Smith shouted.

He didn’t look back to see if Blake had heard him or was responding. He streaked toward the fallen man and snatched the fallen gun—he was right; it was a Glock G34—and shoved it behind his waistband. He didn’t bother searching for a spare magazine along the man’s pouches or pockets, even though he was sure there would be at least one somewhere. There was no time. Instead, Smith pulled his knife out of the man’s palm and sheathed it, then rolled the dead body over—the man’s eyes glared back at him—and wrestled the rifle free.

It was an AR-15 with a collapsible stock. Like with the Glock, Smith didn’t bother searching for extra mags for the rifle. He stood back up even as Blake ran toward him, the sound of her footsteps reaching him just before—

Clop-clop-clop!

Horses, coming from the other side of the ranch.

Smith glanced over just as the first of the three riders appeared out of the darkness, flying across the property in their direction.

One horse, then two—then three.

“What now?” Blake was shouting as she reached him.

Smith whirled back toward the house, less than thirty meters away. He was shocked no one had burst out through the double doors yet, and he couldn’t see anyone moving around in any of the windows, on the first or second floor. Was it possible Tall and Gangly was the only one left in the place? Was he that lucky?

I can’t be that lucky.

Could I?

He turned, looking toward the barn, on the other side of the property. He couldn’t miss it. It was broad and red and practically shining underneath all the bright spotlight. No one was flooding out of it, either.

…underneath all the bright spotlight…

Shit. They were standing out in the open, looking very much like sitting ducks right now. Even a blind man could pick them off with a rifle.

Smith considered his options.

He had, again, just two: Run or fight.

No, that wasn’t true. There was a third option this time.

Take cover.

Smith ran toward the house.

“Where are you going?” Blake asked as she ran after him. He assumed she was on his heels. Just to be sure, Smith glanced back—

Yup, there she was, chasing after him, even if the look on her face was one of puzzlement and…was that annoyance?

Yeah, that was definitely annoyance.

“Smith!” she shouted when he didn’t answer fast enough.

“Taking cover!” he shouted back.

“Where?”

“The house!”

“Are you kidding me?”

The loud, air-splitting pop! of an incoming gunshot answered Blake for him. The round zipped over his head and pekked! against one of the double doors of the house, splintering wood as it embedded into the heavy frame.

Don’t be locked, Smith thought. Don’t be locked!

What were the chances Tall and Gangly had locked the doors after coming out of the building? That seemed unlikely. Besides, Smith hadn’t seen any keys on the man. Of course, he hadn’t exactly searched the body thoroughly—

Pop-pop-pop!

He ducked his head instinctively as the gunshots fought with the clop-clop-clop of storming horse hooves. Both sounds were getting louder as they neared. That was all the incentive he needed to run faster. The other reason to do so was bullets buzzing around him, more than a few of them striking the house in front of him.

Another round went into the door, while two others knocked loose chunks of brick and mortar along the walls that flanked the entryway. Puffs of dirt erupted in front and alongside him as other bullets fell short.

Smith thanked God the shooters were on horseback. Even the best marksman would have trouble hitting a moving target from a hundred or so meters away while sitting in the saddle of a galloping animal. He knew he would, and Smith was a better shot than most people.

“Shit!” Blake shouted just before she appeared on his right.

For a second, before she ran past him.

Damn, she’s fast.

Of course, she wasn’t carrying an extra sidearm and a rifle—

The AR. Why the hell was he carrying it? It was only slowing him down. Besides, if they made it into the house, a rifle was only going to become a liability in the small and probably cramped quarters.

Smith tossed the weapon and picked up speed. Or he thought he did, anyway. He was probably just telling himself lies again.

Blake reached the doors first, grabbed one of the handles, and began pulling it open—

Pop! followed by a pek! as a chunk of thick oak wood broke apart two feet above her head, showering her with splinters.

“Goddammit!” Blake shouted as she ducked her head instinctively.

She pulled the door—and it opened.

My lucky day! Smith thought as he watched Blake lunging inside.

Smith didn’t hesitate and followed her in. He spun on his feet and slammed his shoulder into the door even as the pop-pop-pop of rifle fire continued. He pushed and felt, as well as heard, the pek-pek-pek! of rounds striking the heavy slab of wood on the other side as he shoved it closed and back into its frame.

Bam! as the door landed, and Smith thought the entire house shook from the effort.

Smith searched for, found, and slid the large and heavy deadbolt into place.

“Smith,” Blake said from behind him. She sounded strangely calm.

“What?” Smith said as he took one, then two steps away from the door.

“Smith,” Blake said again. That time, there was something in her voice that wasn’t so calm.

What now?

He turned, his right hand dipping toward his hip and the holstered SIG.

Blake was in front of him, but there was another figure standing just inside a back hallway, holding a shotgun across the living room at them.

“I think you folks snuck into the wrong house,” the woman said.

Yeah, I think so, too, Smith thought.

Eleven

.3 seconds.

That was how long it would take Smith to draw and shoot the SIG from the hip. The fastest he’d ever managed the feat, when he still gave a damn about measuring such things, was .220 seconds.

But Smith had gotten slow in his old age. That, and the lack of opposing fast draws to test his speed, meant he’d let himself slip a little. Or a lot. How much he’d gotten slower was yet to be determined.

So, .3 seconds.

Give or take.

It wasn’t a very long time at all. The average human took anywhere from .2 to .25 seconds to react to something. So, in theory, Smith should be able to draw and fire and hit the woman where she stood—about fifteen meters away, on the other side of the living room—before she could get off a shot of her own.

In theory, anyway.

The reality was more problematic.

For one, Blake was in his way. The blonde stood almost exactly in front of Smith, hindering enough of his vision that he could only see a portion of the gunwoman standing on the other side of her. Not that Smith missed the pump-action shotgun in her hands or the fact she was wearing a one-piece cotton nightgown with floral arrangements. Clearly, the woman had been woken up in the middle of the night by all the gunfire.

That was the first problem.

The second was that the woman’s weapon was aimed squarely at Blake, who stood about a full meter in front of Smith. If she pulled the trigger, Blake was dead. And depending on what kind of shell that shotgun was loaded with, some of the buckshot that ended Blake’s life would also find its way to Smith. He’d be hurt, but alive, since he wouldn’t take the full brunt of the shell’s load. But if the shotgun was loaded with slug rounds, then he’d be spared the collateral damage.

Blake, on the other hand…

Either way, Blake was in trouble.

He was too, potentially, but not nearly as much even in a worst-case scenario. After all, he was pretty sure he could kill the woman before she could rack and fire her weapon a second time.

And that was what he was going to have to do. Kill a woman.

Could he do that? Yes. He’d done it before. He hadn’t liked doing it. In fact, it’d made him a little sick when he found out she was a woman, but he’d done it because he had to. Just like he was going to have to here, unless there was a way out of this.

And right now, Smith didn’t see any other way.

“Where is he?” the woman said. “Where’s Peter?”

Peter? Smith thought. Who’s Peter?

Then, as the clues slid into place…

Tall and Gangly. That has to be Peter.

Not that the dead man’s identity mattered anymore. He may or may not have been Peter, but the results were the same: Peter was nowhere to be found, and this woman with a shotgun pointed squarely at Blake was looking for him.

The woman stood partially in shadows provided by the back hallway opening, but Smith was still able to make out her long, red hair. It was spilled haphazardly over her shoulders, another sign that she’d been rustled out of bed. Unlike Tall and Gangly, she hadn’t gotten properly dressed, but she’d gotten properly armed, which was what Smith was concentrating on at the moment.

It was all he was concentrating on at the moment.

They were inside a living room that had been converted and made bigger. The entire first floor looked as if it had been gutted, the walls torn down, and all that remained was one large meeting area. It was too dark inside for Smith to make out everything clearly, but there was a kitchen to his right, many of its appliances exposed by shafts of light coming from the spotlights outside. A fireplace to his left, also partially illuminated, along with chairs and tables and possibly a sofa or two.

But it was the very obvious and very dangerous woman in front of Blake that demanded every ounce of Smith’s focus at the moment.

You’re going to have to kill a woman.

Goddammit.

Unless, of course, they could talk their way out of this.

“Peter?” Blake was saying. She had her hands raised, her back to Smith. He couldn’t see her face, so he couldn’t tell how scared she was right now. He looked for signs she was shaking, but he couldn’t find any. “Who’s Peter?”

“Where is he?” the woman said. There was an edge to her voice. “What did you do to him?”

“Nothing,” Blake said.

“Stop lying!”

“I don’t know who Peter is.”

“He went outside to see what the commotion was.”

“I still don’t know who Peter is.”

That was a lie, obviously. Like Smith, Blake would have no doubt already put two and two together, and reasoned that the dead man Smith had shot was this Peter the woman was looking for. And yet, Blake’s voice remained incredibly calm as she answered, almost as if she believed what she was saying. He still couldn’t detect any shaking in Blake’s posture, but damn if she wasn’t doing an amazing job staying calm as she answered the very agitated woman.

The very agitated woman with a shotgun. A loaded shotgun, no doubt. What were the chances it wasn’t? And could he really afford to entertain such thoughts?

No. No, he couldn’t.

“Where is he?” the woman insisted.

“Who?” Blake said.

“Peter! What did you do to Peter!”

“Nothing. I didn’t do anything to him.”

Well, that wasn’t entirely a lie. Blake hadn’t done anything to Tall and Gangly. Smith had. He’d shot the man dead.

The woman took a couple of steps forward, exposing more of herself. The one-piece nightgown was slightly faded, well worn. She was in her fifties, with heavy crow’s feet along the corners of her eyes, and wearing slippers, of all things. She didn’t look as if she had any spare shells for the shotgun on her, not that she needed them. The weapon—it looked like a Remington 870 to Smith—was steady in her hands. She had the forefinger of her right hand in the trigger guard, on the trigger itself, while her left hefted the heavy weapon underneath the forend, ready to rack the shotgun to reload it.

She knows how to use that thing. That’s not good.

“Look, this is all a big misunderstanding,” Blake was saying.

“Shut up,” the woman said.

“Let’s talk—”

“I said, shut up!” Then, her dark blue eyes snapped from Blake to Smith, who was standing behind her: “You. Step out from behind her and to the side so I can see you.”

Smith didn’t move.

.3 seconds.

He needed .3 seconds.

Maybe less than that, if he really tried his damnedest.

And right now, that was what he was going to have to do.

“You hear me?” the woman said. She sounded even more annoyed than before. “I said, get out from behind her, so I can see you.”

“Let’s talk this over,” Blake said. “This is just a misunderstanding. We can talk this out.”

“Shut up! Where’s Peter?”

“I don’t know.”

One step to the right. Draw, then fire.

Or maybe draw while stepping to the right.

Unless, of course, Blake could talk their way out of this. Smith didn’t have too much confidence in that, though. The woman looked determined to find out what had happened to Peter, and all she’d have to do to uncover the truth was look outside and see Tall and Gangly lying dead out there.

…look outside…

The riders. Shit. He’d forgotten all about the riders that were shooting at him and Blake earlier. They would be outside right now, either reaching the building or…already here.

Smith didn’t turn around to look back at the doors behind him. It wouldn’t have done any good. He couldn’t see through those thick oak slabs anyway, so he’d need to find one of the windows to see where the riders were. They had to have reached the house by now. How long had Smith and Blake been in here, staring at the wrong end of a shotgun barrel?

A second? Ten? A whole minute?

No, it couldn’t have been a whole minute.

Could it?

“Look, let’s talk this through,” Blake was saying. “We can help you find Peter. Where did you last see him?”

“I was talking to him on the radio,” the woman said.

The radio?

Then, remembering hearing Tall and Gangly telling someone to “hit it” just before the generators roared to life and the spotlights came on. He was talking to the woman, even though Smith couldn’t see the radio on her at the moment.

“Maybe he’s outside with the others,” Blake was saying.

“I don’t believe you,” the woman said. “You did something to him.”

“I didn’t. Neither one of us did.”

Smith had to admit, he was impressed with how calm Blake was. If he didn’t know better, he’d almost think she actually believed what she was saying.

But of course, he knew better.

Step to the right and shoot.

Step to the right and shoot…

The woman’s eyes zeroed in on Blake, leaving Smith temporarily. “You’re lying. I can see it on your face.”

“I’m not,” Blake said.

“You’re lying!” She had shouted the words, her face twisting, the agitation replaced by anger. “You hurt him, didn’t you? You hurt my Peter!”

“No.”

“You’re lying! Where is he?”

“I don’t—” Blake started to say but never managed to finish, because there was a loud thoom-thoom-thoom! from behind Smith as someone—or someones—pounded on the door, and everything went to shit.

The sudden loud banging startled the woman and she pulled the trigger, and Blake was thrown back and would have slammed into Smith if he hadn’t sidestepped, drawn the SIG, and fired twice.

The woman collapsed, the shotgun clattering loudly to the floor next to her.

But Smith was already on his knees next to Blake, grabbing her as she lay bleeding on the floorboards while gasping up at him like a drowning fish. There was a big, bloody mess in her stomach where she’d been shot, and her face was ghostly pale even in the dimmed environment of the room.

“Smith,” Blake gasped. “Oh God, I’m dying. Smith, I’m dying.”

He shook his head. “No, you’re not.”

“I’m dying…”

“No. No, you’re not.”

Blake struggled to suck in air, and the look on her face told him that she didn’t believe him. And she shouldn’t have either, because he was lying and had done a pretty bad job of it.

He was still on his knees, holding Blake, when one of the two front doors crashed open and men flooded inside. They were shouting something, but Smith couldn’t hear them over the sound of Blake gasping, even as blood pumped out of her stomach where she’d been shot by the shotgun’s slug round. Smith was holding onto her, one hand over her belly, even as red, hot liquid squirted between his fingers.

Someone cursed, but Smith couldn’t tell if that was directed at him or just the room in general. He remained where he was, with Blake staring up at him even as life faded from her face, and Smith couldn’t do anything but hold on. He did that—holding on, while maintaining contact with her weakening gaze—and hope, and pray, and—

Something struck him in the back of the head with the force of a dozen sledgehammers, and he fell to the floor on his face.

And…darkness.

Twelve

“Who is he?”

“Some guy named John Smith.”

“John Smith?”

“Yeah.”

“Seriously?”

“That’s what they said.”

“That’s gotta be a fake name.”

“Ya think?”

“Pretty sure.”

“I was being sarcastic. Anyway, why don’t you ask him just to be 100 percent sure? I think he’s waking up.”

Smith didn’t open his eyes. It hurt too much. There was a throbbing pain somewhere in the back of his head. Oh, who was he kidding? The pain was everywhere. He was pretty sure he was bleeding, too, the result of being struck in the back of the head by the buttstock of a rifle. He’d gotten hit before, almost at the same spot, and it hurt then as well. It wasn’t like in the movies, where you could hit someone in the head with a gun and all they did was fall down, then get right back up in the next scene. No. A gun was heavy. A rifle was even heavier. When someone hit you with one, it hurt. It hurt a lot.

“He’s definitely awake,” a voice said. Male. Gruff. Like he chewed glass for breakfast and then followed it up with gravel for lunch.

“I thought he was dead,” a second voice said. Also male, but not quite as gruff. “Cramer hit him hard enough.”

“He’ll probably wish he was dead pretty soon,” the first one said.

“What’d the Judge say?”

“Make an example out of him.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“Nope, it sure doesn’t.”

“Poor bastard.”

“Are you kidding me? You know what he did to Peter, right?”

“Oh yeah.” Then, with a harder edge in his voice, “Fuck him, then.”

Definitely fucked, Smith thought even before he managed to open his eyes.

He was lying on a cold, hard dirt floor, and there was no light of any kind. He was surrounded by seething darkness. He sat up—he was unrestrained, which was surprising—and reached back behind his head. Just as he had already assumed, there was a bloody patch back there, where the rifle buttstock had struck and knocked him out.

How long had he been out was the question. (One of many, anyway.) At the moment, Smith was only concerned about the throbbing pain.

And there was a lot of it.

Christ, there was a lot of it.

Even as he tried to get a handle on his condition, on his situation, his thoughts flashed back to Blake.

Dead.

Blake was dead.

He’d watched her bleed out as she lay cradled in his arms. A slug round in her gut. And all that blood. There’d been a lot of blood. But most of all, he recalled the shocked and resigned look on her face, in her eyes. The green color that sparkled so much when he first saw her had become dull.

I’m sorry, Blake. I should have forced you to head back to the junkyard instead of dragging you along with me.

I’m sorry.

Jesus, I’m sorry.

It was too late for I’m Sorrys now. She was gone, and he was stuck in…

Where the hell was he?

Some kind of dark room, without any lights and no windows. He couldn’t tell what time of day it was, but it felt like it was still night. How long had he been out? Maybe not as long as he thought. Or possibly longer. He had no idea. It was hard to think straight with all the pain.

The voices he’d heard earlier. Mr. Gruff and his Not-So-Gruff pal. Where had they come from? Smith couldn’t see anyone around him. Hell, he couldn’t see much of anything, but that was changing slowly as his night eyes started to adjust to his environment.

Slowly but surely, he could see…

…darkness. A lot of darkness. But walls were starting to take shape in the background. Walls and…a ceiling above him. And the hard, gray floor below him. Concrete. Unyielding and rough.

It was cold in the room, too, and Smith shivered as he reached forward and grabbed the nearest objects. Bars. Cell bars. Was he back in the Gaffney police station? No, it didn’t feel like it. It was too dark, for one, and the bars were slicked with wetness. Sticky wetness.

Sweat? Blood? Something worse?

Smith pulled himself up from the floor until he was on his feet again. Barely. He almost fell back down but managed to remain upright. He glanced around him, trying to get more of his bearings from a higher angle.

Where am I? Where is this?

They’d stripped him of his gun belt and, more importantly, his guns. The sheath with the knife was also gone. His whole body felt so much lighter without his weapons. It was a sensation Smith didn’t like.

Not one bit.

And goddamn if his head wasn’t pounding.

He reached back there again, staring at the blood on his palm. Not a lot, so the wound wasn’t still bleeding. That was good. He didn’t fancy bleeding to death in here, wherever “here” was.

He wiped the dark redness against his pant legs and grimaced against the continued escalating pain. For some reason, it was getting worse the longer he was conscious. Maybe he should lie right back down so he wouldn’t have to deal with it.

No. Find out where you are. Find a way out of here.

Find a way out of here…

That was easier said than done. There wasn’t nearly enough lights for him to even know how big the room he had found himself in was. Where was that ceiling again? Right, up there. Of course that’s where the ceiling would be.

He gripped the cell bars tighter despite the strange wetness that coated them. He was in a cage. They’d put him in a fucking cage.

“I think he’s starting to realize where he is,” the one with the gruff voice said.

“Yup, looks like it,” his partner, the one with the not-so-gruff voice, said with a slight cackle. “He looks confused. Poor bastard.”

The gruff voice laughed. “Fuck ’em.”

Fuck you, Smith thought, but of course he couldn’t say it. His mouth was parched, and just swallowing hurt. It didn’t help that he had no idea where to direct his curse. The voices seemed to be coming from everywhere…and nowhere at the same time.

But of course, that was impossible.

Wasn’t it?

Yes, it was. The voices had to have come from a direction. He was listening to two guys that could clearly see him fine, not to mention the shitty shape he was in. And they were enjoying every bit of it. That, more than anything, pissed Smith off.

“Ready?” the gruff voice said.

Goddammit, where was it coming from? Behind him? Or in front of him?

Smith tried to shake off the headache. It didn’t work. If anything, it just made the pain grow louder in volume.

Yeah, probably shouldn’t have done that.

“Do it,” the less-gruff voice said.

“This is gonna be fun,” his partner said.

“How long you think he’ll last?”

“Not too long.”

“I got five.”

“No way he lasts five.”

“Give me a number.”

“One, tops.”

“Nah, I think he’s tough enough to make it past one.”

“Look at the way he’s standing. He can barely stand.”

“Still think he’ll make it past one?”

“What you wanna bet?”

“Tomorrow’s shift.”

“You’re on.”

Sonsofbitches think this is a game, Smith thought.

Then again, maybe they were right. Maybe this was a game and he was a pawn, helpless to do anything but wait for—

The echoing clang! as something opened. A door of some type. A metal door. That was the only explanation for the loud—

The smell.

Jesus, the smell!

It came out of nowhere and filled the room. (It must not have been a very big room if Smith could smell it so easily. Or was it?) He winced and took a step away from the bars, sniffing the air for its location.

It was close.

Very close.

He spun around, hands forming fists at his sides. He didn’t have a gun or a knife, but he still had his hands. And Smith wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

It flew out of the darkness toward him and slammed into the cage, like a wild animal flinging itself forward with wild abandon. It might have even knocked Smith’s prison over with the force of its impact if the metal rods weren’t nailed into the hard ground. The entire cage shook anyway, but otherwise didn’t bend under the violent assault.

“Jesus Christ,” Smith muttered under his breath.

Somewhere behind him—and he was sure it had come from behind him this time—someone laughed. Then a second voice joined in.

His captors. Gruff and Less-Gruff.

Glad you’re finding this very amusing, boys, Smith thought even as he stared back at the ghoul. There was no need to worry about his human problem right now; not with this inhuman thing in front of him.

The creature peered in at him even as it clung to the bars, its body seeming to hover in the air. But, of course, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t hovering; it was clutching to the steel metal rods, bony fingers wrapped around two of them while two equally bony legs did the same nearer the bottom.

The suddenly very overwhelming stink made Smith want to vomit, but he held it in. Barely.

The ghoul glared at him for a few seconds before it attempted to push its elongated head through two of the bars, but couldn’t. Closer now, it exposed one hollowed socket to Smith. Its right eye was missing, leaving it with only one. There was nothing wrong with the rest of its body, though. Its chest was sunken, pruned black flesh seemingly rippling against the semidarkness. Smith didn’t need lights to see what the creature wanted.

Him.

The hairs on the back of his neck and all along his arms and legs spiked as its one good eye zeroed in on him. One eye was all it needed. Even if it couldn’t see him, it would have been able to smell his presence.

Or, more specifically, the blood pumping through Smith’s veins.

Smith waited for more to appear out of the darkness, but there was just the one. That was the only good news that he could see. If there were more, they would have made their presence known already. Ghouls weren’t known for their ability to hang back when there was prey on the table. And that was what he was right now. Prey.

So why was the creature trying to push its way through the bars? Why didn’t it just use…

…the door.

The door!

Where the hell was the door?

Smith spun around, looking for it. His eyes had mostly adjusted to the darkness, but he couldn’t find the door. But, of course, there had to be one. Didn’t there? How else would they have put him in here?

So where was it?

He started moving frantically around the cage, looking for a way in and out. Or anything that even remotely resembled a door. He could feel the ghoul staring after him, maybe wondering what he was doing. It remained clinging to the bars on the other side of the prison, still trying to push its way in, but failing.

For now. For now…

Focus on the door!

The door. Right. The door. Where was the door?

Smith felt along the bars, hoping to find some indication—

A soft, echoing click came from somewhere behind him. Smith whirled around just in time to see a part of the cage coming apart.

No, not coming apart, but opening.

The door.

The goddamn door. It was exactly where he didn’t want it to be.

…right underneath the ghoul on the other side of the cage…

Thirteen

He’d faced ghouls before. More than once, and more than one ghoul at a time. There had been about a dozen of them earlier tonight, and he’d gotten through that one unscathed. It’d been a little dicey at times, but he never thought he was in trouble. Blake’s presence helped, but he could have handled the whole thing if it’d just been him. Of course, at the time he had a silver-coated knife. He would have loved to have that right about now.

Among other things.

Many, many other things.

For a second or two—maybe three or four seconds max—the creature hopped down from the bars and squatted on the floor, looking as perplexed as Smith was that the door into the cage had suddenly snapped open by an unseen hand.

It peered in at him, almost as if it was suspicious. Was that possible? Were the creatures even capable of suspicious thoughts? The ones he’d encountered in the past didn’t; they were primal animals that streaked toward their prey when one was available. They didn’t sit back on their haunches the way this one was doing and seemed to narrow its one remaining eye at him, as if trying to decide if all of this was a trick or…

It must have decided pretty quickly that it wasn’t, because the creature lunged toward the opening.

Smith did the same, trying to reach the door before the nightcrawler did—

He lost.

Smith stopped at the last second and tried to pivot out of the way but—too late—as the creature entered the cage and slammed into him, knocking him to the floor. He landed on his right shoulder, the ghoul scrambling on top of him. It was all Smith could do to roll away, the ghoul falling off him and onto the hard ground.

He managed to scramble to one knee, but the creature beat him by half a heartbeat. Before he could react, it launched itself into him again with wild abandon. Its stink invaded his space and infiltrated his nostrils until the stench of rotting garbage filled every inch of Smith’s universe.

He fought through it—there were no other choices—and punched it with a balled fist. He got it across the left cheek and felt his hand sinking into the flesh, then striking the cheekbone underneath. The creature’s head snapped back, then sideways, and its body followed suit.

Smith pushed up onto his feet as the ghoul slammed into one side of the cage and collapsed to the hard floor. He wished he could say that the solid punch—which would have put down most men—did the job, but it wasn’t even close.

The ghoul was already back on its rail-thin legs a second later.

“Whoa, you see that?” a voice said. The less-gruff voice Smith had been hearing all this time, but was unable to trace.

“Nice one!” the gruffer of the two voices laughed. “He’s a regular Mike Tyson.”

“Who?”

“Mike Tyson.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“Fuck, you’re young.”

Laughter, but Smith wasn’t sure who it was from, and he didn’t have the opportunity to give a damn because the ghoul was coming at him.

It charged like a runaway train, arms outstretched toward him. Saliva flitted from its mouth, which was wide open to reveal crooked yellowing spikes that were more caverns of fangs than anything resembling teeth. Black goo, like gobs of tar, dripped from the gash in its cheek where Smith had punched and tore through its flesh as if they were tissue paper.

Not that any of that stopped the creature. Nothing was going to stop it except silver. And Smith didn’t have an ounce of the precious metal on him right now. All he would have needed was just a tiny bit to introduce into its bloodstream and the ghoul would stop. Just like that, it would stop.

But he didn’t, and it wouldn’t.

Smith kicked out with his right foot and struck it in the chest with the sole of his boot. (At least they let him keep his boots.) The creature snapped back like a marionette with its strings pulled and slammed down to the floor.

Now what? How did he keep it down?

“Nice!” a voice shouted. Maybe the gruff voice, or possibly the less gruff one. Smith had given up trying to distinguish the two. All he knew was that they were having a hell of a good time at his expense.

The creature was spinning, limbs twisting as it began to rise back up. Smith didn’t let it and charged. He struck out with his right knee, catching it in almost exactly in the middle of its chest. The ghoul flung back and slammed into the bars. The entire cage rattled for a few seconds, and maybe it would have kept right on rattling, but Smith wasn’t waiting to find out.

He ran for the door.

He got halfway when he lost his footing.

No, he didn’t lose his footing. Something had grabbed him and pulled his feet out from underneath him.

The ghoul, its cold, bony fingers wrapped tightly around his ankle.

Shit!

Smith went from running to flying to crashing chest-first into the hard cement. He twisted his entire body, imagining himself flopping around like a fish out of water, but somehow managing to land on his back.

The creature was still holding onto his right ankle with one hand, its bony fingers seemingly digging into his flesh through the fabric of his pant legs.

He stared at it.

It sneered back. Its only good eye might have squinted, but maybe that was just the darkness in the room playing tricks with Smith’s vision. The smell stretched from every pore of the creature’s skin and reached across the space between them like physical tentacles that grabbed a hold of him and refused to let go.

Smith tried his best not to vomit, but he might have dry heaved.

Don’t throw up. This is no time to be throwing up!

But dear God, it smelled. It was impossible to ignore. The entire room seemed to be simmering with its stench, like garbage piled upon garbage inside a box that was then sealed tight and never opened again. And then someone shoved him inside.

Smith turned his head slightly with revulsion.

The creature reached for his left leg with its other hand, but Smith kicked out with his boot first and caught it in the face. The nose shattered, black goo spraying the floor and the sole of Smith’s shoe. Not that that did anything to make it let go of his right leg. If anything, it clung on even tighter.

Was that possible?

Apparently, yes.

“He’s done for now!” a voice said.

“No way. He still has some fight in him!” the other one said.

“We’ll see about that!”

“He looks like a fighter, this one!”

“They all look like a fighter until it’s over!”

Again, Smith wasn’t able to distinguish who was saying what, and he didn’t give a damn, either. The identities of the speakers were less important than what was happening to him inside the cage.

And right now, the ghoul was trying to claw its way up his leg. Fortunately, it only had a grip on his right leg, which meant Smith’s left was free to cock back and strike forward. He landed a shot to its temple.

The creature’s head reared back and that stopped its forward momentum temporarily. Before it could right itself, Smith struck again.

Thwap!

Again, the ghoul’s head snapped back, its grotesque and misshapen skull jerking against its elongated neck.

Before it could gather itself, Smith kicked it again.

Thwap!

And again.

Thwap!

He heard the very solid crack! as the creature’s neck finally snapped on the fourth kick, and felt it loosening its grip on his right ankle slightly.

Smith didn’t wait to see if it would release its hold on him completely. He pulled his leg free, then scrambled to his feet. The creature did the same, even as its head flung back and seemed to hang off its shoulders, the neck bone that formerly held it in place having been shattered by Smith’s last kick.

It was wobbly on its feet when Smith drove himself into it, catching it in the chest with his shoulder and slamming it into the bars on the other side. The entire cage shook, but Smith was too busy stumbling back, back—

He spun and darted toward the open door—and lunged outside the cage!

Smith turned and slammed the door shut. Heard the click! as the lock snapped into place. He hadn’t expected that, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He stumbled back as the creature flung itself into the door.

Bang!

The cage trembled again against the impact, but the door remained closed.

Not that that stopped the ghoul. It reared back, its head dangling off the back of its shoulders like a hoodie instead of a head, and rammed itself into the door again.

Bang!

And again.

Bang!

Bang!

But the door held.

Bang!

Somehow, it held. Smith didn’t know why, or how, but the door wouldn’t budge.

He bent over at the waist and sucked in a deep breath, cold air flooding his lungs.

The bang! bang! of the creature throwing itself into the cage echoed inside the room around him.

Bang!

Bang!

“Goddammit,” a voice said.

Smith straightened up and turned around just as two figures stepped out of the shadows behind him.

“You got my shift tonight,” a second voice said, followed by a chuckle.

Two men appeared out of the darkness, and one of them was holding something in his right hand. Smith squinted, trying to make out what that “something” was, when about 50,000 watts of electrical current coursed through him and he flopped to the floor, where he lay shaking. There were two prongs sticking out of his chest that weren’t there earlier, connected to wiring that ran along the ground then up toward a device being held in one of the men’s hands.

“He’s a fighter,” the less-gruff of the two voices said. Smith couldn’t lift his head to see the speaker’s face. He was too busy trying not to bite his tongue off.

“Not anymore,” the gruffer of the two voices said.

“So what now?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did the Judge say?”

“Nothing about this.”

“You should probably radio him and ask.”

“It’s almost five in the morning. Fat man’s probably sound asleep by now. He’d have my hide if I woke him up.”

“Good point,” the less gruff of the two voices said.

Smith would have liked to keep eavesdropping on their conversation, but he was too busy trying to maintain his focus, even if the only thing he could see was the ghoul, still locked in the cage, flinging itself wildly against the bars.

Bang!

Bang!

Bang…!

Fourteen

“Mr. Smith.”

A female voice.

“John.”

It sounded familiar.

“Can you hear me?”

He snapped awake and sat up. He did it so violently that he heard a gasp and the sound of shuffling feet in response.

“John. It’s okay.”

Was it okay?

“Give it time.”

Where was he?

“You’re hurt.”

Yes, he was.

“But you’re safe now.”

No, he wasn’t. Smith didn’t know a lot of things, but he knew that much. He wasn’t safe. And he wasn’t going to be safe for a while.

“Don’t try to move too fast, too soon.”

He knew that voice. Now if only he could place it…

Smith opened his eyes to…darkness. (So what else was new?) Except there were silhouetted figures gathered in the room with him—

Ghouls!

“John, John. It’s okay. They’re human.”

Human? How did the speaker know he thought the figures were ghouls?

“They’re human, John. It’s okay.”

Slowly, the silhouettes took the shape of humans. Women. He could tell that from the shape of their shoulders, their forms.

So not ghouls.

Not ghouls…

He managed to sit up on solid and slightly cold floor. Concrete. The walls around him—or the parts of them that he could see, because there wasn’t much light in the room—were made of the same dark gray and ugly material.

They were inside a room encased in hard concrete.

The cage.

The cage!

No, no cage. He was out of the cage and in another room. A bigger room. Or it felt bigger to him, anyway.

He sniffed the air, searching for the telltale signs of ghouls.

None. Just sweat and dirt and…

Fear. He smelled fear all around him.

“John. It’s okay.”

Smith glanced behind him. Mary. She had a familiar voice. She was kneeling next to him, one hand holding him by the shoulder to keep him upright. He might not have even recognized her face in the darkness if she wasn’t so close.

“Mary,” Smith said.

She managed a smile, but he could tell it was very forced. “Yes, John, it’s me.”

“Where are we?”

“Underneath the barn.”

“What barn?”

“On the ranch.”

Oh. That barn.

“Your head,” Mary was saying. “It looks like blood.”

“Yeah,” Smith said, reaching behind the back of his head. At least he wasn’t bleeding anymore even if it probably looked like a real mess back there. The blood had coagulated and become tangled with his hair.

“What happened?” Mary asked.

“I came looking for you.”

“How did that work out?”

He looked back at her again and found her smiling.

He chuckled. “Not very well.”

“Well, at least you tried. I didn’t think you’d come back.”

“I promised I would.”

“I know, but…” She shrugged. “Not everyone keeps their promises these days.”

Smith spent a few extra seconds looking at her. As far as he could tell, she didn’t appear to be hurt. Her hair was slightly disheveled, but that was true for everyone inside the room with them, including himself.

The others, as he had guessed, were all women—three that Smith could see right away and a fourth one that had retreated to the back, in the farthest corner of the room.

…all women…

He remembered what Blake had told him, about how the Judge gave the women of Gaffney very few choices. Blake had also said—

Blake.

Jesus, Blake.

She was dead. Shot by the crazy woman with the shotgun. Well, maybe she wasn’t so crazy. She was looking for Peter, whoever that was. Maybe her husband. Or lover. Or brother. She’d been certain Smith and Blake had something to do with his absence, which was true. And she’d shot Blake for it.

I’m sorry, Blake. I should have made you head back to the junkyard.

I’m so sorry.

Smith sat by himself for a moment. Now that he didn’t feel endangered—or not in any immediate danger, anyway—he allowed himself a few precious seconds to take stock of his situation. Of everything that had happened. It was a long thirty or so seconds.

He hadn’t had very much time to dwell on Blake’s death, not after waking up in that cage and being confronted with the ghoul. He still remembered the two voices—Gruff and Not-So-Gruff—and how entertained they were about Smith’s ordeal. The bastards had even made a bet on how long he’d last against the nightcrawler.

But it was Blake that stuck out in Smith’s mind now. He remembered the green of her eyes, the way she moved…

Shouldn’t have gotten involved. Why do I always get involved?

Mary remained next to him. She looked poised to reach over and grab him at any second, should he threaten to topple back to the hard floor.

He glanced over at her. “How long have you been down here?”

“They brought me here yesterday, after you left,” Mary said.

“Why?”

“Punishment.”

“For what?”

“One of the Judge’s men tried to force himself on me. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. I think his name was Dunham.”

“Dunham?”

Mary nodded. “I think so.”

Dunham…

The man was dead. Smith had shot him inside Amy’s clinic back in Gaffney last night. That was after he’d stumbled into the place while Smith was talking to the doctor.

Dunham…

Smith remembered the scar on the man’s face. The very fresh scar that ran down his right cheek.

I guess now I know how he got that.

“They brought me here to be reeducated,” Mary said.

“Reeducated?”

“That’s what the Judge said, before he delivered his sentence.”

“They put you on trial?”

“It wasn’t much of one. They brought me into his office at the courthouse and he spent a minute asking Dunham what happened.”

“Let me guess: He didn’t ask for your side?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think he cares one way or another.”

Mary’s story explained Dunham’s scar, but why had Hobson lied to him? Certainly he would have known about her troubles.

“What about Hobson?” he asked.

“What about him?”

“Did he know what happened?”

“He was the one who led me to the Judge.”

Lying asshole, Smith thought, suddenly not feeling so bad about having shot the man in his own home anymore. Not that he was really feeling bad about it in the first place, but, well, he’d had second thoughts since. Not anymore.

Smith turned back to the other women.

Two of them stood huddled against a wall, almost leaning against one another, while a third had laid back down on the floor on her side, her back to Smith. The fourth one remained in the far corner, her knees pulled up to her chest. It was too dark—there weren’t any lights that Smith could detect, just his night eyes to see with—for him to tell what kind of shape the women were in, but he didn’t sense any fight in them.

Mary, on the other hand…

Smith turned back to her. “Are you okay?”

She pursed her lips. “I’ve been here less than a day. Some of them…” She stared past Smith and at the other women in the room with them. “They’ve been here longer. The one back there? In the corner? They told me she’s been here for almost three months.” Mary nodded at the one lying on the floor on her side. “She’s been here for a week. The other two”—nodding at the two standing against the wall—“have been here for just a few days. I think they’re sisters.”

It was too dark for Smith to see the facial resemblance in the two possible sisters, but it was hard to miss the protective way they stood together, away from everyone else. If any of the women heard Smith and Mary talking, no one said a word.

“So this is their idea of reeducation?” he asked Mary.

“I guess so.”

“What did they do to you?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing yet.” She shook her head, then indicating the one lying on her side, “Since I’ve been here, they’ve only come for her.”

“What did they do to her?”

“I don’t know. They brought her back a few hours later. She looked even worse off than when she left, and she looked pretty bad then.”

Smith couldn’t see the woman’s face, but the way she lay there, unmoving…

“What did they do to you?” Mary was asking him.

He told her about the cage and the ghoul.

“You beat it?” Mary asked.

“Kind of,” Smith said.

He stood up. Or tried.

He lost his balance and his feet went wobbly, and Smith collapsed back into Mary’s lap. She grabbed him, but he was much heavier, and she almost toppled sideways with him tangled up in her arms. Somehow, though, she managed to hold the both of them up.

“Easy, John. Easy,” Mary said. “You look like you’ve been through hell.”

Smith sighed. That wasn’t far from the truth. He’d been shot, shot at numerous times, and lost consciousness more than once. Nebraska was becoming a real pain in the ass, and Smith didn’t like it one bit. On second thought, and with the benefit of hindsight, he should have continued on his path after the run-in with Travis and the other two back at Lucky’s burned-down homestead. Instead, he’d come back to Gaffney on his own, looking for a little payback.

Shoulda done a lot of things these last few days, I guess.

“Okay?” Mary asked.

No, Smith thought, but he said, “I’ll be okay.”

“You sure?”

Not even close.

“Yeah,” he said instead.

He tried to stand up again, this time taking it slower. Much, much slower. He managed to remain upright even though his legs threatened to buckle. There was some pain coming from his chest that he hadn’t noticed before but was now impossible to ignore. The volts of electricity from the TASER they’d shot him with back in the cage room.

Flashes of Gruff and Not-So-Gruff’s conversations replayed in his head. Not the words themselves, but the joy in their voices. The two sonsofbitches were having fun at his expense. A lot of fun.

Just wait until I get my hands on you two bastards.

He would have stretched if every part of him wasn’t in pain. He wasn’t sure when that happened or how. Maybe when he was fighting the ghoul. Or later when he “won” and fell on his face as a reward. However it happened, his muscles were sore and moving his legs was painful. At least his skull wasn’t pounding anymore, so there was that.

Smith walked to the nearest wall and felt along the rough and cold concrete. There was nothing aesthetically pleasing about the room’s construction. It was cement poured into place and allowed to cure. But it did its job, whatever that was, initially.

Right now, it was a prison.

It might not have the bars of the cells back at the Gaffney police station, but they’d tossed him and Mary and the others into a prison cell just the same. Smith couldn’t see a door, but it had to be there somewhere. Probably in the parts of the darkness that he hadn’t reached yet.

Smith felt his way along the wall while Mary stood up and followed him closely behind. “What are you looking for, John?”

“A door.”

“It’s back there, across the room, but it’s locked.”

Smith walked to the far end of the room. There was a deceptive lot of ground to cover. The prison was bigger than a police station cell, and he counted ten feet before he finally reached the other wall. The room itself had to be over twenty feet long and about ten feet wide.

The entrance/exit was where Mary said it was, but grabbing the lever and trying to turn it yielded nothing. Even if he wasn’t slightly weak after being shot, then struck in the back of the head, then TASERed, he wouldn’t have been able to muscle the door open anyway.

Not that Smith allowed that fact to stop him from trying. He didn’t quit until beads of sweat had broken across his temples.

“I’ve tried it; it won’t budge,” Mary said from behind him.

Smith nodded and turned around. She stood in front of him, not quite looking defeated but not too far off.

“Mary,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Where’s Aaron?”

“In Gaffney somewhere. They took him away from me, John. The bastards took Aaron away from me. They said I wouldn’t get to see him again until I’d been reeducated and ready to assimilate back into society.”

“And they didn’t say how this ‘reeducation’ works?”

Mary shook her head. “No.” She crossed her arms over her chest, shivering noticeably for the first time. “But I have a feeling I’ll learn all about it pretty soon. They didn’t bring me here just to sit around.” She glanced back at the four women in the room with them before turning back to Smith. “What are we going to do, John? How are we going to get out of here?”

I have no idea, Smith thought, but he didn’t think that was the answer Mary was hoping to hear.

“I’ll figure something out,” he said instead.

Fifteen

I’ll figure something out, he had said to Mary.

How, was the question.

Or an even better question was, where did he begin?

He was locked away inside an underground prison, as far as he could tell, with no way out. The only path was sealed tight from the other side, and he didn’t have anything even resembling a weapon to work with. There was nothing inside the big room except the clothes they were wearing. Hell, they’d even taken his boots for whatever reason, something he hadn’t noticed until now. (Though they’d left his socks, which he guessed he should be grateful for, if nothing else.)

Smith was up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Worse, he couldn’t even see the creek and didn’t know how long it stretched, or how wide. He was being pushed around blind, and all he could do was adapt to the situation as problems arose.

So he sat with Mary and the others, plotting his next move. Which was…not much. He had to get out of here, that much was clear. He couldn’t allow them to subject Mary to their “reeducation.” Smith had a feeling that involved the cage in the other room, along with the ghoul, which was no doubt still alive.

Over my dead body.

Then: Famous last words.

Yeah, he probably shouldn’t have had that thought. It wasn’t like he could stop Gruff and Not-So-Gruff (or whatever their real names were) when they came to get Mary. He was unarmed and still wobbly on his feet, and he wasn’t entirely sure he could take on either one of their captors mano-a-mano. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he could take on any of the women in the room! One of Smith’s problems was that he’d always been so good with a gun—scarily good, according to his mentor—that he hadn’t developed any real hand-to-hand fighting skills. Sure, he’d had the same combat training during Black Tide’s Basic Training like everyone else, but he’d never really absorbed what he’d been told. He didn’t have to because of his proficiency with a firearm.

Now, thinking about all those classes and lessons, he wished he’d paid closer attention.

Another thing you shoulda done better.

One of many, as it turned out.

So he didn’t have very much to do but sit and wait with Mary and the others. Or just Mary, because as far as Smith could tell, the other four women were sound asleep. He didn’t blame them; from his internal calculations, it had to be almost morning now, or damn near close to it. If he’d had a window, he could have confirmed that theory. Heck, if he had a window, he could have tried to crawl out.

But he didn’t.

He didn’t…

Mary, like him, couldn’t sleep. The other women had no such trouble, and Smith could hear them snoring away. Even the sisters, whose names Mary didn’t know—because they were either too shy or suspicious to talk to her when she arrived—were huddled in their own corner. The young one, who had been here the longest, hadn’t moved from her spot. The one that had been lying on her side had turned over onto her back, and Smith could see long red hair and a pale complexion. None of the women looked as if they’d been physically tormented, but Smith knew from experience that assaults didn’t always produce visible scars.

“How did you end up here?” Mary finally asked after a while.

He told her about going back to Gaffney, rescuing Blake, then coming here.

“What happened to her?” Mary asked.

“She didn’t make it.”

“Oh.”

Yeah, Smith thought.

He didn’t say any more about Blake, and thankfully, neither did Mary.

Aaron’s mother said instead, “Maybe we should try to get some sleep.”

“You should.”

“You’re not sleepy?”

“No.”

“Neither am I.”

“You haven’t slept all night.”

“I know, but…” She paused for a moment, before continuing. “I’m scared of what will happen when I go to sleep.”

“What do you mean? What would happen?”

“They might come to get me.”

This time, it was Smith’s turn to say, “Oh.”

Like Mary’s “Oh,” that was all he needed to say. That simple, single word expressed everything he needed it to.

Smith said, “We’ll get out of here.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, but we will.”

“You sound so sure…”

“I am.”

“Why?”

“I just am.”

“But why?”

Because I don’t have any choice, Smith thought.

But he said, “I’ve been in worse situations.”

“You have?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Atlanta.”

Mary was obviously waiting for him to continue, and when he didn’t, she said, “What happened in Atlanta?”

Smith shook his head. He didn’t want to think about Atlanta. It was a bad situation from the start, and it only got worse as the week dragged on. But he’d survived it, against all odds, and he was sure he’d survive this, too.

He hoped, anyway.

“You know why smart people stay away from the cities?” Smith asked.

“Ghouls,” Mary said.

“That’s only one reason.”

“What are the others?”

Smith thought about how much to tell her. The things he saw, and did…

“There’s a reason people stay away from the cities,” he said, and left it at that.

Mary did, too, thankfully.

She said instead, “I miss Aaron. It’s only been a day—not even that—but I miss him so much already.”

Smith nodded, not that he knew what she was really feeling. He didn’t have a son or a daughter out there; or, at least, none that he knew of. He understood loss, of course, but it was probably not even close to the kind Mary was suffering right now.

Neither one of them said anything after that, and soon they both gave in to the silence and darkness. Smith lay down on the cold and unyielding concrete floor and closed his eyes. He tried to sleep, but it didn’t happen. It was easier for Mary, who began snoring softly next to him. She’d laid down not more than a few inches away. He envied her ability to go to sleep despite all that she’d gone through in the last twenty-four hours. Then again, it wasn’t like he’d had a barrel of laughs—

The click, followed by the clank, of a piece of metal moving, from all the way across the room (The door lever!) snapped him wide awake.

Smith was on his feet before he knew what he was doing, and jogging silently—or as silently as he could muster—across the room. He must have done a pretty good job, because neither Mary nor the other women were woken up by his sudden movements.

He slid up against the equally cold wall next to the door and waited.

Even in the semidarkness, he could see the lever moving. It helped that his eyes had adjusted to the pitch blackness and that the lever, along with the rest of the door, was a slightly different shade of gray than the scarred walls that surrounded him.

Another clank, as whoever was on the other side moved the lever another notch, undoing another locking mechanism. Smith watched silently, mentally and physically preparing for what was coming.

He was reasonably certain he could take on one man, especially with the element of surprise on his side. And maybe even two. He wasn’t 100 percent certain about two, but he thought he could.

Maybe.

Of course, if there was more than two…

Then you’re fucked.

But so what? You’re fucked either way if you stay in here.

The door creaked slightly as it opened. Not loud enough to wake Mary or the other women, but plenty loud for Smith, who was waiting next to it. A patch of artificial light flooded into the room as the door opened wider, allowing two shadows to fall through the opening.

Two men.

Of course two men, because one would have been way too easy for him.

Fuck my luck.

Their shadows were elongated because the source of light was behind them. A hallway, maybe even made of the same concrete material as the room he was in. Was he locked away in some sort of underground bunker? That was possible. The American Midwest was littered with them, built by preppers that thought the end of the world was coming. Or maybe hoping for the end of the world. They had the right idea, as it turned out.

Fortunately, the door opened onto the left side, so it didn’t careen into Smith, where he stood waiting. It also gave him a perfect view of the man that stepped inside first.

Sneakers, faded jeans, holding what looked like a black metal police riot baton that wasn’t fully extended. A belt, but no gun or a holster. Plaid long-sleeve work shirt, the sleeves partially speckled with dirt.

“Which one?” a voice said. It was a familiar voice, too.

Gruff. One of the two that had been taking bets on how long Smith could withstand the ghoul earlier.

“The new one,” a second voice answered. “It’s her turn.” Not-So-Gruff. Gruff’s partner-in-crime.

Smith wasn’t sure if he was happy to hear their voices so he could finally get his crack at them, or if he should have been concerned. They were obviously old hands at this and probably knew what to expect. Or they thought they did, anyway. Smith hoped that previously dealing with only vulnerable women would leave them open and maybe just a little too confident.

That was his hope, anyway, as a man with sandy blond hair stepped casually through the door like he owned the place. The guy had the baton gripped tightly—menacingly—in his right hand. He led with his left foot, followed by his right.

“Wakey, wakey, ladies,” the man said, almost in a singsong pattern that convinced Smith he was used to having his way.

Either he and his partner had forgotten all about Smith, or they didn’t think he was going to be any trouble. But then, there were two of them and just one of him. Assholes, in Smith’s experience, were always overly confident when they had numbers on their side.

That was their mistake. That was always all of these assholes’ mistakes.

Smith tackled the man before he could completely enter the room, and the two of them went flying, with Smith driving the man through the air with everything he had. His socked feet moved with speed and force against the floor while his hands wrapped tightly around his target’s waist. The man’s breath struck Smith in the face, but better bad breath than the baton the guy was holding.

“What the fuck?” a voice shouted from somewhere behind him—Not-So-Gruff, which meant the one with sandy blond hair was Gruff—but Smith was too busy slamming Gruff into the floor, using his weight to piledrive the man into the hard concrete in one of those wrestling moves he’d seen on TV.

Smith heard an audible grunt, but that was lost in the very loud—and incredibly satisfying—crunch of the man’s skull slamming into the floor. The body underneath him instantly relaxed, the right hand with the baton collapsing and staying down. Smith reached for the black object, wrestling it easily out of the weak fingers, and quickly scrambled to his feet.

He fully expected to fall right back down. After all, it wasn’t like he was 100 percent. He wasn’t even close to 100 percent. 50 percent tops, and that was being overly generous. So when he made it to his feet and stayed upright, he was probably more shocked than anyone. Maybe he wasn’t quite as injured as he had thought? Or maybe adrenaline was pushing him to stay on his feet, because falling back down now was not good for his health.

He was whirling around when the second figure—Not-So-Gruff—stepped through the open door. Like Gruff, this one was armed with an identical baton, but he had a holster on his right hip, with a gun in it. The man’s eyes widened—it was easy for Smith to see with the lights flooding all over Not-So-Gruff’s face—as he stumbled through the opening, before backpedaling at the sight of Smith.

Smith was almost on his feet when Not-So-Gruff dropped the baton and reached for his holstered piece.

Shit! Smith thought as he made his move.

But he was too far—at least five feet—and the guy was increasing that by backing up further. He was halfway to his target when Not-So-Gruff—he was about the same age as his partner—early thirties, with shaggy black hair—reached for, found, and drew his gun.

No, not a gun. A TASER. Maybe it was even the same one that had been used on Smith earlier. Smith knew that because of the weapon’s shape. It could be easily mistaken for a gun by an untrained eye, but Smith didn’t have untrained eyes.

Still, he wasn’t going to reach the man in time, and he mentally prepared to do a last-second pirouette to avoid getting tased a second time. He wasn’t sure how he was going to accomplish that, though. Maybe pull off something like in that movie about that guy who was caught in a computer program, then discovered he was “the one,” and—

“Hey, dickhead!”

The sound came from the rest of the room, and Smith, caught by surprise, turned to look. He wasn’t the only one, thank God, because Not-So-Gruff did, too.

Mary, running toward their captor, shouting, “You motherfucker!”

Smith knew exactly what she was doing: Drawing Not-So-Gruff’s attention away from him.

And he took full advantage of it, running toward his target even as Not-So-Gruff’s eyes snapped back in his direction.

Three feet—

Snap! as the rest of the riot baton came out of its housing with a flick of Smith’s wrist.

Two—

Not-So-Gruff raised the TASER to fire.

One!

Smith brought the baton down on the man’s extended hand and heard the crack! of bone breaking. The TASER fell, but even before it had the chance to hit the floor, Smith struck its former owner in the side of the head with the blunt metal object and was rewarded with another solid and oh-so-satisfying crack! echo.

The body collapsed in a pile, twitched for a while, and stayed down.

Smith snatched the TASER off the floor and turned to make sure Gruff had remained down on the other side of the open door. The man hadn’t moved from the spot where Smith had left him.

Smith crouched and checked Not-So-Gruff’s pulse. It was present, but weak. The man’s eyes, blinking rapidly up at Smith, was evidence he wasn’t a threat anymore. If he had a gun and a suppressor, Smith would have put the man out of his misery just to be sure. But he didn’t, so he didn’t.

Instead, Smith hurried back to Gruff and did the same. The guy was flatlined. Good. It saved Smith the energy of killing him. Smith took the opportunity to catch his breath. With the door open and the bright hallway outside visible, suddenly the air was less stale.

Mary was standing next to Not-So-Gruff, looking down at him. Smith walked back over and picked up the man’s fallen baton and handed it to her, before searching its owner for more weapons. He didn’t find anything that he could use. Smith turned the man over onto his back. He was still alive but not a threat. Smith didn’t think the man could even stand up. Blood dripped from the side of his head, and he probably had brain damage given how hard Smith had swung.

Footsteps, as the other women walked over to join them. Even the young one, who had been there the longest. She stood between the other three, hands wrapped tightly around her chest, peering at him as if too afraid to make even the tiniest sound.

Mary stood in front of the other four women, all five pairs of eyes staring back at Smith.

“What now, John?” Mary asked.

“Now we get out of here,” Smith said.

Sixteen

“How are we going to get out of here?”

“Carefully.”

“But how?”

“Like I said: carefully.”

Mary had stared at him.

“Carefully,” Smith said for the third time, though he didn’t elaborate on what that meant, which was probably what Mary was hoping for.

Smith didn’t go into details because he didn’t have any to tell her or the other four women huddled in the slightly dark room with him. Gruff’s body lay nearby, unmoving, while Not-So-Gruff had been rolled farther into the room and left to rest. He wasn’t going anywhere, if he could even move. The man was still alive, as far as Smith could tell, but very much out of commission.

Just to be sure, though, Smith had given Mary very firm orders. “Hit him with the baton if he wakes up.”

“Hit him?” Mary had asked.

“Yeah. Hit him.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere. Preferably the head, where he’s most vulnerable.”

“What if it kills him?”

“Then it kills him.”

“I’m not sure I want to kill him, John.”

You didn’t have any trouble shooting Peoples to shit, he thought and wanted to remind her but didn’t.

Smith said instead, “Just keep him down and out of our hair. The last thing we want is for him to be up and causing trouble. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” Mary said.

“You don’t sound sure.”

“I am.”

“Are you sure, sure?”

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

“I’ll keep him down and out of our hair.”

“Whatever it takes.”

She nodded. “Whatever it takes.”

“Now I believe you,” Smith said, even though he didn’t, really. But he didn’t think voicing his doubts was going to help them.

“What about them?” Mary asked, looking at the other women gathering around them.

The sisters looked perplexed by what was going on, and the other two…looked too scared to do anything. No one, Smith saw, had made an attempt to run for the door. It was almost as if they were waiting for him to tell them what to do.

So Smith did. “Everyone, stay in here. If it’s safe, I’ll come back, and we’ll all leave together.”

They stared silently back at him, and he didn’t think they were very convinced. The sisters didn’t even look as if they’d heard him.

“Stay here,” he said again, emphasizing the two words as much as possible without making it sound like a forceful demand.

* * *

They were being held inside some kind of underground bunker that, according to Mary, was underneath the big red barn structure. Smith took Mary’s word for it; she was, after all, conscious when they brought her to the ranch while he’d been dragged between rooms—first the one with the cage, then later, what he called the holding room.

Smith slipped out of that room now, peeking left, then right, while the thoughts, Carefully. Just like you told her. Do this carefully, ran through his head.

There were lights outside, but they were dimmed, probably to conserve power, and strategically spaced. Just enough to illuminate the hallway, but not enough to see every inch of the place. It was plenty to assure Smith that Gruff and Not-So-Gruff hadn’t brought a third friend with them, though.

He stepped into the hallway, the TASER with its unfired charge in his right hand, with the riot baton in his front waistband. Mary had the other one and stayed behind with the other four women. Smith didn’t think he could have convinced any of them to follow him even if he tried. He got the sense they thought all of this might have been a trick, that their captors were playing a sadistic game with them.

Smith didn’t think so, and as he moved left along the corridor—there was nothing but a solid wall to his right—he was further convinced there was no one waiting to pop out of the shadows and scream “Boo!” at him.

That theory proved true when he reached the corner and peered around it.

Another long hallway, this one ending with concrete steps leading up to the surface. The exit. There were two rooms between him and the way out, and both had closed doors. Smith had a good feeling one of those rooms led into the one with the cage, where he’d had to fight for his life against the ghoul.

So what was the other one? And did he really want to know?

Smith glanced back toward the holding room.

Mary was leaning out the open door. She was the only one.

Seeing him look back, Mary mouthed, “Anything?”

Smith shook his head.

“So now what?” she mouthed.

“Wait here,” he mouthed back.

“Here?”

“Yes. There.”

“Okay.”

She gave him a concerned look, but Smith didn’t wait for her to mouth an argument. He turned the corner and, TASER in hand, headed toward the stairs.

A trio of lights along the ceiling lit his path, but there were plenty of shadowy patches that he couldn’t see through. He wasn’t afraid of ghouls lurking within them, though. For one, there was no telltale smell. And two—well, any nightcrawlers walking around would have attacked him as soon as he peeked around the corner.

And nothing had.

…Not yet, anyway.

He wished he had a gun and not just a TASER. Then again, while he was at it, why not wish for two guns?

Or three…

But he didn’t have one, never mind three, so he had to make do with what he had. Which was a lot better than nothing. If he couldn’t tase someone with the TASER, then he could take their head off with the baton. Of course, that was if he got close enough.

That was the trick. Get them before they got him.

He was halfway to the steps that led out of this hellhole when the irrational part of him resurfaced, insisting that all of this was a trap. Surely the Judge’s people wouldn’t have just sent two guys to go pick up Mary (the “new girl” they were talking about earlier) when they knew he was there? That was highly risky, especially without guns to back them up.

Then again, they probably thought he wasn’t going to wake up anytime soon. He’d been hit in the back of the head by the buttstock of a rifle and then tased. He should have been sleeping both those things off. Instead, he’d woken up and was, miraculously, ready when Gruff and Not-So-Gruff showed up to do their job.

But why would they come so early in the day? Why not wait until sunup? Unless, of course, it was already sunup outside and he was wrong about the time. That was entirely possible, too. Smith’s intuition was good—it had to be if you wanted to survive The Purge—but it wasn’t foolproof.

So maybe he was wrong about everything.

…or nothing.

Goddammit. Just do it, already!

His inner thought was right. There was no point in playing the scenario over and over in his head. Either this was a trick or it wasn’t, and he’d find that out soon enough. If it was a trick, then he’d probably end up dead.

Then again, wasn’t he going to end up dead anyway?

Might as well get it over with, I guess.

There were tracks on the floor that he hadn’t noticed before. Dirt and muddy boot prints coming and going. That would be Gruff and Not-So-Gruff, probably as they made their rounds. Smith had to wonder how many other people were at the ranch. He knew for a fact there had been four—counting the two men in the holding room with the women, there was the woman that had shot Blake, and Peter, the man Smith had shot. And then there were the riders that had ridden out to investigate Smith and Blake’s incident with the ghouls on the hillside. Gruff and Not-So-Gruff could have been a part of that group, or not.

That was the big problem. He didn’t know what he was dealing with. There could be two more or three more—or more, more.

One of many problems, anyway.

But answers weren’t going to come to him down here. He had to go find them, and that meant—

Smith stopped when he reached the two doors. They flanked him on the right and left at opposite ends of the corridor. Metal doors, like the one back at the holding room. One of them likely housed the cage where Smith had been forced to fight the ghoul. So what was the other one, then?

He looked at one, then the other. Not that he could tell them apart. They were identical and missing writing or anything to indicate what was on the other side. Of course, all he needed to do to find out was to open—

Padlocks. Big padlocks, too.

He tried to remember if he’d seen keys on either Gruff or Not-So-Gruff while he was searching them. Maybe, but he couldn’t be sure. It’d been too dark, and it wasn’t like he was looking for keys, so…

Smith glanced back down the hallway. He could go and find out for sure one way or another. Or…he could keep going and see what was up there.

He continued on.

The answers were up there. Whatever was behind the two doors with him down here could wait.

Smith took the first step but didn’t go up right away. There were ten of them, leading up to what looked like a double door at the top. Not metal, which would have been too heavy to open and close, but large wooden slabs. There were rings that could be used to close the doors on this end. And, he assumed, similar rings on the other side to pull them up and open. There were no locks that he could see.

He went up.

Two steps.

Three.

Four…

All the while, Smith clutched the TASER, ready to fire it if necessary. Oh, what he wouldn’t give for a gun.

Or two.

Or three…

He stopped on the fifth step and listened.

Thankfully the absence of shoes meant Smith could move almost silently like a ninja. He’d taken a look at both Gruff and Not-So-Gruff’s boots, but one was too big and the other was too small. Smith had considered grabbing the too-big pair, but he decided against it. A part of him didn’t like wearing a dead man’s shoes (the too-big ones belonged to Gruff), while the other thought staying as quiet as possible in his socks was the better option anyway.

He went up the steps toward the double doors. Near the very top, Smith did his best to calm down his breathing and his slightly accelerated heartbeat as he leaned toward the entrance/exit and…just listened.

Nothing.

He couldn’t hear anything through the slabs of wood. Either there was nothing up there, or the doors were too thick to eavesdrop through. He didn’t think it was the latter, and the former didn’t seem possible. If it was a barn up there—and he didn’t doubt Mary about their location—then there would be horses. But horses wouldn’t make any sounds or be moving around if they were asleep, so the silence did make some sense.

Smith wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince himself or not, but it did help him to take the remainder of the steps toward the doors. There were two deadbolts at the top, each one nearly half the size of his wrist.

He paused again and listened.

Like before, there were no sounds.

Absolutely…nothing.

Smith took hold of one of the deadbolts and slid it out of its clasp. Then he did the same for the other one, all the while keeping the TASER in his right hand, ready to fire. Dammit, he wished he had a gun instead.

The door he was pushing didn’t fight back. It opened easily, without resistance, and chilly air surrounded Smith’s face almost immediately. He hadn’t realized just how stuffy it was in the underground hallway until now. It’d been somewhat cold inside the holding room, but nothing compared to what was in the world outside.

Smith poked his head up, ready for anything.

Pop-pop-pop!

Smith almost dropped the door and jumped down the steps and back to the bunker floor below. But he didn’t, because the gunshots (Gunshots! Those are gunshots!) weren’t being directed at him. In fact, they weren’t even in the same vicinity as him. They were coming from outside.

…they were coming from outside.

He looked up and saw black space and wooden walls. Even as he stuck his head further up and through the opening, Smith could hear what sounded like scratching around him.

No, not scratching.

Shod horse hooves moving around him.

Horses.

Because the animals could hear the gunfire just as he could and were reacting. They might have even been woken up by it. And now, startled, they were agitated and moving around in their stables.

And there was no one inside the room with him.

Smith threw the door all the way open and took the rest of the steps and almost lunged up and outside. He went into a slight crouch, the TASER at the ready, and listened to the continued pop-pop-pop coming from outside.

Two sides, exchanging gunfire.

It’s a party, and no one invited me, Smith thought with a smirk. Time to get in on the fun!

Seventeen

Pop-pop-pop!

Gunshots.

Pop-pop-pop!

A battle.

Pop-pop-pop!

Two sides trying to kill one another.

Fuck yeah.

Chaos was good for Smith because it meant no one was trying to kill him. Call him selfish, but Smith preferred that to having guns pointed at him.

100-friggin-percent.

So the question now was: Who was doing the shooting and why?

Or maybe the better question was: How the hell did he get out of here without getting shot at? Or worse, shot? And it wasn’t just him that he had to worry about. He had Mary and the other four women to take care of, too. Goddammit. That was going to be a pain in the ass.

And to think, the week had started off so well. He’d managed to ditch the girl on the old couple and was free to wander again, like that Kung Fu guy they told him about. But here he was, stuck with four women.

Five, counting Mary.

It was his own damn fault. He should have stayed low when he saw Peoples and his goons. He should have then let Peoples go, after the man’s two flunkies tried to kill him, but Smith had gone after the man instead. He should have… He should have done a lot of things.

So, so many things.

Instead, he’d come back to Gaffney to save Mary and the boy. Or was it just to take out the Judge? Maybe a little of both. Or maybe just most of the latter.

Or the former…

He didn’t know the real answer, even now. He’d been so pissed off that the Judge had double-crossed him. Which was ironic, because Smith had planned to do exactly that to the fat man.

Ha! Maybe he shouldn’t have been so mad at the fucker for doing to Smith first what Smith had been planning to do to him. What’s good for the goose and all that jazz. All that led to now, stuck in a big red barn with five women while people were shooting at each other outside.

The battle wasn’t close enough to the barn that stray rounds were peppering the walls. Smith would have known if they were, because those bullets would have sliced right through the wooden boards as if they were butter. The building was old and rickety and looked painfully weathered. It wouldn’t have been able to stop a flying hot round.

All that brought him back to his predicament. Namely, what was he going to do about Mary and the others? They were his responsibility now.

Or were they?

What did he owe them, really? He didn’t even know their names. He knew Mary, and that was it. One person to take care of was going to be hard enough, but five? He wasn’t a hero. He wasn’t this Chang guy the old couple had told him about. He was just John Smith. And that wasn’t even his real—

“John.”

He spun around, raising the TASER in his right hand to fire, but he didn’t pull the trigger because it was just Mary poking her head up through the open door behind him. He hadn’t realized it before, but the lights from the basement below cast an eerie glow in the small room he was standing inside. It wasn’t exactly blinding, but in the middle of the night, with the rest of the barn so dark, it might as well be a spotlight.

“Jesus, Mary,” Smith whispered.

“I’m sorry, but you weren’t answering me,” she said.

“You were calling me?”

“For about a minute.”

He opened his mouth to argue but stopped short. Maybe he’d been too preoccupied with the battle to hear her. Or maybe he’d been too caught up in trying to decide if he should run away and leave the women behind.

He told himself it was the former as he watched Mary climb through the basement door and rush over to him. She was holding onto the other baton and was amazingly quiet, but then he saw that, like him, she wasn’t wearing heavy shoes. Unlike him, though, she didn’t even have socks on.

“What’s happening out there?” Mary whispered.

“A gunfight.”

“Between who?”

“I don’t know. Someone’s attacking the ranch, that’s pretty obvious. But I don’t know who, or why.”

“Shouldn’t we find out?”

“Yeah, we probably should.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“If they’re friendlies…”

“If they’re friendlies. That’s the question, isn’t it?” He glanced back at the glowing bunker entrance behind them. “Wait here.”

Smith hustled back to the doors and looked down at a pair of eyes staring back up at him from below. One of the sisters. The others were behind her, waiting inside the concrete corridor. He could see fear and anxiety and about a dozen other emotions flashing across their faces as he reappeared.

“Stay down there until it’s safe,” Smith said.

“What’s happening up there?” one of the sisters asked.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. What’s your name?”

“Anne.”

“Okay, Anne. I want you and the others to stay down there for now.”

“Is it safe?”

“I don’t know. That’s why you should stay put until I tell you it’s safe to come up.”

“No, I mean, is it safe to stay down here?”

That was a good question, and one Smith hadn’t considered. What was down there with them, behind those two doors that he hadn’t had the time to investigate? Not that he could have opened them, since both were padlocked.

“Yes,” Smith said. “The other doors are locked. Stay away from them.”

He thought he sounded pretty convincing.

“What about them?” Anne asked. She shot a quick look over her shoulder, and at first Smith thought she was talking about the other women.

But no, she was talking about Gruff and Not-So-Gruff.

“They won’t be any trouble,” he said, once again doing his best to sound convincing.

He was only partially bullshitting the women. Gruff was definitely a non-threat, but there was a chance Not-So-Gruff could still become one. But even then, he wouldn’t be the danger he was before Smith took him down with Gruff’s baton.

Anne nodded back at him, and Smith thought, I guess I’m a pretty good liar, after all.

“I’m going to close the door,” Smith told her.

“What?” Anne said, suddenly alarmed.

“I won’t lock it, just close it back up. The lights from down there are too bright. You understand?”

She nodded again, but this time it was much more reluctant.

“Stay sharp,” he said, before swinging the door closed.

The room around him immediately got dark again, and Smith breathed a sigh of relief. How long had he been standing there with a big hole behind him shooting out bright lights? Thank God no one had spotted him while he was trying to decide whether to ditch the women.

Smith made his way back to Mary. She’d found the door—the only way in and out, as far as he could tell.

She looked over. “Everything okay?”

Not even close, Smith thought but said, “Good enough.” Then, positioning himself on the other side of the door from Mary, “I want you to hang back. Let me go out first. See what’s out there.”

Mary nodded. “Be careful.”

“I’ll be back.”

He took hold of the doorknob—it was cold to the touch—and turned it. It moved easily, but he fully expected it not to budge when he pulled it, because like the doors in the basement, there would be a padlock on the other side.

Except it opened easily, and even colder air from the rest of the barn flooded into the back room. Smith wasn’t sure if he was relieved by the lack of resistance or paranoid. But before he could think too much about it, he eased the door wide enough to be able to see out at—

A dark barn interior, with stables lining both sides. He could more easily hear the scratch-scratch of horses moving around in their housings around him. The pop-pop-pop of gunfire outside also seemed closer, but he knew they weren’t; the louder noises were only because he didn’t have an extra door between him and them.

Smith gave Mary a quick glance—she nodded back, even though he hadn’t said anything—before he stepped through the opening, ready for anything, but hoping for nothing.

Eighteen

Scratch-scratch!

Pop-pop-pop!

Thwump-thwump!

Scratch-scratch!

Pop-pop-pop!

Thwump-thwump!

Smith wasn’t sure what was louder—the sound of horses scratching the floor with their hooves inside their stalls, the gunshots from outside, or the rapid movements of his heartbeat inside his chest.

Jesus Christ. Get ahold of yourself. It’s not like this is your first rodeo.

No, but it was his first rodeo where he was only armed with a baton in one hand and a TASER with limited range—not to mention limited effectiveness—in the other. Then again, compared to what a gun could do, everything had limited effectiveness.

Pop-pop-pop!

Thwump-thwump!

Scratch-scratch!

Pop-pop-pop!

Thwump-thwump!

Smith threaded his way along the shadowy parts of the barn, moving from stall to stall. As he neared each one, the horses inside grew agitated and started scratching harder and louder, sensing—then later, smelling—his presence outside their doors.

Scratch-scratch!

Scratch-scratch!

Scratch-scratch!

As far as he could tell, he was halfway to the front double doors. Smith was hoping to find a side door—most barns had them—or a rear one, but was out of luck. Either they were all on the wrong side, or he couldn’t make them out among all the darkness that filled the barn’s interior like a deep, black ocean. There were windows along the ceilings, but they were closed, with only small slivers of moonlight allowed to pierce through the sea of darkness. Not nearly enough for him to see the full layout of the place with.

His night eyes had adapted enough that Smith didn’t stumble into anything in his path. He stepped over plenty of dirt, dry mud, and scattered hay that carpeted the floors. None of it was enough to stop him or made enough noise that he was worried about someone outside the barn hearing his movements. Besides, he’d have to make a hell of a lot of noise for them to hear him anyway through all the chaos out there.

Pop-pop-pop!

Thwump-thwump!

Scratch-scratch!

Pop-pop-pop!

Thwump-thwump!

Christ, his heartbeat was too loud. Or maybe they weren’t that loud but just sounded loud to his own ears. They were likely not noticeable to anyone else.

At least, he hoped not.

Smith stopped for a moment to calm himself down.

Slowly, very slowly, his heartbeat faded into the background, until all he could hear was…

Pop-pop-pop!

Scratch-scratch!

Pop-pop-pop!

Scratch-scratch!

There. That was better.

Smith focused on the double doors in front of him again. It was easy enough to make them out from all the shadows thanks to their outline, which was highlighted by moonlight shining through from the other side. Like a large, rectangular box with a slit in the middle—

The doors burst open—

Mother…

—and two figures stumbled inside.

…fucker!

Smith’s mind flashed.

Option one: Turn and flee back to the back room where Mary was waiting for him and regroup. Except that was risky because he would have to be moving fast and could easily be spotted. But even if he wasn’t immediately spotted, he’d make plenty of noise to draw attention.

Option two: Stay right where he was, hidden in shadows next to one of the horse stalls. The animal behind him was scratching louder now—

Scratch-scratch!

Scratch-scratch!

—like it was trying to get him to move on. Either that or it wanted someone to pay attention to his presence. Besides, how long could he stay still, standing like a statue in the darkness, before the two newcomers noticed his presence?

And then there was option three. He hated option three, but it was the right call.

It was the only call.

So Smith took it and began moving forward toward the two figures as they spun around and pushed the double doors closed. Smith had no idea why they’d stormed inside by opening both doors, since that seemed highly illogical. Maybe they just couldn’t figure out which door was easier so elected to go for both. Or maybe they just hadn’t coordinated their efforts and ended up working on both, separately, at the same time.

Whatever the case, the left door slammed shut first—bam!—followed by the right one—bam!—just as something struck the wooden structure on the other side.

“Jesus!” one of them—a male—shouted as he ducked. Smith thought he could almost see splinters flicking over the man’s head as a bullet punched through the door and landed somewhere on the other side of the barn.

“You hit? You hit?” the other one, who had also ducked his head, asked.

“Nah, nah, I’m good. I’m good.”

“You sure?”

“I think I’m sure.”

“You better make sure.”

“Yeah, yeah…” The man staggered away from the door, away from the stream of bright light piercing through from the single hole created by the stray—or maybe not so stray—bullet that had nearly taken his head off. He was patting himself down, looking for wounds. “I’m good. I’m good.”

“Goddamn, that was close,” the other one said as he, too, backpedaled.

Both men from the sounds of their voices—and their body shapes, as they slowly became visible to Smith. Both armed, wearing gun belts and holstered pistols. One of them had a rifle slung over his shoulder, while the other one was bending to pick up something off the floor. Another rifle. Apparently, he’d dropped it and was brushing it off now as they continued to back away from the doors, eyes in front of them instead of behind them…

…where Smith was, still advancing toward them.

Slowly, stealthily, as his heartbeat began beating loudly again.

Thwump-thwump!

Thwump-thwump!

Thwump-thwump!

He wanted to stop and gather himself again, force his heartbeat to lessen, but there was no time. Right now he had the element of surprise. The two newcomers had no idea he was behind them. They were too busy focusing on the doors, on what was happening outside.

The pop-pop-pop of a gun battle continued as it had for the last—five minutes? Ten? Smith had lost track of time. Maybe it’d even been twenty minutes? Or longer? How long had it been going on while he was in the basement? He hadn’t heard it until he’d exited the room downstairs, so the chaos could have been raging for an hour, for all he knew. Or—

One of the men began turning around.

Aw, hell.

Smith picked up his pace, raising the TASER in his right hand.

Ten feet…

He thought he saw the whites of the man’s eyes as they widened. Either the man had spotted Smith, or he’d seen something moving in the shadows. Whatever the case, he’d seen something, because he was already lifting his rifle.

Five…

Smith fired and the TASER let out a soft and barely audible pfft!, like a puff of air, followed by the staccato tick-tick-tick of electricity flowing through the twin prongs as they arced across the air and—

Eureka!

The figure seized up, hands trembling as his joints locked up, and he was collapsing to his knees—the rifle fell from his hands at the same time and clattered to the floor—before Smith made up the rest of the distance.

The second man turned, reacting to the clatter of the first’s rifle, but Smith was already driving himself forward and into the man’s chest with his shoulder. The body flung back and crashed into one of the doors, and Smith was pretty sure the entire barn shook against the impact. Not that he spent any amount of time confirming that, because he was already pulling back, raising the baton in his left hand, and swinging it.

He saw a pale white face and bright blue eyes exploding out of their sockets in front of him just before Smith struck—

The rifle!

Shit! The guy had managed to lift his rifle to protect himself and Smith’s metal baton pinged! loudly off the barrel of the weapon!

The shockwave of two metal objects colliding left Smith’s left hand shaking, but fortunately the same was true for his prey. But the man recovered first, and Smith felt a knee sinking into his gut, just before the buttstock of an AR-15 rifle hit him across the face. Either his nose broke or he lost a tooth—not that it really mattered, because it hurt just the same—and Smith flew backwards.

Stay on your feet! Stay on your feet or you’re dead!

Somehow, he managed exactly that, even if it was incredibly difficult. But he fought through it—Stay on your feet, goddammit! Stay on your feet, or you’re a fucking dead man!—and remained upright as his prey, now his attacker, stepped away from the door and raised his rifle to aim.

Smith flung the baton at the man just as he pulled the trigger—

Pop! as the rifle fired and Smith felt the heat trail of the bullet as it zipped! past his head, coming a few inches—maybe closer—from taking off a chunk of his right ear.

But it’d missed.

That was the important part.

It’d missed!

He thought he might have heard the pek! as the round hit something wooden behind him, way back on the other side of the barn, but Smith was too busy lunging forward again just as the man pulled the trigger a second time—

Pop! as the rifle bucked in the man’s hands and the round went wide, this time pekking into one of the stable doors nearby.

Before the man could fire a third time, Smith was inside his defenses and grabbing the rifle by the barrel with one hand, while his other struck the man in the chin. The head snapped back, and before it could come forward again, Smith hit it again—this time in the turned cheek.

Then again, in almost the same spot.

And again.

The man’s body slumped against the door as Smith wrestled the rifle out of his grip. Not that Smith let up. He had to be sure, even though he could see blood dripping down the right temple along the man’s head. Apparently, Smith’s baton had done more than just distract the shooter; it’d landed and broken skin.

Smith drove one knee into the man’s gut, even as the body slackened. Then, as his attacker, now prey again, was halfway to the floor, Smith smashed the buttstock of the man’s rifle into his face, because why the fuck not?

The man crumpled in a pile on the floor, his back against one of the doors.

Groaning from behind him.

Smith turned just as the man he’d shot with the TASER picked himself back up. The guy was already on his knees and was staring at Smith as he reached for his holstered pistol. But he was having difficulty getting a grip on the weapon, and after a while, gave up trying to perform the act with one hand and began using both.

Smith walked the short distance over and struck the man in the face with the buttstock of his newly-acquired rifle. The man’s nose shattered, and blood sprayed the cold air, not that Smith gave a damn. When the man collapsed to the floor, his drawn gun falling next to him, Smith stepped over him, legs on both sides of the man’s prone form, and looked down.

The man stared back up at Smith, his face a bloody mask. Smith couldn’t tell where the blood began or ended. “Don’t, please,” the man said, holding up both hands. If he even remembered about his fallen pistol—it lay dangerously close to him, easily within reach—he hadn’t reached for it.

“What’s happening outside?” Smith asked as he pointed the rifle down at the man and slipped his forefinger into the trigger. He was slightly out of breath and his stomach was hurting, but it was better than being dead.

“What?” the man said. Smith hadn’t just gotten him in the nose with the buttstock of the rifle, but part of his mouth, too. His lips were split, and he might have lost a tooth or two because his words were slightly slurred.

Smith didn’t feel very much sympathy for the man. He was pretty sure his own mouth was cut. Fortunately, he seemed to still have retained all of his teeth.

“Outside,” Smith said. “Who’s attacking the ranch?”

“I don’t—I don’t know,” the man said. He hadn’t lowered his hands.

“You don’t know, huh?”

The man shook his head. “Please. Don’t kill me. I didn’t do anything.”

“You didn’t?”

“No.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe you,” Smith said.

Pop!

Then he walked back to the first man, still sitting against the door. Unlike his partner, this one didn’t get up or beg for his life. As far as Smith could tell, he wasn’t even moving.

Pop!

Luckily, two more gunshots inside the barn, in the midst of the ongoing chaos outside, didn’t draw any attention.

Smith took off one of the men’s gun belts and slid a Glock into the holster while a 1911 Colt went behind his back. He left the other rifle on the floor and hurried to the back of the barn to get the women.

It was time to make his exit.

Nineteen

He couldn’t see a damn thing from the first floor of the barn without opening at least one of the double doors, and he didn’t want to do that. It would expose him to not only gunfire (he still remembered that “stray” round that had nearly taken off the heads of one of the men he’d killed) but anyone who might be looking in his direction when he did.

Fortunately, Smith had other options.

While Mary and the other women waited on the first floor, he climbed up a ladder to the second and scooted his way along the darkness over to one of the windows. It was smaller than a door and less likely to be noticed when he eased it open and peered out.

It was a full-blown gun battle, all right, and it was still going on.

There were two factions that he could see: One was inside the main two-story house, the staccato flashes of their muzzles flickering in the darkness as rifles fired from windows on both floors. They were exchanging fire with people camped out among the hills, but the other side wasn’t constrained to that location. Some of the attackers had made it onto the ranch’s property, and he could see more muzzle flashes from within the fence, some firing on the house from a couple of the outlying supply shacks.

It was difficult to tell who was winning, if anyone was. The attackers were pushing in on the house, pelting the building with bullets. Whoever the attackers were, they had either shot out all the spotlights that had nearly blinded Smith earlier, or the ranchers had shut down the generator, because Smith couldn’t hear it humming anymore. The other possibility was that the attackers had taken the machine out, which was also possible. At the moment, the only lights Smith could see were coming from within the house, creating strange otherworldly glows along the corners of the windows the shooters were using to return fire.

Smith looked for but couldn’t find any casualties along the ground. Either the sides had retrieved their dead and wounded, or there hadn’t been any. He found that hard to believe, given how long the fighting had been going on.

Ten minutes? Twenty? An hour?

Who knew how long they’d been at it before he popped out of the barn basement and heard the shots for the first time. Hours, for all he knew, but that seemed unlikely since Gruff and Not-So-Gruff had come to fetch Mary as if it was just another day on the job for them.

The more obvious answer was that he’d heard the start of the fighting, or close enough. Not that that meant anything—

A strand of sunlight started to peek out from one of the hills in the distance.

Smith glanced reflexively down at his wrist, but there was nothing there. They’d taken his watch. Not that he needed a timepiece to be able to tell that morning was fast approaching. An orange glow was starting to wash across the landscape in front and all around him.

That prompted Smith to lower the window slightly so as not to be spotted by either faction. He left it propped open just enough to be able to see out and in both directions, but not enough to—

“Ron!” A voice, shouting. Then, again, “Is that you?”

Ron?

Smith leaned closer toward the crack in the window and turned toward the source of the voice: The house.

Then, the same unseen voice, just as loud as the first time, “Hey, Ron!”

It took Smith a couple of seconds to realize the voice was shouting in his direction.

Guess I wasn’t being as slick as I thought.

Whoever had spotted him sneaking a peek thought he was Ron. So who was Ron? It had to be one of the two men that had fled into the barn earlier, that Smith had shot, and were now lying dead below him.

Again, the same voice, “Ron! Answer me!”

Smith tried to pinpoint the speaker but couldn’t locate him. The man had to be in one of the house windows facing the barn, but from his vantage point all Smith could make out were the edges of naked window frames, the glass themselves having been shot out earlier in the gun battle. Although Smith couldn’t see the people inside the house, it was clear now that they could see him.

But not enough of him to make out that he wasn’t this Ron person, apparently.

Smith cleared his throat slightly, before shouting back, “Yeah! It’s me!”

“Ron?” the same voice asked. Smith couldn’t be sure if the man sounded suspicious or relieved to get a reply.

“Yeah!” Smith shouted. “It’s me!”

“Where’s Mack?” the voice asked.

Mack?

Then: Ah. Mack. The other guy.

“He’s here, too!” Smith shouted back.

He waited.

One second.

Two…

Three…

Smith was about to call back when—

Pek! as something struck and sliced through the wooden board that covered up the window in front of him, about half a foot over his head.

Shit!

Smith dropped to the floor, eating a handful of stray strips of old hay as he did so. The round hadn’t been close, but it’d felt like—

Move move move! he thought just before he did just that, about half a heartbeat before three more rounds pelted the piece of flimsy wood and a trio of hot lead entered the barn loft at almost the exact spot he’d been lying in.

Fortunately, he’d had the wherewithal to move just in the nick of time and was spared one or two or all three of those bullets going right through his stupid forehead.

Smith didn’t stop rolling until he was well clear of the window frame and the shooting had stopped. Just to be safe, he rolled a few more times, putting another few yards between him and the streaks of orange-ish sunlight pouring in through the newly-made holes.

He scrambled to his knees, then began scooting cautiously away from the front of the barn. Why the hell were they shooting at him? He thought he’d gotten away with it, impersonated this Ron guy, whoever he was. He’d even “confirmed” that Mack was still alive.

And yet, they’d still shot—

Pop-pop-pop! as a torrent of gunfire rang out nearby from the main house, and rounds began pouring through the flimsy barn wall all around him.

Smith spun and ran, then all but jumped through the hole in the floor. He bypassed the ladder entirely and went flying through the opening and—

Crashed into the first floor.

He landed, thankfully, in a big pile of hay.

Hallelujah! he thought as he listened to the continued volley of gunfire and the resulting pek-pek-pek! of rounds hitting, then coming through the second floor of the barn above him. Wood splintered and pelted the loft, and more than a few strips floated down through the opening above him.

“John, are you okay?” Mary, running over to him. “Are you okay? Are you shot? Are you shot?”

“No, I’m fine,” he said.

It was technically true, even though his back felt like someone had cracked a 2x4 piece of lumber across it, then did it again five more times. He supposed it was better than if he’d landed on the hard ground and not the stack of hay, which had cushioned his fall.

He stumbled up to his feet, slipping slightly on all the strands of hay. Mary helped him up and out of the pile, and Smith spent the next few seconds brushing hay off his clothes and out of his hair.

“What happened? I heard gunshots,” Mary said.

She had the other rifle slung over her shoulder, along with the other gun belt, a 1911 pistol in the holster. Smith had considered giving one of the other women either the rifle or the handgun, but he remembered how Mary had handled herself with Peoples. Besides that, she was probably the least traumatized of the five women, so the choice was pretty easy.

“They took a few shots at me,” Smith said.

“A few shots?” Mary said. “It sounded like everyone was taking a shot at you up there. What happened? I heard you shouting back at them. What did you say, exactly?”

Smith glanced toward the front doors, across the barn. The other women were scattered between him and Mary. Smith looked past them to make sure both double doors remained closed. They were, so the shooters hadn’t tried to storm in to finish him off. Not that he was surprised by that. To do so, they would have had to brave the property grounds, along with whoever was attacking the ranch.

The two dead bodies had been moved away from the doors and to the side. One of them was Ron and the other was Mack.

Or were they?

“Why were they shooting at you?” Mary was asking him.

“I think I was bamboozled,” Smith said.

“What? Bamboozled? What’s that mean?”

Smith couldn’t help himself and smiled. The voice from the house had asked for Ron, and when Smith had responded—impersonating Ron—had inquired about Mack. Smith had “confirmed” that Mack, too, was fine.

Then they’d shot at him.

With a vengeance.

Why? Because there was no Mack.

Smith stared at the two dead guys. One of them was definitely Ron, but the other guy wasn’t Mack. Whatever his name was, Smith had fallen for the trick. The shouter from the house had used a fake name to check if he really was Ron, and Smith had failed the test.

Slick bastard.

“Did you see who they were fighting?” Mary was asking him.

Smith shook his head. “Just shadows and muzzle flashes.”

“So we still don’t know if they’re friendlies or not.”

“No.”

The gunfire had resumed, this time going back and forth between the ones hunkered down in the house and the attackers on the outskirts of the property. Smith couldn’t tell if the unknown faction had made it closer while the ranchers were trying to kill him from the sporadic pop-pop-pop of their exchange. He’d need to get another look at what was happening to find out. That was going to be tricky now that the house people knew he was out here, and he wasn’t one of them.

Anne, with the other women in tow, walked over to where Smith and Mary stood. The young woman who had been down in the basement the longest was Jackie, while the oldest of the group was Carol. Anne’s little sister was Jessica. Smith wanted to say he got to know each and every woman in the last few minutes since they all escaped the underground room together, but all he really knew was their names. The truth was, he didn’t want to know more than that.

All four women looked even more haggard with the extra light that was filling up the barn from the coming morning. Their clothes were stained and torn in spots, and their hair was a mess. Jackie, in particular, looked almost like a feral animal as she stood in the back of the others, shyly peeking through the bodies in front of her at Smith.

“What are we going to do now?” Anne asked. “How are we going to get out of here?”

“Slowly and carefully,” Smith said.

“But how?”

“Slowly and carefully,” Smith said again. He turned to Mary. “I need you to keep an eye on them.”

“What are you going to do?” Mary asked.

Smith glanced around the barn. “Did you find another way in and out of this place?”

“A side door.”

She led him to a door near the back and just to the left of the room Smith and the women had emerged out of earlier. He hadn’t seen it before because it was still too dark; but now, with their brightening surroundings, it was hard to miss.

“What are you going to do with it?” Mary asked.

“Find out who else is out there,” Smith said. “Then figure out if they’re friend or enemy.”

“Who do you think they are?”

“I don’t know. I’m hoping they might be Mandy’s people.”

“Who’s Mandy?”

It hadn’t occurred to Smith until now that Mary had never met Mandy or knew anything about her people or their fight against the Judge. She’d gone straight from the encounter with Peoples to Gaffney. Unlike him, she’d never had the pleasure of finding herself locked in a shack inside the junkyard.

He glanced over at Anne and the others, but the women hadn’t followed them over. The sisters stood huddled together while Carol and the young one had wandered over to the two dead bodies farther back. He wondered if any of them knew who Mandy was. He remembered what Blake had told him about how they had friends that had been brought here for “reeducation.” Was one of them a friend of Blake’s?

“John?” Mary was saying when he didn’t answer her. “Who’s Mandy?”

No one, now, he thought but said, “A group that didn’t like what the Judge was doing out here, so they were resisting him.”

“You think that’s them outside?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I have to go out there and find out.”

“And if they’re not this Mandy person’s people, but someone else?”

Smith drew the Glock. The holster wasn’t nearly as comfortable or well-designed as the one he was used to, but it would suffice. He tapped the extra magazine in his back pocket to make sure it was still there.

“What happens if they’re the enemy, too?” Mary was asking him.

“Then I shoot them,” Smith said.

“What if there’s a lot of them?”

“I have plenty of bullets.”

Twenty

“I have plenty of bullets,” he’d said to Mary, and he was pretty sure he did. He had ten rounds left in the 17-round magazine that was in the Glock he’d picked up off one of the dead men (either Ron or Mack, or whatever Mack’s real name was), plus the additional seventeen in the unused spare mag he’d located in the man’s pocket. That gave him twenty-seven rounds total.

More than enough, even if he did face an army outside, which Smith didn’t think he was going to have to.

The Glock 17 was a Gen4 with MOS configuration for easier aiming. Smith thought that was a bit overkill. He’d given Anne one of the AR rifles and left her along with Mary to watch the other three women. They didn’t look especially convinced about Smith’s plan, not that he asked for their opinions. It wasn’t that Smith was a misogynist or anything, but, well, it was his neck on the line and the only person who needed to be comfortable with that was him.

Even so, Mary insisted on coming with him.

“I can help,” she said.

“No, you can’t,” Smith answered.

That had drawn a scowl from her. “I can help,” she had said again, gripping the AR rifle with both hands as if to prove that she could. Or maybe, more likely, to remind him that she’d used something like it before, on Peoples’s poor face not too long ago.

“I need you here,” Smith said. “I need you to watch over them.”

To drive his point home, Smith glanced over at the other four women. Mary did, too, and that finally convinced her.

“Just be careful,” she said.

“I plan to.”

“No, John, I mean it. Be careful.”

He nodded. “I will.”

“Promise?”

He thought that was a little childish. He wasn’t going to be careful? It wasn’t like he wanted to get killed out there.

“Yes,” he said anyway, just before she leaned in and kissed him.

That was a surprise. He hadn’t been prepared for it and was about to pull away…

…but didn’t.

Mary’s lips were soft and pliant and oh so sweet, and he found himself leaning into her kiss instead of pulling away. He’d forgotten the other women were in the barn with them, probably watching (probably, because he didn’t stop kissing Mary back to confirm), but he didn’t particularly care.

It was Mary who pulled away first. There was just a ghost of a smile on her face, barely visible in the slightly semi-dark of the part of the barn they were standing in.

“You promise,” she said, quieter than before, as if she only wanted him to hear.

“Yeah,” Smith said, thinking to himself, Remember Blake, you fucking asshole?

He did remember Blake, and that made liking the taste and feel and everything about Mary’s kiss even more problematic.

* * *

He was still thinking about Mary’s kiss as he slid out of the barn and into the just-a-tad-too-bright ranch property. It was still dark, but there was already a huge difference between now and the last time he was out here.

Still, all he could think about was Mary—

Get your head in the game! You wanna die?

No, he didn’t.

So focus!

The shooting had lessened noticeably, with only the occasional gunshot or two, and then a long period of eerie quiet again. It was very clear to Smith now that he was eavesdropping on to two sides that had realized they weren’t going to take out the other, and were settling down for a long fight.

That, unfortunately, wasn’t something Smith was good with. He was perfectly fine with sitting out a protracted battle where no one was shooting at him, but the problem was what happened after that. Sooner or later, someone was going to win, and when they did, they’d come after him and the women.

Mostly, they’d come after Smith.

…and Mary.

And Mary? Why did he just think about Mary again? He should have been more worried about his own hide right now.

Shouldn’t he?

Goddammit. This is getting confusing.

The door he’d stepped through was on the other side of the property grounds, so he wasn’t immediately afraid of being picked off by a sniper from the house or the hills as soon as he poked his head out. He hugged the wall now, the big red barn’s two-story structure blotting out most of the scattered morning sunlight rising and leaving him with some cover. Not a lot, but some. The house was somewhere in front and to his right, with the hills—and the attackers—behind him. There were open flat fields in front of him, but Smith didn’t see anyone out there when he’d peeked out earlier through a crack in the door.

Smith moved quickly, remaining mostly quiet thanks to the socks he was still wearing. Or he thought he was being pretty stealthy. He might have been making a whole lot of noise for all he knew, but he didn’t think so.

When he finally reached the corner and the front of the barn, Smith leaned out and looked right toward the house some fifty meters away.

The windows were just as blown out as he’d seen it earlier, but now with spreading morning light to help his cause, he could make out that one of the double doors was just barely hanging on its hinges. The front side of the building was damaged by bullets, and there wasn’t a single window that was still intact—

Pop!, followed by a resounding pek!, as a round blew off a chunk of brick and mortar just above one of the second-floor windows. A flash of movement as someone scurried away from that opening and behind some better cover.

Smith remained where he was, listening to the shot echoing, echoing…then fading completely. Erratic—or was that excited?—voices from the house, but he was too far to make out any of the words.

He couldn’t hear anything from behind him either, but what Smith focused on the most was that he was quickly losing what little cover he had. The morning was coming up fast on him, and he didn’t need a watch to know it wouldn’t be long now before the whole valley was awash in daylight. Even now, he could feel the warmth on his skin underneath his clothes.

Smith thought about turning back and returning to the barn to rejoin the women. It was a far better option than standing out here waiting for something to happen. He wasn’t going to get a much better look at the house or however many people were still alive in there, that much was certain. As for the attackers…

Go back. Make sure Mary’s safe.

Mary? Why was he thinking about Mary again?

Get focused, man! Focus!

He couldn’t go back to Mary yet. He still had to find out who the attackers were, and they were on the other side of the barn.

He turned around and headed back, keenly aware that most of the shadows he’d been using as cover earlier were gone.

Smith picked up his pace.

Scratch-scratch from the other side of the wall, now to his left. Horses moving around, either sensing him or hearing his movements. He hoped it wasn’t the latter because he didn’t think he was being that loud. Was he?

No, definitely not.

The side door was in front of him, just five yards away, with the other corner on the other side. He needed to find out who the attackers were. What were the chances they were Mandy’s people? That was the ideal answer, but there was no guarantee of that. For all he knew, it could have been another group that had stumbled across the ranch and decided they wanted it for themselves.

He had to find out one way or another, and that meant getting a good look at the attackers.

Something flicked in the corner of Smith’s right eye, and he turned his head to look. It was, he would realize later, the only thing that saved his life. If he hadn’t stopped moving and turned around, the bullet would have struck him either in the temple or somewhere else along the length of his head. Bottom line: He would have been dead.

But he wasn’t, and instead he heard the soft, almost muffled pop! of a suppressed rifle firing, just before the bullet zipped! past his face, inches from slicing his nose off at the bridge, and piercing the barn wall.

A loud snicker and the suddenly wild clop-clop of hooves moving around as the horse on the other side of the wall jumped, spooked by its own near-miss. At least Smith assumed it hadn’t been hit, because he was too busy ducking his head and running.

The pop! of a second muffled rifle shot, followed by the almost simultaneous pek! as the sniper’s second round smashed through the wooden boards somewhere behind Smith. He didn’t know exactly where, just that it was too damn close, and he could feel splintered wood flicking against his back as he ran.

And he was running.

Fast.

Or as fast as he could, anyway. He hoped it was fast enough.

Shit. He better be fast enough!

Then the side door in front of him burst open, and Mary lunged outside.

“Get back inside!” Smith shouted.

She saw him and froze, one hand on the barn door, the other holding her rifle. He didn’t know why he shouted, because all it did was paralyze her in place.

Even as he ran, Smith glimpsed sunlight glinting off the sniper’s rifle scope out of the corner of his eye for the third time.

He dived at Mary just as the sniper fired, and Smith crashed straight into Mary, knocking her into the door. She must have bounced off it, and he along with her, because soon they were both tumbling to the ground. Mary was screaming as he held onto her, his arms wrapped tightly around her waist.

Was she hit?

Was he hit?

Sunlight filled Smith’s eyes as he landed on his back and rolled over, Mary clutched tightly in his arms. He waited for the sniper to fire again.

One second…

Mary was still screaming.

Two…

He wasn’t sure what she was screaming at, or who.

Three…

Him. She was screaming at him.

Four…

Why was it taking the shooter so long to get another shot off and finish him?

Five…

And Mary was still screaming even as she somehow got loose from his arms.

Six…

Why was she screaming at him?

Seven…

“…bleeding! John, you’re bleeding! Oh my God, you’re bleeding!”

Oh, that was why she was screaming. Because he was bleeding out, which meant he’d been shot and was probably gonna die pretty soon.

Makes sense, he thought as he closed his eyes and drifted off, with the sound of Mary’s voice in his ears, screaming his name over and over and over…

Twenty-One

“What happened?”

“You were shot.”

“Yeah, I figured that part out. What happened after that?”

“Oh. They showed up.”

“‘They’ who?”

“I don’t know. They.”

Mary was looking off to one side. Smith turned his head slightly to follow her gaze.

Two figures stood nearby talking quietly. He wasn’t sure if they were doing that on purpose to keep him and Mary from eavesdropping or if they were just— No, they were definitely trying to keep their conversation a secret.

One of them looked familiar…

Roger. It was Roger. Mandy’s second-in-command.

Mandy’s replacement, now, as far as Smith knew since Mandy was dead and the folks at the junkyard would need a new leader.

He was lying on some kind of futon in the same mobile building that Mandy had called her command center/office/living quarters before she was unceremoniously picked off by the Judge’s sniper yesterday. Or was that two days ago? Smith had no idea how long he’d been unconscious after getting shot.

He struggled to sit up, but Mary was there, grabbing his arms. “Hey, what are you doing? Stay down.”

“I need to get up.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t,” Mary said, and pushed him back down.

He would have resisted her if he could, but he couldn’t. Not only did he not have the strength, but there was that look in Mary’s eyes that made him want to do what she said.

Caring. She cared for him.

Shit. This is no good.

Smith lay back down on the soft bedsheet and sucked in a fresh lungful of air. His head was spinning slightly, though it wasn’t nearly as bad as when he’d been grazed in the head by a bullet days ago. Still, it was enough that he didn’t think he could have made it to his feet anyway, even if Mary wasn’t there to insist he stay down.

He took a few seconds to get a better look at his wound. Or the bandage wrapped around his midsection. The bullet had struck him somewhere in the side; he knew that because that was where the throbbing pain was coming from. It must have gone clean through, considering how much he had been bleeding after getting shot. Not that he’d seen all the blood, but that was what he guessed from Mary’s terrified voice as she screamed his name after he collided with her and they both fell to the ground.

The lower half of his midsection was wrapped in gauze tape. Whoever was responsible had done a pretty good job from the looks of it. There was pain from the spot where he’d been shot, but not of the debilitating variety. At least, he didn’t think so. Then again, he could have been swimming in morphine or some other painkiller and not know it.

“What happened?” he asked Mary.

She was dabbing his forehead with a slightly damp towel while kneeling next to him. He wasn’t sure how long she’d been there, but she looked at home leaning over his prone form. Or maybe he just wanted to think that she looked at home because she felt like home to him.

Yeah. This is definitely no good.

“You were shot,” Mary said. “I already told you that.”

“By who?”

“One of them.”

Mary glanced over at Roger and the woman he was talking to, the two of them standing close to the door. They were much farther than he’d realized when he first looked over in their direction. No wonder he couldn’t hear what they were saying; they were standing well across the elongated building a good twenty yards or so. Smith didn’t recognize the woman Roger was talking to; she was blonde, early twenties. She wore a gun belt and carried a rifle over her back. Roger was, too. They looked very much like two people that had just been in a firefight. Or waiting for one to show up at their doorsteps.

“Why did they shoot me?” Smith asked.

“She said she didn’t recognize you when she fired,” Mary said.

“‘She?’”

“The one that shot you.”

“Who was she?”

“I don’t know. I think they called her Grampa?”

“Gramps?”

“I think that’s it.”

“Figures.”

“Who is she?”

“Someone I’ve met before.” Then, “She said she shot me by accident?”

“Yes. Why?”

Smith shrugged. Or did something that slightly resembled a shrug. “She didn’t exactly like me when we first met.”

“You’ve been here before?”

“Yes.”

“So you know these people?”

Smith turned to look over at Roger again. The man was staring back at him now. “I’ve met them, yeah.”

“They saved our lives,” Mary said. “After you were shot, they converged on the barn. I think they were going to attempt to take on the house.” She paused for a bit, before continuing. “Apparently they’d been preparing for the attack all night, but then you showed up and the woman, Gramps, took the shot.”

“So they took the house?”

Mary shook her head. “After they found us and the others inside the barn, they decided to retreat. We came back here instead.”

“What about the ranch?”

“It’s still there.”

“It wasn’t taken?”

“No.”

“So last night was all a waste of time.”

“Depends on your perspective,” a voice said.

Smith turned his head as Roger walked over to them. The woman was leaving the building, closing the door after her.

Up close, Roger looked different than the last time Smith saw him. It was in the way he walked, the way he talked, and even the way he stood with his hands on his hips as he sat down on the edge of a dirty couch and stared back at Smith.

“You attacked the ranch but didn’t take it,” Smith said. “Sounds like a waste of time to me.”

“It wasn’t,” Roger said. “We got what we went there for.”

“Which was?”

“Jackie and the sisters.”

“And Carol?”

Roger shook his head. “We didn’t know about her. But we got her, too.”

“You attacked the ranch just to save your friends?”

“That, and to let the Judge know that killing Mandy isn’t going to put a stop to this. We’re not going to just go away. Not by a long shot.”

“They didn’t get everyone,” Mary said.

Smith looked over at her. “Who did they leave behind?”

“No one,” Roger said.

“My son,” Mary said.

“He’s in Gaffney. We can’t do anything about that. Gaffney’s…more complicated.”

“But the ranch wasn’t?” Smith asked.

Roger shook his head. “The ranch is isolated. It’s not a town with hundreds of buildings and streets and places to hide. We’ve—” He stopped himself for a moment. Then, continuing, “Mandy and me have been talking about attacking it for a long time now. It was the most obvious choice to take the fight to the Judge.”

“Gaffney didn’t send help?”

“We kept expecting it. They would have heard all the shooting last night. And they had radios. But no one showed up to help the ranch. I had people waiting just in case.” He shook his head and looked thoughtful. Smith wasn’t sure if that was disappointment or relief on his face. “But no one showed up. Maybe they thought the ranch wasn’t worth saving.”

“Or maybe the Judge thought his men could hold out against you. Which, in this case, he was right.”

“Maybe.”

“So what happens now?”

Roger shrugged. “We haven’t thought that far ahead.”

“By ‘we,’ you mean you.”

“Yeah,” Roger said, a little quieter that time.

“You’re in charge now.”

“I guess I am.”

“You made the call to attack the ranch.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, thanks. You saved our lives. Even if Gramps did shoot me.”

“She didn’t know it was you. She was too far away.”

“Was that her excuse?”

Roger chuckled. “That’s what she claims, anyway.”

“By the way, you couldn’t get me a bed? Or a cot, at least?”

“You’re lucky I found that futon for you.” Roger got up from the couch and walked across the building.

“Hey,” Smith said after him.

Roger stopped at the door and looked back. “What? More complaints?”

“I wanted to say thanks.”

The other man raised both eyebrows. Smith guessed he was surprised to hear that. “For what?”

“You know what.”

Roger grunted. “Okay, tough guy.” Then, turning away, “Try not to die on my floor, okay?”

“I’ll do what I can.”

Roger left. Smith heard voices from outside. Roger, calling out to someone. Silhouetted figures moved across the windows to his right as they responded to the junkyard’s new leader.

Smith turned back to Mary. She remained where she was on the floor next to him. He wondered how long she’d been there, taking care of him while he was recuperating. She hadn’t said very much during his conversation with Roger, and he didn’t have to wonder what she was thinking about then; and still was, now.

“Aaron,” Smith said.

Mary stopped what she was doing—wringing water out of the same damp towel she’d been using to clean him, into a bowl next to her—and looked over.

“I’ll get him back,” Smith said.

“How?”

“Whatever it takes.”

Mary pursed her lips. He wasn’t sure if she believed him or not.

She was wiping down his face when Smith reached up and took her hand. He squeezed as hard as he could. It was probably not all that hard, seeing as how he wasn’t even close to being 100 percent yet.

“I’ll get him back,” he said.

She didn’t say anything.

“I swear to God,” Smith said.

She smiled. “I believe you.”

He returned her smile, glad that she did believe him, because he really had meant it. Every single word of it: He would get Aaron back, even if it killed him.

Now all he had to do was figure out how…without actually getting killed in the process.

Twenty-Two

Roger had attacked the ranch with twelve people and left with the three they’d been looking for—Jackie and the sisters—along with Carol, who decided to come along. He’d taken two wounded but no KIAs. Roger was certain they’d killed at least one of the Judge’s men and wounded three others, but couldn’t be sure about the latter.

“Saw them dragging away one body, but I don’t know about the rest,” Roger said. “Maybe two dead? I don’t know. Can’t be sure.”

“So the goal was never to take the ranch?” Smith asked.

“No. It was always just to get our friends back.”

“Mission accomplished.”

“You’re damn straight.”

Smith didn’t think Roger should have been that proud of last night’s raid. One confirmed kill and two, possibly three wounded wasn’t really the kind of enemy casualties he would have called a success. Especially since Roger had the ranch outnumbered and outgunned, not to mention attacking with the element of surprise on his side.

But Smith didn’t bring those points up. Roger was a new leader, taking over for, from what Smith could tell, a beloved predecessor in Mandy. He’d done his best, and for a first time, well, it wasn’t too bad. At the very least it hadn’t been a clusterfuck, which it could have very well been if the Judge had counterattacked from behind the junkyard folks last night. Instead, the Judge had hung back, either confident in his belief the ranch could hold out, or he just didn’t care what happened to them.

Frankly, Smith was leaning toward the latter.

Smith also didn’t mention that he’d taken out four of the ranch’s manpower nearly singlehandedly. He had two confirmed kills alone with a possible third, not to mention a fourth that was incapacitated. Probably four in all, because he didn’t think Not-So-Gruff was going to wake up from his wounds anytime soon, but that wasn’t a given. Three was a safe number.

“What are you gonna do with him?” Roger asked as they walked through the junkyard.

“Ask him some questions,” Smith said.

“You sure you’re up to it? I mean, no offense, but you look like shit.”

Smith grunted. Roger wasn’t wrong. The first few steps from the building where he’d been sleeping off his wound for the majority of the day had been an adventure. Mary hadn’t wanted him to leave and insisted on holding onto him as he climbed down the steps. She’d wanted to come along, too, but Smith told her not to. He didn’t want her to see what he was going to do. Reluctantly, she had acquiesced.

He didn’t so much as walk alongside Roger as he limped. Or hobbled. A mixture of the two. He wasn’t feeling 100 percent. Hell, he’d be lucky if he was 50 percent.

Right now, he felt more like…30 percent?

Feeling a little generous, eh?

More like 20 percent, maybe.

…or just shy of 10 percent...

“I can do this, you know,” Roger said. “You just have to talk me through it.”

“No,” Smith said.

“Why not?”

“Because he wouldn’t believe you.”

“And he’d believe you?”

“Yes.”

“Looking like that?”

“Especially looking like this.”

“Come again?”

Smith shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”

He thought Roger would argue, but instead the man kept quiet. Maybe he really didn’t want to do what Smith had proposed and had just offered to be nice. Or maybe he didn’t want Smith to think he wasn’t up to the task.

They walked on, Smith taking the time to glance around him at Roger’s small army of young women and even younger men. There were lookouts all around them, some perched on the piles of junk that littered the place. They were mostly silhouettes in the dwindling sunlight, hidden against the shadows cast by their hulking stations. The fences were still intact, and no one strayed out into the open where they could be picked off. Roger had organized the place with an eye toward safety in the aftermath of their attack on the ranch. Smith guessed the younger man had learned well at the feet of his former leader.

To stay out of the sights of any snipers that might have been out there, Smith and Roger walked along the rear of the manufactured buildings. It was a good thing they didn’t have to run from cover to cover, because Smith didn’t think he could. Hobbling/limping, or whatever he wanted to call it, wasn’t exactly effective for dodging bullets.

It didn’t take them long to reach the shack. It was the same one that Smith had been kept in not all too long ago. It was just as small and nondescript and ugly as the last time he’d seen it. There were two people standing guard outside, with one of them being Gramps. The young woman sat on the ground, cleaning an AR with a rag. The weapon had a big scope on top. It was probably the same rifle she’d used to shoot him earlier this morning.

Smith didn’t recognize the other woman, who was just a little older than Gramps.

When she heard them coming, Gramps looked up and grinned at Smith. “You looking good for someone who was just shot today.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?” Smith asked.

“Who, me?”

“Yeah, you.”

Gramps shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Uh huh.”

“That’s Lorna,” Roger said, nodding at the tall and attractive brunette standing next to Gramps. She was cleaning her nails with the point of a knife.

Lorna glanced up and gave Smith a What’s up? nod.

Smith returned it, before asking her, “Can I borrow that?”

“What?” Lorna said.

“That,” Smith said, nodding at her knife.

It was about five inches of rubber handle and five more inches of a double-edged stainless steel blade. Nothing special at all, but it would get the job done.

“What’d you need it for?” Lorna asked.

“I have to ask someone some questions,” Smith said.

Lorna turned to Roger, who nodded.

“I want it back,” Lorna said as she handed the knife to Smith.

“I won’t need it for very long,” Smith said.

“What are you gonna do?” Gramps asked.

“He’s gonna interrogate Travis,” Roger said.

“He’s not talking. We already tried.”

“He’ll talk to me,” Smith said.

“To you?”

“Yeah.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I’m gonna ask him nicely,” Smith said. “Really, really nicely.”

* * *

Travis Clarence, the man with two first names, sat on the floor inside the shack, fastened to the same heavy telephone pole that Smith had been when he was last in here. And like Smith before him, the only part of Travis the man could move was his head, which he lifted up when Smith stepped inside and closed the door softly behind him.

The Gaffney man’s wound, the bullet crease on his forehead courtesy of Smith, had been treated, but the original bandage they’d put on the gash remained. Blood had turned it a mostly pale shade of pink, and it was long overdue for a changing.

“Sonofabitch,” Travis said. “I was wondering if you’d gone and gotten yourself killed yet.”

“Why would you say that?” Smith asked.

“Figured you had headed back to Gaffney to get your woman back.”

“You did, huh?”

“So, did you?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“So what happened?”

“I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

“Barely, from the looks of it.”

Smith smirked. He wasn’t trying to hide his condition from Travis. He knew that even with the gauze hidden inside his shirt he was still moving gingerly and was barely at 30 percent strength.

Okay, more like 10 percent.

“Hobson’s dead,” Smith said as he walked toward Travis.

“What happened to him?” Travis asked.

“I shot him.”

“Why’d you do that?”

“He went for his gun.”

“Goddamn. Tough guy, huh?”

“Me or Hobson?”

“You.”

“Nah. Just faster.”

“Hey, what are you doing?” Travis asked, turning his head and trying to follow Smith’s movements as he walked past before disappearing behind the man.

Smith tugged at the thick rawhide rope tying Travis into place. It was as tight and impossible to break free as when Smith had been caught in the same position.

They have friggin’ Hercules tying these things.

Smith made a mental note to ask Roger who that mysterious Hercules was, but that was for later. Right now, he took out Lorna’s knife and went down on one knee so he could place the sharp—and cold—edge against one of Travis’s fingers.

“Hey, what’s that? What are you doing?” Travis asked. The sudden alarm in his voice was impossible to miss. “Stop doing that! Is that a knife? Hey!”

“I’m going to ask you some questions,” Smith said. “You’re going to answer them.”

“Is that a knife? Hey, take that knife away! Hey!”

Smith cut off the forefinger on Travis’s right hand, and the man screamed.

It was an incoherent scream, and it went on for some time.

While Travis struggled futilely against his bounds, Smith took out the duct tape from his jacket pocket and wrapped it around the finger. It was a little difficult because Travis didn’t have very big fingers, and covering the small stump to stanch the spurting blood took more effort than Smith had expected. He had to put down the knife next to the severed piece of finger to make sure Travis wouldn’t bleed to death on him.

“Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!” Travis was screaming. “Jesus Christ! What did you do? Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!”

“Oh, relax,” Smith said. He pinched the duct tape to ensure there were no gaps for the blood to squirt through. Travis screamed louder as Smith put pressure on the wound. “You still have four perfectly good fingers left. Well, three and a thumb. And that’s not even counting the five on your other hand. What’s one less?”

When he was done, and was sure Travis wouldn’t bleed to death on him, Smith picked the knife back up.

“Now, I want you to concentrate,” Smith said. “Are you concentrating?”

“Jesus Christ!” Travis said, half-shouting and half-screaming. “You’re fucking insane! You’re fucking insane, you know that?”

“I need you to calm down.”

“What? Fuck calming down! You cut off my finger, you goddamn maniac!”

“I need you to calm down quickly.”

“What? What? Fuck you!”

Smith placed the cold—and now blood-smeared—edge of the knife against Travis’s middle finger.

Travis shut up quickly and stopped moving entirely.

“You calm now?” Smith asked.

“Yes,” Travis said. Or squeaked out. It was mostly a squeak.

Smith couldn’t see Travis’s face, but he assumed the other man was sweating despite it being quite chilly inside the shack. Travis’s entire body seemed suddenly frozen in place, incapable of even the slightest movement.

“You ready to answer my questions?” Smith asked.

“Yes,” Travis squeaked.

“Question number one: Is the Jeep the only vehicle the Judge has at his disposal?”

“Yes.”

That was easy, Smith thought, before he said, “Question number two: Who is the most dangerous man among the Judge’s men?”

Travis didn’t answer right away, but not, Smith was pretty sure, because he didn’t want to. The man was, in all likelihood, thinking about the answer. Smith could have confirmed that by coming out from behind Travis to glare at his face, but he didn’t want Travis to see him—or how weak he was feeling.

Because he was feeling a little sick and wanted to vomit. Maybe it was the painkillers he’d been swallowing all day or the two he’d taken before leaving the building where he’d been sleeping for most of the day, where Mary was still waiting for him. Walking from there to here hadn’t felt very good, but Smith didn’t really know how taxing it’d be for his currently depleted health until now.

Then again, maybe it was looking at the stump that used to be Travis’s forefinger. Smith was used to killing and death and blood, but he’d never actually had to interrogate someone like this before. He never had to. But he also knew that there was only one way to get Travis talking, and this was it.

“Roman,” Travis finally said. “It’s Roman.”

“The sniper,” Smith said.

“Yes.”

“He’s dead. Remember? I shot him at Lucky’s.”

“Oh.”

Smith smiled. Either Travis had forgotten about that little incident, or he thought Roman had survived. Not that it mattered.

“Who’s next, after Roman?” Smith asked.

“Stephens,” Travis said without hesitation.

“Not you?”

“Huh?”

“You don’t think you’re very dangerous?”

Travis shook his head. “I assumed we weren’t including me in this.”

Smith chuckled. “Good point.”

Travis might have swallowed. Smith saw his throat moving up and down slightly. “That’s it? That’s all you want to know?”

“Are you kidding? I have about twenty more questions for you.”

“Oh.”

“Do I even need to say it? Make me ask any of them more than once, and I’ll cut off another finger.”

“No,” Travis said, shaking his head quickly, even violently. “No, you don’t have to say it. Just ask. Just ask!”

Smith smiled. “Question number three…”

* * *

He handed Lorna her knife back.

“Jesus Christ, what did you do to him?” Lorna asked as she stared at the knife, almost reluctant to reach for it.

It wasn’t really the knife itself that made Lorna hesitant, but the blood on it. Travis’s blood. Fortunately, there wasn’t a lot, because Travis hadn’t forced Smith to cut off another finger. He’d been extremely compliant after losing just one.

Roger and Gramps were also outside the shack, waiting for him. In total, Smith had spent about an hour inside, and by the time he stepped back out, the air had grown a whole lot chillier and night had fallen around them.

It was dark, but it was easy to see the look on Gramps’s face. She was almost beaming. “How many fingers did you cut off?”

“Just the one,” Smith said.

“Just one?”

“Yeah.”

Gramps chortled. “Fucking pussy. I would have held out for at least three fingers.”

Smith grinned at her. “He’s not as tough as you.”

“No shit.”

“What did he tell you?” Roger asked.

“Everything,” Smith said.

“Everything?”

“Yeah, everything.”

“So what now?”

“Now, I go get some rest, because I don’t feel so good.”

“What’s—” Roger began to ask but never finished.

Or maybe he did finish, but Smith just didn’t hear him because he was too busy falling, falling—

—and landing on the hard junkyard ground on his face, for God only knew how many times in the last week.

Like all the other times, he was pretty sure this one looked pretty embarrassing, too.

Twenty-Three

“You really wanna do this?”

“Why not?”

“It’s dangerous, for one.”

“Have you looked around you? Everything is dangerous out there.”

“But this is more dangerous.”

“How you figure?”

“Well, for one, you’re going to drive right into a town where there are rifles on the rooftops waiting to pick you off.”

“They gotta hit me first.”

“All it’ll take is one lucky shot.”

“You mean, unlucky shot?”

“Either/or.”

“That’s fine. I was born underneath a lucky star.”

“Who told you that?”

“My momma.”

“Ah. Must be true, then.”

Gramps chuckled at that. “Then again, Momma did tend to lie about the occasional things.”

“Such as?” Smith asked.

“Lucky stars, things like that.”

“I see.”

“I like you, Smith.”

“Is that right?”

“You got a sense of humor.”

“Can’t be helped, considering what I’m about to do.”

That had elicited a loud chortle from the young woman who called herself Gramps, who was neither a grandpa (or grandma, in this case) or all that grumpy. Smith still remembered the first time Blake had talked about Gramps. She’d been slightly grumpy then, but the woman Smith was talking to now looked like she was ready to take on the world and didn’t give a shit if she died in the process.

Smith, on the other hand, did give a shit. He wasn’t interested in suicide missions, even if this particular stunt could very well be interpreted as that. He told himself that he had all the angles covered. He told himself that all day yesterday as he lay on the futon while the plan gestated inside his head and Mary took care of him.

Mary…

He told himself he wasn’t doing this for her, to save her son from the Judge’s clutches. That he was just going back to Gaffney because he needed to put an end to this, that although he could just ask for a horse from Roger and take off north and never once look back over his shoulder, that he couldn’t. Because the Judge had pissed him off, and now the fat man had it coming. And Smith was just the guy to give it to him. None of it had anything whatsoever to do with Mary or wanting to reunite her with her son, because he had feelings for her.

Because he didn’t, even though she was a very good kisser.

And pretty.

And he dreamt about being with her last night.

And—

Goddammit, Smith thought as he sat up on the hillside and gazed forward at the rooftops of Gaffney.

He was far enough away from the town limits that he could see the men on the roofs with binoculars, but they couldn’t see him back. Or, at least, they didn’t give any indication they had spotted him.

There were only two ways into Gaffney by road—north and south. You could enter it from other directions, but you’d need to be on foot. Smith had taken advantage of that two nights ago when he snuck into Gaffney. This time, he didn’t think it would be quite as easy. The Judge would know he was coming. Or if he didn’t, the fat man would be ready for anything, including a full-frontal assault by Roger’s crew.

“They’re in town,” Roger’s spy had said when the young woman reported back to them earlier in the morning. “The ones from the ranch. The Judge pulled them all back into Gaffney. The ranch is undefended.”

“How many?” Roger had asked.

“A dozen. Two dozen,” the spy had said.

“Which one is it? There’s a big difference between a dozen and two dozen.”

The spy, who couldn’t have been more than twenty, had shrugged. She was covered in dirt and dust and wearing natural earth tones to stay hidden as she kept an eye on Gaffney from the edges. “Let’s go with two dozen, just to be safe.”

“Two dozen,” Roger had said, looking over at Smith. “That’s a lot. I didn’t even think he had that many men left.”

“You weren’t sure how many he had back at the ranch?” Smith had asked.

Roger shook his head. “No. We had a guess, but… No.”

“So he’ll be ready for you when you show up,” Gramps, who was in attendance, had said.

“Apparently,” Smith said.

“So what are you gonna do?”

“I wouldn’t want to disappoint him.”

Gramps laughed. “Man’s got a death wish.”

“I have a plan.”

“Same difference.”

“Not really,” Smith said.

Mary had been there during the conversation, but she hadn’t interjected. Instead, she’d sat back and listened as Smith laid out his plan. Then, when the others left, she’d kissed him—caught him by surprise, again—and left without saying a word. Smith wasn’t sure if that was her way of saying good-bye or—

Yeah, it was probably her way of saying good-bye.

Smith sat on the hill now, the fading sunlight still high above him but getting lower. He felt good, but that was probably all the painkillers he’d dumped into his system starting in the morning and continuing throughout the day. His adrenaline was pumping as he scooted down the hillside and back toward the Chestnut horse waiting below at the base. The animal lifted its head as Smith glided down, and gave him a snort.

“It’s a perfectly good plan,” he said to the animal.

The horse snickered and looked away, apparently a disbeliever.

“Oh, what do you know? You’re just a horse,” Smith said as he climbed into the saddle. He barely felt the gunshot wound in his right side.

Barely.

* * *

He heard the first shot about ten minutes after he picked up the sound of the Jeep’s engine. Smith couldn’t see the vehicle from his position, but he didn’t have to. The Nebraska landscape was deathly quiet, and there was nothing to stop the only working car in what was probably a good hundred miles from making a nuisance of itself.

That was the plan, after all.

Smith didn’t hear the first rifle shot until almost fourteen minutes later. The gunshot was followed by another one, then another a third. Soon, there was just the pop-pop-pop of semiautomatic weapons firing, sometimes rewarded by the occasional ping! as the rounds found their target.

Not that that did anything to stop the vehicle. If bullets hitting the speeding car had managed to stop it in its tracks, then Smith wouldn’t have been able to keep hearing it as it got closer to Gaffney. The city’s rooftop guards would have surely ceased shooting if they’d managed to stop or even slow the approaching Jeep.

“Will this work?” Smith asked when he saw what Lorna and the others had done to the Jeep that he’d brought to them in the aftermath of Mandy’s death. Lorna, as it turned out, was a welder’s assistant before the end of the world, and she had taken charge when it came to shielding the car.

And that was what they did—using thick sheets of metal from around the junkyard to encase the vehicle into something from Mad Max, a post-apocalyptic cinematic tale that was popular with the recruits on Black Tide Island. Smith was told there were sequels, but he’d never seen them.

The continued pop-pop-pop of gunfire got more intense as the Jeep neared the town, followed by the ping-ping-ping! of those same rounds ricocheting harmlessly off the armor plating around the vehicle.

Smith pictured Gramps and Lorna in the front seats of the Jeep as they made a beeline toward Gaffney, probably having the time of their life. Or Gramps, anyway. Lorna was older and clearly didn’t have the same level of death wish as Gramps.

“I’m gonna ram this thing right up their assholes,” Gramps had said to Smith just before he climbed onto the Chestnut to go ahead of them.

“You don’t have to do that,” Smith had said. “I just need you to distract them long enough for me to get in there.”

“I can do both. Ram it up their ass and distract them long enough for you to sneak in.”

“Let’s just concentrate on the latter.”

“Okay, Mr. Buzzkill.”

Lorna, standing nearby, had given Smith an almost pitying look before saying, “We’ll get it done. You can count on it.” She then smacked one of the thick plates of metal that had been welded into place, giving the Jeep a ceiling that it was never supposed to have.

“You sure that’ll deflect bullets?” Smith asked.

“It’s twelve-gauge steel,” Lorna said. “It’ll deflect more than that.”

“And the Jeep can handle the extra weight?”

“We tested it out. She’ll be a little sluggish, but once she gets going she should be fine.”

“‘Should?’”

Lorna shrugged. “Hey, it’s not like any of us have done this before, you know. I guess we’ll find out when we find out.”

Yeah, I guess so, Smith had thought, but for the sake of his own confidence and the women’s, had said, “Let’s shove it up their asses, then.”

That had elicited a big grin from Gramps. “Yee fucking haw!”

* * *

Gramps and Lorna were trying to “shove it up their asses” while Smith snuck his way back into Gaffney. It was easier than he had anticipated, but then again it wasn’t like the Judge’s men didn’t already have their hands full with the armored-plated Jeep driving straight up the road toward them. Smith could hear the shouts and sounds of shod horses clopping away on the streets as they rushed to the north side to stop the incoming vehicle.

The gunfire got louder and more intense, and the ping-ping-ping! of ricocheting bullets picked up speed. Soon, that was all Smith could hear.

Two men on horseback galloped up the road in front of Smith while he was sidling his way along the darkening alleyway. Just like last time, getting into Gaffney wasn’t very hard. There weren’t any walls or fences to keep him out, and the Judge’s men didn’t have nearly enough manpower—especially tonight, after everything that had happened at the ranch—to cover every inch of the city, while also trying to fight back Gramps and Lorna’s charge.

Not that the women were going to actually attempt to make it into the city. Their job—their only job—was just to draw the men over to them. Which, from the sounds of continued gunfire and bouncing bullets, they were doing with aplomb.

Eventually, the shooting slowed down, and the sound of car engine began to fade.

The women had stopped their push and reversed course. They would have only done that under one circumstance: The shielded vehicle was in danger. As long as it didn’t run out of gas—and it wouldn’t for a while; they had checked—it could return to base just fine even damaged. Chances of the Judge’s men pursuing was low. Just in case, Roger and a few others were waiting farther down the road to help. All it would have taken was a couple of good shots to puncture the Jeep’s tires. The vehicle could still move on flat wheels, but it would have been a little difficult given its additional weight.

Smith stopped thinking about what was going on out there and concentrated on the mission at hand.

Him, inside Gaffney, all alone.

Second time’s the charm…

Twenty-Four

“The big white house, about two blocks north from here. The one with the guards outside. I don’t know how you missed it in the first place.”

Hobson had said that, before Smith shot him, three nights ago.

“What are you going to do?” Hobson had asked.

“I already told you,” Smith had said.

“You won’t be able to get to him.”

“How many guards does he have?”

“I won’t tell you that.”

Hobson had kept his word—he hadn’t told Smith. But he didn’t have to, because Travis, the man with two first names, had spilled the beans.

“You believe him?” Roger had asked.

“Yeah,” Smith had said.

“How can you be so sure?”

“I cut off his finger.”

“So? He still has nine left.”

“That guy’s not going to let me cut off another finger just to sell a lie. No, he told me everything he knew. The truth. The whole truth.”

“You better hope you’re right,” Roger had said.

Yeah, me, too, Smith had thought, even though the words that came out of his mouth were, “I’m right.”

I hope I’m right, Smith thought now as he sat in the dark and waited.

He’d found the house easily enough, but its owner wasn’t home. It wasn’t the “big white house” that the Judge was living in, likely still guarded by a good number of men even after Gramps’s distraction had lured most of the guns over to the north side of town. The Judge wouldn’t have been stupid enough to send everyone to stop the vehicle. A man like that would always keep plenty for himself. After all, what was the point of being the alpha male if you couldn’t order people to die for you 24/7?

Besides, Smith had other plans, and other priorities. One of them was Aaron. He had to find the kid first. That was what he’d told Mary he’d come here to do, after all: get her son back. But Smith knew that even if he succeeded in that, it would only be winning a battle. He still needed to win the war.

And the war began and ended with the Judge. Cut the head off the snake, and the body would die, as the saying went. It was easy enough to say but harder to accomplish.

But that was for later. Now, Smith had something else to do…like sit in the dark for a good two, maybe three hours. He stopped keeping track of time once it got so dark outside the window that he couldn’t see the streets beyond anymore. The house was mostly black except for a small sliver of curtain left open to the right of him, the window looking down at Gaffney’s main street below. The north side of town, where all the action had taken place, was a good two hundred meters or so behind him.

After Gramps and Lorna reversed course in the Jeep, Smith watched some of the Judge’s men returning to their posts inside the town. Some were on horseback, others on foot. About ten men in all. He hadn’t expected that many, but it looked as if Roger’s spy was pretty close to the number of reinforcements the Judge had gotten from the ranch.

Smith nodded off a couple of times out of boredom, only to snap right back awake. Or Smith told himself it was boredom, and not because his side had started to hurt from the gunshot wound. But once he took out and knocked down a couple of painkillers, he hardly felt anything anymore.

After what seemed like an eternity, the house’s owner finally returned.

Smith quickly checked his watch. 11:09 p.m.

He listened to the owner walking up the stairs after a few minutes on the first floor. She had light footsteps, but it was so quiet inside the building—and outside in the town—that Smith thought he could hear her breathing even with the closed bedroom door.

The owner spent some more time outside on the second floor in the bathroom next door. Smith thought that was a little odd since her master bedroom that he was waiting inside had an en suite bathroom.

She finally stepped inside the bedroom, already working on the top two buttons of her long-sleeve work shirt. She didn’t bother with the light switch because there was no electricity, so Smith watched her silhouetted form moving across the room. She came to within ten feet of where he sat on the armchair in the corner but didn’t see him. Instead, she went straight to the window and jerked the curtains closed completely, then turned around and flicked on the LED lantern resting on a nightstand between the window and the queen-size bedroom.

“Amy,” Smith said quietly.

“Jesus!” Amy said even as she spun around, hands clutching at her partially opened shirt. “Smith!”

Smith put a forefinger to his lips. He hadn’t drawn his gun, and he didn’t think he needed to. Amy realized her mistake and glanced quickly toward the window. Thankfully she had closed it, so her startled gasp wouldn’t have traveled very far.

“What the hell are you doing back here?” Amy asked.

She walked over to the bed and sat down on the end, facing him from across the room. If she was a little bit scared, he didn’t see it on her face. She did, though, look slightly annoyed, but he thought that had more to do with him catching her almost in the act of taking her shirt off. Smith couldn’t help but notice she wasn’t wearing anything underneath as she did the buttons back up.

“Aaron,” Smith said.

“What about him?”

“I need to find him.”

Amy didn’t say anything. She finished buttoning her shirt, then put her hands in her lap and stared back at him.

“You know where he is, don’t you?” Smith asked.

“Lucky guess?”

He shrugged. “You would have gone looking for him after our conversation at the clinic.”

“You sound very sure about that.”

“I am.”

“Why?”

“Because you care. Because you’re not like the others. Am I wrong?”

She shook her head. “No.”

Smith smiled. At least he’d read her correctly.

One out of two ain’t bad.

“They’re keeping him with one of the families down the street,” Amy said. “Harris and Janice. They’ve been trying to have a baby since they got here, but so far, no luck. I guess the Judge thought they’d appreciate Aaron more.”

“Does he know what happened to his mom?”

“No. I went to see him yesterday under the guise of checking up on him. He doesn’t know about his mom, and he’s not happy about it.”

“He said that?”

“He’s a mute, Smith. But he can write.”

“What did he write?”

“‘Mom?’ With a question mark. When I told him I didn’t know, he got visibly agitated. I talked to Janice about him earlier today, and she said he hasn’t eaten anything since my visit. He’s not a happy camper.”

“You didn’t tell him the Judge had sentenced his mom to be reeducated?”

Amy smirked. “Why the hell would I tell him that?”

“Just wondering.”

He stood up, and he must have been slightly unsteady on his feet—or maybe it wasn’t all that slightly—because Amy saw it right away.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re hurt.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Seriously? You don’t think I’d see it?”

Smith grunted. He wanted to blame being unsteady on his feet on having sat down for so long, but the truth was, the pain from his side had come back. It wasn’t a full-blown five-alarm fire, but it was close. Maybe a two-fire alarm.

Or a four…

“What happened?” Amy asked. “Something to do with that shootout at the ranch?”

“You heard about that?”

“Who didn’t?” She stood up. “Sit back down, and let me look at you.”

“I’m fine,” Smith said. He walked across the room and toward the door. “You said Aaron’s being kept somewhere down the street?”

“916 Tanner Street. Go south down the street, and turn left. Fifth house from the corner.” Then, without missing a beat, “You sure you’re okay?”

“Dandy,” Smith said.

He opened the bedroom door and stepped outside, doing his very best not to fall right back down on his face.

* * *

He left Amy’s house the same way he got in—through the kitchen back door. Amy had locked it, but he’d simply jimmied it with his knife. There were no alarm systems in place, and the doctor hadn’t bothered to check every door before she went up to her bedroom.

Smith stepped back out into a mostly dark town of Gaffney and stayed away from the sparsely-located LED lights. He maneuvered his way through the backyards of multiple uninhabited homes, comfortable in the knowledge there was no one inside them. You could tell from the overgrown grass, fading paint, and fallen white picket fences.

Locating Amy’s house was easy, thanks to Travis, who had provided Smith with the address and a way to reach it safely. But Travis had no idea about Aaron, which was why Smith had taken the chance of approaching the former Black Tider. That shared history was why he thought she could be trusted. If he’d been wrong…

But he hadn’t been. That was all that mattered. He hadn’t been wrong about her.

It wasn’t difficult to find where Aaron had been taken. The house where the couple Harris and Janice lived was exactly where Amy had told him it would be. Like Amy’s, Harris and Janice’s was flanked by a pair of unoccupied buildings. As far as Smith could tell, the ones across the street didn’t have owners, either. Aaron’s relocated home, on the other hand, had an LED lamp hanging from the awning over the front porch.

On his way over, Smith had glimpsed a big white two-story house in the distance. It sat in a cul-de-sac, with lights moving around along the rooftops. Guards. Smith was too far to make out how many, but it was more than one.

The Judge’s mansion.

It wasn’t very far. Maybe 500 meters, give or take. A part of Smith wanted to go straight to it and put an end to this. Yes, he’d come here wanting to safeguard Aaron first, but the kid would be safe anyway if Smith took out the Judge. Mary, also.

So why didn’t he?

For one, he wasn’t feeling 100 percent yet. Way, way less than that, if he were being honest. The truth was, he should have waited, healed up a little bit more (or a lot more) before coming back here. Another day. Or two. (Or a week.)

But he hadn’t.

He was here now, and if the Judge had as many men with him as Smith thought…

Go get Aaron. You promised Mary, remember?

He’d promised Mary. Shit. Why had he done that?

Because you like her, obviously.

Goddammit. He liked her. He liked her.

That was a mistake.

He sighed now as he rounded Harris and Janice’s two-story house and stepped into their backyard. There were no fences to hop, which was good because Smith wasn’t sure he could have made it over without fainting.

He stopped temporarily to gather his breath. When he was sure he was feeling better, Smith used the same knife to pry open a back door with a glass window that revealed a dark kitchen on the other side. As with Amy’s house, Smith didn’t have to worry about alarms blaring away when he pushed the door open and stepped through, exchanging the chilly backyard for the comparably warm kitchen.

The house was quiet, just as he had expected. It was already well past midnight, and Harris and Janice would be sound asleep by now. People in Gaffney would have adapted to normal sleeping patterns a long time ago.

Smith walked softly across the kitchen, the rubber soles of his boots barely making any noise against the smooth linoleum tiles. There was leftover food on the dining table to his left, and a recently used wok sat on the stove to his right. There were no lights in here, but Smith could see the glow from the LED lantern hanging over the front porch spreading across parts of the living room, past the doorless kitchen entrance.

He stepped through—

And stopped.

“Mr. Smith,” a familiar voice said. “There you are. I was starting to think you weren’t ever going to show up.”

Twenty-Five

Well, this sucks.

That was an understatement. This did, indeed, suck, but it was way worse than that. The FUBAR type of suck.

He remembered asking someone at Basic what FUBAR meant. The word (or acronym—or was that initialism? He could never get the two straight.) wasn’t something you wanted to hear when you were out in the field doing operations.

“Fucked up beyond all recognition,” was the answer.

Yeah, that about describes this, all right, Smith thought now as he stood with his dick in his hands and nothing else.

They had him.

They had him good.

More than good, actually.

It was real good.

Real fucking good.

Motherfucking real fucking good, but maybe that was putting too fine a point on the situation.

FUBAR described it pretty well.

“But I had faith that you would, eventually. I thought it would be yesterday, but I was wrong about that. Then when I heard about the supposed attack on the north road, I knew that today was the day.”

The only thing missing from the voice was a villainous cackle as the man’s sausage-like hands played with his mustache. But the Judge didn’t have a mustache, and Smith didn’t think the man was capable of cackling without hurting himself.

“So tell me, Mr. Smith. Has this gone the way you though it would?”

No, it hadn’t. Not by a long shot.

It was times like these that Smith remembered a conversation with his mentor.

“You’re not smart,” the older man had said.

Smith had taken offense to that, as well he should have if he even had a tiny bit of self-respect. He had more than that, so he took exceptional offense to the blunt statement.

“Don’t get me wrong, you’re no dummy,” his mentor had continued. “But you’re not Lara. Then again, no one is, but you don’t even come close.”

“You trying to piss me off?” Smith had said. “Because you’re doing a pretty good job of it, old man.”

His mentor had scoffed. “You telling me you didn’t already know that?”

“Know what?”

“That you’re not going to be a Rhodes Scholar anytime soon. Do you even know what that is?”

Smith didn’t, but he wasn’t about to give the other man the benefit of the doubt. “What’s your point?”

“My point is, while you’re no dummy, you’re not going to outthink a lot of people. That’s where that hand of yours comes into play. It, and how fast and how straight you can pull the hog.”

“The hog? What hog?”

“That’s what they used to call a gun back in the old Wild West days. ‘Pull a hog’ meant going for your pistol.”

“A hog, huh?” Smith had found the whole concept more than a little ridiculous.

“Whatever you wanna call it, that’s where you’re exceptional. Better than almost anyone I’ve trained on this backwater of an island.”

Smith couldn’t help himself and felt a little bit of proud there. Oh, who was he kidding? It was more than a little bit. It was a lot. To be told how good he was by a man like Peters was like being anointed knight by the Queen of England herself. Peters wasn’t just any man; he was the man at Basic.

“But I’m not smart,” Smith said.

“You’re not dumb,” Peters said.

“But I’m not ever going to outthink someone.”

“Maybe some, but not all of them. And you won’t have to. Because you will almost always be faster and a straighter shot than them. Remember, kid, it’s not about who shoots first; it’s about who shoots last.”

“Dead man can’t shoot last?”

“Dead man can’t do shit.”

Dead man can’t do shit, Smith thought now as he stared across the living room space of Harris and Janice’s home at the Judge and his flunkies.

There were two of them (Because of course there would be two of them; assholes always came in threes these days.), flanking the Judge on both sides. The man himself sat on an armchair, maybe because he was too lazy to stand like his underlings. Smith didn’t know how long they’d been there, waiting for him. What would they have done if he hadn’t shown up, he wondered. Maybe sit around in the dark. Or the Judge would, anyway, while the other two would stand guard and look for signs of him.

“Who is the most dangerous man among the Judge’s men?” Smith had asked Travis back at the junkyard two days ago.

Travis had answered Roman, the sniper. Then, when he’d learned Smith had already taken out the man, Travis had replied, “Stephens.”

And it was Stephens on the Judge’s right that Smith kept an eye on now. Stephens wore that same well-beaten Cornhuskers hat on his head like the first time Smith had seen him outside of Gaffney. Stephens wasn’t really standing, he was leaning against a flower-printed wall at a slight angle, his right hand casually resting on the butt of his holstered pistol. A Glock, from the looks of it. Stephens hadn’t drawn the weapon yet, something he could have done before Smith showed himself. Instead, he’d left it in place, maybe because he didn’t think he needed to have it out and ready. Either he was a stupid man or a very arrogant one.

“He’s a stone-cold killer,” Travis had said about Stephens.

“He’s killed before,” Smith had said.

“Plenty of times. When the Judge needs someone gone, Stephens always gets the job. Hell, he volunteers most of the time.”

“Not Roman?”

“Roman’s a sniper. He kills from long-range. Stephens does it up close and personal, and he enjoys every second of it.”

Not stupid, just arrogant, Smith thought now as he eyeballed Stephens back. And maybe, if Travis was to be believed—and Smith did believe him—then Stephens had a good reason to feel confident.

The other flunky, to the Judge’s left, must not have been as convinced about his ability with a gun as Stephens, because he had his weapon out. Not a handgun, which would have been preferable for Smith, but a pump-action shotgun that was up at chest level and pointed straight at Smith’s midsection. Or chest. Not that the exact location mattered, because either place would tear a hole in him. Or holes, depending on what the weapon was loaded with—buckshot or slug rounds.

Smith recognized the other man. He was the oldest member of the posse that had intercepted Smith and Mary out in the wilds not too long ago. Smith still didn’t know his name, but he remembered that the man always stuck to Kyle, the youngster that Smith had killed at Lucky’s. Smith had wondered if they were related or had some kind of mentor-student relationship. Not that he ever asked, or cared.

Right now, as the man glared at him from across the semi-dark living room, Smith got the impression the old man knew about what Smith had done to Kyle, and he was none too happy about it. His forefinger was in the trigger guard of the shotgun, and he had the look of someone just waiting for an excuse to fire.

The reason he hadn’t was probably because Smith’s own Glock was still in its holster and the Judge had given explicit instructions not to fire at first sight. If Smith had a gun in his hand when he stepped out of the kitchen, would the old man have shot him dead? Smith didn’t know the answer to that one, and, frankly, didn’t care. This was the situation he’d found himself in, so he dealt with the reality and not the what-ifs.

FUBAR. Now this is FUBAR, all right.

Smith looked from Stephens to the old man to the Judge…

…then at Aaron.

The Judge had brought Aaron out here to wait along with them. The boy was perched on the big man’s right knee, his eyes wide open as they stared back at Smith. He looked tired, as if he’d been rustled from sleep to join this little charade that the Judge had cooked up for…whose benefit? Smith’s? Aaron’s? The Judge’s?

Did it even matter?

“What’s the matter?” the Judge said. “Cat got your tongue, Mr. Smith?”

Smith didn’t answer. He also kept his hands where they were—hanging at his sides where they’d been since he stepped through the kitchen’s doorless entrance. He didn’t want to give the old man the excuse he was probably looking for to pull that trigger.

Stephens, for his part, just looked bored with the whole thing.

Stay bored, asshole. You won’t be so bored when I shoot you to death.

Smith looked past Aaron’s terrified face and at the Judge. “This all seems a little dramatic, don’t you think?”

“What can I say? I’m a sucker for drama,” the Judge said.

“Me, not so much.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. You were pretty dramatic when you showed up here two nights ago. I hadn’t expected that.”

“No?”

“I’m man enough to admit it. After what happened to Mandy, and having learned you’d survived, I was convinced you’d run. After all, none of this is any of your business. It was always between me and Mandy’s band of ne’er-do-wells. Now between me and Roger’s band of ne’er-do-wells. I was sure you’d focus on that part and leave well enough alone.”

The big man sighed, almost as if he was disappointed with Smith. It was, Smith thought, overly dramatic and clearly done for his benefit. All for the sake of drama, or the Judge would have told either Stephens or the old man to shoot Smith as soon as he stepped out of the kitchen.

Because either one of them could have done that. They could have done that pretty goddamn easily, and Smith wouldn’t have been able to do a damn thing about it.

“My point is, while you’re no dummy, you’re not going to outthink a lot of people,” his mentor had said.

Fuck if Peters hadn’t been right. Smith had thought he’d been pretty clever two nights ago when he came back to Gaffney. Then, again, pretty clever when he sent Gramps and Lorna to attack the north side of town with their armor-plated Jeep while he snuck in. He thought he’d been pretty clever both times.

Not so much, as it turned out.

“It was a nice touch,” the Judge was saying. “The car, I mean. I was surprised when they drove it back toward town. More surprise when the guards told me it had been modified. But then again, those folks at the junkyard are nothing if not scrappy.”

Smith’s eyes snapped from the Judge’s fat face to Aaron’s. The boy looked ready to defecate in his pants. He might have been mute and young, but he clearly knew what was happening. Smith felt sorry for him. The kid had seen more in a week than most people had seen in a handful of lifetimes.

He moved his eyes slightly to pick Stephens back up. The Gaffney man still looked as bored now as when Smith revealed himself. He also hadn’t drawn his weapon yet, even though he could have at any time.

“He’s a stone-cold killer,” Travis had said about Stephens. “When the Judge needs someone gone, Stephens always gets the job. Hell, he volunteers most of the time... Stephens does it up close and personal, and he enjoys every second of it.”

Stephens. The very bored-looking asshole staring back at Smith now, that slight smirk plastered all over his shootable face.

Smith looked back at the Judge. “So what now?”

“Now, you take off your gun belt and put it on the floor,” the Judge said.

“And then?”

“And then you surrender yourself to me.”

“Why? You want to reeducate me, too?”

“I think we both know that’s not going to work with you, Mr. Smith.”

Smith couldn’t help himself and smiled. “You’re probably right.”

His eyes snapped from the Judge’s pudgy face to Aaron’s round and almost cherubic face as it trembled slightly.

Then to the old man with the shotgun.

And finally, back to Stephens.

“Mr. Smith,” the Judge said. “Do you want me to count down from five?”

“And why would I want you to do that?” Smith asked.

The big man shrugged. “For the sake of drama. They do this in the movies all the time.”

“You really had this all planned out in your head, didn’t you?”

“Most of it. Enough that I had someone watching the good doctor’s place long before you showed up to wait for her.”

“You saw me?”

“Not me, of course.”

“One of your flunkies.”

“One of my assistants.”

“What’s the difference?”

“One title is more…prestigious than the other.”

Smith smiled. “Nah.”

“‘Nah?’”

“Nah. I don’t think I’ll play your game and drag this out.”

The Judge’s lips curved into a wide frown. “Are you sure? Because I don’t think you’ll like the alternative.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

“Then how do you propose you surrender yourself?”

Smith’s eyes shifted slightly over to Aaron, still perched precariously on the Judge’s right knee.

“Aaron,” Smith said.

The boy’s eyes lit up. They hadn’t, as far as Smith could tell, ever left his face. He wasn’t sure the boy could even move, and that played into Smith’s decision.

“Close your eyes,” Smith said.

Aaron continued to stare at him, confused.

“Close your eyes, son,” Smith said. “Now.”

Thank God Aaron obeyed and quickly squeezed both eyes shut.

“Shoot him!” the Judge screamed.

Smith drew.

Twenty-Six

It takes, give or take, a second for a person to complete the pull on a gun’s trigger. That is, if they were prepared to do it and simply acted without hesitation.

That was the important part: Simply acted without hesitation.

The problem for the older man with the shotgun pointed at Smith was that he’d been holding that weapon—and it was a heavy weapon, too, much heavier than a pistol—for a while now. Perhaps it wasn’t “long” in the sense that it had been hours, but it’d been more than a few seconds and way more than a few minutes as the Judge played out his little dramatic scene with Smith.

How long, though? Two minutes? Three? Five?

It was more than a few seconds, that much was a certainty. The old man had had his forefinger in the trigger guard and on the trigger the entire time but hadn’t begun the pull. That required applying pressure to the trigger, then following through with the full pull.

One second. That was all it should have taken. One second.

Except the old man had been holding his pose, finger lazily in the trigger guard but not in the process of pulling the trigger, that when the Judge finally screamed “Shoot him!” it took a moment for the command to register. It took, from what Smith could tell, about two and a half seconds longer than it should have for the old man to pull the trigger.

In fact, the old man took so long that Stephens already had his gun out of its holster by the time the old man finally acted and pulled the trigger.

Stephens was fast, but he wasn’t fast enough.

Smith shot him in the forehead even as the man managed to get his Glock out and began lifting it to take aim. That was his mistake. Aiming. Smith didn’t have to do that. He’d learned how to shoot without wasting time lifting the gun once it cleared leather. He simply drew and fired from the hip.

Stephens didn’t get off a shot, but the old man did, even as Smith was swiveling around to face him. The shotgun fired buckshot, and Smith heard rather than felt the multiple balls of steel as they whistled around his head and body. Some struck him in the left shoulder, spinning him slightly, but Smith didn’t let go of his gun.

Bang!

The old man didn’t go down from the first bullet, but instead staggered backward, appearing more shocked than hurt. The shotgun dipped slightly, and he was trying to raise it back up when Smith shot him again, this time in the middle of the face. The head snapped back, and the body collapsed, but Smith was already turning to face the Judge.

The fat man remained sitting in the armchair with Aaron perched on his right knee. The boy still had his eyes shut just as Smith had told him. In fact, Smith could see his face scrunched up in a tight ball even as the kid shivered on the Judge’s knee.

The Judge looked to his right at Stephens’ crumpled body, before glancing left at the old man on the other side. He was breathing hard. Smith could hear every loud heave from all the way across the living room.

“Don’t shoot; you’ll hit the boy,” the Judge said even as he lifted his left hand toward Smith, the palm turned up. All the while, his right hand was coming out from behind Aaron’s back.

Smith didn’t know what was in that hand and he didn’t particularly care.

Bang!

The Judge’s head snapped backward and bounced against the armchair’s plush upholstery and froze in place, the blood that had sprayed out the back of his skull causing him to stick to the chair behind him.

Aaron fell off the Judge’s suddenly slack knee and to the floor. He picked himself up and glanced around—at Stephens, then the Judge, then the old man—before looking across the room at Smith. He was breathing hard, his chest heaving.

“Get over here, boy,” Smith said.

The boy got up and ran over just as light appeared outside the window behind the Judge’s unmoving body.

Lanterns. LED lanterns.

And men holding them were rushing toward the house.

Smith didn’t bother reloading the Glock. He’d fired four shots and still had eleven left in the magazine. The pistol felt a little light in his hand, but maybe that had a little something to do with—

Aaron grabbed at Smith’s hand, and Smith was about to turn around and ask him what he was doing when he almost fell down. Apparently, the kid had either sensed it or saw him about to topple right over, and took action.

Smart kid, Smith thought as he collapsed to his knees in the middle of the living room. Aaron crouched next to him, staring at him with those big brown eyes of his. He didn’t say a word because he couldn’t, but there was no missing the fear in his eyes.

Not for himself, Smith saw, but for Smith.

Shit, I’m bleeding.

He’d been bleeding since the old man let loose with the shotgun. As he replayed the shootout in his head, Smith guessed he should have taken out the old man first and neutralized the pump-action. But he’d gotten it into his head that Stephens was the more dangerous one and needed to be dealt with. He’d committed. Maybe he was right. Maybe he was wrong.

All he knew was that he was still alive.

He had buckshot in his left shoulder and along the length of his arm, and maybe a few of the pellets had taken chunks from one of his cheeks. And he was bleeding. He’d been bleeding since he fired the last shot but just hadn’t felt or recognized it until now that the danger was over.

No, the danger wasn’t over. The danger was just getting started.

Smith stumbled up from the carpeted floor with Aaron clutching his arm. He felt the boy trying to tug him back down, but Smith was bigger and stronger, and dragged the both of them up to their feet.

“It’s okay,” Smith said. “Go hide behind the sofa.”

The boy stared at him.

“Go,” Smith said.

The boy didn’t move, and he didn’t let go of Smith’s arm.

“Go,” Smith said again. Louder and with more authority, but not quite screaming. Or, at least, he didn’t think he was screaming. But he had to get the boy to do what he was told because—

Smith glanced toward the windows as the halo of lights grew closer.

They were in the front yard now but advancing slowly. No doubt they’d been stationed in some of the houses across the street this entire time, waiting for the Judge’s orders to advance, if necessary. Because all of this was a trap, and he’d fallen for it.

You’re right, Peters. I’m not nearly as smart as I think I am.

Smith counted three lanterns moving toward him now…

When he looked back at Aaron, the boy was already scooting behind one of the big sofas across the living room, on the far wall. It was a big couch, but it wouldn’t stop a bullet. Still, it was better than having the kid standing in the middle of the room while hot lead was flying around.

“Stay there,” Smith said.

Aaron poked his head out from one end of the furniture and bobbed his head up and down. He was well-hidden in the shadows of the living room, but Smith could just see enough of his face—and those big brown eyes—to know he was still scared.

Smith didn’t blame him. Hell, he was scared.

“Judge?” a voice called from outside.

Smith hurried to the door, but not before snatching up the shotgun from the old man’s lifeless hands. The old bastard had managed to hold onto it even after he fell.

“Judge! You in there?”

Smith hobbled to the front of the house, then slid up against the wall. He checked the shotgun. It was a nice weapon: a Remington 870 pump-action 12-gauge. Five-round capacity, so four shells left inside. He was pretty sure the old timer had more ammo on his person, but Smith hadn’t bothered to search him. Besides, he still had his holstered pistol, not to mention the spare SIG Sauer behind his back. He had plenty of bullets to deal with however many were out there.

Probably.

“Judge!” The same voice, sounding a little closer now, but not too much closer. They were still taking their time, erring on the side of caution.

“He’s dead!” Smith shouted back.

He didn’t peer out the window behind him, but he could hear the sudden shuffling of boots moving around out there in response. Not quite panic, but realization that someone was still alive inside the house who may not welcome them with open arms.

“Keep on coming closer, if you wanna join him!” Smith shouted.

He thought he sounded pretty good. Not just confident but loud and brash, and not at all like the hurt and bleeding (Christ, where was all the blood coming from?) man he really was. He hadn’t bothered to catalog where the buckshot had managed to hit him, but enough had to make every word he shouted feel like it might be his last.

He blinked through something dripping down his left eye—

Blood. He was bleeding from the forehead.

Smith reached up and swiped at the wetness, then wiped it on his pant legs. His side, where Gramps had shot him yesterday, felt fine. Or maybe that was just all the new pain overwhelming the old one.

Either/or.

Smith fished out the bottle of painkillers and downed two more, even as someone outside shouted, “You’re a dead man!”

“Not as dead as your Judge!” Smith shouted back.

“How do we know he’s really dead?”

“You hear him shouting back at you, genius?”

Silence.

Smith imagined the man outside—and however many he had with him—trying to decide if Smith was lying or not. But then, the Judge hadn’t answered, so why would they think he wasn’t dead? Or incapacitated?

That was what Smith was counting on, anyway. He wasn’t sure if he could take on three or four men right now, in his current condition. For all he knew, there were more than that outside.

Five? Six?

Ten?

Crap. He hoped it wasn’t ten.

“He’s dead!” Smith shouted, mustering every ounce of energy he had left to broadcast the sound of his voice. “So’s Stephens! So’s the old man!”

“Randolph?” the same voice replied.

Randolph, huh? Smith thought, looking over at the old man lying nearby.

“That’s right,” Smith said. “But he was nice enough to give me his shotgun before he went. Stephens, too, with his Glock. Not to mention all their spare ammo. So if you boys wanna come in, go right ahead! I got plenty of bullets for all of you, and then some! It’s a big, dark house! Let’s play!”

Silence again from his would-be attackers. Smith strained to listen but couldn’t hear whispers or even the sounds of moving boots anymore. Whoever and however many they were out there, they had found spots to camp. Unless…

The back door.

Smith’s eyes snapped to the oval-shaped opening that connected the living room with the kitchen. The same entryway he’d come through earlier, only to find the Judge waiting for him. It would be just as easy for whoever was out there to circle around the property and come through it. He had.

“Come on in, boys!” Smith shouted. “Let’s get this party started! The Judge is dead—long live the Judge—and I got more bullets for the rest of you! Come on! I’m bored! Don’t keep me waiting!”

Again, there was no response.

Smith kept his eyes on the kitchen door, expecting figures to run through at any moment. Aaron was hiding behind the couch nearby, and the kid hadn’t poked his head out again after the first time.

Smart kid, Smith thought, wondering what Mary would say to him if he got the boy shot up while trying to rescue him. Not that he’d have to worry about Mary, because if Aaron got shot up, chances were Smith would be, too.

That is, if he didn’t die from his wounds before then.

He wiped at more blood dripping down his forehead and to his left eye. There wasn’t a lot of blood, but the constant drips were annoying. He didn’t even want to see what the rest of him looked like. There was a mirror across the living room, but Smith purposefully avoided it. He felt like shit already; he didn’t necessary need, or want, visual confirmation.

“Well, come on, then!” Smith shouted. “Don’t keep me waiting, boys! The night’s just getting started! Let’s have some fun! All these bullets are heavy! Help me get ridda some of them, will you?”

Finally, Smith heard movement from outside.

Here we go.

He tightened his grip on the Remington, reminded himself he only had four shells left, when the realization hit.

The sounds weren’t coming toward him, they were going away from him.

The would-be attackers were retreating.

Smith risked a quick glance out the window, just in time to spot a pair of figures fleeing down the street to the right—while a third went left. Smith might not have seen them—it was way too dark outside—if all three weren’t carrying their own light sources. None of them looked as if they were trying to outflank him or maneuvering around to come through the back.

They didn’t look like they were doing that, anyway.

He leaned back against the wall and waited, his ears listening for noise from the front of the house while his eyes remained fixed on the kitchen doorway.

A minute of silence followed.

Then two…

Aaron poked his head out from behind the couch, brown eyes searching for, found, and settling on Smith’s.

“Not yet,” Smith said.

The boy nodded and vanished back behind the sofa.

Three minutes of silence…

Five…

Smith’s legs were getting tired, so he walked over to the armchair where the Judge was slumped, and pushed the fat man out of it. There was blood on the upholstery and even more on the headrest, but Smith didn’t care and sat down. The armchair was perfectly turned to face the kitchen, which, Smith guessed, the Judge had done so he could dramatically welcome Smith to the living room.

He leaned over and switched off the LED light resting on the nightstand next to him, and the room quickly faded into darkness. He put the shotgun on his lap, his forefinger still in the trigger guard, and waited.

It was a long wait.

A quiet wait.

And more importantly, an uneventful wait.

* * *

Sometime in the middle of the night, Smith woke up with a start.

Shit!

He’d fallen asleep.

He’d fallen asleep.

Fortunately, it hadn’t cost him his life, because there was no one in the living room with him except Aaron. The boy was curled up in a ball on the floor at Smith’s feet and snoring lightly. Smith didn’t know when he’d come out from hiding or how long it’d been since he lost consciousness.

Smith was still bleeding, but the blood had caked along one side of his face. His sides throbbed, as did all the other parts of him that had taken buckshot.

But he was alive.

Still kicking.

Okay, maybe not kicking, but breathing.

And for now, that was good enough.

Twenty-Seven

“You’re one stubborn man, you know that?”

Smith smirked. “That’s no way to talk to a patient, Doctor.”

Amy matched his smirk with one of her own. “You’re lucky you’re even a patient. You should be dead. Ten times over. What were you thinking, coming in here like that?”

“He was waiting for me. The Judge. He had men watching your place.”

Amy shook her head. “I didn’t know anything about that.”

“I know. I’m not saying you did.”

“Okay. I just wanted to get that out of the way.”

“Relax. It’s out of the way.”

The doctor nodded, and he saw the relief on her face. Maybe she had thought he’d blame her for the ambush, but Smith didn’t. It had never even occurred to him that she was a part of the scheme, which meant he was either a very good judge of character or a really, really poor one.

“What happened?” Smith asked as he sat up on the cot.

He was back in her clinic, and the fact that he wasn’t handcuffed or, well, dead meant everything had mostly worked out for the best. Smith’s last memory was of falling asleep with Aaron at his feet.

There, his gun, still in its holster on a table next to him. That reinforced his belief that everything had, somehow, worked out for the best. Or, at least, worked out in his favor even though he didn’t have a clue how.

“Roger and the junkyard gang took Gaffney in the afternoon,” Amy said. “By then, the others had left.”

“‘Others?’”

“The Judge’s men. The ones you didn’t kill.”

Smith couldn’t help but grin at that.

“They took everyone with them that wanted to go, but left everyone who didn’t,” Amy continued.

“Including you?”

“Me, Aaron, and 50 percent of everyone here.”

“50 percent?”

Amy nodded. “I know it’s hard to believe, but other than the Judge being a royal asshole, Gaffney isn’t all bad.”

“I don’t find that hard to believe at all.”

“You don’t?”

Smith shook his head. “I’ve been out there, Doc. It’s not all games and lollipops. I get why people would prefer the comfort and safety of a place like Gaffney.”

Amy gave him a surprised look before going back to cleaning her hands in a bowl. “That’s ironic, coming from you.”

“Why?”

“You seem like the kind that prefers to be out there than in a place like this.”

“I do.”

“So what are you doing in here?”

“Trying not to die.”

He felt good. He didn’t know why, but it was as if he’d woken up from a long sleep and every part of him was refreshed. Sitting up on the cot wasn’t too much trouble except for the pain vibrating from his midsection and almost the entire left side of his body. All Smith had to do was glance in those directions to know why: He was wearing a hospital gown, but it didn’t do anything to hide the bandages underneath, from his thigh all the way up his side, to his jaw and cheek.

“You want a mirror?” Amy asked.

Smith shook his head. “No.”

“Good choice.”

He smiled. He didn’t have any illusions that he was a mess.

But he was also still alive, if just barely. And for now, just barely was good enough.

“They came to see you,” Amy said. She was cleaning up a counter with a rag.

“Who?”

“The mother and son.”

“Oh.”

Amy glanced down at her watch. “Mary said she’d come back in an hour to see how you were doing.”

“Are they okay? The boy?”

“Everyone’s fine, including the boy.” Amy stopped cleaning the counter to look back at him. “The Judge’s dead.”

“I know. I shot him.”

The doctor grinned. “I figured that.”

“What happened after?”

“The others packed up and left in the morning. They took as much as they could carry with them. The ranch, as far as I know, is empty; all the horses are gone. Roger and his people showed up later. Everyone who’s still here, wants to be here.”

“Including you,” Smith said, swinging his legs off the cot to test his body. Just moving should have hurt, but it didn’t. He wondered what kind of painkillers Amy had given him and if she had more available.

“Including me,” Amy said, nodding.

“The ranch…”

“What about it?”

“There was a ghoul there.”

“There was more than a ghoul in that place.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know the exact number, but more than one. That place draws nightcrawlers every now and then. No one knows why. They just seem to find their way there. Sometimes more than one at a time.”

No kidding, Smith thought, rubbing his legs to get the blood flowing again.

“Mary and Aaron are staying too, by the way,” Amy said.

Smith looked up at her. “They’re staying?”

“Looks like it. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You staying, too?”

Smith shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“They seem to like you.”

“Do they?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s good to know.”

“Is it?”

Smith smiled. “Of course.”

“Ah,” the doctor said, but Smith didn’t think she was convinced. “Lay back down. It’ll be a few more days before you’re ready to walk around Gaffney on your own power.”

“Sure thing, Doc,” Smith said, and did just that, lying back down.

“Doc?” a voice said from the front of the clinic, on the other side of the curtain that separated the areas. “You around here, Doc?”

“Back here,” Amy said.

“We could use some help.”

“I’ll be right there.” Amy walked across the room, but not before glancing in Smith’s direction. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Where would I go?” Smith said.

Amy stopped at the curtain and looked over at him again. “I can’t believe you did that.”

“Did what?”

“Kill the Judge.”

“Which part’s tripping you up?”

“You shot him.”

“And?”

“That’s all it took? A guy with a gun is all it took to end a man like the Judge’s hold over Gaffney?”

“Why? Did you think it’d take more than that?”

She shrugged. “Sort of.”

“That’s all it usually takes, Doc. A guy with a gun. I just happen to be that guy this time.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Doc?” a voice called from the other side of the curtain.

“Coming,” Amy said, before leaving Smith alone in the back of the clinic. “What happened?” he heard Amy ask someone.

“We were at the ranch, cleaning the place out, when she fell off her horse; might have broken her hand,” a familiar female voice said. It sounded like Gramps, but Smith couldn’t be sure.

Smith sat back up, then climbed off the cot and looked around. It took him about twenty seconds longer than it should have to find his clothes, piled up on a counter at the back of the room. They weren’t the same ones he’d worn when he confronted the Judge; Smith knew that because they weren’t covered in blood. But they were men’s clothes and his size. He didn’t think Amy would bother trying to find new clothes for him, so it was probably Mary.

Mary…

He thought about her as he pulled the clothes on, doing his best not to make a sound as his side began to ache. He kept expecting Amy to return and chastise him, but she was apparently too busy with her new patients. Smith was pretty sure one of them was Gramps from the sound of the voice.

“How did she fall?” Amy was asking.

“I guess she’s not good at riding,” the person who may or may not have been Gramps said.

“I guess not,” Amy said.

Smith searched for and found bottles of painkillers in a cabinet. He pocketed a couple and picked up his gun belt and cinched it tight. That was a mistake, and he grimaced slightly from the pain. He found a go-bag in a closet and filled it with bandages, bottles of water, and some bread and sausages in a box with the word Doc written on the lid. Amy’s lunch, maybe.

Mine, now.

He opened the back door and slipped out, and blinked underneath the harsh sunlight. He could see and hear people on the street to his left, so Smith turned right and moved through the back alleys of Gaffney. He was familiar with the turns, having taken them previously. They looked slightly different in the daylight, but it wasn’t too hard to find the edge of town.

Smith thought about Mary and Aaron, and why he was leaving them behind. Mary, especially. He’d liked kissing her, liked having someone beside him as he recuperated from his wounds. And she was one hell of a beautiful woman. He could have done much worse, that was for goddamn sure.

So why was he leaving her? Was it the boy? Was it the idea of having an instant family that was making him run? Or was it just the commitment that was needed? Was he terrified of having someone depending on him? Of having to constantly worry about another life—or two—besides his own?

Then he thought about Blake, and the reasons were as plain as day.

He was almost out of Gaffney when he saw a pair of horses tied to a streetlight, outside some kind of convention hall. Smith could hear voices coming from inside the big building but couldn’t see the speakers.

One of the horses looked familiar. It was the same Chestnut he’d ridden into town one night ago. The animal looked up and snickered as he walked toward it.

“You miss me?” Smith asked.

The horse looked away and shuffled its feet.

Guess not, Smith thought as he untied the horse from the streetlight, then walked it out of town.

He climbed into the saddle about ten yards later, then turned the Chestnut north.

“Ever been to Canada?” he asked the animal.

The horse didn’t reply but did respond when he tapped its flanks with his boots. It quickly picked up pace and was in a full trot out of Gaffney a few seconds later, apparently just as anxious to get the hell out of town and back into the open countryside as him.

Then they were in the fields, with nothing between them and whatever was out there but clear blue skies and wide-open grass. The road was visible to his left, but Smith angled the Chestnut away from it.

His body ached and his wounds throbbed, but he closed his eyes and sucked in the clean air.

Smith smiled and rode on.