Tokens: A Post-Apocalyptic Revenge Horror/Thriller
Author: Sam Sisavath
Date: 2020-07-25 00:00:00+00:00
Description: TRAVEL THE POST-PURGE ROADS AT YOUR OWN RISK. Despite the odds being stacked against her, Ana has saved her little sister, and now all that remains is to return home. Except she can't do that just yet, because Wash—the man who helped her every step of the way—is still out there, chasing a grudge that will likely end with him dead. With her sister safe, Ana goes in search of Wash, determined to help him whether he wants it or not. But the road to Wash is filled with clear and hidden dangers, where good and bad guys aren't so easy to tell apart. A post-Purge world is no place for a man to travel
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Press

Tokens

Copyright © 2018 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

Cover Art by Deranged Doctor Design

Contents

Books in the After the Purge Series

Also by Sam Sisavath

About Tokens (Vendetta Part 2)

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

A Word From the Author

Books in the After the Purge Series

The “Vendetta” Storyline

Requiem

Tokens

Remains

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

The Allie Krycek Vigilante Series

Hunter/Prey

Saint/Sinner

Finders/Keepers

The Red Sky Conspiracy Series

Most Wanted

The Devil You Know

About Tokens (Vendetta Part 2)

TRAVEL THE POST-PURGE ROADS AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Despite the odds being stacked against her, Ana has saved her little sister, and now all that remains is to return home. Except she can’t do that just yet, because Wash—the man who helped her every step of the way—is still out there, chasing a grudge that will likely end with him dead.

With her sister safe, Ana goes in search of Wash, determined to help him whether he wants it or not. But the road to Wash is filled with clear and hidden dangers, where good and bad guys aren’t so easy to tell apart.

A post-Purge world is no place for a man to travel alone, much less a woman. It’s a good thing that Ana is used to being underestimated. But even she will find her resolve tested—and her survival instincts stretched to the max.

Tokens is the second book in the After The Purge: Vendetta storyline, set in a dangerous post-apocalyptic world where Man has begun to reassert itself as the most dangerous species.

One

At first she only thought about killing the man, but was dead certain she was going to do it by the time they sat down for dinner.

Two large smallmouth bass, steam still rising from their gutted stomachs, and two bowls of salad from the family’s garden were spread out before her. The mother was putting a generous portion of greens on Ana’s plate, while Ana herself looked across the table at the man she was going to kill, deciding the neck would be the best place to strike. It would be quick and efficient, if a little bloody.

You don’t have to do this, a voice from somewhere in the back of her mind said. They’re not Emily.

She ignored the voice and thought about the blood. She wished there wasn’t always so much blood, but there was no way around that part. And there should be a lot of blood when you took someone’s life, she thought. The finality of it—the taking away of everything they had and everything they would ever have—shouldn’t be clean and easy. It should leave a lasting impact. On them, on those around them, and on her.

So be it.

He was smiling at her as his wife scooped another large helping of salad and placed it on one of their children’s plates. The man, Mark, had introduced the girls—two of them—as his, but Ana had her doubts. The Purge made a lot of kids orphans, and both girls were too old to have been born after the monsters slithered back into the shadows in the wake of The Walk Out. The one girl sitting to Ana’s right was about thirteen, and the one to her left was around ten. Besides, they looked nothing like their “dad,” or their “mother,” for that matter.

The woman’s name was Sarah, and she smiled the entire time she went around the long—a little too long, actually—table spooning salads onto their plates. She looked happy, and there was noticeable energy in her step. She’d mentioned earlier that she missed having an adult woman to talk to, that it had been a while since they’d had company.

“Nebraska is so far away,” Sarah was saying as she circled back to Mark’s plate. “And you rode all the way down here by yourself?”

“I wasn’t always by myself,” Ana said.

“That’s right. You said you were looking for someone. What was his name again?”

“Wash.”

“Wash. What a strange name.”

“It’s short for Washington.”

“Oh, of course. I was just thinking it might be short for Washington.”

Sarah put the bowl down and took her seat between her husband and Carol, the thirteen-something-year-old. Mark had insisted Ana take the chair across from him as their guest of honor. Sarah had agreed almost right away. Sarah seemed to agree very readily to all of Mark’s suggestions.

Candlelight flickered between them, and Ana could just barely make out Kerry’s face to the right of her. The ten-something-year-old sat almost perfectly in the middle between Ana and her father, and directly across from Carol. Neither girls had looked in Ana’s direction since they sat down to eat, which was a lot different than earlier today when Ana first stumbled across them. She would have ridden her horse right past the place if she hadn’t heard laughter coming from the stream nearby where the two girls were washing clothes and bathing.

She didn’t see any hints of those two carefree girls sitting between her and Mark now. They hardly looked like they were even there.

The only man in the room picked up his fork and beamed across the table at Ana. “You like fish?”

“I love fish,” Ana said. “Especially when they’re bigger than my thigh.”

Mark chuckled. “They grow big around here. But I’m guessing they grow big everywhere else now, too. Not many people left to fish them. Which is good news for us. Even after Sarah here gets too old to tend that garden of hers, we’ll always have fish.”

“I’m not that old, sweetheart,” Sarah said.

“No, but you’re getting there,” Mark said, and reached over and pinched his wife on the arm.

Sarah smiled back at him. Or made an effort to.

The truth was, Sarah wasn’t that much older than Ana. The woman was either thirty or in her late twenties, even if she did look older. But then The Purge aged everyone, and people would say Ana herself looked older than her twenty-five years. Which was another reason Ana didn’t buy that Carol and Kerry were Sarah’s. They could very well be Mark’s, though, given his possible age range—early forties, maybe mid-forties?—but she didn’t think so. The man just didn’t look like a father.

Ana picked at white meat from the bass in front of her with a fork. The utensil was long and sharp and made of sterling silver; it was perfect for killing ghouls and would work just as well for killing men. It looked huge in her hand but comically small—almost like a plastic toy—clutched in Mark’s sausage-like fingers. The man was big.

Maybe too big, the voice in the back of her mind said.

No one’s ever too big, Ana thought.

Are you sure about that?

“Mi casa es su casa,” Mark was saying as he wolfed down a healthy piece of fish. “Eat up. You’ll need the strength if you’re going to keep chasing after this Wash guy. Who is he, by the way?”

“He’s a friend,” Ana said.

“Just a friend?”

“Just a friend.”

“I don’t believe that,” Mark said.

I don’t care what you believe, she thought, but smiled and said, “He’s just a friend.”

The bass had looked appetizing earlier but revealed a slightly undercooked pinkish belly when a chunk of meat was finally on her plate. Of course, it could have been the low lights from the candles on the table and along the walls. She had a feeling Mark’s family didn’t waste too many candles on themselves but had done so tonight because of her.

Mark and his “family” lived in a cottage with two bedrooms in the back—one for the girls and one for him and Sarah. The dining room was part of the kitchen, with a great room behind Ana. Nightfall had brought down wooden blocks over the windows, along with two heavy bars placed over the thick door. All the extra security meant little natural lighting inside the building, and they were dining by candlelight as a result.

“So why’s he running away from you?” Mark was asking her. “A pretty thing like you.”

She poked at the fish and put some of it in her mouth and made the effort to swallow it down. “He’s not. Running away from me.”

“But you’re chasing him.”

“I’m looking for him.”

“There’s a difference?”

“It depends on how you look at it.”

“Sounds a little complicated, that’s all,” Mark said, before spearing himself another big chunk of fish. “What’s the matter? Fish not good?”

“It’s fine.”

“But you’re not eating.”

“I guess I’m not as hungry as I thought.”

Mark grunted. “It’s a little gamey, isn’t it? She didn’t clean it thoroughly enough.” He glared at Sarah even as he talked to Ana. “When we first met, she couldn’t even gut a fish. I had to teach her. I taught all three of them how to cook and fish and even wash clothes. Can you believe that? They didn’t even know how to wash clothes without machines.”

“But you did?” Ana asked.

“I learned when I was a kid. You had to, living out here.”

“You’ve lived out here before? Even before everything?”

Mark nodded and refocused his attention on her. Ana preferred that, if just to spare Sarah that awful judgmental gaze of his. The girls hadn’t glanced up once from their food. She could sense the fear coming from them.

And the question she’d been asking herself, ever since she spied the girls at the stream: “What if one of them was Emily?”

It’s not always about Emily, the voice in the back of her mind said.

“That’s how I survived,” Mark was saying. “I found this place five years ago during that whole mess. I fixed it up, made it respectable. They tried to get in more than once over the years, let me tell you, but they never got in. I could have kept going out here for decades, even if that whole Walk Out thing never happened.”

“You mean you, Sarah, and the girls could have kept going out here for decades,” Ana said.

Mark nodded and speared another chunk of fish meat. “That’s what I meant.” Then, without missing a beat, “You should take a break from the road. You look tired.”

“Do I?”

“I think so. What do you think, Sarah?”

Sarah looked across the table and pursed her lips. “Yes, I think so, too.”

“See?” Mark said.

“What do the girls think?” Ana asked.

But the girls said nothing. If they had even heard Ana ask the question in the first place. Neither one looked up from their plates of salad. Ana wondered if they’d eaten any kind of meat recently, given how thin they both looked. All three women, in fact, were slightly undernourished, but the girls in particular. She had noticed it right away when she stumbled across them in the stream while they were half-naked.

“They don’t talk much,” Mark said to her. “We don’t get a lot of guests out here, so they haven’t had much practice.”

“You’re their father?” Ana asked.

“Of course,” Mark said, and smiled. “Why would you ask that?”

Ana shrugged. “I’ve met a lot of impromptu families since The Purge. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Who says there was?”

“Do you have family?” Sarah asked.

“A sister,” Ana said.

“Does she know you’re out here chasing after a guy?” Mark asked.

Ana narrowed her eyes at him. He flashed her a mischievous grin in return, a clear indication he had gotten what he wanted.

“Yes, she does,” Ana said.

“How does she feel about that?” Mark asked.

“She’s fine with it.”

“Is she?”

“I’m her big sister. She knows I wouldn’t do something stupid, like chase after a guy.”

“And yet here you are…”

“Looking for someone. There’s a big difference.”

“Is there?”

“Yes.”

Mark made a half-hearted shrug before leaning forward and going for another generous portion of fish. “If you say so.”

“What about you?” Ana asked.

“What about me?” Mark said as he slipped the bass into his mouth and sucked on the fork a little longer than necessary while pulling it back out.

“You have family out there?”

“Out there? Nope. Just what you see here.”

“But they’re not really your family, are they?”

One of Mark’s eyebrows lifted at about the same time Sarah stiffened to his right. Carol, sitting next to Sarah, also froze while in mid-reach for her plate. Ana couldn’t tell if Kerry had reacted, because her eyes were glued to Mark and the left side of the table.

“What did you just say?” Mark asked. He lowered his fork to the table, but his fingers were clutching its long handle as if it were a knife.

“You heard me,” Ana said.

“I already told you—”

“Bullshit. I know Sarah’s not your wife. Not that there’s anything wrong with two people living together. But this isn’t that, is it? Sarah doesn’t want to be here. Neither do the girls. At least, not with you.”

Mark’s eyes shifted from Ana to Sarah, the unspoken question on his face clear as day (“What did you tell her?”) before moving to Carol, and finally over to Kerry.

This time, Ana was able to watch Kerry’s reaction. The girl had put down her fork and slipped both hands down to her lap. Her eyes had never wavered from the white cloth that covered the long, rectangular table.

“I saw their bruises when they were bathing in the stream,” Ana said as she stared across at Mark. “I saw the old scars that haven’t healed. The kind you don’t get from falling out of bed or working around a garden. The kind someone has to put on you. Deliberately. Over and over. Did you do that, Mark? You put those bruises on these girls? Am I going to find them on Sarah, too?”

Sarah quickly glanced over at Mark, who held his hand up to silence her.

“I took you in and gave you a place at my table,” Mark said. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Ana. “And this is how you thank me?”

Ana could barely contain her smirk. “I’ve met plenty of guys like you, Mark. You don’t do anything from the kindness of your heart. You let me in because you wanted something from me. You probably think you’re charming, too. Can I be honest? You’re not.” She smiled. “You’re not even close to charming. We’re talking about a Grand Canyon-size difference between where you think you are and where you actually are.”

Mark stood up from his chair. “Get out.”

“Excuse me?”

“Get out of my house.”

“What happened to mi casa es su casa?”

“That ship’s sailed, darling.”

But Ana didn’t get up from her chair. Instead, she leaned back and continued to look across the table at Mark. “I don’t think I will.”

“What?”

Ana almost laughed at the expression on his face. He wasn’t expecting that reply, apparently.

“I said, I don’t think I’ll leave,” Ana said. “At least, not until morning. It’s dark out there. Bad things happen to people at night.”

“That’s not my fucking problem,” Mark said. He pushed his chair back and began walking around the table.

Kerry physically shrank as he walked past her. Sarah and Carol remained seated, but both women were looking from Mark to Ana and back again. Ana couldn’t be sure what she was seeing on their faces.

Was it fear? Confusion?

Hope?

God, let me be right about this. Please, let me be right about this.

“Get up,” Mark said.

“I don’t think I’ll do that, either,” Ana said.

“I said, get up!”

Then he was there and reaching for her. But she took some comfort in the fact that he had walked right past the big Henry rifle hanging on the wall, which he could have easily grabbed. Maybe he thought he didn’t need it because of his size. He was so much bigger than her—bigger than all of them by a huge margin—that when he grabbed her elbow and jerked her out of the chair, she thought her entire arm was going to pop out of its socket.

Fortunately, it didn’t, mostly because she was readying herself for it and there was just a stabbing pain instead of dislocation.

He began pulling her toward the door, which was awkward because he was dragging her by the right arm while she was still turned to face the table.

“You bitch. You ungrateful bitch,” he spat out.

“Mark, please, don’t do this,” Sarah said from behind them.

Mark stopped and whirled around and glared at the other woman. “Don’t.”

Sarah didn’t. At that moment, Ana wasn’t sure if the older woman remembered what else she was going to say.

Instead, Sarah looked back down at her plate. As did the two girls.

Mark turned and continued dragging Ana toward the door. “Some people just have to learn the hard way. But they learn. They always learn.”

“Is that what you did to them?” Ana asked. “You taught them lessons, Mark?”

“You’re damn right I did. You wouldn’t believe how mouthy they were in the beginning. The amount of back talk, the ungratefulness—”

He would have kept going if she hadn’t swung backward with her left hand, her fingers balled into a fist, and struck him in the right ear. Ana was shocked she had actually landed where she intended because of her off-balance stance. Her intention was just to bother him enough to loosen his grip on her right arm so she could pull it free.

Instead, she hit him in the ear and he staggered, at the same time reflexively letting go of her right arm.

She stumbled back as he spun on her, his face turning a furious red color. “You bitch!”

“You said that already,” Ana said. Her voice was calm. She wasn’t sure why it was so calm, but it always was when she found herself in these situations. It was a survival instinct, something she’d honed since The Purge days. Fear led to chaos, which led to indecision, which led to death. She’d seen it happen to so many people.

Mark’s face contorted as if he was slowly, slowly realizing she wasn’t who she had let him think she was. “Who the hell are you?”

“I already told you,” Ana said.

“You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You’re lying!” he shouted, even as he lunged at her.

She didn’t move. She wanted to, desperately—to leap out of the path of his outstretched meaty fingers. But she needed him to come to her, so she didn’t budge an inch. He was too big, with too large of a reach, and if he knew what she was going to do next, he would have had a good to great chance of stopping her.

But he didn’t know what she had planned, or what she had hidden in the left sleeve of her jacket, until it was too late. Until he was almost on top of her and there was no turning back for either one of them.

Ana thought, God, let me be right. Please, let me be right about this as the cold handle of the knife fell into her warm right palm.

Mark saw all five inches of the silver that made up the blade under the dim candlelight, and he stopped moving forward, but it was too late. She made up the short distance that still remained between them, and his eyes were widening when she stabbed him in the side of the neck.

He made a sound like a pig squealing, but she didn’t stop punching the knife into him—again and again—until he was on the floor, and she was crouched over him and there was blood everywhere.

She was ready for that, though, because there was always blood.

There was always so much blood…

Two

“You killed him.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

Sarah didn’t reply. Not right away.

Finally, the older woman said, “You weren’t even scared.”

“I was,” Ana said.

“You didn’t look scared.”

I hide it well, Ana thought, but she said, “Believe me, I was. I’d be crazy not to be against a man his size.”

“You didn’t look scared,” Sarah said again.

Ana didn’t respond the second time.

Instead, she put her hands on her hips and looked over at the Tennessee Walker as it chewed on some grass nearby. The chestnut-colored horse was waiting for her this morning when she stepped outside the cottage, having somehow escaped from the barn next door where he’d been kept overnight. The animal had brought her all the way from Kanter 11 in Kansas and would have kept carrying her down south to Texas if she hadn’t left the road to evade nightfall.

Behind her, Sarah had finished filling up the hole and laid down the shovel to sit in the shade of a large elm tree. They were close enough to the house that Ana could smell the smoke coming from its chimney. By now, Carol and Kerry would have finished wiping the floorboards. It had been nearly two hours since Ana and Sarah dragged the body outside using a rug and buried it out here, about a football field away. Ana was prepared to go farther than that, but Sarah had said it was far enough.

Sarah picked up a canteen from the ground now and took a drink before holding it out to her. The older woman looked so different from yesterday—younger, more vibrant, despite the gruesome task they’d had to perform with Mark’s body.

I wasn’t wrong. Thank God I wasn’t wrong.

Ana walked over and took the canteen. Both of her palms hurt, but it could have been worse if Sarah hadn’t given her gloves to dig with. Like the other woman, her clothes were covered in fresh dirt and specks of Mark’s dry blood. She made a mental note to change shirts and pants after they were done.

Ana sat down next to the other woman and handed the canteen back. She leaned against the tree trunk, the rough bark pricking against her back through her jacket. It was a nice, cool morning, and that helped with the fatigue. She hadn’t felt this tired all night while waiting for sunlight to bury Mark’s body; but then, stabbing a man to death didn’t take nearly as much effort as dragging him outside and digging a hole big and deep enough to hide the crime.

“How did you know?” Sarah asked.

“About what?”

“What he was doing to us.”

“I saw the girls at the stream earlier. Then there was the way you guys acted around him. I know the signs, Sarah. I’ve seen it before. Too many times to count.”

“You must think I’m a coward.”

“No, I don’t.”

“I let him get away with it. Doing things to me, to the girls…”

“He was a big man.”

“I tried, you know. That rifle in the house? The first month he brought me here, I finally grabbed it and tried to kill him.”

“What happened?”

“I missed, and he beat me. I couldn’t walk for a week. Poor Carol had to do all the work around the house. After that…” The older woman caressed fresh bruises along her left arm. Ana hadn’t seen it yesterday or earlier this morning, but they had been there the entire time. “He hasn’t touched the girls. I mean, not in the other way. As long as I kept him away from them…”

“You said he brought you guys here?”

Sarah nodded. “At first, there was just the two of us. Carol and me. Then, two years ago, he showed up with Kerry. She doesn’t remember much of what happened, how he…met her. You think it’s possible she doesn’t remember?”

“You can forget a lot of things if you want to badly enough. Two years ago, she would have been eight. It might be better for her if you don’t make her relive it.”

“I know. That’s why Carol and I haven’t tried to get her to talk about it. It’s done. It’s over with. There’s nothing we can do about it now.”

Ana stared at a wisp of lazy smoke in the near distance. “Will they be all right?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah said.

“What about you?”

Sarah bit her bottom lip but didn’t answer.

“You don’t have to stay here,” Ana said. “There are a couple of towns not far from here that would take you in. You and the girls. Tell them they’re your daughters.”

“I’m not their mother. Mark wasn’t their father, either, but you already know that.”

“No one’s going to care as long as both Carol and Kerry keep it to themselves. Traditional families are overrated, anyway.”

Sarah remained quiet. She seemed to be thinking about it, even as she wiped at dirt and sweat on her forehead with an equally dirty and sweat-covered palm.

Finally, she said, “I’ll think about it. Ask them what they want to do.”

Ana nodded but didn’t add anything. She glanced down at her watch instead.

Almost ten in the morning. She should have been on the road by now, heading south. There was no telling how far Wash had gotten since abandoning her in Kanter 11 three days ago.

You idiot. When I find you, I’m going to kick your ass for that.

“Is it true?” Sarah said after a while.

“Is what true?”

“What you told us about following a friend down south.”

Ana nodded. “Yeah.”

“He must be a good friend.”

“Maybe…” Then, when Sarah gave her a curious look, “I mean, yeah, he’s a good friend. But that’s not why I’m trying to find him.”

“So why are you?”

“I owe him.”

“What did he do?”

“He saved my life. And my sister’s.”

“Where is she now? Your sister?”

“Waiting for me in Kansas. When I’m done down here, I’ll go back to her, and we’ll go home.”

“After you’ve found your friend in Texas.”

Ana nodded.

“The Lone Star State is a big place,” Sarah said.

Ana sighed. “So people keep telling me.”

“Because it’s true.”

“I know.”

They didn’t say anything after that. Instead, they sat silently under the morning shade of the tree and took turns drinking from the canteen until they had regained enough strength to stand up and walk back to the cottage.

Halfway there, Ana said, “I could use some supplies.”

“Anything,” Sarah said. “Texas is still far away. If we have what you need, they’re yours…”

* * *

She left the three women with the same advice she had given Sarah earlier: Stay, or leave the cottage and head north toward one of the two nearby towns that she had passed yesterday. Both would have welcomed them in.

“We’ll think about it,” Sarah said as Ana climbed into the Tennessee Walker’s saddle.

“They’re good people,” Ana said. “You could make a good life far from here. All three of you.”

Sarah glanced back at the cottage. “It has bad memories, but it has some good ones, too. We helped build it. It wasn’t just his. It was ours, too, and abandoning it now would be almost like giving in to him again.”

“Are you sure?” Ana asked, looking from Sarah to the two girls.

Carol, standing slightly behind Sarah, nodded. Kerry, her face buried in the older girl’s chest, didn’t say anything.

“Thank you,” Sarah said, handing another satchel to Ana. “I wish you’d let me give you more.”

“You’re going to need some of them, too,” Ana said. “Besides, there are other towns along the way where I can trade for goods when I need them.”

“What about his guns?”

“I don’t need guns.”

“It’s dangerous out there.”

“It’s more dangerous for someone carrying firearms.” Ana smiled. “Trust me. I’ve been out there for a while now. I know how it works.” Ana turned her horse around but paused briefly before looking back to Sarah and the girls. “Think about what I said. This place…it might not be worth keeping.”

“We will,” Sarah said, and nodded. “I promise.”

Ana wasn’t sure if she believed the other woman, but it wasn’t her job to make them do something they didn’t want to. Wasn’t that why she had done what she did? So they could make their own choices?

She glanced back at them one final time and saw Sarah embracing the girls before leading them to the house. Ana didn’t know what was going to happen to them, and she wished she had the time to find out.

But she didn’t, because Wash was out there, either already in Texas by now or damned close, and he was only getting farther away from her.

* * *

She picked up where she left off, guiding the Walker back onto the same flat four-lane state highway she had been using since crossing the Kansas-Oklahoma border and pointing the horse south. The road had allowed her to go around Oklahoma City and all the other surrounding midsize cities, all the while guaranteeing that it would take her into Texas as long as she stayed on it.

All the while, the conversation she’d had with Wash about the cities always echoed in the back of her mind:

“They’re not happy places, Ana,” he had said. “Best to avoid them at all costs, if possible.”

She hadn’t asked for details, but she’d heard stories. A lot of them were the stuff of nightmares.

The chances that Wash had taken the same route as the one she was on now to his eventual destination were good, but not great. There were so many other ways into the Lone Star State from Kanter 11. And if he knew she might be following him down south, he might have gone out of his way to make sure she couldn’t find him easily.

And if you actually did that, Wash, then you’re a real asshat.

She’d hoped he might have stopped in some of the towns that she’d run across, but they hadn’t seen him. And it would have been easy to recognize Wash—a young slayer, the youngest she’d run across by far—traveling alone. Slayers always traveled in pairs, and they were almost always older men. Harder, more grizzled, and dangerous looking. Wash didn’t have the harder or the more grizzled part down, but he was certainly dangerous. Mathison had found that out the hard way.

May you burn in hell, Mathison.

The sun was in her eyes, and she was riding the Walker at a steady trot, with Emily’s voice in her head:

“How are you going to find him?” her little sister had asked before they parted ways.

“I don’t know,” Ana had answered truthfully. “But I know he’s going to Texas.”

“Texas is a big state, Annie. If you don’t know where he’s going exactly, how are you going to find him?”

“I don’t know, Em, but I have to try. He saved our lives. I owe him. We owe him.”

“Which is why I should be coming with you.”

“No,” Ana had said.

Emily had argued, of course, but in the end, she’d relented.

But her little sister was also right, just as Sarah had been right. Texas was a big state. How was she going to find one man in all that land? She had never been to Texas before, but everyone knew it was massive. What was that saying? Something about everything being bigger in Texas?

They’re both right. How the hell am I going to find him down there?

She let out a sigh. At least she had replenished her supplies and wouldn’t have to stop for more the rest of the way unless she wanted to. If she pushed the horse, there was a good chance she could be in the next state in forty-eight hours or so.

And then what?

She didn’t have a good answer, but she’d figure it out when she crossed that bridge.

* * *

She rode for two hours straight before finally stopping to give the Walker a rest next to a scrub tree, the first shade she’d come across in miles. Ana used the opportunity to dip into her freshly-refilled nonperishables and scanned the countryside around her for signs of…something.

The part of Oklahoma she found herself in was a lot of flatlands and mountains in the distance, and she hadn’t seen anything that looked like woods since she left Sarah and the girls behind. Out here, she thought she could spot another living person a mile away with the naked eye.

She took out a map Marie from Kanter 11 had given her and scanned the area, looking for prominent landmarks. It was difficult trying to think like a slayer, especially one that didn’t exactly act like one.

Where are you, Wash? Where are you going?

That was the thing about Wash that stuck with her: How unslayer-like he was. And at the same time, how so slayer-like. It was an odd contradiction, but then the man was a bit of an oddity. A slayer with no bite marks, nothing to indicate he’d ever been fed on by ghouls during The Purge, or since. Maybe that was what intrigued her most about Wash. That, and the fact that he had saved her and Emily’s life.

“Goddammit, Wash,” she said out loud before folding up the map and putting it away.

She was zipping up the backpack when the Walker, standing ten yards in front of her while dining on a thick patch of green grass, lifted his head and let out a loud, spontaneous whinny.

“What?” Ana said.

She turned around in the direction the horse was staring when she finally heard it.

It was hard to make out at first—at least to her human ears—but it slowly gained in volume until it became impossible to ignore.

A car, coming toward her.

Three

It was hard to miss and even harder to not know what it was. Ana was old enough to remember when everyone had a car (or two) and the roads were filled with them. The streets were still littered with them if you ventured around the cities and bigger towns, but finding one that worked and the fuel for it was another matter.

This one, coming up the road toward her now, was definitely still working.

Running cars were rare, but she’d seen her share since The Walk Out. She’d heard stories about survivors getting refineries back up and running, but she’d never actually seen one herself. She’d also heard tales about airplanes still roaming the skies, but she’d never seen those in person, either.

Ana slipped both backpack straps over her shoulders, then unzipped her jacket to make it more obvious she wasn’t wearing a gun belt or had a weapon in her front waistband. Of course, she could have had one behind her back (even though she didn’t), but showing that she was unarmed from the front was usually enough to put most people at ease.

Her first instincts were to avoid the car and let it pass, but that ship had already sailed. The Tennessee Walker was grazing on grass a few yards from the shoulder of the road and would have been easy to spot by the approaching vehicle’s occupant (or occupants). As they got closer, they would see the saddle, followed by the supply bags draped over it. Those things, along with the reins, would be dead giveaways that the horse had an owner.

So Ana stepped away from the skinny tree that had been providing her some shelter from the sun and toward the side of the road. She lifted one hand to shield her eyes as the car grew louder as it neared.

Even with the sun in her eyes, she could make out a white truck with a shiny front grill moving smoothly down the road. She thought she could just make out two people in the front seats, with a third in the back, standing up and peering over the cab.

Ana lifted a hand and waved when the truck began to slow down. It was more cream than white, and there were big FORD letters stenciled across the front grill. It had big black tires and bugs splattered across the front windshield and hood. There were two figures in the front and definitely a third in the back.

The Walker was starting to slowly move away from the road when Ana walked over and took hold of the reins before he could get spooked and run off. The smart horses, like the smart humans these days, knew enough to be wary of humans. If Ana had any doubts about that, the last few weeks were a good reminder.

The truck pulled up beside her and stopped. The engine remained running as the man in the front passenger seat rolled down his window to look out at her, while the one in the back did likewise. The driver kept his hands on the steering wheel, but he too glanced in Ana’s direction.

Slayers, she thought almost right away.

“Where you headed?” the one in the front passenger seat asked. He was older than the other two by at least a decade. Short white hair and blue eyes, and she had no doubts the lines on his face, along with the crow’s feet, came with plenty of hard years.

But it was the eyes she focused on. They were dangerous eyes, but her instincts—and years of experience judging people, and men in particular—told her they weren’t the same “danger” that she had seen almost right away in Mark.

The same was true for the driver. Short dark hair and brown eyes, and he probably stared at her a few seconds too long. As with the older man, she saw danger in those eyes, but like his front seat companion, it wasn’t the kind that put her immediately on high alert. She wasn’t a fan of the overlong staring, though.

The one in the back was younger than the other two by a long stretch. Short blond hair and light brown eyes. He didn’t say anything as he leaned against the dirty cab roof and watched her curiously, as if he’d never seen another person before. That, or a woman. There was a backseat in the truck, and though there were supply packs on it, there was still enough space left that the kid didn’t need to be outside in the cold wind.

“Texas,” Ana said, focusing on the front seat passenger.

“Lucky you, that’s also where we’re headed,” the older man said. “I’m Chuck. This is Randall. The young ’un in the back’s Shelby.”

“Hey,” the one named Shelby said.

Shelby reminded her of Wash. That is, if Wash wasn’t weighed down by his past. Even now, as she recalled everything he had told her—and all the things he hadn’t said but she had learned anyway through other means—it struck her just what a tortured soul Wash was. Maybe, in some ways, that was what drew her to him—and still did, even if she didn’t want to admit it.

She pushed the thoughts of Wash away and nodded back at Shelby before looking across Chuck at the driver, Randall. “Where in Texas?”

“Dunno, we’ll figure it out when we get there,” Randall said. “Wanna come with?”

“What about my horse?”

“You don’t need a horse when you got a Ford.”

“Texas is at least two more full days’ ride away,” Chuck said. “We can get there before the end of the day.”

“What do you want in return for the ride?” Ana asked.

“Company.”

Ana smiled. “I don’t do company.”

“Not that kind of company.”

“Unless you’re offering,” Randall added.

“Just friendly company,” Chuck said. “You can only ride with two guys for so long before you want to pluck out your eyes. That’s why Shelby’s back there.”

“Why’s that?” Ana asked, looking over at Shelby.

“He’s a once-in-a-monther,” Randall said.

“Once-in-a-monther?”

“He thinks showering once a month is more than enough,” Chuck said.

“Who needs to shower more than once a month?” Shelby asked.

“What about the two of you?” Ana asked, turning back to the driver and his passenger.

“At least once a week,” Randall said. “Or bi-weekly.”

Chuck sighed. “Like I said. I could use better company. A man can only take so much, you know?”

* * *

The Ford was spacious up front but even more so in the back. The slayers had stacked supply packs on the floors and across the seats, but even after shifting things around, there was still plenty of space for Ana and her own bags. She’d hated to leave the horse behind, but it was difficult to make the argument that the animal could get her to Texas faster than a truck. And right now, it was all about catching up to Wash. Besides, the fact that she was in the company of slayers was a plus for a couple of other reasons, one of which was that slayers knew one another and traded information.

Unfortunately, just because they were slayers and knew others in the trade, didn’t mean they knew all of them.

“Never met him,” Chuck said when she asked the question. “You said his name’s Wash? Short for Washington?”

“Yeah,” Ana said. “The last time I saw him, he was headed to Texas on a horse.”

“The name doesn’t ring any bells, but that’s not unusual. There’s a lot of us running around out here. You wouldn’t think there would be so much work to do after The Walk Out, but you’d be wrong. And as long as the nightcrawlers are out there causing trouble, so are we.” He looked over at Randall. “What about you?”

Randall didn’t think about it for very long before shaking his head. “Name doesn’t ring any bells for me, either.” The driver glanced up at her reflection in the rearview mirror. “Where’s he worked besides Kansas?”

“From what he’s told me, he’s been all over the country,” Ana said. “But I never asked him for specifics.”

“But he’s definitely one of us? I mean, he’s part of the network?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure he’s a slayer?” Chuck asked, turning around slightly in his seat to look back at her.

“Without a doubt.” Ana nodded. “I know a slayer when I see one. He’s one of you,” she added, even as she thought, Even if he doesn’t look like you. But that’s probably something he doesn’t want me to go around spilling.

She remembered being locked in a basement dungeon with Wash, who had been shot and was half-dead at the time. She’d seen his body, seen the lack of scars that usually accompanied slayers. Even now, she noticed that Chuck and Randall wore their shirts with the collars up high and around their necks. Their arms were similarly hidden underneath long-sleeve jackets. Yes, it was cold outside the Ford, but she knew without a doubt that both men—and Shelby in the back—would be bundled up like that even during the hotter months. Every single slayer she’d ever crossed paths with carried the physical scars of The Purge on their bodies.

All of them, except for Wash.

Who are you, Wash? Who are you really?

In front of her, Chuck had turned back around in his seat. “Well, like I said, there’s lots of us running around out here. Not a surprise we’ve never run across him. Probably a bunch of other slayers we’ve never met, too.”

“It makes sense he’d be headed for Texas, though,” Randall said, looking over at Chuck when he said it.

“What do you mean?” Ana asked.

“We’re hearing stories about ramped-up nightcrawler activity down south,” Chuck said. “There was a big horde in Cordine City about a week back. The biggest single sighting of ghouls in a long time. Apparently they wrecked the place, left it in pieces, and killed everyone inside.”

“I’ve never heard of Cordine City.”

“Neither have we, but we heard about it through a good friend. But…”

“But what?”

“He heard it from someone else who heard it from someone else…”

“So you’re not sure it’s real.”

“There are always stories about large ghoul activity, and they always end up being one or two nightcrawlers making a mess of things when we get there. Hard to really trust it anymore.”

“Except this time…” Randall said but didn’t finish.

“Except this time what?” Ana pressed.

“It’s not just stories of ghouls, but bad shit with survivors, too,” Chuck said. “Something is happening down there in Texas, and it’s got a lot of people spooked. And if ghouls are involved, it could mean jobs.”

“So that’s why you’re heading south?”

“It’s what we do,” Chuck said. “Might be the same for your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“He sounded like your boyfriend,” Randall said.

Ana sighed. “He’s a friend, that’s all.” Then, hoping to steer the conversation away, “Where did you guys get all the gasoline?”

She had seen more than a dozen big red containers in the back with Shelby earlier. Chuck was right: they had plenty of gas to reach Texas.

“Some folks had a little ghoul problem,” Chuck said. “They paid us in gas.”

“And this truck,” Randall said. “It’s better than walking everywhere.”

Ana couldn’t disagree with that. It was also a lot more comfortable than the saddle of a big Tennessee Walker. Now all she had to do once she reached Texas was find Wash. What were the chances he would be heading to the same places as Chuck and Randall? But she knew one thing for certain: Wash wasn’t in Texas for the same reasons as the slayers sitting in the vehicle with her right now. He was there for something else. Something much more personal.

“Have you guys ever seen a blue-eyed ghoul with one eye?” Ana asked.

The question made the two slayers exchange a look before the older man turned around in his seat to stare back at her again.

“A one-eyed, blue-eyed ghoul?” Chuck said. “Did I hear you right?”

“Yeah. Have you ever seen one?” Ana asked.

“Seen one? I’ve never even heard of one.”

“I didn’t know that was even possible,” Randall said. Then, to Chuck, “Is that possible?”

Chuck shook his head but did so hesitantly. “I don’t think so, but... Hell if I know. I’ve seen a lot of things I didn’t think were possible in the last seven years. So what’s one more?”

“This involve that slayer friend of yours?” Randall asked her.

Ana nodded. “He’s hunting it.”

“And he thinks it’s in Texas?”

“Yes.”

“Hunh,” Chuck said. “That’s a new one.”

“You think it’s got anything to do with what’s going on down there?” Randall asked the older man.

Chuck shrugged. “Your guess’s as good as mine, kid.” He shook his head again. “A one-eyed, blue-eyed ghoul. Hunh. And I thought I’d seen or heard just about everything there was to be seen or heard.”

They drove in silence for a while after that, before Randall finally said, “So, this friend of yours. Washington, right?”

“Wash for short,” Ana said.

“You said he’s just a friend?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Just curious,” Randall said, but she caught those eyes of his looking back at her in the rearview mirror again.

Ana smiled back at him, because it was usually the right thing to do when a man gave you one of those looks. The other response would have turned him off—and at the same time usually turned him against you. Experience had taught her that it was always better to keep a man on your side and allow him to believe anything was possible as long as he played his cards right. When he stopped trying was when you lost him as an ally.

Sorry, Wash, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. Besides, it’s your damn fault for abandoning me back in Kanter 11, you asshat.

She was still thinking about Wash when there was a loud banging noise above her head.

“Shelby,” Randall said as he slowed down the truck before stopping completely in the middle of the empty road. There was no one, and not a single vehicle for miles in front or behind them.

Chuck powered down his window and leaned out. “What is it?”

Ana couldn’t see Shelby, but she could hear his voice from outside: “Nine o’clock, boss. I hear gunfire.”

Chuck pulled his head back in and looked past Randall. Ana followed Chuck’s gaze while Randall rolled down his own window.

They couldn’t see anything out there but flat countryside and mountains that looked almost opaque in the distance.

“He said gunshots?” Randall asked.

“That’s—” Chuck started to say but was interrupted by a pop!

Ana had been around enough gunfire to know what she was hearing, and so did the slayers in the car with her. The sound was faded but still noticeable enough that Shelby had heard them with the truck’s engine running, which meant they were coming from nearby.

“We should check it out,” Randall said, just as another pop! rang out.

“What about Texas?” Ana asked.

“Texas isn’t going anywhere, kid,” Chuck said before giving Randall a nod, and the Ford turned and drove off the road.

Four

It didn’t take them long to reach the source of the gunfire, but by the time they got there it was already over. There hadn’t been much of a struggle from the looks of it, and whoever had done the shooting was gone.

“Oh, man,” Shelby said next to her. “This is not good.”

That’s an understatement, Shelby, she thought, but didn’t feel like saying it out loud.

The two of them stood nearby while Chuck and Randall walked through the campsite. The slayers were armed, with Randall cradling a pump-action shotgun while Chuck only had an automatic pistol in a hip holster. Shelby had one of those semiautomatic rifles slung over one shoulder, and like the other two, wore a gun belt with a machete in a sheath along his left hip. But as well-armed as the slayers were, Ana noticed the tentative steps they took as they explored the area. She didn’t blame them.

Ana looked back at the bodies. There were four of them—two men and two women. They had been lined up in a row before they were executed one by one. Their bodies lay on the hard ground where they had fallen, small holes in the backs of their heads and bigger ones in the front where the bullets had exited. The blood splatters on the grass were wide apart, and it took effort for Ana to avoid stepping on them.

Randall had disappeared into one of the two tents before coming back out and shaking his head at Chuck, before the two men continued on to the next one.

“Who would do something like this?” Shelby asked.

She wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or himself. Maybe it was a little of both.

“I don’t know,” Ana said. “Have you seen something like this before?”

The young slayer shook his head. “Not like this, this. This ain’t nightcrawlers.”

“No, it’s not.”

It was a mess, but it was easy to figure out what had happened. The four campers had run into someone—or someones, more likely—who wanted something they had, so they had taken it. The two women had been killed alongside the two men, and except for one of the women, they all looked to be in their mid-thirties. That was Ana’s best guess, anyway. It was difficult to be sure, with most of their foreheads gone and the strips of cloth hanging over parts of their faces. Makeshift blindfolds.

There were still ashes in the fire pit, along with opened food cans and metal sporks that had been used recently. Whoever they were, they had settled underneath the open sky, but she didn’t think they had been here for very long. A day, at the most.

Black forms flickered along the ground, moving between the bodies and hers and Shelby’s shadows. Ana looked up and shielded her eyes against the sun. She could easily make out the three—no, four—objects circling in the sky. Vultures.

“They’re fast,” Shelby said. He was looking up at the sky, too. “The bodies aren’t even cold yet, you fuckers.”

They’re survivors, Ana thought. That’s all they’re doing. Surviving. Like us.

“You okay?” Randall was asking as he walked back over to where she stood.

Ana looked back down at him and nodded. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. Whoever did this, we must have missed them by just a few minutes.”

“They took off east,” Chuck said as he, too, walked over to rejoin them. He pointed toward a group of prints in the dirt. “Six people on horseback. They came up on the campsite from the east and left in the same direction, which is why we didn’t run across them.” He glanced over at the bodies for a moment. “Three of them were wearing gun belts, but it doesn’t look like that did them any good.”

“They were executed,” Ana said.

“Yeah, it looks that way. But not before she got a piece of one,” he added, crouching next to one of the women. He picked up her hand, almost gingerly and with reverence, and showed it to Ana. Three of the woman’s five fingernails were red, and there were what looked like pieces of skin underneath them. The middle finger was the reddest.

“She got a piece of them,” Ana said.

“At least one,” Chuck said. He laid the hand back down and stood up. “I guess she didn’t get enough.”

“They still have their clothes on. The women.”

“Yeah. This wasn’t rape. This was just…”

“Murder.”

Chuck nodded and looked away.

“Not just murder. They also took their supplies,” Randall said. “Both tents are empty except for some sleeping bags. Guns, food—they’re all gone.”

“All this for guns and food?” Shelby asked.

“No,” Chuck said. “All this because they could.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You will in a few years, kid.”

Shelby didn’t look convinced, but kept quiet.

“What now?” Randall asked.

Chuck didn’t answer right away. He turned around and peered east in the direction the killers had gone. There was nothing out there for him to see except faded mountains in the distance.

“They couldn’t have gotten far,” Chuck said. “Maybe ten minutes head start on us. About thirty minutes, now.”

“They would have heard us coming,” Randall said. He was looking at Chuck like he already knew what the older man was thinking.

He does know, just like I know.

“Which means they’ll be moving fast,” Chuck said.

The older slayer looked back at the bodies. The two men and two women. Two couples. Maybe married. Maybe not. Not that a piece of paper made any difference these days.

“It’s not my call to make,” Chuck said. He turned back to Ana and Shelby, then over at Randall. “It’s all of ours.”

“Can’t just let this go,” Randall said. “This ain’t right.”

“No, it’s not. But there’s six of them, and they’ve already shown they don’t have any qualms about taking lives.”

“Silver bullets work just as well on a human, Chuck.”

“That’s true enough.” He looked over at Shelby. “What do you think, kid? If we’re gonna do this, we all have to agree.”

Shelby shuffled his feet. He was almost six feet tall but looked even taller standing next to her; despite that, Shelby didn’t come close to offering the same presence as the two older men waiting for his answer.

“Like you said, this ain’t right,” Shelby finally said.

“You have to be sure,” Randall said. “This isn’t ghouls we’re talking about. These are still people.”

“There’s a difference?”

“There’s a big difference, kid.”

“If you say so.”

“Shelby,” Chuck said, fixing the youngest slayer with a hard stare. “You have to be sure, you understand? If we do this, we do this.”

Shelby glanced over at Ana. “What do you think?”

Ana didn’t answer him. Instead, she looked over at Chuck and Randall when she said, “When we find them, what are we going to do?”

“We’re going to kill them,” Chuck said without a moment’s hesitation.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Randall said, eyeing her curiously. “What does that mean?”

“It means okay,” Ana said. “But we should bury the bodies first.”

“We don’t have time,” Randall said. “They’re getting farther away as we speak.”

She glanced up at the circling vultures. “We can’t just leave them lying here.”

“Better the birds than the nightcrawlers. I’ve seen those bastards digging graves to get to the bodies underneath.”

“Besides, if they could talk, I’m willing to bet they care more about us catching their killers than taking an hour to bury them,” Chuck said. He turned and began walking back to the truck. “Come on; we got a lot of ground to cover.”

Ana looked after him, then up at the birds again. She thought about Mark, in the woods. He’d gotten a decent burial despite being a piece of shit human being, and she couldn’t give that to these four people.

“Ana, we gotta go,” Randall said. He was waiting for her. “Can’t let them get away with this. When we finish, we’ll come back. I promise.”

Not if the birds get to them first, Ana thought, but she nodded at Randall and followed him to the truck.

* * *

“You’re not carrying any guns on you,” Chuck said when they were back in the Ford and Randall had driven away from the campsite.

“No,” Ana said.

“Why not?”

“I never have.”

“And you said you’ve been out here for weeks? By yourself for most of it? Unarmed?”

“Correct.”

Chuck gave her a long look. She wasn’t sure if he was impressed, confused, or just amused. Maybe a little of all three, while leaning heavily toward the last.

“So how are you going to serve justice on these assholes when we catch up to them?” Randall asked.

“I’ll think of a way,” Ana said.

“We have spare guns,” Chuck said.

“I don’t want or need them.”

“I’m not asking if you need them. I’m telling you.” Then, before she could argue, “It’s either that, or we drop you off here and keep going. Your call.”

Ana sighed back at him.

“Well?” Chuck said.

“One gun,” Ana said. “And it has to be something I can hide.”

“Hand me the bag next to your feet. The red one.”

Ana picked up a red duffel bag. It was heavy, whatever was inside clanging together as she lifted it from the floor and handed it to Chuck. He turned around, unzipped the bag, and rifled through it.

“And here I was gonna give you Ol’ Pumpy,” Randall said.

“‘Pumpy?’” Ana asked.

“Good Ol’ Pumpy,” Randall said, patting the shotgun leaning against his seat.

“This should do,” Chuck said as he held a pistol out to her.

Ana took it. It was black with a rosewood grip and was surprisingly light in her hands despite already being loaded with a magazine. The weight threw her off, and she turned it over to make sure it was actually a gun and not some toy. There was writing along one side of the boxy barrel: SIG Sauer.

“That’ll fit in your pocket,” Chuck said. “The important part is the six rounds in the magazine.”

“Six bullets?” Ana said. “That’s it?”

“Not enough bullets for you?”

“I just thought these guns come with more bullets. Isn’t that why people carry them instead of the ones cowboys used to in Westerns?”

“Revolvers.”

“Yeah, those.”

“It’s the smallest gun we have. The big ones carry more rounds, but you said you wanted a small one you could hide.”

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

She searched for the safety and pushed it into place with her thumb before slipping the gun into her jacket pocket. It fitted almost too perfectly.

Don’t get used to it, she told herself. Guns are trouble. It makes people nervous.

“Hopefully you won’t have to use it,” Chuck was saying from the front seat. “If there’s shooting to be done, try to let us do most of it.”

“I’m not going to argue with that,” Ana said. “Shooting has never been my forte.”

“What is your forte?” Randall asked, looking at her in the rearview mirror.

Ana smirked back at his reflection. “I do what I have to do in order to survive. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Don’t we all?”

“Some more than others.”

“I guess that’s true, too.”

Chuck had taken an old, heavily notated map out from his pack. He unfolded it between the two front seats so she could get a look at it as he pointed out something.

“We’re here,” Chuck said. “And this is the closest town. Mayfield. Formerly O61.”

“It’s a former collaborator town?” Ana asked.

“Most towns are,” Randall said.

“If our killers keep heading east like they are now, they’ll run across Mayfield soon enough,” Chuck said. “If we don’t find them before then, that is.”

“How much farther?” Randall asked.

Chuck measured the distance on the map with his forefinger. “Five miles, give or take, and depending on how fat my fingers are feeling today.”

“You really think they’ll stop in Mayfield?” Ana asked.

“I don’t know,” Chuck said. “They must have heard our truck coming toward them while they were still at the campsite.”

“That’s a given,” Randall said. “Sounds travel these days. Hell, they could probably hear us on their asses right now. We’re probably the only engine running for miles out here.”

Now why does that not make me feel better? Ana thought when there was a sudden crack! from outside, followed by the Ford beginning to move erratically left and right.

It was a gunshot.

A gunshot!

At first Ana thought Randall was so startled by the gunshot and he was jerking on the steering wheel, but then she saw the perfectly drilled hole in the front windshield and realized that Randall had been shot!

“Chuck!” Ana shouted.

“Get down!” Chuck shouted back, even as he lunged across the front seats and grabbed the steering wheel with one hand while reaching for Randall with the other. “Take your foot off the gas, Rand! Take your damn foot off the gas!”

Randall’s back was to Ana, but she could tell he was barely in control of his body as blood pumped out from somewhere near his right shoulder. He was bleeding badly, a continuous spray of blood covering the upholstery and Chuck’s extended arms.

But Randall must have heard Chuck through the pain, because he pulled his foot off the accelerator and the truck began to slow down. At the same time, he all but slumped out of the driver’s seat, knocking “Ol’ Pumpy” to the floor by bumping into the barrel with his head.

Another loud, echoing crack! shattered the front passenger side window and sprayed glass over Chuck and Randall, with more than a few pieces coming dangerously close to cutting Ana’s face all the way in the back.

“Outside!” Chuck shouted. “Get outside!”

Another crack! and this time the small back window to her right—behind the front passenger side—was obliterated, and something fast and loud pekked! into the ceiling just two inches above her head.

Ana didn’t have to be told which direction to use in order to “get outside.” The last two bullets had come from her right, which meant the vehicle had somehow turned toward the shooter (shooters?) while Chuck was trying to stop it.

Chuck was grabbing the Ford’s gear and putting it in park as she crawled past him and opened the door and all but threw herself forward, landing in a pile on the hard, cold ground outside.

A thwump! as something landed beside her, and Ana, the SIG Sauer suddenly in her hand (When did I grab that?), almost shot Shelby as the slayer scrambled up, clutching his rifle in front of him.

“Holy crap, I guess this means we found them!” Shelby was shouting.

Or they found us, Ana thought when a fourth crack! broke the driver-side window next to her just before the door swung open and Chuck rolled outside.

Chuck was back on his knees a second later. He turned around, reached into the vehicle through the open door, and dragged Randall’s body out and deposited it alongside him. Ana flinched at the sound of Randall’s body slamming onto the hard dirt floor.

“Is he okay?” Shelby asked. “Is he dead? Chuck, is Rand alive?”

“Shut up and shoot back!” Chuck shouted.

“Shoot back where?”

“East! Let them know we can still shoot back!”

For a moment, Ana wasn’t sure if Shelby understood, but she must have underestimated the young man, because he lifted his rifle and squeezed off four quick rounds across the Ford—all in the direction the shots had come from. Shelby pulled his weapon down and slid behind the cover of the truck next to her barely a half-second after the last shot.

She expected return fire from the ambushers, but there was only the soft echo of Shelby’s fourth shot as it dissipated into the wide-open countryside. Soon, there was just their harried breathing—hers, Shelby’s, and Chuck’s as he tore off some gauze he’d taken out of a first aid kit (When did he grab that?) and tried to keep Randall from bleeding to death.

Chuck glanced over at her, and they exchanged a frenzied look. Ana thought she knew exactly what he was thinking, because it was the same exact thing going through her mind at that very second.

She and the slayers had, without even knowing it, become the hunted.

Five

I should have stayed out of the truck.

Randall, bleeding next to her on the ground.

I should have stuck to the plan.

Shelby fidgeting nervously on the other side of her, the muzzle of his rifle moving around a bit too much for her liking.

Dammit, why didn’t I stick to the plan?

She sighed before looking down at the small pistol in her hand. She still had no idea when she’d grabbed it while crawling out of the truck. But there it was, in her palm, with all six shots of it still in the magazine.

Maybe I should have asked for a bigger gun…

To her left, Chuck had successfully stopped Randall from bleeding out. He had wrapped gauze around the other slayer’s body while he was propped up against the closed driver-side door, and was now slowly laying him back down on the ground.

“He alive, Chuck?” Shelby asked.

“He’ll be just fine,” Chuck said.

I don’t know about that, Chuck, Ana thought. She’d seen worse bullet wounds, but “just fine” was never a phrase she’d use to describe any of them.

Chuck reached into the open back door and pulled out an old duffel bag. He unzipped it and extracted a camo-painted rifle similar to Shelby’s.

“Shelby, move closer to the back in case they try to flank us,” Chuck said. “Shoot anything that moves toward us. And I mean anything. Got it?”

The young slayer nodded before scooting toward the rear of the Ford. He leaned out to get a quick peek before pulling his head back behind cover a split second later. Ana wondered if he’d even seen anything at all, but she was impressed by how calm he was being given his age. But then he was a slayer, and she imagined he’d probably been in tougher situations than this one. After you’ve gone face-to-face with ghouls in their natural element, could a life-and-death situation with living, breathing human beings really top that?

“Anything?” Chuck asked.

Shelby looked over and shook his head. “Squaddush, man. I don’t see anything out there.”

“Well, there’s at least one of them out there.”

“I don’t see anyone,” Shelby repeated before reaching up to swipe at beads of sweat on his forehead.

I guess he’s human after all. Good to know, good to know.

Ana discovered that she was perspiring, too, which was surprising given how cold it was outside the Ford. She brushed at the wetness with her jacket sleeve before giving Randall a long look.

He was alive. Chuck had done a good job stanching the bleeding, and the man continued to lie peacefully on the ground.

Chuck, meanwhile, slipped a magazine into his rifle and shoved two spares into his pockets. The older slayer tossed the now-empty bag away and scooted toward the front of the truck and took his own peek before pulling back a second or two later.

“Anything on that side?” Shelby asked.

Chuck shook his head. “I don’t see anything but flat country out there.”

“Can they shoot us under the car?” Ana asked.

“No,” Chuck said. “Angle’s wrong. They’d have to be closer than where they are now to even see underneath the truck.” He paused before adding, “No. We’ll be fine back here as long as we don’t let them flank us.”

Fine, huh, Chuck? Ana thought. You sure throw “fine” around a lot.

She wished she could believe him, but she had a hard time swallowing it. How “fine” could they possibly be? They were stuck in the middle of nowhere with at least one sniper (but probably more—like five more) out there waiting to pick them off if they wandered even an inch beyond the parked vehicle.

No, they weren’t “fine” at all. Not even a little bit.

She didn’t say those doubts out loud, though. Instead, Ana moved over to get a better look at Randall. She almost stepped on a used syringe on the ground next to a small bottle of morphine. When had Chuck taken that out and given it to Randall?

He’s definitely done this before.

She picked up both the syringe and bottle and tossed them away before checking on Randall. He was still breathing, even if it was hard to tell from just looking at him. His eyes were closed, his face covered in a sheen of sweat. She took out a rag from her back pocket and wiped at the perspiration, moving from his forehead to his face to his throat.

When she brushed aside the big collars, she saw what she had been expecting: bite marks. They covered both sides of Randall’s neck and were of different shapes and sizes, but had been put there by teeth. Twisted and deformed teeth that were feeding. Ghoul teeth.

She had no doubts that if she took off Randall’s clothes, she’d find more of the marks along his arms and legs. All over his body, in fact. The only slayer she’d encountered who didn’t have such reminders of the nightmares inflicted during the yearlong Purge was Wash.

“We’re not made in a factory,” he had told her when she asked.

So how were you made, Wash? How did you become what you are? How did you get so good at killing? Ghouls and people?

But she couldn’t ask him those questions. Not until she found him first.

Ana looked at the quick work Chuck had done to Randall’s shoulder. The bullet had gone through, but the bandages were expertly applied and he wasn’t bleeding anymore.

“How is he?” Chuck asked from the front of the truck.

Ana nodded back at him. “You did good. He’ll live.” Though for how long, I can’t say, she thought about adding, but decided the still-mobile slayers probably didn’t need to hear that about their friend.

Chuck turned away, and she saw him counting down silently. When he finally reached his magic number, the man stood up and fired over the hood of the car—three shots, pop-pop-pop!—before ducking back down.

“Did you get them?” Ana asked.

The older man shook his head. “I can’t even see them.”

“Then why did you shoot?”

“Need to let them know there’s two of us kicking and ready to shoot their faces off if they try a full-frontal assault.”

“You think it’s them, too, don’t you?”

Chuck grunted. “Yeah, it’s them.”

“Who?” Shelby asked from behind Ana. “Come on, fill in the rest of the class, kids.”

“The ones we’re chasing,” Chuck said. “It’s gotta be them. Who else could it be? They heard us coming back at the campsite, and they probably heard us while we were on their tail, too.”

“Well, that’s not good,” Shelby said.

Kid’s got a real talent for understatements, Ana thought, before smiling to herself. “Kid?” He’s only four—three?—years younger than you.

She glanced down at her watch. The hour hand was creeping up on two in the afternoon. Four hours and thirty minutes or so before nightfall. She shivered at the thought of being caught out here when that happened. Night wasn’t as scary as it once was, and there was very little chance there were ghouls hiding in such a flat and woodless area, but even so…

“What now—” Shelby was asking when there was a crack! and something popped! on the other side of the truck. “What was that?”

“The tire,” Chuck said. “The front-side passenger tire.”

He was right, and a second or two later Ana noticed a slight dip in the truck’s height along with the sound of air leaking.

Another crack! and this time the back end of the Ford also dipped slightly.

“What are they doing?” she asked.

“Keeping us in one place,” Chuck said. “If they can’t get to us, they’re going to make sure we can’t keep following them.”

“Car’ll still run on two tires,” Shelby said.

“Not very well, though.”

“Good point.”

Ana glanced down at her watch again on instinct.

“I know,” Chuck said when she looked back up at him. “I know.”

“What?” Shelby said from behind Ana. “You know what? What’s going on? Chuck, what’s going on over there?”

“Nothing, kid,” Chuck said, looking past Ana at the younger man. “Maintain your position and stay alert. Keep your eyes and ears open for anything that even remotely sounds like someone coming toward us. Got that?” Then, when Shelby didn’t say anything, “You got that, Shelby?”

“Yeah, yeah, Roger and out and all that good stuff,” Shelby said, though judging by the lack of conviction in his voice, Ana wasn’t so sure he really did “get” it.

But she couldn’t do anything for Shelby at the moment. Hell, she could barely do anything for herself, much less the three men stuck behind the parked Ford with her.

Should have let them keep right on driving. Why did I get in the truck?

Because it was supposed to get you to Texas faster, that’s why.

Wash. This was all his fault.

You asshat.

Not that she actually believed that…for the most part. Yes, it was Wash’s fault that she was out here, but she had been fully prepared to follow him down to Texas anyway after what he had done for her and Emily. He had gone above and beyond to help get Em back even when he didn’t have to. Sure, she’d saved his life, too, but he’d returned the favor more than once and still he had come back for her, rescued her from Mathison.

Besides all that, she liked him.

“He said he was leaving without telling you because he didn’t want you to come with him,” Marie had told her when Ana found out, hours after Wash had left. “I got the feeling he was trying to do you a favor.”

Sonofabitch, she had thought then and continued to do so even after saying good-bye to Emily and following in his trail out of Kanter 11.

“The gas tank,” Shelby was saying behind her. “What if they shoot the gas tank, Chuck?”

“It doesn’t matter if they do,” Chuck said. “We’re gonna have trouble with just two working tires anyway.”

“No, I mean, what if it explodes? Wouldn’t it explode?”

“It won’t explode.”

“But if they shoot the gas tank, won’t it explode? Like in the movies?”

“Cars don’t explode because you shoot the gas tank, kid. They’d need incendiary rounds to even start a fire, and the chances of them using one is nil.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Okay. That’s good. Okay…”

Ana was watching Chuck closely as he talked, and she believed him. Not that she knew anything about bullets or what you could or couldn’t do to make a car’s gas tank explode. But Chuck didn’t look worried, and he was back here right alongside her and Shelby.

Either he’s right, or he’s a really good liar.

“Are they still out there?” Ana asked.

Chuck had been peeking out from behind the truck, sometimes looking over the hood and other times around the front bumper. He had kept changing it up, probably to keep the snipers from getting a bead on him. It must have been working, because he was still alive.

“I don’t know, I can’t see them,” Chuck said. “And I don’t think we will, either.”

“Why not?”

“Because in their shoes I wouldn’t risk it, so I don’t think they’re going to, either. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless they’re stupid,” Chuck said.

“Stupid?” Ana thought. I don’t think they’re stupid, Chuck. They knew we were chasing them, and they laid in wait for us. They turned the tables. That’s not stupid. That’s smart. And ballsy.

Ana turned her attention back to Randall. He hadn’t opened his eyes or moved, and if not for the steady rise and fall of his chest, she would think he was dead. But he wasn’t. At least, not yet. It remained to be seen if he would continue that way in four more hours.

She checked the skies, but it was bright and wide open, without a single cloud in sight. Despite all that sun, it was getting colder, and she wrapped her jacket tighter around her before zipping it up and slipping the gun back into one of its pockets. With both Shelby and Chuck armed with rifles, there didn’t seem to be any point in keeping her own weapon out, especially when she couldn’t see a single person to shoot anyway.

There was an unsettling silence to the Oklahoma land around her, and even the occasional howl of wind had ceased. The state had always seemed flat and unassuming ever since she crossed over into its border, with only the mountains in the far distance—like an oil painting, more surreal than real looking—to break the monotony of white nothingness between the hard ground and the heavens. Of course, it didn’t help that she had painfully avoided anything that even looked like a big city.

Chuck continued to sneak looks out from behind the truck, and each time he did—alternating between peeking above the hood and the front bumper—she kept expecting him to pull back without his head attached. But whoever was out there—and however many of them there were—hadn’t fired since they took out the tires on the other side.

“Anything?” she asked Chuck.

He shook his head.

“Maybe they left,” Ana said. She wasn’t sure if that was optimism in her voice or… Yeah, she was pretty sure it was optimism.

“Maybe,” Chuck said.

“What if they did scram?” Shelby asked behind her. “Went splitsville? Wham, bam, no thank you, ma’am?”

“Maybe,” Chuck repeated.

“What about the truck?” Shelby asked.

“What about it?”

“You sure it’ll still run?”

This time, Chuck didn’t answer right away. She assumed he was thinking about it just like she was.

Trucks—or any vehicles, for that matter—weren’t designed to run on just two tires, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t. There was probably a spare in the back, which would give them three working tires instead of just two. If the killers had taken off, she didn’t see why they couldn’t keep going to this nearby town called Mayfield.

If the campsite’s murderers were gone, and if they weren’t just waiting for them to make themselves visible so they could be shot.

And that was the big question. Just because the ambushers hadn’t fired a shot for the last few minutes—How long had it been? Five minutes? Ten? More?—didn’t mean they weren’t still out there. After all, there was no reason for them to be in any hurry. She and the slayers were trapped back here. All the killers had to do was wait them out. And if they couldn’t get them, there were other things out here at night that could finish the job for them.

“Yeah, I think so,” Chuck finally said.

“Then let’s get out of here,” Shelby said. “Load Rand up and hightail it.”

“It’s not that easy, Shelby.”

“Why not?”

Ana looked over her shoulder at the young slayer. “Because if they’re still out there, they can still pick us off. Just like they nearly got Randall last time.”

“Oh,” Shelby said. “We wouldn’t want that.”

“No, we wouldn’t.”

“Got any other ideas?”

“Not right now.”

“Well, that’s no good,” Shelby said, and turned away.

She looked over at Chuck and found him watching her back. But Chuck didn’t say anything, and neither did Ana.

Instead, she glanced down at her watch again.

“I know,” Chuck said when she looked back up at him. “I know.”

“We have to do something,” Ana said. “You said Mayfield’s not far away?”

“Two, maybe three more miles left?”

“Is it closer to two or three?”

“Does it really matter if they’re still out there?”

Ana sighed. He had a point. It really didn’t matter how far Mayfield was if the same people who had taken out Randall were out there. If they could already make one shot on a fast-moving vehicle, how easier would it be to shoot three people on a slow-moving truck?

The phrase sitting duck rushed through her head.

Ana shifted her weight to lessen the pressure on her legs and thought, I should have stayed on the Walker. God, why didn’t I just stay on the Walker? Sure, it would have taken longer to get to Texas, but I’d get to Texas, eventually.

She passed the time by checking up on Randall again. The morphine Chuck had shot him with was doing its job. The question was, what were they going to do when the drug finally ran its course and Randall woke up?

“Hey, you hear that?” Shelby said from behind her.

She glanced back at him. “Hear what?”

“Listen.”

She did, tilting her head slightly for a few seconds.

Then, “I don’t hear anything.”

Shelby gave her an almost annoyed look. “You don’t hear anything?”

“I don’t hear anything either, Shelby,” Chuck said.

“Geez, you guys need to take out the wax,” Shelby said. “Listen closer.”

Ana exchanged a look with Chuck, but it was clear he couldn’t hear whatever it was Shelby thought he was hearing, either. She didn’t say anything, and instead sat still and craned her head and really tried to listen this time.

There was a brief wind, followed by silence…

“I hear it,” Chuck said.

“Hear what?” Ana said, when she felt it. She still couldn’t hear anything, but the ground underneath her was clearly moving. Thumping.

Then, finally, she heard it.

Horses.

Next to her, Chuck readied his rifle and gritted his teeth, shouting, “Get ready! Here they come!”

Six

There were at least two riders, with the possibility of more, judging by the thickness of the dust cloud being kicked into the air. Of course, there could have been ten more riders among the two she thought she could make out, for all she knew, given how far they still were from the truck.

Ana pulled her head down and said a silent thanks that the two or three seconds she’d stuck her head up to peek through the shattered front passenger side door of the Ford hadn’t ended with her brains splattered all over Randall. The wounded slayer was still lying next to her, oblivious to this latest development.

To her left, Chuck also pulled his head away from the front bumper.

“How many did you see?” she asked him.

“Two?” he said. He turned slightly while still crouched to look over at her. “What about you?”

“Just two, too.” She glanced back at Shelby, peering through his rifle’s scope perched on the back bumper of the truck. “How many do you see, Shelby?”

“Three,” Shelby said.

“Three? You sure?”

“Yeah. I see three.”

“Are you sure?” Chuck asked.

“Yeah, of course I’m sure,” Shelby said. “Three riders.”

Ana turned back to Chuck, who nodded. “Shelby doesn’t just have the best ears of the three of us, but also the best eyes. If he says there’s three coming our way, then there’s three coming our way.”

“But there were six of them at the campsite,” Ana said.

“I know.”

“So where are the other three? Wouldn’t they attack with everything they have?”

“Not unless they want to keep some back as snipers,” Chuck said, but the way he had said it left her unconvinced. He didn’t look all that confident, either.

“What is it?” she asked. “What are you really thinking, Chuck?”

The older slayer shook his head. “It’s just a thought…”

“What is?”

“Maybe it’s not them. The killers from the campsite.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Then, before he could answer, “Who else could it be?”

“We’re close enough to Mayfield that they could have heard those gunshots.”

“And?”

“And, maybe the ones coming toward us now are from Mayfield.”

Ana couldn’t be sure if Chuck actually believed what he was saying or, if like her, he was just hoping. It was difficult to read his heavily-lined face.

“That’s a big if,” Ana said.

“Yeah, I know,” Chuck said before turning and peering around the bumper to get another look.

Ana did the same, standing up slightly to look through the open driver-side door across the seats—while doing her best to ignore Randall’s blood on the upholstery the entire time—and out the broken window onto the other side.

The riders were getting closer, and she could just barely make out the outlines of three riders and their mounts flickering in the afternoon sun. Three, not the two she thought she had seen at first, so Shelby was right.

I guess the kid really does have good eyesight.

She lowered herself back down and looked toward Shelby, leaning around the back bumper while peering through his rifle’s scope.

“Still just three, Shelby?” she asked.

He answered without pulling away from his rifle: “Yeah. Just three.”

“How far away are they?”

“Two hundred meters, give or take.”

“Two hundred meters is a lot, right?”

“About two football fields,” Shelby said.

Ana twisted back around to look at Chuck. The older slayer was checking his sidearm—a semiautomatic pistol—before slipping it back into its holster.

“What are you doing?” Ana asked.

“Just being prepared,” Chuck said. He looked up and past her, at Shelby. “Don’t shoot unless they shoot first, Shelby.”

“I never shoot first, boss, but I always shoot last,” Shelby said from behind her.

“What are you going to do?” Ana asked Chuck.

The older man didn’t give anything away with his expression, but he also didn’t look particularly concerned, either. Then again, he hadn’t looked very concerned since all of this began. Ana had a feeling this wasn’t Chuck’s first time in these types of situations, a thought that she wasn’t entirely sure was supposed to be comforting.

“Let’s see what they do when they reach us,” Chuck said. “If they don’t immediately open fire, maybe they’re friendlies.”

“And if they do open fire?” Ana asked.

“Then we open fire back.” He squinted through some dust at her. “You need to stay down when that happens. Shelby and I will do the shooting.”

“I have fired a gun before, you know.”

“This isn’t up to debate. Just do what I tell you.”

She fought back a flurry of annoyance. “Yes, sir.”

“I’m trying to keep you alive, kid. Don’t make it difficult.”

“Whatever,” she said, unable—and unwilling—to hide the petulance on her face.

She thought Chuck would be angry, but he only chuckled before turning around and facing the hood of the truck. Ana wondered if he would have a different opinion of her effectiveness in a fight if he knew the things she’d been through, the things she’d done to survive this long. Or, hell, what she’d been forced to do since she left Nebraska in search of her sister.

Mathison, the cabin, Mark last night…

But she kept her mouth shut. Chuck was doing what most men used to do before everything went to hell: He was looking after the small, “weak” female, putting himself (and Shelby) voluntarily in danger for her sake. It wasn’t anything new; in some cases, she’d even encouraged it. After all, who traveled across the country without any visible weapons?

Despite all that, his command irked her, and she had to restrain herself from setting the record straight.

If he wants to make sure you live through this, why are you fighting it? that familiar voice asked somewhere at the back of her mind.

It was a good point. Besides, she had a very good reason to ensure that she survived this: Reaching Texas, finding Wash, and then, when she’d returned the favor by helping him do whatever it was he was dead set on doing, return to Emily and take her home.

That last one was the real goal. The only goal.

She took the small SIG Sauer out of her jacket pocket and held it in her palm. She had small hands, but the gun fit almost perfectly anyway. Too bad she hadn’t insisted Chuck give her more than one magazine for the pistol. Six shots. That was all she had for now.

Better make them count, I guess.

The slight quaking underneath her boots was becoming more insistent, and their side of the parked Ford was starting to tremble more noticeably as the riders grew nearer. If that alarmed Chuck at all, she couldn’t tell by the way he remained kneeling next to the front driver-side tire with one knee in the dirt. Behind her, Shelby was squatting next to the back bumper, still looking through his rifle’s scope. The way both men were handling the chaos that had befallen them made her wish she’d had them at her side when she was chasing after Mathison. Wash had been a great stand-in, but if she’d had Chuck, Shelby, and Randall along, too…

“Give me a sitrep, Shelby,” Chuck said after a while.

“One hundred meters and closing,” Shelby said.

“Still just three riders?”

“Still just three riders, boss.”

“They’re making a hell of a mess out there for just three riders.”

“Still just three riders, though.”

Ana wanted to ask Are you sure? but then remembered Shelby was the first one to hear the horses coming. Maybe it was his youth, but Shelby just had better ears and eyesight than all of them.

Oh, to be young again, she thought when she turned back to Chuck and found him staring at her.

She mouthed “What?”

“If there’s shooting, Shelby and I will take out as many of them as we can,” Chuck said. “If we don’t get all of them, it’ll be up to you to dispatch the leftovers. After that, you get in this truck and you drive and don’t stop.”

“Where would I drive to?”

“Mayfield.”

“But that’ll mean going through the shooters.”

“It’s better than backtracking to the highway.” He banged his fist on the Ford. “She’ll get you five—maybe six miles, if you’re lucky—on two tires. After that, you’ll be on your own and have to fight however many are left out there. Alone. But if you reach Mayfield, it’s a different story.”

Ana sighed. “So let’s hope those guys coming toward us are friendlies and I don’t have to do any of that.”

Chuck grinned. “Adapt or perish, kid. Someone real smart once told me that.”

“Fifty meters,” Shelby called out behind her. Then, “Forty…”

Chuck nodded at her as if to say, Here goes nothing, before he turned around, seemed to count silently to himself again—“One, two, three…”—then stood up behind the hood and took aim with his rifle.

There was a single gunshot—pop!—but Ana was ready for it, because the shot had come from Chuck’s rifle. It echoed, devouring the sound of approaching horses for a few seconds until…

The Oklahoma countryside was suddenly dead quiet again.

Well, almost quiet. She could hear her heavy breathing and the loud thumping in her chest.

“That’s far enough!” Chuck shouted.

Ana clenched her teeth and waited for return fire—either from the horsemen that were so close to them now that she thought she could taste all the dirt and dust their horses had kicked up as they approached, or the snipers that had taken shots at them earlier.

Except it didn’t happen, and Chuck remained standing.

When she glanced back at Shelby, the young man was crouched next to the bumper and using his rifle’s scope to look out. He did it in such a way that only his weapon was exposed. It was an awkward angle, but he seemed to have done it before.

“Don’t shoot!” a voice shouted from the other side of the truck. It sounded very close. Too close, in fact. Hadn’t Shelby said they were still forty meters away just before Chuck acted?

No, that wasn’t quite right. Chuck had counted down before he made his move, which probably put the riders at…thirty, maybe twenty meters from them? Was twenty meters a long way? How long was that in football field terms?

“Give me one good reason why!” Chuck was shouting back at the riders.

“We’re not here to fight you,” the same voice answered him. “We’re from Mayfield. Heard shooting and came over to see if we could lend a hand. From the looks of it, the answer’s yes.”

“I’ll be the judge of that!” Chuck said. “How many of you are there?”

“What you see is what you get,” the voice said.

“What about the shooter?”

“What shooter?”

“The one that shot up our truck?”

“We don’t know anything about that.”

“He was laying in wait in the same direction you came from.”

Lying in wait, Ana thought, but decided Chuck probably didn’t need her correcting his grammar right about now, and kept quiet.

“We didn’t see anyone on the way here,” the stranger said. There was a brief moment of silence before the man continued. “I swear, mister. We’re here to help. Heard the shooting all the way from town. Sounds travel these days, especially out here.”

Ana couldn’t tell if Chuck was convinced or not. Then again, she could only see one side of his face as he kept aim at the three riders in front of them with his rifle.

“Look,” the stranger said, “if you don’t want our help, that’s fine and dandy with us. We’ll turn around and go right back to town. No skin off our noses.”

“You from Mayfield?” Chuck asked.

“That’s what I said.” A beat, then, “Now, do you want help or not?”

“Only if you put your guns down.”

“That’s not gonna happen. You won’t put your guns down, and neither will we. Ain’t no one got time for that, mister. You want help or not?”

“Well, shit. How am I gonna trust you, then?”

Someone laughed. Ana assumed it was one of the three riders.

“I got a better idea,” the same unseen voice said. “Can that truck of yours still drive?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Chuck said.

“Well, if it can, you get in it and ride to Mayfield with us. Behind us, if it’ll make you feel all safe like. That way, you can keep an eye on us the entire time. It looks in bad shape, but I’m guessing it should make it. Or close enough.”

“And drive right through your ambush up ahead?” Chuck asked.

The man laughed again. “Mister, you can stay out here all day and night if you want, I don’t really care. We came out here to do the Christian thing and lend a hand, but if you don’t want it, that’s up to you. We’ll be on our way now.”

“Wait,” Chuck said.

“What now?” the man asked.

“Give us five minutes to get ready to move.”

“All right, then,” the man said.

Chuck lowered his rifle and kneeled down next to the front tire. “Shelby, keep an eye on them.”

“Will do,” Shelby said.

Chuck looked to Ana. “I don’t think they’re the killers.”

“How do you know that?” Ana asked.

“They don’t look like the type.”

“You know what killers look like?”

“How long have you been out here, kid? I mean, really been out here?”

“I’ve been around…”

“I’m sure you have, but so have I. More than you, I’m willing to bet.”

That’s debatable, Ana thought.

“I’ve run across a lot of people,” Chuck was saying. “Slayers, regular citizens; sometimes the worst of the worst. Trust me when I tell you, I can sniff out a killer a mile away.” He nodded his head toward the hood. “These three don’t give off that scent.”

She thought about Mark, about how she knew he was a bad seed as soon as she saw him. Even so, the idea of blindly trusting three strangers after all they’d been subjected to, after what had happened to Randall…

Ana sighed. “You better be right about this.”

Chuck nodded. “I am. Trust me.”

Sorry, Chuck, but the only person I trust is me…and maybe one other person, but he’s not here right now, Ana thought, but she nodded back at Chuck and said, “I’ll keep my gun in my jacket pocket.”

“Damn right you are.” Chuck grinned before standing back up. He turned around to face the riders—or at least Ana assumed the riders were still somewhere on the other side of the Ford. “We got a wounded man. It’s gonna take time for us to load him into the truck.”

“So more than five minutes?” the same unseen voice asked.

“More like ten. Maybe fifteen.”

“Hey, take as long as you want. You need a hand?”

“No, we got it handled. I’ll let you know when we’re ready to move.”

“Just holler,” the man said.

Chuck looked down at Ana and nodded, then did the same to Shelby. “Help me with Rand, Shelby.”

The young slayer finally came out of his position and hurried over, while Ana moved to get out of his way. She was still leery of gunshots when she stood up and looked across the Ford’s truck bed at the riders.

Shelby was right: There were just three people on the other side. One was a woman, and she, along with a big, burly man, flanked the figure who Ana assumed was their leader. The man sat on a big thoroughbred in the center, wearing jeans and chaps. The big Stetson hat on his head completed his cowboy wardrobe. The gun belt didn’t hurt the image, and neither did the pistol in the holster. Except the gun wasn’t one of those six-shot revolvers but a semiautomatic.

The cowboy sat on top of a big chestnut thoroughbred and tipped his hat at her. “Ma’am,” he said, and she recognized his voice as the same one that had been speaking to Chuck this entire time.

My, my, a cowboy to the rescue, Ana thought as she smiled back at him. I’ve always wanted my very own cowboy…

Seven

The cowboy’s name was Gabriel, and he rode in front of them along with the other two, Kelloway (the woman) and Mitchell (the other man). Kelloway was in her thirties, short blonde hair and freckles to complement pale cheeks that looked even paler in the sunlight. Mitchell looked a little bit like Chuck, except older and more covered in dust.

They rode their mounts at a trot across the uneven Oklahoma plains while the Ford, moving on two good wheels and tilted to one side as a result, followed behind them. The vehicle’s two blown tires dug divots into the ground and threw up an obscene amount of cloud in its wake. There was so much, in fact, that every time Ana looked out at the front passenger side mirror, all she could see was a brown wall behind them.

Now that’s what I call a brownout…

She concentrated on Randall instead. He lay on two-thirds of the backseat next to her while Shelby occupied the front passenger seat and Chuck drove. Which was to say, Chuck spent most of his time fighting the steering wheel to keep the truck moving straight ahead. They were going slow as a result, only keeping pace with Mayfield’s riders because the horses weren’t going full-speed for their benefit. Randall hadn’t woken up when the other two slayers loaded him into the Ford, but he had groaned and continued to make noises. The combination of morphine and blood loss kept him under, which at the moment was the best thing for all of them, Randall himself included.

As it turned out, Gabriel had been telling the truth and it wasn’t a trap. Whoever had shot at them earlier was either gone or remained hidden when Mayfield’s cowboys rode out to investigate the reports of gunfire. Ana didn’t care either way, as long as no one was shooting anywhere in her direction.

After a while, she began to make out buildings popping up from the ground in the distance. The town of Mayfield looked insignificant against the mountains in the background, which continued to give off the appearance of a water painting instead of anything real. It was easy to imagine the whole thing as some kind of artificial backdrop, that maybe they were driving through a fake Hollywood set.

“How is he?” Chuck asked, throwing a quick glance over his shoulder.

“He’s stable,” Ana said. “But we’re going to have to take care of his wound once we get to Mayfield.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll have a doctor.”

“If they don’t, I can take care of it.”

“You know how?”

“I’ve been around my share of bullet holes, yeah.”

“You’re full of surprises, kid.”

You don’t know the half of it, Ana thought, but she smiled back at him instead and said, “You’ve been to Mayfield before?”

“No, but it’s on the map, so past slayers have gone through it. As far as I know, there’s no red flags.”

Ana looked out the front windshield at the three riders leading the way. “What about them?”

“What about them?” Chuck said.

“You still trust them?”

“I don’t have a choice right now. Neither does Randall.”

Ana nodded before briefly patting her jacket pocket to make sure the gun was still inside. It was, and she couldn’t help but smile to herself. She’d never been keen to spend time around guns. She’d gone to great lengths to avoid becoming familiar with them, but the last few days had forced her to get comfortable real fast. She still hadn’t decided if that was a good thing or not.

“What’s he doing?” Shelby said from the seat in front of her.

Ana looked up as one of the horses broke away from the pack and moved over to the left side, slowing down just enough to let the Ford catch up to it. It was the head cowboy, Gabriel. He was holding the reins of his horse with one hand while the other kept his Stetson in place.

“Keep an eye on him, Shelby,” Chuck said.

“You smell something fishy?” Shelby asked.

“No, but let’s stay frosty anyway.”

“Gotcha, boss.”

The truck finally reached Gabriel, who rode his thoroughbred on the left side of the vehicle, away from the clouds of dust that continued to fill up the air on the right side. The cowboy had to lower himself slightly to look in through the broken window at Shelby and Chuck.

“How are things going?” Gabriel asked, shouting to be heard over the engine and noise.

“It’s going,” Chuck said.

“How’s your man doing?”

“He’s still alive. You have a doctor in town?”

“Got two.”

“Two? No one has two doctors.”

“We do. I guess we’re just lucky.” He slowed down a bit more until he was now riding alongside the backseat and looking through the window at Ana. “You doing okay back there, ma’am?”

She looked out at him. “Ana.”

“What’s that?”

“My name’s Ana. You can stop calling me ma’am.”

“My ma taught me to always call a woman ma’am, ma’am. It’s the proper thing to do, end of the world or not.”

“I didn’t expect to find an honest-to-goodness cowboy at the end of the world.”

“Stranger things have happened.”

He smiled, tipped his hat, and rode on forward until he had rejoined his two companions.

“I think he likes you,” Shelby said, turning around in his seat and grinning at her.

“What gave you that idea?” Ana asked.

“He’s got good taste,” Chuck said.

Ana rolled her eyes. “Give it a rest, boys. Let’s just get into town and make sure Randall survives first before we start sending out the wedding invitations.”

* * *

According to Gabriel, Mayfield was once a booming mining town in the mid-1800s, with the railroad at one point even making plans to lay tracks through it. But all that changed when the metal deposits dried up, and the place was on the verge of being completely abandoned by the early 1900s. It somehow survived anyway, hanging on for dear life through both World Wars and eventually making something of a resurgence, thanks to a half dozen local ranchers that had decided to settle in the area in the 1960s.

Then The Purge happened and Mayfield became O61—another ghoul collaborator town in a world full of them. Post-Walk Out, the survivors reclaimed the old name, and Mayfield was reborn. Thanks to a stream that flowed from a nearby mountain, there were generous amounts of grass for the farmland and the cattle that had made it through the dark times. In many ways, a town that was once on the precipice of death had suddenly become a prize, at least to those who knew it existed.

Ana saw some of those herds of cattle grazing on green fields now, along with the cowboys minding them as the Ford drove along a dirt road—the only way into Mayfield from its western end. There was a main country road that connected it to another state highway, but that was on the east side of town.

“I bet they eat plenty of steaks here,” Shelby said as they passed healthy-looking cows that lifted their heads to glare after them. “Big, fat steaks. Man, it’s been a while since I’ve had steak.”

“You hungry, Shelby?” Chuck asked with a grin.

“Aren’t you?”

“I could use a good steak, I won’t lie. It’s definitely been a while.”

“Like years. Years and years,” Shelby said, licking his lips.

Like most former ghoul collaborator towns she’d been through—including her own Newton—Mayfield was small and contained, which allowed it to be easily resettled by people who weren’t local to the area. The residents had added to the place since, that much was obvious, but it still only had a single main road that all the buildings, alleyways, and side streets were connected to.

As they reached the first few buildings, Gabriel slowed down and waved them toward a garage on their right. Chuck turned into the lot, passing gas pumps that didn’t look as if they had been used for a few years, and where two men in overalls waited for them. Apparently the cowboy had radioed ahead, and they were expected.

When Chuck stopped the Ford and shut off the engine, Gabriel swung his horse over to the driver-side window. “Your wheels are about done for, my friend. Not sure if there’s anything these boys can do for it, but I guess we’ll see. They’ll be able to save your gas in the back there.”

Ana got out of the truck and stretched as the two men in overalls climbed into the back and began removing the canisters. Chuck and Shelby prepared to move Randall, while Kelloway, the woman, led a wagon over to them.

Gabriel walked his horse to where Ana stood and climbed off. “I have to admit, this is the first time I’ve seen a female slayer.”

“Then you still haven’t seen one yet,” Ana said.

“Come again?”

“I’m not one of them. I met Chuck and the others earlier today on the road. I only joined with them because we were headed the same way. Or we were, anyway.”

“Where were you headed?”

“Texas.”

“What part of Texas?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He gave her a curious look but didn’t ask the obvious question. He said instead, “You look like you could use a bath.”

“God, yes. You have hot baths?”

“Not quite, but we can do lukewarm.”

“Good enough,” Ana said, smiling.

* * *

What she could have really used was a hot bath, but she wasn’t going to complain about a lukewarm one, which was what she got, as promised. The apartment building Gabriel took her to had a spare room with a claw-foot tub that she filled with water and soaked in for a good ten minutes, wiping away the grime of the morning and the ambush, along with some of Mark’s blood that she found under her nails, and asking herself again why she was out here and not already back in Newton with Emily.

Because of you, Wash. This is all your fault, you asshat.

She sank into the water—it wasn’t cold but it wasn’t really warm, either—to wash her face and hair, then squeezed out some of the shampoo Gabriel had brought over and did her best to soap away the grunge clinging to every hair follicle. It was times like this that she wished she had cut her hair short, but short hair didn’t elicit the kind of responses she needed, especially when men were involved.

Ana hadn’t missed the fact that Gabriel had walked her to the apartment, then come back with everything she needed to enjoy the bath. She wasn’t an idiot and knew the kind of effect she had on men. That knowledge and the willingness to use it had been how she’d managed to keep both her and Emily alive for so long.

Still, it would have been nice to have hot water. Or bubbles. Or…

Two quick knocks on her door, followed by a familiar voice: “You decent in there?”

Chuck. She sat up slightly in the tub before answering. “Give me five minutes.”

“I’ll be back in five.”

Fourteen minutes later, Chuck was inside her apartment looking out the window at Mayfield’s main street. Ana was dressed in new jeans and a white blouse, courtesy of Gabriel. She still had her jacket, which she shrugged on inside the bathroom before joining Chuck in the living room.

“How’s Randall doing?” she asked.

“Town doctors are taking good care of him,” the older slayer said.

“So they really do have two doctors?”

“Well, one real doctor and one former medical student that’s almost a doctor.”

“Still, one and a half ain’t bad. That’s more than what we had in Newton.”

“Where’s that?”

“Nebraska.” She walked over to where he stood and looked out the window alongside him. “Where you from, Chuck?”

“Upstate New York.”

“New York?”

“Upstate New York.”

“What’s the difference?”

He smiled. “There’s only a difference if you’re from upstate New York.” Then, watching a couple of men on horses moving up the road below them, “I’m still not convinced they’re not from here.”

“Who? The one that ambushed us?”

He nodded. “And the ones that murdered those people at the campsite.”

“What did Gabriel say when you told him?”

“He’s sending people out to the campsite. The woman, what’s her name?”

“Kelloway.”

“Right. She hasn’t come back yet.”

“You think Gabriel’s lying? About not knowing anything about the ambush or the killings? If they’re from here…”

Chuck shook his head. “I don’t think he’s lying, but that doesn’t mean the ones responsible still aren’t from here. It would be a hell of a coincidence for them to be heading toward Mayfield when they set up that ambush. This place isn’t really on any map except the ones we carry.”

“Slayers.”

“Yeah.”

“What did the others say about this place, anyway?”

“Nothing about it being dangerous. A few guys came through here about two years ago. Did a job for the locals and left.”

“And there were no red flags?”

“Not a one.”

“That’s why you came here so willingly. You really do think they’re in Mayfield. The killers. Right now, among us.”

Chuck didn’t answer her.

“Chuck,” Ana said.

“There’s a very good chance of that, yeah,” Chuck finally said.

“So how are you going to find them if they are?”

“Shouldn’t be too hard.”

“How you figure that?”

“There were six of them. People tend to notice when six people like to hang around one another. And the kind of people who committed those crimes at the campsite would stand out.” He looked over at her. “I’ll ask around. In the meantime, you can do the same. Find out what Gabriel knows. He looks like the closest thing to the head man around here.”

“What makes you think he’ll tell me anything?”

Chuck grinned.

“What?” Ana said.

“Give me a break, kid. We both know you’re no stranger to making men bend to your will.”

She rolled her eyes. “‘Bend’ to my will? What am I, a sorceress?”

“Better. You’re a pretty redhead with all the right curves.”

“Okay, now you’re just being a creepy old man.”

The slayer chuckled. “Didn’t mean to be. Just stating the facts.”

“Whatever. So how should I go about ‘bending’ Gabriel to my will?”

“You don’t have to try too hard. Just be, well, you.”

“That’s it, huh?”

“I’d give you some tips on how to go about doing that, but I have a feeling you already know all the right moves.”

Ana wasn’t sure whether she should be insulted by his insinuation or… Oh, who was she kidding? She was more than just a little pleased that he recognized what she was capable of, even if she had yet to show him what she could really do.

“I’ll ask around,” Ana said. “If I learn anything worthwhile, I’ll let you know.”

Chuck’s face grew serious. “Be careful, kid. I don’t think Gabriel has anything to do with what happened out there today, but you can never be too cautious with something like this. Whoever they were, they’re not going to like being exposed. And if they’ve been here a while, and this is their home, they’re really not going to like us outing them.”

“I’ll be discreet.”

Chuck looked back out the window. “It’ll be dark soon, and Randall’s healing. We won’t be going anywhere until tomorrow at the earliest, and probably not even then.”

“Chuck, I have to get to Texas. You know that.”

“That’s not going to happen for a while, kid. We really messed up the rims getting here, and Gabriel’s boys don’t seem all that optimistic about finding replacements for us.”

Ana sighed and thought, I should have stayed with the Tennessee Walker. God, why did I leave the horse behind and hop into that damn truck?

But she couldn’t go back in time, and Texas, along with Wash, was going to have to wait at least another day. Maybe she could talk Gabriel into lending her a horse. It sure looked as if Mayfield had plenty to spare.

Another knock on the door from across the living room.

Ana looked over. “Come in.”

Gabriel opened the door and leaned in. He nodded at Chuck, then turned to Ana. “Hungry?”

“Starving,” Ana said.

“You guys go ahead,” Chuck said. “I’ll be along.”

Ana shot him an I know what you’re doing look.

He returned a What? glance in reply.

Yeah, right, Ana thought and walked across the living room.

She smiled at Gabriel. “What are we having for dinner?”

“Depends on what the lady’s in the mood for,” Gabriel said, smiling back.

Eight

“It’s a dangerous world out there,” Gabriel said as he led her down the stairs of the apartment complex. “Especially for a lone woman.”

“I can take care of myself,” Ana said.

“I’m sure you can. Still, pretty dangerous. The monsters may have thinned out at night, but there’s still plenty left in the day.”

She thought of Mathison, of Mark, of the six men who had murdered the campers…

“What did your men find at the campsite?” she asked.

“They haven’t come back yet,” Gabriel said. “I told them to take their time so they wouldn’t miss anything. Kelloway’s in charge, so if there’s anything to be found, she’ll find it.”

“Kelloway’s your second in command?”

“That would imply there’s a first in command.”

“Wouldn’t that be you?”

“No one’s really in charge. We pretty much do everything by committee. But…I guess you could say I take care of the day-to-day operations.”

Sounds like the Big Man on Campus to me, Ana thought, before asking, “But you believe us. About what happened out there? What we saw?”

“Of course. I saw what your truck looked like. Those tires and windows didn’t get shot out by the harsh wind.”

“I’m glad you’re taking this seriously.”

He gave her an amused look. “Why wouldn’t I?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. A lot of people would rather not get involved. It’s not like there’s any advantages to butting in on something that doesn’t personally affect them. You didn’t know those campers.”

“Neither did you.”

He’s got a good point. A damn good point. What am I doing here and not out there looking for Wash?

“Is that how it is out there?” Gabriel was asking her. “People minding their own business even when they run across something despicable like this?”

She nodded. “Like you said, it’s a dangerous world out there. It pays to look out for yourself whenever possible.”

“Well, that’s not how we operate in Mayfield. Besides, something like this, this close to home…” He shook his head somberly. “We have to take it seriously.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

They walked across the lobby, passing Mayfield residents lingering around chatting. Almost everyone Ana had met so far wore working clothes, including the women. Ranching was the town’s main source of food, though Gabriel said they were making headway with farming, thanks to the plentiful spring water that flowed from the mountains.

“We rely on trading with other nearby towns for most of our greens and fruits,” Gabriel had said. “But those are once a month trips. You may have noticed, but we’re not exactly surrounded by other towns.”

“What are you guys trading with?” she had asked.

“Beef. Lots of it. We’re not there yet with the crops, but we’ve always been lucky with the livestock.”

Ana was looking forward to eating some of that livestock as they stepped outside onto the front porch. She allowed herself a few moments to soak in the town and revel in just how peaceful it was underneath the dwindling sunlight. There was an hour, maybe less, before nightfall. Not that the citizens look frightened of what was coming. Then again, they were surrounded by wide-open country, and as Gabriel had said, they weren’t “exactly surrounded by other towns.”

“Chuck told me you guys hired some slayers not too long ago,” Ana asked.

“We had some issues with a pack a while back. Nothing we couldn’t have dealt with ourselves, but it was easier to hire a couple of slayers that were passing by to do the work. Honestly? We were doing them the favor more than the other way around. Paid them in beef, which they loved.”

Ana believed him. There was nothing she had seen so far—of the place and its people—that would lead her to believe the former collaborator town wasn’t capable of taking care of the occasional ghoul problem by themselves.

A soft humming noise began as one of the street lamps above her head flickered on, slowly growing in brightness.

“A bit early,” Ana said, glancing up at the light.

“The solar cells for the lamps are always full,” Gabriel said. “One thing we don’t lack around here is sunlight during the day. It’s probably a little too bright, but always better too bright than not bright enough, am I right?”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“So if you’re not a slayer, what are you doing traveling with these guys?”

“I told you, I was headed to Texas, and they were going my way.”

“What’s in Texas?”

A guy, she thought but didn’t think that would help her “connect” with Gabriel.

“We both know you’re no stranger to making men bend to your will,” Chuck had said. It was probably a little too on the nose for her liking, but she couldn’t exactly tell him he was off the mark.

“A friend,” she said. “I promised to help them, and I like to keep my promises. But first I have to find them.”

“Good for you,” Gabriel said. “Nothing wrong with being a good friend. Come on.”

He led her into the street and toward a building with Lucy’s Cafeteria written in blocky letters above its front doors. Other people were already entering the same place, and Ana could see more residents inside through the windows.

“Who’s Lucy?” Ana asked.

“No idea,” Gabriel said. “The kitchen’s been here before any of us ever showed up six years ago.”

“You were brought here?”

“Yup. Like everyone else.”

“So no one’s originally from Mayfield?”

“Not as far as I know. I was from Missouri myself.”

“How did you end up here?”

“I was doing work in Tulsa when the world went to hell in a handbasket. Ended up here. I guess it could have been worse.”

“What’s worse than Nowhere, Oklahoma?”

“Have you been to New Jersey?”

They exchanged a grin.

“No, but I’ve been to California,” Ana said. “Can’t be any worse than California.”

“You say that, because you’ve never been to New Jersey,” Gabriel said.

“Chuck’s from New York,” Ana was going to say when the bang-bang-bang! of gunshots coming from behind them startled her first.

Ana spun around, but as fast as she had moved, she wasn’t anywhere close to Gabriel’s reaction. He was already fully turned, his right hand stabbing down to his holstered sidearm before she had even gotten halfway.

Damn, he’s fast!

It started with one gunshot that became two, then three, and suddenly there was a flurry of them. So many and in such a short span of time (seconds) that she lost count and didn’t know how many she’d heard, but just that there had been a lot.

“Chuck!” Ana shouted, instantly recognizing that the shouts were coming from the middle of the second floor of the building she and Gabriel had just come out of, exactly where her room was—and where she had last seen Chuck.

Gabriel was already sprinting back across the street, and Ana struggled to catch up to him. It didn’t help that she was almost a full foot shorter than the cowboy and didn’t have a prayer of matching his long legs stride for stride.

People in the streets were looking after them, others turning toward the apartment as Ana and Gabriel hopped up the sidewalk and burst back into the lobby. More residents were at the staircase, peering upward, but no one had gone up.

“Out of the way!” Gabriel shouted. “Out of the way!”

He bounded up the steps, taking them two, then three at a time.

Must be nice to be so tall! Ana thought as she hurried after him as best she could.

She was already winded halfway up the stairs, but Gabriel hadn’t slowed down even a little bit. Her chest was pounding out of control when she finally landed on the second floor. She reached into her jacket pocket and felt the cold grip of the SIG Sauer that Chuck had given her. It was where it was supposed to be. She hated guns, but right now it was her best friend.

Gabriel was still ahead of her and moving up the hallway toward her room, his own pistol already drawn and gripped tightly in one hand. Unlike her, he looked at home with the weapon. He was also moving with surprising grace, like a cat in a man’s clothing. It was impressive, and the last time Ana saw anyone that fluid in a life-and-death situation, it was Wash.

I should be in Texas right now, looking for him. Why am I here? Why am I running toward gunshots?

Those thoughts were swirling around in her head as she hurried after Gabriel. He had already stepped through her room’s open door (The door’s open. The door’s open!) and she waited to hear more gunshots, voices, anything to indicate that the chaos she imagined was going on in there, but there was just silence from inside.

When she entered the apartment, she discovered why—because it was already over.

Gabriel was crouched between two bodies lying on the floor a few feet from the door. Two men she hadn’t seen before, both shot multiple times. The bigger of the two dead men was still clutching his gun, his arm extended forward like he was taking aim when he died. The weapon was a handgun, but it had a noticeably long barrel. It took a second before Ana realized there was some kind of silencer attached at the end.

He came here to assassinate Chuck…

Then, just as quickly, Or me.

Because this was her room, not Chuck’s. They had come to her apartment with a silenced weapon.

Ana shivered, wondering if this was how it felt when someone was walking over your grave.

I should have stayed on the road with the Tennessee Walker. God, why did I get in that truck? All of this is happening because I got in that damn truck.

It was too late to change any of that now, and she took a second to get a better look at the second body. Unlike the first, the dead man had dropped his pistol and lay crumpled awkwardly on his stomach. He had short red hair, and freckles covered one exposed cheek.

Bullet casings surrounded both men, and one had rolled out into the hallway.

Chuck. Where’s—

Oh, God.

Ana hurried past Gabriel and toward the window where she had last seen Chuck. He was still there, except now he was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, his head lolled so far to the one side that it was amazing he hadn’t completely toppled over.

“Chuck,” Ana said, not that he could have answered her.

He was dead. She knew that even before she kneeled next to him. There was no way he couldn’t be dead, given how much he was bleeding. They’d shot him three times, once in the belly, once in the right thigh, and once in the right shoulder. There was blood on the wall behind him, and bullet casings littered the space around his splayed legs.

“How is he?” Gabriel asked from behind her.

She shook her head but couldn’t bring herself to look away from Chuck. The slayer had a strangely peaceful expression on his face as he sat there. She didn’t dare touch him for fear he’d tip over. He was still holding his gun in his right hand, and when she looked at the wall behind him, she saw four bullets embedded in the wallpaper.

She glanced back at the two other bodies in the room.

You got them right back, Chuck. You got them right back…

Ana stood up and returned to Gabriel. He was turning one of the dead men’s heads—the redhead—to get a better look at the face.

“You know him,” Ana said, reading Gabriel’s expression.

“Yeah,” Gabriel said, standing up. “I know both of them.” He pointed at the redhead. “That’s Stark.” Then, indicating the large man with black hair, “That’s Aaron.”

“Who were they?”

Gabriel shook his head. “Guys. Just guys.”

“‘Just guys?’ What does that mean?”

“It means they were just guys. No different than any other guy in town.”

Somehow I find that hard to believe, Ana thought, but bit her tongue.

Gabriel was glancing around at the apartment. “I don’t know what they were doing up here. Or what led to this…”

“I think it’s pretty obvious what led to this,” Ana said. “They were at the campsite. They came here to kill Chuck because of it.”

Or me. Or maybe they came here to kill me…

“You don’t know that,” Gabriel said.

“Don’t I?”

“You’re guessing.”

“But I’m right.”

He shook his head but didn’t say anything.

“I’m right,” Ana said again.

She could see the conflict on his face as he struggled to find something to argue with her. Instead, Gabriel holstered his pistol and unclipped his radio.

He pressed the transmit lever and said into it, “Kelloway. Come in.”

The radio squawked before they heard a woman’s voice. “Kelloway here.”

“Where are you now?”

“On our way back from the campsite.”

“What did you find out there?”

“The slayers were telling the truth. Four dead. Two men and two women.”

“Anyone we know?”

“No. Looks like they were just passing through.”

“How did they die?”

“It was an execution, Gabriel. They were shot in the back of the head.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Joe tracked six horses leading to that ambush with the slayers. After that… You’re not gonna like this.”

Gabriel gritted his teeth. “Tell me anyway.”

“Joe thinks the killers came from Mayfield.” Kelloway paused before continuing. “They’re one of us, Gabriel.”

You were right, Chuck, Ana thought, looking back at the dead slayer.

“There’s a very good chance they’re among us right now,” the man had said only a few minutes ago.

And that was all it had taken. A few minutes, and Chuck was dead.

I should have stayed out of the truck…

“All right,” Gabriel was saying into the radio. “Get back here as soon as you can.”

“See you when I see you,” Kelloway said through the radio.

People were finally appearing in the hallway outside the room and looking in. Gabriel walked over and closed the door on them.

“Well?” Ana said. “What happens now?”

“Now I find out who’s responsible,” Gabriel said. “For that campsite, for the ambush on you earlier. And for this.”

“What happens then?”

“We’ll deal with them.”

“Deal with them how?”

“Look around you, Ana. This is Mayfield. Nowhere, Oklahoma, remember? The only law here—the only justice you’re going to find—is the one we come up with ourselves. So how do you think we’ll deal with them?”

Good, Ana thought, looking back at Chuck’s peaceful and unmoving body. Good…

Nine

“So Chuck’s dead?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit,” Randall said.

“Shit’s right,” Shelby said from where he was standing, next to the window. “Shit’s left, too. Shit’s all around, folks.”

Kid’s got a way with words, Ana thought, looking from the youngest slayer to Randall, lying on a cot in Mayfield’s hospital—really, a one-story building that used to be a dental clinic somewhere in the middle of town. They were in a private back room, where Randall had been getting treatment.

It was dark outside the window next to Shelby and had been for the last hour or so. Unlike most places Ana had gone through since The Walk Out, Mayfield’s buildings didn’t have rebars over their windows or anything that looked like extra security. But then again, she had to remind herself of the town’s location, and it made sense why there were no real fears of ghouls—beyond the occasional strays, anyway.

An LED bulb provided plenty of light for the small room, enough for Ana to see that Randall looked a lot better than he had this afternoon. His wound was properly treated, and he was wearing a white hospital gown as he sat propped up against a pillow.

“So they’re here,” Randall was saying. He sounded pretty strong for a man who had just been shot only a few hours ago.

Ana nodded. “Chuck thought so. Looks like he was right.”

“So what’s the town doing about it?”

“The guy in charge is looking into it.”

“Looking into it how?”

“He’s gathering evidence, searching for the other four.”

“Two down, four to go,” Shelby said. He had put his palm down on his holstered semiautomatic and left it there since Ana entered the room. “Better than six to go. Two less. Amirite?”

“Sounds about right,” Ana said.

“Does he know who they are?” Randall asked. “The others?”

“Not yet.”

“You think he will?”

“He strikes me as very capable. Besides, it’s a small world. Even smaller town. You can’t hide your affiliations forever.”

“He better find them,” Randall said, “or we will.”

“Damn straight,” Shelby said.

“You can’t even stand,” Ana said to Randall.

“Yeah, well, I’m not gonna be in this bed forever,” Randall said. He clenched his teeth. “They’re not getting away with killing one of us. No fucking way.”

“Got that right, homeboy,” Shelby said.

Homeboy? Ana thought, but let the two of them have their moment. Right now, anger wasn’t going to help the situation, but she didn’t think she was in any position—or had the right—to tell them to calm down.

She said instead, “Let’s see how Gabriel handles it first. It’s his town and his people. We should give him first crack at this.”

“Then it’s our turn,” Randall said.

Ana nodded. “Then it’ll be our turn.”

“Our” turn? Since when did you become a part of their “our?”

I guess when you climbed into that truck…

Damn that truck.

“You still armed?” Randall was asking her.

“The gun Chuck gave me,” Ana said.

“Maybe you should replace it with something bigger.”

“Like what, a shotgun? Your Ol’ Pumpy?”

Randall grinned. “Why not?” He reached over for the pump-action shotgun leaning against the wall next to him. Shelby had brought it over an hour ago after they heard about what had happened to Chuck. “The SIG’s a good gun, but it’s no Pumpy.”

“I’ll make do,” Ana said.

“You should think about it.”

“I have.”

“Some more, I mean.”

“I will.”

“Let me know when you change your mind; we have plenty to spare,” Shelby said.

If I need a bigger gun, that just means we’re already in deep shit, guys, Ana thought, but she smiled and said instead, “Yeah, I’ll do that, Shelby.”

“What’s Gabriel telling you?” Shelby asked.

“Just what I’ve told you guys so far.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Hunh.”

“What’s on your mind, Shelby?”

The young slayer shrugged. “Maybe you should work your magic a little harder on him. Know what I mean?”

“No. I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, I think you know what I mean. Know what I mean?” He grinned and did a “nudging” motion with his elbow, while adding, “Nudge nudge, wink wink.”

Ana sighed, and thought, This is going to be a long night…

* * *

“How’re your guys?” Gabriel asked.

My “guys?” Ana thought. When did they become my “guys?”

But she said, “They’re angry.”

“I don’t blame them. I would be, too, in their shoes.”

“Where are you in the investigation?”

“You’re not gonna like this…”

“That bad?”

He shrugged. “I guess it depends on how you look at it.”

“Meaning?”

Gabriel didn’t answer right away, and they continued walking down the sidewalk. The streets were empty except for the two of them, and if not for the lights, she might have been shivering more than just from the cold. Even so, she found the quiet around them unsettling, but Gabriel’s unhurried (and unworried) stride next to her helped to calm her nerves.

“Stark and Aaron, the two guys in your room,” Gabriel said, “have common friends. We tried looking for them, but…”

“‘Tried?’”

“Four of them are missing.”

“Four?”

“Yeah. Four.”

Four plus two makes six.

Shit, Chuck, you were right.

“How do you define ‘missing?’” she asked.

“As in, we can’t find them, and eight horses are unaccounted for from the stables,” Gabriel said.

“Eight horses?”

“We think they took an extra four horses with them.”

Ana wasn’t sure if she was angry or…relieved. Was she relieved? Maybe. After what had happened to Chuck, the last thing she wanted was to get caught up in a gunfight with four stone-cold killers. Four men who were just as bad as Mathison and his crew. She’d had Wash to help her deal with Mathison, but Wash wasn’t here right now.

Damn you, Wash. Why did you have to run off like that?

“But you know who they are,” Ana said. It wasn’t a question.

Gabriel nodded. “Keenan, Patrick, Bates, and Sullivan.”

“Anything special about them?”

“Like Stark and Aaron, they were just guys in town. They did their share of the work, like everyone else.”

“And they apparently moonlight as murderers.”

“Yeah, apparently that, too.”

“Why would they do that? Kill those campers so close to town?”

“The campsite was ten miles away. Not exactly close.”

“But close enough that someone else besides us could have stumbled across the bodies.”

Gabriel shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you, Ana. We’re still trying to wrap our heads around this. Why would anyone do something like that? I don’t know. Why would anyone do any of the things they do these days?”

Ana thought about Mathison again, about Mark...

Because they can. That’s why. Because they can…

They stopped underneath the Lucy’s Cafeteria sign and next to a lamppost. She felt better having light around her. The kitchen was empty behind them, the dinner having finished up a while ago. Ana looked across the street at the apartment building, up at the second floor and the window where she had been inside earlier today. Chuck’s body was gone, along with his killers, but there was no way she was going back to sleep in that room.

“We’ll go after them tomorrow,” Gabriel was saying. “Put together an old-fashioned posse and chase them as far as we can.”

“And how far is that?”

“As far as we can, until we can’t go any farther.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“We can’t exactly chase them to the ends of the Earth, Ana. It’s a big world out there.”

“So they’re going to get away with it. Killing those campers, and Chuck…”

“We can only do what we can do. Mayfield is our primary concern. Everything else…” He paused, before continuing. “We’ll do the best we can.”

Ana wasn’t really angry with him, and that surprised her. He was telling the truth without sugarcoating it, and maybe that was one of the reasons why she accepted his answer so readily. That, and the fact that she knew he was right. It was a big world out there, with a lot of places to run to and hide. How do you track four men on horseback if they didn’t want to be found?

“You haven’t eaten,” Gabriel said.

“Haven’t exactly had time,” Ana said.

He turned around. “Come on.”

“Where we going?”

“Late dinner,” Gabriel said, and pushed open the unlocked doors into Lucy’s Cafeteria.

“You guys don’t lock your doors at night?” Ana asked as she followed him inside.

“Crime isn’t a big concern in Mayfield.” Then, with a wry look, “Or, at least, it didn’t use to be.”

“Times change. Even now.”

“Unfortunately.”

Gabriel led her through the building, passing rows of cafeteria-style benches and turning on battery-powered LED lamps along the way. The place brightened up enough for her to see just how empty Lucy’s was and how many people it would have taken to fill up all the spaces at a normal dinnertime.

She glanced at her watch. 9:19 p.m., and most of Mayfield was already asleep except for the two of them. There was Shelby and Randall in the clinic and a half dozen or so residents they’d walked past as they were heading indoors earlier, but the town was a shadow of its former daytime self.

“Did you eat?” she asked him.

“I grabbed a couple of bites.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Unless you’d prefer to eat alone?”

“I never say no to company.”

“Happy to hear that.”

“So, is there a Mrs. Gabriel?”

He chuckled. “Not for a while. What about you?”

There’s a guy who fled to Texas, Ana thought, but she said, “Not for a while.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Eh, it’ll happen when it happens. You never know.”

He gave her a smile over another shoulder. “No, you never do.”

Gabriel pushed his way through two double doors at the back and into the kitchen, turning on another couple of lanterns along the way. He seemed to know his way around the place, and Ana watched him going through the pantries, taking out cutlery, plates, and utensils before grabbing a basket with a single loaf of bread still inside from one of the shelves and putting it on the counter. He shrugged off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, making a show of it, before starting to cut the bread into thin slices.

“You’ve done this before,” Ana said.

“You mean cook dinner for a beautiful woman?” he said. “Why, yes, I have.”

Ana smiled. She guessed she wasn’t going to have to do that much work with Gabriel. Then again, most men were pretty easy—

Something caught her eye. It was Gabriel’s right arm.

Or, more specifically, the section between his wrist and elbow. There were three very long red marks, like jagged lines, that shouldn’t have been there. The one in the middle was particularly deep. Even though he’d treated all three lines with ointment, it only took her a few seconds to recognize the marks for what they were, and another five seconds to recall one of the dead women back at the campsite. Or her fingers, to be more precise.

“She got a piece of them,” Ana had said.

“Yeah, at least one,” Chuck had replied. “I guess she didn’t get enough.”

If Gabriel noticed her staring at his arm, he didn’t stop cutting the bread. He had already gone through half of the loaf and was still talking.

“You know where that old saying ‘best thing since sliced bread’ came from? 1928. A guy named Otto invented a machine that could cut perfect slices of bread. The ads hyping it at the time actually went along the lines of, ‘The greatest forward step since bread was wrapped,’ or something like that. It somehow morphed into ‘The best thing since sliced bread.’ How funny is that?”

He was too busy cutting and talking that he didn’t notice when she put her right hand into her jacket pocket and eased back the hammer of the SIG Sauer with her thumb. Then she turned slightly until she was standing with him directly in front of her and the hidden barrel of the gun was pointed straight at him. Or as straight at him as she could make it, since it was a little hard to aim when the gun was still inside her pocket and she had to eyeball the whole thing.

What if you’re wrong? a voice asked from the back of her mind. He could have gotten those marks anywhere. He works with his hands, remember? What if you’re wrong?

Gabriel had finished cutting the bread when he put the knife down, then picked up a slice and took a bite as he turned and—stopped moving entirely when he saw the look in her eyes.

“What?” Gabriel said. “What’s wrong?”

What if you’re wrong? the voice asked. What if you’re wrong?

Her eyes shifted slightly to his hand, holding the bread near his mouth. He saw where she was looking and turned his arm. The red lines seemed to gleam in the LED light, becoming even more pronounced when the lantern hit them at just the right angle.

Gabriel lowered his arm and tugged his jacket sleeve over the lacerations.

“Where did you get those?” she asked.

“An accident,” he said. “It happens a lot around here. Mayfield’s not the poster child for work safety.”

“An accident?”

“Yeah. It was an accident. Why?” He smiled. “There’s no office jobs here, Ana. Besides, it looks worse than it really is.”

“It looks like someone scratched you, Gabriel.”

“It may look like that, but it’s not.”

She tightened her grip around the gun in her jacket pocket and thought about her options. Did she even have options?

Yes, she did. Maybe. There had to still be people outside on the streets right now, even in the middle of the night. She could call them. If there was actually anyone out there to hear her calling.

But even if there were, then what? Tell them about her suspicions? Would they even believe her? Would she believe a woman she didn’t know until this afternoon, and take her word against a man who had been running the show for six years?

“What’s going on, Ana?” Gabriel asked. His eyes went to her jacket pocket for a brief second. “What’s in there?”

“A gun,” Ana said.

“Is that right?”

“Yeah.”

“You gonna shoot me?”

“Only if you go for your weapon.”

He held his hands forward, the palms up. “I’m not going to do that. Why would I? All of this is just one big misunderstanding.”

“One of those women at the campsite got a piece of her killer. Three of her fingers were bloodied. She had skin under her fingernails. Did Kelloway tell you that?”

“Yeah, she did,” he said, his eyes staring at her the entire time. He was trying to read her. “What are you trying to say, Ana?”

“I think you know what I’m trying to say.”

“I’d like to hear you actually say it, then give me the chance to defuse this before it gets out of hand.”

Damn, he’s calm, Ana thought, watching his face closely. He had lowered his hands back to in front of him.

“You killed those people at the campsite,” Ana said.

He shook his head. “That’s not true.”

“You killed them.”

“Repeating the accusation doesn’t make it true, Ana.”

“Did you send Stark and Aaron to kill Chuck, too? To kill me?”

“How could I do that? I was walking you over here when it happened, remember?”

“Then it was to kill Chuck.”

“I was the first one in the building. The first one in the room. Or did you forget?”

“I didn’t.”

“So why would I do that if I was involved?”

“The shooting was over. There was no threat to you anymore.”

“You’re reaching.”

“Am I?”

“Yes—” he said, even as his right hand wandered closer toward his holstered sidearm.

Ana took the SIG out of her jacket pocket and pointed it at him. “Don’t.”

His hand froze halfway to the gun. “Don’t what?”

“You know damn well don’t what.”

She waited for him to go for his sidearm anyway, but he didn’t. His right hand returned to in front of him, folded over the back of his left palm.

“You’re making a mistake, Ana,” he said.

“I don’t think so.”

Ana eyeballed the distance between them. Ten feet. She wasn’t much of a shooter, but she didn’t have to be to hit something the size of a fully-grown man from just ten feet away.

Why couldn’t I have been wrong about him? Goddammit.

“Ana,” Gabriel began.

“Shut up,” she said. “You’re going to turn around, and I’m going to take your gun, then we’re going to march out of here.”

“And then what?”

“Then I’m going to find a way to bind your wrists.”

“All of this, over a hunch?”

“I don’t need hunches. I have your arm.”

“Oh, right, I forgot about that.” He looked down at his now-covered arm before refocusing on her. “You’re going to need more than that. Remember, I’ve been here for years. You haven’t. Who are they going to believe? You or me?”

“I can be very convincing,” Ana said. “Besides, the bodies are still out there. And I’m willing to bet if I ask the right questions, you have more in common with Stark and Aaron and those other four names you listed earlier than you were letting on. I bet I can convince one or two of your people to side with me. Or, at the very least, to listen to me and actually look into my claims. What do you think?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Yeah, I’m starting to think that you actually could do that. Convince someone to listen to you…”

“Turn around.”

He didn’t. Instead, he said, “I guess there’s nothing left to say.”

“Turn around.”

He still didn’t. “The truth is, you’re right; I was there, but I didn’t kill them.” Then, with a smirk that made ice slither up and down her spine, “Well, not all of them.”

His right hand went for his gun, and she pulled the trigger.

It was a surprise—to her, that she actually did it, and definitely to him. The gunshot was louder than she was expecting—especially for such a small gun—but maybe the confined nature of the kitchen had something to do with that.

She was startled by the blast, and so was Gabriel, who jerked his right arm back with a grunt, just before he grabbed a pan from a counter next to him with his left hand and threw it at her. Ana was moving the gun around, trying to get a better second shot, when the metal cooking utensil ricocheted off her temple.

She stumbled backward, struggling to remain upright. She was more stunned than hurt, though she was definitely hurting. She was also probably already bleeding and thought she could feel blood trickling down from the spot where the pan had struck her. She was raising her right hand, trying to line up another shot, when he seemed to split into three separate Gabriels.

She shot the one in the middle, but all three Gabriels remained standing in front of her.

Dammit! Wrong one!

The one on the right! Shoot the one on the right!

Or is it the one on the left?

She couldn’t decide, and it was too late to fire a third time, because something struck her in the chest and she was flung backward. Her back slammed into something sharp and metal, and pain exploded across her entire body.

Then someone was screaming just before a heavy object—A fist? Another cooking pan? Maybe a hammer?—hit her across the forehead.

There was overwhelming pain and darkness, and the last thing Ana was conscious of was falling, and the thoughts, Should have stayed out of the truck. Dammit, why didn’t I stay out of the truck? running through her head.

Ten

She expected chaos and fury and a lot of shouting, maybe even shooting, but instead there was just dead silence and the kind of pounding headache that made her want to immediately snap her eyes shut and go back to La La Land. Of course she couldn’t do that (Wake up, or you’re going to die. Wake up, or you’re going to die, girl!), and Ana forced herself to look around her even as her head threatened to cave in on itself.

Any second now.

Any second now…

There was just enough natural light (Is it morning? No, can’t be. It doesn’t feel like morning.) for her to see her surroundings and come up with a pretty good idea of where she was.

A basement. Concrete walls surrounded her on all sides, and there were box-shaped objects stacked underneath a heavy tarp across from her, a large chunk of it hidden in the shadows that dominated that side of the room. Besides her and those boxes, the place was mostly empty, with the beginnings of a staircase to her left leading up to an unseen door.

Where the hell was she? Was she still in Mayfield? Or was she underneath Lucy’s Cafeteria? Where had Gabriel put her?

Gabriel!

“The truth is, you’re right; I was there, but I didn’t kill them. Well, not all of them.”

That bastard. All this time, and he had been playing her, pretending to “help” her find the killers. What were the chances he wasn’t just one of them, but their leader? Given his position within Mayfield, that was probably a good bet.

Lying asshat.

She looked around her again, hoping to see something the second time that she might have missed initially. But all she could concentrate on was the pounding headache. God, her head hurt. What had he hit her with? There was the frying pan to the temple the first time. She flinched at the memory and relived the rush of pain as the heavy metal object bounced off her head. And after that? It might have been his fist. Whatever it was, it had put her out. She could feel the bruises.

Yeah, that’s gonna leave a mark, all right.

To make matters worse, she was tied to some kind of armchair. It was brown and cold and sticky, and her arms were taped to the armrests by gray duct tape. Her legs were bound together, and there was even more tape wrapped around her chest, keeping her pinned to the chair, as if restraining her limbs wasn’t already good enough. It took her a few seconds to realize there was something over her mouth, too, and that she was breathing through her nose and had been since she woke up.

But she wasn’t bleeding, thanks to what she thought might have been a large bandage over her left temple. Or it felt like a bandage. At least the bastard had been nice enough to leave her with that. Of course, that wasn’t going to keep her from cutting his balls off the first chance she got.

Lying piece of shit.

She wasn’t sure how long she sat there staring at the dark blue tarp in front of her. Despite her best attempts, she couldn’t move even a single inch in the chair. She also couldn’t hear anything from outside the basement. And there should have been sounds coming from out there. How was the world around her so silent after everything that had happened?

Had Gabriel taken her out of Mayfield after all? No, she didn’t think so. It would have taken too much work to throw her on a horse and ride out, after all the commotion she’d made. Someone would have heard the shooting and come running. They might not have reacted right away, but eventually someone would have responded. Gabriel might have been in charge of the place, but even he was going to have a challenging time explaining what had happened.

So where was she? And did it really matter if it was still somewhere in Oklahoma or Mars, if she couldn’t do a damn thing about it?

Ana sighed out loud and relaxed her body. Fighting against the duct tape wasn’t doing her a bit of good. The only thing the continued struggling would get her was more sore muscles, and she was already sore from head to toe.

But especially the head. God, it hurt. The throbbing was worse now than it had been when she first opened her eyes. The pain seemed to have built up to a crescendo, and there wasn’t a single thing she could do about it but grit her teeth and bear—

The clack of a door opening, followed by footsteps coming down the stairs to her left.

She turned her head just as something clicked, and a single soft LED light hummed to life above her. The brightness stabbed at her eyes, and Ana clenched them closed. She counted to five before reopening them slowly, just in time to see him taking the last step down.

Gabriel.

He didn’t look any worse for wear after their “disagreement,” even though she was pretty sure she’d shot him in the right arm. He smiled at her before walking to the back of the room and picking up a cheap metal chair from a corner and returning with it. He set the chair down about five feet in front of her and straddled it, laying his arms over the headrest.

He stared at her and didn’t say anything. She had a few choice words for him, but of course couldn’t say any of them. She mumbled against the tape instead.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” he said, turning his head in a mock I can’t hear you gesture. “You’re going to have to speak up.”

She muttered louder against the tape.

“Oh right, forgot about that,” he said, before standing up and walking over.

Her body tightened, fully prepared for the man to do something other than remove the tape from her mouth. Instead, he jerked the strip free with one quick tug.

Ana sucked in a deep breath and in the next second shouted, “You motherfucker!”

“That mouth!” he said, laughing.

He doesn’t care, Ana thought. Because he doesn’t have to.

She had shouted as loud as she could on purpose, and it had nothing to do with Gabriel. She had been trying to get someone else’s attention other than him—someone outside the basement. But judging by his reaction, and that cavalier laugh of his, it had been for naught. Gabriel didn’t care if she made loud noises, because either the basement was soundproof or there was no one out there to hear her. She wasn’t sure which one made her feel worse.

Oh, who are you kidding. It’s both.

But Ana didn’t let him see her disappointment. She didn’t want to give him more ammunition. Instead, she stared back at him and resisted the urge to spit in his face. That would have been satisfying, but it would have also put him in a bad mood. Right now, he looked like a man who believed he had the world in the palm of his hands—and maybe he did—and Ana had learned a long time ago that people, especially men, were most vulnerable when they thought they were in charge.

“How’s the arm?” she asked instead.

“Just a scratch,” he said.

He might have been lying, but she had no way to verify that. He didn’t seem to be favoring his right arm, though, and he was wearing a new jacket, so she couldn’t tell how much damage she’d inflicted on him.

“You’re a lousy shot,” he said. “How does someone miss a target as big as me from five feet away?”

Rub it in why don’t you, you piece of shit, she thought, but said, “I’ll try to do better next time.”

“There won’t be a next time.”

“You better hope not.”

He grinned before casually sticking the tape that had been over her mouth to her shoulder. “For later,” he said, before walking back to his chair and sitting down. “Now. What were you saying?”

“Where the hell am I?”

“Mayfield.”

“Bullshit.”

He shrugged. “Believe what you want.”

She actually did believe him, but Ana was hoping he might try to convince her, maybe even tell her how he’d gotten her down here without the rest of the town knowing. She hated the idea that the entire population of Mayfield might be in on this.

No. This was a small-scale operation. She was sure of it. Six men, like Chuck had believed, and Gabriel himself had all but confirmed during his charade. Maybe unwittingly, but more likely because it helped sell his story. His lies.

Gabriel, who Chuck once looked at and gave the thumbs up.

“I’ve run across a lot of people,” Chuck had said. “Slayers, regular citizens; sometimes the worst of the worst. Trust me when I tell you, I can sniff out a killer a mile away. These three don’t give off the scent.”

You were wrong, Chuck. You were so wrong.

We both were…

And maybe that hurt more. She had liked Chuck, but she didn’t know him long enough to think there would be a long-lasting sense of loss at his death. But the being lied to and believing every bit of it was going to sting for a long, long time.

He tossed me a line, and I bit. All of it. Every single inch of it.

She was supposed to be good at this: Reading people. Reading men. But Gabriel had hoodwinked her from the beginning. The cowboy persona, the back and forth with calling her ma’am. The man was one step ahead of her the entire time, feeding her lie after lie, and she had bought it. She had bought all of it.

“Who were they?” she asked, fighting down the anger, forcing herself to present a neutral expression. It was hard, but she had experience in controlling her emotions.

“Who?” Gabriel said.

“The other five. Your partners in crime.”

“You already met two of them. Stark and Aaron.”

“So they were real?”

“Looked real dead to me.”

“Did you send them to kill me?”

He shook his head. “Chuck. I figured once I got rid of the slayers, you’d be easier to handle.” He flashed her a wry smile. “Turns out, you were the one I should have been wary of the entire time.”

You’re goddamn right, she thought, but said, “What about the others?”

“What about them?”

“Keenan, Patrick, Bates, and Sullivan. So which one isn’t really a part of your little gang of killers?”

Gabriel smiled. “Bates. I guess you could say he’s my stand-in.”

“So you really did do it. You really killed those people at the campsite.”

“Yeah, I did. One of them, anyway. Stark, Sullivan, and Aaron killed the other three. Keenan and Patrick sorta just watched.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Why did you do it?”

He didn’t answer right away. In fact, he almost looked like he was thinking about it, as if he hadn’t ever asked himself the question and it caught him off guard.

But she didn’t believe that for a second. Maybe he was really trying to decide whether to tell her or not.

After almost ten seconds of silence, he finally said, “We were bored.”

“You were bored?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Ana, but there’s not exactly a lot to do around here.” He paused again, before continuing. “They weren’t the first, in case you were wondering. There’ve been others. I guess you could say we’ve been bored for a very long time now.”

Ana wasn’t sure how to respond to that. She had met a lot of unforgivable and bad people since The Walk Out. Mathison, Mark, the mountain men that had captured her and Wash, and a dozen others whose names and faces she’d rather forget completely. They had all been terrible in their own way and for their own reasons, but none of them had done any of their evil deeds because they were bored.

“You look surprised,” Gabriel said, leaning forward against his chair’s backrest. “Or confused. It’s a little hard to tell.”

“You were bored,” Ana said, again tamping down the anger to a simmer, refusing to let it loose. Emotion wasn’t going to help her, but information might.

“Yes, we were bored.”

“You were bored,” she said again.

“Is there an echo in here?”

“You killed four strangers who were just passing through, because the six of you were bored.”

“I hope this isn’t the only thing you’re going to keep repeating, because if so, this conversation is going to get really tedious, really soon. Or boring, if you will. You don’t wanna bore me, Ana. That’s the last thing you wanna be doing.”

She stared at him. It was hard for her to see him as anything other than a piece of garbage, and Ana wanted to gag when she thought about all the flirting they’d done before he revealed his true self.

God, I think I’m going to throw up.

But she didn’t. Somehow, she didn’t…if just barely.

“Where are your friends?” she asked instead. “They’re hiding in basements around Mayfield, too?”

“No, they really are gone,” Gabriel said. “We always knew that sooner or later this rodeo would turn into a goat rope. They were prepared to take off when the time came. We made preparations way before you ever showed up. You know, just in case. It’s too bad, too, because I’m gonna miss those guys.”

“What about Bates? You said he was your stand-in.”

“Bates is gone, too. Let’s just leave it at that.”

“You killed him.”

“I didn’t.”

“One of the other three…”

He shrugged. “Probably. I didn’t ask for specifics, and they didn’t offer.”

“What are you going to do with me?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.” He reached behind his back and took out a knife. It wasn’t just any knife. It was her knife. “This was a surprise find. You always keep a knife hidden in your sleeve?”

“You never know when you’ll run across a two-faced murdering psychopath.”

He snickered. “Is that what I am?”

“Aren’t you?”

“I prefer sociopath. A high-functioning one.”

“Hey, either one works for me. As long as you recognize what you are.”

“Oh, I know what I am, Ana. I’ve always known.” He began carving letters into the chair’s armrest with her knife. “Is that Ana with one n or two?”

She ignored his question and asked, “What happened out there? Why did you ambush us? If you hadn’t, we might never have found you.”

“Maybe, but I couldn’t risk it.” He blew at some wood shavings before continuing. “We watched you, you know, when you were at the campsite. When you climbed back into your truck and took off, it was obvious you knew about Mayfield. We couldn’t let you reach it.”

“So you ambushed us.”

“We made the decision too late, as it turned out. We were already too close to town, and people heard the gunshots. Sound travels these days, especially gunfire, as you well know. When I got the radio call about the shooting from Kelloway, I knew we had to change plans on the fly. So I told Kelloway and Mitchell to meet me outside of town. Of course, they didn’t know I was already out there.”

“They don’t know about this. About you. Kelloway and Mitchell.”

“No.” He smiled. “Why? You plan on squealing to them about me, Ana?”

She didn’t answer him, not that he seemed to mind.

“As the saying goes, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry,” Gabriel continued with a heavy sigh that she wasn’t sure was affected for her benefit.

“So what happens now?” Ana asked. “Are you going to kill me, too?”

“I already told you, I don’t know. I haven’t decided what to do with you yet. That will likely depend on where I decide my future is. Truth be told, I’m not sure I want to stay in Mayfield. I mean, it’s a great town and all, but things have become a little stale.”

“Boring?”

“Exactly. I might end up joining the others out there after all. See what the rest of the world has to offer. Or what remains of it, anyway.”

“You’ll like it out there, Gabriel.”

“You think so?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s full of pieces of shit, just like you.”

He laughed, but she thought it was just a little too forced. “Cute. That’s real cute, Ana.”

“I’ve met plenty of guys like you out there.”

“Have you now?”

“You know what always ends up happening to them?”

“I’m sure you’ll enlighten me.”

“They get stepped on. Because that’s what happens to pieces of shit.”

“Now that’s what I call flowery prose!”

“Just wait for it. It’s going to happen to you, too. It’s inevitable.”

He waved a dismissive hand. “If it does happen, can you promise me one thing?”

“What’s that?”

“Promise me that it won’t be boring.” He grinned as he stood up. “I think you know by now that no one’s going to find you down here. You can scream all you want, but no one’s going to hear you, so you might as well save your breath.” He walked to the stairs. “I’ll be back with some food in a few hours. Be a good girl, and don’t hurt yourself in the meantime.”

“Fuck you, Gabriel.”

He chuckled. “That’s still a possibility, too, but we’ll discuss that later. It’s not like you’re going anywhere. Me, on the other hand, well, there are still options…”

“I’m going to kill you, Gabriel.”

He stopped halfway up the stairs and looked back at her. He didn’t say anything for the longest time.

Five seconds.

Ten…

Finally, he said, “You mean that, don’t you?”

You’re damn right I mean it, Ana thought, but she only glared back at him.

“You’re a dangerous woman,” Gabriel said. “A wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

“Look who’s talking.”

“I guess we both have that in common.” He leaned against the banister and peered down at her through the shadows. “I’ve had a lot of practice, and from the looks of it, so have you. How many people know about this?” he asked, taking her knife out from his back pocket. “Do the slayers know just how dangerous you really are? Probably not. I bet they think you’re just a poor little girl they have to look after. But that’s the idea, isn’t it? That’s the story you sell. Successfully, and for a long time now, from the looks of it.”

She clenched her teeth back at him. “Just remember what I said. Before this is over, one of us is going to be lying on the ground in a pool of their own blood.”

“You really think you can take me?”

“I know I can’t take you. You’re bigger, stronger, and probably faster.”

“Probably?” he grinned.

“The problem is, when I make my move, you won’t see it coming.”

“Is that how it works? With the others? How many have you dangled that innocent Little Red Riding Hood persona in front of, only to gut them with this little blade of yours?”

More than you’ll ever know.

“When the time comes, just remember that I gave you fair warning,” she said.

“Noted.” He turned to go. “But let’s see if you can survive the rest of the day first before we start looking toward the future.”

If I can survive the rest of the day first? What the hell does that mean?

But she had no chance to ask that question, because he was gone and the basement’s lone LED light buzzed a second time and went dark.

She was alone again, with just her thoughts.

They were dark thoughts, full of blood and murder.

I’m going to kill you, Gabriel.

If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to kill you…

Eleven

She couldn’t have been unconscious for very long the first time. A few hours, maybe, since Gabriel knocked her out in Lucy’s Cafeteria. Which meant it was probably still night outside, or early morning when she initially woke up.

She wasn’t sure when she (dozed off) went back under the second time, but when she opened her eyes, it didn’t look like anything had changed. The basement was still as dark as last time, though it had gotten noticeably colder. And there was something in the air that hadn’t been there before.

What is that?

She couldn’t concentrate because her head was throbbing even louder this time, and it became her central focus almost right away. The pain from the blows she’d taken felt even fresher now, which didn’t make any sense.

What is that?

She concentrated on her surroundings, trying to gauge how long it had been since Gabriel brought her down here. Not that knowing the answer was going to do her a lick of good at the moment. She was still taped to an armchair in a soundproof room, because Gabriel wouldn’t have bothered to lie about that.

He’s a liar. That’s what liars do. They lie.

To test out that theory, she screamed as loud as she could:

“Hello! Is anyone out there! I’m down here! Hello!”

Then again:

“I’m down here! Hello! Anyone up there? Anyone?”

And again:

“Help! I’m down here! Help!”

Nothing. No one opened the door, and no one came down the stairs to check on her. Her throat was hoarse by the time she gave up. And there was that consistently pounding headache, overwhelming pretty much every sense at the moment, including that new something in the air with her.

What in God’s name is that?

So, Gabriel hadn’t lied about the room being soundproof after all. It might not have been designed that way, but the combination of thick blocks of concrete and what was probably a heavy door had achieved the same result. She was stuck down here, and no one was going to find her.

That was bad. That was really bad.

Sonofabitch. I’m going to kill you. I’m going to fucking kill you.

She thought about Emily, waiting for her return at Kanter 11. She wasn’t too worried about Em. She was in good hands, with good people. Marie would take care of her, and there were the other women from Newton to talk to if she needed it. But knowing Em, she would have already ingratiated herself with the people of Kanter 11 by now. It wouldn’t have been on purpose. Her sister was just that naturally likable.

I’m sorry, Em. I might not make it back after all.

She gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut. What was she doing? Was she really giving up?

No.

She couldn’t give up. She hadn’t given up when Mathison took Emily, when those mountain men ambushed her and Wash on the road, or when Mathison captured her. And she’d be damned if she gave up now.

Hell no.

The problem was doing something about it. She’d had help dealing with Mathison. Wash had been there, and he’d proven to be an amazing ally. God, was that man good with a gun. If he’d been in Lucy’s last night, Gabriel wouldn’t have stood a chance. Wash would have shot the man dead from ten feet—hell, from fifty feet away.

Too bad you’re not here now, Wash. Too bad you had to run off on me and make me have to chase you down.

You asshat. You big, dumb asshat.

But she didn’t really hate him. She couldn’t. After everything he had done for her, for her sister, she couldn’t bring herself to dislike the man even a little bit. Maybe there was even something else, another reason why she was down south looking for him when every instinct told her to turn north with Em, to go home.

She remembered the last time they were together. Their first night. Their real first night. There was kissing, and cuddling, and she’d wanted to do so much more, but he was hurt because of her. Because he’d helped her rescue Em when he didn’t have to. He’d done so many things that he didn’t have to.

And that was why she was down here, looking for him. Even if she could brush aside her feelings, there was no denying how much she owed him. God, did she ever owe him. More than she’d ever owed anyone in her life. That thought was scary, but it was less so because it was Wash, and he hadn’t asked her for payment. He’d simply left.

She sighed and leaned her head back. It was really the only part of her body that she still had any control over. The tape around her chest, literally sticking her to the chair, seemed to have tightened. She hadn’t been able to move her arms and legs in so long she wasn’t sure blood was even still flowing through them. Every part of her was tired and hurt, not just the bruising from her temple and face—

What is that?

She had gotten a whiff of it earlier when she first opened her eyes, and now that she was able to push the pain into the background, it had started to grow, to reassert itself against her senses.

It was a smell. A lingering odor that hadn’t been there when she was first awake but was there now.

What is that?

Had Gabriel brought something down here to torment her? Spoiled food, maybe, because that was what this smelled like. It was strong and clung to the air like physical fingers slowly reaching from the back of the basement toward her. Then, wrapping around her, invading her olfactory senses, and refusing to let go.

My God, what is that smell?

It was an awful stench. How could she have ignored it when she woke up? It was everywhere, seemingly coming out of every corner, from every inch of the room. She gagged a little, and if not for the fact that she hadn’t eaten anything in—What? Hours? A day?—she might have thrown up.

“I was wondering if you’d wake up in time,” a voice said.

Her head snapped toward the stairs, then up at the heavy patch of shadows near the top. She still couldn’t see the door from her angle, but she could make out the outline of a figure somewhere up there. She had missed it the first time because it was so dark, and even now it was incredibly difficult to see. If not for the voice, which was evidence that someone was up there, she wouldn’t have been able to confirm anything at all. The mind had an amazing ability to fill in missing clues.

“You shouldn’t have screamed,” he said.

Gabriel.

When had he come back? Even better question: What was he doing, sitting in the dark watching her?

“You’re back,” she said. After all the screaming she’d done earlier, her words came out with some difficulty. She relaxed her throat, moved some saliva around, and tried again. “What did you mean, you were wondering if I’d wake up in time?”

“You shouldn’t have screamed,” he said again.

“Why not?”

“Look forward.”

She did, but there was just the ugly tarp and the blocky objects underneath it. Boxes of various sizes.

“What am I looking at?” she asked.

“Look closer.”

“I can’t get any closer. I’m tied up. Maybe you can untie me, and I’ll get right on it.”

Amused chuckling from the shadows at the top of the stairs. “It took a lot of effort to get it down here, you know. Luckily, we had a couple of them saved up in the old mines. The boys and I.”

“It?” she thought, and was almost afraid to say what came to her next out loud, but she did it anyway. “What are you talking about? What did you bring down here, Gabriel?”

“Looks like it took all that screaming you just did for it to finally make it out of the bag. I was wondering if it could smell your blood, but I guess it must be a lot weaker than I thought.”

“What did you bring down here?”

“But it’ll do. It’ll do…”

“What will do, Gabriel?”

He didn’t answer, and she continued staring at the tarp at the far end of the basement, too afraid to look away. Something flickered in the corner of her right eye, and she turned her head in that direction. The smell she’d detected before flared up, invading her nostrils and threatening to choke her.

I know that smell…

“Gabriel,” she said softly, “what did you do? What did you bring down here?”

“Oh, I think you know.” He remained hidden in the darkness, and though she couldn’t really see him, she sensed that he was watching her carefully, like a child waiting for a big fireworks display.

But he was right. She did know what he was talking about, what he had brought down here with her. It was the familiar stench, and the clues were in the way the air had changed as a result of its presence. It was harder to detect them by smell alone when you were out in the open, but in here, surrounded by four walls, a floor, and a ceiling, it was impossible not to. Even the pounding headache could no longer keep it from her.

“There it is,” Gabriel was saying. “There it is…”

It crawled out of the thick patch of shadows.

Slowly. So, so slowly.

She almost stopped breathing altogether at the sight of its domed head, just barely visible in the semidarkness of the room. She waited for more of them, but there was just one that she could see. That should have made her feel better, but it didn’t. Not even a little bit.

It was a ghoul, and it was pulling itself out of the shadows with its hands, fingers fighting for purchase against the hard pavement. It took the monster a lot of effort just to eat up an inch of space, and suddenly she knew why she was only seeing it now even though it had been coming—slowly, so slowly—since she began shouting.

I should have kept my mouth shut.

Oh, God, I think I’m going to throw up.

The creature’s stench was thick in the air, trying to suffocate the life from her regardless of how she breathed—through her mouth, through her nose, or even when she held her breath altogether. It was there, and it wouldn’t go away. It was everywhere, pressing against her skin, the exposed parts of her face. Everything tingled.

There was a click! and the lone LED light above her buzzed to life.

Ana wished it had stayed off, because then she would have been spared the details about the grotesque figure.

It was staring at her with dark black eyes, its jaw grazing against the concrete and leaving behind dark black stains in its wake. If there had once been life behind those eyes, it was long gone and replaced by a revenant that moved on base instincts. There was no intelligence behind those soulless, hollowed black pits that she could detect. Any evidence that it had once been human had been long stripped away, leaving behind a bony thing with malformed limbs. Pruned black flesh clung to its skeletal frame, its hairless skull gleaming under the lone light.

The monstrosity continued to pull itself forward because it couldn’t get up and walk. It didn’t have legs. No, that wasn’t true. It had legs, but it was missing everything below the knee joints, even though Ana thought she could hear the patella of its right leg grinding against the floor as it moved, along with its pelvic bone. The noises, somehow, were even worse than the smell.

It was ten feet from her, and getting closer.

She looked back at Gabriel, visible now at the top of the stairs with the lights on, though the door behind him was still obscured in shadows.

“Why did you bring it down here?” she asked.

He took a couple of steps into the light before stopping in the middle of the stairs and sitting back down. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m leaning toward getting out of Dodge. People are asking too many questions, and I’m having a hard time keeping my lies together.” He smiled. “I’m good, but I’m not that good.”

She glanced back at the ghoul.

Nine feet. How had it made up a whole foot while she wasn’t looking?

She turned back to Gabriel. “Don’t do this.”

“Are you scared?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Look at it. It’s so pathetic. It can barely move. I had to put it in a potato sack to bring it here, and it barely fought. It hasn’t had a drop of blood in ages. It’s so weak, you could probably kill it with your bare hands.”

Ana looked down at her arms, duct taped to the armchair.

“Oh, right, I forgot about that,” he said. The amusement in his voice was like a knife through her gut. “I guess you can’t kill it with your bare hands.”

You fucker, she thought, but knew that wasn’t going to help the situation, so she said instead, “Gabriel, you can’t do this…”

“Of course I can. But don’t worry, I didn’t leave you completely defenseless. After all, what would be the fun in that?”

Fun? There is no “fun” here, you bastard!

“Look at your right arm,” he said.

She did—and didn’t see anything she hadn’t seen the last ten times she had looked.

“See it?” he asked.

“See what? What am I looking at?”

“Look closer…”

She did, even squinting, but there was nothing down there except gray duct tape. What the hell was he talking—

Wait. What was that?

It was some kind of thin sliver, like a thread, running from one short end of the tape to the other. It was an incision, made with a knife or something sharp, but it wasn’t deep enough to cut through the material completely. It was, though, big enough that she could see the mesh between the top and sticky bottom part of the tape.

“See it?” Gabriel asked.

“That’s it? That’s it?”

“Well, I can’t do everything for you now, can I? You’ll have to do something yourself, Ana.”

She jerked her arm, praying the tape would simply snap in half, but her hand remained fastened to the armchair. But she had felt something. A little give. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and it hadn’t been there before.

Ana looked over at her left arm.

“It’s just on your right,” Gabriel said. “Can’t make it too easy for you, can I?”

“Easy?” she said, almost spitting the word out. “You call this easy?”

“Easier than the alternative.”

“I’d rather have a knife. Give me my knife.”

“Sure, why not,” Gabriel said.

“Sure, why not?” she thought. Is he really going to…?

Something sailed through the air and landed on the floor in front of her, clanging barely six inches from her right foot.

It was her knife.

“Oops,” Gabriel said. “You were supposed to catch that.”

She glared at him. “You sonofabitch.”

He chuckled. “I thought about taking you with me, but you’d be more trouble than you’re worth. Then I remembered; when was the last time I saw a ghoul feed? Answer: It’s been a while. I’ve always been fascinated by how long it takes someone to turn. The whole process, from beginning to end. I’ve heard a few theories, but I don’t think anyone’s ever done a controlled experiment like this one. You think it’ll be able to stop when it’s full, or will it keep drinking you to death?”

“You fucker,” Ana said.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

She looked back at the ghoul.

It was eight feet away now and raising its right arm, lowering its palm to the floor, then dragging its body forward.

Seven feet…

And there was the knife, so close she could feel the plastic handle. Feel the silver blade that could end this with a simple stab. She had done it before, and it would have been easy to kill the ghoul.

If she wasn’t tied up.

If she could grab the knife from the floor.

If, if, if…

“I’m being cruel, aren’t I?” Gabriel was saying from the stairs. “I should really give you more of a chance. Shouldn’t I?”

“Yes,” Ana said. “Give me a chance.”

“But I really, really want to see if you’ll turn before it drinks you empty. I’m extremely curious. Don’t worry, though; either way, I’ll make sure you don’t end up running around out there looking for innocent little kids to feed on. It’s the least I could do.”

She turned back to the ghoul.

It was six feet away now. Had it picked up speed? Was it actually moving faster?

No, it couldn’t be. It had to be her imagination.

Wasn’t it?

She looked back at the stairs. “Gabriel…”

“You’re scared, aren’t you?” he asked. She couldn’t tell if it was a real question, or if he was playing—

Oh, who was she kidding? The bastard was having fun at her expense!

“Yes,” she said. “Cut me loose. Just one hand.”

“That’s up to you. I’m sure you can break free.”

“I can’t…”

“You’re not even trying.”

“I can’t, goddammit!”

“Try harder.”

“Give me a chance. Just give me a chance.”

“But look at it. It can barely move. It’s going to take”—he mocked glancing at his watch— “at least another day to reach you. Or half a day. Let’s go with half a day.”

Bullshit. It’s not going to take half a day.

Because it was already halfway to her.

Five feet…

And the smell. It had gotten worse. She didn’t think that was possible, but now that the creature was within spitting distance of her, she was pretty certain it was, and she might have dry heaved her empty stomach on it anyway. Maybe that would make it change its mind. Could ghouls get disgusted by being thrown up on?

Just the thought made her almost gag.

“Careful now,” Gabriel said from the stairs. “Don’t want to give it more incentive. It’s hungry. It’s been hungry for who knows how long now. When we found it, it was hiding in this cabin about fifteen miles from town. The boys and I had no trouble capturing it and a few others, bringing them over…”

What the hell were you doing with it, you sick fuck? she wanted to ask him, but it was a waste of time and breath.

She said instead, “Gabriel, please…”

“Oh, so it’s ‘please’ now, huh? Whatever happened to killing me before this is over?”

“Please…”

The sound of the ghoul’s lower jaw scraping against the concrete, ripping skin loose, made her look over. It was filthy and disgusting, and the overwhelming stench that emanated from every inch of its flesh made her flinch.

Four feet…

“Gabriel,” she said. “Please.”

He didn’t say anything and just watched her curiously.

She sought out his eyes while the tears welled up around hers. It came easily and on cue. “Please, Gabriel. Please don’t do this. For God’s sake, I’m sorry. Please. Please.”

He cocked his head. “I almost believed you.”

“Please,” she said, even as she struggled against the tape holding her to the chair.

Ana was putting most of her weight into her right arm. The tape was giving a little bit each time she jerked, but it would have been more effective if she could pull harder. But that was impossible, and she was forced to resort to small movements. Small, barely noticeable movements. But at least the tape was yielding with every motion she managed. At least there was that.

God, I hope it’s yielding. God, I hope I’m not just imagining it!

She didn’t stop working on the tape as she pleaded with Gabriel. “I’m sorry. You have to believe me. I’m sorry. Please, Gabriel. Please.”

“About what?” he asked. “What are you so sorry for?”

“Everything. Everything I said. Everything I did. I’m sorry. Please, please, you have to believe me. If you let me go, I swear I’ll do anything you want. I’m begging you, Gabriel. Please, I’m begging you for my life. Please.”

That last please might have done it, because he stood up.

The tears were rolling down her cheeks in streams now. They came from deep down, produced by memories of the past, of the dark days of The Purge. She had new ammo to help them along—her sister being taken, fleeing through the dark woods from Mathison’s men, fearing for Wash’s life…

“Please,” she said, her voice fluctuating, dropping then rising, just the way a pathetic woman begging for her life would sound like. “Please, Gabriel, please. Don’t do this. I’ll do anything you want. Please. Please.”

The creature was so close to her now that it stopped crawling temporarily and reached out with its right hand toward her restrained right foot. When it failed to make contact, it looked perplexed.

For a second or two, before it started crawling again.

Two feet…

She looked over at Gabriel as he began walking down the steps.

Almost there. Almost there!

She gave her right arm a quick peek. It didn’t look as if she’d made any headway at all. Had she been mistaken about the tape yielding little by little against her struggling? Was the damn thing never going to let her go?

Ana focused on Gabriel. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. About everything.”

He was watching her the entire time, as if trying to read her, to figure her out, as he took more steps down. “You’re an interesting woman, Ana. I can’t quite figure you out.”

“I’ll do whatever you want. What do you want me to do, Gabriel? Tell me, and I’ll do it. I swear, I’ll do anything.”

He was close enough now that she could see it in his eyes.

He was buying it. She had gotten through.

Finally.

“Gabriel, please, let’s start over,” she said. “Let’s just start over—”

There was a boom! from the top of the stairs, so loud that the entire basement shook for a few seconds.

No. I was so close. I was so close!

Splinters flicked through the air and pelted the floor in front of her, other wooden pieces landing on the crawling ghoul (One foot! It was one foot away!). Not that the creature noticed. It was too busy trying to get to her.

At the bottom of the steps, Gabriel was turning, looking up just as a figure appeared at the top, and Ana heard the sound of a shotgun racking. A shadowy form was moving up there as Gabriel drew his sidearm.

“He’s down here!” she shouted. “He’s got a gun!”

Gabriel fired up the stairs, sending off two bangs that were so loud Ana flinched at the thunderous echoes.

“Down—” she started to scream, when she felt something scraping against the nose of her boot.

She looked down and her stomach dropped.

The ghoul’s bony fingers, like deformed spikes, were wrapping around her leg, the contact sending ice up and down her spine and into the deepest recesses of her soul.

Then it began to climb, pulling itself up, using her leg as an anchor.

Ana heard someone shrieking, and it took half a second to realize it was her.

Twelve

There was a time when Ana was terrified of the dark and everything that dwelled within it. The Purge had all but cemented that fear, and if not for the driving need to keep herself and Emily alive, she might have succumbed. There were so many times when she had wanted to do just that. Just roll into a ball and seek out a corner and let it all just go away.

But she never did, because Em couldn’t afford her to.

So Ana had fought back and learned how to live with the darkness. She stopped being afraid, and the constant fighting kept her going. The nights were filled with terrors, as were the days during that miserable year, though for entirely different reasons. The years after that had been just as hard and just as trying.

Through it all, Ana had adapted (Adapt or perish, someone once said over the radio) and never allowed herself to become complacent. She couldn’t afford to, not with hers and Emily’s lives constantly at stake. Over the last five years, the ghouls became background noise as she focused more on surviving the ones that walked in the daylight. In many ways, the humans were always more dangerous than the nightcrawlers could ever hope to be. At least with the creatures, you knew what you were getting. Man, on the other hand, was capable of so, so much more.

Since The Walk Out, Ana had encountered ghouls, but she’d never really felt the same kind of fear like those early days of The Purge. There was dread, of course, but never the type that dug deep into your soul and filled up the pit of your stomach and refused to let go no matter how hard you shook or fought.

She felt that now, trapped in this room with a ghoul crawling up the length of her body.

No.

No, no, no.

She tried to let out another scream, but the only thing that came out was a loud, almost wheezing cough. Her throat hurt from all the screaming she’d already done and the pleading with Gabriel. She was pathetic and desperate, and worst of all, not in a position to do a damn thing about it except watch the creature glare at her, its slack jaw opening impossibly wide as it pulled itself up past her waistline. Viscous liquid dripped from its jagged brown and yellow teeth and splattered her pants.

No…

She had forgotten all about the smell—or maybe she was just too busy concentrating on the sight of the thing as it crawled up the length of her leg to worry about anything else. She was afraid it might decide to stop and take a bite out of her leg, but it seemed intent on getting to the very top of her. Or perhaps it just wanted her exposed flesh instead of having to work through the fabric of her pants.

NO!

Then it happened. She didn’t know how exactly or where the strength came from when it hadn’t been there before. Maybe it was all those memories of that miserable dark year flooding back to her in a tidal wave. Or maybe it was just pure unfiltered fear flooding every inch of her being, giving her strength from places where she didn’t think they existed. But where and how didn’t matter anymore, because it was just there and she pulled her right arm up with everything she had and—

Yes!

The tape broke loose at the point of incision with a loud tearing sound, and she lifted her right arm, made a fist out of her fingers, and punched the ghoul in the face.

No, you don’t. No, you don’t!

The blow glanced off the creature’s forehead, but if she thought that would throw the monster off her, she was sadly mistaken. Instead, it clung to her with one hand, cold fingers tightening around her leg even as its head rocked back slightly from the strike.

No, no, no!

She hit it again, this time going for the center of its face. Its nose shattered under her knuckles, like twigs underneath a sheet of rubber snapping in half.

That did it, and the ghoul careened back, back until it lost its grip on her leg and collapsed to the floor, bones clacking against the hard concrete.

It’s not going to stay down. It’s not going to stay down!

She knew it without having to think about it. The ghoul was already dead, and it was going to take more than her fist to keep it down for good. Silver would have done it, but the only silver near her was the knife on the floor that she couldn’t reach.

Ana turned as much as she could and began digging her nails into the duct tape holding her left arm against the chair’s armrest. She was making terrible progress, and it didn’t help that she barely had any nails. She had difficulty getting good grips and could only pull strip after strip of tape loose—

Cold—impossibly icy cold—fingers wrapped around her leg as the nightcrawler raised its head back up. Clumps of thick liquid covered the center of its face where its nose used to be. Blood (or she assumed that was blood) trailed down the monster’s top upper lip and into its mouth, and that seemed to only encourage it.

Already?

There were sudden and quick shuffling movements from the corner of her eye, and Ana suddenly remembered it wasn’t just her and the ghoul inside the basement.

Gabriel!

She glanced over, but he wasn’t at the bottom of the stairs anymore. He was moving around, dodging and weaving, trying to get a better look at whoever was at the top of the stairs. The problem for Gabriel was that he didn’t have any places to hide. The only cover Ana could see were the boxes at the back of the basement. But depending on what were in those boxes, they might not be much help against a bullet. It looked, though, as if Gabriel had decided the best course of action wasn’t hiding but trying to kill the newcomer before the man could get him first, and that meant staying close to the stairs.

Forget about him!

She did, because she didn’t have any choice. The smell was back, slamming into her like bricks. She wished she could ignore it, but it was everywhere, scraping at the exposed parts of her skin, including her face. If its stench wasn’t enough, there was the feel of the thing using her legs as a ladder.

Ana went back to trying to rip the tape off her left arm. That was the key. If she could get both hands loose—

A bang! from somewhere on her left, followed by two more—bang! bang!

Gabriel, shooting.

She ignored them, because he was shooting at someone else and not her, and because right now she had other things to worry about.

Boom! as the newcomer fired back.

The shotgun was a little harder to ignore, especially when the basement walls shook from the loud blast and pieces of the banister that had been hit showered the air around her like wooden sprinkles.

Ignore it. Ignore it!

She stared down into black eyes instead. They were reminders that, once upon a time, the ghoul had been a person. That, in another life, it had a name and a gender and a family and loved ones. But all of that was gone now, replaced by this bony husk of a thing that only wanted one thing from her.

She could see its desires in the way it snarled, the thick liquids slipping and sliding from its yellow caverns of jagged teeth and down its chin. It wanted her. Not her, exactly, but the blood that flowed through her veins.

Ana couldn’t let it have it. She hadn’t given it up willingly years ago when everyone else was surrendering themselves to the night and joining collaborator towns. Instead, she had fled and hidden with Emily, fighting every day to find food, every night to stay hidden from the monsters that were everywhere.

All those nights, all those close calls, and she had never given up once.

Not once.

And she wasn’t going to give up now.

Ana hit the ghoul again with a balled fist, getting it in the cheek this time. Bone collapsed under her knuckles, but the monster refused to let go of her legs. If anything, she swore its grip only tightened.

So she hit it again, and again, and again.

On the fourth blow, it finally let go and careened backward for a second time.

Ana gave herself a brief moment to catch her breath, to force her heartbeat to slow down before it exploded out of her chest—

Boom!

Another shotgun blast, just as impossible to ignore as the last one.

She glanced over in time to see Gabriel backing up, his gun still aimed up the stairs at whoever was up there. Ana couldn’t see anything of the newcomer. The lights didn’t reach that far up the stairs, and the man was smartly hiding on the other side of the open door.

She waited for Gabriel to return fire, but he didn’t. Instead, he seemed to be moving very slowly, as if he were having trouble getting his legs to obey. She discovered why when she saw red drops of blood dotting the floor as he retreated.

He’s been shot!

The man was clutching his left side, even as blood pooled around his fingers. He was wounded, the wetness spreading quickly along his shirt and pants, but he was somehow still on his feet even if his face was twisted in intense concentration.

Go down, you bastard. Go down!

But he didn’t, and Gabriel continued squinting up the stairs even as he blinked away beads of sweat.

Fall down, damn you! Fall down!

Gabriel refused to do that, too, and continued backing up, though he was moving much, much slower now than he had been a few seconds earlier.

“He’s wounded!” Ana shouted. “Hey! You up there! He’s wounded! Now’s your chance to finish him off!”

Gabriel whirled in her direction, pain and anger flaring across his face. He mouthed something (she thought she might have caught the word bitch in there somewhere), before turning and pointing his gun at her.

I should have kept my mouth shut! Ana thought and squeezed her eyes closed.

Instead of the bang of a pistol firing, there was another boom! as the newcomer’s shotgun unloaded once again.

She opened her eyes slightly, just enough to peek at Gabriel as a big red blotch appeared across his chest. He took a hesitant step back once, twice, before collapsing to the floor. His gun flew out of his hand and clattered somewhere out of Ana’s peripheral vision.

A rush of joy overcame her, but it was short-lived, because a second later she felt fingers digging into the fabric of her shirt, and when she looked forward and down, she saw the ghoul’s deformed head appearing at her waist again. Its mouth snapped impatiently, dark liquids sliding between jagged teeth as pitch-black eyes zeroed in on her.

It was going to keep coming as long as she couldn’t get out of the chair. She had one hand free, but she was no closer to getting her left out. The fingers of her right hand were covered in strips of sticky tape, but there was still too much left keeping her left arm pinned.

Ana turned to the stairs and shouted, “He’s down! Gabriel’s down!”

“Ana?” a voice called from the top of the stairs.

The voice sounded familiar, but Ana couldn’t place it right away. Maybe it was the overwhelming sensation of the ghoul crawling up her body dominating everything, but she couldn’t even be sure if the shooter had actually said her name or someone else’s.

“Hurry!” she shouted. “Please, for God’s sake, get down here! There’s a ghoul in the basement with me!”

“Ana?” the voice said again. “Is that you?”

She was sure the man had said her name that time.

“Yes! It’s me! For the love of God, get your ass down here and kill this fucking thing, please!”

That did it, and she heard pounding footsteps. She only heard it because she couldn’t bring herself to look away from the ghoul as it reached up for her face, brushing at her neck with its long, slender fingers instead.

“Jesus,” a voice said.

Ana looked over as Shelby (!) jumped down the last couple of steps to stand over Gabriel’s unmoving form. The young slayer stood frozen, looking at the ghoul as it pulled itself well past her waistline, one hand reaching up for her throat…

“Shelby, for the love of God!” Ana shouted.

Shelby didn’t fire the shotgun. Instead, he laid it on the stairs and rushed forward, drawing the long machete strapped to his left hip.

Thunk! as he slammed the blade into the ghoul’s back, nearly cutting it in half. The only reason he hadn’t was because the sharp edge had gotten stuck in the spine. Ana didn’t have to ask or wonder if the machete was lined with silver. Shelby was a slayer, and everything he carried had silver in it.

The proof was the sight of the creature sliding down her body before finally slumping to the floor at her feet. Shelby pried the blade out of the dead (again) thing’s back, black blood dripping from the edge.

“Jesus,” she whispered. “You took your fucking time.”

Shelby smirked. “You’re welcome.” He stared down at the ghoul. “Where’d that thing come from?”

Ana looked over at Gabriel. “He brought it.”

“Why the hell did he do that?”

“He’s a sick sonofabitch, that’s why.”

“I guess that’s a pretty good answer.”

Shelby walked over to Gabriel and picked the shotgun back up. Ana recognized it as Randall’s “Ol’ Pumpy,” as the other slayer called it. Shelby stood over Gabriel and nudged his body in the side with the steel toe of his boots a couple of times.

“He’s dead, Shelby,” Ana said.

“Just wanted to make sure,” the slayer said.

“How did you find—” she started to ask, but never got the chance to finish before people appeared at the top of the stairs.

One of them was Kelloway, who had a gun in her hand as she charged down to the basement. Two others, also armed, followed behind her.

Kelloway immediately saw Shelby standing over Gabriel’s body and pointed her gun at the slayer. “Don’t fucking move!”

Shelby dropped Randall’s Ol’ Pumpy and raised both hands into the air. “I can explain this.” Then, after a couple of seconds, nodded in Ana’s direction. “On second thought, she’ll probably be able to explain it better than I can.”

Kelloway looked down at Gabriel before glancing over at Ana. It took her a few more seconds before she finally noticed the dead ghoul crumpled at Ana’s feet. “What the fuck.”

“What I said,” Shelby said.

“Shut up!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Kelloway walked over as the other two kept their guns trained on Shelby. Gabriel’s second-in-command stared down at the ghoul for a moment before finally looking at Ana as if to say, Well?

Ana sighed. “It’s a long story…”

Thirteen

“He didn’t take you very far. I guess he didn’t have a lot of time and had to make do. Just took you one building over. It was under renovation, and the basement was pretty much the only still-usable part of it.”

Shelby talked and ate at the same time, and given that he had just saved her life, Ana didn’t mind watching him spill SPAM over his already-stained shirt as he forked the meat out in big (probably a little too big) chunks at a time. She was starving and had joined in as soon as he opened up a second can for her.

“I wouldn’t have found you if Rand hadn’t told me to keep an eye on that skunk,” Shelby continued. “He was sneaking around all night like some thief. I guess no one noticed. His people, anyway. But I noticed.”

“I’m glad you did,” Ana said.

“Had to skip a little sleepy sleepy to do it, too. But after what happened to Chuck, I wasn’t sure I was gonna get any anyways. Also, someone had to keep an eye on this gimp”—he nodded at Randall—“in case those boys came back to finish him off.”

“You did good, Shelby. I wouldn’t be alive now if it weren’t for you.”

The young man grinned. “I got my moments.”

“Thank God for them.”

She spooned another piece of SPAM and wolfed it down. Unlike Shelby, she was a lot cleaner with her food, even though she just wanted to shove the whole thing down in one gulp. She had never been so hungry in her life. Coming so close to death—never mind that foul-smelling ghoul—always had a way of doing that to her.

“What made Rand tell you to follow Gabriel around?” she asked. “Why was he suspicious?”

“He didn’t buy the guy’s story about what happened last night with you,” Shelby said.

“Which was?”

“Those four that took off earlier in the day came back to steal food from the kitchen, but ran into you and that two-faced dog instead. Then they absconded with you.” He paused. “Did I use that right? Abscond?”

She smiled. “Yeah, you did.”

“Cool. Anyway, when I told him about it, Rand said it didn’t make any sense. I guess he was right.”

“What about the others? Kelloway? Did she buy his story?”

“Kelloway might have been suspicious, but she didn’t say anything. At least not to me or Rand. They put up an extra guard rotation around town, but that was it. I guess they’re too used to that skunk being one of them. One of the”—he made air quotes—“good guys. Makes sense. Hard to question what he says after all these years.”

He had them all fooled. Me included.

She remembered Gabriel calling her a dangerous woman, that she was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

“Look who’s talking,” she had said.

He had smiled in response. “I guess we both have that in common.”

“He had them fooled, all right,” Shelby was saying.

“Yeah, he did,” Ana said.

“And you say he told you he did it because he was bored?”

She nodded. “That’s what he said.”

“Well, damn. I could think of a lot of reasons to do what he did, but because he was bored? That’s some sick shit right there.”

“Tell me about it.”

“He say where the other four went?”

“Three.”

“Right. Three.”

She shook her head. “But no, he didn’t. Just that they’re out there somewhere.”

“Close by?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. If they’re smart, they won’t come back once they hear about what happened to Gabriel. I wouldn’t.”

“Neither would I,” Shelby said. “But I’m not a psychopath. At least, momma never said I was.”

They were back inside Randall’s room in the town hospital, watching him sleep peacefully on his bed while they sat on the windowsill nearby and ate. According to Shelby, the town’s doctors had given Randall an extra dose of sedative for the pain, which was why he remained oblivious to their chatter.

Ana herself had been treated by those same doctors. The cut along her right temple, where Gabriel had hit her with the frying pan, was stitched up and re-bandaged. They’d put ointment on the bruising along her face where Gabriel had punched her and knocked her out, but it was going to stay with her for a while.

That was fine with her. She wanted the extra reminder that she had screwed up anyway. She needed it. She’d been too trusting and let her guard down. Maybe it was the whole cowboy persona, or the good looks; whatever the reason, she’d made a mistake, and it’d almost cost her her life.

Can’t let that happen again. Never again.

She shivered slightly, remembering the sensation of the ghoul climbing up her legs, its fingers reaching for her throat…

Never again.

It was almost sunrise outside the window, and a soft glow had descended over the town of Mayfield. It had only been half a day since Gabriel put her in the basement, though it had seemed longer at the time. She should have been tired, but Ana wasn’t sure she could get any sleep even if she tried. She was too wired up.

“He tricked everyone,” Shelby was saying. “Even hoodwinked Chuck, and he’s usually pretty good at reading people.”

She nodded, remembering how sure Chuck had been that Gabriel was one of the good guys, just like Kelloway and the rest of the townspeople had been all these years.

Everybody screwed up. Especially me.

Another involuntary shiver at the still-fresh memory of the ghoul crawling up her body…

“You okay?” Shelby asked.

She gave him a pursed smile. “It’s been a long night.”

“That was a hell of a thing, the skunk putting that ghoul down there with you. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that one before.”

“The man was sick in the head. I don’t know how else to explain why he did the things he did.”

“I’ve seen some pretty messed up things since The Purge, but man, putting that nightcrawler in the basement with you…” He shook his head. “That’s a first.”

“Hopefully the last.”

“Amen to that, sister.”

They went back to eating, with only Randall’s snoring to interrupt the sounds of their spoons moving against the tin. Shelby was almost done with his can, and she’d gotten through half of hers when the door opened and Kelloway came in.

The Mayfield woman looked tired and worn down, and Ana had no trouble believing that she hadn’t slept a wink in the last twenty-four hours. Ana wished she could have felt some sympathy for the other woman, but she was the one who had been tied to an armchair in a basement just an hour ago.

“You guys need more food?” Kelloway asked.

“I could always use more food,” Shelby said. “Chuck says I have the metabolism of a horse. I don’t know what that means, but it sounded pretty good.”

“The cafeteria’s opening in thirty minutes for breakfast. You can grab what you need then.”

“I’ve never turned down free food before.”

The slayer hopped off the windowsill and hurried off, leaving Ana alone with Kelloway. Almost alone, anyway, except for the snoring Randall nearby.

“What did you find out?” Ana asked the other woman. She put her can down on the spot formerly occupied by Shelby.

“There were three more ghouls in the old mine. Tied up. It looked like they’d been…” She stopped.

“It looked like they’d been what?”

“Tortured,” Kelloway finished.

“The ghouls?”

“Yeah. Either that, or played with. I don’t know. Maybe there’s no difference.” Kelloway walked over to a chair and sat down. “Anyway, we put them out of their misery.” She looked toward the window behind Ana. “The sun should be doing its job on their remains right now.”

“No one ever checked the mines?”

“Why would we? It hasn’t produced anything in decades. There’s a reason we call it the ‘old mine.’”

“What about the others? The three that’s still out there?”

“Keenan, Patrick, and Sullivan.”

“Yeah.”

“And he told you that Bates wasn’t part of it?”

“He said Bates was his stand-in. I got the impression they either killed Bates or took him with them to put Gabriel in the clear.”

Kelloway grimaced slightly. Ana couldn’t imagine the kind of thoughts going through her head at the moment. She’d known Gabriel and the others for years, and to find out their true colors…

Yeah. That’s not going to go over well anytime soon.

“We don’t know where they are,” Kelloway finally said. “Including Bates. I think it’s probably safe to assume he’s dead and the others are gone.”

“He told me they’d been preparing for this day for a while. That they had everything ready, just in case.”

“He said that?”

Ana nodded.

“Jesus,” Kelloway said. “What else did he say?”

“He told me he was thinking about joining them out there, which may mean they’re not that far away. Would they come back?”

“What do you mean?”

“Would they try to mount some kind of attack on Mayfield?”

Kelloway shook her head. “Only if they’re suicidal.”

Ana nodded and remained quiet. She felt bad for Kelloway. Hell, for all of the townspeople, because they all thought Gabriel was someone he wasn’t. Right now, they were probably questioning everything he’d ever told them or done and wondering what to believe. The next few days, weeks, and months in Mayfield were going to be confusing.

But that was for them to deal with. She had other things to do, and places to be.

Like Texas…

“Is it okay if they stay here awhile, until Randall’s well enough to move?” Ana asked.

Kelloway glanced over at Randall’s sleeping form. “You guys can stay as long as you want. No matter what’s happened, that part still stands. Mayfield isn’t going to change now, not because of what Gabriel’s done.”

“Thanks, but it’s just going to be the two of them. I can’t stay.”

“You’re leaving?”

“I have to. I only joined up with them because they had a vehicle that could get me to my destination faster.”

“Texas.”

“Gabriel told you.”

Kelloway nodded. “He didn’t say what was in Texas, though.”

“A friend,” Ana said, and thought, Who I might never be able to find, and all of this could just be a big waste of time.

Kelloway stood up. “What do you need?”

“What can you give me?”

“After everything that’s happened to you? Just name it.”

“A fast horse, to start with.”

“You good with horses?”

Ana smiled. “I’ve been around a saddle or two in my time.”

* * *

The thoroughbred Kelloway gave her looked familiar, and it took a few seconds for Ana to realize why. It was the same chestnut that Gabriel had been riding. Ana had a brief moment of hesitation, but she got over it when the animal whinnied as she rubbed down its mane.

Fuck you, Gabriel. I’m not going to let you ruin this horse for me.

It was a big horse, too. Strong, with powerful legs, it was probably one of the finest animals in all of Mayfield. The fact that it used to belong to a piece of shit human being notwithstanding, she could have done a lot worse.

Shelby walked her to the stables at the north end of town and watched her prepare to leave. She wasn’t entirely sure if he was sad to see her go, or indifferent. She liked the kid, but it wasn’t as if they’d gotten to know one another in the day or so since they picked her up from the side of the road. Whenever she looked at Shelby, Ana couldn’t get over how much he reminded her of Wash, minus the dark clouds that seemed to follow Wash everywhere.

“You sure you wanna be doing this?” Shelby asked. “Rand’ll be good to go in a few days and Kelloway says her people should have the truck fixed by then. Looks like they found parts for it after all.”

“A few more days is a few more too many for me.” Ana rearranged the supply bags before swinging into the saddle. “Maybe I’ll see you guys down in Texas. If you’re still going there after this?”

“Don’t know yet. Rand and I haven’t decided. That was always Chuck’s idea, to head down there to see what’s cooking.” He took something out of his back pocket. “Here. We thought you might be able to use it.”

She took what Shelby was holding out. It was a map—well-worn and frayed at the edges, but still in good condition. It was heavily notated, with writing along the edges. She had seen Chuck use it before. Wash also had something similar.

“Chuck’s map?” she asked.

“One of them,” Shelby said. “It marks all the towns we’ve been through and ones that we haven’t, but other slayers have. If your boyfriend’s a slayer—”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

Shelby grinned. “Chances are he’ll have something like that on him. If he’s connected to the network, I mean.”

“He is.”

“Then who knows, you might stumble across him in one of those towns. Hey, stranger things have happened.”

I should be so lucky.

Even so, she couldn’t help but feel optimistic; at least more than she had been since she left Kanter 11 and Emily days ago in pursuit of Wash.

“The towns with red X’s over them?” Shelby said. “Do I even have to explain what those X’s mean?”

“Stay away?” Ana said.

“Stay far, far away, yeah.”

“Gotcha.” She put the map into her backpack. “Thank you for everything, Shelby. Most of all, thank you for saving my life in that basement. I owe you one.”

He flashed her a boyish grin. “That’s what I do, ma’am.”

She groaned. “Don’t remind me.” Then, “But I mean it. If I get the chance to pay you back…”

“We’ll see.” He gave her a mock salute. “Vaya con dios.”

She smiled back and said, “Don’t be a stranger,” and turned the horse around and led it toward the exit.

The bright morning sun hit her full in the face before Ana turned left and headed out of Mayfield at a light trot. People watched her go, but she didn’t recognize any of the faces. Kelloway was nowhere to be seen. Too busy taking over from Gabriel, probably, not that Ana knew for certain. Anyway, the power struggles of Mayfield didn’t interest her.

By the time she reached the edge of town, the thoroughbred was already moving at a fast gallop. Ana spurred it on, the need to put Mayfield in her rearview mirror and the urgency to reach Texas pushing her forward.

She thought about Wash and wondered if he was already in trouble. Knowing him, the answer was yes. Wash wouldn’t have been able to avoid trouble if he tried.

I guess we have that in common…

Fourteen

She was maybe ten miles out of Mayfield when she stumbled across the body. She wouldn’t have found it and would have kept right on going along the state highway if she hadn’t spotted the vultures circling in the air.

It was a man, and he had been dead for at least a few hours. He lay on his stomach, the toes of his boots pointing in different directions while his arms splayed almost carelessly at his sides. He wore jeans and a sweater, and only one side of his face was visible. She’d never seen him before, but the freshness of the body, along with the close proximity to Mayfield, made a name pop into her head almost right away: Bates.

“I guess you could say he’s my stand-in,” Gabriel had said about Bates, the man who had gone missing along with Keenan, Patrick, and Sullivan, the other three killers who were still on the loose.

If the dead man was Bates, it made Ana wonder why Gabriel’s partners-in-crime had bothered dragging him all the way out here. There was a lot of dry blood around Bates, but no bloody trails heading off in any direction. Ana wasn’t a police CSI by any means, but she wasn’t an idiot. All the signs pointed to Bates having been brought out here, murdered, then left to lie where he fell.

It made some sense. The location was far enough from Mayfield that a gunshot wouldn’t have been heard all the way back in town. There was nothing out here except the same kind of flat countryside that Ana had been traversing for the last few days ever since leaving Kansas behind.

“What about Bates?” she had asked Gabriel. “You said he was your stand-in.”

“Bates is gone, too. Let’s just leave it at that,” Gabriel had answered.

She thought about giving the body a proper burial. She hated the idea of just leaving it out here for the carrions to feed on. It wasn’t right.

So what’s stopping you?

It was the reality of spending too much time in one place, out in the open, that made her shuffle her feet uneasily and look around at her surroundings. There was no telling who was out there, who could be watching her right now. The very recent memories of the sniper ambush on the truck came rushing back to her, and it was all the incentive Ana needed to climb back onto the chestnut and say “Sorry, Bates,” to the body before turning and spurring the horse back toward the road.

She was still thinking about Bates when she reached the four-lane highway and continued south to Texas. She hadn’t asked Kelloway about the man, if he had a family or loved ones, but only because it hadn’t occurred to her to ask. Kelloway hadn’t volunteered, either.

Looks like you were right, Kelloway. Bates is not coming back. He’s another victim of Gabriel’s sickness.

There was a lot of that going around these days. Sick people who got it into their heads that the only way to survive in a post-Purge world was to take advantage of others. She’d met plenty of them even before encountering the mountain men at the warehouse, then Mark. And now, Gabriel and his merry band of psychos.

Then there were people like Wash, who went out of their way to help even when they didn’t have to. Wash, a slayer who wasn’t really a slayer. At least, not in the way that Chuck, Randall, and Shelby were.

Where are you, Wash? And how am I going to find you?

She thought about him, replaying all the things he’d told her about his past and all the things he kept to himself but that she had figured out on her own. Almost everything came back to an “old man,” as Wash called him. A mentor who was dead now, killed by a one-eyed, blue-eyed ghoul.

The slayers hadn’t even known something like that was possible when she’d asked if they’d ever seen or heard of one. Even now, Ana wasn’t absolutely sure if she believed something like that could exist herself. Weren’t the blue-eyed ghouls capable of healing themselves, unlike the black-eyed ones? She’d seen that in person and had heard from others who also had. Could Wash have been wrong?

No. She couldn’t start doubting him now. She had seen people who weren’t right in the head, and Wash wasn’t one of them.

And then there was the girl at the farmhouse…

Weeks later, and Ana still couldn’t shake the image of the girl from her mind—the memory of her holding the gun to her own head, tears streaming down her face, and the unrestrained terror in her eyes. That girl had seen something that dug deep into her soul and made a permanent home down there, and convinced her that the only way out was death.

“You can’t stop him,” she’d said, every word dripping with dread. “No one can stop him. Not even Dad. Or Billy. Or Pete. No one can stop him. He’s going to come back for me like he promised, and no one can stop him. No one.”

Did a one-eyed, blue-eyed ghoul really exist? Was one really running around out there committing unspeakable things?

Ana and the slayers had never seen such a thing, but the girl at the farmhouse had. If not the exact same entity that Wash was pursuing, then something equally horrific. Ana wasn’t sure which answer was more preferable, and decided that neither one was.

She shivered against the cold (or, at least, she told herself it was the cold) and reached up to pull her jacket’s collar tighter around her neck. The thoroughbred was moving at a steady trot, making good progress along the road.

Soon, she’d reach Texas.

Soon…

Like before, she stuck to the dirt ground next to the road whenever possible to spare the animal’s unshod feet. If she’d wanted to expose herself less, she could have abandoned the highway completely while still moving parallel to it from a safe distance. The risk of losing sight of the road was minimal, but she didn’t feel like taking her chances. Besides, as with the slayers’ truck yesterday, she would be able to hear a vehicle coming for miles before they even spotted her.

She didn’t check the map that Shelby had given her until she stopped to eat the hamburger—it was mostly bread and beef patty—that she’d scored from Mayfield’s cafeteria. The perishable stuff wasn’t going to last forever, and she had to make the most of them before dipping into her nonperishables.

The map showed a number of towns in Oklahoma, almost all of them, like Mayfield, located off the state highway she was sitting next to at the moment. There were a couple of cities with large red X’s over them—one called Danford, which she was still ahead of, and another called Talico before that. She’d have to go around both cities, because the slayers wouldn’t have X’ed them out for fun. There had to be something wrong with them.

“They’re not happy places, Ana,” Wash had said about the cities. “Best to avoid them at all costs, if possible.”

He was mostly talking about the bigger ones, like Oklahoma City, which was already behind her, and Tulsa farther to the east. Danford looked like a good-size town, with Talico being smaller. Still, there was no point in going through them if she didn’t have to.

“They’re not happy places, Ana…”

Wash would know. He’d been out here all these years since The Walk Out, working the country as a slayer, while she was happy to spend them in Newton with Emily. She would still be there right now, safe from the rest of the world, if not for Mathison. What was that saying about ignorance being bliss?

And out there, somewhere, was Texas. And, hopefully, Wash.

“We’re hearing stories from other slayers about renewed nightcrawler activity down south,” Chuck had said. “There was a big horde in Cordine City about a week back. The biggest single sighting of ghouls in a long time. Apparently they wrecked the place, left it in pieces, and killed everyone inside.”

She had never heard of Cordine City, but then she hadn’t heard about a lot of places before she left Newton. What was happening down in Texas, and did it have anything to do with Wash’s One Eye? It would make sense if it did.

Right. Like anything in this world makes sense anymore.

She finished up the burger and brushed the crumbs from her hands on her pants before standing back up. The canteen was filled to the brim, and she drank her fill before putting it back into the pack that she carried on her the entire time. The supplies hanging off the chestnut’s saddle were important, but not nearly as vital as what was on her.

Ana put her hand into her jacket’s pocket, making sure the small SIG Sauer was still in there. Both the gun and the knife that was back inside her jacket sleeve had been retrieved from the basement by Kelloway’s people. Ana was glad to have the knife in her possession again. It had served her well for a long time now. And the gun…

“Take it; Chuck gave it to you,” Randall had said.

Better safe than sorry. Always better safe than sorry.

She climbed back onto the thoroughbred and continued down south along the highway. She wasn’t going to reach the Texas border before nightfall, but at least there was a lot of sunlight left to make up all the time she’d lost.

* * *

About two miles out from the city of Talico, Ana abandoned the road and traveled in a westward direction for about thirty minutes, before starting to angle back south again. The highway she’d been on all this time went through Talico, and this was the only way to go around it. She didn’t know what she was avoiding—just how big of an area did Talico make up, anyway?—but that big red X on the map stuck out in her mind. If slayers—men and women who voluntarily went into the darkness to hunt monsters—said to steer clear of a place, it made perfect sense to heed that advice.

“The towns with red X’s over them?” Shelby had said. “Do I even have to explain what those X’s mean?”

No, he hadn’t, but it was a good reminder anyway.

Once she was riding south again, she could see the rooftops of buildings to her left, marking the presence of the highway as it ran through Talico. It was a good-size town, from what she could tell, and after about ten minutes of slow trotting, she still hadn’t reached the end of the city yet. She was too far away to get a really good look at the place, though, but it wasn’t hard to see that Talico was built around the state highway. There was something in the background that might have been a billboard, and even farther back, a white-painted water tower that looked like a rocket getting ready to launch.

Ana kept going, using the reflections of sunlight against metal and aluminum to her left as an indicator she was going in the right direction. As long as she kept Talico over there, while she remained over here, there was no need to worry—

The crack! of a rifle, followed by something striking the ground a few inches to the right of the thoroughbred, made Ana pull up on the horse’s reins abruptly. A puff of cloud lifted into the air almost lazily before dispersing against the sunlight.

What the hell was that?

Stopping had been reflexive, and she realized too late that the smarter move would have been to keep going. By the time she recognized that mistake, though, a second crack! had rang out, and the animal underneath her lifted its head and let out a loud whinny and began thrashing its head left and right.

No. No, no, no!

Ana leapt off the saddle even as the horse collapsed onto its side. She hit the ground and rolled, all the precious supplies in the bulky pack behind her jamming into her back. She grunted through the pain (Ignore it! Someone’s shooting at you! Ignore the pain for now!) and scrambled to her knees.

The thoroughbred had been shot and lay on its side, the animal attempting in vain to lift its head. Ana’s heart broke at the sight of its wound.

No, no, no…

But she didn’t have time to do anything for the horse, because a third crack! snapped her back to her own situation. The gunshot was followed by another puff of dust appearing just five feet to her left as the bullet struck the ground.

Sniper!

She snapped to her feet and looked south, thought, Jesus, because there was nothing in front of her except open prairie. There wasn’t even a dying scrub tree for her to run to and attempt to hide behind.

Goddammit, why is this fucking state so flat?

She glanced back—and saw the same thing.

Jesus Christ, God, give me a tree or something!

But there was just flat, empty Oklahoma countryside. There were mountains, but they were far, far in the distance and of no use to her.

Another crack! and this time instead of a cloud of dirt at her feet, there was the zip! of something buzzing past her right ear.

A bullet. That was a bullet!

She turned and ran even before she knew she had made the decision.

Where are you going?

Who cares! Just run!

She summoned everything she had to run faster, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. She was already breathing hard, her chest pounding, but she was still moving too slow, dragged down by—

The pack. It was too heavy because it was full of things she needed—like food, like medical supplies, like maps—

Too heavy! It’s too heavy! I’ll never make it!

As if to encourage her, another crack!, followed by another zip! past her head.

Ana pulled off the pack and let it drop and noticed the increased speed right away. Or, at least, she thought she was going faster than before. For all she knew, it could have been entirely in her head.

Don’t let it all be in my head. Don’t let it all be in my head!

The shooting had stopped, but she didn’t let that slow her down. She glanced over her shoulder, but there was nothing back there. No, that wasn’t true. There wasn’t nothing—there was a wounded horse lying on the ground, wheezing as it struggled to breathe, and bright sunlight flashing in her eyes.

The shooter, whoever he was, had smartly positioned himself with the sun at his back—

Crack!, followed by dirt kicking up from the ground to her left.

She looked forward and kept running, knowing full well there was only one direction to go—east.

Toward Talico.

There was nothing but open fields everywhere else. Long, long stretches of nothing, and no place to hide.

What were the chances the slayers were wrong about Talico? That Wash was being overly dramatic when he told her to avoid cities at every opportunity?

“They’re not happy places, Ana. Best to avoid them at all costs, if possible.”

He was talking about big cities like Oklahoma City, like Tulsa, like Norman. Surely he wasn’t referring to a place like Talico, which was barely a blip on a map? How many people lived in this place? A few hundred? A couple of thousand, at the most? How bad could it be?

It was still daylight, with hours to go before nightfall, and she wouldn’t necessarily have to hide in Talico forever. A few hours, at the most, or until the shooter got what he wanted. Which was what? The bags on the horse. The pack that she had dropped. There was nothing else on her that was worth pursuing her into Talico for.

So how bad could Talico really be?

“The towns with red X’s over them?” Shelby had said. “Do I even have to explain what those X’s mean?”

And Talico had an X over it on the map…

The actual city itself loomed in front of her, growing larger with every breath she struggled to get through her lungs. There were a lot more buildings than she had given it credit for—a few of them were two stories, and one might have been bigger than that. The water tower in the background began to lose its rocket shape and took on a more traditional form—a large cylindrical ball at the top, with a thin base holding it up.

Ana risked a glance back over her shoulder. She might have caught something that looked like a human figure flickering against the sunlight like a mirage, but it was hard to tell with the sun in her eyes.

She looked forward instead, focusing on the city as it continued to expand in length and width in front of her.

“The towns with red X’s over them? Do I even have to explain what those X’s mean?”

Please be wrong, Shelby, she thought as she ran, as her legs pistoned and her heartbeat slammed against her chest. God, please be wrong…

Fifteen

Talico was a self-contained city in the middle of nowhere. The state highway ran right through its middle, and as a result most of the commercial buildings were confined to those areas, including a couple of motels, strip malls, and not one but two Dairy Queens two blocks apart. There was a school behind her, next to a baseball field covered in overgrown grass that she’d had to run across in order to reach what she assumed was the center of town.

Ana was in one of the Dairy Queens, peering out from behind a window at the four-lane highway outside. Somewhere out there was the man who had shot her horse out from under her and then tried to kill her as she fled. A couple of those rounds had come too close to this being anything but attempted murder.

She was glad she’d kept the SIG Sauer, which she held next to her with the hammer cocked back. Whoever was out there, he wasn’t taking prisoners, and the “poor unarmed girl traveling alone in a dangerous world” routine wasn’t going to work on him. It was a little hard to convince someone you weren’t a threat when they were trying to kill you from a distance.

The fact that this was the second time in as many days that she’d almost died at the hands of a sniper didn’t escape her. What made it worse was that she didn’t have to be here; in fact, she should have been on her way back to Newton with Em right now.

So why aren’t you? that voice in the back of her mind asked.

Because of Wash. Because she owed him.

And because…maybe more.

Goddamn you, Wash. You should have waited for me. Why didn’t you wait for me?

She glanced back toward the rear of the restaurant. She’d closed and locked the door, but there wasn’t truly anything holding anyone back if they wanted in. A shotgun blast would take out the lock. Or a hard enough kick would equally suffice.

She changed up her grip on the SIG and returned her nervous gaze to the street outside. It was quiet, and the vehicles along the shoulders of the road (someone had clearly pushed them out of the way a long time ago) hadn’t moved since the last time she looked. There was a blue pickup truck out there, along with a red sedan, a bicycle missing its front tire for some reason, and plenty more. None of them would work, of course. None of them would whisk her out of here.

Seeking shelter in the Dairy Queen had allowed her to catch her breath, which she needed after the long dash across the open fields and into town. She had glimpsed homes on the east side of the roads. There were no ranches or farmland anywhere nearby, unlike Mayfield. Whatever Talico was or had been before The Purge, she had a feeling she was looking at all of it right now. This place hadn’t really changed, except for its population.

Whoever the sniper was, either he hadn’t followed her into Talico, or he was taking his sweet time. Maybe he already had what he wanted—the supplies she’d left behind with the thoroughbred—and wouldn’t be pursuing her into the city. That was the best-case scenario, anyway. She didn’t want to think about the worst-case.

Ten more silent minutes ticked by on her watch.

Then twenty…

Ana gave herself permission to finally relax a little when the view outside remained empty of anything even closely resembling a man with a rifle. There was absolutely nothing out there. At least, nothing alive. Even the dogs and cats, which had begun to resurface since The Purge, were nowhere to be seen in Talico.

I guess even they’re too smart to come into this city.

That led her back to the X on the map Shelby had given her. (The map that she’d tossed away, along with everything in the pack… Shit.) Why had the slayers marked it as a place to avoid? There had to be a reason.

As she scanned the visible parts of the city from the safety of her window, Ana couldn’t find anything that looked like a threat. There were no bodies out there and nothing to indicate ghouls were using the place as a nest. The world outside just looked…empty.

So what was it? What was the reason for the big X?

“My map is different than yours,” Wash had said about his own slayer-coded map. “When slayers meet up, we usually spend some time trading information about what’s out there. Ghoul activity, potential jobs, quicksands. Stuff like that.”

But there was nothing out there that was setting off her alarms. Even the Dairy Queen she was in was mostly intact. Almost all of the buildings she’d passed to get here were in the same situation, including the car dealership just up the street and the pawnshop directly across from her. Talico, from what she’d seen as she raced through it, was unspectacular in every way.

So what was the reason for the big red X? That was the question that lingered in the back of her mind.

Ana checked her watch again. Ten minutes before three. She’d made great time since leaving Shelby and the others behind, and if everything had gone according to plan, should have been on the lookout for shelter from the coming nightfall about now. If everything had gone according to plan.

She thought about Gabriel and what he’d said about best-laid plans.

“As the saying goes, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

You got that right, you piece of sh—

A sudden flicker of movement from the street outside made her stop breathing entirely. She would have missed it if she wasn’t so wired and her eyes weren’t constantly shifting, seeking out something—anything—out there that might even give off a mild sign of being a potential threat.

Her body tightened as she pushed against the wall she was already leaning on, literally hugging the peeling wallpaper while doing her best to lower her profile even further. Thank God she already had a good angle to see out of the restaurant without having to move too much, because if she could see out at them, there was a very good chance they could see in at her if they decided to look hard enough.

“They” being three men that had appeared out of nowhere (Where the hell did they come from?) about fifty yards from the Dairy Queen and were walking up the street. She knew they were men from the broadness of their shoulders and thick forms. That, and the way they moved. They didn’t so much as walk as they strode up the empty road like they owned the place.

I guess Talico isn’t so empty after all.

The men were still too far from her position for her to make out more than just how big and broad their shoulders were. Not that it would have been easy if they were closer given what they were wearing. All three were covered in dark trench coats with the tails dragging behind them. They wore gloves and boots, and their faces were covered with rags. Or they looked like rags. Whatever they were, the fabrics wrapped around their foreheads, noses, and mouths, leaving just an oval-shaped slit for their eyes.

One of them was dragging a baseball bat along the ground, but the other two didn’t look to be armed. Or at least she couldn’t see anything in their hands or on their persons, which didn’t make a lot of sense. Everyone was armed these days. Even she had a gun.

She could have gotten a better look at them when they neared, then walked by her and the Dairy Queen, but that would have required shifting her position and exposing herself more than she was comfortable with. Right now they couldn’t see her, and she wanted to keep it that way.

Ana only allowed herself to move, sliding along the length of the wall to follow them, when they were twenty yards or more down the block and their backs were to her. The three men continued on, oblivious to her presence, their dark shapes still as menacing from behind as they had been from the front. She couldn’t help but wonder what exactly those coats of theirs were made of. They looked frayed and almost falling apart, not to mention raggedy.

Now that she had a better angle and could stare long and hard without fear of being caught, it was easier to make out that besides the baseball bat, the other two were carrying a crowbar that looked wrapped up in black tape and a metal rod that the man held like it was a sword.

A baseball bat, a crowbar, and a metal stick.

But no guns. Or knives. Not that you couldn’t bludgeon a man to death with any of those three weapons, but why would anyone choose them when there were so many other options available? These men almost looked like a street gang. Was that what they were?

Ana watched them disappear up the street at the same unhurried pace. They moved so deliberately that she still couldn’t figure out how they had just appeared out of nowhere earlier.

Where the hell did they come from?

They continued on, never breaking formation to check any of the structures around them. Either they didn’t care, or… Well, she didn’t really know what the other possibilities were. So far, nothing about Talico made sense, including the sniper who hadn’t followed her in as far as she knew.

Sunlight glinting off the windows of a Valero gas station across the street drew her eyes. There was still a lot of light out there, but it wouldn’t last forever. That thought prompted her to glance down at her watch again.

Twenty minutes after three. Three hours, give or take, before sundown.

Normally that would have been cutting it close, but here, trapped in Talico with a sniper somewhere out there and three guys in coats seemingly patrolling the streets, things were a little more complicated. But at least no one was shooting or chasing her, so there was that. If she had to spend the night in the Dairy Queen, she could make it work. She’d spent nights in less secure places. Much, much less secure places. Compared to those times, having four walls was an upgrade. If necessary, there was that supply closet near the back with the very solid door…

She sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall. Her stomach growled, and she thought about the pack she’d ditched out there. Did she really have to do that? The answer was an unqualified yes at the time. But now, sitting in a restaurant with nothing edible around her, she was starting to question that decision. Thank God she had eaten earlier in the day. That meal, along with the breakfast at Mayfield, could last her for a few more days, if necessary. She wasn’t looking forward to testing out that theory, though.

I should have stayed in Kanter 11 with Em.

“Shoulda, woulda, coulda,” she whispered quietly to herself. “Should have done a lot of things, girl. A lot of things.”

She stared at the dirty floor, noticing the layers of dust that covered it, that were only broken by her boot prints.

Shit.

She had to be more careful in the future. If anyone had come inside the building, they would have immediately known the place wasn’t as empty as it should have been just by looking at the floor and seeing her prints—

A loud, piercing scream from outside made her snap her head back up. It had come from the same direction that the three men in coats had been headed earlier.

Ana stood up and was moving to get a better look out the window next to her when the pop-pop-pop of gunfire rattled the city of Talico and seemed to keep going and going.

Five seconds…

Ten…

At around twelve seconds, the last gunshot began to fade, and in its place was the same dead silence that had been her companion for the last hour or so since she entered Talico.

What just happened?

She moved over to another window to get a better look down the street. There was nothing out there besides the same auto body shop next door and the empty four-lane highway that cut across the city. There was a red van parked along the shoulder that she hadn’t seen before, along with newspaper debris clinging to a fence. But that was it.

And yet someone had screamed. Then someone had fired automatic rifles. She was sure there had been more than one. It would have been easier if she could go outside to look for answers, but the problem with that was the going outside part. There was no way she was going to voluntarily expose herself unless she absolutely had to. Whoever was out there, whoever had screamed and fired those guns, was on their own.

I learned my lesson back at Mayfield, thank you very much.

Ana remained at the window, looking out from behind cover, hoping to hear or see something that might give her some hints as to what had happened. If she knew, then she could actively avoid getting involved. The lack of clues left her annoyed and anxious at the same time, and the next half hour seemed to drag on endlessly…

* * *

To keep herself occupied and her mind focused on her immediate surroundings, Ana painstakingly went through every room and pantry and shelf in the Dairy Queen, hoping for something that might be edible, that she might have missed the first time she scoured the place. But there was nothing that even remotely came close to fitting the bill. Five years since The Walk Out and six years since The Purge had left the restaurant a barren wasteland of rotted food, with anything and everything that could be eaten or taken, already eaten and taken. Even the packages of condiments that weren’t yet open were gone, and those that weren’t were lying on the floor, with their contents spread and faded around them. For some reason, someone had even emptied the cash register, along with a small safety deposit box in the manager’s office in the back.

Around four-thirty, Ana decided there wasn’t going to be anything left to find and settled down for the night. That meant looking for a better spot than the back closet she’d noted earlier, but as with her search for food, came up empty.

Supply closet it is.

She loitered in the dining area while there was still sunlight, keeping as low a profile as possible and staying away from the windows most of the time to limit her exposure. There had been enough dirt in the place when she showed up that she was convinced no one had entered the restaurant for a long time. If not a few years, then a lot of months; enough time for the counters, booths, and kitchen appliances to get a new coat of dust.

It was five o’clock when a large shadow fell over Talico, covering the part of the barren state highway that was immediately visible outside the Dairy Queen’s front windows. There were either clouds in the sky, or night was falling faster than she had anticipated. It couldn’t have been the latter; Ana took painstaking notice of the comings and goings of night, as did most people who had lived through The Purge.

So what was it?

She was still thinking about the cause of the sudden drop in ambient light when the girl appeared in the corner of her right eye.

Now what?

The girl was wearing large baggy brown cargo pants and a black sweater, her blonde hair streaming behind her like ribbons.

Where the hell did she come from?

She was running fast—or as fast as she could, from the looks of it—while stealing glances back down the street after every ten steps or so.

Someone’s chasing her…

Ana recognized the mortal terror on the girl’s face even from a distance. She’d seen it too many times before to misread it.

It’s not your problem.

The girl had just reached the driveway of the auto body shop next door and was closing in on the Dairy Queen.

Stay out of it.

Ana watched the girl get closer, images of Emily flashing across her mind’s eye.

Don’t go out there.

They were about the same age, maybe even about the same height…

Are you listening to yourself? Don’t go out there!

But Ana had already pulled open the door and was stepping outside before she even knew what she was doing.

Oh, goddammit…

It was too late to stop now, and she was already halfway down the driveway while waving at the girl to get her attention.

You idiot!

The girl slid to a stop so suddenly at the sight of Ana that she nearly lost her balance and pitched halfway forward, before somehow managing to keep herself upright.

“Over here!” Ana shouted.

The girl stayed where she was and stared at Ana.

“Over here!” Ana shouted again.

Confusion replaced fear on the girl’s place, just before she looked back down the street. Ana followed her glance and saw what she’d been running from.

Why didn’t you stay inside the Dairy Queen? the familiar voice asked from the back of her mind. Now look what you’ve done!

There were two of them, and they looked huge even from a distance. They were moving fast, chasing the girl—dark black shapes, the tails of their coats like shrouds flapping behind them. She couldn’t be sure if it was the same group that had walked past her earlier, but they sure as hell dressed the same.

“Come on, kid, over here!” Ana shouted.

The girl turned back around to look at Ana, but she didn’t move. She was much younger than Em and couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen, even though the grime on her face made her appear older. She had stark blue eyes and her face was round and almost cherubic—

The gun. Ana was gripping the gun in one hand.

Dammit!

She quickly shoved the SIG back into her jacket pocket before shouting again, “Come on, kid! This way!”

But the girl still didn’t move.

Why isn’t she moving?

Ana wasn’t sure how long they stood there staring at one another. It felt like whole minutes had ticked by, though it was probably less than a few seconds before the girl’s legs began moving again.

Finally! Ana thought, when the girl turned and raced across the street toward the gas station—away from her.

Ana sighed and thought, Yeah, I’d probably do that, too, kid!

She glanced up the highway at the two forms as they charged toward them. They were moving fast. Too fast. She had a few seconds to decide what to do next.

By now the men would have already spotted her. It would be impossible not to, given how empty this part of town was. The fact that she had been shouting and waving her arms at the girl probably didn’t help.

She shot a quick look back at the restaurant. There was still time to seek shelter in there. It would force the girl’s pursuers to decide whether to chase her or the kid. Maybe they would even split up, which would give both her and the girl a better chance. She was only looking at two men—so where was the third?

And then there was the girl…

It’s not always about Emily, the voice said.

The kid was a lot faster than she looked (She outran those two before you, remember?) and was already halfway through the gas station parking lot when she threw a quick glance over her shoulder back at Ana and they locked eyes.

“Wait!” Ana shouted after her. “I’m trying to help you!”

Whether the girl actually heard her or not, it didn’t cause her to stop or even slow down. The kid veered away from the Valero’s front doors at the last second and went around it, vanishing into the mouth of an alleyway between the convenience store and what looked like some kind of video rental place.

Ana was halfway through the same parking lot when she tossed a desperate look back down the highway.

They were still coming (Of course they’re still coming; did you think they’d give up all of a sudden?), those long strides of theirs carrying them up the street with surprising grace. She had thought men of their size would be slower, but she was wrong.

So what else have you been wrong about since you set foot into this godforsaken city?

The girl’s pursuers were closer now (Jesus, how’d they get so close, so fast?), giving Ana a better look at their covered faces. She glimpsed dark black skin around their eyes as their arms swung back and forth and their legs pumped great big strides. She couldn’t see a weapon in either one’s hands, which should have made her feel better but didn’t. Given their size, they probably didn’t even need weapons to kill both her and the girl.

Ana turned and angled away from the gas station while following in the girl’s footsteps. Then the alleyway was there, and she slipped into the slightly darkened corridor—and almost crashed right into the girl.

The kid was standing in the alley, legs spread apart, gasping for breath while looking back at Ana. Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides, her eyes were wide, and a mask of defiance covered her entire face. Ana recognized someone preparing herself physically and mentally for the fight of her life. She’d seen it on herself on more than one occasion.

Wait. Why is she just standing there?

Ana figured out pretty quickly why the teenager was just standing there, waiting for her when the smart move was to keep going. The kid hadn’t stopped voluntarily, but because there was nowhere for her to go. A large brick wall blocked her escape at the end of the alleyway. There were two metal doors, one leading into the Valero and the other into the video store, but both were closed, and Ana guessed the girl had tried both and couldn’t open either one, or she wouldn’t still be out here.

Oh, that’s why.

Ana lifted both hands, the palms toward the girl. “I’m not going to hurt you! I just want to help!”

The teenager’s eyes shifted—looking past Ana and over her shoulder—and the fear returned, flooding like a tsunami across her face.

Ana knew why when she heard the sounds of heavy boots slamming against the hard ground behind her. She spun around just as the first of the two men appeared, his brown-clad form momentarily lost in the darker atmosphere of the alley.

How? her mind screamed even as something with the force of a freight train barreled into her and knocked her to the filthy alleyway floor.

Sixteen

“Remember your promise. You won’t do something stupid. You’ll find him and come back as soon as you can.”

Ana smiled. “When have I ever done anything stupid?”

Emily didn’t answer right away, which was a sign she was going to disagree. But instead, her little sister handed Ana the backpack. “Just be careful. I don’t want to lose you, Annie.”

“You’re not going to lose me. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

“You might not have a choice.”

“You always have a choice. Even when you don’t think there is one. Look closely enough; there’s always a choice. Didn’t I teach you that?”

Ana slipped the pack on. It was what Wash would call a tactical pack and was probably a little too big for her frame and filled with too many things she didn’t need, but Ana had decided to err on taking “too much” instead of “not enough.”

“How are you going to find him?” Emily asked.

“I don’t know. But I know he’s going to Texas.”

“Texas is a big state, Annie. If you don’t know where he’s going exactly, how are you going to find him?”

“I don’t know, Em, but I have to try. He saved our lives. I owe him. We owe him.”

“Which is why I should be coming with you.”

“No.”

“Why the hell not?”

Ana took a moment to adjust the other supply bags around the Tennessee Walker’s saddle before she responded. She knew this conversation was coming and had been dreading it. Emily had the same kind of stubbornness that they both inherited from their mother; add to that the sometimes aggravating righteousness that they’d both gotten from their father.

I can’t blame her. Stubbornness and righteousness are why we’re still here.

She looked back at Emily. “You’re going to stay here with Marie until I come back. Then we’re going home with the others. And that’s all there is to it.”

Emily frowned. “I don’t like this. I should be coming with you. I owe him, Annie. I owe him. You always said the Harrington sisters always repay their debts.”

“What do you think I’m doing?”

“I’m a Harrington, too.”

“You’re my little sister.”

“I’m both.”

Ana sighed. “Not this time.”

“You’re going to need my help.”

That’s what I’m trying to avoid, Ana thought as she put her hands on Emily’s shoulders and squeezed. “I need you to stay here.”

“Why?”

“Because I need you to be safe.”

“I’m safer with you. Isn’t that what you always say, too?”

“I hate it when you repeat things I say to you.”

Emily smiled. “It’s true, though. I’m always safer with you. That’s always been true, and it still is. So let me go with you.”

“Not this time.”

“Why not?”

Because I don’t know what I’m going to find down there, she thought. If I even manage to find Wash again—and that scares me. God, that scares me so much.

She thought about the girl at the farm shooting herself in the head. She thought about the look on Wash’s face as he told her about where he was going, about having accepted that he might not come back from it. And if Wash, with all his skills, thought this was going to be a one-way journey…

Ana didn’t say any of those things, though, and instead put on the best fake smile she could muster at Emily. “I’m your big sister, and I need you to be safe. That’s all I’ve ever needed. And you have that here. If I don’t come back—”

“Don’t say that,” Emily said. “Please don’t say that.”

“Think about staying here,” Ana finished. “Marie’s a good person. This is a good place. It’s not Newton, but even Newton isn’t really Newton anymore after what happened with you and the others.”

“Was it that bad?”

“Worse.” Ana climbed into the Walker’s saddle. She picked up the reins and looked back at Emily. “I love you, Em. You know that.”

“I love you, too, Annie,” her sister said. She walked closer and took Ana’s hand and clung to it. “You better come back, or I’m going after you.”

“Em…”

“I mean it,” Emily said, and turned around and hurried out of the stables before Ana could say anything else.

Ana looked after her sister for a moment, but she couldn’t help but smile to herself anyway.

Stubbornness and righteousness. The two traits that made a Harrington sister tick. She shouldn’t have expected anything less from Emily.

Now all she had to do was find Wash.

And survive the journey...

* * *

How?

How had the two men gotten to the alleyway so fast?

How?

How did she lose the gun? It was in her jacket pocket when she took off after the girl, but it wasn’t there anymore when she reached for it.

How?

How was she suddenly on the floor, something that might have been a rock stabbing into the small of her back, while a man who was at least six feet tall and probably weighed over two hundred pounds of solid muscle fell on top of her?

How was any of this possible?

How had she allowed herself to get into this position?

How had she convinced herself to do something so stupid?

How, how, how?

But all those questions would have to wait, because right now there was a large man on top of her, straddling her waist as he reared up, his large frame (God, he’s the size of a gorilla!) blotting out her view of the sun outside the alleyway. Pale gray eyes peered out at her from behind the striped blue and white cloth that were speckled with something red.

Something? That’s not something. That’s blood!

She couldn’t see the rest of the man’s face with the rag over it. At first she thought it might have been a balaclava, the kind of masks she’d seen terrorists wearing on the news, but no, this was something clearly sewn together out of multiple articles of clothing of different colors and various quality, and she could see multiple lines of stitching and stray threads dangling free. And yet, despite its cheaply and almost randomly put-together state, the cloth clung to the man’s face like a second skin.

Only the eyes were exposed. Pale dark gray eyes that stared down at her, trying to see into her soul. She shivered, the weight of the man’s body pinning her to the filthy floor. Her chest heaved, the pain coming from her stomach, where he had crashed his shoulder into her as if she were some kind of tackling dummy, excruciating.

God, that hurt, you asshat!

But she was able to power through all that misery by concentrating on the eyes hovering above her. She didn’t see anything that even looked remotely sympathetic in them, but then, her attention was focused on the unnatural veins that extended out from the man’s eye slits, giving the impression of jagged rays shooting out from oval-shaped suns. Ana had never seen anything like it. The veins (Were they veins? Or were they something else?) were so bright and clear they looked almost like glowing tributaries of a river against the dark skin that wasn’t exactly black, but almost a charcoal color.

Jesus, what are you?

Up close, the man’s wardrobe, like his mask, was little more than rags. There were holes and torn sections everywhere and looked as if they would fall apart at any second if you jerked at the wrong dangling string. And yet they didn’t, though there was no doubt that they had seen much, much better days. Dirt and grease and oil and speckles of red dots (Blood. Those are blood!) covered the fabric from the collar all the way down to the hem.

It’s a Raggedy Man, she thought absently. I’m about to be murdered by a Raggedy Man!

There was a blur as the second man that had been chasing the girl ran past the first one. Ana let him go (Focus, or you’re going to die!) and kept her eyes on the one perched above her, the sunlight behind him seeming to ebb and flow as if they were afraid to get too close to his heaving, dark-clad form.

“Remember your promise,” Emily had said. “You won’t do something stupid. You’ll find him and come back as soon as you can.”

I wish I could, little sister. I wish I could…

She wasn’t going to get out from underneath the hulking thing sitting on her with pure force. The man was simply too big and too strong, and the most she could do was raise her upper body slightly off the (sticky) floor.

Which she did now, even as she lifted her left hand and reached for what was hidden inside her jacket sleeve with her right.

The man’s eyes snapped from her face to her hands, and she imagined the words, “What are you doing?” flashing through his mind when she took out the knife and stabbed him in the chest, the point of the silver blade easily sinking through his filthy clothing. She felt flesh breaking underneath, then a squirt of blood as the man reared back in shock.

That allowed Ana to sit up and strike out at him. She went for the neck, the most vulnerable part of any body, regardless of how big or tough they were. Her target moved surprisingly fast for someone so large, and she only managed to nick him in the front of the throat with the first slash.

Dammit!

She scrambled to her knees even as the man rocked backward, lost his balance, and ended up sitting down on the floor on his ass. The look of shock crossed what little of his face that she could see, but it was his widening eyes—the blue-gray veins seemingly pulsating around them in response—that convinced her he hadn’t been expecting that.

She didn’t give him a chance to recover and lunged forward instead of retreating. He stuck out his right hand to ward her off and she sliced through his glove, penetrating the skin underneath. Something that might have been pain (Does he even feel pain?) flickered across his eyes as he lowered his hand, blood flitting to the hard pavement around them.

Ana kept moving toward him because they never, ever expected her to press her attack after the initial encounter. They always assumed she would flee and get as far away as possible. They were always surprised when she didn’t.

Just like the one in front of her was shocked. She saw it even as he lifted his left hand as if to punch her, but she was already too close, and Ana stabbed him through the neck about the same time the girl screamed from somewhere behind her.

Ana glanced back in time to see the teenager struggling with the second Raggedy Man, who had grabbed her by the throat, his fingers like bloated sausages around her thin frail neck, and shoved her against one of the walls. The girl whaled at the man’s outstretched arm, but that did nothing; Ana wasn’t even sure if her attacker could feel the blows. The girl’s eyes shifted, going from the man to Ana.

Hold on, kid. Hold on a little longer!

A grunt from in front of her made Ana look back at the first Raggedy Man. He was clinging to her extended wrist with one hand while his other hand desperately groped at the knife sticking out of the side of his neck. Ana pulled her hand away, easily breaking his grip, and jerked the knife out of his throat at the same time. An arc of bright red blood sprayed the air.

The man made an odd, almost gulping sound before slumping to the floor. Blood continued to pour out of his neck, spreading like wildfire across the trash-strewn floor, but by then Ana had already stood up and spun around.

The second Raggedy Man continued to hold the girl against the wall, but he had looked over in her direction. Dark blue eyes zeroed in on her. Like the first, this one also wore dirty and torn rags that hugged his hulking frame, his face just as covered by a makeshift balaclava. But it was the similar-looking veins spitting from his eyes like erratic sunrays that got her attention. The ones she was staring at were much whiter than the first’s.

Jesus, what happened to them?

Ana held the bloody knife at her side, her other hand forming a fist. “Let her go.”

The man narrowed his eyes at her. She didn’t see anything that looked like fear, but there was uncertainty, as if he didn’t quite know what to make of her or this new situation. The girl was still flailing at the Raggedy Man’s arm, but he continued to ignore her. He was so much taller and bigger that she looked like a doll against his bulk.

Ana clenched her teeth. “I said, let her go.”

He did, unfurling his fingers from the girl’s neck. He simply let her go, as if she were little more than a bothersome flea. The teenager fell hard to the floor and grabbed at her throat while she fought through a series of choking coughs.

The Raggedy Man turned and attacked without a word.

There was nothing subtle or graceful about the way he charged her. It was pure aggression from beginning to end, and she could imagine that he’d never had to rely on anything else in the past. He could probably have crushed her head between his hands, and maybe that was what he was planning as he lumbered toward her.

Ana let him come.

She knew what was going to happen, because this wasn’t anything she hadn’t been through before. Men were too comfortable with their physical advantages over her, and this one was no different. Whatever had happened to him, whatever he had become, he was, and would always be, just another man. In his mind, he saw a short woman with a small knife, and the fact that she had already downed someone his size probably never even factored into his decision. She’d dealt with it all before, and it was the reason she was still standing and they weren’t.

They underestimated her. They always did.

She sidestepped at the last second and ducked under his swinging arm. He was a bruiser, a brawler, and she expected no less. The swoosh! as his fist went over her head, and she was suddenly behind him as he dashed past her, his momentum carrying him forward like the small-minded caveman he was.

Ana knew exactly where to put the knife where it would do the most damage. The neck. That was always the most vulnerable and least protected part of the human body, whether they were men or women or monsters.

She did that now, slashing at her target even before the man had begun to slow down, and got him in the back of the neck. Not quite where she had wanted the blade, but it was good enough for a first strike.

He jerked his head back in shock, stopped clumsily, and began to turn around. He was still halfway from facing her again when she threw herself at him and aimed the knife at his throat. His eyes narrowed and his mouth twisted behind the fabrics that covered it as she pushed until the guard of the knife bumped against his skin.

He swung wildly anyway, and with both hands, landing one against her chest. The air flooded out of her (Christ, he’s fast!) and she fell backward, pulling the knife out at the same time, and landed back on the floor on her butt. Getting struck in the chest should have hurt, but the pain was tempered by the sight of another satisfying arc of blood splashing the alley.

The man stumbled to his knees, hands groping at the side of his neck to stem the flow. It didn’t work, and his life force leaked out through his fingers and ran down along his arms and dripped to the pavement in thick rivulets.

Ana picked herself back up and looked past the Raggedy Man’s struggling form at the first one behind him. That man lay on his back, unmoving, blood pooling underneath him.

One down…

The second one was done for, too; it was just a matter of time.

The girl…

Ana turned around to see the kid picking up something from the floor. It was small but metal, and it looked familiar.

A gun.

Her gun.

Oh, great, Ana thought as the girl tightened her grip around Chuck’s SIG Sauer.

“Hey, hey, don’t do that,” Ana said.

The girl was breathing hard, every breath seemingly taking a lot out of her. Her neck was covered in welts and red all over.

“Let me help you,” Ana said.

The girl looked past her.

Ana glanced back and saw the second Raggedy Man kneeling on the floor behind her. He had lowered his head, his chin touching his chest and his hands hanging at his sides. Blood slurped out of the hole in his neck where she had stabbed him and continued to run down the length of his already smeared coat.

Ana turned back to the girl. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The kid didn’t say anything, but she also didn’t lift the gun and point it at Ana, either. Instead, her eyes dropped to the knife in Ana’s hand.

“You should give me the gun,” Ana said.

The teenager looked back at Ana but didn’t say anything. Ana wondered if she was even capable after what she’d gone through. She looked as if she was having trouble breathing, and those red welts around her throat seemed to have gotten even redder.

“Give me the gun,” Ana said, and held out her empty left hand.

The girl stared at it, then at her.

“You’re safe,” Ana said, even as she thought, What a load of crap. She’s not safe. I’m not safe. Not while we’re still in Talico.

Ana didn’t think the girl would ever move, and images of the kid back at the farm came rushing back to her.

The revolver in her hand, like the gun in this girl’s hand…

Not again. Please don’t let it happen again.

“Please,” Ana said. “Let me help you. Please.”

That did it, and the teenager walked over and held out the SIG. Ana took it and put it away in her jacket pocket.

“We should go,” the girl said. Her voice came out husky, and with difficulty. “There’s more of them out there.”

“How many more?” Ana asked.

“A lot more,” the girl said.

Seventeen

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“I heard shooting earlier. Was that you?”

“That was George and Justin.”

“Where are they now?”

The girl frowned. “They’re dead.”

“What happened?” Ana asked.

“They attacked us. I don’t know where they came from. One second it’s just us, then the next, they’re everywhere.”

“How many of them were there?”

“I’m not sure. A dozen. Maybe more?” She paused to think about it. “It was like they came out of the walls.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have gotten away if Justin hadn’t…” She stopped herself and didn’t continue.

Ana didn’t keep asking stupid questions. The look on the girl’s face told her everything she needed to know about what had happened to George and Justin and whoever else was there during the attack. There had been more than just the three of them, but Ana hadn’t said the others’ names.

They sat across from one another, flanked by student desks. The classroom was near the back of the building, far enough from the front doors that Ana felt safe to use it as a temporary refuge. Not that she felt “safe” anywhere in Talico, but it was better than braving the Oklahoma countryside on foot. Night was already falling over the high windows to their left, leaving the two of them to sit in semidarkness that was getting darker by the minute.

Ana did a quick check of the only door into the classroom, to her right. It had a simple lock, and they had shoved a large heavy oak desk against it. Not that she thought those things were going to keep anyone from coming in if they were really determined, but they were a good first barrier. Mostly it was about staying unseen if anyone peered through the small security window in the door. After all, if no one knew they were inside, no one would try to come in.

The girl’s name was Chris. Short for Chrissy, she had told Ana, but everyone just called her Chris.

“How did you do that?” Chris asked her now.

“Do what?”

“Back in the alley.” She looked down at Ana’s left hand—at the knife hidden inside the sleeve. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. You weren’t even scared.”

I was terrified, Ana thought, but she said, “It’s survival, that’s all. You learn to do what you have to, in order to survive. To keep going.”

“That’s what we did. Survived.” She looked down at her own hands. Ana couldn’t see it now with the growing darkness, but earlier she had glimpsed specks of dry blood on Chris’s palms. “Me and the others. We survived.”

“You’re not from Talico…”

“We were passing through. It looked peaceful from the outside.”

But it’s not, and the slayers knew it. They put that big X over it for a reason.

I guess I know that reason now.

She replayed the image of the Raggedy Men over in her mind’s eye. First the three she’d spotted in the streets; then later, the two in the alley. They were two completely different groups of Raggedy Men, which meant Chris was right and there were more of them out there. The two from the alley hadn’t been armed. Either that or they’d lost their weapons while they were looking for, then chasing the girl.

She had so many questions about them. How many more of them were there? What did they want? And what had happened to them that made them the way they were?

Their eyes stuck in her head. There was something wrong with them, along with the sometimes grayish and other times blue or white veins that crisscrossed the exposed parts of their face.

That’s not normal. That’s definitely not normal.

“Did they say anything when they attacked you and your friends?” Ana asked the girl.

Chris shook her head. “They just attacked.” She paused briefly, before continuing. “George and Justin shot at them.”

“Did they get any?”

“I don’t know. There were bodies everywhere…” She paused again, this time for a longer period. “I thought I’d gotten away, but they still found me. I guess I’m not as good at hiding as I thought.”

There was just enough light left in the outside world that she could make out the chairs scattered around her and Chris. The classroom looked identical to the dozen or so they’d passed as they walked through the school earlier. Opened lockers—some pried open—and old posters and banners had greeted them. There was even a sparsely decorated trophy case. Apparently Talico High School wasn’t very successful when it came to competition of any kind.

She focused on the windows and the dwindling lights coming through them. There was something peaceful about the world outside, but Ana knew it was deceptive. Besides the Raggedy Men, she kept thinking about the sniper who had shot the chestnut out from under her. Was he still out there? Was he working with the Raggedy Men? Was—

Her stomach growled. In all the chaos of fighting, running, and surviving, she had forgotten how hungry she was. She couldn’t, now, sitting in the dark waiting for something to happen.

“Here,” Chris said.

The kid was holding out a see-through bag to her. Ana took it. There were brown chunks of something inside. About twenty of them, though it was obvious the bag had held more than that not too long ago.

“What is it?” Ana asked.

“Pecans,” Chris said. “Nancy found a bunch of them when we spent two days at this farm outside of Tulsa. We had bags and bags of them.”

Had, Ana thought, opening the bag and taking out one precious kernel and savoring it between her teeth.

She handed the bag back to Chris, who grabbed a couple of nuts before handing it right back. Ana would have argued if she had the strength, but she didn’t, and shook out two more pieces and put them into her mouth. They weren’t much, but God, were they tasty. Probably the best pecans she had ever eaten in her life, but of course that was likely the hunger talking.

“I’m sorry about your friends,” Ana said.

Chris nodded but didn’t say anything.

The kid had been through a lot. Everyone had, who had survived The Purge. She had, and Emily certainly had. Even Wash, who was out there somewhere, maybe already in Texas right now while she was stuck in Talico, Oklahoma, trying to survive the night.

Goddamn you, Wash, you should have waited for me.

“Are you from here?” Chris asked after a while.

“No,” Ana said, and told her about the sniper. “Did you see him?”

Chris shook her head. “We didn’t hear any shooting when we got into town. It looked like a nice place. So quiet.” Something occurred to her, and she looked over at Ana. “You think he was forcing you in here on purpose? The sniper?”

“I don’t know.”

“Those others—the ones you call the Raggedy Men—they weren’t carrying guns. I don’t think a single one of them were when they attacked us.”

Ana took out another kernel from the bag and chewed on it slowly, trying to make every bit last. “What were you guys doing out here?”

“We move around a lot. We tried sticking to a couple of places, but it never worked out.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged. “People always wanted…things from us.”

“Things?”

“Things that we didn’t want to give. So we kept moving around.”

“How long have you guys been doing that?”

“A long time, I guess. You sort of get used to it after a while.” Another long pause. “We thought we were prepared for anything. George and Justin were really good with their guns. But there were just too many of those Raggedy Men. I wouldn’t have gotten away the first time if it wasn’t for Justin. He saved my life. He’s always saving my life…”

Ana handed the bag back to Chris, and the girl pinched a couple more nuts out of it. They didn’t say very much after that, and Ana didn’t ask any more questions about Chris’s friends. She didn’t think the girl wanted to talk about it, and Ana didn’t blame her.

It was quiet inside and outside the classroom, and pretty soon Ana found Chris curled up on the floor, snoring lightly.

She’s got the right idea.

Ana felt bad for the kid. God only knew what she’d seen and been through today. Ana herself was sore from head to toe from all the running she’d done. There was nothing like fleeing a sniper, then having to fight two brutes for your life to tire you out. It wasn’t until she had sat down an hour ago that she realized just how much everything hurt.

Watching Chris sleep made Ana wonder why she ever thought the kid reminded her of Emily. They couldn’t have been more different. Where Emily was tall, Chris was about Ana’s height. They also looked nothing alike, though maybe that had something to do with Chris’s nose. The teenager had broken it recently, and there was still a scar along the bridge. Even the shape of their faces was night and day.

What was I thinking running out there? I must have been crazy.

But it was too late to change any of that now. She was stuck with the kid, and whether she liked it or not, she had to keep taking care of her. She’d taken that responsibility on when she stepped outside the Dairy Queen.

Told you, it’s not always about Emily, that annoying voice in the back of her mind said.

Yeah, yeah, Ana thought as she lay down on the floor.

* * *

A sound from the hallway woke her up.

What was that?

Ana glanced down at her watch.

Five past ten. She’d slept for almost four hours.

She picked herself hurriedly up from the floor and looked over at the door, while at the same time reaching into her jacket pocket for the SIG Sauer.

There it was again. She wasn’t entirely sure what it was, but she had definitely heard it again.

What was that?

She sneaked a look over at Chris. The girl remained on the floor, sleeping on her side, both hands folded underneath her head as a pillow.

Ana stood up. The now-empty bag of pecans, which she had forgotten was in her lap, fluttered to the floor. She tiptoed over to the door and leaned against the wall next to it, keeping out of view of the security glass. Anyone on the other side wouldn’t be able to see her, but Ana could look out at…not much.

It was dark in the hallway, even more so than in the classroom. There weren’t very many lights—artificial or natural—and she could just barely make out a large white banner celebrating an upcoming dance that was draped over a row of lockers.

Ana waited, slowing down her breathing so she wouldn’t miss—

There it was again.

What is that?

It was some kind of soft tap.

Then again: Tap.

She changed up her grip on the gun and gave the big desk pressed against the door a long look. It had been heavy as hell when she’d pushed it over with Chris’s help, so she was sure it could withstand some measure of attack. Not forever. But then, nothing really lasts forever these days.

She looked out the security window—

A shadow stood on the other side, staring back at her.

Jesus, Ana thought, and was sure her heart had skipped a beat or two (or a dozen).

It was a dog.

Just a dog. It looked feral, dark black eyes peering in through the window. Not necessarily at her—though it felt that way—because it couldn’t really see her from where she stood. The animal sniffed the air before moving closer.

Shit. It can smell us.

It had to be all the sweat that clung to her and Chris from all the fighting and running, and still did, even now. Or maybe the animal could just sense the fear radiating from her. Either way, it definitely knew someone was inside—

The dog’s head snapped to its left for a brief second before it ran off.

Now what?

Ana didn’t have to wait long to find out what had chased the dog away. There were two of them, and they raced up the hallway in pursuit of the animal.

Humans, the tails of their filthy and falling-apart coats flapping behind them as they chased after the dog. The thump-thump-thump of their booted footsteps as they ran filled the hallway and reverberated all the way into the classroom through the thick concrete walls.

“What’s going on?” a groggy voice asked.

Ana glanced over at Chris, sitting up slowly from the floor. Ana put a finger to her lips. The girl understood right away and quickly scooted all the way back to the wall.

She’s a fast learner.

Ana turned back to the security window as the footsteps continued to fade, until she couldn’t hear them anymore. There was a sudden squeal from farther down the corridor. It was quick and loud, and it stopped almost as quickly as it had begun.

I guess they caught up to the dog.

Sorry, dog.

Ana stood perfectly still, barely breathing, as a suffocating silence returned to the building around her. In front and to her left, Chris had come fully awake and sat without moving. Like her, the girl was waiting for something to happen. The poor kid looked like she could use another day’s sleep—

Clack-clack! as the doorknob jiggled next to her.

Ana spun back to the security window as a masked face peered through the glass, gray eyes shifting left and right in search of something inside the room. The doorknob continued to move as the man tried to open it, before suddenly giving up.

The face also disappeared from the window.

What…?

Ana exchanged a quick glance with Chris, who had stood up, her back pressed against the wall. Even with hardly any lights in the room, it was easy to tell that the teenager was trembling in the darkness.

Ana slowly, very slowly, eased back the hammer on the SIG Sauer with her thumb. She waited to hear the soft click as the hammer was cocked all the way back, and when it finally came it was lost in the sudden—

Bam! of something smashing into the doorknob on the other side. The metal object buckled instantly and flew across the room like a projectile. It disappeared into a patch of shadows where she could hear it rolling around loudly on the floor.

I guess they found us!

Chris scrambled into one of the corners near the back of the room, and Ana didn’t have the heart to tell her that that wasn’t going to do any bit of good. But she didn’t, and instead remained focused on the door even as another bam! shook it.

Again: Bam!

And again: Bam!

There were flickers of movement through the security window and through the hole where the doorknob used to be every time the Raggedy Man threw his body into the door. Each time he assaulted the frame, the desk pinned against it would slide half an inch back, then another half inch…

Oh, shit!

She had no choice. Ana came out of hiding and moved around the desk until she was in front of it. She grabbed the edge with both hands and shoved the heavy furniture forward with a heave. The desk hadn’t thumped! against the door for more than a second before she saw a pair of eyes glaring in at her through the piece of security glass.

They locked eyes for one second, before Ana picked up the gun she’d placed on top of the desk and fired. The security window exploded, and the face on the other side disappeared in a shower of glass.

The gunshot echoed throughout the building and Ana thought, Well, now you’ve done it. Now you’ve gone and done it!

It didn’t take long before she heard the same pounding boots that had chased the dog up the hallway earlier. Except this time they were coming toward her, and she knew that because they were getting louder and louder.

Ana checked on Chris. The girl seemed to be trying desperately to squeeze her tiny frame into the corner, to escape from the classroom. They exchanged a glance, and Ana wondered if her own face mirrored the teenager’s terrified expression. It was probably close, even though she told herself to put on a brave face for the girl’s sake.

Ana turned back to the door just as a face—a new one—appeared in the rectangular opening where the security window used to be. Green eyes, surrounded by pulsating veins, the white cloth covering the face seeming to glow in the hallway darkness.

She lifted the gun to fire again, but the figure disappeared first, just before something crashed into the door.

Bam!

Her legs were pressed against the desk when that happened, and Ana felt the heavy object moving slightly against the attack.

Another bam! and she felt it again, along with the desk sliding back slightly.

“Chris!” Ana shouted. “I need—”

Chris was there before she could finish. The kid shoved herself against the desk next to her and pushed with everything she had.

Bam!

Filthy and torn clothing flashed across the security window and the round hole where the doorknob used to be as more figures appeared in the hallway and began throwing themselves with wild abandon into the door.

Bam!

One after another, after another...

Bam!

Then, before Ana and Chris even had the opportunity to push the desk back into place—

Bam!

The assault was coming harder and faster, like sledgehammers raining against the door, each pounding attack pushing the desk back an inch.

Bam!

Then another inch…

Bam!

And another…

BAM!

Eighteen

BAM!

BAM!

BAM!

She told herself it wasn’t possible that each crash against the door was louder than the last. It couldn’t have been reality, unless there was a new and stronger Raggedy Man every time. Which was impossible.

Wasn’t it?

It didn’t sound like it, though, and Ana struggled to keep the large desk pinned against the door even with Chris’s help. The girl was already halfway to the floor, with her back turned against the desk while her legs pushed backward, grimacing each time the bam! moved the door into the classroom another inch.

At least it was always just an inch and not a foot, and they could always shove the barricade back into place after every impact. It became a battle of how long the Raggedy Men could keep smashing into the door with their bodies and how long she and the teenager could keep pushing back. Ana didn’t have to tell Chris what to do. She knew instinctively.

Bam!

Push!

Bam!

Push!

Ana glimpsed harried movements on the other side of the broken security window and through the hole where the doorknob used to be with every collision. There was also the flurry of torn and fraying fabrics—red and white and black and brown and green and sometimes even pink—flickering against the darkness. The large figures were taking turns violently throwing themselves into the slab of wood, sending an unending torrent of unyielding bodies against them.

Over and over…

Bam!

Push!

And over and over…

Bam!

Push!

But the door, thank God, wasn’t any closer to opening and letting them in, even if vertical and horizontal and diagonal cracks were beginning to form up and down its length. She could see them appearing one by one—first along the top, then the middle, and finally near the bottom. The Raggedy Men might not be able to push their way in, but they were going to destroy the door trying.

And then what? What were she and the girl going to do then?

Bam!

Push!

What could they do? They were trapped inside the classroom. There was only one way in and out, and it was surrounded by Raggedy Men. The only way to safety was through the dark hulks trying to get in.

Bam!

Push!

There was the window, but they weren’t going to be able to climb up there. It was too high and too small, and even if she could boost Chris up somehow—

Bam!

Push!

Chris was grunting, pain washing across the girl’s face every time she dug against the floor with her boots to once again shove the desk into place. Ana’s own hands were starting to tire and become numb from the constant back and forth. She had put the SIG Sauer away in her jacket pocket to make both hands available, but she was very aware of its weight. The knife, too, in her left sleeve.

Bam!

Push!

Chris looked up and over at her. Fear, pain, and a dozen other emotions raced across the girl’s face.

“Keep pushing!” Ana shouted, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. The only other thought that crossed her mind was, “We’re probably going to die, Chris!”

Yeah, that’s not going to do either one of us any good.

Chris nodded in response and braced herself on the slippery tiled floor and pushed back as—

A ferocious bam!, but instead of just the door rocking backward against the desk like all the other times, this time it dislodged a large section of wood that snapped loose and shot past Ana and Chris and landed on the other side of the classroom. If it had hit one of them, Ana was pretty sure they would be more than a little dazed, if not on the floor bleeding.

Jesus, that was close!

A face covered in black clothes except for the eyes appeared in the gaping hole in the middle of the door. Blue eyes seemingly glowing in sync to the spidery veins around them peered in at her in the brief second or two the Raggedy Men paused their assault.

Then the face disappeared, and bam!

Push!

Bam!

Push!

More chunks of the door came loose as new cracks began appearing at even faster intervals than before. Dangerously sharp splinters flicked past Ana’s face, others pelting the glossy desk countertop in front of her. One or two might have almost struck Chris in the back of the head, though the girl didn’t seem to notice.

This is it. This is it…

The Raggedy Men weren’t going to be able to open the door—not with her and Chris refusing to yield—but they weren’t going to have to, because very soon there wouldn’t be a door to separate them.

How long was “soon?”

One minute, if she was lucky.

Less than that, if she wasn’t.

Bam! as the top half of the door came unglued and shattered, leaving behind a gaping hole that revealed the outlines of four coated figures in the hallway beyond. They stared in at her, chests heaving, while the veins that surrounded their eyes glowed unnaturally in the darkness that surrounded them. At that very instant, they looked more like monsters than men.

Maybe that’s not too far from the truth…

“Chris,” Ana said as she began backing away.

The teenager turned, saw what had happened, and scrambled to her feet and did the same. “Oh, God…”

“Get ready to run.”

“What?”

“Get ready to run,” Ana repeated. Her voice came through surprisingly calm for some reason. She wasn’t sure why or how, but the panic she had expected wasn’t there. She was in control even as she slipped her hand into her jacket pocket and took out the gun.

Chris looked over at her, her eyes impossibly wide. “I don’t—” she began, but didn’t get the chance to finish before the first Raggedy Man threw himself through the hole in the door, breaking free more parts of the wooden frame before landing on the desk with a clumsy whump!

Ana shot him in the chest—the biggest part of him that she could be sure she would hit—as he was picking himself up. He seemed to pause, as if unsure what had just happened. She fired again, this time striking him in the neck. He grabbed at the wound even as he attempted to crawl across the splintered-covered countertop, only to fall off the edge and collapse to the floor in a pile of torn black and brown fabrics.

Ana stumbled farther back, Chris mirroring her actions step by step. “Get ready, Chris,” Ana said.

“What?” the girl said. “Get ready for what?”

“Get ready.”

“Ana. Get ready for wha—”

A Raggedy Man smashed his way through what was left of the door, his arms swinging wildly at jagged remains of the frame and creating an even bigger opening. If he even cared at all that Ana had just shot one of his own, it didn’t show in what little of his face that she could see.

The man was on the desk and climbing over it when Ana shot him, too, hitting him in the shoulder. She had been aiming for his chest, but the shot went slightly off-target because he was moving too frantically. It was enough, though, to make the Raggedy Man twist slightly, and only for half a second before he launched himself like a human missile over the desk.

Chris’s gasps as the Raggedy Man landed on the floor between them and the desk were almost as loud as Ana’s own. Ana had seen nightcrawlers doing anything to get to their prey, but she’d never seen a human do the same. Were these Raggedy Men even still human?

Oh, shut up and shoot him! Shoot him now!

The Raggedy Man was straightening up in front of her, barely three feet away, when Ana lifted the gun with both hands, aimed for the spot between his visible eyes, and pulled the trigger. His head snapped back, blood spraying the moonlit desktop behind him in slivers of dark red streaks.

There was no time for Ana to feel anything even resembling triumph, because even before the Raggedy Man could fall down, the other two were already through the door. While one leaped onto the desk, the other one raced around it.

Ana shot the one that was flying through the air at her—and missed!

No! her mind shouted just before the man crashed into her, knocking her back and into a waiting student desk and upending it and everything else in the immediate area. Ana would have screamed as the sharp edge of something—possibly the desk, or maybe a knife?—speared a part of her spine, but she was too busy falling while trying desperately to maintain her grip on the gun at the same time.

Don’t lose the gun! Don’t lose the gun!

Her lungs exploded when she finally slammed against what must have been a brick wall covered in jagged spikes. Somehow, somehow, she still had the gun in her hand when the Raggedy Man jumped on top of her like some kind of goddamn toad. A large, massive man-size toad whose weight crushed her further into the hard classroom floor as if he were trying to pulverize her into nothingness.

Someone screamed (Chris!), but Ana didn’t have the precious seconds it would have taken to check on the girl. She was too busy trying not to die, because that was exactly what would happen if the owner of the pair of piercing black eyes perched on top of her had his way.

No way in hell. No way it ends here!

She lifted the gun, pointed it at the man’s face from almost point-blank range, and pulled the trigger.

The Raggedy Man’s head twisted slightly as the bullet tore through his left cheek underneath the rags (No! No, dammit, no!) and struck the ceiling above and behind him. Blood spurted out of the gash, but it wasn’t a killing shot, and Ana knew it as soon as the man grabbed her wrist—the same one holding the gun—and pounded it down against the cold, hard tiled floor.

There was pain, but it was more the shock of having missed from so close (No, dammit!) and realizing she wasn’t going to get a follow-up shot to make up for it that numbed every inch of her. She let out a scream anyway; not that it halted the Raggedy Man, who lifted her hand and brought it down again, and again, and again.

She figured out why he was doing that quickly: because she refused to let go of the gun.

Hold onto it! her mind screamed. Don’t let go!

But she was losing the battle, and each blow against the unyielding floor sent flurries of pain through the entire length of her arm. Her attacker didn’t stop until her fingers finally (No!) let go of the SIG—she was almost entirely sure every bone in all five fingers were broken by now—and the gun clattered away.

Another scream came from behind the Raggedy Man sitting on top of her.

Chris!

Ana could barely make out the forms, but there were two of them—one with the other thrown over its shoulder—as they disappeared out of her peripheral vision. She knew the smaller of the two was Chris just from the screaming. The teenager continued to cry out even when they were in the hallway, then moving away…

No.

No, no, no!

But Ana couldn’t do anything for the teenager. She could barely do anything for herself. She had lost all sensation in her right hand, which she should probably be grateful for, because it kept her from feeling the pain. Which pain? All of the pain. The one surging through her right arm and the one still pulsing up and down her spine, to name just two. There was more. There was so, so much more.

If she thought the Raggedy Man would go easy on her now that she had lost the gun, she was very wrong. He grabbed her throat with his other hand and lifted her off the floor even as he climbed off her. He raised her up as if she weighed nothing, as if she wasn’t fighting and struggling against his grip and punching at his arm every inch of the way.

No, no, no!

Not like this. Not like this!

The Raggedy Man holding her life in his hand was an unnatural monstrosity. She hadn’t realized it before, but there was something abnormal about his size. All of their sizes. Every Raggedy Man had been huge, well over six feet tall, and wide. It was almost as if a pro football team had decided to dress up in leftover clothing and covered up their faces in the aftermath of The Purge.

It was all surreal and confusing, but maybe that had a little something to do with her inability to catch her breath. The man’s fingers were around her throat, choking her inch by inch, and all she could manage were desperate wheezing sounds.

She gave up trying to fight the Raggedy Man’s monstrous strength and momentarily forced herself to forget that every finger on her right hand was probably broken. She pushed all of that away—far, far into the back of her mind—and reached for the handle of the knife in her left jacket sleeve.

There. There!

The Raggedy Man’s eyes shifted from her face and went downward at the very moment that she stabbed at his neck.

Go for the neck! Always go for the neck!

He threw her.

What?

She didn’t know how he did it, but he flung her as if she were little more than a bug just as she was about to push the point of the knife into the side of his throat.

No! her mind screamed even as she sailed through the air and crashed into another student desk. The furniture broke underneath her as Ana spilled back to the floor, clutching the knife as if her life depended on it.

Get up! Get up now, or you’re going to die!

She scrambled to her knees, her vision blurring the entire time even as the pain that was rampaging through every joint and appendage reached the unbearable stage. She turned her head—slowly, way too slowly—when she heard him coming. He was loud and devoid of grace, like a bull caught in a stampede. Or leading it.

He’s coming! Get up! Get the hell up!

She was pushing up with one hand, straightening and turning around to confront him. Every motion seemed to take a lot (Too much. Too much!) out of her, and she hadn’t even fully turned when he got there first and rammed his shoulder into her chest and she flew backward again.

This time she hit the wall and ricocheted off it, landing chest-first into an already overturned chair. More excruciating pain exploded across every inch of her, and she might have let out a scream, but she couldn’t be sure. There was too much going on, and every one of her senses was overloaded.

Somehow, somehow she was able to pick herself back up again. Slowly, like she was stuck in molasses. It was her only speed at the moment. Thank God her legs were still working, even if every bone felt like jelly and her skull pounded and threatened to cave in on her.

The knife. Where’s…

There. The knife was exactly where it should be—in her right hand, her numbed fingers tightening around the plastic handle. She had held onto it through all of that somehow. Somehow.

And as long as she had the knife…

He was smiling at her. Or she thought he was, anyway. There was a slight curved indentation where his mouth was hidden behind that homemade balaclava. Wisps of loose pink thread swayed back and forth under his chin, but they were nothing compared to the severed sections of his coat, as if someone had put scissors to them. The absurd sight helped to momentarily calm her down and allowed her to temporarily shove aside the mountain of pain coursing through her.

Emily’s waiting for you. You can’t die here.

You can’t die here!

She continued straightening up—How long had she been doing that? A few minutes now?—as moonlight poured through the high windows behind her and hit the Raggedy Man just right, revealing the unnatural lines around his eyes and the dark skin between them.

“What happened to you?” she wanted to ask him. “What did you do to yourself? What made you this way?”

Ana tightened her grip around the knife. Or she thought she did, anyway. The truth was, she suddenly couldn’t be sure of anything anymore, including the ability to do something as simple as make her fingers obey. Did she actually have strength left down there? Hell, did she even still have the knife, or had she dropped it, but only fooled herself into thinking she hadn’t?

She wanted to glance down to be sure. All it would have taken was a second. Just one second.

But she didn’t, because she couldn’t risk it. One second was all it would take for the Raggedy Man to pounce.

One second was all it would take for her to lose this fight, along with her life.

And if that happened, who was going to save Chris? Who was going to take Emily back home? Who was going to rescue Wash?

You? a voice asked from somewhere in the back of her mind. It may or may not have been followed—or preceded—by a laugh. You can’t even save yourself!

“Oh, shut up,” Ana said out loud.

Or did she? She couldn’t be certain of that, either. Her ears were ringing, her heart sledgehammering against her chest, and the parts of her that had been bruised and battered and probably broken were screaming, screaming for her attention.

But maybe she had said it out loud after all, because the Raggedy Man seemed to cock his head slightly to one side, as if to say, “Did you say something?” Not that he actually did say anything. He hadn’t said a word. None of them had. Not the two in the alleyway and not the four that had followed them to the school. The only sounds had come from her and Chris.

Chris, screaming, as one of them took her away…

She looked past the Raggedy Man and at the door. She had to get to it. She had to go through it and save Chris. The teenager wasn’t Emily, but that didn’t matter now. Because, sometimes, it wasn’t always about Emily…

The Raggedy Man began moving toward her. Slowly, as if he had all the time in the world. As if he were playing games with her.

She lifted the knife (Yes, it’s still there. I wasn’t imagining it. Oh, thank God.) in front of her and got ready. He was going to charge and go right past her, just like the one back at the alley had. Just like they always did.

Men. They looked at her and all they saw was a small, skinny redheaded girl. They barely even saw the knife—if they saw it at all. It was a weakness of theirs, one that she had exploited more than once without shame.

Shame? What was there to be ashamed of? Survival was all that mattered.

The Raggedy Man took another step, but before he could take a second one, a hole appeared as if by magic in the spot where his forehead would have been underneath his rags. Ana flinched as something wet splashed her face, but before she turned her head reflexively, she saw the Raggedy Man falling and slamming into the floor in front of her.

Ana opened her eyes back up, the knife still gripped in her hand, and looked through a sticky film of what might have been milky substances at a man standing in the open door on the other side of the desk. At first she thought it was another Raggedy Man, but he was too skinny and average height and he was holding a gun in his hand.

A gun. The man had fired a gun that had killed the Raggedy Man. But how was that possible when she hadn’t heard a gunshot?

The man stepped into the room. Moonlight flooded over him, revealing short blond hair and blue eyes. The butt of a shotgun jutted from behind one shoulder and Ana thought, He’s not one of them. They don’t use guns. I don’t know why, but the Raggedy Men don’t use guns.

The newcomer stared at her, then down at the bodies between them. He spent a second or two on the Raggedy Men that she had killed before looking back at her.

“Goddamn, woman,” the man said. “Goddamn.”

She stared back at him, not quite sure how to respond, or if she could even open her mouth to make a sound.

Instead of saying anything, she reached up and wiped at the bloody sludge dripping from her face. It wasn’t sticky milk, even though it felt like it against her fingers. It took a few seconds before the smell and reality of what she was touching finally hit her.

Ana gagged, bent over, and threw up brown chunks of pecan on the classroom floor.

Nineteen

“Raggedy Men? That’s what you call them?”

“That’s what they look like. What do you call them?”

The man shrugged. “Assholes?”

Ana managed a smile, even if doing so caused a ripple of pain around her jawline, her cheeks, and pretty much everywhere else on her from the neck up.

“That works, too, I guess,” she said.

Her savior hadn’t introduced himself, but he had led her to where he’d been hiding from the Raggedy Men. It was a small room above the janitor’s closet near the back of the school. An attic of some sort, and just as cramped. There were holes in the ceiling that allowed moonlight to filter in, giving her just enough light to see just how limited the spaces around them were. The contained space also meant she could smell everything, including her own sweat-stained clothes and that of the man’s sitting across from her. It didn’t help that she could still taste some of the vomit in her mouth.

“You’re lucky I decided to pop down to see what all the commotion was about,” her savior said as soon as they were safely back in the attic. “That was a bad idea, by the way. The gunshots. I mean, the screaming was bad, too, but you could have brought a whole lot more of them over with the shooting. You’re lucky the four down there were all there was, or we wouldn’t be having this discussion.”

“I didn’t have any choice,” Ana said. “Did you see her? The girl?”

“Yeah, they took her. Walked right past me in the hallway. Lucky I’m good at hiding.”

“Was she…?”

“Alive?” He nodded. “Yeah, fighting the whole way, not that the monster carrying her noticed. I’m guessing she’s going to stay that way. Alive.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why go through the effort of carrying her off if they weren’t going to keep her alive? If they’d wanted to kill her, they’d just do it in that classroom like they were going to do with you. Like they’ve done with everyone else.”

Ana had nodded solemnly, but she wasn’t quite sure how to feel about what he was saying. If he was right—and God, she hoped he was—then Chris still being alive was the best she could have hoped for.

But there was the other part, the realization that if they wanted her alive, then for what reason? What did men who barely still resembled men want with a teenage girl? And did she really want to find out the answer?

You have to. If she’s alive… Then you have to.

“And the answer is yes,” her savior said now.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I know where they’re taking her. The girl.”

“Where are they taking her?”

Her savior didn’t answer right away. He was too busy using the lights from above him to redress his right thigh where blood seeped through a white T-shirt he had been using as a bandage. He had been limping the entire time they walked back to the janitor’s closet, and from the way he grimaced as he climbed up the ladder to the attic above it, he was hurting almost as much as she was. Maybe more, because although she was bruised and battered, at least there wasn’t a part of her bleeding. Or, at least, she didn’t think there was. Her savior, on the other hand, was nursing a nasty wound that hadn’t been treated properly.

“You don’t happen to have a first aid kit or something to eat on you, would you?” was the next thing out of his mouth after, “Goddamn, woman. Goddamn,” back in the classroom.

The question made it crystal clear that he hadn’t left his hiding spot out of some need to save a stranger, but because he’d needed something from her. He’d taken a risk and came up empty, and she could see the regret on his face right away after she answered, “No.”

Ana watched the man toss away the bloodied cloth he’d been using to dab at the blood around the edges of his “bandage” before sitting back against the wall and sighing. He looked somewhere in his early thirties, and she might have even called him handsome if not for the unkempt facial hair and an old fading scar on one cheek. And there was something about his eyes that she didn’t like.

Be careful with him, she had told herself almost right away. Be very careful.

“Well?” Ana said when he still hadn’t replied. “Where are they taking her?”

“What are you gonna do, go get her back from those brutes?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Why? You told me you didn’t even know her until earlier today.”

“I know her well enough. Where did they take her?”

He shrugged, as if to say, It’s your funeral. “There’s a warehouse near the center of town. Next to a strip mall with some phone stores, a Subway, and a pawn shop. Warehouse is the biggest thing in the area; two stories, steel all around. You can’t miss it.”

“How do you know this?”

“Saw them going into the place, then later coming out. Figured that’s where they hang those ugly wardrobes of theirs.”

“You tracked them there?”

“What do I look like, suicidal? It was purely by accident. I was looking for a place to fix this”—he nodded at his wounded leg—“and ended up right next to the devil himself. I guess that’s how my luck’s running these days. Shit and fucked.”

“You saw them taking people inside?”

He shook his head. “No. Just coming and going.”

“So you could be wrong. They could have taken Chris somewhere else.”

“Hey, anything’s possible. Not that I care. I’m not gonna run around out there looking for them. It’s hard enough staying out of their way.” Then, “You sure you don’t have any food on you?”

Ana shook her head.

He grunted. “Like I said. That seems to be how my luck’s running these days. Shit and shit, and more shit.”

“Yours and mine, and everyone else in this world,” she wanted to reply to his little pity party, but decided it wasn’t going to help her get into his good graces. Right now, she needed this man on her side, even if she was getting bad vibes off him. But she couldn’t act on those instincts right now, not while hiding in a school with (monsters) men in ragged clothing hunting for them.

Besides, how did your instincts work out with Gabriel? that annoying voice in the back of her mind asked.

Ana looked around her. They had accessed the attic by using an old beat-up metal ladder that now lay on the floor next to the trapdoor between them. She remembered seeing just how much difficulty he had climbing the rungs.

He would have let me die down there if he didn’t think I might have had something he needed, Ana thought now, looking across at the man. He’s desperate. Maybe even more desperate than me.

There were two used condoms in a corner behind her, along with old soda cans and bags of chips. Everything in the small space had sat undisturbed for years until they showed up. Some kind of secret rendezvous used by the Talico High School’s more adventurous students, maybe. Right now, it was their salvation.

The man had taken out the handgun he’d used to shoot one of the Raggedy Men earlier and was unscrewing the silencer attached to the barrel. That was the reason why she hadn’t heard the gunshot. She wished she had something like that. Why couldn’t Chuck have given her a gun with a silencer?

“Do you have any more bullets?” Ana asked, taking the SIG out of her jacket pocket. Finding it again in one of the classroom’s dark corners had been a minor miracle. The fact that its magazine was mostly empty, though, wasn’t.

Her savior leaned over and took the weapon from her. “Nice little toy.” He ejected the magazine and thumbed out the last round. “.380. I don’t have that on me.”

“You know where I can find some?”

“Good luck with that. I scoured every building I could find after my run-in with those Incredible Ugly Hulks. Sports stores, pawn shops…” He shook his head. “Nothing useful. Like someone cleaned out all the good stuff before we got here.”

He tossed the gun back to her, and Ana almost didn’t catch it. Then again, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered if she hadn’t, because there was only one round left anyway. In many ways, it was a reminder of why she preferred to rely on the knife. Knives didn’t run out of bullets.

“So you know guns?” Ana asked.

“Don’t you?”

“You pull the trigger and it goes bang. What else do you need to know?”

He chuckled. “Spoken like every woman I’ve ever met.” He snatched up a shotgun leaning against the wall next to him. “A girl like you, out in a dangerous world like this, needs something with more firepower for protection than that little peashooter. Like one of these, for example.”

“A shotgun.”

“Not just any shotgun, little missy. It’s a Remington 11-87 model. Semi-automatic.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means it preps the shells for you after every shot. No need to work the forend.”

Ana nodded, even though she had no idea what a “forend” was. “So I can just keep shooting until I run out of ammo?”

“That’s the idea. God bless the Remington Arms Company.” He laid the shotgun down next to him. “The only downside is I only got four shells left for it.”

“What are the chances you’ll give that thing to me? I could probably use it more than you.”

“That’s like saying water is wet. But as to whether I’ll let you have it, the better question is: What are the chances you’ll do something for me, for it?”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I bet we could come up with lots of positions.”

She fought back the sneer and pushed the smile through instead. His response was so typical it was almost amusing. Even now, with some of the Raggedy Man’s dry blood still clinging to parts of her face and obvious red marks along her temple, cheeks, and jaw—not to mention all the bruises under her clothes that he couldn’t glimpse but had to know existed—all her savior could see was a woman and everything she could do for him as one.

Men. They’re as predictable as the sun rising in the east every morning.

“Maybe we can work something out,” Ana said.

“Maybe we can,” he said with a grin.

She nodded at the gun in his lap. “What about that?”

“What about it?”

“I could use a silencer for my gun.”

He held up his handgun. It was much bigger than hers. “Suppressor.”

“What?”

“It’s called a suppressor, not a silencer.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Proper terminology, missy.”

Whatever, she thought, but said, “I guess you learn something new every day.”

“Suppressors come in real handy. You never know when you might have to save some damsel in distress in a classroom full of Raggedy Men. If I’d used an unsuppressed weapon, we might still be up our asses in those fuckers right now.” He put the gun down. “But forget about that, too. It won’t fit your little peashooter.”

As if you would have given it to me if it did, she thought, but asked instead, “How long have you been here? Hiding in this place?”

“Not too long. A few hours before you showed up, from what I can tell.”

“What about the city?”

“What about it?”

“How long have you been here? Had your run-in with the Raggedy Men?”

“Long enough to hear all the commotion going on out there. Apparently everyone chose today of all days to show up in good ol’ Talico. Like I said: Shit and more shit.”

“It wasn’t just you, then?”

He shook his head. “Me and some friends. Thought we’d look for supplies, but all we found were those looney tunes motherfuckers. The place looked like it had bad juju from the road. I should have followed my instincts and steered clear of it. Who knows how many people it’s gotten before us. Will get, after we’re long gone.”

“Why did they attack you?”

“Probably the same reason they attacked you or those kids. Because we’re in their city. I don’t think those shit bags need an actual reason. This is their town. Probably have been for God knows how long. Who knows how many of them are out there.”

“How many did you see at their warehouse?”

“A dozen, at least. Packs of twos and threes coming and going.”

“Chris said the same thing. That the Raggedy Men came out of nowhere and swarmed her group.”

“Yeah, they use numbers to their advantage. We took out a lot of them, but they just kept coming. I swear I double tapped one in the chest and he wouldn’t stay down. I dunno how I managed to get away.” He tapped his wounded leg. “Not in one piece, obviously.”

“What happened?”

“A metal rod. Can you believe it? Raggedy Boy shoved it right through my leg.” He grimaced slightly at the memory. “Hurts like a sonofabitch. Still does. Thought I was gonna die just checking out that little party you were having down there.”

“But you risked it anyway.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend, am I right?”

Bullshit, she thought. Well, at least he’s a bad liar.

“Definitely,” she said. “What about your friends? Did they make it?”

“One’s dead. Saw him go down. The other one…” He thought for a moment. “I don’t know where he is. Took off in one direction, and I went in the other during all the chaos. Saw him snatching up a bag, though. That’s more than I can say,” he added, looking annoyed with himself.

“He’s still out there? Your friend?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. If he is, he’s on foot and armed with whatever’s in that bag he grabbed. We lost pretty much everything else, including our horses, when the shit bags attacked.”

Ana stared at her savior for a moment, digesting everything he had said. Quickly, the pieces started to fall into place.

Was it possible?

Yes, because everything fit, including the timetable. All the clues were pointing to one inevitable conclusion.

“Someone shot at me while I was riding past Talico this afternoon,” Ana said. “It’s the only reason I’m here in this place. I was going around it when it happened.”

“You saw who it was?”

“No. But whoever it was, he killed my horse, and as far as I know, he took my supplies after I fled.”

“Hunh,” the man said.

Ana watched him closely. Just as she had done a few seconds ago, he was clearly trying to piece together the things she was telling him.

“And you didn’t see who it was?” he asked. “What he looked like?”

“No. I only heard the gunshots. He was too far away.”

“And he used a rifle?”

“Wouldn’t it have to be a rifle?”

“Yeah, I suppose it would.”

Ana waited for him to say what they were both thinking.

But he didn’t, so she said, “Your friend…”

Her savior nodded. “Yeah, I guess it could be him. Hell, it probably is him. He did have his AR with him when he took off. That thing’s got a pretty sweet optic.”

“If it was him, why would he ambush me if he already had supplies?”

The man shrugged. “Maybe he needed more. Besides, that bag could have had anything in it from food to supplies to a bundle of C-4.”

“C-4?”

“Plastic explosives.”

“Why were you carrying plastic explosives with you?”

“Because you never know when a little boom-boom will come in handy. We got really good with it over the years. Blowing shit up everywhere.” He grinned. “You ever blow shit up for shits and giggles?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“You’re missing out.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it.” Then, “Is he a good shot? This friend of yours?”

“He’s a pretty damn good shot, yeah. In fact, he’s so good that I’m surprised you got away. My guess is, he let you get away, or else we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“He just wanted my supplies…”

“That would appear to be the case. Which would mean he got the wrong bag when he scrammed.” The man chuckled. “He probably ended up with the C-4. Can’t eat or drink C-4 the last time I checked.”

“But why would he shoot my horse?”

“How else was he going to get your stuff? Would you have stopped if a stranger showed up and asked you to split your supplies with him?”

“Probably not.”

“When he gets it into his head to do something, this dude tends to go all out. He can be pretty single-minded.”

“What kind of asshole shoots a lone woman on a horse?”

“A desperate one. And an opportunist. Either way, sounds like ol’ Keenan, all right.”

“Keenan?”

“If it’s the same person we’re talking about, then that’s Keenan who shot at you and took your things.”

Keenan, Ana thought. Now where had she heard that name before?

Then, like a thunderbolt: Sonofabitch.

The name sounded familiar because she’d been thinking about it all day yesterday.

Keenan. That name, along with three others: Patrick, Bates, and Sullivan.

There was a very good chance she had already stumbled across Bates, which left three names: Keenan, Patrick, and Sullivan.

And if the sniper who had tried to kill her this afternoon and forced her into Talico was Keenan, then that left…

Patrick and Sullivan.

She stared across at her savior. “I never asked you your name…”

The man laughed. “Took you long enough. You’d think the name of the guy who saved your life would be the first thing you asked.”

“Sorry,” Ana said, and forced a smile. “I had a lot going on at the time.”

“Hey, I probably shouldn’t be talking. I haven’t even asked you yours.”

“Kelly,” Ana lied. “What’s yours?”

“Sullivan,” the man said, leaning forward and holding out his hand. “Nice to fucking meet you, Kelly.”

Twenty

Sullivan, Patrick, and Keenan.

The “missing” three members of Gabriel’s murderous inner circle. Sullivan hadn’t identified the man who fell to the Raggedy Man’s attacks this morning, but it was clearly Patrick. Keenan was still alive and running around out there with her supplies.

As for Sullivan, he’d been hiding out in the Talico High School. Unlike with the ghouls, where you could be guaranteed that daytime was your friend, there were no such assurances with the Raggedy Men. They were out there in the day and at night, which was why Sullivan had been biding his time, waiting for the opportunity to put Talico in his rearview mirror. He’d only left the safety of his attic when he thought he could get something from it.

“They’re watching the roads,” Sullivan was saying. “If they weren’t, I wouldn’t be here right now. I thought about making a run for it anyway, but the chances of me getting far with this leg if I’m spotted are about jack and shit.”

Ana listened silently, trying to decide how she was going to kill this man. She still had the last bullet in the SIG Sauer, and they were sitting close enough that she was pretty sure she could make the shot. The problem was with the shot itself. More accurately, the sound of the gunshot. Unlike Sullivan’s weapon, hers didn’t have a silencer—or suppressor, as the man had corrected her. When she pulled the trigger, it was going to make a very loud bang even up here, and if there was even just one Raggedy Man down there, or nearby…

The only alternative to the gun was the knife she had safely tucked away in her left jacket sleeve. But using it would mean getting much closer to Sullivan. Much, much closer. That wasn’t too much of a problem. There were fifty reasons she could come up with to move near him, and he wouldn’t bat an eye at any of them. In fact, he would probably flash her that annoying grin of his.

But Ana bided her time because there was no point in doing anything while it was pitch dark outside. Forget about finding the warehouse that Sullivan had claimed the Raggedy Men were using as their headquarters; she’d had a hard enough time following him through the school’s darkened hallways, and couldn’t imagine stumbling around out there looking for one building out of hundreds.

No. There was nothing for her to do until morning, which meant there was no point in killing Sullivan yet. But she was going to do it. Not just because the man was a murderer, but because she needed the things he had. The one bullet in the SIG wasn’t going to cut it. She wanted that gun with the suppressor, as well as the shotgun. He didn’t have anything else on him—no supplies, no food, and no additional ammo for his weapons—but she’d make do. She always did.

She watched Sullivan’s face closely as he talked. Or as much of it as she could see with the fading moonlight and the two of them almost completely sitting around in pitch darkness. She could see the blue of his eyes easily enough, though, along with his cracked lips and the white, bloodied fabric of the T-shirt he’d used to tie up his right leg. That wound was going to help her tremendously when she decided it was time to finally end this burgeoning relationship of theirs.

“Counting the ones you saw at their place, how many of them do you think are out there?” Ana asked.

He shook his head. “Not a clue. Could be just the ones I saw or more. You took out how many?”

“Four.”

“Goddamn, woman. You killed four of them?”

“Two in an alley earlier, and two more in the classroom.”

“With that little bitty gun of yours?”

“Yeah,” she lied.

The less he knew, the better. In her experience, people expected you to be dangerous with a gun, even if you were a little redhead like her. But they were always caught by surprise when the knife came out. Even Wash, who had seen and done more in his short twenty-something years than most people ever would in a lifetime, hadn’t seen it coming.

“Not bad,” Sullivan said. “You might be more useful for something other than just your looks after all.”

He had grinned when he had said that, and she thought, Asshat thinks that was a compliment.

But she smiled and said, “Thanks, I guess.”

“Hey, it’s a good thing. Most people I know would piss their pants if they ever had to go toe-to-toe with a nightcrawler. The fact you can take down one of those Raggedy Men—never mind four—is good for me. Maybe it means I didn’t go down there for nothing after all.”

We’ll see about that, she thought, but asked him instead, “What’s your plan when morning comes?”

“What else? Get the hell out of Dodge.”

“On that leg?”

“You got a car or horse you’re hiding and haven’t told me about?”

She shook her head.

“Then yeah, I guess I’ll have to do it on this leg,” he said. “Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“You know where the Dairy Queen is?”

“I’ve seen it…”

“There’s a clinic down the street from it. Maybe half a block. I passed it by while I was looking for a place to treat this leg after the ambush. I was going to go in and search it, but the shit bags came out of nowhere and I had to scramble for cover. Couldn’t risk going back after that. I bet there’s something I could use in there. Worst case, maybe a crutch.”

“Maybe. Did you search the school?”

“Went through as much as I could before I found this place. Other than that? A whole lotta nothing.”

He stopped talking and stared at her.

What? Does he know?

“What?” Ana said out loud.

“You got two perfectly good working legs. You could go back to that clinic. See if there’s something there that could help me.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Oh, I don’t know, because I saved your life? Or have you forgotten that part?”

She sighed. It was overly dramatic, and she was afraid he might see through it, but watching his face…

No. He didn’t see through shit.

“I can’t run around out there with this,” Ana said, holding up the SIG. “Not with one bullet.”

“I’m not giving you my gun, if that’s what you’re asking,” Sullivan said.

“What about the shotgun?”

He glanced down at the weapon, then back up at her. “Are you serious? I got a magazine and four shells, and you want me to give up the four shells?”

She let out another sigh. Again, it was probably too dramatic, but like last time, he didn’t seem to notice. “Look, I’m not running around out there searching for meds or a crutch or whatever with just this gun and the one bullet in it. Not with God only knows however many of those Raggedy Men are still out there.”

He wrinkled his nose, and she could see his mind working behind those untrustworthy eyes of his.

Did I sell it well enough? I guess we’ll find out.

After a few seconds of silence, he said, “There’s gotta be something in that clinic worth salvaging.”

“I can go there and find out for you, but…”

“But what?”

“I can’t do it with just this,” she said, holding up the SIG again. “The shotgun will give me a better chance of coming back here.”

“Shit,” he said, and went quiet again.

They stared across the small space at one another, and Ana thought, Look at me. I’m just a small redhead. What are you so scared of?

Finally, he said, “I want what’s in that clinic.”

“I can’t guarantee you anything. This town’s been picked through. That clinic could be empty, just like every other building out there.”

“Fair enough.” He picked up the shotgun and held it to her by the buttstock, but when she reached for (Slowly! Don’t make it too obvious!) it, he pulled it back slightly. “What about the girl?” he asked suddenly, his eyes drilling into hers.

Ana didn’t answer immediately. She was so busy trying to find a way to get her hands on his weapons that she had forgotten all about Chris. The teenager was still out there, in the hands of the Raggedy Men. Probably in that warehouse Sullivan had told her about, going through…

Don’t think about it. Just don’t think about it.

“Well?” Sullivan said, still holding the shotgun away from her extended hand. “What about the girl?”

“I search the clinic, and in return I get to keep the shotgun,” Ana said. Then, before he could argue—she saw it coming on his face—she added, “That’s the deal. I’m risking my life for a weapon that I can use to go after Chris with. That’s the only reason I’m doing this.”

“And the fact that I saved your life,” he said. “That makes no difference to you?”

“It’s a dangerous world out there. And I didn’t ask you to risk anything.”

He grunted. “Spoken like a true survivor.”

“We all do what we have to.”

“I guess so,” he said, and again she saw his mind turning behind his eyes.

Had she sold it well enough?

I guess we’ll find out…

Finally, he extended the shotgun back toward her. “All right, missy. I guess I’ll have to just bite the bullet and take that shitty deal. What other choice do I have?”

If he expected her to feel sorry for him, Sullivan was sadly mistaken. Ana took the weapon by the buttstock. It was brown and heavy, and there was some kind of etching along the black portion where the bolt was. The trigger looked like it was gold-plated and sparkled against a skinny stream of moonlight.

“You’ve used one before?” Sullivan asked.

“Not this kind, but something like it,” Ana said.

“So you know how it works?”

“Pull the trigger and it fires, right?”

Sullivan smirked. “Yeah, that’s basically it. Shells—if you find more—goes into the feeder at the bottom or along the side. Lady’s choice.”

She put the shotgun down on the floor next to her. She couldn’t use it on Sullivan now anyway. The weapon, even more so than her pistol, would have made a tremendous amount of noise. Even if there were no Raggedy Men in the school underneath them right now, wandering the hallways, they would be converging on the building within seconds of the shotgun blast.

No, killing Sullivan would have to wait. Despite that, though, just having the shotgun so close was comforting. All she had to do was reach for it, lift it slightly, and pull the trigger. At this range, she wouldn’t even necessarily have to aim.

You’re so close to being dead and you don’t even know it, Ana thought when she looked back at Sullivan.

“So, where you from, Kelly?” he was asking her.

“Around,” Ana said. “I spent most of my time north after The Purge.”

“What’re you doing down here?”

“I wanted to explore what was left of the country. After The Walk Out, things got a lot safer.”

“Explore? What’s there to explore? It’s a shit show out here.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know that. I had to see for myself. You stay in one place for too long, and it’s hard not to get the itch to move on.”

“You got bored,” he said.

She nodded. “Something like that.”

“I get that,” Sullivan said. “Me and the boys got bored, too. Got to be we started looking for things to do just to pass the time.”

Like murdering random strangers? Like capturing and torturing ghouls in an old mine?

“That’s what we were doing down here,” Sullivan was saying. He grunted. “Made the mistake of stumbling across this shit bag of a city.”

“What about Keenan?” she asked.

“What about him?”

“Isn’t he going to come back for you?”

“I don’t have a clue. Keenan, like I said, he tends to think differently. Who knows, he might still be out there. Now that he’s got your supplies, he can afford to stick around. I don’t think those Raggedy Men shit bags wander beyond the city limits. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if ol’ Keenan came back for me.”

“So you’re good friends.”

“Good enough. Been through a lot together.”

“And yet he abandoned you…”

Something that might have been annoyance flickered across his face. “I wouldn’t say he abandoned me. We took off in different directions during the attack. I don’t think either one of us planned it. It just happened.” He shrugged. “I dunno what ol’ Keenan will do. Maybe he’ll come back for me, or maybe he’ll take off.”

“What would you do if the shoe were on the other foot?”

Sullivan grinned but didn’t answer her.

“If he comes back for you, will he know where to find you?” Ana asked anyway.

The more information she could get on Keenan, the better. The chances of her running across him a second time were minimal—after all, would he really hang around Talico?—but you could never be too certain about anything anymore. The last few days had taught her that.

“I don’t see how he would,” Sullivan said. “I put at least five blocks between me and where they attacked us. Trust me when I tell you, it wasn’t easy walking on this leg.”

Ana leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. She was tired and miserable, and the company wasn’t helping. She told herself that she’d been in worse situations—much, much worse—but that didn’t mean this one was any less problematic.

“Hey,” Sullivan said. When she opened her eyes, he was leaning slightly forward toward her. “It’s gonna be a long night while we wait for morning.”

Here it comes…

“There are better ways to pass the time than just sitting around chatting,” he continued. “You know what I mean?”

“Are you serious right now?”

“What? You got something else better to do?”

“I just went through the fight of my life. I’m aching all over, and I’m not even sure my arms and legs are still working.”

“You look fine to me.”

“I just threw up not more than a couple of hours ago.”

“Okay, so no French kisses.”

“No.”

He smirked and sat back against the shadowed part of the attic. “It’s not like I’m asking for the Kama Sutra here.”

“What are you asking for?”

“How about—” he said while making a fist with one hand and pumping it up and down. “You know what I’m saying?”

“You don’t need me for that.”

“There’s a world of difference, depending on the hand doing the work.”

She shook her head and lay down on the floor. “Not tonight, dear, I have a headache.”

He grunted. “I might have to rethink this partnership of ours…”

She ignored him and closed her eyes again. She really was tired, and her body really did ache. Those things she wasn’t making up, even if the idea of giving the murderer a hand job while they were stuck up here made her want to throw up whatever pecans she hadn’t already discharged back at the classroom.

The shotgun was right in front of her, so close that she actually thought about ending this “partnership” of theirs right here and now. But the blast would be so loud, and it was so damn quiet out there…

The knife. She’d have to use the knife. It was the only way to guarantee total silence.

Ana calmed her breathing and listened to him moving around on the other side of the room. He was lying down, too, but having some difficulty because of his wounded leg. She had been watching him closely and hadn’t seen him put his handgun back into its holster, and she didn’t think he would the entire night. He probably still had it out and next to him, maybe in his hand, just in case he needed it.

“Last chance,” Sullivan said from behind her. “Wanna give me a hand?”

She was about to answer when there was a loud bang! from below them, followed by the thump! of something striking the Sheetrock in the wall.

She opened her eyes and sat up, reaching for the shotgun nearby. It was cold to the touch, but all she could concentrate on was the sound of footsteps directly below them.

Ana glanced over and saw that Sullivan had already sat up, his gun in his hand. That caught her by surprise because she hadn’t realized he could move so fast with only one good leg. The man must be a lot quicker than he looked; either that, or he was overplaying his injuries. She filed both possibilities away for future reference.

The banging noise they’d heard earlier was the door into the janitor’s closet being kicked in and the thump was that same door’s doorknob hitting the wall. She didn’t have to guess who was down there, moving around loudly. Something that might have been a metal bucket fell, followed by something else also made of metal crashing to the floor.

The random clanging and banging went on for a few more seconds before the footsteps faded, then disappeared—just before another bang!, this one much lower in decibel because it had come from farther down the hallway.

Ana exchanged a silent look with Sullivan. He remained seated against the wall with the gun in his lap. She knew he had come to the same conclusions: The Raggedy Men had returned to the school and were searching for them, moving from room to room.

“Get some sleep,” Sullivan said. “You’ll need it come morning.”

She nodded and sat up, leaning back against the wall, while sneaking a peek at the shotgun nearby.

Not yet. Not yet…

* * *

Ana opened her eyes to the feel of his warm breath caressing her face, the view of his enlarged eyes just a few inches from her own. She didn’t scream, not with the knowledge that there might be Raggedy Men still searching for them in the school below. But that was a moot point anyway, because he had one hand fastened tightly against her mouth. It was that alien feel of his skin against hers that had caused her to wake up.

He was crouched in front of her, the barrel of his gun—with the suppressor at the end—pushed against one of her cheeks. The icy cold touch of the weapon told her she had made a mistake by falling asleep, and now she was going to pay for it.

Sullivan wasn’t exactly smiling at her, but there was something that looked like a twinkle in his eyes as he watched her slowly, slowly wake up to the realization that she was well and truly fucked.

“It took a while, Kelly,” Sullivan said. “I couldn’t place you at first, but then it all came together. The red hair, the attitude, the gumption.” He smiled. “Oh yeah, it’s you, all right. It’s you…”

Twenty-One

He knows. Shit, he knows.

“You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?” Sullivan asked her.

Gabriel…

“I told him he should have left town with us when he had the chance,” Sullivan continued, “but he thought he could bullshit his way through it. That was the problem with the Gabster; always too in love with that slick tongue of his.” He cocked his head slightly to one side. “We still have friends in Mayfield, but they were a little short on the details. It wasn’t you, was it? The one that did him in?”

No, that was Shelby. He shotgunned Gabriel to death, but I would have done it myself if I could.

Not that she could have replied anyway with his hand still pressed against her mouth. She was having difficulty just breathing through her nostrils, never mind trying to get any sounds out. Not that Sullivan appeared to really want any kind of answers from her.

Her eyes moved slightly (Slowly! Don’t let him notice!) away from his face and to the floor next to her. The shotgun that was supposed to be there wasn’t.

Dammit…

“That was smooth,” he said, grinning. “You even got me to hand it over to you. Now that was one fine trick. I was asking myself why you didn’t use it on me after you took it, but then it was obvious. The noise. Can’t make too much noise with those Raggedy Men running around out there, can we? Fortunately for me, this gun of mine won’t make nearly as big of a bang.”

He’s got it all figured out, the asshat.

Or maybe not…

She could still feel the weight of Chuck’s SIG Sauer in the right pocket of her jacket. She wondered if he knew—

The corners of his mouth curved into an even wider grin.

Shit.

“You could try it, but I don’t think you’ll make it,” he said. “I would have relieved you of that little peashooter, but I didn’t want you to wake up too early. I wanted it to be all dramatic like. The boys did always say I have a flair for the theatrics.”

As if to convince her of that statement, he pressed the cold end of the suppressor harder against her cheek. If the barrel had had a sharper edge, it might have gone right through her skin and into the cheekbone.

“But hey, it’s not like you have anything to lose right now,” he said. “Why not go for it anyway? Who knows, you might actually make it.”

She stared back at him. Did he mean that? If she was successful, the sound of the gunshot would bring the Raggedy Men. Maybe not right away, depending on how far they were at this moment, but a gunshot, even one that was slightly muffled by her jacket and inside an enclosed space like the attic, was risky.

But he was right: What did she have to lose?

“To think, all of this began with those campers,” Sullivan said. He seemed to have settled into a comfortable sitting position in front of her, his legs crossed Indian style, while he held the gun almost nonchalantly against the side of her face. “It was a spur of the moment thing. We weren’t really going to do anything, but then Stark gets this bright idea to ride over and introduce himself.”

Stark was one of the men who had tried to kill Chuck back in Mayfield. The other man was Aaron. She had forgotten who was who, mostly because she didn’t care to remember. All that mattered was that they had succeeded, but at the cost of their own lives.

“Once we got to the campsite,” Sullivan continued, “it went downhill from there. It was just so easy. They were armed, but they’d had it good for too long. Way too trusting. Invited us into camp and for breakfast, if you could believe it.”

He still had his hand clamped over her mouth, and she wasn’t sure why he was talking so damn much given her inability to respond. Maybe he just liked hearing the sound of his own voice. That was probably it.

“Man, it got bloody pretty quick after that,” he was saying. “But once it got started, we couldn’t go back. We had to take it to the end. Of course, we didn’t realize you and those slayers were close enough to hear the gunshots…” Then, almost as if in afterthought, “That was Keenan, by the way. The one that shot your truck. He’s very good with that rifle. Used to be a hunter or something before the shit hit the fan.”

She listened, but she wasn’t really listening. Instead, Ana was trying to figure out a way out of this. Because there was always a way out; she just had to see it.

On the one hand, she still had the SIG in her jacket. Despite what he’d said about wanting this to be dramatic, she was certain the only reason Sullivan hadn’t taken it was for fear of waking her up before he could get into position. The problem was that her hand was at least a foot from the pocket opening. She would probably need about one second to reach for the gun.

It was doable…if she didn’t have a psychopath in front of her with his finger on the trigger and the willingness to use it.

Don’t get shot. Whatever you do, don’t get shot. You’re not going to survive a bullet through the cheek. Not in this lifetime, anyway.

So what else was left?

The knife. It was still housed inside her left jacket sleeve where she had put it. Either he didn’t know about it, or Sullivan, as with the SIG, hadn’t risked taking it from her while she slept. Unfortunately, using the knife was even more of a long shot than the gun. Just getting it out and into her hand…

She could practically feel the confidence coming from him. He had her where he wanted, and there was nothing she could do about it. She wished it wasn’t true, but wishing didn’t change the facts.

“Well?” Sullivan said. “You have anything to say for yourself?”

She mumbled against his hand.

He cocked his head in mock curiosity. “What was that? I can’t hear you. You’ll have to speak up.”

Ana had flashbacks to her time with Gabriel in the basement under Mayfield. Somehow, it didn’t surprise her at all that Sullivan would have the same sick sense of humor as his fellow psychopath.

“Speak up,” he said, with that stupid grin of his. When she did, he pulled his hand away before pressing one finger against his own lips. “Remember, we don’t want to make too much noise, do we?”

She sucked in some of the stale air around them, but it was still better than breathing through her nose. He quickly reached into her pocket and took out the SIG Sauer, then scooted back until he was sitting across from her again. He shoved her gun into his front waistband before resting the silenced pistol across his lap. The barrel wasn’t pointed at her anymore, but all he’d have to do was turn his hand slightly and it would be. Despite the limited light in the room, she could make out his forefinger still in the gun’s trigger guard.

The knife. He doesn’t know about the knife, or he would have taken it, too. Either that, or he’s forgotten all about it.

She could feel the comforting weight of the knife inside her left sleeve. As long as she had it, she still had a chance. It was a small one, but a small chance was better than the none of a few minutes ago. Now all she had to do was wait for the right moment.

Just wait for it. He’ll give it to you. They always do.

“Do it,” Ana said.

“Do what?” he asked.

“If you’re going to shoot me, get it over with.”

He snorted. “Is that what you want me to do, Kelly? For me to ‘get it over with?’”

“It’s better than listening to you talk. Holy shit, you’re boring.”

She casually leaned back against the wall behind her but made sure her hands remained where they were at her sides. She saw the way his eyes watched her closely, as if he expected her to try something. And his forefinger was still in his gun’s trigger guard, rubbing against the trigger.

Not yet. Wait for the window of opportunity.

Not yet…

“Why didn’t you just kill me while I was asleep?” she asked. “You’d have saved me the headache.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you that eager to get yourself killed, woman?”

“Anything beats listening to you ramble on,” she said, even as she attempted to eyeball the distance between them. It hadn’t changed since the last time: Six or seven feet.

Six or seven feet…

And there, the shotgun, with the barrel facing her. It was lying at his right side—her left. If she could get to it…

“You’re right,” he was saying, “why don’t I just finish it now? This partnership was never in the cards anyway.”

“Of course, you’re still a gimp. With or without me.”

“Better a gimp than a dead man.”

“My point is, you may know who I am, and I may know who you are, but we can still make use of one another.”

“Now why do I feel a sales pitch coming?”

“You’re a killer and a piece of shit. That much we can both agree on.”

He flashed her a wry smirk. “Listen to that tongue of yours. Just like sweet honey. Careful you don’t give me diabetes, little missy.”

She rolled her eyes. “We don’t have to like each other to use one another.”

“Use one another how?”

“To get out of this place. To survive this place.”

“I’m listening…”

“I want to save the girl. You need something to treat that leg of yours, and a crutch wouldn’t hurt. Those two things haven’t changed.”

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

“Is it?”

“I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I can make it with this busted leg. After another day, who knows how I’ll feel.”

“After another day, without food or water, you’ll be too weak to even climb down from here,” Ana said. “And have you taken a good look at that wound lately? You sure it’s not already infected? Or getting there? Look around you, Sullivan. You’re not exactly hiding out in the cleanest of environments.”

He didn’t reply right away, and she thought, This might work. This might actually work.

“We tried to kill you,” he finally said. “And we did, one of you, back in town. You’re telling me you’re just going to forget about that?”

“I barely knew them before the ambush,” Ana said. “And there wasn’t exactly a lot of time to get to know them afterward. Your buddy Gabriel saw to that.”

He squinted at her, either because he had a hard time seeing through the semidarkness or he was trying very hard to read her.

I’m just a little redheaded girl. What are you so afraid of?

“Bullshit,” he said. “You’re trying to talk your way out of it. You’ll shoot me in the back the first chance you get.”

“Not if you don’t give me the shotgun.”

“You saying you don’t want it now?”

“Yeah, I still want it. I need it to save Chris.” Before he could retort, she quickly added, “Here’s my final offer; stop me if you’ve heard it before. When morning comes, I go to the clinic just like we previously agreed and bring back what I find. In return, you give me the shotgun. After that, we go our separate ways.” This time, she paused to let him digest her words. “It’s the best deal you’re going to get.”

“Just like that, huh?”

“Yeah. Just like that.”

“And the slayers?”

“I already told you; I barely knew them.”

“What about the campers?”

“I barely knew them, too.”

“And it matters diddly to you what we did to them? What I did to them?”

“Like I said, you’re a piece of shit for what you did, but I can’t change anything that’s happened already. I’m trying to survive. Right now, this city is going to kill the both of us unless we work together.”

Again, he took a few seconds before answering. “Nice try. But I don’t believe—”

There was a soft, echoey bang from somewhere in the building. It wasn’t anywhere close to their position but near enough that they could both hear it, and Sullivan stopped in midsentence while his eyes turned slightly, leaving her for just a second—

Now, now, now!

She grabbed the knife by the handle and was pulling it out of her jacket sleeve when Sullivan began turning back to her, raising the gun from his lap at the same time.

Shit! He’s too fast!

She was cocking her right arm back as far as it would go to generate all the power she’d need when he fired.

No!

Despite the suppressor, the sound of the gunshot was a lot louder than she had anticipated. She couldn’t remember if it had been just as loud back in the classroom when he had killed the Raggedy Man or if the closed confines of the attic had increased the noise.

There was something that sounded like a mild cough followed by a sharp sting on her left arm as the bullet found its mark. There was pain, but it wasn’t enough to stop Ana from finishing her cocking motion with her right arm.

Sullivan fired again a split second later—another louder than expected pfft!—but this time the bullet missed her head by inches and embedded into the wall behind her. Before he could squeeze off a third shot, she nailed him in the left shoulder blade with the knife from six or seven feet away.

The former Mayfield man recoiled, shouted, “Goddammit, woman!” and reached for the plastic handle of the knife jutting out of his shoulder.

Ana was already lunging across the open space, ignoring the throbbing pain coming from her left arm, telling herself that if she didn’t get to him now now now Goddammit now now now! it was going to be too late.

Sullivan was trying desperately to get a grip on the knife’s handle while simultaneously clutching his silenced pistol. She hadn’t counted on that, but the sight gave her even more hope.

It didn’t take long for him to see her coming, and he gave up on the knife and was taking aim at her with his gun when, at the last second, Ana realized she wouldn’t get to the shotgun in time. Not only would she have to snatch it up from the floor, but she’d have to turn it around, too, and there was just no time. There was no time!

So instead, she went for the SIG Sauer stuffed in front of Sullivan’s waistband even as he fired. There was another pfft!, followed by something buzzing! past her right ear. Ana ignored all of it (The gun! Get the gun, or you’re going to die!) and barreled into his chest, knocking him back and into the wall.

“Bitch!” he shouted even as he tried to line up another shot.

She grabbed the gun and pulled it out from his waistband and squeezed the trigger without really aiming. There was no time, and she was so close anyway—

There was a loud bang! (Too loud. That was way too loud!) and Sullivan bucked slightly up from the floor before falling back down. Ana dropped the SIG and grabbed Sullivan’s gun by the long suppressor and yanked it out of his hand. It was surprisingly easy, and he hardly fought, but she wasn’t complaining as she stumbled backward, turning the gun around and pointing his own gun at him.

She didn’t really have to. The only reason Sullivan hadn’t collapsed to the floor was the wall behind him. His face was white with pain, and he was clutching his stomach with both hands even as blood pumped through his fingers. His eyes were on her the entire time, his lips curled into something that looked like anger but could have just been—Oh, who was she kidding? It was pure, unadulterated hate.

“Fucking bitch,” he whispered.

“Yeah,” Ana said, before leaning forward and pulling the knife out of his shoulder.

He grunted as a stream of blood sprayed the attic air. But that wound must not have hurt nearly as much, because Sullivan never took his hands away from his stomach.

“Bitch,” he said again.

Ana put the knife away, then picked up the shotgun and retreated all the way back to her side of the attic.

“Fucking bitch,” Sullivan said.

She continued to ignore him and turned toward the trapdoor, grabbed the ring handle, and swung it up. Fresh cold air swamped her immediately—or at least for the second or two it took her to step forward and drop through the opening.

There was a ladder in the attic, but she couldn’t afford to use it. It would have taken about ten seconds—maybe five, if she was really fast—and she didn’t have that to spare. The gunshot had been loud. Too loud. And she already knew there was a Raggedy Man in the school—or had been earlier. Even if there wasn’t, they might be close enough to have heard the SIG. It was so deathly quiet out there that even an isolated bang would travel.

Which left her little time. So, so little time.

She landed in the supply closet on both feet and thought her legs might snap on contact, but thank God they didn’t. Thank God she was used to walking and running and was in as excellent physical shape as she could possibly be, and both legs absorbed the ten-foot drop with just the bare minimum of pain. But it was nothing compared to the pulsating sting coming from her left arm, where Sullivan had shot her.

Ana shoved the suppressed handgun into her front waistband and was surprised by how impossibly heavy it was, how uncomfortable it felt. How in the world did Sullivan go around with the gun stuffed in his waistband like this? She might as well be carrying a heavy metal bat stuffed in her pants.

With her left hand, Ana clutched the shotgun while she snatched up the first thing she saw—a filthy rag—from the floor. She wouldn’t have spotted it if it wasn’t white and didn’t stand out against the semidarkness of the room. She shoved it against her bleeding arm, flinching at the contact. She hadn’t gotten a good look at how bad the wound was, but there was probably a good reason the entire length of her arm was burning.

Move, move, move!

She pushed back the growing misery and exited the closet and stepped tentatively out into the darkened hallway. It was a lot colder out here, and her breath exploded into clouds of mist in front of her face despite her best efforts to control her breathing so she could focus on her hearing.

Calm down. Jesus, calm down.

There, the echoey thoomp-thoomp-thoomp! of heavy boots as they raced through the building toward her position.

Already?

Ana took off in the other direction. She was hurting all over, but she found that if she pictured Chris, still alive in a warehouse somewhere in the city waiting to be rescued, that she could ignore the pain. Not all of it, and it wasn’t going to be forever, but enough to carry her through the hallways, passing lockers and classrooms, and more lockers, and more classrooms…

Stay alive. The girl’s dead if you don’t survive the night.

So stay alive!

Stay alive!

Twenty-Two

She was bleeding, but the rag—it used to be white but was mostly a pinkish color now—kept her from dripping blood and leaving a trail as she raced down the hallway and out a side door, careful not to let the door slam when it closed back up behind her. She was already out of breath, which was an indication she was either out of shape (Can’t be; not after the last few weeks) or she was weaker than she thought after everything she had gone through in the last twenty-four hours.

The pain from her left arm where Sullivan had shot her (A graze. It’s just a graze. God, let it be just a graze.) would have been unbearable if she wasn’t struggling to simply breathe against the cold, hard Talico night. The tall grass in the fields that surrounded the school slapped at her legs, some reaching as high as her waistline. Ana bent over slightly as she ran, hoping that would lower her profile against the moonlight that pooled around her.

She clutched the shotgun while checking that Sullivan’s pistol was still securely stuffed in her front waistband. She didn’t trust the gun not to fall right through her belt and down one of her pant legs.

Sullivan…

She couldn’t help but wonder if he was still alive in the attic, and if the Raggedy Men had found him after all the noise she had made. Sullivan was seriously hurt—it was hard to come through a gut shot—and in all likelihood, dead. But even if he somehow managed to survive, he wasn’t going to be a problem for her anymore.

Better you than me, Sullivan.

Her heart was racing with every step, but despite all the fatigue and pain and bruising that covered her from head to toe, Ana didn’t—couldn’t—stop. She had to get as far away from the school as possible, as fast as possible. Even more urgently, she had to find a suitable place to camp and treat her injuries.

She wasn’t sure how long and how far she ran. It could have been half a mile or a whole mile, or way less than that. It was hard to get her bearings or know where she was going. All she could really do was focus on the shapes of buildings in front and around her until she finally located an alley entrance and slipped through, grateful to finally be out of the open.

Ana moved through the dark corridor, keeping as quiet as she could manage, but constantly aware of her haggard breathing every step of the way. Something crunched under her boots, then something else cracked and she felt dampness along her ankles. She ignored everything and kept moving.

She couldn’t stop. Stopping meant dying, and she couldn’t die. Not yet.

Not yet.

Then she found it. A barbershop. She had passed it twice before—once when she first entered the city limits, then again when she and Chris were fleeing the Dairy Queen to find refuge at the school. She had noticed it because of the striped “barber’s pole” at the front of the building. There was a similar barber’s pole sticker on the back door, nearly twenty or so percent of it scraped away by time and the elements, but there was still enough to stand out against the back alley that surrounded her like a cold blanket.

She placed the shotgun against the wall and pressed her ear against the barbershop’s back door. She used the moment to catch her breath (When was the last time she stopped moving? She couldn’t remember.) all the while listening for something—anything—that could be present on the other side. She gave up after about ten seconds of fruitless effort; the only noise she could hear was her own racing heartbeat pounding in her ears.

She tried the doorknob, and it moved without resistance.

Ana glanced back in the direction of the school—or, at least, where she thought it was. The truth was she couldn’t see anything and could just barely make out the brick wall of another building behind her.

She turned around, opened the door, and all but fell her way inside.

* * *

It wasn’t bad. In fact, it could have been a lot worse. It wasn’t quite the graze she was hoping for, and although the bullet had taken a chunk of flesh with it, that was only because it had entered about an inch from the side. That had resulted in the unusually large blood loss that had weakened and left her dizzy as she settled into the back room of the barbershop.

Ana sat next to the door, keeping it slightly ajar to use some of the moonlight that shone in through the large front windows so she could see what she was working with. She’d tossed the rag after locating an old cotton hand towel from the bathroom. There was no water to be found, so she had to make do with a lot of spit to clean up the blood just so she could get a really good look at Sullivan’s handiwork.

The phrase It could have been a lot worse ran through her mind as she tore strips off the towel and made bandages out of them. She had blood on almost the entire length of her left arm, and plenty had splashed on her chin and the front of her clothes. Most of it was her own, but a generous amount came from Sullivan during their struggle. She shrugged the jacket back on, grimacing with the pain. The long sleeve would help keep the bandages in place. Absently, she thought it was funny that she could tell exactly where she’d been shot by the hole about two inches above the elbow joint.

She was tired and wanted nothing more than to just lay down on the filthy linoleum floor and go to sleep, but she couldn’t allow herself that indulgence. She’d have to be satisfied with the two hours she’d managed back at the school before waking up to Sullivan’s gun pressed against her cheek.

Better two hours than nothing.

She fought back the drowsiness and concentrated on the shotgun and handgun. She took the magazine out of the pistol first, thought about thumbing out the rounds to count them, but didn’t think she would have the energy to put them back in afterward. Besides, the magazine, and the gun once she reloaded it, felt pretty heavy, so that had to be a good sign, right? She didn’t have to expend as much energy figuring out the shotgun. Sullivan had already told her all about it, with the most important part being the four shells it still held.

She peered through the open door and out the front of the barbershop. There was a counter with a cash register separating her and the rest of the building, but she could see the top half of the glass walls on the other side. A quick scout of the place had revealed what she already knew—anything that was worth taking was gone. Everything, anyway, except for an old rough hand towel in the bathroom.

Thank God no one wanted that.

Ana slowly eased the door closed, then scooted backward across the smooth floor until her back was against the wall. She placed the shotgun in her lap, then put Sullivan’s handgun with the suppressor still attached on the floor next to her. There were no windows inside the back office, so it was hard to see much of anything except for the sharp corners of a cherry oak desk on the other side and a wall calendar that was forever frozen from six years ago.

All the running and fighting (and killing) had worn her down, and Ana found it easy to close her eyes. Forcing them back open in order to stay awake was the hard part, but she did it anyway because she couldn’t afford to go to sleep.

It worked for the first dozen or so times.

Then it didn’t.

* * *

She opened her eyes to sunlight swarming the backroom, her mind screaming, You fell asleep! You idiot, you fell asleep!

But she was alone, and the Remington shotgun, along with the pistol, were where they were supposed to be.

Lucky. You got lucky.

Ana ran her dirty hands over her equally stained face and allowed herself to slowly decompress. The morning calm, like a sea of light around her, helped with the cold weather, but she was still glad for the jacket.

She sat still and didn’t move for the next ten minutes.

Then thirty…

Then an hour…

Finally, she picked up the gun and gave it a good, long look. She hadn’t had the chance before and wanted to make sure there was nothing out of the ordinary about it besides the long suppressor at the end.

She hadn’t seen it last night, but there was writing on the gun. Smith & Wesson was written along the length of the barrel, along with Springfield, MA, U.S.A. underneath that. There was more writing on the suppressor, but the letters were too small and Ana didn’t bother getting a closer look. The damned thing worked if last night was any indication, and that was all she needed to know.

Ana picked herself up from the floor, groaning with every inch. Every joint on both legs popped as she moved. There was still pain from her left arm, but most of it had gone numb. That was good. She’d take numb over soul-wrenching pain any day of the week. When she was finally on her feet, she picked up the Smith & Wesson and put it into her waistband behind her back. It was a better fit, and she was less afraid it would fall down whenever she moved.

She eased the door open and peered out. There was so much sunlight in the rest of the barbershop that she wasn’t ready for it and blinked a half dozen or so times before her eyes finally adjusted. Ana slipped outside and hurried over to the counter nearby. She kneeled behind it and listened.

Wind outside, howling through the buildings, but nothing else.

She peered over the counter, out the windows, and into the streets. It was empty this morning, just as it had been last night, with no signs of activity. And most of all, no Raggedy Men. At least, none that she could see.

But they were out there. Somewhere…

Ana sat back down on the floor and leaned against the counter. She was very aware of her current weakened state, a combination of a lot of things, from her injuries to the lack of food and water. Her mouth was parched, and there may or may not have been a slug worming its way up and down her throat. She had difficulty generating even a little bit of saliva to wet her lips and wondered if she had used it all up last night.

And yet, she couldn’t just leave Talico. Not with Chris still out there. If she knew for sure that the girl was dead, then maybe Ana could have convinced herself to run to the city limits instead of back into it last night.

Chris had to still be alive. Why else would the Raggedy Men drag her out of the classroom and carry her through the school? If they were going to kill her, they would have just done it right then and there.

You don’t know that, the voice from the back of her mind said. They could have killed her already. You might be looking for a dead girl.

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? There were too many coulds and mights and ifs involved for her to just pack up and leave now.

She’s not Emily, the voice said.

No, she wasn’t, but she was still a kid who needed help, and if Ana didn’t do it, who would?

But to do that, she had to find Chris first. That was the easier of her problems.

“There’s a warehouse near the center of town,” Sullivan had said. “Next to a strip mall with some phone stores, a Subway, and a pawn shop. Warehouse is the biggest thing in the area; two stories, steel all around. You can’t miss it.”

The place might have been hard for Sullivan to miss, but she hadn’t seen it while she was moving around Talico yesterday after fleeing Keenan. At least Sullivan had been kind enough to give her a general vicinity.

“There’s a warehouse near the center of town…”

So that was where she had to go. The center of town. Which meant she wasn’t going to be able to hide out in the barbershop forever. The warehouse wasn’t going to come to her, after all.

Ana changed up her grip on the Remington shotgun. It was a heavy sucker, and even if she were to run out of the four shells, she’d still be able to use it as a blunting weapon. One swing could probably take off a head or two. On a regular human being, anyway. Would it be just as effective against someone the unnatural size of a Raggedy Man?

Only one way to find out.

The back alley behind the barbershop looked a lot more inviting and navigable in the morning. The floor was as filthy as it had felt when she was walking across it last night. It took a while to get where she needed to be, and she got lost more than once, coming up on dead ends that forced her to backtrack. But she was always moving south, toward where she imagined the “center” of Talico to be.

Then she found it, exactly where Sullivan had said it would be.

“Next to a strip mall with some phone stores, a Subway, and a pawn shop. Warehouse is the biggest thing in the area; two stories, steel all around. You can’t miss it.”

He was right about that last part, too. Now that she was staring at it from a good half block away, it was hard to ignore the sunlight gleaming off the corrugated metal sides and the slanted roof that ended in a triangle at the middle. There were writings on the side—red and white and maybe black letters—but they were faded, and except for random letters here and there, were impossible to fully make out.

So there it was. The warehouse. Now all she had to do was go in there and find Chris.

Gee, that’s it?

So she continued on, still using the back alleys as cover. She stopped to listen for possible Raggedy Men presence more often now, reasoning that the closer she got to her target, the more threats would be lingering nearby. But the noises remained the same—ambient winds and the occasional squeaks of machine parts turning after all these years.

But no voices. No footsteps.

And no Raggedy Men.

Where were they? They hadn’t been shy about showing themselves yesterday. And why should they be? This was their city, and they had numbers on their side. They’d taken out Chris’s group and Sullivan’s all in the same day.

So where were they this morning? Or was that it? Were the Raggedy Men still asleep? Were they sleeping this very second inside the warehouse she was walking toward? That might explain it, but so could a hundred different other explanations she hadn’t even thought of yet.

The question continued to nag at the back of her mind as she continued toward her goal, only pausing twice to give herself some rest. Her legs weren’t throbbing nearly as much as this morning when she first woke up, and the continued numbness along her left arm was a lot better than the burning sensation from last night. She still hurt everywhere, but it wasn’t the same kind of paralyzing pain as when she was fleeing the school.

That’s an improvement, I guess.

Finally, after a lot of careful skulking to make sure she wasn’t seen or heard or followed, Ana reached the alley that looked straight across the street at the warehouse. She kept out of sight by crouching behind a big, battered blue Dumpster and peering out.

It was some kind of car salvage yard, surrounded by a chain link fence that had mostly fallen either due to lack of maintenance or was purposefully pulled down. There were hundreds of vehicles in the front yard that were visible to her, many of them gutted and sitting in spots where they had been parked years ago and never moved again. The front of the warehouse had four windows across the second floor, every single one of them broken. Two twin doors were open, revealing dark interiors and little else.

Something about the place, with its wide-open doors, left her with a bad taste in her already dry mouth. It was like they were inviting her to enter, to find out for herself what was inside. Almost as if they were daring her.

What am I doing? This is stupid.

She told herself that Chris wasn’t Emily, that she’d done enough for the girl. She’d saved her life yesterday. Wasn’t that enough? Why did she have to go in there just to find out if Chris was even still alive?

Ana told herself all of that even as she got up and moved away from the Dumpster—except instead of going backward and finding the first exit out of Talico, she went forward toward the street.

I’m sorry, Emily. I know I said I wouldn’t do anything stupid, but I can’t just leave her in there. I have to know if she’s still alive. I have to know.

She wasn’t sure how long she kneeled at the mouth of the alley and waited for something to convince her to turn around and head back. It could have been a few minutes or a few hours, but her legs were half-asleep when she finally stood back up and took the first tentative step out onto the sidewalk.

The empty streets greeted her, along with the strip mall to the right. A Subway shop with broken windows, the storefronts of three phone retailers in a row, and a pawn shop with security bars over its door.

But none of those places were of any interest to her. She only had eyes for the warehouse across the street. The gate into the place had fallen off its rollers and lay on its side. There was nothing that even looked remotely like protection, nothing to keep her from waltzing right into the compound and into the warehouse within.

It was so inviting. Maybe too inviting.

She sighed and jogged across the street.

Twenty-Three

It’s a trap.

It has to be a trap.

Except no one popped out from behind one of the metal husks that littered the yard in front or to the left or right of her when she stepped over the fallen gate. No one showed their faces—covered in rags or otherwise—when she made it ten, then twenty meters farther into the place. And there were still no signs that anyone was even around when she darted behind an old brown minivan missing all except one tire.

She pressed against the cold exterior of some soccer mom’s old car and peered through the cracked driver-side window, across the front seats, and out the equally broken front passenger side window.

There, the open twin doors into the warehouse. The big two-story building where she would find Chris.

…Unless the girl was already dead.

It doesn’t matter. I have to find out. I have to find out for sure, one way or another.

She stared at the opening, at all the blackness on the other side. There was so much darkness that she found it odd none of the broken windows along the second floor had been able to allow enough morning sunlight to brighten the place. All she wanted was just a little bit of light to see with, to get a feel for what was waiting for her in there.

Right now, there was just…nothing.

A big, fat, dark nothing.

Turn around.

This is a trap.

Chris isn’t in there.

If she is, she’s probably dead.

You shouldn’t be here.

Turn and run.

Now.

Now, woman. Now!

She did finally move—pushing off the van, before going around the beat-up and rusted front grill, then jogging toward the warehouse.

You’re crazy, the familiar voice said from somewhere in the back of her mind. That’s what you are. You’ve gone off the deep end.

She gritted her teeth and kept moving until she was at the doors. Instead of going straight, Ana flattened her back against one of the walls next to the opening and sucked in a deep breath full of morning chill. She changed up her grip on the shotgun, then slipped her forefinger into the trigger guard and rubbed it against the trigger.

She reminded herself that the Remington had four shots and was semiautomatic. That meant all she had to do was keep pulling the trigger. Four times, anyway. After that, she would be down to the Smith & Wesson.

Simple enough.

Ana took one hand off the shotgun and reached back until she could feel the foreign metal of the handgun back there. This was her life now—depending on guns. Not her own guns, either, but a stranger’s. A killer.

Remember when your biggest worry was keeping the knife clean?

She stepped away from the wall and spun around until she was facing the opening. She peered inside, her face behind the iron sights of the shotgun. Her breath came out in waves, forming bursts of white clouds in front of her. Her heartbeat had picked up noticeably, and it took some effort to slow it back down.

Now that she was standing directly outside the doors, she could better see the warehouse’s interior thanks to sunlight from above. After passing through all the junk in the yard, she guessed she shouldn’t have been too surprised by the maze of shelves, vehicle parts, and leftovers of the previous world stacked in multiple piles in front of her. Another junkyard—except this one was inside the building.

The individual piles—dozens and dozens of them, spread out across the interior, some reaching as high as the slanted ceiling above—began a few feet from the door and seemed to extend all the way to the back, however far that was. There was no pattern to where things went that she could see; clothes and tires here, cracked windshields and oil-stained rags there. It looked very much like someone had gathered up all the refuse from around Talico and brought them in here and just tossed them randomly. She wondered if she could find some more shotgun shells or guns somewhere in all the metal.

You should be so lucky.

She took the first hesitant step into the warehouse, the shotgun leading the way. There might not appear to be any logic to where things were placed, but there was a pathway around the stacks of junk that stood out. Sunlight gleamed off hubcaps and reflected off glass around her, and each time she passed by a seemingly precarious pile, Ana was afraid the whole thing might topple and bury her underneath their weight.

She pressed on, wary of the slightly loud sounds she was making with every footstep, but she had to keep reminding herself that they were only “loud” because she was listening for them and because there was absolutely no other noise inside or outside the building this morning. That lingering silence, more than anything, further convinced her that there was no one here—no Raggedy Men and no Chris—and that Sullivan had either lied or been mistaken.

The urge to turn and run away was strong, but she couldn’t force herself to follow through with it.

She had to know. She had to know.

It took a while, mostly because she was being overly cautious, before she finally found an ending to the pathway. She guessed she was either at the very back of the warehouse or somewhere near the middle, not that she could really tell given the towers of trash stacked in front of her, creating a giant wall of rubbish. Again, the prospect of being caught underneath a landslide of refuse made her shiver slightly.

But it wasn’t the “wall” that had caused her to stop. It was the rectangular opening embedded in the floor in front of her, like some kind of trapdoor, with concrete steps leading down into…darkness.

So, so much darkness that when she leaned forward and squinted, all she could make out were more gray steps with seemingly no end in sight.

She paused her breathing to listen, but the only sounds were her heartbeat thump-thump-thumping in both ears. Ana glanced over her shoulder, back along the path she’d come. She couldn’t see the doors from her current position, which made sense because she’d turned two or three times (or more?) to follow the winding “road.” She was at least comforted by the fact that she had a clear way to locate the exit again; all she had to do was run back along the path.

Not exactly the Yellow Brick Road, but I guess it’ll do.

She faced the opening again. It looked like an original part of the building and not something that had been put there recently. Which made her wonder what the original owners of the salvage yard had been using it for. Maybe some kind of storage basement, though she didn’t quite understand why it was just…there in the middle of the warehouse. Of course, there could have been walls around it at one point—maybe even a back room—and those could have been torn down or never put up.

There were a lot of possibilities, and she could spend days running them all through her head, but none of them would get her any closer to finding Chris.

If the kid was down there.

If she was even still alive.

If that asshat Sullivan was telling the truth.

She sighed, changed up her grip on the shotgun for the tenth time in as many minutes, and took the first step down the dark hole in the floor.

* * *

The darkness was suffocating, like stepping into the bottom of the ocean where the sun was a stranger and light had no hope of surviving.

It was either that, or her mind was running on overtime.

But it was dark enough that she had to be careful about every step, which meant glancing down before taking each one as they appeared. That was difficult to do while trying to also keeping the shotgun aimed at whatever was waiting for her down there.

Whatever, or whoever.

This is a bad idea. This is such a bad, bad idea.

Not that she could stop and turn around and go back into the light. (Run back into the light, girl! Back into the light right now!) Not as long as she still had questions about the place, about Chris…

Every step forward and down seemed to require more effort than just breathing. It would have been so easy to turn and run. There were so many reasons for her not to be down here, not to keep going any farther.

But she didn’t stop, because she couldn’t. Not while there was a chance Chris was alive. She would never be able to live with herself if she abandoned the kid now. She would never be able to look her sister in the eyes.

This is for you, Em, whether you know it or not.

The only sounds were her heartbeat’s continuous thumping in her ears. Her footsteps, by comparison, were a million miles away. The absolute silence coming from whatever was in front of her didn’t help to calm her nerves whatsoever. If anything, it only encouraged the fear and doubt and paranoia.

Five steps…

Six…

She stopped at number eight when she began to make out…something from all the blackness before her.

There were no lights down here, but her eyes had begun adjusting just enough to the darkness for her to make out concrete walls. When she glanced left, then right, she saw two more walls.

A room. It was some kind of room.

A basement? It made sense. A big warehouse like this would have a basement to be used for storage.

The floor was flat, gray, and scarred with heavy—and very recent—foot traffic. Small dots and splatters of various sizes covered the parts of the basement that she could finally make out. They were dark, either blue or black.

Blood. That’s blood.

That should have been all she needed to stop. No one had seen her yet. No one even knew she was down here. All she had to do was turn and walk back up the way she’d come. She could find a way to live with this, to justify it, and Emily would understand.

Wouldn’t she?

Shut up. You know you’re not going to do it. So just get it over with.

Ana took another step down.

Then another one.

Finally, the bottom was there. Unyielding concrete, gray and ugly. She put one, then the other boot down on top of it, and paused.

There was light behind and above her, but it died (Bad choice of words!) about halfway down the steps, leaving a pool of blackness all around her. But her eyes had adjusted enough for her to make out the four walls. The spaces around her were empty, and except for the blood splatters, it could have been any basement anywhere—

A door. It was black (metal?) and stood out from the monotonous gray wall directly in front of her. There was no doubt where she had to go next, because all she had to do was follow the line of old dry blood toward that door.

She glanced back at the steps behind her, leading up to the light. The morning glow was so warm and inviting, and all she had to do was turn…just turn…

She continued toward the door instead.

It was metal, as she had guessed, and dented from top to bottom and side to side, and there were more old, black (blood) splatters on the floor and walls around it.

Despite its damaged appearance, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with the big shiny metal lever that kept the door closed. Of course, just because it looked intact didn’t mean it would actually work when she put her left hand on it and pushed down—

The damned thing moved just fine.

Better than fine, actually, like someone had kept it well-oiled with WD-40 every other day. It turned smoothly, and the door would have swung wide open if she had let it, but Ana held onto the lever as she pushed forward and eased her way through, lifting the heavy Remington with her right hand.

She peered through the ever-widening opening, afraid to see what was on the other side and eager at the same time. She didn’t let go of the lever until the big slab of metal had opened halfway and she could take one—then another—step inside.

Ana stopped dead in her tracks.

There was a figure in the next room with its back to her.

It was a man, and he was too busy with something to notice that she had opened the door behind him. He was crouched on the floor near the other side, holding something to his mouth. A bowl of some kind. The now-familiar ragged trench coat hung off broad shoulders, but the back of his head was exposed to her, a pieced-together balaclava lying crumpled nearby. He had short and dirty blond hair, and she only knew that because the color helped it to stand out from the darkness.

A Raggedy Man.

He was so consumed with the bowl (What’s in that thing?) that he didn’t turn around when Ana slowly leaned the shotgun against a nearby wall and took out Sullivan’s handgun from behind her waist. She glanced around her at the same time, noticing another metal door to her left, its smooth, black appearance making it easy to spot against all the grayness.

Nothing about this place made any sense. Why were there so many rooms underneath a car salvage yard? What the hell had the previous owners been using this place for?

She was lifting the gun and aiming it when the Raggedy Man finally turned his head. She glimpsed blue eyes and a pale white face just before the man dropped the bowl and its contents splashed the floor. The large figure bounced to his feet and raced across the room, moving with such surprising speed and ferocity that Ana was temporarily stunned.

Snap out of it! Snap out of it!

She pulled the trigger and was surprised by how hard the gun bucked in her hand. The thoughts, Dammit, should have used both hands! rushed through her head as the Raggedy Man’s forward momentum paused briefly as he twisted slightly at the bullet impact.

She’d shot him in the shoulder, which wasn’t where she had been aiming. But that quickly took a backseat when she realized the gunshot was a little too loud even with the suppressor still attached to the barrel. She didn’t remember the suppressed gunshots being this loud when Sullivan had used the gun in the classroom, then later in the attic. Or was it her mind again, running on overtime and magnifying every little noise?

Has to be that. God, I hope it’s that.

The Raggedy Man had momentarily stopped his charge, but he didn’t stay that way. She wondered if he’d even noticed the bullet hole in his shoulder when he righted himself and kept coming.

She put both hands on the gun and fired again, this time hitting him where she was aiming—in the chest. That slowed him down more than the first bullet. A second instead of just the half-second of the first shot.

Jesus, did he even feel that?

Then he was coming again, and Ana thought, How many is it going to take?, because she had been hoping to use as few bullets as possible. But now she’d already wasted two, and the man was still coming.

Ana shot him a third time, once again striking him in the chest. This time the Raggedy Man collapsed to the floor, where his legs twitched and his hands slapped against the concrete, but (Thank God) he didn’t get back up.

She hurried forward toward the fallen figure, praying she didn’t have to waste another bullet on just one Raggedy Man because the weapon was feeling noticeably lighter than before. She aimed the gun at the man’s face but didn’t pull the trigger.

He was alive, if barely, and gasping as he stared up at her. His face was heavily covered in the same pulsing veins that she’d seen on all the others. Without the balaclava, it was clear now that the staggered lines went everywhere, across the cheeks and nose and forehead and vanished down the jawline where the man’s clothes covered them. She wondered how far they extended—maybe all the way down to his toes? More importantly, how had he gotten that way?

Maybe it had something to do with the fresh, thin layer of blood covering the man’s mouth and dripping down his chin. He had been drinking blood. Viscous, dark blood that clung to his skin like thick molasses.

“What are you?” she whispered.

He didn’t answer, though his mouth did open and close like he wanted to say something but didn’t remember how, while blue eyes tracked her every movement. Blood bubbled from his chest where she’d shot him, but she looked past all that and saw…just a man. Young, maybe mid-twenties, and despite the unnatural veins that spidered across his face like glowing worms, he didn’t look anything like the monster she’d been thinking of him as. His hair was a mess, as if he’d hacked at it himself with a knife and without the aid of mirrors.

A million questions raced through her head. How had he gotten this way? Was that really blood he had been drinking out of the bowl? Why was he drinking blood in the first place? Was that what caused those lines that covered his face and, likely, the rest of his body?

“Who are you?” Ana whispered.

He continued to stare up at her, those pale, blood-soaked lips moving, moving…

“Say something,” Ana said. “Say—”

Then he was gone, lifeless eyes drifting away from her face. She’d thought he looked young before, but somehow, he seemed even younger now in death.

“What did you do to yourself?” she whispered as she crouched next to him and closed his eyes with her hand.

Ana startled for a second. She swore the veins along his cheek might have pulsed slightly when she touched him, almost as if they really were worms coming alive at the skin-to-skin contact.

But that could have just been her imagination.

Yeah, let’s go with that.

She stood back up and glanced at the door she’d come through. It was still partially open, what little light that had managed to sneak into the basement coming through and into this joined room. It would have been so easy to walk to it and get the hell out of here.

So easy.

Except she had to know. She just had to know.

Twenty-Four

The smell hit her first. It was also present in the previous room, but it wasn’t nearly as strong or pungent. The stench overwhelmed her senses and refused to let go, and it took Ana a few seconds—Five? Ten?—to find a way to breathe through her mouth without choking.

She sucked it up and kept moving forward, but did leave the door slightly ajar behind her so she could find it again. It was a beacon, beckoning her to take it, telling her to abandon this insane journey she was putting herself through unnecessarily and run, run away, and live!

But she couldn’t. God help her, she couldn’t.

It was so dark that she could barely make out the barrel of the shotgun in front of her, or the solid concrete floor below and around her. Dark, old patches of blood led from the door and expanded in every direction, and all Ana could think about was the blood the Raggedy Man she’d killed in the next room over was feasting on. Not all the blood in this room was old and dry, and the blood that wasn’t stuck to the soles of her boots as she moved across the floor.

A clink in the darkness.

Ana stopped, lifted the shotgun, and pointed it in the direction of the sound. Or, at least, where she thought the noise had come from. For all she knew, she was facing the wrong direction—

“Help me.” A female voice. Soft. Barely audible. Whispering. “Oh God, please help me.”

Chris?

Ana hurried forward—and almost stepped on something lying on the floor.

It was an arm, and her boot was raised over it, about to come down. She took one step back, lowering her leg slowly, silently. She had forgotten how to breathe all of a sudden and had to relearn.

There.

In and out.

In and out…

It was a Raggedy Man, and he lay on the floor on his back. At first, she thought he was dead—the way his arms were splayed at his sides and the lack of movement contributed to that initial diagnosis—but then she saw the very deliberate rise and fall of his chest underneath his raggedy coat.

He was very much alive, just asleep.

This is bad. This is so, so bad.

Ana looked around her as parts of the room began to slowly, very slowly reveal itself to her. It was so much worse than what she had imagined. So, so much worse.

Turn around and run, the voice said from the back of her mind. This is it. This is your last chance. Turn around and run and don’t look back, or you’re never going to see Emily again.

But she didn’t.

God help her, she didn’t.

Instead, she allowed her eyes to continue to adjust even as she breathed in the stale air around her. It was thick with blood and urine and feces and God knew what else that she couldn’t see, and she was glad that she couldn’t.

It was some kind of lair. She had stepped right into a room full of Raggedy Men as they lay sleeping on the floor. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to where they were laid out, as far as she could tell. There had to be more than two dozen of them spread out across the room. Or, at least, more than two dozen that she could see.

And it was a large room, too. Much larger than the first one. There was a Raggedy Man in front of her and another one—no, two—after him. When she turned to her right, a fourth figure greeted her barely five feet from where she stood. The closest one on her left was farther away at about ten feet.

The only thing keeping her from instantly fleeing was the way they slept. Serene, like men who were dead to the world. The ones she could see were still wearing their frayed clothing, and boots covered their feet, and old, cracked, and stained bowls were scattered around their sleeping forms.

Her heartbeat increased, the beats coming so hard and fast that she was afraid the peaceful figures around her could hear them. Small clouds formed in front of her with every breath that managed to squeeze out between her slightly quivering lips.

Get control of yourself.

That was easier said than done. She’d stumbled into a nest of Raggedy Men. This was where they hid when they weren’t out there attacking and killing and abducting people. They came back here and slept and…drank.

Blood. They’re drinking blood. Why are they drinking blood?

“Please.” The same voice as before, and it was just as soft and desperate. “Please help me. Please…”

Ana looked across the room, past the sleeping Raggedy Men, and allowed her eyes to slowly, slowly make out metal bars as they began forming some kind of square near the back. The grayness of the concrete wall helped her mind to fill in the blanks.

It was a metal cage.

And there was someone inside it.

“Please,” the figure whispered. “Don’t leave me…”

It was a girl, but Ana couldn’t tell if it was Chris or not. Did it matter if it wasn’t Chris? No, it didn’t. She’d come here looking for the teenager, hoping to answer once and for all if the girl was even still alive, but instead had found this, whatever this was.

She picked her way around the first Raggedy Man, then the two after him. Slowly, more of them came into view, like ghosts appearing out of the shadows. She had guessed two dozen or so before, but maybe she had underestimated it. These were just the ones that she could see. How many more were inside the room that she couldn’t see? That would depend on how big the place was. If it was even half the size of the warehouse above, then the answer was big.

But she couldn’t worry about what she couldn’t see or confirm. She only had to concentrate on what she could hear, and that was the girl’s voice pulling her forward as she navigated her way around a fourth Raggedy Man, telling him not to wake up, don’t you fucking wake up!

She couldn’t see their faces, just the parts of them that weren’t covered by their balaclavas, but they looked as if they were in deep REM sleep. She might have thought they were in comas if she didn’t know any better. They didn’t move, didn’t even twitch in their sleep, and except for the rise and fall of their chests—and even those were tiny tremors compared to how “normal” people breathed while they slept—she might think they were all dead.

You wish.

The cage grew in size in front of her, and Ana started to make out the girl inside it. At first, she thought the girl was crouching, but the truth was she had no choice—the cage was too small even for an average height human teenager to stand inside it.

“Please don’t leave me,” the girl whispered. She clearly knew what was in the room with them and kept her voice as low as possible while still being heard.

Smart girl.

Ana hurried the last ten or so feet between them. She crouched in front of the cage and got her best look at the girl.

She was wearing panties and a bra, but nothing else. Her hands clung to the metal bars with thin fingers. Everything about her was scrawny, as if she hadn’t eaten or drank anything in days, which couldn’t have been possible, because then she wouldn’t be alive.

If you call this being alive…

She focused on the girl, on those deep blue eyes that stared back at her, and lips that quivered uncontrollably. Ana put a forefinger to her lips and the girl nodded, convincing Ana that she did understand the dire situation.

Definitely a smart girl.

Ana spent a few seconds getting a really good look at the cage. There was a metal padlock over the door, coated in old blood. A lock. How the hell was she going to open a lock?

Then something else caught her eye. Ana turned to her right and saw a second cage about ten feet away. She wasn’t sure how she had missed it the first time, because it had always been there.

She was standing up when the girl whispered, “No, no, please, don’t leave.”

Ana looked back at her and whispered, “I’m not leaving. I promise.”

The girl shook her head. “No, no, please…”

“I’ll be back,” Ana whispered. “I promise.”

The girl may or may not have believed her, but Ana was already up and moving carefully over to the second cage. She kept her footsteps as quiet as possible while glancing around her to make sure the Raggedy Men were still asleep. They were. The large lumps, encased in their rags and masks, hadn’t moved an inch. And the ones that she couldn’t really see but could just barely glimpse the outlines of, also remained still.

There’s so many of them. If just one wakes up…

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it!

She forced herself to think good thoughts as she approached the second cage, wondering how many of them there were that she couldn’t yet see in the darkness. How many kids had the Raggedy Men abducted? And what were they being used for?

She thought about the bloody scarring across the floors, along the walls, the “stains” in the bowls…

“Hey,” Ana whispered when she crouched next to the second cage.

There was no answer, even though there was someone in there. It was a boy—a teenager, wearing boxers and nothing else. He lay on the floor on his side and on one cheek. His eyes were open, and he was looking in her direction but he wasn’t seeing her. She wasn’t sure if he could see anything at all. He didn’t seem to be breathing, but she didn’t think he was dead. He was close, so close, but he wasn’t there quite yet.

“Hey,” Ana whispered again. “Can you hear me?”

The same silence, accompanied by the same unwavering stare.

It took Ana a few seconds before she saw them, but the longer she stared, the clearer they became. There were cuts all across the boy’s arms and legs and chest. Most had scabbed over, but some were still recent, and thin trickles of blood dripped from them.

Fresh memories of the Raggedy Man in the next room, drinking from his bowl, flashed across her mind’s eye.

They’re bleeding him. They’ve been bleeding and drinking his blood.

Ana instead reached through the cage and touched the boy’s arm. His skin was cold and clammy, and the boy’s eyes remained fixed on a random spot in the room and never strayed.

“Can you hear me?” Ana whispered. “Wake up. Can you hear me?”

But the boy didn’t wake up or acknowledge her. And yet, he wasn’t dead. She was sure of that. He was breathing, even if it did seem to take a lot of effort. He was still alive…somehow. How long had they been bleeding him? How long had he been down here? How much longer could someone last in this condition? How—

“Ana?” a voice whispered.

She looked up and to her right as a figure rose from the floor. Unlike the caged girl and the boy, this one looked free.

That voice!

Ana hurried over to the third figure. “Chris?”

“Ana!” Chris had whispered the name, but it was still too loud, and Ana flinched and glanced around her to see if anyone else but her had heard it.

There was no movement around her except for the gradual rise and fall of chests…

Thank God. Thank God.

She turned back and crouched next to Chris. The girl wasn’t as free as Ana had thought. She wasn’t in a cage, but her arms were bound behind her, a chain linking them to a metal spike that had been driven into the floor nearby. Chris still had her clothes on, and she looked terrified and bruised, but wasn’t in the same shape as the caged girl or, even worse, the boy. Her eyes were wide and still filled with life as she clung to Ana’s arms.

“You came for me,” Chris whispered. “You came for me!”

“Of course I did.” Ana smiled.

“I thought you wouldn’t…”

“Now you know better.”

The kid nodded, pursing her lips, and looked very much on the verge of crying. “This place, Ana. This place…”

“I know,” Ana said. “I know.”

She leaned in closer to get a better look at Chris’s bindings. The “rope” was metal, but the cuffs that bound her wrists were brown leather. It looked like some kind of bondage gear, and it was either too tight or the teenager had been fighting them, because Ana could see traces of blood along her arms. They looked strong enough that Chris hadn’t been able to break free, and the small padlock linking them probably didn’t help.

“Can you take them off?” Chris asked. She was still whispering, but Ana could hear the obvious traces of desperation in her voice.

“No,” Ana said, “but I can cut them off.” She put the shotgun down on the floor and took out the knife from her left jacket sleeve. “Hold still.”

Chris nodded, her eyes leaving Ana to look around the room. Ana could actually hear the girl’s heartbeat as she bent down and began sawing through the first leather cuff and wondered if the kid could hear hers. God knew her chest was pounding at the moment.

“They cut him,” Chris was whispering. “The boy in the cage. Ana, they cut him, and they poured his blood into bowls, and they…”

“I know,” Ana whispered. “I know.”

“That girl’s next. Then it’ll be my turn…”

“No, it’s not.”

Ana sawed through the first cuff and immediately went to work on the second one.

“Ana,” Chris whispered.

“Almost there,” Ana whispered.

“Ana…”

“I’m almost there.”

“No, Ana. Look.”

She was almost through the second restraint, but something in Chris’s voice made Ana stop and turn around. Chris wasn’t looking at her, but behind her. Ana peered over her own shoulder at what the teenager was staring at.

A Raggedy Man had sat up nearby and was looking at them. Ana only knew the man’s face was turned in their direction because the spidery blue veins around his eyes were almost glowing in the darkness.

Ana turned back around and quickly sliced through the last remaining two inches of the cuff.

“Ana…” Chris said, her voice dripping with dread.

I know, I know, Ana thought even as she reached behind her back and took out Sullivan’s handgun.

She turned around while still crouched, and having learned her lesson, gripped the Smith & Wesson with both hands and fired.

The first shot hit the Raggedy Man in the chest—it was an easy shot from a short distance, and the man didn’t seem to be moving at all, as if he was still trying to wake up—but he didn’t fall down.

Instead, he started to get up.

She shot him again at about the same spot, and he stumbled, before collapsing back to the floor in a pile of rags.

The clink-clink of the two brass casings rolling around on the concrete floor hit her like a sledgehammer, but Ana was too busy watching as prone figures around them began stirring. One, then two of them began to sit up and turn their heads to look around the room.

“Ana?” Chris whispered, her voice so low that Ana barely heard it.

And yet she did, but instead of answering, Ana put the handgun away and snatched up the shotgun with one hand while grabbing Chris’s free wrist with the other. She dragged both of them up from the floor and hissed, “Run!”

They ran, passing a Raggedy Man who was turning his head to look after them. Like the first one she had shot, this one seemed almost baffled by what he was seeing and had yet to get up from the floor.

“Wait!” a voice shouted. The girl. The one in the cage. She was shouting as loud as she could now. “Don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me! You promised!”

Ana had no choice. She couldn’t help the girl. She couldn’t even open her cage. But she could save Chris and she could save herself, and shapes were starting to rise all around them and she stopped trying to justify it and just ran.

A Raggedy Man staggered to his feet directly in front of her. He moved slowly, like a groggy drunk, and completely blocked the ajar door on the other side with his massive bulk. He was turning around, responding to the sound of her and Chris’s footsteps, when the boom! of the shotgun seemed to lift him off his feet and throw him sideways.

The blast lit up the room for a brief second, revealing more Raggedy Men rising from the floor around them. There were so many. Way, way more than she had initially thought. And although she couldn’t see their faces, or even their eyes, she had no trouble whatsoever seeing the pulsating veins that crisscrossed their exposed faces.

They were everywhere. Simply all around them.

“The door!” Ana shouted. There was no point in whispering now. “Go to the light! Go to the light!”

Chris ran past Ana, who spun around to confront two shadowy forms moving nearby, even as Sullivan’s words rushed back to her:

“Not just any shotgun, little missy. It’s a Remington 11-87 model. Semiautomatic. That means it loads the shells for you after every shot.”

His words were still echoing in her head when she fired the second shot and another Raggedy Man fell in the darkness, only to have two more figures leaping over his body and charging toward her.

They were awake now. All of them.

Twenty-Five

She couldn’t see them, but she could hear and smell and feel them against the back of her neck. Their presence, whether far or near (she would have had to glance back to find out, and that would have cost her a second or two, and a second or two was something she couldn’t spare right now), made the hairs along her arms stand up.

They were coming. All of them.

They were coming.

So she ran, keeping Chris in sight the entire time. The girl was running as fast as she could, but it wasn’t fast enough. Maybe it was because she was weak from the lack of food and water, or she was hurt from being restrained inside that (lair) nest of the Raggedy Men. Whatever the reason, the teenager began to slow down noticeably. Ana only knew that because she was starting to catch up to her.

“Faster!” Ana shouted. “Run faster, Chris!”

The girl looked over her shoulder at Ana (No, no, don’t do that; it’ll only slow you down!), her face covered in sheens of sweat and fear. Mostly fear. Maybe she knew what was back there or she could actually see it behind Ana’s shoulders, but Ana had never seen anyone look so terrified in her life.

Are you sure about that? Maybe you should try taking a look at your own face right now!

But she didn’t do that, either. Just as she couldn’t waste a single second to check behind her. She didn’t need to anyway, because she could feel them back there. Even if she didn’t believe in gut feelings, there was the heavy thump-thump-thump! of their boots pounding on the hard concrete floor to confirm everything she already knew.

“The stairs!” Ana shouted. “Go up the stairs!”

She probably didn’t have to tell Chris that. The girl was smart and had run through the first room without hesitation, even jumping over the dead body Ana had left behind without missing a beat. Chris all but leaped onto the first steps of the stairs now and shot upward like a cannon. Ana breathed a sigh of relief—

Thump-thump-thump!

No, she thought as she finally gave in and glanced back—

Squinting black eyes peered at her while grayish veins danced across the exposed part of the man’s face. He was less than five feet away.

How? How did he get so close so fast?

Then she remembered the first time she fought the Raggedy Men in the alley and how they had caught up to her and Chris so quickly. It was because they were fast—much faster than a normal man should be. Just like they were bigger than any normal man should have been. How had they gotten that way? She didn’t know. Maybe it had something to do with the blood.

Ana threw her right arm, the same one with Sullivan’s Smith & Wesson gripped tightly in her hand, backward and fired—

—and missed!

No, she didn’t miss. At least, not completely.

The bullet seemed to ricochet off the side of the Raggedy Man’s neck, slicing open pieces of cloth that covered it and sending an arc of blood (and skin) into the dark air.

Not that it slowed the man down even a little bit. If anything, his eyes narrowed back at her, almost as if being shot in the neck only pissed him off.

Ana lowered the gun slightly and squeezed the trigger again—two times as fast as she could—and the Raggedy Man stumbled and spilled to the floor. Two other Raggedy Men closing in behind the first (God, how’d they get so close so fast?) tripped over the falling man and they, too, went sprawling headfirst onto the concrete floor.

Then the stairs were there, and Ana was bounding up, up, up, and all she could think was, The gun. It’s lighter than before. It’s lighter than before!

She’d fired too many shots. How many? Her mind spun as she tried to recall.

There was the first Raggedy Man that she had encountered. She’d wasted three bullets on him. Then there was the one in the nesting room. Two more rounds. And now, three more bullets. Eight rounds in all.

Eight bullets gone!

How many were left? How many had been in the magazine even before Sullivan met up with her at the school?

Stop thinking and run, run, run!

Chris had disappeared through the rectangular hole in front of her. There was so much light beyond the opening that it was like staring into the sun. A very welcoming and warm sun that she strived toward with every labored breath and grunt.

Then she was out!

Chris was there, waiting for her, the look of uncertainty over her sweaty face.

Before the teenager could say anything, Ana shouted, “Go, go, go!”

Chris turned and ran up the pathway between the piles of salvaged junk. Ana didn’t have to tell her where to go, because there was only one direction to take.

Ana risked a look back—

A Raggedy Man lunged out of the opening behind her, pale white face reflecting back the bright morning sunlight. He was almost completely out when Ana stopped, spun, and spent a second to aim before she squeezed the trigger.

Pfft! as the Smith & Wesson fired, and she was rewarded with the sight of the Raggedy Man tumbling back and into another Raggedy Man coming up (fast!) behind him. The two forms vanished through the opening in the floor—

And Ana was already turning and running again, even before the bullet casing that had ejected from her gun clinked into a clay bowl perched precariously on top of what looked like the hood of an old car and bounced off it.

Run, run, run!

Chris was still in front of her, arms swinging wildly as she took a turn. Beads of sweat flicked off the teenager’s face and splattered a large cracked mirror. Streams of blonde hair flailed behind her, the way it had yesterday when Ana first saw her running for her life in the streets. It seemed that was all the poor kid was doing these days—running for her life.

The thump-thump-thump of boots behind her, like machine-gun fire, reminded her that she should save some of that pity for herself. She didn’t dare look back this time. She didn’t have to and she didn’t want to. Knowing they were back there, gaining on her with every stride (How are they so fast?), was bad enough.

And the gun. It was so light in her hand. Had she really fired every shot in the magazine? Was there at least one more? Two? Maybe five, if God himself was smiling down on her today. So why did the Smith & Wesson feel so light? That was not a good sign. That was not a good sign at all.

Up ahead, Chris had slowed down and was looking back at her, but before Chris could say anything, Ana shouted, “Run, Chris! Keep running until you can’t run anymore!”

The teenager might have nodded, but all Ana cared about was that she turned back around and resumed running.

“Faster!” Ana shouted. “Faster, faster, faster!”

Chris slowed down a bit as she came up to yet another turn, then went around a stack of shelves filled with rubber and plastic parts. Ana followed in the teenager’s footsteps, taking the opportunity to look back—

—Nothing. There was nothing and no one behind her—

That lasted for half a second before a Raggedy Man appeared, his shredded coat flapping wildly behind him.

Ana stuck her hand back and squeezed the trigger—and her shot went through the Raggedy Man’s coat and pinged! off something metallic behind him.

Shit!

She would have fired again if she could, but the gun’s slide had snapped back and remained that way. It was empty.

It was empty!

She twisted slightly and threw the gun at the charging figure. She didn’t know why she did it. Certainly she didn’t think it was going to stop him or even slow him down, but maybe it was just out of frustration.

Not that the reasons mattered, because the Raggedy Man simply ducked and the Smith & Wesson sailed over his head.

Well, that didn’t work!

She almost laughed out loud. That is, if she could have spared the seconds or the energy to do so.

Run, run, run!

Up ahead, Chris was still running, continuing to lengthen her lead on Ana. The teenager didn’t know how badly off they were now that Ana had run out of bullets. She still had the knife, but that required close proximity to use—

Warm air pushed against the back of her neck, and Ana ducked on instinct, just as the Raggedy Man’s hand flashed over her head. She had avoided being grabbed, but in doing so lost her footing and stumbled, her mind shouting, No, no, no!

Somehow—she didn’t know how—she regained just enough balance to keep from spilling onto the pathway. Instead, she careened toward a pile that appeared in front of her as if by magic—no, not magic; the pathway had curved again, leaving a wall of junk in its wake. She managed to stick out both hands in time, slamming her palms into the smooth (and cold) side of a car door just before the rest of her crashed into it and her body ricocheted off like a bouncing ball.

She struggled with her legs to stay upright, to keep moving, moving, moving—

Crash! as the Raggedy Man, who wasn’t nearly as nimble or agile as her, sailed headfirst into the stack of metal behind her. The same car door that she’d just crashed into dropped to the ground, along with everything else that had been resting precariously on top of it seconds ago. Metal, aluminum, plastic, and one half of a claw-foot tub came tumbling down onto the concrete pathway. One of her pursuers, just turning the corner, slipped on the suddenly moving ground and fell, knocking down another Raggedy Man as he was coming up behind him.

The sight of them fighting against the tide of falling junk would have been funny—a Charlie Chaplin skit come to life—if hers and Chris’s lives weren’t on the line. That, and despite losing three chasers, there were three more—no, four more—that had managed to navigate the disaster and remain on their feet.

And they weren’t the only ones. Even more were coming behind them. She could hear them. She could smell them.

How many of them were there? A dozen? Two? More?

Too many. Too many!

A voice, shouting, “Ana!” from in front of her.

Ana turned around and was going to answer back, “Stop talking and run, kid, run!” But then she saw why Chris had shouted her name.

The teenager was pointing forward at the twin doors. They were as wide open now as when she had first seen them this morning, which might as well be another lifetime ago. In the back of her mind, Ana had expected to find the doors closed, that the Raggedy Men had somehow sealed them in.

But it wasn’t closed. It was wide open.

Wide open!

And there was nothing but open spaces between them and freedom. Or as much freedom as they were going to get before the Raggedy Men eventually caught up to them out there. Even now, as her legs pumped and her arms swung while her right hand gripped onto the handle of the knife (Wait. When did I pull that out?), she could hear them coming behind her.

Thump-thump-thump!

Thump-thump-thump!

There was no telling how many there were back there, but it sounded like a herd of buffalos nipping at her heels.

Catching up to her…

Little by little…

Second by second…

Don’t look back. Don’t look back!

She didn’t, and kept running for all she was worth and praying it was enough, but somehow knowing that it wouldn’t be. They were too fast. They’d proven that in the alley yesterday. They’d also proven that when they rushed Sullivan and the others and killed Chris’s friends except her. It was impossible that men so big could be so fast, but they were.

Chris had disappeared into the wall of hot morning sunlight in front of her, and Ana thought, If only she’d really disappeared, because then she might survive the next few minutes.

If only, if only…

But of course the teenager hadn’t simply vanished into the ether. She was outside the warehouse but still there. She hadn’t gone anywhere, and she would still be running for her life a second from now.

A minute from now.

An hour from now…if she was lucky.

Then Ana was through the twin doors as well, sucking in the deep cold morning air.

There, Chris, racing through the graveyard (Wrong choice of words!) of dead (Stop it!) cars between them and the streets of Talico beyond. Not that Ana thought reaching the streets was going to magically save their lives. There was nothing to stop the Raggedy Men from continuing their pursuit. Nothing at all.

THOOM!

The ground shook and Ana almost pitched forward, but somehow she managed to stay upright even as the cars to the left and right and in front of her rattled and threatened to come apart at the seams.

What the hell was that?

Up ahead, Chris did lose her balance and spilled to the ground, but the teenager managed to throw her hands out in time and spared her face the pain of slamming into the yard’s dirt and junk-strewn ground.

Even as Ana’s mind screamed, Earthquake! she knew it couldn’t be true.

Jesus, what was that?

She spun around just in time to see a part of the warehouse coming unglued, as if the hand of God had reached down from the Heavens and smashed a vengeful fist into the front section, crushing it into the ground while, somehow, leaving the rest of the structure intact.

The sight was such a shock to her system that Ana stopped running without realizing it, turning fully around and staring as one, two, three of the Raggedy Men that were almost through the open twin doors were buried under falling warehouse rubble.

Thick plumes of smoke and soot slithered in every direction, covering up dead cars scattered between her and what was left of the building. The almost aching screeching of steel metal girdles collapsing, slamming into one another, filled her ears.

How…?

Ana grabbed her jacket and pulled it over her mouth just as thick clouds swallowed her up. Pulverized brick and mortar stung her eyes and scratched at her face, and she staggered back, trying to get away from the reach of the expanding debris. She kept moving, trying desperately to stay on her feet the entire time, when a figure emerged from the white and gray smoke.

A Raggedy Man, stumbling forward, his hulking frame reminding her of a mythical beast clawing its way out of the depths of hell—

The thunderous crack! of a rifle, followed by the sight of the Raggedy Man’s head snapping backward, before he collapsed in a pile.

What…?

There was so much smoke and debris that the world around her became gray and white, blotting out the sun above and everything beyond the salvage yard. Metal beams continued to fall in the background, crashing into one another, something that sounded like screaming slicing through the cacophony of destruction.

Ana whirled around to look for the shooter. She covered as much of her face as she could with her jacket’s sleeves, but it did little to stop the coughing spurts pouring out of her. Explosive residue covered her exposed eyes and nostrils and mouth, and she couldn’t stop gagging.

Crack!

Ana flinched at the second shot, expecting a part of her body to explode against the bullet impact. But nothing of the sort happened, and she turned around in time to see a second Raggedy Man stumbling out of the wreckage of the warehouse, falling to the ground.

But that didn’t stop however many Raggedy Men remained, and a third—then a fourth—clawed their way out of the smoking rubble. They moved slowly, clearly injured but undeterred.

Ana turned and ran, hoping against hope that she didn’t run right into a metal spike sticking out of the ground, because her vision was badly limited by the dust and dirt and God only knew what else was covering her eyes and face at the moment.

Then, from seemingly another world, “Ana!”

Chris. It was the kid’s voice.

“Ana!”

She slowed down, before shouting back, “Chris!”

“Ana!”

“Where are you?”

“I’m right here!”

Right here where? Ana thought when she was finally able to make out the teenager’s silhouette standing in front of her.

Ana ran toward her. “Chris…”

The teenager, looking in the wrong direction, turned around. “Ana!”

“Come on,” Ana said and grabbed Chris’s hand and led her forward.

She didn’t know exactly where she was going, but away from the remains of the warehouse seemed like the best course.

“What happened?” Chris asked between her own coughing spurts.

“I don’t know,” Ana said.

She could barely get the words out. Just breathing was difficult and her eyes continued to sting relentlessly. Tears ran down her cheeks, but she wasn’t sure if that was because of all the debris or the sudden realization that she might survive this.

“Keep moving,” was all she could manage. “Just keep moving…”

Twenty-Six

They ran, and they didn’t stop running until Ana could feel the hard pavement of Talico’s streets under her feet and she could breathe again without feeling like her lungs would collapse under a pile of soot and explosive residue. She paused briefly just outside the salvage yard to look back, Chris doing the same next to her. The two of them took turns coughing, but it wasn’t the same violent coughs of the last few minutes.

Had it only been minutes? It had seemed longer than that as they struggled their way through the expanding clouds of smoke and pulverized concrete that had been jettisoned from the destruction of the warehouse.

The destruction of the warehouse…

It was gone, swallowed up by a massive plume of white and gray that still hung over the salvage yard like a great big fog monster. She could barely make out the fence that surrounded the place, much less the husks of vehicles inside it. The dome of destruction was thickest near the center, where the building used to be—

The crack! of a rifle made Ana jump.

The gunshot echoed…before there was silence again.

It had come from inside the yard. She hadn’t been able to tell that earlier when she was in the midst of the destruction, but now that she was beyond its borders, it was easier to pinpoint. Whoever was shooting, he (She? They?) was still in there.

“Come on,” Ana said, and turned up the street.

The teenager didn’t argue, and the two began walking briskly away. They would have been running if they had the strength to do so; even a mild jog was out of the question, given how loudly and hard both of them were breathing.

Ana sucked in a lungful of fresh air for the first time in seemingly days. She expelled it, then took in another one. Chris did the same next to her, the two of them taking turns glancing back at the destruction.

Another crack! from behind them, followed again by silence.

Ana didn’t stop moving, but she also didn’t break out into a run, either. At least, not while the bullets were going in the other direction. She led Chris about half a block up the street before taking her out of the road and into a familiar alleyway. Finally, she slowed down to allow both of them some rest, but still didn’t stop completely.

“I saw him,” Chris said after a while.

Ana looked over at the teenager. “Saw who?”

“The man,” Chris said.

“What man?”

“He was laying on top of a van. I ran past him…”

Ana finally stopped and turned to face Chris. “Wait, wait. Who was lying on top of a van?”

“The guy doing the shooting,” Chris said. “Back there.”

“It was a man?”

Chris nodded.

“Who was it?” Ana asked.

“I don’t know. He was wearing a cowboy hat. At first I thought someone had just put a hat on top of a car, but then it moved, and he looked at me.”

“The shooter? The one shooting back there?”

“Yes.”

“What did he look like?”

“I couldn’t tell. He had a bandana over his mouth and was wearing some kind of goggles. At first I thought he was one of them, the Raggedy Men, but he wasn’t.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

The teenager shook her head. “We sort of just looked at each other for a bit, then he looked away. He had a rifle…”

Ana didn’t say anything for a while. She hadn’t seen a man, but then again, she was too busy running, determined to get the hell away from the salvage yard as fast as she could.

“You believe me, right?” Chris asked.

Ana nodded. “Of course I believe you.”

Because someone blew up that warehouse, and someone’s still shooting back there.

Ana looked out the alleyway and fought the urge to go back there, to find out who the shooter was. Who had, essentially, saved both of their lives?

“You really didn’t see him?” Chris asked. “We ran right past him.”

Ana shook her head. “I didn’t see anyone.” She turned around. “But I believe you.”

Chris nodded, and Ana thought the teenager looked relieved.

“Come on,” Ana said, and led Chris farther up the alleyway.

They turned at the end, Ana retracing her steps from earlier this morning. Somewhere, up there, would be the school, along with Sullivan’s body.

Sullivan…

What was that Sullivan had told her about the third member of his group? The man named Keenan, who had survived?

“What about your friends? Did they make it?” she had asked him.

“One’s dead. Saw him go down,” Sullivan had answered. “The other one… I don’t know where he is. Took off in one direction, and I went in the other during all the chaos. Saw him snatching up a bag, though. That’s more than I can say.”

“He’s still out there? Your friend?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. If he is, he’s on foot and armed with whatever’s in that bag he grabbed. We lost pretty much everything else, including our horses, when the shit bags attacked.”

Keenan had made it out with his rifle and a bag that could have contained anything, according to Sullivan. Instead of abandoning Talico, he had lain in wait for some idiot to cross his path. Some idiot like her. The man was the one who had killed her horse and took her supplies, she was sure of it. Though, if Sullivan were to be believed, Keenan also had every chance to kill her but didn’t.

She glanced back in the direction of the warehouse—not that she could see, with the walls between her and it. Someone had brought down the Raggedy Men’s building using something very powerful.

“He probably ended up with the C-4,” Sullivan had said about Keenan. “Can’t eat or drink C-4 the last time I checked.”

Ana didn’t know anything about explosives, or what C-4 could do, but something had brought down that warehouse.

Could it be? Was that really Keenan that Chris had spotted? If so, why would the man come back to Talico when he had everything he needed, and every opportunity to abandon the place? Maybe the clues, again, were in something else Sullivan had said about Keenan:

“When he gets it into his head to do something, this dude tends to go all out. He can be pretty single-minded.”

Was it possible that was Keenan back there? Had he come back for revenge? Tracking the Raggedy Men to their lair and blowing it up would certainly qualify as “revenge” in her book. Then there was the lying in wait for them to come out and picking his targets off one by one.

If it was Keenan, why had he saved hers and Chris’s life? Or was that just a byproduct of him killing the Raggedy Men and avenging Sullivan and Patrick?

Of course, it could have been anyone. Ana had a hard time believing someone who would run with psychopaths like Gabriel and Sullivan would even care enough to come back here when he didn’t have to.

The crack! of a rifle, this one more faded than the others because of the distance she and Chris had put on the salvage yard.

“He’s still shooting,” Chris said quietly, as if she were afraid of being overhead. “Who do you think he is?”

“As long as he’s not shooting at us, I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Ana said just as quietly.

* * *

They didn’t slow down again until they were a good half-mile from the city limits and the buildings were small boxes in the background behind them. They settled into a slow walk under the morning sun but didn’t stop completely until they could barely see Talico in the distance.

When she was sure they had enough of a safe distance, Ana sat down to rest on the shoulder of the four-lane state highway alongside Chris. Ana hadn’t realized how dirty and badly off Chris was until she got a good look at the teenager under the bright sun. The kid was physically worn down from head to toe, her clothes stained with blood and bodily fluids. Her hair was more white than blonde, and she was rubbing at her wrists where the restraints had bitten into her skin and drawn blood.

Ana took out a strip of the cloth she’d saved from the barbershop from her back pocket and wiped at Chris’s ankle. The teenager grimaced but didn’t make a sound.

“I look like shit, don’t I?” Chris asked.

Ana gave her a half-hearted smile, which was the best she could muster. “Probably no worse than me.” She sighed. “Let’s rest for a while.”

Chris glanced back at Talico. “There were two kids in that place with me.”

Two kids…

She thought about the girl and the boy. But especially the girl, who still had enough strength to cry out, to beg for help.

“Please don’t leave me,” she had whispered. Then, when she saw Ana running away, “Wait! Don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me! You promised!”

The girl was probably dead now, buried underneath that warehouse along with the boy. The boy wouldn’t have felt the thousands of pounds of concrete falling on top of him, but the girl…

Stop it. For God’s sake, stop it.

“Thank you,” Chris was saying. Then, when Ana looked over at her, “You came back for me. You didn’t have to, but you did.” She pursed her cracked lips in an attempted smile. “Thank you, Ana. Thank you.”

Before Ana could respond, the teenager threw herself into her arms. It was all Ana could do to grab her before she was bowled over. Chris was sobbing, wet tears falling on Ana’s soot-covered neck.

Ana sighed and held onto the kid, and thought, At least you did this one thing right. At least this one thing…

* * *

She forgot how long they walked after that. It could have been an hour or two, or maybe more, but all she could focus on was how loud her stomach was growling. After a while, there was nothing behind them but the highway, with no signs that Talico had ever existed in the first place.

That’s the idea. Forget anything that ever happened in that godforsaken place.

Not that she actually could. The girl’s face, on the other side of the cage, remained firmly fixed in the front of her mind’s eye. Even looking at Chris and telling herself, over and over, that she had no choice didn’t make it go away.

Because it wasn’t going to. Not in the next second or minute or hour or day. And maybe it never would.

“Ana,” Chris said after a while.

She looked over at the teenager, who had stopped walking and was looking behind them. Ana followed her gaze, expecting the worst.

It’s Keenan. He’s finally finished with the Raggedy Men, and now he’s come to finish us.

It wasn’t Keenan, but a vehicle moving up the road toward them. Of course, that didn’t mean it wasn’t Keenan, as the man could have found a working car after he had exacted his vengeance on the Raggedy Men.

Ana found herself staring down the highway, even as a part of her told her to Run! What are you doing just standing there like a lifeless mannequin? Run and hide, you idiot!

But she didn’t, and neither did Chris. Instead, the two of them stood on the shoulder of the highway and watched the vehicle get closer and closer, afternoon sunlight glinting off the front hood and roof.

“Ana,” Chris said, looking over at her. “Should we run?”

Ana shook her head, and thought, What’s the point? but she said instead, “No. They’ve already seen us.” She glanced around them at the flat Oklahoma countryside and thought, There’s nowhere to hide anyway.

She stared back down the highway as the caged girl’s blackened face flashed across her mind’s eye, yelling to her, “Wait! Don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me! You promised!” over and over again.

Ana closed her eyes and sat down. Her legs were tired anyway, and she wasn’t sure if she could walk another step, much less make a run for it.

“Ana?” Chris asked. Then, when Ana didn’t respond, “We should hide. Shouldn’t we be hiding?”

Ana shook her head before lying down on the hot pavement. Chris stood over her, looking confused. Finally, the teenager turned back to face the oncoming vehicle.

It was closer, the sound of its engines getting louder.

Then it was there, its tires squeaking next to her. Shade from the parked truck fell over her, and Ana opened her eyes and stared up at the cloudless sky. It was very blue and bright, a perfect day for a Sunday stroll.

A door creaked open, followed by the sound of footsteps, just before a figure hovered over her. It blocked out that perfectly good sky in the background. Ana could just make out short blond hair moving against a flurry of wind.

“Look at you, all messed up and no place to go,” the figure said. “What’s the matter? You don’t know how to read a map? That big red X wasn’t there for shits and giggles, you know.”

Ana smiled. “What the hell are you doing here?”

A second figure appeared next to the first. This one was taller, with dark black hair. It, too, looked down at her for a second before saying, “You look like shit.”

“I feel like shit,” Ana said.

The first figure held out a hand and Ana grabbed it, then let herself be pulled up to her feet. She sighed and smiled at them.

Shelby grinned back at her. “Tough day, huh?”

“Tough couple of days, yeah.”

Randall had walked back to where the truck was parked—the same Ford they had been driving when she first met them—and was shading his eyes as he peered back at Talico, somewhere back down the highway.

“Must have been some fight,” Randall said. “We could hear the explosion for miles. Gunshots after that.”

“You went inside?” Ana asked.

“Hell no,” Shelby said. “We marked that place a no-go for a reason. We hunt monsters, sure, but we’re not crazy.”

Chris had moved over to stand next to Ana. “You know these guys?”

“They’re friends,” Ana said. Then, at Shelby, “You got any food?”

“You hungry?” the young slayer asked.

Before Ana could answer, her stomach growled.

On cue, Chris’s stomach joined in.

“Guess that answers that,” Shelby said.

Randall walked back to them. He was moving slower than necessary, so Ana guessed he wasn’t completely over his gunshot wound. “Saw a guy with a rifle leaving the city about the same time we were driving around it. Thought we were going to have some trouble with him, but he watched us go without so much as a wave.”

“Guy with a rifle?” Ana said. “Did you find out who it was?”

Randall shook his head. “We considered it, but after the week we’ve been having… Thought it best to avoid him.”

“You know who it was?” Shelby asked, looking at her closely.

Ana exchanged a look with Chris.

“Anyone we know?” Randall said.

“No one special,” Ana said, looking back at him and Shelby. “Just another guy with a rifle on the road. Now, about that food...”

A Word From the Author

A big thanks to everyone who decided to go on this new journey through the dangerous world of The Purge with me. I hope your faith was rewarded. If not…sorry?

Please don’t forget to leave a review for the book at a bookseller of your choice, and come back for Book 3, the finale of the “Vendetta” storyline, later this year!