He didn’t have to look back to see Stephens and Travis trailing behind them. Both men were keeping a respectable distance, probably because they knew Smith wasn’t going anywhere. Sure, he could take off running, but how far would he get? He already knew that Gaffney had horses, even if he couldn’t see the animals anywhere in the city. But they were there, ready to be used—and run him down.
Besides, he couldn’t go anywhere anyway even if he had such foolish notions. Travis had made it perfectly clear that Mary and Aaron’s lives were on the line. If he had doubts they might not carry out their threats, all he had to do was remember what they were asking him to do: Kill Mandy or bring her here to be killed. And people who could do that so cavalierly weren’t going to be above harming a mother and her son as vengeance.
Smith focused on Mary beside him. “But what about you? How are you doing?”
“I’m good too,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I be? Gaffney’s a nice town, with lots of nice people.” She tapped her forehead. “Looks like you had a bit of trouble out there, though.”
Smith reached up and touched the bandage Amy had placed over his wound. It reminded him that there was still a shooter out there, beyond Gaffney. Maybe it was even one of the Judge’s killers. In fact, it was a pretty good bet that it was.
“Yeah, it’s a little dangerous out there right now,” Smith said.
“You don’t have to tell me that, Mr. Smith,” Mary said.
“It’s a good thing you don’t have to worry about being out there with Aaron anymore.”
“No, thanks to Gaffney.”
Smith knew that both Travis and Stephens could hear parts of his and Mary’s conversation. It was the reason why he hadn’t come right out and asked Mary if she was being held hostage here.
He said, “So what do they have you doing around here?”
“I helped Amy out at the clinic yesterday, then did some stuff with the kids earlier,” Mary said. “Basically, whatever needs doing.”
So they didn’t try to marry you off yet, Smith thought. That would come later. Blake had said as much. The idea, it seemed, was to get people comfortable first, before the demands were sprung on them.
“So how long are you staying here, Mr. Smith?” Mary was asking him.
“Actually, I need to head out soon,” Smith said. “I have to run a little errand for the Judge.”
“Oh, so you’ve met the Judge.”
There was something about the way she had phrased the question that made Smith glance quickly across at her. He couldn’t quite read her expression, and maybe there was nothing to read.
And yet…
“Earlier, yes,” Smith said. “Have you met him?”
Mary nodded, her eyes trained forward. “Yesterday. He welcomed Aaron and me himself.”
“That was awfully nice of him.”
“He seems like a nice man.”
She looked over and smiled, and Smith thought Uh oh.
Because there was nothing convincing about Mary’s smile. It was forced.
Very, very forced.
“I’m glad you guys are doing so well in here,” Smith said.
“Yes, we’re doing fine,” Mary said. “Don’t worry about us, Mr. Smith. Just take care of yourself out there.”
He nodded. “I will.”
“Will you come back and see us again after you’re done with your errand for the Judge?”
“Yes,” Smith said. “You can count on it.”
Nineteen
“What are you doing back here?”
“I came to talk.”
“About what?”
“You know what.”
“Why don’t you tell me anyway?”
“Gaffney. The Judge.”
“What about Gaffney and the Judge?”
“You really going to make me say it?”
“Look, mister, the last time we saw you, you were tied up in a shack. You were supposed to be dead. But here you are, alive and well. So why don’t you explain to me what you’re doing here, and don’t skip any of the details?”
“All right, then. The Judge sent me here to bring you back for trial. Failing that, I’m supposed to kill you.”
Mandy stared at him, speechless. He wasn’t sure if she was surprised to hear why the Judge had sent him, or that he had just come right out and told her.
No, it was definitely more of the latter.
The first time he saw Mandy, he was sitting on the ground, tied to a pole, and looking up at her and her male companion, whose name turned out to be Roger. The young man stood next to Mandy now as Smith was led inside Mandy’s office, one of those mobile buildings that were dragged between construction jobs for the supervisors to do their paperwork inside while everyone else sweated their asses off in the sun. The walls were pockmarked with fresh bullet holes, and he didn’t have to ask where they’d come from, or when.
“There have been skirmishes in the past, but it was never like this. Never this intense,” Blake had said about last night’s attack by Gaffney’s crew.
It had been pretty intense, all right, from the reception Smith had gotten when he showed up out of the blue and nearly got himself shot as a result. He had arrived on horseback, one that Gaffney had provided him.
Given what he’d just told the duo standing in front of him, Smith wasn’t shocked to see Roger slowly reaching for his holstered sidearm.
Smith shook his head at the man. “If I wanted a fight, I wouldn’t have let the girls out there take my gun.”
Mandy put her hand over Roger’s, then shook her head when the young man shot her a questioning glance. “No. He’s right. He’s taking a big risk coming back here like this. Let’s hear him out.”
“But you heard what he said, Mandy,” Roger said.
Mandy looked over at Smith. “And he didn’t have to tell us any of that, but he did. The question is: Why?”
“I need you to come back to Gaffney with me,” Smith said.
“For what? My trial?”
“That’s right.”
“And why would I do that?”
Smith tapped the empty holster on his right hip. There was a SIG Sauer in there before Mandy’s people relieved him of it. He’d chosen it from dozens of weapons that Travis had offered him back at the police station. While there, Smith had wanted to see Blake again, but Travis wouldn’t grant the visit. Smith had considered taking it anyway, by force, but decided that it wasn’t the time. Not then, anyway.
“When I see the Judge for the second time, I’ll put a bullet between his eyes,” Smith said now, to Mandy and Roger.
A flicker of surprise flashed across Mandy’s face for the second time since Smith entered her building. “You’re going to kill him?”
“Yeah,” Smith said.
“Just like that?”
“I figured that will solve both of our problems.”
“What about the others?”
“What others?”
“The Judge has loyal men that are always with him. Hobson, Travis—the others.”
“I’ll kill them, too, if I have to.”
This time it was Roger’s turn to lift both eyebrows in surprise. “You know how many of them there are?”
“Six.”
“More than six,” Mandy said.
“How many more?”
“At least ten,” Roger said.
Ten, Smith thought. It was more than he’d expected. He’d only seen Hobson and his posse yesterday—that was six. This morning he hadn’t seen anything that would lead him to think the Judge had more men available.
But of course there was no reason for Mandy and Roger to lie about that. Better than him, they knew what kind of firepower the Judge had at his disposal.
“At least,” Roger said. “Who knows how many more has joined him since we last counted.”
“I thought you guys keep a close watch on Gaffney,” Smith said.
“We do what we can, but we can’t see everything,” Mandy said.
“So at least ten, maybe more.”
“That’s right. Maybe more,” Roger said.
“All right.”
“All right, what?”
“All right. I’ll kill as many as I have to to end this.”
“The Judge,” Mandy said.
“The Judge?”
“All you have to do is kill the Judge. And maybe Hobson.”
“What about the rest?”
Mandy shook her head. “Maybe Travis, or Stephens, but the others…” She paused, thinking about it some more. Then, “I think that’s it. The others shouldn’t be too much of a problem if you cut the head off the snake.”
He smiled at that. Cutting the head off the snake to kill the body was exactly what the Judge had sent him here to do, with Mandy. The portly man obviously knew that this whole “rebellion” was centered almost entirely around Mandy, and that once she was gone the rest would either fold or run away. One way or another, he’d be rid of his junkyard nuisance.
Smith had considered a lot of things in the hour or so ride from Gaffney over to the junkyard, the two locations linked by a country blacktop. Not that Smith used it, electing to ride across the flat plains instead. He could feel the eyes of his watchers in the background during the entire trip. He wasn’t sure if it was Travis or Hobson or one of the others; not that it mattered, really. They were making sure he went straight from point A to point B, which was what he did, using the fresh air and hot sun to cycle through his options.
He had only two that he could see: Follow through with the Judge’s orders—kill or capture Mandy—or turn her into an ally instead.
Well, that wasn’t actually true. He had a third option: Leave.
Except he couldn’t do that. Not with Blake still in the police station, and Mary and her son under the watchful eye of Stephens—or one of the Judge’s other men. If Smith even had any doubts the Judge might carry through with his threats, all he had to do was consider the chain of events that had led him here.
Yeah, the Judge was going to do exactly as he had promised if Smith didn’t fulfill his part of the bargain. Not that Smith thought he was going to get off scot free even if he did do exactly what the Judge wanted. There would be repercussions. The moral ones, Smith thought, he could live with; it was the other consequences that he wasn’t looking forward to.
No, he only had one real choice: Mandy.
Unfortunately he wasn’t sure if the woman believed everything he had told her from just the expression on her face. Then again, she had stopped Roger from pulling his gun, and she hadn’t called for the other armed people standing guard outside the building.
Mandy, who had been standing since Smith came in, finally sat down in a chair behind a large desk that was riddled with scars. Slivers of sunlight pierced the room from two holes in the wall behind and slightly above her head. Roger remained standing on her right, literally assuming the role of “right-hand man.”
For the next thirty seconds or so, Mandy stared at Smith, trying to read him. He welcomed that, since he didn’t have anything to hide.
Well, not too much, anyway.
“You took a big chance coming here and telling me all this,” Mandy finally said.
“I didn’t have any choice,” Smith said.
“You had a lot of choices. You could have ridden away on that horse they gave you.”
“No, I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“They were watching me the whole time. Maybe even the guy who tried to kill me yesterday,” Smith added, tapping his bandaged temple. “Besides, the Judge has friends of mine back in Gaffney.”
“Blake?”
“Her, too. Along with a mother and her son.”
“What are their names?”
“Mary and Aaron.”
“How did they end up in Gaffney?”
Smith told them—everything, from the encounter with Peoples and his two dead friends, to Hobson’s posse tracking them down from Peoples’s faceless corpse, to Mary deciding to leave with the Gaffney men.
“She didn’t know what she was getting into,” Smith said. “I didn’t, either. We both thought they’d be safe there.”
“You know that’s not true now,” Mandy said.
Maybe, Smith thought, but he didn’t think that was the right answer. Right now, Mandy and Roger saw Gaffney as the enemy, and as much doubt as he had about the people there being “prisoners,” he gave the duo what they wanted.
“Yeah,” Smith said. “We had a short chat before I came here.”
“They let you talk to her?” Mandy asked.
“They wanted me to know what would happen to her and Aaron if I didn’t follow through on the Judge’s orders.”
“He’s using them as leverage against you.”
“Pretty much.”
“Sounds like the Judge, all right,” Roger said.
“Would he do it?” Smith asked. “Would he follow through on his threat if I’d taken off instead of coming here?”
“Yes,” Mandy said without hesitation. “He would do it, or worse.”
“What could be worse?”
“You were here last night. You saw the ghouls?”
“I saw a ghoul.”
“There was more than one,” Roger said. “And they didn’t get in through our perimeter fence by themselves. They were let in.”
“By who?”
“Who do you think?”
“Gaffney’s men?”
Mandy nodded. “It’s something new. They haven’t done it before—use ghouls in their fight with us.”
“How are you so sure it was them?” Smith asked.
“Because someone cut out a section of the fence last night to let them in,” Roger said. “They chose one of our few blind spots. Last time I checked, ghouls weren’t that clever, and they sure as hell don’t know how to use wire cutters.”
“We thought the ghouls had gotten you and Blake,” Mandy said. “Gramps was crying all day and this morning. A lot of people were.”
“Gee, I didn’t know you guys cared about me that much,” Smith said.
Roger snorted. “It was for Blake, genius.”
Smith smiled. “I know, Roger. Relax.”
The other man narrowed his eyes back at Smith, and he didn’t relax even a little bit.
Mandy stood back up and walked around the desk before leaning back against the front edge. She seemed to have lost any fear of him—if she ever had any to begin with. Smith had a feeling the older woman was used to fighting for her life and not giving a damn about the kinds of trouble she got into. Maybe that was why she had bucked the Judge’s reign in Gaffney, then stuck around just to remain a thorn in the man’s side.
“So you want me to go back to Gaffney with you,” Mandy said.
“It’s the only way they’ll let me back in there with a gun,” Smith said.
“You good with that gun?” Roger asked.
“I’m pretty good, yeah.”
“So how’d you get ambushed out there yesterday if you’re so good?”
“I got shot from a distance. Hard to do anything when someone has his scope set on you and you don’t even know he exists.”
“Sounds like an excuse.”
“It’s a good one.”
“Says you.”
“Enough,” Mandy said. Then, to Smith, “You know that they have spies watching us right now, don’t you?”
“You watch them and they watch you back. Makes sense.”
“My point is that those same spies the Judge has out there likely saw you come in here.”
“I figured.”
“Then how are you going to just take me back to Gaffney with you, and have it be convincing?”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead, but I’m sure we can come up with something. This is your place, after all. You know all the ways in and out. Besides, the Judge’s men can’t possibly watch every inch.”
Mandy smiled.
“So I’m right,
” Smith said.
The woman shrugged.
“These spies,” Smith said. “Is it possible one of them is the asshole that shot me yesterday?”
“Maybe,” Mandy said. “Given the kind of shop the Judge runs in Gaffney, what do you think about the people—almost all of them men—who voluntarily works for him? I used to think Hobson was different. I used to even think he was a good man, but he’s just the same as the rest of them.”
I guess we both made that mistake, Smith thought.
“Mandy, you’re not seriously considering this,” Roger said.
Mandy looked back at him. “I am.”
“This is insane.”
“Yes, it is,” she said, turning back around to look at Smith, “but it might be the best chance to end this once and for all. We’ve tried, you know.”
“What?” Smith said.
“To take out the Judge. But we could never get close enough to the town to assassinate the fat fucker. Given the chance, I’d shoot him myself.”
“So here’s your chance.”
“I thought that was going to be your job?”
Smith shrugged. “I don’t really care who pulls the trigger, as long as the job gets done.” Then, “So. We doing this or what?”
Mandy smiled, then stood up and walked over and stuck out her hand. “All right, Mr. John Smith. Let’s try not to both get killed, huh?”
Smith shook her hand and thought, Yeah. That’s the trick, isn’t it?
Twenty
Mandy’s horse was a light brown gelding with a dark mane, and was just slightly smaller than the American Paint horse Travis had “handpicked” for Smith. She rode the animal with her hands bound with duct tape in front of her while Smith had the reins of her horse tied to the horn of his saddle, leading her across the open grounds back toward Gaffney.
They had left the junkyard in the back, almost at the same spot where the Judge’s people had cut the fence to let the ghouls in last night. According to Mandy, there had been three of the creatures, even though Smith was fortunate enough to have only encountered one of them. Unlike Blake, the rest of Mandy’s people did have silver weapons at the time and were able to defend themselves against the surprise mode of attack.
After The Purge, AKA John Smith (Book 2): Run or Fight Page 13
