Mandy was certain Gaffney’s spies were confined to watching the front entrance, but just in case, Smith had “abducted” Mandy by gunpoint on foot out the back, before they continued on horseback. From a distance, it would have looked somewhat convincing.
Somewhat.
They had gone half an hour, and no one had shown up to intercept them yet. Smith wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or not, though. A part of him expected the Judge’s men, led by either Hobson or Travis or one of the others, to be waiting in an ambush as soon as he left the junkyard, either with or without Mandy.
But there was no one out there, just like there hadn’t been anyone when he first rode through earlier. At least, no one that he could see. He couldn’t help, though, feel eyes watching him, and that made continuing this charade with Mandy necessary.
Their path back to Gaffney took them near the remains of Lucky’s house, just as it had when Smith first rode through less than two hours ago on his way to the junkyard. There was still a black spot where the house used to be, but soon even that would disappear with the passing of the seasons. They were close enough Smith thought he could still smell some of the soot from the fire.
“Lucky,” Smith said.
“Don’t count your chickens yet,” Mandy said. “Luck has a way of turning on you out here, Mr. Smith.”
“No, I mean Lucky. The guy whose house was torched yesterday. What happened to him?”
“The guy whose horse you stole?”
“Borrowed,” Smith said.
“The guy whose horse you borrowed?”
“Yeah, him. I never found out what happened to him.”
“Someone burned down his house.”
“I got that part. But why? Who was he?”
“Once upon a time, Gaffney was called Miller’s Post. Then it became N23. You know why, right?”
“It was a ghoul-controlled settlement.”
“Uh huh. During that time, N23 was run by two people. The Judge and Lucky. Of course, back then he wasn’t going around calling himself the Judge.”
“What’s his real name?”
“The only person who knows that is Lucky, and I guess he took it to the grave with him.”
“Who killed him?”
“Who do you think?”
“The Judge?”
“There’s no reason anyone else would. We wouldn’t.” She paused and seemed to think about what she was going to say next before finally continuing. “Lucky was…complicated. There’s a reason his cabin was almost exactly halfway from our place to Gaffney. He was friends with the Judge from their N23 days, but he didn’t agree with everything that fat slob did. As far as I know, about four years ago they broke off their partnership and Lucky built himself that house in the middle of nowhere. I don’t know how he did it, honestly. But it wasn’t there until four years ago.”
“He sounds impressive.”
“He was.” She paused again. Then, after about ten or so seconds of silence, “He saved my life. When I escaped Gaffney, he was the one who took me in. Hid me, when the Judge’s people came looking.”
“He wasn’t scared of them.”
“Lucky wasn’t scared of anything. Why else would he build a house all the way out here? The guy was fearless. For four years, he lived his life alone out here.”
“So what changed yesterday?”
“I don’t know,” Mandy said. “Maybe the Judge just got tired of him helping us.”
“He didn’t know Lucky was helping you?”
“Oh, he knew.”
“So why finally do something about it now? After four years?”
“I don’t know, Smith. I really don’t know.”
“Something must have changed.”
“Something must have, but I don’t know what.”
From the look on her face, Smith could tell she’d been mulling over the question for some time now but was no closer to the answer. He had never met Lucky, so he didn’t know what kind of man he’d been, but for someone to stand up against the Judge all these years, he had to be a pretty impressive guy. Unfortunately for Lucky, impressive only got you so far out here.
“You really think this is going to work?” Mandy asked him.
Smith smiled. Not at the question but the timing. Mandy had waited until now, when they were halfway to Gaffney, to finally ask it?
“Having a change of heart?” he asked.
“No,” Mandy said.
“Good, because it’s a little too late for that now.”
“I haven’t changed my mind. I still think this is the best chance we have to take out the Judge. I just hope you’re as good with that gun as you claim to be.” Then, before he could respond, “Are you?”
“Yes,” Smith said.
“How good?”
“Good enough that if I’m in the same room with the Judge and I have this gun on my hip, he’s a dead man.”
“That’s if this works and you end up in the same room with him with that gun on your hip. What if they take it away from you?”
“I won’t let them.”
“Maybe they won’t give you a choice.”
“You don’t understand how this is going to work, Mandy. The easy way has me taking you into Gaffney and straight into the Judge’s office with this gun strapped to my hip. The hard way has me shooting my way in. One way or another, I’m going back into Gaffney armed, and I’m not leaving until the Judge is lying in a pool of his own blood.”
“All this because the Judge told you he’d kill a woman and a boy you’d never met until yesterday if you didn’t do what he wanted?”
“Yeah, that about sums it up.”
“It has nothing to do with right and wrong?”
“Who’s right and who’s wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
Smith shrugged. “You think you’re on the side of the angels. The Judge probably feels the same way.”
“Except we know he’s not.”
“You know. Or you think you know. Like I said, he probably feels the exact same way about your little feud.”
“‘Little feud?’ He keeps people there against their will, Smith. He makes women do things they don’t want to do. That’s a violation of their human rights. Everyone deserves to have a choice, even now.”
“If you say so. I’m not here to argue Gaffney politics with you.”
“Why not? Why don’t you care?”
“Because of exactly that.”
“I don’t understand…”
“Because I don’t care.”
“You don’t care?”
“Yeah. I don’t care. Why are you so surprised?”
He didn’t glance back at Mandy, but he could feel her staring daggers at his back.
After a long silence, she said, “But you were there, in Gaffney. How could you say we’re not in the right after seeing the place for yourself?”
“It’s not my cup of tea, okay? I wouldn’t stay there if they begged me to, or offered me a hundred virgins. But that’s me. Maybe the others want to be there. Did you ever think of that? Gaffney gives them security. There’s not a lot of that out there, you know.”
“What about your friend? You told me she wants out.”
“She didn’t exactly say that,” Smith said.
“What did she say?”
He shook his head. “Not much. We were being watched at the time. She probably didn’t say everything she wanted to say. The truth is, I don’t really know if she wants to stay there or not. But I’ll find out one way or another when I get back there.”
“I can’t believe you think Gaffney is a swell place.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“What are you saying?”
Smith sighed. He didn’t know why he was having this argument with her. He didn’t care about Gaffney. He didn’t care about Mandy’s battles with the Judge, either. But he’d been drawn into it, and the only way out was to help one side win. That meant either Mandy or the Judge would
have to die. Smith wasn’t Mandy’s biggest fan, but he was even less of the Judge’s, so the decision had been easy.
“Look, I don’t know what you want me to say here,” Smith finally said. “I just don’t care about any of this. Once I get my friend out of Gaffney—if she wants to leave—then I’m gone. I have no interest in what you people do to each other; it’s not my problem. If I have to kill the Judge to untangle myself from all this, then so be it.”
“Jesus Christ,” Mandy said. “Remind me never to get on your bad side— What is that?”
“What is what?”
“That,” Mandy said.
Smith glanced back at her. She was looking off to one side.
He followed her gaze to a series of hills in the distance, not far from where Lucky’s homestead used to be. Smith recognized them. He’d been standing on one of them when he first saw the burning house, and then later—
…and then later the sniper was there when he took a shot at Smith.
In the second or two it took Smith’s memory to be jogged, sunlight glinted off a glass object resting on one of those hills.
“Get down!” Smith shouted even as he threw himself off the Paint.
The first shot was an echoing crack! that seemed to come from a mile away, the sound seemingly ricocheting off every hill and little thing jutting up from the flat Nebraska countryside.
Smith landed on his chest, his hands keeping his face from an up close and personal introduction to the hard ground and eating a mouthful of dirt. He rolled over, already reaching down for the SIG Sauer even as the horse took off like a bullet, kicking up thick swirls of dust around him.
He didn’t get very far, but not because he’d stopped rolling on purpose. It was because he had bumped into something and couldn’t get around the obstacle.
Smith turned his head—
—and stared into Mandy’s lifeless eyes.
She lay on the ground, having landed on her side, her legs and arms positioned awkwardly around her. She’d been wearing a gray shirt and navy blue jacket over it with the zippers pulled down halfway, exposing the bloody patch and the hole that was almost exactly in the middle of her chest.
Smith didn’t have to waste his breath asking if she was okay.
Mandy was dead. She was deader than dead. All he had to do was stare into her eyes and know she had probably died long before she crashed to the ground.
And he was next.
Twenty-One
First Lucky, who had gone years being a thorn in the Judge’s side.
Now Mandy, who’d had less time to needle the Judge but had needled him just the same.
Both were dead.
In the space of two days.
Coincidence?
Smith didn’t believe in coincidences.
“So what changed yesterday?” he’d asked Mandy about Lucky’s killing.
“I don’t know,” she had replied. “Maybe the Judge just got tired of him helping us.”
Maybe the Judge got tired of a lot of things, Smith thought even as he rolled away from Mandy’s body.
Another crack! rang out, and something fast and hot zipped over his head. A puff of brown cloud appeared spontaneously in the air about a foot in front of his face just before Smith rolled through it.
Then he was on his knees, springing up to his feet a second later, and running as fast as he could.
Run run run!
Don’t look back!
Just run run!
The horses were gone. They’d both taken off after the first shot. Mandy’s mare was chasing after Smith’s Paint, the two animals getting smaller. Smith went in the other direction, moving away from the hills to put more distance between himself and the shooter. He was very well aware that the last time he’d been shot at—likely by the same man—he’d only survived because his canteen had stopped one of the bullets meant for him.
He’d gotten lucky yesterday, but luck only got you so far out here. Wasn’t that the same thing Mandy had said? And look how it had turned out for her.
So Smith ran, zig-zagging like he had the previous day, hoping the shooter still couldn’t figure out a pattern the second time around. More than that, Smith hoped there wasn’t a pattern to his movements, because if the guy could—
Crack! as a round screamed past his left ear and sent up a cloud of dust about ten yards in front of him.
That was a close one, but it didn’t slow Smith down. He continued running at full speed, zigging left, then right, then right again.
No patterns! No patterns!
He waited for the next shot.
Ten yards…
Where was the shot?
Twenty more…
Where was the goddamn shot?
Thirty…
There wasn’t another gunshot. Instead, Smith heard something he hadn’t expected out here and hadn’t heard in quite some time.
Were his ears deceiving him? Was he imagining it?
He had to know. He had to know.
Smith slowed down just enough to glance back toward the hills.
A thick cloud of dust had plumed into the air as something appeared from the other side of the hills. The yellow color made it stand out against the brown and white of the Nebraska plains, but even if it had been perfectly painted to camouflage against its surroundings, there was no way Smith was going to mistake it for anything else.
It was a vehicle, painted bright yellow, moving like a banshee across the open ground toward him.
Sonofabitch!
He couldn’t tell the make or model, but that wasn’t going to matter a damn bit once it reached him. He had a feeling there were guys with guns inside it, and if they’d taken out Mandy, he was possibly next.
Possibly? Probably goddamn likely!
So that was why the sniper hadn’t wasted another bullet trying to take Smith out. He didn’t have to because they had something better that they were going to run him down with. And that was exactly what they were going to do: Run him down.
That is, if he stayed on this path. He had to get out of the open. Get—
The house. Lucky’s house.
It might have burned down to the ground, but there was still enough of it left to provide him with cover. Okay, not a lot of cover, but some. If nothing else, then it was better than him running out here with nothing that even remotely could be used as a defilade.
Smith was already turning toward Lucky’s house before he realized he’d even made up his mind.
He snapped a quick look back at the only working vehicle in probably hundreds of miles, maybe the entire state of Nebraska, though that was a bit of a stretch. Gasoline—at least the still-usable variety—wasn’t easy to find, but armies like Black Tide had figured out how to get the refineries working again. And if they could, why couldn’t some other enterprising asshole with people and time to spare? Though Smith didn’t see the Judge having those kinds of resources. Did Mandy know?
He wished he could have asked her, but she was dead. Besides, he didn’t even know if these were the Judge’s men, though the chances that they weren’t was probably about the same odds as a snowball surviving beyond a second in Hell.
Fortunately for Smith, the remains of Lucky’s house was closer than the vehicle speeding its way toward him, even if the sound of its engine made him think it was about to run him over any second. Smith gauged the distance to the house at a hundred yards. About a football field. It was a good thing he wasn’t carrying anything but the SIG Sauer in his hip holster. Travis hadn’t allowed Smith to take some spares.
“One mag should be good enough,” the man had said, back in Gaffney.
“Two would be nice; three would be better,” Smith had said.
“What would be the fun in that?”
“I didn’t know this was supposed to be fun.”
“Maybe not for you, but it definitely is for me,” Travis had said with that stupid and very punchable grin of his.
Goddamn, Smith wanted to pu
nch that face in the worst way. Just one time. That was all he asked.
But he wasn’t going to get that chance now.
Unless, of course, he survived this.
Smith needed to reach Lucky’s old homestead and find some kind of cover. He wanted to believe it was a mistake on the sniper’s part to take out Mandy before him, but that was probably Smith’s ego talking. It was pretty obvious they’d killed Mandy first because she was the priority. He, on the other hand, was just a loose end. One that they could be easily rid of because they had a fucking car.
Where the hell did they get a car?
Smith could smell the remains of Lucky’s house as he neared it. He was going to reach it before the vehicle got to him, that much was clear now. So he had that in his favor. As for everything else, well, that would probably depend on how many men were in the speeding car and what kind of armaments they were carrying.
Fifty yards…
Smith checked in on the vehicle again even as his breath hammered out of his chest. Every breath seemed like a Herculean task, but he willed himself to keep going, to not slow down. If anything, he got faster.
It’d been a whole day since the house burned down, but Smith could still detect soot lingering in the air as he finally reached the property and made a beeline for the thickest part of it, which was easy to pick out from the remains. The wooden foundation was gone, along with the walls and roof, so it was hard to miss the section of brick wall still standing near the center.
It was a fireplace, made from brick and mortar. How the hell Lucky ever managed to locate, then drag blocks of bricks and cement out here, Smith couldn’t fathom. Then again, according to Mandy, the guy did have a lot of time on his hands. You could do a lot of things when there were no other pressing matters to attend to.
The top half of the fireplace had fallen, leaving behind a seven-foot tall wall for Smith to hide behind. Charred remains of the house crunched and fell apart underneath his boots as Smith ran through the place, glad to have the weight of the SIG Sauer against his right hip.
The gun was a full-sized P220 with a ten-round magazine. He would have preferred something with a higher capacity, but the pistol was a good gun and he was used to it. Besides, unless there were ten people inside that vehicle—
After The Purge, AKA John Smith (Book 2): Run or Fight Page 14
