To stay out of the sights of any snipers that might have been out there, Smith and Roger walked along the rear of the manufactured buildings. It was a good thing they didn’t have to run from cover to cover, because Smith didn’t think he could. Hobbling/limping, or whatever he wanted to call it, wasn’t exactly effective for dodging bullets.
It didn’t take them long to reach the shack. It was the same one that Smith had been kept in not all too long ago. It was just as small and nondescript and ugly as the last time he’d seen it. There were two people standing guard outside, with one of them being Gramps. The young woman sat on the ground, cleaning an AR with a rag. The weapon had a big scope on top. It was probably the same rifle she’d used to shoot him earlier this morning.
Smith didn’t recognize the other woman, who was just a little older than Gramps.
When she heard them coming, Gramps looked up and grinned at Smith. “You looking good for someone who was just shot today.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?” Smith asked.
“Who, me?”
“Yeah, you.”
Gramps shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“Uh huh.”
“That’s Lorna,” Roger said, nodding at the tall and attractive brunette standing next to Gramps. She was cleaning her nails with the point of a knife.
Lorna glanced up and gave Smith a What’s up? nod.
Smith returned it, before asking her, “Can I borrow that?”
“What?” Lorna said.
“That,” Smith said, nodding at her knife.
It was about five inches of rubber handle and five more inches of a double-edged stainless steel blade. Nothing special at all, but it would get the job done.
“What’d you need it for?” Lorna asked.
“I have to ask someone some questions,” Smith said.
Lorna turned to Roger, who nodded.
“I want it back,” Lorna said as she handed the knife to Smith.
“I won’t need it for very long,” Smith said.
“What are you gonna do?” Gramps asked.
“He’s gonna interrogate Travis,” Roger said.
“He’s not talking. We already tried.”
“He’ll talk to me,” Smith said.
“To you?”
“Yeah.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I’m gonna ask him nicely,” Smith said. “Really, really nicely.”
Travis Clarence, the man with two first names, sat on the floor inside the shack, fastened to the same heavy telephone pole that Smith had been when he was last in here. And like Smith before him, the only part of Travis the man could move was his head, which he lifted up when Smith stepped inside and closed the door softly behind him.
The Gaffney man’s wound, the bullet crease on his forehead courtesy of Smith, had been treated, but the original bandage they’d put on the gash remained. Blood had turned it a mostly pale shade of pink, and it was long overdue for a changing.
“Sonofabitch,” Travis said. “I was wondering if you’d gone and gotten yourself killed yet.”
“Why would you say that?” Smith asked.
“Figured you had headed back to Gaffney to get your woman back.”
“You did, huh?”
“So, did you?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“So what happened?”
“I’m still alive, aren’t I?”
“Barely, from the looks of it.”
Smith smirked. He wasn’t trying to hide his condition from Travis. He knew that even with the gauze hidden inside his shirt he was still moving gingerly and was barely at 30 percent strength.
Okay, more like 10 percent.
“Hobson’s dead,” Smith said as he walked toward Travis.
“What happened to him?” Travis asked.
“I shot him.”
“Why’d you do that?”
“He went for his gun.”
“Goddamn. Tough guy, huh?”
“Me or Hobson?”
“You.”
“Nah. Just faster.”
“Hey, what are you doing?” Travis asked, turning his head and trying to follow Smith’s movements as he walked past before disappearing behind the man.
Smith tugged at the thick rawhide rope tying Travis into place. It was as tight and impossible to break free as when Smith had been caught in the same position.
They have friggin’ Hercules tying these things.
Smith made a mental note to ask Roger who that mysterious Hercules was, but that was for later. Right now, he took out Lorna’s knife and went down on one knee so he could place the sharp—and cold—edge against one of Travis’s fingers.
“Hey, what’s that? What are you doing?” Travis asked. The sudden alarm in his voice was impossible to miss. “Stop doing that! Is that a knife? Hey!”
“I’m going to ask you some questions,” Smith said. “You’re going to answer them.”
“Is that a knife? Hey, take that knife away! Hey!”
Smith cut off the forefinger on Travis’s right hand, and the man screamed.
It was an incoherent scream, and it went on for some time.
While Travis struggled futilely against his bounds, Smith took out the duct tape from his jacket pocket and wrapped it around the finger. It was a little difficult because Travis didn’t have very big fingers, and covering the small stump to stanch the spurting blood took more effort than Smith had expected. He had to put down the knife next to the severed piece of finger to make sure Travis wouldn’t bleed to death on him.
“Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!” Travis was screaming. “Jesus Christ! What did you do? Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!”
“Oh, relax,” Smith said. He pinched the duct tape to ensure there were no gaps for the blood to squirt through. Travis screamed louder as Smith put pressure on the wound. “You still have four perfectly good fingers left. Well, three and a thumb. And that’s not even counting the five on your other hand. What’s one less?”
When he was done, and was sure Travis wouldn’t bleed to death on him, Smith picked the knife back up.
“Now, I want you to concentrate,” Smith said. “Are you concentrating?”
“Jesus Christ!” Travis said, half-shouting and half-screaming. “You’re fucking insane! You’re fucking insane, you know that?”
“I need you to calm down.”
“What? Fuck calming down! You cut off my finger, you goddamn maniac!”
“I need you to calm down quickly.”
“What? What? Fuck you!”
Smith placed the cold—and now blood-smeared—edge of the knife against Travis’s middle finger.
Travis shut up quickly and stopped moving entirely.
“You calm now?” Smith asked.
“Yes,” Travis said. Or squeaked out. It was mostly a squeak.
Smith couldn’t see Travis’s face, but he assumed the other man was sweating despite it being quite chilly inside the shack. Travis’s entire body seemed suddenly frozen in place, incapable of even the slightest movement.
“You ready to answer my questions?” Smith asked.
“Yes,” Travis squeaked.
“Question number one: Is the Jeep the only vehicle the Judge has at his disposal?”
“Yes.”
That was easy, Smith thought, before he said, “Question number two: Who is the most dangerous man among the Judge’s men?”
Travis didn’t answer right away, but not, Smith was pretty sure, because he didn’t want to. The man was, in all likelihood, thinking about the answer. Smith could have confirmed that by coming out from behind Travis to glare at his face, but he didn’t want Travis to see him—or how weak he was feeling.
Because he was feeling a little sick and wanted to vomit. Maybe it was the painkillers he’d been swallowing all day or the two he’d taken before leaving the building where he’d been sleeping for most of the day, where Mary was still waiting for him. Walking
from there to here hadn’t felt very good, but Smith didn’t really know how taxing it’d be for his currently depleted health until now.
Then again, maybe it was looking at the stump that used to be Travis’s forefinger. Smith was used to killing and death and blood, but he’d never actually had to interrogate someone like this before. He never had to. But he also knew that there was only one way to get Travis talking, and this was it.
“Roman,” Travis finally said. “It’s Roman.”
“The sniper,” Smith said.
“Yes.”
“He’s dead. Remember? I shot him at Lucky’s.”
“Oh.”
Smith smiled. Either Travis had forgotten about that little incident, or he thought Roman had survived. Not that it mattered.
“Who’s next, after Roman?” Smith asked.
“Stephens,” Travis said without hesitation.
“Not you?”
“Huh?”
“You don’t think you’re very dangerous?”
Travis shook his head. “I assumed we weren’t including me in this.”
Smith chuckled. “Good point.”
Travis might have swallowed. Smith saw his throat moving up and down slightly. “That’s it? That’s all you want to know?”
“Are you kidding? I have about twenty more questions for you.”
“Oh.”
“Do I even need to say it? Make me ask any of them more than once, and I’ll cut off another finger.”
“No,” Travis said, shaking his head quickly, even violently. “No, you don’t have to say it. Just ask. Just ask!”
Smith smiled. “Question number three…”
He handed Lorna her knife back.
“Jesus Christ, what did you do to him?” Lorna asked as she stared at the knife, almost reluctant to reach for it.
It wasn’t really the knife itself that made Lorna hesitant, but the blood on it. Travis’s blood. Fortunately, there wasn’t a lot, because Travis hadn’t forced Smith to cut off another finger. He’d been extremely compliant after losing just one.
Roger and Gramps were also outside the shack, waiting for him. In total, Smith had spent about an hour inside, and by the time he stepped back out, the air had grown a whole lot chillier and night had fallen around them.
It was dark, but it was easy to see the look on Gramps’s face. She was almost beaming. “How many fingers did you cut off?”
“Just the one,” Smith said.
“Just one?”
“Yeah.”
Gramps chortled. “Fucking pussy. I would have held out for at least three fingers.”
Smith grinned at her. “He’s not as tough as you.”
“No shit.”
“What did he tell you?” Roger asked.
“Everything,” Smith said.
“Everything?”
“Yeah, everything.”
“So what now?”
“Now, I go get some rest, because I don’t feel so good.”
“What’s—” Roger began to ask but never finished.
Or maybe he did finish, but Smith just didn’t hear him because he was too busy falling, falling—
—and landing on the hard junkyard ground on his face, for God only knew how many times in the last week.
Like all the other times, he was pretty sure this one looked pretty embarrassing, too.
Twenty-Three
“You really wanna do this?”
“Why not?”
“It’s dangerous, for one.”
“Have you looked around you? Everything is dangerous out there.”
“But this is more dangerous.”
“How you figure?”
“Well, for one, you’re going to drive right into a town where there are rifles on the rooftops waiting to pick you off.”
“They gotta hit me first.”
“All it’ll take is one lucky shot.”
“You mean, unlucky shot?”
“Either/or.”
“That’s fine. I was born underneath a lucky star.”
“Who told you that?”
“My momma.”
“Ah. Must be true, then.”
Gramps chuckled at that. “Then again, Momma did tend to lie about the occasional things.”
“Such as?” Smith asked.
“Lucky stars, things like that.”
“I see.”
“I like you, Smith.”
“Is that right?”
“You got a sense of humor.”
“Can’t be helped, considering what I’m about to do.”
That had elicited a loud chortle from the young woman who called herself Gramps, who was neither a grandpa (or grandma, in this case) or all that grumpy. Smith still remembered the first time Blake had talked about Gramps. She’d been slightly grumpy then, but the woman Smith was talking to now looked like she was ready to take on the world and didn’t give a shit if she died in the process.
Smith, on the other hand, did give a shit. He wasn’t interested in suicide missions, even if this particular stunt could very well be interpreted as that. He told himself that he had all the angles covered. He told himself that all day yesterday as he lay on the futon while the plan gestated inside his head and Mary took care of him.
Mary…
He told himself he wasn’t doing this for her, to save her son from the Judge’s clutches. That he was just going back to Gaffney because he needed to put an end to this, that although he could just ask for a horse from Roger and take off north and never once look back over his shoulder, that he couldn’t. Because the Judge had pissed him off, and now the fat man had it coming. And Smith was just the guy to give it to him. None of it had anything whatsoever to do with Mary or wanting to reunite her with her son, because he had feelings for her.
Because he didn’t, even though she was a very good kisser.
And pretty.
And he dreamt about being with her last night.
And—
Goddammit, Smith thought as he sat up on the hillside and gazed forward at the rooftops of Gaffney.
He was far enough away from the town limits that he could see the men on the roofs with binoculars, but they couldn’t see him back. Or, at least, they didn’t give any indication they had spotted him.
There were only two ways into Gaffney by road—north and south. You could enter it from other directions, but you’d need to be on foot. Smith had taken advantage of that two nights ago when he snuck into Gaffney. This time, he didn’t think it would be quite as easy. The Judge would know he was coming. Or if he didn’t, the fat man would be ready for anything, including a full-frontal assault by Roger’s crew.
“They’re in town,” Roger’s spy had said when the young woman reported back to them earlier in the morning. “The ones from the ranch. The Judge pulled them all back into Gaffney. The ranch is undefended.”
“How many?” Roger had asked.
“A dozen. Two dozen,” the spy had said.
“Which one is it? There’s a big difference between a dozen and two dozen.”
The spy, who couldn’t have been more than twenty, had shrugged. She was covered in dirt and dust and wearing natural earth tones to stay hidden as she kept an eye on Gaffney from the edges. “Let’s go with two dozen, just to be safe.”
“Two dozen,” Roger had said, looking over at Smith. “That’s a lot. I didn’t even think he had that many men left.”
“You weren’t sure how many he had back at the ranch?” Smith had asked.
Roger shook his head. “No. We had a guess, but… No.”
“So he’ll be ready for you when you show up,” Gramps, who was in attendance, had said.
“Apparently,” Smith said.
“So what are you gonna do?”
“I wouldn’t want to disappoint him.”
Gramps laughed. “Man’s got a death wish.”
“I have a plan.”
“Same difference.”
“Not really,” Sm
ith said.
Mary had been there during the conversation, but she hadn’t interjected. Instead, she’d sat back and listened as Smith laid out his plan. Then, when the others left, she’d kissed him—caught him by surprise, again—and left without saying a word. Smith wasn’t sure if that was her way of saying good-bye or—
Yeah, it was probably her way of saying good-bye.
Smith sat on the hill now, the fading sunlight still high above him but getting lower. He felt good, but that was probably all the painkillers he’d dumped into his system starting in the morning and continuing throughout the day. His adrenaline was pumping as he scooted down the hillside and back toward the Chestnut horse waiting below at the base. The animal lifted its head as Smith glided down, and gave him a snort.
“It’s a perfectly good plan,” he said to the animal.
The horse snickered and looked away, apparently a disbeliever.
“Oh, what do you know? You’re just a horse,” Smith said as he climbed into the saddle. He barely felt the gunshot wound in his right side.
Barely.
He heard the first shot about ten minutes after he picked up the sound of the Jeep’s engine. Smith couldn’t see the vehicle from his position, but he didn’t have to. The Nebraska landscape was deathly quiet, and there was nothing to stop the only working car in what was probably a good hundred miles from making a nuisance of itself.
That was the plan, after all.
Smith didn’t hear the first rifle shot until almost fourteen minutes later. The gunshot was followed by another one, then another a third. Soon, there was just the pop-pop-pop of semiautomatic weapons firing, sometimes rewarded by the occasional ping! as the rounds found their target.
Not that that did anything to stop the vehicle. If bullets hitting the speeding car had managed to stop it in its tracks, then Smith wouldn’t have been able to keep hearing it as it got closer to Gaffney. The city’s rooftop guards would have surely ceased shooting if they’d managed to stop or even slow the approaching Jeep.
After The Purge, AKA John Smith (Book 3): Shoot Last Page 15
