They were in the front yard now but advancing slowly. No doubt they’d been stationed in some of the houses across the street this entire time, waiting for the Judge’s orders to advance, if necessary. Because all of this was a trap, and he’d fallen for it.
You’re right, Peters. I’m not nearly as smart as I think I am.
Smith counted three lanterns moving toward him now…
When he looked back at Aaron, the boy was already scooting behind one of the big sofas across the living room, on the far wall. It was a big couch, but it wouldn’t stop a bullet. Still, it was better than having the kid standing in the middle of the room while hot lead was flying around.
“Stay there,” Smith said.
Aaron poked his head out from one end of the furniture and bobbed his head up and down. He was well-hidden in the shadows of the living room, but Smith could just see enough of his face—and those big brown eyes—to know he was still scared.
Smith didn’t blame him. Hell, he was scared.
“Judge?” a voice called from outside.
Smith hurried to the door, but not before snatching up the shotgun from the old man’s lifeless hands. The old bastard had managed to hold onto it even after he fell.
“Judge! You in there?”
Smith hobbled to the front of the house, then slid up against the wall. He checked the shotgun. It was a nice weapon: a Remington 870 pump-action 12-gauge. Five-round capacity, so four shells left inside. He was pretty sure the old timer had more ammo on his person, but Smith hadn’t bothered to search him. Besides, he still had his holstered pistol, not to mention the spare SIG Sauer behind his back. He had plenty of bullets to deal with however many were out there.
Probably.
“Judge!” The same voice, sounding a little closer now, but not too much closer. They were still taking their time, erring on the side of caution.
“He’s dead!” Smith shouted back.
He didn’t peer out the window behind him, but he could hear the sudden shuffling of boots moving around out there in response. Not quite panic, but realization that someone was still alive inside the house who may not welcome them with open arms.
“Keep on coming closer, if you wanna join him!” Smith shouted.
He thought he sounded pretty good. Not just confident but loud and brash, and not at all like the hurt and bleeding (Christ, where was all the blood coming from?) man he really was. He hadn’t bothered to catalog where the buckshot had managed to hit him, but enough had to make every word he shouted feel like it might be his last.
He blinked through something dripping down his left eye—
Blood. He was bleeding from the forehead.
Smith reached up and swiped at the wetness, then wiped it on his pant legs. His side, where Gramps had shot him yesterday, felt fine. Or maybe that was just all the new pain overwhelming the old one.
Either/or.
Smith fished out the bottle of painkillers and downed two more, even as someone outside shouted, “You’re a dead man!”
“Not as dead as your Judge!” Smith shouted back.
“How do we know he’s really dead?”
“You hear him shouting back at you, genius?”
Silence.
Smith imagined the man outside—and however many he had with him—trying to decide if Smith was lying or not. But then, the Judge hadn’t answered, so why would they think he wasn’t dead? Or incapacitated?
That was what Smith was counting on, anyway. He wasn’t sure if he could take on three or four men right now, in his current condition. For all he knew, there were more than that outside.
Five? Six?
Ten?
Crap. He hoped it wasn’t ten.
“He’s dead!” Smith shouted, mustering every ounce of energy he had left to broadcast the sound of his voice. “So’s Stephens! So’s the old man!”
“Randolph?” the same voice replied.
Randolph, huh? Smith thought, looking over at the old man lying nearby.
“That’s right,” Smith said. “But he was nice enough to give me his shotgun before he went. Stephens, too, with his Glock. Not to mention all their spare ammo. So if you boys wanna come in, go right ahead! I got plenty of bullets for all of you, and then some! It’s a big, dark house! Let’s play!”
Silence again from his would-be attackers. Smith strained to listen but couldn’t hear whispers or even the sounds of moving boots anymore. Whoever and however many they were out there, they had found spots to camp. Unless…
The back door.
Smith’s eyes snapped to the oval-shaped opening that connected the living room with the kitchen. The same entryway he’d come through earlier, only to find the Judge waiting for him. It would be just as easy for whoever was out there to circle around the property and come through it. He had.
“Come on in, boys!” Smith shouted. “Let’s get this party started! The Judge is dead—long live the Judge—and I got more bullets for the rest of you! Come on! I’m bored! Don’t keep me waiting!”
Again, there was no response.
Smith kept his eyes on the kitchen door, expecting figures to run through at any moment. Aaron was hiding behind the couch nearby, and the kid hadn’t poked his head out again after the first time.
Smart kid, Smith thought, wondering what Mary would say to him if he got the boy shot up while trying to rescue him. Not that he’d have to worry about Mary, because if Aaron got shot up, chances were Smith would be, too.
That is, if he didn’t die from his wounds before then.
He wiped at more blood dripping down his forehead and to his left eye. There wasn’t a lot of blood, but the constant drips were annoying. He didn’t even want to see what the rest of him looked like. There was a mirror across the living room, but Smith purposefully avoided it. He felt like shit already; he didn’t necessary need, or want, visual confirmation.
“Well, come on, then!” Smith shouted. “Don’t keep me waiting, boys! The night’s just getting started! Let’s have some fun! All these bullets are heavy! Help me get ridda some of them, will you?”
Finally, Smith heard movement from outside.
Here we go.
He tightened his grip on the Remington, reminded himself he only had four shells left, when the realization hit.
The sounds weren’t coming toward him, they were going away from him.
The would-be attackers were retreating.
Smith risked a quick glance out the window, just in time to spot a pair of figures fleeing down the street to the right—while a third went left. Smith might not have seen them—it was way too dark outside—if all three weren’t carrying their own light sources. None of them looked as if they were trying to outflank him or maneuvering around to come through the back.
They didn’t look like they were doing that, anyway.
He leaned back against the wall and waited, his ears listening for noise from the front of the house while his eyes remained fixed on the kitchen doorway.
A minute of silence followed.
Then two…
Aaron poked his head out from behind the couch, brown eyes searching for, found, and settling on Smith’s.
“Not yet,” Smith said.
The boy nodded and vanished back behind the sofa.
Three minutes of silence…
Five…
Smith’s legs were getting tired, so he walked over to the armchair where the Judge was slumped, and pushed the fat man out of it. There was blood on the upholstery and even more on the headrest, but Smith didn’t care and sat down. The armchair was perfectly turned to face the kitchen, which, Smith guessed, the Judge had done so he could dramatically welcome Smith to the living room.
He leaned over and switched off the LED light resting on the nightstand next to him, and the room quickly faded into darkness. He put the shotgun on his lap, his forefinger still in the trigger guard, and waited.
It was a long wait.
A quiet wait.
; And more importantly, an uneventful wait.
Sometime in the middle of the night, Smith woke up with a start.
Shit!
He’d fallen asleep.
He’d fallen asleep.
Fortunately, it hadn’t cost him his life, because there was no one in the living room with him except Aaron. The boy was curled up in a ball on the floor at Smith’s feet and snoring lightly. Smith didn’t know when he’d come out from hiding or how long it’d been since he lost consciousness.
Smith was still bleeding, but the blood had caked along one side of his face. His sides throbbed, as did all the other parts of him that had taken buckshot.
But he was alive.
Still kicking.
Okay, maybe not kicking, but breathing.
And for now, that was good enough.
Twenty-Seven
“You’re one stubborn man, you know that?”
Smith smirked. “That’s no way to talk to a patient, Doctor.”
Amy matched his smirk with one of her own. “You’re lucky you’re even a patient. You should be dead. Ten times over. What were you thinking, coming in here like that?”
“He was waiting for me. The Judge. He had men watching your place.”
Amy shook her head. “I didn’t know anything about that.”
“I know. I’m not saying you did.”
“Okay. I just wanted to get that out of the way.”
“Relax. It’s out of the way.”
The doctor nodded, and he saw the relief on her face. Maybe she had thought he’d blame her for the ambush, but Smith didn’t. It had never even occurred to him that she was a part of the scheme, which meant he was either a very good judge of character or a really, really poor one.
“What happened?” Smith asked as he sat up on the cot.
He was back in her clinic, and the fact that he wasn’t handcuffed or, well, dead meant everything had mostly worked out for the best. Smith’s last memory was of falling asleep with Aaron at his feet.
There, his gun, still in its holster on a table next to him. That reinforced his belief that everything had, somehow, worked out for the best. Or, at least, worked out in his favor even though he didn’t have a clue how.
“Roger and the junkyard gang took Gaffney in the afternoon,” Amy said. “By then, the others had left.”
“‘Others?’”
“The Judge’s men. The ones you didn’t kill.”
Smith couldn’t help but grin at that.
“They took everyone with them that wanted to go, but left everyone who didn’t,” Amy continued.
“Including you?”
“Me, Aaron, and 50 percent of everyone here.”
“50 percent?”
Amy nodded. “I know it’s hard to believe, but other than the Judge being a royal asshole, Gaffney isn’t all bad.”
“I don’t find that hard to believe at all.”
“You don’t?”
Smith shook his head. “I’ve been out there, Doc. It’s not all games and lollipops. I get why people would prefer the comfort and safety of a place like Gaffney.”
Amy gave him a surprised look before going back to cleaning her hands in a bowl. “That’s ironic, coming from you.”
“Why?”
“You seem like the kind that prefers to be out there than in a place like this.”
“I do.”
“So what are you doing in here?”
“Trying not to die.”
He felt good. He didn’t know why, but it was as if he’d woken up from a long sleep and every part of him was refreshed. Sitting up on the cot wasn’t too much trouble except for the pain vibrating from his midsection and almost the entire left side of his body. All Smith had to do was glance in those directions to know why: He was wearing a hospital gown, but it didn’t do anything to hide the bandages underneath, from his thigh all the way up his side, to his jaw and cheek.
“You want a mirror?” Amy asked.
Smith shook his head. “No.”
“Good choice.”
He smiled. He didn’t have any illusions that he was a mess.
But he was also still alive, if just barely. And for now, just barely was good enough.
“They came to see you,” Amy said. She was cleaning up a counter with a rag.
“Who?”
“The mother and son.”
“Oh.”
Amy glanced down at her watch. “Mary said she’d come back in an hour to see how you were doing.”
“Are they okay? The boy?”
“Everyone’s fine, including the boy.” Amy stopped cleaning the counter to look back at him. “The Judge’s dead.”
“I know. I shot him.”
The doctor grinned. “I figured that.”
“What happened after?”
“The others packed up and left in the morning. They took as much as they could carry with them. The ranch, as far as I know, is empty; all the horses are gone. Roger and his people showed up later. Everyone who’s still here, wants to be here.”
“Including you,” Smith said, swinging his legs off the cot to test his body. Just moving should have hurt, but it didn’t. He wondered what kind of painkillers Amy had given him and if she had more available.
“Including me,” Amy said, nodding.
“The ranch…”
“What about it?”
“There was a ghoul there.”
“There was more than a ghoul in that place.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know the exact number, but more than one. That place draws nightcrawlers every now and then. No one knows why. They just seem to find their way there. Sometimes more than one at a time.”
No kidding, Smith thought, rubbing his legs to get the blood flowing again.
“Mary and Aaron are staying too, by the way,” Amy said.
Smith looked up at her. “They’re staying?”
“Looks like it. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You staying, too?”
Smith shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“They seem to like you.”
“Do they?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good to know.”
“Is it?”
Smith smiled. “Of course.”
“Ah,” the doctor said, but Smith didn’t think she was convinced. “Lay back down. It’ll be a few more days before you’re ready to walk around Gaffney on your own power.”
“Sure thing, Doc,” Smith said, and did just that, lying back down.
“Doc?” a voice said from the front of the clinic, on the other side of the curtain that separated the areas. “You around here, Doc?”
“Back here,” Amy said.
“We could use some help.”
“I’ll be right there.” Amy walked across the room, but not before glancing in Smith’s direction. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“Where would I go?” Smith said.
Amy stopped at the curtain and looked over at him again. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“Did what?”
“Kill the Judge.”
“Which part’s tripping you up?”
“You shot him.”
“And?”
“That’s all it took? A guy with a gun is all it took to end a man like the Judge’s hold over Gaffney?”
“Why? Did you think it’d take more than that?”
She shrugged. “Sort of.”
“That’s all it usually takes, Doc. A guy with a gun. I just happen to be that guy this time.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Doc?” a voice called from the other side of the curtain.
“Coming,” Amy said, before leaving Smith alone in the back of the clinic. “What happened?” he heard Amy ask someone.
“We were at the ranch, cleaning the place out, when she fell off her horse; might have broken her hand,” a familiar female voice said. It sounded like Gramps, b
ut Smith couldn’t be sure.
Smith sat back up, then climbed off the cot and looked around. It took him about twenty seconds longer than it should have to find his clothes, piled up on a counter at the back of the room. They weren’t the same ones he’d worn when he confronted the Judge; Smith knew that because they weren’t covered in blood. But they were men’s clothes and his size. He didn’t think Amy would bother trying to find new clothes for him, so it was probably Mary.
Mary…
He thought about her as he pulled the clothes on, doing his best not to make a sound as his side began to ache. He kept expecting Amy to return and chastise him, but she was apparently too busy with her new patients. Smith was pretty sure one of them was Gramps from the sound of the voice.
“How did she fall?” Amy was asking.
“I guess she’s not good at riding,” the person who may or may not have been Gramps said.
“I guess not,” Amy said.
Smith searched for and found bottles of painkillers in a cabinet. He pocketed a couple and picked up his gun belt and cinched it tight. That was a mistake, and he grimaced slightly from the pain. He found a go-bag in a closet and filled it with bandages, bottles of water, and some bread and sausages in a box with the word Doc written on the lid. Amy’s lunch, maybe.
Mine, now.
He opened the back door and slipped out, and blinked underneath the harsh sunlight. He could see and hear people on the street to his left, so Smith turned right and moved through the back alleys of Gaffney. He was familiar with the turns, having taken them previously. They looked slightly different in the daylight, but it wasn’t too hard to find the edge of town.
Smith thought about Mary and Aaron, and why he was leaving them behind. Mary, especially. He’d liked kissing her, liked having someone beside him as he recuperated from his wounds. And she was one hell of a beautiful woman. He could have done much worse, that was for goddamn sure.
So why was he leaving her? Was it the boy? Was it the idea of having an instant family that was making him run? Or was it just the commitment that was needed? Was he terrified of having someone depending on him? Of having to constantly worry about another life—or two—besides his own?
Then he thought about Blake, and the reasons were as plain as day.
He was almost out of Gaffney when he saw a pair of horses tied to a streetlight, outside some kind of convention hall. Smith could hear voices coming from inside the big building but couldn’t see the speakers.
After The Purge, AKA John Smith (Book 3): Shoot Last Page 18
