I’m so sorry.
Smith sat by himself for a moment. Now that he didn’t feel endangered—or not in any immediate danger, anyway—he allowed himself a few precious seconds to take stock of his situation. Of everything that had happened. It was a long thirty or so seconds.
He hadn’t had very much time to dwell on Blake’s death, not after waking up in that cage and being confronted with the ghoul. He still remembered the two voices—Gruff and Not-So-Gruff—and how entertained they were about Smith’s ordeal. The bastards had even made a bet on how long he’d last against the nightcrawler.
But it was Blake that stuck out in Smith’s mind now. He remembered the green of her eyes, the way she moved…
Shouldn’t have gotten involved. Why do I always get involved?
Mary remained next to him. She looked poised to reach over and grab him at any second, should he threaten to topple back to the hard floor.
He glanced over at her. “How long have you been down here?”
“They brought me here yesterday, after you left,” Mary said.
“Why?”
“Punishment.”
“For what?”
“One of the Judge’s men tried to force himself on me. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. I think his name was Dunham.”
“Dunham?”
Mary nodded. “I think so.”
Dunham…
The man was dead. Smith had shot him inside Amy’s clinic back in Gaffney last night. That was after he’d stumbled into the place while Smith was talking to the doctor.
Dunham…
Smith remembered the scar on the man’s face. The very fresh scar that ran down his right cheek.
I guess now I know how he got that.
“They brought me here to be reeducated,” Mary said.
“Reeducated?”
“That’s what the Judge said, before he delivered his sentence.”
“They put you on trial?”
“It wasn’t much of one. They brought me into his office at the courthouse and he spent a minute asking Dunham what happened.”
“Let me guess: He didn’t ask for your side?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think he cares one way or another.”
Mary’s story explained Dunham’s scar, but why had Hobson lied to him? Certainly he would have known about her troubles.
“What about Hobson?” he asked.
“What about him?”
“Did he know what happened?”
“He was the one who led me to the Judge.”
Lying asshole, Smith thought, suddenly not feeling so bad about having shot the man in his own home anymore. Not that he was really feeling bad about it in the first place, but, well, he’d had second thoughts since. Not anymore.
Smith turned back to the other women.
Two of them stood huddled against a wall, almost leaning against one another, while a third had laid back down on the floor on her side, her back to Smith. The fourth one remained in the far corner, her knees pulled up to her chest. It was too dark—there weren’t any lights that Smith could detect, just his night eyes to see with—for him to tell what kind of shape the women were in, but he didn’t sense any fight in them.
Mary, on the other hand…
Smith turned back to her. “Are you okay?”
She pursed her lips. “I’ve been here less than a day. Some of them…” She stared past Smith and at the other women in the room with them. “They’ve been here longer. The one back there? In the corner? They told me she’s been here for almost three months.” Mary nodded at the one lying on the floor on her side. “She’s been here for a week. The other two”—nodding at the two standing against the wall—“have been here for just a few days. I think they’re sisters.”
It was too dark for Smith to see the facial resemblance in the two possible sisters, but it was hard to miss the protective way they stood together, away from everyone else. If any of the women heard Smith and Mary talking, no one said a word.
“So this is their idea of reeducation?” he asked Mary.
“I guess so.”
“What did they do to you?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing yet.” She shook her head, then indicating the one lying on her side, “Since I’ve been here, they’ve only come for her.”
“What did they do to her?”
“I don’t know. They brought her back a few hours later. She looked even worse off than when she left, and she looked pretty bad then.”
Smith couldn’t see the woman’s face, but the way she lay there, unmoving…
“What did they do to you?” Mary was asking him.
He told her about the cage and the ghoul.
“You beat it?” Mary asked.
“Kind of,” Smith said.
He stood up. Or tried.
He lost his balance and his feet went wobbly, and Smith collapsed back into Mary’s lap. She grabbed him, but he was much heavier, and she almost toppled sideways with him tangled up in her arms. Somehow, though, she managed to hold the both of them up.
“Easy, John. Easy,” Mary said. “You look like you’ve been through hell.”
Smith sighed. That wasn’t far from the truth. He’d been shot, shot at numerous times, and lost consciousness more than once. Nebraska was becoming a real pain in the ass, and Smith didn’t like it one bit. On second thought, and with the benefit of hindsight, he should have continued on his path after the run-in with Travis and the other two back at Lucky’s burned-down homestead. Instead, he’d come back to Gaffney on his own, looking for a little payback.
Shoulda done a lot of things these last few days, I guess.
“Okay?” Mary asked.
No, Smith thought, but he said, “I’ll be okay.”
“You sure?”
Not even close.
“Yeah,” he said instead.
He tried to stand up again, this time taking it slower. Much, much slower. He managed to remain upright even though his legs threatened to buckle. There was some pain coming from his chest that he hadn’t noticed before but was now impossible to ignore. The volts of electricity from the TASER they’d shot him with back in the cage room.
Flashes of Gruff and Not-So-Gruff’s conversations replayed in his head. Not the words themselves, but the joy in their voices. The two sonsofbitches were having fun at his expense. A lot of fun.
Just wait until I get my hands on you two bastards.
He would have stretched if every part of him wasn’t in pain. He wasn’t sure when that happened or how. Maybe when he was fighting the ghoul. Or later when he “won” and fell on his face as a reward. However it happened, his muscles were sore and moving his legs was painful. At least his skull wasn’t pounding anymore, so there was that.
Smith walked to the nearest wall and felt along the rough and cold concrete. There was nothing aesthetically pleasing about the room’s construction. It was cement poured into place and allowed to cure. But it did its job, whatever that was, initially.
Right now, it was a prison.
It might not have the bars of the cells back at the Gaffney police station, but they’d tossed him and Mary and the others into a prison cell just the same. Smith couldn’t see a door, but it had to be there somewhere. Probably in the parts of the darkness that he hadn’t reached yet.
Smith felt his way along the wall while Mary stood up and followed him closely behind. “What are you looking for, John?”
“A door.”
“It’s back there, across the room, but it’s locked.”
Smith walked to the far end of the room. There was a deceptive lot of ground to cover. The prison was bigger than a police station cell, and he counted ten feet before he finally reached the other wall. The room itself had to be over twenty feet long and about ten feet wide.
The entrance/exit was where Mary said it was, but grabbing the lever and trying to turn it yielded nothing. Even if he wasn’t
slightly weak after being shot, then struck in the back of the head, then TASERed, he wouldn’t have been able to muscle the door open anyway.
Not that Smith allowed that fact to stop him from trying. He didn’t quit until beads of sweat had broken across his temples.
“I’ve tried it; it won’t budge,” Mary said from behind him.
Smith nodded and turned around. She stood in front of him, not quite looking defeated but not too far off.
“Mary,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Where’s Aaron?”
“In Gaffney somewhere. They took him away from me, John. The bastards took Aaron away from me. They said I wouldn’t get to see him again until I’d been reeducated and ready to assimilate back into society.”
“And they didn’t say how this ‘reeducation’ works?”
Mary shook her head. “No.” She crossed her arms over her chest, shivering noticeably for the first time. “But I have a feeling I’ll learn all about it pretty soon. They didn’t bring me here just to sit around.” She glanced back at the four women in the room with them before turning back to Smith. “What are we going to do, John? How are we going to get out of here?”
I have no idea, Smith thought, but he didn’t think that was the answer Mary was hoping to hear.
“I’ll figure something out,” he said instead.
Fifteen
I’ll figure something out, he had said to Mary.
How, was the question.
Or an even better question was, where did he begin?
He was locked away inside an underground prison, as far as he could tell, with no way out. The only path was sealed tight from the other side, and he didn’t have anything even resembling a weapon to work with. There was nothing inside the big room except the clothes they were wearing. Hell, they’d even taken his boots for whatever reason, something he hadn’t noticed until now. (Though they’d left his socks, which he guessed he should be grateful for, if nothing else.)
Smith was up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Worse, he couldn’t even see the creek and didn’t know how long it stretched, or how wide. He was being pushed around blind, and all he could do was adapt to the situation as problems arose.
So he sat with Mary and the others, plotting his next move. Which was…not much. He had to get out of here, that much was clear. He couldn’t allow them to subject Mary to their “reeducation.” Smith had a feeling that involved the cage in the other room, along with the ghoul, which was no doubt still alive.
Over my dead body.
Then: Famous last words.
Yeah, he probably shouldn’t have had that thought. It wasn’t like he could stop Gruff and Not-So-Gruff (or whatever their real names were) when they came to get Mary. He was unarmed and still wobbly on his feet, and he wasn’t entirely sure he could take on either one of their captors mano-a-mano. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he could take on any of the women in the room! One of Smith’s problems was that he’d always been so good with a gun—scarily good, according to his mentor—that he hadn’t developed any real hand-to-hand fighting skills. Sure, he’d had the same combat training during Black Tide’s Basic Training like everyone else, but he’d never really absorbed what he’d been told. He didn’t have to because of his proficiency with a firearm.
Now, thinking about all those classes and lessons, he wished he’d paid closer attention.
Another thing you shoulda done better.
One of many, as it turned out.
So he didn’t have very much to do but sit and wait with Mary and the others. Or just Mary, because as far as Smith could tell, the other four women were sound asleep. He didn’t blame them; from his internal calculations, it had to be almost morning now, or damn near close to it. If he’d had a window, he could have confirmed that theory. Heck, if he had a window, he could have tried to crawl out.
But he didn’t.
He didn’t…
Mary, like him, couldn’t sleep. The other women had no such trouble, and Smith could hear them snoring away. Even the sisters, whose names Mary didn’t know—because they were either too shy or suspicious to talk to her when she arrived—were huddled in their own corner. The young one, who had been here the longest, hadn’t moved from her spot. The one that had been lying on her side had turned over onto her back, and Smith could see long red hair and a pale complexion. None of the women looked as if they’d been physically tormented, but Smith knew from experience that assaults didn’t always produce visible scars.
“How did you end up here?” Mary finally asked after a while.
He told her about going back to Gaffney, rescuing Blake, then coming here.
“What happened to her?” Mary asked.
“She didn’t make it.”
“Oh.”
Yeah, Smith thought.
He didn’t say any more about Blake, and thankfully, neither did Mary.
Aaron’s mother said instead, “Maybe we should try to get some sleep.”
“You should.”
“You’re not sleepy?”
“No.”
“Neither am I.”
“You haven’t slept all night.”
“I know, but…” She paused for a moment, before continuing. “I’m scared of what will happen when I go to sleep.”
“What do you mean? What would happen?”
“They might come to get me.”
This time, it was Smith’s turn to say, “Oh.”
Like Mary’s “Oh,” that was all he needed to say. That simple, single word expressed everything he needed it to.
Smith said, “We’ll get out of here.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, but we will.”
“You sound so sure…”
“I am.”
“Why?”
“I just am.”
“But why?”
Because I don’t have any choice, Smith thought.
But he said, “I’ve been in worse situations.”
“You have?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Atlanta.”
Mary was obviously waiting for him to continue, and when he didn’t, she said, “What happened in Atlanta?”
Smith shook his head. He didn’t want to think about Atlanta. It was a bad situation from the start, and it only got worse as the week dragged on. But he’d survived it, against all odds, and he was sure he’d survive this, too.
He hoped, anyway.
“You know why smart people stay away from the cities?” Smith asked.
“Ghouls,” Mary said.
“That’s only one reason.”
“What are the others?”
Smith thought about how much to tell her. The things he saw, and did…
“There’s a reason people stay away from the cities,” he said, and left it at that.
Mary did, too, thankfully.
She said instead, “I miss Aaron. It’s only been a day—not even that—but I miss him so much already.”
Smith nodded, not that he knew what she was really feeling. He didn’t have a son or a daughter out there; or, at least, none that he knew of. He understood loss, of course, but it was probably not even close to the kind Mary was suffering right now.
Neither one of them said anything after that, and soon they both gave in to the silence and darkness. Smith lay down on the cold and unyielding concrete floor and closed his eyes. He tried to sleep, but it didn’t happen. It was easier for Mary, who began snoring softly next to him. She’d laid down not more than a few inches away. He envied her ability to go to sleep despite all that she’d gone through in the last twenty-four hours. Then again, it wasn’t like he’d had a barrel of laughs—
The click, followed by the clank, of a piece of metal moving, from all the way across the room (The door lever!) snapped him wide awake.
Smith was on his feet before he knew what he was doing, and jogging silently—or as silently as he could muster—across the room
. He must have done a pretty good job, because neither Mary nor the other women were woken up by his sudden movements.
He slid up against the equally cold wall next to the door and waited.
Even in the semidarkness, he could see the lever moving. It helped that his eyes had adjusted to the pitch blackness and that the lever, along with the rest of the door, was a slightly different shade of gray than the scarred walls that surrounded him.
Another clank, as whoever was on the other side moved the lever another notch, undoing another locking mechanism. Smith watched silently, mentally and physically preparing for what was coming.
He was reasonably certain he could take on one man, especially with the element of surprise on his side. And maybe even two. He wasn’t 100 percent certain about two, but he thought he could.
Maybe.
Of course, if there was more than two…
Then you’re fucked.
But so what? You’re fucked either way if you stay in here.
The door creaked slightly as it opened. Not loud enough to wake Mary or the other women, but plenty loud for Smith, who was waiting next to it. A patch of artificial light flooded into the room as the door opened wider, allowing two shadows to fall through the opening.
Two men.
Of course two men, because one would have been way too easy for him.
Fuck my luck.
Their shadows were elongated because the source of light was behind them. A hallway, maybe even made of the same concrete material as the room he was in. Was he locked away in some sort of underground bunker? That was possible. The American Midwest was littered with them, built by preppers that thought the end of the world was coming. Or maybe hoping for the end of the world. They had the right idea, as it turned out.
Fortunately, the door opened onto the left side, so it didn’t careen into Smith, where he stood waiting. It also gave him a perfect view of the man that stepped inside first.
Sneakers, faded jeans, holding what looked like a black metal police riot baton that wasn’t fully extended. A belt, but no gun or a holster. Plaid long-sleeve work shirt, the sleeves partially speckled with dirt.
“Which one?” a voice said. It was a familiar voice, too.
Gruff. One of the two that had been taking bets on how long Smith could withstand the ghoul earlier.
After The Purge, AKA John Smith Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 39
