“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,” Smith 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.
“Will this work?” Smith asked when he saw what Lorna and the others had done to the Jeep that he’d brought to them in the aftermath of Mandy’s death. Lorna, as it turned out, was a welder’s assistant before the end of the world, and she had taken charge when it came to shielding the car.
And that was what they did—using thick sheets of metal from around the junkyard to encase the vehicle into something from Mad Max, a post-apocalyptic cinematic tale that was popular with the recruits on Black Tide Island. Smith was told there were sequels, but he’d never seen them.
The continued pop-pop-pop of gunfire got more intense as the Jeep neared the town, followed by the ping-ping-ping! of those same rounds ricocheting harmlessly off the armor plating around the vehicle.
Smith pictured Gramps and Lorna in the front seats of the Jeep as they made a beeline toward Gaffney, probably having the time of their life. Or Gramps, anyway. Lorna was older and clearly didn’t have the same level of death wish as Gramps.
“I’m gonna ram this thing right up their assholes,” Gramps had said to Smith just before he climbed onto the Chestnut to go ahead of them.
“You don’t have to do that,” Smith had said. “I just need you to distract them long enough for me to get in there.”
“I can do both. Ram it up their ass and distract them long enough for you to sneak in.”
“Let’s just concentrate on the latter.”
“Okay, Mr. Buzzkill.”
Lorna, standing nearby, had given Smith an almost pitying look before saying, “We’ll get it done. You can count on it.” She then smacked one of the thick plates of metal that had been welded into place, giving the Jeep a protective ceiling that it was never supposed to have.
“And the Jeep can handle the extra weight?” he asked.
“We tested it out,” Lorna said. “She’ll be a little sluggish, but once she gets going she should be fine.”
“‘Should?’”
Lorna shrugged.
“Hey, it’s not like any of us have done this before, you know. I guess we’ll find out when we find out.”
Yeah, I guess so, Smith had thought, but for the sake of his own confidence and the women’s, had said, “Let’s shove it up their asses, then.”
That had elicited a big grin from Gramps. “Yee fucking haw!”
Gramps and Lorna were trying to “shove it up their asses” while Smith snuck his way back into Gaffney. It was easier than he had anticipated, but then again it wasn’t like the Judge’s men didn’t already have their hands full with the armored-plated Jeep driving straight up the road toward them. Smith could hear the shouts and sounds of shod horses clopping away on the streets as they rushed to the north side to stop the incoming vehicle.
The gunfire got louder and more intense, and the ping-ping-ping! of ricocheting bullets picked up speed. Soon, that was all Smith could hear.
Two men on horseback galloped up the road in front of Smith while he was sidling his way along the darkening alleyway. Just like last time, getting into Gaffney wasn’t very hard. There weren’t any walls or fences to keep him out, and the Judge’s men didn’t have nearly enough manpower—especially tonight, after everything that had happened at the ranch—to cover every inch of the city, while also trying to fight back Gramps and Lorna’s charge.
Not that the women were going to actually attempt to make it into the city. Their job—their only job—was just to draw the men over to them. Which, from the sounds of continued gunfire and bouncing bullets, they were doing with aplomb.
Eventually, the shooting slowed down, and the sound of car engine began to fade.
The women had stopped their push and reversed course. They would have only done that under one circumstance: The shielded vehicle was in danger. As long as it didn’t run out of gas—and it wouldn’t for a while; they had checked—it could return to base just fine even damaged. Chances of the Judge’s men pursuing was low. Just in case, Roger and a few others were waiting farther down the road to help. All it would have taken was a couple of good shots to puncture the Jeep’s tires. The vehicle could still move on flat wheels, but it would have been a little difficult given its additional weight.
Smith stopped thinking about what was going on out there and concentrated on the mission at hand.
Him, inside Gaffney, all alone.
Second time’s the charm…
Twenty-Four
“The big white house, about two blocks north from here. The one with the guards outside. I don’t know how you missed it in the first place.”
Hobson had said that, before Smith shot him, three nights ago.
“What are you going to do?” Hobson had asked.
“I already told you,” Smith had said.
“You won’t be able to get to him.”
“How many guards does he have?”
“I won’t tell you that.”
Hobson had kept his word—he hadn’t told Smith. But he didn’t have to, because Travis, the man with two first names, had spilled the beans.
“You believe him?” Roger had asked.
“Yeah,” Smith had said.
“How can you be so sure?”
“I cut off his finger.”
“So? He still has nine left.”
“That guy’s not going to let me cut off another finger just to sell a lie. No, he told me everything he knew. The truth. The whole truth.”
“You better hope you’re right,” Roger had said.
Yeah, me, too, Smith had thought, even though the words that came out of his mouth were, “I’m right.”
I hope I’m right, Smith thought now as he sat in the dark and waited.
He’d found the house easily enough, but its owner wasn’t home. It wasn’t the “big white house” that the Judge was living in, likely still guarded by a good number of men even after Gramps’s distraction had lured most of the guns over to the north side of town. The Judge wouldn’t have been stupid enough to send everyone to stop the vehicle. A man like that would always keep plenty for himself. After all, what was the point of being the alpha male if you couldn’t order people to die for you 24/7?
Besides, Smith had other plans, and other priorities. One of them was Aaron. He had to find the kid first. That was what he’d told Mary he’d come here to do, after all: get her son back. But Smith knew that even if he succeeded in that, it would only be winning a battle. He still needed to win the war.
And the war began and ended with the Judge. Cut the head off the snake, and the body would die, as the saying went. It was easy enough to say but harder to accomplish.
But that was for later. Now, Smith had something else to do…like sit in the dark for a good two, maybe three hours. He stopped keeping track of time once it got so dark outside the window that he couldn’t see the streets beyond anymore. The house was mostly black except for a small sliver of curtain left open to the right of him, the window looking down at Gaffney’s main street below. The north side of town, where all the action had taken place, was a good two hundred meters or so behind him.
After Gramps and Lorna reversed course in the Jeep, Smith watched some of the Judge’s men returning to their posts inside the town. Some were on horseback, others on foot. About ten men in all. He hadn’t expected that many, but it looked as if Roger’s spy was pretty close to the number of reinforcements the Judge had gotten from the ranch.
Smith nodded off a couple of times out of boredom, only to snap right back awake. Or Smith told himself it was boredom, and not because his side had started to hurt from the gunshot wound. But once he took out and knocked down a couple of painkillers, he hardly felt anything anymore.
After what seemed like an eternity, the house’s owner finally returned.
Smith quickly checked his watch. 11:09 p.m.
He listened to the owner walking up the stairs after a few minutes on the first floor. She had light footsteps, but it was so quiet inside the building—and outside in the town—that Smith thought he could hear her breathing even with the closed bedroom door.
The owner spent some more time outside on the second floor in the bathroom next door. Smith thought that was a little odd since her master bedroom that he was waiting inside had an en suite bathroom.
She finally stepped inside the bedroom, already working on the top two buttons of her long-sleeve work shirt. She didn’t bother with the light switch because there was no electricity, so Smith watched her silhouetted form moving across the room. She came to within ten feet of where he sat on the armchair in the corner but didn’t see him. Instead, she went straight to the window and jerked the curtains closed completely, then turned around and flicked on the LED lantern resting on a nightstand between the window and the queen-size bedroom.
“Amy,” Smith said quietly.
“Jesus!” Amy said even as she spun around, hands clutching at her partially opened shirt. “Smith!”
Smith put a forefinger to his lips. He hadn’t drawn his gun, and he didn’t think he needed to. Amy realized her mistake and glanced quickly toward the window. Thankfully she had closed it, so her startled gasp wouldn’t have traveled very far.
“What the hell are you doing back here?” Amy asked.
She walked over to the bed and sat down on the end, facing him from across the room. If she was a little bit scared, he didn’t see it on her face. She did, though, look slightly annoyed, but he thought that had more to do with him catching her almost in the act of taking her shirt off. Smith couldn’t help but notice she wasn’t wearing anything underneath as she did the buttons back up.
“Aaron,” Smith said.
“What about him?”
“I need to find him.”
Amy didn’t say anything. She finished buttoning her shirt, then put her hands in her lap and stared back at him.
“You know where he is, don’t you?” Smith asked.
“Lucky guess?”
He shrugged. “You would have gone looking for him after our conversation at
the clinic.”
“You sound very sure about that.”
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Because you care. Because you’re not like the others. Am I wrong?”
She shook her head. “No.”
Smith smiled. At least he’d read her correctly.
One out of two ain’t bad.
“They’re keeping him with one of the families down the street,” Amy said. “Harris and Janice. They’ve been trying to have a baby since they got here, but so far, no luck. I guess the Judge thought they’d appreciate Aaron more.”
“Does he know what happened to his mom?”
“No. I went to see him yesterday under the guise of checking up on him. He doesn’t know about his mom, and he’s not happy about it.”
“He said that?”
“He’s a mute, Smith. But he can write.”
“What did he write?”
“‘Mom?’ With a question mark. When I told him I didn’t know, he got visibly agitated. I talked to Janice about him earlier today, and she said he hasn’t eaten anything since my visit. He’s not a happy camper.”
“You didn’t tell him the Judge had sentenced his mom to be reeducated?”
Amy smirked. “Why the hell would I tell him that?”
“Just wondering.”
He stood up, and he must have been slightly unsteady on his feet—or maybe it wasn’t all that slightly—because Amy saw it right away.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re hurt.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Seriously? You don’t think I’d see it?”
Smith grunted. He wanted to blame being unsteady on his feet on having sat down for so long, but the truth was, the pain from his side had come back. It wasn’t a full-blown five-alarm fire, but it was close. Maybe a two-fire alarm.
Or a four…
“What happened?” Amy asked. “Something to do with that shootout at the ranch?”
“You heard about that?”
“Who didn’t?” She stood up. “Sit back down, and let me look at you.”
“I’m fine,” Smith said. He walked across the room and toward the door. “You said Aaron’s being kept somewhere down the street?”
After The Purge, AKA John Smith Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 45
