by Sam Sisavath
Thick plumes of smoke and soot slithered in every direction, covering up dead cars scattered between her and what was left of the building. The almost aching screeching of steel metal girdles collapsing, slamming into one another, filled her ears.
How…?
Ana grabbed her jacket and pulled it over her mouth just as thick clouds swallowed her up. Pulverized brick and mortar stung her eyes and scratched at her face, and she staggered back, trying to get away from the reach of the expanding debris. She kept moving, trying desperately to stay on her feet the entire time, when a figure emerged from the white and gray smoke.
A Raggedy Man, stumbling forward, his hulking frame reminding her of a mythical beast clawing its way out of the depths of hell—
The thunderous crack! of a rifle, followed by the sight of the Raggedy Man’s head snapping backward, before he collapsed in a pile.
What…?
There was so much smoke and debris that the world around her became gray and white, blotting out the sun above and everything beyond the salvage yard. Metal beams continued to fall in the background, crashing into one another, something that sounded like screaming slicing through the cacophony of destruction.
Ana whirled around to look for the shooter. She covered as much of her face as she could with her jacket’s sleeves, but it did little to stop the coughing spurts pouring out of her. Explosive residue covered her exposed eyes and nostrils and mouth, and she couldn’t stop gagging.
Crack!
Ana flinched at the second shot, expecting a part of her body to explode against the bullet impact. But nothing of the sort happened, and she turned around in time to see a second Raggedy Man stumbling out of the wreckage of the warehouse, falling to the ground.
But that didn’t stop however many Raggedy Men remained, and a third—then a fourth—clawed their way out of the smoking rubble. They moved slowly, clearly injured but undeterred.
Ana turned and ran, hoping against hope that she didn’t run right into a metal spike sticking out of the ground, because her vision was badly limited by the dust and dirt and God only knew what else was covering her eyes and face at the moment.
Then, from seemingly another world, “Ana!”
Chris. It was the kid’s voice.
“Ana!”
She slowed down, before shouting back, “Chris!”
“Ana!”
“Where are you?”
“I’m right here!”
Right here where? Ana thought when she was finally able to make out the teenager’s silhouette standing in front of her.
Ana ran toward her. “Chris…”
The teenager, looking in the wrong direction, turned around. “Ana!”
“Come on,” Ana said and grabbed Chris’s hand and led her forward.
She didn’t know exactly where she was going, but away from the remains of the warehouse seemed like the best course.
“What happened?” Chris asked between her own coughing spurts.
“I don’t know,” Ana said.
She could barely get the words out. Just breathing was difficult and her eyes continued to sting relentlessly. Tears ran down her cheeks, but she wasn’t sure if that was because of all the debris or the sudden realization that she might survive this.
“Keep moving,” was all she could manage. “Just keep moving…”
Twenty-Six
They ran, and they didn’t stop running until Ana could feel the hard pavement of Talico’s streets under her feet and she could breathe again without feeling like her lungs would collapse under a pile of soot and explosive residue. She paused briefly just outside the salvage yard to look back, Chris doing the same next to her. The two of them took turns coughing, but it wasn’t the same violent coughs of the last few minutes.
Had it only been minutes? It had seemed longer than that as they struggled their way through the expanding clouds of smoke and pulverized concrete that had been jettisoned from the destruction of the warehouse.
The destruction of the warehouse…
It was gone, swallowed up by a massive plume of white and gray that still hung over the salvage yard like a great big fog monster. She could barely make out the fence that surrounded the place, much less the husks of vehicles inside it. The dome of destruction was thickest near the center, where the building used to be—
The crack! of a rifle made Ana jump.
The gunshot echoed…before there was silence again.
It had come from inside the yard. She hadn’t been able to tell that earlier when she was in the midst of the destruction, but now that she was beyond its borders, it was easier to pinpoint. Whoever was shooting, he (She? They?) was still in there.
“Come on,” Ana said, and turned up the street.
The teenager didn’t argue, and the two began walking briskly away. They would have been running if they had the strength to do so; even a mild jog was out of the question, given how loudly and hard both of them were breathing.
Ana sucked in a lungful of fresh air for the first time in seemingly days. She expelled it, then took in another one. Chris did the same next to her, the two of them taking turns glancing back at the destruction.
Another crack! from behind them, followed again by silence.
Ana didn’t stop moving, but she also didn’t break out into a run, either. At least, not while the bullets were going in the other direction. She led Chris about half a block up the street before taking her out of the road and into a familiar alleyway. Finally, she slowed down to allow both of them some rest, but still didn’t stop completely.
“I saw him,” Chris said after a while.
Ana looked over at the teenager. “Saw who?”
“The man,” Chris said.
“What man?”
“He was laying on top of a van. I ran past him…”
Ana finally stopped and turned to face Chris. “Wait, wait. Who was lying on top of a van?”
“The guy doing the shooting,” Chris said. “Back there.”
“It was a man?”
Chris nodded.
“Who was it?” Ana asked.
“I don’t know. He was wearing a cowboy hat. At first I thought someone had just put a hat on top of a car, but then it moved, and he looked at me.”
“The shooter? The one shooting back there?”
“Yes.”
“What did he look like?”
“I couldn’t tell. He had a bandana over his mouth and was wearing some kind of goggles. At first I thought he was one of them, the Raggedy Men, but he wasn’t.”
“Did he say anything to you?”
The teenager shook her head. “We sort of just looked at each other for a bit, then he looked away. He had a rifle…”
Ana didn’t say anything for a while. She hadn’t seen a man, but then again, she was too busy running, determined to get the hell away from the salvage yard as fast as she could.
“You believe me, right?” Chris asked.
Ana nodded. “Of course I believe you.”
Because someone blew up that warehouse, and someone’s still shooting back there.
Ana looked out the alleyway and fought the urge to go back there, to find out who the shooter was. Who had, essentially, saved both of their lives?
“You really didn’t see him?” Chris asked. “We ran right past him.”
Ana shook her head. “I didn’t see anyone.” She turned around. “But I believe you.”
Chris nodded, and Ana thought the teenager looked relieved.
“Come on,” Ana said, and led Chris farther up the alleyway.
They turned at the end, Ana retracing her steps from earlier this morning. Somewhere, up there, would be the school, along with Sullivan’s body.
Sullivan…
What was that Sullivan had told her about the third member of his group? The man named Keenan, who had survived?
“What about your friends? Did they make it?” she had asked him.
“One’s dead. Saw him go
down,” Sullivan had answered. “The other one… I don’t know where he is. Took off in one direction, and I went in the other during all the chaos. Saw him snatching up a bag, though. That’s more than I can say.”
“He’s still out there? Your friend?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. If he is, he’s on foot and armed with whatever’s in that bag he grabbed. We lost pretty much everything else, including our horses, when the shit bags attacked.”
Keenan had made it out with his rifle and a bag that could have contained anything, according to Sullivan. Instead of abandoning Talico, he had lain in wait for some idiot to cross his path. Some idiot like her. The man was the one who had killed her horse and took her supplies, she was sure of it. Though, if Sullivan were to be believed, Keenan also had every chance to kill her but didn’t.
She glanced back in the direction of the warehouse—not that she could see, with the walls between her and it. Someone had brought down the Raggedy Men’s building using something very powerful.
“He probably ended up with the C-4,” Sullivan had said about Keenan. “Can’t eat or drink C-4 the last time I checked.”
Ana didn’t know anything about explosives, or what C-4 could do, but something had brought down that warehouse.
Could it be? Was that really Keenan that Chris had spotted? If so, why would the man come back to Talico when he had everything he needed, and every opportunity to abandon the place? Maybe the clues, again, were in something else Sullivan had said about Keenan:
“When he gets it into his head to do something, this dude tends to go all out. He can be pretty single-minded.”
Was it possible that was Keenan back there? Had he come back for revenge? Tracking the Raggedy Men to their lair and blowing it up would certainly qualify as “revenge” in her book. Then there was the lying in wait for them to come out and picking his targets off one by one.
If it was Keenan, why had he saved hers and Chris’s life? Or was that just a byproduct of him killing the Raggedy Men and avenging Sullivan and Patrick?
Of course, it could have been anyone. Ana had a hard time believing someone who would run with psychopaths like Gabriel and Sullivan would even care enough to come back here when he didn’t have to.
The crack! of a rifle, this one more faded than the others because of the distance she and Chris had put on the salvage yard.
“He’s still shooting,” Chris said quietly, as if she were afraid of being overhead. “Who do you think he is?”
“As long as he’s not shooting at us, I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Ana said just as quietly.
They didn’t slow down again until they were a good half-mile from the city limits and the buildings were small boxes in the background behind them. They settled into a slow walk under the morning sun but didn’t stop completely until they could barely see Talico in the distance.
When she was sure they had enough of a safe distance, Ana sat down to rest on the shoulder of the four-lane state highway alongside Chris. Ana hadn’t realized how dirty and badly off Chris was until she got a good look at the teenager under the bright sun. The kid was physically worn down from head to toe, her clothes stained with blood and bodily fluids. Her hair was more white than blonde, and she was rubbing at her wrists where the restraints had bitten into her skin and drawn blood.
Ana took out a strip of the cloth she’d saved from the barbershop from her back pocket and wiped at Chris’s ankle. The teenager grimaced but didn’t make a sound.
“I look like shit, don’t I?” Chris asked.
Ana gave her a half-hearted smile, which was the best she could muster. “Probably no worse than me.” She sighed. “Let’s rest for a while.”
Chris glanced back at Talico. “There were two kids in that place with me.”
Two kids…
She thought about the girl and the boy. But especially the girl, who still had enough strength to cry out, to beg for help.
“Please don’t leave me,” she had whispered. Then, when she saw Ana running away, “Wait! Don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me! You promised!”
The girl was probably dead now, buried underneath that warehouse along with the boy. The boy wouldn’t have felt the thousands of pounds of concrete falling on top of him, but the girl…
Stop it. For God’s sake, stop it.
“Thank you,” Chris was saying. Then, when Ana looked over at her, “You came back for me. You didn’t have to, but you did.” She pursed her cracked lips in an attempted smile. “Thank you, Ana. Thank you.”
Before Ana could respond, the teenager threw herself into her arms. It was all Ana could do to grab her before she was bowled over. Chris was sobbing, wet tears falling on Ana’s soot-covered neck.
Ana sighed and held onto the kid, and thought, At least you did this one thing right. At least this one thing…
She forgot how long they walked after that. It could have been an hour or two, or maybe more, but all she could focus on was how loud her stomach was growling. After a while, there was nothing behind them but the highway, with no signs that Talico had ever existed in the first place.
That’s the idea. Forget anything that ever happened in that godforsaken place.
Not that she actually could. The girl’s face, on the other side of the cage, remained firmly fixed in the front of her mind’s eye. Even looking at Chris and telling herself, over and over, that she had no choice didn’t make it go away.
Because it wasn’t going to. Not in the next second or minute or hour or day. And maybe it never would.
“Ana,” Chris said after a while.
She looked over at the teenager, who had stopped walking and was looking behind them. Ana followed her gaze, expecting the worst.
It’s Keenan. He’s finally finished with the Raggedy Men, and now he’s come to finish us.
It wasn’t Keenan, but a vehicle moving up the road toward them. Of course, that didn’t mean it wasn’t Keenan, as the man could have found a working car after he had exacted his vengeance on the Raggedy Men.
Ana found herself staring down the highway, even as a part of her told her to Run! What are you doing just standing there like a lifeless mannequin? Run and hide, you idiot!
But she didn’t, and neither did Chris. Instead, the two of them stood on the shoulder of the highway and watched the vehicle get closer and closer, afternoon sunlight glinting off the front hood and roof.
“Ana,” Chris said, looking over at her. “Should we run?”
Ana shook her head, and thought, What’s the point? but she said instead, “No. They’ve already seen us.” She glanced around them at the flat Oklahoma countryside and thought, There’s nowhere to hide anyway.
She stared back down the highway as the caged girl’s blackened face flashed across her mind’s eye, yelling to her, “Wait! Don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me! You promised!” over and over again.
Ana closed her eyes and sat down. Her legs were tired anyway, and she wasn’t sure if she could walk another step, much less make a run for it.
“Ana?” Chris asked. Then, when Ana didn’t respond, “We should hide. Shouldn’t we be hiding?”
Ana shook her head before lying down on the hot pavement. Chris stood over her, looking confused. Finally, the teenager turned back to face the oncoming vehicle.
It was closer, the sound of its engines getting louder.
Then it was there, its tires squeaking next to her. Shade from the parked truck fell over her, and Ana opened her eyes and stared up at the cloudless sky. It was very blue and bright, a perfect day for a Sunday stroll.
A door creaked open, followed by the sound of footsteps, just before a figure hovered over her. It blocked out that perfectly good sky in the background. Ana could just make out short blond hair moving against a flurry of wind.
“Look at you, all messed up and no place to go,” the figure said. “What’s the matter? You don’t know how to read a map? That big red X wasn’t there for shits and giggl
es, you know.”
Ana smiled. “What the hell are you doing here?”
A second figure appeared next to the first. This one was taller, with dark black hair. It, too, looked down at her for a second before saying, “You look like shit.”
“I feel like shit,” Ana said.
The first figure held out a hand and Ana grabbed it, then let herself be pulled up to her feet. She sighed and smiled at them.
Shelby grinned back at her. “Tough day, huh?”
“Tough couple of days, yeah.”
Randall had walked back to where the truck was parked—the same Ford they had been driving when she first met them—and was shading his eyes as he peered back at Talico, somewhere back down the highway.
“Must have been some fight,” Randall said. “We could hear the explosion for miles. Gunshots after that.”
“You went inside?” Ana asked.
“Hell no,” Shelby said. “We marked that place a no-go for a reason. We hunt monsters, sure, but we’re not crazy.”
Chris had moved over to stand next to Ana. “You know these guys?”
“They’re friends,” Ana said. Then, at Shelby, “You got any food?”
“You hungry?” the young slayer asked.
Before Ana could answer, her stomach growled.
On cue, Chris’s stomach joined in.
“Guess that answers that,” Shelby said.
Randall walked back to them. He was moving slower than necessary, so Ana guessed he wasn’t completely over his gunshot wound. “Saw a guy with a rifle leaving the city about the same time we were driving around it. Thought we were going to have some trouble with him, but he watched us go without so much as a wave.”
“Guy with a rifle?” Ana said. “Did you find out who it was?”
Randall shook his head. “We considered it, but after the week we’ve been having… Thought it best to avoid him.”
“You know who it was?” Shelby asked, looking at her closely.
Ana exchanged a look with Chris.
“Anyone we know?” Randall said.
“No one special,” Ana said, looking back at him and Shelby. “Just another guy with a rifle on the road. Now, about that food...”
