by Sam Sisavath
The revving of engines fixed that, though, and she sucked in a final big breath and started running again. She was comforted by the knowledge that the truck wouldn’t be able to follow her straight into the woods. At least, not without a proper trail to drive on, which was something she couldn’t see immediately around her.
The men on foot, on the other hand, were another story.
The snap! snap! of twigs behind her. Dammit. They were already in the woods. She had been hoping for a little more of a head start…
Gaby clenched her teeth and didn’t stop running.
She summoned whatever strength she had left in reserve and pushed harder and faster, even as the woods grew darker around her as she got deeper…
Three
They were making a lot of noise and didn’t seem concerned about their heavy footsteps or how many branches they broke, or the number of twigs they snapped as they made their way farther into the woods. On more than one occasion, she eavesdropped on a back and forth conversation about what they were going to eat later that night.
These guys would never survive the island’s boot camp.
Gaby lay on the ground, in the same spot where she had settled ten or so minutes earlier, waiting for them to finally catch up to her. The dirt was slightly damp from the heavy tree canopies that hindered sunlight but allowed in just enough to keep other things from calling this area home. Nightfall was still a long way off, so she put those concerns into a closet and concentrated on the here and now.
And right here and right now, she was surrounded by men with guns.
She hadn’t gotten a very good look at all of Redman’s men as they passed her by in pairs, but there were at least six that she was sure of. More that she wasn’t. It wouldn’t have taken much in terms of manpower to overwhelm Kohl’s Port: the seaside town only had eighty residents, and most of them—or, at least, the ones Gaby had met as she walked through the place—were unarmed. Of those eighty people, the majority were women and children—about two for every grown male adult.
Those were bad numbers for repelling an attack. Women and children weren’t ideal for fighting. She didn’t have any problems accepting that conclusion, even though she had known plenty of tough women who could hold their own. She was one of them; Kylie had been another.
New voices, coming toward her.
She tightened her fingers around the pistol grip of Geoff’s M4 and slid the forefinger of her right hand into the trigger guard, rubbing it against the trigger. Gaby slowed down her breathing enough that she could hear every word and every sound they made as they neared her.
The same heavy footsteps, as if they had no cares in the world, getting closer, before one of them said, “What are we looking for, anyway?”
“A woman,” a second voice said.
Both men. Both older sounding.
“Just one woman?” the first said.
“That’s what he said.”
“Just one woman?” the first one said again.
His partner chuckled. “You want me to say it a third time?”
“Go for it.”
“A woman.”
“Waste of time.”
“Preaching to the choir, chum.”
“He’s an idiot.”
“You tell him that.”
“I will.”
“When?”
“When the time’s right.”
“And when would that be?”
“Don’t rush me.”
The second one laughed. “Yeah, right.”
The crunch-crunch of boots as they passed barely five feet from the thick brush she was hidden behind. Sweat and thick body odor stung her nostrils. She wrinkled her nose but kept the rest of her body still. Gaby occupied her mind in the next minute or so it took them to walk out of earshot—and carry their stink with them—by taking inventory of her supplies for the fifth time since she entered the woods.
She had the radio, but she hadn’t attempted to make contact with base yet. Besides the fact that it probably wouldn’t have worked—she was well beyond the two-way’s range—she hadn’t wanted to make too much noise while (a lot of) men with guns were hunting her. Any sound in this place echoed, as evidenced by the fact she could hear Redman’s people moving around well before they actually reached her.
Weapons-wise, she was down to the SIG and Geoff’s M4. The carbine was light on ammo, its magazine almost entirely drained. She knew that as soon as she grabbed it off the street and felt its weight, and it was why she had raided the two dead men before fleeing. Her instincts had been to ditch Geoff’s carbine in favor of the still-full raider’s AR, but she hadn’t.
Stupid. You let your feelings for Geoff get the better of you. Now you’re paying the price.
She’d scored two spares off the dead men, but now that she had swapped Geoff’s almost-empty mag with a fresh one, that left her with one extra and the three rounds she’d salvaged from Geoff’s.
Sixty-three bullets, not counting the pistol’s supply.
It wasn’t much, and she regretted coming to Kohl’s Port with so little, but this was a diplomatic mission as much as it was intel gathering, and they hadn’t wanted to spook the townspeople. It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. Not even close.
“Fucking Redman,” the first one was saying. They were almost out of earshot now, but not quite.
“Yeah, fucking Redman,” the second one chuckled.
So I guess Redman’s his real name after all.
She didn’t know why she was so surprised by that, but she was.
Their footsteps gradually faded, but not their odor. She didn’t sit up until she couldn’t smell them anymore, and took a few seconds to get the blood flowing through all her extremities—
The brap-brap-brap of machine gun fire made her almost dive back to the ground. Almost. She didn’t, because no one was firing at her; in fact, no one was firing anywhere close to her.
The gunfire came from beyond the woods, back in the direction of Kohl’s Port.
She remained kneeling next to the cover of the brush and listened to the brap-brap-brap as it was joined by small arms fire, their pop-pop-pop insignificant against the much louder and intense roar of the machine gun.
And then, just like that, everything stopped.
Silence again, just before heavy footsteps approached her from behind.
She calmly lay down as two large figures raced past her. By their smell, she guessed it was the same pair from earlier. She jumped back up into a crouch just in time to see the two men vanishing, heading back toward town.
What just happened?
She replayed the events over in her mind: Machine gun fire, followed by small arms. Were they firing at each other? Had they found someone else in Kohl’s Port to engage? Were there survivors after all?
She wasn’t going to find out anything by lying around in these woods forever. Not that she could, anyway. Sooner or later it was going to get dark, and human threats would be the least of her worries…
Gaby unclipped the radio from her hip. She had switched the channel back to its original setting earlier, hoping to eavesdrop on Redman’s people. She turned the radio back on now, made sure the sound was on low, and held it up to her ears to listen.
Nothing. No back and forth between Redman or his people.
She glanced in the direction that would take her back to Kohl’s Port. That was where all the answers were, and if she wanted information, she’d have to go back there. But that was a hell of a risky move, and she shivered at the idea of voluntarily going back to face one of those two technicals. Assuming two was all Redman had at his disposal.
Gaby turned in the other direction—away from the seaside town—and began walking.
She had to tell Lara and Danny what had happened. Report in. Before she could (avenge) do anything about her team, the others had to know what had gone down, because there was a very good chance it had everything to do with why she was in Texas again in the first place.
>
“Don’t get in trouble,” Danny had said before she left. “Get in, and get out. And if you do get into trouble, try not to make it worse.”
Try not to make it worse. Right.
She smelled it from twenty meters away, and it only got stronger as she got closer.
Sonofabitch must have had asparagus for breakfast. A lot of asparagus.
His back was turned to her when she stepped around the tree. He was too busy shaking off the last few drops to notice when she creeped up behind him and placed the barrel of the P226 against the nape of his neck.
His entire body went rigid, and from her position she couldn’t tell if he’d already managed to stuff himself back into his pants or was still holding it in his hands. When she leaned slightly around him to get a look, she saw it was the latter.
Gaby took a quick step sideways to get away from the flowing puddle of urine. He was taller than her five-seven by a good four or five inches, which meant she had to hold the pistol at a slightly odd angle to get the muzzle where she wanted it. She knew from personal experience there was nothing in the world like the knowledge there was a gun pressed against the back of your neck to make you evaluate everything you thought you knew about life.
“Make a sound, and I blow a hole through your neck,” Gaby said.
He might have swallowed and remained perfectly still, his penis still in his hands.
“What were you, raised in a barn?” Gaby said. “Put the snake away.”
He quickly shoved it back into his pants and pulled up the zipper. While he was doing that, she grabbed his pistol out of its hip holster before taking a step slightly to one side and snatched the AR he had leaned against a nearby tree.
When he felt the gun leave his neck, the man spun around and gave her a good look at him for the first time. (Or, at least, the parts of him that didn’t make her want to gag.) Late thirties, with an unseemly goatee that ended in an almost Fu Manchu pyramid under his chin. Like the other members of Redman’s group, there was a circled M on the front and back of his black assault vest.
Where the hell have I seen that before…?
His eyes—dark brown—snapped from her face to the gun in her hand before going back to her face. She could almost see the gears turning in his head as he played the odds, and she had absolutely no trouble figuring out what he was thinking at this very moment: “Will she shoot me if I go for the gun? Is she capable of it? Is she a killer?”
She cocked back the hammer of the SIG, and his eyes immediately snapped to the gun. “Yes,” she said.
“Huh?” he said.
“Yes, I will shoot you. Or didn’t you hear about the dead ones in town?”
His Adam’s apple went up and down. “You’re her.”
“I’m her,” she nodded. She saw the flash of fear in his eyes and knew she had his attention. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“Huh?”
“Turn around. And say ‘huh’ one more time, and I’ll shoot you purely out of spite.”
He might have been on the verge of saying Huh again but caught himself in time and turned around with all the grace of a polar bear learning ballet. Gaby tossed his rifle into a nearby bush and made sure it was completely hidden before pushing his sidearm—a Glock—into the front of her waist. The handgun wasn’t nearly as heavy as the AR and wouldn’t be too much of a burden if she needed to run again.
She moved forward, careful to step around the puddle of urine, and pushed the muzzle of her gun against the small of the man’s back to urge him forward.
He started walking. “Where we going?”
“Just walk. I’ll tell you when you can stop. Try to run, and I’ll put a round through your back. Make sure you never walk again. Understand?”
“Yeah.”
Gaby followed behind him, keeping just enough of a safe distance that he couldn’t try something stupid, like spin on her to get at the gun, but still close enough that she wouldn’t have any trouble putting a bullet into his spine like she had promised. It wouldn’t be much of a shot at this distance. Of course, it wasn’t a question of could she make the shot, and more of would she if he did run off. There was a difference between killing someone in self-defense, like back in town, and shooting someone for trying to flee. A big difference.
Don’t make me find out. Don’t you fucking make me find out.
She glanced behind her every ten steps or so while keeping her ears open for sounds of Redman’s other men. Gaby and her prisoner were moving away from Kohl’s Port, but there could be plenty more lollygaggers like this one still in front of them.
“What’s your name?” Gaby asked.
“Duncan Bollman,” the man said.
She smiled. Most people didn’t use to bother with last names after The Purge, but times were changing. Again. She was encountering more survivors since The Battle of Houston who had elected to call themselves by their full names. Some had even made up new surnames to go along with a new life, using the opportunity to reinvent themselves.
“What’s yours?” Bollman asked.
“Don’t you worry about my name.”
“Jodie, wasn’t it?” the man said anyway.
“Which part of ‘Don’t you worry about my name’ didn’t you understand, Duncan Bollman?”
The man shrugged—and almost ran into a tree—but managed to stop and clumsily step around it first.
“Careful there, wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself,” Gaby said.
“Can’t help it. I’ve never been held at gunpoint before,” Bollman said.
“Sucks, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, it does.”
Gaby checked behind her again, just to be sure. There was still nothing back there but trees and green. A lot of green.
She turned back to Bollman. “How many of you are out there, Duncan Bollman?”
He didn’t answer, and because she couldn’t see his face, Gaby couldn’t be sure if he hadn’t because he was thinking about the answer, or if it was something else entirely.
Don’t you run on me and make me shoot you. Don’t you fucking run…
“I asked you a question,” Gaby said, putting just enough of an edge into her voice to make him reconsider if he really were thinking about something else other than answering her question.
She hoped, anyway.
“Twenty-five,” Bollman finally said.
“Including the ones that died in the assault?”
“Um…” He paused for a moment, and this time she was sure he was thinking about the answer. “Eighteen. Then it’s just eighteen.”
“Just” eighteen?
She was hoping there’d be less, but eighteen…
She was suddenly very glad she had turned in the other direction instead of heading back into town. Besides the eighteen men waiting for her (or seventeen, if Bollman was counting himself), she wouldn’t have crossed paths with Bollman and would have missed out on this opportunity for answers.
“Where were you going?” Gaby asked.
“Huh?” Bollman said.
“When I found you. Where were you going?”
“Back to town.”
“You were recalled? By Redman?”
“Yeah.”
“What took you so long?”
Bollman shrugged. “I was looking for berries.”
“Berries?”
“They were, uh, tasty.”
Looks like you don’t quite have the control over your men that you might think, Redman. I’ll be sure to bring that up when we talk next time.
“Why Kohl’s Port?” Gaby asked.
“Why?” Bollman repeated.
“Yeah. Why did you attack Kohl’s Port?”
Bollman seemed stumped by the question, but she allowed him five, then a full ten seconds to think about it. He finally said, “Those were the orders. I’m just following orders.”
I wonder how many war criminals have used that defense over the years.
“Whose orders?” she asked instea
d.
“Buck, I guess.”
“Buck? Who is Buck?”
“The guy who calls the shots.”
“Buck what?”
“Huh?”
“What did I tell you?”
“I’m sorry! It’s hard to think with a gun pointed at me.”
“Don’t let it happen again.”
“Okay, okay…”
“Does Buck have a last name?”
“Not that I know of. Well, I guess he does, but I don’t know what it is. He’s always just been Buck.”
“I thought Redman was in charge.”
“Redman’s one of Buck’s lieutenants, that’s all. He just thinks he’s more.” Bollman might have even smirked when he added, “He can be a little delusional, but that’s not hard to be when you spend so much time sniffing Buck’s jockstraps.”
Your men’s lack of respect for you would be hilarious if they weren’t also civilian-butchering assholes, Redman. I’ll be sure to bring that up, too.
“By the way, where are we going?” Bollman asked.
“Like I told you the first time when you asked, keep walking until I tell you to stop.”
“You don’t know, do you?”
“Keep walking.”
“You don’t know,” he said again.
Gaby gritted her teeth but kept her temper in check. “Tell me about the shooting.”
“What shooting?”
“Earlier. I heard shooting coming from town. What were they shooting at?”
Bollman didn’t answer.
Gaby took a step toward him. “I said, what were they shooting—”
She hadn’t gotten all of shooting out before Bollman spun around.
Oh, goddammit!
He was a lot more agile than she gave him credit for, but even so, the man had failed to realize how much safe distance she’d given herself even after taking the extra step toward him. She saw the look of surprise on his face when he found that out, followed by the sudden flash of indecision in his eyes when the reality of his failed attempt landed home.
“Don’t,” she said, but it was too late.
