by Sam Sisavath
“There are three Army airfields in Texas that I know of for certain, probably more I haven’t heard of or been to. That A-10 could have come from any number of places. It’s not like the Army is still around to keep them under lock and key. Frankly, I’m surprised this is the first time we’ve seen one of those things since Happy Times went bye-bye.”
“So why didn’t you and Will ever go looking for one? Or hell, maybe something more up-to-date, like an Apache?”
“Can you fly an Apache, kid?”
“Well, no…”
“Yeah, neither could we. There could be a fleet of AC-130s sitting around just waiting for us, and we wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing with them ’cause we don’t know our cockpits from our cockheads. Why do you think a commercial pilot makes more money than the guy who digs ditches?”
“Sorry, stupid question.”
“There are no stupid questions, just stupid people that ask them.”
Nate grunted before slowing down the F-150 and turning, taking them even further away from the highway. They were headed north now and soon would have to turn back west so they wouldn’t pass Starch by completely. The longer route, but the safer one, especially with that Warthog still up there, somewhere…
“Those people back there,” Nate was saying. “They didn’t deserve that. Even if they were collaborating with the ghouls.”
“No one deserves that,” Danny said.
“What are you going to tell Lara?”
“Hell if I know.”
“Are you going to tell her?”
Danny didn’t answer right away. Gaby found herself waiting anxiously for the answer, too.
“I don’t know,” Danny finally said. “I’ll decide when we contact them again, hopefully from the warmth and comfort of Harold Campbell’s facility this time.”
Gaby didn’t have the strength to join their conversation, and instead closed her eyes again and leaned tighter against the door. Winter was already here, but in Texas it was sometimes difficult to tell. Christmas was somewhere over the horizon, and with it another New Year’s Eve where no one would be celebrating, or singing Auld Lang Syne. Maybe the cold would help wash away the smell of smoke and blood that still clung to her hair and skin and every inch of her clothing. God, she needed a bath in the worst—
“Fuck, shit!” Danny shouted from the front seat.
Her eyes flew open and she sat up straight, was about to say something when she saw it—sunlight reflecting off the gray of its wings as it streaked toward them from the other side of the small feeder road.
“Out!” Danny shouted. “Get the fuck out and find cover now!”
She wasn’t even certain if the truck was still moving or if it had stopped when Danny threw open his passenger side door and leaped out. She reached for her own door handle with one hand, the other grabbing her rifle leaning against the seat. The door was opening and she was almost out when she remembered her pack and all the equipment—
“Gaby!” Danny’s voice, from the other side of the vehicle, booming in her ears. “Move your ass!”
She moved her ass, flinging the door wide open and throwing the rest of her out, one hand clutching her rifle.
Never lose your rifle. Never lose your rifle!
She stumbled and fell, saw the highway floor rushing up at a million miles an hour, and had to stick out both hands to stop her fall. She lost her grip on the M4 in the process and cursed herself (What would Will say?) when the road began trembling as if it was getting ready to split open.
She couldn’t help herself and turned her head and looked up, wondering idly if the Warthog streaking toward them right now was the same one that had laid waste to Morris’s town—
“Gaby!” Nate’s voice, piercing through her idiotic thoughts, as he snatched her up from the road with one strong hand.
Gaby fumbled with her footing, groping the air for her carbine lying just out of her reach on the road.
No, no, no! Never lose your rifle! Never lose your rifle!
Before she could break free from Nate’s grip to retrieve her weapon—he was much stronger than she remembered, his arms clutching to her in a viselike grip—they were both falling backward off the road and into a ditch.
She was flailing through empty air, trying to get her bearings, when she heard the terrible brooooooooooorrrrttttttttt of the A-10 as its primary weapon, the 30mm cannon, started spinning—
She landed in the bottom of the ditch, eating a mouthful of grass and dirt as she did so. Before she could spit out the earthly contents, the road behind her came apart and her bones shook violently. The Warthog swooped over them and she looked up, somehow seeing past the blades of grass covering her face.
The sight was almost magnificent—a gray metal eagle, its fixed wings spread wide and proud, flying much lower than any plane should. She expected to see bombs or missiles, but there weren’t any. Then she remembered: Of course it wasn’t carrying any spare armaments, because it had spent everything on the town. On those poor people.
“Four hundred…”
“Gaby, move it!” Nate shouted, pulling her up from the ditch floor.
She struggled to do just that, hating herself for reverting back to the eighteen-year-old girl she thought she had buried a year ago under Will and Danny’s tutelage. The refined Gaby, who had survived Dunbar and the farmhouse and the assault on Song Island, was nowhere to be found as she stumbled into the cold side of the ditch to keep herself upright.
Standing now, she could see the remains of the F-150 in front of her. It was a flaming wreck in the middle of the cratered road, its twisted metal frame little more than a barely recognizable shell of its former self.
No, no, she thought, because everything was in there. The gas cans, the supplies, the boxes of silver ammo…
Crack! as a piece of dirt and grass spit into the air less than a foot in front of her face as a bullet chopped into the ground.
Gaby looked up the road as sunlight gleamed off the hood of a black truck racing toward them. Erratic figures clung to the back, one of them aiming at her behind a rifle resting on the roof of the cab.
No, not one truck. Two.
Then the ground began shaking again as the Warthog swooped over them one more time, the wake of its passing nearly throwing her off her already wobbly feet. Nate, next to her, had to grab onto the ditch wall to keep upright. Her first instincts were to duck, as if that would save her from the plane’s weapons.
The A-10 hadn’t gone very far before it started turning. The sight of it, getting ready to come back for yet another pass, did something unexplainable to her. Gaby felt rising anger at the plane’s presence, the arrogance of the man—and she thought it had to be a man—inside the cockpit at this very moment.
She reached down and drew her Glock.
“Don’t!” Nate said, grabbing her wrist.
“What?” It was the only thing she could think of to say, just before he snatched the gun out of her hand and threw it up to the burning road.
Nate did the same thing to his sidearm before throwing both arms into the air, shouting, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” He looked over at her, saw the flash of anger on her face, and said, “Trust me, you gotta trust me.”
She did trust him, but she was also angry. Not just with him, but with everything that had happened. The town, the bodies, Morris, and that goddamn plane as it swooped by over them one more time.
But he was right. Nate was right. The Warthog. The two trucks. The men with assault rifles in the back of them.
Slowly, very slowly, the anger fizzled, and she turned around and mimicked Nate, raising both arms into the air just as the first truck—a dirt-caked GMC—stopped above them. The second vehicle—a slightly more beat-up white Silverado—squealed to a stop next to it. Men in tan military-style uniforms leaped out and swarmed them, rifles bouncing dangerously in their hands.
“Get up here!” one of the men shouted.
“Keep your hands up!” anoth
er one said, spittle flying out of his lips. “Keep them fucking up!”
Gaby and Nate climbed up, keeping their hands raised as high as they could make them. It was difficult to navigate the sloping side of the ditch without the use of their hands, but they both managed it anyway, though she had to use her elbows for leverage.
When she and Nate were back on the road, the men circled them, weapons pointed at their faces. They looked wild, almost out of control, and she realized at that moment just how close she had come to being killed if Nate hadn’t wrestled the gun from her.
She looked back at the men, searching for all the things she was used to seeing on collaborators, like Morris back in town. Instead, she saw bright red collars with a white circle in the middle, surrounded by sharp lines that were clearly supposed to represent sun rays. The emblem stood out against the pale drab of their fatigues, as did the all-white patch of the state of Texas over their right breasts with their names stenciled in the center.
Gaby’s eyes were pulled back to an AK-47 pointed in her face. The man behind it was in his late twenties, tall, and he stared back at her even as his forefinger moved dangerously (nervously?) back and forth against the trigger.
I don’t want to die. God, I don’t want to die.
She heard voices and looked across the road, past the flaming ball that used to be their F-150, and saw Danny, hands raised, being patted down by another soldier while the man’s comrades kept the ex-Ranger under their guns.
Danny must have sensed her, because he looked over and nodded, as if to say, “We’ll be okay.”
She wanted to believe him, even as one of the men grabbed and twisted her arms painfully behind her back. She let out a small grunt as someone else ran his hands over her ribcage, then turned her pockets inside out. Two others were doing the same to Nate next to her. Their captors couldn’t have been rougher if they tried.
Above them, the Warthog swooped low as it passed them by, the rush of icy cold air against her face a stark reminder of what had happened to the town behind them and the hell they had involuntarily walked right into.
We should have stayed out of Texas. God, why did we ever come back?
Will would never have let us come back here…
CHAPTER 6
LARA
“THIS IS BULLSHIT,” Gage said. “I did everything you asked. I even taught the Mexican how to drive the damn boat. I answered every question he and that midget had. I did everything you asked.”
The ‘midget’? Oh, he means Maddie.
She fully expected this reaction from Gage but wasn’t quite prepared for the emotion behind it. If she closed her eyes and didn’t know who he was, or what he had done, she could almost believe he was being unjustly treated. Almost.
But of course she knew exactly who the man was; more importantly, what he had been prepared to do at Song Island if Keo hadn’t boarded the Trident and taken it over. She knew all of that, and yet she couldn’t help but ask herself for the twentieth time since she stepped inside the room:
What would Will do?
The problem with that was she knew exactly what Will would have done, and none of it included locking Gage inside a cabin on the lower decks of the yacht away from the rest of the population. Will also wouldn’t have fed Gage twice a day and let him out to see the sun every other day. Will wouldn’t have done any of those things, because once Gage’s usefulness came to an end, so did the man’s reason for being.
But she wasn’t Will, and she would never be. One of these days she’d know once and for all if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
For now, it was just her inside a slightly too-dark room, trying not to gag on the musky stench that lingered over everything despite the open portside window. The cabin was big enough for two people, with a single cot in a corner and its own small toilet and sink. It probably had better amenities than Gage had given his past victims.
“You know that, right?” Gage was saying. “I did everything you asked of me. You wouldn’t have gotten off Song Island if it wasn’t for me. Who kept this boat running after that? Me, Lara. I did. Me.”
What exactly did he expect her to say? She knew what he had done, which was precisely the problem. She knew what he had done after Song Island, but she also knew, if not all the gory details, of what he had done before they ever met him.
Gage was not a good man. He was a killer, a thief, a liar, and an opportunist. Which was why she couldn’t allow him to mingle with the rest of the crew and wouldn’t let him go near the kids. That was also why he spent his days down here eating alone, watching the ocean from his window, and counting down the hours until either Bonnie or Benny came down to take him up for his hour-long alone time in the sunlight above deck.
“Where’s my reward?” Gage asked. “Where’s the gratitude? I deserve something, don’t I?”
“There is no reward,” she said.
“You promised me.”
“I didn’t promise you anything, except that you’d keep living. And you have.”
She wasn’t sure if that deflated him or if it just made him angrier. Gage stood across the room from her, watching her back with an intensity that probably should have intimidated her. He shouldn’t have wasted his time; she’d faced worse things in her life since The Purge, and she’d survived them all. Gage was, after all, only human.
His eyes eventually fell to her right hand, hanging loosely at her side, next to the holstered Glock. She didn’t have her rifle because she rarely carried it around these days. She should have been hesitant to stand this close to him, with only eight (nine?) feet of space separating them. They were near enough that she could smell the odor emanating from his skin. Bonnie had told her that Gage rarely bathed in the ocean when he was above deck, and they theorized that he was afraid they’d drive off and leave him floating in the ocean. She had to admit, she’d thought about doing just that—or something like it—on more than one occasion.
Bonnie’s heavy, booted footsteps echoed from the open door behind her. The ex-model was somewhere further up the corridor, close enough that Lara knew she could hear everything being said. They always had at least one person outside Gage’s door, just in case.
You taught me that, Will. ‘Just in case…’
“So, what now?” Gage asked. “You’re just going to throw me away? Like trash? I did everything you asked.”
The answer should have come easily. She had spent more than one sleepless night thinking about it, and each time the outcome was the same: She couldn’t trust Gage. The man standing in front of her might be wearing shabby and stained clothes, and smelling slightly of urine and a lot of sweat, but she could see it in his eyes. Gage had been thinking about this moment, too, imagining what he would do when it finally came. She wondered if he ever managed to convince himself things might work out in his favor, or if he always knew this was the inevitable conclusion.
He had to know, didn’t he? Maybe…
“Well?” he said, sounding annoyed by her silence. “What happens to me now, Lara?”
“Now you leave,” she said.
“Leave? Just like that?”
“I’m going to give you one of the inflatable boats and enough fuel to reach land, if you drive straight toward it. What you do when you get there is up to you.”
“A boat and some fuel?” He tilted his head slightly to one side, as if he could divine her true intentions if he found the right angle. “That’s it?”
“And some food and water to last a few days. After that, you’re on your own.”
“What about weapons?”
“No weapons.”
“You can’t do that to me.”
“This isn’t a negotiation. I’m telling you what’s going to happen, and you’re going to accept it because there is no Door B or Door C. There is just this door.” She glanced at her watch. “Your boat will be ready in one hour. Make the most of the time you have left and pack up.”
“I need guns!”
Sh
e shook her head, amazed at how calm she was. Her voice hadn’t risen noticeably and her body, along with the hand hovering beside the Glock, remained perfectly steady. She wouldn’t have thought any of this was possible as she walked the length of the boat and climbed down to the lower deck, then moved through the engine room and toward his cabin. She remembered the look on Bonnie’s face as she walked past the other woman, who could barely look her in the eyes. Like everyone, Bonnie had been dreading this moment, too.
But for whatever reason, Lara didn’t feel the sudden surge of adrenaline or pangs of guilt. There was just…calmness, because she knew exactly why she was doing this and why there were no other options. It just had to be done.
“No guns,” she said. “At least not from us. What you find out there is up to you. All I’m giving you is a boat, fuel, and some food and water.”
“You can’t do this…”
“It’s happening.”
“No…”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“Don’t I?” he said, peering at her, his head still cocked at an odd angle.
“No,” she said. “You can take what I give you and make the best of it, or you can take your chances.” She finally moved her hand, placing her palm over the butt of her sidearm. “It’s up to you.”
He didn’t say anything and simply glared at her for a few seconds. He didn’t move, though she thought he wanted to. Desperately wanted to.
But he didn’t move.
“I’ll send Bonnie back down here to get you in one hour,” she said. “Be ready.”
She turned to leave.
“Lara,” he said.
She ignored him and continued walking to the door. “One hour.”
“Lara!” he shouted, the sound of her name like a knife.
That time she stopped and turned back around just in time to see him lunging at her.
Oh, goddammit, she thought, realizing just how badly she had read the situation. She wasn’t prepared for this. Not when she thought it was all over.
Gage had lost a lot of weight since she first met him, and although he still limped noticeably on one leg despite the brace, it didn’t seem to slow him down one bit at the moment. She wasn’t ready for his speed or the bloodshot eyes coming right at her. He didn’t so much as cross the small space between them as he launched himself, his body like a living spring that had been coiled, waiting to explode in this one single moment.
