Mist City (After The Purge: AKA John Smith)

by Sam Sisavath

  Mist City: AKA John Smith

  Copyright © 2019 by Sam Sisavath

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Road to Babylon Media LLC

  www.roadtobabylon.com

  Edited by Jennifer Jensen, Wendy Chan & Shavonne Clarke

  Cover Art by Deranged Doctor Design

  Contents

  Books in the After the Purge Series

  Also by Sam Sisavath

  About Mist City

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Books in the After the Purge Series

  The Vendetta Trilogy:

  Requiem

  Tokens

  Remains

  AKA John Smith

  Mist City

  Also by Sam Sisavath

  The Purge of Babylon Post-Apocalyptic Series

  The Purge of Babylon: A Novel of Survival

  The Gates of Byzantium

  The Stones of Angkor

  The Walls of Lemuria Collection (Keo Prequel)

  The Fires of Atlantis

  The Ashes of Pompeii

  The Isles of Elysium

  The Spears of Laconia

  The Horns of Avalon

  The Bones of Valhalla

  Mason’s War (A Purge of Babylon Story)

  The Road to Babylon Post-Apocalyptic Series

  Glory Box

  Bombtrack

  Rooster

  Devil’s Haircut

  Black

  The Distance

  Hollow

  The Allie Krycek Vigilante Series

  Hunter/Prey

  Saint/Sinner

  Finders/Keepers

  The Red Sky Conspiracy Series

  Most Wanted

  The Devil You Know

  About Mist City

  A SHOOTER WITHOUT A TARGET.

  The man who calls himself John Smith once had a reason to fight: He was committed to a crusade he was willing to kill and die for. Trained by one of the best gunmen alive, Smith’s natural instincts with a handgun were honed to almost perfection.

  But after suffering a devastating loss, Smith has turned his back on everything he once believed in. Now, Smith wanders post-Purge America, crossing paths with other survivors—some good, some bad, and some…unknown—while dealing with the monsters that still lurk in the darkness, forever waiting for unsuspecting prey.

  Smith doesn’t go out of his way to find trouble, but no one who has gone up against him has done so more than once. One of these days, he might find something to believe in again, but until that time comes, cross John Smith at your own peril.

  Mist City is a post-apocalyptic Western and is the first in a series of planned storylines starring an old breed of hero made for a new kind of world.

  One

  John Smith didn’t cut a very impressive figure, especially in the dark. A hundred and fifty or so pounds soaking wet, he just barely came up to five-ten, and that was thanks to a pair of Merrell hiking shoes providing a modest boost. He wore faded denim jeans and a sweat-stained, long-sleeve plaid shirt that was partially unbuttoned to reveal an equally trail-worn white T-shirt underneath. Instead of a Stetson or another branded cowboy hat, he hid his eyes from the sun and elements with a black ball cap with a baby blue bill featuring a cartoon of an “angry” fishing hook choking up on a baseball bat. The “angry hook” wore a red ball cap of its own.

  Smith was an odd sight, but there was nothing strange about the Glock 19 pistol hanging off his hip. He wore it in a simple leather holster strapped to his body by a belt. The barrel jutted out at the bottom, and the setup rode slightly high on his waist. It didn’t look very comfortable.

  The three Bozos who had stepped into Smith’s camp, drawn by the campfire he had made an hour ago, saw all that, but what they really noticed was Smith’s demeanor. He wasn’t afraid. Not when he saw them walking toward him, appearing out of the darkening evening like half-dead specters. And he wasn’t even a little bit nervous when they fanned out, forming a half-assed semicircle on the other side of the flickering flames. It wasn’t the fire that had brought them but the two big rabbits being spit-roasted.

  Smith looked at them while remaining seated on a log covered with some dry twigs to spare him the wetness from this afternoon’s rain. It was raining a lot these days, and although Smith was used to inclement weather, he didn’t necessarily like it. But, he had to admit, it was better than the scorching heat of Texas. He wasn’t quite sure where he was at the moment, but it was not the Lone Star State. The cooler air was a dead giveaway.

  The three Bozos didn’t say anything right away, not that they really had to. Smith knew what they wanted, and they knew that he knew. There was no hiding it, no denying their purpose out here tonight. They didn’t just want his food; they wanted everything else he had, too. Maybe they even wanted more than that. If Smith were a woman, it certainly would have been the case.

  Smith focused on the one in the middle. He was bigger than the other two by a mile, a strong bull of a man with a neck almost as big as one of Smith’s thighs, wearing filthy cargo pants and an Army surplus jacket. He was clutching and unclutching a hunting rifle in front of his bulging chest. The high-powered weapon had a giant scope on top, as if King Bozo had bad eyesight and needed all the help he could get. He had a scar that appeared tailor-made just for him on the left side of his face, trailing down from his eye to one corner of his mouth. It painted a nasty picture that was only magnified by the grime on the rest of him, including the years-in-the-making mullet, the tail of which draped slightly over one shoulder like a furry squirrel.

  King Bozo’s partners in crime were less intimidating. The one on the left was skinny and short, with a busted nose that appeared grotesque against the flickering light of the campfire. He was holding a silver-chromed revolver in a gloved right fist. It looked way too heavy for a man of his stature and made his skinny frame appear lopsided. For all Smith knew, Busted Nose Bozo could have just been suffering from a lifetime of bad posture that his momma never got the chance to knock out of him.

  The one on the right of King Bozo was more average in every way. Somehow, the man had managed to pack on more pounds than he needed and was paunchy around the waistline. He was holding a pump-action shotgun and had a bandoleer only half-loaded with spare shell casings, forcing the sports jacket he was wearing—it was red and blue, and had something that looked like a strutting bird emblazoned across the front—to hug unnaturally against his robust frame. Paunchy Bozo was narrowing his eyes at Smith, maybe trying to figure out why their victim wasn’t the least bit worried.

  Because Smith wasn’t worried.

  He wasn’t even afraid.

  Not even a l
ittle bit.

  “We want—” King Bozo said.

  Or he started to say, before Smith shot him through the mouth.

  The 9mm round punched through the front of King Bozo’s forehead and exploded in a ghastly shower of brains and bone out the other side.

  Smith had taken out his pistol and fired in less time than it took to even begin the process of taking a breath. And he hadn’t bothered to lift the Glock and extend his arm to aim, either. He had simply drawn and fired from the hip.

  The gunshot echoed, invading the noise of crackling kindling.

  King Bozo slumped forward, landing against the ground on his face, pinning the big rifle underneath his massive weight. His two partners looked over at his body, as if unable to fully comprehend what had just happened.

  Smith had expected that. Men in gangs were always shocked when the alpha bit the bullet. In this case, literally. So he knew he had plenty of time to take care of the others. Not that he needed the extra five or so seconds they handed to him on a silver platter. He could have shot them all, one after another, if he’d wanted to. Smith’s ability to speed pull a trigger with uncanny accuracy could only be bested by one man, and that man was long dead.

  Paunchy Bozo snapped out of it first, just as Smith had predicted. He looked way smarter than Busted Nose Bozo, who was still staring, mouth agape, down at King Bozo’s lifeless body next to the fire.

  Smith turned the Glock slightly, without bothering to do the same with his body, and shot Paunchy Bozo in the throat while the man was trying to lift his shotgun. The would-be raider dropped his weapon and grabbed at his neck as blood spurted out of a big hole about an inch from the side. He began staggering around like a drunk, gagging loudly, while blood leaked out between his fingers.

  Busted Nose Bozo finally came to his senses and began to lift the shiny revolver in his right hand. He started to, anyway, but never finished. He paused halfway while looking across the dancing flames at Smith.

  Smith stared back at him.

  One second became two, then five.

  Then ten…

  “You should probably run,” Smith said.

  Busted Nose Bozo threw the gun down, turned, and fled into the darkness.

  Smith looked over at Paunchy Bozo as the man gave up trying to stem the blood-red tide and fell to his knees. He collapsed a few seconds later and lay still in a pool of his own blood, very close to King Bozo, as if he had been attempting to reach the other dead man before finally succumbing.

  Smith turned his attention to where he’d last seen Busted Nose Bozo. The man had already disappeared into the night, and although Smith couldn’t see the man anymore, he could still hear him just fine against the silence of the countryside. Busted Nose Bozo was breathing hard, and it was easy to pick up the thump-thump-thump of his heavy boots against the tough, hard dirt ground.

  Smith stood up, the Glock still held at waist level, and turned his body slightly.

  Bang!

  He was rewarded with a final thump from the blackness, well beyond the light of the campfire.

  Smith holstered his sidearm and sat back down.

  The rabbits were ready to eat, and damn if they didn’t both smell great.

  Two

  Mist City wasn’t actually called Mist City. It had a real name, with a real sign, and had a real annotation on a map. Smith hadn’t taken the time to confirm or deny those theories, though. He didn’t care.

  A city was a city, was a city.

  And this was just another city. One that used to have a real population, once upon a time, but that was before the monsters crawled out of the shadows. That seemed so long ago now.

  And at the same time, just yesterday.

  He dubbed it Mist City because of all the mist that hung over it when he had first spotted the place from the flat country highway he’d been walking on. Smith usually avoided cities, but it’d been at least three weeks since he’d last scavenged for supplies, and the cities always had their fill of leftovers even many years after The Purge. The smaller towns were safer, of course, but also yielded the least. In terms of risk-to-reward ratio, the cities were preferable if he had to waste his time.

  If he had to guess, Smith was pretty sure he was in some part of Kansas. He knew for a fact he’d walked straight across Oklahoma without looking back. There wasn’t much in the Sooner State to occupy his time, and Kansas, farther north, hadn’t looked any more promising.

  Smith guessed Kansas because of the Jayhawks jacket that King Bozo had worn last night, with the blue and red cartoon bird. As with Mist City’s real name, all it would have taken was a map or noticing one of the many, many elements-caked signs for Smith to get clarity on his bearings.

  If, that was, he cared.

  Which he didn’t.

  Just like a city was a city, was a city, a state was a state, was a state.

  All Smith knew was that he wasn’t in Texas anymore. There was too much history down south. Too much pain and way too many bad memories. The farther he could leave it behind, the better he would be.

  Or, at least, that was what he kept telling himself, and had been for almost a year now. Time had yet to prove him right.

  But that was okay. He had all the time in the world. He could wait it out.

  The three Bozos from last night had wanted everything Smith had, but he hadn’t needed anything they possessed. Their weapons were useless to him—they didn’t even clean them, from what he could tell. The revolver, though shiny-looking enough last night, was rusted and dirty up close—and they had nothing on them worth salvaging. He’d located their stash next to a pair of bushes about a hundred meters or so from his campfire, but it, too, was filled with useless things: half-empty bottles of whiskey, half-eaten candy bars that had mostly spoiled or gone very stale, and, of all things, porn magazines.

  Killing the three Bozos had been easy for Smith. He was used to taking lives, used to how the world worked after The Purge. He’d seen bad people do extremely bad things up close, and he’d gone face-to-face with monsters—the unnatural and natural varieties. These days, Smith had to face more of the latter than the former.

  Killing was easy. As easy as pulling a trigger.

  That went for the ghouls that were still out there, too. Smith kept his Glock loaded with silver-tipped rounds just for that. The blade of the knife on his left hip was similarly layered with the precious metal. Silver had become even more valuable than gold or jewels these days. Unlike Smith, the three Bozos hadn’t been carrying the right kind of ammunition with them. That, again, just proved what bozos they were, and Smith marveled at how they had managed to survive this long while being so ill-prepared. But, as with most things these days, they had finally run their course.

  Darwinism, as Smith’s mentor liked to say.

  He stopped thinking about the three from last night as he walked along a raised highway into Mist City. There was no point thinking about dead people, even those he cared about, which were far and few. Once you were gone, you were gone. Smith had learned that the hard way when The Purge devastated the planet almost seven years ago. Or was it eight years ago now since the world went to hell in a handbasket? No, he was pretty sure it was seven years, not that he kept a calendar or anything. Sometimes even the seasons seemed to pass in a blur.

  A season was a season, was a season…

  He walked underneath large green billboard signs with names and numbers that weren’t familiar and that he didn’t care to commit to memory. He wouldn’t be in Mist City long enough to bother. There were plenty of vehicles on the highway, but the parallel feeder roads along both sides were mostly clear. Moving waves of mist revealed sedans and trucks and vans and semis, populating the world around him as he approached them one by one like some kind of impromptu magic act.

  It was eerie how thick the mist was, but calming at the same time.

  The highway was eight lanes deep, not counting the center lanes and shoulders, divided by a giant three-foot-high concrete wa
ll. There were four lanes on the northbound side that Smith was currently on and four more on the southbound. Like most cities, the direction out of town was more congested than the one in as civilians sought escape during that miserable night where everything changed.

  No one had bothered to clear out Mist City’s lanes in the years since The Purge. That in itself wasn’t too unusual. Smith had gone through plenty of places, even smaller towns, where things were still seemingly frozen in time, a daily reminder of when the universe stopped making sense and people realized monsters were real after all. Usually, though, there had been some activity, an attempt to drive through the sea of aluminum and metal. Mist City had been “spared” that.

  He passed clusters of buildings in strip malls alongside the highway and spent the murky morning peering into the army of parked vehicles. Smith had enough supplies in the tactical backpack he’d been carrying with him since Texas to last for another week or so, but it was never a bad idea to add to it. Like bullets, there was no such thing as “too much” food and necessities. People who thought that way were like the three Bozos that had tried to take what Smith had last night.

  Unfortunately, the cars he wasted time searching didn’t produce anything worth taking. He found plenty of very old and faded blood on upholsteries as well as useless clothing, jewelry, and other nonessentials. The scene around him wasn’t anything new—as if the drivers and their passengers had simply stopped their vehicles, gotten out, and disappeared into the mist. These days, a carpet of abandoned metal didn’t even register as odd. It would have been odd not to see them.