Because he did owe the Old Man too much to die down here.
Too much to just give up now.
Too much.
Too much!
Ana was there to help him up the final rung. He didn’t so much as step off the ladder as he rolled over and onto his back, and spent the next ten seconds or so trying to regain his breath, to keep his pounding heartbeat from bursting through his chest like some space parasite in one of those movies the Old Man once told him about.
After a while, he finally noticed that he was sitting in dirt and that there were heavy shoe prints all around him, some fresher than others. It didn’t take very long for Wash to put two and two together—he, Ana, and Marla weren’t the basement’s first guests. There had been others before them. Others who were ambushed on the road, just like he and Ana had been. How many more? And where were they now?
What the hell is this place?
“You okay?” Ana was asking him. “Wash? Are you okay? Wash, answer me.” She was crouched on one knee next to him, holding him up with both hands. “Wash? Wash!”
He nodded and attempted to slow down his breathing so he wasn’t hyperventilating. It didn’t help with the pain, but it got him over the hump. “I feel like I’m drowning.”
He took a second to glance down at his waist and didn’t like what he saw. Now that he had lights to see with, he couldn’t ignore all the splatters of dry blood soaked into his shirt and pants. God, there was a lot of blood. How was he even still alive?
“Well, suck it up, buttercup,” Ana said. “Here, this will help.”
He looked over at her, thinking, Buttercup? But he forgot all about the insult when he saw what she was holding out toward him.
It was a 1911 model semiautomatic pistol. Black all over, except for the brown walnut grip. There was heft to it when Wash took the gun, which told him the magazine was either fully loaded or close enough.
“Can you shoot?” she asked.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“I mean, really shoot?”
He nodded again. “Yeah, I can.”
“Good, because I can’t hit the broad side of a barn with those things.”
For the first time since he climbed up from the basement, Wash got a good look at Ana.
Loose strands of hair fanned around her small face, the red against her pale skin a stark contrast against the soft lights. Her face was still flushed and there were drying smears (Blood. That’s blood.) across both her cheeks and lower jaw. The part of her neck that he could see had dark swaths of purple across them, almost in the shape of…hands? When she’d reached over to help him up, he had also glimpsed drying red spots over both hands and their fingers.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded and pursed her lips. “I’ll be better when we leave this place far behind us.”
Ana helped him up, but Wash was glad his back was mostly turned to her so she couldn’t see the world of hurt on his face as he staggered onto wobbly feet. He concentrated on his grip on the gun to keep his mind off the pain. He was glad to have the pistol. Hell, he was glad to have any weapon after coming up with goose eggs earlier.
Now that he was (barely, again) on his feet, Wash looked around him. They were in some kind of back room lit by a couple of soft white lightbulbs—one on the ceiling and one next to a door in front of them. The place was barren and devoid of decorations, as if its entire reason for existing was to provide access to the basement below.
Basement? That’s a prison.
“Come on, we’re not safe yet,” Ana said. She slipped one arm around him—high up and above his bandages—before taking the first tentative step toward the door. “Put your other arm around me.”
Wash obeyed but kept his right hand, with the gun, free. Except for the 1911 she’d given him, Ana didn’t look like she’d found any other weapons.
“What happened?” Wash asked.
“Let’s talk about that later.”
“Ana, what happened?”
“Later,” she said, and the look on her face told him she wasn’t going to change her mind anytime soon.
He sighed. “Where’s Marla?”
“She’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“I made sure she got out before I came back for you.”
“She’s out there? Outside? Alone?”
“Don’t worry about her. She’s got a gun.”
“The gunshots I heard…”
Ana nodded. “That was her.”
“Who was she shooting at?” was his next question, but he never got it out because the door in front of them snapped open first and a large man with a thick, bushy gray beard filled out the doorframe.
He was massive—at least six-five, and it might have been the pain Wash was trying to battle through, but he swore the guy was at least as wide as a mountain. He was wearing some kind of long johns and a nightshirt, which would have made Wash chuckle if it weren’t for the weapon in his hands.
Ana’s entire body went suddenly stiff next to Wash, and he thought she was about to say something—maybe shout out a warning—but if she were able to get it out, it would have been lost in the—
Bang-bang-bang! as the Model 1911 bucked in Wash’s hand as he squeezed the trigger three times as fast as he could, which was pretty damn fast. He’d been shooting since he was seventeen, and even with two bullet holes in him it was all about instinct.
“Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast,” was one of the first things the Old Man said to him when they began his training.
Three rounds should have been enough to take down the mountain man, but they weren’t. Instead, the massive figure seemed to stumble as he leaned against one side of the doorframe, and he was still trying to lift the weapon in his hands. It looked like a rifle and had a rifle buttstock, but when the man aimed it at Wash, he got an eyeful of two barrels instead of one. It was a shotgun with two barrels side by side.
“Wash!” Ana shouted.
She didn’t have to, because Wash had already decided to shoot the man again, putting three more rounds into his chest as more words of wisdom from the Old Man ran through his head: “Rules to live by when it comes to gunfights, kid, especially if you want to keep living: Keep shooting until they stop moving.”
That did it, and the man finally lowered his double-barreled shotgun before slowly sliding down to the floor, his large bulk taking up almost all of the open door space.
Wash stared at the dead man along with Ana, neither one of them saying anything for a moment.
Five seconds…
Ten…
“Jesus, I didn’t think he was ever going to go down,” Ana finally said, before she started them moving toward the door again.
“Grab it,” Wash said.
“What?”
“The shotgun.”
“That’s a shotgun?”
“Looks like a shotgun.”
“Let me get you outside first. I don’t want you to fall when I let go.”
“Good idea. I don’t want to fall, either.”
Ana helped him get by the dead man. He looked to be in his fifties, dark eyes staring at Wash as they stepped over his splayed legs. The man had bled very little for someone who had been shot six times, and if not for the blank expression on his face, Wash might think he was just really good at holding his breath and not blinking.
They made it onto the other side, a long hallway with concrete floors and walls constructed from heavy metal sheets. Wash leaned back against the cold steel so he wouldn’t fall down and flexed his grip on the 1911 again. The gun felt lighter than before, which wasn’t good. He’d wasted six shots shooting one man, which left him with…how many? He couldn’t tell and didn’t trust himself to take out the magazine and count bullets right now.
“God, it weighs a ton,” Ana said as she stepped back out through the door with the shotgun. She was going to hand it over to him but quickly realized he wasn’t going to be able to carry it, and instead slung it over her left shoul
der. “I’ll hold onto it.”
“Now what?” he asked.
She slipped her arm around him again. “There should be only one of them left, but I don’t know where he is. They might have split up”—She glanced briefly back at the mountain man—“and one went after Marla.”
“And if he didn’t?”
“Then I guess you should shoot him, too, if he pops up.”
Wash grinned and nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
Eight
“Are you sure this is a warehouse?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t look like a warehouse.”
“What does a warehouse look like?”
“More…warehouse-y.”
“That’s not very specific, Wash.” Ana shrugged. “I guess they had a lot of time on their hands since they took the place over. I’d bet that underground dungeon wasn’t in the original floor plans.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t take that bet,” Wash said.
Wash concentrated on what was ahead instead of what was behind them. His body ached, and every step he took sent slashes of pain through every one of his limbs. He had to keep clutching and unclutching the pistol to make sure he didn’t drop it, thankful for the distraction from his physical misery. Ana had the mountain man’s double-barreled shotgun hanging off one shoulder, but if they ran into trouble, it was up to him. Her every focus at the moment was keeping him upright and the two of them moving forward.
Wash tried to think what the Old Man would say if he were here to see the state Wash had found himself in. He imagined a chuckle and a joke, followed by a word of warning. The Old Man was not the most trusting type, and that paranoia had rubbed off on Wash to some extent. It was only normal, given how much time they spent alongside one another.
Except Wash didn’t have any choice right now but to trust Ana, because without her he wouldn’t have made it out of the basement, much less survived the road ambush. And he was sure the mountain men would have caught him out there by himself. These assholes had a well-oiled operation from years of trial and error. Even if his instincts kicked in and he sniffed them out, would he have survived against four heavily armed men that had gotten the drop on him?
I’m good, but I’m not that good.
He sneaked a peek over at Ana, gritting her teeth as she shouldered him with one arm. She looked even smaller pressed up against his body, but there was nothing weak about her fortitude. He could see that in her eyes—that refusal to give in despite how much she was struggling to keep them both upright.
Ana glanced over and caught him staring. Her smile temporarily replaced the strain on her face. “Eyes forward, buddy. There’s at least one more still out there. Maybe even two.”
“Two?”
“Maybe two. I’m not sure. It depends on what one of them did.”
“Okay, so maybe two, but definitely one?”
“Yes. Maybe two, but definitely one more. So be ready for anything.”
“Understood.”
“And by that, I mean shoot anything that isn’t Marla.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured you meant, Ana.”
“Just wanted to make sure, that’s all.”
They hadn’t been walking for very long—maybe only a few minutes, maybe not even that—and the corridor was about to come to an end. There was a door on the other end; it was metal like the rest of the building, with the only exception being the basement where he had been held.
“You said Marla escaped?” Wash asked.
Ana nodded. “She’s somewhere out there. The faster we get out of here, the faster we can go looking for her.”
“Those gunshots…”
“What about them?”
“They were loud.”
“And?”
“It’s quiet out there, Ana. Loud sounds attract attention, remember?”
It didn’t take her very long to grasp what he was trying to say. “Shit. I forgot about that.”
Most people do, he thought, thinking about all the townspeople he’d worked for over the years. Men and women who should have known better but still somehow let their guards down enough to need his help. Sometimes there were just one or two ghouls in the area, feeding on the rare livestock that wandered outside at night, and sometimes it was more serious. Wash always hated it when kids were involved.
“She wouldn’t have fired those shots if she didn’t have to,” Ana said. “Marla’s not a dummy. She knows what’s out there, too. Everyone does.”
But not everyone remembers in the heat of the moment, he thought, but said, “You said there could be one or two more out there. That means you’re sure there’s only four of them?”
“I think so.”
“So you’re not sure?”
Ana shook her head and thought about it for a moment. Then, “I didn’t see anyone else other than the four that ambushed us on the road.”
“This is after they brought us here?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s no women? Just men?”
“Just men, like the one you shot.”
“Like him how?”
“Big. Shaggy beards. They looked like mountain men.”
Wash nodded and smiled. He’d thought mountain man, too, when he first saw the big one he’d shot earlier.
He glanced back over his shoulder. “If they’re all like him, I’m going to need more bullets.”
“I have the shotgun,” Ana said. “How do you shoot this thing, anyway?”
Wash squinted at the double-barreled weapon slung over her shoulder. It looked just as odd now as it had the first time he saw it, and he wouldn’t be surprised if it was something the dead man had cooked up himself. It looked somewhat homemade. There were no hammers that Wash could see, and he could only make out one trigger. That meant every shot either unleashed both barrels at once, or one at a time. He cringed at the possible recoil, but maybe that was why there was such a generous buttstock—to absorb the kick. The weapon didn’t have optics mounted on it, even though it did have a rail system on top. Then again, a scope was probably overkill when you could shoot two barrels at once, quickly reload, and fire again. There was a grip attached underneath the forend for easier reloading and, he guessed, stability when firing both barrels.
“Is it heavy?” he asked.
“Like carrying ten logs.” Ana grunted.
“Can you use it?”
She gave it a quick glance. “I guess I’m going to have to.”
“It looks pretty basic. Pull the trigger, and it fires either both barrels at once or one at a time.”
“Which one is it?”
“I don’t know; I’ve never seen that model before. Either way, just keep it aimed at your target until it stops shooting.”
“And how long would I need to do that? Keep it aimed?”
“Shouldn’t be more than a second.”
“‘Shouldn’t be?’”
He shrugged. “Usually about one second. Use the pistol grip under the barrel to rack it after the shot.”
“‘Rack it?’”
“Reload a fresh round. Pull the pistol grip back as hard as you can, hear the sound of it reloading, then let it snap back forward.”
“Okay…”
“You’ve never used a pump-action shotgun before?”
“I have. I just never bothered to learn the lingo.” She sighed. “I don’t like guns.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t. Don’t ask me to explain.”
He couldn’t help but chuckle. “After everything that’s happened? The Purge? The last five years?”
“Is that weird?”
“Kinda, yeah.”
“I guess I’m a little weird.”
“I guess so,” Wash said when they finally reached the end of the hallway. “Hold on. Let me see if I can hear anything.”
She pulled her arm out from around him. Wash quickly grabbed the wall to keep himself upright, then pushed his ear against t
he cold slab of metal. He slowed down his breathing, then stopped it entirely in order to concentrate on listening for anything—anything at all—coming from the other side.
Ana had unslung the shotgun and now had it cradled in front of her as she stood next to him. The weapon looked way too big for her, but then most rifle-length guns probably would have, given her slight stature. She didn’t say anything while he tried to listen for sounds and just watched his face for signs.
Wash finally pulled back and shook his head. “I don’t hear anything,” he said, dropping his voice to almost a whisper just in case he was wrong.
Ana moved closer and leaned against the door before pulling back after a few seconds. “Me neither.”
“What’s on the other side?”
“The main part of the warehouse, including the front doors. The rooms they were staying in—their living quarters—are on the other side.”
“This is just one part of the building?”
She nodded.
“What else did you see?” he asked.
“Some ATVs and a stable.”
“Stable?”
“With about a half dozen horses inside. Including ours. There were also bundles of stuff covered with heavy tarp. I don’t know what’s underneath them. Probably just boxes with extra supplies.”
“How many times did you walk through this place?”
“The whole place from end to end? Twice. When they came for me and Marla, and later when I ran back for you.”
He thought about what she’d told him, before saying, “Living quarters, stables, vehicles. I guess they really have been here awhile.”
“Who knows for how long.”
He turned back to the door before pushing slightly off the wall. He changed up his grip on the 1911. “I’ll go through first.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“You can barely stand. You almost fell down a second ago.”
“Almost only counts in horseshoes and grenades.”
She gave him an amused look.
“What?” Wash said.
“Sounds like something an old man would say.”
“I got it from an old man.”
“Well, that explains it.” Then, with her serious face, “But are you sure you’re not going to fall right through that door as soon as it opens?”
After The Purge: Vendetta Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 7
