After The Purge: Vendetta Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Sisavath, Sam

  “I’ll be fine.”

  She gave him a doubtful look but didn’t say anything.

  He nodded at the weapon in her hand. “You come out behind me, then move to my left side with that thing.”

  She glanced down at the shotgun, then gave him the least confident look he’d seen on her since they’d met.

  “Remember,” Wash said, “if it fires both barrels at once, you can move the gun immediately. Most shotguns give you a twenty-five yard maximum range. Assuming it’s got buckshot and not slug rounds.”

  “I don’t know what that means, Wash.”

  “Basically, just keep shooting until whatever’s in front of you goes down. Put the buttstock against your shoulder to help with the recoil. That’s what it’s for.”

  She sighed. “I really don’t want to use this.”

  “Suck it up, buttercup.”

  She smirked. “What did I tell you about being an asshat?”

  He grinned before turning back to the door.

  Wash regripped the pistol, then put his free hand on the lever. Like the door itself, it was cold to the touch, but he quickly got over it.

  He looked over at Ana one last time.

  She had positioned herself next to him, clutching and unclutching the forend grip of the unwieldy-looking shotgun in front of her. She returned his nod, but it was impossible to miss the apprehensive look on her face.

  Wash faced the door again. He sighed and wondered what was going to kill him first: Whatever was waiting for them on the other side or just the act of moving on his own without Ana’s assistance.

  Fuck it, he thought and didn’t bother counting down before he jerked on the lever, felt the door starting to open, and helped it by pushing hard and stepping through at the same time.

  Too fast, as it turned out, and pain screamed through every part of him, but Wash clenched his teeth and kept moving anyway. He lifted the 1911 to chest level and took aim, thankful for the lights inside the adjoining rooms that allowed him to see. It wasn’t just the artificial kind, either, but also a large swatch of moonlight coming through an open door.

  Time slowed, and his every heartbeat became sledgehammers pounding away against asphalt in his chest. His breath formed small clouds in front of his face as Wash saw, in the next few seconds:

  Two doors to his right—a regular-size one and a much larger garage door next to it that could slide up to the ceiling. Even if Ana hadn’t already told him they were somewhere in a forested area, Wash would have figured it out just by looking through the open door and spotting the field of trees beyond.

  Two ghouls feasting on the remains of a man wearing a thick black coat lying on the floor about a couple of meters from the door. The creatures were hunched over the body, one of them practically buried in the man’s thick black beard. The slurp-slurp-slurp was the only sound in the entire place, but that was quickly broken by the loud whinny of a horse.

  A small motor pool of ATVs to his left—but nothing bigger than a four-wheeled off-roader—and a makeshift stable near the back. Horses—a big orange-brown one among them—were locked behind iron bars that looked more like a prison cell than housing. The bars were the only reason why two more ghouls couldn’t get inside at the animals, not that that was stopping them from trying anyway. One of the nightcrawlers had almost successfully squeezed itself through two of the bars, even as the Quarter Horse and another smaller brown kicked at its defenseless head with their hind legs.

  He would have opened fire immediately, except there were no reasons to. The ghouls bent over the dead body were oblivious to his and Ana’s presence, as were the two trying to get into the stables at the back.

  His heartbeat returned to normal, as did the movements of the cold air around him, and Wash exchanged a quick look with Ana. “Silver bullets?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Has to be, right?”

  “Has to be.” He nodded, but thought, Please be. Please be!

  Wash looked back over at the ghouls in front of the door just as one of them lifted its head and glanced back. At him. A paint of fresh blood coated the area around its mouth and dripped from its chin, and though Wash had accepted long ago that the monsters were no longer capable of emotions, he swore there was something that almost looked like...bliss (?) in the creature’s hollowed black eyes.

  It saw him, but it didn’t get up to attack. Instead, the nightcrawler returned to its victim and was bending down to rejoin its companion, chewing and slurping loudly on the man’s neck, when Wash shot it in the back of the head.

  The ghoul collapsed forward and lay still on the dead man’s chest, and Wash thought, Yup. Silver bullets.

  The second creature lifted its head, its face almost completely covered in a sheen of thick red wetness. It seemed to almost scowl at Wash just before he shot it in the face—the bullet punched through its weak skull and pinged! off the metal wall behind it—and this ghoul, too, collapsed over the dead man it had been feasting on.

  Wash stared at the body buried underneath the two ghouls for a moment, but he couldn’t tell what the man looked like. Most of his face was gone, with just a hole where his nostrils once were, and a lump where—

  Boom!

  The entire warehouse shook with the explosion coming from next to him. It was so close that Wash was pretty sure every part of him could feel it, including his bandaged side.

  Another ear-splitting boom! rang out almost exactly half a second later.

  Wash looked to his left. Ana, holding the shotgun with the buttstock against her shoulder. She was staring forward, wide-eyed, at one of the ghouls. Or what was left of it. The top part of the undead thing’s head was gone, and there was a hole the size of Wash’s fist in its chest. It lay on the floor where it had fallen, halfway between them and the stable.

  She turned to him, lowering the shotgun, her entire body trembling slightly. “It fires one at a time.”

  Wash smiled. “How’s the kick?”

  “Actually not bad. The second shot surprised the hell out of me, though.” Ana nodded toward the stable. “What about that one?”

  The last ghoul was still attempting to squeeze itself through the bars, oblivious to the violence behind it or its dead fellow ghouls. It was trying, but it couldn’t quite get its entire head past the available space, not that it let that little inconvenience stop it from continuing to push, and push... The horses were still kicking at it, landing blow after blow on its arms and legs and skull. But that, too, didn’t deter the creature for one second.

  Stubborn bastard.

  Wash took aim at the ghoul’s back, but he didn’t pull the trigger. He lowered the 1911 instead. “I can’t shoot it. The bullet’s just going to go right through it and hit one of the horses.”

  Ana slung the shotgun and walked forward, and suddenly she had the same knife she’d stolen from one of the mountain men in her right hand.

  Where the hell did that come from?

  Wash tried to remember if he’d seen her holding the knife earlier, but he couldn’t. If he was surprised, he wondered how much more shocked the mountain man had been when Ana plunged it into him. The blood on her face, the bruising around her neck…

  She’s impressive. And scary.

  God, is she scary.

  Ana walked right up behind the lodged ghoul, and without hesitation, stabbed it in the back of the skull. The undead thing went limp, its body trapped between the bars. The horses on the other side quickly settled down, but Wash didn’t think any of them—five in all, three wisely keeping to the back—were completely relaxed.

  Ana turned and headed for the door. She glanced over in his direction as she passed him by. “Sit down. You look like you’re about to fall.”

  “That’s because I am,” Wash said.

  “So sit down.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He took a couple of steps back until he found the wall behind him, then slid gratefully down to the floor. He peeked under his shirt at th
e bandages. The sight of bloodless gauze allowed him to let out a relieved sigh.

  Ana stepped around the bloody mess in front of the door in order to get to the door itself. She closed it, then locked it using the deadbolt before scooting over to the large garage door next to it. When she was satisfied, Ana walked back to the three bodies and crouched next to the pile. She stabbed the dead man in the forehead, then stood up—but didn’t go anywhere.

  “What’s wrong?” Wash asked.

  “The body,” Ana said, staring at the black-clad figure under the two unmoving ghouls. From a distance, their size could almost convince him they were two children lying in their father’s arms.

  “Which one?”

  “The mountain man.” Ana crouched and grabbed the dead man by the forehead and turned his head side to side. “I don’t recognize him.”

  “How can you tell? Ana, he doesn’t even have a face anymore.”

  “It’s not his face, it’s his hair.” She glanced toward the door. “It’s blond.”

  Wash had to squint to see what she was talking about. The dead man’s hair looked blond, but there was so much blood and wetness that it was hard to tell from across the room.

  “So?” Wash said.

  “There were four of them, and they all had dark hair.” Ana stood up and looked around the warehouse before quickly, nervously unslinging the double-barreled shotgun and racking it, the clack-clack! of the shells reloading echoing off the metal walls. “Wash, there’s still one more unaccounted for. He might still be in the building…”

  Nine

  Ana might have been right and there might have been one more mountain man running around somewhere in the building with them, but he hadn’t shown his face even after all the noise they had made. Wash’s gunshots would have traveled to every inch of the place, never mind the double blasts from her double-barreled shotgun.

  And yet, no one appeared from the other side of the warehouse or tried to bang their way back in through the front doors. According to Ana, there was no back way in or out that she was aware of, but she made sure to emphasize the that she was aware of part.

  Wash remained in the same spot where he had sat down, next to the door that led into the west side of the warehouse, while Ana disappeared into the hallway across the wide open space. She hadn’t hesitated and hadn’t even given him the option of talking her out of it.

  “Stay here. I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she had said before taking off.

  As if I could stop her, Wash thought as he watched her slip through another door a good fifty yards or so across from him.

  It was a large place, but how much of it had been here before the mountain men added to its size over the years? He could see signs of recent construction everywhere, from the not-quite-finishing along the walls all the way up to the rafters.

  Wash laid the 1911 semiautomatic on his lap and let himself enjoy the peace and quiet, all the while listening for evidence that Ana had stumbled across her prey. If the fifth mountain man existed in the first place, anyway. But Ana was so sure, and he was leaning toward believing her. After all, she was the only reason he was still alive, and he guessed he owed her the benefit of the doubt.

  And then some.

  He glanced over at the thick puddle of blood, where the blond and his killers lay in front of the door. All the signs pointed to the poor sap opening the door and being pounced on immediately. That was the only explanation for the lack of blood, anyway, except at the spot where he currently lay. If Ana was right, then that would mean there were five of them instead of four.

  “That has to be it,” she had said. “I only saw four, but there could easily have been a fifth one somewhere doing something else while they were taking me back and forth.”

  He had to admit, Ana was an impressive woman. It was too bad she also scared the shit out of him. He hadn’t asked how she’d gotten away from their captors and managed not only to help Marla escape, but come back for him. Maybe, just maybe, he was a little afraid to find out the answer.

  What are you so scared of? She’s barely five-something and weighs less than a ten-year-old, for God’s sake.

  And yet, and yet…

  Wash suddenly looked up and lifted the pistol at the same time when he heard footsteps approaching.

  It was just Ana, coming out of the door on the other side. She had a backpack in one hand and the shotgun in the other.

  Already?

  Wasn’t it just a few minutes ago that he watched her walk through that same door? It felt like it, but Wash didn’t discount the possibility he might have dozed off and didn’t realize it. Either that, or getting shot was playing havoc with his grasp of time.

  “Did you find him?” Wash called over.

  Ana shook her head. “If he’s still here, he’s got a pretty good hiding place.”

  “Why would he be hiding?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s scared of me.”

  Wash smiled, but he thought, And I wouldn’t blame him one bit.

  “Or maybe he’s out there chasing Marla with the other one,” he said instead.

  “Or that,” Ana nodded. She glanced over at the closed door. “Marla has a gun, so she’s not completely helpless.”

  Out there, at night by herself, she’s going to need more than a gun, Wash thought, but he said instead, “What’s in the bag?”

  “Something to keep you alive,” Ana said as she crouched in front of him. She put down the shotgun and unzipped the bag.

  “That’s good. I like staying alive.”

  “Who doesn’t?” She took out a half-empty sheet of pills and popped out two of them. “Ultracet. You know what those are?”

  “Do I look like a pharmacist?”

  “Tramadol and Acetaminophen.” She handed the pills to him, along with a bottle of water, then slipped the rest of the pill sheet into one of his cargo pants pockets. “Two every four hours as long as you need them. Eight per twenty-four hours maximum.”

  Wash made a face. “You know I’ve been shot, right?”

  “Don’t go over eight a day.”

  “Whatever you say, doc.”

  She squinted back at him. “I’m serious.”

  He gave her a mock salute before downing the pills and chasing them with the water. “How much water do we have?”

  “More than enough. Drink it all.”

  He didn’t argue and finished off the bottle. It was warm, but warm was better than none.

  Ana had produced a large roll of gauze and placed it on the floor next to him, along with scissors and a small white first-aid kit. “I’m going to have to suture your wounds after this.”

  “You know how to do that?”

  She frowned. “Yes, but it’s not fun.”

  “Hey, I’m the one you’ll be sticking needles into.”

  “That’s true, but you’ll be so doped up when that happens you won’t notice any of it. Me, on the other hand, I’ll have to actually do it.”

  He chuckled. “Wanna trade places?”

  “Pass.”

  “What else you got in there?”

  She fished out another bottle of water, along with a Beretta 9mm that looked familiar.

  “You found my gun,” Wash said, taking the pistol from her. “What else?”

  “Your shotgun and our supplies. But I left those behind and only carried over what I could fit in here.” She took out two magazines for the Beretta, and Wash pocketed them. “And, oh, this.” She held up one of his gloves, with the silver studs along the knuckles. “You made this yourself?”

  “Yeah.” He took the glove, then its partner, and dropped them next to the 1911. “For close quarters.”

  “Wouldn’t a knife be better?”

  “You can’t wear a knife.”

  “Depends on what kind of knife,” she said with a grin. Ana next pulled out a see-through bag with jerky inside. “Here. You’ll need to get your strength back.”

  The contents smelled glorious when she op
ened the bag, but Wash didn’t reach for it immediately.

  “What’s wrong?” Ana asked.

  “You said you didn’t know what the mountain men wanted.”

  “And?”

  Wash glanced at the bag, then at her, but he didn’t say anything.

  It took Ana a few seconds, but she finally understood. “You think it’s…?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know what it is. It could be venison or some other animal. Plenty of them out there now, if you know how to hunt. Did they say anything when they came to get you and Marla earlier?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “Where were they taking you, exactly?”

  “Somewhere on the other side of the warehouse, but I didn’t feel like waiting to find out where exactly.”

  “Before you made your move…”

  She nodded. “I couldn’t have done it without Marla. She was brave, and I guess desperate to get out of here. You can do amazing things when you’re desperate.”

  “You said you got one of them with the knife?”

  “I killed one of them and wounded another, but he managed to get away.”

  “One of those mountain men ran from you?”

  “He was young. I think he was only a few years older than Marla. Anyway, Marla got his gun during the fight, and he fled up the hallway. After we split up and I was on my way back to you, I saw him running out the door after Marla.” Ana looked like she was reliving everything she was telling him. “It was chaotic. I’m not sure why he chased her but not me.”

  “The one I shot,” Wash said. “They probably decided to split up.”

  “Maybe,” Ana said, but she didn’t look convinced. He could see her mind working behind her green eyes, trying to piece everything together.

  Finally, she looked down at the bag of jerky before holding it up to her nose and sniffing it.

  “What does it smell like?” Wash asked.

  “Meat,” Ana said.

  “What kind of meat?”

  “I don’t know. Is there a difference in smell between deer meat and…something that’s not deer meat?”

  “You’d have to taste it.” Then, “Did you…?”