Wash walked over and opened it for the same two twenty-somethings he’d seen earlier, as they carried a bundle each inside.
“Home delivery,” one of them said with a grin. He had dark red hair and freckles and hurried past Wash to drop a thick blanket and pillow on the floor.
His companion was blond and rail thin. “We’re gonna grab your horses and take them to the stables, so you guys wanna get your stuff first?”
Wash and Ana did just that, carrying their bags into the bakery before the two young men untied their horses’ reins and led them up the road. Sunlight was fading, but neither townsman seemed to be in any hurry.
“I don’t see any old men around, either,” Wash said, watching after the two from the bakery’s front porch. “Just kids, like those two.”
“‘Kids?’” Ana said. “They’re your age, Wash.”
“I’m twenty-five.”
“Of course you are,” Ana said before heading back into the building.
Wash gave the darkening skies a quick peek, then glanced at the windows around him. Some had turned on lanterns while others had closed up and simply gone dark. There weren’t that many people still out in the street, but a few were checking the bars over their windows before heading inside.
He turned and followed Ana back into the bakery. Wash closed the door, then pushed the deadbolt into place before dropping his bags. He took the Mossberg and M4 with him to the corner where Ana had unrolled the blankets and fixed up their makeshift beds. She had laid them out side by side, with about a foot of space to spare.
“Are you still thinking about it?” Ana asked. She had sat down on her “bed” and was taking off her jacket.
“About what?” Wash said. “The girl, the farmhouse, the mountain men, or One Eye?”
“All of the above.”
“Yeah.” Wash leaned the carbine against the wall to his left (Ana was to his right) and laid the shotgun on the floor. “They’re all I’ve been thinking about. Especially what the girl said.”
“Me too.” She stared at the door for a moment, her hands wrapped around her knees. “It’s gotten a lot complicated, hasn’t it?”
He sat down next to her. “It wasn’t complicated before when you decided to chase down Mathison and his gang all by your little lonesome?”
She shook her head. “It was a pretty easy decision, actually. It’s my sister. I’d go to hell for her. And it’d been pretty straightforward since, but…” She looked over at him and smiled. “Then you came along.”
“Hey, you’re the one who came to me, remember?”
“I know, Wash. I just meant that things didn’t quite go as planned, that’s all.”
“I’m not sure how to take that.”
“It’s a good thing.”
“Is it?”
“Yes,” she said, and leaned over and kissed him before he could reply.
She caught him by surprise, but he didn’t let that stop him from kissing her back. Her mouth was warm and her lips were amazingly soft and malleable, and it had been a while since he’d inhaled a woman’s scent from such close proximity.
Wash was reaching for her when she pulled away and said, “That’s enough.”
“What?” he said. “Wait—”
“We both need sleep.”
“Now?”
She lay down and pulled the blanket over her, then turned over onto her side with her back to him.
“Really?” Wash said.
“Go to sleep. We need to wake up early tomorrow and try to make up ground on Mathison.”
“We should talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“You kissed me.”
“Yes, I did. Now to go sleep.”
“Just like that?”
“Go to sleep, Wash.”
“Easy for you to say, lady.”
He lay down and stared at dust flitting across fading sunlight from the windows. Kanter 11 was already quiet when they first stepped inside, but it had gone completely silent now. It would have been the same inside the bakery if not for his slightly accelerated breathing.
Wash pushed up onto one elbow and looked over at her. “What if—”
“Go to sleep,” Ana said before he could finish.
“Hear me out…”
“Go…to…sleep.”
“Hey, you started this,” Wash said, unable to hide his annoyance.
“It was just a kiss. You’ve been kissed before, haven’t you?”
“Of course I have.”
“Then don’t make more out of it than what it is.”
“And what is it?”
“It was a kiss.”
“Why did you kiss me?”
“I felt like it, so I did it.”
“And that’s it?”
“What else is there?”
“You tell me.”
“There isn’t more.” She pulled the blanket higher up her shoulder. “Go to sleep. I want to get an early start tomorrow.”
“Hey, woman, you can’t just pull something like that and expect me to forget about it,” Wash said, but Ana didn’t respond.
He tried again:
“Ana…”
Nothing from her, even though he was sure she hadn’t fallen asleep that fast.
“Goddammit,” he said, and turned over onto his back and stared up at the ceiling.
After about an hour of trying to go to sleep, it was obvious it wasn’t going to happen. Even the usually comforting tick-tick-tick-tick of the watch couldn’t help him. Ana didn’t share his troubles, if the sound of her snoring softly next to him was any indication.
Wash sat up and dug out the sheet of Tramadol and punched out two more pills. He glanced over at Ana just to make sure she wasn’t pretending before taking the meds with some warm water. He felt better almost immediately, even though there was a very high probability it was all in his mind. The pain hadn’t been too bad throughout the day, but Wash didn’t feel like taking any chances.
Wash looked over at Ana again. She had turned over onto her back and her hair, loosened from its ponytail, fanned around her face, a few strays draping over her eyes. There was enough moonlight to give him a breathtaking view of her.
She really was a beautiful woman, and he wondered how he hadn’t seen that before. Maybe it was the way she slept—peaceful, without a care in the world, and with that ghost of a smile on her lips—that convinced him he was nuts when he thought she was pretty before, just not that pretty.
Wash wasn’t sure how he felt about her. About this thing between them. This was exactly the kind of entanglement he wasn’t looking for, that he had actively avoided since starting his manhunt for One Eye. If he’d wanted a woman, he would have stayed in Harrisonville when the mayor made his generous offer. But he hadn’t, because there were other things that took precedence over his libido.
He lay back down and tried to go to sleep. The pills helped, and he could already feel himself starting to drift off. The quiet from outside and Ana’s soft and soothing breathing next to him didn’t hurt, either. The watch’s tick-tick-tick-tick, this time, was more effective.
Even as he started to fade, the girl’s words came back to him:
“He’s gone now, but he says to tell you he’ll be waiting in Texas. He says not to keep him waiting too long, because he gets bored easily.”
“…he’ll be waiting for you…”
“....he’ll be waiting for you…”
Fifteen
He woke up to Ana sitting next to him in that now familiar-looking Indian style, her hands draped over her knees and her eyes fixed on him. He had a feeling she’d been in that pose for a while and wondered how much of it was because of her it was just a kiss kiss from last night.
“What?” Wash said, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes.
“I need to change your bandages and check your sutures,” Ana said.
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
&nbs
p; “You sure?”
“Yes.” Then, without missing a beat, “For now.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means what it sounds like. Now come on, I want to get this done so we can get back on the road.”
He pulled off his clothes for her. “Let me know if you see anything you like.”
Ana smiled as she took out the supplies from a bag sitting nearby. She immediately went to work, unrolling the gauze from around his waist while Wash occupied himself by blinking at the sunlight coming in through the windows. Ana had pulled aside the curtains, and he could see Kanter’s citizens going about their business. They were early risers, apparently.
Wash glanced down at his watch. A few minutes after seven. “How long have you been awake?”
“About an hour.” She tossed the old bandages and peered at her handiwork on one side, then leaned over to see the other one. “Any pain?”
“Does blue balls count?”
“Really? That’s mature.” She picked up a clean rag and wetted it with some water. “How long has it been?”
“How long has what been?”
“Since you’ve been laid. It sounds like it’s been a while.” Wash couldn’t see her face, but he imagined her smiling when she said that.
“What makes you think that?”
“I don’t know; the way you keep harping on a simple kiss.”
Wash grunted. “It hasn’t been that long. Last week in a place called Jones City, just north of Harrisonville. Did you pass by it?”
“I did. Saw a lot of pretty girls there.”
“Why did you think I spent a few days there after I was done working?”
“Did you, now?” she asked. He wasn’t sure if that was actually a question, though.
“That’s right, I did.”
“What a playboy,” Ana said as she cleaned his side, concentrating around the sutures before leaning over and doing the same to his back. “What are all those girls in Jones City going to say when you don’t show back up after this one-way trip of yours to Texas?”
The question caught him off guard. Wash thought they were just having fun, going back and forth, and then she had to hit him with that.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t tell them. You’re the only person who knows what I’m doing out here. What I’m really doing.”
She sat back, putting the towel away and picking up the roll of gauze, while catching his gaze. “I’m the only one you’ve told?”
He nodded.
“Why me?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” Then, with a satisfied smirk, “I wouldn’t read too much into it, if I were you. It was just something that happened.”
She rolled her eyes, then picked up a pair of scissors. “This might hurt a little bit.”
“It didn’t hurt last time.”
“Yeah, well, you weren’t being an asshat last time…”
Marie showed up about an hour later while they were getting ready to leave. She invited them to breakfast, but they’d already eaten from the mountain men’s stash and declined. For the night stay, Marie took some supplies, but nothing they couldn’t do without. She also asked for a box of 9mm bullets, even though Wash hadn’t seen anyone in town walk around with a weapon since they arrived yesterday.
“Before we go, can I ask you something?” Ana said as Marie was about to leave with her payment. “Before us, did anyone come through here? Eleven men and four women? They would have come through about a week ago.”
Marie didn’t think about it for very long before shaking her head. “No one like that. You’re the first couple that’s been through here for about four months now.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’d remember a group of eleven men and four women from a week ago.”
Ana nodded. “Thanks.”
“Friends of yours?”
“Acquaintances.”
Marie nodded, even though Wash didn’t think she bought that explanation. “I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for them. In case, you know, they come back this way.”
Maybe that’s not such a good idea, Wash thought, but Ana said first, “It might be a good idea to avoid them if they do end up back in this direction.”
Marie looked at her for a moment before turning to Wash. Then, “So, not friendly acquaintances?”
“No,” Ana said.
“Thanks for the heads-up.”
Ana nodded.
“You sure you guys don’t want to stay longer?” Marie asked. “We can all use a little more rest. Some of us more than others, I’m guessing.”
“We can’t,” Ana said. “We have to get going.”
“To find your Shangri-La.”
“That’s right.” Ana smiled. “It’s not going to find itself.”
Marie returned her smile. “Kanter’s doors are always open, if you folks should come back this way. We can always use more supplies.”
Thirty minutes later, Ana and Wash were back in their saddles and riding out of town. They saw more people in the streets than yesterday, with more kids under five years old. A few of the young women were cradling infants. They entered Kanter from the south and left through the north using the same dirt street.
They were just beyond the town when the same two twenty-somethings from yesterday stepped out of the nearby woods. They were packing sidearms and rifles and had a white-tailed deer dangling from a branch between them. Wash exchanged a nod with the two as they rode past.
“That’s the first townspeople with guns I’ve seen,” Ana said.
“You noticed that, too, huh?” Wash said.
“Hard not to. Even those milquetoasts in Harrisonville knew enough to arm themselves.” She glanced behind them back at the town. “They don’t have much, do they?”
“They have enough.”
“My point is that they don’t have a lot, and they don’t care. After everything they went through—everything we’ve all gone through in the last six years—maybe this is what paradise is. A small, nondescript town next to a stream, with no cares in the world.”
Wash smiled. “You thinking of switching homes?”
“Maybe. After what those people in Newton allowed to happen…” She gritted her teeth for a moment before finishing. “Maybe.”
They continued through the woods until they’d found the dirt road they were on yesterday. Wash breathed easier once they were beyond the canopy of trees and underneath open skies. For some reason, he had expected Kanter 11 to be more than what they’d found, or what he’d been told about it. After the run-in with the mountain men, then later with the girl at the farm, he just expected trouble in Kanter as well. Ana might have felt the same way from the relieved look she gave him once they were finally moving south again.
It took another two hours before they finally stopped at a gray asphalt highway. It wasn’t much—two lanes separated by a fading yellow divider—but it was the first hint that there was more to Kansas than woods, collaborator towns, and backcountry roads.
“State Highway 49,” Ana said. “We can take it across the Kansas-Oklahoma border, then figure out what road to take once we’re on the other side. I think Mathison will avoid the big cities, and we should, too.”
Wash nodded. “That’s a good idea.”
“So it’s true. About the cities.” She looked over at him. “It’s been a while since I’ve been out here, but we’ve heard stories…”
“Depends on what stories you’re talking about.”
“Bad ones. Really bad ones.”
“Oh. Those.”
“So they’re true?”
“Mostly, yeah. And the ones that aren’t, aren’t too far from the truth.”
“You’ve been back inside them since The Walk Out?”
“Not because I wanted to.” He frowned. “They’re not happy places, Ana. Best to avoid them at all costs, if possible.”
Ana nodded. “We’ll take 49 south for as long as we can, then switch to another high
way when we near Oklahoma City and Norman. Go around them instead of through them.”
State Highway 49 was flat to the ground and flanked by walls of trees on both sides. They traveled on the shoulder just in case they had to quickly dart back into the woods for cover. The first road sign they came across told them Oklahoma was still ten miles south, which meant they would easily cross the border before the end of the day.
Wash’s side was feeling better, but he took two more of the Tramadol anyway just to make sure it remained that way. Ana either didn’t see him do it, or she didn’t feel like arguing about it if she had.
About five miles later, Ana stopped her Tennessee Walker on the shoulder.
Wash moved his big orange-brown over to join her. “What is it?”
She nodded at a sign in front of them. It was rectangular and had an arrow on one side pointing left toward an overgrown trail. The sign was green with faded yellow letters, but Wash could still read most of it and was able to figure out the rest: Pond Creek Campsite.
“Campsite?” he said.
“Mathison likes to stop at places like campsites and RV parks to rest during the day. That was how I picked up their tracks outside of Harrisonville. They have the gear for it.”
“We should take a look. It won’t take that much time, and if nothing else, there’s the creek. We can refill our bottles.”
Ana rode forward, then turned left into the covered trail. She leaned in her saddle to bat at low-hanging tree branches and leaves in her path. Wash pulled his shotgun out of its holster and followed behind her.
Voices.
They heard it after fighting through the trail for about a hundred yards. It was almost impossible not to. There was more than one man, and they were laughing. Booming laughter, as if they were having the time of their lives.
Ana stopped and glanced back at Wash. He nodded, confirming what she’d heard, and saw the combination of dread and anticipation on her face. They climbed off their horses and tied them to a nearby tree.
Wash was unslinging the M4 to give her when Ana shook her head.
“Take it,” he whispered.
“No,” she whispered back. “It might not be them, and I don’t want to scare whoever it is.”
After The Purge: Vendetta Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 14
