“Thanks, but it’s just going to be the two of them. I can’t stay.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I have to. I only joined up with them because they had a vehicle that could get me to my destination faster.”
“Texas.”
“Gabriel told you.”
Kelloway nodded. “He didn’t say what was in Texas, though.”
“A friend,” Ana said, and thought, Who I might never be able to find, and all of this could just be a big waste of time.
Kelloway stood up. “What do you need?”
“What can you give me?”
“After everything that’s happened to you? Just name it.”
“A fast horse, to start with.”
“You good with horses?”
Ana smiled. “I’ve been around a saddle or two in my time.”
The thoroughbred Kelloway gave her looked familiar, and it took a few seconds for Ana to realize why. It was the same chestnut that Gabriel had been riding. Ana had a brief moment of hesitation, but she got over it when the animal whinnied as she rubbed down its mane.
Fuck you, Gabriel. I’m not going to let you ruin this horse for me.
It was a big horse, too. Strong, with powerful legs, it was probably one of the finest animals in all of Mayfield. The fact that it used to belong to a piece of shit human being notwithstanding, she could have done a lot worse.
Shelby walked her to the stables at the north end of town and watched her prepare to leave. She wasn’t entirely sure if he was sad to see her go, or indifferent. She liked the kid, but it wasn’t as if they’d gotten to know one another in the day or so since they picked her up from the side of the road. Whenever she looked at Shelby, Ana couldn’t get over how much he reminded her of Wash, minus the dark clouds that seemed to follow Wash everywhere.
“You sure you wanna be doing this?” Shelby asked. “Rand’ll be good to go in a few days and Kelloway says her people should have the truck fixed by then. Looks like they found parts for it after all.”
“A few more days is a few more too many for me.” Ana rearranged the supply bags before swinging into the saddle. “Maybe I’ll see you guys down in Texas. If you’re still going there after this?”
“Don’t know yet. Rand and I haven’t decided. That was always Chuck’s idea, to head down there to see what’s cooking.” He took something out of his back pocket. “Here. We thought you might be able to use it.”
She took what Shelby was holding out. It was a map—well-worn and frayed at the edges, but still in good condition. It was heavily notated, with writing along the edges. She had seen Chuck use it before. Wash also had something similar.
“Chuck’s map?” she asked.
“One of them,” Shelby said. “It marks all the towns we’ve been through and ones that we haven’t, but other slayers have. If your boyfriend’s a slayer—”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
Shelby grinned. “Chances are he’ll have something like that on him. If he’s connected to the network, I mean.”
“He is.”
“Then who knows, you might stumble across him in one of those towns. Hey, stranger things have happened.”
I should be so lucky.
Even so, she couldn’t help but feel optimistic; at least more than she had been since she left Kanter 11 and Emily days ago in pursuit of Wash.
“The towns with red X’s over them?” Shelby said. “Do I even have to explain what those X’s mean?”
“Stay away?” Ana said.
“Stay far, far away, yeah.”
“Gotcha.” She put the map into her backpack. “Thank you for everything, Shelby. Most of all, thank you for saving my life in that basement. I owe you one.”
He flashed her a boyish grin. “That’s what I do, ma’am.”
She groaned. “Don’t remind me.” Then, “But I mean it. If I get the chance to pay you back…”
“We’ll see.” He gave her a mock salute. “Vaya con dios.”
She smiled back and said, “Don’t be a stranger,” and turned the horse around and led it toward the exit.
The bright morning sun hit her full in the face before Ana turned left and headed out of Mayfield at a light trot. People watched her go, but she didn’t recognize any of the faces. Kelloway was nowhere to be seen. Too busy taking over from Gabriel, probably, not that Ana knew for certain. Anyway, the power struggles of Mayfield didn’t interest her.
By the time she reached the edge of town, the thoroughbred was already moving at a fast gallop. Ana spurred it on, the need to put Mayfield in her rearview mirror and the urgency to reach Texas pushing her forward.
She thought about Wash and wondered if he was already in trouble. Knowing him, the answer was yes. Wash wouldn’t have been able to avoid trouble if he tried.
I guess we have that in common…
Fourteen
She was maybe ten miles out of Mayfield when she stumbled across the body. She wouldn’t have found it and would have kept right on going along the state highway if she hadn’t spotted the vultures circling in the air.
It was a man, and he had been dead for at least a few hours. He lay on his stomach, the toes of his boots pointing in different directions while his arms splayed almost carelessly at his sides. He wore jeans and a sweater, and only one side of his face was visible. She’d never seen him before, but the freshness of the body, along with the close proximity to Mayfield, made a name pop into her head almost right away: Bates.
“I guess you could say he’s my stand-in,” Gabriel had said about Bates, the man who had gone missing along with Keenan, Patrick, and Sullivan, the other three killers who were still on the loose.
If the dead man was Bates, it made Ana wonder why Gabriel’s partners-in-crime had bothered dragging him all the way out here. There was a lot of dry blood around Bates, but no bloody trails heading off in any direction. Ana wasn’t a police CSI by any means, but she wasn’t an idiot. All the signs pointed to Bates having been brought out here, murdered, then left to lie where he fell.
It made some sense. The location was far enough from Mayfield that a gunshot wouldn’t have been heard all the way back in town. There was nothing out here except the same kind of flat countryside that Ana had been traversing for the last few days ever since leaving Kansas behind.
“What about Bates?” she had asked Gabriel. “You said he was your stand-in.”
“Bates is gone, too. Let’s just leave it at that,” Gabriel had answered.
She thought about giving the body a proper burial. She hated the idea of just leaving it out here for the carrions to feed on. It wasn’t right.
So what’s stopping you?
It was the reality of spending too much time in one place, out in the open, that made her shuffle her feet uneasily and look around at her surroundings. There was no telling who was out there, who could be watching her right now. The very recent memories of the sniper ambush on the truck came rushing back to her, and it was all the incentive Ana needed to climb back onto the chestnut and say “Sorry, Bates,” to the body before turning and spurring the horse back toward the road.
She was still thinking about Bates when she reached the four-lane highway and continued south to Texas. She hadn’t asked Kelloway about the man, if he had a family or loved ones, but only because it hadn’t occurred to her to ask. Kelloway hadn’t volunteered, either.
Looks like you were right, Kelloway. Bates is not coming back. He’s another victim of Gabriel’s sickness.
There was a lot of that going around these days. Sick people who got it into their heads that the only way to survive in a post-Purge world was to take advantage of others. She’d met plenty of them even before encountering the mountain men at the warehouse, then Mark. And now, Gabriel and his merry band of psychos.
Then there were people like Wash, who went out of their way to help even when they didn’t have to. Wash, a slayer who wasn’t really a slayer. At least, not in the way that Chuck,
Randall, and Shelby were.
Where are you, Wash? And how am I going to find you?
She thought about him, replaying all the things he’d told her about his past and all the things he kept to himself but that she had figured out on her own. Almost everything came back to an “old man,” as Wash called him. A mentor who was dead now, killed by a one-eyed, blue-eyed ghoul.
The slayers hadn’t even known something like that was possible when she’d asked if they’d ever seen or heard of one. Even now, Ana wasn’t absolutely sure if she believed something like that could exist herself. Weren’t the blue-eyed ghouls capable of healing themselves, unlike the black-eyed ones? She’d seen that in person and had heard from others who also had. Could Wash have been wrong?
No. She couldn’t start doubting him now. She had seen people who weren’t right in the head, and Wash wasn’t one of them.
And then there was the girl at the farmhouse…
Weeks later, and Ana still couldn’t shake the image of the girl from her mind—the memory of her holding the gun to her own head, tears streaming down her face, and the unrestrained terror in her eyes. That girl had seen something that dug deep into her soul and made a permanent home down there, and convinced her that the only way out was death.
“You can’t stop him,” she’d said, every word dripping with dread. “No one can stop him. Not even Dad. Or Billy. Or Pete. No one can stop him. He’s going to come back for me like he promised, and no one can stop him. No one.”
Did a one-eyed, blue-eyed ghoul really exist? Was one really running around out there committing unspeakable things?
Ana and the slayers had never seen such a thing, but the girl at the farmhouse had. If not the exact same entity that Wash was pursuing, then something equally horrific. Ana wasn’t sure which answer was more preferable, and decided that neither one was.
She shivered against the cold (or, at least, she told herself it was the cold) and reached up to pull her jacket’s collar tighter around her neck. The thoroughbred was moving at a steady trot, making good progress along the road.
Soon, she’d reach Texas.
Soon…
Like before, she stuck to the dirt ground next to the road whenever possible to spare the animal’s unshod feet. If she’d wanted to expose herself less, she could have abandoned the highway completely while still moving parallel to it from a safe distance. The risk of losing sight of the road was minimal, but she didn’t feel like taking her chances. Besides, as with the slayers’ truck yesterday, she would be able to hear a vehicle coming for miles before they even spotted her.
She didn’t check the map that Shelby had given her until she stopped to eat the hamburger—it was mostly bread and beef patty—that she’d scored from Mayfield’s cafeteria. The perishable stuff wasn’t going to last forever, and she had to make the most of them before dipping into her nonperishables.
The map showed a number of towns in Oklahoma, almost all of them, like Mayfield, located off the state highway she was sitting next to at the moment. There were a couple of cities with large red X’s over them—one called Danford, which she was still ahead of, and another called Talico before that. She’d have to go around both cities, because the slayers wouldn’t have X’ed them out for fun. There had to be something wrong with them.
“They’re not happy places, Ana,” Wash had said about the cities. “Best to avoid them at all costs, if possible.”
He was mostly talking about the bigger ones, like Oklahoma City, which was already behind her, and Tulsa farther to the east. Danford looked like a good-size town, with Talico being smaller. Still, there was no point in going through them if she didn’t have to.
“They’re not happy places, Ana…”
Wash would know. He’d been out here all these years since The Walk Out, working the country as a slayer, while she was happy to spend them in Newton with Emily. She would still be there right now, safe from the rest of the world, if not for Mathison. What was that saying about ignorance being bliss?
And out there, somewhere, was Texas. And, hopefully, Wash.
“We’re hearing stories from other slayers about renewed nightcrawler activity down south,” Chuck had said. “There was a big horde in Cordine City about a week back. The biggest single sighting of ghouls in a long time. Apparently they wrecked the place, left it in pieces, and killed everyone inside.”
She had never heard of Cordine City, but then she hadn’t heard about a lot of places before she left Newton. What was happening down in Texas, and did it have anything to do with Wash’s One Eye? It would make sense if it did.
Right. Like anything in this world makes sense anymore.
She finished up the burger and brushed the crumbs from her hands on her pants before standing back up. The canteen was filled to the brim, and she drank her fill before putting it back into the pack that she carried on her the entire time. The supplies hanging off the chestnut’s saddle were important, but not nearly as vital as what was on her.
Ana put her hand into her jacket’s pocket, making sure the small SIG Sauer was still in there. Both the gun and the knife that was back inside her jacket sleeve had been retrieved from the basement by Kelloway’s people. Ana was glad to have the knife in her possession again. It had served her well for a long time now. And the gun…
“Take it; Chuck gave it to you,” Randall had said.
Better safe than sorry. Always better safe than sorry.
She climbed back onto the thoroughbred and continued down south along the highway. She wasn’t going to reach the Texas border before nightfall, but at least there was a lot of sunlight left to make up all the time she’d lost.
About two miles out from the city of Talico, Ana abandoned the road and traveled in a westward direction for about thirty minutes, before starting to angle back south again. The highway she’d been on all this time went through Talico, and this was the only way to go around it. She didn’t know what she was avoiding—just how big of an area did Talico make up, anyway?—but that big red X on the map stuck out in her mind. If slayers—men and women who voluntarily went into the darkness to hunt monsters—said to steer clear of a place, it made perfect sense to heed that advice.
“The towns with red X’s over them?” Shelby had said. “Do I even have to explain what those X’s mean?”
No, he hadn’t, but it was a good reminder anyway.
Once she was riding south again, she could see the rooftops of buildings to her left, marking the presence of the highway as it ran through Talico. It was a good-size town, from what she could tell, and after about ten minutes of slow trotting, she still hadn’t reached the end of the city yet. She was too far away to get a really good look at the place, though, but it wasn’t hard to see that Talico was built around the state highway. There was something in the background that might have been a billboard, and even farther back, a white-painted water tower that looked like a rocket getting ready to launch.
Ana kept going, using the reflections of sunlight against metal and aluminum to her left as an indicator she was going in the right direction. As long as she kept Talico over there, while she remained over here, there was no need to worry—
The crack! of a rifle, followed by something striking the ground a few inches to the right of the thoroughbred, made Ana pull up on the horse’s reins abruptly. A puff of cloud lifted into the air almost lazily before dispersing against the sunlight.
What the hell was that?
Stopping had been reflexive, and she realized too late that the smarter move would have been to keep going. By the time she recognized that mistake, though, a second crack! had rang out, and the animal underneath her lifted its head and let out a loud whinny and began thrashing its head left and right.
No. No, no, no!
Ana leapt off the saddle even as the horse collapsed onto its side. She hit the ground and rolled, all the precious supplies in the bulky pack behind her jamming into her back. She grunted through the pain (Ignore it! Someone�
��s shooting at you! Ignore the pain for now!) and scrambled to her knees.
The thoroughbred had been shot and lay on its side, the animal attempting in vain to lift its head. Ana’s heart broke at the sight of its wound.
No, no, no…
But she didn’t have time to do anything for the horse, because a third crack! snapped her back to her own situation. The gunshot was followed by another puff of dust appearing just five feet to her left as the bullet struck the ground.
Sniper!
She snapped to her feet and looked south, thought, Jesus, because there was nothing in front of her except open prairie. There wasn’t even a dying scrub tree for her to run to and attempt to hide behind.
Goddammit, why is this fucking state so flat?
She glanced back—and saw the same thing.
Jesus Christ, God, give me a tree or something!
But there was just flat, empty Oklahoma countryside. There were mountains, but they were far, far in the distance and of no use to her.
Another crack! and this time instead of a cloud of dirt at her feet, there was the zip! of something buzzing past her right ear.
A bullet. That was a bullet!
She turned and ran even before she knew she had made the decision.
Where are you going?
Who cares! Just run!
She summoned everything she had to run faster, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. She was already breathing hard, her chest pounding, but she was still moving too slow, dragged down by—
The pack. It was too heavy because it was full of things she needed—like food, like medical supplies, like maps—
Too heavy! It’s too heavy! I’ll never make it!
As if to encourage her, another crack!, followed by another zip! past her head.
Ana pulled off the pack and let it drop and noticed the increased speed right away. Or, at least, she thought she was going faster than before. For all she knew, it could have been entirely in her head.
After The Purge: Vendetta Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 36
