Ghouls. It was ghoul smell.
But how had he missed it earlier? How?
He saw how when he pushed the door open wider with the blade to get a better look inside: There was a trapdoor near the back that he had missed that was now open, and the smell (God, the smell!) was coming from inside. Deep, deep inside. He couldn’t see how deep or what else was down there from his angle. It was lightless and dark and…
Wash knocked the trapdoor closed with the kukri and stepped back. He closed the closet, then grabbed the pallet and pulled it over and raised it from the floor until it was pinned against the door.
Then he rushed back outside.
The Old Man had finished wrapping his forearm with the rag. The white cloth, already dirty from sweat and use, had now turned a bright shade of pink.
“Where’d they come from?” the Old Man asked.
Wash stared at the Old Man’s bloody rag.
“Kid,” the Old Man said. “How did they get inside?”
A bloody rag…around the Old Man’s arm…
“Kid!” the Old Man shouted.
He looked up at the Old Man’s face. “What?”
“How’d they get inside?”
“There was some kind of cellar in one of the closets. They were hiding in there.”
The Old Man looked back at him for a moment, not saying anything.
“I missed it,” Wash said. “I didn’t check the closet close enough. I missed it.”
“Well, shit,” the Old Man said. He sighed, placed his bandaged arm in his lap, and leaned his head back against the wall. “It happens.”
“I missed it,” Wash said. Then, his eyes focused in on the Old Man’s arm. “It bit you.”
He glanced back at the ghoul with the red cloak. Nightcrawlers rarely kept their clothes on. The transformation made them immune to just about every part of nature other than sunlight, so to find one still wearing something, anything, was an oddity.
“It wasn’t one of them,” the Old Man said. Then, off Wash’s confused look, “The one in the cloak. It wasn’t like the other three. There’s a reason I put the knife in its forehead.”
Wash looked back at the cloaked ghoul. He walked closer and crouched next to it, then got a better look at its face.
It was malformed, its cheeks gaunt and the sharp edges of its skull sticking out from its flesh. But there was something very different about it that made it stand out from the other three bigger ghouls.
Wash glanced back at the Old Man, who read his face and nodded. “Yeah, it was a Blue Eyes.” The Old Man lifted his bandaged arm. “It got me before I could kill it. Damned things are just so fast, and I’m getting old…”
“Shit,” Wash said. Or whispered. He wasn’t sure which.
“Yeah.” The Old Man put his arm back down and seemed to shrink before Wash’s eyes. “There’s no getting around it. It’s in me. The bad blood. I can feel it moving through my veins. Shit is right, kid. Shit is right…”
Wash sat down on the hard floor. Or he toppled slightly backward and fell on his ass. He hadn’t looked away from the Old Man the entire time. He couldn’t.
There was sympathy in the Old Man’s eyes when he smiled at Wash. “I’m not going to ask you to do it, kid.”
“Do what?” Wash said. At that moment, he wasn’t sure if he didn’t know or if he was just pretending he didn’t.
The Old Man was still smiling. “Get me some water.”
“Water?”
“I’m thirsty.” He licked his lips. “Damn if I’m not thirsty all of a sudden.”
“There isn’t any. The well’s empty.”
“Not outside, kid. In my pack. In the corner,” he said, motioning with his head to where their packs were leaning against the wall next to the front door.
“Oh,” Wash said, and got up.
“Kid,” the Old Man said from behind him.
Wash stopped and looked back. “Yeah?”
“I don’t blame you. Okay? I don’t blame you. And you shouldn’t, either. It’s done. Move past it. Next.”
Wash didn’t reply. He didn’t know how.
“Say it,” the Old Man said.
“Next,” Wash said.
“Good. Now, go get me that water. Damn, don’t think I’ve ever been this thirsty in my life.”
Wash nodded and turned back around. He stepped over the dead ghoul—the one with the red cloak—and avoided the others. He wasn’t sure if he was moving in slow motion or if the world had just sped up on him. Every step took a lot of effort, and he had a hard time breathing. There was something in his chest—a living, breathing thing, almost like an animal trying to burrow its way out. Digging and biting and chewing—
Click! from behind him.
Wash turned around.
The Old Man had his SIG Sauer in his hand, and the click Wash heard was the pistol’s hammer being cocked back. The Old Man had the gun pressed against the side of his temple.
They locked eyes.
“Don’t,” Wash said. “Please.”
“I’m proud of you, kid,” the Old Man said, just before he pulled the trigger.
Two
Sonofabitch.
The girl in the dark red cloak was a slap in the face, a reminder of all the terrible things that had happened between them, as if Wash could ever forget, even if he wanted to. Which he didn’t, because it was the memories that drove him. The good, the bad, and everything else in-between. They were the reasons he was out here, hurting but pushing through.
So why did he stop in the middle of the road anyway? It wasn’t because he didn’t have any choice. He did. Three, to be exact. Would she have chased him if he fled left or right or turned and retreated the way he’d come? Maybe, but he thought he could outrun her on the Quarter Horse. The animal was well-rested, and Wash hadn’t been pushing it very hard since they left Kanter 11 behind.
So why, despite knowing everything, had he stopped anyway?
Because it sent her, that was why, and Wash was going to be damned if he ran away from it.
Not here. Not now. Not ever.
Wash halted the orange-brown horse about ten feet from the girl. He knew she was a girl—or used to be one, anyway—because she was small, barely five feet tall, even though she looked slightly hunched over as if she were suffering from a lifetime of poor posture. The cloak, up close, was a much darker shade of red. Almost blood-red.
There were no woods around him or trees for miles. Which was how he had spotted the solitary figure from a distance. He thought she would move when he neared, spooked by his appearance, but she hadn’t. She remained slightly turned, with her back mostly exposed to him even now. He couldn’t see her face or tell what she looked like with the hood draped over her head, and there was really no reason for him to think she was a she at all.
Except he knew, because this was a call back to that night, when everything changed.
A soft wind howled from somewhere to his left, pushing against the girl’s cloak until it hugged her thin frame. Wash couldn’t make out arms or legs, just the shape of a small person. A small, bony person.
Wash held the reins of the horse with one hand, while his right dropped slightly to his holstered sidearm. A Kahr 9mm, courtesy of Marie’s people. The kukri was sheathed on his left hip should he need it, but at a distance of ten feet, Wash could nail his target without even trying. And the mag was fully loaded with silver-tipped rounds.
The horse seemed to sniff the girl and must not have liked what it smelled, because it began shuffling its unshod feet. The animal was agitated, and Wash didn’t blame it. There was something very not right about the girl, even if he couldn’t see any part of her because the red-tinted fabric covered her body from head to toe.
But there was no hiding the smell. It was strong and tainted the air, reaching out across the cold night air and caressing Wash’s face, making his nostrils twitch. His wounds, still healing days later, tingled at the nearness of that familiar stench.
&
nbsp; Rot. Vomit. Death.
“Where is it?” he asked. His voice was even-keeled. Calm. Unhurried. Unafraid.
Because he wasn’t afraid. You couldn’t get rid of fear completely, but you could master it, temper it at the crucial moments so it wouldn’t interfere. Wash had begun doing that during The Purge, and the Old Man had taught him the rest.
When the figure didn’t answer, Wash said, “It sent you, didn’t it?”
The figure moved. Slightly. It turned its head to the left, as if it were sneaking a look back at him. Except it stopped partway, eyes and face still hidden underneath the draped hood.
Wash let his fingers brush against the grip of the Kahr. The semiautomatic was cold to the touch, but maybe that was because he hadn’t had any reason to reach for it in the last few days. The first day with the weapon had been spent testing it, getting a feel for its smooth double-action trigger and recoil. That get-to-know session had cost him exactly one full magazine. He hadn’t wasted any more since.
“What’s the point of this?” he asked the girl. “Are you just going to stand there all night or what?”
He was still sure it was a girl underneath the cloak. The height, the size—everything pointed to a kid. A kid. Why had it sent a kid to intercept him? Was this all just to remind him of that night—
The horse felt it first—the ground around him moving as something (somethings) underneath the surface began crawling their way out. The Quarter Horse lifted its head and let out a loud snort.
Wash tightened his grip on the horse’s reins even as he drew the pistol, the thoughts It’s a trap. You knew it was a trap, and you walked right into it anyway. You idiot! You goddamn idiot! racing through him.
But it was too late to turn back now. The air was suddenly suffocating, every inch of it filled with that familiar aroma of stinking garbage.
Of death. Of ghouls.
There were a half dozen of them—their black flesh gleaming against the flood of moonlight—clamoring clumsily out of the holes they’d dug into the ground on both sides of the road. He hadn’t noticed how the ground had been tampered with, because it was so dark and because he was too focused on the figure in the road. Just like it had intended.
The world slowed down to a crawl like it always did when death was in the air, and Wash spun the horse around even as the animal continued to snort loudly, bursts of white clouds expelling in slow motion out of its nostrils with every alarmed breath.
The first creature to reach the surface ran at him, wet, damp dirt flinging off its shoulders and hairless domed head. Dark eyes focusing, twisted mouth opening wide to reveal jagged yellow teeth. It was fast, but it wasn’t quick enough to dodge a bullet.
The Kahr slid easily out of its holster, and Wash fired from the hip. He caught the first ghoul in the chest with the first shot. The 9mm round punched through its sunken torso and kept going, exiting out its back and vanishing into the night air. The nightcrawler, all tainted life suddenly snuffed out of it, continued forward, its momentum driving it. Then it lost all steam and slammed into the ground at the horse’s feet.
That spooked the horse, and the animal began shuffling its feet wildly to get away from the corpse. The agitated movements threw Wash’s aim off slightly as he fired a second time, still from the hip, at two more ghouls.
One creature’s head exploded like a ripe watermelon as the 9mm round drilled through its face, smashing its nose in the process, while it was still pulling itself up from the ground. Wash missed with his third shot but not his fourth. He clipped a ghoul in the shoulder blade, and it fell back into the hole it had been hiding in all this time.
The Quarter Horse continued to move wildly, and despite Wash’s best attempts to keep it under control, he realized quickly that it was a lost cause. Wash acted before the frightened horse could throw him off, launching himself in the same direction as the dead ghouls he’d just killed. There were more ghouls scrambling out of holes on the other side, and he didn’t want to land right in the middle of the pack. This way, he’d get a few seconds to gather himself—
Pain crackled through his body as he hit the hard ground and rolled over, the smell of rotting flesh from nearby dead ghouls tearing at his nostrils. He gritted his teeth through it all—or as much of it as he could, anyway—and still might have let out a loud scream anyway.
Then he was rolling and scrambling back onto his knees. He spun around to search for the rest of the ghouls that, by now, would have already managed to dig themselves up from their hiding places.
“Four rounds! You have four rounds left, kid!” a voice shouted inside his head. It was the Old Man but not really the Old Man. An imaginary version of him, reinforcing things Wash already knew. Like right now, reminding him that he had only four rounds left in the Kahr. The magazine was limited to eight bullets, and he had already wasted four on three ghouls. Four on three ghouls.
“You’re supposed to be more accurate than this, kid,” the Old Man said.
Yeah, yeah, Wash thought as he watched the horse whirling around, puffing clouds from its flaring nostrils, before it took off down the road.
“That’s not good,” the Old Man said.
No kidding! Wash thought, when he glimpsed sudden movements from the corner of his eye.
The girl in the cloak!
He spun in that direction, the Kahr still at waist level, as she came at him.
He could see the creature in all its glory now, especially the piercing blue eyes that flashed inside the lightless interior of the hood. A blue-eyed ghoul. Not the blue-eyed ghoul Wash had been hunting, but another one.
It was fast. So, so much faster than the three black eyes he’d killed seconds earlier.
Goddammit, they’re fast!
It disintegrated the distance between them in the blink of an eye, the cloak fluttering around it as if alive, revealing its skeletal frame and deformed joints and—the eyes. All Wash could focus on were the eyes. So much so that he completely ignored the three figures on the other side of the road as they began moving toward his position.
He fired at the blue-eyed ghoul. Wash didn’t bother to lift the pistol for a better shot. He didn’t need to. He’d been shooting from the hip since he had learned to hold a gun, and he did that now.
Bang-bang-bang-bang!
All four shots, as fast as he could, and he didn’t stop pulling the trigger until the gun’s slide snapped backward and locked on the fourth (and last) bang!
And the creature kept coming.
He hadn’t hit it. He hadn’t even come close to hitting it.
But Wash didn’t think he would anyway. He already knew how fast the blue-eyed ones were, and he didn’t for one second believe he could nail it. And knowing that, he had fired at it with one hand while his left reached for the kukri and began drawing it, and it slipped out of the sheath just as the monster reached him.
It grabbed him by the neck, icy-cold fingers sliding around his throat and tightening like a vise. Razor-thin lips curved into existence from the black void that was its face, the hood still clinging to the creature’s forehead somehow. Was the damned thing glued in place? Wash wondered. How had it not fallen down yet?
It was so small—barely five feet—that it only had to bend slightly at the waist to take hold of Wash’s kneeling form—
Wash drove the kukri into the blue-eyed ghoul’s stomach. Instant shock exploded and ballooned in both of its eyes at the sharp contact. It hadn’t seen it coming, just as he had planned.
Adapt or perish, bitch! Wash thought, grinning through a mouthful of blood (Blood? Now where had that come from? Oh right, that stupid stunt where he threw himself off the horse’s saddle.) as he jerked the knife upward and eviscerated the creature from its gut all the way up to its chest before it could react.
Then he angled the kukri slightly so he could break through the chest cavity and bones and pull the blade free.
Blood splattered the air, and the blue-eyed ghoul let out an ear-splitting shriek
that shouldn’t have been possible for something its size. It wasn’t the kukri’s fourteen inches of razor-sharp and curved blade that was causing it incredible pain, but the silver that coated it. Silver didn’t kill the Blue Eyes, but it hurt.
Wash saw the truth of that as the childlike figure stumbled away from him. It moved with difficulty, its severed torso causing it to sway from side to side. Not that Wash felt any sympathy for it. He had none to give this wretched thing that was once human—once a little girl that someone, somewhere called daughter or sister—but wasn’t anymore. It was just another undead monstrosity, a crime against nature, as alive as the clump of dirt that flicked from its soles as it attempted to flee.
Wash lunged after it and lopped its head off at the neck with one wide-arcing swing. He’d had too much practice with the kukri to miss. There was barely any resistance to the blade, and he cut through the bones as if they were little more than flimsy sheets of film.
The figure flopped to one side while its head went flying in the other. The head rolled away for a few feet before stopping and settling, the face turned toward Wash. Wide blue eyes, now devoid of any sheen, stared back at him while its mouth trembled in shock.
It was still alive…somehow.
“The brain, kid,” the Old Man said. “Haven’t I taught you anything?”
Right. The brain.
Wash remained on his knees, looking back at the creature, when there was a sudden surge of suffocating rot in the air.
He spun on his knees, fingers tightening around the kukri.
There was a black-eyed nightcrawler standing less than ten feet from him. Standing, because it had frozen in place, along with the other two. They didn’t even seem aware of his existence anymore and stood like statues, staring at the decapitated head of the blue-eyed ghoul.
“They control them, the Blue Eyes,” the Old Man once told him. “The Black Eyes turn into mindless machines without them. Kill one, and you’ve essentially killed all of its soldiers.”
That was what Wash was looking at now. Soldiers waiting for orders from a higher-up that would never come. The ones that were out there on their own could act independently, but once a Blue Eyes got involved, linked to their minds, they became another cog in the machine, incapable of autonomous thinking. If the black eyes could even think at all. Even after killing so many of them, Wash wasn’t so sure.
After The Purge: Vendetta Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 50
