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

by Sisavath, Sam

  “It’s all in your head, kid,” the Old Man said.

  Probably.

  “No probably about it. You need to calm down.”

  I’m trying.

  “Try harder. This is it. This is where it all ends. Tonight. Now. You have to be absolutely ready.”

  He concentrated on the world around him instead of arguing with himself:

  A sudden gust of wind contributing to the growing chill...

  Lyla was where he’d last seen her, in the middle of the street…

  Keith, walking toward her now, his rifle hanging at his side…

  Lyla waiting, waiting, as darkness continued to grow around them…

  Wash resisted the urge to look back at the door, to make sure Ana had closed and barricaded it. He had to trust her. She was a smart woman. Way too smart to leave the door open for no reason whatsoever. Way smarter than him, at least.

  “That goes without saying,” the Old Man said.

  Don’t rub it in.

  “Why shouldn’t I? You’re out here, and she’s in there.”

  Good point.

  Wash stepped off the sidewalk and onto the street as Keith continued on ahead of him, toward Lyla. She had stopped moving, and though Wash couldn’t make out most of her face, he could see enough to know that it really was her and not some ghoul trick. Well, it was a ghoul trick, but Lyla wasn’t one of them yet. She was still Lyla. Now all Wash and her brother had to do was keep her that way.

  Keith reached out a hand toward his sister. “Lyla…”

  “Keith,” she said. Her voice was strained, every word on the verge of tears. “Keith. I’m sorry. I should have listened to you. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Lyla. It’s okay.”

  “I should have listened to you…”

  “It’s okay. I’m here now.”

  “God, Keith, I’m so sorry…”

  “It’s okay. All’s forgiven. Everything’s going to be okay from now on…”

  Wash didn’t particularly agree with that last statement. There was nothing okay about tonight. Not with the three of them out here, in the open, as the night air turned every one of their breaths into exploding white clouds.

  His night eyes had adjusted enough for him to notice the tiny movements behind curtains across the street. More of the same to his right, but no indication anyone else was going to come out here to join the party.

  Wash tightened his grip on the H&K. He wasn’t familiar with the model or how many bullets the mag held (Probably should have checked, or asked Keith…), but it had to be over a dozen given the 5.56 caliber rounds it was loaded with. Fifteen, at a minimum, but probably more like thirty. He’d find out eventually when the shooting started.

  “Keith, I’m sorry,” Lyla was saying. She was holding out both hands toward her brother as he closed in on her. Keith was moving cautiously, just as aware as Wash was that they weren’t alone out here.

  “You don’t have to be,” Keith said. “We’re family. You don’t have to be. Ever, baby sister.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Lyla said. The distance made it hard for Wash to get a good look at her face, but he swore she was staring past her brother and right at him.

  “What happened to you?” Keith was asking Lyla. “Where did you go?”

  “It did it,” Lyla said, her voice cracking even more. “It did it, Keith. It did this to me…”

  Movement, out of the corner of his right eye.

  Here we go!

  Dark stick figures were racing across the rooftop of the buildings across from them. Two—three—more. They were small and low to the ground, darting along the edges, unbothered by how close they were to falling off the side. They were there one second and gone the next, but they hadn’t been fast enough to stay unseen.

  “Keith!” Wash shouted. “The rooftops!”

  Keith had reached Lyla and put one hand on her shoulder when he looked up and around at the sound of Wash’s voice. Wash was about to point out the ghouls’ last sighting, but the Jasper man saw them quickly enough—nightcrawlers, at least five of them, now moving across a different series of rooftops.

  Keith swung up his rifle with one hand, grabbing Lyla’s wrist with the other. “Go! Get inside!”

  “Keith!” Lyla shouted.

  “Jesus Christ, do as I say for once in your life, Lyla!”

  Even if Lyla wanted to do just that, the problem was that she couldn’t move very fast. She was more hurt than Wash originally thought, and that was abundantly clear when she tried to hobble away from Keith and toward him. She was dragging her right leg while clutching her left arm.

  She won’t make it. She’s never going to make it in time.

  Wash took a couple of quick steps toward Lyla when the pfft-pfft-pfft! of suppressed rifle fire echoed behind her.

  Keith, shooting at something down the street.

  It took Wash only a second of looking in that direction to know what that “something” was:

  Ghouls.

  They were on the ground and racing toward them. Wash couldn’t see them clearly, but it was hard to miss their malformed silhouettes as they lunged out of the shadows and fell one by one as Keith picked them off with a series of bursts.

  Keith stopped shooting just long enough to throw a quick glance over his shoulder and locked eyes with Wash, shouting, “Get her inside, goddammit! Get her inside!”

  Wash ran toward Lyla, who had stopped moving entirely to look back at her brother. Keith was shooting again, the pfft-pfft-pfft! of his gunshots the only noise in the entire town besides Lyla’s haggard gasps and Wash’s footsteps.

  “Lyla,” Wash said as he reached her and grabbed one of her arms.

  Her hand was slick with blood, as were her clothes, the side of her neck, and cheeks. There was a gash along her temple, and parts of her jacket were ripped. She barely had any resemblance to the woman who had saved him earlier tonight. The terror on her face didn’t help.

  Wash smiled at her. Or tried to. He did his best and was turning to lead her back into the red building when the boom! of a shotgun blast shattered the night air. It had exploded from nearby and left his ears ringing for a moment.

  What…?

  He dropped Lyla’s hand and lifted the H&K, but found two twisted black shapes lying crumpled in the street in front of him. The door into Keith’s building was open, and Ana was standing just outside it, the shotgun in her hands.

  Wash was about to call her name when Ana fired again. Flames stabbed forth and eviscerated a ghoul as it fell down from a nearby building’s rooftop, its remains splattering the sidewalk and streets with chunks.

  Ana looked over, racking the shotgun. “Come on! Come on!”

  Wash slipped his free arm around Lyla’s waist, said, “Put your arm around me!” and began half-dragging, half-carrying her to Ana.

  The pfft-pfft-pfft! of Keith’s continued gunfire behind them (Did it sound closer than before?) was all the assurance Wash needed that the man was still alive and Wash didn’t have to keep an eye on that side of the street, too.

  Boom! as Ana’s shotgun fired at two more ghouls running out of an alleyway from across the street. One seemed to trip over an invisible wire and slammed face-first into the ground, but the other one kept coming.

  Another boom! and it, too, dropped.

  “Goddammit, Wash, hurry it up, will you?” Ana shouted as another spent shell flicked out of her pump-action shotgun.

  “I’m trying, I’m trying!” Wash shouted back.

  “Keith!” Lyla said. She was looking behind them at her brother. “Oh God, Keith. We can’t leave him behind! Please! We can’t leave him behind!”

  Wash glanced over to check. Keith was backing up, following in their footsteps, while reloading his rifle.

  Wait. He was reloading already? That meant he only had one spare left.

  Ana, shouting, “Wash! Get your ass in here now!”

  Wash locked eyes with Lyla. Tears flooded down her cheeks, smearin
g the not-quite drying blood.

  “Please,” Lyla said. “Don’t leave him. Oh God, please don’t leave him!”

  Wash sighed. Or thought he did. He probably just grunted and blew out another desperate lungful of air.

  “Wash!” Ana shouted. “Move it or lose it!”

  “Please,” Lyla said.

  “You’re really popular tonight, kid!” the Old Man laughed.

  Oh, shut up, Wash thought just before he unhooked his arm from Lyla’s waist and passed her off to Ana, who had jumped down from the sidewalk and run over.

  “Take her inside!” Wash said.

  Ana’s eyes widened. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Something really stupid, Wash thought, but he shouted back at her instead, “Go! We’ll be right behind you!”

  He saw the question in her eyes: “We?”

  But she didn’t say it, maybe because there was no time. Ana took Lyla, who was both bigger and taller than her, and somehow still managed to drag the other woman to the red building. Barely.

  They’re not going to make it, Wash thought, and was ready to take Lyla back from Ana when Chris was suddenly there, putting her arm around Lyla, and both women began half-carrying and half-dragging the Jasper woman to safety.

  Ana threw a quick glance over her shoulder at him. “Come on!”

  “Not yet!” Wash said.

  “Wash, you asshat!”

  He grinned at her, when there was a flurry of motion as the night spat out ghouls from up the street. They bounded toward them, moving with unnatural speed, heading right for the women.

  Wash fired, the rifle butt slamming against his shoulder as the first loud pop! cracked. He hadn’t realized just how quiet the night was despite everything—Keith shooting behind him and all the screaming back and forth. There was nothing like the first loud roar of a semiautomatic rifle to light things up.

  He picked off the ghouls with three shots—pop-pop-pop!—and dropped all three. He couldn’t afford to waste bullets, especially when he didn’t know how many of the creatures were out here. How many did One Eye still have in its arsenal?

  I guess we’re going to find out!

  Wash looked back and found Ana, Chris, and Lyla going up the sidewalk. Once again, Ana glanced over, and they locked eyes.

  “Don’t stop! Go!” Wash shouted at her.

  She nodded and, with Chris’s help, carried Lyla into the building.

  “Lock the door!” Wash shouted after them. “Lock the door!”

  Ana reappeared at the doorframe, her shotgun in her hands again. “What about you?”

  “We’ll be there soon!” he said just before he turned and shot two more ghouls that had fallen down from the rooftop across the street.

  Both creatures were so thin, their bones so fragile, that one of Wash’s rounds punched through its target and smashed into a window somewhere in the background. The nightcrawler fell where it was shot.

  Wash heard the door slamming behind him, which was all he needed to know that Ana was following through on his instructions. He turned to Keith, who was already reloading again (Shit! He’s reloading again?) while he continued backpedaling calmly toward Wash’s position. There was a jagged line of dead ghouls up the street, the nearest one less than two meters from Keith.

  “Keith,” Wash said.

  The Jasper man looked over his shoulder and grinned. “Easier than I thought.”

  “It’s not over yet.”

  “Almost—”

  A ghoul burst out of an alley between the red building and the next one over. Wash opened his mouth to scream out a warning, but it wasn’t necessary. Keith had either already seen it out of the corner of his eye or heard the creature, and was already pivoting in its direction.

  Pfft! as the creature’s torso snapped backward in midair and it collapsed.

  But even before the monster struck the ground, two—three—too many more ghouls were already flooding out of the same patch of shadows after it.

  Too many! That’s too many!

  Wash lifted his rifle to take aim at the moving figures. If they even noticed his presence they couldn’t care less, because every single one was headed straight for Keith even as the Jasper man fired into them. Wash knocked down two ghouls as they streaked past him, the sounds of their two weapons raking across the town almost in sync: The pop-pop-pop of his unsuppressed weapon and Keith’s suppressed pfft-pfft-pfft!

  But it wasn’t going to be enough. Wash knew that even as he kept firing, even as a couple of ghouls gave up on reaching Keith and made a sudden turn. Wash jumped up the sidewalk and shot the first one, then another.

  Keith, screaming, “Fuck you! Fuck you!”

  Wash looked over just in time to see Keith before he was swallowed up by the night itself. No, not the darkness, but a carpet of squirming black tar pummeling him to the ground. The muffled pfft-pfft! of Keith’s rifle still firing from underneath the swarm, his rounds punching through weakened flesh and vanishing into the sky.

  Fuck.

  It seemed to go on for a while, at least in Wash’s mind. But the truth was, it might have only lasted a few seconds before Keith succumbed and his rifle went silent.

  Wash shot one of the ghouls at the top of the pile, striking it in the cheek. It toppled off the mound and slid down the backs of the others. He’d aimed high on purpose, knowing that his round would go right through the creature. He hadn’t wanted to accidentally hit Keith if he was still alive down there.

  He took aim at another ghoul and pulled the trigger—but there was no shot.

  Empty!

  The rifle was suddenly very light in his hands. Too light. How had he missed that? It was all the action, all the running and shooting, all the—

  “Excuses, excuses,” the Old Man said.

  Wash began backing up, ejecting the spent mag and snapping in a fresh one. He was halfway back to the red building’s door when he pulled back the charging handle on the H&K and spun around.

  It stood in front of him, towering over him. Its one blue eye glowed like a beating, malformed heart in the shadows, even as its lips creased into a smile.

  “Hello, Washington,” it hissed.

  Oh…

  The monster was too close and too fast, and even before Wash could send the command from his brain to his arms to squeeze the trigger on the rifle, the creature grabbed the H&K by the barrel and wrestled it out of his hands and tossed it into the street. It did so with hardly any effort, as if Wash was little more than a child trying to resist a grown man.

  …fuck…

  Wash staggered back and reached behind him for the 1911 that Keith had given him. He’d managed to wrap his fingers around the grip, when the monster touched his right arm and Wash lost all feeling in it.

  …me.

  “There’ll be none of that,” the creature hissed.

  The clatter of the pistol as it dropped from his numbed fingers and banged against the wooden sidewalk.

  What? How’d he lost his grip on the weapon? Better yet, why couldn’t he feel anything along the entire length of his right arm?

  Wash continued to stumble back—it was the only move left to him—and the one-eyed ghoul followed.

  “You knew it would end this way,” it hissed. “How many times have I told you? You should have listened…kid.”

  Twenty-Five

  THEN

  By morning, all that was left for Wash to do was drag the bodies out of the bungalow and let the sunlight take care of them. The flesh and blood, anyway. He did the blue-eyed ghoul in the red cloak last, telling himself there was a reason for it but wasn’t sure what it was. Wash was numbed and moving on autopilot, doing the things he knew had to be done, things he’d done countless times. It was mundane and passionless work, but they kept him busy and his thoughts from straying.

  He didn’t bother digging holes to bury the remaining ghoul bones. The carrions and insects needed to eat, too. There was a reason you didn’t find a lot of ghou
l remains after The Walk Out. All Wash had to do was listen to the wildlife around him to know these four leftovers would be gone before the end of the week.

  When he returned to the house, the Old Man’s body was still wrapped in his sleeping blanket and bundled with duct tape. The Old Man used to say there was nothing a roll of duct tape couldn’t fix, and Wash had found that to be true for the most part. It worked wonders to keep a body hidden.

  He spent the remainder of the morning getting ready to leave and doing his best to pretend the Old Man’s body wasn’t there, resting on the floor in a corner, waiting for him to finally deal with it. When he was done packing, it was time to do the inevitable, even if the thought made him sick to his stomach.

  He dragged the mummified body out into the back and dug a grave just deep enough to keep the animals away, then put the Old Man inside. He didn’t bother with a cross—the Old Man was the least religious person Wash knew—or markers. The Old Man had no family, and besides the occasional slayers they would partner up with on the road, no close friends who would come looking for him. No one, anyway, except Wash.

  Morning was fading when Wash glimpsed two mounted figures through one of the windows, sunlight blinking off a pair of aviator shades one of them was wearing. He hadn’t heard them approaching because the riders were on unshod horses and the animals barely made any noise against the damp earth.

  Wash grabbed his pack and went outside to meet them. He was carrying more this afternoon than when he’d showed up last night, even though he’d left most of the Old Man’s stuff behind. He didn’t need more guns or bullets; they were too heavy, and the payment from Oakville was more valuable anyway. You could always find more unclaimed ammo and weapons out there just lying around.

  The two slayers were waiting outside. Wash hadn’t realized how dirty he was or how tired he looked until he saw his own reflection in the lenses of Taggert’s glasses.

  “You look like shit, kid,” Williams said, as if reading Wash’s thoughts.

  “Didn’t think you guys would still be around,” Taggert said. “You weren’t waiting for us, were you?”