0692672400 (S) (11 page)

I can’t bear to lose you too…

G
ALLANT HAD MORE
land than it did people, so the houses on the outskirts of the main commercial area were spread out. The dirt road Danny had turned into eventually became smooth asphalt again, and they passed a series of residential homes with large front and backyards.

Danny finally settled on a house with a dirt driveway and nothing but empty fields behind it. If not for the map, they would have driven right past this part of town and never known people lived here. The house had a white truck parked in the front yard and an unattached garage big enough for two cars, which was good because she didn’t think the jalopy was going anywhere after this. If they could even start it again with the drain on its already leaking fuel tank.

She stayed inside the truck with Nate while Danny cleared the house by himself, then did the same to the garage next door. When he came back, they hid the pickup in the garage, then carried Nate inside the house and put him down in the living room. The residence was a single-floor building with burglar bars outside the windows and over the front door. Those security measures were the main reason Danny had chosen it out of all the other houses in the area.

“I’m going to need your help,” Danny said as he shrugged off his pack, took out a bottle of water, and poured it over his hands.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

Nate lay on the couch with his eyes closed. His hair was soaked in sweat and his entire midsection was covered in blood, as were his pants and what was left of the shirt Danny hadn’t already cut away to put on the bandages earlier.

“Tell me you can do this,” she said to Danny.

“The first-aid kit has everything we need.”

“Danny, tell me you can do this.”

He nodded. “I can do this.”

She stared at him for a few long seconds before finally nodding. “Okay.”

“Let’s get to work,” Danny said, then handed her another bottle of water to clean her bloody hands with.

“
W
ANT A SOUVENIR
?” Danny asked.

She shook her head. “Be my guest.”

“Eh, souvenirs are for old people anyway.”

Danny flicked the bullet he had dug out of Nate into the bathroom sink. There was just enough light coming from the small rectangular opening behind her to see the 5.56 bullet as it
clinked
around the porcelain bowl before vanishing down the drain.

All that damage, from such a small thing…

Gaby concentrated on rubbing Nate’s dried blood off her fingers, but it didn’t seem like she was making any real progress. After a while, she gave up and grabbed a blue cotton towel hanging off a rack and forced herself to be satisfied with wiping the sweat off her face.

“He’s gonna be out the entire night from the morphine,” Danny said, “which means you and I get the privilege of guard duty.”

“Yay us.”

“What I said. Anyway, we have everything we need to survive the night. Burglar bars over the windows, extra food, and water. All we have to do is stay as quiet as mice and they won’t ever know we were here.”

“Who are we talking about? Ghouls or humans?”

“Both.”

“You think there’s more of them out there? Besides the guy in the Jeep?”

“I think that technical was already on its way here before the fun started. Maybe because of whoever they were exchanging fire with earlier.”

“It had to be Mercer’s people. They’re everywhere.”

Danny nodded. “Yeah. Mercer’s fun boys are becoming a real pain in my ass. Right now, though, I’m more concerned with why those boys in black were here in the first place. That technical came later.”

“The Jeep.”

“Uh huh.”

“What if Nate was right? What if they were tracking us?”

“The question is why.”

“Mason?”

“Maybe.”

“But you don’t believe it.”

“No. Something else is going on.” He shook his head. “I’d give my left pinky finger to find out what.”

Danny seemed to drift off, lost in thought, and Gaby did the same, staring at herself in the mirror above the sink. She was already covered in dirt and sweat, but now she’d added streaks of blood by touching her face with her bloodied hands. A year ago the sight of the girl looking back at her would have horrified her, but these days it barely registered. She wetted the towel with a dab of water from what was left in her bottle and went to work.

“He’s still out there,” she said after awhile. “Mason.”

“Yup,” Danny nodded.

“We should have killed him.”

“Probably.” Then, “Get some rest, kid. It’s been a long morning, and it’s going to be a long night. We can’t travel with Nate in his condition, at least not if you want to keep him alive for cuddling later.”

“I’d really like that.”

“A little cuddling, a little premarital sex…” Danny said before turning and leaving the bathroom.

She smiled wryly after him before returning to cleaning Nate’s blood off her cheeks and forehead. When she was (mostly) done, she tossed the towel into the overflowing trash bin, snatched up her rifle, and went outside to join Danny. She could already feel the temperature starting to drop around her.

It would be dark soon. Very soon…

6

KEO

W
ELL
, this didn’t quite go as planned.

Or maybe that wasn’t entirely true. The fact of the matter was, he was (somehow, some way) still alive, and more importantly, there was a good chance he was being taken to Mercer. Of course, that was the best-case scenario, and he had a feeling he knew what Danny would say if he ever caught wind of Keo’s presently overflowing optimism.

Not that he had much of a choice. It was either focus on the positive or wallow in the pain. Because there was a lot of pain.

His face was on fire, and moving even just a little bit sent jolts of electricity coursing through his body. But it wasn’t the type of pain that signaled a broken rib (or two), so that was the good news. The bad was that his captors hadn’t bothered to clean up his face, which explained the feeling of sandpaper scraping at his eyeballs. He still had a mouthful of blood, most of it coming from his broken nose. His forehead might have been slightly cut, though that was currently taking a backseat to the pounding originating from between his eyes.

The pain should have been worse with the helicopter pulsing continuously through him as it traveled over the state of Texas, the
whup-whup-whup
of its rotors like sledgehammers pounding nails into his skull. He had no idea where they were or where they were going, only that they were already in the air and moving when he opened his eyes and (discreetly) took stock of his situation.

He was surrounded by the same people he had seen back at the barn—three of them sat across from him while two more flanked him. A sixth, sporting aviator shades, was perched behind a machine gun mounted along the open starboard-side hatch. The weapon looked like an older model M240 with a box magazine; the man behind it pointed the weapon playfully at a flock of birds outside and mimed shooting them. The port-side door was closed and the only thing Keo could see out the windows were empty skies.

Six men and one woman, and two in the cockpit. It wasn’t even close to being manageable numbers; not that he had any ideas about escaping anyway, especially with his wrists and ankles duct taped together. Never mind the fact that he had never learned to fly, because going out one of the open doors was probably his only real option at the moment. They had removed everything he had on him, leaving just his clothes and the blood on his face.

He wasn’t sure how long the woman had known he was awake; she was watching him with a curious expression on her face. She looked tall even sitting down—maybe just a shade under five-ten, and like most women he had encountered since The Purge, carried very few if any excess pounds on her. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and that made the bags under her eyes more apparent.

Someone hasn’t been getting their beauty sleep lately.

She looked tired but was trying to power through the fatigue. He’d seen plenty of guys do that on jobs either with caffeine or pill-sized stimulants. She had short black hair, but he could imagine her with a long, flowing mane just a year ago. The obvious Parisian genes were easy to spot and she reminded him a little of Bonnie, the ex-model with whom he had spent a lot of time with back on the
Trident.
Like the men around her, the woman wasn’t wearing anything that looked like a uniform or a name tag, which made perfect sense if they were indeed Mercer’s men and were out here launching guerilla-style hit-and-run attacks on collaborator positions.

His ruse exposed, Keo gave up pretending to still be asleep and straightened up, or as much as he could manage while restrained. His nose felt as if there were cotton balls jammed into both nostrils, and the hard floor was sticky with fresh mud and dirt and (no doubt his contribution to the mess) blood.

“Where we going?” Keo asked, directing his question at the woman. He had to shout to be heard over the turbine engine that made every inch of the helicopter thrum as if it were going to come unglued at any second.

She didn’t answer him, but she didn’t take her eyes off him, either. The guy behind the machine gun glanced over at the sound of Keo’s voice before returning his gaze out the hatch as the helicopter caught up to another flock of birds.

“Can I get some water?” he asked the woman.

She stared but still didn’t say anything.

“Towel?”

Nothing.

“I smell jerky in the air. I wouldn’t mind some of that. I’m famished. Haven’t eaten all day and most of yesterday.”

“Shut up,” the man sitting to his left said.

Keo ignored him and said to the woman, “Ever heard the idiom ‘You catch more flies with honey?’”

“If I give you some jerky, will you shut up?” the man sitting to the woman’s left said.

“Absolutely,” Keo said.

“Too bad. I finished it off this morning. Chased it down with some coffee and an oatmeal cookie.”

“Sounds like fine dining.”

“It ain’t the Hilton, but it’ll do.”

He turned back to the woman. “Maybe you can tell one of these gentlemen to give me some water.”

“What makes you think she’s in charge?” Beef Jerky Guy asked.

“Oh, come on. It’s obvious she wears the pants around here.”

Something that looked almost like a smile flickered across the woman’s face, but it only lasted for a blink of an eye before vanishing.

“Right?” he said to her.

She ignored him, said instead, “What happened here?” and traced one side of her face with her forefinger. “Looks like it must have hurt.”

“It did,” Keo said, remembering the cold steel of Pollard’s knife as it sliced its way into his flesh. “You should see the other guy.”

“Prettier than you?” Beef Jerky Guy said.

“Not even a contest.”

“Considering how you look, that’s saying something.”

“I still have nightmares about it.”

“I bet.”

“Where we going?” he asked the woman again.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said.

“Give a guy a hint.”

She didn’t answer.

“Then can I at least get some water?” Keo asked.

“You already asked that,” she said.

“Figured I didn’t have anything to lose by asking a second time.”

She nodded at the man sitting next to Keo. The guy produced a canteen and leaned over. Keo opened his mouth gratefully and took as much water as he could, then swished it around to wash away the blood clinging to the walls of his mouth before swallowing the whole thing down.

“Thanks,” he said to the woman.

“Next thing you know Slaphappy Jerry here’ll want a change of clothes,” Beef Jerky Guy said.

“I’m Keo,” he said to the woman.

“Good for you,” she said.

He couldn’t help but smile back at her even though doing so made the entire lower half of his face hurt, as if someone were punching it repeatedly.

“Where we going?” he asked for the third time.

“Ask that again and I’m going to throw you out the hatch,” the woman said.

“I’d like to see that,” Beef Jerky Guy grinned.

“Only if you buy me dinner first,” Keo said.

“Smart guy, huh?”

“It’s my disguise. I’m actually very dumb. Hence my current situation.”

“Yeah, you really bungled that one, didn’t you?” He chortled. “Man, what were you doing showing up by yourself like that?”

Being the world’s biggest idiot, or something pretty goddamn close
, Keo thought, but said, “You sure you’re out of those jerky?”

“Pretty sure,” the man said, and smacked his gums for effect.

“Too bad. There’s nothing better than two guys bonding over some meat.”

Beef Jerky Guy stared at him like he didn’t know how to respond to that. The woman next to him, Keo noticed, barely managed to suppress a snort.

A
COMBINATION
of pain and lack of sleep took its toll and he dozed off soon after, and didn’t wake up a second time until someone was nudging him on the shoulder. A gruff male voice half-shouted, “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty!”

Once the haze cleared, Keo opened his eyes to empty seats in front of him, just before Beef Jerky Guy and a second man yanked him out of his own seat and pushed him toward the open door. He stumbled, expecting to fall on his bound legs, until he noticed he was moving freely again, though he couldn’t say the same about his still-bound wrists.

One out of two ain’t bad.

“Don’t fall, princess,” Beef Jerky Guy said. “No one’s picking you up. We’ll make you crawl the rest of the way.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Keo said.

“Don’t say I never gave you nothin’.”

“You’re too kind. I would have settled for the jerky breath.”

“Heh. Funny guy. You a professional comedian or something?”

“No, but I’ve been told I can be a pretty stand-up guy.”

“Oh, funny,” Beef Jerky Guy said. “Now
move.
”