Purge of Babylon (Short Story): Mason's War Read online

  The girl’s arms were draped over the open window, and though she didn’t look dangerous whatsoever (“Looks can be deceiving!”), he had to remind himself that this was the same girl who had shot Lyle and Rummy while they were drinking beer less than twenty-four hours ago.

  “Now you’re getting it,” the voice said. “The smart thing to do now would be to open that door and throw her out. Better yet, take out your Sig and waste her. Get her before she gets you.”

  She had plenty of chances to shoot me, but she didn’t.

  “So what’s that supposed to mean? You’re best friends now?” The voice laughed. “How in God’s name have you managed to survive this long being this stupid? She is not Ange, you peckerhead!”

  Mason said out loud, “You’re not going to shoot me, are you?”

  “What?” she said, and glanced back at him. His question had clearly caught her by surprise. Either that, or she was doing a very good job of pretending that it had, the way she had pulled the wool over Max last night.

  “You’re not going to shoot me as soon as I turn my back on you, are you?” he asked, looking out the windshield at the empty countryside.

  “Of course not,” she said, sounding almost…insulted? “Why would I shoot you?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time you tried.”

  “That was different.”

  “Was it?”

  “Of course it was.”

  The use of of course, as if she were talking to her too-dumb-to-get-it younger brother. That made him almost chuckle.

  “Just wanted to make sure, that’s all,” Mason said.

  “Besides,” Freckles said, “we’re on the same side now. When they come after you, they’ll be looking for me, too.”

  He couldn’t disagree with that, even if the voice did.

  “Remember Max. Remember how she fooled poor, dumb Max…”

  AFTER ANOTHER HOUR or so of driving (Mason had stopped looking at his watch and was satisfied to let the sun tell him he still had plenty of time before nightfall), they finally found something that had the potential to yield some food. And if not that, then at least shelter from the coming darkness.

  “You really think you’ll be able to sleep tonight?” the voice asked. “You’ll be lucky if Freckles doesn’t shoot you in the back of the head first.”

  It was a lone two-story building next to the Gulf of Mexico, far enough from T10 that Mason wasn’t too worried he would run across any of his (former) collaborator pals out here. He was actually surprised he had gotten so close to the ocean without knowing it.

  “Almost drove right into the ocean, huh?” the voice chuckled. “Maybe that would have been the merciful way to end all this. Avoid all the pain that’s waiting for you.”

  He eased them into the dirt parking lot, ready to gun the gas into reverse at a moment’s notice. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands, eyes and ears alert for signs that he might be wrong about the area being empty. The place was surrounded by fields of grass and was so wide open Mason had a hard time believing someone could be hiding out there just waiting for them to pop up. What were the chances of that?

  “About the same as you—you!—pulling a stupid stunt like rescuing a girl who tried to kill you less than a day earlier,” the voice said.

  Will you keep quiet? I’m trying to concentrate.

  “You see anything?” he asked.

  “No,” Freckles said. Like him, she looked wary of a trap and kept glancing around them. “You see anything?”

  “No.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Maybe…”

  “Was this place always this empty looking?”

  “I don’t know. Never been here before.”

  “So how did you find it?”

  Dumb luck, he thought, but said with as much confidence as he could fake, “There was bound to be something along the coastline. There usually is.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  The structure sat on stilts like most of the houses he’d seen that were too close to the sea. There was a beat-up red truck, maybe just a few years older than the one he was driving, parked underneath the building, with a stairwell leading up to the front door on the second—main—floor. The wood was heavily beaten by the elements, but he could still make out JONAH’S MARINA painted across its side in faded white letters.

  A small path broke off from the parking lot and led onto the beach in the background, but other than that, the lone building was the full extent of the “marina.” Mason couldn’t locate anything that looked like a dock or boat slips, and certainly no boats. Given the shape of the property, Mason was inclined to believe that ol’ Jonah had abandoned his place and the business long before the ghouls ever took over.

  Mason put the Nissan into park and sat back in his seat. Freckles did the same, but she’d picked up her rifle from the floor and had her forefinger resting comfortably, at the ready, in the trigger guard.

  “Just make sure she doesn’t point that thing at us,” the voice said.

  She’s not.

  “For now…”

  “Relax,” Mason said to Freckles. “We’re good. If there was anyone out here, they would have shown themselves by now.”

  She nodded, but he could see she wasn’t entirely convinced. It wasn’t just in her face but in the way she clutched and unclutched the AR.

  “You think there’s food in there?” she asked.

  “Only one way to find out…”

  Mason climbed out of the truck and stretched his legs, doing his very best to stay calm, to not show just how paranoid he was about the possibility there was someone hiding somewhere in the fields around them right now, watching him.

  There’s no one out there. There’s no one out there…

  Freckles exited on the other side, but she didn’t try to hide that she was on high alert.

  “I’ll take a look inside; you stay with the truck,” Mason said.

  “I don’t want to stay with the truck,” she said.

  “Then what do you want to do?”

  “I dunno. I’ll think of something while you check the house.”

  “Okay, kid, do what you want.”

  He drew his sidearm and went up the stairs. Climbing steps wasn’t something he was looking forward to; walking and driving didn’t take a lot of effort, but any extra exertion on the part of his legs reminded him of the bullet hole down there.

  Mason stopped halfway up the steps to take another one of the Tramadol while using the opportunity to look around at the tall grass swaying against the ocean breeze in the fields around him. The lack of civilization was both calming and unsettling, and he wondered how the hell this Jonah guy managed to do any kind of business all the way out here, far from any hints of civilization. Of course, maybe that was why ol’ Jonah had gone out of business. No roads meant no people, which meant no money.

  Should have picked a better spot, Jonah.

  He continued up, the stairs squeaking under him with every step, until he was on the spacious balcony on the second floor. He peered through the dirt-caked windows and into a small lobby with a counter at the end next to a back hallway. The place was surprisingly small for something that was supposed to run a business. Like the exterior, the building didn’t look as if anyone had given it very much attention for longer than a few years.

  The door was unlocked and Mason let himself in.

  The stink hit him first—abandonment and old seafood commingling to produce something beyond foul. He left the door open behind him, then opened the windows to let fresh air in to help cleanse the place. There was a cash register on the counter, but the drawers produced little beyond old, paling yellow receipts. The presence of a kitchen in the back, visible through a rectangle-shaped opening, looked more promising.

  There was enough light coming from the front of the building that he didn’t have to worry about unwanted guests hiding in dark corners. The previously closed door and windows also did a lot to ease his
mind; the ghouls, especially the black-eyed ones, were not known for their subtlety. When they occupied a place, you usually knew it in the first few seconds by just the smell alone. Then there was that ever-present vibe that their presence always produced. Mason didn’t detect either one of those telltale signs at the moment.

  By the time he’d gone through the place, he understood why Jonah had left the door unlocked. There was nothing here to steal.

  Fuck you, Jonah, he thought as his stomach growled while he went through the drawers and pantries and two empty fridges. There was nothing inside—at least, nothing that he and Freckles could eat.

  “Anything?” a voice asked behind him, making him jump slightly.

  “Jesus Christ, kid,” Mason said, looking back at her. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  The girl—or the top half of her face that was visible over the window dividing the kitchen and lobby, anyway—looked in at him. “Sorry.”

  “I’m gonna have to put a bell around your neck.”

  “Whatever,” she said. “Did you find anything to eat or not?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Squat.”

  “Did you look in the fridge?”

  “Of course I looked in the fridge. Both of them. Why wouldn’t I look in the fridge?”

  “Geez, sorry, just thought I’d ask. Sheesh.” She left the opening, but he could still hear her just fine. “Maybe we can fish in the ocean.”

  “I don’t see any fishing poles, do you?”

  “Or spear them.”

  “Spear fish?”

  “Some of the guys used to do that on Black Tide. You know, just for fun, in between training. There isn’t really a lot to do over there.”

  “You guys trained a lot?”

  “What do you think?”

  Stupid question. Of course she trained a lot—probably a lot more than most of the collaborators he knew. More than him, in all likelihood.

  “Another good reason to take those guns away from her,” the voice said.

  She hasn’t shot me yet. And she could have, a hundred times over now.

  “Are you really willing to risk it?”

  “Spearfishing, huh?” Mason said. He went back to the drawer where he’d seen a couple of rust-covered knives. One of them was a steak knife, and it was just long enough…

  “Yeah,” Freckles said from the other side of the room. “You wanna try that?”

  “Why the hell not.”

  He’d seen a roll of Scotch tape in another drawer and a mop in the closet, and after removing the dirty head and fastening the knife to the top of the wooden handle, it looked like a decent…something. He wouldn’t exactly call it a spear, maybe more of a…knife-on-a-broomstick thing.

  Freckles wasn’t impressed either when he brought it out of the kitchen. “I guess that might work.”

  “Hey, if you can’t do better, don’t complain.”

  “Who says I couldn’t do better?”

  “So get to work, then.”

  “Maybe later.”

  “That’s what I thought.” He headed for the door. “Now let’s go see if I can catch us something to eat.”

  He heard her sighing behind him, apparently unconvinced.

  IT TURNED out spearfishing was easier in concept than it was in practice. Mason spent the next two hours trying to drill fish the size of his pinky finger up and down the beach. Eventually he had to wade farther out for bigger game (the bigger they were, the easier it would be to hit them, right?), until he was waist-high in the cold waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

  Freckles wasn’t any help and watched him from the dry sand of the beach, but he felt oddly safe with her up there armed with the rifle, watching for signs of trouble. She was actually guarding him.

  Surely, that was crazy.

  Wasn’t it?

  “And I thought last night was the dumbest thing you ever did,” the voice said.

  Mason ignored it, when Freckles asked from behind him, “Anything yet?”

  “Not yet,” Mason said.

  “Will there be something soon?”

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “You said that two hours ago.”

  “So why do you keep asking? Now shut up; I’m trying to concentrate.”

  “What have you been doing all this time?”

  Mason grunted, thought, Smart ass; I should have left you in Max’s donut shop, and went back to work.

  It didn’t, predictably, go well.

  After another hour of freezing his ass off, Mason gave up and tossed the spear onto the beach and climbed out after it.

  Freckles walked over and made a face. “You suck at this.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Mason said, and stomped past her, trying to get as much of the water out of his clothes as possible. He felt about fifty pounds heavier and even hungrier than this morning.

  “That’s it?” Freckles called after him. “You’re just going to give up?”

  “That’s right,” Mason said. “I’m wet and tired and my shoulder’s killing me. You wouldn’t know anything about that last part, would you?”

  Freckles didn’t answer, but he heard her jogging after him.

  “Should have stayed in bed,” the voice chuckled. “Then you wouldn’t be walking around out here, wet and hungry.”

  Mason sighed. The voice was right, but then he should have done a lot of things these days, so what was one more mistake?

  TWELVE

  THEY COULDN’T FIND any food in the house or in the Nissan, but Freckles did score a nearly full bottle of water that had gotten lost under the truck’s passenger seat for God only knew how long. It was warmish, but warmish was better than nothing. Mason drank his bottom half while standing on the second floor watching Freckles as she walked up and down the beach with the AR slung over her shoulder, the weapon ridiculously large against her petite frame.

  “It doesn’t take a giant to pull a trigger,” the voice said.

  She hasn’t shot me yet, and she won’t.

  “So you keep saying. What happens when you’re finally wrong? Oh, right. You get dead. Hard to come back from that kind of mistake.”

  She’s not going to shoot me. We’re in this together.

  “Until she doesn’t need you anymore…”

  Mason took his time with the water just in case it was the last one out here, even though he didn’t think so. Civilization had been obsessed with bottled water even before the world ended, resulting in an obscene number of cases just lying around for the taking. Mason could think of at least two dozen collaborator storage areas just in this part of the state with enough water, MREs, and nonperishables to last him and Freckles (and a few thousand other people) a number of lifetimes. He would know, since he was the one responsible for putting most of them together. Of course, knowing their locations wasn’t the same as accessing them.

  “They’d shoot you on sight,” the voice said.

  Only if they knew what I did.

  “Word will get out.”

  Doubtful. It won’t be that hard to find a town where no one knows me. I can start all over again. One step at a time…

  “When did you become such an optimist?”

  Since you started nagging me.

  “Touché.”

  He thought about taking another Tramadol, but decided against it. While his left arm continued to send out little reminders that Freckles had shot him, it was more of a lingering annoyance than actual pain now. Besides, he needed to keep his head clear.

  The one upside to all of this was that Jocelyn wasn’t out there looking for him. Mason had a very bad feeling that woman would hunt him down to the very ends of the globe if she were here right now. Paul, on the other hand… How far would Paul chase him?

  Another good question that he didn’t have any answers to.

  “You’re full of those these days, aren’t you?” the voice said. “Or yo
u’re full of something, anyway.”

  Funny.

  “I have my moments.”

  Freckles eventually returned just as empty-handed as she had left. “There’s nothing out there.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “I thought there’d be at least something. But there’s just…nothing. Even the beach ends after a while.”

  “How far did you go?”

  “Pretty far.”

  “How far is ‘pretty far?’”

  “I dunno. Pretty far.”

  “And you didn’t find anything?”

  “I saw some dead crabs.”

  “Were they at least fresh?”

  “No…”

  “You can’t eat old dead crabs.”

  “Yeah, I know, I’m not an idiot.”

  “That makes two of us,” the voice said. “I don’t know about you, though.”

  You’re right; I am an idiot, or I wouldn’t be wasting my time talking to you.

  The voice laughed as Mason watched Freckles climb up the stairs and lean against the rickety wooden railing next to him. She let out a frustrated sigh as sunlight brightened her face. She would look almost innocent if it weren’t for the fresh scars and the big rifle over her back.

  “Innocent?” the voice said. “You really have gone bananas.”

  She hasn’t shot me yet.

  “Yet.”

  “Where’s this Black Tide Island of yours?” he asked her.

  “Out there, somewhere,” she said, nodding at the endless ocean to the left of them.

  “Where, exactly?”

  “Like, you mean coordinates?”

  He smiled. “Yeah, like, I mean coordinates.”

  She might have just been a kid, but she understood sarcasm just fine and smirked back at him. “I dunno. It’s not like that was something I needed to know. I don’t even think it’s on a map.”

  “What is it, invisible or something?”

  “Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.” She shrugged. “I just don’t know how to get to it, that’s all. Others do.”

  “Like the ones that dropped you off in Texas to start shooting people.”

  “Yeah, like them.”