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

  “You knew them well? The two guys on your team?”

  She nodded solemnly and looked off at nothing in particular.

  He followed her gaze out to the blue oceans of the Gulf of Mexico. It was so serene out here that he almost forgot the chances were better than not that Paul was out there, searching for signs of him.

  “Whose fault is that?” the voice asked.

  You’re not helping.

  “Agree to disagree. You’re just not listening.”

  After a long silence where neither he nor Freckles said or did anything, with only the wind and the waves crashing into the beach nearby to fill the void, Mason finally said, “Why haven’t you shot me yet?”

  “I’m still thinking about it,” Freckles said, without missing a beat.

  Mason chuckled, and though he couldn’t be entirely sure, he swore he caught her grinning out of the corner of one eye.

  THEY HAD an hour to go before nightfall, but without a viable destination, staying at the marina until they could figure something out was the best option. The only option, the more he thought about it. The alternative was to get back in the Nissan and drive around, and hope they ran across food, other people with food, or simply ran out of gas. There was no real choice, and Freckles recognized it, too.

  Mason knew of other collaborator towns in the area—the closet one was T9, about ten miles west of the coastline—but it would be well-guarded, if not locked down the way T10 had been after Mercer began his attacks. Sneaking in would be a problem—for him, anyway. Even if no one there knew who he was, or what he had done, there would be questions and natural suspicion about his arrival. He knew, because he’d done his share of “greeting” strangers that just appeared in the towns he’d run.

  It would be a lot easier for the girl. Even if she were captured, there was nothing like the sight of a brutalized teenager to draw sympathy. He would have to work with her on a good lie, one that could pass muster, but he was good at that, and the girl had shown plenty of innate intelligence to pull it off.

  “How do you know she’s not pulling it off now?” the voice asked. “On you, this time?”

  She hasn’t shot me yet.

  “You keep saying that. Are you trying to convince yourself or me?”

  Eventually, he’d have to find another town to resettle, preferably one out of state where he could tell any story he wanted and no amount of suspicion or questioning could lead back to T10. But that was going to have to wait until tomorrow—or the days after that. Right now, he was starving, but he wasn’t going to die from starvation. Weak and dizzy, yes, but he’d been weak and dizzy before. If getting shot by Gaby and then dragged through half of Texas hadn’t done him in, he’d be damned if going a single day without food would do it.

  The house didn’t have a whole lot going for it, but it did have a door and windows that could shield them from the elements.

  “And the night,” the voice said. “Don’t forget about the night. You’re not protected anymore, remember?”

  They took everything they could salvage from the truck and drove it under the house, parking it next to the black pickup, which was itself empty except for dead bugs and thick layers of dust. All told, they came away with one AR, two spare magazines for it, and the dead man’s Glock, which Freckles wore around her narrow hips. Mason had his Sig Sauer, a spare magazine, and his knife. He briefly considered asking the girl to let him have the rifle, but then remembered what she had done to Rummy and Lyle, and didn’t.

  She’s probably better with that thing than I am.

  “And this is good for us?” the voice asked.

  For now…

  MASON SAT at the top of the stairs next to Freckles and stared off inland, back in the direction they’d come. Or he thought that was the direction. He might have taken a couple of turns between T10 and the marina without realizing it. Heck, he didn’t even know he was about to drive into the ocean until he saw the house pop up out of nowhere.

  Despite the fading sunlight, he kept expecting to see Paul and a band of collaborators charging through the grass with bloodlust in their eyes. But there was no one out there, and he couldn’t hear car engines or see the glinting hoods of approaching vehicles. Which didn’t mean they weren’t out there, somewhere, looking for him.

  “You would be, in his shoes,” the voice said. “You wouldn’t let this go, not if you wanted to hold onto your authority.”

  He glanced over at the girl, with her arms draped over the wooden railing and her legs dangling off the floor. Her scars pulsed under the dying sun, and soon they would scab over but would never go away completely. It didn’t matter if she lived past the week; she would always have something to remember her mission, and Max, by.

  Looking at her, he still had difficulty believing she was just a kid.

  “So you lived on an island, huh?” he said after a while.

  “Uh huh,” she said, staring off as if she could see that island now.

  “What’s it like?”

  “The weather’s always great. And the fish…there are fish everywhere.” She licked her lips. “I’d love some fish right about now.”

  “You and me both.”

  “You think they’re coming?”

  The question caught him off guard—had she just changed the subject on him at the drop of a dime?—and Mason said, “Who?”

  “You know who.”

  I guess I’m not the only one expecting trouble, Mason thought, and said, “I don’t know.”

  “You killed two of them.”

  “They don’t know about the guy in the truck.”

  “They definitely know about Max.”

  “Yup. They definitely know about Max, all right.”

  Freckles continued staring off at the ocean, watching the waves battering the beach thirty yards from where they sat. All that water and foam, and not a single thing to eat. It was as if the Gulf of Mexico itself was taunting him.

  “Thanks,” Freckles said after a while.

  “For what?” Mason said.

  “You know what.”

  He nodded, because he didn’t know how else to respond.

  “Why did you do it?” Freckles asked, looking over at him. “Was it for her?”

  “Who?”

  “You said her name back in the woods. Angie? That was it, right? Angie?”

  Ange, he thought, but said, “No.”

  “Do I look like her?”

  “No.”

  “So why did you think I was her?”

  “I was wrong.”

  “Obviously, but you still thought it. Who was she? Who was Angie?”

  Ange, he thought again. Her name was Ange.

  “Was,” the voice said. “You just said ‘Her name was Ange.’”

  No, I didn’t, Mason thought, and said, “Someone I know.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “I don’t want to talk about her.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just don’t, okay? Drop it.”

  She waited for him to continue, and when he didn’t, she looked back at the ocean and said, “I would have killed you, you know. Back there, in the woods. That’s what they trained me to do. That’s what I came here to do. I would have killed you and not even thought twice about it.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  “I was going to use you to lure the others into an ambush.”

  “An ambush?”

  “I was going to make you radio in. When they came out to investigate, they’d see you at the tree and rush over to help. Then I’d shoot as many of them as I could while they were out in the open. It’s one of the tactics they taught us at the island..”

  He didn’t know what surprised him more—that she was admitting to it, or that she had spilled the scenario as if they were discussing the weather.

  “You were going to do what, tie me to the tree like some kind of bait?” he asked.

  She grinned, as if the shocked expression on his face was the funnie
st thing she’d ever seen. “Well, yeah.”

  “Jesus Christ, kid,” was the only thing Mason could think of to say.

  THIRTEEN

  “ARE THEY OUT THERE?”

  The question came from Freckles, somewhere behind him in the dark, but Mason didn’t want to take his eyes off the fields beyond the marina to see where exactly.

  So this is what it feels like to be scared of the night again.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he had to outrun the daylight. The lingering fear, the overriding dread day in and day out; it was one of the reasons why he had chosen the path that he did. Ange would have understood. She would have approved.

  Probably…

  “Dead people don’t approve or disapprove,” the voice said.

  You don’t know she’s dead.

  “Don’t I?”

  No. I made it, why couldn’t she?

  “Keep telling yourself that, sport.”

  “Well?” Freckles said.

  “I don’t see them,” Mason said. “Relax; there’s a reason this place has been abandoned for this long. We’re okay as long as we don’t announce our presence.”

  “Wow, you almost convinced yourself that time,” the voice said.

  Because it’s true.

  “Riiiight.”

  “Are you talking about the nightcrawlers?” Freckles asked.

  “Yeah.” He paused, then, “What were you talking about?”

  “Your friends from the town.”

  He couldn’t help but smile to himself. “Your friends from the town.” As if that were even close to being the truth after the stunt he pulled.

  “I don’t see them out there, either,” Mason said.

  He finally glanced behind him, at Freckles’s shadowy outline on the floor. He was crouched at the window next to the closed door while she had taken up a spot beside the counter toward the back. He couldn’t see it with the moonlight taking an odd angle into the room through the windows, but he imagined the rifle was gripped tightly in her hands at the moment.

  “You know about them and the water?” he asked. “The nightcrawlers?”

  “Of course,” she said, sounding almost insulted. “Who doesn’t?”

  “What else do you know?”

  “Everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “We had a long time to get ready. We even had scouts out here for a whole year before we finally attacked. How do you think we knew where all your towns were?”

  “Mercer’s a smart man.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “You’ve met him?”

  “Black Tide’s not that big.”

  “How many people do you have over there?”

  This time, she didn’t answer as quickly.

  Mason rolled his eyes before realizing she probably couldn’t see it with all the darkness. “I thought we had trust.”

  “You thought wrong,” Freckles said.

  The voice laughed. “Do you feel safer now?”

  Not quite.

  Mason turned back to the window and refocused on the stalks of swaying grass beyond the parking lot, like dancers under the moonlight. The rhythm of the waves pushing against the beach was oddly soothing, and he eyeballed the distance to the water for the fifth time in the last hour. It was still thirty yards or so, just close enough that he could probably reach it even with one gimpy leg. The real question was could he outrun a horde of ghouls with said gimpy leg?

  “Let’s hope you never have to find out,” the voice said. “Of course, hope is in very short supply these days. But whose fault is that?”

  Don’t remind me.

  “If not me, then who?”

  There was nothing out there. At least, nothing to indicate danger, and Mason liked to think he had a sixth sense for this sort of thing. He had expected ghouls in the grass as soon as the sun dipped over the horizon and was glad he was wrong. Their absence wasn’t too surprising, since the creatures disliked the ocean water enough not to get anywhere near it if they didn’t have to.

  That and silver. Wish I had a little of those around, too.

  “I bet you wish you had a lot of things around,” the voice said. “Like food. Remember food?”

  His stomach growled just thinking the word food.

  “What was that?” Freckles asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I was thinking maybe we can try to trap some crabs tomorrow.”

  “Can you eat crabs raw?”

  “Sure. You just have to be careful. Or we could build a fire.”

  “How? By rubbing two sticks together?”

  “That’s right,” Mason said, though he remembered spotting a couple of matchboxes and a butane lighter or two in the kitchen. What were the chances they still worked? He wouldn’t know until he tried.

  “You used to be a Boy Scout or something?” Freckles asked.

  Mason smiled. “Not quite—”

  Movement.

  He crouched lower next to the window, his sudden movement causing the girl to shuffle behind him as she moved from the side of the counter to behind it, with only the top part of her face peering over the frayed Formica countertop back at him.

  There were at least a dozen of them and they were racing along the shoreline, staying just far enough from the beach not to be splashed by the waves. They streamed past the marina one by one until all he could see of them were their skeletal forms as they slipped back into the darkness where they belonged. Even the moonlight, he thought, seemed to be doing its best to avoid them.

  “Oh, to have silver bullets,” the voice said.

  Or a tank.

  “That, too.”

  He didn’t breathe easier until the last of them had disappeared and it was only he and Freckles hiding in the house again.

  “Lucky,” the voice said. “You’re a real lucky man. Let’s hope it lasts for a few more days.”

  I’m thinking longer term.

  “Hope springs eternal, as they say.”

  “They’re gone?” Freckles asked from behind him.

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Nightcrawlers?”

  “Nightcrawlers.”

  She came back out from behind the counter and resumed her spot next to it on the floor. The AR was clutched in her hands, and although he couldn’t see most of her face, she had sounded pretty calm when she asked the question.

  “That little tyke blew away Lyle and Rummy without batting an eye,” the voice said. “Of course she’s calm. This is probably a cakewalk for her.”

  “You think they’ll come back?” Freckles asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mason said. “No reason for them to if they didn’t bother to stop the first time.”

  “Why didn’t they?”

  “I don’t know, kid. But maybe it’s like I said, there’s no point. This place has been abandoned for too long. Say what you will about them, but they’re not dumb. They don’t usually search the same place twice unless they have reason to, and we didn’t give them any.”

  “What about our truck?”

  “Yeah, what about the truck?” the voice asked.

  “Maybe they didn’t notice it under the house,” Mason said. He shrugged. “I don’t know. Just take the win.”

  “Rose,” the girl said.

  “What?”

  “My name. It’s Rose. So you can stop calling me kid. It’s getting annoying.”

  Mason grinned. “You’re still a kid. Me knowing your name doesn’t change that.”

  “I’m not that young.”

  He looked back at her. “How young are you, anyway?”

  “Not as young as you think I am.”

  “Sixteen?”

  She laughed.

  Mason raised an eyebrow. “You’re not sixteen?”

  “Not for two more years,” Rose said.

  Mason stared across the room at her, not sure what he was feeling at the moment. He was either beyond impressed with everything she had done for her age, or be
yond terrified.

  “Can’t it be both?” the voice asked.

  Yeah, it was probably a little of both.

  Or a lot of the latter…

  HE WASN’T sure when he closed his eyes—it might have been around midnight or possibly just a little after that (he blamed it on the lack of food, making something as simple as telling time difficult), but when he opened them again, light was filling the room through the window next to him.

  Mason was lying on his back with the Sig Sauer out of its holster and on the floor nearby. He didn’t remember when he had drawn it, or why, and said a silent Thank you, God that he hadn’t accidentally shot himself while he was rolling around in his sleep.

  His stomach growled as he sat up and reached for the gun. The pain in his gut was a reminder of why he was feeling like shit this morning, and it was only going to get worse unless he got some food into it.

  “You sure that’s the reason?” the voice asked.

  What else would it be?

  “Oh, I don’t know. Killing Max. Running from T10. Trusting a fourteen-year-old killer. And then there’s that whole throwing your future into the sewer. But hey, I’m just spitballing here. I could be entirely off base.”

  Oh, shut up, Mason thought, and searched his pockets for the bottle of Tramadol.

  “That’s not going to help with your starvation,” the voice said.

  No, but it’ll help shut you up.

  There, nestled in the left pocket where he’d put it last night—

  Pop!

  He was on his feet before the second pop! rang out, and then not even a split second later there was a third and fourth—

  Pop-pop!

  “They’ve found us!” the voice shouted.

  Mason looked out the window just as sunlight glinted off the smooth barrel of a rifle as it fired. He ducked instinctively, even though he didn’t actually have to because the shooter was at least a football field away, surrounded by towering grass, and wasn’t shooting at him.

  Freckles!

  Or Rose. She’d told him her name was Rose last night.

  Not that it mattered to the man trying to get a bead on her as the teenager raced through the grass and back toward the house. She had the AR in front of her, and the exertion showed as clear as day on her face despite the distance. She had a good jump on the shooter, who had stopped to aim some forty (fifty?) yards away.