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

  “Now then,” Mason said. “Get up slowly and then take off that pack.”

  She didn’t move, and said, “Why don’t you just shoot me?”

  “I told you, I need to bring you in. Got me some brownie points to collect. That’s how you get by these days. Make yourself invaluable to the bosses, and then one day you can become the boss.”

  Again, that strange look from her that told him she didn’t know what he was going on about.

  “It’s an adult thing,” Mason said with a shrug.

  “Whatever,” she said. “Just shoot me already.”

  “Don’t tempt me, kid.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you, so you might as well do it.”

  He stared at her for a moment, wondering just how serious she was being right now, and trying to gauge if any accolades from Jocelyn were worth all the aggravation he knew without a doubt was waiting for him in the very near future.

  “Get up,” Mason said. “I’m bringing you in, dead or alive. I prefer alive, because dead means having to drag your body back into town and that’s going to be a real pain in the ass, especially with this bum shoulder of mine. But I’ll do it if I have to.”

  She frowned. “What kind of an asshole are you?”

  “The kind that’s too lazy to drag you back with me. Now get up.”

  She finally picked herself off the ground and dusted off her pants and bottom, then slipped the pack off her shoulders and let it drop. “What now?”

  He motioned with the gun for her to step away from the bag, and when she did, he walked over and picked it up. “Sit down in front of that tree, where I can see you.”

  She obeyed, taking a seat underneath a large elm tree with enough shade that it covered up her entire body and nearly blackened out her camo-covered face. She folded her legs under her and sat Indian style, which wasn’t hard to do given how short she was.

  He tossed her a zip tie from his own pockets. “You know how this works. The ankles.”

  She didn’t look happy, but she did it. He didn’t bother with her wrists; it would have been difficult for her to bind her own hands, and besides, he didn’t need it with her legs already limited by the restraints. He kept waiting for her to make her move, to risk it all, but she didn’t. He was glad for that, because regardless of what he had done in the past, Mason wasn’t keen on shooting a kid.

  “I guess we’re conveniently forgetting about all those kids you gave to the ghouls?” the voice asked.

  It’s not the same.

  “Isn’t it?”

  Yes.

  “How?”

  Because they’re still alive.

  “Some of them…”

  All of them.

  “You don’t know that for sure. But then, you’ve never let the truth get in the way of a perfectly good lie before, so why start now?”

  When she was done, the girl leaned back against the gnarled trunk and let out a defeated sigh.

  “Good girl,” Mason said.

  “Go to hell,” she spat back.

  He chuckled before sitting down in front of the bag. He laid the pistol on the ground barely a foot away and within easy reach, even though he didn’t think she’d try anything now with her hands restrained. Still, you could never be too careful, and the girl had already proven to be a killer. That made her nothing like Ange. How had he ever mistaken the two of them in the first place?

  I must have been delirious.

  “Or maybe you just wanted to believe it so badly,” the voice said.

  Ange is still alive. She’s out there, somewhere.

  “Keep telling yourself that…”

  Mason opened the pack, and with one eye scouring its contents and the other on Freckles, he found what he was looking for and took them out. A small field first-aid kit. He dug out what he needed and went to work, pulling off the bloody handkerchief to clean the wound before dressing it with gauze. It wasn’t topnotch fieldwork, but it would do until he got back to town.

  With fresh medical ointment in his nostrils, Mason dug out his knife and the Sig Sauer from the pack and put them back around his hips. He liked the Sig better anyway. It was bigger, heavier, and had more stopping power.

  “What now?” Freckles asked.

  “Well, since someone stole my truck, I guess we start walking,” Mason said. “And you better pray the boys at T10 weren’t best buds with Rummy and Lyle after what you did to them.”

  She stared back, defiant.

  Or tried to be. He thought he glimpsed a crack in her armor. It was very slight, but it was there, and Mason thought, So you’re just a kid, after all.

  “Shoot her and get it over with,” the voice said. “Jocelyn won’t care either way.”

  Not yet…

  “She’s not Ange.”

  Don’t you think I know that?

  “Do you?” the voice asked.

  Mason didn’t answer, and got up. “Time to go…”

  SIX

  TWO HOURS into their walk back to T10 and the town was still nowhere in sight. Mason’s shoulder kept bothering him and he had to stop and rest, though he kept the reason why from the girl. It wouldn’t do to show that he wasn’t at his best, even though she’d have to be blind not to notice. Still, as long as he didn’t overtly acknowledge it…

  Fortunately Freckles had packed well for her mission, and he found some painkillers that were stronger than the ones he had on him, along with a half-finished bottle of water. He gulped the latter with the pills, and that gave him the strength to keep going.

  The girl walked in front of him the entire time, and Mason kept about ten feet of safety between them. At least it wasn’t hot, with plenty of cool breezes sweeping across the flat land around him to make walking tolerable. He’d had to remove the zip ties from her ankles and put a fresh pair around her wrists so she could move on her own power, and Mason pegged the chances at fifty-fifty that she might finally get brave enough to make a run for it.

  The voice was even more certain, and it said, “Wait for it, wait for it…”

  Except she didn’t.

  Instead, she kept in front of him and moved along the lone country road in silence. She refused to tell him her name, and by the fourth time he asked and got back a nonanswer, he was too tired to make a fifth effort. He didn’t know exactly what was waiting for her back in town, but he didn’t like her odds.

  He was behind her so he couldn’t see her face, but if she was scared of what was up ahead, she didn’t show it in the way she moved.

  “Maybe she’s braver than you think,” the voice said.

  Or stupid. She’s just a kid, after all.

  “What do you think they’ll do to her?”

  It’s not my problem.

  “Isn’t it?”

  No.

  “You’re giving her to them. That makes it your problem. What would Ange say?”

  Ange isn’t here.

  “So you admit it. She’s dead.”

  That’s not what I said.

  “That’s what you’re thinking.”

  No…

  “Riiiight,” the voice said.

  He guessed they were maybe about five miles from town when sunlight reflected off the hood of a truck that appeared in the road up ahead. It was moving toward them at a fast clip, and Mason could just make out the lone figure in the back stationed behind the machine gun welded to the roof of the cab.

  It was one of T10’s technicals.

  “Stop,” Mason said.

  Freckles did, then glanced back at him, and he saw uncertainty in her eyes.

  “Here it comes,” the voice said. “She knows it now, and she’s going to take off. Wait for it, wait for it…”

  But the voice was wrong again, and the girl didn’t run. Instead, she turned back to the charging truck and held her ground.

  “Or not,” the voice said.

  Are you ever going to get tired of being wrong?

  “I’ll let you know when it happens.”


  The technical sped down the middle of the two-lane road as if it were afraid they’d try to flee. It used to be black, but it was covered in mud and dirt and looked closer to brown now. The man in the back (Donnie? Dan? One of those.) swiveled his machine gun around alertly, looking for targets among the empty fields around them. Mason could have told him there was nothing out here. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There had been people out here, and they had taken his truck.

  The vehicle stopped in front of them and the driver climbed out. As the man walked over, he had no trouble grinning at Mason over the girl’s shoulder. The man’s name was either Pete or Peter, Mason couldn’t be entirely sure. T10, for whatever reason, had never gotten around to putting name tags on their uniforms. It was one of those things that made them look less competent than the places Mason had commanded; it was also a reminder of just how far down he had fallen to be stuck with these barely organized country bumpkins.

  “What the hell happened to you?” Pete or Peter (Something with a P?) asked. “Where’s Lyle and Rummy?”

  “You don’t know?” Mason asked.

  “Know what?”

  So who the hell took the Ford? Mason thought. Then, “They’re dead.”

  “What happened?”

  “She did.”

  Pete or Peter (or something else) had stopped a few feet from Freckles, and he put his hands on his hips and gave her a good, long look. Mason would have given anything to see the girl’s face as she was confronted with that imposing bulk of a man. Was she scared? Or was she still trying to act tough? He thought he might have noticed the slight tensing of her small shoulders. Maybe.

  “She killed them?” Pete or Peter said.

  “Plugged them both,” Mason said.

  The man looked past the girl at Mason, then at his bandaged shoulder. “She did that to you, too?”

  “It wasn’t the fucking Easter Bunny,” Mason said. He walked past Freckles and toward the truck. “My legs are killing me. I must have been out here for hours.”

  “What happened to your truck?”

  “I was hoping you’d know,” Mason said. Then, to the guy in the back of the vehicle, “You got anything to drink?”

  The man dipped behind the truck for a second and reappeared with a fresh bottle of water. It was warm but it was better than nothing, and Mason drained it while Pete or Peter led Freckles over, looking very much like a giant Papa Bear dragging a diminutive Goldilocks to her doom.

  “Into the back,” Pete or Peter said, and shoved Freckles inside.

  She fell face-first into the backseat before picking herself up with some difficulty. There was a police cruiser-style cage separating the front and back of the Chevy, which meant Freckles couldn’t get her hands on the AR rifles leaning against the front seats. After righting herself, she searched out and locked eyes with Mason through the grime-covered rear driver-side window. If she hadn’t looked worried before, she couldn’t hide it now.

  Sorry, kid, but you’re on your own, he thought, and turned to Pete or Peter (What the hell is his name again?). “Jocelyn sent you guys to come look for us?”

  The big man nodded. “You never answered the radio.” He glanced around. “So Rummy and Lyle are dead?”

  “Dead as doorknobs.”

  “What about your patrol vehicle?”

  “I guess someone stole it.”

  The other man gave him a confused look. “You guess?”

  Mason sighed. “It’s a long story.”

  “You got a hot date or something? Jocelyn’s going to want to know ASAP. She’s got everyone on high alert after you guys went MIA.”

  “Isn’t everyone already on high alert?”

  “Higher alert then, smart guy.”

  Mason nodded in the direction of the girl behind them. “The ones Lyle perforated earlier today. Those were her pals. She got payback by plugging the old timer and the kid. Not long after that, someone stole the truck. I thought it might have been you guys, but if you’re telling me it wasn’t…”

  “Well, shit,” Pete or Peter said, looking back into his truck at Freckles. “What is she, fifteen?”

  “Fifteen, sixteen; hell if I know.”

  “Jocelyn’s gonna be real happy about this.”

  “Was that sarcasm?”

  Pete or Peter (or whatever his name really was) chuckled. “Maybe.”

  Mason grunted, then walked around the hood of the big truck to the passenger side. He sneaked a quick peek up at the sky to check for warplanes as he did so.

  It was empty, exactly how he liked it.

  “Your paranoia is showing,” the voice said.

  It’s not paranoia when they’re really trying to kill you, Mason thought.

  PETE OR PETER WAS NEITHER; his name was actually Paul.

  Close enough.

  “Really?” the voice said. “In what universe is that close enough?”

  At least I got the first letter right.

  The voice laughed. “Our expectations are very low these days, aren’t they?”

  They drove back into T10 on a bumpy dirt road that splintered off from the paved highway. According to Paul, neither they nor any of the other patrols had run across anyone driving the stolen Ford F-150 while out looking for them. Whoever they were, they hadn’t stayed on the main road for very long.

  Hope you run into a ditch somewhere, you thieving fuckers.

  Like most collaborator towns, T10 was isolated and far from any major city, and chosen for its proximity to a lake. It had, once upon a time, been a timber town back when there was still timber to be exploited. The lake was overstocked with fish, and the land around it was fertile enough for farming. Mason hadn’t had time to properly explore the area since his arrival so he didn’t know what exactly they were growing in the fields, but it was apparently fruitful enough for about two hundred or so civilians and forty-something soldiers. Two hundred and change was a small number compared to some of the other places around the state, but this was Podunk City, so he wasn’t that surprised.

  He looked out the window to follow a group of a dozen or so women as they trudged their way through the fields. Their protruding bellies looked comical against the setting sun, as if they were attempting to smuggle contraband back into the city limits. Somewhere in town, more civilians were “donating” blood to feed the ghoul machine, but Mason, like the other soldiers, was spared that job.

  Mason was very aware of Freckles’s continued presence behind the cage. She hadn’t said a word since Paul threw her into the back, and the few times he spied at her in the rearview mirror, he caught her staring at the civilians in the fields as they drove past. Despite the black and green paint on her face, she somehow looked even younger now.

  Christ. How old is she?

  “Does it matter? You’ve never killed a kid before,” the voice said.

  I’m not killing one now.

  “You don’t have to pull the trigger to kill someone. We learned that pretty fast, didn’t we?”

  As they drove past two other technicals guarding the way into town, Paul honked and got honks back in return. The additional patrol units were in response to Paul radioing ahead and informing Jocelyn of what had happened, not only to Rummy and Lyle, but also with the missing truck. It hadn’t really occurred to Mason that they didn’t just have one problem (Freckles), but actually two now, counting the thieves. He wanted to blame it on getting shot (“Again! This is becoming a bad habit,” the voice said), for not thinking clearly, and not because it just never occurred to him.

  “When in doubt, go with the excuse that makes you look less like an ass!” the voice laughed.

  “Fair warning: Jocelyn’s not going to be happy with you,” Paul was saying as they drove through the main street.

  Whatever it was called before the collaborators took over, T10 wasn’t quite a one-horse town, even though it was a one-main-street town. It had plenty of side alleys and buildings to both sides of them, but it was as “quaint” as they c
ame.

  “Podunk City,” the voice said. “Any lower on the totem pole, and we’d be in the ground.”

  They passed civilians on the sidewalks, along with soldiers on horseback with slung rifles. The place had been on alert ever since the war with Mercer started, but they looked more wired than usual this afternoon. He guessed Jocelyn wasn’t taking any chances after what had happened to his patrol.

  “About what?” Mason said.

  “About what,” Paul repeated with a chuckle. “The patrol, genius. We’re already strapped for manpower as it is, but you went and lost two men and a truck. Neither one of those things grows on trees, you know.”

  “I didn’t lose shit. She killed them, not me. And someone took the truck. I wasn’t exactly in a position to stop them.”

  “So why aren’t you dead, too?”

  “It wasn’t for her lack of trying, I can tell you that. Besides, we can always get more volunteers.”

  “Jocelyn’s already scraping the bottom of the barrel. Volunteers are drying up.”

  “Like us?” the voice said with a snicker.

  Oh, shut up.

  “Maybe you guys need a more charismatic leader,” Mason said. “Someone who can inspire people to sign up.”

  Paul laughed. “Like you, maybe?”

  “You could do a lot worse.”

  “I’ll tell Jocelyn you said that.”

  “Be my guest,” Mason said, and thought, Someone’s going to have to lose power for someone else to gain it. What makes Jocelyn so special?

  IF JOCELYN WAS PISSED at him, she’d apparently gotten it out of her system by the time he arrived with Paul and the other guy, Joe, who stayed behind in the parking lot while they brought Freckles inside T10’s version of a command center. It was really an office in the back of a converted Sonic Drive-In, located almost exactly in the middle of town next to City Hall.

  Jocelyn glanced up from the same map she had been looking at when Mason saw her earlier in the day, and he thought, The way she looks at that thing, she should have every inch of it memorized by now.