“Lake patrol?” Danny said.
“Looks like it,” Will said.
“First uniforms with nametags and now this? Looks like our boy Josh has really whipped these naughty buggers into shape.”
“Looks like it.”
“Is that all you can say?”
“Sounds like it.”
“Better.”
After the boat faded into the distance, they got up and continued alongside the lake, but this time sticking closer to the thicker parts of the woods to keep from being spotted. The good news was that they could hear the motors coming from a distance, which gave them plenty of time to hide. After all, no one had ever accused the collaborators of being subtle.
“You know what this means, right?” Danny said after a while. “About the kid.”
Will nodded. “Yeah.”
“We see the kid, we gotta pop him. He’s getting too dangerous to let run around out here. Him and his newfangled ideas are begging for a reckoning.”
“A ‘reckoning,’” Will said, grinning at him. “What are you, John Wayne?”
“I’m just saying. The kid’s become a royal pain in the butt cheeks.”
“Even if we popped Josh, it still wouldn’t stop what’s happening out there with the camps and towns. Kate probably has a hundred more like him running the show for her in the daytime. Take one of them out and she’ll just replace him with another eager beaver.”
“Yeah, well, I’d still like to put the kid over my knees and give him a good spanking,” Danny said. “Bad boy, Josh. You’ve been a very bad boy.”
Will recalled that day when he thought Josh had died. The eighteen-year-old had done something stupid and stood up during a boat chase and had gotten shot as a result. He had ended up falling into Beaufont Lake. How was Will to know the teenager would float back up later and turn into…this?
I should have put a bullet in him while he was drowning in the lake.
Still not too late for that, Josh.
Still not too late for that…
10
Gaby
“He had a Mohawk,” Gaby said.
“A Mohawk?” Peter thought about it for a moment before shaking his head. “I don’t remember seeing anyone like that. And I would definitely have remembered a guy with a Mohawk. Milly?”
“What’s a Mohawk?” Milly said.
“You don’t know what a Mohawk is?” Peter asked, slightly amused.
“No.”
“It’s a hairstyle. Like in those cowboys and Indians movies.”
“I don’t like cowboys and Indians movies.”
“Okay, um.” He paused, then, “It’s mostly a shaved head, except for the middle that stands up.” Peter demonstrated by flattening his own hair and leaving just the middle section standing up. “Like this.” He looked over at Gaby. “Right?”
She nodded. “Something like that. But shorter. You didn’t see anyone with hair like that in town, Milly?”
The girl shook her head. “Nope. Was he your friend?”
“He’s my friend, yes.”
Was. Nate’s dead. You know it. Stop pretending he’s not. Josh would never have let him live even if he had survived that night. Maybe the old Josh would, but that Josh is long gone.
I’m sorry, Nate. You shouldn’t have been there with me that night…
She walked on in silence and could feel Peter’s and Milly’s eyes on her back. She ignored them and continued to set the pace through the woods, moving close enough to the shoreline to their right to get some of the cool breeze, but far enough that they couldn’t be seen. Peter told her there were boat patrols along Hillman’s Lake.
They had been walking for the last two hours, keeping to the shade provided by the trees. Every now and then she looked around her, expecting an attack by someone in a camo uniform. Josh’s people. Or maybe Josh himself.
He’ll never let me go. In his deranged mind, he’s doing all of this for me.
“Where are we going?” Milly asked after a while.
“There’s a place called Dunbar up ahead,” Peter said. “A small city with a state highway running through it. We should be able to find shelter and food there, then figure out where to go next.”
Song Island. Where else but Song Island?
“Are there a lot of people in Dunbar?” Milly asked.
“Well, there was supposed to be about 10,000 people,” Peter said. “I’m not sure now.”
“Is it close to the interstate?” Gaby asked, looking back at him.
He shook his head. “It’s about thirty miles from Interstate 10.”
“You’ve been there.”
“I used to live there before I went to New Orleans for work.”
“They took you from New Orleans?”
“Uh huh.”
“What were you doing there? What was ‘work’?”
He smiled. “What, you don’t think I was a cook in my previous life?”
“Call it a hunch.”
“Human Resources,” Peter said. “Boring job, but it made use of my degrees. Of course, I wish I had spent more time in the woods hunting or something. What about you? What did you do before all of this?”
“I was in high school.”
“Oh,” he said.
She smiled. “I’m nineteen, Peter.”
“I thought you were older.”
“You keep saying that. Why?”
“Why?”
“Why did you think I was older? Don’t I look nineteen?”
The question was rhetorical, because Gaby knew she didn’t look nineteen. The Purge aged you and she hadn’t looked — much less felt — nineteen in a year.
“I don’t, I’m not…” he stammered. “I wasn’t sure, that’s all.”
“Sure of what?”
“Milly didn’t tell me you were so young.”
“I didn’t?” Milly said, surprised. “I thought I did.”
“You didn’t,” Peter said.
“Oh.”
“What did she tell you about me?” Gaby asked.
“Not much,” Peter said. “Neither one of us saw you when they first brought you into town. Yesterday was the first time Milly had actually seen you up close.”
“So who did you think I was?”
“I just thought, because…you know.”
“Because of what?” She watched him struggling with an answer. She took pity on him and said, “Because they had me locked up, you thought I was dangerous and you assumed dangerous meant older.”
He nodded, grateful for the rescue. “Yes.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“You didn’t. That’s not what I meant at all. I just couldn’t figure out why they had you locked up in there, that’s all.”
“It has to do with him,” Milly said.
“‘Him’?” Peter said.
“The kid. The leader.”
“Oh,” Peter said. Then, “Is she right? What’s his name? James?”
“Josh,” Gaby said.
“What did he want with you?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she kept walking.
Peter took the hint and didn’t ask again.
I’m not yours, Josh. Get that through your thick head.
I was never yours, and now I’ll never be.
They crouched behind tall grass and watched the boat pass. There were two men in uniform riding on top, both heavily armed. The one up front looked bored, occasionally turning his head left and right.
“How often do they go up and down the lake?” she whispered to Peter.
“Once or twice a day, I think,” Peter whispered back. “In the morning and in the afternoon. Everyone tries to get back to town before nightfall.”