“And you believe that?”
She sighed. “I don’t know.”
“Sorry.”
“What are you sorry about?”
“You followed Tobias because you believed in him. It’s never an easy thing when your leader decides he’s had enough, and vamos.”
“I guess.”
“And you’ve never slept with him?”
She threw him an annoyed look.
Keo raised his hands in surrender. “I was just double checking.”
“When you feel like triple checking, just keep in mind that I know where we’re going and you don’t,” she said, moving ahead of him.
He smiled and followed her.
They were now moving through a part of the woods that made him a little uneasy. The canopies were getting thicker, which meant the sun was having a harder time finding its way through. As a result, the air had grown chillier and Keo instinctively clutched the MP5SD in front of him.
“You know where you’re going?” he asked after a while.
“The woods might look endless, but it’s not. There’s a cabin not far from here that we’ve used before.”
“Is that a good idea? If you know about it, what are the chances that the soldiers do, too?”
“We’ll have to risk it. You need to rest for a while. That lightheadedness you’re feeling is a result of the blows you took. You might have even gotten a concussion, and it’s just now showing up.”
Keo felt his forehead again. The cut had started to scab over, but it was going to be a while before it healed. The good news was that it would definitely heal, unlike the scar along the left side of his face. Pollard’s farewell gift wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, if ever.
Thanks again for that, Pollard, you sonofabitch. I’m glad both you and your son are dead.
“Okay,” Jordan said as she finally slowed down before stopping completely.
She held her rifle at the ready as she peered through two trees at an old cabin sitting in a rough circular clearing that would be, in a few years, swallowed back up by the woods. Two dirt-encrusted windows flanked a door and a chimney jutted out on one side of the roof. The building looked just big enough to have a couple of bedrooms in the back.
The bright spot was that the clearing was wide open to the skies, and a thick pool of sunlight shone down on the cabin. It was a far cry from the last few minutes, when it seemed like they were walking deeper and deeper into the lightless bowels of the woods.
Jordan crouched at the edge and listened, and Keo joined her. He had to put his hand down against the ground because the sudden movement nearly made him keel over.
“You okay?” she whispered.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, Mom.”
She pursed her lips.
“Anything?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Looks clear. You ready?”
She got up and jogged into the clearing and slid against the wall next to one of the windows before he could respond. Keo sighed. He would have liked to sit and listen for another thirty minutes, maybe an hour. Not just to be sure they were the only people around, but because he could have used the rest. But that was just wishful thinking now, and he hurried over to join her outside the cabin.
The window next to them revealed a dust-covered floor, along with a kitchen lit up with sunlight through the windows above the sinks and a barren fireplace on the other side. There was no furniture to speak of, and the only thing staring back at them were the heads of two deer mounted on the far wall next to a darkened hallway that was just a bit too dark for his liking. The passageway led into the back of the house.
“Anything?” he whispered.
She shook her head. “You?”
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. I can rest in the woods,” he said, even as another throbbing pain rushed through him. He gritted his teeth and hoped she didn’t notice.
It must have shown on his face anyway, because she looked more determined when she said, “No cover. If they find us out here, we’ll have nowhere to run. In here, at least we have a chance.”
He started to argue, but she had already moved toward the door, and Keo had no choice but to follow.
The handle was a simple lever, and she pressed it and pushed the door inside and stepped in a half-second later. Keo had to admit, she had developed a pretty nice rhythm since the last time they saw each other back at Earl’s cabin. Being out here with Tobias’s people, fighting Steve and the town, had definitely increased her battle movements. Now all she needed was a little more patience, a notion that Keo thought was funny since he’d never really been known to have a whole lot of that himself.
Dust brushed against his face as he stepped inside the cabin. The living room smelled slightly stale, but he blamed that on the lack of ventilation thanks to all the closed windows. The back hallway was partially submerged in shadows, but he didn’t detect movement or see obsidian eyes staring back at him.
Jordan had slung her rifle and opened up her pack. She pulled out a bottle of water and an old Tylenol bottle and handed it to him. “Sit down, drink, and rest for a while.”
“You came prepared,” Keo said. He turned the bottle over and noticed the expiration date.
“Don’t worry, that’s just a suggestion,” she said. “Probably. Anyway, the town’s not far from here. Maybe another hour, so we can afford to stay awhile or until you’re ready to move again.”
“It’s just a small headache.”
She peered at his face-or specifically, his scabbing forehead. “He really laid you out good. I thought you were going to bleed to death in that office last night.”
“That bad?”
“But you look okay now. Still ugly as hell, but better.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I mean, compared to the first time I saw you.”
She walked to the kitchen and laid her pack and rifle on the island counter, then began flipping through the top pantries and pulling drawers along the counter. Dust erupted every time she opened something, then again when she closed them.
Keo shook out two of the pills and washed them down with water. He walked over to one of the windows, and staying as far away from the grime-smeared windowsill and glass panes as possible, looked out at the clearing and the woods beyond. He couldn’t help but remember all those months at Earl’s cabin at the start of The Purge.
Gillian was there. So was Norris, and Rachel and her daughter, and the girl, Lotte. Jordan and her friends didn’t show up until later. Then there was that whole mess with Levy, and the garage…
But most of all, he remembered the good times. The days and nights and weeks and months when they didn’t have anything to worry about, when it seemed like they could hide from whatever was going on in the world around them. At the time, he had no idea what the ghouls were doing, and thinking back, he didn’t care. He would have been happy to live however many months or years he had left at the cabin with Gillian and Jordan and the others.
What was that old saying? “Ignorance is bliss.”
What he wouldn’t give for a little bit of ignorance right now.
“Did you take the pills?” Jordan called from the kitchen.
“Yes.”
“Take a few more later. They won’t make you drowsy.”
He did feel better, though it wasn’t really the pills but mostly the resting, the not moving his feet every other second. The throbbing remained, but it wasn’t nearly as unbearable as it had been a few minutes ago when they were out there in the woods.
He finished off the water, then putting the bottle away (you never knew when an empty bottle would come in handy), called back to Jordan, “Find anything?”
“Not a thing.”
“Did you expect to find something?”
“Maybe.”
“You said no one’s been here awhile. Why wouldn’t Miller put someone out here? Use it as a station or something.”
“He did, once. Not just here, but other locations around the area. The strip malls, the warehouses…until we convinced him it was a bad idea. Nowadays, he sticks to the other side of the river.” Then, “I’ve been meaning to ask you. What did you do back there to make Miller think you could kill Tobias for him?”