Miller, his hands covered with his own blood, swiped them on his one good pant leg before taking the water and gulping it down in one long swig. He was in his early thirties, with a somewhat pudgy face and already stripes of gray among his dark hair. He eyed Keo suspiciously over the bottle as he drank.
“Careful there, don’t wanna drown yourself,” Keo said. “How’s the leg? Any broken bones?”
Miller slowed down but kept drinking. “It went clean through.”
“Lucky you.”
“Yeah, lucky me,” Miller said, clenching his teeth.
“J. Miller,” Keo read. “That’s a first.”
“What’s that?” Miller said, lowering the bottle. He sighed with relief.
“The initial on your tag.”
“There was another Miller in my outfit, so I had to add a J.”
“What’s it stand for?”
“Jack.”
“Ah. So should I call you Jack or Miller?”
“I don’t give a shit,” Miller said, and handed the bottle of water back.
Keo put it away. “Fair enough.”
“Who the fuck are you, anyway?”
“I’m just a guy with a gun. Those two back there your friends?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You guess?”
He shrugged. “I’ve only known them for a few months. It’s not like we had dinner at each other’s houses or anything.”
“You guys have houses out here?”
“Rooms might have been more appropriate. So what’s the deal with you and the kid?”
“I guess he lives here. I just showed up earlier this morning.”
“Your boat…”
“Uh huh.”
“What are you, Japanese or something?”
“Or something,” Keo said. “You did pretty good there with the leg.”
“I could still use some real medical attention, I’m not gonna lie.”
“And where would you find something like that?”
“T18 has a full medical staff.”
“T18?”
“Where I’m based.”
“What’s the T stand for?”
Miller gave him an Are you kidding me with that question? look. Then he said, “Texas.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
“Where you from, anyway?”
“San Diego. But I’m assuming you meant recently. In which case, that would be Louisiana.”
“I’ve never been to Louisiana,” Miller said almost wistfully.
“Not too late. It’s just next door. I hear the traffic’s pretty light these days.”
“Can’t. Got a job to do.”
“I can appreciate that. But speaking of going places, how far is T18?”
Miller clammed up. Apparently he realized (too late) that he shouldn’t have said anything in the first place.
“Look,” Keo said, “here’s the deal. I need information, and you have it. I’d prefer if you told me what I needed to know without all that messy bloodshed. Er, well, more bloodshed. I mean, you’re already hurt, but you can still walk. Mostly. Just tell me what I need to know and we’re cool. You go your way, and I go mine. Tell me that’s not the best deal you’re gonna get all day.”
Miller gave him that long look again, as if he could read Keo’s face.
Good luck with that, pal.
“Well?” Keo said. “What’s it going to be?”
“You know where League City is?” Miller asked.
“For the sake of avoiding further pointless questions, let’s just pretend I’ve never stepped foot in the great state of Texas in my entire life.”
“It’s about thirty miles from here. Up the I-45. It used to be a town called Wilmont.”
“How big is T18?”
“Pretty big.”
“Okay, let’s put it another way. How many people are in T18 right now?”
Miller thought about it for a moment, then, “Around 4,000.”
Keo whistled. “That’s a lot of people.”
“It’s probably the smallest town in Texas. There’s one outside of Dallas that has almost 10,000.”
Keo wished he could say he was surprised. From everything he had heard, there were a hell of a lot more towns out there he would never know about, all of them filled with survivors. He used to think the creatures had either killed everyone or turned them into ghouls, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. There had been a plan in effect from the very first day of The Purge, and he was only now starting to fully grasp the scope of it. He had never been especially good at out-of-the-box long-term thinking, but Keo had to admit, what the creatures had done and what they were currently doing out there was beyond impressive.
“Good to know,” Keo said, hoping his face didn’t betray his thoughts. “So, let’s pretend you and your friends caught survivors running around out here. Say, like my little buddy Gene. Where would you take him?”
“Our orders are to take everyone we find to T18.”
“How many did you take in the last, say, six months?”
“Me personally? None. I just joined Matthew and Bo out here two weeks ago. Before that, I had guard duty back in town.”
“So this is a promotion?”
“It beats looking at the same patch of dirt every day.”
“Thirty miles is a pretty long drive to take people back and forth.”
“Not if there’s nothing between here and League City.”
“Nothing?”
“I mean, there are small towns, but no one lives out here if they can help it. It’s not exactly fertile ground.”
“What about T18?”
“It’s the exception. It’s connected to Trinity Bay by a river, and there are large undeveloped lands in the area.”
“Wildlife?”
“Yeah, sure. Some of them are just starting to come back now that the crawlers aren’t feeding on them anymore.” Miller paused, then added, “You’re looking for someone.”
Keo nodded. “I am.”
“You think they’re in T18?”
“Don’t know. I guess the only way to find out is to go there and look.”
Miller smiled at him.
“That’s funny to you?” Keo asked.
“If you go to T18, you won’t come out alive.”
“Really.”
“Really,” Miller nodded.
“I thought these towns were paradise. Peace and quiet. Sanctuary from the night. All that good stuff. You telling me all of that’s a big fat lie?”
“They’re supposed to be, but T18’s different. It’s…problematic.”
“How so?”
“It’s at war. If you go there, you better choose sides.”
“So tell me who the good guys are.”
“That’s the problem. There’s no such thing. There’s just the bad guys and the badder guys.”
Sounds familiar, Keo thought, and asked, “And which ones are you and your buddies?”
“The bad guys,” Miller said. “The badder guys? Trust me, when you meet them you’re going to wish you were on our side.”
*
“You believe him?” Gene asked.
“I don’t know,” Keo said. “Maybe. Or he might just be a very good liar.”
“You can’t tell?”
“I’m not a human polygraph, Gene.”
“What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“Polygraph.”
“A lie detector.”
“Oh.”
Gene glanced back at Miller, leaning against the same Bronco with zip ties around his ankles and wrists. They had found bundles of the stuff inside the compartments of the soldiers’ boat. No doubt they came in handy whenever Miller and his crew ran across stragglers such as Gene’s friends. Or, possibly, Gillian and the others a few months earlier. Though, according to Miller, he was new to the gig, which meant Keo had shot the wrong men.
“I don’t know how you can trust him,” Gene said.
“I can’t. But as long as I have a gun and he doesn’t, I don’t have to.”
He had said it louder than necessary, even though they weren’t so far from him that Miller couldn’t already hear everything they were saying anyway.
“You can come with me,” Keo said.
The teenager looked surprised. “Me? What would I do out there?”