by Sam Sisavath
Jesus.
Her hands were shaking, and she couldn’t make them stop. She hadn’t lost so much control over her appendages since that first day after Ranger training with Will and Danny, when she didn’t think she could even stand up from all the aches and pain they had put her through. But she had. She had fought through them because she had promised herself that she would not be helpless again.
Never, ever again.
She crouched next to Bruce and unclasped his gun belt before going through his pockets for anything she could take.
By the time she was done and stood back up, Gaby had resolved to get out of Fenton or die trying.
Eleven
“How did you get out?”
“I killed one of my captors.”
“How’d you do that?”
“I seduced him, then stabbed him in the brain with his own switchblade.”
“Oh.”
Or at least that was how she imagined the conversation would go when she finally got back to Black Tide Island and Danny asked about her adventures in Fenton, Texas. Of course, that adventure wasn’t over yet, because she was still stuck in the stables, in a city surrounded by enemies, but at least she was closer than she had been when she was tied to a chair.
Bruce’s death gifted her a SIG Sauer 9mm, along with two spares in the pouches of his assault vest. She took the key, along with a small bundle of bandages and a pack of unopened gum. She pocketed all the spoils and stood up, the weight of the gun belt around her waist boosting her confidence by a huge margin. She spent a few seconds trying to decide whether to pull out Bruce’s switchblade and take it, too, but ultimately decided against it. The idea was queasy enough, she couldn’t imagine actually going through with it.
She was about to step through the open stall door, the pistol in her hand, when she stopped and looked back at Bruce.
But it wasn’t the dead man on the floor that she saw, it was what he was.
One of Buck’s people. One of Fenton’s. Even if she didn’t already know that fact, his uniform gave away his affiliation. And, in this case, his uniform was the black assault vest with the circled M over one of the pouches.
Gaby walked back over and crouched next to the still body and unclasped the vest from it. She was surprised to find that Bruce was already cold to the touch. Was that the night or the lack of life within his frame?
Stop it. He’s dead.
Jesus, you shoved a knife into his brain…
She slipped the vest on, then returned the bandages and gum to one of the pouches, but kept the spares in her back pocket.
There was one more problem: The patch on her shoulders with the inguz. It stood out and might attract attention, and she couldn’t afford that.
Gaby ripped the patches off one at a time and stuffed them into her pocket. She kept them because throwing them away would have been, if not literally then figuratively, spitting on everything she held dear. She’d be damned if she was going to allow Fenton to make her tarnish their meaning.
She took a moment to prepare herself for what came next, physically and mentally, by counting down from ten.
Nine…eight…seven…six…
And pushed through the stall door on four.
She walked up the building, passing other stalls on both sides of her. As she had guessed, they had put her at the very end and on the left side, which meant she had to walk the entire length to get to the large double doors up ahead—
She stopped and looked right, and spotted a side door.
“Front doors are still chained up. I came through the side door,” Bruce had said.
She hurried over to it, the handgun in her right fist.
The door was unlocked, and when Gaby pushed it, it opened without resistance. She didn’t open it completely, just enough to get a glimpse of what awaited her outside.
A bright spotlight lit a patch of ground in front of her, revealing heavily tread-upon mud and grass covered in boots and vehicle tire prints. There were a dozen or so buildings that she could see from her angle, more that she couldn’t.
And it was deathly quiet.
The entire town, it seemed, had gone to sleep. Gaby wondered if that was why Bruce had chosen this moment to come visit her. The lack of activity, the nonexistent presence of people, allowed him to disobey orders.
She glanced down at her watch: 11:51 p.m.
Almost midnight. No wonder there wasn’t a single soul—
Voices, coming from the right.
Gaby pulled the door back but not completely, because that would have made the latch bolt slide into place, and the noise, while not ear shattering, might be enough to betray her given just how silent the town was at this very second.
Two men, both wearing vests, walked into the spotlight about five meters in front of her. They had slung rifles, and she recognized a patrol when she saw one. The question was, were these also her guards that had finally come back from dinner?
“Trust me, those guys won’t be back for at least an hour,” Bruce had said about those guards. “Besides, it’s not like you’re going anywhere, and they know it.”
She hoped Bruce was right.
Keep walking. Just keep walking…
And the men did, stepping out of the spotlight. Gaby opened the door slightly back up and leaned out and looked in the direction they had gone. She was just in time to see them turn right, moving away from the stables instead of walking over to the front doors to stand guard.
Gaby didn’t move and waited, letting the patrol put more distance between them.
Ten seconds…
Thirty…
At the full minute mark, she slid through the slightly ajar door and out into the cold, chilly night.
If she thought Fenton looked dead from inside the stables, the lack of movement—hell, the lack of anything—outside was even more startling.
She slid the SIG Sauer back into its holster and turned around to get a good look at the side door. There was a padlock hanging off a hasp on the wall, unlocked. Bruce’s handiwork. She changed that, pushing the hasp over the door and clicking the lock into place.
What were the chances her guards would just check the locks, find them in place, and resume their positions at the front of the building after their dinner? If Bruce was to be believed, she was just “some yahoo causing trouble” and was “no big deal.” If they believed that, then they might very well be satisfied with finding the locks in their proper places and try to make the best of their “shit job.”
It was a big leap of faith, but what else did she have to go on except Bruce’s knowledge of his own guys?
You better be right, Bruce.
She looked left toward the stable’s front doors. There was another bright spotlight there just like there were at the entrances of most of the buildings around her. It was obvious they weren’t keeping her at a residential area; instead of houses, there were large structures that looked recently built, with new additions still being tacked on.
That explains all the construction noises earlier.
There was a long line of working streetlights in the distance, visible above the single-story buildings, and their uniformity made her believe they were likely overlooking a road. Either that, or a perimeter defense of some kind.
Gaby turned right and started walking, moving away from the stables, but keeping parallel to the lights. She didn’t get very far before coming up on another building with even more lights, and had to turn again to stick to the shadows. She came across streets and crossed them, willing herself to walk casually so she wouldn’t draw attention if she were spotted by a pair of curious eyes looking out from one of the structures around her.
She thought she saw a couple of newer constructions that looked like barracks, with vehicles parked around them and a big circled M spray painted on the front door as well as along the sides. The entire area, in fact, gave off the vibe of a military installation. Was that it? Was Fenton one big, recently-built base of some so
rt?
Lights were visible through some of the windows; small personal lamps, from what she could tell. She had to dodge three more patrols, each consisting of two armed men in vests before she reached what looked like the bank of a lake.
The fact that Fenton had water nearby was expected. Almost every ghoul collaborator town was situated next to a lake or a water source of some type to provide them with a constant supply. And she had no doubts Fenton was, at one point in its lifetime, a collaborator town. Fenton might not even be its original name.
There was a big lake to her right, with moonlight reflecting off its calm surface. She hadn’t seen it before with all the buildings blocking her view, but now that she had reached what looked like the edge of all the new construction, she had no trouble making out the water just beyond the muddy grounds.
And there, farther ahead of her, more lights and guards. Three dark figures that she could see, maybe more that she couldn’t, standing along the shoreline and in front of a marina. White and various colored crafts—tied-up boats—were visible nearby.
Gaby stopped for a moment to get her bearings. She remained standing in shadows as she looked across the lake at even more lights ringing what appeared to be a small island. It was in the middle of the water—maybe five hundred meters or so from the shoreline—and was connected to the mainland by a dark strip of land. She couldn’t tell how big the road was, but it had to be large enough to accommodate a constant back and forth.
The island wasn’t big, but it was long and wide enough to house a two-story warehouse in the very center that was surrounded by smaller buildings. Gaby swore she could make out people moving around in what looked like guard towers along the edges of the island, but maybe that was just the moonlight playing tricks with her eyes.
What’s going on over there?
But as much as she wanted to find out, she had other priorities. The first was to get out of Fenton.
“What about Reese?” a voice asked in the back of her mind.
She hadn’t thought about Reese since leaving the stables behind. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to, because thinking about the girl forced her to make a choice.
“She’s with her people, the ones from Kohl’s Port,” Redman had said.
Except that didn’t really help her at all because she didn’t know where Fenton was keeping its captives. They had stuck her with the horses because they had run out of room. So where would they keep a kid like Reese? Would she even be in the same area? This military installation, or whatever it was?
The patrols so far had all been wearing vests—soldiers, essentially—and she had yet to spot a civilian out here. In fact, the only person who would even qualify as a “civilian” was Cherise, but the woman hadn’t given away very much information about herself.
It made some sense the more she thought about it. If this was, in fact, a military zone separate from the rest of Fenton’s population, then they wouldn’t let the civilians move around freely, especially at night. Cherise would be an exception, but maybe only in the daytime.
I’m sorry, Reese, but you’re safer staying as far away from me as possible right now, Gaby thought, and readjusted her positioning.
She was at the edge of Fenton—if not the town itself, then this heavily patrolled section of it—with nothing on the other side of the marina except water. Besides the three men she’d spotted, she could make out two other pairs of patrols farther back. They were obviously keeping a very close watch not just on the boats, but the pathway connected to the island.
What is going on in that warehouse?
Questions. So many questions. And she wasn’t going to find any answers just standing around doing nothing.
Gaby made up her mind and headed in the only direction left for her—toward the line of lights. She had to keep moving, keep getting as far away from the stables as possible. It wouldn’t be long now before the guards returned. If she was lucky, they wouldn’t know anything was amiss and have no reason to check on her. They hadn’t bothered when they replaced Bruce and the other one, so why would they do so now?
Hell of a leap of faith, girl.
She picked up her pace, sometimes breaking out into a jog when she wasn’t moving in the open and had the luxury of shadows to hide her presence. She passed more buildings, dodged more patrols, and angled around spotlights.
There were a lot of lights, which made her wonder where they were getting the power from. She couldn’t hear generators running in the background, and she would have, as quiet as the night was. There were obviously solar-powered LED bulbs at work, but there were others that were being powered by something else.
She looked back at the island—or in its direction, since she couldn’t see it anymore with new structures in her way—and wondered if it had anything to do with Fenton’s generous and seemingly readily available power supply. Maybe that warehouse was some kind of power plant. Hydro power? It would make sense given the size of the lake that she could see; she couldn’t imagine how much bigger the rest of it was that she couldn’t.
It took her another ten minutes of careful maneuvering to finally reach the long line of lights. She was right; it was some kind of perimeter, with a ten-foot tall chain-link fence topped by barbed wire and patrols. There was a road on the other side, tantalizingly within walking distance.
She stopped next to a shack fifty meters from where the fence began and took it all in, wondering how the hell she was going to get through that.
It had to be ten feet of fence, didn’t it? And the barbed wire doesn’t help.
Gaby could make out farming fields on the other side of the two-lane blacktop road that ran parallel to the fence. Waves of cornstalks covered the area directly in front of her, and she thought she could make out the moonlit appearance of other kinds of vegetation to her left and right. Fenton, apparently, had a thriving farming community.
So what exactly was the purpose of the fence? Wouldn’t Fenton want its food supply to be protected within the perimeter? Unless, of course, she was right and they had put her in a restricted zone, while the civilian areas were on the other side.
Voices, as a patrol walked in front of her.
Gaby pressed her body against the cold exterior of the shack. In the darkness, she couldn’t tell what color it was—maybe gray or dark brown. It was eight-by-ten feet in dimension, with a slanted roof. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the front while approaching it, but there were no windows that she could see, so no one would be able to spot her from inside.
The patrol consisted of a woman and a tall man, and that made Gaby breathe a little easier because it meant she could pass for one of them if the place wasn’t an all-male operation. It wasn’t much, and she was still pushing her luck running around out here looking for a way out, but it was something to grab onto.
Barely.
She waited until the two-man patrol had passed her by. They weren’t talking, so she only had the soft crunch-crunch of their boots on the ground to go by that they were getting farther away from her position.
Gaby refocused on the fence. Ten feet high with barbed wire, because all of this wasn’t already hard enough.
The sudden realization that she was outside and in the dark—and had been for some time now—sent a slight shiver up her spine, and Gaby glanced around while reaching down to touch the butt of the SIG Sauer to make sure it was still there.
Ghouls. There are still ghouls in the night. Remember that.
She hadn’t checked to make sure Bruce’s gun was loaded with silver bullets—it had never even occurred to her to do so until now. She quickly drew the weapon and ejected the magazine, and checked the first round at the top. Moonlight gleamed off some silver around the tip of the bullet—not a lot, but enough to make a difference—and she sighed with relief and put the pistol away.
She looked back at the fence and listened for more patrols. There had to be a way in and out somewhere along the length of the perimeter. Wherever that was, it would also
be guarded, of course. After all, why would you put up a fence if you didn’t put eyeballs on the only way (ways?) in and out?
Which didn’t leave her with a whole lot of options, because she had to get out of here. Now, while it was still dark, while no one knew she had left the stables. Even if her guards didn’t check up on her after their “late dinner,” by morning, black vest or not, she was going to stick out—
Pop-pop-pop!
Gunfire, coming from her left side. The only reason she didn’t dive to the ground was because the shooting wasn’t anywhere close to her.
There was a brief pause, before:
Pop-pop-pop!
Gaby pushed her body even tighter against the shack and drew her pistol, even as the same patrol she’d seen earlier ran past her and toward the sound of gunfire—
Lights flicked into existence behind her, coming from a building less than twenty meters away. It wasn’t big enough to be a barracks, but there were people in there, and when they burst out of that front door there would be nowhere for her to hide.
Gaby quickly slid around the shack and grabbed the lever at the front. The door moved but didn’t open. The damned thing was secured with a hasp and a padlock.
She glanced back at the building with the lights on and glimpsed figures moving across a window, toward the front doors.
Any second now…
Gaby turned the SIG Sauer in her hand, gripped it by the barrel, and smashed the buttstock into the hasp. She didn’t think there was a chance she could bust the padlock, but hasps weren’t always made of the strongest construction—
It broke off, and she grabbed the lever and pulled, then slipped inside just as she heard the click! of a door opening behind her.
Too close!
There were no lights inside the shack, but the darkness was a welcome relief after the near-miss. Gaby caught her breath while checking to make sure the gun was still in one piece and usable. The grip was slightly cracked, but other than that—
The smell hit her first.
What…?
The stench was rotten and flooded her nostrils, and she turned around just in time to see it lunging at her from the darkness.