by Sam Sisavath
“Guess no one’s home,” Danny said.
“But something—or someone—had to have started the fire.”
“Spontaneous combustion?”
“That’s one theory.”
“What’s another one?”
“No idea.”
“Hunh. So what now?”
Will glanced back toward the road. “Come on, we’re burning daylight. Gaby was smart not to stop, and we should have done the same thing.”
“Too late for that.”
“Just don’t tell her when we finally catch up.”
“Mum’s the word.”
They started walking back to the Bronco when a flicker of movement—from the barn—caught the corner of Will’s eye and he stopped on a dime and spun. Danny did the same, and they stared across forty meters at the large twin doors that had swung open.
“I guess someone’s home after all,” Will said.
“Awesome,” Danny said. “Let’s go see if we can borrow some milk and sugar.”
They changed direction and moved toward the barn, approaching it from two different angles the way they had the minivan earlier. Will kept his eyes on the open alley doors in front and the closed loft door directly above those. If there was a sniper inside, he would use the higher perch to shoot from, but Will couldn’t make out any holes or makeshift gun ports.
The barn doors remained open, but no one had shown themselves yet.
They took the first twenty meters without fanfare, taking their time but moving steadily forward. Will scooted slightly right to eyeball the bottom of and along the slanted roof. Danny did the same on his side.
“Anything?” Will asked.
“Squadoosh,” Danny said. “Unless they have an invisible sniper. If they do, that would really suck.”
Finally, one of the barn doors opened even wider and a pair of tanned arms appeared in the sunlight. “Don’t shoot!” someone shouted. Young and male. “We’re not armed!”
“Step outside!” Will shouted back.
The owner of the outstretched hands stepped out of the barn. Tall, jeans and a white T-shirt stained with something red. Blood. The man squinted in the sunlight and his hair was a mess. Will couldn’t see a gun belt or a weapon, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something behind his waist.
The man had moved a foot outside the building when Will said, “Stop.”
He did.
“Turn around,” Will said.
The guy gave him a confused look.
“Like Cinderella,” Danny said.
Another confused look.
“Just to make sure you’re not armed,” Will said.
He understood that and turned around a full 360 before facing Will again. He had wisely not lowered his arms the entire time.
“You said ‘we,’” Will said. “Who else is inside?”
“My girlfriend,” the man said.
“Her name wouldn’t happen to be Gaby, would it?” Danny asked.
The guy shook his head. “Um, no. It’s Annie.”
“Oh well, worth a shot,” Danny said.
*
LANCE AND ANNIE hadn’t arrived from Mississippi by themselves. There had been six of them four months ago. That number was trimmed to two after last night.
“They had blue eyes,” Lance said, trembling noticeably as he talked. “They played with them. I mean, they played with them. I’d never seen anything like it.”
“There were two,” Annie said.
Will and Danny exchanged a knowing look.
They stood around the Bronco with the weary couple. Both Lance and Annie still looked shell-shocked from last night’s harrowing encounter with the ghouls.
“What do you mean by ‘they played with them’?” Will asked.
“They let Toby out of the house,” Lance said. “Then they made him run into the fields. At first I thought the black-eyed ones would be all over him, but they weren’t. They just stood around and watched. Then the new ones—the ones with blue eyes—ran after him. Then…there was a lot of screaming. Toby. I would know his voice anywhere.”
“They gave him a head start?” Danny said.
“Yeah,” Lance said, as if he could barely believe his own story. “Those things… they didn’t act like the others. I think they were controlling them. I know that sounds crazy…right?”
“It’s not that crazy,” Danny said.
“You’ve seen them too, haven’t you?” Annie said, staring at them.
“Yeah,” Will nodded. “What happened to the rest of your people?”
“They killed them,” Lance said. “One after another. They started with Toby, then Danielle, then Sally…”
“…then Howard,” Annie finished.
“We hid in a room under the floorboards inside the main bedroom when they first attacked the house. I guess the homeowners were using it to store valuables. We saw bundles of money in there.”
“There was jewelry, too.”
“We stumbled across it by accident when we first moved in. We didn’t really have any uses for it until last night when they came. Usually they don’t bother with the house. We make sure the place is completely dark at night and we seal ourselves into the rooms. We had barricaded the windows and doors, too.”
“Every night?” Will said.
Lance nodded. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it. Until last night.”
“What happened last night?”
“Usually the black-eyed ones might sniff around. Sometimes they’ll even bang on the doors or windows. But then they always leave when we don’t show ourselves. But last night, they didn’t stop. They just kept at it. I don’t know how, but they managed to break down one of the windows.”
It’s the blue-eyed ghouls. The others become unpredictable when they’re around…
“We barely got into the hidden room in time,” Annie said. “Then the screaming started…”
“They played games with them,” Lance said, and his eyes drifted over into the fields that surrounded the property. “It’s so quiet at night, you can hear a long way even through walls.”
Annie reached over and squeezed Lance’s hand.
“What about the house?” Will asked. “What happened to it?”
“We burned it down,” Lance said. “After last night, there wasn’t any point in staying. And they were in there…”
“They?”
“The creatures. They were hiding in the basement. When we came out of the secret room, we could hear them moving around under the house.”
“Lance thought we might be able to kill a few of them,” Annie said. She was staring back at the house now. The smoke had all but vanished, leaving behind just a twisted, blackened carcass. “I don’t know if it worked, or if the basement is still down there under all that. Should we…find out?”
Will exchanged another look with Danny.
“There could be a couple of Mister Blue Eyes down there,” Danny said. “Might be worth it to find out.”
“Through that?” Will said. “It’d take the whole day to sift through the wreckage. We don’t have that kind of time with Gaby still out there.”
“You mentioned her before,” Lance said. “Who’s Gaby?”
“A friend of ours. We’ve been looking for her since Dunbar.”
“We saw a lot of vehicles coming from Dunbar all morning.”
“Was one of them a Silverado truck?” Danny asked.
“I don’t know, I didn’t see one. Annie?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what a Silverado looks like. And I only got glimpses of them from the barn.”
“But there was something else,” Lance said. “We heard shooting from farther up the road.”
“How long ago?” Danny asked.
“I don’t know, I think thirty or forty minutes?”
“The timing’s about right,” Will said. He looked back at Lance and Annie. “You guys can come—”
“Yes,” Annie said before Will cou
ld even finish.
Lance grinned sheepishly. “What she said.”
*
THE CHEVY SILVERADO was inside a ditch, resting on its back bumper with the front grill facing the cloudless sky. Harsh sun beat down on its chrome and hood, streams of sunlight piercing bullet holes that stitched the front windshield. There was a dead man outside the driver side door with two bullet holes in his chest. All the car windows were broken, with glass sprinkled liberally over the seats and spread out among the splashes of blood.
Will climbed up the ditch and back onto the highway, where the Bronco idled in the road. Lance and Annie were standing outside in the sun glancing around.
“Bad news?” Lance said, looking over.
“Not good news,” Will said.
He blinked up the road at Danny, walking back from a lone red pickup parked across one of the two-lane roads. He was dropping spent bullet casings from one hand.
“Anything?” Will called.
“There was a second car,” Danny shouted back. “Some kind of half-assed roadside ambush.”
“To stop the Silverado.”
“Looks like it. And these,” he said, flicking one of the bullet casings in Will’s direction.
Will crouched and picked up a 5.56x45mm brass casing. Assault rifles. Probably M4 or AR-15. God knew there were plenty of those just lying around these days.
God bless the Second Amendment.
“There’s a dead body up there,” Danny said. “Poor bastard decided to go up against the Silverado and—surprise—lost. Any signs of Gaby?”
“No, and that’s a good thing.”
“Pray tell.”
“No body means she’s still alive.”
Danny peered up the road. “They must have taken off in the third car. That thing’s leaking motor oil. I get the feeling they intended to dump it, grab the first vehicle that came across their little slapdash barricade, but—” he looked over at the undercarriage of the Silverado “—I’m thinking that didn’t quite work out as planned. That car can’t be moving very fast at all. If we haul ass…”
“So let’s get to hauling,” Will said.
*
DANNY WAS ABLE to track the motor oil stain on the highway from the Bronco’s driver seat. This way, they would know if the vehicle unexpectedly left the road. It hadn’t so far. Will just hoped they could catch up to it before it reached the interstate up ahead. It was going to be difficult, leaking motor oil or not, after that.
He hung out the window listening for sounds that didn’t belong and scanned the horizon just in case the trail they were following proved deceptive. Lance and Annie pitched in, the couple leaning out their windows while armed with Will’s and Danny’s binoculars.
They were ten minutes into the pursuit when Will said, “How’s it looking?”
“It’s looking,” Danny said. “Whatever they’re driving, it’s leaking good. No wonder they were so hot to switch vehicles. I’m guessing the red pickup must have been in worse condition or else they would have taken it instead.”
“We’re pushing up on time here, Danny. If we don’t find her and hit the interstate soon, we’re not reaching Song Island by tonight.”
“I know, I know.”
They drove on for another few minutes, the only sound coming from the wind rushing through the vehicle and the engine churning under them.
Behind them, Lance asked, “Anything?”
“Nothing,” Annie said. “Just a lot of empty land. God, there is so much emptiness out here. We were so lucky to find the house.”
“Yeah, lucky.”
“I mean before last night,” Annie said softly.
“I know what you meant, babe. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Will imagined them smiling at each other back there, trying to comfort one another as best they could. The same way he would do with Lara…
“Aw, shit,” Danny said beside him.
Will looked out the windshield and saw it.
A lump in the road: a body.
Danny slowed down as Will picked up his M4A1 and looked into the back at Lance and Annie. “Stay inside.”
They nodded silently back.
Danny stopped the Bronco, and Will opened the car door and hopped out. He heard Danny’s door opening behind him, but he was already moving quickly toward the body, scanning the ditch to his right and the landmass beyond. He didn’t bother with his left side because he didn’t have to—Danny was covering it. Traces of leaked motor oil zig-zagged in front of him, already drying in the heat.
The body was thirty meters away and Will reached it first. He felt a tightness in his gut at the sight of blonde hair blowing against a slight wind. The lump lay on its stomach, arms awkwardly folded under it, as if the woman had attempted to stop her fall as she fell.
She was wearing shorts, a long-sleeve shirt, and sneakers. Blood gathered under her, glimmering against the harsh sun. He crouched next to the body and slowly, almost hesitantly, turned the woman over onto her back.
A girl. Young. Maybe seventeen.
But not Gaby.
“Is it her?” Danny said behind him.
“It’s not her,” Will said.
The girl’s face was partially covered in blood, and there were deep cuts along her cheeks and temple, likely from glass. From far away, she might have been mistaken for Gaby, but Will knew Gaby’s face well enough to see through the scars and blood.
“They dumped her,” Will said. “She was probably still alive at the time.”
“One of the girls with Gaby?”
“Maybe.”
Will thought about searching the girl for clues but quickly dismissed it. She looked at peace, and considering what she had gone through, she didn’t need him digging around her pockets.
“What’s the word?” Danny said.
“Let’s go.” He got up and they jogged back to the Bronco. Will could feel the urgency in every one of his bones. “She’s still fresh. Five minutes. Maybe less. We’re catching up to them.”
“Shitty car,” Danny said. “They’re probably moving slow, too. Good for us and good for Gaby. We get her and head home. No muss, no fuss.”
“Yeah,” Will said, glancing down at his watch.
12:40 P.M.
Too close. We’re cutting it too close…
CHAPTER 28
GABY
SHE WAS STILL dazed from the pain, trying desperately to make sense of what was happening to them, when Harrison stopped the car and threw Donna’s body outside. Then he climbed back in and drove off, leaving Claire’s sister to die in the middle of the highway. She was vaguely aware of Milly sniffling next to her, just barely able to stop herself from outright bawling, while Claire pressed the rag down against Gaby’s mouth, trying to stop the bleeding from her broken nose.
Gaby’s entire body was on fire, and the scorching sun that turned the backseat of the old Dodge Neon into an oven didn’t help. She couldn’t tell how Claire was handling the situation because she could barely make out the girl’s face through the haze that blanketed her vision. Claire wasn’t crying—she could tell that much because the girl was so close to her—but Milly was doing enough of that for both of them.
Harrison had taken their weapons and tossed them into the trunk before putting all three of them into the vehicle. The handcuffs dug into Gaby’s wrists, but she found herself grateful for them because the biting metal sensation took away some of the pain coursing endlessly through the rest of her body. Every inch of her face hurt, and her nose was clearly broken. If only her high school friends could see her now, they might not even recognize her.
She struggled to sit up and was only able to do so with Claire’s help. The thirteen-year-old took the blood-soaked rag away because she wasn’t bleeding anymore. She couldn’t tell if the sun was overly bright this afternoon or if something was wrong with her eyes. Maybe a loosened socket or two. She wouldn’t be surprised if she was bleeding internally, too. It felt like it.
&n
bsp; “Donna…” she said.
Claire, sitting to Gaby’s left, shook her head silently. The girl looked resolute in her determination not to let any emotion show on her face, though when she glanced forward at Harrison, sitting directly in front of her, the hate shone through. Milly had turned herself into a ball to Gaby’s right, arms folded across bent legs and her head placed between her knees, like a tortoise hoping to escape from all this.
Harrison drove in silence. What was that he had said when he pulled her out of the Silverado?
“Everything was going fine until you showed up. Everything that’s happened, it’s all your fault.”
Screw you, Harrison.
There were a lot of things wrong with that statement, but she was sure Harrison wasn’t in the mood to debate them. Not that she was, either, as her eyes drifted from his face, reflected in the rearview mirror, to the Remington shotgun lying across the front passenger seat, the stock facing him. As luck would have it, she had sat up in the middle of the backseat and there was nothing at all between her and the weapon. All she had to do was lean forward and reach for it—
Harrison’s eyes shifted, picking her up in the rearview mirror. “You’re up.”
Sonofabitch.
“What happened to Donna?” she asked.
“The same thing that’ll happen to you and the kids if you make trouble.”
“Donna wasn’t making trouble.”
“She was going to die anyway.” He shrugged. “I saved us both the hassle. You should thank me.”
I’ll kill you instead.
Claire tensed up next to her. It never occurred to Gaby just how small Claire really was until now. The driver’s seat completely covered her up, which meant Harrison couldn’t see her.
As the fog began to clear from her head, Gaby’s mind went to work. She turned over everything that had happened, that was happening, and that would likely happen if they were still here, in this car with Harrison, when night fell.