by Sam Sisavath
“How was last night?” he asked.
“We managed.”
“No ghouls?”
“None that we saw. Or heard.” He looked surprised. “Why?” she asked. “Did you see any?”
“A few last night. They were probing the cabin we stayed in.” He shrugged it off. “What about Luke?”
“He’s alive and eating again. That’s a good sign, right?”
Will nodded. “That’s a very good sign. We’ll have to keep monitoring him.”
“Where did you find her?” Kate asked. “The girl.”
“Girl?” Will said.
“What is she, twenty?”
He laughed. “Twenties. I forgot to ask for a birth certificate.”
“Where did you find her?”
He told her about the Sundays. The cabin. Finding Lara standing over Jack Sunday’s bullet-riddled body.
“Go easy on her, Kate,” he added. “She’s been through a lot.”
“We all have,” she said quickly. She felt instantly guilty, and added in a softer tone, “You’re right. That sounds like she’s had a nightmare time.”
“Bonus points: she’s a third-year medical student.”
She nodded and looked at him closely.
He smiled back. “What?”
“I’m glad you’re okay.”
He slipped his arms around her and pulled her to him, kissed her softly. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulled him tighter against her.
In the back of her mind, she hoped Lara was watching. It would save them both a lot of trouble later on.
*
Lara was leaning over Luke on the couch when they caught up with the others in the office. She had removed parts of the gauze and she looked like she knew what she was doing. Or at least, more than they did.
“You guys did a pretty good job,” Lara said to Danny.
“You sure I didn’t leave a knife inside there?” Danny said. “I’m pretty sure I was using it to cut the gauze when I was bandaging him up. But I can’t seem to find it now.”
“You better not,” Luke grunted. “Seriously, man, I’m going to kick your ass if you did.”
“Or a watch,” Danny continued, ignoring him. “I’m missing a watch, too. That’s not bad, right? If you leave a watch inside someone?”
“I don’t see any,” Lara said. Kate couldn’t tell if she was playing along with Danny or not.
“Have you done this before?” Will asked.
“Up close like this? Once,” Lara said. “Last night, on the person you shot. This doesn’t look nearly as bad as that one.”
“Did he make it?” Luke asked.
“No, he died later.”
“Oh.” Luke’s face turned pale.
“It was the wound,” Lara added quickly. “It was too deep and it took the Sundays too long to get him back to the cabin. But Danny and Will did a really good job on this, and you’re already one day past it, so this is completely different.”
Luke nodded, looking very relieved.
Lara wrapped Luke back up and dug through their first-aid kit, essentially a big bag that Danny and Will had filled with medical supplies along the way. Lara scanned the bottles, reading the labels, then found one she wanted and shook out a couple of pills.
She handed them to Luke. “This is going to help with the pain, and it’ll keep you alert at the same time.”
“Will I play the piano again, Doc?” Luke grinned.
“Only if you’re on your back like this.”
He swallowed the pills with some water. “You guys got those dicks that shot me?”
“Yeah,” Will said. “Danny did. I’m pretty sure Ted put down the one Lara’s talking about. And Lara herself finished off the third one for us before we even got to the cabin.”
“Serves them right,” Luke said, though even that seemed to take a lot out of him.
“Luke, stop talking now,” Kate said. “Save your energy.”
She felt a presence behind her and looked back to find Ted. He turned and left without a word. She made a mental note to talk to him later.
Will was saying to Lara, “When do you think we can move him?”
“The highway’s pretty smooth,” she said. “I don’t see why you couldn’t move him. He’s already made it past the first twenty-four hours, and that’s the important thing.”
“The problem is, it won’t be highway forever. There’ll be some bumpy roads ahead. I’m not just talking about your standard bumpy country roads. Harold Campbell purposefully put the facility in a spot only accessible after three klicks of the worst road you’ll ever see.”
“Why did he do that?” Carly asked.
“To deter the local population from poking around. No one would be crazy enough to keep going along that road on purpose for too long.”
“Is it really that bad?” Kate asked.
“Imagine driving three klicks through potholes.”
“He can’t go through something like that,” Lara said. “Not for a while.”
“How long?” Will asked.
“Maybe a couple of days, at least. If the road is as bad as you’re saying.”
Will nodded. “It’s worse.”
“Jesus, this guy really is out there,” Danny said.
“They call it eccentric when you’re filthy rich.” Will glanced at Lara. “Do what you can for now. Danny and I will plan accordingly.”
Will left them in the office. Danny kissed Carly and followed Will outside with a mug of steaming coffee moments later.
Lara said, “Will told me you guys have some clothes. Do you think I could…?”
“Yeah,” Kate said, “of course, come with me.”
She led Lara through the side door and into the garage. The steel garage door remained down, so the only light came from the portable LED lanterns hung around the room. Kate went to one of the trailers and pulled back the tarp.
She looked through the closed crates and boxes and pulled a suitcase from the middle. “Don’t expect anything too flashy. Everyone stopped trying to make fashion statements a while ago.”
“Anything’s better than what I’m wearing now.” She tried to smile, but it came out wrong.
Kate unzipped the suitcase for her. “There should be something that fits you. You look about Carly’s size.”
“Thanks.” Her voice was breaking.
Kate didn’t know whether to run away or grab her in a tight embrace. “There’s some bottled water in one of the trailers. If you want it.” Oh God, what am I doing? “I don’t mean just to drink, to wash with.”
“Oh.”
What happened to you back there?
“Are you okay?” Kate asked.
Lara lifted her head, dirty hair falling over her face. “Not really.”
Kate felt her heart breaking. “I’m sorry. For what happened to you back there.”
“At least I’m alive, right?” She tried to smile again. It still came out all wrong. “Thanks, for the clothes. And the water.”
“There’s more than enough,” Kate said, the words tumbling out of her unnecessarily fast. “We can always pick up more. Stores are filled with them…dozens and dozens of cases just lying around.”
“That would be great. It’s…been a while since I’ve had a shower.”
“I’ll let you get dressed and cleaned up.” Go. Just go.
“Thanks.”
She nodded, gave the younger woman a small smile, and left as fast as she could, feeling a rush of uncontrollable guilt.
*
She found Danny and Will outside by their ATVs, looking over a map they had picked up from a gas station a few days back.
Danny was saying, “A dozen. Maybe more.”
“Where?” Will asked.
“Some in the parking lot, but mostly around the garage area.”
“What about the garage?” Kate asked.
“There were ghouls here last night,” Will said.
“Are you sure? I didn’t
see or hear any.”
“They were keeping a low profile,” Danny said. “But yeah, they left tracks.”
“But I didn’t hear anything, Danny.”
“I think that was the point,” Will said. She gave him a questioning look. “Last night, at the cabin, they did the same thing. They probed, but didn’t attack.”
“They’re getting smarter,” Danny said. “A hell of a lot smarter.”
Dead, not stupid. Like you always say, Will.
“There’s a good chance it’s the same group,” Will said. “The same one that’s been tracking us since we left Houston.”
The implication behind his words made her shiver slightly.
“We’ve been able to stay one step ahead of them,” Will continued, “but I think they finally caught up to us last night. At the cabin, and here. But they didn’t attack either place. Why not?”
“They’re doing recon,” Danny said.
“What does that mean?” Kate asked.
“They’re doing reconnaissance,” Will explained. “Before you attack an enemy, you gather intelligence first, find out where they are, their numbers, weaknesses, and if necessary, you make adjustments, call in reinforcements. They know a handful of ghouls aren’t going to stand up against us. So what do they do?”
“They call reinforcements,” she said, feeling a sudden tightness in her chest.
Will had brought this up before, but it had never seemed real until now. Was it possible? Were the ghouls that smart? The very idea terrified her.
“So what do we do?” she asked.
“Starch is only forty-eight klicks up the road,” Will said. “An easy two hour’s drive even going slowly. Three hours, max. An hour if we gun it. But we can’t go there yet.”
“Luke…”
“Yeah. Can’t risk opening up that wound again.”
“Come on, the road to the facility can’t possibly be that bad,” Danny said.
“It’s worse,” Will said.
“Maybe they’ve fixed it since you were last there.”
“That would defeat the purpose of the road in the first place, Danny.”
“Oh. Good point.”
“What now?” Kate asked.
“We hunker down around here and see what happens tonight?” Danny said. “Then tomorrow, if Luke’s better, we risk it. How’s that sound? See? I can come up with a plan, too.”
Will grinned. “That sounds about right. Who knows, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we’ll skate through tonight just fine.”
Danny grunted. “Right. And Carly likes me for my personality.”
*
Kate heard them ride off on their ATVs again. By the time she had climbed up to the rooftop, Will and Danny were small dots in the distance.
“We’ll be back as soon as we can,” Will said over the radio.
“How long will moving those cars take?” she asked.
“Depends on how many keys we find, how much gas is in the tanks, spare tires, et cetera. You should have come along with us.”
“No, thanks. Moving cars all day isn’t my definition of fun.”
She was still thinking about what Will had said, about the ghouls probing them last night. She hadn’t heard or felt them at all, which was unusual. Even when she couldn’t see them, she could feel them, their unnatural presence somehow tainting the air around them. But she had been so preoccupied with Luke, watching over him, making sure he didn’t die during the night, that maybe she lost sight of everything else around her.
That explained it, didn’t it?
Maybe…
What if Will was right? What if the ghouls were doing reconnaissance on them? What if they had gone back to report? What then? Will sounded and looked alarmed, and she knew better than to disregard the few moments when he actually showed concern about something.
She remembered the last time they had faced more than a handful of ghouls at one time. Back in Houston…
Ted was sitting in his flimsy portable chair near the edge of the roof, just close enough to watch for incoming danger, but far back enough to hide from anyone looking up from below. He glanced over and she thought he was going to tell her to leave, that he wanted to be alone up here, but he gave her a small smile instead and went back to carving something into his rifle’s stock with a pocketknife.
It was only when Kate got closer that she saw it was his name.
“There you are,” she said. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Yeah?”
“I wanted to see if you were okay.”
He shrugged, but didn’t say anything.
She walked to the edge of the roof and looked down. It was only twenty feet to the parking lot below, but she still hated being up this high. She looked back at Ted and watched him quietly working on the rifle’s stock.
“You probably saved Will’s and Danny’s lives, you know. And Luke’s, too. Will told me himself.”
He looked up uncertainly at her.
“I mean it, Ted. If you hadn’t hit one of them, they would have just kept shooting at Will and Danny. You saved their lives. I hope you know that.”
“I’ve never killed anyone before,” he said.
“I know. But we did what we had to do yesterday. We protected our friends from people who wanted to harm them. You shouldn’t lose sleep over it. You did the right thing.”
Ted nodded, and she watched him closely. Was she getting to him? Maybe. It was hard to tell with Ted. Sometimes it was easy to forget that the big man with the big hands also had a very big heart.
“I guess,” he said and went back to carving.
“Don’t guess.” She was surprised by her own forcefulness. “Know, Ted. Don’t doubt it for a second. When you shot that man, you saved three lives. Three lives.”
He smiled a bit this time. It wasn’t out of bravado. That wasn’t Ted. “I wish I didn’t have to,” he said.
“I wish you didn’t have to, either. I wish they hadn’t set that ambush and shot Luke. I wish a lot of things. But that’s the world we live in now. We have to do the best we can and live with the consequences. And in this case, the consequence of your actions is that Will, Danny, and Luke are alive. You did good.”
“Thanks,” he said, and he flushed a bit. She took that as a good sign.
“You’re a good guy, Ted. Don’t ever change.”
“That’s a compliment, right?” He grinned sheepishly at her.
She laughed. “I’m pretty sure it is, yeah.”
“Okay.”
“Why the name?”
“Huh?”
“The rifle stock.”
“Oh.” He stopped halfway on the D and seemed to consider her question. “I don’t know. I guess since I’m going to be using it for a while, I might as well make it mine. Does that make sense?”
“Makes as much sense as anything that’s happened the last month or so,” she said.
CHAPTER 24
WILL
It took them two hours and change to move the cars off the road, parking the vehicles along the ditch on both sides, where they made quite a sight but would no longer be a nuisance to anyone driving through. The semi was the most difficult to move, but once they were able to hotwire it and drive it off, it was a simple matter of finding the biggest vehicle left, then using it to tow the rest of the vehicles they couldn’t find keys for, or with empty tanks.
Once they were done, Will and Danny went back to the Sundays’ cabin and looked for any supplies they could use. They ignored the weapons as they had plenty already, but tossed the boxes of bullets for the rifles and handguns into a bag and carried them back to the ATVs. The cabin was well-hidden, but there was a noticeable path through the woods that led directly to its front door.
When they were done searching the house, they left the bodies of the two Sunday men where they rested, and Will left the door open for the animals.
Danny said, “Maybe we should burn the place down.”
“Let the wild dogs eat.
”
“That’ll work, too.”
“What did you find?”
Danny pointed at tracks around the cabin, just barely visible in the dirt. “They go all the way around the place. Maybe a dozen.”
“The ones that were here last night.”
“Yeah. There’s no place for them to hide around here, so they had to take off before sunup. Where is the question. If we can find the nest, maybe we can burn the place down or fill it with silver bullets.”
Will looked around the woods. It was dense and went on for miles in all directions. “We’re not going to find anything in this place.”
“They really are getting smarter and more organized, aren’t they?”
“It definitely seems that way. Since Houston.”
“It’s that whole Archers thing. You pissed them off,” Danny said.
“Hey, they were your C4.”
“Yeah, but it was your plan.”
Will smirked.
“I don’t mind telling you,” Danny said, “I’ll feel a hell of a lot better once we reach Harold Campbell’s place… Assuming it’s actually there.”
“It’s there.”
“Completed?”
“It’s been five years since they started construction. Campbell had unlimited resources. Chances are it’s finished. Or mostly finished. But that place mostly finished is better than surviving day-to-day out here.”
“All right. Still a better plan than I got.”
“You had a plan?”
“Nope, that’s the point.” Danny paused for a moment and got suddenly serious. “If what we’re thinking turns out to be true, we’re going to need a pretty strong base for tonight. They’re going to be coming, and there’s going to be a hell of a lot of them.”
Will nodded. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t already considered a million times since last night. “I have a plan. A just-in-case plan.”
“A good one, I hope.”
“Good enough. It involves Plan Z.”
“Aw, shit,” Danny said. “Not Plan Z.”
“You love Plan Z.”
“I hate Plan Z. And I hate you for making me take part in your Plan fucking Z.”