by Sam Sisavath
She stared speechlessly back at him.
Her face must have also looked stunned, because he grinned and said, “Oh come on, that’s surprising to you? Look, I don’t say this a lot, but Willie boy’s really good at this sort of stuff. Me, I’m just a lover and a fighter. Got a farmer’s daughter you want seduced? I’m your man. Need a way out of an Afghanistan mountainside covered in Taliban? Uh, ask Will. Failing that, ask Lara.”
It took her a moment to answer, but when she finally found her voice, the only thing that came out was an almost disbelieving, “Since when?”
“Since Will left four hours ago.”
Lara peered through the binoculars again, if just to hide her sudden—but quickly growing—anxiety. The idea of being in charge in Will’s absence terrified her. She was a third-year medical student, for God’s sake. They taught her how to sew up wounds and take care of colds, not to make decisions that could, potentially, lead to other people’s deaths.
“What do you think?” she asked uncertainly.
“We should at least find out what they want,” Danny said.
“I think we know what they want.”
“They’re a little late for that.”
“Which sort of makes it unlikely this could be a trap.”
“You think?”
“Think about it. If they’re collaborators, and this is some elaborate scheme to get back on the island, this is kind of…dumb, don’t you think? Show up three months after the last radio broadcast?”
“That’s a good point.”
“Or I could be overthinking it,” she added quickly. “I don’t know what I’m talking about, Danny. Maybe we should radio Will back and ask him.”
“Nah, I think you’re on to something.”
He said it with such absolute certainty she almost believed him. Almost.
“I’ll take a boat over with Maddie and suss them out,” Danny continued. “Can’t very well just ignore them, can we?” He glanced at his watch. “Seven hours till sunset, give or take.”
Lara nodded reluctantly. “Be careful.”
“Don’t sweat it, doc. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“They end up being ghoul collaborators and kill everyone on the island as soon as they set foot on the beach.”
“Sure, there’s that,” Danny said.
CHAPTER 5
GABY
She thought she would have gotten used to the smell after a few hours, but four hours later Gaby was still unable to fully breathe through her nose without feeling overwhelmed. It wasn’t just the presence of forty bodies crammed onto one floor, because the tenth floor was certainly massive enough to accommodate ten times that number. There was something else about the place, about the whole hospital. Something in the air she hadn’t felt in a long time, and it took her a while to remember what it was.
Desperation.
She didn’t like how these people lived. Even before she found Will and Lara, Gaby had had a better existence than this. Sure, going from town to town, hiding in basements, didn’t sound like such a great time, but when you compared it to hiding (stuck) on the tenth floor of a hospital, with ghouls waiting in the nine floors below, it was a hell of a better alternative.
This isn’t a sanctuary. It’s a prison.
To escape it, she went up to the rooftop. There were a couple of guys outside smoking cigarettes. One of them was Benny, who had learned his lesson and hardly stared when she came outside. Instead, he offered her a cigarette.
“I don’t smoke,” she said. “It’s a filthy habit.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So why don’t you quit?”
“I guess I’m weak.” He gave her a shy smile. “I’m Benny, by the way.”
“Gaby,” she said, shaking his hand.
She had thought he was in his twenties when she first met him earlier, but up close she realized he was just a nice-looking eighteen-year-old kid. He sported amusing facial hair that did more harm than good, and he had pleasant enough light-blue eyes. The other boy, Mack, gave her a brief nod and turned away.
Gaby walked to the edge of the north tower rooftop, while Mack and Benny stayed behind near the access building. She wasn’t sure what their jobs were, exactly. Who was going to invade the building from the rooftop? The only danger came at night…
She looked off at the city around her. The domed building—some kind of basketball arena, probably—was visible across the street, along with the baseball and football stadiums to either sides of it. They were definitely in some kind of college town.
College.
She used to have plans for college. She’d had everything worked out, too. Good grades, after school programs, extra credits, stacks of college preparation books, and admissions forms from every school around the country.
What was that old saying? “The plans of mice and men…” Or something like that.
“There you are,” a voice said behind her.
Gaby looked back at Amy, who walked over with two cans of diet soda.
Gaby took one. “Thanks.”
She opened her can. There was no fizz, of course, and the taste was sludgy and warm, and she suddenly missed the freezer back at the hotel. She did her best to hide her disappointment and hoped Amy hadn’t caught it.
“Jen says you guys have a freezer on the island,” Amy said. “That would be nice right about now.”
“Refrigerators in our rooms, too.”
“So, ice and cold drinks?”
“Uh huh.”
“I’ve forgotten what that’s like.” She took a sip from her soda and made a face. “Yeah, I could really go for a little ice right about now.”
“Where’s Jen?”
“Asleep in her room. She always crashes after every trip. I personally think she does it on purpose—keeps going out there to tire herself out, because it’s so hard to sleep day after day in here. There’s not a lot to do, and you know hospitals…”
Gaby replayed the faces of the people on the tenth floor in her mind. Droopy, sleep-deprived, and pale. It was a depressing thought, and she pushed it away.
“What’s out there?” she asked instead.
“The University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Go Ragin’ Cajuns.”
“I’ve never seen a Ragin’ Cajun before.”
“They’re like your average Cajun. Only ragin’.”
“Ah.”
They shared an awkward smile.
Amy took another sip from her flat soda and made another face. “Ugh. This thing tastes terrible. You swear you guys have ice over there?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Good enough for me.”
“Are you going?”
“To Song Island?” She seemed to think about it. “If everyone’s going, I guess there’s no reason for me to stay behind.”
“Jen doesn’t seem to care either way.”
“It’s ‘have helicopter, will fly’ with her. I don’t think she cares about anything else, to be perfectly honest.”
“Was she in the Army, too?”
“She was the news chopper pilot for one of the local stations around here. You should have seen her at the beginning of all this. Ferrying people to the hospital like some kind of aerial avenger. It was beautiful.”
Gaby took another sip from the soda, thought about spitting it out, but didn’t want to hurt Amy’s feelings, so she forced herself to swallow it instead.
“Can you hear it?” Amy asked.
“What’s that?”
“The city.”
Gaby thought that was a strange question. She tried to listen to the city, but she only heard the whistling of the wind, the occasional flap-flap-flap of trash moving around the street and the parking lot below them.
“I don’t hear anything,” Gaby said.
“Yeah,” Amy said. “We heard them in the first few months. Dogs and cats. But we haven’t heard a single one of them for months now. The only animals that are safe are t
he birds.”
Gaby watched a flock of birds glide gracefully across the skyline in front of them, far from the reaches of the streets below…
*
She found Will in his room, next to hers along the north tower. There weren’t nearly enough people for the tenth floor’s 200 rooms, so they had their pick. She guessed Will had chosen two rooms within twenty yards of the stairs for the quick rooftop access.
“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst” was his and Danny’s motto. They did almost everything with it in mind, something she had slowly begun to adopt. It was a new way of not just thinking, but living, and it took more effort than she had expected, mostly because Will and Danny made it look so effortless.
He stood next to his window, staring out through rusted rebars. Every room on the floor had the same long, rectangle windows that stretched almost the entire width of the back wall. Will had dumped his pack on an uncomfortable-looking pull-out sofa, and his beaten up M4A1 rifle lay across the patient bed behind him. The good thing about staying in a hospital was that every room had its own bed and bathroom. Unfortunately, the bathroom didn’t have running water or working plumbing, but the bed was clean enough, if not entirely comfortable.
Will glanced over. “Settled in?”
“Lumpy bed, window you can’t open, and the smell of desperation in the air. What’s not to like?”
He chuckled. “What’s up?”
“About Mike’s people…”
“Close the door first.”
She nodded and closed the door after her. “Are we taking them back with us?”
“Some. Maybe ten at first. See how that works out, then act accordingly.”
“We could definitely use more guns.”
He nodded. “You can never go wrong with more guns, as long as you can trust the finger pulling the trigger.”
She stood next to him and looked out the window at the quiet, empty city below. It looked more dead from behind bars than it had from the rooftop. They didn’t speak for a long time, something Gaby had become used to with Will.
“Thanks again for bringing me with you,” she said after a while.
“I wouldn’t have if I didn’t think you could hack it.”
A sudden flush of pride raced through her, and she did her best to not let it show on her face.
Instead, she reached through the bars, rasped her knuckles against the glass window, and got back a dull thudding sound. “Can they get through this?”
“Doubtful. Hospital windows are made to be permanently closed and nearly impossible to break.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It’s to keep the patients from deciding to end it all when times get tough.”
“That’s a pleasant thought.”
He glanced back at the door briefly, as if to make sure it was still closed. “They’ve been really lucky here so far. I think Mike knows it, too. That’s why he’s so desperate to get them to the island.”
“There are a lot of long faces in those hallways.”
“They look like good people, so there’s that.”
“Pretty decent, yeah.”
“It won’t hurt to bring them over. Mike would be a valuable asset…with some sleep.”
“And the others?”
“Danny and I have experience sanding down kids and turning them into decent soldiers.”
She smiled. “Did Mike say what they’re planning to do with the silver bullets we brought over?”
“There’s an Archers Sports and Outdoors a few streets down with supplies he’s been itching to get at. The last time he tried to take them was about three months ago, and they lost a couple of guys.”
“So we’ll be here for at least tonight.”
“Homesick already?”
“Nah,” she said. “Just missing that kitchen freezer, that’s all.” Then she added, “And the cold drinks. And the ice. And the showers. But mostly the showers.”
*
There wasn’t a lot to do until tomorrow, so after washing her face with warm bottled water in the bathroom, Gaby sat on the bed, stripped down her M4, and cleaned it piece by piece while she still had some light from the window. She took out a small pouch with cleaning solvents, an old toothbrush, lint-free cloth, and a bore brush for the job. It was the most basic cleaning kit they could put together using equipment available at the hotel.
She looked up when there was a knock on her door. “Come in.”
A pair of familiar blue eyes and bad stubble peeked in at her through the open door. Benny shot a curious look at the pieces of the rifle spread out on the white bedsheet in front of her.
“You busy?” he asked.
“No. What’s up?”
“We’re about to have dinner. They wanted me to call you. Well, I volunteered.”
“Where?”
“Huh?”
“Where do you guys eat?”
“Oh. At the central hub.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll be over when I’m done.”
“Oh. Okay. I’ll…” She thought he was going to stammer his way to something else, but he apparently decided to just leave instead.
Gaby picked up the bore brush and went back to cleaning the M4. The old Gaby wouldn’t have had the patience for something so tedious, but that girl was gone. If the new her had learned anything from three months with Will and Danny, it was that no one was going to depend more on her gear than her.
Out here, the difference between life and death was a weapon that worked the way it was supposed to.
*
If she thought the sight of the hospital’s survivors was depressing, the dinner wasn’t much of an improvement. Gaby spent the thirty minutes in the central hub listening to Will, Mike, and Amy talking, while people came and went in a never-ending stream. Although Benny told her it was dinner, it was really eat-when-you-feel-like-it time. Food consisted of canned meat, MREs, and bags of noodles washed down with warm soft drinks and water. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a single can of fruit dripped in syrup to be found.
Even with the bright LED lights, the room looked and felt uninviting.
“There are others out there,” Will was saying. “In other states. I’m not sure if it’s anything resembling an organized resistance, but they’re out there. We’re not alone by any means.”
“That’s good to know,” Mike said. “One of the disadvantages of locking ourselves in here is the lack of information. Even Jen hasn’t really brought anything back about what’s happening out there.”
“Has she left Louisiana yet?”
“Not yet,” Amy said.
“What are your immediate priorities?” Will asked Mike.
“Those supplies in the Archers, first.”
“What are you running low on?”
“Everything. That’s one of the reasons why I want to start shuttling people to Song Island. Starting with the women and children.”
“I’ll agree to that. What I don’t want is for you to load everyone into a van and drive down there. We’re not ready for that kind of influx.”
“And you’re right to be wary of that,” Mike nodded. “We’ve been here for eleven months. Another month won’t kill us.”
“In terms of medical supplies,” Amy said, “what are you looking for?”
Will took out a piece of folded paper and handed it to her. “A lot of supplies for everyday use and the occasional emergencies.”
Amy scanned the sheet of paper, then nodded at Mike. “I can fill everything on here.”
“So that’s settled,” Mike said. “When do you head back?”
“I’m not in any hurry,” Will said. “If you want, I can help out with the Archers tomorrow.”
“I’d be an idiot to turn down an Army Ranger’s offer.”
The two men shook hands.
*
After dinner, Gaby walked back to her room. She saw a boy watching her from a partially open door. He had
a pale face and hollow eyes, and for a brief instant she thought she was looking at a ghoul child.
The boy closed the door as she walked past.
She finally made it back to her room, feeling less than full after dinner. She hadn’t wanted to say anything, because Mike and the others went out of their way to welcome them. The food wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t island food.
There was still enough light outside, so she decided to strip down her Glock and clean it, too, and was slightly annoyed when there was another knock on her door.
“Come in.”
It was Will this time. He closed the door softly behind him.
“Thank God,” she said. “I thought it was that Benny kid again.”
“He likes you.”
“He’s a teenager, Will. He likes anything with tits and ass.”
That got an amused grin from him.
“What’s up?” she asked.
Will had a small bundle wrapped in red felt and tied with brown twine in his hand. He tossed it to her. “Happy early birthday.”
“It’s not—” She stopped herself.
Oh my God.
“I forgot,” she said quietly. “I can’t believe I forgot my own birthday.”
“Lara didn’t. Eighteen, right?”
“Nineteen.”
“Right. Nineteen.”
“Can I…?”
“Knock yourself out, birthday girl.”
“It won’t be official until tomorrow.”
“Close enough.”
Gaby pulled at the twine and it slipped effortlessly free. She realized she was trembling slightly when she peeled the felt wrapping to reveal a can of Dole Pineapple Chunks.
“It’s the last can on the island,” Will said. “Lara saved it two weeks ago to give it to you. She’s been hiding it in the freezer without telling anyone, so…” Will put a finger to his lips. “Mum’s the word.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“I told her we should have gotten you something else. Like jewelry. Teenage girls love jewelry, right?”
Gaby gave him a wry look before beaming. “This is great, Will. Thank you.”
“Yeah?”
She smiled and nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah. I mean it. You guys are awesome.”