by Sam Sisavath
“Take your time,” Benny said. He looked over at Gaby. “Grab me a bag of Funyuns, will ya?”
“They’re probably all stale by now,” Gaby said.
“Just as good.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Will unslung his M4A1 and walked over to Gaby, who was already waiting for him at the doors. He nodded, and she pulled the door open. Will slipped inside first, rifle raised. He glimpsed the aisles, then stopped and listened for noises. There was very little chance the ghouls would be using the gas station as a nest. It was too small and too inconvenient; they preferred bigger places with thick walls (like Mercy Hospital).
Will nodded right, and Gaby disappeared down the aisle. He took left.
After about ten minutes of going from aisle to aisle and looking through an employee lounge in the back and a bathroom next door, they met up again at the front. Gaby had grabbed a bag of Funyuns sometime during the trip back.
“Stale?” he asked.
“Expired eight months ago. Maybe he won’t notice the difference.”
“Must be love,” Will teased.
“He did save my life on the rooftop.”
“That always helps, sure.”
*
Benny didn’t seem to mind the expired Funyuns, digging into the bag as if he hadn’t eaten in days. Will left them in the employee lounge, a big block of concrete with some Brad Pitt movie posters and old hunting magazines stacked on a flimsy fold-out portable table. The only other furniture was an old lime-green couch.
The good news was that there was only one way into the lounge—through a sturdy steel door that had been painted over at least four times in its lifetime, judging by the eclectic mix of colors visible underneath the peeling paint.
Will grabbed a couple of plastic bags from behind the front counter and filled them with water bottles from the freezers, all the beef jerky he could find, and five cans of Vienna sausages with pull tabs from the shelves. The sun was already starting to fall outside, casting an orange-red glow across the highway as Will walked back to the lounge.
He handed Gaby the bags, then went through the gym bag they were hauling around and pulled out what he needed.
“You need a hand?” Gaby asked, looking worriedly at him.
“I’ll call if I do.” He pulled out a bottle of Vicodin and handed it to Gaby. “Give Benny two, and don’t let him move around on that leg.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll take some tramadol.”
“That’s it?”
“We have to stay awake, but Benny doesn’t have to.”
She nodded, and he had to remind himself that even scratched up, bruised, and cut, she was still just a kid.
Back outside, he used the fading daylight to take off the gauze from around his left arm. He washed the wound again, disinfected it, then took out the needle and medical suture and went to work. When he was done, he snipped the thread and wrapped it back up with a new layer of gauze.
Working on his right leg was trickier. He had to unwind the duct tape along with the gauze, which was of course wet and sticky with blood. He pulled off his pants and sat in his boxers with his leg propped up on the counter. He had to wash and disinfect the wound again before he could finally start suturing it. He thought about Lara, her lips, kissing those lips, the feel of her skin, and was able to get through it with minimal pain. By the time he was finished wrapping it back up with more gauze and fresh duct tape and had pulled his pants back on, the windows had almost completely faded to gray.
Will took out the bottle of painkillers and chewed on a couple, then gave them a few minutes to do their job. Afterward, he gathered up the bloody items from the floor and tossed them into a bag before heading back to the lounge. He tied up the bag and tossed it into a corner, then made sure the door was locked. There was a deadbolt, but that was it.
“Gaby, give me a hand with the couch.”
They moved the couch over, stood it on its side, then leaned it at an angle against the middle of the bigger door. He stood back and gave it a look.
“It’ll never hold,” she said.
“No, but it’s better than nothing.” He looked back at Benny, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, head lulling to one side and struggling to keep his eyes open. “Push comes to shove, we can always use him. He’s what, 200 pounds?”
“One fifty, tops.”
Will grinned. “We’ll be okay.”
“Yeah? What makes you say that?”
“I have faith.”
“In what, this ugly couch? Or this twenty-year-old door?”
“Both.”
“This is all for my benefit, isn’t it?”
“Yup.”
“Swell.”
They sat down on the floor, backs against the far wall, and laid their rifles across their laps.
Will dug out a couple of water bottles and handed her one. “You did good out there.”
She smiled, pleased. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Perish the thought,” she said. “But just between you and me. I’m a better soldier than Danny, right?”
“Without a doubt,” he smiled.
“Good. I’m going to rub it in his face when we get back. Assuming we survive this.”
“We’ll survive this.”
“Is that just for my benefit, too?”
“Yup.”
She smirked. “You know, it would work better if you didn’t automatically tell the truth once I pressed you on it.”
“Oh yeah, sorry about that.”
*
Benny was snoring long before nightfall. They moved him into the corner so he wouldn’t accidentally topple to the floor and hurt himself.
They didn’t see the night coming outside the door, but they could feel it. Will’s internal clock buzzed and screamed and rang when his watch ticked to 7:10 p.m. The temperature dropped noticeably about thirty minutes later. That was good, because he was afraid of suffocation by heat inside the room.
Gaby’s eyes, like Will’s, never left the door, even as visibility dropped to almost nothing.
“Should we pop a glow stick?” she asked.
“There’s too big a slot under the door and around the frame. They’ll see the glow if they look into the store for longer than a few seconds.”
“So we’re just going to sit here in the pitch dark, then?”
“Pretty much.”
“Romantic.”
“Uh huh. Beef jerky?” He offered her one from the bundle he had shoved into his pack earlier.
“Don’t mind if I do.”
It took only a few minutes until they were completely engulfed in darkness, and his only clue Gaby was even sitting next to him was the sound of her chewing. Benny, somewhere in the corner, was snoring, though not loudly enough for Will to be too concerned.
“I liked Amy and Jen,” Gaby said quietly.
“I did, too.”
“And they took the fucking kids, Will.”
“Yeah.”
“We couldn’t even save the one kid. Amy said his name was Freddie.”
Gaby didn’t say much after that.
“Go to sleep, Gaby,” he said after a while.
“What about you?”
“I’ll wake you around three.”
“Okay.”
He heard her repositioning her rifle in her lap, then the rustling of clothes as she folded her arms across her chest against the growing chill.
Will leaned his head back against the wall, keeping his eyes on the door in front of him. Despite the darkness, the door stood out, the slivers along its frame giving it the impression of being some otherworldly portal.
*
Somewhere around midnight, he heard them moving around the store outside the lounge. One of them appeared in front of the door and jingled the doorknob, its shadow moving in that staccato, unnatura
l gait that they possessed.
He gripped the M4A1 in the darkness.
Gaby was sleeping quietly next to him, while Benny snored softly in the corner. Still not too loud, but just loud enough to make him nervous. He was struck by how much more of a soldier Gaby was compared to Benny. Hell, compared to all of Mike’s people. He always knew he and Danny had done a good job with her, but to see her in action was impressive.
The creature finally grew bored of playing with the door. It turned and scampered off.
But it wasn’t alone. There were more movements outside, and shadows flitted across the crevices around the door.
These other creatures, though, didn’t bother to stop and inspect the back room.
The hive mind. One knows, so the others know, too.
Dead, not stupid.
An hour later, the last of the noises faded into the background, and Will felt comfortable enough to close his eyes.
He thought about Lara. About their mornings on the beach and their nights in bed. He could almost hear the rise and fall of her heartbeat, and it made him smile. He wondered what she was doing right now, and if she missed him nearly as much as he was missing her…
CHAPTER 17
LARA
She was tired, and she wanted nothing more than to just lie down and close her eyes and go to sleep. But while Lara felt mentally fatigued, West actually looked the part. His face was black and bruised, his temple bearing the stitches from a couple of hours ago. His eyes were glassy, his nose partially broken, and he looked like a hospital patient who had stumbled out of bed after surgery.
“This is a death sentence,” West said as they approached the marina.
He sat up front facing them, with Lara in the back and Danny in the middle. His hands were zip tied in front of him, not that he looked like he was in any shape to fight at the moment.
“You know that, right?” West said.
She didn’t answer.
Danny steered them into the mouth of the inlet, then glided up toward the marina. It had been a while since she left the island, and just stepping into the boat felt terrifying, as if she would never be able to return.
She glanced over at the blackened property to their left. It looked miserably bleak, which, she guessed, was the point. It was the same with the marina. There used to be a garage near the water’s edge, but it, too, had been burned down. The marina itself was still in one piece, since it was a little difficult to burn down an asphalt parking lot. The area around it was nothing but towering fields of grass as far as the eye could see.
“Are you listening to me?” West said.
“I heard you,” she said. “It won’t change anything, so you can stop wasting your breath.”
“You’re a doctor, for God’s sake.”
Third-year medical student, actually.
“I gave you every chance in the world,” she said. “This is all your doing.”
“Keep telling yourself that, and maybe one day you’ll believe it.”
She should have let Maddie come instead. Or any of the others. But she hadn’t passed off the responsibility to them, because she needed to do this, because it was her responsibility.
I made the decision. Now I have to stare it in the face.
Danny eased up on the boat, then angled it toward one of the boat ramps. The front of the boat slid gently up the sloping concrete, until it came to a rough, grinding stop.
“This is where you get off, Kemosabe,” Danny said, pulling back on the throttle.
West stood up and sought out her eyes. She wanted desperately to look away, but Lara forced herself to stare right back at him.
“Look, I’m sorry about this afternoon,” West said. “About everything. But this isn’t right. You know this isn’t right. I’m going to die out here. I don’t stand a chance.”
“You’ll stand a chance if you’re smart,” she said.
“You know that’s not true. You know it.”
She ignored his plea and said, “Danny.”
Danny drew his cross-knife. “Hands.”
West held out his zip tied hands and Danny cut them free. West towered over Danny, but at the moment she had never seen such a tall man look so small. At first she thought it was an act, an attempt to garner sympathy.
But no. This was the real thing. West was terrified.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
That seemed to utterly deflate him, stripping him of whatever last vestige of hope he had been clinging to that she would change her mind.
“Turn around,” Danny said.
West obeyed. “Please…”
“And don’t forget the battery.”
West picked up a car battery at his feet, then clumsily climbed over the side of the boat. He stumbled most of the way, trying to fight the slight rocking of the boat while clinging to the heavy burden in his hands.
“Try not to get it wet,” Danny said.
West barely made it to the angled ramp, sacrificing his pant legs as they dipped into the cold water of Beaufont Lake. He scrambled, fighting against the sloping concrete, and finally pulled himself up onto the dry parking lot with a lot of effort. He dumped the battery on the ground and immediately—desperately—searched out her eyes again.
“Please, Lara. You can’t do this. You know this isn’t right. Whatever I did, I don’t deserve this. You know that. Please.”
She stared back at him.
This is where I change my mind. This is where I let the squishy woman in me take over and allow him back on the island. This is where I prove to him that I have no killer instinct.
This is where he’s wrong.
She picked up a gym bag and threw it onto the marina ten feet from where he stood. The bag was stuffed with his rifle and a shotgun, knives and ammo, canned goods and bottled water. All the supplies he would need to survive—for a while, anyway. It was everything she thought she owed him and nothing more.
“Don’t touch the bag until we’re out of sight,” Lara said. “Danny will shoot you if you do. Trust me, he’s a better shot than you are.”
“Catch,” Danny said, and tossed West a key. “The blue Tacoma. There should be some gas left. Not a lot, mind you, but we took it out a week ago, and there might be half a tank if you’re lucky. Swap in the battery and you’re good to go. Well, goodish, anyway.”
“Drive north as fast as you can,” Lara said. “You don’t have a lot of time.”
West blinked nervously up at the sun.
“Do yourself a favor,” Danny said. “Don’t be here when we come back. I see you, I’m shooting first, and it’s never mind the questions.”
Lara didn’t wait for West to respond. “Let’s go, Danny.”
Danny made a U-turn, and when he had the boat facing the lake again, he stepped aside for her to take over the steering wheel. Danny unslung his M4A1 and looked back at West in case he went for the bag.
“Do us both a favor,” Danny shouted. “Go for the bag. Pretty please?”
West didn’t go for the bag.
“You’re no fun,” Danny said.
She guided the boat out of the inlet and back onto the lake. It was like driving a car, only each slight jerk of the steering wheel was more dramatic. She could almost feel West’s eyes on her back, but she never turned around.
“You did the right thing,” Danny said behind her. “Don’t beat yourself over it. If Will was here, West would never have survived the woods. The idiot doesn’t know it, but he’s lucky he got to deal with you instead.”
“Thanks, Danny,” she said quietly.
*
Once they were back on the island, she waited for Danny to return to the Tower to relieve Maddie before calling him on her radio. It was the longest, most excruciating ten minutes of her life.
“Anything from Will?”
“Nothing, sorry,” he said.
Dammit, Will, where are you?
“Get some sleep, Lara. I’ll send Carly to bang on your door when Willie bo
y calls. And he will. Have faith.”
Faith.
Yeah, I’m finding a shortage of that lately, Danny.
She ate dinner with everyone in the dining room, trying her best to engage in their conversation. Sarah was in the Infirmary with Blaine and had been since Lara left them a few hours ago. Sarah would probably be there all night, since Mae, Bonnie, and Gwen had taken over the kitchen. The food, a bit spicier than Sarah’s, was still delicious, though about halfway through Lara realized she was more tired than hungry.
After dinner, she took her half-empty dishes into the kitchen, where Bonnie was pouring Coke from a two-liter plastic bottle into a dozen tall glasses on a tray. Each glass was topped with ice, and by the time Bonnie finished pouring, there was more ice than Coke in each glass.
“Got enough ice there?” Lara smiled.
Bonnie laughed. “When you’ve been drinking warm soda for as long as we have, you can never get enough ice.”
Bonnie handed her one of the glasses and Lara took it gratefully. “Mae said you were a model before all of this.”
Bonnie looked embarrassed. “Talk about a useless career, huh?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I was thinking about opening an island magazine, call it Island Breeze, or something like that.”
“Are you saying you’re looking for a model?”
“That depends. Are you expensive?”
“I had a pretty lucrative career. Did you used to read a lot of fashion magazines before all this?”
“Did the New England Journal of Medicine ever put out a fashion issue?”
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say no?”
“Figures. My roommate used to buy stacks of them, though.”
“Is she…?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t know what happened to her.”
Bonnie nodded. Lara didn’t have to say anything else. They all knew people who either didn’t make it or were unaccounted for.
“I guess I was lucky,” Bonnie said. “With Jo, I mean. So many people have lost so much, and somehow we still have each other. You were lucky, too.”
“I was?”
“You found Will. Treasure that, Lara. This kind of thing was a rarity back when the world made sense, but now, it’s a miracle.”