by Sam Sisavath
Adapt or perish, kid.
She crossed over to the Tower and climbed the spiral staircase, the sound of her boots click-clacking against the cast iron metal. She was halfway up the second floor staircase when she heard voices floating through the open door above her.
Danny, talking to a second, muffled voice.
The radio.
She hurried up the last dozen steps and burst onto the third floor. Danny was leaning over the ham radio at the table.
“Will?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Someone else, but here’s a kicker—it came through our emergency frequency.”
“Then it has to be Will and Gaby.”
“That’s what I figured.” He turned back to the radio, pressed the transmit lever. “The boss just showed up. You’ll want to talk to her.”
Lara took the receiver from him. “How long ago?” she asked him.
“A few minutes.”
She turned to the receiver and pressed the lever. “This is Lara. Who am I talking to?”
“My name’s Benny,” a male voice said.
“Benny, how did you get this frequency?”
“Will gave it to me.”
Will. Oh thank God.
“Is he okay?” she asked, somehow managing not to scream the question through the radio. Not that it stopped her heart from racing noticeably inside her chest.
“Last time I saw him,” Benny said.
“He’s not with you?”
“No.”
“What about Gaby?”
“She went to find Will.”
“What does that mean, Benny?”
“Will sent her to find a ham radio, but before she came back, he took off. Gaby decided to go after him, and Nate went with her.”
“Who’s Nate?”
“The guy leading this group I’m with now.”
“Wait, you’re not all from Mercy Hospital?”
“No.” He paused for a moment. “The hospital was attacked. Most of the people there are dead. I think I might be the only survivor.”
Lara exchanged a worried look with Danny. This explained so much. Why Will was out of contact, and who the man with the deep voice was that had answered when she called Jen’s helicopter yesterday.
“They killed everyone?” she asked.
“I think so, yeah,” Benny said. Then he added, “Except for the children.”
“What about the children?”
“They took them,” Benny said. “The ones Will called collaborators. That’s where Will went. To get the children back.”
*
OF COURSE WILL would try to get the children back. Will was practical to a fault, but there was a streak of righteous decency in him that she admired and loved. So of course he would decide to go on a fool’s errand to save children he had never met, whose names he probably didn’t even know. Because there was a chance he could succeed, and a chance was good enough for Will.
If you get killed, I’m going to kick your ass, Will.
Knowing why he was doing what he was doing didn’t make it any easier to accept. But she understood it. God, did she understand it. She might have even done the same thing in his position, though she was sure her chances of success would be far less.
“That’s Will for you,” Danny said. “Personally, I think he’s just going after this Kellerson guy because he’s bored.”
She stood at the window next to him, looking out at Bonnie’s girls gathered near the edge of a nearby cliff, throwing rocks at the lake below. Even Derek seemed to have come out of his shell and was skipping his share of pebbles.
She was still trying to digest what Benny had told her a few minutes ago. Will, Gaby, and Mercy Hospital. Most of all, she couldn’t quite wrap her head around the collaborators deciding to kill everyone except the kids.
“Why did they take the children?” she said out loud.
“I’m just a grunt, doc,” Danny said. “You tell me.”
“They have a plan.”
“Collaborators?”
“No, the ghouls. They keep pressing forward, building on what they’ve done. The Purge, the blood farms. The one we saw in Dansby was just the early stage. The one Blaine saw in Beaumont was another one, but further along. Now they’re taking children and killing the adults. Before, they took the adults, too. But that’s changed. Why?”
“I get the feeling Will’s thinking the same thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s one of the reasons he’s not back here yet.”
“I don’t understand.”
“‘Know thy enemy,’” Danny said. “Willie boy really takes that motto seriously.”
*
BENNY AND THE others reached Beaufont Lake around four in the afternoon. They arrived on a single tank of gas, and Benny radioed ahead when they were halfway down Route 27. Lara remembered when they had originally come down the same stretch of road. It had seemed as if the drive would never end.
Danny, with Bonnie, took the pontoon boat back over to the marina to get the new arrivals. Bonnie volunteered, and Lara was more than willing to accept. She had more questions for Benny—about Will, about Mercy Hospital, about what had happened to everyone there—but she needed them to rest up first.
With six new people now on the island, Lara spent the next couple of hours with Carly in the hotel arranging living quarters for them. They needed five rooms for one couple, a mother and her teenage son, a teenage girl, and Benny. They had to bring fresh bedsheets, blankets, and pillows from the supply closets in the back. Eventually, Lara knew they would have to start prioritizing the rooms when the island’s population increased. She had already begun keeping a ledger, noting everyone’s room number, as well as writing down the names of the room’s occupants on the doors themselves using large white envelope labels she had found in one of the offices.
It was mundane things like that that kept her from spending every second worrying about Will and Gaby. They were out there, in God knew how much danger, chasing men who had already tried to kill them.
If she didn’t keep her mind constantly occupied with something else, like the tedious running of the island, she was almost certain she would go insane.
*
IT WAS ALMOST five when everyone was back on the island and she could breathe easier. Sending people on land always left her anxious, especially to a launching point as obvious as the marina. You never knew who could be lurking in the grass, harboring ill-intentions.
Like West…
She let Benny and the newcomers eat first. They were tired from the long drive, from being squeezed into a vehicle for most of the day. She remembered how that felt, too.
She asked Roy, who had woken up, to go back to the beach and stay on the boat shack. Afterward, she went to the third floor of the Tower and sat down at the table with the radio. She had renewed hope that Will would contact them, because the first thing Benny had told her when they met was that Gaby had taken a second radio with her.
That was the good news.
The bad news was that she hadn’t heard from them yet. The fact that they had a radio and hadn’t contacted Song Island introduced a whole new set of possibilities, each one more confusing than the next.
Had Gaby even managed to find Will? According to Benny, Will had an hour’s head start on her and Nate. If they hadn’t caught up to him yet, it explained a lot. Moving by himself, on a motorcycle, Will would be able to travel faster on the highway. Gaby and Nate, on the other hand, had left in a Volkswagen Beetle.
She waited with Maddie in the Tower, staring at the radio and willing it to make a sound, but the damn thing refused to obey her mental commands.
“How long are you staying up here?” Maddie asked after a while.
“Why? Are you tired of me already?”
“Not at all, boss. Just wonderin’.”
“I’m waiting for Benny.”
“Speaking of which, what do you think of them?”
“Stan’s an electrician, so he’s
going to be invaluable. And Kendra was a gardener at Home Depot, so she’ll come in handy when we start growing things around here.”
“It would be nice to have some fruits and vegetables to go along with all the fish,” Maddie said.
Lara heard footsteps on the spiral staircase and looked over as Benny poked his head up through the opening. His face was covered in sweat from the climb and he looked older with the stubble, though she guessed he was only eighteen or nineteen. He had dimples that reminded her of a boy she used to like back in middle school.
“You guys could use an elevator in this place,” Benny said as he climbed up onto the floor. “I thought I was going to have a stroke halfway up.”
He was breathing hard and moving on a crutch—really, a baseball bat with a car seat’s headrest duct taped at the top. One of his leg was encased in splints made from two pieces of wood, with more duct tape wrapped around them.
“How’s the leg?” she asked.
“Hurts.”
“But you’re not in any major pain?”
“I pretty much loaded up on painkillers on the way over here, so it’s mostly numbed over, thank God.”
“I’ll look at the leg later, then get Danny to make you some proper crutches.”
He nodded gratefully. “You’re a doctor, right?”
“I’m just a third-year medical student.”
“Three more years than I got.”
She smiled. If she had a dime every time someone said that to her…
“Sit down, Benny.”
She gave him her chair. Benny sat down and glanced up at the glass skylight.
“You knew Gaby, too?” Lara asked.
“Yeah, we—” He stopped short, then actually blushed a bit. “Yeah, we got to be pretty good friends.”
Lara and Maddie exchanged a knowing look.
“So you wanted to ask me some questions?” Benny said.
“Tell me what happened at Mercy Hospital,” Lara said.
“What do you wanna know?”
“Everything. The men that attacked the hospital. What did they look like. How many were there. How Jen died. Everything you can tell me, Benny.”
Benny nodded. He took his time, gathering his thoughts.
“They came out of nowhere,” he began. “One moment they weren’t there, and the next they’re all over the tenth floor. It was bloody. It was so bloody…”
CHAPTER 21
GABY
GABY BELIEVED IN a higher power, that there was a God out there somewhere watching over her and her friends. But she’d be damned if she didn’t think she was listening to God himself as Will crouched in front of Kellerson’s sniper and talked to the guy.
“Here’s the deal,” Will began. “I was with Harris County SWAT before all of this happened. Before that, I was an Army Ranger and I served in Afghanistan. I won’t bore you with the details, but I wasn’t building roads or schools or holding anybody’s hand when I was in-country. They sent me to kill people, because that’s what I do. I’ll admit it, I did it—and I still do it—very well.”
The guy’s face hadn’t changed since Will started talking, and the only time he moved at all was to pick pieces of dried grass out of his thick red beard.
Will continued: “So when I tell you that I have absolutely no desire to hurt you, but that I will if you don’t tell me everything I want to know, you should take it as gospel. I would have done this to you before the world went to shit if you had something I needed. Now, after everything that’s happened? The whole end of the world stuff? The lying in wait to put a bullet in my head? I will hurt you—and hurt you badly—and I won’t lose a single second of sleep over it.”
The man finally looked Will in the eyes.
“Do you understand me?” Will asked.
The guy nodded. “Yeah, I understand you.”
“Do you believe me?”
“Yeah, I believe you.”
“So tell me about Kellerson.”
“What do you wanna know?”
Gaby exchanged a look with Nate. “That was easy.”
The man leaned back tiredly against the tire of the Saleen sports truck he had been using, trapped between Will in front and Gaby and Nate on either side. Not that he noticed Gaby or Nate. His eyes—even if he pretended otherwise—were firmly focused on Will.
“What’s your name?” Will asked.
“Harris,” the man said.
“Where is Kellerson, Harris?”
“Sandwhite.”
“Sandwhite Wildlife State Park?” Nate asked.
“Yeah. Just like on the billboard.”
“What’s he doing there?” Will asked.
“That’s where the nightcrawlers told him to take the kids.”
“Where in the park?”
“I don’t know. We usually just deliver them to the main parking area and the others come and get them.”
“Others?”
“Others like us.”
“Collaborators.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Nightcrawlers?” Gaby said.
“It’s what we call those things,” Harris said. “Why? What do you call them?”
“Ghouls.”
Harris shrugged. “Good name as any, I guess.”
“So there are ghouls—nightcrawlers—in Sandwhite, farther up the road,” Will said.
“I guess so,” Harris said. “It’s dark in there. There are parts of the place where sunlight doesn’t even reach. They might have been there all this time, I don’t know, we never stuck around long enough to find out.”
“Who told Kellerson to take the kids there?”
“Them.”
“Who is ‘them’?”
“One of them had blue eyes…”
Blue-eyed ghouls.
Gaby had never seen one herself, but Will had. So had Lara, and Blaine, and Maddie. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to see a blue-eyed ghoul; the black-eyed kind was disturbing enough.
“He’s right,” Nate said. “The trees grow pretty big in there.”
“You know the area?” Will asked.
“I grew up around here. Used to go to Sandwhite every now and then for camping and hunting.”
Will said to Harris, “What are they doing with the kids in Sandwhite?”
“I have no fucking idea,” Harris said. “We just drop them off and leave.”
“Where were you headed after Sandwhite?”
“I dunno. Kellerson didn’t say. Probably to pick up more men. You guys—back there at the hospital—did a pretty good number on us.”
“How many are left with Kellerson now?”
“Just me and Danvers. You killed the rest.”
“So Kellerson isn’t at Sandwhite right now?”
“Probably not. He went on ahead of me yesterday.”
“And left you behind. Why?”
“In case there were more of you Mercy Hospital guys chasing us. He got spooked when you showed up with the helicopter yesterday. We saw it a mile away, on our ass.”
“That was his idea? Using the Law?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’d you get something like that?”
“We raided Fort Polk. Kellerson’s got all kinds of hardware stashed around the state.”
“Fort Polk is in Vernon Parish,” Nate said. “About 180 klicks from Lafayette.”
“What else does he have?” Will asked Harris.
“Everything,” Harris said. “We raided the armory.”
“Is that where you got all the M4s?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s your base?”
“Tatum Golf and Country Club.”
“Near Oden Lake?” Nate asked.
“Yeah.”
“Country club?” Gaby said.
“Clean living,” Harris said. “Greens as far as the eye can see. And you can catch fish at the lake nearby.”
“Yeah, but who cuts the grass?” Nate smirked.
“Who cares. We
didn’t go there for the golf.”
Will stood up. Harris tensed, then looked over at Gaby and Nate. She could guess what was probably going through his mind at the moment: “Now what?”
“Do we just…leave him here?” she asked Will.
Will didn’t answer right away.
That, more than anything, unnerved Harris. “Leave me here,” the man said. “I told you everything you wanted to know. You promised.”
“Did I?” Will said.
Harris opened his mouth to protest, but stopped short. It was true. The only thing Will had promised was pain if he didn’t talk. Other than that, she didn’t remember anything about letting Harris go.
“Look, I was just following orders,” Harris said.
Will ignored him and glanced down at his watch before looking over at Nate. “What’s the word on the Beetle?”
“There are at least four bullets in the engine block,” Nate said. “It’s not going anywhere.”
“Transfer everything you have over to the Saleen.”
“Now?” Gaby said.
Will nodded.
Gaby took the hint and started off, but noticed Nate wasn’t following. She glanced back at him. “Nate, come on.”
He hesitated, before grudgingly leaving with her.
They walked along the feeder road for a moment, then crossed over to the highway’s southbound lane, back to the Beetle farther down the I-49.
Nate kept glancing back at Will and Harris. “Is he going to kill that guy?”
“I don’t know,” Gaby said. “Maybe.”
“Should we stop him?”
“Why?”
“It’s murder, Gaby.”
“He was trying to murder us.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“Isn’t it?”
“If we killed him during the gun battle, that’s fine. I won’t lose sleep over it. But this…this is murder.”
She gave him a sharp look, ready to get pissed at him, but saw the very real conflict on his face. He looked so young, even with that Mohawk.
“When did you get so soft and gooey?” she asked instead.
He chuckled. “Is that what I’m being? Soft and gooey? Just because I don’t want Will to murder some guy?”
“You really think he wouldn’t do the same to us if the shoe was on the other foot?”
“I’m sure he would. But we’re better than him. He and this Kellerson guy. These collaborators. That’s what sets us apart from them.”