by Sam Sisavath
Note to self: Find out if she’s right when you get back.
She focused on the grass-heavy fields around her. There were no signs of civilization as far as she could see, but that was the point of choosing this spot to beach. She wasn’t exactly looking forward to the long walk ahead of them, but a lot of nothing was better than even a little hint of something, especially if those somethings carried guns.
Loud grunting behind her as Blaine eased the suitcase out of the boat while Bonnie waited to lend a hand.
Gaby willed Blaine to get the piece of luggage over the side of the boat, then for Bonnie to hurry over and grab the other end.
Don’t drop it into the ocean. Whatever you do, don’t drop it into the ocean!
She breathed a sigh of relief when they both found firm holds and successfully made the transfer, splashing water around their ankles the whole time, before depositing the black case on dry land.
Blaine looked up and nodded at her, and Gaby returned it.
She turned back to the empty world in front of her, slinging the rifle and raising the binoculars hanging around her neck. She scanned the horizon, looking for signs—anything—that might indicate they weren’t so alone out here after all, that maybe they had misjudged how empty the place looked while they were waiting in the ocean last night.
Nothing. There was absolutely nothing out there.
So far, so good.
She lowered the binoculars and looked back at Blaine and Bonnie as they were slipping on their bulky packs. They already looked tired from the lack of sleep, and she wanted to tell them this was just the beginning, that the road ahead was only going to get tougher the closer they got to their ultimate destination.
But she didn’t, because they already knew everything that she did. They had, after all, also volunteered when they didn’t have to.
We’re all idiots. All three of us.
“Good to go?” Blaine asked.
She nodded. “I don’t see anything out there. We landed in a good spot.”
“Nothing is good. Nothing is very good.”
“You wishing you were back on the boat yet?” Bonnie asked him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is going to be easy. In and out, just like that.”
Bonnie smirked. “Just like that, huh?”
“Yup,” Blaine said. “That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Besides, who wants to live forever?”
“I do,” Bonnie said.
I wouldn’t mind seeing the next couple of years myself, Gaby thought, but kept that to herself.
Bonnie and Blaine didn’t just have their packs and weapons to carry, but they were also burdened with the two duffel bags—one each—and had the black suitcase between them.
“You guys need a hand?” she asked them.
“Nah, it’s just like dragging around a really big piñata,” Blaine said.
“Yeah, what he said,” Bonnie said.
Gaby didn’t quite believe them, but she nodded anyway and stood up, and weapon in front of her, began moving forward, back into Texas.
They made surprisingly good time despite having no forms of transportation except their feet. Gaby remained up front, with Blaine about ten yards (sometimes less, sometimes more, depending on the terrain) behind her. After leaving the mushier grounds around the beach, Blaine was now able to drag the suitcase by its handle, which helped them move faster. Bonnie, meanwhile, brought up the rear about twenty yards back to make sure no one was sneaking up on them. Blaine was the only one with both hands occupied, so that left Gaby and Bonnie with their rifles at the ready.
The only times they stopped was to catch their breath and drink some water, and to radio the Trident to let them know they had made it on land in one piece. After that, they wouldn’t call again until almost nightfall. Ever since Keo had given Black Tide their designated emergency channel, Lara had switched to a secondary one, which was what they were using now to make contact.
Just in case…
It was almost noon when they finally stumbled across something that hinted at civilization—in this case, a small blacktop two-lane road that cut across the flat landscape. There were no official road signs close enough for them to see, but it was easy to pick a direction and follow it, basically keeping the Gulf of Mexico at their six o’clock.
After a while, the soothing warmth of the sun began to take its toll, and Gaby found her focus wandering slightly. There was something to be said about seemingly being the only three souls on the whole planet, with only the sounds of their footsteps against the hard earth and occasionally labored breathing to keep them company. She only wished Nate were here to enjoy it, too.
Sorry, Nate, but I couldn’t let you risk it. Not after all you’ve been through. Don’t hate me too much.
Footsteps, before Blaine appeared alongside her, the suitcase rolling behind him on its well-oiled wheels. “Anything?”
“Not much.”
“I don’t know about you, but I don’t like the thought of walking all the way over there.”
“Will said there’s supposed to be a collaborator town nearby.”
“And he would know, right? He’s been running around out here for how long now?”
“Long enough.”
“Yeah.” He paused, then, “So just walk up and ask to borrow one of their trucks?”
“Sure,” she smiled. “If they don’t feel like being neighborly, we’ll just take it by gunpoint.”
“Sounds good to me,” Blaine said, and drifted back until he was behind her again.
Gaby didn’t change her stride. She would have slowed down if she thought the two of them couldn’t keep up, but they hadn’t said anything about her going too fast or too slow, so she maintained her current pace.
Except for the occasional breeze that swept across the countryside, she had difficulty remembering it was winter. Texas weather was an oddity that most Texans had come to accept, but she hadn’t realized just how strange this place was until after she’d been living onboard the Trident. Of course, the thermal sweater she had on and the heavy load she was carrying had a little something to do with keeping the cold at bay.
Don’t like Texas weather? Wait five minutes, she thought with a smile.
It was big and black and looked new if not for the blown-out front windows. There was a machine gun mounted on top of the cab, the muzzle pointed up at the cloudless sky. It was parked next to a tall elm tree, though not directly underneath the provided shade. She was looking at it from over a hundred yards and from a side angle with binoculars, and there was too much knee-high grass in her path to allow her to see much of anything around the parked vehicle.
Blaine scooted up next to her and went into a crouch a few feet to her right. He had left the suitcase and duffel bag behind to free his hands for his rifle, and he gripped it with one hand now as she handed him the glasses.
“That’s a hell of a nice spot for a picnic,” Blaine said as he peered through the binoculars. “What happened to its windows?”
“Looks like they were shot out,” Gaby said.
Gaby glanced back at Bonnie, crouched in the grass about twenty yards behind them, rifle clutched in her hands. The two of them exchanged a brief acknowledging nod.
Then Gaby turned back to the truck. “See anything I might have missed?”
“Nope,” Blaine said, lowering his hands. “Looks like a Ford. F-150 or F-250.”
“Is there a difference?”
“The 1 or the 2 in front of it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, Danny Junior.”
Blaine chuckled. “Not the worst insult I’ve gotten.”
He turned slightly and looked through the binoculars at a wall of trees about 200 yards to their right. It was the first real group of woods they had seen since arriving on land, and they had gone around it like the plague, sticking instead to walking under the sun where it was safe.
Stay out of the dark places, girl, stay out of the dark
places, she remembered telling herself.
She stared at the truck again. “What do you think?”
“I think it was smart of Danny boy to give us these,” he said, tilting his rifle so that the sun glinted off the smooth steel bore of the long suppressor attached to the end of the barrel.
Her own M4, along with Bonnie’s, had the same custom attachment. The extra length made the rifle somewhat unwieldy, but out here, in the open where a gunshot would travel for miles, she was glad to have the option.
“It looks pretty new,” Blaine said, handing the glasses back to her. “Or someone’s been keeping it clean. Good chance it’s still drivable; maybe there’s even some fuel in the tank depending on how long it’s been out here. The blown-out windows are a problem, though.”
“It’s a big problem.”
“The plan was always to find a ride, and here it is.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Here it is…”
He snapped a quick look back at Bonnie, then over to her. “We’re going to have to take a chance sooner or later.”
“It could be a trap.”
“I don’t think so,” Blaine said. “No one knows we’re out here. At least, no one we can’t trust. And I don’t see how it makes any sense for anyone to leave a truck out here on the off chance someone would walk across it.”
She thought about it for a moment. Blaine wasn’t wrong. There was a very small number of people who knew their itinerary, though Lara might have already told Riley and possibly Hart, his second-in-command. And Blaine was right about the other thing, too: Sooner or later they were going to need a ride.
And here it was…assuming it still ran and there was fuel in the tank. These days, those two things weren’t always a given.
Finally, Gaby said, “We go at the same time. You take the right side, and I’ll take the left. Bonnie keeps an eye out for snipers, just in case.”
Blaine grinned. “You sound like you’ve done this before.”
“Once or twice.”
“I’ll go fill Bonnie in,” Blaine said, then got up and jogged, slightly hunched over at the waist, back to Bonnie.
Gaby pulled at the straps of her pack to make sure they were tight. Her heartbeat had picked up slightly, but not nearly as much as she would have thought.
Maybe I really am getting used to all of this.
Blaine returned a few seconds later. “Ready?”
She nodded.
“Be careful,” Blaine said, and was on his feet and moving forward toward the parked truck in the next breath.
She launched to her feet and was on his heels before starting to angle to the left side and didn’t stop until she had put almost ten yards between them. Her eyes snapped left and right and forward, never staying still in one direction for longer than a second each time.
The country road they had been following for the last couple of hours was to her left, but there were too many fields of grass to see it at the moment. To the right of Blaine was the wall of trees, and she couldn’t help but feel like eyes were watching her every movement, listening to every haggard breath she took…
Focus!
She trained her eyes back on the truck and kept moving, matching Blaine’s pace.
Eighty yards…
Seventy…
She glanced left again, toward the road, but still couldn’t see it. Back to the truck and the tree on the other side of it. It was a nice shaded area, the perfect spot for a pair of lovebirds to park and do whatever it was that lovebirds did. She had an image of two naked people in the truck bed popping up suddenly as they neared it.
Sixty yards left, and nothing except for the slight swaying of the branches in the background.
Fifty yards…
She sensed eyes watching her and snapped a quick look over at Blaine, but he was concentrating on their target. She looked past him, at the trees in the background.
Dark, black trees, so thick she wondered if the sun could even penetrate their crowns.
Thirty yards…
Closer now, she could see the Ford emblem up front, and there, the splashes of blood on the chrome grill.
“Blood!” she snapped, half-shouting and half-whispering.
Blaine nodded, but neither one of them stopped. Like her, he had already assumed the vehicle wasn’t just sitting there on purpose. Something had happened to its occupants, and out here these days that “something” usually involved guns and blood and bodies.
She lifted her carbine and took a quick look through the red dot sight, then lowered the weapon, all the while continuously moving. Blaine hadn’t stopped or slowed down to her right, and he had actually picked up his pace, which forced her to do likewise in order to keep up with him.
She finally reached the Ford and circled the front hood, sweeping the blood caked over the grill and on the dirt floor directly below.
A body.
Male. Young. Maybe in his early twenties, though it was difficult to tell for sure with the blood on his face. He was crumpled on the ground and half-hidden under the front bumper, either because he had attempted to crawl to safety after being shot or his momentum had rolled him into that position after falling off the hood. The blood on the truck was clearly his because there was a hole in the side of his head.
Jesus, that’s some shot.
“I got a body!” she said, using the same half-shouting and half-whispering voice.
“Back here, too,” Blaine said, matching her pitch.
She rounded the truck onto the other side, where a second man sat awkwardly against the trunk of the large elm tree. He was older than the first body, with gray in his hair. His head was lolled to one side, and if not for the patch of thick red that covered his chest, turning the uniform he wore an even darker shade of black, she might have thought he was just tired and decided to sit down to take a nap. A pair of empty beer cans lay at the man’s feet, and sunlight glinted off the shards of glass sprinkled around the Ford.
“I hope those beers were at least cold,” Blaine said.
“I don’t see a cooler,” Gaby said.
Blaine made a face. “You couldn’t pay me enough to drink warm beer.” Then, “Your guy wearing a uniform, too?”
Gaby nodded. “They’re collaborators.”
Blaine glanced around at their surroundings, then hurried to the back bumper and waved at Bonnie, still hiding in the grass across the field. Gaby walked over to where the second dead man sat and quickly noticed the tree behind him.
“Blaine,” she said.
He walked over. “Find something?”
She pointed at the large indentations in the trunk just above the dead man’s head. There were three of them, and they had gone in deep. Gaby took out the cross-knife and picked at the bark until she could see what had caused one of the jagged holes.
“What is that?” Blaine asked.
“Bullets,” Gaby said. “Someone was shooting at the tree.”
“Why was something shooting at a tree?”
“It wasn’t because of him,” Gaby said, nodding at the dead man. “I think he was standing in front of it when he was shot. The shooter took him out by going through the two front truck windows.”
“Yeah, I saw that,” Blaine said, looking back at the shattered windows. “That’s a Danny shot right there.”
“These guys might not have even seen him when he picked them off.”
“Then the sniper was shooting at someone else if it wasn’t this poor bastard,” Blaine said. He turned and looked around them before settling on the wall of trees in the distance. “There’s a third one still out there somewhere.”
“What do you think they we doing out here?”
“Beer, a nice shade… Looks like they had some downtime.”
“That means the town’s nearby.”
“Not close enough.”
“No?”
“The gunshots,” Blaine said. “No one’s responded to the shooting yet. These guys still look pretty fresh.”
“There’s that,” Blaine nodded, before walking around the tree to get a better look at the other side.
“Nice truck,” Bonnie said as she came around the hood. Like Blaine, she had left her heavy cargo behind in the field to free her hands for her carbine.
“We got it cheap,” Gaby said. “Free.”
“My favorite price tag. Does it run?”
“Let’s find out.”
Gaby opened the passenger-side door. There was glass scattered across the seats but no blood. A two-way handheld radio lay on the dashboard, and someone had left their AR-15 behind. She looked across at the steering wheel and saw a key dangling from the ignition.
“Key,” she said, before climbing inside.
She reached over and turned the key—but not all the way—and smiled when the dashboard lights turned on, along with a chime to indicate the door was open. Even better, the fuel gauge rose almost three quarters of the way before stopping.
“Hallelujah,” Bonnie said, leaning in the exposed driver-side door. “I was starting to think we were going to have to walk all the way to Houston.”
Blaine reappeared behind Gaby. “They couldn’t have been out here for very long. Less than an hour, give or take.”
Gaby climbed out of the Ford. “Did you find anything back there?”
“Some traces of the third guy,” Blaine said. “My guess is, he was hiding behind the tree and the sniper tried to pick him off. After that, he ran for it.” He nodded at the wooded area. “In there.”
“I’d rather take my chances out here than go in there,” Bonnie said, not even trying to hide the slight tremor in her voice. “Was it another collaborator?”
“Makes sense, considering the other two. The sniper was picking them off one by one.” He walked around the truck to look at the first body. “He went first. Then the guy in front of the tree. Number three got the hint after that.” He took in the endless fields around them. “The question is: What happened to the sniper? And who was he?”
“One of Mercer’s people?” Bonnie said.
“Who cares,” Gaby said. “Let’s get the hell out of here before someone comes back for the truck.”