by Sam Sisavath
Will and the others.
“He’s watching them now?” Blaine asked, trying to sound as neutral as possible. He could see Gerry, still standing and wound up, watching him closely from across the food court.
“He’s been watching them since yesterday,” Maddie said.
“Yeah, they’re definitely moving,” the man named Dirk said through the radio. “If you want to do something, this is going to be it. We’re going to lose our chance in a few hours.”
“No,” Mason said. “Stay out of sight.”
“Are you sure?”
“Did I stutter?”
“Come on, we can take them,” Dirk insisted.
“Stay the fuck out of sight,” Mason said.
“Okay, okay,” Dirk said, and the radio went quiet.
Maddie picked up her can of tuna and tossed it into a trash can that was almost topped off. “Dirk’s an okay guy. He can be a bit of an idiot sometimes, but he’s a guy, so that comes with the territory.”
“Tell me about it,” Sandra said.
The two women exchanged a brief knowing look.
“Come on, I’ll show you where everything else is,” Maddie said.
Blaine and Sandra got up and followed Maddie away from the food court. He could feel Gerry’s eyes, like lasers, burrowing deep into his back the entire way.
*
“SPAM CAN LAST for over five years if you store it right,” Maddie said. “Of course, whether you want to still be eating SPAM five years from now is another matter entirely.”
“You sound like you know this from experience,” Blaine said.
She laughed. “Yeah, we weren’t exactly the richest people in our county.”
“Where you from originally?”
“Travis County. Around the Austin area.”
“I thought Austin was a rich city,” Sandra said.
“I said around the area, not actually in it. We didn’t have a lot, so we made do. I also grew up hunting. I killed my first deer when I was thirteen. I’m pretty handy with a hunting rifle, but this assault rifle stuff is all new to me. It kicks like a bastard.”
“What about the country boy?” Blaine asked. “Gerry.”
Maddie snorted. “He’s mostly talk. Don’t let him get to you.”
“He got me pretty good yesterday,” Blaine said, feeling the soreness in his side all over again.
“Yeah, he’s good with the cheap shots, too, you have to watch out for that.”
Maddie led them back through the Sortys department store, where the group made their base camp. They passed racks of clothing and shoes and towels sitting undisturbed on the same hangers from eight months ago. There was just enough sunlight from the windows up front to navigate by.
“Why Sortys?” Sandra asked.
“Mason decided,” Maddie said. “It’s close to the food court and it faces the highway. Other than that, I don’t know.”
“Does he decide everything?” Blaine asked.
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“Who put him in charge?”
“He was the guy who made the deal with the creatures. The ghouls.”
“How did that happen?”
“I don’t know. Bobby and me met up with him about two months after everything went tits up. He already had it set up pretty good here, with Gerry and Dirk, and a few other guys.”
“Lenny?”
“No, Lenny came later. I don’t even remember those other guys’ names. Dan or Phil or something.” She shrugged. “Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes. They’re dead now, anyway.”
“What happened?”
“People driving by, like you two. That’s why Mason pulled up on you like he did. He doesn’t want to take any more chances. The last time he did, his guys got killed.”
“Is that why he didn’t attack the other people who rolled in before us?”
“Pretty much. He’s an asshole, but he’s a smart asshole. He doesn’t fight battles he knows he can’t win.”
“I guess that’s why he decided to betray his own kind,” Sandra said.
Blaine saw Maddie physically flinch next to them.
Oh, Sandra, you gotta learn to stay quiet, baby. This is no time to be riling up the only person who may be our friend in this entire place.
He said quickly, “He was trying to survive. Hard to blame him for that. We all do what we have to do.”
“That’s right,” Maddie said.
Sandra looked over at him, half angry and half questioning. He shook his head back at her, thankful Maddie had moved farther in front of them and couldn’t see.
They eventually reached a back hallway in the department store Blaine guessed used to house the Sortys staff.
“This is where we stay,” Maddie said. She led them past a half-dozen rooms, all offices that now held sleeping bags and sofas and boxes of food and supplies. “I guess eventually you’ll be able to grab one of these rooms.”
“When Mason’s sure we’re fully onboard,” Blaine said.
“Yeah, something like that.”
Maddie led them to the very back, and pushed open the door into a room about the same size as the employee lounge. There was a bank of security monitors along one side of the wall, and a half-circle desk and a small jail on the other side. Half of the jail cell contained boxes, the other half housing five, maybe six plastic moving crates filled with weapons. He saw shotguns, handguns, and hunting rifles. Everything was just far enough away from the bars that he wouldn’t be able to reach in and grab a gun.
“Store security,” Maddie said. “Cameras don’t work anymore, of course, but there’s nothing wrong with the jail. All the weapons and ammo we could find from the mall and from the buildings around the city we’ve been able to search so far. People out here really like their guns.”
Blaine spotted his Remington 870 leaning against a crate.
“Yeah, that’s yours,” Maddie said. “You’ll get it when Mason says you can have it back. Before then, I can’t help you.”
“Who has the key to the jail cell?” he asked.
She smiled at him. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“Is that an invitation to search you?”
She laughed. “You wish.”
Mason has the key. Of course he does.
“Come on,” Maddie said, and headed back to the door.
Blaine and Sandra followed her out, and when Maddie had gotten far enough ahead of them, Sandra said in a low voice, “Are you trying to piss me off on purpose?”
“What?” he said, matching her quiet pitch.
“First that bullshit with Mason out in the hallway, and now the flirting?”
“Flirting? I wasn’t flirting.”
She rolled her eyes at him and walked ahead. “Whatever.”
Blaine followed her, wondering if she was right. Was he flirting with Maddie? He didn’t think he was. He was being friendly, trying to win her over. That was point, wasn’t it? She was the only person here who was a potential ally, and he was doing his best to bring her over to their side. If he was flirting at all, it wasn’t on purpose.
Or at least, he didn’t think it was.
Blaine was still trying to justify himself in his own mind when he heard two soft, faded pop-pop sounds in the distance.
He stopped and listened, and heard the echoes.
Maddie and Sandra heard them, too, and also stopped in the hallway.
“Was that…?” Sandra said.
“I think so,” Maddie said. She pulled her radio free and keyed it: “Did anyone else hear that? Were those gunshots?”
“It’s Dirk,” Mason said through the radio. He sounded more annoyed than angry. “That son of a whore. I told him to stay the hell away from those people.”
*
“STUPID DIRK,” MADDIE said, looking at the dead man lying face-down on the floor, still wearing his hazmat suit. The man would look like he was sleeping if not for the two holes in his back and the blood pooled inside his sui
t.
They were inside some kind of clinic along the highway, across from where Will and the others had spent the night before. That was according to Mason, who had been tracking Dirk’s movements since he had sent the man out here to watch them. As for Dirk, he did something Mason told him not to—he showed himself to Will’s group—and ended up dead for his efforts.
The lobby showed signs of a struggle, with a couple of overturned chairs and blood that wasn’t Dirk’s, because all of Dirk’s blood was in his suit. There were two shell casings, so Dirk had never even gotten off a shot, though his killers had taken his gun.
Gerry came out of the hallway behind them, holding a radio in one hand. “The moron turned off his radio and left it in one of the rooms.”
“Dumb bastard,” Mason said. He looked up at them. “See what happens when people don’t do what I tell them? I told Dirk those people were too dangerous, but he didn’t listen. This is what happens when you don’t listen to me.”
They were all wearing gas masks, and it was odd seeing the world through the clear lens. He could tell from the way Sandra fidgeted in her suit next to him that she felt the same way. The suit was surprisingly comfortable in the sun, which he supposed was the point of the special fabric. The gas mask was another story. Besides the fact that it made his voice sound strange, he didn’t like the feel of the plastic pressed against his face. Maddie and the others didn’t seem to even realize they were wearing masks anymore.
“You sure you don’t know who they were?” Mason asked Blaine.
“Yeah,” Blaine said. From his experience, people who couldn’t lie tended to over-explain things, so Blaine kept his answer as short as possible.
“Doesn’t matter. They’re gone anyway.”
“We should go after them,” Gerry said.
Mason glanced over at him. “Why the hell would we want to do a fool thing like that?”
“They killed one of us. We can’t just let them get away with it.”
“He was an idiot who didn’t follow orders. You want to disobey orders, too?”
“That’s not what I said,” Gerry said, and Blaine could hear his voice getting softer, less confrontational. “I’m just saying, this sets a bad precedent.”
Mason laughed. “Precedent? You’re out of your mind. Just do what I say. Shit, I’ve kept you people alive for this long, haven’t I?” He looked over at Blaine and Sandra. “The noobs get manual labor duty. Bring him back to the mall.”
Mason turned and left, with Gerry following silently.
“Were the two of you friends?” Blaine asked Maddie.
Maddie looked down at Dirk. “I wouldn’t go that far, although he wasn’t really that bad a guy. Probably a bit too high-strung and thought too much of himself, but that doesn’t make him much different than the rest of these bozos. But friends? I wouldn’t say that, no.”
She followed the others out of the clinic.
Blaine and Sandra exchanged a look, then glanced down at the dead body. They had seen plenty of dead bodies, but never one in a hazmat suit before.
“Maybe we can find a wheelbarrel to move him,” Sandra said.
“Or a shopping cart,” Blaine said.
Sandra sighed. “You take the arms and I’ll take the legs…”
*
THEY DIDN’T HAVE to go far with Dirk. The others were waiting outside in a red Ford truck. Sandra and Blaine grunted their way from the clinic to the parking lot and tossed Dirk into the back, where Gerry was sitting. He moved away as the body landed near his legs and shot Blaine a look. Sandra and Blaine climbed into the truck and sat across from Gerry while Mason drove them back to Willowstone Mall.
Back at the mall, Sandra and Blaine followed Maddie to the second floor, where she introduced them to Bobby. He was a young kid with long blond hair and dark brown eyes, and he looked much older than his twenty-two years. But then again, they all looked older.
Bobby had shown up in Beaumont with Maddie, the two having met on the road. He was also mute, which explained why he was always so quiet. He nodded to them when Maddie introduced him, then drifted off, turning back to the sleepers scattered about the second floor.
“That’s just how he is,” Maddie said. “But if you need someone to watch your back, you won’t find a better partner. Plus, he won’t talk your ears off.”
Blaine glanced over, wondering if Bobby had heard, but the young man didn’t react if he had.
“How many of them are up here?” Sandra asked.
“Thousands,” Maddie said. “I tried counting a few months ago, but I stopped around 2,000.”
“Over 2,000?”
“Yeah.”
“Where do they come from?”
“I don’t know. Most of them were already here when I arrived with Bobby. The rest were brought here by the ghouls. Sometimes they’d show up with just one, sometimes dozens at a time. You never know.” She shook her head, and he thought she looked almost sad. “Try not to think too much about it. After a while, you get used to it.”
Maddie turned and walked back down the escalator.
Looking after her, Blaine wondered if Maddie really had gotten used to it, or if she was putting on a front for them. He hadn’t heard a whole lot of conviction in her voice and thought it was probably more of the latter.
Maddie is the key.
They spent most of the afternoon on the rooftop, wearing their hazmat suits and occasionally taking off their gas masks to drink warm water or eat canned fruits. Guard duty meant watching the empty highway and the wind picking up debris and tossing it around the empty city. Blaine had never felt so alone as he did sitting up there with Sandra and Maddie, guarding a city that had housed over 100,000 souls at one point.
Every now and then, Mason, Lenny, or Gerry (sometimes a combination of the three) would leave the mall, but they were always back less than an hour later. Each time they left, Blaine found himself wondering if he could hurt Maddie, take her gun, and escape with Sandra. He probably could, even in his condition.
But how far could he and Sandra go on foot? Their Silverado was parked in front of Sortys, but there was no sign of the key. Without the Silverado, they would have to take one of the other cars in the parking lot. And if they couldn’t find one with the keys nearby and a working battery under the hood, they would have to look farther out. Blaine wondered if Mason would let them go if they did make a run for it, the way he had refused to confront Will’s group. That was the best-case scenario. The worst case had Mason taking it personally and committing to chasing them down.
No, not yet.
If things went sideways, he could consider that option. There was still another way, one that didn’t involve hurting Maddie. One that involved convincing her.
“You and Bobby came straight to Beaumont?” Blaine asked Maddie.
“We spent a few weeks in Austin, gathering supplies,” she said, between spoonfuls of pineapple dripping with syrup. “Then there were smaller towns between here and there. We thought about trying Houston, but it was too big. You know what big means, right?”
“A lot of them.”
“Right. So we mostly avoided Houston. I know this guy with a cabin near Sabine Lake. It has good hunting grounds, and there aren’t a lot of people there. We were headed there when we stumbled across Mason in Beaumont.”
“He introduced himself with those rifles, too?”
She snorted. “Yeah. He made us the same offer he gave you. It looked like he had a good thing going here. Plus, you know how it is on the road. It’s sleep with one eye open, always looking over your shoulder at the sky.” She put down the spoon and looked off at the highway in the distance. “If I’m really, really lucky, I’ll make it another year. Meanwhile, I don’t want to spend every second of it wondering when they’re going to get me. You know? That’s no way to live.”
Sandra watching Maddie closely, and maybe he saw her soften a bit toward the other woman. It was hard not to. Maddie wasn’t a monster—not even clo
se.
“You did what you had to,” Blaine said.
“Yeah, I know,” Maddie nodded. “But like you said, it’s a hell of a way to survive.”
They sat on the hard roof and said nothing for a while. Blaine thought he heard car engines in the distance, but noticed he was the only one who turned his head. He waited, but nothing appeared, and he chalked it up to his imagination running overtime.
Maddie saw his face and smiled. “It’s the quiet. It plays with your mind. Makes you think you’re hearing something that isn’t there. Pretty soon you’ll start to see things, too.” She handed him a pair of binoculars. “Use them before you grab the radio. It’ll usually turn out to be nothing.”
“How many people come through here a day?” Sandra asked.
“Once or twice a week is more like it. Yesterday was the first time we saw two groups of people in the same day.” She narrowed her eyes amusedly at Blaine. “You sure you don’t know those people?”
“What did they look like?” he asked.
“Doesn’t matter. They’re gone. Probably in Louisiana by now if they keep on the I-10.”
“What about this cabin at Sabine Lake?”
“What about it?”
“You don’t want to find out if it’s still there?”
“Oh, it’s still there. Where’s it going to go? It’s a cabin.”
Blaine caught Sandra’s eyes, and knew she understood where he was going.
“You don’t think it’s worth getting to anymore?” Sandra asked. “The cabin?”
“Compared to this?” Maddie said. “You know how many of them are out there. It’s going to take a fortress to keep them out of a cabin, even one that remote. Sooner or later, they’ll find it.”
“What about an island,” Blaine said.
“Island?” Maddie looked over at him. “What about an island?”
“I bet an island could keep the ghouls out. Even better than a cabin or a mall could.”
“Yeah, sure, but where would you find an island?”
“Let me show you something,” Blaine said.
*
HE FOUND A ham radio in a Best Buy next to the Sortys, then grabbed a handful of new batteries from a rack near the cash registers. He made sure Gerry, Mason, and Lenny were nowhere to be found before he powered the ham radio up and hunted down the FEMA frequency.