by Sam Sisavath
“You think they’re really out there?” Jordan asked between spoonfuls of beans. Unlike earlier, when her stomach was growling as she ate, she was mostly just going through the motions now, filling up her belly because her body demanded the nutrients, and because the open cans would just be wasted if they didn’t eat them now.
“Who?” he said.
“Your friends on the yacht.”
“I hope so.”
“But you don’t know for sure.”
“Nope.”
“That’s not very encouraging.”
“Nope.”
“Have you tried calling them on your cell?”
“I did, but their line’s always busy, keeps going to voice mail. Plus, I think I’m out of my roaming zone.”
“That’s how they getcha. Roaming charges.”
“Tell me about it.”
She forced down another spoonful of beans. “You guys slept together?”
The question caught him by surprise, and it took Keo a few seconds to process it. Jordan, meanwhile, looked amused by his reaction.
“Who? Me and Lara?” he finally said.
“No, you and the Queen of England.”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“What is she, ugly or something?”
He chuckled. “No.”
“Fat?”
“No, nothing like that. She’s actually very attractive. And, um, thin, I guess.”
“You’re not sure.”
“I mean, she’s reasonably attractive physically.”
“Well, reasonably attractive is good.” He sighed and she chuckled. “I’m just busting your balls, Keo.”
“The reason it never happened was…it just never happened, that’s all.”
“You guys were on that boat together for more than a month, and nothing ever happened?”
“We weren’t the only ones onboard.”
“Still…”
“It never occurred to me to sleep with her. Besides, she was vulnerable back then, after Song Island.”
“Waiting for her boyfriend…”
“Yeah.” He paused for a moment, then said, “I can’t decide if you think so highly of me that you think everyone I’m around will immediately want to jump my bones, or if you think so little of me that I’d go after a woman who just lost her boyfriend.”
Jordan grinned to herself, clearly still amused. “Can’t it be both?”
“I don’t see how.”
“Okay, it’s probably a little more of the former.”
“Ah.”
“Or is it a little more of the latter?” She shrugged. “I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”
“Very kind of you.”
She went back to forcing herself to scoop up another spoonful of beans and swallow them down. After a while, she said, “Have I told you how much I enjoy these heart-to-heart moments of ours?”
“Is that right?”
“Not really, no.”
“Ah,” he said.
*
THE PLAN WAS to stay on the second floor and then move to the storage building downstairs when it got dark, but they didn’t get that far, because around 4:30 P.M., Keo felt the floor under him trembling. It was very slight, and he might not have even noticed it if both he and Jordan hadn’t stopped eating and talking and were just sitting quietly and listening to the soft buzz of insects outside the house.
“What the hell was that?” Jordan said, springing to her feet and snatching up her rifle.
Keo did the same thing, looking toward the window. “Stay here.”
“The hell I am.”
“Jordan—”
“What do I look like, a damsel in distress?”
He didn’t bother arguing with her (after a week on the road with Jordan, he knew better), and hurried across the room to the window and peeked out from behind the curtains. The front of the house faced the beach, which of course was the point of owning real estate out here. Right now the beach was just as empty as when he had checked it thirty minutes ago, with the only sound coming from the waves crashing against the sand. The Gulf of Mexico was serene, with a warm orange glow creeping across the horizon.
Jordan looked out the other window next to his for a moment, then said, “Anything?”
He shook his head. “You?”
“Bupkis.”
Keo put his hand against the wall and held his breath.
There, the same vibration he had felt earlier, as if a large machine was slowly cranking up but still far from reaching its full potential. It was a familiar sensation, but he couldn’t quite place it at the moment.
“What is it?” Jordan asked.
He shook his head, then went to the door and pushed the armchair out of the way. He opened it a crack and looked out. He took a second to eyeball the house with the gray roof next door, then the one with the white paint. No movements came from either building, but now instead of just feeling the vibrations, he thought he could hear it, too.
Whatever it was, it was getting closer.
He slipped outside and crouched his way to the banister that overlooked the vast field of grass behind the house. More homes on stilts, each one as old and weathered as the one he was hiding behind at the moment. Beyond that, in the industrial area of Sunport, were large domed structures blinking in the distance like marbles.
Keo hugged the exterior wall, using it as a shield, and leaned out and looked to his left, back toward the road he and Jordan had taken earlier to reach the beach. Rays of sunlight glinted off the top of a vehicle as it rumbled up the highway in their direction, and Keo only had to see it for a second to know what it was.
Fuck me.
It was tan colored and moving on fourteen wheels (seven on each side) housed inside caterpillar tracks and was still about 200 meters up the road. He would have felt that sixty-ton monster moving from miles away. It helped, of course, that there wasn’t anything except the waves of the ocean behind him to steal its thunder.
Keo recognized the vehicle even without the benefit of binoculars. The turret on top was turning slowly, and there was something odd about the machine gun mounts, but he was too far away to know for sure.
Footsteps behind him, just before Jordan whispered, breathless, “Jesus, is that a tank?”
He nodded. “It’s an M1 Abrams.”
“Fuck me.”
“What I said.”
There was writing along the armor tiles above the wheels of the tank as well as across the long cannon jutting out of the front like a baseball bat. He had absolutely no chance of reading what those letters spelled out from his position. That, and the angle was all wrong, which he guessed was a good thing. That meant the tank’s occupants probably couldn’t see him, either.
“Where is it going?” Jordan asked.
“Looks like the beach.”
“What’s at the beach?”
“Sun and sand.”
“Wiseass.”
He smiled to himself.
“You don’t think…?” she started to say.
“What?”
“That the U.S. Army is up and running again?”
She sounded almost hopeful, and he felt bad when he said, “Soldiers aren’t really soldiers anymore, remember? There’s nothing to stop another Steve or Jack from adding a tank to their arsenal. God knows they don’t seem to have any problems finding gasoline.”
“But where would you find something like that?”
“There must be hundreds of war machines sitting unattended on all the Army bases around the country. Texas alone probably has two or three of them. Guns, ammo…and tanks.”
She nodded reluctantly, and he felt oddly guilty about being the one to dash her hopes, especially since there was so little of it around these days to begin with.
“Doesn’t mean I’m right,” he added. “Who knows what’s been going on out there? Even a lumbering, inefficient dinosaur like the U.
S. government could have finally gotten its shit together after a year, right?”
“What are you, North Korea’s spokesman?”
“There’s no leader quite like the Dear Leader.”
The growing rumble of the tank’s tracks and the increased vibrations along the house drew their attention back to the road.
The Abrams was deceptively swift for a vehicle of its size and was capable of forty-five miles per hour on smooth pavement, and wherever it had come from, it was pretty clear the crew had fuel to burn…just like every other collaborator he had ever run across.
“Come on,” Keo said, and turned around.
Jordan followed him down the stairs and they moved around the first floor, sticking to the walls of the storage shack. Down here, with the shade of the second floor above them and the overgrown grass all around, they were less exposed.
“This changes everything, doesn’t it?” Jordan said.
“Maybe.”
“You don’t think so?”
“It depends on who they are.”
“Any ideas?”
“A few.”
“Any of them good for us?”
“Nope.”
She sighed. “Figures.”
They leaned around a corner to watch the tank as it halted about twenty meters from where the road and beach met. The turret moved again, this time in a full 360-degrees—slowly, taking in the entire area around it as if it had all the time in the world. And maybe it did, especially inside its armored shell.
Apparently satisfied there was no ambush waiting for them, there was a loud clang! as a hatch opened, and a head wearing a sports cap poked outside just before a man in a sweat-drenched wife beater and cargo pants climbed out.
“How many people does something like that hold?” Jordan asked.
“You just really need a driver, but Abrams are designed for a four-man crew. Theoretically, you could put in a few more, but it’d be a tight squeeze.”
“You know a lot about tanks.”
“Just enough to know not to be standing on the wrong side of one.”
“Sounds like a good policy for any vehicle,” she said.
The man jumped off the vehicle and landed on the road, then began stretching while a second figure appeared out of the same hatch behind him. The second man hopped down, too. He was wearing some kind of tan-colored military uniform with the shirt buttons undone. Keo glimpsed red collars around his neck and some kind of round white emblem on them. The man poured water over his head and whipped it back and forth, spraying the guy in the wife beater, who shouted out a curse and jumped away.
A third figure appeared above the first two, but he remained on top of the turret, scanning the surrounding area with binoculars.
Keo dropped to the ground and was about to tell Jordan to do the same, but she was already flat on her stomach next to him. Her chin was pressed against the dirt, head slightly tilted, and both palms in the dirt. He couldn’t help but smile.
“Can he see us?” she whispered.
“I think the high grass will cover us.”
“What if they decide to search the houses?”
“Then I guess we’ll have to kill them.”
“They have a tank.”
“They can’t search a house while inside the tank.”
Keo turned over onto his back and laid the M4 next to him, then put his hands on his chest and stared up at the sky.
Sunlight was fading. The orange glow he had seen in the horizon earlier had reached them and was now spreading across Sunport. It was so quiet, with only the nearby waves and Jordan’s soft breathing next to him, that he thought about closing his eyes and catching a nap.
He wouldn’t have minded staying here forever, if he could. If he conserved his supplies, the canned goods and bottled waters could be stretched out, and who knows what were in the other houses? Even if Lara never showed up, and if Frank’s mortality proved to be more human than blue-eyed ghoul, he could see himself wasting the next few months of his life out here, on this long stretch of beach. And there were those fishing poles in the house above him. Fish for lunch, crab for dinner. Why not?
No, it wouldn’t be such a bad life at all. Why keep fighting if he didn’t have to? Maybe all those people in T18 and the other towns had the right idea. Gillian understood. She had chosen predictability over running around out here, constantly afraid for her life.
Gillian.
Dammit. He still remembered the feel of her belly, the shock of discovering she was pregnant, that he had been too late. Then there was Jay. The asshole had to be a good guy, too. Not an asshole, as it turned out.
If it wasn’t for shitty luck…
“Again?” Jordan whispered next to him.
“Hmm?”
“You’re thinking about her again.”
“Who?”
“You know who.”
“How do you know?”
“You’re like a book, Keo. Don’t ever play poker with me.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
She looked back in the direction of the tank. “Any more thoughts on what they’re doing down here?”
“Lots,” he lied. “But most of them are probably wrong.”
“So what do you suggest we do in the meantime?”
“Lie back and see what happens.”
“Really. That’s your big plan?”
“For now.” He glanced down at his watch. “It’ll be night soon.”
“It’s always night soon,” Jordan said. “Remember when you were afraid of the dark, but then you grew up and realized there was nothing to be afraid of? The good ol’ days.”
“Yeah,” he said.
The good ol’ days. Oh, he remembered them, all right. Back when his biggest goal in life was to see the world and make a few bucks, even if he had to kill a few people along the way for the privilege.
The good ol’ days. Like when he thought Gillian was still waiting for him.
If it wasn’t for shitty luck…
CHAPTER 9
GABY
“SMALL WORLD,” MASON said.
Gaby didn’t have to go very far in her memory banks to remember the last time she had seen the man. L15. The collaborator town in Louisiana where Josh had taken her after the pawnshop. Mason had been there, in charge while Josh was away.
“You know this guy?” Nate asked.
They sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor, with the door to their right and the windows to their left. She had no desire to mix with the collaborators in the room; as a result, they sat staring across at each other.
“L15,” Gaby said. “He was there at the same time as me.”
She stared forward, holding Mason’s brooding dark beady eyes, and at the same time ignoring the other four men in the room with them. It might have been two against five, but she was going to let them know—all of them, but especially Mason—that there were no cowering damsels in distress among them at the moment.
“The one with Josh?” Nate said.
She nodded.
“Sorry about your boyfriend,” Mason said. “Never made it off the island, from what I heard. Kid had a lot of potential, but he bit off more than he could chew. I tried to warn him, but he got it into his head he was something special. That’s when you know a fall’s coming—when they think they’re too big. You can never be too big, especially these days.”
She didn’t reply. If Mason thought talking about Josh was going to elicit some kind of emotion from her, he was mistaken. She hadn’t erased Josh from her memory—she couldn’t, even if she wanted to, which she didn’t because he was a part of her and would always be—but she had learned to push him into the background and focus on what was still important, like Lara, the girls on the Trident, her job, and Nate.
“Do yourself a favor and shut the hell up,” Nate said to Mason.
“Just trying to be friendly,” Mason said.
“You can stop now.”
“You the new guy, huh?�
�� He looked back at Gaby. “Tsk tsk. The kid isn’t even cold yet, and you’ve already moved on? Where’s the loyalty?”
“Hey, asshole,” Nate said. When Mason glanced back at him, “Keep talking, and we’re going to find out if my fist can fit down your throat.”
Mason chuckled. “I’m shaking.”
“You should be.”
“What’s with the Mohawk?”
“What’s with the blood on your face? You make a habit of getting your ass kicked? Keep it up, and it’s going to happen again.”
Mason smirked, then exchanged a brief look with the other collaborators in the room, as if to say, “Listen to this guy.” But he didn’t say anything again, which told her he wasn’t taking Nate’s threats nearly as lightly as he had made it seem.
With seven people stuffed inside what was essentially an enclosed space of about fifteen-by-fifteen feet, it should have been uncomfortable, except it wasn’t, thanks to the two open windows. There was enough light inside the hangar to see with, and the sounds of Mercer’s people working and engines coming and going made for a constant soundtrack behind them.
Now that Mason wasn’t running his mouth, she spent the next few seconds observing the collaborators in front of her. Mason’s hair was damp with sweat and his clothes were dirty, with spots of dried blood stretching all the way down to one side of his neck. There might have been blood on his clothes, too, but the fabric was too dark for her to be sure. The others looked as disheveled and beaten as Mason, and apparently even more tired, because none of them had said a word.
Then, just when she thought she was going to be able to enjoy the peace and quiet, Mason said, “Like what you see?”
“Keep it up,” Nate said. “You just keep it up, shorty.”
Mason ignored him and focused on her. “We’ve been looking for you, you know. After Song Island. They had us searching every building along the coast. What do you think I’m doing back in Texas? It ain’t because I miss it.”
Gaby didn’t answer him, but she stared back, almost daring him to keep talking. Will had drilled it into her during all those months of training: the importance of intel. Here was Mason, volunteering information she didn’t have but that might come in handy one day—or maybe sooner. She remained silent and let him keep talking.