The Gates of Byzantium

CHAPTER 10 LARA

The kid said his name was Josh, and they put two and two together and deduced he was one of the two teenagers that escaped the man named Folger’s captivity last night. Which meant he knew where Sandra was, a fact that instantly got Blaine to move toward him, so fast that the poor kid stumbled back and almost fell down in surprise — or fear.

Will quickly grabbed Josh by the shirt collar and kept him upright. “Relax. This is Blaine. He’s been looking for Sandra since yesterday. Where is she?”

“You know Sandra?” Josh asked, looking at Blaine.

“Yes,” Blaine said, and Lara could almost see him restraining himself from shouting questions at the kid. “Where is she? Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” Josh said, though looking at him, Lara thought he knew something else that he wasn’t saying. It was probably about Sandra, after she had been captured by Folger and his men yesterday, while Blaine lay bleeding and dying in the road.

She thought about the Sundays…

No. Don’t think about them.

It had been months since she had remembered the Sundays ever existed. She had scrubbed them so thoroughly from her mind that it took a lot to trigger her memory of those days with them. But now, listening to Josh and Blaine, and thinking about what Sandra had gone through since yesterday, all those tainted memories came rushing back.

“I’m going inside to see if Carly needs help,” she said, and hurried back into the courthouse before Will could catch her eyes.

Carly was near the cells in the back, pulling blankets and bedrolls out of the moving crates they had transferred inside earlier. Despite the attempted ambush by Folger and his men, they had decided Lancing was too big a city to just abandon. Which meant they were going to need a place to stay, and the courthouse was as good a place as any unless they found a better location. They could easily barricade the two front windows and door, as well as the two extra doors in the back. If push came to shove, there were the cells in the back. Lara didn’t look forward to being literally locked inside those, but she reminded herself that she had been in worse situations.

Lara walked over and helped Carly unpack their belongings — just the essentials they would need to sleep through the night. It wouldn’t be a very comfortable temporary base, but it would do for now.

Until we get to Song Island.

God, please, let it be real…

“Was that one of the kids who escaped last night?” Carly asked.

“Yeah,” Lara said. “And Sandra’s alive, too.”

“Wow, that’s good news. I bet Blaine was happy to hear that.”

“He was.”

The girls raced around the front reception area and wound their way through the courthouse. They seemed to have boundless energy, and Lara could only look after them and smile. For a while, she hadn’t been sure if Elise could adapt. But she had. They all had.

Adapt or perish.

“So what’s this make, three more people?” Carly asked.

“If they decide to come with us.”

“Of course they will. After what they went through? Trust me, they’ll come with us. Until last year, I was a teenager, too. I still know how teenagers think.”

“God, I forget how young you are sometimes.”

“Good, because I feel fifty years old,” Carly said, and made a face.

Lara laughed. She really did sometimes forget just how young Carly was. Heck, she sometimes forgot how young most of them were. She wouldn’t be twenty-six for another month, but she already felt so much older than that.

Twenty-six going on forty…

She heard the front doors opening and looked back to see Will coming in. He walked over to them, dodging Vera and Elise as they darted across the room. He smiled after them, and seeing that brought a smile to Lara’s lips, too.

“Are we going after Sandra?” Lara asked.

“Josh is taking Blaine and Danny to her now.” He glanced at his watch. “Once they get back, Danny and I will go looking for supplies. If we’re lucky, we’ll find a better place to spend the night. Josh said they were staying in a basement in one of the subdivisions. That might work out better for us than out here in the open.”

“Great,” Carly said. “So I’m doing all this unpacking for no reason?”

“Probably.”

“Then I’m going to fix the girls something to eat. I could use a snack, too.”

Carly headed off, leaving them alone at the holding cells.

When Carly was gone, Will asked, “You okay?”

“Don’t I look okay?”

Lara pulled some new shirts out of a crate. The one she was wearing was already damp from the heat. She went through at least two shirts on a good day, and more when it was really hot, which it usually was. For the life of her, she couldn’t understand how Will and Danny managed to wear the same odor-drenched clothes throughout most of the day, and sometimes for days at a time until, inevitably, either she or Carly complained.

“Not really,” he said.

“I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You know you can talk to me.”

“I know. I just don’t have anything to talk about right now, that’s all. But if I do, you’re the first person I’ll come to. Promise.”

He slipped one hand around her waist and kissed her neck. She sighed and inhaled his usual mix of sweat and dirt.

“Blaine must be excited,” she said.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I don’t really know the guy.”

“You saved his life.”

“I wouldn’t say I saved his life. I gave him a ride. You did more for him than I did.”

“Well, he thinks you saved his life.”

“It’s his right to. This is still America, after all.”

“I can’t figure out if you’re just being humble or if you’re being a jerk.”

“That depends. Which one turns you on more?”

She turned around in his arm and sought out his mouth. His hands were already tugging her shirt out of her waistline and were searching for more when the radio clipped to his vest squawked and they heard Danny’s voice:

“We just arrived at the house the kid was staying in.”

Will grunted, pulling away from her briefly to key his radio. “Roger that.”

“Nice neighborhood,” Danny said. “We should get a couple of places here. Ones with really big lawns. The girls can raise the kids and we can have barbeques on the weekends.”

“Why just the weekends?” Will asked, playing along as usual.

“Because if I had to see your face seven days a week, I’d probably shoot myself. That, or turn on the car engine in my garage and end it peacefully. I haven’t decided yet.”

“You guys sound like married old ladies,” Lara said, rolling her eyes at Will as she pulled herself free and walked off, tucking her shirt back into her pants. “I’ll go help Carly make dinner. A woman’s work is never done.”

Blaine returned later with Danny and Josh and a pretty teenage girl Josh introduced as Gaby. But there was no Sandra, which explained why Blaine looked like someone had punched him in the ribs, then shot him three more times. Lara thought about going over to comfort him, but realized she didn’t really know him all that well, and she wasn’t sure how he would take it. Maybe he didn’t want some stranger to comfort him at that moment.

The positive news was that Sandra was still alive.

“She left about an hour after Josh did,” Gaby told them.

They were gathered back inside the courthouse, eating canned fruit. Gaby seemed to relish every drop of the same syrupy flavor that Lara had grown tired of, and she envied the teenager’s appetite.

“She found a car in the garage of the house we were hiding in,” Gaby said. “There were keys, and she packed up as much stuff as she could carry. The last I saw of her, she was driving off.”

“Did she say where she was going?” Will asked.

Blaine had apparently heard all this before, either on the ride over or at the house, and he left the courthouse without a word. Lara considered going after him again but thought better of it. He didn’t look like he wanted company.

“She went looking for him,” Gaby said, looking back at the door after Blaine. “She thought he was dead. She said he had been shot, and he looked like he was dead when they dragged her out of the woods and threw her into the semitrailer and brought her here.”

“Why did she go back looking for him if she thought he was dead?” Carly asked.

Lara thought she knew the answer. She looked over at Will, but he didn’t catch her glance. She would go back for him, too, even if she knew he was dead. She knew without a doubt Will would do the same for her.

“She wanted to bury him,” Gaby said. “He wasn’t bitten, so he wouldn’t have turned, right? Isn’t that how it works?”

“We’re not sure,” Lara said. “I don’t think anyone is.”

“Sandra didn’t think he had turned, anyway, which was why she went back. Or maybe she just wanted to be sure he wasn’t still lying out there on the road.” Gaby shrugged. She turned her attention back to the can, tilting it up to her lips, and drank down the sugary liquid. “God, these are good.”

Carly handed her another Del Monte can, this one with peaches.

“Are you sure?” Gaby said, looking almost embarrassed by her appetite.

“We have more than enough to spare,” Carly said. “Take it.”

She took it gratefully and pulled open the top lid and dug in. “God, these are so good,” she said again, between mouthfuls of peaches dripping with syrup.

Gaby was young and painfully pretty. Even though Gaby’s hair was dirty and her face hadn’t seen makeup in months, Lara couldn’t help feeling a little bit jealous looking at the teenager. She didn’t have to guess why Josh stood so close to Gaby at all times. Josh was a decent-looking kid, with disheveled brown hair that she guessed someone had cut for him recently (probably Gaby) and mellow brown eyes that weren’t quite as striking as Will’s. There was really nothing extraordinary about Josh physically, and she couldn’t picture the two of them together in high school. They were about the same height, which made the poor kid stand out even less.

But she had to admit, Josh had done a remarkable job keeping the two of them alive, especially after they were captured by Folger’s men yesterday. It had been his idea to escape, Gaby said, and Lara saw the way Gaby responded to him. She might not have given him the time of day eight months ago, but things had changed since.

Lara saw Will looking down at his watch. “Three fourteen,” he announced. “That gives us two hours to find a better place to bed down for the night. If we don’t find anything by then, we’ll come back and fortify the courthouse.”

“Be careful,” Lara said.

He nodded and went outside, where Danny was already waiting.

That left Lara and Carly with Josh and Gaby. She watched the blonde teenager devour the can of peaches until there was nothing left.

Wish I had that appetite…

“Danny said you guys were going to some island,” Josh said. “Is that true? He said it might be safe. Like a sanctuary.”

“Song Island,” Lara nodded. “And that’s what we’re hoping — that it’s safe. It’s somewhere on Beaufont Lake in Louisiana. It’s better if you hear it for yourself.”

Lara went into the back to grab the ham radio. She turned it on as she walked back, and the recorded female voice was already in mid-message:

“…broadcasting on the FEMA frequency to any survivors out there. We want you to know there is hope. There are survivors on Song Island. We have food, supplies, electricity, and protection against the darkness. If you are receiving this recorded message, we encourage you to make your way to us. I repeat: we have food, supplies, electricity, and protection against the darkness. Hello. If anyone can hear me out there. This is Song Island on Beaufont Lake in Louisiana. We are broadcasting on the FEMA frequency…”

“It’s a recorded message,” Lara said, turning the sound down a bit. “It repeats the same message over and over.”

“Who’s broadcasting it?” Josh asked.

“We don’t know. Will thinks it’s possibly some ex-military types, or maybe ex-government officials. Someone who knows about the FEMA frequency.”

“Why wouldn’t they just say who they were?”

“I don’t know, maybe they just wanted to keep the message short.”

“That means they have power, right?” Josh said, brightening up. “You’d need power to send that kind of message.”

“It could be hydro power,” Lara said. “The facility where we were staying before this used a water turbine to generate electricity. These people are on an island, so it makes sense if that’s how they’re getting their electricity, too.”

“Song Island?” Gaby said. “I’ve never heard of it. Then again, I’ve never been outside of Texas.” She glanced over at Josh. “What do you think? Is it possible?”

“Maybe,” Josh said, though Lara didn’t think he was sold on the idea. “It’s definitely possible. Why not? It’s an island, surrounded by water. If the bloodsuckers have a thing about water… Do they have a thing about water?” he asked, looking over at Lara and Carly.

“I guess we’ll find out, because we’re going there,” Lara said. “The two of you are welcome to join us.”

“God, yes,” Gaby said quickly. “Right, Josh?”

“Count us in,” Josh said without hesitation.

Josh would run through a wall for her.

Ah, teenage love. Or possibly lust.

Close enough.

Lara and Carly got Josh and Gaby settled into the courthouse, even though they fully expected Will and Danny to tell them they were moving. That was usually how it happened. After that disastrous night at a bank outside the city of Cleveland, Texas, that had nearly cost them their lives, Will was determined to not let it happen again. The ghouls had proved too intelligent and too creative for him to risk being hunkered down inside a building that could be breached. The best way to avoid them, Lara had learned, was to actually avoid them.

Dead, not stupid.

That meant hiding. She wasn’t ashamed of it. In fact, she preferred it. Hiding was always a better option than fighting, especially when your enemy had an endless number of (undead) bodies to throw at you.

Lara found Blaine outside the courthouse, under the hood of a beat-up white Toyota truck with the letters “TRD” on the side. It was covered in dust and looked like it had been abandoned some time back, but must still be working because it hadn’t been in the parking lot the last time she was out here. Lara saw a key in the ignition.

Blaine pulled his head out from behind the hood of the truck. “Hey.”

“Going somewhere?”

“After Sandra.”

“Did you talk to Will?”

“He understands.”

“So you’re going by yourself?”

“It’s my thing,” he said. She thought he was going to elaborate, explain his “thing” to her, but he didn’t.

“I can’t talk you out of it?”

“Why would you want to?”

She thought about it and realized he was right. “I wouldn’t.”

He slammed the hood back down and wiped blackened hands on a rag, then walked around the truck and leaned into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The truck jumped to life.

“Sounds good,” she said.

“It’ll do,” Blaine nodded. He turned the engine off and sat behind the steering wheel for a moment. Then he seemed to make up his mind about something and looked at her. “I don’t have any right to ask, but can you spare any food and supplies? I already talked to Will about weapons, and he’s going to let me have one of the AR-15s to replace the shotgun.”

“I’ll put a care package together for you. When are you leaving?”

“Whenever you’re done.”

“Give me ten minutes,” she said.

“Should we try to talk him out of it?” Carly asked. “I feel like we should.”

Lara was putting Blaine’s care package together using one of the smaller crates. She packed blankets, bedrolls, pillows, canned food, and toiletries, utilizing the space to its maximum, a trick she had picked up over the months. She packed the box with the intention of it being used by two people. Maybe it was a fantasy, but she thought Blaine would want that, and the optimist in her wanted that happy ending for him.

“Will didn’t,” Lara said.

“That’s Will and Danny. I mean we, as in us.”

“I don’t think I can. I tried, but I just didn’t have my heart in it. Wouldn’t you want Danny to come after you, if that was you out there?”

“Of course I would. But only if I knew Danny wasn’t limping around with three bullet holes in him. How long do you think he’s going to last out there? He can barely walk, Lara.”

“Danny wouldn’t care.”

“Danny can be an idiot, too,” she said.

Lara smiled. “Love makes you do crazy things.”

“I guess so. God knows I love that guy. Bad jokes and all.” She looked back at Gaby, playing clapping hand games with Elise and Vera, while Josh watched with a big grin on his face. “She looks like you.”

“Who?”

“The girl. Gaby. A younger version of you. Did you look like that ten years ago?”

“God, ten years ago,” Lara said, looking over at Gaby. She did see a slight resemblance. Had it really been that long since she was an eighteen-year-old teenager? It felt like another incarnation. “Maybe,” she said.

“You guys could pass for sisters.”

“I already have a sister.”

“Really? You never told me that. What’s her name?”

Lara gave her a look and rolled her eyes.

Carly laughed. “God, I’m so dense.” She smiled at Lara before suddenly grabbing her in a big bear hug. “It’s nice to be the little sister for a change. I’m tired of always being the big sister. It’s too…much…work.”

Lara laughed. “Okay, okay. Only if you promise to do what I say and clean your room so I don’t have to.”

“No promises.”

The radio clipped to Lara’s hip squawked, and she heard Danny’s voice: “Ladies, when was the last time you went to church and repented your sins to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?”

“Stupid Danny, always ruining a great moment,” Carly said, wiping away tears.

That almost made Lara cry, too, but she somehow managed to fight through it, if just barely.

Lara went outside with the crate and put it into the back seat of the Toyota. She opened the lid and took out a small white bag.

Blaine was slipping on a gun belt. A Remington 870 and an AR-15 rifle lay across the hood of the truck next to him.

“You sure you won’t change your mind?” she asked. “Song Island isn’t going anywhere. We’ll go back with you to find Sandra tomorrow.”

“I can’t wait that long. She’s out there now, Lara. She went back for me. I need to find her.” He tossed the weapons into the front seats. “Thanks for the care package.”

“Oh, and this.” She handed him the white bag. It was leather and at one point someone had used it to carry makeup.

“I don’t need makeup, Lara,” Blaine said, grinning at her.

She smiled back at him. “It’s an impromptu aid kit.” She unzipped the bag and pulled out a plain white bottle. “I restocked your painkillers, for when the pain kicks in. And trust me, it will, sooner or later.”

“More Vicodin?”

“Tramadol. Not quite as strong as Vicodin or Percocet. At this point, I’m supposed to tell you not to take more than three a day, but I doubt you’ll listen anyway.” She put the bottle back into the bag and pulled out a roll of gray duct tape. “This is for your wounds, if and when they open again. Let’s hope they don’t, but if they do, this will do in a pinch. Clean the wound as thoroughly as you can, then use this to keep it closed so it can heal up. It’ll hurt, but it’ll also keep you from bleeding out.”

He took the duct tape hesitantly. “Isn’t this something MacGyver would do?”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“He’s a guy on TV. He did crazy things with household items.” Blaine shook his head. “Never mind. Does this actually work?”

“I would have given you superglue, but we don’t have any.”

He gave her another doubtful look, probably wondering if she was just messing with him now.

“Superglue works wonders to close up a wound,” she said. “But since I don’t have any on hand, duct tape will have to do. Just make sure to clean the wound first.” She reached into the bag and took out a small bottle of rubbing alcohol. “This will do the trick. Then squeeze the wound together and apply as much duct tape as you need to cover it up. That’ll give it time to heal and keep it from opening again.”

“Why don’t I just do that now?”

“Because I spent a lot of time stitching you back together and properly dressing the wounds. This is worst-case scenario. If you ever need to reach for this white bag, you’re already in trouble.”

“You’re the doctor, doctor.” He took the bag from her and put it on the seat next to the AR-15.

“Third-year medical student, actually.”

“I sold car parts for a living and did part-time work in my uncle’s garage in Dallas. Trust me, third-year medical student is a better doctor than I could have afforded even before the world went to shit.”

He climbed into the truck and looked back out at Lara, and for a moment she thought he was going to announce he had changed his mind, that he was going to stay with them after all.

Instead, he said, “Thank you. Not just for the supplies. But for everything. For saving my life. You didn’t have to do it, especially now with everything the way it is, but you did, and that means a lot to me. One of these days, I’m going to pay both you and Will back. I just don’t know how I’m going to do it yet.”

“You’ll have to stay alive to do that.”

He grinned at her again. “That’s the plan. But I have to find Sandra first. She means everything to me. If she’s not here beside me, I might as well just lie down and let those monsters drain me dry.”

He closed the door and turned on the engine.

“Blaine,” she said, leaning closer to the door so he could hear her over the engine. “We may still be here in a day, or a week, or we might be gone by tomorrow morning. It all depends on what’s out there and how safe we can be by remaining here. But if you can’t find us, remember Song Island across the border.”

“We’ll find you again, Sandra and me. You can count on it.”

She was convinced that he believed every word. She nodded and stepped back. “Be safe.”

He put the truck in gear and pulled out of the parking lot.

She watched him drive off, going up Chance Street in the direction they had come, speeding up with urgency a second later and then, just like that, he was gone, the sound of his truck engine fading with him.

Good luck. God knows we all need some these days.