The Gates of Byzantium

CHAPTER 30 BLAINE

Blaine heard them moving all around him. Something was different tonight. They sounded more active, and their footsteps were heavier somehow. The ghouls were always amazingly light on their feet, a result of their dwindling muscles and the fact that they were mostly skin and bones because that was all they needed.

And the blood. They needed the blood most of all.

But tonight was different, and looking across the employee lounge at Maddie, sitting on the dirty orange couch in her hazmat suit, the gas mask in her lap, trying not to fall asleep, he could tell she knew it, too. Even mute Bobby, leaning a few inches from the fridge pushed against the door, seemed aware of it also.

The room was pitch-dark, with only a few strands of moonlight finding their way through the high window. They sat silently in the Sortys employee lounge and listened. Blaine listened without interest. He was still numbed, still empty. Still trying to decide whether it was even worth it to keep going without Sandra.

The ghouls were indifferent to his pain, and their activity went on for hours. It started as soon as darkness fell, and it didn’t stop. He heard footsteps throughout the early morning hours, racing across the rooftops, outside in the parking lot. But they never strayed into the hallway outside the lounge. Maybe they knew there was nothing for them there from their previous forays into the mall. Or maybe they were all assigned other duties. Blaine knew from experience the creatures weren’t stupid. Far from it. They were disciplined, and they did as they were told.

The blue-eyed ghoul…

He didn’t care. They could come through the door. It didn’t make any difference to him.

After what seemed like hours of sitting in silence in the darkness, Maddie finally whispered across the room at him. “What are they doing?”

He shook his head. He didn’t know what she expected him to say. Blaine wasn’t even sure he could talk. Or if he wanted to.

“I’ve never seen this before,” she whispered. “They’ve never been this…active.”

Bobby pointed up at the ceiling. Maddie nodded.

“The second floor,” Maddie said. “He’s saying most of the activity is on the second floor. Where the sleepers are.” She shook her head again. “This is something new. I’ve never seen anything like this before in all the months I’ve been here.”

He didn’t care. His mind was elsewhere.

“If you love me — if you care about me — you’ll keep going,” Sandra had said as she died in front of him.

But how could he keep going? Without her?

Blaine laid the Glock down on the floor next to him and leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.

“If you love me — if you care about me — you’ll keep going.”

Impossible. How could she tell him that? How could he keep going without her? All of this was for her. Blaine would have been happy to spend the rest of his life in someone’s dark basement, running from town to town. As long as she was with him.

He had wanted Song Island for her. What was the point of going there now?

Not without you, baby. Not without you…

Blaine closed his eyes. He didn’t even remember when he fell asleep, but he welcomed the darkness for the very first time in a long time.

When he opened his eyes it was morning, and sunlight was splashed across the room. Blaine pulled himself up from the floor where he had slid during the night. His neck hurt and there was silence around him, reminding him how quiet it could be in the mornings when most of the planet was dead.

Like Sandra…

Maddie wasn’t on the sofa, and the fridge lay on its side. Bobby wasn’t anywhere in the room, either, and Blaine couldn’t find signs of a battle. The door was open, and it looked to be in good shape. The ghouls hadn’t attacked last night.

He sucked in air for a moment.

“If you love me — if you care about me — you’ll keep going.”

He looked down at the Glock in his hand. He didn’t remember when he had picked it up from the floor.

“Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop…”

He didn’t recall when he had started to lift the gun, but it was suddenly up to his chest when he heard footsteps and looked over as Maddie walked into the lounge.

She had her M4 rifle over one shoulder and a backpack over the other. She saw him and gave him a brief, awkward smile. “You’re up.”

Blaine consciously lowered the gun and glanced at his watch. Already 10:16 a.m.? He had slept through most of the morning. “You should have woken me.”

She shrugged. “You looked like you needed the rest. Besides, there wasn’t a lot to do.”

“The others…?”

“Gerry’s gone. Lenny, too.”

“What about Sandra?”

“I’m sorry. She’s gone, too.”

Of course they would take Sandra, too. Why would the world allow him to grieve properly?

She walked over to the couch and sat down. Her eyes went to the gun in his hand. “No signs of Mason, but I have Bobby on the roof just in case he comes back.”

“Is that safe?”

“Safer than all of us sitting in here where he can sneak up on us.”

Blaine looked down at the Glock in his hand. It looked foreign, and the feel of it against his palm was unnatural.

“Blaine,” Maddie said, “put the gun away.”

He looked up at her, momentarily taken aback by the hardness in her voice. What did she think he was going to do with the gun? Kill himself? He wasn’t going to kill himself.

Right?

Blaine slipped the Glock into its holster and sat back down on the floor. Maddie unzipped her backpack and took out a bottle of water and tossed it over to him. He took a big gulp and was halfway through when he started spilling some on his shirt and slowed down.

“So what now?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” He set the bottle between his legs.

“I mean, what now? They’re gone, you know.”

“Lenny, Gerry, and Sandra, I know.”

“No, not just them. The others, too. All the sleepers on the second floor.”

Blaine gave her a surprised look.

“Yeah, all of them,” she nodded. “That was all the commotion last night. They were carrying away the sleepers en masse. There isn’t a single soul left up there. You’d think there might be one or two or a dozen that they would leave behind, who might have died; but no, they took them all.”

“All of them?”

“It doesn’t make any sense. Nothing about last night makes sense.”

“Where would they take the sleepers?”

“I don’t know.”

“How many were up there? Thousands?”

“At least.”

“That’s a lot of people to move in one night.”

“There were a hell of a lot of them last night, Blaine.”

He nodded. He had to remind himself this was their world now. They — he and her and Bobby — were the anomalies, running around trying to survive, to avoid being stamped out of existence. One nightfall at a time.

So this is what being a cockroach feels like.

“So what now?” Maddie asked again. “Do we follow your friends to Beaufont Lake?”

“Go to Song Island,” Sandra had said. “Take Maddie and Bobby. Go to Song Island and try to be happy. If you love me — if you care about me — you’ll keep going.”

“Blaine?”

He looked up at her. She was watching him closely. “What?”

“Do we follow your friends to Beaufont Lake?”

He thought about it. It was hard to concentrate on any one thing. He still felt numbed — not just physically, but mentally as well. “Will and the others would have reached the island by now.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah. Probably.”

“So we should go, too. Take what we can from here — the food, water, weapons, and clothing — and start off now.” She glanced at her watch. “We could be on the road by noon. If we push it, we can be in Louisiana and on our way to Song Island well before nightfall.”

“It’s a plan,” he nodded quietly.

“But is it a good plan? Is it doable?”

“What does Bobby say?”

She grinned at him.

“You know what I mean,” he added.

“He’s good to go. We have vehicles. Gas. And it wouldn’t be hard to shoot out the lock in the security room and gather up the weapons.”

“We need silver.”

“What for?”

“Silver kills the ghouls.”

“Since when?”

He told her about Will and Danny discovering silver. About his own use of silver at the house with Sandra.

Sandra…

“Jesus,” Maddie said. “When were you going to tell us this?”

“After we killed Mason.”

“Fair enough. We have more silver than we know what to do with in the department stores. The question is: you know how to turn them into bullets?”

“I don’t have a clue. You?”

“None.”

“Didn’t you say you used to hunt as a kid with your dad?”

She gave him a wry smirk. “Yeah, but we bought bullets from the store like normal people.”

He had to see it for himself, so he went up to the second floor. He expected to see the rows and rows of sleeping bodies. Instead, there was just emptiness.

It didn’t seem possible the ghouls could remove thousands of people in one night, but they had. Even so, he walked along the second-floor walkways just to be sure, spaces once filled up with frail, sleeping bodies hanging between life and death. He could see outlines of where they had lain, created by dust and dirt and spilt blood, like obscene police chalk outlines. There wasn’t nearly as much blood on the floor as he had expected.

They don’t waste a single drop.

After a while, Maddie joined him. “Not even one night. They did all this in half a night. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. They took over the damn planet in one night.”

“How many buildings in Beaumont are as big as the Willowstone Mall?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t exactly explored the city since I got here. That was Mason’s job, and he gave me mostly guard duty. Why?”

“They had to have taken the bodies somewhere.”

“You’re assuming they’re going to keep them in the city.”

“You’re right,” he nodded. “They wouldn’t have gone through all this trouble just to swap one building for another in the same city. Not because of us. I don’t think they’re afraid of us at all.”

“Hardly. There are what, millions of them out there? Billions? How many of us are left? A few hundred in the state? A few thousand across the country? The planet?”

One less without Sandra…

“We should start getting ready,” Maddie said. “I think we need to be gone from here by noon. Just to give ourselves enough time to get to Song Island in case we run into trouble along the way. Besides, I’m not fond of the idea of Mason waiting out there for us.”

They walked back to the escalator.

He knew she was watching him closely, trying to gauge his state of mind. “I’m fine.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Yeah, well…”

He walked past her and down the escalator, trying to pretend like he really was fine, and failing miserably.

“If you love me — if you care about me — you’ll keep going…”

Blaine and Maddie went down to the security room for their weapons. Maddie shot the lock with her M4, and Blaine collected his Remington shotgun and handgun while Maddie grabbed as much as she could carry.

They took the weapons to a Jeep parked outside Sortys, with Bobby standing sentry on the roof. It took them three trips, using two shopping baskets, to carry all the ammo outside. They stuck to the M4 rifles and shotguns and left behind a stack of weapons for whoever came after.

He didn’t speak as he gathered up the weapons, then the ammo, then the silver from the cases around the department stores. Maddie didn’t seem to mind the silence, and Bobby, well, he was Bobby.

They amassed an impressive amount of silver within the hour — two baskets full of cutlery, pens, ornaments, candleholders, and things Blaine didn’t even know came in silver. Maddie seemed to be able to pick out the real silver from the fake easily enough, but Blaine had to take a second and sometimes a third look just to make sure.

By the time they were done, it was almost noon, and Bobby came down from the roof with his weapons and a backpack stuffed with food and water. He climbed in, squeezing wordlessly between the crates of silver and weapons latched onto the back of the Jeep with bungee cords.

Maddie slipped behind the wheel and tossed a quick look back at Bobby. “How you doing back there?”

Bobby gave her the “OK” with his fingers.

“How about you?” she asked Blaine.

“Okay,” he said.

“Up I-10 and into Louisiana, right?”

“Straight shot, yeah.”

“Keep an eye out for Mason. That asshole’s out there somewhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to take a pot shot at us somewhere along the way.”

Blaine had the Remington in his lap. He checked to make sure it was loaded, then gave her a nod.

“Okay, then,” she said. “Let’s get outta here.”

She turned the engine and the Jeep hummed to life without a problem. Maddie drove through the parking lot. Blaine expected to hear gunfire at any second — Mason, hidden somewhere out there, getting in one last goodbye before it was too late.

But there was nothing except the quiet purr of the Jeep as Maddie maneuvered them out of the Willowstone Mall parking lot and onto the feeder road. They were on their way, and Blaine couldn’t help but wonder what Sandra would say right about now. Probably something positive, something to lift their spirits. Maybe a joke, or a smile. All it usually took was a smile from her.

“Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop…”

Eventually, they stopped at a Shell gas station in the Louisiana city of Salvani, hoping to grab some food and drinks. It was 3:13 p.m., and they had made good progress out of Texas and into Louisiana. It took them longer than Blaine would have liked, but slow and steady meant no disasters on the road. He knew all about disasters on the road.

Sandra did, too.

He spent the entire drive trying to decide whether he could go on without her. She had told him she wanted him to, but he hadn’t made any promises. He couldn’t make any promises. Every now and then he sneaked a glance at Maddie behind the wheel, and Bobby in the back, his face turned into the wind.

They’re so young…

This was all because of him, he realized. He had introduced the idea of Song Island to Maddie. He was the one who had convinced her to betray Mason. Without him, Maddie and Bobby would be blissfully moving on with their lives in the mall. So what did that mean?

They were his responsibility. It was his fault they were here. Could he just abandon them now?

“Go to Song Island. Take Maddie and Bobby. Go to Song Island and try to be happy. If you love me — if you care about me — you’ll keep going.”

He didn’t know if he could be happy without Sandra, but he could at least take Maddie and Bobby to Song Island. He owed them that much. After that? He didn’t know. It was a big world still, and it wasn’t likely it was going to miss him.

Song Island first…

They found what they needed either in the pungent-smelling freezers in the back of the Shell or scattered along the floors. A couple of bottles of warm Gatorade, another three bottles of Powerade, and some boxes of snacks the rats and animals hadn’t gone through yet. From the looks of the footprints in the well-tread aisles, there had been plenty of creatures big and small looking over the Shell’s shelves in the past eight months.

Blaine looked up when he heard the chime over the front door jingle as Maddie came in.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Town’s dead. Big surprise.” She pulled a folded map out of her back pocket. “I did find a map of the area, though. You find anything good?”

“Drinks, junk food, the usual.”

Bobby came out from the back with BBQ-flavored Pringles he was popping into his mouth from a can. Blaine thought with some amusement that this was the most sound he had ever heard come out of Bobby’s mouth.

Maddie sat down on an ice cream freezer near the window. She looked tired as she fixed him with a querying look. “Still Song Island or bust, right?”

She’s still worried. Afraid I’ll off myself when she’s not looking.

Maybe she’s not so wrong…

“Unless you’ve changed your mind,” he nodded.

“Got nowhere else to go. No job interviews or anything.” Maddie looked over at Bobby. “How about you? You think we should turn back now or keep going to Song Island?”

Bobby gave her a thumbs up without hesitation.

“He’s good to go,” Maddie said.

Blaine picked up the bag of drinks and took out a warm blue bottle of Powerade and tossed it over to Maddie.

“Ugh. Warm Powerade,” she said.

“Better than warm nothing.”

“Just barely—” she started to say, but was interrupted by the familiar drone of car engines coming down the road outside. “Down!”

Maddie dropped behind the big ice cream freezer while Blaine went down behind the counter. He looked out the window and saw a black Toyota Tacoma truck racing down Ruth Street, swerving around an old red pickup sitting half on the curb and half on the road. Blaine caught a glimpse of two guys in the front seat and shadows in the back, though he couldn’t be sure if they were more guys or supplies.

His eyes darted to their Jeep parked outside the front door of the Shell. If the Tacoma had been moving slower and someone had bothered to look in their direction, they might have noticed the Jeep. It was hard to miss, with the big pile of crates in the back. Fortunately there were two big gas pumps between the Jeep and the road, so even if someone had looked over, there was a chance their view might have been slightly obstructed.

The Tacoma kept going, disappearing down the road.

I guess they didn’t see us.

He was about to stand back up when two more trucks appeared off the I-10 feeder — a white Ford F-150 and a silver Chevy Silverado, similar to the one he and Sandra had entered Beaumont in. For a second, he thought it might be the same truck, but as the Silverado flashed by, he saw white stripes along the side. He glimpsed two men in the front seat of the truck. He was so focused on the Silverado that by the time the F-150 went by, it was just a white blur.

For a moment Blaine thought the last two cars were chasing the first one, but he soon concluded that wasn’t the case. They were together. Or at least, going in the same direction. He watched them disappear down Ruth Street, the sound of their engines lingering in the air for a long time. They could still hear the trucks for minutes afterward.

He stood up from behind the counter and exchanged a look with Maddie.

“More survivors headed to Song Island?” she asked.

“Has to be. What else is down there?”

“How many you figure were in those three trucks?”

“I saw two in the front seats of the Tacoma, two more in the front seats of the Silverado, but I didn’t catch the F-150.”

“At least two, I think.” She looked back at Bobby. “How many did you see, Bobby?”

He shrugged and put up two fingers. Then shrugged again.

“He’s not sure,” Maddie translated. She looked back at Blaine, saw the look on his face. “What is it?”

“They were in a hurry,” he said.

“And?”

“There’s no reason to be moving that fast.” He glanced at his watch. “We’re still a good five hours away from sundown. It’s not going to take more than an hour max to reach Song Island. There’s no traffic on the road, at least not out here. So what’s the hurry?”

She seemed to think about it, but didn’t have any answers for him.

Behind them, Bobby popped another BBQ-flavored Pringle into his mouth and crunched loudly.

“It should be ahead of us,” Maddie said, consulting the map in her lap.

“How far?”

“There should be a right bend in about a mile. Route 27 keeps going around the lake’s western cove for another two miles.”

“Anything about a marina?”

“No, but there should be one or two before the two miles are up.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because coves make for good fishing spots. I’d be surprised if there weren’t at least two launches around here.”

“If you say so.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I’m more concerned about those trucks,” Blaine said.

He was unable to forget about the trucks. Three trucks, with at least two men in each one. The farther he went down south, the more convinced he was they were headed to Beaufont Lake. But it was the way they were traveling — fast, with purpose — that stuck with him. Even though he had only seen them from a distance, something in the way they drove didn’t seemed right for survivors looking for safety. It was too aggressive.

It was hard to explain, and there was always a chance he was being overly paranoid. Then again, if only he had been more paranoid about entering Beaumont, taken precautions, maybe Sandra would still be here…

The right turn Maddie had predicted came up, and Blaine slowed down and took it without any problems.

“There,” Maddie said, pointing.

Blaine slowed down some more, heard Bobby moving excitedly behind them. Bobby made so little noise that whenever Blaine did hear him, it always startled him just a little bit until he realized who it was. He didn’t think he would ever get used to having someone around him who didn’t speak.

Maddie pointed at a faded sign along the side of the road. The only thing Blaine could make out was the word “marina,” and he didn’t have to wait long before the marina itself appeared in the distance. He glimpsed the tip of a gazebo and the sun sparkling off the aluminum roof of a garage-like building.

Blaine stopped the Jeep about fifty yards away, putting the vehicle into park along the side of the road out of sheer habit.

“Why are we stopping so far away?” Maddie asked.

“Just to be safe.”

“The trucks?”

“Yeah.”

The trucks. If they were heading for Song Island — and he was fully convinced they were — then they would have seen the marina and pulled in. Unfortunately, fifty yards was too far away to pick out the three trucks from the dozen or so vehicles at the marina at the moment.

Behind them, Bobby stood up and peered through a pair of binoculars.

“See anything?” Blaine asked.

Bobby handed him the binoculars and pointed forward. Blaine stood up in the driver’s seat and peered through them.

The gazebo to the left of the marina, a storage garage farther in. None of the vehicles looked like the ones he had seen passing the Shell earlier. There was an inlet next to the marina, and on the other side, a sprawling, white two-story house surrounded by hurricane fencing. He couldn’t see signs of movement around the property, but it was hard to tell from this distance.

“Anything?” Maddie asked.

“House across from the marina,” Blaine said.

He handed her the binoculars. She stood up and looked for herself, and after a moment, lowered them. “I don’t see anyone.”

“Neither do I. And that’s the problem. There are no other places for those three trucks to have stopped but here. At least, if they want to get to Song Island.”

“You’re assuming they were headed there.”

“What else is down here?”

She looked around at the emptiness for a moment. “Maybe they already took a boat to Song Island. I saw a boathouse on the property.”

“Can you see the island?”

“I see a patch of dirt,” she said, peering through the binoculars again. “Way, way in the distance. And something that looks like a lighthouse, but I can’t be sure.” She lowered the binoculars. “So what do we do now? There aren’t any boats at the marina, and there might be people at the house who may not be friendly. This has gotten a lot more complicated.”

Blaine glanced at his watch. They were pushing up against five in the evening. They had, at best, just over three hours of sunlight left.

Suddenly there was the loud crack of gunfire in the distance.

A second shot followed, then a third. Not a burst, or a three-shot burst, but carefully squeezed-off shots. They came from the water, though Blaine couldn’t tell from which direction, or how far away.

Then the loud rattle of return fire, like fireworks, rolling across the lake surface for a good five seconds. More than one assault rifle firing, unloading on something. That, or someone was wasting a lot of bullets answering the first three shots.

They heard the crack of another gunshot, then a fifth and sixth shot followed.

Then there was silence.

They waited to hear something else — more returning fire — but whatever had happened seemed to have run its course. The quiet settled back over the lake as if nothing had happened.

“That’s not a good sign, right?” Maddie said. It wasn’t a question. “Gunfire from Song Island. If that is Song Island out there.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know what to think.”

“What about your friends? You think they’re on the island right now?”

“They must have arrived a full day ahead of us, so it’s possible.” Then he heard something else. It was a grinding sound, gradually growing in intensity. “You hear that? What is that?”

“Outboard motors,” Maddie said. “Boats.”

It didn’t take the boats long to reach the shore, but by then Blaine had moved the Jeep out of the road and into the side of the ditch. The Jeep wasn’t completely hidden, at least not from anyone with eyes traveling along the road. From a distance, it had a chance of going unseen, though that was probably a stretch, too.

They crouched along the edge of the ditch, watching with binoculars as the boats — there were two — chugged down the inlet between the marina and the house, then turned left and headed toward the boathouse on the property. Blaine saw four men in one boat and four more in the other. He couldn’t make out faces, but it wasn’t hard to see they were all heavily armed.

“One of them’s hurt,” Maddie said beside him.

“Which one?” Blaine asked.

“First boat.”

Blaine looked again and saw that she was right. One of the men was sitting down, slightly slumped over, holding his shoulder.

“The second boat’s motor is damaged,” Maddie said.

“How can you tell?”

“It’s coughing up smoke. Too much smoke.”

Blaine saw that, too, though he didn’t know what a damaged boat motor looked like. She was right, though, the motor on the second boat was definitely putting out more smoke than the first one.

The boats pulled up to the boathouse, which had three slots, the third slot empty. A man appeared from the side of the binoculars’ field of view and guided the boats in. The men climbed out, two of them helping the injured one up.

“Make that two injured,” Maddie said.

“Which one?”

“Second boat. Looks like his right leg.”

Blaine focused on the second boat as the men climbed onto the dock. And yes, one of them was limping badly. One of the limping man’s comrades reached over and helped him up the wooden deck. They left the boathouse, arguing and gesturing wildly. He followed them to the two-story house as far as he could, glimpsing trucks parked in front of the house, and was sure one of them was the Silverado from earlier. Another vehicle might have been the blue Tundra.

“That’s a lot of firepower,” Maddie said. “You think they were attacking the island?”

“If they were, it didn’t go well.” Blaine lowered his binoculars. “I only heard six shots in all, not counting the loud free-for-all in the middle. What about you?”

“Six.”

“What about you, Bobby?”

Bobby held up one hand and one finger on his second hand.

“So six shots in all,” Blaine said. “That’s not a lot. But it might be enough for a pair of Army Rangers to put the hurt on a couple of boats trying to land on their beach. The question is, why are they even attacking the island? What’s going on over there?”

“So you think your friends took the island?” Maddie asked.

“I think they’re on it, yeah. I’ve seen them shoot. They wouldn’t need more than six shots to repel an attack by boat. Even a couple of boats with four guys apiece.”

“Are they that good?”

“They’re really well-prepared, and they know what they’re doing.”

They settled back down into the ditch.

Maddie wiped at a bead of sweat along her forehead. “So what now? We can’t just stay here forever. Sooner or later it’s going to get dark, and we’re going to need shelter.”

He didn’t have any good answers for her. They could attack the house from the front, but he flashed back to the gunfight at the mall. What happened that day was forever etched into his brain. He reminded himself that he, Maddie, Bobby, and Sandra could barely take on two men they had the drop on. Which made it unlikely they were going to take on at least eight heavily armed people in a two-story house, even if two of them were already hurting. That still left six.

Six too many…

Blaine glanced down at his watch: 4:16 p.m.

“Well?” Maddie said, watching his face carefully. “Should we attack the house?”

“That wouldn’t be a very good idea,” a voice said behind them.

Blaine shot up and spun around — and found himself staring into the barrel of an assault rifle.