The Purge of Babylon: A Novel of Survival

CHAPTER 19 KATE

Kate watched the ghoul through the rifle’s sight, lining the bright red dot directly on the creature’s forehead, which looked like a lump of mashed potatoes left out in the sun too long…then painted black.

Not that she needed to shoot it in the forehead to kill it, but it was more challenging than going for the chest. That was the easy shot, and she had taken too many easy shots already.

She felt Will’s breath against the back of her neck. He was close enough that she could smell his scent, a combination of dust, dirt, and sweat. Baths had been hard to come by the last few weeks. She had learned to get used to a lot of things these days, like shooting an M4A1 rifle without feeling as if someone was hitting her in the shoulder blade with a sledgehammer.

A month ago the M4A1 would have been just a “rifle.” Now it was an “M4A1.”

Oh, how times have changed.

This particular M4A1 was one of a half-dozen Will and Danny liberated that first day. There was a suppressor at the end of the barrel, making the rifle a foot longer. It also added extra weight, but they only used suppressors at night to keep the sound down. Not that it really made things completely silent. Kate discovered, much to her chagrin, that real gun suppressors didn’t magically silence weapons the way movies had led her to believe.

She continued watching the ghoul, its shifting dark black eyes oblivious to the red dot she had placed on its forehead. The ghoul was a scout, one of many scouring the land for signs of survivors. Maybe even for them. Will had theories.

From the size of the ghoul, she guessed it was once a teenage boy. Or a girl. It could once have been a full-grown adult. It was hard to tell with them, even up close. They all looked the same, with dark, wrinkled skin, hairless bodies, black eyes, and rotted, yellow and brown crooked teeth.

She slowed down her breathing. It wasn’t a particularly hard shot, but from her vantage point — perched on the metal walkway of the water tower in the darkness, the big globe-shaped water container behind her — it was going to be a bit tricky. Next to her, Will sat silently; the only sound coming from him was his soft, unhurried breathing.

Softly, ever so softly, she tightened her forefinger against the trigger and squeezed. The M4A1 leaped slightly in her hands as expected. The bullet was away, the shot marked by a muffled noise — not completely inaudible, but hard to locate in wide-open country.

There was a slight wind, but not enough to deter the bullet’s trajectory. The silver and lead projectile hit the ghoul just below its forehead, almost exactly between its eyes, and it simply fell over into the grass.

She pulled her eye away from the reticle. “How was that, boss?”

Will was looking through night-vision binoculars. “Not bad, for a beginner.”

She smiled. It was a high compliment coming from him. “What now?”

“Let’s see if any more show up. If we’re lucky, you’ll get multiple targets.”

“What happens if I’m unlucky?”

“We’ll sit here in silence for thirty minutes getting sore butts and nothing to show for it.”

“Fingers crossed, then.”

She sat up, laying the M4A1 across her lap.

Three weeks ago she would have cringed at the rifle’s cold, hard aluminum and alloy parts pressed against her skin, but those days were long gone. Like Will, she was decked out in black thermal pants, shirt, sweater, and socks. A black wool cap covered the top of her head, leaving her face mostly exposed to the chilly December night. She blew little clouds of mist whenever she breathed or talked.

The water tower, like the abandoned buildings sprinkled among the trees and bushes around them, was part of Cleveland, Texas. It was a small town of 8,000 or so people about forty miles outside Houston, along Highway 59.

Will took a pair of energy bars out of his pouch and handed one to her. Strawberry flavored. She liked the fact that he knew to give her the strawberry-flavored bar without asking. She took a bite and frowned at the taste. The artificial strawberry flavoring made it just a little bit more edible than it otherwise would have been. Barely.

“You’re getting dangerously good with that rifle,” he said. They kept their voices low. Out here, in the open, voices tended to travel, especially at night. “You would have made a decent Ranger.”

“Just decent?” she said, feigning offense.

“I need to see how you handle a fifty-pound rucksack during a morning run up a hill first.”

“Oh yeah? How far?”

“Twenty-nine klicks in less than five hours.”

“What’s a ‘klick’?”

“A kilometer.”

“What’s a kilometer?”

“What?”

“I don’t know how far a kilometer is.”

“A kilometer is point six two miles. So twenty-nine klicks is approximately eighteen miles, give or take.”

“So why didn’t you just say that in the first place?” she teased.

He smiled. “Sorry.”

“Eighteen miles up and down a hill with a fifty-pound thing strapped to my back? Sounds like a legal way to kill someone.”

“I think you could do it.”

“I doubt that.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“Gee, thanks.”

The back and forth came easily. It always did with Will, especially when they were by themselves. It was harder with the others around. She was particularly self-conscious if Luke was within earshot. Which was stupid, but it was hard to explain.

Out here, in the darkness with Will, though, she felt loose and free.

“I used to protest against guns when I was in college,” she said after a while.

“Oh yeah?”

“I don’t even remember what the group was called. Students Against Guns, or something on the nose like that. Not very creative. But you know college students. It was my freshman year, and I’m pretty sure a guy was involved.”

“That’s a first.”

“What?”

“A girl joining a cause she doesn’t believe in for a guy.”

Kate remembered those days as if they were someone else’s memories. It was so long ago now. Had it really been her? Had she ever really been that naïve? That idealistic? Or maybe just that horny?

“Yeah,” she said, smiling to herself.

“So what happened?”

“We dated until sophomore year. Then I ditched him for this French foreign exchange student. Suddenly I was very interested in French history.”

“Nice.”

“Did you go to college?”

“I did.”

“Where did you go?”

“The Forty Acres.”

“The University of Texas?”

“Yup. I enlisted in the Army two days after I graduated.”

“What did you study?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Bullshit. What did you study?”

He smiled to himself and scanned the area with his binoculars for a moment. The longer it took him to answer, the more interested she became.

“Tell me,” she said. “I’m dying to know.”

After a while, he said, “Greek History.”

“What about Greek History specifically?”

“I was a fan of Greek Warfare. Thermopylae, the Spartans, the Hoplite.”

“What’s that?”

“Which part?”

“Hoplite.”

“The Greeks used to fight in a style called Hoplite, using foot soldiers primarily armed with a shield and a spear. They would gather on a field, in a tight unit, and decimate their opponents. The entire foundation of the Hoplite was about trusting the man to your right to protect you with his shield, while you protected the man to your left with yours. If everyone did their job, you won the battle. When two Hoplite units faced off in battle, the one that didn’t break was usually the winner.”

“Sounds hard.”

“It’s about discipline and trust. If one person fails, the unit collapses. It’s been translated to modern fighting. Special Forces operators are almost entirely dependent on watching each other’s back. No man left behind, et cetera.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“Yup.”

Kate smiled. “Was she cute?”

“Oh yeah,” he laughed.

Two hours later, no other ghouls had shown up. So Kate and Will packed up and climbed down the water tower, then headed back in the direction of tonight’s home base.

Back in the city, it would have been unthinkable to walk in the darkness at night, but out here in the countryside the risks were lower. At least, enough for Will to commit to random nights of ghoul sniping.

It was almost midnight when they found the suburb again. Base camp was a house near the end of a street, with its basement turned into a bomb shelter by the previous owner. It consisted of walls, a lone steel door, a nice rug, and it was big — and comfortable — enough for all seven of them. The owner had been something of a gun nut, and there were racks of rifles and handguns in one corner and boxes of ammunition stacked on shelves.

Over the last three weeks, they had become used to staying in other people’s homes. The ghouls didn’t particularly like to shelter in residences during the day. Will reasoned the houses were too small and had too many windows. Even when they slept in buildings, the ghouls stuck to the back rooms. So they had become experts at choosing houses that could accommodate them and were defensible at night. During the day, they gathered supplies and spent at least two to three hours making silver bullets.

Their priorities were always the same: silver bullets, shelter, then supplies.

They entered the suburbs from the south end. Will used the backyards, staying away from the streets and sidewalks and keeping to the darkness as much as possible. Kate was used to walking around in the dark by now, though the overwhelming muteness of the world around her still managed to be disturbing if she stopped to listen.

They made it to within 300 yards of base camp when they heard the soft — and by now very familiar — padding of feet against asphalt. She knew what the sound meant without having to think about it.

They moved quickly behind a big grouping of bushes along the side of a two-story house just as a flurry of ghouls flashed by in front of them, along the sidewalk. She watched from behind shrubbery as the thin, preternatural silhouetted figures raced up the street. She counted, but gave up after fifteen.

Will crouched silently next to her, his rifle slung across his chest, forefinger tapping quietly against the trigger guard. He was counting. Each tap for every ghoul. Once the last ghoul disappeared, he stopped.

“How many?” she whispered.

“Twenty-three.”

They circled back and entered the two-story house through the unlocked back door. She was right behind him, unholstering her Glock and holding it against her side as she went. The Glock had long ago stopped feeling strange against her bare skin. The strangeness now came when she couldn’t feel its weight against her hip.

Will scanned the house in the darkness. Moonlight shone through the windows, enough to see where everything was. The front door was closed, but also unlocked. The windows were broken, jagged pieces of remaining glass jutting out from corners, dried blood smeared along the sharp edges and windowsills. Nothing she hadn’t seen in dozens of homes since they began making their way out of the city three weeks ago.

Will tapped her on the shoulder and pointed up the stairs. They hurried up, Will taking point. She kept close behind him, leaving enough space that if he needed to spin at the last instant, she wouldn’t block his path. When she needed to move close to him, she kept one hand on his back to let him know she was there. She had learned the hard way that forgetting that one little trick was deadly. A week back, he almost cracked her forehead open with his rifle while turning in a hallway because she had lazily taken her hand off his back as they were moving through a house. She was sore for days.

On the second floor, there were more patches of dried blood along the carpets and walls. They moved quietly through the hallway and found the master bedroom at the end. The bed was unmade, but showed no signs of struggle or death.

“This looks good,” Will whispered.

She nodded.

He moved to the window and peered out from behind the curtains, careful not to move them. She did the same on the other side.

There were at least two dozen of them, moving from house to house up the street. They scampered like cats, quick and silent and with complete focus. They slipped in and out of doors and windows, continually moving up the street, away from them. She caught her breath as a ghoul darted inside the house the others were staying in.

Base camp.

“It’ll be okay,” Will whispered, reading her expression. “Danny won’t let them expose themselves that easily.”

About thirty seconds later, the ghoul emerged and ran to the house next door.

She breathed a sigh of relief.

“We’ll stay here until morning,” Will said, “in case they decide to double back and do a second round of searches. There’s no point in risking exposure in case they leave a spy behind.”

She nodded. The ghouls had left spies before.

What was that saying Will had about them?

Dead, but not stupid.

She fell asleep on the king-size bed with the M4A1 across her chest. It felt so comfortable, even natural, to have the rifle close to her. When she woke sometime later in the night, Will was standing watch at the window.

He had been there as she fell asleep, and it didn’t look as if he had moved at all.

He looked over, brown eyes and two-day stubble barely visible in the darkness. “Looks clear out there. I haven’t seen one for a few hours now.”

She sat up and glanced down at the black plastic watch around her wrist. Neon blue numbers glowed in the darkness. “You should have woken me for my shift.”

“It’ll be morning soon. Go back to sleep.”

“Will, you should have woken me.”

“I’ll wake you next time.”

She swung her legs off the bed and sat in the blackness, taking a moment to shake off the remnants of sleep. She was surprised she had dozed off at all. It was not something that came easy these days, not since that night at the Archers warehouse store in Houston.

“Did you get in contact with Danny?” she asked.

“He knows we’re close by.” Will was wearing his communications gear, with the earbud in his right ear and the Motorola radio clipped to his assault vest. They were close enough that he could reach Danny’s radio.

She walked across the room. The M4A1 dangled from the strap in front of her. She used to think it cumbersome and heavy, but now she hardly felt it at all. She leaned against the wall by the window, mirroring Will’s pose.

“You should get some sleep,” he said.

“I did.”

“Are you sleeping okay? In general, I mean. Carly’s been using some melatonin pills. You should ask her for some.”

“She already gave me a handful.”

“You didn’t take them,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t need them,” she lied.

“Kate, if you need them, you should take them.”

“I don’t need them.”

“Kate…”

“Don’t do that,” she said, looking across the small space at him. “I hate it when you do that.”

“Do what?”

“You know what. Treating me like a helpless damsel in distress. Maybe I was when we first met, but I’m not anymore.”

“It’s not what I meant.”

“I’m fine,” she insisted. “I don’t need the pills. If I need them, I’ll take them.”

He nodded, though she could tell he wasn’t convinced. He was about to say something when they both heard a noise from the first floor.

It was the unmistakable tap-tap of bare feet.

He was moving forward in the darkness before she could say anything. She followed, drawing her Glock from its holster. He stopped at the door and they exchanged a brief, wordless nod. He opened it softly, one hand on the doorknob, the other holding the M4A1 in front of him, and slipped outside. She was right behind him.

He moved along the dark hallway, toward the staircase at the end, a shaft of moonlight from a small second floor window illuminating their path. He moved silently, like a ghost. She couldn’t figure out how he did that, with all the equipment he was carrying and the heavy combat boots he wore. She swore she creaked and crunched with every step.

He moved stealthily to the staircase, then slipped down it, disappearing out of sight.

She waited.

Five seconds.

Ten, fifteen, twenty…

She felt a sting of panic and began to hurry forward when he suddenly reappeared just below her, looking relaxed. “False alarm. Wild dog.”

“Are you kidding me?” She let her body relax and holstered the Glock. “How did it get inside?”

“Dogs can be pretty resourceful when they have to be. My guess is it saw the ghouls moving around outside and didn’t want to risk it.”

“Do you think they’d attack a dog?”

“I haven’t seen it happen yet, but doesn’t mean it won’t. What exactly is the thing that drives them? Human blood, or just blood?”

“Good question.”

He shrugged. “Maybe we’ll find out the answer one of these days.”

Three weeks later, and they still knew so little about the ghouls. Will had his theories, Carly had hers, and even Danny threw out some outlandish ideas that were more about being a smartass than coming up with actual theories. The one constant was that they were all guessing.

She turned to head back to the bedroom.

“Kate.”

She turned back and he was right there in front of her, his face as close to hers as it had ever been. He was taller than her, so she had to look up at him, and as she did he kissed her on the lips.

She was surprised but allowed her hands to slip around his waist. His own were suddenly on her body, his mouth moving roughly against hers. His hands felt surprisingly fine, even tender, roaming around the thick fabric of her thermal shirt. He caressed the exposed part of her neck and pulled her closer, kissed her harder.

She wanted this, she realized, but there was never the right time. Every day ended with all seven of them exhausted, always watching for ghouls, making bullets, scouring buildings and stores and houses for supplies. There never seemed to be a right time.

“Not out here,” she whispered. “In the bedroom.”

“Okay.”

She forced herself to pull away from him. He followed and closed the bedroom door behind them, already taking off his clothes. She struggled with her boots.

“Here,” he said, moving toward her. “Milady.”

She stifled a laugh. He knelt on the floor in front and made her sit on the end of the bed. He removed her boots one at a time, then eased her pants down. She felt like a teenage girl being undressed for the first time, and the feeling was electric.

“If you want me to stop…” His voice was soft in the darkness.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered.

She lay back on the bed, and he covered her body almost immediately, his mouth seeking hers, devouring her. His body was so warm, even in the chilly bedroom air, and the satin fabric of the sheets gentle underneath her bare back and buttocks as he entered her.

She moaned against his mouth and wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist and clung to him as he thrust inside her again and again. His intensity increased with each movement, and she felt overwhelmed and delirious, wanting more of him.

She wanted to cry out, but didn’t.

She clung to him instead, breathing him in, and wondered why she had waited so long.

The blanket rested next to her, but she didn’t reach for it. His body, already heated before sex, was like an oven afterward. She lay on top of him, letting his body heat warm her against the cool air. She could see his breath, forming a mist as soon as it left his lips.

She listened to the eerie nothingness around them, outside the house. Her ears tuned in to every rustling of the wind, creaking floorboards, and falling leaves. She tried to concentrate on the feel of him against her, her breasts crushed down against his warm chest, neither one of them caring about appearances.

She felt satisfied for the first time in a long time.

“What did you do before all of this?” he asked softly.

“Why?”

“I’m curious. I’m going to guess construction worker, but I might be wrong.”

“Close,” she smiled. “I made commercials.”

“Sounds fun.”

“Not really.” She sighed. “You don’t realize how utterly pointless your career choice is until the world crumbles, and all the skills you spent so much time learning in order to be the best in your field become instantly useless.”

Will chuckled in the darkness. “You make a lot of money doing something like that?”

“More than a cop.”

“Ouch.”

She laughed softly. “Let me ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

“I’ve always wanted to know. Do they pay you extra for being in SWAT?”

“Enough to order two Whoppers instead of one.”

“Impressive.”

“I could definitely go for a Whopper right about now.”

“Would you buy me one?”

“Why stop at one—”

A clacking noise from the street below them cut him short.

He reached for his Glock on the nightstand as she immediately climbed off him and slid across the bed to reach for her own holstered weapon on the floor. When she looked up, he was already at the window. She marveled at the way he moved — silently, like some kind of apparition.

She followed him and looked down into the street. In the moonlight she could see a rolling Coke can, aluminum scratching loudly against the asphalt. It was a small sound — insignificant, but it might as well be fireworks in this new existence.

Will pointed at something. A ghoul appeared from a bush across the street, watching with dark eyes as the can rolled past. Satisfied it wasn’t prey, it disappeared back behind the bush.

Dead, not stupid.

Will was smiling at her. She smiled back.

They were both standing naked in the dark holding guns. Utterly absurd and incomprehensible a few weeks ago, but tonight, in this abandoned house with an undead creature across the street, perfectly normal.

“You look cold,” he whispered.

She could feel her nipples standing erect in front of him. “You look pretty cold yourself.”

Will glanced down, then back at her. “I could change that in a hurry. You could help.”

“I bet that kind of sweet talk gets all the girls hot and bothered.”

He reached over and took her hand. She let him lead her back to the bed. They put their guns on the nightstand, and she pushed him down on the ruffled sheets and climbed on top. He cupped her breasts. Her nipples were fully erect and hard, and his touch sent all kinds of sensations through her.

“You have beautiful tits,” he said. “And yes, I do say that to all the girls.”

Kate reached back and held him against her palm. She lifted her body slightly up and guided him inside her. He moaned in the darkness. She leaned down and sought out his lips and kissed him hard, the way he had kissed her in the hallway.

He pushed his hands through her unruly long hair and held her mouth tightly to his. He lifted himself off the bed in time to her movements. She reached orgasm faster when on top, and she could sense it coming now. It had to be the moment. The here and now, the threat of the ghoul below, and the soundless night around them.

She opened her eyes, looked down at him. She moved faster, and he responded with urgency.

She came in waves and bit down on her lip to keep her cries from escaping into the cold air. He grabbed her waist and reversed their positions. The satin sheets rubbed against her back and buttocks as he thrust inside her until he, too, came, stifling his own moans against her mouth. He tasted hot and sweet and salty.

They slept the rest of the night with her body splayed on top of his, his arms around her, holding her tight. She wasn’t sure if he slept at all, but she felt his warm breath against her and the slow beating of his heart, and for a brief moment she convinced herself that things might not be so bad after all, that maybe there was something of a chance for them.

The thought lasted until the sun came up a few hours later, when they had to untangle and go face the reality outside.

CHAPTER 20 WILL

Harold Campbell was a paranoid rich man with too much time on his hands. He was perpetually afraid the United States government was going to raze his mansions — word was he had more than one, possibly three or four, depending on who you asked — or send the vicious hound dogs of the IRS after him on some trumped-up charge. One day, it occurred to Campbell that the only way to defend himself from the government was to build an underground facility that could, conceivably, withstand a nuclear strike. Unless, of course, the nuke landed directly on top of the place, and then, yeah, he’d probably go right along with the rest of humanity. Harold Campbell was paranoid, but he wasn’t stupid, after all.

Will knew about Campbell’s flights of fancy, because he had spent two weeks trying to learn the construction business from a friend, before eventually deciding he’d rather spend his time kicking in doors and shooting bad guys instead. That friend was Tom Lerner, a fellow Ranger he and Danny knew from their time in Afghanistan. Lerner’s family business was one of many contracted to build Campbell’s underground survival lair.

Will spent two weeks helping Lerner’s family pour concrete and install electrical components around the facility. He also spied bits and pieces of the floor plans, enough to know that he and the Lerners were building only a small portion of the structure, that there were many others at work elsewhere, a small army of builders coming and going, and more still waiting to start their phase.

The place had multiple layers and redundancies, all designed to withstand and survive a prolonged assault. Will had never met Campbell himself — no one had, according to Tom — though every now and then he saw one of Campbell’s assistants walking around with a video camera sending live feeds to their boss back…well, wherever it was Campbell spent his days. He was never on scene, but he was nevertheless always there. Sort of.

That was five years ago, and given Campbell’s money and resources, it wasn’t a stretch to believe the facility was finished, and probably had been years ago. The question was, had Campbell gotten to it in time? Will doubted it, unless the man was already living inside the facility at the time of what Will and the others were referring to as The Purge. That was possible, but unlikely.

What he was fairly certain of was that the facility was there, and it was their best shot.

He told the others all of this while they were still in Houston.

To his surprise, they agreed to follow him out of the city.

Danny and Ted were waiting in the driveway of the temporary home base, the garage door open behind them, when he and Kate walked down the street from the house they had spent the previous night.

Danny glanced in his direction, and a second later Will heard a click in his ear: “Took your sweet time. We were starting to wonder if you two had run off together.”

“Thought about it,” he said, “but it would have been cruel, leaving them with you.”

“Now that hurts. Speaking of which, you get some last night?”

Will glanced reflexively at Kate.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.” He pressed the PTT switch. “Everyone good?”

“Sounds like a ‘Yes’ to me,” Danny said in his ear. “Hopefully you still remembered how to get the job done. It’s been a while, right? Since that emo chick you picked up outside the Taco Cabana on Westheimer?”

“Great,” Will said, aware Kate was watching him closely. “We saw about two dozen of them last night, checking the houses up and down the street.”

“Yeah, we heard them moving around the house. Same group from yesterday, you think?”

“Possibly.”

“If it’s the same ones, then they’ve doubled since the last time we saw them. That’s not good.”

“Nope. Not if they’re following us.”

“You think they’re following us?”

“Maybe.”

“By the way, you didn’t answer my question. How was it? Spectacular? She looks like a spectacular lay.”

“Fuck off.”

“What’s he saying?” Kate said, a hint of annoyance in her voice.

“Something about his mom,” Will said.

“Oh, go for the momma jokes,” Danny said in his ear. “Classy.”

Kate rolled her eyes. “He’s asking about us, isn’t he? What did you tell him?”

“Nothing.” When she looked like she didn’t believe him, he feigned hurt. “Honest. Not a thing.”

“Uh huh,” she said, clearly not believing a word of it.

As they reached Danny, a motor started up and Luke rode one of the ATVs out of the garage and down the driveway. The four-wheel all-terrain vehicle, a red Yamaha with dented sides, was hauling a trailer behind it, topped with supplies underneath a heavy tarp cinched closed to keep the wind from ripping it loose.

“Welcome back!” Luke shouted over the roar of the engine. “Thought we might have lost you guys last night!”

“This guy?” Danny said. “Ghouls wouldn’t know what to do with him.”

Ted rode a green Honda out after Luke, his ATV also pulling its own supply trailer. They had found the vehicles in a sports shop along Highway 59 on their way out of Houston. The place had been ransacked, but there were plenty left behind. The ATVs proved invaluable, allowing them to take the highways by staying mostly along the shoulders and maneuvering around vehicles in their path. And when they needed to, the vehicles traveled just as well along smaller roads, dirt trails, and sidewalks. The hitched trailers made carrying supplies and bullet-making materials effortless.

Ted and Luke parked their ATVs in the street, then went back inside the garage and drove out two more. Will’s ATV was a black Yamaha that — like the other ATVs — had seen plenty of action in its previous life. It had a solid motor, which was all that mattered.

Carly and Vera came out of the house, shielding their eyes against the glare of the sun. They looked energetic, even refreshed.

Danny said, “Grab a shower. Bottled water, soap, and shampoo are in the bathroom on the second floor.” He wrinkled his nose. “In fact, I insist.”

“I smell like a rose,” Will said.

“Keep telling yourself that. We’re not going to be moving for another hour anyway. Smoke’em if you got’em.”

Kate asked, “An hour?”

“Go for it.”

“If you insist.” She hurried up the driveway, stopping to chat with Carly and Vera briefly before continuing into the house.

Will looked after her for a moment before he sensed Danny standing next to him. “What?”

“So? Spectacular, good, or just meh?”

“Best night of my life,” Will smiled.

“Damn, really? I suspected, but I had no idea your sex life was that bad before everything went to shit.” He sniffed Will and made a face. “It must be the dirty, filthy, foul-smelling kind of sex.”

“King-size bed didn’t hurt.”

“Just like a hotel, huh?”

“Minus the room service. We made do, though.”

Carly came over to them. “Kate said you guys got stuck in one of the houses last night. We were worried.”

“All’s well that ends well,” Danny said. “By which I mean they totally had sex last night.”

“Oh, real subtle, Danny,” Carly said, rolling her eyes at him. Then she smiled at Will and said, “So, how was it? Spectacular, good, or just meh?”

“You’ve been hanging around Danny too long,” Will said.

Harold Campbell had chosen a secluded patch of land that he had purchased years ago in the city of Starch, Texas, about thirty-two kilometers — or about two hours given their deliberate progress — from Cleveland. Starch was a city of 2,000 residents and was remote enough from prying state and federal government eyes for Campbell to get away with building his compound. The city also had something Campbell needed — Lake Livingston, a huge nearby reservoir of water.

Between the two small cities, the highway had flattened out noticeably, with walls of trees flanking the four-lane highway. There were few elevated roads this far out of the city, and at times the road was so well-trodden that it felt as if they were driving on hard gravel. Most of the businesses they passed along the way were gas stations, diners, and every now and then, a strip mall with a few businesses vying for attention. Ancient structures that had been here forever, and had always relied on the occasional customers for survival.

Will rode his ATV with Kate behind him. Danny rode with Vera clinging tightly to his waist, while Carly rode with Ted on his Yamaha. They were all carrying supplies in trailers. Except for Luke, whose Honda was up the road ahead of everyone. Will had given the kid the same communications gear that he, Danny, and Ted wore, so Luke could keep in touch at all times.

He heard a click in his right ear, followed by Luke’s voice: “Hey, guys, reporting in.”

Will clicked the PTT: “Go ahead.”

“He shouldn’t be out that far ahead!” Kate shouted over the wind.

Will looked farther up the road but couldn’t see any signs of Luke. He told the kid repeatedly not to get too far ahead of them, but teenagers were still teenagers. One with a very cool toy, no less. Kate hated the idea of Luke riding alone, but she had about as much control over him as Will did. Which was to say, very little.

Luke said, “There’s an overturned semi about half a mile ahead. It’s made a pretty big pileup and there are cars blocking both sides of the highway. I don’t know if we can even go around it, it’s pretty big.”

Will heard Danny’s voice cut in: “Luke, did you say there was an accident ahead?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Are you sure it was an accident?”

“What do you mean?” Luke sounded confused.

“Did it look like an accident?”

“I’m not sure…”

“How many cars did you say there were?”

“I’m looking at one of those big rigs and maybe two dozen more cars. Why?”

“And they’re covering both sides of the highway? All four lanes?” Will asked, joining back in. He knew exactly where Danny was going.

“Yeah,” Luke said, though he sounded unsure now. “Why? What’s going on?”

Will exchanged a brief look with Danny, riding nearby.

Luke said, “I can try going around it…”

“No,” Will said quickly. “I want you to head back to us.”

“Go back? Why?”

“I want you to start back toward us, Luke. Now.”

Will slowed down and stopped, Danny doing the same next to him. Ted, coming up behind them, did likewise.

“What’s happening?” Kate asked, alarmed.

“There’s an overturned semi up ahead,” Will said. “We’re too close now, I don’t want to take any chances.”

“What about Luke?”

“He’s coming back.”

“I’ve told that kid over and over not to get too far ahead of us,” Ted grunted.

“He’s a teenager,” Danny said. “It’s his job to not listen. It’s written in the DNA.”

They could see Luke coming back in the distance, his red ATV a sudden flash of color in a stretch of very gray road and brown, sunburned grass.

“What’s the plan?” Danny asked.

“Let’s see what we’re dealing with first,” Will said.

“How far to the facility?” Carly asked.

“At this speed, two more hours, give or take,” Will said. “We have plenty of daylight left, there’s no need to hurry.”

He glanced down at his watch: 9:11 a.m.

Plenty of time.

A loud, cracking noise punctured the quiet.

He knew instantly what it was and so did Danny, and before the others could react, the two of them had climbed off their ATVs and were unslinging their M4A1s.

“Gunshot!” Will shouted. “Get behind cover now!”

The others hurried down and scrambled for cover. Will, crouched next to his vehicle, looked up the road and saw Luke’s bright red ATV slowly rolling toward them. It was drifting and the seat was empty. There were no signs of Luke.

“Oh, God, Luke…” Kate whispered next to him, her voice breathless.

Will lifted his binoculars and looked down the road. The bright fire-red ATV had gone nose-first into a ditch nearby, one of its back wheels still spinning in the air, its sputtering engine still turning. He looked past the vehicle and saw a figure lying facedown on the asphalt road about 190 meters from their position.

Luke.

The kid’s arm was moving noticeably.

“He’s alive,” Will said.

He could feel Kate next to him, her entire body a box of boiling energy.

“We’ll get to him, Kate,” Will said. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

She didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure she’d even heard him.

“Kate,” he said, more forcefully this time.

She looked at him, indecision, shock, and fear on her face. He had seen that same look in dozens of faces in Afghanistan. War always looked different in person, where it was usually twenty-three hours of boredom followed by one hour of sheer terror.

“He’s alive,” Will said, “and he’s going to stay that way. But I need you to stay here.”

Her eyes widened. “No, don’t make me!”

“Someone has to cover us.”

She started to argue, but then stopped and nodded, her face still pained. “Go. Hurry.”

He looked over and met Danny’s eyes. He was crouched behind his ATV with Vera clutching at his waist, her face buried in his back. “How we doing this?” Danny asked.

“We go out and get him. Kate and Ted cover us.” Will looked at Ted and focused on the big man’s eyes until he was sure Ted was really listening. “Shoot anything that moves. With the exception of us.”

“I second that last part,” Danny said.

Ted nodded. He clutched and unclutched his.308 Winchester. The bolt-action rifle had a big $2,000 scope on top, and Ted had proven surprisingly efficient with it.

“Ted,” Will said, “watch the trees to our right. That’s where the first shot came from. They’ll most likely still be in there. You see a muzzle flash, you shoot back at it and you keep shooting until that muzzle appears somewhere else. Then you follow it and you shoot at that. Understand?”

Ted nodded again. He looked calm, even in control. Will didn’t entirely believe it, but he had no choice.

Will said to Danny, “Let’s go.”

Carly ran over and pried Vera from Danny. He smiled and kissed the girl on the forehead. “I’ll be back, Vera the Explorer. Don’t go joyriding on my ATV, you got it?”

Vera gave him a thumbs-up as she was whisked back behind one of the trailers by Carly, who fixed Danny with a serious look. “I’ll kick your ass if you get shot.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Danny and Will quickly unhooked the trailers from their ATVs and climbed back on.

Will gave Ted and Kate one last nod. “Unless they start moving up the road, you should be fine at this distance. But just in case, use the trailers as a shield. I’m counting on you guys to cover us.”

Ted said, “You got it.”

Kate’s eyes were locked on him. “Please,” she said, almost pleading, “bring him back.”

“I will,” Will said.

He gunned the ATV and took off down the road. Danny quickly caught up to him. They cranked up the throttle, chewing the distance between them and Luke in seconds.

He hadn’t been able to pinpoint the exact location of the shot, but he knew it came from the woods to their right. Probably camouflaged. They were dealing with people who had been here for a while, who had probably done this before. That meant they were prepared, well-armed, and there was likely more than one. The odds weren’t very good, especially just riding down the road in the open. He felt like an idiot, but there was no other way to save Luke.

He saw the kid moving up the road through his binoculars. Barely moving, but moving, that was the important part. Hurt bad, probably in shock, trying to understand what was happening to him. But alive.

The gunshot was from a hunting rifle. Probably a Winchester, similar to the one Ted was carrying. That wasn’t good. Ted’s rifle was loaded with.308s. Will had seen the kind of damage.308s could do to a human body. Depending on where Luke was shot, he was either going to die as soon as they reached him, or later tonight. Either way, he was going to be in immense pain for a while. The smart thing would be to leave him.

Of course, he wasn’t doing that.

You’re an idiot.

They were forty-five meters from Luke now, and he started to feel good about their chances. Maybe the people who had shot Luke had fled. That was a possibility. Maybe the shooters had expected only one person, but when they saw not just two more, but six more, they panicked and decided to fight another day.

He was still considering that very optimistic possibility when the air cracked with gunfire and he heard the incredibly loud buzzing of a bullet zipping by the back of his right ear.

Captain Optimism. Fuck you.

CHAPTER 21 KATE

Kate thought she had gotten used to the sound of gunfire after all the training sessions, shooting at targets, and nighttime hunting with Will, but she was wrong. She peered through her rifle’s sight and watched Will and Danny on their ATVs, riding low, pushing forward to reach Luke despite the bullets flying around them. It was insane. Illogical and insane.

Over the last few weeks, she had managed to cultivate some kind of order in her life out of the chaos. But this, this…

This was pure chaos.

And Luke. Poor Luke. Lying out there on the road. Bleeding. Dying. Maybe already dead. She couldn’t tell from this distance, though she could see his dark shape lying motionless on the road 200 yards away. She couldn’t make out any details, and maybe that was for the best.

She focused on the wall of trees along the right side of the road instead, where Will told them to concentrate. She moved the sight farther up the woods, even as gunfire made her jump each time it rang out. They were much louder than when she was shooting the M4A1 even on full-auto. It had to be the different caliber.

She almost laughed.

Bullets. Calibers. When the hell did words like that enter her vocabulary?

She tried not to swing the sight back to Will, to make sure he was still alive as he continued up the road. She needed to find the shooters, locate them within the green and gray and brown of the woods and—

There.

She saw it — the flash of a rifle firing among the trees. Will was right, they were in there. Hidden like cowards. Kate saw only one muzzle flash, though she was sure there was more than one person firing. There had to be. They were using hunting rifles like the one Ted carried, and those could only fire one shot at a time. And from the sounds of it, they were firing constantly at Will and Danny.

She stopped the pointless, random thoughts, and taking a breath, fired off three quick rounds from her M4A1.

She didn’t know if she hit anyone, or even came close, but she quickly adjusted herself and standing up, fired another three rounds into the same general vicinity. Somewhere behind her, she heard the thunderous boom of Ted’s rifle. It was so loud she almost jumped, but she gathered herself and squeezed off another burst into the trees.

Kate swiveled her rifle down the road and picked up Will and Danny, no longer on their ATVs, but on their knees next to Luke. Will was in a shooting position with his M4A1 and was calmly firing shot after shot into the wall of trees. Danny did the same before quickly slinging his rifle, grabbing Luke, and throwing the teenager over his shoulder then carrying him back to his vehicle.

She watched where Will was firing, then swiveled her rifle to the same spot and fired in that direction, squeezing off round after round until she was empty.

Kate quickly took out the magazine and pushed in a new one as Ted fired next to her into the trees, in the same direction that she had been shooting. She took aim and joined him, fighting the urge to switch the fire selector to full-auto and just unleash the entire magazine.

Will’s words flashed in her head: “One at a time. In a gunfight, your best asset is your ability to aim and fire.”

So she fired two shots, stopped, waited a second, then fired two more, stopped, waited and fired again.

She swung her rifle back to Will. He was walking calmly to the ATVs, firing into the trees. He hopped onto his vehicle at the same time Danny took off on his, Luke’s body thrown across the seat like some freshly killed deer. The image made her almost vomit.

She followed Danny’s progress back to them when the gunfire led her back to reality. The ambushers were shooting at Will and Danny again.

She scanned the wall of trees, looking for a muzzle flash…

There!

She emptied the magazine into the general vicinity she thought the flash came from, squeezing the trigger again and again and again, without pausing this time. The rifle bucked with every shot and it was like getting kicked in the shoulder by a mule. But she had prepared her body for it and absorbed the impacts, never taking her eye off the sight and the red dot at the center.

Then Will and Danny were there, a loud squeal as they jammed on their brakes and their tires slid along the highway road.

Suddenly it was quiet.

The ambushers had stopped firing. Maybe it was the distance, maybe they realized they had lost the advantage, but the world seemed to instantly shut down around them, all except for the chirping of birds and insects buzzing in the woods.

Will hopped off his ATV and began hitching the trailers back into place. He worked and talked, calmly — always calmly. “That roadside place about three klicks back. We’re going to use that for now.”

Kate, like Ted and Carly, was in a daze as she stared at Luke’s body, slumped over Danny’s ATV. His white shirt was now a ghastly purple color, his face covered in a sheen of sweat that dripped down onto the hot asphalt. He didn’t look alive, and Kate wasn’t sure if he was still breathing. She wanted to reach out and feel for a pulse, but she was frozen, unable to move, and could only stare dumbly.

Will was suddenly next to her. Slowly, she heard his voice: “Kate, we have to go.”

She swam through a haze and tried to focus on him, standing in the sun, sweat dripping from his face despite the December weather. She might have answered. Or nodded. Or moved. She didn’t remember.

Her next memory was wind against her face, because they were moving, riding back down the road they had traveled only minutes ago. She was barely aware of climbing onto the ATV behind Will, or wrapping her arms tightly around his waist. Her eyes focused up the road at Danny, riding up front with Luke still slumped across his vehicle.

He’s dead. I know he’s dead.

Carly and Vera rode double behind Ted, the little girl squeezed between the two adults, looking uncomfortable but not complaining. She never complained. She was such a good soldier. Better than her.

They reached their destination after what seemed like hours of riding against the wind, though it was probably just minutes. Her sense of time and space was out of balance, and it was hard to keep track of where she was.

They turned off the road and onto a patch of dirt in front of two old buildings, with nothing but trees behind them. A small diner on the left and an auto body shop on the right made up the roadside establishment, surrounded by something that didn’t even vaguely resemble a parking lot.

They stopped the ATVs in front of the diner, and Danny hopped off. Carly got there quickly, and together they lifted Luke off as Will, M4A1 in hand, led the way, pushing into the diner’s door.

Kate sat numbly on the ATV, unsure what to do, or even if she could move if she wanted to. She watched Will through the dust-caked diner windows as he disappeared into the back of the building, before re-emerging seconds later and slinging his rifle. Danny and Carly had laid Luke down on the counter, and even through the window, Kate could see blood dripping onto the polished countertop, roll off the side, and fall to the floor. The blood seemed to have an oddly pale color, but maybe that was due to the dust on the windows.

She was vaguely aware of Ted standing next to her, talking. “Come on, Kate, it’s not safe out here. We need to go in with the others.”

She followed him inside the diner. She was moving on automatic pilot, barely noticing the steps she was taking or the thick whiff of abandonment that surged out of the diner when Ted opened the door.

She wished she hadn’t followed him inside. Seeing Luke lying on the countertop, bleeding, was worse up close. At least through the window she couldn’t tell how miserably pale he looked, how much he was sweating and bleeding. He didn’t move at all. Carly was holding a rag against Luke’s belly where the bullet had pierced, but it didn’t seem to be helping. Luke was still bleeding.

There was so much blood.

She thought of Donald, bleeding in the garage all those nights ago. She had wondered then, too, how someone could bleed so much and still be alive. It had turned out Donald wasn’t alive for very long, and looking at Luke now, she wondered how long he was going to last.

Probably not very long, either.

Will hovered over Luke, looking at his wound, oblivious to the blood gushing out as he touched and prodded. “Large caliber,” he said to no one in particular. “Looks like a thirty-aught-six. Entered his side from the back and went clean through the front, so that’s the good news. The bad news is that he’s lost a lot of blood. A lot of blood.”

She sat quietly and watched Will continue to poke around Luke’s bloody mid-section. A moment later, Danny came back out of the backroom with a first-aid kit and more white rags that he put on Luke. The rags turned a bleak red as soon as they touched the teenager’s body.

She flinched.

“There should be more inside the closet,” Danny said to Carly, who hurried into the back room, her hands covered in blood.

Will was still poking at the wound, and Kate wanted to shout at him to stop. Didn’t he see that it was just making it worse?

“How’s he looking?” Danny asked.

“I’ve seen worse,” Will said.

“Jackson in Kabul?”

“Close second.”

“Well, at least Luke still has his legs.”

“Captain Optimism,” Will grunted.

“Someone’s gotta be. What about the shooters?”

“We’ll deal with them later.”

She reminded herself that Will and Danny were Rangers, that they were trained for this. Or something like this. Weren’t they?

Luke would be fine. He would live.

He had to.

She wasn’t sure what happened, or how, but she felt a slight bump on the back of her head and then everything went black.

When Kate opened her eyes, she saw spiders dangling from cobwebs along the blades of a fan on the ceiling, visible over Will’s right shoulder. She felt like crap, and trying to sit up sent stabbing pains through her body.

“Easy does it,” Will said and helped her up to a sitting position in the booth.

“What happened?”

“You keeled over backward and hit your head on the seat and somehow managed to knock yourself out.”

She looked over to the counter, but Luke wasn’t there anymore. Instead, there was a thick pool of blood where he had been lying. There was blood all over the countertop and on the floor. Like the leftovers of a gruesome crime scene.

Suddenly, the worst-case scenario washed over her. “Is Luke…?”

“He’s in one of the back rooms,” Will said. “We managed to stop the bleeding and patched him up as best we could. Good thing we found that animal clinic last week. The morphine and gauze tape came in handy.”

“He’s okay?” she asked, almost afraid to hear his response.

“I don’t know. He lost a lot of blood. We managed to get him stable, but… He’s lost a lot of blood, Kate.”

“I heard you tell Danny you’ve seen worse.”

“I have. But war wounds are different from getting shot by some dick with a hunting rifle on the road.”

“How is it different?”

“It just is.”

She felt faint again. Seeing her expression, he quickly handed her a bottle of water. She took a big gulp, somehow exhausted and wired at the same time.

“You did really good back there,” Will said. “You and Ted. You saved our lives.”

“Thanks.” She didn’t really feel all that heroic. She only recalled wasting two magazines by firing into the trees.

She looked around the empty diner.

“Ted’s on the roof,” Will said. “In case our friends decide to follow. I doubt they will. Guys who set up ambushes along country highways don’t usually have the balls to attack where you can see them. And Vera is in the back room with Carly, watching over Luke in case he wakes up or needs anything.”

“Where’s Danny?”

“He should be on his way back about now.”

“Back from where?”

“Up the road.”

“You mean back there? By himself?” She felt panic rising. “How could you let him go by himself, Will?”

“He’s safer by himself.” He looked amused. “Relax, he’s just doing a little recon. He’ll be fine. I’m more worried about you.”

“I’m just a little light-headed.” Standing up took a lot of effort, and she had to fight against her wobbling knees.

She wondered if he noticed. If he did, he didn’t say anything.

She looked out the window, at the road beyond the dirt parking lot and gas pumps. “How long has Danny been gone?”

“Kate, he’ll be fine. I just heard from him five minutes ago.”

“Five minutes ago?”

“Relax, Kate, this is what we do for a living, remember? Besides, he’s only supposed to make contact every five minutes.” Will glanced at his watch, then cocked his head, listening to something. “Speak of the devil.” He nodded to no one in particular, then clicked the PTT dangling from his Motorola radio. “Roger that. Get back here.”

“Was that Danny?” she asked.

“He’s on his way back now.”

“What did he say? Did he find them?”

“He found where they were camping out in the woods. Looks like we might have hit one or more of them. They’re bleeding, leaving a pretty big trail to follow, too.”

“So what now?”

“We wait until Danny comes back. In the meantime, we have five hours until sundown. We need to get ready for tonight. We’re not moving from here for a while, not with Luke in his condition.”

She glanced toward the back of the diner, where Luke was…

“You should go see him,” Will said. “He’s sleeping, but he’s stable.”

“Tell me the truth. Is he going to live?” She didn’t look at him, because she was afraid she would see his eyes when he answered and she would know he was lying. She didn’t want to know.

“If he doesn’t bleed again in the night, yes,” Will said.

“And if he does?”

“He’s already lost a lot of blood. Right now, we’re at the mercy of his body. But he’s a young man, and they tend to heal fast.” He hesitated, before adding, “Truth is, we won’t know for sure until tomorrow morning if he’s going to live.”

They heard an engine approaching and looked out the windows to see Danny coming back on his ATV, kicking up a cloud of dirt and dust behind him as he entered the parking lot.

A few seconds later, Danny entered the diner. “Three, maybe four or five.”

“How many wounded?” Will asked.

“If it’s just one of them, then he’s a real bleeder.”

“What now?” Kate asked.

“Now, we get you guys ready to spend the night here,” Will said. His face darkened. “After that, Danny and I will go find whoever put a bullet through Luke and return the favor.”

“Good thing we have a lot of bullets to spare,” Danny said.

“Good,” Kate said somberly. “Make sure you kill them all.”

They chose the auto body shop next door. Or to be more precise, the garage. There were only two entrances in — the garage door itself and a door that led into the office. The garage door was made of heavy sheets of steel and it would take more than a dozen ghouls all night to break through with their bare hands. Kate remembered the last time she had found herself in a garage alone. The night of The Purge. Maybe this was a good sign. At least she wouldn’t be alone this time.

Ted had switched to the auto body shop’s roof, crouching low to keep from becoming an easy target. She could hear him moving above them, the crunch-crunch of his boots, a reminder that he was bigger than the average man.

Will and Danny hung the Rayovac LED lanterns they had brought with them from Houston around the garage. The space was limited, but they were able to stash their supply trailers and still have enough room for the office couch, on which they laid Luke. The teenager was unconscious, and he still looked dangerously pale. She was heartened to see that he was breathing, his chest rising and falling through the day, even if he did seem to struggle with it periodically.

He’s alive, that’s all that matters.

She found Will and Danny in the diner next door and was surprised to see them packing night-vision gear. “Why are you taking those?”

“Just in case we get caught out there when night falls,” Will said. He picked up one of the Motorola radios and removed a couple of wires attached to them before handing it to her. “We don’t think the shooters’ home base is far from here. Maybe three, four klicks. They wouldn’t want to set up their ambush too far from where they can walk to and back.”

She took the radio. There was dry blood along its edges. It was part of the comms system Luke was wearing. She remembered seeing him putting it on this morning before they left, and how young he looked, wearing gear designed for men who lived and died in war zones.

He was so young. He is young.

“Kate,” Will said, his voice bringing her back.

She looked up from the radio.

“If we don’t make it back before nightfall, we’ll radio in if we can,” Will said. “These things usually have a three- to four-kilometer range, but those woods look pretty thick, and radio signals might have a hard time getting through.”

“Is all this really necessary?”

“Expect the best, prepare for the worst,” Danny said.

“What is that, some kind of motto?”

“Ranger motto,” Danny said. “Well, ours, anyway. That, and ‘Never screw a farmer’s daughter until you know how often she spends her free time in the barn.’ We learned that the hard way during a practice jaunt in Oklahoma.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Will said. “We’ve never even been to Oklahoma.”

“Speak for yourself.”

Will said to Kate, “You’ll have to watch over the others until we get back.”

“What if you don’t come back?”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“But what if.”

“That’s not going to happen.” He put down the spare magazines he had been loading, reached for her hand and pulled her close to him, then kissed her softly. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

“Promise?” she whispered, feeling childish, but unable to stop herself.

“Promise,” he said and kissed her again, more forcefully this time.

Behind them, Danny said, “Get a fucking room. I’m trying to work here.”

She and Ted watched Will and Danny leave on their ATVs from the roof of the auto body shop. They headed back in the direction they had fled just a few hours ago. Had it only been a few hours since the gun battle on the road?

“They’ll be okay,” Ted said. “This is what they do, right?”

“Yeah.”

She watched the ATVs until they were gone, leaving just the sound of their engines in the air. Soon, that too was gone. She touched the radio clipped to her hip and fought the urge to call Will and tell him to come back, that they should wait until tomorrow.

She glanced at the sky instead. It looked darker, clouds gathering.

“How long should we stay up here?” Ted asked.

“Maybe an hour before sundown.”

She sensed Ted wanted to say more, but something was holding him back. The big man fidgeted with the rifle in his hands. He suddenly looked very young to her; his imposing size made it easy to forget he was still in his early twenties.

“Are you okay, Ted?”

He gave her a grin that came out wrong. “Back there, when they shot Luke… Were you scared?”

“I was scared out of my mind,” she said, relieved by the admission. It was easier with Ted. He was like her, a civilian pressed into war. She could never be this candid with Will or Danny.

“Yeah, me, too,” Ted said. “I think I might have gotten one of them.”

“Yeah? Danny said at least one of the ambushers had been shot.”

Ted nodded. “I saw a figure in my scope. It’s stronger than yours, you know? I’m pretty sure I got one of them.” He paused, seemed to struggle with his thoughts. “When you started shooting into the trees, I saw one of them moving behind this big tree and I shot at him. I wonder if he’s dead.”

I hope they’re all dead. I hope it was painful and they lay bleeding. They can all go to hell.

“We’ll find out when Will and Danny come back,” she said instead.

CHAPTER 22 LARA

Lara felt overwhelming relief whenever they left her alone in the cabin, and suffocating fear when they returned, as they invariably did, day after day after day. It had been almost two weeks since she had become acquainted with the Sunday brothers, and each day introduced a new level of fear she hadn’t thought possible. It was a debilitating feeling, one she lived with, breathed in, and even slept with, perched on the tip of her lips. It wouldn’t go away as long as the Sundays were alive, she knew that intimately.

They were coming now, the heavy grunts and rutting noises they always made as they moved around. Except this time there was a difference. It sounded more urgent, more desperate, and for a moment she allowed herself to enjoy this new sensation. The sound of the Sundays in obvious distress made her smile.

They left three hours ago, leaving her, as usual, chained to the floor by her ankle. In those three hours, she heard gunfire and recognized the Sundays’ hunting rifles. They often hunted in the woods around the cabin, so hearing rifles throughout the day was normal.

Then she heard other gunshots that weren’t hunting rifles, and knew it was some kind of gunfight. The Sundays had found someone who was fighting back! She imagined them shot to pieces and lying on the side of the highway, bleeding slowly to death. Moaning in pain, crying out to each other.

Her fantasy lasted until she heard them coming back, their huffing and puffing, their grunting and groans of pain.

She reflexively stood up. The chain was only five feet long, so she couldn’t move very far. The doors and windows were at least twenty feet away, and the kitchen even farther. There were small bedrooms in the back — one for John, the other for Fred and Jack, the younger brothers. Not that she could have called for help even if she could reach the door or windows. There was no one out there. She found that out her first night in the cabin, when she screamed at the top of her lungs for seemingly hours on end.

There was no one out there. It was just the Sundays.

John kicked the door open and rushed inside. He and Jack were dragging Fred, the youngest, between them. They had their rifles, except for Fred.

As soon as he saw her, John gritted his teeth and shouted through his patch of thick beard at Jack, “Go unchain her!”

All three brothers were bloody, though only Fred looked hurt. It was Fred’s blood on the others’ clothes. They must have dragged him through the woods, all the way from the gun battle. They were covered in sweat and dirt and blood, the way they always looked in her nightmares.

Jack let go of Fred and rushed forward to her. He was a lanky twenty-seven-year-old, ten years younger than John, though much smaller. Fred was taller than both of them, but frail looking. John lifted his little brother and carried him to a heavily scarred oak table in the back. Fred bled all the way there, squirming uncontrollably in John’s arms. John looked almost annoyed.

Jack took a key from his pocket. He undid the shackle around her ankle without a word. She felt immediate relief. The skin around the ankle had bled and scabbed over a dozen times, and in a sick way, she had become used to the feel of the heavy, cold steel pressed against her flesh.

“Go help him,” Jack said. “He’s been shot.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“I told you, he’s been shot,” Jack said impatiently. “Go help him, Goddammit!”

He pushed her roughly. She stumbled, stepped on the long hem of her dress, and almost fell, but managed to stay upright somehow. She didn’t wear the dress, it clung to her, covered in dirt and sweat. She had slept in it for the past five days. It was torn around the edges and badly frayed all over, its floral pattern faded. She was afraid it would fall apart any day now, exposing her to the brothers.

She hurried over to John and Fred. It didn’t pay to move slowly around the brothers, especially John. How many times had he hit her for being too slow? She had stopped counting.

Fred’s wound was big and wide, and it looked like the kind she saw on the animals the brothers brought home after each hunt. She had seen post-mortem wounds on cadavers at school, but nothing fresh like this. Her stomach turned, and she instantly remembered Tony.

Sweet Tony, lying dead on the road, lifeless eyes staring back at her…

She looked at Fred now, twisting in pain, soaked in his own blood, and wondered if it was Fred who shot Tony. She was too afraid to ask. It was probably John, since he did most of the killings.

Fred was eighteen, but he looked much younger despite the hand-me-down clothes and facial hair. He didn’t have the stomach for most of the things his two older brothers did. Of the three, he was always the kindest to her. Even when he chained her up, she could see his discomfort, and once he even apologized.

She always had to remind herself of who they were. Not just John and Jack, but Fred, too, because he went along with them. He was just as culpable as the others. The Sundays killed anyone who had the misfortune of running across their highway ambush. The lucky ones managed to get around the roadblock when the brothers weren’t watching from their perch in the woods. The unlucky ones, like her, or the two girls that came after her…

John was staring at her, his face twisted into that demonic expression that warned her something bad was about to happen. “Stop just standing there and stop his bleeding.”

She moved closer to get a better look at the wound. This was why John kept her alive, long after he had gotten tired of her, long after they had realized her cooking wasn’t anything they couldn’t do themselves — and better. When he learned she studied medicine, it was as close to happy as she had seen him.

“Well?” John grunted. “Can you fix him up or not?”

“I don’t know,” she said. It was an honest answer, but it was the wrong one. She hadn’t even finished speaking when John hit her across the face with the back of his hand.

She reeled back and fell to the hard cabin floor, a place she was familiar with.

He loomed over her, his massive bulk blocking her view. Spittle hit her face as he grunted out, “You fucking save him or I’m going to cut your tits off one by one. Get to fucking work!”

She nodded through the throbbing pain, relieved he hadn’t knocked loose one of her teeth. She remembered the two girls they brought back that night, how one of them had a mouthful of blood and gaping holes where her teeth used to be…

Stop it! Concentrate on the moment!

John lumbered across the room to Jack, who was looking on from a distance, as if afraid to get too close and become infected by Fred’s injury. She could see it in Jack’s face. He was scared. Not just of John — he was always scared of John — but of what had happened out there.

She turned back to Fred. He had a soft, almost cherubic face, but right now he looked old and tired, grimacing through the pain, staring up at her with tears welling in his eyes. He didn’t make a sound except for the occasional wheezing that slipped through his lips. He was putting on a brave face.

“You’ll be all right,” she said.

He smiled at her, though she couldn’t be sure if that was because he believed her or saw right through her lie.

John stomped back to them. Lara quickly began unbuttoning Fred’s shirt to reveal the hole in his belly. It was huge and pumping blood, and she almost fainted at the sight. She blinked through the horror and concentrated on his pale, sweat-covered face instead.

“Well?” John said behind her.

“He’s bleeding badly. I need supplies…”

He was already thinking ahead of her and thrust a dust-covered first-aid box into her hands. John walked around the table and stared down at the hole in Fred’s stomach. Jack had come over, too, and was standing behind her. She could hear him breathing, raggedly, as if he were the one lying there bleeding to death instead of Fred.

“Hurry up and stop the bleeding,” John said.

She opened the box and took out the roll of gauze tape. She looked at Fred, saw the desperate sadness in his eyes, pleading with her to keep him alive.

Please, God, let him live, so I can live one more day…

Fred was alive, but she didn’t think he would last very long. She would be surprised if he survived the night. She hadn’t done much, except clean his wound and cover it with gauze to stop the bleeding. The bullet had gone clean through, entering his stomach and out his back. It was a miracle the bullet hadn’t severed his spine, though it had come close.

She hoped that saving him for now would mean something to John. If not, he would punish her again…

She wanted to live. She hadn’t been sure that first night in the cabin, but she was sure now.

She wanted to live.

They left Fred on the table, unconscious. She had given him enough morphine to tranq a horse, partly to keep him under, but also because he looked like he needed it. John had brought the sticks of morphine and a syringe out of his bedroom. She didn’t know where he had gotten them, and didn’t ask.

In the past few hours, Jack had become a part of the window, staring out through the burglar bars at the woods beyond, his rifle clutched tightly in his hands. There were only two windows left in the entire cabin, and both had black bars fastened tightly over them. Two other windows in the back had been sealed up before she arrived at the cabin. The door was protected by a security gate.

It was safe in here, in the cabin. She had to admit that much. Partly it was the isolated location, but the Sundays were smart about surviving. In the two weeks she’d been there, the creatures never attacked the place. At night, the Sundays turned off the lights and generators and slept in total darkness. The first night they left her outside in the living room chained to the floor, she was certain the creatures were out there, moving around, waiting.

It was a nightmare situation. It was safe inside the cabin, but she was at the mercy of three men she would murder in their sleep if given the chance.

John came back from his bedroom with two handguns stuffed in his front waistband. He hadn’t bothered to change, and dried blood clung to his shirt and faded jeans. The same with Jack.

She kept an eye on the brothers without making it too obvious. It was a skill she had developed. John handed a handgun to Jack, who looked at it oddly before taking it and tucking it into his waistband.

She smelled fear in the cabin. Not from her this time, but from the brothers. They were afraid, especially Jack. Maybe John wasn’t afraid (or maybe he just controlled it better), but he was definitely anxious. That counted for something, too.

“You think they’re coming?” Jack asked.

John didn’t answer right away. Instead, he loaded a second rifle. “I don’t know. Maybe. Doesn’t matter. If they do, we’ll kill them.”

“But there’s more of them,” Jack said, almost defensively.

“Who gives a fuck,” John grunted. “We’ll just kill them all. This is our place. No one attacks us.”

“Maybe we should go…”

“What did you say?” John stopped reloading and glared at Jack.

“Nothing,” Jack said quickly.

John shoved a finger in Jack’s face. “Listen, this is our place. No one’s driving us off. Not those fucking dead things and not these fucking people. You get that?”

“Yeah,” Jack said.

“You fucking get that?” John shouted.

“Yes, John, I got it.”

“Stay the fuck here.”

He got up and stomped across the cabin and disappeared back into his bedroom. She glanced out the window, seeing nothing but trees beyond.

Jack snickered at her. “You think they’re coming to rescue you? Think again. You heard John. We’re going to kill them.”

“Then why are you so scared?” she said.

She hated Jack, but she wasn’t afraid of him like she was afraid of John. He knew better than to touch her, to strike her. She was John’s domain. She imagined she wasn’t the only one who felt John’s wrath. How many times had John struck his brothers over the years? Enough to make Jack docile and turn Fred into a feeble, worshiping kid.

“Shut the hell up,” Jack said. “When this is over, I’m going to make it so you can’t talk for a few days.”

She smiled to herself. He didn’t sound very convincing at all. Jack wasn’t just scared, he was terrified.

John came out of his bedroom. “You wait here, I’m going outside,” he told Jack.

“Alone?” Jack said.

“Fucking chain her if you’re so scared,” John said, laughing. He slammed the door shut behind him.

Jack, still clutching his rifle, watched John through the window, like a kid wondering where his father was going and why he couldn’t go, too. His handgun was sticking out awkwardly from the front of his waistband. She wondered how hard it would be to get to the gun, to cock back the hammer and shove the barrel into Jack’s gut and pull the trigger, leaving two Sundays with bullet holes in their bellies instead of just one.

He caught her staring at the gun and smirked. “Go ahead if you think you can. That’ll be the fucking day.”

It might come earlier than you think.

It was almost dark when she heard gunshots again. John’s rifle. Jack, who had been sitting at the window without moving for the last three hours, knew it, too, and he stiffened and peered out, rifle raised slightly.

She heard two shots — both from John’s rifle.

Then what sounded like shots from another kind of weapon, answering John’s. It went on for a while, back and forth, back and forth…

And then it just stopped.

It was over. Just like that, it was over.

Either John was dead, or the strangers were. She didn’t know, she couldn’t know, and the uncertainty hung over her head like the Sword of Damocles and made breathing difficult.

She sat on the couch next to Fred, who remained unconscious, oblivious to the gunfire in the woods. She noticed, and so did Jack. She wondered if he was debating whether to go help John or pack up and run. She thought he might be leaning toward the latter. Fred would have already been out the door. But not Jack. No. Jack’s love for John was based more on fear than actual brotherly devotion.

Looking at Jack, she felt her confidence growing. As soon as John left the cabin, she knew what she had to do. There would be no turning back, but it wasn’t as if she had a choice. Fred was going to die, then John would realize she wasn’t trained to handle what he needed. Then he would get rid of her…like he got rid of those two girls…

“He’s probably dead,” she said. “Or dying. I bet he’s bleeding out there right now.”

Jack looked across the cabin at her. She could see the startled shock on his face. He wasn’t used to this. He wasn’t used to her being unafraid of him.

“What?” he said, blank confusion in his eyes.

“Your brother. He’s probably crawling around in the woods dying. I bet he’s been gut shot. Like poor Fred here.”

“Shut your mouth.”

“Wouldn’t that be a hell of a day? Two Sundays gut shot in the same day?”

“I said shut your fucking mouth.”

“John probably didn’t stand a chance. What an idiot.” She let out a laugh. “What was he thinking, going up against all that firepower? God, what an idiot.”

“I told you to shut the hell up!” Jack stood up, his face turning red. “Just sit there and shut your mouth.”

She ignored him and pushed on. “He never stood a chance. Out there all by himself. But maybe he’s not dead yet, maybe he’s crawling around, wondering why you haven’t come to save him yet. He sure can’t count on Fred here.”

Jack glared at her. “He’s fine. He’ll kill them, you’ll see.”

“I don’t know about that. They did get Fred. I bet they got him, too.”

It was quiet outside. It had been about ten minutes since the last gunshot. Wouldn’t John have come back by now if he was still alive? She hoped that thought was going through Jack’s mind, seeding doubt, building fear, creating indecision.

She could tell she was close from the look on his face. She was so close.

“He’s probably dead,” she said. “Fred’s going to die later tonight, too. Did you see that wound? He’s not going to make it. When that happens, you’re going to be all alone, Jack. The last surviving Sunday. How long do you think you’ll last without John?”

Jack blinked at her, his face contorted in that almost innocent way when he was struggling with words, often under John’s badgering glare. She knew better, of course. There was nothing innocent about Jack Sunday.

“Just shut up,” was all that came out of his mouth.

No, I won’t shut up.

“I wonder how you’re going to make it without them,” she said. “Without John. He’s the brains, I know that.”

“What?”

“Come on, we both know it. John built this place. He tells you what to do. How are you going to survive without John? Did you even know where to put your dick in a woman before he showed you? I saw you watching when he raped me that first night. Was that when you finally learned where to put it?”

His face had turned a ghastly purple, and she could almost feel the rage welling up inside him, about to explode. He pointed a shaking finger at her. “I’m warning you,” he said, his voice cracking. “Shut your goddamn lying mouth, you fucking bitch.”

No.

“The funny thing is,” she continued, “he told you that you can’t have me, but he gives me to Fred whenever it’s your turn to go out and watch the highway. I bet you didn’t know that, did you? Of course not.”

It was a lie, but Jack didn’t know that.

He stalked across the room, and she quickly got up to her feet and braced herself. He had left the rifle behind at the window. She concentrated on the gun in his front waistband, the handle jutting out, like something that shouldn’t be there.

“Shut your lying whore mouth!” he shouted at her.

“Go to hell!” she spat back, with all the venom she could muster.

That did it. He slapped her across the face so hard she instantly tasted blood. The force of the blow sent her staggering back onto the couch. He scrambled after her, pouncing. He grabbed her by the shoulders with two hands, pulled her back up, and slapped her across the face again. She screamed.

“I’ll teach you to lie, you stupid whore!” he shouted, his spit flying at her face.

His hands found her throat and his fingers wrapped all the way around. She felt dizziness almost immediately. His face was inches from hers, contorted in that ridiculous, angst expression she had seen a hundred times before when he wanted to argue with John but was too afraid to.

Now, now, now!

She thrust her hands forward, below his outstretched arms, and fumbled at his waistband, groping blindly until she found the handle of the gun. She tightened her grip around the curved wood and pulled, even as he was screaming into her face. But she had stopped listening. Her ears were ringing and she was starting to black out, because he was squeezing, squeezing so hard…

She thought the sound of a gunshot up close would be louder, or maybe it was because her ears were flooded with pain. She heard the bang! and felt Jack jerk backward, his fingers relaxing around her throat almost instantly, although he didn’t let go. His eyes went wide, that confused expression spreading across his face and, without thinking, she pulled the trigger again.

And again and again and again…

He slid to the floor and lay in a puddle at her feet. Blood pooled underneath him, and she could hear him still breathing, even over the loud, cacophonous thrumming inside her eardrums. His eyes were wide open and he stared at her, that dumb look of confusion plastered across his stupid Sunday face.

She had to grab the couch to keep from falling. She still had the revolver in her hand — it felt so heavy.

Lara realized suddenly how much darker the room had gotten. She didn’t have her watch anymore, and there was no wall clock in the cabin, but she knew they were pushing up against sundown.

The door, a voice inside her shouted. Lock the door! No one’s locking the door!

She turned and almost ran into the man’s chest.

She didn’t know how he had gotten into the cabin without her hearing. He was taller than Jack but a few inches smaller than John. He had short brown hair and was wearing some kind of black plastic strap around his throat. A wire dangled from his right ear, connected to a radio that was Velcroed to some kind of vest. A rifle was slung over his back.

His hand moved quickly and snatched the revolver from her grip. She didn’t realize the gun was gone until a few seconds after it was no longer there. “Just to be safe,” he said, and his voice sounded calm and kind and unthreatening, and she thought of Tony again.

Tony. Poor Tony…

A second man came into the cabin. He was about the same age as the first man and wore the same kind of clothes and had the same band around his throat, with a wire also dangling from one ear. He closed the security gate over the cabin door, then pulled on it.

“Looks like they have the place fixed up pretty good,” the second man said. “Only two windows still open, both with burglar bars. Propane tanks for cooking, gas generators for indoor plumbing, and residential well water. Quite the sweet setup for the end of the world.”

“No lights?” the first man asked. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Lara.

“Nope,” the second man said. “Looks like they go dark when it gets dark. Smart.”

The first man looked past Lara at Jack, lying on the floor behind her. “Not a friend, I take it?”

She took a couple of steps away from him and almost stumbled over Jack.

The second man was closing the windows and pulling the curtains over them, bathing the cabin in darkness.

She couldn’t see anything. Not the men, not Jack, not Fred, and not even herself.

There was a cracking sound, and seconds later two green glowing tubes appeared in the blackness, lighting up the men’s faces. They tossed the glowing sticks to the floor, then cracked two more and tossed them to other sides of the cabin. There was light again, and everyone appeared in an otherworldly fluorescent green glow.

The second man walked over to Fred. “This one looks like he’s about had it. Probably won’t make it through the night. What about that one?”

The first man crouched next to Jack. “Deader than a doorknob.”

“John?” Lara managed to say.

“John?” the first man repeated, looking up at her.

“Is John dead?” she said, forcing the words out. She had to know. She had to know.

The two men exchanged looks, then the second man shrugged. “Maybe the big one with the beard? He looks like a John to me. Or maybe a Paul. Possibly a John Bear Paul.”

“Is he dead?” she asked again.

“Yeah,” the first man said. He looked back down at Jack, then up at her. “You all right?”

“No,” Lara said and began crying uncontrollably.

Will handed her an energy bar from one of his pouches and watched her eat in the semi-darkness. It tasted like the best thing she had ever eaten. After weeks of nothing but venison — not just eating it, but also having to skin and cook it for the Sundays — anything would have tasted like caviar.

When she finished, Will handed her another one.

Danny was going through the fridge. He pulled out bags of stored venison and tossed them into the sink before locating a six-pack set of Miller Lite, with three cans still inside their rings. He brought the beers over and handed them one each.

She took it and drank half of it in one gulp.

Will and Danny exchanged a look, then laughed.

She realized what she had done and laughed with them. “I’m not really a big drinker,” she said, embarrassed.

“I can see that,” Will said and laughed again.

They sat with their backs against the wall, eyes on the door and windows, in the soft green illumination of the glow sticks.

Will told her about the silver bullets. How had she and the Sundays managed to survive all this time without them? She told them about the first week with Tony, hiding in her apartment, then finally venturing out here on the dirt bike.

She stopped talking when she heard them moving outside the cabin, drawn to the windows and probably the strange green light inside. She couldn’t tell how many there were, but Will guessed at least a dozen by the sounds. Every now and then, one would slip its hand through the burglar bars and tap against the glass.

“What are they doing?” she whispered.

“Probing,” Will said.

“They can think…?”

“They can do more than that,” Danny said.

She sat in the darkness with them and listened to the soft padding of bare feet outside. The sound kept changing — first slow, then fast, then slow again. Every now and then, something scraped against the other side of the door, and once she thought she saw a shadow flitting across a window.

She felt safe with Will and Danny sitting on both sides of her, their rifles leaning against the wall next to them. They didn’t seem alarmed by the sound of the creatures moving around outside, and their calmness had an effect on her.

She grew less and less afraid as the night went on.

“You think it’s the same group?” Danny asked.

“I don’t know,” Will said. “Maybe.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe they are following us…”

“Tracking us is more like it,” Will said.

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Me, neither. But it won’t make any difference tomorrow. We’re thirty minutes from Starch if we push it. Two hours if we go slow. Either way, we’ll be in Starch by tomorrow.”

“If it’s there like you said.”

“It’s there.”

“So you keep saying.”

“Trust me.”

“Only as far as I can throw you. Luckily for you, I can throw pretty far.”

Lara did her best to stay awake and listen to them without interrupting. They had their own rhythm and she felt like an interloper, stealing pieces of their conversation, even though she hardly understood what they were saying most of the time.

Sometime around midnight she gave in. It was the first time in a long while she had fallen asleep without the sounds of chains jingling in her ear or dreading what awaited her.

CHAPTER 23 KATE

Kate was on the auto body shop’s rooftop with Ted when she saw them coming back. She could see both ATVs through her binoculars. She had been waiting to hear from them through the radio nearly all day yesterday, but once Will announced they were going into the woods, the radio went quiet.

This morning, when it squawked, she could feel her heart in her throat, waiting for bad news. There were none. They were coming back — and they were both fine.

“They’re back,” she announced.

“Thank God,” Ted said, relief in his voice, too.

Last night hadn’t been easy for any of them. It occurred to her that they had become too reliant on Will and Danny, and without the two ex-Rangers around, the night seemed colder and scarier.

She watched the ATVs get closer. She made out Danny, in front on his yellow Yamaha. Then Will came into view, with a second person riding behind him. A woman with blonde hair.

“Ted, can you stay here?”

“Go ahead.”

“Thanks.”

She climbed down and went into the office. Carly was there with Vera, talking to Luke. Kate woke up this morning to find him sitting up on his bedroll. He looked pale and was too weak to walk, but he was alive. That was all that mattered. He had survived the night.

He looked up from a can of corn as she walked in now. “Don’t get mad, but I think I’m eating your corn.”

“Just make sure you eat everything. You need the strength.”

“Yes, Mom.”

They exchanged a brief smile before he shyly went back to eating the corn with a spork.

Carly was making coffee with some old grounds she found in the back, using a portable coffee maker salvaged from a house a few weeks back.

“They’re back,” Kate announced.

“Oh, thank God,” Carly said. “Are they all right?”

“Will said they were fine on the radio.”

“What about…you know,” Luke said. She knew he was referring to the men who shot him.

“I don’t know,” Kate said. “I’ll find out.”

She slipped out of the office just as Will and Danny turned into the dirt parking lot, a thick cloud of dust floating into the air in their wake.

Carly came out behind Kate. “Who’s the girl?”

“I don’t know. Will didn’t mention her.”

Danny stopped in front of them and turned off the engine. Before he could hop down, Carly rushed forward into his arms. It was all he could do to grab her before they both tumbled over the ATV.

He laughed. “I’m okay, I’m okay.”

“You had me worried,” she said and punched him playfully in the shoulder. “Why didn’t you or Will call over the radio last night?”

“We tried, but nothing got through the trees.”

“Don’t ever do that again,” she said and kissed him hard on the mouth.

Will parked next to them. “Get a fucking room.”

Danny flipped him off while still kissing Carly.

The woman climbed off the ATV. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, with dirty, shoulder-length blonde hair. Soft blue eyes complemented a thin five-five frame, though she didn’t look malnourished. She wore a long, crumpled dress that had seen better days. Despite her unkempt appearance, Kate thought she was breathtaking.

She felt a curious sensation while looking at the blonde. It had, she realized, been a while since she looked at another woman and felt anything approaching jealousy.

“Welcome back,” Kate said to Will.

She resisted the urge to jump into Will’s arms the way Carly had done with Danny.

You’re too old for that.

Seeing how attractive this woman was, Kate felt a childish need to assert herself.

Will introduced them, including Ted, who waved down from the roof.

The woman, Lara, waved ‘Hi’ to them in that awkward way people did when they met strangers and were unsure of their surroundings. Kate felt sorry for her, thrust into a group that was already intimately familiar with one another after surviving on the road together for almost a month now.

“I’m making coffee,” Carly announced. “I promise, it’s not as bad as last time.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Danny said. “Last time was great.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“I mean it. I didn’t know coffee could be so painful.”

She gave him another punch and they piled back into the office, all except for Will and Kate. He pulled his M4A1 out of a scabbard alongside the ATV, took out the magazine, and replaced it with one that didn’t have a white ‘X’ printed on the side. The ones with the X were loaded with silver bullets, something they carried with them at all times now.

“How was last night?” he asked.

“We managed.”

“No ghouls?”

“None that we saw. Or heard.” He looked surprised. “Why?” she asked. “Did you see any?”

“A few last night. They were probing the cabin we stayed in.” He shrugged it off. “What about Luke?”

“He’s alive and eating again. That’s a good sign, right?”

Will nodded. “That’s a very good sign. We’ll have to keep monitoring him.”

“Where did you find her?” Kate asked. “The girl.”

“Girl?” Will said.

“What is she, twenty?”

He laughed. “Twenties. I forgot to ask for a birth certificate.”

“Where did you find her?”

He told her about the Sundays. The cabin. Finding Lara standing over Jack Sunday’s bullet-riddled body.

“Go easy on her, Kate,” he added. “She’s been through a lot.”

“We all have,” she said quickly. She felt instantly guilty, and added in a softer tone, “You’re right. That sounds like she’s had a nightmare time.”

“Bonus points: she’s a third-year medical student.”

She nodded and looked at him closely.

He smiled back. “What?”

“I’m glad you’re okay.”

He slipped his arms around her and pulled her to him, kissed her softly. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulled him tighter against her.

In the back of her mind, she hoped Lara was watching. It would save them both a lot of trouble later on.

Lara was leaning over Luke on the couch when they caught up with the others in the office. She had removed parts of the gauze and she looked like she knew what she was doing. Or at least, more than they did.

“You guys did a pretty good job,” Lara said to Danny.

“You sure I didn’t leave a knife inside there?” Danny said. “I’m pretty sure I was using it to cut the gauze when I was bandaging him up. But I can’t seem to find it now.”

“You better not,” Luke grunted. “Seriously, man, I’m going to kick your ass if you did.”

“Or a watch,” Danny continued, ignoring him. “I’m missing a watch, too. That’s not bad, right? If you leave a watch inside someone?”

“I don’t see any,” Lara said. Kate couldn’t tell if she was playing along with Danny or not.

“Have you done this before?” Will asked.

“Up close like this? Once,” Lara said. “Last night, on the person you shot. This doesn’t look nearly as bad as that one.”

“Did he make it?” Luke asked.

“No, he died later.”

“Oh.” Luke’s face turned pale.

“It was the wound,” Lara added quickly. “It was too deep and it took the Sundays too long to get him back to the cabin. But Danny and Will did a really good job on this, and you’re already one day past it, so this is completely different.”

Luke nodded, looking very relieved.

Lara wrapped Luke back up and dug through their first-aid kit, essentially a big bag that Danny and Will had filled with medical supplies along the way. Lara scanned the bottles, reading the labels, then found one she wanted and shook out a couple of pills.

She handed them to Luke. “This is going to help with the pain, and it’ll keep you alert at the same time.”

“Will I play the piano again, Doc?” Luke grinned.

“Only if you’re on your back like this.”

He swallowed the pills with some water. “You guys got those dicks that shot me?”

“Yeah,” Will said. “Danny did. I’m pretty sure Ted put down the one Lara’s talking about. And Lara herself finished off the third one for us before we even got to the cabin.”

“Serves them right,” Luke said, though even that seemed to take a lot out of him.

“Luke, stop talking now,” Kate said. “Save your energy.”

She felt a presence behind her and looked back to find Ted. He turned and left without a word. She made a mental note to talk to him later.

Will was saying to Lara, “When do you think we can move him?”

“The highway’s pretty smooth,” she said. “I don’t see why you couldn’t move him. He’s already made it past the first twenty-four hours, and that’s the important thing.”

“The problem is, it won’t be highway forever. There’ll be some bumpy roads ahead. I’m not just talking about your standard bumpy country roads. Harold Campbell purposefully put the facility in a spot only accessible after three klicks of the worst road you’ll ever see.”

“Why did he do that?” Carly asked.

“To deter the local population from poking around. No one would be crazy enough to keep going along that road on purpose for too long.”

“Is it really that bad?” Kate asked.

“Imagine driving three klicks through potholes.”

“He can’t go through something like that,” Lara said. “Not for a while.”

“How long?” Will asked.

“Maybe a couple of days, at least. If the road is as bad as you’re saying.”

Will nodded. “It’s worse.”

“Jesus, this guy really is out there,” Danny said.

“They call it eccentric when you’re filthy rich.” Will glanced at Lara. “Do what you can for now. Danny and I will plan accordingly.”

Will left them in the office. Danny kissed Carly and followed Will outside with a mug of steaming coffee moments later.

Lara said, “Will told me you guys have some clothes. Do you think I could…?”

“Yeah,” Kate said, “of course, come with me.”

She led Lara through the side door and into the garage. The steel garage door remained down, so the only light came from the portable LED lanterns hung around the room. Kate went to one of the trailers and pulled back the tarp.

She looked through the closed crates and boxes and pulled a suitcase from the middle. “Don’t expect anything too flashy. Everyone stopped trying to make fashion statements a while ago.”

“Anything’s better than what I’m wearing now.” She tried to smile, but it came out wrong.

Kate unzipped the suitcase for her. “There should be something that fits you. You look about Carly’s size.”

“Thanks.” Her voice was breaking.

Kate didn’t know whether to run away or grab her in a tight embrace. “There’s some bottled water in one of the trailers. If you want it.” Oh God, what am I doing? “I don’t mean just to drink, to wash with.”

“Oh.”

What happened to you back there?

“Are you okay?” Kate asked.

Lara lifted her head, dirty hair falling over her face. “Not really.”

Kate felt her heart breaking. “I’m sorry. For what happened to you back there.”

“At least I’m alive, right?” She tried to smile again. It still came out all wrong. “Thanks, for the clothes. And the water.”

“There’s more than enough,” Kate said, the words tumbling out of her unnecessarily fast. “We can always pick up more. Stores are filled with them…dozens and dozens of cases just lying around.”

“That would be great. It’s…been a while since I’ve had a shower.”

“I’ll let you get dressed and cleaned up.” Go. Just go.

“Thanks.”

She nodded, gave the younger woman a small smile, and left as fast as she could, feeling a rush of uncontrollable guilt.

She found Danny and Will outside by their ATVs, looking over a map they had picked up from a gas station a few days back.

Danny was saying, “A dozen. Maybe more.”

“Where?” Will asked.

“Some in the parking lot, but mostly around the garage area.”

“What about the garage?” Kate asked.

“There were ghouls here last night,” Will said.

“Are you sure? I didn’t see or hear any.”

“They were keeping a low profile,” Danny said. “But yeah, they left tracks.”

“But I didn’t hear anything, Danny.”

“I think that was the point,” Will said. She gave him a questioning look. “Last night, at the cabin, they did the same thing. They probed, but didn’t attack.”

“They’re getting smarter,” Danny said. “A hell of a lot smarter.”

Dead, not stupid. Like you always say, Will.

“There’s a good chance it’s the same group,” Will said. “The same one that’s been tracking us since we left Houston.”

The implication behind his words made her shiver slightly.

“We’ve been able to stay one step ahead of them,” Will continued, “but I think they finally caught up to us last night. At the cabin, and here. But they didn’t attack either place. Why not?”

“They’re doing recon,” Danny said.

“What does that mean?” Kate asked.

“They’re doing reconnaissance,” Will explained. “Before you attack an enemy, you gather intelligence first, find out where they are, their numbers, weaknesses, and if necessary, you make adjustments, call in reinforcements. They know a handful of ghouls aren’t going to stand up against us. So what do they do?”

“They call reinforcements,” she said, feeling a sudden tightness in her chest.

Will had brought this up before, but it had never seemed real until now. Was it possible? Were the ghouls that smart? The very idea terrified her.

“So what do we do?” she asked.

“Starch is only forty-eight klicks up the road,” Will said. “An easy two hour’s drive even going slowly. Three hours, max. An hour if we gun it. But we can’t go there yet.”

“Luke…”

“Yeah. Can’t risk opening up that wound again.”

“Come on, the road to the facility can’t possibly be that bad,” Danny said.

“It’s worse,” Will said.

“Maybe they’ve fixed it since you were last there.”

“That would defeat the purpose of the road in the first place, Danny.”

“Oh. Good point.”

“What now?” Kate asked.

“We hunker down around here and see what happens tonight?” Danny said. “Then tomorrow, if Luke’s better, we risk it. How’s that sound? See? I can come up with a plan, too.”

Will grinned. “That sounds about right. Who knows, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we’ll skate through tonight just fine.”

Danny grunted. “Right. And Carly likes me for my personality.”

Kate heard them ride off on their ATVs again. By the time she had climbed up to the rooftop, Will and Danny were small dots in the distance.

“We’ll be back as soon as we can,” Will said over the radio.

“How long will moving those cars take?” she asked.

“Depends on how many keys we find, how much gas is in the tanks, spare tires, et cetera. You should have come along with us.”

“No, thanks. Moving cars all day isn’t my definition of fun.”

She was still thinking about what Will had said, about the ghouls probing them last night. She hadn’t heard or felt them at all, which was unusual. Even when she couldn’t see them, she could feel them, their unnatural presence somehow tainting the air around them. But she had been so preoccupied with Luke, watching over him, making sure he didn’t die during the night, that maybe she lost sight of everything else around her.

That explained it, didn’t it?

Maybe…

What if Will was right? What if the ghouls were doing reconnaissance on them? What if they had gone back to report? What then? Will sounded and looked alarmed, and she knew better than to disregard the few moments when he actually showed concern about something.

She remembered the last time they had faced more than a handful of ghouls at one time. Back in Houston…

Ted was sitting in his flimsy portable chair near the edge of the roof, just close enough to watch for incoming danger, but far back enough to hide from anyone looking up from below. He glanced over and she thought he was going to tell her to leave, that he wanted to be alone up here, but he gave her a small smile instead and went back to carving something into his rifle’s stock with a pocketknife.

It was only when Kate got closer that she saw it was his name.

“There you are,” she said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Yeah?”

“I wanted to see if you were okay.”

He shrugged, but didn’t say anything.

She walked to the edge of the roof and looked down. It was only twenty feet to the parking lot below, but she still hated being up this high. She looked back at Ted and watched him quietly working on the rifle’s stock.

“You probably saved Will’s and Danny’s lives, you know. And Luke’s, too. Will told me himself.”

He looked up uncertainly at her.

“I mean it, Ted. If you hadn’t hit one of them, they would have just kept shooting at Will and Danny. You saved their lives. I hope you know that.”

“I’ve never killed anyone before,” he said.

“I know. But we did what we had to do yesterday. We protected our friends from people who wanted to harm them. You shouldn’t lose sleep over it. You did the right thing.”

Ted nodded, and she watched him closely. Was she getting to him? Maybe. It was hard to tell with Ted. Sometimes it was easy to forget that the big man with the big hands also had a very big heart.

“I guess,” he said and went back to carving.

“Don’t guess.” She was surprised by her own forcefulness. “Know, Ted. Don’t doubt it for a second. When you shot that man, you saved three lives. Three lives.”

He smiled a bit this time. It wasn’t out of bravado. That wasn’t Ted. “I wish I didn’t have to,” he said.

“I wish you didn’t have to, either. I wish they hadn’t set that ambush and shot Luke. I wish a lot of things. But that’s the world we live in now. We have to do the best we can and live with the consequences. And in this case, the consequence of your actions is that Will, Danny, and Luke are alive. You did good.”

“Thanks,” he said, and he flushed a bit. She took that as a good sign.

“You’re a good guy, Ted. Don’t ever change.”

“That’s a compliment, right?” He grinned sheepishly at her.

She laughed. “I’m pretty sure it is, yeah.”

“Okay.”

“Why the name?”

“Huh?”

“The rifle stock.”

“Oh.” He stopped halfway on the D and seemed to consider her question. “I don’t know. I guess since I’m going to be using it for a while, I might as well make it mine. Does that make sense?”

“Makes as much sense as anything that’s happened the last month or so,” she said.

CHAPTER 24 WILL

It took them two hours and change to move the cars off the road, parking the vehicles along the ditch on both sides, where they made quite a sight but would no longer be a nuisance to anyone driving through. The semi was the most difficult to move, but once they were able to hotwire it and drive it off, it was a simple matter of finding the biggest vehicle left, then using it to tow the rest of the vehicles they couldn’t find keys for, or with empty tanks.

Once they were done, Will and Danny went back to the Sundays’ cabin and looked for any supplies they could use. They ignored the weapons as they had plenty already, but tossed the boxes of bullets for the rifles and handguns into a bag and carried them back to the ATVs. The cabin was well-hidden, but there was a noticeable path through the woods that led directly to its front door.

When they were done searching the house, they left the bodies of the two Sunday men where they rested, and Will left the door open for the animals.

Danny said, “Maybe we should burn the place down.”

“Let the wild dogs eat.”

“That’ll work, too.”

“What did you find?”

Danny pointed at tracks around the cabin, just barely visible in the dirt. “They go all the way around the place. Maybe a dozen.”

“The ones that were here last night.”

“Yeah. There’s no place for them to hide around here, so they had to take off before sunup. Where is the question. If we can find the nest, maybe we can burn the place down or fill it with silver bullets.”

Will looked around the woods. It was dense and went on for miles in all directions. “We’re not going to find anything in this place.”

“They really are getting smarter and more organized, aren’t they?”

“It definitely seems that way. Since Houston.”

“It’s that whole Archers thing. You pissed them off,” Danny said.

“Hey, they were your C4.”

“Yeah, but it was your plan.”

Will smirked.

“I don’t mind telling you,” Danny said, “I’ll feel a hell of a lot better once we reach Harold Campbell’s place… Assuming it’s actually there.”

“It’s there.”

“Completed?”

“It’s been five years since they started construction. Campbell had unlimited resources. Chances are it’s finished. Or mostly finished. But that place mostly finished is better than surviving day-to-day out here.”

“All right. Still a better plan than I got.”

“You had a plan?”

“Nope, that’s the point.” Danny paused for a moment and got suddenly serious. “If what we’re thinking turns out to be true, we’re going to need a pretty strong base for tonight. They’re going to be coming, and there’s going to be a hell of a lot of them.”

Will nodded. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t already considered a million times since last night. “I have a plan. A just-in-case plan.”

“A good one, I hope.”

“Good enough. It involves Plan Z.”

“Aw, shit,” Danny said. “Not Plan Z.”

“You love Plan Z.”

“I hate Plan Z. And I hate you for making me take part in your Plan fucking Z.”

“Quit yer bitchin’ and embrace the Z,” Will said.

Will turned off the flat highway and into the parking lot while Danny kept going up the road behind him. Ted was on the roof of the auto body shop, leaning over the edge, waving down. He waved back, then watched Ted disappear behind the rooftop again.

He grabbed the bullets they had taken from the Sundays’ cabin and took them into the garage, where he found Lara looking inside one of the weapons containers. She had changed into pants and a T-shirt and had washed her hair. She was an attractive girl. How had he missed that last night?

She looked over as he entered the garage. “You guys have a lot of guns. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many guns in one place before.”

“Danny and I brought most of them with us, but the rest we found along the way. You’d be surprised how many guns there are out there. We could have filled a dozen crates if we had wanted to, but guns without the right bullets are pointless.”

“Silver bullets.”

“Yeah.”

“You figured that out.”

“Accidentally, but yeah.”

He told her about the Wilshire Apartments, about finding the crosses hidden inside someone’s pantry closet. He skipped the part where seven other SWAT guys had gone into the building with him, but only two of them came out.

“I would say it was a sign from God,” he said, “if I actually believed in God.”

“I didn’t use to believe in God, either.”

“You sound like you’ve changed your mind.”

“Maybe. The things I’ve seen… It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

He was going to answer, but stopped himself. That wasn’t really a question meant for him, he realized. It was probably something she had been asking herself, struggling with the answers to. After what she had been through, he didn’t blame her. There were moments in a person’s life when he or she questions everything they believed in. Will knew what that was like. His first moment had come when bullets started flying over his head in Afghanistan. It was the first of many moments.

He gave Lara her privacy and took stock of their ammo instead. They had enough to last a prolonged engagement, but he wasn’t stupid enough to think they had enough to stop making silver bullets. No, that time was never going to come, not as long as they were up here, and the sun still set every evening.

He glanced at his watch: 11:15 a.m.

They were into the middle of December now, but this was December in Texas, and despite the chill weather outside, sunset was still around 5:25 p.m. Too fast, but it gave them plenty of time to set up for tonight.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’re not coming after all…

Yeah, right, and maybe I’m the Prince of Wonderland.

Danny returned about an hour later.

Will heard his ATV approaching from a distance and went outside to meet him in the dirt parking lot. “Did you find a place?”

“I found something that could work.” Danny turned off the engine and pulled out a map. “Saw a couple of good candidates, but only one really viable option. It’s a bank. Country bank, sure, but it had solid concrete walls, two front doors, two front windows, and only one back door. No rooftop access, so that’s a plus.”

“How far back?”

“A couple of klicks, give or take. Closer to Cleveland.”

“What do you think?”

“It’s the best we’re going to find in such a short time. I say we go for it.”

Will glanced at his watch and nodded. “The bank it is.”

The “country bank,” inside a strip mall, was sixteen kilometers back up the highway. The bank was flanked by a Shipley Do-Nuts and a Subway to one side, and a McDonald’s and Ned’s, a mom-and-pop hardware store, on the other. The fact that Ned’s existed at all, in a world of Home Depot and Lowe’s, was an amusing anomaly.

The bank itself, a small operation called Cleveland Savings and Loans, was exactly as Danny described. It had two front doors made of thick glass, and there were no telltale signs of ghoul occupancy. The doors were locked, so Will and Danny forced them open with prying bars.

“You couldn’t have picked a place that wasn’t locked?” Will asked.

“Nag, nag, nag,” Danny said.

The bank’s interior was about 3,000 square feet, the size of a major bank’s local branch in the city. It had a teller counter to one side and a manager’s office, an employee lounge, and a vault room in the back, along a hallway that curved slightly to the right the farther back you went. The manager’s office, with its rows of metal shelves, big desk, and sofas, took up twice as much space as the vault room and employee lounge combined.

Like a boss.

There were rows of chairs lined up against the front wall inside the bank lobby, and closed-circuit cameras watched silently along the ceiling. The bank didn’t have a drive-through, so no backdoor windows to worry about. A small layer of dust had fallen over the furniture and counters, as well as the red velvet rope that snaked into three rows in front of the tellers. Other than that, the bank looked to be perfectly preserved.

Will spent some time in the office taking inventory, then walked out of the hallway to find Danny holding fistfuls of $100 bills from one of the opened teller drawers, shouting at him, “I’m king of the world!”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks. It’s about time, too. I was starting to think serving the public good would never pay off. Goes to show you, my guidance counselor didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.”

“That’ll show ’em.”

Will walked across the lobby to the front doors. They were big and bulky, with two windows on each door that took up about forty percent of the space. He tapped on the glass and liked what he heard.

“Doors are steel and laminated glass,” he said. “We’ll still have to reinforce them, just to be safe.”

“Ned’s should have all the tools we’ll need. Maybe take apart some of the counter?”

“Some? Try all of it.”

“I was hoping for less work.”

“Captain Optimism.”

Danny grunted.

“There’s just one back door,” Will said. “So we’ll have to reinforce that, too. The manager’s office is big enough to put everyone inside.”

“What about the vault? I always dreamed about living in a vault.”

“Power’s out, and it’s electronically controlled. Can’t open it without blowing it up.”

“You and your fucking facts,” Danny said. “By the way, did I mention? I’m rich!”

He watched Danny running along the teller counter, snatching money out of the drawers and tossing it into the air.

He smiled, but it also made him slightly sad. Was it that long ago that they were all putting so much of their blood, sweat, time, and tears into the acquisition of what were essentially just green rectangle pieces of paper?

Money. What the hell were we thinking?

They gathered all the tools they needed from Ned’s, transferring them back to Cleveland Savings and Loans before heading back to the diner, where the others were waiting for them. Having ridden over piggyback on one of the ATVs, Will now rode the ATV back while Danny drove a Ford F-150 truck from the strip mall parking lot, the car keys abandoned on the driver’s side floor.

Kate met them outside the diner. “Is this going to work?”

“It should,” Will said.

“Should?”

“It’s just a precaution. Chances are, we won’t have anything to worry about tonight, and tomorrow we’ll be in Starch by noon.”

“I thought Danny was the optimist,” she said with a wry smile.

“He is, but I like to pretend I’m Danny every now and then.”

They loaded Luke and the couch he was lying on into the back of the F-150. With Lara and Kate sitting in the back with Luke, they headed to the bank, careful to avoid bumps on the road.

By one in the afternoon, Will, Danny, and Ted were breaking down the bank’s counters into thick slabs. They chopped what they could with axes, cut the rest with handsaws, and tossed the useless pieces into the parking lot. Vera and Lara sat with Luke, while Carly and Kate scoured the stores around them for supplies, food, and water. They found plenty of all three and, like Will and Danny earlier, didn’t run across one ghoul.

They’re gathering. For tonight…

They barricaded the back door with a thick slab of countertop that covered the entire frame, then nailed two more across for good measure. They pulled heavy metal shelves from the office and stacked them against the door as a secondary barrier. In all, there were at least 500 pounds of resistance, though he didn’t think they would need it. If they came at all, the ghouls would come through the front doors, which provided a wider berth and allowed them to use their greatest strength — their number.

“Ted,” Will said, “you’ll take the back. There’s no point in having everyone in the lobby. That means swapping the rifle for a shotgun.”

“Okay,” Ted said, though he looked a little pale.

“You’ll do fine, Ted. Trust yourself.”

Ted nodded, looking unconvinced.

They used up more of the teller counters on the two front windows. Then later, on the two front doors once everyone was inside and settled. They checked, doubled checked, and triple checked that everything they needed from the trailers was inside with them, or where it was supposed to be. Most importantly, that meant Danny knew where all the C4 were.

Will and Danny spent a few minutes outside the bank going over just that.

“Everything in place?” Will asked.

“It’s a big strip mall,” Danny said. “But everything’s where it’s supposed to be.”

“How much did you have to use?”

“Most of it. Got a little left, though.”

“Maybe we won’t need them at all.”

“Look who’s playing the part of Captain Optimism now?”

They retreated back into the bank, where they stripped the rest of the office and employee lounge, moving shelves and desks to the front and piling them against the thick slabs of countertop already plastered over the two front glass doors. Everything not nailed down was used to strengthen the barricades.

By four, they had hung portable LED lanterns along the lobby, the curved back hallway, and inside the office. Using screws, they attached the lanterns to the ceiling and walls for maximum coverage. Powered by rechargeable lithium batteries, there was no danger of spilling fuel. Soon it was intensely brighter inside the bank than outside. The LED lights didn’t make it any less cool though, and the temperature began to drop noticeably.

“Time to break out the thermals,” Danny said.

Will already wore a thermal sweater underneath his assault vest, and he was carrying so many shells and magazines in a half-dozen pouches that when he moved, he jingled. Danny looked similarly bloated when they took up positions on either side of the front doors, the boarded-up windows over their shoulders. They leaned the M4A1s against the wall and kept the Remington 870 shotguns in their laps.

Kate and the others had quietly settled around the bank. Vera and Carly, along with Lara, were watching over Luke in the office.

The plan was to retreat into the office if the front doors fell. That was unlikely, but Will liked having backup plans. All their ammo, weapons, food and drink, along with their other supplies, were already stored in the office. Their last stand. The vault, of course, would have been ideal.

“It would have been nice to have the vault,” Danny said.

Will smiled. “I was just thinking that.”

“Because of the money inside, right?”

“Um, no, not because of that.”

“I bet there’s a lot in there,” Danny continued. “Millions, maybe.”

“Paper isn’t going to do us any good, Danny.”

“I’m just saying. It’d be nice to be a millionaire for once. Even if the only thing money’s good for now is to wipe my ass.”

“Thanks for that visual.”

“I’m just being practical. Toilet paper isn’t going to last forever. We’re going to need a substitute sooner or later. How long does toilet paper take to break down, anyway?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“You seemed like someone who would know.”

“Ten years?”

“Are you just guessing?”

“Yup.”

“Useless,” Danny grunted.

Will watched Ted across the room, fidgeting with the Remington shotgun in his lap. He looked uncomfortable, staring at the weapon like he was afraid it might bite him if he held it too tightly.

Kate was staring off at the window over his right shoulder, lost in thought. She must have sensed him watching, because she turned her head slightly and their eyes met. She gave him a small smile, and he smiled back.

She hadn’t really been the same since yesterday, since Luke got shot. In so many ways he pitied Kate and the others. They weren’t prepared for this. Not that he and Danny were, but it was easier for them. As long as he thought of this as just another war, he could treat it as just another tour of duty to get through.

He wanted to reach out to Kate and tell her that everything was going to be okay, that tonight would be uneventful, and tomorrow they would get Luke to Harold Campbell’s facility in Starch, Texas, and everything would be all right.

But he didn’t, because he didn’t trust himself to be that good of a liar.

“We’re officially at sundown,” Will announced when his watch ticked to 5:30 p.m.

They sat and waited.

He checked the Remington, then the M4A1 for the fifth time in the last hour.

At 6:15 p.m., Danny said, “Looks like we got dressed up for nothing.”

“Captain Optimism,” Will smirked.

“I’m just saying. It’s dark outside, and they’re not here yet. Maybe we were both wrong.”

“Anything’s possible.”

“Not that I mind the waiting. I love waiting.” He licked his lips. “That, and cheesecake. You know what would be great right now? Waiting while eating cheesecake.”

“Good to know, good to know.”

So they waited.

At 7:16 p.m., Danny said, “Reminds me of a joke.”

Will groaned.

“Shut up, you’ll love it. A guy goes into a bank—” But Danny stopped suddenly and glanced over at Will for confirmation.

Will nodded back at him.

There was a slight change in the way the wind moved across the parking lot outside. With the change came the vibrations. A minor tremble, easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it.

Will guessed there must be at least a dozen, possibly more, gathering outside.

As they listened, it seemed as if the dozen were joined by more until there were so many of them out there that the ground moved slightly with them.

Across the room, Kate said, “Did you guys feel that?”

Will said, “They’re here.”

He and Danny stood up and went to the windows, most of which had been covered up, but they had left space for peepholes. They looked through these now.

“What do you see?” Kate asked anxiously.

“Nothing,” Will said.

“Butkus,” Danny chimed in.

Will stood still and let his eyes adjust to the darkness.

He saw them. Their thin frames were positioned from one end of the parking lot to the other. It was a moonless night, and the ghouls stood almost invisible in the pitch blackness. Even if he hadn’t been able to pick them out, he would have still felt them. He knew with absolute certainty that there were more of them out there, not just in the parking lot, but beyond, spilling out into the streets.

“Fuck me,” Danny whispered from across the door.

“Are there a lot of them?” Ted asked. He sounded out of breath.

“If by ‘a lot’ you mean a fucking army of them, then yeah, there are kinda a lot of them out there,” Danny said.

One of the creatures suddenly appeared in front of Will’s peephole, slate eyes staring back at him for the split second it took Will to pull his head back. A moment later the ghoul was gone, and Will could see the parking lot again.

“What happened?” Kate said behind him.

“One of them came in for a close-up,” Will said.

He heard them moving on the rooftop, their footsteps light but noticeable. It grew louder as more climbed up. He didn’t worry about the ones up there. There was a ladder up to the roof, but no ways to gain entry into the bank itself. Both he and Danny had gone up to make sure.

“Ted,” Will said, “time to go watch the back.”

Ted hurried off, his big frame making a ruckus as he moved. Will didn’t think the kid could help it. It was part of who he was. Big.

Kate had walked up behind him. “How many are out there?”

“A lot.”

He stood aside to let her see, and as she peered through the peephole, her body tensed in front of him. “There’s so many of them…”

“Four hundred easy,” Danny said. “And growing. They’re filling up the damn parking lot. I can’t even see the cars anymore. You don’t think they’re going to steal our ATVs, do you?”

“There’s a thought,” Will said.

“I just fixed the engine and everything.”

“I know. It’s purring now.”

“Damn straight.”

Kate took an involuntary step back. She looked at Will, fear in her eyes. She opened her mouth to say something, but stopped, and instead walked back to the far end of the lobby and sat down on the floor.

She clutched the M4A1 tightly to her chest and stared off at nothing.

“Kate,” Will said, “Ted needs some backup in the hallway.”

She looked up at him and shook her head. “You’ll need me out here when they start coming through.”

“When they start coming through, we’re fucked. Right now, I need you back there to watch Ted’s back.”

Kate looked uncertainly at him, and for a moment he thought she was going to argue. To his surprise, she nodded and stood up, one hand on the wall for support as if she didn’t trust her own legs, and hurried into the hallway.

He looked after her. He could see just far enough into the curving hallway to pick up Carly leaning out of the office, looking worriedly back at him. He gave her a brief smile, though it probably wasn’t nearly as convincing as he had hoped.

He looked back out the peephole and saw that Danny was right. The ghouls had taken up almost every inch of space in the parking lot and, as impossible as it seemed, more of them had appeared out of thin air, squeezing forward until there were no spaces left.

They stood quietly, still, like soldiers waiting for orders. He couldn’t tell where they ended and the night began.

“If I had a grenade,” Danny muttered.

“We have something better. We have Plan Z.”

“I hate your Plan Z. Have I told you that? Hate it. Hate it with every fiber of my being. If you gave me a survey now and asked me to rate your Plan Z from one to ten, with ten being ‘Hate it with a passion,’ I’d write in twenty. That’s how much I hate your Plan Z.”

“You whine like a housewife.”

“Fuck your Plan Z,” Danny insisted.

Then Will saw something that made him perk up.

One of the ghouls, somewhere in the middle of the densely packed parking lot, stood out from the others, because it actually stood.

He stared for a few seconds, just to be sure.

But yes, he wasn’t seeing things. The ghoul stood without hunching over like the others, and that alone made it looked taller, regal, like a king among prostrated servants.

Is it possible?

Will quickly lifted the M4A1 and slipped the barrel through the peephole, using the boards as a perch, and flicked on the sight’s night-vision.

There.

Will could see it clearly now, bathed in fluorescent green that turned night into day. It was staring back at him with fearless, defiant eyes. It stood perfectly straight and it was very clear that the ghoul had dark, crystal pale blue eyes.

Will took his eyes away from the sight. He wondered if Danny had seen it. Had he really seen it?

He looked back through the sight again, just to be sure.

And yes, he could still see it. The ghoul hadn’t moved, hadn’t tried to hide, and remained standing in the parking lot thirty meters from the bank, towering over the other ghouls hunched around it.

Fuck you.

He squeezed the trigger.

The bullet punched a hole through the glass window and traveled out…and one of the black-eyed ghouls threw itself into Will’s line of fire, the silver bullet punching through its chest and landing a full two meters short of the blue-eyed creature.

As the dead ghoul fell sideways, Will switched the M4A1’s fire selector to full-auto and pressed the trigger, and this time the window shattered under the assault. He watched, fascinated, impressed, and pissed off, as one ghoul, then two, then three—then a dozen—threw themselves into his line of fire, silver bullets slamming into them one after another.

Will jerked his finger off the trigger and watched as the crowd of ghouls stirred, then settled back down, as if nothing had happened.

And the blue-eyed ghoul, still standing, still defiantly tall, continued to stare back at him. Then it did something he didn’t expect—it grinned at him.

Will took a step back and quickly reloaded the M4A1.

Danny was looking across the door at him. “What’s going on? You trying to pick a fight or something?”

“You didn’t see it?” Will asked.

“See what?”

“You didn’t see it?”

“No,” Danny said, shaking his head. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”

“There was a ghoul in the parking lot.”

“There are lots of ghouls in the parking lot. What’s your point?”

“This one had blue eyes and it stood tall, not like the others. It was different, Danny. It had blue eyes.”

“The fuck you say?”

“And it grinned at me.”

“It grinned at you?”

Will slapped the new magazine in and slipped the M4A1’s barrel back through the peephole again and peered out through the sight. He scanned the parking lot, but the blue-eyed ghoul was gone.

He continued sweeping the parking lot, back and forth, but saw only dead black eyes staring back at him.

“Is it still out there?” Danny asked.

“It’s gone.” Will pulled the rifle back.

Danny did the same, then looked at him again. He couldn’t tell if Danny believed him. “You said it had blue eyes? And it stood tall?”

“Blue eyes and it stood tall.”

“Did you at least hit it?”

“No, the other ghouls threw themselves in front of it.”

“The fuck you say. Like some kind of Secret Service for the United States of the Undead?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“Did it, I don’t know, say anything after that?”

“No, it just looked at me.”

“And it grinned at you.”

“And it grinned at me, yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Will said.

“Well, fuck me,” Danny said.

CHAPTER 25 LARA

Lara didn’t pray. She didn’t come from a praying family, and her parents didn’t believe in a “mythical being in the clouds,” as her mom would say. Her dad was a little more open-minded, but even he enjoyed the occasional eye roll whenever someone with a heavily religious persuasion came on TV.

Lara wondered what her parents would say now, in the days and weeks after The Purge, as Will and the others called it.

As she sat in the bank manager’s office and listened to footsteps moving above her on the rooftop, she wanted to believe that all of this could be explained away by science. But it was hard to hold fast to everything she grew up believing — and disbelieving — when the dead didn’t stay dead. She thought about all those stories in the history books of people returning from the grave, fantastical tales eventually explained away by science. There had to be explanations for what was happening now, right?

Maybe…

She sat on the floor with Vera and Luke, who sat with his back against the wall, heavy gauze wrapped tightly around his abdomen. He looked much younger than the first time she had seen him this morning. He craned his head upwards, listening to the ghouls. She didn’t know what they were doing, but their constant movement unnerved her.

She felt safe in here, with the LED lanterns spread out along the ceiling and walls. Ironically, the room was much brighter with the lanterns than in its normal daytime setting. She found a strange sort of comfort in the humming sounds of the lights and the unnatural brightness.

Even the exposed weapons in the room didn’t disturb her nearly as much as she thought they would. There were four shotguns and two military rifles leaning against and on top of the weapons crate to her left. There were pouches of ammo, filled with rifle magazines and shotgun shells, scattered about the floor along the side wall next to the crate. She wasn’t sure what Will intended to do with all the weapons, but she guessed there was a reason he had chosen the office as their fall-back position. It was the biggest room, safely tucked between the lobby and the employee lounge. If all else failed, they would come in here.

She marveled at these people she had fallen in with, who had saved her from the Sundays. Even the little girl, Vera, seemed to have adjusted surprisingly well. Or maybe that was just a coping mechanism. Kids were highly adaptable, but they could also quickly retreat into a state of mind that cut them off from the real world. She hadn’t known the kid long enough to know for sure either way, and Carly didn’t seem overly concerned.

Carly was leaning against the opened doorframe, looking out to her left at the bank lobby. They had seen Kate and Ted go by a few minutes ago. The employee lounge was farther up the hallway, hidden by the bend.

She looked down at the Glock in her hands. It was a smaller gun than the ones Will and Danny carried, though it was about the same size as Carly’s and Kate’s. Luke also had a Glock, though his was a little bigger.

The gun felt cold and rubbery in her hands, unlike the cold steel of the revolver that killed Jack Sunday. That gun felt real and heavy, the way an instrument that could take someone’s life should feel.

She remembered killing him, though the details eluded her. How many times had she shot him? Did he die right away? Why did she keep pulling the trigger? The memories were hazy and she wondered if she was purposefully forgetting them, or if her mind decided to keep them from her to spare her the gory details.

He’s dead, that’s all that matters. The Sundays are dead. All three of them…

There was a loud crash of gunfire from the lobby. First a single shot, then the loud clatter of a full magazine being unloaded.

Carly leaned out farther to see what was happening, and the machete she wore in a sheath at her left hip stuck out. It was an absurdly long weapon, though Carly looked comfortable wearing it.

After a moment, Carly looked back at them and shook her head. “It’s fine. Will was shooting at something. But it’s fine now.”

Carly didn’t sound entirely convinced by her own assurances. But there were no other sounds from the lobby, which was a good sign. Wasn’t it?

Lara looked over at Luke, grimacing silently next to her. “Are you okay?”

He tried to smile it off. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine. Maybe I should take a look at the wound. You might be bleeding again.”

He waved her off with another attempt at a smile. “I’m good, Doc. It’s not bleeding. Just hurts a little when I try to move, that’s all.”

“So don’t try to move.”

“Good advice,” Luke said and leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. “I think I’m just gonna rest for a while…”

She looked down at Vera, lying prone on the floor, cautiously filling in Snoopy’s body with white crayon. Her tongue stuck out one corner of her mouth in intense concentration. She looked oblivious to what was happening and hadn’t even looked up when Will fired in the lobby.

She’s used to it. And I don’t know if that’s a good thing…

Lara looked back down at the small Glock in her hand. The magazine was loaded with silver bullets, and she only needed one shot to kill (Re-kill?) them, according to Will. Shooting it with anything else, or even decapitating it, did nothing. There had to be an explanation as to why the ghouls were fatally allergic to any form of contact whatsoever with silver. A scientific explanation. And if there was a scientific explanation for how the ghouls died, then there had to be one for the ghouls themselves.

If she only had the time and the materials to study them…

But that was for later. For tomorrow. Or the day after that. She had to survive tonight first. That was the trick, wasn’t it?

She heard them moving above her again, and suddenly the Glock felt heavier in her hands. It didn’t have a hammer, and the trigger was much easier to pull than the revolver. She had fired off an entire magazine — not a ‘clip’, she had been told, but a ‘magazine’—earlier today, and while it felt unnatural in her hands at first, it wasn’t anything she couldn’t adjust to. God knows she had already adjusted to a lot in the last few weeks.

She was looking up at the ceiling when Luke spoke: “Don’t let them get to you. Will’s right, they’re not going to break through the ceiling. They never have.”

First time for everything. “What are they doing up there?”

“Who knows? Don’t let it bother you.”

I can’t help it…

She leaned back against the wall. At least the shooting from the lobby had stopped. Seconds counted down slowly in the silence and the minutes seemed to move at a snail’s pace. For a while, it seemed as if the night would never end.

Carly was still glued to the door, while Luke had fallen asleep with the gun in his hand. Lara crawled over and slowly removed it from his grip, then placed it on top of one of the weapons crates. The thought of Luke squeezing the trigger by accident while asleep was disconcerting.

Seven o’clock turned into eight, and they heard nothing from the lobby, though she could still hear the creatures moving above. What were they doing up there? What were they doing out in the parking lot, for that matter?

What are they waiting for?

She started to drift off, lulled by the quiet, when gunfire erupted from the bank lobby for a second time.

Carly looked back into the room with another progress report. “It’s okay. They’re shooting through the peepholes. I don’t know why. Maybe they saw something out there.”

Vera had gone to sleep on the floor and was snoring quietly. She slept next to her coloring books, a blue crayon clutched in one of her hands. Lara picked up a blanket from a nearby bedroll and placed it over Vera.

“Thanks,” Carly said behind her.

“Should I carry her over to her bedroll?”

“She’s used to sleeping like that.”

Lara glanced at Luke sleeping soundly against the wall. Like Vera, the fresh gunfire from the lobby hadn’t disturbed his sleep.

She walked over to Carly and leaned out of the door. She looked left, toward the bank lobby. Will and Danny were sitting on the floor, their backs against the wall on either side of the doors. Neither looked anxious and seemed to be passing the time cleaning their rifles and shotguns.

“They’re so calm,” she said.

“They’re always like that,” Carly said. “It’s kind of annoying, to be perfectly honest with you.”

Lara smiled. “You’ve been with them from the beginning?”

“Pretty much. We were lucky to find them. Ted and Vera and me.”

Lara looked to her right, down the hallway, which curved slightly to the right about ten yards from their door. Both Kate and Ted were sitting on the floor, guns in front of them, backs against the wall. They looked tired and nervous and hungry. She was struck by just how different they looked from Will and Danny.

The hallway extended for another ten yards, leading to the back door, with the employee lounge somewhere before that. It was impossible to see the back door from here, or the furniture and shelves they had stacked up in front of it earlier.

Nothing’s getting through there. Hopefully.

“We’ll be okay,” Carly said. “We’ll get through tonight.”

Lara nodded and wondered for whose benefit Carly had said that. She didn’t really know these people very well, though she thought they were good people. She was lucky to have found them, and she wished Tony were here, too. How differently things might have turned out if she had met Will and Danny before all of this, run across them while they were leaving the city. From what Will told her, she and Tony were only a few days ahead of them. If only they had started their exodus a day later, or the others started theirs a day earlier…

The past now. All in the past.

Concentrate on surviving tonight!

She glanced back toward the bank lobby and saw a dark shape slip silently through the peephole in the window over Will’s right shoulder.

It was a hand.

She was about to scream but realized what would happen if she did. Will would turn and shoot it with a silver bullet, or use that strange cross-knife of his, and it would be over. Instant contact with silver would kill the creature, and the hand would be useless to her.

There has to be a scientific explanation, she thought, even as she pulled Carly’s machete out of its sheath and rushed up the hallway and into the lobby.

Will looked up at the sound of her footsteps and his eyes went wide. He shot up from the floor when he felt it, and jumped back from the window even as the hand reached for him. The arm was straining against the glass shards, cutting itself into ribbons, clumpy black blood spraying the boards.

Will reached for his Glock, but before he could pull it free, Lara lopped the hand off at the wrist. They heard a shriek, then the creature pulled its remaining arm out of the hole, leaving behind a patch of blood and skin on the jagged glass.

Will stood over the severed hand and watched it flop around the marble floor at his feet. The fingers grabbed fruitlessly at the smooth surface, pumping a small amount of black ooze in its wake.

“What the fuck?” Will said and aimed the Glock.

“No!” Lara shouted at him.

Will stopped short of pulling the trigger and looked questioningly at her.

“I need it,” she said.

“What the hell for?”

“Look, it’s still alive.”

He looked down at it, then stepped on it with his boot, pinning it by the back of the palm to the floor. It flopped desperately against his boot, trying to find leverage that wasn’t there.

“How is it still alive?” she asked.

He looked at her for a moment, then back down at the hand. “That’s a good question. How is it still alive?”

She sought out his eyes. “Please, don’t shoot it. Not yet.”

He didn’t respond, but his eyes softened a bit.

“Wait,” she said, and before he could say anything, she ran quickly back to the hallway.

Carly was staring at her as she ran back. “I’m confused. What’s happening?”

“I need to know,” Lara said and handed the stunned woman back her machete.

Lara found what she was looking for in one of the supply crates in the office — a backpack filled with socks and rags. She dumped them out — toilet paper, toothbrushes, and tooth paste fell out, too — and hurried back to the lobby.

“What are you going to do with that?” Will asked. He was still standing over the hand, moving underneath his boot.

She crouched in front of him and held the backpack open. “Okay, when I give the word, lift your boot.”

“What?”

“I’m going to throw this backpack over it and put it inside.”

“Why the hell are you going to do that?”

“Look at it, Will, it’s still alive. Even after I cut it off at the wrist, the hand is still sentient, essentially its own entity now. Don’t you think it’s worth finding out how that’s possible?”

Will glanced across the room at Danny, who shrugged and said, “Yeah, she’s got a point, Kemosabe. Know thy enemy and blah, blah, blah.”

Will looked back at her. “And you’re going to do what? Study it?”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

He seemed to think about it.

“Will, we can learn so much from it,” she said, seeing the doubt in his face. “Please, it’s just a hand. It can’t be that dangerous.”

“We don’t know that.”

“You have to let me try. Please.”

He sighed. “All right.” He shook his head. “I’m so going to regret this.”

“Thank you.”

“On the count of five. Ready?”

She nodded.

“Five…four…three…two…one!”

Will lifted his foot, and Lara quickly brought the backpack down over the moving hand. She trapped it against the floor, then scooped it up with a sweeping move that tossed the hand into the bottom of the backpack.

She instantly felt it moving, crawling up the interior of the backpack by stabbing the sides with its fingernails. She zipped the backpack shut and tossed it across the room. It lay still for a moment, but then the hand started moving again, punching against the backpack as if trying to rip itself free. It had no leverage and no strength, and the backpack didn’t move from the spot where it had landed.

“Simultaneously the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen and quite possibly the hottest,” Danny said. “How exactly do you plan on studying that, Calamity Jane?”

She didn’t know how to answer. She hadn’t really thought that far ahead. “We can learn a lot from it,” she said, looking back at the two of them. She could feel Will’s eyes on her. He was still far from convinced. “I’m tired of thinking about these things like they’re supernatural creatures. I don’t think they are. And that hand might hold the answer…tomorrow, or a week from now, or maybe even a month from now. It’s an opportunity we have to take.”

She prepared herself for a bombardment of questions, doubts, maybe even accusations. But instead Will just grinned at her and said, “Looks like you just lost your title, Danny.”

“Oh, she can have it,” Danny said, grinning at her, too.

“What are you talking about?” she said. She looked at Will, then Danny, then back at Will. She grew quickly annoyed. “What title?”

“Captain Optimism,” Danny said. “Because you’re already assuming we’re going to survive tonight. That’s kind of precious.”

With Vera and Luke sleeping soundly in the office, Lara and Carly gathered in the lobby with Will and Danny. They sat across from the men, Carly keeping one eye on the barrier over the front doors and the other on the backpack lying on the floor next to her.

Every now and then, Lara felt the hand moving inside the backpack, stretching against the fabric, as if seeking a new route of escape.

“You’re really going to study it?” Carly asked.

Lara nodded. “We don’t know anything about them. What they are. Aren’t you curious?”

“I’ve always been pretty good at concentrating on what’s ahead. Right now, I don’t care about what makes them tick.”

Not wanting to know was not in Lara’s nature. It was why she had been so drawn to medical school, and why, despite the fact that it was a severed hand moving on its own, she couldn’t take her eyes off the backpack.

“I thought lizards did that,” Carly said. “You know, if you cut off a limb, the limb still keeps moving for a while. Or even grows back. Or maybe that was just some movie I saw.”

Lara nodded. She was half right. “A lizard can regrow a tail if it has to shed it to, say, escape a predator, but the tail won’t be the same. It can’t actually grow a new leg, that’s just a myth. Invertebrates can, though. Like flat worms. You cut off twenty pieces, and you’d get twenty smaller worms. Even crickets can regrow legs. Some amphibians can regenerate limbs, too. But these things… It’s sentient. It can actually think.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t just flopping around? I’ve seen dogs that got run over and were still moving their heads afterwards, even though their body was crushed.”

“I don’t think so. But there’s a way to test that out.”

“Ugh,” Carly said, unconvinced. She stood up. “I’m going to check on Vera and Luke, and…” she gave the backpack one last look, “…get the hell away from that thing.”

Lara smiled as Carly disappeared into the hallway.

“To what end?” Will asked from across the room.

“What?”

“The hand.” Will was watching her closely. He had very soft brown eyes. “Study it to what end?”

“The more we know about them, the more we’ll know about how to kill them. You’re interested in knowing that, aren’t you?”

“Silver does that.”

“Maybe there’s an easier way. A less dangerous way for us.”

“‘It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.’”

“I don’t know what that means,” Lara said.

“Sun Tzu. From The Art of War.” He shrugged. “I read sometimes.”

“And sometimes I watch TV, but you don’t see me bragging about it,” Danny chimed in.

Will ignored him. “You need to be careful with it, Lara. We don’t know what it’s capable of. If you’re right, and it is sentient, you need to always take precautions before you do anything with it.”

“I will,” she said defensively.

“We need to make an agreement,” he insisted. “No bringing that thing out unless either Danny or I are there. Or Kate or Ted. Anyone with a gun.”

“I have a gun.”

“It’s going to be hard reaching for your gun with that thing’s fingers wrapped around your throat. You said it yourself. It’s sentient. It’s thinking. That makes it extremely dangerous.”

He was right, she realized. She had been so giddy about acquiring the hand, about all the tests she wanted to perform on it, that she had temporarily forgotten what it was, or where it had come from.

“So we’re agreed,” he said.

“Agreed,” she nodded. “I won’t do anything without someone else there with a gun.”

Will looked satisfied with her answer.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“For not shooting it.”

“You made a compelling argument.”

“Blonde hair and blue eyes don’t hurt, either,” Danny said. “Willie boy’s a sucker for blondes.”

“Shut up, Danny,” Will said.

“Don’t try to deny—” Danny stopped suddenly and glanced over at Will. “You hear that?”

“Yeah,” Will said.

“I don’t hear anything,” Lara said, suddenly feeling very anxious.

Like the others, she had become attuned to Will’s and Danny’s reactions. When they were calm, so was she. And when they were alarmed, panic klaxons went off in her head.

Will and Danny stood up quickly and peered through the peepholes into the parking lot beyond.

“What do you see out there?” she asked. She stood up and walked across the lobby.

Will said, as if he couldn’t quite believe it, “Sonofabitch.”

He turned and ran toward her, his rifle in one hand, shotgun in the other, and shouted something at her. But she didn’t hear it because the entire wall behind him and Danny — who was also running — suddenly exploded, and a massive boom overwhelmed all her senses.

A split second later she felt something hit her in the right temple and knew instantly she was bleeding. She didn’t have time to reach up and feel the wound, to gauge how deep it was, because Will had rammed into her with his shoulder and they both flew backward and down to the floor as the wall behind him — or a million pieces of it — flew through the air at them like heat-seeking missiles.

Fragments of concrete whistled past her face. Big chunks hit her in the chest, and maybe the face, too, though she couldn’t be sure. Pain and noise and white light from one of the LED lanterns flashed across her universe, splashing its heat across her face as it went. Somehow the lantern missed her head and crashed into the wall behind her, sparks flying into the air. She expected the entire room to go dark, but the other lanterns stayed in position.

Loud crashing sounds, like thunder, slammed very close to her ears, and she realized Will and Danny were shooting their rifles, even as a hand grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her to her feet. She had trouble assuming control over her legs, and she felt herself dragged along the floor as a result.

He’s going to pull my arm right out of its socket, and it’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt a lot…

The human arm was not meant to be dragged, the socket that connected it to the shoulder could only take so much pull before it snapped loose. Lara found, through some research, that tearing a human limb off was much harder than most people realized, and even the tried and true method of quartering by four horses was a major hassle, not only for the executioner, but for the horses.

These inane facts, seemingly from another lifetime, flitted across her mind as Will dragged her along the floor.

She felt a wetness on her face and remembered that she was bleeding.

What’s that phrase? Oh, right. I’m bleeding like a stuck pig.

As she peered through a mask of flowing blood, she saw them coming through the hole in the wall across the bank lobby. They were climbing over the great big steel machine (A car, dummy, it’s just a car) as if they were moving on spring-assisted stilts.

She saw five — no, more than that, maybe ten — then ten became twenty.

No, wrong again. There had to be at least fifty of them trying to squeeze in through the hole all at the same time.

Lara stared, mesmerized by their graceful gait as they climbed the length of the badly crumpled car and entered the lobby with great alacrity. Their black eyes darted left and right as soon as they crossed the threshold, dark, tightened skin shimmering unnaturally against the bright LED floodlights.

And the booming. Loud, crashing, earsplitting booms of guns firing around her, a never ending cascade that started, amazingly enough, to fade into the background, until they were just mere echoes and she was suddenly left with just her thoughts.

I never finished medical school. If Mom ever found out, she’d be so disappointed.

I’m sorry, Mom, I’ll try to do better in the next life…

CHAPTER 26 KATE

She heard a loud crashing sound, like a bomb had gone off next door. It came from the lobby, where Will and Danny were holed up with Lara. And the last time she checked, Carly was out there, too.

It was an intensely grinding sound, like metal against concrete. Then gunfire, and she knew Will and Danny were shooting. First they were firing single shots, but then she heard the roar of their M4A1s on full automatic.

That was the dead giveaway that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Ted, sitting down the hallway a few yards from her, threw a quick look over his shoulder and she saw large, terrified eyes underneath the LED lanterns hung above him.

“Stay here!” she shouted, leaping to her feet.

She ran up the hallway. She saw Carly up ahead, turning when she heard Kate coming up on her.

“Don’t leave Vera!”

Carly nodded, but Kate was already running past her and out into the lobby.

She came right up against Will as he was backing up, dragging something on the floor with him.

Lara.

Her body limp as Will pulled her back by the wrist while he continued firing with the M4A1 using his free hand. Danny was next to him, firing on full-auto at the far wall.

Then Kate saw them.

A swarm of black death, flooding in through a massive hole in the wall. The bank doors with their thick, reinforced barrier were still there. But that didn’t matter now, and the sight of the still-standing doors next to the gaping hole in the wall looked patently absurd. She stared at the front grill of a four-door Chevrolet sedan, covered in brick and mortar and dust, and over the roof of the vehicle, at the nebulous moonlit parking lot of the strip mall beyond.

Every time Danny and Will shot one of the creatures, two or three (or five) instantly took its place, leaping over the quickly piling bodies. The front of the lobby was covered in black, oozing, contaminated blood and shriveled forms, like a growing landfill of black prunes with arms and legs, heads and eyes.

Through the fog and gunfire, she heard Will screaming: “I’m out! I’m out!”

She ran to him and got a quick glimpse of Lara on the floor. She hardly recognized the pretty blonde girl from this morning. Lara’s face was covered in a mask of blood, and she blinked her eyes rapidly, as if trying desperately to get her bearings.

“Go!” Kate screamed.

Will pulled Lara past her, trying to reload at the same time. It seemed like an impossible task, but he was actually dragging Lara and reloading at the same time. She didn’t know how that was even possible.

Kate switched her M4A1 to full-auto and, bracing against the kick she knew was coming, began firing into the wall of ghouls rushing through the wall. There were so many of them, filling every inch of cold, brightly lit open space, that it was impossible to miss. She didn’t even have to aim, she just concentrated her fire into the thickest part of the mob.

Danny was suddenly next to her, backing up, shouting, “Changing!” as he dropped an empty magazine and quickly inserted a new one. A second later, he shouted, “Go go go!” and began firing again.

Kate backed up, still firing. She was stunned when she fired the last bullet and the M4A1 stopped pounding against her shoulder.

My God, already?

She quickly hit the switch to release the empty magazine and snatched a new one from one of the pouches around her waist.

Danny stood still in front of her, holding his position, firing calmly and almost point-blank into the creatures as they tried to bull rush him. He was conserving bullets, firing a burst into this section, another into that, and back and forth. Calmly. So damn calmly. She wondered if she could ever be that calm in the face of certain, horrifying death.

She jammed a fresh magazine into the rifle. “Go go go!”

Danny dropped his magazine and stepped back behind her, and she heard him reloading as she fired off her second magazine.

The ghouls kept coming.

They were feverish, rabid, and the wanton disregard they were showing for their own lives was unfathomable to Kate. Their bodies had become so thin and frail that she could see her bullets go right through them when they didn’t hit bone, continuing and hitting the second and even third ghoul — and even speckling what was left of the wall — behind them.

Kate knew she was halfway through her second magazine when she felt a hand touch her shoulder and heard Will’s voice, calm and shouting at the same time next to her, “Manager’s office! Go go go!”

She didn’t move right away. She fired off the remaining bullets from her magazine before stepping back, passing Will, who had taken her spot. Danny was backing up and reloading again. They were moving backward the entire time, the sound of machinegun fire never ceasing for even a second.

As she stepped back toward the office, her sneakers slid in liquid, making a squishy sound, and she looked down at a thick trail of blood leading into the hallway and through the door into the office.

Lara’s blood…

Then Will and Danny were almost on top of her. She quickly stepped over the blood and continued down the hallway.

Will was shooting with the shotgun now, racking the forend and shooting, racking and shooting, without end, burning through the weapon’s seven-shot capacity at a dizzying pace. The ghouls were now so close she could hear the sound of silver-coated bullets slapping into flesh and bone and the cries of ghouls as they continued to throw themselves into what was left of the lobby. Between the shotgun blasts and Danny’s M4A1 firing on full-auto, she was only vaguely aware of her heart thrumming mercilessly against her chest.

Will shouted, “I’m out!”

Danny stepped forward into the hallway and began firing with his own shotgun, racking and shooting, the blasts deafening in the narrow confines of the hallway. Would she still have her hearing come morning?

If they made it to morning. At that moment, she wasn’t so sure.

Something crashed behind her, and she spun around.

Ted hadn’t moved from the end of the hallway and had held sentry over the back door throughout the entire ordeal. He didn’t see the ceiling behind him cave in as something bulky, square, and massive came crashing through, taking a pair of LED lanterns with it, slamming into the hallway floor with such force that she actually heard it over the roar of shotgun blasts a mere three feet behind her. The heavy object splintered the tiled floor as if it were wood, sending chunks of debris into the air.

A projectile scraped her temple, drawing blood, and she instantly lost her balance and groped at the wall to keep herself upright.

Ceiling debris hadn’t even begun to scatter into the air when two dark, skeletal shapes fell out of the ceiling and landed on top of the object — an air conditioner unit the size of a small closet. One of the creatures leaped at Ted, who got off a shot, turning the ghoul’s head to mush, but then — more fell through the hole. There were so many of them they took up her entire line of sight. She couldn’t even see Ted, though his shotgun continued firing somewhere on the other side.

Will was behind her, grabbing her by the shoulder and shoving her toward the office, shouting: “Inside, Kate! Inside now!”

Ted’s down there! What about Ted?

But her words wouldn’t come out. Danny’s shotgun fired behind her, Will’s next to her, tearing one ghoul, then two, then a half-dozen to blistering pieces before her eyes.

Will gave her another push and she fell through the office door, Will and Danny right behind her as Carly, who had been waiting beside the door, slammed it shut and threw down a large steel bar they had welded to the wall earlier in the day. The heavy object fell over the door, landing into a waiting latch on the other side of the wall and snapping into place with a loud crashing sound that made Kate’s ears ring.

Immediately the door shook as the ghouls crashed into it from the other side, the heavy, loud, persistent thoom-thoom-thoom! vibrating through every inch of the office.

She stood in the center of the room, the M4A1 hanging loosely at her side. She wasn’t sure if it was shock or terror, or both, that had left her paralyzed, but she had become an observer, watching the door shake and the latch threatening to come loose from the wall as the ghouls slammed and smashed their bodies with wild abandon into it over and over and over again.

And all she could think was, Ted is still out there. Ted is still out there!

Luke was on his feet, one hand clutching his Glock, the other gripping his stomach. He looked pale and was covered in sweat, clearly in immense pain. He was barely standing, using the edge of a big desk to stay propped up. She wanted to reach out and grab him, force him to sit back down, but she couldn’t move.

Carly had retreated into a corner, Vera gripped tightly inside one arm, her other hand holding a Glock at her side. The little girl pressed her own palms against her ears and buried her face in Carly’s chest.

Good, that’s a good girl. You don’t want to see or hear what’s about to happen. You’re a very smart girl, Vera.

The sisters were standing next to Lara, who lay on the floor, bleeding badly from a large gash in her right temple. There was a thick pool of blood already forming underneath her head, and Kate wondered how Lara could possibly be still alive after losing so much blood. Someone had put a towel underneath Lara’s head — it might have been white once upon a time, but it was red now, and getting darker with every passing second.

Will was loading shells into the shotgun, his ammo pouches bulging again. Danny’s pouches were similarly replenished.

When did they reload?

It was hard to focus on what was happening around her. Her mind was everywhere and nowhere. In the hallway with Ted. At the back of the room with Luke, trying to stand despite the pain. In the corner with Carly and Vera, hoping for the best. With poor Lara on the floor, bleeding everywhere.

Danny took a familiar-looking box the size of a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket. She had seen it before.

Back in Houston. At the Archers warehouse store.

It was a C4 detonator.

Plan Z.

God, that’s such an awful name, Will. You should have changed it by now. I told you, you can’t sell people on a ‘Plan Z’. Why didn’t you listen to me? This is what I do, Will. I sell people on things. You should have listened to me…

Will and Danny were talking — she saw their lips moving but couldn’t hear what they were saying. She wasn’t entirely certain she could even depend on her eyes, because it looked like the wall around the door was actually pulsating, as if it were alive. Cracks began to spread along the length of the wall, originating from the edges of the door. First in small increments, slivers that sliced left and right, then increasing in size, expanding and widening, actually tearing, coming apart at the seams…

They’re coming in. The door isn’t going to hold. They’re going to take the whole wall down and they’re coming in.

Her sense of touch came back as fragments of the ceiling began pelting her. Small, misshapen pieces the size of pennies, tapping against her shoulders, disappearing into her hair.

The ceiling was shaking almost in sync with the pounding against the door, the widening cracks along the walls, the throbbing of the building around her…

Will was suddenly in front of her, saying something. She shook her head to let him know she couldn’t hear him. He put his arms around her, and she felt warm and wanted very much to just let herself be lost inside his arms, to be with him like this forever, the ghouls be damned. Who were they to say who she could or couldn’t be with on the last night of her life?

The ground underneath her began to tremble.

An earthquake? Texas doesn’t get earthquakes…

In the back of her mind, she knew it wasn’t an earthquake. It was the C4 Danny had hidden around the strip mall, underneath cars in the parking lot, planting them in a wide semicircle around the bank. The earthquake that shook the walls and floor and sent shards of the ceiling crumbling down on top of their heads was the C4 going off one by one, taking most of the parking lot and surrounding buildings with them in what was probably a huge sea of explosions, igniting the gas in cars, propane tanks, and just about anything else they found that could be ignited or imploded.

Plan Z…

She heard and felt the earsplitting results of Plan Z while wrapped in Will’s arms. She pressed against his chest as half the ceiling fell on them with a sudden rush of cold air as the room ventilated. Even before the sounds of the massive explosion had a chance to die down, she heard gunfire and realized Will was gone, and she was crumpled on the floor alone, covered in pieces of ceiling and dust and specks of brick and mortar.

She looked up, inching her head slowly. Fire spat from Will’s shotgun as he fired at two ghouls leaping over the fallen wall.

Wall? What happened to the wall?

She watched in fascination as buckshot ripped ghoul flesh from their bones over and over again. The creatures fell like drops of water from the heavens, black blood splattering white floor tiles in a sea of tainted darkness, making for an oddly beautiful canvas.

She had lost her bearings. She didn’t know where the door was. Every inch of the room looked the same, and it became impossible to orient herself.

Danny appeared out of nowhere and sat next to her, reloading his shotgun. There were shotguns scattered all around them, and pouches, some with shotgun shells spilling out. So many pouches. So many shells. This was why Will insisted they keep making silver ammo, even though it slowed them down leaving the city. He knew they would need it. He knew, because Will always prepared for the worst-case scenario.

Danny was shouting at her — No, he was shouting at Will, who grinned even as he racked the shotgun and fired again and again, swinging it from left to right, right to left.

Seven shots. Those shotguns only have seven shots.

Danny was shoving shell after shell into his shotgun. When he was done, he grabbed a nearby shotgun and loaded that, too. It wasn’t until Will shouted something back at him that Danny started firing. Now it was Will who was reloading, grabbing handfuls of shells from the pouches spilled about them, loading one shotgun, then another.

The two of them were constantly moving, moving, moving.

Through a kind of impossible slow-motion haze, Kate saw that the ghouls weren’t coming through the door. No, it still held, the latch had done its job, even though the walls around it were badly cracked and torn and chunks of it were falling free.

No, the door was safe. The creatures were coming through one of the walls that had opened up in the explosion. A sea of dead, unmoving black things covered the floor and rubble, like an extension of the darkness outside in what remained of the parking lot, or the dark, swaying trees or the quiet, pitch-black highway in the distance.

Plan Z…

The only thing keeping the darkness at bay were the LED lanterns screwed into what was left of the walls and the ceiling, and a couple resting in corners on the floor behind them. Would it be better if she couldn’t see what was happening? The end was coming, and she’d rather let it all end in the dark. It would be more merciful that way.

Hands grabbed her and she was pulled back toward another section of the wall. Will’s face appeared above her, but she still couldn’t hear what he was saying. She found herself marveling at the way thick black pools of blood clung to his temple and chin and cheeks. Not his blood.

Across the room, Luke bravely shot at the mass of ghouls pouring in through the wall, but it was like firing into an ocean of pudding. They simply absorbed his bullets and kept coming. He had to know that, didn’t he?

As she watched, horrified, Luke stopped shooting and she realized he was out of bullets. She groped for her own gun, screaming at him to take hers, but he didn’t hear her. Had she really screamed at all? Was it only in her head? Her mouth was dry and clenched tight, and she didn’t have the strength to open it.

Luke smiled at her, but before she could respond, one of the ghouls seemed to swallow him up and he disappeared down to the floor. Suddenly they were all over him, and she tried to dig out her gun.

Here, Luke, take it!

Her hand swung limply at her side even as Will dragged her across the room.

No, stop! Luke! We have to save Luke! Can’t you see? He needs us!

The ghouls on top of Luke evaporated before her eyes as buckshot tore into them. But it was too late, she realized. Too late.

Luke…

Will shoved her against the wall where she sat awkwardly, looking across the room as more ghouls raced through the opening, slithering on black blood as they persistently climbed over growing piles of their dead. Kate felt like laughing at the sight of slipping and sliding ghouls, but when she parted her lips to do just that, no sound came out. Or maybe she did laugh. She wasn’t sure, since she couldn’t hear a thing and hadn’t been able to hear for a while now.

The ghouls didn’t get far into the room before their skin was shredded by silver-coated buckshot. The shotgun blasts, as Will fired next to her, barely a foot away, had become mere soft pop-pop-pop noises, felt rather than heard.

Will and Danny took turns shooting and reloading. More machine than men. Whenever Will stopped shooting to reload, Danny was instantly shooting. Three empty pouches lay on the floor, and there seemed to be more spent shotgun shells around them than flooring.

As the pain and numbness started to take her, something made her look out through the hole in the wall. Past the never-ending ghouls trying to crawl in, stumbling on the increasingly large hill of dead.

There was something out there. In the darkness. Standing on top of a large, rising rubble in what was left of the parking lot.

It was a man.

No, not a man. It stood like a man, but she knew, without having to think about it, that it was one of them. A ghoul…and at the same time it wasn’t.

There was something about its eyes, something intense and unnatural in the way they seemed to glint against the inky blackness of the night. They were cold eyes. Cold and blue and they bored their way into her very soul.

It sees me. The undead thing with blue eyes sees me.

And more…

The creature’s lips moved, forming an expression she hadn’t seen before in the creatures.

Not a frown, but anger.

It was simmering with anger.

Then the blue-eyed ghoul turned and slipped away into the night, and she saw only black clouds and a moonless sky high above them.

Overwhelming calm and sleep tugged at her, and she didn’t bother to fight them. Even shotgun blasts and an M4A1 firing on full-auto a foot from her ear faded into the background. But she didn’t turn her head to make sure, because it didn’t seem to matter all that much.

Will and Danny were still fighting. They weren’t going to give up. Not them. Not Will and Danny. They never gave up. They would fight on, and fight on and fight on until they couldn’t fight anymore.

She didn’t know why they bothered.

What does it matter? What does any of it matter?

She closed her eyes, and there was only serene blackness.

CHAPTER 27 WILL

They had maybe ten shells left between them. That was the optimistic guesstimate, anyway. A couple were scattered about the room, hidden among the sea of empty shells, that he made mental notes of over the course of the night. But ten shells sounded about right. It was why he had switched back to the M4A1 sometime during the night while Danny kept firing with the shotguns. While the Remington gave them the coverage at close range that the rifle couldn’t, silver bullets were still silver bullets.

Will took tally of the dead and dying:

Luke was dead. He knew that much. The kid hadn’t moved in two hours. The top part of his head was gone, a dead giveaway that he wasn’t waking up anytime soon. The kid had saved a bullet for himself and actually went through with it. Will wasn’t sure when that had happened because he lost track of Luke during the chaos. His field of vision had been limited to a half-dozen meters around him, and Luke somehow got lost in his blind spot.

Ted was also gone. Somewhere in the hallway beyond the office door, lost behind a pile of debris, probably. Will’s last sight of the big former security guard was watching Ted fight off a dozen ghouls falling through a hole in the ceiling. The creatures had used an air conditioner to break their way through, just like with the car against the lobby wall. Different objects, same principle.

Not stupid. Dead, but definitely not stupid.

They would eventually have to dig Ted’s body out of the rubble. There couldn’t be very much left of the hallway after the explosion. Will wasn’t looking forward to that. Best case scenario was that the explosion killed Ted before the ghouls got to him, before they could turn him.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Kate lay on the floor next to him, breathing in long, regular breaths. He reached over and ran his fingers along her temple. One of the fragments from the falling air conditioner had hit her on the side of the head, and he could feel a big bump there. She was going to feel the effects of it for days. But maybe that wasn’t really the problem.

He remembered the look on Kate’s face as they retreated into the office. She was dazed and confused, fixing him with the thousand-yard stare he was so familiar with. He had seen it from soldiers after a hectic firefight. Mostly the rookies, the new kids that hadn’t been in-country for longer than a few weeks, but veterans got it, too. He would have to watch her closely.

Lara was alive, which had to be some kind of miracle. Her prone body lay behind the big desk to their right, hidden in a corner and somehow spared from much of the falling wall and ceiling, shielded by the expansive tabletop. She had bled profusely from the nasty gash on her head, thanks to a projectile dislodged from the wall by the impact of the ramming car. The bleeding had mercifully stopped.

She’s a lot tougher than she looks.

Will turned his head too fast and flinched involuntarily. Broken ribs for sure, from the same fusillade of bricks and mortar that had knocked out Lara. His thigh was bruised — he knew that much without having to see it. Half his body was probably purple and black underneath his thermal clothing, but there would be time to take inventory later. It wasn’t like they were going anywhere anytime soon.

His eyes went back to the hole in the wall across the room. The door was still intact, which was another surprise. The steel bar had done its job. Barely, but it held. Most of the ceiling was still where it was supposed to be, though large globs of it had collapsed before the ghouls abandoned that part of their assault to focus completely on coming through the caved-in wall.

It was impossible to tell where the skeletal corpses of the ghouls stopped and the room began. They were everywhere. Hundreds, possibly thousands, piled on top of one another, in places reaching as high as the ceiling. There were probably more spread outside the building, and he imagined a bridge of the dead leading directly to the hole in the wall. Ironically, it was the dead ghouls that saved their lives. After a while, it became impossible for the creatures to reach them without first having to climb over their own dead. That slowed their progress tremendously and made defending the wall easier.

The nearest dead ghoul was barely a meter from Will’s boots, lying on its stomach, head twisted awkwardly. He stared down at the creature’s lifeless eyes. There wasn’t much of a chest left after he shot it point-blank with the Remington. What remained of the ghoul’s insides were spilled out on the floor. Or at least, he thought those were insides. It was hard to tell…

Almost every inch of the once-white tiled floor was covered in a shimmering black pool that looked like the surface of a calm pond made of dripping thick tar. The inky color gave off an almost radiant glow underneath the LED lanterns still hung from the remaining ceiling and walls. What must it look like from the outside, looking at the bank from a distance, with the LED lights pouring out through the hole…

Probably like some kind of glowing radioactive chamber. Warning, warning: don’t get too close!

Their clothes were stained black, as were most of the walls and big swaths of the ceiling. The same black goop clung to parts of his face, hair, and over one eye. Danny, sitting nearby, was in the same boat; he was almost completely covered from the cheeks down, and there were thick chunks of clumpy flesh in his hair.

Will glanced down at his watch but saw only ghoul blood. He wiped it against a clean part of his pant legs and stared at the time: 3:14 a.m.

Three more hours…

The good news was it didn’t look like any more ghouls were coming. There had been less and less of them as the hours dragged, as he and Danny ran lower and lower on ammo. Until finally, the ghouls had just stopped coming. He hadn’t heard or seen any signs of movement at all for at least thirty minutes now.

Still, he took that assumption with a grain of salt. They could be playing possum right now. He wouldn’t put it past them.

Dead, not stupid.

He looked over at Danny again. Like Will, he had wrapped pieces of a shirt — one of many scattered about the room, loosened from the crates during the fight — over both his hands. Their weapons had overheated from repeated use. The heat generated by the non-stop firing had turned every inch of the M4A1s and shotguns into burning metal, and their palms were bright red and covered in welts as a result. It would have been worse if they hadn’t switched between six shotguns, giving each weapon time to cool down. Not enough time, as it turned out.

He was sure they both had second-degree burns, which was the best-case scenario. If they were unlucky, they were third-degree, which meant damaged nerve endings — probably why they couldn’t feel the pain at the moment — and hair follicles and epidermis, which was not going to be pretty. Assuming they survived the night, of course.

Again, more assumptions he had to take with grains of salt.

For now, he could still grip the shotgun, which was a good sign, even if doing so made him grimace with pain. The M4A1 had run dry an hour ago, forcing him to revert back to the Remington and their precious and dwindling shell count. He kept the rifles nearby, though. In a pinch, they made for decent blunting instruments.

He barely felt the cold rushing in through the opened wall despite the fact each breath he exhaled produced a small cloud of white mist. Maybe it was the thermals he had on, or the thick layer of ghoul blood that caked him, or possibly the nerve damage from the weapon burns.

Thank God for small miracles.

Or it could be the adrenaline. It was still coursing through his body, keeping him from feeling most of the pain, blunting the aches and throbbing in his joints, the stinging in his palms, and even the cold against his face. But it wasn’t going to last forever. And when it went, it was going to hurt like a sonofabitch.

Next to him, Danny kept one eye on the gaping wall across the room and the other on Carly and Vera, folded up into a bundle next to him, both snoring lightly. Every now and then, Carly woke up and looked at Danny, who smiled at her and nodded, and she then drifted back to sleep.

“I think they’ve retreated,” Will said softly after about an hour of sitting in silence staring at the wall.

“How long has it been?” Danny asked.

“Hour?”

“You’re not sure?”

“Probably an hour.”

“How many you think we killed? A few hundred? Thousand?”

“I lost count.”

“I know one thing: I killed more than you. But then again, I’ve always been the better soldier.”

“Yes, you are. The master of disaster.”

“Was that a joke?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s my territory, asshole.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t let it happen again.”

They sat quietly for a few more minutes, looking out at the pitch-black darkness visible beyond the pile of the dead.

“You saw Ted?” Danny asked quietly.

“Yeah.”

“I liked that kid.”

“Me, too.”

“Went out like a champ.”

“Yeah.”

“Would have made a decent soldier.”

“Probably.”

Will glanced at Luke’s still form. Danny’s eyes went there, too.

“Didn’t think the kid had it in him,” Danny said.

“He was tough.”

“That’s the way I’d like to go. Coming back as one of those things is not my definition of fun in the sun.”

“Make sure you save a silver bullet for yourself, then.”

“You and your sweet nothings,” Danny said.

Will chuckled. He was tired. He didn’t feel like moving. Talking was easier, and it kept them both alert and alive. Just in case the ghouls were still out there, playing possum, listening in.

Dead, not stupid.

“Kate?” Danny asked.

“Concussion, I think, but she’ll be fine.”

“She didn’t look so good back there.”

Will nodded. “I know.”

“What about her?” Danny nodded over in Lara’s direction. “I think I can see her chest moving.”

“She’s a tough one.”

“Can you move?”

“Barely,” Will said.

“Good. Cause I can’t move at all.”

“Cover me.”

“You wish.”

“No, seriously.”

“Yeah, seriously, you wish.”

He gritted through the pain and crawled to Lara, shuffling forward on all fours with the shotgun in one hand and one eye on the wall. Halfway there, he slipped and fell in a pool of black blood.

“Nice,” Danny chuckled behind him.

“Eat me.”

He picked himself up and kept going until he reached Lara. He kneeled behind the big desk and reached for her blood-covered hand, searching for a pulse. Weak, but it was there.

“How is she?” Danny called softly.

“Just barely.”

He grabbed a bottle of water lying nearby and found a clean shirt in one of the storage crates. He wetted the shirt and slowly wiped at the dry blood along her forehead and face. She had minor cuts along her cheeks and nose, but they paled in comparison to the gash on her forehead. He slicked back bloodied blonde hair from her face and was struck by how peaceful she looked, as if she had simply gone to sleep.

Her breath quickened a bit and she moved slightly, as if sensing his contact. He sought out her pulse again. It had gotten stronger, more determined.

Tough girl.

He pulled a compact first-aid kit from one of his pouches. He cleaned her wounds again, then applied a thin layer of antibiotic cream before bandaging them up. It wasn’t exactly first-rate corpsman work, but it would keep the wound from festering. He hoped. The only thing that killed soldiers faster on the battlefield than bullets was an infected wound.

Behind him, Danny said, “You through, loverboy?”

“Almost.”

Will finished up and leaned back against the wall. He took a breath and watched Lara sleep soundlessly in front of him. He wished he could sleep that peacefully. It had been a while…

The pain hit him like a locomotive flying out of a tunnel while he was standing on the tracks. He closed his eyes and grimaced. His joints were starting to ache, the throbbing in his arms and legs was asserting itself, and his palms were beginning to sting a little bit more. He felt like screaming out but got through it by clenching his teeth instead.

“You feel that?” Danny asked. “Adrenaline’s going. It’s gonna hurt.”

“Try not to cry out like a little girl.”

“We’ll see who cries for their momma first.”

Will grinned back at him through the pain.

They were both still awake when the sun finally showed up at 6:35 a.m., flooding the hole in the wall with a great big yellow splash that looked as beautiful as anything he had ever seen in his life.

The familiar and stinging acidic smell waffling through the air attacked his nostrils with a vengeance. He watched with morbid fascination as the sun swamped the bodies piled across the mouth of the caved-in wall, the sea of dead looking strangely spectacular in the daylight. Ghoul skin sizzled and evaporated into white powder. Bones clattered as the flesh that once held them sloughed off, literally dissipating into listless clouds of fine, white mists. The hundreds (thousands?) of bones, suddenly finding themselves without something to hold them in place, tumbled from their piles, making the kind of racket that would have woken even the dead.

The sun finally reached Danny and covered him from head to toe. “God bless you, sun, you magnificent bastard!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, spreading his arms out as if he could actually embrace the heat.

Black blood clinging to Danny’s face turned dry and brittle and cracked, falling loose like a facial treatment gone wrong. Will half expected to see a new face appear underneath the second layer of crackling skin, but it was still just Danny.

The same happened to the blood on the floor, on the walls, and splattered against the ceiling and rubble. Sunlight hardened it on contact, and soon it was fracturing like clay, literally coming undone before his eyes. It turned into hazy sheets of vapor that seemed to get sucked out through the hole, into the bright sky outside.

The only blood that remained where they were was the red kind. Luke’s, Lara’s, and theirs.

Danny was crouching in front of Carly and Vera, shaking them awake by the shoulders. Vera opened her eyes first, and seeing the sun spread across Danny’s face, scrambled out of Carly’s arms and into his. Danny grabbed her, grunting with the pain of contact, but trying not to show it.

“Feeling all right there, sport?” Will grinned at him.

“Just fine, thanks,” Danny grunted back, wincing in pain.

Carly opened her eyes and smiled at the sight of Vera clinging to Danny. “You look like shit.”

“Feeling good, babe. It’s morning.”

“Yay for morning,” Carly said, sitting up from the floor.

Will got up and walked across the room. He felt like a dead man in purgatory, strolling through a cemetery, with bones unearthed from coffins to block his path. Having to climb the mountain of bones meant stepping on them. Arms and legs and even skulls crunched underneath his boots. He blocked the terrible sounds out. It couldn’t be helped. They were just everywhere.

He managed to climb to the very top, found some stable slabs of brick to stand on, and looked down at the parking lot.

Or at what was left of it.

Will glanced back at Danny. “Hey, master of destruction. Job well done.”

“How does it look?”

“Like a masterpiece. Come see for yourself.”

Danny gave Vera back to Carly and climbed up the mountain of bones to stand beside Will. He looked out at the parking lot and nodded. “Not bad. If I do say so myself.”

“You do, you do.”

“A-plus?”

“Give or take. You’re a poet, man.”

“I should open a school. Danny’s Academy for Blowing Shit Up and Stuff.”

“Sign me up. Do I get a discount?”

“What makes you so special?”

The entire parking lot had caved in, dropping two — and in some places, three — meters deep, as if a giant sink hole had opened up and swallowed it, taking anything, and every undead thing, that had been standing on top with it. A sea of skeletal remains — legs and arms and fingers — jutted out of the debris like blades of grass, gleaming bones underneath the sparkling sun.

It was impossible to count how many ghouls had perished in the parking lot, trapped by the rubble at night and silenced permanently by sunrise. Will guessed it had to be in the high hundreds, maybe thousands. And there were probably more buried underneath that they couldn’t see. At least the bulk of the ghoul army, he guessed, gathered to kill them last night were dead before they even made it into the bank.

Even after Danny’s C4 reduced the parking lot to nothing, taking a huge chunk of their number, they had continued to attack through the caved-in wall. For a while, anyway. Will found that oddly impressive.

Last charge of the dead brigade…

It took them most of the morning, but they dug Ted out of the rubble and buried him, along with Luke, in a patch of soft dirt about 150 meters behind the strip mall, on a slightly raised hill that had been used to plant a giant billboard advertising the mall’s businesses. They found shovels at what was left of Ned’s, and by the time they were done, the fresh bandages around his and Danny’s hands had turned a sooty gray, forcing them to clean and re-bandage.

They took inventory of their ammo and had exactly seven shells left between them, not the ten he had optimistically estimated last night. There wasn’t a single magazine of silver bullets for the M4A1, which wasn’t good. But at least they still had the equipment they used to make silver bullets. Now all they needed was more silver…

Kate regained consciousness first, but her motor coordination was shot. Will couldn’t tell if it was due to her injuries or something else. The latter worried him. He told Carly to keep a close eye on her.

He and Danny had buried Luke before Kate woke up, so she had only his freshly dug grave to say her goodbyes. It was for the best. He hadn’t wanted her to see Luke with a hole in his head. In her state, it might just push her completely over the edge.

When it came time to visit Ted’s grave, Danny took Carly and Vera himself while Will stayed behind with Lara. She had woken up at 8:05 a.m., and he had given her water until she couldn’t drink anymore. She looked better, but then again, the last time he saw her she was covered in blood. The cuts along her cheeks and nose had started to redden, and by tomorrow they would scab over. In a few weeks, they’d be gone, though one or two may linger as a reminder.

He was surprised by how well she took the news about last night. Maybe it was her nightmarish time with the Sundays, but she seemed to have an easier time digesting the deaths, the firefight, and even her own near-death experience. He kept a close eye on her to make sure it wasn’t just an act.

They sat on what was left of the sidewalk in front of Ned’s. They had changed into whatever clothes they could pull out of the rubble. It wasn’t much, but it was unbearable to spend any more time in their ghoul-blood-soaked clothes. Even with much of the blood flaked off in the sun, the heavy, pungent aroma of the ghouls lingered long after.

She touched the bandage over her forehead, like a kid unable to leave the scab alone. She winced at the contact.

“You probably should refrain from doing that,” Will said.

Lara gave him an annoyed look. “Yeah, thanks, doctor.”

“I’m just saying.”

“I’m the third-year medical student here. If anyone’s dispensing barely credible medical advice, it’ll be me.”

“Fair enough.”

She gave him the briefest of smiles, and he returned it.

“You don’t want to go say your goodbyes?” he asked.

She seemed to consider it, but then shook her head. “I wouldn’t know what to say. I barely knew them, and I don’t want to intrude.”

“Okay.”

“I shouldn’t go, right?”

“Not if you don’t feel comfortable.”

She shook her head again. “I shouldn’t…”

They sat in silence for a moment, enjoying the heat beating down on their faces. It would get cold again soon enough. And after that, nightfall.

Nightfall was always waiting in the wings…

“I almost died last night, didn’t I?” she said after a while. It wasn’t really a question.

“You came pretty close, yeah.”

“They used a car.”

“Yup.”

“I didn’t even know they did things like that.”

“They adapt. They’re very good at that.”

“You were right. They are smart. They tracked you, but they didn’t attack until they had reinforcements.”

“It seems that way.”

“You knew it was going to happen.”

“I didn’t.”

“The guns in the bank manager’s office, the ammo on the floor…”

“I like being prepared. Just in case.”

“Like the Boy Scouts?”

“Something like that. Dead, not stupid.”

“What?”

“The ghouls. They’re dead, not stupid. Just keep that in mind and act accordingly.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” She paused for a moment, then said, “I was a liability last night, wasn’t I?”

“You did good.”

She frowned. “Will, I don’t even know how I’m still alive after last night. All I heard were gunshots, then I remember feeling blood on my face.” She touched the bandage over her forehead and winced again. “Some help I turned out to be.”

“You did fine,” he said.

“Complete and utter bullshit.”

“You did fine, for a first-timer. But I’ll expect more next time.”

“Yes, sir,” she said and gave him a mock salute.

He grinned back.

“What were you in the Army?” she asked. “I mean, what was your rank?”

“I was a corporal. Officially E-4. Which is lower than a sergeant but higher than a private.”

“How long were you in the Army?”

“Eight years.”

“And you only made corporal?”

“Yup.”

“Does that mean you sucked at being a soldier?”

He smiled. “Probably, yeah.”

“But at least it sounds cool. Corporal Will. Okay, probably not that cool. What’s your last name?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not really.”

She was staring at the parking lot, at the skeletal remains of the dead ghouls.

“What is it?” he asked.

“This thing,” she said. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever studied. It’s not in the history books, Will. It’s been hiding all this time, somehow managing to escape scrutiny for God knows how long.” She was talking more to herself than to him, he realized. “And the infection itself… How far does it go? Down to the DNA? What happens there? I have so many questions. What about the sun turns them into that? What do you call that?”

He shrugged. “Paste? Mist? Vapor?”

“The UV rays of the sun completely destroys their cells, breaks them down until there’s nothing left. I’ve never seen anything react that way to sunlight in my life. There are allergies that can cause someone to break out in rashes or even blisters when exposed to sunlight. But to do that? I’ve never seen anything like that before, Will. It’s fascinating, isn’t it?”

“It’s something, all right.”

He could see her mind churning, digesting the information before her. He let her roll the questions and theories around in her head for a moment.

After a while, he said, “What happened to your hand?”

Lara held up her hands. “My hands?”

“Your other hand.”

She looked confused for a moment, then understood what he meant. She laughed. “Oh, that hand. I think it’s back in the bank somewhere. We should find it.”

He grunted. “I’ve already changed these bandages once already. I’m afraid you’re on your own when it comes to the digging.”

CHAPTER 28 KATE

What’s the point?

Kate was numb. Her legs seemed to move on their own as she traveled from what was left of the bank, up the side of the small hill, and finally to where they buried Luke and Ted. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say or do, so she stood in front of Luke’s makeshift grave and waited for it to all be over. It wasn’t much of a grave — just some freshly dug dirt and a cross made from two pieces of two-by-fours, with Luke’s name scribbled on top in marker. It was better than nothing, though she had a hard time wondering what the point of it was.

They were probably expecting her to cry, maybe even say a few words. But no one else was saying anything, though Carly and Vera cried quietly over Ted’s grave while Danny stood slightly off to one side and patiently waited. She did think about crying, but it never really happened.

Her eyes felt numb, like the rest of her body. Her soul.

Finally, mercifully, they started back down the hill. She was grateful to grab what she could find of her things or dig out of the rubble. She tossed them into the back of the Tacoma truck that Will had found as a replacement and climbed into the front passenger’s seat. The others would drive with Danny in a Dodge Ram, another vehicle they had salvaged from the streets. Without Luke and Ted, they didn’t need as many vehicles. It occurred to her that they were really just minus one person, since they had picked up Lara yesterday and lost Ted and Luke today.

Luke. She was supposed to be crying, bawling her eyes out for him. It was what they expected. Will and Danny and the girls. She caught Will watching her from time to time, the look of concern on his face so clear he might as well be wearing a sign that read “Everyone keep an eye on Kate. I don’t think she’s doing very well.”

Not that he would have been wrong.

She felt great relief when they finally started off in the trucks, though she had lost all enthusiasm for the idea of reaching Starch, Texas, and hidden in its woods, Harold Campbell’s mysterious, life-saving facility. Or as Luke used to call it, the “bomb shelter.”

Will took the feeder road and merged back onto Highway 59, heading north. “Two hours, worst-case scenario,” he announced into the radio.

“That gives us five hours to find shelter if Harold Campbell’s fabled Land of Oz turns out to be more fable than actual land,” Danny said through the radio.

“It’s there,” Will insisted.

“I’m not doubting you, chief, I’m doubting Harold Campbell.” Then he added, “And I’m doubting you a little bit, too. Wait, did I just say that out loud?”

Danny, joking again. Because Danny always joked, even when the world was crumbling around them. It used to be comforting to her. Now, she wasn’t so sure anymore.

Will was watching her closely again. “You okay? You haven’t said a lot this morning. Does your head still hurt?”

“I’m fine,” she said.

Luke’s dead. Ted’s dead. And I can’t even force myself to cry over their deaths. I’m just fine, Will, why do you ask?

“Kate,” he said, in that voice that let her know he wanted her to keep talking.

She wasn’t in the mood for it, though. “I’m fine. I really am.”

We’re all going to die. What does it matter if I’m fine or not? We’re all going to die.

Like Luke. And Ted.

And Donald. And Jack…

They drove the first thirty minutes in silence, and for a while she almost managed to trick herself into thinking they were on a Sunday drive through the Texas countryside. The air was filled with birds, all the usual sounds of humanity replaced by nature, with only the unwanted noise of their truck engines to ruin the mood.

They reached Starch, Texas, faster than she expected, but then, there really wasn’t a whole lot of traffic out here. Starch was a town off Highway 59, connected to civilization by a feeder road that was under construction. The lanes looked haphazardly thrown together, as if the person designing them hadn’t really given it much thought. In usual traffic, it would have been a pain to maneuver around, but there was nothing usual about today.

They passed a Texas state patrol car parked along the shoulder, its doors open, blood-splattered window and driver’s side seat visible in the sun. Along the unfinished sidewalks there were discarded hard hats, construction equipment, and vehicles. They passed a charred human body, not the white skeletal remains of a dead ghoul exposed to the sun. She couldn’t help but wonder how it had burned. Had the person done it on purpose? Chose painful death by fire over turning? Could she summon that kind of courage when her time came…?

They took a small highway — little more than asphalt on an old country road — off the main thoroughfare and were almost immediately swallowed up by walls of trees on both sides. The “hub” of Starch, Texas, was a long stretch of road crisscrossed with smaller streets. Houses and RV parks flanked them, then a church, what looked like a community center, and a house with a big poster on the front lawn advertising the services of a lawyer.

They came up to a four-way intersection, where they found the city courthouse on one street corner. The courthouse was also the city police department, essentially a two-floor building next to a fire station and a post office. She saw several purple-themed signs reading “Pirates Proud” before she realized Pirates were the local high school football team’s mascot.

A left turn took them over a railroad track, then past more houses and RV parks. She saw an impossibly large number of old trucks and boats sitting in front lawns, some rusted over and probably unusable now. The farther they went, the fewer homes they encountered. Most of the roads curved and twisted at odd angles, and after five minutes of driving, the houses on the sides of the road seemed to get older and more spread out, until there was just one house — if they were lucky — for every minute of traveling.

“How much farther?” Danny asked through the radio.

“Almost there,” Will said. “The facility was designed to take advantage of Lake Livingston. Campbell paid off some Texas law legislators and got permission to build a small hydro dam as part of the facility. The idea was to use the lake as an unlimited power source.”

“That must have cost him a pretty penny.”

“It’s a good thing he had lots of pretty pennies to spare.”

They went down a spur road that curved up and down, then left to right without rhyme or reason. The trees were becoming more constant now, rarely giving way to a house or farm. They drove along the stretch of road for about ten minutes, and the road was so empty they rarely saw any signs of civilization except for the occasional hurricane fencing. She imagined Starch, Texas, probably looked like this even without the end of the world bearing down on them.

Finally, Will slowed down. “We’re almost there, ease up on the throttle,” he said into the radio.

Will slowed down even more as they came up on a man-made dirt road on their left leading into a large wooded area. The sign read: “Route 19.”

They had passed a dozen roads with a dozen signs like this one, and each time Kate had wondered where they led. Sometimes she saw a house not far from the road, but other times the roads just kept going before turning left or right.

Will turned into the dirt road, easing the speedometer down to five miles per hour. Almost immediately, the truck started bouncing and she was thrown around by the unpaved road underneath them.

They were surrounded by trees. Towering, centuries-old trees. She had never seen so many big, old trees in her life. Not that she could really concentrate on the view. The road was simply miserable, and she remembered what Will had said, about not wanting to bring an injured Luke here yesterday. He was right. Luke would have bled out a minute after they turned into this Godless stretch of road.

“Damn,” Danny said through the radio. “Harold Campbell has a sick sense of humor. I think Vera is about to barf in her seat. How far down is this place?”

“Three klicks, give or take.”

“Sonofabitch.”

The road turned slightly a minute later, then went straight for another half mile. They were moving so slowly now that she lost track of how far they had come, especially as all the trees looked the same, and one patch of dirt road looked like the other dozen or so patches of dirt road. She spent most of her time clinging to the handle above her door to keep from being flung onto the dashboard or against the window.

Danny’s voice came through the radio again: “Are you sure you know where we’re going?”

“Pretty much,” Will said.

“We’re driving down the Devil’s own version of a dirt road because you’re ‘pretty much’ sure?”

“Relax, I’m sure. We had to travel back and forth to the building site the entire time I was working with Tom, and you got used to it. It’s Route 19 all the way to the end.”

“You mean there’s an end to this? It doesn’t keep going until we fall off a cliff or, even better, straight into Lake Livingston?”

“It’s coming up. Have faith.”

“I have faith in you, bub. I just don’t have faith in this road ending. Ever. Or us surviving it. Did I tell you Vera just barfed into Carly’s lap?”

Without warning, a large shaft of sunlight poured through the trees in front of them, and suddenly the Tacoma was past the hellish road and moving on a soft, even patch of dirt again. She breathed a sigh of relief despite herself.

They entered a wide-circled clearing surrounded by hurricane fencing, parts of which looked like they had come tumbling down a while back, while the rest stubbornly held on, if just barely. There was a gate in front of them, but it too had come down probably a while ago, and Will drove the Tacoma over it, passing an unmanned guard’s shack along the way. Intercoms and cameras, still perched on top of poles that had fallen, were now half-buried in the soft earth.

And there, in the middle of the rough circle, was a concrete structure. It was ten feet high and looked like a big, ugly rectangular box, resting on top of a wider slab of concrete that extended thirty yards out to either side. The block itself was long, maybe about ten yards in length and five yards wide. There wasn’t anything there that looked like a door, or windows, or any kind of entrance whatsoever.

There was only the block of concrete in the center. It looked rough and ugly and inhospitable, the kind of building that didn’t have any personality or cared to have one. The structure screamed plain, nothing that millions of dollars had bought.

Will stopped the Tacoma in front of the structure. “That’s not the whole thing,” he said, as if reading her mind. “That’s just the entrance. The facility is underneath. I was one of the guys pouring concrete on a building that takes up half of this circle. This patch of dirt under us? It was poured in later to cover the facility.”

He turned off the engine and grabbed his M4A1 from the back seat, then climbed out of the Tacoma. She followed him outside just as Danny pulled up in the Ram alongside them.

Danny leaned out of his opened window and grinned. “Okay, you got me. It’s here. There, now you can get in the ‘told you so’.”

“Told you so,” Will said.

“Happy? Good. Now stop beaming like a virgin on prom night — it doesn’t become you.”

She gave the structure another long look as Danny and the others piled out of the Ram. Up close, it still didn’t look all that impressive. If anything, it was the opposite.

It was a big lump of concrete in the middle of nowhere. No, that wasn’t really true. They were somewhere — in the middle of a clearing surrounded by old, dark trees, hiding dark things inside. Did sunlight even penetrate the thick crowns of those trees? How many ghouls were in there now, watching them at this very moment?

The structure did look a bit bigger than she had initially thought, and the concrete was a lot smoother the closer she got to it, as if it had been sanded down to take out all the edges. It looked almost like marble, and if she looked hard enough, she could see their rough, tired reflections on the surface.

“What is it?” Carly asked behind her.

“It’s a door,” Will said. “Think of this as the top of a very big pyramid. There is a much bigger structure underneath that is only accessible through here.”

“How do we get in?” Lara asked.

Will felt along the smooth wall of the structure before finding what he was looking for. Kate saw it, too — a small round lens embedded inside the surface, covered by thick clear glass. Will tapped on the glass with his knuckles and they heard a solid but dull echo.

“Camera?” Danny asked.

“Security camera,” Will said. “One of many embedded in the structure, in case the perimeter surveillance cameras went down.”

Looking closer at the structure, she could see small cameras embedded along its sides. There were four on this side alone, and she imagined there would be others on the other three sides as well.

Will was saying: “In theory, there should be someone on the other end of that camera looking at us right now.”

“In theory,” Carly said. “What if there’s no one inside? You said it yourself, Will, you weren’t even sure if Campbell or anyone else would have had time to make it to the facility.”

“I think there’s someone in there,” Will said. He tapped the glass covering again, and this time spoke directly to it: “If you can hear me in there, you need to open up.”

“How can you be so sure?” Lara asked.

“The fence,” Will said. “And the gate. And the footprints.”

“Footprints…?”

She took a step back. Barefoot tracks covered the dirt ground surrounding the structure. The more she expanded her view of the clearing, the more tracks she saw. There had to be hundreds. They had come from all around, converging on the structure like moths to a flame.

Ghouls.

Danny said, “They’ve been here. Last night, from the look of the tracks. And the nights before that.”

“So where are they now?” Carly asked, sounding suddenly nervous.

“Probably in the woods, waiting for the sun to go down. The foliage looks pretty thick in there.”

Of course they’re in the woods, Danny. Where else would they be? They’re all around us, just waiting…

She instinctively glanced at her watch. 1:14 p.m.

Will was tapping on the glass over the security camera again while talking directly to it: “I know you’re reluctant, but you need to let us in. We can help. We have supplies. Weapons. A doctor.”

She noticed Lara look up, surprised to hear that last part.

“I know there’s a lot of room down there,” Will continued. “More than enough for a few hundred people. My guess is there’s not a few hundred down there, so there’s plenty of room left for us. We can pay our own way. We’ll salvage supplies in the day, help pull security at night. This isn’t a zero sum decision. You’ll gain everything and lose nothing.”

Will paused, as if waiting for whoever was behind that camera lens, if indeed there was anyone — she had her doubts — to absorb what he had already said.

She tried to see if the camera was moving, but couldn’t detect anything.

“You need to understand that we’re not going anywhere,” Will said at the camera again. “We can’t. This is our objective. You need to understand our situation. You know what’s out here. You’ve seen it yourself. So you need to open this door.”

They waited, but there was no response of any kind. The structure didn’t move. The camera didn’t blink. The only sounds were birds chirping from the trees around them and insects chattering in the air.

Kate looked around at the faces of the people standing next to her. There had been two more faces yesterday, but they were down to six now. Their little bit of hope was slipping away with each second that no one responded to Will.

She couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for them. They still thought things could get better. She wasn’t so sure about that anymore.

What’s the point?

Will said to the camera, “All right, don’t say I didn’t give you a chance. Trust me, this isn’t how I wanted to do this. But you’ve left us no choice.” He stood back. “Danny.”

Danny was holding a familiar looking backpack. He opened it and pulled out slabs of C4 explosives.

Oh. So it’s Plan Z all over again?

That’s such an awful name, Will.

Danny held one stick of C4 up for the camera to see. Then he lifted the entire backpack and showed its contents to the camera.

Will was talking to the camera again: “My friends and I have come a long way, and we’re not turning back now. Open the door, or we’re going to make our own. You don’t want that. This door is the only thing between you and what’s waiting out here in the dark. You and I both know that. So you’re going to open up and let us in, or we’re going to see how long the facility lasts without this structure on top of it. What do you think? Fifty-fifty? Less? Let’s find out together.”

Will took a step back. Instinctively, she and the others did the same. All except Danny, who began pressing slabs of C4 to the structure, then attaching what looked like bronze tubes to each one. Danny put two on one side before moving on to another side, where he slapped two more against the smooth surface.

Will turned back to the camera: “Remember, you’re forcing our hand. What happens in the next few minutes is all on you. But it’s still not too late. You can still open the door.”

Danny reappeared on the other side of the structure, his empty backpack in one hand, a remote detonator in the other. “Everyone back. You don’t want to be anywhere close to this sucker when it goes.”

“Let’s move the cars first,” Will said, and they started walking back toward their vehicles.

She had one hand on the Tacoma’s door and one foot poised to climb up when something very loud and unnatural broke the quiet air behind her and the ground underneath her began to vibrate noticeably.

She looked back.

The rectangle structure was moving. It was sliding to the right, letting out a loud grinding noise, as if giant blocks of granite were in motion. She could hear what sounded like heavy machinery and giant gears turning underneath the dirt.

Will and Danny unslung their M4A1s and walked back toward the structure. It occurred to her very suddenly that she didn’t have her rifle and hadn’t even bothered looking for it when she had woken up this morning. What did that say about the “new” Kate, who had been gung-ho about learning how to shoot ghouls between the eyes?

The structure slid all the way open to reveal another rectangle — this one a hole in the floor. It was an entrance with concrete steps leading downward, and a thick shaft of artificial light flooded out and upward into the air, visible even in the daytime.

Danny said, “So does this mean I don’t get to put the rest of the C4 to use?”

“’Fraid not,” Will said.

“Damn.”

Carly patted him on the back. “Maybe next time, babe.”

“Promises, promises…”

The top structure finally stopped moving.

They leaned forward and looked down. The steps only went down for about ten feet before they met a concrete floor inside a long, brightly lit hallway. Halogen lights lined the walls below, but they didn’t see anyone.

“A brightly lit hallway with no signs of people,” Lara said. “That’s not ominous at all.”

Danny glanced over and grinned at Will. “You’re the one who brought us here, Kemosabe. This is your party invitation, so after you.”

Will smirked back at him.

Then facing front, he took a tentative step forward…then down…