The Stones of Angkor

CHAPTER 15 LARA

She spent most of the afternoon trying to ignore the fact that she couldn’t reach Will at Mercy Hospital. Or reach anyone there at all. The only time she made contact was through Jen’s helicopter, but the man with the deep voice who answered hadn’t picked up the second time.

Her last contact with Mercy Hospital had been two hours ago.

Lara paced the Tower’s third floor, looking at the ham radio every few minutes. She willed it to squawk, for Will’s voice to come through. If not Will’s, then Gaby’s or Jen’s. She would have settled for just about anyone at the moment.

But there was nothing.

What the hell is going on over there?

Either they had turned off their radios, or they were purposefully ignoring her call. Neither answer made any sense. Had she allowed Will to walk into an ambush? Will was certain Jen could be trusted, and Lara had learned to trust his instincts. There was nothing “squirrelly” about Jen. Will would have noticed, just as Danny noticed it from West and Brody in the first few seconds after meeting them. The two of them just knew when something wasn’t right.

There had to be another explanation.

What the hell is going on over there?

“Still nothing from Mercy Hospital?” Danny asked, coming through the door behind her.

She shook her head and continued pacing.

“Nothing,” Maddie, standing at the window, said.

“What about our designated emergency frequency?” Danny asked. “If Mercy Hospital’s MIA, Will or Gaby would be using it to try to contact us.”

“I tried that, too,” Lara said, grinding her teeth. “Nothing.”

Maddie and Danny exchanged a brief look that they were probably hoping she didn’t catch.

“What’s going on?” she asked Danny.

“You’ve been up here for two hours,” he said. “Go back to the hotel. Go eat something.”

“Soon.”

“When?”

“Soon, Danny.”

Maddie put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “He’ll be fine, Lara. It’s Will. He’s pretty good at being fine.”

“I know,” she said, smiling. She hoped it was at least semi-convincing.

“Come downstairs and get something to eat with me. Danny will call if he gets anything on the radio.”

Lara nodded. “I’ll be right down.”

Maddie gave her a pursed smile that said she didn’t entirely believe her, but the smaller woman left anyway. Lara waited until she couldn’t hear Maddie’s footsteps before looking over at Danny. He was watching her closely.

“He’s in trouble,” she said.

“What else did the guy say?”

“That was it. He cut the connection and hasn’t picked up again. No one has. Someone should have, Danny.”

“It doesn’t mean Will’s in trouble.”

“Then why hasn’t he called back? He knows we’d be monitoring the emergency frequency by now.”

“Maybe he doesn’t have access to the building anymore. Or a radio.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Last night he said he was going to help this Mike guy clear out an Archers early in the morning, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

“So maybe he wasn’t at the hospital when everything went bad, when this dickhead you talked to took over the place. Or so he says.”

“He sounded pretty damn certain.”

“Look, if this was Joe Blow we’re talking about, I’d be worried. If it was Joe Blow’s ex-military badass brother-in-law, I’d still be worried. But it’s Willie boy, so I’m not all that worried.”

“What about Gaby? I haven’t heard anything from her, either.”

“If Will’s around, he’ll look after her. And vice versa.”

“She’s just a kid…”

“She’s eighteen.”

“Nineteen.”

“Nineteen? When did that happen?”

“Today. She turned nineteen today.”

“Huh. I guess I gotta get her a present when she comes back.”

If she comes back. If they come back.

“Go get something to eat,” Danny said. “You haven’t eaten since last night.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s not? Then what did you eat this morning?”

“I…” She shook her head. “I was too busy helping you catch West all night.”

“And West has been caught. So go down to the kitchen and eat something. It’ll make you feel better.” He unclipped his radio and held it up. “I’ll give you a ring if something comes through. Promise.”

She hesitated.

“Go, Lara,” Danny said.

Food helped, but it didn’t keep her from thinking about Will. Or Gaby. Or about what was happening eighty miles away in Lafayette that very moment. But at least it kept her from fainting, because she had felt lightheaded on the walk over, and for a moment didn’t think she would actually make it.

Mae had become a fixture in the kitchen along with Jo, Bonnie’s eighteen-year-old sister. Sarah was more than happy to spread the work around, and although Mae brought some cooking experience, Jo was clueless but, according to Sarah, anxious to learn.

Bonnie found Lara while she was finishing up a plate of foil-baked crappie outside on the patio, watching Lucy, Kylie, and Logan racing around the expansive grounds of the hotel, while Vera, Elise, and Jenny chased them. She wished she could be more like them, allow herself to forget what was happening out there. With Will, with Gaby…

What the hell is going on out there?

“Still no word from Will?” Bonnie asked.

Lara shook her head. “Danny’s keeping an eye on the radio.”

“From what I hear, Will’s extremely capable.”

“He is.”

“Then he should be fine.”

“I hope so.”

“You were lucky to find him and Danny.”

I wasn’t always so lucky.

“I was,” she said.

Bonnie leaned against the railing and watched the kids. After a while, she said, “I’ve missed that.”

“What?”

“Children laughing. Not that we’ve had a lot to laugh about, but they’ve persevered. God knows how, but they never once broke down during all those miserable days and nights hiding in basements and homes.”

“Kids are adaptable. We don’t give them enough credit for it.” She looked over at Bonnie, who looked preoccupied with something. “What is it?”

“This whole thing with West and Brody… I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to keep apologizing. It’s done and over with.”

“I know, but I still… God, I never wanted it to be like this.”

“As Will would say if he was here now, it is what it is.”

“You love Will.”

“A lot,” she said without hesitation.

Bonnie smiled. “That’s bad news for Roy. He’s been trying to enlist me into talking him up to you.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “He doesn’t give up, does he?”

“He can be very stubborn. Roy was the one who kept us alive before we ran across West and Brody. We lost a couple of people during that time, and I think he blames himself. I’ve tried to tell him he shouldn’t, that he did his best.”

“If it makes him feel any better, the old me would have totally swooned over him.”

“Missed his chance by that much, huh?”

“Yup.”

They looked back at the kids. Bonnie’s girls had tired themselves out and were resting in the grass, while Vera, Elise, and Jenny ran rings around them.

Her radio squawked, and she heard Maddie’s voice: “Lara, Danny, we have a problem.”

So what else is new?

She unclipped the radio. “What’s going on, Maddie?”

“It’s West.”

Next to her, Bonnie tensed at the name.

“What about him?” Lara asked.

“He’s gone,” Maddie said.

“Gwen discovered it when she brought his lunch over,” Maddie said. “She came and woke me from my nap because my room was closest, and I called you guys.”

“When was the last time someone came to see him?” Lara asked.

“Four hours ago,” Sarah said. “Around eight in the morning, when I had Bonnie bring him his breakfast.”

Bonnie nodded. “He was in there when I brought it over.”

The tray still sat on the bed, a used plastic spoon and crumbs of bread left behind on a Styrofoam plate.

“So he could have gotten free any time between eight and now,” Lara said. “Four hours.”

“Who had the key?” Bonnie asked.

“I did,” Lara said, pulling the key out of her pocket. “Not that he needed it, apparently.”

She pulled the door toward her. The deadbolt was still in place, but someone had used a prying bar to break the door open at the strike plate. There was a big crater left behind in the doorframe. The wood around the area where the lock would be had caved in.

“Where’s Roy?” Lara asked.

“He’s on the beach,” Maddie said.

Lara nodded. “How old is Derek?” she asked Bonnie.

“Fourteen,” Bonnie said. “Why?”

“He’s a pretty big kid for fourteen. I thought he was sixteen when I first saw him.”

“I guess.”

“Where is he now?”

“You think…?”

“It’s not one of the girls, I know that much. You need a lot of strength to do this to the door.”

“Oh, God,” Jo said quietly.

Lara looked over at her. “What is it?”

Jo turned to Bonnie, as if asking for permission. Bonnie nodded.

Jo looked at Lara. “Derek always sort of looked up to Brody and West. You can’t really blame him,” she added almost defensively. “They’re big and tough guys. Kids like Derek are impressionable, and whatever we thought of them, we couldn’t have gotten here without those two.”

“Where is Derek now?” Lara asked.

Derek was exactly where Bonnie said he would be — in his room, still wearing the same hoodie from yesterday. He sat on the end of his bed, hands in his pockets, as if he had been waiting for them and was relieved when they finally showed up.

“You found out, huh?” he said.

Bonnie exchanged a look with Lara.

“Where is he?” Lara asked him.

“I don’t know. He said it was better if I didn’t know, so you couldn’t force me to tell you. I told him to take me too, but he wouldn’t, that it was better for me to stay here. Are you going to kick me off the island now?”

Lara didn’t answer him. She turned to Bonnie. “I need to talk to Danny about this.”

“I’ll stay here and talk to him for a while,” Bonnie said. “If I find out anything, I’ll come get you.”

Lara nodded. She left Derek’s room and stepped back into Hallway A. Maddie and Jo were waiting for her outside.

“God, he really did do it,” Jo said, looking sick to her stomach.

“Like you said, he’s impressionable.” She started up the hallway, the two women falling in behind her. Lara said into the radio, “Danny.”

“So, go West, young man rides again?” Danny said through the radio.

“Can you see anything from up there?”

“I’m scanning every inch of the island, but if he’s back in the western half, we’re probably going to have to do this the old-fashioned way…again.”

“Lock the door to your floor, just in case.”

“Will do, boss.”

She sighed. She still hated that title.

“Roy,” she said into the radio. “Where are you?”

“On the beach,” Roy said through the radio. “You need me somewhere else?”

“No. Stay where you are. Radio immediately if you spot him. He might be going for the boats, and if he does, let him. Don’t try to stop him.”

“You mean just let him go?”

“Yes. At this point, if he wants to leave the island, he’ll be doing us a favor.”

“Okay,” Roy said.

She looked over at Maddie. “Go back to the lobby, just in case he shows up there.”

Maddie nodded and jogged off, one hand on her holstered Glock.

Jo moved up alongside her. “Can he get his hands on any weapons? Besides the knives in the kitchen, I mean?”

“No, we have everything locked up in the Tower basement as a precaution.”

“So he probably only has that prying bar…”

“Probably.”

“He’s still hurt. Maybe he won’t try anything.”

“Yeah,” Lara said, though she didn’t believe it.

What was that Will always said? “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”

She looked over at Jo. “Tell me the truth, Jo. Will he hurt the kids?”

Jo shook her head. “Brody, maybe, but I don’t think West would. He’s really not that bad of a guy, honestly. He might have hit Bonnie once or twice, and he got aggressive when he wanted her to, you know, do things that she didn’t want to.”

She doesn’t know about West and Brody killing the other survivors for their supplies and the gold watch. Bonnie and Roy never told her.

“But, I don’t know,” Jo continued, looking very uncomfortable. “I don’t think he would stoop to hurting the kids, but I could be wrong.”

“Go bring the girls into the hotel anyway, just to be safe.”

Jo nodded and hurried off.

Lara stopped at her room and went inside. She hadn’t completely lied to Jo. Most of the weapons were in the Tower, just not all of them.

She closed the door and walked straight to the nightstand. The sight of the soft, comfortable bed reminded her that she hadn’t slept in a while, ever since waking up in the middle of the night to chase West. She thought about lying down for a moment to catch that nap Maddie had suggested. What would it hurt?

An hour. Maybe thirty minutes?

That’ll have to wait.

She opened the nightstand drawer and froze.

The spare Glock she was looking for wasn’t there.

She was still trying to process that when she heard the closet door opening behind her and reached for the Glock in her holster — a split second before she felt the cold barrel of the missing gun pressed against the back of her neck.

“I figured you might have a spare piece or two in your room,” West said behind her. “Is it yours or the boyfriend’s?”

“Does it matter?” she asked.

She was surprised she wasn’t more afraid, that her voice didn’t break slightly or tremble when she responded. Why weren’t her legs shaking? A man had a gun pressed into the back of her neck. She should be scared right about now.

“Not really,” West said.

“Don’t do anything stupid, West.”

“Shut up, Lara. You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore.” He pulled the other Glock from her holster. “Now, be a good girl and keep your trap shut for once, or I might just put a bullet in you out of pure spite.”

“West, don’t—” she started to say.

He grabbed her by the hair and pulled back so hard she almost screamed. Somehow, she managed to stop herself. Instead, her mind raced, looking for a way out of this that would keep them both alive. That would keep her alive.

He pushed himself up against her. She imagined he had to lower himself quite a bit, given how much taller he was, to whisper menacingly against her ear. “This is where you beg me not to kill you.”

“Are you going to kill me?” she managed to say, despite the pain pulling at her scalp.

“I haven’t decided yet.”

West must have sensed her lack of fear, because he let go of her hair and moved back. She let out a relieved sigh, then turned around to face him. He gestured for her to sit down on the bed. She did, watching him the whole time. He leaned next to the closet door.

Reminder to self: put locks on all the doors.

All the hotel doors were equipped with keycard locks, but there hadn’t been any need to keep the doors locked when it was just them. Now, with Bonnie’s group on the island, it was something she should probably bring up to everyone. Of course, to do that, she had to survive this encounter with West first.

Oh, that’s it? Easy peasy, then.

West had her other Glock stuffed in his front waistband. He was wearing the new pants and shirt she had sent over to him earlier this morning, and he was still favoring his right leg from his wounds. She wondered if it hurt him just to be moving around even a little bit.

Maybe he’s not as strong as he looks…

“I was going to let you go,” she said. “After you healed up. I would have given you supplies, weapons, and let you take your chances out there.”

“I won’t have much of a chance out there on my own.”

“I thought you were a tough guy.”

He chortled. “I’d be tougher with Brody.”

“It’s not my fault you and he decided to try to kill Blaine last night.”

“Yeah, well, it was a good idea at the time.”

“So that was the big plan?”

He sighed almost wistfully. “It wasn’t a bad plan. Once we were armed, we could renegotiate our stay on the island. But, unfortunately, things went sideways.”

“It doesn’t have to go further than this. You haven’t hurt anyone yet. This situation is still salvageable, West. Right now the only thing you’ve damaged is that door down the hall, and maybe my closet. Give me the gun and I won’t count this against you.”

He smirked. “I’m the one with the gun, Lara.”

“And I have people with guns out there, too. They outnumber you, the last time I checked.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re not scared at all, are you?”

“Should I be?”

He was right, though. She wasn’t scared at all. Not even a little bit. If anything, she was just annoyed. At her own stupidity, at her inability to predict his movements, at her unwillingness to let Danny end it all earlier this morning.

I’m not Will. And I’ll never be Will.

He lowered the gun to his side, grimacing slightly from the effort. “I was hoping for a little bit of fear. Just a tiny bit? Now I don’t know what to do with you if you’re not going to play along.”

“There are only two ways out of this, West. Give me the gun and I forget this ever happened. I let you rest, heal up, and then I put you back on land, just like I originally planned. The other option ends with you dead.”

“And who’s going to do the shooting?”

“Maddie. Carly. Or Danny. It doesn’t matter. The second option always ends with you dead. I’d rather not see you dead, West.”

“It’s not fair, you know,” he said, almost pathetically, and for a moment — a split moment — she nearly felt sorry for him. “We brought them here. If it wasn’t for us, they wouldn’t have made it. We did that. We did a lot of things for them they couldn’t do on their own. You think it was easy?”

“I know it wasn’t easy. I’ve been there.”

“Yeah, I forgot. You were out there, too. So you know how hard it was. And then we get here, what’s the first thing they do? They turn on us. Those bitches.”

“They told me what I asked them. The truth. That’s all.”

“Danny. The blond California surfer. He had it out for us from the word go, didn’t he?”

“Danny was born and raised in Texas.”

“Bull.”

“It’s true.”

“Hunh. He looks like a California surfer.”

“That’s what everyone says.”

He walked across the room to the patio window. She noticed that he was moving gingerly. He brushed back the curtain and looked out. “Nice view you got here.”

“Give me the gun, West.”

He looked back at her and grinned. “What’s to stop me from taking what I want? Including you. I’m going to die anyway. Either here on this island, or back there on land. Maybe I should take some treats before I go. My reward for having to put up with this garbage. Sounds fair, don’t you think?”

He walked back and stood in front of her. He still held the gun at his side, almost casually, as if it were a can of beer instead of a deadly weapon.

“You’re pretty, Lara,” he said. “I can see why Roy gets all hot and bothered whenever he’s around you.”

He touched her hair, then caressed her cheek, before sliding his fingers under her chin. She forced herself not to flinch. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, even if the touch of another man’s hand other than Will’s brought back bad memories.

May you forever burn in hell, John Sunday.

“This boyfriend of yours,” West said. “What’s his name?”

“Will.”

“What do you think he’d do if he found out what I’m thinking about doing to you right this moment?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Big tough guy, huh?”

“Big and tough enough.”

“Ah, hell, I’m not gonna do anything.” He let out a frustrated sigh. “I like my woman with more meat on her bones anyway. Now Bonnie… Damn, that woman. I always knew she might be the death of me. The way she—”

He stopped suddenly when they both heard footsteps moving down the hallway outside the room. West turned his head toward the door on instinct—

Now!

— and Lara launched herself off the bed and tackled him, catching him mostly in the ribs. He grunted with pain as she jolted his still fresh wound, and her momentum drove them into the closet door. He smashed into it, cratering the door and stumbling to the floor, putting up so little fight for a man of his size that she was momentarily stunned.

But he was still moving, and he still had the gun.

Lara reached for the closest weapon she could find — the radio clipped to her hip — and pulled it free. She swung it as hard as she could and hit West across the side of the head. He fired the Glock in her direction — or where he thought she was — but he hadn’t turned his head and was shooting blind.

He missed her by a good solid foot.

Before he could squeeze the trigger again, she smashed the radio into the side of his head a second time — then a third time, and finally, a fourth time.

West’s gun hand dropped weakly to the floor and she wrestled the Glock from his pliant fingers, then used her feet to turn him onto his back and pulled the other Glock out of his waistband. He was bleeding again, blood seeping through the front of his shirt, and his temple was a bloody mess. He groaned on the floor, eyes closed in obvious pain.

Her door burst open and Maddie and Carly ran inside, their guns drawn.

“Holy shit!” Maddie said, seeing West on the floor.

Lara tossed one of the Glocks on the bed and holstered the other one. She picked up the remains of her radio. Most of them were sprinkled along the floor around her.

“I need a new radio,” she said quietly.

“Damn, girl, that’s the understatement of the century,” Carly said, and started laughing.

After a moment, Lara started laughing with her, and then Maddie joined in.

CHAPTER 16 WILL

Heat. Pain. And Lara in his mind’s eye.

Her blonde hair, so bright under the sun. Crystal-blue eyes like the clear water of Beaufont Lake. The early morning walks on the beach, and all their private moments, even before the others woke up. Listening to her soft heartbeat against his, a reminder of why he lived, fought so hard, and strived to always come through alive. The taste of her lips, sweet and addictive. Her smell, like roses. The feel of her skin, soft and delicate.

Lara.

He opened his eyes to twisted and smoking wrecks around, below, and above him. He knew he was bleeding (again) without having to actually see it. His face throbbed, and he could feel the bruises and cuts without having to see them. Predictably, every inch of him hurt like a sonofabitch.

He grunted through the aches and tried to move his arms and legs. There was a sharp stabbing pain from his right leg, but his left seemed fine. The operative word being seemed. His arms were mostly okay, and happily, the bullet wound from this afternoon had numbed, probably because the rest of his body was making up for it.

He was still fastened to the passenger seat by the seatbelt, which was a minor miracle. Rays of sunlight filtered in through the cracked windshield, so that was a good sign. Sunlight meant day, and day meant time. He lifted his left arm, shards of glass and tiny pieces of steel and aluminum falling free every time he moved any part of his body.

3:14 p.m.

A couple of hours since the helicopter had come down. That explained the lack of roaring flames around him, except for those still lingering over pieces of wreckage scattered about the hard concrete highway. The other good news was that he couldn’t smell burning flesh or singed hair, which meant he wasn’t currently roasting to death inside the carcass of the destroyed helicopter.

The bad news was everything else.

He couldn’t see behind him, so he didn’t know where the others were, or if they were even still inside with him. He couldn’t hear anyone other than himself moving, and despite the stillness of the city, the only breathing he could detect was his own. Jen was nowhere to be found, and her pilot’s seat was raised at an odd angle; it had probably overturned during the crash. The seatbelt hung upside down and was slashed near the middle. There were thick patches of blood against her side of the windshield. That wasn’t good.

The air around him was hot despite the cooling September breeze. The cockpit passenger door was gone, leaving a big, gaping hole exposing the sight of overturned vehicles piled on top of one another. The result was something akin to a makeshift tunnel extending from the open door to freedom, with broken glass and sharp metal lining his path.

He turned his head slightly to the left. When he couldn’t turn just his head far enough, he twisted his body slowly, carefully, in case he was impaled on something. Fortunately, he was able to turn a solid sixty degrees to look into the backseats. He wished he hadn’t.

Amy was still fastened to her seat, with the boy clinging to her chest, his arms around her neck. Her head was slumped forward, and Will was glad he couldn’t see the boy’s face because there was a large slab of metal jutting out from his back. He thought at first it was a piece of the rotor, but no, it was too jagged, too rough around the edges. The metal had pierced the boy first, then continued into Amy and exited the back of her seat. A large pool of blood gathered under them on the seat and the floor. The metal must have missed him by mere inches.

There were no signs of Gaby or Benny, though he spotted an AR-15 (Benny’s) lying on the floor, the barrel bent, with metal shrapnel sticking out of the side between the ejection port and magazine slot. More blood on the seats, but not enough to convince him Gaby or Benny were bleeding to death somewhere. They had either been thrown clear in the crash, or they had crawled out.

Will turned back around, pain shooting up from his right leg, where he had felt the first stinging sensation earlier. He finally looked down, saw a piece of glass — probably from the cracked windshield — three inches of it visible above the fabric of his pant leg. He guessed there were another two inches under there, embedded just deep enough that he felt it every time he moved a little bit. It hadn’t hit anything vital, he was sure of that, and it had missed the bone entirely.

“Will,” a voice said from outside.

Will looked to his right and saw Gaby kneeling on the other end of the vehicle cocoon. There was a nasty gash across her forehead, covered in a thick layer of drying ointment. Her chin and cheeks were scratched up, and her neck was purple and bruised.

“You gonna sit there all day, or you want us to pull you out?” Gaby asked.

“‘Us’?”

“Benny’s out here with me.”

“You guys okay?”

“I’ve looked better. Benny’s limping around a bit.” She frowned at the shard of glass sticking out of him. “How bad?”

“It didn’t puncture anything major. I should be fine.”

“Right. Fine. When aren’t you fine?”

He ignored her comment, said, “Jen?”

Gaby shook her head. “You don’t want to know.”

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

“Shit.”

They were both silent for a moment.

Then Gaby asked, “Can you move?”

He looked down at the glass. “I’m going to have to remove it first.”

Gaby winced. “Are you sure?”

“I can’t crawl out with this, Gaby.”

She nodded. “The medical supplies are all across the highway. We gathered up as much as we could find. Found your pack, though, with all the ammo still in it.”

“I need a first aid kit. Or if you can’t find one, a towel, water, gauze, duct tape, and antiseptic.”

“I’ll be back,” Gaby said, and disappeared.

Alone again, Will took inventory.

His left arm was fine. Well, not fine, exactly, but workable. The wound was bleeding again, but it wasn’t too bad. Eventually, he would have to suture it to make sure he didn’t bleed to death later. His legs weren’t broken, which was very good news. He wouldn’t have gone very far with broken legs. It was a simple matter of removing the glass shard, then cleaning the wound in his right leg. Disinfectant would keep out infection, and he could stitch it the same time he did his arm.

Doable.

He freed himself from the seatbelt, then reached down and touched the glass with a finger and tried pushing on it. Stabbing pain. He grimaced through it.

Gaby came back, knees scraping against the highway. “Ready?”

He nodded.

Gaby rolled the water bottle first. Then a fresh rag, the edges taped into the middle. He opened it, taking out a white packet, gauze in shrink wrapping, and a roll of gray duct tape.

“You sure you don’t need a hand?” she asked.

“I’ll manage.”

Will slid the cross-knife out of its sheath and sliced his pant leg open around the embedded glass, careful not to cut too wide, but enough to see — and eventually get at — the wound underneath. Surprisingly very little blood, but that was going to change when he pulled the glass out.

He laid down the knife and opened the water bottle, then set it back down. He picked up the rag with one hand, took hold of the shard of glass with the other. He didn’t think about it, just pulled it out with a grunt. Blood spurted and he quickly shoved the rag down against the opening, pressing down hard.

“How’s Benny?” he asked.

“Hobbling around,” Gaby said. Her eyes were glued to his leg.

“Any threats out there?”

“None that I could see. The Humvee that we saw earlier is gone. What was that, some kind of rocket launcher?”

“M72 Law anti-tank rocket launcher, yeah. I guess it works just as well on helicopters. We were lucky.”

“You call this lucky?”

“The M72 is unguided. If he had something more sophisticated, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Where the hell did they get something like that, anyway?”

“Army base would be my guess. Louisiana has plenty of them around. They probably looted them about the same time they picked up the Humvees and all those M4s. Those are military grade stuff.”

Will lifted the rag and peeked at the wound before pouring water over it. The warmth helped him with the pain. He wiped at the wet blood, clearing it from the opening, then used his teeth to tear the package and squeezed out the antiseptic ointment that he then spread liberally over the hole.

“Weapons?” he asked.

Gaby didn’t answer right away. She was too busy staring at the blood.

“Gaby, weapons?” he asked again.

“I still have my M4, and another one the others took from Mike. Also, all the magazines in my pack and yours. Found mine about twenty yards up the highway.”

Will pressed the gauze over the wound, careful to position it under the pant leg, then wrapped the whole thing with two revolutions of duct tape.

“Did you find my rifle?” he asked.

“It’s behind you. I remember stepping on it when I was climbing out earlier.”

“Catch,” Will said, and tossed the duct tape back to her. Then he drank what was left in the water bottle and sat back for a moment to catch his breath.

“You okay?” Gaby asked.

“I’ll be fine. Get ready to move.”

She nodded and disappeared from the opening again.

Will turned around in his seat and saw the barrel of his M4A1 behind him, amazingly still in one piece. From Afghanistan, to Harris County SWAT, to the end of the world. And now to this.

Will wasn’t a superstitious man, but if he were…

There was a certain order to the destruction when viewed from inside the wreckage. It was a much different story on the outside.

Pieces of the helicopter were strewn across nearly a 200-meter length and along both sides of the highway. Two of the rotor blades were buried in the thick concrete not far from the main bulk of what was left of the fuselage. The landing skids, in four sections, had ripped through a dozen cars and impaled a minivan’s engine block. There were little impact craters everywhere.

Will climbed down from the police cruiser, wincing a bit as his right leg touched down.

Benny had seen better days, too. The kid’s face, like his and Gaby’s, was bruised and cut, and he had a large scar across one cheek that he had treated. All the first aid they had wasn’t much help for a broken leg that made him limp everywhere, though Gaby had made a splint for him using two pieces of wooden sticks cinched in place with duct tape. He remembered teaching her that during one of those two weeks they had spent together in the woods back on the island.

Benny stood gazing off at the highway, Mike’s M4 and a bag only half full with the medical supplies they had managed to salvage slung over his shoulders. He moved with the help of a makeshift crutch — a wooden baseball bat with the headrest from a car seat duct taped to the top. Again, another impromptu creation by Gaby.

It had taken Will longer to crawl out of the wreckage than he had anticipated. It was already 4:11 p.m. by the time he emerged and looked up at the sky. Late September in Louisiana meant 7:00 p.m. sunsets, give or take.

Gaby walked over to him, carrying her pack and rifle. “Do we go after them?”

Will shook his head. “We’ll never catch them on foot. Not in our condition.”

“What about the kids?” Benny asked.

Will didn’t answer right away. He looked up the highway, in the direction the Humvees had gone. Then glanced back at Benny, limping on a makeshift crutch, and at Gaby, her face a mess of bruises and cuts. All three of them looked like hell, and there wasn’t an inch of him that wasn’t in pain at the moment.

“We can’t do anything for them now,” Will said after a while. “Right now, we need to find shelter. We have three hours before it gets dark.”

“The closest off-ramp is back there,” Gaby said.

“Take point.”

She headed west, and they followed on foot. There wasn’t any need to weave around vehicles abandoned eleven months ago because the Humvees had done such an efficient job of clearing everything to the sides, creating a single, almost-perfect lane to drive — or walk — through.

Will found that if he focused on something else, like Lara’s image in his head, or the lake breeze around the island, he could almost ignore the stabbing pain in his right leg. Thank God for the numbness in his left arm. He wasn’t sure if he could fight through both wounds at the moment.

He caught up with Gaby, who was moving slowly — on purpose for their benefit, he guessed. “How far?”

“Half a mile,” she said.

“That’s too far.” He glanced at his watch, then looked up at the sun for confirmation. “We need to pick it up.”

“Your leg and Benny’s…”

“We’ll be fine. It’ll be worse if we’re caught out here at night.”

She nodded and began moving faster.

Will waited for Benny to catch up. “Lean on me, Benny.”

Will took his crutch and slipped his left arm around Benny’s waist. He used the crutch for himself, and surprisingly, with Benny on one side and the crutch on the other, he walked relatively pain-free.

Or at least, that’s what he told himself. The trick to ignoring pain was conviction.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

It took them nearly thirty minutes to reach the off-ramp, which was much too long. They stuck to the shoulder to maneuver around the parked vehicles frozen in their lanes, dried blood clinging to dashboards and steering wheels and seats baking in the sun.

With the help of gravity, it didn’t take them nearly as long to reach the bottom of the off-ramp. As they were walking down, Will scanned the feeder road, looking for buildings they could use. Gas stations, strip malls — nothing that made him happy. There was a motel about half a kilometer up the street, but just walking there would easily take them another half an hour. They didn’t have that much time.

“Gaby,” he said, “the gas station.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “It doesn’t look that safe.”

“We just need one room that can be defended.”

She jogged on ahead toward a Valero gas station, and Will followed with Benny. They passed a red Chevy waiting in line at the pump, and Will skirted around a white, overturned Bronco in the parking lot.

The Valero, like most gas stations, had glass windows, so he could see into the store before they ever reached the front doors.

“Silver ammo?” he asked Gaby.

She nodded back. “Nothing but.”

“Give me a moment.” Will sat Benny down on the curb outside the store. “Stay here. We’ll clear the store, then come back for you.”

“Take your time,” Benny said. He looked over at Gaby. “Grab me a bag of Funyuns, will ya?”

“They’re probably all stale by now,” Gaby said.

“Just as good.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Will unslung his M4A1 and walked over to Gaby, who was already waiting for him at the doors. He nodded, and she pulled the door open. Will slipped inside first, rifle raised. He glimpsed the aisles, then stopped and listened for noises. There was very little chance the ghouls would be using the gas station as a nest. It was too small and too inconvenient; they preferred bigger places with thick walls (like Mercy Hospital).

Will nodded right, and Gaby disappeared down the aisle. He took left.

After about ten minutes of going from aisle to aisle and looking through an employee lounge in the back and a bathroom next door, they met up again at the front. Gaby had grabbed a bag of Funyuns sometime during the trip back.

“Stale?” he asked.

“Expired eight months ago. Maybe he won’t notice the difference.”

“Must be love,” Will teased.

“He did save my life on the rooftop.”

“That always helps, sure.”

Benny didn’t seem to mind the expired Funyuns, digging into the bag as if he hadn’t eaten in days. Will left them in the employee lounge, a big block of concrete with some Brad Pitt movie posters and old hunting magazines stacked on a flimsy fold-out portable table. The only other furniture was an old lime-green couch.

The good news was that there was only one way into the lounge — through a sturdy steel door that had been painted over at least four times in its lifetime, judging by the eclectic mix of colors visible underneath the peeling paint.

Will grabbed a couple of plastic bags from behind the front counter and filled them with water bottles from the freezers, all the beef jerky he could find, and five cans of Vienna sausages with pull tabs from the shelves. The sun was already starting to fall outside, casting an orange-red glow across the highway as Will walked back to the lounge.

He handed Gaby the bags, then went through the gym bag they were hauling around and pulled out what he needed.

“You need a hand?” Gaby asked, looking worriedly at him.

“I’ll call if I do.” He pulled out a bottle of Vicodin and handed it to Gaby. “Give Benny two, and don’t let him move around on that leg.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll take some tramadol.”

“That’s it?”

“We have to stay awake, but Benny doesn’t have to.”

She nodded, and he had to remind himself that even scratched up, bruised, and cut, she was still just a kid.

Back outside, he used the fading daylight to take off the gauze from around his left arm. He washed the wound again, disinfected it, then took out the needle and medical suture and went to work. When he was done, he snipped the thread and wrapped it back up with a new layer of gauze.

Working on his right leg was trickier. He had to unwind the duct tape along with the gauze, which was of course wet and sticky with blood. He pulled off his pants and sat in his boxers with his leg propped up on the counter. He had to wash and disinfect the wound again before he could finally start suturing it. He thought about Lara, her lips, kissing those lips, the feel of her skin, and was able to get through it with minimal pain. By the time he was finished wrapping it back up with more gauze and fresh duct tape and had pulled his pants back on, the windows had almost completely faded to gray.

Will took out the bottle of painkillers and chewed on a couple, then gave them a few minutes to do their job. Afterward, he gathered up the bloody items from the floor and tossed them into a bag before heading back to the lounge. He tied up the bag and tossed it into a corner, then made sure the door was locked. There was a deadbolt, but that was it.

“Gaby, give me a hand with the couch.”

They moved the couch over, stood it on its side, then leaned it at an angle against the middle of the bigger door. He stood back and gave it a look.

“It’ll never hold,” she said.

“No, but it’s better than nothing.” He looked back at Benny, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, head lulling to one side and struggling to keep his eyes open. “Push comes to shove, we can always use him. He’s what, 200 pounds?”

“One fifty, tops.”

Will grinned. “We’ll be okay.”

“Yeah? What makes you say that?”

“I have faith.”

“In what, this ugly couch? Or this twenty-year-old door?”

“Both.”

“This is all for my benefit, isn’t it?”

“Yup.”

“Swell.”

They sat down on the floor, backs against the far wall, and laid their rifles across their laps.

Will dug out a couple of water bottles and handed her one. “You did good out there.”

She smiled, pleased. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Perish the thought,” she said. “But just between you and me. I’m a better soldier than Danny, right?”

“Without a doubt,” he smiled.

“Good. I’m going to rub it in his face when we get back. Assuming we survive this.”

“We’ll survive this.”

“Is that just for my benefit, too?”

“Yup.”

She smirked. “You know, it would work better if you didn’t automatically tell the truth once I pressed you on it.”

“Oh yeah, sorry about that.”

Benny was snoring long before nightfall. They moved him into the corner so he wouldn’t accidentally topple to the floor and hurt himself.

They didn’t see the night coming outside the door, but they could feel it. Will’s internal clock buzzed and screamed and rang when his watch ticked to 7:10 p.m. The temperature dropped noticeably about thirty minutes later. That was good, because he was afraid of suffocation by heat inside the room.

Gaby’s eyes, like Will’s, never left the door, even as visibility dropped to almost nothing.

“Should we pop a glow stick?” she asked.

“There’s too big a slot under the door and around the frame. They’ll see the glow if they look into the store for longer than a few seconds.”

“So we’re just going to sit here in the pitch dark, then?”

“Pretty much.”

“Romantic.”

“Uh huh. Beef jerky?” He offered her one from the bundle he had shoved into his pack earlier.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

It took only a few minutes until they were completely engulfed in darkness, and his only clue Gaby was even sitting next to him was the sound of her chewing. Benny, somewhere in the corner, was snoring, though not loudly enough for Will to be too concerned.

“I liked Amy and Jen,” Gaby said quietly.

“I did, too.”

“And they took the fucking kids, Will.”

“Yeah.”

“We couldn’t even save the one kid. Amy said his name was Freddie.”

Gaby didn’t say much after that.

“Go to sleep, Gaby,” he said after a while.

“What about you?”

“I’ll wake you around three.”

“Okay.”

He heard her repositioning her rifle in her lap, then the rustling of clothes as she folded her arms across her chest against the growing chill.

Will leaned his head back against the wall, keeping his eyes on the door in front of him. Despite the darkness, the door stood out, the slivers along its frame giving it the impression of being some otherworldly portal.

Somewhere around midnight, he heard them moving around the store outside the lounge. One of them appeared in front of the door and jingled the doorknob, its shadow moving in that staccato, unnatural gait that they possessed.

He gripped the M4A1 in the darkness.

Gaby was sleeping quietly next to him, while Benny snored softly in the corner. Still not too loud, but just loud enough to make him nervous. He was struck by how much more of a soldier Gaby was compared to Benny. Hell, compared to all of Mike’s people. He always knew he and Danny had done a good job with her, but to see her in action was impressive.

The creature finally grew bored of playing with the door. It turned and scampered off.

But it wasn’t alone. There were more movements outside, and shadows flitted across the crevices around the door.

These other creatures, though, didn’t bother to stop and inspect the back room.

The hive mind. One knows, so the others know, too.

Dead, not stupid.

An hour later, the last of the noises faded into the background, and Will felt comfortable enough to close his eyes.

He thought about Lara. About their mornings on the beach and their nights in bed. He could almost hear the rise and fall of her heartbeat, and it made him smile. He wondered what she was doing right now, and if she missed him nearly as much as he was missing her…

CHAPTER 17 LARA

She was tired, and she wanted nothing more than to just lie down and close her eyes and go to sleep. But while Lara felt mentally fatigued, West actually looked the part. His face was black and bruised, his temple bearing the stitches from a couple of hours ago. His eyes were glassy, his nose partially broken, and he looked like a hospital patient who had stumbled out of bed after surgery.

“This is a death sentence,” West said as they approached the marina.

He sat up front facing them, with Lara in the back and Danny in the middle. His hands were zip tied in front of him, not that he looked like he was in any shape to fight at the moment.

“You know that, right?” West said.

She didn’t answer.

Danny steered them into the mouth of the inlet, then glided up toward the marina. It had been a while since she left the island, and just stepping into the boat felt terrifying, as if she would never be able to return.

She glanced over at the blackened property to their left. It looked miserably bleak, which, she guessed, was the point. It was the same with the marina. There used to be a garage near the water’s edge, but it, too, had been burned down. The marina itself was still in one piece, since it was a little difficult to burn down an asphalt parking lot. The area around it was nothing but towering fields of grass as far as the eye could see.

“Are you listening to me?” West said.

“I heard you,” she said. “It won’t change anything, so you can stop wasting your breath.”

“You’re a doctor, for God’s sake.”

Third-year medical student, actually.

“I gave you every chance in the world,” she said. “This is all your doing.”

“Keep telling yourself that, and maybe one day you’ll believe it.”

She should have let Maddie come instead. Or any of the others. But she hadn’t passed off the responsibility to them, because she needed to do this, because it was her responsibility.

I made the decision. Now I have to stare it in the face.

Danny eased up on the boat, then angled it toward one of the boat ramps. The front of the boat slid gently up the sloping concrete, until it came to a rough, grinding stop.

“This is where you get off, Kemosabe,” Danny said, pulling back on the throttle.

West stood up and sought out her eyes. She wanted desperately to look away, but Lara forced herself to stare right back at him.

“Look, I’m sorry about this afternoon,” West said. “About everything. But this isn’t right. You know this isn’t right. I’m going to die out here. I don’t stand a chance.”

“You’ll stand a chance if you’re smart,” she said.

“You know that’s not true. You know it.”

She ignored his plea and said, “Danny.”

Danny drew his cross-knife. “Hands.”

West held out his zip tied hands and Danny cut them free. West towered over Danny, but at the moment she had never seen such a tall man look so small. At first she thought it was an act, an attempt to garner sympathy.

But no. This was the real thing. West was terrified.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

That seemed to utterly deflate him, stripping him of whatever last vestige of hope he had been clinging to that she would change her mind.

“Turn around,” Danny said.

West obeyed. “Please…”

“And don’t forget the battery.”

West picked up a car battery at his feet, then clumsily climbed over the side of the boat. He stumbled most of the way, trying to fight the slight rocking of the boat while clinging to the heavy burden in his hands.

“Try not to get it wet,” Danny said.

West barely made it to the angled ramp, sacrificing his pant legs as they dipped into the cold water of Beaufont Lake. He scrambled, fighting against the sloping concrete, and finally pulled himself up onto the dry parking lot with a lot of effort. He dumped the battery on the ground and immediately — desperately — searched out her eyes again.

“Please, Lara. You can’t do this. You know this isn’t right. Whatever I did, I don’t deserve this. You know that. Please.”

She stared back at him.

This is where I change my mind. This is where I let the squishy woman in me take over and allow him back on the island. This is where I prove to him that I have no killer instinct.

This is where he’s wrong.

She picked up a gym bag and threw it onto the marina ten feet from where he stood. The bag was stuffed with his rifle and a shotgun, knives and ammo, canned goods and bottled water. All the supplies he would need to survive — for a while, anyway. It was everything she thought she owed him and nothing more.

“Don’t touch the bag until we’re out of sight,” Lara said. “Danny will shoot you if you do. Trust me, he’s a better shot than you are.”

“Catch,” Danny said, and tossed West a key. “The blue Tacoma. There should be some gas left. Not a lot, mind you, but we took it out a week ago, and there might be half a tank if you’re lucky. Swap in the battery and you’re good to go. Well, goodish, anyway.”

“Drive north as fast as you can,” Lara said. “You don’t have a lot of time.”

West blinked nervously up at the sun.

“Do yourself a favor,” Danny said. “Don’t be here when we come back. I see you, I’m shooting first, and it’s never mind the questions.”

Lara didn’t wait for West to respond. “Let’s go, Danny.”

Danny made a U-turn, and when he had the boat facing the lake again, he stepped aside for her to take over the steering wheel. Danny unslung his M4A1 and looked back at West in case he went for the bag.

“Do us both a favor,” Danny shouted. “Go for the bag. Pretty please?”

West didn’t go for the bag.

“You’re no fun,” Danny said.

She guided the boat out of the inlet and back onto the lake. It was like driving a car, only each slight jerk of the steering wheel was more dramatic. She could almost feel West’s eyes on her back, but she never turned around.

“You did the right thing,” Danny said behind her. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. If Will was here, West would never have survived the woods. The idiot doesn’t know it, but he’s lucky he got to deal with you instead.”

“Thanks, Danny,” she said quietly.

Once they were back on the island, she waited for Danny to return to the Tower to relieve Maddie before calling him on her radio. It was the longest, most excruciating ten minutes of her life.

“Anything from Will?”

“Nothing, sorry,” he said.

Dammit, Will, where are you?

“Get some sleep, Lara. I’ll send Carly to bang on your door when Willie boy calls. And he will. Have faith.”

Faith.

Yeah, I’m finding a shortage of that lately, Danny.

She ate dinner with everyone in the dining room, trying her best to engage in their conversation. Sarah was in the Infirmary with Blaine and had been since Lara left them a few hours ago. Sarah would probably be there all night, since Mae, Bonnie, and Gwen had taken over the kitchen. The food, a bit spicier than Sarah’s, was still delicious, though about halfway through Lara realized she was more tired than hungry.

After dinner, she took her half-empty dishes into the kitchen, where Bonnie was pouring Coke from a two-liter plastic bottle into a dozen tall glasses on a tray. Each glass was topped with ice, and by the time Bonnie finished pouring, there was more ice than Coke in each glass.

“Got enough ice there?” Lara smiled.

Bonnie laughed. “When you’ve been drinking warm soda for as long as we have, you can never get enough ice.”

Bonnie handed her one of the glasses and Lara took it gratefully. “Mae said you were a model before all of this.”

Bonnie looked embarrassed. “Talk about a useless career, huh?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I was thinking about opening an island magazine, call it Island Breeze, or something like that.”

“Are you saying you’re looking for a model?”

“That depends. Are you expensive?”

“I had a pretty lucrative career. Did you used to read a lot of fashion magazines before all this?”

“Did the New England Journal of Medicine ever put out a fashion issue?”

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say no?”

“Figures. My roommate used to buy stacks of them, though.”

“Is she…?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t know what happened to her.”

Bonnie nodded. Lara didn’t have to say anything else. They all knew people who either didn’t make it or were unaccounted for.

“I guess I was lucky,” Bonnie said. “With Jo, I mean. So many people have lost so much, and somehow we still have each other. You were lucky, too.”

“I was?”

“You found Will. Treasure that, Lara. This kind of thing was a rarity back when the world made sense, but now, it’s a miracle.”

Lara nodded. “I guess you’re right. It’s good to be reminded of that every now and then. Thanks.”

“Glad to do it.”

“Anyway,” Lara said, brightening up. “How much would it cost to book you for a fashion shoot?”

Bonnie laughed. “Since I know you, I’ll cut you in for a discount. Give me your cell and I’ll get my people to call your people and we’ll work something out.”

They talked for a bit longer, before Bonnie finally had to take the drinks out before the ice melted.

Lara walked through Hallway A by herself. Her joints ached and she had difficultly trying to keep her mind focused on one thing. By the time she reached her room, her body was already half asleep.

Seconds after lying down on the bed and closing her eyes, she didn’t even remember if she had closed the door behind her. She realized she didn’t really care either, and went to sleep, her last jumbled thoughts of Will.

CHAPTER 18 GABY

The warm morning sunlight on her face was somehow more soothing out here, beyond the safety of the island. She guessed it had something to do with the precarious nature of their situation. Out here, beyond the white beaches of Song Island or the purview of the Tower’s watchful eye, there were no guarantees.

Benny hobbled out of the Valero behind her. His face remained scratched up and bruised, but he had lost the pale, hollowed look of yesterday. She hoped she was equally improved, but had been too scared to actually glance at anything too shiny for fear of seeing the truth.

“Hey there, gimpy,” she said.

“Funny,” Benny smirked back. “Let’s see you break a leg and not gimp around.” He sat down and leaned back against the store, then opened a gym bag and took out a long Slim Jim stick. “Breakfast?”

“Whatcha got?”

Benny tossed her a bag of Jack Link’s turkey-flavored jerky. “Where’s Will?” he asked. “He wasn’t in the lounge when I woke up.”

“He’ll be back soon.”

Benny opened a bottle of water and poured it over his head, then dabbed his face with a rag from the store’s racks, wincing with every contact.

“Did they find us last night?” he asked.

“Will said they searched the gas station, but didn’t try to break down the door. I wouldn’t know. He didn’t wake me up last night.”

“He probably thought you needed the sleep.”

“We all needed the sleep. He was just being Will.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

She shrugged, but didn’t feel like explaining. Instead, she walked over and sat down next to him and dug out a bottle of water from her pack, then wet a towel with it to clean her face. Unlike Benny, she was more careful and managed to clean up most of her face without too much pain. She fought the urge to look at herself in the glass window behind her.

“What now?” Benny asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Will didn’t say?”

“No.”

Benny looked toward the highway. Gaby knew he was trying to locate the remains of the helicopter. She had done the same thing when she first emerged from the store earlier.

“I’m the only one left,” Benny said quietly. “Out of forty people. Mike, Tom, Amy… I’m the only one left. Crazy how it worked out. I wasn’t even supposed to be alive, you know.” He shook his head and looked as if he were on the verge of laughing. Or crying. “When it happened… I didn’t know what to do. I was lucky Mike and the others were there. They took me in and taught me how to fend for myself. And now… God, I’m the only one left, Gaby.”

“You’ll like the island,” she said. “White beaches. Nice breeze. More fish than you can eat.”

“And you.”

“We’ll see.”

“But you’re not against it?”

“We’ll see,” she said again.

Will came back a few minutes later. He wasn’t hobbling quite as much, even though she knew the strongest painkiller he took last night was some tramadol. Benny, who took the same pills this morning, wanted something stronger, but they couldn’t afford for him to fall asleep in the daytime. That, and neither she nor Will felt like carrying him more than they already had.

They headed west on foot along the I-10 feeder road, back in the direction of Mercy Hospital and, beyond that, Song Island. There was no point in chasing Kellerson or his collaborators. Not on foot, anyway. Even if they could find a ride, the Humvees were long gone, and it would be difficult — if not downright impossible — to locate them once they left the city, and there were no longer cars pushed to the sides of the road to track by. Kellerson had also proven that he wasn’t a total idiot. Leaving the man with the rocket launcher behind to ambush them was proof of that.

As much as she hated to abandon the chase — and the kids — Gaby didn’t have to look any farther than Will and Benny to know that they were in no position to keep going. Even so, the decision to head back made her feel empty and dirty, as if she were betraying not just those kids but herself as well.

“What about all the cars?” Benny asked after a while. “Shouldn’t we be looking for a car that’ll run?”

There were a lot of cars along the streets. Sedans, trucks, semitrailers, and a dozen others. Most of them still had keys stuck in the ignitions.

“Waste of time,” Will said. “Batteries don’t work after eleven months. Gas is another issue. Better to just look for something else, like a bicycle.”

“A bicycle?” Benny sighed. “I’m not sure I could even pedal on this leg.”

“Better than walking on that leg.”

“At this rate, it’ll take us most of the day to reach Mercy Hospital. Then what? Are we staying at the hospital? I’m not sure I want to go back there after what happened.”

“Less talk, more walk.”

“I’m just saying…”

“Say less, walk more.”

Benny sighed again.

Gaby gave him a disappointed look. She accepted that he was injured, but so was Will. She had seen Will pull a chunk of glass out of his right leg, for God’s sake, but he wasn’t being nearly as dramatic about it as Benny. She felt growing irritation and did her best to temper it. Telling herself that Benny was new to all of this helped a little bit, but it was difficult to reconcile this whiny Benny with the same one who had saved her yesterday on the rooftop.

They hadn’t gone more than five minutes when Will stopped in the middle of the road and snapped, “Cover!”

Gaby unslung her M4 and rushed behind a red Camaro, sliding up against the driver’s side door. She looked back and was horrified to see Benny standing out in the open, frozen in place.

“Benny!” she hissed.

He snapped out of it and hobbled over to her. “What’s going on?”

“Get down!”

She glanced over at Will, crouched behind a white pickup truck. He was peering over the hood at something up the road. She followed his gaze and saw a figure standing on the rooftop of an auto body shop. The figure had binoculars and was looking in their direction. It was a man, but he was too far for her to make out any details. Something that looked like a rifle was slung over his back.

She looked back at Will, who seemed to be considering his options. Then, finally, he made a decision and slung his rifle and looked back at her.

She surprised herself by knowing exactly what he was going to do, and nodded back at him.

“What’s going on?” Benny asked.

“I’m going to cover Will,” she said. “Stay down and don’t do anything, okay?”

“What’s he going to do?”

“Just stay down, Benny,” she said, putting just enough annoyance in her voice to get through to him.

Will stood up and walked out from behind the pickup truck. The figure on the rooftop watched him curiously, perhaps trying to guess Will’s intentions. The man hadn’t reached for his rifle yet, which she took to be a good sign.

Gaby kept her M4 at the ready anyway. She guessed her target was maybe 100 yards, give or take. Will and Danny could probably hit someone from that distance, but her best shot had come at just under eighty. She was at least somewhat comforted in the knowledge that if she couldn’t hit the guy, maybe he couldn’t hit her or Will, either. Of course, all that went out the window if the guy was a really good shot.

“Don’t shoot!” Will shouted.

His voice echoed up and down the feeder road. Birds perched on top of the highway’s concrete barriers burst into flight.

She watched the figure on the rooftop carefully, waiting for signs — any signs at all — of aggression. But the man hadn’t moved from his spot and hadn’t gone for his rifle. Maybe the guy understood what Will was doing. Or maybe he was a decoy, and there were other men hiding up the street, waiting for Will to get closer so they could take a shot—

She gripped her rifle tighter, her legs a bundle of energy, ready to spring up from behind the Camaro and start shooting.

Be ready. Be ready…

“I have two more people behind me!” Will shouted, stopping twenty yards up the street.

Why had he stopped? Had he spotted something?

She waited for him to look back at her, to give her some kind of signal. But he remained fixed on the man on the auto body rooftop.

“What—” Benny started to say beside her.

“Shhh!” she snapped before he could get another word out.

They waited for what seemed like hours, though it was probably only a few seconds, before the guy finally shouted back, “What do you want?”

“Just passing through!” Will shouted. “We’re trying to get home!”

“Where’s home?”

“South!”

“There’s not much down south!”

“There is if you know where to look! We’re just passing through! You don’t try to shoot us, and we won’t shoot you. Deal?”

The guy hesitated for a moment, then shouted back, “Deal!”

Will looked back at Gaby and nodded.

She relaxed her grip on the rifle and stood up. Benny struggled back up to his feet next to her, groaning like an old woman who had sat down for too long.

His name was Nate and he had short blond hair, though it was hard to tell the color since he had almost completely shaved it off, leaving behind just a small, ridiculous looking Mohawk in the center. He was armed with a gun belt and a bolt-action hunting rifle.

“We heard the helicopter coming from a distance,” Nate said. “You guys flew right over us. Then there was a loud boom, but by the time we came outside, we could only see fire and smoke. We thought about coming to help, but you know how it is. We didn’t want to get in the middle of whatever was going on between you and the other guys. We only checked it out this morning, when it was safer.”

“You went to the wreck?” Will asked.

“For supplies, yeah. We picked up some things, lots of pill bottles. Since it’s yours, we’ll give it back.”

“We have everything we need. You can keep them.”

Nate nodded gratefully. “You were in the Army?”

“Yeah. You?”

“I was in ROTC at Lafayette University.”

“Good. That means you haven’t been tainted by Officer Candidate School yet.”

Nate grinned. “That’s one way to put it.”

He finally looked over at her. Like Benny, she had kept quiet as Nate and Will talked. Now, facing his pale blue eyes, she was suddenly very self-conscious about her appearance. The gash in her forehead, not to mention the cuts and bruises along every inch of her face and neck. She wanted to shrink away and hide, but willed herself to stand perfectly still and stare back at him instead.

“I’m Nate,” he said, extending a hand to her.

“I heard,” Gaby said, shaking his hand. “This is Benny.”

“Hey,” Benny said, offering up a half-wave.

“Hey,” Nate said, before looking back at her. “That’s a pretty wicked gash.”

“I ran into a door,” she said.

“Must have been a pretty big ass door.”

“It was oak.”

“Ouch.” Nate looked back at Will. “So what’s down south?”

“You know where Song Island is?” Will asked.

“Never heard of it. What’s so special about Song Island?”

“That depends.”

“On?”

“What kind of transportation you have, and whether you’re useful to me or not.”

Nate didn’t look fazed. “The answer to those two questions depends on two things. One, what’s so special about this Song Island, and two, what are the chances you’ll take us with you?”

“Us” was Nate and five others. They were staying in the basement of a house half a block from the feeder road where they had met Nate. The house was just one of many in a neighborhood with fallen-down picket fences, overgrown lawns, weed-covered gardens, and dirt-strewn streets. Curtains covering broken windows blew in the breeze around them, with a museum of cars frozen along curbs and driveways.

All five of Nate’s people had come outside to meet them. Nate had called ahead on a radio, proving to be more tactically sound than Mike, who had been a former Army officer. Nate reminded her of Will; they were about the same height and build. Except for the silly Mohawk on top of Nate’s head, the two of them could almost pass for brothers.

They gathered in the driveway while Nate introduced everyone.

Kendra was a black woman in her thirties. She had a son, Dwayne, who looked all of twelve, though the kid was already as tall as his mom. Gaby guessed he was going to sprout like a beanstalk by the time he hit puberty in a few years. Like Nate, Dwayne was carrying a hunting rifle that looked almost as big as him. His mother looked tired, as if she hadn’t slept in a while.

The other two were a Hispanic couple, Stan and Liza. Stan looked at least twenty years older than Liza, who was about Lara’s age. Liza could only speak Spanish, so Stan translated everything for her.

The fifth member of Nate’s group was a teenage girl named Mary, who had possibly the largest eyes Gaby had ever seen on someone who wasn’t a cartoon character. Mary stood silently next to Nate, clinging to his arm with both hands.

“What’s your transportation look like?” Will asked.

“It’s not much to look at, but she’ll run,” Nate said.

He led them to a beat-up black Dodge Caravan parked nearby. He was right; it didn’t look like much at all. It was long, with four doors — two front doors and two rear ones that slid backward. The backseats could be folded down to accommodate more people.

“Gas?” Will asked.

“Stan topped her off three days ago when we settled down here,” Nate said.

“She’s not exactly a speed demon, but she’s comfortable,” Stan said. “Well, for six people, anyway. I don’t know about all of us. Might be a bit of a tight squeeze.”

“Are we leaving?” Mary asked anxiously.

“Maybe,” Nate said. “It depends on what they have to say. Apparently they have an island.”

“An island?” Dwayne said. “Seriously?”

They stayed outside in the sun as Will told them about Song Island.

“It sounds wonderful,” Mary said enthusiastically. “We’re going there, aren’t we, Nate?”

“I don’t know,” Nate said. “That depends on what Will decides.”

“There’s plenty of room on the island,” Will said. “All we need is a second vehicle.”

“It’ll be tight, but we could probably fit everyone into the minivan.”

“I don’t like having that many people in one vehicle. We need a second one, just in case. Battery’s still good?”

“Definitely. I turn on the engine at least once a day even if we’re not going anywhere, just to keep it running.”

“Spare gas?”

“Two extra cans for emergencies.”

“Smart.”

“We weren’t always this smart, but we learned as we went.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a ham radio on you, would you?”

“No. You need one?”

“I need to contact Song Island. Let them know we’re coming back.”

“I know where you can get one. There’s a pawnshop about two blocks up the street. I saw a shelf full of them on the counter when I was window-scouting earlier yesterday.”

Will looked over at her. “Gaby, find a vehicle that we can use. A truck, preferably, while Nate takes me to go get the radio.”

“I should go instead,” she said. Then added quickly, “You could use the rest.”

“I’m fine.”

“Bullshit. Your leg’s killing you, and you barely slept last night because you didn’t wake me up like you promised. Besides, it’s a radio, Will. I can go get a damn radio.”

He sighed. “All right. Be careful.”

“Silver?” Nate said.

“Yeah, silver,” Gaby said.

“Didn’t know that.”

“No one does. We wouldn’t even know about it if not for Will and Danny.”

“Silver crosses, too?”

“Yeah.”

“That has to be some kind of a sign, right?”

“Will doesn’t believe in signs. He thinks it’s all coincidence.”

“I have to admit, I’m not religious either, but that was before these things crawled out of the pits of Hell and tried to eat me.”

Nate walked quietly beside her. Despite the fact that he wore thick combat boots just like her, he barely made any noise. He had a smooth walking motion that was not quite swagger, but came dangerously close. She also noticed the way he kept looking around them. It wasn’t paranoia, it was alertness of his surroundings. Will did that, too.

They had been walking for close to thirty minutes before they finally reached their destination. The strip mall didn’t look like much as they walked across its parking lot.

“So you were in the Army?” she asked.

“Sort of. I was still in ROTC in college. Reserve Officers’ Training Corp.”

“Then you were supposed to go into the Army?”

“Uh huh. I was supposed to get a commission as a second lieutenant and go to the branch of my choice. That’s the idea, anyway. They say, though, that mostly you go wherever they need you.”

“Where were you going to go?”

“I always wanted to become a Ranger.”

“Will was a Ranger.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah.”

“He didn’t mention that.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“I can dig it. Badass guys don’t need to tell people how badass they are.”

She smiled to herself, deciding that she liked the way he put things in perspective without making a big deal out of it. It was too bad about the Mohawk, though. What the hell was that about?

“Where’s this pawnshop?” she asked.

“There,” he said, pointing to a place called Leroy’s Stuff, squeezed between a Subway sandwich shop and an AT&T outlet store.

There were bigger stores in the strip mall, but Leroy’s managed to stand out because of its burglar bars over its glass wall and front door.

“See them?” Nate said, pointing at a shelf behind the counter inside the store.

Gaby saw a large selection of radios and recognized a couple that looked like the ham radio they had back in the Tower on Song Island.

“How are we going to get inside?” she asked, looking at the burglar bars. “Can you squeeze through?”

“Are you serious? I’m bigger than you.”

“You’re taller, but you’re not bigger.”

“I’m at least fifty pounds heavier. What are you, a hundred soaking wet?”

“In your dreams.”

“I could probably bend the bars back far enough to slide under.”

She put a hand on his right bicep and squeezed. “With what? This little thing?”

He snickered. “That’s a challenge if I ever heard one. Step back.”

He crouched and used the butt of his rifle to break the glass window near the bottom. He then used the barrel to knock loose the glass shards still sticking along the frame.

“Why a bolt-action rifle?” she asked. It had been on her mind ever since she saw it.

“I don’t know, really, I grabbed it when all of this was happening. I never thought much about trading up. Why the M4?”

“I learned to shoot with it.”

“Yeah? You good with that thing?”

“I could probably shoot a target from eighty yards.”

“That’s not bad for a civilian.”

“Gee, thanks.”

He chuckled, then cracked his knuckles. “Moment of truth.”

“Fair warning: if you hurt yourself, I’m heading back without you.”

He gave her a wry look. “You don’t have to be such a bitch, Gaby. I’m just trying to impress you here.”

She smirked. “So shut up and impress me already.”

It took Nate almost an hour to bend the bars back, creating a makeshift entrance near the bottom to crawl under. Before he could slide under the bent bars, she handed him her Glock. Nate carried an M1911 Colt.45 loaded with regular ammo, and her spare magazines weren’t going to fit his weapon.

The building was brightly lit by sunlight up front, but the back was pitch-dark. Gaby didn’t think there was anything back there because the pawnshop gave off that undisturbed vibe, but she didn’t feel like taking the risk anyway.

When he was inside, she followed, moving on her belly to slide under the bars.

He pulled her up from the floor. “I think we’re safe. No monsters. Or what do you guys call them?”

“Ghouls.”

“Interesting name.”

“Will’s idea. I used to just call them ‘bloodsuckers.’” She looked around the interior of the pawnshop. It looked a lot more claustrophobic now that she was inside. “Look for something we can use and I’ll grab the radio.”

“Who put you in charge?”

“Just do it, will you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, snapping her a mock salute before disappearing into the back with her Glock.

Gaby, safe in the sunlight, went behind the counter and looked over the radios. She grabbed a couple, choosing the newest looking ones. She found bags, but they looked too flimsy. There were backpacks hanging from hooks nearby, and she brought a couple over and stuffed two of the radios into one bag, then grabbed unopened battery packs from a rack. By the time she was done, the backpack with the batteries was at least twice as heavy as the one with the radios.

“Nate,” she called.

“Yeah?” he called back. She couldn’t see him in the shadowed parts of the store.

“Find anything?”

“Junk. Lots and lots of useless junk.”

“It’s a pawnshop, not the Sharper Image. Let’s go, Will’s waiting.”

“What’s the hurry?”

“We haven’t been in contact with Song Island for two days now. They’re probably worried sick about us.”

“Coming…”

While she was waiting, she grabbed some silver jewelry from the glass counter and tossed them into a backpack, then snatched up some silver pens and cutlery, too. She looked up as Nate walked back over to her, twirling a machete in one hand. With the Mohawk, he looked like some bad extra from a post-apocalyptic movie.

“Check this out,” he grinned.

“It looks good on you.”

“You think?”

“Sure. Now all you need is some face paint.”

“Don’t tempt me, because I will do it.”

“Somehow, I believe you,” she said, tossing him the heavy backpack with the batteries.

When they got back to the house, she knew something was wrong when the first person she saw wasn’t Will, but Benny. He was waiting for her next to the Caravan, the minivan’s hood propped open and jumper cables dangling from it.

“Where’s Will?” she asked.

“He’s gone,” Benny said.

“Gone? What do you mean, ‘gone’?”

“He took off about thirty minutes ago.”

“How the hell did he do that?”

“He found a motorcycle in the garage next door. He charged the battery with the minivan’s, then took off.”

“Where did he go?”

“After that Kellerson guy.”

Gaby looked in the direction of the highway. She tried to see if she could hear the sound of a motorcycle, but couldn’t.

“By himself?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Benny said.

“What about the island?” Nate asked.

Benny took out a map from his back pocket and laid it across the minivan’s driver seat. “He showed me how to get there. It’s pretty much a straight shot down south. He also jotted down the radio frequency to contact the island.”

Gaby didn’t pay attention to what they were saying behind her. Her mind was elsewhere.

Of course Will would go after Kellerson. It wasn’t just that Kellerson murdered Mike’s group; he also took the children. Will knew, more than anyone, what the ghouls did to people they captured. He had seen the blood farms up close, something she had only heard about but never witnessed.

She wasn’t even sure if she could blame him. The image of those kids, pressing their faces against the back windshield, still gnawed at her core.

“Gaby?” Nate said behind her. “He’s got a motorcycle. You’ll never catch up to him.”

“Benny,” she said, ignoring Nate, “I need you to take them to Song Island.” She pulled one of the radios out of the backpack, along with a handful of batteries. “Contact Lara before you get there, let them know you’re coming so they can come get you at the marina.”

“You’re not coming?” Benny asked.

“I’m going after Will.”

“You’ll never find him, Gaby. He’s got a thirty-minute lead on you.”

“Will thinks he can find this Kellerson asshole, or he wouldn’t have gone. Maybe I can, too.”

“That’s a lot of maybes,” Nate said.

She continued to ignore him, and said to Benny, “I’ll follow you down to the island with Will as soon as I can.”

“This is nuts, Gaby,” Benny said, frowning miserably at her. He looked so young, so out of his element. “Come with me. Please.”

This time she ignored Benny and looked over at Nate. “I need a car. Can you find me something I can use to get through all the traffic? Maybe something small?”

“Are you seriously going after him?” Nate asked.

“Yes. Now, can you help me or not?”

He shrugged. “I saw something that might work, back in the auto body garage.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you kidding me?” Benny said, his face turning slightly red with frustration, though directed at Nate this time. “You’re going to help her?”

“She wants to go, I’m not stopping her,” Nate said. “It’s her choice.”

Nate walked over to the hood and detached the jumper cables, then slammed the hood down and climbed into the driver’s seat, tossing the cables to the floor. The key was already in the ignition.

Gaby hurried around the hood to the passenger side, where she looked back across at Benny. “Don’t stop for anything, okay? Just keep going south, and radio Lara when you’re almost there.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but she was already climbing into the passenger side as Nate fired up the minivan. They drove off, leaving Benny to stare after them in the side mirror, his mouth still hanging open in disbelief.

Nate turned up the street, moving around a couple of overturned vehicles. “You might need some help,” he said.

“I don’t.”

“Tough girl, huh?”

“Tough enough.”

“All right then. I’m volunteering.”

She gave him a quizzical look. “Volunteering for what?”

“To go with you.”

“I don’t need you to come with me.”

“Doesn’t matter. That’s why they call it volunteering.”

“What about your people?”

“They’ll be fine with Benny. According to the map, it’s a straightforward trip down south and they should get there by this afternoon. Besides, Stan’s pretty good in a pinch, and Dwayne isn’t bad with the rifle.”

“The kid?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s just a kid.”

“So are you.”

“I’m nineteen.”

“Yeah, well, still a kid. Anyways, we’ll go pick up the car I mentioned and come back and give them the van. Sound good?”

She looked forward. “Your funeral.”

“You ever heard of the power of positive thinking?”

“Is that how you’ve survived this long? Positive thinking?”

“Sure,” he said. Then added, “That, and hiding. That works pretty well, too.”

CHAPTER 19 WILL

It was easy to track the Humvees — at least for a while. All he had to do was ride the Triumph Bonneville through the clearing they had carved out of the highway traffic. He picked up the trail along I-10 before taking the ramp at the Marabond Throughway onto I-49 and continuing north.

As soon as he left the city and its stalled traffic behind, things got more iffy. There were signs here and there that the Humvees had come through, mostly the occasional vehicles pushed to the sides, their doors bearing the aggressive markings of contact with the Humvees’ makeshift V-shaped steel plows. After a while, traffic thinned out so much that he went for whole kilometers without seeing a single confirmation he was on the right path. His only hope was that Kellerson’s destination was still far off, which would allow him to pick up the trail farther up the highway.

Without traffic, he made good time, reaching the small city of Harvest within an hour of leaving Lafayette behind. The I-49 had gone flat to the ground a few kilometers back, and he was able to scan the sides of the highway for a gas station when the Triumph’s fuel gauge dipped dangerously close to ‘E.’

Harvest, Louisiana, was a city of about 5,000 people, and was oddly spread out almost entirely on the left side of the highway. There was a Holiday Inn near the feeder road, and across the street a sprawling Walmart with a parking lot teeming with vehicles.

And there, a Shell gas station two streets up from the Walmart.

Will slowed down, then turned off the I-45, rode across a small strip of grass down to a frontage road, before turning right into the Shell. There were already two vehicles waiting in line — a red Chevy station wagon and a white Mazda with red trimmings, both occupying separate gas pumps. He wasn’t going to get the pumps working, not without electricity, so he eased the bike alongside the Chevy and parked, removing the motorcycle helmet and hanging it on one of the handlebars.

He pulled out a clear siphoning hose from his pack. Nate had placed a box full of them in the back of the Caravan. The kid was well-prepared, which was more than Will could say for a lot of survivors he had met along the road. That included Mike, unfortunately.

Will took a moment to look at his surroundings before getting to work pulling the fuel pump nozzle out of the station wagon’s gas tank. Leaning down, he took a whiff. Not much. Gas in car tanks could sometimes last up to a year, so he was hopeful to find something to refuel the Triumph with. He moved on to the Mazda and did the same thing and got better results this time. He moved the Triumph over, then dipped the hose as far down into the Mazda’s tank as it would go. He sucked on his end until he saw gas flowing, then slipped the clear plastic hose into the Triumph’s open gas tank.

He sat down on the curb between the pumps and took out the bottle of tramadol from his pack. He swallowed three pills, then hunted for some food. Two strips of Jalapeno-flavored Jack Link’s beef jerky tasted better than anything he had ever eaten before, which was an obvious indication he was starving. He chased them down with warm water, wishing badly for the cold drinks of Song Island.

As he was rummaging in the pack for more beef jerky, he touched something soft and pulled it out. It was the plush Hello Kitty doll from Mercy Hospital. Will stared at it for a moment, unable to recall when he had decided to hang on to it.

But he wasn’t here because of the doll. It was the picture of the family whose house Nate’s people were staying in that convinced him he couldn’t let it go. There was no way in hell he could just let Kellerson run off with the kids from the hospital. That picture showed a nice-looking family: nice-looking parents and their nice-looking children. Two girls and a boy. They looked happy, innocent, and wide-eyed with hope. He was already considering it when he woke up this morning, but that picture, staring back at him in the living room…

Lara would understand why he couldn’t go back to Song Island. At least, not yet. Not until he knew for sure.

She’ll understand…

The sound of dripping water got his attention. He got up quickly, dropping the Hello Kitty, and grabbed the hose and pulled it free from the Triumph’s tank as gas spilled. He jerked the hose out of the Mazda and dropped it to the ground, then screwed the lid back over the tank.

He wiped his gas-slicked hands on his pant legs and was about to climb back on the bike when he remembered the doll. Will leaned down for it when he heard the crack! of a gunshot and a bullet zipped past his head and drilled into the gas pump in front of him, shattering the glass display and scattering shards into the air.

He dove off the Triumph and darted between the pumps as two more shots smashed into the machines behind him. A fourth shot buzzed past his right ear and hit the glass door of the Shell. Will made a quick left turn as the gunshots came faster, shattering the gas station windows one by one by one.

He found salvation by lunging behind an ugly green dumpster at the end of the parking lot. It was stained and smelled, but it was also six cubic yards of fourteen gauge steel. Immediately, the sharp ping-ping! of bullets peppered the other side of the dumpster, vibrating across the metal and through his body.

Will almost laughed when he realized he had held on to the Hello Kitty the entire time.

God bless you, Hello Kitty.

He stuffed the plush doll back into his pack and unslung the M4A1.

As the last gunshot faded, he waited for more, but there weren’t any.

Silence, as the shooter — or shooters — stopped firing.

Will reached into his pack and pulled out the baton and mirror kit. He snapped the metal rod to its full sixteen inches, then attached the mirror to the end with a solid click. Careful not to show himself, he stuck the baton, mirror-first, out the side of the dumpster, keeping it low enough to the ground to avoid detection.

First, he made sure no one was moving in on his position, which was his first worry. If there were more than two, he was in trouble. Two, he could probably handle. More, and they could come at him from multiple angles.

When he was certain a forward charge wasn’t coming, he moved the mirror back to the highway to study the vehicles, in case the shooter was hiding behind one of them. Because the I-49 was flat to the ground, he could easily see the other side.

He glimpsed a row of buildings, including what looked like an auto body shop next to a school. The buildings were all one story, so he concentrated on the roofs because that was where the sniper — or snipers — were likely to be. A high vantage point was always the key to a successful ambush.

He picked up a structure in the distance, jutting up from the ground, and looked like some type of water tower. A lot of small cities like Harvest had their own water towers, and this one was bright white and tall. It would have made for a terrific shooting spot if it wasn’t way back on the other side of the city — more than half a kilometer — and the chances of someone shooting from that distance were dismal.

He spotted another possibility, this one closer to the highway. Not the buildings that were low to the ground, but rising steel struts that went high up. He angled the mirror to get a better view, revealing a giant billboard advertising something called the Sandwhite Wildlife State Park. Cute cartoon animals poked their heads out from behind bushes, and a family of four smiled back at him as they set up camp for a picnic.

He saw a metallic reflection along the length of the billboard scaffolding, about the same time a gunshot interrupted the calmness and a bullet slammed into the concrete floor just three inches from the mirror.

Will quickly pulled the baton back.

He took a moment, gauging the distance between him and the sniper—120 meters, give or take. That meant two possible scenarios — the man was either a really good shot, or he had a nice riflescope on top of what sounded like an M4 doing most of the aiming for him.

Another M4? Same as the guys back at Mercy Hospital…

He moved to the other side of the dumpster and slowly eased the baton out again. He immediately angled it to get a better view of the billboard, and could just make out a figure lying on top of the metal scaffolding. There was only one man up there, but he seemed pretty comfortable. The guy was patient, too, which was another potential problem. He couldn’t make out a whole lot of details on the shooter, but it was easy enough to see the long barrel of the man’s rifle. The sun also glinted off a riflescope resting on top of it.

Just my luck, it’s probably an ACOG.

If the guy did have an ACOG, that meant he didn’t have to be a great shooter. The rifle scope was good for two, maybe 300 meters in the hands of an amateur. A pro like Danny could stretch that out to 800 in optimal conditions. At a distance of a hundred and change, the shooter had the advantage. Even a blind man could hit him from that distance, given enough time and a steady enough target.

Will pulled the mirror back and considered his options.

There was no way around it. He was pinned. There were no places to hide between him and the shooter. No buildings, or raised highway structures, or even a decent natural defilade to shelter behind. He wasn’t getting anywhere near the guy without being picked off first.

Which left him with…what?

There’s always an option. Always…

He glanced down at his watch: 10:13 a.m.

He had plenty of daylight to come up with something. That was the only good news.

He could make the Shell next door easily, but then what? The Triumph was on the wrong side of the gas pumps and he wouldn’t last more than a few seconds out there trying to climb on top of it, much less start it. And he wasn’t going to hit anything from this distance with the M4A1’s red dot sight. Maybe if he had an ACOG of his own, things would be different.

Yeah, and if wishes were assholes…

Ten minutes passed, and Will was surprised the sniper hadn’t called in reinforcements yet. It made him wonder if Kellerson and the others were too far away, or if the sniper was even a collaborator. He hadn’t seen any signs of a hazmat suit, but then again, the sniper might have taken it off, including the gas mask, to aim better. That made sense. The hazmat suit was essentially a uniform — to distinguish them from other humans and to each other, and of course, to the ghouls. There would be no reason for the sniper to wear it here.

If, that is, the man was even one of Kellerson’s people. For all Will knew, this could be a lone nutter. A survivalist who didn’t like people trespassing through his domain. But that wouldn’t explain why the man would take a shot at him. A survivalist would do all he could to avoid interaction with other people, including sniping at random passersby.

But if the sniper was one of Kellerson’s men, how many of them were out there? Maybe Jones had lied to him about their number. Or maybe Kellerson had already gotten reinforcements.

A lot of possibilities, and none of them did him any good at the moment.

Will slipped the baton outside again, angling it to get another look at the billboard. Almost instantly, he heard the crack! of a shot and a bullet chopped into the concrete parking lot a foot from the mirror.

He pulled the baton back quickly.

Will looked over at the Triumph, leaning on its kickstand. Impossible to get to, which further limited his options. He could retreat in the other direction. He could make it to the Shell easily, and from there, the Walmart next door. The sniper couldn’t hit him from that distance. He could gradually move back even farther and look for shelter.

Then what?

Will sat on the ground and took out another strip of Jack Link’s beef jerky. He ate slowly, in no real hurry, breathing through his mouth to keep out the rank stench of the dumpster behind him.

The sniper wasn’t going to attack. Why should he? He had the dominant position and was in total control of the situation. Attacking would be giving up his one major advantage. It was obvious now that it was just one man up there. Harvest, Louisiana, was as dead as you could get, and Will could hear almost everything, including debris scattering along the highway. The crunch of boots rushing him would be like firecrackers in this serenity.

He washed the jerky down with warm water and wished he were back on Song Island, walking on the beaches with Lara.

Lara… If I die now, she’s going to really be pissed.

He was thinking about how best to apologize to her when he heard the sound of a car engine. It was still distant, but approaching fast.

Alarms went off inside his head and he thought the car was reinforcement for the sniper, but he realized it was coming from the wrong direction. It wasn’t approaching from the north, where Kellerson would have vanished, but coming up from the south, from Lafayette.

Will scrambled up and inched toward the edge of the dumpster. He didn’t have to lean out completely to see the highway, or the green Volkswagen Beetle doing around forty miles per hour up the road. Out here, it was easy to get careless with speed; the lack of vehicles lulled you into a sense of safety that could be snatched away at any moment by just about anything, like debris, a pileup…or a sniper perched on a billboard.

The Beetle was still over 300 meters away…

Then 250…200 …

…150…

Will glanced toward the billboard. He saw sudden movement as the man shifted his position to pick up the Beetle.

…100 meters now…

At about seventy meters, Will heard the first shot from the M4, then brakes squealing and tires sliding desperately against the smooth highway. He leaned out a bit further and watched the sniper firing at the Beetle in three-round bursts.

The Beetle had come to a complete stop in the middle of the highway about fifty meters away, and Will watched a figure scramble out of the front passenger seat. Then a second later, another figure crawled out the same door, even as the sniper put round after round into the Beetle’s windshield and front hood and sides. The man seemed to be spraying and praying.

Then Will glimpsed a blonde ponytail.

Gaby.

What the hell was she doing here?

He sighed. She was following him, of course. It was the same reason why he had left before she had come back, because he knew she would argue and eventually decide to come with him. She was stubborn that way. It was the same trait that helped her to persevere and overcome.

He slipped out from behind the dumpster and ran across the parking lot. His thigh throbbed, reminding him he wasn’t 100 percent. Not even close.

He got twenty meters and was already crossing the feeder road and moving through the overgrown grass before the sniper remembered he was still around. The man shifted on the scaffolding and began shooting at him.

A bullet came close to putting a hole in his right arm, to match the one already in his left. Thankfully, he was able to find shelter behind a Chevy truck parked on the northbound lane. The windows above him shattered, and he heard the ping-ping-ping! of bullets going into the hood and the side of the truck.

He looked down the highway, in the direction of the Beetle.

Gaby was crouched behind the green vehicle, staring back at him. The guy crouched next to her looked familiar, and although Will thought it was Benny at first, he realized it was actually Nate, the twenty-something ROTC college student. The dumbass Mohawk gave it away.

Will caught Gaby’s eyes over the distance and held up his left hand, with all five fingers extended. Then he began to count down.

Four…three…

She nodded back, understanding. She said something to Nate, who then scooted over to the back of the Beetle and stopped next to the back tire.

When he got to one, Gaby and Nate stood up in unison and began firing back at the billboard sign. They were close enough that they were hitting the billboard, and Will could hear the bullets that didn’t puncture the big sign ricocheting off the metal struts around the sniper.

He waited, and only dove out from behind the Chevy when he heard the sniper firing back at the Beetle. He kept an eye on the billboard, on the cute creatures and family of four welcoming him to visit Sandwhite Wildlife State Park, as he moved across the flat highway lanes, doing his best to ignore the stabbing pain from his leg. He hit the median about four seconds later and rushed across overgrown grass that looked more like jungles.

By the time the sniper realized he was moving again, Will was on the southbound lane and already too close. He saw the man clinging low to the scaffolding, Gaby and Nate still firing at him, their bullets perforating the billboard. Every time the sniper tried to get up, another bullet came close to taking his head off.

Will stopped and took aim and fired, hitting the metal tubes just under the sniper. The man flinched as sparks flickered at his face. He scrambled up to his knees to get a better view.

Big mistake.

Will fired — and missed.

His bullet hit the billboard behind the man’s head, but it must have come pretty close, because the sniper twisted around involuntarily, lost his balance, and fell about fourteen meters to the ground — and landed in a thick bush that hadn’t been pruned in eleven months.

Gaby and Nate stopped shooting as Will jogged across the highway over the southbound feeder road and approached the sniper. He spotted a hand reaching out from the brush, groping for a Beretta M9 in a hip holster.

Will stepped on the arm and the man screamed. He bent down, pulled out the Beretta, and shoved it behind his back.

The man had a thick red beard and was wearing some kind of camo uniform. He glared up at Will with dark, bloodshot eyes, grimacing in pain, but looking, miraculously enough, still in one piece.

“How many lives you got?” Will asked.

“Seven, give or take,” the guy said.

Will grinned back at him, and looking up at the billboard, saw the rifle still up there. “You forgot your rifle.”

“You wanna go get it for me?” the guy said.

“Well, since you asked so nicely…”

Gaby and Nate had run over. They were out of breath, though he guessed it was less from the short jog and more from the adrenaline.

“Friend of yours?” Gaby asked.

“Not quite,” Will said.

“Who is he?” Nate asked. “And why was he trying to kill you? Us?”

“I don’t know,” Will said. He looked back down at the man. “He’s either one of Kellerson’s, or some random asshole that likes shooting people for fun. So which one is it?”

The sniper said nothing.

“Kellerson?” Nate said.

“He’s in charge of the collaborators I told you about,” Gaby said. “The ones that attacked Mercy Hospital.”

“Look around for his vehicle,” Will said. “It should be around here somewhere.”

“What about you?” Gaby asked.

Will looked up at the billboard. “Watch him for me. He was using an ACOG, and it’s still up there.”

“Sweet,” Gaby said.

It was sweet, until he climbed all the way up and saw the M4 carbine with a big piece of metal sticking out of its side. There was another, smaller piece sticking out of the front lens of the scope mounted on top of it.

The sniper was sitting on the curb with his hands draped over his knees when Will climbed back down. Gaby stood in front of him, almost daring him to try something. He was smarter than he looked, though, and didn’t.

“Where’s the ACOG?” Gaby asked.

“It’s broken. Along with the rifle.”

“Of course. Why should we get any luck, right?”

“Did you find his vehicle?”

“Behind the school. Nate’s bringing it over now.” She looked at the man. “You killed a lot of people back at Mercy Hospital.”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” the man said. “I was downstairs in front of the building the whole time.”

“So you are one of Kellerson’s men,” Will said.

“I’ll talk to the girl over here — I’ve always been partial to blondes — but you can kiss my ass.”

“Did you find out where Kellerson went?” Gaby asked Will.

“I bet my friend here knows,” Will said. Then he shifted his attention over to her. “What are you doing here, Gaby?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” she said, staring back at him defiantly.

“You know what I’m doing here.”

“Asked and answered, then.”

“I left before you came back for a reason.”

“I know. You tried to ditch me. That wasn’t very nice.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“And where should I be?”

“Back on Song Island.”

“Benny’s taking the others there. He doesn’t need me to ride shotgun.”

He sighed.

“Look,” she said, showing no signs of giving in, “I can’t just let you chase after Kellerson and those kids by yourself. Besides, that dick killed Amy and Jen. I liked them, Will. I liked them a lot, and I’m not going to let him get away with it.”

They heard a car coming and looked over as a white truck appeared from behind the auto body shop, driving through the grass before easing onto the road. Nate was behind the wheel.

“I know your story,” Will said. “What’s his? He voluntarily left his group to come chasing me, too?”

Gaby actually blushed a bit. “I guess he likes me.”

“And that’s the only reason he came?”

“He’s a guy, Will,” she said, as if that should explain everything.

He smiled. He guessed it did. “What about Benny?”

“What about Benny?”

“I thought you liked him.”

“Give me a break. It’s the end of the world. I get to pick whoever the hell I want to hang around with. Even if that someone is your dumb, suicidal ass.”

“Fair enough.”

“Besides,” Gaby said, “I figured, with the three of us, there’s a better chance you’ll come home alive, and I won’t have to explain to Lara why I let you run off to get yourself killed. Tell me I’m wrong.”

He didn’t, because she wasn’t wrong.

Three against Kellerson was better odds. It still wasn’t great odds, but it was a hell of a lot better than it had been an hour ago when he rode out of Lafayette.

CHAPTER 20 LARA

She overslept and woke up with a hangover. It wasn’t quite the pounding-in-your-brain type of hangover she had endured a couple of times in college, when she couldn’t pull herself away from a party fast enough. Lara was always good at either resisting or dodging peer pressure entirely, but there were only so many times you could tell your friends you didn’t want to drink with them before they took it personally.

She sat up in bed and grimaced at the sunlight splashing rudely across her face. She had slept in her clothes, but had somehow managed to kick off one shoe during the night. Not soon enough, as it turned out, because the bedsheets were covered with crumbs of dirt and dried mud.

She stumbled to her feet and into the bathroom for a hot shower, spending the full five minutes to gather herself. Afterward, Lara dressed in fresh cargo pants and a long-sleeve shirt, then grabbed her gun belt. All the while, she stepped over pieces of the broken radio and closet door she hadn’t gotten to yesterday.

She picked up a new radio from the nightstand and debated whether to call Danny, who would already have been in the Tower since five this morning. With Blaine still in the Infirmary, Carly had pitched in, taking over Blaine’s shift in the evenings. Soon Lara would have to start assigning Bonnie, Roy, and the others their own duties. But that could wait, maybe until after Will got back.

If he’s still alive…

She had overslept her eight o’clock shift on the beach, which meant Roy had either failed to wake her up or had decided not to. If it was the former, she had cause to be worried; she needed people she could trust to do what they promised. But if it was the latter, and he purposely didn’t wake her because he thought she needed the extra sleep, then she would have to thank him.

She found Bonnie in the kitchen, helping Sarah and Jo fix breakfast for everyone.

Breakfast, unlike lunch and dinner, didn’t involve fish. There were plenty of freeze-dried breakfast items in the freezer, enough to feed, according to Sarah, an army for a few years. That was an exaggeration, but not far from the truth. There were stacks of frozen biscuits, sausage patties, bacon strips, pancake batter, waffles, oatmeal, French toast sticks, popcorn chicken, and a hundred other items she didn’t even know came in frozen form. Sarah had begun to catalog everything — something that was never done when Karen ran the island — and was still going through the shelves three months later.

“Where’s Roy?” she asked them.

“He went to bed about two hours ago,” Bonnie said. “I found him snoring on top of the boat shack this morning. Poor guy, he wanted to stay up there until you came to relieve him. I put Gwen in his place with the binoculars, if that’s okay.”

She nodded. “That’s fine. The beach is just a precaution, anyway. She has a radio?”

“Danny assigned everyone radios this morning.”

“Why didn’t anyone wake me?”

Sarah gave her a sympathetic smile. “Everyone agreed you needed the extra sleep. Besides, Carly and Danny are around. Nothing happened, and you got your rest. Everything’s fine, Lara.”

Lara smiled. “So, Roy was snoring on top of the shack?”

“More like snorting,” Jo said, and the girls laughed.

Lara left the kitchen, imagining Roy with his boyish blond hair snoring on the roof of the boat shack in the morning hours.

She made her way across the hotel grounds, watching and enjoying the sight of Lucy and Kylie giving themselves a tour of the island. Derek, the teenage boy who had let West out of his makeshift jail cell yesterday, was with the girls, along with the younger boy, Logan. When they saw her, they waved — all except Derek, who looked away, whether out of anger or embarrassment, she had no idea.

Adapt or perish, kid.

She crossed over to the Tower and climbed the spiral staircase, the sound of her boots click-clacking against the cast iron metal. She was halfway up the second floor staircase when she heard voices floating through the open door above her.

Danny, talking to a second, muffled voice.

The radio.

She hurried up the last dozen steps and burst onto the third floor. Danny was leaning over the ham radio at the table.

“Will?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Someone else, but here’s a kicker — it came through our emergency frequency.”

“Then it has to be Will and Gaby.”

“That’s what I figured.” He turned back to the radio, pressed the transmit lever. “The boss just showed up. You’ll want to talk to her.”

Lara took the microphone from him. “How long ago?” she asked him.

“A few minutes.”

She turned to the mic and pressed the lever. “This is Lara. Who am I talking to?”

“My name’s Benny,” a male voice said.

“Benny, how did you get this frequency?”

“Will gave it to me.”

Will. Oh thank God.

“Is he okay?” she asked, somehow managing not to scream the question through the radio. Not that it stopped her heart from racing noticeably inside her chest.

“Last time I saw him,” Benny said.

“He’s not with you?”

“No.”

“What about Gaby?”

“She went to find Will.”

“What does that mean, Benny?”

“Will sent her to find a ham radio, but before she came back, he took off. Gaby decided to go after him, and Nate went with her.”

“Who’s Nate?”

“The guy leading this group I’m with now.”

“Wait, you’re not all from Mercy Hospital?”

“No.” He paused for a moment. “The hospital was attacked. Most of the people there are dead. I think I might be the only survivor.”

Lara exchanged a worried look with Danny. This explained so much. Why Will was out of contact, and who the man with the deep voice was that had answered when she called Jen’s helicopter yesterday.

“They killed everyone?” she asked.

“I think so, yeah,” Benny said. Then he added, “Except for the children.”

“What about the children?”

“They took them,” Benny said. “The ones Will called collaborators. That’s where Will went. To get the children back.”

Of course Will would try to get the children back. Will was practical to a fault, but there was a streak of righteous decency in him that she admired and loved. So of course he would decide to go on a fool’s errand to save children he had never met, whose names he probably didn’t even know. Because there was a chance he could succeed, and a chance was good enough for Will.

If you get killed, I’m going to kick your ass, Will.

Knowing why he was doing what he was doing didn’t make it any easier to accept. But she understood it. God, did she understand it. She might have even done the same thing in his position, though she was sure her chances of success would be far less.

“That’s Will for you,” Danny said. “Personally, I think he’s just going after this Kellerson guy because he’s bored.”

She stood at the window next to him, looking out at Bonnie’s girls gathered near the edge of a nearby cliff, throwing rocks at the lake below. Even Derek seemed to have come out of his shell and was skipping his share of pebbles.

She was still trying to digest what Benny had told her a few minutes ago. Will, Gaby, and Mercy Hospital. Most of all, she couldn’t quite wrap her head around the collaborators deciding to kill everyone except the kids.

“Why did they take the children?” she said out loud.

“I’m just a grunt, doc,” Danny said. “You tell me.”

“They have a plan.”

“Collaborators?”

“No, the ghouls. They keep pressing forward, building on what they’ve done. The Purge, the blood farms. The one we saw in Dansby was just the early stage. The one Blaine saw in Beaumont was another one, but further along. Now they’re taking children and killing the adults. Before, they took the adults, too. But that’s changed. Why?”

“I get the feeling Will’s thinking the same thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s one of the reasons he’s not back here yet.”

“I don’t understand.”

“‘Know thy enemy,’” Danny said. “Willie boy really takes that motto seriously.”

Benny and the others reached Beaufont Lake around four in the afternoon. They arrived on a single tank of gas, and Benny radioed ahead when they were halfway down Route 27. Lara remembered when they had originally come down the same stretch of road. It had seemed as if the drive would never end.

Danny, with Bonnie, took the pontoon boat back over to the marina to get the new arrivals. Bonnie volunteered, and Lara was more than willing to accept. She had more questions for Benny — about Will, about Mercy Hospital, about what had happened to everyone there — but she needed them to rest up first.

With six new people now on the island, Lara spent the next couple of hours with Carly in the hotel arranging living quarters for them. They needed five rooms for one couple, a mother and her teenage son, a teenage girl, and Benny. They had to bring fresh bedsheets, blankets, and pillows from the supply closets in the back. Eventually, Lara knew they would have to start prioritizing the rooms when the island’s population increased. She had already begun keeping a ledger, noting everyone’s room number, as well as writing down the names of the room’s occupants on the doors themselves using large white envelope labels she had found in one of the offices.

It was mundane things like that that kept her from spending every second worrying about Will and Gaby. They were out there, in God knew how much danger, chasing men who had already tried to kill them.

If she didn’t keep her mind constantly occupied with something else, like the tedious running of the island, she was almost certain she would go insane.

It was almost five when everyone was back on the island and she could breathe easier. Sending people on land always left her anxious, especially to a launching point as obvious as the marina. You never knew who could be lurking in the grass, harboring ill-intentions.

Like West…

She let Benny and the newcomers eat first. They were tired from the long drive, from being squeezed into a vehicle for most of the day. She remembered how that felt, too.

She asked Roy, who had woken up, to go back to the beach and stay on the boat shack. Afterward, she went to the third floor of the Tower and sat down at the table with the radio. She had renewed hope that Will would contact them, because the first thing Benny had told her when they met was that Gaby had taken a second radio with her.

That was the good news.

The bad news was that she hadn’t heard from them yet. The fact that they had a radio and hadn’t contacted Song Island introduced a whole new set of possibilities, each one more confusing than the next.

Had Gaby even managed to find Will? According to Benny, Will had an hour’s head start on her and Nate. If they hadn’t caught up to him yet, it explained a lot. Moving by himself, on a motorcycle, Will would be able to travel faster on the highway. Gaby and Nate, on the other hand, had left in a Volkswagen Beetle.

She waited with Maddie in the Tower, staring at the radio and willing it to make a sound, but the damn thing refused to obey her mental commands.

“How long are you staying up here?” Maddie asked after a while.

“Why? Are you tired of me already?”

“Not at all, boss. Just wonderin’.”

“I’m waiting for Benny.”

“Speaking of which, what do you think of them?”

“Stan’s an electrician, so he’s going to be invaluable. And Kendra was a gardener at Home Depot, so she’ll come in handy when we start growing things around here.”

“It would be nice to have some fruits and vegetables to go along with all the fish,” Maddie said.

Lara heard footsteps on the spiral staircase and looked over as Benny poked his head up through the opening. His face was covered in sweat from the climb and he looked older with the stubble, though she guessed he was only eighteen or nineteen. He had dimples that reminded her of a boy she used to like back in middle school.

“You guys could use an elevator in this place,” Benny said as he climbed up onto the floor. “I thought I was going to have a stroke halfway up.”

He was breathing hard and moving on a crutch — really, a baseball bat with a car seat’s headrest duct taped at the top. One of his legs was encased in splints made from two pieces of wood, with more duct tape wrapped around them.

“How’s the leg?” she asked.

“Hurts.”

“But you’re not in any major pain?”

“I pretty much loaded up on painkillers on the way over here, so it’s mostly numbed over, thank God.”

“I’ll look at the leg later, then get Danny to make you some proper crutches.”

He nodded gratefully. “You’re a doctor, right?”

“I’m just a third-year medical student.”

“Three more years than I got.”

She smiled. If she had a dime every time someone said that to her…

“Sit down, Benny.”

She gave him her chair. Benny sat down and glanced up at the glass skylight.

“You knew Gaby, too?” Lara asked.

“Yeah, we—” He stopped short, then actually blushed a bit. “Yeah, we got to be pretty good friends.”

Lara and Maddie exchanged a knowing look.

“So you wanted to ask me some questions?” Benny said.

“Tell me what happened at Mercy Hospital,” Lara said.

“What do you wanna know?”

“Everything. The men that attacked the hospital. What did they look like. How many were there. How Jen died. Everything you can tell me, Benny.”

Benny nodded. He took his time, gathering his thoughts.

“They came out of nowhere,” he began. “One moment they weren’t there, and the next they’re all over the tenth floor. It was bloody. It was so bloody…”

CHAPTER 21 GABY

Gaby believed in a higher power, that there was a God out there somewhere watching over her and her friends. But she’d be damned if she didn’t think she was listening to God himself as Will crouched in front of Kellerson’s sniper and talked to the guy.

“Here’s the deal,” Will began. “I was with Harris County SWAT before all of this happened. Before that, I was an Army Ranger and I served in Afghanistan. I won’t bore you with the details, but I wasn’t building roads or schools or holding anybody’s hand when I was in-country. They sent me to kill people, because that’s what I do. I’ll admit it, I did it — and I still do it — very well.”

The guy’s face hadn’t changed since Will started talking, and the only time he moved at all was to pick pieces of dried grass out of his thick red beard.

Will continued: “So when I tell you that I have absolutely no desire to hurt you, but that I will if you don’t tell me everything I want to know, you should take it as gospel. I would have done this to you before the world went to shit if you had something I needed. Now, after everything that’s happened? The whole end of the world stuff? The lying in wait to put a bullet in my head? I will hurt you — and hurt you badly — and I won’t lose a single second of sleep over it.”

The man finally looked Will in the eyes.

“Do you understand me?” Will asked.

The guy nodded. “Yeah, I understand you.”

“Do you believe me?”

“Yeah, I believe you.”

“So tell me about Kellerson.”

“What do you wanna know?”

Gaby exchanged a look with Nate. “That was easy.”

The man leaned back tiredly against the tire of the Saleen sports truck he had been using, trapped between Will in front and Gaby and Nate on either side. Not that he noticed Gaby or Nate. His eyes — even if he pretended otherwise — were firmly focused on Will.

“What’s your name?” Will asked.

“Harris,” the man said.

“Where is Kellerson, Harris?”

“Sandwhite.”

“Sandwhite Wildlife State Park?” Nate asked.

“Yeah. Just like on the billboard.”

“What’s he doing there?” Will asked.

“That’s where the nightcrawlers told him to take the kids.”

“Where in the park?”

“I don’t know. We usually just deliver them to the main parking area and the others come and get them.”

“Others?”

“Others like us.”

“Collaborators.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Nightcrawlers?” Gaby said.

“It’s what we call those things,” Harris said. “Why? What do you call them?”

“Ghouls.”

Harris shrugged. “Good name as any, I guess.”

“So there are ghouls — nightcrawlers — in Sandwhite, farther up the road,” Will said.

“I guess so,” Harris said. “It’s dark in there. There are parts of the place where sunlight doesn’t even reach. They might have been there all this time, I don’t know, we never stuck around long enough to find out.”

“Who told Kellerson to take the kids there?”

“Them.”

“Who is ‘them’?”

“One of them had blue eyes…”

Blue-eyed ghouls.

Gaby had never seen one herself, but Will had. So had Lara, and Blaine, and Maddie. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to see a blue-eyed ghoul; the black-eyed kind was disturbing enough.

“He’s right,” Nate said. “The trees grow pretty big in there.”

“You know the area?” Will asked.

“I grew up around here. Used to go to Sandwhite every now and then for camping and hunting.”

Will said to Harris, “What are they doing with the kids in Sandwhite?”

“I have no fucking idea,” Harris said. “We just drop them off and leave.”

“Where were you headed after Sandwhite?”

“I dunno. Kellerson didn’t say. Probably to pick up more men. You guys — back there at the hospital — did a pretty good number on us.”

“How many are left with Kellerson now?”

“Just me and Danvers. You killed the rest.”

“So Kellerson isn’t at Sandwhite right now?”

“Probably not. He went on ahead of me yesterday.”

“And left you behind. Why?”

“In case there were more of you Mercy Hospital guys chasing us. He got spooked when you showed up with the helicopter yesterday. We saw it a mile away, on our ass.”

“That was his idea? Using the Law?”

“Yeah.”

“Where’d you get something like that?”

“We raided Fort Polk. Kellerson’s got all kinds of hardware stashed around the state.”

“Fort Polk is in Vernon Parish,” Nate said. “About 180 klicks from Lafayette.”

“What else does he have?” Will asked Harris.

“Everything,” Harris said. “We raided the armory.”

“Is that where you got all the M4s?”

“Yeah.”

“Where’s your base?”

“Tatum Golf and Country Club.”

“Near Oden Lake?” Nate asked.

“Yeah.”

“Country club?” Gaby said.

“Clean living,” Harris said. “Greens as far as the eye can see. And you can catch fish at the lake nearby.”

“Yeah, but who cuts the grass?” Nate smirked.

“Who cares. We didn’t go there for the golf.”

Will stood up. Harris tensed, then looked over at Gaby and Nate. She could guess what was probably going through his mind at the moment: “Now what?”

“Do we just…leave him here?” she asked Will.

Will didn’t answer right away.

That, more than anything, unnerved Harris. “Leave me here,” the man said. “I told you everything you wanted to know. You promised.”

“Did I?” Will said.

Harris opened his mouth to protest, but stopped short. It was true. The only thing Will had promised was pain if he didn’t talk. Other than that, she didn’t remember anything about letting Harris go.

“Look, I was just following orders,” Harris said.

Will ignored him and glanced down at his watch before looking over at Nate. “What’s the word on the Beetle?”

“There are at least four bullets in the engine block,” Nate said. “It’s not going anywhere.”

“Transfer everything you have over to the Saleen.”

“Now?” Gaby said.

Will nodded.

Gaby took the hint and started off, but noticed Nate wasn’t following. She glanced back at him. “Nate, come on.”

He hesitated, before grudgingly leaving with her.

They walked along the feeder road for a moment, then crossed over to the highway’s southbound lane, back to the Beetle farther down the I-49.

Nate kept glancing back at Will and Harris. “Is he going to kill that guy?”

“I don’t know,” Gaby said. “Maybe.”

“Should we stop him?”

“Why?”

“It’s murder, Gaby.”

“He was trying to murder us.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“Isn’t it?”

“If we killed him during the gun battle, that’s fine. I won’t lose sleep over it. But this…this is murder.”

She gave him a sharp look, ready to get pissed at him, but saw the very real conflict on his face. He looked so young, even with that Mohawk.

“When did you get so soft and gooey?” she asked instead.

He chuckled. “Is that what I’m being? Soft and gooey? Just because I don’t want Will to murder some guy?”

“You really think he wouldn’t do the same to us if the shoe was on the other foot?”

“I’m sure he would. But we’re better than him. He and this Kellerson guy. These collaborators. That’s what sets us apart from them.”

Gaby didn’t reply. She didn’t really know how. Maybe he was right. The old Gaby would have jumped at the chance to agree with him. But she had seen too many things, faced too much ugliness from her fellow man, and lost too many friends to just forgive Harris for “following orders.”

When she didn’t answer, Nate said, “Gaby?”

“What?”

“Nothing. I expected you to say something.”

She shrugged. “What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know. That you agree with me would be nice.”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t?”

“No. Why do you find that so hard to believe?”

“I thought—” He paused. “I just thought you would.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“So you’re fine with Will shooting Harris in cold blood?”

“I’m fine with whatever Will decides to do with him.”

“You trust him that much?”

“I trust him more than I trust you. You’re cute and all, but you haven’t been through the shit me and Will have been through.”

He grinned crookedly at her. “You think I’m cute?”

She gave him a wry look. “Really? From arguing for Harris’s life in one breath to grinning like an idiot over me calling you ‘cute’ in the other? Classy, Nate, real classy.”

“Hey, a guy’s gotta make some points where he can. Girls like you don’t come around very often, you know.”

“I have bruises and scratches all over my face, and my forehead looks like someone cut it open with a hammer, then poured dirt into it.”

“Scars heal and bruises fade, but you’ll always be beautiful.”

“Wow. That was almost…sweet.”

He laughed. “I get some brownie points for that, right?”

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

Gaby was amazed they had survived the ambush unscathed, given the state of the Beetle. It was almost completely destroyed, every single window shattered, even the back windshield. The doors were covered in bullet holes and the car seats and dashboards were shredded. The man had really unleashed on them, but then again, given how much ammo he was carrying inside the Saleen, she guessed he wasn’t exactly trying to conserve bullets.

Before she left Benny, Gaby had taken some of the emergency supplies from the gym bag they were hauling around, giving Benny the bulk of it to take back to Lara. The ham radio she had brought with her was in pieces in the back of the Beetle, with a nice big hole in the center.

They grabbed their packs and headed back to Will.

“Radio’s kaput,” Gaby said.

Will nodded, keeping one eye on Harris, who was still seated on the curb in front of him. As she expected, Will didn’t look all that torn up about the loss of the ham radio.

Of course not. He left before I came back for a reason…so he wouldn’t have to explain to Lara why he isn’t coming back to the island yet.

Slick, Will, real slick.

Next to them, Nate was busy taking inventory of everything from inside Harris’s truck, including one of the green ammo cans that had been stolen from Mercy Hospital. The bullets inside were 9mm and 5.56x45mm silver rounds, not that Harris had cared or noticed. There was also a white Level B tactical hazmat suit in the backseat, along with a spare M4 rifle, a backpack, gas mask, and a crate of food.

“So what’re we gonna do with this asshole?” she asked Will.

Harris narrowed his eyes at the insult.

“We’ll leave him here,” Will said. “If he survives the day, fine. If not, that’s his problem.”

Gaby glanced over at Nate to see his reaction. He looked satisfied with the compromise.

“I can live with that,” Nate said.

“What about my suit?” Harris asked.

“What about it?” Will said.

“I need it.”

“That’s too bad, because we’re taking it, too.”

Harris didn’t bother arguing.

She left Will and Harris and climbed into the front passenger seat of the truck.

Nate settled down behind the steering wheel, moving his butt around the luxurious leather sports seat and whistling his approval. “I could get used to this.”

“Considering the fates of every vehicle I’ve been in lately, you probably shouldn’t.”

“Oh come on, your luck’s changing.”

“What gave you that crazy idea?”

“You met me, didn’t you?”

“Unbelievable,” she said. “We’re probably going to die soon, and all you can think about is getting into my pants.”

“Is it working yet?”

“You’re not even at the belt.”

“Damn,” Nate said.

She watched Harris outside the window, looking forlornly back at them. He hadn’t bothered to move from the curb, probably realizing there was nowhere to run anyway.

Will soon showed up, riding his Triumph motorcycle across the flat highway lanes over to them. He stopped next to Harris, who remained seated like a kid sent to the corner as punishment.

“What’s the point?” Harris asked. “So you save a couple of kids. Then what? There are hundreds—thousands—of people out there. You’ll never be able to save them all. Why even bother?”

“How many did you personally hand over to the ghouls?” Will asked.

“Enough.”

“Maybe you can explain to them how loyal you’ve been when you see them tonight.”

Will gunned the motorcycle and shot forward, up the southbound lane, before switching over to the northbound. Nate eased the truck back onto the road, then increased speed as they hopped the lanes. Will had slowed down for them to catch up before increasing speed again.

They drove past a sign that read, “Sandwhite Wildlife State Park. 29 Miles.”

Gaby looked in her side mirror, back at Harris. He was still sitting on the curb, watching them go.

“How long do you think he’ll last out here by himself?” Nate asked. “Without food, weapons, or the hazmat suit?”

Gaby remembered the kids, their faces pressed against the rear windshield of the Humvee, looking back at her, horror frozen on their tear-streaked faces.

“Gaby?” Nate said. “How long do you think he’ll last out here?”

“I couldn’t give a shit,” she said finally.

Sandwhite was only twenty-nine miles from Harvest, but as they approached the five-mile mark, Will slowed down and pulled over to the side, motioning for them to drive up next to him.

Gaby glanced down at her watch: 11:55 a.m.

Nate pulled up alongside Will and put the truck in park.

Will flicked up his helmet’s visor. “How big is Sandwhite?”

“It’s big,” Nate said. “About 10,000 acres the last time I was there. The state might have expanded it since.”

“Ten thousand is massive,” Gaby said.

“Yeah, it’s pretty big. Some rich family originally owned it before gifting it over to the state. It’s essentially halved — one for the hunters and the other for campers. It’s got trails, but honestly, it’s a good idea not to get lost inside at night.”

“What kind of wildlife?” Will asked.

“Squirrels, rabbits, wood ducks, and large herds of deer. And oh, woodcocks.”

“Woodcocks?” Gaby said doubtfully.

“Yeah, you know, small birds with long, skinny beaks?”

“You’re making that up.”

“No, I’m serious. They’re called woodcocks.”

“Trails?” Will asked.

“About twelve miles in all, mostly used by hunters. We used to notch some nice trophy bucks from those woods.”

“What’s the plan?” she asked Will.

He glanced at his watch. “What are you loaded with, Nate?”

“I have Harris’s 9 mil Beretta, and I swapped my rifle with his spare M4. Thought it’d be more appropriate if we run across this Kellerson asshole.”

“I reloaded all the mags with the silver from the ammo can,” Gaby added. “Just in case.”

Will looked forward. “If Harris was telling the truth, then Kellerson will have already delivered the kids and left yesterday. You said there are places in the park where the sun doesn’t reach?”

“A lot of places,” Nate said.

“This is where I give you the option of turning back,” Will said. “Gaby—”

“Forget it,” she said, cutting him off. “The only place I’m going is wherever you are.”

She thought she was in for an argument, but instead he looked at Nate. “What about you, ROTC?”

“Hell, I came this far,” Nate said. “Why the hell not?”

“You could die.”

“Yeah, well, I could die tomorrow. Or the day after that. If I am going to die, I might as well do it for a good cause. And rescuing some kids is as good as any.”

Will nodded. “Harris said they drove to the main parking lot and waited for the others to come get the kids. You know where that is?”

“There’s only one main parking lot, in the center of the park. I know where it is.”

“All right. You take point.”

Will flicked his visor back down and waited. Nate pulled on ahead, and Will followed behind them.

Gaby glanced over at Nate. “Are you doing all of this just for me?”

He gave her a serious look. “Maybe. I don’t know. But I wasn’t lying back there. I don’t like the idea of kids being hand-delivered to those things by other human beings. It makes my skin crawl.”

“Yeah, me too.”

He drove in silence for a while, before asking her, “How good is Will? Tell me the truth.”

“He’s really good. Just do what he says and follow his lead, and our chances of coming out of this alive are decent.”

“I was hoping for more than decent.”

“Yeah, well, hope springs eternal, Louisiana.”

Nate pulled off I-49 five miles later, taking a small two-lane road for the next ten minutes.

“Sandwhite?” she asked.

Nate nodded. “This is the main entrance. From here, we’ll go to the main parking, which is exactly in the middle of the park for easy access to all the other areas.”

They passed large sections of undeveloped land, broken up by the occasional wall of trees to the left and right of them. There were buildings and small businesses, but no houses or farms that she could see. It was quiet, almost serene, but Gaby couldn’t shake the feeling there were things inside the woods watching her.

Eventually, Nate slowed down and took a right onto another two-lane road. It went east for about five minutes, before curving left for another two, then arching back right again. They passed more thick trees, so many and so tightly packed together that it was impossible to see slivers of sunlight between them.

Gaby shivered slightly at the thought of being lost in there. It would take days, maybe weeks, to find her way out. That was, if she survived the first night…

“You okay?” Nate asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine. How much farther?”

“One more mile.”

They passed a group of tanned buildings. There were three similarly colored trucks parked in front of them, but she didn’t look quickly enough to catch the sign up front.

Then there were more trees. Everywhere. She had never seen so many trees in her life.

Ten thousand acres. Twelve miles of trail. Where do we even start?

She was about to give up ever reaching anything resembling civilization again when Nate slowed down and pulled onto an asphalt parking lot. It wasn’t nearly as big as she had expected, given the size of the park. There were about thirty to forty vehicles already inside, with plenty of empty slots for at least a hundred more. The wall of trees made it look foreboding, like the green scenery could collapse in on them at any moment.

“I thought it’d be bigger,” she said.

“Most of the hunters like to park around the area so they can reach their favorite hunting grounds faster. The people who park here are mostly campers and hikers. There’s a bayou about a mile’s walk where you can do some fishing.”

“You do come here a lot.”

“What can I say? I’m easily bored. Hunting and fishing take up a lot of time.”

Will pulled up ahead of them, sliding his motorcycle into one of two open spaces flanked by a white and a red truck. They were both much bigger than the Saleen and swallowed up the sports truck as it eased into the empty spot next to Will’s bike.

Will was already off the Triumph with his M4A1 in his hands by the time she and Nate climbed out with their packs and rifles.

The air around them was thick with the sound of animals. There was more wildlife here than she had seen or heard in a long time, though they were all either perched on branches or high up in the trees. Land animals, like in the cities, didn’t last very long these days.

“Nate,” Will said. “What’s the highest point in the park? Some place where we can get a good look at what’s around us?”

Nate thought about it. “Trail #8 takes us north to Sandwhite Point. It’s a hill and should give us our best view of the surrounding area.”

“There was something that looked like official buildings about a mile back, with some trucks in front of them.”

“Game warden’s office.”

“All right. If anything happens and we get separated, we fall back to those buildings to meet up. Whatever happens, the two of you stay together. Understand?”

Nate and Gaby nodded.

“Lead the way, Nate,” Will said.

Nate headed off across the parking lot, she and Will following.

The animal noises seem to increase in intensity as they neared the wall of trees, as if they knew humans were approaching. Her chest tightened as she took her first step inside the woods, the almost-choking chilly air wrapping around her fingers.

God help me to survive this place…

CHAPTER 22 WILL

Will spent most of his career moving across hot deserts and rocky mountainsides before trading it all for hard concrete and steel jungles. There were woods in Afghanistan, but they were nothing like the thick, deep canvas of Sandwhite Wildlife State Park.

Nate was up front, keeping to Trail #8, with Gaby behind him. They were both moving at a fast clip while maintaining complete silence. Will kept them within range while drifting behind a bit, watching for signs of movement around them. The last thing he needed was to get outflanked in here.

Squirrels raced along branches above his head, and woodcocks fluttered when they got too close.

The trail was essentially a dirt path, approximately two meters wide. He saw old tracks — truck tires and faded shoe prints, some trampled over by much fresher prints. Bare feet.

Ghouls.

They were, without a doubt, moving behind enemy lines.

After about twenty minutes on Trail #8, Will caught up with them. “How far to Sandwhite Point?”

“Maybe another ten minutes,” Nate said.

“You sure?”

“Pretty sure,” he said, pointing at a sign about ten meters ahead that read, “Sandwhite Point” with an arrow pointing up the trail.

“Good enough,” Will said.

They continued up Trail #8.

There was supposed to be a massive deer population in the park, but so far he hadn’t seen a single one. Except for the birds and animals high above them, it seemed as if they were the only living beings moving on the ground.

They walked for another fourteen minutes before they finally reached Sandwhite Point. It wasn’t much — a wide, circular clearing with a cliff at the end. Four wooden picnic tables were spread across the grounds, faded trash bins on opposite sides, and a couple of crushed beer cans half-buried in the dirt. There was an opening at the top of the clearing, which allowed sunlight to pour through. They had been moving through heavy canopies for so long that finally feeling heat against his skin again brought an odd sense of comfort.

“Sandwhite Point,” Nate said.

“It’s not much,” Gaby said.

“Nope. But it’s the highest point in the entire park.” He started toward the cliff, Gaby and Will following. “We’re still at the northern edge of the 10,000 acres that make up the park. Won’t be able to see everything from here, but we’ll be able to see a lot of it.”

Will glanced down at his watch: 12:45 p.m. “If we don’t find anything in two hours, we need to start heading back to the vehicles and looking for shelter for the night.”

“I don’t mind telling you, I’m looking forward to that,” Nate said. “This place gives me the creeps.”

“But you’ve been here before,” Gaby said.

“Yeah, but it was never like this. Quiet and empty, and…”

“Dead,” she finished.

“Yeah.”

Nate and Gaby reached the cliff first, when Nate suddenly went into a crouch, grabbing Gaby’s arm and pulling her down with him.

Will followed suit, his rifle raised, searching the area behind them. “What?”

“Oh my God,” Gaby said, her voice breathless. “Will, come see this.”

When he was sure there was no one behind them, Will hurried over, keeping low. He crouched next to Gaby and peered over the cliff.

Where he expected to see a valley teeming with nature, there was instead a large, ragged man-made clearing at least half a kilometer in diameter. It was a camp, filled with gray, beige, green, and camouflage tents. He was looking down at a sea of thick, heavy canvas spread out to accommodate a large population that didn’t belong among the greens and trees that surrounded it.

Will had begun counting, starting at the south end, only to stop when he hit fifty tents and realized he wasn’t even close to the middle yet.

He fished out binoculars from his pack and peered through them.

It was impossible to miss the large blue tent in the center. It looked like some kind of grand circus tent, and was literally and figuratively placed — purposefully, he assumed — in the very center of the camp. A long stream of people moved in and out of it, including men in white Level B hazmat suits, the sunlight glinting off the lenses of gas masks either over their faces or hanging from their waists.

“Collaborators,” Gaby whispered.

“Not all of them,” Will said.

There were at least two, maybe three hundred people for every collaborator he spotted. Regular people. Men and women, boys and girls, old and young. They moved between tents, reminding him of homeless refugees saved from some disastrous, unwinnable war.

Maybe not so far from the truth…

“What the hell is going on?” Nate whispered.

It was a good question, because the people down there didn’t look afraid. He saw small circles of people gathered around campfires, and smelled the very strong aroma of smoked meat filling the air. The voices drifting up from the camp were not dripping with mortal terror. If he didn’t know better, he would think he was looking at some kind of mass cookout.

There was hurricane fencing around the camp, and a group of twenty to thirty men were swinging axes at the north side, felling trees to make more room. A couple of men in Level B hazmat suits stood watch, though there was an easiness, a sense of familiarity and cooperation between the two groups that was obvious even from this distance. They looked more like friends instead of captors and captives.

There were vehicles on the other side of the fence — trucks, mostly. He counted thirty to forty in all, including a half-dozen green military five-ton transport trucks he hadn’t seen since his days in the Army.

“I’ve seen this before,” Gaby whispered.

“Where?” Nate asked.

“Back in school. During our World War II phase of world history. This reminds me of concentration camps.”

“Is that what this is? A prison for human survivors?”

“I think we’re looking at something else,” Will said, lowering the binoculars.

“Like what?” Nate asked.

“Like what the ghouls have planned for us. First The Purge, then the blood farms, and now this.”

“Yeah, but what is ‘this’?” Gaby said.

“You’re right, it’s some kind of camp,” Will said. “But I don’t think it’s a concentration camp. Maybe the better analogy would be an internment camp.”

“What’s the difference?”

“FDR illegally detained over 100,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II. They weren’t harmed, and they were fed and allowed to work, but they were still captives. It’s one of the biggest black stains in American history, but people survived it, and they were eventually freed and allowed to return to society.”

“They look almost…content,” Gaby said, staring down at the camp.

“Blaine said there were thousands of people in the Beaumont mall when he showed up, and by the time he left, they were gone. Where did they go?”

“You think they were brought here?”

“Maybe not here specifically, but maybe a place like this one.”

Will shook his head, processing the information.

What the hell have you been doing out here, Kate?

“I think we’re looking at the next phase of whatever final solution the ghouls are moving toward,” he said. “This…is something new. Something we haven’t seen before. And it’s big, so it has to be a pretty significant part of their plan.”

Gaby shivered next to him, though she did her best to hide it. “What now?”

“The blue tent.”

“What about it?”

“It might be worth seeing what’s going on inside. It’s the center of whatever’s happening here, literally and figuratively.”

“You mean you want to sneak in there?”

“The suit,” Will said. “The one Harris wore. It’s still in the truck?”

Nate nodded. “We left it in the back seat.”

“Will,” Gaby said, “you’re not seriously thinking about putting that suit on and going in there?”

“That blue tent,” Will said. He couldn’t look away from it. “The answer is in there.”

“There has to be another way.”

“I’m open to suggestions.”

She struggled for an answer, and finally said, “I don’t know.”

“There’s no reason why they wouldn’t think I belong if I wear the suit. Especially with the gas mask on.”

“You hope,” she said.

“Yeah,” he nodded.

He tried to eyeball the size of the blue tent. It had to be at least fifty meters in diameter, easily half the size of a football field. What the hell was going on in there? What would they need something that big for?

“How many hazmat suits did you see?” Nate asked.

“About thirty, give or take,” Will said.

“How many people do you think are down there?” Gaby asked.

“A thousand?” Nate said.

“Maybe,” Will said. “A lot, in any case.” He glanced down at his watch again. “Let’s head back to the vehicles. I want to get in there and out before it gets dark—”

Snap!

Will was already rising and spinning, the rifle lifted, before the sound of snapping twigs had even run its course.

He stared across the clearing at a figure in a white hazmat suit. The man stared back at him with light blue eyes, gas mask clipped to his hip.

No, he was wrong. It wasn’t a man.

It was a boy.

A teenager. Sixteen, maybe even younger than that. (Fifteen?) The gun belt was too big around his slim waist, and the holstered handgun hung too loosely from his hip. He looked like a boy wearing his father’s uniform.

And there was something else: the hazmat suit had a name tag, and the word “Ray” written across it. Nothing fancy, just an envelope label with the name scribbled on it in black marker. It was the first time Will had seen the collaborators putting any identifying marks on their uniforms.

Ray the teenager had curly brown hair, and he was holding an apple near his mouth. He had taken a bite, and was in the process of chewing when he saw them. Or more specifically, looked into the barrel of Will’s M4A1.

Gaby and Nate had both turned at this point and taken aim at the kid with their own weapons. The teenager gawked at them, the apple absurdly poised in front of his mouth, as if he didn’t know whether to drop it or continue eating it.

“Oh, shit,” Gaby whispered.

There was a radio clipped to the teenager’s hip, and Will watched — and wished he wasn’t seeing it — as the kid dropped the apple and reached for the radio.

“Don’t,” Will said.

The kid looked at him, then down at the radio, then back up at Will again. Blue eyes trembled, and the kid’s lips quivered.

“No, don’t,” Nate said. “Don’t do it, kid, just don’t do it, for Christ sake.”

Ray unclipped the radio and lifted it to his lips.

“Don’t,” Will said again, louder this time.

“No, please, don’t,” Gaby said.

The kid pressed the transmit lever and said, “Intruders—”

Will shot Ray in the chest.

The gunshot shattered the stillness, the loud boom like thunder flashing across the entire park. Birds took off in sudden flight, the sound of hundreds, maybe thousands, of flapping wings almost as loud as the gunshot.

“Go!” Will shouted.

They broke off into a run.

Will snatched up the dead teenager’s radio almost at the same instant it squawked, and a man’s voice shouted through: “Ray, was that you? Ray!” Then, when Ray didn’t answer, the man shouted, “Converge on Trail #8 now! Trail #8!”

Gaby, running at a full sprint up ahead, looked back at him. “Where are we going?”

“The truck!” he shouted. “Get to the truck and get out of here!”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be right behind you!”

They hadn’t been moving for more than ten seconds when a white hazmat suit stepped out of the tree line ten meters in front of them. Will opened his mouth to shout a warning, but he didn’t have to. Nate, who was setting the pace up front, shot the man from nearly point blank range, his sprinting taking him almost on top of the figure when he fired.

Gaby smartly veered around the collapsing body so she wouldn’t have to slow down. The man had dropped an Uzi submachine gun as he fell. By the time Will recognized the weapon and its value, he had already leaped over the body, and kept running.

The radio in his hand squawked again, and another voice, this one female, said, “Barnes, where’s the truck? Where’s the goddamn truck?”

A man who Will guessed was Barnes replied, “I’m close!”

Will looked down Trail #8 and for the first time realized how wide it was. He remembered the faded tire prints from earlier.

He glanced back about the same time he heard the roar of a truck behind him, still hidden by the turn farther down the trail.

“Gaby! Nate!” he shouted. “We have to split up! Whatever you do, make your way to the truck and get out of here!”

“Will—” she began, but stopped when the truck appeared out from the turn behind them, forty meters back. There was a man in a hazmat suit behind the wheel and two more in the back with assault rifles. “Shit!” she finished.

“Now!” Will shouted, and darted right.

He looked back briefly and saw Gaby and Nate jumping out of the trail and into the woods, going left. He hadn’t turned his head completely back around when the rattle of gunfire filled the woods. Tree branches splintered and snapped, tree barks exploding under a torrent of bullets that seemed to be coming from every direction.

Will pushed his head down as low as he could and still maintained his speed, pushing hard through the woods, ignoring the slapping tree branches, the ground crunching under his boots, the sound of gunfire everywhere.

A man shouted through the radio he was still holding: “They’re in the woods! They’re in the fucking woods!”

“Where?” the same woman from earlier shouted.

“Off Trail #8, north sector! I got two heading west and one heading east!”

“Converge!” another man shouted through the radio. “If you’re in the woods, I want you to converge on them now!”

“What about the camp?” someone else asked.

“Stay back! If you’re not already in the woods, maintain your positions! I repeat: do not leave the camp unprotected!”

“Motherfucker, they killed Ray!” someone else said.

“We’ll box them in,” the woman said. “They’re not getting out of here alive!”

Seen from the wrong angle, the branches of oak trees could look like the spindly arms of some angry demon emerging from the darkness to snatch a child from his bed. To a grown man, they looked like shelter, hiding him from men in hazmat suits. If he couldn’t see them, then they couldn’t see him. Of course, he could hear them, but that was only because they were big and clumsy and loud.

His watch ticked to 1:15 p.m.

Six hours, give or take, before sunset. He had to be out of the park by then. If he was caught in here, among these trees, he was a dead man. Or worse. He didn’t particularly feel good about the worse part, and the dead man part didn’t sit all that well with him, either.

Lara would be so pissed at me right about now.

He was crouched behind a large oak tree, one of thousands in the area, indistinguishable from a thousand others. He had been in the same spot, in the same position, for the last few minutes, listening to the men moving around him.

Three of them. Heavily armed and moving with all the subtlety of civilians in combat boots, lugging around assault rifles they weren’t trained for.

He had turned down the radio to almost a whisper, and he lifted it to his ear whenever it squawked, which translated into soft vibrations against his palm. He got a squawk now, and raised it to his ear.

“Give me a sitrep,” a male voice said.

“I got nothing,” another man answered.

“Givens, is that you?”

“Yeah.”

“Where is he?”

“I dunno,” Givens said. “We thought we had him a moment ago, but he’s gone again. Donner lost his track a few minutes back.”

“Hey, I didn’t say I could track,” Donner said defensively.

“Keep looking,” the first man said. “He couldn’t have gotten very far.”

“What about the other two?” Givens asked.

“Don’t you worry about them. You just catch your guy.”

Easier said than done.

Footsteps were approaching from behind him. Boots moving loudly over dry grass and brittle twigs. He lost the initial pursuit about twenty minutes back, but he knew eventually they would get close again. He didn’t plan to keep running, but he needed a distraction. Some kind of camouflage…

What’s going on in that blue tent?

The good news was that there was just one man close enough that Will could hear his loud, laborious breathing. The bad news was that there were two more somewhere nearby.

Will turned off the radio and clipped it to his belt, then slipped his rifle’s strap over his shoulder. He reached down to his left hip and slid the cross-knife soundlessly out of its sheath.

The man walked past him, sticking to the other side of the giant oak tree.

Will stood up and maneuvered around the large tree trunk, moving right, continuing until he had performed a full ninety degrees and could see the back of a white-clad figure walking ahead of him. Ten meters between them.

He switched the knife to his right hand and took the first step toward the figure in front of him. The man didn’t hear Will coming until he was almost on top of him, and even then, the man only stopped to listen, cocking his head curiously to one side.

Will slipped his left hand around the man’s face, clasped his palm over the mouth, and drove the point of the cross-knife into the back of the neck, pushing it in deep until the body went slack against him and collapsed like a marionette with its strings snipped.

He caught the man halfway, then lowered the lifeless body all the way to the ground like precious cargo, careful not to get any blood on the plastic, shiny white hazmat suit.

CHAPTER 23 GABY

Nate was shot. Gaby had no idea how or when it had even happened. He had been running in front of her the whole time ever since they abandoned Trail #8, but somehow he had ended up getting shot anyway, while she remained unscathed.

The bullet had gone through his left arm, somewhere between his elbow and shoulder, and he was wincing as he ran, keeping his other hand pressed against the wound to slow down the bleeding.

When they had finally put enough distance between them and their pursuers, she felt safe enough to force him to stop next to a big oak tree, while she pulled out the first aid kit from her pack and stopped the bleeding, then wrapped gauze around the wound.

“You’ve done this before,” he said, watching the woods with the Beretta in his good hand.

“I’ve had practice.”

“You think Will made it?”

“I’m sure he did.”

“I don’t hear them.”

“We might have lost them a few minutes ago, unless they followed your blood all the way to us.”

He gave her a crooked grin. “Sorry about that.”

“When did you get shot, anyway?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah,” he said.

She finished up with the gauze around his arm before stuffing the roll back into her pack. The result wasn’t much to look at, but he wasn’t bleeding anymore and that was all that counted.

Gaby snatched up her rifle and looked around. “How far did you think we ran?”

“No idea. I was too busy hauling ass.”

She nodded.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“We were running away from the camp, and Will was running in the other direction to split up the chase. So that means he was running toward the camp.”

“You think he did it on purpose?”

“I know he did it on purpose.”

“So now what?”

She shook her head and thought about it. Nate leaned against the tree trunk to rest, looking a lot paler than when they stopped a few minutes ago, though his eyes seemed alert enough.

“He’d want us to leave, regroup at the game warden’s place,” she said.

“And are we going to do that?”

“He’d want us to do what he said.”

“That never stopped you before.”

She looked at him again, this time with a more critical eye. He was hurt and bleeding, trying to fight through the pain. Could she drag him back there to find Will? If it were just her, it would have been an easy choice. She would never leave Will behind, because Will would never leave her, even in a hospital full of gunmen. With a healthy Nate, it might have been a no-brainer. But she didn’t have a healthy Nate…

Goddammit, Will.

“He’s your friend,” Nate said. “It’s up to you.”

“He’s more than that.”

“The big brother you never had.”

“Or wanted,” she smiled.

He smiled back. “I wouldn’t leave him behind, either.”

“Even if it means dying in here? In this place?”

“Eh. I always figured I’d end up somewhere like this.”

“In a state park filled with traitors to the human race?”

“Okay, not exactly like this, but close.”

“Thank you,” she said.

He nodded. “You’re welcome. So, should we—”

The loud crack! of a rifle cut him off, just before a bullet slammed into the tree two inches from Nate’s head and showered him in bark.

Gaby spun, lifting her rifle, and even before she saw what she was aiming at, squeezed the trigger again and again and again.

Two men in hazmat suits were simultaneously stepping out of a bush and diving in separate directions. They fired back wildly as they ran for cover, bullets splintering tree branches over her head.

Nate grabbed her wrist, pulling her behind the big oak tree as bullets smashed into it and peppered her face and clothes with tiny pieces of bark. As soon as she made it to the other side, Nate let go of her and took off. She followed without hesitation.

Bullets pecked the ground around her, throwing dirt and grass into the air.

Nate wasn’t running straight, she realized; he was starting to curve right — taking them back south, then southwest.

He’s leading us back to the parking lot. Back to the truck.

Away from Will…

They ran nonstop for almost five minutes, and Gaby thanked God she was in the best physical shape of her life, thanks to training with Will and Danny on the island. It had been almost three minutes since she last heard gunfire, but Nate didn’t seem anxious to stop, so she didn’t, either.

After awhile, though, she started to gasp for breath and finally risked a glance over her shoulder, seeing no one behind them.

How long had they been running? Five minutes had felt more like five hours.

“Nate,” she said. “I think we’ve lost them. Slow down.”

Nate slid to a stop behind the trunk of another giant oak tree, taking up position with his carbine. Gaby did the same on the other side, both of their weapons pointing back in the direction they had come. She was out of breath, gasping for air. Nate was breathing just as loudly on the other side.

“See anything?” he said softly, keeping his voice down.

“No,” she said, matching his pitch. “Are you okay?”

“I have pieces of trees in my hair, and I’m pretty sure some got into my eyeballs.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Never mind, then. I’m probably fine.”

“Probably?”

“Arm’s throbbing like a sonofabitch, though.”

“Are you bleeding again?”

“No. It just hurts.”

“Yeah, well, you were shot. It should be hurting.”

“Makes sense, then.”

They both shut up when a man in a hazmat suit emerged out of the woods in front of them, moving in an unhurried trot as if he were jogging in a park. He was out of breath, and he stopped dead in his tracks the instant he saw them looking back at him. For a second — just a split second — he stared, brown eyes widening in an “Oh, shit” moment.

She flashed back to Ray, the young collaborator Will had shot earlier. This man wasn’t a teenager. He was in his thirties and old enough to know better. Like Ray, the man had his name (“David”) scribbled in painfully perfect letters on an envelope label over his left breast.

David started to lift his rifle, and she and Nate fired at the same time. The man slumped to the ground.

“Go!” Nate shouted.

Gaby took off running through the woods again, legs pumping, rifle swinging back and forth in front of her. She was only vaguely aware that she was purposefully keeping to the same southwest angle Nate had set for them earlier.

Toward the parking lot…farther away from Will…

She looked back at Nate, running after her, face constricted in pain, blood dripping from his left arm through her lousy-looking tourniquet. He tried to grin back at her, but he barely had the strength to make it convincing.

They ran for another fifteen minutes, stopping to rest every five, before continuing again, when Gaby looked back and saw Nate’s face. It was flushed and covered in sweat; he looked as if he was straining badly with every step.

She slowed down before coming to a complete stop next to another oak tree. She imagined what a nightmare it would be to get lost in here. Every tree looked like the 5,000 other trees around it. Turning left or right, south or north gave her no directional markers, because one side of the woods looked the same as the other three. There was only the sun to lead her southwest.

She put her hand on the tree trunk, the other holding the M4 against the ground like a crutch. Nate was gasping for breath next to her, his blinking eyes scanning the area.

“Do we keep going to the parking lot?” he asked between desperate, hard-fought gasps.

“I’m not sure.”

“It’s your call.”

She thought about it for a moment, even looking back west. Not that she could see Will, or the camp. But he was back there, somewhere…

“We should go,” she said finally.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Gaby…”

She picked up her rifle and began walking. “Come on, we’ll retreat back to the game warden’s office and wait for Will there, just like we planned.”

Keep moving. Just keep moving…

They reached the parking lot thirty-nine minutes later, walking at a brisk pace. Nate had used the time to get stronger, helped greatly by not having to overexert himself. She didn’t know how they had managed to lose their pursuers, but they hadn’t seen or heard anyone since they had shot the man named David.

They crouched near the edge of the parking lot, where the grass met the asphalt, and peered out. She didn’t believe for a second that the bad guys wouldn’t have the place covered. It would have been the first place they looked. Unless these people were total idiots — and they had done nothing to show her that they were — the parking lot would be the perfect place for an ambush.

So where are they?

She couldn’t see anything that wasn’t here when they first arrived. They had emerged out of the woods at about the same spot where they’d entered, and she had a decent view of the gray Saleen sports truck about forty yards away. On the other side would be Will’s Triumph, though Gaby couldn’t see it from her crouched position.

“See anything?” she whispered.

Nate shook his head. It wasn’t an enthusiastic “No.” It was more of a cautious, “No, but that’s what worries me.”

“You’re thinking it too, right?” she asked.

He nodded. “They should have figured out by now where we parked. It’s a no-brainer.”

“So where are they?”

“Exactly. Where are they?”

She looked out at the parking lot again, trying to see it from a different perspective.

After about a minute, she gave up.

“What do we do?” she whispered.

Nate thought about it, then said, “We might have to risk it. It’s either that or take our chances back there.”

And by “back there” he meant the woods, where every tree looked the same, and every patch of ground looked like the last patch. It was either that, or risk running for the truck and hoping no one was waiting behind one of the other thirty or so vehicles scattered around the parking lot. Neither option was very appealing to her.

Like we have a whole lot of choices…

She looked over at Nate again, saw him watching her back intently. “What’s the plan?” he asked.

“You’re asking me?”

“You seem to know what you’re doing.”

She looked back at the parking lot. “What choice do we have? We can’t run around in here forever. Sooner or later, it’s going to get dark.”

“Yeah.”

“We don’t have any other, better choice. Right?”

“I don’t see any.”

She sighed. She hated this. It was stupid, reckless…and they had no choice.

Will would have figured out another way.

Too bad he’s not here…

“On five, then?” Nate said.

“How about three?”

“Just three?”

“I don’t like to count all the way to five,” Gaby said. “I get anxious around two.”

“Okay, on the count of three.”

“Together, right?”

“Together, yeah.”

“No bullshit.” She fixed him with a hard look. “We step out together on three and make a run for the truck.”

“Agreed. Ready?”

“Okay.”

“One, two…three.”

Nate moved first, jumping out into the open.

She sighed, and got up to follow him.

Nate hadn’t gone more than a few feet when the gunshot exploded across the parking lot, so loud that it startled and made her jump a little. The bullet went through Nate’s left shoulder, exited his back, and kept going, clipping the tree branch over her head with a loud crack.

He fell backward and Gaby moved on instinct, dropping her rifle and lunging out into the open. She managed to slide under him, catching Nate as he fell. He was heavy and he pushed her down with him, her knees scraping against the hard asphalt through her pants.

Nate was already bleeding badly, warm blood pumping out of him and spilling over her clothes. Gaby shoved her hand over the wound, before her brain caught up with her and told her he was bleeding on both sides of his body because the bullet had gone right through him. She reached down with her other hand, digging underneath his heavy body, and cupped the other side of the bullet hole, too.

Her mind spun as panic fought for control over her senses.

Her pack! She had the first aid kit in her pack!

Gaby pulled her hands away from his wounds and ripped the pack free, unzipped it, and pulled out the roll of gauze, pressing it against the hole in his back to stifle the bleeding on that side. Almost instantly, blood soaked through the cotton material, making it heavy. She kept it pressed against him anyway, using her other hand to wrap it around his body over his clothes. She was covered in blood, and she realized she was doing a terrible job of stopping his bleeding, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do.

Nate’s eyes shifted from the sky to her. His lips quivered and he seemed to be out of breath, fighting to get out every word. “Gaby…are you…crazy…run…”

She shook her head.

“Gaby…stupid…go…”

He was right. She knew it was stupid, and every part of her brain screamed at her to get up and run. Or at least reach for her weapons.

She did neither.

She had already abandoned Will, left him out there on his own. How long could he last by himself? Soon, he could be another casualty for her to add to her growing list. Right alongside her parents. Her friends. Poor Matt. Even Josh.

And she was supposed to let Nate just lie here and die, too?

No!

She wrapped up his shoulder again and again until she had run out of gauze. He grunted against her, his face a mask of pain. Her hands were slick with blood, but she didn’t care. She wiped them on her pants and didn’t give them another thought.

The sound of heavy boots rushing in her direction momentarily distracted her attention from Nate’s face. Men were coming out of the woods around them, some appearing from behind parked vehicles. They were moving cautiously toward her, probably wondering what the hell she was doing with Nate. She wondered if she looked like a crazy woman in their eyes. A crazy woman covered in blood.

She saw flashes of hazmat suits. Gas masks. Assault rifles. White label strips with names written in marker. One of the men had a large hunting rifle with a big scope on top.

She thought about running. Dragging Nate back into the woods.

Too late. Too late for that now.

She looked back down at Nate instead. His face was so pale, and he felt simultaneously heavy and lifeless in her lap. At least he had stopped bleeding, though it was hard to tell because they were both covered in blood.

The barrel of a rifle poked her in the shoulder. It didn’t hurt, but it was annoying, forcing her to look up into an old face, gas mask perched on top of his forehead. The man had an AR-15 aimed at her face and was saying something, though she couldn’t make out what. She didn’t know why, but it was difficult to hear anything at the moment. The man’s name tag, written in cursive handwriting, read, “Barton.”

Barton seemed to finally give up communicating with her. He reached down and pulled the Glock from her holster, then scooped up her M4 and stepped back.

Another man in a hazmat suit did the same to the Beretta in Nate’s holster, then picked up his M4. Nate stirred, but didn’t fight.

The man with the hunting rifle (“Wilson” was written in careful lettering across his left breast) moved closer and casually aimed his weapon at her from point-blank range, eyes calmly watching her from behind the clear lenses of his gas mask. He was the only one still wearing his gas mask, she saw; the others had theirs hanging off their hips.

She stared back at Wilson. If she was going to die, she would look into the eyes of her killer. At least she could do that much.

Wilson matched her gaze, and his finger tightened around the trigger—

“Stop!” a voice shouted. “I said stop, goddammit!”

Wilson lowered his rifle reluctantly and looked back. “Orders were to shoot on sight,” he said, his voice muffled by the gas mask.

“They weren’t my orders,” the voice said. It sounded equally distorted.

“I didn’t know you were in charge now.”

“You don’t know a lot of things. That’s the point.”

The men gathered around her and Nate began to part, and a new figure in a hazmat suit and gas mask appeared. The others reacted strangely to his arrival — as if they didn’t care for him, but felt the need to obey him anyway.

The newcomer was the only one without a name tag over his hazmat suit, which made her think he didn’t really belong here. Maybe he was just passing through, or maybe he was part of another group, like Kellerson and Harris and the men who had attacked Mercy Hospital. She didn’t remember a single one of them wearing labels, either.

He looked down at her and Nate, and by the way his eyebrows raised, he seemed to be focusing on the way she held Nate’s limp body in her lap.

“Who is he?” the man asked. “Why’s he so important to you?”

That voice!

Even muffled by the gas mask’s breathing apparatus, there was something familiar about the voice now that the man was closer. She couldn’t quite place it, though. It was a maddening feeling, especially because she thought the voice belonged to someone who was, at one point, very important in her life.

But that couldn’t be, could it? That man was…

“They killed Ray,” Wilson said. “And David, too.”

The newcomer ignored Wilson, and his eyes remained fixed on hers. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

That voice! I know that voice!

When she didn’t answer him, the man pulled off his gas mask.

Gaby stared into brown eyes she hadn’t seen in months, belonging to a man she thought she would never see again.

But it was impossible.

The man (the boy) those soft, gentle brown eyes belonged to was dead. He had drowned in a lake. She knew this because Will had told her so himself. He had seen it happen. Blaine and Maddie had seen it happen, too.

That was over three months ago.

You’re supposed to be dead!

“Answer me, Gaby,” Josh said. “Who is this guy? Why is he so important to you?”

CHAPTER 24 WILL

Getting into the camp was easy once he put on the hazmat suit and gas mask. They belonged to a man named Givens, according to the label taped over the suit, which was a good fit if a bit loose around the midsection where Givens had stretched it out. Clasping on the gun belt fixed that.

The camp was much more encompassing when viewed at ground level. He was surprised by the breadth of it, along with the human congestion, and had to actually stop and take it all in. It was, in many ways, a self-contained city built from the ground up, even though there was a temporary vibe to it.

“How many people do you think are down there?” Gaby had asked.

“A thousand?” Nate had answered.

He was close. If there weren’t a thousand people down here, mingling around the campfires and the hundreds of tents of every shape, size, and color, it was pretty damn close.

Now that he was seeing it from up close, the hurricane fencing around the camp looked haphazardly installed. He got the impression it was a minor inconvenience, a fait accompli with the people it was supposed to be holding in. Their acceptance of the situation was what kept them here, not a fence that looked as if it could be toppled by a five-year-old leaning against it. Certainly, the thirty or so collaborators he had spotted around the place weren’t enough to keep this many people in line.

Will entered the camp through one of the gates interspersed every fifty meters or so. The gates had latches and coiled steel cables with padlocks, though none were being put to use. It was just another sign that this was less an internment camp as he had surmised from Sandwhite Point, and more of a voluntary way station of sorts.

As he walked through, the people didn’t seem surprised or scared of him. Some nodded and moved on, and others — mostly children — looked on with what Will thought was admiration. That was disturbing, but he had to remember that the hazmat suits were essentially uniforms, and children, regardless of the situation, were naturally inclined to be wowed by a spiffy uniform — even if it happened to be something as aesthetically unpleasing to the eye as a Level B hazmat suit. Of course, in the eyes of a child, a chemical suit might have looked pretty impressive.

Directly ahead of him and impossible to miss was the blue tent. It reached so much higher into the air than the others that it almost looked like a mountain. Will walked toward it, maneuvering around the tents, campfires, and people in his path. He walked as if he belonged, unhurried, meeting every eye that bothered to catch his.

Then he saw something he didn’t think he would ever see again: a pregnant woman sitting under a small pup tent. She was eating beans out of a can, while a young boy in an LSU Tigers T-shirt chewed on a stick of beef jerky next to her. They sat on the grass, so immersed in their surroundings that they were oblivious to him when Will stopped and stared. The woman was in her late twenties and looked at least a few months along. There were futons lying out on the grass in the tent behind them.

Will moved on just as the woman felt his stare and glanced up.

He hadn’t gone another few steps when he saw another pregnant woman.

Then another one, and another…

What the hell is going on here?

They were everywhere. Two pregnant women came out of a beige canvas tent talking and laughing about something. They saw him and nodded, continuing on their way. One of the women looked further along in her pregnancy, while the other had a barely-there bump.

He walked on, doing his best not to stray, not to stop and stare, but feeling dazed by what he was seeing. There was something wrong here. Something not right. One pregnant woman would have been extraordinary, but two, or three, or a dozen?

What the hell is going on here?

He must have been walking in a fog, trying to process the incongruous appearances of the pregnant women around him, because suddenly he had arrived at the blue tent and didn’t recall how he had actually gotten there.

The tent was octagonal, the flat sides extending eight meters high all around and held in place by thick beams of extruded aluminum alloy. He eyeballed the structure’s span at sixty meters, held together by PVC-coated polyester textiles. It looked very much like a mini version of a sports dome, with multiple, unguarded tunnel entrances/exits jutting out along the sides.

He watched people moving in and out of those tunnels for a moment, before slipping in among one of the lines going in. Like with the rest of the camp, the sight of men in hazmat suits around the blue tent was apparently so common that no one gave him more than a couple of glances, if they even bothered at all.

Alarm bells went off when he spotted the shoulder of a man in a hazmat suit standing guard at the end of the tunnel.

Will kept walking, moving steadily but in no hurry. He casually lowered one hand toward his holstered Glock, then moved forward until he was walking behind a pregnant woman who was waddling more than she was actually walking. By the size of her bump, he guessed she was even further along in her pregnancy than the ones he had seen outside. She was leaning on a young woman’s arm as they moved through the length of the tunnel, which extended for about five meters. The women were talking about clothes.

The three of them finally reached the end and stepped out into the main housing area. As he expected, the hazmat suit standing guard was just for show; the man was reading a magazine, paying zero attention to anyone coming or going. His rifle was slung over his shoulder, and his gas mask hung loosely around his neck.

Will let the women continue on, then he turned left and continued walking for a bit. He finally stopped and took a moment to orient himself with the scope of the blue tent’s interior.

There was really just one vast, open room. The height of the tent, with its upwardly extended middle, gave the place the feel of being cavernous. Hundreds of civilians took up space among the grass floor, which was divided into two sections — a smaller area filled with cots, the type he had slept on in the Army, with the bigger area dotted with mats. The cots looked as if they were reserved almost exclusively for the women.

More pregnant women.

If he thought there were a lot of them outside, there were even more of them in here. There were, as far as he could tell, about one hundred cots, though only half of them were filled at the moment. The others, he assumed, were outside the camp walking around.

The mats were occupied by a more varied group of people: girls, women, men, and boys. There didn’t seem to be any real organization to where they sat, though they all looked as if they were resting. There had to be over 300 mats spread out around the tent, almost all of them occupied with a warm body either lying down or sitting and chatting casually with the person next to them.

Will started moving through the tent, ignoring the voices buzzing and overlapping all around him. Hundreds of people talking at once, without a care in the world.

As with the campers outside, the ones in here barely gave him a second look. Their acceptance of his presence — or more specifically, the hazmat suit he wore — bothered him tremendously.

There were others moving through the tent — men and women in blue, green, and white hospital scrubs. He counted two, maybe three dozen in all. They were moving efficiently through the throng of bodies, dispensing everything from water to pills to medical advice. The bits and pieces of conversation he could overhear were overwhelmingly about the pregnancies.

Jesus Christ. This is a maternity ward.

“You,” a female voice said behind him.

Will looked back at a woman in her early thirties, wearing a white doctor’s coat. She had long blonde hair in a ponytail and was eyeing him with light green eyes. She had one of those envelope labels over her right breast pocket, with the name “Zoe” written on it. A stethoscope was draped around her neck, and she was holding a young pregnant woman’s arm, apparently taking readings while talking to him.

“What are you doing, Givens?” the woman asked.

“Givens?”

Right. Givens. The dead guy.

“What do you mean?” he said.

“You’re just walking around. Is that in your job description? Walking around?”

Will didn’t quite know how to answer that, and felt a little bit like a kid who just got caught in the hallways trying to skip school.

“Well?” she said.

“Well what? You need something?”

“Yes, I do. Where are my cots? I have more patients than I have cots.”

Cots. Right.

“Who did you talk to about that?” he asked.

“How the hell should I know. Half of you guys don’t even wear name tags. I can’t keep track of how many of you breeze through this camp in a given day.”

Kellerson and how many others?

“How many more cots do you need?” he asked.

“Eleven—” She stopped, then corrected herself. “Twelve, since this morning. You wanted preggos, you got preggos.”

Preggos?

“Right. I’ll see what’s keeping the cots,” he said.

“You do that.”

He turned and started to walk away.

“Givens,” Zoe called after him.

He looked back. “Yeah?”

She gave him a pursed smile. “I didn’t mean to put it all on you. We’re both just trying to do our parts here, right?”

“Right,” Will said, and gave her a smile back behind the gas mask, before realizing she probably couldn’t see it since his mouth was entirely hidden. He said instead, “I’ll see what I can do.”

“You in a hurry?”

“No, why?”

“I got that list your boss wanted.”

“Okay…”

Zoe turned to the young pregnant woman whose hand she had been holding, and gave her a friendly, reassuring smile. “You’re coming along just fine, Anne. Just keep doing what we discussed, okay? No deviating.”

Anne, the young woman, nodded gratefully. “Thanks, doc.”

“Lay down and rest.”

Anne did as she was instructed. Will thought she couldn’t have been older than seventeen.

Zoe stood up and began walking off.

Will briefly considered continuing on and ignoring her, but thought better of it and followed her instead.

“Where’s your boss?” Zoe asked. “I haven’t seen him all day, and he promised to come talk to me before we start the next transport.”

“What are we transporting?”

She stopped and looked back at him, eyes narrowing a bit. “What is this, some kind of game to you, Givens?”

She doesn’t know who Givens is. Use that.

“I’m new here,” Will said. “I’m just trying to get caught up.”

She chewed on his excuse for a moment, then continued leading him through the blue tent. “The next transport scheduled to leave for the town. This new group is further along than the last one, so you guys need to bend over backward to make them more comfortable.”

She led him to a small grouping of tents near the back. There were a dozen lined up. She slipped inside one of them and he followed. Inside was a small cot next to a portable fold-out desk and a stack of worn clothes.

Zoe walked over to her fold-out table, picked up a piece of paper, and handed it to him. “Here’s the list your boss wanted.”

“What’s it for?” he asked, taking the list.

“The names of everyone that’ll be on the next transport, organized by need.”

Will unfolded the paper and glanced at it. It was a long, handwritten list of about 200 names, some with a check mark next to them. “What’re the check marks?”

“The pregnant ones,” Zoe said. “You guys need to put them in their own separate trucks and not stuff them in with everybody else like the last few times. You need to keep in mind you’re dealing with pregnant women here. They’re fragile.”

He pocketed the paper. “Is that all?”

“How long have you been here?”

“Just a few days.”

“I didn’t know they were still bringing in new people.” He heard the suspicion in her voice. “Is Givens your first or last name?”

“Does it matter?”

She shrugged. “Just curious.”

“You’re a doctor, right?”

She smiled. “Lucky guess.” She walked over to a cot and sat down heavily. “Can I ask you a question?”

Why the hell not, it’s not like I can stop you.

“Sure,” he said instead.

“What’s with the gas mask? I know, you wear it at night so the creatures steer clear of you. But why do you guys insist on wearing it in the daytime, too? I’ve always been curious.”

He couldn’t tell from the sound of her voice if it was just curiosity or something more.

“Habit,” he said.

“It can’t possibly be comfortable.”

“You get used to it.”

That seemed to strike a chord with her. “I guess we’ve all had to learn to get used to things, haven’t we?”

He wondered if she was still talking to him or herself. Zoe was kneading her forehead with her fingers, like someone with the weight of the world on her shoulders.

“You okay, doc?” he asked.

She glanced up. “Yeah, why?”

“You look tired.”

“How could you tell? Is it the wrinkles or the crow’s feet? I’m pretty sure I’ve aged a year for every week I’ve been in this place.”

“Why don’t you leave?”

Damn. Did I just say that?

Instead of flashing him another one of her suspicious glances, she smirked at him instead. “I could ask you the same thing.”

“I’m just a grunt. I follow orders.”

“Isn’t that what the Nazis said during World War II?”

“We all do what we have to in order to survive.”

“I guess so.” She sighed and stretched out on the cot, putting her hands on top of her forehead and closing her eyes. “Sorry about shitting all over you, Givens. That was unfair.”

“No worries.”

She smiled at nothing in particular. “You can go now.”

“Right.”

He stepped out of Zoe’s tent and kept walking, glad to be out of there.

One thing she had said stuck in his head: “The next transport scheduled to leave for the town.”

He was right, after all. The camp was just a way station to someplace else — a final destination.

“The town.”

People were being relocated there from here, including the pregnant women. Especially the pregnant women. So what were the people sitting on the mats, the men and boys and women who weren’t pregnant, doing inside the big tent?

He walked past young men and women — teenagers — pushing carts through the mats and cots, offering up fruits and vegetables, but also more meat and venison on cheap plastic plates. Everyone seemed to be doing their part, though it was obvious the doctors — or the ones in the scrubs, anyway — were paying more attention to the pregnant women.

It didn’t escape him that he hadn’t seen a single baby, toddler, or infant. That told him all these pregnancies had occurred after The Purge. The furthest along, as far as he could tell, was six months. He wasn’t entirely sure what that told him, if anything. For the most part, the majority of the women looked newly pregnant.

By the time he reached the end of the tent, he had walked the entire length of the place and there wasn’t a whole lot more to see, except for an entrance tunnel that joined another, smaller tent on the other side. But this entrance had two hazmat suits guarding it, and unlike the others, these looked alert. He glimpsed people lying down in cots inside the connecting tent, their arms hooked up to tubes that were connected to red bags.

No, not red bags. Clear bags with red liquid inside.

Blood. They’re drawing blood.

He had trouble making out the size of the second tent through the tight opening. It looked big, though of course nowhere near as large as the blue tent. There were nurses inside, walking along the cots and checking the tubes connecting the arms and blood bags. People who were coming out of the tent looked noticeably tired and dazed, some moving on wobbly feet. Almost all of them went straight to the mats to sit or lie down.

Will thought about getting a better look at the other tent, maybe even trying to access it, but he decided against it. It was too risky, and the two men standing guard were too alert. Right now, his greatest asset was his ability to go everywhere as long as no one paid attention to his face. All it took was one hazmat suit to realize he wasn’t Givens, and he was screwed. The prospect of having to shoot his way out of the camp, with its large population of pregnant women, made him queasy.

He walked on through the tent instead, slipping into a line of people exiting out a tunnel that didn’t have any guards in front of it.

He stepped back outside and blinked in the sun, before glancing down at his watch: 2:11 p.m.

Plenty of time.

Will walked through the camp again, passing a group of men laughing around chunks of freshly killed deer meat sizzling on a grill. The rest of the animal was in a cooler, one man tasked with fanning it to scatter the flies every time they opened it for another piece of meat. The men were drinking beer. Warm beer, but he guessed they had gotten used to that from the sounds of the drunken voices.

One of the men noticed Will and speared a thick piece of meat with a cooking fork, then got up and walked over. “Wanna grab a piece of this? We have plenty to go around. More than plenty, actually.”

“Where’d you get it?” Will asked, remembering the dearth of deer — or any animal life moving on the ground at all — that had crossed his path as he moved through the woods.

The man looked confused by the question. He was in his early forties, with a thick brown beard, and had the type of world-weary eyes Will would expect from a resistance fighter, not someone enjoying the company of his captors.

“Your buddies bring them over every morning,” the man said, “for old farts like me who can’t stand to eat out of cans anymore. You new to this camp?” he asked, switching topics with surprising dexterity. “I haven’t seen you around before.”

“You know everyone in camp?”

“Not everyone, but most of you guys. It’s not like there’s a lot of you.”

Will nodded. “I just came over a few days ago.”

“Ah, that explains it.” The man offered up his hand. “I’m Jenkins.”

Will shook it. “Givens.”

“I know, it says so on your label thingie there,” Jenkins grinned. Then he nodded at the campfire. “You wanna join us? Plenty of room. I’ve never been much of a deer man myself, but it’s surprisingly good.”

“How long have you been here, Jenkins?”

“You mean this camp?”

“Yeah.”

“Just a little over a week now.” He glanced around. “It’s a lot bigger than the last camp I was in, and also a lot more organized.”

“How many camps have you been in?”

“Counting this one? Three.”

Jesus, how many of these places are out there?

You really have been busy, Kate.

“All in Louisiana?” Will asked.

“Yup. Though I hear there’s one in Texas that’s four times the size of this one. You seen it?”

“No. Just the Louisiana camps so far.”

Then Jenkins leaned in a bit, as if he was going to say something important that he didn’t want anyone else to overhear. “The guys and I were wondering. You know when they’re gonna relocate us to the towns?”

Again with the towns.

“The next transport leaves tomorrow,” Will said. “Why, you anxious to get there?”

“Sure, why not. I mean, I don’t mind living out of a tent and eating deer meat, but it’d be nice to get back to civilization. Or as close to one as you’ll get these days, anyway.”

“How long have you been going from camp to camp, Jenkins?”

“Ever since I knew there was a choice.”

“What choice is that?”

“You know, run around out there, or come here.”

He means surrendering. Giving up.

Jenkins gave him a half-hearted smile. “You can only fight for so long, you know? And I’m getting old.” He glanced around the camp. “It’s good here. I think I made the right decision. Still, it would be nice to finally get to one of these towns I keep hearing about. Get on with living.”

“You’ve never been to one of these towns before?”

“Nah. I’ve just been shuffling from camp to camp. Sure are a lot of pregnant women here.” He whistled. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many pregnant women in one place in my life.”

“Neither have I.”

“By the way, you know anything about all the shooting in the woods? You guys having trouble or something? There are plenty of boys here who wouldn’t mind lending a hand if you need it.”

Will shook his head. “We’re fine.”

“What was all that shooting about?”

“Don’t worry about it. We’ve dealt with it.”

Jenkins was about to ask something else — the man had a thousand questions, apparently — when he stopped and stared over Will’s shoulder instead. He followed the older man’s gaze and saw a group of six hazmat suits moving through the camp. They had two figures between them, leaning against each other.

Will casually walked away from Jenkins and out of the open, slipping behind one of the tents. Not that anyone noticed, including Jenkins. Every set of eyes in the immediate area was too busy watching the new arrivals, which included a tall blonde girl covered in blood.

Aw, shit.

Will watched Gaby shouldering Nate, who was moving with some difficulty alongside her. Nate looked shot — at least twice — with almost one entire shoulder swaddled in bloodied gauze. And although she was covered in almost as much blood as Nate, Gaby didn’t actually look wounded; she seemed to be more tired than anything.

Nate’s blood.

As Gaby and Nate were led past the tent he was standing behind, Will pulled off the gas mask and tried to catch Gaby’s eye. She was looking around her, taking in the camp with an expression he imagined he must have had himself when he first saw the place up close.

Just as the group was about to pass him completely, Gaby glanced over and they locked eyes for a brief second. Her eyes widened just a bit, but then she quickly looked away, though he thought he saw a ghost of a smile cross her lips.

That’s my girl.

CHAPTER 25 GABY

Josh was alive!

She didn’t know how that was possible. It shouldn’t be. But Josh was here, walking in front of her. He wasn’t just one of these people, he was leading them.

Her mind spun, trying to process the information. At first she thought she was still lightheaded from watching Nate get shot and then trying to keep him from bleeding to death, but she realized now that it was more than that.

Josh was alive!

“Josh,” she said, trying to get his attention.

She struggled to hold on to Nate as they were led through the woods. Gaby spent almost as much time swatting branches out of her face as she did trying to keep Nate upright. Somehow, though, he was keeping up with her. She couldn’t fathom how he was doing it. She held on to Nate with both arms, his feet moving alongside her, his eyes were closed as if he were asleep.

“Josh,” she said again, louder this time.

He finally looked back at her, his hair long and shaggy. She remembered all the times she had cut his and Matt’s hair while they were hiding together for eight months after the world ended. But the brown eyes that looked back at her now were different. The same, but not quite. He wasn’t as skinny anymore, and even the gun belt around his waist seemed to fit better.

He didn’t say anything, and instead waited (forced) her to continue.

“Why aren’t you dead?” she asked. “Will told me you died. You fell into the lake and you drowned.”

“Will was wrong,” he said. It was his first words to her after they had left the parking lot.

She waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.

“So you didn’t die that day?” she said.

“Gaby, I’m here, walking in front of you, aren’t I? How could I do that if I died that day?” He chuckled, and for a brief moment, she saw the old Josh again.

Gaby looked around at the men walking with them. They didn’t seem to be paying attention. Or care.

She repositioned Nate’s body against hers with some effort. Nate groaned, but his eyes remained closed. He was painfully pale and sweat dripped from his face. She still couldn’t understand how his legs were moving.

“Josh, please slow down.”

Josh did slow down, and as he did, the others followed suit without a word.

Josh looked back at her again, and his eyes drifted to Nate. “Who is he, Gaby?”

“I told you, he’s a friend. His name’s Nate.”

“Just a friend?”

“Yes. Just a friend. We only met this morning.”

That seemed to satisfy him, and his eyes softened a bit. “Do you want some help? He looks heavy.”

“No, I’m fine.” That wasn’t true, but she didn’t want him to know that. Didn’t want them to know that. “Josh, how are you still alive?”

“I fell in the water, but someone fished me out.” He grinned. “Literally. They used this big fishing hook thing.” He mimed it for her. “I guess I just wasn’t ready to die yet.”

“Just like that?”

“You think it should be more dramatic?”

“I guess.”

“It wasn’t.” Then he frowned at her. “You guys killed some of my people, Gaby.”

“I didn’t know they were your people,” she said, doing her best not to say the word “people” in a way that might be interpreted as anything other than a simple statement of fact. Even though the idea of Josh being one of these people sent a chill up her spine, to hear him actually call them his people was somehow a thousand times worse.

“Who was out there with you and…what’s his name again?” Josh asked.

“Nate.”

“Who was out there with you and Nate? They said there was a third guy.”

“Henry,” Gaby said without hesitation.

“Do I know him?”

“No. He came to the island after…you left.”

He was reading her face carefully, trying to catch her in a lie. She looked back at him, doing her best to sell the untruth.

Apparently satisfied, Josh said, “What were you guys doing out there?”

“Some col—” She stopped herself, and said instead, “—of your guys raided a hospital in Lafayette. They took some kids, and we were trying to get them back.”

“Are you talking about Mercy Hospital?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t have anything to do with that. I’m only responsible for the camps and the towns. But I heard about it.” He looked a bit sad — or was that just an act? “You were there?”

“We were trading with them.”

“Just you and this Henry guy?”

“There were a few others, but they died at the hospital during the attack.”

“Oh, I’m sorry about that.”

You’re sorry about that?

Instead of allowing her emotions to explode on him, she forced them down and concentrated on keeping her lies straight. Josh had always been a smart kid, and it wouldn’t have taken much to slip up. He was probably keeping track of everything she had already told him so far.

Or maybe she was reading too much into it. Maybe, under that new, harder exterior, it was still just Josh, the boy who doted on her, who shook and shuddered and whispered “Thank you” when she finally made love to him that first night on the island.

“What about Will and Danny?” Josh asked. “They didn’t come with you?”

“No. Just us.”

“That’s kind of dangerous, isn’t it?”

“We had a helicopter,” she said, thinking that he probably knew about that part.

“A helicopter,” he said, almost wistfully. “I haven’t seen one of those in a while.”

“Neither had we. It belonged to the people at the hospital. They picked us up, brought us over. That’s why Will and Danny didn’t feel the need to come along. There was me and Henry and two other guys. We thought we were just coming to trade, but then your guys attacked.”

“Not my guys, Gaby,” he said, sounding almost annoyed at the accusation.

“One of these guys, then.”

He sighed, but let it go. “So, this Henry guy. He’s the one going around killing my people?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. We got split up.”

“I have an MIA. His name’s Givens. You know anything about him?”

“No.”

“Maybe this Henry took him.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I told you, we got split up. I don’t know what Henry’s up to. He’s smart, so he probably took off. That’s what Nate and I were trying to do when you ambushed us in the parking lot.”

He gave her that annoyed look again. “Like I said, I’m sorry about what happened at the hospital, but I had nothing to do with it. And as for your friend Nate, well, my guys were just shooting back. You attacked us first.”

“My guys.”

“Us.”

Who are you, Josh?

“What is this place, Josh?” she asked instead. “What’s this camp?”

“It’s just temporary. From here, we take people to their final relocation spot. It’s nice, Gaby.” He beamed like a proud father. “It’s a real town, and they’re free to come and go, but most of them stay for obvious reasons.”

“You have a fence.”

“The gates aren’t locked. They can leave any time, but they don’t. Some do, but most don’t. They know what’s out there. It’s safer in here. It’s even safer in the towns.”

“What are these towns?”

“We’ve taken over some of the smaller cities, resettling people in them.”

“Resettling?”

He grinned at her, and the brash Josh, the one who always knew he was smarter than most of the kids around him, shone through again. “I’m at the ground floor on this, Gaby. She came up with the idea, but I’m the one making it happen. She’s good at this, selling dreams to people. They call this Phase Three. We’re almost at the end.”

“We.” He said “we” instead of “them.”

“You’re with them now,” she said.

He started to answer, but stopped and seemed to consider his response more thoroughly before finally saying, “It’s complicated.”

“How complicated is it, Josh?”

“More complicated than you think, Gaby.”

They finally stepped out of the woods and back onto a muddy dirt road. She saw a gate in front of them. It was wide open, inviting. He was right. The fences and the gates were just for show. They weren’t going to keep anyone in who didn’t want to stay.

And beyond the fencing was the camp.

Here we go…

Will!

She saw him out of the corner of her eye, wearing a hazmat suit and watching them from behind one of the many tents sprouting up from the ground around her. Her eyes met his, just long enough to let him know she had seen him, before she quickly looked away.

Josh was moving slower in front of her as they serpentined their way through the camp. He had moved farther ahead of the group, apparently not interested in engaging in small talk with her anymore.

People stared as they passed. Not that Gaby blamed them. She was very aware of the scabbing gash in her forehead, along with the scratches and bruises that still adorned her face and neck from the helicopter crash. Her hair was a mess, and she hadn’t showered since leaving Song Island two days ago. Her clothes — cargo pants and a long-sleeve button shirt — were covered in Nate’s blood and dirt and God knew how many layers of sweat.

She discovered that she didn’t care about the curious stares. She had nothing to be ashamed of. Certainly not to these people, who had given up everything to come here, to be a part of this. Whatever the hell this was.

The sight of pregnant women made her look twice, though. By the time she saw the second, third, and tenth one, she stopped doing a double take.

She remembered what Will had said back on Sandwhite Point: “I think we’re looking at the next phase of whatever final solution the ghouls are moving toward. This…is something new. Something we haven’t seen before. And it’s big, so it has to be a pretty significant part of their plan.”

Nate was groaning against her, and he was moving much slower than before, his feet dragging against the ground noticeably now.

“Josh,” she said.

He didn’t hear her, and kept walking.

“Josh,” she said louder.

He glanced back. “Hmm?”

“Do you have a doctor? I don’t think Nate’s going to make it.”

He stopped, and everyone stopped with him. “You, you, and you,” he said, pointing at, from what she could tell, three random men, “take him to see a doctor. I want two people with him at all times.”

The men grabbed Nate and pulled him roughly from her. Nate groaned as he was yanked away, and she helplessly watched them move toward the blue tent that rose from the campgrounds like some kind of plastic castle.

“You’re not going to hurt him?” she asked Josh.

“He’ll be fine,” Josh said. “What happens after that is up to him.”

“What does that mean?”

“We’ll talk about it.” He looked at the others. “You can go, I got her.”

The others faded away, but Wilson hesitated. “Are you sure?”

“She’s unarmed. I got it.”

Wilson shrugged and wandered off after the others.

Josh took her gently by the arm and led her through the camp again, but it wasn’t in the direction of the big blue tent. Gaby let him lead her, mulling over her options.

They were limited. The fact that she was unarmed was a problem. They had taken her rifle, her Glock, and her knife. They had even taken her pack. The only thing she had left was an empty gun belt and pouches, which felt so light without her sidearm and spare magazines that she almost forgot she was still wearing them.

“It’s okay, Gaby,” Josh said.

“Is it, Josh?”

“Yes. I’m here. I’ll make sure you’re safe.” He smiled at her. “That’s why I did all of this, you know. It’s for you, Gaby. This is all for you.”

Josh’s tent had a grass floor like all the others, with a small cot in one corner. The only other furniture was a fold-out table with a portable LED lamp and laptop on top.

“Laptop?” she said. Somehow the fact that Josh had a working laptop at the end of the world didn’t surprise her at all.

He grinned. “I know, right? So cliché.”

“How do you power it?”

“Rechargeable batteries. I got the idea from Will. You know those Army Rangers, always prepared. I’m trying to get everyone here into more of a battalion mentality. You should see the people running the other states, Gaby. They have no clue what they’re doing. Compared to them, we’re on the cutting edge.”

He’s so proud of it.

Josh must have seen the dubious look on her face, because he walked over and put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. The Josh she remembered, who smiled a lot and always wanted to please her, seemed to return again in that instant.

“Gaby, I did all of this for you,” he said, the earnestness in his voice almost cracking, as if he was willing her to understand.

“How is all of this for me, Josh?”

“They gave me a choice…”

“Who?”

“The blue-eyed ghoul. She said her name was Kate.”

Kate? Will’s Kate?

“They have names?” she said instead.

“The blue-eyed ones do.”

“How many of them are there?”

“I’ve met ten so far, but there are more, spread out. Most of them are assigned to specific states, but there are a few that float around, doing what needs to be done. You have no idea how organized they are, Gaby. You would think with so many of them—billions—that they couldn’t possibly be organized, but you’d be wrong. They have some kind of mental link, this hive mind, that lets them communicate. It’s remarkable. I’ve learned so much in just three months. Imagine what I could learn in three years.”

She tried to smile, but she knew it came out wrong even before she saw him frown back at her in response.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“What’s wrong?” My God, Josh, how could you even ask me that? Everything is wrong.

“You’re working for them,” was all she could manage. “You’re one of them now. A collaborator.”

“No, no, no.” He walked away for a moment, before looking back at her with renewed focus. “You don’t understand, Gaby.”

“Then make me understand.”

“I did all of this for you.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because it’s true.”

“How is it true?”

“We can’t fight them, Gaby. There are too many of them. Even if Will and Danny found a thousand more just like them — a million more — it still wouldn’t matter. There are just too many of them. We can’t win this war.” He paused, seemed to gather his thoughts. “They gave me the opportunity to save you. To save everyone. Why did you think they left the island alone all these months? She could have kept throwing people at it if she wanted to, but she didn’t.”

“Because of you?”

“Yes, Gaby. Because of me. See, it was always my intention to come back to you. That’s what all this is about, that’s why I’m doing this. Everyone here will be taken to a town and allowed to live out the rest of their lives. They’ll grow old, have children, and die of natural causes. Don’t you want that?”

She didn’t know how to answer. She had so many questions, but many of them, she knew, would sound like accusations if she voiced them.

Don’t antagonize him, but find out what you can. That’s what Will would do.

“Why are there so many pregnant women here?” she asked. “I haven’t seen a pregnancy since all of this began.”

“It’s part of the deal.”

“What deal?”

He walked over to a cooler and opened it, took out a can of Coke. “Want one?”

She shook her head. “What kind of deal did those women make, Josh?”

He took his time. Walked back to her, cracked open the can, and took a sip of warm soda. Then, wiping at his lips with the back of his hand, he shrugged. “The ghouls need live bodies. They need a continuous supply of blood. Human beings, in other words.”

The blood farms…

“It’s part of their plan,” Josh continued. “The Purge, the blood farms, the relocation camps, and now, the towns. It’s all part of a grand, ambitious plan, and it’s up to people like me to make it happen. But don’t worry, they’re not going to extinguish the human race. They can’t. They need us. They need humans, but controlled humans. Future generations of humanity that understand and are willing to do what needs to be done in order to coexist. They just want to share the planet.”

“Are you saying those women out there are pregnant on purpose?”

“Yes. It’s the entire basis of the agreement.”

“The babies…?” she said, barely able to get the words out.

She remembered the Mercy Hospital children looking out the back window of the fleeing Humvee at her with tear-streaked faces, an image she would never be able to forget for as long as she lived.

“Oh, no, they’re not going to give the babies to the ghouls,” Josh said, and he almost laughed. “No, no, nothing like that. Don’t be morbid, Gaby.”

Morbid? This whole thing is morbid, Josh.

“Those babies will all grow up into healthy boys and girls,” he continued. “The ghouls need us, Gaby. Animals won’t do it. Yes, they can drink animal blood, and they have been, but it’s not the same. They were always going to do this. This was always the plan all along. They just didn’t really know how to go about doing it.”

“That’s where you come in…”

“That’s where Kate and I came in, yeah. She used to be human — still is, for the most part. The trap on Song Island? That was her idea. All this? Her idea. I just added in the little details, made sure everything was working in the daytime. The less she and the other ghouls show themselves around the people, the easier it is to control them, to convince them that this is for their own good.”

He motioned for her to follow him outside. She did, and stood next to him as he gestured at the people in tents, the ones walking around, the men ripping cooked meat with their teeth around the campfires.

“Look around you, Gaby,” Josh said. “This was my idea. I showed these people there’s nothing to fear. We let them go if they want, but the vast majority of them stay.” He gave her that eager to please smile again. “We’re giving them food, a place to live, and they don’t ever have to fear the night again.”

“What happens at night?” she asked.

“Nothing. Nothing happens at night. That’s the point.”

“What about blood…?”

“We have that taken care of, too.” He looked over at the blue tent. “There’s another, smaller tent behind that one. People give blood there. That’s what we give to the ghouls. They don’t need to suck it out of you, they just want the end results. It’s like donating blood. Painless.” He smiled again. “This is good for us, Gaby. That’s why I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Why is that, Josh?”

“Because I get to see you again, that’s why!”

He laughed and moved toward her, but Gaby took a quick, involuntary step away from him before she even realized what she was doing.

He froze, then frowned. “But you don’t believe me.”

“I don’t know what to believe, Josh.” Find a way to salvage this. “You were supposed to be dead, then it turns out you’re not. Three months, Josh. Three months.”

His frown eased, and she saw a hint of regret.

There. Keep going…

“And then you show up and tell me you’re in charge of these collaborators?” she continued. “Not just that you’re one of them, but you’re actually in charge of them?”

People were stopping to look at them now. For the first time, she saw Josh feeling less than in charge. He reached for her arm, but stopped himself in time.

“Let’s go back inside,” he said quietly, almost meekly.

She followed him back into the tent.

“I should have contacted you sooner,” he said. “I really wanted to. God, you have no idea how much I wanted to. I’ve missed you so much, Gaby. Every day I think of you, about that night we spent together.”

His shoulders slackened, and he was suddenly the eighteen-year-old boy she had lived out of basements with all those months, always worried about when he went searching for supplies with Matt, and had been so happy to see when they came back safe.

Josh, are you really still in there?

“Please, don’t be angry with me, Gaby.” His voice almost pleading now. “You know how I feel about you. I love you. I’ve always loved you. I did all of this for you. Please, can’t we just…” He paused. Then, softly, “Can’t I just hug you? Please? It’s been so long, and I’ve missed you so much…”

At that moment, he sounded like the same Josh, the awkward boy in love with her, who followed her around and sneaked looks at her in school when he didn’t think anyone was watching. She threw herself into her training with Will and Danny in part to forget about him, to push away the hurt of losing him. And it had hurt. Not because he was the great love of her life, as he wanted so desperately to be, but because she liked him. Truly, truly liked him, and though she hadn’t felt it yet, she was certain she could have grown to love him too, if they had only spent more time together.

Then he was gone, taken away in a hail of bullets.

Only to resurface now, so different, and yet…so much like the same Josh.

He looked as if he was about to cry, when she rushed forward and into his arms. She pressed her head against his chest and he wrapped his arms so tightly around her that she couldn’t breathe for a moment.

“Gaby,” he whispered. “God, it’s been so long. I’ve missed you so much. You don’t know how much I’ve missed you.”

“Me too, Josh, me too,” she said, forcing back tears.

In the back of her mind, one thought kept going around and around:

Can I kill him? If I have to — and God, I might have to — can I kill Josh?