0692672400 (S) (37 page)

He leaned forward, and if she wanted to, she could have reached over and snatched his pistol out of its holster.

Except she didn’t.

Not yet, anyway.

“I need a guide,” Keo said. “You know the place. I don’t. And I can’t afford to still be running around looking for Mercer when the sun comes up. So I need you, Erin. Are you in or out?”

Her stare never wavered from his face. “You’re either insane or delusional if you think you can pull this off, even with my help.”

“Are those my only two choices?”

“Or suicidal.”

“How about none of the above?”

He smiled at her then leaned in even closer. She would have absolutely no trouble grabbing his gun now.

Except she still didn’t.

“Help me end this madness,” Keo said. “Only one more person needs to die. You know deep down that I’m right, that this is the only course of action left. There’s no other way.”

“On one condition…”

“Name it.”

“Promise me you’ll do everything possible to keep the body count to a minimum.”

“I’ll do the best I can.”

“
Promise
me.”

“I’ll keep the body count to a minimum,” Keo nodded.

She sat back in her chair and let out a long sigh, as if the weight of the world had just been lifted from her shoulders. “When do we leave?”

He stood up. “Have you eaten yet?”

“Not since this morning.”

He picked the chair back up and returned it to the corner. “We’ll get something to eat first, then shove off at midnight. It’ll be a nice moonlit boat ride in the dark. Might even be romantic, if you play your cards right.”

“You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I’m single, you’re single…”

“In your dreams.”

“Oh, trust me, we’ve done more than just a moonlit boat ride in my dreams.”

She smirked. Then, as he turned to the door, “Hey.”

Keo stopped and looked back.

“On a scale of one to ten,” she said, “how certain were you I wasn’t going to take your gun and shoot you just now?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he drew the Sig Sauer and tossed it to her.

She caught the gun easily, and by the startled look on her face, he guessed she figured it out pretty fast.

“It’s not loaded,” Erin said, weighing the gun in one hand.

“Not as dumb as I look, remember?”

She sighed and tossed him back the gun. “Dick.”

“Not the worst thing I’ve been called tonight,” Keo said as he holstered the gun.

“You said you needed to get this done before morning.”

He nodded.

“So tell me you have a good plan to make that happen,” Erin said. “Tell me that this isn’t a spray-and-pray suicide run.”

“I have
a
plan,” Keo said. “Whether it’s a
good
plan… Well, I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

22

GABY

“
B
ACK AT
S
TARCH
,” Danny said. “It was the same one. I couldn’t put my finger on it before, but I always knew there was something different
about that one. It just took me a little time to figure it out.”

“Danny, its eyes look just like all the other blue eyes,” Gaby said. “How can you tell it apart from the ones that attacked us last night?”

“Trust me on this, kid. It’s him.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“I’m not.”

“But what
if?
”

Danny shook his head. “I’m not. And I need you to trust that I’m not.”

She didn’t answer him, because she didn’t know how. She was afraid of what would come out if she opened her mouth. Instead, she stared at him across the semidarkness of the hallway and said nothing. Danny was bleeding from a number of cuts along his temple and arms, and despite the stink of smoke, sweat, and blood clinging to every inch of him—and her and Nate, and the entire building, for that matter—he was still in one piece.

Danny was looking at her, but not
at
her. He was staring at—and through—the closed door behind her. On the other side was the creature that had literally fallen into their laps when the back section of the bank’s roof caved in from the blast. It had been some kind of bomb, and if it had detonated any closer they would all be dead right now instead of just dirty and smelly and bleeding from small cuts.

“Torch it,”
Benford had said into the radio. Whoever he had been talking to hadn’t managed to set the town on fire, which she was grateful for, but if the First Gallant Bank was any indication, the lone warplane had left plenty of wreckage behind outside their walls. Thank God there had just been the one plane. If there had been more, with extra munitions available to drop…

She glanced out the hallway at Nate, just to make sure he was still there. He was crouched next to the counter in the lobby and only had eyes for the large pile of rubble that had inadvertently covered up the hole put in the front wall by Benford’s grenade launcher. Slabs of partially intact concrete jutted out of the chaos, the big and small pieces awash in the blue of the moonlight that pooled inside the bank through the large, jagged opening where that section of the roof used to be. Rooftop gravel carpeted almost the entire length of the lobby, with most of it concentrated near the front.

Gaby was just glad she couldn’t see the street outside, because that meant whoever (whatever) was out there couldn’t see in, either. Not that she had any delusions a pile of brick and mortar and concrete was going to keep back the creatures if they wanted to come in. All it would take was a short climb and they would be inside.

Except they didn’t climb over, or do anything to show themselves.

But they were out there. She knew that without having to hear or see them, even if she thought she could
smell
their stench coming in through the multiple holes that pockmarked the bank’s ceiling. It was also a lot colder now, and she clutched her jacket to her chest while making sure her rifle remained within reach.

She looked back at Danny still staring past her. “What are you going to do with it, Danny?”

He shook his head and didn’t answer right away. She could tell by his expression it was a question he had been asking himself all night.

“If it is Will—” Gaby said, but stopped herself short. Then, “If it
was
Will, then it would explain a lot.”

“Why it told me to put on the uniform in Starch,” Danny said.

She nodded. “I don’t suppose he told you how he knew that would work?”

“No lips, remember?”

“Right. No lips. You think he can grow them back? The black eyes never could. When they lose something, it seems to be gone for good.”

“He’s not one of them.”

The question is, what
is
he?

“If that
is
Will,” she said, “how do you think he did it? How did he save us at the hangar without actually being there?”

“I’ve been thinking about that…”

“And?”

“Willie boy always thought the creatures had a kind of hive-like mind, always connected somehow. He thinks that’s how they know where to swarm when they discover survivors, or how the blue eyes control them.” He tapped his temple. “Think of it like a network of bloodsucking, well, bloodsuckers.”

“Like what, the Internet?”

“Yeah,” Danny said. “Some kind of ESPN shit.”

“You mean ESP.”

“Uh huh. The Worldwide Leader in Bloodsucking.”

Gaby managed a smile. There wasn’t an inch of her that wasn’t sore and dirty (and smelly, even if that part was harder to confirm), but the upside was that they were all alive. Still wearing bloody dead men’s clothes, yes, but alive nonetheless, and right now that was all that mattered and all she wanted to concentrate on.

After a while, she said, “If it is Will, do you think he was the one the other blue eyes were trying to lure here? Were they using us to get to him?”

Danny, she saw, was grinning stupidly at her.

“What’s so funny?” she asked, annoyed.

“You said
he
, not
it
.”

“I did?”

“Uh huh. More than once.”

She sighed. “Give me a break. I’m doing my best to wrap my head around all of this, but it’s not easy. I feel like my head is spinning and I don’t know which direction is up or down.”

Danny chuckled. “Now you know how I’ve been feeling since Starch.”

“
W
HAT DID
D
ANNY SAY
?” Nate asked when she crouched next to him beside the island counter, about five feet from where the pool of moonlight ended in front of them.

“He’s not sure yet,” she said, readying her M4 across her knees even though there was nothing to shoot at
(Jinx!)
.

She looked out at the opening where the wall used to meet the ceiling, but there was now just a gaping hole staring out at the moon above them. With so much bright moonlight, it was easy to make out the footprints plastered across the lobby floor, so many that they overlapped each other many times over. When they were retreating, the creatures had taken the bodies of Benford and the dead collaborators that had been assaulting the bank with them.

Wouldn’t want to waste a single drop of that precious blood, right, boys?

The silence inside and outside the bank hung over them like a physical thing, a blanket that could drop at any second and smother them underneath it. The thought made her nervous and Gaby clutched the rifle tighter, if just to give her hands something to do.

“What about you? You really think it’s him?” Nate asked. He glanced briefly backward at the manager’s office.

“Danny seems to think it is.”

“He would know, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“How long have they known one another? If anyone would recognize Will, even under all that, it would be Danny. Who knows him better?”

She nodded. “Once you’ve been in combat with someone, survived the end of the world side-by-side with them… That kind of connection is hard to come by.”

“Like us?”

“We still have a long way to go.”

“But we’ll get there.”

“Maybe, if we can get out of this town alive first.”

“Eh, I don’t know, it’s not that bad. Bullet holes and destroyed buildings notwithstanding, I think it’d make for a pretty good summer vacation spot.”

She smirked. “You’re doing Danny now, is that it?”

“You know what they say, ‘If you can’t beat ’em…’”

“Become as annoying as them?” she finished for him.

“How’d you know?”

“I’ve been around Danny too long.” Her legs were tiring, and she finally gave in and sat down on the floor, but only after brushing small chunks of rooftop gravel away. “How’s your side?”

“Hurts, just like everything else.”

Pain lets you know you’re still alive. Right, Lara?

“I was expecting fire,” Gaby said.

“From the bombing?”

She nodded.

“I guess there isn’t anything left in Gallant that’s flammable,” Nate said. “Or, at least, not enough to start and maintain a fire. We’re lucky that Warthog only had two bombs to drop.”

“Yeah, lucky,” she said quietly. Then, “We have to get back. The
Trident.
Whatever it takes, we have to get back.”

“We will. Just a few more hours, and it’ll be sunup. Then we’ll go home.”

He put an arm around her, and Gaby leaned against his shoulder, welcoming the warmth of his body to help fight back the cold that swamped the lobby. She wondered if she would ever be able to enjoy moments like these without guns within reach or undead things moving outside her walls. Were those things even possible anymore?

“I was thinking…” Nate said quietly.

“What?”

“That thing in the office. If it really is Will…”

“It’s a big if...”

“I know, but if it really is
Will, then it changes everything, doesn’t it?”

“How?”

“He saved our lives at Larkin, then again in Starch. He did that, Gaby. He didn’t have to, but he did. The question is: Why?”

Why? I’ve been asking that question all night, and I’m no closer to the answer.

“If he’s still Will, what else can he do?” Nate continued, though now Gaby wasn’t sure if he was even talking to her anymore or just speaking his thoughts out loud. “What does he know? How long has he been out here? What has he been doing?”

“We think the blue eyes were trying to lure him here, using us as bait.”

“There,” Nate said.

“What?”

“He knows something, Gaby,” he said, unable to hide the excitement in his voice. “Get it?”

“No…”

“Think about it,” Nate said. “If they’re this desperate to stop him, if they’re going through all this trouble just to bring him here, he must know something they don’t want us to know. The question is: What?”

S
HE FELL
asleep with Nate’s voice in her head, asking her “Why?”
and “What?” over and over again, and opened her heavy eyelids back up to the sight of Danny hovering over her.

“You catching a little nap there, little girl?” he said, grinning down at her.

“Oh, God,” she said, and hurried up to her feet, the sound of loose gravel
crunching
under her boots. “Nate…”

She didn’t have to look far to see him leaning against the counter where she last saw him, his head lolled slightly forward. He was snoring softly yet somehow still clutching the rifle resting across his lap.

She shook off as much sleep as she could and picked up her rifle from the floor, feeling simultaneously embarrassed and angry with herself. “I’m sorry, Danny. I must be more tired than I thought.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over it, Tex,” Danny said. “No harm, no foul.”

She snapped a quick look at the front wall across the lobby, at the undisturbed barricade and the pools of moonlight coming in from the openings above. Still dark, and nothing had come in while she was asleep.

Stupid. So stupid.

“I’m sorry, Danny,” she said again.

“Stop apologizing,” he said. “Nothing happened. Everything’s hunky dory.” He took out a bottle of water and handed it to her. “Partially my fault. I was too preoccupied in the office, didn’t think to check up on you lovebirds until now.”