“We need to get going, Danny,” Gaby said. “Lara and the others are counting on us showing up tonight.”
“Get back to the island!” Will had said. “Whatever you go, don’t leave it undefended for another night!”
“You know anything about that?” Danny asked. The question was obviously directed at Nate, even though Danny hadn’t looked back at them when he said it.
Nate shook his head. “That’s beyond my AO. I haven’t been anywhere past the interstate since I woke up.”
Woke up? Gaby thought, but restrained herself from blurting out the question.
She said instead, “AO?”
“Area of operations,” Nate said. “Though they didn’t call it that. Like I said, it’s a pretty helter-skelter outfit. I don’t think they know what the hell they’re doing. Mostly, they’re just obeying orders from them.”
She didn’t have to ask who “them” was. She knew. Danny knew, too.
“So what’s the plan?” she asked Danny.
“The fastest path to Song Island is the interstate,” Danny said. He was still moving unfathomably slow. She wished he would move faster already. “We could try going around it, but it’s going to cost us time if we have to pick through the small roads. Of course, we’d have to try not to get lost in the process, too. One wrong turn, and it’s another hour or two. Or days. Maps aren’t nearly as reliable as GPS, and unfortunately I don’t think those are up and running anymore. Like you said, kid, we gotta get home before dark.”
“So what are our options?”
“They think we already went on ahead, in the truck we took. So the guys at Salvani are expecting us, and the ones that just took off think they’re going to cut off our retreat. I’m guessing they also have guys in Lake Dulcet thirty minutes from here, and Lake Charles after that.”
“They’re not real soldiers by any stretch, but yeah, they’re not total idiots, either,” Nate said.
“Good to know. So, my guess is when they can’t find us, they’ll start spreading out, thinking we left the interstate before we reached one of their ambushes. That’s the smart move.”
“But that’s not what we’re going to do,” Gaby said.
“Nope.” Danny bit on another big stick of jerky and nodded back at Nate. “Nice uniform.”
“Thanks?” Nate said.
Danny grinned at them.
“You trust this guy?” Nate asked.
“If it wasn’t for Danny and Will, I wouldn’t be alive more times over than I could count,” Gaby said. “Yeah, I trust him.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
She looked at the girls in the backseat. Annie had Milly in her lap, the two of them staring somberly out the window. Like Gaby, they hadn’t protested when Danny laid out his plan. Although she looked like she might have bolted at any second, Annie hadn’t said a word when given the chance. Milly, too, had kept quiet. But if Annie and Milly looked terrified of where they were heading, Claire was the exact opposite.
“We’re almost there,” Claire said, smiling at her.
“Almost,” Gaby said.
She returned the girl’s smile, though inside she couldn’t help but wonder where she was leading them. Was Song Island really safer than out here? Or in one of those collaborator towns? If you obeyed and went along with the program, those places weren’t so bad. All you had to do was give blood every night…and let some stranger impregnate you…so your child could be born to serve the ghouls.
Like cattle.
That’s what they want to turn us into. Docile cattle.
Gaby shivered slightly and was glad no one noticed, including Nate behind the steering wheel next to her. Claire was also too busy wiping dirt off her FNH shotgun to pay attention.
God, Josh, how did you ever convince yourself any of this was okay?
She turned back around in the front passenger seat and got a quick glimpse of herself in the tilted rearview mirror. If seeing Nate in the fresh soldier’s uniform still threw her for a loop, seeing herself in one was even more jolting.
There was a hole in the back of the shirt she was wearing now, along with some dried blood. The man Nate had shot in the back had been about her size, though a few inches taller and wider around the hip area. The pants barely fit, but she was able to cinch it mostly in place with the gun belt. Not that she was going to have to wear it for long, which was why she kept her original clothes crumpled on the floor at her feet.
There were hardly any vehicles left along the interstate to look at, or obstructions in the roads to avoid. This stretch of the countryside had been barren of stray cars for the last twenty minutes ever since they drove out of the woods and made their way back onto I-10. According to all the signs, Lake Dulcet was still five minutes ahead of them.
“I know you want to ask,” Nate said after a while.
“Later,” she said.
“If we live through this.”
Gaby sighed and hoped Claire and the others hadn’t heard that. But of course they had. They were sitting right behind them, after all.
“We’ll be fine,” she said, a little louder than she needed to because she wanted the girls in the back to hear her clearly. “Danny knows what he’s doing. You just have to trust him.”
God, I hope Danny knows what he’s doing.
“You really trust him,” Nate said.
“We’ve been through a lot together.”
“So have we.”
“It’s not even close, Nate.”
“Not even close?”
“Night and day.”
“Even after the pawnshop?”
“Even after the pawnshop.”
“Oh.”
He sounded genuinely hurt that time, though she couldn’t understand why. He had to know, didn’t he, that what she had gone through with Will and Danny was beyond anything he and she had shared in the couple days they knew each other before he was taken? Didn’t he know that?
“Let’s talk about something else,” she said.
“Okay,” Nate said. Then, “They’re there? Dwayne, Kendra, and the others? They made it to Song Island safely?”
“They did.”
“Good. Not knowing what had happened to them kept me up at night.”
“After what you went through, you were worried about them?”
“I’ve been responsible for them for a long time. Old habits are hard to break, I guess.” He paused for a moment, then, “How sure are you they’re going to attack the island tonight?”
“Will seemed pretty sure.”
“I’m sorry about that. Will, I mean.”
“You don’t know Will. As long as he’s breathing, he’s capable of anything. I wouldn’t be surprised if he beats us to the island.”
God, I almost believed myself that time.
“You didn’t know about the ambush on Route 13?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I know they were setting up an ambush, but not that you were involved. I told you, they really don’t tell us anything. Just where to go and what to do. I didn’t even know you were still alive until I saw you through my scope.”
“When did you decide?”
“Decide what?”
“To change sides.”
“I was never on their side,” Nate said. Again, he sounded slightly frustrated with the question — or the accusation, she guessed, was the more appropriate word. “You have to understand what happened to me after Lafayette—”
“Later,” she said, cutting him off and leaning slightly toward the dashboard. She peered out the windshield at what she had been waiting to see since they returned to the highway.