Nate saw it, too, and went quiet.
There were two vehicles up ahead, parked nose-to-nose in the middle of the two-lane highway. The shoulders were wide open, but getting to them would be a miracle with the four men standing around the trucks, aiming assault rifles down the interstate at them.
Nate began to slow down. “Ready?”
She nodded, then turned around slightly in her seat. It was a minor move that was (hopefully) unnoticeable from outside the car. “Guys, get down, just like we rehearsed.”
There was a lot of movement behind her as Annie and Milly sank into the floor behind Nate’s seat, and Claire did likewise behind hers. She imagined the thirteen-year-old clutching her shotgun and steeling herself for what was about to come.
Gaby faced fully forward again and gripped the M4 leaning against her right leg. It had been there the entire time, just out of view.
Please let this work. Please don’t let us all die in the next few minutes.
The two-way radio on the dashboard squawked, and they heard Danny’s voice. “Easy does it, Nathaniel Ramsey. Just pretend you’re back at the Colonial Congress of the Confederation.”
“What the hell is he talking about?” Nate said to her.
Gaby couldn’t help but smile. “I have no idea. Just keep going. Remember who you are.”
“And what’s that?”
“A traitorous scumbag who sold out humanity.”
“Ouch.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know,” he said.
She nodded. “I didn’t say it before, but it’s good to see you again, Nate. I’m glad you’re still alive.”
He smiled at her, genuinely touched by that. She almost blushed under his gaze.
“Ditto,” he said.
Now all they had to do was survive the next few seconds.
I hope you know what you’re doing, Danny. God, I hope you know what you’re friggin’ doing…
CHAPTER 9
WILL
“One door closes, another door opens.”
Or maybe the better saying was, “Up a creek without a paddle and nothing to show for it but a wet ass”?
The point was, he was in trouble. Maybe. There were options in front of him, but as always, the trick was to pick out the best one and go for it. Choose the wrong one, and he was likely a dead man. And Lara would so be pissed off if he went and died on her.
Don’t worry, babe, I don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon.
“You’re from Dunbar,” Will said.
“How’d you know?” This was Leo, the forty-something who, along with the woman, had found him inside the Palermo. He was the talkative of the duo; which was to say, he was the only one who talked.
“The direction you came from, for one,” Will said. “That, and your less-than-enthusiastic reaction to the soldiers.”
“‘Soldiers,’” Leo snorted. “Don’t call them that.”
“What do you call them?”
“Wannabes. Killers. Pieces of shit. Take your pick.”
Will nodded. He would have gone with “weekend warriors” himself, but “wannabe killer pieces of shit” was just as good.
Natasha, the woman, was watching him closely from across the room. Not that there was a lot of space between them. They were sitting on the dust-covered floor of one of those small pick-up centers for Domino’s Pizza. The building was on the other side of the I-10, beyond the underpass, and to the right of Route 13. They were close enough to the highway that he could see out the windows at the Palermo and Chevron signs jutting in the air. There were two more men in a Valero gas station across the street from them, both heavily armed individuals that were, like the three of them, waiting for signs of a counterattack from Mason’s men.
Dunbar’s fighters didn’t have the desire to go anywhere anytime soon post-attack, he had discovered. They were at least nice enough to give him back his painkillers and a half-full bottle of water to wash away the caked blood from his face while they waited, though Will spent most of it keeping dehydration at bay.
He sneaked a look down at his watch: 1:06 P.M.
Almost an hour after Leo, Natasha, and the others laid waste to the ten or so men Mason had left behind at the intersection. Since then, no one else had shown up yet. Looking around him at Leo’s gnarled face and Natasha’s dead-serious eyes, he couldn’t shake the feeling he had found himself in the company of people who had embraced a death wish. Attacking the soldiers had been a hell of a gamble and had cost them two of their own, leaving behind just six, including the two in the technical hidden next to their side of the highway now, ready to burst out and open fire at anyone who came down Route 13.
That was the full extent of their “plan,” as it turned out. He wondered if he could use that lack of ambition to his advantage. What would a group of people who just wanted to kill some assholes that had laid waste to their city do when those intended targets never showed up?
Maybe I should find out.
“You’ve been to Dunbar?” Leo was asking him.
“We thought about it, but we never got that far down the highway,” he lied.
“Where you from?”
“Mississippi.”
“That was you,” Natasha said. “We saw a minivan not far from here, at a farmhouse. It had Mississippi plates.”
Will nodded. He was hoping they would have stumbled across it on their way down the road. The minivan belonged to a young man named Lance and his girlfriend, Annie. The two had come to Louisiana from the neighboring state with other survivors looking for salvation.
Old story. New characters.
Annie was the only survivor after last night, and she was with Gaby and Danny right now on their way to Song Island.
Song Island. That was the key.
But first, he had to slowly build up his credibility. Maybe Leo and Natasha knew about his and Danny’s presence in Dunbar two nights ago, and maybe they didn’t. Right now, he needed them to see him as an unaffiliated third party who wasn’t a threat. After all, it was hard to take suggestions from someone you’d rather shoot in the head.
“You alone?” Natasha asked him.
He shook his head. He had a feeling she already knew about the other truck — the one Danny and Gaby had managed to escape in earlier. What was that Michael had said?
“They came out of nowhere. They must have…they must have been crawling along the fields all day toward us.”
That kind of stealth approach took a long time. It hadn’t surprised him to learn Leo and Natasha’s group had been approaching Mason’s long before his and Danny’s vehicles made their mad dash to reach the interstate. Which meant there was a very real possibility the two people watching him closely right now had witnessed the ambush from cover.
So he had to choose his lies and truths carefully. Very, very carefully. He could see it in Natasha’s stare — and, to an extent, in Leo’s, too. Days later, they were still reeling from what happened back at Dunbar.
“No,” Will said, looking Natasha in the eyes, because this version of him that he was trying to sell had nothing to hide. “After we left the farmhouse, we ran across a couple of the soldiers in trucks. We managed to overpower them and take their vehicles. We were trying to escape when they ambushed us.”
“How many more of you are out there?” she asked.
“Four.”
“Christ, how many did you fit into that minivan?” Leo asked, with just a hint of amusement.