Nate had picked up a third rifle on his side, but didn’t bother with the fourth one. “It’s busted,” he said before she could ask.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said, and they took their spoils back to the Silverado, where Danny was waiting for them.
“We good?” he asked them.
“We’re good,” Gaby said.
“How about you, Nathaniel Bacon?”
Nate shook his head. “I don’t know who that is.”
“Read a book sometime,” Danny said. He glanced down at his watch, then looked up at the feeder road beside them. “We’ll cut across Lake Dulcet and make our way south. It’ll be close, but if we haul ass, there’s no reason we can’t reach Song Island by four or five. That sound good?”
“You know where you’re going?” Gaby asked.
“Yeah, sure. Just follow the signs, right? I’m good at that, you know. Back in college, they used to call me Follow The Signs Danny.”
“‘Follow the Signs Danny’?” Nate said.
Gaby managed a smile. “Just go with it.”
“Ah,” Nate said.
She tossed the bag of food, ammo cans, and rifles into the back. Annie and Milly were outside on the driver side and Claire was standing next to her, looking at what remained of the soldiers’ trucks. Gaby was glad the girl couldn’t see the bodies on the other side of the vehicles. Claire was strong, but she didn’t particularly want the kid seeing everything if she could help it.
“What’s that smell?” Claire asked, wrinkling her nose.
“Gasoline,” Gaby said.
“Oh.” Then she turned her calm eyes on Gaby. “I could have helped.”
“Not until you learn how to shoot a rifle.”
“I already know how to shoot a rifle.”
“I mean a real rifle.”
“You’ll teach me?” she said, nodding at the carbine in Gaby’s hands. “Soon? I want to help, too.”
“Soon,” Gaby nodded. “Now get inside so we can get going.”
“Next stop, Song Island?”
God, I hope so, she thought, but smiled reassuringly and said, “Yeah, definitely next stop, Song Island.”
Claire grinned and climbed back into the truck.
Danny was already settling in behind the steering wheel. “You did good, kid.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Perish the thought.”
He grunted, then, “Asses down and seatbelts on. Annie, you’re up front with me. You know how to read a map?”
Annie climbed into the front passenger seat. She didn’t look nearly as shell-shocked or dazed as she had earlier during the first firefight on the highway. Maybe, Gaby thought, Annie was finally warming to what it took to survive out here.
It’s about time, too.
“It’s just a map,” Annie said, taking the folded paper from Danny. “How hard could it be?”
“Pretty hard, if you’re blind,” Danny said.
Gaby walked over to Nate, who was already waiting in the back of the truck. He held out his hand, and she let him pull her up.
“How old is that girl? Twelve?” he asked, looking into the cab window at Claire on the other side, clutching her FHN shotgun.
“She’s thirteen.”
“Thirteen. Jesus. You think she’s ready for an assault rifle?”
“I wasn’t ready for one, either, but I got over it.”
“Well, in that case, why don’t we just give her a bazooka?”
“If only we had one.”
“I was kidding,” Nate frowned.
“I wasn’t,” Gaby said.
She sat in the back of the truck across from Nate, with the M240, now reloaded with a fresh ammo belt, rattling next to them. The soldiers were, if nothing else, well stocked when they ventured out. Danny drove, with Annie in the front passenger seat directing his turns using the map.
They had taken the feeder road off the I-10 and were now moving through what looked like Downtown Lake Dulcet. It wasn’t a particular big city — more like a tourist attraction — and the only sound for miles was the churning of the truck’s engine. If Josh’s soldiers were in pursuit, they would be able to hear them easily enough. But that couldn’t be helped right now. To move fast, they had to be loud, too.
The one bright spot was that it had been almost an hour since they entered the city and there were no signs of pursuers. That supported Danny’s theory that the rest of the ambushers were either positioned in Lake Charles further up the interstate or waiting to strike near Salvani. Either way, they had skirted trouble.
Or they hoped, anyway.
Nate sat across from her so they could see both forward and back, as well as both sides of the road. She kept the M4 in her lap, because the very thought of not having it was terrifying. The only sounds for the longest time were the car engine, the wind blasting in her ears, and stray brass casings clinking randomly around them. Danny was driving at forty miles per hour in the narrow streets and gassing it when he found bigger lanes.
She should have felt good about making it through a second ambush unscathed, but seeing those men falling under Danny’s onslaught hadn’t been nearly as triumphant as she had expected. Looking across at Nate now, she guessed he felt the same way, which may or may not be why he hadn’t said a word since they climbed into the Chevy.
“You okay?” she finally asked. She had to raise her voice over the roar of the wind to be heard.
He gave her a forced smile. “Yeah. You?”
“We did what we had to. Back there.”
“I know.”
“Then what’s wrong? Is it the four guys we had to kill?”
“I don’t care about those guys. I was thinking about the other two. The ones who were with me before.”
“What about them?”
“I shot them in the back.” He paused. “They never saw it coming. One of them…he was surprised. I could see it on his face afterward.”
They chose their fates, Nate, she wanted to say. They got what they had coming. Would they have felt bad about shooting us?
But she didn’t say those words out loud because she could see how much it was bothering him, and had been for some time now. It didn’t surprise her at all that he would feel guilty about it. They had once argued about whether to kill another man who had ambushed them on the highway not all that long ago.
“Did you know them?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Not really. We were thrown together when I volunteered for this.”
“You volunteered?”
“I had to. It was the only way to leave L17 and find you.”
“L17,” she repeated. “The town they took me to was called L15.”
“There are dozens of towns in just this state alone. You have no idea how massive the operation really is, Gaby. L17 had over 5,000 people.”
Not people, Nate. Cattle. That’s what we are to them. Nothing but cattle.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” she said, and managed a smile that wasn’t completely forced.
“You already said that.”
“It deserves saying again.”
He gave her his best (mostly) unforced smile. “I wasn’t sure for the longest time, you know. After I woke up…”
“What happened to you, Nate?”
His face darkened slightly. “The night at the pawnshop. They didn’t kill me. They’d been feeding on me for…” He shook his head. “I don’t know how long. After they were done, I guess they put me in one of the towns.”