“There’s a first time for everything.”
“Not this. He was so sure of it he risked his life so we could get through the ambush back at Route 13. And as much as Danny and me wanted to come home — and God, we did, desperately — Will wanted to come home more.”
He nodded and went quiet for a moment.
After a while, he said, “I never heard anyone talking about it, you know. Song Island. Back when I was with the others in town. I don’t think most of the soldiers knew it even existed.”
“What did you hear?”
“What do you mean?”
“Back at the town. What did the soldiers talk about?”
The question had been nagging at her ever since L15. The guards assigned to watch her back then hadn’t been very talkative, and she was confined to a room where she didn’t get to interact with the townspeople. She saw them from her window — the way they lived, went about their lives, and sometimes she could hear the tail end of their chatter — but she never really knew them.
“Mostly about everyday things,” Nate said. “What they used to do before, that sort of thing. They weren’t all bad, you know.”
“The soldiers…”
“Yeah.” He paused for a moment, looking thoughtful. “Some of them were in it for the power trip, but most of them…” He shook his head, then pursed his lips into a forced smile. “There were a couple of good guys back there.”
She didn’t ask him if one of those “good guys” had been back at the highway because she decided she’d rather not know. They’d all had to do things these days that they weren’t completely proud of. Gaby didn’t regret very many things, but sometimes the more violent situations stuck with her for days afterward. Every now and then when she closed her eyes, she still remembered Mercy Hospital back in Lafayette, and the blood and the screams and the gunshots…
This is our existence. Surviving from day to day. Night to night.
Everyone dies, sooner or later. Everyone.
“Gaby,” Nate said, smiling across the back of the moving truck at her. “We’ll make it through tonight. We’ll be around to see tomorrow, and the day after that. We have to, otherwise I won’t be able to convince you what a charming devil I am.”
She smiled back at him.
Or tried to, anyway. It may or may not have been all that believable, but at the moment it was all she could manage, and he looked like he desperately needed to see it.
Her watch had just ticked to four in the afternoon when Danny finally slowed down and stopped the Chevy in the middle of the two-lane highway. The heavy vehicle creaked as Danny turned off the engine and climbed out.
“Stretch ’em if you got ’em,” he shouted.
The girls climbed out, and Gaby hopped out of the back with her M4. She exchanged a brief grin with Claire, who had also come out of the Silverado, still clutching onto her FNH shotgun, ready for battle.
“Are we almost there?” the thirteen-year-old asked.
“Almost,” Gaby said.
She glanced around at their surroundings. Every inch of grass looked like the last few thousand they had passed. The same went for the water on the other side. The truth was, without Song Island anywhere in the distance, she had no idea where they were. This side of the lake was all new to her.
Danny had placed the portable ham radio on the hood of the truck and was fiddling with the buttons and dials.
She walked over. “Where are we exactly?”
“We should be directly beside the island if my internal GPS is correct.”
“Internal GPS?” she said doubtfully.
“By which I mean, the map.”
She looked back at the lake, but despite her best efforts, she couldn’t make out any signs of the island in the distance. “There’s nothing out there, Danny.”
“It’s there. Just too far to see from this side of the lake.”
“So why did we stop here?”
He showed her his watch. “We don’t have time to circle all the way around to the marina. Besides, we’re running low on gas.”
“How low?”
“I’ve-been-driving-on-fumes-for-the-last-thirty-minutes low.”
Nate had walked over. “We’re out of gas?”
“Unless you have a secret stash hidden somewhere, Famous Nathan, that’s an affirmative.”
“I still don’t know what that means.”
“That’s what ESPN’s for,” Danny said. He turned back to the radio and pressed the lever and spoke into the microphone. “Song Island, come in. Roger if you roger me, roger.”
A male voice answered almost immediately. “Danny? Is that you?”
“It ain’t Danny Elfman. Although I was known to play a pretty mean Casio keyboard back in college.”
“Holy shit, you’re alive,” the man said.
“You sound surprised.”
“Yeah, well, you know…” The man disappeared from the line for a moment before returning about ten seconds later. “I just told Lara over the two-way. She’s still on the yacht.”
“Who is that?” Gaby asked. “I don’t recognize the voice.”
“That’s Roy,” Danny said. “He came over with a handful of people after you left on your helicopter adventure.”
“Danny?” a female voice said through the radio, sounding slightly out of breath. This one Gaby recognized instantly. Carly. “You asshole. You had me worried.”
Danny smiled. “Sorry, babe. You know I love you. Girls have been throwing themselves at me, but I told them to back off because there’s only one redhead for me.”
“I want names,” Carly said.
Gaby nodded at Nate, and they drifted to the back of the truck to give Danny some privacy. That, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to be around when someone on the island got to asking about Will, which they would, eventually.
The girls were skipping rocks across the calm lake on the other side of the truck while Annie watched them. The sight of the girls being so carefree for the first time in such a long time made Gaby smile.
“They look happy,” Nate said next to her. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen kids that happy.”
“What about back at L17? Did you have kids there?”
“A lot of kids. Most of them were happy to be there. Not all of them, but most. Did both girls come from L15?”
“Just Milly,” Gaby said.
She thought about Peter, the man whom Milly had treated like a brother. Peter was gone, and in so many ways Annie had taken his place. That was how it worked these days. You needed someone to cling to, because the emotional loneliness was sometimes worse than the physical isolation.
Gaby glanced back as Danny walked over to them.
“Are we at the right spot?” she asked him.
“Close enough,” Danny said. “Looks like running out of gas might have saved our lives.”
“How’s that?” Nate asked.
“Apparently there is a very strong possibility of bad guys with big guns lying in wait at the bridge up the road. So instead of us braving that snake pit, the kids from Song Island will be coming here to pick us up. It’ll take longer, but it’ll keep us from being dead, and gosh darn it, that’s a good thing.”
“How long before they get here?” Gaby asked.
“Long enough. So I need you and the Natester to pull security until they arrive.”
“Did you tell her?”
Danny shook his head. She didn’t have to say who “her” was; he already knew. “She was busy on the yacht.” He pointed down the road. “Former bad guy, you take that side. Gaby, the other one. Stay within shouting distance in case you see or hear anything that isn’t us or the fishies.”
Nate gave her an exasperated look before heading off to take up position farther down the road. She did the same thing in the opposite direction, with Danny falling in beside her. Gaby made a concerted effort to walk slower to accommodate his limping pace.