Lara hurried over and looked down and could see the creature sinking, reaching out with its bony arms for her. Then it was gone, and the waters of Beaufont Lake settled over the spot where it had vanished.
“Lara,” Gaby said behind her.
She looked back at Gaby, saw her staring past her and at the island. She followed Gaby’s gaze back to the beach — or where she thought it was supposed to be. Normally she would be able to see the long stretch of white sand from anywhere, even at night without lights. That wasn’t the case this time. Everywhere she looked, there was just shifting, moving darkness.
Lara shivered, even though they were already forty to fifty yards from land and there was no way they could throw themselves that far. Or, at least, she hoped not.
She looked away. She didn’t need to see anymore. The island was gone. Lost. She had fought against it — tried like mad to keep it — but the truth was staring back at her now.
Song Island was lost. Truly, truly lost.
She crouched next to Danny instead and felt along the side of his neck. To her great relief, he still had a pulse, but it was very weak. He was alive, though, something she hadn’t been entirely certain of earlier.
“Is he okay?” Gaby asked.
“He’s alive,” Lara said.
She looked up at Gaby, who was still staring back at the island. But Lara knew what she was really looking for. Josh.
Lara couldn’t wrap her mind around what he had done. He had saved their lives. Pushed the boat back into the water. How? That was the question. Could Will, even at full strength, have done something like that? She remembered seeing Josh buried up to his knees in the sand as they were backing up. What kind of strength had the kid possessed to do something like that?
“Gaby, we need to go,” she said. “Blaine and the others will be waiting for us.”
Gaby nodded and spun the steering wheel. She looked back at the island as long as she could until they had turned completely around. The boat started moving smoothly under her, and Lara fumbled her way to the bench at the front and sat down.
She was tired, and sitting down seemed to help, even though every part of her was threatening to come apart at any second.
“Lara,” Gaby said. She looked back as Gaby threw her a white pill bottle. “Don’t read the label; just take two.”
Lara nodded. She didn’t have the strength to argue, anyway. She opened the bottle, took out two pills, and swallowed them. She had never been good about taking medicine without a glass of water, so she felt a little proud of herself when the pills went down surprisingly easy.
“I think I saw someone on the other side of beach,” Gaby said. “At the same time we were running for the boat.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know. He was wearing dark clothes.” She shook her head. “It could have been one of Josh’s…” Gaby stopped in mid-sentence, then said instead, “How long will Blaine wait for us? I don’t want to leave anyone behind, Lara. Not again. Not ever again…”
CHAPTER 26
WILL
Kate.
He used the wall behind him as a crutch, because he wasn’t confident in his legs. The sight of her in person after all this time left him speechless, confused, and unable to fully understand how the last few months had all ended up with him here, face to face with her.
She was taller than he remembered. Thin, but not quite as skeletal as the others. He recalled seeing this new version of her in the town of Harvest that morning at the water tower. But that was from afar, and though he recognized her (even now, he didn’t know how, he just did), it wasn’t the same as seeing her standing before him.
The blue of her eyes was ethereal and nothing like the crystal blue of Lara’s. These seemed to actually pulsate, as if they were living organisms in and of themselves.
The creatures were gone. All of them. They had slinked away into the night, leaving just the two of them, like children abandoning the room to bickering parents. He couldn’t even smell them anymore, and in their place was just the crisp night air. He didn’t know how that was possible. Usually when the ghouls were around, there was always the stink of compost.
Maybe it was Kate. There was an iciness about her presence, an almost regal vibe that made him want to fall to his knees and bow. But of course he did no such thing, because this wasn’t the Kate he knew. That Kate was gone — dead. He would know; he had shot her in the chest himself.
This Kate wasn’t anyone he knew. This Kate was…more.
But even new Kate could die.
“Shooting them doesn’t work, not even with silver bullets,” he had told Danny. “But taking out the brain seems to work just fine.”
“You still need silver for that, or will any ol’ bullet do?” Danny had asked.
“I have no idea. Let’s just use silver to be sure.”
Being sure was a luxury he didn’t have at the moment, because he had no silver bullets on him. But he still had the gun, and the magazine was half-full. So there was that.
He measured the distance between Kate and him: Three meters.
Not too far, but not too close, either. If last night was any indication, the blue-eyed ones were fast. Much, much faster than the black eyes. (What had Kate called them? Her “brood”?) But how much faster was Kate? Could she dodge a bullet—
“Yes,” Kate said. Her voice was almost a hiss, not the same soft and melodic sound that it was inside his head.
“Yes”? he thought. Yes what, Kate?
“Yes,” she said again, as if he should know.
Because he did know.
Yes, she was fast.
Yes, she could take him before he could put a bullet in her head and splatter the brain inside. Because Kate, like the other blue-eyed ones, still had brains. That was their weak spot.
All he had to do was hit the brain…
Captain Optimism, amirite, Danny?
“He’s dead, you know,” she said.
Dead?
“Danny,” the ghoul said. The creature. Kate. “On the island. He was shot, and he’s dead. Everyone’s dead, Will. Song Island is lost.”
“You’re lying.”
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
“Lara is gone, too. But you don’t have to join her.”
Was she lying? She was certainly capable of it. She was a monster, after all. There was no such thing as honor among monsters. Everyone knew that.
She might have snorted. Or made some other derisive sound. It was hard to tell because the noises that came out of her (it) were difficult to interpret.
She hadn’t moved from her spot. Three meters, that was all that separated them, though it felt so much closer because he could hear her voice like a sharp knife. He didn’t have to strain, even though her hisses were unnaturally soft, almost whispers. Or was he hearing her inside his head, too? That could have been very possible.
Three meters for a head shot…
“More than enough time,” she said.
He smiled at her. He didn’t know where it came from. Maybe it was the clown in him, or the gung-ho asshole he thought he had whipped out of his system since the first weekend of Basic Training.
“Are you sure about that?” he asked. “Are you really that fast?”