“Yes,” she said simply. “I’m not the one who’s dying tonight, Will.”
“You mean dying again?”
Thin creases, like cuts rather than lips, formed something that might have resembled a smile. He wondered how long it had been since Kate — this new Kate — had performed such an act that the result was so horrendous.
“Do you really want to die, Will?” she asked. “Is that what you want?”
“You think I’m scared of dying, Kate? If you think that, then you really never knew me at all.”
He pointed the gun at her, and the moonlight glinted off its smooth side. He expected some kind of reaction, but there was none; Kate stood perfectly still, as if he were armed with nothing more than a water pistol.
“Let’s find out how fast you really are,” he said.
She sighed. Or seemed to sigh. He couldn’t be sure. “You’re so human, Will.”
“When did that become a bad thing?”
“Have you looked around you?”
He grinned. She had a point there. “Tell me one thing: Why?”
“Why?” she repeated.
“Why? Why are you in my head? Why can’t I get rid of you? Why, Kate?” He was almost shouting now. “What the hell do you want from me?”
She didn’t answer for the longest time. In fact, she seemed almost taken aback by the questions. Or was that all in his mind? Was he subscribing human traits to her again in an attempt to understand her?
“It’s lonely,” she said finally, her voice dropping to a mere whisper, so low he wouldn’t have heard if she wasn’t standing so close to him.
Three meters…
“I’m surrounded by billions of us,” she said, “and it’s still so lonely.”
A head shot at three meters. Just under ten feet. That was all it would take to end this. Maybe, like with the farmhouse last night, if he could kill Kate and use her as a shield to keep the black-eyed ones back, he could survive tonight. The other creatures were still out there, waiting — always waiting — even if he couldn’t see or hear or even smell them (Is that your doing too, Kate?).
Maybe, just maybe, this might work.
Then in the morning, he’d find a vehicle and make his way down to Song Island. Or he’d walk, if he couldn’t find a car. It didn’t matter. As long as he was breathing, that was all that mattered. As long as he was still sucking in breath, he could get home to Lara, because Kate was lying about Song Island being lost. She had to be.
He almost smiled, because there it was. The opening he had been waiting for. He knew it would come sooner or later as long as he bided his time. Like always, the trick was to recognize it and jump through feetfirst.
Kill Kate and use her to keep the black eyes back. Repeat what he had done at the farmhouse last night.
Easy peasy.
The only thing standing between him and seeing Lara again was a bullet and three meters. He’d made harder shots in his life. But he was only going to get one shot (Haha, good one) at this. If he missed, and she proved to be just as fast as the others (or faster), then he might not get a second try.
The shot of your life.
No pressure.
“There are others,” she said, when he didn’t respond. “Like me. Like Mabry. But it’s not the same. This colonization — it’ll be over soon. We’re bringing order to the chaos, and the future is bright. You must know that this was how it was always going to end, Will. You can’t win. You must know that by now.”
It doesn’t matter how fast she is. You can’t outrun a bullet.
Hopefully.
“I think you do, Will. You might deny it out loud, but deep down, in your private thoughts, you know I’m right. You can’t win. You never could. You never will.”
He focused on the stunning glow of her blue eyes, the windows to her soul. If she even still had a soul. He imagined he could see the old Kate through those eyes, the one that existed beyond the black flesh and gangly frame.
“When it’s over, we’ll rebuild,” she continued. “We’ve already begun. Humans will serve us and provide for us. There’ll be no more fighting. No more violence. We’ll rise above it all.” She smiled again. Or attempted to. “And when it’s over, when it’s finally all over, I’ll need someone with me. By my side. You, Will. You should be that someone.”
Me?
The reality of what she was saying eluded him. He understood every word of it, but he couldn’t grasp the concept. Maybe it was the idea of being with her after all of this. Or just being with her at all. It was…unnatural.
How did she ever think it could be possible?
How did she ever think he would agree to it?
“I was content to let you waste your time on the island with that little girl until I could convince you to see the truth,” she continued, unbothered by his lack of response. “But then she had to go and make things difficult. That radio broadcast made Mabry angry, and he gave me no choice. And here we are.”
She held her hand out toward him, the palm facing up, the flesh so impossibly tight that he could only see the curvature of bones underneath.
“Fate brought us here, Will. But you don’t believe in fate, do you?”
I believe in what I can touch, and see, and hear, and shoot. I believe you’re not the same Kate, even though you pretend to still be her.
“No,” he said.
“You should. Remember the first time we met? Most of the world was gone, but we still found each other. Something led me to you, and something made you stop there to wait for me. It was fate, Will. Nothing happens without a reason. Everything works to achieve a perfect balance. Order out of chaos. That’s what this is. This is order.”
He stared at her and knew she believed every word of it. That, more than anything, was surprising. The Kate he remembered was mature, smart, and would have laughed in his face if he started talking about destiny and fate and strange, unexplainable psychic connections.
And yet here she was, trying to convince him all of this was…fate?
He pitied her. He hadn’t realized what he was feeling until now. There was something sad about Kate — despite her millions of ghouls, her brood — because she longed for a connection that she couldn’t have.
You’re gonna get a good laugh out of this one, Danny ol’ chum.
Her fingers moved as she prompted him. “Give me the gun, Will. Let it be your token of surrender. You have no choice.”
“No,” he said.
“No?” she repeated. There was a stunned look on her face. Or, at least, something he interpreted as stunned. It could have been anything, really.
He grinned again. It was reckless, and he must have known she wasn’t going to receive it well, but he couldn’t help himself.
“Sorry,” he said, “but Lara would kick my ass if she found out I was cheating on her with a corpse.”
He caught the sudden movements out of the corner of his eye just before the ghouls came back, bringing with them the terrible smell; a swarm of them appearing from the darkness, as if oozing out of the night itself. There were too many to count, so he didn’t bother. He always knew they were out there so he wasn’t surprised, but how the hell had they appeared so fast?
His eyes were drawn back to Kate because something had changed with her (it); a flash of emotion flickering across her blackened face, the skin so constricted it might as well have been satin over a skull in a medical lab somewhere. Even her eyes seemed to flare up, growing in size, the blue doubling (tripling?) in intensity. He might have even believed they were on fire if they weren’t so blue.