Now that was something you didn’t see every day. He still couldn’t get over the sight of watching fear flashing across their eyes.
I guess they still remember fear. Welcome back to the human race.
Well, sort of.
He was doing calm, slow breaststrokes, simultaneously hoping to find shore and dreading it. He hadn’t figured out yet what he would do when he finally got there. Climb up and…then what? There were going to be creatures waiting for him. He had seen them from the Tower, racing back and forth like little speed freaks along the shoreline.
Where the hell was he going, anyway? Dammit. He’d lost track of his direction again. The closest shoreline would be the marina and the burnt-down house, but he couldn’t see signs of them at the moment even after stopping and twirling around in a circle.
Then again, it was so dark he could barely see more than a few meters in front of him, so that certainly didn’t help. For all he knew, he had been swimming around in circles these last few minutes…hours? No, minutes. It couldn’t have been hours yet. Could it?
He sighed. Maybe he should be grateful he couldn’t locate land. Drowning might be preferable to fighting a horde of those things, even with the silver bullets in his submachine gun and two spare magazines.
One year. He had survived for one year. Not so bad. Most of the world’s population had turned into ghoulish creatures overnight, except him. Certainly no one would have put money on him making it through this long. Only God knew how he had made it when so many hadn’t.
God.
That was funny. He didn’t believe in God, and he was pretty sure the old guy didn’t believe in him, either. Keo didn’t blame him. He had too much blood on his hands to think anyone — anything—floating on a cloud up in the sky was looking out for him.
Keo looked up at the twinkling stars. It was peaceful tonight, with only the waves sloshing against him to fill the silence. Everything was so serene he didn’t know why he was even still treading water. It was time to just stop and let go. He, too, would sink to the bottom of Beaufont Lake and join those pesky black-eyed bastards. Some people would call that poetic, but Keo was just lazy and felt like giving his legs and arms a rest.
“See the world. Kill some people. Make some—”
The gradual whine of a motorized device intruded on his thoughts.
He spun around and caught the white spotlight as it danced across the water and blasted him in the face. Keo flinched and held up one hand to keep from being blinded. He managed to peer through his fingers at a white boat. Long and sleek, being powered in his direction by what sounded like a trolling motor. He wouldn’t have heard it at all if it wasn’t the only thing running in the entire lake at the moment, and was almost on top of him.
Keo lowered his hand and gripped the MP5SD under water. The boat’s passengers hadn’t fired yet, so he assumed whoever was onboard wasn’t shooting on sight. That was good, because it meant he had the advantage.
Yeah, right!
He slipped his forefinger into the trigger guard but kept the barrel of the submachine gun under water as the boat neared. A little bit closer and he’d find out, once and for all, if the German gun could fire while partially submerged in water.
“Keo!” a voice shouted from the boat.
He relaxed at the sound of the voice and grinned against the spotlight. Of all the people he expected to see out here right now, she was definitely not one of them.
The vessel slowed down as it reached him, waves jostling him around and making staying in one place difficult. They angled alongside him and he saw the familiar tall blonde figure behind the steering wheel, two hands frantically trying to keep the boat from running him over and under. Keo had a sudden image of being saved, only to be accidentally shredded by the propellers. Now that would have been ironic.
The girl stopped the boat, hurried over to the portside, and leaned over. “You’re alive,” she said, grinning down at him.
“So are you,” Keo said. “I thought you were on the yacht.”
“No, we never made it.”
“That makes two of us. Who else made it?”
“Later. Get up here first.”
He grabbed her extended arm and let her pull him up. She was a tall kid, but lean and not very muscular. It didn’t help that he had been soaked in water for all this time and “gained” weight as a result. He crawled over the gunwale like a crab, snaking arms and legs over every stable piece along the boat he could find. Finally, he slumped over the side and landed on the floor, then struggled to sit back up with his back against the side, water pouring out of every inch of him.
Gaby wasn’t alone in the boat. Lara was in the back, using a second spotlight to treat Danny’s wound. It looked like a big ugly gunshot to the side. There was already a thick stack of bloodied gauze next to them, and it was clear Lara had been working on him for some time. She looked pretty shot up herself and was grimacing with every little movement she made.
“Glad you made it, Keo,” Lara said.
“You came looking for me?” he said, not able to hide his surprise.
“Gaby swore she saw someone else making a run for the water while we were fleeing down the beach. We weren’t sure if it was you or one of the soldiers, but we thought we needed to find out before rejoining the others.”
“What if I’d been a soldier?”
“Then I’d have run you over,” Gaby said.
He chuckled. “My lucky night, then.”
“You and I have very different definitions of ‘luck,’ Keo,” Lara smiled.
“Hey, any night where I’m alive at the end of it is a lucky night,” he smiled back. He nodded at Danny. “How’s Jokes-a-lot doing?”
She frowned. “He’s lost a lot of blood.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll live.” She looked over at Gaby, that steely resolve he had come to respect so much returning in the blink of an eye. “Let’s find the Trident, Gaby. Zoe will be able to do more for Danny there.”
“We know the Trident made it?” Keo asked. “The soldiers didn’t attack it?”
“Not as far as we know,” Lara said. Then, “I guess we’ll find out soon.”
Gaby switched off the trolling motor, then hurried back behind the steering wheel and switched on the outboard motor. It coughed, then caught, and the sound of it powering up was like an explosion against the silent lake.
“Why the trolling motor?” Keo asked her, shouting over the roar.
“In case there were soldiers still around!” Gaby shouted back.
“And now?”
“We’ve been circling for almost thirty minutes. If they’re still around, we would have run into them by now!”
Just in case, Keo thought, and slipped the MP5SD in front of him and looked off the side as the boat started moving.
Gaby pushed on the throttle and the stern dipped slightly as the vessel picked up speed until they were racing across open water, the spotlight at the front lighting their path.
The Trident was exactly where it was supposed to be, drifting half a kilometer from the opening into the channel that connected Beaufont Lake with the Gulf of Mexico. He saw silhouetted figures moving on the main and upper decks as soon as they were within sight of it and wondered if one of them was manning the M240 right now, ready to blast away like they had back at the island.
The luxury yacht looked like a ghost ship afloat on the lake with all of its lights still switched off, and only the moonlight to hint at its presence. That is, until the people onboard saw the much smaller boat approaching with its spotlight shining in the darkness. The Trident’s industrial strength lights quickly blasted on at full intensity, nearly blinding Keo in the process.