“That’s the only reason?”
Donna shrugged. “Harrison… I never liked him. My dad used to teach us about what kind of man to stay away from. You know, when we got older. Harrison fit his description perfectly.”
“So why did you stay with them for so long?”
“Dunbar’s the only place we know. And besides, the others were pretty cool. Rachel, for one.”
“Was she back at the VFW hall?”
“No. She was outside with Harrison. She’s like his second-in-command.”
“She’s really your friend?” Claire asked from behind them. “The woman on the radio?”
“She is,” Gaby said.
“She sounds cool.”
“She is pretty cool.”
“And the island is safe?” Donna said doubtfully. “The creatures — these ghoul things — can’t get to it?”
“I was there for three months and they never crossed the water,” Gaby said.
“What about the hotel? Tell me about the hotel. You said it had power, which means hot showers, right?”
Gaby nodded. “All the hot showers you want.”
“Oh my God,” Donna smiled widely. “It’s been so long since I’ve had an honest to goodness real shower.”
“You smell it, too,” Claire said.
Donna rolled her eyes. “It’s not like you smell any better.”
“Better than you.”
“Oh, shut up.”
Claire snorted, but didn’t have any comeback for that one. The thirteen-year-old continued to keep watch behind them, eyes roaming the cemetery for potential threats or surprises.
“Can she really use that rifle?” Gaby asked Donna.
“She was good with it before all of this,” Donna said. “Now, she goes to sleep with that thing in her arms. It’s creepy.”
“I heard that,” Claire said.
“You were supposed to.”
“Whatever.”
Gaby smiled. It had been a while since she heard sisterly bickering. In some strange way, she liked it. It reminded her that, whatever happened, sisters would still be sisters even at the end of the world.
“Come on,” Gaby said, glancing up at the sun. “The faster we get up Route 13, the faster we’ll hit Interstate 10.”
“And Song Island after that,” Donna said.
“And Song Island after that. Meanwhile, keep an eye out for any vehicles. It’d be nice not to have to walk the entire way there.”
“Can you drive?”
“A little.”
“Good, because I never got my driver’s license.”
“I doubt anyone’s going to ticket you, Donna.”
“No, but she might drive into a ditch and kill us all,” Claire said.
Donna groaned. “God, you’re stupid, Claire.”
“Whatever.”
They finally reached the front gates of the cemetery and stepped through it. They turned left, heading back toward the highway in the distance.
They hadn’t gone very far toward the highway when Gaby saw sunlight glinting off the metal dome of a vehicle parked at the intersection between Route 13 and the country road that had led them to the cemetery. The car hadn’t been there last night.
She grabbed Donna’s arm and pulled her left, toward the ditch and off the road, snapping, “Car.”
Behind them, Milly and Claire smartly followed without a word. Gaby slipped to one knee and unslung the M4, flicking off the safety.
Donna was on both knees in the grass, peering forward. “Is that a truck?”
Gaby nodded. It was a big silver truck, about 200 yards further up the road and parked along the shoulder. She couldn’t tell what kind of vehicle from this distance, not that she had ever been particularly good at distinguishing one car from another. The end of the world hadn’t done a whole lot to fill in that particular knowledge gap.
A man was climbing out of the front passenger seat of the truck now and did something she couldn’t quite make out from this distance. Too bad she hadn’t grabbed a pair of binoculars. She remembered seeing a few of them on the shelf in the basement under the VFW hall. Will and Danny would have picked one up just in case.
“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst,” they would say.
“What should we do?” Donna whispered. She didn’t really have to, given how far they were from the highway. Then again, sound did travel these days, so maybe the girl was wiser than Gaby gave her credit for.
She glanced back at Claire and Milly. They were crouched behind them, Claire with her rifle in front of her, looking ready for action. Milly was a quivering mess, and Gaby expected her to jump up and run off at any second.
She looked back at the truck just in time to catch a second figure approaching from the other side of the road. Both men. She could tell by the way they moved. After a while, she began to make out the multiple colors of their camo uniforms.
Josh’s soldiers.
Were they looking for her? Had Josh sent them? He would have been informed by now of her escape. There was one thing about Josh — the old and the new — that she knew with absolute certainty: he didn’t give up when he set his mind on achieving a goal. Unfortunately, that was her at the moment.
Whatever he had become, whatever he had deluded himself into believing, he was still, at heart, the kid who fell in love with her the day she moved in across the street from him. She knew that because he had told her.
Kid? Did I just call him a kid?
He’s not a kid anymore. He’s nineteen. Old enough to know better. Old enough to stop lying to himself.
“Gaby?” Donna whispered. “What should we do?”
They were watching her curiously. Donna next to her and the two girls behind them.
Good question.
Options. What were her available options?
She could look at this as a stroke of bad luck, but that was probably not what Will or Danny would have done. No, they would see the soldiers and the truck (but especially the truck) as an opportunity.
Besides, she didn’t feel like walking the rest of the way to Beaufont Lake, anyway.
“Stay here,” Gaby said, looking first at Donna, then at the thirteen-year-olds. “Don’t move from this position, and stay as low as you can until I give you the word.”
“I can help,” Claire said eagerly.
“Yes, you can — by keeping everyone here safe with that rifle.”
She fixed the girl with a hard look and Claire, understanding — which didn’t mean she liked it one bit by the way she gritted her teeth — nodded reluctantly.
“Remember, keep low,” Gaby said. “Don’t make a sound. If anything happens and I don’t come back, wait until they leave, then keep going south until you reach Beaufont Lake. Understand?”
Donna nodded without any enthusiasm. Like her sister, she apparently didn’t see any point in arguing. Milly just looked mortified by the whole thing.
“Okay,” Gaby said. “I’ll be back.”
She gave them her best smile, then shrugged off her pack and handed it to Milly since Donna was already carrying the supply bag. She got up and began jogging up the country road, back toward the highway. With just the rifle, her holstered sidearm, and spare magazines around her waist, she felt lighter on her feet, though of course that could just be the adrenaline trying to convince her she could, possibly, survive this.
Captain Optimism, right, Danny?
They needed the truck. It was going to make returning to Beaufont Lake easier, faster, and safer. There was no way around it. That truck had a working battery and likely a full tank of gas to be out here by itself. She needed that damn truck in the worst way.
Gaby was fortunate the country road had ditches on both sides, each about four feet deep. That allowed her to slide all the way down to the bottom of one of them and, hunched slightly over, move up the road without being seen.