“Morning?” Danny said.
“Morning.”
“We made it.”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s not do last night again.”
“Deal.”
Danny pulled the tissue paper out and flicked them away. “I hate nosebleeds.”
“I wouldn’t call what you had last night nosebleeds. More like a blood-gushing torrent.”
“That bad, huh?”
“I was pretty sure you were dead. I had a speech prepared for Carly and everything.”
“I kinda wish I was.” He glanced over at Will, sitting to his right. “You look like how I feel.”
“That bad?”
“Worse.”
Will didn’t feel like moving from where he had been sitting for the last few hours. In-between chewing on a pair of granola bars from one of his pockets, he had downed two more painkillers. His side throbbed and his neck hurt, but he was alive, even if every inch of him claimed otherwise.
“Water?” Danny said.
“Back in Ennis’s basement.”
He looked over at one of the stalls. “I can’t believe I’m asking this, but…toilet water?”
“Went dry a long time ago.”
“So what’s the good news?”
“We’re still alive.”
“That’ll work. So, you got anymore of the good stuff?”
Will pulled out the light bottle of painkillers and tossed it over. “Finish it off.”
“This everything?”
“More in the packs…”
“…back at Ennis’s,” Danny finished. He shook out two, then decided four was the better number and popped them into his mouth and chewed on them as if they were rock candy. He tossed the empty bottle away and watched it skid across the room. “It wasn’t my imagination, right? There was one of those blue-eyed buggers in the hallway.”
“Yup.”
“I shot it.”
“You did.”
“With silver bullets.”
“Uh huh.”
“I mean, I shot the crap out of it. A dozen rounds. At least six.”
“Give or take.”
“So how the mother truckin’ hell did it keep coming?”
“I was going to tell you,” Will said. “I saw one of them outside the bar last night. I shot it with a silver bullet and it didn’t go down.”
Danny smirked. “And you were saving this for…when?”
Will shrugged. “Eventually. We were sort of preoccupied with other things last night. Like trying to keep Rachel from killing us. Then I fell asleep. And you know what happened after that.”
“Excuses, excuses.” Danny paused, then, “So why are we still alive?”
“Shooting them doesn’t work, not even with silver bullets. But taking out the brain seems to work just fine.”
“You still need silver for that, or will any ol’ bullet do?”
“I have no idea. Let’s just use silver to be sure.”
“Sounds good to me. That’s what they used to call me back in college, you know. Sure Thing Danny.” He paused again to catch his breath. “Damn, I could use some water.”
“Yup.”
They sat in silence for a moment, staring at nothing in particular. Talking was easier than moving, but it seemed to have tired Danny out almost as much as it had Will.
Danny touched the gash along his left temple, fingers sticky from the ointment and disinfectant Will had used to cover it up when there was enough light to work with. He had wiped as much blood off Danny’s face as he could, but even so, Danny looked like the result of a plastic surgery gone awry.
Danny flinched. “Goddamn, that hurts.”
“So don’t touch it.”
“Yeah, good idea. You’re full of good ideas this morning.” Danny nodded at the long trail of dried blood that led to the door. “Is that mine or Tommy’s?”
“Both.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I think one of them found another way in. Waited for Tommy, then…you know.” He added, almost as if in afterthought, “It took his head.”
“It took his head?”
“Yeah. It took his head.”
“The fuck?”
“What I said.”
“Did you…find it?”
“No. I don’t want to, either.”
The bathroom smelled of something rotten, and it wasn’t just from their sweat and blood. Will had been breathing mostly through his mouth ever since he struggled to drag Danny inside about four hours ago. Even though there were no windows, visibility had greatly improved and he could feel the warmth of the sun against his skin and face coming into the room from…somewhere.
“So,” Danny said after a while.
“So…”
“Blue-eyes.”
“Yeah.”
“Two?”
“Four.”
“Four?”
He told Danny about his dream, the one Kate had shown him. About how they had ambushed Harrison’s people.
“Smart buggers,” Danny said.
“Bratt had it right.”
“What’s that?”
“He called them shock troops. The tip of the spear, sent behind enemy lines to break the resistance. That’s what they did. Harrison and his people have been causing problems for the ghouls, attacking their convoys, that sort of thing. So Kate sent the four blue-eyed ones to take Dunbar.”
“And it was all your ghoulfriend’s idea?”
Will sighed. He hated that word. “She claims it was. She was a former ad executive, you know. It’s what she used to do for a living. Getting people to do what she wants.”
“That how she got you into bed?”
“All she had to do was take her clothes off to accomplish that.”
Danny snorted. “Tits and ass is all it takes with you, huh?”
“Pretty much.”
“You’re such a dude, dude.”
“Dude, right?”
Danny chuckled for a moment, then smacked his dry, cracked lips together. “So, four?”
“I saw four.”
“In the dream.”
“Uh huh.”
“And we’re sure the dream was real?”
“It didn’t feel so much like a dream as they were…memories.”
“Whose?”
“She said one of the ghouls’.”
“She can do that now?”
“I guess so.”
“Man.”
“Yeah,” Will said.
A few more seconds of silence passed between them before Danny said, “But there were only two last night.”
“Two minus four is indeed two.”
“So Mrs. Miller was right. Math really does come in handy in real life. So where are the other two?”
“I have no idea.”
“Does that worry you?”
“Every second of last night.”
Danny’s stomach growled. “Excuse me.”
“Hungry?” Will smiled.
“Just a tad.”
“Well, we know where our packs are…”
“Ennis’s.”
“Yup.”
Danny sighed and reached over and picked up his rifle. “What are we just sitting around here twiddling our thumbs for, then? Let’s get this show on the road.”
Tommy’s headless body wasn’t in the hallway when Will and Danny emerged from the bathroom, weapons at the ready. There wasn’t a whole lot of light back here, and patches of shadows jumped out at them from both sides of the passageway.
They swung left, then right, then stood with their backs together, rifles pointing into the darkness on both sides of them, waiting for something to happen. There should have been an attack from a nest of waiting ghouls, only there wasn’t.
“Shoot for the head?” Danny asked.
“Shoot for the head,” Will nodded.
“Should have told me that last night.”