“Keep your eyes on the road, pretty boy.”
“What the hell for? There’s nothing out here. Even less than nothing. If there was a name for this place, they’d call it Nothingland. Nothingapolis. Loadacrapola.”
He wasn’t wrong. Route 13 out of Dunbar was uneventful. Will was ready for an ambush or at least some kind of activity on their way out, but there was none. The streets remained deserted, and the main highway connecting Dunbar to Interstate 10 was a flat two-lane road with empty scenery on both sides of them. He expected to start seeing farmland and houses soon, but apparently they hadn’t ventured far out enough.
‘Loadacrapola’ is right.
Then Danny said, “Whoa,” and slowly stepped on the brake.
Will looked out the front windshield and immediately saw a body lying across the highway where Route 13 intersected with a country road on its right side.
“Body?” Will said.
“Body,” Danny nodded.
“Stay sharp.”
“I’m so sharp I give myself pinpricks.”
Will put down the FNH and unslung the M4A1. The window was already rolled down, so all he had to do was focus in order to listen in on his surroundings. Not that he could hear very much over the churning of the Ford’s engines. He did glimpse something to his right in the distance, along the country road. It looked like a cemetery.
Now that’s not an ominous sign at all.
Danny stopped in front of the body. It was wearing a camo uniform and lying on its stomach. “Ambush?”
“Doubt it.”
“You go out and make sure while I wait in here.”
“Don’t leave without me.”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
Will opened the passenger side door and hopped down. He scanned the area — the land to his right, then up and down the highway. He stepped on bullet casings as he moved toward the body.
The figure was definitely dead, fresh blood pooling underneath him. The man’s hip holster was empty and there was no sign of a weapon nearby. Will turned the man over onto his back with the toe of his boot. Male, twenties, with a ponytail. “Lumis” was written over his right breast pocket. He hadn’t been dead for very long. There were no vultures or crows circling above, so the smell hadn’t reached the carrions yet. He had been shot once in the hip, then again in the back.
His right ear clicked, and Danny’s voice came through the earbud in his ear, part of the comm system they had recovered from Ennis’s basement earlier. “Dead?”
“Looks dead to me.”
“Give it mouth to mouth just in case.”
“I think I’ll skip that part.”
“Why, cause he’s a guy? You’re such a homophobe.”
Will straightened up and looked around at the flat country landscape again. There was nothing out here, which made stumbling across a body odd. Someone had to have killed this man. Maybe someone had actually survived Dunbar last night. Maybe that person might have even been Gaby…
Captain Optimism.
“I’m heading back,” he said into his throat mic.
He was halfway to the Bronco when he heard rustling and spun back around toward the ditch that ran alongside the country road. He didn’t hesitate and ran toward the source of the sound with his rifle at the ready.
“Don’t shoot!” a voice shouted as he neared.
Another man in his early twenties, also wearing camo, was crouched in the ditch with his hands raised high. The man was unarmed, sporting an empty hip holster and a makeshift tourniquet around his right ankle. His face was pale and he was covered in sweat, and the name “Darren” was stenciled across his nametag.
“Don’t shoot!” Darren shouted again.
“Get up here,” Will said.
Darren hesitated, then stood up and climbed out of the ditch with some difficulty. The handkerchief he had tied around his ankle was covered in blood and he winced each time he put pressure on the leg.
Danny had come out of the Bronco and was standing behind Will now, scanning their surroundings for possible signs of a threat. “Looks like we missed the party.”
“Looks like,” Will said. Then to Darren, “What happened here?”
“We were parked on the road when someone attacked us,” Darren said.
“You were in a car?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“They took it.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
“I don’t know,” Darren said. He wiped at the beads of sweat dripping down his face. “There were four of them.”
“What did they look like?”
“They were girls.”
“Girls?”
“Yeah.”
“You mean kids?”
Darren seemed to think about the question before answering. “Teenagers, I guess.”
Will exchanged a quick look with Danny, who grinned back at him. “Ya think?”
Maybe…
“Was one of those teenagers blonde, tall, about five-seven?” Will asked Darren. “Pretty, despite the bruises on her face?”
“You know, the kind you’d give that right leg to take to the prom?” Danny added.
Darren grimaced at him for a few seconds. Will wasn’t sure if it was because of the sun, the pain, the memory of what had happened to him, or maybe all three.
The kid finally nodded. “You guys know her or something?”
Will smiled. “Yeah, we’ve met. Where’d she go, and how long ago?”
24
Lara
Carrie and Lorelei had good things to say about Keo, but more important was what they told her about the “soldiers” and Keo’s reaction to them. He wasn’t their friend. Far from it.
The enemy of my enemy is friend. Isn’t that the old saying, Will?
Then Will called on the radio and told her about Kate. A part of her was still annoyed his ex-girlfriend was visiting him in his dreams. In his dreams. But that was the kid in her talking. The pre-med student who had survived The Purge on pure luck. The new her, the one who had been running Song Island for the last few weeks, was concerned about other things.
Like survival. Hers. And Carly’s. Elise’s and Vera’s, too. The new people who had joined them, hoping for a fresh start. Or, at least, a less terrifying existence. All these people who had come here and now depended on her, and she didn’t know when it would all fall apart.
That was what concerned her the most. The not knowing. Today, tonight, or tomorrow. Or the week after. She knew one thing: they were sitting ducks. The enemy knew where they were at all times. The island that was such a godsend also made them an easy target. There was nowhere to run or hide, just fight.
Just fight…
Those thoughts swirled around her head as she walked to the back of the hotel.
Survival. Their chances would increase when Will and Danny returned. But that wasn’t for a while. A day at least. Maybe two. Gaby was still out there, too. The thought of losing her because Will had to rush back home tormented Lara.
Roy was sitting on a chair outside the makeshift jail cell, an old inventory room with a steel door, when she turned the corner. He glanced up when he heard her footsteps.
“Did you eat yet?” she asked.
“Not yet. Blaine’s supposed to show up in thirty minutes.” He looked nervous this morning, and she guessed he had been waiting for this — the two of them talking — since last night. “Lara, about what happened …”
“We’re not talking about that right now, Roy.”