“You think your girlfriend’s going to find us?” Danny asked. “Kate struck me as the persistent type.”
“Ex-girlfriend.”
“Same difference. What’s with you and the crazy ones, anyway?”
“Lara’s not crazy.”
“Not yet.”
“I’m going to tell her you said that.”
“Hey, hey, let’s not start throwing each other under the bus now,” Danny said.
They waited until an hour before sundown before entering their respective trailers. Will and Lara, with Josh and Gaby, in one, and Danny with Carly and the girls in the other. They pulled the doors closed, and with the LED lamps hanging from the ceiling, the interior of the trailer looked like some otherworldly cave with blindingly white lights.
The semitrailer doors didn’t have locks on the inside, but Will had made sure to choose trailers with simple door designs that could be chained in place from the inside. They slid steel bars across the latches as a secondary measure. The chains were taut enough that they could probably withstand most assaults, but it never hurt to have a backup plan.
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Will heard Danny doing the same with his trailer’s lock next door. He said into the radio, “We good?”
“We’re spiffy and dandy,” Danny said through the radio.
“All right, let’s go silent. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
“Try not to wake me up unless it’s absolutely necessary. A man needs his beauty rest, you know. The ladies, too, I guess.”
Will glanced briefly his watch: 7:56 p.m. “Thirty minutes, give or take.”
Josh and Gaby settled into the back. Will watched Gaby closely. He didn’t blame her for her reluctance to climb back into a semitrailer. It was more than that, though. Gaby had killed a man during their escape. And yet, she hadn’t made a scene about his plan.
She has no idea how tough she really is, or what she’s capable of.
He glanced over at Lara, trying to stave off sleep next to him. “With any luck, we’ll be in Beaufont Lake by tomorrow evening.”
She nodded and leaned tiredly against him. He slipped his arm around her waist, careful to avoid putting any pressure on her left arm.
“Go to sleep,” he whispered.
“I will if you promise not to dream about your ex-girlfriend again,” she whispered back.
He smiled. “I’ll do my best.”
Darkness came at 8:29 p.m. on the dot.
The temperature dropped noticeably, even inside their steel confines. He turned off the LED lamps, and his world would have been pitch-black if he weren’t wearing the night-vision goggles. He used them to navigate back to Lara.
He sat down next to her, the Remington shotgun in his left hand. The M4A1 rested on another mattress nearby, along with a second Remington and half the ammo they carried with them. Danny had the other half.
Will felt Lara slide against him as he took the night-vision goggles off. It wasn’t nearly as hot inside as he had feared, and with nightfall coming, the temperature would be just north of bearable. At least, bearable enough to sleep through, though Will didn’t think he would be getting a lot of sleep anyway.
What was that Kate had said? “Your mind is tired, Will. You’re exhausted.”
She was right. He was exhausted down to his bones, and had been for the last few months, ever since they were forced to abandon Harold Campbell’s facility. He was moving on fumes, warm bottles of Red Bull, pure black coffee that tasted more like sludge, and energy bars. Not to mention fear. Not for himself, but for Lara. For Carly. For Danny and the girls. He stayed awake because he had to.
He thought about Song Island. Maybe things would change once they got there.
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
He couldn’t really make out Josh and Gaby behind him without the night-vision goggles, though he could hear their slight movements against the mattress. They weren’t asleep, not yet, and maybe they were purposely trying to stay awake. He didn’t really need them awake, but he wasn’t going to tell them what to do. They had survived out here for eight months on their own, and Will figured they had earned the right to be as paranoid as he was.
It took thirty minutes before he heard the first one moving outside, bare feet slapping against concrete as it went down the row of semitrailers. Lara heard it, too, because her body stiffened next to him, and he felt her hand reaching for her Glock.
Will slipped his hand around her waist to let her know he was there. She relaxed a bit, but not much. He kept his other hand on the Remington, lying on the mattress next to him.
He felt safe in here, surrounded by the preparations they had put in place. Even if they were discovered, getting in was another matter entirely.
What had Miguel said? “Have you seen those semitrailers? You can’t tear into those things. They’re like a moving safe.”
Thanks for the idea, Folger, you dead piece of shit.
The noises outside became more obvious as a single ghoul became two, then two became a dozen. Then he heard them moving on the roof above him. They were hopping from trailer to trailer, and each time one of them landed and leaped off, the steel container trembled slightly in their wake.
On cue, his right ear clicked, and he heard Danny’s voice, soft and calm, but clearly whispering on his end: “I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your semitrailer down.”
“You felt that, huh?” Will whispered.
“Felt it, heard it, and smelt it. How many do you think? A dozen?”
“At least.”
“They can’t sniff us, right? Cause I haven’t taken a shower in a while.”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“Good. Carly says I reek. Maximum BO.”
“Go to sleep. Nothing’s going to happen tonight.”
“Sleep. Right. That’s going to happen.” Danny paused, then added, “A clown wakes up one morning and decides to visit his doctor. His doctor takes one look at him and asks, ‘So what’s the problem? Why are you here?’ To which the clown replies, ‘I dunno, doc, I woke up this morning and I just felt funny.’”
“Go to sleep,” Will said.
Lara was looking at him in the darkness.
He shook his head and whispered, “Just Danny being Danny.”
She laid her cheek against his chest, and Will tightened his arm around her. His hand accidentally brushed against her breasts. “Not tonight, dear, we have company,” she whispered, her words slurred by the Percocet she had taken for the pain earlier.
He smiled and wondered how the kids were doing back there. He couldn’t tell if they were moving, or even breathing.
Will caught a flicker of movement from the corner of his left eye. He looked over at the breathing hole about a meter from the end of his mattress and saw something flitting across the other side of the opening.
Black eyes stared up through the hole, searching, searching…
Dead, not stupid.
Will lifted the Remington to his lap and slipped his finger into the trigger guard, but he didn’t thumb off the safety yet. From his angle, he could see the tiny drilled hole, but the ghoul wouldn’t be able to see much of anything except for the ceiling directly above it. And there was nothing up there to give away their position or indicate there was anything inside. The closest LED lamp was three meters away, but the creature wouldn’t be able to pick it up with the naked eye given its limited angle.