Blaine followed her, wondering if she was right. Was he flirting with Maddie? He didn’t think he was. He was being friendly, trying to win her over. That was the point, wasn’t it? She was the only person here who was a potential ally, and he was doing his best to bring her over to their side. If he was flirting at all, it wasn’t on purpose.
Or at least, he didn’t think it was.
Blaine was still trying to justify himself in his own mind when he heard two soft, faded pop-pop sounds in the distance.
He stopped and listened and heard the echoes.
Maddie and Sandra heard them, too, and also stopped in the hallway.
“Was that…?” Sandra said.
“I think so,” Maddie said. She pulled her radio free and keyed it: “Did anyone else hear that? Were those gunshots?”
“It’s Dirk,” Mason said through the radio. He sounded more annoyed than angry. “That son of a whore. I told him to stay the hell away from those people.”
“Stupid Dirk,” Maddie said, looking at the dead man lying face-down on the floor, still wearing his hazmat suit. The man would look like he was sleeping if not for the two holes in his back and the blood pooled inside his suit.
They were inside some kind of clinic along the highway, across from where Will and the others had spent the night before. That was according to Mason, who had been tracking Dirk’s movements since he had sent the man out here to watch them. As for Dirk, he did something Mason told him not to — he showed himself to Will’s group — and ended up dead for his efforts.
The lobby showed signs of a struggle, with a couple of overturned chairs and blood that wasn’t Dirk’s, because all of Dirk’s blood was in his suit. There were two shell casings, so Dirk had never even gotten off a shot, though his killers had taken his gun.
Gerry came out of the hallway behind them, holding a radio in one hand. “The moron turned off his radio and left it in one of the rooms.”
“Dumb bastard,” Mason said. He looked up at them. “See what happens when people don’t do what I tell them? I told Dirk those people were too dangerous, but he didn’t listen. This is what happens when you don’t listen to me.”
They were all wearing gas masks, and it was odd seeing the world through the clear lens. He could tell from the way Sandra fidgeted in her suit next to him that she felt the same way. The suit was surprisingly comfortable in the sun, which he supposed was the point of the special fabric. The gas mask was another story. Besides the fact that it made his voice sound strange, he didn’t like the feel of the plastic pressed against his face. Maddie and the others didn’t seem to even realize they were wearing masks anymore.
“You sure you don’t know who they were?” Mason asked Blaine.
“Yeah,” Blaine said. From his experience, people who couldn’t lie tended to over-explain things, so Blaine kept his answer as short as possible.
“Doesn’t matter. They’re gone anyway.”
“We should go after them,” Gerry said.
Mason glanced over at him. “Why the hell would we want to do a fool thing like that?”
“They killed one of us. We can’t just let them get away with it.”
“He was an idiot who didn’t follow orders. You want to disobey orders, too?”
“That’s not what I said,” Gerry said, and Blaine could hear his voice getting softer, less confrontational. “I’m just saying, this sets a bad precedent.”
Mason laughed. “Precedent? You’re out of your mind. Just do what I say. Shit, I’ve kept you people alive for this long, haven’t I?” He looked over at Blaine and Sandra. “The noobs get manual labor duty. Bring him back to the mall.”
Mason turned and left, with Gerry following silently.
“Were the two of you friends?” Blaine asked Maddie.
Maddie looked down at Dirk. “I wouldn’t go that far, although he wasn’t really that bad a guy. Probably a bit too high-strung and thought too much of himself, but that doesn’t make him much different than the rest of these bozos. But friends? I wouldn’t say that, no.”
She followed the others out of the clinic.
Blaine and Sandra exchanged a look, then glanced down at the dead body. They had seen plenty of dead bodies, but never one in a hazmat suit before.
“Maybe we can find a wheelbarrel to move him,” Sandra said.
“Or a shopping cart,” Blaine said.
Sandra sighed. “You take the arms and I’ll take the legs…”
They didn’t have to go far with Dirk. The others were waiting outside in a red Ford truck. Sandra and Blaine grunted their way from the clinic to the parking lot and tossed Dirk into the back, where Gerry was sitting. He moved away as the body landed near his legs and shot Blaine a look. Sandra and Blaine climbed into the truck and sat across from Gerry while Mason drove them back to Willowstone Mall.
Back at the mall, Sandra and Blaine followed Maddie to the second floor, where she introduced them to Bobby. He was a young kid with long blond hair and dark brown eyes, and he looked much older than his twenty-two years. But then again, they all looked older.
Bobby had shown up in Beaumont with Maddie, the two having met on the road. He was also mute, which explained why he was always so quiet. He nodded to them when Maddie introduced him, then drifted off, turning back to the sleepers scattered about the second floor.
“That’s just how he is,” Maddie said. “But if you need someone to watch your back, you won’t find a better partner. Plus, he won’t talk your ears off.”
Blaine glanced over, wondering if Bobby had heard, but the young man didn’t react if he had.
“How many of them are up here?” Sandra asked.
“Thousands,” Maddie said. “I tried counting a few months ago, but I stopped around 2,000.”
“Over 2,000?”
“Yeah.”
“Where do they come from?”
“I don’t know. Most of them were already here when I arrived with Bobby. The rest were brought here by the ghouls. Sometimes they’d show up with just one, sometimes dozens at a time. You never know.” She shook her head, and he thought she looked almost sad. “Try not to think too much about it. After a while, you get used to it.”
Maddie turned and walked back down the escalator.
Looking after her, Blaine wondered if Maddie really had gotten used to it, or if she was putting on a front for them. He hadn’t heard a whole lot of conviction in her voice and thought it was probably more of the latter.
Maddie is the key.
They spent most of the afternoon on the rooftop, wearing their hazmat suits and occasionally taking off their gas masks to drink warm water or eat canned fruits. Guard duty meant watching the empty highway and the wind picking up debris and tossing it around the empty city. Blaine had never felt so alone as he did sitting up there with Sandra and Maddie, guarding a city that had housed over 100,000 souls at one point.
Every now and then, Mason, Lenny, or Gerry (sometimes a combination of the three) would leave the mall, but they were always back less than an hour later. Each time they left, Blaine found himself wondering if he could hurt Maddie, take her gun, and escape with Sandra. He probably could, even in his condition.
But how far could he and Sandra go on foot? Their Silverado was parked in front of Sortys, but there was no sign of the key. Without the Silverado, they would have to take one of the other cars in the parking lot. And if they couldn’t find one with the keys nearby and a working battery under the hood, they would have to look farther out. Blaine wondered if Mason would let them go if they did make a run for it, the way he had refused to confront Will’s group. That was the best-case scenario. The worst case had Mason taking it personally and committing to chasing them down.