No, not yet.
If things went sideways, he could consider that option. There was still another way, one that didn’t involve hurting Maddie. One that involved convincing her.
“You and Bobby came straight to Beaumont?” Blaine asked Maddie.
“We spent a few weeks in Austin, gathering supplies,” she said, between spoonfuls of pineapple dripping with syrup. “Then there were smaller towns between here and there. We thought about trying Houston, but it was too big. You know what big means, right?”
“A lot of them.”
“Right. So we mostly avoided Houston. I know this guy with a cabin near Sabine Lake. It has good hunting grounds, and there aren’t a lot of people there. We were headed there when we stumbled across Mason in Beaumont.”
“He introduced himself with those rifles, too?”
She snorted. “Yeah. He made us the same offer he gave you. It looked like he had a good thing going here. Plus, you know how it is on the road. It’s sleep with one eye open, always looking over your shoulder at the sky.” She put down the spoon and looked off at the highway in the distance. “If I’m really, really lucky, I’ll make it another year. Meanwhile, I don’t want to spend every second of it wondering when they’re going to get me. You know? That’s no way to live.”
Sandra watching Maddie closely, and maybe he saw her soften a bit toward the other woman. It was hard not to. Maddie wasn’t a monster — not even close.
“You did what you had to,” Blaine said.
“Yeah, I know,” Maddie nodded. “But like you said, it’s a hell of a way to survive.”
They sat on the hard roof and said nothing for a while. Blaine thought he heard car engines in the distance, but noticed he was the only one who turned his head. He waited, but nothing appeared, and he chalked it up to his imagination running overtime.
Maddie saw his face and smiled. “It’s the quiet. It plays with your mind. Makes you think you’re hearing something that isn’t there. Pretty soon you’ll start to see things, too.” She handed him a pair of binoculars. “Use them before you grab the radio. It’ll usually turn out to be nothing.”
“How many people come through here a day?” Sandra asked.
“Once or twice a week is more like it. Yesterday was the first time we saw two groups of people in the same day.” She narrowed her eyes amusedly at Blaine. “You sure you don’t know those people?”
“What did they look like?” he asked.
“Doesn’t matter. They’re gone. Probably in Louisiana by now if they keep on the I-10.”
“What about this cabin at Sabine Lake?”
“What about it?”
“You don’t want to find out if it’s still there?”
“Oh, it’s still there. Where’s it going to go? It’s a cabin.”
Blaine caught Sandra’s eyes, and knew she understood where he was going.
“You don’t think it’s worth getting to anymore?” Sandra asked. “The cabin?”
“Compared to this?” Maddie said. “You know how many of them are out there. It’s going to take a fortress to keep them out of a cabin, even one that remote. Sooner or later, they’ll find it.”
“What about an island,” Blaine said.
“Island?” Maddie looked over at him. “What about an island?”
“I bet an island could keep the ghouls out. Even better than a cabin or a mall could.”
“Yeah, sure, but where would you find an island?”
“Let me show you something,” Blaine said.
He found a ham radio in a Best Buy next to the Sortys, then grabbed a handful of new batteries from a rack near the cash registers. He made sure Gerry, Mason, and Lenny were nowhere to be found before he powered the ham radio up and hunted down the FEMA frequency.
“What am I listening for?” Maddie asked.
“Give it a minute,” Blaine said.
He stopped fiddling with the dial when he heard the familiar female voice:
“…Song Island on Beaufont Lake in Louisiana. We are broadcasting on the FEMA frequency to any survivors out there. We want you to know there is hope. There are survivors on Song Island. We have food, supplies, electricity, and protection against the darkness. If you are receiving this recorded message, we encourage you to make your way to us. I repeat: we have food, supplies, electricity, and protection against the darkness. Hello. If anyone can hear me out there. This is Song Island on Beaufont Lake in Louisiana. We are broadcasting on the FEMA frequency …”
Blaine was watching Maddie’s expression the entire time, trying to gauge her reaction to the message. At first she looked confused by what she was hearing, but that quickly gave way to shock, followed by…hope?
Or maybe he was reading her wrong. He was never particularly good at reading women. Sandra knew that firsthand.
“Is it true?” Maddie asked, once the message started repeating itself.
“To be honest, I don’t know,” Blaine said. “But if it is true…?”
“What about the water? The ghouls can’t cross water?”
“I don’t know that, either. But they’ve been on that island for months now, and they’re still out there.”
“But you don’t know for sure,” Maddie insisted.
“I don’t know anything for sure, no,” Blaine said. “I just know that this message has been repeating for months now. Every day, without fail.”
“It could be on some kind of a loop.”
“I’m sure it is. But the fact it’s running in a loop at all…”
“Power,” Maddie said, the realization dawning on her. “They have power.”
He could see it. He had her. Or he was close. “Exactly. They have a power source. You can’t run a radio tower without electricity.”
“It could just be an emergency generator. We have them here, too.”
“Sure, but to broadcast continuously, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for months now?”
She nodded. “That’s a good point.” She went quiet for a moment, lost in thought. Then, “It would be nice to have power again. Plumbing. Running water…”
“You could come with us,” he said.
She looked up at him with genuine surprise. “Where? Song Island?”
“Why not?” Sandra said. “You and Bobby. You wouldn’t have to do this anymore. I know this isn’t something you want to be doing for the rest of your life.”
They didn’t have to be mind readers to know how Maddie felt about doing this forever. They could read it on her face.
“Come with us,” Sandra said.
Blaine was glad to let Sandra make the invitation. It wouldn’t have sounded nearly as believable or sincere coming from him, even if he did mean every word of it. He was never particularly good at playing the softy, either.
“Bobby, too?” Maddie asked.
“Yes, of course, Bobby, too,” Sandra said.
Maddie nodded. But she didn’t answer right away.
Blaine exchanged a quick look with Sandra. “We’re almost there.”
“I need to talk to Bobby about this,” Maddie said.
It took her less than thirty minutes to talk to Bobby.
Blaine took that as a good sign, though he could have been very, very wrong. Fatally wrong. But Blaine didn’t think he was. Still, the idea of putting his and Sandra’s fate in another person’s hands made him skittish. In those thirty minutes of waiting, he went through every possible scenario, most of them ending with him realizing, too late, that he had read Maddie wrong from the very beginning.
By the time Maddie climbed back up to the rooftop of the Willowstone Mall where he was sitting with Sandra, it was two in the afternoon, and the sun was at its full force, blasting away at everything under it. Even inside the protective hazmat suits, Blaine could feel sweat dripping along his armpits and back.