Silver. Take the silver. Make bullets. Silver bullets.
Then he was back inside the employee lounge and sitting on the couch. He didn’t know how he got there so quickly.
Bobby locked the door and leaned against it.
Maddie sat on the couch next to him. She wiped at a thick patch of sweat clinging to her face and she had an extra M4 rifle slung over her shoulder. “I don’t know what’s going to happen next. With the ghouls. I don’t know how they’re going to respond to the bodies in the store. Lenny’s and Gerry’s… and Sandra’s. So we have to be ready for anything.”
He didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure if he could talk.
“We have to put the suits back on,” Maddie said. “Just in case, okay?”
Bobby retrieved their suits from the corner where they had left them. Blaine heard the rustling of clothes and zippers, and a hazmat suit and gas mask somehow ended up in his hands. There was another suit and mask on the floor, like someone had abandoned it.
Sandra’s…
“Bobby, you gotta help me put it on him,” he heard Maddie say.
Bobby took Blaine’s suit and mask from him. They stood him up, directing his actions like he was a two-year-old. They raised his arms and lifted his legs, then someone — Bobby, probably — handed him back the gas mask and patted him lightly on the shoulder, like a father would his wounded son, as if to say, “You’ll be fine, my boy.”
Bobby, in his hazmat suit, walked back to the door and sat down, the rifle resting between his legs, the gas mask draped over one knee. He leaned back against the door and waited. He didn’t have to wait very long.
Darkness came quickly, and with it, the ghouls.
For the first time in the last eight months, Blaine discovered he didn’t really care that the ghouls were coming, that it was dark outside.
What did any of it matter without Sandra?
CHAPTER 25
JOSH
Pros and cons: What were they?
Pros: He was finally safe, on an island the ghouls couldn’t get to, and he had never been closer to Gaby. She finally accepted him as more than just a neighbor and a friend, and there were signs she was willing to be more, something he never could have expected just a few days ago.
Cons: There were none. At least, none that he could see. It was hot on the island, but then it was hot everywhere. In Texas. In Louisiana. Where wasn’t it hot?
Conclusion: Sure, the world had essentially come to an end, but his life was looking pretty bright right about now.
Suck on that, mofos!
After he settled into his room, Josh spent the first few hours on the island exploring, careful to stick to the cobblestone paths that snaked everywhere. He had planned to invite Gaby along, but he could hear the shower running in her room next to his. His face still throbbed, and it felt good to be out in the sun. There was a nice breeze, and it soothed Josh’s bruises and seemed to help with the swelling around his eyes.
He had left his gun back in his room. There was something about the island, about the way the islanders walked around without guns — except for the big guy, Tom — that made it seem all right for Josh to do the same. If it was good enough for them…
While everyone stuck to the hotel and the air conditioning, Josh was irresistibly drawn to the Tower, about half a football field from the back of the hotel, perched on the eastern cliff. He stood next to the concrete base of the thick, conical structure, craning his neck to look up at the unfinished glass housing at the top. It was high up, and his neck hurt trying to take in the entire sight.
Josh pulled open the thick wooden door to the Tower. It was a lot heavier than it looked. Or maybe he just needed to work out more. Probably a little of both.
He stepped inside.
There wasn’t much of a first floor. There was a chair in a corner and another thick wooden door built into the concrete floor with a ring handle. The basement, he guessed. There was a bookcase with hardcover books, paperbacks, and stacks of yellowing magazines. A spiral cast-iron staircase wrapped around the wall of the Tower’s interior like a skeletal snake, gradually extending upward before ending at another wooden door in the first-floor ceiling.
Josh climbed the staircase and was out of breath by the time he reached the door at the end. He pushed at it, felt it giving way grudgingly, and had to put his shoulder into it just to push it all the way up. The damn thing was heavy, and he felt like one of those submariners pushing open the top hatch of the sub in order to step outside. He poked his head through the rectangular opening, not quite sure what to expect.
The second floor was smaller than the first, which made sense since the Tower contracted inward the higher it went up. There was another bookcase across the room, but what really caught his attention were the paintings along one side of the wall. A dog with something in its mouth, a big deer, and a guy peering out from behind some bushes. There was a cot with meticulously folded blankets and sheets. Another section of spiral staircase circled the wall, leading up to yet another thick door in another floor above him.
Josh climbed all the way up and walked to the window across the room. The breeze up here was definitely cooler. There were no curtains on the windows, which were really just big square holes in the wall. He wondered if there were supposed to be more — like window frames with glass, maybe.
Josh leaned out the window and looked around. He could see almost everything on the eastern side of Song Island, including the beach to the south. There was a solar-powered LED floodlight directly above him, hanging just below the windowsill of a third-floor window.
“Nice view, huh?” a voice said behind him.
Josh was startled and turned quickly, surprised to find Tom sitting on the other side of the floor, behind the open door. Tom had apparently been there the whole time, eating what looked like blueberries out of a Ziploc bag; his lips had turned purple from berry juice. The cheap fold-out chair under him looked as if it shouldn’t be able to support a man of his weight.
Tom looked pleased at Josh’s reaction. “Sorry, kid, didn’t mean to scare you. This is sort of my place.”
“I didn’t know anyone was up here,” Josh said. And how the hell didn’t I see you sitting back there all this time?
“No worries.” Tom wiped his hands on his cargo shorts, smearing purple juice over the fabric. “Ugh. Now that’s going to stain.”
“Baking soda will get that out.”
“That right? Baking soda?”
“You can usually rub it out with a wet rag.”
“I think we have some baking soda in the kitchen,” Tom said, flicking at the stains on his pants. “Josh, right?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened to your face?”
Josh flushed a bit. “I ran into this guy.”
“Did you at least give as good as you got?”
“Well, he’s dead, and I’m not, if that’s what you mean.”
Tom nodded approvingly. “That’s not a bad trade-off.” He grinned, showing juice-stained teeth. “You ever been in a lighthouse before?”
“First time. What’s up there?” Josh pointed at the third floor above them.
“More of this, but also where the radio message you heard gets sent out into the world. I guess they were planning to run their own radio station or something. Go on up. The view’s even better up there.”
Josh hesitated. “So you live here?”
“Here, there, everywhere. But I come here for the privacy. Not everyone likes to climb the stairs.”
Tom dug out another Ziploc bag filled with more blueberries and began popping them into his mouth. Josh didn’t know where he was hiding those bags.