“You sure?” he asked, and she could hear the concern in his voice.
“I’ll be fine.” She opened her eyes and said, before he could argue the point, “We should head back.”
She crumpled up the piece of paper and tossed it, then turned around until she was lying on her stomach again. She picked up the rifle and began crawling backward away from the ledge. The distance between them and the highway was close enough (Shooting distance, at least with the ACOG) that she took every precaution. It only added a minute or so to their retreat anyway, and they had minutes to spare at the moment. Nate mirrored her crawl until they were almost on the other side, and only then did they stand up and take the ladder in the back down to the street below.
They had walked over to their position on top of the Waffle House, so that meant walking back to where Danny and Mason were. The area they were in was oddly divided with the stores and restaurants to one side and almost exclusively traveling hotels and inns on the other. The tallest building in the entire place was a Comfort Inn and Suites. The rooftop above the hotel’s three stories would have given them a much better spying perch, but the idea of going through those floors just to get to that perfect spot spiked the hairs on the back of her neck even now.
They wound their way through the streets and buildings using the businesses as cover whenever they could. Not that she expected to be spotted from the highway, but again, there was no point in taking unnecessary risks just to shave off a few seconds or minutes. So they took their time and moved along, through, and behind a fast food joint, then a gas station, and a dozen other buildings.
“Wanna get wasted?” Nate asked as they walked past one of the many brick and mortar stores. The sign outside was in gaudy neon, reading “Gallant Liquor Store.”
Not very creative, she thought, looking in at the hundreds of bottles still sitting on display shelves. The store was remarkably undisturbed and she couldn’t find any signs of ghoul occupation — there were no blankets on the windows or blood smears. Unlike most places they had traveled through, it was rare to find evidence of a ghoul nest in Gallant. It was another reason they had decided to make camp here. That same disregard for the town by the monsters was also why it didn’t make any sense for the two collaborators to be lingering around it.
What are you two doing here?
“Let’s relive our college years,” Nate was saying.
“I never went to college.”
“Oh, right. Sometimes I forget how young you are.”
“Are you saying I look old?”
“Well, yeah.”
“You’re lucky I already like you, or else…” She playfully put a hand on the butt of her sidearm.
He raised both hands in surrender and began walking backward, grinning at her. “If you want, we can pretend we’re in school. I’ll be the big man on campus, and you’ll be my cheerleader girlfriend. I bet if we look hard enough we might even be able to find a cheerleader uniform somewhere in this place, maybe at the high school we passed earlier…”
She shook her head but couldn’t help herself and smiled anyway. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you be my cheerleader boyfriend…”
They made their temporary base about a mile from the Waffle House inside the Gallant First Bank, one of the few buildings that had everything they needed in case they were forced to stay the night in town. Large white GFB letters were easily visible on the rooftop, welded to some kind of scaffolding. It wasn’t exactly subtle, but then it fit in with its surroundings, mostly department stores, restaurants, and she guessed the cream of the commercialism crop in Gallant. The bank had security bars over the windows and doors, and when they peeked inside, found it as pristine now as it had been a year ago.
She saw Danny peeking out at them from behind blinders on one of the front windows as they approached, then a few seconds later one of the doors clicked opened before they even reached it.
They slipped inside and Danny locked it back up. “What’s the word, birdies? Tell me you haven’t been giving each other disgusting hickeys out there while I was babysitting in here?”
“A Jeep with two soldiers,” Nate said. “They showed up and parked on the I-10 around ten in the morning and haven’t moved since. We think they’re looking for something.”
“Maybe us,” Gaby said.
“Has to be, right?”
“Did you go and ask them?” Danny asked.
“Uh, no,” Nate said.
“Maybe they’re just searching for property to rent or buy. Land’s pretty cheap these days, and property’s always a good investment. Always has been, always will be.”
“We thought they might have been the same two we saw outside of Port Arthur yesterday,” Gaby said.
“Were they?”
She shook her head. “Same uniforms but different vehicle, and one of the two from yesterday was blond. These two both had dark hair.”
“Dark-haired muchachos are seriously the worst.”
“Self-loathing?” Nate asked.
“Maybe a tad,” Danny said. Then, looking at her, “Why didn’t you just shoot them? I gave you that ACOG for a reason, you know.”
“It was tempting…” Gaby said.
“Next time when in doubt, shoot.”
I almost did, she thought, and tossed her pack on the island counter in the lobby, knocking down a few deposit slips that had been left behind. She unzipped the bag and pulled out a bottle of water and took a drink.
The place was remarkably clean when they had found it, with no evidence of a fight or blood anywhere, and Nate theorized it was closed when the town succumbed to The Purge. Like most small cities around the state, the citizens probably knew something had happened when the big metropolitans like Houston and Dallas went dark. It would have been terrifying as they waited for the second night. She knew the feeling, having lived through it herself a year ago.
There were still piles of money in the registers and safes when they looked around this morning, and the two offices in the back were in immaculate condition. She kept expecting someone to clock in for work whenever she glanced at the counters. There were plenty of lights coming through the closed blinds behind her to see with, but not enough to give their position away to someone passing by, like those two guys…
Maybe Nate’s right. Maybe they are following us.
But why?
When she finished drinking and put the bottle away, she looked back at Danny. “Nate is convinced they’re tracking us.”
“What do you think?” Danny asked her.
“I don’t know, maybe. It’s just too much coincidence that they — or one of their friends — keep showing up wherever we go.”
Danny nodded but didn’t say anything. He looked lost in thought, and whenever that happened, he always reminded her so much of Will. They looked nothing alike, of course, but when the usually jovial Danny went still, it was hard to shake the resemblance.
“Where’s Mason?” Nate asked.
“Dozing, the last time I saw him,” Danny said. “Being a hostage is hard work.”
“I should go check on him.”
“You think he’s going to try something?” she asked.
Nate shrugged as he walked past her. “I just don’t like the idea of that guy being somewhere where at least one of us can’t see him at all times.”
She watched him go into the back hallway, then open the door into one of the two offices and disappear inside. Gaby turned back to Danny, who had returned to looking out the blinders at the street outside.