With their hands bound with duct tape, the captives were led through the lower deck and placed inside a small room where the boat’s crew usually ate their meals. Their ankles were bound, and five of the men sat down while Benny and Maddie stood guard outside the door. The sixth man, the one who had been first to surrender, left with Lara.
She led him, his hands still bound, to one of the crew cabins they had been using as an extra storage room, and closed the door after them. The man sat down on a box of military MREs and looked around him. He was older than the rest — late forties, with gray liberally sprinkled along a military-style haircut. He could have passed for her father, except he was lean and muscular and almost six feet.
It should have been imposing for her to be in a room alone with him, but she wasn’t afraid. She didn’t know why, exactly, but she wasn’t the least bit intimidated. Maybe it was the Glock in her hip holster; or maybe she was just tired of being afraid of people when there were so many other things out there to be scared of.
“You have a name?” she asked.
“Hart,” the man said.
“I’m Lara.”
“Nice to meet you, Lara.”
“Likewise, Hart. How old are you?”
“That’s my line,” he smiled. “What are you, twenty?”
She smiled back but didn’t answer him.
“Twenty-five?” he said.
“You’re getting warmer.”
“Gotta admit, you’re the last person I expected to find in charge of this boat.”
“What were you expecting?”
“Older. More male.”
“Happy to disappoint you.”
He sighed. “I guess we should get on with it, huh? It’s late, and I’m sure we’re both tired. Especially me. These bones aren’t made for sitting on those tiny boats for hours.”
“How long were you guys out there?”
“Long enough.”
“Where did you come from?”
“I can’t tell you that. At least, not yet.”
“‘Not yet?’”
He gave her a noncommittal shrug.
“You wanted the boat,” she said.
He nodded. “We wanted the boat.”
“You’re not even going to try to lie?”
“No point. You got us by the balls. I figure whether we live or die now depends on what I say next.”
“That’s a very astute observation.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“What?”
“Astute.”
“It means you’re right. Whether you live or die depends entirely on what you say now, in here.”
“Ah,” Hart said.
“Were you going to kill us?”
“No.”
“Then how were you going to take the boat from us?”
“Hopefully without bloodshed.”
“You were pretty heavily armed, if that was your hope.”
“The plan was to sneak onboard and take it over with minimal collateral damage. We needed the boat. The weapons were insurance.”
“I could have killed you and your men out there.”
“I know…”
“If one of your guys had opened fire…”
“I know,” Hart said again. “Trust me, I know.”
They let a few seconds of silence fall between them.
Five seconds became ten, then fifteen…
He wasn’t afraid of her, she could tell that much. Mostly he seemed completely resigned to his fate. She told herself not to believe him, that he wasn’t telling her the complete truth, but for whatever reason, she chose to ignore it.
“Where’s your base of operations?” she asked. “I know you didn’t come all the way from shore. We’re too far for that.”
“We didn’t.”
“So where did you come from?”
“I can’t tell you. At least, not yet.”
“That’s the second time you’ve said that.”
“Do you have a pen?”
“What would I need a pen for?”
“I’m going to give you a radio frequency,” Hart said. “The guy you’ll want to talk to will be on the other end.”
“Is he in charge?”
“Yes.”
“Why would I want to talk to him?”
“How long have you been on this boat?”
“That’s none of your business.”
He shrugged slowly, as if just doing that simple move was tiring. “What I’m trying to get at is you’re probably running low on fuel and supplies. Am I right?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Of course I am,” he said. “The collaborators have all the marinas and fueling stations along the coastline on lockdown. The ones they haven’t already destroyed, anyway.”
“You’re not a collaborator…”
“And neither are you, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. I’d be fish food at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Which is why I think we can make a deal.”
She stared at him but remained silent.
“Call my CO,” Hart said. When she still didn’t say anything, he leaned slightly forward, his eyes almost pleading with her now. “Please. I promise you, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
8
Gaby
She hated the sinking feeling that always came with waiting for night. There was a thickness in the air, as if the molecules that made up the world suddenly doubled in density. Even breathing seemed to get a little harder, and it didn’t help that the weather got immeasurably chillier as the sun disappeared. Darkness, unencumbered by artificial lights that once dotted the landscape, fell over everything.
They left the living room windows the way they had found them — dirty linen curtains over the glass panes on the inside, without any extra barriers that hadn’t been there when they found the house. Danny had locked the doors because a locked door wasn’t obvious like windows that were barricaded with furniture. The ghouls were dead, not stupid, as Will always used to say, and they knew when an environment had been altered. It was instinctive, a level of base intelligence that remained long after their humanity had been stripped away.
Eventually they retreated into the main bedroom in the back. There was a single window in the room, and thankfully it had blinders that were already closed earlier today. That made perfect sense. The previous owners wouldn’t have wanted their neighbors looking in at their bedroom. She and Danny upended the king-size bed and leaned the box spring and mattress against the window, then wedged them into place with a heavy wood armoire.
“Should hold,” Danny said.
“You think?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Probably.”
“That’s not very reassuring, Danny.”
“Oh well.”
They moved Nate into the master bedroom and placed a mattress from a smaller room on the floor for him to lie on. He hadn’t woken up from the morphine, and a part of her was glad he wasn’t going to be awake for this. Not just because of the pain, but in case things went from bad to worse. She hated the thought but the possibility was there, especially if the collaborators really had been tracking them since Starch.
What makes us so special? Hopefully we won’t have to find out.
They had brought all their supplies and weapons into the house, and while Danny called the Trident on the ham radio in the living room, she sat with Nate in the bedroom and watched him sleep. He was covered up with a throw blanket, but every now and then he would still shiver. She knew it wasn’t from the slowly building cold outside the house’s flimsy walls or from his wounds.