Danny…
“Yes, it will,” Danny said, and turned to look at her, “but I don’t know what that’ll do to all the party people standing outside our walls right now.”
The woman shot a quick, nervous glance across the room. He didn’t know what she was looking at.
“I’m more concerned with our lack of a full roof at the moment,” Danny said, pointing at the open holes in the ceiling above him.
“You think they’ll come in if it dies?”
“I don’t know. That’s the point.”
“So what, then?”
Danny looked back at him and tilted his head slightly to one side, as if trying to mirror his unwitting pose.
“Danny,” the woman (girl?) said. “What are you going to do with it? We can’t just leave it there. What if it digs itself out?”
“I don’t think it can.”
“You sure about that?”
“Mostly sure.”
“Have you been…talking to it?”
“Yes and no. It’s been mostly a one-way conversation with a few blinks thrown in. Might be worth waiting for it to grow its mouth back so we can have a proper tête-à-tête.”
“Can it…do that?”
“I have no idea what it can or can’t do. That’s one reason I haven’t sent him to the big Blue Yonder yet. Maybe we can learn something from him. If that’s even possible; I don’t want to just throw the opportunity out the window.”
“‘Him?’”
“What?”
“You just called it ‘him,’ Danny.”
“Did I?”
“Yeah…”
“Well, technically I’m not wrong. It was a him, once upon a time.”
“But not anymore.”
“That boat would seem to have sailed a while ago, yup.”
The girl shivered in the darkness. “Are you just going to sit here all night and talk to it?”
“That’s the general idea. You should go keep Natmillian company. I’ll shout if I need a hand.”
The girl turned to leave, but not before looking back at him one last time. Then she was gone and he heard whispers, followed by the presence of a third heartbeat somewhere outside the room that he hadn’t noticed earlier because of his weakened state.
Danny had moved closer while he wasn’t paying attention and was now peering at him. There was a new intensity in his eyes as he stared, as if he was searching for something important.
What was he looking for? More importantly, what did he expect to find? What was there left to be found? What if all Danny saw was a lifeless corpse that refused to die, with an empty black hole where a soul used to be—
“Jesus Christ,” Danny said, his voice barely rising above a whisper.
Then, as if he was afraid to say the word out loud:
“Will?”
Book Three
Shoot The Messenger
19
Keo
Once in the boat and on their way, Keo paid attention to his surroundings for the first ten or so minutes, but after a while his mind started to wander. After all, there were only so many identical stretches of ocean you could stare at until it got old real fast, which in Keo’s case was around the twenty-or-so-minute mark.
Instead, he spent his time observing Erin, Troy, and the other four in the boat with him. The only time they stopped was to pour gas into the boat’s tank from the generous supply they had brought with them. Keo couldn’t begin to guess where they were headed, though he’d never thought of The Ranch as being out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Just the name alone had him envisioning fields of grass and grazing cattle and possibly a horse or two. But no, they were definitely heading farther and farther out to sea.
Maybe The Ranch was a submarine or a ship. Maybe even one of the many Navy destroyers or aircraft carriers that no one had seen since The Purge. What about an adrift oil tanker being commanded by a one-eyed maniac? The possible identity of The Ranch became more elaborate as the sights (What sights?) around him remained the same and boredom set in again.
Keo sat at the stern of the offshore vessel with his hands and legs duct taped, empty red gasoline cans tapping against his boots as the boat moved against the waves. They had restrained his legs only after he had climbed onboard, as if he could escape with his hands bound. He wasn’t even sure he could swim if he fell overboard. How long could he tread water before he succumbed to fatigue and drowned? He was a good swimmer, but he wasn’t that good.
The good news was that he had stopped bleeding and no longer needed a wad of paper stuffed up his nostrils. His exposed forehead and nose had gone mostly numb from the chill of the winds plastering him nonstop. He would have liked a painkiller or two to dull the remaining pain, but that wasn’t one of the options offered up by his captors. Which was to say, they didn’t offer up any options whatsoever.
Troy and Erin sat on both sides of him on raised chairs, while the unnamed two that had come with him from Texas sat on a bench at the front. No one had said a word since they cast off, and the only noise was the wind roaring in Keo’s face. Although they had been traveling for some time, it didn’t look as if they had made any progress. Of course, that could have just been because the damn scenery never seemed to change.
Eventually the never-ending blur of ocean and nothingness took their toll, and Keo stopped fighting the boredom and closed his eyes, only to wake up with a start when a hand pushed at his shoulder. He opened his eyes to the sight of Erin leaning in front of him with what almost looked like a smile.
“What?” he said, shouting over the wind to be heard.
“First and last warning,” she shouted back. “You nod off and fall overboard, and we’re not stopping to fish you out. Without your arms and legs, I’m guessing you’ll sink right to the bottom.”
“Unless the sharks mistake you for snacks first,” Troy said. “Might be the most merciful thing. I hear drowning sucks.”
“Sharks, huh?” Keo said.
“It’s an ocean, numbnuts. There are sharks and a lot of other things out here you don’t wanna come face-to-face with.”
Keo stared at Troy for a moment, wondering if the man actually believed that or if this was just a bad attempt at intimidation. He decided it might have been a little of the former and a lot of the latter.
Troy grinned, proving him correct. “Just fucking with you, Bruce.”
“Bruce?” Keo said.
“He thinks you’re Chinese,” Erin said. “Bruce Lee?”
“I’ve been mistaken for worse.”
“Like what?” Troy asked.
“A guy named Fred who I used to know back in the day.”
“What’s so bad about Fred?”
“That’s what Fred asked himself every day.”
Troy gave him a puzzled look.
Erin flashed Keo another almost smile. “Give him a minute. Troy can be slow on the uptake sometimes.”
“Fuck off,” Troy said, and turned back into the wind.
Keo took a second to scan his surroundings in case things had changed since he last had his eyes open. He shouldn’t have bothered. There was still just water — lots and lots of water — shimmering underneath the afternoon sun.
“Almost there,” Erin said, as if reading his mind.
“The Ranch?” Keo asked.
“Not yet.”
“So, what’s ‘there?’”
“You’ll find out when we get there.”
Keo looked ahead, and he didn’t see anything but an empty horizon and an endless field of blue water. “I don’t see anything…”