Except they didn’t climb over, or do anything to show themselves.
But they were out there. She knew that without having to hear or see them, even if she thought she could smell their stench coming in through the multiple holes that pockmarked the bank’s ceiling. It was also a lot colder now, and she clutched her jacket to her chest while making sure her rifle remained within reach.
She looked back at Danny still staring past her. “What are you going to do with it, Danny?”
He shook his head and didn’t answer right away. She could tell by his expression it was a question he had been asking himself all night.
“If it is Will—” Gaby said, but stopped herself short. Then, “If it was Will, then it would explain a lot.”
“Why it told me to put on the uniform in Starch,” Danny said.
She nodded. “I don’t suppose he told you how he knew that would work?”
“No lips, remember?”
“Right. No lips. You think he can grow them back? The black eyes never could. When they lose something, it seems to be gone for good.”
“He’s not one of them.”
The question is, what is he?
“If that is Will,” she said, “how do you think he did it? How did he save us at the hangar without actually being there?”
“I’ve been thinking about that…”
“And?”
“Willie boy always thought the creatures had a kind of hive-like mind, always connected somehow. He thinks that’s how they know where to swarm when they discover survivors, or how the blue eyes control them.” He tapped his temple. “Think of it like a network of bloodsucking, well, bloodsuckers.”
“Like what, the Internet?”
“Yeah,” Danny said. “Some kind of ESPN shit.”
“You mean ESP.”
“Uh huh. The Worldwide Leader in Bloodsucking.”
Gaby managed a smile. There wasn’t an inch of her that wasn’t sore and dirty (and smelly, even if that part was harder to confirm), but the upside was that they were all alive. Still wearing bloody dead men’s clothes, yes, but alive nonetheless, and right now that was all that mattered and all she wanted to concentrate on.
After a while, she said, “If it is Will, do you think he was the one the other blue eyes were trying to lure here? Were they using us to get to him?”
Danny, she saw, was grinning stupidly at her.
“What’s so funny?” she asked, annoyed.
“You said he, not it.”
“I did?”
“Uh huh. More than once.”
She sighed. “Give me a break. I’m doing my best to wrap my head around all of this, but it’s not easy. I feel like my head is spinning and I don’t know which direction is up or down.”
Danny chuckled. “Now you know how I’ve been feeling since Starch.”
“What did Danny say?” Nate asked when she crouched next to him beside the island counter, about five feet from where the pool of moonlight ended in front of them.
“He’s not sure yet,” she said, readying her M4 across her knees even though there was nothing to shoot at (Jinx!).
She looked out at the opening where the wall used to meet the ceiling, but there was now just a gaping hole staring out at the moon above them. With so much bright moonlight, it was easy to make out the footprints plastered across the lobby floor, so many that they overlapped each other many times over. When they were retreating, the creatures had taken the bodies of Benford and the dead collaborators that had been assaulting the bank with them.
Wouldn’t want to waste a single drop of that precious blood, right, boys?
The silence inside and outside the bank hung over them like a physical thing, a blanket that could drop at any second and smother them underneath it. The thought made her nervous and Gaby clutched the rifle tighter, if just to give her hands something to do.
“What about you? You really think it’s him?” Nate asked. He glanced briefly backward at the manager’s office.
“Danny seems to think it is.”
“He would know, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“How long have they known one another? If anyone would recognize Will, even under all that, it would be Danny. Who knows him better?”
She nodded. “Once you’ve been in combat with someone, survived the end of the world side-by-side with them… That kind of connection is hard to come by.”
“Like us?”
“We still have a long way to go.”
“But we’ll get there.”
“Maybe, if we can get out of this town alive first.”
“Eh, I don’t know, it’s not that bad. Bullet holes and destroyed buildings notwithstanding, I think it’d make for a pretty good summer vacation spot.”
She smirked. “You’re doing Danny now, is that it?”
“You know what they say, ‘If you can’t beat ’em…’”
“Become as annoying as them?” she finished for him.
“How’d you know?”
“I’ve been around Danny too long.” Her legs were tiring, and she finally gave in and sat down on the floor, but only after brushing small chunks of rooftop gravel away. “How’s your side?”
“Hurts, just like everything else.”
Pain lets you know you’re still alive. Right, Lara?
“I was expecting fire,” Gaby said.
“From the bombing?”
She nodded.
“I guess there isn’t anything left in Gallant that’s flammable,” Nate said. “Or, at least, not enough to start and maintain a fire. We’re lucky that Warthog only had two bombs to drop.”
“Yeah, lucky,” she said quietly. Then, “We have to get back. The Trident. Whatever it takes, we have to get back.”
“We will. Just a few more hours, and it’ll be sunup. Then we’ll go home.”
He put an arm around her, and Gaby leaned against his shoulder, welcoming the warmth of his body to help fight back the cold that swamped the lobby. She wondered if she would ever be able to enjoy moments like these without guns within reach or undead things moving outside her walls. Were those things even possible anymore?
“I was thinking…” Nate said quietly.
“What?”
“That thing in the office. If it really is Will…”
“It’s a big if…”
“I know, but if it really is Will, then it changes everything, doesn’t it?”
“How?”
“He saved our lives at Larkin, then again in Starch. He did that, Gaby. He didn’t have to, but he did. The question is: Why?”
Why? I’ve been asking that question all night, and I’m no closer to the answer.
“If he’s still Will, what else can he do?” Nate continued, though now Gaby wasn’t sure if he was even talking to her anymore or just speaking his thoughts out loud. “What does he know? How long has he been out here? What has he been doing?”
“We think the blue eyes were trying to lure him here, using us as bait.”
“There,” Nate said.
“What?”
“He knows something, Gaby,” he said, unable to hide the excitement in his voice. “Get it?”
“No…”
“Think about it,” Nate said. “If they’re this desperate to stop him, if they’re going through all this trouble just to bring him here, he must know something they don’t want us to know. The question is: What?”
She fell asleep with Nate’s voice in her head, asking her “Why?” and “What?” over and over again, and opened her heavy eyelids back up to the sight of Danny hovering over her.