Elise was trembling as they walked through the first two rows, looking from left to right, moving as slowly as possible. Her shaking lessened noticeably by the third and fourth rows, and disappeared almost completely by the tenth.
“Take your time,” Lara said.
Elise nodded and slowed down. “Is he here? I don’t see Todd, Lara. Where is Todd?”
“We have to keep looking, sweetheart. That’s all we can do. Keep looking…”
It was well after one in the afternoon when Danny and Davies finally came back with a vehicle, pulling into the school parking lot and stopping behind the destroyed Tacoma and Ram.
Davies was behind the wheel of an old, brown minivan that had been riddled with bullets, its windows blown out. Even without the bullet holes, the van looked old and decrepit, yet it was somehow still running.
Will, standing next to her, shouted at Danny, “How is that thing even still running?”
“We had to swap out the tires, which were a bitch to find,” Danny said, climbing out of the van’s front passenger’s side. The door creaked loudly as he pried it open then slammed it shut again. “Luckily, the jackasses never got around to shooting up the engine block, and we found the keys inside.”
“Thank God for shitty miracles,” Davies grunted, hopping out of the driver’s side door.
“Gas?” Will asked.
“Half a tank,” Danny said.
“You think it’ll actually make it back to Starch?”
Danny shrugged. “If it doesn’t, we’ll be walking the rest of the way unless we find a decent replacement along the highway. There isn’t anything else out there, bub. It was either settle for this beautiful bastard or start looking even farther out, and that would have taken another hour, easy.”
Will nodded. He walked over and peered into the minivan through the side hatch door. “Good enough. Davies, go bring Megan.”
Davies jogged back over to the school.
Danny looked over at Lara, standing with Elise next to her. “You guys find Todd?”
“He wasn’t in the auditorium,” Lara said.
“That sucks.”
“Yeah.”
Danny looked over at Elise. “Sorry, kid. We really wanted to find your brother for you.”
Elise nodded but didn’t say anything. Instead, she slipped behind Lara while still holding onto Lara’s hand.
“Kids love me,” Danny said.
“I can see that,” Lara smiled at him.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Will said, walking back to them.
“How much room do we have?” Lara asked.
He shook his head. “It’s going to have to be just us for now.”
“That’s it?”
“We’ll be back for them later. Right now, we have to make sure we’ll be around to come back.”
“Will, there must be some room…”
Will put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed gently. “We have to worry about us first. I know it’s hard. But Megan and Elise, the others, it has to be us first.” He paused to let it sink in. “We’ll come back. I promise. We’ll come back as soon as we can.”
He gently brushed back some hair that had fallen across her face and smiled at her.
“You promise,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “We’ll come back.”
“Tomorrow morning. As soon as the sun is up, we’re on the road with as many vehicles as we can muster to take them back with us. I promise.”
She nodded. “All right. Tomorrow. I’m holding you to that promise.”
She looked back at the school, imagining she could see through the walls into the auditorium, at the field of poor souls trapped inside.
Were they conscious? Did they know she was about to abandon them? Were they crying out right now but unable to make any sounds? Or were they completely oblivious, more dead than alive?
She wished she knew, and not knowing made it somehow much, much worse.
They drove back through Dansby along the same route they had used to enter the small town. Lara was squeezed into the long back seat with Elise and Megan, fastened to her seat by a seatbelt, while Davies sat in the middle chair in front of them. Danny drove while Will navigated from the front passenger’s seat. Their equipment, guns, and what supplies they were able to salvage from the destroyed trucks were spread out in the empty spaces between the seats. She could barely move her legs without kicking something.
As they drove through Dansby for the second time, she looked carefully at the cars parked along the curbs, in the streets, or in driveways. They all had flat tires and bullet holes along their sides.
My God, how did we miss the signs? It’s all there in front of us, but we drove past them without really seeing…
She listened to the sound of wind whistling through the holes in the van, mingling with the soft noise of Elise snoring lightly against her shoulder and Davies snoring much more loudly in front of them, his body slumped against the seat so awkwardly she was afraid he might tumble to the floor at any moment since he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.
She looked down at the little girl who had fallen asleep almost as soon as the car started moving. How long had it been since Elise could fall asleep without thinking about monsters, without being afraid? She marveled at how the girl had survived all this time with just her brother, hidden in that dark basement. It had worked out until Todd got sick. What would have happened to them, she wondered, if Davies hadn’t been listening to the ham radio in the Control Room when Elise called yesterday?
She brushed some blonde hair from Elise’s face, revealing the cherubic shape behind it. She had managed to clean most of the dirt and grime, but despite her best efforts, there were still small patches here and there that clung on stubbornly.
Lara felt eyes watching her and glanced up to see Will looking over his shoulder. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he said back.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you something…”
“Yeah?”
“I…” she started, but didn’t finish. Instead, she smiled at him, and perhaps he knew what she was going to say, because he smiled back.
“Oh, get it out,” Danny said.
Lara pictured him rolling his eyes, though she couldn’t see anything but the back of his head behind the driver’s seat headrest.
“Just pretend I’m not here,” Danny continued. “Just a guy driving a minivan. Riddled with bullet holes. Down a deserted highway. In the apocalypse. With undead creatures probably watching us from the woods. You know, nothing special.”
She exchanged another private look with Will. “I’ll tell you when we get back home.”
“Okay,” he nodded back.
Danny said, “Wow, be still my heart. That was possibly the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. You guys should write greeting cards. Love Notes from the Apocalypse. You’d sell a shitload. I’d buy a dozen…”
HAPTER 37
KATE
The first time he came to her was in a dream, a month after they arrived at Harold Campbell’s facility.
She was dreaming of Deussen Park, near Lake Houston, which had always been one of her favorite places to go. Her father used to take her there often. She would spend the entire day with him, running up and down the piers, loving the feel of freshly cut grass against her bare feet. She loved darting in and out of the gazebos while he fished. Or tried to fish. The truth was he spent more time keeping her from falling into the lake than he ever caught anything.