The water tower, like the abandoned buildings sprinkled among the trees and bushes around them, was part of Cleveland, Texas. It was a small town of 8,000 or so people about forty miles outside Houston, along Highway 59.
Will took a pair of energy bars out of his pouch and handed one to her. Strawberry flavored. She liked the fact that he knew to give her the strawberry-flavored bar without asking. She took a bite and frowned at the taste. The artificial strawberry flavoring made it just a little bit more edible than it otherwise would have been. Barely.
“You’re getting dangerously good with that rifle,” he said. They kept their voices low. Out here, in the open, voices tended to travel, especially at night. “You would have made a decent Ranger.”
“Just decent?” she said, feigning offense.
“I need to see how you handle a fifty-pound rucksack during a morning run up a hill first.”
“Oh yeah? How far?”
“Twenty-nine klicks in less than five hours.”
“What’s a ‘klick’?”
“A kilometer.”
“What’s a kilometer?”
“What?”
“I don’t know how far a kilometer is.”
“A kilometer is point six two miles. So twenty-nine klicks is approximately eighteen miles, give or take.”
“So why didn’t you just say that in the first place?” she teased.
He smiled. “Sorry.”
“Eighteen miles up and down a hill with a fifty-pound thing strapped to my back? Sounds like a legal way to kill someone.”
“I think you could do it.”
“I doubt that.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
“Gee, thanks.”
The back and forth came easily. It always did with Will, especially when they were by themselves. It was harder with the others around. She was particularly self-conscious if Luke was within earshot. Which was stupid, but it was hard to explain.
Out here, in the darkness with Will, though, she felt loose and free.
“I used to protest against guns when I was in college,” she said after a while.
“Oh yeah?”
“I don’t even remember what the group was called. Students Against Guns, or something on the nose like that. Not very creative. But you know college students. It was my freshman year, and I’m pretty sure a guy was involved.”
“That’s a first.”
“What?”
“A girl joining a cause she doesn’t believe in for a guy.”
Kate remembered those days as if they were someone else’s memories. It was so long ago now. Had it really been her? Had she ever really been that naïve? That idealistic? Or maybe just that horny?
“Yeah,” she said, smiling to herself.
“So what happened?”
“We dated until sophomore year. Then I ditched him for this French foreign exchange student. Suddenly I was very interested in French history.”
“Nice.”
“Did you go to college?”
“I did.”
“Where did you go?”
“The Forty Acres.”
“The University of Texas?”
“Yup. I enlisted in the Army two days after I graduated.”
“What did you study?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Bullshit. What did you study?”
He smiled to himself and scanned the area with his binoculars for a moment. The longer it took him to answer, the more interested she became.
“Tell me,” she said. “I’m dying to know.”
After a while, he said, “Greek History.”
“What about Greek History specifically?”
“I was a fan of Greek Warfare. Thermopylae, the Spartans, the Hoplite.”
“What’s that?”
“Which part?”
“Hoplite.”
“The Greeks used to fight in a style called Hoplite, using foot soldiers primarily armed with a shield and a spear. They would gather on a field, in a tight unit, and decimate their opponents. The entire foundation of the Hoplite was about trusting the man to your right to protect you with his shield, while you protected the man to your left with yours. If everyone did their job, you won the battle. When two Hoplite units faced off in battle, the one that didn’t break was usually the winner.”
“Sounds hard.”
“It’s about discipline and trust. If one person fails, the unit collapses. It’s been translated to modern fighting. Special Forces operators are almost entirely dependent on watching each other’s back. No man left behind, et cetera.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“Yup.”
Kate smiled. “Was she cute?”
“Oh yeah,” he laughed.
Two hours later, no other ghouls had shown up. So Kate and Will packed up and climbed down the water tower, then headed back in the direction of tonight’s home base.
Back in the city, it would have been unthinkable to walk in the darkness at night, but out here in the countryside the risks were lower. At least, enough for Will to commit to random nights of ghoul sniping.
It was almost midnight when they found the suburb again. Base camp was a house near the end of a street, with its basement turned into a bomb shelter by the previous owner. It consisted of walls, a lone steel door, a nice rug, and it was big — and comfortable — enough for all seven of them. The owner had been something of a gun nut, and there were racks of rifles and handguns in one corner and boxes of ammunition stacked on shelves.
Over the last three weeks, they had become used to staying in other people’s homes. The ghouls didn’t particularly like to shelter in residences during the day. Will reasoned the houses were too small and had too many windows. Even when they slept in buildings, the ghouls stuck to the back rooms. So they had become experts at choosing houses that could accommodate them and were defensible at night. During the day, they gathered supplies and spent at least two to three hours making silver bullets.
Their priorities were always the same: silver bullets, shelter, then supplies.
They entered the suburbs from the south end. Will used the backyards, staying away from the streets and sidewalks and keeping to the darkness as much as possible. Kate was used to walking around in the dark by now, though the overwhelming muteness of the world around her still managed to be disturbing if she stopped to listen.
They made it to within 300 yards of base camp when they heard the soft — and by now very familiar — padding of feet against asphalt. She knew what the sound meant without having to think about it.
They moved quickly behind a big grouping of bushes along the side of a two-story house just as a flurry of ghouls flashed by in front of them, along the sidewalk. She watched from behind shrubbery as the thin, preternatural silhouetted figures raced up the street. She counted, but gave up after fifteen.
Will crouched silently next to her, his rifle slung across his chest, forefinger tapping quietly against the trigger guard. He was counting. Each tap for every ghoul. Once the last ghoul disappeared, he stopped.
“How many?” she whispered.
“Twenty-three.”
They circled back and entered the two-story house through the unlocked back door. She was right behind him, unholstering her Glock and holding it against her side as she went. The Glock had long ago stopped feeling strange against her bare skin. The strangeness now came when she couldn’t feel its weight against her hip.
Will scanned the house in the darkness. Moonlight shone through the windows, enough to see where everything was. The front door was closed, but also unlocked. The windows were broken, jagged pieces of remaining glass jutting out from corners, dried blood smeared along the sharp edges and windowsills. Nothing she hadn’t seen in dozens of homes since they began making their way out of the city three weeks ago.