“Or a watch,” Danny continued, ignoring him. “I’m missing a watch, too. That’s not bad, right? If you leave a watch inside someone?”
“I don’t see any,” Lara said. Kate couldn’t tell if she was playing along with Danny or not.
“Have you done this before?” Will asked.
“Up close like this? Once,” Lara said. “Last night, on the person you shot. This doesn’t look nearly as bad as that one.”
“Did he make it?” Luke asked.
“No, he died later.”
“Oh.” Luke’s face turned pale.
“It was the wound,” Lara added quickly. “It was too deep and it took the Sundays too long to get him back to the cabin. But Danny and Will did a really good job on this, and you’re already one day past it, so this is completely different.”
Luke nodded, looking very relieved.
Lara wrapped Luke back up and dug through their first-aid kit, essentially a big bag that Danny and Will had filled with medical supplies along the way. Lara scanned the bottles, reading the labels, then found one she wanted and shook out a couple of pills.
She handed them to Luke. “This is going to help with the pain, and it’ll keep you alert at the same time.”
“Will I play the piano again, Doc?” Luke grinned.
“Only if you’re on your back like this.”
He swallowed the pills with some water. “You guys got those dicks that shot me?”
“Yeah,” Will said. “Danny did. I’m pretty sure Ted put down the one Lara’s talking about. And Lara herself finished off the third one for us before we even got to the cabin.”
“Serves them right,” Luke said, though even that seemed to take a lot out of him.
“Luke, stop talking now,” Kate said. “Save your energy.”
She felt a presence behind her and looked back to find Ted. He turned and left without a word. She made a mental note to talk to him later.
Will was saying to Lara, “When do you think we can move him?”
“The highway’s pretty smooth,” she said. “I don’t see why you couldn’t move him. He’s already made it past the first twenty-four hours, and that’s the important thing.”
“The problem is, it won’t be highway forever. There’ll be some bumpy roads ahead. I’m not just talking about your standard bumpy country roads. Harold Campbell purposefully put the facility in a spot only accessible after three klicks of the worst road you’ll ever see.”
“Why did he do that?” Carly asked.
“To deter the local population from poking around. No one would be crazy enough to keep going along that road on purpose for too long.”
“Is it really that bad?” Kate asked.
“Imagine driving three klicks through potholes.”
“He can’t go through something like that,” Lara said. “Not for a while.”
“How long?” Will asked.
“Maybe a couple of days, at least. If the road is as bad as you’re saying.”
Will nodded. “It’s worse.”
“Jesus, this guy really is out there,” Danny said.
“They call it eccentric when you’re filthy rich.” Will glanced at Lara. “Do what you can for now. Danny and I will plan accordingly.”
Will left them in the office. Danny kissed Carly and followed Will outside with a mug of steaming coffee moments later.
Lara said, “Will told me you guys have some clothes. Do you think I could…?”
“Yeah,” Kate said, “of course, come with me.”
She led Lara through the side door and into the garage. The steel garage door remained down, so the only light came from the portable LED lanterns hung around the room. Kate went to one of the trailers and pulled back the tarp.
She looked through the closed crates and boxes and pulled a suitcase from the middle. “Don’t expect anything too flashy. Everyone stopped trying to make fashion statements a while ago.”
“Anything’s better than what I’m wearing now.” She tried to smile, but it came out wrong.
Kate unzipped the suitcase for her. “There should be something that fits you. You look about Carly’s size.”
“Thanks.” Her voice was breaking.
Kate didn’t know whether to run away or grab her in a tight embrace. “There’s some bottled water in one of the trailers. If you want it.” Oh God, what am I doing? “I don’t mean just to drink, to wash with.”
“Oh.”
What happened to you back there?
“Are you okay?” Kate asked.
Lara lifted her head, dirty hair falling over her face. “Not really.”
Kate felt her heart breaking. “I’m sorry. For what happened to you back there.”
“At least I’m alive, right?” She tried to smile again. It still came out all wrong. “Thanks, for the clothes. And the water.”
“There’s more than enough,” Kate said, the words tumbling out of her unnecessarily fast. “We can always pick up more. Stores are filled with them…dozens and dozens of cases just lying around.”
“That would be great. It’s…been a while since I’ve had a shower.”
“I’ll let you get dressed and cleaned up.” Go. Just go.
“Thanks.”
She nodded, gave the younger woman a small smile, and left as fast as she could, feeling a rush of uncontrollable guilt.
She found Danny and Will outside by their ATVs, looking over a map they had picked up from a gas station a few days back.
Danny was saying, “A dozen. Maybe more.”
“Where?” Will asked.
“Some in the parking lot, but mostly around the garage area.”
“What about the garage?” Kate asked.
“There were ghouls here last night,” Will said.
“Are you sure? I didn’t see or hear any.”
“They were keeping a low profile,” Danny said. “But yeah, they left tracks.”
“But I didn’t hear anything, Danny.”
“I think that was the point,” Will said. She gave him a questioning look. “Last night, at the cabin, they did the same thing. They probed, but didn’t attack.”
“They’re getting smarter,” Danny said. “A hell of a lot smarter.”
Dead, not stupid. Like you always say, Will.
“There’s a good chance it’s the same group,” Will said. “The same one that’s been tracking us since we left Houston.”
The implication behind his words made her shiver slightly.
“We’ve been able to stay one step ahead of them,” Will continued, “but I think they finally caught up to us last night. At the cabin, and here. But they didn’t attack either place. Why not?”
“They’re doing recon,” Danny said.
“What does that mean?” Kate asked.
“They’re doing reconnaissance,” Will explained. “Before you attack an enemy, you gather intelligence first, find out where they are, their numbers, weaknesses, and if necessary, you make adjustments, call in reinforcements. They know a handful of ghouls aren’t going to stand up against us. So what do they do?”
“They call reinforcements,” she said, feeling a sudden tightness in her chest.
Will had brought this up before, but it had never seemed real until now. Was it possible? Were the ghouls that smart? The very idea terrified her.
“So what do we do?” she asked.
“Starch is only forty-eight klicks up the road,” Will said. “An easy two hour’s drive even going slowly. Three hours, max. An hour if we gun it. But we can’t go there yet.”
“Luke…”
“Yeah. Can’t risk opening up that wound again.”
“Come on, the road to the facility can’t possibly be that bad,” Danny said.
“It’s worse,” Will said.