The one he had shot earlier in the auditorium was crouched behind the Tacoma, and even from this distance Will could see him shaking, which was something to behold, because the man was still wearing a hazmat suit. Will pulled the red dot away from him, moving slightly to his left, to the one standing, firing calmly back at Danny.
Will shot him once in the back of the head and quickly rolled away as a third man turned in his direction and began firing back. The dead man in the hazmat suit next to Will twitched as two bullets found him, surprising Will.
Nice shot, buddy.
Will clicked his radio. “Danny, leave the one with the bandages.”
“I would never hurt a wounded dog,” Danny said.
Will sat calmly behind the flat tire and waited out the shooting. The man would have to reload sooner or later.
Instead, he heard a single shot from an M4A1 and then silence.
Or not.
Danny’s voice came through the radio: “Nine down, one to go. Looks like we have a volunteer. You think he’ll join up? Lie to him about the pension plan. They always fall for that.”
He leaned out and saw the man with the bandaged leg standing, or trying his best to stand, groping the truck for support, and turning around in a wild circle. His rifle lay on the floor at his feet next to his gas mask. He was shouting something. It took Will a moment to hear what he was saying: “I surrender! Don’t shoot!”
Will wasn’t sure, but the man might have also been crying.
He clicked his radio: “Lara, talk to me.”
“I’m fine,” she answered.
“Davies?”
“Good, good,” Davies said, though his voice was still quivering a bit, and he sounded a little out of breath.
“I’m fine, too, in case anyone cares,” Danny said.
Will glanced down his watch: 10:43 a.m.
CHAPTER 36
LARA
His name was Kevin. He was twenty years old, and a blue-eyed ghoul came to him one night and asked him if he wanted to keep living. Kevin, who somehow survived The Purge, and kept surviving almost purely by accident — or as he put it, “Dumb-ass luck and more dumb-ass luck”—said yes. And that was how he became one of the ten men in hazmat suits who by day made sure the blood farm wasn’t disturbed, and by night…well, at night, they tried to stay out of the way.
Lara spent the hour after the gunfight listening to Kevin explain things as best he could. He wasn’t the leader. Far from it. The leader was a man named Troy, who was also the first man Will shot, thus sending the group into something of a free fall. After that, a man named Peter sort of took over the group, directing the attacks, but proved wanting.
For his part, Kevin managed to survive so long because he kept his head down and did what he was told. He was thankful to still be alive, knowing that so many were already dead or dying.
“It wasn’t like I had a choice,” he explained. “It was either that or get used like those other guys. I mean, what was I supposed to do? I’m no hero.”
He looked at the field of emaciated bodies around him as he spoke. They were in one corner of the auditorium, close enough to the bodies for Kevin to squirm uncomfortably on the floor. Without his gas mask, he didn’t look very menacing. He looked exactly like what he was — a scared kid.
She was in the auditorium with Will, who was casually picking his nails with the sharp point of his cross-knife. She knew it was an act. Letting Kevin see it was a psychological tactic — a covert threat. Kevin’s eyes kept darting from Lara to Will to the cross-knife to the bodies and back again.
“And there are only ten of you?” Will asked. He barely looked at Kevin, but the threat was implicit: I’m so disinterested in you, I can kill you at any moment and not give a shit.
“As far as I know,” Kevin said.
She hadn’t been able to detect a lie from him since they began the questioning. She didn’t think he was smart enough to know when to fib and when to tell the whole truth. That, and he had just seen Will and Danny kill nine of his comrades. That probably made an impression, too.
“What about the other towns?” Will said. “Are there other blood farms like this one? How many do you know about?”
“I don’t know,” Kevin said. “We were told to just watch over this one. We’ve never even left the town since it all started. That’s part of the deal.”
“Where did you get the people?” Lara asked.
“They brought them to us.”
“They’re not all from here?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you from here?”
“Yeah.”
“You said ‘they’ brought the people here. Who is ‘they’?”
“You know. Them. The creatures. The ones you call ghouls.”
“They were still alive when they were brought here?” Will asked.
“Yeah. Like that. They were just sort of asleep.”
“What is it that you do?” she asked. “With the bodies? You just watch over them?”
Kevin nodded. “That’s it. I swear. We just watch them, make sure they’re still here when they, you know, need them at night.”
“How often do they need them?” Will asked.
“Every night.”
“Every night?” Lara said.
“Pretty much, yeah,” Kevin nodded.
“You said he came to you,” Will said. “The blue-eyed ghoul. He talked? The way you and I are talking right now?”
“Yeah. He’s not like the others. He walks straight and he talks. He kind of looks human, too. From, you know, certain angles.”
She looked up at Will. Was he thinking the same thing: Was it the same blue-eyed ghoul, or were there more of them out there?
“Did he have a name?” Will asked. “This blue-eyed ghoul?”
“What?” Kevin shook his head, as if that was the most ludicrous thing he had been asked yet. “No. At least, none that he told us. We never asked. Why would you ask, you know? It wasn’t like it was hard to pick him out from the others. He had blue eyes.”
“How do you contact him?”
“We don’t. He comes to us, tells us what to do. It’s been a while since we heard from him, though.”
“How long has it been?”
“About two weeks.”
“When did you start all this?” Lara asked.
“About three months ago,” Kevin said. He suddenly looked from her to Will, then back to her. “You’re not going to kill me, are you?”
She wasn’t surprised he looked at her when he asked that. It was a shrewd move, something she hadn’t thought he was capable of. Asking her and not Will was a sign he knew any chance he had of survival lay with her, the woman. She almost respected him for such a blatant, tactical move. Maybe he wasn’t so dumb after all.
“That’s not my call,” she said.
The words came out easily, emotionless. Kevin heard it, too, and the disappointment was obvious on his face. She expected to feel sorry for him, but it never happened.
Their radios squawked with Danny’s voice: “I got good news, and I got bad news. Which one you want first?”
“What’s the good news?” Will said.
“The good news is Davies turned out to be a pretty decent mechanic. At least, he knows his way underneath a hood, which is more than I can say for, well, me.”
“So what’s the bad news?”
“The bad news is there’s not a whole lot for him to work on. Every single vehicle we’ve come across is no good. There are bullets in everything. Engine blocks, tires, doors. One guess who was responsible, and no cheating.”