Carrie went back to scooping syrup-drenched pieces of fruit into her mouth with one of the cheap plastic sporks they had found in the back of the Ridgeline. Lorelei, meanwhile, ate ravenously from a can of SPAM.
“Tell me about this town,” Keo said to Carrie.
“What about it?”
“Why did you run away?”
“You really don’t know? About the towns?”
“‘Towns’? So there is more than one?”
“That’s why it’s called L11,” she said, watching him carefully, maybe trying to gauge if he was messing with her. When she was certain he wasn’t, she continued. “There are dozens of them in Louisiana alone. That’s what I heard, anyway. The one we escaped from was called L11.”
“L11,” Keo repeated again. “So there are ten more before it. And more after it?”
“Yes, I think so. I don’t know for sure, but I’ve heard the stories.”
“And there are people in these towns? How is that possible? What happens at night? How do they keep the bloodsuckers out?”
“You don’t know?” she said again. “Where have you been all this time?”
“In the woods. I guess I’m a little behind the times.”
“Have you ever been to the camps?”
“These are different from the towns?”
She nodded and told him, and Keo listened intently.
Carrie explained the camps filled with survivors. The towns like L11, where the creatures stayed out. And humans donating blood every day. “The agreement,” as Carrie put it. Then there were the pregnant women. He found that the hardest to swallow, but when he stared at the women and saw the very real fear on Lorelei’s face underneath her hair, he believed it. Every single word of it.
“Goddamn,” he said when she was finished. “So they’re working for those things? The enemy?”
“Yes,” Carrie said. “They watch over us in the daytime.”
“But that’s not all they do.”
“No. They do a lot of other…things.”
Keo nodded. Suddenly the presence of those men in hazmat suits and gas masks trying to kill him in Robertson Park made sense. Or as much “sense” as selling out your own species to bloodsucking creatures made any sense, anyway.
“You’re taking this well,” Carrie said, watching him closely.
He shrugged. “I’ve seen some crazy things in my life.”
“Crazier than this?”
“Not this, but I’ve seen people do some crazy things to survive.”
He spent a few minutes rolling all the information he had just absorbed over in his head in silence. A year ago he wouldn’t have believed a single thing Carrie had just said, but what was possible and impossible had been upended for good in the last eleven months. These days it seemed anything was not only possible, but likely.
After a while, he glanced back at her. “You said they wanted to impregnate you.”
“Yeah. That’s why we ran.”
“Were the guys too ugly?”
Carrie rolled her eyes. “It’s not the sex. It’s what happens afterward. With the babies.” She looked almost imploringly at him. “You understand, right? Why we couldn’t stay? Why we ran?”
He nodded and thought about Gillian. “I understand.”
She nodded back gratefully then returned to eating her canned fruits with the flimsy utensil.
“One of the men I shot mentioned a kid over the radio,” Keo said. “Was that why they were there?”
“I heard them talking on the radio,” Carrie nodded. “One of the kids spotted your boat at the marina. That’s why they were checking it out.”
“‘Kids’?”
“They have eyes everywhere. Kids. Eleven, twelve-year-olds. They’re all over the cities on bicycles. Some on skateboards.”
“Skateboards?”
“Whatever they’re used to and can get them from place to place the easiest, I guess.”
“What do these kids do, exactly?”
“They’re spies. Lookouts. Their job is to go around the city looking for survivors. The guys in uniform come later. That’s how they found us. One of those stupid kids spotted us and the trucks swooped in.”
“Kids on skateboards, towns, camps, and pregnant women carrying babies to feed the ghouls,” Keo said, shaking his head. “Next thing you know, you’re going to tell me Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are real, too.”
“‘Ghouls’?” Carrie said.
“That’s what she calls them.”
“Who?”
“The woman on the radio.”
Carrie stared at him like he had a third eye. Then Lorelei joined in.
Keo sighed. “My turn, I guess.”
He told them about the woman on the radio. The repeating message. Bodies of water. Sunlight. Ultraviolet. And silver.
“Is she right?” Carrie said. “About everything? I know about sunlight, but the others…”
Keo nodded. “She’s right about pretty much everything. The only thing I can’t be sure of is the ultraviolet light. Hard to test that one out without the right equipment, and I have no idea where to get those.”
“But silver…”
“It works. I was testing it out last night.” And got Shorty and Zachary killed doing it, he thought, but left that part out. Instead, he said, “The boats at the marina. Do you know what happened to them? That sailboat was the first and only vessel I saw since I arrived in the city.”
Carrie shook her head. “I don’t know. I spent most of my time in the camp before they relocated us to L11. It’s weird, though. Those marinas are usually filled with boats.”
“You used to live around here?”
“The east side,” she nodded. “That’s where we were headed when they grabbed us.”
“What’s over there?”
“My old house.”
“That’s it?”
She looked embarrassed. “I couldn’t really think of anywhere else to go. I don’t even know what I expected to find there. Everyone I know is gone. I just didn’t…know where else to go.”
Lorelei reached over and clutched Carrie’s arm tightly. The two girls exchanged a brief private smile, an attempt to give each other strength that he wasn’t entirely sure was successful.
Keo watched them closely for a moment. The teenager, hiding behind her hair as if it were an invisible force field, doing her best not to draw attention. The older Carrie, who would have been pretty if not for the dirt and grime. They looked beaten and tired and in so many ways were the exact opposite of Gillian.
Or, at least, the last time he saw Gillian.
Was she even still alive out there?
He had to know. And that meant finding a boat. Maybe somewhere down south.
He had to go down there anyway…
“Have you ever heard of Song Island?” he asked Carrie.
“Yes,” Carrie said, looking back at him. “It’s on Beaufont Lake. I used to go fishing with my dad down there when I was a kid. Those were some of the best times of my life. Why?”
“I was told there might be people there. The plan was always to find out one way or another if they’re still there before I headed off to Santa Marie Island.”
“An island,” Carrie said. “It would make sense, wouldn’t it? Because the creatures — the ghouls — wouldn’t be able to cross the lake. Do you think that’s why all the boats are missing? Maybe the soldiers are going around destroying them so no one can use them to get to these islands?”
“That’s one theory.”
“You said going to Song Island was the original plan. Is it still the plan?” Carrie asked anxiously.
He nodded, thinking about Zachary, who had come with him specifically to find out what had happened to his friends who had gone to Song Island, following the siren call of a radio message promising shelter and security many, many months ago.