As the animal settled and the man on top of it hung on, Gaby took two quick steps forward and took aim again, but before she could squeeze off another shot, the man collapsed from the saddle. He crumpled onto the ground on his belly, legs twisted awkwardly under him, and lay still.
The horse didn’t stick around. It turned and ran back—right at her!
Gaby stepped into the animal’s path and threw her hands into the air, waving them wildly to gets its attention. She got it, all right, not that the large brown charging thing with magnificent flowing mane had any intentions of stopping for her.
“Whoa!” Gaby shouted. “Whoa, horse!”
She didn’t have time to process how stupid she must have looked (or sounded) before the horse came within a foot of running her over like she was an annoying gnat. She lunged out of its path, going sideways at the last second, losing the AK-47 at the same time she crashed into some underbrush headfirst.
By the time she picked herself back up, the horse was running freely through the woods until there was nothing left of it but the gradually fading clop-clop-clop echoing back and forth among the trees.
She sighed and struggled to her feet. “Stupid horse.”
Right. The horse is the stupid animal and not you, who just tried to flag it down like it was a taxi. Keep telling yourself that, girl.
She snatched up the assault rifle and jogged over to the dead rider. Gaby robbed him of the M4 and pocketed his spare ammos and a small first-aid kit. She pulled out his holstered sidearm — a 9mm Glock — and stuffed it into her waistband.
Voices, coming from behind her. “Greg! Where the hell are you?”
She didn’t hear galloping, so the man had to be on foot. Gaby didn’t stick around to find out for sure. She slung the newly acquired carbine and hurried off, feeling much better with her pouches stuffed with spare magazines and an extra handgun in her waist. The extra weight made her move slower, but she didn’t want to risk throwing anything away.
“A soldier who complains about having to carry too much firepower is a dead one,” Will liked to say.
Will and Danny had taught her a lot of things on the island, but tracking people wasn’t one of them. She had no idea where Milly and Peter had gone, and although there were clues — a broken branch here, a snapped twig there — each time she thought she had picked up their trail, it suddenly changed again.
She entertained but quickly dismissed the idea that Peter was purposefully mixing up his footprints in order to throw her off. He didn’t strike her as someone who had a lot of experience in the woods. She didn’t either, but compared to him she might as well be one of those frontier woodsmen she had learned about in school. Peter was one of the town’s cooks, for God’s sake. A guy like that probably didn’t spend a whole lot of time learning tracking — or in this case, hiding his tracks — from pursuers.
Of course, she could be wrong. What did she really know about them, anyway? What did she know about the girl? Besides the fact they were both clearly desperate to leave L15. They were the only two, from the looks of it. Was that suspicious? Maybe. Right now, though, she owed them for saving her life. Maybe she would have gotten out anyway on her own, but they had made it easier.
Even so, after about fifteen minutes of fruitless searching, the idea of heading off by herself was becoming more and more feasible.
What did she really owe them, anyway? Yes, they had helped her escape, but if they had run off on their own, they were beyond her help. The smart thing would be to keep going, cross Hillman Lake, and somehow reorient herself and head back south, back toward Beaufont Lake…
…and Song Island.
How long had it been? It felt like years since she had seen the white beaches and eaten the fresh fish and stood watch in the Tower’s third floor—
Snap!
She spun around, lifting the AK-47 to fire—
“It’s just me!” Peter shouted.
She sighed and lowered the rifle. He had come close to dying. Too close.
“Where’s Milly?” she asked, keeping her voice low.
“Follow me,” he said, lowering his voice to match her pitch. He started off and Gaby followed.
“Where’s Milly?” she asked again.
“We found a place to stay not far from here.”
“Is it safe?”
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
“It looked pretty safe.”
They walked in silence for a while, and Peter seemed to know where he was going.
“You’re pretty good with that rifle,” he said finally.
She remembered missing the horseman with her first shot. “I’m not that good with the AK. I was trained on an M4.”
“Which one is that?”
“The black one.”
“Oh.”
“Where did you put Milly, Peter?”
“It’s a cave, but it’s pretty well hidden. I left her to come look for you.”
Gaby grabbed his arm and spun him around. “You left her inside a cave?”
He didn’t answer right away, and she could tell he didn’t understand the accusatory tone in her voice. “Why? Isn’t a cave safe?”
“Caves are dark, Peter.”
The realization spread across his face. “Oh God,” he said, and jerked his hand away before running off at full speed.
She fell in behind him, keeping one eye in front of her and the other scanning the woods. Her ears were up, listening for the familiar clop-clop-clop of horse hooves on soft earth. She didn’t believe for a minute the remaining two guards on horseback hadn’t converged toward all the gunfire. The fact that they weren’t here yet worried her. Then again, maybe like Peter, they were more terrible at this whole woods thing than she initially attributed to them.
“Are we close?” she asked Peter.
“Almost there,” he said, already sucking in air with every step.
She didn’t know why he was breathing so hard. She was the one carrying two rifles, two handguns, and nearly half a dozen magazines. Even with all that weight, she was still matching him stride for stride. A part of her wanted to ask him what he did before all of this, but the other part — the survivor in her — didn’t want to know. If he and Milly died today or tomorrow, it was better if she didn’t know too much about them. It was a cold thought, but Gaby had gotten progressively good at detaching herself from her emotions these days.
Except with Nate.
What happened to you, Nate? Are you dead…or worse?
Peter finally slowed down as they came up on the mouth of a cave, partially hidden among the trees and bushes. It was impossible not to notice the suffocating darkness staring back out at her.
“Milly,” Peter whispered. He had stopped near the entrance. When there was no answer, he whispered louder, “Milly.”
Gaby moved past him with the AK-47 in front of her, wishing badly for the magazine to be full of silver bullets. She flicked the fire selector to full-auto. Regular bullets didn’t do a damn thing against the ghouls, but maybe enough of them at once…
“She’s not answering,” Peter said.
No shit, Peter.
Gaby took a deep breath and stepped into the pitch-black. Peter moved behind her, his footsteps tentative, his breathing too loud despite the fact he had stopped running more than a minute ago.
She stepped cautiously, allowing her eyes to adjust to the nothingness. The sunlight only penetrated the cave for a few precious yards, and it wasn’t nearly enough to see with. She only managed four, then five steps before she was swallowed up by the pitch-black nothingness.