“Keo!” Bonnie shouted again.
Keo snapped out of it and ran around the Ram.
Bonnie saw him coming and threw the passenger side door open and he jumped inside, landing in her lap. She grabbed him with one hand, her other arm reaching across him and slamming the door shut, shouting, “Go, Blaine, go!”
Blaine didn’t need any encouragement. He shoved his foot down on the gas pedal and the Ram began reversing up the road, the big man’s hands gripping the steering wheel with such intensity Keo wondered what it would take to pry them loose if he needed to.
Bonnie struggled out from under him and scooted over to the middle of the front seats. “Jesus, we thought you were dead.”
He was about to answer when bullets punched through the front windshield and zipped past his head and tore into the truck upholstery around them.
“Christ!” Blaine shouted.
The big man spun the steering wheel even as rounds slammed into the vehicle’s side and front hood, the constant ring of ping! ping! ping! filling the air. Then a second later they were facing the right direction — back down the road — and the truck was picking up speed again with every breath Keo took.
Bonnie screamed when the back windshield exploded under a hail of bullets and they were showered with glass. She threw her hands over her head and kept it down, unwilling to come up even after the last piece of glass fell away.
“We’re good, we’re good,” Keo said, looking back up. Then to Blaine, “Nice driving.”
“Thanks,” Blaine said, though he hadn’t looked away from the road or even relinquished an ounce of pressure on the steering wheel.
Keo glanced out the blown back window. He didn’t see any pursuing vehicles, just the two wasted ones blocking the road. The first was still resting on its roof, while the second one was engulfed in flames. Two trucks were trying to get around them, but one had run into a ditch and men were trying to push it out to no avail. The fourth truck didn’t even make the attempt.
“Are they following us?” Bonnie asked.
“No,” Keo said. He glanced at his watch. “Get to the island by six, right?”
“Yeah,” Blaine said, almost breathless.
Keo reached into the back and pulled his pack over. He unzipped it and took out a bottle of water. It was freezing cold a few hours ago and was just cold enough now. Hell, that was more than he’d had in almost a year.
He sat back in his seat and took a sip, flicking broken glass off his clothes and picking them from his hair. He hoped he hadn’t been cut by flying shards. God knew he already looked like a mess with the scar and a broken nose that hadn’t entirely healed properly yet. The last thing he needed was a piece of glass sticking out of the other cheek.
After a while, he realized Bonnie was staring at him. “What?” he said.
“Did that go as you planned it?” She wasn’t being sarcastic, either; he could see it in her eyes. She was hoping he would say yes, because that would mean it was mission accomplished. Or close enough.
“The idea was to stall them until the Army Rangers get back and you can put up a proper defense for the island, right?”
“Yes…”
He looked at the truck’s side mirror, back at the flaming wreckage behind them. “Then maybe. I guess we’ll find out tonight one way or another…”
27
Will
Two down, two to go.
So where were the other two blue-eyed ghouls?
The question nagged at him from the time they climbed into the Bronco to when they were halfway up Route 13, with I-10 still hidden somewhere in the distance.
According to the map, thirty minutes would take them to the interstate, and from there another hour on the highway before hopping off for the small roads at the town of Salvani. Song Island lay further south. Another hour, give or take, thanks to the nonexistent traffic. If they could locate Gaby somewhere along the way, there was no reason why they couldn’t be home by nightfall. He was looking forward to that. More than anything, he wanted to see Lara again. Imagining her in his mind’s eye had become harder with each passing day.
And yet…
Two down, two to go.
Where did the other two go? Why weren’t they in Dunbar last night? The only explanation he could think of was that they had split up. Which had benefited Danny and him. He wasn’t sure he could have fended off four at once, even knowing a bullet to the head (Silver bullets? Or would any ol’ bullet do?) could finish them off, whereas they simply shrugged off everything else.
That was good and bad news. The good news was that you could kill them with a bullet to the head. The bad news was that you had to shoot them in the head and destroy the brain. The average human melon had a circumference of fifty-six centimeters (give or take), with the brain residing in the top portion. So take fifty percent away from the initial size, leaving the shooter with, at best, a target circumference of twenty-eight centimeters.
Not a difficult shot in and of itself, but when the target was moving — and there was no way in hell those blue-eyed bastards were going to stand still and let him zero in on them — it was another matter entirely. He had gotten lucky with the two from last night. The first one by way of the cross-knife when it was standing still, gloating over its victory, and he had caught the second one at almost point-blank range with the creature coming right at him. Even an amateur could have made that shot.
Shoot them in the head. Right. Easy peasy.
“At the risk of sounding like Carly,” Danny said, “what are you thinking?”
“Where did the other two blue-eyed ghouls go?”
“And you definitely saw four in that, uh, walkabout of yours.”
“Definitely. I mastered counting in elementary school.”
“I wouldn’t know. I was too busy making out with Suzy by the jungle gym.”
Danny had both hands on the steering wheel. His broken nose and bruised face looked even more noticeable against the burning sun and dry wind blowing through the open windows. Both of their clothes, weighed down by the gear they were carrying, were damp against their seats. Will would have preferred to drive with the air conditioner blasting, but knowing Gaby was out there somewhere made that impossible. They were also driving much slower than before — barely forty miles per hour now — just so they wouldn’t miss seeing or hearing anything that could point them to Gaby’s whereabouts. The idea of driving past her now, after all but giving her up for dead thirty minutes ago, was an unsettling thought.
“Given their whole hive mind thing,” Danny said, “it doesn’t make sense they didn’t launch a second attack after you took out the first two.”
“That’s what concerns me.”
“So maybe they weren’t in Dunbar. Maybe they were out here in Nowheresville doing…something else.”
“Or tracking someone else.”
“Gaby?”
“Best-case scenario.”
Danny chuckled. “Our best scenario is that two blue-eyed ghouls are hot on Gaby’s trail. Didn’t think I’d be saying that anytime soon.”
“Desperate times call for desperate best-case scenarios.”
“So we know she left L15 with two locals, then left Dunbar with three. Where do you think she picked up the third stray?”
“In Dunbar, maybe. Or—” Will stopped when he saw the smoke rising in the distance. “Slow down, Danny. Two o’clock.”
Danny eased the Bronco down to thirty-five, then twenty, miles per hour. They leaned forward at the sight of smoke hovering over the remains of a house. Recently, from the looks of it.