“They had blue eyes,” Lance said, trembling noticeably as he talked. “They played with them. I mean, they played with them. I’d never seen anything like it.”
“There were two,” Annie said.
Will and Danny exchanged a knowing look.
They stood around the Bronco with the weary couple. Both Lance and Annie still looked shell-shocked from last night’s harrowing encounter with the ghouls.
“What do you mean by ‘they played with them’?” Will asked.
“They let Toby out of the house,” Lance said. “Then they made him run into the fields. At first I thought the black-eyed ones would be all over him, but they weren’t. They just stood around and watched. Then the new ones — the ones with blue eyes — ran after him. Then…there was a lot of screaming. Toby. I would know his voice anywhere.”
“They gave him a head start?” Danny said.
“Yeah,” Lance said, as if he could barely believe his own story. “Those things… they didn’t act like the others. I think they were controlling them. I know that sounds crazy…right?”
“It’s not that crazy,” Danny said.
“You’ve seen them too, haven’t you?” Annie said, staring at them.
“Yeah,” Will nodded. “What happened to the rest of your people?”
“They killed them,” Lance said. “One after another. They started with Toby, then Danielle, then Sally…”
“…then Howard,” Annie finished.
“We hid in a room under the floorboards inside the main bedroom when they first attacked the house. I guess the homeowners were using it to store valuables. We saw bundles of money in there.”
“There was jewelry, too.”
“We stumbled across it by accident when we first moved in. We didn’t really have any uses for it until last night when they came. Usually they don’t bother with the house. We make sure the place is completely dark at night and we seal ourselves into the rooms. We had barricaded the windows and doors, too.”
“Every night?” Will said.
Lance nodded. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it. Until last night.”
“What happened last night?”
“Usually the black-eyed ones might sniff around. Sometimes they’ll even bang on the doors or windows. But then they always leave when we don’t show ourselves. But last night, they didn’t stop. They just kept at it. I don’t know how, but they managed to break down one of the windows.”
It’s the blue-eyed ghouls. The others become unpredictable when they’re around…
“We barely got into the hidden room in time,” Annie said. “Then the screaming started…”
“They played games with them,” Lance said, and his eyes drifted over into the fields that surrounded the property. “It’s so quiet at night, you can hear a long way even through walls.”
Annie reached over and squeezed Lance’s hand.
“What about the house?” Will asked. “What happened to it?”
“We burned it down,” Lance said. “After last night, there wasn’t any point in staying. And they were in there…”
“They?”
“The creatures. They were hiding in the basement. When we came out of the secret room, we could hear them moving around under the house.”
“Lance thought we might be able to kill a few of them,” Annie said. She was staring back at the house now. The smoke had all but vanished, leaving behind just a twisted, blackened carcass. “I don’t know if it worked, or if the basement is still down there under all that. Should we…find out?”
Will exchanged another look with Danny.
“There could be a couple of Mister Blue Eyes down there,” Danny said. “Might be worth it to find out.”
“Through that?” Will said. “It’d take the whole day to sift through the wreckage. We don’t have that kind of time with Gaby still out there.”
“You mentioned her before,” Lance said. “Who’s Gaby?”
“A friend of ours. We’ve been looking for her since Dunbar.”
“We saw a lot of vehicles coming from Dunbar all morning.”
“Was one of them a Silverado truck?” Danny asked.
“I don’t know, I didn’t see one. Annie?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what a Silverado looks like. And I only got glimpses of them from the barn.”
“But there was something else,” Lance said. “We heard shooting from farther up the road.”
“How long ago?” Danny asked.
“I don’t know, I think thirty or forty minutes?”
“The timing’s about right,” Will said. He looked back at Lance and Annie. “You guys can come—”
“Yes,” Annie said before Will could even finish.
Lance grinned sheepishly. “What she said.”
The Chevy Silverado was inside a ditch, resting on its back bumper with the front grill facing the cloudless sky. Harsh sun beat down on its chrome and hood, streams of sunlight piercing bullet holes that stitched the front windshield. There was a dead man outside the driver side door with two bullet holes in his chest. All the car windows were broken, with glass sprinkled liberally over the seats and spread out among the splashes of blood.
Will climbed up the ditch and back onto the highway, where the Bronco idled in the road. Lance and Annie were standing outside in the sun glancing around.
“Bad news?” Lance said, looking over.
“Not good news,” Will said.
He blinked up the road at Danny, walking back from a lone red pickup parked across one of the two-lane roads. He was dropping spent bullet casings from one hand.
“Anything?” Will called.
“There was a second car,” Danny shouted back. “Some kind of half-assed roadside ambush.”
“To stop the Silverado.”
“Looks like it. And these,” he said, flicking one of the bullet casings in Will’s direction.
Will crouched and picked up a 5.56x45mm brass casing. Assault rifles. Probably M4 or AR-15. God knew there were plenty of those just lying around these days.
God bless the Second Amendment.
“There’s a dead body up there,” Danny said. “Poor bastard decided to go up against the Silverado and — surprise — lost. Any signs of Gaby?”
“No, and that’s a good thing.”
“Pray tell.”
“No body means she’s still alive.”
Danny peered up the road. “They must have taken off in the third car. That thing’s leaking motor oil. I get the feeling they intended to dump it, grab the first vehicle that came across their little slapdash barricade, but—” he looked over at the undercarriage of the Silverado “—I’m thinking that didn’t quite work out as planned. That car can’t be moving very fast at all. If we haul ass…”
“So let’s get to hauling,” Will said.
Danny was able to track the motor oil stain on the highway from the Bronco’s driver seat. This way, they would know if the vehicle unexpectedly left the road. It hadn’t so far. Will just hoped they could catch up to it before it reached the interstate up ahead. It was going to be difficult, leaking motor oil or not, after that.
He hung out the window listening for sounds that didn’t belong and scanned the horizon just in case the trail they were following proved deceptive. Lance and Annie pitched in, the couple leaning out their windows while armed with Will’s and Danny’s binoculars.
They were ten minutes into the pursuit when Will said, “How’s it looking?”
“It’s looking,” Danny said. “Whatever they’re driving, it’s leaking good. No wonder they were so hot to switch vehicles. I’m guessing the red pickup must have been in worse condition or else they would have taken it instead.”
“We’re pushing up on time here, Danny. If we don’t find her and hit the interstate soon, we’re not reaching Song Island by tonight.”