“Oh yeah,” Danny said. “It’s a little crowded back there. But that’s what laps are for, right?”
Gaby held open the door for Milly and Claire as they squeezed into the back. “Milly, sit on my lap.”
The girl nodded. She had stopped crying and her cheeks were covered in dried tears, but she looked ready to start all over again at a moment’s notice.
Gaby closed the door as Danny started up the truck and reversed. Then he somehow swung the vehicle around until he had it turned a full 180 degrees. He stepped on the gas and they were flying down the highway, away from Josh’s approaching soldiers.
It was a tight fit in the back. Even though the other two people were doing their best to make themselves small, they had to fight for space with weapons and boxes of supplies piled on the floor. Claire ended up sitting on one of the boxes while Gaby had to place her legs over another one, with the edge of crates poking into her ribcage.
Danny looked up at them in the rearview mirror. “Just think of it as a studio apartment and ignore the smell. Annie and Lance, that’s Gaby. I have no idea who those kids are, so don’t ask.”
“We’re sorry about your friend,” the woman, Annie, said.
“Friend”? Gaby thought, then, Oh, she’s talking about Donna.
“Thanks,” Gaby said, and wondered if Claire had deduced the same thing.
Gaby looked over her shoulder and out the back window.
Two trucks — the “technicals”—were coming up the road after them, but they weren’t going to catch Danny anytime soon. At least, she hoped not. After surviving Harrison and reuniting with Will and Danny, the idea of having all of that ripped away now was too difficult to stomach.
Will looked into the backseat and observed her for a moment.
“What?” she said.
“How’s the face?” he asked.
“It hurts. What do you think?”
He smiled, then took something out of one of his cargo pants pocket and tossed it to her. “Something for the pain.”
She caught the bottle. It didn’t have any labels, and there were only a few pills left when she opened it. She didn’t ask him what the pills were because she trusted Will. Gaby swallowed two of them.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“There has to be a back road, another way to the interstate and around what’s waiting up there.”
“And if there isn’t?”
“Then we’ll do what we always do,” Will said. “Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.”
29
Lara
“Everyone’s in one piece,” Bonnie said through the radio. “I don’t know how, to be honest with you. I think one of them had a machine gun. We could hear it shooting from miles away.”
A machine gun. Jesus.
“Where are you now?” Lara asked.
“Almost home. Thank God. I can see the sun starting to set, or maybe that’s just my imagination.”
“I’ll see you when you get back.”
“Okay. Over.”
Lara put down the radio. “They’re on their way back.”
Carly moved over to the north window and peered out with her binoculars. “I see them coming down the road now. Sarah will be relieved to have them back.”
“Blaine?”
“No, Lara, she’s been nervous about Bonnie. Of course Blaine.”
Lara smiled. “I wasn’t sure.”
“Everyone’s getting some nookie these days except us.”
“Danny will be back soon and you can make up for lost time.”
“Done, and done,” Carly said. “Has Will radioed in yet?”
“Not yet.”
She looked down at her watch: 5:29 p.m. It would be dark in less than an hour, and Will hadn’t called yet. If he was on his way, he would have told her so. But he hadn’t, which meant he was nowhere close to home and was busy doing something else (like surviving). For some reason, she wasn’t surprised by that. She just hoped he had spent all that time out there looking for Gaby.
No one gets left behind, Will. Find Gaby. Find her and come home to me.
“Looks like all that time you put into convincing Keo paid off,” Carly said. “How did you know he’d go for it? Or come through with flying colors?”
“I didn’t. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, remember?’
“Well, you did good, kid.”
“Only if they don’t attack us tonight.”
“You think they might anyway? Even after what Keo did with that grenade launcher?”
Lara shook her head. “I don’t know. That’s the problem. I don’t know anything for sure.” She picked up the radio again. “Roy, come in.”
“What’s up?” Roy answered.
“Blaine and the others are headed back now. I need you to get one of the fast boats ready just in case they need a hand. Grab a battery out of the supply building and get Maddie to help you gas it up.”
“Will do.”
“I heard some Russians on the radio today,” Carly said behind her.
“Russians?” Lara said.
“Yeah. They were talking to some Italians.”
“What were they saying?”
“I have no idea. The Russians were talking in Russian to the Italians, who were talking Italian back at them. It was, uh, kind of confusing for everyone, not to mention super surreal.”
Lara smiled at the thought. She’d done that. Got people around the world communicating with one another. Even if they couldn’t understand a single word the other was saying, her broadcast had connected them by letting them know there were other survivors out there. That, she found, was what they needed to hear most — that they weren’t alone.
We started something. Now all we have to do is survive it.
Yeah, no pressure.
Blaine and the others didn’t shove off from shore on their way back to the island until five minutes after six. They were cutting it close, and Lara only allowed herself to breathe easier when they were halfway home and she could see their boat in the distance, with the sight of the sun dipping in the horizon behind them. She still didn’t feel comfortable sending people out there, and she didn’t think she ever would be.
It was beginning to darken, and still no word from Will. That meant there was no chance he was coming back today. A part of her always knew they’d have to survive another day without him. Maybe that was why she took such a big gamble with Keo.
“How many?” she asked Keo later while he was eating in the dining room.
Keo tore apart a white bass and gobbled up the meat. “Over twenty, easy. They were definitely preparing for an assault.”
“One hundred percent sure?”
He nodded. “They were loading supplies onto boats when I showed up. And they had night-vision gear.”
“Even after you killed some of them, they were still coming…”
“Like I said: they really have a bug up their ass for you people.”
Will was right. Kate’s coming, and nothing’s going to stop her.
Keo grabbed a glass of water and gulped it down and didn’t stop until he had drained the entire thing. Even Blaine and Bonnie, eating across the table from him, looked impressed. Lara exchanged a brief grin with them.
“Ice cold water,” Keo said, putting the glass down. “Worth its weight in gold these days, especially in the summer.”
Lara had already eaten with the others two hours ago, so she was the only one at the table not pulling apart fish at the moment. Blaine and Bonnie still looked a bit shell-shocked by their experience, and to hear them tell it, they hadn’t really done much except dropped Keo off, then picked him back up when the shooting started. Keo, who had been in the middle of the firefight, didn’t look the least bit fazed. At first she thought it was an act, a tough guy façade. She only had to watch him eating for a few minutes to realize that wasn’t the case.