“Good to be in one piece,” Blaine said. “Mostly, anyway.”
“Sorry about Sandra.”
“Yeah,” Blaine said. “I hope Carly’s okay.”
“She will be,” Danny said, with absolute certainty.
“This is Maddie and Bobby. Bobby doesn’t speak.”
“Yeah? I bet the girls go crazy for that,” Danny said.
Bobby grinned sheepishly back at him.
“Don’t worry, I make up for his lack of speaking,” Maddie said.
“Welcome to Song Island,” Danny said. “Unlike the previous landlords, we’re not going to feed you to the ghouls.”
Maddie, Blaine, and Bobby exchanged a confused look.
Blaine looked over at Will. “Wanna fill us in? There seems to be an awful lot of shooting around this place. I didn’t quite expect that.”
“I know you thought you came here to get away from the fighting,” Will said, “but it’s more complicated than that.”
“How complicated?” Maddie asked.
Will and Danny gave them a brief, half-assed tour of the island, filling them in on Karen, Tom, and Marcus along the way. They told them about the previous night, about the ghouls, and ended the tour at the power station, where they stood in front of the concrete wall they had built over the door of the shack.
“Are you serious?” Blaine said. “They’re in there right now?”
“Yeah,” Will nodded.
“How many?” Maddie asked.
“A few hundred,” Danny said. “Give or take. If by ‘take’ you mean possibly lots of hundreds. Or thousands.”
“The only way to tell is to go in there,” Will said.
“We’re taking volunteers,” Danny added.
“Where do they come from?” Maddie asked.
“We think there’s a tunnel under there,” Will said. “We don’t know where it goes, or how far it runs under the lake. Eventually, we’ll have to figure it out, but that’s for later.”
“But the island is safe, though? They can’t swim over?”
“We don’t think so. As far as we know, this tunnel seems to be their only access to the island.”
“As far as you know?” Blaine said doubtfully.
“We can’t be sure,” Will said. “But as far as we know, yeah.”
“So they’re stuck in there?” Maddie asked, exchanging a private look with Bobby.
“That’s the going assumption,” Will said.
“And you know what happens when you assume,” Danny said.
“They’ve been down there all day?” Blaine asked.
“Since last night, yeah,” Will nodded.
“Jesus Christ.”
Danny chuckled. “Get to the island, it’ll be safe. No more ghouls to worry about. Except for the few thousand already waiting underneath it. Hey, it beats running around out there, right?”
Blaine, Maddie, and Bobby exchanged a look that said they weren’t entirely sure about that anymore.
“It’s not too late,” Will said. “They want the island, but you don’t have to be here when they try to take it. If you decide to leave before they come back, we’ll give you everything you can carry — food, ammo, weapons, and supplies — and we’ll give you a boat and help you get back on land, avoid the people at the house. There are other places to dock that don’t involve the marina, and we’ll do everything we can to help you move on. No hard feelings.”
They listened quietly, not saying a word. He could see their minds reeling, then gathering, then trying to sift through the pros and cons.
“But if you want to stay here,” he continued, “you’ll have to fight for the privilege. That may sound like a shitty deal, but it’s all I have to give you at the moment.”
Maddie and Bobby exchanged another private look that didn’t involve Blaine.
Then Maddie said, “One question.”
“Shoot,” Will said.
“Who the hell are those guys at the house?”
“Ghoul collaborators,” Danny said. “Assholes working with the creatures in exchange for their hides. Like Song Island’s previous tenants.”
The three of them exchanged another series of quick looks, and he wondered if they believed Danny. The concept of collaborators, human survivors throwing in their lot with the ghouls, was a hard pill to swallow. He might not have believed it himself if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes twice now.
Blaine said to Maddie and Bobby, “If you guys want to go, I’ll go with you.”
“You were the one who wanted to come here,” Maddie said. There was no accusation in her voice, it was just a statement of fact. She even sounded a bit confused by his offer.
“I know, but Sandra’s death changed things for me. My priorities have changed.” He seemed to struggle with his thoughts. “Let’s face it, it’s no better out there. Hell, it’s probably worse. Here, at least, there’s a chance at something approaching a normal life for you and Bobby. So we’ll have to fight for it. So what else is new?”
Maddie glanced over at Bobby again. The mute boy nodded and gave her the “OK” sign with his fingers.
“Why the hell not,” Maddie said. She looked over at Will. “So, silver bullets?”
So they made silver bullets.
A lot of them.
Maddie and Bobby proved to be good workers. Neither one had made bullets before, but Maddie knew her way around a rubber mallet, and Bobby took instructions easily. Blaine wanted to help, but Will sent him to Lara to see to his wounds instead. The gunfight at the marina hadn’t done Blaine any favors, even if he insisted otherwise.
Will also decided Danny should go back to the Tower to keep overwatch with the ACOG.
“You think they’ll hit us back this quickly?” Danny asked.
“I would,” Will said. “They lost a few people back there.”
“Man, you’re just going around the end of the world making friends, aren’t you?”
After Danny left, Sarah and the girls chipped in, bringing more silver from around the island, even raiding the kitchen and closets and racing through all the rooms.
They didn’t stop until they had melted all the silver and pounded out as many 5.56x45mm and 9mm bullets and as much buckshot as possible. There was enough ammo from the Tower’s basement, collected over months from all the poor souls lured to the island before them, that they ran out of silver long before they ran out of bullets to recast.
At one point, Maddie said, “If I knew I’d be working this hard, I would have stayed behind in Beaumont.”
Bobby, drenched in sweat next to her, grunted his agreement.
The acrid fumes of smelting metal, iron, and brass, mixed with silver, lingered over the island long after they were done. Will didn’t let them stop until they were literally walking around in puddles of their own perspiration.
“Load up with what you can carry,” he told them. “Silver and regular ammo. The rest goes into the Tower.”
“And these will actually work?” Maddie said, holding up one of the silver bullets.
“They work,” Will said. “Shotguns for close quarters. You’ll need to keep all three types of ammo with you at all times. There are two more Benellis in the Tower. When in doubt, load the silver. They’ll kill a man just as easily as a ghoul.”
Bobby tapped Maddie’s shoulder excitedly and nodded at Will.
“He wants to know if you have any more assault vests,” Maddie translated.
Before six in the evening, he took away the M4s that Maddie, Bobby, and Blaine had arrived with and gave them new ones from the Tower’s basement. The new M4s had fully automatic capabilities, which would come in handy in a frenzied firefight. Amazingly, the more they searched the Tower’s basement, the more useful things they found, including assault vests and more radios.
Later, they ate in the lobby, loading up on calories and proteins from fish and MREs. Blaine had rejoined them, looking better. Or at least, not walking with nearly the same noticeable limp as earlier. Bobby took to the MREs, and that got a chuckle out of Will and Danny, who had never really seen anyone who wasn’t ex-military take a liking to the bagged food the U.S. military was known for. The MREs were designed for maximum efficiency, supplying nutrients and over a thousand calories per bag. The taste, on the other hand, left a lot to be desired.