Thirty against five…
Who were Will and Danny and the others, anyway? He only knew them for a few days. It wasn’t like he grew up with them, the way he grew up with Gaby. He liked them, but he didn’t love them, the way he loved Gaby.
I have to protect Gaby…
She asked him what happened to Tom.
“Will killed him,” Josh said. “That night.”
She nodded. He wasn’t sure if he detected sadness or just acceptance. Maybe indifference. It was hard to read Karen, especially since she stood next to the window and was somehow still mostly hidden in shadows.
She asked about Marcus.
“Danny killed him. The same night.”
Again, the slight nod that he couldn’t figure out.
Then she asked him about Sarah, about Berg, about the others.
He told her what he knew.
Then about the shack at the power station, the one connected to the tunnel with the ghouls inside. He told her about the concrete wall Will and Danny had put over the door.
Then, to his surprise, she smiled and said, “Ghouls? Will calls them ghouls?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I guess they just looked like ghouls to him.”
“It’s not a bad description, actually. I should probably start calling them that, too. Just not to their faces.” She smiled, almost as if she expected him to return it. When he didn’t, she continued. “Who is this Blaine guy?”
“I don’t really know. He’s just some guy we met in Lancing, Texas. Then he showed up here later.”
“And the two with him?”
“Maddie and Bobby.”
“Are they soldiers, too?”
“They didn’t look like soldiers. The guy is a mute.”
“What does that mean?”
“He doesn’t talk.”
“Doesn’t talk or can’t talk?”
“I don’t know for sure. Maddie just said he doesn’t talk.”
Karen nodded. “What about the women? Carly and Lara. How good are they with weapons?”
“They can shoot.”
“Anyone can shoot,” Karen said impatiently, like he was trying to pull one over her. “The question is, how good are they with weapons?”
He flashed back to last night, standing side by side with Carly as she calmly defended the Tower with a shotgun. He knew Lara had killed before. That man in the church back in Lancing, for one.
“They’re good with weapons,” he said.
“So that’s seven.”
“I guess, yeah.”
“But it’ll probably just be the five defending the beach. Lara and Carly will most likely be back in the Tower with the kids. Speaking of the Tower…Who is up there? The one shooting this afternoon?”
“Danny.”
“What does he have on that rifle? Some kind of high-magnification scope?”
“I don’t know. Will called it an ACOG.”
“What the hell is that?”
“I don’t know. Something Tom had in the basement. It lets him shoot farther and straighter.”
“Tom had a lot of things in that basement, most of which he didn’t know how to use.” She waved a dismissive hand. “So they have a sniper. Danny. Four at the beach, because Will knows that’s the only place for boats to land. He’ll commit everyone there. It’s the smart thing to do. The obvious thing to do.”
I should stop now…
“What did you come back for?” she asked. “What was in the garage in the marina that was so important?”
I shouldn’t tell her…
“Tools,” he said.
“Tools?” She gave him a sharp, suspicious look. “Tools for what?”
“For making bullets.”
“Bullets? There are plenty of bullets on the island, underneath the Tower.”
Don’t tell her…
“Silver bullets,” he said.
Shit.
“Silver bullets?” she repeated, narrowing her eyes at him, trying to decide if he was lying to her again.
“Yes.”
“Why does he need silver bullets?”
“The ghouls. Silver bullets kill them.”
Her eyes widened and her suspicion grew. “How do you know this?”
“I’ve seen it. Will discovered it months ago, when all of this started. He and Danny have been making silver bullets whenever they could ever since. They left the tools in the garage when we arrived because there was no room on the boat.”
Karen seemed to mull it over. She didn’t know about the silver, that much was obvious. Josh wondered if that affected how she looked at the ghouls. Would she still work for them if she knew she could actually kill them?
“Smart guys,” Karen said finally. “Too smart for a couple of jarheads.”
Jarheads are Marines. Will and Danny are soldiers. Even I know that.
But he didn’t say it out loud. He was too busy trying to justify himself to the traitorous feelings washing over him like some sick, disgusting bile rising from the very pit of his stomach and forcing its way out of his mouth, onto his tongue. The taste was hideous and made him want to gag.
He watched Karen standing beside the window. She was looking off into a corner, and he could almost see her mind working, crunching the numbers. What was that Sarah had said about Karen? She was a politician; she bartered and made deals to save her own skin because that was who she was. She was the one who had struck the deal with the ghouls — with the blue-eyed ghoul in particular — to turn the island into a honey trap.
“All right,” Karen said after a while.
“So what happens now?”
“Now I take back my island.”
“What about me, I mean?”
“You stay here. I might have more questions for you if this doesn’t go well. It will,” she added quickly, “but you can never be too sure. I always like to have a backup plan. Like the tunnel at the power station. I was going to wait for the blue-eyed creature — the blue-eyed ghoul—to show up before I let them in. My big ta-da! moment, to prove to her that I could be trusted with bigger things.”
Jesus, she was using the island as a job application for a promotion. What a bitch.
“You guys spoiled that,” Karen said, with a slight frown. “But that’s all right. Nothing worth having ever comes without a little hard work.” She walked across the room, opened the door, but then stopped and looked back at him. “One last question. I’m really curious.”
“About what?”
“Sarah woke you guys up, right? She was the one who betrayed us?”
“No.”
“No?”
“I mean, yes, she betrayed you, but she wasn’t the one who woke us up. I did. I woke up first, then I convinced Sarah to help us.”
Karen stared at him for a moment, again trying to gauge his trustworthiness. “You woke up first? How? No one’s ever woken up before.”
“I barely touched the wine during the feast.”
“Shit,” she said, and almost laughed. “I should have kept an eye on you. I told Marcus to pour you the Coke instead, that you’d probably never drunk wine in your life. But you looked older, and…” She shook her head. “Sonofabitch.”
She turned back to the door.
“What about me?” he asked. “Do I just…sit here?”
“There’ll be someone outside. Try to escape and he has orders to shoot you dead. Got it?”