They glided swiftly across the lake in the same boat they had used yesterday. The Carver had proven itself sturdy, even with a dozen bullet holes in various parts of its frame, including five on the bottom that he had patched with caulk and spackling from the boat shack. Blaine steered from the middle while Will crouched at the bow with the M4A1, scanning the horizon for targets. He wanted to see someone, notice a head poking out from the ridgelines in front of him. He wanted to shoot something. Someone.
Anything, dammit.
The two-story house across from the marina looked dead and abandoned, even from a distance. Will scanned the yards and could find no one. The boathouse was empty — of people and boats. If there were people still at the house, they would be inside. They could certainly hear the Carver coming because Will hadn’t done anything to disguise their approach, with the outboard motor roaring in the still morning.
So where were they?
He didn’t believe for a second they had killed every single collaborator in last night’s attack. Twenty-five men, in all. The storming of the beach had been a diversion to keep them occupied as two other boats came along the west side and the men scaled the cliff. They had found ropes and hooks there this morning, the boats themselves drifting at anchor in the water. Three of the men who had tried to climb hadn’t made it. Two had fallen to their deaths against the rocks below and a third was floating nearby.
Twenty-five dead men…
Including Bobby.
Of everyone on the island, he and Blaine were the most mobile. The bullet wound in his left arm was easy to ignore with painkillers. He felt like sleeping for a week, but that wasn’t anything new. And like all the other times when he was tired and could barely walk, he soldiered through it. It wasn’t like he had any choice.
They went up the inlet, outboard motor piercing the clear morning air. Will expected to see the sun glinting off rifle barrels at any moment.
Any second now…
But it never happened.
He knew they were gone as soon as he jumped from the boat and set foot on the patch of land the house sat on. Blaine struggled with the boat for a moment but finally jumped out with a rope and tied it around a nearby tree.
They scanned the house. Will shot one of the windows just to let anyone inside know they were coming, then waited for a figure to appear so he could shoot it.
He saw no one.
“Gone?” Blaine asked, keeping his voice low.
Blaine gripped his M4, and like Will, he had a shotgun slung over his back. They had brought enough ammo with them to last a while in a stand-up firefight. Will was hoping he got to use all of it. Or most of it, at least.
“Let’s check the house,” Will said.
There was no one in the house. The place looked heavily lived-in, and there was food in the kitchen and living room and cases of bottled water left on couches. Boxes of clothing, ammo, and guns lay scattered everywhere. The bedrooms were similarly used and abandoned.
There were trucks in the yard, parked in a kind of semi-circle, the grass around them trampled by heavy boots and bare feet. He saw a generator near the back of the house, and portable spotlights lined the yard.
They had been here last night. Gathering, waiting for the call to attack. And when the call came, they boarded their boats and charged.
A suicide run. Why would they do that?
Because they didn’t have a choice.
She was here. Kate. She sacrificed the collaborators to get to us.
“What now?” Blaine asked.
“Grab the ammo and guns from the house.”
Will siphoned gas out of the trucks into containers he found in the boathouse. When Blaine came back outside, Will handed him two of the containers.
“We’re going to burn the house?” Blaine asked.
“Yup.”
“Why not save it? In case we need it later?”
“We don’t need it. We have the island. The next time they come back, they should be as uncomfortable as possible.”
They doused the house with gas inside and out, added fuel to the boathouse and the big storage building across the yard, then lit a match and stood back and watched it all burn under the sun. The heat quickly became suffocating.
With the fire gutting the house behind them, Will and Blaine checked the garage in the marina. The crates they had left behind were still there, but they had been strafed with automatic gunfire. Perforated water bottles had leaked onto the ground.
“Anything we can salvage?” Blaine asked.
“Clothes, shoes…”
“Got holes in them.”
“Probably.”
They filled a crate with all the undamaged supplies they could find, then doused the garage with the remaining gas and lit it. For good measure, they burned down the gazebo, too.
Will noticed that the bodies were gone. The two men he had killed around the garage, and the three or so they had shot during the gunfight afterward.
Blaine noticed, too. “They took the bodies. They did that at the Willowstone Mall in Beaumont, too. Sandra’s body was gone the next morning. They can’t turn the dead, can they?”
“Not that I’ve seen.”
“So why did they take them?”
Will shook his head. Just another mystery to add to the pile of mysteries. Eight months had gone by, and they hardly knew anything about the creatures.
They walked to Blaine’s Jeep, parked in the ditch farther up the road. It wasn’t there anymore, though they did find a couple of silver candle holders lying in the grass nearby.
“Sonofabitch,” Blaine said. “That’s the second Jeep I’ve lost.”
“Should have known better than to leave your car unlocked on the side of the road,” Will said.
“Rub it in.”
They climbed back into the Carver and rode back to the island.
Will watched the house burning, half of the two-story structure already consumed by the large flames. The trucks in the yard had become blackened wrecks and some caught fire, their tanks adding more fuel to the bonfire raging next to them. The small boathouse had gone quickly, along with the garage and gazebo at the marina.
Will turned back toward Song Island and settled down in the stern of the boat, Blaine steering in front of him. He could feel the heat flaring against his back, even from a distance. It felt even warmer than the sun above them.
He was short on manpower, so he gave Maddie first watch, positioning her in what remained of the Tower’s third floor. She was wounded, but she could still shoot, and the painkillers helped. Blaine walked the island, circling it every few hours. Will didn’t know how he was even still up and about after last night, much less still moving. Danny was already conscious, but he wasn’t going to be useful for a while.
The next few days and weeks would be dangerous ones if the collaborators decided to attack again. His only hope was that they didn’t know how much he had lost last night. If Kate decided to risk more of her humans, their ownership of Song Island would prove short-lived.
Will located Danny’s remaining bundles of C4 in the basement underneath the Tower where Tom had left them. He planted them along the beach and kept the detonator with him at all times.
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Tonight. He would find out how much Kate wanted the island, how much she was willing to sacrifice.
He was lucky he still had Sarah around. Along with the girls, he and Sarah were able to keep an eye on the wounded — Carly, Danny, and Gaby, now lying side by side on the second floor of the Tower. It was still the safest and easiest-to-defend location on the entire island, even after last night’s grenade launcher attack.