The third man said, “Five, maybe six. I don’t think the kid has any bullets left. I think he’s just playing hero.”
Betts towered over the other two like a scarecrow. He sported a big, ugly scar that ran from the corner of his right eye all the way down to his jawline. Josh found himself wondering how anyone had managed to get high enough to put that scar on Betts’s face.
“You think so?” Folger said. “You just playing hero, young man?”
“Take one step and you’ll find out,” Josh said.
“Oh, that’s dangerous talk,” Del said.
“Kid’s dangerous,” Betts chimed in, though he said it without any trace of humor.
Josh’s eyes darted to his left and right. There was nowhere to go. There was the house behind them, but Matt was in there. The good news was, Matt was in the basement, which still left the rest of the house. If he and Gaby could make it back inside, he could open the backpack and grab more bullets. If there were more bullets to be grabbed. He wasn’t even sure about that.
It was a plan. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was a plan. He only knew he couldn’t let these men get their hands on Gaby. He saw the way all three of them were looking at her, and he didn’t like it one bit.
“Five bullets,” Folger was saying. “At least. The way you were firing it, over and over again, my guess is you didn’t have time to reload before the two of you bolted out of that house. So, I’m willing to bet you either have one bullet left in that gun, or none.”
“You don’t want to find out,” Josh said.
“I think I do,” Del said.
“No, you don’t—”
But he never got the chance to finish before Del walked forward and snatched the gun out of his hand with such swiftness for a man of his size that it stunned Josh. He was still trying to come to terms with what had happened when Folger drew his gun and stepped forward and hit him across the face.
Josh felt a massive stabbing pain, like someone had thrown ten tons of rocks on his head, and he was aware of falling. Then darkness.
From somewhere in the blackness, the sound of screaming cut through.
It wasn’t him screaming, though, it was Gaby…
No, no, I’m the guy… I’m the guy…
CHAPTER 5
LARA
Will considered continuing on to Lancing, a city farther down the road, before stopping for the day, but eventually they decided to pull off Route 69, turning into the driveway of a sprawling estate on the side of the road. It was an impressive house and looked relatively new, with a huge surrounding yard filled with something they had seen plenty of recently — an overgrown lawn that in a year or two would probably end up covering half of the house. They went up a concrete driveway, and Lara saw an attached two-car garage.
She looked back at the man they had picked up, literally, from the road, just to make sure he was still alive. She hadn’t been sure he would even survive the short trip, but he had. The man looked back at her through a mask of pain.
“Man’s got something to live for,” Will had said when they carried him off the road.
She had done the best she could with his wounds, but she didn’t give him much of a chance. The man had, after all, been shot three times and was lying on the road for God knew how long. Fortunately, there was only one bullet still in him — in the right shoulder, about half an inch from shattering his humerus bone, which would have completely taken away the use of his right arm. He was lucky, or as lucky as any man could be with three bullet holes in him.
“Will says you’ve got something to live for,” Lara said to the man.
He looked back at her, and she could tell he wanted to respond, but he couldn’t. His lips quivered and he blinked once, twice, but even that seemed to take a lot out of him.
“Don’t try to speak,” she told him. “We’re going to stop for the day and I’m going to sew you back up. You’ve already survived this long, stay with me for a few more hours and I promise, you’ll live through the night. Do you understand?”
He moved his head. Yes.
Tough guy. Let’s see if he’s tough enough to last the night…
Lara waited outside the house with Carly, both of them armed with shotguns. It wasn’t just for show. They were trained on the weapons — had been ever since the ghouls had laid siege to Harold Campbell’s facility in Starch. During the first few days of training, she had gone to sleep with throbbing pain in her shoulders, which wasn’t too bad since every other part of her body from the waist up was also aching. If she thought the Glock had a kick, the shotgun was like getting body-slammed by a mule.
Slowly but surely she had gotten used to it, and though she still felt it every time they did target practice, the ear-shattering blast didn’t surprise her anymore and she was able to hit her target. Most of the time, anyway. That was the point of a shotgun. It had spreading power, which made it invaluable in close-quarters battles.
Lara and Carly stood watch at the trucks, with the girls still inside Danny’s Ranger. The man from the road was in the black Ranger, unconscious in the back seat. Lara kept her eyes on the road behind them, a good fifty yards away. The house was big, and she could see at least three bedrooms from the front. She guessed there were probably more inside. Five, maybe six in all.
She glanced down at her watch: 2:11 p.m.
Will and Danny had gone inside ten minutes ago, and she considered it a good sign that they hadn’t fired a single shot. It never took them more than twenty minutes to clear a building, depending on how many rooms they were confronted with.
Lara found herself staring at two Labrador dog statues perched on their hind legs, standing guard at the front doors like dutiful sentries.
“Cute dogs,” Carly said. “If I ever get a house, I’d like one of those. Or maybe one of those weiner dogs. What do you call them?”
“Chihuahuas? I don’t know my dogs.”
“Sounds right.”
“Not much of guard dogs, though.”
“Danny with a shotgun should make up for that.”
Lara smiled at the image of Danny standing permanently outside a house with a shotgun, boyish blond hair fluttering in the breeze. “Now that’s an image.”
“I know, right?” Carly looked over at the black Ranger. “Has he said anything yet? Like his name?”
“He’s trying.”
“Danny said he was shot three times.”
“He was.”
“How do you survive being shot three times?”
“Determination. Guts. A reason to keep living…”
“Who do you think Sandra is?”
“Probably a girlfriend. Or a wife. Someone he met on the road after The Purge, maybe. There’s a lot of that going on.”
Carly chuckled. “Tell me about it.”
Lara’s radio, resting on the hood of the black Ford Ranger, squawked and they heard Danny’s voice: “All clear. And I call the master bedroom.”
“That’s my man,” Carly said.
She was close. The house had five bedrooms — one on the first floor and four more, including the master bedroom, on the second floor. Will and Danny carried the wounded man inside, putting him into one of the smaller rooms on the second floor before heading back downstairs to move the trucks into the parking garage next door.
There was a fenced-in section at the back of the house, with two trucks parked in the dirt and a third with lumber stuffed in the back. The ground was flattened and trees chopped down to make room for whatever grand plans the family never got to put into action. For once, they didn’t find any blood or signs of struggle inside the house. The front door was unlocked and the windows intact. There were also no cars in the garage. It all pointed to the family abandoning the house in a hurry.