“In here? This house that belongs to a family that’s probably dead?”
“Not here, here. But here. With you.”
“Ah.”
“This is where you say you wouldn’t rather be anywhere else, either.”
He leaned over and kissed her softly on the lips. “I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else, either.”
She smiled. “I’ll go sit outside with you.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a doctor and I’m a grunt. You start sitting on watch with me, the next thing you know, I’m obsolete. So you’re going to sleep and get some rest, and then later when Danny relieves me, I’ll come back and we’re going to do this all over again. Got it?”
She mock saluted him. “Yes, sir!”
“I’ll be right back.”
He kissed her again, then left the room.
Night came a few minutes later, though the room was pitch-dark even before then.
Lara was restless and got up and dressed in the darkness. She located her shotgun leaning in a corner nearby, with the ammo pouch on the nightstand next to it.
She sat on the bed and listened.
Birds chirped from the woods on the back of the property, and crickets added their own soundtrack from the overgrown lawn around the house. The rest of the world was silent, except for her steady breathing and the soft whirring of the fan at the foot of the bed. She wondered what Will would say if she picked up the shotgun and went outside to be with him despite his protests.
But she didn’t do that, because this was what Will did. She knew exactly where he was at the moment. He would be perched on the second floor, at the head of the stairs, waiting patiently in the darkness with his shotgun. There were no other ways for the ghouls to come if they made it through the doors and windows on the first floor. The staircase was what Will called a choke point — it was narrow and made it hard to push too many ghouls through at a time. The perfect spot to open fire with a shotgun loaded with silver buckshot.
The first few hours of the night were always the hardest for her. She sat still in the darkness and waited to hear banging on the front doors downstairs. Waited for the loud, tumultuous crashing of windows, signaling that the ghouls had found them. Then there would be the unmistakable boom of shotguns.
But none of those things happened.
Instead, she sat for an hour before she felt tired and lay back down, telling herself she wouldn’t go to sleep, because Will was still out there, and she had to stay awake in case he needed her. She glanced over at the shotgun in the corner again. At the pouch full of shells on the nightstand.
Lara passed the time by looking around her. It was such a girl’s room. Whereas the room with the stranger had sports posters, this one was covered end to end in pink, frilly things. There was a big dresser with a mirror and makeup and combs of a dozen varieties, all perfectly arranged in a row. Not a kid’s room, but a teenage girl’s. Maybe fourteen or fifteen. Almost a woman, but not quite. There were no pictures. Did the room’s owner take them with her when the family fled?
She closed her eyes.
Just for a bit. A few minutes, then she would sit back up, in case Will needed her outside.
Just a few minutes…
She woke up sometime after midnight. She wasn’t sure if it was closer to one in the morning, because she had taken off her watch and laid it on the nightstand.
She heard movement and opened her eyes and saw a figure walking around the bed.
“It’s just me,” Will whispered in the darkness.
She sat up and watched him put down his shotgun, shrug off the vest, and unclasp the gun belt. There was just enough moonlight filtering in through the barricaded window behind her that she could make out his shape. He was moving much slower than normal, which was the telltale sign he was tired and sleep-deprived.
“I fell asleep,” she said, rubbing at her eyes and feeling a little sheepish.
“I can see that.”
“Everything’s good?”
He sat down at the foot of the bed and pulled off his boots. “Everything’s fine. Go back to sleep.”
“Did you check on the girls?”
“I did. They’re sound asleep.”
“I’ve been meaning to check on the stranger, too.”
“I already did. He’s fine.”
“How did he look?”
“Like he’s going to see tomorrow.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s what I do.”
She smiled. “Didn’t you promise me something earlier, too?”
He looked over, and she saw a brief smile crease his lips. “You need sleep more than you do sex, lady.”
“I need you more.”
She held out her hands. Will took them and climbed into bed with her, then immediately sought out her mouth in the darkness.
She didn’t sleep again for another hour.
CHAPTER 6
JOSH
Pros and cons: What were they?
Pros: He was still alive. And so was Gaby.
Cons: They might not stay that way for very long. At least, not him. Gaby might last longer, but she might end up praying she were dead, too.
Conclusion: They were in deep shit.
Josh concluded that the slimy asshole with the white hair, Folger, was in charge. Or as in charge as five other guys with guns could ever allow one man to be. As Josh watched them interact throughout the day, it was obvious that while Folger considered himself the boss, the others didn’t really see it that way. Folger just happened to be the guy leading them at the moment.
He had woken in Gaby’s lap and known they were in trouble. It was less that he was in trouble and more that Gaby was in trouble. His life was at stake, and they could kill him at any moment, but that was just death. He was afraid to die, of course. Josh wasn’t some gung-ho dumbass who though he was invincible. But he was afraid more for what they would do to Gaby once he was dead.
Like it or not, she had chosen him to protect her.
I’m the guy…
That was clear when she gave him Matt’s gun. It was his job now to rise to the occasion, and Josh didn’t want to let her down. More than death, he feared failure with Gaby’s life at stake.
At the moment, there was a humming pain all over his face. He didn’t know how bad he looked until he saw the expression on Gaby’s face when he opened his eyes.
“How do I look?” he asked.
“Good,” she said.
“Liar.”
“Your face is a little bruised. He hit you with his gun. I think your nose is broken.”
I feel like half my face is broken.
That had been an hour ago.
It took a while, but he was finally able to fight past the pain and get his bearings. They were inside a semitrailer, sitting on a thick rug, though it took him a moment to realize it was actually just carpeting, probably pulled from someone’s house and repurposed. The trailer was wide and long — Josh estimated it was anywhere from fifty to sixty feet long — and about ten feet high (maybe a little higher). It was about ten feet wide from side to side. Josh had seen semitrailers being hauled around Texas all his life, but they had never looked that big to him. Now that he was sitting inside one, he realized how wrong he had been. It actually looked roomy.
His captors had transformed the interior of the semitrailer to be livable…ish. Besides the carpeting, there were small, Army-type cots along the sides, six in all, held in place by metal cables soldered to the wall. They could be folded up when not in use, like metal hammocks. There were boxes of supplies stacked all the way up to the ceiling in front and to the right of them, and a big rack with guns near the cots.