Big mistake, asshole.
“I guess they didn’t want to waste any more bullets on me,” he said.
Lara looked at him for a moment, then, apparently satisfied he was telling the truth, she nodded. She walked back to her black bag and finished putting what looked like tweezers and a sewing kit back inside.
Blaine sat up again, this time slowly. There was bandaging around his shoulder, and he was almost entirely nude except for his boxers, which were stained with blood and sweat. He smelled, too. Lara had also stitched up and bandaged the bullet hole in his left thigh and the one in his right side, where most of the pain was coming from at the moment. Simply breathing hurt.
“Thank you,” Blaine said.
“You should thank Will. He almost ran you over. We don’t see a lot of bodies on the road, but then you probably know that.”
He nodded. The creatures didn’t leave bodies behind. They were efficient that way.
“I will,” he said. “Thank him, I mean.”
“The men who shot you. Did they take Sandra?”
“I don’t know for sure.”
He told her about meeting Folger and his people on the road the day before. The flat tire that had slowed them down. About Deeks dying, then Sandra taking off for the trees while he tried to distract the men.
“She’s fast,” he added. “She used to run track in college. But I don’t know if she made it.” He shook his head. “There were a lot of them…”
“We didn’t find anyone out there but you and the other man, Deeks.”
“Did you search the woods?”
“No. We didn’t know there was anyone to search for.”
“I don’t think she made it,” he said, shocked by how matter-of-fact he sounded. “If she had, and they left, she would have come back for me. But she didn’t. And she would have come back for me…”
Lara nodded, though Blaine wondered if she really believed him. He didn’t blame her for having doubts. He knew what he looked like. A big, hairy Mexican with bad teeth who didn’t smile very often, and even when he tried to smile, it always seemed to come out wrong. But if she only knew what Sandra looked like, he thought amusedly, she really wouldn’t believe him.
She dug out a small bottle from her black bag and handed it to him, along with a bottle of water. “Something for the pain.”
“What is it?”
“Vicodin.”
“I need to stay awake and alert,” he said, looking at the pill bottle.
“You don’t have a choice,” she said. “It’s either this or we’re going to be carrying you around all day, and let’s face it, no one’s looking forward to that. Once your pain lessens, I can give you something else to get by.”
He nodded reluctantly and took the bottle. He opened it and saw a dozen or so white pills inside.
“To start you off,” Lara said. “Take one now. And another one in an hour if you need it. No more than three a day. Understand?”
He shook one of the pills into his palm and washed it down with warm water that tasted better than anything he had ever drunk, and he ended up drinking the entire bottle.
“Drink up,” Lara said. “We have plenty more downstairs. You need to eat something so the Vicodin won’t be the only thing in your stomach.”
A man entered the room. It took Blaine a moment to put the face with the guy who had talked to him on the road yesterday. He was a few years younger than Blaine, with brown eyes and short black hair. Blaine only had to look at the way he was holding the assault rifle — some kind of M4 variant, though it looked heavily modified, with dents and scratches from heavy use — to realize he knew his way around guns.
“How’s the patient?” the guy asked Lara.
“As long as he doesn’t go running around, he should be fine,” she said. Then she looked over at Blaine. “Will, this is Blaine. Blaine, this is Will.”
Blaine exchanged a nod with Will. “You saved my life.”
“I almost ran you over. Lara is the one who saved your life.”
“Thank you, for everything. If I can do anything…”
“You wouldn’t happen to know how to fix a computer, would you?”
“A computer?” Blaine shook his head. “I barely know how to turn one on.”
“Yeah,” Will said, disappointed. “Me, too.”
He heard children laughing, which confused him.
There were two of them, and the way they talked and whispered to each other, like everything they said was their own private little secret, made him think they were actually closer than sisters. It was the kind of closeness only possible after you had seen what was lurking out there in the darkness.
Their names were Vera and Elise, and the young, pretty redhead who watched protectively over them was Carly. The other man in the group, Danny, had short blond hair and looked like a surfer, but didn’t talk or act like one. One look at him and Blaine knew that, just like with Will, he was ex-military. It was easy to see the difference between men like them and Folger.
When everyone was up, Carly and Lara prepared a big breakfast, using plates and silverware from the kitchen.
“We try to eat as big a breakfast as possible every morning,” Lara told him. “You never know when you might be forced to miss out on a meal later in the day.”
As Blaine stood at the foot of the stairs watching them get ready to eat, all he could think about was Sandra. He was certain Folger had found her in the woods, and that certainty was like a black hole in his gut.
Will came out of the garage next door with a big crate of supplies.
“Will,” Blaine said. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”
Will nodded. “Give me a sec.” He walked over to the kitchen, put the crate down, then came back. “How are the stitches holding?”
“I’m not bleeding, which is a good sign, I guess.”
“Good. What did you want to talk about?”
“Outside?”
Blaine headed for the door, grimacing the whole time, and was glad Will couldn’t see his face. Walking was painful, but not nearly as painful as climbing down the stairs. He didn’t think those damn steps would ever end. His entire right side was so heavily bandaged he felt like a walking mummy — clumsy and awkward.
Will followed him outside and they stood in the sun for a moment. Blaine looked over the tall blades of grass that covered the unmowed lawn, then at the empty and silent road beyond. The thought of Folger with his filthy hands on Sandra gnawed at him.
“I need to go,” Blaine said. “I appreciate what you and Lara did for me. And I’m going to repay you guys back when I can. But I need to go. Sandra is out there, and I need to find her.”
“You can barely walk,” Will said.
“Doesn’t matter. I still need to go. Sandra’s out there.”
“You even know where?”
“Up the road somewhere. I saw those trucks in the back of the house. I can take one of them if you can spare some gas.”
“Gas and cars aren’t the problem, Blaine. The fact that you can barely walk without grimacing in pain is. How many did you say there were? Six?”
“Maybe six, yeah.”
“Let’s assume for the moment you found them. And that’s a big ‘if.’ You think you can take on all six?”
“I…” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t stay here. I can’t sit down and have a big breakfast when I know she’s out there. What would you do if it was Lara?”
“I’d make sure I could actually do something about it instead of just rushing off to die.”
“Bullshit. You’d do what I’m doing now.”
Will picked up one of the ceramic Labrador dogs squatting in front of the house and walked across the lawn. He placed the animal about twenty yards away. The dog stood one foot wide and three feet tall, and it stared back at Blaine with its tongue sticking out of its mouth like it was waiting for a treat.