“I have.”
“And you’ve never been shot?”
“Never. I guess I’ve just been really lucky.”
“Good for you.” She tried to sit up, and her entire body exploded with sensations she didn’t think were possible and never ever wanted to feel again.
Oh, so there’s the pain.
Will helped her lean back against the basement wall. Someone had cut away her shirt’s left sleeve and wrapped the wound with gauze tape, and she was wearing a makeshift sling using materials from two different-colored shirts.
“You did this?” she asked.
“I cleaned it, sutured the wound, and wrapped you back up,” he smiled. “I’m no third-year medical student, but I think I did all right.”
“You did fine as long as I’m not bleeding to death.”
“You’re too kind.”
“But did you have to mutilate my shirt, too? Do you know how hard it is to find good shirts in the post-apocalypse?”
“Sorry.” He sat on the floor next to her, hands over his knees, watching her closely.
He wants to make sure I’m fine.
“I want a new shirt,” she said.
“I’ll take you shopping once we get to Beaumont.”
“When are we going to Beaumont?”
“As soon as you can stand up.”
“I thought we were staying here for a while.”
“Lancing’s run its course. Too much bad mojo here.”
“‘Bad mojo?’” She flashed him an amused grin. “First it’s cavorting at a park in psychic dreams with your ex-girlfriend, now it’s bad mojo? My, have we changed.”
He laughed. “I can be pretty open-minded when given the chance. Besides, we all took a vote, and we decided to skedaddle, as Danny would say.”
“I didn’t get a vote.”
“I voted for you.”
“How kind of you. Should I ask what I-slash-we voted for?”
“You could, but it’s my constitutional right as an American not to tell you.”
He was still watching her very closely, with that very serious look that told her he wasn’t going to be deterred.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“I know. The bullet went clean through. You’ll be tap-dancing in a few days.”
“I don’t know how to tap dance.”
“You’ll be learning how to tap dance in a few days.”
“Sounds good.” She sighed, then looked back at him, matching his serious gaze. “What is it?”
“I’m afraid.”
That caught her by surprise.
Will wasn’t afraid of anything. Even in the midst of life and death, he was always calm. She had come to see him as the Plymouth Rock in her life, keeping her anchored in the moment, but longing for the future, a reminder that everything would be fine and all she had to do was believe in him.
To hear him admit he was afraid made her shiver a bit.
“Why?” she asked.
“It’s Kate. What she said in the dream.”
“It was just a dream…”
“It was more than that. It was really Kate.”
“What else did she say?” Lara asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
“She told me it wasn’t going to end until this was over. Until we were over. They’re going to keep coming after us, Lara. That scares me, because it means whatever I do, wherever we go, it might not be enough to protect you.”
“I’m fine,” she said, and leaned over and kissed him lightly on the lips. “And I’ll stay fine as long as you’re with me. As long as we’re together.”
She smiled at him, hoping some of that got through. Maybe it did, because he smiled back and suddenly he looked like his usual Will self again.
Strong and assured and calm. Always calm.
“What else did Kate say in the dream?” she asked.
“She knows we’re here. In this basement.”
“So that’s the real reason we’re leaving.”
He nodded.
“The others?” she asked.
“Outside, getting ready.”
“Is it still morning?”
“A few minutes past noon.”
“You should have woken me up earlier.”
“You needed the rest. And besides, we still have plenty of time. We can be in Beaumont in a few hours, barring any troubles along the road.”
“That’s the tricky part, isn’t it?”
“That’s always the tricky part, yeah.”
“We’ll be fine,” she said, hoping that he understood she didn’t mean just about Beaumont, but about everything.
He did. “We’ll be fine,” he nodded, and smiled at her again.
“Okay, then. Now, about getting me a new shirt…”
The others had packed most of their things back into crates and carried them out to the parking lot while she had slept. There were only a few crates still left in the church when she emerged from the basement.
The girls were helping out with the smaller items, though Vera actually managed to carry one of the ammo bags by herself. Elise made do with their backpacks, filled with clothes, shoes, and socks. Little things they had come to rely on, that they could still call their own. Lara felt guilty watching them do all the work while she could only manage her shotgun and her personal backpack. She didn’t like having only one arm.
She walked across the chancel and stopped when she saw the thick patch of dark red on the brown carpeted stairs. The body was gone, and she wondered briefly where the others took it before deciding she would rather not know.
She went outside, where Danny was stacking crates into the back of a Honda Ridgeline truck. Will and Danny had switched the damaged Ford Rangers for the Ridgeline and a white Nissan Frontier. Both trucks looked new, with four doors apiece. The trade-off was the truck beds, which were smaller and couldn’t carry everything they were used to taking with them. To make up for that, Will and Danny had hitched a five-by-ten U-Haul cargo trailer behind the Frontier. It looked more than spacious for all their crates.
She stepped around a dried blood trail leading out of the church’s side door that ended in a big puddle of blood ten feet into the parking lot. There were bullet casings, but no body. She didn’t bother asking where the man with white hair was, either.
“Look at you,” Danny said. “Walking wounded. You know Will and I have never actually been shot? And we’ve been to Afghanistan.”
She touched the butt of her sidearm. “I can change that.”
He laughed, throwing his hands up. “Don’t shoot! I surrender!”
“Just keep it up.” She looked around the parking lot. “Where’s Will?”
Danny pointed across the street. “We found where they were hiding. Sonsofbitches were just waiting for us to skedaddle before coming over. Marauding assholes just aren’t as honorable as they used to be.”
Will was jogging back toward them now, crossing the street, then the parking lot.
“Find anything?” she asked.
“A Jeep,” Will said. “Could have been the one Blaine lost.”
“What about the semitrailer?” Danny asked.
“No signs of it. They either dumped it or parked it somewhere else.”
“Weren’t there supposed to be three of them?” Lara asked.
“I didn’t see anyone else,” Will said.
“Maybe the third one left earlier with the big rig,” Danny said. “Wouldn’t surprise me. A gang that marauds together don’t necessarily stay together. Too bad, too. That semitrailer might be worth finding. They must have collected a lot of things over the last eight months.”
“I’d rather we don’t find it,” Lara said. “I don’t want to use what they took. God knows how they got it, if this is how they’ve been surviving since The Purge.”
“Yeah, but they could have had some really cool stuff,” Danny insisted.