By the time they reached Lancing, there were no signs of Will and the others. They went to the municipal area and checked the courthouse first. He couldn’t find signs anyone had spent the night, which meant they had either left the city yesterday — which was unlikely, given how cautious Will was with the others’ lives — or they had found another place.
It was either one or the other, but it wasn’t like Blaine could track them. Lancing was a town of 12,000 people, with enough businesses and residential subdivisions that it would take weeks to search every house and building. He was also well aware they had, at most, five hours before it was time to look for shelter.
They spent the first hour driving around town, sticking mostly to the main roads, because that’s what they guessed the others would have done. Sandra drove slowly, taking her time. After a while, they had to stop for gas, but instead of siphoning from another vehicle, they traded up to a four-door Chevrolet Silverado instead. The fact that the key was sticking out of the driver’s side floor and the tank was still three-quarters full made picking the Silverado a no-brainer.
Blaine swapped the car batteries, and they were rolling down the windows and continuing along Main Street a few minutes later. The Silverado had a dozen country music CDs stuffed into the driver’s sun visor, and Blaine slipped George Strait’s Greatest Hits into the CD player, then cranked up the volume in hopes of attracting attention.
After a while, Sandra slowed down and stopped the Silverado in the middle of the street.
Blaine reached over and turned the volume down on George. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking we’re not going to find them,” she said with a slight frown. “At least, not like this. Not just driving around.”
“How did you find me?”
“I told you, I heard gunshots.”
“Maybe we should try that.”
“Gunshots?”
He shrugged. “What do we have to lose?”
“What if there are other people in the city besides them?”
He thought about that for a moment, then lifted the AR-15 from the floor. “It’s either that or keep driving around aimlessly until we reach the highway. Then what, drive back again?”
“Yeah, okay.”
Sandra turned off the Silverado’s engine and they climbed outside. Blaine blinked under the sun and wasn’t sure if the heat or the pain was more annoying. He called it a tie and fought the urge to beg Sandra for his bottle of pills.
Sandra had the shotgun, and she climbed up into the back of the Silverado’s flat bed and fired off three rounds into the air. She waited, then fired the remaining four shells. As the final thunderous blast echoed across the cloudless sky, she was already — urgently, he saw — reloading.
She climbed down the Silverado and stood in the street next to him. They didn’t hear anything in response to the shotgun blasts except the sound of the wind and the fluttering of birds’ wings in the air. Blaine thought he might have heard a car engine in the distance, but after listening, realized it was just one of the metallic flagpole latches banging away.
Blaine drew his Glock and fired three shots into the air. He stopped, waited ten seconds, then fired three more shots. This time he waited a full minute before firing the rest of the magazine, spacing each shot off at ten-second intervals.
He quickly reloaded. “If they’re still here, they would have heard those shots from the other side of town. Sound travels these days.”
“Let’s give it some time,” she said. “It’s not like we have any other place to be.”
Sandra leaned against the Silverado. Her hair was already sweaty and matted to her face. He reached over and flicked the strands away, and she smiled at him. He smiled back.
They drank warm water and waited five minutes. Then five became ten, then twenty.
“No one’s coming,” he said, after thirty minutes.
“Let’s wait a little longer,” she said.
Thirty minutes became an hour.
“No one’s coming,” she said. “What now? If they’ve left the city, where would they go?”
“South,” Blaine said, looking down Main Street. “They’re headed to Beaufont Lake in Louisiana. The easiest path there would be along US 287, then switch over to the I-10 and Highway 90 in Beaumont. From there, they’d probably take one of the smaller roads farther south to Beaufont Lake.”
“They told you that?”
“Will showed me a map, and that’s the quickest way to Song Island. If we keep going south on US 287 to Beaumont and they’re still on the I-10, we should be able to catch up to them before they take one of the smaller roads off the interstate.”
“All that from a map you saw?”
“You sound impressed.”
“I thought guys were bad with directions.”
“That’s a filthy stereotype.”
She laughed. “Okay.”
“One more thing,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“I need my pills.”
“In an hour.”
He groaned. “I don’t think I’m going to make it to an hour.”
“Don’t be such a baby,” she said, and walked around the Silverado’s hood back to the driver’s side.
“I’m really hurting here, babe,” he said after her.
“You’ll live.”
“Babe, please,” he said, trying his best not to beg, though it was pretty damn close. “I need more pills.”
She rolled her eyes. “God, if I knew getting shot would turn you into such a drama queen, I’d never have gone back for you.”
“Wow,” he said, feigning hurt. “Just wow, babe. That’s harsh.”
She laughed. “Get in, Meryl Streep.”
They drove down Lancing’s Main Street for a few more minutes before the road became Highway 96 and, about a mile later, joined up with US 287/Route 69. Eventually, the businesses began to thin out and they were back in the countryside, passing thick patches of overgrown grass swaying in the hot sun on both sides of a series of never-ending rickety fences.
“No cows,” Blaine said quietly, almost to himself.
“What?” Sandra said.
“No cows,” he repeated. “What happened to all the cows?”
Sandra peered at the land around them. “You’re right. When did the cows start disappearing?”
Blaine remembered seeing cows as recently as a few weeks ago, when they were entering Grime. There had been cows and horses grazing on the abundant grass. Once, he had seen a couple of riderless horses roaming the streets, the clack-clack of their hooves like loud gunshots moving up and down the roads. He had wondered where they were going. Were they looking for their owners?
There were no cows or horses anymore. At least, none that he could see. There were no carcasses of the animals, either, which was even more disturbing.
Where the hell are the animals?
He hadn’t seen a dog or a cat in months, now that he really thought about it.
Where have all the animals gone?
They drove past a sign along the side of the road: “Beaumont, Texas 15 Miles.”
Maybe Beaumont has the answers…
CHAPTER 18
WILL
They reached the outskirts of Beaumont, Texas, by two o’clock in the afternoon, which was better time than Will had expected, given they were stuck at thirty-five miles per hour on the road. There were a couple of reasons for that. The roads got more dangerous the closer they got to a major city — and Beaumont definitely qualified, with its 118,000 population within an eighty-five-square-mile radius. There was also more debris, leftovers from the days even before The Purge. The leftovers piled up, and wind and time added to the growing menace. There was also the cargo trailer to worry about, and losing that would have been calamitous.