“Real silver?” Keo asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Silver is expensive, Gene. People don’t just keep them in the drawer and use them as everyday utensils.”
“Oh. I guess that makes sense.”
“Although I do know about a couple of guys who stumbled across a pair of silver crosses inside an abandoned apartment. They ended up using them as knives.”
“They must be the luckiest guys alive.”
Keo thought about Danny and that knife of his. “They were.”
“‘Were’?”
“That’s the problem with luck. Sooner or later, you run out of it.”
“Did they? The guys you’re talking about. Did they run out of luck?”
“One of them did.”
Gene didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, finally, “That sucks.”
“Yeah.”
“Anyway, how can you tell real silver from the fake kind? You know, in case I run across a pair of silver knives or something.”
“There are a couple of ways. Silver makes a distinctive ring when you tap them against one another; it also melts ice faster.”
“Seriously?”
“Which part?’
“Both.”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know all of this?”
“Someone once paid me entirely in silver.”
“For what?”
“Some of this, some of that, and a little of whatever.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Then, “How long have you been here by yourself?”
The teenager shrugged, but he didn’t answer right away. He went back to eating what was left of the lasagna, though at this point Keo wasn’t sure if there was very much still in the bag by the sound of Gene’s spork scraping the bottom.
“A while,” Gene finally said.
“Why are you still here?”
“Because it’s safe. Well, mostly.”
“How do you avoid the ghouls night after night?”
“Ghouls?”
“That’s what these people I met called them. Ghouls.”
“Cool name,” Gene said. “But no. I mean, yeah, them too, but I don’t really have to worry about them too much. I’ve gotten good at staying away from the houses where they’re hiding. There are signs, if you know what to look for. But I’m really talking about guys like you.”
“Guys like me?”
“People on boats.”
“Is that why you shot at me?”
Gene gave him an almost embarrassed grin. “Sorry about that, by the way.”
“No harm, no foul. Unless you count my boat. So you’ve had trouble before.”
“Yeah, you can say that.” He tossed the empty MRE bag into a trashcan that was already brimming with garbage. The bag bounced off some cans of beans and landed on the sidewalk behind them. “I wasn’t always alone.”
“Besides you and Deuce?”
Another grin. “Yeah, besides me and Deuce.”
“What happened to your friends?”
“Soldiers came and took them,” Gene said.
*
“You’ve been here before,” Keo said.
“Yeah, I like it,” Gene said. “I can see the whole island from up here.”
“Is that how you spotted me?”
“Nah, I was just walking around when you showed up. I do that every morning. Go around the island, taking note of anything that might have changed during the night. It’s how I keep track of their movements.”
“The ghouls.”
“Uh huh.”
They were inside one of the two-story houses on the hillside in the middle of the island. From the second-floor windows, Keo could see the entirety of Santa Marie Island’s five-mile stretch. The house faced west with a great view of the Texas coastline, along with a clear line of sight to the large marina in the center. He had to use a window at the back of the master bedroom in order to see the east marina where he had docked his twenty-two-footer. The boat looked incredibly lonely out there all by itself.
There were empty cans of nonperishables on the first and second floors, and more signs that Gene had made use of the house in the recent past. The teenager told Keo that he didn’t worry about leaving evidence of his presence around since he never stayed at the same place two nights in a row anyway. In the bathroom of the master bedroom, Keo was surprised to find weapons-assault rifles, handguns, and boxes of ammo-housed inside the tub.
“I didn’t know where to put them,” Gene said when Keo asked about the guns. “I found most of them around the island after we showed up. Maybe some of them belonged to your friends.”
“Why the bolt-action and not one of the assault rifles?” Keo asked.
“I learned to shoot with Deuce, so I guess I’m comfortable with it. What kind of gun is that?” he asked, nodding at the MP5SD.
“Submachine gun.”
“It doesn’t look like it can shoot far.”
“It can’t. It’s a close-quarters weapon.”
“Are you good with it?”
“Depends on who you ask. You never told me long have you’ve been here, Gene.”
Gene was sitting on the floor behind him, going through the supply bag, while Keo looked out at the Texas coastline in the distance. Cool air from the open windows vented out the second floor, making it easier to be around Gene, who stank. It had obviously been a while since the teenager showered, and it hadn’t occurred to him to just take a swim in Galveston Bay every morning. Keo himself had done exactly that on the way over here.
“You mean, did I ever come across your friends?” Gene asked.
“Yeah.”
“Three months ago. But I definitely never met anyone named Gillian, or who looked like her.”
Three months ago? Keo crunched the numbers in his head.
The last time he had seen Gillian, Jordan, and the others was almost six months ago. That would have given them more than enough time to reach their destination before Gene. A three-month window. Possibly two, if they were somehow delayed. After all, it had taken him almost six months to finally get here, so who was to say it hadn’t taken them just as long? If, that is, they had made it at all.
More ifs and maybes. He didn’t have a single clue what had happened to them. All this time, and he was probably chasing a ghost.
Well, shit.
Gene opened one of the water bottles and drank it. When he was done, he let out a whistle. “Man, this is good stuff. I ran out of bottled water months ago, and I’ve been drinking rain all this time, but this… Wow.”
“It’s better cold,” Keo said absently.
“Everything’s better cold, except the weather.”
Keo smiled. The kid really did have a way with words. “You said the soldiers took your friends?”
Gene nodded. “We ran across them a couple of weeks after we arrived. They cruised up to the western marina, and like idiots we went out there to greet them. They caught the others, but I managed to escape. They come back here every now and then to look for me, or to see if they can catch other two-legged fish.”
“That’s why you shot at me.”
“Normally they come from the west, but they’ve been known to try to sneak up on me from the east.”
“Why don’t you just avoid them entirely?”
“What do you mean?”
“If you shoot at them, won’t they know you’re on the island?”
Gene shrugged. “They already know I’m here. But knowing and finding me isn’t the same thing. I know every house on this rock, all the good places to hide. They always look for me, but at the end of the day, they always get bored and leave.”
“How often do they come looking?”
Gene thought about it. “About once a week since I’ve been here. The last time they came was about five days ago, so you know, they’re due. They have bases all across Galveston Island. I’m surprised they didn’t hear you coming through the channel.”
“I was using a trolling motor. Ran out of gas about eight kilometers out.”
“Kilometers?”
“About five miles.”
“Oh. Anyway, that probably explains it. Otherwise they might have intercepted you before you ever reached Santa Marie.”
“They do that a lot?” he asked, thinking about Gillian and Jordan coming on Mark’s boat. Was that what had happened to them? Did they get intercepted?