Inside the house, they found five bedrooms, with two on the second floor, including the master. It had an attic but no basement. He found plenty of boxes (open, which probably meant Gene had gone through them already) in one half of the garage, but no car or food. Gene had once told him he had bug-out bags all around the island, but apparently the two-story house wasn’t one of those places. Or if it were, Keo couldn’t find where the kid had hid them.
His stomach was growling when he came out of the garage and headed back to the house. He gave the street beyond the gate a last look, then peeked up at the darkening skies before slipping back inside.
Jordan was leaning against the kitchen’s island counter, looking somberly at her reflection in the steel refrigerator across from her. She and Dave had gone through the cabinets, opening every door they could find in hopes of locating food that hadn’t spoiled or gone bad, while he was outside. By the expression on her face, he guessed they had come up empty, too.
Piles of utensils covered the counters-spoons, forks, and butter knives. Besides food, Jordan and Dave had been looking for anything silver, but by the way the cutlery was tossed around, that search had come up just as empty.
“Any silver?” he asked anyway.
She shook her head. “Fake. They’re all cheap fakes. How is it possible people who live in a house this big, that probably cost more than I’ll make in a lifetime, don’t have one single real piece of silver lying around?”
“Maybe that’s how they got to be rich in the first place. They’re frugal with their money. Why buy real, expensive silver when you can just use the cheap stuff? Most people don’t know the difference, anyway.”
“So that’s the secret?”
“One of many, I’m guessing.”
He started to open the refrigerator, but Jordan said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Nothing?”
“Oh, there’s something in there, all right. You just can’t eat it. Well, you could if you wanted to, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”
He gave up on the refrigerator and walked back to her. “Nothing at all? Not even a nibble?”
“Not even rat droppings. You’d think there would be rat droppings, right? Are there even any animals left on the island?”
“The birds.”
“Land animals, I mean.”
“Probably not. Once they turned the population, they’d have to resort to other things for blood.”
“And here we are…”
“And here we are. Did Dave find anything on the second floor?”
“If he did, he didn’t say anything. Maybe he’s hoarding the food all for himself.” She laid her forehead against the counter and sighed. “We should have gone to Galveston Island, Keo. There are more houses there, more supplies…”
“We’ll go there tomorrow. Find some gas, load up on some food, and get the hell away from here for good.”
She gave him a wry smile. “When did you become such an optimist?”
“Why shouldn’t I be?”
“For one, you lost the woman you love to some guy. To add insult to injury, she’s carrying his child.”
“Yeah, but other than that, things have been going pretty swell.” He sat down on a stool. “You know what the funny thing is?”
“You mean there’s something funny about all this? Please enlighten me, because I can use a good laugh right about now.”
“Back at the marina-at T18-I saw something that I’m still not entirely sure I actually saw.”
“That sounds overly complicated.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
He ran the memories back in his head. Keo had lost count of the number of times he had relived last night. And like all the other times, nothing he saw-or thought he saw-still made any sense.
“What happened?” Jordan asked, looking at him curiously with her good eye.
“I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.”
“Even after everything that’s happened?”
“Even after everything that’s happened,” he nodded.
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, feel free to tell me about it later. Right now, there’s a very good chance I’m too tired to care anyway.”
They heard footsteps behind them as Dave came back down the stairs.
“Anything?” Keo asked him.
Dave shook his head. “Nothing that you didn’t already find earlier. You?”
“Nope.”
“Figures.”
Keo got up and turned toward the window facing the backyard. It had gotten noticeably darker since the last time he looked.
“Let’s get ready for tonight,” he said.
*
Silver bullets. That’s what he needed right now, even more than food.
Christ, he wished he had silver bullets.
It didn’t take very long before they came out. He saw just one at first, darting across the street in front of the house. It had come out of the ugly blue building next door and made a beeline straight for the western marina.
Then another, and another…
“One fifty, give or take a few dozen here and there. Could be less. Could be more. I’m just spitballing numbers, though,” he had told Gene when they were trying to guess how many ghouls were still on the island.
As he watched them coming out of the homes around him, their strained dark flesh reflecting back the bright moonlight, he probably hadn’t been too far from the truth. He had stopped counting around fifty, and there were definitely more than that.
Maybe a hundred. Maybe almost 200.
“Could be less. Could be more.”
What mattered was that there were too many. There were always too many, but even more so now because he didn’t have a single silver bullet to go around. Hell, he would have made do with a silver butter knife. Or a fork. Anything, as long as it was silver. Was it possible the entire island was barren of the precious metal? One of the houses around him had to have what he needed-a candleholder, a picture frame, or maybe if he was really lucky, a sword made entirely of silver. Oh, the things he could have done with that…
Except there hadn’t been time to do a thorough search of every single house, because they had wasted most of the day waiting for Steve to finally charge across the waters. Which meant he had screwed up. Maybe he had even overestimated Steve’s determination to avenge his brother’s death.
Or maybe, just maybe, Steve really was dead. Maybe the man really had been one of those soldiers either he or Dave had shot back at Marina 1.
Was that possible? Yes. Likely? Maybe…
Daebak. My entire life is a series of maybes these days.
He focused on the western marina from the sanctuary of the master bedroom, keeping out of view behind the back window. Somewhere outside the room on the second floor, Dave was keeping watch out the front window at the eastern marina on the other side of the island. An approaching vehicle, even one that was powered by trolling motors, would be noticeable against the glistening dark ocean.
He could easily make out the docks under the generous pool of moonlight, along with the creatures crawling all over them at the moment. The white twenty-footer they had arrived in remained tied in its slip, looking incredibly lonely against the blanket of night. Not surprisingly, the ghouls were drawn to it like a beacon. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to keep the boat there. Should they have dragged it out of the water and hid it? Too late for that now.
His stomach growled, a low rumble that gradually increased in volume.
“I heard that,” Jordan said from across the room. She was sitting against the wall next to the open door.