“Good,” he nodded.
“What about the turbine?”
“It’s still there, but the computer that runs it is smashed to hell. We don’t have any ideas about how to go about fixing it. Hell, we don’t have any ideas where to even start. You know computers?”
“Not really,” she frowned.
“Yeah.”
“What about the generators?” Carly asked.
They had used Ben’s pendant to go down to the sublevel and checked on the generators. The machines were still running fine, and the computer told them they had at least a month of stored electricity left.
“If we conserve,” he said, “we should be able to make it last more than a month. Maybe two or three.”
“Captain Optimism,” Lara smirked.
“Hey, that’s my job,” Danny said.
They went topside, if just to feel the sun against their skin again, to remind themselves that there was another world beyond the blood-covered concrete universe of Harold Campbell’s facility. In a lot of ways, the facility had functioned exactly as Campbell predicted, though he guessed even a paranoid billionaire never quite envisioned strangers using his place to fend off undead creatures at the end of the world.
The girls didn’t seem to notice, though. They ran around chasing each other as soon as they burst out into the sun, seemingly oblivious to the nightmare of the previous night, while Danny and Carly stood watching them, holding hands.
Lara walked up beside him and took his hand and squeezed. They watched Elise and Vera picking flowers from the overgrown grass, sticking yellow daffodils in each other’s hair and giggling.
A couple of bluebonnets were growing farther out. Bluebonnet was the official state flower of Texas, and they tended to grow where you least expected them.
After a while, Will said, “We’ll stay here for as long as we can.”
“Then what?” Lara asked.
“I’m open to suggestions.”
Carly looked over. “Did we ever find out if the rest of the country is like this? What about the rest of the world?”
“We never did,” Will said. “Too busy trying to stay alive to worry about some Frenchman in Paris.”
“Maybe it’s time to go out there and find out,” Carly suggested. “Not Paris, of course. But what about the surrounding states?”
Will nodded. It had been gnawing at him, too.
Was the rest of the country like Texas? What about the rest of the world? There was a big planet out there. The ghouls had managed to conquer Texas in one night, but what about the other forty-nine states? Had they fallen as easily? Were there now bands of humanity fighting back in conclaves? Maybe there were other facilities like Harold Campbell’s out there. Maybe remnants of a United States government hiding in underground bunkers around the country.
He wanted to find out. He needed to find out.
“What about those poor bastards back at Dansby?” Danny asked.
“Look around,” Will said. “We’re no good to them now, not in our current jam.”
“It didn’t work out so well for Megan, either,” Lara said quietly.
“Okay,” Danny said, brightening up. “Sounds like a plan. A lousy plan, but I guess a plan is a plan, right?”
“Plan Z?” Lara smiled.
“Plan Z is for when everything hits the fan,” Will said. “We’re not quite there yet. For now, it’s still Plan A.”
Then he thought about it.
“Okay, maybe it’s more like Plan E…”
EPILOGUE
Kate didn’t so much see the blood coursing through the veins as hear it and smell it. It was an odd sensation, to see with her other senses so clearly, so vividly, while her eyes were dull and weak and lazy. It was the same with the other ghouls. She didn’t hear or see them moving around her, she sensed them. It was a tricky concept to grasp at first, but Mabry told her she would get used to it soon enough.
Mabry revealed to her that he first became aware of the danger Will posed all the way back to their time in Houston, even before Will and Danny destroyed the Archers warehouse store and killed hundreds of Mabry’s soldiers. He first encountered them at the Wilshire Apartments, where they had discovered the silver. Mabry wasn’t there personally, but he watched from afar, through the eyes of those that were, as they attempted to kill the ex-Rangers. Mabry was too busy that night, painstakingly organizing the takeover of the city, to deal with the threat himself. It was one of his biggest regrets, he told her.
She learned that the war was all but won, except for small, annoying pockets of resistance around the country and in scattered parts of the world. Mabry was certain that the resistance wouldn’t last for very long. Eventually, as with Harold Campbell’s facility, humanity always found a way to do itself in.
She still remembered who she was, her name, and her life before being turned. But she was not surprised to realize that the “Kate” she knew was dead. She was wearing Kate’s skin now, and though she knew all the things that Kate did, she no longer felt like Kate. She was more of a historian of Kate’s extinguished life.
It was another odd concept, one that took time to grasp, but Kate — the new Kate — discovered that it wasn’t too hard to wrap her mind around once she accepted it. That was the key. Acceptance. After all, she was the one in control now, not the old Kate. That Kate had lost control long ago, allowed chaos to rule over order.
This Kate, this new version, had order again.
They were inside a warehouse, somewhere in Texas. Her first day as one of them was spent traveling, moving fast to beat the approaching sunlight. Mabry knew why Will had opened the facility door as sunup neared. It was a ceasefire, he told her, and Mabry gladly accepted if it meant he could save more of his soldiers. Mabry had many soldiers at his disposal, but he abhorred the idea of needlessly throwing their lives away. They were his to care for, after all, like children, and what parent wanted to sacrifice their children’s lives needlessly?
The warehouse had been converted into another blood farm. One of many. There were more around the state, around the country, and even around the world. So many more.
She stood among the ghouls, listening to the sound of blood as it coursed through the veins of a young girl who couldn’t possibly be older than thirteen. Kate knew that her old self would have been horrified by the sight of the girl on the floor. The girl was no more than a reservoir of blood now, flesh and bones harnessed for her ability to generate a constant flow of the precious liquid.
She leaned over and lifted the girl’s arm toward her mouth. There were no teeth marks on the arm. This one was fresh. She could feel Mabry standing behind her in the darkness. They didn’t need light to see, because they didn’t see with their eyes.
“I saved her for you,” Mabry said inside her head.
She opened her mouth and closed it around the girl’s arm. She bit into the girl’s skin, so hard that her teeth, still white and pristine, like Mabry’s, scraped against the bone underneath. The blood, like hundreds of tiny streams, flowed freely into her mouth. At first she didn’t think she could handle the flood, and she felt as if she were drowning in blood. Then something happened — it became easier, as the blood poured down her throat and she sighed with pleasure and suckled some more.
She lifted her head and tasted the wetness along the corners of her mouth with her tongue, which had gotten longer, almost reptilian. She swiped at the thin drops hanging from her chin, catching every little sweetness.