Nate…
The loud, rumbling sound of an approaching vehicle (vehicles?) invaded her thoughts. She hurried across the room and back to the window, and saw a group of green military transport trucks moving down the street. She remembered them from the camp in Sandwhite Wildlife State Park, though these were probably not the same ones. Or were they?
People in the streets had stopped to watch as five of the trucks entered town, moving at very slow speeds. Not that they had to. There were no other vehicles anywhere that she could see, unless you counted the half dozen people on horseback.
As the trucks drove under her window, Gaby glimpsed the faces of men, women, and children looking out from the back flaps. Bright, smiling faces. Eager faces. The trucks came to squelching stops, and people began climbing out of the backs. Pregnant women, dozens of them, were helped down from their own transports. More people came out of buildings, gathering in the streets and converging on the newcomers, offering food, water, handshakes, and hugs.
They think this is salvation. This place. This…L15.
She felt a hollowness in her stomach that had nothing to do with the lack of food. Her mind spun, trying to understand, processing everything she was seeing, everything she had learned the last few days.
Sandwhite. Josh. And now, L15.
She remembered what Will had said, back when they first discovered the camp in Sandwhite: “I think we’re looking at the next phase of whatever final solution the ghouls are moving toward.”
Was this it? The final solution? Humans living in towns run by ghouls?
She shivered even as she listened to the bright, contagious laughter coming from the street below her, the very real, very unmistakable sounds of people delirious with happiness.
This is how mankind ends. Not with resistance, but with laughter…
CHAPTER 36
WILL
“So many cars,” Zoe said. “You’d think there would be at least one that would work. My feet are killing me.”
They had been walking for the last hour, ever since they climbed down from the Harvest water tower and discovered the Ford F-150 destroyed. The truck’s engine was gutted and the battery missing. Will expected the truck to be useless after the damage it endured last night, but the fact that they took the battery was unexpected. He wondered if it had anything to do with Kate being here last night. The ghouls tended to act unpredictable when the blue-eyed ones were around.
His pack had felt disturbingly light as he climbed down the water tower, reminding him that he was carrying around empty magazines for the carbine and Glock. They walked away from the water tower, over the cemetery of bones bleached white by the sun around the base of the structure. The lingering smell of vaporized flesh was suffocating and Zoe threw up twice before she finally made it to the other side. Zoe took twenty minutes to clean his bandages and check his stitches, breathing through her mouth the entire time.
After an hour of walking, the highway didn’t look any closer. Will hadn’t been able to see where he was going last night as he fled the ghoul horde; he had only known where he was heading — the bright, white-painted water tower.
“Where are we going anyway?” Zoe asked after a while.
“The highway.”
“And after that?’
“Lafayette.”
“That’s far away.”
“Yup.”
“Can we really walk all the way to Lafayette in one day?”
“Sure we can.”
She gave him a doubtful look.
“It’s only thirty-eight kilometers,” Will said. “Give or take.”
“Kilometers?” she smirked. “What are you, European all of a sudden? What’s that in miles?”
He sighed. “Twenty-three miles ish.”
“Better.”
“See? Not too far.”
“How long in terms of walking?”
“Three miles an hour at regular walking speed. That’s—”
“Over seven hours, Will. Without stopping for food or water.”
“We can always pick up our speed.”
She gave him another doubtful look.
“Or I can put you on my back and carry you,” he said.
She managed a smile. “Now you’re talking.”
“I was kidding.”
“Oh,” she said.
They stopped at a Shell gas station and raided the shelves for food, warm bottles of water, and anything else they could eat or drink. Will stuffed the pack with supplies, then grabbed a pair of cheap T-shirts off a rack and swapped one of them with his blood-soaked one. He poured water over his head and shook off as much leftover ghoul smell as possible, then slipped on a yellow and purple cap. He grabbed an extra one for Zoe and waited for her outside on the curb.
Zoe came out looking refreshed. She was apparently better at cleaning herself than he was. Zoe had also swapped shirts, and her long drying blonde locks fell across her face and shoulders.
“Did you even wash?” she asked, wrinkling her nose at him.
“I did the best I could.”
“Your best sucks. I could have given you a hand.”
“Maybe next time.” He handed her the spare baseball cap. “For the sun.”
“Thanks.”
She slipped it between her legs, then grabbed her hair in a big bundle and somehow got it into a bun, tying it in place with a rubber band. Lara could do that too, and for the life of him he could never quite figure out how they managed something so complicated so effortlessly.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“Famished,” she said, and took a spicy Jack Link’s beef jerky that he had pulled out of his pack. “So, Lafayette?”
“Lafayette. Then Song Island after that.”
“And hot showers.”
“And hot showers,” he nodded.
After about an hour of searching every store that stood between them and the highway, he finally located a small hunting outlet called Renny’s in a strip mall. He swapped his blood-stained pants, well-worn combat boots, and socks for new ones off the rack. He also found plenty of ammo under the counters. Will grabbed as many 9mm and 5.56x45mm rounds as he could find and reloaded his weapons, then shoved as much as he could carry into the pack.
He left Renny’s feeling better about his chances of getting back to the island than he had all day, and went looking for Zoe.
She had spent most of her time going through the cars in the parking lot. When he caught up to her, she gave him an approving look. “You still smell like something died, but it’s an improvement. Hell, from a distance I might even mistake you for handsome, Will.”
“I’m sure there was a compliment in there somewhere. Any luck?”
“I didn’t find a working car, but I did find something that might be even better.”
She led him across the parking lot to a Jeep Wrangler squeezed in between a red Taurus and a black minivan. It wasn’t the Jeep she wanted to show him, but two mountain bikes clinging to its back. One was bright yellow, the other white, and both were held in place by looping steel chains with separate padlocks.
Zoe looked back at him, then at the knife in its sheath. “Can that thing cut through steel?”
“No.”
“Damn. Any ideas how to get the bikes free, then?”
“Did you search for the keys?”
“You think they’re around here?”
“Usually people keep their keys in one big bundle. Like on a key ring.”