“That’s what Danny says, too.”
“Is that…good?”
Carly shrugged. “I don’t know. They seem to think it is.”
“What do you think?”
“If none of this had happened, Gaby would be getting ready for the prom and college, not learning to shoot and fight. I bet she never thought she’d be doing that a year ago.”
“I don’t think any of us thought we’d be doing this a year ago.”
“Yeah, laundry was never in any of my plans,” Carly said.
“Well, you’re really good at it.”
“Shut up, that’s not funny. How long did Will say he’ll be gone, anyway?”
“He should know by tonight. Right now, he’s talking to Mike — the guy leading the group over there.”
“Their version of Will.”
“Uh huh. He says—”
She didn’t get to finish because the radio clipped to her hip squawked, and they heard Danny’s voice: “Heads up, we have vehicles on approach.”
Lara unclipped her radio. “How many, Danny?”
“Four. Three trucks and one van.” He paused, then added, “They’re pulling into the marina.”
“I’m on the way.”
Carly abandoned the laundry and jogged out of the room with Lara, who headed for the closest side exit.
“I thought we shut down the FEMA broadcast?” Carly said.
“We did,” Lara said. “Even before it got blown up. Whoever these people are, if they’re here because of Karen’s broadcast, they’re three months late.”
Lara reached the Tower and found Danny at the south window on the third floor, looking out with binoculars. Carly had separated from her outside the hotel, making a beeline for the beach to gather up the kids and bring them back to the hotel. It was a system Will had put in place, and everyone knew their roles.
Lara snatched the spare binoculars off a hook and peered out across the lake at the marina.
Or what was left of it. Will had burned it down, along with a storage garage. He had also set ablaze the two-story house across a small inlet from the marina at the same time, leaving only old trampled hurricane fencing behind. There were exactly eleven vehicles in the marina parking lot at the moment. A few hours ago, there had only been seven.
She saw tiny black dots climbing out of the newly arrived vehicles, the figures gathering near the water’s edge. She could tell they had spotted the Tower and Song Island by the glint of binocular lenses staring back in their direction.
“How many do you count, Danny?”
“Seven from the trucks, four out of the van,” Danny said.
Lara swung the binoculars toward the beach, at Maddie on the roof of the boat shack.
On cue, her radio squawked, and she heard Maddie’s voice: “What are we looking at?”
“Eleven people so far,” Lara said into the radio.
“Any ideas what they want?” Carly asked from somewhere else on the island, likely the hotel where she, Blaine, and Sarah were guarding the girls.
“Not yet,” Danny said. He glanced over at Lara. “What do you think?”
“Why are you asking me?” she said, meeting his gaze.
“Well, Will’s not here, so that kind of leaves you in charge.”
She stared speechlessly back at him.
Her face must have also looked stunned, because he grinned and said, “Oh come on, that’s surprising to you? Look, I don’t say this a lot, but Willie boy’s really good at this sort of stuff. Me, I’m just a lover and a fighter. Got a farmer’s daughter you want seduced? I’m your man. Need a way out of an Afghanistan mountainside covered in Taliban? Uh, ask Will. Failing that, ask Lara.”
It took her a moment to answer, but when she finally found her voice, the only thing that came out was an almost disbelieving, “Since when?”
“Since Will left four hours ago.”
Lara peered through the binoculars again, if just to hide her sudden — but quickly growing — anxiety. The idea of being in charge in Will’s absence terrified her. She was a third-year medical student, for God’s sake. They taught her how to sew up wounds and take care of colds, not to make decisions that could, potentially, lead to other people’s deaths.
“What do you think?” she asked uncertainly.
“We should at least find out what they want,” Danny said.
“I think we know what they want.”
“They’re a little late for that.”
“Which sort of makes it unlikely this could be a trap.”
“You think?”
“Think about it. If they’re collaborators, and this is some elaborate scheme to get back on the island, this is kind of…dumb, don’t you think? Show up three months after the last radio broadcast?”
“That’s a good point.”
“Or I could be overthinking it,” she added quickly. “I don’t know what I’m talking about, Danny. Maybe we should radio Will back and ask him.”
“Nah, I think you’re on to something.”
He said it with such absolute certainty she almost believed him. Almost.
“I’ll take a boat over with Maddie and suss them out,” Danny continued. “Can’t very well just ignore them, can we?” He glanced at his watch. “Seven hours till sunset, give or take.”
Lara nodded reluctantly. “Be careful.”
“Don’t sweat it, doc. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“They end up being ghoul collaborators and kill everyone on the island as soon as they set foot on the beach.”
“Sure, there’s that,” Danny said.
CHAPTER 5
GABY
She thought she would have gotten used to the smell after a few hours, but four hours later Gaby was still unable to fully breathe through her nose without feeling overwhelmed. It wasn’t just the presence of forty bodies crammed onto one floor, because the tenth floor was certainly massive enough to accommodate ten times that number. There was something else about the place, about the whole hospital. Something in the air she hadn’t felt in a long time, and it took her a while to remember what it was.
Desperation.
She didn’t like how these people lived. Even before she found Will and Lara, Gaby had had a better existence than this. Sure, going from town to town, hiding in basements, didn’t sound like such a great time, but when you compared it to hiding (stuck) on the tenth floor of a hospital, with ghouls waiting in the nine floors below, it was a hell of a better alternative.
This isn’t a sanctuary. It’s a prison.
To escape it, she went up to the rooftop. There were a couple of guys outside smoking cigarettes. One of them was Benny, who had learned his lesson and hardly stared when she came outside. Instead, he offered her a cigarette.
“I don’t smoke,” she said. “It’s a filthy habit.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So why don’t you quit?”
“I guess I’m weak.” He gave her a shy smile. “I’m Benny, by the way.”
“Gaby,” she said, shaking his hand.
She had thought he was in his twenties when she first met him earlier, but up close she realized he was just a nice-looking eighteen-year-old kid. He sported amusing facial hair that did more harm than good, and he had pleasant enough light-blue eyes. The other boy, Mack, gave her a brief nod and turned away.
Gaby walked to the edge of the north tower rooftop, while Mack and Benny stayed behind near the access building. She wasn’t sure what their jobs were, exactly. Who was going to invade the building from the rooftop? The only danger came at night…
She looked off at the city around her. The domed building — some kind of basketball arena, probably — was visible across the street, along with the baseball and football stadiums to either sides of it. They were definitely in some kind of college town.