“What kind of guy do you think I am?”
“I know exactly what kind of guy you are. And I still love you, too.”
“That took a while.”
She laughed again. “I had to think about it.”
“Damn, lady, you really know how to hurt a guy’s feelings.”
“I’m just messing with you. I didn’t have to think about it for one second.”
“Better.”
“Okay, maybe half a second.”
“Hunh.”
“By the way, one of the newcomers is a computer guy. Danny and I were discussing how he might come in handy.”
“The hydro turbine back at Harold Campbell’s facility?”
“Exactly. Of course, we’ll need Jen’s helicopter. How’s it coming, anyway? Is your charm offensive going as planned?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Work harder. We need that helicopter.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
They spent another thirty minutes talking. By then, Greg, the guy whose job it was to monitor the radio, had returned from dinner, and he sat back behind a desk and picked up an old, heavily dog-eared novel he had been reading when Will first arrived.
“Be careful,” Lara said, when he told her about helping Mike with the Archers raid tomorrow. “I hate the idea of you doing that, Will.”
“It’s a goodwill gesture.”
“Like some macho male bonding?”
“Something like that.”
He imagined her rolling her eyes on the other end.
“Just don’t get dead,” she said. “Isn’t that what Danny would say?”
“Probably something like that. But then he would spell it out, and instead of saying d-e-a-d, he would spell it d-e-d.”
“And that makes it funny?”
“It’s Danny, Lara,” Will said. “Jokes don’t have to be funny when he’s telling them.”
Tap-tap-tap.
Tap-tap-tap…
It had been so long since he saw one up close, that watching it peering back at him from the darkness elicited a curious reaction from Will. He didn’t know whether to draw his Glock and shoot it, or engage the thing in a kind of macabre staring contest.
He wasn’t worried the glass window would give. Mike’s people had been here for eleven months, and the ghouls hadn’t gotten in yet. The fact that the creatures hadn’t even attempted to do anything beyond patiently tap-tap-tapping the glass told him they were aware of its unyielding strength.
The one staring back at him now looked as if it had once been a woman. There were small bumps on its chest where breasts would have been. It was impossible to tell its age, and it had turned so long ago its skin, pruned and hairless, looked like plastic surgery gone wrong. Its eyes were dark and hollow, like two black voids staring back at him against the moonlight. Its upturned nose sniffed the glass pane.
There was a knock on his door.
“Come in.”
Mike entered, a pool of dimmed LED light from the hallway splashing across the window. The ghoul turned its head toward the door, regarding Mike with similar muted curiosity.
“Don’t let them get to you,” Mike said.
“You’re used to this? Seeing them out here every night?”
“Eventually, yeah. Come on,” Mike said. “I got just the cure for insomnia.”
Back in Mike’s room, the former lieutenant opened a cabinet and took out a full bottle of Wild Turkey. He grabbed two plastic cups and pointed to an empty chair near the rebar-reinforced window. An LED lamp turned on low in one corner lit the room up just enough to navigate by.
Will sat down and watched Mike open the bottle and pour out a generous amount into both cups. Mike looked somehow even more weary than this afternoon, which was quite a feat.
“I had four of these the first week we came here,” Mike said. “I’ve been steadily draining them for the last year. Finished the third bottle last night. I thought, hell, I’ll save the final bottle for something special. I guess this is as good a time as any.”
“Cheers,” Will said, and touched plastic cups with the former officer. He took a sip of the bourbon and grimaced as the bitterness washed down his throat. It had been a while.
Mike smiled knowingly. “Not a bourbon man, I take it.”
“Hard to afford them on an enlisted man’s salary.”
“Amy said you were a corporal. Where did you serve?”
“Afghanistan.”
“I never made it in-country, even though I was supposed to go. After OCS, they gave me a second lieutenant commission and I spent most of my time waiting to pack my bags. Never happened, for some reason. After a while, my CO got pissed that I kept pestering him about it.” He smirked. “Turns out, I didn’t have to go overseas to see action.”
“How’d it go down that night?”
“I was at the Lafayette army base doing field training exercises. At first we thought it was some kind of pandemic. No one knew what was happening. I tried getting orders from the higher-ups, but they didn’t have a clue. No one did. I don’t know how, but we managed to organize enough people at the base to make a stand, but by morning…” He shook his head. “All those people, jammed in there at night, gone. Just gone. Like that, it was a ghost town.”
“How many men did you bring with you?”
“A couple, including Park. The rest scattered, went looking for their families in the city or out of town. Can’t blame them. If I had family, I would have done the same thing. They might still be alive out there somewhere. Who knows? There were some good, very capable men in the bunch.”
Mike looked out the window, as if expecting a ghoul to be there. There wasn’t, though Will could still here the soft tap-tap-tap from other parts of the hospital.
They’re probing for weaknesses. Relentless. Night after night.
Dead, not stupid…
“How active are they?” Will asked.
“They’re erratic. Sometimes there are waves of them, so many you can’t see the city in the background. Other times, it’s like this — they show up, look around, and then disappear just as quickly.”
“They’re smart.”
Mike nodded. “They would have to be, wouldn’t they? To pull off what they did?” Mike refilled their cups. “Down the hatch,” he said, and drained his in one swallow.
Will winced for him, then sipped his. “Are you sure you want to hit that Archers tomorrow?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“You said you were running out of supplies. Can you last another month without replenishing?”
Mike thought about it. “Maybe. But why should I do that? You said it yourself, I can’t just put everyone into our cars tomorrow and drive down to Beaufont Lake. I need supplies until that happens.” He grinned at Will. “Unless you’re telling me you’ve changed your mind?”
“Not yet. Sorry.”
“I understand.” He leaned back. “Look, you have a good thing going there. Forty extra bodies is a lot. If I was in your position, I’d do the same thing.”
“How are you handling who goes and who stays?”
“I was thinking about sending the kids and women first. We have a couple of fifty-somethings that would probably benefit from the fresh air. And they’ll be able to contribute right away. One’s an engineer, another’s an electrician. Of course, you’ll have to take their families, too. The electrician, Darren, has a fourteen-year-old girl, and the engineer, John, has a wife. I think she was a real estate agent, in case you were thinking about selling the island.”
He chuckled. “Probably not.”
“Well, I tried.”
Mike took another emptying swig of the plastic cup, then quickly refilled it.