The two women grabbed a gym bag each and followed her.
“Did he take a trip down south?” Jen asked.
Gaby groaned. “Give it a rest.”
They were almost at the door when a scream, followed quickly by a gunshot, ripped across the tenth floor. The gunshot was followed by a series of gunfire — the pop-pop-pop of a three-round burst — and Gaby knew right away that more than one person was shooting in different parts of the building at the same time.
They dropped the gym bags and rushed to the door, Gaby already unslinging her M4. Jen, with her longer stride, beat her to the door, and as the pilot threw it open, Gaby lunged outside and slid to a stop in the hallway, her boots battling against the slick vinyl.
She saw a man in a dull white tactical hazmat suit and gas mask moving away from her, stepping over a body lying prone on the floor. The suit was thin, one of those Level B hazmat suits. The man was wearing boots, and as he stepped over the dead man, she could see blood on his soles. She recognized an M4, identical to her own, in the man’s hands. As soon as the shooter heard the sound of the inventory room door opening behind him, he stopped and turned around.
Gaby glimpsed dark black eyes behind the gas mask’s single face covering, a stunted one-piece air purifier jutting out from underneath.
The man started to lift his rifle, but he hadn’t gotten it halfway up before Gaby shot him in the chest. She fired without thinking—“muscle memory” Will would have said — and was momentarily stunned by the sight of the man collapsing in front of her. The bullet had drilled into the thin fabric of his suit, and it didn’t look as if there were any blood at all. But of course, she knew better. The suit kept the blood inside, leaving behind a small hole in its wake.
Just like that man in Beaumont, Texas…
Jen and Amy stumbled out of the room behind her. It didn’t occur to Gaby how vulnerable the two women were. They were both unarmed, and they gasped at the sight of the dead man in the hazmat suit lying near one of their own.
“Oh my God, Dan!” Amy said, rushing forward.
She hadn’t gotten more than a few yards when gunfire ripped over her head and shredded a large painting hanging on the wall beside her. Amy instinctively fell to the floor headfirst, sliding comically along the smooth tiles with her hands thrown over her head, as if that would somehow protect her from bullets.
Gaby turned to her right, looking down the hall as another man in a hazmat suit moved toward them, also armed with an M4. The man was taking aim at Amy’s scrambling form when Gaby fired at him. Her first shot missed, but her second shot hit the man in the leg and he stumbled, then turned and hobbled desperately behind a corner.
She heard gunfire from other parts of the hospital, and Gaby desperately longed for a radio. Will insisted everyone on the island carried one, but Mike didn’t have that kind of system in place.
God, they’re so unprepared. How did they survive for so long?
She stopped thinking when the same gas-masked face peered out from behind the corner down the hallway. She snapped a quick shot in his direction, and the man jerked his head back behind the wall as her bullet tore a big chunk off the corner.
Gaby kept her rifle on semi-automatic. She wasn’t worried about ammo. She had two magazines for the rifle around her waist and two more for the Glock in her pouches. She had even more in her pack…back in her room.
She risked a quick look behind her, and saw Jen helping Amy up from the floor, shouting, “Come on, we can’t do anything for him now!” Then she looked back at Gaby. “We have to go!”
“Go where?” Gaby shouted back. “They’re all over the floor! Listen!”
The two women stopped their frantic movements and listened. Gaby saw their faces go from pale and confused to horrified.
The screaming, the gunshots — it was coming from all around them, as if they had just stumbled into the middle of a war zone.
And this day started off so well, too…
CHAPTER 10
LARA
She didn’t know how Will wore his communications rig all day. It was cumbersome and unwieldy, and she thought the plastic mic around her throat was going to choke the life out of her with every step she took. The thing was supposed to work on bone vibrations, or something like that. The earbud didn’t look like it would stay in her ear, though when she purposefully moved around like a spastic, it refused to dislodge.
She was wearing the assault vest Will had designed specifically for her a month ago. She remembered almost swooning. How many girls got custom-made assault vests? It was a slimmed-down version of the kind he and Danny wore, with pouches for equipment, such as the radio connected to the throat mic and earbud. It was a lot more convenient than holding the radio with one hand, especially when she was moving.
An hour after kneeling on the wet ground inside the woods in the western half of the island, the Benelli shotgun had begun to feel almost weightless leaning against her knee. The first signs of sunup appeared in the distance, casting the kind of glow across the sky that still took her breath away many mornings later.
Danny was somewhere to her left, hidden among the foliage. The woods were brightening around her, slivers of the clear sky coming through where it was pitch dark moments before. Every now and then she heard movement that prompted her to tighten up, get ready to spring into action. The paranoia was justified, because he was out here somewhere.
West.
He and Brody had done exactly what Bonnie had predicted they would do. She chastised herself for not seeing it sooner. Thank God they had padlocked the Tower basement, where all the weapons were stored. She didn’t want to think about what would have happened had both West and Brody gotten to their rifles while the rest of them slept, with only Blaine on the third floor to stand in their way.
This wouldn’t have happened if Will was here.
The thought popped into her head every few minutes, twisting her into knots, and confirming what she already knew: She wasn’t ready for this. Not even close. So why did the others think she was? Whatever possessed them to put so much faith in her judgment? She wasn’t ready—
She was startled by a clicking sound in her right ear, before Danny’s voice came through a second later to soothe her nerves: “Look how pretty the sky is. Makes you appreciate all the finer things in life, doesn’t it?”
“Like what?” she whispered.
She had learned a few hours ago that even when she barely whispered, Danny could hear her just fine.
No wonder Will loves these things.
“Girls,” Danny said. “Fresh air. Girls. Walking around the woods at night. Girls.”
“You forgot girls.”
“Oh, right, girls.”
She smiled despite herself. “Where are you now? I can’t see you.”
“Your eleven o’clock.”
“I don’t know what that is, Danny.”
“Imagine the hands on a clock.”
“Okay…”
“Now imagine where eleven o’clock is.”
“So, to my left?”
“Close. Northwest of you.”
“Couldn’t you have just said that in the first place?”
“Sure, but it’s cooler this way.”
Snap!
She shot up to her feet and spun around, the shotgun rising, her forefinger slipping into the trigger guard—
“Don’t shoot!” Roy shouted.
He stood twenty yards behind her, hands trembling in the air.