by Sam Sisavath
“Not that. The second part.”
“That I’m harmless?”
“Yeah.”
“You may be younger than me, but you’re clearly more adept with those weapons than I am. Besides, I don’t think I could take you in a fight.”
Gaby almost laughed. “I wish you’d try. I’d crush your throat. That is, if I don’t break your nose and shove the loose bones into your brain first.”
She heard Zoe swallow audibly on the other side of Nate. Gaby smiled to herself.
“What you were doing back there,” Gaby said, “with the pregnant girls. That makes you dangerous.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re working for them. The ghouls. The bloodsuckers. Whatever you want to call them. That makes you dangerous. Add in your medical training, and that really makes you dangerous. I would shoot you just to keep you out of their hands, so you can’t do any more harm.”
Zoe didn’t answer.
Will climbed back into the truck. He noticed the silence, and there must have been something about Zoe’s face that gave away their conversation.
“What’s going on, ladies?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Zoe said.
“Just girl talk,” Gaby said.
“Uh huh,” Will said, not believing a single word of it.
He reversed the truck, then turned a full 180 degrees in the driveway before backing up into one of the two empty garage ports.
Gaby climbed out of the truck and walked outside to pull security with the AR-15 she had snatched up during their escape. The weapon felt wrong in her hands, and she longed to have her old M4 back. The barrel on the AR-15 was too long, and she was even slightly annoyed by the ugly tan color. But at least whoever owned it before her had converted it to full-auto, so there was that.
Sunlight was fading in the horizon, and she could barely make out the gray stones of the highway from this distance. Will had chosen a good spot to lay low for the night.
Zoe climbed out, and when Gaby looked back, she saw the other woman doing everything possible to avoid her gaze.
“We’ll stay here for the night,” Will said.
“Then what?” Zoe asked, arms wrapped tightly around her chest. “What happens to me?”
“I need you to keep an eye on Nate, make sure he survives the night.”
“And then?”
“We’ll revisit that question tomorrow.”
She sighed, frustrated. “Do you have any painkillers? He’s going to need them.”
Will pulled out his pack, took out a bottle, and handed it to her.
“Generic Vicodin,” Zoe said, reading the label. “It’ll do.”
“Gaby,” Will said.
She walked into the garage and they pulled one steel door down, then the other. There were no ways to lock the doors except for a latch that could be easily flicked open. The room was suddenly bathed in darkness, until Gaby heard a soft crackling sound and Will’s face lit up, illuminated by a soft green glow stick. He put it on the dashboard and climbed back in behind the steering wheel.
She squeezed into the back with Nate, lifting his head and resting it in her lap. She stroked his hair, matted with sweat, and looked down at his calm, almost contented face. His lips even looked as if they were curling up into a smile, as though he knew she was doting on him.
Zoe climbed into the front passenger seat, her face illuminated by the glow stick. Will pulled out some strips of beef jerky from his pack and passed them around. Zoe took the offering gratefully, pulling open the wrapper and chewing ravenously.
“Tell me about the towns,” Will said.
Zoe didn’t answer right away. The older woman was sitting directly in front of her, so Gaby couldn’t see her face. She did see the seat moving uncomfortably from time to time, depending on what Will was asking.
“What about them?” Zoe finally said.
“How many are there around the state?”
“I only know of three.”
“You’ve been to all of them?”
“Just two.”
“Including the one they’re scheduled to transport to tomorrow?”
“Not that one, no.”
“How big are these towns?”
“Big.”
“Give me dimensions.”
She sighed. “I don’t know. I didn’t exactly get out and measure them.”
“Ballpark.”
“They’re good-sized towns, I guess. More than one street.”
“How many people were there?”
“There were 500 in one town, and about a thousand in the other.”
“How many were supposed to go to this third town?”
“From my camp alone, around 700.”
“How many camps will be relocating their people over to this third town?”
“Josh told me two other camps from around the area.”
“Jesus, how many camps are there?” Gaby asked.
“There are five that I know of,” Zoe said.
“As big as the one we just left?” Will asked.
“No. This last one was the biggest by far. The others are about half the size, some smaller.”
“And they all have pregnant women in them?”
“Yes. They…encourage it.”
“I bet the guys don’t mind,” Gaby smirked.
“No, I guess not,” Zoe said.
“So you go around the camps, making sure everyone’s getting laid?” Will asked.
Gaby smiled at the question.
“I’m a doctor,” Zoe said defensively. “Someone has to look out for them.”
“How many doctors do they have working the camps?”
“I haven’t been to all of them, like I said. But of the five that I’ve visited, there are about twenty of us spread around. Actual doctors and nurses. Most of the ones you saw in scrubs back at the camp were volunteers.”
“Twenty doctor and nurses for five camps. That’s a lot of work.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“And you don’t see anything wrong with it?”
Zoe didn’t answer right away.
“Doc?” Will pressed.
“What do you want me to say?” She sounded angry, which surprised Gaby. There was real emotion there, and her voice rose slightly. “I did the best I could, but there’s only so much you can do. And I was tired of the running, the hiding…watching people dying that I couldn’t save.”
The seat in front of Gaby creaked as Zoe leaned back against it heavily.
“I thought I was dead at first,” Zoe continued. “When it all began, there were twenty-nine of us. We were like you, running and hiding, barely surviving. Then one night they caught us, and I went to sleep. I don’t know what happened. It was some kind of induced coma, I know that now.”
Phase Two. The blood farms…
“Were you alert?” Will asked. “During the coma?”
“Sometimes.” She paused. “It’s hard to tell. Sometimes I remember images. Flickers of memory, but they’re hazy, and it’s never for very long. A creature bending over me, over one of my arms…my legs…” She shook her head. “It’s all a blur. I can’t make out details, just the feeling of helplessness. Unable to move, unable to make a sound, unable to… It’s better to pretend it’s all just a bad dream.”
She stopped talking for a moment. Will didn’t push it, and Gaby wasn’t sure if she really wanted to know more, either. The idea of a blood farm was grotesque enough, but getting details about what happened inside one of them, from someone who was a victim of it, felt almost perverted.
“Then one day I woke up,” Zoe said. “It’s months later, and suddenly I have this dream. This creature, with glowing blue eyes, giving me a choice. But it wasn’t much of a choice. Go back to sleep, or wake up and help people. It wasn’t much of a choice, like I said.”
Zoe pulled back the long sleeves of her white doctor’s coat that she still had on and showed Will her arm. Gaby leaned over a bit and saw fading teeth marks agai
nst pale skin. She had no doubt there were similar markings along Zoe’s right arm too, and maybe other places as well. Will had told her about what happened at those blood farms, and Blaine and Maddie had confirmed it. The ghouls fed on you, night after night after night…
She shivered slightly in her seat.
“I guess I’m weak,” Zoe said. “I rationalized it, of course. History will look at me and frown. But what’s that saying? History is written by the winners. Tell me, Will, do you really think you can win this war?”
Will didn’t answer. He sat silently in his seat, staring out the bullet-riddled windshield at the pulled-down steel garage door.
“I didn’t think so,” Zoe said, and leaned back against her seat for the night.
*
SHE MUST HAVE fallen asleep, because when Gaby opened her eyes again, it was pitch dark inside the garage. The glow stick was still giving off light, so it couldn’t have been more than a few hours since she had dozed off.
She saw the back of Will’s head in the driver’s seat, along with the barrel of his M4A1 peeking out over the space between the two front seats. Nate was sleeping soundly in her lap with that stupid grin still on his face. There was the sound of snoring in front of her, the front passenger seat slightly reclined back.
Gaby picked up the AR-15 from the floor and leaned it between her leg and the door. Will had split his ammo with her—three magazines for the rifle and three more for the Glock. Only Will would carry that many spare magazines with him. One of his favorite sayings was that the only thing soldiers liked more than bullets was even more bullets. She felt better with the rifle next to her, and even better knowing they were loaded with the right kind of bullets. She stuffed the regular ammo she had snatched from the camp into her pack, just in case.
When she looked up, Will was holding something in front of her. She smiled and took it. “Thanks. Where’d you get it?”
“I grabbed a spare back at the Archers. Just in case.”
Gaby pulled off her shirt. It was still sticky with Nate’s blood, but more than that, it was the smell. She tossed it out the window and slipped on the new T-shirt, ripping the tag off the sleeve. It was a bit loose, but it fit well enough after she tucked it into her pants.
“How’s Nate?” Will asked.
“Out like a light.”
“His breathing?”
“Pretty normal.”
“Good.”
“What do you think? About Zoe.”
He didn’t answer right away. “She believes she’s doing what she has to. Taking care of the others.”
“Josh thought the same thing.” She remembered how earnest he looked while explaining his actions to her.
What happened to you in those three months, Josh?
“He really believed it,” she said. “Every single word of it. I don’t know if he’s changed that much, or if I have.” She paused. “Is it me, Will?”
“You’re still you, Gaby.”
“Am I?”
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that training doesn’t change you. Training only brings out what’s already inside. You can’t turn shit into diamonds, but you can wipe away shit from one.”
Gaby smiled. “That’s a nice visual, Will, thanks.”
He chuckled. “This moment of Zen, courtesy of Danny.”
“He came up with that?”
“Yeah, a while back.”
“What do you think they’re doing right now on the island?”
“Danny’s probably making bad jokes, Carly’s probably rolling her eyes at him, and Lara is probably soaking in the tub. Naked. Looking beautiful…”
She smiled. “TMI.”
“Not nearly enough.”
“You wanna know something funny?”
“What’s that?”
“You and Lara are probably the most functional couple I’ve met.”
He turned around in his seat and grinned back at her. “Really.”
“Yeah. Sad, right?”
He shrugged. “Better than the alternative, I guess. Although she must be pretty pissed at me right about now.”
“You left Benny and the others before I could come back with the radio on purpose, didn’t you? So you wouldn’t have to tell her you weren’t coming back home.”
He didn’t answer her right away. After a while, he said, “Yeah.”
“That’s really shitty of you, Will. She’s probably worried out of her mind right now.”
“I didn’t know what to tell her.”
“She would have understood.”
“Maybe. But I was probably going to die out here, Gaby, and I didn’t want the last words she heard from me to be an excuse why I’m not coming back to her.”
“You chickened out.”
“I guess I did.”
“You’re an asshole, Will.”
“I know,” he said quietly.
*
WILL WAS JUST as surprised as she was that they had made it through the night unscathed. They climbed out of the truck in the morning and threw open the garage doors, drinking in the warmth of the sun like drunks with their booze.
Gaby went back to check on Nate while Will wandered off. Both Nate and Zoe were still asleep in their seats. She had only gotten a few hours in last night, and Will had gotten even less than that, since every time she opened her eyes during the night he was still staring alertly at the garage doors.
Will didn’t return until twenty minutes later.
“Found one?” she asked.
He nodded. “How does a sports car sound?”
“As long as I can step on the gas and it goes, I’m good.”
They climbed back into the truck, and Will drove them over to the Phillips 66/Burger King next door. There were two vehicles lined up along the gas pumps—a red Ford Mustang GT and a slick-looking black GMC truck.
Zoe woke up when they were halfway there. “Where are we going now?”
“Next door,” Will said.
“Oh,” she said, sounding disappointed.
Will maneuvered the Ford until it was parked parallel with the Mustang, except the noses of the vehicles were pointed in opposite directions. The sports car would have looked shiny and new if not for the thick layer of eleven-month-old dust. Gaby got out of the truck with a rag and wiped down the thick grime that covered the front windshield. It gave way grudgingly, revealing the clean front seats underneath. No blood, and the key fob was sticking out of the ignition.
“How much would a car like this have cost me?” Gaby asked.
“$22,000 for the base model, easy,” Will said. “Twenty-five with some luxuries.”
“There goes the college fund.”
“Lucky for you, I’m going to take the F-150 in a straight-up trade.”
“Now that’s a deal,” a voice said behind her.
She looked over at Nate, peering out of the open truck door. “Lay back down,” she said.
“I’m fine.”
“Stop being an ass and lay back down.”
He smirked, then laid back down with his feet sticking out of the open door. “I’m really fine.”
Zoe was stretching lazily next to the truck. Gaby was surprised she hadn’t taken off running at the first opportunity. She would have, in the same situation.
“Give him a final look-over, doc,” Will said.
Zoe climbed back into the Ford. “How are you feeling?” she asked Nate.
“Like someone poured concrete on my head and then tried to bury me,” Nate said.
“That’s the Vicodin talking.”
Zoe swapped out Nate’s bloody bandages and put on fresh ones, while Gaby opened the Mustang’s unlocked driver side door. Dust erupted from the black leather seat as soon as she sat down. It would have been nice if she could roll down the windows, but that required power.
Will, meanwhile, had pulled out a siphoning tube from his pack and was sniffing the Mustang’s open gas tank. He had lined up the two vehicles and stuc
k one end of the tube into the Ford’s tank, then sucked on it until liquid started flowing slowly through the tube. He quickly stabbed the other end into the Mustang’s, transferring gas from one car to the other for about five minutes before cutting it off.
“Is that enough?” she asked.
“The Ford doesn’t have that much to give. You’ll need to search for more gas along the way, or find something else less shiny to drive.”
Will climbed back into the Ford and maneuvered it until it was parked nose-to-nose with the Mustang. He popped the truck’s hood, and Gaby fumbled around with the Mustang until she found a lever underneath the steering column. Pulling it, she heard the sports car’s hood pop open. Will climbed back out and Gaby watched him hook the jumper cables between the two batteries.
When he finally gave her the thumbs up, Gaby turned the key in the Mustang’s ignition. The car struggled for about five or six seconds before it finally turned over and roared to life, so loudly that Gaby instinctively pulled her foot off the gas to quiet the beast. She climbed out of the Mustang and left it running.
Zoe stood outside the truck, cleaning her hands on a rag that was already covered in dried blood.
“How is he?” Gaby asked.
“Better than yesterday,” Zoe said. “You’re taking him to the island?”
“That’s the plan.”
“How far is it from here?”
“Beaufont Lake,” Will said.
“I know where that is,” Zoe nodded. “I used to go fishing there with my dad when I was a kid. It’s nice. So you guys are on the island? Song Island, right?”
“Right,” Gaby nodded.
“So what about me?” She looked at Gaby, then at Will. “What happens to me now?”
“You’re coming with me,” Will said.
She frowned. “Why won’t you just let me go?”
“I will, but not yet.”
“When? I already told you everything I know.”
“I still need to know more.”
“But why?” she asked, sounding very much like a child.
“‘If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles,’” Will said.
Zoe sighed. “What the hell does that mean?”
*
“ARE YOU REALLY going to leave Will?” Nate asked.
He was reclining in the front passenger seat of the Mustang, stretching out his legs as far as they would go. She could hardly tell he had been shot twice yesterday unless she peeked underneath his shirt, where his entire left side was wrapped tightly in gauze. It helped that he wasn’t wearing his old, blood-covered shirt and had a bottle of generic Vicodin in his pocket.
