Florida
Westlake stood at the edge of the hangar, looking out at the night. Cicadas sang noisily in the trees and lesser insects kept time. Once, he’d found such natural sounds annoying. Now he felt nothing at all, save perhaps the calm of the grave.
Inside, the others were discussing their next move. Normally, he liked to be involved in the planning stages, but not this time. His mind still wasn’t firing on all cylinders; hadn’t been for some time. He could feel himself slipping in and out more often. For someone who’d once prided himself on his focus, it was unsettling to realize it wasn’t there anymore. He looked down at his hands, bound in gauze and electrical tape. He was held together with spit and bailing wire, and it wasn’t going to last.
Part of him didn’t mind. He’d run out the clock already; it had all been overtime since the Villa. But another part of him was annoyed… no. Angry. Angry that he couldn’t do more for them. Angry that his mind and body were failing, that he was becoming worse than useless. That wasn’t how he wanted to go out. That wasn’t how he wanted to be remembered. Not that he’d ever given it much thought, but death had a way of changing your priorities.
He frowned. The conversation behind him was getting loud. That was happening a lot more these days. The Villa survivors were used to working with one another, but the Atlantic City survivors weren’t. They had their own ideas about how to do things.
He wondered how things were going back at the Villa with the influx of survivors. More hands made for swift work, but some of those hands might not appreciate being made to erect fences and plant potatoes. For now, everyone was concentrating on survival, on getting through the next day. But what about tomorrow? What about next winter?
There’d be trouble eventually. There always was. Maybe they’d get through it. Maybe they wouldn’t. He probably wouldn’t be around to see it either way.
He shook his head and stepped out into the night. Imogene was on watch, and she started at the sight of him. “What?” she said, half in challenge. She fingered one of her knives as she looked at him. She was scared; they were all scared, but he could smell it on her. The way he’d been able to smell it on Terry.
“Go inside. I’ll keep watch.”
“Yeah?”
Westlake nodded. Imogene hesitated, and then went. Westlake watched her vanish into the hangar and turned to face the night. For an instant, he wondered if it might be better for everyone if he just walked away now. They wouldn’t notice until he was gone. But then what? It wasn’t as if there was anything out there waiting for him.
“Going somewhere?” someone asked behind him. He heard the scrape of a lighter and turned. Coop stood behind him, lighting a cigarette.
“Just clearing my head,” Westlake said. He studied the other man warily. He didn’t much care for Coop. Coop didn’t much care for him. He’d met guys like Coop before, almost always cops or cop-adjacent. Hard guys, with flat eyes and an inflated sense of their own authority. Bit of training, bit of blood, and they thought they were hot stuff. To his credit, Coop hid it better than most.
“Seems like it’s plenty empty to me. Anything even left in there?”
Westlake frowned. “That a joke?”
Coop sniffed. “You see me laughing?”
Westlake grunted and looked out at the night. “I don’t suppose you do much of that. Don’t worry, I’m not planning to wander off.”
“I’m not worried about that.” Coop blew a plume of smoke into the air and sidled toward him. Westlake noticed that the other man had his hand resting on his holstered sidearm. “Tell me the truth… back at the mall, were you really going after that walker, or did it just get in the way?”
Westlake looked at him. “You accusing me of something?”
“Yeah, I think I am,” Coop said. He pointed at Westlake. “I think you had a little lapse. I think something in what’s left of your brain went pop and you decided to chow down.”
“Is that what you think?” Westlake wanted to smile. He’d figured Coop wouldn’t let the issue drop, no matter what Ramirez said. Coop thought he was the alpha dog. There was always one in every group who wanted to be in charge, but who definitely shouldn’t be. That was Coop. Good at shooting, not so much at being a team player.
Coop nodded amiably, all smiles. Just two friends having a chat. “Yeah, it is. What about you, Westlake, what do you think?”
“I think I’m one foot in the grave. But you ain’t the one who’s going to bury me.”
“Want to try me?” Coop said. He wasn’t smiling now, and his hand was steady on his weapon, ready to draw it at a moment’s notice.
Westlake chuckled. “I’m not the one with the problem, cowboy.”
“Oh, I’d say you have a big goddamn problem,” Coop growled. “And I’m just the guy to solve it for you.” His arm tensed. Ready to draw. Westlake almost wished he would. Better to get it out in the open and handled than to let it fester.
“Are you now?” Ramirez said. She stepped out of the darkness, hands in the pockets of her jacket. Westlake wondered how long she’d been there. He didn’t mind. Ramirez had been coming to his rescue in one way or another even before the apocalypse. “What problem is that, Coop? Care to fill me in?”
Coop frowned, but relaxed. Ramirez studied him. “No?” she said, when no answer was forthcoming. “Must not be a problem then. Take a walk. Check the perimeter and make sure nothing is creeping up on us in the dark. Runners don’t usually travel alone. I’d hate to wake up tomorrow and find a horde of walkers clogging up the runway.”
Coop made as if to protest, but then turned away with a grunt and ambled off. Ramirez watched him go, and then said, “You shouldn’t antagonize him. He doesn’t know you as well as I do.”
“You don’t know me very well at all,” Westlake said. “And you should be more worried about him. A guy like that is more trouble than he’s worth.”
“Says the convicted felon.”
“That just means that I know what I’m talking about.” He crouched and picked up Coop’s dropped cigarette. He watched it smolder and then stuck it between his lips. He inhaled creakily, drawing the last gutters of smoke into his lungs. It seeped out of the myriad tears in the flesh of his torso, squeezing between the layers of duct tape and clothing. Annoyed by the lack of sensation, he stubbed the cigarette out on his palm.
Ramirez watched the display with a raised eyebrow. “Are your lungs even still working?” she asked, half in jest.
“When I think about them,” he said, flicking the remains of the cigarette away. “Which isn’t often. I use them to talk, and that’s about it. Even that’s getting harder.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what? It’s not your fault.”
“It sort of is.”
Westlake grimaced. “Not really.” He looked back at the hangar. “What’s the consensus? Have we come to a decision?”
“Not really.” Ramirez blew a strand of hair out of her face and peered toward the end of the runway. “Sayers says there’s a hurricane coming. Two, maybe three days. That narrows our window significantly. Is there anything else around here? Charleston is – was – a major port. Is there something…?” She trailed off and gave him an expectant look.
Westlake stared out into the night. How many of the old hideouts had they already hit? He couldn’t remember. They’d been going in a straight line, though. Taking it state by state, widening the parameters of the search. So, what was left on the east coast?
Not much, was the answer. Big cities were a no-go. Too many zombies, too much risk. That left the out of the way places, like the mall. The off-book safehouses and temporary accommodations available to a certain class of professional criminal.
“Westlake?” she pressed.
“Florida,” Westlake said softly. Ramirez looked at him.
“What about it?”
“There’s an airfield in Florida, in the Everglades. Refueling spot for drug traffickers.”
“And?”
“And it’s the big one. This place was a resort for international fugitives. Not as big as the Villa, but fairly large. It was built for big-time Narcos to hide away in when they made their occasional jaunts to the States.” Westlake looked at her. She seemed doubtful. Then, she always looked that way. “No one knew about it except guys like me, and I can’t imagine many Narcos left their fortified compounds for a hidey-hole in the swamp. But there’s no telling whether it would still be there afterwards if Sayers is right and there’s really a hurricane coming.”
“You think we should hit it now, is what you’re saying.”
Westlake nodded. “Before it’s too late.”
“For whom? Us, or you?”
He looked away. “Does it matter?”
“Yes. The way you went after that walker… that wasn’t like you. I nearly put a bullet in your head right then and there myself.”
“So why didn’t you?”
Ramirez hesitated. He wondered if she even knew the reason herself. Finally, she said, “I suppose I knew better. Besides, if you’d turned, I doubt you’d go for Terry… not when I’m standing right there.” She gave him a crooked smile. He emitted a wheezy laugh and she wagged a finger at him. “Admit it, I’m right.”
“I choose not to answer on the grounds that I might incriminate myself.”
Ramirez nodded. “That’s what I thought.” She cleared her throat and changed the subject. “Why Florida?”
“Florida is close,” Westlake said slowly. “Won’t take us but a few hours to get there, and then we can go back to the mountains and hunker down for the summer.”
“And then what?” Ramirez asked.
Westlake wasn’t sure how to answer that, so he said nothing. The truth was, he wasn’t thinking that far ahead. Couldn’t, not anymore. Once, he’d been able to plan years ahead, lay the groundwork for jobs he might want to do at some point in the future. But these days, it was hard to think beyond the next week, even the next day. Maybe Coop was right, and his brain was decaying like the rest of him.
“Do you ever wonder what will happen to them, when it’s all used up?” Ramirez asked. Westlake looked at her. She smiled in a brittle way. “The old world, I mean. When the last of the gas is gone, when all the insulin and the bullets are – poof! What then?”
“People got along fine without most of that for a long time.” Privately, he figured things wouldn’t change much. People would still be people. They’d still need someone to tell them what to do. Ramirez was good at that.
“People died.”
“They do that regardless,” Westlake said. “Nowadays, they even come back.” He flexed his hands. He couldn’t feel anything in them, not even the pull of tendons. They were so much dead meat. But he could still use them, though he didn’t know how that was possible. Kahwihta had some theories, but he no longer had the patience to listen to them.
“No,” he added, after a moment. “I don’t wonder. I can’t waste the braincells worrying about things I have no control over.”
Ramirez snorted. “You were never very philosophical, even when you were alive.”
“I had my moments,” he protested.
“Few and far between,” she said. Then, “Florida, huh? Saving the best for last?”
Westlake gave a phlegmy chuckle. “Something like that.”