"Recruiting me? Seriously?" Marco laughed. "They offering to let me be all I can be?"
"Hey," Andrea said. "Watch it."
"Both of you, shut the hell up," Tanner snapped. "Let the lady have her say."
Andrea grumbled, but fell silent. For his part, Marco gave the Private a curious look, but settled back and waved Bunny on, apparently content to do as the soldier asked. Bunny gave Tanner a smile in the way of thanks for backing her up.
"Obviously, you know a lot more about what's going on out here than we do," she said to the dead man. "We have a plan to get out of the city, but we need information before we can move. We need to know what Pete’s up to, and the only person who can get that information is you."
"So, let me see if I got this right," Marco said at length. "In order to help you guys get out of the trap you laid for yourselves, you want me to basically go get myself killed."
Bunny blew out an exasperated breath. "You really think I'd ask you to do that?"
Marco bowed his head. "No, of course not. Not you. Them, yeah. In a heartbeat."
"I won't let them do that," Bunny told him.
"And what, you're gonna pout until they play nice with the talking corpse? Seriously, Bunny.”
"I wouldn't be here if I didn't trust them," she said.
Marco shook his head. "I don't know. It's a lot of risk on me for a lot of gain to them."
"Fine, don't take my word," she replied. "Come with us to the camp. Talk to Williams yourself."
"Whoa," Andrea cut in. "You've got to be joking. We are not taking a Gaunt back into the camp with us. I don't care how civilized it is."
Bunny leveled a hard gaze on the woman. "It really isn't your call, now is it?"
"She got you there," Tanner said quietly.
"Forget it," Marco told her. "No way would I go in there with all of them. We both know I'd never come out."
"I'd make sure you did,” Bunny promised.
He laughed. "Wow. You really do think you can take on the world, don't you?"
"Don't really have a lot of choice left, buddy. It's that, or die," she answered.
Marco shook his head, still laughing at her. "Sorry, Bunny. I'm not going in there. It's just too much of a risk."
"Damn right," Andrea said.
"For me," Marco told her pointedly. "I've got no guarantee your Colonel wouldn't decide to turn me into a lab rat, and let me tell you, spending the rest of my days having my brain poked at isn't my idea of fun."
"Fine," Bunny said. "How about a compromise?"
"Like what?"
She pulled one of the military radios out of her duffel bag and held it out to him. "Take this. If you see anything at all that could be useful intelligence, call me up and I'll relay it."
Marco stared at the device for a while, but finally accepted it. "I doubt I can be of any real use, Bunny. Pete's got a compound on the north end of the city. I have no idea what he's doing up there, but I know a lot of the dead have gathered outside it. I can’t get anywhere near it without getting swarmed.”
"A compound?" Tanner asked. "Like, a base?"
"Just like a base," Marco told him. "And I've seen his pets dragging dead people inside."
Bunny mulled that over for a minute. "Like, the ones we've killed?"
"And the ones they kill, yeah," Marco said.
"They're killing each other?" Tanner asked.
"Sometimes, yeah. Then they drag them off into that place." Marco shrugged. "He's up to something, but I'll be damned if I know what it is."
"Yeah, well, we need to know," Bunny said.
"Take some friendly advice, Bunny," Marco said as he stood. "Get as many people out of the Park as you can, and run like hell. Whatever he's up to, it's not going to be pretty, and that's saying a lot these days."
"We plan to," she answered. "We just want to make sure we don't get waylaid on the way out the door."
Marco looked at her for a long moment, then sighed and held up the radio. "I'll see what I can see."
"Thank you," she said. "Seriously."
"Don't thank me yet. I'm not making any promises. Odds are, they'll rip me apart before I can find anything out anyway," he warned.
She smiled. "I doubt you'd let yourself get caught that easily."
"You should go," he said. "They come through sometimes, with the blind ones."
She nodded, holding out her hand, which he took. "Be careful, Marco."
“You, too.”
With a nod from Bunny, Tanner and Andrea quickly began packing up the few things they’d set out. It only took a moment until they were ready to head to the roof, Bunny pausing long enough to look back at her friend one last time. He smiled, and to her, it wasn’t so frightful a thing, making it easy to smile back.
"One more thing you should know," Marco called as she turned to head out the door.
"What's that?" she asked.
"They took Peyton to the compound."
Chapter Eighteen
BUNNY SAT behind the wheel of the Beast, smoking a rolled cigarette, staring out the window blankly. Her mind rolled over the information she’d received, picking it apart, putting it back together trying to make sense of it. Somewhere in it, she felt sure was a picture that would make sense. Or at the very least, one that would make more sense than none at all.
She leaned her head back, letting out a long slow breath. Since the first night, she’d rarely had time to sit still and
