Once he finally slid past the day markers, “No Wake” signs, and other warnings that surrounded the island, he was sure the boy wasn’t going to shoot him. The teenager continued to hold the rifle at the ready in front of him anyway, forefinger in the trigger guard for a quick lift-and-shoot motion, if necessary.
Smart kid.
“You got a name?” Keo shouted, before realizing he was close enough now that he could have asked in a normal voice.
“Gene,” the kid said. “You?”
“Keo.”
The kid gave him a look before saying, “What kind of name is Keo?”
“Chuck was taken.”
Gene gave him a confused look. “Hunh?”
“Just a joke.”
“Oh. You Chinese or something?”
“Or something.”
Another confused look.
At the ten-meter mark, Keo said, “You’re not going to shoot me, are you, Gene?”
“If I was gonna shoot you, I would have done it already, don’t you think?”
“Good point. Just wanted to make sure, that’s all.”
“Sure’s sure.”
Keo didn’t know what that meant, but he decided not to ask. He said instead, “You alone, Gene?”
“No.”
For some reason, Keo didn’t believe him.
Gene held up his rifle. “I got my friend Deuce here with me.”
Keo grinned and angled the boat toward the dock before switching off the motor and letting his forward momentum take him into one of the slips.
“What now?” he asked.
“I dunno,” Gene said. “I guess we tie up your ride and you come up.” He shrugged. “Work for you?”
Keo nodded. “Works for me.”
“All right, then.”
He tossed his line over and Gene tied the boat in place.
Up close, Gene had bags under his eyes. He clearly hadn’t been sleeping well and hadn’t for some time now. He was wearing fingerless wool gloves and the sun glinted off large-caliber bullets around his waist, housed in their own individual loops. The getup made him look like a bandit out of a Western, the rifle almost bigger than both his arms put together. The scope on top was massive, which explained how he had managed to put holes into Keo’s boat from such a long distance. Even an amateur could have managed that. If the teenager had just been a little better, Keo would be fish food by now.
Thank God for amateurs.
He climbed onto the dock while Gene gave the boat a cursory look before asking, “You said you have supplies?”
“MREs, bottled water, and beef jerky.”
“What kind of water?”
“Filtered.”
“Where’d you get those?”
“From a hotel.”
“No shit?”
“Nope.”
Keo looked around at the rocky ridgeline of Santa Marie Island, taking in the still houses to the left and right of him. He didn’t know what he expected, maybe more…life. Instead, it was like looking at a vivid painting rather than a real place that people actually used to live in.
“So how long have you and Deuce been here?” he asked.
“For a while now,” Gene said. “Who was it you were looking for?”
“A woman named Gillian.”
Gene shook his head. “Never heard of her.”
“You didn’t even think about it.”
“Don’t have to. Never heard of her.”
“Well, shit.”
Gene shrugged. “Sorry, man.”
Keo sighed.
Yeah, you and me both, pal.
CHAPTER 2
“Where is everyone?” Keo asked.
“What you see? That’s it,” Gene said between mouthfuls of cheesy lasagna. Or what was supposed to be lasagna, anyway. The kid didn’t seem to notice the difference though.
They walked up the road from the marina, passing houses with overgrown lawns and stalled vehicles along the curb and driveways. Santa Marie Island looked frozen in time, a picture of what once was. He didn’t have any trouble imagining that things were exactly like this a year ago. He kept expecting to see a housewife in a flower-print dress and apron calling her husband, who would likely be busy mowing the lawn, in for dinner. Or a dog barking. Or kids on bicycles swerving up and down the sidewalk, trying not to hit him.
But there was none of that.
Instead, there was just the quiet, the overwhelming smell of abandonment. He wondered how the people on the island had learned about The Purge and how they had reacted. There were very few barricades over the windows, which told him they hadn’t been prepared when the end came.
The streets were curved, rarely staying in a straight line for very long, and there was a noticeable incline almost as soon as they began walking away from the marina at the southern tip. Santa Marie Island was big enough for more than one subdivision, including the expensive luxury houses along the ridgeline. The ones inland to his right looked like cheaper options. Though even “cheap,” he imagined, was probably still pricey, given the locale.
Location, location, location, as the saying went.
“Ferry,” Gene was saying, looking at him. The kid must have been reading his mind. “There’s another marina on the other side. It’s twice the size, and there’s a big ramp just for the ferry.”
“They got here by ferry?”
“I think so.”
“I don’t see it anywhere. The ferry.”
“It’s gone. Someone took it. Or sunk it.”
“Not in these waters. A sunken ferry would stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. Unless they towed it out into deeper waters and then did the deed, which doesn’t make sense. Why go through all the trouble?”
“I never thought of that.”
Keo looked back at him. “Where do you stay at night, Gene?”
“I move around. You can’t spend more than one night at the same place.”
“Why not?”
“They know.”
“They?”
“Yeah. They.”
“They’re still here?” Keo asked as his hand instinctively reached for the MP5SD hanging off him by its sling.
“Won’t do any good,” Gene said. “I’ve put a .308 round right into one’s head, blew its brains out, and nothing. It just kept coming.”
“Are you using silver bullets?”
“Silver bullets?” He stopped eating momentarily to stare at Keo.
“They work.”
“The fuck you say,” Gene said.
Keo smiled. “Anything silver works. Something about the metal interacting with their bloodstream. You have to get it inside them, though. So shooting’s the easiest way—the safest way by far—but stabbing them with something silver works just as well.”
“What are they, allergic to silver or something?”
“Beats the hell out of me. I just know it works.”
He pulled out a spare magazine from his pouch and handed it to Gene. The kid thumbed out a round and held it up. It was midday, and the warm sunlight glinted off the smooth silver tip. Gene eyeballed the bullet with intense fascination, pieces of lasagna clinging to his chin, though he was blissfully unaware of it.
The kid finally slipped the bullet back into the magazine and handed it to Keo. “I’ve seen some silverware in a lot of the kitchens. Maybe I can use them as weapons.”
“Real silver?” Keo asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Silver is expensive, Gene. People don’t just keep them in the drawer and use them as everyday utensils.”
“Oh. I guess that makes sense.”
“Although I do know about a couple of guys who stumbled across a pair of silver crosses inside an abandoned apartment. They ended up using them as knives.”
“They must be the luckiest guys alive.”
Keo thought about Danny and that knife of his. “They were.”
“‘Were’?”
“That’s the problem with l
uck. Sooner or later, you run out of it.”
“Did they? The guys you’re talking about. Did they run out of luck?”
“One of them did.”
Gene didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, finally, “That sucks.”
“Yeah.”
“Anyway, how can you tell real silver from the fake kind? You know, in case I run across a pair of silver knives or something.”
“There are a couple of ways. Silver makes a distinctive ring when you tap them against one another; it also melts ice faster.”
“Seriously?”
“Which part?’
“Both.”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know all of this?”
“Someone once paid me entirely in silver.”
“For what?”
“Some of this, some of that, and a little of whatever.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Then, “How long have you been here by yourself?”
The teenager shrugged, but he didn’t answer right away. He went back to eating what was left of the lasagna, though at this point Keo wasn’t sure if there was very much still in the bag by the sound of Gene’s spork scraping the bottom.
“A while,” Gene finally said.
“Why are you still here?”
“Because it’s safe. Well, mostly.”
“How do you avoid the ghouls night after night?”
“Ghouls?”
“That’s what these people I met called them. Ghouls.”
“Cool name,” Gene said. “But no. I mean, yeah, them too, but I don’t really have to worry about them too much. I’ve gotten good at staying away from the houses where they’re hiding. There are signs, if you know what to look for. But I’m really talking about guys like you.”
“Guys like me?”
“People on boats.”
“Is that why you shot at me?”
Gene gave him an almost embarrassed grin. “Sorry about that, by the way.”
“No harm, no foul. Unless you count my boat. So you’ve had trouble before.”
“Yeah, you can say that.” He tossed the empty MRE bag into a trashcan that was already brimming with garbage. The bag bounced off some cans of beans and landed on the sidewalk behind them. “I wasn’t always alone.”
“Besides you and Deuce?”
Another grin. “Yeah, besides me and Deuce.”
“What happened to your friends?”
“Soldiers came and took them,” Gene said.
*
“You’ve been here before,” Keo said.
“Yeah, I like it,” Gene said. “I can see the whole island from up here.”
“Is that how you spotted me?”
“Nah, I was just walking around when you showed up. I do that every morning. Go around the island, taking note of anything that might have changed during the night. It’s how I keep track of their movements.”
“The ghouls.”
“Uh huh.”
They were inside one of the two-story houses on the hillside in the middle of the island. From the second-floor windows, Keo could see the entirety of Santa Marie Island’s five-mile stretch. The house faced west with a great view of the Texas coastline, along with a clear line of sight to the large marina in the center. He had to use a window at the back of the master bedroom in order to see the east marina where he had docked his twenty-two-footer. The boat looked incredibly lonely out there all by itself.
There were empty cans of nonperishables on the first and second floors, and more signs that Gene had made use of the house in the recent past. The teenager told Keo that he didn’t worry about leaving evidence of his presence around since he never stayed at the same place two nights in a row anyway. In the bathroom of the master bedroom, Keo was surprised to find weapons—assault rifles, handguns, and boxes of ammo—housed inside the tub.
“I didn’t know where to put them,” Gene said when Keo asked about the guns. “I found most of them around the island after we showed up. Maybe some of them belonged to your friends.”
“Why the bolt-action and not one of the assault rifles?” Keo asked.
“I learned to shoot with Deuce, so I guess I’m comfortable with it. What kind of gun is that?” he asked, nodding at the MP5SD.
“Submachine gun.”
“It doesn’t look like it can shoot far.”
“It can’t. It’s a close-quarters weapon.”
“Are you good with it?”
“Depends on who you ask. You never told me long have you’ve been here, Gene.”
Gene was sitting on the floor behind him, going through the supply bag, while Keo looked out at the Texas coastline in the distance. Cool air from the open windows vented out the second floor, making it easier to be around Gene, who stank. It had obviously been a while since the teenager showered, and it hadn’t occurred to him to just take a swim in Galveston Bay every morning. Keo himself had done exactly that on the way over here.
“You mean, did I ever come across your friends?” Gene asked.
“Yeah.”
“Three months ago. But I definitely never met anyone named Gillian, or who looked like her.”
Three months ago? Keo crunched the numbers in his head.
The last time he had seen Gillian, Jordan, and the others was almost six months ago. That would have given them more than enough time to reach their destination before Gene. A three-month window. Possibly two, if they were somehow delayed. After all, it had taken him almost six months to finally get here, so who was to say it hadn’t taken them just as long? If, that is, they had made it at all.
More ifs and maybes. He didn’t have a single clue what had happened to them. All this time, and he was probably chasing a ghost.
Well, shit.
Gene opened one of the water bottles and drank it. When he was done, he let out a whistle. “Man, this is good stuff. I ran out of bottled water months ago, and I’ve been drinking rain all this time, but this… Wow.”
“It’s better cold,” Keo said absently.
“Everything’s better cold, except the weather.”
Keo smiled. The kid really did have a way with words. “You said the soldiers took your friends?”
Gene nodded. “We ran across them a couple of weeks after we arrived. They cruised up to the western marina, and like idiots we went out there to greet them. They caught the others, but I managed to escape. They come back here every now and then to look for me, or to see if they can catch other two-legged fish.”
“That’s why you shot at me.”
“Normally they come from the west, but they’ve been known to try to sneak up on me from the east.”
“Why don’t you just avoid them entirely?”
“What do you mean?”
“If you shoot at them, won’t they know you’re on the island?”
Gene shrugged. “They already know I’m here. But knowing and finding me isn’t the same thing. I know every house on this rock, all the good places to hide. They always look for me, but at the end of the day, they always get bored and leave.”
“How often do they come looking?”
Gene thought about it. “About once a week since I’ve been here. The last time they came was about five days ago, so you know, they’re due. They have bases all across Galveston Island. I’m surprised they didn’t hear you coming through the channel.”
“I was using a trolling motor. Ran out of gas about eight kilometers out.”
“Kilometers?”
“About five miles.”
“Oh. Anyway, that probably explains it. Otherwise they might have intercepted you before you ever reached Santa Marie.”
“They do that a lot?” he asked, thinking about Gillian and Jordan coming on Mark’s boat. Was that what had happened to them? Did they get intercepted?
“That’s all they do,” Gene said. “People are always showing up here. Like you. Like us. Maybe like your friends.”
Keo stared out the window at the coastline in the distance. The land, or what little of it he could see, was brown and gray under the sun. What were the chances Gillian had made it inland? Maybe they had decided to bypass the island entirely?
“When was the last time you left this place?” he asked Gene.
“Not since I arrived. Why would I?”
“For one, you’re running out of food.”
“Not really.”
“No?”
“There’s a big ocean out there. Once I run out of nonperishables, I figure I could always learn to fish.”
“You mean you don’t know how to fish?”
Gene gave him a noncommittal shrug. “I’m a fast learner. And I’ve been hoarding books about doing all sorts of things.”
“Is one of them fishing?”
“Fishing, hunting, shooting, all kinds of things.”
Keo glanced at Gene’s rifle leaning against the wall nearby. Deuce looked well-used, its stock noticeably chipped.
“So what now?” Gene asked. “You came here looking for your girlfriend, but she’s not here. She probably never even made it. So what’re you gonna do?”
He sighed.
Good question, kid.
*
Keo spent the next few hours walking around the island. For a place that stretched eight kilometers long, Santa Marie was a lot smaller than it looked from the water, with one main road that encircled the place. It was well designed to accommodate a small and privileged population, and he could see why it was so attractive. It was isolated, but just a boat ride away from the mainland, and perfect for those who could afford its limited space.
As he walked out in the open, Keo could feel their eyes on him. They could see him, but he couldn’t return the favor. For every house that looked empty, there was one or two that showed clear signs of occupation, either by the pulled curtains or the furniture stacked on the other side of the windows to stave off the bright sun.
Come out, come out, wherever you are…
If Gene’s theory was correct and the creatures had arrived by ferry that first night and never left, then the islanders were still here, somewhere, either hiding in their old bedrooms or basements, or wherever they could find a dark, damp place. That led Keo to wondering how long these things could survive without fresh blood. Or did they even need fresh blood at all?
Purge of Babylon (Book 6): The Isles of Elysium Page 2