The not-really-fat soldier looked shocked to see the body fall next to him. Then he snapped out of it and glanced over at Keo before scrambling to unsling his rifle.
“Don’t make me kill you!” Keo shouted.
The wounded man looked conflicted, and Keo was sure he might finish going for his M4 after all—there was at least a fifty-fifty chance—but the man was apparently smarter than he looked. Either that, or he wanted to live more. He pulled his hands away from the rifle and placed them over his thigh to stanch the bleeding instead.
Blood was squirting out through the man’s fingers when Keo finally reached him. He grabbed the wounded man’s rifle and tossed it up the dock, then kicked the dead soldier’s rifle into the water. Once he secured the remaining soldier’s handgun—a nice-looking Smith & Wesson .32 semiautomatic—Keo took a step back to catch his breath.
“Keo!” Gene, waving with both hands (and Deuce) at him from the ridgeline.
Keo waved back. “All clear!”
He looked back at his captive. Like the soldiers Keo had encountered recently, this one had a name tag over his right breast pocket. It read: “J. Miller.” Unlike the ones in Louisiana, Miller and his fellow Texans had a patch of the Lone Star State over one shoulder.
“We gotta stop meeting like this,” Keo said.
“Huh?” Miller said, blinking the sweat and sun out of his eyes.
“Me, you guys, and marinas.”
Miller continued to blink at him, unsure how to respond. He finally said, “I don’t know you, man.”
“No? Hunh. I must be thinking about some other douchebags in uniforms, then.” He looked down at the blood oozing out between Miller’s fingers. “Hurts?”
“What do you think?”
“Looks like it hurts.”
“That’s because it does.”
“You need a doctor?”
“I got medical supplies in the boat.”
“Oh, do you now? That’s convenient.”
Miller didn’t say anything.
Keo glanced at the dead soldier nearby. His name tag read: “Matthew.” Keo hadn’t caught the third soldier’s name before he did his swan dive into Galveston Bay. Not that it mattered. Fish food didn’t need names.
“So,” Keo said, looking back at Miller. “I have a few questions. You mind answering them for me?”
“I got a choice?” Miller asked.
Keo grinned. “Of course you do. It’s a free country, isn’t it? Well, it used to be, anyway.”
CHAPTER 4
J. Miller, as it turned out, was a former paramedic, and when Keo tossed him a first-aid kit he had retrieved from the soldiers’ boat, the man quickly took out what he needed, cut off a large chunk of his pant leg, and treated his own wound. He worked without making a sound, though every now and then his breathing accelerated slightly.
They were in the parking lot, with Miller leaning against a white Bronco and the sun beating down mercilessly on both of them. Keo gave Miller space to keep himself from bleeding to death while Gene had retreated back to the ridgeline overlooking the western marina in case more soldiers tried sneaking up on them.
When Miller was finished, Keo handed him a refilled bottle of water, also from the soldiers’ boat. The vessel was packed with supplies, including spare magazines with 5.56 rounds but no 9mm, which was what Keo would have preferred. He’d only used up half of the bullets in his MP5SD and he still had two full spares, but a man with extra ammo (especially the right kind) was a rich one these days.
Miller, his hands covered with his own blood, swiped them on his one good pant leg before taking the water and gulping it down in one long swig. He was in his early thirties, with a somewhat pudgy face and already stripes of gray among his dark hair. He eyed Keo suspiciously over the bottle as he drank.
“Careful there, don’t wanna drown yourself,” Keo said. “How’s the leg? Any broken bones?”
Miller slowed down but kept drinking. “It went clean through.”
“Lucky you.”
“Yeah, lucky me,” Miller said, clenching his teeth.
“J. Miller,” Keo read. “That’s a first.”
“What’s that?” Miller said, lowering the bottle. He sighed with relief.
“The initial on your tag.”
“There was another Miller in my outfit, so I had to add a J.”
“What’s it stand for?”
“Jack.”
“Ah. So should I call you Jack or Miller?”
“I don’t give a shit,” Miller said, and handed the bottle of water back.
Keo put it away. “Fair enough.”
“Who the fuck are you, anyway?”
“I’m just a guy with a gun. Those two back there your friends?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You guess?”
He shrugged. “I’ve only known them for a few months. It’s not like we had dinner at each other’s houses or anything.”
“You guys have houses out here?”
“Rooms might have been more appropriate. So what’s the deal with you and the kid?”
“I guess he lives here. I just showed up earlier this morning.”
“Your boat…”
“Uh huh.”
“What are you, Japanese or something?”
“Or something,” Keo said. “You did pretty good there with the leg.”
“I could still use some real medical attention, I’m not gonna lie.”
“And where would you find something like that?”
“T18 has a full medical staff.”
“T18?”
“Where I’m based.”
“What’s the T stand for?”
Miller gave him an Are you kidding me with that question? look. Then he said, “Texas.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
“Where you from, anyway?”
“San Diego. But I’m assuming you meant recently. In which case, that would be Louisiana.”
“I’ve never been to Louisiana,” Miller said almost wistfully.
“Not too late. It’s just next door. I hear the traffic’s pretty light these days.”
“Can’t. Got a job to do.”
“I can appreciate that. But speaking of going places, how far is T18?”
Miller clammed up. Apparently he realized (too late) that he shouldn’t have said anything in the first place.
“Look,” Keo said, “here’s the deal. I need information, and you have it. I’d prefer if you told me what I needed to know without all that messy bloodshed. Er, well, more bloodshed. I mean, you’re already hurt, but you can still walk. Mostly. Just tell me what I need to know and we’re cool. You go your way, and I go mine. Tell me that’s not the best deal you’re gonna get all day.”
Miller gave him that long look again, as if he could read Keo’s face.
Good luck with that, pal.
“Well?” Keo said. “What’s it going to be?”
“You know where League City is?” Miller asked.
“For the sake of avoiding further pointless questions, let’s just pretend I’ve never stepped foot in the great state of Texas in my entire life.”
“It’s about thirty miles from here. Up the I-45. It used to be a town called Wilmont.”
“How big is T18?”
“Pretty big.”
“Okay, let’s put it another way. How many people are in T18 right now?”
Miller thought about it for a moment, then, “Around 4,000.”
Keo whistled. “That’s a lot of people.”
“It’s probably the smallest town in Texas. There’s one outside of Dallas that has almost 10,000.”
Keo wished he could say he was surprised. From everything he had heard, there were a hell of a lot more towns out there he would never know about, all of them filled with survivors. He used to think the creatures had either killed everyone or turned them into ghouls, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. There had been a plan in effect from the very firs
t day of The Purge, and he was only now starting to fully grasp the scope of it. He had never been especially good at out-of-the-box long-term thinking, but Keo had to admit, what the creatures had done and what they were currently doing out there was beyond impressive.
“Good to know,” Keo said, hoping his face didn’t betray his thoughts. “So, let’s pretend you and your friends caught survivors running around out here. Say, like my little buddy Gene. Where would you take him?”
“Our orders are to take everyone we find to T18.”
“How many did you take in the last, say, six months?”
“Me personally? None. I just joined Matthew and Bo out here two weeks ago. Before that, I had guard duty back in town.”
“So this is a promotion?”
“It beats looking at the same patch of dirt every day.”
“Thirty miles is a pretty long drive to take people back and forth.”
“Not if there’s nothing between here and League City.”
“Nothing?”
“I mean, there are small towns, but no one lives out here if they can help it. It’s not exactly fertile ground.”
“What about T18?”
“It’s the exception. It’s connected to Trinity Bay by a river, and there are large undeveloped lands in the area.”
“Wildlife?”
“Yeah, sure. Some of them are just starting to come back now that the crawlers aren’t feeding on them anymore.” Miller paused, then added, “You’re looking for someone.”
Keo nodded. “I am.”
“You think they’re in T18?”
“Don’t know. I guess the only way to find out is to go there and look.”
Miller smiled at him.
“That’s funny to you?” Keo asked.
“If you go to T18, you won’t come out alive.”
“Really.”
“Really,” Miller nodded.
“I thought these towns were paradise. Peace and quiet. Sanctuary from the night. All that good stuff. You telling me all of that’s a big fat lie?”
“They’re supposed to be, but T18’s different. It’s…problematic.”
“How so?”
“It’s at war. If you go there, you better choose sides.”
“So tell me who the good guys are.”
“That’s the problem. There’s no such thing. There’s just the bad guys and the badder guys.”
Sounds familiar, Keo thought, and asked, “And which ones are you and your buddies?”
“The bad guys,” Miller said. “The badder guys? Trust me, when you meet them you’re going to wish you were on our side.”
*
“You believe him?” Gene asked.
“I don’t know,” Keo said. “Maybe. Or he might just be a very good liar.”
“You can’t tell?”
“I’m not a human polygraph, Gene.”
“What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“Polygraph.”
“A lie detector.”
“Oh.”
Gene glanced back at Miller, leaning against the same Bronco with zip ties around his ankles and wrists. They had found bundles of the stuff inside the compartments of the soldiers’ boat. No doubt they came in handy whenever Miller and his crew ran across stragglers such as Gene’s friends. Or, possibly, Gillian and the others a few months earlier. Though, according to Miller, he was new to the gig, which meant Keo had shot the wrong men.
“I don’t know how you can trust him,” Gene said.
“I can’t. But as long as I have a gun and he doesn’t, I don’t have to.”
He had said it louder than necessary, even though they weren’t so far from him that Miller couldn’t already hear everything they were saying anyway.
“You can come with me,” Keo said.
The teenager looked surprised. “Me? What would I do out there?”
“Try to find your friends.”
“I don’t even know if they’re still alive.”
“When the soldiers took them, were they still alive?”
“Yeah.”
“Then they’re still alive now.”
“How do you know that?”
“The towns Miller was telling me about? They don’t kill you. It’s not a prison. Not really, anyway. I mean, yes, it is in a sense, but it’s not a death camp by any means. Think of it more like a federal pen for white collar criminals, with only minimal possibilities of shower rapes.”
Gene gave him that patented confused look.
“Point is,” Keo continued, “if they did take your friends to T18 or one of the other Ts, that means they’re still alive and probably fine as long as they play by the rules.”
“How do you know all this?”
“The question is, how is it that you don’t? Weekend warriors like Miller have been setting these towns up for months now. First the camps—”
Gene’s eyes lit up at that.
“You know about the camps,” Keo said.
The kid nodded. From his expression, he knew a lot about the camps. He might have even been in one of them once upon a time, and for a moment Keo thought about asking Gene to pull up his sleeves to show him his arms, but decided against it. Being victimized by those creatures was traumatic enough; he didn’t feel the need to force Gene to relive it, too.
“They’re gone,” Keo continued. “The camps. From what I’ve been told, they started moving people over to these resettlement towns months ago.” He glanced back at Miller. “Right?”
Miller nodded. “Right.”
Gene was staring at Miller intently. Keo wasn’t sure what he saw in the kid’s eyes—maybe anger, a little bit of fear, but definitely a lot of dislike.
“Kid,” Keo said, directing Gene’s eyes back to him. “It’s your choice. I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to. If you stay, you can keep half the supplies like we agreed, and I’ll give you half of the soldiers’, too.”
“What about him?” Gene asked.
“He’s coming with me.”
“What if he comes back with more men?”
“He won’t. Whatever happens, I promise you won’t see him again.”
Gene nodded reluctantly, then said, “So when are you leaving?”
Keo glanced at his watch: 3:14 P.M.
The afternoon had crept up on him, leaving him just three hours before sunset. He thought about all those houses behind him along the streets and the things that may or may not be hiding inside, watching them at this very moment.
Keo looked back at the docks, at his boat in the slip next to the soldiers’ bigger vessel. He had spent the last few days in the Gulf of Mexico sleeping under the stars on his way here. It had been some of the best night’s sleep of his life because he didn’t have to worry about anything crawling up and over the gunwales. He would have no trouble doing that for one more night.
But that was back when he was out there in the middle of the ocean all by himself, and not this close to the Texas coastline. Even if he took Miller’s boat, a gunfight out in the open water would not end well for him, especially if they had more than one gun onboard, which they certainly would. If his experiences with the soldiers in Louisiana had taught him anything, it was that where you found one patrol, you usually found more.
“Tomorrow morning,” Keo said, turning back to Gene. “Until then, show me how to survive the island at night.”
*
Instead of staying at the two-story white house on the hill, Gene led him and a hobbling Miller further up the street. Keo had given Miller a paddle from his boat to use as a crutch, and the former paramedic turned human collaborator seemed to be moving surprisingly well for someone with a hole in one of his thighs. He only clenched his teeth every now and then and had decided to smartly keep any complaints to himself.
The fact that Miller seemed to be taking captivity so well made Keo doubt everything the man had told him. Guys who were that calm while facing the wrong end of a
gun were dangerous enough to come up with clever lies, like a town with two warring parties. But Keo kept his suspicions to himself. He would find out one way or another if Miller was telling fibs in the morning. Right now, there was the night to worry about.
One problem at a time.
The house Gene took them to was another two-story, this one squeezed between two much smaller residences. It sat along the north end of the island, with a quaint backyard overlooking the bay. A mailbox with the name “Tanner” greeted them as they walked up the driveway.
“You’ve been here before?” Keo asked Gene.
The teenager nodded. “Couple of times.” He pointed at the exposed windows and the living room on the other side. “That’s how you know if they’ve been inside the houses.”
“The curtains…”
“Yeah. If they’re inside, they’ll pull the curtains or something, like furniture, to block out the sun. The tricky part is tricking them while not letting them know you’re tricking them.”
“Tricky,” Keo said.
“Heh,” Gene grinned. “I see what you did there.”
Keo smiled back at him.
Gene walked on forward, then opened the door—it wasn’t locked—and leaned inside and seemed to sniff the air for a moment. Satisfied, he glanced back at Keo. “Smells good.”
“Smells good?” Keo said.
“Yeah, they have a smell. Like shit mixed with garbage. It always lingers when they’ve been inside a house.”
“Sounds good to me,” Keo said. Then, nudging Miller in the back with the barrel of his MP5SD, “In you go. You’re our guinea pig for the day.”
Miller grunted before taking his first tentative step inside, the paddle under his armpit clack-clacking against the tiled floor.
There were no signs of a struggle, and the place was spotless except for old, faded stains here and there. Dried blood, from the night the creatures invaded Santa Marie Island, probably. What must it have been like as the creatures took the population one by one, multiplying as they went? The only way off the island would be through the marinas, but how many had made it? How many even knew to flee before it was too late?
Keo closed the door behind him. “Should I lock the door?”
“No,” Gene said.
“What about the windows?”
“No, everything has to be the way they were when we found them. They’re smarter than you think. If they see something wrong with a house, something that wasn’t there the night before, they’ll know someone’s inside. A locked front door, a closed curtain, even the slightest things. We have to trick them without letting them know they’re being tricked, remember?”
Purge of Babylon (Book 6): The Isles of Elysium Page 4