*
About three kilometers from the bridge, Keo came upon the first sign of civilization—a shopping center with sun-baked concrete floors and gray buildings that had been stripped of most of their signs. A slight wind moved through broken storefront windows without resistance, and overgrown grass swayed against the edges of the expansive and mostly spacious parking lot.
The sight of the abandoned stores and the few dirt-covered cars around him was like stepping through a portal in time, a reminder that he was living through the end of civilization as he knew it. He couldn’t even summon the curiosity to search the buildings for hints to Tobias’s whereabouts. It was all incredibly depressing, and Keo quickened his steps to get through the lot as fast as possible. Besides, there was little chance Tobias would leave clues this close to T18.
All things considered, this was one of his better days. He’d found Gillian, and that alone made up for everything else. It felt as if someone had lifted a 500-pound safe off his chest. He was optimistic for the first time in a long time, and it made leaving Carrie behind on the Trident easier to stomach.
He was almost giddy as he flattened his finger against the trigger guard of the MP5SD hanging from a sling in front of him. Having the submachine gun back was another major plus, and Jack had been even nice enough to return his pack intact, including the spare magazines and his gun belt with the silver bullet-loaded Glock. From the way the younger Miller had simply handed the bag full of weapons over, Keo guessed his captors hadn’t bothered to pay very close attention to his supplies. Either that, or finding guys loaded with silver rounds wasn’t anything new to them, which Keo doubted.
The only thing he was missing was food and water. Apparently they expected him to find his own rations out here. Or maybe that was just another incentive to hurry up, finish the job, and return to T18.
Not that he needed more incentive, with Gillian back there…
He was grinning to himself like an idiot when something small but fast—incredibly fast—hit the parking lot about two feet in front of him and chipped concrete flicked at his face like little bees.
Sniper! Shit!
Keo darted out of the open and slid against an old Chevy minivan with peeling white paint that, thank God, was just a few feet away. He was trying to come to grips with the absence of a gunshot as he pressed against the dirty vehicle when the back windshield to the left side of his head exploded. Except this time he heard the subsonic round as it shattered the glass and punched its way into the floor of the car behind him.
He dropped into a crouch and hurried toward the front, waiting for a third shot that didn’t come. He reached the driver-side door, ignored it, and rounded the front bumper until he was leaning against the dirty grill of the Chevy.
He waited again for more follow-up shots, but nothing was exploding around him, so he assumed the guy didn’t have a clear shot. That meant his position in front of the minivan was good, which in turn translated to the shooter being somewhere behind him.
Keo recalled the layout of the area in his head.
There was an Archers Sports and Outdoors next to what looked like a pizza place featuring some guy in a toga, and a dozen or so other businesses that he hadn’t paid very much attention to. One of them might have been an insurance place and the other was—
The Archers. It had to be the Archers.
Whoever it was, he was using a rifle with a suppressor, because Keo hadn’t even heard either one of the two gunshots. That was hard to do with a rifle. Even the best suppressors left some kind of noise, especially against the nearly silent backdrop of a dead world. Firing from a high angle, which any sniper worth his salt would be doing, would increase the possibility of noise. And yet he hadn’t heard a single peep when the first bullet nearly took his head off.
He was pretty sure the shooter was on top of the Archers directly behind him, about one hundred meters across the parking lot. There was nothing but a lot of open ground between him and the store. Oh sure, there were a few cars sprinkled here and there, like the minivan that had saved his life, but not nearly enough of them for one hundred meters’ worth of safety.
Still, he had to be sure.
Keo stood up quickly, turning around and looking through the dirt-speckled front windshield of the Chevy and out the exposed rear area and across the parking lot at the Archers—
The man saw him almost at the same time Keo spotted him, perched along the edge of the sports store. Sunlight glinted off the long barrel of the rifle as it twitched, and Keo dropped back down as the round pierced the windshield and zipped! a few inches over his head.
Too close!
Okay, so now he knew exactly where the guy was. On top of the Archers, just as he had guessed.
So how was he going to use that information?
He had no idea. It wasn’t like he could counterattack, even if he desperately wanted to. Keo had never been the kind of person to take being shot at lying down. But one hundred meters was probably ninety meters too many, and as pissed off as he was at the moment, he wanted to stay alive even more—especially now that he had found Gillian.
The shooter clearly had a good scope on top of his rifle. Or maybe not. He did miss the first shot, didn’t he? Then again, he’d only missed by two feet…
Maybe, maybe not.
Keo sat on the concrete pavement, which was curiously both hot and cold against his butt. He didn’t really have much of a choice at the moment. He could run or fight, and fighting seemed like a lost cause. Besides, he had other fish to fry. One named Tobias, to be very specific.
Yes, the sniper had him pinned behind the minivan, but it was difficult shooting a moving target from across an entire parking lot. The guy would have to be pretty good, and he had already proven that he wasn’t, even if that last shot had come dangerously close.
He knew one thing for sure: He definitely couldn’t stay here forever. Even if the shooter didn’t have reinforcements—though the chances of him being out here alone were pretty slim, especially this close to T18—Keo was working against the clock. He had less than six hours to find and kill Tobias and return to town. Failing that…
Failure is not an option.
Unless you fail.
He smirked to himself, then glanced down at his watch.
Did he say six hours? It was more like five.
Time flies when people are shooting at you.
There wasn’t very much to the right and left of him, and behind him were the stores. His only choice was forward, back toward the same long stretch of road that had brought him here from the bridge in the first place. On the other side were a couple of large warehouses, hard to miss given their size, their front yards like jungles. There was nothing behind them but woods.
Thick woods. He could easily get lost in there. If he made it across alive, that was. But his best option at the moment was to lengthen the distance between him and the shooter. The problem with that was, the warehouses were at least another hundred meters away. That was a hell of a long distance to run, even if the guy had proven not to be a world-class marksman.
The things I do for you, Gillian.
He sighed and rose from the ground.
Keo counted to five, but on three decided to play a trick on himself and pushed off the grill of the Chevy and ran forward as fast as he could. His pack thumped against his back as he began zig-zagging, hoping to make getting a bead on him more difficult.
It seemed to work when the first two shots went wide—one landing to his right, the other to his left.
At the twenty-meter mark, Keo decided to run straight for a while before breaking off and going right for another fifteen. Each time he changed directions, the shooter had a hard time keeping up, and three more shots missed him by wide margins. Keo started noticing that each round was falling further behind him, which meant the guy was having difficulty adjusting.
The sniper finally stopped shooting—or at least the ground stopped exploding around him—when K
eo successfully crossed the road and entered the overgrown lawn of the closest warehouse. He passed a sign with a guy holding a welder’s torch, but he was moving too fast to read the company name.
The large twin doors into the building had been pried open long ago, leaving a gaping hole for Keo to easily slip through without the need to break his stride. A good thing, because as soon as he darted out of the open there was a loud pang! as a bullet ricocheted off the metal wall behind him.
A little late there, aren’t you, pal?
The interior was steel walls and roof and solid concrete floors. Heavy machinery lined the cavernous room, which actually looked much bigger inside, and the ground was sticky with year-old oil spills and God knew what else. Every step he took produced a squeaking sound that echoed (too loudly) off the walls. The air was musky and smelled of chemicals, more oil, and a lot of grease. He couldn’t find any evidence as to what the warehouse had been used for once upon a time, and as he hurried through it toward the back, he guessed it didn’t really matter.
It was just another old relic of the past, like Santa Marie Island, like the boardwalk and fairground at the channel and the strip mall with the sniper behind him. No one was going to come in here anymore except guys like him looking for shelter, and soon nature would reclaim this area. He’d be surprised if he could even still see the warehouse in ten, maybe twenty years. Unlike back at the shopping center, there were no concrete parking lots to keep the woods at bay on this side of the street.
It took a while given the size of the building, but finally he reached the other end and made a beeline toward a steel back door. The lever was covered in black gunk that might have been oil or grease or a combination of the two—or possibly something else entirely. He was reaching for it when there was a crack! and a round ping! off the metal surface, ricocheting into an assembly line machine behind and to the right of him.
Keo spun and fired back without aiming, or really knowing what he was shooting at. He was also darting left when more than one rifle opened up in return.
The sound of unsuppressed gunfire inside the warehouse was deafening, and they were quickly joined by the multiple pings! of bullets bouncing off walls and machinery around him, every single one of them seemingly trying to track him down.
Out of the frying pan and into the bonfire.
Daebak.
CHAPTER 9
They stopped shooting only after he had made it behind cover. Through the fading echoes of ricocheting bullets, Keo picked up the loud squeaking of shoes from the front of the warehouse. That told him there was definitely more than one shooter, but he had already figured that part out when they unloaded on him.
It couldn’t have been the sniper. There was no way that guy could have gotten down from the Archers and crossed the parking lot so fast. Which left him with what? Maybe those reinforcements he was sure the man must have had waiting in the wings, finally arriving. A sniper left behind to watch the road and lie in wait for Steve’s people would be armed with a two-way radio so he could relay information about enemy movements.
He’d waited too long, giving the shooter the time to call in his friends. It had to be Tobias’s people. Of course, Jack hadn’t said anything about an ambush at the first hint of civilization, but then again, that was Jack. Lying Jack. Or, in this case, information-hiding Jack.
Dickhead Jack.
“Spread out!” someone shouted.
A male voice. Deep. Keo wondered what the chances were that he was hearing Steve’s best friend Tobias giving orders.
Right. Like your luck’s that good, pal.
Hard metal poked into his back. Part of some kind of manufacturing equipment. He’d never spent a day of his life inside a warehouse working an assembly line, so the shape pressing into him was just another mystery he didn’t have any interest in exploring. It was cold and heavy and easily stopped bullets, and that was all he really cared about.
“Hey!” the same voice shouted. “You still alive back there?”
The man was still near the very front of the warehouse, which was of course part of an elaborate trick to divert his attention. The man’s “friends,” the ones ordered to spread out earlier, were moving slowly in his direction right now. Keo could hear their shoes squeaking against the grease and oil and God-knew-what-else covered floors as they did their best to move silently.
Not quite silent enough, boys.
Keo leaned out the right side of the bulky object behind him and saw two men moving steadily up in his direction, almost hugging the wall. They were half-crouched, half-walking, and were still a good forty meters away when he spotted them. They were both wearing sneakers and civilian clothes, and he swore one of them had on a Houston Rockets cap, though they were in a dark patch of the warehouse and he didn’t get a clear look at them.
When they saw him peeking out, their reaction was priceless. It was like looking at two deer caught in a car’s headlights.
That lasted for about half a second before one of them snapped off a shot while the other darted behind something shiny for cover. The round pinged! off whatever it was Keo was leaning out from behind, forcing him back behind cover. He stuck his MP5SD out and squeezed off a short burst up the warehouse, heard the satisfying ping! ping! as his rounds bounced off something solid.
Hopefully that would send them scurrying back. Or, at least, halt their advance.
“Make this easy on yourself!” the same man shouted, his words booming off the steel walls and high ceiling. Despite the distance between them, the ensuing echo meant Keo didn’t have to strain to hear him. “There’s no way out of here! I got people on the other side of that door, too. You’re trapped!”
Keo sighed. And here he had been hoping to eventually make a run for the back door and slip out into the woods the first chance he got. Then again, people tended to lie a lot these days. Jack was proof of that. So what was to keep this other guy—
The lever on the back door moved up and down, but it was locked and whoever was on the other side gave up on opening it a few seconds later.
Or not.
“Come on now!” the man shouted. “You gotta know you’re trapped. Don’t prolong the inevitable!”
“What do you want?” Keo shouted back.
He figured he didn’t have anything to lose. Maybe, if he was lucky (Yeah, right) one of them was Tobias. If so, that would make his job a lot easier. Well, maybe not easier, easier. But definitely cut down on all that time he was going to have to spend looking for his target, something he thought might take a while. Like a day or two…or a week.
“He’s out there, somewhere,” was all Jack had been able to tell him about Tobias’s whereabouts.
Yeah, thanks for that, Jack, you lying piece of shit.
“I want you to come out!” the man shouted.
He sounded much closer than before, but Keo was trying to keep tabs on the squeaking shoes instead of concentrating on the voice. That was a diversion, and had been from the very beginning. The shoes, on the other hand, didn’t lie, and they were definitely getting closer. They were also coming along the walls to both the right and left of him, but of course he could hear the ones to his right much clearer because of proximity. His spray-and-pray earlier might have forced them behind cover, but it hadn’t lasted.
How long did he have? Not long enough.
Running out of time again. So what else is new?
“And then what?” Keo shouted back.
“We can talk!” the man said.
“You wanna talk?”
“Yes!”
“So why’d you start shooting?”
“That was a mistake!”
“No shit! The sniper out there, he one of yours?”
“Maybe!”
Keo grinned. “I’m not from Texas, but is everyone in this state a fucking liar?”
The man actually chuckled that time.
Keo listened past it for the familiar squeaking of footsteps, but failed to find one. That was dis
turbing, because there was no reason for them to stop their advance. They had him cornered like a rat inside the warehouse.
And time was running out. Sooner or later, it’d be dark. That was the other problem. The always-over-his-shoulder problem.
Sooner or later, it was always going to be dark.
“Depends on who you talk to!” the man was shouting back.
“What do you want?” Keo shouted.
“You already asked that!”
“Try telling the truth this time!”
“God’s honest truth! We just want to ask you some questions!”
“Oh yeah? Is that all?”
“Yup!”
He leaned out the side of the machine, ready to fire, but there wasn’t anyone in the open. He pulled back, then looked across the warehouse to the other side. Nobody there, either. Maybe they really were going to wait him out. Hell, that’s what he would have done, too.
“What’s got you so curious, my friend?” he shouted.
“You came from T18, didn’t you?” the man asked.
The voice didn’t sound any closer than before, which was another hint they might be content to wait him out instead of the more risky approach of bum-rushing him. So maybe they really were curious about him. Could he really stake his life on that, though?
“I get the feeling you already know the answer to that one!” Keo said. “Let me guess: You have lookouts?”
“Maybe!” the man said. “What are you doing out here by yourself, my friend?”
“So we’re friends now?”
“Why not?”
“Friends don’t shoot at friends!”
The man laughed. “Come on, how many times I gotta apologize for that?”
“How about one more time?”
“All right! Sorry about trying to kill you! Now, what are you doing out here all by yourself, buddy?”
“That’s better! And the answer is, I was sightseeing!”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yup! Figured, what the hell? Maybe I could pick up some flowers for the old lady, too!”
Purge of Babylon (Book 6): The Isles of Elysium Page 9