by Sam Sisavath
THE FIELDS OF LEMURIA
(SEQUEL TO THE WALLS OF LEMURIA)
SAM SISAVATH
The Fields of Lemuria
Copyright © 2014 by Sam Sisavath
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Published by Road to Babylon Media
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Edited by Jennifer Jensen & Wendy Chan
Cover Art by Creative Paramita
Formatting by BB eBooks
Books in the Ongoing Babylon Series (Reading Order)
The Purge of Babylon
The Gates of Byzantium
The Stones of Angkor
The Fires of Atlantis
Books in the Stand-Alone Purge of Babylon: Lemuria Series
The Walls of Lemuria
And now…
The Fields of Lemuria
Thank you to all the readers who have followed me on this journey so far. Five books into the series and your enthusiasm keeps me pounding away at the keyboard. Truly, none of this would be possible without your adventurous spirit. You took a chance on a nobody, and for that I’m forever grateful.
“Who the hell are these guys?”
Hunted through the Louisiana woods by a mysterious paramilitary group, Keo and Norris are about to reach the end of the line.
After months of running, hiding, and fighting for their lives, the ex-mercenary and the ex-cop will finally discover the identity of their pursuers—and why they will never, ever give up.
The planet may have been purged and the ghouls now hold complete dominion over the night, but in the day, man still remains the deadliest species.
After the Walls come down, the Fields will run red with blood…
NOTE: This is the direct sequel to The Walls of Lemuria and leads into the events of The Fires of Atlantis (Book 4 in the ongoing Purge of Babylon series).
PART ONE
‡
THE CRUCIBLE
CHAPTER 1
“How many of you are out there?” he had asked the man named Doug.
“A lot,” Doug had answered.
That man was dead, and Keo had already killed three more of Doug’s friends since the house gun battle that had separated him from Gillian and the others. Not that it had slowed the rest of Doug’s friends for even a single day. Which made him wonder how many of them there actually were.
A dozen? Two? A hundred?
How many was “a lot”?
Before he knew it, he and Norris were moving through the woods of Louisiana again. By now, they had lost sight of the river completely, and their only option was to continue south. Somewhere down there was Baton Rouge and New Orleans. And beyond that was (Gillian) the Gulf of Mexico. All they had to do was keep moving south.
That was easier said than done.
They ended up at Robertson Park, a long stretch of wooded area shaped like a cone, getting smaller the farther south you went, and flanked to the east, west, and south by a landlocked body of water called Downey Creek Lake. He only knew where they were because of the signs along the roads, though he didn’t have a clue what part of the state it was exactly, or if a town or city was nearby. They had lost their map more than two months ago during a skirmish that nearly cost Norris his life and were essentially moving blind, pushed forward by the men in black assault vests. At times Keo thought he and Norris were being herded, purposefully directed down here. But that couldn’t have been possible.
Could it?
Who the hell are these guys?
Robertson Park was big enough that it took them most of the day moving from end to end before they realized the only way out was to double back north. While they were attempting to circumvent the area, Keo noticed one thing that struck him as strange: the docks along the shoreline were empty. He didn’t spot a single boat they could have used—not even a dinghy raft to paddle their way to the other side of the lake.
Where did all the boats go?
The question nagged at him throughout the day, but he soon forgot about it because there were more immediate and important things to worry about. Whenever his thoughts drifted, there was always something to drag him back to the present.
Like food. Water. Or trying to stay out of another ambush…
Crossing the lake was out of the question, so they had to do it the hard way. Which was nothing new. It had been the only way for over two months now. Or was it more than that? They hadn’t been in the woods for three months, had they? No. That was impossible. It was probably just two months. Or two and a half months.
Probably.
The nights had a way of blending together, and neither he nor Norris were actually keeping tabs on the days anymore. They didn’t know their Mondays from their Fridays from their weekends. Not that it mattered. One day was the same as the other, taken up with the constant search for shelter. Those were the good days. The bad ones usually involved a lot of running, hiding, and fighting. Always fighting.
The problem with doubling back out of the park was the men pursuing them. By now, he was pretty sure they had tracked them into Robertson and were pushing him and Norris south toward the tip. The woods were longer than they were wide, so it didn’t take a lot of men to create a staggering wall. God knew they had plenty of men.
“How many of you are out there?”
“A lot.”
They were halfway back to the park entrance when they caught sight of their pursuers, men in black assault vests armed with assault rifles and carrying what seemed like more ammo than God himself.
Where the hell did they get all the ammo?
He and Norris didn’t even have to talk about it. They just turned around and began moving south again.
Their one advantage—their only advantage—was that the massive center of Robertson Park consisted of hundreds of wooded acres containing densely packed trees, underbrush, and nothing resembling civilization. Once upon a time, there had been a lot of wildlife in here, and hunters roamed freely. Those days were long gone, though. Unlike the middle, the shorelines had been developed for human habitation with a string of high-priced homes, each one complete with private boat docks. (What happened to all the boats?)
With the exit denied them, Keo and Norris retreated back to a lakeside house on the southeast side. The house had two stories, with a large window on the second floor that gave them a great view of the surrounding area. If their pursuers showed up, they would be approaching from the north. The window would give them a minor advantage, but right now he would take anything he could get.
The house, like all the others in the area they had scavenged for food and supplies, was devoid of signs anyone had lived in it since November of last year. Thin layers of dust covered the furniture and tiles, and the beds on the second floor were undisturbed. It was like walking into a museum, a “This is How the Rich and Famous Lived in the 21
st Century” tableau.
He heard footsteps now as Norris came up the carpeted stairs behind him. The fifty-six-year-old ex-cop from Orlando was already breathing hard by the time he reached the top. “Jesus, did you have to pick a two-story house?”
“Stop your complaining,” Keo said. “Murtaugh wouldn’t complain this much.”
“Murtaugh would complain so much you’d want to shoot him in the back of the head while he slept.”
“You’re getting there.”
Norris snorted. He walked over to the window and slid against the wall on the other side and peered out.
If Keo thought the trees looked massive from the ground, he got a better sense of their towering height from the second floor of the house. They stood tall, the crowns hovering over them still. It was quiet outside, the only noise coming from the chirping birds and the scraping of claws from two squirrels racing across a branch directly in front of them. Those were the only animals that were safe these days—the ones small and fast enough to escape into the trees when they came out at night.
“They out there?” Norris asked.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Maybe we lost them.”
“Maybe you’re daydreaming again.”
Norris grunted. “Maybe you’re right.”
The older man pulled a bottle of water from the backpack slung over his back. The tactical pack, along with the spare magazines in the pouches around his waist, were courtesy of the men they had killed. Keo carried his own “collected” pack and ammo, but he had run out of bullets for the MP5SD two weeks ago. Although he was now relying on a beat-up M4 that its former owner no longer needed, he still kept the submachine gun in a sling over his back. You never knew when you would run across some 9mm rounds just lying around. He was in the South, after all. Ammo and guns tended to be plentiful down here.
“We’re running low,” Norris said, holding out the bottle to him.
“So what else is new?” Keo said, taking the proffered bottle.
Like most of the houses they had searched in the last few days, there wasn’t a single unopened bottle of water, non-perishable food, or weapon to be found. There were plenty of knives, but there were only so many sharp things you could carry around with you. What he wouldn’t have given for a can of fruit, or sardines, or saltine crackers.
Boats are gone. So are the supplies. Someone’s living off the park. So where are they?
Norris had come to the same conclusion, but they hadn’t spent another second wondering where those people were. It didn’t matter. Like always, they had other, more immediate concerns. Like the men in black assault vests pushing south toward them…
He drank half of the water bottle and poured the rest over his head and face in an attempt to wash the dirt and grime off him. If how he felt afterward as the water rolled off him and onto the carpeting was any indication, it didn’t work.
Norris gave him a disapproving look. “If you were my kid, I’d slap you across the face for wasting water.”
Keo grinned. “If I was your kid, I’d slap myself.”
Norris smirked. “Smartass.”
“You never told me why you never had any kids.”
“Why didn’t you ever have any kids?”
“I didn’t think I was going to live this long. What’s your excuse?”
“Seriously, kid, for a guy who keeps telling me he doesn’t expect to see his thirtieth birthday, you’re sure good at all this surviving stuff.”
Keo shrugged. “It’s a bad habit.”
The fact was, Norris could easily be his father. The retiree had twenty-eight years on him, and all of it showed on his heavily-lined face and gray beard at the moment. Norris hadn’t always looked as old as he did now, but constantly running for his life from men with assault rifles in the day while hiding from undead things during the night hadn’t done him any favors.
Like Keo, Norris was covered in old and new dirt, and drying and still-wet mud caked their shoes along with their sweat-stained shirts and pants. How long had they been wearing the same clothes now? He couldn’t even start to guess. Wardrobe changes hadn’t been a priority for either one of them in a long time.
Keo tossed the bottle across the room’s luxury carpeting. Every inch of the lakeside house screamed money. Mid six figures if he was lowballing it, but probably somewhere in the seven figures. There were pictures of a family along the front hallway when they entered, but Keo made an effort not to look. He disliked staring at the frozen and happy faces of people who were probably dead (or worse).
“How’s your leg?” he asked Norris.
“Bummed,” Norris said, looking out the window.
“What does that mean?”
“It hurts; what do you think it means?”
“Well, you were only shot once, so be grateful. I’m lugging around two bullet holes here.”
“Should learn to duck better, kid,” Norris grinned.
Keo grunted back. Norris had been shot in the thigh not all that long ago, and despite his self-prognosis, he seemed to be moving much better in recent weeks. Keo had two bullet holes in him—one in the left shoulder and the other in the right leg. They throbbed whenever he moved any part of his body, and pretending they didn’t had stopped working about three weeks earlier. The ironic part was that the only time he didn’t feel the pain was whenever he was running, something he was doing a lot of these days. At nights, though, when they found a place to hide, it was impossible to remember he had been shot while fleeing from the same group of men hunting them now.
Who the hell are these guys?
“How long do you think they’re going to keep this up?” Norris asked. He hadn’t looked away once from the window in the last ten minutes.
“I don’t know,” Keo said. “If they didn’t give up after the house, I don’t think they’re going to give up now.”
“How many have we killed since? Three?”
“Yeah. I got two, and you got the last one.”
“You sure I didn’t get the second one, too?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“I don’t believe you. You wouldn’t lie to an old man, would you?”
“Absolutely,” Keo smiled. “It’s not like I actually respect you—”
Pak!
A bullet drilled through the glass between the two of them. The round kept going, slicing across the room before slamming into the wall on the other side.
Keo pulled his head back, Norris doing the same across the window.
He hadn’t heard the gunshot, which meant they were using a silenced rifle. That was new. When had they resorted to that? Keo was so used to the loud rattle of gunfire that the soundless bullet shocked him for just a moment. It didn’t last long, though, and his survival instincts quickly kicked in.
“Downstairs!” he shouted, racing to the stairs.
Pak-pak-pak!
More bullets smashed through the window behind him, chipping away glass and frame and embedding into the wallpaper over his head. Keo didn’t spend too much time worrying about Norris. The ex-cop had proven himself more than capable in a gunfight. They had saved each other’s lives more times than Keo cared to count, so when he left Norris on the second floor, he knew the older man would do his job just fine.
He jumped the last four steps to the bottom. It was a stupid move, and he regretted it right away even while he was still in mid-air, because even though he had prepared himself for the jolt of pain that was coming (You idiot, remember the bullet hole in the leg?) it still managed to catch him by surprise.
Keo almost lost his footing as he landed and stumbled, sticking out the M4 in front of him as he crashed into the wall. The impact jarred loose a framed photo of a good-looking middle-aged couple with two teenage children, the same people he had avoided looking at two hours ago when they found the house. The frame shattered against the tiled floor and glass sprinkled the hallway.
He pushed off the wall almost at the same time as he cau
ght a flicker of movement out of the corner of his right eye. It was coming from the patio window, which was in the process of sliding open—
Keo spun and fired—pop-pop!—and the window shattered, glass spraying everywhere. At the same time, a black-clad figure collapsed, followed by the clatter of a rifle falling against the wooden patio floor outside. He spent half a second wondering what the weapon was, and if the man had more ammo for it. That, and if it was the right caliber.
Not that he had time to check, because as soon as he fired his second shot, the door behind him clicked open. Keo felt the rush of wind and the August heat (September heat? One of those.) immediately flooding the first floor.
He turned, ready to fire, but there was no one on the other side of the hallway, just the open door and bright sunlight blasting him in the face—
A green oblong-shaped object appeared through the door and bounced across the floor.
Keo dived to his right, not even sure where that would take him, learning a heartbeat later that it was the kitchen. He landed painfully against the dust-covered floor and slid on his side across the room, slamming into the sink counter just as the explosion ripped apart the bottom of the stairs along with the table and cabinets in the dining room on the other side of the wall that separated it and the kitchen.
Smoke and debris flooded the entire floor.
Keo struggled back to his feet, sweeping the carbine right, then left. He made sure no one had tried to follow the dead man through the patio window in front of him before turning his attention back to the house’s front door behind him.
The clatter of automatic gunfire echoed from upstairs. Norris, unloading on whoever was approaching the house from the north, out of the woods. Which meant there were at least three people assaulting them at the moment. He had killed one outside the patio, and another one had tossed the grenade. So how many was Norris shooting at? One more, at least, and two or three more if they were really unlucky.