by Sam Sisavath
“Have you ever seen Lethal Weapon?” Keo asked her.
“What is that, a movie?”
“Yeah. Apparently it was a big action series from the ’80s.”
“And ’90s,” Norris added.
“Right, and ’90s.”
“So?” Fiona said. “What’s that got to do with what you’re about to do now?”
Norris chuckled. “You gotta grow the mullet, kid.”
“If I survive this, I’ll think about it,” Keo said.
CHAPTER 4
The smoke would last for ninety seconds. It was a thick, billowing white cloud that engulfed the bottom of the stairs almost as soon as it touched down. The speed with which it spread was impressive, though Keo wished Fiona had been carrying a third canister with her. Two of these bad boys would have been ideal.
He went down first with the MP5SD, fully intending to rely on its sound suppressor capability as he moved through the makeshift camouflage. He didn’t have any illusions that whatever advantage he had purchased was going to last for very long. There were eight people down there—at least—and they were all heavily armed. His only hope was that they had become complacent since arriving, knowing nothing was going to happen until Pollard arrived.
The first man he saw was coughing, swiping his hand in the air and stumbling around near the stair landing. His black clothes made him easy to spot against the white smoke. He had come from the direction of the kitchen, his AK-47 pointing at the floor in front of him. Keo wondered where he was going. For half a second, anyway.
The submachine gun went pfft-pfft! in Keo’s hands as he shot the man once in the chest, then again as the body fell to the floor in front of him.
Norris was coming down behind him, the bigger man moving with difficulty down the destroyed bottom half of the stairs. Keo kept to the side, skirting around the damaged area, then hopped the last four steps. Unlike last time when he stumbled and crashed into the wall, this time he landed in a slight crouch next to the dead body lying facedown on its stomach.
Voices, screaming, and radios squawking exploded all around him.
“The house!” someone shouted. “They’re coming down! Converge converge converge now!”
Now there’s a man with his head on straight.
Keo straightened up and twisted right, toward the living room. He hadn’t even completed his turn yet when he caught a ripple of movement in the expanding smoke. He fired twice and hit something that sounded like glass as the figure disappeared out of his line of sight.
More footsteps. Coughing. From behind him.
He spun all the way around, just as a large black-clad silhouette staggered through the open door. Keo knew the front door was wide open because he could see the rectangular opening, like some kind of extra-dimensional portal with the sun glowing brightly on the other side. That, and the cloud was flooding in that direction, being sucked out by the hot air.
Keo shot the man once and hit him in the neck. Then as the man stumbled into a wall, gagging, blood spurting out of the hole just under his chin, Keo put a second round into his chest. The man slid down the wall with a heavy thump, his rifle clattering beside him.
There was loud, crashing gunfire behind him as Norris unleashed at the other side of the house with his M4. Norris was standing too close when he fired, and Keo flinched at the thunderous booms, one after another after another.
“Go, kid, go!” Norris shouted.
Keo made a run for the door. He hopped over chunks of the wall, ceiling, and floor that had been gutted by Fiona’s grenade from earlier. Loose tiles crunched under him, but the sound was quickly lost in another volley of bullets as Norris sprayed into the living room again. Keo just hoped the ex-cop was keeping count of his magazine, because he wasn’t entirely sure if they were going to have a chance to reload before this was over.
How long had it been? The smoke wasn’t going to last for more than ninety seconds.
Was it thirty seconds yet? Maybe a minute?
He was losing track of time. It probably had something to do with the hammering in his chest. He did his best to not breathe in the smoke as he ran through it, wishing the damn foyer wasn’t so long and—
Another black figure appeared in the doorway, the radio Velcroed to his assault vest blaring with someone’s voice, shouting, “They’re making a run for the door! Who the hell is at the door?”
This guy, Keo thought, and shot the man in the face from almost point-blank range.
Blood and brains might have exited the back of the man’s head and sprayed the suffocating hot summer air behind him, but it was difficult to see through the smoke and bright sun assaulting every one of his senses.
Then he was through, jumping over the falling body even before the assaulter had gone completely down.
“Norris!” he shouted.
“Behind you!” Norris shouted back. “Keep moving!”
Keo kept moving, bursting out into the opening and landing on the cobblestone pathway that connected the door, snaked around the front yard, and reached the boathouse on Downey Creek Lake. It was a damn shame there wasn’t a boat in there waiting for them.
Where the hell are all the boats?
Considering how much lead Norris was pouring into the house behind him, Keo guessed most of the assaulters were back there. He had killed three—one was coming out of the kitchen, but two were clearly guarding the front door—so that left five out back. Unless he had hit the fourth man he saw moving earlier, then maybe four. Not that one more or less made any bit of difference at the moment.
Keo didn’t go down the pathway for very long. After about a second, he turned right and darted through overgrown grass that went up almost to his knees. It was like running across quicksand, only with more things slapping at his legs as he went.
The house was to his right, the thick woods spread out on all sides except to his left where the lake was. One of the reasons they had chosen the house was because of its isolated location. It was far from the other homes and connected to the main road by a private driveway. The problem with that was there wasn’t another house for them to run to for cover, and once outside the front door they were essentially out in the open, with the tree line (their only option) nearly forty meters away across open field.
No sweat. Time to run for your life, pal.
Keo ran, the MP5SD clutched tightly in his hands, ready to shoot anything that popped up in front of him. Sweat poured down his temple and stung his eyes, and it had only been a few seconds since he came out of the house.
Goddamn, it was hot out here.
It took five (or was that ten?) seconds before the first gunshot zipped! past his head, so close he swore the damn thing might have singed a stray hair or two as it went. After that first shot, the bullets started coming faster, like bees buzzing around him. Bees made of lead. One bite and he was a goner. He already had two holes in him; a third might just about do it. Especially in the right place—
“Too many!” Norris shouted behind him.
Keo threw a quick glance back and saw Norris struggling to keep up. The older man was already sucking in air like a drowning victim, the M4 swinging wildly in front of him. Keo had never seen him look more tired or ready to drop. And they had only been running for…what was it now, twenty seconds…? Ten? Five seconds?
He looked past Norris at two figures emerging out of the front door of the two-story house further back, the white smoke billowing out with them, turning them into specters instead of assholes with assault rifles. Two more were coming from around the side of the house, both running full speed and firing in their direction at the same time.
“Keep running!” Keo shouted.
“No, no,” Norris said. “We gotta split up!”
“Are you crazy?”
Norris grinned at him. It was a slightly unhinged look, and Keo wondered if he ever looked like that whenever Norris called him crazy and he grinned back at the ex-cop in response.
“We stick
together!” Keo shouted.
“Okay, okay, just keep going!” Norris shouted back.
Keo faced forward again. The wall of trees was coming up.
Ten meters.
Five…
Tree barks shattered in front of him from stray bullets. Well, not stray, exactly. Those bullets definitely had a target. Him and Norris.
Then he was through!
He breathed a sigh of relief, though he didn’t stop running for even a nanosecond. Soft and slightly damp earth squelched under his shoes instead of the hard, sun-drenched ground of the house front yard. The cool relief from the shade provided by the dome of trees was immediately obvious. And it was only going to get cooler, because soon it would be night, and night meant…
Run! Stop thinking and run!
“We keep going until we hit the shoreline!” Keo shouted. “Then follow it back around to the west side of the park!”
He waited for Norris to respond.
“Norris!”
Keo risked slowing down a bit. Not a lot, just enough to be able to glance over his shoulder—where he saw nothing back there.
He slid to a stop and grabbed at the gnarled face of a tree and used the moment to catch his breath while he looked around for Norris. There were no signs of him.
Where the hell did Norris go, and how long had he been running all by himself?
“Norris!”
He realized what a stupid thing that was to do immediately and almost paid for it with his life when a black-clad figure thirty meters away, barely visible behind some trees, turned in his direction and snapped off a shot.
The tree he had been holding onto sent splintered bark in his face. Keo cursed and squeezed off three shots back in the man’s direction. He couldn’t really see who he was shooting at because his eyes were half closed. It felt like needles had been hammered into his eyeballs. He did see a black blob ducking for cover, and Keo used the opportunity to spin around and take off running again.
He waited for the man to unload on him, but maybe the guy didn’t have a shot, or maybe Keo was a lot faster than he ever gave himself credit for. Either way, he kept moving, not looking back, doing his best to blink away whatever was trying to drill their way into his eyes and the brain behind them.
At least he wasn’t blind. He knew that much, because he could see the trees coming up at him from all sides. Left, right, and front. Everywhere. Every tree look identical to the last one hundred he had already passed.
He had been running for ten (fifteen?) seconds when he heard gunfire from behind him. He braced himself for a new swarm of bees, but they never came. That was because the shooting wasn’t anywhere nearby.
It was coming from behind and to the right of him.
Norris.
He stopped for a moment, slipping behind a big tree for cover, and looked back with the MP5SD at the ready. The rattle of automatic gunfire continued, like rolling thunder smashing across Robertson Park, and they were moving away from him.
What the hell are you doing, Norris?
Then, just like that, the last shot faded and there was just…silence.
He waited and waited for more shooting, but there was none. There was just the quiet all around him. He didn’t know silence could be so utterly suffocating.
Norris…
He was either dead, or he had escaped his pursuers. The only way to know for sure would be to head back to the house and pick up Norris’s trail and locate him…or his body. It was a hell of a choice. If Norris had managed to get away, then Keo would be heading right back into the teeth of the bad guys—
The squawk of a radio from nearby and the sound of a male voice intruded on his thoughts. “Did you get them? Someone answer me.”
Keo didn’t recognize the slightly muffled voice, but he knew a man in a position of authority when he heard one, even through a radio’s tiny speakers. His life was spent taking orders from men who knew the value of their words, and the man he was listening to now understood that power and wielded it without hesitation.
“We’re looking for them now, sir,” a voice on the other side of the tree he was positioned behind answered. The man wasn’t too close because Keo had to strain a bit to hear all the words clearly. “I think they split up.”
There was a moment of silence before the second man answered through the radio. “Find them quick. You’re running out of time.”
“Yes, sir.”
Keo stood perfectly still and listened to the man with the radio walking past him. When he was sure the footsteps were fading, he slowly slipped around the tree to get a better look. A figure in black clothes and assault vest was picking his way through the woods cautiously when he suddenly picked up speed. A second later, he was jogging through the woods, heading north up the park, until he slipped through some underbrush and was gone.
He cursed under his breath. He could have used the man’s radio. That, more than anything, would have allowed him to keep tabs on his pursuers.
Too late now. Way too late now.
Keo turned and continued west along the shoreline.
There was some good news. The man had said into the radio, “We’re looking for them now, sir.” That meant they hadn’t captured Norris yet, so the old-timer was still out there somewhere.
Keo smiled. Sometimes he didn’t give Norris enough credit. Of course, reuniting with the ex-cop might be a problem. But that was for another day.
He glanced upward. The woods were thick and the tree crowns were dense, but he could make out the sun. It was still high up, but it wasn’t going to stay that way for very long.
His watch confirmed it: 5:24 p.m.
The man on the radio was right. Time was running out, a thought that made him walk with more urgency without even realizing it.
There were possible shelters all around him in the form of the other houses. All he needed was one of them. The problem with that was Pollard’s people could easily deduce that would be his goal (it wasn’t rocket science, after all), which meant they could use their overwhelming force to check every house in the vicinity. If he picked the wrong one, they would start this little gunfight all over again, and this time he would be alone. He didn’t like his chances of surviving that at all.
As he trudged on, keeping his ears open and still trying to blink out whatever the hell he had gotten in his eyes, Keo thought about what else Fiona had said about Pollard. She all but confirmed that she followed the ex-Army officer out of basic necessity. He didn’t blame her one bit. He had spent most of his life looking out for himself, but these days you needed someone to watch your back. He’d been lucky all these months with Norris.
Not anymore.
He kept moving, and with each step, he expected to hear hints that Norris was still out there somewhere.
A gunshot. A scream. Voices. Anything.
The utter peace and tranquility of the park, for some reason, depressed and filled him with pessimistic thoughts.
CHAPTER 5
So this is what it’s like to be a squirrel.
The thought flashed across his mind as he leaned back against the massive tree trunk and tried to balance himself on the large branch. It was the widest thing he had been able to find after thirty minutes of searching, keeping one eye on the dwindling sunlight around him at the same time.
Sunlight, sunlight, don’t go away…
The coming darkness had always felt like a tightening noose even when he was with Gillian and the others at Earl’s house. But now, running for his life through the woods, it was even more pronounced, the rope thicker and more unyielding. The overwhelming need to constantly look for shelter, even when it was still morning, had dominated every waking hour since he and Norris began fleeing Pollard’s people.
Pollard’s people.
It was a curious sensation to finally have a name to go with the black assault vests and painted faces. He used to just refer to them as assaulters in his head, but now he had a name and a history, even a voice if not
a face. But that was coming. Keo didn’t have any delusions that Pollard was going to give up the search now. Not when he was so close. The man had to know there were no places for Keo to go except north out of the park.
That was the point of pushing him and Norris down here in the first place. They had been herded like cattle all this time; they just hadn’t known it.
Maybe I can build a boat. Or a canoe. Like on Gilligan’s Island. Where’s the Professor when you need him? Hell, right now I’d settle for Mary Ann. Maybe use her as bait…
His watch ticked to 7:22 p.m.
Not that he needed the confirmation. He was up high enough that he could see past most of the canopy and at the darkening skies beyond. He would have called it cloudy, except there hadn’t been any rain in four to five days.
He tightened his grip on the MP5SD resting in his lap and watched the squirrel staring back at him from a much thinner branch across the open space. The animal looked intrigued by Keo’s presence, perhaps wondering what a human was doing all the way up here in its domain. It sure didn’t look scared of him. Then again, after what it had probably seen racing around down below, a regular ol’ man probably didn’t rate very high on its list of “things to fear.”
Keo thought about shooting it. He hadn’t had squirrel meat in months. The last time was when Levy shot a couple of the furry critters and brought them back to the house. They had made squirrel stew that night. The animal was surprisingly tasty, but then again, maybe it was just how Levy cooked it.
Levy.
When was the last time he actually thought about him in any detail? It had been a while, so long that he couldn’t recall.
Levy was dead. Along with Lotte and Jill.
What about Gillian? And Jordan and Mark? Rachel and her daughter, Christine?
Are you still alive out there, Gillian? Are you still waiting for me, or have you given up?
He wished he knew if she had ever made it to Santa Marie Island. His one comforting thought was that Jordan was with her, and she was as competent a survivor, man or woman, as Keo had come across since the end of the world. She had single-handedly kept her friends Mark and Jill alive for months. The only person he would have trusted Gillian’s life with more than Jordan was Norris, and Norris was…out there somewhere.