by Sam Sisavath
The sight of the two figures retreating was unreal, and for just a moment Keo wondered if he was still unconscious and this was all just a very strange dream. Or maybe he had never survived his confrontation with Pollard and this was some kind of purgatory reserved especially for guys like him, men with too much blood on their hands.
No. This is real.
Right?
There was a flurry of movement just before a third white figure appeared out of the corner of his right eye. Keo dived to the floor as an AK-47 clattered outside and the wooden barrier splintered. Bullets zip-zip-zipped past his head and across the room.
“Shit!” he heard Georgette shout from behind him. He looked back and saw her ducking as the bullets from the window slammed into the wall next to her.
Keo scrambled back up and slid against the wall. There wasn’t enough space in the barricade for him to be able to see out, much less shoot back at the men in hazmat suits. But they had stopped firing, probably because they didn’t think they could hit him and were too busy dragging their wounded comrade to safety. Of course, maybe they were just waiting for him to poke his head into their line of fire like the idiot he clearly was.
He switched the submachine gun to semi-automatic and stayed where he was, flat against the wall. His ammo pouches were still on the floor next to his gun belt and sheathed Ka-Bar, but Keo didn’t reach for them. He also didn’t feel any urgent need to leave the wall and get shot by three guys in hazmat suits (Hazmat suits!) armed with assault rifles outside.
He looked across the room at Brian instead. The teenager was pressed up against the belly of the desk, staring back at him. For a moment, he wondered if Brian was going to reach for his weapon at the sight of Keo with his. But the kid didn’t, which was a good thing because Keo would have easily killed him, and that was the last thing he wanted to do tonight.
“Keo?” Georgette said. She was standing next to Brian, still pushing against the desk with her whole body, even though, like with the window, the attack against the door had stopped.
“I think they’re retreating,” Keo said.
“Who?”
“Your men in hazmat suits.”
She grinned triumphantly. “I told you.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
He leaned toward the window and looked through the closest hole in the barricade, ears perked up for sounds. Any sound. There was none, and he only saw an empty moonlit yard from the limited angle.
He moved closer and found a bigger peephole with a better view.
Still empty. Still no men in hazmat suits. Or creatures, for that matter. That didn’t make any sense at all. Where did they all go?
“There’s no one out there,” he said, slipping back behind the wall.
“Who the hell were they?” Georgette asked.
Keo shook his head. “You tell me. You said you’ve seen them before.”
“I didn’t actually see them. I heard about them. It sounded crazy at the time, too.”
“What did you hear?”
“Druthers said he shot one of them,” Brian said. It had been so long since he spoke that the sound of his voice momentarily surprised Keo.
“Who’s Druthers?” Keo asked.
“One of Pollard’s ex-soldiers,” Georgette said. Then, to Brian, “What else did Druthers say?”
“I think it was just a skirmish or something,” Brian said. “They were poking their heads around Corden. Druthers didn’t know what happened to the guy he shot.”
“This was in the daytime?” Keo asked.
Brian nodded. “Yeah. In the afternoon.”
“What else?”
“That’s it. He didn’t really go into details.”
“You?” Keo said to Georgette. “What did you hear?”
“Most of it was secondhand,” Georgette said. “I was told they were searching the city, looking for something. I guess they saw there were too many of us and decided not to push their luck. That’s what I heard, anyway.”
“Do you think…” Brian started to say.
“What?” Georgette said.
“Do you think they were working with the bloodsuckers? I mean, how else are they out there at night?”
Georgette didn’t answer. Neither did Keo.
“Crazy,” Brian said, mostly to himself.
Understatement of the century, kid, Keo thought, but he said instead, “You two stay over there, and I’ll watch the window from this moment on.”
Georgette and Brian exchanged a look before they both reluctantly nodded.
“Now,” Keo said to Georgette, “would you mind telling me what time it is?”
She dug into one of her cargo pants pockets and tossed his watch across the room. Keo snatched it out of the air.
3:14 a.m.
“We should have left this afternoon when we had the chance,” Brian said to no one in particular.
Georgette didn’t respond. She sat down on the floor next to the door, while Brian did the same on the other side. They both looked tired. And young. He hadn’t fully appreciated just how young they both were until now, as they stared off at nothing and wiped at their sweat-slicked faces.
“We’ll be okay,” Keo said.
They both looked up at him, and he could see that they wanted badly to believe him.
“I’ve been in worse situations,” he continued. “True story: There was this crazy jackass with a small army of heavily-armed men chasing me through the woods for the last three months…”
*
The men in the white hazmat suits didn’t come back the rest of the night. Keo waited, and so did Brian and Georgette. Even Darlene and Justine, still huddled somewhere in the dark corner, seemed to be expecting something to happen at any moment to break the monotony of silence, where the only sound was their combined labored and anxious breathing.
Instead, there was just the deadening quiet.
Keo eventually sat down on the floor, while Georgette scooted across the room and checked on his side. Even though the entire left part of his face was still throbbing, he didn’t tell her about it. He wasn’t going to bleed to death from the cut, even if the initial point of entry was deep enough to really hurt. The knife wound in his side was another story. Pollard had sunk all five inches of cold steel into him down there, and just thinking about it made him grimace.
“Am I hurting you?” Georgette asked as she poked around.
“No,” Keo said. “Just bad memories.”
“Well, you didn’t break my stitches.”
“What about the back of my head?”
She checked. “The new bandage I put on last night’s still dry, which means the stitches are still good.”
“You learned all this while helping your dad at his veterinarian’s clinic?”
“You’d be surprised how much harder it is to work on animals than humans. Compared to them, we’re domesticated sheep.” She sat back on her haunches. “I guess I’m better at this than I thought.”
“Your dad would be proud.”
“I hope so,” she said quietly.
“What about him?” Keo said, nodding across the room at Brian, who stared at the door as if he expected the attack to resume at any second.
“He’s sort of my bodyguard,” Georgette said. “He goes everywhere I go. I told you. I’m the closest thing Pollard has to a doctor.” Then, “How’s the nose?”
“Still broken, but it’ll heal. They say a broken nose gives you character.”
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that.”
He chuckled. “You’ve done a lot of this for Pollard?”
“Rupert and I didn’t join a Boy Scout troop. We knew what we were getting into, but it was better than the alternative.”
Her face changed noticeably at Rupert’s name, and she seemed to drift off.
“I’m sorry about your brother,” Keo said. “He seemed like a good kid.”
“You were there when it happened?”
“I was.”
“Was it an accident, like Darren said?”
Keo thought about it. Standing there, listening to Fiona, with Rupert between them. Then the gunfire. Fiona going down, and a moment later, Rupert doubling over.
“I think so, yeah,” Keo said. “They opened up from behind some trees, so they might not have been able to see everyone clearly.”
“Fiona, too?”
“Her, too.”
“I liked her. She looked after us when we first joined.” She sighed and leaned back against the wall.
They didn’t say anything for a while. Keo looked across the room at Brian. He had clearly heard everything because he was still wide awake, though he didn’t say a word and stared off at something along one of the walls instead.
“You’re going back to Corden after this?” Keo asked.
“Yeah,” Georgette said. “We were going to take one of the trucks and head back. Brian thinks if we just head north, we should run across Corden eventually.”
“Eventually,” Keo repeated. He didn’t like the sound of that. “But you don’t know for sure. Do you have a map?”
“A couple of the guys had maps, but we couldn’t find them after last night. They probably had it on them, and when they disappeared…”
Keo nodded. You didn’t die anymore. You just turned. You became one of them.
So what did that make the people in the hazmat suits and gas masks?
Who the hell were those guys?
“There’s another option,” Keo said. “You like fish?”
*
They made it through the morning without incident. The men in hazmat suits didn’t return, and the creatures stayed away. None of it made any sense, but then, what did these days?
The fact that it was sunlight didn’t mean they were safe, though. He had to remind himself that they had been engaged in a gunfight with men last night, and men didn’t have to fear the day.
They came out of the building around eight, and Keo stood aside and listened to Brian and Georgette arguing about what to do next. The boy wanted to leave for Corden, but Georgette wanted to go with Keo. At times things got heated, and Brian brought up Rupert’s death and those of the others. He (rightfully) accused Keo of being the cause for all their misery and losses.
Smart kid.
Keo let them go at it for a good thirty minutes before Georgette finally said, “If you wanna go, then go.” Then she turned to Darlene and Justine. “You guys can go with him, if you want. I’m going with Keo for now.”
The other two girls were indecisive, but eventually decided it couldn’t hurt to come with Keo, too. He wasn’t sure if that was because they thought he was a better protector than Brian or they just liked the idea of an island that was safe from the creatures. Either way, Brian let out some choice curses and kicked the door on one of the trucks. When that was over with, he picked up what supplies they had managed to salvage from the last two nights and followed Keo and the others into the woods. Keo carried as much as he could while the girls dragged along the rest.
It took them four long hours of walking slowly to finally reach the southern shore. Keo didn’t want to rush it. There was no need and he was wary of an ambush. God knew he had walked into too many already, even when he knew it was waiting for him. That made him, he reminded himself, one of the dumbest men alive.
Lucky. You got real lucky the last few days, pal.
The image of the men in hazmat suits flashed across his mind’s eye every few minutes. It reminded him that there were things going on out there in the rest of the world that he didn’t fully understand even now. But then, where had he been since the end of the world? Most of it had been spent in the luxury of Earl’s house, with the rest of it running through one Louisiana woods after another, trying to stay ahead of Pollard. It wasn’t as if he had time to actually explore the state, much less the country beyond.
Who the hell were those guys?
Finally, they stepped through the trees and onto a stretch of beach. He didn’t have binoculars, but he thought he knew where the island was and looked for it among the flickering lake surface.
“Here?” Georgette said behind him.
Keo nodded. “Sit down and rest for a while. I’ll have to get their attention.”
“How? I don’t see anything out there.”
“It’s hard to spot in the daytime. That’s what makes it perfect. They’re literally hiding in plain sight.”
Georgette didn’t look convinced, but she sat down along with the others. Except for Brian. He didn’t appear to be all that tired and stood guard with his rifle. He hadn’t said a word since they started off, which Keo found impressive. He was expecting the teenager to fight him every inch of the way, but the kid had instead stayed mum.
Keo took out the small compact with the paint and mirror from one of his pockets. He twisted the lid, breaking it loose, then made sure he caught the sunlight just right and flicked the mirror back and forth.
“What are you doing?” Georgette asked.
“I’m signaling them,” Keo said.
“Is that some kind of Morse code?”
“Yes.”
“What if no one there knows Morse code?”
Zachary will know.
Keo didn’t know why he believed that, he just did. Zachary was one of those guys who was born to live out here in the wilds. The fact that he had spent two nights hiding in the ground while the creatures roamed above him convinced Keo the man was either suicidal or just really skilled. And a guy like that, he thought, probably knew Morse code.
Hopefully.
“Even if no one knows Morse code, I’ll still have gotten their attention,” Keo said. “So sit down and relax.”
“I can’t,” Georgette said. “I’ve been walking through the woods for half a day. We’re all hungry and thirsty, and I’m starting to think Brian may be right about taking one of the trucks….”
Keo ignored her and continued signaling. Even if he was wrong about Zachary, at least they would know someone was out here. That might be enough for Allie to send someone to check—
There.
The sunlight reflected back something in the distance—a response.
Georgette saw it and hurried over. “What’s that?”
“The island,” Keo said.
“So, it worked?”
“Yes.”
“What does it say?”
He read the flickering light, stringing the letters together.
Finally, he smiled.
“Shouldn’t you be dead, San Diego?” the message read.
CHAPTER 19
“How is he?” Keo asked, looking down at Norris’s sleeping form. He had never seen the old-timer looking so peaceful in his life.
“They really worked on him,” Allie said. “I didn’t think he’d survive past the night, but he proved me wrong. He’s stubborn. Which I guess is why you two get along so well.”
“That’s one theory.”
They were in the back room of her houseboat, with Norris snoring on one of the lower bunk beds. Two open windows allowed plenty of light inside, along with a nice and surprisingly cool breeze this afternoon.
“He’ll be mostly fine with a lot of rest,” Allie said. “And I mean a lot of rest. Zachary told me you guys were headed down south to New Orleans.”
“That was the plan.”
“That’s not going to happen if you want him to live past the week.”
He nodded, because that was his best-case scenario anyway. Norris’s appearance had been barely okay two nights ago, but the morning after he looked worse than half-dead.
“And what about you?” Allie said. “You were actually good looking when you were last here. What happened?”
He grinned and didn’t want to imagine what he actually looked like at the moment. Zachary and Shorty had done a double take when they came to pick him and the kids up in one of the pontoon boats. The blood still clung to the fabric of his shirt, and his face was probably black and pur
ple. His nose was certainly a different shade than his skin color, and the long bandage stretching from the middle of his cheek to his temple probably didn’t improve his looks any.
“You should see the other guy,” he said.
“I bet,” Allie said. “That was a hell of a fight back there. I was listening to it all day. Then when I thought it was over, you went at it again all night. What was that about?”
He told her about the men in hazmat suits and saw the look on her face. He guessed that was probably the same expression he had given Georgette when she told him about the same men last night.
“Are you serious?” Allie said, when he was finished.
“As a heart attack.”
“You have any idea who they were, or what they wanted?”
“They didn’t stick around to tell us in the morning, and we didn’t feel like going out there to find out when it was still dark.”
“What about the bloodsuckers? Did they just…ignore them?”
“I don’t know. I just know that they were out there and I didn’t see a single creature around them.”
“That’s…” She shook her head, speechless. “Jesus Christ. As if we don’t have enough to worry about.”
Hazmat suits. Gas masks.
What the hell’s going on out there in the rest of the world?
“What about the kids?” he asked.
“You took a big risk bringing them here.”
“It wasn’t much of a risk. They’re three teenagers and a scared twenty-something without adult supervision.”
“With automatic weapons.”
“Just the one.”
“One’s all it takes.” Then, softening a bit, “Maybe you’re right. They seemed harmless enough. More hungry than anything.”
“They’re not the only ones,” he said, just as his stomach growled.
Allie smiled. “She must be gorgeous, huh?”
“‘She’?”