The Walls of Lemuria (A Purge of Babylon Novel)

by Sam Sisavath

  Keo keyed his radio. “Can you see them?”

  “No, I’m at the back of the garage,” Norris said. “You got eyes on them?”

  “Two. And they’re wearing black assault vests.”

  “Wait, are they…?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Dammit.” Then, “Just two. We can take two.”

  “Follow my lead.”

  “Roger that.”

  Keo clipped the radio back to his hip and watched the black-clad figures walk into the parking lot. They had left the truck idling behind them, the doors thrown lazily open. They had also unslung M4 carbines and were scanning the area as if they expected to find something.

  The truck.

  Earl’s Bronco was sitting in the parking lot. It was also the only vehicle in the entire place. If the men were familiar with the strip center, they would have remembered that the parking lot was supposed to be empty from previous drive-bys.

  Shit. I should have kept going. Trust your instincts next time, you idiot.

  As the two men got closer, Keo saw radios Velcroed to the front of their vests and the pouches around their tactical belts bulged with spare magazines. All of that meant they had come prepared. For what, though? They were both wearing caps, and while he couldn’t make out their faces under the brims, he didn’t see green and black face paint.

  So who were they? What were they doing in this area? Were they actually a part of the four men who had ambushed them at the gas station back in November? The assault vests looked familiar, but there were no writings or anything to indicate these men were part of an organization. Keo spent a few seconds recalling the ambush in his head again. No, the four men he saw back then didn’t have any writings on their vests, either.

  So what did that prove? Nothing, and maybe everything.

  One of the two men was making a beeline for the Bronco with his M4 aimed at the back window while the second one remained slightly behind, pulling security. That told him they had either done this before, or they were reasonably well-trained.

  As the men honed in on the Bronco, their path took them across the barbershop’s window from left to right. Fortunately, Keo had parked the truck between the barbershop and the diner next door, so by the time the men reached their destination, they had left his line of sight. He couldn’t see them anymore, but they couldn’t see him, either, when Keo stood up and quickly ran toward the glass wall.

  He ignored the door and looked out the window and to his right. One of them was standing behind the Bronco while the second one, the closest to Keo, was moving toward the front passenger door. Both of the truck’s windows were open, so the men didn’t really need to get too close to peer inside.

  Keo didn’t wait for them to discover that the vehicle was empty and turn their attention elsewhere. He switched the MP5SD’s fire selector to full-auto and pulled the trigger and shot the black-clad figure closest to him in the back. He landed three bullets while the rest missed their mark and hit the side of the Bronco with three solid ping-ping-ping!

  He was spinning toward the second man, only to discover that his intended target was already taking aim at him with the M4.

  Oh, shit.

  If Keo had fired from anywhere else, it would have taken the other black-clad man at least a few seconds to track the sound of his suppressed gunfire. Unfortunately for Keo, the noise of the glass wall shattering and pelting the shredded linoleum tiles like falling rain gave away his position.

  He heard a loud pop! and braced himself for the first bullet and the pain to follow.

  Instead, Keo watched the man behind the Bronco jerk his head sideways and fall to the asphalt floor like a marionette with its strings cut. Blood spurted out of his temple and disappeared under the truck in bright red streams.

  Norris appeared in Keo’s peripheral vision, moving tentatively toward the two bodies. Keo climbed out through the shattered window and joined him in the parking lot. He moved quickly to the man he had shot and turned him over onto his back.

  The man was still alive, and he stared up at Keo, face grimacing with pain. He looked in his thirties, and his eyes darted from Keo to Norris, then back again. He had a full stubble and his slightly fat, pale lips were trembling, as if he was trying to say something.

  Keo crouched next to him, avoiding the blood pooling under the man’s back. “You have a name?”

  The man didn’t answer. His eyes snapped to Norris before returning to Keo once again.

  “You’re going to die,” Keo said. “Can’t help you with that. But it might be awhile. I don’t think I hit any major organs. Have you ever seen someone bleed to death? I have. It’s going to be long and painful.”

  The man swallowed. “Doug,” he said, stuttering out his name.

  “Doug,” Keo said. “I can help you with the pain.”

  “Do it,” Doug said.

  “I will, but first, how many more of you are there?”

  Doug didn’t answer.

  “I need an answer,” Keo said. “How many more of you are out there?”

  “A lot,” Doug said.

  “How many is a lot?”

  “A—” Doug didn’t finish. He closed his eyes and died.

  Keo sighed and stood up. “Shit.”

  “I thought you said it was going to be long and painful?” Norris said.

  Keo shrugged. “I was just guessing.”

  Norris chuckled. “Man, you’re evil.” Then he looked at the Bronco and the holes Keo had put into the side. “And nice shooting there, Tex.”

  “I didn’t want to take a chance I might miss with the glass between us.” He looked up the parking lot at the Ford idling in the road. “Besides, I already got you a replacement.”

  “I can live with that trade.” Norris looked over at the man he had shot. “What about them?”

  “You heard Doug. There are a lot of them out there somewhere.”

  “Like some kind of militia, you think? I hear there are a lot of those nuts out here. Wouldn’t surprise me if the assholes who took a run at us last year were one of those.”

  “That’s possible.” Keo pulled Doug’s broken radio free from his vest. “These things aren’t for communicating between the two of them, I know that much. They’re well-prepared. I’m guessing the others know exactly where these two went this morning.”

  “It looked like they were headed to Corden. Maybe that’s where their base is.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But I got money on their friends coming to look for them when they fail to show up or answer the radio.”

  “So, we dump the bodies,” Norris said. “Far from here. If they don’t know where these two skells died, they won’t know where to start looking for us. And it’s a big country. You could get lost out here if you don’t know where you’re going.”

  Keo nodded. It was a solid plan. It also helped that the strip center was a good forty-five kilometers from the house.

  Still, Keo didn’t like what Doug had said when he asked him how many of them were out there.

  “A lot,” he had said.

  How many was a lot?

  A dozen? Two dozen?

  Too many.

  *

  They didn’t want to take any chances that the bodies could be discovered, so they loaded them into the Bronco and Norris drove it while he followed in the Ford. They took the familiar road all the way back to the RV park where they had met Earl and his friends those months ago. Then they dumped the bodies into the river and made sure the water carried them south and out of sight before heading back. The house was up north, so there wasn’t a chance the bodies would somehow show up there.

  The Bronco had three holes in it that it didn’t have an hour ago, but it was still in good condition as they drove it back to the house. They couldn’t risk leaving the other Ford behind or ditching it somewhere where it could be found. Even if the chances were remote, the risk wasn’t worth it.

  Gillian saw them drive up and gave him a curious
look when he climbed out of the F-150. Norris drove on and parked the Bronco with the other vehicles on the other side of the yard.

  “Do we really need another truck?” Gillian asked him. “I’m pretty sure we have more cars than gas to run them at the moment.”

  “You can never have too many trucks,” Keo said.

  “Spoken like a country boy. You sure you’re not originally from around here?”

  “I’ll re-check my family tree when I get the chance.”

  “So where’d you find this one?”

  He told her, and watched her face get paler with every detail.

  “Was it the same ones?” she asked when he was done.

  “It could be. They weren’t walking around with signs around their necks, but it’s a hell of a coincidence if they’re not from the same group.”

  “Do you think they were out there looking for us?”

  “I don’t think so,” Keo said. “It’s been months since that incident. I think they were doing what Norris and I were. Looking for supplies and expanding their search areas as they wear out the closer targets. Norris thinks they could be based in Corden.”

  Gillian crossed her arms over her chest and shivered slightly. Keo put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her forehead before giving her his best comforting smile. It wasn’t nearly as convincing as he had hoped, and it showed on her face.

  “We’ll just have to be extra careful from now on,” Keo said. “Even more than before.”

  “Will that be enough?”

  “It’ll have to be, because we don’t have any choice. It’s not going to get any safer out there, Gillian. We need to continually adapt if we want to keep surviving. That’s the goal, right? Survive?”

  She nodded and tried to smile, but it came out poorly. “Yeah, that’s the goal.”

  “Good,” he said. “Let’s go tell the others.”

  *

  It began heating up again around March, and by April he was already walking around in T-shirts like the first few weeks when they arrived at Earl’s house. The weather, though, proved unpredictable. Most days it was seventy degrees or higher, but there were times when it dipped to the mid-fifties.

  Don’t like the weather? Just wait an hour.

  He walked his usual rounds, keeping track of where the creatures had been the previous night, using the broken branches, twigs, and impressions on the ground as markers. There was no real pattern to their movements, though that in itself was a pattern.

  The winter weather of the previous months hadn’t done anything to cut down on the creatures’ nightly visitations. They continued to show up night after night, probing the windows and doors, looking for weaknesses. To his surprise, hearing them scurrying around outside the house at nights had ceased to strike terror in him and the others. It was now so commonplace that they were sleeping soundly through the nights.

  Keo wasn’t entirely sure if that was a good thing, though.

  In the mornings, he still spent the same one to two hours walking the woods, listening for sounds of footsteps, for voices, or car engines that didn’t belong. Like all the other times, he didn’t hear anything this morning, too. That should have made him feel better, but it didn’t.

  He was turning to head back to the house when he saw it.

  Smoke, rising lazily in the distance…

  CHAPTER 24

  Smoke meant people, and he knew exactly where it was coming from. The question was who was there and how many of them there were.

  It took him five minutes to reach the origin of the smoke, running full sprint through the woods. Keo ran with one hand on the submachine gun and the other on his radio. “Norris, come in. Norris!”

  Norris answered after a few seconds. “You sound like you’re running, kid.”

  “Smoke in the northeast. Can you see it?”

  “Wait…” A brief pause, then, “I see it. Where’s it coming from?”

  “The bungalow.”

  “I thought it was abandoned.”

  “It’s supposed to be.”

  “Shit. Where are you now?”

  “Almost there,” Keo said. “I’m going silent. Get over here when you can.”

  Keo turned off the radio and put it away, then burst out of the woods and into a clearing. He went into a crouch, sucking in a lungful of air, thankful he had approached the house from the side so he could see its doors and windows, but whoever was inside probably couldn’t see him. He hoped, anyway.

  The bungalow was a long, squat building about twice the length of their house. The front door and windows were wide open, like the last time he saw them two weeks ago. There were too many shadows for him to see inside from thirty meters away, but there was no mistaking the gray smoke coming out of the chimney. There was definitely someone inside.

  He couldn’t find a vehicle anywhere, which wasn’t too surprising. He would have heard a car coming, even an ATV or dirt bike, for miles in these woods. There were so few noises these days that just about anything that didn’t belong—like birds chirping or squirrels scrambling across branches—would be easy to detect. Had they arrived on foot? Possibly. He had searched the entire area in the last few months, and he knew for a fact there wasn’t supposed to be anyone inside the bungalow.

  Keo stood up and darted across the open ground. He made it to the side of the building in less than four seconds. The nearest window was to his right and he moved toward it. He heard a faint, whispering hiss followed by the random pop pop and the smell of dead trees and dry twigs burning in a makeshift campfire from inside. It was a slightly chilly morning, but sixty-something wasn’t nearly cold enough for a fire. Of course, they could be cooking something.

  He also heard voices. A woman, saying, “…around here?”

  A man answered: “Not too far from here. I only saw it from a distance, but it looked pretty livable. We should go check it out. Even if we don’t stay, there could be valuable supplies lying around.”

  A second woman: “You said the house looked livable?”

  “Better than this one,” the man said.

  “In good shape?”

  “It had windows and everything, and I think I might have heard a generator in the back.”

  “That means there are already people there. It’s been five months. Generators don’t last that long by themselves. Did you see any cars?”

  “A few trucks and some ATVs.”

  “Should we go see for ourselves?” the first woman asked.

  “Maybe,” the second woman said. “Let’s just finish breakfast first, then we can decide what to do later.”

  Keo moved along the length of the building toward the back. He peered out at the river twenty meters through the woods and found the answer to how the people in the house had arrived here.

  There was a white pole sticking out of the water near the bank, wrapped in fading blue canvas. He was looking at the mast of a sailboat, the bulk of it hidden behind the trees and ridgeline. Not a big boat. The river was only so wide that anything longer than a twenty-five-footer was probably pushing it.

  A sailboat. So that meant the people in the house had been on it last night and not inside the house. How was that possible? Hadn’t the bloodsuckers seen the boat last night? Of course, they could have arrived this morning…

  Crack!

  He turned around in time to see Norris moving through the clearing when he suddenly slid to a stop at the sound of a gunshot. At first Keo thought Norris had been hit and was falling, but no, the older man had just put the brakes on at the last second and was fighting to keep from slipping. He spun around and ran back toward the tree line.

  A voice—one of the women—shouted, “Stay back! Don’t come any closer!”

  Keo turned the corner and headed for the back door. The bungalow had lost all of its doors years ago. That allowed Keo to look inside at a darkened hallway and make out silhouetted figures at the other end in the living room, crackling fireplace lights flickering off a woman with a shotg
un and a man gripping a hunting rifle.

  He slipped inside the hallway and moved toward them, glad to have darkness benefiting him for the first time in a long time. He didn’t worry about the creatures, not with three humans already inside the house.

  Since that first shot, it got very quiet again. The figures in front of him seemed to be scrambling around, apparently because Norris’s sudden appearance had freaked them out almost as much as their warning shot (at least, he hoped it was a warning shot) had likely put even more grays into Norris’s stubble.

  The Keo from five months ago would have gone into the house shooting. The MP5SD’s attached suppressor would have allowed him to take out one, likely two of them before the third even knew he was inside. On full-auto, the submachine gun was a supremely deadly weapon with or without silent capabilities.

  These people didn’t sound dangerous, though. Overhearing their conversation had convinced him they were just looking for a place to stay for a while before moving on. It was likely they were more afraid of him and the others at the house. That, more than anything, was why he didn’t go in guns blazing. He was tempted, though. After the run-in with the two men in black assault vests, he was leaning heavily toward not taking any chances.

  I’m going soft. That’s the only explanation.

  He tightened his forefinger against the trigger when one of the women, wearing a white T-shirt, stopped moving in front of him. She was clutching a 12-gauge double-barrel shotgun with the barrels pointed up at the ceiling. She looked almost as uncomfortable with the weapon as the man with the hunting rifle, peering out the window looking for Norris across the clearing.

  “Is he still out there?” the woman with the shotgun asked.

  “The black guy?” the man said.

  “How many are out there?”

  “I just saw the one black guy.”

  “I think he’s still out there,” the other woman said from somewhere to the right of the living room. Keo couldn’t see her from his position. “Did you see that gun he had?”

  “Some kind of assault rifle,” the man said.

  “Where’d he get something like that?”