by Sam Sisavath
“How’d you get up there?” the man behind him asked.
“The tree?” Keo said.
“No, the Empire State Building. Yeah, the tree.”
Keo smiled. “I climbed.”
“That’s one hell of a climb.”
“I’m a very good climber.”
“No kidding, Rain Man.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“You know, from the movie Rain Man with Tom Cruise?”
“I’ve never seen that movie.”
“It was pretty good. I think that short guy might have won an award for it or something.”
“Tom Cruise?”
“No, the other short guy.”
“Dustin Hoffman,” the big one in front of them said.
“Yeah, him,” the second one said.
“I don’t watch a lot of movies,” Keo said.
“Yeah, I got that,” the short one said.
“Where are we going?”
“Hey, which one of us has the guns here?”
“You.”
“That’s right. So we ask the questions, and you answer. See how this works?”
“Well, now that you’ve clarified it, sure.”
The older one chuckled. “This guy is funnier than you, Shorty.”
“Easy to be funny when you’re trying not to fall asleep in a tree,” the one named Shorty said.
They definitely saw me up there before sunrise.
How is that possible?
Keo heard a squawk, and the man in front of him reached into the folds of his ghillie suit and pulled out a two-way radio just as a female voice said, “Zachary, come in. Over.”
“Everything okay?” the man named Zachary said into the radio.
“Everything’s fine over here. What about out there? Shorty?”
“He’s in one piece.”
“Tell her I’m starving,” Shorty said.
“He says he misses you and wants to touch you in inappropriate places when we get back,” Zachary said.
Shorty snorted. “Two smartasses today.”
“I bet,” the woman said through the radio. “What about those guys you saw all over the park? We heard a lot of shooting yesterday. It sounded like some kind of war was going on over there.”
“It was close,” Zachary said. “We’re bringing over a guy who’ll be able to provide some answers. He’s a real talker.”
“Who is it?”
“Said his name’s Keo.”
“What kind of name is Keo?”
“Apparently because every other name in the English language was taken.”
Keo grinned.
“What’s wrong?” Zachary said into the radio.
“What do you mean?” the woman said.
“Come on. You sound pissed off.”
“You and Shorty, staying out there again. I told you before, it’s too dangerous. You need to stop taking unnecessary risks like that.”
“Couldn’t be helped. We got caught outside. Nothing you can do about it but roll with the punches.”
“I don’t want to argue,” the woman said. “Just get back here.”
“Will do. Over.” Zachary put the radio away.
“Who was that?” Keo asked. “Your wife? She sounds angry.”
“Allie,” Zachary said.
“He wishes she was his wife,” Shorty said. “Hell, I wish she was my wife.”
“She didn’t sound very happy with the two of you,” Keo said.
“It’s her job to worry,” Zachary said. “She’s the boss. But I think she’ll get over it when I bring you back. I’m sure she has a lot of questions. You guys freaked everyone out with your shooting.”
“So, she’s the boss? Allie?”
“Pretty much.”
“Not bad looking, either,” Shorty said. “Too bad she’s a lesbian.”
“She’s not a lesbian,” Zachary said.
“I’ve been trying to get with her for months now. Trust me, she plays for the other team.”
Zachary snorted. “Just ’cause she doesn’t want to sleep with you doesn’t mean she’s a lesbian, Shorty. That would make the vast majority of the female population lesbians even before they got turned into bloodsuckers.”
Shorty wasn’t convinced. “Lesbian. One hundred percent.”
*
They led him through the woods for another thirty minutes. It would have been faster, but Zachary began doubling back before taking different turns the second time through the same path. Or, at least, he thought it was the same direction. He couldn’t really be sure, which told him Zachary was doing a damn good job. What he did know for sure was that he was dealing with seasoned trackers and woodsmen here.
Great. I got captured by Daniel Boone and his little buddy.
Even Shorty seemed to know what he was doing, and the two communicated with looks instead of words. That was, when they needed to “talk” at all. After the initial burst of conversation, neither one had said another word to him.
Instead of engaging them in conversation, Keo waited patiently for his opportunity. Unfortunately, between Shorty’s steady rifle at his back and Zachary’s calm pace in front of him, he never saw anything that he could have even confused for an opening.
Damn, they’re too good.
He was already sweating under the morning heat despite the plentiful shade, but neither of his two captors appeared to share his discomfort despite what they were wearing. He found that slightly annoying but refrained from saying so. They hadn’t shown any indications they were the enemy, but that could easily change at a moment’s notice. Right now, he was still breathing, and he wanted to keep it that way.
After another ten minutes of walking, Zachary turned left, and Keo heard waves lapping, so he guessed they were close to the shore. He wasn’t sure how they had gotten here, but apparently this was the destination all along.
Zachary stopped at some bushes, grabbed a large branch, and pulled, revealing a dull gray canoe about fourteen feet long and thirty-five inches wide. It looked long enough for three people (with extra room for even a fourth), and there were two paddles inside and a mount in the back for a trolling motor to be attached.
“We going swimming?” Keo asked.
“Something like that,” Zachary said.
“You can swim if you want,” Shorty said. “We’ll just pull you along the side. Howzabout it, funny guy?”
“I guess I can go for a canoe ride,” Keo said.
“You guys don’t swim where you’re from?”
“I’m mostly from San Diego.”
“No kidding.”
“Nope.”
“Never been to San Diego. Nice?”
“I said I lived there for a time; I didn’t marry it.”
“Smartass,” Shorty said, but he chuckled anyway.
The canoe was light enough that Zachary could handle it by himself. He slung his rifle and grabbed one end, then dragged it out of the woods and onto a small stretch of beach. The polyethylene hull scraped against pebbles and debris as it slid easily across the small patch of land before slipping into the warm lake water.
“You get middle seat,” Zachary said. “Lucky you, we’re going to be doing all the paddling.”
“A free boat ride?” Keo said. “My day’s looking up.”
He felt a little clumsy climbing into the canoe with his hands bound, but he managed to grab onto the side and pulled himself in, the long but narrow vessel moving dangerously under him.
He tried to remember the last time he had been on a boat. Years, probably. He had always been a strong swimmer, thanks to all those summers hanging around Mission Beach. Or, when the tourist throngs became too much to bear, there was always Pacific Beach. Ironically, while he could swim with the best of them (and better than most), Keo had never been a particularly good boater. He knew, as the saying went, just enough to get in trouble.
Once Keo was inside, Shorty climbed up front while Zachary pushed off before ho
pping into the back. They each grabbed a paddle and started stroking, the canoe gliding smoothly across the calm lake surface. Keo was hoping it would be cooler out here in the water, but five minutes in and he was still sweating from the heat.
“Are we going to the other side?” Keo asked.
“You’ll see,” Shorty said. “Just relax and enjoy the ride, San Diego.”
“That’s going to be a little hard to do. My friend is still out there. He needs my help.”
It had taken Keo a while to understand why Norris had run off on him yesterday. Norris had done the right thing, giving their pursuers two targets instead of just one. It was the smart move, and if Keo had been thinking clearly that day, he would have agreed with Norris when the older man made the suggestion. But he hadn’t, which had forced Norris to take it upon himself to split them up.
Keo didn’t know whether to curse Norris or thank him for taking the initiative that, probably, saved both their lives. Of course, he’d need to find the ex-cop first in order to do either one. Right now, Norris could be dead or dying, or captured. Too many possibilities, all of them highly possible.
“You mean the black guy,” Zachary said behind him.
Keo looked over his shoulder. “You saw him.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you see what happened to him?”
“Don’t know. He went north and you went west.”
“You were there last night. In the woods.”
Zachary nodded.
“Where were you?” Keo asked.
Zachary grinned back at him. Sweat had wiped some of the mud and dirt off his face, leaving behind something that looked like a mask made up of smeared mascara.
“In the ground?” Keo said. “Are you shitting me? Those things…”
“The bloodsuckers,” Shorty said.
“Yeah, the bloodsuckers. How…?”
Shorty looked back at him. He seemed just as amused as Zachary by Keo’s reaction. “Zach and me have spent all our lives out here, San Diego. We can get so close to a deer we can touch it if we want to. You don’t think we can do the same to those freaks?”
Keo didn’t know how to respond to that. A part of him was awed by what they had done last night. Not only hadn’t the creatures seen them, but he hadn’t seen them either, and he had a great view from above. They must have been there all night, watching him from somewhere on the ground in their ghillie suits.
You would love these guys, Norris. They’re crazier than I am by a good mile.
“You saw me in the tree,” Keo said. “How long?”
“Didn’t see you climb up,” Zachary said, “but saw you trying to stay awake last night.”
“Best damn show I ever saw in a long time,” Shorty chuckled. “Drinking water, pinching yourself, pulling your earlobes. Man, I wish I had one of those GoPro cameras. Put you on YouTube or something. I’d probably get a million hits.”
“How did they not see you?” Keo asked.
“They came close,” Zachary said. He looked suddenly thoughtful. “I was pretty sure a couple of the devils had spotted me. Or smelled me, at least.”
Keo remembered the two bloodsuckers from last night. The two that had stopped and sniffed the air for a moment before racing off again. He had thought they had smelled him, but it was actually Zachary all this time.
“They almost did,” Keo said.
“Yeah,” Zachary said, and gave Keo a Whew! grin. “That was a close one.”
“Eyes forward, San Diego,” Shorty said. “We’re home.”
Keo turned around and stared at “home.”
It was an island.
A small island, anyway. It didn’t take him very long to see all of it because there wasn’t that much of it to see. Half a football field, he guessed, with most of it taken up with trees and a brown stretch of beach up front. There were makeshift camps spread out across the open spaces, filled up with a dozen tents of varied colors and sizes. Almost as many people were moving around, some coming from the wooded area behind them carrying branches that they deposited into permanent campfires. A couple of men looked up from one of those fires, and Keo got a whiff of burning fish.
There were two wooden docks sticking out of the center of the island, with the biggest vessel by far tied up to one of them. It looked more like a floating RV than an actual boat. A houseboat of some sort, designed specifically to spend more time on the water than on dry land. The rest of the dock space was filled up with boats of various shapes and sizes. They looked permanently fastened to the docks while another dozen or so were anchored just off the island. There were people on some of the boats, especially the ones with cabins, though he received a few curious glances from a pontoon boat.
Keo remembered moving along the shoreline a few days ago, going through the expensive lakeside homes, and not finding a single boat parked in the water.
Not even a life raft, he remembered thinking. Where did all the boats go?
Here, apparently. They all came here.
“The supplies from the houses,” Keo said, looking back at Zachary. “You guys took them. The water, nonperishable food, weapons…”
“Most of them,” Zachary nodded. “We got all the weapons we need, so we dumped most of them into the lake. Too dangerous to just leave behind.”
“For who?”
“Us. We don’t know you from Adam, kid.”
“Gotta look after our own,” Shorty said. “Boss’s orders.”
“This Allie?” Keo said.
“Yup,” Zachary said. “That’s her over there.”
A tall African-American woman had come out of the cabin of the houseboat and was climbing over the side railing and onto the dock. He couldn’t tell how old she was from the distance, but she looked comfortable in cargo pants and a white T-shirt, and she was raising a radio to her lips just before Zachary’s own radio squawked in the back of the canoe.
“Any trouble?” the woman, Allie, asked through the radio.
“We made sure no one saw us pushing off,” Zachary said. “You worry too much.”
“If I’m not worrying, you should be, Zach. We just put some fish on the grill for you guys.”
“Much appreciated.”
“Don’t say I never did anything for you.”
Keo looked back at Zachary. “I need to get back to land. My friend is still out there. You understand loyalty, don’t you?”
“I do,” Zachary said, but then shook his head. “But it’s not up to me. You’ll have to talk to Allie.”
“So, she’s really in charge.”
“Yup. She’s really in charge.”
“Girl power, and all that,” Shorty chuckled in front of him.
“That, and she’s smarter than the rest of us,” Zachary said.
“That’s a matter of opinion,” Shorty said.
Allie had walked up the wooden planks to the end of the dock and was waiting for them as they coasted toward her. Two men, both in their twenties, had appeared alongside her at the same time. One of them grabbed a rope and tossed it over to Shorty, while the other man, a redhead, stood back with a hunting rifle cradled in his arms, eyeing Keo.
“This him?” Allie said.
“That’s him,” Shorty said. “Mister San Diego.”
“Keo,” Zachary said, “this is Allie.”
Allie looked him up and down, and he took the opportunity to do the same to her. Early thirties, attractive, about five-seven, and with clearly intelligent eyes. The kind of woman who would have intimidated him in a bar, though of course that wouldn’t have chased him away.
“You wanna tell me what you and your friends were doing running around the park, shooting it up?” she asked.
“They’re not my friends,” Keo said.
“Then who are they?”
“What do you call people trying to murder you?”
Allie frowned. “Do they have a reason?”
“Depends on your perspective.”
She looked past him at
Zachary. “He sounds like trouble, Zach. You should have saved us the trouble and just shot him and tossed his body in the lake.”
“Still not too late for that,” Shorty said, climbing out of the canoe. “It’s a big lake.”
My big mouth, Keo thought, and said quickly, “I was told you had questions, then you’ll let me go.”
She narrowed her eyes. “We’ll see.”
CHAPTER 7
“How many are we talking about?” Allie asked.
“I saw around ten,” Keo said.
“But that’s not all of them.”
“No.”
“Stop beating around the bush. How many more are running around the park right now with machine guns?”
“Assault rifles.”
“What?”
“They’re carrying around mostly assault rifles. I haven’t seen a machine gun among them yet.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Well, machine guns are—”
“I don’t care,” she interrupted. “How many more?”
He smiled. “I was told around fifty.”
“That’s a lot.”
“Yup.”
He followed her the short distance from the dock to the houseboat. It was beige, just over forty feet long and somewhere around fifteen feet wide. There were already a couple of people onboard, including one man inside the long cabin in the middle. The second one was manning a gas grill at one corner of the foredeck. Keo smelled more cooking fish and licked his lips.
“Hungry?” Allie said.
“I’ve been surviving on plants, MREs, rain water, and dirt for the last few months.”
“Lucky you, we have plenty of fish to share.”
“What kind of fish?”
“The cooked kind. You on a diet?”
“Seafood diet. You know what that is?”
“What am I, five years old?”
“You don’t look five, no.”
“Don’t get too comfortable. This isn’t a date. I could still toss you overboard at any moment.”
“Understood.”
Allie swung her long legs over the boat’s railing without any trouble. Freed from the zip ties, Keo followed suit, with his new bodyguard bringing up the rear. The twenty-something redhead, Granger, had one hand permanently on the butt of his holstered Glock. Granger also had Keo’s pack and MP5SD, while Zachary and Shorty had headed over to a tent somewhere along the beach.