Rooster

by Sam Sisavath

  “You done?” Keo asked.

  Winston’s answer was to abandon Pressley and stumble to his feet. He’d gotten halfway up when Keo tapped the shotgun’s walnut buttstock against his temple and Winston fell like a lump of coal.

  “Now you’re done,” Keo said, and walked over to the nearest wall and sat down.

  He looked across the room at Pressley as she picked herself up from the floor with some difficulty. Once she made it to her knees, she lifted her head, her chest heaving, and looked across the room at him.

  Keo saw the same thing in her eyes that she was probably seeing in his.

  A question.

  Now what?

  Twelve

  “You should have taken the easy way out.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “You’re going to regret this.”

  “I’m regretting not having some duct tape to shut you up.”

  “You should have taken the easy way out…”

  Man’s on repeat, Keo thought as he walked past Winston, who leaned against the wall cupping his broken nose. That was a present from Pressley during their fight, but he’d gotten off mostly unscathed, if Keo didn’t count the bloody cut along his forehead thanks to the buttstock of the shotgun.

  Keo went back to Short and Skinny and picked up the man’s rifle from the floor and slung it. He unbuckled the dead man’s gun belt and slipped it on, then checked the SIG Sauer 9mm in the holster. Fully loaded. Good. He pocketed a spare magazine for the AR and another for the handgun before retrieving the Glock he’d thrown and shoved it into his belt behind his back.

  He straightened up and took stock of the situation.

  So far, so good.

  “We have to get out of here,” Pressley said behind him, between coughing spurts.

  Keo glanced over at her. She leaned against the far wall, slightly bent over with her hands on her knees. She looked ready to fall down, and maybe that wasn’t far from the truth; her scuffle with Winston had opened up the wounds, and small patches of blood seeped through the white bandages at multiple spots.

  “You gonna die on me?” Keo asked.

  Pressley looked up and pursed her lips. “Not if I can help it.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not really the kind of thing where you get a choice in the matter.”

  “I’m not gonna die.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “You look like shit.”

  “Fuck you, Keo. And you don’t look any better.”

  He grunted and reached up to touch the bruising along his cheek and forehead. No thanks to you, Ms. Do It, he thought, but said, “Well, at least you know my name. What else do you know about me?”

  “Enough,” Pressley said.

  “Enough for what?”

  “Enough,” she repeated.

  “What did Buck tell you?”

  “That talking to you was a waste of time.”

  “He really said that?”

  “No. That’s just the conclusion I came up with after being in the same room with you for a few minutes.”

  Keo smirked. He remembered the last time he had heard her voice, outside the stairwell door telling the Williams guy to “do it.” Williams had responded by sending a grenade into the room with Keo.

  And I just saved her life.

  What the hell is wrong with me?

  “Listen,” Pressley said.

  “Listen to what?” Keo said.

  “Just listen.”

  He was going to repeat his question when he suddenly understood what she was trying to get at. He could hear his own slightly accelerated heartbeat, along with Pressley’s wheezing and Winston’s labored breathing, but there was something else.

  Or actually, there was nothing else.

  There was nothing that sounded like a small army of well-armed men rushing the room right now. Which was exactly what should have been happening after all the gunfire of the last few minutes. One pistol gunshot and two shotgun blasts should have brought Winston’s people down on top of them.

  So where were they? Where were all the Cordine City fighters that had taken out Greengrass’s unit earlier?

  Keo glanced back at the door. Like the cell he had shared with Greengrass, there was a lever, but no way to lock it on this side. Which meant if there were people currently charging through the hallways toward them, there was no way for him to keep them out.

  Well, that’s not exactly true. The human shield concept worked pretty well with the Skinny Brothers earlier.

  He walked over to Winston. “Where are they?”

  Winston stared back at him but didn’t answer.

  “Your men,” Keo said. “Where are they? Why isn’t anyone responding to the gunshots?”

  “Someone must have heard it,” Pressley said. Every word seemed to take a lot out of her, but she remained on her feet even if she had to use the wall for support.

  Keo stopped in front of Winston and drew his newly acquired pistol. “Where are the rest of your men?”

  Instead of answering, Winston reached up and swiped at some blood dripping down the side of his forehead.

  “Tough guy, huh?” Keo said. The SIG Sauer was a P320 and had a hammer that Keo cocked back now for effect. “We’ll see about that.”

  The other man stared back at him but remained silent.

  “We can use him to get out of here,” Pressley said. She pushed off the wall and walked over to them. Keo thought she was going to collapse, but she somehow didn’t.

  Ms. Do It’s tougher than she looks.

  “His people won’t open up on us if he’s in the way,” Pressley said. “Those two guys already proved that.”

  Brilliant minds think alike, apparently.

  Keo holstered the SIG before looking over at Pressley. Really, really looked at her this time.

  She was struggling to stand without the support of the wall, but she was still standing. That was a heck of a feat, especially considering how half-dead she’d looked back in the cell room with Greengrass and all that blood he’d seen in the hallway earlier.

  “How are you still alive?” Keo asked.

  Pressley blinked through what was probably a wave of pain, before answering him. “What do you mean?”

  “I saw them dragging you, unconscious, out of the other room. You were bleeding all over the hallway.”

  “I woke up when they slammed the door shut, but I pretended to be unconscious. The less of a threat they perceive you to be, the better your chances of fighting back when the opportunity presents itself. Like it just did with you.”

  Keo grunted and thought, You have no idea how close you came to being killed, lady. No idea at all.

  So why didn’t I kill you? Why did I pull this dumbass stunt instead?

  He had been asking himself those questions for a while now.

  Why, why, why?

  The easier path out of this place alive was to play along with Winston. It wasn’t as if he had never shot someone to save his own hide before, and Pressley certainly had it coming. Ms. Do It was the reason he was here in the first place, as far as he was concerned.

  So why didn’t he just pop her and go along with whatever Winston had in mind? Why in God’s name did he decide to throw all that away to help a Bucky? A Bucky?

  It must be temporary insanity. That’s the only explanation.

  But there was another possibility that he didn’t like to think about, because it hit too close to home.

  Lara.

  It was Lara. She was why he hadn’t killed Pressley. He could deny it all he wanted, but it was right there, clear as day.

  Lara.

  He had envisioned what she would say when she found out he had murdered a helpless woman (“Helpless.” Ha!) to save himself. Everything seemed to come down to Lara these days. Even when she wasn’t around, or would ever find out about any of the things he’d done, he was still thinking about her. About what she would say, how he would explain himself, about trying despera
tely not to be an asshole.

  “Don’t be an asshole, Keo,” she had said to him, more than once, and he’d spent an awful lot of time trying to avoid being one as a result.

  That woman’s going to be the death of me one of these days. The ironic part is, she’ll never even know it. How sad is that?

  Pretty damn sad, pal.

  “I need a gun,” Pressley was saying. “If we’re going to get out of here—together—then I need a gun.”

  Keo looked over at Winston, who continued to stare silently at him. There was no fear in the man’s eyes. Hell, there was nothing that even looked remotely like fear.

  He turned back to Pressley. Those blue eyes of hers (Not like Lara’s. No one’s eyes are like Lara’s.) gave off a friendlier vibe, but he didn’t believe that for a second. Ms. Do It had once tried to kill him, and she would do it again in a heartbeat.

  So why was he taking the Glock out from behind his back and throwing it over to her?

  Because you’re an idiot, that’s why. And Lara’s going to laugh her ass off when she finds out how you got yourself killed.

  Pressley wasn’t expecting the gun and flinched with obvious pain when she scrambled to grab it out of the air. “Couldn’t you have just handed it to me?”

  He grinned. Had he done that on purpose, just to stick it to her a little bit? Maybe…

  “You know how to reload it?” he asked.

  “What am I, a moron?”

  No, but you might be looking at one, Keo thought, but said, “You gonna shoot me in the back the first chance you get, Pressley?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Greengrass told me who gave your unit your orders. That it came straight from the bucking top.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re a long way from Fenton, aren’t we?”

  Not far enough for my liking, Keo thought as he watched her snatch up the bullets from the floor around the room. Every step she took seemed to take a lot out of her, and just crouching or bending to pick up a stray round made her grimace noticeably. But she always managed to get back up and moved on to the next piece of ammo that Winston had thumbed free. Most of the bullets had scattered into the corners when he and Pressley were trying to punch each other into oblivion earlier.

  Keo had to admit, he didn’t know a lot of people who could take more than one bullet and what was probably a concussion and still keep going. He was one, and now apparently Pressley was another.

  “What about Greengrass?” Pressley asked.

  Keo didn’t answer right away, but he thought, He’s got two broken bones and zero chance of being much help getting out of here.

  But the words that came out of his mouth were, “He’s dead.”

  Pressley paused briefly to absorb that before she finished picking another bullet up with a grunt. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. I made sure. So did the guards.”

  “What happened?”

  “What do you think happened? He was shot. He was hurt and bleeding even before they brought him down here. They wrapped you guys up, but as you probably noticed, you weren’t exactly given A-class medical treatment.”

  “Shit,” Pressley whispered.

  “Sorry.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  Keo glanced over at Winston, who was narrowing his eyes back at him. The man clearly knew that Keo was lying, but he kept silent, and Keo couldn’t be sure if that was curiosity on the other man’s face or…amusement.

  As long as he keeps his mouth shut…

  Thirteen

  The reason Keo didn’t think Pressley was going to shoot him the instant she snapped the magazine into the Glock and worked the slide was what Greengrass had told him:

  “It wants you alive.”

  And Greengrass had done everything possible not to kill him back at the office building. He could have—the sniper, Mr. Smiley Face, could have put Keo out of his misery a thousand times over—but he hadn’t.

  “It wants you alive.”

  That order came directly from Buck, and Greengrass was determined to follow it. What were the chances Pressley felt the same way?

  Of course, the other possibility was that she meant it when she said she needed him to get out of the facility alive. That was Self-Preservation 101, something Keo knew a little about himself.

  You mean used to, don’t you? Because if you still knew it, you’d have shot her instead of turning on Winston.

  Right? Right?

  Whatever the reason, Pressley still hadn’t shot him once the Glock’s slide clacked back into position. There was nothing to stop her from pulling the trigger, but she didn’t do it, and that was all that mattered for the next few hours.

  As they walked Winston to the door, stepping over Short and Skinny, then around Tall and Skinny, Keo tried very hard to ignore Greengrass’s voice in the back of his head.

  “It wants you alive.”

  There was no question who it was.

  Not who. What.

  It was still out there, with that horde it had used to surround Axton with. Maybe it hadn’t brought all of them, but Keo didn’t think Blue Eyes would bring just a few. The undead thing was definitely smarter than that. That was, after all, the reason why he had lured it away from Gaby and the others. He had done that to save them, because it was the unasshole thing to do.

  “Don’t be an asshole, Keo,” Lara had said to him.

  God, she really is going to be the death of me. It’s too bad she’ll never know it.

  Keo shoved all of that into the back of his mind as he opened the door and peered out at the barely lit hallway outside. Behind him, Pressley waited with Winston, who still hadn’t said a word since telling Keo he had made the wrong choice.

  “Anything?” Pressley asked.

  “All clear,” Keo said. He closed the door back up and turned around to face Winston. “Where are they? Where’s the rest of your men? Why are there just the three of you down here?”

  Winston stared back at him, but like all the other times, didn’t waste his breath with an answer.

  “There must be more of them aboveground,” Pressley said. “They probably use this place as some kind of last resort when they’re not using the cells. That’s why it’s so empty. They’re all up there.”

  “Are you just guessing?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. You got any better ideas?”

  “Did you hear them saying anything while you were playing possum?”

  “No. But they weren’t really the chatty type.”

  Keo looked over at Winston again. “Nothing to say? Yay, nay? Somewhere in between?”

  “You made a mistake,” Winston said.

  “He speaks!”

  “A big mistake,” Winston added. He didn’t sound angry or even threatening. It was almost as if he were simply talking to a dumb kid.

  Not too far from the truth, I guess. I did just hand a gun over to a woman who had tried to kill me not too long ago.

  “You think so?” Keo asked Winston.

  “We’re wasting time,” Pressley said. “We need to get out of here. They might be getting ready to assault us at any minute.”

  “Hold your horses. The man wants to talk. So let him talk.”

  “There’s nothing for you out there,” Winston said. He didn’t bother acknowledging Pressley, holding the Glock behind him.

  “Your people are out there.”

  “I’m talking about beyond the city. Even if you make it out of here, we’ll hunt you down. You made an enemy of us tonight, Keo. Out of me. You’re going to live to regret that. For however long that lasts.”

  “Seems like that’s what I do best these days. Make enemies. Right, Pressley?”

  Pressley smirked at him over Winston’s shoulder.

  “You shouldn’t have made this one,” Winston said. “You won’t survive it. You’ll just live long enough to regret it.”

  “Not the first time someone’s said that to me. But I’m still here.”

  “For
now.”

  “How’s the head?”

  “You said you weren’t one of them…”

  “I’m not.”

  “And then you did this.”

  “I don’t shoot unarmed women. Even Ms. Do It over here.”

  “What did you call me?” Pressley said.

  “Pressley.”

  “You didn’t say Pressley.”

  “Of course I did. Get your ears checked.”

  Pressley narrowed her eyes at him but didn’t say anything.

  Keo ignored her and said to Winston, “I made a choice. That’s really the only thing any of us can do these days. Make a choice and live with it.”

  “You’re right, you did make a choice,” Winston said. “But it was the wrong one.”

  “Not the first time, either, and probably not even close to being the last.”

  “You do that a lot? Make bad choices?”

  “More than I’m willing to admit, alas.”

  “Come on, let’s go,” Pressley said impatiently. “The more we stand around here chatting, the more chances his people have of coming down and discovering us.”

  “She’s got a point,” Keo said to Winston. Then, looking past the Cordine City man and at Pressley, “Try not to shoot me in the back.”

  Pressley smiled back at him. “I’ll do my best.”

  Was that a “I’m fucking with you” smile or a “Why don’t you turn around and find out, dumbass?” smile?

  Keo sighed, thought, I guess we’ll find out, and turned around.

  He pulled open the door a second time and looked out at a still-empty corridor.

  This can’t be right. Where are they? Where are the men with guns trying to stop me from leaving?

  Keo waited for those men to charge around the corner, armed to the hilt, but they never came. Not after he waited ten seconds, and not after thirty seconds.

  Around the minute mark, Pressley said, “Well?”

  Keo shook his head and took his first tentative steps outside. Despite his best attempts, he couldn’t get rid of the negative thoughts swirling around in his head.

  This can’t be right. Can it?

  Is this really going to be easier than I thought?