“Why Dave?”
“Dave killed his brother, before he came here.”
“Oh.”
“So you’ll be fine. He has no choice but to let you and Jay off the hook.”
“Assuming you’re right…”
“I am,” he said, thinking, Christ, I hope I’m right.
“Assuming you’re right,” she said anyway, “then what about you? You said he would come after you.”
“Don’t worry about me. Just worry about yourself.” He put a hand on her belly. “And him. Or her.”
“By the way it’s kicking, it’s probably a him.”
“Either way, I know you’ll be a great mother.”
She tried to smile. “I’m never going to see you again, am I?”
Thunder crackled outside and lightning flashed, illuminating the lawn for a brief moment. Instead of slowing down, it sounded like the rain was increasing, as if everything up till now had just been a prelude to the real storm that was coming.
“Of course you will,” Keo said. “I’ll come around on the holidays to say hi. Bring gifts for the little slugger.”
She tried to laugh it off before looking back at Jay. He wasn’t paying attention to them; or if he was, he was hiding it well.
Gillian looked back at Keo and reached up and caressed his cheek, the one with the scar. He leaned into her palm, enjoying the warmth of her skin against his.
“Time to go,” he said.
He was drenched from head to boot as soon as he stepped outside the house. By the time he had traveled the short distance from the door to the driveway where the golf cart was sitting, he was pretty sure he had gained five extra pounds just from his clothes absorbing all the rainwater.
And the cold. Jesus Christ on a stick, it was cold.
Keo didn’t know if his heart was racing so hard because he was anticipating gunshots to come out of the darkness around him, or if the organ was trying to pump enough blood to the rest of his body so he wouldn’t freeze to death. There was nothing out there but a murky black pool of nothing, the LED lights barely having any effect against the unrelenting elements.
There was one bright spot (Ha ha, “bright” spot, get it?): If he couldn’t see anything, there was a good chance no one out there could see him, either. And in this weather, only the really dedicated would be out hunting Dave and Jordan. What were the chances that described a lot of Steve’s “soldiers”?
If there were still people moving around in the streets, he couldn’t see them. Then again, he couldn’t see much of anything except the twenty or so feet in front of him at the moment. The solar-powered garden lights were little more than white dots in the darkness and he stepped off the walkway twice, his boots soaking up more water and drenching the socks inside as a result, before finding the driveway in all the nothingness.
When he finally reached the vehicle and no one had fired a shot yet, Keo breathed easier, though he still couldn’t quite make his teeth stop their chattering. He was pretty sure they were snapping so fast and furious that there was a good chance he might end up biting his own tongue off by accident.
Death by chattering. Now that would be a hell of a way to go.
Fortunately, he still had his tongue when he climbed into the cart and turned the key. The raindrops landing on the solar panels above him sounded like machine-gun fire, which wasn’t quite the imagery he needed at the moment.
Keo stepped on the gas pedal and spun the wheel, aiming the slow-moving vehicle toward the front door of Gillian’s house. He turned around, then reversed into position, going up the slight step until half of the cart was out of the rain.
The door opened behind him and Dave came out with Jordan. He was carrying her on one side while Gillian, protruding belly and all, had the other. Keo had expected Jay and was taken aback to see the pregnant Gillian hobbling out of the door with Dave. Jordan was mummified in a thick black parka, the hood zipped up and covering almost the entire lower half of her face.
Dave carried the backpack he had brought with him, along with Owen’s M4. Keo had Ronny’s rifle along with his raincoat and gun belt.
“In the back!” Keo said. He had to shout to be heard over the pak-pak-pak of rain around them.
Keo grabbed Jordan’s unconscious form from Gillian, who stood back and watched him and Dave put her into the backseat. Dave slid in next to her unresponsive body, then slipped both arms around Jordan to keep her upright.
When Dave had secured Jordan in the back with him, Keo turned to Gillian.
She stood looking back at him in the doorway, trembling arms folded across her chest for warmth. Water dripped down her long raven hair, and despite the semidarkness, he was drawn to her green eyes.
Keo glanced past her and into the house, but there was no sign of Jay, though Owen and Ronny still lay where they had fallen. He turned back to Gillian, who had put on a pink bathrobe and looked every bit like the housewife she had become. But he easily pierced through that charade and saw the woman he had survived the end of the world with, who he had been trying, all this time, to get back to.
He opened his mouth to say something, but she shook her head and shouted over the rain, “I’ll see you again very soon.”
He nodded. “Soon.”
“Go,” she said, just as thunder boomed in the background and lightning lit up her face for a fraction of a second.
He turned to go when she reached out and grabbed his hand. He turned back around and she was there, pressing up against him with her body and her mouth. He inhaled in her scent and tasted her lips and forgot all about the cold.
For a while, anyway—until she pulled away and smiled.
He smiled back (it came out much easier than he had expected) before letting go of her hand and turning around and climbing into the golf cart.
He removed the M4 and leaned it across the dashboard within easy reach. He didn’t look back at her but instead used the rearview mirror. She hadn’t moved and stood shivering in the doorway, watching him back.
Keo stepped on the gas and the cart hummed to life and started moving, taking him, Jordan, and Dave back into the hellacious storm.
Book Three
The Last Boat
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Dave said from the backseat of the golf cart. He had to shout, or else Keo wouldn’t have been able to hear him over the pouring rain.
No, but what the hell choice do we have?
“Yeah, sure,” he said instead. “If there’s shooting, stay low and keep Jordan safe.”
“You can’t drive and shoot.”
“This isn’t even remotely close to driving. This is sitting in a slow-moving piece of crap. Just keep her head down.”
“And mine.”
“Yeah, you too.”
Dave smirked at him in the rearview mirror. He had every right to be concerned, because Keo himself was concerned. There was nothing about riding through a rainstorm in a slow-moving golf cart that made him feel like he was going to survive the night.
The structural husks around him—homes that were supposed to be occupied—didn’t help to convince him this was going to end very well for him, Dave, and Jordan. A few lights from a window here and there managed to peek through the unending cascade of rain, but for the most part the houses might as well be abandoned.
The streets were no different. Water flooded the roads, threatening to overwhelm the cart’s small tires. Keo felt like he might lose control of the steering wheel at any second, that at any moment he might hit a large puddle and end up flowing backward with the current.
This must be what it feels like to ride the Titanic after it hit the iceberg…
…only less fun.
It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t so goddamn cold. He had been soaked to the bone for so long that he didn’t remember the last time he wasn’t shivering uncontrollably. If not for the fact he was gripping the wheel with both hands, his arms might have been shaking l
ike a crackhead in need of a fix.
The only other sensation was the tap-tap-tap against the back of his seat: Dave’s feet kicking, probably involuntarily. He just hoped the extra clothes swaddling Jordan, along with Dave’s body heat, were enough to keep her from freezing to death. There was absolutely no guarantee she would wake up at all. Depending on how the next few minutes went, Keo might wish he were shot up with drugs, too.
He glanced up at the rearview mirror but could only see two black lumps huddled against one another, forming a single shape in the backseat. They were both wearing dark clothes, which helped to keep them somewhat invisible—
Shit.
Two figures, standing outside a house at the corner of the street to his right. He only managed to make them out because the homeowner was holding an LED lamp, and the bright light illuminated all three figures against the open door.
Keo kept both hands on the steering wheel but made a mental note of how far the M4 rifle was from his hand as he continued driving up the street.
They must have caught the barely visible headlights of the golf cart or heard the splashing of tires against the flooded road, because they both turned their heads in his direction. He couldn’t have made out their faces if he wanted to, even though they were barely twenty meters from his position. He kept the cart moving steadily forward, not that he really had any choice. The only other options were to take his foot off the gas pedal and slow down, or—
Well, that was it. He already had the pedal pushing against the floor. The damn vehicle was just slow.
As he passed them by, one of the soldiers turned back to talk to the civilian, but the other one continued to look after him. Keo stared forward and kept going, but as soon as he was on the other side of the intersected street, he glanced at his passenger-side mirror and saw the soldiers going into the house.
Close one.
He wondered if Dave had seen them or if he was too busy trying not to freeze to death in the back. Since Dave hadn’t said anything, it was probably the latter.
They were halfway to the front gate now, and he was feeling a lot better. Not that he thought they were any closer to making it out of T18 alive, though he had settled on the odds of them exiting the subdivision at slightly under forty percent. The presence of those two soldiers had knocked those odds down some, but having passed them, he thought forty percent was probably about right.
I’ve had worse odds.
As the golf cart churned on, splashing an ungodly amount of water in its path, Keo upped his chances of surviving Texas at around forty-five percent.
What the hell. He was feeling a little optimistic these days.
The last time he approached the front gate of T18A1, with Grant in the driver seat, the two soldiers manning it were too busy trying not to catch a cold in the guard booth and had left the gate open.
This time, Keo wasn’t so lucky.
It took all his willpower not to pick up the M4 and start shooting. He didn’t do it because he had gotten lucky with Owen and Ronny inside Gillian’s house, but out here there were no walls to help suppress the sound of gunshots. And he remembered the two soldiers he had passed earlier; there was no telling how many others were still walking around the subdivision, going house to house.
He was twenty meters from the heavy gate—way too heavy to ram; hell, the cart would crumble long before he could force that hulking metal barrier open—when the guards spotted him. It was likely the soft glow of his headlights, which despite not being all that bright was the only thing lit up around the area and wasn’t difficult to pick out.
One of the guards hurried out of the booth, bent slightly at the waist as if that would save him from the slashing rain. The man had his M4 slung over his shoulder, which told Keo he wasn’t on high alert.
Keo stopped ten meters from the gate and reached down and took out the Glock, then placed it in his lap. He kept his right hand on the gun while holding the highest point of the steering wheel with his left so the guard could see it.
The guard moved toward him, shielding his eyes with one hand against the sheets of rain that seemed to be coming at them sideways now. The wind had also picked up and the man’s raincoat was pressed against one side of his body, and it looked like he was doing everything possible not to be picked up and blown into the night sky. It didn’t help that he was tall and lanky.
“Open the fucking gate!” Keo shouted with all the indignation he could muster.
Behind him, Dave must have finally realized where they were and stirred. Or, at least, Keo assumed he was moving back there, because Jordan’s protector gave the front seat one involuntary hard kick before going suddenly very still.
The soldier stopped at the sound of Keo’s voice, and still peering from underneath one hand, shouted back, “What?”
“I said open the gate, you moron!” Keo shouted over the pak-pak-pak of rain. “We’re freezing our asses off out here!”
The soldier hesitated. He glanced back at his partner, but the man remained hidden inside the shack with a small LED light of some sort hanging above him. With no help coming, the soldier started moving toward the golf cart again.
“Are you deaf?” Keo shouted when the man was five meters away. “You new here or something? Open the gate!”
The man was close enough now that Keo could see he was very young, his face just barely illuminated by the weak headlights.
“The golf cart,” Keo wanted to shout. “Respect the golf cart, you little prick!”
Keo glared at the soldier like he expected something better, like he belonged and this kid was screwing up—
That might have done it.
The soldier looked back one more time before shouting, “Sorry, sir!” and rushed back up the street to the gate.
Sonofabitch. That actually worked.
Keo loosened his grip on the Glock but kept it in his lap, his chest thrumming a thousand miles per second and giving his chattering teeth a run for its money.
“Oh, fuck me,” Dave whispered behind him. Loudly, too, because Keo could hear him over the storm. “I can’t believe that worked. You fucking maniac.”
Keo grinned and put both hands on the steering wheel. He stepped on the pedal and the cart moved forward.
The soldier pushed the heavy black metal gate aside as Keo drove through, halfway out of there before the gate had even fully opened. The soldier looked after them as Keo turned left as soon as he was able and pointed them down the road, back toward the marina.
“This isn’t going to work!” Dave shouted.
“Shut up!” he shouted back. “It’ll work!”
“We’re just going to drive up there and take one of the boats? And they’re just going to let us?”
“Yes,” Keo said, and thought, Or die trying, but he didn’t add that part because he didn’t think Dave needed to know he had adjusted their chances of surviving tonight back down to forty percent…ish.
Oh, who was he kidding? It was more like thirty-five, considering how desolate and empty the world looked at the moment. If he thought the almost invisible houses in the subdivision were unnerving, it was nothing compared to driving through the wide-open fields that were teeming with people earlier today. The crops looked as if they were being physically assaulted by the rain, most of the corn stalks pummeled to the ground while water flooded the row after row of carefully arranged soil.
The only reason the golf cart wasn’t already floating instead of grinding down the road on its four small tires was because the pavement was slightly elevated, but that wasn’t going to last very long. Before midnight, every street and road in T18 was going to be under water. So he wasn’t terribly surprised by the lack of soldiers out here. Besides the fact that Dave and Jordan’s last known trails led into the subdivisions, anyone foolish enough to hide among the fields wouldn’t survive the night anyway. Drowning out there was a very real possibility.
Somewhere between the near-miss at the gate and his present location, Keo
had lost track of time and didn’t know how long they had been on the road. They must have been close to the marina because he glimpsed the water tower to his right, on the other side of another large field of crops. It was too dark and visibility was nonexistent, and he could just barely make out the rocket-like shape and the round top—never mind if there were any guards still braving the horrid weather up there.
He was wary about having to deal with extra guns, but maybe he was giving Steve’s “soldiers” too much credit. Sure, the tower made for a great sniper’s perch, but it was going to take a hell of a good shooter to hit something in this weather. If, that is, someone was still up there at the moment.
He guessed he’d find out soon enough.
Not that he had any choice, anyway. The marina was the only way out. Or, more specifically, the boats docked there. He needed one of them. The faster the vessel, the better, but he’d settle for something with enough gas to get him…where? It didn’t matter. He’d figure it out once he was in the river. Until then, it was all theory anyway.
There were enough lights along the power poles to keep him from running off the road and into the overflowing ditches to both sides of him. Meanwhile, the rain had decided to bypass the cart’s roof entirely and was now hitting him from the side. Keo wished he had grabbed an extra blanket for himself and hoped Jordan, back there with Dave, didn’t die of hypothermia first.
He slowed down when he saw the guard shack next to the marina gate coming up. He couldn’t actually see the structure, just the faded glow of two LED lamps hanging on the other side of what he assumed was a closed window.
The last time he had been driven through by Jack, there were four men with rifles manning the gate. What were the chances Steve had pulled some of them to help with the search? Because if all four had remained behind, this was going to be a very short escape attempt. Keo could see himself outgunning two—maybe even three—if he was really, really lucky, but four? That was asking for too much, especially tonight when he could barely feel his fingers despite the fact he had both hands clutching the steering wheel in a deathlike grip.
The Purge of Babylon Series Box Set, Vol. 2 | Books 4-6 Page 113