The Isles of Elysium

CHAPTER 10

His captor was in his late twenties and maybe just a year or two younger than Keo himself. He learned this useless fact while they were moving through the woods when the man wiped the camo off his face with a rag that he then stuffed into his back pocket. The wiring that had snared Keo was now binding his hands in front of him, the thin piece of steel digging into his wrists, just deep enough to hurt but not draw blood.

Keo walked up front, moving slowly because he had no idea where he was going and a part of him was afraid of stepping into another trap. From the looks of the man keeping a decent distance behind him, rifle no doubt pointed right at Keo’s back, he had been out here for some time setting up plenty of snares. The damn thing had been strong enough to hold him suspended, so either the man was looking for big game or he was hunting humans. The only other option was that he was hoping to catch something that used to be human, but that didn’t really make much sense in the daylight.

They were definitely moving deeper into the woods because the canopies were getting thicker and the temperature was continuing to fall around him. Keo kept sneaking a look at the darker parts of his surroundings, the places where shadows lingered, and imagined black eyes watching him back. He might have shivered and hoped his captor didn’t notice.

“What’re they for?” Keo asked.

“What?” the man said. He moved quietly, almost like a cat. No wonder Keo had never known he was hiding nearby.

“The snare. What was it for?”

There was no response, just the crunch-crunch of shoes over brittle grass. Keo couldn’t see the man’s face, so he didn’t know if he didn’t want to answer or if he just didn’t feel like talking.

“Humans?” Keo said anyway. “Or things that used to be humans? Is that it? You trying to snag yourself a ghoul?”

“Ghoul?” the man said.

“The creatures.”

“You call them ghouls, too?”

‘Too’? Keo thought. Curiouser and curiouser.

“So do you, apparently,” he said.

There was no response that time.

“Where are we going?” Keo asked.

“You’ll know when we get there.”

“What if I walk right into a hole and fall down or something?”

“I guess you better watch your step, then.”

Keo smiled. “I’m Keo, by the way.”

“Good for you.”

“You got a name?”

“Yes.”

“Wanna share?”

“Nope.”

“Don’t be that way. I have to call you something.”

Silence.

Keo sighed. “This is how misunderstandings get started, you know.”

“There’s no misunderstanding,” the man said. “You set us up.”

“I didn’t set anyone up. You ambushed me. The sniper-”

“Bullshit.” Then, “Turn left here.”

Keo turned left, though there were still no trails, old footsteps, or anything that would indicate this was a well-traveled route. So what exactly was his captor using to tell directions? Or maybe the guy was making it up as he went. That seemed unlikely, though.

“He’s out there with his men,” Jack had told him.

“Where exactly?” he had asked.

“If we knew, you think we’d need you to go out there to find him for us?” Jack had laughed. “They’re all over those woods on the other side of the river. We could never pin them down. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had some hillbilly survivalists among them.”

Hillbilly survivalists. Like the one behind him right now? His no-name captor didn’t really sound like someone who had spent most of his life in the wilderness. Or the hills. Or wherever the hell Texas hillbillies came from. Not that Keo would know the difference anyway. He didn’t meet many hillbillies growing up in San Diego and had managed to avoid them in the years since. Though, he had crossed paths with a few in the French countryside that might fit the description-

Focus.

Keo figured he had until they reached wherever they were going to get out of this jam. If he met Tobias with his hands bound and weaponless, he was likely as good as dead. The man walking behind him had made it pretty clear they thought he was responsible for the ambush at the warehouse. Even the woman on the radio had indicated the same thing.

“Bring him in. He’s got a lot to answer for,” she had said.

As if he were the one who had tried to pick off some poor sap with a sniper rifle and not the other way around. As if he had run into the warehouse so Steve’s men could then corral his pursuers and blast away with an M60. Of course, he had a feeling they weren’t going to believe him when he tried to sell that story. Never mind that it was the God’s honest truth.

Just his luck. The first time he had truth on his side, and it wasn’t going to do him a lick of good.

“What’s he like?” Keo asked.

He didn’t expect an answer, but his captor said, “Who?”

I guess he feels like talking after all.

“Tobias,” Keo said.

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Give me a hint.”

“Keep walking.”

“One more question…”

“Shut up.”

“You a hillbilly?”

“What?” the man said. Keo grinned at the insulted tone. “What did you just call me, Chinaman?”

“Hillbilly. I was told there were Texas hillbillies all over these woods. I was just wondering if you were one of them.”

“Fuck you.”

“Whoa whoa, let’s keep it civil, okay? I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being a hillbilly. Even a Texas one. No judgments here, pal.”

“Man, I’m getting real sick of the sound of your voice.”

His captor had picked up his pace. Keo knew that from the slight increase in the sound of the man’s footsteps. He was getting closer…

“It was a genuine question,” Keo said.

“Shut your mouth.”

“Is Tobias a hillbilly, too?”

“I said, shut up.”

He sounded much closer that time. Much closer.

“Can I ask you a question?” Keo said.

“No.”

“Is it true that hillbillies inbreed?”

Keo was waiting for it, and when it finally came-the cold touch of the rifle’s barrel starting to poke him viciously in the back of the neck-he dropped down, spun around, and swept his right leg from front to back in a wide arc. His captor went down and squeezed the trigger at the same time. The gunshot exploded, scattering birds in the vicinity, the buzz! of the bullet passing over Keo’s head.

The man landed on his butt with an oomph!, but somehow still managed to cling onto the rifle. Keo lunged forward and drove his knee into the man’s face, slamming the back of his head into the ground. The gun fired again, the second shot buzzing past Keo’s right shoulder this time and shattering a tree branch behind him.

Before the man could pull the trigger a third time, Keo leaped on top of him, driving both knees into his chest. His captor let out a surprised grunt as Keo captured the rifle’s barrel with his bound palms and wrenched it free. He tossed it, then lifted himself slightly before dropping back down with his entire weight. Another loud grunt, the man’s eyes flaring, his lips twisting in intense concentration-

The knife. A big monstrous thing with a gleaming metal blade like something out of the Jim Bowie collection was coming out of the man’s sheath along his hip.

Aw, crap.

Keo dove to the other side-away from the knife-and slipped his arms over the man’s head until he had the steel wire binding his wrists positioned in front of his captor’s neck. Keo shoved the heels of his boots into the ground and pulled back even as the man whaled desperately at his arms with one balled fist while trying to swipe blindly at his head with the knife.

Keo didn’t let go and didn’t relinquish pressure on his victim. He held on through the convulsions, the kicking and punching and slashing against empty air. He only lessened his stranglehold when the body in front of him finally relaxed, the knife hand dropped to the ground, and the man stopped struggling.

He sighed and finally pulled his arms up and rolled away and lay on the damp ground for a moment to catch his breath. Clear white skies poked through massive tree branches above him, so he still had plenty of time.

He finally sat back up and rolled over and reached for his captor’s neck, feeling for a pulse. Weak, but present. He hadn’t been trying to kill the guy, just cut off his oxygen; but that was a fine line to tread and it was difficult to show finesse with his hands bound.

But the guy was still alive, and that was all that mattered. Keo had a feeling he was going to need a guide to find Tobias.

Find the girl. Kill some guys. Live happily ever after.

If all went well, he’d only have to kill one guy. God knew he’d had to do a hell of a lot worse and for much less.

*

“What’s your name?” Keo asked.

The man blinked at him, the long red stripe across his neck like a glow-in-the-dark scar against the black and green of his shirt collar. His nose was broken at the bridge, and Keo had stuffed some pieces of wadded cloth he’d cut off the man’s shirt using the Jim Bowie knife into his nostrils to stop the bleeding.

“Look, I need to call you something, right?” Keo said.

The man seemed to think about it for a moment. Finally, he said, “Wyatt.”

“See, there you go. Now we’re friends.” Keo smiled. “Well, close enough. So, where do I find Tobias, Wyatt?”

Wyatt didn’t answer. He sat on the ground with his back against the tree, the same strand of steel wire that had been biting into Keo’s wrists earlier now binding his hands in his lap. Keo had taken back his MP5SD, Glock, and pack, and tossed Wyatt’s rifle into a nearby brush and taken the man’s Smith amp; Wesson semiautomatic.

Keo glanced at his watch: 2:56 P.M.

“Tobias?” Wyatt said. “You mean you want to find Tobias?”

“Uh huh.”

“Why?”

“I have a message for him.”

“A message?”

He could see Wyatt trying to read him and not doing a very subtle job of it.

“Yeah, a message,” Keo said. “Like one of those singing telegrams. That’s me. Except I’m not a very good singer. But I can hum pretty good.”

That elicited a confused look.

“Joke,” Keo said.

“Oh.”

“So where’s Tobias?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

Wyatt shook his head.

“You do realize that you were taking me to him a moment ago, right?” Keo said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No?”

“No.”

Keo sighed and slung his submachine gun and drew the Glock. He pointed it at Wyatt’s kneecap and squinted behind the sight.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Wyatt said, suddenly alarmed.

“I’m going to shoot you in the kneecap.”

“Why the hell you gonna do that?”

Keo looked up at him. “To get you to tell me where Tobias is. Duh. I know it’s going to hurt, but trust me, I’ve had experience with this. I once shot a guy in the kneecap while we were both on a boat. He was perfectly happy to assist me after that.”

“Hey hey, come on now.”

“Hold still. It won’t hurt. Okay, that’s a lie. It’s definitely going to hurt a lot.”

“Don’t, okay?”

Keo pulled back a second time. “Why not?”

“I…” Wyatt’s eyes darted behind Keo, as if he expected someone to come out of the woods at any moment and rescue him. When no one did, he said, “I’ll take you to him. Just…don’t shoot me in the leg.”

“I was going to shoot you in the kneecap.”

“Yeah, don’t shoot me there, either.”

Keo stood up and holstered the Glock. “See? Now we’re almost best friends.”

Wyatt sighed and stood up, using the tree behind him for support.

“How far away are we?” Keo asked, even though he thought he already knew the answer. Wyatt had fired two shots, and no one had showed up in the last ten minutes. That meant the camp wasn’t close by.

“Not far,” Wyatt said. “Maybe another hour by foot.”

“You guys have vehicles?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t hear any earlier.”

“We’re pretty deep in the woods. We’ll have to start circling back toward the road.”

Keo nodded. “So you do know where you’re going.”

“Yeah.”

“Lead the way, then. Just keep in mind that I’m not against cutting short our burgeoning friendship, Wyatt.”

Wyatt grunted and started off, moving in the same path they had been going earlier. Keo noticed the man’s head turning slightly left and right. Wyatt probably thought he was being slick, that Keo wouldn’t catch the movements. He was, of course, looking for his weapons, the same ones Keo had tossed earlier. Keo decided not to tell him that he was looking in the wrong direction.

“What does he look like?” Keo asked. “Tobias.”

“He’s a guy,” Wyatt said.

“Really? And here I thought he was a bear.”

Wyatt snorted. “What do you want with him, anyway?”

“I’m going to ask him to friend me.”

“Friend you?”

“You know, like on Facebook.”

“You have Facebook?”

Keo smiled. “Joke, Wyatt. Just a joke.”

“Oh,” Wyatt said, and Keo thought he sounded just a little too sad when he said it.

*

They walked through the woods for another ten minutes, then fifteen, and though Wyatt insisted they were moving back to the road, Keo couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. After a while, Keo was sure Wyatt was leading him to a dead end, that maybe the guy never knew where he was going in the first place and was just hoping to stave off getting shot for as long as possible.

After about an hour of pointlessly stumbling around one identical section of woods after another, Keo was about to stop Wyatt and use the bullet-in-the-kneecap as incentive when he saw sunlight filtering in through a wall of trees in front of them.

He grabbed Wyatt by the shirt collar and jerked him back roughly, then deposited him to the ground. “Stay, boy.”

Keo stepped forward with the MP5SD at the ready and looked out.

They’d slowly been angling back toward civilization after all, and he was now looking out at a strip mall with a Valero gas station and a row of businesses on the other side of a two-lane road. On the other side was a strip mall with a Valero gas station and a row of businesses in the back. Sunlight glinted off the barrel of a rifle just barely visible on the rooftop of a Wilmont Mutual Insurance office building. The shooter’s head poked up briefly before disappearing again behind a cut-out picture of the Statue of Liberty.

Keo scanned the rest of the buildings and saw a second, then a third man, the two stationed at opposite ends of the connecting rooftops. They were watching the streets and surrounding area with an alertness that told Keo they were waiting for an impending attack. The rest of the strip mall looked deceptively empty, but Keo didn’t buy it.

Behind him, Wyatt was picking himself up from the ground when Keo grabbed him by the shirt collar and walked his former captor back to the tree line.

“Your friends?” he asked.

Wyatt nodded.

“Why here?” Keo asked. “Why are they still hanging around so close to the ambush site?”

“Maybe that’s what we want.”

“Come again?”

“Tobias isn’t stupid.”

“Go on…”

“Maybe he wants the people from T18 to try to hit him again.”

“You’re saying this is a trap? Tit for tat, is that it?”

Wyatt shrugged.

“How many men do you have left?” Keo asked, looking back out at the sentry perched behind Lady Liberty as the man raised his head briefly to glance down the street before ducking back down.

“I don’t know,” Wyatt said.

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t know how many made it back from the ambush. I was inside the woods, remember? That’s my job. Scout the area for signs of movement coming and going from the town and report back. I wasn’t even supposed to be involved until the shooting started. Then you just ran right at me.”

Keo still couldn’t spot any movements behind any of the storefront windows, but that didn’t mean the buildings were empty. If this was a trap, an attempt to lure Steve’s people into a payback ambush, the shooters would be hiding and waiting to strike.

Clever dogs.

“Is Tobias in there?” he asked.

“I guess,” Wyatt said.

“You guess?”

“They told me to bring you here, so I guess he’s in there, somewhere.”

“Makes sense,” Keo nodded.

“So what happens now?”

“Give me a second.”

“I mean, to me.” Wyatt sighed. “Tobias won’t be happy that I led you right to him.”

“He told you to take me to him, didn’t he? Why wouldn’t he be happy that you did exactly as ordered?”

That seemed to confuse Wyatt temporarily. “I guess…”

“Besides,” Keo said, “I just want to talk to the guy. Sit down and have a chat. Maybe over some warm beers-”

Snap!

Keo spun around-a difficult feat, since he was still half-crouched-in time to see two figures emerging from behind a thick brush. They were both huge men, their faces painted in camo like Wyatt earlier (More of Tobias’s scouts, Keo thought). More importantly, they were both armed and by the look on their faces, they were equally surprised to see him.

“Fuck!” one of them shouted, even as he lifted his rifle-an M4 with a red dot scope on top.

Keo was wondering how the hell had they gotten so close without him hearing them until now even as he jerked Wyatt in front of him. Wyatt gasped and tensed up as he realized what was happening. Keo abandoned the MP5SD-it was too long, making it too cumbersome for what he had in mind-and drew his Glock and jammed the barrel under Wyatt’s chin at an angle.

“What the fuck is this?” the same man shouted. Then he added, as if he couldn’t quite believe it, “Wyatt?”

“Don’t shoot!” Wyatt shouted. “Don’t fucking shoot!”

“Yeah, listen to him,” Keo said.

“Fuck!” the second man shouted, pointing his bolt-action rifle at Keo. Or trying to, with Wyatt in the way.

Keo smiled. The constant barrage of profanity was amusing to him for some reason. He just hoped the sight of him hiding behind Wyatt, his Glock against the man’s chin, was enough to keep them from squeezing their triggers. Either the M4 or the bolt-action could do some serious damage at this distance. Which was to say, if someone fired, he was a dead man. Really, really dead.

The two scouts shuffled their feet, not sure whether to move forward, back, or side to side; or just stand there and keep their weapons pointed at him. Keo was just glad no one had fired a shot yet even though he realized all the screaming might have already drawn attention from the strip mall behind him.

He threw a quick look back, out past the trees and into the streets, and sure enough there was movement at one of the buildings. The Wilmont Mutual Insurance office doors were opening and people were pouring out. Armed people.

Goddammit, I hate it when I’m right.

He looked back at the two men in front of him. Like Wyatt, they were wearing hunting clothes, and one of them had blood splatters along his pant legs and shirtsleeve. The blood looked fresh, too.

“Come on,” Keo said to Wyatt, pulling him slightly to the right.

Both men quickly followed, their rifles never leaving him.

“Where the fuck you going?” one of them shouted. Keo didn’t know why he was still shouting.

He had a good point, though. Where the fuck was he going? Not front. Not side to side. And certainly not back-

Dammit. There was nowhere to go but back.

He tightened his left hand around Wyatt’s neck, then began dragging the other man backward. He felt the warmth of the sun splash against his back almost as soon as he stepped outside the woods and into the overgrown grass jungle.

The sound of heavy footsteps overwhelmed everything else, and Keo spun around briefly, Wyatt still in front of him, to face at least six men running in his direction with rifles swinging in front of them. They were just about to cross the parking lot when they saw him, slid to a stop, and took aim.

Great. Now instead of two guys with rifles, he was staring at six.

Six? It was more like nine, because the three guards on the rooftops were now training their rifles on him, too. That prompted Keo to press his body even tighter against Wyatt’s. Thank God Wyatt was around six foot, which was just an inch shorter than Keo.

“Don’t shoot!” Wyatt was shouting. “Don’t anyone shoot, for Christ’s sake!”

There you go, Wyatt. Keep at it, pal.

The fresh sounds of footsteps behind him forced Keo to drag Wyatt south along the shoulder of the road. The two scouts burst out of the tree line to the left of him a second later. Now he had men with guns at two directions-front and from the right.

They kept pace with him as he pulled Wyatt southward, and they stopped when he stopped. That lasted for a few seconds until a couple of them got smart and ran further down the street before crossing over to outflank him.

He stopped, now with men on all three sides and just the woods behind him.

The woods. He could probably get lost in there. He could always come back later and find Tobias. Steve didn’t say anything about killing Tobias today. There was no timetable, there was just the job.

Yeah, that could work.

Of course, he was assuming the pissed-off looking men with guns-half of them haggard, their civilian clothes splashed with blood-would let him just back up into the trees without a fight. That was a pretty big if right there, but what the hell, it wasn’t like he had much of a choice at the moment.

“Get ready,” Keo said.

“What?” Wyatt said.

“Get ready to move.”

“Christ, you’re going to get us killed!”

“Shut up and get ready-”

“Don’t shoot!” someone shouted. It was a woman. He thought she sounded like the one that had talked to Wyatt over the radio earlier. “No one goddamn shoots!”

She pushed a couple of men out of her way and jogged across the street toward him. He watched her closely from behind Wyatt’s head, doing his best to expose as little of himself as possible to the shooters. He just hoped the riflemen on the rooftops were as bad a shot as the one that had tried to take him out earlier.

“Jesus Christ,” the woman said. “It really is you. I was pretty sure you were dead.”

Keo blinked once, twice.

The sun was in his eyes, but there was no mistaking who the woman was. She’d cut her hair short and the boots made her look taller-and she had been pretty tall to begin with-but it was definitely her.

Of all the people that had escaped on Mark’s boat, she would have been the one he’d put money on surviving. Besides, Gillian had made it, so why not her, too? Despite what Steve had told him about her and Mark dying when his men first encountered them, a part of him never really believed it.

“Well, shit,” Keo said.

She stopped a few feet away and seemed to sigh with a mixture of frustration and annoyance. “What kind of name is Keo, anyway?”

He smiled. “Donnie was taken.”

She smiled back, then held out her hand toward him. “Give me the gun, Keo, before someone loses their shit and we all end up dead.”

“Can I trust you?”

“I don’t think you have much of a choice right now, do you?”

Good point, he thought, and took the gun away from Wyatt’s chin and held it out to her. “So what now?”

“Now you meet Tobias,” Jordan said.