The Isles of Elysium

CHAPTER 14

“You don’t have to do this,” Keo said for the third time since they left the YMCA behind and began the trek back to T18. That was almost an hour ago.

“Shut up,” she said.

“I’m serious. I can do this on my own. I have the ring of power. Its gaudiness will be more than enough to strike down the bad guys.”

She smirked. “You don’t even know if it’s going to work.”

“Tobias seemed to think it will.”

“It’s been months since he talked to Miller. People can change a lot these days. You, of all people, should know that.”

They walked in silence for another few minutes, passing parts of the woods that he didn’t recognize from yesterday. Jordan was leading the way because she was more familiar with the area, and according to her, just as it didn’t pay to stay in the same place for too long, it wasn’t smart to travel the same path more than once if they could help it. She knew better, so he deferred to her experience.

“So what’s the plan?” Jordan asked. “You’re just going to walk up and hand the ring to Miller and ask him to pretty please give you Gillian?”

“You act like that’s a bad plan.”

“It’s a stupid plan. He didn’t expect you to survive yesterday. He practically dangled you so we’d expose ourselves.”

Jordan had a point, but Keo knew men like Miller. They were cunning and dangerous, but also vain. When presented with the opportunity to take a prize like Tobias’s state championship ring and lose nothing in return, would Miller really turn it down? Keo didn’t think so. Which was good, because he was going to put his life on the line for that belief.

Solid plan, pal. You just forgot the part where everything turns to shitburgers and you get killed.

“About Gillian,” Keo said. “You never told me what happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“T18. You left and she didn’t. You never told me why.”

“We talked about it more times than I could count, and I thought she was going to leave with me.” She looked momentarily lost in thought, maybe reliving all those conversations with Gillian. “But when the time came, I left and she stayed behind.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her when you see her again.”

“And she hasn’t tried to leave since?”

Jordan shook her head. “I sent her messages using one of our inside guys, but she never answered. The only thing left would have been to get our guy to approach her, and I didn’t want to risk exposing him like that in case-”

She didn’t finish.

“In case of what?” Keo asked. When she still didn’t say anything, “Jordan.”

“You’ll have to ask her when you see her again,” was all she would say.

“Jordan…”

“She was different in the weeks leading up to the escape. To this day I don’t know what happened, but when the time came, I was the only one who left. Only she can say why.”

He thought about pressing the issue, but one look at her and he knew he wasn’t going to get far. If anything, it would probably piss her off.

So he asked instead, “How long have you been running around out there with Tobias’s gang?”

“Three months. It feels like three years. Time has a way of slipping by out here.”

They walked on, moving as quickly as they could without making too much noise. Keo caught a couple of squirrels sitting on a branch nearby watching them pass, and he grinned. He had a long and glorious history with squirrels.

“So, these people on Song Island,” Jordan said after a while. “They sound like good people.”

“Sure, if you don’t mind all the crazy shit they do.”

“Hunh.”

He gave her a curious look. “Meaning?”

She had walked on in front of him, but he pictured her smiling to herself when she said, “You calling someone else crazy. That’s a good one.”

He grunted. “You haven’t met these people. They’re all nuts.”

“I’d still like to meet them one of these days. Especially Lara.”

“Maybe you will.”

“You think he found them by now? Her boyfriend Will?”

“He’d have to be alive first to do that.”

“You don’t think he is?”

“We were out there for a month and never heard a peep from him. If he was still alive, he would have already made contact.” He shrugged. “But what do I know. From what everyone keeps telling me, he’s too stubborn to die, so anything’s possible, I guess.”

“That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”

“What’s that?”

“People finding each other out here. Like you and Gillian.”

“Happily ever after?”

“Maybe just a happily for now-”

Clop-clop-clop!

Jordan froze and started lifting her rifle, but Keo grabbed her by the arm and pulled her down to the ground first. They ended up behind a thick bush on their stomachs, faces pressed into the soft earth just as two men on horseback galloped past them.

Soldiers in black uniforms, M4s thumping against their backs.

They were heading off in the same direction Keo and Jordan had just come from: toward the YMCA building. It had to have been the cars firing up at the same time. Tobias’s people had made a hell of a ruckus, but they could afford to, because they were abandoning the base.

He was hoping one of the soldiers might be Jack Miller, who would have made for an even better bargaining chip than Tobias’s ring. But that turned out not to be the case. Even though he only saw the two men from the back as they were riding away, one was too thin and the other was too tall to be Jack.

Next to him, Jordan had eased her carbine forward and was gripping it perhaps just a little too tightly. He could tell she wanted to fight.

He shook his head and they exchanged a brief look, then waited for the clop-clop-clop to slowly fade into the background.

When they couldn’t hear the soldiers anymore, they picked themselves up and brushed the dirt off their clothes.

“They’re heading for the YMCA,” Jordan said.

“If we move farther back into the woods, away from the road, can you still find T18?”

“I’ve been walking and running and fighting around here for months now. I could find T18 with a blindfold on.”

“So that’s a yes?”

“Yes, smartass.”

They continued on, but also moved deeper into the woods. It wasn’t a guarantee they wouldn’t run into more soldiers, but Keo didn’t feel like taking any chances now. He’d already taken too many unnecessary risks on his way here, and having found Gillian, he wanted to play it as safe as possible.

“Kill Steve. Save Gillian. Live happily ever after.”

*

His head had started bothering him as soon as they left the YMCA behind, and it only continued to get worse during the long walk back to T18. The quick spurt of adrenaline from the near-miss with the mounted soldiers hadn’t helped, either.

“You okay?” Jordan asked when she saw the way he was touching his head.

“A little dizzy,” he said, stopping momentarily and leaning against a tree. “I guess I’m still not over getting my head bashed in by your friends.”

She looked at him worriedly for a moment. “You need to rest. Get off your feet.” She glanced around them, then bit her lips for a moment. Finally, she said, “Come on. I know a place around here.”

They headed off again, Jordan taking him deeper into the woods.

“So everyone’s gone?” Keo asked when they had been walking for a few minutes.

“Gone?”

“Tobias’s people.”

“Except for the ones still in town, yeah.”

“How many inside agents do you have?”

“Two that I know of for sure, more that only Tobias knows about. They’re risking a lot to help us, and he doesn’t want to unnecessarily endanger them. The more people know, the greater their chances of being discovered.”

“So except for the undercovers in T18 and you, that’s it. Tobias has officially thrown up the white flag.”

“You heard him. He said he was just going to rest, to let the others heal up.”

“And you believe that?”

She sighed. “I don’t know.”

“Sorry.”

“What are you sorry about?”

“You followed Tobias because you believed in him. It’s never an easy thing when your leader decides he’s had enough, and vamos.”

“I guess.”

“And you’ve never slept with him?”

She threw him an annoyed look.

Keo raised his hands in surrender. “I was just double checking.”

“When you feel like triple checking, just keep in mind that I know where we’re going and you don’t,” she said, moving ahead of him.

He smiled and followed her.

They were now moving through a part of the woods that made him a little uneasy. The canopies were getting thicker, which meant the sun was having a harder time finding its way through. As a result, the air had grown chillier and Keo instinctively clutched the MP5SD in front of him.

“You know where you’re going?” he asked after a while.

“The woods might look endless, but it’s not. There’s a cabin not far from here that we’ve used before.”

“Is that a good idea? If you know about it, what are the chances that the soldiers do, too?”

“We’ll have to risk it. You need to rest for a while. That lightheadedness you’re feeling is a result of the blows you took. You might have even gotten a concussion, and it’s just now showing up.”

Keo felt his forehead again. The cut had started to scab over, but it was going to be a while before it healed. The good news was that it would definitely heal, unlike the scar along the left side of his face. Pollard’s farewell gift wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, if ever.

Thanks again for that, Pollard, you sonofabitch. I’m glad both you and your son are dead.

“Okay,” Jordan said as she finally slowed down before stopping completely.

She held her rifle at the ready as she peered through two trees at an old cabin sitting in a rough circular clearing that would be, in a few years, swallowed back up by the woods. Two dirt-encrusted windows flanked a door and a chimney jutted out on one side of the roof. The building looked just big enough to have a couple of bedrooms in the back.

The bright spot was that the clearing was wide open to the skies, and a thick pool of sunlight shone down on the cabin. It was a far cry from the last few minutes, when it seemed like they were walking deeper and deeper into the lightless bowels of the woods.

Jordan crouched at the edge and listened, and Keo joined her. He had to put his hand down against the ground because the sudden movement nearly made him keel over.

“You okay?” she whispered.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, Mom.”

She pursed her lips.

“Anything?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Looks clear. You ready?”

She got up and jogged into the clearing and slid against the wall next to one of the windows before he could respond. Keo sighed. He would have liked to sit and listen for another thirty minutes, maybe an hour. Not just to be sure they were the only people around, but because he could have used the rest. But that was just wishful thinking now, and he hurried over to join her outside the cabin.

The window next to them revealed a dust-covered floor, along with a kitchen lit up with sunlight through the windows above the sinks and a barren fireplace on the other side. There was no furniture to speak of, and the only thing staring back at them were the heads of two deer mounted on the far wall next to a darkened hallway that was just a bit too dark for his liking. The passageway led into the back of the house.

“Anything?” he whispered.

She shook her head. “You?”

“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. I can rest in the woods,” he said, even as another throbbing pain rushed through him. He gritted his teeth and hoped she didn’t notice.

It must have shown on his face anyway, because she looked more determined when she said, “No cover. If they find us out here, we’ll have nowhere to run. In here, at least we have a chance.”

He started to argue, but she had already moved toward the door, and Keo had no choice but to follow.

The handle was a simple lever, and she pressed it and pushed the door inside and stepped in a half-second later. Keo had to admit, she had developed a pretty nice rhythm since the last time they saw each other back at Earl’s cabin. Being out here with Tobias’s people, fighting Steve and the town, had definitely increased her battle movements. Now all she needed was a little more patience, a notion that Keo thought was funny since he’d never really been known to have a whole lot of that himself.

Dust brushed against his face as he stepped inside the cabin. The living room smelled slightly stale, but he blamed that on the lack of ventilation thanks to all the closed windows. The back hallway was partially submerged in shadows, but he didn’t detect movement or see obsidian eyes staring back at him.

Jordan had slung her rifle and opened up her pack. She pulled out a bottle of water and an old Tylenol bottle and handed it to him. “Sit down, drink, and rest for a while.”

“You came prepared,” Keo said. He turned the bottle over and noticed the expiration date.

“Don’t worry, that’s just a suggestion,” she said. “Probably. Anyway, the town’s not far from here. Maybe another hour, so we can afford to stay awhile or until you’re ready to move again.”

“It’s just a small headache.”

She peered at his face-or specifically, his scabbing forehead. “He really laid you out good. I thought you were going to bleed to death in that office last night.”

“That bad?”

“But you look okay now. Still ugly as hell, but better.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I mean, compared to the first time I saw you.”

She walked to the kitchen and laid her pack and rifle on the island counter, then began flipping through the top pantries and pulling drawers along the counter. Dust erupted every time she opened something, then again when she closed them.

Keo shook out two of the pills and washed them down with water. He walked over to one of the windows, and staying as far away from the grime-smeared windowsill and glass panes as possible, looked out at the clearing and the woods beyond. He couldn’t help but remember all those months at Earl’s cabin at the start of The Purge.

Gillian was there. So was Norris, and Rachel and her daughter, and the girl, Lotte. Jordan and her friends didn’t show up until later. Then there was that whole mess with Levy, and the garage…

But most of all, he remembered the good times. The days and nights and weeks and months when they didn’t have anything to worry about, when it seemed like they could hide from whatever was going on in the world around them. At the time, he had no idea what the ghouls were doing, and thinking back, he didn’t care. He would have been happy to live however many months or years he had left at the cabin with Gillian and Jordan and the others.

What was that old saying? “Ignorance is bliss.”

What he wouldn’t give for a little bit of ignorance right now.

“Did you take the pills?” Jordan called from the kitchen.

“Yes.”

“Take a few more later. They won’t make you drowsy.”

He did feel better, though it wasn’t really the pills but mostly the resting, the not moving his feet every other second. The throbbing remained, but it wasn’t nearly as unbearable as it had been a few minutes ago when they were out there in the woods.

He finished off the water, then putting the bottle away (you never knew when an empty bottle would come in handy), called back to Jordan, “Find anything?”

“Not a thing.”

“Did you expect to find something?”

“Maybe.”

“You said no one’s been here awhile. Why wouldn’t Miller put someone out here? Use it as a station or something.”

“He did, once. Not just here, but other locations around the area. The strip malls, the warehouses…until we convinced him it was a bad idea. Nowadays, he sticks to the other side of the river.” Then, “I’ve been meaning to ask you. What did you do back there to make Miller think you could kill Tobias for him?”

“I’m not convinced he thought I could. Chances were, he was hoping I could take out a few of your people. Best-case scenario, maybe make your men reveal themselves.”

“That’s probably true. You do make pretty good bait, Keo.”

He grunted. “Stop trying to butter me up.”

“Don’t take it too personally-” There was a loud thump! followed by a clattering sound, then Jordan’s voice, screaming, “Keo!”

He turned back to the kitchen, but she wasn’t there. Her rifle and pack were still on the counter, but there were no signs-

Jordan was on the floor on her stomach behind the counter, both hands clawing at the wooden floorboards.

“Keo!” she shouted again.

He unslung the MP5SD and ran to the kitchen. He was halfway there when Jordan managed to spin around onto her back and lifted her head, looking at something on the other side of the counter. Her Glock was lying across the kitchen where she had sent it clattering when she fell.

He changed directions at the last second, and instead of running to the right side of the counter, he went left where Jordan’s feet were. When he finally made the turn and saw it, Keo might have actually frozen for a full second.

The bottom half of the creature’s body was hidden inside the cabinet under the sink, where it had apparently been hiding when Jordan stumbled across it. It had lunged out through the open door and had gotten a hold of her legs and was trying to pull her toward it-pull her out of the sunlight and into the shadows that fell over its part of the counter. She was kicking at it, but it had two solid grips on one of her legs and wouldn’t let go.

It must have heard him coming, because its head snapped in his direction and twin lifeless black eyes settled on him. He lifted the submachine gun and pointed at it, and the creature actually sneered at him.

“Don’t shoot me, Keo!” Jordan shouted.

Keo almost laughed.

Gee, thanks for that suggestion, Jordan. Real helpful there.

He fired three times into the cabinet, splintering the door and sending rounds inside rather than trying to hit any specific part of the ghoul’s body. He didn’t know how many times he hit it, but once was enough and its head flopped to the floor even while its body continued to jerk up and down with Jordan’s struggling motions.

She finally realized it had stopped trying to pull her into the darkness under the sink and stopped kicking. Jordan stared at it, gasping for breath, before finally regaining enough control to reach forward and pry its bony fingers off her leg. Then she scrambled backward and up to her feet. She picked up her Glock and stumbled away from the kitchen, then looked over at him.

“What?” he said.

“There’s more of them in there,” she said, almost gasping out the words.

“Where?”

“The lower cabinets.”

“Which ones?”

“All of them.”

“How do you know?”

“I heard them when I was on the floor. And I can smell them. Can’t you?”

Keo took a quick, involuntary step away from the cabinets. “You sure?”

“You can’t smell them?”

He sniffed the air. There was that smell again, the same one he had detected when he first entered. But it seemed to have gotten stronger…

“Yeah,” he said.

“What should we do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do we just…leave? What if someone else comes in here and stumbles across them later?”

Keo aimed and fired a shot into one of the closed cabinet doors.

He heard something scurrying behind the cheap wood paneling for a moment before settling into silence again. He had to remind himself that they were just bags of bones, and if losing a head or a limb didn’t bother them, squeezing into the small spaces of the cabinets probably didn’t register at all.

“Screw this,” Keo said. “We can’t save everyone. We can barely save our friends.”

He took another couple of steps back and picked up her M4 and handed it to her. Jordan grabbed her pack and slung it back on.

“Let’s go,” he said. “I’ll rest later, when I’m dead.” That drew a quick, almost pained look from her. “Too soon?”

She gave him a half-smile, but it was easy to see she hadn’t completely recovered from being grabbed by the ghoul and almost dragged into its hiding place. Keo knew from experience that even though the creatures looked like emaciated little children, they were goddamn resilient. It probably helped that they didn’t care about self-preservation when they locked onto a prey.

He was still backing up when a flicker of movement drew his attention.

He spun toward the hallway in the back and the smell hit him. It was bearable earlier, but that had all changed. The stench was suffocating now, because there were so many of them out in the open and squeezed into the hallway at once.

Jesus Christ, where did they come from?

It had to be the back rooms. They had been inside (Sleeping? Resting? What exactly did ghouls do in the daytime?) until now.

They crowded into the hallway, so many that Keo didn’t know where the shadows began and their numbers ended. Black eyes peered out of the darkness at him, but it was the growing overwhelming smell of rot and decay that got to him. They would have come out if not for the swaths of sunlight splashing across the living room, an invisible barrier they couldn’t cross even though he could tell they wanted to with every fiber of their being.

“Oh God,” Jordan breathed beside him.

She drew her Glock, the one with the silver magazine, and pointed it at them, but Keo grabbed her arm before she could fire.

“There’s too many of them,” he said. “One or ten dead won’t make any difference. But we have limited ammo. Especially the right kind.”

She nodded, and they backpedaled toward the door together, side by side.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked.

She shook her head and shivered slightly.

He knew how she felt, and didn’t feel better himself until he opened the door and stepped outside. The warmth of the sun against his back was like a mother’s embrace, and fresh air filled his lungs once again.

He forgot about his throbbing headache and turned around and followed her back into the woods without a word.