The Isles of Elysium

CHAPTER 19

Keo still had the taste of chicken in his mouth, and maybe a small piece of meat hidden somewhere between his molars at the back, when he was driven over to T18A2, next door to Gillian’s subdivision, and climbed out of the golf cart in front of a squat one-story house. There were already five soldiers standing in the driveway, with a horse grazing on the lawn nearby, oblivious to the activity.

One of the men hurried over. He was sweating even in the chilly air and with storm clouds continuing to gather above them. With thirty minutes before nightfall, it already looked pitch-dark outside, and most of the streetlights (and the few sprinkled among the lawns) had come on all around them.

“What the fuck happened?” was the first thing out of Steve’s mouth.

“Someone helped her escape,” the man said. Keo recognized his voice from the radio. Grant.

“How many?”

“Bannerman said there was just one.”

“And Jack?”

“He’s inside.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know exactly, sir. He was inside the garage with Bannerman and the woman when it happened. They shot Roger on their way out.”

Steve brushed past Grant and made a beeline for the door. The other soldiers hurried out of his path. They were all wearing gun belts and cradling M4 rifles, and Keo kept count of all the others around the area. Counting these five, there were the two standing guard at the gate and a half dozen more he had seen on his way over here.

Too many. Always too damn many.

Unlike Steve’s house, the interior of Bannerman’s was sparsely lit by a pair of LED lamps, one resting on the kitchen counter and another in the living room over the fireplace. It almost looked as if no one lived here, but of course the blood on the floor and a dead soldier lying facedown on the carpet said differently. Keo stepped around the blood and followed Steve to the back of the house.

Steve marched straight to a door that opened into the garage, crunching heavy tarp covering every inch of the concrete floor as he did so. The room had been converted into some kind of operating room, though it looked and smelled more like a butcher shop. A pair of metal tables sat in the center, flanked by steel trays with surgical instruments; one had been upended, its contents tossed liberally across the room. One of the tables was covered in blood and there were fresh, bloody footprints all over the place.

A man in his sixties, wearing white hospital scrubs, sat in a comfortable-looking armchair in the corner, cradling his arm in his lap. Someone had bundled the arm up with gauze and the man looked tired, wiping sweat from his face. The garage door was closed-and didn’t look capable of opening-and there was very little ventilation, which probably accounted for the old man’s perspiration.

The lack of circulating air also kept in the smell of the blood that pooled underneath Jack. The younger Miller sat awkwardly against the far wall, his head lolled to one side, eyes open, as if he had simply decided to sit down to rest and could stand up at any moment.

Steve ignored the old man and walked straight to Jack. He kicked a surgical scissor in his path and it skidded across the room. He crouched in front of his brother and held Jack’s sweat-slicked face in his hands, staring at him in silence.

Keo looked over at the old man, Bannerman. “What happened?”

Bannerman picked up a bottle of water on a table next to him with his good hand and took a slow, drawn-out sip. “Some guy in a ski mask. Came in and shot Jack, then took the woman. I guess he shot someone else in the living room, too?”

“You didn’t go out to check?”

“He shot me, too,” Bannerman said, holding up his wounded arm as proof. “I thought it’d be more prudent to wait for help instead of running out there. I’m just a doctor.”

More like a butcher.

Steve stood up and ran his fingers through his hair for a moment. Keo waited for the outburst, the profanity, but instead Steve just whirled around and walked past Keo and back into the hallway. The man hadn’t spared a single glance at Bannerman, which, Keo guessed, the old man was grateful for.

Keo followed Steve through the living room, then to the front door. “What now?” he asked.

“Find her and kill her,” Steve said.

Oh, that’s all?

Grant hadn’t gone anywhere and was waiting for them in the driveway. For a man who was barely a few years younger than Steve, Grant looked overly small and frail and fidgeted back and forth nervously.

“There was gunfire,” Steve said. “Why didn’t anyone stop them?”

“No one heard gunshots,” Grant said. “I think he was using a silencer or something.”

“You think?”

“He must have,” Grant said, trying his best to sound more confident-and failing miserably. “It wasn’t until Pete stumbled across Roger’s body inside the house and called it in that we even knew what had happened.”

Steve didn’t say anything. Instead, he squinted up at the storm clouds continuing to gather en masse above them. There was a strangely serene expression on his face, as if he hadn’t just discovered his little brother was dead.

Keo glanced around him. Every soldier, even the ones across the street, seemed to know something bad had happened inside Bannerman’s house, something that was going to affect all of them. Like Keo, they looked as if they were waiting for the inevitable eruption from Steve.

Any moment now…

“It’s going to rain all night,” Steve finally said, sounding perfectly calm. “They have two options: Make a run for it, or hide. It’s too dark to go into the woods. The crawlers will be out by now, and they’d never survive for more than a few minutes in there. Anyone who has been here for a while knows that. So they’ll hide.” The man glanced at Keo and narrowed his eyes. “You have any ideas?”

“About what?” Keo said.

“Where they would be hiding.”

“You’re asking the wrong man. I didn’t even know they existed until yesterday.”

“They have inside help,” Steve said, looking around the streets. “I’ve always known that. Someone feeding them intelligence, stealing supplies for them. M4s and ammo going missing. That’s who we’re looking for. Someone who knows the town, knows where to hide. That means we have to look everywhere. Turn this place inside out, because they’re still here. I can fucking guarantee you that.”

An inside man? Right. What was that Jordan had told him?

“If this blows up in your face, there’s another way out of the town… His name’s Dave. I’ve never actually met him before, but Tobias seems to trust him. He works in the main cafeteria…”

Dave. Main cafeteria.

Maybe Dave had heard about Jordan being held at Bannerman’s. People would talk. Maybe one of the soldiers who liked eating with the civilians. Bragging, trying to impress some pretty young girl with inside gossip.

Not that it mattered. Dave, or one of Tobias’s other inside agents, had clearly saved Jordan, though Keo still hadn’t decided if that was a good thing or not. He would have eventually come up with a plan to rescue her himself. Heck, he might not even have to, since Steve seemed to have bought his line about Jordan wanting to re-assimilate back into town. The only certainty now was that someone had acted and Jordan was out there, somewhere.

And Steve was right. They would still be in T18 right now because there would be no other places to go. Certainly not out there. Not under the suffocating darkness.

“Someone who knows the town, knows where to hide.”

Keo was watching Steve’s face, the way he was scrunching his eyes and sweeping the streets, as if he could see through the walls of the homes, when something fell out of the sky and landed on Keo’s forehead. He held out his hand to catch a few more drops, as did some of the men around him.

The rain came slowly but quickly picked up momentum.

In less than ten seconds, Keo was soaked from head to toe.

Steve, standing next to him, didn’t seem to notice.

“Search every house!” he shouted, raising his voice to be heard. “They’re hiding in one of these houses! No matter how long it takes, search every single building and shack and room until you find them!”

*

Steve left Keo in the driveway with Grant and rode off on the same horse that had been dining on the lawn when they arrived-it turned out to be Jack’s-along with a dozen other mounted soldiers. Keo guessed it was faster to travel by horseback than in the slow-moving, solar-powered golf cart.

“Come on,” Grant said. “I got orders to take you to Processing.”

Keo climbed into the cart with Grant and they motored off, raindrops bouncing against the solar panels on top of the vehicle. The streets were already showing signs of flooding, the multiple cracks of thunder in the distance followed by lightning flashes sounding as if the gods had finally decided to punish T18 for its trespasses.

“Does it usually rain this hard?” Keo asked, shouting over the pak-pak-pak of raindrops cascading around them.

“Not usually!” Grant shouted back as lightning crackled again. “Hear that? This is gonna be a huge one!”

They were driving through two to three inches of water by the time they left T18A2, and Grant turned south down the road-toward Processing, wherever the hell that was. Soldiers in raincoats had begun appearing on horses and on foot around them, many wielding flashlights. They looked coordinated, some moving in groups while others spread out among the subdivisions. Like a Western posse times ten, except these cowboys were carrying assault rifles.

“Looks like it’s gonna be a long night,” Grant said. “We’re going to find them, though. Not a lot of places to hide around here. No one’s going to harbor them, either. Sooner or later they’ll run out of corners, and then we’ll get them.”

Keo didn’t respond. Instead, he tried to imagine where Jordan and Dave (if it was Dave, and not another one of Tobias’s inside men) would go. Like Steve, they would know better than to brave the woods. Even before the rainstorm it had gotten too dark, and that brought out things worse than soldiers. Would they hide out in the inside man’s place? That would depend if he was single or if he shared a house with someone (or someones). Not that it mattered, because he didn’t know who had taken Jordan anyway, which left him with…

Jordan. Where would Jordan go?

Keo was thinking about that as two horsemen galloped past them along the shoulder of the road, flashlights shining in his face. Compared to the Maglites they were carrying, the golf cart’s own headlights were barely strong enough to illuminate the paved lanes in front of them. If not for the LEDs hanging off the poles, Grant would be driving almost in total darkness.

Thunder boomed in the distance, seemingly getting closer (and louder) with each new one. For a second Keo thought they were gunshots and was thankful he was wrong. Gunshots would mean Steve had found Jordan and her friend, but soldiers still running around searching every house and building meant the exact opposite.

They were about to pass the open gate into T18A1 when Keo tapped Grant on the shoulder. “Hey, turn left.”

“What?” Grant said.

“Turn in here.”

“I got orders to take you to Processing.”

“You can do that later. I have to swing over and talk to a friend about something.”

“Forget it.”

Keo reached over and drew Grant’s gun-a Glock-and pressed it roughly into the man’s side. “I said, turn in here.”

Grant almost missed the entrance but stopped in time and turned into the subdivision. The gate was already open, which wasn’t a surprise since soldiers had probably been going in and out of the place before they even arrived.

Keo spotted two people inside the guard booth, shivering against the cold. They were soaking wet and neither one felt like coming out when they saw the golf cart moving past their window. One of them did make the effort to wave Grant through. Grant started to slow down when Keo jammed the gun harder against his gut. Grant took the hint and they continued through.

Steve’s people were flooding all five subdivisions at once, but that also meant they had to stretch their numbers thin. They drove past soldiers along the sidewalks knocking on doors. They seemed to be moving in groups of two, flashlights cutting through the sheets of falling rain. Every single one looked miserable and wet, and a few gave them envious stares as they cruised by under the (barely there) protection of the cart’s roof. Keo just hoped he had the gun held low enough that the others couldn’t see where it was pointed.

“Turn here,” Keo said when they finally reached their destination.

Grant turned the cart up onto the driveway and parked out in the open. Keo took a brief second to look around him-a pair of soldiers down the street, about five houses down; two more on the opposite side further up the road. The two behind him were the problem, but they were moving slowly, the combination of the weather and the need to search every room of every house before moving on taking up most of their time. No doubt the warmth of the houses compared to the bone-soaking rain outside convinced them to make all those searches go slower, too.

He hoped, anyway.

Keo pulled off Grant’s M4 rifle and shoved the Glock into his front waistband, then climbed out of the golf cart. “Get out.”

Grant did and was soon hopping from foot to foot, arms folded across his chest as rain ran down his head and uniform. His teeth started chattering almost right away.

“Don’t be such a girl; it’s not that cold,” Keo said.

He nodded toward the door and Grant moved toward it obediently, asking, “Where are we?”

“Shut up and move.”

“You’re not going to get away with this.”

“You know what a bullet tastes like, Grant?”

Grant shook his head. “No…”

“If you don’t want to find out, keep your mouth shut unless I speak to you. Comprende?”

The soldier swallowed and kept moving. Keo followed him, only allowing himself to shiver and his teeth to chatter when Grant wasn’t looking.

Christ, it was freezing cold. And it was only going to get worse as the night dragged on. He wondered how long it was going to take the neighborhood to be completely flooded. Hopefully Steve had paid attention to the sewers so the water would have someplace to go when that did happen.

Grant was waiting at the front door, trembling underneath a pair of small solar-powered LED lights. Keo leaned across him and knocked on the slab of wood. He could only see pitch blackness through the side security windows, but soon a lamp turned on before moving across the foyer toward them.

“Not a fucking word,” Keo said to Grant.

Grant nodded. Or shivered. Keo liked to think he was afraid and not just freezing.

The door opened and a man in his thirties, wearing thin-rimmed glasses, looked out at them. He was wearing slacks and a white T-shirt and used the lamp in his hand to illuminate Grant’s face before moving over to Keo’s.

He lingered a bit on Keo-or maybe just on the scars.

“Yes?” he finally said.

“Jay?” Keo asked.

“Yes. Do I know you?”

“No.”

Keo nudged Grant in the back and the soldier stepped anxiously inside the house, glad to be out of the cold night. Jay looked conflicted, and for a moment Keo thought he might fight back, but instead he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and stepped aside to let them in.

Grant sighed audibly as they were immediately embraced by the warmth of the house. It might not have air conditioning or heating anymore, but a well-insulated building still offered more than decent protection against the climate, especially one that was currently being rocked by a thunderstorm.

Keo closed the door behind them, grateful for the sudden soothing silence, with only the distant pak-pak-pak against the rooftop to remind him what was going on out there. “Where’s Gillian?” he asked.

“She’s asleep,” Jay said.

“It’s barely six in the evening.”

“She…had a long day.”

Jay was a terrible liar. What’s worse, he probably knew it but couldn’t do anything about it. He was either a very decent guy not used to lying, or an asshole. Keo wanted to believe it was the latter, but chances were pretty good it was probably the former.

Just my luck.

“What’s this about?” Jay asked.

“Gillian!” Keo shouted.

“I told you, she’s asleep,” Jay started to say.

“Shut up, Jay.”

The man looked as if he might argue, but like last time, decided to back down instead.

Grant, standing between them, looked back and forth, clearly picking up on the extra “something” going on between them. Or, at least, coming from Keo. Smartly, though, he kept his mouth shut.

“Gillian!” Keo shouted again.

He heard footsteps coming down the stairs before Gillian finally appeared in a nightgown, which was supposed to confirm Jay’s statement that she had been sleeping. He didn’t buy it. Keo didn’t need to ask her, because he could see it on her face.

“Keo,” she said softly, genuinely surprised to see him there.

“Grant and I were just tooling around in his cool golf cart and decided to see how you were doing,” he said.

She gave him a confused look.

“Joke,” he said.

“Oh.”

Jay hurried over and stood next to her. “What’s this about?” he asked again.

Keo locked the door behind them. “They’re coming,” he said, directing everything at Gillian and ignoring Jay.

“Who?” Gillian said.

“The soldiers. They’re searching every house in town.”

“What?” Jay said, alarmed. “Why are they doing that?”

“Stop fucking around. There’s no time for that. Right, Gillian?”

She didn’t answer.

“Right?” he said again.

She sighed. “Right.”

“Where are they?”

“Upstairs.”

“Gillian,” Jay said.

“It’s okay, Jay,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “He knows already. Keo’s a smart guy.”

Not that smart, or I would have been here earlier before he knocked you up, Keo thought about saying, but didn’t.

Jay looked over at him, as if to say, “Is he?”

“Just enough to get in trouble,” Keo said.

“How long do we have?” Gillian asked.

“It’s probably going to take them about thirty minutes to get here. Maybe more, maybe less. How secure are they?”

Gillian thought about it. Jay, next to her, looked physically pained.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Not very. We didn’t expect a house-to-house search.”

Keo put a hand on Grant’s shirt collar and dragged him forward. “I need someplace to put him.”

“Jay can help with that,” Gillian said.

Keo gave her a disbelieving look.

“He can keep him from running off,” Gillian said. Then to Jay, “Go get your little black bag, honey.”

“Why?” Jay asked.

“Trust me,” she said, before looking back at Keo and adding, “And you can trust Keo. We’re going to need his help to survive tonight.”