The Isles of Elysium

CHAPTER 21

Jay was on the first floor, and the sound of pouring rain flooded the house as soon as he opened the door to answer the pounding. Keo was already halfway downstairs. He didn’t like the idea of Jay facing the soldiers alone. The guy couldn’t lie to save his life, and now he had all their lives on the line, too.

Gillian grabbed his arm and pulled him back before he reached the bottom landing. “The gun,” she whispered. “Soldiers don’t carry guns in their front waistband.”

He nodded and switched Grant’s Glock to behind his waistband, then covered it up with his shirt. He would have liked to have the M4 he had left in the guest bedroom on the second floor alongside Grant’s sleeping form, but the soldiers were the only ones supposed to carry weapons.

“You’re Doctor Jay, right?” a voice asked somewhere in the foyer.

“That’s right,” Jay answered. “What’s going on?”

“We’re looking for some fugitives,” a third voice said.

“Oh.”

Dammit, Jay, never ever play poker with your life on the line, pal.

They continued down the stairs, Gillian holding his hand the entire time and not letting go until they were almost at the bottom. Jay was leading two soldiers into the living room. They were both dripping wet and leaving large puddles in their wake, all the while shivering under cheap plastic black raincoats.

“Honey, we have company,” Jay said, forcing a barely credible smile in Gillian’s direction.

“Is something wrong?” Gillian asked.

The soldiers were both in their thirties, their faces and hair wet despite their hoods. Keo couldn’t see their name tags because of the raincoats, but they both carried M4s over their backs and were rubbing their hands together.

Gillian went to stand next to Jay while Keo wandered over to the kitchen and sat down on a stool on the other side of the counter. The gun bulged against his back and anyone who looked closely would have spotted it, so he made sure they only saw his front the entire time he was within sight of them.

“We’re looking for two fugitives,” one of the soldiers said. “A black guy and a white woman. She’s hurt and he’s armed, and they might have come in this direction.”

“We haven’t seen anyone like that around here,” Jay said.

Jay’s voice had trembled a bit when he said it, and one of the soldiers clearly noticed. “Are you sure about that?” the man asked.

“Yeah, of course.” Jay smiled. It came out, predictably, unconvincing.

Gillian must have realized how badly Jay was doing, because she sought out his hand and slipped her fingers through his. “How do you know they’re in our area?” she asked the soldiers.

“They came over the fence from next door,” the other soldier said. “Left a lot of blood behind, but the rainstorm washed away most of the trail so now we’re going house to house.”

The first soldier was peering up the second floor stairs. “Anyone up there?”

“Just one of your guys,” Keo said.

The soldier looked over at him. “He got a name?”

“Grant. He was taking me to Processing in the golf cart, but then the rain hit and we decided to detour here.”

“Shit, you must be someone special to be riding in that chariot,” the other soldier said.

“No one special.”

“Humble, too.”

Keo smiled. He knew they had seen the cart outside, and he had guessed correctly that only Steve (or Jack) rode around town in those things. In a place where the haves wore uniforms, carried guns, and had horses to take them when they were too lazy to walk, the king had a slow-moving, solar-powered golf cart. It would have been an absurd concept a year ago, but then this wasn’t a year ago.

“You got a name?” one of the soldiers asked him.

“Keo.”

“Keo? What kind of name is that?”

“He’s a friend,” Gillian said before Keo could answer. “He’s new in town; that’s why he was being taken to Processing.”

“Grant’s up there?” the other soldier asked.

At this point, Keo had stopped bothering to keep them separate. Dripping wet and covered from head to toe in black raincoats, they might as well be duplicates.

“He’s coming down with a cold, so we gave him one of our guest rooms to sleep it off,” Gillian said. Then, turning to Jay, “Right, honey?”

“Right,” Jay nodded. “I gave him something to help him sleep.”

“Go check it out, Ronny,” one of the soldiers said.

“You mind?” Ronny asked. Keo wondered if he was only asking that because of Jay’s position.

“Go right ahead,” Jay said.

Ronny walked past them and jogged up the stairs.

“What did you say your name was again?” Jay asked the other soldier.

“Owen,” the man said.

“Owen. Have we met before?”

“Yeah, I had some leg pains a few weeks back. You gave me something for it, remember?”

Jay nodded. “I remember now.”

“Thanks for that, by the way.”

“How’s the leg coming along?”

“Much better.”

Keo could see Jay warming up to the moment. Maybe it was because he was in his element, talking medicine to a patient.

Even Owen looked disarmed, though his expression changed a bit when he turned his attention back to Keo. “When did you get in?”

“This afternoon,” Keo said.

“Is that right? How’d you get a golf cart already? I’ve been here since the beginning, and they haven’t even given me a horse yet.”

“It’s Steve’s.”

“Steve?” Then, as the name registered, “Oh. You call him Steve, huh?”

“He told me to.”

“Must be nice,” Owen smirked.

Footsteps behind them, just before Ronny came back down the stairs.

“Grant?” Owen asked.

“He’s sleeping like a fucking baby,” Ronny said. “Out like a light. Smacked him around and he didn’t even flinch.” To Jay, “What’d you give him, Doc, and where can I get some of that?”

Jay gave him an anxious smile. “He was coming down with a bad cold and I didn’t want him to go back out in this weather. Doctor’s orders.”

“Lucky him,” Owen said. “We don’t have that choice.”

“You checked the other rooms?” Ronny asked.

Owen shook his head. Then to Jay: “We’re going to have to search the house before we can leave, Doc. That okay?”

Jay nodded. “Go right ahead.”

“Just…try not to make too much of a mess,” Gillian said. She was rubbing her belly, which Keo thought was a nice touch.

“We’ll be gentle,” Ronny said.

“Everyone stay in here until we’re finished, okay?” Owen said.

They nodded as the two soldiers headed into the back hallway where the bedrooms were.

“How many rooms?” Ronny called back.

“Four,” Gillian said. “Two down here, two more upstairs.”

Jay and Gillian drifted over to the kitchen counter where Keo was sitting and sat down across from him. Jay laid his hands on the smooth countertop, but when he saw that they were shaking noticeably, he picked them up and hid them in his lap.

“Relax, Doc,” Keo said, keeping his voice just low enough to be heard. “You’re doing fine.”

That was a lie. The man’s face was pale, and you only needed to spend a few seconds looking into his eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses to know Jay wasn’t doing fine at all. In fact, he was doing pretty goddamn awful.

That realization made Keo reach behind his back and slide the Glock out from his waistband and put it in his lap. He kept his left hand on the counter the whole time, next to the same mug of black tea that Gillian had fixed for him this afternoon. He guessed she hadn’t had time to clean it, which made him wonder what kind of conversation she’d had with Jay when the doctor came home. Clearly, she had told him everything. Or most of it, anyway.

Gillian, meanwhile, was looking across the counter at him. She was amazingly calm, and watching her sitting side by side with the nervous Jay made Keo realize just how much all those months fighting Pollard and his men had cost him.

Fucking Pollard. The man continued to haunt him even in death.

They sat staring at each other in silence for what seemed like hours, with only the constant pak-pak-pak of rain against the roof and the occasional crashing of thunder in the distance to break the silence. Thank God for the noises outside, otherwise Keo was sure he could actually hear Jay’s heartbeat thrumming against his chest.

Gillian must have heard it, too, because she got off her stool and went to a cabinet and brought back a bottle of Pinot Noir. She pulled the cork out with little effort, grabbed three glasses from the kitchen, and expertly poured the remains into them. She slid one in front of Jay and smiled at him, and Jay anxiously picked it up and drank most of it in one tilt.

Keo picked up his and sipped once, then put it back down. He wanted to maintain all of his motor coordination if he needed to use the Glock. He prayed he didn’t have to do any shooting, because even with the rain and thunder, gunshots inside a house might still travel past the walls. It would be doubly bad luck if someone were to be walking by on the sidewalk at the same moment. That wasn’t even taking into consideration the potential collateral damage, which was his primary concern now as he looked across the counter at Gillian.

“Sorry, no refrigeration,” Gillian said. “But we just opened it yesterday, so it’s still drinkable.”

“Where’d you get it?” Keo asked.

He didn’t really care, of course, but talking about something as inconsequential as the origins of the wine was a simple and effective way of keeping her mind-and Jay’s-off the two soldiers rummaging through their bedrooms at the moment.

“One of the doctors at Medical has a case of them,” Jay said. “I’m not sure where he got it; probably from a trade with one of the soldiers.”

“That happens a lot? Trading?”

“Pretty much everything other than the bare essentials is gotten through trading,” Gillian said. “It’s a thriving black market. I don’t know if their superiors know about it, or if they just look the other way.”

“What else gets traded?” Keo asked.

“Everything,” Gillian said.

He was going to ask what “everything” included when Owen and Ronny came out of the back hallway.

“Sorry for the mess, Doc,” Owen said. “We tried to be gentle, but we had to make sure there’s no one hiding in the closets or under the beds.”

“That’s all right; you’re just doing your jobs,” Jay said. He smiled, and it actually looked semi-convincing that time.

Thank you, red wine.

“What about upstairs?” Owen said to Ronny.

“I already went through both rooms when I was up there,” Ronny said. “Unless you want to wake Grant up and haul his ass into the rain with us.”

“Nah, let the guy sleep it off. One of us might as well keep dry tonight.” He turned back to them. “Okay, guys, we’ll let you get back to sleep.”

“No problem,” Jay said, climbing off his stool with the almost empty wine glass in his hand. “I’ll walk you guys out.”

Jay followed them to the door.

Keo looked across at Gillian. She was smiling back at him, and he was trying to decide if she’d always been this gorgeous or if being pregnant had given her something extra (not that she needed it), when there was a loud squawking noise and they heard a muffled voice that was lost behind clothing.

The soldiers stopped in the foyer, and Owen pulled a radio out from behind his raincoat. He keyed it. “Say again?”

“Grant,” a voice said through the radio. “Anyone seen Grant?”

“What about Grant?”

“Boss wants to know where the fuck he is. He’s supposed to be at Processing with some new guy, but they never showed up.”

Ronny had already turned around and began to unsling his rain-slicked M4. He walked back into the living room, passing Gillian, until he was standing directly across the counter from Keo. They stared at each other.

Oh so close.

“If anyone sees Grant or the guy he was escorting, don’t let them out of your sight,” the man on the radio continued. “That’s an order.”

“You hear that?” Owen said over at Ronny.

“Yeah-” Ronny started to say, when there was a loud bang! and he stumbled backward, looking more shocked than hurt.

Keo stood up from the stool and hurried around the counter as Owen dropped the radio and scrambled for his rifle.

“Jay, move!” Gillian shouted.

Jay staggered away, stunned, when Keo shot Owen twice in the chest with the Glock. The soldier crumpled to the floor, splashing blood and water in equal measures across the already wet tiles.

Ronny had fallen to his knees, his rifle clattering in front of him. He was holding onto his gut, apparently still unsure how a bullet had hit him in the stomach. Sooner or later, he would figure out that Keo had shot him through the wall under the counter. Or maybe he’d never get that far because Keo shot him again, this time in the head, and quickly picked up the rifle and checked the magazine.

A full load. Good.

Keo waited for the radio on the floor next to Owen’s lifeless body to squawk, for the man on the other side to order soldiers to converge on the sound of gunshots. Instead, he just heard men talking back and forth, and the same voice repeating the message to others who were just now reporting in. There was nothing about gunshots, nothing about converging on Gillian’s house.

“Report in if you find Grant or the other guy,” the voice said. “Until then, everyone stick to your assignments and keep the radio clear for further updates. Over and out.”

He finished unclasping Ronny’s gun belt while Gillian went to Jay, who was leaning against the wall. It was the only thing keeping the doctor from keeling over as he stared at Owen’s body. For a man whose livelihood was spent looking at blood, Jay gave Keo the impression he had never seen it before. Then again, maybe it was the shock of being in the middle of a violent gun battle. Either way, Gillian was whispering to him, her hands rubbing his shoulders. Jay had dropped the glass of wine sometime between when Keo shot Owen and finished off Ronny.

Once Gillian had led Jay to the stairs and sat him down, she walked back over to him. If she was scared, she didn’t show it. He had to remind himself Gillian hadn’t always been pregnant or playing house. Once upon a time, she had saved a group of people inside a hospital infested with ghouls.

That same woman looked at him now with steady eyes. “What if the neighbors heard the gunshots? These walls aren’t exactly soundproof.”

“No, but with the rain and thunder, maybe they won’t know the difference.”

“That’s a pretty big maybe, Keo.”

“Not everyone knows what a gunshot sounds like in real life. Besides, it’s not like anyone has a phone to call the cops. Or maybe they’ll just ignore it, pretend they didn’t hear anything. People did that even before the end of the world.”

“What about the soldiers outside? I’m pretty sure they can tell the difference between gunshots and thunder.”

“If they’re outside and they heard anything through this monsoon, they’ll be all over us in a few minutes anyway, so this conversation is irrelevant. But if we got real lucky, then it’s going to take some time before they realize where these two were last seen.”

“But they’ll figure it out eventually. They’ll ask around, and sooner or later they’ll get to a house where the soldiers didn’t search yet, then they’ll backtrack to us.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I gotta get Jordan and Dave out of here before then.”

“What about Jay and me?”

Keo looked past her at Jay, still sitting at the bottom of the stairs staring at his hands. He wasn’t sure what Jay was looking at because his hands looked fine and there were no traces of trembling that Keo could see from across the room.

“Keo?” Gillian said.

“I’m thinking,” Keo said, and hurried across the room to the front door.

He peered out through the peephole, but he might as well be looking into an empty black ocean with the sheets of falling rain obscuring everything, including the LED lights up and down the streets. The only time he could see the sidewalk and the street beyond it was when thunder clapped and lightning lit up the subdivision for a brief second.

Gillian had followed him over. “Keo,” she said, much quieter than she really had to. “What now?”

“You’ll be fine,” he said, trying to sound as confident as he could muster.

“How will we be fine after this?” She looked back at Owen’s body, then Ronny in the living room. “This isn’t fine.”

“You didn’t do this. I did.”

“They’re not going to see it that way.”

“Look at him,” Keo said, nodding at Jay.

The doctor was still in his own world, oblivious to them.

“What do you see?” Keo asked her.

“I don’t understand…”

“He’s a doctor.”

“So?”

“How many doctors do you have in town?”

“Two, with four full-time nurses and a dozen trainees. Three doctors, if you count Bannerman, but no one does. Steve won’t let him come near the civilians after what he’s done in the past. We’re lucky. I’ve heard from some of the soldiers that other towns have to make do with just one doctor.”

“Two doctors, and Jay’s one of them. That’s the number you should be focusing on, because that’s the number that tells me Steve’s not going to do anything to him. Or to you. He can’t afford to. His number one job is to keep this place running smoothly so the ghouls get their blood and the pregnancies are on schedule.”

She was looking intently at him. “What’s out there, Keo? When Jordan and I were trying to get to Santa Marie Island, we didn’t even know places like this existed. What’s happening out there that we don’t know about?”

He thought about Song Island, all the stories about the towns, the soldiers, and ghouls with blue eyes. It was enough to give him goose bumps, but he didn’t tell her about them. Right now, Gillian didn’t need to know. Right now-and he hated to admit it-T18 was the best thing for her and the life growing inside her stomach.

“You’ll be safe here,” he said. “You were right not to leave with Jordan. You made the right choice.”

“I know,” she said. “But are you absolutely sure about your buddy Steve?”

“I know guys like him. I’ve been around them most of my life, even before all of this. They compartmentalize. Maybe he’ll come to the conclusion that you and Jay might have something to do with it, but he’ll let it go, because he knows I wouldn’t hesitate to do this. So don’t clean this mess up. Don’t try to hide the bodies. In the morning, wake up Grant and let him go. Or if he’s still out, go outside and get one of the soldiers. Tell them everything, that I’m responsible for the shooting. Grant will be able to corroborate most of it, including when I ordered Jay to put him out.”

“You’ve thought all this out, huh?”

“Not even close. But I don’t think it’s going to really matter how good your story is. It’ll be good enough for Steve to let this go, which will allow him to focus on coming after me, and especially Dave.”

“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.