The Isles of Elysium

CHAPTER 28

Daebak. It knows my name, too.

The sight of the creature standing in front of him, its blue eyes like twin otherworldly orbs, made Keo hesitate. He wasn’t sure for how long, though; it could have been just a second, or two, or possibly a minute.

He didn’t know how long he stood there staring back at the creature, replaying the sound of his own name coming out of its impossibly thin and blackened lips. But when he finally did manage to gain some semblance of control, the first thing he did was shout, “Jordan!”

But the ghoul reacted before Jordan could, and it pointed the Mossberg at Keo-no, not at him, but past him, and at Jordan standing over his shoulder. The fact that it even knew how to use a shotgun surprised him for some reason. And the way it held the weapon-as if it had been doing it all its life-made Keo more curious than scared, and he was pretty goddamn scared to begin with.

For the next few seconds, Keo didn’t know what Jordan was doing behind him. Maybe like him, she had frozen in place and was unsure how to respond to the sight of this thing in the room with them. Maybe like him, she couldn’t understand how it could radiate heat and icy coldness at the same time.

However long the next few seconds passed for the three of them, the monster must have no longer thought she was a threat because its eyes (Christ, they’re blue) shifted back to him, and Keo saw it clear as day and without a shred of doubt:

The creature was intelligent.

He was so focused on that (impossible) sudden realization that he forgot to reach down for his sidearm. Not that he would have had much of a chance, anyway. This thing had crossed the room in less time than it had taken him to rack the shotgun. Did he really think he could draw the Glock before it fired, taking both him and Jordan out in a hail of buckshot?

No way in hell. Not even close.

“If I’d wanted to kill you,” it hissed, “you wouldn’t have escaped T18.”

T18.

Back at the marina…

“You,” Keo whispered.

He didn’t know exactly why he was whispering. Maybe it was the sound of the creature’s voice-it was so low, as if just talking (hissing) was painful somehow, and he wanted to…do what? Match its pitch?

Crazy talk.

“You saved my life,” Keo managed to get out. Then, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say or do, “Why?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” it said, and cocked its head slightly to one side. “They’re coming.”

“Who?”

“The others.”

Others? What others-

Oh, right. The others.

“The door won’t hold forever,” it hissed. “There’s too many of them.”

“Keo?” Jordan said behind him. She sounded breathless, which made him wonder how he was sounding at the moment. “What’s happening?”

“I…” Have no fucking idea, he wanted to say, but finished instead with, “It saved my life. Our lives. Back at T18. We wouldn’t have made it out of there if it hadn’t shown up. I’ve been, uh, meaning to tell you.”

“And…now?”

It looked past him-at Jordan, or the door, or both-before settling on him again. “You’ll never survive the night. Not alone.”

Keo nodded. He didn’t know why he was so calm all of a sudden. Maybe it was the way the creature talked, or possibly it was the lack of animal urges behind its cool blue eyes. He had faced enough of the black-eyed ghouls up close and personal to recognize the absence of a soul behind the hollowed holes that used to be their eyes. This thing standing in front of him was so far removed from those frenzied monsters that Keo wondered if he was dreaming, if this was all just one long (albeit very vivid) nightmare.

Wake up! Wake up, you idiot!

But he didn’t wake up, because he wasn’t asleep. This was real. Jesus, this was real.

“I agree,” he said. “We can’t survive alone.”

It pulled back the Mossberg, then held it, stock-first, to him.

Keo stared at the shotgun, then at its unmoving face, those pulsating blue eyes. He didn’t react for a long time.

Five seconds…then ten…

He reached forward and took the Mossberg back from the ghoul.

It lowered its hand, bony fingers unfurling at its side.

Behind him, Jordan might have shuffled her feet nervously, though it was hard to tell because he was so glued to the creature, on its every movement, waiting-waiting-for the first hint that it would prove him right, that it was, after all, just another undead thing waiting to end his existence.

“Now what?” Keo asked.

“You can’t climb,” it said.

“Is that how you got up here? You climbed?”

It nodded.

“Damn,” Keo said.

“Keo,” Jordan said, and he could almost hear her doing everything humanly possible not to scream out his name.

He turned around and saw her looking back at the door.

“They’re inside the house,” the creature hissed behind him.

Keo moved across the bedroom and pressed his ear against the wall. He didn’t have to wait very long. They were out there, on what was left of the second-floor living room. The unmistakable sounds of shuffling bare feet, the growing smell of their numbers swelling on the other side of the thick slab of wood.

Behind him, Jordan was staring at the creature in the trench coat, her shotgun pointed at the floor. She was gripping the Remington so tightly that her fingers looked ghost-white against the darkness. For its part, the thing looked unbothered by Jordan’s unwavering stare or the weapon in her hand.

“What are you?” Jordan finally asked.

It opened its mouth, as if to answer, but then it stopped and seemed to pause for a moment.

It doesn’t know, Keo thought. Or it’s not sure.

Instead of answering her, the creature hissed, “The marina. Get to it.”

“Easier said than done,” Keo said, walking back. “How many are out there?”

“Hundreds.”

“You attacked them,” Jordan said. “The soldiers on the first floor. That was you.”

It nodded.

“Why?” she asked.

Its eyes shifted to Keo. “I need him alive.”

Keo didn’t know if that was supposed to make him feel better or worse. He just hoped the creature and Jordan didn’t notice when he trembled involuntarily for about half a second before he could force himself to stop.

He looked back at the door instead. “Why haven’t they attacked yet?”

“They’re confused,” it said.

“Confused? By what?”

“Me.”

Well, at least I have that in common with them, Keo thought, and said, “So what now? What are they doing out there?”

“They’re waiting.”

“For what?”

“Orders.”

“Whose orders? Yours?”

It shook its head. “Someone else’s.”

Something else’s, you mean, Keo wanted to say, but bit his tongue.

“You’re not like them,” Jordan said. She hadn’t looked away from the blue-eyed ghoul…or lessened her grip on the shotgun.

“No,” it said, resting its blue eyes on her. Keo swore the damn things seemed to be glowing-pulsating. “I’m…more.”

“Can we wait them out?” Keo asked. “Until sunrise?”

“No,” it said. “The orders will come, and when they do, they’ll attack. You won’t survive to see morning. The marina is your only chance.”

“We’d never make it. It’s a long island and you said it yourself, there’s too many-”

It turned and began walking back to the window.

“Where are you going?” Jordan asked, and Keo thought she actually sounded terrified to see it leaving.

“Stay here,” it said, and before he or Jordan could respond, the creature leaped through the broken window and disappeared into the dark void beyond.

Keo ran over and looked out just in time to see it bounding across the backyard, then catapult over the iron fence as if it were a foot high instead of ten-feet-tall. The flaps of its trench coat fluttered in its wake before vanishing into the night.

Now I’ve seen everything, Keo thought, except even when the words popped into his head, he didn’t think it was true. He had a very strong feeling that tonight was just the beginning, that things were about to get…stranger.

Jordan appeared next to him. “Keo…”

“Yeah?”

“That just happened, didn’t it?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“I just wanted to make sure.” She paused, then, “It knew your name.”

“I noticed that.”

“Keo, it knew your name.”

He sighed. “Yeah, I know.”

“And it could talk.”

“I heard.”

“I didn’t know they could talk. Did you?”

“I…yes.”

“You knew?”

“I heard stories.”

“What kind-”

Thoom-thoom-thoom!

They spun around simultaneously as the dresser shook against the door.

“I guess they finally got those orders they were waiting for,” Jordan said breathlessly.

Thoom-thoom-thoom!

“The bed!” Keo shouted.

He started moving toward the king-size bed when a long, thin shadow fell across the floorboards in front of him. At first he thought it was just him or Jordan, but that didn’t make sense because he knew exactly where his shadow was, and Jordan was to his right, but this one was coming from his left and over his shoulder-

Keo turned around just as the ghoul flung itself from the top frame of the window and landed on the windowsill, impaling its bare feet on shards of jutting glass. For a split second, Keo thought it was the blue-eyed ghoul returning to finish him and Jordan off, having decided they weren’t worth the effort to save.

But no, because the eyes glaring at him were solid black and not ethereal blue.

The creature lunged into the room and Keo lifted the Mossberg and fired, punching a hole through the creature’s chest, flesh and muscle splattering the wall behind it, while the blast itself had enough force to throw the ghoul backward and to the floor.

“Keo!” Jordan shouted.

“The bed!” he shouted back, and racked the shotgun.

The ghoul was picking itself up from the floor when Keo shot it again, this time taking its entire right arm off at the shoulder joint. When that didn’t stop it, he racked and fired a third time, chopping one of its legs out from under it.

The creature toppled to one side, landing in a splash of its own thick pool of blood. Instead of trying to get back up on its remaining leg, the ghoul started crawling toward him, using its one arm to grab, fingernails digging into the floorboards, and pull itself forward. Then it repeated the process.

Keo stared at the absurd sight for a moment before taking a quick step toward the creature. It raised its head to look up inquisitively at him just before Keo fired, shattering its skull and splattering flesh and blood across the floor.

It didn’t have a head anymore, but the damn thing was still dragging itself toward him…

Keo’s stomach lurched and he took a step back before starting to reload the shotgun. He didn’t have to go very far, because even though it wouldn’t die, the ghoul had been reduced to a tortoise’s speed, sliding across the floor in almost slow motion.

“Keo!” Jordan shouted. “I could really use a hand here!”

She had cleared the pillows and blankets off the bed and was trying in vain to drag it by one bedpost toward the door. Looking at her straining, Keo wondered amusingly if Jordan would get to the door before the ghoul got to him-

“Keo!”

He slung the shotgun and hurried across the room, giving the back window one last look just in case another one of the creatures had managed to climb up the wall outside. When he didn’t see any further threats, he grabbed his end of the bed and pushed.

His left shoulder screamed and his right thigh throbbed against their bandages. Ripples of pain sliced up and down his body and he was probably bleeding again, and he was thankful he didn’t have time to stop and make sure-

Clack.

Keo spun back toward the window just in time to see the blue-eyed ghoul pick up the now-headless black-eyed one from the floor by its remaining leg and casually toss it through the window.

THOOM!

Splintered wood flew across the room and almost impaled itself in Keo’s face. He ducked just in time and watched as a pair of dark eyes peered into the master bedroom through the slit in the door.

THOOM!

Another piece slid across the floor, the slit on the door widening both horizontally and vertically. As if they knew exactly where the weak spot was, the creatures began slamming into the opening until it was big enough that one of the ghouls could begin to squeeze itself through, slashing its flesh against the edges.

Black blood arced through the moonlit room.

“The marina,” the blue-eyed creature hissed. “Now.”

*

The creature had gone to get an extension ladder, the same one Keo had used earlier to retrieve Gene’s water bottles. It was leaning outside the back window of the master bedroom and Keo climbed down first, doing his very best not to think about what awaited him below, but only knowing he had to get away from the room above him and the creatures amassed outside its door at this very moment.

THOOM-THOOM-THOOM!

He could feel the relentless pounding in his bones as he climbed.

The night air swirled around him, threatening to grab and toss him off the ladder. He spent almost as much time looking down, waiting for the inevitable black-eyed ghouls to appear out of nowhere, as he did looking up at Jordan as she maneuvered herself to follow him down.

He hopped the last few meters and landed in a crouch, quickly unslinging the Mossberg. Out here, in the middle of the night, the spreading power of the shotgun was preferable to the M4. Not that he expected them to do the job completely, but placed at the right spots, maybe he could slow them down just enough to outrun them.

THOOM-THOOM-THOOM!

The door had to have been weakened drastically by now, and when it could no longer be called a door, there would be nothing to stand in their way except Ol’ Blue Eyes, as Keo had come to call his savior. It was better than just referring to it as, well, it all the time. Given what the creature had done for him at T18 and now, on Santa Marie Island, Keo felt almost obligated to give it a name, and with it, some measure of respect.

Just don’t fall in love with it, pal. It is a monster, after all.

His heart was racing even as he swept the backyard with the shotgun and continued to wait for the first ghoul to pop out of the bushes like in the movies. It was pitch-dark back here, and what he wouldn’t give for one of those night-vision goggles Steve’s people had been wearing. Of course, those were inside the house behind him at the moment, likely drowned in a sea of undead.

Even now, with his back to the two-story building, Keo could smell them, so many that he imagined the walls of the house bulging with their numbers. He was very aware that all it would take was for one ghoul to stray from the task at hand, from their deadly single-minded determination once they set their sights on a goal, and check the backyard and it was over. Jesus Christ, he was a sitting duck out here.

Jordan jumped the last few feet and landed with an oomph! next to him. She quickly sprang back up and gathered herself and unslung her Remington, even as-

THOOM!

The crash was so loud that Keo felt the door finally, mercifully crumbling all the way down here.

“Go!” he whispered sharply to Jordan, and the two of them began running across the moonlit backyard and through knee-high grass, toward the fence on the other side.

The very loud explosion of chaos, of flesh smashing into walls and floor and ceiling, thundered from the second floor master bedroom behind them, the bang-bang-bang! like machine-gun fire.

Keo didn’t look back and kept running. Ol’ Blue Eyes had been strict about that.

“Run to the docks,” it had said, in that unnatural hiss that gave Keo goose bumps every time. “Take my boat. It has everything you’ll need. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. Just run.”

A shrieking sound, unlike anything Keo had ever heard before, made him break his promise and he glanced back while still moving at full stride.

He glimpsed a flurry of clothing-a trench coat-flashing across the window just before a ghoul trying to climb out was grabbed from behind and jerked back inside.

Bang-bang-bang!

Jesus, it’s doing it. It’s actually stopping them.

But it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. Sooner or later, the flood would drown even Ol’ Blue Eyes. It didn’t matter how fast you were; you couldn’t outswim the ocean. Like most of the lessons he had learned in his life, Keo had accepted that one the hard way, too. It didn’t matter how strong or fast (or unnatural) you were.

Jordan had outdistanced him and reached the gate first. Of course she did. She wasn’t limping on one bad leg. He watched her sling her shotgun, then jump and grab the top of the spikes and scamper up and over. He smiled to himself, remembering how she had told him she had gone to Tulane University on a softball scholarship. He didn’t even know schools had competitive softball.

Keo mimicked her movements and pulled himself up and over the fence. He didn’t land on the other side quite as gracefully as her, spilling on the tall grass with one of the M4’s parts jamming into his side. He grimaced, hoped it didn’t puncture skin, and scrambled back up.

“I didn’t know you were so clumsy, Keo,” Jordan said next to him.

He grinned. “Shut up and run.”

Jordan jogged across the weeds until they finally felt hard pavement under their feet. He couldn’t see the marina from here, but there was no doubt about the direction: South.

“Take my boat,” Ol’ Blue Eyes had said. “It has everything you’ll need.”

Everything? What’s everything? Keo wanted to ask, but by then the door was already bursting at the seams.

He glanced back toward the house one last time.

The tall, white two-story structure stood out even in the darkness, its size dwarfing the other houses around it. The building was so big he had no trouble believing that a hundred, maybe more, of the ghouls had managed to squeeze themselves inside its wide two floors. They would be assaulting the master bedroom right now, waiting their turn to enter, only to find Ol’ Blue Eyes standing in their way.

How long before they overcame him? (Him? Did I just refer to the ghoul as a him?) Or how long before they realized he and Jordan were no longer inside-

“Oh, shit!” Jordan shouted in front of him.

Keo turned around and lifted the Mossberg just as two skeletal forms bounded across one of the unkempt lawns to the left of them.

“Run to the docks,” Ol’ Blue Eyes had said to them. “Take my boat. It has everything you’ll need. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. Just run.”

Like I said, pal, easier said than done, Keo thought, and pulled the trigger.