The Isles of Elysium

CHAPTER 8

“You’re really good at that,” Keo said. “You raised on a farm or something?”

Jack chuckled from his horse’s saddle. “Conroe, Texas. We had more fish than horses out there. I guess I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“You boys been here long?”

“Long enough to be one of the original guys that had to clean up the houses for all the new arrivals. Let me tell you, that’s grunt work I’d rather not do again.”

“Who gets the houses?”

“The worthy ones.”

“Like you?”

“Like I said: The worthy ones. That can be you too, if you play your cards right.”

“You mean if I can find Tobias, kill him, manage to get away, and return to the town still breathing.”

“I thought all of that was implied.”

“Hard to tell with you, Jack, on account of your propensity for lying.”

“A guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do.”

I’ll keep that in mind for next time, dickhead.

“You can do this,” Jack was saying. He sounded almost encouraging, for a dickhead. “Steve says he’s pretty sure you used to do something like this back in the day.”

“What did Steve use to do…back in the day?”

“He was a cop. A detective. A pretty good one, too. Smart. Why do you think he’s running the show around here?”

“I thought it was because of his charming personality.”

“It ain’t that charming.”

For a guy with one bad leg, Jack was easygoing, being a dickhead notwithstanding. Then again, he was riding on a horse while Keo had to walk next to him up the length of the bridge that connected T18 and the rest of what used to be the city of Wilmont. It was midday and would have been peaceful if not for the loud, echoing clop-clop-clop of horseshoes against the steel floor.

A pair of soldiers with binoculars keeping a constant watch on both sides of the river barely paid them any attention as they walked past. There were four soldiers on the bridge, including two manning a guard station on the right lane, leaving just the left open for back and forth travel. The setup was really just two large desks stacked with sandbags underneath a camo canopy that provided plenty of shade. What Keo really paid attention to was the M60 machine gun perched between the two men.

Four men on a bridge were not nearly enough to keep T18 from invasion, but that probably wasn’t the point. The men were just a buffer, with more soldiers manning a swinging metal gate behind them. The figures he had seen earlier moving around the ringed walkway of the water tower were still there, further down the river. Now that was a hell of a perch, and likely one he’d have to evade or take out first if he ever expected to escape the town.

“Have they ever tried to attack the bridge?” Keo asked.

“They’re too smart for that,” Jack said. “Why do you think they’ve been giving us so much trouble? If they were stupid, Steve would have snuffed them out a long time ago.”

Keo looked up at Jack. The younger Miller was eyeing the other side of the bridge as if he expected the mysterious Tobias to be lying in wait for him. The full extent of Jack’s “briefing” had involved pointing out the last spot they had skirmished with Tobias’s group and what the man looked like. Tall, blond, blue eyes, and formidable. He might as well be describing Captain America.

“You respect him,” Keo said. “Tobias.”

“You have to respect the enemy in order to effectively fight him.”

“One of Steve’s sayings?”

Jack grinned but didn’t deny or confirm.

They stopped next to the guard station in the middle of the bridge. The steel structure extended about fifty meters from side to side and about fifteen meters above the water. Keo couldn’t see much of anything on the other end except a two-lane country road flanked by walls of trees. The city’s main commercial district was supposed to be beyond that. As with the right side, the left half of what used to be Wilmont was surrounded by thick woods.

And somewhere out there was Tobias.

“This is where you get off,” Jack said. He picked up the duffel bag lying across his saddle and handed it down to Keo. “Do us both a favor and don’t open it until you’re on the other side. You know, in case the boys here get itchy fingers. It’s been a while since they’ve shot anything, so you don’t wanna tempt them.”

“Heaven forbid,” Keo said, and slung the bag over his shoulder. It was heavy, which was a good sign.

He glanced at his watch: 12:15 P.M. Just over six hours until nightfall.

“You sure you don’t want something with more firepower for the job?” Jack asked. “Not too late. I can ask one of these boys to let you borrow their M4.”

“It’s not the size of the gun, Jack; it’s the finger behind the trigger.”

“Is that what you tell the ladies?”

“I do just fine with the ladies.”

“I bet. I’ve met Gillian, by the way. I can see why you’d be willing to take this job just to get back to her. She’s something.”

“Yes, she is.”

“You’ve tapped that before, right?”

Keo didn’t answer.

“Of course you have,” Jack smiled. “Why else would you be running around out here doing Steve’s bidding. Must have been some-”

“Watch yourself.”

Jack chuckled. “Fair enough.” Then, “Well, good luck, sport, because you’re going to need it. Tobias is a hard man to find and a harder man to kill. But after seeing what you did back at Santa Marie, I’m sure you’re more than up for the job.”

“Tell me something,” Keo said, looking up at Jack.

“What’s on your mind?”

“You always knew your brother was going to come looking for you, didn’t you? That’s why you never tried to escape yesterday.”

“We’re brothers. That’s what we do; look out for one another.” He picked up the reins and was about to turn the horse around when he paused, adding, “Oh, one piece of advice. When you get Tobias in your crosshairs, don’t hesitate. You’re probably only going to get one shot at him.”

Jack galloped off, the clop-clop-clop of horseshoes against the steel bridge like gunshots.

Keo started walking. He didn’t bother looking back because he could feel the men behind the sandbags manning the M60 watching him closely. The thought of being on the wrong side of that monster when it unleashed its full fury made him shiver slightly.

*

About three kilometers from the bridge, Keo came upon the first sign of civilization-a shopping center with sun-baked concrete floors and gray buildings that had been stripped of most of their signs. A slight wind moved through broken storefront windows without resistance, and overgrown grass swayed against the edges of the expansive and mostly spacious parking lot.

The sight of the abandoned stores and the few dirt-covered cars around him was like stepping through a portal in time, a reminder that he was living through the end of civilization as he knew it. He couldn’t even summon the curiosity to search the buildings for hints to Tobias’s whereabouts. It was all incredibly depressing, and Keo quickened his steps to get through the lot as fast as possible. Besides, there was little chance Tobias would leave clues this close to T18.

All things considered, this was one of his better days. He’d found Gillian, and that alone made up for everything else. It felt as if someone had lifted a 500-pound safe off his chest. He was optimistic for the first time in a long time, and it made leaving Carrie behind on the Trident easier to stomach.

He was almost giddy as he flattened his finger against the trigger guard of the MP5SD hanging from a sling in front of him. Having the submachine gun back was another major plus, and Jack had been even nice enough to return his pack intact, including the spare magazines and his gun belt with the silver bullet-loaded Glock. From the way the younger Miller had simply handed the bag full of weapons over, Keo guessed his captors hadn’t bothered to pay very close attention to his supplies. Either that, or finding guys loaded with silver rounds wasn’t anything new to them, which Keo doubted.

The only thing he was missing was food and water. Apparently they expected him to find his own rations out here. Or maybe that was just another incentive to hurry up, finish the job, and return to T18.

Not that he needed more incentive, with Gillian back there…

He was grinning to himself like an idiot when something small but fast-incredibly fast-hit the parking lot about two feet in front of him and chipped concrete flicked at his face like little bees.

Sniper! Shit!

Keo darted out of the open and slid against an old Chevy minivan with peeling white paint that, thank God, was just a few feet away. He was trying to come to grips with the absence of a gunshot as he pressed against the dirty vehicle when the back windshield to the left side of his head exploded. Except this time he heard the subsonic round as it shattered the glass and punched its way into the floor of the car behind him.

He dropped into a crouch and hurried toward the front, waiting for a third shot that didn’t come. He reached the driver-side door, ignored it, and rounded the front bumper until he was leaning against the dirty grill of the Chevy.

He waited again for more follow-up shots, but nothing was exploding around him, so he assumed the guy didn’t have a clear shot. That meant his position in front of the minivan was good, which in turn translated to the shooter being somewhere behind him.

Keo recalled the layout of the area in his head.

There was an Archers Sports and Outdoors next to what looked like a pizza place featuring some guy in a toga, and a dozen or so other businesses that he hadn’t paid very much attention to. One of them might have been an insurance place and the other was-

The Archers. It had to be the Archers.

Whoever it was, he was using a rifle with a suppressor, because Keo hadn’t even heard either one of the two gunshots. That was hard to do with a rifle. Even the best suppressors left some kind of noise, especially against the nearly silent backdrop of a dead world. Firing from a high angle, which any sniper worth his salt would be doing, would increase the possibility of noise. And yet he hadn’t heard a single peep when the first bullet nearly took his head off.

He was pretty sure the shooter was on top of the Archers directly behind him, about one hundred meters across the parking lot. There was nothing but a lot of open ground between him and the store. Oh sure, there were a few cars sprinkled here and there, like the minivan that had saved his life, but not nearly enough of them for one hundred meters’ worth of safety.

Still, he had to be sure.

Keo stood up quickly, turning around and looking through the dirt-speckled front windshield of the Chevy and out the exposed rear area and across the parking lot at the Archers-

The man saw him almost at the same time Keo spotted him, perched along the edge of the sports store. Sunlight glinted off the long barrel of the rifle as it twitched, and Keo dropped back down as the round pierced the windshield and zipped! a few inches over his head.

Too close!

Okay, so now he knew exactly where the guy was. On top of the Archers, just as he had guessed.

So how was he going to use that information?

He had no idea. It wasn’t like he could counterattack, even if he desperately wanted to. Keo had never been the kind of person to take being shot at lying down. But one hundred meters was probably ninety meters too many, and as pissed off as he was at the moment, he wanted to stay alive even more-especially now that he had found Gillian.

The shooter clearly had a good scope on top of his rifle. Or maybe not. He did miss the first shot, didn’t he? Then again, he’d only missed by two feet…

Maybe, maybe not.

Keo sat on the concrete pavement, which was curiously both hot and cold against his butt. He didn’t really have much of a choice at the moment. He could run or fight, and fighting seemed like a lost cause. Besides, he had other fish to fry. One named Tobias, to be very specific.

Yes, the sniper had him pinned behind the minivan, but it was difficult shooting a moving target from across an entire parking lot. The guy would have to be pretty good, and he had already proven that he wasn’t, even if that last shot had come dangerously close.

He knew one thing for sure: He definitely couldn’t stay here forever. Even if the shooter didn’t have reinforcements-though the chances of him being out here alone were pretty slim, especially this close to T18-Keo was working against the clock. He had less than six hours to find and kill Tobias and return to town. Failing that…

Failure is not an option.

Unless you fail.

He smirked to himself, then glanced down at his watch.

Did he say six hours? It was more like five.

Time flies when people are shooting at you.

There wasn’t very much to the right and left of him, and behind him were the stores. His only choice was forward, back toward the same long stretch of road that had brought him here from the bridge in the first place. On the other side were a couple of large warehouses, hard to miss given their size, their front yards like jungles. There was nothing behind them but woods.

Thick woods. He could easily get lost in there. If he made it across alive, that was. But his best option at the moment was to lengthen the distance between him and the shooter. The problem with that was, the warehouses were at least another hundred meters away. That was a hell of a long distance to run, even if the guy had proven not to be a world-class marksman.

The things I do for you, Gillian.

He sighed and rose from the ground.

Keo counted to five, but on three decided to play a trick on himself and pushed off the grill of the Chevy and ran forward as fast as he could. His pack thumped against his back as he began zig-zagging, hoping to make getting a bead on him more difficult.

It seemed to work when the first two shots went wide-one landing to his right, the other to his left.

At the twenty-meter mark, Keo decided to run straight for a while before breaking off and going right for another fifteen. Each time he changed directions, the shooter had a hard time keeping up, and three more shots missed him by wide margins. Keo started noticing that each round was falling further behind him, which meant the guy was having difficulty adjusting.

The sniper finally stopped shooting-or at least the ground stopped exploding around him-when Keo successfully crossed the road and entered the overgrown lawn of the closest warehouse. He passed a sign with a guy holding a welder’s torch, but he was moving too fast to read the company name.

The large twin doors into the building had been pried open long ago, leaving a gaping hole for Keo to easily slip through without the need to break his stride. A good thing, because as soon as he darted out of the open there was a loud pang! as a bullet ricocheted off the metal wall behind him.

A little late there, aren’t you, pal?

The interior was steel walls and roof and solid concrete floors. Heavy machinery lined the cavernous room, which actually looked much bigger inside, and the ground was sticky with year-old oil spills and God knew what else. Every step he took produced a squeaking sound that echoed (too loudly) off the walls. The air was musky and smelled of chemicals, more oil, and a lot of grease. He couldn’t find any evidence as to what the warehouse had been used for once upon a time, and as he hurried through it toward the back, he guessed it didn’t really matter.

It was just another old relic of the past, like Santa Marie Island, like the boardwalk and fairground at the channel and the strip mall with the sniper behind him. No one was going to come in here anymore except guys like him looking for shelter, and soon nature would reclaim this area. He’d be surprised if he could even still see the warehouse in ten, maybe twenty years. Unlike back at the shopping center, there were no concrete parking lots to keep the woods at bay on this side of the street.

It took a while given the size of the building, but finally he reached the other end and made a beeline toward a steel back door. The lever was covered in black gunk that might have been oil or grease or a combination of the two-or possibly something else entirely. He was reaching for it when there was a crack! and a round ping! off the metal surface, ricocheting into an assembly line machine behind and to the right of him.

Keo spun and fired back without aiming, or really knowing what he was shooting at. He was also darting left when more than one rifle opened up in return.

The sound of unsuppressed gunfire inside the warehouse was deafening, and they were quickly joined by the multiple pings! of bullets bouncing off walls and machinery around him, every single one of them seemingly trying to track him down.

Out of the frying pan and into the bonfire.

Daebak.