The Isles of Elysium (Purge of Babylon, Book 6) (40 page)

He could easily make out the docks under the generous pool of moonlight, along with the creatures crawling all over them at the moment. The white twenty-footer they had arrived in remained tied in its slip, looking incredibly lonely against the blanket of night. Not surprisingly, the ghouls were drawn to it like a beacon. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to keep the boat there. Should they have dragged it out of the water and hid it? Too late for that now.

His stomach growled, a low rumble that gradually increased in volume.

“I heard that,” Jordan said from across the room. She was sitting against the wall next to the open door.

“Heard what?” he said.

“Uh huh. So what are they doing out there?”

“They’re at the marina. I guess they found the boat.”

“Not exactly hard to find. Maybe we should have hid it.”

Definitely should have hid it,
he thought. “Yeah, probably.”

“So what are they doing, exactly?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“You expect them to jump into the boat and drive it back to the mainland?”

“Given everything I’ve seen so far, would that really be all that crazy?”

Keo thought about T18, about the blue-eyed ghoul that had saved his life… “Not that crazy, I guess.”

“Keo,” Jordan said.

“What?”

“I’m sorry about Gillian.”

“Are we doing this again?”

“There’s a bright side…”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve always had a bit of a crush on you. So if you’re looking for some rebound sex, I’m available.”

“Shit,”
Keo said.

“Ugh, never mind, then. I was just trying to be friendly—”

“No, not that. Something’s approaching the island.”

He saw it again—
a single orb of light
bouncing against the water’s surface, followed quickly by the familiar and slowly growing whine of motors.

“What is it?” Jordan asked.

He looked across the semidarkness of the master bedroom at her, clutching the AR-15. “They’re here.”

“How many?”

“Just one.”

“Just one?”

“I only see one.”

Jordan gave him a confused look. “That doesn’t make any sense—”

BOOM!

The entire house shook, as if it had been hit by a meteorite, and every inch of the wall and floor and ceiling seemed to tremble and threaten to come unglued at the seams. The shock of the explosion tossed Jordan forward, the rifle spilling from her grip. A cloud of debris and smoke flooded through the open doorway and splashed into the master bedroom, swallowing up Jordan in its path.

Keo ducked instinctively, even though he didn’t have to. Jordan was somewhere on the floor in front of him, trying to get up; he only knew she was there because he could hear her coughing.

Dave!

He staggered to his feet and rushed through the billowing smoke—
crunching
chunks of the wall and ceiling that had fallen free under his boots—over to Jordan’s struggling form. He pulled her up, and when she was steady on her feet again, he continued on toward the door. He slipped through it, stumbling over more debris.

Once outside, he froze in his tracks.

Half of the second floor ceiling was gone, exposing the open, dark skies above. A cold chill swamped the remains of the room, and there were no signs of Dave. In the spot where Keo had last seen the other man, there were only shreds of clothing buried underneath fallen rubble and pieces of what looked like an assault rifle sprinkled across the floor.

Keo zeroed in on the gaping hole in the front wall, the same one that faced the eastern marina. The almost perfect half-circle opening in the floor looked down at a bathroom and parts of another bedroom. It looked like the explosion had torn out a huge chunk of the house, as if some giant monster had gobbled it up, leaving behind a jagged crater in the shape of its mouth.

He hadn’t gotten more than a few steps toward what remained of the front wall when—

Pop-pop-pop!

He dropped to the floor—

Pop-pop-pop!

Bullets
zipped
past his head and slammed into parts of the ceiling that were still above him. Keo rolled away from the opening, ignoring the stabbing pains; it seemed like every sharp edge along the Mossberg shotgun slung over his back was digging into his body.

Whoever was shooting at him must have anticipated that he would be scampering away from the opening, because they started shooting through the wall in front of him. Pieces of the house splintered, and a window that had escaped the blast unscathed shattered and rained glass around him.

He kept moving—kept rolling—because he didn’t know what else to do.

He didn’t stop until he bumped into a wall and scrambled up and ran back toward the master bedroom. Jordan was at the door, clinging to a nearby bureau to keep herself upright, and she almost shot him with her reacquired rifle when he darted back inside.

“Jesus, Keo!” she shouted. “Where’s Dave?”

He shook his head. Dave was probably dead. Or injured. Or somewhere buried on the first floor. Bottom line: Dave was out of action, and there was no telling how many men were coming into the house at this very moment.

Not just men, either, but
them
, too.

He ran past Jordan and to the window. He kept away from the glass and peered out and was immediately drawn back to the western marina where the boat he had seen earlier had docked in the slip next to the one holding the white shape of their twenty-footer.

What the hell is happening?

None of this made any sense. If Steve’s people—and there was no doubt that was them out there right now—had successfully sneaked unnoticed onto the island from somewhere else, then who was the lone dark figure walking calmly up the dock?

Keo might have been seeing things
(again?)
, but he swore the throng of ghouls gathering inside the marina were separating, scrambling to get out of the figure’s way, like Moses parting the Red Sea…

“Hey, Keo, you
in there?”

Steve.

Of course it was Steve, shouting like an idiot from somewhere outside the house, though where, exactly, Keo couldn’t quite pinpoint. Who else would it be? He hadn’t for a single second (okay, maybe for a few very optimistic seconds) thought the man was dead. It was too good to be true, and if everything he had gone through since the world ended had taught him anything, it was that when things were too good to be true they usually were—especially when he was involved.

If it wasn’t for shitty luck…

“One down, two to go!”

The man sounded like he was having fun, which was more than Keo could say for him and Jordan as he scrambled out of the main bedroom while keeping as far away from the cratered wall as possible. A cold gust of wind made him shiver involuntarily, and the scar along the left side of his face tingled, the first time in a long time.

“I could be wrong, of course. It’s kind of dark out here. Hard to see.”

His one big advantage was the stairs. There were plenty of ways to get into the house—the back door, the front door, the windows—but there was only one path up to the second floor. He moved in a crouch toward it now and leaned against the wall, listening for sounds and vibrations that would signal entry.

Now this is familiar,
he thought, remembering the last time he was pinned on the second floor of a house.

“But it’s going to get even darker real soon, buddy.” The voice was clearly on the move, from the back of the house toward the front.

Earlier, Keo had locked the doors and windows on the first floor, but there were no additional (and obvious) barricades over the other entrances, just in case the creatures decided to look inside. It was a risk, considering everything Gene had preached about not messing with a house’s status quo, but Keo had to risk it. The idea of hiding inside a place that wasn’t locked
on purpose
made his skin crawl. And besides, Gene’s way of doing things hadn’t exactly worked out the last time he was on the island…

“You still alive in there, Keo? Don’t be shy! I thought we were friends?”

Think again,
Keo wanted to shout back down, but held his tongue.

“Gillian’s still waiting for you back in town. You’ll be happy to know I’ve decided not to punish her. Or Doc Jay. They’re not responsible for your bad decisions, after all.”

Right. Steve hadn’t hurt Gillian because he was feeling generous. More likely it was because he needed her to keep Jay in line. Jay might not have the makings of a rebel, but every man had his limits. Harming a woman like Gillian, along with her unborn baby, was a good way to piss off one of the only two doctors in town.

Steve’s words made Keo feel a lot better about leaving Gillian behind in T18. Of course, that probably wasn’t Steve’s intent.

“Man up, Keo!” the man shouted now. “Don’t make me go up there! It’s not gonna be pretty if I have to do that!”

A brief silence. Maybe Steve expected him to respond. If so, he was going to have a long wait. Keo was too busy listening for the telltale signs of an impending assault, because he knew damn well one was coming. And soon.

“All right, have it your way!” Steve shouted.

Thanks for the warning, asshole,
Keo thought, just as he heard the first
bang!
against the front door downstairs. That was followed by the
crash!
of glass panes as they began breaking their way through the windows at the same time.

He glanced behind him at Jordan, crouched near the open master bathroom door with the Remington in her hands, the AR-15 slung over her back. Her right eye had gotten much better in the last few hours, though at the moment he could really only see her left even with the thick pool of moonlight splashing inside through the gaping hole to their right—the result of some kind of grenade launcher, most likely.

He nodded at her and could just barely make her out giving him a crooked, almost wistful half-smile back, as if to say,
This is it. We’re both going to die.

He couldn’t disagree, so he smiled back and turned around, then swapped the M4 for the Mossberg with the pistol grip. The 12-gauge pump-action shotgun was thirty-one inches long and held six shells. He had the rest stuffed into his pockets, but what he wouldn’t give for a shell carrier. Of course, what he wouldn’t give for a whole lot of things, including his MP5SD with the built-in suppressor. There were a lot of weapons still waiting inside the master bedroom’s tub, but one non-MP5SD was the same as another.

If wishes were assholes…

He faced the stairs again and pressed his left ear against the wall.

They were coming. The banging against the door had ceased, probably because they realized coming through the windows was easier. Right now, he could hear the
crunch
of glass under heavy combat boots. Then, in no time at all, those same sounds approaching the bottom of the stairs.

Definitely more than one. How many would Steve bring with him? That would depend on how many boats he had managed to land on Santa Marie Island without them noticing. He couldn’t have achieved that using the eastern marina. Dave would have seen them. And Keo had the western side scoped out, but by the time he had seen the lone boat, it was too late; they were already on the island.

Christ, how did they get on the island so fast?

Things weren’t adding up. If Steve had made it onto the island unnoticed, who was piloting the lone boat that landed at the western marina? Was that some kind of diversion? Draw his attention as they moved on the house?

Maybe. Steve was clever enough to do something like that. The guy had sent him out of T18 to be shot at, only to swoop in and decimate Tobias’s people. Many of the opponents Keo had met in the last few months had been devoid of tactical ability, but Steve wasn’t one of them. Far from it.

And Dave. Shit. He was either dead or lying somewhere on the first floor under some rubble. Either way, Dave wasn’t going to be much help right now. Keo just hoped it was at least a fast trip to the afterlife for the poor guy. He hadn’t really gotten to know Dave all that well, but he’d liked the man nonetheless.

Focus.

He didn’t have very long to wait for Steve to show his hand. Keo didn’t so much as see the man’s head as he spotted the protruding lens of the night-vision goggles peeking around the corner before turning up the stairs.

Keo fired, buckshot tearing into the NVG and shattering the lens, slamming into flesh and bone on the other side.

Even as the body collapsed, a second man appeared, jumping over his fallen comrade. The man landed on the second step and was lifting a laser-equipped M4 when Keo racked the Mossberg and put the contents of the second shell into the man’s chest. The black-clad figure was flung back by the blast, tripped over the body behind him, and did an almost impressive backward flip onto the living room floor.

They took the hint after that and he heard heavy footsteps, this time moving away from the staircase.

Keo took advantage of the momentary retreat and grabbed two shells from his pocket and fed them into the shotgun. Behind him, he heard Jordan crouch-walking over to his position, her labored breathing doing more to alert him than the
crunch
of her boots over debris strewn across the floor.

“You okay?” she whispered.

He nodded. “Anything going on back there?”

She shook her head. “I don’t see anything. They’re either all inside the house already, or they’re sticking to places I can’t see from the back window.”

“What about the rest of the island?” He thought about adding,
“What about
them,” but Jordan already knew what he meant.

“I don’t know where they went,” she said. “It’s like they just disappeared. But it’s so dark out there, they could be right under the window and I might still not have seen them.”

That’s encouraging,
he thought, smiling slightly to himself.

He focused back on the stairs.

“Do you really think they’re holding back?” Jordan asked. Like him the last time, she didn’t have to elaborate on who “they” were.