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

“You believe him?”
Gene asked.

“I don’t know,” Keo said. “Maybe. Or he might just be a very good liar.”

“You can’t tell?”

“I’m not a human polygraph, Gene.”

“What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“Polygraph.”

“A lie detector.”

“Oh.”

Gene glanced back at Miller, leaning against the same Bronco with zip ties around his ankles and wrists. They had found bundles of the stuff inside the compartments of the soldiers’ boat. No doubt they came in handy whenever Miller and his crew ran across stragglers such as Gene’s friends. Or, possibly, Gillian and the others a few months earlier. Though, according to Miller, he was new to the gig, which meant Keo had shot the wrong men.

“I don’t know how you can trust him,” Gene said.

“I can’t. But as long as I have a gun and he doesn’t, I don’t have to.”

He had said it louder than necessary, even though they weren’t so far from him that Miller couldn’t already hear everything they were saying anyway.

“You can come with me,” Keo said.

The teenager looked surprised. “Me? What would I do out there?”

“Try to find your friends.”

“I don’t even know if they’re still alive.”

“When the soldiers took them, were they still alive?”

“Yeah.”

“Then they’re still alive now.”

“How do you know that?”

“The towns Miller was telling me about? They don’t kill you. It’s not a prison. Not really, anyway. I mean, yes, it is in a sense, but it’s not a death camp by any means. Think of it more like a federal pen for white collar criminals, with only minimal possibilities of shower rapes.”

Gene gave him that patented confused look.

“Point is,” Keo continued, “if they did take your friends to T18 or one of the other Ts, that means they’re still alive and probably fine as long as they play by the rules.”

“How do you know all this?”

“The question is, how is it that you don’t? Weekend warriors like Miller have been setting these towns up for months now. First the camps—”

Gene’s eyes lit up at that.

“You know about the camps,” Keo said.

The kid nodded. From his expression, he knew a lot about the camps. He might have even been in one of them once upon a time, and for a moment Keo thought about asking Gene to pull up his sleeves to show him his arms, but decided against it. Being victimized by those creatures was traumatic enough; he didn’t feel the need to force Gene to relive it, too.

“They’re gone,” Keo continued. “The camps. From what I’ve been told, they started moving people over to these resettlement towns months ago.” He glanced back at Miller. “Right?”

Miller nodded. “Right.”

Gene was staring at Miller intently. Keo wasn’t sure what he saw in the kid’s eyes—maybe anger, a little bit of fear, but definitely a lot of dislike.

“Kid,” Keo said, directing Gene’s eyes back to him. “It’s your choice. I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to. If you stay, you can keep half the supplies like we agreed, and I’ll give you half of the soldiers’, too.”

“What about him?” Gene asked.

“He’s coming with me.”

“What if he comes back with more men?”

“He won’t. Whatever happens, I promise you won’t see him again.”

Gene nodded reluctantly, then said, “So when are you leaving?”

Keo glanced at his watch: 3:14 
P.M.

The afternoon had crept up on him, leaving him just three hours before sunset. He thought about all those houses behind him along the streets and the things that may or may not be hiding inside, watching them at this very moment.

Keo looked back at the docks, at his boat in the slip next to the soldiers’ bigger vessel. He had spent the last few days in the Gulf of Mexico sleeping under the stars on his way here. It had been some of the best night’s sleep of his life because he didn’t have to worry about anything crawling up and over the gunwales. He would have no trouble doing that for one more night.

But that was back when he was out there in the middle of the ocean all by himself, and not this close to the Texas coastline. Even if he took Miller’s boat, a gunfight out in the open water would not end well for him, especially if they had more than one gun onboard, which they certainly would. If his experiences with the soldiers in Louisiana had taught him anything, it was that where you found one patrol, you usually found more.

“Tomorrow morning,” Keo said, turning back to Gene. “Until then, show me how to survive the island at night.”

*

Instead of staying
at the two-story white house on the hill, Gene led him and a hobbling Miller further up the street. Keo had given Miller a paddle from his boat to use as a crutch, and the former paramedic turned human collaborator seemed to be moving surprisingly well for someone with a hole in one of his thighs. He only clenched his teeth every now and then and had decided to smartly keep any complaints to himself.

The fact that Miller seemed to be taking captivity so well made Keo doubt everything the man had told him. Guys who were that calm while facing the wrong end of a gun were dangerous enough to come up with clever lies, like a town with two warring parties. But Keo kept his suspicions to himself. He would find out one way or another if Miller was telling fibs in the morning. Right now, there was the night to worry about.

One problem at a time.

The house Gene took them to was another two-story, this one squeezed between two much smaller residences. It sat along the north end of the island, with a quaint backyard overlooking the bay. A mailbox with the name “Tanner” greeted them as they walked up the driveway.

“You’ve been here before?” Keo asked Gene.

The teenager nodded. “Couple of times.” He pointed at the exposed windows and the living room on the other side. “That’s how you know if they’ve been inside the houses.”

“The curtains…”

“Yeah. If they’re inside, they’ll pull the curtains or something, like furniture, to block out the sun. The tricky part is tricking them while not letting them know you’re tricking them.”

“Tricky,” Keo said.

“Heh,” Gene grinned. “I see what you did there.”

Keo smiled back at him.

Gene walked on forward, then opened the door—it wasn’t locked—and leaned inside and seemed to sniff the air for a moment. Satisfied, he glanced back at Keo. “Smells good.”

“Smells good?” Keo said.

“Yeah, they have a smell. Like shit mixed with garbage. It always lingers when they’ve been inside a house.”

“Sounds good to me,” Keo said. Then, nudging Miller in the back with the barrel of his MP5SD, “In you go. You’re our guinea pig for the day.”

Miller grunted before taking his first tentative step inside, the paddle under his armpit
clack-clacking
against the tiled floor.

There were no signs of a struggle, and the place was spotless except for old, faded stains here and there. Dried blood, from the night the creatures invaded Santa Marie Island, probably. What must it have been like as the creatures took the population one by one, multiplying as they went? The only way off the island would be through the marinas, but how many had made it? How many even knew to flee before it was too late?

Keo closed the door behind him. “Should I lock the door?”

“No,” Gene said.

“What about the windows?”

“No, everything has to be the way they were when we found them. They’re smarter than you think. If they see something wrong with a house, something that wasn’t there the night before, they’ll know someone’s inside. A locked front door, a closed curtain, even the slightest things. We have to trick them without letting them know they’re being tricked, remember?”

Smart dead things? Now where’d he heard that before? Right. It was something Lara said, about how the creatures were dead but not stupid. A motto her boyfriend had come up with that had kept them all alive. For a while, anyway. As far as Keo knew, it hadn’t helped the ex-Ranger in the end.

Gene led them up a flight of stairs, their footsteps against the carpeted steps the only noise in the entire house.

“How do you know they didn’t sneak in through the back door since the last time you were here?” Keo asked as he and Miller followed the teenager up.

“I can tell just by looking at the floor,” Gene said. “Or the walls. Things moved, broken furniture, glass, that kind of thing. And like I said, they smell. Once they’re inside a house, the stink doesn’t go away for weeks even after they’ve moved on. Can you smell it?”

“No.”

That wasn’t entirely true. He did smell something. Abandonment. But that was normal these days. You couldn’t stick your head into a building, a vehicle, or anything with enclosed spaces and not get a whiff. It was everywhere.

“No smell means they’re not inside,” Gene was saying.

The second floor was wide open, with curtainless windows exposing the calm waters of Galveston Bay on the other side.

“You sure we’re going to be safe up here?” Keo asked.

“I’ve stayed here before,” Gene said. “The last time was almost three weeks ago. They’ve never come close to sniffing me.”

“First time for everything.”

“Trust me, we’ll be fine.”

Famous last words, kid.

Miller, moving in front of him, must have had the same thought, because he gave Keo a quick look.

“What?” Keo said.

“I didn’t say anything,” Miller said.

“Uh huh.” Then, “I have a question for you.”

“What?”

“How do they know to avoid you?”

“Avoid me?”

“Yeah. How do they know not to have you for dinner?”

Miller seemed to actually think about it for a moment. “I don’t know. They just do.”

“That’s it? You’re not even curious?”

“It works. I don’t care why or how, just that it does.”

“I bet that’s what the Nazi sympathizers said during World War II.”

“There’s a difference between me and them.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I’m still alive.”

“For now.”

Miller snorted. “Have you looked around you?”

“What about it?”

“There’s no winning here, sport. We’re down for the count. The faster you accept it, the easier it’ll be.”

“Are you trying to recruit me?”

Miller grinned back at him. “You interested?”

Keo chuckled. “I’ll let you know in the morning.”

Gene pushed his way into the master bedroom at the end of the second-floor hallway. It was appropriately huge, with satin sheets crumpled on the floor. The king-size bed looked to be in good condition, though clouds of dust flitted off the sheets and across the streams of fading sunlight coming in through an open window.

The teenager led them past the bed, a massive dresser, and LCD TV, and toward a pair of doors in the back. Keo already knew what was on the other side even before Gene pulled them open. It was a bathroom, big enough to fit a couple of families and their pet. More sunlight poured in through a window behind a large bathtub and reflected off the long mirror opposite from it.

“Here?” Keo said.

“Doors are solid wood, super tough,” Gene said. He knocked on one of the mahogany slabs for effect, producing dull
thudding
sounds. “They’re going to need a battering ram to get through them. Push comes to shove, we can always escape through the window.”

“The window?” Keo said doubtfully.

“I’ve tested it out. You can climb onto the roof from it.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Why, you scared of heights?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean I want to go around climbing people’s roofs, Gene.”

The kid smiled mischievously before walking over and opening the cabinet underneath the sink. He took out a backpack and put it on the counter, then unzipped it and pulled out a bottle of water that he tossed to Keo. It was warm, and Keo brushed aside a generous layer of gathered dust.

“I have go-bags in all the safe zones around the island,” Gene said. “Lots of water, but I’m running out of food.” He also pulled out a Glock handgun. “You need another one?”

“I’m good,” Keo said. Then to Miller, “What about you? You need a gun?”

Miller gave him a look that said he wasn’t entirely certain if Keo was kidding. “Yes.”

“Too bad. Have a seat instead.”

Miller grunted, then hobbled over to the toilet in the back. It was separated from the shower stall by a three-inch wall, and the wounded soldier sat down gratefully on the porcelain lid.

Keo stared at the man for a moment. He had expected Miller to at least try to escape once during the trek from the marina over to the house, but he had remained perfectly obliging. In fact, it seemed as if he hadn’t given the possibility of escape a single thought.

“How long before your friends show up looking for you?” he asked Miller.

“My friends?” Miller said. Either the guy was surprised by the question, or he really was a very good liar.

“When you don’t return to T18. What happens then?”

Miller shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

“Are you telling me no one’s going to care if you don’t report back in?”

“Report back? Man, you’re way overestimating us. We’re not nearly that organized. I wish we were. It’d make a lot of things easier.”