The Isles of Elysium

CHAPTER 26

“They’re not coming,” Keo said.

“How can you be sure?” Jordan asked.

Keo didn’t have to look at his watch, thanks to the sight of the setting sun. The calm, clear skies weren’t darkening just yet, but it wouldn’t be long now. Maybe another hour, maybe less. In the back of his mind, he still remembered the speed with which yesterday had darkened.

“They would be here by now if they were coming,” he said.

“Maybe he’s dead. Steve. You said it yourself; you couldn’t see anyone back at the marina, just silhouettes. One of them could have been Steve. If he’s dead, would they still come after us?”

It was a fair question, and she had a point. It had been unfathomably dark back there, and he and Dave were shooting at everything that wasn’t them. One of the bodies spilling out of Marina 1 could very well have been Steve.

Or was that just him trying to be overly optimistic?

“Maybe,” he said.

“You didn’t answer my question. Would they still come after us if Steve’s dead?”

“I don’t know. You’ve known the guy longer than I have. Would he?”

“I’ve seen him, and Tobias has talked about him a lot, but I never sat across a desk from him drinking shots of whiskey. You have.”

Another good point. Jordan was full of good points today.

“Steve’s the boss,” Keo said. “He would move Heaven and Earth to find and snuff out Dave for killing Jack. Without him, the town-and the soldiers running it-might not consider us important enough to commit the manpower. I wouldn’t, in their shoes. What’s two or three more stragglers when they have an entire town to watch over?”

“So there’s a chance no one’s coming.”

“There’s a chance, yeah.”

She cocked her head, scrutinizing him with her one good eye. In a day or two, she would probably be able to see out of the right side just fine.

“What?” he said.

“You’re telling me what you think I want to hear, but you don’t actually believe any of it, do you?”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

Jordan sighed. “You know what’s ironic about all of this?”

“What’s that?”

“This place.” She looked around at the empty streets and the houses around them again. “We’ve been trying to get here all this time, and here we are, finally. Is it everything you thought it would be?”

“Not quite.”

“Yeah…”

He glanced down at his watch. 5:11 P.M. “It’ll be dark soon. We need to find a place to hole up for the night.”

“And maybe find some food. Did I tell you I was starving?”

“Maybe a time or two.”

“I thought I’d just remind you in case you forgot.” As if on cue, her stomach growled. “See?”

He stood up. “Let’s go get Dave.”

“You think he’s hungry, too?”

“I’m sure he is.”

“Because I’m starving.”

“You don’t say…”

*

Dave heard them coming behind him and glanced up from the boulder where he was hiding, overlooking the eastern marina on the other side.

“I don’t think they’re coming today,” he said.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Keo nodded.

“That’s good news for us, right? Maybe they won’t come tomorrow, either.”

And maybe monkeys will fly out of my ass, Keo thought, but said, “Maybe. For now, let’s find someplace to bunk down for the night. This island might look empty, but it’s far from it.”

Dave looked up at the sky, and Keo thought he might have shivered involuntarily.

“Been awhile?” Keo asked.

“What’s that?” Dave said.

“Since you’ve been out here.”

Dave tried to smile. “Something like that.”

Keo thought about saying something reassuring. Not just for Dave, but for Jordan standing next to him, but with the night creeping up on them and Steve coming (You’re out there, aren’t you? I know you’re out there.) sooner or later, whatever he said would have just sounded hollow.

“Let’s try to stay alive tonight first, then worry about tomorrow, tomorrow,” was all he could think of to say.

*

Choosing a place to stay the night was a no-brainer. The two-story white house on the hill in the middle, where he had found the guns, was the first and last choice he considered. From up there, he could keep an eye on the entire island, including both marinas. The house was also in a perfect spot to, even with just three people, hold off a lengthy assault.

He didn’t like the idea of getting into another standoff with very few outs, but Keo had learned long ago that what he wanted and would rather do was usually not what he had to do in order to survive. Pollard, Song Island, and T18 were proof of that.

“Adapt or perish,” as Lara and the folks on the Trident were fond of saying.

The house was flanked by a half dozen others, with a long, winding driveway that connected it to the streets. A ten-foot-tall metal fence surrounded the property, with an extensive front and backyard, and an electronic gate that they left the way Gene had found it-open. Gene might have just been a sixteen-year-old kid, but he had survived on the island by himself for months; he had done that by not attracting the ghouls’ attention, which meant leaving things as he found them, including the doors, windows, and front gates.

Inside the house, they found five bedrooms, with two on the second floor, including the master. It had an attic but no basement. He found plenty of boxes (open, which probably meant Gene had gone through them already) in one half of the garage, but no car or food. Gene had once told him he had bug-out bags all around the island, but apparently the two-story house wasn’t one of those places. Or if it were, Keo couldn’t find where the kid had hid them.

His stomach was growling when he came out of the garage and headed back to the house. He gave the street beyond the gate a last look, then peeked up at the darkening skies before slipping back inside.

Jordan was leaning against the kitchen’s island counter, looking somberly at her reflection in the steel refrigerator across from her. She and Dave had gone through the cabinets, opening every door they could find in hopes of locating food that hadn’t spoiled or gone bad, while he was outside. By the expression on her face, he guessed they had come up empty, too.

Piles of utensils covered the counters-spoons, forks, and butter knives. Besides food, Jordan and Dave had been looking for anything silver, but by the way the cutlery was tossed around, that search had come up just as empty.

“Any silver?” he asked anyway.

She shook her head. “Fake. They’re all cheap fakes. How is it possible people who live in a house this big, that probably cost more than I’ll make in a lifetime, don’t have one single real piece of silver lying around?”

“Maybe that’s how they got to be rich in the first place. They’re frugal with their money. Why buy real, expensive silver when you can just use the cheap stuff? Most people don’t know the difference, anyway.”

“So that’s the secret?”

“One of many, I’m guessing.”

He started to open the refrigerator, but Jordan said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“Nothing?”

“Oh, there’s something in there, all right. You just can’t eat it. Well, you could if you wanted to, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

He gave up on the refrigerator and walked back to her. “Nothing at all? Not even a nibble?”

“Not even rat droppings. You’d think there would be rat droppings, right? Are there even any animals left on the island?”

“The birds.”

“Land animals, I mean.”

“Probably not. Once they turned the population, they’d have to resort to other things for blood.”

“And here we are…”

“And here we are. Did Dave find anything on the second floor?”

“If he did, he didn’t say anything. Maybe he’s hoarding the food all for himself.” She laid her forehead against the counter and sighed. “We should have gone to Galveston Island, Keo. There are more houses there, more supplies…”

“We’ll go there tomorrow. Find some gas, load up on some food, and get the hell away from here for good.”

She gave him a wry smile. “When did you become such an optimist?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

“For one, you lost the woman you love to some guy. To add insult to injury, she’s carrying his child.”

“Yeah, but other than that, things have been going pretty swell.” He sat down on a stool. “You know what the funny thing is?”

“You mean there’s something funny about all this? Please enlighten me, because I can use a good laugh right about now.”

“Back at the marina-at T18-I saw something that I’m still not entirely sure I actually saw.”

“That sounds overly complicated.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

He ran the memories back in his head. Keo had lost count of the number of times he had relived last night. And like all the other times, nothing he saw-or thought he saw-still made any sense.

“What happened?” Jordan asked, looking at him curiously with her good eye.

“I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.”

“Even after everything that’s happened?”

“Even after everything that’s happened,” he nodded.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, feel free to tell me about it later. Right now, there’s a very good chance I’m too tired to care anyway.”

They heard footsteps behind them as Dave came back down the stairs.

“Anything?” Keo asked him.

Dave shook his head. “Nothing that you didn’t already find earlier. You?”

“Nope.”

“Figures.”

Keo got up and turned toward the window facing the backyard. It had gotten noticeably darker since the last time he looked.

“Let’s get ready for tonight,” he said.

*

Silver bullets. That’s what he needed right now, even more than food.

Christ, he wished he had silver bullets.

It didn’t take very long before they came out. He saw just one at first, darting across the street in front of the house. It had come out of the ugly blue building next door and made a beeline straight for the western marina.

Then another, and another…

“One fifty, give or take a few dozen here and there. Could be less. Could be more. I’m just spitballing numbers, though,” he had told Gene when they were trying to guess how many ghouls were still on the island.

As he watched them coming out of the homes around him, their strained dark flesh reflecting back the bright moonlight, he probably hadn’t been too far from the truth. He had stopped counting around fifty, and there were definitely more than that.

Maybe a hundred. Maybe almost 200.

“Could be less. Could be more.”

What mattered was that there were too many. There were always too many, but even more so now because he didn’t have a single silver bullet to go around. Hell, he would have made do with a silver butter knife. Or a fork. Anything, as long as it was silver. Was it possible the entire island was barren of the precious metal? One of the houses around him had to have what he needed-a candleholder, a picture frame, or maybe if he was really lucky, a sword made entirely of silver. Oh, the things he could have done with that…

Except there hadn’t been time to do a thorough search of every single house, because they had wasted most of the day waiting for Steve to finally charge across the waters. Which meant he had screwed up. Maybe he had even overestimated Steve’s determination to avenge his brother’s death.

Or maybe, just maybe, Steve really was dead. Maybe the man really had been one of those soldiers either he or Dave had shot back at Marina 1.

Was that possible? Yes. Likely? Maybe…

Daebak. My entire life is a series of maybes these days.

He focused on the western marina from the sanctuary of the master bedroom, keeping out of view behind the back window. Somewhere outside the room on the second floor, Dave was keeping watch out the front window at the eastern marina on the other side of the island. An approaching vehicle, even one that was powered by trolling motors, would be noticeable against the glistening dark ocean.

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…