The Isles of Elysium (Purge of Babylon, Book 6) (4 page)

As he walked out in the open, Keo could feel their eyes on him. They could see him, but he couldn’t return the favor. For every house that looked empty, there was one or two that showed clear signs of occupation, either by the pulled curtains or the furniture stacked on the other side of the windows to stave off the bright sun.

Come out, come out, wherever you are…

If Gene’s theory was correct and the creatures had arrived by ferry that first night and never left, then the islanders were still here, somewhere, either hiding in their old bedrooms or basements, or wherever they could find a dark, damp place. That led Keo to wondering how long these things could survive without fresh blood. Or did they even need fresh blood at all?

The things he didn’t know about them could fill a book…or a dozen.

Keo had completed a full circle around the island when he saw a figure moving on the roof of one of the homes in front of him. He unslung the MP5SD and slipped behind a power pole, realizing too late that it was much too small to hide his entire frame.

He peered out and watched the figure, silhouetted against the sun, picking something up from the roof. It was a man—he could tell that much by the shape and shoulders—and as he straightened up—

It was just Gene, and he was cradling a couple of plastic two-liter Coke bottles in his arms.

The teenager spotted him and shaded his eyes, then shouted down, “Hey, what are you doing?”

Almost putting a bullet in you, that’s what,
Keo thought as he came out from behind the pole.

“I scared ya?” Gene said, not even bothering to hide his amusement.

“What are you doing up there?” Keo shouted up. He stood outside the house, which had two garden gnomes that had been completely overtaken by the weeds, giving them the impression of children lost in a forest.

Gene held up one of the bottles. “Just retrieving this,” he said. Then, “Give me a sec,” and disappeared off the roof.

Keo put the submachine gun away and looked around the street. He would never get used to the quiet, the nothingness staring back at him. He had no idea how the kid had survived by himself for so long. Keo would probably have gone insane after a month. Oh, who was he kidding? He probably wouldn’t have survived the first few weeks.

Gene came out from behind the house, cradling the two bottles in his arms. One was half-f, the other even less than that. “Forgot to get these after the rain last week.”

“Are they clean enough to drink?”

“Only if you don’t subscribe to the theory that rain is just the gods taking a leak, then I don’t see why not.”

Keo chuckled. “You’ve been here by yourself way too long, Gene.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

They walked up the street, back toward the house on the hill.

Keo glanced briefly back at the house Gene was standing on the rooftop of a few moments ago. “No ghouls?”

“Not the last time I checked, but I didn’t go inside.”

“Scared?”

“No point. I took whatever I could from the place last week.”

“So how’d you get to the roof?”

“Ladder in the back. You wouldn’t believe what you can find in people’s backyards if you look hard and long enough.” He walked in silence for a moment before adding, “They usually stay away from the smaller houses. There’s a whole nest of them in that red one near the west marina. The thing is, they don’t really move around that much. My mom had a word for it, but I can’t remember.”

“Lazy?”

“Nah. Something with an
L
, though.”

Keo looked at the Coke bottles in the teenager’s arms. “How many of those do you have sitting around?”

“Dozens. I told you, I could live here for the rest of my life on just the fish alone. I mean, I don’t want to, but if I had to, I could.”

“What about your friends?”

“What about them?”

“Have you tried looking for them?”

Gene shook his head. “I wouldn’t know where to start.” He paused, then glanced at Keo. “What about you? You decided what you’re gonna do next yet?”

Keo sighed.

“I take it that’s a no,” Gene said.

“Maybe tomorrow—” Keo started to say, when he stopped and looked backward toward the east side of the island.

“What?” Gene said.

Keo shushed him, then unslung his MP5SD.

The very familiar whine of boat motors in the distance, closing in fast…

He had heard
motors—more than one, he was sure of it—but as it turned out, there was just one craft; it just happened to have two motors in the back powering it. It was coming from the east, which meant it was probably cruising around the Gulf of Mexico when it decided to swing over to check out Santa Marie Island. Just his luck, it was heading straight for the marina, where his boat was tied up.

It was some kind of offshore fishing boat, bigger than his twenty-two-footer by a mile, and a hell of a sight better looking, too. What he wouldn’t have given to have had something that comfortable during his three days on the ocean. He might have stretched it out to a week, just to prolong the solitude.

The boat coming toward him now had a sleek deep V hull design and shiny navy blue colors on the outside, with an all white interior. Probably twenty-eight or twenty-nine feet long with a three-meter beam. He couldn’t see the man behind the steering console in the middle because of the enclosed T-top that hid him, but he didn’t have any trouble picking out the two soldiers on the bow. One was crouched and peering through binoculars at the marina, while the other stood watch with a rifle in a sling.

He couldn’t make out any details across the distance, but it wasn’t hard to spot their uniforms. Soldiers. Except these guys were wearing dark black and not the brown and gray camo of the ones he was used to seeing back in Louisiana.

“What’re they doing back so soon?” Gene said next to him.

The teenager was whispering, even though he didn’t have to. They were flat on their stomachs along the ridgeline, about fifty meters from the marina to their right, and surrounded by plenty of rocky formations to hide them from even binoculars. The vessel was still more than 500 meters away but closing in fast, thanks to its dual motors.

“The same ones that took your friends?” Keo asked, just to be sure.

“Yeah, that’s them.” Gene lowered his binoculars. “Maybe they heard my gunshots…”

“See what happens when you shoot at strangers?”

Gene snorted. “Whatever. If you hadn’t shown up, I wouldn’t have fired.”

“And you wouldn’t have had that delicious lasagna MRE.”

“That’s true.” Gene reached for his rifle lying nearby.

“What are you doing?” Keo asked.

“I’m going to shoot them.”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“Let them get closer. You’re not going to hit something moving that fast anyway. You could barely hit me, and I was crawling toward you.”

“Good point.”

“Let them come up,” Keo said, thinking,
And I’ll figure it out as we go
.

It didn’t take long for the saltwater boat to reach the marina. The pilot deftly glided the vessel into the slip behind Keo’s twenty-two-footer, while one of the soldiers up front hopped onto the dock and pulled security. He watched the man go into a crouch and aim his rifle up and down, then side to side. Meanwhile, the second man tossed the line over, then followed it and tied the boat into place. They had clearly done this many times before, so he wasn’t dealing with complete amateurs.

“You think it was your boat or my shooting?” Gene asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Just curious.” Gene had slid his rifle up next to him and was clutching it. “You sure we shouldn’t—”

“Yes,” Keo said. “Besides, I need to find out what they know.”

“How’re you gonna to do that?”

“I need to take at least one of them alive.”

The motors cut off, and blessed silence once again swept across the island. All three of the soldiers were on the dock now, and one of them jumped onto the tied twenty-two-footer. He searched through the compartments under the console, then spent a few seconds peeking into the livewells.

“I can take them,” Gene said.

“No.”

“But—”

“No,”
Keo said, probably a bit louder than he needed to that time.

It had the desired effect, though, and Gene sighed as if Keo had given him a spanking. The kid unclutched his rifle and laid his chin against the ground and pouted.

The soldiers were moving up the dock, the
clomp-clomp-clomp
of their heavy boots against the wooden structure echoing all the way up here. To his absolute non-surprise, they were all well-armed, wearing gun belts and sidearms, and the sun reflected off the barrels of their assault rifles. Either M4s or AR-15s, though given how every soldier he had met in Louisiana seemed to have been armed with the US military-adopted M4s, he was leaning toward the former.

“Okay,” Keo said. When Gene lifted his head expectantly, he asked, “You see the fat one?”

The kid peered through his binoculars. “Which one?”

“The one in the back.”

“That’s the fat one?”

“Yes.”

“He doesn’t look that fat.”

“Okay, the biggest one in the back, then.”

“What about him?”

“He’s yours. When I make my move, you take him out. Got it?”

“What about the other two?”

“Don’t worry about them. I’m going to kill the second one and keep the third one alive for questioning.”

“Can you do that?” Gene gave him an earnest look. “I mean, you can do that?”

“Yes,” Keo nodded. “I can do that.”

“Okay. So when should I shoot?”

“After I make my move.”

“And what’s that? Your move?”

“When one of them goes down.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Get ready,” Keo said, then began sliding backward, away from the ridgeline.

Gene watched him go, looking so much younger than he had earlier this morning. Keo had thought he was seventeen, but he was probably closer to sixteen. Which made the fact that Gene had managed to survive these months on Santa Marie Island all by himself something of a miracle.

“Don’t sweat it; you can make the shot,” Keo said.

He didn’t so much as have faith in Gene’s shooting ability than he did in the high-powered scope mounted on top of Deuce. They were, from what he could tell, less than a hundred meters from the marina. Even someone as distance shooting-challenged as Keo could have made the shot all day long with the equipment and position.

“I can make the shot,” Gene repeated, likely more for his own benefit than Keo’s.

When he was far enough away that he was sure the angle kept him from being spotted from below, Keo picked himself up from the ground. He brushed off dirt and pebbles clinging to his clothes, then turned and, bent over at the waist, moved quietly down the sidewalk.

Like most marinas, this one was slightly angled with the entrance at the top and the docks at the bottom, with the parking lot spread out in the middle. The only potential hiding spot Keo had seen when he first walked through the place earlier was a natural defilade made of rocky formations and a wall of dirt that flanked the entrance. It wasn’t very much at all, but at least it would keep him invisible from anyone approaching on the other side.

Keo slid against the wall of dirt now, and out of pure habit checked the weight of the MP5SD to make sure he had a full magazine in place. The submachine gun was equipped with its own suppressor, which made it longer and less mobile than its smaller cousin, the MP5K. The weapon was heavily chipped and dented, and Keo was resigned to the fact that sooner or later he would have to look for a replacement. Like everything these days, even the German gun would eventually fall apart.

It was too bad Gene didn’t have two-way radios, otherwise Keo wouldn’t have needed to risk peeking around the wall of rock to glimpse the docks and the three soldiers walking up it at the moment. They were taking their time, which was probably a byproduct of being in control of the surrounding area and, most likely, having everything go their way for a long time. Even if they knew Gene was on the island, they were used to him hiding from them.

As he had guessed, they were carrying M4s. New models, from the looks of it, and nearly identical to the one he had left behind in Gene’s two-story house on the hill. Of course, he’d gotten that carbine from Song Island, and the Rangers had converted it to full-auto. Would these bozos have done the same thing to their weapons? He guessed he’d find out pretty soon.

There was fifty to sixty meters of open space, including the parking lot, from where he was and the end of the docks, plus a generous amount of trucks, many with boat trailers, left behind to block his view of the soldiers, and vice versa. The windows of the vehicles were coated with the elements, and not a single one looked even remotely usable. Gene had told him he’d found keys to some of them, but after trying a half dozen or so, he’d given up trying to find one that still worked.

Given the range of the MP5SD, there was no way he was going to hit them from this distance, even if he could shoot around the cars. No, he’d have to let them come closer and make use of the submachine gun’s close-quarters ability. Of course, that would mean Gene would have to wait just a little bit longer to—

Crack!
as a single rifle shot smashed the silence.

Or not.

He stuck his head out into the open a second time and watched the soldiers scrambling around on the docks. The two up front, anyway, while the third had fallen and was grabbing onto his left thigh, where he had been shot.

Gene had missed—sort of.

The two able soldiers returned fire on Gene’s position along the ridgeline to the right of them, the
pop-pop-pop
of their assault rifles rolling back and forth across Santa Marie Island.

Ah. Three-round bursts, and not full-auto.

He should have felt better about that, but of course two people letting loose with a string of three-round shots were still two people too many when lead was involved.

Gene hadn’t fired a second shot, probably because he was trying not to get his head blown off at the moment. That was awfully smart of him, but Keo didn’t have that luxury. Well, he did. He could stay right where he was, and either the soldiers would come closer or they would turn tail and—