Purge of Babylon (Book 6): The Isles of Elysium

by Sisavath, Sam

  “How is she?” Jordan finally asked.

  “You don’t know?”

  “It’s been a while since I’ve seen her.”

  “What happened?”

  “We’ll talk about it later.”

  “I might not have a later.”

  “You’ll be fine. Just…be truthful.”

  “Tobias?”

  “Yeah.”

  Well, you wanted to find him, pal.

  Mission accomplished.

  She led him into the insurance building and across (fresh) blood-covered carpeting while the others returned to wherever they had been hiding before he showed up. He followed Jordan into a back hallway that was just a little bit too dark for his liking.

  “You’re waiting for them,” Keo said. “The soldiers. You’re trying to lure them up the road and into an ambush.”

  She gave him a quick, sharp look.

  “Wyatt gave it away,” he said.

  She nodded, relaxing. “We have men planted along the roads. If they’d followed us like we had hoped, we would have had hit them back. We’ve done it before.”

  “But they didn’t bite this time.”

  “No…”

  “Still, pretty gutsy move.”

  “Yeah, well, it takes guts to run around out here. But you probably know a little bit about that.”

  “Just a little bit, yeah.”

  Jordan opened the last door into a small office. There were two people already inside, and one of them—a woman, even though Keo only saw her from the back—was busy wrapping fresh gauze around the thigh of a man with short blond hair. The man’s pant leg had been cut away, and a pool of fresh blood was gathering on the floor under him. Like the men outside, he looked haggard and on edge.

  The man looked up when they entered. “This him?”

  Jordan nodded. “Keo, this is Tobias.”

  Tobias eyed him. Jack wasn’t far off when he described the man—the steely blue eyes, square jaw, and the six-three frame. Early forties, though he could have passed for a man five years younger with a shave and a decent haircut.

  The woman working on Tobias was in her fifties and Hispanic, and the gun belt around her narrow waist looked awkwardly strapped on. She swiped at some gray hair and gathered up the bloody rags and bandages and tossed them into a nearby trash bin that hadn’t been emptied in over a year.

  “I’ll get Denver to make you a crutch,” the woman said.

  “Thanks, Pita,” Tobias said.

  “Try not to break the stitches, if you can help it.”

  “That’s the trick, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, well, do your best,” she said, and left the room, leaving the door open behind her.

  Tobias picked up a black jacket and slipped it on before hopping off the desk and making his way to a chair in a corner. He sat down and drew his sidearm—a dull black revolver—and placed it in his lap before looking across at Keo again.

  “What kind of name is Keo, anyway?” he asked.

  “Matt was taken,” Keo said.

  “What?”

  “It’s…just something he says,” Jordan said, shaking her head. “He thinks it’s funny.”

  “You guys know each other,” Tobias said to her. It wasn’t a question.

  She nodded. “We met a while back.”

  “He set us up.”

  “He says he didn’t.”

  “Let’s hear him say that.”

  “I didn’t set you up,” Keo said.

  Tobias didn’t take his eyes off Keo. “Convince me.”

  “Convince you of what? Your guys tried to kill me. Why don’t you convince me why I shouldn’t be pissed off right now?”

  Tobias narrowed his eyes, and Keo almost smiled. Almost. He bet they didn’t expect that response from him. It was a risky approach, but at the moment he didn’t think he had very much to lose.

  What was that old saying? Ah, right. “The best defense is a good offense.”

  “What were you doing out there?” Tobias asked.

  “It’s a free country,” Keo said.

  “Not anymore.”

  “I was never very good at following rules.”

  “He’s not wrong,” Jordan said. “Ron shot at him first, then Mack and the others chased him into the warehouse. I know him. He wouldn’t set us up like that.”

  “Maybe…”

  “I can vouch for him. Keo and I have been through a lot together.”

  “Are you willing to bet your life on it?”

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation.

  Keo couldn’t help but glance over at her. She stood calmly next to him, facing Tobias. He remembered the first time they had met—in a cabin in the woods, pointing guns at each other. Things got better after that initial encounter, but even so, Jordan was the last person he expected to find out here, giving her word to the man he was supposed to kill.

  “People change, Jordan,” Tobias said. There might have been a little warning in his voice. He pushed back up to his feet with a grimace, then holstered the gun. “He’s going to have to answer a lot more questions. Like what he was doing in T18 in the first place. But all that can wait until we get back to base. Until then, he’s your responsibility.”

  She nodded.

  Tobias pushed past Keo and Jordan and hobbled out the door.

  Jordan looked after him for a moment, then over at Keo.

  “Thanks—” he started to say.

  “Shove it,” she said. “He’s got a point. We know you came from T18, so you better have a damn good reason.” He opened his mouth to answer, but she cut him off again. “I said shove it. You have a couple of hours to come up with a better answer than whatever you were about to say, because I can’t protect you forever.”

  “I was just going to ask about what happened to Mark and the others,” Keo said.

  That was a lie, but he needed her back on his side, and the best way to do that was to remind her of their mutual experiences…and friends.

  “A lot,” she said quietly.

  *

  “What happened?” Keo asked when they were back outside in the strip mall parking lot watching Tobias and his men pack up their gear to move.

  Keo counted four wounded men being helped out of the buildings, including two that had to be carried outside. They had hidden Jeeps and trucks in the back of the lot and were now carefully loading their wounded onto them, with Pita standing by giving instructions.

  “We made it to Santa Marie Island about two weeks after we left you at the cabin,” Jordan said. “But they were waiting for us. They were already on the island. Of course, we didn’t know that. They shot Mark and brought us to T18.”

  “I saw Gillian, but I didn’t see Rachel and her daughter.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “A few hours.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged, and she gave him a suspicious look.

  “Whatever, Keo,” she said. “You’re going to have to tell Tobias everything later anyway. I just hope you come up with a better story than that.”

  I’m working on it, he thought, but said, “What about Rachel?”

  “She didn’t make it,” Jordan said.

  “Christine…?”

  Jordan shook her head. “When the soldiers first showed up, things got messy. Mark and I fought back and…”

  She stopped and didn’t say anything for a while.

  “We can talk about it later when you’re ready,” he said.

  “They’re gone. That’s what happened. They’re gone. Only Gillian and me made it off that island alive.”

  He thought about the little girl, Christine, and her mother Rachel, and all those months in the cabin with him and Norris and Gillian. The mother and daughter were easy to like, even though he had done his best to keep his distance. A part of him always doubted they would all make it to Santa Marie Island, but to finally get there, only to lose everything…

  He looked over at Jordan. She was sta
ring at the men, but he knew she wasn’t really seeing them. It was easy enough to guess where her thoughts were at the moment. Back at Santa Marie Island, back to that day…

  Keo felt suddenly very guilty about making her relive it.

  “Is this everyone?” he asked, hoping to draw her back.

  Tobias had hobbled into the Jeep’s front passenger seat while two of the wounded were being loaded into the back. Pita climbed in after them, along with two other men. The others were piling into the truck, a beat-up gray Honda Ridgeline.

  “No,” Jordan said. She looked down the road. “The others will follow us later, when we’re sure T18 isn’t going to press their attack.”

  They watched the two vehicles turn into the road and pick up speed as they went.

  “So we’re walking?” Keo asked.

  “The only thing more precious than lives these days is gas.” Jordan waved to the three men who were still standing guard on the rooftops of the strip mall and shouted, “Let’s go!”

  Keo followed her across the street and back to the tree lines. He felt naked without his weapons, and that feeling got worse when they stepped into the darkened woods. Despite wearing a long-sleeve shirt and pants, he shivered anyway.

  What he wouldn’t give for a gun, or two. And silver bullets, of course. Always silver bullets.

  Tobias’s men followed them inside, then immediately began spreading out without having to be told. Everyone seemed to know what they were doing, including Wyatt, who gave Keo a hard stare before vanishing behind one of the many identical trees around them.

  There were, he counted, five other people inside the woods with him and Jordan at the moment. Five people meant five potential sources of weapons. He’d prefer his MP5SD and the silver ammo, but he was good at making do. He had been looking for the man who had taken his things, but the guy had either left with Tobias or was somewhere else in the woods at the moment.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Jordan said beside him.

  “Think about what?”

  “You know damn well what.” She flashed him a warning stare with her brown eyes.

  He smiled innocently back at her. “I’m just following you, Jordan. That’s all I’m thinking about at the moment.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “No.”

  “I’m hurt.”

  “And I’m a virgin.”

  “You mean you’re not?”

  She rolled her eyes. “This isn’t a date, Keo.”

  “Too bad.”

  The last time he saw Jordan she was a shooter in training, but she had clearly progressed past that stage. As he watched her walking with a gun belt and her beat-up M4 held at the ready in front of her, he had no doubts she had been putting all those lessons at the cabin to good use since they separated almost six months ago.

  “Where’d you get all the M4s?” he asked.

  “T18 supplies them. But don’t tell them that.”

  “Mum’s the word. How long has this been going on? You guys and T18.”

  “Before there was even a T18. You know about the camps?”

  “I’ve heard of them.”

  “T18 was just a camp when we first showed up. It wasn’t that bad in the beginning, despite how they brought us here. I mean, I wanted to kill every last one of them for what happened back at Santa Marie Island, but it wasn’t like we had a lot of choices, or chances.”

  “You and Gillian.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She stayed and you left. Why?”

  “You’ll have to ask her.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “And I’m telling you, you’ll have to ask her.”

  “Was it the whole pregnancy thing? Is that why you left?”

  “That was a big part of it. The ‘donating’—” she used air quotes “—blood part, I might have been able to live with. It made me physically sick each time they forced us to go into those tents and give blood, but the idea of conceiving and then raising a child for that cycle to continue? That made me want to throw up.”

  “I saw a lot of people back there. They seemed okay with it.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not a lot of people, Keo.”

  He looked over at her again. She was still the tall athletic girl he had almost killed back in Louisiana, and the same college student who had kept Mark and Jill alive for months after The Purge. Her hair was shorter, but somehow the new cut complemented the shape of her face more.

  “What?” she said, narrowing her eyes back at him.

  “Nothing.”

  “So stop staring like a perv.”

  “Sorry.”

  “So, have you come up with a better story yet? Because, make no mistake about it, Tobias would have killed you back there if I hadn’t stopped him.”

  “And I appreciate that.”

  “That’s not the point. You need to make him believe you weren’t a part of the ambush. Can you do that?”

  “I didn’t know about the ambush because I came here to kill Tobias,” he thought about saying, but of course, didn’t. He said instead, “It’s the truth.”

  “I don’t think Tobias is going to like your truth very much. And out here, what he says goes.”

  “Even with you?”

  “Even with me.”

  “You guys involved?”

  “What?”

  “Are you guys—”

  “I heard you the first time.” She paused, then, “Why would you ask me that?”

  “I don’t know. Back in the office, the way you guys were talking…” He shrugged. “The two of you seemed to have a very copacetic relationship.”

  “Just because we see eye-to-eye doesn’t mean we’re screwing, too.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not?” she repeated, as if she didn’t understand the question.

  “The guy’s Captain America. Who doesn’t want to jump Captain America’s bones?”

  She actually smiled. “I was always more of a Punisher fan myself.”

  “Punisher? I didn’t know you rolled that way.”

  “What way?”

  “Sex and punishment?”

  “Oh, God,” she groaned. “I meant the Punisher. The comic book character?”

  “I don’t read comic books.”

  “He had a couple of movies. Three, I think.”

  “I don’t watch a lot of movies, either.”

  “What exactly did you use to do with all your free time, Keo?”

  “Troll bars for women.”

  She sighed. “Why did I even ask?”

  He smiled. “So, that’s a no on the sex and punishment?”

  *

  They had been walking for half an hour, and it didn’t seem as if they were any closer to reaching their destination. Keo spent most of that time keeping tabs on Tobias’s people, but they moved like ghosts, coming and going around him. He had no trouble at all understanding why Steve had such a hard time pinning them down. These people had made themselves comfortable out here, with guys like Wyatt and the two scouts he had encountered earlier probably giving the soldiers fits around T18.

  The only person who was close enough for him to even consider taking her weapons was Jordan. Maybe it was the soft gooey part of him that had developed in the last year despite his best efforts, but the idea of hurting her for her guns didn’t sit well with him.

  You’ve gone soft, pal. Real soft.

  “I’m sorry about Mark,” he said after they had been walking in silence for a while.

  “Yeah, me too,” Jordan said.

  She was slightly in front, the handle of her holstered Glock staring invitingly back at him. It was tempting. So, so tempting.

  He thought about Gillian. He could do it for her if he had to. Finding Gillian again after all these months was a minor miracle, and all he had to do to be permanently reunited with her was kill Tobias and return to T18. But to do that, he needed guns, such as the one staring back at hi
m right now…

  “What happened to you?” Jordan asked, looking over her shoulder at him. “After the cabin, we were pretty resigned to you and Norris being dead. Even Gillian. She kept waiting for you to find us, you know. After Santa Marie Island, and even when we were at T18. I would catch her staring off at nothing for long stretches until it occurred to me she was looking for you. Waiting for you to show up to rescue her.”

  “Norris and I ran into trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “The kind that kept me away for almost six months.”

  He told her about Pollard. About Joe. About running for his life in the woods of Louisiana and not knowing where the hell he was going, until he finally ran out of room. He skipped the part about Allie but told her Norris had found some survivors to stay with and that he was probably still safe right now, living out his remaining years.

  Then he told her about Song Island. About Lara. And about the soldiers.

  “Jesus, how many of them are out there?” she asked.

  “My understanding is that they’re everywhere. Every state. Maybe every country. Who knows?”

  She was speechless for a moment. After a while, she shook her head. “I guess it makes sense. Everyone we knew in the camp was either from Texas or Louisiana, so we didn’t get any information about what was happening in the rest of the country. Talk about a myopic view of the world, huh?”

  “The big picture is overrated.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  They walked on for another few minutes in silence before Keo said, “Are we almost there yet?”

  “What are you, ten?”

  “It’s going to get dark soon, Jordan.”

  “We’re almost there. The base is temporary because we never stay at one place for too long. Sooner or later, they find us.”

  “The soldiers?”

  “No.”

  She’s talking about ghouls.

  He thought about his guns again, about the silver ammo inside them…

  “What are you carrying?” he asked.

  “About five pounds lighter since the last time you saw me,” she said, grinning back at him. “I like to think I’m at my perfect fighting weight.”

  He chuckled. “You got funnier.”

  “You think?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I try.”