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

by Sisavath, Sam

  “I gave her plenty of morphine,” Jay said. “She won’t feel a thing no matter how cramped it is.”

  “You claustrophobic?” Keo asked.

  “Hell yeah,” Dave said. “But I guess it’s better than nothing.”

  Dave went back-first into the enclosed space, basically folding over into a ball to squeeze inside. He didn’t stop scooting until he bumped into the back wall. Keo laid down a duvet, then lowered Jordan’s unconscious body on top of it. Dave took hold of one end of the blanket and pulled it inside with him, but it took both of them to curl up Jordan’s legs and head to fit. She looked so peaceful that Keo found himself staring at her for a few seconds.

  “What happens if they don’t buy it?” Dave asked.

  “They’ll buy it,” Keo said. Then to Jay, “Right?”

  Jay nodded. “They should. Definitely.”

  Keo smiled. Jay really was a terrible liar, but it looked as if Dave believed him anyway.

  “Man, this is going to be a tight squeeze,” Dave said. “How long do we have to stay in here?”

  “As long as it takes,” Keo said. “Just pretend you’re a pretzel.”

  “Oh, great. That helps a lot, thanks.”

  Keo handed Dave his P22. “Just in case.”

  “Just in case. Right.”

  “Where’d you get that little beauty, anyway?”

  “One of the soldiers gave it to me in return for some off-the-books rations. The guy told me it was the same gun that James Bond used in the movies.”

  “Bond carries a Walther PPK. This is a Walther P22.”

  “What, not the same?”

  “Not the same.”

  “Shit,” Dave said. Then, “I thought you don’t watch a lot of movies.”

  “I don’t, but I do read,” Keo said, closing the shelf up. He straightened and wiped his hands on his wet pant legs. He was still dripping a little water from his clothes, but not nearly as much as before. “Sorry about the mess, Doc.”

  Jay gave him a forced smile. “It’s okay. Tomorrow’s cleaning day anyway.”

  “Cleaning day?”

  “That’s when Gillian and I spend an hour just cleaning the house. We do it every week. This place was a mess when we first moved in.”

  “Huh,” Keo said. It was the only thing he could think of to say.

  “Do you, uh, need something for the pain?” Jay asked.

  “Pain?”

  Jay was staring at the still-red gash on his forehead.

  “No, thanks,” Keo said. “I still get some headaches, but I’ve been taking these.”

  He took out the bottle of painkillers and Jay took a look at them.

  Then the doctor nodded. “I can give you something better. Stronger.”

  “I’d appreciate that. They let you carry meds home?”

  “I guess they trust me.”

  Gillian appeared at the open laundry door and looked in at Keo, then at Jay, as if sensing that something had happened between them while she wasn’t there.

  “Okay?” she asked.

  “Good to go,” Keo said.

  “Fine,” Jay smiled. Or tried to.

  “Let’s get everything ready before they show up,” Gillian said. She gave the two of them another glance before leaving again.

  He and Jay followed her out.

  “I’ll go clean the mess you guys left on the first floor,” Jay said, and disappeared into the living room.

  Keo looked after him, then at Gillian.

  She sighed. “This has been an all-around tough day for him. First you, then Jordan…and now you again.”

  “He seems to be holding up fine.”

  “He’s tougher than he looks.”

  “Hunh.”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you’re thinking it.”

  He shrugged.

  “He is, though,” Gillian said. “You’d be surprised at what he’ll do if he believes in the cause. Like helping me hide Jordan and Dave. He didn’t have to do that, but he did.”

  Keo nodded. She had a point there. Maybe he was letting pettiness get in the way of appreciating the sacrifice Jay was making. Then again, maybe he didn’t care to give Jay the benefit of the doubt.

  Screw you, Jay.

  He followed her back up to the second floor. He wanted to say something during the walk up the flight of stairs, like last time, but couldn’t think of anything that hadn’t already been said or would change the outcome of the last six months.

  Gillian couldn’t, either, so they walked in silence instead.

  They went to another room, where Grant was snoring on the bed. His boots were on the floor and the sheets around him were still wet. Jay had injected Grant with something called synthetic opioid etorphine that had put him to sleep. According to Jay, some of the soldiers had found the opiate at an animal clinic. It took Grant a few minutes to lose consciousness, but once he did, Keo wasn’t sure he could have woken the man up with a grenade.

  “Jay says he should be asleep until morning,” Gillian said. “So you have that long to decide what to do with him. That is, if we actually get away with tonight.”

  Keo chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “Just like old times.”

  She gave him a wry smile. “The old times weren’t that great, Keo. As I recall, we were running for our lives most of the time.”

  “Not always. The six months at the cabin was nice.”

  “Except for that. Those were okay.”

  “Just okay?”

  “Maybe good.”

  “They were more than that.”

  She sighed. “Maybe.”

  “You still miss it, don’t you? You still miss me.”

  “I told you. I’ll always miss you. That’s never going to change. The rest…the rest isn’t possible anymore.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe whatever you want—”

  He kissed her.

  She let out some muffled sounds at first, and he expected her to push him away again, but instead she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down harder against her mouth. Keo slid his hands along her side, skirted around her protruding belly, and squeezed her breasts. They were a lot bigger than he remembered.

  Thunder crackled outside and lightning flashing across the back window, and he swore the room shook for a brief second.

  “The earth moved,” he grinned.

  “You’re so corny,” she smiled.

  “Hmm,” he said, and kissed her again.

  Harder this time, pulling her against him. He didn’t even care about the baby bump anymore.

  “Keo,” she whispered in between the brief moments that he allowed her to breathe. “Keo. Stop it.”

  “No.”

  “Please.”

  “No.”

  “Jay’s downstairs.”

  “Fuck Jay.”

  “Stop it. Please.”

  “No.”

  “God, I hate you.”

  “Liar.”

  She tried to say something else, but he wouldn’t let her. She moaned incoherently against him, and he had reached one hand into her shirt to see just how big her breasts really had gotten—

  Bang bang bang!

  Pounding. From downstairs.

  The front door.

  He pulled back, annoyed and frustrated with the night, with the entire world.

  “It’s time,” she said, gasping for breath against him. “Try not to get us killed, okay? All of us?”

  “I’ll do what I can,” he said.

  CHAPTER 21

  Jay was on the first floor, and the sound of pouring rain flooded the house as soon as he opened the door to answer the pounding. Keo was already halfway downstairs. He didn’t like the idea of Jay facing the soldiers alone. The guy couldn’t lie to save his life, and now he had all their lives on the line, too.

  Gillian grabbed his a
rm and pulled him back before he reached the bottom landing. “The gun,” she whispered. “Soldiers don’t carry guns in their front waistband.”

  He nodded and switched Grant’s Glock to behind his waistband, then covered it up with his shirt. He would have liked to have the M4 he had left in the guest bedroom on the second floor alongside Grant’s sleeping form, but the soldiers were the only ones supposed to carry weapons.

  “You’re Doctor Jay, right?” a voice asked somewhere in the foyer.

  “That’s right,” Jay answered. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re looking for some fugitives,” a third voice said.

  “Oh.”

  Dammit, Jay, never ever play poker with your life on the line, pal.

  They continued down the stairs, Gillian holding his hand the entire time and not letting go until they were almost at the bottom. Jay was leading two soldiers into the living room. They were both dripping wet and leaving large puddles in their wake, all the while shivering under cheap plastic black raincoats.

  “Honey, we have company,” Jay said, forcing a barely credible smile in Gillian’s direction.

  “Is something wrong?” Gillian asked.

  The soldiers were both in their thirties, their faces and hair wet despite their hoods. Keo couldn’t see their name tags because of the raincoats, but they both carried M4s over their backs and were rubbing their hands together.

  Gillian went to stand next to Jay while Keo wandered over to the kitchen and sat down on a stool on the other side of the counter. The gun bulged against his back and anyone who looked closely would have spotted it, so he made sure they only saw his front the entire time he was within sight of them.

  “We’re looking for two fugitives,” one of the soldiers said. “A black guy and a white woman. She’s hurt and he’s armed, and they might have come in this direction.”

  “We haven’t seen anyone like that around here,” Jay said.

  Jay’s voice had trembled a bit when he said it, and one of the soldiers clearly noticed. “Are you sure about that?” the man asked.

  “Yeah, of course.” Jay smiled. It came out, predictably, unconvincing.

  Gillian must have realized how badly Jay was doing, because she sought out his hand and slipped her fingers through his. “How do you know they’re in our area?” she asked the soldiers.

  “They came over the fence from next door,” the other soldier said. “Left a lot of blood behind, but the rainstorm washed away most of the trail so now we’re going house to house.”

  The first soldier was peering up the second floor stairs. “Anyone up there?”

  “Just one of your guys,” Keo said.

  The soldier looked over at him. “He got a name?”

  “Grant. He was taking me to Processing in the golf cart, but then the rain hit and we decided to detour here.”

  “Shit, you must be someone special to be riding in that chariot,” the other soldier said.

  “No one special.”

  “Humble, too.”

  Keo smiled. He knew they had seen the cart outside, and he had guessed correctly that only Steve (or Jack) rode around town in those things. In a place where the haves wore uniforms, carried guns, and had horses to take them when they were too lazy to walk, the king had a slow-moving, solar-powered golf cart. It would have been an absurd concept a year ago, but then this wasn’t a year ago.

  “You got a name?” one of the soldiers asked him.

  “Keo.”

  “Keo? What kind of name is that?”

  “He’s a friend,” Gillian said before Keo could answer. “He’s new in town; that’s why he was being taken to Processing.”

  “Grant’s up there?” the other soldier asked.

  At this point, Keo had stopped bothering to keep them separate. Dripping wet and covered from head to toe in black raincoats, they might as well be duplicates.

  “He’s coming down with a cold, so we gave him one of our guest rooms to sleep it off,” Gillian said. Then, turning to Jay, “Right, honey?”

  “Right,” Jay nodded. “I gave him something to help him sleep.”

  “Go check it out, Ronny,” one of the soldiers said.

  “You mind?” Ronny asked. Keo wondered if he was only asking that because of Jay’s position.

  “Go right ahead,” Jay said.

  Ronny walked past them and jogged up the stairs.

  “What did you say your name was again?” Jay asked the other soldier.

  “Owen,” the man said.

  “Owen. Have we met before?”

  “Yeah, I had some leg pains a few weeks back. You gave me something for it, remember?”

  Jay nodded. “I remember now.”

  “Thanks for that, by the way.”

  “How’s the leg coming along?”

  “Much better.”

  Keo could see Jay warming up to the moment. Maybe it was because he was in his element, talking medicine to a patient.

  Even Owen looked disarmed, though his expression changed a bit when he turned his attention back to Keo. “When did you get in?”

  “This afternoon,” Keo said.

  “Is that right? How’d you get a golf cart already? I’ve been here since the beginning, and they haven’t even given me a horse yet.”

  “It’s Steve’s.”

  “Steve?” Then, as the name registered, “Oh. You call him Steve, huh?”

  “He told me to.”

  “Must be nice,” Owen smirked.

  Footsteps behind them, just before Ronny came back down the stairs.

  “Grant?” Owen asked.

  “He’s sleeping like a fucking baby,” Ronny said. “Out like a light. Smacked him around and he didn’t even flinch.” To Jay, “What’d you give him, Doc, and where can I get some of that?”

  Jay gave him an anxious smile. “He was coming down with a bad cold and I didn’t want him to go back out in this weather. Doctor’s orders.”

  “Lucky him,” Owen said. “We don’t have that choice.”

  “You checked the other rooms?” Ronny asked.

  Owen shook his head. Then to Jay: “We’re going to have to search the house before we can leave, Doc. That okay?”

  Jay nodded. “Go right ahead.”

  “Just…try not to make too much of a mess,” Gillian said. She was rubbing her belly, which Keo thought was a nice touch.

  “We’ll be gentle,” Ronny said.

  “Everyone stay in here until we’re finished, okay?” Owen said.

  They nodded as the two soldiers headed into the back hallway where the bedrooms were.

  “How many rooms?” Ronny called back.

  “Four,” Gillian said. “Two down here, two more upstairs.”

  Jay and Gillian drifted over to the kitchen counter where Keo was sitting and sat down across from him. Jay laid his hands on the smooth countertop, but when he saw that they were shaking noticeably, he picked them up and hid them in his lap.

  “Relax, Doc,” Keo said, keeping his voice just low enough to be heard. “You’re doing fine.”

  That was a lie. The man’s face was pale, and you only needed to spend a few seconds looking into his eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses to know Jay wasn’t doing fine at all. In fact, he was doing pretty goddamn awful.

  That realization made Keo reach behind his back and slide the Glock out from his waistband and put it in his lap. He kept his left hand on the counter the whole time, next to the same mug of black tea that Gillian had fixed for him this afternoon. He guessed she hadn’t had time to clean it, which made him wonder what kind of conversation she’d had with Jay when the doctor came home. Clearly, she had told him everything. Or most of it, anyway.

  Gillian, meanwhile, was looking across the counter at him. She was amazingly calm, and watching her sitting side by side with the nervous Jay made Keo realize just how much all those months fighting Pollard and his men had cost him.

  Fucking Pollard. The man continued to haunt him even in
death.

  They sat staring at each other in silence for what seemed like hours, with only the constant pak-pak-pak of rain against the roof and the occasional crashing of thunder in the distance to break the silence. Thank God for the noises outside, otherwise Keo was sure he could actually hear Jay’s heartbeat thrumming against his chest.

  Gillian must have heard it, too, because she got off her stool and went to a cabinet and brought back a bottle of Pinot Noir. She pulled the cork out with little effort, grabbed three glasses from the kitchen, and expertly poured the remains into them. She slid one in front of Jay and smiled at him, and Jay anxiously picked it up and drank most of it in one tilt.

  Keo picked up his and sipped once, then put it back down. He wanted to maintain all of his motor coordination if he needed to use the Glock. He prayed he didn’t have to do any shooting, because even with the rain and thunder, gunshots inside a house might still travel past the walls. It would be doubly bad luck if someone were to be walking by on the sidewalk at the same moment. That wasn’t even taking into consideration the potential collateral damage, which was his primary concern now as he looked across the counter at Gillian.

  “Sorry, no refrigeration,” Gillian said. “But we just opened it yesterday, so it’s still drinkable.”

  “Where’d you get it?” Keo asked.

  He didn’t really care, of course, but talking about something as inconsequential as the origins of the wine was a simple and effective way of keeping her mind—and Jay’s—off the two soldiers rummaging through their bedrooms at the moment.

  “One of the doctors at Medical has a case of them,” Jay said. “I’m not sure where he got it; probably from a trade with one of the soldiers.”

  “That happens a lot? Trading?”

  “Pretty much everything other than the bare essentials is gotten through trading,” Gillian said. “It’s a thriving black market. I don’t know if their superiors know about it, or if they just look the other way.”

  “What else gets traded?” Keo asked.

  “Everything,” Gillian said.

  He was going to ask what “everything” included when Owen and Ronny came out of the back hallway.

  “Sorry for the mess, Doc,” Owen said. “We tried to be gentle, but we had to make sure there’s no one hiding in the closets or under the beds.”