Maybe it was all those days and nights and months on the San Diego beaches, but he had enough awareness and ability to fight through the pain and spin around even while he was crashing through the water until he was looking up again. The moonlit night sky stared back at him on the other side of the surface, just before the air began filling with a red and orange glow. It was beautiful and inspiring, and he found himself gazing up at the spreading color and smiling, or thought he was, anyway.
He wanted to look at it forever, but for some reason he was still free-falling, going deeper and deeper into the Gulf of Mexico.
Keo was a strong swimmer. He’d always been, and those skills had come in handy the last few months. But for some reason, he couldn’t call on them at the moment. His legs didn’t move, and neither did his arms. There was a continuous throbbing pain from behind him, as if someone (or a hundred someones) were repeatedly stabbing him in the back, over and over and over again.
He didn’t want to go anywhere, anyway. He found himself incredibly content to stare at the blooming spectrum of colors beyond the surface and wondered if this was what it was like to witness the birth of the universe.
Daebak, he thought, and smiled up at the sight of the night sky burning. It was glorious.
CHAPTER 30
“I thought you were dead,” Jordan said. “Again. Though I guess I can’t be that mad at you this time; it was kind of my fault.”
He smiled up at her. Or thought he did. He might have just spat out some of the water he had taken in while he was drowning.
So how did he get up here?
“I didn’t know it would do that,” she said. “I thought it was a riot gun or something. You know, the kind that shoots smoke? Shit, I almost killed you.”
“What was it?” he asked. Or tried to. It sounded suspiciously like a loud croak.
“It’s uh…this.”
She held up an M32 grenade launcher. The last time someone had fired one of those at him—it might have even been the same one, for all he knew—they were using tear gas. This time it was 40mm grenade rounds. He had seen what one of those could do to an area and had launched a couple himself back at Beaufont Lake not all that long ago. But he had been firing a single-shot weapon back then, whereas the one she was showing him could launch six in a few seconds.
“M32,” he said.
“What?”
“It’s an M32 grenade launcher.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that. Sorry.”
“’s okay. What happened?”
“I, uh, hit one of the trucks in the parking lot with the first round by accident. I don’t know what happened after that, it was dark and it looked like the entire marina was exploding. Then I saw you flying through the air. It was kind of cool, actually. That is, until I realized I might have killed you in the process of trying to save you.” She frowned. “They were almost on top of you and I didn’t want to lose you, too. If I didn’t do something, you’d never have made it into the water.”
“You saved my life.”
“I almost blew you up. That blast should have killed you.”
“Shrapnel?”
He remembered the ghouls shrieking behind him, the sounds of flesh rendering, metal bouncing off bones…
“I didn’t find any on you,” Jordan said. “But your entire back is black and purple, kinda like my face the last few days. I guess we have that in common now. When you didn’t swim back up to the surface, I thought your back might have also been broken.”
“Is it?”
“Can you feel your legs?”
He tried. “Yes.”
“Then it’s not. Thank God.” She gave him a pursed smile. “You’ve got to be the luckiest man I know, Keo.”
“Yeah, that’s me, lucky.”
He found it incredibly difficult to focus on her face with all the darkness around her. He would have been immediately alarmed, except he could feel the gentle ocean’s surface under him. Under the boat. They were out at sea, safe from land. Or, at least, safe from the black-eyed ones.
It came to Santa Marie Island on a boat. Ol’ Blue Eyes. It actually came on a boat…and left a lot behind, apparently.
“Take my boat,” it had said. “It has everything you’ll need.”
“Everything” included an M32 grenade launcher, apparently. Keo had to admit, whether the creature was still alive back on the island or not, it had come through for them. Three times now.
The question was: Why?
*
Under the soothing morning brightness, Keo sat on a bench at the stern of Ol’ Blue Eyes’ boat and tried to remember how to breathe again. The vessel was at least a twenty-eight-footer, with a canvas T-top to keep out the harsh sun, though at the moment he didn’t want to be separated from the warmth.
The M32 grenade launcher rested on top of a small armory at his feet. Three M4 rifles, gun belts, handguns, and a pair of knives. He idly wondered if one of those knives was made of silver, like Danny’s cross-knife. Was his luck really that good?
Of course not, so he didn’t even bother to check.
Jordan was leaning against the center console, looking back at the marina about sixty, maybe seventy meters across the ocean. The impact of six 40mm grenade rounds had left craters in the parking lot and caused half of the docks to catch fire. Their boat was gone, sunk to the bottom in the aftermath, where he would have also gone if Jordan hadn’t jumped in after him.
The weapons weren’t the only things Ol’ Blue Eyes had left behind for them. Jordan had found two tactical packs with bags of MREs and nonperishable canned goods, along with two bottles of water. She had eaten her fill even before he woke up.
She changed his bandages (he was much too weak to protest) then opened a can of beans for him, and Keo attacked it with gusto, momentarily forgetting that every part of him was throbbing. Just breathing hurt, and swallowing wasn’t any better, but an entire day without food and a night where he almost died had left him too starved to care.
“It must have killed them,” Jordan was saying, “so it could take their boat.”
“The soldiers?”
“Uh huh. Where else would the guns and packs come from?”
He nodded, remembering how Ol’ Blue Eyes had waded into Steve’s soldiers back at T18. It had demolished almost a dozen men on horseback as if they were children, effortlessly. So what were a few soldiers that had something it needed, like a boat to cross Galveston Bay with?
“What do you think happened to him?” she asked.
Keo didn’t answer right away. Instead, he spooned beans into his mouth and looked toward the island.
It was still back there, somewhere. Was it even still alive? They couldn’t see anyone (anything) along the ridgelines, but of course it wouldn’t be there anyway, even if it had survived last night. Blue eyes or not—smarter than the average ghoul or not—it still had to avoid the sunlight like the rest.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Well, we have a quarter tank of gas left.” She tapped the console with her spork. “Where should we go?”
“Back there.”
“Where?”
He nodded at the island.
Jordan stared at him with her good eye. “No way. We barely survived last time, remember?”
“It’s still there.”
“Keo…”
“It knew my name.”
“I know, but…” She shook her head. “We should just go. Let’s just go.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I need to know, Jordan.”
Jordan sighed and sat down and stared in the opposite direction of the island. She didn’t say anything for a long time. Then, finally, “What if you don’t like the answers?”
“I have to find out either way.”
*
Half of the docks had sunk into the ocean from the fire, and the still-standing parts that they sidled alongside of and climbed up were slightly charred and blackened. They were armed again, even if they couldn’
t find any more 40mm rounds for the M32. Too bad, because Keo would have loved to carry that thing back onto the island. Instead, he had to make do with a fresh M4 and a gun belt with a Beretta 9mm in the holster.
Jordan followed him up the pockmarked parking lot with another rifle. Like him last night, she had ditched all of her weapons and ammo in order to lighten her load in her dash to the boat. It still amazed him how fast she had been.
Competitive softball. Damn.
Keo walked across the parking lot wearing his damp clothes, thankful he could still move his legs at all after getting broadsided by the exploding truck last night. That was the kind of “accident” that could have just as easily snapped his spine and paralyzed him—or sliced him in half with shrapnel—instead of just leaving his entire back and the upper parts of his thighs bruised and battered.
Maybe my luck’s finally turning around after all…
Captain Optimism, as Danny would say.
The place was a surreal sight, with multiple craters scattered from one end to the other. Jordan told him that once she saw him flying through the air, she had kept firing until the M32 was empty, after which she jumped into the water after him.
Most of the vehicles that had been calling the marina home for the last year were now charred, scattered husks, which seemed appropriate given the piles of skeletal remains. The explosions hadn’t killed them, though they had severed arms and legs and detached heads from shoulders. The number of limbs spread around the area—represented this morning by the familiar sight of bleached white bones—were too many to count. And these, he reminded himself, were just the ones that hadn’t managed to crawl away before sunrise.
The lingering acidic smell of dead ghouls filled Keo’s nostrils as he walked through the cemetery of bones.
He was glad he was walking in front of Jordan so she couldn’t see him grimacing with every step. Despite taking two more of Jay’s painkillers (he had already taken two last night), he wasn’t sure how long he was going to last on his feet. His back was intact (Thank you, God), but it was constantly letting him know it was far from okay. He wanted badly to sit down and rest but forced himself to keep moving anyway.
He must not have hid the pain well enough, because Jordan asked, “Are you okay?” from behind him.
“Fine.”
“Then why are you walking so slow?”
“I’m just taking my time. It’s a nice, sunny day. Perfect for a stroll.”
“Right,” she said, but thankfully didn’t press the issue.
There were more bleached bones and partial skeletal remains in the streets beyond the marina. These were spread out, as some of the creatures attempted to crawl toward the houses for salvation, and some had made it onto the lawns before the sun caught them. There was more of the sharp, acidic smell in the air, and Keo picked up his pace—or as much as he could, anyway—to get through it faster.
The two-story white house was exactly where they had left it last night, but being able to see it from afar and getting to it were two different things. During the long walk up the slanted road, he finally surrendered to the pain and stopped to gather his breath.
Jordan, meanwhile, stood guard. “No rush. We got all day.”
Unlike him, the morning had been a good one for Jordan, and the swelling around her right eye had gone down noticeably so that when she looked at him, it was now with both eyes.
“How’s the back?” she asked.
“Throbbing.”
“How’s everything else?”
“Throbbing.”
“Lots of throbbing.”
“Yup.”
“Here,” she said, handing him one of the water bottles from her pack.
“Save it for later,” he said, and stood up with a flinch and walked on before she could argue.
*
There were no signs of Steve or his men on the first floor of the house on the hill. They had left their weapons behind (including an M4 with an attached grenade launcher, probably the same one that had killed Dave), but the bodies were gone. Dead men still bled, especially the freshly dead one. Keo imagined a feeding frenzy as the ghouls, having been locked on the island for a year, got their first taste of fresh (or, well, mostly fresh) blood.
Sucks to be you, Steve.
They kicked stray bullet casings on their way through the house. Holes dotted the walls, and any furniture that wasn’t nailed down was scattered in pieces. Large patches of blood covered the floor and walls in spots where the sun couldn’t reach.
The staircase was battered and broken, with the kind of damage that could only be caused by repeatedly ramming someone’s skull into the frame. Or a lot of someones’ skulls.
Mister Blue Eyes. Did you do this?
They found more evidence of last night’s fight on what was left of the second-floor living room. Sunlight highlighted white bones along the floor, including evidence of incomplete ghouls that had been unable to crawl away as the morning stalked them. All Keo had to do was follow the trail of bones to the master bedroom, which he did while holding his shirt over his nose to keep out the stinging smell that had become nauseating after breathing it for the last hour or so.
They went in cautiously, guns at the ready in case there was a ghoul or two (or a dozen) still hiding in the shadows. He could see the broken back window from the open door, but there were no guarantees the place was empty even if the stench attacking his nostrils was more of the acidic odor of vaporized flesh than the rotting garbage of living (hah) ghouls.
The master bedroom looked as if a tornado had hit it. The bed, dresser, and door had been reduced to unrecognizable splinters. Sunlight poured in through the lone window—the opening had widened, the wall surrounding it gashed, as if someone had hit it with a wrecking ball—and illuminated the evidence of a massive fight that had taken place here last night. The walls were heavily cratered, and the parts of it and the floor that avoided coming into contact with the sun were awash in thick coats of black blood.
“Must have been some fight,” Jordan said next to him.
“Yeah.”
“Wonder if your friend survived.”
Keo smiled. His “friend.”
He looked around the room, hoping to find signs of Ol’ Blue Eyes. Would the black-eyed ones take him (It, it’s an it) with them if it were dead? The way they had absconded with Steve and his men?
He had no idea. All of this was new territory for him.
“There,” he said, pointing the barrel of his rifle at the bathroom doors.
They were closed but were also the only doors in the entire room—maybe even the entire house—that were still intact. Or, well, mostly, despite the generous layer of black blood spread across them.
“Be careful,” Jordan said when he started moving toward the doors.
He wiped a thick layer of dark liquid off one of the doorknobs with a shirt from the floor, then used the same fabric to turn it. Jordan moved over and they counted down to five before he pulled open one of the doors and they both took a step back.
A large trail of plasma, jagged and thick, led from the doors to the remains of a badly destroyed trench coat lying in a crumpled heap near the bathtub. The guns, ammo, and supplies Keo expected to find in the tub were tossed to the floor, some resting in enough blood for two people, maybe even three.
Having made room for itself, it now sat inside the tub, facing him. There were no windows inside the bathroom, so the creature hadn’t needed to risk the sun in here.
Ol’ Blue Eyes.
It looked asleep, and when he opened the doors, it slowly, almost lazily, lifted its head. The blue eyes that looked across the mostly darkened room at him weren’t quite as pulsating (alive) as they had been last night.
“You came back,” it said. Even its hiss seemed weaker. Much, much weaker.
He could tell it was badly hurt, even if Keo couldn’t see its wounds from the open door. He wanted to get closer but was unwilling to abandon the comforting warmth
of the sunlight at his back. After all, he had seen just how fast the thing could move. Even if it was injured, Keo didn’t want to take the chance.
“I had to know,” he said.
It looked at him but didn’t say a word.
Next to him, Jordan’s breathing had accelerated noticeably.
“Last night,” Keo continued, “you said you were looking for me.”
“Yes,” it said, with that same soft, labored hiss that wasn’t quite human, but wasn’t quite inhuman, either. “I’ve been searching for you.”
“How did you find me?”
“I saw you through one of them. At the cabin, when it attacked you. I saw your face and heard your name.”
“The cabin,” Jordan said. “Outside of T18?”
It nodded.
“So you…saw me through their eyes?” Keo asked.
“I can see what they see, hear what they hear, even feel what they feel,” it said. “We’re linked, because we share the same blood. All of us. Like veins in a river. Tens of thousands. Millions. You have no idea the full extent of their number. What you’ve seen so far is only a raindrop in the ocean.”
Keo exchanged a glance with Jordan. If she understood any of this, he didn’t see it on her face. He wondered if he looked as perplexed, or even more so.
He turned back to the creature. “What do you want from me?”
“To find someone,” it said.
“Who?”
“Lara.”
The name caught him by surprise, and it took Keo a few seconds to respond. Finally, he said, “What do you want with her?”
“To help her.”
“Help her do what?”
“To save everyone,” the blue-eyed ghoul said. “There is a way to end this nightmare. Lara needs to know. She needs to know…”
Well wasn’t that a bumpy ride? My grateful thanks to all of you who stuck around after The Ashes of Pompeii. I hope I’ve restored some of your faith by giving you a glimpse of what I have planned for the series moving forward.
Yes, there was always a plan.
Now that you’ve gotten a taste of what’s coming, why not mosey on over to Amazon or a bookseller of your choice and leave a review for The Isles of Elysium? I hear the Internets is very popular these days with the kids and leaving reviews is super easy. Why, back in my day, we had to walk through five feet of snow just to write a book review! Get off my lawn! Ahem.
Purge of Babylon (Book 6): The Isles of Elysium Page 33
