by Sam Sisavath
Ten seconds had passed, which left…
Ten…
He glanced over at the house one last time. The peepholes were closed.
Eight…
Keo sucked in a breath. “Ready, old timer?”
Six…
“No, but what the hell,” Norris said from somewhere behind him.
Four…
“It’ll be fun,” Keo said.
Two…
Norris chuckled. “Fucking Riggs. That’s what you are. Minus the mullet.”
One!
He popped up from behind the shattered driver side window and sought out the Ford F-150 where he had last seen Joe. A head bobbed on the other side of the vehicle and Keo opened fire, the cycling mechanical whine of the MP5SD almost immediately lost in the ping-ping-ping! of 9mm rounds puncturing the truck across the yard. The head dropped out of sight, though Keo didn’t delude himself into thinking he had hit anything.
Behind him, Norris was firing on full-auto with the M4, and Keo was very glad they had loaded up on ammo before heading off on the supply run. The belt around his waist held four magazines for the submachine gun and two more for the Glock. Norris had about the same amount, though he had already used up one while Keo hadn’t fired a single shot until now.
While he kept Joe pinned down behind the Ford, he glimpsed two figures moving on the other side of the Nissan nearby. Keo switched his fire to that vehicle, piercing tires and shattering windows. He didn’t stop shooting until he had drained the magazine, then he ducked back down and began reloading.
They returned fire, 5.56 and 7.62 rounds drilling into the Bronco, sharp and metallic and so close he was almost certain he was going to be filled with holes in the next few seconds. Keo wondered what the truck looked like to someone from a distance. All four tires were gone and the vehicle was essentially sitting on its undercarriage like an abandoned piece of junk. Which, he guessed, probably wasn’t too far from the truth.
Norris had also stopped firing and was reloading while the assaulters returned the favor.
Keo waited to hear the sound he knew (hoped) was coming, knowing that even over the pummeling gunfire wouldn’t be difficult to detect—
There!
The loud roar of an outboard motor firing up, at first with some difficulty—loud coughing spurts—before it caught and increased in volume.
“Watch the sides!” Keo shouted. “Don’t let them make a run for the back of the house!”
As soon as he said it, a black-clad figure raced across the yard toward the side of the house in front of him. He switched the MP5SD to semi-auto and fired twice, hitting the running man in the thigh with his second shot. The man stumbled and rolled forward on his shoulders but somehow still managed to keep his grip on his AK-47. As he was coming to rest on the ground, Keo shot him two more times, hitting him in the chest with both rounds. The man went down for good this time.
Keo’s radio squawked, and he heard Jordan’s voice. “Keo—”
“Shut up and go!” he shouted back into the radio.
There was no reply. Instead, Keo heard the outboard motor revving as someone hit the throttle. He couldn’t hear the river parting under the boat from this distance, but he imagined it heading downriver at this very second, and Keo couldn’t help but smile to himself.
“See the world. Kill some people. Make some money. Get killed for a bunch of people you didn’t know until six months ago.”
Fucking daebak.
Norris screamed, and Keo turned around to find the ex-cop on the ground, shooting at two black-clad assaulters hiding in the woods behind them. Norris’s bullets tore into the trees and branches as the men sought cover.
Keo rushed over and poured half of his magazine into the woods after the two men. He might have hit one, but they were too far away—over fifty meters—and he couldn’t tell for certain either way.
“You good?” Keo shouted.
“Fuck no!” Norris shouted back, simultaneously reloading his carbine while flat on his back. Blood spurted out of his left leg, near the thigh area.
“I’ll pull, you shoot!” Keo said, and grabbed Norris by the shoulders and began dragging him across the yard toward the side of the house. Thank God he had at least parked the Bronco close enough that it wasn’t too big of a distance—
Spoke too soon, he thought, when an AK-47 sent bullets zip-zip-zipping around his head. Keo did all he could to ignore the rounds and kept dragging. Not an easy feat, because the bullets seemed to be getting closer with every step he took. He was moving as fast as he could, but even he knew it wasn’t fast enough. He was out in the open, exposed, dragging a bleeding man with him.
Any minute now, and one of them’s going to get lucky.
Get ready for the pain. Get ready…
Norris was firing into the trees before turning at the waist and unloading at the vehicles in the yard. That silenced the enemy assault rifle for a moment, but then it was back again just as Keo reached the side of the house. Brick exploded, showering both him and Norris in thick red and gray clouds.
He kept pulling Norris along the side of the house, trying to reach the back and safety. He couldn’t stop. Not for a second. Couldn’t reach for his MP5SD and return fire, because that would mean stopping completely. And he couldn’t do that, because not constantly moving back back back would result in doom for both of them.
And Norris was heavy. Jesus. Had Norris put on some pounds since they arrived at the house? It felt as if he were dragging a boulder—
Crack!
Keo grunted as the bullet chopped through his left shoulder. Pain speared his body like flames, enveloping every inch of him.
He kept moving, dragging Norris with him, doing his best to ignore the pain, because there was no choice, because stopping meant death, so he had to keep going and going and going—
A second crack! tore a big chunk from the brick wall a few inches from his face, throwing debris into his eyes.
He coughed and kept moving and dragging.
Finally, after an eternity, he reached the back of the house and pulled Norris behind it just as the two black-clad assaulters peeked out from behind the Bronco (Jesus, when had they made it across the open ground from the woods?) and fired at them, half of their rounds hitting the corner of the house and the rest going into the trees in the back. There were two more thick clouds, like some kind of man-made fog, in front of them by the time Keo dropped Norris to the ground and unslung his submachine gun.
Keo heard the loud rush of footsteps and spun around just as a figure took the corner on the other side of the house. The man froze when he saw Keo looking across at him.
Joe.
The kid’s AK-47 was just halfway up when he rounded the house. His eyes widened and he was in the middle of taking another ragged breath. Sweat poured down Joe’s forehead, gliding smoothly over the waterproof paint on his face.
“Wait—” Joe said, half a second before Keo shot him in the chest, and as the eighteen-year-old fell, Keo shot him a second time, hitting him in the neck. Blood spurted as Joe went down. He didn’t get back up.
Norris was reloading when Keo looked back. The ex-cop was staring at Joe’s still form on the other side of the house. “Fucking kid,” he said. Then, “You’re bleeding.”
“Yeah,” Keo said. “So are you.”
“So what does that tell you?”
“We’re fucked.”
“That about covers it,” Norris grunted.
He was bleeding and it hurt, too, but he ignored the pain. The feel of wetness trickling down his shoulder and running along the length of his left arm was strangely cold.
He noticed right away that the pier was empty and there were no signs of the boat. He couldn’t hear the roar of the outboard motor anymore, either, which meant they were far, far downriver by now.
Next stop, Santa Marie Island.
“What now?” Norris said. His eyes were glued on the corner in front of him, M4 poised and ready to s
hoot.
Good question.
Keo looked around them. He hadn’t really thought this far ahead. Getting the hell away from the Bronco had been the priority, and now that they were behind the house, what was left? He had no delusions that the assaulters would leave now, not after the casualties they had taken. They were probably coming at this very moment. Either from one side or both. Likely both. That’s how he would do it.
The same reason he told Jordan to abandon the house was the same reason they couldn’t use it to make their stand. Too easy to surround, too easy to destroy once they were locked inside with no way out.
No, the house wasn’t going to do it.
So what was left?
Then he heard his answer. It had been there all this time.
The river.
“Can you swim?” he asked Norris.
Norris sighed. “You call that a plan?”
“Cover us!”
Keo slipped his hands under Norris’s shoulders and began dragging him backward again, this time toward the river. It seemed a lot further today than it usually did, but maybe that was because he was moving with a 200-something pound burden this time.
Norris fired another burst at the corner in front of them just as a man with camo on his face sneaked a peek around it. Clouds of loosed brick floated in the air, thick and red and gray. A second later, a figure burst through the makeshift smokescreen, and Norris shot him in the leg. The man went down screaming when a pair of hands grabbed his legs from behind and dragged him back through the fog.
Keo thought that was ironic. A lot of people were being dragged around bleeding today.
“Stay back if you know what’s good for you, whippersnappers!” Norris shouted.
Keo wanted to laugh when he felt the ground under him slanting and knew he was close to the river. He looked back to be sure and saw that he was almost at the ridge overlooking the bank below. The pier was to his left and the flowing river was directly behind him. The sound of rushing water had increased. It wasn’t a strong current today, but maybe it would be just good enough.
Hopefully.
“Ready?” he shouted.
“Fuck no!” Norris shouted back.
“In you go!”
Keo swung Norris around as if he were a sack of meat. Norris might have been screaming obscenities at him as he flew through the air and splashed into the river face-first.
Norris disappeared under the water, only to pop back to the surface, gasping for breath, a couple of seconds later. He had, miraculously, still held onto his carbine.
“You’re going to pay for that!” Norris shouted at him just before he was carried downriver.
Keo didn’t have time to make sure Norris didn’t sink back under the surface, because bullets began screaming around him. One of them hit him in the back of the right leg, and he fell off the ridge and just barely managed to stick out his hands as he landed on the muddy banks. He half-crawled and half-ran toward the river and leaped toward it with every ounce of strength he had left, which wasn’t very much.
He sank under the surface like a lead weight, the stinging cold making every inch of his skin howl with a combination of unbearable pain and surprise. He struggled to right himself underwater even as the world rippled in slow motion as bullets penetrated from above. He could barely hear the thudding clatter of gunfire from the bank as they poured round after round at him, but for some reason the bullets were coming down further and further behind him.
Keo decided to give in and embrace the current. He stopped trying to fight his way up to the surface where, in all likelihood, he was going to get his head shot off the second he popped it back up. He was thankful for the cold river water because it helped to dull the pain from his shoulder and leg as he floated downriver.
His eyes were open and he saw that he was leaving tendrils of blood in his wake. A lot of blood.
Jesus, he was literally bleeding to death in the river.
There was a bright side to all of this, though. He was probably going to drown before those two bullet wounds finally got the better of him, so there was that.
CHAPTER 33
Norris fished him out of the river, though Keo didn’t know how or when exactly, since his entire body had gone numb from the cold and he had trouble clinging to any specific thought, much less pay attention to his environment. The bleeding and pounding pain from his toes to his head didn’t help, either.
He woke up sporadically throughout the day, first on a muddy bank with Norris pumping on his chest. When he opened his eyes a second time, he was traveling through the woods, hoisted over one of Norris’s broad shoulders. The ex-cop might have been grumbling the whole way, but Keo couldn’t really be sure since he could barely keep his eyes open.
He was also only dimly aware of the sun setting in the distance.
That’s not good, he remembered thinking. That’s not good at all.
The third time he opened his eyes, he saw only darkness. Alarm bells went off and he willed himself to sit up, but he couldn’t move a single part of his body.
Slowly, the darkness gave way to light—or well, sort of light. He could make out dirty scarred gray walls, and the ground under him was hard and cold. A concrete floor. He was in some kind of room. A dark room, but it wasn’t necessarily dark outside…yet.
“Still alive?” a voice said.
Keo managed to turn his head toward the sound of the voice. Norris, sitting against a wall, watching him with a grin. He looked dry, which meant they had been here a while. Norris still had his M4 across his lap and Keo’s MP5SD slung over one shoulder. His left leg was wrapped with what looked like strips of fabric.
“Thirsty?” Norris asked.
Keo nodded.
“Well, too bad; we don’t have any water,” Norris said and chuckled. “Of course, I think we’ve both had enough of water to last us a lifetime. You’re still alive, though. That’s good, right?”
Keo managed to sit up. He was close enough to a wall that he only needed to scoot back a few inches. Which was good, because any farther and he wouldn’t have made it. His right leg had a tourniquet wrapped around it. It looked like a piece of a shirt. Another tourniquet was tied tightly around his left shoulder, which probably explained why he could barely move it, even though he could feel the pain from it just fine. Too fine, in fact.
“Where are we?” he asked. His throat was parched, which he found surprising. He was sure he had swallowed most of the river earlier in the day.
“Remember that house we searched about a month ago? The one with the swing set out back?”
“Yeah…”
“We’re in the basement. Got lucky. It only took me carrying you for an hour to find it again. Luckily, I haven’t gone senile yet. Well, not entirely.” He grinned, white teeth visible in the semidarkness. “It’s a good thing you’re taller than you weigh, kid, or I would have dumped your ass back at the river bank.”
Keo glanced down at his watch. It was still ticking after being drowned in water for…how long?
5:16 p.m.
“Any pursuit?” he asked.
Norris shook his head. “We floated down the river pretty far. I almost didn’t catch you when you flew by, you know. It’s a good thing I’m pretty fast even with this bum leg.”
“Thanks,” Keo said. “You saved my life.”
“Hey, you saved my ass first. Just returning the favor.”
Keo laid his head against the wall. The basement smelled of abandonment, but it looked secure, with a door to his left at the top of a flight of stairs. He remembered checking the house with Norris before and finding the place empty, with the basement door held tightly shut with a padlock, which meant none of the creatures were waiting inside when they opened it.
It was a good thing Norris remembered how to get back to it.
“Go to sleep, kid,” Norris said from across the room. “Door’s locked. They can’t get in. We’ll look for food and water tomorrow. Until then, let’s try
to just survive the next twenty-four hours. It’s been a really shitty day.”
Keo couldn’t disagree with that. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to slink back down to the floor. He was tired. He didn’t think he could actually sit back up if he tried. Or at least, not on the first try.
Maybe on the sixth…
He was asleep again in seconds.
*
A week after the firefight at the house, they were still following the river down south toward New Orleans, keeping in mind that Mark and Jordan had sailed the others upriver to them from the same fork.
Traveling on foot was a pain in the ass, especially with their wounds. They hobbled more than they actually walked, and they made pathetic time. It seemed as if they had been walking for months without seeing any signs of civilization, a reminder again that while they were hiding out back at the house, there was still a very big world beyond the woods.
They broke away from the river only to find shelter and food, which further cut into their progress. Even then, they didn’t move very far from the river because Keo didn’t trust that they could find it again if they ever lost sight of it. Neither one of them had a map or knew where the hell they were going. Every tree they came across looked like the last hundred (or thousand) they had already passed in the last seven days.
Eventually, the sun would always begin its descent, which meant they had to find safe haven for the night. At first they carved out an hour at the end of every day just for that, but when that proved too risky and they almost got caught outside on Day 3, they decided two hours was the better number.
By their first week in the woods, they were looking for shelter at around noon. That really cut into their time, too.
Norris never said anything about whether the girls and Mark had made it to Santa Marie Island or not. He seemed just as content as Keo to keep moving, pushed on by a shared goal. The fact that they hadn’t encountered wreckages along the river in the first few days was a good sign. Of course, Gillian and the others would be moving faster on a boat powered by a combination of outboard motor, sails, and going downriver with the current. They might have already reached New Orleans by now and slipped into the Gulf of Mexico on their way to Galveston, Texas.
