by Sam Sisavath
He listened, waiting for the sound of heavy footsteps that he knew was coming next. Besides the plentiful black assault vests and small arms, not to mention an ungodly amount of ammo, their pursuers also seemed to have a never-ending supply of army boots and other assorted military gear.
Who the hell are these guys?
But he didn’t hear anything at the moment, which didn’t make any sense.
What were they waiting for? Maybe they didn’t think the grenade had taken him out, though more likely they were coordinating a plan of attack. If he had learned anything about these assholes, it was that they could be stubbornly patient. And why not? Sooner or later, there was going to be a lot more men in camo face paint gathering around the house. Retreating back to the house, as it turned out, hadn’t been the best move on his and Norris’s part.
“Norris!” Keo shouted. There hadn’t been any shooting from upstairs in the last ten seconds, and silence from Norris was never a good sign.
After a few seconds, Norris shouted back down, “Yeah?”
“How’s it looking up there?”
“I saw two!”
“You get ’em?”
“No! They’re somewhere along the side of the house!”
“You need to shoot better!”
“Yeah, yeah. What about you?”
“Got one!”
“What was the big bang?”
“Grenade!”
“Damn!”
“Yeah.”
Tactical gear. Assault rifles. Unlimited ammo. And now the enemy had grenades to throw around, too?
Who the hell are these guys?
Keo continued to wait. He had hoped the very loud back and forth with Norris would draw the grenade tosser forward, or at least prompt the man or one of his friends to make a move instead of just waiting for reinforcements. He needed to finish this before the others showed up.
“How many of you are out there?”
“A lot.”
Doug wasn’t lying, as it turned out.
Keo glanced quickly down at his watch: 3:16 p.m.
Late summer in Louisiana meant long days. Sunset didn’t come until just before eight, which left them with four hours and thirty minutes (optimistically speaking) to survive this and find another place for shelter.
That took up most of his priorities these days—run, fight, evade, and shelter. When they could, they stayed at the same place for days, sometimes weeks, until they were forced to move on. He used to care about all the time they were wasting in the early days of the chase, which were usually filled with images of Gillian and his promise to her.
Not so much anymore. Now, finding a place that he and Norris could rest for more than one night in peace, without having to shoot at anyone—or be shot at—was as close to paradise as he could get. His standards for what qualified as a great day had fallen dramatically these last few months.
His watch ticked to 3:18 p.m.
Gotta get outta here.
Gotta get outta here soon…
CHAPTER 2
“You promise me,” Gillian had said. “You’ll follow us to Santa Marie Island.”
“Yes,” he had said. “I promise.”
Even when he made it, he always knew there was a very good chance he wasn’t going to be able to follow through. Not because he didn’t want to, because God only knew he wanted to desperately. It was more that he didn’t think he would get the chance. But he thought she needed to hear it at the moment, with heavily-armed men gathered all around them, trying to kill them.
The more things change…the more they don’t.
He leaned around the corner of the kitchen and glanced back toward the front door for the fifth time in as many minutes. It was still wide open, sunlight pouring inside in big, comforting swaths. The foyer was in pieces, and so was the bottom of the stairs. Chunks of glass, what used to be fine mahogany wood, and a lot of someone’s very expensive dinnerware set were scattered across the elongated open spaces.
We left our house for one weekend, and someone tosses a grenade inside. Man, this neighborhood’s going to hell!
Keo felt like laughing at the absurd thought. The fact that he was making jokes made the absurdity even more so.
Keep laughing, pal. You’re about to die, you know that, right?
He couldn’t detect signs of movement or sounds of any kind. The house opened up to the shoreline, with the lake beyond about thirty meters or so connected to the front door by a winding cobblestone walkway walled by fields of unmowed grass. He remembered seeing a combination deck and empty boathouse there, including a pair of empty slots for jet skis. Like the boats, the jet skis were missing.
Who took all the boats? Maybe the same people that cleaned out all the houses before we got here. Curiouser and curiouser…
“Hey, kid!” Norris called from upstairs.
“Yeah!” Keo shouted back.
“You still alive?”
“I just said ‘yeah,’ didn’t I?”
“Good point.” There was a slight pause, then, “Can you make it?”
“Make it where?”
“Outside.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible. You said there were two coming, and I definitely know there’s one outside the front door right now.”
“Well, we gotta make our move sooner or later. You know that, right?”
One hour. Maybe two, at the most.
Yeah, he knew it, all right.
“I’m open to suggestions,” Keo said.
“I’m thinking—” Norris began, when Keo saw a black-gloved hand appear in the open doorway and toss a can-shaped object into the house.
“Incoming!” Keo shouted, and dived back behind the kitchen wall.
Something metallic clattered into the hallway and rolled along the tiled floor. There was a loud pop!, followed by the swoosh! of a smoke canister ripping.
“Smoke!” he shouted, hoping Norris could hear him over the sharp hiss.
He grabbed his T-shirt and pulled it up and over his mouth and nostrils—not that he expected it to do much good once the smoke reached him. He was still tugging at the fabric when he caught movement in front of him, outside on the patio.
Two figures, both clad in black, their faces smeared with green and black paint, were moving cautiously toward the broken window with weapons raised. They looked inside, searching for him in the kitchen. They spotted him as soon as he leaned out from behind the island counter to get a better look at them. Gunfire exploded and bullets tore into the wooden structure in front of him, chunks of the granite countertop splitting off like missiles. More bullets ricocheted off the steel refrigerator behind him, the ping-ping-ping! filling the first floor.
Keo kept his head down and bided his time, listening, listening—
Through the chaos, he heard the loud thumping footsteps he had been waiting for to finally show up, coming from behind him as their owner shuffled his way up the hallway from the front door.
When the two men finally emptied their magazines and stopped shooting, Keo held the M4 over what was left of the countertop and fired off a burst in the direction of the patio window. He had no clue if he hit anything or if the men were already inside the house. The last he saw of them, they were still cautiously approaching the shattered window, so maybe he caught them while they were still outside.
There was only one way to find out, though.
He stopped firing, pulled the rifle back, and dived forward, slipping and sliding against the dirt-covered but still slick floor. He braced himself for more return gunfire but was surprised when there was no reaction to his movements.
By now, smoke had filled half of the living room and pretty much the entire foyer, so when Keo picked himself up and ran, legs struggling for purchase against the wood and granite-covered floor, into the hallway, he didn’t look up in time to see the figure coming straight at him. They collided, the impact sending the M4 flying out of his hands. The carbine hit the wall, the loud clatter u
nmistakable even as both he and the attacker went spilling to the floor.
Keo stabbed his hand down toward his hip, groping for the Glock G41 in its holster. The smoke stung his eyes, but he could just barely make out the form in front of him, a black shape scrambling up from the floor just a little slower than him. Unlike Keo, the man had managed to hold onto his weapon, an MP5K, despite the collision. His radio, on the other hand, hadn’t survived the fall and pieces of it dangled from a Velcro strap along the left side of his vest. The man was whirling around in search of Keo, their entire world having been reduced to nothing but a thick white cloud and vision that was limited by only a few feet at a time.
The man finally located Keo, and as he lifted his weapon, Keo shot him in the shoulder. He was aiming for the head, but the figure in front of him was moving too erratically, still spinning around, and it was a miracle he hit anything at all. A scream, then the body fell, the submachine gun falling away as the man grabbed at his wound.
Keo felt a burst of glee. The MP5K fired 9mm rounds, and its magazine was interchangeable with his now-depleted MP5SD. If the guy had spares, then that would mean more ammo for his weapon.
Daebak. Today’s looking up!
The thought hadn’t finished reverberating in his head when the loud pounding of footsteps coming from the living room snapped him back to reality.
The two from the patio.
The wounded black-clad man was trying to get back up when Keo slid behind him and hooked his left hand around the man’s throat, pinning the back of his head to his chest, and shoved the barrel of the Glock against a trembling temple.
“Don’t come any closer or your friend’s dead!” Keo shouted into the white smoke.
The footsteps stopped.
Keo tightened his grip on the man’s throat and leaned forward. “Tell them.”
“Don’t come any closer!” the man shouted.
Wait, what? That wasn’t a man’s voice—
Keo jerked the head back slightly and looked down at a woman’s face. Bright blue eyes, made somehow brighter against the camo paint, peered defiantly back up at him. Late twenties, maybe early thirties—it was hard to tell with all the gunk on her face—and she had black hair in a ponytail.
“Fiona?” a male voice shouted from somewhere in the living room.
“I’m sorry!” the woman in front of Keo shouted back.
“Come any closer and her brain gets splattered on the walls!” Keo shouted.
He heard loud, grumbling curses, something that sounded like a brief argument, before the heavy footsteps echoed again—except this time they were fading, retreating back into the living room.
Jesus, I can’t believe that worked.
He reached down and pulled a handgun out of the woman’s hip holster and shoved it behind his waist. Then he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her up with him. She let out a scream.
“Sorry about that,” Keo said, switching his grip from her injured left arm and over to her right.
“Go fuck yourself,” she snarled back at him.
*
Norris cleaned, disinfected, and then bundled up the woman’s shoulder using the first aid kit from his pack. It wasn’t much of a wound—barely a graze, really—compared to what he had been carrying around through the woods of Louisiana for the last few months. Not that the woman seemed to appreciate her good fortune, or Norris’s efforts to wrap her up.
He was back on the second-floor living room, with the stairs between him and Norris, finishing up with the woman on the opposite wall. The window was to his left, the stairs to his right. Keo had briefly considered retreating all the way into the bedrooms, but he didn’t like the idea of being trapped in there. Out here, if they could hold the stairs, they had some options left. Not a lot of good ones by any means, but some shitty options were better than none.
He glanced down at his watch. 3:54 p.m.
Still plenty of time…
They had been waiting for her friends to attack for the last thirty minutes, but the three men moving around somewhere below them hadn’t shown any willingness to come up the stairs. Every now and then Keo expected them to just toss another grenade up here and kill them all, but that would have taken out Fiona, too, and they had already shown an unwillingness to harm her. So that was something he hadn’t expected from their pursuers. Loyalty.
Fiona’s eyes were locked on Keo, as if she thought she could kill him if she stared long and hard enough. He was almost tempted to hand her a gun and tell her to try it, but at the moment she was the only reason they were still alive.
“Give it a rest,” Keo said.
“Which part of ‘go fuck yourself’ didn’t you understand?” she said.
Norris chuckled. “Hey, look, she’s just like you, kid. A hard-ass.”
The ex-cop finished up and stuffed the first aid kit back into his pack before heading over to the bullet-riddled window and peeping outside from a safe angle. They didn’t know if the sniper was still out there or not, or if the man had joined his buddies downstairs.
Keo stared back at Fiona. She sat with her legs splayed in front of her, hands on her lap, gauze tape covering the upper part of her left shoulder. Her assault vest lay on the floor nearby, with the broken radio still dangling from it. The black clothes she wore didn’t do her any favors against the stifling heat, and neither did the camo that covered her face. Even with all that mess, he thought she was still reasonably attractive. Too bad she had been trying to kill him all day…
“You’re dead,” Fiona said, as if reading his mind. “Both of you. You know that, don’t you? Neither one of you is getting out of this house alive.”
“They’ll have to come up and get us first,” Keo said. “Apparently they care enough about you not to try it yet.”
“You think you’ve figured it out?” There was just the ghost of a smile on her face. “You haven’t figured out anything, dead man.”
“Since I’m already a dead man, then you won’t mind telling me who the fuck you people are.”
“Now what would be the fun in that?”
“How many of you are out there?”
“More than enough to kill two assholes.”
“So we’re the assholes?” Norris said. “That’s news to me.”
“Did you think you were the good guys?” she said, almost laughing at him.
“You’re the ones hunting us, lady,” Keo said.
“You have no idea, do you?” she said.
“Enlighten us.”
“Bobby.”
Bobby?
The name sounded familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know any Bobby.”
“Bullshit,” Fiona said. “You started this when you killed him.”
“I told you. I don’t know any Bobby. And I certainly never killed any Bobby. I would remember.”
“You remember everyone you’ve killed?” she snorted.
“Yes,” Keo said.
She stared at him in silence for a moment. Then, “How many people have you killed?”
You don’t want to know, lady, he was going to say, but Norris interrupted him with, “That kid. Remember?”
Keo glanced at him. “What kid?”
“Back at the house. In the garage with Lotte? And Levy?”
Bobby.
Jesus Christ. The kid in the garage with Lotte. The one Levy killed?
“So now you remember him?” Fiona said. “Killing him started this. You started this.”
“We didn’t kill Bobby,” Keo said. It wasn’t a total lie, though the truth was more complicated.
“You did, someone else did, doesn’t matter,” Fiona said. “One of your people murdered Bobby. There were two others with him, but the way we heard it, that was a fair fight. Hell, for all I know, you killed Carl and Doug, too. That’s five bodies on your doorsteps.”
Carl and Doug?
He knew a Doug. Keo had shot a man who called himself D
oug months ago when they had encountered him, along with a second man at an abandoned strip mall outside of Corden. Norris had shot the other one (Carl, I presume).
“Did you?” she asked.
“Did I what?” Keo said.
“Kill Carl and Doug, too?” She was watching him closely, trying to read his reaction. “We never found their bodies, so we were never sure what happened to them…”
“I don’t know who Carl and Doug are,” Keo lied. “What makes you think we’re the only people running around with guns out there? You seemed to have plenty of them yourself. What are you, ex-soldiers?”
“Nice try, but it’s not going to be that easy.”
“You don’t look ex-military. Probably a wannabe.”
“So that’s your point of attack? Insult me and hope I’ll blurt out something valuable when I indignantly try to defend myself?” She smirked then looked at Norris. “Is this guy calling the shots? If so, you’re screwed, old man.”
Norris grunted. “I’ve been telling myself that for the last nine months, girly. It’s nothing I don’t already know, so you can save your breath.”
Keo looked down at his watch. “I don’t have to survive your friends downstairs. I just have to outlast them until nightfall. I’m willing to bet those bedroom doors with a little furniture reinforcement will last a lot longer against the bloodsuckers than what your pals have to work with. What do you think?”
Her face was placid, almost…pitying? “You think the bloodsuckers are your biggest worry? They’re not. It’s not even me or my friends down there that you have to worry about. When you killed Bobby, you started something that can’t be stopped. There’s a man out there, and he’s going to hunt you down to the ends of the Earth.”
“‘Hunt you down to the ends of the Earth’?” Keo said. “Jesus fucking Christ. Who the hell are you people?”
For a moment, he thought she was going to laugh, or maybe mock him. But instead, she just shook her head. “You’ll find out soon enough, because I’m one hundred percent certain he’s on his way here now.”
