by Sam Sisavath
“Do you?”
“I’m not sure.” He seemed to think about it for a moment, then shook his head. “I guess I don’t feel too bad. What’s it like?”
“What’s that?”
“The second time killing a guy?”
Keo didn’t answer him. He didn’t know how. Then again, he had never sat down (or stood around) talking about his feelings after killing a man, either.
“You all right, kid?” Keo asked.
Levy nodded. “Yeah. I’ve never felt better in my life.” He looked down at his victim. “Who do you think he was?”
“I don’t know. You’ve never seen him before?”
“Never saw him in my life.”
“You didn’t know they were here until they started shooting?”
“Nope. They must have been really quiet. It’s a good thing you and Norris showed up. They probably would have snuck up on me.” Suddenly, the grin left his face and was replaced by suspicion. “What are you guys doing here, anyway? Are you checking up on me?”
“We were looking for Lotte.”
“I told you, I haven’t seen her.” He looked slightly annoyed. “You don’t believe me?”
“We’re checking everywhere.”
“Well, she’s not here. Why would I lie about that?”
I don’t know, why would you lie about that? Keo thought, but said, “We’re just looking everywhere.”
“And you just happened to walk in this direction?” Levy said, slightly amused.
“Yeah, that’s pretty much it.”
“Where have you guys looked so far? Maybe I can help. I like the kid, too.”
Keo didn’t get a chance to answer before their radios squawked again and Norris said, “Third one’s talking, and he’s got a pretty interesting story.”
“What’s he saying?” Keo said into the radio.
“They came here looking for a missing friend, and they thought he was in the garage.”
Keo looked at Levy.
“He’s lying,” Levy said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Levy nodded with absolute conviction.
“Good to know,” Keo said, and punched Levy in the gut.
When Levy doubled over in surprise, Keo hit him in the face. Levy dropped, landing on his stomach on the ground next to the man he had killed.
Levy groaned and tried to get back up.
“Don’t,” Keo said.
Maybe Levy didn’t hear him, or maybe he was just stubborn, but he reached for his sidearm. Keo hit him across the face with the stock of his submachine gun, and Levy flopped back to the ground again.
This time, he didn’t try to get back up.
CHAPTER 29
“Jesus Christ,” Norris said, doing his best not to choke on the stench.
Keo was already breathing through his mouth, and it was barely helping. Even though he had shut down his sense of smell, his eyes still stung from the tainted air. It was all he could do to stare at the darkened corner and not throw up.
There was blood all over the half of the garage that wasn’t covered with leftovers from the burnt house next door. Fresh blood. It pooled in the sunlight, originating from the corner where Keo had last seen Levy’s creature.
It was still in there, but it wasn’t alone anymore.
He took out his flashlight and flicked it on.
They glanced up from what they were doing and glared at him, as if he was an annoyance interrupting their work. There were two of them now, and one of them was clearly smaller, though size was always tricky with the creatures. One of them was missing an arm and had a hole where its eye socket should be.
He knew without a doubt that the other one was Lotte. Or it used to be Lotte.
He only knew that because it was still wearing Lotte’s shirt and pants, both soaked in blood that glistened against his flashlight. She hadn’t turned all that long ago. The pebble turquoise bracelet that she always wore barely clung to her shrunken wrist, on the precipice of falling free at any second. Her chest was sunken, her body impossibly frail. Her right leg, which still hadn’t healed entirely, was bent at an odd angle, though she moved on it as if there were no pain.
Do they even still feel pain?
A rawhide rope was wrapped tightly around Lotte’s throat and attached to the same spike driven into the ground that leashed the other creature. It wasn’t just Lotte and the creature in the corner, though.
There was a third. A man. Not really a man. A kid.
He was wearing dirt-caked camo pants and a shirt, like the three men who had tried to ambush Keo and Norris earlier, though the boy’s clothing looked too big for his slight form. Blood was spurting out of his neck and wrists where he had been bitten, teeth marks still visible around the gaping wounds. Lotte and the creature were perched over the boy, the sound of wanton suckling filling the garage.
Norris shuffled his feet restlessly behind him. “This is going to kill the girls. Rachel, Gillian… Jesus.”
Lotte. The fourteen-year-old had been easy to like. He remembered all the times when she “accidentally” fell asleep in the living room whenever he forgot to leave her and Gillian’s room in time. How she looked after Christine when Rachel was busy, or humored Norris when he started telling another one of his dull stories from his time as a cop.
She was a good kid. A really good kid…
“She looks fresh,” Norris said. “How long does it take for them to turn?”
“I don’t know,” Keo said. “I guess it depends on when they die.”
He shook his head. He didn’t want to have this conversation. He didn’t need to have this conversation about Lotte.
“He’s going to turn,” Norris said. “The kid in the camo. Just like Lotte. Jesus, this is going to kill the girls.”
The thick and crisp slurp slurp of Lotte and the creature working on the dead body was like a sledgehammer in the quiet of the garage.
“We can’t let them leave,” Keo said.
“Which ones?”
“All of them.”
Keo clicked the flashlight off, pocketed it, and took a step back. Norris did the same thing and they turned without a word and left. Keo slammed the door shut behind them.
Outside, Levy was lying unconscious on the ground on his side. He had a strangely contented look on his bruised face, even with his hands tied behind his back with a pair of zip ties they had found on one of the dead ambushers. Keo stared at Levy, wondering what the hell they were going to do with him.
The last surviving ambusher, whom Norris had caught while the man was fleeing across the clearing, sat on his butt a few feet from Levy, his own hands bound behind his back along with his feet to keep him from running off. He was almost as young as the boy inside the garage with Lotte and the creature, but maybe a few years older. Eighteen, at least. He had told Norris his name was Joe.
Right now, Joe glared at Keo and Norris, as if he were prepared to tear them apart with his bare hands if given the opportunity. “Is Bobby in there? Is he alive? He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“There was someone else in there,” Keo said.
“Bobby. It was Bobby, wasn’t it?”
Yeah, probably, Keo thought, but said, “I don’t know what Bobby looks like.”
“It’s Bobby,” Joe said, as if just making that declaration sapped all the energy and anger from him. He looked down at the ground between his legs instead. “There was a lot of blood where we last saw him. He was bleeding pretty bad all the way over here.”
“You followed the blood here?”
“Yeah. He must have stabbed Bobby,” Joe said. He flashed Levy’s unconscious form a disgusted glance. “Sneaked up on him, probably. Bobby couldn’t hear too good out of his right ear.”
“Sorry, kid,” Norris said.
Joe looked up at Norris, the fire suddenly reignited. “You killed him. You killed Bobby.”
“Not us.”
“You’re with him,” Joe said, nodding at Levy. “You�
�re just as responsible as he is.”
“No…”
“Admit it!”
Norris opened his mouth to argue, but stopped himself. He was probably thinking the same thing Keo was. Maybe the kid was right; maybe they were just as responsible for Bobby’s death (and Lotte’s) as Levy was. They had left him alone after discovering the creature in the garage. They had allowed Levy to do what he did this afternoon.
To Lotte. To Bobby…
“You’re right,” Keo said. “We should have put a stop to him sooner.”
That seemed to deflate Joe, and he looked down at the ground again. “Why’d you have to kill my uncles, too?”
“You shot at us first,” Norris said. “You shot to kill, too, so don’t start thinking the three of you have clean hands in this.”
Joe’s eyes went to Keo’s blood-soaked shirt. It looked worse than it really was, since he couldn’t really feel the pain anymore. Not that he had forgotten about it, but he had been in worse situations.
“What now?” Joe said, looking from Keo’s face to Norris’s, and back again. “What happens to me?”
“We haven’t decided yet,” Keo said.
“You got family left?” Norris asked.
Joe shook his head. “I ain’t got no one. You killed them all,” he said, and looked down without another word.
*
“I told you I never shot anyone while I was a cop?” Norris said.
“You mentioned it,” Keo said.
“I’d never even discharged my weapon in the line of duty.” He grunted. “It’s funny how life works. I spend most of my fifty-six years carrying a gun, patrolling some of the shittiest neighborhoods in Orlando, and I never had to shoot anyone. It takes the end of the world to change all that. Crazy.”
They stood just far enough from Joe and Levy that the two men couldn’t hear them. Levy had woken up and now sat on the ground next to Joe, doing his very best to avoid eye contact. Joe looked as if he wanted to strangle Levy, and no doubt his zip-tied hands were the only thing keeping him from doing just that. Levy, for his part, seemed to know he had messed up. He had only looked at Keo and Norris once after gaining consciousness and hadn’t done it a second time.
“I get the feeling you’re better at this than I am,” Norris said.
“‘This’?” Keo said. “What are we talking about here?”
“All this killing stuff.” He added quickly, “That’s not an accusation or some kind of backhanded compliment, kid. That’s just a statement of fact. Tell me I’m wrong.”
Keo didn’t. Because Norris wasn’t.
“See the world. Kill some people. Make some money.”
He glanced up at the sun. The brightness stung his eyes, but it was a good sting, and it took away some of the lingering pain in his side. He was going to have to tend to it sooner or later. A scratch or not, it was still an open wound, and he had seen infections in the field develop from something as minor as a scratch, never mind a bullet graze.
“We can’t take him back with us,” Norris said.
“I don’t see how,” Keo said. “Not after what he did.”
“So, what’s left? What are our options?”
“I think we both know the answer to that.”
“Do we?”
“He can’t be trusted.” Keo looked at Levy, who was doing everything possible not to stare back. “Not around us. Not around the house or the girls.”
“Maybe it’s just one of those temporary insanity things. Should we ask him why he did it?”
“Does it matter? The point is, he did it.”
Norris didn’t answer right away. After a while, he said, “The kid needs psychiatric help.”
“No chance of that now.”
“I guess not.” He paused, then, “I can do it.”
“No, I’ll do it,” Keo said. “I promised Gillian.”
He began walking away before Norris could say anything else.
Joe and Levy heard him coming and looked over. He wasn’t quite sure what was in Joe’s eyes, but Levy’s were clear as day—they were wide with terror, as if he could already read Keo’s mind and knew what was coming.
“Keo, don’t,” Levy said. “Whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t do it. I didn’t meant to hurt anyone. The kid—Bobby—he surprised me, that’s all. I didn’t have a choice.”
“What about Lotte?” Keo asked.
“She followed me. I’m sick of people following me, not trusting me. I just…snapped, that’s all.” He was struggling with the right words, or what he thought were the right words. “She started badgering me about what I was doing to the bloodsucker. I tried to explain it to her, the way I explained it to you, but she couldn’t understand. I couldn’t make her understand.”
Maybe that’s because she’s a more decent human being than me…
“She’s just a kid,” Levy said. “She didn’t have a right to talk to me like that. Not after what I did for her. For all of you. That house is mine now that Earl’s gone. I let you guys stay there. And that dumb kid trying to tell me what I could and couldn’t do to that bloodsucker just pissed me off.”
Keo glanced at Joe, who was watching on in silence. The kid’s face was unreadable. Keo guessed he had come to the same conclusion as Levy and was content now to sit back and watch and not interfere.
“You know I’m right, Keo,” Levy was saying. “I saw it in your eyes. You know what I’m doing here is right. We need to do this. We need to know the enemy. It’s the only way we’ll survive.”
Keo didn’t answer.
“Keo, what are you going to do?” Levy asked. His voice had trembled slightly for a split-second there. “There’s still so much I want to do. We can do this together. You’re the only one at the house who understands. You know this is the right thing to do, don’t you?”
“Why did you give Bobby to Lotte and the other one?” Keo asked.
“Huh?” Levy said.
“Why did you feed Bobby to them? Inside the garage?”
“Because they were hungry,” Levy said, as if the answer was obvious. “I need them to keep up their strength. The other one, it was getting weak, dying on me. The blood should keep it fresh for months. Don’t you want to know how that works? How one person can sustain them for months at a time?”
He did want to know. “Know thy enemy.” Wasn’t that the saying? How could you hope to defeat the enemy if you didn’t know what made them tick? What hurt them, and what killed them? Levy was doing them all a big favor, whether the others realized it or not.
“Keo,” Levy said, trying desperately to read his face. “You know I’m right. You and me. We know what we have to do. You have to trust me—”
Keo drew his Glock and shot Levy in the forehead.
Joe flinched at the loud boom!, then stared at Levy’s body as it slumped to the ground next to him and lay still. A small trickle of blood dripped from the hole in Levy’s forehead, but most of the damage had gone out the back of his skull and splattered a healthy gob of blood and brains on the ground.
Keo holstered the gun.
“What about me?” Joe asked.
Keo looked at him for a moment. “We killed your uncles.”
Joe nodded. “I know. It was a big misunderstanding.”
The fire that Keo had seen in Joe’s eyes before was gone, replaced by something more subdued, even resignation. The kid was way more mature than his age.
“You didn’t have a choice,” Joe continued. “I know that now. I accept that.”
Keo stared at him, trying to read him. Joe’s face was placid.
“Is your place around here?” Keo asked.
“It’s a cabin about thirty miles north of here. I guessed we found a place in the woods like you guys did, to hide from those things.”
“What were you doing this far south?”
“Hunting,” Joe said. “There aren’t a lot of wildlife left these days, so we’ve been going out farther and farther to try to find s
ome. Then Bobby went missing…”
“You’ll be alone now,” Keo interrupted him. He said it harshly, without emotion, because he wanted to see Joe’s reaction.
“Yeah, I know,” Joe said quietly, and looked down at the ground.
Keo pulled out the Ka-Bar. “You make me regret this and I’ll gut you like a fucking pig the next time I see you.”
“You won’t regret this,” Joe said. “I just want to go home. This entire day has been one big nightmare.”
“What will you do next?”
“There are some people in a house about two miles from us. We’ve traded with them before.” Joe shrugged. “Maybe I can stay with them. They’re nice people.”
Keo nodded. “Don’t make me regret this, kid.”
“You won’t,” Joe said. “I swear it.”
CHAPTER 30
They buried Levy and the two hunters in the woods near the clearing, digging just deep enough to put down the bodies. They had found shovels inside the garage, where Lotte and the creature were still suckling at the dead Bobby. Keo kept expecting Bobby to rise at any second, but he never did.
While they were shoving dirt over Levy’s surprisingly youthful-looking face—he seemed to have de-aged in death, though of course that was impossible—Keo spent a few seconds wondering if Levy and the other two buried next to him were going to come back when night fell.
We know nothing about them. Levy’s right about that. We are just guessing about everything. Who knows what we’ve been wrong about?
They thought about burning down the garage and the creatures inside with it, but the risk of setting a fire that they couldn’t control was too great. Instead, Keo and Norris spent ten minutes knocking down enough of the back walls to expose the creatures to sunlight. He heard them hissing, then smelled the familiar acidic scent. Leashed to the spike on the ground, the only path available to the creatures was to flee the formerly darkened corner. But there was nowhere to go and they died (again), leaving piles of bones and Bobby’s cold, bloodied remains abandoned on the ground.
Keo and Norris thought about burying Bobby, too, but decided one more of the creatures running around wasn’t going to make any difference tonight or the next thousand nights. Besides, if he did turn while the sun was still up, he would just die (again).
