The Isles of Elysium (Purge of Babylon, Book 6) (34 page)

There were enough lights along the power poles to keep him from running off the road and into the overflowing ditches to both sides of him. Meanwhile, the rain had decided to bypass the cart’s roof entirely and was now hitting him from the side. Keo wished he had grabbed an extra blanket for himself and hoped Jordan, back there with Dave, didn’t die of hypothermia first.

He slowed down when he saw the guard shack next to the marina gate coming up. He couldn’t actually see the structure, just the faded glow of two LED lamps hanging on the other side of what he assumed was a closed window.

The last time he had been driven through by Jack, there were four men with rifles manning the gate. What were the chances Steve had pulled some of them to help with the search? Because if all four had remained behind, this was going to be a very short escape attempt. Keo could see himself outgunning two—maybe even three—if he was really,
really
lucky, but four? That was asking for too much, especially tonight when he could barely feel his fingers despite the fact he had both hands clutching the steering wheel in a deathlike grip.

Keo stopped the cart completely about fifty meters from the marina entrance and looked back at Dave. The former cafeteria man was already picking up his M4 from the floor. Keo could barely make out Dave’s face back there, but he could see the whites of his eyes just fine. They were wide and scared.

“How are we going to do this?” Dave asked. He was stuttering badly, except he wasn’t really; he was freezing, and everything that came out of him just sounded like stuttering because his teeth were chattering so fast.

“I’m going to drive up there, kill them, then leave you behind with Jordan and the golf cart while I get us a boat,” Keo said. His own voice sounded clipped, as if he had a hard time forming words. “After that, you drive over to the docks and we get out of here.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“I can barely see your face and you’re right in front of me. How am I going to know you’ve made it?”

“I’ll give you a signal.”

“What kind of signal?”

“Hell if I know. But you’ll know it when you see it. Or hear it.”

“That doesn’t sound like much of a plan,” Dave frowned.

“It’s the best one you’re going to get tonight. If we’re still here by tomorrow, all three of us are dead. I know it’s hard to believe, but this rainstorm is probably the best thing that could have happened to us.”

“You’re right; that is hard to believe.” Dave shook his head. “Shit, I should have stayed at the cafeteria.”

“You should have. I bet it’s warmer.”

“Among other things.” Dave sighed. “Okay, let’s get this over with. If I’m going to die, it might as well be soon. I’m not in love with the idea of freezing to death out here. Or drowning,” he added, looking over the side of the cart at the inch-high rain building around them on the road.

“That’s the spirit,” Keo grinned.

Dave grunted back.

Keo turned around and stepped on the pedal, and the golf cart motored forward. The marina entrance looked a world away, its thick black gate the only thing keeping him from salvation at the moment.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true.

Even if he got through the four guys at the gate—unless, of course, Steve had decided to double the sentry, which was entirely possible, too—there were the other soldiers inside the marina, not to mention the ones at the docks. The last time he was here, he had spotted at least a dozen men milling around Marina 1 and 2, not counting however many were at the docks. Two, the last time he had counted, but that was before Dave and Jordan made their great escape.

Then there were the snipers on the water tower.
If
they were still up there and
if
they could shoot from 200 meters in this condition.

There were a lot of ifs tonight. One wrong if, and he was a dead man.

So what else is new?

Still, he was going to have to lower his chances back to about thirty-five. That seemed about right. Not quite too optimistic, but not entirely too pessimistic, either.

He was thirty meters from the entrance when a figure emerged out of the booth with a flashlight. Rain fell in rivulets down the man’s hood and bounced off the cold steel barrel of the M4 rifle in his other hand.

Keo drove all the way up to him, waiting until he was just ten meters away before he lowered his hand to his lap, picked up the Glock, and raising it back up, fired through the falling raindrops.

Maybe it was
the rain, the frequent thunderclaps, or his inability to stop his teeth from snapping, but Keo barely heard the gunshot.

Or the second, or the third one.

It only took one round to fall the soldier walking toward him, though Keo shot him again anyway as the man was going down just to be sure.

He stopped the golf cart and turned off the engine and hopped out just as a second guard stood up inside the booth and looked out the window. The light from inside illuminated his face and the man was still turning his head when Keo shot him in the face, shattering the glass at the same time.

Keo rushed toward the guard booth.

Three shots and no return fire. Three very wet, very loud gunshots that someone had to have heard. If not the guys in the water tower, then the ones on the other side of the gate, in the marina. There was no way someone would not have heard, even in this driving rainstorm—

Thunder, twice in a row,
boomed
across the skyline behind him. They were at least five times louder than his gunshots. Or maybe someone did hear the gunfire but just didn’t care, because everything else about the night was just so much, much louder.

That’s right, pal, think positive.

Keo had the Glock aimed at the broken window, waiting for a second head to pop up. He was still waiting when he finally reached the booth and kicked the door open and looked in at a lone body crumpled on the floor.

Two soldiers. That was it. Maybe he really had gotten lucky. Maybe Steve really had committed most of his forces to searching the subdivisions. Or maybe Steve just didn’t realize how uncommitted his men were and most of them were hunkered down from the rain at this very moment.

He looked back toward the golf cart in time to see Dave climbing out with his rifle.

“Wait for my signal!” he shouted.

Dave nodded back. Or Keo thought he did. He might have just been shaking under the unforgiving cold.

Keo scanned the marina on the other side of the gate, which was really just a long metal pole across the wide lane. He could see the docks at the very end, and for whatever reason the pounding rain sounded much louder out here.

He expected to see men rushing in his direction, soldiers on horseback charging through the storm. Was it really possible Steve had concentrated the bulk of his forces to searching the houses? Yes, because there were a lot of houses. Five subdivisions worth. Even the military ones would be searched. That kind of canvassing required a lot of manpower.

Keo was starting to feel good about his chances again
(Fifty percent?)
as he grabbed the gate and unlatched it, then swung it out of the way. It was heavy against his wet and slightly numbed hands. When he had the gate open, he unslung the rifle and went into a slight crouch, sweeping the marina just to be sure.

There was absolutely no movement from the wide parking lot in front of him, and no sound except for the consistent
pak-pak-pak
of rain. The water was flowing down the incline floor and into the river on the other side, and at this rate it wouldn’t be long before this part of T18 was submerged in water as the river overflowed.

The bulk of the marina was dark except for lights coming from his left, from one of the offices along the administrative buildings. He recognized Marina 1, where he had met with Steve twice now. He glimpsed figures on the other side of the windows milling about. Soldiers trying to stay out of the freezing rainstorm.

Keo got up and jogged through the parking lot toward the docks. He could see the boats in their slips being tossed around by the swells of the river. If not for the lines holding them in place, they would have been gone by now. Hell, he might not even need to use the motor; just untie one of those boats and let the current carry him back to the ocean—

A figure, moving at the end of one of the docks in front of him.

Keo slid to a stop and went into a crouch. There were no vehicles to hide behind, so he was stuck out in the open. At least he didn’t stand out too much in the night dressed in the black raincoat. Even the M4 was black, which meant if the man didn’t stare too closely—and given the distance, that was unlikely—then Keo was for all intents and purposes invisible.

The guy was walking from the end of the dock toward the middle, appearing for just a brief second in a small pool of light when Keo first saw him. Now that the man had continued on, he morphed into a moving black (and shivering) silhouette. Keo could just barely make out clouds of mist with every breath the man took and wondered if he was producing the same kind of telltale signs.

He took a moment to sweep the other docks. Were there more men walking or standing around trying not to freeze to death on those other platforms? If there were, they were doing a hell of a good job hiding themselves. Was it possible they would only leave one unlucky bastard out here while everyone else kept warm inside Marina 1?

Anything was possible, especially on a night like this. It wasn’t like he was dealing with real soldiers here. These weren’t men who had been whipped into shape by Boot Camp and demanding drill instructors. They were civilians playing dress up, many of them just barely worthy of the weapons they were carrying.

He suddenly felt very generous, and Keo hiked his chances of surviving the night to a whopping sixty percent.

He stood up and slung his rifle, then began walking toward the middle dock, the one where he had seen the soldier walking back and forth on. The man spotted him almost right away, but instead of going for his weapon, he stepped into a weak halo of light and rubbed his hands together and blew into them.

It was the raincoat. Of course it was the raincoat. Just like the soldier at the T18A1 gate could only see the golf cart, this one saw the raincoat and rifle and thought Keo was one of them, too. And why wouldn’t he? Keo didn’t just look like he belonged, he walked like it, too.

He stepped onto the dock and continued toward the sentry. Water from the surging river splashed his boots and pant legs, though by now he was already so soaked from head to toe that he hardly felt the additional wetness.

“Can you believe this fucking night?” Keo shouted.

The guy nodded back and tried to peer through the sleets of rain at him.

Good luck with that,
Keo wanted to tell him.

The soldier was standing under an LED bulb and Keo couldn’t even see his face under the hood, so there was very little chance the man could see Keo with nothing at all to illuminate him. Of course, all that was going to change when he got closer. What were the chances the soldier recognized the faces of every soldier in town? It was possible. After all, Ronny had recognized Grant in Gillian’s house. Or had he just gone with the name on the uniform?

“Where is everyone?” Keo shouted. “I can’t see shit!”

“Nothing to see!” the soldier shouted back. “You my replacement?”

“Yeah!” Keo continued walking toward the man, letting his right hand drift casually toward the fold of his raincoat. “Go on, I got this!”

“Halle-fucking-lujah!”

The man began walking quickly toward him, still rubbing his hands desperately together. Keo calmly slipped his right hand into the folds of his coat and reached for the Glock in its holster—

“Hey,” a voice said, freezing Keo in place.

Keo looked to his right at the nearby platform as a second raincoat-cloaked figure emerged out of the darkness and into another small pool of light.

“What’s going on?” the second man asked. “We finally getting replacements?”

Keo finished wrapping his fingers around the Glock and pulled it out and shot the soldier in front of him in the head, then spun slightly and shot the other one in the chest—just as lightning pierced the blackened night above them, lighting all three of them up for a brief moment…then it was gone again.

The second soldier was stumbling, trying not to fall, when Keo shot him a second time in the chest, just as the thunder that had been promised a second ago finally reached them and
boomed
across the skyline.

The one in front of Keo collapsed to the dock while the second soldier fell into the water, the moving river quickly grabbing onto his body and dragging him into its current. The speed of it surprised Keo, and he was still looking after the body when a second lightning bolt struck and—

Eyes.

An army of blackened eyes on the other side of the river, looking back at him from the banks, gleaming rain-drenched dark flesh writhing between the throng of trees.

Jesus Christ.

They weren’t so much as hiding from him as they were trying to stay away from the powerful currents splashing against the riverbanks, threatening to overflow and flood the woods. There were so many of them that he couldn’t have begun to count even if he had wanted to. Their numbers stretched from one side of the woods to the other, an endless multitude of moving black flesh and hollow eyes and herky-jerky movements, completely unnatural and surreal against the rain.

The river. They couldn’t, didn’t, or
wouldn’t
cross the river.

“Relax,”
Steve had said.
“They don’t come into town. There’s an invisible line that they don’t cross. When I decide I can fully trust you, I might tell you how it all works.”

An invisible line that the creatures didn’t cross. Like the river. Or the tree lines. Or maybe those flimsy six-foot fences that surrounded the subdivisions.

Whatever it was (maybe all of it), the ghouls didn’t cross.

He should have felt good, even safe at the sight of them wanting
(desperately)
to cross the river but holding back, but he shivered from head to toe instead.