The Walls of Lemuria (29 page)

The F-150 came to a complete stop in the middle of the road. Now that the vehicle was still, Keo could make out two figures in the front through the open passenger side window. He mouthed a curse when the two men opened their doors and climbed out.

They were both wearing
black assault vests
over black cargo pants and long-sleeved black shirts. That combination would have been impossible a few months ago, but it was already early February and the weather had turned chilly, so the men were perfectly at home suited up like commandos on a mission even in the daytime.

Keo keyed his radio. “Can you see them?”

“No, I’m at the back of the garage,” Norris said. “You got eyes on them?”

“Two. And they’re wearing black assault vests.”

“Wait, are they…?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Dammit.”
Then, “Just two. We can take two.”

“Follow my lead.”

“Roger that.”

Keo clipped the radio back to his hip and watched the black-clad figures walk into the parking lot. They had left the truck idling behind them, the doors thrown lazily open. They had also unslung M4 carbines and were scanning the area as if they expected to find something.

The truck.

Earl’s Bronco was sitting in the parking lot. It was also the
only
vehicle in the entire place. If the men were familiar with the strip center, they would have remembered that the parking lot was supposed to be empty from previous drive-bys.

Shit. I should have kept going. Trust your instincts next time, you idiot.

As the two men got closer, Keo saw radios Velcroed to the front of their vests and the pouches around their tactical belts bulged with spare magazines. All of that meant they had come prepared. For what, though? They were both wearing caps, and while he couldn’t make out their faces under the brims, he didn’t see green and black face paint.

So who were they? What were they doing in this area? Were they actually a part of the four men who had ambushed them at the gas station back in November? The assault vests looked familiar, but there were no writings or anything to indicate these men were part of an organization. Keo spent a few seconds recalling the ambush in his head again. No, the four men he saw back then didn’t have any writings on their vests, either.

So what did that prove? Nothing, and maybe everything.

One of the two men was making a beeline for the Bronco with his M4 aimed at the back window while the second one remained slightly behind, pulling security. That told him they had either done this before, or they were reasonably well-trained.

As the men honed in on the Bronco, their path took them across the barbershop’s window from left to right. Fortunately, Keo had parked the truck between the barbershop and the diner next door, so by the time the men reached their destination, they had left his line of sight. He couldn’t see them anymore, but they couldn’t see him, either, when Keo stood up and quickly ran toward the glass wall.

He ignored the door and looked out the window and to his right. One of them was standing behind the Bronco while the second one, the closest to Keo, was moving toward the front passenger door. Both of the truck’s windows were open, so the men didn’t really need to get too close to peer inside.

Keo didn’t wait for them to discover that the vehicle was empty and turn their attention elsewhere. He switched the MP5SD’s fire selector to full-auto and pulled the trigger and shot the black-clad figure closest to him in the back. He landed three bullets while the rest missed their mark and hit the side of the Bronco with three solid
ping-ping-ping!

He was spinning toward the second man, only to discover that his intended target was already taking aim at him with the M4.

Oh, shit.

If Keo had fired from anywhere else, it would have taken the other black-clad man at least a few seconds to track the sound of his suppressed gunfire. Unfortunately for Keo, the noise of the glass wall shattering and pelting the shredded linoleum tiles like falling rain gave away his position.

He heard a loud
pop!
and braced himself for the first bullet and the pain to follow.

Instead, Keo watched the man behind the Bronco jerk his head sideways and fall to the asphalt floor like a marionette with its strings cut. Blood spurted out of his temple and disappeared under the truck in bright red streams.

Norris appeared in Keo’s peripheral vision, moving tentatively toward the two bodies. Keo climbed out through the shattered window and joined him in the parking lot. He moved quickly to the man he had shot and turned him over onto his back.

The man was still alive, and he stared up at Keo, face grimacing with pain. He looked in his thirties, and his eyes darted from Keo to Norris, then back again. He had a full stubble and his slightly fat, pale lips were trembling, as if he was trying to say something.

Keo crouched next to him, avoiding the blood pooling under the man’s back. “You have a name?”

The man didn’t answer. His eyes snapped to Norris before returning to Keo once again.

“You’re going to die,” Keo said. “Can’t help you with that. But it might be awhile. I don’t think I hit any major organs. Have you ever seen someone bleed to death? I have. It’s going to be long and painful.”

The man swallowed. “Doug,” he said, stuttering out his name.

“Doug,” Keo said. “I can help you with the pain.”

“Do it,” Doug said.

“I will, but first, how many more of you are there?”

Doug didn’t answer.

“I need an answer,” Keo said. “How many more of you are out there?”

“A lot,” Doug said.

“How many is a lot?”

“A—” Doug didn’t finish. He closed his eyes and died.

Keo sighed and stood up. “Shit.”

“I thought you said it was going to be long and painful?” Norris said.

Keo shrugged. “I was just guessing.”

Norris chuckled. “Man, you’re evil.” Then he looked at the Bronco and the holes Keo had put into the side. “And nice shooting there, Tex.”

“I didn’t want to take a chance I might miss with the glass between us.” He looked up the parking lot at the Ford idling in the road. “Besides, I already got you a replacement.”

“I can live with that trade.” Norris looked over at the man he had shot. “What about them?”

“You heard Doug. There are a lot of them out there somewhere.”

“Like some kind of militia, you think? I hear there are a lot of those nuts out here. Wouldn’t surprise me if the assholes who took a run at us last year were one of those.”

“That’s possible.” Keo pulled Doug’s broken radio free from his vest. “These things aren’t for communicating between the two of them, I know that much. They’re well-prepared. I’m guessing the others know exactly where these two went this morning.”

“It looked like they were headed to Corden. Maybe that’s where their base is.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But I got money on their friends coming to look for them when they fail to show up or answer the radio.”

“So, we dump the bodies,” Norris said. “Far from here. If they don’t know where these two skells died, they won’t know where to start looking for us. And it’s a big country. You could get lost out here if you don’t know where you’re going.”

Keo nodded. It was a solid plan. It also helped that the strip center was a good forty-five kilometers from the house.

Still, Keo didn’t like what Doug had said when he asked him how many of them were out there.

“A lot,”
he had said.

How many was a lot?

A dozen? Two dozen?

Too many.

*

They didn’t want
to take any chances that the bodies could be discovered, so they loaded them into the Bronco and Norris drove it while he followed in the Ford. They took the familiar road all the way back to the RV park where they had met Earl and his friends those months ago. Then they dumped the bodies into the river and made sure the water carried them south and out of sight before heading back. The house was up north, so there wasn’t a chance the bodies would somehow show up there.

The Bronco had three holes in it that it didn’t have an hour ago, but it was still in good condition as they drove it back to the house. They couldn’t risk leaving the other Ford behind or ditching it somewhere where it could be found. Even if the chances were remote, the risk wasn’t worth it.

Gillian saw them drive up and gave him a curious look when he climbed out of the F-150. Norris drove on and parked the Bronco with the other vehicles on the other side of the yard.

“Do we really need another truck?” Gillian asked him. “I’m pretty sure we have more cars than gas to run them at the moment.”

“You can never have too many trucks,” Keo said.

“Spoken like a country boy. You sure you’re not originally from around here?”

“I’ll re-check my family tree when I get the chance.”

“So where’d you find this one?”

He told her, and watched her face get paler with every detail.

“Was it the same ones?” she asked when he was done.

“It could be. They weren’t walking around with signs around their necks, but it’s a hell of a coincidence if they’re not from the same group.”

“Do you think they were out there looking for us?”

“I don’t think so,” Keo said. “It’s been months since that incident. I think they were doing what Norris and I were. Looking for supplies and expanding their search areas as they wear out the closer targets. Norris thinks they could be based in Corden.”

Gillian crossed her arms over her chest and shivered slightly. Keo put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her forehead before giving her his best comforting smile. It wasn’t nearly as convincing as he had hoped, and it showed on her face.

“We’ll just have to be extra careful from now on,” Keo said. “Even more than before.”

“Will that be enough?”

“It’ll have to be, because we don’t have any choice. It’s not going to get any safer out there, Gillian. We need to continually adapt if we want to keep surviving. That’s the goal, right? Survive?”

She nodded and tried to smile, but it came out poorly. “Yeah, that’s the goal.”

“Good,” he said. “Let’s go tell the others.”

*

It began heating
up again around March, and by April he was already walking around in T-shirts like the first few weeks when they arrived at Earl’s house. The weather, though, proved unpredictable. Most days it was seventy degrees or higher, but there were times when it dipped to the mid-fifties.

Don’t like the weather? Just wait an hour.

He walked his usual rounds, keeping track of where the creatures had been the previous night, using the broken branches, twigs, and impressions on the ground as markers. There was no real pattern to their movements, though that in itself was a pattern.

The winter weather of the previous months hadn’t done anything to cut down on the creatures’ nightly visitations. They continued to show up night after night, probing the windows and doors, looking for weaknesses. To his surprise, hearing them scurrying around outside the house at nights had ceased to strike terror in him and the others. It was now so commonplace that they were sleeping soundly through the nights.

Keo wasn’t entirely sure if that was a good thing, though.

In the mornings, he still spent the same one to two hours walking the woods, listening for sounds of footsteps, for voices, or car engines that didn’t belong. Like all the other times, he didn’t hear anything this morning, too. That should have made him feel better, but it didn’t.

He was turning to head back to the house when he saw it.

Smoke, rising lazily in the distance…

Smoke meant people,
and he knew exactly where it was coming from. The question was who was there and how many of them there were.

It took him five minutes to reach the origin of the smoke, running full sprint through the woods. Keo ran with one hand on the submachine gun and the other on his radio. “Norris, come in. Norris!”

Norris answered after a few seconds. “You sound like you’re running, kid.”