The Walls of Lemuria (30 page)

“Smoke in the northeast. Can you see it?”

“Wait…” A brief pause, then, “I see it. Where’s it coming from?”

“The bungalow.”

“I thought it was abandoned.”

“It’s supposed to be.”

“Shit. Where are you now?”

“Almost there,” Keo said. “I’m going silent. Get over here when you can.”

Keo turned off the radio and put it away, then burst out of the woods and into a clearing. He went into a crouch, sucking in a lungful of air, thankful he had approached the house from the side so he could see its doors and windows, but whoever was inside probably couldn’t see him. He hoped, anyway.

The bungalow was a long, squat building about twice the length of their house. The front door and windows were wide open, like the last time he saw them two weeks ago. There were too many shadows for him to see inside from thirty meters away, but there was no mistaking the gray smoke coming out of the chimney. There was definitely someone inside.

He couldn’t find a vehicle anywhere, which wasn’t too surprising. He would have heard a car coming, even an ATV or dirt bike, for miles in these woods. There were so few noises these days that just about anything that didn’t belong—like birds chirping or squirrels scrambling across branches—would be easy to detect. Had they arrived on foot? Possibly. He had searched the entire area in the last few months, and he knew for a fact there wasn’t supposed to be anyone inside the bungalow.

Keo stood up and darted across the open ground. He made it to the side of the building in less than four seconds. The nearest window was to his right and he moved toward it. He heard a faint, whispering hiss followed by the random
pop pop
and the smell of dead trees and dry twigs burning in a makeshift campfire from inside. It was a slightly chilly morning, but sixty-something wasn’t nearly cold enough for a fire. Of course, they could be cooking something.

He also heard voices. A woman, saying, “…around here?”

A man answered: “Not too far from here. I only saw it from a distance, but it looked pretty livable. We should go check it out. Even if we don’t stay, there could be valuable supplies lying around.”

A second woman: “You said the house looked livable?”

“Better than this one,” the man said.

“In good shape?”

“It had windows and everything, and I think I might have heard a generator in the back.”

“That means there are already people there. It’s been five months. Generators don’t last that long by themselves. Did you see any cars?”

“A few trucks and some ATVs.”

“Should we go see for ourselves?” the first woman asked.

“Maybe,” the second woman said. “Let’s just finish breakfast first, then we can decide what to do later.”

Keo moved along the length of the building toward the back. He peered out at the river twenty meters through the woods and found the answer to how the people in the house had arrived here.

There was a white pole sticking out of the water near the bank, wrapped in fading blue canvas. He was looking at the mast of a sailboat, the bulk of it hidden behind the trees and ridgeline. Not a big boat. The river was only so wide that anything longer than a twenty-five-footer was probably pushing it.

A sailboat. So that meant the people in the house had been on it last night and not inside the house. How was that possible? Hadn’t the bloodsuckers seen the boat last night? Of course, they could have arrived this morning…

Crack!

He turned around in time to see Norris moving through the clearing when he suddenly slid to a stop at the sound of a gunshot. At first Keo thought Norris had been hit and was falling, but no, the older man had just put the brakes on at the last second and was fighting to keep from slipping. He spun around and ran back toward the tree line.

A voice—one of the women—shouted, “Stay back! Don’t come any closer!”

Keo turned the corner and headed for the back door. The bungalow had lost all of its doors years ago. That allowed Keo to look inside at a darkened hallway and make out silhouetted figures at the other end in the living room, crackling fireplace lights flickering off a woman with a shotgun and a man gripping a hunting rifle.

He slipped inside the hallway and moved toward them, glad to have darkness benefiting him for the first time in a long time. He didn’t worry about the creatures, not with three humans already inside the house.

Since that first shot, it got very quiet again. The figures in front of him seemed to be scrambling around, apparently because Norris’s sudden appearance had freaked them out almost as much as their warning shot (at least, he hoped it was a warning shot) had likely put even more grays into Norris’s stubble.

The Keo from five months ago would have gone into the house shooting. The MP5SD’s attached suppressor would have allowed him to take out one, likely two of them before the third even knew he was inside. On full-auto, the submachine gun was a supremely deadly weapon with or without silent capabilities.

These people didn’t sound dangerous, though. Overhearing their conversation had convinced him they were just looking for a place to stay for a while before moving on. It was likely they were more afraid of him and the others at the house. That, more than anything, was why he didn’t go in guns blazing. He was tempted, though. After the run-in with the two men in black assault vests, he was leaning heavily toward not taking any chances.

I’m going soft. That’s the only explanation.

He tightened his forefinger against the trigger when one of the women, wearing a white T-shirt, stopped moving in front of him. She was clutching a 12-gauge double-barrel shotgun with the barrels pointed up at the ceiling. She looked almost as uncomfortable with the weapon as the man with the hunting rifle, peering out the window looking for Norris across the clearing.

“Is he still out there?” the woman with the shotgun asked.

“The black guy?” the man said.

“How many are out there?”

“I just saw the one black guy.”

“I think he’s still out there,” the other woman said from somewhere to the right of the living room. Keo couldn’t see her from his position. “Did you see that gun he had?”

“Some kind of assault rifle,” the man said.

“Where’d he get something like that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a gun shop?”

“Gun shops carry stuff like that?”

“Around here, I guess.”

“Maybe it was a mistake to come up this far north…”

“We can always go back down.”

“Yeah, we should think about that…”

Keo smelled burning fish from the living room. So that was why they had started the fireplace. Fish for breakfast.

The woman with the shotgun had moved directly in front of Keo now. He could make out the New Orleans Saints’ fleur-de-lis on the back of her shirt, illuminated by the flickering fireplace light. She was shuffling her feet nervously and he was close enough that Keo could see long black hair that hadn’t seen a decent shampoo in a while.

“Hey, you still out there?” the man called out the window at Norris.

There was no reply.

“I don’t think he’s going to say anything,” the second woman said. “You did shoot at him.”

“It was a mistake,” the man said defensively. “I panicked when I saw him coming out of the woods.”

“Did you think he was, you know,
them
?” the first woman said.

“What do you mean?”

“Because he’s black.”

The man didn’t answer right away. Keo couldn’t tell if he was turning the question over in his head or if he was slightly offended by the suggestion. He finally said, “Of course not. They can only come out at night. I knew it wasn’t them. He just freaked me out running toward us with that rifle.”

“Oh,” the woman said, sounding slightly embarrassed.

Keo had to smile. Norris running out of the woods with an M4 would scare anyone. He wondered what the ex-cop was doing now. Maybe he was trying to reach Keo through the radio. No chance of that, since he had turned it off earlier as he approached the house. The last thing he wanted was for it to start squawking as he sneaked in to get a good look at the new occupants.

“I think he’s gone,” the woman whom Keo couldn’t see said.

“Can’t take the chance,” the man said.

“Then what?”

The man shook his head. “We shouldn’t have started the fire. I told you that was going to be a mistake.”

“Forget about that,” the woman said. There was a slight edge in her voice. “Arguing about it won’t make any difference now.”

“Maybe we should head back to the boat—”

Keo stepped forward and pressed the barrel of his weapon against the back of the first woman’s neck. She let out a startled yelp just as Keo grabbed her shotgun with his other hand and wrenched it free from her grip. It hadn’t taken much effort at all, as if she were just waiting for someone to come and take it from her. He leaned the weapon against the wall instead of tossing it to the floor. The last thing he wanted was for the 12-gauge to go off involuntarily and kill someone, especially him.

The man at the window spun around, as did the second woman—she was almost as tall as the man, both of them maybe five-eight—who moved forward holding a handgun. A six-shot revolver. Silver-chromed. Fancy. Light brown eyes pierced the semidarkness, and a long blonde ponytail whipped behind her.

They both looked young, maybe in their twenties. Keo couldn’t see the face of the woman in front of him, but he guessed she was about the same age. He wondered if she was half the looker as the one pointing the handgun at them.

“What the fuck!” the woman with the gun shouted.

She wasn’t really pointing the weapon at him, since Keo had slipped behind the first woman and was now using her as cover. He was so much taller than her that he had to bend slightly at the knees, which wasn’t entirely comfortable, so he hoped this wasn’t going to take too long.

“He’s got a gun!” the woman in front of Keo shouted.

“Oh, shit,” the man said. He kept raising his rifle and lowering it, as if he couldn’t quite make up his mind what to do. “Oh, shit,” he said again. “What now, Jordan? What now?”

The tall woman, Jordan, held the revolver steady in her hands as she moved forward another step, trying to see Keo behind his shield. “Let her go, you asshole! Let her go right now!”

“No,” Keo said.

That seemed to throw them off, and Jordan and the man exchanged a look. The woman in front of Keo was shaking badly.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?” Jordan said.

“I mean no,” Keo said. “N-o. The opposite of yes.”

Jordan’s face looked conflicted. Not quite as indecisive as the man’s. His response, he guessed, wasn’t what she had expected.

Finally, she just shouted again. “Let her the fuck go, asshole!”

Keo almost smiled. He could tell she was trying her best to sound tough, but it wasn’t an easy thing to pull off. Her hands didn’t waver and the six-shooter remained steady in front of her, which was impressive for a civilian. But did she know that if she started shooting there was a better chance she would hit her friend than him?

“Here’s your problem,” Keo said. “I have a gun that can fire thirty rounds with one squeeze of the trigger. As luck would have it, so does my friend back there.”

The man spun around—and froze at the sight of Norris aiming his M4 through the window at him from less than a meter away.

“Lower your weapons and we won’t kill you,” Norris said, the sound of his gruff voice prompting the man to toss the hunting rifle away so quickly that Keo expected an accidental discharge and was thankful there wasn’t one.

The woman, Jordan, proved to be made of sturdier stuff than the man. She didn’t lower her handgun, and instead glanced back at Norris, then at Keo, and back again. She looked pained from the indecision. She was clearly afraid of being shot (who wasn’t?), but she was also afraid of what would happen if she did surrender. He actually felt bad for her.

Jesus, I really have gone soft.

“Relax,” Keo said. “I could have killed all three of you before you even knew I was inside the house. You’re still alive now because I decided we’re not enemies.”

“You
decided?” Jordan said incredulously.

“Yes. I’m the one with the automatic weapon.”

That seemed to placate the man. Then again, Keo guessed it wouldn’t have taken much, judging by how fast he had tossed his weapon.

“Jordan, please,” the man said. “You heard him. We’re not enemies.”

“Listen to the kid,” Norris said, sounding every bit like the ex-cop that he was. “You don’t want to make this any worse.”

“Jordan,” the man said. “Just do what they say.
Please
.”

Jordan didn’t look convinced by either one of them, but he could tell she was smart and she knew there was no way out of this. Of course, he had seen very smart people do some pretty stupid things before when they thought they had no choice.

“Listen to your friend,” Keo said. “Put down the gun.”

Her mouth twisted into a silent scream and she actually looked even more angry. He didn’t know that was even possible.

“Dammit!” she shouted, then bent her knees and slowly lowered the revolver.

“Kick it over here,” Keo said. “Not that I don’t trust you, but you look pissed off enough to try something stupid.”

She glared defiantly at him before grudgingly kicking the revolver over.

“Good,” Keo said, and let go of the woman in front of him.

She stumbled forward and ran into Jordan’s arms. They embraced, Jordan still watching Keo over her friend’s shoulder. The man at the window breathed a sigh of relief, and so did Norris behind him.

“Close one,” Norris said.

“You okay?” Keo asked.

“Kid missed me by a mile.” He grunted. “I think I almost pissed my pants, though.”

“Oh, nice.”

“What now?” Jordan said.

Keo remembered how Earl had treated him and the others when he found them in the basement of the RV park. Earl hadn’t had to do any of those things, but he had anyway because he was a decent human being.

The legend of Earl lives on.