The Walls of Lemuria (6 page)

Of course not. Why should my luck improve now?

He kicked something small on the ground when he turned. It
clinked
away.

Keo crouched and picked up a spent shell casing. He glanced around and saw more shiny brass spread across the parking lot, glinting under the morning sun. How’d he miss those before?

He headed into the building, retracing a trail of dried blood that stretched from the parking lot to the front doors. Someone—or
someones
, judging by the large amount of blood—had been dragged in last night. Glass shards covered the concrete walkway closer to the doors. The security gates up ahead had kept the doors in place, but that hadn’t prevented someone
(something)
from breaking the glass anyway.

Keo tried the doorknob on the security gate, but it was locked.

“Anyone home?”

He waited for a response.

Five seconds…ten…

“Anyone?”

Five more seconds…ten…

“I swear I’m not selling anything. Honest.”

He tried pulling the security gate. It moved a bit, showing obvious wear and tear
(from last night?)
, but it was going to take a lot of effort and sweat—not to mention the right tools—to pry it free from the walls. There were a couple of windows to his right, so Keo moved over to them, stepping on flower beds and skirting bushes along his path.

The only noise for miles belonged to his footsteps
crunching
the damp soil and the
clang! clang!
of a metal latch banging against one of the flagpoles behind him.

The burglar bars were still in place over the windows, and pulling at them for a couple of minutes only tired out his arms. Keo peered in through the curtainless window. Despite the sun, there were too many patches of shadows on the other side, and he could barely make out a group of desks and chairs. If there were people in there, they would have spotted him easily enough.

So where were they? The doors were still locked, which meant someone had made it here last night. So why were they hiding—

The loud
boom!
of a shotgun blast rocked the town behind him.

Keo looked back and across the street at a row of storefronts just as a flock of birds perched on a nearby roof took flight in terror.

A second
boom!
tore through the air.

Keo ran across the parking lot as a third and fourth shot rang out less than a second apart. He was on the road when a figure emerged out of a gas station in front of him. There were clothes draped over the building’s windows, along with newspapers and plastic bags. It looked like a makeshift mural of leftovers from an old, dying world.

The man who was backpedaling out of the store lost his footing when he stepped off the walkway and didn’t account for the slight drop. He fell down to the hard concrete on his butt, but somehow still managed to hold onto the shotgun.

Keo slowed down as he crossed the gas station parking lot. “That last step’s a doozy.”

The man scrambled up and spun around at the sound of Keo’s voice, taking aim with the weapon. Keo slid to a stop and instinctively raised his hands as high as they would go, praying he didn’t get shotgunned to death in the next few seconds.

Right. Crack a dumb joke at a guy with a shotgun. You’re a real dumbass.

Something behind the man drew Keo’s attention. The store door was slowly closing, and Keo saw two pairs of dark black eyes looking out at him from the shadows. One of the creatures, its black skin almost invisible in the semidarkness, had a hole in its chest and was missing almost its entire left arm, cracked bone sticking out at an impossible angle. The rest of the arm was on the floor in a pool of
(moving?)
black blood. Then the door closed, blocking Keo’s view.

The sound of the shotgun racking snapped Keo’s attention back to the man. A pair of intense brown eyes looked out at him from underneath an LSU Tigers cap. The face was hardened—mid-fifties, eyes that had seen their share of bad things even before last night. He wore civilian clothes, jeans and a sweat-stained T-shirt, and there was a padded pouch on his left hip, bulging with what Keo guessed were extra shells for the shotgun currently pointed at his head.

“Put it down, string bean,” the man said. “Put the tire iron down
now.
”

Keo slowly bent at the knees
(Slowly, don’t get shot)
and laid down the tire iron.

“Step back,” the man said.

Keo did, raising his hands back up without having to be told. He eyed the man from top to bottom, getting a good feel for who he was dealing with. The man’s voice was hoarse, which matched his grizzled face. He was barrel-chested, maybe five-eight, and African-American. He looked in reasonably decent shape for a man his age. Sunlight reflected off a bald head and the grays were liberally spread out across a five-clock shadow.

What Keo really noticed, though, were the man’s hands. Despite his recent encounter with the creatures inside the gas station, those hands were rock steady.

That’s a man who knows how to use a weapon.

“I was just coming to help,” Keo said. “You a cop?”

The man cocked his head, then grinned slightly. “How’d you know?”

“You look like a cop.”

“Not anymore. Orlando PD.”

“You’re a long way from home.”

“Yeah, well, I was on vacation.”

Keo grinned. “Small world. I was on vacation, too.”

That’s right. Find something in common with the guy pointing a shotgun at you. Maybe then he won’t shoot you dead.

Keo nodded at the door behind him. “What happened in there?”

“I was looking for survivors. I found more of those
things
instead.”

“There are more of them, you know. In the other buildings with the covered windows. That’s how you know.”

The man didn’t reply right away. He seemed to be considering what Keo had said. Then, finally, “How’d you know that?”

“They’re afraid of sunlight.”

“Why?”

“Because it seems to be the only thing that can kill them. I saw it for myself on the way over here.”

“How do you know it’s the only thing that can kill them?”

“How many shots did you fire at those things inside the gas station?”

The man grunted. Keo wasn’t sure if he had gotten through, but the guy hadn’t shot him yet, so that was a good sign.

“I’m not the enemy,” Keo said. “I’m just trying to figure out what’s happening, same as you. I came to the police station looking for help and maybe some answers.”

And some guns would have been nice, too,
he thought, but didn’t say out loud.

Keo heard footsteps behind him. He looked over his shoulder at a man and a short woman with blonde hair running across the street. He had no idea where they had come from, but he guessed from inside the police station. The man was armed with a shotgun and the woman was clutching a police baton. They slowed down as they reached the gas station parking lot, both out of breath.

“Norris!” the woman said. “Are you all right?”

“I’m okay, Rachel,” the man named Norris said. “This guy had some interesting things to say about the creatures.”

“Does he know what’s happening out there? About last night?”

“I know as much as anyone,” Keo said. “But if we can all lower our weapons, maybe we can figure this whole thing out. After all, I’m the only guy who’s going to get killed here if people start shooting.”

Norris made a quick circle around Keo before joining his friends on the other side. Keo turned around to face all three of them.

Norris lowered his shotgun. “He’s not armed, unless you count the tire iron. Lower your weapon, Aaron.”

The man named Aaron hesitated. “Are you sure?”

“He heard my shots and ran over to help.” He eyed Keo for a second, then added, “We gotta trust somebody; might as well be him.”

“Do you have a name?” Rachel asked.

“Keo.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“John was taken,” Keo said.

“The SUV. That’s
yours?” Keo asked.

Rachel nodded. “We were on the I-20 when everything started happening. We heard about it on the radio and decided we should probably look for a place to stop for the night, just in case…you know.”

“Where were you headed?”

“Texas. Well, Santa Marie Island in Galveston. We were going to visit some family, maybe even stay there for a while.”

“Where were you guys coming from?”

“Atlanta. I had a job there until a few months ago.” She shrugged. “We were looking for a change of scenery, anyway.”

“We” was Rachel and her eight-year-old daughter, Christine. The girl sat on one of the big desks inside the police station, small legs swinging back and forth over the side. She ate enthusiastically from a bag of Doritos and hummed some random pop song he had heard on the radio a few days ago to herself.

Aaron, the other guy with the shotgun, stood at the window peering out through the bars, absently clutching and unclutching the Mossberg 500 in his hands. He wore slacks and a jacket, the pockets stuffed with shells. Every now and then he swiped at beads of sweat along his forehead, though he didn’t seem affected by the sun shining in his eyes. He had all the telltale signs of a man who hadn’t slept in the last twenty-four hours. Despite the stress spread liberally across his face, Aaron looked young. Early twenties, Keo guessed. Aaron lived a few blocks away and had arrived at the police station about the same time that Norris and Rachel did last night.

Norris looked in direct contrast to Aaron; he was calm despite the incident at the gas station earlier. The fifty-six-year-old ex-cop from Orlando, Florida, was at home with the shotgun, and if last night’s events had turned his world upside down, he didn’t show it.

“I saw shell casings in the parking lot,” Keo said to Norris.

“Wasn’t me,” Norris said. “We got here after all of that happened. It couldn’t have been too long, though; the blood was still wet then. Whoever was in here before us must have gone outside and didn’t come back before we arrived. They left the doors unlocked and we found the keys on the floor.”

“We came here because it was a police station, like you did,” Rachel said.

She sat next to her daughter, occasionally reaching over to flick at a piece of cheese or chip clinging to the girl’s pink shirt and dress. Mother and daughter both had blonde hair and blue eyes, and they clearly adored each other. There was no doubt Christine was going to grow into an attractive woman, just like her mom.

If she lives long enough to grow up, anyway.

“You have no idea what happened to the cops?” Keo asked.

“Dead,” Aaron said. His voice sounded hollow and drained. “Probably dead. I heard a lot of shooting. Must be dead.”

“You said there were reports on the radio,” Keo said to Rachel. “What were they saying?”

“Something about attacks in the cities,” Rachel said. “It was kind of confusing. I don’t think the news really knew what was happening. And no one was telling them, so there was just so much guessing, rumors…” She adjusted Christine’s hair, and the girl smiled back at her mother. “I didn’t want to risk it out there alone with just the two of us, so I decided to get off the main road and find a place to spend the night. Bentley was the first town we ran across.”

“She picked me up along the highway,” Norris said. “I’d lost my ride.”

“We weren’t the only ones who decided to take the first exit off the interstate,” Rachel said. “There was a big pileup and Norris was just walking along the shoulder. He looked friendly enough.”

“No, I didn’t,” Norris said, “but she was nice enough to give me a ride, anyway.”

Rachel gave Keo a pursed smile. “I took a chance. What about you, Keo? Where were you when all of this happened? Do you have any idea what ‘this’ is?”

“I was at a motel down the road,” Keo said.

“But you saw them, right?”

Keo nodded. “I saw them.”

“They’re not human. They can’t possibly be human.”

“They used to be.” He told them about Delia. “She was bitten by one of those things. It took a while, but she finally succumbed. That’s how it works, I think. They bite you, you die, and then you become one of them. For them to have done what they did last night—in
one
night—there had to be thousands of them spread out across the state when it started. They had to be coordinated, too. This isn’t some random thing that just happens. Last night was an orchestrated invasion.”

“An invasion,” Rachel repeated quietly.

“It must have been hell in places with big population centers. It would spread like wildfire and their numbers would explode exponentially every hour. One becomes two, two becomes four, four becomes eight…”

“Like a disease,” Norris said.

“A goddamn effective one, yeah. At least, that’s what I saw with my own eyes. I’ll leave it to the historians to come up with the fancy words. All I know is, don’t let them bite you and stay out of the dark.”

Rachel and Norris didn’t say anything for a while.

Finally, Norris said, “You armed?”

Keo held up the tire iron. “I got this.”

“We can do better than that,” Norris said.

*