Sam Sisavath - The Isles of Elysium

Instead, he concentrated on his surroundings.

They were inside the living room of the same two-story house where he, Gene, and Miller had retreated for the night. The windows were broken, the jagged shards still sticking out of the frames covered in coagulated black blood. It looked less like plasma and more like mud: thick and still oozing.

Two men in black uniforms similar to the one Miller wore sat on the floor in opposing corners, M4 rifles lying across their laps and gas masks dangling from their hips. One was already snoring, the other getting there. A third man leaned against a wall looking out the window while spooning gobs of mashed potatoes into his mouth from a bag of MRE. Keo recognized the distinctive bulky six-shot cylinder and short barrel of the M32 grenade launcher-the weapon that had sent the tear gas sailing into the bathroom-slung behind the man’s back.

If Keo had any ideas about taking that launcher and giving the soldier a taste of his own medicine, he quickly gave it up when he looked down at the zip ties around his wrists and ankles. They were the same color and brand as the ones he had used on Miller earlier. He wondered if they found a warehouse full of this stuff or something.

“Finding stragglers,” Miller had said about his mission. “People hiding out in the hills or the cities. Bringing them back to the towns.”

Keo bet those zip ties came in real handy for that. Maybe Gillian and Jordan and the others had been hauled into T18 in similar conditions. At the moment-and as crazy as it might sound-that was his best-case scenario of ever finding them again.

He looked around the room again. There were plenty of signs that the ghouls had trampled their way through the carpeting earlier, so where were they now? The windows were wide open and it was still obviously night outside, so what was stopping them-

A flicker of movement, as one-no, two- five- emaciated forms scampered past the windows on the house’s front lawn. More of them, on the sidewalks and streets beyond, like moving shadows come alive.

Keo tensed, and so did the soldier leaning in front of him. The man actually stopped eating his MRE for a while. A few seconds, anyway, before he went back to business as usual. But for a while there, the man hadn’t been so sure.

So you’re still scared of them too, huh?

Good to know, good to know…

The first five were only the beginning. There were more, flitting across what little moonlight was visible beyond the broken windows. If they knew he was inside the house without anything to stand in their way, they didn’t show it. They appeared oblivious to him and the portable LED lamp resting on a dresser that hadn’t been there when Keo walked through the place this afternoon. That was just enough light for him to see Gene lying unconscious on the floor, his back against one of the sofas in front of the windows.

Footsteps, before a pair of calm male voices appeared behind and to the right of him, coming from the kitchen.

“…back by morning,” one man was saying. “I expected better from you.”

“Give me a break; I almost died,” a second voice said. This one sounded familiar, but it took Keo a few seconds to put a name to it, which told him he was still a little out of it from the blows he took upstairs.

J. Miller.

“Bo and Matthew weren’t so lucky,” Miller was saying.

Miller appeared in the living room with a second man. They looked almost identical in their black uniforms, except the second man was just a little taller and was in his early forties. Keo found out why they looked so much alike when he saw the second man’s name tag: “S. Miller.”

“There was another Miller in my outfit,” Miller had said to him back at the marina yesterday. Of course, Miller had failed to add that the other Miller was, likely from the resemblance, his big brother.

So what else did J. Miller lie about?

“Look who’s up,” younger Miller said. For a guy moving on crutches made from a pair of sofa cushions duct-taped to paddles, Miller still looked his cheery self despite red eyes from the tear gas. He looked as if he had washed most of it out, a luxury Keo wished he had at the moment.

“How’s the leg?” Keo asked.

“It’s been better, but can’t complain, considering.” He jerked a thumb at the other man. “This is Steve. You might have noticed the resemblance. Yes, he’s the other Miller I was referring to earlier.”

“Ah, thanks for the clarification.”

“He the one who shot you?” the older Miller asked.

“That’s the other one.” Jack nodded at Gene’s sleeping form. “Shot me with that big.308. Christ, it hurt.”

“You’ll live.”

“Not the point.”

Steve ignored his brother and walked over to Keo, crouching in front of him. Besides being older than Jack, he was a little more haggard, his face lined and weathered from experience. He had the kind of calm, inquiring brown eyes that could be intimidating when focused entirely on you, the way he had them zeroed in on Keo now.

“Like what you see?” Keo asked.

Steve smiled. “What happened to your face?”

“Which part?”

Steve traced an imaginary line along the side of his own face, starting from the temple and finishing up at the jawline.

“Rollercoaster accident,” Keo said.

“I’ve heard those can be dangerous.”

“You have no idea.”

“His name’s Keo,” Jack said.

“Keo?” Steve repeated. “What kind of name is that?”

“Mike was taken,” Keo said.

Steve chuckled. “Is that right?”

“Yup. I was heartbroken, too. Really wanted to call myself Mike.”

“Life’s full of disappointments.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Anyway, I hear you’re a dangerous man, Keo. Took out two of my guys on the docks like it was nothing.”

“I wouldn’t say it was nothing. It was definitely something.”

“A real badass, huh?”

“I do all right with the ladies.”

“What did you use to do before all of this?”

“You mean before I found this quaint little island?”

Smack! as Steve’s open palm struck Keo across the cheek.

He wasn’t prepared for it, which as it turned out was a good thing, because he was too stunned to actually feel the pain. Steve had a pair of meaty hands on him, which made sense since the man looked like a solid 220 pounds of muscle. It was hard to stay blubbery at the end of the world.

“Was it something I said?” Keo asked, trying to shake the blow off.

“What did you use to do?” Steve asked again.

“This and that.”

“Probably ex-military,” Jack said. He was leaning against a nearby wall, clearly enjoying the show.

“Nah, but close,” Steve said. “I can smell ex-military guys, and he’s not one of them. It’s all right. You don’t have to tell me now.” Steve stood up and looked at Jack. “Get some shut-eye and rest your leg. We’re heading back at sunup.”

Jack nodded and found himself a spot on the same sofa that Gene was lying against and lay down.

“The creatures,” Keo said.

Steve, who had settled on the floor across from him, said, “What about them?”

“They’re going to stay out there the entire night?”

“You scared?”

“Fuck yes.”

Steve grinned. “Don’t worry your pretty little head off. They’ll stay away.”

“How does it work? How do they know to leave you alone?”

“You ever heard the phrase need-to-know?”

“No one ever told me.”

Steve snorted. “They’re not coming in as long as we’re in here.”

“You sure about that?” Keo asked, watching as three more of the creatures darted across the windows. Just seeing them out there, with nothing to protect him if they stopped and turned around on a whim, made his skin crawl.