Sam Sisavath - The Isles of Elysium

*

About three kilometers from the bridge, Keo came upon the first sign of civilization-a shopping center with sun-baked concrete floors and gray buildings that had been stripped of most of their signs. A slight wind moved through broken storefront windows without resistance, and overgrown grass swayed against the edges of the expansive and mostly spacious parking lot.

The sight of the abandoned stores and the few dirt-covered cars around him was like stepping through a portal in time, a reminder that he was living through the end of civilization as he knew it. He couldn’t even summon the curiosity to search the buildings for hints to Tobias’s whereabouts. It was all incredibly depressing, and Keo quickened his steps to get through the lot as fast as possible. Besides, there was little chance Tobias would leave clues this close to T18.

All things considered, this was one of his better days. He’d found Gillian, and that alone made up for everything else. It felt as if someone had lifted a 500-pound safe off his chest. He was optimistic for the first time in a long time, and it made leaving Carrie behind on the Trident easier to stomach.

He was almost giddy as he flattened his finger against the trigger guard of the MP5SD hanging from a sling in front of him. Having the submachine gun back was another major plus, and Jack had been even nice enough to return his pack intact, including the spare magazines and his gun belt with the silver bullet-loaded Glock. From the way the younger Miller had simply handed the bag full of weapons over, Keo guessed his captors hadn’t bothered to pay very close attention to his supplies. Either that, or finding guys loaded with silver rounds wasn’t anything new to them, which Keo doubted.

The only thing he was missing was food and water. Apparently they expected him to find his own rations out here. Or maybe that was just another incentive to hurry up, finish the job, and return to T18.

Not that he needed more incentive, with Gillian back there…

He was grinning to himself like an idiot when something small but fast-incredibly fast-hit the parking lot about two feet in front of him and chipped concrete flicked at his face like little bees.

Sniper! Shit!

Keo darted out of the open and slid against an old Chevy minivan with peeling white paint that, thank God, was just a few feet away. He was trying to come to grips with the absence of a gunshot as he pressed against the dirty vehicle when the back windshield to the left side of his head exploded. Except this time he heard the subsonic round as it shattered the glass and punched its way into the floor of the car behind him.

He dropped into a crouch and hurried toward the front, waiting for a third shot that didn’t come. He reached the driver-side door, ignored it, and rounded the front bumper until he was leaning against the dirty grill of the Chevy.

He waited again for more follow-up shots, but nothing was exploding around him, so he assumed the guy didn’t have a clear shot. That meant his position in front of the minivan was good, which in turn translated to the shooter being somewhere behind him.

Keo recalled the layout of the area in his head.

There was an Archers Sports and Outdoors next to what looked like a pizza place featuring some guy in a toga, and a dozen or so other businesses that he hadn’t paid very much attention to. One of them might have been an insurance place and the other was-

The Archers. It had to be the Archers.

Whoever it was, he was using a rifle with a suppressor, because Keo hadn’t even heard either one of the two gunshots. That was hard to do with a rifle. Even the best suppressors left some kind of noise, especially against the nearly silent backdrop of a dead world. Firing from a high angle, which any sniper worth his salt would be doing, would increase the possibility of noise. And yet he hadn’t heard a single peep when the first bullet nearly took his head off.

He was pretty sure the shooter was on top of the Archers directly behind him, about one hundred meters across the parking lot. There was nothing but a lot of open ground between him and the store. Oh sure, there were a few cars sprinkled here and there, like the minivan that had saved his life, but not nearly enough of them for one hundred meters’ worth of safety.

Still, he had to be sure.

Keo stood up quickly, turning around and looking through the dirt-speckled front windshield of the Chevy and out the exposed rear area and across the parking lot at the Archers-

The man saw him almost at the same time Keo spotted him, perched along the edge of the sports store. Sunlight glinted off the long barrel of the rifle as it twitched, and Keo dropped back down as the round pierced the windshield and zipped! a few inches over his head.

Too close!

Okay, so now he knew exactly where the guy was. On top of the Archers, just as he had guessed.

So how was he going to use that information?

He had no idea. It wasn’t like he could counterattack, even if he desperately wanted to. Keo had never been the kind of person to take being shot at lying down. But one hundred meters was probably ninety meters too many, and as pissed off as he was at the moment, he wanted to stay alive even more-especially now that he had found Gillian.

The shooter clearly had a good scope on top of his rifle. Or maybe not. He did miss the first shot, didn’t he? Then again, he’d only missed by two feet…

Maybe, maybe not.

Keo sat on the concrete pavement, which was curiously both hot and cold against his butt. He didn’t really have much of a choice at the moment. He could run or fight, and fighting seemed like a lost cause. Besides, he had other fish to fry. One named Tobias, to be very specific.

Yes, the sniper had him pinned behind the minivan, but it was difficult shooting a moving target from across an entire parking lot. The guy would have to be pretty good, and he had already proven that he wasn’t, even if that last shot had come dangerously close.

He knew one thing for sure: He definitely couldn’t stay here forever. Even if the shooter didn’t have reinforcements-though the chances of him being out here alone were pretty slim, especially this close to T18-Keo was working against the clock. He had less than six hours to find and kill Tobias and return to town. Failing that…

Failure is not an option.

Unless you fail.

He smirked to himself, then glanced down at his watch.

Did he say six hours? It was more like five.

Time flies when people are shooting at you.

There wasn’t very much to the right and left of him, and behind him were the stores. His only choice was forward, back toward the same long stretch of road that had brought him here from the bridge in the first place. On the other side were a couple of large warehouses, hard to miss given their size, their front yards like jungles. There was nothing behind them but woods.

Thick woods. He could easily get lost in there. If he made it across alive, that was. But his best option at the moment was to lengthen the distance between him and the shooter. The problem with that was, the warehouses were at least another hundred meters away. That was a hell of a long distance to run, even if the guy had proven not to be a world-class marksman.

The things I do for you, Gillian.

He sighed and rose from the ground.

Keo counted to five, but on three decided to play a trick on himself and pushed off the grill of the Chevy and ran forward as fast as he could. His pack thumped against his back as he began zig-zagging, hoping to make getting a bead on him more difficult.

It seemed to work when the first two shots went wide-one landing to his right, the other to his left.