Sam Sisavath - The Isles of Elysium

Jordan had slung her rifle and opened up her pack. She pulled out a bottle of water and an old Tylenol bottle and handed it to him. “Sit down, drink, and rest for a while.”

“You came prepared,” Keo said. He turned the bottle over and noticed the expiration date.

“Don’t worry, that’s just a suggestion,” she said. “Probably. Anyway, the town’s not far from here. Maybe another hour, so we can afford to stay awhile or until you’re ready to move again.”

“It’s just a small headache.”

She peered at his face-or specifically, his scabbing forehead. “He really laid you out good. I thought you were going to bleed to death in that office last night.”

“That bad?”

“But you look okay now. Still ugly as hell, but better.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I mean, compared to the first time I saw you.”

She walked to the kitchen and laid her pack and rifle on the island counter, then began flipping through the top pantries and pulling drawers along the counter. Dust erupted every time she opened something, then again when she closed them.

Keo shook out two of the pills and washed them down with water. He walked over to one of the windows, and staying as far away from the grime-smeared windowsill and glass panes as possible, looked out at the clearing and the woods beyond. He couldn’t help but remember all those months at Earl’s cabin at the start of The Purge.

Gillian was there. So was Norris, and Rachel and her daughter, and the girl, Lotte. Jordan and her friends didn’t show up until later. Then there was that whole mess with Levy, and the garage…

But most of all, he remembered the good times. The days and nights and weeks and months when they didn’t have anything to worry about, when it seemed like they could hide from whatever was going on in the world around them. At the time, he had no idea what the ghouls were doing, and thinking back, he didn’t care. He would have been happy to live however many months or years he had left at the cabin with Gillian and Jordan and the others.

What was that old saying? “Ignorance is bliss.”

What he wouldn’t give for a little bit of ignorance right now.

“Did you take the pills?” Jordan called from the kitchen.

“Yes.”

“Take a few more later. They won’t make you drowsy.”

He did feel better, though it wasn’t really the pills but mostly the resting, the not moving his feet every other second. The throbbing remained, but it wasn’t nearly as unbearable as it had been a few minutes ago when they were out there in the woods.

He finished off the water, then putting the bottle away (you never knew when an empty bottle would come in handy), called back to Jordan, “Find anything?”

“Not a thing.”

“Did you expect to find something?”

“Maybe.”

“You said no one’s been here awhile. Why wouldn’t Miller put someone out here? Use it as a station or something.”

“He did, once. Not just here, but other locations around the area. The strip malls, the warehouses…until we convinced him it was a bad idea. Nowadays, he sticks to the other side of the river.” Then, “I’ve been meaning to ask you. What did you do back there to make Miller think you could kill Tobias for him?”

“I’m not convinced he thought I could. Chances were, he was hoping I could take out a few of your people. Best-case scenario, maybe make your men reveal themselves.”

“That’s probably true. You do make pretty good bait, Keo.”

He grunted. “Stop trying to butter me up.”

“Don’t take it too personally-” There was a loud thump! followed by a clattering sound, then Jordan’s voice, screaming, “Keo!”

He turned back to the kitchen, but she wasn’t there. Her rifle and pack were still on the counter, but there were no signs-

Jordan was on the floor on her stomach behind the counter, both hands clawing at the wooden floorboards.

“Keo!” she shouted again.

He unslung the MP5SD and ran to the kitchen. He was halfway there when Jordan managed to spin around onto her back and lifted her head, looking at something on the other side of the counter. Her Glock was lying across the kitchen where she had sent it clattering when she fell.

He changed directions at the last second, and instead of running to the right side of the counter, he went left where Jordan’s feet were. When he finally made the turn and saw it, Keo might have actually frozen for a full second.

The bottom half of the creature’s body was hidden inside the cabinet under the sink, where it had apparently been hiding when Jordan stumbled across it. It had lunged out through the open door and had gotten a hold of her legs and was trying to pull her toward it-pull her out of the sunlight and into the shadows that fell over its part of the counter. She was kicking at it, but it had two solid grips on one of her legs and wouldn’t let go.

It must have heard him coming, because its head snapped in his direction and twin lifeless black eyes settled on him. He lifted the submachine gun and pointed at it, and the creature actually sneered at him.

“Don’t shoot me, Keo!” Jordan shouted.

Keo almost laughed.

Gee, thanks for that suggestion, Jordan. Real helpful there.

He fired three times into the cabinet, splintering the door and sending rounds inside rather than trying to hit any specific part of the ghoul’s body. He didn’t know how many times he hit it, but once was enough and its head flopped to the floor even while its body continued to jerk up and down with Jordan’s struggling motions.

She finally realized it had stopped trying to pull her into the darkness under the sink and stopped kicking. Jordan stared at it, gasping for breath, before finally regaining enough control to reach forward and pry its bony fingers off her leg. Then she scrambled backward and up to her feet. She picked up her Glock and stumbled away from the kitchen, then looked over at him.

“What?” he said.

“There’s more of them in there,” she said, almost gasping out the words.

“Where?”

“The lower cabinets.”

“Which ones?”

“All of them.”

“How do you know?”

“I heard them when I was on the floor. And I can smell them. Can’t you?”

Keo took a quick, involuntary step away from the cabinets. “You sure?”

“You can’t smell them?”

He sniffed the air. There was that smell again, the same one he had detected when he first entered. But it seemed to have gotten stronger…

“Yeah,” he said.

“What should we do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do we just…leave? What if someone else comes in here and stumbles across them later?”

Keo aimed and fired a shot into one of the closed cabinet doors.

He heard something scurrying behind the cheap wood paneling for a moment before settling into silence again. He had to remind himself that they were just bags of bones, and if losing a head or a limb didn’t bother them, squeezing into the small spaces of the cabinets probably didn’t register at all.

“Screw this,” Keo said. “We can’t save everyone. We can barely save our friends.”

He took another couple of steps back and picked up her M4 and handed it to her. Jordan grabbed her pack and slung it back on.

“Let’s go,” he said. “I’ll rest later, when I’m dead.” That drew a quick, almost pained look from her. “Too soon?”

She gave him a half-smile, but it was easy to see she hadn’t completely recovered from being grabbed by the ghoul and almost dragged into its hiding place. Keo knew from experience that even though the creatures looked like emaciated little children, they were goddamn resilient. It probably helped that they didn’t care about self-preservation when they locked onto a prey.