Sam Sisavath - The Isles of Elysium

He was still backing up when a flicker of movement drew his attention.

He spun toward the hallway in the back and the smell hit him. It was bearable earlier, but that had all changed. The stench was suffocating now, because there were so many of them out in the open and squeezed into the hallway at once.

Jesus Christ, where did they come from?

It had to be the back rooms. They had been inside (Sleeping? Resting? What exactly did ghouls do in the daytime?) until now.

They crowded into the hallway, so many that Keo didn’t know where the shadows began and their numbers ended. Black eyes peered out of the darkness at him, but it was the growing overwhelming smell of rot and decay that got to him. They would have come out if not for the swaths of sunlight splashing across the living room, an invisible barrier they couldn’t cross even though he could tell they wanted to with every fiber of their being.

“Oh God,” Jordan breathed beside him.

She drew her Glock, the one with the silver magazine, and pointed it at them, but Keo grabbed her arm before she could fire.

“There’s too many of them,” he said. “One or ten dead won’t make any difference. But we have limited ammo. Especially the right kind.”

She nodded, and they backpedaled toward the door together, side by side.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked.

She shook her head and shivered slightly.

He knew how she felt, and didn’t feel better himself until he opened the door and stepped outside. The warmth of the sun against his back was like a mother’s embrace, and fresh air filled his lungs once again.

He forgot about his throbbing headache and turned around and followed her back into the woods without a word.

After the near-miss with the riders, then the surprise at the cabin, they took the rest of the way back to T18 slowly while listening for sounds of more soldiers and other things that might be hiding in the darker parts of the woods around them. And there was a lot of it, further increasing Keo’s paranoia.

Gradually, he noticed that the air had become chillier, and when he glanced up at the sky, it had darkened since the last time. He had to look at his watch to make sure it wasn’t even noon yet.

“You feel it?” he asked.

“What?” Jordan said.

“The air.”

She paused for a moment. “I think it’s going to rain.”

“Does it rain a lot out here?”

“This far inland? It’s only rained twice since I’ve been here.”

“Maybe you guys are due.”

“I guess. How’s your head?”

“I took two more pills.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“The pills are kicking in, but I’ll feel better when we finally reach T18.”

Finally, around midday, he heard the familiar rush of water and they approached the tree line slowly before going into a crouch and looked out.

Like yesterday, there were people on the opposite riverbanks, maybe even the same ones. Women were washing clothes while children jumped into and frolicked in the river. A few soldiers stood around in the back, some chatting with the civilians. The sound of laughter and inane chatter was completely incongruent with the world as Keo knew it, and had been surviving in, for the last year.

He stared at them in silence for a moment. These people were at home and at peace with their choice. He could tell that just from the way they talked and moved around. His first instinct was to pity them, but maybe they were the smart ones. They had accepted and embraced the reality of the world, and from the looks of it, they were happy. People like him and Jordan, on the other hand, were living hand to mouth, getting by on what they could scavenge, and always looking over their shoulders.

Who was he to pity them? They would probably pity him , and he would have a pretty hard time convincing them it should be the other way around.

Jordan hadn’t said a word since they looked out across the river. He wondered if she was rethinking the last few months of her life. She had been trying to rescue these people, but they probably had no idea and might not have been all that grateful if she had succeeded.

“Jordan,” he said softly.

She looked over.

“You okay?”

She nodded, then got up. “Let’s get going. I don’t want to be caught out here when it starts raining.”

She stood up and pushed through the brush. She was moving too fast, as if she was in a hurry to get away from the civilians and their carefree laughter on the other side of the river. She was already a full meter ahead of him when Keo saw something black moving against the green and brown of the trees and branches in front of her. Jordan had her head slightly down and didn’t see it. He would have screamed at her if he could, but there was no time and he was afraid someone else might hear him anyway.

Jordan finally looked up and froze at the sight of the man stepping out through two large trees. He was wearing a black uniform and he mirrored her response, halting completely at the sight of her. They stared at one another for just a second, though he imagined it must have seemed longer to the both of them. Time had a habit of stretching endlessly when you were staring death in the face.

“Hey, wait up,” a voice said behind the man.

That seemed to spur the man into action, and he reached for his sidearm because his M4 was slung uselessly behind his back.

Jordan, on the other hand, hadn’t moved at all.

Keo fired past Jordan, the pfft! of his gunshot sounding much too loud to his own ears even though he knew for a fact it was little more than a coughing noise. The soldier had a name stenciled across his name tag, but Keo didn’t get the chance to read it before the man fell to the ground on his stomach and face-

Revealing a second figure coming out through the same trees behind him.

Jordan was still stuck in time, and by now Keo had already caught up to her. He almost pulled the trigger again at the sight of the second black-uniformed body but somehow stopped himself. It wasn’t the fact that the second one was barely out of his teens. Age didn’t enter into Keo’s calculations at all.

The teenager’s eyes went straight to the dead man in front of him. For a split second Keo thought he would turn around and run for it, but instead the kid scrambled to unsling his rifle.

Jordan finally snapped out of her stupor and began fumbling with her carbine, but she was having as much difficulty getting a handle on it as the soldier seemed to be. Keo didn’t let either one of them get to their weapons first before he fired a second shot, his bullet sailing over the soldier’s head and hitting the tree behind him on purpose. Bark flew into the back of his head, and the kid ducked as if missiles were coming at him.

That gave Keo another extra second or two, enough time to grab Jordan’s arm. He said, “Don’t,” and kept going.

The soldier had gotten back up. He was already gasping for breath, and when he saw Keo coming right at him, it only made him scramble faster for his weapon. But he was having so much difficulty Keo wondered if his rifle was covered in oil.

The teenager had finally gotten a firm enough grip to raise the M4 when Keo reached him and slammed the stock of his submachine gun into his neck. He gagged, the rifle forgotten, and reached up as Keo shoved the MP5SD’s suppressor into his cheek, putting a finger to his lips. “Shhh.”

Jordan hurried over, skirting around the dead man on the ground. She was hyperventilating but slowly getting control. “Jesus, where did they come from?”

The soldier was looking at Keo, his face turning slightly blue. Keo grabbed him by the back of his shirt collar and sat him down on the ground, his back against a tree, before disarming him. The teenager didn’t fight, probably because he was too busy trembling.