Sam Sisavath - The Isles of Elysium

They all looked the same. Mostly. One was two stories, one was one story, then he found another two story. One had three stories, and a woman in one of the bedroom windows watched him walk by along the sidewalk. She looked young, maybe in her late teens, and she was combing her hair. He didn’t see a belly, but there was a good chance she had one.

…just like Gillian.

The people who had been cleaning the streets when he first showed up were now gone. Maybe they had moved on to the next subdivision, or maybe the work was done. He didn’t think so, though. A place this large, with this many streets and homes, had to have plenty of trash even without the trappings of what civilization once had to offer.

The sky above him had also gotten noticeably darker since the last time he was outside. Rain was definitely coming. And soon.

He had been walking for an hour and was still no closer to the front gate. He didn’t recognize any of the streets, mostly because they all looked identical. Had he taken a wrong turn somewhere? Or had he been walking in a straight line this entire time and missed a turn? Did Steve even make a turn-

Honk!

A car horn, so small that he thought it might have come from a toy, blared behind him.

Keo turned around as Jack drove up in a golf cart. It may or may not have been the same one in which his brother had driven Keo here a few hours ago. Keo’s mind was still too clouded from his visit with Gillian, and he couldn’t be sure one way or another.

The younger Miller stopped in the street next to him. “There you are. Someone said they saw a weirdo walking around the neighborhood. I thought it had to be you.”

Keo grunted. “I thought I had a few more hours until you picked me up.”

“Change of plans.” Jack patted the seat next to him. “Climb in. Steve wants to see you now.”

“What about?”

“You’ll see when we get there.”

“What is it about you Miller boys and surprises?”

Jack grinned. “Hey, if there weren’t surprises, life would be awfully dull.”

Keo climbed in and Jack drove them off.

He made a mental note of Jack’s gun belt and a revolver in the holster. It was similar to Steve’s setup.

Like brother…like brother.

He peeked out from under the cart’s roof at the slowly darkening horizon. It wasn’t just a sign of gathering precipitation, but night was also coming. A double whammy. His watch ticked to 4:56 P.M.

“What happens when it gets dark?” he asked.

“Everyone heads home at five.” Jack glanced at his own watch. “So, soon. I know what you’re thinking: ‘But what about rush hour traffic?’ Lucky you, I know how to avoid all of that.”

“Yeah, lucky me.”

“Oh, what’s the matter, sport? The reunion didn’t go as planned?”

Keo glanced over at him. “You knew.”

“That she was preggers? ’Fraid so. I’m the one who got her off the fields and brought her home for ya.”

“That was awfully nice of you.”

“She wanted to know why, but I didn’t tell her. I figured you’d like to do the honors. You can thank me later.”

“I’ll do that. Later.”

Jack laughed. “Perk up, sport. There’s plenty of women around. We did a survey last month. There are five women for every guy. Tell me you don’t like those odds. The best part? They don’t expect you to put a ring on it.”

The younger Miller was still very amused with himself as he drove, and it was all Keo could do not to reach over and snap his neck. It was tempting. It was so tempting, but he was still walking (or riding, now) in a fog, unsure of how to proceed.

He thought about Jordan, somewhere out there, and hoped she had found shelter for the night, because darkness was coming faster than normal today.

*

After exiting T18A1, Jack turned left and took Keo back through the agriculture fields for a second time. Keo watched the multiple-and seemingly endless-streams of people returning home. They were talking, laughing, and looking for all the world like they belonged here, that all their life had led to this moment.

“I’ll never forget what happened to them. But I can’t change the past, or dwell on it. I can’t afford to. I have to think about the future.”

Could he really settle here? Take what guys like Steve gave him and be happy with it? Maybe find a woman and have a kid. Or two kids. So what if his children were destined to become another cog in the ghoul machine? So what if the entire human race had been reduced to chattel? So what if all those months of fighting and killing and almost dying more times than he could count to get here, to reunite with Gillian, had all been for nothing?

So fucking what.

“Forget her,” Jack was saying. “Plenty of fish in the ocean. That ugly mug notwithstanding, you can do pretty good here, sport. I mean, look at me. I got a woman at home. She’s giving birth to twins in five months. Life’s good.”

“They leave you guys alone?” Keo asked. “The monsters?”

“We call them crawlers.”

“Why crawlers?”

“It’s…nicer. Plus, Steve’s orders. Don’t want to start calling the bosses monsters, right? Think about the meetings. How awkward would those be?”

“Hunh.”

“But yeah, they stay out of the town at night. Don’t ask why. One of the mysteries of the universe. It’s easier if you don’t think too much about it. Better for your sanity, especially at night.”

They finally reached the marina, and this time the gate was down and two of the four soldiers guarding the booth hurried out of the small building to raise it for them. Jack turned inside.

As they drove through the empty parking lot, there were noticeably fewer soldiers around than earlier in the day. He only saw two people walking back and forth on the docks, and about a half dozen more were heading toward the gate. It made sense for such a drastic drawdown of forces at night. What idiot would attack the town under the cover of darkness? For that matter, what moron would be outside, in those woods, when night fell?

Jack drove toward the office buildings, but instead of heading for Marina 1 as Keo had expected, the younger Miller turned left and parked in front of the large warehouse at the north end of the lot.

“What’s going on?” Keo asked.

“Find out inside,” Jack said.

They climbed out and Keo peeked up at the sky again. Just past five o’clock, but it already looked impossibly dark, thanks to the gathering clouds. He could almost taste the coming precipitation.

“Looks like it’s gonna be a long and rainy night,” Jack said. “We don’t usually get a lot of that around here. Should be good for the crops.”

“Do they come out in the rain?”

“Who?”

“Them.”

Jack looked at him funny. “The crawlers? Why would they care about the rain?”

Because I’ve seen them turn to stone and sink in a lake. Because they’re freakishly terrified of bodies of water. Maybe the rain has the same effect?

But he didn’t say any of those things out loud. He had a feeling Jack didn’t know-and probably didn’t care, either.

He shrugged, said, “Just wondering.”

“You wonder too much,” Jack said. “Come on, let’s see what Steve wanted to show you. I hear it’s a real humdinger.”

Jack hobbled the short distance to the warehouse with the help of a cane, and watching him, Keo once again went through the pros and cons of taking the man’s revolver and shooting him dead right then and there.

The pro was that he would be armed again, and Jack would be dead.

The con, though, meant having to fight a lot of soldiers still inside the marina with nothing but a revolver and its six bullets. Besides the two leftovers he had seen at the docks, there were the four at the guard booth and the half dozen or so heading toward the gate.