Sam Sisavath - The Isles of Elysium

“Jay?” Keo asked.

“Yes. Do I know you?”

“No.”

Keo nudged Grant in the back and the soldier stepped anxiously inside the house, glad to be out of the cold night. Jay looked conflicted, and for a moment Keo thought he might fight back, but instead he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and stepped aside to let them in.

Grant sighed audibly as they were immediately embraced by the warmth of the house. It might not have air conditioning or heating anymore, but a well-insulated building still offered more than decent protection against the climate, especially one that was currently being rocked by a thunderstorm.

Keo closed the door behind them, grateful for the sudden soothing silence, with only the distant pak-pak-pak against the rooftop to remind him what was going on out there. “Where’s Gillian?” he asked.

“She’s asleep,” Jay said.

“It’s barely six in the evening.”

“She…had a long day.”

Jay was a terrible liar. What’s worse, he probably knew it but couldn’t do anything about it. He was either a very decent guy not used to lying, or an asshole. Keo wanted to believe it was the latter, but chances were pretty good it was probably the former.

Just my luck.

“What’s this about?” Jay asked.

“Gillian!” Keo shouted.

“I told you, she’s asleep,” Jay started to say.

“Shut up, Jay.”

The man looked as if he might argue, but like last time, decided to back down instead.

Grant, standing between them, looked back and forth, clearly picking up on the extra “something” going on between them. Or, at least, coming from Keo. Smartly, though, he kept his mouth shut.

“Gillian!” Keo shouted again.

He heard footsteps coming down the stairs before Gillian finally appeared in a nightgown, which was supposed to confirm Jay’s statement that she had been sleeping. He didn’t buy it. Keo didn’t need to ask her, because he could see it on her face.

“Keo,” she said softly, genuinely surprised to see him there.

“Grant and I were just tooling around in his cool golf cart and decided to see how you were doing,” he said.

She gave him a confused look.

“Joke,” he said.

“Oh.”

Jay hurried over and stood next to her. “What’s this about?” he asked again.

Keo locked the door behind them. “They’re coming,” he said, directing everything at Gillian and ignoring Jay.

“Who?” Gillian said.

“The soldiers. They’re searching every house in town.”

“What?” Jay said, alarmed. “Why are they doing that?”

“Stop fucking around. There’s no time for that. Right, Gillian?”

She didn’t answer.

“Right?” he said again.

She sighed. “Right.”

“Where are they?”

“Upstairs.”

“Gillian,” Jay said.

“It’s okay, Jay,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “He knows already. Keo’s a smart guy.”

Not that smart, or I would have been here earlier before he knocked you up, Keo thought about saying, but didn’t.

Jay looked over at him, as if to say, “Is he?”

“Just enough to get in trouble,” Keo said.

“How long do we have?” Gillian asked.

“It’s probably going to take them about thirty minutes to get here. Maybe more, maybe less. How secure are they?”

Gillian thought about it. Jay, next to her, looked physically pained.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Not very. We didn’t expect a house-to-house search.”

Keo put a hand on Grant’s shirt collar and dragged him forward. “I need someplace to put him.”

“Jay can help with that,” Gillian said.

Keo gave her a disbelieving look.

“He can keep him from running off,” Gillian said. Then to Jay, “Go get your little black bag, honey.”

“Why?” Jay asked.

“Trust me,” she said, before looking back at Keo and adding, “And you can trust Keo. We’re going to need his help to survive tonight.”

“How did you know she’d be here?” Gillian asked as she led him up the stairs.

They were moving much slower than they really had to, not that Keo was complaining. Despite everything, being this close to her, smelling her, was still preferable to not seeing her again.

“I took a stab in the dark,” he said. “She’s stuck behind enemy lines at night and she can’t leave the safety of the town. Where would she go? There’s only one person here who she calls a friend. You. There was also her accomplice, but I took a chance that they burned their cover when they rescued her.”

“That’s a big chance.”

“It was fifty-fifty. I’d take those odds any day of the week and twice on Wednesdays.”

“Wednesdays?”

“I don’t like Sundays.”

She smiled, but it was gone quickly, replaced by the very determined Gillian he remembered from the days and nights of trying to survive after The Purge. “She’s bad off, Keo. I almost didn’t recognize her when Dave brought her here.”

Ah. Dave. The cafeteria man.

“Jay almost fainted at the sight,” Gillian continued.

“I thought he was a doctor.”

“He is, but he’s never seen someone get beaten that badly. It’s really bad.”

“I know. I saw her earlier.”

“You saw her earlier?”

“They were torturing her at the marina.”

“Jesus. Why didn’t you-”

“Save her? I did. Steve would have killed her. I spun him a story and he believed me. Then Dave had to go and jump the gun. She would have been fine after a few days.”

“A few weeks, maybe.”

“Or a few weeks. The point is, she would have been fine. She knew what I was doing and she was playing along. Your husband’s a doctor. Did he give her anything?”

Gillian sighed. “He’s not my husband.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Boyfriend?”

“I guess.”

“Maybe live-in lover.”

“Give it a rest. Things are difficult enough without you popping back into my life.”

“My mistake. I only spent the last six months fighting everyone in the world to get to you. Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered.”

She stopped on the second floor and glared at him. She dropped her voice slightly when she said, “It was hard on me, too. It still is. It’s hard for everyone, okay? You, me, Jay…”

“But he’s the one you’re with. It can’t be that hard on him.”

“I…”

He put a hand on her belly. Four months, and it already looked bigger than a medicine ball. He didn’t want to imagine what she’d be like in four more months. It would be massive and impossible for him to ignore even if he wanted to. All those nights and weeks and months wondering if she was alive, imagining different scenarios about their reunion…

He felt like a two-time chump just thinking about it.

“Your hand’s cold,” she said.

“I’ve been out in the rain.”

“You’re going to catch a cold.”

“I’ll live.” He looked up, seeking out her eyes. “Four months. If you’d just waited a little longer…”

She looked down at his hand, circling her belly over the nightgown. She placed her hand over his and squeezed. “I know.”

“How?”

“How?” she repeated.

“You know what I mean.”

She didn’t answer right away.

“Gillian…”

“It just happened. It sounds stupid, I know, but it’s true. I was one of his helpers and I probably saw him more than anyone in town, including Jordan. One night I was depressed and thinking about…everything. I used to do that a lot, you know. Every face I saw, I wanted it to be you. Every time someone new came through Processing, I wanted them to be you. I thought you were dead, Keo. I tried to be positive, but every day it got harder. And he was lonely, too, and I guess we just thought it would be okay if we weren’t both lonely for one night.”