Sam Sisavath - The Isles of Elysium

“Jordan didn’t know?”

“No. I worked in Medical and she was in Agriculture.”

“Do you love him?”

The question blurted out of him. He didn’t know where it came from, and he regretted asking as soon as it left his mouth. Not because it was something he didn’t want to ask, but because it was something he didn’t want to know the answer to.

She didn’t say anything right away, and the wide-open second floor seemed entirely too large. Although she was standing right in front of him and he could feel her belly pressing against the palm of his hand, she was more distant now than she had been in all those days and nights he thought about her, dreamed of her, and rehearsed their reunion over and over again.

Four fucking months.

“No,” she said finally. “He’s a good man, Keo.” She looked up at him. “But I can never love him the way I love you.”

“You say ‘love.’ Not ‘loved’…”

“I know what I said.”

He smiled. “Does he know that?”

“Yes.”

“But he’s still with you.”

“He’s a good man…”

“Stop saying that.”

“It’s the truth. Maybe one day I’ll come to love him, but it’s never going to be the way it was with us. Back at the cabin, all those months together after the end of the world… You can’t replicate something like that.” She put a warm hand against his cheek and traced the long scar. “But it has to be this way now. Because I need him to care for this baby. And I need this place to keep it safe. Do you understand?”

“But it won’t be safe. Not for your baby.”

“It will be.” She took her hand away and wrapped both arms around her stomach. “The doctors have privileges that the others don’t. My baby is going to be spared.”

Classes within classes, right, Steve?

She pursed her lips. “I know it’s selfish. It’s not fair to all the other mothers, but Jay has a special position here. What happened to me was an accident. Or, at least, I thought it was at first. I wasn’t going to keep it, you know. I was going to leave with Jordan. Then one day I felt it.”

“It?”

“The baby. It kicked. After that, I couldn’t go through with it. I couldn’t leave to raise my baby out there. It wouldn’t have survived for long. But in here, it could. I could watch it grow.”

“In this town…”

“It’s better than out there. Maybe if you had been here earlier, things would be different. But you weren’t, so I made a choice. And I chose my baby.”

She placed her head against his chest and Keo slipped his arms around her. He held her tight and never wanted to let her go, the way he had over six months ago when Pollard’s soldiers attacked the cabin. He had made that choice to save her.

Joke’s on you, pal.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“I know,” he whispered back.

He kissed her hair and inhaled her scent. Just soap and water, he knew, but it was still better than anything he had smelled in months.

Then, because he couldn’t take it anymore, “Let’s go see Jordan.”

*

Jordan was unconscious and lying on a bed in the guest bedroom. She was pantless and wearing an oversize button-down shirt that went all the way down to her thighs. Her face was still badly bruised, the purple and black swelling over her left eye even uglier now than when he had seen it earlier at the warehouse.

The room was dark, but there was enough LED light coming through the back window to see Jordan and her protector. He was a black man in his thirties with a shaved head, and he stood next to the window looking out at the streets-or at least what little of it he could see through the falling rain. He had a Walther P22 with an attached suppressor that he clenched tightly at his side, and the gun twitched when the door opened and Keo stepped inside with Gillian.

“Hello, Dave,” Keo said.

The man grinned. “I’ve never heard that one before.”

“What’s that?”

“What?”

“What?” Keo repeated.

“‘Hello, Dave,’” the man said. “From 2001 .”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s a science fiction movie. Stanley Kubrick? That’s where the line’s from.”

“I don’t watch a lot of movies.”

Dave shook his head. “Whatever. That your golf cart down there?”

“You need a ride?”

“Hell yeah.”

“This is Keo,” Gillian said. “He’s a friend of ours.”

“‘Ours’?”

“Jordan and me.”

“What happened to your face?” Dave asked him.

“Shaving accident,” Keo said.

“Oh yeah? I ran out of shaving cream months ago.”

“I use butter.”

“Butter?”

“Yes.”

Dave looked like he was trying to figure out if Keo was kidding him, before finally saying, “Word of advice. You’re not nearly as quiet as you thought you were being. I could hear the two of you talking through the wall.”

“Sorry,” Gillian said, and gave Keo an embarrassed look.

“Anyway, I’m seeing a lot of activity on the streets. Soldiers with flashlights moving through the rain. What’s going on?”

“They’re looking for you,” Keo said. “Going house to house. Two of them are on their way here now. We have about twenty minutes to get you and Jordan to a better hiding spot.”

“Shit,” Dave said. “Where?”

Jay appeared behind them, squeezing through Keo and Gillian. “Excuse me,” he said, and walked to the bed.

“What’s he doing?” Dave asked.

“Getting her ready to move,” Gillian said. “You’re going with her.”

“Where are we going?”

“Downstairs.” When Dave still looked unconvinced, she added, “Trust me, Dave, okay?”

Dave nodded. “All right.”

“Bring her down when you guys are done,” Gillian said, and left them.

Keo watched her go, then looked back at Jay. The doctor was unbuttoning the oversize shirt and checking Jordan’s wounds. Then he opened a black bag he had brought in with him and took out a syringe.

“What’s that?” Dave asked.

“Sedatives to keep her asleep for a while,” Jay said.

“She gonna be okay?”

“If you’re worried about the cuts, don’t be; they’ll heal as long as they don’t get infected. And the swelling around her eye will go down soon.”

Keo looked at Dave. “You didn’t exactly think this through, did you? You didn’t think the soldiers would start going house to house looking for you?”

Dave shook his head. “I thought I had at least an hour to get her out of town.”

“You took a big risk rescuing her from Bannerman’s. Why?”

“I thought they were going to interrogate her for information.”

“What kind of information?”

“I don’t know. The group’s whereabouts, what Tobias is planning, that sort of thing. I thought it was worth blowing my cover to make sure she got away. I was going to take her to the safe location in the woods, but the goddamn storm clouds…” He sighed, exasperated-maybe with himself, maybe with everything. “Things went to shit fast after that. If she didn’t tell me to come here, we’d still be running around out there.”

Keo thought about telling Dave that he was protecting a ghost, because Tobias was gone and the last time he saw the man, Keo had a feeling he might never come back. But Dave didn’t know that, since people didn’t walk around with cell phones and texting had ceased to become a viable communication tool these days. Where was social media when you needed them?

#UBscrewedDave.

“Tobias is going to be pissed,” Dave said.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Keo said.

Dave gave him a questioning look, but Keo didn’t elaborate.