Sam Sisavath - The Isles of Elysium

Because he knew it was coming-a fusillade of lead that he or Dave had no hopes of surviving. They were still backing away from the docks, trying to reach a part of the river where they could use the motor and were, for all intents and purposes, sitting ducks for a good ten, twenty seconds.

“Get down!” he shouted when it finally came-the pop-pop-pop of automatic rifle fire that wasn’t his, muzzle flashes lighting up the wide open spaces in front of him.

Except the horsemen weren’t shooting at him or Dave or Jordan.

What the hell?

Maybe it had something to do with the dark shape moving between the horses, inciting the animals to let out loud furious whines and scramble about the wet concrete pavement. The thing was fast, and something-a long coat? — was fluttering around it, visible for brief half-seconds against the staccato bursts of gunfire as it moved through the throng of men and beasts.

Any hopes Keo had of seeing details were rendered impossible by the night and rain. The figure in the long coat was on the ground, then it was in the air, then it was on the ground again. It was moving so fast Keo could barely keep up with it. He didn’t know when he stopped shooting, but time seemed to slow down as he stood there and watched the figure grabbing men off their horses and throwing them across the parking lot.

Something sailed through the air, and Keo instinctively ducked even though he didn’t have to. A black-clad soldier, hands and feet flailing, hit the river just five feet off the starboard and was sucked under.

Then the boat’s stern dipped slightly, and a motorized roar shattered the shrill wind and falling rain. Keo didn’t know when Dave had turned them around, but suddenly they were blasting downriver and leaving the docks behind.

Keo hurried to the stern and looked back toward the marina as gunshots continued to ring out and muzzle flashes lit up the parking lot again and again and again. He waited for bullets to zip past his head or punch into the hull of the twenty-footer, but none of those things happened. The soldiers on horseback-and some on the ground now-were firing at something among them. Something that wasn’t him or Dave or Jordan. That same something that Keo had seen earlier, moving with a ferocity he didn’t know was possible.

Slowly, the flashes began to disappear one by one until they had ceased completely. There was a brief pause before someone screamed. A shrill cry, dripping with fear instead of pain, and it burrowed its way through the cold and night and rain and into Keo’s gut.

The docks were still fading fast behind him when Keo thought he saw something that shouldn’t have been there, that shouldn’t have been possible.

Eyes.

Blue fucking eyes.

They were looking after him, the twin orbs pulsating against the rain and darkness. He shouldn’t have been able to see them through the night and distance, but there was something vibrant about them, full of life, and they drew him in like lighthouse beacons.

“Christ, you’re bleeding!” Dave shouted, his voice breaking through Keo’s temporary stupor.

He looked back at Dave, and by the time he turned back around, the marina had vanished into the darkness.

And with it, the eyes.

What the fuck…

It had attacked the soldiers. He knew that for a fact. It had come out of nowhere and waded into Steve’s horsemen before they could open up on him and Dave. At that range, with that many guns, and with the boat in such a vulnerable position, they would have been shredded and sank in a hail of bullets.

…just happened?

He had heard the stories. From Lara and Carly, from Gaby and Danny. But he hadn’t believed it. It was too much. Despite everything he had been through and seen, the idea that there was something out there more horrific than the black-eyed ghouls…

Blue eyes.

Jesus fucking Christ.

He sat down and leaned back against the starboard hull, then squinted up at Dave’s silhouetted form. “You know how to drive this thing?”

“Better than you!” Dave shouted back over the roar of the motor.

Keo grinned. That was good to hear, because with the hole in his thigh and the other one in his left arm, he wasn’t entirely sure he could have stood behind the steering wheel and fought against the currents and the storm at the same time.

“Hey,” Keo said.

Dave looked back at him. “What?”

“Don’t run aground.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t wanna know.”

But Dave did want to know, and there was a click as he turned the button that powered on the spotlight at the front of the boat. They must have been everywhere, just like the last time he saw them, because it didn’t take Dave very long to see them.

“Oh, fuck me,” Dave said.

“Yeah,” Keo said.

He closed his eyes, the pak-pak-pak of rainwater against his forehead, eyelids, and face fading into the background. Even the cold had ceased to matter as Keo relived the last few seconds.

Blue eyes.

He couldn’t get over it. The image of it, looking after him, bounced around inside his head like a sledgehammer.

It had blue eyes…and it had saved his life.

Dae-fuck-me-bak.

“You were good back there,” Keo said. “Like Evel Knievel. But on a boat.”

Dave chuckled. “You ever been stuck on a shrimp boat in the Gulf during hurricane season?”

“That happen a lot to you?”

“Just once. But I don’t need a second time to know it’s not fun. You learn a lot about what you’re capable of when the wrath of God is bearing down on you.”

“I’m glad I brought you along, then.”

“Right, because you had a choice.”

“Yeah, that too.”

Dave paused, and Keo could sense him wanting to say something else.

“What is it?” Keo said.

“What the fuck happened back there?” Dave asked, looking back at him. “We were sitting ducks, and then I saw… something. Not just the soldiers, but something else. Did you…?”

Blue eyes, Dave. It had blue eyes, and it saved our asses.

“I don’t know what I saw,” Keo said. “We got out, that’s all that matters.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“So let’s focus on staying alive.”

Dave nodded and stared off the bow, though Keo didn’t believe he was going to let it go because Keo himself hadn’t been able to since he saw it. He had spent the last few hours trying to wrap his mind around what had happened at the marina, and it still didn’t compute. If the ghouls weren’t supposed to come into the towns, then what was that thing doing back there?

Better yet, why had it attacked the soldiers? Why did it save them? Or was that what it was doing in the first place? Maybe it just saw the soldiers as the easier prey and preventing them from shooting him and Dave was just a happy coincidence.

Riiight.

Keo sat in the back of the boat, his butt on the cold floor, and finished wrapping the last piece of gauze around his left arm. The round had gone through and taken a big chunk of flesh with it, but it hadn’t impacted bone, which was the best thing he could have hoped for. The same with the hole in his right thigh. That didn’t feel quite as bad because he was sitting down and wasn’t putting a lot of pressure on it. Or, at least, that’s what he told himself.

He packed up the first-aid kit Gillian had given them back at the house and returned it to Dave’s pack. The bandages were constricting around his shoulder and thigh, but it was better than bleeding to death.

For the last two hours, they had been sitting on the twenty-footer as it shifted back and forth against the waves somewhere between Trinity and Galveston Bay. Even Dave wasn’t quite sure where since their vision was limited by the pitch blackness and they could barely see more than a few meters around them.