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  THE WALLS OF LEMURIA

  (A PURGE OF BABYLON NOVEL)

  SAM SISAVATH

  The Walls of Lemuria

  Copyright © 2014 by Sam Sisavath

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Published by Road to Babylon Media

  Visit www.roadtobabylon.com for news, updates, and announcements

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  Edited by Jennifer Jensen & Wendy Chan

  Books in the Purge of Babylon Series (Reading Order)

  The Purge of Babylon (A Novel of Survival)

  The Gates of Byzantium

  The Stones of Angkor

  And now…

  The Walls of Lemuria (A Purge of Babylon Novel)

  My heartfelt thanks to everyone who made this book possible by volunteering their valuable time, including George, Cathy, Dru, Brock, Lisa, Ryan, Sally, Steven, Susan, Elizabeth, Mark, and Zachary. I asked, and you all said Yes. I can’t thank you guys enough.

  Every survivor has a story.

  The Purge decimated the planet almost a year ago, leaving small bands of humanity scrambling to find sanctuary from the hordes of unkillable monsters that reside in the darkness.

  Keo is one of the few who made it through that harrowing first night. Trapped in a small town in Louisiana, he finds himself joining forces with a group of strangers to make sense of what’s happening.

  Like thousands of others around the globe at that exact moment, Keo and his new allies will discover that braving the creature-infested first night is only the beginning. Every day from that moment on will be a struggle, and every night will be a nightmare.

  This is their story.

  PART ONE

  ‡

  THE SURVIVORS

  CHAPTER 1

  “See the world. Kill some people. Make some money.”

  It wasn’t an entirely bad plan, and a lot of people had taught Keo to do a lot of things in his twenty-eight years of existence to achieve those very modest goals. He knew how to kill a man in the water, from the air, and on land, but his instructors never bothered to cover what to do when faced with something that didn’t die even after you shoved a lamp into its skull.

  Keo was out of ideas when the thing rose back up from the motel room floor. The carpeting under its bare feet was already covered with too many stains from past occupants and was now getting a nice new coat of paint in the form of oozing black…something.

  This is not real. I’m dreaming.

  It wasn’t blood, exactly. Keo had seen blood before. Human blood, pig blood, horse blood, even camel blood. But he had never witnessed anything this thick and clumpy. So it couldn’t possibly be blood. Could it?

  Of course not. This is just a really bad dream.

  The problem was that it wouldn’t die. Not after it smashed its way through the window and took a big chunk out of the pretty blonde waitress (Danielle? Delia? Something with a D.) who had come back to the motel with him. The creature had cut itself to ribbons on the glass shards as it crawled inside, leaving an impressive, bloody trail in its wake. It had bled enough for two dead men.

  So why isn’t it dead?

  It should be dead. Keo had bludgeoned it with a cheap lamp with a cheap lightbulb that had been sitting on a cheap nightstand before shoving the top of the lamp, broken lightbulb included, straight down into its skull. It was easy because the thing was crouched like some kind of animal in front of him. He saw the lamp go in—and through—the skull, which was surprisingly weak. Skulls were not supposed to be that easy to puncture.

  That should have done it. It should have gone down and stopped moving.

  Only it didn’t.

  First day on vacation and you’re already stuck in a bad dream. What a gyp.

  Twin obsidian globes where eyes should be looked back at him in the semidarkness. It was almost hairless except for strings of what must have been, once upon a time, blond hair. Its teeth were black and yellow and brown, as if someone had grabbed random pieces of bone and superglued them onto its gums. The only lights in the room flooded in through the broken window, the motel’s gaudy street sign spelling out “Rearview Motel” in green and red colors, blinking all the way across the parking lot.

  Then Danielle/Delia screamed from the open bathroom door across the room. Keo had lost track of her in the last few seconds. She was still just wearing her bra and panties with a towel wrapped around her left arm where the creature had bitten her a few minutes ago. The towel had been white when Keo had first seen it, but it was almost completely red now.

  Red blood. Because blood is supposed to be red, not black.

  The scream distracted the creature and it turned toward her with an almost curious expression, the lamp jutting out of its head bobbing like some grotesque party hat, the heavy base making it move left and right, then forward and back.

  Keo took advantage of the distraction and grabbed the next closest weapon and smashed it into the side of the thing’s temple. The cheap alarm clock shattered on impact, pieces of it sailing in every direction through the air. The lamp, balanced unsteadily on the creature’s head, was jarred loose and fell to the floor, taking chunks of flesh and bone and more of the clumpy black liquid (blood?) with it.

  The creature forgot about Danielle/Delia and lunged at him instead. He dived to his right and out of its path. He expected it to take a second—maybe two seconds, if he were lucky—to right itself, but instead the thing gracefully swiveled to follow his path, seeking him out again like some kind of bony flesh-and-blood living missile.

  Then it was in the air and coming at him again. And damn, was it fast.

  He flung himself to the floor and it sailed over his head. Keo twisted around just in time to see the not-quite-human thing hit the wall, where it somehow ricocheted off, landed on the floor, and was (How?) already in the air again. Keo didn’t think—he didn’t have time to think—and kicked out with both bare feet, catching the creature in the chest as it pounced on him. It was like kicking a bag of flour, and the soles of his bare feet sunk into flesh as he guided it over—then past—him.

  Keo scrambled up and ran for the bathroom, realizing how absurd he must look in just his boxers. Danielle/Delia stood frozen in the middle of the open door, holding the bloodied towel to her arm and staring at him with all the alertness of a deer in the headlights.

  “Get inside!” he shouted.

  She snapped out of it and turned and ran inside, and Keo was almost at the door when he decided to look back and—

  It was already on its feet. Not just up, but on the queen-size bed and about to use the mattress as some kind of springboard. The surreal sight of the moving creature with the top half of its head gone made Keo wonder for just a split-second if he hadn’t, in fact, died in some shitty backwater country and was now stuck in some kind of purgatory hell. That was entirely possible. He had certainly accumulated enough bad karma to justify this kind of endless and cruel suffering.

  Then again, maybe he was awake and all of this was real. Which, he supposed, wasn’t really so far from purgatory hell, too.

  Move move
move!

  He grabbed the doorknob and lunged inside, slamming the door almost at the exact instant the creature crashed into the wooden panel on the other side. Its forward momentum generated enough force to make the door and flanking walls quake against the impact.

  Keo turned the lock and stepped back.

  Thoom thoom thoom!

  It was hitting the door. He couldn’t imagine with what. Its fists? It had ridiculously small hands with long, old lady fingers. Boney would be the right word. Flesh draped over a skeletal form, like some emaciated hunchback the way it seemed permanently bent over, minus a noticeable hump. It had almost no volume to its body, no muscle, but that also made it incredibly swift. He had never seen anything that malnourished move that fast.

  Thoom thoom thoom!

  The door moved each time, but it was holding. Whatever had happened to the thing outside hadn’t given it any special strength. But then maybe brawn didn’t matter when you couldn’t die. He had literally smashed the thing’s brains in. It didn’t even have a brain anymore.

  And yet, there it was, railing against the door.

  Thoom thoom thoom!

  Pounding, smashing, relentless…

  Thoom thoom thoom!

  He looked back at Danielle/Delia, sitting on the toilet seat, staring at the door. He hadn’t seen it back in the motel room, but under the harsh bathroom light, she had blood on her chest and tummy and legs as well as the side of her neck and parts of her cheek. Her face was white, long blonde hair spread out around her oval-shaped face, giving her the appearance of a wild she-devil. She trembled each time the creature banged against the door behind him.

  Thoom thoom thoom!

  He walked over and crouched in front of her. “You okay?”

  Tears fell silently down her cheeks, and her lips quivered. She shook her head and tried to speak, but when she opened her mouth, the only thing that came out was the sound of her teeth chattering.

  “It’s okay,” Keo said. “It’s okay.”

  She didn’t look convinced at all.

  Thoom thoom thoom!

  “I promise,” Keo said. “We’ll be—”

  The creature stopped.

  There was just silence from the other side of the door now.

  They both stared at the door, neither one saying a word, as if afraid to jinx the sudden peace and quiet. Keo expected the creature to pick up where it had left off, but it didn’t.

  They waited, unsure of what to do next besides watch and anticipate.

  “Keo?” Danielle/Delia said softly, her voice uneven, on the verge of breaking down.

  “I don’t know,” Keo said. “It could be a trick.”

  “A trick?”

  “To lure us outside. Why would it stop?”

  “Maybe it…left.”

  Maybe it did. Or it was a trap. Was it smart enough to do something like that?

  He wouldn’t know. Keo didn’t know a damn thing about the creature. And that was what it was. A creature. It wasn’t human. He knew that much. Maybe it used to be human, once upon a time, but not anymore.

  “What now?” she asked.

  He shook his head. Keo was more than happy to wait inside the bathroom until the authorities showed up. Someone would have heard the commotion by now. If not the breaking window, then Danielle/Delia’s screams. A call to the local cops would have already gone out. So how long did he have to wait it out? Morning? It wasn’t as if he were in New Orleans or Shreveport. He was in the boondocks of Louisiana. There were probably a dozen cops for the next 200 or so miles. Maybe.

  Keo looked back at Danielle/Delia. “Danielle…”

  “Delia,” she said.

  “Right, Delia,” he said, and gave her his best smile.

  She smiled back. Or tried to. It came out more as half-smile/half-terror.

  “I need to look at that,” he said, reaching for the towel.

  She grimaced when he took her hand away and slowly unwound the cotton material from around her arm. Keo had seen plenty of wounds—knife wounds, bullet wounds, even a good old-fashioned animal mauling—but Delia’s arm still made him flinch a bit, though he did his very best to hide it.

  Whatever the creature was that had been banging on the bathroom door a minute ago, it had really chomped down with those things it was passing off as teeth. The result was a bite mark almost a quarter-inch deep that was still oozing blood when Keo took away the towel. The flesh around the point of contact was purple and black, and it looked infected even to his layman’s eyes. That was the most dangerous part of all. He had seen what infections could do in even the toughest and biggest men. Delia was five foot six and 120 pounds soaking wet.

  He covered her arm back up without a word. Delia was watching him closely and when she saw his reaction, she began crying.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Keo said. “I’ve seen worse. Hey, Delia, look at me. I’ve seen worse.”

  She either believed the lie, or she wanted to. Either way, her crying lessened, but her face remained terror-stricken, her cheeks covered in tears. “I’m scared, Keo…”

  “I know,” he nodded. “So am I.”

  “You too?” she asked, as if she couldn’t believe it. Lovely brown eyes watched him closely again.

  “Yes.” He smiled, hoping it was convincing. “This…isn’t normal. It’s perfectly okay to be scared, right?”

  She nodded hesitantly.

  “But we’ll get through this, I promise,” he continued. “We’ll wait in here for the cops. I bet someone already called the local PD. How many cops are in Bentley?”

  She thought about it. “Six, I think?”

  “So at least one or two of them should be on their way by now. Until then, we’re just going to sit tight and wait for them. Okay?”

  She nodded with more confidence this time.

  “You’re doing good,” he said. “You’re doing really good.”

  Keo sneaked a quick look at the towel around her arm. He swore it had gotten even redder since a few seconds ago. How was that possible? It wasn’t, of course. No one could bleed that much from a simple bite wound.

  Right. Because all of this makes perfect sense.

  “Keo,” Delia said.

  “Yes?”

  “Can you hear it?”

  “Hear what?”

  She didn’t answer, because she didn’t have to. Keo did hear it.

  It was unmistakable and it seemed to be coming from all around them, from the other motel rooms to their left and right.

  Rearview Motel had one floor and it was spread out, with twenty rooms in a long line from one end of the lot to the other. Their room was somewhere in the middle, #11, which gave him a perfect spot to hear the growing noise, like rolling thunder, getting closer and closer, and louder and louder at the same time.

  “Keo,” Delia said, her voice dropping to barely a whisper. “Is that…?”

  He nodded.

  “What’s happening, Keo? What’s happening out there?”

  “I don’t know, but we’ll get through this. I promise. We’ll get through this.”

  He remained crouched next to her and listened, because it was impossible to ignore. If he pressed his palms against his ears and pushed for all he was worth, he would still hear it.

  The screaming.

  The people in the other motel rooms were screaming…

  CHAPTER 2

  They spent the next two hours inside the bathroom listening to the screaming. Every now and then Keo heard gunshots, but there weren’t enough of them to convince him there was some kind of organized resistance going on. The shots never came from the same location and they sometimes overlapped, which meant the attacks were happening simultaneously across the motel.

  There’s more than one of those creatures out there.

  How many? Depends. How many rooms?

  Too many…

  Keo didn’t have his watch with him, but it had to be well after midnight. Two, maybe three in the morning. They ha
d arrived at the Rearview Motel around ten after Delia got off work early at the bar. He had actually waited for her, which had been a first. Four long, agonizing hours of listening to country music and avoiding fights with locals who thought Delia was spending too much time with a stranger. A six-foot-one Asian guy, no less. In this part of Louisiana, that probably made him something of a freak. He wasn’t even supposed to have stopped here, and now he wished he had kept going.

  Too late for that. Way too late for that now.

  Keo didn’t spend a lot of time regretting things in his life. The fact was, if he had to weigh the night with Delia against everything happening now, it wasn’t even all that hard of a choice—

  “Keo,” Delia whispered.

  “I hear it,” Keo said.

  Or rather, what he didn’t hear.

  Silence.

  The screaming had stopped.

  He didn’t think quiet could feel so heavy, but then he had never listened to strangers screaming for the last two hours.

  He glanced back at Delia just to make sure it wasn’t all in his head.

  She nodded, large brown eyes wide with questions. “Is it over?”

  “I don’t know.” He turned back to the door. “I should find out.”

  “No, don’t go out there. It’s out there.”

  “Trust me, I don’t want to go out there, but we need to know what’s happening.”

  And you need proper dressings and a doctor, he thought about adding, but decided she didn’t really need to know that. He had wrapped a fresh towel around her arm only to watch it turn red like the last one. There was no way to actually stop the bleeding, and there was no first-aid kit in the medicine cabinet. And Delia looked painfully pale and seemed to be moving her head with difficulty. More than once, he’d had to check that she was even still breathing as she dozed off.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  She nodded, but even that seemed to take a lot out of her. “Just be careful, okay?”