The Fields of Lemuria Read online

  End of the world, boys and girls. Get it while you can.

  When he had put enough distance between himself and the lovers, Keo relaxed and turned north, and this time he was more aware of the noises he was making. He should have been more careful earlier, too. All it would have taken was one pair of attentive ears and he would have been a dead man back there. It would have been hard to rescue Norris with a bullet in his head.

  That is, if Norris needed rescuing at all. He’d find out when he found the ex-cop. That, unfortunately, was easier said than done.

  He took a quick look down at his watch: 12:24 p.m.

  At least he had plenty of time…

  *

  He circled the clearing around the house, trying to pick up Norris’s tracks from when they had fled into the woods the day earlier while still keeping as far away from the tree lines as possible. The last thing he needed was to run into another amorous couple doing the nasty during their lunch break. He crossed a couple of limited hiking trails, two of many that snaked all around the park.

  The world of green and brown and sunlight around him looked, sounded, and felt empty, as if he could walk for days without actually running across another human being.

  It was a hopeless task, and he wondered how he ever convinced himself that this was even a possibility. There were no obvious signs of Norris, and whatever prints had been created in the soft ground the previous day had been trampled by hundreds (thousands) of bare feet last night. The creatures. The bloodsuckers. They were simply everywhere, though the fact that he couldn’t see them now, in the daylight, made him slightly nervous.

  After a while, he decided to stop deluding himself and turned north, in the direction that he always knew he would end up eventually: the park visitors’ building at the entrance, which Pollard was using as his base of operations. With his fifty or so people…

  Shit, that’s a lot of guns.

  If Norris had been captured, he would be there right now, because Pollard wouldn’t kill him right away. At least, he hoped not. Which was an odd thing to be hoping for, but at the moment it was the better of two options.

  If Norris wasn’t there, then that meant he was still roaming around the woods. That was a much better outcome, but problematic because it meant Keo would have to go looking for the old-timer. Still, Norris out there was better than Norris in captivity. Would Pollard care it was him, and not the ex-cop, that had killed his son? Maybe, maybe not.

  Either way, he had to know for sure.

  From his time in Robertson Park, Keo knew there were three main roads that forked from the entrance. The people who made use of the park were mostly hikers, fishermen, and the people who owned the lakeside homes. All the parking lots were located near the southern shore, and the rest were pretty much dense wooded areas—

  Crunch-crunch!

  Two figures. Black-clad. Walking across his path twenty meters away.

  Keo slipped behind a tree, the gym bag with the rifle and spare magazines clanking against his back.

  Too loud.

  He knew they had heard him as soon as he heard the clanking himself. He muttered a silent curse and spun away from the tree, lifted the MP5SD, and peered through the sight at the two figures just as they were turning, reacting too slowly to the noise.

  They froze at the sight of him, the steel barrel of the suppressor pointing in their direction. He had them dead to rights and they knew it.

  There were two of them. A man and a woman. Except the man wasn’t really a man. He was a kid carrying an M4 and looked out of place covered up with all the tactical gear and ammo pouches. He was way too young to be staring wide-eyed at Keo with a face that, for just a split-second, reminded Keo of Joe and Bobby.

  Fucking Joe. You lying punk.

  But it wasn’t the face that Keo saw clearly across the short distance that separated them. It was the eyes. They telegraphed what the kid was about to do before he did it.

  Oh, you little bastard, you’re going to make me kill you, aren’t you? Keo thought, and started to squeeze the trigger just as the kid began lifting his rifle, even though he knew (he knew!) that Keo had him sighted down.

  That was when the woman whirled on the boy and smashed the stock of her rifle into his back. The kid let out a surprised grunt and stumbled forward. The woman followed and delivered a second vicious hit to the back of his head. This time, the teenager fell to the ground and lay still on his stomach.

  “Don’t shoot,” the woman said, raising her hands into the air.

  Keo stared across at the familiar face. It wasn’t covered in paint this time, not that he would have mistaken her for anyone else even if it had been. He would remember those blue eyes anywhere.

  “Don’t shoot,” Fiona said again. “Come on, you haven’t forgotten me already, have you, Keo?”

  “No,” Keo said.

  He didn’t lower his weapon though. Keo was still trying to understand what the hell just happened. Did she just knock out one of her own? Why?

  “Come on, Keo,” Fiona said. “My arm is killing me. You remember what happened to it, don’t you?”

  He lowered the submachine gun a bit. “Stop whining. It was just a scratch.”

  “God, you’re an ass.” Relieved, Fiona put down her arms with a painful grimace.

  “I need that,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Your rifle.”

  She sighed and tossed it into the grass in front of him.

  “The sidearm, too,” Keo said.

  She tossed it as well.

  “How’s the shoulder?” he asked.

  “It hurts like a sonofabitch every time I move it. How do you think it is?”

  He looked down at the unconscious body. “What was that about?”

  “You would have shot him.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “I don’t want you to shoot him. He’s a good kid. He’s just…not that bright.”

  “You know him?”

  “I know all of them. I’ve been with Pollard for eight months. We’ve eaten, slept, and hell, I’ve even fucked a couple of them.”

  “Just a couple?”

  She smirked. “What else is there to do these days? Can’t even waste time on Twitter or Facebook anymore. What’s the world coming to?”

  She crouched and felt the boy’s neck, and satisfied that he was still alive, touched the sticky patch at the back of his head.

  Keo kept a close eye on her. There was a fifty-fifty percent chance she might go for the boy’s sidearm or the fallen M4 a few feet away. Keo had purposefully not collected those. He wanted to see what she would do.

  “Still alive?” Keo asked.

  “Yes.” She wiped her bloody palm against the grass and made a face. “God, I hope I didn’t give him brain damage.”

  “You hit him with the stock of your rifle. He’ll be fine.” Mostly, he thought, but didn’t bother to add that part.

  Keo looked around him to make sure their little incident hadn’t drawn more attention from the rest of Pollard’s men. He went quiet and listened but didn’t hear any footsteps running toward them.

  “You’re looking for him,” Fiona said. She hadn’t reached for the boy’s rifle or sidearm, and she didn’t seem interested in doing so. “Your friend. What’s his name?”

  “Norris.”

  “Right. That’s why you’re back here scouting the house. Trying to pick up his tracks, I guess.”

  “Something like that. You know where he is?”

  “He’s alive,” she said, and gave him a sympathetic look. “Pollard has him. He’s had him since yesterday.”

  *

  The kid’s name was Rupert. He was seventeen and had joined Pollard’s group six months earlier.

  “We found him and his sister hiding in a cellar near Corden,” Fiona said. “They’d been there since all of this began. They managed to survive by raiding farmhouses around the area, then started coming into town when supplies ran
low. I think he joined just so his sister didn’t have to go to sleep starving at nights.”

  “How old is she?” Keo asked.

  “Seventeen too, I think.”

  “And he takes care of them? Pollard?”

  “Pollard does one thing very well—he gets you to commit to him. Before you know it, you think you owe him everything. Your trust, your loyalty, even your obedience.”

  “How does he do that?”

  “He gives you food. Shelter. Friends. These days, that’s everything.”

  Keo nodded. He understood what she was saying. Maybe he might have managed to carry on by himself after the world went to crap, but that was a pretty big “maybe.” The fact was, having Gillian and Norris made everything easier, and he sometimes doubted if he would have gotten this far without them, or even if he would have wanted to. It could get pretty damn lonely out there by yourself, especially now with most of the planet’s population gone.

  Well, not gone, exactly…

  Fiona was staring at the unconscious Rupert, whose hands were bound behind his back with a zip tie. Fiona had treated the wet spot on the back of his head with a first aid kit from a pouch around her waist. Keo had also stuffed a handkerchief into the kid’s mouth in case he woke up screaming.

  They were sitting around the spot where Rupert had gone down, Keo with his back against a tree while Fiona sat next to the teenager’s still form. He had her M4 leaning against the trunk next to him. She had not gone for the kid’s weapon yet, which he was glad for. The last thing he wanted to do was kill her. Despite their initial meeting, he found that he liked her. She had a spirit about her that reminded him of Gillian.

  Are you still alive out there, Gillian? Did you make it to Santa Marie Island?

  Most of Pollard’s patrols, according to Fiona, were spread out along the shoreline looking for him this morning. The fact that they hadn’t spotted him when Zachary and Shorty brought him back in the canoe was a minor miracle.

  “You’re not wearing your war paint today,” Keo said. “Neither is the kid.”

  “We only put them on when we know we’re going into a firefight.” She shrugged, looking a little embarrassed. “It’s just something a group of the guys started doing, and the rest of us decided to join in. Besides, they thought you’d be nuts to return to the house. I guess you showed them, huh?”

  It’s unanimous. I don’t have a single working brain cell in my head.

  “You know why they put me with Rupert on this—according to them—pointless patrol?” Fiona asked him.

  “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  “He’s my punishment. For yesterday.”

  “This is Pollard’s way of saying you shouldn’t go around getting shot?”

  “Mostly it’s his way of saying I shouldn’t have let myself be taken. He blames me for losing the two of you at the house. If I wasn’t up there on the second floor being held hostage, the others would have assaulted with everything they had and taken you and Norris before he arrived.” She sighed. “So yeah, I guess he does blame me.”

  “At least he didn’t tie you outside to a tree and leave you out there at night.”

  She smirked. “It was probably because I got shot in the arm. I guess that gave me some extra bonus points or something, showed him that I at least put up a fight.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Up yours.”

  He chuckled before getting serious again. “What kind of shape is Norris in?”

  “He’s alive…”

  “Fiona,” he said, putting a little edge in his voice. “What have they been doing to him since last night?”

  “Pollard wants you. He knows you killed Joe. If it had been Norris, he would have killed your friend last night.”

  “Norris told him it was me?”

  “He didn’t have a choice. Pollard has people with him that know how to get information.” She shook her head. “Your friend’s in bad shape, Keo.”

  Keo didn’t reply right away. He didn’t doubt anything she was saying, and he hadn’t expected Norris to hold out under interrogation. Keo had seen twenty-somethings with bulging muscles break down under duress. There was no way Norris would—or should—have lasted.

  “They’re holding him at the park visitors’ building?” he finally said.

  She nodded. “Where else?”

  “How many people are back there now?”

  “Everyone who isn’t patrolling the woods for you at the moment.”

  “How many are we talking about?”

  “Thirty, probably. And almost every one of them heavily armed.”

  “Almost everyone? So not all of them?”

  “There are some people there just for support. They’re armed, but Pollard doesn’t expect them to engage in gunfights.”

  Keo glanced down at Rupert. “How many are like him?”

  “Like him?”

  “Young and wet behind the ears.”

  “He’s a rarity. Most of the ones out here with Pollard are older, and they’re pretty good at this.”

  “‘This’?”

  “Taking what they want. It’s a brave new world, Keo. Pollard preaches that every night. You’re either with him or you’re against him. With him, you get benefits. Against him, you get a bullet to the head.”

  Keo nodded. He hadn’t expected anything less from Pollard. You didn’t get to lead a band of trigger-happy survivors without being more than a little vicious. The secret to holding power for any length of time was the occasional exercise of that power. You couldn’t expect to be king forever if you didn’t chop off a head every now and then in the town square for everyone to see.

  “Tell me something,” Keo said. “Where does he get all the hardware? Grenades, assault rifles, and all that ammo. And these assault vests, tactical belts, and military equipment. I’ve been running around this part of the country for the last nine months, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “He didn’t say, but I always assumed he raided one of the army depots. Maybe Fort Damper? It’s around here, isn’t it? He’s ex-Army, so I’m assuming he’d know where to find all the guns he needs. It’s not like there’s anyone around to guard them anymore.”

  “It’s not Fort Damper.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Someone told me it burned down the night all of this happened.”

  “How about Fort Polk? Is it still standing?”

  “I have no idea,” Keo said.

  He spent the next few minutes trying to come up with a plan to save Norris that wouldn’t end up with the both of them dead. He was running out of options, and Pollard had all the advantage—not to mention all the manpower and guns. Those were two very difficult things to overcome. He could probably manage to slug it out against a dozen people if he was really lucky, but twenty? Thirty?

  Too many. Always too damn many…

  Fiona stared at him in silence for a while until she couldn’t stand it anymore. “So now what?”

  “I came back for Norris. I’m not leaving without him.”

  “You’ll never get close enough to get him back. If anything, you’re just giving Pollard what he wants by going there.”

  Keo picked up her rifle and tossed it back to her. He didn’t even know when he had decided to trust her, but at the moment, it seemed like the right thing to do. She caught it with her good arm, then picked up her handgun from the grass.

  He looked down at Rupert. “He’s going to be a problem.”

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  “If I leave the two of you here, can you promise me he won’t grab the radio and start blurting out where I’m going when he wakes up?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  Keo reached for his sidearm.

  “Wait,” she said. “Just…wait.” She paused for a moment, then, “Maybe I can make him understand.”

  Keo gave her a doubtful look.

  “He knows me,” she continued. “I�
�ve been watching out for him and Georgette since the day they joined us. I can talk him into it.”

  He wasn’t quite sure if she was trying to convince him or herself. Maybe a little of both.

  Keo stared at her so she would understand he meant it when he said, “If he doesn’t go for it, I won’t have any choice. You understand?”

  She nodded solemnly. “If I’m going to help you with this, you need to do something for me, too.”

  That took him by surprise. “I’m already letting you go.”

  “Just listen.”

  “Okay.”

  “When you leave, I want you to take me with you.”

  “Why?”

  “Besides the fact that Pollard doesn’t trust me anymore, everything has changed, most of it for the worse. Ever since his son died, he’s been erratic. He uprooted half of our group—almost all of the unattached singles—from the safety of Corden to come after you and Norris. Since then, we’ve been on the constant move, slogging through these woods in search of you two idiots.” She shook her head. “Don’t get me wrong. I knew what I was getting into when I joined up, but the way he’s obsessing over you, it’s… Look, I don’t want to be around when it all goes bad, okay? And take my word for it. It will go bad.”

  “It’s dangerous out there, Fiona. You have to know that.”

  “Really, thanks for the news flash, Walter Cronkite. I know it’s dangerous out there, but I’ll take my chances. Besides, I’m not telling you to dump me as soon as we get out of this place. What I’m saying is, I’d like to tag along wherever you go to next. Two is better than one, right?”

  “Three,” Keo said. “You, me, and Norris.”

  “Right,” she said. “You, me, and Norris. That’s what I meant.”

  He could see on her face that she didn’t believe a single word of it, so they had that in common.

  CHAPTER 9

  Keo gave Fiona space to work on Rupert, standing nearby while they talked in soft voices. Or Fiona talked, because Rupert mostly just looked confused, caught somewhere between wanting to run away, fighting Keo, and lying down and going back to sleep. Keo wasn’t entirely sure if she was getting through to the kid or if she was even close.