The Walls of Lemuria (10 page)

The Lancer was
a full-size truck and weighed over 5,000 pounds. It had a maximum payload of over 1,500 pounds and was powered by a 5.7L V8. It also had a huge front grill and when Keo backed it up and slammed on the gas, it had no trouble whatsoever punching a hole into the side of the hospital.

Keo hadn’t backed the truck all the way across the parking lot because he didn’t need that much of a head start. He wanted just enough speed to penetrate the wall, but too much and the collision would send huge blocks of brick flying across the room at Gillian and the others like missiles.

The wall caved in as expected, chunks of it raining down and spiderwebbing the windshield of the Lancer from one side to the other and nearly collapsing the roof of the cab above him. He ducked his head, just in case. Keo knew he had lost the truck even before he saw smoke billowing out of the crumpled front hood. Trucks were not meant to be used as battering rams, but they sure made for a good one in a pinch.

He couldn’t see much of anything through the smoke and debris outside the cracked windshield. He tried reversing the Lancer, but the rear wheels spun uselessly on him. After about ten seconds of futility, he turned off the engine and kicked the bent door open just enough to angle his way out.

Jake was there to lend a hand, pulling him free from the destroyed vehicle. “Jesus. I can’t believe you just did that.”

“Worked, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, but… Jesus, you’re crazy.”

Keo grinned at him.

“He’s not wrong,” a familiar female voice said.

Figures were climbing out of the rubble in front of the truck through the makeshift hole in the wall. One of them was a tall woman with black hair wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, coughing as she pushed a girl in a wheelchair outside. The girl had her shirt pulled over her mouth and nostrils to keep out the smoke.

“You’re insane, Keo,” Gillian said with a big smile on her face. “I think I’m in lust.”

Gillian had been
hiding in the hospital morgue with ten others—three nurses and six people who had either been waiting to see a doctor or were visiting patients, and a young girl named Lotte, who was in a wheelchair. Lotte, whose broken right leg was covered in a cast from a car accident, was fourteen, and Jake was wheeling her up the ramp into the back of the ambulance.

“How many are coming with us?” Keo asked Gillian.

They watched the cars driving away, all of them in a hurry to get somewhere. There had been a lot of questions about what had happened last night, and Keo had told them everything he knew, which wasn’t much. He didn’t blame them for not coming to the police station with him and Jake, or going to Fort Damper. They had families, friends, and loved ones they needed to find, despite the odds being against them.

By the time the last vehicle pulled out of the parking lot and disappeared up the street, it was just Keo and Gillian standing next to the ambulance, with Jake in the back getting Lotte’s wheelchair strapped in for the drive. Jake had found the keys to the ambulance still dangling from the ignition.

“It’s just Lotte, me, and Taylor,” Gillian said. “Lotte’s family was killed in the accident that put her in the wheelchair about a month ago. Some cousins were supposed to come get her next week.”

Taylor was one of the nurses, a pretty girl still wearing her blue nursing scrubs. She stood next to the ambulance, absently scraping at the dried blood on the front of her shirt and along her pant legs with her nails.

“She told me she’s only been in town for about a year,” Gillian said, looking over at Taylor. “She had a boyfriend, but he left a few months ago for a job in Monroe, so she doesn’t have any friends or family, either.”

“What about you?” Keo asked. “You’re taking the end of the world pretty well.”

“Am I?”

“Better than her,” Keo said, looking at Taylor.

“I have an ex-husband running around out there somewhere. He can stay out there for all I care. Other than that, the only thing the end of the world means is I don’t have to pay the rent anymore.”

“What were you doing at the hospital last night?”

“I wasn’t feeling well all week, and the over-the-counter stuff I was taking was just making it worse.”

She caressed her throat. Gillian was tall at five-eight and had a long neck to match. She was a strikingly beautiful woman, and as promised, she had lovely green eyes that he wouldn’t mind getting lost in at the first opportunity.

“It was a last-minute thing,” she continued, “and the hospital was on the way home from work. It wasn’t like I had a social life, anyway.”

“So, what did you have?”

“I don’t know. All of this happened before I got the chance to see someone. Wouldn’t it be ironic if coming here saved my life, all because I thought I was coming down with something? That morgue might have been the best thing to happen to me last night.”

“Where were you coming home from?”

“What’s with all the questions?”

He shrugged. “We’re not going anywhere until Jake’s done strapping Lotte in. I don’t like awkward silences.”

“Bentley Savings and Trust,” she said. “I’m a bank teller. Well, I was a bank teller, I guess. Not much use for banks anymore, right?”

“I guess not.”

“So, what’s your story?”

“I don’t have a story.”

“Bull. What’s a guy like you doing in a two-horse town like Bentley?”

“I was on vacation.”

“In Bentley?”

“Why do you sound so surprised?”

“Did you not hear when I called this place a two-horse town?”

“It has its charms.”

She smirked. “Where were you on vacation from?”

“Work.”

“I got that part. What’s work?”

“I did things for people who needed things done.”

“That’s it?”

“Yup, that’s it.”

Jake exited the back of the ambulance. “I got her strapped in, and we’re good to go.”

Keo glanced at his watch. It was almost noon. “I talked to Norris, told him we were on our way. He said he’d wait for us for another half hour.”

Jake nodded, the relief obvious on his face. The idea of having to chase after Norris and the others—including Tori and Henry—on the road had made him more than a little anxious.

“Can you drive this thing?” Keo asked him.

“Sure. It’s like driving a really big tractor.”

“Really.”

“I have no idea,” Jake said. “Can’t be that hard.”

“I’ll sit in the back with Lotte and Taylor,” Gillian said.

“Okay,” Keo said. “You can take inventory of what they have so we can clean it out when we reach the station. I was hoping to grab some medical supplies from the hospital, but I guess this’ll have to do.”

He climbed into the front passenger seat of the ambulance. Jake was already settled in behind the steering wheel and adjusting his seat belt.

“You sure you can drive this thing?” Keo asked.

“Pretty sure,” Jake said.

“Good enough.” He unclipped the radio and keyed it. “Norris.”

“You took your sweet time,” Norris said through the radio.

“We’re on our way back now.”

“Tell me you’re not coming back empty-handed. I mean, besides the others.”

“We’re coming in an ambulance. There might be things in the back we can use.”

“Well, that’s something, I guess.”

“Any troubles on your end?”

“No. Just get your ass back here, kid. No more delays.”

“Roger that.”

Keo put the radio on the dashboard as Jake started up the ambulance and maneuvered them out of the parking lot. He seemed to be handling the large vehicle well enough, so Keo looked back through the opening between the two front seats. Gillian was sitting next to Lotte, whose wheelchair was strapped against the wall. The teenager was playing with a pebble turquoise bracelet around her left arm. Taylor sat further back, staring out the security glass of the twin doors at the hospital in the background.

“Fort Damper, huh?” Gillian said.

“In absence of any other viable options, it’s the best option at the moment,” Keo said.

“And that makes sense to you?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Are you always this negative?”

“It helps to keep me from being constantly disappointed. What kind of name is Keo, anyway?”

“Fred was taken,” he said.

*

The rain started
just as they turned into the parking lot of the police station, thick heavy drops pelting the roof of the ambulance like machine-gun fire. Aaron was on the roof when they pulled in, and he hurried off to get away from the rain while Norris ran outside as Jake parked as close to the front doors as he could.

Keo opened the back and helped Taylor out, then lowered the ramp while Gillian pushed Lotte’s wheelchair down.

“Looks like we’re in for a heavy storm!” Keo shouted over the rain at Norris.

“This is what I get for waiting for you!” Norris shouted back.

“Do we still go in this?”

Norris shook his head. “The only thing worse than rushing in a crisis is rushing in a crisis during a rainstorm! We still have time. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll stop soon.”

Keo nodded back, though he didn’t believe a single word of it.

He saw that Rachel’s SUV was parked in the handicap spot nearby, and its back was already full of supplies. Jake and his would-be father-in-law’s trucks had also been moved closer to the front doors.

The rain pummeled them, and the parking lot had already been covered in puddles in the couple of minutes since the shower began. Keo felt as if he were drowning; it was difficult to breathe, and his clothes clung to his bones. It didn’t help that the wind had picked up and was howling around them like some banshee.

“Let’s get out of this monsoon!” Keo shouted.

Norris led them up the walkway to the front doors.

“What about the medical supplies?” Gillian shouted at Keo.

“We’ll get them later, when it stops raining!”

She wiped water off her face with one hand and looked up at the skies. They had gotten impossibly dark in such a short time. “Looks like it might rain for a while!”

Aaron, soaking wet, stood holding the doors with Henry for them. They rushed inside, trudging through an obscene amount of water as lightning flashed across the horizon and thunder boomed somewhere nearby.

If this isn’t the end of the world, it sure as hell sounds like it.

When they finally made it into the lobby of the police station, Rachel and Tori hurried over with rolls of paper towels and they wiped the water off them as much as they could, but it was obvious it wasn’t enough. Keo’s teeth were still chattering and so were the others’ around him. Christine, Rachel’s daughter, looked on with fascination from a swivel chair behind a large desk.

“What about Damper?” Keo asked Norris.

The ex-cop shook his head. “We’re not going anywhere in this weather, kid.”

“What about when it stops?” Rachel asked.

“Depends on how long it lasts. Same difference if there’s still a lot of water on the roads. We’ll just have to wait and see. Play it by ear.”

“We were safe here last night. They couldn’t get in. If we have to, we should be fine staying here again tonight. Right, Norris?”

“If we have to stay, we should be,” Norris nodded, though Keo wasn’t quite sure if he was trying to convince her or himself.

“So, no road trip?” Gillian said behind them.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Keo said.

*

Gillian was going
through the personal lockers in the back room. There were two dozen of them, twelve on each side, but only six had anything in them. They had names on the doors and combination locks that Norris and Keo had pried open for their contents, which turned out to be mostly clothes. Keo had been hoping for one of the weapons that would load those boxes of 5.56 rounds.

There were no windows in the room, but there was enough natural light from the hallway spilling in through the open door to see with. They could hear the rain pounding on the rooftop above them. There were no hints that it would stop anytime soon, and, in fact, seemed to be stretching itself out.