The Walls of Lemuria (20 page)

“I think just about anything will beat sleeping on a dirt floor,” Keo said.

“You coming, Earl?” Bowe called from the other side of the Bronco. He and Gavin looked as if they were already preparing to leave again.

“In a sec,” Earl said. He turned back to them. “Bowe thought he saw some deer tracks not far from here. We’re gonna go see where it leads. Deer population’s really thinned out; we hardly saw any the last few days.”

Levy walked over. “I can show them the house, Earl. I got a feeling Bowe saw rabbit tracks and thought they were deer.”

“Hey, screw you,” Bowe said. “They were definitely deer.”

“Whatever,” Levy said.

Gavin chuckled. “Levy hears gunshots all the time, and Bowe thinks he sees deer tracks all the time.”

“Hey, they were definitely deer!” Bowe shouted.

*

The door into
the house was a foot wider than the standard three feet, which made rolling Lotte in easy. There was also a small ramp, though Keo couldn’t imagine what Earl needed that for. They didn’t have to worry about tracking dirt inside because there was already plenty on the wooden floorboards. Keo could tell it wasn’t real wood from the glossy shine, but the construction was solid and it didn’t creak under their shoes, which probably meant concrete underneath.

Levy led them inside, then showed the girls where the bathroom was. Gillian and Rachel hurried off with Christine and Lotte, as if the water might run out if they didn’t get to it fast enough. Keo and Norris exchanged a brief chuckle.

“Keo,” Levy said, walking back to them, “that’s a weird name.”

“Tom was taken,” Keo said.

“Huh?”

Keo smiled. “It’s a joke.”

“Oh, gotcha,” he said, though Keo couldn’t tell if he really did “get” it. Levy looked as if he got confused easily.

Now that he was inside the house, Keo noticed the thick slabs of wood fastened over the two front windows. They were held in place by makeshift riggings that could be easily manipulated by pulling on welded link chains to lower the pieces completely over the openings. Both inch-thick blocks of wood had small, rectangular peepholes with a sliding metal covering, and simple latches at the bottom to hold them in place once they were brought down into position. The set-up wasn’t anything fancy, but then, it probably didn’t have to be to keep the creatures out.

The front door, too, had been worked on. Keo had thought it looked heavy when Levy was opening it earlier, and now he knew why. It was solid oak, but they had attached a second layer of lumber to it, effectively doubling the door’s strength. They had also drilled two sets of brackets on either sides of the doorframe, with the two pieces of 8 foot 2x4 that he guessed would be dropped across the door to barricade it leaning against the wall nearby.

“When did you guys reinforce the door and windows?” Keo asked.

“Earl’s idea,” Levy said. “The four of us put them together the same day we got here, using supplies Earl was going to build a garage with. The burglar bars are strong enough to keep those bloodsuckers out, but we didn’t want to take any chances.”

“And they work?”

“We’re still here, aren’t we?”

“Good enough for me,” Norris said.

The living room was as big as any house Keo had been in. There was a fireplace in the back with two comfortable looking sofas in front of it, along with an armchair in a corner and a couple of stools next to an island counter in the kitchen. The place clearly lacked a woman’s touch, which was something he noticed almost right away.

“Earl bought this place and built the house for his wife,” Levy said. “But then they split up and he sort of ignored it for a long time. Then one day he invites us out here for some hunting. That was two years ago, and I guess Gavin, Bowe, and me decided to help him finish the place. Plus, it was a good excuse to come hunting and drinking every weekend. When everything went down, we figured this was probably the safest place. You saw what happened in the cities?”

Keo nodded. “A smaller version of it, yeah.”

“We were working at the warehouse when it went down. We got real lucky.”

“How’s that?” Norris asked.

“It was a small warehouse and we managed to lock it down in time. Man, those things kept trying to get in all night. It was crazy.”

Keo looked around the room before stopping at a gun rack on the wall next to the fireplace. There were a couple of hunting rifles and a 12-gauge shotgun, and open boxes of ammo on top of a shelf. “Is this everything you guys have?”

“That?” Levy said, following his gaze. “That’s nothing. Wait till you see the armory.”

*

The house had
two back hallways, and Levy led them to the one with the basement. He opened the door and walked down wooden steps, a small squiggly bulb on the wall partially lighting their way. The basement had a solid concrete floor and walls, and a humming noise punctured the silence as a large LED panel powered on in the center of the room.

The basement, like the house above it, was built for space. It was one giant room with small 1x1 foot ventilation grills strategically placed along the top of the walls. Half of it was already filled up with stacks of moving crates, and one entire wall was covered with propane tanks of various sizes and brands—the hundred-pounders in the back and the smaller twenty-pounders up front. There had to be close to fifty in all.

“Where’d you get all the propane tanks?” Norris asked.

“We brought what we could fit into our vehicles from Corden the first morning,” Levy said. “We’ve been looting the rest from businesses between here and the city since.”

“What about the houses?” Keo asked.

“We were saving those up for later,” Levy said. “They’re in there, you know. The bloodsuckers. Hiding in the backs of those houses.”

Keo nodded. “We noticed.”

Levy headed to the far end, where Keo almost stopped in his tracks at the sight of the weapons piled on top of a shelf. There were boxes of ammo on the floor, so many that someone had gotten creative and stacked them into one big pyramid.

“Damn, son,” Norris said. “The ATF know you have this arsenal down here?”

Levy chuckled. “We grabbed everything we could find, along with the propane, before we hightailed it out of Corden.”

Keo picked up one of a dozen or so M4 carbines on the shelf. The M4 was a shorter version of the M16 and was just a shade over a pound lighter. He liked the M4. It was a good fighting weapon.

“Got those from a pawnshop,” Levy said. He pulled another weapon from a shelf and Keo smiled at the sight of the Heckler & Koch MP5SD. “Found this little ditty at the same place. The only one, unfortunately.”

“Daebak,”
Keo said.

“Huh?” Levy said.

“Nothing. May I?”

Keo put down the M4 and took the submachine gun. He ran his fingers along the stainless steel suppressor attached at the end of the barrel. The weapon felt light, and he found out why when he pulled out the long but empty magazine. The MP5SD looked in good condition, though he could tell it had been put to use before, and often.

Norris chuckled at Keo. “Jesus, kid, it’s just a gun. Don’t drool over it.”

Keo grinned back at him. He couldn’t help himself.

“We always bought our hunting gear from the guy who ran the pawnshop, so we knew he had all these gems in the basement,” Levy said. “Figured, what the hell. It wasn’t like there was a lot of people left in Corden to take them.”

“The four of you are the only survivors?” Norris asked.

“That we know of. But it’s not like we spent a lot of time looking. We drove up and down the city for a while that first day, then decided the best course of action was to split for the house. We’ve been trying to contact other people on the radio since we got here, but so far no luck. How about you guys?”

“Not counting those psychopaths at the gas station, we haven’t seen anyone since we left Bentley,” Norris said. “Even FEMA’s down.”

“Yeah, we tried FEMA, too. Nothing. Hell of a thing, huh? Power grid’s down, radio’s down. There’s just nothing out there. But we’ll keep looking. I mean, what else we gonna do, right?”

“Anyone claimed this?” Keo said, holding up the MP5SD.

“It’s yours,” Levy said. “I only play with American.” He said to Norris, “You’re welcome to the M4s. Complement that shotgun of yours.”

“You have any more of those?” Norris asked, pointing at Levy’s gun belt.

“As a matter of fact, yeah.” He sifted through another box and pulled out two tactical belts with pouches and a gun holster already attached. It was similar to the ones he and the others were wearing. “We brought extras.”

“The same pawnshop?” Keo said.

“Yup.”

Keo took the belt and picked through one of the crates loaded with handguns. He settled for a Glock G41 .45, then went hunting for magazines.

Norris decided on a G42 .380. “I had one of these back in the day.”

“Just like old times, huh?” Keo said.

“Not quite.”

Keo found a handful of magazines and loaded the G41, then stuffed the rest into one of the pouches.

“What about you?” Keo asked Levy.

Levy tapped the AR-15 slung over his back. “We got these babies nice and broken in. Plus—” he added like a proud parent “—we converted them from burst to full-auto. So if those assholes you tangled with show up here, they’re going to eat some lead and like it, that’s for damn sure.”

Earl came back
an hour later without any deer. “False alarm,” he said.

“Are there supposed to be a lot of deer around here?” Keo asked.

“The woods are usually thick with them.” He shook his head. “It probably has something to do with what happened three nights ago. I think those things might be feeding off the deer population.”

While the women were getting dressed after their long, hot showers, Keo and Norris helped Earl move his things from his room and over to Gavin’s. The house’s four bedrooms, each one with wooden floors and the same Spartan design, were split evenly among the two hallways. Earl might have built the house initially for his wife, but apparently she had never gotten around to putting her stamp on the place.

They started by moving Earl first, with Bowe up next. The tall twenty-something would be giving up his room to shack with Levy, whose room was in the same left side hallway. Rachel and Christine would take over Earl’s room in the right side hallway, with Gillian and Lotte settling in Bowe’s. That would give the women a little more privacy in a house that was suddenly very crowded.

Keo had to admit, Earl and the other three’s willingness to give up their space was impressive. He was expecting resistance, even downright hostility, but it was Earl and Bowe who had offered up the rooms to the women without any prompting, though Keo thought it was possible they had discussed it during their fruitless deer hunt.

The stark difference between Earl, Bowe, Gavin, and Levy and the four men with painted faces back at the gas station made Keo’s head spin. He had to wonder if he might have shot first and asked questions later if it was him who had stumbled across Earl and the others and not the other way around, especially just a day after the ambush.

Maybe. Maybe…

Although the deer hunt had come up empty, Gavin and Bowe remained in the woods while Earl came back to help Keo and the others settle in. It was more hospitality than Keo had expected from a complete stranger, but he was glad for it. After two nights in Bentley and a third night in the dirt basement, Earl’s house was a godsend.

“You really don’t mind us being here?” Keo asked Earl as they settled his bags into Gavin’s room. Levy’s was farther down the left side hallway. “Giving up your room in your own house?”

“Nah. Girls need space. Levy told you I built all this for my ex?”

“He did.”

“Turns out, she wanted more than just a house in the woods, I guess.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Hey, that’s life. She got on well, though. Last I heard she had remarried and was pregnant in Baton Rouge somewhere. The best thing the ex ever did was not demand I sell this place and give half of the sale to her. I still love her for that.” Then he brightened up, or at least did his best to shake those bad memories away. “Besides, you should see my apartment in the city. It’s half as big as this room.”