When he finally reached the vehicle and no one had fired a shot yet, Keo breathed easier, though he still couldn’t quite make his teeth stop their chattering. He was pretty sure they were snapping so fast and furious that there was a good chance he might end up biting his own tongue off by accident.
Death by chattering. Now that would be a hell of a way to go.
Fortunately, he still had his tongue when he climbed into the cart and turned the key. The raindrops landing on the solar panels above him sounded like machine-gun fire, which wasn’t quite the imagery he needed at the moment.
Keo stepped on the gas pedal and spun the wheel, aiming the slow-moving vehicle toward the front door of Gillian’s house. He turned around, then reversed into position, going up the slight step until half of the cart was out of the rain.
The door opened behind him and Dave came out with Jordan. He was carrying her on one side while Gillian, protruding belly and all, had the other. Keo had expected Jay and was taken aback to see the pregnant Gillian hobbling out of the door with Dave. Jordan was mummified in a thick black parka, the hood zipped up and covering almost the entire lower half of her face.
Dave carried the backpack he had brought with him, along with Owen’s M4. Keo had Ronny’s rifle along with his raincoat and gun belt.
“In the back!” Keo said. He had to shout to be heard over the pak-pak-pak of rain around them.
Keo grabbed Jordan’s unconscious form from Gillian, who stood back and watched him and Dave put her into the backseat. Dave slid in next to her unresponsive body, then slipped both arms around Jordan to keep her upright.
When Dave had secured Jordan in the back with him, Keo turned to Gillian.
She stood looking back at him in the doorway, trembling arms folded across her chest for warmth. Water dripped down her long raven hair, and despite the semidarkness, he was drawn to her green eyes.
Keo glanced past her and into the house, but there was no sign of Jay, though Owen and Ronny still lay where they had fallen. He turned back to Gillian, who had put on a pink bathrobe and looked every bit like the housewife she had become. But he easily pierced through that charade and saw the woman he had survived the end of the world with, who he had been trying, all this time, to get back to.
He opened his mouth to say something, but she shook her head and shouted over the rain, “I’ll see you again very soon.”
He nodded. “Soon.”
“Go,” she said, just as thunder boomed in the background and lightning lit up her face for a fraction of a second.
He turned to go when she reached out and grabbed his hand. He turned back around and she was there, pressing up against him with her body and her mouth. He inhaled in her scent and tasted her lips and forgot all about the cold.
For a while, anyway-until she pulled away and smiled.
He smiled back (it came out much easier than he had expected) before letting go of her hand and turning around and climbing into the golf cart.
He removed the M4 and leaned it across the dashboard within easy reach. He didn’t look back at her but instead used the rearview mirror. She hadn’t moved and stood shivering in the doorway, watching him back.
Keo stepped on the gas and the cart hummed to life and started moving, taking him, Jordan, and Dave back into the hellacious storm.
BOOK THREE
CHAPTER 22
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Dave said from the backseat of the golf cart. He had to shout, or else Keo wouldn’t have been able to hear him over the pouring rain.
No, but what the hell choice do we have?
“Yeah, sure,” he said instead. “If there’s shooting, stay low and keep Jordan safe.”
“You can’t drive and shoot.”
“This isn’t even remotely close to driving. This is sitting in a slow-moving piece of crap. Just keep her head down.”
“And mine.”
“Yeah, you too.”
Dave smirked at him in the rearview mirror. He had every right to be concerned, because Keo himself was concerned. There was nothing about riding through a rainstorm in a slow-moving golf cart that made him feel like he was going to survive the night.
The structural husks around him-homes that were supposed to be occupied-didn’t help to convince him this was going to end very well for him, Dave, and Jordan. A few lights from a window here and there managed to peek through the unending cascade of rain, but for the most part the houses might as well be abandoned.
The streets were no different. Water flooded the roads, threatening to overwhelm the cart’s small tires. Keo felt like he might lose control of the steering wheel at any second, that at any moment he might hit a large puddle and end up flowing backward with the current.
This must be what it feels like to ride the Titanic after it hit the iceberg…
…only less fun.
It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t so goddamn cold. He had been soaked to the bone for so long that he didn’t remember the last time he wasn’t shivering uncontrollably. If not for the fact he was gripping the wheel with both hands, his arms might have been shaking like a crackhead in need of a fix.
The only other sensation was the tap-tap-tap against the back of his seat: Dave’s feet kicking, probably involuntarily. He just hoped the extra clothes swaddling Jordan, along with Dave’s body heat, were enough to keep her from freezing to death. There was absolutely no guarantee she would wake up at all. Depending on how the next few minutes went, Keo might wish he were shot up with drugs, too.
He glanced up at the rearview mirror but could only see two black lumps huddled against one another, forming a single shape in the backseat. They were both wearing dark clothes, which helped to keep them somewhat invisible-
Shit.
Two figures, standing outside a house at the corner of the street to his right. He only managed to make them out because the homeowner was holding an LED lamp, and the bright light illuminated all three figures against the open door.
Keo kept both hands on the steering wheel but made a mental note of how far the M4 rifle was from his hand as he continued driving up the street.
They must have caught the barely visible headlights of the golf cart or heard the splashing of tires against the flooded road, because they both turned their heads in his direction. He couldn’t have made out their faces if he wanted to, even though they were barely twenty meters from his position. He kept the cart moving steadily forward, not that he really had any choice. The only other options were to take his foot off the gas pedal and slow down, or-
Well, that was it. He already had the pedal pushing against the floor. The damn vehicle was just slow.
As he passed them by, one of the soldiers turned back to talk to the civilian, but the other one continued to look after him. Keo stared forward and kept going, but as soon as he was on the other side of the intersected street, he glanced at his passenger-side mirror and saw the soldiers going into the house.
Close one.
He wondered if Dave had seen them or if he was too busy trying not to freeze to death in the back. Since Dave hadn’t said anything, it was probably the latter.
They were halfway to the front gate now, and he was feeling a lot better. Not that he thought they were any closer to making it out of T18 alive, though he had settled on the odds of them exiting the subdivision at slightly under forty percent. The presence of those two soldiers had knocked those odds down some, but having passed them, he thought forty percent was probably about right.