Free The Isles of Elysium (Purge of Babylon, Book 6) by Sam Sisavath Page A

pulled Keo up from the floor. He paid very close attention to Donovan, who had his MP5SD and pack slung over his back.
    “Go for it, you know you want to,” Taylor said, grinning knowingly at him.
    Keo smiled back, but thought, Damn.
    Donovan pulled out an all-black tactical knife from a sheath strapped low to one of his thighs and sliced the zip ties around Keo’s ankle, but left the one around his wrists. Then Taylor gave him a (not so) friendly shove in the back as they led him outside.
    If the sun was ridiculously bright before, it was practically blinding as he walked down the driveway. The crisp morning air flooded his lungs, and for a moment Keo almost believed there was nothing wrong with the world. He took a moment to stare at the impressive sight of birds flocking in formation above him. That ended when Taylor gave him another shove in the back, this time with the cold barrel of his rifle.
    Steve turned in the street and led the way toward the eastern marina. Horace had taken point, while Jack limped on his two crutches behind him. They were moving slowly, probably for Jack’s sake. Keo let the cool air cleanse the remains of last night’s gas from his face and eyes. What he wouldn’t give for a bottle of water to wash away the rest.
    He was very aware of Donovan and Taylor moving step-for-step behind him. They were keeping their distance—Donovan further back than Taylor. He thought about making a run for it every time the narrow spaces between houses popped up to the left and right of him, but whenever he calculated the distance with the time he’d need to make it to safety, the results always came out against him surviving.
    “You stopped at Galveston Island on your way over here?” Steve, walking in front of him, asked.
    “I was thinking about going back for a visit,” Keo said. “Nice?”
    “Oh, yeah. Tons of things to see and do. The seawall in particular. Now that’s engineering.”
    “You from around here?”
    “Pearland. You know where that is?”
    “Nope.”
    “Up I-45. Close enough that I spent most of my free weekends down here. I’ve always wanted an oceanside house.”
    “So what’s stopping you now? Pick one. Or fifty.”
    “You know that old saying, ‘I don’t want to join a club that will have me’? Now that there’s no one around to keep me from taking any house I want, it doesn’t quite have the same cachet. Know what I mean?”
    “You a man who worries about cachet, Steve?”
    “Who doesn’t?”
    “I could care less.”
    “No?”
    “Nope. Give me a gun, a boat, and I’ll be out of your hair.”
    Steve turned around but continued backpedaling down the street. He smiled at Keo. “And if I don’t?”
    “I’ll probably end up killing you.”
    “Just like that?”
    “Just like that.”
    He chuckled, though it sounded just a little bit too forced. “One of these days, you’re going to tell me what you used to do for a living. Until then—” he spun back around, “—I’ll have to be satisfied with knowing I can put a bullet in your head any time I feel like it.”
    *
    They took all three boats with them, including Keo’s twenty-two-footer. Personally, with the bigger and more powerful vessels the soldiers had arrived in, Keo would have dumped his, but Steve had other plans. Like the one Jack had come in yesterday, Steve’s was an equal-size offshore model with two engines in the back.
    Steve had, he told Keo, approached Santa Marie Island last night using trolling motors to escape detection. Just that alone made him much smarter than all the other “soldiers” Keo had met the last few months, including the poor bastards that had assaulted Song Island.
    Once they put him inside Steve’s boat, Donovan zip tied his ankles back up and placed him on a bench up front alongside Gene.
    “You okay?” Keo asked the kid.
    Gene gave him a nervous smile. “Yeah, you?”
    “My eyes still sting a little.”
    “Mine, too.”
    “Can we get some water?” Keo