Free The Fields of Lemuria by Sam Sisavath Page A

just over forty feet long and somewhere around fifteen feet wide. There were already a couple of people onboard, including one man inside the long cabin in the middle. The second one was manning a gas grill at one corner of the foredeck. Keo smelled more cooking fish and licked his lips.
    “Hungry?” Allie said.
    “I’ve been surviving on plants, MREs, rain water, and dirt for the last few months.”
    “Lucky you, we have plenty of fish to share.”
    “What kind of fish?”
    “The cooked kind. You on a diet?”
    “Seafood diet. You know what that is?”
    “What am I, five years old?”
    “You don’t look five, no.”
    “Don’t get too comfortable. This isn’t a date. I could still toss you overboard at any moment.”
    “Understood.”
    Allie swung her long legs over the boat’s railing without any trouble. Freed from the zip ties, Keo followed suit, with his new bodyguard bringing up the rear. The twenty-something redhead, Granger, had one hand permanently on the butt of his holstered Glock. Granger also had Keo’s pack and MP5SD, while Zachary and Shorty had headed over to a tent somewhere along the beach.
    Granger was smart enough to keep a reasonable distance, not that Keo was entertaining the idea of escaping. There was no point that he could see. Allie and her people clearly didn’t intend to harm him, despite all her unveiled threats. He knew killers when he saw and heard them, and he wasn’t in the company of killers here.
    “How long has it been?” he asked.
    “What’s that?” she said, leading him along the side of the boat, the large box-shaped cabin to their left.
    “Since you guys shoved off land.”
    “About one week after the world stopped making sense. We initially had just this one houseboat, but we added the others as more people showed up over the next few weeks and months.”
    “Whose idea was this?”
    “Mine.” They reached the foredeck, where Allie pointed to the man standing in front of a metal grill rooted to the boat. Fish sizzled, and the smell made Keo’s mouth water some more. “That’s Bill. Bill, this is Keo.”
    Bill, who looked to be in his fifties, gave him a perfunctory nod. “What kind of name is Keo?”
    “Jimmy was taken,” Keo said.
    Allie smirked. “That’s a running gag with you?”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Whatever. Follow me.”
    She led him into the cabin, which was surprisingly spacious. A man in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, sitting in the officer’s chair in front of the helm reading a magazine, stood up and shook his hand when they entered.
    “Gabe, Keo. Keo, Gabe,” Allie said. “Gabe’s in charge of making sure the boats don’t sink in the middle of the night.”
    “She’s exaggerating my qualifications,” Gabe said. “I’m just a beach bum.”
    Gabe was in his early forties and probably a little too tanned for his own good. Keo wondered if that was an issue with the people here, with the sun always beating down on top of them with only the tents and cabins for cover.
    “You staying a while?” Gabe asked.
    “Not if I can help it,” Keo said.
    “We’ll see about that,” Allie said, and gave him a long look. “You could use a little cleaning up.”
    “Is that some kind of subtle hint?”
    “I didn’t know I was being subtle.” She wrinkled her nose. “You can use that room,” she said, pointing to the back room. “That’s also where I and others sleep, so don’t touch anything. I’ll get Granger to bring you some spare clothes, and we’ll talk over fish when you’re done.”
    “You have a working shower in there?”
    She laughed. “No, genius. Use the lake, like the rest of us. Then you can change in there. Unless, of course, you like letting everything hang out.”
    *
    He swam around the island for the next ten minutes, washing every part of him with a bar of soap that Granger had tossed over while the redhead stood along the side of Allie’s houseboat doing his best not to