The Walls of Lemuria by Sam Sisavath Read Free Book Online Page B

now and then he swiped at beads of sweat along his forehead, though he didn’t seem affected by the sun shining in his eyes. He had all the telltale signs of a man who hadn’t slept in the last twenty-four hours. Despite the stress spread liberally across his face, Aaron looked young. Early twenties, Keo guessed. Aaron lived a few blocks away and had arrived at the police station about the same time that Norris and Rachel did last night.
    Norris looked in direct contrast to Aaron; he was calm despite the incident at the gas station earlier. The fifty-six-year-old ex-cop from Orlando, Florida, was at home with the shotgun, and if last night’s events had turned his world upside down, he didn’t show it.
    “I saw shell casings in the parking lot,” Keo said to Norris.
    “Wasn’t me,” Norris said. “We got here after all of that happened. It couldn’t have been too long, though; the blood was still wet then. Whoever was in here before us must have gone outside and didn’t come back before we arrived. They left the doors unlocked and we found the keys on the floor.”
    “We came here because it was a police station, like you did,” Rachel said.
    She sat next to her daughter, occasionally reaching over to flick at a piece of cheese or chip clinging to the girl’s pink shirt and dress. Mother and daughter both had blonde hair and blue eyes, and they clearly adored each other. There was no doubt Christine was going to grow into an attractive woman, just like her mom.
    If she lives long enough to grow up, anyway.
    “You have no idea what happened to the cops?” Keo asked.
    “Dead,” Aaron said. His voice sounded hollow and drained. “Probably dead. I heard a lot of shooting. Must be dead.”
    “You said there were reports on the radio,” Keo said to Rachel. “What were they saying?”
    “Something about attacks in the cities,” Rachel said. “It was kind of confusing. I don’t think the news really knew what was happening. And no one was telling them, so there was just so much guessing, rumors…” She adjusted Christine’s hair, and the girl smiled back at her mother. “I didn’t want to risk it out there alone with just the two of us, so I decided to get off the main road and find a place to spend the night. Bentley was the first town we ran across.”
    “She picked me up along the highway,” Norris said. “I’d lost my ride.”
    “We weren’t the only ones who decided to take the first exit off the interstate,” Rachel said. “There was a big pileup and Norris was just walking along the shoulder. He looked friendly enough.”
    “No, I didn’t,” Norris said, “but she was nice enough to give me a ride, anyway.”
    Rachel gave Keo a pursed smile. “I took a chance. What about you, Keo? Where were you when all of this happened? Do you have any idea what ‘this’ is?”
    “I was at a motel down the road,” Keo said.
    “But you saw them, right?”
    Keo nodded. “I saw them.”
    “They’re not human. They can’t possibly be human.”
    “They used to be.” He told them about Delia. “She was bitten by one of those things. It took a while, but she finally succumbed. That’s how it works, I think. They bite you, you die, and then you become one of them. For them to have done what they did last night—in one night—there had to be thousands of them spread out across the state when it started. They had to be coordinated, too. This isn’t some random thing that just happens. Last night was an orchestrated invasion.”
    “An invasion,” Rachel repeated quietly.
    “It must have been hell in places with big population centers. It would spread like wildfire and their numbers would explode exponentially every hour. One becomes two, two becomes four, four becomes eight…”
    “Like a disease,” Norris said.
    “A goddamn effective one, yeah. At least, that’s what I saw with my own eyes. I’ll leave it to the historians to come up with the fancy words. All I know is, don’t let