Road to Babylon (Book 9): The Ranch

by Sisavath, Sam

“Maybe…”

  “But you don’t believe it.”

  “Nope.”

  “Why?”

  “Just a feeling.”

  “Your feelings always right?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Bunker harrumphed. “Remind me why I let you stay here again?”

  “My charming personality.”

  “No, that’s not it.”

  “My good looks.”

  “That must be it,” Bunker said.

  Keo grinned and continued listening to the world outside his window. He thought he could hear the whump-whump-whump of the windmill turning behind the house next to the water tower. He could detect the crickets in the grass and cicadas in the area easily enough. They were still out there making noise. That was good. It was when the crickets and cicadas stopped altogether that he needed to worry.

  I know you’re out there. So what are you waiting for?

  What the hell are you waiting for?

  By the time the clock ticked and tocked to 9:00 p.m., Keo began wondering if they really were going to come. Maybe he was wrong; maybe Sadistic wasn’t ready yet. It’d attacked Longmire and taken its residents, but perhaps that was a gesture of intimidation. It wanted Keo to know it was here to create anxiety. From everything Keo knew about the creature, it had a thing for the theatrics. It really, really liked it when its victims feared it.

  It likes to play games. Maybe that’s what it’s doing now.

  Playing with me. Toying with me.

  Keo turned around and sat on the floor with his back against the wall to give his knees some rest. He wasn’t as young as he used to be, and he could only stand for so long before both legs got tired. Besides, when the attack happened, he’d know. He didn’t actually need to see them coming.

  Footsteps coming down the stairs, before shadows moved in front of him. Lara, appearing out of the back hallway. She’d been at her position on the second floor all night, watching the back of the house from one of the rear rooms.

  She walked across the dark interior of the great room now, making very little noise in her sneakers. She was similarly geared up—assault vest, gun belt, and an MP5K with a folded buttstock hanging from a shoulder strap. Lara had become very good with the submachine gun. Like him, she now preferred the smaller barrel for maneuverability and the lower weight compared to a fully-loaded AR rifle.

  Lara leaned against the wall next to him and peered out the window at the darkness outside. She didn’t say anything, but he could tell by her body language that she was just as anxious as he and Bunker were.

  “Anything at our six o’clock?” Keo asked.

  She shook her head. “Nothing yet. What about down here?”

  “Not a peep.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  Keo shrugged. “I’d kind of like to get it over with.”

  “Don’t be so impatient.”

  “Can’t help it.” He looked at her seriously. “Remember the plan. No heroics.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I know my priorities. I’m not going to be playing hero anytime soon.”

  “Good.”

  Lara tapped the Heckler & Koch hanging off her shoulder. “Besides, I got this and a magazine fully loaded with silver bullets. And there’s you out here. What more could a gal in my position ask for?”

  “How about an army?”

  “We do have an army, remember? They’re just not here.”

  Keo smiled. She had a good point. They did have an army. Black Tide, to be specific. But they were somewhere else right now.

  “How’s the baby doing?” Keo asked.

  “He or she’s doing fine,” Lara said. She sat down next to him and leaned her head against his shoulder. “How about you?”

  “Me? I’m hunky dory. Never been better.”

  “‘Never been better,’ huh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You couldn’t even get out of bed two months ago.”

  “That was two months ago. Today I’m as fit as a fiddle and twice as spry.”

  “Fiddles aren’t spry.”

  “They’re not lying in bed aching all over, either.”

  “That’s a good point.”

  “Is it?”

  “No, not really.”

  He smiled, and she did, too.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Lara said.

  “What about?”

  “When the baby’s born, we should probably recolor the room.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Definitely. Maybe baby blue.”

  “That sounds appropriate.”

  “I think so, too.”

  Bunker cleared his throat from across the room. “Hey, it’s my house. You might wanna talk to me first before you go redecorating my place.”

  Lara glanced over at him. “Hey, Bunker.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can we recolor our room when the baby’s born?”

  “Sure. Do what you want. Why’re you asking me?”

  She looked back at Keo and grinned. “Baby blue, then?”

  “If I can find a can of paint out there somewhere,” Keo said.

  “Home Depot.”

  “That’s at least fifty miles away. And how long do paints last, anyway?”

  “I think they last for some time, if stored properly.”

  “That’s the trick, isn’t it? If stored—” Keo stopped talking.

  Lara stared at him. “What?”

  “They’ve stopped,” he said, standing up and turning around.

  “What’s stopped?” Lara asked.

  “The crickets and cicadas.” He looked across at Bunker, who was also already on his feet and peering out the window. “You see anything?”

  Bunker didn’t answer. Instead, he picked up a pair of binoculars and peered through them.

  “Bunker?” Keo said.

  “Nothing yet,” Bunker said.

  Keo turned to Lara. “Time for you to go. Follow the plan. No meandering, got it?”

  She smiled. “That’s my line.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I know.” She kissed him quickly on the lips before pulling back. “Be careful.”

  “You too.”

  She turned and ran across the room. She didn’t go back up the stairs to the second floor, but continued on toward the back of the hallway until he couldn’t see her anymore.

  Keo looked back toward the window and out into the cold, dark night.

  Christ, it was dark out there. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think the rest of the world had simply been swallowed up by a pitch-black void and that there was nothing out there but emptiness. But of course, he knew better.

  Where are you, motherfucker? Show yourself…

  “You sure they’re going to bypass the stables?” Bunker asked from across the doors.

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” Keo said.

  That was a lie. He wasn’t sure. At all. But as much as Bunker cared for his four-legged friends, Keo cared more about the two-legged ones. At the moment, they didn’t have the manpower to protect the stables and the house at the same time. They’d locked down the stables, but the truth was, if the ghouls wanted in, they would probably get in. Certainly nothing was going to stop the Blue Eyes from breaking down the twin doors as if they were kindling. Keo was, though, counting on the creature wanting into the house more.

  “Bunker?” Keo said.

  “I see them,” Bunker said.

  “How many?”

  “Too many.”

  Keo had to smile at that. Too many when it came to ghouls seemed to be a very common answer.

  About fucking time, he thought as he checked the submachine gun one last time and took a deep, deep breath. Time to make the donuts…

  Eight

  They were on the roof, their movements like raindrops pelting the solar panels that provided juice to the night-lights on the floor behind Keo. As the echoes continued, dripping down to the great room, Keo and Bunker continued to wait.r />
  They didn’t attack the front doors or any of the other access points right away, even though they’d converged on the house from all directions and climbed the walls along the sides and rear, careful to stay away from the windows so they couldn’t be shot. That was how Keo knew it was out there.

  Sadistic.

  It was giving commands, telling the Black Eyes what to do.

  “This is what you were talking about,” Bunker said, his neck craned as he stared up at the ceiling, listening to the consistent but somehow unaggressive tap-tap-taps of footsteps coming from up there. “They’re not behaving like normal Black Eyes.”

  “Yeah,” Keo said. He remained at his window while Bunker did the same with his. “When there’s one of them out there, the attacks are more organized. Less predictable. They’re not going to make it easy for us.”

  “Hey, who wants easy, anyway?”

  “I do.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re not a fun guy, that’s why.”

  “I didn’t know this was supposed to be fun.”

  “You know how boring it gets out here? Yeah, this is fun. I’ll take it where I can get ’em.”

  Keo smiled. Surprisingly, he had a good feeling about the situation. For one, he wasn’t saddled with a couple of know-nothing civilians that he’d have to look out for. Instead, he had a brash rancher who was good with a gun and a combat veteran in Lara. The three newcomers could have been a potential weakness, but Lara was taking care of them. All in all, things could have been much worse.

  Is that Captain Optimism rearing his head? a voice asked from the back of his mind.

  You’re damn right.

  “What are they doing up there?” Bunker asked. He had stepped slightly away from his window and was trying to track the sounds of movements above him.

  They were moving constantly, but there were no obvious tells in which direction, or why. They were just…moving around for the sake of moving around.

  “I don’t know,” Keo said.

  “I thought you’d done this before,” Bunker said.

  “Every situation is different.”

  “This blue-eyed ghoul. It’s got a name?”

  It was a good question, and one Keo hadn’t actually thought about. He assumed that it did, but he’d just never asked the creature. For one, he didn’t care to know. And two… Well, he just didn’t give a damn what its name was.

  “Sadistic,” Keo said.

  “‘Sadistic?’” Bunker said. “That’s its name?”

  “It’s the name I gave it. Figured, if you name something, it has less power over you. Or something psychological like that.”

  “Is it working?”

  “Nah.”

  Bunker chuckled. “But they have names, right?”

  “Yeah, they do. And I’m sure this one has a name, too. I just never asked it.”

  “That’s rude.”

  “Yeah, well, it can kiss my ass.”

  “I’ll tell it you said that. Among other things.” Then, “So. Sadistic, huh?”

  “Yup.”

  “Sounds appropriate, considering everything you’ve told me about it.”

  The portable radio clipped to Keo’s hip squawked, breaking through the momentary quiet between them.

  “You guys hear that?” a voice asked through the tinny speakers. Lara.

  Keo unclipped his radio and pressed the transmit lever. “They’re on the rooftop.”

  “What are they doing?” Lara asked.

  “We don’t know yet. Nothing, for now.”

  “Nothing?”

  “For now.”

  “Are they attacking the doors yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “The windows?”

  “Negative on that one, too.”

  It didn’t take Lara very long to figure it out. “You’re right. It’s out there. A Blue Eyes.”

  “Yes,” Keo said.

  “Be careful, Keo.”

  “I will,” he was about to say but was interrupted by a very loud bam! as something struck the front doors behind him.

  No, not the double doors themselves, but the extra wooden barricade on the other side of the entrance. It wasn’t the familiar flesh-heavy attacks Keo was used to when it came to black-eyed ghouls. This one was rapid-fire and struck again and again—bam-bam-bam!—and each time both doors moved against the pounding.

  It wasn’t ghouls throwing themselves at the barricades, but something else. Something big and strong and effective.

  Keo took an involuntary step back, as did Bunker.

  “What the hell are they using out there?” Bunker asked.

  “I don’t know,” Keo said.

  The only way to see what the ghouls were using would be to open the metal slabs over the window to get a look. They’d closed both barriers as soon as the creatures showed themselves outside.

  “Open your window and see,” Keo said.

  “The hell with that!” Bunker said. “Maybe I don’t wanna see what’s out there right now.”

  “Don’t be such a baby.”

  “Wah wah,” Bunker said.

  Keo’s radio squawked again, and Lara’s voice asked, “What’s that noise?”

  “Something’s trying to come through the front doors,” Keo said into the radio.

  “Maybe you guys should start back here.”

  “Not yet.”

  “I agree with Lara,” Bunker said.

  Keo grinned across the room at him. “What’s the matter, Bunker? You scared?”

  “Hell yeah,” the rancher said.

  There was a massive crash!, louder than anything that preceded it, and the entire house seemed to shake from the impact.

  Keo almost lost his footing, but managed to stay upright even as the double doors burst open against the assault. The doors, and the barricade on the other side, spilled into the great room.

  Maybe they were right! Keo thought as he watched at least a dozen ghouls scrambling over the large steel object that had split the doors open.

  Dark black eyes peered in at him from underneath hairless domed heads and pruned black flesh. It didn’t matter how many times Keo came face-to-face with a ghoul, the sight of them—like small children, many bent over because of their deformed bones—always made him take a slight pause.

  It took Keo a couple of seconds to realize what that “object” they’d used to break open the door was: The four-legged 12-foot windmill that Bunker used to aerate a small pond behind the house. They had pulled the structure out of the ground and had used it as a battering ram.

  Now that’s improvised thinking!

  “Go go go!” Keo shouted even as he lifted the MP5 with one hand—the other was still holding onto the radio—and squeezed off a burst right at the now-wide open doors.

  The first wave of ghouls trying to come inside fell, the silver-tipped 9mm rounds ripping through their soft flesh and tearing into the ones behind them. Loud pings! echoed as bullets ricocheted off bone and kept going, some vanishing into the night while others managed to strike even more creatures in the background.

  Keo glimpsed Bunker running into the back out of the corner of one eye even as he himself backpedaled, sweeping the front entrance with the submachine gun. Wood chipped as his bullets struck the wall on the right side of the opening as he swung a bit too wide, but Keo didn’t care about that.

  Ghouls were falling as he fired. The staccato muzzle flash of his weapon and the whirring sounds of the parts doing their jobs filled the slightly-dark living room of the main house. Keo kept the trigger depressed until the MP5 ran empty.

  He heard Bunker’s voice, shouting, “What are you waiting for, an invitation?” from behind him just before the rancher’s AR-15 exploded from his left side.

  Keo spun, using the momentary respite to put the radio away even as he ejected the spent magazine on the H&K with his other hand. Bunker’s rifle flashed on his now-right side even as Keo ran. He reached down for a fresh magazine and slammed it home betw
een wide strides.

  “Go go go!” he shouted.

  Bunker immediately stopped firing and whirled around. Keo was already turning, facing the wide-open doors again.

  There was a stack of twisted bodies on the floor and even more outside in the front yard. They lay on top of one another, carpeting the ground with their black flesh and oozing thick blood. The room was already starting to stink, and it’d only been a few seconds.

  Only a few seconds!

  Keo couldn’t begin to count the number of dead. Two dozen, at least. Possibly three, but there couldn’t have been more—

  The sight of more ghouls running and stumbling over the fallen ones in their path reminded him this was no time to be counting. Keo lifted the MP5 for a better aim, left hand grabbing the underside of the weapon, and unloaded.

  He took out a fresh wave of ghouls with the first volley even as they staggered their way inside. They collapsed as if they’d run into an invisible wall, limping to the floor to join the ones already down there.

  Bullets pinged! off bones and vanished into the night outside, others pekking! into the house’s walls.

  And more were still coming in.

  Too many. Always too many.

  Jesus. Where did they all come from?

  Two months, he had to remind himself. Sadistic had had two months to prepare for tonight. While Keo was healing, not realizing their battle was still ongoing, the bastard was rebuilding its army.

  And to look at the ones bounding their way into the house, it’d been successful.

  Too goddamn successful!

  He retreated, the submachine gun bucking in his hands.

  “Again, what are you waiting for, an invitation?” Bunker shouted from behind him.

  Keo continued backpedaling, the MP5 spitting fire at the opening. He trusted Bunker to be where he needed the rancher, and vice versa. Because if he couldn’t trust the other man, then all of this was going to be a very short night!

  Ghouls collapsed in front of him, but more kept pouring inside.

  “Now!” Bunker shouted.

  Keo didn’t stop firing until the H&K was empty. He turned and darted toward the back hallway. Bunker wasn’t there. He was already moving toward the rear of the house, his silhouetted form running in front of Keo as he led the way.

  He was running past the staircase up to the second floor when he heard dull thudding from upstairs. Ghouls, trying to break their way into the house through the windows. They were going to have a long night ahead of them, because like the windows downstairs, the ones up there also had metal slabs over the windows for protection against unwanted entry.