Road to Babylon (Book 9): The Ranch

by Sisavath, Sam

  “In flashes. It comes and goes.”

  “And here I thought I’d made an impression.”

  “But if I concentrate,” it continued as if he hadn’t interrupted it, “I can remember the things we spoke to one another that night. The things that happened. The others… I don’t remember their names.”

  “Sharon. Liz. Carter.”

  “Yes. Yes…”

  “You don’t remember them, but you remember me?”

  “Yes…”

  A slight shiver raced up and down his spine. He wasn’t sure he liked the idea of a blue-eyed ghoul remembering things about him when it couldn’t the names of friends that it had traveled with for years before meeting him.

  No, that wasn’t true.

  He was pretty goddamn sure he didn’t like it.

  “Jackson,” Keo said.

  “Not anymore,” it hissed.

  “Yeah, well, I gotta call you something.”

  “Call me whatever you want.”

  “Jackson it is.” Then, when the creature didn’t say anything, “So why did you ask for this meeting, Jackson?”

  “Father,” it hissed.

  “Whose father?”

  “Our father.”

  “I don’t—”

  The ghoul, Keo thought. It’s talking about the blue-eyed ghoul. Sadistic.

  “Ah,” Keo said. “What about it?”

  “He must be stopped.”

  Keo wasn’t sure what he had expected when he first decided to come here, but maybe this was exactly it. Even so, it still caught him by surprise.

  “Just to be sure we’re talking about the same thing,” Keo said. “We’re talking about the other blue-eyed ghoul. The one from Paxton.”

  “Yes…” Jackson hissed.

  “Does it have a name, by any chance?”

  “Father.”

  “Just Father.”

  “Yes.”

  I guess that’s a no on a name.

  “Why do you want to stop him?” Keo asked.

  “Does it matter?” it said.

  “Oh yeah, I think it matters. It matters a lot.”

  “Why does it matter? You want the same thing.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re asking me to team up. I need a pretty goddamn good reason to do that. You do realize what you are, right?”

  The creature’s robe rustled, and it looked away for a brief couple of seconds. Keo wasn’t sure if he had just insulted it or—

  No, he had done exactly that.

  “No offense,” he added.

  “He must be stopped,” the ghoul said.

  “You said that already. But you haven’t told me why.”

  “What does it matter?”

  “Oh, it matters. So, why?”

  It didn’t answer right away. Instead, its eyes ebbed and flowed in the darkness. Intensely bright one second, dimmed the next, then back again.

  “He’s sacrificing the children,” the ghoul finally said.

  “What children?” Keo said.

  “The others.”

  “The black-eyed ones.”

  “Yes…”

  “What do you mean, it’s sacrificing them?”

  “Last night…”

  “What about it?”

  “He wasted their lives attacking the house when it wasn’t necessary. We should never have gone through the front doors and allowed you to murder the children unnecessarily.”

  “Murder?” Keo thought.

  But he quickly understood. Of course this thing would view killing a swarm of attacking black-eyed ghouls as “murder.” To it, they were children—one of its own. To Keo and Bunker last night, they were just an unnatural horde of killers.

  “He won’t stop,” the creature continued. “Father will waste their lives to taunt you. It’s his way. It’s his joy.”

  “Yeah, your Father likes to play, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes…”

  “What about you? You like to play, too?”

  It didn’t answer right away.

  Five seconds…

  Ten…

  “No,” it finally said.

  Bullshit, Keo thought, but he said, “So why don’t you tell your father to stop his fucking games and leave us alone?”

  “He won’t listen. He won’t stop. He will play with you until he’s bored. And he’s not bored yet. You are…” It let the rest trail off.

  “What?” Keo said. “I’m what?”

  “…a challenge,” the ghoul said. “Father is having too much fun. He will needlessly waste the children’s lives to continue his games with you.”

  “But not you. You actually care about the Black Eyes.”

  “Yes…”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re my children, too.”

  “You created them.”

  “Some of them, yes.”

  “Longmire. You were there.”

  “Yes…”

  “How many—”

  “Does it matter?” it hissed, cutting him off.

  Keo shook his head. No, it didn’t matter. But if he ever needed a quick reminder that he was talking to a blue-eyed ghoul, one that he was going to kill the first chance he got, it had just given it to him.

  “Eighty-two at last count,” Bunker had said about the number of souls in Longmire before the entire town was snuffed out of existence two nights ago. “No. Make that eighty-three. Angela gave birth while you were running around in Paxton, having fun without me.”

  Eighty-three lives. Some of them were probably at the ranch last night, pouring through Bunker’s front doors. The rest would show up tonight, and the night after that, and the one after that…

  “Does it know you’re here?” Keo asked. “Your father?”

  “No,” the creature hissed.

  “Are you sure about that?” He tapped his temple. “Isn’t it inside your head right now? Maybe it’s listening.”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “How are you so sure?”

  “I’ve learned to control my thoughts, to put up barriers. He’s there. He’s always there, and he always will be. His blood flows through my veins, just as it flows through all of his children’s. But I can hide from him. I’m doing that now.”

  Keo remembered Frank telling him the same thing, about erecting mental walls to keep the ghouls from reading his thoughts. They were even tracking him, using the psychic connection that linked all the ghouls. The closer they were to him, the easier he was to find. But Frank had managed to block them out, and eventually used that weakness to his advantage. To humankind’s advantage.

  “Where is it now?” Keo asked. “Your father.”

  “That isn’t important,” the creature said.

  “If you tell me where it is, I can go there and put it out of its misery. That would solve both our problems.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “There are others with Father. You would harm them.”

  You’re goddamn right I will.

  He said, “But that’s exactly what you want me to do. That’s the whole point of this meeting. You want me to harm him.”

  “Yes.”

  “You want me to kill him.”

  “He will sacrifice all the children. I can’t allow that.”

  There was something in its voice that Keo couldn’t ignore. It came through loud and clear, so human-sounding that, for a moment—just a brief flash—Keo almost forgot this was a blue-eyed creature standing in front of him.

  Its words, he realized, were dripping with regret.

  “All right,” Keo said. “Then how are we going to stop it?”

  “By working together,” it hissed.

  “That’s easier—”

  The crack!, then the resulting echo, of a gunshot stopped Keo in midsentence.

  He spun around toward the open door.

  The shot had come from outside—where Bunker was waiting for him. />
  Sixteen

  Bunker.

  Shit!

  Keo was running toward the open door even as the shot continued to echo. It seemed to go on forever.

  One second became five, then ten, then a minute.

  Or maybe it was only a few seconds in total.

  Halfway to the door, Keo glanced back over his shoulder at Jackson. Or the ghoul that Jackson had become.

  Blue eyes glowed in the darkness, watching him back. The creature hadn’t gone anywhere. But of course it hadn’t, because it couldn’t. It was stuck here, in this building full of fun house mirrors, because of the sun outside. It would have to wait until nightfall to move again.

  The crack! of another rifle shot drew Keo’s attention back to the street outside.

  Bunker!

  He finished his dash toward the opening, the bright sunlight from the other side giving the door an eerie glow like it was a portal to another universe instead of just a way out into the carnival grounds beyond.

  Keo burst through the open door and onto the floor porch, scanning the empty dirty street outside for signs of Bunker, but the rancher wasn’t there. The horses were also gone—

  A pool of blood in the dirt, just about where he’d last seen Bunker. It was fresh, the wetness glistening—

  “Get back inside, you idiot!” a voice shouted.

  He tracked the voice to the bumper car platform less than ten meters across from him. It was Bunker. He was crouched between two of the “cars”—a spotted white one and a striped yellow.

  The man was waving frantically at him. “Inside! Get your ass back inside!”

  Keo was going to ask him, “What happened?” when the crack! of a rifle shot pierced the chilly air, and Keo thought, Oh, fuck.

  He expected to take the bullet in the head or somewhere else on his body, but instead he was thrown backwards even as he felt a heat trail slicing through the air at about the same spot where his head had been only milliseconds earlier. He heard the echoing pek! as the round buried itself into the termite-infested floorboards even as he was jerked, roughly, back into the building.

  Keo landed on his ass, then his back, followed by his head. Pain coursed through him, but it was a hell of a lot better than eating a bullet, which was what he would have done if he hadn’t been pulled back into Crystal Lil’s.

  …pulled back into Crystal Lil’s…

  What the fuck just happened? Keo thought, even as he scrambled up to his feet, searching for—then quickly finding—the MP5 still slung over his shoulder.

  He was on his knees when he spun around just in time to see the creature gliding, quickly, back into the shadows. It didn’t move nearly fast enough, though, and the acidic stench of vaporized ghoul flesh stung Keo’s nostrils as it filled the hallway around him.

  The ghoul. Jackson. It had grabbed and pulled him back into the building in the nick of time.

  It had saved his life.

  …and in doing so, it had exposed parts of itself to sunlight.

  Keo couldn’t just smell the strong stinging odor, but he could see bleached-white bones revealing itself just before the ghoul managed to pull itself completely back into the comforting safety of darkness on the other side of the hallway.

  Jesus Christ. It saved my life.

  A fucking blue-eyed ghoul saved my life!

  “Keo!”

  Bunker, shouting at him from outside.

  Keo finished scrambling to his feet and turned around before running back to the door. He was shocked at how far the ghoul had pulled him back into the room. If it’d clamped its bony fingers around his head when it’d done that, it might have detached his head from his shoulders completely; a similar fate if it’d gone for one of his limbs. Instead, it had grabbed a handful of the back of his jacket to save his life.

  …to save his life.

  “Keo!”

  Bunker again. For all Keo knew, Bunker might have thought he’d been shot and fallen through the door. It certainly felt that way to him at the time.

  Keo ignored the presence of a blue-eyed ghoul behind him—he could feel its hot and warm presence, smell its still-fresh scorched flesh in the air—because he didn’t need to fear it anymore. God help him, but he’d quickly—and he thought, rightfully—concluded that he was safe in its company. After all, if it’d wanted him dead, all it would have had to do was not do anything and watch that bullet punch into his brain while he was standing outside like an idiot.

  He crouched next to the wall, keeping about seven feet away from the opening. He was close enough that he could see his own reflection on dirt-smeared mirrors on the opposite wall from him, but whoever was out there wouldn’t be able to.

  Or, at least, he hoped that was the case.

  “Keo!” Bunker again.

  “Yeah!” Keo shouted back.

  “You alive in there?”

  “No. You’re hearing a ghost shouting back at you, dumbass!”

  Bunker laughed. That was a good sign. A laughing Bunker meant a still-in-the-fight Bunker. Keo hadn’t forgotten about that puddle of blood he’d spotted on the ground when he was outside. It hadn’t been there before, but the rancher had been.

  “You okay?” Keo shouted.

  “No! I got a hole in me that my momma didn’t give me!” Bunker said.

  Keo grinned. “Who’s out there?”

  “Beats the hell outta—”

  The crack! of a rifle shot cut Bunker off in midsentence.

  Keo heard it, followed by the ping! of the round ricocheting off something metallic.

  “Fuck!” Bunker shouted.

  “What happened?” Keo asked.

  “Asshole took another shot at me.”

  “You still good?”

  “Let me check.” Then, about three seconds later, “Yeah, just the one extra hole still.”

  Keo scooted a few more feet toward the door. There was plenty of sunlight around him, the heat warm against his face, chasing away some of the erratic hot-and-cold that was coming from the ghoul behind him.

  …coming from the ghoul behind him.

  He shook the uneasy feeling away. It was back there, yeah, and it wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. It couldn’t, even if it wanted to. It’d survived exposing itself to sunlight earlier, but that had cost it plenty of flesh. That wouldn’t last, though. Keo had seen it before—blue-eyed ghouls growing whole limbs back. So a little lost flesh here and there wasn’t going to be much of a problem for Jackson.

  Keo stopped three feet from the opening. He didn’t lean out. That would have been stupid, and he had already done too many stupid things today. The shooter—if there were just one out there—already knew he was in the building. Hopefully they wouldn’t know if Keo was still alive or not. From their vantage point they might have just seen him suddenly reeling back into the building, as if he’d been shot.

  Then again, he had been shouting back and forth with Bunker, so unless the shooter was deaf…

  Goddammit, shoulda kept my mouth shut.

  He moved closer to the door until he was just a foot away now, and there were no mirrors across the hallway from him to expose his presence. Keo peered out until he could see Bunker again, crouched behind one of the bumper cars. The rancher was almost completely bent over at the waist like some kind of turtle trying to seek shelter underneath its shell. Of course Keo knew why he was doing that—he was making himself as small a target as possible.

  Keo hadn’t spotted them before, but now that things had slowed down and he wasn’t running around for his life, he could see the drops of blood leading from the pool in the street and toward the platform where Bunker was. He must have moved pretty quickly, seeking out the nearest shelter, because the bumper cars weren’t exactly the best cover right now. Keo could see a half dozen better options. Then again, he had the gift of not being shot at; Bunker hadn’t had that privilege earlier.

  From his vantage point, Bunker looked okay. Not great, but he didn’t appear to be on the verge o
f dying, either. He’d been shot; Keo knew that much. All the blood that hadn’t been there before was evidence of that. How badly was the question. Keo didn’t shout the question out a second time because he didn’t want the shooter to know the answer, either.

  He waved one hand to get Bunker’s attention. The rancher looked across at him, moving his body slightly so that Keo could see he had been working on his wound all this time. Bunker had unzipped his jacket and pressed a quick clotting pad to his left shoulder and wrapped it up with duct tape. That explained why Bunker hadn’t returned fire, and the only gunshots Keo had been picking up so far came from the sniper trying to finish the man off.

  Keo gave Bunker a questioning look. The other man rolled his eyes dramatically before giving him a thumbs up back.

  Translation: “I’ll live.”

  Keo nodded. Then, this time not shouting but just loud enough for Bunker to hear (and, he was hoping, low enough that the sniper couldn’t; or if he could, then not clearly): “You got a bead on him?”

  “He’s up on the Super Shot,” Bunker said.

  “The what?”

  “The Super Shot.”

  Keo shook his head. “I don’t know what that is.”

  “The fucking tower in the middle.”

  “Why didn’t you just say that before?”

  Bunker was referring to the 100-foot tower that hovered over the carnival grounds. It was the first thing Keo had seen when he rode up on the area; it was the tallest structure in the place by a mile and impossible to miss. Lack of maintenance and time hadn’t done anything to topple it, so it was still out there, in the hot sun.

  And right now, it would make for one hell of a sniper’s perch.

  Damn. He’s definitely got the high ground on us.

  There was no way Keo was going to run out there and reach Bunker. There was no point in trying the stunt anyway. Getting to Bunker just meant exposing himself, then pinning himself down along with the rancher.

  No, there had to be a better way. Time wasn’t on their side, which was something else that stuck out in Keo’s mind. A quick glance down at his watch said 3:11 p.m. Plenty of time to reach the ranch and get ready for tonight…if they were on their horses and headed back home within the next hour or so.

  Hell, he didn’t even know where the horses were. Neither Lucille nor Annabelle were anywhere on the street outside—either dead or alive—so that was a good sign they were still loitering about, waiting to be rounded up. So the shooter hadn’t been sadistic enough to take down the animals, too. Then again, he could have done exactly that but the horses were lying dead somewhere else.