Road to Babylon (Book 9): The Ranch

by Sisavath, Sam

  Ten whole meters.

  But Keo didn’t make the mad dash right away. The problem was that the sniper knew where he was and the direction he was going—sideways, inching his way closer toward the Super Shot. That meant Keo couldn’t keep on that track. Right now—right this very second—the guy was probably peering through his scope, waiting, just waiting for Keo to do exactly what he’d almost done just seconds earlier.

  Fuck that shit.

  So Keo didn’t do the obvious thing and retraced his steps until he was back on the other side of Starship 3000. He slinked around the curved shape of the ride until he could see the dirt street that herded people through the rest of the carnival. It was the same stretch of dirt road Keo and Bunker had used earlier. Crystal Lil’s was not that far up the road, and on the other side…

  Bunker’s bumper car platform was somewhere to his right, partially obscured behind something called Chaos, which was shaped like a pyramid and attached with long metal arms that raised the seats at the ends up and down. Keo had no idea who would find something like that thrilling, but then again, he’d never been much of a carnival man.

  If he was right, then he’d have just a few seconds head start before the sniper realized Keo had juked him and was zigging when he was supposed to be zagging. (Or something like that.)

  Keo hoped he had a few seconds head start, anyway. It wasn’t like he had any other options.

  He glanced down at his watch.

  Keo sighed, thought, Time to make the donuts! and ran, ducking his head as low as it would go while not breaking his stride.

  One meter, two—and still no gunshot.

  Three meters—four—

  Five—six!

  That was as far as Keo got before the sniper opened fire. The first bullet screamed past the back of his head, and the second one struck one of Chaos’s extended metal arms as, Keo guessed, the shooter attempted to correct his fire, shooting at where Keo was going instead of where he’d been. So the guy wasn’t a total noob at this after all!

  Swell! he thought even as sparks flicked into the air from another round bouncing off the hard surface of Chaos with a loud ping!

  Keo was almost at the platform, getting ready to dive for cover behind one of the massive steel girdles, when he decided to sneak a look down the road and up—

  The sniper, rising up from his perch in an attempt to get a better shot at him.

  Oh, you mother—Keo was thinking when he heard the pop! of a gunshot.

  Except this one had come from his right side instead of his left, and it had been much, much closer.

  Keo was still looking when the sniper’s body jerked, then plummeted off the 100-foot tall Super Shot tower.

  Happy landing, asshole!

  Keo slid to a stop a foot or two from running right into the raised platform in front of him, then walked the remainder of the short distance and sat down on the cold, hard floor. He couldn’t see where the shooter had landed from where he was, but the man was down there, somewhere. Keo wasn’t too worried about him anymore; if he were still alive, he was probably wishing he wasn’t.

  Bunker appeared, walking down the street toward him. For a guy who’d taken a bullet in the shoulder and had blood all over his clothes, he looked in amazing spirits. Then again, he had just nailed the sniper, so maybe Bunker was feeling very good at the moment. He certainly looked smug enough.

  “You gonna have a heart attack?” Bunker asked.

  “Not today,” Keo said.

  “Good to know. While you’re catching your breath like an old man, I’ll make sure the other guy’s down.”

  “You go do that. I’ll join you in a bit.”

  “Take your time,” Bunker said as he walked past Keo.

  Keo didn’t really take that much time. A minute, tops, before he picked himself up from the cold (and very dirty) platform and followed in Bunker’s steps all the way to the Super Shot. It took him a while because he wasn’t in any hurry. By the time he reached Bunker, most of the adrenaline was gone, and he could hear the wind howling through the rides around him again and taste the sun on his lips.

  Bunker was standing over a body, not saying a word.

  “He still alive?” Keo asked.

  “Not anymore,” Bunker said.

  Keo found out why Bunker seemed so fascinated by the sniper when he saw the man’s face.

  It was Carlos.

  “What the fuck?” Keo said.

  The former rancher’s face was covered in sweat, his dark brown eyes wide open and staring back up at them as if he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened and was hoping for answers from Keo and Bunker.

  Carlos was also no longer among the living. He lay on his back, his legs twisted at impossible angles behind and slightly underneath him. There were no signs of his rifle, not that Keo cared to really look for it.

  “The fall snapped his spine,” Bunker said. He didn’t sound at all like someone who had just found out that his neighbor, a man whom he called friend and had for the last few years, had just tried to kill him. Keo attributed it to shock.

  In comparison to Bunker, Keo didn’t know Carlos all that well, but he’d liked the man well enough. He and his brother—

  His brother.

  Keo glanced around, casually, in case he were being watched, swinging the MP5 around to in front of him. The idea that Jose could be out there waiting to take his shot danced across Keo’s mind. The two were rarely seen far from one another’s side, and after what had happened—and now, this—Keo felt suddenly like he was standing in someone’s crosshairs again.

  “You think he was alone?” Keo asked quietly.

  “He said he was,” Bunker said. He still hadn’t looked up or away from Carlos’s body. If Keo didn’t know any better, he’d think Bunker was waiting for Carlos to sit up and declare that it was all just a misunderstanding—including when he had shot Bunker and tried to kill Keo.

  “You talked to him?” Keo asked.

  “For a bit, before he died. Funny…”

  “What’s that?”

  “He didn’t look like he was in pain. He looked almost relieved, actually.”

  “Did he say why he tried to kill us?”

  “It sent him here. Told him to take us out.”

  “Who?”

  “Your blue-eyed buddy. Sadistic. I guess this is one reason why you called it that.”

  It’s one reason, among many, Keo thought as he shot a quick look down the street, back toward Crystal Lil’s fun house.

  “It didn’t kill Carlos’s family last night,” Bunker continued. “It took them, like we thought, but not for the reasons we were thinking.”

  “All of them?”

  “Jose, Donna, Gwen, the kids…”

  Lightning Mikey, too, Keo thought.

  He said, “It sent Carlos to kill us?”

  “Seems that way,” Bunker said. “Was using them to do it.”

  “Just like it used Thuy.”

  “Mr. Fucking Sadistic.”

  “What else did Carlos say?”

  “That he didn’t have any choice. He had to do what it wanted, or it’d kill his family.”

  They’d been standing there for a while now, and no one had fired. Keo relaxed a bit and looked back down at Carlos’s frozen face. He remembered his last conversation with the man, back at his ranch:

  “Don’t be a hero. Think about your family,” he had told the Mexican rancher.

  “I am thinking about my family,” Carlos had said. “I’m always thinking about my family, Keo. First, second, and last.”

  Carlos was thinking about his family to the very last breath. He’d come here to kill Keo and Bunker because of his family, despite the fact that they were friends and neighbors. More so with Bunker, but Keo had gotten to know them, too.

  And yet, here he was, with a rifle…

  Keo wondered if he’d do the same thing in Carlos’s shoes. Would he take up arms and kill his friends to protect Lara and the baby?
Would he—

  Yes. Yes I would.

  The answer came easily and without hesitation.

  Yes, he would kill friends if it meant saving Lara and the baby’s life. He would do it, and he wouldn’t care if it was the right or wrong thing to do. He would lose countless nights’ sleep over it, but he would do it anyway.

  In a heartbeat. In a fucking heartbeat.

  “That means the other one knows it’s here, meeting with us,” Bunker was saying.

  Keo looked up at his friend. “Jackson?”

  “Yeah. Am I right?”

  Keo sighed. He hadn’t thought about the repercussions of Carlos’s betrayal, but if he’d been sent here by Sadistic, to this place where they were meeting with Jackson…

  “Shit,” Keo said. “It knows. It fucking already knows.”

  Eighteen

  “It knows about you. About this.”

  “Yes.”

  “How will it respond? It’s already sent Carlos to kill us. To kill you, too, for all we know.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Just so there’s no misunderstanding. This plan of yours…it’s out the window now, right? Am I right about that?”

  “Yes. He knows too much now. The element of surprise is gone.”

  “Was that what you were counting on?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s too bad. I was hoping to end this without every single one of us dying in the process.”

  “Does that include my children?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you hate us.”

  “I don’t hate you, Jackson.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No. The truth is, I’ve never hated your kind. You’re just surviving. You’re doing what every sentient being has done since the dawn of time—trying to survive, no matter the cost. It just so happens that your survival interferes with ours.”

  “You surprise me, Keo.”

  “How is that?”

  “You’re more…open-minded than most humans.”

  “You were one of us two months ago.”

  “Another lifetime, now.”

  “I guess. So what will you do now? You can’t go back, can you?”

  “No…”

  “So what’s your next move?”

  “I don’t know yet. Things are…fluid, now.”

  “Let me ask you a question…”

  “Can I stop you?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Then what’s your question?”

  “Can you beat it?”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “In a fight. Can you beat it? Your father?”

  “No.”

  “You answered that pretty quickly.”

  “Because the answer is an easy one. Father is stronger. Faster. And the children belong to him. His blood courses through their veins, just as it does mine. They will do whatever he says. If there is a fight, they will side with him. There is no question about that.”

  “So by killing it, your father, you would have changed that. The others would follow you instead.”

  “That was the plan, yes.”

  “For what it’s worth, I really wanted this to happen.”

  “Yes. Me too.”

  “You know where this leaves us, right?”

  “Yes…”

  “Just to be sure… When your children come after us tonight, I’ll have to do what I have to, in order to protect my family.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, then.”

  “What else?”

  “What else, what?”

  “You have something else on your mind.”

  “The horses…”

  “What about them?”

  “Why did you leave them alone?”

  “I didn’t. Father did.”

  “All right. Why did he leave them alone last night?”

  “Because they’re not important to you. Father has watched you, Keo. He knows the horses mean nothing to you. Not as much as they mean to the other one.”

  “Bunker.”

  “Yes.”

  “So he didn’t go after the horses because he knows I won’t, what, cry over them if he did, so it’s not worth his time?”

  “Partly.”

  “What’s the other reason?”

  “When this is over, he plans to use the horses as food to feed more of the children that will come.”

  “Your father is a real piece of work, you know that?”

  “He’s…something.”

  That was how the conversation between Keo and the ghoul that used to be Jackson ended. Without very much fanfare. There was nothing else to say by either one of them. Whatever plans Jackson had had when she came to meet with him, it was no longer viable after what happened with Carlos. Sadistic clearly knew about her, about this supposedly “secret” tête-à-tête.

  The best laid plans of mice and men.

  Or maybe that’s the best laid plans of ghouls and men…

  Keo climbed onto Annabelle, Bunker on Lucille, and they rode back to the ranch with the falling sun at their backs. They could have gone faster, but Keo was taking Bunker’s wound into consideration, and they were only moving at moderate speed as a result. Bunker insisted he was fine, but Keo didn’t believe him for a second. He’d seemed fine initially, but the longer he stayed out here, the worse he looked.

  Lara was standing in the front yard, the destroyed double doors into the main house behind her, when they arrived. The kids, along with Lara, had cleaned out a lot of the property while they were gone. It didn’t quite look like the aftermath of a war zone anymore, though Keo could still smell the stench of vaporized ghoul flesh lingering in the air. That, he thought, wasn’t going to go away anytime soon.

  There was still a stack of ghoul bones behind the house, but they weren’t going to spend the effort to bury them until all of this was over. Besides, Keo was hoping the animals would take care of it for them, but he was probably being overly optimistic about that, considering how many bones there were.

  Lara walked over to them as Keo and Bunker stopped their horses outside the stables and Keo helped the rancher down.

  “I’m fine,” Bunker said.

  “Sure you are,” Keo said.

  “No, seriously.”

  “Seriously, yeah.”

  “What happened?” Lara said. She’d quickened her pace, probably after realizing that Bunker was hurt from the way he climbed off Lucille.

  “I was shot,” Bunker said.

  “I can see that. But what happened?”

  “It sent Carlos after us,” Keo said.

  “Carlos? Did you say Carlos?”

  Keo nodded. “He’s not dead. Or, well, he is, now.”

  Lara gave him a puzzled look even as she directed Bunker to stand still as she checked his wound.

  “I’m fine,” Bunker said.

  “Stand still,” Lara said.

  “I said—”

  “Still,” Lara snapped.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What happened?” Lara asked Keo again as she took off Bunker’s jacket to get a look at his handiwork.

  Keo told her, everything from meeting with Jackson to Carlos trying to kill them.

  “Carlos is dead for real this time,” Bunker finished.

  “So that’s it?” Lara asked, looking across Bunker at Keo.

  “Pretty much,” Keo said. “She can’t do anything now without the element of surprise on her side.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “We left her back at the carnival. I don’t know what she’s going to do after that.”

  “Keo,” Lara said.

  “Yeah?”

  “You just called the blue-eyed ghoul ‘she.’”

  Keo raised both eyebrows. “Did I?”

  “More than once,’” Lara said.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”
/>   “You definitely did,” Bunker said.

  “Hunh,” Keo said.

  Lara smiled at him. “So it is Jackson?”

  “It was Jackson, yeah.”

  “And it really did want to join forces? Against the other blue-eyed ghoul? What did you call it?”

  “Sadistic,” Keo said.

  “Right. Against Sadistic?”

  “Apparently, yes.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “The children.”

  “‘Children?’”

  “That’s what she calls them. The other ghouls. It decided that Sadistic was wasting their lives all for its sick pleasure. Jackson didn’t like that. So she was attempting a coup d'état.”

  “A coupe-day-what?” Bunker said.

  “Coup d'état,” Lara said. “She was trying to overthrow the other ghoul’s dominance over the others.”

  “Ah,” Bunker said. Then, “Now you’re doing it, too.”

  “Doing what?”

  “You’re calling that blue-eyed ghoul we just came from meeting ‘she,’ instead of ‘it.’”

  “Oh.” She looked over at Keo. “So what does that mean?”

  Keo shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

  “Well, whatever it means, you two best figure it out, ’cause it’s gonna get dark real soon,” Bunker said.

  Bunker wasn’t going to die on them, but Lara forced him into the shelter below and did a thorough examination, cleaning and redressing his wound. Keo, meanwhile, spent the remaining fifty or so minutes before nightfall making sure the ranch was ready for the second night.

  Or, as the blue-eyed ghoul called it, round two.

  He put Lucille and Annabelle into the stables and locked the building down, then did the same for the supply shacks and the other structures around the property. He had considered taking extra precautions with the horses to make sure they were safer than they had been last night, but after the conversation with the blue-eyed ghoul at the funhouse, it didn’t seem necessary anymore.

  He and Bunker also hadn’t bothered putting the double doors back onto the main house because there was no point in that, either. The ghouls would just break it down again anyway. Besides, this time there would be no one topside to stop them. Before the darkness claimed the ranch, everyone would be in the shelter and behind locked doors. The really big and heavy and thick door.