Road to Babylon (Book 9): The Ranch

by Sisavath, Sam

  “Um, where are we going?” Wilson asked.

  “All right, let’s do this, then,” Bunker said.

  “Guys?” Wilson said.

  Thump-thump-thump!

  Both Keo and Bunker ignored her question and headed into the vault room.

  Lara had opened both vaults and taken out a pile of weapons, ammo, and supplies and laid them on a counter. The two girls were also inside with her. Gummy looked like she was ready to go now, but Abby’s face remained stoned. Keo wondered if the kid even knew about what her sister had done, or what had become of her? Was the ghoul that had commanded Thuy to act also inside her head, too?

  “I have to!” Thuy had said, with that look of desperation on her face. “It won’t let Abby and me go! It’ll never let us go! This is the only way! I have to give it what it wants! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

  He didn’t know what had happened, and maybe he didn’t want to know. He didn’t like the idea of a Blue Eyes being inside his head, which was exactly what had happened to Thuy and Abby. Maybe it was better for the younger sister because Jackson hadn’t been as malicious, but then again…

  Keo put Wilson down and closed the vault room door. He locked it, silencing the thump-thump-thump! from the other door. Bunker, meanwhile, had walked to the door at the back that led into the escape tunnel. He opened the security slot, peered through it to make sure there was nothing waiting for them, before declaring it safe and opening the door.

  The rancher grabbed some weapons and supplies off the pile Lara had placed for them and glanced over at Keo. “We going or what?”

  “You first,” Keo said. “Lead the way.”

  “Follow the leader, kids,” Bunker said, and slipped into the semi-dark tunnel first.

  As Bunker disappeared, there was a very loud boom! from behind them—coming from the common area.

  Wilson and Gummy started at the noise, both girls shaking. Keo wasn’t sure if they were more scared of what was outside the vault room or what was waiting for them inside the escape tunnel.

  “Stick to Bunker, and everything will be fine,” Keo said to them.

  He wasn’t sure if the sisters believed him, but they followed orders anyway. Wilson limped into the tunnel with her sister’s help, though again, Keo wasn’t quite sure who was holding who up at the moment.

  Lara remained behind, one hand holding onto Abby’s as if she were afraid the girl might try to run off.

  “You too,” Keo said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Lara, shotgun in hand, stared intently back at him.

  Another boom! from the other side of the door startled Lara, and she jumped slightly. So did Abby, which surprised Keo. It was the first emotion the girl had shown all night.

  “I’ll be right behind you,” Keo said to Lara again.

  “Don’t be too long,” she said.

  “I won’t.”

  She disappeared into the tunnel after the others, dragging Abby with her.

  Keo bypassed the piles Lara had put on the counter and went to the racks. He looked over the selection even as there was another very loud boom! from the common area.

  Then, less than three seconds later, BOOM!

  That last one was followed by the sound of something heavy and metal crashing to the floor, the impact echoing off, seemingly, every inch of the shelter.

  Time to make the fucking donuts.

  Twenty-Three

  It’s a game. That’s all this is. It’s just a fucking game.

  So relax.

  Pfft!

  The 9mm Parabellum round hit the middle of the ghoul’s face, where its nose used to be, and exited out the back with a sickening twack! that sounded more like someone stepping on a wet bag than a bullet punching through one side of a skull and out the other. The ghoul’s head snapped back, and its body collapsed to the concrete ground where it lay still.

  Yeah, right. Relax.

  Keo continued moving backwards, waiting for the next one to show itself. He’d expected a swarm of them, but they were coming at him one at a time for whatever reason. No, that wasn’t true. He knew exactly why they were jumping out of the shadows at him one by one. Because that was how it wanted this to go down. It was playing with him. Toying with him. Getting off on sacrificing one ghoul at a time.

  Fuck you, motherfucker. Fuck you and whatever ghoul you rode in on.

  Pfft-pfft! as the Daewoo K7 bucked in Keo’s hands.

  Both gunshots should have crashed like thunder in the close confines of the tunnel, but the submachine gun’s built-in suppressor kept the noise to a much lower decibel than it otherwise would have generated. It wasn’t silenced by any means, but it was a hell of a lot better than a normal gunshot, which would have battered his eardrums.

  The two ghouls he’d shot collapsed and stopped moving, their deformed limbs flashing underneath the round beam of the tactical flashlight he held in his left hand, pressed against the side of the K7’s barrel. The ejected bullet casings on the floor gleamed like gold nuggets against the yellow glow of the light sticks he wore in belt loops along the front of his vest. The empty cartridges disappeared back into the shadows along with the bodies as Keo took a few more steps backward.

  The lights had gone out in the tunnel—and Keo guessed, the entire shelter beyond it—a minute or so after he’d started after the others. Sadistic could have let them race to the other side with the lights on, but then what would have been the fun of that? That was the whole point of this, after all.

  Besides the narrow beam of the flashlight (Should have grabbed a bigger flashlight, dammit.), Keo had the light sticks to see with. He’d always had good night eyes, but there was no substitute for actual lights. He had more of the sticks, but activating them would have just been overkill. The two he had on generated a constant yellow halo immediately around him, moving as he moved.

  Keo retreated slowly, purposefully, his flashlight beam moving along the curving tunnel in front of him. Which meant the parts of the tunnel behind him were curving as well. The ghouls seemed to know how to stay hidden and never attacked until the corridor straightened out and they couldn’t hide behind the occasional bends anymore.

  Keo’s present universe was teeming with the stink of living, moving ghouls. Like spoiled cabbage, mixed with week-old grease, and dripped in the decaying blood of a graveyard. The only reason he hadn’t vomited yet was because he was too busy moving, too busy staying alive.

  …too busy staying alive…

  He continued to backtrack one foot at a time because that was all he could do. He couldn’t just turn and run. He’d smack right into the others—Bunker, Lara, and the girls. Among them was Wilson, who was limping along with the others. Keo thought he could smell the girl’s wound in the stale air around him, but that was probably giving himself too much credit considering what other, more pungent odors were floating around.

  The tunnel in front of him was still curving, curving…

  He could hear the shuffling of shoes against the hard and unyielding floor behind him, evidence that the others hadn’t encountered anything yet that had halted their progress to the other side. Despite the ten-feet length and five-feet width, the passageway felt very claustrophobic. Maybe it had a little something to do with what else was in the tunnel with them.

  Yeah, that’s probably it.

  Keo didn’t know for sure that Sadistic was the one that had taken out the generator. For all he knew, it might not have been something at all, but someone that had plunged them into total darkness. He hadn’t forgotten about Jose. Was he in the thick of those ghouls right now, following him up the tunnel? Keo hadn’t spotted the rancher back in the shelter, but then, he’d been so focused on not getting trampled—

  Three ghouls this time, racing out of the blackness, their eyes flickering in the beam of light that danced across their shriveled faces.

  Pfft! Pfft! as the first two fell sideways, while the third kept coming—

  Pfft! as it, too, seemed to tr
ip on an invisible wire and pitched forward, and lay still less than a foot from Keo’s boots. Its black flesh was rendered almost green in the yellow glow of the light sticks.

  Keo scooted away from it and continued backtracking.

  Easy does it. Easy does it…

  That last attack had been just a little too close for comfort. The problem was that the flashlight was small and had limited range. It was bright, but that didn’t do him any good unless he put it on exactly the right spots. He could have activated the other light sticks and tossed them down the tunnel to light up the shadows, but he only had a limited number. Besides, once he retreated past the glows and couldn’t make them out anymore, they would be useless to him.

  Keo wasn’t sure how long he was going to be stuck down here. It could have been his imagination—or maybe it was the fact he was moving so slowly, as were the others—but the tunnel seemed to be never-ending. It hadn’t felt this long the last time he’d gone through it, not even twenty-four hours ago. Of course, at the time, he didn’t have a swarm of ghouls on his tail, so maybe that had a little something to do with it.

  Gee, ya think?

  The K7 was heavy in his hands, so that was a good sign. From his own count, Keo had fired about ten times, and had fallen ten ghouls with those shots. He hadn’t missed once, mostly because they were almost always too close for him to do so. The narrow width also made them bunch up in the middle, making for easier shots.

  He changed up his grip on the submachine gun. The Daewoo was essentially a South Korean version of the H&K MP5SD, complete with built-in suppressor. It had a telescopic buttstock that Keo didn’t utilize because he needed the weapon small and unobtrusive. It had iron sights but he didn’t really need it, not when the targets were so close. It was a good weapon, but it didn’t come close to matching its German equivalent—

  A flash of teeth as a ghoul seemed to drop off the ceiling in front of him!

  Pfft! as the round slammed into its chest and exited the back, striking two more coming up behind it. The first one fell to the right, while the other two both collapsed to the left as if they had synchronized their (re)death for his visual pleasure.

  Jesus Christ, how had the first one gotten so close?

  Another bend in the tunnel coming up. He didn’t remember there being this many the last time…

  Continued shuffling behind him, along with the occasional back and forth between Lara and Bunker.

  “…are we close?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “How much farther?”

  “Not too much farther.”

  “That’s what you said fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Well, it’s not too much farther now.”

  Fifteen minutes ago? Keo thought. He hadn’t realized they’d been inside the tunnel for over fifteen minutes now. It hadn’t seemed like more than…five minutes?

  He was losing track of time.

  Space and time.

  Everything, basically.

  And he was sweating like a whore in church. Keo reached up and wiped at a bead of sweat from his forehead. Quickly, so his hands could instantly return to pointing the submachine gun and flashlight down the tunnel where they needed to be—

  A small group coming in fast!

  He couldn’t make out their number—the flashlight beam was bouncing too much, and they were still beyond the reach of his light sticks—but there were a lot of them because the shadows shifted and danced and jumped—

  He switched the fire selector on the K7 and fired a burst into the darkness, felling half of them with one swipe and getting the rest with the second. He also sent more than one bullet into the walls, heard the pek-pek-pek! as they either embedded themselves into the concrete structure or ricocheted off.

  The submachine gun was suddenly very light, and Keo quickly ejected the magazine and slapped in a new one. He could have waited for the mag to run completely dry first, but he didn’t like the idea of being caught empty in the middle of another sudden attack. He was pretty sure he’d moved so fast he had worked the new magazine in before the ejected one had even clacked! off the floor. Of course, that could have just been wishful thinking on his part.

  Urgent shuffling from behind him, followed by the growing sounds of someone breathing hard, but it was her smell that put him at ease.

  Lara tapped him on the shoulder. “Are you okay?” She was whispering, not that it really did any good, because voices echoed off the walls and traveled long distances down here.

  “I’m fine,” Keo said without looking back. “Keep moving.”

  “We are. Bunker says we’re almost there, but he said that the last ten times I asked him, too.”

  Keo grinned. He had no idea where they were or how close they were to the hatch on the other side, so he assumed Bunker was feeling similarly disoriented, especially with the lights off and only their flashlights to work with.

  “How’s Wilson?” he asked.

  “She’s okay for now,” Lara said.

  “‘For now?’”

  “She’s lost a lot of blood. I’m not sure…” She let the rest trail off.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing. She’ll be fine.”

  Somehow, he didn’t believe her. Maybe Lara wanted Wilson to be fine, but that wasn’t the reality they were dealing with. As quickly as Lara had worked to stop the bleeding, Keo still remembered just how much blood the teenager had lost before she could make it to them for help.

  Keo occasionally bumped into Lara behind him, and sometimes the barrel of the semi-automatic Benelli pump-action shotgun that she had grabbed before entering the tunnel poked at his back. He didn’t mind. They were good reminders she was back there and not in front of him where it was dangerous.

  “Lara,” Keo said. “If she can’t make it…”

  “She’ll make it,” Lara said before he could finish.

  “If…”

  “We’re all going to make it.” She tapped him on the shoulder. “Be Captain Optimism for me, babe. Okay? I need him right now.”

  “Okay. Captain Optimism it is.”

  “I can’t see your face right now, so I don’t know if I should believe you.”

  “You should.”

  “Should I?”

  “Yes. Because we’ll make it. All of us.”

  Even as he said it, Keo didn’t know if he actually believed that.

  Oh, who are you kidding? You don’t believe a word of it, pal.

  And maybe Lara didn’t completely believe him, either, but she needed to hear it, and so he was happy to say them out loud.

  As if the others could hear them talking, a voice from behind them screamed, “Wilson!”

  “Oh no,” Lara said.

  “Go,” Keo said.

  He listened to Lara running away. The voice he’d heard earlier was Gummy’s, which meant something had happened to her sister. Keo stopped when he couldn’t hear the others moving behind him. They had bogged down in the tunnel to deal with Wilson’s situation.

  Keo went into a slight crouch, the K7 pointed down the dark tunnel in front of him, and didn’t dare take his eyes off the shadows for even a heartbeat. He moved the flashlight around, trying to pick up a clear target. The beam only went so far. The creatures were back there, as if they knew exactly how far to stay away to remain undiscovered by the flashlight. He could have fired down the tunnel into the darkness, but the chances of missing, and wasting bullets, kept him from doing so. Right now, he had a feeling he was going to need every single bullet he’d carried into the tunnel with him.

  So come on, you bastards, show yourselves.

  What are you waiting for?

  What the hell are you waiting for?

  “Is she okay?” he heard Bunker asking behind him. They weren’t too far back—maybe ten yards, but that was just a guess. He could have confirmed it by looking back, but of course he didn’t.

  Eyes down the tunnel, pal.

  Eyes down the tunnel a
t all times!

  “No, she’s not,” he heard Lara answer. “I don’t think she can walk. I’ll have to carry her.”

  “I can walk,” Wilson said, though it sounded pathetically soft and weak. “You don’t have to carry me, Lara.”

  “Be quiet. You don’t get a say in this.”

  “But I can walk…”

  “Give her to me,” Bunker said.

  “Are you crazy? You can barely hold that rifle and the flashlight at the same time,” Lara said.

  “Oh, ye of little faith.”

  “Bunker…”

  “Give ’er,” he said. “Okay, kid, this is gonna hurt both of us, but suck it up, okay?”

  “Okay,” Keo heard Wilson say meekly.

  That was followed by a very loud and pained grunt, though he couldn’t tell who it had originated from—Wilson or Bunker.

  Maybe both of them…

  “You going to be okay, Wilson?” Gummy was asking.

  “I’m gonna be fine,” Wilson said, but judging by the severe lack of conviction in her voice, Keo didn’t believe her.

  “Keo,” Lara said. She sounded closer. “We’re moving again.”

  “Go,” he said, and straightened up—

  Pfft-pfft-pfft! as the K7 bucked in his hands, his forefinger pulling the trigger three times so fast that he wasn’t even aware he had done it.

  Not that he had any time to be proud of his reflexes, because as soon as the third round started echoing, even more creatures appeared out of the tunnel, seemingly lunging out of the darkness in manic kamikaze runs.

  Here we go! Here we fucking go!

  Keo stumbled back, flicked the fire selector on the K7 to full-auto again, and opened up.

  The pfft-pfft-pfft! of thirty rounds emptying at a dizzying speed made the built-in suppressor almost irrelevant as the gunshots were as loud as Keo’s footsteps as he backtracked in a hurry, picking up speed with every dangerous unseen step, just hoping, hoping that the others realized why he had gone full-auto and weren’t lollygagging back there.

  Just in case, though, he shouted, “Go go go! Go go go!”

  He didn’t look back to make sure the others had gotten the “hint” after that. He was too busy firing, swiping the submachine left then right, then left again. Bullets pek-pek-pekked! off the walls, filling the already stale and wretched air with bursting clouds of pulverized concrete. Twisted and elongated faces of ghouls running toward him flashed across the flashlight’s beams while others jumped over the corpses of their fallen comrades. More of them ran straight into the flurries of gray and white clouds hovering in the air, giving them the appearance of wearing masks.