Road to Babylon (Book 9): The Ranch

by Sisavath, Sam

  Kabuki dancers of death!

  He guessed Sadistic had decided it was tired of playing games, because there were a lot more ghouls this time—and their attack was more sustained—than the previous forays. Maybe the bastard was finally getting bored?

  Fuck you and your boredom, asshole! Keo wanted to shout out, but that would have taken too much effort and he didn’t have any to spare right now.

  He didn’t even bother reloading the K7. That would have taken seconds that he couldn’t afford. Instead, he threw it at the closest ghoul, striking it in the chest and knocking it back and into two other night-crawlers. They fell, taking more down with them.

  He was almost running backwards now as Keo unslung the MP5, switched the fire selector to full auto, and pulled the trigger. The H&K didn’t have the built-in suppressor of the K7, so there was nothing stopping its very bright—at least it was inside the intensely dark tunnel they were moving through—muzzle flashes as he ripped off a burst, then another, and another. Ghouls rushed and fell, but others jumped and even more began scrambling along the walls (How the hell are they even doing that?) to get past the piling numbers of dead that was clogging up the narrow passageway.

  Then the MP5 was empty and Keo groped for a spare magazine to reload. He found it and pulled it out just as a ghoul leapt at him. It didn’t so much as land on top of him as it struck him in the chest with its head like some kind of battering ram, knocking him to the floor.

  The blow, followed by the landing, probably should have hurt. Probably. But Keo didn’t feel a damn thing because he was too busy trying to stay alive.

  Stay alive! Stay alive, you fool!

  He smashed his left elbow into the creature’s throat as it squirmed on top of him, trying to get at his throat with saliva-dripping teeth. There was a solid crack! as bone snapped. The ghoul thrashed, unwilling to let go, until Keo grabbed it by the protruding ribs and shoved it off him. He scrambled to his feet just as the skeletal figure spun onto its back and spidered forward—

  A shotgun blast boomed next to Keo’s right ear and the ghoul’s entire head exploded like a ripe watermelon.

  Keo stumbled, more “hurt” by the closeness of the shotgun blast than he’d been when he was knocked to the ground seconds ago. His ears rang, a thousand chimes and bells and whistles and gunshots going off all at once inside his skull.

  I’m deaf. That’s it. I’m deaf now! Good-bye, hearing!

  A hand was tugging at the back of his shirt collar and someone might have been shouting his name, but he couldn’t hear anything. Not a goddamn thing.

  Were his ears bleeding? Yeah, he was pretty sure his ears were bleeding. Did he even still have eardrums anymore?

  Instead, Keo relied on his eyes and sense of touch, and they told them he had finished reloading—he couldn’t believe he had continued to reload through all that, way to go!—and that the ghouls were still coming.

  But of course they were still coming, jumping into the halos of constant yellow glow generated by his light sticks.

  One, two, three—hundreds.

  Hundreds?

  No, there couldn’t possibly be hundreds.

  Could there?

  He lifted the MP5 and fired off a burst, and ghouls fell left and right…

  …and yet they kept coming…

  …and coming…

  Twenty-Four

  We’re going to survive this.

  We have to survive this.

  Because the alternative was unacceptable.

  There was no alternative.

  They were going to survive this, or they were going to die trying.

  Wait. No. That’s not right.

  We’re going to survive this!

  And no one’s going to die tonight!

  Now all he had to do was make that come true. It didn’t help that he was deaf (or damn near close enough to it) as the events unfolded in front, above, behind, and seemingly underneath his boots, too.

  He was probably bleeding out of one ear, if not both. Lara had fired her shotgun way too close to his head. Not that she had done it on purpose, but, well, the results were the same. He was either completely deaf and would be permanently, or it was going to last for a while.

  Right now Keo couldn’t hear a damn thing even as Lara stepped up next to him and dragon fire spat from the barrel of her Benelli M3 shotgun. The weapon was a semiautomatic, which meant she didn’t have to rack the forend every time she fired to load a new shell into the chamber. It did it for her, which allowed Lara to pull the trigger over and over and over without stopping once.

  Somewhere between the third and fourth shot, she glanced over at him and shouted something, but of course he couldn’t hear any of it. There was a persistent thrumming inside his skull, like a machine factory full of big burly men pounding away at sheets of metal with giant sledgehammers.

  Keo shook his head and got what might have been a confused look back from Lara. Either that or the yellow glow of his light sticks against her face was making him see things. He didn’t think so, though.

  Probably.

  Lara turned and fired again, and the carpet of dead ghouls on the floor grew even as more of the creatures lurched out of the shadows, darting around his lonely single beam of light, and toward them. Whenever he could see them, it was a sign that they were too close, because they were invading the glow of his light sticks, which had very limited range.

  He wasn’t sure when he had reloaded the MP5, but suddenly it was heavy again in his hands, and Keo fired a burst into the thick of the moving, twisting, surging wall of black flesh. They fell like dominos, bullets punching through their weakened bodies and striking the ones behind them, and felling them just as easily.

  Not that that did anything to stop them.

  They kept coming.

  More of them, emerging out of the darkness.

  Jesus Christ. Where did they all come from? Keo remembered thinking that exact thing back at Paxton. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so surprised by their endless number. After all, Sadistic had had two months to prepare for tonight.

  Something tugged on Keo’s right elbow, and he glanced over his shoulder to find Lara back there. She was pulling him back as she backpedaled. Pulling him back because he had ground to a halt as he emptied the submachine gun.

  Keo began backpedaling, even as he turned and fired another burst that dropped three—four—the rest disappeared around a turn. Another one. He didn’t remember there being this many curves in the tunnel when he’d gone through it earlier with Bunker. Was it just his imagination, or had more sprung up?

  Lara was reloading as she backed up, not that Keo could hear the noises she made as she punched shells into the shotgun with the fluidity of someone who had been doing it all her life. That wasn’t true, but Lara was always a fast learner. He could feel her back there, her body heat pressing against his as she kept close. He wasn’t sure if that was because she couldn’t move backward fast enough or she didn’t want to leave him behind. Or maybe—

  No, that was it. She didn’t want to leave him behind.

  That’s my girl!

  He had no idea what had happened to Bunker and the girls, Wilson, Gummy, and Abby. For all he knew, they were still back there somewhere waiting for them, but Keo didn’t think so. Bunker would have gotten the hint and ran off to find the other end of the tunnel. He wasn’t a dummy. Keo just hoped the rancher could make it with Wilson in his arms. He had, after all, just been shot in the shoulder this afternoon. Keo couldn’t imagine the kind of pain his friend was suffering through right now.

  Suck it up, Bunker! Or you won’t be sucking anything after this!

  Keo smashed the butt of the MP5 into the soft skull of a ghoul as it fell off the ceiling and landed barely a foot in front of him, saliva-dripping teeth a bright yellow in the pool of light sticks. It fell sideways, but that only offered up room to two other ghouls as they charged.

  Keo fired. He didn’t even have to aim. He simply pulled the t
rigger, and blood and flesh and bone ripped through both ghouls and splattered the ones coming up behind them. A piece of shattered bone pierced a creature in the eyes, and its head snapped back.

  For a second, anyway, before it righted itself and continued forward.

  He hit the mag release switch and backed up even as Lara pulled at his elbow again. She was more insistent this time, and he kept retreating until he’d passed her by. Lara took his spot and began shooting, the spreading power of her shotgun erasing ghouls as they curved around the turn in the tunnel. He realized she’d been tugging harder on him because she likely already figured out he couldn’t hear. Lara was smart that way.

  Keo found the sight of her shooting while retreating, flames from her weapon pouring into the wall of ghouls, mesmerizing. But he knew it wasn’t going to be enough. For every creature her silver-filled buckshot eviscerated, even more took their spot. He’d lost count of how many he and she had killed combined.

  Twenty? Thirty? More?

  Yeah, more sounded about right.

  So how many more did the fucker have to throw at them?

  How many did it have left after two nights?

  He took the opportunity to reload the MP5 as he waited for Lara to finish firing. When he was done and Lara was still pouring it on, Keo used the extra seconds to grab and toss the remaining mag for the K7 that he hadn’t gotten time to employ. The added weight was minimal, but there was no point in hanging onto it now that he’d ditched the South Korean weapon. It wasn’t like he could use them for the German submachine gun.

  Finally, Lara stopped shooting and turned around. He didn’t wait for her to mouth that she was empty (“Mouth,” because he wouldn’t have been able to hear a thing anyway with the constant thrumming inside his skull) and rushed forward to take her place. She ran past him as he squeezed off a burst down the tunnel.

  Even as he recommenced killing, Keo couldn’t help but notice that the ghouls were thinning out. There weren’t as many of them lunging out of the shadows at him this time. Even the number of dead had decreased significantly to the point where he could actually make out the glowing yellow pavement again, and that they weren’t completely covered up in black sludge and pruned flesh.

  Holy shit. They were going to survive this.

  They were going to survive this!

  That’s right, pal! Captain Optimism strikes again!

  He felt like laughing but didn’t. Or maybe he did and just didn’t hear it.

  Keo flicked the fire selector on the submachine back to 3-round burst to conserve ammo, and only squeezed the trigger when he saw a target. They were still coming, but not at the same rabid pace.

  One here, two there; and once, three at the same time.

  They were no longer climbing the walls or hanging onto the ceiling, which they’d been doing before because there were so many of them that there was no room for all of them to move forward at him and Lara at the same time. They had the superior number, but in the tight confines of the tunnel, it didn’t do them much good. At least, not as long as they had ammo, and they still did, even though his pouches were feeling extremely light.

  Extremely light.

  The same was true for Lara, apparently, because Keo stepped on her M3 on the floor as he backed up. She’d tossed the shotgun because, probably, she’d run out of shells for it. Which left her with—

  He glanced back to be sure, using the momentary respite from lunging ghouls to get some bearings on his and her presence. Lara was a few yards behind him, holding her pistol in her hand. He didn’t see any other weapons on her, so the handgun was it. Besides the knife on her left hip, that is.

  Keo looked back down the tunnel. He could only make out three ghouls, but he could see more shadows moving behind them. They had left the dead ones behind, but these weren’t quite willing to give up yet.

  But they weren’t attacking, either. Maybe they knew they weren’t going to reach him without eating a bullet. Or maybe they were biding their time. Either options didn’t make any sense, though. The Black Eyes weren’t known for their patience. They were primal animals, and when they smelled or saw prey, they attacked with wild abandon. The only time they acted out of character was when a Blue Eyes was around.

  …when a Blue Eyes was around…

  Keo turned back at Lara, and shouted, “Go!”

  “What?” Lara said.

  He had actually heard her that time. Not just her voice, but his own. So he was getting his hearing back; if not completely, then some. And right now, some was a lot better than nothing.

  “Run!” Keo screamed.

  She gave him a confused look.

  “It’s here!” Keo said. “It’s—”

  It grabbed him from behind, cold bony fingers tightening around his throat, and threw him into a wall. Keo swore every one of his bones, from his skull all the way down to his toes, was broken on impact. He wasn’t even sure where the MP5 had gone or how he’d lost his grip on it, but it was suddenly gone.

  He crumpled to the floor, hitting the hard concrete with his chest and one side of his face. That should have hurt, but he was too busy trying to come out of the other pain, the one that was still vibrating through his body from being slammed into the unyielding concrete wall.

  The bang-bang-bang! of gunshots.

  He raised his head and looked up the corridor. It was the only thing he could make himself do. The rest of his body was in pieces. Or if it wasn’t, then it sure as hell felt like it.

  Lara, stumbling back and out of the ring of yellow lights produced by his light sticks. She was shooting, squeezing off round after round at—

  A ghoul.

  Not just any ghoul, but the ghoul.

  Sadistic itself.

  It had finally made its grand entrance and now stood between Keo and Lara. It stalked toward her. Slowly, calmly, with aggravating patience. Just like it’d done to Keo outside of Paxton, it was making her fear the anticipation, the inevitability of its presence. It would reach her, and there would be nothing she could do about it. She couldn’t hit it even though it seemed to be barely moving when it twisted its body left, then right, then left again.

  Bang! as her bullet sailed harmlessly past it and struck a wall farther down the corridor, chipping away a big chunk of concrete.

  Lara’s eyes snapped from the creature in front of her to Keo behind it. He could see the terror in her eyes, on every part of her face.

  Get up, you idiot, he told himself.

  Get up! Lara needs you!

  Get the fuck up!

  He got the fuck up. Or he tried, anyway. His legs were jelly, but thank God his arms were stronger, more resilient as he pressed his palms flush against the hard floor and pushed himself up. He’d lost the MP5 and the flashlight—he wasn’t even sure when the flashlight vanished, or where—but he still had the SIG Sauer—

  Hot, tainted flesh overwhelmed him from behind, and Keo spun even as he was still rising, still drawing the pistol.

  A ghoul was on top of him, catching him by surprise. It struck him in the chest with its body and knocked him back into the wall. The same wall that had, seconds ago, broken every bone in his body. But of course that couldn’t have been true because he was still on his feet and pulling the gun out and squeezing the trigger.

  The creature twitched and fell, revealing two more coming out of the shadows, yellow fangs glinting against the glow of the light sticks.

  Keo lifted the SIG and fired two shots, felling both of them.

  But even as those two fell, he glimpsed shadows moving down the tunnel. He pointed the gun in their direction and squeezed off more shots.

  The bang-bang! of gunshots coming from up the hallway.

  Not his.

  Lara!

  Keo ignored the remaining ghouls and ran up the corridor even as something zipped! past his head and pekked! off the wall a few inches from his face.

  One of Lara’s missed rounds.

  Lara!

  Keo saw
it, its dark, impossibly thin frame appearing out of the shadows in front of him. Its back was turned, because it was preoccupied with something else. Someone else.

  Where was Lara?

  Where was Lara?

  And why had she stopped shooting?

  “Hey!” he shouted.

  The creature didn’t respond.

  “Hey, you motherfucker!” Keo shouted.

  It stopped and turned, and grinned at him, even as it held Lara up in the air, its fingers around her throat. Blue eyes pulsated, beating in tune to Keo’s erratic heartbeat.

  Thump-thump-thump!

  Thump-thump-thump!

  And that thing it was trying to pass off as a grin. That fucking, taunting grin.

  Lara was struggling, her feet kicking empty air as it held her in the air. She seemed okay, or as “okay” as you could be when something like that was holding you by the throat.

  But she was alive. She was still alive.

  Keo didn’t shoot. He didn’t dare shoot for fear of hitting Lara. So he put the gun away and drew the KA-BAR instead. He couldn’t do this from a distance, so he’d have to get in close and personal. Real close and personal.

  Keo fixed his eyes on the ghoul. “You fucker.”

  Its eyes widened. Was that surprise? Was it even still capable of that human emotion?

  “Now that’s not very nice,” it hissed, even as those things it called lips curved further. Straining, straining against that blackened, hairless face. Keo wasn’t sure where its chin began and its forehead stopped.

  “Let her go,” he said.

  “Her?” It turned its head to look at Lara, as if it had forgotten she was even there. “Her?” it asked again as it looked back at him. “Or the thing inside her belly? Why don’t I take both of them? Or all of you?”