Road To Babylon Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Sisavath, Sam

  “So what’s that all about?”

  “I don’t know. Neither did the ones that made it here. They don’t have a clue. But it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Answer. Whatever it is, it’s in Fenton.”

  “Someone told me a guy named Copenhagen runs the place.”

  “That’s what I hear, too.”

  “You never traded with them?”

  “Once or twice, but I’ve never met the man himself or sent people to Fenton. It’s too far north, and we can get everything we need from Winding Creek, Dresden, Juno, and a half-dozen other places that’s a hell of a lot closer.”

  “What do you know about them? The Buckies?”

  “Not much…”

  “But you know something.”

  Jonah nodded. “I know their type. They’re mercenaries. Paramilitary. Whatever you want to call them. Fenton’s not the only one using them, either. Dresden had their own smaller group. Your friends the Buckies wiped them out first.”

  “So I take it you didn’t always have guys with rifles on rooftops?” Keo asked, looking up the beach at one such figure crouched on top of one of the buildings now.

  “Not even close.” Jonah grunted. “Funny thing is, five years ago I would be running around out there with those guys. But things change.”

  “You turned a new leaf.”

  “Not quite. More like I adjusted.”

  Keo watched some kids and a couple of adults washing themselves in the ocean water. “Why did you let them stay? You had to know what kind of trouble they were bringing with them.”

  Jonah followed his gaze. “There was just six people from Dresden at first. I mean, six people, and half of them could barely walk. I don’t know how I could have turned them away. I guess I could have, but it didn’t seem…right.”

  “And then more showed up…”

  The shorter man sighed. “And then the others showed up, yeah. That was when I knew I had screwed up, but by then it was too late. I might have been the de facto leader of this place because I was here first, but there were thirty-eight others who also called it home, and there was no way they were going to turn down women and children who had been through hell and back.”

  Keo glanced over at the black wall of trees in the distance. He wondered how many Buckies were already in there right now looking back at him, waiting to attack. Or maybe they had come searching for their friends and found their bodies instead and were now returning to report in to Buck.

  “They’re coming,” Jonah said next to him. “Tomorrow, the day after, or the week after. But they’re coming. Maybe I could have talked my way out of it before today, but not after you killed five of their people.”

  “In my defense, I only killed three,” Keo said. “Sherry took out the other two.”

  “You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to.”

  “What are you going to do when they do show up? I doubt they’ll be in a talking mood.”

  “I have no idea. Try to talk my way out of it anyway, I guess.”

  “You good at that? Talking your way out of trouble?”

  Jonah shrugged. “I used to be, but I’m a little out of practice.”

  “They’re gonna want answers.”

  “That’s the best-case scenario.”

  “What’s the worst case?”

  “They don’t even give me the chance to lie to their faces,” Jonah said.

  Keo chuckled. He decided that he liked Short Stuff, even if the man was right and they were, probably, all doomed when the Buckies eventually showed up.

  It’s a good thing I won’t be here tomorrow, Keo thought, but decided to keep that part to himself.

  Twenty-One

  Jonah stayed in one of the houses near the middle of the six buildings, flanked by three on one side and two on the other. He shared it with five others, all of whom were currently outside patrolling the grounds at the moment.

  “I spent the first seven months here by myself, trying to finish up this house,” Jonah said. “It took forever. Then the others showed up. After that, it only took a month, if that.”

  “Why this one?” Keo asked.

  Jonah shrugged. “It was the least finished. I guess it was symbolic; me finishing it, starting over.”

  “Where’d you get the parts?”

  “Everything we needed was in piles outside, just sitting there waiting for someone to punch in a time card and finish the construction. Turns out that was me. Never in a million years did I think I’d be spending my time hammering in nails and liking it. I guess you end up doing a lot of things you never planned on these days.”

  Ain’t that the truth, brother, Keo thought as he leaned against the deck railing and looked across the pitch-dark field at the solid black wall of woods on the other side.

  “Ghoul problems?” Keo asked.

  “Not out here,” Jonah said. “Not this close to the ocean. You know about that, I assume?”

  “That the only thing the little critters fear more than sunlight and silver is large bodies of salt water?”

  “Uh huh. Saw one of them come close a few years back, but that was it. Only the really desperate ones would even think about trying their luck with us all the way out here.”

  Or the really hungry ones, Keo thought, remembering the one he had killed in his cabin.

  There was constant ambient noise around him, crickets filling the air in front and the ocean waves pounding the beach at the back. A pair of sentries walked by below, talking quietly among themselves. Jonah had also put four men on each side of the beach in case of a surprise night attack. Overall, it was a decent perimeter defense and convinced Keo that Shorty knew what he was doing. Mostly, anyway.

  I guess no one’s getting a lot of sleep tonight.

  He looked back at the trees. There was something foreboding about it, and he couldn’t shake the feeling there were people in there watching him back. If there were, they’d be getting a pretty clear look at him with an LED lantern hanging almost directly above him. The lights were solar-powered and hung from the edges of each one of the six buildings.

  Talk about a spotlight, Keo thought, before taking a couple of steps back from the railing until he was partially hidden in the shadows.

  “What’s the matter?” Jonah asked when he came back out onto the deck and handed Keo an unlabeled bottle of beer. “You look spooked.”

  “Just being careful,” Keo said. He took the bottle and was surprised to find it cool to the touch. “You got a working fridge in there?”

  “Nah. We keep a cooler full of them in the ocean. I fished these out earlier.”

  Jonah had already taken off the cap, so Keo took a sip. The beer had lost most of its flavor and body, but it was still better than drinking bottled water. He watched Jonah lean against the railing, at about the same spot he had been earlier, and thought about telling the man he probably shouldn’t expose himself so readily, but decided he was just being paranoid.

  “It was nice while it lasted,” Jonah said, taking a sip from his beer.

  “You sound like you’ve already given this place up.”

  “I’m a pragmatist, and I know what these Buckies are capable of.”

  “Are we talking about personal experience?”

  Jonah grunted. “Maybe.”

  “What else did you hear about this Copenhagen guy?”

  “Not much, but anyone who could hire these old chums of ours to do the dirty work isn’t someone to fuck with. It takes a lot of balls to be in charge.” He paused to take another sip before lowering the bottle and staring off into the night. “Decisions have to be made, and sometimes men sacrificed for the greater good. It takes a toll on you, grinds you down. The only way it doesn’t is if you don’t have anything for it to grind down in the first place.”

  “Is it safe to say you weren’t just a foot soldier in the day?”

  “Not quite.”

  “So what happened?”

 
“Ran into people who were tougher than me. Smarter, too.”

  “Ain’t that always the case?” Keo took another sip from the beer. It wasn’t the best thing he’d ever tasted, but it was cool enough that it didn’t taste too bad. “So if you’ve already given this place up, where are you guys going?”

  Jonah looked back at him. “Why should I tell you? You’re leaving us tomorrow anyway, aren’t you?”

  “Who said anything about leaving?”

  “Oh, come on. You came here looking for two very specific people. You got some information from the Winding Creek refugees, and now you’re going to go back out there to continue the search. It’s a no-brainer.”

  I guess he’s making up for the lack of height with some smarts, Keo thought, and said, “Maybe.”

  “I have a plan and let’s leave it at that.”

  “It’s always nice to have a plan,” Keo said, and thought, I wish I had one right now. Wouldn’t that be nice?

  “I like having options,” Jonah said. “You never know when the world will try to kick you in the nuts. When that happens, I like being able to pivot. I find that it’s a good way to keep from dying unnecessarily.”

  “Has that always worked for you?”

  “So far…” He paused, then, “By the way, where’s your horse?”

  “My horse?”

  “Yeah. I saw it walking around on the beach earlier. I don’t see it anywhere down there.”

  Keo shrugged. “I have no idea. It’s not actually my horse.”

  “No?”

  “For some reason, it keeps following me—”

  Keo didn’t hear it, but there was no confusing what it was when something chopped into the wooden railing about six inches from Jonah’s chest, spitting wood into the air before zipping past Keo’s waist and punching into the wall behind him with an echoing thunk!

  “Sniper!” Keo shouted, and spun toward the door.

  He didn’t hear the next three shots, but he saw them landing—two embedding into the wall to his left before the third shattered a window just as Keo raced past it. The beer bottle flew out of his hand sometime between the second and third shot, but Keo wasn’t paying enough attention to be sure where it landed.

  “Fuck all!” Jonah shouted behind him.

  “Fuck all?” Keo thought even as he leapt through the open door and slammed into the floorboards inside the house.

  There was another LED lantern on a table nearby that partially lit up the room, though not enough to cover all of the spaces. Keo was rolling over onto his back and into a patch of shadow just in time to see Jonah slipping inside after him. The man grabbed the door and swung it shut as two more rounds smacked into it from the other side—thunk! thunk!—but didn’t penetrate.

  Jonah ducked as he jumped over Keo, then slid to the floor and crawled over to a nearby wall far from any of the windows. Keo thought that was a fine idea—the sniper couldn’t hit what they couldn’t see—and crawled over to the table where he had laid down his MP5SD, reached for it, then went over to join Jonah.

  Keo had just reached Jonah’s position when a radio squawked and an alarmed voice said through tiny speakers, “What was that? Did someone shout something?”

  Jonah unclipped the two-way from his hip and keyed it. “It’s me. There are snipers in the field. I repeat: There are snipers in the field.”

  Keo had to admit, he was impressed with Shorty’s calmness. The man didn’t scream into the radio or shout incoherently.

  He’s definitely been through this before.

  “Should we return fire?” someone else asked through the radio.

  “Not unless you can see them,” Jonah said. “You’ll just make yourselves into a target. Until then, stay low. That goes for everyone.”

  “Roger that,” someone answered.

  “Are you hurt?” a female voice asked. Keo recognized Sherry.

  “No, got indoors with everything still intact,” Jonah said, patting himself down just to be sure. “Yeah. I’m good.”

  “Keo?”

  “He’s fine, too.”

  “Nice of her to ask,” Keo smiled.

  “Well, you did save her life out there,” Jonah said. Then, into the radio, “Landry, Max—you guys see anything?”

  “Who’s Landry and Max?” Keo asked.

  Jonah looked up at the ceiling.

  The rooftop sentries.

  “I got nothing,” a male voice answered. Jonah mouthed the word Max at Keo, before Max added, “I’m not seeing anything out there, Jonah.”

  “Are you using your night-vision?” Jonah asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, of course. I’m still seeing squat. If he’s out there, I don’t see him. But there’s a mile of grass. He could be anywhere.”

  “What about you, Landry?”

  He waited for a reply.

  Five seconds, then ten.

  Uh oh, Keo thought, when Jonah said into the radio, “Landry. Are you there? Landry, answer me, goddammit.”

  But whoever Landry was, he never answered.

  “Shit,” Jonah whispered. Then, calmly into the radio, “Max. Can you see him?”

  “He’s down,” Max said. “He’s down, Jonah. Landry’s down.”

  “Where?”

  “On the roof. He’s still on the roof, but he’s not moving…”

  Jonah exchanged a look with Keo, and even in the semidarkness Keo could tell the man was trying to figure out what to do or say next. Keo wanted to help the poor guy out, but all he could think about was running out there, looking for Horse, and escaping through the beach. And he could do just that without ever having to see a single Bucky. The bad guys were probably shooting from the woods (which was possible but not likely—it was a damn mile, after all) or they were already staked out in the fields (which was much more likely), but the beach would be cleared. All Keo had to do was find Horse and point him either south or north and keep going along the sand.

  Unless, of course, the Buckies had people watching both beach directions, too. What were the chances of that? It would almost entirely depend on how many they had brought this time.

  Five this morning. Maybe five again tonight.

  Or more…

  Keo was still thinking about his options when Jonah keyed the radio and said into it, “Baker, I want you to wake everyone up.”

  “Got it,” someone answered.

  “Stratton,” Jonah said, “take a group to bolster the guards on our south. Jerry, I want you to do the same on our north—”

  “Fuck!” someone shouted through the radio just before a rifle fired—the pop-pop-pop filling the world outside in a rush of gunfire. Someone was unloading an entire magazine and didn’t stop until they had run empty.

  Jonah waited until the last shots faded before he keyed his radio. “What was that? What just happened?”

  “They shot Barnes,” another man answered through the radio. “Goddammit, they got Barnes. Shot him through the head. Jesus.”

  “Where are they?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t see them.”

  “Anyone else?” Jonah asked.

  “I don’t see anything out there,” someone else answered.

  “I can’t see anything from my building, either,” Sherry said.

  “Okay, okay.” Jonah seemed to take a breath. Then, “Stay out of the open. They can’t shoot what they can’t see. Watch your spots, and if you see anything moving out there, let them have it. But don’t expose yourself if you don’t have to. Got it?”

  “Roger that,” Sherry said.

  A few others responded in the affirmative.

  “Where was Barnes?” Keo asked.

  Jonah put his radio down. “What?”

  “Barnes.”

  “South end.”

  “And Landry was on the north end?”

  Jonah nodded. “Yeah. So?”

  “Someone took a shot at us in the middle.”

  “What’s your point, Keo?”

  “My point is, ther
e are at least two of them out there, with the possibility of three or more. They have the south and north ends covered, along with the center.”

  It took a few seconds, but Jonah finally got it. “Oh, crap. They’ve got us cut off from any routes of escape. Even through the beaches.”

  “Looks that way,” Keo nodded, and thought, There goes my out. “Even if there’s just three of them out there, they can pick us off if we try to make a run for it in any direction. They might not get all of us, but they’ll get enough.”

  “Goddammit. Got any more good news for me?”

  “Yeah. I dropped my beer.”

  Jonah gave him an “Are you serious?” look before chuckling. “I’ll get you another one when this is over.”

  “I gotta wait for this to be over?”

  “Hey, life’s full of sacrifices, buddy.”

  “I guess so,” Keo said, and laid his submachine gun in his lap and leaned back against the wall.

  “I didn’t hear it,” Jonah said. “The first shot or the others. I heard them hit, but I didn’t hear the actual shots.”

  “They’re using suppressors,” Keo said. “My guess is they’re already in the fields. Probably spent the last few hours crawling through it from the woods. There could be a few hundred of them out there, for all we know. It wouldn’t be hard in that pitch darkness.”

  Jonah sighed. “I guess it was too much to hope they might wait a few more days before they made their move. Most of our emergency supplies are already in moving crates.”

  “When was moving day supposed to be?”

  “I was going to make the announcement tomorrow morning.”

  Jonah looked toward the closest window, which was also the one that had been shot out. Moonlight and chilly air filtered inside, and Keo pulled his shirt’s collar up and over his neck for warmth. There were just the crickets in front of them and the surf behind them again.

  “How many of your people know what they’re doing out there?” Keo asked.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, how many have killed before?”

  Jonah shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s not like I gave everyone an interview before I let them join us.”

  “You said they were all collaborators. How many wore uniforms like you?”