Road to Babylon (Book 9): The Ranch

by Sisavath, Sam

  “Compared to what you got over at Bunker’s, it’s not much to look at, but it’s not too shabby, either.”

  “Are you sure about that? Because we have plenty of room back at Bunker’s. For you and the whole family, and five more if necessary.”

  Carlos seemed to think about it for a moment, and didn’t answer right away. He glanced back at Donna as she stood waiting at the door, looking over in their direction.

  “Come stay with us until this is over,” Keo said. “Grab the wives and the kids. The ranch is going to be here tomorrow and the day after that, and the day after that. You saw what happened at Longmire. It could happen here, too. Easily.”

  Carlos shook his head. “We’ll be fine. Like Jose says, it’s not like we haven’t been around these things before. We can handle ourselves, Keo. And we’re prepared for whatever comes our way.”

  “This Blue Eyes…”

  “We’ll kill it if it comes here,” Carlos said. There was a finality to his voice, a That’s all there is to it, and nothing you say will change my mind.

  Keo nodded reluctantly. “If you change your mind, you know where to find us.”

  “Thanks. Maybe we’ll take you and Bunker up on your offer.”

  Keo climbed back into Annabelle’s saddle. He didn’t ride off right away. Instead, he looked across the vast ranch grounds at Donna, already heading back into the house. He could see the figures moving around in the kitchen through the windows, not that he could tell who was who.

  He looked back at Carlos. “If anything happens, give us a shout on the radio. We’re neighbors, right? And neighbors help each other in times of need.”

  “Same to you,” Carlos said.

  Keo leaned down to shake the man’s hand. He had a strong grip as usual. “Don’t be a hero. Think about your family.”

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

  Keo didn’t say anything else. There wasn’t anything left to say, so he turned Annabelle around and led her back down the trail.

  He slowed down as Lightning Mikey darted past him, his father laboring to catch up.

  Jose stopped to catch his breath, hands on his knees. “That kid will be the death of me, Keo.”

  Keo grinned. “Bacon and milk, huh?”

  Jose chuckled. “That’s all it takes.”

  “I’ll let Lara know.”

  He glanced back at Carlos, who had already begun walking to the house. Mikey was well ahead of him, getting smaller as he dashed on ahead.

  “What did he say?” Jose asked.

  Keo looked over at Jose. “About what?”

  “You told him to come join you guys at Bunker’s, right? To use that shelter of his?”

  Keo smiled. “Yeah.”

  “So what did he say?”

  “He said no.”

  Jose flashed him a wry Yeah, I figured he’d say that smile. “He’s stubborn, my brother.”

  “But you’re not.”

  “I know what Bunker has, and what we have.” He shook his head. “It’s no contest.”

  “So talk to Carlos.”

  “I did. All morning, ever since we got back from Longmire.”

  “And?”

  Jose shook his head. “Stubborn, my brother. It’s the ex-army in him. Makes him think he’s always right.”

  “You can’t be always right all the time, Jose.”

  “Tell him that. He sure doesn’t listen to us.”

  “He says the women know.”

  “They do.”

  “What do they think about staying here?”

  “Donna agrees with her man, of course.”

  “And Gwen?”

  Jose grinned. “She’s my dulzura, cuz. What do you think?”

  Keo looked over at the main house again. Carlos was only halfway there, but Mikey was long gone.

  “I’ll work on him,” Jose said. “Me and Gwen. I think she says Donna may be coming around.”

  “Keep working on him,” Keo said. He leaned down to shake Jose’s hand. “Until then, watch each other’s six.”

  “You too, man. You too.”

  Keo rode off, leaving Jose to jog after his brother. Keo passed the pens with the cattle and pigs and went around some stray lines of chickens crossing the dirty road he was on.

  The sun was still high in the sky, so he wasn’t too worried that the trip to Carlos had cost him any real time.

  Next stop: Hamlock.

  Five

  Keo settled over the ridge overlooking the small town of Hamlock—a scattering of buildings with a single main road that ran through it. The country highway that led toward Longmire was within sight to his right, but that was only because he was so high up. Any lower, and he wouldn’t be able to see the blacktop at all. That made Hamlock mostly isolated, squatting at the base of a series of rolling hills. That lack of contact with the rest of the world had been why the town had never been resettled after The Purge. As far as Keo knew, there were only a few hundred people in the place before the world went to shit. That few hundred became zero quickly after.

  The sun beating down on him was a soothing reminder that he was still working within his own timetable despite the side trip to Carlos’s, but the weather wasn’t nearly as warm against the chilly Texas weather as it had been just an hour ago. That was another gentle nudge that while he was still very much on schedule, time was slipping away.

  Nightfall was coming. And with it…

  Let’s not think about that right now.

  Keo didn’t blame Carlos and his brothers for not following the ghoul tracks into Hamlock. There was something foreboding about the small town even in the brightness of day. The place just looked…dead.

  Nice choice of words, pal. You trying to psych yourself out of this? This was your idea in the first place, remember?

  Oh, he remembered. Despite the sudden bout of reluctance, he also knew it was the right call. They did need more intel on the enemy. Keo didn’t like having to go into a fight not knowing how many guns—or, in this case, fangs—the bad guys had to throw at him. For all he knew, Sadistic, Keo’s new name for it, had assembled itself a whole new army, one that was even bigger than the one he’d sicced on Keo back at Paxton. That would explain how it could have taken Longmire in one single night.

  “I don’t like the fact that they took out Longmire,” Bunker had said. “There were eighty-plus people in that place, and we’re not talking about a bunch of hippies here. They survived The Purge. They survive everything that happened after that. And for them to go out in one night?”

  Keo didn’t like how easily Longmire had gone down, either. He wasn’t nearly as familiar with the town’s citizenry as Bunker, but he had gotten to know plenty of them over the months. They were good people. More than that, they were tough.

  And yet, they’d been taken in one night…

  Not tough enough, I guess.

  The answers weren’t going to come to him sitting on Annabelle looking down at Hamlock. They were inside the town. If not every answer he was hoping to find, then maybe something to justify coming out here. Right now, some was better than none.

  Keo nudged Annabelle on the flanks, and the big black mare started forward. Annabelle had once belonged to a slayer named Martin, but the man was dead. He, along with a half dozen other slayers, had fallen victim to the ghoul Keo had come to call Sadistic back in Paxton. Keo would have joined them in the afterlife if not for the actions of one of Martin’s men. Not that Keo thought the man had done what he did on purpose, but the results were the same nonetheless.

  Thanks again, Felix.

  What was that Felix had said to him before he detonated the C4? Oh, right.

  “Hey, Keo, time to make the donuts!”

  Keo still didn’t know what the hell that meant, but it had sounded pretty good, especially coming out of Felix’s mouth. The phrase itself belonged to another slayer, one that wasn’t nearly as frie
ndly to Keo as Felix had been.

  It’s time to make the donuts, or something just as sweet, that will clog up my arteries and kill me early, Keo thought as he entered Hamlock from its southern end.

  Hamlock was a silver town—or it used to be—and once mined the precious metal out of a nearby hill. Once the precious metal ran out, though, so had the town’s purpose. It looked bigger on the ground than when Keo had viewed it from the elevated perch. Not by much, but the difference was noticeable. Maybe it was the way the eaves hung off the rooftops, as if they were about to fall down at any moment, but somehow remained attached through the years.

  The place showed obvious wear and tear and had been battered by time and the elements over the years. Wind whistled through gaping holes along walls, broken windows, and wide-open doors that hadn’t been closed for God only knew how many years now. There were a few cars sprinkled about, most of them parked along the sidewalks, but not as many as he was used to seeing in other towns. A couple of parking lots, grocery stores, and a big church farther up the road. That wasn’t unusual; all these small cities had churches. There were a few things Texans couldn’t live without, and religion was one of them. Guns were the other one. If he looked, Keo was sure he’d find plenty of weapons lying around waiting to be picked up.

  He paid more attention to the windows of buildings he passed. There were very obvious telltale signs that ghouls had been around a certain area. The creatures didn’t understand subtlety and left evidence everywhere they went. Keo expected to find those hints of ghoul occupation here, but he didn’t. Either they were being very careful these days, or…

  The Blue Eyes. I forgot about the Blue Eyes.

  Then: How the hell did you forget about the Blue Eyes?

  The difference between what the Black Eyes did and how they operated was night and day when one of their blue-eyed counterparts was around. It controlled them. It told them what to do. It was the commander to their grunts. When one of those vicious bastards was in the vicinity, the ghouls were unpredictable and acted in a manner that could almost be misinterpreted as intelligence. But of course they weren’t. They just seemed that way because the Blue Eyes were telling them what to do.

  Is that why he couldn’t find any signs of ghoul occupation? Were the Blue Eyes being careful? It would make some sense. Sadistic wouldn’t allow Keo to just stumble across their hideout. It would be careful, especially in the daytime, when Keo had all the advantage.

  “All the advantage?” Going a little overboard there, aren’t you, pal?

  Okay, maybe a little advantage.

  If Annabelle was suspicious of Hamlock’s seemingly empty nature, the horse didn’t show it. And animals were much more instinctive when it came to ghoul presence than humans, Keo concluded. After all, they’d not only survived The Purge, but the years since. Like their human counterparts, it took more than just dumb luck to achieve that. A little skill here and there helped, too.

  Keo leaned down and rubbed the side of Annabelle’s head. “Anything, girl? You getting any whiffs of ghouls out there?”

  The horse continued on her slow walk up the road, the clop-clop-clop of her hooves on the hard concrete the only sound other than the occasional howling winds. If she was even the least bit alert, Keo couldn’t detect it.

  “I guess not,” he said, sitting back up on the saddle.

  There were surprisingly few signs of looting around him, probably because Hamlock never had very much to give to begin with. There was a reason Carlos, whose ranch was only two miles to the south, and Bunker had never bothered to search the place for supplies.

  “It’s dead city,” Bunker had said when he first told Keo about Hamlock’s existence. “Went through it once or twice—or maybe once and a half, but who’s counting?—and didn’t see any point in doing it again. It’s deader than dead.”

  “How is something deader than dead?” Keo had said.

  “You know dead?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, this is deader than that.”

  “Okay, Bunker,” Keo had said, because trying to “get” Bunker was like trying to understand the Texas weather. It was flaky and you never knew what it would do—or not do—in any given day. Or hour.

  Bunker was right, though. Keo would have thought he was inside an old Wild West town if not for the occasional vehicles and TV antennas that, though askew, still managed to remain propped up on a few of the rooftops around him. There were a surprisingly large number of satellite dishes, but that made sense. Even before The Purge, Hamlock was a hidden town, and getting fiber optic cable out here would have been diff—

  Sunlight blinked off something along one of the rooftops just a split second before Keo heard the very loud pop! of a gunshot and was on the ground.

  What the hell was that?

  He’d landed on his left shoulder, which was a lot better than if it’d been his head or the back of his neck, and was rolling away even as another pop! rang out.

  A round sailed over his head and struck the pavement a few yards in front of him, kicking up fragments of the street into the air. Keo rolled right underneath it, the need to keep going (Move move move! Don’t stop! Don’t make yourself an easy target!) overriding everything.

  Another pop!, but this one missed by a mile, and Keo thought, Jesus Christ. Is the shooter just that bad, or are they not trying to hit me?

  But then another voice said, If they’re not trying to hit you, why the hell are they shooting at you then, genius?

  Good point!

  He didn’t stop to find out one way or another. He couldn’t afford to, anyway, and didn’t stop rolling until he glimpsed dented chrome metal coming up fast. He was forced to scramble up from the ground and onto his knees as—

  A pop!, followed a split second later by the ping! of the round as it struck the trunk of the Toyota Camry parked on the curb. That shot hadn’t been close, either. The bullet had struck the vehicle a good five feet or so to his left.

  Bad shot or not really trying to hit me? Keo thought again even as he scrambled around the parked car and dropped down to his knees on the other side.

  There was another late pop!, followed by the corresponding ping! as the round hit the Toyota on the other side.

  The shot faded…then silence.

  Just to be safe, Keo crab-walked to the flat tire, where any bullet that managed to puncture the body of the sedan couldn’t go right through him as he hid behind it. At least this way he’d have a second defensive wall.

  Despite the whole thing taking place in less than ten or so seconds (Maybe even shorter than that? It wasn’t like he was timing it.), he was out of breath. If he was bruised and hurt from the fall, then the insane roll, scramble, and dive for cover, he didn’t feel it. Not yet, anyway. Good ol’ adrenaline was doing its job as usual, and despite his breath hammering out of him in chaotic spurts, Keo was reasonably certain he didn’t have any additional holes in him that he didn’t have before he arrived at Hamlock.

  Just to be sure, though, he did a quick check.

  He was good. At least, he wasn’t bleeding anywhere. Thank God he’d been carrying the MP5, with the AR-15 in its sheath, alongside Annabelle. While the short submachine gun had gotten in a few painful pricks into his body while he was rolling for his life, the longer-barreled AR would have made it twice as hazardous.

  Wait. Annabelle. What about Annabelle?

  Keo had been so busy falling, then moving to save his own hide, that he’d forgotten about the horse. Now that the shooting had stopped (Bad shot or not really trying to hit me?), Keo scooted farther down the length of the car before poking his head up to look through one of the grime-caked windows and out the other side—

  Pop! and zip! as the sniper fired and a bullet sailed harmlessly over his head.

  Another miss!

  Badly, too.

  He ducked back down anyway. In the second or two he was up, he hadn’t been able to fully scan the street or locate Annabelle. But he was able to
confirm that the shooter was on the rooftop of a building directly across the street from him.

  Keo dropped to the sidewalk instead of sticking his head up for another peek, even though, at this point, he had concluded that the shooter wasn’t trying to miss him on purpose, but was just a really bad shot. Not that he was complaining. He’d take a bad sniper over a good one any day of the week, especially when their weapon was pointed at him.

  He peered underneath the Camry. All four tires were flat, which meant the car was lower to street than usual, but there was still plenty of space for Keo to see across—

  The clop-clop-clop of horse shoes from up the street.

  Keo scrambled back up and sought out the source of the noise.

  Annabelle, very much alive, and in the process of fleeing through Hamlock.

  Smart horse, Keo thought as he watched the big black mare getting smaller. He wasn’t too surprised the Morgan hadn’t stuck around. In her shoes, he would have done the same thing. It wasn’t like they’d bonded. Keo had spent nearly a month in bed recovering from his wounds. When all was said and done, he’d really been on his feet and feeling like he could stand without help for the last few weeks or so.

  Keo needed to get a better look at the shooter, but he didn’t poke his head up to get it shot at again. The sniper might have been a bad shot, but there was no point in pushing his luck. Instead, he kept the MP5 in front of him as he scooted along the Toyota until he was nearer to the driver-side door. He was pretty sure the shooter couldn’t see him, or they would have fired again already. The sniper had the higher ground, and all it would take was one bad decision by Keo—or one poorly positioned angle—and he was a dead man.

  And he didn’t want that. Nope. He didn’t want to be dead at all. Especially not with what was coming tonight.

  Especially not with everything at stake.

  With everyone at stake…

  It’d been a few minutes since the first shot, and Keo didn’t hear or see any signs of a ground assault. That meant the sniper was either by themselves or their allies were taking things slowly. Either way, Keo kept his eyes and ears open for a full-frontal charge now that the ambush had failed.