Road to Babylon (Book 9): The Ranch

by Sisavath, Sam

  “Even when it’s not there, you feel it, like something moving at the corner of your eyes. But when you turn to look, it’s gone.”

  Thuy nodded, and kept quiet. It was almost as if she were afraid to speak too loudly; terrified it would know that she was talking about it.

  “Your sister,” Keo said. “Where is she now?”

  “The last time I saw her, yesterday morning, she was still at the park,” Thuy said. “But…”

  “But what?”

  “I think they were already preparing to move.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure if she’s still there.” Then, almost hopefully, “Do you think she’s still there?”

  “This is the state park, about five miles northwest from here.”

  “Yes.” Then, trying and failing to sit up on the cot, “Do you think she’s okay? Do you think it’s hurt Abby?”

  Keo and Lara exchanged another look, but neither one of them said anything. Thuy saw their reaction, but before she could press her question, their radios squawked, sparing them from having to lie to her.

  It was Bunker: “Hey, guys. I got an update on Carlos.”

  Keo unclipped his radio first. “Are they okay?”

  “I don’t know; no one answered my call.”

  Of course they didn’t. Why did I think they would?

  “What do you want to do, Bunker?” Keo said into the radio.

  “They’re my neighbors,” Bunker said. “The least I can do is find out if they might need a hand.”

  If they’re even still alive, Keo thought.

  He said instead, “I’ll see you topside.”

  Bunker was waiting for him with two horses already saddled, one of them being Annabelle. The big Morgan gave Keo what might have been a Hey there, nice to see you again whinny as Bunker passed over the reins.

  “Still nothing from Carlos?” Keo asked.

  Bunker shook his head. “A bit fat zero. That’s never happened before. Either he or his brother usually answers. Or one of the wives, if the men are busy.”

  “Always?”

  “Always.”

  That’s not good, Keo thought as he climbed into Annabelle’s saddle.

  It didn’t take them very long to reach Carlos’s place, but they were moving pretty fast and hard across the hills. As they neared the neighboring ranch, the smoke had thinned out, becoming long wisps of gray in the sky instead of full-blown smoke. Keo was surprised whatever had started the fire had lasted so long to begin with. It had to have begun at night and carried through morning.

  When they finally crossed through the front gate—it was still standing, and so was the fence that corralled the property—Keo saw why the smoke had lasted so long. Every single building in the place was gone, reduced to ashes. That included the pens that once housed the livestock. Instead of chickens, pigs, and cattle, there were bloody patches scattered across the grass as if a marauding army had slaughtered and eaten what they killed as they carried on their warpath. Which, Keo guessed, wasn’t too far from the truth.

  They rode up the dirt trail toward what was left of the main house, moving slower than necessary. This was because of Bunker, who had slowed down noticeably, almost as if he didn’t want to reach the remains too fast. That was understandable. Bunker and Carlos’s family were friends and had been long before Keo and Lara entered the picture. The wives always welcomed Lara and Keo to the ranch. They were the first ones at Bunker’s with gifts when they learned Lara was pregnant. The kids were there, too.

  …the kids…

  Three of them: two girls and a boy, including Lightning Mikey, the fastest kid in Texas…

  Bunker didn’t say anything all the way from the front gate to the first pile of burnt wood that had fallen off the pile of what used to be the main house. There were more prints on the ground and in the grass. An army of bare feet.

  Ghouls.

  Lingering smoke and ash and things Keo didn’t want to think of tickled at his nostrils, making breathing a little more difficult than it should have been. Keo took out another half mask he’d brought along just in case and slipped it on.

  It didn’t really help this time, for some reason.

  He still remembered, in vivid detail, what the monster had (hissed) said to him over eight long weeks ago:

  “Pathetic. Did you really think this was a fight? You’re just my playthings, meat. You’re just my temporary cure against boredom.”

  And when it was bored with Keo, when the cure ceased to become entertaining enough, it would seek out a new playmate.

  A new victim…

  But it wasn’t over yet. That message back in the basement was proof of that.

  ROUND ONE

  That meant there was going to be a round two.

  Then a round three…

  Unless I kill you first, motherfucker, Keo thought as he watched Bunker climb down from Lucille and stand in front of the ashes and smoldering ruins that used to be Carlos and Jose’s residence. There wasn’t anything left but burnt wood, scarred bricks, and charred grass around them.

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

  Looking at the remains of the property now, Keo couldn’t tell if there had been a fight. Maybe Carlos and Jose were properly equipped to handle a ghoul invasion, but were they ready for a Blue Eyes? Keo hadn’t thought so then, and he didn’t now. Unless you’d come face to face with one of those ungodly things, it was hard to know what to expect—

  Annabelle lifted her head and let out a surprised whinny. She’d smelled it first, but it didn’t take long for Keo to catch on.

  He whirled the horse around, already unslinging the MP5 with his other hand.

  What the fuck?

  She looked back at him with big brown eyes, wearing tattered clothes that were covered in dirt and mud and God only knew what else. He wasn’t sure how she’d gotten behind him and so close. Maybe he was too preoccupied, like Bunker had been. She couldn’t have been more than twenty meters away, standing with her arms hanging loosely at her sides, long black hair draped over her dirty, oval-shaped face like an Asian ghost from those horror movies Danny liked to watch so much.

  Keo pulled down the mask. “Bunker.”

  “What?” Bunker said. Keo couldn’t see the rancher, but from the slightly annoyed tone of his voice, he had a feeling Bunker hadn’t turned around.

  “Bunker, turn around.”

  It took a couple of seconds before Bunker said, “What the fuck?”

  That’s what I said, Keo thought as he let the submachine gun fall back on its strap.

  He jumped down from Annabelle and held out one hand, palm up, toward the girl. He didn’t recognize her, which made her presence confusing. She was Asian, and there was a familiarity to her that Keo couldn’t quite place.

  “Hi,” Keo said. “What—”

  “She wants to meet you,” the girl said.

  “What?”

  “She wants to meet you,” the girl said again.

  “Is she talking to you?” Bunker asked from behind Keo.

  “I don’t know,” Keo said. Then, to the girl, “Are you talking to me?”

  “She wants to meet you,” the girl said for the third time. Her voice was flat and monotone and as devoid of emotion the third time she repeated her sentence as it’d been the first. He might have believed she was a robot in a girl’s body, but of course he knew better. He could see it on her face: She was shell-shocked. The last time he saw that…

  Thuy. She looks like Thuy.

  “It wasn’t all a lie,” Thuy had said this morning. “There were seven of us, and they did ambush us in the park where we were staying. Except it didn’t kill everyone but me. It killed five of the people traveling with me, but it left two of us alive. Me…and Abby, my sister.”

  “Abby,” Keo said. “Your name’s Abby, isn’t it?”

 
Something that could almost pass for emotion flickered across the girl’s eyes at the sound of her name. It was all the confirmation Keo needed.

  He glanced back at Bunker, standing closer behind him. The rancher had one hand on his holstered sidearm, his AR still slung over his back. Keo gave Bunker a Don’t draw your gun look.

  “You know her?” Bunker said. “’Cause I don’t. She’s not one of Carlos’s.”

  Keo nodded. “She’s Thuy’s sister.”

  Bunker raised both eyebrows. “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  He turned back around. Abby was still there, not having moved an inch. She looked like a statue. Or, again, a robot, waiting for instructions.

  “Your sister—” Keo began.

  “She wants to meet you,” Abby said, cutting him off.

  “Who?”

  “She wants to meet you.”

  “Who? Who wants to meet me?”

  A moment of confusion crossed Abby’s face. She was very young. Twelve, maybe even younger than that. It was hard to tell for sure with all the dirt and mud on her face and the paleness of her skin. Whatever the girl had been through, it had left a lasting impression, the kind that wasn’t going to go away anytime soon, if ever.

  When Abby still didn’t answer him, Keo said, “Who, Abby? Who wants to meet with me?”

  “Jackson,” Abby finally said.

  Jackson? Keo thought. The name caught him by surprise. He hadn’t expected to hear it again.

  “Jackson?” he said out loud.

  “Jackson wants to meet you,” Abby said.

  Fourteen

  “So when exactly did I start an orphanage for lost girls and no one bothered to tell me about it?” Bunker asked.

  “Probably about the same time you let us in,” Keo said.

  “Yeah, I knew that was a bad idea.”

  Keo grinned. “Live and learn, pal. Live and learn.”

  “I’d rather not, thank you very much.”

  “Be quiet, you two, this is a good thing,” Lara said.

  “Says you,” Bunker said.

  “Shut up.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Now you’re learning,” Keo said, winking at him.

  Bunker smirked but didn’t say anything else. He shut up and watched Thuy and Abby have their reunion inside the infirmary. Or Thuy was having the reunion, anyway. Abby, as far as Keo could tell, might not have even recognized her sister as she was embraced—or as much an embrace as Thuy could manage toward the smaller girl given she only had one arm to work with.

  Keo, Lara, and Bunker watched the sisters from the door, which was as much privacy as they could give them. They didn’t think Thuy was going to do anything before, and certainly not now that she’d gotten her sister back, but you could never be too careful. She had, after all, almost killed Lara last night, and that was something Keo wasn’t ever going to forget.

  Keo’s mind drifted back to Jackson.

  He hadn’t thought of her in a long time, maybe not even once in the last month or so. Which, he guessed, made him something of an asshole since she had saved his life. If Jackson hadn’t made it to the ranch, with a KA-BAR knife sticking out of her, no less, he probably wouldn’t be alive right now.

  Probably? Try for sure, pal.

  It was Jackson who had told Lara and Bunker about his situation. If she’d given in on the way here, and didn’t fight tooth and nail to make it despite all the pain she was suffering that night, today would be much different. He wouldn’t be around to watch over Lara and their unborn child, for one.

  And a blue-eyed ghoul wouldn’t have just sent him another message, this time through Abby.

  And that was exactly what Jackson was, now. She’d been turned by the blood still dripping from the KA-BAR’s blade when it sank into her shoulder. The infection had made her into one of them. They hadn’t known if she’d just become another Black Eyes among many or something else.

  If Abby was to be believed—and Keo believed her 100 percent—then Jackson was a Blue Eyes. She’d been turned that night and was probably here last night, too. Hell, she was probably also in Longmire when it was razed to the ground, not to mention Carlos’s.

  “She wants to meet you,” Abby had said.

  Not “They want to meet you.”

  Or “It wants to meet you.”

  Instead, she’d said, “She wants to meet you.”

  “Why you?” Bunker had asked on the ride over.

  “I don’t know,” Keo had said, and it was the truth.

  He didn’t know. He understood the other Blue Eyes—to the extent you could really understand a supernatural creature like that, anyway—but Jackson was a completely different animal. For one, he actually knew this one’s name, and had known her before her turning. Was that it, then? Was it their history, however brief, that had started this…whatever this was?

  “Have you figured out what it wants with you yet?” Bunker was asking Keo now as they continued to watch the sisters sitting on the cot together.

  Thuy was clinging to her little sister as if she was afraid the other girl might try to get away. Abby didn’t so much as look uncomfortable as…confused by the whole thing.

  “No,” Keo said.

  “There’s a reason it asked for you,” Bunker said.

  “I’m sure there is. I just don’t know what it is.”

  “She said Jackson?” Lara said, watching the sisters. “She specifically said Jackson’s name?”

  “Yes,” Keo said.

  He watched Thuy running her fingers through Abby’s hair, picking out dirt and mud and flicking it away. The young girl sat still as her big sister cleaned her, looking across the infirmary back at Keo.

  It was her eyes that bothered him. There was something wrong with them. There was a certain…deadness about those brown eyes that didn’t belong to a twelve-year-old girl, which was what she was. Thuy had confirmed her age.

  He tried to remember what she’d been through—what both sisters had. It’d been enough for Thuy to almost kill Lara last night. So what was this little girl capable of?

  Keep an eye on her.

  Definitely gotta keep an eye on her…

  Now all he had to do was figure out if this was a trap. Or if Blue Eyes was using Jackson to get to him. Maybe trying to manipulate him, the way it had done back at Paxton.

  As if she could hear his thoughts, Abby said, directly at him, “The other one doesn’t know.”

  The girl hadn’t spoken since they brought her down here, and to hear her again surprised everyone. Keo, Bunker, Lara—and Thuy.

  “What did you just say, Abby?” Thuy asked.

  “It’s just her,” Abby said. She hadn’t looked away from Keo or seem to have even heard Thuy’s question.

  “Who are you talking about, Abby?” Thuy asked. “Her, who?”

  “Her,” Abby said, finally turning to stare at her sister.

  From the look on her face, it didn’t take Thuy very long to understand who “her” was.

  “Who is she talking about, Thuy?” Lara asked, even though, like Keo, she already knew the answer as well.

  “The other one,” Thuy said, looking across at them.

  “‘The other one?’” Bunker said.

  “The other blue-eyed ghoul. There were two of them.” She looked back at her sister. “Was she the one who let you go?”

  “She wants to meet you,” Abby said. Those disturbing brown eyes had returned to lock in on Keo’s. “The other one doesn’t know. She wants to meet you alone…”

  “How did she find you guys, anyway?” Lara asked, later, after they had left the sisters in the infirmary to continue their awkward and what appeared to be very one-sided reunion.

  “It told her to look for smoke and to walk toward it,” Keo said. “It took her the entire morning to reach Carlos’s place.”

  “Not exactly Google Maps, but I guess it worked,” Bunker said.

  “I guess so.”

  �
��So do we believe her about all the other stuff? This creature wanting a meeting in a neutral location?” Lara asked.

  “I don’t think she’s lying, if that’s what you mean,” Keo said. “Is that what you mean?”

  “Sort of,” Lara said, but he didn’t think she sounded entirely sure herself.

  “If it is Jackson…”

  “That’s a big if,” Bunker said. “It’s not like we knew what happened to her after we left her here that night. We’re just guessing, right? All of this is just one big guesswork?”

  “It’s an educated guess,” Lara said. “That’s how the infection works. Their blood comes into contact with yours, and it’s over.” She shook her head. “If I’d known she was infected when we left that poor girl here…”

  “You couldn’t have done anything anyway,” Keo said. “We’ve all seen how it works, Lara. Once you’re infected, there’s no turning back. That’s it. We’ve seen it too many times.”

  She nodded but stayed quiet. Keo knew that Lara had always felt guilty about abandoning Jackson in order to rush with Bunker to rescue him outside of Paxton. That was Lara in a nutshell—always feeling responsible for everyone. It was one of the reasons why she was so much happier now, at Bunker’s ranch. Here, it was just her and him to worry about. Then, eventually, baby made three. But it was still just three souls instead of the thousands that depended on her, day in and day out, back at Black Tide. The responsibility had crushed her spirits until she couldn’t take it anymore.

  “You’re not really going to do this, are you?” Bunker was asking him.

  Keo didn’t answer him immediately.

  “Well? Are you?” Bunker pressed.

  “I don’t know,” Keo said.

  Bunker rolled his eyes. “Yeah, you do. You’re gonna do it.”

  “It wants to meet me.”

  “And who says we have to give it what it wants? You saw that message in the basement. Round two’s coming, buddy.”

  “That was from the other one. Not Jackson.”

  “And you’re going to take the kid’s word for it that it’s two different people? With two different agendas? It sure didn’t feel like it last night. Carlos would tell you the same thing if he were here.”