“You okay, kid?” Keo asked.
Carter didn’t answer.
“Kid?” Keo said.
When Carter still didn’t reply, Keo glanced over his shoulder.
The teenager was lying on the landing on her back, gasping for breath while she clutched her chest with both hands. Even in the semidarkness, Keo could see blood seeping through her fingers as her eyes, wide as the moon, looked up at him. Keo had seen that expression of shock and confusion too many times to count.
“Jesus Christ,” Keo said as he turned around and crouched next to her.
He put both hands over hers as Carter’s mouth moved erratically, like a fish struggling to breathe on land. Her body was surprisingly calm, belying the blood that oozed generously out of her.
Too much blood. She was losing way too much blood.
“Kid, do you have a first-aid kit?” Keo asked.
Carter stared up at him. He wasn’t sure if she’d even heard him; or if she did, if she understood a single word he’d said.
Keo unzipped his jacket and took it off. Getting Carter to take her hands away from her wound was another matter. She fought him, but eventually he won, and pressed his bundled jacket down against the wound. He had to exert a lot of pressure to make sure he could cut off the bleeding, and Carter gasped loudly and began thrashing from the pain.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Keo said. “I just need to stop the bleeding. You’ll be okay, kid. You’ll be okay.”
It was a lie, because the wound was bad. The bullet had struck her where one of her lungs would be. That explained the blood bubbling out between her lips and her struggles to keep breathing, even as her body continued fighting him.
“Stay with me, Carter,” Keo said. “We’ll find Liz and Jackson together, but you have to stay with me first, kid. Do you hear me?”
Carter’s lips quivered as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t form the words.
“Don’t die,” Keo said. “You can’t die. Liz and Jackson are looking for you. Do you hear me? They’re out there looking for you right now.”
Carter closed her eyes.
“Carter, open your eyes. Carter!”
Her eyes remained closed, and the teenager stopped fighting him. A few seconds later, her body ceased moving altogether.
“Carter. Carter!”
There was no response. The kid was gone. Keo had seen too many people die in front of him to know the signs.
Carter was dead.
Goddammit, Carter was—
Crash!
Keo had his back turned to the door so he didn’t see the chair buckling and coming loose, but he did glimpse it flying past him and Carter’s still body, and vanish down the dark flight of stairs. By the time he looked up and over, the door was swinging open, and a hulking figure was striding inside.
It wasn’t a ghoul but a man wearing black clothes and an equally dark trench coat, the tail of it brushing against the floor as he moved. Moonlight silhouetted his massive frame, but it was the sledgehammer with the bright-red metal head gripped tightly in his hands that really grabbed Keo’s attention. There were what looked like spikes jutting from what should have been smooth surfaces.
A hard face scowled back at Keo from the shadows.
Keo jumped up to his feet and spun around. The KA-BAR was already in his hand, his blood-slicked fingers wrapping tightly around the grip.
What was left of the door hung on a single hinge, three quarters of the heavy slab of wood having come undone against the might of the sledgehammer that had “opened it” and freed the chair.
The dark figure stepped farther inside, kicking at a piece of the door in his path with a steel-toe boot. The man had to be well over six-five, with a neck that was probably the same size as both of Keo’s thighs combined. Those same dark eyes shifted from Keo to Carter, lying on the stair landing behind him, before settling back on Keo.
“What did you do to her?” the man asked. Or grunted out.
Yeah, it was definitely more of a grunt.
“Do to her?” Keo thought but never got the chance to say before the hulking figure ran at him, the sledgehammer cocking back to deliver the mother of blows.
Keo had only two options that he could see: Attack or retreat.
The latter was clearly the smarter move, but there was nothing down there for him except the opportunity to find himself cornered like an animal. And there was no way Keo was going to let that happen.
So Keo charged at the dark figure instead. It was admittedly a stupid move on Keo’s part and was probably what made the intruder pause momentarily. It was only half a second—maybe not even that—but it was all Keo needed to avoid all twenty or so pounds of the sledgehammer as it whooshed! over his head.
Keo got as low as possible while still staying on his feet, just before he lunged to the right. The second move got him around his attacker, who stumbled past him, his momentum carrying him toward Carter’s body.
Somehow the guy managed to stop himself from stepping on Carter, but before he could reverse course, Keo sprang up and drove the KA-BAR into the meatiest part of his victim’s back. He successfully lodged nearly half of the seven-inch straight blade somewhere just underneath his target’s clavicle.
Mr. Sledgehammer jerked back and upward, letting out a monstrous roar that was part pain and part anger—or maybe it was all anger—and seemed to shake the basement wall. Not that Keo gave a damn about the man’s pain as he held onto the handle of the knife and tried to push it in even further. He didn’t stop until the attacker dropped to the landing on his knees. Somehow, though, the man still managed to cling onto the sledgehammer.
Keo was still pushing, trying to get the other half of the knife into the thick flesh, when he heard the thump-thump-thump! of heavy footsteps behind him. He glanced back just as two figures rushed up the hallway.
Great. He has reinforcements!
Like Mr. Sledgehammer, these two new figures were also wearing dark clothing and trench coats, their heavy boots slamming into the floorboards as they rushed at him. Unlike their compatriot, these two weren’t nearly as physically intimidating, even if Keo could only see their silhouetted shapes.
Keo pulled the knife out of Mr. Sledgehammer and spun around to face the new threats. He heard the big man collapsing to the floor behind him, which was all the assurance Keo needed that he wouldn’t have to deal with the man for the time being.
Which was a good thing, because as soon as Keo got all the way around, the first man was on top of him.
Is that a machete? Keo thought when something very long and sharp arced through the air and at him.
Keo jumped back, and the weapon (Yup, that’s definitely a machete!) missed slicing his gut open by about a few inches. But Keo had gone back too far and landed on Mr. Sledgehammer’s arm. The big man, still conscious, released a pained howl.
Better you than me, pal! Keo thought even as he righted himself and pushed forward. It’d worked the first time, and he did it again: Instead of retreating, he lunged into his second attacker’s space.
Trench Coat Guy #2 had swung his weapon so wide and hard that it hadn’t just missed Keo but lodged itself into the wall of the narrow corridor. The guy was still trying to pull it free when Keo punched him in the face. The man let go of the long blade and reeled backward, arms flailing. Keo could have sank the KA-BAR into his face, but he didn’t want to get it stuck the way it had with Mr. Sledgehammer, so he hit Trench Coat Guy #2 in the face again instead. He was pretty sure he heard bone breaking that time.
Mr. Machete went down like a brick.
That left Keo to confront Trench Coat Guy #3, who had smartly decided to stop about ten feet away instead of running blindly at Keo the way his comrade had. The man had put away his weapon, another machete (What’s the deal with these guys and machetes?), and was reaching for his holstered sidearm. He could have also gone for his slung rifle but had smartly decided the pistol would be quicker.
Keo’s eyes were already fo
cused on the hand that was reaching for the sidearm, but even if they weren’t, the gold watch on the man’s wrist would have gotten his attention anyway. It was hard to miss the bling.
Trench Coat Guy #3’s face was exposed in the moonlight, giving Keo a clear view of the slightly flustered and youngish face. Keo wasn’t exactly dealing with a kid, but this was clearly someone who wasn’t as experienced in a fight as the others.
Maybe that inexperience was why Trench Coat Guy #3 was having such a difficult time getting his pistol out of its holster. It probably didn’t help that both his hands were trembling badly. Despite the extra second or two Trench Coat Guy #3 was giving Keo as he fumbled to draw his gun, there was no way Keo was going to reach the man before he got the pistol out.
So Keo did the only thing he could think of: He threw the KA-BAR.
Except the guy ducked, and the knife flew right over his head and vanished into the bar’s lobby!
Sonofabitch!
Keo charged, jumping over Trench Coat Guy #2 while the man rolled around on the floor holding his nose and screaming—or crying. It sounded like something between crying and screaming.
But even as he made his mad dash to reach Trench Coat Guy #3 before he could pull the trigger, Keo didn’t think he’d make it. Ten feet was a lot of ground to cover, and he’d have to be an Olympic caliber sprinter to make it up before the man took aim and—
The bang! was booming in the closed confines of the back hallway. Keo felt the round land somewhere on his left shoulder (Better than my face!), and the impact spun him while he was still in midair, forcing his body to twist in midjump.
Bang! as the guy fired again.
As it turned out, the unwitting pirouette was probably the only thing that saved Keo’s life, because he felt the heat of the second bullet as it scorched its way through the air inches from his face.
He landed on his feet and dived to make up the rest of the space between him and the shooter, and crashed headfirst into his target’s gut. The shooter let out a pained grunt as he fell with Keo on top of him the entire way down. Trench Coat Guy #3 was so skinny that it was like landing on top of twigs that buckled and threatened to snap in half as they crashed to the floor.
Keo got up first and straddled the shooter’s waist between his thighs to keep the man pinned. He searched for and quickly found a weapon—the guy’s sheathed machete.
Eureka!
Keo grabbed the long blade from the guy’s left hip and gutted the man from crotch to ear with his own weapon. Kid or not, the man and his friends had just tried to murder him, and Keo wasn’t about to let that slide.
Or Keo was getting ready to teach young Mr. Trench Coat Guy #3 a hard lesson about life, anyway, when he heard the click! of a gun hammer being cocked back and looked up to find a fourth figure in the bar pointing a pistol at him.
Unlike the squirming figure underneath him, who had missed two easy shots because his hands were shaking so badly, Trench Coat Guy #4 had a very steady hold on the gun as it drew a bead on Keo’s head.
Way, way too steady.
Eleven
This was not good. On the scale of bad and good, this was somewhere past bad and well into seriously screwed territory.
So, not good.
Not good at all.
Carter was dead, for one. That was pretty bad. Keo had failed to save the kid. Failure seemed to follow him like a specter these days. And what’s more, he was about to join her very soon if he didn’t somehow turn this situation back in his favor. How to go about that was the question.
Gee, that’s it? That’s the only question? Look around you, pal. You’re up a creek, and you don’t even have a canoe!
Yeah, it was a bad situation all around. He’d been in worse, though. There was that time on Black Tide Island when he ended up being shot in the head for his troubles. Keo was hoping to avoid that. Being shot in the head was not fun.
Mostly, he thought about Carter, lying dead in the basement somewhere behind him right now. Shot through the door. It was either a stray bullet, or someone had purposefully put a round through the door. Not that it really mattered how it happened, because the end result was the same.
Sorry, kid. I hope you have better luck in the next life.
And then there was Lara. He had to get back to Lara. There was more than just his life riding on this outcome. The guy with the gun pointed at him—not at Keo’s head but at his chest for an easier shot—was going to have a lot to do with how all of this ended.
He stared intently at the guy’s eyes—or at least where Keo assumed the eyes were. He couldn’t make out the face from the semidarkness that covered the interior of the bar, but Keo could easily pick up the bodies on the floor around the man’s feet.
Ghouls. At least five of them that he could see, maybe more because the joint was starting to stink of the dead. That was the problem with ghouls; they reeked in life and in death. Or was that re-life and re-death?
He hadn’t noticed the dead creatures earlier because he was too busy trying not to get his brains smashed in by Mr. Sledgehammer, and then later by his two buddies in trench coats. There was enough moonlight filtering in through the open door behind the guy with the gun and the destroyed windows that it was now impossible to miss the carnage. While he was hiding with Carter in the basement, there was a battle going on out here, apparently.
The muffled gunfire he’d heard (But, strangely enough, couldn’t detect anymore.) was explained away by the suppressors on the barrels of the rifles carried by the trench coat squad. Keo also hadn’t noticed that little detail earlier because there were too many shadows and, again, he was too busy trying not to get smashed into pieces or hacked in half by one of their machetes.
Machetes. Trench coats. Dead ghouls.
Slayers.
He was dealing with slayers here.
That explained everything from the outfits to the bodies inside the bar and, Keo assumed, outside in the streets as well, even though he couldn’t see that far. From his current vantage point, he couldn’t make out anything going on out there, so either the fight was over or it had moved on to another part of Paxton. He was more inclined to believe the former, given how quiet it was out there right now.
All of that told Keo one undeniable fact: These slayers were very, very good at their job.
It would have been dead silent in the bar too if the young Mr. Trench Coat Guy #3 wasn’t breathing so hard Keo was a little afraid the poor guy might have a stroke. Not that Keo cared if the man died on him; it was just that a dead hostage made for a very poor one.
Keo hadn’t taken his eyes off Trench Coat Guy #4 even while his right hand, holding the machete, kept the bloody blade against Trench Coat Guy #3’s neck. There was a lot of black goo sticking to the sharp edge. Ghoul blood. A simple wrist move and the guy was dead by his own weapon, and he knew it, too. Which was probably why his eyes were so wide Keo thought he could see straight into the man’s soul. He saw a scared little kid looking back at him. A scared little kid sporting a gold Rolex. The watch was so blingy it gave Keo a headache.
Mr. Rolex’s friend, the one with the pistol. That was a 1911, from what Keo could tell, thanks to a generous pool of moonlight reflected off a partially-shattered mirror behind the bar. The handgun came with a hammer, thus the dramatic click Keo had heard earlier.
So why hadn’t Trench Coat Guy #4 pulled the trigger yet?
Keo gauged the distance between him and the would-be shooter at about fifteen or so feet. The guy hadn’t exactly snuck into the bar while Keo was fighting his friends, but he’d gone unnoticed until he pulled out the gun. He could have shot Keo already, but he hadn’t.
So why hadn’t he?
The only reason Keo could think of was because he wanted to keep the young man underneath Keo alive. Maybe it was his brother. Or son. It wasn’t like Keo could make out the gunman’s age.
What mattered was that the man wasn’t willing to take the chance. Which was good. Keo could use that
to try to keep himself alive. It was always so much easier dealing with an antagonist who wasn’t a total homicidal maniac, who didn’t give a shit about anyone but himself. Or even himself, for that matter. Keo had had to contend with plenty of those guys, too.
“Pull the trigger, and I cut his throat open,” Keo said, hoping to confirm his theory.
“You’re not gonna do that,” Trench Coat Guy #4 said.
“You think I give a shit about any of you?”
“I know you don’t give a shit about us. I’m just telling you that if you hurt him, I’ll put out your lights. Permanently.”
Was that the confirmation he’d been looking for?
Maybe…
“So like I said. Pull the trigger and I cut his throat open,” Keo said.
“You can’t do that if you’re dead,” the gunman said.
“Can you make the shot?”
“I’m a pretty good shot.”
“Are you, now?”
“You’ll just have to find out. You want to risk it?”
Sounds like someone doesn’t want to take the shot. Good. I can use that.
Keo was a little annoyed at the way the guy was holding the gun. He had been staring at that weapon for a while now, and it hadn’t moved even a little bit.
Fuck it all, he’s calm.
“We don’t have to find out one way or another,” Trench Coat Guy #4 was saying.
“You don’t think so?” Keo said.
“You’re not a ghoul.”
“What gave it away?”
The guy smirked. “Let him go, and this is over.”
“He shot me.”
“He attacked us!” Trench Coat Guy #3, still trapped on the floor between Keo’s legs, shouted. It was a mistake, because he almost skinned his Adam’s apple on the blade of his own machete.
“Be quiet, Jack,” Trench Coat Guy #4 said.
“Yeah, Jack, be quiet and let the adults talk,” Keo said. Then, up at Trench Coat Guy #4, “What are you guys doing in Paxton?”
“Who’s that?”
“Who’s what?”
“Paxton.”
“The town. It’s called Paxton.”
Road to Babylon (Book 8): Daybreak Page 10