The guy shrugged. “How am I supposed to know that?”
“So why are you here, then?”
“Why are you here?”
“I asked first.”
“I asked second.”
Keo snorted. “You always this clever?”
“Only when I have the upper hand.”
“Do you?”
“From where I’m standing? You betcha.”
So why haven’t you taken the shot yet?
“Anyway, isn’t it obvious what we’re doing here?” the guy said. “We’re hunting.”
“You finished with that?” Keo asked.
“Not quite.”
Keo scanned the floor again. There were a lot of dead ghouls in here and probably more out there. The building was getting overwhelmed with the stench of death now. Nothing tainted a place faster than a pile of monsters.
So the guy and his buddies had certainly known what they were doing when they went to work painting Paxton red. Or, well, black in this case. The suppressed weapons, the machetes—all of which were no doubt coated with generous silver. Slayers wouldn’t be caught dead plying their trade without silver weapons. Even the sledgehammer had spikes on them. More silver, Keo assumed.
“You realize you’re bleeding, right?” Trench Coat Guy #4 was asking him.
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“You’re seeing things. I’m perfectly fine.”
“Are you crazy?”
“You’re the one seeing things, pal.”
“You’re definitely crazy.”
Keo was definitely bleeding in the left shoulder where Trench Coat Guy #3, a.k.a. Jack, had shot him. The question was: How bad was it? Because right now he couldn’t tell. The wound didn’t really hurt as much as it should, which meant it wasn’t nearly as bad as he had suspected (Come on, flesh wound! Let’s go with a flesh wound for the win, folks!) or good ol’ adrenaline was doing its job keeping him from going into shock. Either option was acceptable, because at the moment Keo didn’t have the time to acknowledge his injuries.
He heard a deep rumbling groan from behind him. That would be Mr. Sledgehammer, way back in the basement. So he was still alive, despite Keo having pushed half of his KA-BAR into his back. Given the size of the man, it was probably going to take all of the knife and in the right spot to put him down permanently.
Trench Coat Guy #2, the one Keo had punched twice in the face, hadn’t woken up yet. Or if he had, he was keeping very quiet. Keo hoped he was still out, because he wasn’t confident he could deal with him, Jack, and Mr. Sledgehammer all at the same time.
And that was not counting the guy with the gun pointed at him. Yeah, this was the one Keo had to be absolutely focused on right now.
“You gonna shoot me or what?” Keo asked the gunman.
“You want me to shoot you?” Trench Coat Guy #4 said.
“Gee, what do you think?”
“If you don’t want to get shot, take your knife away from Jack’s throat and we’ll talk like sensible human beings.”
“Are we?”
“Are we what?”
“Sensible human beings.”
Trench Coat Guy #4 seemed to think about it for a second or two. “I don’t know. We’re definitely still human beings, I know that much.”
“There’s that.”
“Besides, I have the clear advantage here.”
“How so?”
“I got this,” the guy said, turning the 1911 in his hand slightly for effect. “Meanwhile, you got that.”
“This is a very good machete, and I’m pretty sure it can cut ol’ Jack from nut to throat with ease. Looks sharp enough. Also looks like it’s done a whole lotta cutting tonight. What’s one more?”
“You don’t wanna do that.”
“Don’t tell me what I wanna or don’t wanna be doing, pal. I’m very much on edge right now. You don’t want to be messing with a guy who’s on edge while he’s holding a machete to someone’s neck. Someone that just shot him.”
Jack made a noise that Keo interpreted as heavy swallowing, but he didn’t take his eyes off Trench Coat Guy #4 to check for sure. All he knew was that Jack wasn’t willing to risk getting his throat slashed, and that was good enough. It was too bad Keo couldn’t locate Jack’s gun, which was somewhere in the dark hallway with them right now. A gun would be better than a machete, if he could reach it.
“Still just a knife,” Trench Coat Guy #4 was saying.
“Considering what I had before, it’s an improvement,” Keo said. Then, “You’re slayers.”
“You know about us?”
“Everyone knows about you.”
“Then you know we’re the good guys.”
“Doesn’t change the fact your boys attacked me first.”
“That’s not—” Jack started to say.
Keo shut him up by pressing the machete closer to the slayer’s throat until he could feel skin against the blade. “Shhh. Didn’t I tell you to let the adults talk?”
Jack smartly didn’t reply.
“Okay, let’s talk this through,” Trench Coat Guy #4 said.
Keo could be wrong, but he thought he’d detected a trace of anxiety in the guy’s voice. It once again made him think Trench Coat Guy #4 and Jack were more than just slayers-in-arms.
“You like olives?” the guy asked him.
Keo narrowed his eyes. “I feel like I’m being set up for a punchline, so let’s just get to it and skip the foreplay, shall we?”
The guy might have smiled as he uncocked his weapon and lowered it. That was a good sign. That was a very good sign.
“Here’s my olive branch,” the guy said.
It took all of his willpower for Keo not to let out a sigh of relief. He thought a little still managed to slip through and hoped Jack, underneath him, didn’t notice.
“Cute,” Keo said.
“Glad you think so,” the guy said. “Now it’s your turn.”
“It could be a trick. You could still easily shoot me.”
“I don’t have to trick you. I don’t have to do anything. How many times do I have to say it? I’m the guy with the gun. You’re the one with the knife.”
“A very sharp and long knife. You should know. You have one, too.”
“Oh, come on. If I’d wanted to shoot your dumb ass, I would have done it already. Trust me, I had the shot. I always had the shot. The only reason you’re not dead right now is because I can clearly see this was a misunderstanding. That, and I don’t go around killing humans unless I absolutely, positively have to. So don’t make me absolutely, positively have to tonight.”
He’s not lying, Keo thought, replaying the scenario over in his head. It didn’t matter how many times he viewed it or from what angle, it always came up the same way: He was lucky to still be breathing right now.
“The machete,” the guy said. “Throw it, before I lose my patience.”
“It might dent the blade,” Keo said.
“Don’t make me ask again, buddy.”
“I’m not your buddy, pal.”
“Jesus Christ, you’re getting on my nerves. Just do it, will you?”
Keo grinned and tossed the machete, then picked himself up from Jack. The young slayer let out a loud sigh of relief, but unlike Keo, he hadn’t tried to hide it.
“You okay, Jack?” Trench Coat Guy #4 asked.
“Peachy,” Jack said. Then, holding up his right hand and checking his watch, “I think he might have put a scratch on my Rollie, though.”
“Then it’ll be an improvement,” Keo said.
“You know how much this costs?”
“To you? Nothing.”
“Well, yeah, technically.”
“Jack,” Trench Coat Guy #4 said. “Are you okay.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m alive. I don’t know if that counts as okay.”
“It counts.” The slayer holstered his pistol before turning his attention back on Keo. “I almost kille
d you.”
“Almost only counts in horseshoes and grenades,” Keo said.
The guy chuckled. “My daddy used to say that whenever I brought home a bad grade and made an excuse.”
“He was clearly a wise man.”
“That’s debatable.”
“Daddy issues?”
“Not anymore.”
“Harsh,” Keo said, while thinking, Definitely daddy issues.
Trench Coat Guy #4 picked something up from the floor before walking over toward Keo and revealing his face. He was older than Jack—late thirties, maybe early forties—and there was just enough of a resemblance between the two slayers that it lent further credence to Keo’s theory they were brothers.
“This yours?” the guy asked as he held Keo’s KA-BAR out to him.
“Looks familiar,” Keo said as he took the knife and slid it back into its sheath.
Now that he wasn’t in any immediate danger, he took a look at his left shoulder. There was a hole in his jacket, along with a little blood.
“It’s just a scratch,” Trench Coat Guy #4 said. “You’re lucky Jack was never much of a shot.”
“Hey, he threw a knife at me,” Jack said as he picked himself up from the floor.
“Don’t make excuses.”
“It’s a pretty damn good excuse.”
“You done?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Keo said to the older slayer, “So, is the hunt over?”
Trench Coat Guy #4 shook his head. “Not yet.”
“There’s still a blue eyes out there,” Jack said as he picked his machete up from the floor and put it away. “It’s here, in town. We’re gonna find it, and we’re gonna stake it through the fucking brain, and then it’ll be over.”
Jack’s brother smiled. “What he said.”
Keo didn’t say anything, but he thought, Yeah, I’ve heard all that before.
Twelve
Trench Coat Guy #4’s real name was Martin, and he was Jack’s older brother. He was also the de facto leader of this particular group of slayers. Keo found all this out through the young woman who sewed the hole in his shoulder.
“It’s not like there was a vote or anything. One day he just sorta became the boss, and since we liked him well enough, we decided to just go along with it.”
Keo smiled at that. “That’s all it takes, huh?”
“Pretty much. It helps that it’s not exactly a high-paying job.”
“You guys get paid?”
“No. That’s the point.”
“Ah.”
The group’s medic was named Huston, who explained her name’s spelling even though he hadn’t asked: “Not the city, but the director.”
“What director?” Keo asked.
“John Huston?”
“Is he from Houston?”
“No. That’s just his name. Huston. H-u-s-t-o-n.”
“If you say so.”
“The African Queen? The Maltese Falcon? The Treasure of the friggin’ Sierra Madre?”
“That’s not helping at all.”
“Not a cinephile, I take it.”
“Maybe, maybe not, but no one’s ever proved it in court.”
That had drawn a smirk. “Was that a joke?”
“It was supposed to be, yeah.”
“Not funny.”
“I gave it a shot,” Keo said with a shrug.
Huston didn’t tend to Keo right away, of course. She prioritized the big guy Keo had stabbed with the KA-BAR. And she still didn’t turn her attention to Keo until after she’d taken care of Trench Coat Guy #2 and his broken face. Mr. Sledgehammer’s real name was Rondo, while Trench Coat Guy #2, sporting a busted nose for his troubles, was going around under the moniker Terminal. Keo guessed the nickname was supposed to be intimidating, or something.
10:19 p.m. ticked by on Keo’s watch as he sat on a stool at the bar and Huston sewed up the small hole in his shoulder. She had a deft touch for someone who didn’t have an MD after her name, and she reminded him a bit of Lara.
The slayers had brought portable solar-powered LED lamps with them, and one was set nearby on the counter while two others took up space on separate tables in the room. The place was probably at its brightest now than it’d been in God knows how many past nights.
“How’d you get involved with these guys?” Keo asked Huston as she worked.
“Long story,” Huston said.
She snipped a line before starting a second one. The bullet was a graze and wasn’t nearly as bad as he had feared. An inch higher or more to the left, and the round would have missed him entirely. He was lucky it was the young and inexperienced Jack who had done the shooting. If it had been his brother, Keo would probably be dead right now.
“It’s a flesh wound. Don’t be such a sissy,” Huston had said when she took a quick look at Jack’s handiwork almost thirty minutes ago, before leaving Keo in order to take care of her fellow slayers.
Flesh wound or not, it still hurt. Fortunately Huston was nice enough to hand him a handful of Tramadol while he waited his turn. She had plenty of painkillers in the medic bag that she carried with her, along with sutures and every other tool needed to mend her friends together. It was easy to tell by the way she went about her job that Huston was no stranger to blood.
While Huston patched up his “flesh wound,” the other slayers, along with Martin and his younger brother Jack, continued their work outside. Apparently, it wasn’t quite over yet. Every now and then, Keo picked up the soft and muffled pop-pop of a suppressed rifle firing. But for the most part, the slayers stuck to their bladed weapons. It was an effective way of taking care of the enemy while also conserving ammo.
Having met plenty of slayers in his lifetime, Keo didn’t think those were the only reasons they favored blades over guns. Almost every slayer he’d ever met had a personal grudge against the ghouls for what had transpired during the yearlong Purge. The romantic thing to say was that the slayers were saving those who couldn’t save themselves from the monsters. The reality of it was that they were getting payback. Bullets were more effective, but it didn’t feel nearly as good as delimbing a ghoul with a machete at close-range.
Before he left, Martin and his boys had been nice enough to drag all the dead ghouls inside the bar out into the street so Keo didn’t have to endure their stink. Not that that he still couldn’t smell them anyway. There was a lingering stench in the air, but Keo was too tired to worry about that right now.
Keo didn’t ask Huston how she’d fallen in with the slayers. Everyone had their own stories, and the truth was he didn’t want to know. He wasn’t planning on staying around for very long anyway. There was no reason to. Carter was dead, and according to Martin, they hadn’t found anyone at the office where Liz and Jackson were fleeing toward when Keo last saw the women. All that was left for Keo was to retrieve his bag and continue home.
The problem was finding the bag.
“It’s a black tactical pack. It should be in the street about a block from here,” Keo had said to Martin. “There may or may not be the carcass of a horse next to it. There’s other supplies, but I just need the bag.”
“We’ll keep an eye for it,” Martin said, “but we’re a little busy right now.”
“I thought it was over.”
“Not yet. Not until we find it.”
“It” was a blue-eyed ghoul that Martin and his group had been hunting since Monroe, Louisiana. Somehow, the creature had eluded them and made its way south, before turning west and crossing the state line into Texas. It had created its own small army along the way and continued to do so as it hunkered down in Paxton sometime between when Keo first rode Mirabelle through it almost nine days ago now and tonight. At least, that was the theory Keo was going with because the place had looked pretty damn abandoned the first time.
“What’s it doing here?” Keo had asked Martin.
“Looks like it’s regrouping,” Martin said. “We thought it’d head for Houston at fi
rst, but all signs pointed away from the big city. It’s a tricky bastard. Unpredictable. It’s been a month since we started this little game of hide and seek.”
“You’ve been stalking this thing for a month?”
“A month and change, yeah.” Martin’s face was somber as he recounted his tale. “It knows we’re hunting it. And it’s hurt. My guess is, it’s using Paxton to lay low. We almost lost it a few times, but we finally tracked it here.”
“You said it was hurt?”
“Badly.”
“A blue eyes? You know they can regenerate, right? You cut off a limb, and they can grow it back like a fucking lizard. The only way to kill a blue eyes is to shoot it in the head. Destroy the brain, and you take them out.”
“Who are you talking to, Keo?” Martin had looked almost offended when he said that. “I’ve been hunting these things since The Walk Out. I know how to kill the blue eyes. I know what they’re capable of.”
“So how exactly did you ‘hurt’ this one?”
Martin had drawn his machete. It was still partially caked in fresh ghoul blood from the night’s action. “I almost got through its skull with this.”
“You wounded it in the brain?”
“Another inch, and it would have been over. The lucky fuck.”
“That’s a first. I didn’t know you could just wound it in the brain.”
“It’s been running from me since that night. It’s here now, and I’ll find it. When I do, I’ll finish the job.”
Martin also told him that he’d found the remains of Sharon’s group about half a block up the street from where they were at the moment. Two of the survivors were in the process of turning when the slayers finished them off.
“Looked like a pretty good fight,” Martin said. “But running around out here without silver bullets did them in. They had the right knives, but that wasn’t enough to keep them alive.”
“They had silver bullets,” Keo said. “But they lost them when the ghouls ambushed them and chased off their horses.”
“Silver bullets don’t do you any good if you don’t have them loaded.”
“They let their guard down. I don’t think they’ve ever encountered such a big group of ghouls before. It was a mistake.”
“I’m not surprised. People think the night’s safe again after The Walk Out. It’s only when they realize they’re wrong that it’s too late. But who am I to complain? If it wasn’t for them, guys like me wouldn’t have a job.”
Road to Babylon (Book 8): Daybreak Page 11