“Just medical stuff.”
“For you?”
“No.”
“I thought it might be for that ugly scar of yours.”
“Is that any way to talk to the guy who just saved your life?”
“Yeah, well, we saved your life first, so we’re even-steven.”
Keo guessed he couldn’t really disagree with that. “Good point.”
“So what’s in the bag?” Jackson asked again.
“I already told you.”
“You said ‘medical stuff.’ That could be anything from bandages to drugs.”
“It’s not drugs.” He thought about it for a second, then, “Well, it could be drugs, I guess. But not the type of drugs that Hollywood hunks and starlets do at cool parties.”
“You’re not going to tell me, huh?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Are you afraid I’ll take it from you?”
“No.”
“So what’s in the bag?”
“Medical stuff.”
“Fine. Be a jerk.”
He looked over at her walking alongside him. He hadn’t seen it before, but she had dirt and cobwebs in her hair. He wondered how she’d gotten those.
“How am I a jerk because I don’t want to tell you what’s in my bag?” he asked.
“We’re traveling partners now,” Jackson said. “We should trust each other. It’s hard for me to trust you if you won’t tell me what’s in your bag.”
“You’re just going to keep asking, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. It’s medical supplies and antibiotics.”
“Antibiotics?”
“Yes.”
“For you?”
“No. Someone else at the ranch where we’re going. Satisfied?”
Jackson seemed to think about it for a moment.
Finally, she nodded. “For now.”
Keo sighed. “Are you always this—”
He stopped talking when he heard the clop-clop-clop coming from behind them. Keo spun around, unslinging the MP5 as he did so. Jackson had heard it, too, and she also turned, already drawing the Glock.
“Is that…?” Jackson asked.
“That’s a horse,” Keo said.
He knew the sound as soon as he heard it and watched the source galloping toward him and Jackson at a fast run.
It was a black horse, its color making it nearly invisible against the semidarkness of Paxton. The only reason Keo could make it out at all was thanks to the white stripes along the animal’s mane that bounced up and down and side to side as it sped down the street in his direction.
He let go of the MP5 and stepped into the street as the horse neared.
“What are you doing?” Jackson asked, alarmed. She hadn’t moved from the sidewalk.
“Wait there,” Keo said.
“Keo, what are you doing?”
“We could use a horse.”
“Not if it runs you over.”
She’s got a point.
The animal was twenty meters away when Keo stepped in front of it and lifted both hands, thinking to himself, Holy crap. Jackson’s right, you’re going to get run over, you idiot!
But he didn’t, because the horse began to slow down.
Thank God, Keo thought and said out loud, “Easy, boy, easy!”
The horse responded as he hoped it would, and dropped into a less-frenzied trot as it got closer. Keo waited in the streets.
“Keo,” Jackson said.
“Stay there,” Keo said.
He waited until almost the very last second before sidestepping out of the animal’s path and grabbed the reins just as it passed him by. He pulled gently on the rope as he jogged alongside it for a second, then two more, all the while cooing, “Whoa, girl, whoa. Whoa!”
The horse, a familiar-looking black mare (That’s Martin’s horse), began to slowly respond, until it stopped completely.
Keo walked over. “That’s a good girl. That’s a good girl.” He put one tentative hand on its mane before rubbing the silky smooth hair. “Good girl. Good girl.”
The horse was a Morgan breed, and had it kept going right through Keo, he’d probably be lying on the street, either dazed or dead. It still had its saddle, but the sheath for a rifle was empty and the supply bags Keo had seen on it back at the Deuces were gone. The last time he saw the mare, it was tied up to a street sign with three others.
Something happened at the Deuces, Keo thought as he looked back down the street.
“I thought for sure it was going to run you over,” Jackson said as she walked over to him. “Man, you’re crazy.”
“I’ve been called worse,” Keo said.
He leaned closer to the horse to get a better look at some dark spots along the Morgan’s right flank that he’d glimpsed earlier. They were, as he had feared, sticky to his touch.
Black, oozing liquid.
Blood.
Ghoul blood.
“You know this horse?” Jackson asked.
“It’s Martin’s horse,” Keo said.
“Who’s Martin?”
Keo looked up the street again, back in the direction of the Deuces. “One of the slayers I told you about.”
“The ones that were going after the blue-eyed ghoul?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” Jackson said. Then, almost tentatively and following his gaze back up the street, “You think they found it?”
I don’t think this horse ran off because it wanted to. I think it ran off because it had to.
Keo said, “I need to find out.”
“How?”
Instead of answering her, Keo put his boot into the stirrup and climbed onto the horse’s saddle.
Jackson stood on the street, looking up at him. “What are you going to do?”
“I need to find out what happened back there,” Keo said. “You can stay here or come with me.”
“Well, I’m not staying here by myself.” She sighed. “I guess I’m sitting in the back?”
Keo smiled. “I’m the one who took the chance at stopping a charging horse. I get the front as a reward.”
“Darn it.”
He helped her up and onto the back of the Morgan.
“Here,” Keo said, slipping off his pack and handing it back to her.
She didn’t reach for it right away. “Why are you giving it to me?”
“It’s going to be a little uncomfortable back there with this thing in your face.”
“Oh, good point.” Jackson took the backpack and slipped it on. “Why are you even going back there, anyway? You didn’t know these guys until tonight.”
I didn’t know you until tonight, too, Keo thought, but said, “I need to find out what happened. They might need my help.”
So why did you abandon them in the first place? a voice asked from somewhere in the back of Keo’s mind.
Oh, shut up.
“Maybe we should just leave town,” Jackson said. She put her arms around his waist. “I mean, if it’s there, this blue-eyed ghoul…”
“They may need my help,” Keo said again. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince her or himself.
“I thought you wanted to go home? Wasn’t that the only thing that mattered to you before? So let’s go to your ranch instead.”
She made a very good point. He had everything he needed, and now he had a horse to get him to the ranch even faster.
And Lara did tell him not to meander…
So why was he hesitating?
He hadn’t heard a single sound coming from up the block. No gunshots or shouts or anything that would indicate a fight. Paxton was so quiet around him that he should have heard something. Except he hadn’t, and that fact gnawed at him.
What the hell happened back there?
“Keo, let’s just go,” Jackson said from behind him, her voice dangerously close to pleading. “Can we just go?”
“I can’t,” Keo said, and turned the Morgan around.
The horse followed his instructions, but it didn’t immediately start moving back toward the Deuces. He could feel its hesitation underneath him, but just in case he missed the signals, the animal let out a slightly annoyed whinny.
“I don’t think it wants to go back,” Jackson said.
“We don’t have a choice,” Keo said.
“Tell it that.”
Keo did just that. He leaned forward while nudging the horse on both of its flanks. At the same time, he loosened the reins to urge it forward.
When that still didn’t work, Keo leaned lower, and whispered to the mare, “Let’s go, girl. We have to find out what happened. Martin might be in trouble. You wanna find out what happened to Martin, don’t you?”
That seemed to get the Morgan moving.
Slowly, but moving.
“This is such a bad idea,” Jackson said.
Keo sighed and thought, I have to know. God help me, I have to know.
Seventeen
He expected to find carnage. Bodies in the streets and bullet casings everywhere. Dead slayers lying among the ghouls that Martin’s people had piled up along the sidewalks outside the Deuces.
But there was none of that.
The nightcrawlers were still where Keo last saw them, but the horses were gone. Keo assumed the animals had gotten loose just as Martin’s had, but instead of heading down the street. they’d taken off in other directions. Either that, or they hadn’t made it, but Keo didn’t see any evidence to support that. If not obvious clues, then something.
But there was nothing.
Turn around. Head south. Go home.
Are you listening? Go home, you idiot.
Except he didn’t turn the mare around, and instead kept it moving steadily toward the bar.
“What are we doing?” Jackson asked from behind him.
Good question, Keo thought.
But he said, “They saved my life. I owe it to them to find out what happened.”
“I thought you wanted to get home.”
“I do.”
“So why aren’t we going the other direction instead?”
Dammit, woman, stop asking such good questions!
Keo didn’t know how to answer her, so he didn’t. Thank God Jackson saw something else that got her attention.
“Is that…?” she said, pointing at the sign with the two clinking mugs that hung over the Deuces.
Double dammit. Forgot about that.
He’d been hoping to avoid this conversation—and the entire topic of Carter—but there it was. On the plus side, at least it took her mind off the other thing that he didn’t have any answers for.
Keo nodded. “You recognize it?”
“Is it the same one?”
“Yes. And you were right. That’s the bar where Carter was being kept.”
“Wait. Carter’s in there?”
“She’s gone, Jackson.”
“Gone? Gone how?”
“She was killed during the slayer attack on the town. I wanted to wait until we were out of the city to tell you. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, no. That poor kid.”
Keo waited for Jackson to ask for more information about Carter’s death, but she never did. Maybe, like him and Liz, Jackson would rather not know all the grisly details. But if she had, he’d already decided some white lies would be in order. It would have been all for the teenager’s benefit. Or, at least, that’s what he told himself.
He stopped the mare about four buildings down from the bar and climbed off. “Stay here.”
“Stay where?” Jackson asked.
“On the horse.” He handed the reins to her. “If anything happens, take off.”
“Without you?”
“Yes.”
“And go where? You said it yourself: The last thing I want to be doing is going out there by myself before morning.”
“If something happens to me, then anywhere will be better than here.” He unslung the MP5. “Head south and you’ll come to a two-lane interstate. Keep following it southwest. Eventually you’ll see a town called Longmire. About two miles west of that will be a ranch. You can’t miss it. It’ll be the only thing that’s still alive all the way out there.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Just in case.”
“In case of what?”
“Just in case,” Keo repeated, because he thought she already knew the answer but just didn’t want to accept it. “Don’t wait for me. Just go. And make sure that pack goes with you to the ranch. Do not leave it behind, do you understand? It’s vital that it gets to the ranch. Ask for Bunker or Lara, and tell them it’s from me.”
Jackson nodded mutely, but he could see the fear on her face and a hundred more questions in her eyes. But she kept quiet, and Keo was glad for that. He didn’t like talking as if he wasn’t going to make it back to Lara, but like he’d told Jackson, just in case.
He turned and focused on the bar.
The street sign where the horses had been tied up to earlier was bent at an obvious angle, and the rectangular metal piece that denoted the street name was on the ground a few feet away. That was how the mare had gotten loose—it, along with the other animals, had not just bent the pole but had snapped the sign off and were able to slide their reins free. He didn’t see any horse corpses in the area or on the way here, so that meant the others had all managed to escape as well.
The mare shuffled its feet and let out a small snicker, as if in warning, as Keo walked past it.
Smart horse. It doesn’t want to be here.
Wish I was as smart as a horse.
Keo glanced back at Jackson. “Remember what I said.”
“Be careful,” Jackson said, both fists gripping the reins tightly. She looked like she was about to take off at any second. Both her and the horse.
Keo continued up the sidewalk toward the Deuces.
The door was wide open and the windows were just as broken as before, with shattered glass scattered across the sidewalks and parts of the street. He could make out LED glows coming from within the establishment, and as he neared, was able to see inside through the nearest window.
The exterior might have looked the same as when he was last here, but the interior was a different story. The place was trashed. Tables were overturned and chairs scattered. The slayers were also missing. There was no Jack, or Merrifield, or McBroom. They’d simply vanished. He had a feeling that they hadn’t gone voluntarily, if the mess inside was any indication.
He went around the dead ghouls piled on the sidewalk and stopped at the door before looking back at Jackson again. The girl remained seated on the mare, staring back at him with a look of confusion on her face. Maybe she just couldn’t wrap her mind around what they were doing here or why. The horse gave Keo a similar questionable gaze.
He turned and stepped through the door before he could change his mind, the MP5 leading the way.
The Deuces was as empty inside as it’d looked from the window. Jack wasn’t at the bar, and Merrifield and McBroom were nowhere to be found. Rondo, who had been snoring away in the corner on the makeshift bed, was similarly MIA. The portable LED lamps were on the floor, their lights spilling across random parts of the bar. Something had knocked them from their original perches.
The pile of weapons and supplies that Keo had helped himself to earlier wasn’t on the pool table in the corner anymore. They were scattered across the floor. Guns, along with boxes of ammo and packs. He’d have to get closer to know for sure if anyone had taken anything, but there were an awful lot of weapons still down there.
Clink! as Keo’s boot kicked something on the floor.
A machete skidding away, the blade gleaming as the knife spun into a pool of LED light.
There, another knife. This one was next to one of the overturned tables. A KA-BAR similar to his own, but this one had duct tape over the handle. The blade was whist
le clean, so whoever had lost it hadn’t managed to draw blood. Ghoul’s or human’s.
There were bullet scars across some of the furniture and walls, but those had been put there during the initial assault on the town by Martin’s group. Besides, if anyone had gotten off a shot, Keo would have heard it. Even with suppressors, the rifles would have made some noise, especially considering how dead Paxton had been for the last hour or so.
So what did all this mean? A lot of things, and none of them good. None of them even remotely good.
“What are we doing?” Jackson had asked.
It was a damn good question then, and it was an even better good question now.
Remember what Lara said? About not meandering? Yeah, I think this qualifies as meandering.
Keo looked across the Deuces at the back hallway. As luck would have it, (Shitty luck, anyway.) none of the fallen lamps were casting a single light in that direction, so all he could see was…
Nothing.
A big, fat nothing.
There could have been a single ghoul in there or a million of them, just waiting for him to get closer before they poured out. It was all the more reason for him to turn around immediately and get out of there.
“What are we doing?” Jackson had asked.
I have no idea, Keo thought as he relaxed his grip on the MP5 and sent the command from his brain to his legs to turn around.
“You!” a voice shouted just before a hulking form lumbered out of the shadows that filled the back hallway.
Stray streaks of moonlight revealed silver-coated spikes welded onto smooth metal surfaces, followed by the sausage-like hands clutching them. The black fabric of a trench coat came next, then the man himself.
“It’s you!” the figure said, the shout turning into a partial grunt.
Me? Keo thought even as he took a couple of steps back.
It was Rondo.
And he was pissed.
“I’m going to kill you!” the slayer roared.
The sledgehammer in Rondo’s hands was impossible to miss, but it was his face that really drew Keo’s focus. It was flushed red and twisted into something that almost looked like a permanent scowl. The eyes were wide and wild and out of control, and they were zeroed in on Keo.
Keo saw nothing but bad intentions in them.
“Whoa, whoa,” Keo said as he took even more steps back. By now he was already halfway to the wide-open door behind him. “No one’s killing anyone here tonight!” Then, when that didn’t seem to have any effect, he shouted even louder, “Rondo! Hey, Rondo!”
Road to Babylon (Book 8): Daybreak Page 16