Road to Babylon (Book 8): Daybreak Read online

  Yeah, don’t wanna be doing that.

  So he had to run faster!

  And he did, even as his heartbeat slammed wildly against his chest. Christ, was he out of shape or something? No, that couldn’t be it. He’d managed to flee the horde earlier, so he couldn’t have been that out of shape. So why was he breathing so damn hard? Why did it feel like his legs were turning to jelly, that every additional step—

  Watch out!

  Keo dodged another lever, this one twice as big as the first. There was writing along its length, just slightly visible in the moonlight, but Keo had no time to stop and read.

  Run run run!

  He did just that, sometimes grabbing the tarps that covered the machines and using them to slingshot him around the massive objects underneath them. Christ, there were a lot of these things. What the hell were they using this warehouse for? Pressing steel? Making giant tools? Or maybe giant coffins—

  Wrong thoughts! Wrong thoughts, pal!

  He flexed his grip around the KA-BAR’s handle. At least he had his knife. And as long as he had it, he could survive the night.

  Goddammit, he wished he had more than a damn knife!

  Between labored breaths and the sounds of his boots squeaking against the hard floor and the rumblings of bare feet gaining on him from behind, Keo thought about Lara and the last conversation they’d had before he left the ranch.

  “No meandering,” she had said. “Get there, get what you need, and come home. Got it?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he had replied.

  “I mean it, Keo,” she had said, with that stare that was supposed to reinforce the I mean it part, as if he didn’t already know that she meant it.

  “I know you do.”

  “If I have to go after you, I’m going to be really angry.”

  “We wouldn’t want that, would we?”

  We definitely wouldn’t want that, he thought now as he reached down and found a little reservoir of energy that he didn’t think he had. But there it was, sitting there waiting for him to grab it and put it to work.

  He did that now, increasing his speed. He tuned out the crushing sounds of bare feet—like stampeding herds of longhorns catching up to him—and closed his senses to the stink of rotting garbage. Instead, he focused entirely on what was ahead of him—the back of the warehouse, rushing up on him fast.

  And a door. A way out of here.

  God, he hoped there was a way out of here back there!

  Two

  But there wasn’t a door.

  Fuck, there wasn’t a door!

  There should have been a door. A rear exit. Wasn’t that some kind of OSHA regulation? Not that Keo would know anything about what OSHA required of businesses in America. He’d never held down a 9-to-5 job in his life. No white collars or blue collars had ever been a part of his past. Unless you counted all the times he had to wear a suit in order to blend in for an up-close-and-in-person job.

  The point was, there wasn’t anything that even looked like a door for him to grab and pull open and lunge through and into the cold night air on the other side. He had already pictured himself doing just that with action-movie flair—one hand on the doorknob or lever, the other gripping the knife, ready to slash at whatever awaited him outside.

  It turned out he didn’t have to worry about whatever was outside waiting for him, because there was no door.

  Where the hell was the door? There should have been a door, but there wasn’t.

  Goddammit, there wasn’t.

  Fuuuuuuuuuuuck me.

  He stopped a few feet from running straight into a steel wall and spun around. The KA-BAR was heavier in his fist for some reason as he tightened his grip around the handle, the pommel slick with the fresh blood of the ghoul he’d eviscerated less than a minute ago.

  A minute ago? No, less than that. Maybe thirty seconds ago. How long had he been running through this place?

  He didn’t have to wait long for the rest of that dead ghoul’s friends to catch up. The first two to arrive leapt down from the machines in front of him, moonlight flickering off their dead eyes.

  Keo sliced off the head of the first one even as he punched at the second. His fist sank right through its cheek and shattered weak bone underneath. The undead thing let out a surprised squeal as Keo swung violently with his left hand, sending it to the floor where it slid along the surface and thudded against one of the heavy machineries.

  The ghoul Keo had decapitated flopped to the floor near his boots. Keo took off running again. The back of the warehouse flashed by on his right while skeletal figures flitted to his left as ghouls broke off from the pack and tried to catch up any way they could from every direction open to them.

  There were a dozen that he could see out of the corner of his eye, maybe more.

  …maybe more…

  He wished he still had the submachine gun. Hell, he wished he had a bazooka. Or a laser weapon. One of those things that went pew-pew when you fired it like in an old episode of the 1930s Flash Gordon TV show.

  It’s official: You’ve gone a little daffy, pal!

  The air shifted and parted above his head, and Keo ducked instinctively.

  The creature flew right past him and right into a lever jutting out of some kind of metal presser, impaling itself. The ghoul thrashed, its shriveled head flinging wildly from side to side as it attempted to pull itself free. All it would have taken to put the creature out of its and his misery was a swipe with the KA-BAR—except that required two, maybe three seconds. Keo didn’t have that much time, so he just ran past it instead.

  He didn’t have to sneak a look behind him to know the rest were still back there, because of course they were still back there. All of them. All the ones that weren’t preoccupied with Mirabelle’s corpse in the streets. Keo didn’t like picturing ghouls feasting on the Appaloosa’s corpse.

  Bunker’s going to kill me.

  The upside was that Bunker couldn’t kill him if he was already dead.

  Joke’s on you, Bunker!

  Moonlight blinked off something bright in front of him. Not metal, but glass.

  A glass window!

  It was a smaller section of a very bright blue door that seemed to almost glow in the semidarkness, as if beckoning him toward it.

  Keo didn’t resist its pull.

  The door was metal with a smooth surface, but it wouldn’t lead to a rear exit. More likely an office of some type. It wasn’t what he was hoping for, but it was better than nothing.

  It was a lot better than nothing, actually.

  Keo picked up speed—or told himself he did—toward the door.

  The tap-tap-tap! of bare feet behind him had grown in volume. There were either more of them since he last looked, or they were getting closer. Or both. Not that either possibility was preferable. They were both pretty bad. Everything about tonight was pretty bad.

  Keo considered diving headfirst into the glass section of the door and breaking his way through to the other side. It was the kind of stunt he’d seen action heroes do plenty of times in movies. But rational thought got the better of fanciful Hollywood clichés, and he spent the extra two seconds to stop, grab the doorknob, twist it—saying a silent Thank you, God! when it didn’t fight him—and pushed the door open.

  He lunged inside even as something brushed against the nape of his neck, and Keo shivered slightly, the thoughts So that’s what it feels like when someone walks over your grave! flashing across his mind.

  He spun around, shoved one hand against the door, and pushed it with everything he had, longing to hear that loud, satisfying slam as the door made its way home.

  But it wasn’t to be.

  The ghoul was halfway inside when Keo tried to cram the door back into its frame. He smashed the heavy structure into the creature instead, catching it across the body while it was partially in the air, and wedged it into place.

  Sonofabitch!

  It wasn’t what Keo had planned. In fact, it was the
opposite. With the deformed thing in the way, he couldn’t close the door. So what other options did he have?

  An army of black eyes glared at him from the squirming darkness outside. Moonlight glinted off hairless domed heads and the twisted bodies underneath them as the creatures surged across the shadows. It looked more like one moving wall of flesh rather than a series of bodies.

  Jesus H. Christ. Where did they all come from?

  There were more out there than he’d expected. He had guessed a dozen, maybe two at most, but this? You just didn’t find a lot of ghouls in one place anymore. The combination of The Walk Out and slayers roaming the countryside had thinned their numbers dramatically. A dozen strong ghouls capable of taking down a horse like Mirabelle in one place was already such a rarity, but two or more?

  And they were coming, and he couldn’t close the door. Not with the ghoul still wedged between it and the frame.

  So Keo did what he didn’t want to do—he jerked the door open to let the ghoul drop to the floor, then crouched slightly in order to grab the creature by the arm even as it attempted to pick itself up. Keo gave it a literal hand and pulled the undead thing inside the room with a hard jerk. He imagined the shock on the nightcrawler’s face as it slid along the smooth concrete floor and vanished into the dark interior of the office while he slammed the door home and pushed the deadbolt into place.

  Bam! as the first creature crashed into the door on the other side, followed by the thud! as another one smashed its domed head into the glass section. The creature that had struck the window reared back and smashed its forehead into the glass again with another resounding thud!

  Bam-bam-bam! as other ghouls assaulted the metal part of the door, the continuous bam-bam-bam and thud-thud-thud merging into one ongoing symphony that filled every inch of the office around him. He could see the ones flailing against the square section of glass, their skeletal limbs thud-thud-thudding against the opaque material.

  The hot stink of rotting garbage, too close for comfort, found its way to Keo’s nostrils.

  He whirled around just as the ghoul he’d let in pounced.

  Almost forgot about you, pal!

  It got both spindly legs around his waist and would have driven him down to the floor with its weight if it weighed anything at all. Instead, it was like being attacked by a living pillow. But if its physical self couldn’t pummel Keo into submission, then its smell—up close and personal and vomitous—came close.

  Keo glimpsed ugly jagged yellow teeth as the creature flung its head toward him, mouth opening wide as it went for his neck even as its arms fought for handholds around his shoulders. Keo managed to reach up and smacked his palm against the undead thing’s forehead, keeping its teeth away from his flesh. Its eyes were so close to Keo’s that he could see just how ill-fitting its eyeballs were in their sockets. How did they even stay in place? What was holding them in there?

  The ghoul’s legs tightened around his waist, its hands fighting for purchase around his neck. It was determined to reach him with its teeth. The feel of it against his exposed skin made Keo want to throw up. Pungent, oozing sweat covered every inch of the grizzled flesh that came into contact with him.

  I think I’m going to barf!

  He pushed its head back just enough to stab it through the side of the skull with the KA-BAR. The creature’s limbs immediately let go of him, and its body sloughed off before landing on the floor with a soft and anticlimactic thump.

  Keo turned around, the bam-bam-bam! and thud-thud-thud! of ghouls continuing to throw themselves against the door growing louder. He stumbled back, his blood-slicked knife gripped tightly in one hand.

  Something wet and thick dripped from his chin and fell from his right ear. There was more of the unknown substance—at least he didn’t want to know what it was—plastered to the front of his clothes.

  Weapons. He needed weapons!

  He spent the next ten seconds or so inventorying the contents of the office.

  No weapons. Shit. No weapons!

  But there was a metal filing cabinet in the corner that Keo ran to, grabbed with both hands, and began maneuvering across the room. He took note of the big oak desk at the back that was minus a chair. (Who would steal a chair?) Old pieces of paper littered the floor along with miscellaneous supplies. He kicked a stapler, stepped over a couple of pens, and felt old brown folders wrinkling under his boots.

  Keo shoved the cabinet against the door, pushing it flat against the center where it covered up the bulk of the square window near the top. That was the most vulnerable part of the door. It might take a while before the ghouls could shatter the glass, but there was a very real possibility they could manage that eventually.

  Bam-bam-bam!

  Thud-thud-thud!

  It was almost as if they knew what he was doing and were picking up their attacks. Of course, it could have all just been his imagination. From experience, he knew that ghouls didn’t tire and they didn’t give up. That, coupled with their inability to think tactically, usually meant they would pound away at an obstacle until they couldn’t anymore.

  And right now, only daylight was going to make the creatures stop and push them back into hiding.

  Keo glanced down at his watch.

  The neon minute hand glowed as it ticked, ticked, ticked in a clockwise motion. But it was the hour hand that he focused on.

  6:19 p.m.

  Exactly 6:19 p.m.

  Bam-bam-bam!

  Thud-thud-thud!

  It was winter in Texas, and sunset always came early this time of year. It’d done exactly just that today a little over an hour ago.

  Bam-bam-bam!

  Thud-thud-thud!

  And just as he could count on darkness falling around 5:30 p.m., he could put the whole house on sunrise arriving no earlier than 7:00 a.m. in the morning.

  Bam-bam-bam!

  Thud-thud-thud!

  His watch ticked slowly—painfully slowly—to 6:20 p.m.

  Another minute. That was it. He still had hours to go before daylight. Just over thirteen more hours, give or take.

  Bam-bam-bam!

  Thud-thud-thud!

  Keo looked back at the door.

  Bam-bam-bam!

  Thud-thud-thud!

  He had a feeling it was going to be a long, long night.

  And this was only the beginning…

  Three

  They were going to get through the door. Maybe not now, or in the next few hours, but soon. Eventually. That was the important part: Eventually.

  Bam-bam-bam!

  Thud-thud-thud!

  They may be shells of their former selves, but there were a lot of them and they were tireless. They were going to keep at it for hours if necessary. Hours.

  Bam-bam-bam!

  Thud-thud-thud!

  It was what they did. It was what they were. Relentless, when there was prey around. And right now, that was him. And because of him, they wanted in. They wanted to get at him.

  Bam-bam-bam!

  Thud-thud-thud!

  Keo shivered and was glad there was no one else inside the room to see him. There was the dead ghoul he’d dragged into the corner, but its seeing days were long over. The reaction was a reminder that it’d been a while since he was afraid of ghouls. Months. Years. Okay, maybe not years, but months.

  Bam-bam-bam!

  Thud-thud-thud!

  It didn’t matter how many of them he’d already killed. First outside in the streets; then later, in the warehouse. They had no sense of loss, no notion of fear. Those were human emotions, and they hadn’t been human for a long time now. They had no such weaknesses.

  Bam-bam-bam!

  Thud-thud-thud!

  He couldn’t see the glass breaking behind the metal file cabinet, but Keo thought he could hear it happening, small cracks appearing against the unrelenting onslaught.

  Bam-bam-bam!

  Thud-thud-thud!

  He wasn’t worried about the metal part of
the door giving way. That would hold all the way to morning. But the glass pane… Slowly, he tuned out the strikes against the main part of the door and concentrated on the ones against the glass portion.

  Thud-thud-thud!

  He could just barely make out the frantic and attacking figures outside through the slivers that the cabinet didn’t cover up.

  Thud-thud-thud!

  They were out there. But of course they were still out there. They weren’t going anywhere tonight. Not as long as he was in here.

  Thud-thud-thud!

  Keo felt something that was dangerously close to fear race up and down his spine. It’d been a while since that, too.

  Thud-thud-thud!

  Then, the sound he’d been dreading—a sharp crack as a part of the glass panel gave way.

  Here we go…

  Keo took a step backward even though he didn’t have to. A small part of the window had broken, but not the entire thing. It would take more than a single—

  Crack!

  A second one. Damn.

  Crack!

  A third!

  Keo looked around and began searching for another way out of the office. He might as well be looking for that bazooka that wasn’t there the first or the second time he’d pored over the interior of the dark room.

  Thud-thud-thud! from behind him.

  The office was four walls and one door, a ceiling and a floor, and that was it. There was no second way in or out, no window to slide open and jump outside into the cold Paxton air. He was trapped in here. It’d been his salvation earlier, but it had now become his final destination.

  There you go, pal. Positive thoughts!

  He snickered, though he wasn’t sure if that was directed toward himself or the shitty moment he was currently trapped in. Maybe a little of both. He had to remind himself that he’d been in worse situations and had always gotten through them all. Bruised and battered and bloody, and usually with a few extra scars and holes in him, sure, but he’d survived them nonetheless. He’d always been able to find hope out of the darkness, even if it was just a tiny sliver.