Road to Babylon (Book 9): The Ranch Read online

  They found Keo by following the tendrils of smoke drifting up from an unfinished mall on the outskirts of Paxton, and they brought him back home around ten at night. They would have arrived sooner, but Keo’s wounds made traveling too fast too risky. Fortunately, they’d had the foresight to take an additional two horses with them, both carrying field emergency supplies in case Keo needed more than just a hand.

  It turned out that he did. A lot more.

  But he was alive, and that was all Lara cared about. His wounds would close, his scars would heal (Well, most of them; and the rest, she didn’t give a damn about anyway.), and his bones would mend.

  Lara expected to find Jackson sleeping off the sedatives and morphine she had given the young woman in bed when they returned, but instead there was just an empty mattress and bloody footprints on the floor leading to the door, through the back hallway, then out into the night.

  Jackson was gone.

  From all the evidence, she’d left on her own power and hadn’t been taken.

  Through Keo, Lara learned that the KA-BAR embedded in Jackson’s shoulder while she was riding all the way from Paxton to the ranch, that Lara had taken out of her, had been used on a blue-eyed ghoul previously. Its blood still coated the blade when the creature wounded Jackson with it.

  Its blood was on the knife that had gone into Jackson…

  “What are the chances she’s not going to come back tonight, or the next night, or the ones after that?” Bunker asked as he and Lara stood outside the bedroom where Keo was sleeping off a healthy cocktail of meds.

  Lara shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “But we’re in agreement. She’s turned.”

  “Yes. From everything Keo said, that seems like a fair conclusion.”

  “Well, shit. Hopefully she won’t come back.”

  “You think she will?” Lara asked.

  Bunker shrugged. “Hell if I know. But if she does, we’ll be ready.”

  One

  It was a smiley face.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Bunker asked.

  “That’s blood,” Keo said.

  It was human blood. Keo knew that because ghoul blood would have already disappeared with the morning sunlight. Well, it could have also been animal blood, but Keo didn’t think so.

  No, that’s definitely human blood.

  “Yeah, but the shape,” Bunker said. “What’s that called?”

  “A smiley face.”

  “That’s it. I forgot for a moment.”

  “Really?”

  “Hey, it’s not like I see a smiley face all the time, you know. Anyway, that’s pretty fucked up.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “That’s pretty fucked up.”

  “Go ahead. Say it one more time.”

  “Nah. I think I made my point.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yup. I’m a man of few words.”

  “Since when?”

  “Ask my momma. The first word I ever said was, ‘Shhh.’”

  The smiley face was drawn on a fire-scorched wall, the bloody lines drawn either hastily or purposefully poorly, because the overall shape could best be described as sloppy. But there was no denying its intention: Someone had left it for them to find, and whoever the “artists” had been, they’d chosen the largest building still standing at the center of town. A half-burnt sign on the ground identified the place as the LONGMIRE MEETING HALL, though the ING HALL part was missing, along with the roof and every other part of the structure that wasn’t made of brick and mortar.

  It’d been left here sometime last night, knowing they would find it. It was impossible to miss, after all. You couldn’t ride through all of Longmire without stumbling across it eventually. The bloody thing was ten feet wide and just as high, and almost radiant against the rising sun in the background.

  “This is worse than I expected,” Bunker was saying.

  “What were you expecting?”

  “Bad, but not this bad. Hell, I think it’s safe to say it’s gone past bad and crossed over into real fucking bad territory now.”

  Bunker tightened his grip on his AR-15 as he scanned the remains of Longmire. He was bundled up, his large Stetson hiding his eyes from the sunlight. Keo, like Bunker, had come to town fully armed, though he carried an MP5 submachine gun. He liked the compactness of the weapon and left the long-range shooting to Bunker.

  Despite wearing a jacket, Keo still shivered underneath it. He wanted to think it was because of the Texas cold that had continued well into spring, but maybe he was just trying to assuage his ego just a little bit.

  Like Bunker, he’d expected to find bad, but not this.

  Not this.

  Longmire was a town of 5,000 or so residents before The Purge. That number had been reduced to a lowly 500 or so during the year-long nightmare. That decline continued after The Battle of Houston chased the monsters back into the shadows, to an even lower 80 or so. Right now, there were no signs of any of those 80 or so anywhere, as if the residents had simply picked up and disappeared in the middle of the night.

  Of course, Keo knew better. He’d heard the gunfire and screams last night. So had Bunker and Lara. Longmire’s citizens hadn’t gone willingly; they’d been taken. The culprits were pretty obvious, too. The fact that it had taken place at night was a dead giveaway. The lack of bodies in the streets or among the husks of still-standing buildings was the other clue. And if that wasn’t all the proof they needed that ghouls had attacked the town, there were the deformed bleach-white bones. Not a lot, but enough to tell them that Longmire hadn’t gone gently into that good night without a fight.

  Most of the town’s walls were brick and mortar, which was the only reason they were still standing after last night’s flames. The roads were filled with debris, the streetlights charred black. The interiors of buildings that once had people living their lives inside, just trying to get by the best they can, were gone.

  Lingering ashes made Keo blink as they fell on his head. He brushed at them and looked around, wondering just how the hell a town of 80 or so people had been reduced to…this in the space of just one night. He knew what ghouls were capable of—had seen them in action more times than he cared to remember—but this...

  How many of them were there last night? How many would it take to do this?

  A lot, was the answer.

  A fucking lot.

  Keo and Bunker stood at just about the center of town, the ground under their boots made of carefully put-together cobblestone. It, like the hollowed husks of buildings, would be the only things still standing long after they left this place. Across from them was the fountain that acted as Longmire’s centerpiece, featuring a statue of a man holding a musket in one hand while his other hand shielded his eyes as he gazed off into the distant hills. The figure wore buckskin and had a big knife in a sheath on one hip. John Longmire was an imposing fellow, and it was too bad he hadn’t been here last night to save the people who called this place home.

  “Why’d they leave that behind, you think?” Bunker asked, staring at the bloody smiley that had waited for them this morning.

  “For us to find, obviously.”

  “Like what, some kind of mark? Like Kilroy was here?”

  “Who’s Kilroy?”

  “You know. Kilroy.”

  “I don’t know any Kilroy.”

  “You need to learn your history, Keo.”

  “I don’t have time. I’m too busy worrying about the present.”

  “Good point.”

  Keo recalled the noise that had woken him up. The ranch was only a couple of miles south of Longmire, but even if it had been ten miles, he would have heard the chaos just fine. Sound traveled now, and it was even more obvious in the middle of a silent night, which most nights were these days.

  First there was the shooting, as Longmire’s citizens fought back against the invasion. The fire came afterward. Keo could see the orange-red glow in the sky eas
ily from the ranch, dominating the dark skies in the horizon. The colors were vibrant, almost dancing against the darkness.

  Like an invitation…

  His first instincts were to gear up and run to the town to help. It was the same with Lara and Bunker. But the voice of reason put the kibosh on that. As much as it pained them—Lara and Bunker more than Keo, if he was being honest with himself—they hung back and waited for sunup before heading over to see what had happened.

  They’d expected bad, but it was worse.

  It was way worse.

  Standing on one of the many small rolling hills that littered the area like camel humps, and looking at Longmire from half a mile away, there was something oddly beautiful about the ruins under the rising morning sunlight. Not that Keo gave voice to that thought; he didn’t think Bunker, who had been living next to the town (along with its people) for much longer than he had, would have appreciated the sentiment.

  “It’s been a while since we’ve had ghoul problems all the way down here,” Bunker was saying. “Maybe too long.”

  “Too long?” Keo said.

  “They weren’t ready for it.” The rancher shook his head as he continued to look around, hands on his hips. “They weren’t ready for it…” he said again, softly, as if to himself.

  Keo looked at the smiley face again. The fact that he’d found that here, waiting for him, made him wonder if something else was responsible for this. Something from his not-too-distant past…

  “It’s dead,” Lara would say, whenever they talked about it, which they rarely did, but sometimes it did come up.

  “You don’t know that,” Keo would say. “I wish you were right. But you don’t know that for sure, Lara. You never found its body.”

  “It was morning when we found you, Keo. If there was a body to be found, it’d just be bones.”

  “Not if it was buried underneath the rubble.”

  “It wasn’t like we could unearth the whole mall just to look for it. Besides, we had to bring you home. You were more important.”

  He couldn’t disagree with that. Lara and Bunker had done what they needed to in order to give him the medical treatment his wounds demanded.

  That was two months ago. Almost two months ago.

  If it was the creature, come back to finish what it’d started with Keo back in Paxton, at least it’d given him time to mend his broken bones. He had extra scars on his face and body, but who didn’t these days? Besides, the only opinion about his looks that mattered was Lara’s, and she didn’t give a damn what he looked like.

  But Keo couldn’t shake that image of the creature, out of Paxton…

  You did this, didn’t you? I know you did this, you sick sonofabitch.

  Keo glanced around at the smoldering remains of Longmire, the acidic taste of vaporized ghoul flesh scratching at his cheeks. The townspeople hadn’t gone down without a fight; they’d taken a few of the ghouls with them. Not enough, as it turned out. If it had been enough, Keo and Bunker wouldn’t have been walking through nothing but rubble for the last hour.

  You’re out there, aren’t you? I know you’re out there. And you know that I know, don’t you? This is just another one of your games. You want me to see this. You want me to know you’re coming.

  You sadistic fuck.

  Of course, he could be wrong. The creature might have died in the mall outside of Paxton like he’d hoped, like Lara tried to convince him. This could be something else. Another ghoul raiding party. It was possible. It was very much poss—

  Yeah, right.

  He glanced back at Bunker. “How many people?”

  “Eighty-two, at last count,” the rancher said. Then, furrowing his brows, “Make that eighty-three.”

  “Eighty-three?”

  “Angela gave birth while you were running around in Paxton, having fun without me.” He paused. Then, wrinkling his face as if he had an invisible itch he couldn’t get to, “Eighty-three people were here last night.”

  Not anymore, Keo thought. Not anymore…

  He looked over at Annabelle, waiting nearby. The big black horse shuffled her unshod feet occasionally, while big brown eyes scanned the remains of Longmire. The horse was imposing in the morning sunlight, even next to Bunker’s Paint, Lucille. The two horses were on high alert, clearly not liking what they were seeing, or smelling. Horses had much better sense of danger than humans did, from Keo’s experience.

  He couldn’t say he blamed the animals for being jittery. He was too, and that was before he found the bloody smiley face waiting for him.

  “Let’s get back to the ranch,” Keo said as he headed over to the horses. “I don’t like leaving Lara back there by herself.”

  Bunker trailed behind him. “We haven’t searched the whole place yet.”

  “Look around you, Bunker. There’s nothing to find.”

  “We don’t know that for sure.”

  Yeah, we do, Keo thought as he picked up Annabelle’s reins. The mare wasn’t always called Annabelle, but Keo had no idea what her original name was. Her former owner knew, but he was dead. Besides, Keo wasn’t the one who had named the big black. Bunker had, after Keo gifted him the horse to make up for losing Bunker’s other horse, Mirabelle, back in Paxton. Though he wouldn’t admit it, Keo guessed Bunker naming the horse Annabelle was in honor of the lost Arabian.

  “Hey,” Bunker was saying behind him. “You know what happened here last night, don’t you?”

  Keo climbed into Annabelle’s saddle. The horse instantly lifted her head and let out a slight snicker, approving of his need to get the hell out of Longmire as fast as possible. “I know as much as you do.”

  “I don’t believe you. I think you know a hell of a lot more.”

  Keo looked down at Bunker and shook his head. “It’s just a guess.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “I’m probably wrong…”

  “Let me be the judge of that.”

  Keo nodded and looked around at the remains of Longmire. “I think it was here last night. The same sick bastard I told you about.”

  “Paxton. The same one that you said took out a group of slayers like they were just toys.”

  “One and the same.”

  “You said it took a C4 to the face. No one survives that. No thing survives that.”

  “It did, somehow. And it was here last night. I can feel it.”

  Bunker didn’t look convinced. “It’s been almost two months. Why did it wait so long to make its move?”

  “It was injured. The slayers hurt it before it reached Paxton, and Felix nearly killed it at the mall. It was hurt and it needed to heal, and to rebuild its army. After what happened here last night, I’m guessing it’s accomplished both those things.”

  “You think what happened with Jackson had something to do with it?”

  “I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t care. I’m only thinking about tonight and the nights after this one.”

  The rancher climbed onto Lucille. “You have any proof of this, or is this all just guesswork?”

  “It’s all gut instinct.”

  “So, no proof.”

  “None.”

  “You could be wrong.”

  “Shit, Bunker, I hope I’m wrong. Goddammit, I hope I’m wrong.”

  Keo tapped Annabelle on the flanks and pointed the mare up the road. Bunker caught up and rode alongside him. Neither one of them said anything for a while until they were halfway out of town.

  “Supposing you’re right,” Bunker said. “Supposing it is the same one you ran into at Paxton. What do you think it wants?”

  “It wants to play games,” Keo said.

  “What kind of games?”

  “The kind that makes you wish you were dead, and ends with you being dead.”

  “That doesn’t sound very fun.”

  “It’s not.”

  He remembered the glowing eyes, trying to pierce his soul. But most of all, he remembered the words that came out of the cr
eature’s mouth:

  “I’m going to take everything from you. Everything, and everyone. Including those at the ranch. Yes, I know about the ranch, meat. I know all about the ranch…”

  It had taken the sadistic fucker almost two months, but it was finally following through on its threat.

  Two

  Keo was anxious to get back to the ranch, not because he didn’t think Lara could handle herself if trouble found her, but because, well, he didn’t like the thought of her being alone. Especially in her current condition. She hadn’t wanted to stay behind, but he had to remind her it wasn’t just about her anymore; she was now looking out for two people.

  Jesus Christ. I’m going to be a father. When did this happen?

  He didn’t know the exact date of when that had happened, and neither did Lara. Not that dates mattered anymore. She was with child, and had been for almost four months now. Two months ago, she’d gotten sick and diagnosed herself with sepsis, or “blood poisoning.” That had sent Keo to collect antibiotics and other medical supplies for her. Galveston was the most obvious choice: He was guaranteed to find a working Black Tide clinic there, stocked with everything he’d need to bring back to Lara so she could cure herself.

  He remembered arriving at the Texas island city, which had been turned into a working refinery for Black Tide fuel production. He’d found one of the clinics easily enough, but the lone staffer hadn’t been willing to fill his entire list. Lara had told him she didn’t need everything, but it would have been nice if she got them. That was good enough for Keo to persist.

  “Who’s your commander?” Keo had asked the pimply-faced twenty-something kid who was on duty.

  “What’s it to you?” the kid had answered. His name tag read LAWRENCE.

  “I need to talk to them.”

  “What if they don’t want to talk to you?” Then, softening his voice, Lawrence had added, “Look, I can give you some antibiotics, but not the drugs you want.”

  “You don’t have them?”

  “We do, but we don’t just give them out to anyone who comes in here asking for them.”