James slapped a hand to his forehead. “Oh, fuck.”
“Yes, yes, now you know fear.”
“Nah, not fear. I just forgot the first rule of hunting zombies. Always go for the headshot.”
Sombra ground his teeth. “I am no zombie. I am Death.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that. It’s starting to piss me off.”
Now that James was only about ten yards out, instead of fifty, it was easy enough to snap a round into the other man’s head.
Again, Sombra jerked back, but this time he didn’t fall to the ground. The glow around him intensified, and the flesh grew back almost instantly.
James grunted. “You’re a lot tougher than you or your shirt looks.”
The necromancer shook his head, which was still glowing. “Your death comes, mercenary. The army advances.”
James muttered, “Bounty hunter, not mercenary. Shit, get that right.”
Scratching and crunching echoed through the canyon. The bounty hunter jerked his head around, trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
A rotted hand burst from the ground, followed by another, and then a head. Half the skin was missing, leaving a permanent skeletal half-grin.
“Motherfucking zombies,” James snarled through gritted teeth. “So that’s what you buried. I think I would have preferred mines.”
Bodies erupted from the ground all over the canyon. Men and women, some fresh, some just scraps of flesh barely holding together. More corpses emerged from the ground, these from areas that hadn’t looked freshly disturbed before.
The only advantage James could see was that all the corpses had at least some actual skin and muscles move on them. Sombra couldn’t apparently make bones move by themselves.
Even the Granite Ghost didn’t have a good idea how to take down a skeleton.
None of the zombies moaned. The scratching of their hands in the dirt and the shuffling of their feet in the dust and gravel provided the only noise.
James’ skin crawled. Magic bothered him because it made things complicated, but necromancy violated the natural order in a perverse and fucked-up way. Even the stupid top-hat ferret was a living thing.
He grunted. “I’m gonna fuck you up, you piece of shit.”
“How do you kill something that is already dead, idioto?” Sombra shouted. “I am beyond death. I am beyond life. I am beyond God. I am beyond the Devil.”
“No,” James replied. “You’re beyond my patience, asshole. I hope the Devil’s got some real creative punishments ready for you when you get to hell.”
About a dozen zombies had surrounded James and were shuffling toward him in jerking movements with their arms outstretched.
Bullets exploded from his gun into four zombies in rapid succession—four perfect head shots. Other than jerking slightly from the impact, the zombies showed no reaction, just kept moving toward him. One turned slightly, revealing that the bullet had blown out the back of its head.
Okay, head shots didn’t work. Damn it.
“Well, fuck.” James reloaded his gun and then pulled a .50-caliber Desert Eagle from a holster. It was time to go full John Woo. He spun, blasting with both guns, this time going for the legs and knees.
Blowing their lower legs off at the knees slowed the zombies down, but didn’t stop them.
Now missing their legs, the animated bodies pulled themselves toward him. James opened up with both guns on the closest zombie, putting hole after hole into the body. It finally stopped moving, but that left him with the rest to deal with. He didn’t have enough magazines if it’d take dozens of bullets for each one.
Another wave of zombies closed on him. There was no intelligence in what was left of their faces. James kicked the crawler nearest him, sending it flying several yards away, but several more zombies, both crawlers and upright zombies, came closer. They reached toward him, some with normal hands, others with sharp skeletal fingers.
James kicked, punched, and fired bullets into the bodies trying to drag him down. Several grabbed him from behind, squeezing with surprising force. He slammed his elbows into the zombies behind him, sending them sprawling to the ground. He holstered his ineffective pistols for the moment and charged forward, trying to rush through the thicket of living dead.
Fuck these guys. Chop off the fucking head and the dragon dies.
Zombies grabbed at his jacket, face, and legs. The damn things were slow, but by now hundreds filled the area. His rush toward Sombra brought him only to a group of cacti and more zombies.
“What the fuck?” James exclaimed, jerking his gaze back and forth to find the man in the huge crowd of walking corpses. “Where did you go, you little bitch?”
“Do you realize your mistake now?” Sombra shouted.
In a reversal of the militia encounter, the necromancer’s voice echoed throughout the canyon. Combined with the distraction of hundreds of shuffling feet, James couldn’t pinpoint his target’s location.
Talk about getting what you deserved. The bounty hunter snickered.
“Why don’t you stop hiding among these rotters?” James called. “If you’re so tough, come after me and prove it.”
“You thought it’d be easy, didn’t you? I’m sure back in America you’re big shit, gringo, but here, I am Death. I have nothing to prove to you, other than that I can destroy you.”
“At least he doesn’t call himself King Death,” James muttered.
The bounty hunter delivered savage punches and kicks to the zombies around him. He held no delusions that he’d be able to take out a zombie by punching it; he was just trying to keep them off him until he could find Sombra.
At this point, so many zombies choked the area that short of the Mexican military blasting away with artillery or an air strike, James couldn’t win.
It didn’t matter. The asshole had to be in the crowd still, probably somewhere close. He’d want to stay close enough to gloat. James could use that against him.
“If you’re Death, why don’t you come and take me on man to man? It’s hard for me to think you’re anything but a chickenshit hiding behind all these rotting skinbags.”
“The wolf can howl at the moon all it wants,” Sombra shouted, “but that doesn’t mean the moon has to listen.”
“Fuck. I hope your zombies kill me soon so I don’t have to listen to more of that kind of bullshit. It’s more painful than getting shot.” James shook his head.
The bounty hunter pulled out a knife and stabbed at a closing zombie, but it didn’t seem to notice. More kicks and punches followed, but zombies continued to block all his escape routes.
With a roar, the bounty hunter rushed forward, smashing into several zombies and sending them flying, only to run into another thick layer of the beasts.
He yanked out a gun and blasted a corpse point-blank in the neck. Its head popped off with a surprising lack of blood, and the body collapsed.
James grunted. “Huh. Need to take the heads off? Wish I would have brought a machete. Live and learn.”
More dead hands clawed and tore at his clothes, ripping his pants and adding more damage to Shay’s not-so-favorite coat. James blasted another zombie in the neck, but the bullet passed clean through, leaving the zombie’s head hanging to the side and the creature still active.
The bounty hunter grabbed a zombie by the legs and threw it into several closing on him. They all went down in tangle of limbs.
“Fucking Sombra. If you’re supposed to be the Deathbringer, then bring the actual death!”
All the zombies stopped moving. They just silently swayed in place.
James took the opportunity to reload, wondering if he’d finally convinced his quarry to stop running and face him. If he could kill a zombie with enough damage, he could kill a necromancer.
“I win,” Sombra whispered from behind him.
James spun just in time to see the necromancer rushing forward, his hand covered in a dark glow. The necromancer’s palm landed right over the bounty hunter’s heart.
Fuck! I’m sorry, Father McCartney.
A scream filled the air. A few heartbeats passed before James realized it wasn’t him screaming, but Sombra the Deathbringer.
The necromancer’s eyes flared red as his shrill cry echoed through the canyon. He slowly sank to the ground, shuddering and twitching as his skin shrank in on itself, his eyes blaming James for lying to him.
About what, James didn’t know.
“Didn’t see that coming,” James murmured, scratching his eye as the zombies fell, inanimate, around him.
Shay fidgeted in the car, resisting the urge to open the door and charge toward the gunfire she’d been hearing.
“Not my problem,” she muttered. “I made that clear to him. Have to establish some sort of limits.”
She took several deep breaths as a new and more insidious enemy attacked: a full bladder.
“Damn it, Brownstone. If we hadn’t taken your stupid detour, I could have been back in town using an actual bathroom.”
That was the one big disadvantage of her new vocational choice. Men just didn’t understand how unpleasant it was to have to pee in bushes. They figured that just because it was easy for them to whip it out, it wasn’t a big deal for women.
“Brownstone, if I get sand up my crack, I’m kicking your ass.”
19
Shay finished her personal business and made her way back to the Forerunner. The entire time, she fought the urge to go check on Brownstone and see if he was still among the living. Tension spread through her neck and shoulders at the lack of recent gunfire.
“That’s a good thing,” she muttered. “It means he won.” A sigh followed. “Or it means he lost and the dumbass got turned into a zombie.”
Shay stopped, frowning. If Brownstone were dead, then she needed to go get some vengeance for him. Then again, a monster who could kill the bounty hunter might be too much for her. Knowing her limits was one of the reasons she was still breathing after a lifetime of violence.
“Maybe that idiot got too cocky. I’m not like him. I’m not gonna end up a zombie.”
“What about zombies?”
The tomb raider pulled her gun out as she spun. Brownstone stood on the path, bloodied and scratched up, but very much in the land of the living from what she could see. He held something wrapped in a bloody T-shirt decorated with a cartoon fox.
“Don’t sneak up on people, Brownstone,” Shay muttered, holstering her gun. “Especially when you’ve just finished hunting a necromancer.”
“He’s not a problem anymore.” The bounty hunter shrugged, then glanced over his shoulder. “What were you doing? I thought you were going to stay in the car.”
Shay’s face twitched. The last thing she wanted to tell Brownstone was that she had to take a leak. “I got bored, and I’d thought I’d see if you needed help.” She shrugged. It wasn’t a total lie. She had in fact thought about whether Brownstone needed help, even if she hadn’t acted on it.
Brownstone raised the bloodied T-shirt. “Thanks, but I had things under control. I guess you could say Sombra lost his head.” He chuckled.
Shay rolled her eyes. “That joke is so bad it should be treated as a weapon of mass destruction.”
The fact he held a decapitated head didn’t bother her. She’d done far worse when she was a professional killer, even if she didn’t always want to remember that.
“Next time I go after a necromancer I’m bringing a machete,” Brownstone said. “It’ll make a lot of things easier. Or maybe a big-ass sword.”
Shay sighed and hurried over to the Forerunner. “Let me get you a bag so you don’t get his blood all over the seats. I’d kind of like the deposit back.”
James looked around as if the cacti would miraculously cough up something for him before he turned to Shay. “Thanks.”
She opened the back and fished a small black cloth bag out of her supplies. She tossed Brownstone the bag. “So you went through all that trouble just to end up with no bounty? You don’t really seem like the trophy type, though, so I guess I’m a little surprised.”
“Nope, not a trophy-taker. I’m practical, not psycho.” Brownstone assured her, stuffing the bloodied T-shirt, head and all, inside the bag.
The tomb raider stared at the bag, trying to square its presence with what the bounty hunter had just said.
“Uh, Brownstone, I think most people would consider chopping off a guy’s head trophy-taking. Or is this part of some sort of weird magic shit?”
The bounty hunter grunted. “I needed the head for identification. And his bounty actually listed him as worth twice as much dead.”
Shay blinked. “Huh, really? I thought most of the time they wouldn’t take ‘em if they were dead. I read all the time about people getting in trouble back home for excessive force during bounty captures.”
Brownstone shook his head. “Past the border, sure. Not as much down here, though usually it’s not higher, just the same. The Mexican authorities didn’t want to have to deal with figuring out how to hold this asshole. Can’t blame them after the shit I saw him do.”
Shay chuckled. “No wonder this guy had to make his own friends.” She started the vehicle once Brownstone had situated himself in the passenger seat. “Let’s get back to the hotel before you accidentally run into more armed men. Or the head starts to smell the car up. Roll down your window.”
The next day at lunch, Shay lifted a delicious taco to her mouth. It’d been a while since she’d visited El Paisá, but the wonderful flavors in her mouth were the same as she remembered. Ah, the spices, the crunch of the shell, and the mixing of the textures between the lettuce, meat, and cheese. Too damn tasty.
“Flavor this good should be illegal,” Shay murmured to herself between bites. Her thoughts drifted back to her call to the Professor the night before.
Smite-Williams seemed delighted, if a bit tipsy, at her recovery of the artifact, and he had alluded to another job he wanted her to do soon.
“Whatever,” the field archaeologist mumbled to herself. “I’ll worry about that when I get back to the US.”
Money was money, and the Professor seemed to have a lot of it to throw around. These successful recoveries also were helping build her reputation, which meant other people would throw work her way.
The tomb raider put down her taco and frowned. There were certain lines she hadn’t crossed yet. Smite-Williams seemed like a decent enough man, but she wasn’t sure what she’d do if someone dirtier needed her help. The Rod of Supay, for example, would be very dangerous in the wrong hands.
Am I a total mercenary or not? Guess I should figure that out before someone does it for me.
Shay took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. She’d scored an artifact and managed to not get killed, so it had been a good trip. She needed to focus on that, more than some future ethics concerns.
She considered lingering a day or two and relaxing in town. It’d been a long time since she’d been able to enjoy a place like Cabo San Lucas without work hanging over her. The Professor probably didn’t need her to immediately leave for the new job.
Brownstone stepped into the taqueria. She was glad he’d dumped that ugly-ass coat, but several customers stepped away from him, eyeing him with visible concern.
Shay frowned, then realized she’d gotten used to his somewhat odd appearance. She even found it attractive, in its own way. Between the muscles, the ridges and birthmarks on Brownstone’s face, and his extensive arm tattoos, she could see how a normal person might be afraid that he belonged to some gang like MS-13.
She pushed the thought out of her head, happy to see he wasn’t carrying the head around with him anymore. From what he’d told her the night before, they’d sent James away from the local police station, telling him to come back the next day. This was despite the fact he literally had a head in a bag. She couldn’t help but wonder how often that exact scenario played out, if the local authorities were so blasé about it.
With both the field
archaeologist and the bounty hunter tired from a long day, they had decided to just grab a quick bite to eat and rest at the hotel until the following day.
The bounty hunter had disappeared after breakfast with the necromancer’s head, and she’d texted him when she’d headed out to let him know she was grabbing lunch at the taqueria.
Brownstone nodded to Shay and headed over to her table to take a seat. He had a slight frown on his face.
“Problem, Brownstone?” Shay asked after swallowing the current bite. “Did you get your bounty, or are they making you wait some more?”
“Nah, they gave it to me, but it was a fucking hassle to get it processed.”
“Why? Didn’t pay your local bounty dues or some shit? They want bribes?”
The bounty hunter shook his head. “No, they just didn’t believe me at first.”
Shay leaned forward. “You had a fucking head in bag,” she whispered.
“Yeah, but they didn’t believe it was him. I’m not the first gringo to show up with a head in a bag and claim it was Sombra the Deathbringer. That was why they made me come back today; so they could inspect the head more carefully.”
Shay nodded. “They don’t have DNA on file they can run a comparison on?”
“Nope. They don’t. I got lucky, though.” Brownstone grunted. “I wasn’t going to leave this town without them paying me.”
“How did you get lucky? You intimidate them into paying you?”
“Nope. They confirmed the identity.” He tapped his cheek. “Turns out our boy used to be in a gang and had a unique gang tattoo inside his cheek, so that proved it was him. He was also wanted for the murders of several Federales a few years before this more recent shit.”
Shay stared at Brownstone. “Wait, some necromancer joined a gang? That’s kind of dumb. If the guy can raise an army of zombies, why does he need to bother with a bunch of thugs?”
“That’s the fun part. Because he wasn’t Sombra the Deathbringer until last year. Before that, he was just Sombra the low-level gang enforcer.” Brownstone shook his head. “He stumbled on some sort of Oriceran artifact that changed him, and then he turned into a bigger arrogant prick than before. I’ll give him credit; for all his bullshit speeches about how tough he was, he must have understood that if he’d hung out in the city he’d have been taken down sooner rather than later. He wasn’t a total moron.”
The Unbelievable Mr. Brownstone Boxed Set One (Books 1-3): Feared By Hell, Rejected By Heaven, Eye For An Eye (The Unbelievable Mr. Brownstone Boxed Sets) Page 34