Swim Like Hell: A Visit to Superstition Bay

by Benjamin LaMore

  “It doesn’t matter,” Claire tells me. “Possession feels the same no matter who’s doing it. It’s like you’re a glove with a hand inside it. The glove can’t tell whose hand it is.”

  She says it with such certainty that I have to know. I ask the question with my eyes. She answers with hers, and I’m now a little clearer on why she wanted so much to leave her coven.

  “So, what happened next?”

  “I drove here, to this house. Peter and Ernest woke up and we went inside. Then we just sat on the couch and waited. When that horrible monster…”

  “Azrael.”

  He looks at me with fresh horror. “That was Azrael? The real Azrael?”

  “I sure as hell hope there isn’t another one.”

  He looks to the sky and crosses himself. “When Azrael crashed through the door we all snapped out of it. It grabbed Ernest and started demanding the Cleave. I slipped it from its cradle and into my pocket while Peter ran for the front door. It murdered Ernest right in front of my eyes, then went after Peter. I ran out the back door and didn’t stop running until I saw the Gulf.”

  He reaches for his pocket, then stops.

  “You promise that I can trust you?” he asks, with the air of a man who is only now daring to believe and fears nothing more than the possibility that he’s wrong.

  “I won’t let anyone use the Cleave, for any reason,” I swear. After a final moment of indecision Bruce’s shoulders slump forward, either in relief or in defeat. He reaches into his pocket and comes out with an object wrapped in a piece of black silk. With the care of a man cradling an infant he unfolds the silk, and when I crane my neck forward I get my first look at the trinket that has cost at least three lives in the last day.

  It’s thickly made, almost bulky. Folded, the old-style straight razor looks bigger than I expected, about eight inches and change. The handle is polished but undecorated, hewn from some kind of dark material. It isn’t metal or stone, but doesn’t seem wooden, either. Carefully, not moving an inch in his direction that isn’t necessary, I take a closer look.

  The blade is steel, as far as I can tell, but up close I can see that the handle is made from a single segment of unidentifiable black bone. The spine of the enormous razor gleams under the faint light, and the tang curls out into a menacing hook.

  I can sense Claire holding her breath, the tension singing out of her as loudly as her voice ever did. The man standing just out of arm’s length from her is holding a fearsome as a king cobra and infinitely more dangerous. She’s horrified, but at the same time she’s not panicking. More than anything else I’ve seen from her in the past, this impresses me.

  Bruce looks less hardy. With every moment he quivers more. Soon he’ll literally begin to quake in his shoes, and I’m starting to worry about him keeling over from the stress. He may be fit for an older man, but he’s still not exactly hale anymore.

  I have no doubt I can physically take the blade from him. Hell, Claire could compel him to give it to me, once she relaxed and thought it over. I don’t want to do that, though. The poor bastard has already been through too much, and I’m afraid that a fight might actually drive his heart right over the edge. I reach out my hand slowly, stopping it halfway between our bodies. After a moment’s hesitation, he reaches the Cleave out to me.

  I gently ease the razor out of his hand, turning it over in the moonlight. I press down on the tang with my thumb, easing the blade slowly out of the handle. It’s flat, broad, with a square tip. The blade itself holds an unusual gleam. I lift it up, turning it over in the moonlight. If it is steel, it’s a kind I’ve never seen before.

  “This used to be Azrael’s sword?” I whisper as I close the blade.

  “That’s the legend,” he agrees.

  “How did he…” I cut myself off when I see his eyes shoot wide, staring wildly over my shoulder. I follow his eyes, knowing even as I do that I’m going to end up regretting it.

  At first it’s just a face, hanging forlornly in the dark. It’s so white it’s as if the moon has given up the sky and sublet a space in the yard. I can see the eyes, wide and unblinking, the mouth slack and drooling. No hair, not even eyelashes. Just those eyes, heatless flames with laser focus. Focusing on me. As I watch another face materializes, on the other side of the yard twenty feet away. Then another. Then another. Claire gasps, subconsciously recoiling.

  “Holy shit,” I whisper.

  “What are they?” Claire whispers, subconsciously stepping backwards.

  “Ghasts,” I mutter. “Remy Danaher’s lynch mob.”

  I can’t believe what I’m seeing. The living dead are extreme rarities, even in supernatural circles. The act of raising a dead body is an immense one, requiring almost unthinkable levels of mystical power and an almost criminal disregard for your own safety and the safety of everyone around you. Even I had never actually met one before I moved to Superstition Bay, and he’s something of a special example, but now a veritable pack of them is here right in front of us.

  And there’s only one person who could have sent them.

  “What’s a ghast?” Bruce says through tight lips.

  “Zombies,” I say with a snarl. I stuff the Cleave into my hip pocket and slide my Springfield into my palm. Without taking my eyes off them, I pop out the silver clip and replace it with magazine number one – normal hollow points. “Zombies with coordination.”

  “What do they want?” Bruce’s voice cracks.

  “We want the Cleave,” the foremost ghast growls. As it speaks they all come forward, five altogether, to the edge of the light. The leader is male, or at least it had been in life. After life, gender is kind of irrelevant. It’s well preserved, with no visible sign of decay. All of them are, and that troubles me a lot. Like all zombies, if a ghast goes too long without fresh meat they lose their cohesion and they start to rot. The meat keeps them intact, functioning. Technically they can survive on any kind of meat, as long as it’s raw, but they only stay in their prime when the meat is of a singular variety.

  Human.

  “You promised it to our master,” the thing continues.

  “Tell him the deal’s off,” I say. “I’ll explain it to him tomorrow.”

  “No, no,” it breathes, its words slurred and clipped and not entirely rational. “Promises made, promises kept. That’s what he tells us. Promises made, promises kept. You made the promise. You keep the promise.”

  “I keep the peace,” I correct. “And I don’t deal with the dead. Go tell Danaher that I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

  “The Cleave is here,” a second barks.

  “Give it to us,” two more of them chorus.

  This isn’t going well, but I’ve really only been stalling until I came up with a better plan. Zombies aren’t always the shambling messes they’re shown as in movies, but they’re not exactly genius level when it comes to their mentality. Negotiating with them would never work. Apparently, bluffing wouldn’t, either.

  “Get in the house,” I order the living people in the yard. Bruce needs no further coercion, taking the steps as nimbly as a spring faun and vanishing into the house. Even Claire chose not to debate, carefully backpedaling up onto the porch. Not even the birthings of a melody hover around her throat – the mere presence of the undead has jolted her mercilessly out of her world. It happens that way sometimes. The undead are dislocated from the living world, and just being around them puts some people off.

  “You can’t have it,” I tell it. “Tell Danaher that the deal is off.”

  It lunges, but as inhumanly fast as the creature is it can’t beat a bullet. Especially when it has given me all the time in the world to aim. It catches the ghast squarely in the forehead, between the eyes and one inch up. The bullet punches through skin and bone before mushrooming, tearing a cone-shaped path through the corpse’s brain. The head jacks back from the shock and then falls straight down, a marionette with cut strings. That’s all it had been before, anyway. An evil man’s puppet
.

  The other ghasts charge as one, but we’re close enough to the door that I’m able to bustle Claire inside and slam it shut before they could reach us. We’re in a kitchen, and our shoes slip on the 1970’s linoleum floor. I wedge my shoulder into the door just as the first impact of bodies crashing hard against the other side comes, jarring me back six inches. The door bulges, the wood creaking around the door handle, and Claire rushes in and adds her shoulder to the fight. Between us we managed to keep the ghasts from breaking through, but it would only take seconds for them to overbear us.

  “Bruce!” I shout. My only thought is that a holy man who has been trained as a magical security agent might have some kind of secret weapon for dealing with a plague of the undead. He comes slowly out of the living room behind us, looking panicked and on the verge of tears.

  “Come here,” I call to him. “We need you!”

  He comes on tiptoe across the linoleum floor.

  “What do you have for zombies?” I ask over the relentless pounding of bloodless fists against the door. More of them start to attack the windows on either side of the door, glittering spider webs spreading further with each blow.

  “I’m sorry, Ian,” he whispers. Before I can react he reaches out and snatches the Cleave from where the oversized razor is sticking out of my hip pocket. He clutches it tightly and runs from the room, leaving us alone to stem the tide of the monsters.

  “You son of a bitch,” Claire shouts after him.

  For a fleeting moment it crosses my mind to send her after him, but I have no way of knowing whether or not the rest of the ghasts have run around to the front of the house. I give the door a final shove.

  “Come on,” I shout, jamming my gun back into its holster, grabbing her hand and pulling her in my wake. We cross the ruined living room in two quick strides, then I tuck my shoulder and drive into the makeshift plywood front door, sending it clattering down the steps. We vault the stairs, landing on the sidewalk and not breaking stride. Behind us we hear the ghasts in pursuit, heavy footsteps pounding the cement.

  The ghasts, while tigers in a pounce, are simply sub human in any kind of coordinated activity, such as running. As runners, Claire and I are a solid pair. I run between four and six miles a day while her lungs are the entire basis of her existence. Alone, we’d have outpaced the ghasts easily. But it isn’t us that I’m worried about.

  Bruce’s reserves must be deep indeed, as the older man is nowhere in sight despite the exhaustion of the past few days. “Where’d he go?” I ask as we run.

  “I think he turned up here,” Claire says, pointing.

  “We have to get him before they do.”

  We round the corner and find ourselves coming up to the black wrought-iron gates of Glorious Peace, Superstition Bay’s only cemetery. They seem a story high as I stare up at them. They hang slightly ajar – not an uncommon state for a Louisiana cemetery (homeless people, young punks and the occasional grave robber haunt them like material ghosts, though I’ve never heard of anything hinky happening in this one). The gate creaks on its hinges, an unseen and unfelt current of air nudging the metal in what seems to be a morose gesture of welcome.

  I’ve always made it a point to avoid the cemetery. In my line, there’s really nothing good that can come from hanging out there, in a place steeped with dead things. In New Orleans the cemeteries are even called “cities of the dead”, and the term is well fit. Due to the high water table that’s constant to the Louisiana shore, being buried wasn’t an option for the dead here. When the first settlers here tried to do that, they wound up with coffins that floated out of the ground after hard rains. Instead, they’re entombed in large aboveground crypts of concrete and iron, rows and rows of the dead laid out in neatly stacked vaults and ornate mausoleums. Being closer to the surface also makes it easier to interface with the dear departed, one of the reasons that so many tales of zombieism have their basis in this region.

  As we reach the immense cemetery gates we can clearly see that Bruce has won the race and is already slipping inside the cemetery. I see him stop and grab the iron handle as he turns his head our way. Even in the scattered light of the broken moon I can see the decision already on his face.

  “Don’t you do it, Bruce!” I scream. His eyes dart like a sparrow’s, face void of everything except terror, and he slams the gate shut behind him with a deathly clang.

  Fifteen

  “Shit!” I hit the gate at a full run, rattling the hell out of it but not budging the lock. I turn to Claire. “Blow it.”

  She nods, squares off against the bars and takes a deep breath. Before she could sing a note a shadow tears the darkness and slams into her back, ramming her chest-first into the bars. The ghast attacks with snarling fury, its head lunging over her shoulder as the teeth snap the air an inch above her carotid artery. I know what would happen if those teeth break her skin; bleeding out will be the last thing she has to worry about.

  I leap on the thing’s back, throwing my left arm blindly across the ghast’s face. The jaws, which had been in the act of chomping down on her neck, bite deeply into the meat of my forearm instead. I scream, feeling the blood run and foam around the cold, dry teeth. It growls in delight, making a horrible savory noise as my blood fills its mouth.

  I pistol-whip the top of its head, distracting it enough to tear my arm from its mouth, then hook onto its collar and haul it roughly off her. I whirl and throw it with all my strength, slamming it hard to the rocky earth. I fire one handed and without aiming, tearing a bloodless hole through its cheek and jaw but missing the vital brain stem. It rolls to its knees and I punt the bastard’s head, the kick strong and true. It flops like it’s having a seizure, crumpling into an untidy heap five feet away. A living man would be in back and neck braces for a year after taking a hit like that, but I know we only have seconds. That’s not counting its pack mates who are already overdue.

  While we’re scuffling Claire recovers enough get back to her feet. As I’m finishing off the ghast she braces herself and lets fly a piercing note that sends a wild pulse out away from her body in all directions. The gates fly open as if hit by an eighteen-wheeler, actually dropping off their hinges from the force of her tune, and the pulse catches the handful of ghasts that are just arriving and sends them tumbling away into the night.

  “There,” she cries, pointing into the cemetery. I follow the point and just make out the flash of white cloth disappearing behind a crypt a hundred feet away. We run down the path just as the rest of the ghasts come boiling out of the darkness, trying to outrace the nightmare on our heels. We’ve scarcely left the ruined gates behind when we hear the storm of feet charging up behind us, trampling grave flowers and bounding over monuments but making no human sounds. I grab Claire’s hand and we start ducking and weaving through the graves, pursuing and pursued at the same time.

  “This way,” Claire pants, pointing down a path. The forbiddingly sinister, sparse electric lights irregularly cast glowing islands in the mist and fog. Still, it leads away from the monsters, and that’s good enough for the moment. We take off, feet pounding on the mud slick trail.

  “Don’t let them bite you,” I warn Claire as we run.

  “Why not?”

  “Just trust me. You don’t want to get bitten by one of those things.”

  “What about you?” She points to the dripping wound on my forearm. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Yeah. The contagion’s mystical. I won’t turn.”

  She blanches. “Contagion?”

  I look sideways at her. “You don’t know? A zombie bites you, you become a zombie.”

  “I thought that was just in movies…”

  We round a mausoleum at speed and find a lone ghast fifty feet down the lane in front of us. They must have split up, seeping through the graveyard like fog through the trees. It sees us as we skid to a wet halt on the dewy path and snarls rabidly at us. With one thought we each line up our weapons: I raise my gun, carefully sig
hting the center of its forehead, and Claire takes a deep, angry breath, tiny sparkles of light dancing around her lips. We look at each other, eyes meeting with united purpose and a plan that doesn’t need to be shared. With a single long stride we both go in for the kill.

  The attack comes from the sides.

  They bound over the graves in the periphery of vision, but they find us ready. I smoothly pivot to the left and let two rounds fly and the one flying at me lands in a literal dead heap at my feet, a forty-five-caliber hole just over its right eye.

  Claire’s ghast lunges for her, arms outstretched as it leaps over a waist-high grave marker, but this time she already has her breath. She opens her mouth and a single vibrant tone viciously fires out of her mouth like a cannon. This time the sound is rough and harsh as her vocal chords, already strained from overuse, struggle to keep up with her demand. A flash of green catches the ghast in mid-air, erupting in its chest like napalm. It stops dead in the air from the impact, falling straight down and crashing hard against a marble angel. Green flames lick up the torso, scorching the entirety of its upper body. It doesn’t scream or even flinch. It just floats to its feet, brushing at the fire as if it had just spilled a pitcher of water over its shirt. Then, extinguished, the charred thing rushes in again. I’ve already lined up my crosshairs, and a gentle squeeze of the trigger puts a round in its left eye. When it falls I wheel about, sensing movement from the right.

  The ghast with the gunshot ruined jawbone comes out of nowhere and slams into me like a fullback, the impact knocking the Springfield out of my grip. I trip over a headstone and sprawl, the ghast riding me to the ground like a wrestler. I try to get myself into a defensive position, but from its mounted position it has all the leverage in the world. I struggle but I’m unable to squirm free as it presses itself against my torso and thighs, dropping a bony knee on my left shoulder and pinning my right with one hand. I get a glimpse of the remaining ghast, scorched black and skinless by Claire’s burst, muscling her to the ground, a steaming hand clamped on her throat. She has one forearm under its jaw, keeping the lethal jaws well away from her flesh, but she’s clearly overpowered and fast losing ground.