The Zombie Game

by Glenn Shepard

  Jakjak was shaking. “I’ll be alright.”

  I drew up more local and did a nerve block of the fractured rib and the ones above and below, prepped him for surgery, and put on fresh gloves. I incised over the rib and used the periosteal elevator to strip the rib of its covering. If I went a millimeter too deep, I’d be in the thoracic cavity and would likely kill Jakjak. I kept looking up at the door, fearful they’d find me before I completed the operation. I put a towel clip on either side of the fracture and pulled the ribs apart as hard as I could. Jakjak cried out in pain.

  Without an assistant, the reduction was difficult. I dropped one of the clamps, and I had to put the elevator under the rib and lift while I distracted the towel clip. I saw the bone segments coming up. I strained as hard as I could.

  I lifted and pulled to the point of exhaustion, and just as I was about to give up, the ribs popped into place. Sweat ran down my nose.

  I looked at my watch. It had taken only six minutes. I wiped my nose with my elbow and quickly closed the skin with staples. Staples were crude and left bad scars, but they were fast. After wrapping an Ace around Jakjak’s chest, I helped him stand up.

  I looked at my watch again. Only ten minutes had passed since Keyes call. We just might make it.

  I stuffed my pockets with a handful of syringes and needles, alcohol wipes, and a bottle of antibiotic pills and threw some ice in a plastic trash bag. Then, I realized the evidence might get Chris in trouble. So I stuffed all the drapes and instruments as well as the jug of fluid from Jakjak’s chest into a garbage can and wiped blood from the table.

  Again, I glanced at my watch. Twelve minutes.

  Grabbing Jakjak around the waist to help him walk, we hurried to

  the car.

  “Emmanuel, there’s going to be trouble. If you don’t want to be involved, get out of the car and run,” I said as I helped Jakjak into the back seat.

  “No sir, Doktè. Sanfia will kill me if I leave you.”

  I hopped into the front passenger seat, and Emmanuel stomped the accelerator. He drove at top speed, following my directions to where we were to pick up Keyes.

  As we turned onto the road behind the Duran’s home, unbeknownst to us, the Duran’s limo-sized Jaguar drove into their driveway. Mrs. Duran ran from the house and quickly got in the car’s back seat. The Jag gunned it to the corner and hung a left. I spotted it as it turned onto the street behind the house, heading straight for us. If we passed it, Ingrid would recognize Tomas’ Lexus.

  I pointed to her Jag. Emmanuel braked, made a sharp right, and drove in the opposite direction.

  But when I looked in the right rear-view mirror, her car was following us. Ahead was a police cruiser, coming our way. I ducked as the police approached … and then sighed with relief as it passed us without flashing its lights. But a few seconds later it slowed, like it was going to turn and follow us, and my heart started racing again.

  Then Mrs. Duran’s Jag pulled off the road, and the police car stopped beside her.

  “Something’s happening,” I said. “Let’s find Keyes and get the hell out of here.”

  Emmanuel turned left, and within a few minutes we were cruising past the elegant houses of Duran’s neighborhood. I kept looking both for the police to return and for Keyes. Where is she? We had to get out of there as fast as possible.

  Suddenly, somebody banged on the window. I pulled back as Emmanuel slammed on the brakes. It was Keyes.

  As she slid into the back seat next to Jakjak, I said, “The police just met Mrs. Duran down the road.”

  “Yeah,” Keyes said. “The police are looking for us and this Lexus. Emmanuel, get us the hell outta here. And, then, do you know where I could buy a used car?”

  Emmanuel sped off. I kept looking for the police, but they didn’t follow us. Once we seemed to be safe, he said, “I know a place where people sell their cars on the street. They aren’t cheap, but it’s easy.”

  We drove into downtown Léogâne, which boasted a handful of shops and lots of street vendors. Several cars lined the street.

  “Drive ’til I see a car I can afford,” Keyes said.

  About five minutes later, she spotted the car she wanted: a twenty-year-old, pale-blue Fiat sedan with “For Sale” marked with soap on the window. She whispered to Emmanuel before she jumped out and went to the owner, who stood beside the car.

  “Two thousand euros for your car.”

  “Euros? How much is that?”

  “Over 100,000 gourdes.”

  He raised his eyebrows and slyly removed the 40,000 gourde sign from the window. “But I need 150,000 just to break even.”

  Keyes snapped at him. “Cut the bullshit. I read your sign. I’m giving you 40,000 for the car. The other 60,000 is for driving the fuckin’ Lexus to the hospital and parking it, and not talking about it. You see, I stole the car from a doctor there.”

  His eyes opened widely. “The police know the car is stolen, no?”

  “They don’t know yet. If you park it back at the hospital, they’ll never know.”

  “I must charge you another thousand gourdes for that.”

  “Well, let me see what my associate thinks.” She nodded to Emmanuel.

  Emmanuel came and stood at Keyes side. Then, he jerked a machete from behind his back and waved it in the man’s face.

  Keyes leaned toward the man. “As a bonus, if you do as I say, I’ll let you live.”

  The man looked at the machete, then at the large, muscular, imposing Haitian standing next to Keyes. “Yes, yes, that’ll be a sacrifice, but I’m a generous man.”

  Keyes grabbed Emmanuel’s hand and shoved the blade up to the car salesman’s face. “You tell anybody, and I’ll come back and cut your fuckin’ head off!”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Yes, I understand. I not tell nobody.”

  They exchanged keys, and Keyes handed him the money.

  As we turned to leave, Emmanuel stepped closer to the man and grabbed his collar. His usually kind face was knotted in a frown, and his eyes were round and filled with the same fire I’d seen in Sanfia’s. His voice was thick, deep, and threatening. “Trahissez-moi et je capturerai votre âme dans une bouteille et asservirai votre corps depuis mille ans.”

  The car salesman turned pale, and his whole body trembled. Tears began to pour from his eyes. As Emmanuel got in the driver’s seat of Keyes new car, the man dropped the money on the ground and sat beside it, crying.

  I whispered to Keyes. “What did he say?”

  “Betray me, and I’ll capture your soul in a bottle and enslave your body for a thousand years.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Between Léogâne and Port-au-Prince

  10:00 a.m.

  I LAID JAKJAK DOWN on the back seat of Keyes’ Fiat and climbed in beside him. I put the bag of ice on his chest. I could tell by his grimace that he was in excruciating pain. But he was breathing better. I felt his forehead. He’d definitely cooled off.

  Keyes turned to face us. “Jakjak, Mrs. Duran was talking to someone in the police department. She called him Javier, and he called her Ingrid. Do you know anyone in the police department named Javier? Someone who is on a first-name basis with her?”

  “Wi, Madmwazèl. That’ll be the police chief in Port-au-Prince, Javier Conrad.”

  “Does he always call her by her first name?”

  “Non, Madmwazèl. Everyone I know, even her friends, call her Mrs. Duran. And nobody, not even Minister Duran, calls the police chief by his first name.”

  Keyes looked at me. “It’s the terrorists. Farok told them about us, and they’re going to find us and take us to him. I told you before: They won’t stop looking for us until we’re dead.”

  I remembered how frightened Keyes had been of Farok and his ISIS group two months earlier in North Carolina. So frightened, she’d done whate
ver the terrorists directed her to do in order to avoid the horrible torture she’d seen her friends put through.

  “I never should have come.”

  “No, we need to face Farok and end this thing once and for all.”

  “So what do you propose we do?” she asked.

  “Well, we can’t go to the police. And if I go to the US Consulate, they have to report all their actions to the local government, and—”

  “And you’re screwed. You killed a couple of guys in Haitian territory. Or that’s the way they see it. You’re Haitian property now. They can do whatever they want to do with you, consulate or not.”

  “I’m aware. And believe me, Farok has more than enough money to bribe the police chiefs and even the President.”

  “And they’ll keep us from investigating what the hell’s going on in Haiti,” she said grimly.

  “Yes,” I said, softly.

  Looking away from Keyes, I said, “Where can we hide in Port-au-Prince? A place where the lady can use her computer.”

  Jakjak said, “Let’s go to Sanfia’s house. It has—”

  “No,” Emmanuel interrupted. “You’re not welcome to return where you spent last night. Sanfia has many places to hide. Some of her people are always in trouble, and she hides them. She already told me where to take you.”

  Somewhere in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

  Noon

  I was worried. We’d been on the road too long and seemed to be going in circles.

  Finally, I asked, “Emmanuel, where are we going?”

  ”Sanfia doesn’t want anybody finding her safe houses. She told me to be sure you don’t.”

  At long last, Emmanuel drove the Fiat off the barely passable road and several dozen yards across a field. We came to a stop by a strip of trees crossed by an earthquake fissure. I had no idea where we were.

  After instructing us to stay in the car, Emmanuel got out and ran up a dirt hill, where he moved two large sheets of metal. He returned to the car and drove it up the pile of dirt and into a hidden cave. He then jumped out again and replaced the coverings.

  In the dark space, Emmanuel directed us by flashlight down a steep embankment, through a narrow tunnel, and finally into a cavernous room carved by the quake. The oval-shaped cave was about fifty feet by thirty feet and nearly empty.

  “What does Sanfia use this cave for?” I asked.

  Emmanuel rubbed his chin. “Ah, Sanfia has many places and many, many uses for all of them,” he said, evading the question. “She doesn’t want you in her house again, but she doesn’t want to abandon you, either. She thought this would be good for your needs now.”

  Emmanuel shined his flashlight on two folding card tables and a stack of folding chairs. Behind them was a three-shelf metal bookcase stacked with canned foods. Beside it were a half-dozen twelve-packs of soft drinks.

  Directing the flashlight at another crack in the wall about six feet wide and spiking to a height of twenty feet where it met the ceiling of our room, Emmanuel said, “And that is your toilet, Miss Hart.”

  He led her to it. As Keyes peered into the empty tunnel, seemingly without an end, she shook her head.

  “Lights?” she asked.

  “I have a box of flashlights and a couple of cases of batteries here in the cave. I’ll show you where they’re stashed.”

  I looked at Jakjak. Though he was breathing much better, he was pale and weak. “Is there somewhere for Jakjak to lie down? He needs rest.”

  Emmanuel was ready for this request. He took us to a wall opposite the “toilet” and shined his light on a canvas cot with a foam-rubber mattress on it. I helped Jakjak lie down.

  Keyes found a card table and started setting it up. Emmanuel helped her and put a chair beside it. She sat down, opened her MacBook Air, and started working.

  “Signal’s too weak. I can’t function here.”

  I turned to Emmanuel. “This room won’t work. She needs to be outside somewhere.”

  Emmanuel hung his head in thought for a moment and then snapped his fingers. “Follow me.”

  He led us through one of the tunnels to a small, dimly lit cave.

  “You can use this exit,” he said, pointing to the roof.

  We looked up at the light streaming in from an opening fifty feet above our heads. It was treacherous: a straight-up climb and a two-story drop. If any of us fell, we’d be badly hurt.

  Emmanuel demonstrated how to scale the wall by finding footholds in the rocks and grasping the edges of projecting stones to pull himself up. Emmanuel was tall, strong, and agile; he bounded up to a ledge near the top in less than a minute. He beckoned for us to come up.

  I followed, and Keyes was close behind me. About halfway up, she attempted to pass me. A rock she grabbed pulled out. She reached for another, but missed. I grabbed her hand. But the stone dust didn’t allow a firm grip, and her hand was slipping from mine. I stuck my right foot out behind her and planted it on a rock. She fell backward against my leg and tried to gain a foothold on the rocks. I held on tightly. At last, she grabbed a flat stone and regained control.

  “Got it,” she gasped.

  I slowly removed my foot from behind her and placed it on a rock.

  “Phew.” I took a deep breath. “Don’t be in such a hurry next time, Miss Show-Off.”

  Keyes moved more deliberately as we climbed to the plateau where Emmanuel now stood. But it was eight feet from the top. There were sharp boulders projecting above us, with no other place to sit or stand. To go over the jagged rocks at the top would put us not only on a treacherous pile of rocks but also in view of the tent city below. We needed to stay hidden.

  “I’m afraid those rocks still block the signal.”

  Keyes opened her computer and got comfortable, “If we can’t get any closer to the opening then we’ll have to use my phone as a ‘hotspot.’” Emmanuel, can you get me a stick and a piece of tape?”

  “I have the tape,” I said. “But we need some rope to get up and down easier. Have any rope?” I asked Emmanuel.

  He nodded and scampered down the rock wall. He quickly returned with a hundred-foot length of heavy, three-quarter-inch rope. “I saw this in the trunk of the miss new car.”

  As I removed the tape from my pocket and handed it to Keyes, I grinned and said, “With this, I’m a vicious killer.”

  Keyes turned on her iPhone, taped it to the end of the stick, and I climbed the remaining eight feet and pulled myself out of the opening. A solitary tree stood about two feet from the cave entrance. I tied the rope to the tree and pulled on it to make sure it was secure, then erected our makeshift antenna.

  I repelled down past the ledge where Keyes was perched.

  “Good job!” She smiled. “I like it here in my crow’s nest.”

  Keyes was back in business. I left her alone and went to check on Jakjak.

  Thirty minutes later, I returned to find her frowning at the computer screen.

  “Find anything?” I asked.

  “I tracked the number the police chief used to call Mrs. Duran. It’s his direct line at the police station, so I just hacked into the local telephone company. He made a call to a bank in Turkey. And received two calls from the same bank.”

  “Why would he call a bank in Turkey?”

  “He’s probably using ISIS money to make pay-offs, maybe to bribe the Haitian police to catch us for them.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Aboard the Ana Brigette

  Port-au-Prince, Haiti

  1:59 p.m.

  LARS PAULISSEN REVEALED HIS escape plan to Tobias Jensen. Patting his top dresser drawer, he said, “I have a key to unlock the porthole. Last year we bought a bunch of padlocks, and I have the master key to them all. Tonight, I’ll open the port, knock a hole in the canvas, and send a Morse code message. Maybe someone on t
he shore will pick it up.”

  Just then a key rattled outside the cabin and the door burst open. Mobuto stood flanked by two men with machine guns.

  Mobuto marched Lars to the bridge and ordered him to talk to the family of engineer Jon Johansen. Today was the dead man’s birthday, and the family was calling to wish him well.

  Lars took the phone and read the typed message Mobuto had written. “Jon is well. As a birthday treat, he went ashore for a day on the beach.”

  After grabbing the phone and hanging it up, Mobuto took Lars for a walk on the deck. It was his first time out of his room since construction had started on his ship. He was distressed to see what had been done. Everything had been stripped from the aft deck. The empty deck was now outlined by an inch-wide cut in the metal, with another inch-wide cut down the middle and hinges on the periphery. Two latches held together the two large doors that had been created.

  As Mobuto turned Lars to escort him back to his quarters, one of the deck doors opened for a few seconds. Lars saw two missile launchers on the second level. Each held a twenty-foot rocket. On both, hand-painted in English, was, THE END OF USA SATAN.

  After being locked back in his cabin, Lars didn’t need to look to know that the fake “master key” he’d told Jensen about had been taken from the room.

  The Oval Cave

  2:31 p.m.

  Keyes had been working on the computer for two hours, and I couldn’t stand to wait another minute. I decided to go to her, but before I could, she ran down to the large cave, calling my name.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I broke through the firewall. The bank in Turkey transferred one hundred thousand dollars to Chief Conrad’s personal account.”

  “Is ISIS connected to that money?”

  “Judge for yourself. Three days ago, the balance in the Turkish bank account was only twelve thousand dollars. The next day, three billion dollars was transferred into it from an account that Minister Duran controls in Haiti.”

  “Haitian money?”

  “Probably from the Haiti Relief Aid Fund.”