Carrion

by Gary Brandner

  Fain chose a room on one side of the house that was smaller than the rest. It had a high black-beamed ceiling, a curtained French window, heavy plush furniture, and a walk-in fireplace. Using wood from a supply stacked on the hearth, he soon had a crackling fire going.

  He carried in the plastic bucket and the rest of his paraphernalia from the car. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go over what we’re going to have to do tonight.”

  “Do we get a rehearsal?” Jillian asked.

  “Sorry, but due to the nature of the performance, it’s strictly a one-shot. Now listen carefully.”

  • • •

  Twenty minutes later he concluded, “So that’s it. Any questions?”

  She stared at him for a moment, then said, “Are you out of your mind?”

  “I won’t count that one.”

  “Mac … all that blood!”

  “Honey, there isn’t any other way. If there were, believe me, I’d take it.”

  “Jeepers!”

  Fain took her in his arms and hugged her tightly. “If there wasn’t another reason in the world, I think I’d love you just because you can use an expression like ‘Jeepers.’”

  “Are you sure it will work?” she asked, her mouth against his.

  “No, but when you consider the alternative, I’d say it’s worth a try.”

  He took his other purchases from the plastic bucket and emptied the contents of several bottles back into it. The mixture bubbled and steamed.

  “Is it all right to mix that up beforehand?” Jillian asked.

  “Yeah, except for the bl — ” He saw her shudder.

  “The crucial ingredient. That’s the one they have to see go in.”

  “Sounds crazy to me.”

  “The workings of the world of magic are not for mortals to understand.”

  “Phooey.”

  “Let’s go pick a good spot out in front to set up the show,” he said. “We want something where we can see in all directions, and with an emergency escape route down the hill.”

  They walked out together into the chill night.

  Fain paced back and forth in front of the house until he found a location off to the left of the entrance that satisfied him. It afforded a good view of the floodlit road and the edge of the surrounding wood. An unbroken stone wall would protect their backs.

  “This will get it,” he said. “We’ll lay the hair rope down here in a half circle to make us a little stage.”

  “I’ll go in and get it,” Jillian offered.

  The wind shifted subtly. Both of them sniffed the air.

  Jillian made a face. “Wow, is something dead?” She covered her mouth as she realized what she had said.

  “We’d better hurry it up,” Fain said quietly.

  As Jillian hurried inside, Fain reached into one of the jacket’s deep pockets and pulled out the package he bought at the medical supply house. He unwrapped the package and checked its contents. A scalpel, surgical clamp, two feet of clear plastic tubing …

  Glass crashed inside the house.

  Jillian screamed.

  “Mac, they’re in here!” she cried.

  He started toward the door but pulled up suddenly when a figure stepped between him and the entrance. A big man with a terrible wound in the front of his head. John Corely, the murdered policeman. Fluids from the bullet wound oozed down his face. He reached out for Fain and started forward.

  “Jill!” Fain shouted. “Use the rope. Block yourself in a corner. They can’t cross it.”

  He held the scalpel before him and feinted from side to side as the hulk of a policeman advanced. At the edge of his vision he could see other figures moving out of the trees.

  Nice going, Fain, he told himself grimly. Preparation is ninety percent of a performance.

  He ducked suddenly and tried to dash by under the policeman’s outstretched arm. He was too slow. A hand, cold and leathery, clamped onto his face. The grip was like steel, and Fain thought his cheekbones would crack at any moment.

  Fain bit at one of the fingers that was fastened across his mouth. He gagged as dead flesh came away with his teeth.

  Unable to see, he gripped the scalpel and slashed blindly at the arm. He prayed that he would sever some vital muscle before the others reached him or before this one cracked his skull like an egg.

  The hand went limp for a moment as his blade found nerve tissue. The fingers flexed for a renewed purchase on his head. Jerking free, Fain broke past the policeman and into the house.

  He found Jillian in the room where they had built the fire. God bless her, she had stretched the silvery rope across the floor as he had told her, closing in a safe corner on the side of the room away from the fireplace. Inside the rope with Jillian was one tall-backed chair and, bless her again, the bucket of formula.

  Fain sprinted past two foul-smelling creatures and joined her in the corner.

  “Are you all right?” he panted.

  “For the moment. What happened to your face?”

  “It’ll heal. Let’s get set up.”

  He took a moment to look at the menacing figures that faced them across the rope. One was, or had been, female. Thick blond hair, now matted and tangled, framed the face on which flesh sagged from the wide-spaced cheekbones. Paula Foster, the movie star, let a few wrinkles take her to surgery, and to death. The other was old friend Kevin Jackson, his black face mottled with something like gray mold.

  One by one the others came in the door and approached. Barney Quail, the transient, his toothless mouth a black hole in the dead stubbly face. John Corely the policeman, seemingly unaware that the flesh of his right arm hung in shreds. Glenn Meiner, the brave young fireman. One empty eye socket squirmed with maggots. Ada Dempsey, the shattered hit-and-run victim, flopping her pitiful remains across the floor. Sharon Isaacs, the teenage suicide, swollen tongue coming out of her mouth like a dead white sausage. And finally, the most ravaged of all — a mass of putrescent flesh hanging loose in spots to reveal greasy yellow fat and pale bones. Leanne Kruger.

  The two living people in the room were almost relieved when the lights suddenly went out. In the glow of the fire across the room, shadows leaped and danced like tormented things, but the loathsome details of decay in the walking dead were mercifully blurred.

  “Here goes,” Fain muttered to Jillian. He extended his arms to the sides and faced the misshapen figures that crowded the rope barrier, chattering and hissing at him. In a voice as strong as he could muster, he commanded, “Mauvais nâmes … m’ecoutez!”

  The restless movement of the dead ones slowed. Fain continued with the words he had memorized from Le Docteur’s incantation. The pronunciation he entrusted to the memory of his high school French.

  “Regardez! Ce soir je vous renvois. Je vous delivre. Regardez!”

  The only sound now was the crackle of the flames and the sigh of wind through the broken window.

  “What did you say?” Jillian asked in a whisper.

  “I told them the show was about to begin,” Fain whispered back. In truth, he had only a general idea of the words’ meaning, but they had the desired effect of quieting the dead ones. At least temporarily.

  “Now comes the hard part,” he said through gritted teeth. “Look away if you feel faint.”

  “I can take it if you can,” she said.

  Fain sat down slowly in the heavy chair. He positioned himself facing his grisly audience, with the steaming bucket of formula at his feet. Moving deliberately, he drew the scalpel and held it poised in his right hand. He inserted the point of the blade in the fabric of his left jacket sleeve, halfway between the shoulder and elbow, and slit the material cleanly all the way down through the cuff. Wisps of down floated in the air as the quilted fabric parted.

  He pulled the sleeve apart, exposing his bare arm, and laid the scalpel blade across the median cephalic vein. He glanced up at Jillian. Her eyes were large and luminous in the firelight. Fain winked at her, then sliced into his vein w
ith the scalpel.

  Jillian quickly handed him the plastic tubing and clamp. He had some difficulty attaching the tube to the open vein, once dropping the clamp while the loose jacket sleeve flapped over the wound. When he had the tube properly inserted, he held the open end up for the watchers to see as the crimson liquid quickly filled it.

  “Avec le sang de mon coeur je vous renvoie!”

  He dipped the open end of the tube toward the bucket. The dark scarlet blood flowed out, making a soft splash in the silent room.

  With Jillian at his side, watching anxiously, Fain settled slowly in the chair as blood drained steadily into the bucket. She laid a hand on his shoulder. From time to time he looked up at her with a shadowed smile.

  After many minutes, Fain raised his right hand. The small gesture cost him an effort. In a voice that had lost its timbre he said, “Mauvais names! Ne marchez pas jamais! Avec le sang de ma vie je vous renvois à travers la barrière!”

  McAllister Fain’s eyes slid out of focus, and his head dropped forward as the blood continued to dribble from the tube into the bucket. Jillian clamped her teeth together, dipped her hands into the viscous red mixture, and splashed it out at the dead creatures beyond the rope.

  The effect was instantaneous. The scarlet fluid spattered across the decaying flesh with the hiss of a virulent acid. The moldering faces sizzled and smoked. The poor ruined bodies thrashed about in a grisly dance, their ruined mouths agape in screams long delayed.

  Jillian dipped her hands again and threw the fluid outward, trying not to think about what was happening.

  They writhed now on the floor, their cries growing fainter. And fainter. At last, at long, long last, they were still.

  Jillian, her hands red and dripping, sank slowly to the floor beside Fain’s chair.

  Chapter 30

  Although the city of Guayaquil on the western hump of Ecuador had a population of more than a million, it retained the flavor of a sleepy coastal town. Calle de Gaviotas was a street of small shops and cozy houses overlooking the Gulf of Guayaquil. The building was two stories, painted a soothing pastel pink. A new sign beside the entrance read:

  SENOR FANTÁSTICO

  MAESTRO DEL OCULTISMO

  McAllister Fain came down the stairs to the doorway, wearing a flowered shirt and high-cut white peasant pants. He shook hands with a stout, dark-browed woman who had preceded him through the doorway.

  The woman smiled at him. “You sure there will be a man? In my life? De verdad? ”

  “Absolutely, señora. And soon. Very soon.”

  He watched the woman walk happily up the street, then turned and climbed the stairs. He walked through the small room where the tarot deck lay spread on the table and into the living quarters with the airy rattan furniture. He went out through the French window onto the pink balcony.

  Jillian Pappas reached up from her chair and handed him a frosty glass decorated with a pineapple slice.

  Fain took an appreciative sip. “Delicious. What is it?”

  “Mostly rum. Did you have good news for Mrs. Ycaza?”

  “The cards, my dear, not I.”

  “Let me guess. A man is coming into her life.”

  “Amazing. I might dispense with the cards and just use you.”

  “Sounds like fun,” she said.

  “No more pupils today?”

  “Nope. The English department is closed for the weekend.”

  He pulled a chair next to hers, and they sipped their drinks in comfortable silence, looking out over the water.

  “It doesn’t seem as hot as when we first came,” Jillian said.

  “We’ve had two months to get acclimated,” Fain said. After a moment he added, “Ever miss the old life?”

  “Nope. I was kidding myself that I actually enjoyed busting my behind for some little bitty part in a bad play in a crummy theater that would go to some big-chested eighteen-year-old, anyway. Down here I feel like I’m really helping people, teaching English to the poor kids. And learning Spanish from them while I’m at it. How about you, Señor Fantástico? Do you think about what you left behind?”

  “Oh, yeah, I think about it. Mostly what I left was a tangle of civil and criminal charges that would take years to straighten out even if I didn’t go to prison. I was a little crazy for a while up there, but now I finally know what I want.” He leaned over and kissed her. “And I’ve got it.”

  “Did you have any doubts we’d make it that last night in Eagle’s Roost?”

  “Plenty,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t want to have to do that again.”

  “Amen,” she said. “What made you so sure the beef blood would work? Didn’t the formula call for human blood? Yours?”

  “It’s the nature of magic, darling,” he said. “How much is real, and how much is trickery? Who knows for sure? With the alternative being a messy suicide, I figured I wouldn’t lose a whole lot by trying a variation of the Sultan’s Wine Flask.”

  “It sure looked real. I didn’t even see you switch the tube from your vein to the plastic blood bag under your jacket.”

  “Another basic principle of magic — misdirection. When I dropped the clamp, everybody looked down just long enough for me to make the switch and start the beef blood flowing.”

  “Thank gosh it worked. I never want to do anything that icky again.”

  This time Fain was the one to say, “Amen.”

  There was a knock at their apartment door.

  “Adelante!” Fain called from the balcony.

  Mrs. Ruiz, the landlady, entered and came over to the French window. She was a stout, dignified woman in black taffeta. “There is a visitor for you. A boy.”

  “I thought you had no more pupils today,” Fain said to Jillian.

  “He may be new,” she said.

  “I can send him away,” said the landlady.

  “No,” Jillian said. “I don’t like to do that. Send him up.”

  Mrs. Ruiz nodded and went back down to the foot of the stairs where the door opened onto the street. The boy waited there, bundled from head to foot despite the heat. She motioned for him to go up, then fanned the air in front of her face. It would take more than a bath, she thought, to wash away that carrion smell.

  • • •

  Slowly, purposefully, Miguel Ledo climbed the stairs.

  Serving as inspiration for contemporary literature, Prologue Books, a division of F+W Media, offers readers a vibrant, living record of crime, science fiction, fantasy, and western genres.

  If you enjoyed this Horror title from Prologue Books, check out other titles by Richard Gary Brandner at:

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  The Brain Eaters

  Quintana Roo

  Doomstalker

  Floater

  The Players

  The Boiling Pool

  Rot

  Offshore

  A Rage in Paradise

  The Sterling Standard

  Walkers

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  Copyright © 1986 by Gary Brandner

  All rights reserved.

  Cover image(s) © 123RF.com

  Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-5841-8

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5841-2

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