The E. Hoffmann Price Spice Adventure MEGAPACK ™

by Price, E. Hoffmann

  They could not be alive. There was no resentment or wrath at his frantic, savage blows. Somewhere he heard a terrified wailing and a scurrying. Amelia was taking cover. The walking corpses seemed unaware of her presence.

  Madeline’s outcries were throttled. As Connell vainly battled, he caught glimpses of her silk clad legs flailing in the moonlight, heard the ripping of cloth as her ensemble was torn to ribbons by her captors. Then he was smothered by the irresistible rush. A sickening, musty, charnel stench stifled him. Iron muscles, leathery bodies, exhaling the odor of incipient decay, yet more powerful than any living thing, crushed him to the border of unconsciousness. They seized him and Madeline as though they were logs, and hauled them up the veranda stairs and into Madeline’s room.

  Connell heard Pierre Ducoin’s familiar voice.

  “Too bad,” he ironically commented as the blacks dropped their burdens, and pinned Connell to the floor with their bony knees. “Aunt Célie told me something was going on.”

  Then he turned to the corpse men, and spoke in a purring, primitive language, more rudimentary than any Haitian patois: the old savage dialect of Guinea.

  They bound Connell’s hands and feet to a chair, and flung Madeline carelessly across her bed. Though half conscious, she was stirring and moaning, and instinctively trying to draw her tattered ensemble down about her hips. And then Aunt Célie appeared, black, sombre and malignant. The sinister negress knelt beside the hearth and struck light. In a moment she had a fire kindled and was heaping it with charcoal.

  The walking corpses lined themselves against the wall, awaiting orders. It was only then that Connell fully realized what had mauled and pounded him and Madeline.

  They were breathing; but their lack of expression reminded him of a dog he had once seen in a vivisection laboratory. The greater portion of the animal’s brain had been removed; it lived, but it was a living log. And those black men had only enough brain left to let their reflexes function.

  “How do you like my crew of zombies?” murmured Ducoin as the negress set a kettle of water over the glowing coals.

  Zombies! That one word rounded out Council’s rising horror. They were corpses stolen from unguarded graves and had been reanimated by a primal necromancy to serve as farm cattle! Zombies, toiling as no dumb beast could. Rich profits, farming a plantation with hands like those. He wondered why Aunt Célie knelt swaying and muttering before the kettle into which she tossed dried herbs, and bits of bark and roots and pebbles.

  “Pretty nice, eh?” was Ducoin’s satirical comment. “I learned the trick at Haiti, and I’m going to add you to my string of zombies. Once Aunt Célie mixes you a drink you won’t be so interested in women.”

  Wrath blazed in Ducoin’s eyes as his glance shifted to his disheveled niece.

  “I don’t know what you two were doing,” he murmured, “but I can fairly well guess. Or else she wouldn’t have been so willing to go away with you. Just another no-good wench. Shell be a very good zombie herself—”

  “You damn’ dirty rat!” snarled Connell. “Do you mean—”

  “Certainly,” answered Ducoin. “After fooling around with you, she’s no niece of mine. In this day and age I can’t give her what she deserves, but making her a zombie is different. Nobody will inquire out here on the Delta. And she’ll not be playing around with strangers any more.”

  Another guttural command. The corpse men marched over to Madeline’s bed as returning consciousness stirred her. Connell, struggling against his bonds, saw them stripping her dress to tatters as they throttled her into submission. Shuddering with horror at the grisly contact, Madeline finally surrendered, and the zombies methodically lashed her to another chair. Her dress was a pitiful rag. Her clawed breasts were half exposed, and her bruised legs peeped through the remnants of her hosiery.

  Ducoin chuckled at Connell’s frenzied struggles.

  “That won’t do you any good. I’ll leave a guard here to watch you while Aunt Célie and I finish the brew that’ll make both of you zombies.”

  At Ducoin’s command, all but one of the zombies filed out of the room. Before he and Aunt Célie followed, the Creole paused to remark. “You were looking for Plato. All right, I’m sending Plato in to help watch you. Now see how you like the white man’s burden!”

  They left. But presently, as the fumes from the kettle stifled and dizzied Connell, he heard approaching footsteps clump-clump-clumping down the hall.

  The black apparition which stood framed in the doorway froze his blood. Plato had returned, a loose-jointed, shambling, lifeless hulk that moved in response to the zombie master’s command.

  “Good God in heaven!” he groaned.

  “That’s why I warned you,” whispered Madeline. “I saw Plato before and after.”

  “If I’d only left—”

  “I’m still glad you didn’t, Walt. It was such a ghastly, lonely life. Becoming a living corpse is better than never having lived.”

  A wave of nausea racked Connell. He and Madeline would presently be the companions of that horrible hulk.

  “Hitch your chair over, bit by bit,” Madeline continued. “Maybe I can get you loose.”

  Connell’s cramped efforts moved the chair a scant fraction of an inch. At the rasp of wood, the heads of the zombies shifted. They had their orders. Not a chance.

  “Plato,” said Connell. “Loosen my hands, Plato, don’t you remember me?”

  Over and over, he repeated the name. The blank, sightless face seemed to change for an instant.

  “Maybe he’s not been this way long enough to forget everything,” whispered Madeline. “Try again—”

  The oft repeated name got unexpected results, but not from the zombie. Plato’s wife, Amelia, came slinking from the hallway. Her black plump face became slate grey as she stared into the ruddy glow.

  “Where’s mah Plato? Mistah Walt, was yo’all talkin’ to him?”

  Then she saw the hulk that had been Connell’s nigger.

  “Plato! Don’t yo’ heah me talkin’ to yo’?”

  Not a sign of life. That blasted brain could not absorb a new impression.

  “Plato, honey, cain’t yo’ heah me?”

  Finally, grey and trembling, the negress turned to Connell.

  “Mistah Walt, Ah cain’t do nuthin’. Mah Plato’s am daid.”

  Connell realized that Amelia’s persuasion had made less impression than his own authoritative voice.

  “Untie us, Amelia,” he said.

  She had scarcely reached the chair when Plato’s ponderous hand lashed out, flinging her into a corner.

  “Mistah Walt,” said the negress as she struggled to her feet, “Ah’s gwine to de village to git help. Dat debbil don’t know Ah’m here, and Ah’ll get some white folks.”

  She stepped into the hall. Connell renewed his struggles. Once or twice Madeline contrived to jerk her chair a fraction of an inch toward him, but a zombie leaped forward, bodily picked her up, and set her in a corner. They did nothing to thwart Connell’s struggles against his bonds. The orders had not covered that.

  Finally Connell contrived to spread the knotted strands of clothesline.

  “Hang on, darling,” he panted. “I’ll be clear in a second.”

  “But what good will it do?” moaned Madeline. “They’ll block you before—”

  “Maybe I can toss you out the window, chair and all.”

  He knew that he had no chance against his grisly captors, but anything was better than waiting for that deadly brew to receive the missing ingredients that would make them living corpses. Connell heard footsteps and relaxed his desperate efforts. His blood froze, and a stifled oath choked him.

  It was Amelia. She had a small parcel wrapped in paper. Damn her black hide, why hadn’t she run to the village?
r />   “Plato, honey,” she pleaded, “Ah’s done brought yo’ somethin’ good.”

  “For God’s sake, go to the village,” shouted Connell.

  “That would be wasted effort,” said a sardonic voice. Ducoin crossed the threshold, accompanied by Aunt Célie and several zombies. His sinister presence, and the living dead seemed to freeze Amelia with horror. She had lost her chance to make a break.

  “I guess we’ll have a number three zombie,” murmured Ducoin.

  The living dead now blocked the doorway. Aunt Célie lifted the lid of the kettle, and added a pinch of powder from a small packet. She stirred the villainous potion, and drew off a cupful and held it to Connell’s lips.

  “You might as well drink it,” said Ducoin. “If you don’t—” His gaze shifted to Madeline’s trembling bare body and he resumed, “These zombies will do anything I tell them. How would you like to see one of them—”

  His words trailed to a whisper, but Connell knew what would happen to Madeline, before his eyes.

  And then the last remnant of cord that bound his wrist yielded. His freed hand flashed out, striking the steaming beverage from Ducoin’s hand. As the Creole recoiled, Connell’s other hand jerked loose, gripping him by the throat. The sudden move caught Ducoin off guard. Since the master was present, the zombies did not interfere; and Ducoin, throttled by Connell’s savage grasp, could not articulate an order.

  Sock! Connell’s fist hammered home, driving Ducoin crashing into a corner, dazed and numb. Connell struggled with the bonds at his ankles, but only for a moment. Aunt Célie seized his elbows from the rear.

  Once Ducoin recovered his voice—!

  Amelia was free. But instead of running, she approached Plato.

  “Jes’ yo’ taste one, honey,” she crooned, placing a salted cashew nut in the bluish, sagging mouth of her dead husband.

  There was a mumbling and a drooling, a sudden flash of perception as the salty tidbit mingled with the saliva; then an inarticulate, bestial howl. Ducoin and Aunt Célie flung themselves forward.

  “Stop her!” yelled Ducoin. “She’s giving them salt!”

  Too late. Burly, powerful Plato had become a raging maniac. Amelia thrust a dozen cashew nuts into the mouth of the other zombie. Another incredible transformation. Another slavering, howling black brute. A pistol cracked, but only once.

  Ducoin’s weapon clattered into a corner. Plato and his companion closed in.

  The room became a red hell of slaughter. The insensate black hulks were pounding and trampling and flinging Ducoin and Aunt Célie about like bean bags.

  They hungrily licked splashed blood from their black hands, and renewed the assault. Other zombies came from the fields, tasted a salted nut, and joined the butchery. And presently there was only a shapeless, gory pulp that they were trampling and beating into the floor.…

  The zombies desisted for lack of fragments left to dismember. Then they clambered to their feet, utterly ignoring Amelia and the two prisoners. They shattered the window, cleared the sill, and dashed across the field. Against the moonglow Connell saw them burrowing into the ground like dogs.

  Amelia, sobbing and laughing, was releasing him and Madeline.

  “Mistah Walt,” the negress explained, “when Ah saw mah Plato Ah remembered somethin’ my ole grandmammy done tol’ me years ago, about dem zombies cuttin’ up dat way when dey ate salt. Den Ah ’membered de cashew nuts Ah done give yo’. Now, praise de Lawd, Plato am plumb daid, and all de other niggah is gwine to their graves lak Christians. Dey always does dat, when they gets salt. But fust they musses up de man what made dem zombies.”

  “But how did he do it?” wondered Connell as he helped Madeline into the car.

  “I don’t know anything about it, except that according to the law in Haiti, it’s a capital offense to administer any drug that produces a coma. And I think that’s the real reason Uncle Pierre decided to finish me—he found me reading an old book of Haitian statutes, not long ago, and was afraid of my suspicions.”

  “Mistah Walt,” interrupted a voice from the rumble seat, “yo’ll gwine to need a maid fo’ de new missus, ain’t yo?”

  “Absolutely,” assured Connell, “but you’d better take a vacation for a couple of weeks before you come to work.…”

  EVERY MAN A KING

  “Do you have to go? At this hour?” Olajai turned from her mirror, but did not leave off unfastening the red velvet hood whose twinkling pendants trailed past her cheeks, and to her shoulders. “Couldn’t it wait till tomorrow?”

  Timur[1] frowned, which made it all the more certain that the King Maker’s granddaughter had not married him for his looks. He snatched a shirt of link mail from a hook, and as he worked it down over his broad shoulders, he grumbled, “One of Bikijek’s pets, and he’s got the king’s seal. Either be a good dog, or run out and join your brother at Saghej Well!”

  Olajai said, wistfully, as she wiped off the last bit of dead-white makeup, “And I thought it’d be lovely, living in Samarkand.”

  Olajai was shapely of body, and exquisite of face; the Turki heritage, showing in the peach blow tinge of her cheeks, gave features whose every line was sharp and clean and delicate in its drawing. This was Timur’s first and only wife, and thus far, he was glad that there were no others.

  Though not quite twenty-seven, he looked older, for mountain blizzards and desert blasts had weathered his flat face. Wind blown sand and storm driven sleet had set the Mongol slant of his eyes in a permanent squint; and for all the blue Zaytuni silk tunic he put on over his shirt of linked mail, and his gold embroidery boots, and plumed pork pie hat, he seemed out of place in a palace.

  “I’ll get away as soon as I can,” he promised, and limped out.

  Bow legged, and never built for walking, he was further handicapped by an ankle which had stopped a well-aimed arrow. In the tiled reception room, he said to the waiting official, “Something important going on?”

  The square-rigged Kipchak did not answer; he merely tapped the big four-cornered seal. In the court, a sleepy groom held his horse, and Timur’s.

  They skirted the plaza of splendid Samarkand. The bitter clear moon brought out the blue of tile-fronted palaces, and the golden crests of tall minarets. Samarkand, the jewel of the Jagatai Empire, was now the prize of the Kipchak Horde who had overrun the land: and Timur was weary of serving invaders. But for luck, and a friend at Elias Koja’s court, he might be an exile, like Olajai’s brother, Mir Hussein. Yet, though his position as administrator of affairs gave plenty of enemies and little satisfaction, it at least enabled him to stand between Bikijek’s rapacious clique of nobles, and his own conquered neighbors.

  Timur trailed the official, instead of riding boot to boot. There was more than just the matter of rank involved. Then, wary ever since that first strange warning, he noted the stirring in the shadows of the archway to the left. Here the street was narrow; here he and his guide faced a cold, white moon.

  A bowstring twanged, the strident note of a horseman’s bow. Timur ducked. His sword was half unsheathed when the arrow thumped home, nailing the Kipchak squarely in the throat. The fellow made a choking sound, and lurched from the saddle.

  Timur wheeled, chin in, and crouching low, so that there was hardly any vulnerable spot exposed. The Ferghana stallion stretched out in a great bound; hooves struck fire. When things happened too fast for thought, Timur Bek was driven by the instinct to close in, to cut down.

  Then a man came out, barefooted and bearded. “Go home, Timur Bek. There was no other way to warn you.”

  The face was in shadow, but Timur recognized the voice and the figure. “Good shooting, for a scholar! But why?”

  “Allah will enlighten you. Also, the man you were following won’t be able to tell anyone you’ve been enlightened.”

  “What is
this, Kaboul?”

  “If all is well with your family, then this is a mistake. And the peace upon you.”

  Kaboul the Darvish turned into the shadows of the archway. On the ground, Timur saw a horseman’s bow, but neither quiver nor arrows.

  “One man, one arrow.”

  And now Kaboul was going back to his cubicle to write a Persian quatrain, or an ode in Turki!

  Timur, retracing his course, held his horse to a walk, for in spite of the menace which threatened Olajai he could not risk the sound of galloping. When he finally reached the wicket which gave entrance to the rear court of his house, he hitched himself up and stood in the saddle. Then, catching the crown of the wall, he swung himself to the top, and dropped to the grass inside. His first move was to unbolt the little gate, and lead his horse in, for he dreaded the helplessness of being afoot.

  His felt boots made no sound. As he hurried past the servants’ quarters and down a hallway, he heard voices, in front: a challenge as of a drowsy porter, then brusque answer, and a scuffle which ended in a groan.

  There was time. He hurried back, mounted up, and again felt complete. He nudged the stallion with his boot, and stroked the sleek neck, wheedling the bewildered beast into the tiled passageway.

  A woman cried out, more in wrath and indignation than in fright. “Father of pigs! Get out of here or have you skinned alive.”

  “That’s her, Olajai Turcan Aga!”

  “Come down, khanoum; we won’t hurt you.”

  “So you do know that this is Timur’s house. You know, and come in?”

  They laughed at the threat. “And we know where Timur is.”

  That was when the lame rider’s scowl became a grin. “Come down, Olajai!” he called. “We’re leaving town!”

  The deep-chested hail made the men at arms whirl about. They had curved swords, they had maces; they wore peaked helmets, and armor of overlapping plates sewed on leather, but they were afoot, and they were surprised.