Goddamn it!
Maria slung the weapon over her shoulder in case she stumbled across an ammo clip. Drawing the Walther, she bent over and seized a fallen machete. Traces of rotten flesh on the handle caused her to shudder. She heard footsteps behind her. Turning, she sprinted in the direction of the footbridge. Her chest and throat ached. As she drew closer to the edge of the woods, she heard the chopper and saw dirt kicking up in the bright light shining through the trees. The chopper hovered in the clearing above the river, creating turbulence on the water’s surface.
They’re waiting for me.
The men in the helicopter knew she would try to flee the woods as soon as she encountered the zonbies. If she set foot on the bridge, the chopper’s machine guns would rip her to shreds. If she dove into the river, the piranhas would tear her to pieces, especially with her arms and legs all scratched up. She had no choice but to remain in the woods. Taking a deep breath, she took off, following the river once more. Holding the machete in one hand and the Walther in the other made for awkward running.
A heavyset Hispanic woman with bright orange hair came out from behind a tree, her eyes glazed with a sheen of milky blue death. Maria feared she would waste a bullet if she fired while running, and she gripped the machete in her weaker left hand, so she slammed the Walther’s grip down on the woman’s crown. A dull moan escaped the woman’s parched lips, and she sagged onto her haunches. Slowing to a stop, Maria aimed the Walther at the forehead of the woman, who looked up at her with unblinking eyes. Wishing to preserve her limited ammunition, Maria shifted her machete into her right hand and resumed running.
A lanky man with mixed race features lumbered ahead of her. Maria thought she might run around him, but he extended his arms at his sides like a defensive basketball player, grasping at the air with one hand while his other hand waved a machete.
Maria cocked her right arm over her left shoulder as she ran straight at him and brought the machete down at an angle. The blade cleaved the man’s skull above his right eye just below his brain. The eye looked up at the blade. Maria tried to yank the blade out, but it was wedged in her target. She shifted the Walther into her right hand, grasped the machete’s handle with her left, then pressed the gun against the man’s skull and squeezed the trigger. The shot blew the man’s head back, painting the foliage behind him with brain fluid, the velocity of the impact freeing the machete.
Two shots left. Maria scooped up the zonbie’s machete, slid it under her belt, and ran.
She didn’t get far before almost running into the arms of a squat male zonbie with a bald head. Realizing that every time she fired the Walther the gunfire drew the attention of other zonbies, she jammed the gun in the waistband behind her and drew the other machete, one blade in each hand.
The zonbie swung his machete at her, and she jumped back to avoid it. He swung again, and this time she struck his blade with one of hers, producing sparks, and buried her other machete in his forearm. She applied pressure to that blade as she wrenched it free and felt the metal scraping bone. Had she been stronger, she might have cut off his sword hand.
Without acknowledging the sawdust seeping out of his wound, the zonbie swung his machete into Maria’s left side. She cried out as he pulled the blade and it sawed through her flesh. Then she stepped forward and plunged one of her machetes in the side of his neck.
To her astonishment, he opened his mouth and unleashed a hoarse cry, as if summoning his fellows. He swung the machete at her side again, and she moved closer to him so that his arm just wrapped around her back. Maria raised her left arm, waited for him to cock his arm, then buried the machete in his forearm. She had hoped to strike the same wound and hopefully chop the forearm off but missed by a good three inches. Still, the blade sank into bone, allowing her to twist his machete arm away from her.
The zonbie snapped his teeth at her face, and she flinched, then jerked the other machete out of his neck in a shower of sawdust and struck again. This time the blade struck the same gaping neck wound, a feat she repeated several times as she attempted to hack his head off. Finally, she gave up and pulled her other machete out of his forearm. He collapsed in a heap, his head flopping around on his ruined neck like a beached fish.
Maria took off, her breath coming in tortured rasps. Jake had told her a single bokor controlled an army of zonbies. Did that mean a bokor had seen her in action and knew which direction she was headed? Did all of the zonbies know? She had already lost track of the river, but using the drone of the helicopter as a marker, she headed deeper into the woods, closer to danger.
Maria ran almost a quarter of a mile into the woods before she had to stop to catch her breath, the danger being that the zonbies might hear her.
If they can hear, she thought.
She pushed the goggles on top of her head and wiped sweat from her forehead and around her eyes, then stretched the sore muscles in her arms. Coquis croaked around her, something they hadn’t done around the zonbies. Did that mean she was safe?
Maria pulled the goggles down, adjusted them, and walked. Another quarter of a mile in and the woods came to an abrupt stop. She stood in high grass, facing a field. A road on her right led to a complex of six barracks illuminated by work lights. Seeing no zonbies, she crept forward.
A farm?
No, but definitely something organized. As she neared the complex, she realized the buildings were made of cinder blocks, with corrugated metal roofs. She stopped and crouched. A guard marched around the corner of the nearest building, clutching a semiautomatic rifle. She narrowed her eyes. He was dead. Hugging the earth, she waited for him to pass and move on to the next building. Then she ran to the closest window, stood on her toes, and peeked inside through a dirty pane of glass.
The building was the size of an army barracks, with mattresses scattered around the floor. She estimated as many as fifty men and women, mostly in their twenties and thirties, sat huddled in small groups. At first she thought they were zonbies, but then she realized they were scarecrows: filthy, emaciated creatures fixing before crossing over.
A man inhaled a cloud of Black Magic from a glass pipe, and his head rolled around on his neck, his eyes unblinking. A woman shoved a needle in her arm and looked heavenward. A pair of young girls took turns snorting black powder off a broken piece of glass. A man lay on his back, his chest rising and falling with effort.
They’re dead and don’t know it.
She looked left and right. No sign of the guard.
A shooting gallery in the middle of nowhere? Drug addicts close to death guarded by an armed zonbie?
She ran to the next building. Inside the unoccupied structure, she noticed a dozen examining tables. Near each table were metal tubs stained with blood and piles of big bags that reminded her of those she had seen for peat moss.
Sawdust, she thought.
Plastic tubes ran from the tables to the tubs, and flies swarmed the area.
This is where they drain their blood and stuff them.
Settling on her heels, Maria searched for any sign of security. Satisfied she was safe, she ran around the building to its corner and spotted the zonbie guard marching two buildings away. As soon as he was out of sight, she sprinted to the next building. Through the window, she saw mats, rugs, and mattresses on the floor.
Sleeping quarters?
The bokors needed to rest, and Humphrey had said the zonbies supposedly harvested Malvado’s drugs at night. They had to stay somewhere during the day.
She went to building four: more mats and rugs. More of the same filled building five.
There must be hundreds of them.
One building remained, and smoke billowed out of two different chimneys on its roof. The guard emerged around its corner.
Maria pressed her back against the wall, then hurried to the other end and circled that way. She ran to the last building and peered through a window. She saw another dozen tables, half of them occupied by nude male and female zonbies with rotti
ng features. These tables had no tubes or tubs but rather wheeled carts. Two clothed zonbies stood at each table, and Maria watched in horror as they raised their machetes and hacked at the limbs of their emaciated “patients.”
She realized the naked zonbies were in much worse condition than those attacking them: their tight skin had split at the seams. They did not even react to their dismemberment, and the standing workers tossed the severed limbs into the carts. Then each pair of zonbies worked in tandem to throw the trunks of the dismembered zonbies into the carts, which they pushed to the far end of the building.
Maria ran the length of the building for a better view. Through the next window, she saw the zonbies toss the limbs and trunks into an iron oven.
An incinerator. The zonbies were reducing other zonbies to ash.
Black Magic.
Jake had told her he and Edgar had “killed” as many as a hundred zonbies at an abandoned factory in the Bronx.
That must have been an operation similar to this one.
Turning from the window, she pressed her back against the wall and looked from side to side, relying on her ears as much as the goggles to locate the zonbie guard. She dislodged herself from the wall and was about to move when the zonbie marched past her from the opposite side.
No. Another guard!
Somehow she had managed to avoid him without even trying. He didn’t notice her and disappeared behind the next building.
Maria exhaled and moved sideways along the building to the far corner, which she rounded. Facing deep fields, she saw over a hundred silhouettes in the distance. Maria pushed the goggles up on her head and blinked several times, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness without the aid of the night vision. A full moon cast silver light on the zonbies toiling in the acres of bloodred flowers.
Malvado’s poppy crops.
She spied two figures on horseback, then two more.
Overseers. But are they alive or dead?
A roar filled her ears, and bright light caused her to wince. The helicopter soared overhead, its spotlight moving around on the ground. Bathed in light, she looked away. The copter flew over the field, its light revealing many more zonbies than she had discerned on her own. None of them reacted to the aircraft.
Recalling the map as best she could, Maria knew there were more fields beyond this one, then a mountain and even more fields. She didn’t want to head back in the direction of the first building, because both guards were in that area. That left returning through the woods to the river, which made sense now that the chopper had left. Securing her goggles once more, she turned and froze.
Both guards stood twenty feet away.
SIXTEEN
Maria jumped, even though she had sensed the guards even before she saw them. The zonbies lifted their rifles in unison. Seeing no other choice, she ran straight toward them. She zigzagged, and the zonbies followed her. Then she threw herself sideways at the closest zonbie’s legs, which snapped like branches, and the dead thing collapsed over her. She rolled onto its sternum and sat up on the balls of her feet.
The other zonbie aimed its rifle in her direction. Maria swung one machete at the rifle’s barrel, deflecting it, then chopped at one of the zonbie’s knees with the other. The undead creature toppled over.
The first zonbie sat up behind Maria and thrashed around on his broken legs, attempting to create enough space to aim its rifle at her.
She drove her elbow into its mouth, shattering its front teeth and knocking it down. Then she stood, leaving the one machete buried in the second zonbie’s knee. She brought her remaining machete down with all her strength into the second zonbie’s skull.
The dead thing’s eyes rolled in their sockets, and its body convulsed. Then it turned still and fell back with the machete protruding from its head.
Maria spun on one heel, facing the first zonbie, which pointed its rifle at her as it struggled to sit up. She unslung her machine gun and swung it like a bat at the rifle, which flew out of the zonbie’s hands. Moving forward, she raised the machine gun over her head and slammed the stock down on the zonbie’s head. The dead thing blinked several times.
“Son of a bitch,” Maria said, swinging the gun harder. This time she heard the cracking of skull, but the zonbie continued to blink. Grunting with strain, she swung the weapon a third time, splitting the zonbie’s skull open and the machine gun’s stock to pieces at the same time. Brain fluid spurted out of the rupture, and the zonbie fell.
Maria discarded her broken weapon and stood gasping for breath in the moonlight. What the hell had she gotten herself into?
In the distance, the chopper turned around.
Maria spied a crawl space under the barracks. She pulled her machetes out of the second zonbie and rolled the corpse under the space, then sat on her ass and kicked it out of sight. She did the same with the first corpse and threw the broken machine gun in after them. Sliding one machete under her belt, she carried the other machete and one rifle.
Firepower, baby.
She strode to the end of the building. With the chopper no longer at the river, she hoped to make it to the bridge by dawn. Stopping in her tracks, she sucked in her breath as a dozen machete-wielding zonbies emerged from the woods she had escaped. Her fingers tightened on the rifle. Then another dozen zonbies appeared behind the first group.
Ah, fuck.
The helicopter grew louder behind her.
Grunting with frustration, she ran back to the end of the building facing the fields and the chopper. The spotlight moved across the ground far away, and she sprinted to her right, passing the buildings designed to house the zonbie workforce. The field angled across the land ahead, trapping her between the undead harvesters and the security patrol. She stopped at the first building and located its screen door, which opened when she turned its handle.
No need to lock in junkies when you’re providing their drug of choice.
She entered the dark building still wearing her goggles. The stench of feces, urine, vomit, and sweat assaulted her, almost causing her to pass out. Jesus, what she would have given for some vapor rub to dull the nauseating smell. Gagging, she steadied herself. Around the room, junkies fixed. In the green glow of the night vision, they appeared as dead as the zonbies.
They’re just one step removed.
She crept through the crowd of sweating flesh to the rear of the building. Along the way, she opened four windows to let the stink out, allow fresh air in, and provide her with some escape routes if she got jammed up. Some of the scarecrows looked at her, but their faces showed no concern, and they returned to their drugs.
Passing two emaciated people attempting to have intercourse despite the man’s lack of an erection, Maria reached a far corner, pressed her back against it, and slid to the floor. From this level, she observed a woman on her hands and knees snorting black powder off the floor and a man inserting a needle up one nostril. Moans coalesced into a wail of confused ecstasy and misery.
Jesus.
Draping the machete across her lap, she set the rifle behind her. She opened her bag, found some tissue, and wiped the cuts on her arms and legs. The tissue came away red and wet. She pressed one hand against the wound on her side and winced, then reached into her bag, took out her cigarettes, and lit one.
A few heads turned in her direction, then away.
Maria took a deep drag and exhaled. Humphrey had said the zonbies worked in the fields at night when no one would see them. If he had been right, all she needed to do was survive until dawn, and then she could waltz off the plantation.
When she finished her cigarette, she stabbed it out on the floor and rested her head against the wall. Believing the living skeletons around her posed no threat, she closed her eyes.
Maria awoke with a start and stared into pitch darkness. At first she thought she had removed the goggles in her sleep, but when she reached up with one hand she felt them where they belonged. Their electric charge had just died. She took them off and
gasped at the sight of the creature on top of her. The naked scarecrow had pulled himself alongside her leg, which he proceeded to hump with his erection. With a disgusted cry, she shoved the scarecrow off her and jumped to her feet.
The man rolled over, grabbed another woman and a man with glazed eyes, and poked each of them with his organ.
Looking outside the window, Maria saw a shade of purple in the sky. In the distance, two or three hundred figures lumbered toward the complex, the overseers trotting their horses among them. They appeared human and bored.
Quitting time, she thought. She would have to wait until the zonbies were all packed away before she cut out. She turned back to the scarecrows on the floor, most of them unconscious.
The screen door opened, and she dropped facedown to the floor. A shadow filled the doorway. Maria reached out for the rifle. A zonbie entered the far end of the building, carrying a metal bucket. Swallowing, Maria pulled the rifle close to her body, hiding it. She located the machete a foot away.
Shit.
And she remembered she had tucked the Walther into the rear waistband of her shorts, where the zonbie would see it.
Double shit.
The zonbie reached into the bucket and tossed something onto the floor near the scarecrows at his feet.
Food?
No. Handfuls of plastic dime bags.
Black Magic.
He might as well have been executing them with a gun while they slept, except then they could not serve as Malvado’s slaves.
Maria watched the zonbie make his rounds, tossing quantities of the drugs at the sleeping scarecrows.
One of the skeletal junkies stirred, saw his treat, and lunged for it on all fours. He snatched a dime bag, tore it open with his remaining teeth, dumped the Magic on the floor, and snorted it up each nostril. He rolled over onto his back, rubbed his nose, and gazed at the ceiling.
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