In the far corner, a fully clothed man stirred, though he didn’t look at her.
She aimed the flashlight at him. Oh, my God.
Jake’s mouth hung open, a lazy, stoned look on his face. Stopping before him, she saw torn plastic bags on the floor. He had ingested Black Magic. Kneeling beside him, she gasped, tears filling her eyes. Jake’s left arm ended in a bandaged stump.
“You sons of bitches,” she said, spitting the words.
Jorge kneeled beside her and took Jake’s wounded arm. “At least he’s alive. Let’s go.”
Maria reached beneath Jake’s right arm. “Come on. We’re getting you out of here.” Pulling him to his feet, she groaned. “Why did the two smallest people come in to carry him?”
Jake blinked at Maria and a moan escaped his lips.
Maria and Jorge dragged him across the floor, and Maria didn’t care when she stepped on a scarecrow by mistake. She didn’t consider them human and just wanted to get Jake the hell out of here.
As they neared the door, three silencer shots fired in rapid succession outside. Then a zonbie stepped inside. He held a metal bucket in one hand and drew a machete from his belt with the other.
“Take Jake,” Maria said. As Jorge complied, she aimed her Glock at the zonbie’s forehead at point-blank range and squeezed the trigger.
A hole appeared in his forehead, and he rocked backwards like a drunkard, a stream of liquefied brain gushing into the air, and collapsed at their feet.
Exiting the building, they almost tripped over the bodies of two armed zonbie sentries.
Armand and Stephane continued to fire in the opposite direction.
“Get in the truck!” Armand said.
They hauled Jake to the truck and pushed him into the backseat. Turning, Maria saw a dozen zonbies with machetes advancing on her comrades, who had difficulty hitting their targets in the head with handguns in the darkness and couldn’t shoot their rifles without alerting the slaves in the fields. The zonbies advanced in herky-jerky motions, their bodies absorbing some of the bullets.
“Stay with him,” Maria told Jorge before she ran over to Armand and Stephane. “Take it to them!”
As soon as the men stopped firing, Maria charged straight at the zonbies.
“Holy shit,” Stephane said.
Maria halted ten feet short of the first zonbie, leveled her Glock, and fired. The first shot missed. The second burrowed a hole through the top of the zonbie’s skull. The creature’s body twisted, his eyes seeking the moon in the sky before he landed on his back and stopped moving.
As the remaining horde closed in, Armand and Stephane joined Maria and opened fire. The silencers coughed flames and suppressed rounds, and dead scalps creviced, eyeballs popping and liquid brains oozing. The humid night air filled with gun smoke, and before it had cleared, the zonbies lay unmoving on the ground.
“Back to the truck,” Maria said. She knew the zonbies they had just exterminated had been workers assigned to the Black Magic factory. Halfway to the truck, an alarm rang and the work lights grew brighter, pinning them in the glare. Facing the field, she saw hundreds of figures turn still, rotate toward the compound, and start running. “Oh, shit.”
Armand climbed into the truck, and Stephane ran around to his side. Maria heard their doors close, but she remained riveted on the spectacle before her. The overseers on horseback galloped into the tide of running corpses, gaining speed.
Jorge opened the rear door. “Maria! Get in!”
She hopped in next to Jake, and the truck surged forward even before she had closed her door. Armand drove deeper into the compound.
“Where the hell are you going?” Maria said.
“We’re not leaving without inflicting some serious damage,” Armand said.
“Are you crazy? There are hundreds of those things!”
Stephane pulled two rum bottles out of the bag at his feet. Strips of cloth dangled from the neck of each bottle, and Maria smelled gasoline.
Molotov cocktails, she thought.
“Which building do they make the Magic in?” Armand said.
“The last one.”
As Armand steered the vehicle forward, Maria saw naked zonbies staggering out of their destination. Y incisions divided the torsos of the dead men and women. Their flesh had turned to leather and showed signs of decomposition. Some had only one arm and still managed to wield machetes. Others had no arms at all. One hopped around on a single leg. Maria knew they had been selected for dismemberment in the Black Magic factory, destined to become ashes, and they had been ordered into action because she and her fellows had destroyed the workers.
“I’ll handle these,” Jorge said as Armand braked the truck.
Stephane jumped out first and lit the cocktails’ fuses with a lighter. Blue flames blossomed near each of his hands. Jorge got out beside him and started firing his Glock. He shot more zonbies in the chest than the head, but the bodies were in such bad shape the dead things seemed to be more adversely affected than the other zonbies had.
Stephane ran up to the building and hurled the first bottle through a window, which shattered. A moment later, flames burst inside the building, blue light spilling outside.
Maria leaned forward. “We have to get out of here!”
Armand ignored her. Jorge continued firing and dropped three of the maimed zonbies. Stephane threw the second cocktail through another window, producing a wall of fire inside. Then he drew his Glock and joined Jorge in shooting the remaining zonbies. As they climbed inside the truck at the same time, a man wearing robes ran screaming from the building, his clothing and hair trailing flames.
“Houngan dog,” Stephane said as Armand gunned the Ram forward.
They circled the compound, and a dozen zonbies emerged from the woods, their machetes reflecting moonlight.
“That’s a security patrol,” Maria said.
They raced away from the security zonbies, only to see the army of slaves from the field had gained a great deal of ground and had almost reached the compound.
“How did they get here so fast?” Armand said.
“They don’t run out of breath because they don’t breathe,” Maria said. “They don’t get tired, either. They’ll maintain that speed. I told you we have to get out of here.”
“Stop the truck,” Jorge said.
Maria looked at him.
“Stop the goddamned truck!”
“What for?” Armand said, his voice reaching a crescendo.
“So I can get into the truck bed. The only chance we stand is if one of us uses those machine guns we’ve got stockpiled back there.”
“Damn it!” Armand stomped on the brake, and they all lurched forward.
Jorge jerked his door open, jumped out, and slammed the door. Maria watched zonbies growing steadily closer from both sides.
Jorge scrambled into the truck bed. “Go! Go!”
Armand sped forward, and Jorge picked up a machine gun and opened fire into the crowd of pursuing zonbies.
“That little princesa has balls,” Stephane said.
“He’s my brother,” Armand said.
Jorge’s machine gun roared in a continuing burst, and rising puffs of sawdust glowed red in the receding taillights of the pickup.
“He’d better not fall out,” Maria said. “If we stop again they’ll be all over us.”
The road twisted into the woods and Armand decelerated. Maria saw phantom figures racing through the woods on both sides of them. Stephane rolled down his window, revealing one more Molotov cocktail.
“You blow up my truck and I’ll kill you,” Armand said.
“Wait until we cross the bridge,” Maria said. “That way you might actually stop them.”
The truck roared through the second checkpoint, where they had passed the zonbie soldiers made up to look human. In the light, Maria saw an army of zonbies running after them at an impossible speed.
Pressed against the truck’s gate, Jorge stopped firing. He tossed the machine g
un aside, picked up another, and resumed firing.
Several zonbies fell to the ground, their heads ruptured, and the zonbie horde trampled them without slowing.
Armand sped onto the bridge, the Ram vibrating as it passed over the boards. Stephane sparked his lighter, igniting the fuse, and leaned out his window with the bottle. He hurled the Molotov cocktail down on the bridge, and it burst into flames, causing Jorge to drop his gun and shield his face. The flames spread across the bridge, preventing passage.
A few zonbies staggered through the flames and toppled face forward. No more appeared.
“Stop the truck,” Maria said as they cleared the bridge.
The truck skidded to a stop.
Maria opened her door and hopped out. “Get your ass back in the truck,” she said to Jorge, who joined her on the ground. “You’re either a brave little fucker or very stupid.”
Jorge smiled. “I could say the same thing about you.”
Across the river, the zonbie army stood still along the embankment on each side of the bridge.
“They must know about the piranhas,” Maria said as she and Jorge got into the truck. “Or they’ve been ordered not to cross the river.”
The truck moved forward.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Armand said.
Ten minutes later, speeding along the road, they spotted two helicopters in the sky.
Armand killed the headlights, turned down a narrow side road, and slowed the Ram to a crawl. “The trees will hide us.”
“Where are we going?” Maria said.
“We know a place on the west coast. At this speed, we’ll be there in two hours.”
Stephane glanced at Jake, unconscious between Maria and Jorge. “How many more like him were inside that building?”
“Twenty or thirty,” Maria said. “But none of them were this healthy. In my country, we call them scarecrows. Don’t beat yourself up. They were practically zonbies already. There’s nothing we could have done for them.”
Silence settled over the truck. Maria put her arms around Jake and pressed her head against his.
TWENTY-THREE
Sitting in the backseat of his moving limo, Russel massaged the bridge of his nose. Late night emergency calls came with the territory, but this was the first one that had ever involved Malvado’s zonbies. So far, Russel had done a pretty good job avoiding Pavot Island’s supernatural elements, other than dealing with Mambo Catoute and her circle of witch doctors.
As the chauffeur navigated the limo through the woods, flashing strobe lights became visible through the trees, and then the first checkpoint came into view. Police cars and military jeeps flanked the road, and officers clad in khaki and camouflage uniforms guarded the perimeter.
The limo stopped at the open gates, and Russel lowered his window for the police officer who approached. “How many?” Russel said.
“Four sentries killed and stripped of their uniforms, their weapons missing. The woods are littered with the bodies of those other things, and we had to pull three dozen of them out of the road so our vehicles could get through. General Buteau and Colonel Solaine are in the compound.”
Without acknowledging the officer, Russel turned to his chauffeur. “Drive on.”
Ahead, a fire truck idled near the smoldering bridge, and half a dozen vehicles blocked the entrance. Soldiers and firemen stood around the vehicles.
Russel told his chauffeur to pull over, and he got out.
A lieutenant greeted him. “They torched the bridge. It’s safe to walk across, but no vehicles are allowed. Would you like me to accompany you?”
“That won’t be necessary.” Russel crossed the bridge, pausing only to look at the charred area where the fire had been put out. Smoke still lingered in the air. His footsteps sounded loud in the night, and he gazed over the railing at the river below. Too bad the trespassers hadn’t tried to cross it; a lot of problems would have been solved.
On the other side of the bridge, soldiers stood near flares set up on the ground. All of them wore red berets, the sign of the elite. Only the top soldiers and police were allowed in the compound. No one else was permitted to see the zonbies, although Malvado had instructed his officers to encourage talk of their existence among the rank and file. He enjoyed ruling his subjects through fear.
Russel said nothing to the soldiers as he passed them. Motionless zonbies littered the road. He didn’t look forward to Malvado’s reaction. At the second checkpoint, he counted four dead zonbies and an equal number of living soldiers and police. He conferred with another soldier, then proceeded.
Several work lights illuminated the compound. Police officers scrounged around in the grass for evidence, and soldiers guarded the perimeter.
Russel found Buteau and Solaine standing near the smoldering ruins of the Black Magic lab. Unlike Maxime and Najac, the army general and police colonel worked well as a unit. Neither man seemed to desire greater responsibility than the other, and they appreciated having someone with whom to share the blame when things went awry. They stopped speaking as Russel approached, something to which he had still not become accustomed. The military and police operated in the open, following established guidelines, while Russel had been given carte blanche to operate in the shadows.
“Gentlemen, I see we have a real cluster fuck on our hands.”
“As long as all three of us take responsibility, he can’t blame only one of us,” Solaine said.
Just like a cop, Russel thought. Glancing at the fields, he saw the zonbies and their overseers had returned to work.
“The overseers directed a band of workers to hose down the building,” Buteau said.
“How much damage was done?”
“At least six kilos of Black Magic,” Solaine said. “We don’t know how much heroin and cocaine was in there. A total loss, which is why the overseers went right back to work.”
I can’t blame them, Russel thought. “What’s the body count?”
“Seventy zonbies and counting,” Solaine said.
“And one Houngan,” Buteau said. “As far as we can tell, his bodyguard didn’t make it out of the building alive, either.”
“Do we have any security video?”
“Just at the checkpoints,” Solaine said. “A black truck with three men and one woman. They wore masks.”
A woman, of course. “License plates?”
“Fakes.”
“How many junkies are in building one?”
“Maybe twenty-five,” Buteau said.
“Administer overdoses as soon as a new Houngan shows up. At least we can cut down the losses to the workforce.”
“The American isn’t among them,” Solaine said.
“Of course he isn’t. He’s who they came for. Destroying the drugs was just a bonus.”
The officers exchanged looks.
“We don’t have to wait for a Houngan,” Buteau said, nodding in the direction Russel had come from.
Turning, Russel saw three figures approaching in the distance: a tall man and a young woman trailing an old woman. Issagha, Sivelia, and Mambou Catoute. “Looks like the gang’s all here.”
The sun shone bright on the lush green vegetation. Jake walked through a jungle with Sheryl, who held Cain’s hand. Cain appeared human, with flesh pulled over his muscular physique and long brown hair extending from his scalp. Jake knew him as a fiery demon with translucent skin and glowing organs. The three of them were naked, and Sheryl caressed Cain’s bicep as they walked.
This isn’t right, Jake thought. Sheryl belongs with Abel. I guess she changed her mind again.
They both spoke to him, but his dream lacked audio. Another couple joined them: Abel and Laurel Doniger, also naked. Abel shook Jake’s hand and clasped Cain’s shoulder. It was nice to see them getting along. Abel didn’t seem jealous to see Sheryl with his brother, and Sheryl didn’t seem jealous to see Abel with Laurel.
Heaven is a very nice place.
Or was this hell?
Laurel isn’t dead.
Or was she?
All five of them swam in a lake at the bottom of a waterfall. The two couples frolicked and splashed water at each other, leaving Jake alone. He wondered what had happened to Maria.
A bird cawed, and Edgar alighted on a rock in the water.
I guess it’s just you and me, sport.
Edgar spoke and Jake heard his words clearly: “You’ve lost your hands.”
You’re wrong. I lost only one of them. To prove his point, Jake raised his arms from the lake. Edgar was right: both of them ended in stumps.
“And your eyes …”
Panicking, Jake reached for his eyes with the stumps, which pressed against his empty sockets.
“You’re in no condition to help me.”
The world went black, like a television that had just been switched off, and Jake screamed.
Jake opened his eye. At least he still had one. His head throbbed, his face and chest felt tight, and his nasal passages felt dried out and drawn in. The feeling reminded him of a cocaine hangover.
Black Magic …
Bill Russel and a vodou witch doctor had forced him to breathe in the smoke from that candle, and he recalled dozens of scarecrows on the floor around him while he snorted the vile black powder. He wondered if he had kept any of the plastic bags.
A pillow supported his head, and he was lying on his back. The ceiling came into focus.
Stalactites?
Flickering orange light highlighted the giant mineral daggers poised above him. Turning his head to the left, he saw cabinets, a table, and chairs positioned along a natural rock wall that supported several torches. Turning his head farther, he saw Maria sleeping on her side on a thick rug laid over a wooden floor. But where the hell were they? He tried to sit up, but the tightness in his chest increased, and he fell back onto the foldout cot with a groan.
“Jake?” In an instant, Maria stood at his side, her sleepy eyes filled with concern. It had been a long time since anyone had really given a damn about him.
“You’re a sight for a sore eye,” he said. His throat felt raw. Reaching up to brush her curly brown hair out of her face, he saw the stump where his left wrist and hand had once been, and the image of Russel burying the machete in his arm flashed through his brain. His head sagged into the pillow, and he felt the strength leaving his arm, which dropped onto the mattress.
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