Macumba Killer

by Lou Cameron

  “Ah, but you obviously keep up with the times, no?”

  “I try to. But I sure hope the coming twentieth century will move a little slower. I’ve just about got steam engines straight in my head, and some crazy German just invented something he calls an internal combustion engine.”

  “What on earth does it do, my Captain?”

  “Beats the shit out of me. What’s that funny smell?”

  Gordo sniffed and called ahead to the machete man, “Jose, watch out for las breas” Then Gordo told Captain Gringo, “There are tar pits here and there on the island, my Captain.”

  “You mean like that asphalt lake on Trinidad?”

  “Si, but not as big and useful. The tar pits of Trinidad furnish asphalt for to ship for money. We, alas, are not so fortunate. There are only scattered pools of the treacherous stuff. Sometimes livestock becomes mired and even lost. I stepped in one near the town once. It cost me a sandal and I couldn’t get the tar off for a week.”

  Jose hacked through some brush and stopped to say, “Mirar! That is what has been making such a stink, my Captain.”

  Captain Gringo joined Jose and followed the direction of his pointing machete with his own eyes. A puddle of ink black, evil-smelling liquid nestled in a bigger patch of red mud. As he watched, a big black bubble farted more rotten egg and road tar fumes. The tar pool was small enough to jump across, but it made more sense to walk around it. So they did.

  As they left it behind, Captain Gringo asked Gordo, “Does the company know about these natural asphalt pools, Gordo?”

  “Of course, my Captain. When Colonel Gage first learned of them he became excited about the possibilities of shipping tar as well as sugar. But, as I said, we are not as supplied with the muck as Trinidad. There is only enough to smell bad here and there. The British sent some geologists to look at the tar pits. They said there wasn’t enough to be worth developing. The islanders sometimes use some for to patch a boat or fix a leak.”

  Captain Gringo nodded and put the idea aside for now. If there was enough natural asphalt to waterproof the earthworks he planned around each machine gun nest he’d use it. If there wasn’t, he wouldn’t. Once this red gumbo really dried it stayed pretty solid, even in the rain. That was another future problem for Pantropic Limited that he sure was glad he didn’t have to worry about. This red-clay soil turned to solid brick and stayed that way if you farmed it wrong. But he’d been hired as an ordinance consultant, not an agricultural expert.

  The jungle was getting darker and thicker now. Jose was working up a real sweat with his machete when Captain Gringo stopped him and said, “Hold it. I hear something.”

  The little survey party stopped and listened as the shadows on all sides throbbed softly to a primitive pulsation. Gordo said, “I hear them. They are Voodoo drums, my Captain.”

  The American tested the wind with a wet finger, saw there wasn’t any, and said, “Yeah. I make ’em miles from here to the south. Let’s move it out, Jose.”

  Gordo asked, “Don’t you mean back, my Captain?”

  “If I’d meant back I’d have said back. Burton and the others will be waiting for us up ahead. Those tom toms only mean somebody’s down that way making noise. We already knew the Black Caribs were all over the south end of the island, and I guess they can make noise if they want to. They have no way of knowing what we’re doing here.”

  Jose pressed on, but Gordo said, “We can’t be sure of that, my Captain. What if they have posted scouts? What if they are watching for us?”

  “That’s why we brought these pump guns. You point ’em, pull the trigger, and bang-bang, the number nine buck goes out the other end.”

  He saw the others were as uneasy as Gordo and added, “Look, guys, you’re not supposed to wear those soldier suits if you’re afraid of meeting strangers. Mamma Macumba’s kiddies can’t be watching the whole fucking jungle. So the odds of running into anyone who could take us is pretty slim. If any of you do spot an Indian scouting us, for God’s sake, don’t fire before I say to.”

  Gordo asked, “What if he spots us and is running away to tell the others, my Captain?”

  “You let him go. A man only moves through this tanglewood at a slow trot. The sound of gunshots travel seven hundred miles an hour.”

  Gordo said, “Ah-ha! I see, my Captain. Before a scout could reach anyone we would have many minutes to be somewhere else in the meantime. But roving parties would head directly for the sound of gunshots without waiting for an invitation.”

  Gordo was learning. It was pretty basic I & R tactics, but at least he didn’t have to be led by the hand. Captain Gringo wondered why none of the guards had been given any training in jungle warfare at all. All they knew how to do was salute, for God’s sake. Burton admitted he wasn’t a pro, but the colonel kept bullshitting about the Northwest Frontier and the Indian Army. Didn’t he know you don’t make soldiers on the parade ground? If these guys were a sample of British military thinking, the British Empire was in trouble.

  The Romans had screwed up the same way, he remembered from his history lessons. Civilized troops tended to walk over less advanced people on first contact. But then everyone rested on their laurels and as the first Romans, or Redcoats, got old and dropped out, they were replaced by men like the colonel. Men who talked of a good fight.

  Meanwhile the Gauls, Hindus, or whatever, raised their kids on bitterness and stories of the mistakes they’d made the first round. In the end the dismissed natives came back for another try, armed with better weapons and a lot of tactical homework. And then some guy like Webster or the colonel wound up with a spear up his ass, wondering what had gotten into the ruddy wogs.

  He’d met officers like the colonel in his own army. The last fighting Apache had started reloading their own shells and digging trenches, when he left. But some jerk-offs at the Officer’s Club still talked about Indians as if they were retarded children and worried more about brass buttons and dismounted drill.

  He told Jose to blaze a tree from time to time as they moved on. The going was rough, but not impossible for the big spiked wheels of the steam tractors.

  He was behind Jose, thinking about how to fasten the ends of the anchor chain to the hitch hooks of the tractors, when Jose made a funny little sound and dropped his machete.

  Captain Gringo glanced up, saw Jose was going down in two pieces, and swung his Browning up to fire into the blank face of the naked black man coming at him!

  The shotgun blast blew the attacker’s face off and-he fell slowly back across Jose’s mangled body, with his legs still churning like an off-balance wind-up toy. Captain Gringo didn’t wait to see if he landed that way. Another nude figure was charging from his right! He swung the Browning’s muzzle and fired while Gordo yelled, “My God, the zombies!”

  Captain Gringo saw the second one was still on his feet and still coming, with his midsection blown to hash, so he fired again. The zombie dropped his machete, turned around, and walked away, blood, or something as red, running from his shot-out eyes. As long as he was going somewhere else, Captain Gringo concentrated on two more zombies boring in out of nowhere, staring blankly at him while they came with upraised weapons. One had a machete. The other had a tree branch spiked with nails. He fired at the machete wielder first, swung the gun as he pumped, and blasted the one with the club. They both looked like they had been hit in the chest with raspberry pies, and neither one went down!

  He pumped his weapon again and it clicked just like any other empty gun. There’d only been five rounds in the tube and he’d used them all!

  He wondered why nobody else had fired, as he backed away from the oddly walking but determined-looking men he’d shot. He glanced around and saw he was alone. His men had simply cut and run.

  It didn’t seem like such a bad idea. There were others coming, all walking quietly, blank-faced, in no hurry, but obviously unstoppable with an empty gun!’

  So Captain Gringo headed north through the trees on the double,
fumbling with his free hand for extra shotgun shells. He called out to Gordo. Gordo didn’t answer, but a funny bird call did, and he cut to the side when he realized there were others ahead of him in the jungle.

  He was over his first shock and thinking on his feet again. He didn’t believe what he’d just seen, but he’d worry about it later. If the things chasing him weren’t zombies, they sure acted like zombies. The only thing he seemed to have going for him was their odd, slow pace. They didn’t run. They didn’t dodge. So he decided to do as much running and dodging as he was capable of to put more distance between them.

  A fallen forest giant lay across his chosen path to elsewhere. He vaulted lightly over it, landed, and sighed, “Aw shit!” He was stuck to his knees in warm black tar. He’d landed in another asphalt pit!

  He felt himself sinking when he moved his feet to withdraw from the natural trap. He leaned back against the log he’d jumped to keep from sinking deeper and reloaded his Browning.

  He pumped a round in the chamber and looked up. They were in a circle all around him now. He estimated there were about thirty of them. He had five 12 gauge and five .38 rounds to stop them and they took a hell of a lot of stopping. They closed in slowly. Not one of them looked like he had sense enough to tie his own shoes, if he’d worn shoes, but they probably weren’t expecting him to be leaving in a hurry.

  He cursed and tugged at the tar around his calves as he watched them coming. That odd detached part of the mind that notices details when the rest of us is going crazy wondered why they didn’t look like his preconception of Black Caribs. They didn’t look like jungle natives of any race. They were both Black and mestizo and seemed to be peones or common farm workers. Dead common farm workers. There was no trace of emotion in their slack-jawed faces as he raised the shotgun and shouted, “All right, that’s far enough!”

  They kept coming. Slowly, like people strolling through a market plaza and not sure what they’d come to buy. He raised his weapon and aimed at the nearest one’s face to fire into the eyes. The gun kicked, the zombie’s face dissolved in crimson horror, but he didn’t fall. He just stood there, swaying, as if confused by the lights going out.

  Captain Gringo muttered, “Jesus,” and shot another one. He, or it, sank to his or its knees and stayed that way, staring, or rather, trying to, with part of the skull gleaming like wet ivory through red ribbons of shredded face and oozing gore.

  It was like shooting ducks in a gallery and Captain Gringo had one boot almost free when he fired for a third time. His charge failed to stop that one and he had to fire again to put the zombie on the ground.

  He had one shotgun round left, so he had to make it count before he switched to his pistol. He chose his target and aimed. But then something smashed into the back of Captain Gringo’s skull and when he fired, he fired into pinwheeling stars. The blow drove his half-free foot deeper into the tar and it seemed as if the tar was spreading and spreading and, when he dropped the shotgun, he followed it down and down into a spreading sea of tar black darkness.

  Chapter Nine

  It was hard to sleep with all that noise going on. Captain Gringo tried to turn over in bed and block it out. But he couldn’t turn and he realized he wasn’t in bed or even laying down. So he opened his eyes.

  That seemed like a terrible mistake, but as his aching head cleared he kept his eyes open anyway. He was tied upright to a post in a firelit clearing. The sky above was pitch black, so he knew he’d been out for hours. The noise was coming from a nearby drum and the naked people squatting in a circle around him looked more like his idea of Black Caribs. They had nothing on but strings of seashells and mahogany skin oiled with butter or something. Their features were more Indian than Negroid but one guy had kinky hair, with what looked like a human femur through his top knot. Whoever was whamming the drum was behind Captain Gringo, out of his line of vision. He was facing what seemed to be the mouth of a cave in a low cliff of coral rock. The natives seemed to be’ expecting something to come out of the cave. They apparently hadn’t invited the zombies to the show, whatever it was to be. Captain Gringo glanced down. He still had on his pants and tarred boots. They hadn’t piled brush around the post, so they weren’t going to burn him at the stake at least. They’d ripped off his jacket, shirt, and shoulder rig. A damned mosquito was taking advantage of his bare chest and he saw other bites. They itched like hell, but he was in no position to scratch. His hands were bound tightly to his sides. He bent his knees to see if the stake had any give. It didn’t. He was stuck here until somebody cut him loose. None of his captors looked like they planned to.

  Somebody must have signaled that he was conscious. The drum beat changed and the natives stared expectantly into the dark opening in the pale gray rock. Captain Gringo did, too. There was a teasing delay, then a figure moved out into the ruddy firelight and the natives gasped in awe. Captain Gringo gasped, too. He hadn’t expected a naked lady wrapped in the biggest fucking snake in the world.

  She was a tall, shapely, jet black Negress with her head and everything else smooth shaven. Her ebony body had been oiled to gleam like patent leather and it contrasted starkly with the big boa constrictor coiled around her. She had the snake gripped just below its head, and it was hissing at her and darting its tongue as she blew in its face teasingly. He noticed she missed a beat while she half-pranced in place to the beat of the drum. She dug her nails into the snake with her free hand and adjusted the snake’s coil lower, over a hip bone. The monster was trying to squeeze the breath out of its tormenting mistress, but she knew how to handle it. It couldn’t crush her ribs if she didn’t let it get purchase. The boa’s tail thrashed in the dust around her dancing feet as it tried to find something to wrap around for leverage. The dance was more than show business. She was avoiding a coil around an ankle.

  A male voice from someone he couldn’t see started chanting in a language he couldn’t understand. The tall black priestess swayed closer and their eyes met when she held the boa’s ugly head up to him as if for his approval. He said, “It’s swell. Now why don’t you put the fucking thing away?”

  The chanting and drumming got wilder. So did the colored lady with the snake. She spread her feet and writhed sensually as she ran the snake’s head over her oiled naked flesh. One of the squatting Caribs was masturbating unselfconsciously while he watched her, sweat beading his brow. Captain Gringo didn’t find her act as sexy. It was too perverse. The priestess teased her own nipples with the boa’s darting tongue. The crowd seemed to be eating it up.

  The woman was actually fighting with the creature now, and she was obviously as strong as most men. The tormented snake was mad as hell and trying to crush her, but she moved too cleverly and her skin was too greasy for the boa to really get a grip on her. She slid the head down her belly, thrust her pelvis forward, and slid the boa’s head between her greased thighs as the crowd gasped. It was too quick to be sure whether she’d really shoved it in her or not, but as she repeated the motion it looked like she was screwing herself with a fourteen foot boa constrictor, and enjoying it!

  The snake didn’t like it at all. It was hissing and snapping its jaws, and since Captain Gringo knew the thing had some teeth, even if it wasn’t venomous, her act had to be a fake. That big boa really wanted to eat pussy, and the rest of her too!

  The male chanter he couldn’t see suggested something new, and the big black priestess moved closer to him. The drum beats stopped and she sank to her knees in front of Captain Gringo, the boa coiled around her hips, and she held the head out in an attitude of prayer. Then he grasped what the next act was and said, “Hey, I liked it better the other way. Now you’re really getting dirty!”

  The boa sensed freedom as it slid forward through her oiled palms. It darted its tongue out to touch Captain Gringo’s knee. Then it slid around and around, and as it unwound from the black girl’s hips, it started climbing him and his post like a stripe going up a barber pole!

  He struggled to free at least a
hand, for God’s sake. He could see a strong adult could wrestle a boa, with hands free to shift the coils. But he was helpless. The snake and everyone else knew that. The naked woman rose to her feet to step back, hands on hips, to watch. She was a beautiful animal, but Captain Gringo couldn’t remember anyone he’d ever hated as much as he did her right now.

  The boa slithered up him and he tried not to flinch as its oddly cool beaded skin caressed his naked torso and bound arms. Maybe if he held very still the fucker would mistake him for a tree?

  It didn’t. They’d starved as well as teased this standin for Mambo Jumbo and he knew now how it was supposed to go. The symbolism was all too obvious. First Mamma Macumba shows everyone the snake god is her lover and then she feeds somebody to him! The coils were tightening and it was hard to breathe as Mambo Jumbo rose ever higher for a better look at his meal to be. Captain Gringo tried to gain a little breathing space by moving his elbows out against the constricting coils. The boa tightened its grip painfully, but he could just barely inhale until his arms gave, and that didn’t figure to be long. The night was young and nobody was in a hurry. The naked slut watching from a safe distance probably enjoyed a long last act. He wondered how often they’d done this to others. How often did you have to feed a snake, and where the hell was Mambo Jumbo going to put him? The boa was as big around as a man’s thigh, but could it open its mouth that wide?

  “Apparently the snake wondered too. It raised its ugly head to his and started exploring his face with its darting tongue. The desperate and enraged American knew he was done for, but, damn it, if they wanted him dead they’d have to do it right. He wasn’t about to be swallowed whole by a fucking animated sausage!

  He pulled his head back against the pole behind him. The snake moved in to close the gap. Captain Gringo’s head shot forward, teeth red in the firelight, and snapped like a trapped wolf. It even surprised him when he bit down hard on the snake’s head, and found himself chewing!