inherit the earth

by Hunter

  Lupe fell to the ground, desperately trying to shake off the blow. She was dead if Carpenter finished her off while she lay there. The room spun crazily despite her efforts to regain control. She felt for sure she was done for, but luck was with her. Still groggy, she saw the hazy image of Carpenter’s rotting feet pound through the doorway and down the hall. She realized his lunge hadn’t been to grab her, but to escape. The injuries she’d inflicted must have been enough to knock the fight out of him.

  The room started settling down. Seemed like she’d only gotten the wind knocked out of her, nothing more. Good; she had to get after him, finish him off before he could go to ground. She moved to hoist herself to her feet, then two strong hands grabbed her under each arm and lifted. Steadying herself against the wall, Lupe turned to face the man from the other side of the casket. He was tall and thin, dressed impeccably in a dark suit. The tie seemed strangely jovial for someone at a funeral. Then her gaze continued up to his eyes.

  In the instant before the man looked away, Lupe saw darkness, secrets, and pain. The blow must have rattled her brain a little; after blinking hard a couple times Lupe looked at the stranger again. He stepped back, his hands clasped before him and head tilted down slightly in an attitude of respect and commiseration. He looked the very picture of a somber funeral director.

  Whatever. She had to get going. First, best to make sure everything was all right here, though. “Youokay, mister…? ”

  “Pellucci, ” the man replied. One hand came up as if to shake her hand, then trembled slightly and moved to rub at his forehead. He was holding up surprisingly well, considering, but obviously still shaken by what had happened. “Arthur Pellucci… I’m the, ah, funeral director here. Yes, thank you, I’m fine. What, ah… ”

  Lupe nodded. “I bet you’re really confused. Sorry, sir, but I just can’t tell you what’s going on right now. You know if anyone in the building was injured? ”

  He turned, offering her his striking profile as he contemplated the door at the other end of the room. Faint cries of confusion and shouts carried through the wood. “No, everyone’s fine. Though I suppose they’re all upset about the sound of gunshots. ” “Wouldn’t be surprised. ” There was something about this guy Lupe couldn’t quite figure. Spare and dark, he was almost the stereotype of a funeral director. But there was a vibe to him, something more she couldn’t… hell, now wasn’t the time. The adrenaline rush was wearing off, leaving her feeling sluggish. She had to get on Carpenter’s trail. If only she’d had a chance to mark him! “Look, Mr. Pellucci, I gotta run. I—” “Please; I need you to do something for me first, ” Pellucci said. “It’s very important. ”

  Lupe was already moving to the doorway and glanced over her shoulder. “What’s that, Mr. Pellucci? ” she asked in irritation.

  The man’s eyes captured her. Lupe could’ve sworn she saw one eye flare green as he said, “Forget me. ”

  • • • •

  Carpenter would’ve found the whole thing hilarious if it wasn’t so bizarre. A hunter bursts in and mistakes a rotting zombie for him! The woman obviously knew who Maxwell Carpenter was, but not well enough to know what he looked like. The piece of shit monster might serve as a distraction for the moment, but Carpenter knew these hunters were too good to buy the error for long. It’d be best if he’d take himself out of the equation entirely.

  During the distraction of the ensuing scuffle, Carpenter readied his play. A sudden shove at the woman’s mind at just the right moment of distraction and she was on her way.

  • • • •

  Lupe burst out the back door, looking around frantically. If she was quick, she could catch up to C— to… what the hell? Lupe took a few tentative steps toward her taxi. She had a name on the tip of her tongue, something… she was looking for someone. But who? She turned and saw the gaping doorway, a pair of hunter symbols scrawled on the interior wall. Suddenly, details returned. There was a rot out there, had been by here. Not inside; she felt sure of that. Well, not sure, exactly; the funeral home was a dead end, though. No pun intended. Why would she—

  Okay, this wasn’t good. She felt winded, and her memory had obviously blanked on a few minutes. She wasn’t sure if this was the result of physical stress or some whammy thrown on her by… well, whatever she’d been hunting. Whatever the case, if she tried hunting while all distracted like this, she’d end up dead or worse. After some rest she could gather a few others and check out this area. They’d find the whatever-it-was sooner or later and send it back to the hell it crawled from.

  • • •

  Carpenter followed the woman, moving down the hall seconds before someone kicked in the other door (which he’d locked after taking Pellucci’s key when he first got there). He ignored the shouts of anger and confusion, his attention on the hunter who wandered, obviously a little confused, toward a taxicab parked in the lot. He’d just cleared the circle of illumination cast by the light over the back door when she spun around and looked at the back door. Moving quietly back into the darkness, Carpenter considered the next step.

  He was surprised at himself for not taking the hunter down when he had the chance. That decayed fucker hadn’t hurt her much before it ran, it seemed, but she’d been defenseless for plenty long enough for Carpenter to have finished her off. So why hadn’t he?

  Annabelle. It offended him that violence had occurred while he was saying his farewells to the woman he once loved. And, much as he hated to admit it to himself, he still did. Hated her too, but the two emotions weren’t much different. They had a powerful hold on him, even now, after six decades and counting.

  Standing in the dark behind the funeral home, watching the taxi’s taillights recede, Carpenter knew he couldn’t leave, not yet.

  He hadn’t given Annabelle Sforza a proper goodbye.

  • • •

  Lupe pulled out of the funeral home lot, something nagging at the back of her mind. Like trying to remember song lyrics or the capital of Delaware, it hugged the shadows of her memory. She knew it was there, just couldn’t see it clearly enough to bring it out. The best thing was to not think about it; focus on something else, let it come on its own—

  Carpenter

  She slammed on the brakes, jerking against the seat belt as the momentum carried her forward. Luckily there was no one behind her.

  She’d come around looking for Carpenter. The rot. The zombie. The dead guy. Her mind’s eye recalled a tall, slim figure, as if glimpsed from a distance. Must’ve seen him on the cemetery grounds or something. Enough to notice his build but nothing else. Full realization seemed so close. If she could only confirm… Inspiration struck. She had something in the glove box that should answer her questions.

  She clicked on the interior light rooted through piles of notes, receipts, and assorted crap. After a minute of searching, she found a wrinkled photocopy of the Chicago Tribune from 1934. She’d come across it during her research, kept it with her on patrols, just in case she got lucky. It showed a grainy photograph of a burly, almost brutish man — almost a stereotypical mob thug, a gorilla in a suit — being led out of a building by a pair of Chicago’s finest. It had a caption at the bottom: “Dennis Maxwell, questioned in the disappearance of Walter D’Amato” — as in Dennis “The Carpenter” Maxwell, aka Maxwell Carpenter.

  The image wasn’t the sharpest quality, but that stocky build was pretty distinctive. The rot she was after looked completely different. Slumping back with relief, she put the cab back in gear. • • • •

  Carpenter waited a good half hour in the dark until the mourners settled down from the mystery of the gunshots. What with the Sforzas’ mob ties, no one bothered calling the authorities to investigate. When he felt the time was right, he came around to the front. A couple of goons were checking people, but a mild push of will was all it took for one of them to declare Carpenter was okay by him.

  The funeral home was packed this time around, which made it easier for him to hide from Pellucci should he
pop up. Carpenter saw they’d wheeled out Annabelle’s coffin and the half lid was open for viewing. He joined the line of mourners paying their respects, noting that the other half of the casket lid gleamed warmly in the lights. Guess they’d wiped up the gore from the top before they brought it out. It was only a passing thought; his mind had locked back onto Annabelle.

  He’d had time alone with her, but now was the time to say goodbye. It was a big deal; he wanted to do something suitable for the occasion. Despite having plenty of time waiting outside and now in the mourning line to think about what to say or do, Carpenter was at a loss when he stood before the coffin again. It was different from looking at her in the back room; that was more personal, more intimate. This was more somber. He saw that it was finally over. She truly was dead, passed beyond to a fate that he had yet to face himself.

  Carpenter remembered the hammer stuck through his belt. On impulse, he slipped it out and leaned over the casket as if in prayer. He slid the hammer under Annabelle Sforza’s black gown so that it rested between her large old woman’s breasts, a parody of the silver crucifix that hung around her neck. Smoothing the fabric back in place, he couldn’t even tell it was there. He straightened and made the sign of the cross — except for him, it was the sign of the hammer.

  He fought back a smile as he turned from the coffin and made his way outside. He’d considered placing the hammer in a safe deposit box. But it seemed suitable that it should be buried with Annabelle. Each had influenced his life in profound ways, after all.

  It was fitting that they spend eternity together.

  The second-story windows along the front of the old building blew out at the same time, showering the sidewalk below with jagged shards that flashed red and orange as they fell. A scream went up from the crowd of onlookers across the street; one of the girls who’d gotten out the front door in time staggered to her feet and tried to run back to the blazing building, sobbing hysterically. A young man raced after her and wrestled her to the ground, shouting for help to drag her back to the curb. Over the roar of the blaze came the distant wail of sirens, but the fire engines wouldn’t arrive in time. The frantic cries of those trapped inside had died out long ago.

  Joshua watched from the mouth of an alley half a block away, wiping smoke stains from his dark-skinned face with an old, faded handkerchief. He studied the writhing columns of fire boiling from the upper-story windows and allowed himself to relax. Tension ebbed, letting in a tide of weariness and pain. His right shoulder and knee throbbed in dull counterpoint to the sharp, searing pain of the bums on his face and wrist. The hunter pulled off his gloves and probed gingerly at his cheek. The bums weren’t bad, no more than second-degree at most; had any of the napalm actually hit him, things would have been much, much worse. Some ointment and sterile bandages and he would be good as new in a couple of days.

  He checked his watch. It was only a quarter-past two. An early night for him, all things considered. Things had gone better than he’d hoped, but now he found himself with time on his hands. Joshua toyed with the idea of simply going back to the apartment and getting some rest, but he knew that he’d just toss and turn until the sun came up.

  After a moment, he reached a decision. Joshua pulled a cell phone from his pocket and dialed one of a half-dozen numbers he’d committed to memory. It picked up on the first ring. The voice on the line was that of a young man, perhaps in his early twenties. He sounded wideawake, despite the hour.

  “Hello? ”

  “This is God45, ” Joshua said quietly. “What do you have for me? ”

  “How did you get this number? ”

  “That’s not really important right now, John, ” the hunter replied. “I was on a job that wrapped up quicker than I’d planned, and I’m looking for more work. Do you have any leads for me? ”

  “No. Not any more, ” John said harshly. “Goddamn it, I told you to leave me alone! ” Down the street the hysterical girl was struggling to break free, her outstretched arms silhouetted by the firelight as she fought to reach the burning building. “This isn’t about what you or I want, John, ” he said evenly. “It’s about doing the work we were chosen to do. You told me that yourself once upon a time. ”

  “That’s not what this is about! ” John cried. For a moment, the line was silent. Then: “There’s something on the scanner about a nightclub fire downtown. Whoever called it in said the place’s fire exits had been jammed shut. You didn’t have anything to do with that, did you? ”

  There was a grinding crash as the club’s ceiling collapsed. Joshua could just hear the girl’s despairing wail over the noise. “I’ve been hunting bloodsuckers, John. That’s it. ”

  “That doesn’t answer my question. ”

  “It does as far as I’m concerned, ” the hunter replied.

  Silence stretched between them. John sighed. “You don’t understand what you’re asking. I can’t be a party to the things you’re doing. I can’t. “

  Joshua gritted his teeth. “John, I’m not asking you to be my assistant. I’m just looking for information. If you’re concerned about the way I handle a problem, then give me a lead on something that your conscience can handle. It’s that simple. ”

  “If only that were the truth, ” John said bitterly. “All right, goddamn it. Take this down. ” He read off an address. “It’s a warehouse. Look for the Sign. ”

  Joshua committed the information to memory. “What then? ”

  “I’ll tell you more when you get there, ” John said, and the line went dead.

  The sirens were much closer now. Joshua hesitated, his thumb hovering over the redial button. He wasn’t in the habit of being strung along.

  Then the first police cars came howling around the corner. Joshua watched them pull up to the crowd of onlookers and knew it was time to go. He slipped from the alley and kept close to the shadows, making his way back to his car.

  If there were complications when he got to the warehouse, he’d find a way to deal with it. He always did.

  • • • •

  The address was near the docks, in an older part of the warehouse district that the city had long since washed its hands of. Joshua nosed the beat-up old Pontiac down the trash-strewn lanes, carefully eyeing every broken-out window and open doorway. Nothing moved in the early-morning darkness; even junkies and thieves had to sleep sometime, he mused.

  He found the building quickly enough. The symbol for “monster” was painted in bright crimson on one of the rusting metal doors. To a normal person, the Signs were just more meaningless graffiti scrawled on city walls, while monsters couldn’t seem to see them at all, much less read them. The symbols were an invaluable tool for hunters, who could leave inconspicuous warnings or even identify themselves to one another. Many of the chosen wore the symbol for “hunter” tattooed somewhere on their body, proclaiming their mission to a blind and uncaring world.

  There was a Ford Explorer pulled up outside the warehouse, and a man in a dark blue jacket stood by the passenger door, smoking a cigarette. He gave Joshua a hard look as the Pontiac cruised by, and the hunter noticed at once that the Ford’s passenger window was rolled down, giving the smoker easy access to anything resting across the front seat. Like a shotgun, or worse.

  There was something wrong with the man, Joshua saw at once. His face was like a death mask, pale and withered as if a fever had rendered away the soft flesh and left nothing but bone and sinew behind. The eyes were sunken and fever-bright, like polished marbles. He might have been a bloodsucker or one of their slaves, but the thought seemed wrong, somehow. He might have been a rot. Ultimately the details were unimportant — he was one of them, and that was all that mattered.

  Joshua drove on past the warehouse and continued on to the end of the lane before turning and circuitously doubling back. He parked the Pontiac several blocks away in a narrow alley, then got out and opened the trunk. He pulled out a canvas shoulder bag and then reached into the spare tire well and retrieved a semiautoma
tic pistol sealed in a plastic bag. The hunter pulled on a pair of gloves, took out the pistol, and slid it into his back waistband. He closed the trunk lid carefully, then stepped around the car and pulled an army-surplus jacket from the passenger seat. Joshua pulled the jacket on and slung the bag, and found the pain and fatigue receding as he focused on the job at hand. Just like old times, he thought to himself, back when the world made sense.

  It took him almost twenty minutes to make his way back to the building. He approached the old warehouse from the opposite side and paused at the comer of a burn-out building across the street. He scanned the shadows of the surrounding buildings carefully, taking his time, but there were no telltale signs of ambush. Then he turned his attention to the warehouse itself. The building was at least a hundred years old, made of solid red brick and granite, with a row of windows running along the walls near the roof. Joshua noticed that someone had gone to the trouble to cover the windows with some kind of heavy felt, although thin shafts of light seeped through in places where chinks showed in the window frame. They had been careful, but not completely so; a tall stack of crates were set against the wall, reaching up to the level of the windows. Joshua smiled grimly and jogged quickly and quietly across the street.

  On close inspection he realized why no one had tried to move them — they were decades old, and so rotted that they looked ready to fall apart in a stiff wind. Joshua tested one crate carefully, then another. Rotten wood flaked away in his hands, but the core still seemed solid. Moving slowly, his burnt arm aching with every move, the hunter levered himself onto the first crate and started to climb.

  As he’d hoped, the window itself had been broken out years ago. All he had to do was reach inside and gently move the felt back to make a tiny opening. After all his careful labor, Joshua was disappointed with what he saw: dust and trash stood ankle deep across the warehouse floor. At the far end of the building there were lights on in the foreman’s office, but the glass-walled room was empty even of furniture. The only individual in sight was a man who stood on the rusting stair that climbed the wall to the office, cradling a shotgun in his arms and smoking a cigarette. Like the man standing watch outside, he too, had pale, shrunken features and cruel eyes.