A few seconds passed, and no one said anything. Bobby Belasco looked up and then turned around. “Hey, Mort?” he asked. “There’s someone at the door.” Sure enough, I could hear a dull knocking on the double doors. I didn’t turn my face away from Verona. “You want to go see who it is?” Belasco wondered.
“Not particularly,” I replied.
“They seem real insistent…” Belasco said.
He was right. They were so insistent that they smashed the door open and stepped inside. I turned and saw it was one of the waitresses, the one I had been staring at earlier. Now, she didn’t look nearly as good. Her eyes were open, unblinking and the color of rotten milk. Her blonde hair was in a tangle over her shoulder, and she had a slick red wound on her shoulder. She stepped forward slowly, her mouth open and tongue lolling over her teeth.
“Project Lugosi,” I whispered.
“The application of zombies into war zones – the ultimate destruction of a hostile population.” Belasco grinned at the waitress. “Of course, our helicopter transporting the first test subjects happened to have a little engine failure right over the Paradise City express way. The experiments got out. This is the result.”
“Well, they’re still manageable,” I muttered. “Couple of lurching corpses. Pretty much a shooting gallery at a carnival.”
Unfortunately, the zombie had other idea. The waitress came towards me, not in a slow, limping lurch, but in a ferocious charge. I turned around; ready to bring my pistols up and shoot her down, but the corpse was too fast. Her slim form carried surprising strength and she knocked me down, against the table and to the floor. I grabbed her neck and tried to hold her back, feeling her cold skin against my fingers as her open mouth dropped lower and lower.
“Afraid not, buddy-boy,” Belasco explained, not making a move to save me. “You see, Project Lugosi made a few changes to the zombie powder – adding copious amounts of amphetamines. Makes them a little stronger – and a lot faster.”
I couldn’t hold her back for long. My pistols were on the ground. I reached for one, feeling my fingers wrap around the butt. I couldn’t get it in time. I looked up into those milky white eyes and that face that had been pretty, before death set in. Then it exploded, sending brains and skull fragments spinning through the air.
What was left of her head slumped on my chest. I pulled her off of me and wiped the blood from my eyes. It was Joey Verona who held the smoking gun. He walked over to me and offered his hand. I took it. “Did you miss?” I asked. “Aim a little high?”
Verona shrugged. “Nah, Morty I don’t hate you that much.” He turned to the door. “And I think I’m gonna need someone between me and these dead mooks. That’s means you get a free pass, Baum. For now.”
Weatherby hastened to my side as I grabbed my fallen pistols. I felt their weight in my hands, like a boxer getting comfortable in his gloves before the fight. Verona reloaded his own automatics, and Belasco removed his silencer.
“Mort, you cannot conceive of allying with these villains!” Weatherby cried. “They have threatened the life of Henry Wallace! Directly in the case of Verona, and Belasco with his foul Black Ops machinations!” He was angry, the kind of white hot rage you feel after a fellow in your platoon goes down from a sniper’s slug and you can’t do anything about it.
I was about to respond, but Henry Wallace stepped forward. He bowed his head. “Weatherby?” he asked, his voice soft. “I think things are going to get really bad, and we need all the friends that we can. Thanks, for being angry and stuff, but I think we need to work together.” He shivered. “I mean, just listen to what’s going on out there…”
So we listened, and in just a few seconds, we heard all the screams, gurgles, spurts, cries and sounds of tearing flesh that we needed to. Next door, on the casino floor, it seemed the zombie plague was spreading, victim by victim. Belasco wasn’t nearly as thorough as he thought he was.
“Okay,” I said, raising both pistols. “I’ll take point. Belasco, you get behind them, keep that pistol of yours ready. Verona, stay next to me. If you try anything, well, you’d better not miss.” I turned to Weatherby. “Stay with Henry Wallace and his papa, kiddo. If you got any anti-zombie dingus in that coat of yours, now’s the time to bring it out.”
“I understand,” Weatherby said. He looked down at Henry Wallace, and put his hand protectively on the boy’s shoulder. The kid had already set his birthday presents into his backpack with shaking hands and was getting ready to leave, “Do not worry, Henry Wallace. I will not allow you to come to harm.”
“Okay, Weatherby,” Henry Wallace agreed. “I’m not worried.”
I wished I shared the feeling.
After walking slowly down the empty hall, we reached the main casino floor. Sure enough, the zombies were here, and it seemed that the plague had spread fast enough to turn all of Paradise City into a walking graveyard. In the main casino hall and lobby, the zombies were running through the rows of slot machines, chasing down the living and tackling them, then digging in with teeth and fingers. The dead clearly held sway here, and the Oasis Casino had run out of luck.
I saw a fat tourist laid out on a roulette table, a pair of gaudily dressed showgirls dragging out his guts with their long fingernails. I saw a petite housewife pinned down by her former husband, pleading with him even as he tore her throat out with his teeth. I saw the waiters snacking on customers instead of serving them. After that, I had seen enough.
“Cover your eyes, s-sport!” Sly ordered, picking his son up and holding him close. “Cover your eyes and don’t you look! Don’t look at all!”
Weatherby glared at Belasco. “You, sir, are a monster. You’re worse than any mindless demon, Mr. Belasco! How could you unleash this terror on innocent people?”
The CIA operative shrugged and smiled like a guilty schoolboy. “Come on, kid — you see a human feeding frenzy, I see the possibilities and applications. Name me a government that hasn’t pulled stuff just as bad as this, all in the name of power. This one just went a little wrong.” He smiled as he started moving forward, his machete in one hand and his pistol in the other. “Now let’s test these babies out!”
I followed him, and we hurried between the main rows of slot machines, with the dead all around us. They clambered towards us, reaching out with grasping hands to drag us down. I started shooting, blazing away as Belasco and Verona opened up with their own cannons. Zombie heads started blasting open, their bodies toppling back and spraying gore over the shiny surfaces of the one-armed bandits.
I kept shooting, walking forward and clearing a path of bullets and blood. The two showgirls headed my way, and I brought them down and sprayed brains all over their sequined tops. The little housewife and her husband reared up at me from an overturned table, and I took care of them in the same pair of seconds.
Belasco was enjoying himself. “You see the rump on that chippy, Mort?” he asked. “Whoo-weee! If we had some time, I’d tell you what I’d do to her – zombie or not, brother!” I got the feeling he’d have as much fun gunning down these people if they weren’t zombies.
Verona kept quiet, placing his shots in simple precise places. He was a professional, and he executed every corpse that got in his way. I was angry, and didn’t have his restraint. These people didn’t deserve to get turned into flesh-eaters. I wanted to put them out of their misery, and felt just a little sense of victory with each corpse that toppled over.
We made our way down the aisle, and I could see sunlight creeping in through the foliage surrounding the lobby. I felt just a little bit better, and then a clammy hand gripped my shoulder. A fat tourist in a canary yellow shirt and panama hat was leaning towards me, ready to have a snack from my face. I swung one of my pistols to his temple, when I remembered the clip was empty.
He tackled me, gripping my shoulders with his thick fingers and leaned forward. My fingers reached out, and I knew Verona and Belasco were ahead of me, and didn’t want to waste the time or the effort to swing
around and put a bullet in my attacker’s head. I couldn’t reach the Ka-Bar in my boot. Weatherby took out his revolver, but I think he had trouble figuring out what end of the gun the bullet came out of.
I reached out and grabbed one of the slot machine handles. Instinct made me pull it. Some gambler must have placed a pair of quarters in the machine, because it started whirring away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the panels rolling away. One stopped, revealing a seven. The second displayed the same, and then the third. Lights started flashing and a wave of coins shot out of the bottom of the slot machine, spraying into the zombie like a tide.
It didn’t knock him off, but it kept him distracted and stopped him from chomping into my face. I grabbed a spare clip from coat, reloaded and fired. The zombie looked almost surprised as I plugged him between the eyes. I came to my feet and started running Weatherby and Sly next to me.
“A win on your first try?” Sly asked. “Wow, Mr. Candle. You sure are lucky.”
“Sure am,” I said, stepping away from the bloated tourist. All around us, the zombies were closing in. “Time to start running,” I suggested.
Weatherby, Sly, his son and I dashed for the exit, where Joey Verona and Bobby Belasco were cracking away at the hordes of zombies in the parking lot. Sly picked his son up, holding him close. My feet pounded on the blood-soaked carpet, and then we reached lobby just ahead of every hungry corpse in the casino. Weatherby reached into his coat, pulling out a small vial of dark green liquid.
“I created this after our time in Havana,” he explained. “It should react negatively with the zombie powder, creating an immediate attraction of avian spirits—”
“Just throw the damn thing, kiddo!” I shouted.
Weatherby hurled the vial into the crowd. We turned to run as it crashed down, and the effect was immediate. A dark cloud of smoke burned outwards from the broken glass, congealing and going solid as it grew. Ravens and crows poured out of the smoke, and flew in a fluttering obsidian swarm towards the corpses. The carrion birds had themselves a feast, squawking and shrieking as their beaks ripped flesh from the bodies of the zombies and plucked out eyeballs from dead sockets.
The distraction was all we needed. We hurried out into the parking lot, and I spotted the Packard. “We’ll take my auto out of here!” I ordered, starting for the car. Verona, Belasco and I helped clear the way, and Weatherby and the Baums followed us.
Weatherby reached the car first and held open the door. “Get inside!” he cried. “And hurry, for God’s sake!”
Sly and Henry Wallace ran for the car. Henry Wallace started to scramble inside, when a dead hand reached out from under the Packard and grabbed his leg. It was the receptionist, his turban now stained with blood. He pulled Henry Wallace down, slamming him against the pavement and the boy yelped as he tried to break free. I raised my pistol, but Weatherby was faster.
“Do not harm him!” he shouted, ramming his foot into the back of the receptionist’s skull. Weatherby didn’t bother drawing his revolver. He just slammed his loafer, again and again into the zombie’s head. The bone broke and brains started leaking out like runny eggs and Weatherby kept kicking. I knew the kid was angry, full of rage about the death of his parents and his current position, and now he was letting it out.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “We don’t have time,” I said.
He snapped out of it in a second. “Of course.” He looked down at his loafers. “Heavens. This will take a while to get out.” He then bent down and picked up Henry Wallace, gentle as a mother, and set the boy in the back of the Packard. “It’s all right,” he said. “We’re almost to safety.”
Belasco laughed as he climbed into the back seat. “Well, Weatherby, I hate to break it to you, but that’s not exactly the case.”
Sly joined his son in the back, and Verona took the passenger seat. “What the hell are you talking about, you kooky nutball?”
I got into the Packard’s driver seat and slammed down the gas pedal. “Save it until we get on the road, Belasco,” I said. “Let me pretend my luck’s changed, just for a few more seconds.”
The automobile shot forward, speeding through the parking lot and towards the main avenue. A couple of zombies ran towards the car, making a fatal mistake. I slammed into them, sending them under my wheels and over my hood. The windshield cracked and got bloody, but I kept going, pulling out into the main drag of Paradise City.
All around us, we could see the effects of the zombie plague. Cars were overturned, zombies clustered around fallen bodies, and smoke poured out from the windows of the big hotels. Occasionally, I heard a gunshot in the distance, but I doubted there was much resistance. More likely, it was some poor sap using that bullet on himself.
A former policeman, his revolver still frozen in his hand, ambled towards the car. I cracked the Packard against him and sent him under the wheels. “All right, Belasco,” I said. “Now’s the time to let us hear the bad news.”
“By now, Paradise City is, I’d say 90% infected,” Belasco explained casually. “Now, the eggheads over at Langley came up with a standard procedure if this was to happen. The higher-ups kept it away from me. Strictly in the ‘Burn Before Reading’ pile, if you get my drift. But I picked the lock on their safe and read it all anyway.”
“Get to the point, Belasco,” I prompted, as the Packard cruised over a sidewalk.
“They’re gonna nuke Paradise City,” Belasco explained. “They’ll say it’s an accident, blame it on communist infiltrators. Big mushroom cloud, zombies, and survivors are vaporized – kaboom!” He pantomimed an explosion. “So we gotta get some distance. And this little roadster just ain’t gonna do it.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. All the trouble of busting out of the Oasis, all the zombies I had planted bullets in, and we were still gonna get vaporized in a nuclear explosion. Sly held his son close, and Weatherby became enraged. He drew out his revolver and placed it against Belasco’s head. “You callous bastard!” he cried. “You and your CIA cronies bargain with lives and ruin countries on a daily basis, and this mess is your fault!” He cocked his pistol. “I should kill you here and now!”
Belasco could have used a bullet to the head, but not now. I had never seen Weatherby this angry. Normally, he had a kind of burning irate dissatisfaction with everything, but this was something else. I had the feeling Henry Wallace was the reason.
“Weatherby,” I said. “We don’t need this!”
“Oh, I believe we do!” he replied. I stared at Weatherby. I couldn’t talk the hotheaded teenager down. Belasco just smiled at Weatherby, calm as could be. The psycho spook was enjoying himself.
But then Henry Wallace put his hand on Weatherby’s hand. “Please, Weatherby,” he said. “Mr. Candle is right. We can’t start fighting. Not now. Please stop.”
Slowly, Weatherby lowered his revolver. “I’m sorry, Henry Wallace…” he said. “I shouldn’t have allowed my temper to take control.” He looked up at me. “I’ll do my best to keep it in check, Morton.”
Joey Verona coughed. “Actually, I may have a little solution to this dilemma. I was checked in at the Dorado. Tommy Gabriel, that no-talent warbler, was set to play a show tonight. I figure that canary got himself munched soon as the zombies appeared, but he flew in on a helicopter, and that’s still on the rooftop. We can go to the Dorado, pop up to my penthouse room, get to the roof, grab the chopper and fly the hell away from this screwed-up burg.”
“Except I don’t know how to fly a copter,” I said. “And I doubt they teach wiseguys to do that.”
“I can fly the chopper,” Belasco said. “I think. Be kind of fun to find out, right, Morty?”
“Right,” I muttered. It was a long shot, but that was the best bet we could do. Going through twelve floors packed with zombies wouldn’t be fun. Trying to get Belasco to fly the helicopter wouldn’t be too great either. But we were out of options. I started driving to the Dorado.
The Dorado Hotel had large lobby, surrou
nded by wide glass walls of a dull gold tint. Posters for Tommy Gabriel’s concert were plastered all over the faux-Mesoamerican ruins that decorated the place, now dyed a different shed of ruby red. The zombies had been here and done their bloody work, just like in every other joint in Paradise City.
I rolled the Packard over the lawn. “We got a plan of attack?” Belasco wondered.
“Plans are what put us in this situation,” I said. “I think we’ll figure it out as we go along. There’s heavy artillery in the trunk. I’ve got a line to some army buddies that keep my supplied with ordinance. Weatherby? Why don’t you hand it out. But save the tommy gun for me, kiddo.” I positioned the Packard right across from the Dorado, leaning forward to do a little recon. The joint was packed with zombies. Getting to the elevator wouldn’t be easy.
Weatherby handed out the big guns without pause. Verona took the shotgun and Belasco grabbed the carbine. I set the Thompson on my lap, resting one hand on the familiar bulge of the drum magazine. I waited for a few seconds, just to get my heart beating and feel the sweat seeping into my collar. Then I gunned the engine for everything it was worth.
The auto zoomed forward, aiming straight for one of the large glass windows. The car smashed through, shattering glass and rolling inside the casino. I aimed straight for the largest horde of zombies and kept going until there were bodies under my tires and pressed against the hood. The Packard careened across the lobby like a wrecking ball, spraying blood and broken bodies behind it. I didn’t bother hitting the brake, not until the Packard bumped into one of the large marble pillars and finally came to a rest.
I kicked open the door. “Get to the elevator!” I shouted. “Move, goddamn it!”
I planted both boots on the ground, raised my tommy gun and opened fire. I didn’t bother with bursts. The zombies came swarming towards me, and I gave them a blistering wall of pure automatic fire. The tommy gun chewed through them, spitting out those fat .45s that busted open skulls and tore apart limbs and ripped open chests. Verona slid out next to me, his shotgun booming away in his skillful hands. Every zombie that came towards him went down, its head gone in a blast of reddish gore. Belasco picked away at them from behind the Packard, happy as a kid in a shooting gallery with his carbine.
The Stein & Candle Detective Agency, Vol. 1: American Nightmares (The Stein & Candle Detective Agency #1) Page 14