“There will be alarms and watchmen. Someone will have to distract them. And I think they are less likely to put a bullet in me than in you. I bet they’ll even be happy to give me some gas.”
I had a crude thought that they would definitely want to give her something, and it wouldn’t be fuel. I didn’t say anything, though. All those mandatory on-the-job sensitivity seminars had trained me well. Anyway, she was probably right about us needing a diversion while I stole things, and the less alarming the diversion the better.
We traveled the rest of the way to town in her Jeep, kicking up a plume of dust that would be visible to any lookout. Corazon didn’t like it, but Ninon made him wait in my SUV while we went into the village. I didn’t argue the call, but had a strong suspicion that I would return to find that the annoyed animal had carved his initials in my upholstery. If not worse. I really hoped he contained himself. Nothing smelled quite as bad as cat urine in a hot car.
The Jeep didn’t smell at all. I was grateful. So many rentals and secondhand vehicles smelled like a gym locker. Ninon and Corazon were obviously fastidious.
Ninon pushed in a tape and the sounds of Sourdough Slim’s yodels filled the air. This made me flinch, but I reminded myself that she wasn’t trying to be stealthy. An upfront approach would help ease any suspicions about her.
We stopped just at the edge of the still village, leaving the Jeep in the open but screened by a large stand of prickly pear. Sourdough’s lament about a strawberry roan was cut off midsong.
We waited. And waited. No one approached, nothing moved. We looked at one another, feeling vague unease. Drug dealers weren’t this careless. We decided to be a shade less open in our advance. No act would fool a ghoul or zombie.
As we crept closer, we finally heard the distant strains of music. Guitar—good guitar—can usually make my hands ache with old longing, but I felt nothing that day. Partly that was because this was a recording, but also the air of desolation was thickening. I was tempted to suggest turning back, but knew Ninon would refuse. We needed weapons and our options were limited.
We made our way through the available shadows as we approached the only building in town that showed signs of life.
The windows of the squat house where a boom box played were shuttered but in bad repair, so it was easy enough to lay an eye against the crack and have a look-see at what was beyond. We had apparently arrived on poker day. Four of humankind’s more primitive specimens were bellied up to a round kitchen table covered in American currency and surrounded by a minefield of beer bottles. None of the poker players would be trying out for Mr. Universe anytime soon, but they didn’t have to worry about anyone kicking sand in their faces either.
If this weren’t off-putting enough, the air was thick with smoke and the sound of the Gypsy Kings, who they were torturing by playing it on a CD player that had seen better days. Dust is hard on electronics and cars. Ninon and I both carried spare air filters for this reason.
We backed away quickly. Neither of us was smiling.
“I don’t like this,” I whispered, looking up and down the street. “It’s too dead. If we hadn’t seen those guys, I would think this was another of Saint Germain’s zombie towns.”
“It does seem abandoned. But maybe the drug dealers prefer it this way,” Ninon suggested softly. “I haven’t smelled any zombies or ghouls yet.”
I sniffed. I didn’t smell any either. Still, there was something nasty riding the air, causing a feeling of impending violence that tickled the hairs of my nape.
“We need guns and ammo and anything else we can find. If Saint Germain has made a ghoul pack…” Ninon spread her hands wide. Sometimes she is very French. I knew what she meant though. We had to deal with this. It wasn’t like we could call a support group.
“Okay,” I said. “You’re sure they keep the guns around back?”
“Yes, I can smell them.”
Once she mentioned it, I also smelled the faint odor of gun oil. Maybe that was what was bugging me—guns, violence. It was a good match. I told the small hairs on my nape to lie back down. They didn’t listen.
“I’ll be quick,” I promised. “You be careful. Scream if anything goes wrong. Anything.”
“I’m always careful.” Ninon got up and adjusted her dress—and not to make it more modest. She swayed toward the door, balancing on those ridiculously high heels that they call stilettos.
In spite of my promise to hurry, I hung around long enough to make sure that she wasn’t gunned down immediately upon walking through the door.
I shouldn’t worry about her, I scolded myself. These were, after all, mere males. But I remained, pressed against the shutter.
I could see straightaway that Ninon’s main target was a middle-aged man, a Latino Jackie Gleason. He looked marginally friendlier that the others. She made her voice high and giggled nonstop as she swayed in on ridiculously high heels telling a tale in fractured Spanish about getting lost and running out of gas. The sound was grating but she was doing a stupendous impersonation of a woman so stupid that she almost needed her own branch on the great ape family tree: one above gorillas but below chimps and humans. Had I been part of the crowd, the only thing that would have saved her from strangling was the fact that she was so damned beautiful. But then, I have perfect pitch. Maybe these guys were tone-deaf. Maybe they were really just gorillas who had managed to shave and liked feeling intellectually superior to someone for a change. Mr. Muscle on the far side of the table certainly looked closer to a gorilla than a Homo sapien.
Certain that she had successfully distracted everyone in the room and that they were not offering her anything more deadly than leers, I slipped around back to see what I could discover.
It was easy to find the place where the weapons were stored; I just followed my nose and those upright hairs that twitched. Warmer, warmer, hot!
The room seemed as empty as the rest of the town, but I remained cautious. First stop for the new cat burglar was a small barred window where I again did a bit of reconnoitering. A quick peek told me the room inside was empty. There also was a locked door with a barred window, but the catch was flimsy and I am very strong. I also wasn’t worried about being heard above Ninon’s shrill laughter, shouts of Tequila! and the Gypsy Kings that could be heard even through two sets of walls. It seemed certain that nothing short of a raid would get their attention now.
The air inside was stale and the light almost nonexistent. I saw no obvious gun lockers, no weapons of any kind. In fact, under normal circumstances, there was nothing there that would have encouraged me to linger. But these were hardly normal days, so linger I did, looking for the useful weapons my nose could smell.
Excepting an exquisite woman—to which I am as vulnerable as the next man—I am a less-than-usually visual person. I live more in my mind than most men, but because of my heightened sense of hearing and smell, I tend to use these senses as much as I do sight. Perhaps that is why I was less than moved by the portrait in front of me. I don’t mean to be critical—after all, art is a personal choice. But I saw that this artist wasn’t especially gifted. In fact, I am sure it was an amateur piece. It was a woman—actually just a very graphic diagram of the least interesting parts of the female body. So bad was it, I felt safe in assuming that it had never graced the covers of any of the finer men’s magazines. Still, it drew me more than the more tasteful watercolors on the other wall. I laid my hand on the frame and began to feel around it. I had a strange woman’s breast nearly pressed against my eye.
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words—but not in fiction. Not unless it’s exceptionally good art and the author exceptionally awful. All a picture can do is show. Give me a thousand words and I will make you smell and taste and feel. This portrait was maybe a small but tasteless step down from the velvet dogs playing poker, however it still interested me because of the gun safe I smelled behind it. Breaking in might have been a challenge, but fortunately it had been left open.
I still preferred my shotgun in a tight spot, but this would be excellent for Ninon. It would be great long range, much better than her pistol. She’d be pleased.
I didn’t waste time searching the office for the missing handgun that went with the ammo; it was a sure thing that one of the poker players had it at the table. More would have been better, but this was a good score and things were going smoothly. Ninon was going to be sorry about the lack of grenades and rocket launchers, though. Still, I was thinking we were golden. Mission accomplished.
On the way back to her, I suffered my first distraction. I was passing a second small door, something that might open into a utility closet, when I heard a familiar but not immediately placeable sound. Thump-bump, thump-bump, like a really slow heartbeat. I also smelled something. Something at once appealing and unpleasant.
Hesitating, I slung the shotgun over my shoulder with the carbine and laid an ear against the door. The sound got louder but no clearer. Thump-bump, thump-bump. It was too rhythmic to be someone knocking, but something about it…
Knowing it was unlikely that I would find more weapons, I still put my hand on the doorknob and gave it a slow twist. It wasn’t locked. I looked about quickly before I entered. I was still alone. Nothing moved in the sunbaked street. Nothing.
The door opened without protest and I found myself, not in a utility closet, but in the kitchen part of a small, low-ceilinged house. The thumping noise was coming from through an open door to the left. I approached slowly, skirting a small table with a coffee cup and a vase of dying flowers. I put my bag of ammo and the rifle down. I was alone, but I walked quietly and warily, my breath held.
The owners must have been fairly wealthy people by local standards—perhaps Americans who had retired down there, drug dealers who decided to splurge on a few comforts for the housekeeper. The place had a paved floor, a gas range, a small refrigerator, and a washer and dryer. It was the last two appliances that were tucked in the small laundry room and laboring diligently. New, compact, and sparkling white, they were also smeared with ugly stains that could only be blood. Now that I was inside, the odor was drifting my way.
Someone was hurt, I thought. Then: Someone is dead.
I thought about the ghoul’s arm.
I looked left. Thump-bump, thump-bump. There should have been flies gathered in the blood, but none had ventured near because of the pounding that shook the machine. I had seen this before when loads of heavy sheets or comforters were severely unbalanced. The washing machine had begun walking across the floor, its metal feet scraping deep grooves in the adobe tiles as it teetered.
I crossed the room slowly, hating the smell of rotting lilies, burnt coffee, and semi-fresh blood. The three smells, each bad enough alone, were unutterably horrible together in that hot, airless room.
Thump-bump. Thump-bump.
It wasn’t just the washer. Something heavy and solid was rolling around inside the dryer, making a slamming sound that was audible even over the clanking of the swaying washer on spin cycle. Reluctantly, I leaned down and peered in the dryer’s dark window—and was immediately sorry I did. What I assume were the house’s late owners peered back at me as their heads tumbled by, frozen expressions shocked and outraged.
I gagged and reeled back against the rough wall, feeling dizzy. The washer moved closer, pleading to be spared another spin cycle, but no power on earth would have been able to get me to open and see what was going through the rinse.
It took a moment for my disorientation to wear off, but as soon as my brain unlocked I began thinking hard. I know that such an act of barbarism should suggest insanity or some brutal drug-dealer’s revenge, but it somehow didn’t. This was beyond bizarre, beyond revenge, beyond insanity. It was like the severed arm that the ghoul had thrown at Ninon. It was a challenge, a taunt, aimed at us. Something done to provoke us into action. I realized that we were supposed to find this—and this terrible idea, once born, raised those small hairs on the back of my neck until they stood on end.
We were supposed to find this, and be outraged. Therefore, someone knew that we were here. Someone cruel and insane.
We had two candidates. But since there was no lake or stream nearby, I was betting on it being Saint Germain.
I glanced at the corner of the dining room I could see from where I stood pressed against the wall, making sure I was still alone. I was. And this time I noticed that there was a wooden ladder leaned against the wall, leading up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. The square was not sealed tightly and stray shafts of sunlight leaked into the room.
Ignore it, I told myself. Whatever’s up there, you don’t want to see. It might even be a trap. Just signal Ninon that the job is done and get out of here.
Yet, a moment later I was climbing the stepladder up to the roof, arguing that I needed to know if the Jeep had been found and perhaps tampered with, or if there was anyone—or anything—between us and a safe getaway.
I ventured out slowly, looking for booby traps or sentries, or, I admit, ax-wielding maniacs. But nothing sinister was up there except a selection of dead cockroaches and a few cracks in the slanted adobe that needed immediate repair. The clay was burned in several places and I suspected that it had been hit with lightning.
The thought was further cause for anxiety, but I didn’t hurry away. The roof offered an excellent view of the town, and more than ever I wanted to be sure that Ninon and I wouldn’t be running into a trap when we tried to leave.
I could hear the faint strains of music coming from the left. Just music. No screams or gunshots, not even any more shouts for tequila. That was good. That probably meant the homicidal housekeeper was having a coffee break somewhere else before starting the ironing on the entrails, or whipping up cannibal smoothies.
I squatted down and crab-walked to the low wall that encircled the roof, being careful to avoid the cockroach carapaces. There were clay drainpipes around the edge at four foot intervals, large enough to stuff my hands in, but I would have to lie flat to see out of them, something I was reluctant to do. I listened some more, my breath held. Nothing moved, nothing disturbed the eerie silence. Not so much a bird called or a dog barked.
Zombie town, I thought again. I couldn’t smell them, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there, hiding in the houses, waiting for dark.
Inch by inch, I raised my head until I could peer over the wall. What I saw was not reassuring. No one was near Ninon’s Jeep, but something very bad had happened here recently—and I didn’t think it was drug dealers looking for a little privacy and sending the townfolks for vacation in Puerto Vallarta. For one thing, people didn’t go off and leave their house and car doors standing open.
And there was that open gun locker, full of cash but only one weapon.
I looked south. Some the buildings near the town square had been decked with bunting for a fiesta or perhaps a parade, and it hadn’t yet begun to fade in the summer sun. That would happen very quickly, in only a day or so. Obviously, they couldn’t have been up that long. There was also a table of food—almost black with flies—and half-empty punch bowls laid out in the village square. Worse still, a few torches were still flickering. Whatever had happened, it had been recent. I didn’t see any bodies or blood, but the place was as dead as a graveyard. Whether the people had enjoyed their party or not, they had bee
n driven away or killed before they had a chance to take the decorations down and finish their sangria.
If it were the latter and they were dead, I thought, God grant that our enemies’ destruction will give them consolation for their lost lives.
I rubbed a hand over my face. It was Hell at high noon, a landscape worthy of Dante. I hadn’t prayed since childhood, but my subconscious recalled its teachings and began reciting the prayer for the dead.
I had another moment of dizziness. The heat was worse now than it had been all day, especially up there in the open with the baking cockroach carcasses. Summer was here and the lightning-damaged adobe was baking itself into powdered clay that fell from the walls softly like a swarm of dead moths. I watched the plaster fall off the building across the street, mesmerized, as it seemed to float on the air to the soft strains of wheezing flamenco guitars.
I think maybe the sun was baking my brain too. Something must account for my sudden stupor.
As I stared at the flaking plaster and thought about dead moths, Saint Germain walked into the square. A breeze, perhaps stirred up by his passing, made the bunting flutter. He paused at the feast table where he helped himself to whatever was in the punch bowls. I turned my head slowly and blinked twice and then twice again, unable to believe my eyes. I’d never seen him before, and yet I knew beyond any doubt that this was our enemy. I also finally caught of whiff of spoiled food and what could only be human blood.
He sat casually on the edge of the table. I watched his throat work as he swallowed the red sludge and had a sick feeling—part disgust but part envy, I have to admit—that he was drinking blood.
Saint Germain was drinking blood. From a punch bowl. All alone. Something wasn’t right. I mean, less right that even we expected. Ninon hadn’t said anything about him drinking blood. Could he be some kind of vampire after all? I shook my head again. This was Alice-through-the-Looking-Glass time.
I should have left then, don’t you think? Found Ninon and gotten the hell out of Dodge, even if I had to shoot the poker players to do it. But I didn’t. I just squatted there, stunned as any deer in headlights and watched the man—if a man he was—drinking blood and swinging one foot gently as he killed some time before doing God only knew what.
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