Dark Resurrection

by James Axler

  The other seven red sashes raised their side-by-side scatterguns as the head guy unlocked the cell’s iron door. After the prisoners were made to kneel on the floor, the noose-bearers entered and securely collared them, front and rear.

  As they worked, Ryan sensed that the guards, despite numbers and firepower, were not all that confident in their advantage. They seemed nervous, and he could smell the rank fear in their sweat. Under the circumstances, Ryan had expected the keepers to be more arrogant, more dismissive. Perhaps contemptuous. But they were none of those things. They were walking on eggshells.

  He and Chucho were led slowly from the cell. A red sash in front and one behind controlled each of them with the poles and the airway-closing tension of their integral garrotes. The rest of the escort didn’t bracket the two prisoners. All ten red sashes walked on Ryan’s left, which gave them a clear firing lane and a stone wall for a pellet-and-splatter backstop. As Ryan and Chucho advanced, hobbled hand and foot, and collared, twenty shotgun barrels were aimed at them.

  A mobile firing squad.

  Their excess of caution made Ryan crack a half smile. He certainly didn’t want to die, but if he had to take the last train west, he’d be proud to check out beside a man who could instill such unreasoning, pants-pissing terror in these assholes.

  The entourage gradually spiraled up from the bowels of the ravelin. There were no stairs to climb, just a slight, gradual grade in the floor. The only sounds were the steady scrape of boot soles and the rhythmic clanking of ankle chains.

  Then a string of words growled in Spanish echoed down the corridor. Quite loud and distinct, they seemed to come from the rear of the firing squad escort.

  The only phrase Ryan could understand and translate was “Su mama…”

  Your mother…

  Without a preamble of shoving or warning shouts, two of the red sashes immediately dropped their shotguns and started throwing punches at each other’s heads.

  The procession’s advance faltered, then halted. The red sash leader looked around stunned as under a bare bulb full-power blows landed and straw hats went flying. Before anyone could intervene, the two combatants were rolling around on the puddled floor, hands around throats, trying to strangle the life from each other.

  The leader bellowed a command and four of the red sashes slung their double-barrels and set to pulling the fighters apart.

  Chucho laughed out loud at the show, thoroughly amused by it. He winked at Ryan with his one good eye and said, “Good trick, yes?”

  Ryan had to admit it was that.

  After a brief scuffle with the peacemakers, the two still-furious men were hauled to their feet. Their faces were bloodied, shirts torn, sashes askew and cowboy hats crumpled. The clearly aggravated red sash leader stationed one of them at the head of the line, the other at the end, then ordered the column to proceed.

  Ryan and Chucho were marched through the ravelin’s foyer, out the prison’s only exit, into the heat and blazing light of the semitropics. From the height of the sun overhead, Ryan figured it had to be close to midmorning already. The red sashes lined up along the fort’s ramparts sent up a round of raucous cheers when they appeared. Ryan heard music and drumming coming from that direction, as well.

  The procession crossed the bridge over the deep canal that separated the ravelin and the fort. Looking in both directions down the sheltered waterway, Ryan glimpsed crowds of people gathered on the mainland, wildly waving colored pennants and juking giant heads on sticks up and down.

  They entered the fort through the door of the cylindrical guardhouse, passed under the massive ramparts and stepped out into the broad compound-parade ground. To the left, on an elevated platform at the far end of the enclosure, the priests were indeed wearing their judge hats: tall, red cones with a matching, glittering fringe that hung down over their faces past their chins like curtains of perpetually spurting blood. They were also doing what Ryan assumed was their special judge dance—weaving serpentine, spiraling, shuffling, while beating on tambourines with what looked like polished human long bones. They were accompanied by an eight-piece band made up of accordion, fiddle, trumpet and congas.

  Dressed in a gold-epauletted, white military tunic, the breast laden with rows of bright medals and matching white trousers, Fright Mask oversaw the festivities from a throne behind the judge dancers.

  Ryan and Chucho were force-marched to the edge of the dais and there, thanks to the leverage provided by the noose poles, made to kneel in the sun in front of the judges and the governor-general of Veracruz.

  Their submission proclaimed the final victory of the Lords of Death.

  The red sash audience looking down from the battlements on three sides of the compound absolutely ate it up, yelling, whistling and hooting. Some even fired their shotguns in the air. Ryan could see the sun flashing off the bottles that were being passed around. The red sashes were getting drunk in the middle of the morning on this very special occasion.

  After a few minutes the music and awkward dancing stopped, and the spider priest stepped to the edge of the platform, raised his arms to silence the crowd, then unleashed a lengthy preamble, his voice an odd singsong, like a ritual chant.

  “What’s he saying?” Ryan asked his twin.

  Chucho didn’t bother to translate the words verbatim. “It’s just the usual bullshit,” he said. “Itzamna, the head priest, is thanking the Lords of Death for the opportunity to serve them by publicly trying and executing their sworn, ancient enemies from the beginning of time. Namely, you and me.”

  After another short musical and dance interlude, the spider priest got down to business.

  As the lesser priests took their seats on either side of Fright Mask, Itzamna read from a scroll. When he paused after a moment, the other judges beat on their tambourines with the stripped, polished leg bones. This was accompanied by cheers and hoots from the red sash mob. Then the head priest resumed reading. Every time he paused in the oration, the judges hit their tambourines, and the crowd went wild.

  “He’s listing the charges against us,” Chucho informed Ryan. “And then the rest of the priests are voting guilty or not guilty. Beating on the drums means guilty.”

  “Figured that much,” Ryan said. “I want to know what I’m dying for.”

  “We are accused of disemboweling priests and strangling them with their own guts,” Chucho translated. “I only did that once, and I was sorely provoked. We are accused of burning churches to the ground after trapping priests and red sashes inside. Yeah, did that. Blowing up red sash garrisons. Poisoning wells in garrisons. Robbing treasure and payroll caravans. Destroying oil pipelines and a small refinery. Inciting mob violence and rebellion in that mining ville I told you about.”

  “You did all that, too?”

  Chucho grinned.

  “What about me?” Ryan said. “What are they accusing me of?”

  “Well, since we’re the Hero brothers it’s sort of a two-for-one thing. You are the dzul twin. The white twin. I’m the indio, the dark one. Guilt by association, though we’re perfect strangers.”

  “So everything you did to these bastards, I’m getting the blame for?”

  “Pretty much. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. If I’d known about any of this, I’d have done the same as you. Mebbe a lot worse.”

  As the head priest prattled on, the listed crimes became more and more arcane, both philosophically and metaphysically. Even when translated by Chucho they were unintelligible to Ryan because he couldn’t understand the terminology and complex mythological references: White Bone Snake, Black Transformer, Maize God…. It didn’t matter what the hell they meant, according to Chucho, because every crime on the list was punishable by death.

  The full charges against them took the better part of twenty minutes to read. No surprise, the verdicts were all guilties, punctuated by applause and volleys of shotgun blasts from the surrounding ramparts. Then the head priest recited a last bit from the very end of the
scroll, which was further cause for celebration.

  “How are we going to be punished?” Ryan said. “How are they going to execute us? Did the priest talk about that?”

  “That’s what all the noise is about,” Chucho replied. “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “I don’t plan on being around when it’s supposed to happen,” Ryan said. “I’m just curious about what they have in mind.”

  “It’ll be big fun for the priests, but not so much fun for us,” his twin assured him. “First, they’ll strip us naked in front of all the Jarochos down in the Zócalo, then they’ll stick quills through our culebras to draw out the sacred blood for fire sacrifice. After burning our blood they’ll hang us by the neck from the lighthouse parapet, and revive us. They’ll do that a few dozen times, until they or the crowd gets bored, whichever comes first. After that, they’ll chop off our arms and legs and cauterize the stumps so we don’t bleed out. Then they’ll cut off our male parts and fry them in hot lard right under our noses. When that’s done, they’ll open our bellies and yard out our guts.”

  “And that’s how they chill us?”

  “Nah, to chill us they’ll burn us alive.”

  The spider priest lowered the scroll, stepped to the edge of the dais and addressed the kneeling prisoners. The crowd went suddenly silent.

  Ryan looked over at Chucho expectantly.

  “He’s asking us if we have anything to say after the verdict and sentence,” Chucho told him. “You know, any final words for the world to remember us by. Confessions to other crimes we weren’t accused or convicted of. Pleas for mercy from the Lords of Death. Last-second conversions to their sickening, false religion. Itzamna’s told us how we’re going to die. Now he thinks we’re going to grovel and tremble in fear, and thereby amuse the audience even more.”

  “When it gets dark I’ll let my fists and feet do the talking,” Ryan said.

  “And guns, too, if we can grab some,” Chucho said, “but first I’ve got a few things I want to get off my chest.”

  When Chucho tried to get up from his knees, his guards wouldn’t let him. Displaying amazing strength in his thighs, he slowly rose against the power of the noose poles. Unable to lever him back down, they tried to choke him out. His face turned dark with suffused blood. His remaining eye bulging from the pressure, he stared up at the spider priest and pointed at his mouth.

  The priest impatiently waved for the guards to loosen the nooses so he could speak his final words.

  When he regained his breath, Chucho addressed the priest, Fright Mask, and the assembled crowd of traitors in a loud, clear voice. Ryan had no idea what he was saying. He might have been giving some kind of defense for his actions; he might have been promising to return as a ghost to haunt them. Everything was calm and peaceful until his very last line, which he directed at all and sundry.

  When the red sash audience heard it, they went absolutely crazy. Not just booing and screaming, either. Joy juice bottles rained down on them from the battlements, shattering on the grass and the edge of the dais. Then came the stones, like hail.

  Fearing his prisoners would be killed before the officially sanctioned event, the leader of the guards ordered a quick, strategic retreat. Ryan and Chucho were rushed to cover under the red brick colonnade.

  “What did you say at the end that made them so nukin’ mad?” Ryan said as they ducked into the shade.

  Chucho shrugged. “I told them before the night’s over I’d be in hell, fucking their grandmothers.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Harmonica Tom Wolf threw back his head and cheered himself hoarse, waving his arms, stamping his boots—he and the thousand other men in straw cowboy hats, white shirts and crimson shoulder sashes. Tom wanted no part of what was being celebrated, but he couldn’t risk calling attention to himself by standing sullen and silent while the crowd around him went wild. Not that anyone was looking in his direction at that moment. The militiamen who packed the edges of the fort’s ramparts were all staring down at the quadrangle and the two prisoners kneeling there.

  Ryan Cawdor was noosed, front and rear, and held down with long poles by two red sashes in front of a low stage at the eastern end of the compound. The prisoner beside him was similarly pinioned and pinned. From a distance, the second man might have been Ryan’s twin brother. They had the same rangy, powerful build, the same long dark hair, the same noble bearing, the same black eye patch and scar—only the stranger’s battle wound was on the opposite side of his face. After a moment or two it had dawned on Tom that the giant sculpted heads he’d seen the night before hadn’t been meant to represent Ryan Cawdor after all; it was the other guy that they depicted, the guy with the missing right peeper. Ryan’s running buddies—Krysty, Mildred, J.B., Doc and Jak—were nowhere in sight. There was no telling what had happened to them, or whether they had survived the night.

  While the prisoners knelt, a dried-up little walnut of a man in red robes and a pointy red cone hat stood on the edge of the platform and read from a rolled-up piece of paper. His unamplified voice, though high-pitched and shrill, carried well; he was obviously accustomed to public speaking. Every time he paused in his singsong recitation, the seven other men in red hats and robes seated behind him on the stage beat on their tambourines with bone drumsticks, and the crowd cheered approval.

  The excitement bordered on frenzy. It was fueled by a blazing sun that beat down on them and by the copious amounts of joy juice being passed from hand to hand. The man standing beside Tom suddenly thrust his shotgun in the air and touched off both barrels at once. The booming report echoed off the walls of the compound before it was lost amid the general clamor. The side of Tom’s face went momentarily numb from the blast; he gingerly rubbed his ear, which felt like it had been rammed full of cotton with a barge pole. Scowling at the drunken shooter, Tom fought down the urge to unsling the 12-gauge he had commandeered, and force-feed the idiot its metal-shod butt.

  All around him the red sashes began putting in their two cents, chanting a word in Spanish that he translated without any difficulty at all. “Death! Death! Death!”

  Tom had no doubt what was going on. He was witnessing a show trial with a verdict that had already been decided. What, if anything, Ryan could have done to deserve this was a mystery to him. Had Cawdor committed some kind of crime against piracy while a prisoner on the Matachìn tug? Had he started a mutiny or a slave rebellion?

  The seagoing trader accepted a half-full glass bottle that was shoved into his chest and pretended to take a deep swig from it—pretended because the backwash from a dozen strangers did not appeal to him in the least. Then he passed the joy juice on, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. In the uniform and carrying the standard red sash firearm, he was invisible. No one even thought to question his right to be there.

  Harmonica Tom had no shortage of balls.

  But it was balls coupled with brains that had brought him, easy as you please, over the narrow bridge and right through the ancient gates of the island fortress. He had already sized up his red sash opponents as complacent, smug in their power, because just like their Matachìn masters they hadn’t been challenged by their fellow citizens or any threat from outside for so long. Even for a homegrown militia, they seemed more than a little disorganized; that was another consequence of having faced no real adversaries in recent memory. Of course, it didn’t take much in the way of organization to dominate unarmed shopkeepers and dirt farmers. One thing was for sure, if the red sashes had officers and noncoms, they weren’t in charge here. There was no unit cohesion. It was every man for himself.

  When the opportunity arose to do a little recce of the fort’s interior, knowing that’s where Cawdor and the others had been taken the previous night, Tom Wolf had seized it without a moment’s hesitation.

  Just after daybreak, while he was sawing up kilo-size blocks of C-4 into smaller chunks on his galley table with a predark treasure, his SOG Seal Knife 2000, he had heard heavy footsteps
on the deck above. Tempest was being boarded. A second later someone pounded on the cockpit door so hard it rattled in its jamb, and the steel wire of the attached booby trap vibrated through its eye-screws all the way down to the PKM’s pistol grip.

  “Sí, sí, momentito…” he called out.

  Putting the SOG’s blade between his teeth, razor edge out, Tom quickly spread his poncho over the tripod-mounted machine gun at the foot of the cabin’s aft stairs. The poncho didn’t fully cover the weapon, and it did nothing to hide its obvious contours and upward aimpoint.

  Boom-boom-boom! The pounding resumed.

  Tom pulled a paper navigation chart over the primer-rigged chunks of plastique he had stacked on the table, then palmed the fixed blade knife.

  “¡La otra puerta!” he yelled back. “¡La proa!”

  Overhead, he heard what sounded like two sets of boots tramping hard up the deck for the cabin’s forward entrance. Rushing past the staterooms amidship, he vaulted up the steep companionway and unlocked the door. Then he hopped back down to the deck, stepping back to block with his body the view down the corridor, the view of the shrouded machine gun.

  The door above him swung outward, bright light spilled in, and a red sash charged down the steps without invitation.

  No greeting.

  No warning.

  As the man descended, Tom noted the missing buttons on the front of his white shirt and a blubbery, hairless brown belly showing in the gap. The straw-hatted, red-sashed intruder held a double-barrel 12-gauge hard to his shoulder as he stepped onto the cabin’s deck; his expression seemed inordinately pissed off. The whites of his brown eyes were pink, like he’d been caught out in a sandstorm. He brought with him the stink of joy juice, cheap perfume and recent sex.

  The red sash braced his scattergun’s butt on his hip, the barrels pointed at Tom’s midsection.

  As second pair of boots started down the stairs, Tom moved a little to the side to further block the first guy’s view into the aft cabin. But the man was looking around much closer to hand. Looking for something small and valuable to steal? Tom thought. For something worth killing him over?