Desperate Souls

by Gregory Lamberson

  Marcus felt a hot shell casing from Forty-five’s gun strike his left eye. Blinking fast to regain full vision, he glimpsed sparks below as a round struck a machete blade. Worthless piece of shit!

  “I’m out!” Forty-five said, his silver gun clicking in his hand.

  “So reload!”

  “I can’t! I don’t have any more ammo!”

  Seeing the advancing horde less than ten steps below, Marcus stopped firing long enough to plant his feet and hurl Forty-five down the stairs. The bodyguard screamed as he collided with the lead zonbies, and Marcus watched the mass of bodies tumble down into the darkness. Forty-five’s screams turned shrill and gurgling.

  Turning, Marcus ran to the Black Magic den and saw the scarecrows inside huddled together in fear. Opening the door wider, so the zonbies would see them, he sprinted to the next apartment, slammed that door shut, and pressed the doorknob’s feeble button lock. Breathing heavy, he searched the apartment with his flashlight and discovered a chair with a broken seat in the kitchen. He ran back to the front door and wedged the chair beneath the knob.

  That ought to hold them.

  He ran into the living room, where dim moonlight shone through grime-encrusted windows. Jamming his Glock into his waistband, he twisted the brass window locks and braced his palms against the frame. Even before he opened the window, his heart sank. Up close, with his vision adjusting to the darkness, he saw the black bars that covered the windows from the outside. With his heart pounding in his chest, he forced the window up and seized each bar in his hands. All of them held.

  In the hallway outside the apartment, fists pounded on the door.

  Jake opened the door to his suite, flicked on the lights, and carried Edgar’s cage into the reception area. Ignoring the mail that had collected on the floor, he went into his office and opened the safe. He considered copying Afterlife to his laptop’s hard drive but rejected the notion.

  If I don’t survive the night, then two copies will exist to threaten humanity.

  He ejected the original DVD and relocked the safe. Crossing the office, he sat behind his chair and turned the disc over in his hand.

  So much horror over one damned research project.

  But Afterlife was more than a research project: the file contained all of mankind’s knowledge and theories on the supernatural, religion, and mythology, cross-referenced and indexed.

  Tilting back in his chair, he opened the blinds and gazed out the window at the Tower. You sure knew how to cause trouble, old man.

  He glanced at his cell phone: 8:55 p.m.

  Edgar cocked his head at him.

  “It’s going to be a hell of a night,” Jake told the raven. Four minutes later, he located the telephone number he had stored in his phone’s memory and pressed autodial.

  On the other end, Katrina answered after the second ring. “Hello, Jake. It’s a relief to hear your voice again.”

  Staring at Edgar, Jake said, “I can’t say the same thing, Dawn. But I have been looking forward to this call.”

  “So have I. You want Edgar returned to normal, and I want Afterlife. The exchange will be tonight at eleven.” She told him where to meet her. “Needless to say, come alone.”

  “That’s how I roll. Why not make it midnight?”

  Her words tumbled out faster. “I have to let you go. I’m in the middle of something.” She hung up.

  With his flashlight and Glock both aimed at the front door, Marcus inched toward the banging. “Forty-five? Hey, I’m sorry about that, brother. I guess I just panicked.”

  The blade of a machete chopped through the door, and Marcus jumped off the floor. A second machete blade appeared, and the first one withdrew. Then a third blade hacked its way into view.

  Marcus took a step backwards. Oh, Jesus, no!

  Pivoting on one foot, he ran into the only bedroom. Aiming the flashlight, he saw the door had been removed. Around the corner, the front door crashed open. He fled to the bedroom windows and saw that they too had bars.

  Footsteps stomped down the hall. Facing the direction of the noise, he switched off his flashlight and tightened his grip on the Glock. Beams of light sliced through the darkness. Some of them separated from the others and divided the bedroom, pinning him like a deer in headlights. He knew better than to fire blindly.

  Let them get closer. Go for their heads.

  The flashlights grew nearer, brighter, blinding him. He clicked on his own flashlight, and the silhouettes before him lit into zonbies. Dead eyes sunk within skullish heads regarded him with distant stares. Raising his gun, he fired at one of the dead things and hit it in the forehead. Dropping it to the floor.

  Marcus grinned. Take that, you stinking piece of meat!

  He aimed at the next zonbie. The thing grinned at him, revealing discolored gums.

  He had been around a hundred of these things, and not one of them had ever shown the slightest degree of emotion.

  Grinning even wider at his obvious discomfort, the male zonbie spoke, its voice hoarse and raspy and unmistakably female. “This is your judgment day, Marcus.”

  Katrina!

  “Payback is a bitch.”

  “So are you,” Marcus said, shooting the zombie in the head. The thing toppled to the floor.

  Katrina’s voice continued from the next zonbie’s mouth. “I can do this all night long.”

  “So can I.” Marcus aimed at the zonbie before him, and the slide of his gun locked back. Son of a bitch!

  “It doesn’t look that way.”

  Marcus squeezed the trigger over and over with the same result each time. Tears formed in his eyes. “You bitch …”

  “Life’s a bitch,” the zonbie said in Katrina’s voice. “And then you die.”

  “No …”

  The crowd of zonbies in the room flowed around the talking zonbie like water, their machetes raised high in the air.

  Over the sounds made by metal blades cutting into his body, Marcus thought he heard Katrina laughing.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Jake drove up Second Avenue, Dawn Du Pre’s building rising from the darkness in the distance on his right. When he reached the building, he turned left at the intersection and circled the opposite block. A plywood fence surrounded the half of the block facing the apartment building, and on the other side of the fence, the skeletal structure of the unfinished high-rise rose from its foundation fifty feet below. Parking the dented, scarred, and shattered Monte Carlo along the curb facing the fence, Jake switched off the engine. When he had confronted Old Nick and Kira Thorn in the Tower, a storm had raged outside. Tonight the sky was clear and black, pinpricked with stars.

  Opening his door and easing the birdcage out with both hands, he said to the raven, “Come on. Let’s go save the world. Or at least this city.” Or your soul, buddy.

  He stood up holding the cage in one hand. Looking around the quiet neighborhood, he removed a container of salt from the backseat and poured the remainder of its contents over the car door’s threshold.

  Just in case I make it out of there in a hurry.

  He tossed the container back into the car and closed the door. With half the windows shot out, he saw no point in locking the vehicle. Stepping onto the sidewalk, he whistled the tune to “Moon-dance,” which had been Sheryl’s favorite song. He circled the fence, searching for an opening.

  At last he found a gate fabricated from the same material, so it blended into the fence. A chain with a padlock on its end lay coiled on the sidewalk. Pulling the gate open, Jake faced a covered gangway that led into the structure. The streetlights on the sidewalk illuminated the girders and crossbeams, but no light reached the structure’s interior despite the lack of walls.

  Taking a deep breath, he traversed the gangway. He looked over the railing and saw lights far below.

  Not lights. Torches. So far down that no one else sees them.

  At the end of the gangway, he stepped onto a metal floor. Switching on his flashlight, he saw a caged
construction elevator. He pulled the gate open, stepped inside, and pulled it shut. The gate rattled like a grocery cart.

  “Now we’re both in a cage,” he said to Edgar.

  The raven cawed.

  Scrutinizing the elevator’s controls, Jake threw a lever so it aligned with a Down arrow. A motor hummed to life, and the elevator descended into darkness. A breeze blew in Jake’s face, and his stomach felt queasy. He counted four floors, then saw the foundation come into view. Wondering if the elevator would stop on its own or if he would kill himself in a crash, he waited until he had almost reached the ground before flipping the lever into its Off position just to be safe.

  He pushed the gate open and hopped down two feet onto the cement. Stepping forward, he imagined the space before him as a luxury condo’s parking garage.

  If it ever gets finished.

  A series of work lights affixed to support beams provided enough illumination for him to see where he was going without the use of his flashlight, which he slid into a jeans pocket. He approached the burning torches at the foundation’s far end, the smells of cement and plaster and other construction materials filling his nostrils. Glancing down at Edgar, he maintained an even pace.

  Nearing the torches, he saw Katrina standing in the distance, wearing a tight white dress that emphasized her figure and made her skin appear darker. She had lashed the torches to steel girders.

  As they got closer to her, Edgar made a sound that Jake had not heard from the raven before: a low, fearful croak.

  “It’s okay. Don’t be afraid.” I’m afraid enough for both of us. Jake stopped ten feet away from her. He did not set the birdcage down.

  Katrina held a laptop with a handle. “Good, you came alone.”

  “Don’t men usually do whatever you say?”

  A hint of a smile. “Yes. Especially those who have drunk my menstrual blood without knowing it. An old vodou recipe.”

  He gestured at her dress. “White doesn’t suit you. You seduced Edgar to get to me?”

  She nodded. “When Tower died and Kira Thorn disappeared, I cast a spell to locate Afterlife. When I found out whose safe protected it and I discovered your former relationship to the Tower, I decided to set up shop here in the city.”

  “Why didn’t you come after me instead of Edgar?”

  “I’m an expert researcher, remember? I knew your wife had been murdered and that you had thrown yourself into your work. Your relationship with Edgar seemed to be the only one you made an effort to maintain, so I chose him. When I finally met you at dinner and saw you with Maria, I considered that maybe I’d underestimated myself. I’m pretty sure I could have had you. No problem, though: everything went according to plan, and Edgar was a fine lay.”

  Jake felt anger radiating from his soul. Stay cool, Jake. Stay focused. “One minute you tried to kill me, the next you wanted me alive. That’s confusing to a guy like me.”

  “I never wanted you dead. I came here for you and what you stole from Tower. You caused my Brooklyn zonbies to go after you when you invaded their turf. They’re programmed to carry out basic functions, one of them being self-preservation. I didn’t even know they tried to kill you until I read about it in the papers. But I did send the second crew to your building after you drove me home. Their orders were to torture you until you opened the safe so they could steal the disc.”

  “And then they wouldn’t have killed me?”

  She offered an apologetic smile. “I said I didn’t want you dead. I didn’t say I wouldn’t hesitate to kill you if it served my best interest.”

  “Why the machetes?”

  “What is this, Meet the Press? Machetes are easy to come by, and I wanted to ensure that my enemies didn’t resurrect their soldiers. The last thing I needed was for zonbies to come after me. “

  “You threw my back out and caused me to hallucinate.”

  “Physical pain to keep you out of my hair and emotional distress so you’d beg me to make it stop. I wanted to trade you peace of mind for Afterlife then, but you found a way to beat my curse. Since we’re playing twenty questions, why don’t you tell me how you did it?”

  “It’s a trade secret.”

  “We’d make an interesting pair, if only we could trust each other.”

  “What about Malachai?”

  “He and his crew are dead. I had no choice after you turned him against me.”

  Malachai is dead, Jake thought. Good, now I don’t have to worry about him. “You shouldn’t have sent him to deliver that message.”

  “I didn’t want to risk meeting you face-to-face. You’re more unpredictable than I expected. You might have killed me or kidnapped me and tortured me until I agreed to transmogrify Edgar again.”

  “You could have just called me; I’m listed in the phone book.”

  “You made that impossible when you stole our supply of Black Magic. Malachai was out of his mind with anger. I needed to make him feel proactive about settling his score with you or kill him. So I sent him to you, knowing that I’d still have to kill him eventually. You can’t blame a girl for trying to have her man and eat him, too. It doesn’t matter; he served his purpose, just like Edgar did. I can rebuild my drug operation with very little effort. With Afterlife, I can do almost anything in time.”

  “What secret sauce makes your zonbies tick?”

  Katrina seemed to enjoy his attention. “Trade secret.”

  “According to my source, a true bokor gets her power from a demon.”

  “Hmm. Your ‘source.’ I wondered how you were so effective against me when I went out of my way to keep the really useful information about voodoo out of Afterlife. I thought maybe you’d used something else in Afterlife against me. I guess you’re not such a loner after all. Isn’t there a psychic on the ground floor of your building? I should pay her a visit one day for a little girl talk.”

  Careful, Jake thought. “Can I watch?”

  “Let’s see how tonight goes first.”

  “That suits me just fine. We were discussing your demon friend …”

  She pursed her lips. “We call them Loa, the spirits of our vodou religion. The Petro Loa are aggressive and warlike. While conducting research for Nicholas Tower, I discovered a secret method of summoning the demon spirit Kalfu, who is a Petro Loa. Naturally, I kept this information to myself. I dreamed of one day revenging myself upon the drug dealers who murdered my parents in the Bronx. It was a silly schoolgirl fantasy, one that I’ve never been able to realize because I don’t know who the killers were. Hopefully I can remedy that with Afterlife. But when my grandmother, who raised me and instructed me in the ways of vodou, drowned in her own home because our government wouldn’t extend a hand to save its own people—the descendents of the slaves who built this country—I performed this ritual and summoned Kalfu to visit me.

  “He didn’t appear naked in a pentagram or in a burst of flame. I saw him on the street a few days after I’d made my sacrifice in his name. He was beautiful—boyish and feminine at the same time. As soon as he spoke to me, I knew my prayers had been answered. I took him home and made love to him. I’d never experienced such love. Then he raped me. It was brutal. Ugly. Painful. I don’t know how I survived that night. It took weeks for the scratches and bite marks to heal, and I still have scars. When he left, he said, ‘You’re pregnant now. Call me when you’ve given birth.’ And then he laughed at me, humiliating me even more than when he tore me open.

  “It turned out he was right: I was pregnant. I had no job, no family for support, just Nicholas Tower’s money. That was enough. I carried the baby to term and gave birth to a beautiful baby boy in a house I’d bought in Westchester. I named him Romero after my father. He filled my life with a joy I’d never known. But when I took him home, I remembered what Kalfu had said. So I summoned my god.

  “He appeared in my bed when I went into my room. His skin was red and covered with runny sores. ‘Let me see the child,’ he said.

  “I raised my son
in my arms for his father to admire. ‘Isn’t he beautiful?’

  “Kalfu laughed, a sound that degraded me. ‘Do you love him above all else?’

  “’Yes,’ I said.

  “’Then kill him now in front of me, and I will grant you the powers you seek. Wring the life out of his frail body, and you shall know the secrets of life and death, which you may use as you see fit.’

  “I looked at my baby, Romero, with his soft skin and closed eyes. He weighed only six pounds. I caressed his hair and kissed his cheeks. And then I strangled the life from him and offered his corpse to Kalfu. Laughing, the demon raped me again, streaking my body with my own blood. I screamed, then cried, then passed out from the agony in my orifices. When I regained consciousness, Kalfu and Romero were both gone, and I could barely move. I didn’t leave my house for two weeks until my wounds healed. During that time, I suffered feverish dreams, and in those dreams, Kalfu instructed me in the ways of true vodou.” She smiled, her teeth white in the firelight. “For that, I love him to this day.”

  Jake felt sick to his stomach. He was no stranger to human-demon couplings; he had witnessed Kira Thorn fondling Cain and attempting to straddle him. But Kira had revealed herself to be a monster, genetically engineered in Tower’s laboratories and programmed to lust after power. Katrina was all too human and had sacrificed her own baby to his father in return for the secrets of necromancy. And she craved even more.

  Sensing his disgust, Katrina stopped smiling. “Don’t look at me like that, just because I have the guts to walk where others are afraid to tread. I’ve brought this city to its knees. Not Papa Joe, not Malachai. Me. A so-called bitch.”

  “I don’t need to hear any more. I don’t think I can stomach it. I’m here to make a trade.”

  Katrina reached out with one hand. “Then give me Afterlife.”

  Jake grunted. “First, make Edgar normal again—with no side effects. I want him the way he was, the way he’s supposed to be.”

  “Just like a man. Satisfy me first; then I’ll satisfy you.”

  Jake drew his Glock from its shoulder holster and aimed it at her. He had learned a thing or two about high-pressure negotiating from Old Nick. “We seem to have reached an impasse.”