“No. Really, Ferris. I thought I heard them.”
He moved on without another word, making me feel like an even bigger nutjob than I already did. Explaining how Toussaint remote-controlled my brain seemed like an excuse, not to mention a waste of time. It didn’t matter. We still had a job to do.
I stepped forward, following Ferris, and my ribs screamed out, bringing me to my knees. I ran my hand over my flank, feeling something sticky and wet. Ferris, already back at my side, pulled what was left of my shredded T-shirt aside and shined his light on my torso. Bruises were already blooming. Blood ran freely from several deep gouges in the front and on the sides. I didn’t need an X-ray to tell me at least a couple of my ribs were cracked.
Ferris ripped off his shirt sleeve, balled it up, and pushed it into my side. “Keep pressure on that.”
“Ah! Not so hard.”
“You have to stop the bleeding.”
“Whatever. I’ll try to bleed slower. Just get that thing away from me.”
While in the glow of his flashlight, I ran a hand over my hips and legs, checking for other damage. Assorted cuts and bruises, rips here and there along my jeans, including a missing belt loop in the front, near my right hip. The corner pocket had ripped at the seam. My heart sank as I stuck my hand inside and discovered only two of Mama’s three vials remained; the third must have fallen into the crawl space.
Fuck me twice on Tuesday.
“You’re hurt,” Ferris murmured. “We should stop and wait for backup.”
“Then stay, you big pussy. I’m good to go. If Rico and the others have been infected, every minute counts.”
He snorted, but held his tongue and continued down the hall. I slipped in a new mag and prayed that between the brain bitch and I, one of us could keep Toussaint out of my head.
Ferris wrapped his fingers around the next door knob and twisted. When it didn’t budge, he tried again, putting his shoulder to it. The door groaned but held. Voices chattered inside the room. I glanced at Ferris to see if he’d heard them too. The excitement in his eyes told me they were real.
He signaled a three-count with his fingers, then stepped back and kicked beside the knob, shattering the lock. The door slammed open. He went left; I went right.
Ferris downed a bogey with a single tap to the head, then whirled and took out another. A third skell crouched in the right front corner. I spun and fired, flinching at the pain in my side. Hawk’s muzzle wavered; my bullet went wide. The bastard stood and set me in his sights, but never got the chance to pull the trigger. My second shot drilled him between the eyes.
Nothing to crow about. That was my second miss of the day and I was certain to hear about it. But three up, three down, and the good guys were still standing. That was a win in my book.
A muffled voice called from behind a door at the far end of the room. “Well, it’s about damn time.” The timbre and the tone sounded familiar, but given Toussaint’s mind games, I took my cue from Ferris’s reaction.
He bit back a smile, strolled forward and rapped on the door. “Anybody happen to see a cop, a rookie, and a reporter around here?”
“Son-of-a-bitch. Where in the hell have you—” Rico was having a meltdown and all I could do was smile.
I’d never been so happy to have my ass chewed out in all my life.
36
Shit-Out of Miracles
The solid mahogany door required a skeleton key which, sadly, hadn’t been left in the lock for our convenience. As if that weren’t a big enough challenge, the hinges weren’t visible on our side of the door, either.
Ferris frowned. “I could kick all day and not break this mother down. If I shoot the lock, the bullet could ricochet or hurt one of them inside.”
“Occam’s razor,” I muttered. “Since the key isn’t in the lock, surely one of the dead guards has it. Hold on.”
I bent over and rummaged through their pockets, grimacing, as I pulled out Kleenex, cigarette packs, and loose change.
“Yes,” I whispered, wrapping my fingers around an old brass key.
With a wink at Ferris, I put the key in the lock and turned the knob. The massive door groaned in protest as I pushed it open and stepped across the threshold. Ferris moved beside me, joining his flashlight beam to mine.
I scanned the room from left to right, searching for Rico. He blinked furiously as the light captured his face. In that instant, I cataloged every cut and bruise, the circles beneath his eyes and the sallow tone of his skin. He was tied to a heavy wooden chair in the center of the room. Dried blood stained his clothes and peppered the floor around him. Ferris pulled his Buck knife, rushed to Rico’s side and began sawing at the ropes to free him.
Fairchild lay in a heap, arms pulled behind his back and zip-tied to the foot of an old cast iron radiator. He didn’t speak, but his swollen eyes tracked our movements. Jade, lashed to a chair beside Rico, was slumped over, ashen and covered in sweat. Her usually shiny hair hung in tangled strings around her face. Which one needed me more? Had either of them been infected?
Jade raised her head and rasped, “Help Fairchild.”
I nodded and went to Fairchild’s side, slicing though his zip-tie. Anticipating the pain, I sucked in a breath and bent over, propping him squarely against the wall. A wave of dizziness washed over me.
I straightened up slowly, released my breath, then scrambled back to Jade. Her eyes were hollow and dark.
“It’s too late,” she whispered. “Toussaint injected me with the virus. Take care of the others.”
I pulled out one of the vials from Mama, opened it and held it to her lips.
“Drink this,” I said, pouring it into her mouth before she could ask what it was. Every second counted.
Freed from his ropes, Rico rose slowly from his chair and grimaced as the blood rushed back into his limbs. He wobbled to Jade’s side, swept her sweat-soaked hair from her face, and kissed her cheek. “What did you give her?”
“Mama made a tonic—”
“Mama, the magical Hoodoo queen?”
Under any other circumstances, I’d have knocked him into next Tuesday for taking a shot at Mama. But I bit my tongue instead. We had too big a battle in front of us to fight each other.
Jade’s eyes glimmered with hope. “This is a cure, right?”
I busied myself, checking her arms and legs for injuries. Anything to avoid looking her in the eye. “Not exactly.”
Rico fixed me in a long cold stare. “What do you mean, not exactly?”
“Let’s focus on getting out of here, okay?”
He stepped closer and growled, “Let’s focus on the truth.”
The truth? We’d been down this road before with Leo. There had never been a cure, and he knew it.
I spun around, ignoring the pain—but not for long. My knees buckled; a gasp shot out my mouth. I grabbed the arm of Jade’s chair to keep from falling, while Ferris shot to my side and put his arm beneath my shoulder.
Rico’s eyes widened. “What’s wrong?” He glanced from me to Ferris and back again, waiting for an answer.
So, I gave it to him straight.
“I fell through the fucking floor trying to save your ass. A simple thank you would suffice.”
The sound of distant footsteps brought our squabble to a close. But they weren’t the comforting, measured steps of the cavalry coming to save us. They were the frenzied, erratic steps of the undead.
“She’s right, you know,” Ferris said, guiding me toward the door. “Now is not the time. We’re about to have company, and not the good kind.”
I waited at the door while Rico helped Jade out of her chair, and Ferris lifted a woozy Fairchild to his feet.
“You with us?” Ferris asked, tapping Fairchild’s cheek.
The rookie steadied himself and flashed a wobbly thumbs up.
Ferris winked. “Back up’s on the way, pal. You hang in there, okay?”
Ferris and I had our weapons, but Rico’s and Fairchild’s
were long gone. I forked over my Ka-Bar knife to Rico, while Ferris busted Jade’s chair into pieces and handed out the jagged legs like party favors.
When he was finished, he unsheathed his Buck knife and gave it to Fairchild. “I want this back, kid. It’s my lucky knife.”
Battered and bloodied, we formed a ragtag group of warriors; Ferris at my back, Jade and Fairchild next, with Rico batting clean-up. I felt good about our chances. What the hell? We’d made it this far. All we had to do was make it back out alive.
Okay. Maybe I didn’t feel exactly good. But fair…ish. Heavy on the ish.
As we took our assigned places at the entrance to the hallway, I couldn’t help but remember the last time I went up against a real horde—the undead kind that never tires, that keeps coming long after you’re exhausted. The kind that destroys everything in its path. The kind that’s driven by an insatiable hunger. Toussaint sent an army of rotters to overrun my house when we were safeguarding Leo. Rico and Ferris were with me then, too. So was Nonnie.
Too bad Nonnie isn’t here with us now, I mused. She couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a gun, but she swung a mean skillet.
The footsteps grew louder, thumping, scuffling and shuffling toward us, echoing down the passage that led to our escape. With no way past the horde but through it, we moved into the hallway to run the gauntlet.
The biters surged, coming in high and low, grabbing our shoulders and ankles. Ferris fought off a corpsicle that lunged in from the left. A rotter snagged my calf and took me to my knees. Jade stepped up and buried the business end of her chair leg into the rotter’s head, spearing it like a redfish.
I got a twofer, jumping to my feet and firing into the forehead of the closest biter. The bullet burst through the back of its brain and into the eye socket of the bogey behind it.
We’d pass a room and think we’d cleared it, only to see a new round of rotters diving out into the hall, targeting the back half of the group.
Sirens blared in the distance. We battled down the hall, taking ground inches at a time. For every rotter we wasted, two more took its place. The narrow hallway echoed like a canyon, making it impossible to pinpoint where sounds came from. In front of us? Behind?
I had no way of knowing what was behind me. Was Rico holding his own? Fairchild? What about Jade?
I didn’t dare look back to find out.
A surge from the rear drove Ferris into me, knocking me to the ground. I flipped onto my back as a biter dove on top of me, snapping its serrated teeth at my neck. I shoved Hawk into the rotting flesh beneath its chin, pulled the trigger, and blew its head off, driving its body back into the oncoming horde. They stumbled backward into each other and fell like a line of deadhead dominos, giving me the chance to check on the rest of the group.
My flashlight beam came to rest on Princess Jade, who wielded her chair leg like a Louisville Slugger, swinging away and bashing brains like she’d been doing it her whole life. She was hot on Ferris’s heels, using him as a shield, the way she was supposed to. Rico, behind her, faced sideways with his back against the wall, head swiveling left to right, anticipating the next wave. He stepped forward, tripped over something, and fell to his knees.
Fairchild? Where was Fairchild?
Caught in the glow of my flashlight, Rico’s wild eyes told me everything I needed to know. Fairchild lay motionless, mouth twisted in agony, eyes fixed and glazed, his raw, crimson throat ripped to shreds. Rico sprang to his feet with a roar and slammed his hand against the wall. He sucked in a breath, wiped his sleeve across his face, and then turned to me with resentful eyes.
Bile filled my mouth as he rammed the Ka-Bar into Fairchild’s head.
My heart ached—for Fairchild, and for me, too. Would Rico ever stop hating me? Would he always blame me for what happened? Those were questions for another day. I worked my way to the back, to Fairchild, then bent over and picked Ferris’s Buck knife off the floor and handed it to Rico. What the hell? Fairchild wouldn’t be needing it.
The deadhead dominos, having righted themselves, churned forward in a rolling wave. Exhaustion had set in. My muscles ached. My ribs seared when I breathed. Soon, my mag would be empty, and we were shit-out of miracles. I tried not to dwell on the nasty end in sight. If it came to that, I had at least one bullet left. But did I have enough for Ferris, Rico and Jade?
Sirens screamed; flashing lights from police cruisers reflected against the foyer walls. Thank God. I thought. Just a few more minutes.
A bullhorn blared, “Chalmette Police Department. You inside, duck and cover. We’re coming in hot.”
As they entered, gunfire began to pop, sporadically at first, then quickly building to a hail of bullets that seemed to go on forever. Nobody wanted to duck and cover more than we did, but we still had the front-line biters surging toward us. Our best option was to flank each other, move forward in a crouched position, and pray for the best, taking the rotters down before they took us down.
Soon, the rain of bullets slowed to a deliberate series of calculated shots. The remaining deadheads fell one at a time.
Somehow, we’d survived. I’d never been more spent in my entire life.
I sat on the floor in the foyer and rested against a wall while Ferris called Boudreaux to tell him both the good news and the bad. When the ambulances arrived, I struggled to my feet and shined my flashlight into the crawl space, in search of the missing vial, but didn't find it. Jade and Rico passed by, strapped to their gurneys. On their way out the door, Jade smiled and kissed my hand, but Rico refused to look at me.
While the paramedics re-bandaged the knife wound on Ferris’s arm, I asked Chalmette PD to look for the vial and then reclaimed my seat against the wall, leaned my head back, and nearly drifted off. The same odd, uninvited voice from earlier that night whirred in my ear. Open your eyes.
I didn’t want to open them, but I needed to.
Directly across from me, on the foyer mirror, was a message written in blood. Midnight. Tomorrow. Congo Square. Come alone.
Could anyone else see the message? Or was it one of Toussaint’s mind games? After watching first responders and the coroner’s team walk past it without so much as a glance, I had my answer. The message was for my eyes only.
Toussaint needn’t have worried. Come midnight tomorrow, I alone would be at Congo Square. And I wouldn’t be leaving until I’d taken him down.
37
Casualties of War
Ferris needed stitches for the less emergent wound in his bicep, so I drove him to the St. Bernard Parish Hospital Emergency Room, the same place where Rico and Jade had been taken for assessment. After the nurse called Ferris back, I nodded off in the waiting room, awakening sometime later to the smell of coffee under my nose.
“Morning, Nighthawk.” Boudreaux’s eyes studied me, as if he were performing his own assessment.
“What time is it?”
“Five-ish”
“Go away.” I rolled sideways and grimaced. Damned ribs.
Boudreaux stared at my bloodied T-shirt and the wounds that peeked through what was left of it. “Drink your coffee. We’re going to get you checked out, just to be safe.”
I hate doctors but I was too tired and in too much pain to argue. Not long after, Ferris, with his upper arm bandaged, strolled out from behind the double doors and sat next to me, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes.
By the time I was called into the back, ninety minutes later, treated, medicated and discharged, Dickhead had arrived. He and Boudreaux stopped chatting when the hydraulic doors opened and I returned to my seat in the waiting room. Ferris lowered his gaze and squirmed like he’d been given an atomic wedgie.
Little Allie bristled and wanted to know what that was about. So did I.
Signed HIPPA consent forms in hand, Doctor Bailey met with us in a small conference room to discuss our litany of injuries with Horton and Boudreaux.
“Agent De Palma has a broken nose and multiple f
acial contusions and abrasions. He also has a bruised kidney with a small amount of associated internal bleeding. We’re going to admit him, so we can monitor the bleeding and make sure it subsides on its own. As for Ms. Chen, I understand she’s been infected with a synthetic version of the Z-virus.” The doctor looked at me and frowned. “I also understand she was given some kind of…home remedy. You wouldn’t happen to have a sample? We’d like to analyze the ingredients to prevent negative drug interactions.”
I fished the last vial from my pocket and handed it to the doctor. “It’s not a cure. It blocks the body’s absorption of the virus. She’ll need another dose in a month or so.”
The doctor peered at me over the top op of his glasses. “A month or so?”
“Every thirty-ish days.” Snarky bastard. Definitely not the kind of doctor who’d prescribe medicine in lunar doses.
Bailey scribbled something in his file and then continued his update. “Other than having contracted the virus, Ms. Chen is severely dehydrated and has pneumonia. She’ll be admitted and administered fluids as well as IV antibiotics. Agent Ferris received six stiches in his bicep. He’s got a nice assortment of soft tissue injuries, but he’s good to go. Ms. Nighthawk has two broken ribs, several lacerations in her thoracic area, and the mouth of a longshoreman. We don’t wrap ribs anymore; wrapping causes pneumonia. I’ve given her prescriptions for antibiotics and pain meds. She’s not only good to go, I wholeheartedly invite her to leave—preferably, to never return.”
Yeah? Screw you, Doctor Douche.
Boudreaux bit back a smile; Dickhead scowled.
“Geez. Awfully sorry for the potty mouth,” I said. “How ’bout you lie down, Doc? I’ll push on your broken ribs and we’ll see if you’ve got any shits and fucks inside you waiting to escape.”
Corpse Whisperer Sworn Page 24