Scarlet Dream

by James Axler

  Grant focused his attention on the one he had shot first. He had had time while in the House Lilandera to consider the most efficient way to deal with this seemingly infinite army of undead. He and Kane had concluded that his best option was to put each one down in succession, rather than allow their energies to be split between two or more. So Grant punched the first zombie with his left fist, smashing it across its still-smoldering face with a blow like a hammer. The undead man staggered backward under the force of the punch, and Grant raised the Sin Eater again, snapping off another burst of fire at the thing’s torso. Grant turned then, as the first animated corpse fell over, his feet snagged by the roots of a weed that had spread over the pathway.

  As his first foe fell, Grant turned on the next undead man, saw that this one was carrying a thick branch it had snagged from one of the nearby trees. Grant leaped over the path of the swinging branch, landing agilely on both feet and delivering a rocket-fast jab to the zombie’s jaw. Even as his fist struck, Grant popped off another burst of fire from the Sin Eater, peppering the undead thing’s face with bullets.

  Though bullets had little effect on these revived corpses—other than perhaps whittling down their bodies by miniscule degrees—Grant had concluded that the shock to their bodies, plus the burst of light involved, served as enough of a distraction to give him some small advantage. As such, he used his Sin Eater like an extension of his fist, landing blows and lacing them with quick bursts of gunfire as he struck.

  As the undead man with the branch sagged backward, Grant rammed down with his left fist, bringing it hard against the back of his adversary’s head. The moving corpse-thing toppled forward, getting a face full of shingle as he struck the path.

  Grant used his strike to springboard from the moving zombie, leaping through the air and catching the third one with a scissor kick that threw them both to the ground. As the third corpse-thing struggled to fight back, Grant drove a knee into his windpipe, slamming his head against the solid ground. Then his right fist struck out again and again, smashing the zombie’s moldering face, with a burst of gunfire punctuating every blow.

  “Stay…the hell…down!” Grant ordered his gruesome opponent as each punch struck.

  In a few seconds the undead thing’s rotten face looked barely like a face at all, and thick black liquid leaked from its empty eye sockets like an oil spill.

  Kane and Brigid had joined Grant by then, mopping up the struggling corpses that Grant had put out of action. Together, the three of them worked as one unit to finish off the undead figures.

  “This is going to take forever,” Kane complained as he put the last of their relentless foes down for good, decapitating him with a solid kick. “We need to be back in the redoubt inside an hour to make this plan work. After that, the Red Weed catalyst will make whatever we do irrelevant—everyone will be dead anyway.”

  Grant gave his partner a stern look. “We can only keep going,” he said. “If it happens, I’ll deal with these dead things while you and Brigid make a run for it to the redoubt.”

  As Grant made his statement, Brigid’s Commtact came to life and she listened as Lakesh outlined his discoveries.

  “Regarding the reactor, I think we’ve found a way to make it work,” Lakesh explained. “It’s a back door to the security system, but by using a false power surge to the electrics we can fool the system into believing it’s been shut down. Once we do that, it will automatically engage a systems check and reboot sequence, giving you about two minutes during which the access hatch can—theoretically—be opened.”

  “You say about two minutes…?” Brigid said.

  Donald Bry’s strained voice came over the Commtact link. “The reboot takes two minutes and eight seconds,” he explained. “The system will believe it’s been powered down during that period and will allow the access hatch to be opened. That’s your window.”

  The trio of Cerberus warriors and Papa Hurbon had reached the scarred blacktop now, and warily began to trudge along it, back to where the overgrown dirt track led deeper into the swamps.

  “That’s not long,” Brigid mused over the Commtact, “but I think it’s doable. How much notice do you need at your end to start this security glitch?”

  “We’ve set the sequence in place,” Lakesh told her. “We’re monitoring your progress via our satellite surveillance and we can go live as soon as you’re ready.”

  “But you can’t see once we enter the redoubt and our Commtacts are unreliable inside,” Brigid observed, speaking her thoughts out loud. “Kane?” she asked, knowing her partner was listening in on the conversation.

  “We’ll be there in an hour,” Kane decided. “Have to guess it after that.”

  “But what if you’re not there?” Lakesh asked.

  “Then you’ll finally get to throw that end-of-the-world party you’ve been planning for,” Kane stated.

  Over the com link, the Cerberus warriors heard Lakesh discuss the plan with his personnel. Then he came back to Brigid and Kane. “We’ll monitor your progress via the satellite and start our sequence ten minutes after you reach the door.”

  “What about the catalyst?” Brigid asked.

  “By Kane’s timing that would be ready in ninety minutes,” Lakesh said. “Donald and I have a team working on possible counteragents, but no answers yet, I’m afraid.”

  “Great,” Kane said sourly. “Anything else?”

  “Good luck,” Lakesh offered.

  Kane, Brigid and Grant checked their wrist chrons as they continued down the scarred tarmac roadway.

  “Roughly ninety minutes before the world ends, huh?” Kane pointed out with grim humor.

  Wheeling himself along the blacktop behind the Cerberus teammates, Papa Hurbon spoke up. “We have, on occasion, been on opposing sides of the fence during our brief meetings,” he told Kane and the others. “But I believe today that fortune is waiting to be kind.”

  Brigid looked at the strange voodoo priest and smiled, clearly touched. “I hope you’re right, Mr. Hurbon.”

  Hurbon shrugged. “In a situation of this magnitude, my natural instinct is to call upon the loa—to pray to my gods,” he clarified. “Somehow, that seems inappropriate. We are going to kill one, are we not?”

  “We’re going to stop a god gone mad,” Brigid lamented. “Things like that—they just have to be done.”

  “You make it sound like you do this regularly,” Hurbon observed with a chuckle.

  “Yeah, sure,” Kane huffed. “Every three months. Set your watch by it.”

  Thus, the foursome made its way onto the dirt road that led to the underground entrance of the redoubt. Kane took up a position behind Hurbon’s wheelchair, grasping the handles and pushing the corpulent man along since he found the uneven track heavy going under his own power.

  “How far away is this place?” Hurbon asked, reaching into the bag at his side.

  “Fifty minutes on foot,” Kane said. “Maybe a little less if we don’t meet anything too hostile. Or if you lost weight.”

  Hurbon produced the spindle of black ribbon from his saddlebag and began unraveling a length of it, speaking under his breath. He was blessing it, Kane guessed, preparing the ribbon—and himself—for this final showdown.

  Within forty minutes the group had reached the entrance to the redoubt. Other than the clutch of undead wandering around near Lilandera, there had been few signs of life—or unlife—during their trip. There had been just two encounters with wandering corpse-things, both of them mercifully brief. It seemed that Ezili Coeur Noir had called most of her troops to her side, and Brigid proposed that the undead things may have trouble living—as it were—beyond a certain proximity to her.

  As if to confirm Brigid’s theory, Grant spotted several shambling figures waiting by the large rollback door to the redoubt. “Company,” he stated, his voice low.

  “I see them,” Kane acknowledged. “We’re ahead of schedule. Let’s keep it that way.”

  With a single curt
nod, Grant hurried forward, his body crouched low, the Sin Eater present once more in his hand. His companions followed but held back a little, both Brigid and Kane remaining alert if Grant needed their help.

  In his wheelchair on the dirt track, Papa Hurbon brought out the doll that represented Ezili Coeur Noir, its black rag body sagging with the loose sawdust stuffing inside. “Get me to some cover, eh?” he instructed Kane. “Give me a chance to finish this.”

  With a silent nod, Kane pushed Hurbon’s chair to the edge of the dirt road while Brigid kept watch, hiding the voodoo priest among the greenery there. The greenery was actually turning brown, much like the dead plants in the immediate vicinity of the redoubt itself. It seemed that the longer Ezili Coeur Noir remained here, the more death spread out around her. Her powers were growing, Kane realized.

  “You think I’ll be safe here?” Hurbon asked as Kane parked the wheelchair.

  “I’m fresh out of guarantees,” Kane replied grimly as he turned back to the dirt road leading to the redoubt entrance.

  Open, the door to the redoubt was wide enough to fit a vehicle through. There were three zombies trudging around, not really guarding the entrance so much as wandering aimlessly. They turned as Grant approached in his half crouch.

  The lead undead thing was a woman, with tangled locks that fell down her back like lines of blood. This was the same one whom Kane had battled with earlier, the one he had dubbed Dreadlocks who had thrown him through the glass wall of the laboratory. She hissed like a rattlesnake when she saw Grant, and he could not help but smile, repulsed but faintly amused by the terrible thing.

  Behind her, two other undead figures waited, and then Grant spotted a third hanging back in the shadows of the tunnel. The closest of the undead figures was skeletal with a walking stick. Next was a small figure whose skin had shredded, leaving only his white skull for a face. The third figure remained in the shadows of the entryway, looming there with unspoken menace, at home with this swath of death that now surrounded the redoubt.

  As Grant took another step, Dreadlocks stopped hissing and lunged at him. Grant was ready, mentally prepared for this move. He had stepped forward only on the toe of his foot, and he kicked backward so that he reared away as the undead woman swept a clawlike hand at his face. Her hand cut through the air, and then Grant was upon her, his right fist driving a blow low to her torso, the Sin Eater’s trigger depressed as he struck.

  The female zombie’s body shook and chunks of her desiccated guts spewed from out of her back as Grant’s bullets cleaved a path through her rotten flesh.

  This close up, Grant could smell her, and his nose wrinkled in disgust. Her breath reeked of disease, while her body carried the musty smell of old books, mildew and dust. As the undead woman doubled over with Grant’s punch and tumbled to the ground, the undead figure with the walking stick turned on Grant.

  Grant’s eyes opened wider as the animated cadaver took his stick in both hands and wielded it like a bat. Behind the scarecrowlike skeleton, the white-faced one bared his teeth and hissed, his hands poised like knives.

  “Crap,” Grant muttered. They were fighters, dead or alive.

  Grant ducked low as the stick came slashing through the air, swishing just inches over his head. He jabbed out with his right fist, blasting off a volley of bullets at his skeletal adversary.

  Behind Grant, Kane and Brigid had just joined the fight, even as the undead thing with dreadlocks struggled up off the ground, her rotten guts hanging from her torso.

  “I’ll take her,” Brigid instructed. In a second she had flipped around the metal pole she held, striking the female zombie across the side of her face and knocking her back to the ground.

  Kane didn’t stop to argue. He was already rushing at the shorter figure, leaping into the air as he reeled off a stream of bullets from his own Sin Eater pistol. The short, skull-faced zombie stood there as the bullets rattled against his bony hide. Then Kane was on him, his foot kicking out into the undead thing’s jaw. The zombie fell back, but had recovered in a fraction of a second. Despite being dead, these things still seemed able to move pretty damn fast when they needed to, Kane lamented, and it seemed they had more life in them when they were close to their terrible mistress, Ezili Coeur Noir. She had to be inside the redoubt, then.

  Then the white-faced zombie lashed out with his right hand, driving it like a blade at Kane’s exposed throat. Kane managed to turn just a fraction, and the undead thing’s hand caught the edge of his neck, the talonlike nails ripping away curling shreds of skin.

  Kane struck back, driving his left knee into the zombie’s gut with such force that the animated corpse-thing was shoved backward, arms flailing to keep his balance.

  Kane’s right fist whipped out and he drilled another burst of fire at his opponent, then he followed through with a roundhouse kick, spinning in place until his heel met with the tumbling form of the white-faced zombie. The zombie crashed to the ground, skidding in the dirt until his chalky head slammed against the side of the redoubt door. Kane stood over the struggling, undead body for a moment, blasting shot after shot into his back. He spasmed, like an insect with its carapace cracked, still trying to right itself despite the fact that its body was ruined.

  Kane drove the heel of his boot into the back of the undead man’s neck, slamming it down into the ground as he tried unsuccessfully to get up. Kane became aware of the looming figure just a few feet back from the redoubt entrance. It was the big man with the eye patch hiding his empty left socket. Kane peered into the shadows, watching as that broad-shouldered undead man strode into the light like some prizefighter from another era, an era when legends still walked the Earth.

  “Guess it’s you and me,” Kane said, and he raised his Sin Eater, snapping off a quick shot. The bullet zipped through the air and struck the zombie’s face, leaving a hole dead center of the eye patch. The animated undead man seemed utterly unfazed as a wisp of smoke smoldered from the hole in the ruined eye patch. “Yeah,” Kane muttered to himself, “just you and me.”

  A few feet away Grant vaulted and ducked as his own undead opponent slashed at him with his walking stick. Then the zombie came at him again, swinging with his walking stick, and Grant met the stick with the muzzle of his gun. The two weapons clashed together, and a sliver of the aged stick snapped away.

  Going low, Grant dipped and blasted off another burst of bullets from his weapon, peppering the emaciated body of the zombie with titanium-coated 9 mm steel. The scarecrow-thin figure shook as the bullets drilled into his soulless body, dancing in place as if caught in a quake.

  Grant leaped then, his Sin Eater still spitting death at the revived old corpse as he barreled through the air. The corpse-thing raised the walking stick once again but Grant’s right foot kicked out, anticipating the move and kicking the stick aside. The aged stick snapped in half as Grant’s blow struck.

  As the walking bag of bones turned, pulled by the momentum of the blow to his walking stick, Grant landed feet-first on his chest, driving the old figure into the ground. The zombie let out a hissing curse as Grant’s weight broke his rib cage, and the ex-Mag rolled from his body, turned and drilled another blast of gunfire into the zombie’s face.

  A moment later Grant was standing over the animated corpse, one foot to either side of the undead thing’s long head as he stabbed at Grant with the abbreviated length of the broken stick. Clamping his feet there, Grant shifted position and snapped the awful thing’s neck, wrenching it hard to the left. When the ex-Mag stepped away, the old corpse lay still on the ground, head turned at an impossible angle, the creamy bones at the top of the spinal column peeking through his ragged frock coat. After a moment, the hand holding the stick drooped, sagging to the ground and loosening its grip on the walking stick for a final time.

  While Grant was dispatching his foe, Brigid was using her metal pole like a staff to bat her own blood-haired foe backward into the siding of the buried redoubt entrance. Incredibly, Dreadlocks reached
out and snagged the end of the staff as it came at her face for the fifth time. Brigid suddenly found herself losing her footing as the pole came to an abrupt halt in midair.

  Then Brigid was lying on her back, the metal bar wrenched from her hands by the blood-haired woman. Dreadlocks held the metal bar, staring at it with her soulless eyes, and Brigid would swear that a grin crossed her wasted, time-eaten face.

  The undead woman swung the metal pole at Brigid, turning her opponent’s weapon against her in a flash. Brigid rolled out of the way as the bar slammed down against the ground, burying itself several inches into the moist soil beside her head. The female zombie recovered in a second, and drew the metal pole back for another swing at her opponent, even as the red-haired former archivist struggled to her feet at the edge of the path, where the dried-up tree cover began.

  The metal shaft whizzed through the air again, cutting a savage strike against Brigid’s ribs as she righted herself. Once again, Brigid fell, tumbling over and over with the force of the blow. Dreadlocks kept coming, pulling back the pole to try for another swing at her living opposite, the blood-smeared metal bar swinging through the air like a gross baseball bat.

  Still lying on her back, Brigid’s right hand fumbled for her holster, and she produced the TP-9 semiautomatic even as the pole came crashed down toward her face. Brigid turned her head at the vital instant, and the heavy metal bar slapped against the loam, kicking up another gob of wet soil.

  Brigid swept the TP-9 around, blasting bullets at her attacker even as she came at her again with the metal bar. “I don’t plan on following you into oblivion,” Brigid promised as her bullets struck the zombie figure and pinged off the hard surface of the swinging metal bar.

  The metal pole swept down again, striking Brigid across her left shin, forcing her to scream out in agony.

  Her mind racing, Brigid saw her chance and she altered her target in an instant, turning her TP-9 on the dead branches of the overhanging tree. As the zombie with dreadlocks charged at her, Brigid’s bullets clipped the branches above them, cutting them from the trunk of the cypress tree. The zombie figure disappeared amid a tumble of crashing foliage, and Brigid rolled aside once more as the metal bar slammed the ground beside her.