Scarlet Dream

by James Axler

  “That’s the line,” Kane shouted, his eyes fixing on Ezili Coeur Noir’s yellow orbs. “Any of your people cross it and we will have ourselves a problem.”

  Ezili Coeur Noir held Kane’s gaze, the lids of her lizard eyes taking a slow blink as she considered his statement. “I like you,” she said in her rasping voice that sounded like crushed leaves. “You shall take pride of place as my castrato once the new dead world is born. And I shall make you sing.”

  But as Kane watched, the corpselike woman seemed to shudder, as if struck by a seizure. That was Hurbon’s doing, Kane knew—the binding was taking effect, casting some supernatural hold on the half-life figure of the Annunaki goddess that Hurbon had created when he had accidentally given her her new name.

  And then the awful, lifeless army charged at Kane through the pouring water and he found himself batting them away with swift strokes of the two-foot-long sword. As Hurbon had promised, the sword had some exceptional power over these creatures. It seemed to be devastating, far more effective than their bullets or other weaponry had been. Kane swung the sword in a long arc from high to low, cleaving the head from a stumbling undead man and snagging a chunk of his shoulder away before the ku-bha-sah sword cut the shambling undead woman beside him through the neck, continued slicing and powered through two more corpse-things, high in the rib and across the belly respectively. All four figures staggered backward, and the suddenly headless one grasped for where his skull had been before toppling backward into the next wave of zombies.

  “Come on,” Kane snarled. “Who’s next?”

  There were plenty of undead atrocities just waiting to take him up on that taunt.

  IN HIS WHEELCHAIR, Papa Hurbon continued wrapping the thin black ribbon around and around the fetish representing Ezili Coeur Noir, winding it tighter and tighter to bind his wicked goddess.

  “Poupée de cire,” Hurbon chanted under his breath as the sprinklers soaked the ribbon, “poupée de son. Poupée de cire, poupée de son.” It was French Creole, and the words meant “doll of wax, doll of dust.” So long as he repeated the binding spell, the houngan would hold Ezili Coeur Noir’s powers in check, prevent her from assaulting Kane and the others. However, he had no way to stop her undead army attacking.

  “Keep it up, man,” Grant said, glancing across the room to where Ezili Coeur Noir stood. “Whatever it is you’re doing seems to be working.”

  Hurbon made another twist of the binding ribbon. “The way of the path provides power you can’t possibly understand,” he told Grant.

  “I don’t need to understand it,” Grant replied, “just so long as it works. That’s my best friend fighting out there, while I’m stuck here protecting your sorry ass.”

  Ahead of them both, Brigid Baptiste sprinted across the decking toward the lab, the metal bar clutched in one hand, its surface stained with dark streaks of blood. One of the undead figures in the laboratory turned as she entered, and Brigid swung the pole around in an upward movement, knocking the undead man in the jaw with such force that he was driven almost a foot up in the air before falling onto his back with a loud crash. Even as he dropped, two more of the undead figures turned and rushed at the infiltrator, their busy work with the lab equipment forgotten.

  Brigid grasped her staff with both hands, readying herself for the next onslaught, but her emerald eyes were on the timer at the centrifuge spinner unit. The digital readout showed they had fifteen minutes left before the catalyst was mixed and ready for use, fifteen minutes before the end of the world began.

  The zombie to Brigid’s left—a female figure with a large chunk of her forehead caved in as if it had been struck with an artillery shell—made to grasp for Brigid with one of her deteriorating hands. The flesh there was a dark, pitted streak that barely clung to her clacking, bony fingers. Brigid stepped back and brought the metal staff up, striking the undead woman on the breastbone. The animated corpse took a step back at the impact, then tucked her head low between her shoulders, fixing Brigid with a glare from her soulless black eyes.

  To Brigid’s right, the second zombie lab technician swung one arm at her, and Brigid saw almost too late that he had tossed a beaker full of boiling liquid right at her face. Brigid ducked, just barely dodging the impact, as the water and the glass beaker flew through the air.

  The beaker smashed against a filing cabinet behind Brigid, shattering into pieces as steam puffed from its contents. The red-haired former archivist was already in motion then, swinging her metal pole low so that it tripped the male zombie off his feet. However, the first one was coming at her again, reaching out with hideous, clawlike fingers.

  Brigid rolled backward, watched in horror as the undead woman leaped after her, not so much diving as simply falling, her rotting black mouth wide open. Brigid could smell the corpse’s terrible breath as she landed just inches from her face, and she slapped her left hand against the woman’s concave skull, holding her back as the savage undead thing tried to bite off her nose.

  “Get…off me,” Brigid said, the words coming staggered as she struggled to keep the snapping jaws of the undead woman from snagging her.

  The undead woman’s hands came around, clawing for Brigid’s face even as her jaws clacked shut once again on empty air, closing just an inch from the tip of Brigid’s nose.

  KANE STABBED the three-foot-long blade of the ku-bha-sah through the rotting torso of his next opponent, using both hands on the grip to drive it through the zombie’s black heart. Pus and congealed blood spurted from the back of the undead warrior as he fell from the blade and toppled to the floor.

  But there was no time to congratulate himself. Kane saw another dozen shambling, undead figures making their way toward him on all sides, surrounding him and tightening the circle that would entrap him.

  Kane dived at the floor as the closest of the zombies swung a heavy metal wrench at his head, a makeshift weapon found among the artifacts in this motor pool of the old redoubt. Kane’s hand slapped against the metal plate floor and then he sprang up, twisting with the sword as he drove it up between the ribs of his latest opponent. The walking corpse let out an awful, choked gasp and thick, brown-colored blood oozed out over his front teeth. Standing once more, Kane pressed his foot against the zombie and gave him a hard shove, pushing him from the end of his blade.

  The zombie staggered backward, dropping the wrench to the floor with a splash of the pooling water. The undead man hissed, the spittle of his black-brown blood spraying out at Kane’s eyes as he did so, and he reached for Kane’s throat. Kane delivered a swift left punch at the zombie’s face, snapping his brittle neck with the force of the blow.

  Then the ex-Mag was moving once again, turning to face his next attackers. There were two—a man and a woman dressed in the tattered remains of their wedding clothes, their faces a patchwork of diseased skin. With a one-handed grip on the ceremonial sword, Kane swung it toward the undead woman’s head, slicing her rotten ear off and bringing with it a clump of matted hair that flew past him in the air. The undead husband made to grab Kane, his gristle-and-bone arms reaching around Kane’s torso and pulling the ex-Mag off his feet. Then the wife was upon Kane, battering her small, bony fists at his chest before clutching him by the throat.

  The undead woman’s grip was not tight enough to strangle him, but Kane felt her sharpened nails ripping into the flesh of his neck, drawing blood. He kicked out, driving a bent knee into the woman’s abdomen so that she doubled over, ceasing her horrifying attack.

  Then Kane was bending forward, shrugging out of the grip of the undead man and throwing him to the floor. The moving corpse hit the metal decking with brutal force, and he writhed there, struggling to right himself.

  Kane placed a firm foot against the struggling undead figure’s back, stomping hard to drive him back to the floor. Then the ku-bha-sah blade swung once more, and Kane decapitated his struggling foe with a vicious sweep of supernatural metal through desiccated bone. As the undead man’s head rolled away ac
ross the water-slick floor, Kane looked up to see further animated corpses making their unhurried way toward him. While the ceremonial blade he wielded was exceptional, he was beginning to feel exhaustion deep in the core of his being. He had been on the run all day, and the perverse incident in the House Lilandera had drained him in other ways. But there was no time to stop.

  With grim determination, Kane gritted his teeth and urged himself on, his sword glinting and flashing as it swung through the air.

  WHILE KANE WAS DOING an admirable job, it was perhaps inevitable that a few of the deathless zombies would break through his assault. Thus, as Papa Hurbon continued chanting his confirmation under his breath while he bound Ezili Coeur Noir, Grant found himself fending off four of the grave-busters who had been brought to life by their terrible mistress.

  “Keep going,” Grant instructed the priest. “I’ve got this.”

  Grant threw himself at the first of the undead men, a tall, gangly sort with a face so rotten it was hard to distinguish his features at all. Grant used his bulk to block the zombie’s path to Hurbon, and his fist lashed out in a hammer blow, knocking the zombie where his left eye had once been. The undead man stumbled backward, and Grant spun on his heel, whipping out with his other leg to trip the zombie, forcing him to the wet floor in a splash.

  The undead man hissed, and Grant recalled the Sin Eater to his grip before blasting a face full of lead at the uncanny creature. Even as he did so, a second soulless wretch reached for Hurbon, his hands grasping for the voodoo doll the man was working. Hurbon was no wall-flower; his meaty left fist snapped out and he struck the zombie square in the face, driving him an ungainly step backward.

  As the undead man recovered, Grant lunged, bringing him to the ground in a football-style tackle. The animated corpse toppled backward, crashing to his knees as his back was arched by Grant’s thunderclap blow. The ex-Mag leaped to his feet in an instant, unleashing another unforgiving round of gunfire at the undead man’s skull, the bullets ripping thick gobs of flesh away in their urgent passage.

  “Get back!” Grant instructed, turning for just a moment to look at Hurbon.

  The voodoo priest did not bother to argue. Immediately he began wheeling his chair back toward the wide-open doors of the vehicle elevator. The wheels kicked up water from the surface of the hangar in twin sprays as Hurbon retreated.

  In front of Hurbon’s startled eyes, Grant fearlessly tackled the undead people who had come after him. The powerfully built ex-Magistrate kicked the closest high in the chest, sending the undead woman hurtling backward as she struggled for and lost her balance. Grant ignored her, turning his attention to another of the fiends, this one armed with a metal bar. The bar whooshed through the air as the zombie tried to brain his living opponent, but Grant leaped out of the path of the lethal hunk of metal. Then the ex-Mag had his gun up and was directing a long burst of fire at the zombie, riddling his face and chest with bullets.

  The undead man with the bar took the impacts of the bullets without complaint, lurching just a little to retain his balance beneath the shock. The shots were all the distraction Grant needed, and he came at the corpse in a blur, his left hand reaching out in a vicious grab for his foe. Grant’s fingers grabbed the zombie by his rotten face, his digits sinking into the ruined flesh. Then the ex-Mag was pulling the undead man forward by his face, sickening hunks of graying flesh tearing away. With a final yank, Grant let go of the zombie and stepped aside as his forward momentum drove him straight into the decking.

  But there was no time to stop. Grant found himself facing two more of the zombies, one of them the woman he had first brought to the floor just thirty seconds earlier.

  In his wheelchair, Papa Hurbon continued winding the black ribbon around the doll, determined to keep their mistress’s deathly powers in check.

  IN THE CLOSED-OFF laboratory area, Brigid dived away from the undead woman who was trying to eat her nose, sweeping her legs out from under her with a turn of her metal staff. As she crashed into the watery decking, the undead woman grunted through a broken voice box, the sound like nails down a chalkboard.

  For a moment a strange sense of tranquility seemed to settle on the glass-walled room, and Brigid looked around her, searching for her next foe. There were several other walking undead men or women, making their unsteady way through the aisles of equipment toward her as water gushed from the broken pipe. And there, not six feet from where she stood, Brigid saw the timer counting down atop the centrifuge, timing the release of the Red Weed catalyst. Twelve minutes left.

  She could stay here, she realized, deal with the catalyst, add something to the mixture or simply break the device. But there was no time left. She needed to deal with the reactor first and foremost or Kane’s battle would be for nothing. She had to trust that Lakesh’s plan would work.

  The set of her jaw showing brave determination, the red-haired former archivist hurried through the lab and out to the tiny corridor beyond it that held a two-man elevator. Brigid stabbed at the call button, watching the open doorway as two more zombies hurried toward her from the lab.

  The elevator door slid back on its silent tread and Brigid stepped inside. She jabbed her floor button with an outstretched finger and waited as the elevator doors began to languorously close while her two would-be attackers stumbled into the abbreviated corridor. As the elevator doors were about to meet, one of Brigid’s undead foes reached out and jammed his hand between the doors, halting them and preventing the elevator from descending.

  Without a moment’s hesitation Brigid swept down with the two-foot-long metal bar she had appropriated as a makeshift weapon, rapping the solid metal across the zombie’s wrist. With a wrenching snap, the man’s wrist broke and the hand was ripped from the undead man’s arm.

  “Sorry, but I’m in a rush,” Brigid said as the doors whispered shut. “Can’t hold the elevator for anyone today.”

  The doors sealed and Brigid felt the elevator shake as it began to descend through the redoubt complex. As it sank through the shaft, Brigid let out a breath in relief. At her feet, the hand twitched as a spasm went through the dead fingers one last time.

  THE FLOOR of the hangar was over a foot deep with water, and the sprinklers continued to spray the room with freezing cold water like icy rain.

  Kane had worked through over thirty of the undead men by then. Both he and the ku-bha-sah blade were smeared with the detritus of human corpses, the water from the overhead sprinklers making it cling to them like some kind of muddy paste. Now, however, there were just two more of the undead men to dispatch before he reached Ezili Coeur Noir where she stood proudly like some strange statue of Cleopatra from ancient times. The revived corpses fought Kane with the grim determination of things that never want to die again, ripping and clawing at his flesh as he ducked and leaped away from their punishing assaults.

  Elsewhere in the large hangarlike room, Grant was dealing with the last of his own foes, protecting his team’s ace-in-the-hole—Papa Hurbon—until he could finish his binding spell.

  With two swift swipes of his sword, Kane dispatched the final two undead men and they fell to the floor as one, their guts curling out across the decking, their heads rolling away from their twitching bodies.

  “Your party’s over, Lilitu,” Kane said as he wiped the grime from his face. “Time to pay the band and go home.”

  Twelve feet away, standing at the doorway that led from the hangar at the back of the room, Ezili Coeur Noir narrowed her sick yellow eyes and let out a hiss, sounding more like a snake than a person. “Tomorrow’s parties are canceled, flesh puppet,” she told Kane. “All tomorrow’s parties end today.”

  And then Kane was running at the emaciated form of the queen of all things dead, and that terrible flower of carnage was shrieking as she called on her supernatural powers to destroy this apelike foe who challenged her projected reign of death.

  Chapter 23

  Brigid Baptiste hurried from the elevator and out into the
sub-basement corridor, her boots splashing in the eighteen inches of water that now covered the floor.

  She was in a service corridor with white-painted walls, the emergency lighting above fizzing and buzzing as it flickered on and off. In a moment she had reached the end of the corridor, and she burst through the fire door and into the main artery of the redoubt. She was back in the corridor with the red stripe running across its bottom third. Two of the walking corpses stood there, turning at the sound of the heavy door as it crashed against the wall on its hinges.

  “Dammit,” Brigid swore, “I just don’t have the time for this.”

  The zombies—a woman and a man—groaned angrily as they spied Brigid hurrying toward them.

  Brigid swung the metal bar in a high arc, and it struck across the undead woman’s face, knocking her back into the white-and-red wall with bone-jarring certainty.

  As the female corpse-thing fell backward, the man lunged for Brigid, and she drove him away with the heel of her hand, smacking it against his breastbone as if pushing a button on an old-fashioned game show.

  “Come on,” Brigid muttered as she brought the metal bar back into play. “Give a girl a break already.”

  The undead man either didn’t hear or, more likely, didn’t care.

  TWO FLOORS ABOVE, Grant turned to Papa Hurbon at the vehicle elevator that only came as low as the hangar.