The Taste of Fear (A Suspense Action Thriller & Mystery Novel)

by Jeremy Bates

  “You forgot the bodies,” he said from behind her.

  “I’m checking it out first.”

  The stairs were narrow and steep and curving. The yellow beams of the two flashlights cut circular swaths in the darkness, revealing grimy, crumbling stone walls. The stairs seemed to go on and on before they emerged in a large open space. Scarlett felt dwarfed, like a spelunker who’d just stumbled upon a vast cavern.

  She directed the flashlight around. The undercroft was brick-lined with high vaulted ceilings. It seemed to extend not only below the chancel but the nave and transepts as well. Corridors stretched away from the main section at right angles. Except for the slow plink-plink of dripping water, it was tomb quiet, the air dank and smelling of mildew and age.

  “Spooky,” Sal said from beside her.

  Scarlett said, “Let’s go get Miranda.”

  “Not so fast. You wanted to check it out, so let’s check it out.”

  “I’ve seen enough.”

  “Just a few minutes.”

  Before she could reply, Sal walked away from her to the nearest corridor, leaving her alone. She hurried to catch up. The arched alcove was about twenty feet deep. At the end of it was a rectangular box.

  “Don’t tell me that’s a coffin,” she said. She was whispering, though she didn’t know why. Nobody was around to hear her. But it seemed appropriate considering this place wasn’t an undercroft as they’d previously assumed; it was a crypt—a place for the dead.

  “Give me a hand with the lid,” Sal said.

  “Are you nuts?”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Why do you want to open it?”

  “To see what’s inside.”

  “I think I have a pretty good idea, Sal.”

  “It’ll give us a clue as to who ran this village before it burned down. Now are you going to help me or not?”

  Scarlett wanted to say no, but she knew Sal would do it himself anyway. That would take longer, which meant they would be down here longer.

  They each took an end of the wooden lid and lifted. The lid came free with a small puff of escaping air. Scarlett leaned forward to look inside the coffin. The smell of mold and human dust and dried meat hit the back of her throat like a physical presence. She gagged and stumbled away, dropping her end of the lid. It crashed to the floor, the rotten wood splintering on contact.

  Sal, left with the entire weight, cursed and dropped his end as well. Learning from her mistake, he covered his nose with his arm and looked inside the coffin. Scarlett did the same. Although she had seen several corpses in the last few hours, none of them had been dead for very long, and all had looked human.

  What she saw now didn’t look human one bit. The face of the skull stared at her in broken horror. The jaw hung open in a silent yowl, slightly lopsided, showing peg-like teeth. The eye sockets were gaping black holes filled with dust and other decomposed organic matter. The skeletal body was dressed in a royal-blue jacket with a line of bronze buttons down the front, wide knickerbockers, puttees, and leather ankle boots.

  “Some sort of colonial soldier,” Sal said. “French or Belgium maybe.”

  Scarlett stared, transfixed by the clothed skeleton, the ghastly thing that had once been a man—a man who likely at one time had a wife and a house and a family, a man who had felt fear and happiness and love, who had seen beauty in a sunrise and put value to money and obeyed the rules of right and wrong. A man who was now bones in a box.

  Scarlett felt like she was being let in on some age-old secret. This was what death looked like, she thought. How Miranda and Joanna would soon look. What she herself would one day be.

  She blinked and turned away. She was freaking herself out, and this was not the place where she wanted to be freaked out.

  With a jolt of panic, she realized Sal was gone.

  Frowning, she swept the flashlight beam across the mouth of the alcove. Shadows danced and leapt. “Sal?” she called.

  “Come here!” His voice echoed slightly from somewhere to the right.

  “I want to leave.”

  “Come here.”

  Scarlett found him in the next corridor over, examining another coffin.

  “Opening one coffin, fine, Sal,” she said, reprimanding. “But two? That’s perverse.”

  “Look.”

  He aimed the light at the floor, revealing several sets of footprints in the dust, which weren’t hers or his. They all led from the stairs directly to the coffin and nowhere else.

  Scarlett’s first thought: vampire. Some undead thing sleeping its days away down here, waking at dusk to feed on blood during the night. But then the rational side of her brain kicked in, reminding her that there were no such thing as vampires and witches and other monsters.

  There was a much more logical explanation for the footprints.

  “Jahja?” she said.

  “Who else?”

  “Why would he be interested in that coffin?”

  “That’s what I want to find out. Give me a hand with the lid again. And try not to drop it this time.”

  She joined him at the coffin. On the count of three they heaved the lid off and set it on the floor so it leaned at a forty-five degree angle against the wall. They covered their noses and peered in. The coffin was filled with a smorgasbord of automatic weapons, boxes of ammunition, magazines, grenades, and other miscellaneous military gear.

  “Jackpot,” Sal said.

  Scarlett uncovered her nose. This time the only smell was that of oil and metal and cardboard. “Why would Jahja be stashing all these weapons out here?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Well, whatever. Can we leave now? I want to get Joanna and Miranda down here so I can attend to Thunder.”

  Sal nodded, but not before he selected a grenade and stashed it in his pocket.

  Scarlett frowned. “Why do you want that?”

  “We’re still in the jungle, cara mia. Still vulnerable. Until Danny arrives, it’s better to remain safe than sorry.”

  “Safe from what?”

  Sal didn’t have an answer to that—or if he did, he wasn’t telling.

  CHAPTER 32

  Scarlett and Sal sat shoulder to shoulder against the stone wall of what had only recently been their prison. Thunder lay along the floor in front of them, Sal’s torn blazer bunched beneath his head as a pillow. Scarlett had given him the two aspirin and made him drink some water she’d brought from the church. That had been almost two hours before. He seemed to be doing better now. At least his fever was in remission.

  The rain, a steady drizzle, hadn’t let up yet, but it hadn’t gotten any worse either. It was still thundering and lightning, each white blaze visible through the cracks in the ceiling. Scarlett was deep in thought, going over everything she wanted to do when she returned home to LA, which included eating a mammoth cheeseburger from Dukes on the Sunset Strip, ordered in, taking a long hot bubble bath in her Jacuzzi, and maybe calling up her masseuse, Rose, for a three-hour-long pampering.

  Thunder’s eyes fluttered open.

  “Thunder!” she said, cheeseburgers and massages instantly forgotten. “How are you feeling?”

  He grimaced. “Like I just woke up on the bottom of the scrimmage.”

  “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “Got any food?”

  “There’s some in the church. We ate some earlier. I’ll go get you something.”

  He looked confused. “What about…you know…the bad guys?”

  “They’re all dead.”

  Hearing herself speak those words gave her a thrill. It shouldn’t. Death was still death, regardless of who it had ferried across the Styx, and she wasn’t sadistic, but she couldn’t help the feeling. Jahja and his cronies were dead; she and Sal and Thunder were alive. All was as it should be in the world.

  Except for Joanna and Miranda, she thought dourly. Don’t forget about them.

  Apparently her words gave Thunder a thrill too. Hi
s eyes widened and his mouth opened, as if to ask what she was talking about.

  “I’ll explain when I get back,” she told him.

  “I’m coming too,” Sal said.

  “I can get it—”

  “Yes, I know,” he said, cutting her off. “Still, we should stick together.”

  Scarlett nodded. She understood. They didn’t know for sure whether the Irishman was truly gone or not. They collected their assault rifles—Sal had shown her how to use hers—and went outside.

  Halfway across the road, Scarlett froze. She grabbed Sal’s forearm and pointed to the west side of the clearing, where a short column of people had emerged from the forest and were now walking toward the town.

  “Who are they?” she said.

  Thunder grumbled loudly. The line of men grew more distinct. She counted at least two dozen. One of the half-naked tribes she’d seen living along the riverbank? A rat-pack of bushman-like Congolese villagers? Yes, it must—

  A zigzag of lightning crackled overhead, momentarily illuminating the clearing. Not villagers, she realized. They wore backward or sideways baseball caps, bandanas, and baggy T-shirts and shorts. A few even had on mismatched military uniforms and too-large combat helmets. They walked with a swagger, like the Mexican street gangs in LA. They all carried automatic weapons.

  “Rebels,” Sal said, stating what she was thinking. “I think that was their stash of weapons we discovered earlier.”

  Scarlett wondered if Sal had suspected this back in the crypt, and if that was the reason he’d taken the grenade. But there was no time to press the matter. The rebels had spotted them in the flash of lightning as well. They let out a collective cry and broke into a run toward them.

  Sal raised his assault rifle.

  “Don’t,” Scarlett said, yanking his arm back down. “There’re too many of them. If they see you pointing that thing, they’ll shoot us down.” She was aware of the quiver in her voice.

  “What the hell do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing. There’s nothing we can do.”

  When the large group of men came to within fifty feet, they stopped and shouted incomprehensible words and waved their guns in the air.

  Scarlett and Sal raised their hands.

  Bolstered by the show of peace, the rebels advanced slowly. It turned out they weren’t men; they were boys, most no older than teenagers. It was like a scene out of Lord of the Flies. Or, more precisely, Lord of the Flies meets Boyz n the Hood. Even so, she was trembling. Their expressions were murder, their eyes bloodshot. A few were holding bottles of a murky white drink that she was pretty sure wasn’t milk.

  A long, thin, tubular object was strapped to the back of one of them.

  A rocket launcher?

  “Hello,” Sal said, and the confidence he displayed amazed her. “Do you speak English?”

  The oldest kid, who was maybe in his early twenties, stepped forward. He was wearing wraparound sunglasses and an extra-large Eminem T-shirt. A red beret sat atop his thick, tightly curled black hair. He looked simultaneously ridiculous and terrifying.

  “I am Killer,” he announced.

  Scarlett and Sal exchanged a look. A burst of lightning sparked the sky, chased by heavy thunder. The rain fell harder.

  “Killer is your name?” Sal said. A little less confident?

  “Sergeant Major Killer. I want money.”

  “We don’t have any money.”

  “You give me drugs then.”

  “Do I look like I carry drugs, chief?”

  Scarlett rested a warning hand on Sal’s forearm. What was he thinking? These might be kids, but this was their world—a world without rules or repercussions. If they decided Sal was patronizing them, they’d likely shoot him for his insolence.

  Undeterred by the rain, the kid with the red beret took out a rolled cigarette and lit up. Not tobacco, Scarlett realized when the waft of smoke drifted in her face. Cannabis.

  They were drunk and high.

  Killer took off the shades, hooked them on the neck of his shirt, and said, “Give me your guns.”

  “No,” Sal said.

  “Yes, Sal,” Scarlett said harshly. She lifted the rifle strap over her shoulder and handed the weapon to Killer stock first. He examined it for a moment, then fired a burst of bullets into the air.

  Scarlett ducked, covering her ears. Sal stepped backward.

  Killer tossed the AK-47 to one of the other kids and said, “I want that one also.”

  This time Sal gave it to him without protest.

  “Why are you here?” he asked, handing the joint to a guy with a Leonardo DiCaprio T-shirt.

  Scarlett knew full well that her face could just as easily have been on that shirt, and she wondered if she should tell these kids who she was. Would they suddenly treat her to a big feast with music and dancing like something out of Romancing the Stone? Or would they rape her and kill her for the bragging rights? She looked in Killer’s blood-crazed eyes. She kept quiet.

  “We’re Americans,” Sal said. “We were taken here by terrorists.”

  “You lie. You are FDLR.”

  “Do we look like FDLR?”

  Scarlett wiped rain from her eyes. “What’s that?”

  “A Rwandan rebel group,” Sal told her.

  “See, I am right,” Killer said. “You are FDLR.”

  “Why would we be down here, this far south?”

  “You are running from the Rwanda Army or the Congolese government.”

  “Look at me, kid,” Sal said curtly. “Am I black?”

  “You are undercover.” Killer laughed. “No, I know who you are for real. You are UN. You are MONUC. You are working with the armed forces to get rid of us.”

  “And who are you?”

  “I am Rambo. Major General Rambo.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “So you are MONUC?”

  “No.”

  “I think you are.”

  “Listen, Killer—”

  “Rambo.”

  “Okay, Rambo—”

  “Major General Rambo.”

  Sal took a frustrated breath and said, “Look, Major General Rambo. There’s a helicopter coming for us very soon. When it gets here, I can get you some money, if that’s what you want. Just relax for now and be patient.”

  “We will kill them.”

  Sal’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Yeah?” he said. “Good luck.”

  “We will eat them.”

  Scarlett couldn’t help but feel as if she’d fallen down the rabbit hole. The conversation sounded comical, absurd even, but there was an underlying menace that made the hair on the back of her neck stand tall.

  A burst of forked lightning turned the sky dark blue. The kid with the DiCaprio shirt shouted and pointed to Jahja’s body lying twenty-five feet away in the middle of the road.

  “You killed him?” Rambo said to Sal.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you. We were kidnapped. He was one of the kidnappers.”

  “He is a soldier?”

  “He’s a terrorist.”

  “How many more soldiers are here?”

  “None.”

  Rambo barked something to his gang. Two of the kids jogged off to search the buildings. They emerged from the prison dragging Thunder by the arms and tossed him onto the muddy road. Thunder, still semi-unconscious, raised his head and started to say something. One of the kids kicked him in the face with his boot. He collapsed and lay still.

  Scarlett cringed but held her tongue.

  “You lied to me,” Rambo said, then fired a slug into Sal’s leg. Sal gasped, collapsing to the ground.

  “Don’t!” Scarlett screamed, flabbergasted by how quickly they’d gone from talking to gunshots. “Don’t!”

  Rambo barked more orders. His child soldiers dragged Sal and Thunder and prodded her around the side of the church to a fire pit, where they pulled back a blue plastic tarp to reveal separate
piles of dry tinder, kindling, and larger sticks. They started tossing leaves, grass, and bark into the ring of stones.

  Scarlett, however, was focused solely on Sal. He was lying beside her, his eyes closed, his face wet. She took his hand in hers and squeezed, thinking briefly about how he’d done the same to her last week in the hospital. He squeezed back weakly. His jaw muscles were bunched, as if he was in severe pain, and she had no doubt he was. The bullet had gone into his thigh, just above the knee. Given the amount of blood soaking his pant leg, it looked as if it might have hit a deep artery or vein—and if that was the case, she knew he wouldn’t make it until Danny arrived.

  She was losing him, and there was nothing she could do about it. She felt as if she’d been caught up in a powerful mudslide, and all she could do was hang on to something and pray for the best.

  She gripped the hemline of her dress with shaking hands and tore upward, creating a slit. She pulled horizontally, parallel with the lower edge, until she’d ripped free a long piece of fabric. She folded the cloth in half, corner to corner, then folded it again and again until she had a makeshift bandage that was roughly three inches wide and several layers thick. “Can you hear me, Sal?” she said softly.

  He nodded.

  “You’re bleeding a lot. I have a tourniquet. I’m going to tie it around your leg. It’s going to hurt—”

  “No.”

  “I have to, Sal.”

  “It’s too late.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  His eyes opened. They were filled with rage.

  “Help me up,” he said.

  “What? Why?”

  “Help me get to my feet.”

  “You can’t stand. Not with your leg—”

  “I’m not going to die lying down.”

  “Sal—”

  “Help me.”

  Fighting back tears, Scarlett moved beside him so he could loop an arm around her neck. She stood, pulling him upright with her, taking half his weight. Her mind was numb; she was just going through the motions. But a part of her, a part she didn’t want to recognize, thought maybe she knew what she was doing—knew she was helping Sal kill himself.

  Rambo, who had been overseeing the fire, saw them and laughed. “Where do you think you are going?”

  Scarlett could feel Sal shaking—the stress of trying to stand on one leg.