Dead Market

by Gary Starta

  Chapter 2

  Guatemala, six months earlier…

  The two enforcers trudged along a muddy path, the muck an uneasy reminder of things to come. Things were going to get messy no matter how many times Carlos focused on the singing.

  “Don’t you just love their song?” Carlos asked Juan, his senior by five years.

  “They’re just a bunch of fucking birds, mi amigo,” Juan answered. “They don’t even know what they’re singing about. It’s loco. And you’re fucking crazy for thinking they do.”

  Juan tried his best to hold his grimace, but finally broke into a sadistic grin when Carlos began mimicking the birds.

  “Great, I’m going on a hit with a nature lover. How am I supposed to count on you? I’m going to need your help.” The smile faded from his eyes.

  “You can count on me, just trying to live in the moment. Comprende? You know, they might be prepared for us.”

  “We’re not about to be taken down by a Mommy and Daddy resistance group. Get that through your head. Cruz sent us because he thinks we’re the best. So don’t let me down, mi hombre. You are a man, aren’t you? No Niño Pequeno…? Juan poked Carlos in the ribs with the butt of his rifle until Carlos laughed.

  “Shit. Stop it Juan. I don’t think killing children is funny.”

  “Exactamente, mi hombre. It’s going to send a clear message to all the other fucking farmers who don’t pay their cut on time. It’s the law of the land. You want to grow your coffee beans and raise your children in peace; then you will pay up, each month, on time.”

  Juan locked eyes with Carlos until the younger man spoke. “Claro. I got it. You can count on me. In fact, I don’t even need your help. I’ve followed Cruz"s orders before.”

  “Those orders didn’t involve putting down children before.”

  “What about you, Juan? You put down children before?”

  Juan nodded. “Just keep walking, Carlos.” The men both listened to the squish, squish squishing of mud beneath their feet for a long moment. Their boots were caked with it. The footwear sparked an idea for Carlos.

  “You know,” Carlos added, “I think that maybe Cruz put two of us on this hit in case one of us gets cold feet. You sure you can stomach this?”

  Juan laughed and spit on the ground ahead. “What cold feet? You fucking with me, El Niño? Let me explain why two of us are being sent. They are a family of seven. Some of them might run. One of us has got to catch them. To make sure they’re all exterminated. That’s the math, plain and simple.”

  “No, Juan. I think Cruz ordered you to put a hit on me if I chickened. So to be fair, mi hombre, the same rule applies. For you as well…We get them all or we die. The children are no exceptions. So, don’t ask me again if I can do this. I guess I learn pretty fast for such a little chicken shit.”

  “You’re still a birdbrain. Just no more singing from here on unless you want me to cap your ass; we should be no more than a mile from their farm.”

  They walked on for another five minutes in silence until Juan noticed a loud screeching sound from his right side, the side Carlos should have been on.

  “Damn. I told you. No more singing!”

  When Juan turned his head to further reprimand Carlos, the younger man was not in sight. But the loud whistling continued. Just from behind his head, Juan imagined.

  When he turned, he found a whistling man pounding the butt of Carlos" rifle into the forehead of his fallen comrade. The man went about his business, whistling, as if he were engaged in something no more mundane than digging a ditch.

  “Mira! Stop! Comprende, English? I said, stop!”

  The man kept on pounding. Finally, he looked up after Juan launched a shot at him. It had grazed the Whistling Man’s shoulder. The man didn’t appear fazed, only annoyed at the interruption.

  As the Whistling Man looked up, Juan, the veteran hit man and enforcer of Aurelio Cruz"s law of the land, stained his shorts.

  The man’s face was nearly transparent, just a small hint of blue offset the disturbing hideous fact that the man’s skin tone was no more opaque than Saran Wrap. Juan froze for a long moment, allowing the intruder time to kneel over the fallen and unconscious human plaything it had ensconced itself with. Now fully enraptured, it nearly bared a smile, sinking its teeth into Carlos" head.

  Juan thought the Whistling Man looked like a man at a family picnic, perhaps enjoying his friend’s flesh as if it were watermelon. Juan’s hands shook as his brain tried to understand what was transpiring. Blood shot all over Whistling Man’s clothes as he ate. Maybe the pounding act was the way this thing tenderized its meat. Juan felt his feet slip in the mud. Lightheaded, he chided himself for spending so much time analyzing the bizarre attack. He gripped his rifle tighter. This bastard must have been hired by the family for protection. I’ll show him no one fucks with Aurelio Cruz or his clan! He steadied himself and fired, but the adrenaline coursing through his veins made him miss and slip in the mud. The erratic shot conspired to invite more birds to the choir. They shouted, squawked, cried and shrieked. None of them sounded happy.

  As Juan struggled to his knees, slipping in the quagmire of muck, he found one other creature wasn’t exactly chirping a happy tune either. He inspected his rifle, but the weapon was now clogged with mud, useless.

  The Whistling Man, now upright, walking and squawking, made his way through the mud bath, clearing a path towards Juan.

  “No!” Juan screamed in unison with the Whistling Man who continued to squawk, clearly angry, visibly grotesque with his robin’s egg blue carapace of horror, veins bulging in a translucent skull.

  “We can make a deal!” Juan screamed, but his voice sounded raspy and weak to his ears in comparison to the din of audio accompaniment surrounding him. The shrilling birds added a dramatic soundtrack to Whistling Man’s encroachment. Slow and deliberate, he advanced, apparently taking great care not to slip in the mud as Juan had done.

  This can’t be. Juan desperate for options, racked his mind for a solution; but he realized, as a career long scumbag, only scumbag type thoughts were made available to him. I’ve got to enlist him…Cruz always said if you can’t beat your enemy, make them join the entourage…

  “Mister, hey listen! Man to man…” Juan paused as the absurdity. How could this thing be a man, but he forced himself to continue? “I’ve got mucho dinero, cash for you! You can work for me…or maybe…I can work for you. What do you say, mi hombre. What do you say?”

  In that interim of time, Juan realized he carried a pistol in his backpack. He fumbled for it, trying to stall for time, attempting to continue the absurd conversation with the whistling bird man of Guatemala.

  He had it! In his hands now, the weapon more than made up for his lack of education, he thought. Fuck ideas when you have bullets at your disposal. Fuck tactics. Shit, Juan thought, now I’ve got the upper hand. He smiled with relief.

  “Hey, birdbrain, I’m through talking. I’ve wasted many motherfuckers in my time. I tried to give you a chance. He estimated Whistling Man was no more than five feet from him now. Just a little closer…

  Juan, now on his knees, trained his pistol on his target with both hands. Dead to rights, he thought. He laughed, giddily. “Now this is only going to hurt a FUCKING lot!”

  But Juan wasted a valuable second with what he believed to be his victory taunt. In that nanosecond, he heard Cruz scold him for behaving unprofessionally. Cruz spoke to him, but his face was transparent like Whistling Man. You kill without emotion. Be a fucking robot. I told you a million times, El Niño.

  As Juan squeezed the trigger, cursing both Cruz and Whistling Man in the process, he found himself blinded. With what he couldn’t comprehend, but he could still hear. The Whistling Man spoke to him. Not whistled. Spoke.

  “Yes, you are right, amigo. It is going to hurt a FUCKING lot!”

  As tears floo
ded Juan’s eyes, he realized the Whistling Man had kicked mud at him. He tried to squeeze the gun’s trigger but it slipped from his hand as if a bar of soap.

  Time to come clean… It was one of Juan Salazar’s last thoughts, that and a silent plea Whistling Man would have the mercy to tenderize him with the butt of his rifle before dining on him. But that mercy, as well as hope for forgiveness for his cold-blooded sins would not arrive in time to distract Juan’s mind from the impending horrific epiphany…he would be eaten alive…

  Three months earlier, Islamorada, Florida Keys

  “So, what ever happened to this Patient Zero?” The bald man pursed his lips, eyes shifting.

  “You can tell me,” his companion said. “Hell, you’ve told me more than I could expect for an egghead on the lam.”

  “I’m not on the lam. I’m not even an egghead if you’re referring to me as a scientist. What I am, is a human engineer.” Karl Brinkhaus, grandson of Nazi doctor Maximilian Brinkhaus, paused for emphasis, brimming with implied pride, his eyes twinkling. Brendan McKean, ex-cop, ex agent of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms broke gaze with Brinkhaus, pausing to take a long pull from his Heineken. “Well,” McKean said, eyes fixated on the table, “I do admit you Germans sure do make some fine lager.”

  Brinkhaus leaned across the table to minimize the distance between them. “Look, Mr. McKean, I really do appreciate you coming out of retirement so to speak, to handle this mission.”

  “Ah, you call this a mission, nice touch. I’d call it extortion, but who am I to judge?” McKean laughed, his fingers rapping lightly upon his green bottle.

  Brinkhaus studied the man’s reflex. He thought the man was affectionately tapping upon the glass as if it were some favorite firearm. Gun lover, through and through…

  Brinkhaus now encouraged by his observation, felt more secure. His politician friends had indeed recommended the right man for the job. Someone not afraid to speak to his mind, a man not afraid to bend the rules to exact justice, a gun lover who believed the ends justified the means.

  “I will tell you in strict confidence that Patient Zero has been terminated. A chess piece removed from the board because of his failure to respond to treatments, if you will.”

  “Mr. Brinkhaus, if you are indeed a human engineer, then speak like one. I don’t need cop speak or military mumbo jumbo to assist you with your vision. Although I have to say your vision is one of the most psychotically clouded ones I’ve come across in my long and tarnished career.”

  “Then you don’t see the full picture. It’s not clouded or psychotic, it is evolution beckoning us to take the next step, before it’s too late.”

  “Okay. But you’re willing to break a few eggs to make the omelet. I mean, Patient Zero, he was a human being before he contracted your virus. No? So, how did this evolution benefit him?” McKean smiled at Brinkhaus, with his eyes only.

  “An astute observation if you believe all human life is valued equally. I won’t go into detail, but Patient Zero was probably a kind of man you spent your career trying to incarcerate. And the damage he caused…well, these men were no better than swine working for vermin.” Now Bronchus’s eyes smiled. He wondered what McKean would say if he knew his genealogy, the grandson of a Nazi doctor, the first of the human engineers, sacrificing a few lives for the benefit of the many. Would this man understand this brand of altruism, or even the most basic doctrines of Friedrich Nietzsche? Could he understand sacrifice? Or was he just some uniformed order taker trained to see only black and white?

  “Sometimes, Mr. McKean, if civilized men believe in a cause they concede sacrifice. That’s what is needed to make my vision a reality. I do hope you see it not only in your mind, but in your soul, to warm to this sacrifice. And as I’ve said before, the test subjects are no better than scum. The man you will infect with my virus is a crime lord, much like the one the Guatemalan hit men labored for. So, when you carry out my plan, I can only hope you embrace the ideology and not simply feel you’re getting a paycheck.”

  “Oh, you mean the way those Guatemalan hit men did. Well, even if I do embrace the ideology, you damn well realize the danger I’m putting myself in. Once that man is infected, he’ll be as ravenous and animalistic as our good friend Patient Zero, the guy who whistled while he worked…oops, I mean killed? Isn’t that correct?”

  “For a short time only, but that’s where the extortion-as you like to call it-comes into play. You will earn your money by holding a treatment over his head.”

  McKean reflected. He thought about what an untouchable scumbag Amado James had been and still was. He sold drugs, women and possibly even body parts. The undisputed king of Florida’s black market, even McKean didn’t dare to tread on the bustard’s turf. Many of his former buddies were on his payroll, paid to look the other way. Fucking with Amado James would only result in a bullet to the head, and whether that bullet came from James’s entourage or from the man you thought was your friend, it all resulted in futility. Now he had a chance to take down the king of all bastards-or at least screw with him pretty royally-with a plan that sounded too novelistic, too futuristic and damned well too terroristic to fully comprehend. Brinkhaus talked of sacrifice and collateral damage. So what if his plan worked, what if James’s cannibalistic urges were tempered with the treatment? Would Brinkhaus then find a way to spread his virus throughout the country or throughout the planet, for that matter? What price would he be condemning humanity to pay all for taking down one crime lord? McKean took a long pull from his beer.

  “Mr. Brinkhaus, you told me the pills are a treatment, so they’re not a cure, correct?”

  “Why do you ask? Do you find it unconscionable?” He didn’t wait for a response. “I will admit there is no cure for the virus. It’s why Pharmacure Pharmaceuticals funded my initial research. They set up the trial in Guatemala. They said it failed because Patient Zero still savagely killed those hit men even while medicated. But they aren’t fooling me. They want me to redesign the disease, take out the flaw. What they really desire is a disease which can be treated – not cured – with a pill that will still make the reanimates appear alive. It’s all for the purpose of their marketing campaign. Appeal to the family’s loved ones so they will feed the pill to their reanimated brother, sister or husband. So during the last months, their research firm tweaked the pill to not only deal with the victim’s appearances but to curb their carnivorous hungers. For the most part, once James is on the pills, he will no longer be ravenous for flesh and blood. And there’s the irony, Pharmacure doesn’t care about a cure. If patients, the reanimates, can be infected and have their cannibalistic tendencies inhibited, then Pharmacures of the world will have no problem funding my research and manufacturing a pill. They’d only be too happy to collect money from the afflicted from now to time’s end. In essence, they would be cornering what I call a dead market, the dead brought back to life from their virus, only to fall victim to insatiable corporate greed. Imagine the money to be made from not only the living but the living dead. The breadth of their market would know no bounds. But I am not motivated by financial compensation. I see the virus as a means to access the unused portion of the human brain. These reanimates will have skills beyond your imagination. No offense, Mr. McKean.”

  “None taken, I’m not easily offended. So, let’s get down to brass tacks, how will I infect James?”

  “Good, good, I see you’re now getting into the spirit of things, Mr. McKean. You will simply inject a serum into him via a dart. Much like the ones used to tranquilize wild animals. You may use a dart gun so you may maintain the maximum distance…”

  McKean cut off Brinkhaus with a wave of his hand. “Come, come. I’m the ex ATF here. I’ll work out the logistics.”

  “Yes, I suppose you will. But I recommend you put together a team, possibly comprised of other ex agents to assist you, before we proceed. A man like James will understand strength in numbe
rs.”

  “And then after James is infected…?”

  “Then you will make regular deliveries to Mr. James. You’ll supply him with the treatment in pill form. He’ll be only too happy to pay the sky’s limit for them, I’ll assure you. You can even set the price if you like, believe me he’ll pay it.”

  “Even a scumbag like James? Are you sure, Brinkhaus? Because I think a man like him won’t care about becoming a vicious animal, well…that might be redundant or maybe what you call an oxymoron…but suffice it to say, will James care a shit about losing his humanity?”

  “Oh, yes. He will. Take it from a student of the human brain. He is wired to and will feel compelled. The virus does not affect the morality center of the brain. And even though you and I would think his morality center to be severely compromised already, it’s not. There is a will of man to remain true to his original design. He will not relish the urge to take flesh or blood. He will comply and gladly buy into a cure. That is a guarantee.”

  “And my cut?”

  “Twenty percent each delivery…and don’t try to screw me. I’ll know it. Remember I need his payments to continue funding my research. Eventually, when I’m back in the good graces of the pharmaceutical companies, I won’t need a crime lord’s money and you, my good man, can retire to a nice coastal resort, maybe one such as this.”

  “You know what. I’m going to do this. But I don’t think it’s going to work, at least not in the global way you hope. Sorry I can’t embrace the ideology. But even if I could, I’m not feeling too good about how this virus might be unleashed on the civilian population. Isn’t that your goal, to revolutionize with evolution?”

  “Most definitely, but I respect your candidness, as always.”

  “You might not want to respect me if you knew all I was thinking at this moment. I see you as vermin as well, Brinkhaus. But I’ll use your means to bring down that bastard James. After that, I don’t wish your plan much luck. I mean the only way I see you spreading this virus on a mass scale is with government assistance. And if that’s the case, then maybe you’ve just become smarter than any crime lord or fifth grader, for that matter.”