Gino and Vinny got into the Titan and drove off.
I couldn’t let Gino get away. He had information that I needed and I was going to get it. Even if it came to gunplay.
CHAPTER 12
Hard drops of rain splashed on my face.
I rushed to my Toyota. I’d follow Gino and find a chance to hypnotize him. I’d learn what he meant by: “My cousin told me that if someone came asking about Barrett, that guy would be the one who knew what the score was.”
Who in Morada knew I’d be asking about Barrett?
By the time I reached my truck, I was drenched with rain.
I took out my contacts to track Gino by his aura. He’d be easy to spot. Each psychic envelope was as unique as a face.
His aura looked like a dimpled red balloon while Vinny’s resembled a dollop of cinnamon-candy-colored syrup. Stubby tendrils of anxious thoughts poked from each aura.
Gino’s Nissan turned left and went east, then north on a county road.
Sheets of heavy rain muted the landscape to blurry shades of gray. The sky became dark as dusk. Drivers turned on their headlights, but I kept mine off so that I could stay hidden from Gino.
My wipers beat across the windshield. The windows started to fog because of my wet clothes, not my heavy breathing. I don’t breathe. I turned on the defogger.
We crossed over the Rio Grande. The rain-swollen current roiled around the bridge pilings.
I had no idea where Gino was headed, but no matter, once I caught him, I’d know his secrets.
A half mile later, Gino left the county road for an asphalt single lane.
Leafy shrubs pushed close to the road. Branches slapped my windshield. Gino’s aura bounced in the squall like the flame of a candle. Even if he swerved into the brush, I’d still be able to spot him.
To my right, a man and a woman darted between the shrubs. At first, I wondered what they were doing out in this storm. Then I realized: neither of them had an aura.
Zombies.
Change in plans. Gino could wait.
I stepped on the brakes and jerked the steering wheel for a fast U-turn.
The Toyota looped across the rain-slick asphalt. I straightened the wheel and pressed the gas pedal. The rear tires clawed at the road and the truck yawed side to side.
What were zombies doing out now? I thought of them as creatures of the night. Well, vampires get around quite a bit in the daytime. Why shouldn’t zombies?
Since they showed no auras, their filthy clothes allowed them to blend chameleon-like in the landscape. I searched for their outlines. I caught them up ahead, lumbering in stooped gaits through the woods.
I pulled off the side of the road.
I reached under my seat and pulled out a Heckler & Koch .45 pistol. Normally, if I needed a gun, I packed a .380. Plenty of firepower to discourage even stubborn humans. In case of vampires, I loaded the .380 with silver bullets. Against zombies I needed something with more oomph, like this .45.
I palmed the gun and got out of the Toyota. The pistol felt heavy and reassuring. Nothing like German firepower as backup to my vampire skills.
Rain dribbled down my face. I wiped my eyes and looked for the zombies’ trail.
Two sets of prints trampled the grass. I leaned over to study them and got hit with a double dose of wet garbage smell.
One set of prints was of a man’s big bare feet. The other prints looked like they came from a small pair of boots.
I advanced with the H&K and moved the square muzzle left and right like the snout of a dog homing in on the scent.
What were the zombies doing out here? Hunting?
For what?
Who sent them?
Perhaps there was an infestation underground and the rain had forced this pair to the surface like a couple of earthworms.
I would drop them both and go through their clothes. With luck I’d find a lead back to the reanimator.
One of the zombies paused beneath a willow. He wore a tattered straw cowboy hat. At the moment I could see him only in outline, but as I got close I noticed that he was looking back at me.
Layers of flabby skin hung around his neck. He stood bow-legged and barefoot, wore a ragged shirt and tight pants with a big metallic buckle. The boxy shape of his face, the thin eyebrows, and the cowboy hat reminded me of someone I’d recently seen.
The missing cowboy. The zombie’s face matched the picture in the newspaper.
He hadn’t run away or gotten tangled up with criminals. His fate had been worse.
He’d been a victim of the reanimator.
The cowboy zombie lowered his head and scooted away.
I had seen the tracks of two zombies. Where was his companion?
Cowboy zombie disappeared through a gap in the dense shrubs around a stand of scrub oaks. Plenty of cover to hide for an ambush.
My sixth sense tingled my fingertips and ears.
I crept through the shrubs and under the branches of the oaks. Dumpster funk was all around me, but I had lost the zombies.
The tingling of my fingertips amplified into a buzz. The muzzle of the pistol began to tremble.
The damn zombies were close.
I adjusted my grip on the .45 and held it as steady as I could.
I don’t breathe.
Zombies don’t breathe.
The only sound was the drip-drip patter of heavy drops falling through the leaves.
My wet clothes sucked the heat from my body. The chill squeezed my bones. First I’d kill these zombies and then reward myself with a hot soak and an extra-large martini.
Cowboy zombie appeared in the sumacs at the far end of a grassy open patch. His waterlogged hat drooped around his ears. He wiped an elbow across his belt buckle.
My sixth sense screamed Trap.
My senses tingled so hard I couldn’t keep the pistol steady and I gripped the H&K with both hands.
I stayed beneath an oak tree and scanned the brush around me. Nothing lurked.
Cowboy zombie was at least fifty feet from me, too far for an accurate shot. But after meeting Barrett, I had learned to keep my distance from these smelly tricksters.
I raised the pistol and centered the sights on his chest.
Pow.
The bullet ripped through his shirt and tore into his sternum in a splat of rotted meat. The impact knocked the hat off his head. The zombie shook and flopped to his back. His heels pawed troughs in the mud and his hands clutched at the wet grass.
Incredibly, he rolled to his knees and retrieved his hat. How unstoppable was he? This H&K could kill a bear.
Exposed ribs flopped hatch-like from his chest. A lump of pulp dropped from the hole. He grabbed the lump and came to his feet. He shoved the lump into the chest cavity and tamped the ribs back into place.
I leveled the sights on his nose. The next shot would blow his head apart like a melon.
The zombie screwed the hat on his head. Mud plopped from the wilted brim. He wiped his belt buckle and shuffled closer as if daring me to shoot again. No problem, I had plenty of bullets for both zombies.
Both zombies?
Where was the other zombie?
This was a diversion.
Stars exploded in my head.
Pain rattled my skull and spine.
My knees buckled.
I rallied and straightened my legs. I pivoted to the left and my gun hunted for the other zombie.
She swung in a blur of arms and legs from an overhead branch. Her boot heels came straight at my face.
I raised my pistol and squeezed off shots in a panicked spasm of self-survival.
More pain thudded across my forehead.
The strength drained from my hips and knees. My legs became jelly. Sharp branches ripped at me while I tumbled.
Tumbled.
Tumbled.
CHAPTER 13
What woke me was the sensation of having a hot iron pressed against my face.
Even with my mind fogged up with pain, I
instantly knew what this was.
The morning sun.
My kundalini noir shrank and corkscrewed in terror.
I slapped my hands over my face and curled into a ball. Hot rays prickled my skin. I squinted through my fingers.
The gray light of a rainy dawn broke to the east. A semicircle of yellow light hovered over the horizon, marking the place where the sun would rise.
The morning sun, the great devourer of vampires, was an instant away from roasting me into ash.
I lay in a rocky puddle at the bottom of a shallow ravine. I was surrounded by trash, weeds, and trees. My wet clothes were matted with mud and garbage.
My head swam in pain, but unless I moved…NOW…the next sensation would be cooking alive.
I drew the collar of my coat over my head. I sat up and crawled to the nearest well of shadow.
Sunlight lashed at me. The air burned with microwave intensity.
I splashed through the syrupy mud like a wounded, desperate dog and dove headfirst through the bramble.
I burrowed into a layer of wet dirty leaves. I scooped them over me until I was covered in a paste of leaves and mud. I lay still in the protective coolness while the ravaging sunlight stalked the open ground.
Worms and beetles crawled out from the fetid mud and kept me company by climbing over my face. I cinched my fingers over my nose and kept my eyes clenched tight to keep the visitors out.
A headache banged against the inside of my skull.
I stole a look at my wristwatch. My vision was blurry and I had to study the watch face to read the time. Almost eight. The morning after. The blow to my head had knocked me out all night.
Rain plopped through the leaves overhead. Then more rain. The downpour smothered the sunlight. The worms and beetles vanished as if they’d melted into the mud.
Rain channeled through the tree and came out in a spout from a fork in the trunk. I knelt under the spout to wash away the filth. I relished the cleansing and the reprieve from death. The water poured over me like a baptism.
Why hadn’t the zombies finished me off?
Couldn’t they find me?
I peered into the ravine. Flattened grass and dislodged rocks marked my path down the slope. Soggy cardboard and paper trash littered the rocky puddle I’d fallen into. No, I had been lying in plain sight.
Maybe the zombies thought they had killed me.
Or maybe they had a more pressing task.
As the rain beat down, I picked my way out of the ravine. I looked for my pistol, which I found in a patch of dandelions. A quick check of the magazine showed I had three rounds left. The muzzle bore was clear but gritty mud remained in the recesses of the pistol. Letting a gun get this dirty—for any reason—was as bad as stealing from your mother.
I scrambled up the ravine and kneeled at the edge. I parted the brush with the barrel of my .45.
No zombies.
Spent cartridge casings glittered in the mud under the oak. Some fight I had put up. I went down making a lot of noise but that was it.
Carefully, I made my way back to my Toyota.
The doors were open and my belongings were scattered over mud torn up by footprints.
If my kundalini noir had a mouth, it would’ve groaned.
My clothes lay in soaked lumps. The cooler sat empty with the lid open and gaping at the rain. The bags of blood looked like silver hamsters where they rested in the mud.
Had the zombies taken anything?
They had.
Now I understood why the zombies had left me alone.
They had found a prize too valuable to waste time killing me.
The psychotronic diviner.
CHAPTER 14
When the Araneum learned that I had lost the diviner, they were going to skin me for sure. My head throbbed harder. My kundalini noir sank to the pit of my belly.
Why did the zombies take the diviner? Were they attracted to shiny pretty objects?
Or did they recognize the diviner for what it was? In that case, what did the zombies and their reanimator know about psychic energy and the astral plane? Was he responsible for the psychic attacks? And my hallucinations?
Not all my clothes and belongings had been gone through—my overnight bag and backpack remained unopened. When the zombies found the diviner, they must have lost interest in everything else and hurried away.
The rain let up but the clouds remained low and threatening. Much like my recent bad fortune.
I felt clammy in my wet clothes and had to change. I was miserable enough on the inside. Might as well be comfortable on the outside.
I gathered my belongings, drove back to town, and found a Laundromat next to a truck stop. My first priority was to wash up and change. With customers wandering in and out of the men’s room, for privacy I locked myself in a utility closest. I gave myself a sponge bath, shaved in the mop sink, applied makeup, and put on clean dry clothes.
While my dirty clothes churned in a washing machine, I sat in my Toyota, cleaned my H&K, and inserted a fresh magazine.
This pistol was one of the most powerful in the world but wouldn’t do much good if I walked around with my head up my ass.
I’d made one huge mistake as a human—when I’d accidentally killed the Iraqi girl and her family—and that has led me to the path of the undead.
Later I’d made one huge mistake as a vampire—I had let Carmen get kidnapped by the aliens.
The stakes in this investigation were too high for more screwups. The Araneum depended on me. The zombies were a big enough threat in the physical world. What would happen if they got into the astral plane?
But that was speculation about the future. I had to focus on what I could control, the here and now.
I checked my cell phone for messages. Only one. From Gino. The time stamp showed that he had called yesterday evening. About the time I was taking a snooze in a mud puddle courtesy of the zombies.
Gino wanted to meet again, at a restaurant called Humphreys. He gave directions and emphasized the time, noon sharp.
I called back. His voice mail answered. I didn’t leave a message.
I clipped a holster to the inside of my waistband. I racked the slide of the H&K to chamber one of the fat .45 rounds.
I reviewed my plan. Question Gino. Under hypnosis. Interrogate Vinny and their uncle Sal. They might know enough to add another piece to the puzzle. Find the creator of the zombies and destroy him and every one of his creatures. Get to the bottom of the psychic energy signals and the hallucinations. Retrieve the psychotronic diviner.
I holstered the pistol.
I was ready for anything.
I had to be.
CHAPTER 15
Humphrey’s Kountry Kitchen was on the west end of town, past a Shell station minimart. There were two vehicles in the restaurant parking lot, a Buick LeSabre and a Ford pickup hauling a trailer with a pair of camouflaged quad bikes. I didn’t see Gino’s silver Nissan Titan.
I was deliberately ten minutes late. Where was he?
I went down a block and turned around. I parked on the shoulder where I could check out the restaurant and the neighborhood.
The rain started again. I looked through the arcs my wipers swished across the windshield. People wandered around the Shell station across the street, moving about the cars and gas pumps, or in or out of the minimart. I studied the dark windows of the buildings facing me, a real estate office and a honey wholesaler.
Maybe Gino had been dropped off at Humphrey’s. Either the Buick or the Ford could be his wheels. I flipped open my cell phone and punched his number. His voice mail picked up again.
Where the hell was Gino? He might be sleeping off a hangover, playing errand boy to Uncle Sal, drilling some tail…or had the zombies gotten him?
Frustrated and more than a little paranoid, I snapped the phone closed and dropped it into my coat pocket.
Without Gino, I’d be playing Whac-A-Mole looking for clues.
Then again, Gino
might be in Humphrey’s waiting for me.
I drove to the restaurant and parked beside the Ford pickup. I got out of my Toyota and stepped into a muddy puddle. Goddamn weather. I pulled the collar of my barn coat tight around my neck. Fighting zombies was trouble enough without the misery of getting soaked and cold. This was too much like being back in the army.
A For Sale sign sat in the front window of the restaurant. Guess even mountain views and country living get old.
I started through the front door of the restaurant when the hallucination of the girl came to me, the apparition so real I could almost feel the heat of her body.
If this was a psychic attack, I wouldn’t give in.
I planted my feet and stood strong. I imagined swatting the image out of my head. But the hallucination tore into my thoughts.
She called my name. Her voice filled my head, drowning out all other sounds. Its echo bounced inside my skull, gathering volume until her voice became a deafening shriek as loud as a fire alarm.
The top of my spine buzzed. I pressed one hand across the back of my neck to dampen the sensation. The vibration continued down my psychic column and my spine shook.
Panic and fear gouged me to the bone. I stumbled into the restaurant and collapsed on the wooden bench in the foyer.
The shriek halted like someone had turned off a spigot of noise. My head held the fading echo. As my helplessness and panic subsided, my strength returned—and my anger.
Psychic energy attacks. Zombies. Gino’s mysterious cousin. The loose ends in this mystery tangled around me.
A woman appeared in the doorway to the dining room. She wore an apron and had a pen stuck in her mop of henna-colored hair. Her eyes and forehead crinkled in worry. “I saw you keel over like you had a seizure or something. You okay?”
“Yeah.” On the outside. Inside I was a mess.
“You waiting for somebody?”
Gino, but it wasn’t her business. “Sorta.”
“Sorta yes or sorta no?” Her tone went from concern to a hard scold. “Either get in or get out. No loitering.”
Feisty shrew needed a kick in the butt to learn about customer service. I followed her inside to see if Gino was here.
Jailbait Zombie Page 6