by Gar Wilson
The field seemed to have a sinister atmosphere, as though a malevolent presence was brooding among the sugarcane stalks. The commandos could see little beyond the acres of towering crops. Anything could be hidden among the forest of sugarcane, which stood five to ten feet high. A Sherman tank could have been concealed in that field.
"What the hell are we looking for?" Sergeant Bristol demanded as he followed the Phoenix team through the dense crop of rigid stalks.
"Something that might be able to hear us," Calvin James hissed, gripping the confiscated FMK-3 subgun in his fists. "Maybe something that'll try to kill us."
"The prisoners said there's nothing out here but a couple empty buildings," another Kingston cop named Garner commented. The young patrolman held a riot gun similar to the weapon Manning had taken from a dead hoodlum in the house. "A storage house for tools and machinery to work the fields and a sort of barracks for the hired laborers during the cutting season."
"Either shut up or go back," David McCarter said in a tense whisper. Ingram held ready, the Briton turned suddenly when some sugarcane rustled.
A large brown rat scurried between two stalks. McCarter held his fire. His heartbeat was rapid, and he felt the blood rushing through his brain. Excitement and expectation had mingled with a trace of terror. It was a familiar sensation for McCarter; a thrilling sensation that he needed in his life on a regular basis.
Gary Manning was leading the group: the Canadian demolitions expert was an expert at detecting booby traps, especially devices rigged to explosives. Encizo and Manning followed close behind, scanning the area for trip wires and pressure plates. They looked for sugarcane stalks that might have been rigged to trigger a concealed trapgun, or for patches of overturned earth that might have covered a pit filled with sharpened stakes.
The five Phoenix warriors were constantly alert to possible danger, more so than Bristol and the three other Kingston police officers who accompanied them who were unfamiliar with this sort of situation. The sugarcane fields were almost a miniature jungle, a different world than the concrete-and-glass cities the cops were accustomed to. Katz glanced over his shoulder at the cops and shook his head. He wished he had not agreed to let them trek through the cane fields with Phoenix Force. The four policemen were more apt to be a liability than an asset.
Manning peered through the two-inch-thick stalks that towered above the moist ground. Seeing a long one-story wooden building with a tar-paper roof ahead, he gestured to the others. The structure appeared to be the workers' quarters. Katz nodded at Manning and likewise signaled to Encizo and McCarter, tilting his head to indicate the building.
The three chosen warriors crept forward while Katz, James and the four cops covered them from the shelter of the sugarcane. Manning, Encizo and McCarter spread out as they stepped into the clearing and approached the barracks. Better able to view the building without the multijointed cane stalks blocking their view, the trio discovered the windows were blacked out by thick boards nailed on the outside of the billets. The front door was bolted by a heavy beam and secured by two thick steel padlocks.
"Bloody hell," McCarter rasped softly. The trace of terror was growing fast and threatened to outweigh the excitement and anticipation he felt. "What have they got in there?"
"I'll take care of the locks," Encizo whispered, removing a small leather packet from his pocket. "Somebody check the rear."
"I'll cover it," Manning volunteered.
The Canadian moved around the building to the back, finding blank walls and more boarded-up windows. There was no back door, but he stayed in position anyway. He moved to one of the shuttered windows and listened for the telltale sound of voices, machinery or footsteps. His eyes widened when he heard a strange gurgling, like that of an infant trying to speak. A low, mournful groan made Manning's stomach knot in a cold, hard ball. He clutched the steel frame of the riot gun and held his breath as he waited for Encizo to pick the locks to the door.
Encizo easily unlocked the padlocks with a thin metal pick and a narrow hacksaw blade. He worked the probes inside the keyhole of the first lock for less than ten seconds, and the shackle popped open. The second padlock required less than half that time.
Removing the padlocks from the hasps, Encizo stopped and reached for the MP-5 machine pistol that hung from a shoulder strap. An odd scraping sound at the opposite side of the door had surprised the Cuban. He glanced up at McCarter and noticed the British ace was gripping his Ingram M-10 a bit tighter than usual. McCarter had heard it, too.
I wonder if Pandora felt this way when she opened the box that unleashed evil upon the earth, Encizo thought grimly as he removed the last padlock and prepared to raise the beam from the door. Low moans from within the building almost convinced him to leave the door bolted. Yet the sound relayed suffering, and Encizo had known too much suffering not to feel compassion toward others in this condition. Nonetheless, the groans seemed threatening, as if he was about to open a cage filled with dangerous wounded beasts.
Encizo swallowed his fear and removed the bolt.
The door burst open, nearly striking Encizo. McCarter aimed his M-10 at the doorway as a scrawny shape clad in filthy rags staggered across the threshold. Eyes like glass marbles stared from the emaciated dark features of the repulsive figure shuffling barefoot from the building. Spittle dripped from the quivering lips as its unblinking gaze turned toward McCarter.
"Oh, my God," the Briton whispered, ice scorpions crawling up his spine as he stared directly into the face of the zombie.
A flicker of consciousness appeared in the creature's glassy eyes. The zombie growled like a beast and raised its right arm. The long, curved blade of a sickle extended from its fist.
McCarter triggered his Ingram. A 3-round burst tore through the zombie's chest. Its body jerked from the impact, blood oozing from the ragged holes in its tattered shirt. The creature staggered backward but did not fall. More moaning horrors shuffled from the barracks. Encizo tried to slam the door, but too many of the zombies were pressed against it for him to hold them at bay.
The thing McCarter had shot staggered toward him once more, crimson drool spilling from its open mouth. The Briton clenched his teeth, raised his Ingram and fired. Parabellums pulped the zombie's face and exploded the back of its skull. Lifeless, the creature collapsed, but other nightmare figures continued to march woodenly from the workers' quarters.
"Lord Jesus Christ," Sergeant Bristol gasped as he stared at the bizarre scene from the cover of the sugarcane stalks. He could have been uttering a blasphemous oath or a prayer for salvation. Perhaps a combination of both.
Calvin James could not fault Bristol either way. The tough guy from Chicago watched the dreadful, mindless creatures shuffle from the building. The scene was right out of a horror movie. More than a dozen blank-eyed human scarecrows emerged from the building. They were men and yet not men, human and yet not human. Their minds and willpower had been destroyed and replaced by whatever instructions Cercueil and his followers had programmed into them.
Whatever else they might be — human, subhuman or flesh-and-blood robots — the zombies were dangerous. Armed with machetes, sickles and hoes, they seemed ready to lash out at anyone who appeared to be unlike their kind. Several zombies raised their weapons and charged McCarter and Encizo.
Backing away from the advancing figures, the British and Cuban warriors opened fire. Parabellum slugs ripped into the torsos of three approaching zombies. Bleeding bodies staggered backward into other braindamaged androids. Only one creature suffered enough internal damage to heart and lungs to collapse. The others moved forward, including two opponents with blood trickling from bullet holes in their chests.
"The bastards are immune to pain!" McCarter exclaimed. "Go for the heads!"
The booming report of a shotgun announced that Gary Manning had joined the battle. The Canadian had hurriedly returned from behind the building when he'd heard the first gunshots and had practically run straight into a group of
zombies. Manning saw one figure raise a machete and opened fire. The force of the powerful I2-gauge weapon blasted the emaciated creature off its feet and pitched it back five feet. It crashed to the earth, upper torso ripped into shreds.
McCarter and Encizo fired their machine pistols again. Zombie skulls burst apart from multiple 9 mm bullets. The slain zombies fell, but the others, apparently unconcerned with the fate of their comrades and devoid of any fear of injury or death, continued to advance.
"Bristol!" Katz called out to the Jamaican police sergeant. "You and your men wait here and back us up. Hold your fire until..."
The Phoenix commander's warning came too late to stop Officer Garner from opening fire with his riot gun. The cop's eyes swelled with horror as he stared at the zombies; he mumbled something in a hysterical manner, words tumbling together too rapidly to make sense. Although every man in the unit had realized they might find these terrible yet pathetic creatures lurking in the cane fields, the idea of encountering zombies had seemed too bizarre to be real. The horror of actually finding a group of beings straight out of voodoo folklore had stunned every member of the team. Even the ultraprofessional Katzenelenbogen, despite his decades of training and experience, hadn't been prepared for the sight.
It was too much for Garner. The panic-stricken cop responded to his terror by firing his 12-gauge relentlessly at the zombies. Buckshot burst from the short-barreled shotgun. Pellets tore into the shoulder and face of one zombie and into the upper back of another. Both ragged figures spun around from the blast. Only one went down, its spinal cord severed. The other creature remained upright, although blood appeared on the tattered sleeve of its filthy cotton shirt. The right side of its face had been pulverized by buckshot, the eyeball dangling on its bloodied cheek by the stem of the optic nerve.
"Stop it!" James shouted as he rushed toward Garner.
He was not concerned about the welfare of the zombies. James was afraid Garner might hit McCarter or Encizo with an indiscriminate burst of shotgun pellets. The cop pumped his weapon again and fired another blast at the sinister horde. James closed in and karated Garner's forearm to numb the ulnar nerve and prevent the cop from working the trigger of his shotgun.
James also swatted the back of his hand across the policeman's face. It was a crude method of jolting the hysterics from the terrified Garner, but there was no time for subtle tactics. However, James had not been able to stop Garner from firing a second blast.
A few pellets tore chunks of flesh from the arm of one zombie and slammed into the rib cage of another. Garner's buckshot also hammered the box-shaped frame of the Ingram M-10 machine pistol in McCarter's fists. The impact kicked the gun out of the Briton's hands.
"Damn!" McCarter rasped, his hands quivering from the unexpected force that had plucked his weapon from his grasp.
Luckily, none of the pellets had claimed a finger in the process. That was about all the British ace had any reason to feel thankful for. Two slobbering zombies were headed toward him. The taller of the pair wielded a machete, while the other creature held a hoe with a rusty front blade. Their dark, corpselike features revealed little expression except a wild animal fury displayed in the open, gaping eyes.
Encizo was busy hosing down another pair of zombie opponents with his MP-5. He saw the pair crumple and swung his Heckler & Koch toward the two monstrous figures that threatened McCarter.
A quick salvo from his gun penetrated the skull of the closest zombie, smashing through the thing's head with ease. The zombie half turned and fell, landing on what remained of its face. The body barely twitched as death claimed another subject. The zombies were half dead and looked to be completely beyond redemption and "rehabilitation." Whatever humanity they possessed probably welcomed an end to their miserable half life.
As Encizo trained his MP-5 on the tall, machete-wielding figure that was about to attack McCarter, its sinister brethren swung a hoe at the Cuban warrior. The attack was clumsy. The drugs and physical abuse used to destroy the willpower of the zombies had also ruined their coordination. The blade of the hoe missed Encizo's head but snared the frame of his machine pistol.
The violent tug deflected Encizo's weapon away from its intended target. Now, ironically, the MP-5 was pointed at the chest of the zombie with the hoe. With a pull of the trigger, Encizo sent a volley of 9 mm rounds into the creature. The zombie fell backward, and the hoe, which was still hooked over Encizo's H&K blaster, caused the machine pistol to slip from the warrior's hands.
"Cristo!" the Cuban exclaimed as a sickle-swinging zombie executed a backhand sweep, the long, curved blade aimed at Encizo's neck.
The Phoenix pro ducked under the whirling crescent of sharp steel. The sickle sliced through air above Encizo's bowed head. He chose not to think about how close the blade had come to removing the top of his skull. The full terror of this close brush with death would not sink in until later, when he was not completely absorbed with survival. At the moment there was no time to reflect on the situation. There was only time to react to the threat.
Encizo instinctively grabbed the hilt of the Cold Steel Tanto knife on his belt instead of reaching for the H&K P9S autoloader holstered under his left arm. The Cuban had been a knife fighter since childhood and still favored the blade for extremely close combat. He also knew he could draw the Tanto from its sheath, naked blade ready for battle, faster than he could draw the pistol, snap off the safety catch and point and squeeze the trigger.
The zombie raised its sickle for another attack. Encizo lunged. The slanted tip of the Cold Steel blade slid easily into his opponent's solar plexus. His free hand grappled to release the sickle from the zombie's grip. Again he shoved the knife into the creature's flesh. It drove upward into the chest cavity. The technique, which Encizo had used many times previously, had never failed to bring down an enemy.
Until now.
The zombie did not respond to the knife thrust. Despite massive internal damage, it did not feel pain or shock. The creature did not appear to realize it was dying — or perhaps it did not care. But it still intended to take out Rafael Encizo.
The Cuban felt the beast struggle to overcome the handicap of four inches of sharp steel buried in its chest. The emaciated man-thing was stronger than it looked, but malnutrition and years of physical abuse had taken its toll. It had formerly been a skid-row wino whom Cercueil's people had abducted and transformed into the present mindless being that struggled against Encizo. It had strength limited to the extent of its aroused fury, and not much endurance.
Encizo restrained the zombie's sickle with one hand and worked the handle of the Tanto with the other. He jerked the hilt up, down and sideways, both to increase the damage to his opponent's body tissues and to wiggle the blade free. The zombie's free hand reached for Encizo's face. Dirty fingers pawed at the Cuban's mouth and nose. Broken black nails crept toward his eyes.
The Phoenix fighter turned his face away, released the knife handle, and batted the groping hand aside with a forearm blow. He glimpsed the zombie's face. The eyes were filled with demented rage, and blood issued from the creature's nostrils and mouth, from which a series of monotonous animal grunts poured forth. Encizo slammed his fist into those terrible features. The monstrous head bounced from the punch, and the equally monstrous body swayed.
Encizo grabbed the knife handle once more and yanked with strength born of desperation. The blade came free with a sickening slushing sound of wet flesh and gurgling blood. Crimson splashed Encizo's shirt-front, but he barely noticed as he shoved the zombie with two hands. The creature staggered backward, still staring at Encizo, its knees finally buckling as the loss of blood robbed it of its remaining strength. Then the man-thing wilted to the ground.
Threatened by a tall zombie with a machete, David McCarter had been too busy to come to his partner's assistance. The android swung its jungle knife at the agile ex-SAS commando, who dodged it and grabbed the half-human wrist before the creature could try another stroke.
&n
bsp; Twisting the wrist, McCarter swung a boot under the zombie's extended arm, kicking the creature in the lower abdomen. The animal did not even grunt in response. McCarter could not worry about his choice of tactics. He played out his move and prayed it would work.
The Briton held the zombie's wrist with one hand and grabbed the upper forearm with the other. He shoved down with two hands and smashed the zombie's forearm across a bent knee. The radius bone snapped and poked sharply through the skin of the creature's forearm. The zombie did not appear to feel any pain, but the fingers opened, the machete fell at McCarter's feet, and the broken limb swung limply aside.
Then the Phoenix crusader executed a high kick to the zombie's face. The creature's head snapped back with such force that two neck vertebrae popped. The shock to the spinal cord and brain stem was too much for even a zombie to endure, and he dropped like a steer in a slaughterhouse.
Another zombie, armed with a rusty sickle, shuffled toward McCarter as the Briton scooped up the machete. The creature swung. The sickle arched widely over McCarter's head. The Briton grabbed the machete and, utilizing the momentum established by the creature, turned the weapon so that the sharp edge chopped into the zombie's skull. The blade split bone and destroyed the creature's brain.
"Now be off!" McCarter snarled with a kind of fearful disgust at what is grossly unnatural and kicked the zombie away.
He landed the boot to its chest as if kicking in a door. The blow sent the corpse hurtling backward into yet more zombies. McCarter pulled his Browning Hi-Power from shoulder leather. The familiar feel of the 9 mm pistol in his grasp sent a hot flush of renewed confidence through him.
Gary Manning's shotgun boomed, and the corpse of a ragged zombie crash-landed among its mindless peers. The Canadian hastily worked the pump action, eliminating two more opponents. Manning felt trapped in the middle of a nightmare as zombie fingers closed around the barrel of his Winchester riot gun. A hideous face stared at him. The eyes were like those of the killer wolves he had encountered in Finland, half crazy with desperation and starvation.