Age of Voodoo

by James Lovegrove

  “See those?” Morgenstern pointed to the inner edges of the hatch, where there were scorch marks and shiny nodules of metal that had melted and solidified again. “It’s been sealed up with a blowtorch.”

  “Sampson?” said Buckler. “You’re our Incredible Hulk. You do the honours.”

  “I prefer to think of myself as our Luke Cage, sir,” said Sampson.

  “If you say so. I’m not a comic geek like you. Just kick the fucking hatch in.”

  SAMPSON STAMPED ON the hatch until it was hanging from its mounting, bent in the middle and ready to drop. He reached down, prised it free, and laid it aside on the elevator roof. A dim light gleamed up from below. Sampson poked his head through the aperture for a recon.

  “Zilch,” he said.

  He lowered his bulk down through the hatchway and landed on the floor, surprisingly softly.

  Soon everyone else was with him. Buckler tried the Open Doors button, but to no avail.

  “Now there’s a surprise,” he said. “Lights are at quarter power, so I’d say the whole installation’s gone into automatic shutdown. The system’s designed to do that to conserve energy if demand drops below a certain level. There’s a manual reset in the maintenance room on the lowest level. Trip that and we can get the elevator running again. Meantime, these doors need forcing. Sampson, you’re up. Pearce, Tartag.”

  Buckler dug his fingertips into the sliver of a gap between the doors. The other three SEALs joined him, and together they began pulling, two one way, two the other.

  “Put your backs into it,” Buckler said. Faces contorted with effort; knuckles popped. “Harder. My eight-year-old could do better, and she has asthma.”

  The doors parted a hair’s breadth. Then an inch. A couple of inches. Morgenstern jammed the butt of her CAR-15 in between them and began using the carbine like a crowbar. Sampson braced his foot against the door opposite for additional purchase and leverage.

  All at once the doors’ mechanism abandoned its resistance and Team Thirteen wrenched them apart almost the whole way. Morgenstern was outside in a flash, swinging her gun left then right.

  “Clear.”

  The others exited the elevator. Overhead emergency striplights provided a low level of illumination, tingeing everything sulphur-yellow. The passage ran twenty yards in one direction and about twice that in the other, turning a corner at both ends. There were a couple of doors, one marked Janitorial Supplies. Otherwise it was just beige walls and durable linoleum flooring, pure military-grade functionality.

  Stencilled opposite the elevator were the characters SL1—Sublevel One. Beside the sign was a single bloody handprint, smearing downwards.

  “Where our vévé artist cleaned his brush,” said Buckler.

  “Please God, that’s all it is,” said Sampson.

  Buckler consulted a 3D schematic of the installation floorplan on his smartphone. “That way’s living quarters and refectory,” he said, pointing left. “That way”—right—“leads to test laboratories, communications hub, installation control room, and stairwell. We need to make a sweep of the entire premises, from the top down, in order to check for survivors... and hostiles. Quickest way is if we split up into two groups. You two, with me.” Tartaglione and Sampson. “We take left. The rest of you, right. Got that?”

  Nods of assent all round.

  “Just so’s we’re clear on this,” said Tartaglione, “are we Freddy, Daphne and Velma, or Shaggy and Scooby? I only ask ’cause Shaggy and Scooby always find the monster first.”

  “Whichever one we are,” said Buckler, “you’re the dog.”

  “Ruh-roh,” said Tartaglione.

  PEARCE TOOK THE lead with Lex’s group, heel-to-toeing along the passage with his M-60 at eye level. He rounded the corner, quadranted for targets with the machine gun, then beckoned the other three to follow.

  The first room they came to was the refectory. Half-finished meals sat on trays on the tables, food congealing on plates, cans of carbonated drink long gone flat. A few of the tubular steel chairs were overturned. Flies buzzed around the self-service canteen, where desiccated burger patties lay in stacks and French fries in cold soggy clumps.

  “The Mary Celeste,” said Lex. “Only with fast food.”

  “Kind of reminds me of the day at school when someone found a rat’s tail in the meatloaf,” said Morgenstern.

  Pearce went through into the kitchen, searched, found no one.

  They moved on to the living quarters. There were cramped dormitories with three sets of double bunk beds and there were single-occupancy rooms with slightly smarter decor and more lavish furnishings. Ancillary staff and executive. Most of the beds were made. Clothes lay in drawers, folded. Laptops and tablets lay on dressing tables, waiting for their owners to return.

  “Where is everybody?” Lex wondered.

  Pearce shrugged. “Elsewhere.”

  The comms clicked. “Whisper? This is Big Chief Dirty. Anything?”

  “Nada.”

  “Bring your people this way, then. RV at the communications hub.”

  “Roger.”

  “Three sentences in a row,” Lex said aside to Morgenstern, nodding at Pearce. “That’s chatty for him.”

  “But only ever a single word at a time. Pearce is one-eighth Cherokee. Says his ‘nation’ aren’t big on small talk. Or any kind of talk.”

  Pearce, aware they were discussing him, fixed them with an imperturbable dark-eyed stare. He twirled a finger, helicopter style—moving out—and all four of them set off back the way they had come.

  Abruptly, Pearce halted. He clenched a fist in the air. Morgenstern stepped past Lex and Albertine to join him.

  Pearce pointed to his eyes, then forwards.

  Morgenstern looked a query at him.

  Pearce held up a single finger.

  Morgenstern nodded. She motioned to Lex and Albertine to stay put, and mimed shushing.

  Lex drew his SIG and chambered a round as quietly as he knew how.

  The two Thirteeners advanced slowly, silently, Pearce in front, Morgenstern covering him from behind.

  Albertine nestled close to Lex. He could feel her trembling. He placed his free hand on her forearm, hoping his steadiness would steady her. It seemed to, somewhat.

  Reaching a door, Pearce pressed his back to the wall beside it. He jerked his thumb. Someone, the individual he’d caught a glimpse of, had gone in there.

  The door led to one of the six-man dormitories. It stood halfway open. Carelessness? Invitation? Trap?

  Pearce pointed to himself, then upward, then to Morgenstern, then downward. A high-low entry to maximise the spread of gunfire coverage.

  He counted down on his fingers. Three. Two. One.

  He swung in through the doorway, sighting along his M-60. Morgenstern matched him at a crouch, CAR-15 levelled.

  Both took aim, zeroing in on the same target.

  “Who’s that?” Morgenstern barked. “By the bunk! Turn round and identify yourself!”

  Whoever she was addressing did not reply.

  “You have three seconds to comply, or face aggressive action.”

  Three long seconds passed.

  Morgenstern shouldered her carbine and unclipped something from her belt. She held the object up so that Lex could see. A dark green cylinder with holes drilled in it.

  Flashbang.

  Lex turned to Albertine. “Shut your eyes and cover your ears.”

  Morgenstern yanked out the pull ring and tossed the flashbang into the room. She and Pearce twisted aside, shielding their heads.

  An enormous sunburst of brilliance.

  An ear-splitting percussive crack.

  Smoke drifted out from the dormitory doorway. Pearce and Morgenstern stood back, weapons at the ready.

  Someone emerged.

  He came slowly through the dispersing smoke. Lex assumed he was stunned by the flashbang, dazzled by a million candela of light and deafened by 180 decibels of sound, disorientated, made meek
. He was giving himself up.

  He stumbled into the corridor. He was dressed in camouflage fatigues and combat boots, with a Glock 19 pistol snugged in a shoulder rig. His features had a Hispanic cast. A silver eagle, the insignia of a US army colonel, adorned his shoulder.

  The surname sewn on his chest pocket read Gonzalez.

  Colonel Gonzalez looked around, and what Lex had taken to be dazedness seemed in fact to be something else. A kind of deep-seated perplexity, as though the entire world was a puzzle to him.

  His eyes were strange. The irises were unnaturally pale, especially for someone with his complexion. The retinas reflected the sulphurous light queerly, flashing a deeper yellow.

  His gaze fell on Pearce and Morgenstern.

  Instantly he went on the attack.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  A WALKING SHAMBLES

  IT WAS SO swift, so unexpected, that neither Pearce nor Morgenstern was prepared for it. From a standing start, without a sound, Colonel Gonzalez sprang into action like a tiger pouncing. He swatted Pearce’s machine gun out of his grasp and went for his throat. One grubby hand clamped around the Thirteener’s neck and started to squeeze. The other lashed out and caught Morgenstern with a savage backhand blow. Her head snapped sideways and she reeled.

  Pearce grabbed Gonzalez’s wrist and tried to pry himself free, but the colonel bore down with startling strength. His fingers dug into Pearce’s flesh as though it were bread dough. Pearce’s face turned a terrible shade of red and his mouth worked effortfully as he tried to suck in air through his constricted windpipe.

  He abandoned the attempt to dislodge Gonzalez’s hand and went for the colonel’s eyeballs instead, jabbing with his thumbs. Gonzalez seemed unperturbed. His expression was impassive, no ferocity, no aggression, just the calm mask of someone doing their job. He gathered up both of Pearce’s wrists with his free hand and levered them aside, out of harm’s way. The throttling continued.

  Morgenstern had by now recovered her wits. She drew her sidearm, a MK23 semiauto, and lined it up with Gonzalez’s temple. Point blank. In a moment’s time the top of Gonzalez’s skull would be blown clean off.

  But the colonel, spying the danger, swung Pearce bodily around and slammed him into his teammate like a living baseball bat. Morgenstern was sent skittering across the linoleum. She managed to get off a shot but it went wild, bullet embedding in the ceiling. She caromed head first into the wall and the gun was jettisoned from her hand.

  Pearce’s face was now purple and he was starting to spasm uncontrollably. There was no fight left in him. He was on the brink of passing out.

  Lex stepped forward, SIG raised. Finally he had a clear line of fire. Before, Morgenstern had been in the way. He hadn’t dared take a shot for fear of hitting her by mistake.

  He squeezed the trigger and planted a bullet in Gonzalez’s shoulder.

  The force of the impact alone should have knocked Gonzalez off his feet. Shock and pain should have incapacitated him.

  Gonzalez was unfazed. A huge chunk had been taken out of his upper arm, blood was flowing freely, yet he still stood, still strangling Pearce. It was almost as though Lex hadn’t shot him at all.

  “The head,” Morgenstern said, dazed and bleary. “In the fucking head.”

  Lex recalled Sampson describing how to bring down a zombie. Head shot. Destroy the brain stem. It’s the only way.

  Was that what this was? Gonzalez was a zombie? This was what one looked like?

  It really didn’t matter. A head shot was a head shot, after all. No one, be they man or monster, could withstand having half their cerebellum punched out by a Parabellum round.

  The SIG boomed. Gonzalez’s head recoiled like a coconut hit dead-on at a shy. Stuff from it spattered the wall behind.

  He ought to have toppled instantly. Dropped like a stone.

  How come he didn’t? How come he remained upright, remorselessly clutching Pearce’s throat in a death grip?

  Slowly Gonzalez swivelled his head to look at Lex. A whole portion of his cranium had been removed, as though someone had dug a trowel into his brow and scooped upwards. Grey matter glistened. Blood oozed down his face, carrying shards of skull bone with it.

  Yet his eyes still stared, befuddled but bright. Something continued to live inside him, even with half his brain gone.

  “Zuvembie,” Albertine whispered.

  Lex could not make sense of it. He tried to analyse how a bullet in the shoulder at a range of ten yards could fail to stop an opponent in his tracks, let alone a head shot. Gonzalez had survived the unsurvivable. The laws of ballistics had been rescinded. No, the laws of nature.

  Pearce was in dire straits. His eyes rolled up. He was twitching, his legs kicking like those of a hanged man in his final throes.

  Lex tamped down his astonishment. Pearce’s life was at stake. That consideration overrode all others.

  He advanced on Gonzalez, SIG held out, pumping 9mm bullet after 9mm bullet into the colonel. He aimed for joints, weak spots in the human physiology, anywhere crucial to the movement of the body. Gonzalez might be unkillable, but if his basic biomechanics were messed with, he could surely be crippled, rendered inert.

  One shot blasted through the elbow of the arm with which Gonzalez was holding Pearce. The arm was virtually severed in two and, unable to bear the Thirteener’s weight any more, tore apart. Pearce fell with the hand still around his neck, although its crushing grip had relaxed. He and the gristle-ended stump of forearm hit the floor together.

  Another bullet took out Gonzalez’s left knee, and he staggered but shifted his weight to the right leg. He shuffled towards Lex, at the same time reaching for his Glock with his one good arm. The SIG obliterated most of that hand, leaving just the thumb and some of the meat of the palm.

  A bullet shattered Gonzalez’s pelvis. A bullet gouged through his neck, splintering the cervical vertebrae. His half-missing head flopped, and what was left of his brain spilled out like porridge from an overturned bowl.

  Even then, he continued on the offensive. He lumbered forwards, head lolling, yellowy gaze locked sideways on Lex. As long as Lex posed a threat to his existence, Gonzalez would not give up. Indeed could not, it appeared. He had to kill Lex, while his body was still able to. Long after the point where he should have been lying on the ground in a lifeless, mangled heap, something drove him murderously on.

  The SIG clicked dry. Lex swapped out the spent magazine for a fresh one, and as he did so called out, “Someone! Anyone! What do I need to do here? The bugger won’t take the hint and die.”

  “Just keep firing,” said Morgenstern. She had shoved herself up into a sitting position and her MK23 semiauto was back in her hand. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

  Together they pumped a score of bullets into Gonzalez, and more. Gobbets of him flew away like the wreckage from a piñata. He skipped and shook in a grisly St Vitus dance. At last his body could no longer physically support itself. The damage to muscle and bone was too extensive, too catastrophic. He was a walking shambles, more of him injured than intact. His fatigues hung off him in tatters. He teetered on the spot, some three paces from Lex, close enough that the abattoir reek of blood and ruptured organ coming off him was sickeningly strong. He fumbled one last time for his Glock, trying vainly to hook his thumb into the trigger guard to draw it, even though he lacked the fingers to use it. Then he collapsed.

  Almost literally collapsed.

  Bits of him breaking apart and tumbling off as he fell.

  Like a bombed skyscraper disintegrating.

  A man became a gory jumble of body parts.

  Silence reigned.

  BUCKER HAD BEEN yelling over the comms for some time.

  “Who’s firing? Answer me, dammit! Do you have enemy contact? Have you engaged?”

  Lex had been aware of the voice in his earpiece but only distantly, as background noise. He had been too preoccupied with killing Gonzalez to give it much attention.

  Now he said
, “This is White Feather. We have engaged with one enemy. Enemy is down. No fatalities on our side, but Whisper is hurt.”

  “How badly?”

  “No idea. I’m going to check.”

  “Do not move from your position. We’re on our way.”

  “Roger, Big Chief Dirty.”

  Lex knelt beside Pearce. He felt for a pulse and found one. Strong. The Thirteener stirred at his touch. His eyelids fluttered open. He let out a sound that could have been a word or simply a groan. Finger-mark bruises patterned his neck like livid leopard spots. The whites of his eyes were crazed with burst capillaries. His face, at least, was returning to its normal colour.

  “Fuck,” he croaked.

  “Succinctly put,” said Lex.

  “Morgenstern?”

  “Here, Pearce.” Morgenstern crawled over to his side. “Let’s take a look at you.” She palpated his neck gently, then with equal gentleness clasped his jaw and rolled his head from side to side. She inspected his pupils and asked him a few simple questions with yes-or-no answers.

  “You’ll live,” was her expert prognosis. “Contusions. Some trauma to the trachea. You’re going to have a hell of a sore throat for the next few days and probably a nasty headache too. But nothing’s broken. No nerve damage. Try to keep from talking too much, if you can. That’ll aid the healing process.”

  “Difficult,” he said with a partial smile.

  “Yeah, I realise it’s a big ask.”

  Footfalls echoed along the passage. The rest of Team Thirteen raced into view.

  “Pearce,” Buckler barked. “What’s your status?”

  Pearce raised a shaky but resolute thumb.

  “And what in the name of fuck,” Buckler said, turning his attention to the mess on the floor, “is that?”

  “That is—was—someone called Colonel Gonzalez,” said Lex.

  “Jesus. The site military supervisor. What’d the guy do to deserve being shot to shreds?”