Age of Voodoo

by James Lovegrove

  They passed doors marked LAB 1 and LAB 2. No doubt it had been in one of those rooms that Seidelmann had brewed up his V.I.V.E.M.O.R.T. and Couleuvre had hijacked the formula for his own esoteric purposes. The taste and smell of concrete was growing stronger, the pall of dust thicker.

  “I heard him calling out to me,” said Couleuvre, almost dreamily. “Every time I was down on this level, the voice came to me, louder, clearer. It was not simply in my mind. It was an actual sound, in my ears. As real as anything. How could I not listen? How could I ignore it?”

  And now they rounded a corner, and before Lex’s eyes there appeared a scene that was both industrious and hellish.

  Zuvembies, dozens of them, moved to and fro. Some were carrying armfuls of rubble—chunks of concrete ranging from pebble-sized to football-sized—which they transported into rooms on either side of the passage, emerging moments later unburdened. Others were ascending from a huge hole at the end of the passage, a cavelike entrance that had been hewn out of the floor and one wall. They came up with more of the rubble, which they passed to their comrades before turning and descending back into the pit. It was a zuvembie chain gang, a machine of the living dead, labouring repetitively and monotonously. Clothes hung off emaciated frames in tatters. Hands were bloodied and raw from hefting all that debris. In the hazy half-light Lex saw faces that seemed utterly resigned, as though the zuvembies knew they would have to keep at these tasks until their bodies broke down or doomsday arrived, which happened sooner.

  From the pit itself rose a remorseless pounding and clanking. Couleuvre motioned to the zuvembie Marines to release Lex. He invited him to go closer to the pit and inspect. “No need to be cautious,” he said. “None of them will bother you. They have a task, and that is all they are focused on.”

  Lex peered over the lip of a tunnel that went down at a shallow incline, over thirty feet deep. Yet more zuvembies were crammed together at its base, toiling away with hammers, fire axes, chisels, crowbars, any and every sort of metal tool. They hacked, chipped, bashed and scraped, eating through solid concrete inch by inch. The other zuvembies scooped up the biggest pieces and brought them up and out. The rest of it, the stuff that was too small to carry, littered the tunnel floor, a shin-deep drift of gravel and shaley flakes.

  Mute, uncomplaining, uncaring, the zuvembified personnel of Anger Reef were doing Couleuvre’s bidding. They dug and fetched and dumped, burrowing into the installation’s very foundations, moles, miners, mules, slaves.

  “The perfect workers,” Couleuvre said, gloating. “They do not take breaks. They do not need to rest. They have been hard at it twenty-four hours a day for nearly a week, and they are so close now, so close. A breakthrough is at hand. And he is singing high and loud, a hymn of fear and agony because he knows I have almost reached him. Perhaps you hear it too...?”

  Lex shook his head. “Nothing but the racket your victims—your innocent victims—are making. What’s down there, Couleuvre? What are you after? Who is this ‘he’?”

  “I think you know, Monsieur Dove.”

  “Assume I don’t. Tell me.”

  “Bondye,” said Couleuvre.

  This was more or less the answer Lex had anticipated. “God.”

  “None other.”

  “And not, maybe, a thermonuclear bomb?”

  “You say that as though there is a difference.”

  “I believe there’s a very great difference,” said Lex.

  Couleuvre looked grave. “And you would be incorrect. They are intertwined. The one is an aspect of the other. Bondye. Bomb. Both are judgement. Both are slaughter. Both bring death to millions. Both cannot be argued with or appeased.”

  “And this particular bomb, if it’s even there, if it’s even still operational, which I doubt...”

  “Oh, it is there. Trust me.”

  “What are you planning on doing with it?”

  “What else does one do when one gets an opportunity to meet God face to face? Tell Him a few home truths. Remonstrate with Him. Teach Him a lesson.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “You want me to spell it out? Very well.” Couleuvre ran a hand over his rooster strip of blond hair, a casual act of preening. “When I find the bomb I will set it off. I will stand in front of it and defy it to destroy me. My power against Bondye’s—and we shall see who wins.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  A DEITY OF MASS DESTRUCTION

  LEX FOUGHT THE urge to laugh.

  “I can tell you right now who’s going to win,” he said. “Not you.”

  “You underestimate me.”

  “Human being versus nuclear fission? Sorry but that’s not even a contest.”

  Couleuvre blinked calmly, saying nothing. Around them the zuvembies carried on their task, deepening the pit little by little.

  “For fuck’s sake, why?” Lex demanded. “Why do such a crazy thing?”

  “I told you. To challenge Bondye. To teach Him a lesson.”

  “But what’s God ever done to you?”

  Couleuvre’s face creased, as though a bolt of lightning were zigzagging across it. “What has Bondye done? Hmmm. To the world, over the centuries? Brought endless suffering and ruin. All those wars, those massacres, those inquisitions, carried out in His name. Countless millions have died. But to me personally? Perhaps I can remind you of a tragedy that hit my country quite recently.”

  “The earthquake.”

  “Just so. One January evening, out of a clear blue sky, comes a seven-point-zero magnitude earthquake. A quarter of a million buildings are demolished, just like that. Three hundred thousand people are killed, the highest casualty rate of any single earthquake ever. A million more are left homeless. Overnight, most of Haiti becomes a holocaust zone. Bodies pile up in the streets. Relief supplies take forever to come through and are poorly distributed. Aftershocks ripple across the country and nobody knows what is going on. Communications are down. The government is in disarray. There’s looting, chaos, widespread panic.”

  “Sounds to me like every earthquake there’s ever been,” said Lex. “It was a terrible event, no question. On Manzanilla, no one could talk about anything else. There were charity drives. We sent a load of rice, flour and medicine over. We did everything we could to help. As did other countries. I don’t see what you’re driving at.”

  “You were not there,” said Couleuvre. “To feel the ground shaking under you, as though being kicked from below by a giant... To see houses that have collapsed with whole families inside... To hear the cries of those trapped in the ruins with no hope of rescue... And then the corpses. We were stacking them up on the sidewalks and in alleys. Nowhere else to put them. And in the heat, as they began to decompose—the stench! I saw a stray dog biting at one, gnawing off a hand and running away with it. I saw crows flying off with human eyeballs in their beaks. I saw an infant squatting beside its dead mother, huddled against her bloated belly, because it had nowhere else to go and no one else to look after it. What had Haiti done to deserve this? Nothing. Nothing.”

  “It wasn’t some kind of punishment. You make it sound like one but it wasn’t. It was a random natural disaster. Just something that happens. An act of—” Lex faltered.

  “Go on, say it.”

  “All right then. An act of God.”

  “Précisément! The very words. An act of God. Bondye. Bondye Himself did it to us. He flapped His mighty hand, tectonic plates moved, and my country suffered. It suffered as no other country has done. Some of our most prized historic landmarks were flattened, including the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de L’Assomption. Some of our most prominent citizens were killed, including the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince. What kind of deity does that to one of His own places of worship and one of His own Christian representatives on earth? I will tell you. A deity who does not care, that is who. A deity who is so indifferent to His creation that He can smash parts of it without thinking, perhaps with even realising. A deity who needs to be reminded of the respons
ibilities a god should have.”

  “Okay, look,” said Lex. “I’m not getting into a whole theology debate, because it’s a subject I know nothing about. But I am confused. Not so long ago you were telling me about Baron Samedi, how he’s the loa of death, how I’m his right-hand man, his ambassador, because I’ve killed people.”

  “Mais oui. And?”

  “Well, you worship him and serve him. He’s your husband, your master. If he’s all about death, then what’s your problem with Bondye being all about death too? There’s a basic contradiction there. Surely Bondye and Samedi are on the same page. If Bondye kills three hundred thousand people, doesn’t Samedi revel in that? Doesn’t it make your loa rub his hands and cackle with glee?”

  Couleuvre looked pleased, as though Lex was posing exactly the questions he wanted him to. “No contradiction. There is more to the Baron than simply death. He loves life as well. It is knowledge of one’s own inevitable end that makes living more valuable, more exciting. We dance in the shadow of death, we eat, we fuck, and enjoy these things all the more because we know they cannot last. Without death, life is meaningless, and without life, death is too. The Baron and his wife Maman Brigitte look forward to receiving our souls in due course, but before then they wish us to make the most of our brief time as flesh-and-blood beings. They see death as a climax, the final great party. To them it is a special occasion, a cause for celebration. They are not casual about it. They are not indiscriminate or callous.”

  “And Bondye is.”

  “As the Haitian earthquake proved. I cried to the Baron afterwards. Weeping, on my knees, I begged him to explain to me how Bondye could do such a thing. But he just shook his head in sorrow and shrugged his shoulders. He could not understand either. Bondye is as mysterious to the loa as He is to us mortals. They struggle to make sense of His behaviour no less than we do.”

  “Is triggering a bomb really going to grant you a personal tête-à-tête with the Almighty?”

  Couleuvre shrugged his shoulders: why not? “It is a weapon of mass destruction. Bondye is a deity of mass destruction. The bomb, you could say, is just another of His loa. And it is not as if I have a choice. Bondye Himself has laid down the challenge, through the bomb. I must respond. I cannot back away. I am no coward. What I’m hoping is that you will agree to help me.”

  “Me?” Lex’s eyebrows shot up.

  “The Baron’s man. An assassin of acute skill and prowess. The Baron tells me he visited you last night. He joined the army of your victims. He followed their souls, hitching a ride with them as they made their pilgrimage to you in your sleep. He was drawn by their hunger for you, their hatred, their desire. He saw you, and what he saw impressed him. He very much wanted you to travel to Anger Reef and meet me. He felt we would make a good team.”

  A weird, horrible feeling stole over Lex. His nightmares about being mobbed and mauled by his Code Crimsons were deeply unpleasant but they were, nonetheless, his nightmares. They were private. No one had a right to know about them but him.

  And here was Couleuvre, whom he had met barely twenty minutes ago, revealing a familiarity with these innermost secrets of his psyche. It was cruelly intimate. A violation.

  “Don’t think that’s going to happen,” he growled, letting rancour leak through into his voice. “Not a fucking chance.”

  “The Baron has assured me that my magic will be increased by your presence beside me.”

  “If there’s a nuclear bomb going off on this island, I aim not to be around when it happens.”

  “You will not be escaping. Do not be under any illusion as to that. Why not stand with me instead as I tame the bomb with my wanga? Together we can show Bondye that we mortals are no mere ants to be trodden on and crushed without care or consequence. We are worthy of His respect.”

  “Where is this bomb anyway?” Lex shifted one foot, a subtle sidestep that brought him a few inches closer to the bokor. “Your zuvembies have dug all that way and you still haven’t found it.”

  “It was buried,” said Couleuvre, studying the pit. “When Anger Reef was mothballed, it seems the Americans could not be bothered to go to the trouble of dismantling the bomb. They left it where it was, in a hidden chamber at the foot of a vertical shaft leading down from this sublevel. They poured tons of concrete down the shaft, filling it in, and walked away.”

  While Couleuvre was talking, Lex edged another few inches closer still. His whole body was tensed, ready. This was his best chance and probably the only one he would get. Couleuvre was musing, distracted. The bokor had a thick, strong neck. The jugular stood proud. A half Nelson chokehold would soon stop the flow of blood through that, causing transient cerebral ischemia. In thirty seconds he would be out cold. Maintaining the pressure for a further two minutes would result in irreversible hypoxic brain damage.

  “Did you find that out online?” he asked.

  “The loa have knowledge you can’t get even from the internet,” Couleuvre replied. “And Monsieur Dove?”

  The fist seemed to come out of nowhere. The punch was powerful and well aimed, a backhander with plenty of weight and force behind it. The gold and silver rings acted like knuckledusters.

  Lex lay on his back, head ringing. His jaw was numb, thick, swollen.

  “The loa can also alert you to a man’s intentions,” said Couleuvre. He snapped his fingers, and the zuvembie Marines jerked into life, seizing Lex once again. Undead fingers dug painfully into his arms, all the way to the bone it seemed.

  “Such a pity,” Couleuvre sighed. “I felt I could count on you. So did the Baron. We are both disappointed.” To the zuvembie Marines: “Take Monsieur Dove to join the others. He can be dosed with V.I.V.E.M.O.R.T. like the rest of them. If he will not help me one way, he can help me another.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  PRISON BREAK

  THE ZUVEMBIE MARINES hauled Lex back up to Sublevel 2. He didn’t even try to resist. He was still stunned from Couleuvre’s blow. He couldn’t recall ever having been hit so hard. His thoughts were scattered, pinging about in his brain like pachinko balls. His vision kept drifting out of focus.

  He was hurled unceremoniously into a storeroom of some kind. A door slammed. Around him, voices rumbled like bubbles bursting underwater. Gradually they began to make sense.

  “...Lex? Lex?” Albertine. “Speak to me.”

  “Ugh. Shit.” He sat up shakily, feeling as though he were on a boat in rough seas.

  “Easy now. Are you okay?”

  “Just.”

  “I take it your little chitchat with Couleuvre was a free and frank exchange of opinions,” said Buckler.

  “He bent my ear. Tried to recruit me. Belted me a good one.” Lex worked his bruised, tender jaw. Unbroken, but not for want of trying. A molar wobbled in its socket when he probed it with his tongue. “Suppose I asked for it. I was moving in to kill him.”

  “You had a shot?” said Morgenstern.

  “Yeah, but the bugger saw it coming. Like he had some kind of sixth sense. The loa warned him, he said.” Lex peered around the room, seeing shelf upon shelf laden with folded linen, supplies for the entire installation. Some had been pressed into service as makeshift bandages for Tartaglione and Pearce. “Field dressing. Your handiwork?” he asked Morgenstern, who nodded. “How are they doing?”

  “Tartag’s been bitching and whining, so we know he’s all right.”

  “I’m right here,” Tartaglione protested. His head was partially mummified with torn-up strips of hand towel. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not.”

  “We always try and act like you’re not here,” Sampson said. “It’s wishful thinking.”

  Tartaglione lofted a middle finger. “Your mother.”

  “And Pearce?” asked Lex.

  Morgenstern’s expression said it all: not good. Pearce lay on the floor with a bound-up shoulder and a blood-drenched bedsheet fastened round his waist like a cummerbund. He had passed out.

  “I worked the broom handle o
ut and managed to stem the bleeding, but there’s no way of telling what’s been pierced inside him. If it’s any part of his intestine, we’re looking at peritonitis and, well, you know where that leads. He needs proper medical attention urgently.”

  “So we’re all about the good news,” said Buckler. “What’s Couleuvre’s game anyway? Any clues?”

  Lex gave a summary of what he had seen down on Sublevel 3. His account was met with a dark silence, which Tartaglione broke. “So let’s get this straight. We have no guns. We’re going to be killed and turned into brainless minions. And Couleuvre’s got a date with a nuclear weapon which he’s going to set off just to make some whack-job religious point. Oh man, this is perfect, just perfect. We are the dictionary definition of screwed.”

  “Tartag,” said Sampson, “I love you like a brother, but if you do not nut up and be a man, right now, I will unwrap that Indian-ass turban of yours and use it to strangle you.”

  “Thanks, pal. Good to know I can count on you for support.”

  “Any time.”

  “But I mean it. What the hell can we do? Lieutenant? Anyone?”

  Albertine raised a tentative hand. “I think I know how to stop the zuvembies.”

  “What, seriously?”

  “Go on,” said Buckler.

  “Couleuvre has used strong sorcery, and there’s also Seidelmann’s formula to take into account,” said Albertine. “That’s an unknown factor. I’ve never dealt with anything like this before. But a zuvembie is basically an unwilling slave. There’s a soul inside, still tethered to the body when it ought to be free—a soul cowed into obeying Couleuvre, enabling the body to do as he asks. I can use my own vodou to attempt to release that soul, and therefore incapacitate the zuvembie it belongs to, like removing the hard disk from a computer. But it has to be on a one-to-one basis. Individually, not en masse. I will need to prepare a poudre for the task.”