by Steve Perry
He pulled his knees in tight, used his interlaced fingers to draw his head closer to his body, and curled into a fetal position as the wind nudged him onto his side.
His belt went taut, and he felt himself sliding along the rope as if held by a giant’s insistent hand: Come with me, it said. Now!
He stopped when he arrived at the end of the line that was tied around Marie. She wrapped arms and legs around him and held on tightly. He grabbed his hat in one hand, let go with the other, and used it to encircle Marie. Nearly face-to-face they bobbed up, cleared the muddy ground, then fell back down. The water that had puddled on the earth was gone, blown away. He felt the rope straining, could feel the vibration, could hear the sound of the rope thrumming as might the string of a musical instrument—
Would his belt break? Would the rope? Would the tree fall?
He couldn’t catch his breath, so fast was the wind rushing past his face. He tucked his cheek into the hollow of Marie’s throat and managed to draw in air as he labored to breathe.
Odd what a man notices when he is close to death—she had a musky, pleasant smell—
He heard wood cracking under the wind’s force, felt rather than saw something big rush past, missing them by inches—
If it got any stronger, it would be all over—
And then, the wind slowed. A heartbeat . . . three more . . . yes, definitely it was easing up . . .
The tornado went on its way, heading to the northwest, clearing a path in front of itself like a steamroller . . .
A few seconds later and the driving rain began to fill the empty hollows the wind had cleared. The near pitch blackness lightened enough for him to see that Mac was no more than a few feet away, the wind having dragged him along the same path.
The wind eased yet more. Enough for Indy to yell, “Mac! You all right?”
“Never better!” Mac hollered back.
“Marie?”
“I am fine.” She released her grip on him, and reluctantly he did the same. He slid back a bit along the rope so that there was a bit of space between them.
“It appears that we have dodged another bullet, old sod. Dame Fortune smiles on us yet again.”
Well, they were still in the middle of a hurricane with all kinds of people in the forest who wanted them in the worst way, but yeah.
Indy nodded. Sooner or later, Dame Fortune was going to turn her smile elsewhere—you couldn’t have it forever—but this had been a big favor on her part. Luck had favored him more than a few times, and he was happy to accept that. Better to be lucky than good . . .
The good thing? The tornado had created for them a walkway, and it was going in the right direction . . .
TWENTY-SEVEN
BOUKMAN CONSIDERED his choices, but he could see no better one, and so he invoked Papa Legba, the Master of the Crossroads. This was nothing out of the ordinary, for Papa Legba was both the first and last called upon in heavy magic—he was the Gatekeeper, and contact between human and loa went through him. He controlled the access between the real world and the Other Realm.
Papa Legba was usually revealed as a little old man who smoked a pipe, wore a broad-brimmed hat, and leaned on a cane.
He generally walked with dogs. They revered him, for he was their patron and protector. Abuse a dog, and sooner or later Papa Legba would find you and make you pay. Might be tomorrow, might be fifty years, but find you he always would.
Everybody knew this much about Papa Legba. But it was not so well known that he could and did borrow bits of mojo from every loa who passed through his gate. Not much, and the loa didn’t miss it—if you have millions, you do not miss a few pennies, but after many centuries those small bits from tens of thousands of crossings added up. Papa had amassed strength beyond most. He was not a god, but he could do things that most loa could not. For what each loa had, Papa Legba had, too. Not as much, but more than anyone probably knew.
Boukman approved of dogs. He had never been overly harsh with any that he owned, and he had never—not once—kicked a dog in anger. In many ways, dogs were better than people, and Boukman respected this. It was his best calling card, and he needed to use it.
So he called upon Papa Legba, but instead of asking him to open the Gate, he bowed his head thrice and called his name each time. A request for something other than normal business.
Energy swirled and darkness flowered with multicolored light, washing away the world . . .
The place approaching the Beyond where Boukman found himself was not the usual one where Papa Legba stood in front of a massive iron gate as high as an elephant’s eye with bars as thick as a man’s arm. No, this time the gate was but a short wooden affair in the middle of a chest-tall fence, and Papa sat on a three-legged stool in front of it, smoking his pipe and tossing tidbits of something bloody to the three black and white dogs who lay at his feet. The dogs were short, stubby-legged things, pointed ears, white-tipped tails and feet, bigger than terriers but smaller than chowchows.
The dogs heard or smelled Boukman’s spirit approaching.
They turned to look at him.
Here was the test. If they growled, if the hair went up on their backs, if they barked and showed their teeth, he was in trouble . . .
After a moment, their tails began to wag, though they didn’t leave Papa Legba’s feet.
The old man drew on his pipe, blew out a cloud of red smoke, and smiled. “The dogs like you,” he said. “Speak.”
Boukman offered the old man a low bow. “I am weak, Papa, and there is a task for which I must be stronger.”
The Gatekeeper nodded. “I can offer you strength—what your form can tolerate. Not as much as once it could, but some.”
“I would be in your debt.”
Papa nodded, acknowledging this. After a moment, he said, “There are too many strays,” he said. “Poor creatures with no home, no food, no one to scratch behind their ears, to spell away their fleas.”
“I could build a shelter,” Boukman said. “A roof against the sun and rain, with food and water, run by boys who like to scratch dogs behind the ears. A place where fleas will fall off and die and where all strays would be welcome.”
The old man smiled. Blew out another cloud of red. He nodded. “That would be a good thing, such a place, hey, dogs?”
The dogs wagged their tails faster.
He waved his pipe in Boukman’s direction. “Strength you shall have. Such that you are able to use.”
Boukman bowed. “Thank you, Papa.”
The old man looked at the three dogs, then back at him. “You are evil as men go, Boukman. I have seen many, and I know—there are few who approach your infamy. But a man, even an evil one, who likes dogs? That man can be worth something to me. Go. I will look forward to the shelter you build.”
Boukman bowed again.
When he awoke this time, Boukman felt better than he had in months. Strong, fit, full of vigor. Yes, it was magical strength, and if he misused it, it could kill him—his body had been healed and made stronger, but it was still old by any human standard, and even magic could only protect it from so much. He didn’t need a whole lot, only enough to collect the talisman. After that, he would remake himself—a body completely reborn, perhaps even a new one entirely. With enough power, with enough care, almost anything was possible.
After he collected the talisman, he would be, one way or the other, a new man.
Boukman’s âme stood in the middle of the carnage the imen blan had left behind. With his new strength, he focused his energy, channeled it, and poured it into the corpses at his feet.
It was like standing under a waterfall—magic rushed through and over him like a raging torrent, spewing, filling the dead at his feet with ersatz life.
They began to judder and bounce about on the wet ground, the bodies. Like sparks struck from flint by steel, some of them took life, some did not. The recently killed stirred: those who had been under the spell of the potion, and those who had been in the par
ty of the imen blan. Took life, these did, shook themselves, and stood, empty, soulless husks now his to command.
Papa Legba had been generous in his gift. Boukman would have to build a grand shelter for dogs in return, but that was of small importance now.
Fifteen zombies attained their feet and stood, some of them swaying to an unheard rhythm, waiting for Boukman’s order. And he had energy left. He could raise this many more, he felt, and thirty would be more than he had been able to animate for eighty or ninety years. It was wonderful. More, this would be but a drop in the bucket compared with what he could do once he had the talisman, and was able to use it . . .
“Go and collect the imen blan,” he said. “And the woman with them. Alive. I want them all alive. I have use for them. Follow the path left by Papa Badé’s demon-wind.”
Obediently, the zombis shuffled into the rainy forest. The wind blew over them hard enough to whistle.
Boukman smiled. The gods had tasked him. Very well. He would overcome the obstacles needed to reach his goal. He had always done so before. He would do so now. It was only a matter of time.
The rain came, it stopped, it came back. The wind roared, slackened a bit, then gusted enough to make it impossible to stand erect. Gruber fretted about Jones and McHale, but he knew they would have no easier a time of it than he was having. To attempt to move about in the jungle during a storm of what seemed biblical proportions would be madness, and he didn’t think the Englishman or the American was completely insane.
Of course, after leaving the slaughterhouse floor, it might be that they were panicked into a mindless flight, preferring to be crushed by falling trees over having their throats ripped out. He could understand that.
Even over the thrum of wind and lashing rain, they heard a roaring noise that, to Gruber, sounded like a freight train rushing past only a few meters away.
The rain fell harder, and there was lightning and thunder to go with the new sound.
“Tatsumaki!” Yamada cried.
It was not a word in Gruber’s Japanese vocabulary. “What, another of your ghosts?”
“No. It is a whirlwind. In English, they say ‘tornado.’ ”
Ah. “Windhosen. Trombe,” Gruber said. “We have those sometimes during spring thunderstorms.”
The roar grew briefly louder, but then faded, until the rain and wind covered it again.
Yamada said, “Typhoons bring them, sometimes more than one. In my country, when I was a young man, a typhoon hit our prefecture. From a hill near my home, I watched four tatsumaki dance together through the fields, smashing flat all they touched. It was an amazing sight.”
“Well, this one seems to have missed us.”
“Yes. But we must hope that it also missed our quarry.”
Gruber blinked at that. Yes. Having them sucked up into a violent trombe and hurled out to sea? That would be bad.
“It is a large jungle! What are the chances?” Gruber said. He had to yell, for the wind had come back harder.
“Who can say?” Yamada ducked as a branch blew over his head, barely missing him.
Gruber put his own head down. None of this was to his liking.
“I think we’ve got company!” Indy yelled.
“Where?” Mac said.
“Behind us! I thought I saw something move!”
“Indy, we are in the middle of a hurricane! Everything is moving!”
“Not against the wind, it isn’t!”
“Germans? Japanese? Zombis?”
“I didn’t get a good look.”
“Zombis,” Marie said.
He glanced at her, saw that her eyes were closed. “I can feel them. Almost as many as before . . . ah!”
“What?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. If Boukman can raise that many so quickly, he is even stronger than I knew. We must go faster!”
Indy didn’t need any prodding to agree with that.
They ran.
Well, as much as they could.
The tornado’s track wasn’t an easy walk—there were downed trees and branches, but there were gaps, and it was much faster than slashing their way through the jungle.
It wasn’t long before they came to an obstacle the tornado couldn’t help them with—a river.
The rain was still driving, and the river foamed and rushed past, full of leaves and branches and debris—
“Wait, have a look!” Indy said. “There!”
Mac and Marie looked.
“It’s a rope,” Mac said.
“Yes! Somebody has crossed here,” Indy said. “We can hand-over-hand using that line!”
“If we don’t get smacked by a fallen tree.”
“Would you rather wait for the zombis?”
Mac shook his head. No, he didn’t want to do that.
“I’ll even go first,” Mac said.
They hurried down to the riverbank, slipping and sliding in the mud. Well. They were about to get a bath . . .
It wasn’t the most fun Indy had ever had—it was tough on his hands, and his shoulders, back, and stomach all ached, too, by the time he crawled onto the opposite shore behind Marie. As soon as Indy achieved the muddy bank, Mac pulled his machete out and cut the rope loose from where it was tied to a tree. The river streamed the cut rope across itself toward the other side.
“That ought to help,” Mac said.
“It will slow them only a little,” Marie said. “They will swim across, and most of them will make it. They cannot drown.”
“Anything we can get, we’ll take,” Indy said.
TWENTY-EIGHT
GRUBER AND YAMADA looked at the fast-flowing river. “This is where we crossed before,” Yamada said. “See there, the rope.”
“For what good it does us,” Gruber said.
One of Yamada’s men approached, bowed, and, from what Gruber could gather of his conversation, offered to attempt to swim across and reattach the rope.
“Iie,” Yamada said, in Japanese. “We will look for another way.”
The soldier bowed.
Gruber looked at him as if he did not understand any of what had passed between them. “What?”
“My soldier has offered to try to swim across and retie the rope. As island people, we are good swimmers, but that would cost me a man I cannot afford to lose, I think.”
Gruber looked at the river. “Yes, I believe you are correct.”
“There will be fallen trees in the water. Perhaps enough have gathered to form a dam or bridge. We should look for such.”
Gruber shrugged. Perhaps that was wishful thinking, but sending men into the raging water to drown wasn’t appealing, either. He wouldn’t mind if it served a higher purpose, of course, but he couldn’t see how it would in this instance.
Following the tornado’s path until it stopped abruptly more than a mile later, the trio found another animal trail. A couple of hours later, they reached the gorge they remembered from only a few days before. The rain had finally slackened some, though Marie said it would come back strong again. Yet, even after as much rain as they’d had, the gully had not been filled.
That seemed moderately impossible.
Indy said, “That must be one hell of a big tunnel below to drain that much water away that fast.”
“Yes, yes, fascinating,” Mac said. “Let’s keep moving!”
Marie shook her head. “We cannot keep up this pace.”
“Maybe if we cut the rope going up the slope—” Mac said.
“I can feel them behind us,” she said. “It didn’t work at the river—they draw closer as we speak. This slope won’t stop them.”
Indy looked at the bottom of the trench, at the fissure that ran its length. “I got an idea. Stay here.”
Quickly he used the rope they’d left rigged on the way in to ascend partway up the steeper side of the narrow canyon. Twenty-five . . . thirty feet . . . that ought to do it. He pulled his machete out and hacked at the fiber just below where he had
grabbed it. The sharp blade severed the sisal in one stroke, and the cut piece fell and slithered down the drenched slope.
Slithered, like a giant—
Don’t even think the word, Indy . . .
“What are you doing?” Mac yelled.
“When they see this, they’ll think we went this way and then cut the rope behind us!”
“Maybe. And maybe they split up, look for tracks, and trail us down the gully!”
Indy sheathed the machete and skidded and scuffed his way back down to where Marie and Mac stood. Indy bent, grabbed the rope, wrapped the center of it around his waist, and tied it in a square knot. He handed one end to Marie, the other to Mac.
“Link up,” he said. “Just like during the tornado.”
“What good is this going to—ah.” Mac got it.
Marie didn’t. “I don’t understand.”
“We can’t move as fast as they can on foot. They might be able to track us on land.”
“On land? Can you now fly? I don’t—oh.”
Mac was already knotting the rope around his waist. “We’ll probably drown, you know. Or be dashed against the rocks at the drop to the sea like Batiste said.”
“Maybe. But roped together, we might be able to snag something along the way and avoid the fall at the end. Or maybe the tide will be in.”
“Rather iffy, Indy.”
“Maybe we drown or go off the cliff, as opposed to for sure we get caught by the walking dead. If we hurry, they won’t know which way we went.”
Marie nodded. “You have a point.” She quickly tied her end of the rope around her waist.
Indy took his hat off. “Sorry,” he said to the hat. Then he used the awl on his pocketknife to punch a small hole in the hat and the leather sweatband. He ran a spare bootlace through the hole and tied the hat to his belt on the left side. Given all the rain, a little more water wasn’t going to hurt it, and this way he had a chance of keeping it. His hat guy could fix the hole, if Indy got home again.
“Leave anything you don’t want to carry while swimming,” he said. He hoped that the wooden boxes holding the Heart of Darkness would be buoyant enough to help keep his backpack from dragging him down.