by Steve Perry
Yamada had a knife. Good. There would come a moment. He was certain of it.
Indy watched as Boukman sat cross-legged on the earth, the wooden jar on the ground in front of him. Boukman’s eyes were closed, he’d finished smoking whatever had been in his pipe, and he was chanting softly.
Around him, the chemically created zombis began to chant, their voices joining Boukman’s. The other ones, the dead, did not make a sound, but they swayed back and forth like a captive elephant, rhythmically, in unison—all to the left, all to the right, as if joined at the hip.
“He calls upon the Gatekeeper,” Marie said. “And once the Gate is open, he will call for the creator of the talisman. When he comes, even you will feel it. Boukman will take the talisman out of the jar for its creator to examine. The circle of torches will keep most of the power warded, but some of it will escape. I will try to catch what I can.”
The chanting, more of a wordless drone now, increased in volume. It had a lulling, almost hypnotic quality to it . . .
Yamada felt a chill sweep over him, like a wind from a glacier, a sensation he never expected to feel in the jungle. It was as if some alien presence had arrived and settled nearby.
He nodded to himself. Demons and hungry ghosts. He was not a deeply religious man, he was a scientist, but he knew what he was feeling. This place was imbued with the spirit of something inhuman. A wrong move at the wrong moment, and this thing would consume a man as a wolf would a mouse. A single crunch of otherworldly teeth and that would be the end of you.
Yamada sat very still.
Indy felt something, no question, but what it was, he couldn’t say. Whatever it was, it smelled of evil.
It wasn’t something you wanted to notice you if you were tied hand and foot nearby. Indy found himself holding his breath . . .
For a moment Gruber thought he was hallucinating. He saw something settle down inside that ring of torches, some ethereal, translucent something that assumed a vaguely man-like shape and sat on the ground facing the witch doctor Boukman.
Must be whatever the man was smoking. Some kind of drug, and some of it drifted this way to affect my mind. That has to be it . . .
This was no loa sitting across from Boukman. It was some Maldye godling, full of arrogance, reeking of power. It spoke not, but waved what looked like a hand made of fire at the jar. Boukman felt its thoughts:
Show me, it demanded.
Boukman unscrewed the wooden lid, removed the talisman, unwrapped it from the silk covering it. He had slitted his eyes almost completely closed, yet even so it was like looking into the noonday sun. To stare directly at it was to go blind, so he shifted his gaze to one side—
Mine, yes.
Next to him, Marie moaned. “It is so bright! Come to me—!”
Indy didn’t see anything, but he felt the air stirring around him as a wind that was hot and cold at the same time.
The zombis that could speak were in full voice now, and all of them swayed together, as precisely as a machine. Boukman had taken the pearl out, unwrapped it, and set it on the ground—
Boukman felt the Maldye’s smile more than saw it. The god was shifting fires, reds, blues, greens, yellows, swirling and contained, like nothing natural could possibly be.
Yesss? it seemed to say silently inside his head.
Aloud, Boukman said, “I importune thee. Grant me thy favor.”
What do you offer in return?
Boukman stood, rising up effortlessly, filled with the radiant energy that shined from the talisman, stronger already than ever before. The potential was astounding.
In the graveyards on the island, anyone dead within the last year began to stir, hearkening to his unspoken call.
Across the miles of sea passage, on the south coast of Haiti, graves rumbled as the dead strove to leave, digging free of rotted coffins, shoveling away earth with their hands . . .
Amazing! And this but a reflection, like the sun in a mirror!
Time passed, how much Boukman could not say. Hours? Eons?
Eventually, Boukman drew his knife from his belt. The polished steel glittered in the torchlight. “Bring her,” he said.
Four zombis headed to where Indy and the others were tied up.
“Not yet,” Marie said. “I am not ready yet.”
“Now would be a good time to get your knife out,” Indy said to Yamada. “Hurry!”
The four zombis arrived. They picked up Marie and carried her back toward Boukman.
“Yamada!”
“Almost . . . almost . . . here—”
He managed to toss the knife toward Indy. It fell two feet short. Indy fell forward, extending his tied hands toward it—
His slaves laid Marie on the ground in front of him. Boukman squatted, raised the knife, offered a Word—
Wait. I will see her dance first.
Boukman frowned. Well. It was the god’s sacrifice, he could do with her what he wished.
Boukman laid the edge of the knife onto the ropes. In a moment Marie was free. She rose up, as if to run, but the living fire gestured and she stopped.
Dance, it said.
Marie leaned her head back. Shook her hair out. Began to dance, under the Maldye’s control—
Indy managed to saw away the ropes holding him, cutting himself a couple of times, but that didn’t matter. Quickly he cut Mac’s hands loose and handed him the knife. “Cut yourself loose,” he said.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to give Boukman something to think about!”
But as Indy gathered himself to go, he noticed something.
Around the periphery of the clearing, forms began appearing and moving toward the center. It took a second for him to realize what they were, what he was seeing.
Zombis. And some of them little more than skeletons—they had to have been buried for weeks, months, maybe years—!
“Oh, damn,” he said. “Okay, Mac, listen—I’m going to get their attention. Try to get to Marie, okay?”
Mac nodded. “What about them?” He nodded at Gruber and Yamada.
“His knife, we owe him. Cut them loose, they get the same chance we do.”
“Good luck, Indy!”
“Yeah. You, too.”
Indy stayed low, halfway between a crawl and a duckwalk, and made his way to one of the torches nearby. He grabbed the stick, worked it back and forth a bit, then jerked it out of the ground.
One of the swaying zombis noticed him.
Indy swung the torch like an axman trying to split a log and slammed the torch down onto the top of the zombi’s head.
It screamed. Ah. One of the live ones—
Gruber saw the American attack one of the men with a torch. The man took fire as some of the fuel splashed onto him and lit.
The man screamed.
Others turned to see, and the American began flailing like a baseball player, back and forth, back and forth—
As soon as his feet were free, Gruber got up and hurried to the wooden box. Nobody was paying him any attention.
It would have to do—the jar was too far and there were too many people between it and him.
Yamada appeared next to him.
“Time to leave,” Gruber said.
“Hai!”
But both men were scientists—and transfixed enough by what they saw that they stood there watching . . .
THIRTY-EIGHT
INDY DODGED, ducked, and kept swinging the torch. Kerosene spewed, igniting as he slung the thing back and forth, making strings of flaming liquid that arced into the night.
Zombis came at him, and he jinked to the side, avoiding their grasps. Too many of them, he’d never beat them all, but if he could get them chasing him, Mac might have a chance to save Marie—
A ragged circle of eight or ten of them started to close in on him, though, and he was trapped—!
All right, he’d go down swinging—
There was a sudden bright flash, and a big wh
oosh! behind him. Indy turned to see Mac, holding a torch of his own and standing next to a drum with flaming liquid pouring from it onto the ground—the darkness retreated from the burning pool—
“Over here, you bloody bastards! Come and get me if you can!”
Indy managed a grin.
Distracted for an instant, the zombis in front of him lost focus, and Indy battered his way through them. Last one he hit, the torch broke open and fire whooshed! from that, too, as the zombi seemed to explode into flame. It uttered no sound—
Boukman’s rage flared in him like the fires the imen blan had started. How dare they interrupt this ceremony! He would squash them like insects! He would have them ripped limb from limb!
The Maldye seemed to take delight in the chaos. As Marie, in the grip of the thing’s power, danced almost erotically in the circle, the Maldye’s thoughts came:
Yesss . . .
The power Boukman had absorbed was but a small piece of what was in the talisman, incidental to the main part of it; even so, it was like bathing in energy, he felt stronger than he had ever felt, and all he needed to do was focus it properly.
The dead were rising and more of them coming, but he couldn’t seem to connect to them directly. Something was interfering, somehow, something was blocking him—what was it?
No. Not what. Who . . .
Marie! She was bathed in the same energy. The Maldye had her dancing to his unheard tune, but even as she did, she soaked in the light from the talisman! Here was a danger—!
She had to die. To feed the Maldye, now!
He reached for his knife again—
Indy found another handy torch, pulled it up, and hammered his way toward Marie. He would have to do it; Mac was too far away.
As he got closer, he saw Boukman pull a knife and raise it—
Indy had thrown the javelin in college. Not well, and not far, but he was only thirty feet away. He pulled the torch back like a spear, felt the heat of the flame singe his hair and scorch his hat—
He threw the torch—
It was top-heavy and didn’t fly straight. It started to spin, rotating, so it wasn’t the fire that hit Boukman, but the stick part. Even so, it was enough to knock the knife from his hand—
Indy ran toward them—
Boukman felt the impact, and the shock of it caught him unprepared. He lost the knife, lost his balance, staggered, but kept to his feet.
“Sakpata Loa!” he screamed—“Help me!”
Indy was almost there—
“Indy!” Marie yelled. “The pearl! I need the pearl!”
She continued to dance, as if she were a puppet on strings. It was bizarre.
It was all bizarre—
He knocked over one of the inner circle of torches, and when he did, the zombis in line with it behind him collapsed, as if struck by lightning. He kept going—
Boukman turned, saw Indy, and raised a hand—
Indy dove, hit the ground on his shoulder—ow!—but rolled up and kept going. He scrabbled past Marie, still dancing, and dove again. This time he grabbed the pearl as he rolled.
He came up, and the black pearl felt like his gun when Boukman had made it hot. It was burning him, but he held on.
“No!” Boukman screamed.
Indy thought he heard another voice, deep in his head:
Yes! it said.
Boukman cursed, and Indy felt his legs turn rubbery. He fell, unable to support himself, but he crawled. Marie was only a couple more feet . . .
“Marie!”
Boukman was coming—
She looked down at him. Dropped into a low dance step, as if doing a split—
He shoved the Heart of Darkness into her hand.
Somebody laughed inside Indy’s head. Something was really funny, though he didn’t have a clue what it was—
More zombis appeared and came at Indy. Six, eight, ten of them, and he knew it was about to be all over. He couldn’t get to his feet in time, and even if he could—
Marie was there. Holding the black pearl in both hands and singing? chanting? moaning? He couldn’t tell.
Boukman stopped. He cursed again, but Marie said, “No. Not this time!”
The zombi closest to Indy grabbed him, lifted him up, and bared its teeth as it lunged to bite out his throat—
—but the zombi next to it smashed the one holding Indy with a head-butt to its nose, and the thing let go of him. The two zombis grappled and fell to the ground—
Indy looked around. Boukman was moving away, waving his hands and yelling.
Around them, the zombis had turned on one another.
Indy realized what must have happened. Marie had done it. Just as she had at the village. Only now, she had a lot more horsepower.
Boukman called on every bit of strength he had taken in. He was more skilled than Marie, he knew so much more, but she was feeding from the talisman, and the raw energy of it was too much. He would have to use his talents to beat her!
Two hundred years’ practice to her scant twenty or so, he had ten times her experience! He could do this, he could still prevail—he just had to be careful—!
She had taken control of some of his slaves—!
Indy looked at Marie. Her eyes were completely white and her face creased with veins. Her hands trembled. She chanted, words Indy didn’t understand. But he knew that Marie had wrested control of some the zombis from Boukman and they were going at one another.
But—which were hers and which his?
—a zombi dressed all in black leaped onto one wearing what looked like a sarong—the one in black looked alive, the other much less so. They toppled to the wet ground, clawing and biting at each other—
—a naked and rotting man was ignoring the pair biting and tearing chunks out of his body in favor of the one he was dismembering—
—five zombis were locked in undead combat against ten others, a tangle of limbs and teeth—
—one of them, on fire but apparently not bothered that much about it, lurched past Indy and wrapped its flaming arms around another of the mob, pulling it close—
—the second one’s clothes caught fire, and it screamed.
Who was in control of which ones? Which should Indy attack?
And with what? His gun was gone. Another torch? . . . wait, he had his whip, for all the good that might do—
Gruber stared as one of his men—the missing soldier!—went up against a dark man with a shaved head. The pair of them grappled and fell, and a Japanese soldier arrived and wrapped his arm around the bald one’s neck—
Yamada, awed, watched the battle. There was no skill to it, no sense of strategy or tactics, just the hammering of fists and feet, the flashing of stained and broken teeth.
There—was that one of his men? Trying to gouge the eyeballs out of a woman he had pinned to the wet ground?
—vertebrae cracked as another one lurched in and grabbed the soldier, twisted his head—
They had to go. They had to—but the scientist in him wanted to stay and watch, it was so unbelievable—
“Doctor!” Gruber said.
Yes. Time to go, now!
Boukman screamed and unleashed what energy he had remaining in all directions. Zombis fell, living and dead, flattened by the blast. Marie was too strong—he had to hit her hard!
But he made a mistake—what he let go also splashed against the Maldye—
The evil god was enraged. Boukman felt the malignant darkness well and flow reflexively from the fiery creature, roiling like lava and spewing toward him—
Boukman raised his shield, and the black fire splashed harmlessly over him but knocked down zombis, smashed into the shed, flattened trees in its path. He could withstand that, but it took all his concentration. “I did not mean it!” he yelled. “Please!”
He had to concentrate or he would—
“Hey, pal!” somebody yelled.
Boukman looked. Jones. The American, lunging at him with something in his han
d—a rope? No, a whip—
Boukman raised his hand to ward off the attack—
Two things happened: His protective shield slipped—just a hair, but enough to allow a bit of the black fire to touch him. And then he flinched at its touch, enough so that his warding-off gesture missed Jones—
Indy snapped his wrist out straight and tugged back a hair as he cast the length of his whip at Boukman. The leather end flew past the bokor, not fast enough to crack the sound barrier, but enough to curl back and wrap around the man’s thin neck—
Boukman screamed as the whip encircled his throat. He grabbed it, and the leather caught fire. He needed only a second and it would be be burned to ash—
—but his attention upon the whip choking the life out of him took his attention away from his shield . . .
Indy saw his whip burst into blue-green fire, but he pulled for all he was worth—
—Boukman toppled, face-forward but in slow motion, as if falling through thick glue—
—Boukman, as he fell, realized that it was The Dream. The awful heat at his back, the vileness of his pursuer, it was, after all these years, coming to pass. The Maldye—!
—Boukman’s shield winked out, leaving him unprotected against the black fire that washed over him—
He screamed—“No—!”
The blue-green fire raced up Indy’s whip toward him, and he let go of the handle just as it exploded into unnaturally colored flame—
—Boukman was down, and as Indy watched, a different kind of conflagration enveloped the bokor, what looked like black fire, swirling around him. He screamed, and the darkness somehow flashed in a way that blinded Indy; he threw his forearm up to cover his eyes from a bleakness too intense to behold—
When he lowered his arm and looked past the afterimages on his retinas, he could see what was left of bokor Boukman on the ground: a pile of smoking gray ash . . .
Marie stood there, smiling, and it was not a pleasant expression, but one full of triumph. She waved one hand at Indy.