Divine Madness (26 page)

—
François de la Rochefoucauld

A woman who is through with a man will give him up for anything—except another woman.

—
“Lesson in Love” by Ninon de Lenclos

Your heart needs occupation

—
Letter from Ninon de Lenclos to the Marquis de Sévigné

I’d been fixating on the weird mix of weaponry that we’d found in that town, probably because it was better than thinking about other things. Maybe I was being influenced by American cinema, but I had always thought of modern drug dealers as being more high-tech. Had many fled at the first sign of trouble, taking their newer guns with them? And if some had departed on an urgent mission, why leave those other unpleasant specimens behind?

These trivial thoughts were soon displaced. Thirty yards away, it became apparent that in our absence my SUV had suffered an engine extraction and extensive remodeling of its exterior by King Kong or a tribe of cudgelwielding freaks. A closer inspection showed that Corazon also appeared to be missing.

Ninon was understandably upset. But not for long. That cat has more than nine lives, I swear, and as soon as Ninon called he reappeared, wet from doing God knew what and dragging another limp-necked rodent that looked severely withered. He seemed unharmed but a little dazed. I
didn’t blame him. My run-in with a ghoul had produced a similar effect.

Unfortunately, Ninon couldn’t call my engine back as easily as the cat. It continued to lie in the flattened cactus by the road, its torn engine mounts facing skyward as it played at the automotive version of roadkill. I didn’t want to think about what could be strong enough to rip an engine out of an SUV, but I had to admit a graphic image or two crossed my mind before I shut down my imagination and remembered to breathe.

“I’m glad this car wasn’t a phallic symbol for me or anything,” I muttered.

That got a small smile.

“Actually, I see this as a good news–bad news sort of thing,” I went on. I had stopped lisping. Amazingly, my cheek was already beginning to heal, the skin and muscle knitting back together. I had known that, as a vampire, I was supposed to have good recuperative abilities, and Ninon assured me that our little divine fire trick would make them even better, but I had never been tempted to test the theory before. Not that I was feeling smug and immortal, but it was a very small silver lining in an otherwise stressful day.

“I can see the bad,” she said, picking up a punctured gas can. Only a small amount of fuel sloshed around the bottom. Shrugging, she went to the back of the Jeep and pulled out fresh clothing and some wet-wipes. The hole in her chest had scabbed over and she looked fairly healthy when she wiped the blood away. “But the good?”

“Well, eventually the SUV will be found and traced back to me. If I want to disappear, to fake my death, this should do it. Especially if I leave some blood behind for dramatic color.” I picked up some of my clothes that had been flung about in the cactus. Not all of it was shredded. That was good, because my current selection was looking less than haute couture.

I was also relieved to find my portable computer, safe inside its very expensive case. I made a note to never complain about the cost of computer bags again.

“No blood,” Ninon said immediately, and I felt like smacking my head. Of course no blood. I didn’t want them trying to match my DNA and getting too interested in the anomalies. “The rest is good though—especially if we burn it. The last time I had to disappear I went missing in the Bermuda Triangle. That always felt a bit cliché. A car accident in the wilds of Mexico is much better.”

That was my Ninon, ever calm, always thinking. We both began to clean up and then dress. Though we didn’t say anything, we were sniffing the air at regular intervals, checking that we were alone.

“If you have any money stashed away under your real name, you’d best arrange to collect it. Once you ‘die,’ you need to stay dead,” she said suddenly.

I nodded.

“If we do a transfer and large withdrawal at a nearby town, they will probably assume that you were followed by thieves and killed in a roadside robbery. I guess that’s more good news. And you won’t have to pay any more taxes this year.”

I shivered a bit. Too many geese walking on my grave all at once. One thing though, the ghouls scared me more than the IRS.

“Is there a nearby town? I mean, one large enough to have a bank?” I asked.

“Yes. At least, there was. I don’t think we can take anything for granted from here on out. Saint Germain has gotten unbelievably bold.”

“How long can a ghoul live?” I asked. “What about zombies?” In other words, how long could these things chase us? Or force us to chase them?

“In this heat a zombie, assuming it was in prime condition when it was raised, would last no more than five years—three is more likely. A ghoul? I don’t know. Not
much longer. Even if they avoid the sun, the heat and other organisms will continue to eat away at their flesh. Of course, if Saint Germain keeps replacing failing body parts…I don’t know. The zombies I’m less worried about. If we can kill Saint Germain, they’ll wander about their own locales until they rot. The ghouls, though—they’ll follow us. And failing that, they’ll move into populated areas looking for prey. We’re going to have to kill them.” She finished dressing and then tucked her pistol into her belt. I noticed that she had also retrieved her trench spike.

“With a shotgun, a carbine rifle, a nine-millimeter handgun, and an antique revolver for which we have little ammunition? I forgot the trench spike—those work really well,” I added.

She nodded. “Yes. Until we can find something better. Maybe…” She broke off, spinning about with reflexes that would make Corazon proud. She snatched up her trench spike and continued her pivot so that she was facing the body when it hurtled out of the sky.

Her spike landed dead center in its chest. Ninon grabbed the thing’s right arm and flipped the creature onto the ground. She cracked it like a whip, dislocating the thing’s shoulder. The noise it made when it hit the ground was shrill enough to pierce the eardrums. Without thought, without any conscious instruction, I grabbed up my own spike and drove it into the creature’s head. It bucked twice, then stilled.

It was only then that I realized that we hadn’t been attacked by a ghoul.

Ninon realized this at the same moment, and backed away hastily. As I watched, every last bit of color drained from her face.

“Miguel.” Her voice was barely recognizable. I wondered for a moment if she was going to faint. “Please tell me that isn’t your mother.”

My mother? I looked back down at the withered thing
with leprous skin and talons. Its mouth was open and I could see the pick on the end of its tongue. It was definitely a vampire. Could that be Mamita? My eyes ran over it repeatedly, unable to take in what lay before us. Finally, I focused on its abdomen.

“No,” I said at last, finding myself oddly relieved. “There’s no appendectomy scar. Anyway, this poor thing has eczema or something.”

“Not eczema—sunburn, I think,” Ninon said, slumping against the Jeep. She drew a couple of slow breaths and color began to return to her face. “She’s been out in the sun for a while. Maybe
she
wrecked the SUV and not the ghouls.”

It was possible, but I didn’t think so. Vampires tended to get mad at people, not things that couldn’t bleed.

“How did she get here? I don’t smell any water.” I inhaled deeply and regretted it. The creature was definitely starting to rot. The deterioration was rapid; we could almost see the body caving in. The movies had got that part right.

“With all the recent rain, there could be underground aquifers.” Ninon shrugged. Vampires obviously weren’t her area of expertise.

Then we looked at one another, our eyes widening. If a vampire could travel to us via underground rivers, so could S.M.

I reached down and pulled out our trench spikes. This time the sucking sound bothered me. I went to the back of the Jeep and used a few more of Ninon’s wet-wipes to clean them off. I worked quickly. The thought of S.M. lent me speed.

“Put all the clothing and rags in the SUV,” Ninon said, picking up the damaged gas can again. “We’re going to burn it all.”

“Don’t,” I said, as she reached down for the body. Ninon hesitated.

“We should burn it too.”

“I know. But I’ll do it.”

“You don’t have to. I can—”

“I’ll do it,” I repeated. “There’s no need for you to get messy again. Just get anything useful out of the SUV packed into the Jeep.”

She nodded, but we both knew that wasn’t the reason I didn’t want her touching the body. That creature wasn’t Mamita, but it could have been. This was my job.

“Miguel!” she said again. I looked back at her. She was pointing to the side of the SUV. Someone had written in the dust:
Lara Vieja.
There was something about the handwriting that was familiar, but then I had only seen one letter from Mamita. And most graffiti looks alike so I wasn’t inclined to jump to conclusions.

“What does that mean?” I asked. “Old Lara? Is that who this creature is?”

“No. Lara Vieja is a ghost town. It was wiped out some years ago in a flash flood.”

“So this would be a clue then?”

“A dare, I think. Or a warning. Maybe both.”

I thought so too. Everything the ghouls had done had been a taunt.

Still, that writing bugged me. Ghouls were brighter than zombies, but could they write? Or did we have a friend? Maybe it was someone who was an enemy of our enemy and willing to help us find him.

“Do we take the dare?” I asked.

“The world is a big place. Saint Germain could be hiding anywhere. I don’t see that we have a choice.”

I saw many choices, but I didn’t think Ninon would go for running away and not stopping until we reached the Arctic Circle.

We stayed only long enough to see things catch fire. By then there wasn’t much of the vampire’s body left to burn. I still felt sick seeing it consumed by flames.

Ninon turned away first. She opened the driver’s-side door of her Jeep and then said to me, “Do you want to drive?”

“Like I’ve never wanted anything in my life,” I muttered.

I took the keys she held out to me. Under any other circumstance I think we would have held each other, offered comfort and consolation. But we couldn’t afford the time or the weakness that sympathy brought about. If we had ever had any doubts about the situation, now we knew: We were at war. The place had been named and the battlefield was to be Lara Vieja.

“Miguel?” Ninon asked after I had driven for a few minutes in silent driving. I glanced at her, but she didn’t turn my way. The scenery seemed to enrapture her. Or maybe she was watching for ghouls. “That creature was attacking us, wasn’t it? I didn’t overreact?”

I had never heard Ninon sound uncertain. The question surprised me a little.

“Yes, it was attacking,” I said, and made my voice definite because the vampire had been after her. Her, Ninon. The next part came out more easily than I thought it would. “And if you see another vampire coming at you, you must not hesitate because you think it’s my mother. Believe me, she wouldn’t hesitate to attack you if she thought you were threatening me.”

“Miguel…” She swallowed. “You know that S.M. controls these vampires. He’s been in your head and you still have some powers of resistance. You can’t hesitate either if one comes at you. Even if it’s your mother.”

“I know.” I reached over to squeeze her leg. She turned to look at me with somber eyes, and I forced myself to nod affirmation. I still felt ill. “And I won’t hesitate if she attacks me. Or you.”

It wasn’t a hollow promise. Anything that came at me or Ninon—ghoul, zombie, vampire, Mamita, S.M.—was going to end up shot or spiked.

“I’m so glad my own mother’s dead,” Ninon whispered. “Seeing me now…it would kill her. Or Saint Germain would.”

It wasn’t a joke. I wished my mother were dead, too—though not quite enough to want to be the one who killed her. And not enough to want her die by any method S.M. devised.

Men are more often defeated in love by their own clumsi ness than by a woman’s virtue.

—
“Lesson in Love” from
Carte du Tendre
by Ninon d
e
Lenclos

To achieve greatness one should live as if they will never die.

—
François de la Rochefoucauld

It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do.

—
Molière

Our run-in with the vampire had me thinking about Mamita. I had thought that maternal-connector nerve severed, my mind made up about her and therefore no reason to feel pain at the thought of her escaping from a life of slavery. After all, I barely knew her and had no real bond, no reason to care beyond basic human decency, and I had less and less of that all the time. But somehow I did care. I also had questions bubbling back to the surface of my consciousness. Stupid, bitter questions about why and how she had ended up as a vampire. I’ve read up on the Aztec birth rituals once, the ones that invoked the gods. It made me wonder: Did Mamita, in her delirium, accidentally conjure S.M. to save herself? Or maybe by attempting a Christian baptism of her infant so I would not die in sin and end up in Limbo, and that was how her blood got in the water? The later seemed more likely. I couldn’t picture her accidentally murmuring the conjuring ritual—

Come, O god, to see my child, come into the world of too much heat and cold and wind. I give his blood for the sun
to drink and may this water carry away all stain and make this child worthy.

No, it was more likely her blood that drew him. He loved women who were dying in childbirth. The smell would have been like chum in the water, drawing the nearby shark. It was probably just bad luck.

The thing was that Mamita either didn’t know what had happened or wouldn’t tell me, and since I wasn’t going to ask S.M., I would probably never have answers. I just had to accept that maybe there hadn’t been any reason for this tragedy, no one to blame.

We found a town with a bank and no noticeable zombies, and arranged for a transfer of funds and a large cash withdrawal from my bank accounts. I didn’t empty them completely or close them down; that would look too much like a deliberate attempt to disappear and I didn’t need my former bosses mounting a paranoid search for me. Not immediately. We needed to get a few miles under our belts before anyone else started hunting us.

I sat in the small office with my smoky clothes—I had changed, but all our clothes were burdened with a smoke pall—and did my best to look unimpressive, trying to imagine that I had less personality than a vegetable. Somehow I don’t think I succeeded, probably because Ninon and I didn’t dare take our sunglasses off. I think the manager of the bank thought I was a stupid gringo trying to set up a drug deal, and Ninon the evil girlfriend who was leading me astray. He wouldn’t be surprised when the SUV was found torn apart and my body missing. Theoretically, this was a good thing. In actual practice, I didn’t enjoy being looked at like I was stupid scum, another ugly American.

Ninon was an old hand with these sorts of transactions and was very charming, but in spite of what they show you in the movies and the manager’s earnest desire to please her, this moving money across borders is not exactly instantaneous. Perhaps if we had been in the Caymans
or Switzerland where they did these things daily. Still, though I would have to come back the next day to pick up the cash—greenbacks, not pesos—I felt somewhat better about actually taking a concrete step, committing to a course of action. I’ve never been good at fence-sitting. A balancing act takes more energy than engaging in an actual fight.

I haven’t talked about my job in any specifics—and won’t—but I should explain that what the government values me for isn’t something they can easily find and replace. I am unique and they won’t be happy with my loss. I have what you might call hyperfocus, a sort of pattern recognition ability that borders on being psychic. Put simply, I just know things—even about subjects I have no training in. They show me data, often raw numbers or strange collections of facts from newspapers or the internet, and I can somehow glean massive amounts of information from very little data. The fact that I often don’t know what I’m working on is meaningless; I have seen top-secret information that I might pass on to someone else. Really, the only way out for me—at least as far as the more paranoid government types are concerned—is feet first. This disappearance was a drastic step, but a necessary one. I knew it, but it was still a bit eerie killing off Miguel Stuart.

We blew a little of our traveling money and had a car alarm installed in the Jeep. Again, we got some weird looks for wanting to alarm the old thing, but I thought Ninon’s idea perfect. It was belling the cat. We couldn’t stop ghouls—or vampires—from trashing the Jeep, but at least we’d know they were doing it. If the town had run to high-tech, I’d have picked up motion sensors for our hotel room door and to set up everywhere we went, an early warning system that bad guys were creeping up on us. We needed all the edge we could get.

I was still thinking fondly of attack helicopters, but resisted the urge to ask anyone about purchasing dynamite
or military-grade weapons. The place was too small even for a gun store, and we didn’t want to be remembered too colorfully when my bosses finally arrived in town looking for answers about my disappearance. A drug deal gone bad they might buy. It wouldn’t be the first time an American had gone on vacation and done something stupid. Trafficking in arms was another matter.

A gun store wasn’t all that was missing in this minimetropolis. The town’s temples of commerce were limited in their choice of couture as well. They had shorts and T-shirts that advertised beer and cigarettes, and one pair of jeans in my size that cost three times what they would in the States. There were no dress shirts to be had at any price. I found myself looking at stacks of Joe Camel T-shirts and hats that stank of burned rubber, and longing for my closet of clean button-down cotton shirts and suits; and I knew it was probably worse for Ninon who selected a few things with an air of despair. It was bold to tempt Fate by making plans, but I promised myself a trip to expensive stores in a major city soon. I feel so much more competent and desirous of living when I wear clean clothes that fit.

The evening was better. We had a peaceful night in a hotel that offered room service, undisturbed by any branch of the living dead family, though I had at first rather thought the place too much like a rest home where people might be waiting for the bitter—or maybe welcome—end. I actually hesitated before entering the lobby. One didn’t usually see so many elderly people in boater hats and matching shirts gathered in one place, except at campaign rallies in Iowa in an election year. Or with tour groups of retirees, usually going to Reno or Atlantic City to blow their kids’ inheritance.

As I’d stood outside the hotel, reluctant to step inside, Ninon began staring at me with a brow raised, asking silently what was wrong. A quick look around showed me that there was a tour bus outside. I was still feeling a bit
creeped out by the general air of decrepitude, but we decided to register.

The condemned man and woman, we enjoyed our last meal, a sensual feast by anyone’s standards, and then we slept. It was sleep with one mental eye open, on the lookout for intruders, but for the first time ever I enjoyed the simple act of sleeping with a woman in my arms.

The next morning, we started out early heading north. Ninon was driving, so I had the sunrise full on my right cheek. It was beautiful, full of pinks and reds, but I was coming to hate the sun. Being out in it day after day was making me feel like cured leather. However, it was better than rain and the attendant problems that could bring.

Ninon told me that we were near Chihuanuan, almost to the U.S. border. I couldn’t smell the Rio Grande, but took her word for our location, especially when she again left the paved road in favor of what looked like an old wagon-train path.

“This is it.”

The remains of Lara Vieja were beautiful and sad painted in late-morning light. Most of the smaller buildings had collapsed in the flood that had temporarily drowned the town, and were returning their clay to the earth from which it came. Their sandstone foundations were all that survived the torrent, leaving only faint signs of what would have been a bank or café, a market, a school, and homes.

The flood had been bad. Bad enough and fast enough to be supernatural in origin, though it had happened before Ninon and I were in Mexico, so maybe it had nothing to do with us. I hoped the people had escaped the deluge but suspected they hadn’t. There weren’t any bones or bodies about, but experience told us that didn’t mean anything one way or another. Scavengers of any ilk could have carried off the corpses.

The town was a ruin, but the church and hotel remained more or less unscathed, tattered but still proud to
be doing their civic duty for whatever ghosts lingered. Their furniture had been swept into the streets and the walls water-stained to a height of seven feet, but I could see though the open doors and missing windows that the frescos and chandeliers in the ceiling remained intact.

The church vault and hotel wine cellars were probably intact too—the perfect place for a zombie to enjoy a little siesta.

It would be a damned shame, I thought, if we had to burn this place. We were certainly prepared for this eventuality. We had a lot of gasoline in the back of the Jeep. I didn’t plan on getting caught short again.

We slowed to a full stop in the middle of the village square. Only faint traces of the plaza’s giant pavers remained, cracked, crumbling, also anxious to be done with this man-made incarnation and to return to the earth from which they been plucked. We got out of the Jeep, listening and watching and reaching out with other senses.

Beautiful it was, but there were many things not to like when you were thinking defensively. The town was rimmed with cracked boulders and a thick stand of cactus, and burnt-out sagebrush and greasewood littered with church pews, smashed sofas, torn beds, a sign for a
farmacia
now long gone, and even an old claw-footed bathtub—all providing excellent cover for anyone who wished to remain unobserved as they crept up on us. Also, shooting into that mess would mean risking wounds from ricochets.

Guns were a last resort anyway. Reconnaissance was called for.

“They’re here?” I asked, not referring to the townspeople.

“Yes. Listen.” I did, and still heard nothing that suggested life or movement. I suppose the absence of sound was the biggest giveaway that the bad boys were around.

Again, just as was the case in all the other ghost towns we had visited, there were no signs of coyotes or any animal habitants. Birds, snakes, burrowing animals—none of
these were shy and should have moved into these readymade homes as soon as the waters receded, but there was nothing, not so much even as a scorpion clinging to the decaying walls. There was also no graffiti, no broken bottles, no bullet holes, no sign that any human predator had come to gnaw on Lara Vieja’s carcass. Something was keeping them away. The only question I had was whether it was Saint Germain or S.M. who’d been at work.

I turned and looked out over the desert. No animals breathed or chirped or barked. The wind was back, though, its idiot gibbering slipping through the opened doors and missing windows, and it told sad insane tales. It was bringing storm clouds with it as well. Ozone was building in the air.

I turned slowly, looking first at the red-stained church with its bell still hanging from a giant blackened beam and then at the hotel of two-toned pink plaster, a deeper hue where the water had raged. Its wrought-iron balconies were still there, its blue-paned French doors, their glass broken but closed however futilely against the sun. Its carved sign was still legible over the arch of the main entrance: Hotel Loyola, 1864.

Ninon grimaced as the hot wind came, blowing its fetid breath over our tired bodies.

“Is this Smoking Mirror’s work? But why would he do it?” Ninon asked. “There must be a reason. This large a flood would take effort.”

“He doesn’t need a reason. Being pissed off is enough Maybe someone slighted him.”

Ninon looked a question at me.

“Seriously. You may think you know how to hold a grudge, but I promise you that good old S.M. can hold a grudge longer and stronger than anyone. After all, he’s immortal. He has had time to work vengeance into an art.”

“Do we know that?” she asked, looking up into the sky.

“That he’s immortal?” That stopped me. I thought about it, trying for a paradigm shift and finally having a
slight one. “No, actually we don’t. Those stone tablets are hundreds of years old, so we know he’s long-lived. But they don’t actually say he’s immortal.”

“So it might be good news for us. He could be killable by standard means.”

“Or not.” I shook my head. S.M. was too large a problem. Suffice it unto the day the troubles therein and all that. “So, any thoughts about our current dilemma? Do we start with the abode of God? Or do you prefer the abode of men?” I asked. “I suppose we could rummage in the dump for a while. It looks like a great place for ghouls to hide.”

“The church will be more open with fewer places for anyone to hide,” Ninon said. She went to the back of the Jeep, fetched the carbine, and filled her purse with ammunition. She slung the strap across her chest, leaving her arms free. She had her spike and pistol tucked into her waistband already. Her shirt was loose, the bottom buttons undone so that she could draw her gun easily. I approved. It would probably be a long time before either of us went weaponless again.

“Works for me. Let’s go pray and see if we can get the angels on our side.” I already had my shotgun and the second of Ninon’s straw purses filled with ammunition. The trench spike was in my boot, but I added a crowbar to my burden. I had a feeling we might want to open things that were shut.

“
Bon.
Yes, let’s go kill for Christ, since this seems to be what God wants,” Ninon said, closing the back of the Jeep.

The slight blasphemy surprised me. It said so much about the depths of anger and loathing she had been hiding from me and perhaps from herself.

Her words were defiant, but I wasn’t surprised when Ninon paused outside the church, showing a rare moment of hesitation. I didn’t blame her. Even I, as irreligious as I am, felt reluctant to go on. This had been holy ground, a place of worship, a house of God. Its wall were imbued
with faith. You didn’t have to be a devout Catholic to think twice about committing the worst of all sins right there in God’s living room.