Tortured Spirits (18 page)

Jake knew Russel was baiting him, trying to get him to comment on Humphrey.

“Miss Vasquez is a homicide detective with NYPD. You were a homicide detective with NYPD. She used to be partners with a man named Edgar Hopkins.
You
used to be partners with Edgar Hopkins. Mr. Hopkins vanished nine months ago. It stands to reason the two of you came here in search of this common denominator.” He laid the
printout and the drawing on the table. “What's Hopkins got to do with Pavot Island?”

Jake said nothing.

“Where's Vasquez?”

His heart beat faster. Maria was alive!

“Did the two of you come here to assassinate President Malvado?”

Jake clenched his teeth.

“So, we're back where we started?”

Jake blinked.

“Don't say I didn't warn you.” Crossing the room, Russel opened the door and waved.

Two soldiers with red berets entered. Jake noticed the soldiers wore machetes on their belts.

“Take off his handcuffs,” Russel said, closing the door as the soldiers marched toward Jake.

The soldiers jerked Jake to his feet, throwing him off balance. He heard a clicking sound, and the handcuffs came away, freeing his wrists.

Russel folded the drawing of Maria and put it and the printout inside the folder, which he set on a chair. He looked at Jake, then at the soldiers, and nodded at the table. The soldiers wrapped Jake's arms in theirs and dragged him toward the table.

Jake planted his feet on the floor and struggled. “No …”

Standing before him, Russel delivered a powerful blow to Jake's solar plexus.

Jake cried out and doubled over.

Russel sank his hands in Jake's hair and jerked his head
back, then leaned close to his face. “Where's the woman?”

Jake spat in his face.

Wiping his face on his jacket sleeve, Russel looked at the soldiers. “Left arm.”

The soldier on Jake's right pinned Jake's arm behind his back, threatening to break it. The other soldier forced his left wrist down to the table and pulled his arm taut.

Jake saw peeling paint on the tabletop. Dents. Scratches. Blood.

Oh, God, no.

Standing beside the soldier on Jake's right, Russel drew the machete from his belt.

“Don't do it,” Jake said. “I'm an American.”

Russel positioned the machete's blade against Jake's forearm, three inches above his wrist. “This isn't America.” He raised the machete above his head with both hands.

“No, don't!”

The machete left a trail of reflected light as Russel swung it into Jake's arm. Jake screamed as the blade bit into his bone. Pressing his left hand against Jake's arm, Russel pried the machete free. Jake continued to scream as blood gushed out of the gaping wound in his arm. Then Russel raised the machete and brought it down again, separating Jake's left hand and wrist from his arm.

Jake's agonized screams made his throat raw, the room spun around him, and he spiraled into darkness.

Maria didn't know if any other soldiers had gotten off the helicopter, so she moved deeper into the woods away from the river.

Moonlight slatted through the trees, causing rocks and moss to sparkle. Occasionally she raised the night vision goggles to her eyes, and the forest lit up around her. Stepping over another fallen tree, she swatted at mosquitoes swarming around her. She lowered the goggles, opened her bag, and found a packet of insect repellent towelettes and ran one over her arms. It burned her scratches and she hissed. Then she rubbed the towelette over her legs.

When she stood erect, she no longer saw the moonlight cutting through the trees ahead. A tall figure stood silhouetted before her, blocking the silvery light.

Maria recoiled. Taking a step back, she raised the
goggles. The blossoming green light revealed African features, but the man's white eyes appeared pure green, with no irises or pupils, and did not blink. She had seen that same flaccid expression scores of times on homicide victims in general and on the faces of sixty DOAs in particular: the faces of dead men and women. Jake's zonbies.

No, no, no.

Maria felt her blood rushing from her head. She had seen many corpses before but none standing upright. The man slapped a cold, leathery hand around her wrist, and she knew there was no way this was some junkie who had overdosed on a Caribbean toxin.

I will not scream.

Sucking in her breath, she drew the Walther, pressed its barrel against the man's forehead, and pulled the trigger. Despite the intensity of the muzzle flash, the goggles protected her eyes.

Fluid spurted out of the bullet hole in the man's head. He rolled his eyes and collapsed.

Maria stared down at the corpse, which did not rise. Jesus Christ, she had seen a zombie with her own eyes, and she had put it down! Was this an act of murder or self-defense? Was it even killing?

She couldn't remember how many rounds a Walther's clip held, but since it had been used in Hitler's army, she guessed six, plus one in the chamber. She had fired four shots, which left maybe three.

Branches snapped all around her. Shadows moved. Silhouettes revealed themselves.

Tucking the Walther in the waistband of her shorts, Maria leveled the machine gun. Jake had warned her to shoot the zonbies in their foreheads, as she had. Firing at their torsos would do no good. She needed to see the whites of their eyes.

Six men and women in tattered clothing emerged from the trees. Maria had to assume they saw her with their ghastly, unblinking orbs as they staggered moaning in her direction. They brandished machetes.

The Machete Massacres,
she thought.

This was no crazy theory. It was really happening. The damned things were coming after
her.

She raised her weapon to her shoulder and pressed one goggle against the sight. A glowing red sun flared over a man's pallid green flesh. She located a crease above his eyebrows and squeezed the trigger. A third eye appeared in the man's head, and he seemed to spit out of it. Then he collapsed and stopped moving.

The other zonbies had drawn closer. She turned in a circle, facing others, her heart racing. A female with an afro lifted her machete. Maria fired and missed, striking a tree instead. The woman brought the machete down, but before she could complete her arc Maria had fired again, striking her forehead. The woman's head snapped back, liquid spewing out of the crater in her forehead like tobacco juice.

In the time it had taken Maria to exterminate the woman, the other creatures had moved even closer to her. She had no choice but to fire a short, concentrated burst at them, driving them back. As expected, the torso shots had
little impact, and the dead things resumed walking in her direction. Bracing the machine gun against her shoulder, she let it rip. She struck two of the remaining zonbies in their heads, dropping them, but did far more damage to the surrounding trees.

Turning sideways, she aimed the weapon at another approaching female. She waited until she could see the whites of her eyes—

And then a machete struck the barrel, ruining her aim as she triggered a burst of gunfire. Instead of destroying the female zonbie's head, she tore her torso open from between her breasts down to her crotch. Jerking her head to the left, Maria saw a Hispanic man pulling his machete back for another swing. She aimed her machine gun at his head at point-blank range and fired. The head exploded skull fragments and brain juice in all directions, and she glimpsed an airborne eyeball soaring past her.

When she heard the zonbie strike the ground, she turned to the woman whose torso she had ruptured. Sawdust and unrecognizable organs poured out of the giant fissure in the woman's chest, where fabric and flesh hung as indistinguishable rags. Maria aimed and fired. The woman's head shook from the impact, and she dropped as Maria's gun clicked.

Goddamn it!

Maria slung the weapon over her shoulder in case she stumbled across an ammo clip. Drawing the Walther, she bent over and seized a fallen machete. Traces of rotten flesh on the handle caused her to shudder. She heard footsteps
behind her. Turning, she sprinted in the direction of the footbridge. Her chest and throat ached. As she drew closer to the edge of the woods, she heard the chopper and saw dirt kicking up in the bright light shining through the trees. The chopper hovered in the clearing above the river, creating turbulence on the water's surface.

They're waiting for me.

The men in the helicopter knew she would try to flee the woods as soon as she encountered the zonbies. If she set foot on the bridge, the chopper's machine guns would rip her to shreds. If she dove into the river, the piranhas would tear her to pieces, especially with her arms and legs all scratched up. She had no choice but to remain in the woods. Taking a deep breath, she took off, following the river once more. Holding the machete in one hand and the Walther in the other made for awkward running.

A heavyset Hispanic woman with bright orange hair came out from behind a tree, her eyes glazed with a sheen of milky blue death. Maria feared she would waste a bullet if she fired while running, and she gripped the machete in her weaker left hand, so she slammed the Walther's grip down on the woman's crown. A dull moan escaped the woman's parched lips, and she sagged onto her haunches. Slowing to a stop, Maria aimed the Walther at the forehead of the woman, who looked up at her with unblinking eyes. Wishing to preserve her limited ammunition, Maria shifted her machete into her right hand and resumed running.

A lanky man with mixed race features lumbered ahead of her. Maria thought she might run around him, but he
extended his arms at his sides like a defensive basketball player, grasping at the air with one hand while his other hand waved a machete.

Maria cocked her right arm over her left shoulder as she ran straight at him and brought the machete down at an angle. The blade cleaved the man's skull above his right eye just below his brain. The eye looked up at the blade. Maria tried to yank the blade out, but it was wedged in her target. She shifted the Walther into her right hand, grasped the machete's handle with her left, then pressed the gun against the man's skull and squeezed the trigger. The shot blew the man's head back, painting the foliage behind him with brain fluid, the velocity of the impact freeing the machete.

Two shots left.
Maria scooped up the zonbie's machete, slid it under her belt, and ran.

She didn't get far before almost running into the arms of a squat male zonbie with a bald head. Realizing that every time she fired the Walther the gunfire drew the attention of other zonbies, she jammed the gun in the waistband behind her and drew the other machete, one blade in each hand.

The zonbie swung his machete at her, and she jumped back to avoid it. He swung again, and this time she struck his blade with one of hers, producing sparks, and buried her other machete in his forearm. She applied pressure to that blade as she wrenched it free and felt the metal scraping bone. Had she been stronger, she might have cut off his sword hand.

Without acknowledging the sawdust seeping out of his wound, the zonbie swung his machete into Maria's left side.
She cried out as he pulled the blade and it sawed through her flesh. Then she stepped forward and plunged one of her machetes in the side of his neck.

To her astonishment, he opened his mouth and unleashed a hoarse cry, as if summoning his fellows. He swung the machete at her side again, and she moved closer to him so that his arm just wrapped around her back. Maria raised her left arm, waited for him to cock his arm, then buried the machete in his forearm. She had hoped to strike the same wound and hopefully chop the forearm off but missed by a good three inches. Still, the blade sank into bone, allowing her to twist his machete arm away from her.

The zonbie snapped his teeth at her face, and she flinched, then jerked the other machete out of his neck in a shower of sawdust and struck again. This time the blade struck the same gaping neck wound, a feat she repeated several times as she attempted to hack his head off. Finally, she gave up and pulled her other machete out of his forearm. He collapsed in a heap, his head flopping around on his ruined neck like a beached fish.

Maria took off, her breath coming in tortured rasps. Jake had told her a single bokor controlled an army of zonbies. Did that mean a bokor had seen her in action and knew which direction she was headed? Did all of the zonbies know? She had already lost track of the river, but using the drone of the helicopter as a marker, she headed deeper into the woods, closer to danger.

Maria ran almost a quarter of a mile into the woods before she had to stop to catch her breath, the danger being that the zonbies might hear her.

If they can hear,
she thought.

She pushed the goggles on top of her head and wiped sweat from her forehead and around her eyes, then stretched the sore muscles in her arms. Coquis croaked around her, something they hadn't done around the zonbies. Did that mean she was safe?