Tortured Spirits (27 page)

Armand gestured to the last two men killed. “We can't save their shirts, but everything else is good.” He grabbed one corpse by the wrists and dragged it in Jorge's direction.

Maria did the same with the remaining soldier, who moaned as she struggled with his weight. His eyes locked on hers, then fluttered. The dying body left a trail of blood. Maria dropped the still figure beside the one Jorge had left.

“Get his pants, boots, and weapons,” Jorge said as he stripped the corpse at his feet.

Maria unlaced her corpse's boots and pulled them off, then unbuckled the military belt around the pants. Once she had removed them, she returned to where he had fallen and collected his machine gun.

Armand walked out of the security booth carrying a case of ammunition. The four of them tossed their booty into the back of the truck, then resumed their positions inside.

“Seat belts,” Armand said.

Maria pulled her shoulder strap across her torso and buckled it.

Armand backed up the truck, then floored it. The Ram raced forward and smashed through the gates. The truck sped onto the bridge, and she glanced over its railing at the dark water below. They reentered the woods.

“If you come into contact with any zonbies, shoot them in the head,” Maria said.
“Only
in the head.”

Jorge looked puzzled. “Why?”

“Because that's the only thing that will stop them. Anywhere else will be a waste of ammo.”

A second checkpoint loomed ahead: a security booth but no fence or gate. Two soldiers armed with rifles stood at attention in the middle of the road.

“What's with those guys?” Stephane said.

Maria studied the soldiers. They had waxy skin and didn't blink as the truck's headlights lit up their faces. “Those aren't soldiers. At least not
living
ones.”

“What are you talking about? They're wearing uniforms. They look normal.”

“They're wearing makeup. Someone wanted to make them
appear
alive.”

Armand stopped the truck and rolled down his window.

One of the zonbie sentries came over to his door and peered inside.

“Oh, shit,” Armand said, gazing at the man's undead features.

The zonbie stared at Armand long enough to register
his presence, then raised his rifle's stock to his shoulder.

“Look out!” Jorge said.

Armand threw his door open, slamming it into the zonbie before the dead thing could fire. Then he hopped out and stepped around the door, so Maria saw only his head. Two muzzle flashes accompanied by high-pitched whistles told her he had killed the zonbie.

The second zonbie aimed his rifle at the windshield. Stephane fired two shots from his open window. Neither shot hit the zonbie in the head, but one sent him spinning to the ground. Armand ran around the front of the truck, aimed his Glock, and fired. The zonbie's brain fluid spurted out of his skull, fully illuminated by the headlights, and the reanimated soldier dropped out of view.

Armand gathered the dead soldiers' guns and climbed into the truck. “Screw
their
clothes.” He passed the weapons to Maria and Jorge, who stashed them on the floor.

“Were those really … zonbies?” Jorge said.

“They were dead.” Armand closed his door and resumed their course. “Call them what you want.”

Stephane wiped his forehead. “Ay Dios mio.”

“You were right,” Armand said to Maria. “Only shots to the head work.”

Jorge said, “Zonbies foutus.”
Fucking zonbies.

“Something other than blood came out of their wounds. Powder or—”

“Sawdust,” Maria said. “Packing material. Filler.”

“How do you know?”

“Jake put down scores of them in New York.”

The road turned again, and within a moment the trees cleared, providing a clear view of the stars in the sky and the compound of buildings below.

“It's the first building,” Maria said.

Armand killed the headlights, allowing the fog lights to provide the only illumination. He slowed as well, cutting down on the engine noise. Maria doubted that would make a difference. The work lights around the compound cast a glow on the buildings, and the door to the drug den became visible as they drew closer.

Armand stopped ten feet from the structure, and all four of them poured out. Armand and Stephane clutched two rifles with mounted laser scopes.

Stephane looked at the fields to their right. “Holy mother of God …”

The others turned in the same direction. Silhouetted figures worked in the distance, overseers on horseback supervising them.

“There must be hundreds of them,” Armand said.

Clutching a flashlight in one hand and her Glock in the other, Maria sprinted into the shooting gallery, followed by Jorge. Inside, gagging on the stench of human sweat and waste, she thumbed on the flashlight and passed it over the faces of the scarecrows on the floor.

They blinked at her, some of them looking barely human.

“Oh, mon Dieu,” Jorge said, his words obscured by his mask. He stared at the wretched addicts before him. “These are my people. Malvado's got to pay for this.”

Maria strode forward, stepping around the bodies curled on the floor. “Jake?”

In the far corner, a fully clothed man stirred, though he didn't look at her.

She aimed the flashlight at him.
Oh, my God.

Jake's mouth hung open, a lazy, stoned look on his face. Stopping before him, she saw torn plastic bags on the floor. He had ingested Black Magic. Kneeling beside him, she gasped, tears filling her eyes. Jake's left arm ended in a bandaged stump.

“You sons of
bitches,”
she said, spitting the words.

Jorge kneeled beside her and took Jake's wounded arm. “At least he's alive. Let's go.”

Maria reached beneath Jake's right arm. “Come on. We're getting you out of here.” Pulling him to his feet, she groaned. “Why did the two smallest people come in to carry him?”

Jake blinked at Maria and a moan escaped his lips.

Maria and Jorge dragged him across the floor, and Maria didn't care when she stepped on a scarecrow by mistake. She didn't consider them human and just wanted to get Jake the hell out of here.

As they neared the door, three silencer shots fired in rapid succession outside. Then a zonbie stepped inside. He held a metal bucket in one hand and drew a machete from his belt with the other.

“Take Jake,” Maria said. As Jorge complied, she aimed her Glock at the zonbie's forehead at point-blank range and squeezed the trigger.

A hole appeared in his forehead, and he rocked backwards like a drunkard, a stream of liquefied brain gushing into the air, and collapsed at their feet.

Exiting the building, they almost tripped over the bodies of two armed zonbie sentries.

Armand and Stephane continued to fire in the opposite direction.

“Get in the truck!” Armand said.

They hauled Jake to the truck and pushed him into the backseat. Turning, Maria saw a dozen zonbies with machetes advancing on her comrades, who had difficulty hitting their targets in the head with handguns in the darkness and couldn't shoot their rifles without alerting the slaves in the fields. The zonbies advanced in herky-jerky motions, their bodies absorbing some of the bullets.

“Stay with him,” Maria told Jorge before she ran over to Armand and Stephane. “Take it to them!”

As soon as the men stopped firing, Maria charged straight at the zonbies.

“Holy shit,” Stephane said.

Maria halted ten feet short of the first zonbie, leveled her Glock, and fired. The first shot missed. The second burrowed a hole through the top of the zonbie's skull. The creature's body twisted, his eyes seeking the moon in the sky before he landed on his back and stopped moving.

As the remaining horde closed in, Armand and Stephane joined Maria and opened fire. The silencers coughed flames and suppressed rounds, and dead scalps creviced, eyeballs popping and liquid brains oozing. The humid night air
filled with gun smoke, and before it had cleared, the zonbies lay unmoving on the ground.

“Back to the truck,” Maria said. She knew the zonbies they had just exterminated had been workers assigned to the Black Magic factory. Halfway to the truck, an alarm rang and the work lights grew brighter, pinning them in the glare. Facing the field, she saw hundreds of figures turn still, rotate toward the compound, and start running. “Oh, shit.”

Armand climbed into the truck, and Stephane ran around to his side. Maria heard their doors close, but she remained riveted on the spectacle before her. The overseers on horseback galloped into the tide of running corpses, gaining speed.

Jorge opened the rear door. “Maria! Get in!”

She hopped in next to Jake, and the truck surged forward even before she had closed her door. Armand drove deeper into the compound.

“Where the hell are you going?” Maria said.

“We're not leaving without inflicting some serious damage,” Armand said.

“Are you crazy? There are hundreds of those things!”

Stephane pulled two rum bottles out of the bag at his feet. Strips of cloth dangled from the neck of each bottle, and Maria smelled gasoline.

Molotov cocktails,
she thought.

“Which building do they make the Magic in?” Armand said.

“The last one.”

As Armand steered the vehicle forward, Maria saw
naked zonbies staggering out of their destination. Y incisions divided the torsos of the dead men and women. Their flesh had turned to leather and showed signs of decomposition. Some had only one arm and still managed to wield machetes. Others had no arms at all. One hopped around on a single leg. Maria knew they had been selected for dismemberment in the Black Magic factory, destined to become ashes, and they had been ordered into action because she and her fellows had destroyed the workers.

“I'll handle these,” Jorge said as Armand braked the truck.

Stephane jumped out first and lit the cocktails' fuses with a lighter. Blue flames blossomed near each of his hands. Jorge got out beside him and started firing his Glock. He shot more zonbies in the chest than the head, but the bodies were in such bad shape the dead things seemed to be more adversely affected than the other zonbies had.

Stephane ran up to the building and hurled the first bottle through a window, which shattered. A moment later, flames burst inside the building, blue light spilling outside.

Maria leaned forward. “We have to get out of here!”

Armand ignored her. Jorge continued firing and dropped three of the maimed zonbies. Stephane threw the second cocktail through another window, producing a wall of fire inside. Then he drew his Glock and joined Jorge in shooting the remaining zonbies. As they climbed inside the truck at the same time, a man wearing robes ran screaming from the building, his clothing and hair trailing flames.

“Houngan dog,” Stephane said as Armand gunned the Ram forward.

They circled the compound, and a dozen zonbies emerged from the woods, their machetes reflecting moonlight.

“That's a security patrol,” Maria said.

They raced away from the security zonbies, only to see the army of slaves from the field had gained a great deal of ground and had almost reached the compound.

“How did they get here so fast?” Armand said.

“They don't run out of breath because they don't breathe,” Maria said. “They don't get tired, either. They'll maintain that speed. I told you we have to get out of here.”

“Stop the truck,” Jorge said.

Maria looked at him.

“Stop the goddamned truck!”

“What for?” Armand said, his voice reaching a crescendo.

“So I can get into the truck bed. The only chance we stand is if one of us uses those machine guns we've got stockpiled back there.”

“Damn it!” Armand stomped on the brake, and they all lurched forward.

Jorge jerked his door open, jumped out, and slammed the door. Maria watched zonbies growing steadily closer from both sides.

Jorge scrambled into the truck bed. “Go! Go!”

Armand sped forward, and Jorge picked up a machine gun and opened fire into the crowd of pursuing zonbies.

“That little
princesa
has balls,” Stephane said.

“He's my brother,” Armand said.

Jorge's machine gun roared in a continuing burst, and rising puffs of sawdust glowed red in the receding taillights of the pickup.

“He'd better not fall out,” Maria said. “If we stop again they'll be all over us.”

The road twisted into the woods and Armand decelerated. Maria saw phantom figures racing through the woods on both sides of them. Stephane rolled down his window, revealing one more Molotov cocktail.

“You blow up my truck and I'll kill you,” Armand said.

“Wait until we cross the bridge,” Maria said. “That way you might actually stop them.”

The truck roared through the second checkpoint, where they had passed the zonbie soldiers made up to look human. In the light, Maria saw an army of zonbies running after them at an impossible speed.

Pressed against the truck's gate, Jorge stopped firing. He tossed the machine gun aside, picked up another, and resumed firing.

Several zonbies fell to the ground, their heads ruptured, and the zonbie horde trampled them without slowing.

Armand sped onto the bridge, the Ram vibrating as it passed over the boards. Stephane sparked his lighter, igniting the fuse, and leaned out his window with the bottle. He hurled the Molotov cocktail down on the bridge, and it burst into flames, causing Jorge to drop his gun and shield his face. The flames spread across the bridge, preventing passage.

A few zonbies staggered through the flames and toppled face forward. No more appeared.

“Stop the truck,” Maria said as they cleared the bridge.

The truck skidded to a stop.