Tortured Spirits (44 page)

Jake aimed his Glock at Andre's forehead. He had only one shot with which to spare the man an agonizing death. There would be no such easy way out for himself.

“Wait,” Andre said. “They're leaving!”

Jake turned and saw the shadowy zonbies shuffling toward the door. He scooped up his fallen flashlight and pointed it at their backs.
What do you know?
“It worked!”

The zonbies filed out of the building, leaving Jake and Andre with the corpses of their three fallen comrades. Jake retrieved Stephane's ATAC, and Andre located the other one.

“Let's go,” Jake said.

Stepping over unmoving zonbies, they made their way to the front of the building. Jake's clothes clung to his sweaty body. The work lights and moonlight provided ample illumination in the compound.

Jake stopped in the doorway, Andre beside him. Easily two hundred zonbies stood motionless in concentric circles radiating from the truck, all of them clinging to machetes. Jake moved between the zonbies, avoiding their blades. They didn't react to his presence. Lumpy bald heads. Long, stringy hair. Glazed-over eyes. Rotting teeth. Skeletal arms. Emaciated bellies. All of them dead. Undead.

“Sweet Jesus,” Andre said behind him.

“We must have killed a hundred of them,” Jake said, scanning the bodies on the ground. He stopped at the corpses of Louider and his men, hacked to pieces, and collected their weapons. He handed a hand radio to Andre,
who switched it on.

“This is Le Père,” Andre said.

“Go ahead,” Alejandro said over the speaker.

“Unit one has achieved its objective. We sustained significant casualties.”

“Roger that. I'll notify unit two.”

They walked through the motionless zonbies to the truck, where the two remaining horses whinnied. Jake reached into an open crate and passed clips and grenades to Andre, who reloaded the two ATAC weapons. Jake ejected the magazine from his Glock, slapped another one in, and stuffed his pockets with reloads.

“They're just … standing there,” Andre said.

“They're waiting for instructions.”

“All units report success,” Alejandro said over Jorge's hand radio.

Pharah stopped chanting, a look of surprised satisfaction on her face.

Jorge spoke into his radio. “Copy that. We're commencing phase two.”

“Roger that,” Alejandro said.

Pharah moved closer to a section of candles and altered her chant.

“What's she doing now?” Maria said.

“She gave a general order to the zonbies to stand down. Now she needs to propose a specific attack plan to each division.”

Unbelievable,
Maria thought, glancing at Catoute, who squirmed in her summoning circle.

Fingers opened and closed. Heads turned on cracking necks. Bodies shifted.

“Jake?”

“I see them.”

A handful of zonbies detached themselves from the crowd and moved closer to Jake and Andre.

“Should we get in the truck?” Andre said.

“No.”

A male zonbie wearing a dirty suede vest, blue jeans, and motorcycle boots stood before them. Long, matted hair hung over broad shoulders and arms that must have been muscular before atrophying. He seemed to focus on Jake and Andre, and cracked lips separated as his jaw moved up and down.

“He's trying to talk,” Andre said with wonder in his voice.

“They don't have any vocal cords left.” Jake felt a powerful sense of sympathy for the creature. “But he's sentient.” He glanced at the miserable faces around him. “They
all
are. Before they were like machines or cult members—brainwashed, with no will of their own, doing only as they were commanded.”

“And now they're fully conscious,” Andre said. “But trapped inside their dead bodies. Souls
do
exist. Malvado will burn in hell for what he's done to these people.”

”Your
people.”

The zonbie pointed at Andre.

“He recognizes you,” Jake said. The mass of corpses pressed in around them. “They all do.”

The zonbie brought his hand to his forehead, forming a salute.

Blinking, Andre returned the salute and held it.

Almost in unison, two hundred leathery hands saluted as well.

Pharah stopped chanting and stepped back from the last section of candles. She turned to Jorge and nodded.

Jorge raised the hand radio to his mouth. “What's the status on our draft choices?”

“All players are reporting to the field,” Alejandro said.

Maria laughed. “It worked? Son of a bitch, it worked! What now?”

“All we've done is increase our ranks. We still have a war to fight.”

Jake reached for the handle of the driver's side door.

“I'm pretty sure it will be easier for me to drive stick than you,” Andre said.

“Good point.” Jake rounded the truck and climbed in on the passenger side.

Andre started the engine and switched on the headlights. “Onward, Christian soldiers.”

The truck surged forward. Andre twisted the steering wheel and turned into the poppy field, the bumpy terrain rocking them from side to side.

Andre glanced at his side mirror. “They're running.”

Jake looked at his mirror and saw scores of zonbies with ATAC machine guns chasing the truck. “They'll keep up. They don't tire, they don't run out of breath, and they don't need to go to the bathroom.”

“Just like machines,” Andre said.

“With souls.”

Poppy flowers surrounded them, bloodred in the moonlight. Half a mile later, Andre drove the truck uphill and stopped. As he and Jake climbed out, the zonbie army passed them without stopping or seeming to notice them. To Jake, it felt like watching the New York City marathon being run by dead people. They watched the army trample poppies and disappear over the hill's opposite crest.

Jake scrambled into the back of the truck and handed a gasoline container to Andre, who unscrewed its cap, pulled out its nozzle, and crossed the hill's surface with gasoline trailing him and soaking the poppies.

“Got a match?” Andre said.

“Nope.”

Laughing, Andre tossed the gas container aside. They got into the truck and drove away.

Fifty yards later, Andre stopped again and they got out. Jake watched the man raise the ATAC to his shoulder and activate its laser scope.

Jake lifted the hand radio to his mouth. “Le Père to base.”

“This is base. Go ahead.”

“We're in position.”

“Go for the gold.”

“Copy that.”

Andre squinted. “A little red, glowing dot. The wonders of modern technology.”

“Wait until you discover Facebook,” Jake said.

Andre squeezed the trigger, and the grenade rocketed forward, detonating the gas can and igniting the hillside. Orange flames shot twenty feet into the air, then blew sideways, consuming a hundred yards' worth of poppies before it even spread.

“We're roasting marshmallows here,” Jake said into the hand radio, which he hitched onto his belt.

Far in the distance beyond the compound, thunderous explosions shook the night.

“You just fired the shot heard round the island,” Jake said.

Malvado stood on the third-story balcony of his study with his arms folded behind his back. Dressed in a black silk robe, he had heard what sounded like thunder in the distance and had gone out to investigate. No signs of lightning, yet the thunderous percussions continued.

“Ernesto?”

He turned at the sound of his mistress's voice. Inmola was a model from the UK, tall and slender, with dark brown skin, like his. She wore an identical silk robe, though she left hers open, revealing the contours of her body.

“Is something wrong?”

Malvado returned his gaze to the jungle around the palace. “I don't know.”

Inmola slid her arms around his waist. “Come back to bed.”

“I have too much on my mind. There's something in the air, something electric. I can feel it.”

“Let me take care of you. I promise I'll make you forget your worries.”

He offered her a serious smile. “I don't want to forget them.”

His cell phone rang. Detaching her arms from around his waist, he answered it.

“This is General Buteau. We have a crisis. Make that
crises.
You'll want to come to the command center right away.”

Malvado switched the power off. “Help me get dressed.”

Ten minutes after the truck had passed the zonbies again and after entering a strip of woods, the headlights shone on the surface of a narrow river.

Andre killed the engine but left the headlights on. They got out, and Jake heard distant explosions in all directions. Lowering the truck's gate, Jake climbed up and dropped the ramp, then led the two horses out one at a time. A large,
heavy sack rested on each horse's back. Jake carried out four more sacks.

“Supposedly, this is where the river is shallowest,” he said, “with the least current. It's almost stagnant.”

“So? I'm told the water's stocked with piranhas.”