Desperate Souls Read online

  Gary homed in on a trio of corner boys occupying a single park bench painted dark green and bolted to the asphalt. One boy sat on the bench. Another sat on the bench back with his sneakers on the bench. And the third stood on the patch of cement upon which the bench rested. Gary and Frank walked right up to the boys, who barely registered their presence.

  They’re lit, he thought, gazing at the emaciated boys’ unblinking eyes.

  Frank said, “Good afternoon, fellas. Maybe you can explain to us what you’re doing here.”

  The corner boys ignored Frank.

  He took out his shield. “I’d like to know what the fuck you’re doing here.”

  Blank stares. Empty eyes. Silence.

  Gary let loose an exaggerated sigh. “Okay, men. Which one of you is in charge?”

  They stared past him.

  Fuck. Gary felt his blood growing hot. “You,” he said, pointing at the boy sitting on the bench. “You look comfortable. Stand up.”

  The boy ignored him.

  “Son of a bitch!” He didn’t want to punch the kid—God only knew what diseases they all had—but he couldn’t help it. Before he could control himself, he had clocked the kid in the jaw.

  “Yeah!” Frank said.

  Oh, great. He knew he was out of control when his partner approved of his actions.

  The kid looked at him for the first time, his eyes cold. That look sent a shiver of fear down Gary’s spine. The kid didn’t even rub his jaw. He just went back to staring across the yard.

  Gary took out his handcuffs, which gleamed in the afternoon sunlight. “Okay, tough guy. Get on your feet and show me some ID, or we’re taking you in.”

  No reaction.

  Gary grabbed the kid’s shirt and hauled him to his feet. He spun him around and shoved him forward onto the bench, planting his left knee in the small of the kid’s back as he locked the bracelets around his wrists. The kid weighed even less than he had thought. Glancing sideways at the other two boys, he said, “Do I need to read him his rights?”

  Ignoring him, they stared straight ahead with unblinking eyes.

  “Come on,” Gary said, jerking the kid toward the street. “Say good-bye to your playmates.”

  Frank surveyed the vacant expressions of the remaining boys, then spat on the cement.

  The kid did not resist as Gary guided him through the yard. None of the scarecrows paid any attention to them. Crossing the street, Gary felt his anger lingering. He didn’t care what people did to make money, but he had no patience for people who disrespected his authority. He intended to enjoy what this kid had coming to him. Frank opened the back door, and Gary shoved the kid inside. Then the two detectives got into the front.

  “It gets creepier up here every day,” Frank said. “I don’t know how people live like this.”

  “You got that shit right.” Gary started the engine and pulled into the oncoming traffic, which provoked a honking horn or two.

  “It stinks in here,” Frank said, lowering his window. “Don’t you little hoppers ever bother to bathe?”

  In the backseat, the kid did not answer. He just stared out the side window.

  “These corner boys are creepier than their customers,” Gary said. He had become accustomed to mindless drug fiends over the years, but something about these teenage dealers troubled him. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but they possessed an apathy the likes of which he had never seen. They didn’t care about anything.

  Gary drove two miles uptown, then pulled over to a stretch of abandoned houses in a field of tall grass. He parked in a driveway and looked over his shoulder at the kid. “Do I ever feel sorry for you.”

  They got out and led the kid toward the cement porch of the house. No traffic appeared on the pocked street. They might as well have been in another country. The kid took the stairs one at a time, showing no fear. Frank opened the storm door, which swung on a creaky, rusted spring. Stepping inside, Gary noted the paint peeling on the walls. The house reeked of mildew.

  “Down we go,” Frank said, taking a flashlight out of his pocket and shining it into the dank blackness.

  Gary didn’t know why he grasped the kid’s arm as he led him down the bare wooden steps. He didn’t care if the kid got hurt or not, and he intended to hurt him anyway. Maybe that was it; he wanted the kid to know that any pain he incurred was intentional. Humidity rose from the cellar as the flashlight beam bounced around the gray cement walls. Dirty sunlight sliced through filth-encrusted windows.

  “Nice,” Frank said with admiration in his voice.

  Gary positioned the kid before a rusted slop sink stained with layers of rotting gunk. “Don’t move,” he told the kid. He uncuffed one wrist, pulled the kid’s free arm around a sewage line that ran from the ceiling to the floor, and snapped the cuffs again. Then he shrugged off his jacket and laid it over a workbench. Staring at the kid, he rolled up his sleeves. The kid paid no attention.

  “I’m going to ask you a question. If you answer that question, you’ll save us all a lot of time and yourself a lot of unnecessary suffering. Where can we find Prince Malachai?”

  The kid stared into emptiness with equally empty eyes, and Frank grinned with anticipation.

  Not nearly so pleased, Gary took a pair of black leather gloves out of his jacket pocket and pulled them on. Without saying anything, he stepped forward, seized the kid’s hair, snapped his head forward, and threw a ferocious punch that connected with the kid’s jaw. He heard the unmistakable sound of bone snapping, and the kid swung around the sewage line like a pole dancer and smashed one hip against the slop sink, all without uttering a single protest. He looked up at them, his jaw hanging loose on one side.

  Gary shook his hand and flexed his fingers. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

  “Enjoy the ride,” Frank said, delivering a powerful kick at the boy’s groin, which only managed to connect with his inner thigh.

  The kid flew back, and the handcuffs snapped against the line.

  Frustrated that he had missed, Frank pummeled the kid’s sides, his fists blurring like pistons. He worked the kid over with all the fury of a little man suffering from an inferiority complex, unleashing years’ worth of anger in a full-on assault. The kid took his beating like a punching bag, and Frank finally stepped back, winded.

  “He didn’t even blink,” Gary said. “Not once.”

  “That’s impossible,” Frank said between tortured gasps.

  Looking around, Gary spotted a rusted garden rake with a long wooden handle, which he retrieved. Standing before the kid with the rake clutched in both hands, he said, “Where’s Malachai?”

  The kid stared past him.

  “Answer me, or I swear to Christ I’ll go Abu Ghraib on your ass.”

  The kid kept staring past him.

  That does it! Winding his arms, Gary swung the rake over his head, but the tool’s metal teeth bit into a wooden beam in the ceiling. Grunting with anger at his clumsiness, Gary wrenched it free and swung the rake sideways. This time, the teeth bit into the kid’s left side.

  Still the kid didn’t blink, and other than regaining his balance, he did not react to the blow.

  Frank did a double take. “What the fuck?”

  Gawking at the sight before him, Gary wiggled the rake back and forth, working it even deeper into the kid’s side. Then he jerked the tool free, leaving twenty holes the width of a dime in the kid’s shirt. No blood came out.

  Frank pointed at the kid’s legs. From beneath his shirt, what appeared to be sawdust poured along his jeans and onto his sneakers and the cement floor.

  Gary twirled the rake like a baton, stopping it so that the teeth extended from his own mouth. “Where’s Malachai?”

  When the kid ignored him, Gary pivoted the rake at his face. The teeth tore into the kid’s eyebrow, nose, and broken jaw at an angle.

  “Scream, goddamn you!” Gary wrenched the rake, splitting the kid’s face open with a dry tearing sound. Sawdust streamed out of
the wide fissure, obscuring one eye.

  “What the fuck?” Frank said again.

  Gary watched the kid. Only it wasn’t a kid. Christ, it wasn’t even a human being.

  Frank dashed to the basement corner, seized a shovel, and charged at the kid like a soldier brandishing a bayonet on the end of his rifle. He drove the shovel’s blade into the kid’s sternum, and it sounded like metal driving into gravel. Frank pulled the shovel out with a demented grin on his face and watched sawdust pour out in a torrent.

  Thing’s got to be about empty from the waist up, Gary thought.

  “Holy shit,” Frank said. “Look at this!”

  Now what do we do with this … thing?

  Frank swung the shovel over his head and buried it in the kid’s, bifurcating it. Grayish pink fluid sprayed out of the new wound, and all at once, the kid toppled to the floor and did not move. Frank poked him with the shovel, with no response. The corpse might just as well have been a real scarecrow stuffed with sawdust rather than straw.

  Stepping back, Frank discarded the shovel, which clanged on the floor. Then he massaged his temples. “Okay, okay. I know I’m not hallucinating. What the fuck was that?”

  Gary shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  Frank took out a bag of blow, opened it, and fingered a blast up each nostril. Ever the codependent gentleman, he offered the bag to Gary. “You want a hit?”

  Don’t do it, Gary thought. “Fuck, yeah.”

  Gary snorted some coke up both nostrils at the same time, then handed the bag back to his partner.

  “Now what do we do?” Frank said, his voice becoming a whine like it did whenever he snorted while already excited.

  Gary considered their predicament. “Now we get a live one.”

  Jake caught the 2:20 p.m. Long Island Railroad from Amityville to Penn Station in Manhattan. The trip was scheduled to last one hour, with stops in Jamaica, Queens, and Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. He did not relish the thought of returning to the scene where this latest nightmare had started.

  The morphine had worn off, leaving his back feeling like a train wreck, but the sedative he had been given made it possible not to care. Taking his seat on the train, he marveled at its plush seats, a far cry from the mass transit to which he was accustomed to as a Manhattan resident. A dozen passengers joined him in the car, with plenty of seating left, and the train glided out of the station. Jake watched the stores flash by, then attractive homes, and he saw kids playing softball in a manicured playground rather than in the street.

  A different world, he thought, closing his eyes. Exhaustion claimed his weary body, but his mind would not allow sleep. He rocked gently from side to side, listening to the steady chug-chug of the train. His mind wrestled with the MRI photos the technician had shown him— sectioned images that showed his body turned inside out—and with what she had said: “I’m sorry, Mr. Helman, but the MRI shows that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with your lower back physically. No herniated disc, no torn cartilage, no pinched nerve, no sprain.”

  How could that be? She had said there was nothing physically wrong with him, but he knew his symptoms were not psychosomatic.

  Don’t worry about it, he told himself. Enjoy this sedative while it lasts. Just go along for the ride for now.

  The sound of the train sped up, but when he opened his eyes, the train seemed to be traveling at a consistent speed. Closing his eyes again, he tried to sleep, but he could not shake the lingering aftereffects of his unexplainable experience in the MRI scanner.

  Thrum … thrum … thrum … THRUM!

  His eyes snapped open. Concentrating, he heard the sound even though he was awake. The steady rhythm of drumbeats. The same sound he had heard inside the scanner. Turning in his seat despite the spasm of pain, he looked at his fellow passengers. Except for one young guy with dark hair, all of them were middle-class working stiffs, probably worried about the failing economy and how it would affect their families.

  All because I took down Old Nick.

  None of them showed any indication that they were troubled by an inexplicable drumbeat. He closed his eyes and tried to relax.

  Thrum … thrum … thrum … THRUM!

  The shrieking of metal against metal caused him to open his eyes again. The metallic scream sounded more like the New York City subway than an aboveground rail. The ceiling lights went off and failed to come back on, although sunlight streaming through the wide windows illuminated the interior.

  Something did not feel right to Jake. He heard a door slide open and recoil behind him, and as he forced himself to turn around once more, he heard a woman’s piercing scream.

  Three Indian men had entered the car. At least he thought they were Indian. But there was no doubt in his mind that they brandished semiautomatic rifles. And as he narrowed his eyes, he saw that the emaciated-looking men wore blank expressions, their eyes unblinking. His body turned numb, except for the pain in his back.

  They’re looking for me!

  Without warning, the lead dead thing lowered his AK-47 and triggered a burst of gunfire that decimated a woman’s torso like canned tomatoes.

  No!

  Screams filled the car, and a passenger stood up. The second man fired a burst from his weapon, causing the passenger to dance with his arms spread wide before he dropped to the floor like a slaughtered cow.

  Jake reached inside his jacket for the reassuring grip of his Glock, only to realize he had left it at the office on doctor’s orders.

  Shit out of luck …

  Panic drove half a dozen passengers running past Jake to the opposite door. Before they could escape, the dead men mowed them down. Blood spattered the windows and seats and remaining passengers.

  With the assassins almost upon him, Jake managed to stand and face them. “Stop! It’s me you want. Let these people go.”

  The lead man shoved Jake, and Jake toppled onto his back in the aisle with a cry of debilitating pain. The killers continued to fire at the trapped passengers, filling the air with their agonized death cries until no one remained except Jake. Then the men laid their smoking weapons on the gore-drenched upholstery and drew machetes from their belts. They went to work, hacking off the limbs of their victims.

  Rolling over onto his chest, Jake worked his way up onto his hands and knees, and a spray of hot vomit gushed from his mouth. His eyes teared up and his throat burned as he gazed at the startled passengers.

  Oh no …

  The good news was that everyone on the train was still alive and seated, with no evidence that undead hit men had been anywhere on the train. The ceiling lights shone down on blood-free seats. The bad news was that every man and woman aboard the car now stared at Jake with an equal measure of puzzlement and disgust.

  What the hell is happening to me?

  He had not dreamed the incident. Somehow he had suffered some sort of waking delusion, the big city equivalent of a desert-induced mirage. Only with machine gun—wielding zombies who liked to clean up after themselves with machetes …

  Grabbing an empty seat beside him, he rose, stepped over the vomit as best he could, and limped to the door through which the assassins had entered, hoping to escape his embarrassment.

  “Sorry,” he said to no one in particular.

  His hand closed around the stainless steel door handle, but the locked door would not budge.

  Oh, great. Bowing his head against the door’s glass pane, he counted to five, then turned around and returned to his seat.

  Parked once more across the street from the Polo Grounds, Gary and Frank noted that a new corner boy had replaced the one they abducted. His gaunt features made his pronounced brow appear Neanderthal.

  “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss,” Frank said.

  Gary scanned the front yard. Dozens of scarecrows sauntered across the asphalt. “The zombies are dealing Black Magic to the scarecrows. Prince Malachai is using zombies to push his shit.”

  “Saves on payroll,” Fr
ank said.

  “Maybe the Magic turns the scarecrows into zombies.”

  “No doubt.”

  A silver Grand Cherokee pulled over to the curb closest to the projects. The new corner boss lumbered toward the vehicle.

  “Bingo,” Gary said. Delivery time.

  The corner boss leaned inside the vehicle’s open passenger window, then turned around and returned to his station. The Grand Cherokee pulled into traffic.

  “How much you think that package is worth?”

  Gary started the engine. “Not as much as the driver of that vehicle.” He followed the Cherokee a couple of blocks before setting his portable siren on top of the roof of the car and activating it.

  The Cherokee’s driver immediately pulled over, and Gary motored the unmarked car into position behind it. A number of pedestrians glanced at them but kept walking. The detectives climbed out of the car at the same time and approached opposite sides of the Cherokee. Rap music blasting from the vehicle faded, and the driver regarded Gary from behind dark shades through the open window.

  Gary held out his shield in his left hand, his right hand resting on the butt of his Glock.

  “What’s the problem, Officer?”

  “Detective. Take off your sunglasses, please.”

  The man removed the sunglasses and held them in his right hand, visible on top of the steering wheel. He wore his hair in cornrows tight to his scalp.

  “License and registration.”

  Rolling his eyes, the man reached inside the CD compartment for his wallet and handed his driver’s license to Gary. Leon Jennings. Gary recognized the man by his street name GQ, one of Prince Malachai’s chief lieutenants. GQ leaned across the seat and reached for the glove compartment. His body tensed when he saw Frank standing outside the passenger door. Recovering, he gave the registration to Gary, who barely glanced at it.