Desperate Souls Page 7

  A regular United Nations envoy, Jake thought, watching the men move with mechanical precision. They wore identical expressions: flat, impassive, dead. He wrinkled his eyebrows. These aren’t the corner boys or the Escalade hit men. Then who?

  His heart skipped a beat.

  All four men had something else in common. They carried gleaming weapons.

  Machetes.

  The bald Chinese man thumbed the elevator call button, and the door opened seconds later. Without speaking to his fellow assassins, he boarded the elevator, and the door closed. The black and Hispanic men headed toward the stairway, while the Caucasian stood guard in the lobby.

  Covering their bases, Jake thought as he stepped onto the leather sofa. But so am I.

  Grasping the frame around the painting mounted on the wall, a black-and-white depiction of Manhattan when the Twin Towers still dominated the sky, he removed the canvas, revealing a niche where he stashed his secret arsenal. Lifting a Beretta from its compartment, he screwed a silencer into its barrel and slapped a magazine into its grip. He had learned his lesson after taking out the Cipher, and the Beretta was one of several untraceable—and illegal—weapons he owned. The silencer was also illegal. He took a second magazine and an additional silencer for the Glock in case he needed it, returned the picture to its rightful place, and hopped off the sofa. With no police response to the alarm, he could handle this situation his own way.

  Whatever the hell that is.

  On the lobby monitor, he saw the black man climb the stairs and the Hispanic man twist the knob on the door leading to the basement. When the knob did not turn, the man stepped back, raised the machete high over his head, and brought it down in a powerful swing that produced sparks and sent the knob rolling across the tiled floor. He pushed the door open and descended the stairs.

  Jake ran to the window, raised the blinds, and threw the latch. The window ground open, and he looked outside. He saw plenty of traffic in the street and on the sidewalks despite the late hour. Reaching the sidewalk posed no problem; the green fire escape provided an easy exit. But he didn’t want to escape. He wanted to sneak into one of the neighboring suites and take the intruders by surprise. A six-inch stone ledge ran the building’s length, but the nearest windows contained air conditioners.

  Screw that.

  He closed the window and its blinds, then sprinted through the office to his front door and turned the locks as quietly as possible. The echoing squeak that the door issued as he opened it made him shudder. The elevator hadn’t reached the fourth floor yet, but he knew the noise had been heard by the assassin ascending the stairs.

  Stepping into the hall, he discerned the stairway at the opposite end thanks to an opaque window laced with wire through which city lights shone. As he closed the door and locked it, he heard the elevator and ran down the hall to the dark stairway. Throwing himself around the corner of the stairway leading to the roof, he pressed his back against the wall and gripped the Beretta in both hands. He stared down the stairs at the third floor, which he had climbed every day for nine months. The building had felt safe to him. He should have known better.

  The floor and stairs vibrated as the elevator reached its destination. Jake listened to the elevator door slide open and held his breath. Then he heard footsteps walking away from him toward his office.

  I can’t believe this is happening again.

  Sharp banging echoed through the hall.

  He’s banging on the door with the machete’s handle.

  Jake sprang from his hiding place as silent as a jungle cat, gun raised in both hands, and moved forward.

  Oblivious, the Chinese man continued to bang on Jake’s office door. Then he stepped back and raised the machete in both hands.

  Jake saw his shadow fall over the man’s gray skin. “Looking for me?”

  The Chinese man spun around and glared at Jake. A milky white sheen covered his black eyes.

  He’s dead all right.

  Jake squeezed the Beretta’s trigger three times. Muzzle fire flared through the silencer in the dim lighting, and the Chinese man’s body jerked as each round tore into his torso, but no blood flowed from his wounds. Instead, little puffs of discharge, like sawdust, clouded the space before him.

  Without so much as looking at the bullet holes, he charged at Jake, who backpedaled in surprise. The Chinese man brought his machete down in a powerful arc, and Jake leapt backwards to avoid the blade, which struck the floor seconds before Jake’s back did the same. Staggering forward, the Chinese man raised the machete again.

  Jake leveled the Beretta, took careful aim, and fired again. This time his shot penetrated the Chinese man’s forehead, and liquefied brain burbled through the hole. The Chinese man dropped his machete and toppled to the floor. Then his flickering soul shot through his cratered head, blinding Jake before fading from view.

  I should have tried that first, Jake thought. But he had wanted to find out what would work against these things and what wouldn’t.

  Scrambling to his feet, he ran over to the corpse and examined it. He set his gun on the floor and searched the Chinese man’s pockets. No identification. No money. Nothing to suggest who he had been or where he came from.

  Or why he wanted to kill me.

  They had gone through an awful lot of trouble on short notice to come after him.

  Jake sensed that the black man had reached the fourth floor even before he turned around. To his horror, the dead thing stood only a few paces behind him. How the hell did it get up here so fast? he wondered as his heart thudded in his chest.

  The black corpse raised its machete as the first one had.

  Jake reached for the Beretta on the floor, but the machete whistled through the air, and he snatched his hand back just as the blade struck the gun.

  Son of a bitch!

  With his survival instincts kicking in, Jake leapt over the Chinese man’s body and rolled across the floor. He came up in a crouch, his back against his office door.

  The black man stared into his eyes from ten feet away.

  Does he even see me? Jake’s chest rose and fell.

  The black man slid his machete into his belt at an angle, then reached behind him and pulled a Glock from his waistband.

  Make up your mind!

  As the dead man raised his gun and held it sideways, gangsta style, Jake whipped his own Glock from its shoulder holster and fired. The round missed the black man and shattered a portion of the wired window at the far end of the hall.

  Goddamn it! He had hoped not to leave any evidence of the battle.

  The corpse fired its gun, the ensuing shot deafening. The round flattened against the office door.

  Jake returned fire, and the dead thing’s face disintegrated into pulp. It collapsed onto the floor, and Jake waited for it to rise again. It did so, on its hands and knees, and stared at Jake with one eye.

  Jake rushed forward, pressed the silencer against the thing’s head, and squeezed the trigger. A hole the size of a baseball opened up in the dead flesh, and the corpse struck the floor. The black man’s soul rose from the wound and faded.

  That leaves two.

  Scooping up his Beretta, he headed downstairs.

  As Jake stepped onto the second-floor landing, he encountered the third zombie on its way upstairs.

  Shifting his machete from his right hand into his left, the Hispanic man reached inside his shirt and drew out a gleaming .45.

  Jake froze with one foot planted on the stair below him. Even as he brought up his Beretta to fire, confusion rained down on him. He had seen the Hispanic man go into the basement and had expected to run into the Caucasian man next. Had the white zombie remained in the lobby?

  His answer came in the form of a shuddering groan from a spring as a door opened behind him. Spinning on one heel, Jake saw the Caucasian emerging from the garbage chute room. They had laid a trap for him!

  Holding the machete in its right hand, the white-faced zombie wrapped its a
rms around Jake in a bear hug. With their faces only inches apart, Jake smelled fetid flesh and putrid breath. Staring into Jake’s eyes, the thing tilted its head back, opened its jaws, and jerked its head forward, clamping its mouth over Jake’s neck. Envisioning his flesh tearing, Jake opened his own mouth to scream, then realized he felt very little pain. The zombie raised its head, and through its still moving jaws, Jake saw purplish black gums but no teeth.

  A gummer!

  Jake struggled in the thing’s iron grip to no avail, then tried to aim each of his handguns at the creature’s head. No such luck, and a random shot could just as easily blow out his own brains. So he jammed both barrels against the zombie’s midsection and squeezed the triggers repeatedly. Over the sounds of the muffled gunfire, he heard rounds tearing through solid matter. As he filled his attacker with lead, the thing remained stone-faced.

  Jake stopped firing when he heard the empty Beretta clicking. Realizing that he needed to save the ammunition in his Glock, he looked over his shoulder at the Hispanic zombie, which had almost reached them. That assailant still had not raised either of its weapons.

  The Caucasian squeezed Jake’s torso harder, forcing the air from his lungs. With his breathing halted, Jake heard his heart hammering that much clearer. Bending his legs at the knees, he raised his feet off the floor, throwing the Caucasian zombie off balance. As the creature teetered forward because of the extra weight in its arms, Jake planted his feet back on the floor and kicked backwards with all his strength. This propelled him and the Caucasian zombie straight back into the Hispanic zombie, and all three of them tumbled down the stairs.

  Holding on to both guns for dear life, Jake heard metal clattering down the stairs, but he couldn’t tell which weapons had been dropped. Halfway down, the Caucasian zombie released Jake, who rolled across the lobby floor.

  Leaping to his feet in the bright lobby, Jake glanced out the front glass doors as the zombies rolled onto the lobby floor. Reflections in the glass made it impossible to see the Manhattan nightlife outside, so he had no idea if any passersby had witnessed the sudden arrival of him and his attackers.

  As the zombies climbed to their feet, he stepped into the alcove leading to the basement door, out of sight of anyone who might be watching. The zombies’ eyes seemed to focus on him at the same time, like identical digital cameras, and they gathered up their weapons and lumbered toward him in unison. Jamming the empty Beretta into his waistband, he raised the Glock in both hands and squeezed off a shot.

  The round tore into the dead center of the Caucasian zombie’s forehead, and the creature fell backwards and splayed across the stairs, out of public view except for one foot. The man’s flickering soul rose from the head wound and faded.

  Damn good shot, Jake thought with pride as he trained his Glock on the Hispanic zombie’s head and squeezed the trigger. The barrel locked back in plain sight, the gun out of ammunition.

  Shit!

  The Hispanic zombie charged at Jake, who seized the thing’s wrists and forced the weapons away from where they could do him harm. The dead thing head butted him, and he saw spots before his eyes as his forehead turned numb. They grappled in the corner; then Jake lunged for the edge of the narrow stairway leading to the basement. Hurling the zombie into the space below, he made sure it didn’t take him along for the ride.

  The zombie struck the stairs face-first and flipped heels over head on its way down. As Jake raced after it, he heard metal scraping cement. The zombie hit the floor and rolled, then stood before Jake could reach him. Its face had collapsed into a mostly unrecognizable mass of bone and tissue.

  Glimpsing the .45 on the floor ten feet behind its owner and the machete in the dead thing’s right hand, Jake leapt into the air with his legs before him. I hope he doesn’t cut my feet off…

  The zombie took the impact full in its chest and spiraled backwards, the machete flying from its hand. Ready for action as he landed on the floor, Jake sprang to his feet. The zombie rose, made eye contact with Jake, then looked from left to right, calculating the distance to each weapon.

  Go for the machete, Monte. Go for the machete.

  It went for the .45.

  Panic drove Jake scrambling for the machete. Out of the corner of his left eye, he glimpsed the zombie hunching over for the gun. Jake’s hands closed around the machete’s handle. The zombie turned toward him, swinging the .45 in his direction. Jake had no choice but to leave himself fully exposed as he cocked the machete with both hands, bringing his arms behind his head. It took all his willpower to ignore the gun’s barrel and concentrate on the zombie’s crown as he brought the machete down with all the force he could muster.

  An instant later, the machete cleaved the creature’s head, coming to a stop between its eyes. Gray fluid containing chunks of pink spurted out of the wound. Jake waited for the gun to fire, but instead, it slipped from the Hispanic man’s hand, and a moment later, the zombie joined it in a heap on the floor.

  With his chest rising and falling, Jake watched the man’s flickering soul rise and fade.

  Jake seized the .45 and ran upstairs to the lobby. Concealing the gun from the glass doors behind him, he raced to the black metal door and flung it open. He switched on the overhead light and scanned the storage area for any more of the damned dead things. Satisfied that he was alone, he crossed the cluttered space to a wide metal door in the back. As expected, the locks on the door had been broken. If he had not answered the call from the alarm company, the dispatcher would have called the police, and some unsuspecting uniforms would have been in store for four big surprises.

  They wouldn’t have come here if I hadn’t, he reasoned. They must have followed me from One PP.

  This begged the question: how large was this network of dead things? He had seen three of them dealing drugs on Flatbush Avenue, four had chased him over the Brooklyn Bridge, and four more had invaded the little office building. That made eleven that he had encountered in one night.

  And I cut that number in half, give or take a head.

  On his way up the stairs to the fourth floor, Jake collected the various weapons that his assailants had dropped. He estimated that he had only two hours remaining before sunrise, which left him little time to accomplish what needed to be done. Entering the slop sink room on his floor, he opened the garbage chute and deposited the guns and two of the machetes, which banged and echoed their way down to the basement trash compactor.

  Inside his office, he set the two remaining machetes on top of his safe for further inspection later and fetched a digital still camera, an ink pad, and several sheets of blank paper. He photographed each of the dead things from several angles, working his way down to the basement. When he attempted to fingerprint them, he made a shocking discovery: the ends of each finger had been surgically removed and sutured.

  What the hell?

  Inspecting the insides of their mouths, he saw that all their teeth had been removed, reducing their gums to misshapen masses of gray tissue. The zombie that had attempted to bite him had not been an isolated case. With a sickening feeling in his gut, he removed their shoes and peeled off their socks. The ends of their toes had been cut off and sutured with catgut.

  No wonder they staggered around like Boris Karloff in elevator shoes. Someone went to pretty extreme lengths to make sure these things can’t be identified.

  Their flesh felt like shoe leather, which explained why their faces had been so inexpressive, besides the fact they were dead.

  After returning the camera and fingerprint documents to his office, Jake seized the Chinese and black zombies by their wrists and dragged them into the waiting elevator. Possessing no desire to ride in the cramped elevator with two corpses, he thumbed the button for the basement and stepped out just before the door closed. He returned to his office and took a spare blanket from his bedroom closet, then took the stairs.

  It was easy enough to cover the Caucasian zombie with the blanket, harder to sling the corpse over his shou
lder and carry it to the alcove, where he dumped the thing without ceremony and watched it flop and thud its way to the basement below.

  With all the assassins gathered together, he opened the large, curved hatch of the industrial garbage compactor. The weapons he had dropped down the chute rested atop garbage waiting to be crushed. As he understood it, when a certain weight of garbage had accumulated, the compactor automatically went to work. He loaded the corpses into the machine in the order in which he had put them down. They seemed far heavier now, as his muscles had grown fatigued.

  With their arms and legs entangled, blank eyes staring at him, he closed the hatch and pressed the red button on the compactor’s side. Issuing a great rumble, the compactor folded, crushed, and packed the human bones and flesh into a dense package that it forced deep into its bowels, ready for pickup.

  One hour later, after sweeping and scrubbing the sawdust and liquefied brains from the walls and floors, Jake sat at his desk, with the Afterlife file uploaded again, and keyed a single word into the search engine: voodoo.

  An hour after that, with the sun rising, he grabbed a round container and poured salt across each doorway of his office.

  EIGHT

  “Grandma! Grandma!”

  Carmen Rodriguez awoke with a start, snapping her head up. She caught her breath. “What is it, Victor?”

  The boy stood beside her bed. “Someone’s trying to get in!”

  Seeing the panic in her young grandson’s eyes, she threw back her bedsheet and climbed out of bed, her nightgown sticking to her body. She snatched the wooden baseball bat from where she left it propped against her bedroom doorframe and rushed past the bathroom and the bedroom that Victor had shared with Louis.

  Early morning light shone through the blinds in the kitchen and living room, and as she rounded the corner, her heart jumped in her chest. Through the front door, open six inches but held in place by the chain lock, she saw her other grandson, Louis, standing in the green hallway and staring at her with flat, expressionless eyes.