Book of the Dead (13 page)

“Hey, Lewis,” the Pole says. “Lewis. I’m talking to you.”

Lewis does not respond.

“Lewis. You’re slowing up. You hear me?”

Corvino is walking across the parking lot as Skolomowsky speaks.

“…I said you’re losing it. Just like in Tehran.”

“Sweep complete?” Hutson, the Beta team leader asks Corvino.

As he is about to answer, a movement at the right corner of his field of vision: Lewis swinging the butt of his M16 in an arc to connect with Skolomowsky’s jaw. A crunch as the Pole backflips to the tarmac. Lewis shrieks, diving on his downed partner, his mouth wide.

Corvino pulls the .45 from his holster, squeezing the trigger as the barrel comes into line with the side of Lewis’s head: Lewis, at Skolomowsky’s throat, tearing out the soft flesh and chewy esophageal tract. Dark blood fountains in the night air.

He’s missed!

The thought frags his concentration as he squeezes off a second shot. That, too, goes wild. But the third finds its target and the right side of Lewis’s head explodes. Lewis deflates over the Pole’s still twitching body.

Corvino’s mind is out of sync.

He’s missed
.

One-Shot Corvino, Mr. Trigger, has actually missed.

The Pole is still moving. The squeal he made as Lewis ripped out his trachea ceases, replaced by a harsh, rasping wheeze as his lungs draw in oxygen directly through the gaping throat wound. The Pole heaves the corpse off him, sits up. The wheezing increases, his shrunken eyes retreating farther into the withered sockets. Like a stunned yet still enraged bull, he lumbers to his feet, his face a rictus of rage.

Harris opens fire with his .357 magnum.

The first bullet catches the Pole in the groin. He bucks to one side but continues standing. The second catches him in the chest, exiting with a sound like snapping branches. The third takes his right arm off at the elbow.

What the fuck is Harris playing at?

The head, always the head; Corvino aims and fires…

…and the Pole’s face disappears, the body sagging to the ground with a wet thud.

Corvino turns to Harris. The team member’s face is a blank chalkboard, his features an unwritten text.

“Once we get back to Capitol Hill you’re off duty, Harris.”

Harris says nothing. He stares with empty eyes, his magnum smoking in his fist.

Corvino moves away from the vacant assassin to face Beta team, all of whom have their guns up.

“Clean this mess up,” he nods in the direction of Skolomowsky and Lewis. “Let’s load up and get this chuck wagon back to the White House. The president needs fresh meat.”

Two members of Beta place their Ml6s against the nearest truck and pull fresh body sacks from the vehicle’s rear.

In the space of one minute, total change.

It begins with a crescent of muzzle flashes and a thunderous roar.

Fifteen seconds: As Corvino turns, a bullet catches Hutson in the throat; he gags, blood spurting from his mouth as he stumbles back; two bullets take Corvino in the stomach, spinning him around; five Cleanup members fall; some begin blasting back with their Ml6s at the gunfire that comes from the perimeter of the parking lot; Corvino’s .45 jerks in his hands as he pulls off five rapid shots: blood pumps from his stomach where a section of small intestine bulges from the large hole in his combat jacket; behind him, a figure tries to stand as more bullets rip into its torso; others drop to the ground.

Thirty seconds: Popping the spent clip from his pistol, Corvino speed-reloads, continues to fire, oblivious to his damaged internal organs. A bullet grazes his forehead, sending a stream of red into his eyes; he fires blind, tugging another cartridge from his ammo belt as he goes into a crouch that pushes his viscera through the now gaping hole; brains leave a head; the downed men writhe on the gore-soaked ground as wave upon wave of bullets tear into their bodies.

Forty-five seconds: Corvino keels over, his gun spinning from his hand: He twitches spastically as he tries to crawl toward a truck. The parking lot is a firework display; as if punctuating the performance, one of the trucks (the one toward which Corvino crawls) explodes as a stray shell hits the gas tank, sending a fireball up up into the darkness, flaming gasoline spraying his smashed body.

Fifty-seven seconds: Corvino continues to crawl, his intestines uncoiling snakelike as his body burns. He is dying for the second time. There is no pain.

Sixty seconds: Corvino fades to black.

Nick Packard pulled the clip from the Ingram. His ears were ringing. Someone shouted, but whatever was called did not register against the pealing bells sounding out in glorious jubilation inside his head.

The young policeman, who had joined the Washington force only six months before, had hardly ever used a gun. Now the Ingram felt like an extension of his right arm. And hot shit, did it feel good!

Captain Stipe waved to the group composed of cops and civilians to advance. The flaming truck illuminated the carnage. Several gore-slicked zombies thrashed on the ground like maggots. One was trying to lift an M16 with a broken arm, so Packard fired a quick burst at the creature’s head.

Take that, you friggin’ sonofabitch fuck-faced flesh-eater!

“No more shooting!” shouted Stipe. Packard’s ears were beginning to clear.

“Okay!”

There were thirty of them: seven cops and a ragged assortment of men and women, their ages ranging from late teens to mid-fifties. All were armed to the teeth with a wide selection of handguns, rifles, axes, pitchforks, a couple of crossbows, and numerous knives. One kid, a zit-covered geek, even had a homemade flamethrower, a Hudson sprayer/blow-torch combo that, despite its primitivism, could really kick ass.

“Packard,” Stipe signaled to the young cop. “You’re keen to wipe these things out, so finish ’em off.”

“Fuckin’ A.”

Packard fired three short bursts and the last of the dead meat stopped moving. All but one.

What remained of Dominic Corvino rolled over, a final twitch of the death nerve. Packard plucked his .38 special from his hip holster and fired twice into the burning head of what had once been Dominic Corvino.

Hell, you couldn’t be too careful these days
.

Stipe walked over to a bullet-riddled body that lay face down on the tarmac. The police captain pushed it over with his foot. “Government assholes.”

“Say again?” Packard said as he drew near.

“These are government dicks. I recognize this one.”

“So what?” Packard hawked up a ball of phlegm, which he spat on the creature’s face. “They’re still fuckin’ zombies. Dead scum.” He kicked the body, his boot breaking a rib.

“Yes, but these were organized, right? They were working together, not running rampant. I mean, if some of these things are retaining intelligence, we’re in deeper shit than we think.” Stipe wiped the back of a hand across his forehead.

He went to the back of the truck that was not on fire and unzipped a body bag. It contained the corpse of a small child, a little girl about seven, shot through the chest, her once rosy cheeks dotted with chickenpoxlike splashes of dried blood.

The child had been normal.

“Sheeit!” Packard’s eyes widened. “This still gets to me, especially the kids. So what do you reckon?” He continued to look at the dead girl, her dimpled cheeks frozen marble under the light of the police captain’s torch.

Stipe turned to him, his lips pursed.

“I think it’s time we visited the White House.”

BY EDWARD BRYANT

There once was a beautiful young woman with long hair the russet gold of ripe wheat. Her name was Martha Malinowski and her family had lived in Fort Durham for three generations. Martha was nineteen and had spent her entire life in the border area where southern Colorado shades subtly from browns and tans to the dark green mountains of northern New Mexico.

Martha’s eyes were a startling blue that deepened or paled according to the season and her mood. Her temperament had begun to darken with the onset of early winter snows, and so her eyes began to reflect that. Now they appeared the color of the road ice that formed on the headlights and steel bumpers of the pickups lining the parking strip beside the Diner.

She waited on tables for one, sometimes two long shifts each day at the Cuchara Diner. Occasional tourists speculated aloud that the Diner was more properly called the Cucaracha. Henry Roybal, the owner, would gesture at the neon tablespoon suspended in the front window. That made little difference to the tourists who rarely understood Spanish. The locals around Fort Durham simply referred to the place as the Diner. The Diner itself was a sprawling stucco assemblage that had been added to many times over the decades. Its most notable feature was Henry Roybal’s pride and joy, an eight-foot-high neon
EAT
that flashed from red to green and back again while a blue arrow pointed down at the Diner’s front door.

Martha Malinowski’s fair features haunted the illicit dreams of many in the community. She was largely oblivious to this and to the dreamers themselves. She ignored the ones she did notice. Her cap was set for Bobby Mack Quintana, the deputy sheriff. Bobby Mack was always cordial toward her, but that seemed to be about it. Martha wondered if he was just too shy to express his feelings.

Then there was Bertie Hernandez who openly lusted after Martha. Crude, rude, and vital, his buddies and he were among Henry’s best customers. Martha was never glad to see them coming into the Diner. But a job was a job, and business was business in this world of sage, scrub grass, endless horizons, and Highway 159. Someday Martha would have saved enough cash to leave this place. Or if Bobby Mack wanted her, then perhaps she would stay. She was practical about romance, yet still maintained her dreams.

The men watched the little old ladies tap and scratch ineffectually against the Diner’s thick plate-glass front window, their clawed fingers fluttering like the wings of injured birds.

“Don’t look too mean to me,” said Billy Gaspar, a strapping young man in a red plaid lumberjack shirt.

“You don’t know squat about zombies,” said Shine Willis, who was a few years Billy’s senior and half a head taller. “I was up to the Springs last week when a bunch of ’em came boilin’ out of a Greyhound bus downtown. They’re faster than they look, and stronger too. Especially if they been eatin’ good.” He chuckled.

Billy looked a bit livid. “People.”

“Yeah,” said Shine. “People.”

Bertie Hernandez glanced up from his breakfast plate. “Gimme another side of bacon, Martha,” he said. “Have Henry make it good and chewy.” The radio above the cash register was blaring out the Beat Farmers’ cover of “Sweet Jane.” “An’ turn off that shit. I want to hear something good.”

“Like what?” someone said from down the formica counter.

“Conway Twitty,” said Bertie. “Good shit.”

The radio stayed where it was set. The Beat Fanners’ record segued into Joe Ely’s “Crazy Lemon.”

“Better,” Bertie said.

“What we gonna do about the old ladies?” said Shine.

“Where’d they come from?” Billy Gaspar said. His fingers twitched around the handle of an untouched mug of cooling coffee.

“Eventide Manor, most like. The nursing home.” Shine grinned mirthlessly. “Musta found a zombie in the woodpile sometime in the night, I’d judge.”

“We gotta kill ’em?” said Billy.

“Too old to fuck,” said Shine. “Too tough to eat”

Billy’s complexion seemed to slide from white to greenish.

Somebody closer to the window said, “See the second from the left? That’s ol’ Mrs. Davenport, Kevin’s grandma.”

“The one in the center,” said Bertie Hernandez, “is my mother. Fuck her. Let’s do it.” He swung around on the counter seat and stood in one fluid motion. He slid the big .357 magnum out of its holster and checked the cylinder.

“Nice piece,” said Miguel Espinosa.

“Six old ladies,” said Bertie. “I figure I can handle them.”

“You want some help?”

Bertie shook his head. “Not unless they take a chunk out of me. Then shoot me quick.” It all sounded matter-of-fact.

“Why don’t all of you wait for Bobby Mack?” said Martha.

“Bobbee May-ack,” Bertie mimicked her. “Your fag cop heartthrob? Fuck him. Let him find his own zombies to blow him.”

Nose level with Bertie’s Adam’s apple, Martha looked up at him. “Don’t say things like that. Not ever.”

Bertie looked at her steadily for a moment. “Just watch what I do to the deadheads, darlin’. If it makes you wet enough, maybe I’ll take you over to Walsenburg tonight for a movie show and then the Motel Six.”

“Bertie,” said Henry Roybal. “There’s no call for talk like that.” The Diner’s owner had stuck his head out of the kitchen. “And don’t get any mess on the window. I washed it just yesterday.”

“They’re smearin’ the glass, right enough,” said Shine. “Pus, blood, all sorts of shit.”

“Okay,” said Bertie, looking away from Martha toward the old ladies beyond the window.

Martha stood rigid. Then she turned toward Henry, whose corpulent body was still wedged in the kitchen doorway. “Can you get hold of Bobby Mack?”