Bad II the Bone (24 page)

“Now you’re getting the hang of this.” He grinned then genuflected, kissing her hand on his way down.

“Fool!” she said and started laughing again.

16.

Red Ground Estates, Surrey

Friday July 19th

22.20

The men who had been stationed outside of Spokes’ country residence were getting used to the cold hard facts of slipping personal hygiene, twelve hour shifts, unpalatable coffee and indigestible food, but that was what was required of them. The money was good and no one in their right mind would question Deacon’s orders without having a well armed regiment in reserve for the backlash.

In the meantime they prepared for a possible opening in Spokes’ battl
ements on the off chance. Deacon was adamant and obviously a firm believer in providence awaiting any possibility, whether mundane or supernatural to breach Spokes’ defenses.

Team Bravo were six hours into a
shift,  a five man crew in a BMW SUV hidden in the leafy copse out of sight readying themselves to send out a two man scouting unit to see what they could see. Robert and Stevo were dressed in dark overcoats packing enough heat to engage an equally armed crew not a millionaire promoter who had no experience in the world of violence they occupied.

Deacon’s desperation was showing.

Stevo reached for the door release to let himself out when someone rapped on the tinted glass.

“Shit!” he said, hearing weapons cocking in the background with the swiftness of seasoned assassins. Stevo c
almed their nervousness with a gentle to and fro of his hand, knowing that suburbia threw up these situations from time to time. He switched his facial muscles to neutral and placed the pistol behind his back as he slid the door open.

A tall dark skinned man, dressed in light khaki slacks, Clarkes shoes with white shirt and Panama hat of which he tipped in his direction while smiling grotesquely.

“What?” The man in the van asked gruffly.

“I need your van, pardy.” Darkman said evenly.
“And your talents.”

Stevo glared at him and then laughed.

“Are you fucking retarded or something? Walk away before I hurt you.” He spat. “Talents?” He said to himself and tried to slide the door shut but it wouldn’t budge.

“Don’t be like that, star. What if I promise not to kill yuh.”

Darkman placed the cricket bag he was carrying on the ground beside his leg and with one hand on his waist, a smile creeping slowly across his lips. Stevo was yanking on the door perplexed as to why it still would not close when it dawned on him that this strange Jamaican was threatening to kill him.

“You
what?” Stevo asked incredulous and slightly amused then it was gone. He glared angrily at the man who had not moved and was watching his ineffective efforts with amusement. “Kill me? Are you listening to this lad’s?” His head snaked inside. “This wanker want’s us dead.”

Laughter erupted
in the vans interior.

Enoch shook his head in a gesture that almost looked like r
emorse for what he was about to do. He reached into his pocket, popping a small bundled up parcel of vegetation in his mouth like gum. He chewed heartily on the unprocessed leaves of the demon weed, his salivary glands pumping mouth water into the cavern of his mouth. Careful not to swallow any of the masticated contents, Enoch maintained chewing his cud. He puckered his lips and prepared to squeeze the liquid through his tongue and upper palette. The incantation unraveled in his mind rearranging the form and function of the liquid in his mouth as he forced it out. His spit vaporized explosively from his lips filling the interior of the van with a powder cloud of tornado force that obscured them into silence. Moments later the hoarse wheezing of five men overcome and bent to his will whispered out to the cool air like the slow leak of a bike tire.

Slowly Darkman entered the SUV,
it rocked slightly with his added weight. Casually he checks over his shoulders to see if he had been seen and slid the door closed behind him.

Surrey Heath, Victoria Park Nature Reserve

Saturday July 20th

22.15

A dark uneasiness crept in time with the girls as soon as they wandered through the gates and into Victoria Park and only Suzy Wong felt it.

It had been a spur of the moment decision which they had di
scussed and decided Spokes could be on his own while they got some air and down time. The house as large as it was and sporting every amenity a reclusive millionaire could ever want still was unbearable after forty-eight hour stretches. Y had come up with the idea of a walk in the park. At the time it felt like a good idea. The boss was asleep and the floor surrounding his bed was marked with Mayan sigils of protection for his peace of mind. If it was triggered he had an hour worth of mystical defense. The grounds were covered as usual with his personal security detail, the park-cum-nature reserve was twenty minutes walk away and his ring should afford him enough time to contact them if he was being threatened. So here they were walking arm in arm, shooting the breeze with at least two out of the trio enjoying the vast greenery even in the darkness.

Suzy subtly excused herself from Y and Patra’s discussion and fell back. The deeper they got into the reserve’s winding pathways
and open expanses the more her disquiet increased. She watched her sisters proceed in the distance oblivious to the waves of menace that had her emotions in a tangle. She stopped feigning interest in a blooming bougainvillea and tried to settle herself.

Moments later Y sensed Suzy’s absence and stopped to look back only to be reassured by her easy wave in the distance. They stood t
heir ground and continued on with the conversation waiting for Suzy to catch up.

Suzy concentrated
but her five senses detected nothing. It was her intuition that was expecting the rows of foliage to transmute into a monstrous plant with a taste for human flesh. But a warm breeze ruffled their leaves and nothing more sinister than tree sparrows emerged from the branches. Suzy could not shake the feeling though so on a whim she left the safety of the foot path and moved silently into the shrubbery. She inhaled a heady mixture of humus, sap and chlorophyll as she nestled into the dense branches and crouched to wait.

After five minutes she was beginning to feel silly then that feeling of foreboding returned with more intensity.

Something appeared.

It came as an almost imperceptible grating murmur that she couldn’t distinguish if she had heard it or if it was extrasensory in nature. Her temple prickled immediately and her ears tingled as minute forces of some kind ran up and down her earlobe stretc
hing it as if they were becoming elfin. Suzy shifted in her crouched position wanting to sprint away from there but fear and curiosity held her fast. That God awful murmur was behind her, so she spun to face it and saw nothing. Then at the periphery of her vision something swooped out of eyeshot, through the leaves, silent and ethereal, large enough to be human but with no definition to speak of but ink black with many tattered and flapping edges. The figure moved through the air like a demented vulture trailing its substance behind it as if this world had some effect on how it moved, dulling its power but not its inquisitiveness.

It was looking for something, looking for Suzy.

She crouched; transfixed then with the cold hand of dread gripping her spine she stood up and walked out of the shrubs.

“You wanted me?” Suzy growled up into the night sky.

The spectral bird of prey swooped again at the edges of her perception responding to her voice. It twirled with satisfaction when it realised she was still in the park, almost whooping with delight from its aerobatics, it shot upwards merging into the trees, leaving behind a sense of foreboding that Suzy now knew had to be acted on.

Enoch’s essence returned to his body seated in the
Command SUV he had forcefully appropriated, sans its original five passengers with such displeasure, his corporeal self spasmed and gasped for breath as he became one with himself again. He slammed the door to the astral world like a teenager slamming his room door shut with vexation and kept swearing. He uncrossed his legs and leaned back into the passenger seat, his five senses re-aligning themselves to the here and now. The euphoria of being unfettered from his body disappeared and what returned were the emotions of flesh and blood.

Deh Chiny gal can see mi to rass
. He thought.

He had been right to not take them for granted and from w
hat he had read , their talents could manifest in different forms but a warrior sensitive, now that was different. The plan to track them to where Spokes was holed up was an inspired one but what was genius was the vévé, he had planted at the entrance to the mansion. It was a work of voodoo art if he said so himself using the skin of a deer as the canvass and his paints were black sand, cornmeal and human blood to mark out the delicate patterns that would subtly nudge his targets to a particular way of thinking. He was not used to the delicate strokes, and the spider web energies it would influence, his diagrams were more heavy handed in their construction and effect but this was almost beautiful in its function. The spell was so unencumbered with the usual trappings of bending the will of its subjects that the three bitches thought the idea of walking to the park was their own. That’s why this trap he was about to spring would prove pivotal.

He had read accounts of the Guardians interfering with the scheming of his great, great grandfather on one of his frequent jaunts around the world. They were immune to overt magic and reveled in conflict so to distract or destroy them required subte
rfuge and cunning. Grandfather Pierre was in Costa Rica when it happened and he circumnavigated the issue without shedding any blood and still getting the Tabernacle Moth that he seeked. Enoch thought it was a good strategy but bad for his ego. And when he sat to write his memoirs, he would recount how he trapped and slaughtered the blessed Guardians with his ego intact.

No back dung, an no compromise.

They would die, Spokes would be alone and although he couldn’t face him directly he would instruct the demons from hell’s Seven Circle to rip off his ring finger and gut him open from ass to gullet. Another chunk of Enoch’s soul forfeit to the darkness but it was worth it. 

“You don’t bomboclaat
keep secrets from Darkman,” he muttered. “Then try to keep me from what is my birthright, pan top a dat.” He snorted derisively. “Death for you will be the easy part, my friends. Trust mi.”

The threat hung languidly in the confines of the van, as if wai
ting for its activation into the real world was dependant on tonight’s outcome.

As far as Enoch was concerned the night was pregnant with promise and his concerns could be unnecessary. He closed his eyes and let the anger maintain its grip on him and waited for his puppets to do his bidding. Soon his minions would be returning with the severed head of one of the Guardian bitches and he would be one step closer to what was his.

Surrey Heath, Victoria Park Nature Reserve

Saturday July 20th

22.35

“Hey ma, you aight?” Patra directed the question to Suzy who had materialized beside them from a jog.

They had left the nature reserve and were heading across a
nother small park that would connect them to the main road and Millionaires’ Row.

“What were you doing back there?” Patra asked. ”Find som
ething interesting?”

“Something found mi instead. We were being followed,” Suzy said flatly.

Patra stopped in her tracks.

“By whom?”

“Don’t stop,” Suzy insisted as she dragged her to pick up pace.

“Let’s just get back to the yard now and we can talk there. Oh, an’ it’s not a who but a what.”

“You spooking the shit out of me girl. What do you mean a what?”

“Nuh time feh no long explanation P, I’ll tell you everyting when wi safely inside. Just keep moving.”

The message understood, they picked up speed, starting to jog across the low grass when just on the verge separating nature from asphalt the shadows congregated, the figures looking hazy and bent as the light from the street lamps diffused through the heat being exuded from the ground. Then ever so slowly five, ten, fifteen rambling figures joined the original set. The girls slowed down but did not stop. Instead Suzy turned back dragging Patra and Y with her. They slid down the hill and once they hit the bottom they took a sharp left and headed deeper into the shrubs.

The thought that they could out-run them kept Suzy focused but so far they were everywhere. The park was a big place and the shambolic shuffling of the shadows stalking them could not or were not inclined to follow for very far. But soon it became clear that what Suzy was feeling was Darkman’s attempt at destroying the threat they posed to him. He had recruited a horde of malcontents drugged or under his dark magic’s to coral them in the park and then take them out. So far every escape route they had tried was compromised with unexplained energies that were vibrating high on Suzy’s psychic Richter scale. She was trying not to have to explain Darkman’s plan to her sisters, just get them to safety as quickly as she could. Suzy didn’t want to explain how she was receiving a multitude of echoes from the figures stalking them. Ugly, oily, empty and hungry. A ravenous hunger that emanated off them and was smearing and clogging her headspace like a mad painter throwing excrement onto the canvas that was her mind.

Movement was good, taking her attention away from the emotional onslaught battering her mental defenses. This was not the time to be stopping but Patra had something to say and she could be very forceful when she wanted to express herself.

Patra suddenly brought them to a stop, holding their hands and dragging them to their knee’s

“Now is not the time, sis.” Suzy said. “Trust mi pan dat.” They breathed heavily.

“I do trust you Suzy. It’s not that but I want to see these motherfuckers. Who are they and who sent them?” Patra paused.

“Don
’t answer that I know who did this, I just wish he would show his punk ass. I get antsy with the idea of being trapped.”

“We’ll get out, I promise but we have to keep moving.” Suzy said.

“Why aren’t we taking the fight to these crack heads? You ain’t telling me you think we can’t breakthrough these assholes?” Patra said he voice a harsh whisper.

“That’s not what your saying is it Ms Wong?” Y asked. “You don’t want to try, do you?”

Suzy didn’t confirm or deny Y’s observation.

“Let’s just keep moving, ladies. I don’t like what I’m feeling and I don’t want to find out I was right to be afraid, yuh understand mi?”

Patra nodded her lips stretched tight and her eyes wide.

Y intervenes with a calm tone that belied her concern for Suzy’s weird
behavior.

“Ok, lets keep trying to get out of here without any contact with these people. But if were cornered……?

“We taking niggas out!” Patra spat.

They kept moving on a track that wasn’t so well used, an alternative route cut from necessity or convenience by the feet of someone who required change on his own terms. Overgrown foliage encroached on the path but it didn’t much matter to Bad II the Bone. They followed it where it led using Patra’s smartphone as a light source. Suzy was being guided on instinct alone and nothing was making sense except the overriding impulse to get home. They kept pushing forward. The ground was hard from the drought that had been news in this part of Sussex for a while. The smell of sappy green and soil was pungent as they disturbed the air as they moved, movement that was brisk at first but slowed as they burrowed deeper into the thicket, a foreboding mental fog shadowing them like a rain cloud. But just as suddenly the bushes became less dense and more easily traversed and shafts of light bore through from what they hoped was civilization.

“Damn do you smell that, shit?” Patra asked bringing everyone to a stop as if an invisible wall had suddenly erected before them.

“Like something died, man.” Y concluded. “Lots of them.”

Then the moans floated up into the sweetness of the night air, amplified by the silence.

Suzy grabbed Y’s arm, like vice grips, her hands trembling, her heart thundering in her chest.

“We can’t go any further sis, there out there, all a dem.”

“Them who?” Patra snapped.

“I don’t understand Suzy.” Y absorbed some of Suzy’s fear her voice shrill. “Who’s out there? We can’t keep doing this all night. We got to face them.”

“She right, sugah. I’m done running around in circles while these crack heads spook the shit out of us. We are the Guardians right? We ain’t scared of no man and anyway hiding just ain’t cool.” Patra grabbed her crotch obscenely. “If they think scare tactics is gonna keep on working, they can suck my dick.”

“You nuh feel what mi feel.” Suzy said. “An emptiness I want to shake but can’t. A kind of hunger where every part a yuh a scream feh food. A nastiness countless showers nah guh cleanse.”

“We’re together,” Y reassured her. “Whatever it is that’s making you feel like this, you won’t face alone. Do you understand me?”

Suzy nodded and all three held hands.

“For all this drama, I think I need to give them a piece of my mind or my blade, whichever works better.”

“Preach!” Patra encouraged with a
nervous grin.”

They kept moving through the smell of death and decay that hung languidly like an et
hereal dirty curtain. The smell stuck in their throats and soiled their clothes, adding a note of urgency to their step.  They hurried through a copse of trees at the bottom of the small hill and headed up a slight incline that quickly plateau. Ahead of them is an open field and beyond that the glimmering lights of the main road and cars traversing the country lanes.

Sweet escape.

Then they paused, their focus now on the immediate distance, their hands falling to their sides, staring on with an unexpected awe.

Suzy’s face looked like a cold granite frieze of an ancient war
ning etched into some Roman temple. Her mouth was moving but her words were heard by no one.

Patra
flinched; a nervous tick suddenly appeared at the corner of her mouth. She was having difficulty understanding the picture her eyes were showing.

Y is shaking, her spine goes cold, her heart pounding behind her ribs, only her grip on the sword slung on her back kept her from discounting
what she was seeing as a waking nightmare.

But i
t was real.

“Duppy.” Suzy said.

“Say what?” Patra exclaimed.

“Walking dead.” Suzy expounded in a deadpan tone.

“Motherfucker!” Patra whispered, her mental clarity returning. “You got to be fucking kidding me.”

Together the tableau they saw would be fire bra
nded into memory for a lifetime.

A throng of dead things were materializ
ing from the wispy mist on the left and right flanks, their stench carried in the air. A riot of moving corpses, thirty or forty of them maybe more were dragging their dead asses towards the startled girls. The walking dead were in varying degrees of decomposition. The clothes they wore were caked with mud as if they had clawed themselves out of fresh graves, gooey splashes of decrepit body fluids stained them, shit smeared with fresh blood splashes as if something warm and alive had got in the way and paid the price with their lives.

A lumbering cadaver dressed in a green soiled and ripped shell suit led the ponderous charge. Another that looked like a school teacher in an advanced state of decay, black drool dripping down from cracked lips, the side of her head caved in and body parts falling from her. Some of them were clad in their Sunday best, shirts untucked, hats still atop heads, innards exposed and dra
gging. Some of them dressed for more leisurely pastimes but lacked arms and legs. Some were slivering and hopping towards them, their blackened teeth chomping at the prospect of life giving flesh. Milk white eyes gleaming in the moonlight devoid of all intelligence and overcome by an insatiable hunger. The thought had occurred to Y to go back to where they had come from but the rustling of the bushes at the bottom of the incline put paid to that idea. Suzy looked back to where they had come from longingly too, knowing with an uncanny certainty that trouble was on its way from behind also.

Y had her samurai sword unsheathed and was gripping it in both hands, a nervous tightening and relaxing of her fingers aro
und the hilt between her digits. Y let reason fall like a stone in a pond, watching the ripples in her mind’s eye, spread and diminish to nothing.

Y charged
the fifty yards between them, the sword singing through the air and in a heartbeat she is amidst the shuffling hordes in a controlled frenzy of violence. The katana was a silver blur, cutting through moldy neck and spinal cord, putrefied sinew and rotting muscle, hollowed bone and poisoned marrow that should not be able to accommodate life – no not life, anti-life – but did. They kept coming and Y kept hacking, hyper aware of her surroundings.

Separate the head from the neck, because nothing else would do.

The remainder of Bad II the Bone stood their ground.

Patra eye
d a broken tree limb that had been snapped by excessive weight or overzealous swinging. She ambled over and picked it up. With a flick of her wrist, she spun it in her hands nimbly and then swung it both sides of her with a fierceness that could break bones. Her show of aggression done she let the weapon rest easily at her side.

Suzy took off her light jacket and slipped out of her blouse ri
pping it in two. She got back into her windbreaker and then bound her fists with the torn blouse. After minutes of controlled slaughter Y backed away from the horde, rejoining Suzy and Patra. She wiped the blade on her sleeves, her movements lethargic from sore muscles, her chest heaving from the exertion of battle and her clothes drenched in black blood and guts.

“I can’t get through…them alone. We have to do this toget
her.”

Y nodded.

“You stink,” Suzy said to her, all three backing into each other.

“If we get out of this alive, you can chastise me for my slipping personal hygiene later, okay.”

“Deal,” Suzy said.

The atonal moan of the zombies approaching them suddenly swelled and Bad II the Bone looked on with a mixture of puzzl
ement and fear.

The shuffling mass of figures parted.

A group of five men approached. Covered in white dust from head to toe streaked with their own blood seeping from their eyes, nose, mouth and ears. If they were the living dead, they died recently because they looked intact, free from rotting flesh and their clothes lacked age or deterioration. But whatever covered them was luminescent and seemed to provide a gross attraction that kept them close together like clusters of single cell bacteria and as they came closer motes of dust sprang up as they dragged their feet. Murmurs trickled from open mouths in a strange unified groan from a collective awareness.

Stranger still, as they drew nearer moonlight glinted off swords and machetes they carried loosely between stiff and gnarled fingers. They shuffled towards them in a t
ight group like stroke victims whose movements were uncoordinated but still had the capability to hold on to sharp edged weapons.

Suddenly the teeming
dead stopped in unison like blood splattered AWOL soldiers trapped in a force field, watching.

Waiting.

The crooked silhouettes shuffled towards them.

Suzy smoothly moved
into the praying mantis stance, her fists up and clenched.

“Could do with my butterfly swords right about now.” Suzy muttered. “Not looking forward to putting my hands on dem
nasty skin.”

Patra nodded an agreement and as if to say that’s why I have this, grabbing the tree limb with both hands and swinging the wood back and
forth to test its suitability for what was about to come just for reassurance.