Desperate Souls (10 page)

Jumbie:
West Indian for “ghost.”

Nzambi:
Kongo term meaning “the spirit of a dead person.”

Nzúmbe:
the Kimbundu ghost.

Zonbi:
Louisiana Creole or Haitian Creole; a person who has died and has been resurrected without the power of speech or free will.

Zonbi astral:
a human soul captured by a bokor to increase the bokor’s power.

Jake continued reading into the night, digesting terms and dates and geographic locations related to zombies. Finally, he rubbed his eyes and uninstalled the program from the laptop’s hard drive. Having processed the file’s information, he wondered if Tower had been taken for a fool by his research team. Although Jake had found the dozens of cases of modern zombies around the world interesting, nothing he read had persuaded him that the creatures existed. Still, the hair on the back of his neck had prickled at the mention of bokors capturing human souls for their own nefarious purposes.

Soul catchers,
Jake thought. The term alone sent an icy chill through his core.

Then the lights went out.

A beam of light shot up behind Jake. It came from the high-intensity emergency flashlight that he kept plugged into the outlet behind his chair.

Power’s out,
he thought as he swiveled around and stood up. But he did not snatch the flashlight from the outlet. The blinds over the window to his right glowed from the city lights outside, and as he peeked through the slats, he saw lit windows in the buildings on either side of him. Only the power in
this
building had been cut.

Three… two … one…

The lights came on again as he expected, juiced by the emergency generator that he had recommended Eden, Inc. install in the basement. As he watched the security monitors on the far wall flare back to life, he unfastened his cell phone from his belt.

When the phone rang in his hand, he answered it. “Jake Helman.” Scanning the security monitors, he studied each floor. No sign of intruders yet.

“Mr. Helman, this is Central Alarm Station. What is your—?”

“Evolution.” With his password given, he added, “I’m on-site. There’s nothing to worry about. Thank you.” He powered down the laptop.

“Have a good night, sir.”

“You, too.” Seizing the laptop in both hands, he ran it over to the safe, set it on its designated shelf, closed the iron door, and spun the combination dials.

His mind raced. The power lines had been cut in the back of the building, which was where the intruders would have to break in. Even as he formulated this scenario, he saw on one monitor the black metal door in the rear of the lobby swing open and a figure lumber forward: tall, shaved head, Chinese. His eyes resembled black pits. Three men followed him. One appeared Hispanic, one African American, and one Caucasian.

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 arms 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.