The Savage Dead (11 page)

He checked his watch. Three minutes to five.

No time like right now, he told himself, and focused his breathing. In and out, slow and steady, like a metronome. During the selection process for Special Forces the doctors had discovered Juan had something called a metronomic heartbeat. Most people's heartbeats vary with what they're doing. Fast when they're stressed, like when they have a gun to their heads or they're about to jump out of an airplane, slow when they're sitting on the couch reading a book. Not Juan's though. His was steady nearly all the time, no matter what he was doing. The doctors told him it was because his brain produced a higher than normal level of a neurotransmitter called neuropeptide. They told him it was like the body's version of a Valium, mitigating the effects of anxiety and stress. It was a good thing, they told him, and a trait he shared with most of the successful Special Forces operators. And it was helping him now to stay focused and calm. He brought his pistol up and glided down the hall, rounded the corner and charged into the room yelling,
“La Policia! Abajo en el suelo! Al suelo!”

Caught flatfooted, the two guards at the door fumbled with their weapons trying to get them up. One of them accidentally squeezed off a round into the ceiling. Juan didn't give him a chance to fire another. He shot the guard closest to him, putting a single round center mass in his chest. The man staggered backwards, but didn't fall. Juan lunged for him, grabbed the muzzle of the man's AK with his left hand, and pushed the rifle flat against the man's bleeding chest. With his other hand Juan fired twice over the man's shoulder, dropping the second guard to floor.

The first guard was making a choking sound. Already his eyes had turned up into his skull and he was shaking. That made him easy to control. Juan spun him around, using him as a human shield for the three gunmen moving in on him. The men opened fire just as Juan spun the first guard around, the bullets thudding into the man's back and causing his body to twitch and dance. Juan pushed the man toward the middle of the room and fired at a man running straight at him, hitting him in the stomach and in the face. The man fell forward onto his hands and knees, and then collapsed onto his belly.

“Matar a ese hijo de puta!”
somebody shouted. Juan didn't see who, though it sounded like the young guy in charge.

Just the man Juan wanted to get his hands on.

To his left was a metal staircase leading to a catwalk that went the length of the room. There was a narrow gap between the catwalk and the wall and he ran for it, rounding the far side of the stairs just as more shots zinged off the pipes that ran beneath the catwalk.

“Se fue de esa manera,”
the young guy yelled again.
“Cómo él, lo consigue!”

About twenty feet down there was a gap in the pipes. Juan reached that just as two men came around the stairs. Had Juan been in their shoes he would have hung back, where he could use the stairs for cover. But these two were stupid. Not seeing him right away, they rushed forward, and when Juan pied around the edge of the stack of pipes he was using for concealment, the two men found themselves framed in the narrow funnel between the catwalk and the wall. They were set up like ducks in a county fair's shooting arcade. One man stopped and tried to backpedal out of the funnel. The other brought his gun up to fire. Juan shot him four times in the chest, then put his sights on the second man at the foot of the stairs and dropped him with three shots.

The slide of Juan's pistol locked back in the empty position. He brought it up to his chest, ejected the spent magazine, and retrieved another from his back pocket, all while walking back toward the main floor. He was in operator mode now, every action deliberate, smooth, and executed with practiced precision. Juan had only taken the briefest of glances at the main floor, but it had been enough to lock it into his mind. There'd been the two guards at the door, and the three men he'd killed by the stairs. That left a man in a blue T-shirt and jeans that had been standing far off to his right by a long metal table and the young guy in the black blazer. The guy in the blue T-shirt had pulled a pistol, Juan had seen that, so when he came around the back side of the stairs, he was ready.

The young guy in the blazer was running toward the back of the main floor, toward some offices along the far wall. Juan scanned the rest of the floor and saw the man in the blue T-shirt ducking behind the table. There was some kind of pulley attachment just above the table and he was using that as concealment. There wasn't enough of him showing for a clean shot, not at thirty yards with a pistol.

But maybe . . . There was a six-inch gap between the table and the bottom of the pulley. Raising his pistol and fixing his sights on the surface of the table, Juan slowly squeezed the trigger. Bullets hitting hard surfaces such as concrete and metal at an obtuse angle tended to hug that hard surface. It was a trick he'd learned while street fighting in Ciudad Juarez years earlier, where shooting at targets hiding under cars was a necessary survival skill, and when the gun jumped in his hand he wasn't surprised to hear the shot zing off the table and then the man let out a startled cough. He stumbled away from the table, coming out from behind the pulley, and when he did, Juan saw the man's blue T-shirt had become a bloody bib from the wound in his neck. He collapsed to the ground without Juan having to fire a second shot.

Juan broke into a sprint and went after the young guy in the blazer. He'd already made it across the main floor and was disappearing into an office, but Juan was closing fast. He hit the door with his good shoulder and caved it inwards. The young guy was standing in a doorway on the far side of the office with a gun in his hand. He fired five wild shots at Juan's direction, but Juan was already diving toward a heavy oaken desk in the middle of the room. He hit the ground and rolled left, firing as he did so and driving the guy through the door and out into the hall.

Juan could hear the man's footfalls disappearing down the hallway. He climbed to his feet, hustled to the door and pied around the corner. The man had stopped at the end of the hall, his gun up and ready. But Juan had the jump on him and fired twice, both shots hitting the man in his right shoulder. He wanted this man talking, not dead.

The man screamed and fell back against the wall, leaving a long smear of blood there. His pistol fell to the carpet, and before he could reach down with his good hand to get it, Juan let out a yell and charged him.

The man turned tail and ran into the darkened recesses of the building. It wasn't hard to follow him, though. He was shot and panicking. Juan could hear him panting, whimpering really, and when he caught up to him, he pushed him headlong into a wall. The man screamed from the pain and then screamed again when Juan grabbed the wounded shoulder and used it as leverage to pull him to the ground. Working quickly, he pushed the man onto his stomach and wrenched the wounded arm behind his back, slapping a handcuff on the man's wrist a moment later.

He tried to pull the other arm back, but the man was lying on it, squirming around like he was trying to reach something in his opposite side front pocket.

“Dame tus manos!”
Juan yelled.
“Hacerlo ahora!”

Still the man wouldn't release his arm. He kicked and bucked, tried to roll over and throw Juan to the side. Juan clamped his fingers down on the man's wounded shoulder and squeezed, causing the man to howl in pain, and still he wouldn't give up his free arm.

Then Juan felt him grab something and he thought:
Crap, a gun!

“Soltarlo! Soltarlo!”
Juan yelled. “Drop it!”

He clamped down again on the wound, digging his fingers into the bullet hole, tearing it. The man's screams echoed off the walls, and after nearly ten seconds of that he'd had enough and rolled over, freeing up his right arm, all his resistance gone.

Juan pulled the arm back, expecting to see a gun, and instead saw what looked like a garage door opener in the man's hands. The man's thumb was mashing down on the button so hard it had turned white.

“What the hell is this?” Juan asked.

The man laughed. There were tears running down his blood-spattered face, but he was laughing.

The crazy bastard, Juan thought.

“What have you done?” Juan asked him.

The man's laughter turned to a cruel sneer.
“No entiendo Ingles,”
he said.

Juan grabbed the wound again, this time sinking his thumb down to the knuckle in the wound.

Between the man's screams, Juan said, “Bullshit, asshole. You speak English just fine. Now what the hell did you do? Why were you sending that bacteria down to Nuevo Laredo? Where's the truck?”

The man couldn't laugh anymore. He tried, but he couldn't. He was panting now, his skin an ashen white.

“You want to know?” the man said.

“Yeah, I want to know.”

This time the man did manage a laugh. A laugh that made him sound like one of the damned. “You want to know. I'll show you.”

His head fell back on the carpet. He had all but passed out. Juan was about to go for the wound again when a door burst open not ten feet down the hall. A man fell out and collided with the opposite wall.

Instantly, Juan was on his feet, his weapon in his hand.

The man's head lolled on his shoulders. His arms hung limply at his side. Even in the low light of the hallway the man's face looked diseased, blistered and cracked. There were oozing wounds on his cheeks and his forehead. And when he stood up, pushing away from the wall, Juan could see he was missing an ear, his clothes bloody and shredded rags.

“What the hell?” Juan said.

From below him, the handcuffed man let out a sound that was supposed to be another brave laugh, but instead came out like a groan.

The diseased man staggered forward.

Two more men, both as diseased looking as the first, stepped out of the doorway.

“Stop right there,” Juan said, surprised to hear the hitch in his voice. “I said stop.
Alto ahi!
”

The man lurched forward. His whole body trembled when he walked. He wasn't drunk. Juan could see that at a glance. But something was wrong with him. Seriously wrong.

“Acuéstese en el suelo con las manos detrás de la cabeza,”
Juan said.

The handcuffed man started to laugh. “You're fucked,
pendajo
! You wanted to know what we did, this is it. You hear me, man, you're f—”

The rest was cut off sharply.

As Juan watched, both horrified and captivated, unable to look away, one of the three diseased men fell on the handcuffed man and tore at his face with his hands and his teeth. It was savage to watch, an awful act full of blind fury and inexplicable rage. A cold chill moved over his spine. Juan backed away, shaking his head, not at all sure what he was looking at, but scared nonetheless.

A hand fell on his shoulder.

He spun around.

And found himself nose to nose with another of the diseased men. This one didn't have any lips. His eyes were leaking pus and his skin was peeling from his face. He opened his mouth and leaned forward to take a bite out of Juan's face, and when he did Juan got a whiff of something he hadn't smelled since leaving Ciudad Juarez all those years ago.

The odor of a body left out in the sun to rot.

He gagged and fell backwards. The man reached for him and Juan reacted instantly by grabbing the man's wrist and pulling him.

Hard.

The man went flying, and Juan was shocked by how little resistance he gave. He tumbled headlong into the path of the diseased men behind Juan and they all went over.

Like bowling pins.

There was a woman standing in front of him when he turned around. This one had gray, matted hair halfway down her back, the remnants of some kind of white smock hanging from her shoulders. Behind her were half a dozen more just like her, diseased and lurching forward, unsteady on their feet, the odor of dead things moving with them.

“Oh, shit,” Juan said.

He turned around and saw the bowling pins rising to their feet. When the first man turned to face him Juan raised his gun and centered the front sight on his chest.
“Un paso más y voy a poner una bala a través de su corazón,”
he said. “I mean it. Not another step.”

The man stumbled forward, his hands reaching for Juan's face.

Juan braced himself.

And fired.

The first shot knocked the man back on his heels.

But didn't stop him.

His head tilted forward, his hands came up again, grabbing at air, and he took another step. Juan fired twice into the man's chest, both shots hitting almost directly on top of the first. Little bits of flesh and burned bits of fabric flew from the entry wound.

Nothing.

The man staggered forward.

Unphased.

Seemingly oblivious to his pain.

Juan leveled his sights on the man's nose and fired.

Half his head exploded away, big clumps of scalp and hair smacking against the wall like a thrown wet towel.

And still the man staggered forward.

Juan lowered his weapon, stunned, and for the first time since his father's funeral all those years ago, a prayer rose to his lips:
“Padre nuestro que estás en los cielos, santificado sea tu nombre, venga tu reino . . .”

But the man didn't stop.

Slowly, Juan raised his pistol, and this time his aim was true. The man's head snapped back, and he sank to the floor a motionless heap.

Juan glanced over his shoulder at the advancing horde and knew he couldn't go that way.