The Wrong Goodbye

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

–
Jean-Paul Sartre

 
 
 

Rain tore through the canopy of leaves, soaking my clothes until they hung wet and heavy on my limbs, but doing little to dispel the fetid stench of decay that pervaded every inch of this God-forsaken place. 

  Just keep moving, I told myself. It's not far now. 

  Mud sucked at my shoes as I pressed onward, swinging my machete at the knot of vegetation that barred my way. The roar of the rain against the leaves was deafening, swallowing the noises of the jungle until they were little more than a distant radio signal, half-heard beneath the waves of static. Heavy sheets of falling water obscured my vision, reducing my entire world to three square feet of vines and trees and rotting leaves. I swear, that dank jungle stink was enough to make me gag. Then again, that could have been the corpse that I was wearing.

  See, I'm what they call a Collector. I collect the souls of the damned, and ensure they find their way to hell. Believe me when I tell you, it ain't the most glamorous of jobs, but it's not like I really have a choice. Back in '44, I was collected myself, after a bad bit of business with a demon and a dying wife. I didn't know it at the time, of course, but this gig of mine was my end of the bargain. Most folks think of hell as some far-off pit of fire and brimstone, but the truth is it's all around them, a hair's breadth from the world that they can see – always pressing, testing, threatening to break through. That hell is where I spend my days, collecting soul after corrupted soul, all in service of a debt I can never repay.

  Which brings me to Colombia, and to the dead guy I was wearing.

  One of the bitches about being a Collector is that even though you're stuck doing the devil's bidding for all eternity, your body's still six feet under, doing the ol' dust-to-dust routine. But a Collector can't exist outside a body, which leaves possession as our only option. Most Collectors choose to possess the living – after all, they're plentiful enough, and they come with all kinds of perks, like credit cards and cozy beds. You ask me, though, the living are more trouble than they're worth. They're always crying and pleading and yammering on – or even worse, trying to wrestle control of their bodies back – and the last thing I need when I'm on a job is a backseat driver mucking everything up for me. That's why I stick to the recently dead.

  Take this guy, for example. I found him on a tip from my handler, Lilith, who handed me a clipping from a local paper when she gave me my assignment. "Honestly," she'd said, her beautiful face set in a frown, "I don't understand your morbid desire to inhabit the dead, when the living are so much more convenient and, ah, pleasant-smelling." 

  "A living meat-suit doesn't sit right with me. It's kind of like driving a stolen car."

  "You're aware you're being sent there to
kill
someone, are you not?"

  "Yeah, only the folks I'm sent to kill need killing." I waved the article at her. "The hell's this thing say, anyway? I barely speak enough Spanish to find the restroom."

  "Says he's a fisherman. Died of natural causes – and just yesterday, at that. He's as fresh as can be," she added, smiling sweetly.

  Fresh. Right. Just goes to show, you should never trust a creature of the night.

  Turned out, Lilith's idea of natural causes included drowning. This guy'd spent six hours in the drink before they'd found him, washed ashore in a tangle of kelp a good three miles from where he'd gone overboard. I'd cleaned up as best I could in the mortuary sink, but no amount of scrubbing could erase the reek of low tide that clung to his hair, his skin, his coarse thicket of stubble. Still, if Lilith thought this guy would be enough to make me cave and snatch myself a living vessel, she was sorely mistaken. I'm nothing if not stubborn.

  But the hassle with the meat-suit was nothing compared to the job itself. His name was Pablo Varela. A major player in the local drug trade. Varela's brutality was a matter of public record. In the two decades he'd been involved in the trafficking of coca, he'd only once been brought to trial. It was seven years back, and the Colombian government had turned the trial into quite the spectacle – TV, radio, the whole nine. Their way, I guess, of demonstrating their newfound dedication to the War on Drugs. Varela declined counsel, and mounted no defense. After eight weeks of damning testimony from the prosecution, it took the jury only minutes to acquit. Some say Varela got to them – that he threatened their lives and the lives of their families if they failed to set him free. Others claim he didn't have to, that his reputation alone was enough to guarantee his release. Whatever it was, the jury made the right choice. Save for them, everyone who set foot in the courtroom over the course of his trial was murdered – every lawyer, every witness,
everyone
. Some, like the bailiff and the court reporter, got off easy: two bullets to the back of the head. The judge and chief prosecutor weren't so lucky. They were strung up by their entrails in the city square – their throats slit, their tongues yanked through the gash in the Colombian style. One week later, the courthouse burned to the ground.

  Now a guy like Varela, I don't much mind dispatching. Problem was, the man was paranoid. As soon as he caught wind that I was looking for him, he sent a couple of his goons around to take care of me. That didn't go so well for them, so he sent a couple more. I'm afraid they didn't fare much better. That's when I slipped up. See, I'm not much for killing anyone I don't have to. You could call it mercy, I suppose, or whatever passes for a conscience among the denizens of hell. I call it stupidity, because the bastard that I spared spilled his story to Varela, who grabbed a handful of his most trusted men – not to mention enough firepower to topple your average government – and disappeared into the jungle. Not a bad play, I'll admit. Hell, the first day or so, I even thought it was kinda cute. But as the hours wore on, and the rain continued unabated, the whole affair sort of lost its shine.

  Now it'd been four days since I left Cartagena – four grueling days of tracking Varela and his men through blistering heat and near-constant downpours, without so much as a moment to eat or sleep or even catch my breath. Varela's men were welltrained and familiar with the terrain, but they were also laden with gear and would no doubt stop to rest, so I was certain I could catch them. Still, October is Colombia's rainy season, and during that rainy season, there's not a wetter place on Earth. All I wanted was to turn around – to find some nice, secluded spot on the beach and watch the waves roll in off the Caribbean through the bottom of a bottle of beer. Which is exactly what I intended to do, just as soon as Varela was dead.

  Woody ropes of liana hung low over the forest floor – clawing, scratching, winding themselves around my weary limbs as though they might at any moment retreat with me into the canopy, the rare unwary traveler too delicious a morsel to pass up. It was ridiculous to think, I know, but even the plantlife in the Amazon has a vaguely predatory air – from the strangler figs that choke the life from the mighty kapok trees to the thick mat of green moss that blankets every surface, always probing, searching, feeding. By the light of day, the jungle wasn't so bad. But as the last gray traces of sun dwindled in the western sky and the brush around me came alive with the rustling of unseen beasts, panic set in. My heart fluttered. My spine crawled. The bitter tang of adrenaline prickled on my tongue. My lips moved in silent prayer – a useless habit – and I quickened my pace, pressing onward through the darkness. 

  I never even saw the embankment coming.

  One moment, I was slashing through the underbrush, the jungle pressing in against me, and the next, there was just a queasy, terrifying nothing. It was like scaling a flight of stairs in the dark only to realize there's one fewer than you remembered, except in this case, my lead foot never hit ground. 

  I pitched forward. My arms pinwheeled, and my blade clattered to the forest floor, forgotten. I fell for what seemed like forever. Then I slammed into the side of the embankment so hard it knocked the wind out of me, and snapped my jaw shut on my tongue. My mouth filled with blood. My lungs seared as they begged for breath that wouldn't come. 

  And still, I wasn't done falling.

  I tumbled down the steep, muddy slope, clawing frantically at every fern and rain-slick root, but it wasn't any use. I tried to dig in my heels, but one of them caught on something hard, and instead of stopping I hinged forward, somersaulting. End over end I bounced, every inch of my borrowed frame erupting in white-hot pain.