Tortured Spirits (20 page)

Next, a naked woman looked up and followed a similar routine. By the time she had stopped snorting, the man had started masturbating. She crawled on top of him and pushed her vagina against his penis. Within seconds, they each grunted in a mockery of lovemaking.

Maria slid her hand across the floor, and her fingers curled around the handle of the machete, which she slowly drew closer to her, careful not to scrape the metal blade against the wooden floor. Holding the blade a quarter of an inch above the floor, she brought it to her hip, her shoulder aching with strain. She rolled two inches to one side, pushed the machete beneath her body, and laid flat.
When the zonbie turned his back to her, she rolled in the opposite direction, her cheek pressed against the filthy floor, and pulled the rifle beneath her. At last she had hidden both weapons, but now she experienced extreme discomfort. And she still had to worry about the Walther.

The zonbie moved closer. As the sky outside brightened, she noticed he wore leather sandals, his toenails were long, and his black skin seemed powder gray. Sweat formed on Maria's forehead, and she tried to regulate her breathing. She closed her eyes halfway and saw the zonbie step before her. She prayed the thing didn't notice the handgun. A painfully long moment passed, and she fought the urge to open her eyes.

I have to look fucked up enough to pass for one of these things.

A few packets of Magic landed near her face, and her eyelids twitched.

Damn it
…

The zonbie walked away and she exhaled. Opening her eyes, she stared at the packets of Black Magic. Malvado was killing his people to create a workforce he did not have to pay or worry about betraying him. The zonbie returned to the front of the building, and even before he exited Maria heard scarecrows stirring and snorting Magic.

A hand came down on the packets before her, and she looked up into the bulging eyes of a woman with dark skin.

“It's all yours, sweetheart,” Maria whispered as she got up onto her knees. “You need it. I don't.”

She gazed out the window. Dawn had come, and none of the zonbies remained in sight. But how could she know
they were inside their shelters, and even if they were, how did she know none of them looked out the windows?

A dull moan rose behind her, and when she turned around she saw other scarecrows had awakened and were consuming their drugs. All except one: a shirtless teenage boy who lay on his back. His chest did not rise or fall, and flies buzzed around him.

Maria grabbed the machete and took a step closer to the boy.
Oh, Christ, don't tell me I have to perform mouth to mouth on one of these—

The boy opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling.

Maria froze in midstep.

The boy sat up with no visible sign of effort and turned his head in her direction like a windup doll. He rose and looked at her with unblinking eyes.

Oh, my God. He overdosed in his sleep. This is how it begins.

The boy pointed at her. His mouth opened in slow motion, and he uttered an unintelligible sound, “Ah-AH-ah …”

Maria's gaze darted around the room.

A few of the scarecrows glanced at the boy, then returned to the religious exultation of their addiction.

The boy continued to babble, his sounds growing louder.

Not a boy,
Maria told herself.
A zonbie.

Moving around the scarecrows on the floor, she made straight for the newborn dead thing, who continued pointing and grunting. His flesh and eyes had not yet changed color, and he still appeared human, albeit a pathetic one. She
buried the machete in the dead boy's skull. His eyes rolled and he sank to his knees. She wrenched the machete free, and he toppled over, chunks of brain falling out.

Maria had killed two soldiers in adrenaline-fueled self-defense and thirteen zonbies, but only this one had felt like an actual kill.

With her chest heaving, she returned to the window. No way did she intend to cross the entire building again. She picked up the rifle, tossed it out the window, then climbed through it and leapt to the ground, where she rolled across the grass and came up in a fighting crouch. She had never appreciated fresh air so much in her entire life. Retrieving her weapons, she tucked the machete into her belt, gripped the rifle in both hands, and ran. She headed toward the woods but also in the general direction of the fields.

Running with the rifle proved awkward, and Maria stumbled more than once but never fell. She didn't look behind her, fearing what she might see. Her desperate, heavy breathing filled her ears. The overseers were human, yet she saw no living quarters for them or their horses or vehicles for transportation. Did they ride the animals to work?

After a quarter of a mile without incident, Maria stopped and turned around. The buildings stood silent, with no movement around them, appearing abandoned. No more smoke rose from the rooftop of the Black Magic factory.

Dropping the rifle on the ground, she bent forward with her hands on her knees and vomited. Once finished, she stood straight and folded her hands behind her head, drawing in breath. She spat on the ground, propped the rifle
against one shoulder, and walked toward the fields.

Acres of red poppies stretched before her.

Heroin. For all the misery Maria had witnessed in New York City because of drugs—addicts, robberies, murders—it felt oddly emotional to see the source of such devastation. How many souls had been harmed or destroyed because of such destructive greed?

Reaching into her bag, she took out the minibinoculars and focused them. Beyond the red poppies, acres of blue flowers matched the early morning sky.

Cocaine,
she guessed. Malvado was a one-stop drug lord.
Someone's got to destroy him.

But it wouldn't be her. She just wanted to get the hell off Pavot Island.

The temperature rose with the sun as Maria moved through the woods. Sweat streaked the grime and blood on her flesh, and she hacked at loose branches and vines with the machete. She didn't know what her first move would be once she escaped the woods.

A vine waved in the breeze before her, and she cocked her arm to knock it aside with the machete. The end of the vine opened, revealing fangs and a tongue that flicked in the air as a hiss escaped it. Maria gazed into the thick snake's malevolent eyes. Just yesterday the sight of such a
serpent caused her alarm. Now she laughed and walked on.

Emerging from the foliage, Maria gazed at the riverbank. She wasn't sure how many miles upriver she had walked from the footbridge since the previous night, but she assumed the same breed of piranhas swam this water as well. Wiping sweat from her eyes with her arm, she followed the current.

Forty minutes later, Maria discovered a rowboat trapped in a crop of rocks. Peeling blue paint revealed rotting gray wood lined with cracks. Refusing to set foot even in shallow water, she crawled over the rocks and retrieved a frayed rope floating in six inches of water inside the boat.

Returning to the riverbank with the boat towed behind her, Maria coiled the rope at her feet, making sure the boat didn't break free and drift away. She pulled the boat onto the bank and stood it on one side, dumping out brown water and rotten leaves. Setting it back down, she tested the floorboards. They squeaked and groaned but didn't break.

She set the boat in the water, got into it on wobbling legs, and sat on the bench. The current immediately seized the craft, and Maria took control of the oars and steered the boat around the rocks. She had never rowed a boat before, and she found herself turning in a circle. When she rowed against the current, one oar snapped.

“Shit!”

Discarding the broken oar, she tried to stabilize the
boat but failed. Traveling backwards, the boat picked up speed, which she did not see as a positive development. She debated using the rifle as a makeshift oar but rejected the idea. It was too important to her survival. Instead, she rowed the lone oar with both arms and managed to turn the boat around.

Thunk.

Maria looked down at her feet. At first she thought the boat had struck a rock, but then she heard the sound again. And again. Beneath the water, something pounded on the bottom of the boat. The pounding grew faster, louder, and she felt the vibrations through the floorboards.

The piranhas!

She had to reach shore fast. Feeling the vibrations of the predators through the boat's bottom, she rowed faster and with great effort steered the boat closer to the opposite bank. The aft of the boat struck the rocks, and the boat rebounded away from her destination.

Glancing over her shoulder at nothing but cascading water, Maria rowed with all her strength, and this time when the aft hit rock she leapt toward land, her arms and legs flailing. She hit the ground harder than intended, then sat up and watched the river carry the boat away. She saw no sign of the piranhas.

Maria limped along a paved road flanked by bright green grass and lush trees. No traffic passed her, thank God. She
could only imagine how she looked, her limbs streaked with blood and mud. Half a mile away, she saw a white house and a barn and a wooden corral-style fence that surrounded grazing cattle.