Desperate Souls (41 page)

Jake studied her. “That’s okay.”

“Your secrets are safe with me.” She served the food. “To what do we owe this honor? Shouldn’t you be out exterminating zonbies?”

He sat beside her on the sofa. “The last time I had scores to settle, I ate alone in a restaurant my wife and I used to frequent. I thought it might be nice to have some company this time.”

“What’s happening tonight?”

“I know who all the players are and what they’re after. First I’m going to make Katrina restore Edgar; then I’m going to put a permanent stop to her zonbies.”

“Afterlife?”

“It’s scary how you do that.”

“That disc contains deadly information, Jake. Apocalyptic, even. You can’t turn it over to her, even to bring Edgar back.” Laurel looked at the raven. “He’s alive. His soul remains in his body. Share that information, and there will be repercussions that you and I can’t imagine.”

“Would you like me to share it with you?”

Her lips parted, her eyes opened with sudden temptation, and her body stiffened, like a recovering addict just offered a fix. “Once, maybe. But not now.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“You should destroy that disc.”

“I’ll consider it.” Opening a fortune cookie, he plucked out the piece of paper. “’Loyalty is its own reward.’“ He laughed.

Marcus ran to the stairway with Forty-five pounding the hallway floor behind him. Flashlight beams danced on the walls below, and he prayed the intruders were cops. Peering over the railing, he saw a small army of zonbies, armed with machetes, running up the stairs. The dead things spotted them.

“Aw, nah!” Forty-five said, his deep, flabby voice squealing.

“I don’t think they’re here to move in early.”

“What the hell did
we
do?”

Good question.
Marcus moved sideways to the top of the stairs. “Get your fat ass over here.”

“No, let’s get the fuck out of here!”

“We stand a better chance of picking them off right here.”

“Ah, shit.” Stepping beside Marcus, Forty-five pulled back his gun’s slide.

The zonbies stormed upstairs, and the drug dealers opened fire on them. The semiautomatic gunfire slowed the ghoulish creatures down but stopped none of them.

Marcus shouted to be heard over the deafening noise. “Their heads! Their heads!”

“I’m trying!”

Marcus felt a hot shell casing from Forty-five’s gun strike his left eye. Blinking fast to regain full vision, he glimpsed sparks below as a round struck a machete blade.
Worthless piece of shit!

“I’m out!” Forty-five said, his silver gun clicking in his hand.

“So reload!”

“I can’t! I don’t have any more ammo!”

Seeing the advancing horde less than ten steps below, Marcus stopped firing long enough to plant his feet and hurl Forty-five down the stairs. The bodyguard screamed as he collided with the lead zonbies, and Marcus watched the mass of bodies tumble down into the darkness. Forty-five’s screams turned shrill and gurgling.

Turning, Marcus ran to the Black Magic den and saw the scarecrows inside huddled together in fear. Opening the door wider, so the zonbies would see them, he sprinted to the next apartment, slammed that door shut, and pressed the doorknob’s feeble button lock. Breathing heavy, he searched the apartment with his flashlight and discovered a chair with a broken seat in the kitchen. He ran back to the front door and wedged the chair beneath the knob.

That ought to hold them.

He ran into the living room, where dim moonlight shone through grime-encrusted windows. Jamming his Glock into his waistband, he twisted the brass window locks and braced his palms against the frame. Even before he opened the window, his heart sank. Up close, with his vision adjusting to the darkness, he saw the black bars that covered the windows from the outside. With his heart pounding in his chest, he forced the window up and seized each bar in his hands. All of them held.

In the hallway outside the apartment, fists pounded on the door.

Jake opened the door to his suite, flicked on the lights, and carried Edgar’s cage into the reception area. Ignoring the mail that had collected on the floor, he went into his office and opened the safe. He considered copying Afterlife to his laptop’s hard drive but rejected the notion.

If I don’t survive the night, then two copies will exist to threaten humanity.

He ejected the original DVD and relocked the safe. Crossing the office, he sat behind his chair and turned the disc over in his hand.

So much horror over one damned research project.

But Afterlife was more than a research project: the file contained all of mankind’s knowledge and theories on the supernatural, religion, and mythology, cross-referenced and indexed.

Tilting back in his chair, he opened the blinds and gazed out the window at the Tower.
You sure knew how to cause trouble, old man.

He glanced at his cell phone: 8:55 p.m.

Edgar cocked his head at him.

“It’s going to be a hell of a night,” Jake told the raven. Four minutes later, he located the telephone number he had stored in his phone’s memory and pressed autodial.

On the other end, Katrina answered after the second ring. “Hello, Jake. It’s a relief to hear your voice again.”

Staring at Edgar, Jake said, “I can’t say the same thing,
Dawn.
But I have been looking forward to this call.”

“So have I. You want Edgar returned to normal, and I want Afterlife. The exchange will be tonight at eleven.” She told him where to meet her. “Needless to say, come alone.”

“That’s how I roll. Why not make it midnight?”

Her words tumbled out faster. “I have to let you go. I’m in the middle of something.” She hung up.

With his flashlight and Glock both aimed at the front door, Marcus inched toward the banging. “Forty-five? Hey, I’m sorry about that, brother. I guess I just panicked.”

The blade of a machete chopped through the door, and Marcus jumped off the floor. A second machete blade appeared, and the first one withdrew. Then a third blade hacked its way into view.

Marcus took a step backwards.
Oh, Jesus, no!

Pivoting on one foot, he ran into the only bedroom. Aiming the flashlight, he saw the door had been removed. Around the corner, the front door crashed open. He fled to the bedroom windows and saw that they too had bars.

Footsteps stomped down the hall. Facing the direction of the noise, he switched off his flashlight and tightened his grip on the Glock. Beams of light sliced through the darkness. Some of them separated from the others and divided the bedroom, pinning him like a deer in headlights. He knew better than to fire blindly.

Let them get closer. Go for their heads.

The flashlights grew nearer, brighter, blinding him. He clicked on his own flashlight, and the silhouettes before him lit into zonbies. Dead eyes sunk within skullish heads regarded him with distant stares. Raising his gun, he fired at one of the dead things and hit it in the forehead. Dropping it to the floor.

Marcus grinned.
Take that, you stinking piece of meat!

He aimed at the next zonbie. The thing grinned at him, revealing discolored gums.

He had been around a hundred of these things, and not one of them had ever shown the slightest degree of emotion.

Grinning even wider at his obvious discomfort, the male zonbie spoke, its voice hoarse and raspy and unmistakably
female.
“This is your judgment day, Marcus.”

Katrina!

“Payback is a bitch.”

“So are you,” Marcus said, shooting the zombie in the head. The thing toppled to the floor.

Katrina’s voice continued from the next zonbie’s mouth. “I can do this all night long.”

“So can I.” Marcus aimed at the zonbie before him, and the slide of his gun locked back.
Son of a bitch!

“It doesn’t look that way.”

Marcus squeezed the trigger over and over with the same result each time. Tears formed in his eyes. “You bitch …”

“Life’s a bitch,” the zonbie said in Katrina’s voice. “And then you die.”

“No …”

The crowd of zonbies in the room flowed around the talking zonbie like water, their machetes raised high in the air.

Over the sounds made by metal blades cutting into his body, Marcus thought he heard Katrina laughing.

Jake drove up Second Avenue, Dawn Du Pre’s building rising from the darkness in the distance on his right. When he reached the building, he turned left at the intersection and circled the opposite block. A plywood fence surrounded the half of the block facing the apartment building, and on the other side of the fence, the skeletal structure of the unfinished high-rise rose from its foundation fifty feet below. Parking the dented, scarred, and shattered Monte Carlo along the curb facing the fence, Jake switched off the engine. When he had confronted Old Nick and Kira Thorn in the Tower, a storm had raged outside. Tonight the sky was clear and black, pinpricked with stars.

Opening his door and easing the birdcage out with both hands, he said to the raven, “Come on. Let’s go save the world. Or at least this city.”
Or your soul, buddy.

He stood up holding the cage in one hand. Looking around the quiet neighborhood, he removed a container of salt from the backseat and poured the remainder of its contents over the car door’s threshold.

Just in case I make it out of there in a hurry.

He tossed the container back into the car and closed the door. With half the windows shot out, he saw no point in locking the vehicle. Stepping onto the sidewalk, he whistled the tune to “Moon-dance,” which had been Sheryl’s favorite song. He circled the fence, searching for an opening.

At last he found a gate fabricated from the same material, so it blended into the fence. A chain with a padlock on its end lay coiled on the sidewalk. Pulling the gate open, Jake faced a covered gangway that led into the structure. The streetlights on the sidewalk illuminated the girders and crossbeams, but no light reached the structure’s interior despite the lack of walls.

Taking a deep breath, he traversed the gangway. He looked over the railing and saw lights far below.