Blood Soaked and Contagious (9 page)

Don’t ask what is in the bottom of the trash bin you pass on your way into the neighborhood from the Route 29 side. There are about 50 similar surprises around the major entry points into the community. I like it here.

“Do you think you could tell me where the strike will penetrate?”

“Before you grab that skewer or anything else, I can’t. I just go where I’m told. The black ops guys have that job, not us.”

Again, I nodded. Black ops personnel were trained to go into unknown situations and do nutty things, like extract people while keeping them alive in the process. I wasn’t entirely sure that my boy was being completely on the up-and-up, but I also had to consider the possibility he didn’t know anything beyond the general details of a mission he wasn’t involved with. Sure, he was a veteran who came home in one piece, but he certainly wasn’t trained for recon.

I decided to let it slide.

“For our next magical trick, I sense you want to tell me how many layers there are between your average Joe Zombie and Warren Hightower,” I intoned with great gravitas and mysterious arm motions.

“You are one sick fucker. You’re enjoying this!” His tone was both surprised and accusatory.

“In point of actual fact, Jerome, I am not enjoying myself. My idea of a good time is much like yours. I like to paint pictures of cute baby animals, but my real passion is flower arrangement. Now answer the question or I’ll make butter inside your knee here.”

“Four bodyguards, and he doesn’t socialize with anyone but group commanders and team managers.”

I wondered at the flat tone of voice he was using to tell me that. It wasn’t quite bored, but it was questionable. In that quiet space, I found myself wishing I had a stun gun. A stun gun and a kabob skewer would make an impression.

“How many layers of people was that?” Asking a second time wouldn’t hurt.

“I already told you, you’ve got managers, commanders and the other guys.”

He was using a flat tone of voice, but it came off as just a little exasperated.

“Three layers, right?”

“Yes. Three layers.”

“How many people in each layer to contend with?”

Jerry answered, “Three or four bodyguards. Three commanders. Something like nine group leaders,” but he definitely sounded annoyed with the answer.

“That’s three bodyguards?”

“Fuck! Yes! Three goddamned bodyguards!”

Butter time.

I admit, I stirred the wreckage of his kneecap around like sugar cubes in tea. I will also report that his screaming and cursing was some of the most intense that I’ve ever heard in either category. To repeat the cursing, just the cursing, would probably cause the Pope’s eyebrows to spontaneously burst into flame.

“How many bodyguards? Really? Be honest, because you do not want me to escalate this. I’ve only got a Swiss Army knife, more skewers, and two kitchen knives to work with. My options are limited, but they all involve piercing or involuntary amputations.” I leaned over, looked him dead in the eyes, and said, “Things would have gone much faster if they’d had a little cooking torch. Then I could have used the skewers to keep one of your eyes open while I roasted it in its socket.”

I smiled. He went rigid, and from the look in his eyes I was fairly certain he understood the depth of shit that he was in.

Very quietly, he said, “There are four bodyguards. Three of them are ninjas. The fourth used to work for him when he owned his company. Vice President, or something.”

“Ninjas? You’re shitting me, Jer. Let me mix your knee a little... ”

“NO!” He cut me off. “The guys say they’re ninjas! They’re always jumping around and balancing on strange shit like parking meters!”

There was a ring of truth to that. Ninjitsu is big on balance, especially in odd places and situations. You can’t be “Death from the Trees” if you can’t walk around on a limb. In the urban jungle, a parking meter could be a reasonable tool to exercise with. As for the jumping around, even Silent Shadow-san likes to have a good time.

Ninjitsu is like Parkour, but with death.

“Thank you, Jerry. That’s very helpful, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I
like
ninja; they’re crunchy in milk.”

“Fuck me,” he said, and I just shook my head.

“Necrophilia is not on my list of joyful pastimes. There’s also the small problem of you being a guy.”

“Look, can you just keep asking me questions so we can be done with this and I can get out of here? You’re fucking insane and it is really starting to freak me out!”

Got him.

“You guys got any superheroes or secret weapons over there?” I asked, grinning down into his face. I didn’t want the psychological advantage to slip once we’d determined that I had it.

“Fuck no. Nobody’s a super hero. No funky powers or shit like that.”

“How many team leaders are there?” You always ask questions more than once. Remember that.

“I told you, there are nine. They’ve all got stupid-ass names like Team Fruit Fly and Team Crunchy Baguette.”

“I guess this means that our boy Warren has a really odd sense of humor?”

“Hell yeah!” He seemed to forget that I was torturing him for a minute there, and I didn’t mind. “He’s had these strange parties where the team leads dress up in costumes they snagged from some kinky store somewhere and dance around. I’ve even heard he’s got some kind of dominatrix or something up in his office.”

“Dude, that’s some sick shit!” I figured I’d keep him going a little bit. Besides, if you’re the living dead and you’re screwing your “food,” you can’t get much kinkier than that. Dominatrixes are small fry when compared to shagging, killing, and then eating people.

“The team leads always talk about her in really quiet voices. Like they’re in awe of that shit.”

“Damn. Where’s the office? I got to see that shit for myself.”

“Same building the parking garage is in. You know the one, there’s a New York-style deli out front.”

I nodded, still in his face, still smiling. “Jerry?”

“Yeah, man?”

“You weren’t supposed to mention the location or the dominatrix, were you?”

“Oh, no.” He was almost adorable in a zombie sort of way when he realized he’d given away more than he should have. His responses had been changing throughout the interrogation, and I didn’t think it had everything to do with being invited to answer questions. The viral decay, which he’d mentioned earlier, was probably beginning to impair his cognitive functions.

“You were telling me about the interesting weapons cache you guys have, before you got on about the S&M. Remember?”

“Right! Yeah. We’ve got some shoulder-mounted rocket launchers, a few mortar launchers and this thing in a box that no one gets to touch.” He was nodding while he listed those things, and just kept going. “Lots of machine guns and ammo. Um. Handguns. Three cases of fragmentation grenades and a whole shitload of flash bangs. Ninjas! Dude, did I tell you we’ve got some ninjas?”

Note to self: cognitive zombie impairment starts out with acting like you’re stoned. I was betting if I didn’t wrap it up soon, I’d find him entering the belligerent phase of My Brain is Melting.

“Jerry,” I said and then got out of his face, “I just want to tell you you’ve done a great job and I’m really happy we got to work together on this.”

“Dude! Me too! Me too! You’re really good at this shit!”

“Hey. You’re too kind. I’m going to take this skewer out of your knee, and I want you to stay chill because it’s not going to feel very good at all. Okay?”

“Sure! I’m a man. I can take it.” He was nodding vigorously and it looked more like headbanging from where I was crouched.

“Count to three for me, and I’ll pull it out on three. That work all right for you?”

“Yeah! Let’s go! One.”

I put my finger through the loop of the skewer and got a decent hold on it. He was looking far too eager to be sane.

“Two!”

Headbanging ratcheted up a notch or two. Interesting. I got ready to pull.

“THREEEEEE!”

I whipped it out. He convulsed, screaming, and tore his right arm loose. Before I knew it, his clawed fingernails had bitten into my left forearm. He had a death grip on me and was not about to let go.

I let out a yell of my own. Don’t blame me. It hurt like Hell.

Jerry, on the other hand, was banging his head against the beach chair and denting the frame. That didn’t bother me as much as the insane little laugh wheezing out of his mouth while he slammed his head back and forth.

“Got you now, you fucking piece of shit. Not gonna let you go either. Cut me loose or I’ll tear your arm off.” He didn’t actually say it that quickly or coherently. It came out as bursts of words punctuated by the nasty, almost subvocal, laughter. I knew I couldn’t let him go, even if I wanted to keep my promise.

Whether or not I liked it, I had to end him there, while I still had a chance. I had to get my arm back in one piece, and it was probably going to hurt like Hell to do that if I had to force his grip. Then I remembered the cleaver by my right knee.

“All right, I’ll cut you loose!” I told him. “Just don’t tear my arm off!”

“Heh. Good. Good. Good,” he kept repeating it while denting the chair even further with his head.

I picked up the cleaver, tried to clear my head, and got a feel for the thing. A Chinese meat cleaver. Heavy blade. Good balance.

I swung and cut some of the Ethernet cable that bound his right leg to the chair. He cackled with glee and started chanting “More” as I pulled my arm back for another swing.

As you can imagine, I didn’t swing at the cables, but at his right wrist. I fell into a roll across his arm when the hand parted from his wrist because I was so off balance between the grip on me and the force of my swing. I came back up into a crouch with the hand still attached to my arm, covered in my blood and the spray from his stump.

The whole beach chair was jumping around on the concrete with the force of his flailing. No human noises were coming from his mouth at this point. Whatever was left of Jerry the Soldier had been replaced by some kind of mindless, raging creature. Thank whichever God you want, I still had the scythe on my back.

I pulled it out, snapped the blade into place, reversed my grip, and put the spike right between his eyes. The thrashing stopped.

Then I did something I’d never done before because I didn’t know if the structure of the weapon could take lateral torsion. I leaned my right knee into the body of the scythe and pushed. I half expected the pins and screws that held it together to pop out and go bouncing around the room, but they didn’t. The spike twisted in the hole it had made going in, crushing things as it went. As long as I live, I never want to hear a noise like that again.

I pulled the weapon free, saw the brain matter on the spike, and decided I needed to sit down.

I put the Man Scythe on the floor. Then I sat down. The last thing I remember is the concrete floor impacting the back of my head as I passed out.

There was darkness, and I think it was cold. Definitely not warm, like the kind of darkness you get from huddling under the blankets on a Sunday morning in the wintertime. This was a chilly darkness with a certain moistness. Lo, even a sense of things dripping.

Did I mention the dripping, cold darkness was soft and smelled exotic in some way? It was really soft. If I were pressed to describe the scent, I would have to use phrases like “warm spices” and “freshly washed girl.”

Don’t give me shit. There is a “freshly washed girl” aroma. I smelled it, spices, in a soft place that was drippy, moist, and dark. Overall, aside from the dark aspect of everything, it was pretty pleasant.

Then I opened my eyes.

“I’m blind!” I yelled and thrashed my head around, heaving myself up into a sitting position.

There was a cold compress flopped over on a big, bandaged sausage in my lap. Things weren’t dark anymore, or soft, or cold and drippy. In fact, things were well lit, tastefully decorated, and two of my dear friends were composing their faces at the foot of the bed.

“You’re awake now. That’s splendid!” Bajali was smiling at me from the end of the bed, and Shawn clapped him on the shoulders, looking pretty pleased as well.

“Oh. How long was I out?” I looked around a little bit, but not very much because the back of my head hurt like a stone-cold son of a yak-buggering whore.

“About four hours,” Shawn answered, looking a little bit green around the eyes and jaw.

“Ah. Knocked myself out on the floor. Is Jerry dead?”

“If you mean the zombie that you were interrogating, yes. I think that may have been related to the hole that your spike made in his forehead, and that his hand was still attached to your forearm.” Bajali pointed to the big white sausage in my lap. I noticed the sausage started at my elbow and had a hand attached to the opposite end.

The fingers wriggled. I winced. It was my hand and arm, not a mutant bologna from Hell. I breathed a sigh of relief that it was there and functioning, if more than a bit painful.