Dark Resurrection (20 page)

Nibor nodded. His reply was difficult to understand because of the oral modifications, which tended to muffle and distort his speech, but to Mildred it sounded like he said, “In a month they will be back here.”

Dr. Montejo was proud of his work, too, and he butted in, pointing out his success in restoring the captives to full and robust health.

Instead of a pat on the back, he got a disinterested grunt from Nibor.

High Pile turned and gestured at his crew, then told the dog-faced man that he and his sailors had grown tired of banging the little
brujas.
And that he hoped the local whorehouse would give them some better variety.

Brujas?
Mildred asked herself. Witches? Was High Pile talking about the little brown whitecoats?

The two women in white giggled and tittered behind their upraised hands, happy as clams that they rated a mention to the Big Man, even if it was in the form of a complaint about their job performance.

Leaving Mildred to wonder where in hell all three of them had been trained, how they’d been trained, and by whom. It appeared that in these climes the status symbol of the white lab coat had lost much of its objective, professional luster.

At least she knew that wherever they were being taken by Nibor the plan was for them to eventually be brought back to Colón, and then taken north again. Which meant they weren’t going to be chilled in the immediate future—not on purpose, anyway.

“¿Su enano, dondè esta?”
Nibor said.

“Allà,”
High Pile replied, pointing back at the water.

Out on the mud flat, the rowboat had returned from the ship bearing another passenger on the stern, this one swaddled, bagged head to foot in black mosquito netting. Though the passenger’s ankles weren’t manacled, the pirates carried him—or her—over the mud to the ramp.

It wasn’t until the shrouded one reached the top of the ramp that Mildred recognized who it was: the Fire Talker, Desipio. The mosquito netting was like a beekeeper’s suit, with sewn-in arms and legs. The reason for the protection was a puzzle she couldn’t immediately solve, or bring herself to care about. Obviously, the piece of shit had been transferred from the hold of the tug to the black sloop.

The pirates kept him at a distance from the other captives, and their bodies as a barrier between them. An extra precaution.

Doc, J.B. and Jak weren’t in any condition to do him serious harm, as much as they might have wanted to. As for Mildred, she held her own fury in check with the thought that at some point soon she would get her chance to pay back the bastard who’d betrayed them and gotten Ryan Cawdor chilled.

The dog-faced man waved for the Matachìn and their entourage to follow. Mildred and the companions were ushered along the walkways to dry land. Except for the curious children, the inhabitants of the little ville-on-stilts had apparently all taken cover, waiting for the potential Lords of Death storm to pass. The column walked along a deeply eroded dirt lane on the edge of old Colón. Most of the standing structures were rubblized, home to small, darting lizards. Much larger, striped iguanas slithered from sunning spots on concrete pads into the safety of the bush.

The modern city above the treetops had been eaten alive by jungle. The empty window frames of the high-rises had been invaded by clusters of green creepers, like scavenger worms boring through the eye sockets of skulls. The farther they moved from the water, the hotter it got, and bug song sawed from every branch and leaf. The rilled road soon gave
way to a narrower, tree-shaded lane. The shacks on either side of the path had to be of more recent construction. No way could those ramshackle affairs have withstood the force of the flood, although some were thrown up on the ruins of the predark structures. Strangler vines wrapped around trunks and branches, their trumpetlike, bright yellow flowers gave off a dizzingly sweet perfume. Some of the tree branches were laden with fruit, as well. Papayas and guanabanas lay rotting on the ground. Black-and-white pigs too drained by the heat to gorge themselves lay panting on their sides in the shade at the sides of the road.

The land of plenty.

Mildred wondered what the population of Colón was now. A few hundred souls, maybe? A thousand at most? It was hard to say because there could have been dwellings off the lane, in clearings deeper in the jungle.

Ahead, peeking up over the treetops on the right, was a much bigger structure that had obviously ridden out, or more likely been missed by the wall of flood water. Two stories high, and easily 250 feet long, one side of its facade bordered the lane. It looked like an enormous Spanish hacienda from colonial times: white plaster perimeter, red-tiled roof, black wood trim.

As they got closer, where the concrete and plaster had fallen away, Mildred could see hugely thick brick walls underneath. At one time, shaded balconies along the second floor had overlooked the lane. They were long gone. All that remained were the jagged black remnants of their support posts. Steel shutters covered the second-story windows and balcony doors to keep out the heat—and presumably incoming bullets. There were holes in the roof where tiles had
slipped away. The ground-floor windows facing the lane were massively barred.

Mildred noticed a pair of recent, rather crude additions to the corners of the roof: machine-gun posts, with their own palm-frond sunshades. Across the lane from the hacienda, the jungle branches had been reduced to white-tipped stubs.

Gut-hook machetes at work.

Mildred guessed she was looking at the Matachìn HQ.

They were led through the story-and-a-half-tall double wooden gate. Mildred immediately smelled fresh horseshit. Sure enough, in the far corner of the yard was a stable. The enclosed compound was bordered on four sides by the wings of the hacienda. To their right, in front of a palm-frond roofed patio, four horses were tied to a hitching post and two horse-drawn carts stood waiting. There were no gasoline or diesel-powered wags in sight.

The Matachìn, High Pile included, directed their attention to the shaded tables under the palm fronds, and the dozen or so brown women who lounged on the chairs and couches there. The pirates unleashed a predictable chorus of whistles and kissing sounds. The gaudy sluts grinned and waved for the men to join them, pointing at the full bottles of joy juice on the tabletops. A couple of them jerked down the necklines of their peasant blouses to expose black-tipped breasts.

This made the pirates very happy.

While High Pile and his crew hurried over to introduce themselves, the paramilitaries hustled Mildred and the companions into the back of one of the horse carts. Their chains were looped through iron rings in the cart’s low rear and side walls. When they were secured, Nibor and one of his lackeys helped Daniel into the cart, as well. They put him forward,
chaining his cuffs to the front wall, well out of the reach of his fellow passengers.

Daniel didn’t say anything.

Nor did any of the companions speak to him.

Over on the patio, the sluts were getting comfortable on the pirates’ laps, holding the bottles up so their new friends could drink their fill.

One of the paramilitaries climbed onto the driver’s seat of the companions’ cart. Wherever they were headed, the 9 mill subguns were not enough firepower. Nibor handed the cart driver a well-worn Soviet RPD—a 7.62 mm, 100-round, drum-fed, light machine gun. Mildred saw there was a mount for a bipod on the barrel right behind the front sight, but the bipod’s legs were missing—it looked as if the weapon had been customized with a hacksaw. The driver set the machine gun on the seat beside him, close to hand. Dog-face and the three others slung identical weapons across their backs, then mounted the saddled horses. Montejo and the little women climbed into a second, supply-loaded cart, and the doctor took the reins.

With a lurch, the two-cart, six-horse convoy set off across the courtyard and through the open gates. The slow movement caused air to flow over Mildred’s sweating body and face, but it did nothing to cool her off.

Mildred soon realized why they weren’t riding in wags, why there were no wags in evidence inside the compound. Wags never could have made it over the shambles of a road, which deteriorated even further as they put the hacienda behind them: broad, slick patches of exposed bedrock, potholes deep enough to bury a man. The jarring reality of a no-tech world was something she’d learned to expect from the hellscape. The fabled survival of progress in these latitudes was nothing but a charade.

This was no better than Deathlands.

As they jolted off the walls and bounced on the floor of the narrow-wheel-based cart, Mildred turned her attention to the Fire Talker. Through the netting, she could see he still wore his ridiculous camouflage do-rag, a survivalist affectation that virtually shouted “Poseur!” She could also see how pale his skin had become. That was understandable: he hadn’t seen the light of day for more than three weeks.

The puzzle of the mosquito netting vexed her.

“Why are they keeping you under wraps?” Mildred asked him.

“I had a bad reaction to bug bites,” Daniel said matter of factly. From the dopey smile on his face, he was feeling no pain at present, thanks to the residual effect of his breakfast.

“That’s why they locked you in the hold on the tug?” Mildred said.

“Uh-huh.”

“You looked pretty goddamned lively to me on Padre Island,” Krysty said. “Not sick at all when you set the pirates on us.”

That wasn’t the only thing that made no sense to Mildred. “And you didn’t catch whatever it was that chilled the islanders,” she said.

“Lucky, I guess.”

Mosquito bites. Virus. Viral transfer. Daniel’s isolation outside the target zone. Netting to protect those around him when he was out of doors. Suddenly it all fell into place for Mildred, and it didn’t make her a happy camper. Fists tightly clenched at her sides she said, “Either you were lucky, or you brought the plague to Padre Island with you. You brought it there in your blood.”

“What are you saying, Mildred?” Doc asked as he tried and failed to follow the thread of logic.

“I think our shitweasel here is a carrier,” she said. “I think he’s the source of the infection that slaughtered all those people on Padre. His blood is loaded with the disease virus. He’s a walking biological weapon. Skeeters bite him, pick up the virus in his blood, then bite someone else and give it to them. On and on, until just about everyone in the surrounding area is infected. The disease would spread through an isolated population in a big hurry.”

“You bastard!” J.B. growled, lunging for the Fire Talker only to be brought up a yard short by his chains.

Daniel jerked back, instinctively raising his netted hands to protect his face. When it was clear he was in no danger, he lowered his hands.

“It is true?” Krysty demanded of him.

Daniel didn’t try to deny what Mildred surmised. He just shrugged it off. The cat was out of the bag. No big deal.

“What kind of a creature are you?” Krysty said.

“I believe the technical term for him is mass murderer,” Doc said.

“It’s in my blood,” Daniel admitted. “I can’t help it. I didn’t put it there. I didn’t ask for it. They did it to me.”

“Who did it to you?” Mildred said.

The Fire Talker didn’t answer.

“He told us he was part of a whitecoat experiment before nukeday,” J.B. said. “Said it went wrong.”

“You may not have asked for it,” Krysty said, “but you can control how it’s used.”

“She is referring to your moral fiber,” Doc added. “Or lack thereof.”

“That isn’t my fault, either,” Daniel countered. “It was my parents. They rejected me when I was little because I was different. I wasn’t like them, or anyone else in the family. They couldn’t understand my need to read adventure books and to try to write them. They were always yelling at me about it. I had to hide my short stories or they’d burn them in the fireplace. They thought I was lazy and a daydreamer, maybe even somewhat mentally defective, and they were sure that I’d never amount to anything. They wanted me to do something worthwhile with my life, something that made good, steady money like my cousins who owned a fast-food franchise and a strip-mall copy-and-mail service center. I could never live up to their expectations, and they never lived up to mine. That’s haunted me ever since I was seven years old. My parents have been dead more than a century and I still think about their rejection every day.”

All the buck-passing and boo-hooing set Mildred’s teeth on edge. “You’re a monster,” she informed him. “A self-made fucking monster.”

“It isn’t like I chilled those people with my own two hands,” Daniel countered.

“Yeah, you don’t have the stones for that,” J.B. said.

“They call you
enano,
that means dwarf,” Mildred said.

“I am not treated well, if that’s what you’re getting at. I am regarded as a necessary evil.”

“You’re pure scum, so why should anyone treat you otherwise?” Krysty said.

“Because what I’ve got inside me has done a lot for them,” Daniel replied. “It’s served their cause.”

“What do they intend to do to us?” Mildred asked.

Daniel shrugged again, this time in apparent disinterest.