Ghost Key (28 page)

It was what he’d felt when he’d held Maddie out there in the salt marsh, and when she had been out of her body and had kissed him. Hope kept him here, not the agendas of the feds, of Delaney, of anyone or anything else. Just hope.

Beyond the circle of stones, he encountered the first of the sentries, a giant of a man with more tattoos than Sanchez had ever seen outside of fiction. He nodded at Sanchez. “Can’t sleep?”

“Something woke me. When did the power go off?”

“About twenty minutes ago. Not to worry, brother. I alerted Zee and we’ve got additional security.”

“So Zee is awake?”

“Man hardly ever sleeps.” The guard gestured toward his camper, where a soft light was visible in one of the windows. “He’s in there reading the Bible. Me, I’m not much of a reader, but I can tell you that I don’t believe the meek will inherit the earth. The meek just get fucked over and here on Cedar Key they get taken by Satan’s army.”

“I agree. But if they get into the camp, what’re you supposed to do?”

“Shoot to kill.”

“Is that in the Bible?”

Tattoo Man grinned. “Don’t know about the real Bible, brother. But it’s in
my
Bible.”

Sanchez moved past him and knocked at the door of Zee’s camper. “Zee, it’s Nick.”

“Door’s unlocked. C’mon in.”

Sanchez opened the door and he and Jessie entered the camper. The dog went straight for the bowl of water and cat food set out for a cat or cats Sanchez had never seen. Zee was sitting at the kitchen table, not reading any Bible that Sanchez could see, but hunched over his MacBook, the only source of light in the camper. His thinning gray hair, loose from its ponytail, stuck out wildly from every part of his head, as if he’d just crawled out of bed. A bottle of moonshine and a glass were in the middle of the table. “Power’s out at this end of the island, Zee.”

“Power’s out all over the island. I’m on it. And before the sun rises, we’re moving, Nick. I figure Satan’s army cut the power ’cause they know it protects us. Just trying to figure out where it might be safest.” Zee stabbed his thumb at Sanchez’s pack. “You headed somewhere?”

“Yeah, out of here with everyone else. I think the cemetery is the place to go. These ghosts hate cemeteries.”

Zee raised his eyes from his MacBook. “How do you know that?”

From Maddie
. “I just do.”

“Just like you knew about my wife.” In the glow from the laptop, his face looked worn and leathery. The creases in his throat and forehead, at the corners of his eyes, seemed to be filled with this unnatural light. “You know God’s speaking to you, right, son?”

“It doesn’t matter who’s speaking to me if the information is correct. I think we should move immediately. Are your son and daughter-in-law here?”

“Shit, no. They left this afternoon, told me I’m a fruitcake and they don’t want nothing to do with me or the camp.”

“I’m sorry, Zee.”

He waved Sanchez’s sympathy aside. “I told them their best bet is to get the hell off Cedar Key.”

“Yeah? How?”

“Beats me. Coast Guard’s got the island covered, road’s blocked at the fourth bridge, no planes coming in or leaving.”

“So what’s your plan for defeating these mutants?”

Zee tapped the edge of his MacBook. “I’ve been mulling that over. I was going to run this past you when I was finished. Fire seems to be our best weapon against them. But if we have to burn the island to get rid of them, that’s not winning.”

“Suppose we got most of them in a particular area of town and then set just that area on fire?”

Zee splashed moonshine into his glass, sipped at it, sat back. “How would that work, exactly?”

Sanchez hadn’t told him that he communicated with Maddie from time to time. “You know the redhead who works at the hotel? Maddie?”

“Sure. She’s got one of Satan’s stewards inside her.”

“She’s got the tribal leader inside her. From time to time, Maddie and I … communicate.”

Zee frowned and sat forward, his dark, intense eyes fixed on Sanchez in a way that made him squirm inside. “Using this…”—he rolled his hand through the air—“seer ability you have?”

“Telepathy, mind to mind.”

Zee’s mouth twitched into a sly smile. “Can you and I talk that way? Sure would be easier, Nick.”

“I doubt it. The evil within her seems to facilitate this communication in some way. I can hear her as clearly as I hear you now. The problem is that she doesn’t have any control over this evil. Dominica, the evil inside of her, controls
her
. But we might be able to find a way around her.”

The old man pushed the bottle of moonshine toward him and gestured toward the galley cabinet. “Grab a glass and sample some Zee Small moonshine, son. Loosen up this tongue of yours. Let’s hear all about this telepathy shit.”

As Sanchez pushed to his feet, gunfire exploded through the darkness, earsplitting staccato bursts that tore across the outside of the camper and shattered the window behind the table. Zee and Sanchez dived for the floor, then Sanchez rolled and crawled over to the window and positioned himself on one side of it. Zee snapped open a door under the galley sink, brought out what looked like a submachine gun, and stood on the other side of the shattered window. He slapped the lid of the MacBook, shutting it and killing their only source of light. Sanchez gripped the Glock so hard his fingers hurt, and dared to glance through the window.

Four pairs of blindingly bright headlights screamed,
We’re here, bet you can’t shoot us.

“Let’s show ’em what’s what, Nicko,” whispered Zee.

They opened fire simultaneously on the headlights.

The lights exploded, another window in the camper blew apart, and then Zee was on his cell, barking instructions to whoever was on the other end. “We’re outta here, Nick,” and he and Sanchez ran to the front of the camper, the dog at their heels.

Within seconds, the camper lurched forward like a dinosaur with indigestion. It belched and coughed and sputtered as it slammed over rocks, roots, low brush. It didn’t move quickly enough. In the side mirror, Sanchez saw a truck closing in on them, its headlights gone, an inside light winking off and on like a firefly. He grabbed Zee’s submachine gun and let it rip. The truck’s windshield blew apart, the hood popped up, and the sucker veered out of control, tearing across the ground until it crashed into a tree.

“Good work!” Zee yelled.

A second truck raced forward, its passage covered by a constant barrage of bullets. One of the camper’s rear tires blew—Sanchez felt it—and Zee struggled with the steering wheel to keep them moving. Sanchez leaped up and ran back through the camper to one of the shattered windows. For an instant, he had a clear view of the truck’s driver, bent over the steering wheel, driving like a lunatic while his companion stood in the bed of the truck, firing over the roof. Sanchez took out the front and rear tires and riddled the side of the truck with so many holes it gave new meaning to the term “air-conditioning.” One of his shots hit the gas tank and the truck exploded, chunks of flaming debris bursting out in every direction.

A heartbeat later, the camper swung out onto the road, rear end fishtailing, then tore into a curve, the flat tire probably shredding by now, and headed for Gulf Boulevard. Sanchez hung out the window for a better look. Trailers and vehicles from the camp popped out of the trees, one after another, like beings from some other dimension.

He pulled himself back inside, sank against the floor. His hands shook, an acrid stink clung to the air, and the wind whistled through the broken window. He pressed his fists against his eyes.
I just killed at least two men, maybe more. I’m no better than these
brujo
bastards.

Jessie nudged him with her cold nose, whining softly, and Sanchez dropped one arm over her back and the other to his thigh. She sank to her belly, her head resting on Sanchez’s knee. The weapon lay beside him in broken glass. “I think we’re okay for now, girl.”
Until the next attack, the next crisis
.

He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself to breathe slowly, deeply, until his hands stopped shaking and he felt calmer. When he opened his eyes again, his mother was sitting on the floor beside Jessie, her legs folded lotus style. The dog stared at her, but didn’t make a sound. Jenean didn’t look quite as solid as she had previously.

“You did what you had to do, Nick.”

“I shouldn’t have put myself in this situation to begin with.”

“You’ll be safe in the cemetery for a while. But Dominica is learning to overcome her fear of certain things, so that safety net may not last. You should have a backup plan.”

“Like what? Just tell me how to get to Maddie without that … that
thing
inside her killing her first.”

His mother’s ghost looked stricken and he had the sudden feeling that she knew only so much about these
brujos.
Her belief that she had to compensate for her lack of maternal support when she was alive had drawn her into a battle that wasn’t hers. He reached for her hand, to give it a quick squeeze, but his own hand went through hers.

“Mom, you don’t owe me anything. Really.”

“Fire,” she said. “That’s how you have to fight them. Fire, like you and Zee talked about.”

With that, she faded away and the camper stopped. “Nick,” the old man hollered. “Get that cemetery gate open.”

He told Jessie to stay, picked up the monster submachine gun, and opened the camper door. Fog twisted across the pavement, narrow bands of it that his movement quickly dispersed. But as he dashed to the gate, thicker ribbons of the stuff darted toward him like hungry snakes—from the right, the left. One piece wrapped around his ankle and a bitter cold penetrated his jeans, cut through his flesh, pierced his bones. Sanchez tore at it with his hands, then kicked the other piece away. He slammed the butt of the weapon against the rusted gate lock a couple of times until it popped loose. Sanchez pushed the gate open and motioned Zee and the others inside.

The fog didn’t follow him through the gate. It remained just outside, smaller pieces merging to form longer, thicker tendrils. Low, thin veils of fog crept out of the trees on the far side of the road, swaying at first, then whipping across the pavement toward its counterparts. It was as if the separate pieces were controlled by the same brain, one piece calling to the other:
Join us, make us bigger and stronger, join us.
That was creepy enough. But then he heard what sounded like sand blown against trees, like fingernails drawn down a blackboard, and realized it was an insidious whispering:
Find the body, fuel the body, fill the body, be the body …

And he suddenly knew it was these
brujos
in their natural form, trying to overcome their fear of the cemetery and seize him and everyone else in Zee’s camp. It triggered an elemental terror in Sanchez. He aimed the monster weapon at the largest bank of fog and fired into it. The fog broke into a thousand pieces. Some pieces hastily retreated to the other side of the road, into the trees. Other pieces hesitated, coiling as if to strike. Sanchez fired into those and they burst apart like exploding stars.

The last vehicle in Zee’s caravan sped into the cemetery and Sanchez quickly shut the gates and secured them with large rocks so they wouldn’t swing open. A larger bank of fog now moved like a hula dancer just outside the cemetery. “You come anywhere near this cemetery again,” he shouted, “and I’ll unleash the artillery on you, and it’ll be fire.”

He backed away from the gate, spooked by how fast the fog swelled and thickened, and how loud the lascivious litany became. It scraped against his senses until he slapped his hands over his ears, then spun around and loped toward the circle of trailers and trucks.

It suddenly occurred to him that the cemetery might be a trap, the perfect prison for Zee and his followers until the
brujos
overcame their fear of this place.

*   *   *

Maddie’s
exhaustion clawed through her. Every time she didn’t think she could lift another cardboard box out of a cart or the back of a truck and carry it inside the Island Market, Dominica tweaked her adrenal glands. Then for another ten or fifteen minutes, she zipped along, lifting, carrying, moving among the other hosts who entered and left the market.

The hosts were worse off than slaves, she thought. They were captives who no longer controlled their own bodies or actions, and some of them, she knew, were no longer around at all. She didn’t sense the mayor’s essence and suspected her grandfather was right, that the mayor was dying or had died at Annie’s Café, and pretty soon the mayor’s body wouldn’t be able to sustain life. Whit would be forced to seize another host.

Of the core group of Dominica’s
brujos,
Maddie felt she might be able to reach out to Richard, Kate’s ex-boyfriend, and Bean, who owned the hotel. Both of them seemed to have held on to a fragment of their humanity. Their
brujos
—Gogh and Joe—didn’t control them consistently. It was why Richard had been able to warn Kate
not to make waves,
and why Bean hadn’t fired Kate in February, after his fuck fest in the hotel bar. She’d uncovered these two facts in Dominica’s recent memories, and they defied what Dominica wanted Maddie and the other hosts to believe, that the
brujos
were like gods, all-knowing. The truth was that
brujos
could be duped, distracted, tricked, and a host’s memories could be hidden from them. Maddie was proof of that.

The market hummed with activity. Dozens of hosts stocked shelves, dozens more outside unloaded food and supplies, and cars and trucks arrived every few minutes with food and supplies pillaged from homes. She decided to seize her chance.

Bean. Mind to mind.

Maddie carried her cardboard box into the third aisle, where canned goods were shelved, and crouched next to Bean, who was moving merchandise around so he could fit the contents of his box onto the shelves. While Dominica spoke aloud to Joe, the
brujo
within Bean, Maddie pushed her mind toward Bean’s essence and brushed up against it like a gentle, cool breeze.