Ghost Key (45 page)

Gunfire cut the rest of his sentence short, a continuous, explosive chatter from the AK-47s the guards carried. Zee’s head snapped up, the Bluetooth connected to his ear burst with chatter that even Sanchez could hear, and he raced into the middle of the camp, waving his skinny arms.
“We’re under attack, get to your posts.”

But for long, terrible moments, no one in Sanchez’s field of vision moved. People glanced around in confused terror, as if none of them knew where their posts were supposed to be. Sanchez dived for the ground and rolled under one of the trailers, his dog following him. They scrambled along on their bellies until they were behind one of the massive tires. Jessie trembled with fear and Sanchez flung one arm over her back, murmuring, “Good girl, stay close.” Then he peeked out from behind the tire.

Eight dump trucks had crashed through the cemetery gate, flattened part of the fence, and now tore into the cemetery, spreading out like a cancer. Fog thickened and rose on either side of them, then in front of them, creating a shield of white soup that obscured their precise location. But before the vehicles disappeared, Sanchez saw enough to know that Zee’s people were seriously outnumbered. The trucks all had rear beds that held eight, ten, maybe as many as a dozen people. And within the fog, he could hear dozens more
brujos,
their litany so horrifying and alien that fear paralyzed him. Run or stay? Cower or fight and hope for the best?

No-brainer.
He now knew what it was like to have one of these things inside his body. He didn’t intend to ever have a repeat experience.

Sanchez rolled out from behind the tire again. He could make out vague outlines within the fog, dark, rapidly moving shadows, and he targeted the closest one, and opened fire, emptying his clip. The vehicle suddenly veered off to the right, the fog parting like some biblical sea, and flipped over. Two men in the truck’s bed were hurled out, struck the ground, and didn’t move. Sanchez rolled back behind the tire, tore off his pack, dug inside for the additional clips. He slammed one into the Glock, rolled again, and fired at whatever he saw, one side to another. When he emptied the clip, he loaded again, took hold of his dog’s collar and moved toward the far end of the trailer.

Jessie got the idea and nipped at his hand, making it clear he didn’t have to restrain her; she knew the drill, she would follow him. They crawled quickly over dirt and grass, chaos bursting around them: blaring horns, shrieks, shouts, gunshots, explosions, total pandemonium. At the far end of the trailer, Sanchez spotted one of the dozen mausoleums in the graveyard and knew he could make it. “Okay, Jess, you have to stick close.”

She whimpered, drew her tongue over the back of his hand. When he crawled out from under the trailer and leaped up, so did she. They raced through a thin fog, through the stink of smoke. He heard several of the vehicles closing in on him, and dived behind the mausoleum. Jessie landed beside him and Sanchez leaped up, the massive marble structure shielding his body, and shot blindly. A heartbeat later, a truck careened past the mausoleum and crashed into a small, wooden structure, tore a hole in the side of it, and slammed into the mechanism that powered the cemetery sprinkling system.

Suddenly, sprinkler heads all across the cemetery popped up out of the ground like living things and whipped into action, shooting great, powerful gushers of water in every direction. The hosts who were nearest to the gushers were knocked off their feet, others were driven back, some ran for cover. The stupid
brujo
fog didn’t seem to know what to make of these gushers, so it—or Dominica—used the moisture to create more fog, thicker fog, fog that both blinded and shielded him and Jessie.

They dashed through the fog to Cemetery Point. Jessie leaped into one of the canoes and Sanchez frantically pushed it off the beach and into the water and jumped in. He switched on the electric motor, but nothing happened. “Shit, shit,” he muttered, and checked the battery connection. He hit the switch again and again, then the engine hummed to life.

He opened the engine up wide, but the boat was just a simple canoe with a puny electric outboard—soundless, but puny—suitable for fishing on a calm day, not for escaping the madness in the cemetery. Long ropes of fog pursued them, whipping away from the land and across the surface of the bayou like water serpents. One strand lifted up out of the water, dropped into the boat next to Sanchez’s feet, and quickly wrapped around his ankles. He tore the shit away with one hand and with the other he fired the Glock into that part of the strand that still trailed in the water.

The fog there didn’t just break apart—it
fell
apart, as if he’d struck its brain. The boat whispered on through the salt marsh, sometimes hidden, sometimes exposed. Sanchez brought out his BlackBerry and activated his GPS so he could see exactly where he was in relation to land. Not only did the service work, but it was like looking at a map during an RV session in which he was supposed to pinpoint a target. He suddenly believed that Maddie was somewhere below the third bridge, and that she’d broken free of Dominica.

But as soon as he felt this certainty, he doubted it. His ability was capricious enough to surrender to desire, to create images and scenarios that would never manifest themselves because they had no basis in reality. Just the same, he continued toward the general area below the third bridge. When he neared the salt marsh with the tall reeds and lush growth that would hide him, he cut the power. The bayou quickly went shallow, forcing him to tip the engine out of the water. Since he didn’t have paddles as backup, he drifted with the current.

Thirty yards from shore, he ran into a sand dune. It was low tide. He swung his legs over the side of the boat and sank to his thighs in muck. He pulled one leg out, stepped forward, sank again. Jessie barked and paced the length of the rocking boat, eyeing the water warily. “C’mon, girl,” he coaxed her. “A short swim and then a short run. You can do it.”

But in the end, she sat back, whining and pawing at the side of the boat and Sanchez had to lift her out and set her in the water. Then she raced for shore, splashing through water and muck. They plowed through the last few yards together and collapsed on a tiny dune of low brush and crushed shells. Sanchez felt so spent, so totally exhausted, that he shut his eyes. When he opened them again, the sun was much lower against the horizon, his stomach cramped with hunger, his mouth felt like a fire pit, dry and sooty.

He rocked back onto his heels and saw a dune buggy tearing toward them, toward him and Jessie. He flung his arms around her and they scooted down behind the dune, below the level of the brush and reeds. Jessie didn’t move, didn’t whimper. The dune buggy flew past them, the echoing laughter of the people inside a seductive call:
Join us, laugh with us, physical life is fun.
Seductive, he thought, unless you’d been seized and knew the truth. Possession by one of the
brujos
made death look inviting.

He didn’t know how many minutes passed before he finally got to his feet. He felt washed out, like some old codger coming off last night’s drunk. His thinking had gone fuzzy, his head and eyes ached, he craved sleep. He and Jessie trudged up the dunes. They weren’t high dunes, but felt like Everest. His calves hurt, his feet hurt, he was a goddamn mess. He needed water, food, a respite. He tried not to think about the chaos and carnage he had fled. But suddenly, it was all he could think about. Visions exploded in his skull—real or imagined, the effect on him was the same, a crippling guilt that he had not stayed behind to fight, to defend the camp, to help the man who had saved his ass.

He crawled the last thirty feet to a wooden porch, up three steps, to the sliding glass doors. And there, he collapsed, he just couldn’t move another inch. Jessie whined and pawed at him, licked his face and neck, insisting that he crawl another few feet to the doors. Sanchez reared up on his knees, pressed his palms against the glass and pushed left.

The door rattled open and he and Jessie made it inside the quiet house. He slid the door shut, eyed the comfortable-looking couch on the far side of the living room. It listed, the room blurred, and he knew he wouldn’t make it. He crumpled to the cool tile floor, the side of his face resting against his hands, and shut his eyes. His dog stretched out alongside him, a warm, familiar shape against his side.

*   *   *

He
dreamed in great, sweeping mythic themes, everything excessive, large, boldly colored. But when he woke, he recalled only the myth and the grandness, no specifics. He was thirsty enough to lick his own sweat, and weaved toward the kitchen.

Faucet on, he guzzled, then jerked open the door of the freezer and grabbed a handful of ice. The chill shocked him when he rubbed the cubes over his face and neck, and down his arms. Then it felt good and he popped a piece of ice in his mouth and sucked on it. He filled a bowl with water and set it on the floor for Jessie. She lapped it up.

Sanchez shrugged off his pack, dug out his map of Cedar Key and smoothed it out against the floor.
Where is Maddie?
He ran his hand slowly over the map, trusting that his body would show him her precise location, something more than
below the third bridge.
If his talent failed him, maybe Charlie or his mother would help out. But nothing happened. No tingling, no warmth in his hand, and his mother and Charlie were apparently out to lunch.

He tried again. And again. But he was so attached to the outcome, he picked up nothing at all. He didn’t give up. He knew he could do this. He had done it before. But first, the zone. He had to sink into his zone, find the place of
no space no time.
But distracted by noises, hunger, thirst, and his own angst, his consciousness just couldn’t seem to sink deeply enough. He kept thinking of his original impression, that she was below the third bridge. Then even that faded from his mind.

When he finally reached his zone, he moved his fingertips over the map without looking at it, and felt the warmth. Strong. Immediate.

His eyes popped open and he stared at the map.

Pine Street neighborhood.

Nothing on Cedar Key was very far from anything else, not as the crow flew. He estimated the Pine Street neighborhood was within a mile or two of his location. But getting there without running into any more roving bands of
brujos
would be a challenge. Sanchez shoved the map in his jacket pocket, stood on legs that felt like they were made of Silly Putty, and opened the sliding glass doors.

A slight breeze kicked in off the water, the smell of it familiar to him now. Fish, seaweed, sand, a faint residue of heat from earlier in the day. Go find her, he thought, and stepped outside, his dog right behind him.

Twenty-two

Maddie worked feverishly until her stomach growled, her bladder ached, until her eyes felt like they’d been stung with dust. She knuckled them and raised her head.

Long, narrow shadows, like elongated cartoon figures, fell into the room. All sorts of strange weapons surrounded her, most of them crude, built from half-remembered stuff from the Internet aeons ago, before she ever knew
brujos
existed, back in Key Largo when algorithms had spoken to her the way words spoke to writers or images and color spoke to artists.

She had torches, crude firebombs, odd-looking firecrackers that would create distractions. None of it would defeat Dominica’s tribe, but she might be able to create such chaos that they would be driven away, off the island, into the fed zone outside the quarantine. She placed the first load of weapons in a cardboard box and carried it downstairs to put into the truck.

In the kitchen, she paused and rifled through the pantry and fridge, searching for something to eat. Dominica’s people had taken just about everything that was edible, but had left behind a half-full jar of peanut butter, a few slices of bread, some frozen goods. She found a piece of bread that hadn’t gone moldy, slapped some peanut butter on it, squirted honey across it, and gobbled it down as she hurried into the garage.

The truck was a monster. It boasted a large, open console below the dashboard and another one between the two front seats. There was also plenty of room in the passenger seat and on the floor in front of it for her backup weapons. The torches would lean against the passenger seat, within easy reach. And just in case she needed it, she dropped a bottle of lighter fluid into one of the cup holders with a box of kitchen matches and several lighters.

When she’d emptied the box, she set it on the hood to take back inside with her for the next load, and walked around the huge truck, checking the tires. The huge tires raised the vehicle four or five feet off the ground. Lights and gun mounts graced the roof, the sun roof slid open at the touch of a button. The truck was obviously used for hunting, probably in the Everglades, by some redneck weekend warrior.

She hurried back inside the house to put the rest of the weapons into her box. The light was fading fast from the bayou. It wouldn’t be long before the fog rose. And tonight, she thought, the fog would be brutal, thick, ugly, hostile, aggressive, intent on blood. Fear flooded the back of her throat, that awful taste of bitterness and bile, and it all suddenly felt impossible, weighted, onerous.

No matter how she struggled to spin things in her own head, she was about to take on a tribe of vicious, hungry mutants, most of them so clueless that they simply carried out Dominica’s orders and never questioned anything. Except in the Island Market that night.
Which night? Was that last night?
She didn’t know. Linear time hadn’t existed for her since Dominica had seized her. But she remembered the events, how Liam had confronted Dominica, how he had
dissented.

Where was Liam now?

Didn’t matter. She couldn’t hang her hopes on some rebellious ghost, especially some young ghost like Liam who really didn’t understand what had happened to him, where he was, who or what Dominica was. And she couldn’t hope that Wayra or Sanchez would find her, that she would be rescued like some princess in a tower. That just wasn’t going to happen. No guy in any universe she knew of ever thought a woman would rescue
him,
so where had this idea come from that a woman would be rescued by a man?