Savage Prophet: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Episode 4) (26 page)

I pulled my hand cannon and held it aloft, letting the greasy firelight reflect off the black gunmetal. “I seem to recall you spouting off some similar horseshit the last time we met. Right before I gave you that lovely parting gift.”

He instinctively reached up, fingers tracing over the gaping hole in his face. “You will lose,” he said, his voice so sure, so full of victory there could be no doubt.

“Could be I lose, noodledick, but I don’t particularly feel like giving up yet. Generally, I’m pretty shitty at quitting. I’ve been smoking since sixteen.”

The man frowned, then nodded slowly, his top hat bobbing and swaying. “It would be a terrible shame if they”—he nodded toward the idling zombies—“kill you before I can even our tab, so maybe I can change your mind. There are, after all, many ways to win a fight, and I know ’em all. So, maybe we talk instead. Maybe I can persuade you. People, they say I’m very persuasive.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you deserve to win salesmen of the year award, douchebucket,” I called back. “Why don’t you amble your lanky ass over here and collect your prize—you’ve won yourself a matching set of missing eyes.”

He laughed, then. A deep belly rumble of real joy, which made me more than a little uneasy.
What the hell did he have up his sleeve?

“We’ll see ’bout dat.” He winked at me and snapped his fingers once more. The zombies, swaying but otherwise still, broke into restless motion.

Instead of swarming toward me, however, they formed two columns, with a wide path cutting up the middle, snaking toward the truck. Goofiest friggin’ battle formation I’d ever seen.

I watched, eyes squinted, lips pursed as Beauvoir leaned over and whispered something to the child soldiers encircling him. After a moment, the kids nodded and crawled out of the truck bed—faces drawn, their hands now devoid of their too big AKs. One by one, they marched down the path between the zombies, hands empty, arms hanging limp and listlessly at their sides.

There were six of ’em, all boys, none of ’em past the age of thirteen. They stopped at intervals of four or five feet; the closest one halted fifteen feet away.

I nervously adjusted my sweaty palm on the pistol grip of my hand cannon.
Seriously, though, what the holy-living hell is going on here?

“I can see you are confused,” Beauvoir said, clapping his hands together. “So let me explain. These boys here, they serve me heart and soul. Each of them once had parents, parents who opposed me. Who opposed my Chimeres. Political dissidents. Freedom fighters. Journalists. Scholars. Government workers.” He waved lanky hands through the air as though to say,
the
why
is not so important
. “They spoke lies against me. They threatened my empire. So I found them, Yancy Lazarus. I found them in their homes late at night, tucked away behind stone walls, believing themselves protected. Safe. They were not safe. No one in Cité Soleil
is safe, not from me.

“My zombies, they came, tore down doors, flooded through windows. They dragged those treacherous families into the streets. While they were held down, I would come and pick one child”—he held up a long, skinny finger—“and I would give him a revolver. Then I would give him a choice. For each member of his family he was willing to kill, another would live. ‘Kill your father, shoot him in the head,’ I would say, ‘and your mother lives. Kill your brother and your sister lives. You choose who lives, who dies.’ If they refused”—he shrugged, uncaring—“well, then everyone died. Their families were torn apart one by one, and they were forced to watch. Very persuasive.”

Tears welled in my eyes hearing the words, and I couldn’t help but look at the unarmed boys, flanked by deadly, brainless killing machines. What kind of monster could do that to anyone, let alone kids? I have no illusions about myself—I’m not a good guy. Over the course of my years, I’d abandoned my family, burned people alive, murdered countless monsters—often in spectacularly bloody fashion—even killed a handful of children, though always in an act of self-defense. Shit, I’d been the Guild’s wet-works man for twenty-five years before finally walking away.

But even I had my limits.

What that asshole was describing went beyond morally questionable acts and entered fully into the realm of completely fucking evil. Hitler-level evil. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

“All these boys,” Beauvoir continued, “they were strong. They each saved the innocent at great personal expense. They saved their families, even though they never got to see their loved ones again. Then they came to work for me. I am their family now, their father, their master. They would do anything for me. Kill for me. Die for me. Whatever I ask.

“Tonight, Yancy Lazarus, I’m gonna give you the same choice. If you come down from there and turn yourself over to me, you can save these boys. All of them. Dat would be a good thing to do, I think. The heroic thing, though we both know you are no hero. But maybe. Maybe, you can
do
a heroic thing.” He nodded his head approvingly. “One heroic thing. One act of redemption.

“Or you can try to save yourself,” he continued, “but there is a great cost in this. If you do not come down, you will have a front-row seat to watch these boys being torn to pieces, one by one. There are six boys. I know”—he tapped at his gaping, empty eye socket—“dat gun of yours holds six shots. If you are a very good shot, maybe you can kill each one before the suffering begins. But the question is this: can you kill six unarmed boys to save yourself? Even if you can’t pull the trigger, can you watch ’em die horrible deaths to prolong your life by a few moments? If so, I think you will not be sleeping so well after tonight.”

He was quiet for a moment, then shrugged and folded his hands in front of him. “In the end, life is choice, and this choice is yours. I give you a minute to think about it, but”—he paused again, letting the ominous silence impart its own warning—“don’t take too long.” Then he sat back down on his throne, legs crossed, fingers steepled as he regarded me with a smug smile.

I wasn’t completely out of juice, but I was damned close and there was no feasible way I could hold off another full-on assault. When they came for me, and they would, they’d take me one way or the other. I considered my pistol, then with a sigh, slipped it back into its holster. I’d killed kids before—certainly not something I was proud of, but a hard truth I couldn’t deny—but I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t watch those kids get torn to pieces if I could stop it. Not in a million years.

Beauvoir was right about one thing: life
is
choice.

Choosing where you’re gonna work. Who you’re gonna love. Where you want to live. It’s about choosing whether to cheat on the test. Whether to return that wallet full of bills you found on the ground. Whether to fight. Whether to walk away. It’s about deciding what you want to live for and, maybe more importantly, what you’re willing to die for. Despite what I’d told Ferraro, there was a better-than-even-money chance that Pa Beauvoir was gonna kill me, and if I didn’t hold my ground, he probably would.

Or, I could give up, maybe die, and six innocent kids—kids who’d already been forced to murder their families—could live. I nodded. That was a price worth paying.

“Alright,” I called back. I pulled my bulk over the wall on tired arms, used the little power remaining in me to clear a path in the spiked barrier below, and dropped to the ground. My feet thudded against the dirt, a small dust cloud mushrooming up around me.

“Just don’t hurt ’em, and I’ll go with you.” I raised my hands into the air, a universal symbol of surrender. “But you need to know, Beauvoir, I am gonna make you pay. And not just for whatever you’ve got planned for me. You’re gonna pay for what you’ve done to these kids. For what you’ve done to the people of this city. You’re gonna pay for every murdered father, mother, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, and child. I swear to God.”

“Big words,” he said, standing, “but I think that is all they are. Words. Just words.” His tone—dry, flat, slightly amused—showed just how unconcerned he was. “Junior, Emmanuel.” He barked the names off, a drill instructor calling out recruits. “Go retrieve our guest.” The two boys nearest me started forward, their huge, distant eyes hardly registering what had just happened. “The rest of you,” Pa Beauvoir said, “get the coffin.”

A coldness blew through my chest like an arctic gale at the word
coffin
, but I forced the sudden fear from my mind as the first boy drew up to me.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I wasn’t ready when he lifted a gloved hand, almost in greeting, then blew a small cloud of chalky yellow powder directly into my face. The shit—harsh and acidic with a pungent scent like rotten fish—swirled into my open eyes, temporarily blinding me. It hit my skin like flour and stuck fast against my cheeks and sweaty brow. I blinked frantically against the substance, which felt like having shards of fine glass scratching at my eyes, then swiped at my face with one hand, trying to clear the dust away.

“What the hell?” I sputtered, then shook my head, once more rubbing at my eyes with the back of my hand. I stumbled back a step, then two, before reeling left, desperately trying to regain my balance, which had apparently abandoned me. My head became unbearably heavy, bobbing up and down, my lips and face growing numb and useless. “The hell was that stuff?” I slurred, stumbling left and right, back and forth, a stone-cold drunk fighting to keep his feet at all costs.

The kid didn’t answer.

Instead he stared at me with placid, far-seeing eyes. The eyes of a combat-hardened solider who no longer saw the violence of his hands.

My foot hit a rock or maybe a large fragment of skull, and I finally lost the battle to stay upright. My legs collapsed and my body fell like a boneless rag doll, crumpling to the ground. My head came down hard, colliding with something sharp littering the ground, and pinpricks of light exploded in my vision. The blow was a nasty one—split my scalp—and I knew it wouldn’t be long before I lost consciousness, either as a result of the head trauma or as a result of whatever drug the kid had hit me with.

Things started to fade, but not before I saw the other four boys make their way toward me, carrying a heavy coffin fashioned of polished black wood. “Get him in,” came Beauvoir’s voice from somewhere out of view. “It is time to begin the games.” The breath caught in my chest and I wanted to scream. To kick and bite, to run and hide. But I couldn’t do anything. My eyes were, glued wide open, but the rest of my body was entirely unresponsive. I still had sensation throughout my body—could feel the rocks and sharp bone chips beneath me—but I couldn’t
do
anything.

Couldn’t even blink.

One boy slid behind me, wiggling and wedging his hands beneath my armpits while another kid—the one who doused me—roughly grabbed my ankles. “
Un. Deux. Trois,”
the boy behind me counted, and then they hoisted me up like a bulky, awkward sack of potatoes and manhandled me toward the coffin, which had been set down a few feet away. It took ’em only a handful of seconds to get my body suspended above the box and, after another three count in French, they unceremoniously dropped me in, my head thumping down, this time against the thin silk liner inside.

Beauvoir loomed above me like a scarecrow, his face twisted in a cruel smile. “Give me that,” he snapped at a boy out of view. He reached for something: a jar, which he brought into view. The jar wasn’t anything exceptional. A plain glass container with a metal lid screwed on the top—like the kinda jar old church ladies used to preserve jam. It was filled halfway with something brown. Then I noticed that the contents of the jar
moved
. A steady wriggle, followed by a flash of buggy legs.

“It’s gonna be dark for a little while,” Pa Beauvoir said with a knowing grin, “but I don’t want you to be lonely, so I brought you some friends.” He unscrewed the container—slowly, methodically—then casually upended the container on my chest. A small host of bugs crawled free. A pair of scuttling cockroaches, several slithering giant centipedes, and a creeping, long-legged tarantula. “Have a nice trip,” Pa Beauvoir said, before slamming the coffin lid closed with a
snap-bang
, leaving me paralyzed, in utter darkness, with bugs burrowing into my clothes.

I don’t know if tears leaked from my eyes or not, what with being paralyzed and all, but I think they did. Then, whether from head trauma or from sheer fear and panic, I fainted, the darkness stealing in from the edges and overwhelming me, dragging me down into an uneasy sleep. I’ve never in my whole life been so relieved to pass out.

TWENTY-ONE:

Meeting of the Minds

My mind slipped into darkness, but the increasingly familiar sight of the vaulted prison housing Azazel resolved out of that thick gloom.

One moment the coffin lid clicked closed, blanketing me in thick, suffocating black, and the next the metal-plated dome loomed before me, obscured only by the chain-linked fence with its looping curls of razor-sharp C-wire. Sleeping, then. I turned without really paying the prison much mind, surveying the murky swampland. A marsh filled with poisonous bugs. Like cockroaches and centipedes and spiders and a thousand other nasty things with too many legs.