Zombie Pulp (22 page)

And waited.

When the sun was down an hour, two, I was still waiting. Still thinking. I’d talked to Tommy, but I hadn’t told him what Louie told me. I was saving that until I was sure. I had to be sure this time. Tommy told me that Mikey Ryan had been undercover, following around bagmen who ran money for the Italians. The money was from gambling, prostitution, extortion. He was mapping out their haunts, their routes, how often they came and went. All in advance of a big raid by vice.

But now he was dead.

How did that factor in? I wasn’t sure just yet. I laid there in my rack, listening to the clock tick, traffic on the street below. I smoked and watched the neon from the bar downstairs light up my room, latticing me with sharp shadows.

That’s when I heard my door open.

Feet went pounding away. Very casually, I went for my .45 on the nightstand. I didn’t know what to expect. The lights were off. Carefully, I turned the gooseneck lamp on the stand so when I clicked it on it would illuminate the intruder, temporarily blinding him. It would give me the edge.

Breath locked up tight in my lungs, I waited. A trickle of sweat ran down one temple like ants to a picnic. My finger was hot and damp against the trigger of my Browning. I caught a whiff of something sharp and pungent like spices, like age. I could hear the intruder moving through my living room, approaching my bedroom door.

The door swung in.

I saw a shadow…filmy, almost transparent.

I clicked on the light. And it could’ve been a lot of people standing there, arms outstretched. I could’ve given you a grocery list of sorry bastards who wanted me dead. But I never would have guessed this.

Helen was standing there.

Dead these two years, but shuffling forward all the same. She was a mummy. Nothing more. I still recognized the diamond choker around her withered throat. She was naked and her flesh was papery, shriveled, it clung to the skeleton beneath like wet decoupage. Except it wasn’t wet, but dry and rubbed with spices to keep it from crumbling away entirely. As she drifted towards me, stick arms extended and twig fingers clutching, she seemed to be disintegrating, flaking away. Motes of her danced in the shaft of light from the lamp.

Her skull-face attempted a grin but it was the grin of mortuaries and death houses, the grin of something long-buried beneath shifting Egyptian sands. Eyeless, her fine nose collapsed into the nasal channel of her skull, her teeth gone black, she attempted speech…but her vocal cords had long ago succumbed to worm and dust. What came out was a dry and hideous croaking.

My insides gone to sauce, funeral bells gonging in the drum of my skull, I sat forward and, letting out a piercing shriek, I put two slugs in her head. She folded up like a house of cards, shattering into dust and pitted bone and rags as she struck the floor.

My brain full of her stink, my mind full of an insane screeching, I fell next to her, sobbing.

This was their latest game.

But it hadn’t scared me off; it only made things personal.

13

It was a huge and rambling Tudor a mile outside the city lights. In a neighborhood where the yards sprawled half a city block and the driveways were circular and flanked by weeping willows. This is where I came. This is where it would end. The place was surrounded by a low stone wall.

I slid over it and dropped into the grass.

I waited for dogs, for guards, for worse things. But nothing or no one came. Surprised? I wasn’t. The egos of the people behind this ghastly little game couldn’t or wouldn’t accept defiance of any sort. The drive was choked with Rolls-Royces and Mercedes…but there were a few low-class sedans and wagons. I saw the car that had spirited away Marianne Portis and smiled. I also saw a delivery truck. I knew without a doubt that the dead ones arrived in that like troops.

I was glad she was there.

I wanted her to be part of this.

As I was casing the joint, some guy—an Outfit soldier—stumbled through the hedges probably in search of a place to relieve himself. He saw me and went for his gun, but never made it. I popped him three, four times in the face, dropping him. Then I punted him in the head and turned his lights out. I gagged him with his own hanky and tied him up in the hedges with his own belt.

I wasn’t careful going through that cellar window.

I kicked it in and dropped through with my bag of goodies. Using my flashlight, I made a quick inspection of the place. Kept looking and looking until I found the furnace room, taking special interest in the fuel oil tank against one wall. It held over 2oo gallons and it was nearly full. And then I knew how it would end for them. Not with a whimper, but like the Fourth of July finale. I’d found what I was looking for.

I opened my bag and got to work.

During the war, I served in the Navy. In the UDT to be specific. Underwater Demolition Teams. You probably read about us, they called us frogmen. We swam around and planted bombs on boats, docks, beachheads. Sometimes we came out of the water for quick commando raids. Like any good UDT man, I knew explosives better than I knew my own mug. I taped together ten sticks of TNT with electrical tape and attached a blasting cap to it. Then I ran a positive and negative wire from a battery-operated alarm clock to the blasting cap. Then I set the timer. I gave it ninety minutes. I was in no hurry and according to Louie Penachek, these little gatherings went on all night.

When I had attached my bomb to the fuel tank, I went right up the stairs.

It was a big house by any stretch of the imagination. But it only took me a few minutes to locate the people. There were a couple hatchetmen outside the door and I shot both of them down and kicked my way through the double oak doors and there they all were. Marianne and her crew. An assortment of high-ranking hoods from the Italian mob. Because you see, that was my plan: I wanted them all in the same place.

A couple tough guys went for their rods and I killed them where they stood. Then I aimed at the leader of the rat pack: Carmine Varga, the boss of the syndicates. He was an obese, swarthy guy with a face like congealed grease. He seemed to glisten with oil and evil. He was so fat they should’ve hung an orange triangle on his ass. I had seen pictures of him in the daily rags, but none of those did this guy justice. All my life I’d wondered when I’d meet the guy with the patent on ugly and here he was. I kept my rod on him while his hoods bristled like the pigs they were. They all wanted to make a try for me, but he stopped them with a slight shake of his head.

“Vince Steel,” he said like we were old pals. “I wondered when you’d show.”

I glommed a nail and burned the end, blew out a cloud of smoke. “Where are they?” I said to him, looking around, taking it all in—the long tables of culinary delights, the imported champagne, the works of art that hung on the wall. All things stolen or bought with blood money. “Where are the dead guys, fatso?”

He sneered at me, quickly gathered himself. “Dead guys?” He laughed. “Whatever are you talking about?”

I looked at him flat and mean and hungry, the way a rattlesnake might look at you right before it sunk its teeth into your throat. “You know what I’m talking about, you fat piece of shit. Are they here? Are they downstairs? Upstairs? Answer me and don’t even think of lying, because if you do I spray that morgue photo you call a face all over the fucking room.”

Marianne Portis stepped forward, her eyes were iron balls—cold and rusty. “Mr. Steel, you have no idea what you’re involved in here…put that gun away while you still can.”

I smiled at her. She had a cute way about her…like a hungry leopard coming at you in the dark jungle. “Shut that pisshole you call a mouth, sweetheart, and tell me where that festering collection of roadkill is. You know the ones I mean, I think.”

The gaunt man with her took a step forward in some vain attempt to protect his lady love. Maybe. I had to admit that Marianne—with her hair down, dark and lustrous, some make-up on, and a tight-fitting evening gown that left little to the imagination—was a pretty swell dish. I bet she’d been in more beds than a hot water bottle.

“Easy, Dracula,” I told him. “I don’t think it’ll take a wooden stake in your heart to put you down.”

“Drop that gun, Mr. Steel,” Marianne said.

I stared at her. “That was a nice trick you had, sending my dead wife over. Sickest piece of work I’ve ever seen.”

She smiled like a cat disemboweling a mouse. “My gift to you.”

“That’s sweet. And here’s one for you,” I said and put a slug in that fine expanse of belly.

She made a gagging, coughing sound and dropped to the floor, a blossom of blood spreading over her dress like a red flower. She glared at me through the pain, blood running from her lips. The gaunt man came at me and I gave him a pill in the face, point blank, spraying the others with the contents of his skull. I was throwing lead like a maiden aunt tossing rice at a wedding, but I didn’t care.

“It’s a hell of a way to die, sweetheart,” I told Marianne. “Gutshot. Could take hours and hours before you cash in.”

I sensed motion at my back and the welcome wagon rolled in with a maggoty stench. Johnny Luna. Tony the Iceman. I emptied my heater into them and Tony, his face hanging like confetti, gave me a shove and I went to the ground. And then, of course, they were all over me.

First things first. Varga’s hoods gave me a good beating, made me spit some blood and make obscene comments about their mothers. But then they had me subdued, tied to a chair. But despite all they did to me, I kept smiling.

“You won’t be smiling long, you sonofabitch,” Varga told me. Guy smelled like fish oil and grease. “Not when we’re through with you. But let me explain.”

I spat some blood. “No point. I already know what your mother does for a living.”

That got me a couple more knocks. When the fog parted, I was still smiling. How much longer before the place went up? An hour? Maybe a little less? Hee, hee, hee. Boy, were they in for a surprise.

Varga swept his hand around the room indicating the living ones. “I won’t bother with introductions. These are my people.” Then he looked at Marianne on the floor, bleeding like a slit pig. Her friend with that hole in his face. A few others including some broad who looked like Peter Lorre in drag. “These people here. They’re the ones that put this little thing together. You might remember a guy named Quigg. You do? Of course, you do. See, our good Mr. Quigg, he spent years bopping around to all them weird places putting together all this…”

He gave me the rumble and I listened.

Quigg had lived amongst sorcerors, witch doctors, shaman, you name it, all around the world, studying and learning. What he was interested in was nothing less than resurrection. After devoting most of his life to it, he succeeded. Or almost had. I kind of messed that up when I tracked him down and helped put him away. But Marianne, apt pupil that she was, carried on and put on the finishing touches. But she needed money. That’s where Varga came in. He bankrolled it all and was pleased with the results. See, through Quigg’s neo-science, he had an army of dead hoods at his disposal—killers, bagmen, enforcers, thieves, racketeers. Guys who could pull jobs and never be prosecuted because they were already dead. Even if they left fingerprints, what possible difference did it make? Eye witnesses? Who’d believe ‘em?

It was perfect.

“…and it was out of respect to our Mr. Quigg that I had some of my boys take out the D.A., a couple of the jurors. That cannibalism bit was just a cosmetic touch. Yeah, but those three are only the beginning. Before we’re done, they’ll all be doing the deep six: the judge, your friend Tommy Albert, even yourself. We do that out of respect for the man that made this all possible.”

The walking dead goons parted and I almost shit a pearl.

Old Quigg came shambling forward, a bag of graying bones. His eyes were like yellow moons setting in that shrunken face. “Yes. Mr. Steel,” he managed, his voice dry as sandstorms. “And soon you’ll be joining us. First you’ll need to die, then we’ll need your heart—”

“Kiss my ass,” I said and then something hit me and I fell into darkness.

14

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

That’s what I woke to. My head was throbbing, but I came awake sharp and ready. I came awake in panic. In the darkness. In a box. It wasn’t a fancy casket they were burying me alive in, just a plain wooden packing crate. I tried to move, to thrash, to fight, but it was no good. This was Quigg’s revenge—let me die like this and bring me back like one of them. Trying to think, I pushed up at the lid with everything I had. It moved up two, three inches, but that was all.

The dirt kept raining down.

The sound of it was muffled and I knew my coffin was covered now. If I was going to do anything, I’d have to do it before too much dirt piled up on top. I flicked my lighter and saw that the lid was roped shut. At least it wasn’t chained or nailed. After some squirming and banging my knees and head, I got my switch out and began sawing through the ropes. It took less than a minute, but a minute was a lot when you were running out of air.

When the ropes were free, I began putting everything I had into getting that lid up. The dirt was still loose above, but it was still heavy as all hell. I got it up enough to start forcing myself through and then I was free, trapped in that cocoon of shifting black earth. I was able to draw air from pockets. I began clawing my way up real slowly, making progress, but not wanting to come bursting out of there before the gravediggers were done. But soon enough, the air was getting harder to breathe and I had to strain it through my teeth, drawing in ranks clods of dirt. That soil was rich and black and wormy. With everything I had, I clawed my way up. About the time black dots were dancing before my eyes, my fingers broke free. Then my head and shoulders.