Doug let out a long breath. “Yeah. I had meant to call about it, actually, and then Clint phoned 911, and everything went off the rails.” He watched the cops transfer the body bag to the trunk of Doug’s squad car.
“Not sure that’s exactly by the book,” Brent remarked.
Doug glared at him. “Did your police manual say anything about zombies? Neither did mine. Sure doesn’t need an ambulance or a hospital, and that would just make the rumors fly.”
“How about if I go say Last Rites,” Travis offered. “And then you know we’re going to have to finish her off, or she might be back.”
Doug paled and nodded. “Yeah. I know. Go do your thing. I’ll make sure Doc’s on his way and that Chip and Jay,” he added with a nod toward the officers, “head back to the station. I never thought I’d say this, but I know a place where we can burn the body without anyone noticing.”
Travis usually felt peace settle over him when he said Last Rites, a calm that transcended even his hardwired guilt over speaking a prayer that, as a defrocked priest, he wasn’t supposed to have the authority to offer. But now, remembering Clint’s grief and Meghan’s ruined body, Travis raged inside at the tainted energy bedeviling the citizens of Cooper City and wresting the dead from their graves. He hoped that for all his turmoil, the litany gave Meghan’s violated spirit a final rest.
By the time he finished, the officers were gone, and a man in a late model gray sedan had pulled into the drive. From the way Doug greeted the newcomer, Travis guessed he was Doc.
“Didn’t know they made house calls anymore,” Brent remarked when Travis came back to the Crown Vic where he was waiting.
“Extraordinary circumstances,” Travis replied.
“This whole place is like Schrodinger on steroids,” Brent said as he got into the passenger side of the car. Travis knew him well enough by now to guess that the black humor was his way of coping.
“What worries me is, if we keep running around playing whack-a-mole with zombies and monsters and low-level demons, when do we have time to concentrate on shutting down the hell gate?”
Travis eased the car down the country driveway, following Doug’s cruiser. Much as he lamented what the gravel would do to his undercarriage, he didn’t want to think about how much worse it would have been if Clint had lived on a city street.
Doug led them toward the state game lands, then back a lonely drive to an abandoned farmhouse. Travis helped him lift the body bag from the trunk, then Brent covered them with his Glock as Doug opened the bag enough to sever the head from the spine. Gasoline from an emergency container fueled a pyre.
“You said there was another incident,” Travis prompted as they walked back to the cars.
Doug looked like he had aged just since the previous night. “Yeah. Someone else got a surprise visitor. I might as well just show you.”
They followed the cruiser down another country road, but thankfully not back to Cooper City. “I don’t think we’re very far from those cemeteries,” Brent pointed out. “In fact, we’re just on the other side of the woods.”
“Yeah, I realized the same thing,” Travis agreed. “Maybe whatever’s creating the zombies can’t control them long enough to have them hike all the way into town. Be grateful for small favors, I guess.”
Travis and Brent followed Doug after they left the burned-out pyre that used to be Meghan Zimmerman. “I’m afraid the next one isn’t going to be any easier,” Doug said when they parked outside a cabin near the state game lands.
“What’s that godawful noise?” Brent asked.
“Follow me.” Doug led them around to the back of the cabin, where a large, enclosed dog run took up a chunk of the backyard. The big cage was made from chain link, sized to comfortably hold several large hunting dogs. But the creature inside was not canine. A mournful wail sent a chill down Travis’s back. He couldn’t tell whether a creature was in pain or calling its pack, but it sounded feral and unnatural.
“What the fuck?” Travis recoiled as he realized what he was looking at. A boy who might have been about ten years old, hollow-cheeked and dressed in the rags of a nice shirt and slacks, crouched on his haunches, dead—and howling.
“Back away from there!” a man’s voice commanded, and Travis heard a shotgun load. He and Brent raised their hands, but Doug turned slowly, hands still down at his side.
“It’s just me, Ben. I brought people who might be able to help, like I promised.”
Ben had the build of a linebacker who let muscle run to fat. His dark hair fell shoulder-length, and his thick beard looked more unkempt than intentional. He had frozen in place and paled as if he had seen a ghost.
“Captain Lawson?” he asked.
Travis glanced at the man beside him. Brent looked equally poleaxed. “Ben Thompson?” Brent finally managed, eyes wide as his gaze flicked between the wild man with the gun and the creature in the cage.
“I won’t let you take him,” Ben said, bringing the shotgun’s muzzle up again from where it had dipped.
“It’s me, Benny,” Brent said, keeping his hands up but he chanced a step toward the man. “I got your back. Like always.”
Travis glanced at Doug, who looked equally mystified.
“He wants to take my boy,” Ben said, glaring at Doug, who had kept his hands in plain view.
“Put the gun down, Benny, and we’ll talk. Like in Mosul. Old times. Okay?” Brent had eased a few steps closer, but not enough to make a grab for the gun without getting someone shot. The shotgun wavered, and Travis held his breath, hoping that neither Doug nor Brent did something stupid.
The dead child howled again, and Ben’s expression went from defiant to despairing. He lowered the shotgun, and Brent moved in quickly to disarm him, passing the gun off to Doug as Ben collapsed to sit on the steps. Brent sat down beside him, while Travis and Doug kept their distance, not wanting to spook the man.
“Tell me what happened,” Brent said. This was a different side to the ex-soldier than Travis had seen.
Ben’s gaze fixed on the howling zombie inside the cage. “Jamie got hit by a car when he was riding his bike,” he said. His tone was thick with grief, and he had a hopeless look in his eyes. “We buried him two weeks ago. His mama and I split up a while back, and she took off, so it was just the two of us.” He paused and tried to compose himself.
“I shouldn’t have let him go ride that day. But he wanted to go to his friend’s house, and it was nice out, and he was almost eleven, and I used to ride my bike places when I was his age, so I thought he’d be okay.” He sounded frantic, as if he needed to justify himself to them. Or maybe, Travis thought, because Benny lived with his own relentless accusations every day.
“The driver was going too fast. Ran a stop sign. Jamie never made it to the hospital.” Ben closed his eyes, straining for composure, and Brent laid a hand on his shoulder in support. “I watched them put his casket in the ground, and it was the worst day of my life,” Ben said in a ragged tone. “And then, two nights ago, I heard a noise out back, and there he was, in the clothes we buried him in, wild-like.”
Ben opened his eyes and glared at them in challenge. “But he’s my boy, and he’s back. I don’t know how, or why. But I can’t—I won’t—lose him again.”
Travis’s heart ached for the man, and his anger spiked at the cruelty of whatever lay behind the zombies. The dark force that returned Jamie from his grave—and Zimmerman’s dead wife from hers—was drawing its energy from their pain, toward an end goal that could only be even more horrific.
“Do you remember what we saw, that night in Mosul?” Brent asked quietly, leaning in as if only he and Ben were present. “That night we saw…her.”
Ben’s gaze darted like a frightened animal. “I try not to, but I see it in my dreams.”
“So do I,” Brent said, his voice low and reassuring. “It wasn’t natural, wasn’t something from this world.”
Ben nodded in agreement.
“We think ther
e’s something like Mavet loose near Cooper City and Peale, and it’s causing all the weird shit that’s been happening,” Brent said.
“But Jamie—”
“He’s not the only one whose body’s been animated,” Brent said, and Travis knew his partner was choosing his words carefully. “We just came from a place where a man’s dead wife attacked him.”
“Jamie’s gone feral,” Ben confided. “Like his brain must not have gotten enough oxygen—”
“Jamie’s dead, Benny,” Brent said with quiet conviction.
“No! He’s just messed up from what happened,” Ben protested. “I wish God would just strike me dead because I let them bury my boy alive—”
“No.” Brent’s voice this time was a command, and Ben reacted reflexively, straightening his back and squaring his shoulders. “That creature in the cage over there is not Jamie, back from the dead. It’s a hoax, by a spirit like Mavet, like we saw in Mosul, and it’s just his corpse, brought here to torture both of you so the demon-thing can feed on your pain.”
“Jamie—”
“His body—his corpse—is deteriorating,” Brent said matter-of-factly. “We don’t know that there’s anything of Jamie left inside—his memories, or his soul. They’re gone, the stuff that made him, him.”
“But he found his way back,” Ben said, utterly bereft.
“Or he was sent,” Brent pressed. “Sent to torture you and maybe keep Jamie from his final rest. He can’t heal. His body is decaying. Listen to him,” Brent ordered. “If he can feel anything, it’s pain. My friend was a chaplain,” he added with a nod toward Travis. “He can help Jamie pass over. But we have to send him on.”
“You got us out, in Mosul,” Ben looked away. “When the others died, you knew what to do. I trust you, Cap. You know I do. But…he’s my boy.”
“You held it together that night, with Mavet,” Brent said, dropping his voice in shared confidence. “You’re a strong man, Benny. A brave man. And now you’ve got to do the right thing, for both of you.”
“I can’t put him down,” Ben sobbed. “I can’t do it.”
“You don’t have to,” Brent assured him. “Just go inside.”
“Can I say goodbye?” Ben looked up, eyes wet with tears. Travis guessed that Brent had put into words what Ben had known all along, even if he hadn’t wanted to admit it.
“Of course,” Brent said.
Travis saw Brent’s gaze flicker between him and Doug, giving the okay for Ben to approach the cage.
The feral dead creature inside paused its howling to glare at Ben, recognizing him as prey if nothing else. It shuffled closer to the fence, sniffing and mumbling. Ben stopped a foot away from the chain link, out of reach, as if he recognized at least on some level that the Jamie-thing might be a danger.
“I’m so sorry,” Ben said, tears streaming down his face. “I let you down. It’s all my fault. I’m so very sorry, Jamie. And no matter what, I love you.”
The Jamie-thing canted its head, looking at Ben through rheumy eyes, before it let out the thin, high howl of an injured wolf summoning its pack. Travis felt ice slither down his spine. He had no way to know whether some spark of Jamie retained enough memory to grieve—God, he hoped not—or whether he meant to call more zombies and kill them all.
“Go inside, Ben,” Brent ordered. He gave Doug a look and a jerk of his head, asking him to accompany the man. When they were in the house, Brent met Travis’s gaze.
“Say your prayer,” he told Travis. “Then I’ll take care of it.”
Travis nodded and began Last Rites. The Jamie-thing shuffled closer, eyeing Travis and Brent curiously, more like a wary stray dog than anything remotely human. Halfway through the litany, Jamie began to howl, a soft, keening sound this time, and he fell to his knees, rocking back and forth. Whether a splinter of his soul remained intact enough to react to the prayer or the infernal power that animated his corpse knew its time was short, he didn’t know. Travis stood behind him, hiding the gun in his hand, a silver round already chambered.
“Amen.”
“Move.”
Travis stepped out of the way. Brent raised his hand and shot. The high-caliber round hit the Jamie-thing between the eyes, shattering his skull. Seconds later, Travis broke the lock and brought his silver-edged machete down, severing the head from the body.
From inside the house came the muted sound of a gun firing.
“Shit,” Brent muttered.
Travis knew Brent wanted to run inside to see what happened, and even without Travis’s clairvoyance, he felt certain that Brent already guessed. Instead, Brent pulled out lighter fluid and set the pathetic corpse aflame, as Travis chanted a Psalm. Together, Travis and Brent headed toward the house. Doug met them on the porch.
“He went to the bathroom, and he either had the pistol on him or had it hidden there. It was done before I could stop him.”
Brent sighed. “Had a feeling it was going to happen, now or later. Damn.”
“It’s finished?” Doug asked, looking past them to the smoking heap of zombie.
“Yeah,” Brent replied. “It’s over.”
“For Ben,” Doug said. “But there’s more out there. Shit, I hate this part of the job.” He ran a hand across his chin. “You two better get out of here before I call this in. You get the shell casing?” he asked.
“And the slug,” Brent said.
There would be nothing to tie Brent’s gun or their presence to the situation.
“Good,” Doug said. “I’ll say that we found the thing in the kennel like that, and Ben inside, who panicked when I came to the door. No one’s going to look further, not with the shit that’s going on these days.”
“Call us,” Brent said as he and Travis turned toward the car, then paused. “We’ll be in the area for a while before we head back.”
“Let me know what you hear,” Doug said, looking worn. “I don’t think it’s over—not by a long shot.”
Chapter Eleven
“I’m sorry about Ben.” Travis didn’t glance at Brent when he spoke, but he didn’t need to see his partner to know how the day’s events had worn on him. Brent was hardly chatty, but since they had called a truce and decided to work together, he had gradually thawed a little, willing to make small talk on long car trips, and showing a dry sense of humor that meshed well with Travis’s. Since the shooting, Brent had been quiet.
“That thing wearing Jamie’s body—his spirit wasn’t present,” Travis said. He couldn’t read minds, but he felt certain he knew some of what was bothering Brent. “Pretty sure Ben had been thinking of killing himself a long time before the zombie showed up. He’s at peace now—yet another church dogma blown to smithereens,” he added with a bitter edge to his voice.
Being a medium had given him enough of a glimpse into the afterlife to skewer most of what he had been taught in catechism and seminary. And while he was relieved to discover that suicide did not lead to eternal damnation, he still bristled at the damage done by such callous, ongoing teaching.
“Benny always expected the worst—and usually got what he expected,” Brent replied, head turned so that he remained staring out the passenger window. “That night in Mosul, when we survived Mavet, he had more trouble with it than a lot of the guys.” He snorted. “I mean, don’t get me wrong—having a major demon clean out a town like the fucking Angel of Death did a number on all of us, including me,” he admitted.
“You seem to have figured out how to cope.”
Brent gave a harsh laugh. “Is this coping? I kept running into demons or demonic activity when I was with the police, and before that, the Bureau, and of course, no one believed me except CHARON.”
“CHARON?” Travis asked. He’d heard the name whispered more than spoken and figured it was a government version of the Sinistram, one of many that had come and gone throughout the years. Bureaucrats worried about psychics and came up with things like the Men Who Stare at Goats. The Church did marginally better since at least
they were steeped in the world unseen. To Travis’s mind, neither institution was to be trusted.
“Think of every movie you’ve seen with a black ops organization to stop occult threats,” Brent replied. “And then make it worse. There’s a reason those groups are never the good guys. CHARON lives down to the stereotype.”
“And they want you?”
Brent nodded. “Demon magnet, remember? I keep saying no. They keep telling me that someday they’ll make me say yes.”
“Fuck them,” Travis said, with enough heat behind his words to make Brent actually look at him. “I got recruited into something like that back in seminary until I got tired of doing their dirty work. Never again.”
“The Sinistram?”
Travis startled. “How—?”
Brent nodded. “Maybe it’s not as secret as they want to think it is,” he replied. “I told a buddy about you, and he said that ninja priests were all Sinistram.”
“Ninja priests, huh?” Travis managed a tired smile. “Yeah, maybe. But that kind of badassery comes with a price, and I got tired of paying it.”
“So they let you walk?”
“Hell, no. They’re biding their time, figuring they’ll get me back sooner or later.” He gave Brent a conspiratorial look. “Looks like we can be on the run together.”
“Just like Butch and Sundance,” Brent replied.
“Maybe we can skip the blaze of glory part.” They fell quiet for a few minutes. “I figured we’d meet with the lead on the Silverado killings first, and then check in with Derek. He’s heard chatter to suggest we’ve got a ghoul problem, on top of everything else. I’ve got a message from my friend, Jason, and I’m afraid that’s what it’s probably about.”
“Works for me,” Brent replied. He thumbed through screens on his phone. “I need some real Wi-Fi to send a report to one of my clients. Then I can focus on what we’re doing, knowing the rent is paid.”
“I got us a hotel in Bellefonte. Free Wi-Fi. I need to check in with Jon and Matthew, and plow through some emails.” Travis turned his attention back to the road, but memories of what had happened in Cooper City were never far from mind. “Did you look at those news sites?”
Sons of Darkness Page 17
