by J. E. Gurley
“You crucified Digger Man,” Jeff spoke up.
“Yes. Damballah Wedo commanded it. I had no choice. He was in me just like he was inside Digger Man. There was no fighting it. Digger Man just stood there as I wired him to the crane and ripped him open navel to chest with this knife. He stared at me like he couldn’t believe it, so I plucked out his eyeballs and tossed them over the side. He didn’t even scream as I hoisted him into the air.”
“How did you do it all?
In answer to Jeff’s question, Sims’ face began to melt, to run like molten wax. It reshaped itself as Waters. “Waters thought he was helping you, trying to save you. I borrowed his face. It was so hilarious when Tolson attacked him and Waters had to fight back. It made using him as a scapegoat so much easier, so entertaining.”
“Why the charade?” Lisa asked.
“A diversion to keep you here. You feared Waters and ignored the real danger.”
Lisa thought of her friends, the men on the supply ship and choked back a sob. “All those men…how could you?”
“Souls for my master.”
“There’s one more thing,” Jeff asked. “You said the hip flask contained a tonic. What is it?”
Sims smiled, replaced his knife in its scabbard, removed the silver flask from his back pocket and offered it to Jeff. She watched as Jeff took the flask and sniffed it. He jerked his head back, snorted and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.
“Blood,” he said in disgust.
“Digger Man’s blood,” Sims added, “mixed with a little blood from all the others. Like I said, it’s a tonic.”
Jeff threw the flask down in disgust and stomped on it. A dark, nauseatingly thick ichor oozed from the opening. Sims’ face clouded and his flesh began to quiver in agitation.
Lisa smiled that Jeff’s action angered Sims. “Your master is a fool if he thinks he can break the barrier between life and death,” she yelled.
Sims frowned and balled his fist. “Damballah Wedo is all powerful.”
She laughed. “Damballah Wedo is a weakling who needs humans to do his biding. He’s afraid of us. He’s afraid of me.”
As she hoped, a black shadow began to ooze from Sims’ mouth and eyes. It ran like oil to the deck, pooling around Sims’ feet. Sims staggered and writhed as his body emptied of its host.
“What are you doing?” Jeff asked her under his breath.
She cautioned him to wait.
Sims moaned as the last of Damballah Wedo poured from his body. He stood rigid, empty, his eyes wide with fright. The pool of evil began to rise, reshape itself into a sick parody of a man.
“Run Sims!” she shouted. “You’re free!”
Sims turned but Damballah Wedo was too quick. An ebony tendril lashed out and encircled his head. He screamed as black smoke rose from his face. The tendril whipped around and tossed Sims to the floor. He rose on his hands and knees, moaning loudly. Lisa gasped when she saw his eyes had been burned from the sockets. The flesh was black and raw. He crawled blindly across the floor, groping his way until he collided with a wall and curled up in the fetal position.
“You will never destroy the Gateway,” Lisa shot at Damballah Wedo. “The other Loas will stop you.”
His laughter shook the room. “They are aiding those who try to stop me, fearing my wrath too much to confront me directly. My power grows stronger by the hour as the storm approaches. Shortly, I will have enough power to rip the Gateway to shreds. The dead shall rise; the living shall tremble. I will control both.”
Behind him, the bodies of Easton, Ed Harris and the crew of the supply ship fanned out, blocking the hall. Lisa realized their only escape, if any, led outside into the storm. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sims slowly rise to his feet, holding onto the wall. Freed of the creature inhabiting him, the part of him that remained Sims the shrimper fought for control of his body. He could no longer see, but he could smell the fetid creature that had possessed him.
“You will not win,” she shot at Damballah Wedo to keep his attention focused on her. As she had hoped, the creature did not see Sims draw his knife and lunge at it.
“Run!” she shouted, grabbing Jeff’s hand and pulling him to the door. She looked back to see Sims driving his knife deep into the Loas’ neck. Black flames erupted from the wound and engulfed both of them. Sims’ body shriveled as the flames consumed it but Damballah Wedo remained untouched. The flaming knife fell from Sims’ hand and shattered on the deck. Sims, burning fiercely, grabbed at the Loa’s legs as he fell in a last attempt to tackle the creature. Damballah Wedo kicked at him and Sims dissolved into a pile of black ash that scattered in the breeze.
The zombies, momentarily without direction from their master fell to the deck. Slowly, they began to rise. Jeff yelled a warning but the wind ripped the words from his mouth. Outside, they crawled, hugging the side of the building for shelter.
“Where are we going?” she yelled into his ear.
“To the TEMPSC.”
She grabbed him by the shirt and shook her head. “No. We can’t. We have to stop him.”
He looked at her as if she had suddenly gone crazy. “Are you crazy?”
They turned the corner of the building into the lee of the wind and managed to stand. He grabbed her shoulders with both hands.
“We’ll die here,” he told her and she knew he was probably right, but she also suspected Damballah Wedo would never allow them to leave.
“He controls the sea and the storm,” she explained. “We’ll die if we try to leave now.”
Jeff shook his head uncertainly. She knew she had to persuade him.
“Did you see Sims?”
“Yes, I guess I understand about him now, poor soul.”
She shook her head. “No, I meant when he attacked Damballah Wedo, the zombies fell. His control of them faltered. He’s not yet as all-powerful as he claims.”
“He’s stronger than us,” Jeff reminded her.
“He admitted other houngans and mamboes in New Orleans are fighting him. He controls the storm through his control of other Loas. If we could break that control for just a short while, maybe we could redirect the hurricane and save New Orleans.”
Jeff looked unconvinced. “How does this save us?”
“It might not,” she admitted, “but if the hurricane moves away, he loses some of his power. It might give us a chance to escape.”
Jeff smiled and shook his head. “You’re a poor liar, Lisa. I like that in a woman. Okay, tell me what we need to do.”
There, in the lee of the storm, hunkered down against the elements, they plotted.
Chapter Twenty Nine
Jeff waited patiently alone. Lisa tried her best to convince him her plan would succeed, but he still harbored doubts. At best, he thought, they would die quickly and together. Even that seemed better than the messy alternatives his mind churned up. Fighting a Loa with a god complex seemed like a futile effort, but Lisa was convinced help was waiting. She said she sensed other voodoo priests and priestesses back in New Orleans and along the coast gathered together challenging Damballah Wedo’s power. That she considered herself a mambo now frightened him, too. How could a college-educated woman living in the Twenty-First century believe in voodoo? Granted, he had witnessed enough strange things the last few days for one lifetime, but to seriously believe chants, trances and a few candles could even the playing field—it didn’t make sense.
She had guts. He had to give her that much. If it were left up to him, they would be taking their chances in the TEMPSC, maybe at the bottom of the Gulf by now, but away from voodoo central. She had insisted he wait while she retrieved her I-Pod from her room. They had watched as the zombie horde, his dead friends among them, tottered off into the storm at the far end of the platform. He hoped she would be safe.
They could not risk candles and trances inside and outside in the storm it would be impossible, but Lisa insisted all she required now was her music to reach that dream state she ne
eded to open the doorway. The rest was just window dressing. She explained that the music brought forth long buried memories and chants her voice—she had not dwelt on this revelation—had hidden. Even though he had been there,he thought, he wasn’t sure he believed such a place really existed.
Jeff hung his head and let the rain drip off his soaked Re-Berth cap. He couldn’t let his doubts, as myriad as they were, affect Lisa’s plan. He would have to support her fully or they would surely fail. He tried to think of similar times when trust triumphed over doubt, but could recall none. Of course, he had led a relatively quiet life until now. Surely, others had trusted deeply enough in their comrades or loved ones to risk everything. It would just have to be his first time, a virgin truster.
He hoped Tolson was still alive. There was nothing more they could do for him. He was probably safer in the emergency craft anywhere, out of the weather and away from marauding zombies. Lisa seemed to think Damballah Wedo would ignore him since he had touched him already. One thing Jeff did know, if Tolson didn’t get serious medical help soon, he would certainly die.
Jeff hid behind a steel drum as a man wearing a captain’s hat and Sid Easton shambled by. It seemed they had a plague of zombies. Their heads turned toward him but did not see him through the blinding rain. They ignored the fury of the storm as the rain fell in sheets and ran down their decaying bodies. Their wet clothing lay plastered to their skin by the wind. Jeff watched in disgust as the edges of the open wound in Easton’s torso flapped open, revealing the empty cavity inside.
He lost sight of them for a moment in the fury of the storm. The rain was so furious it created a solid wall of water across the deck, like a curtain. They had slipped through it and vanished.
Jeff eyed the crane. Even though the engine was out of diesel, the battery would still contain enough juice to at least swing the boom around and lower the cables. If all else failed, it might provide a means of escape. He could lower the cables and he and Lisa could slide down them into the water and their probable deaths. He wished the rig had two of the inflatable self-contained survival suits such as some rigs carried. Even those might keep them alive long enough for rescue; but that meant leaving Tolson and he wasn’t willing to do that yet. Too many of his friends had died on Global’s Hell Rig. He would have to let Lisa have her chance.
He saw her crawling toward him and his heart raced. She snuggled up against him.
“Miss me?” she asked.
Jeff saw she had her I-pod in her hand, cradling it against the rain. “Where do we go?”
“The only place we can—the chemical room.”
“I was afraid you would say that.” The chemical room had only two doors, the outside door and the one leading to the central hallway. It was an easy place in which to get trapped. “We need some kind of weapons.” He had dropped the Glock since it was out of ammunition and he had left the axe in the main building in his haste to escape.
“Maybe in the wood shop,” she suggested.
He nodded. A sharp saw blade or wood chisel was better than nothing. Using the outside staircase was dangerous but they had no choice. Hurricane Rita was slamming the rig with 135 mph winds. Each giant wave rang the rig like a bell. It staggered like a drunken man. Each second could be its last.
They slid down the rain-slick steps one at a time on their backsides to prevent being blown away. Even so, they had to cling tightly to the rails and to each other as sudden gusts literally lifted them from the stairs. Reaching the bottom only compounded their problem. They had to walk directly into the fury of the wind. They each took a moment to catch their breaths before hurrying to the wood shop. The icy knee-deep water did not matter since they were thoroughly soaked already.
Jeff searched the room for a weapon, any weapon. His eyes fell upon a large hatchet hanging on a tool pegboard attached to one wall, neatly centered upon the painted silhouette of a hatchet. He thanked the shop foreman for his neatness and grabbed it. He tested the edge and found it still sharp and free of rust. On the same pegboard he saw a two-foot long flat-head screwdriver, also in its proper place. The incongruousness of the neat pegboard amid the destruction and turmoil of the rig struck him as funny. He could almost envision the harried shop foreman racing around, neatly stowing away tools as the Digger Man chased him with whatever implement of torture he used. He laughed aloud, but immediately regretted it as Lisa shot him an irritated look. He grabbed both tools and stuck them in his belt. Searching further, he used the screwdriver to break the lock on a steel storage cabinet. Inside, he found a gas powered nail gun that still contained a CO2 charge. Using his screwdriver, he broke away the safety feature that prevented the accidental firing of the nail driver and handed it to Lisa.
“It’s like a gun,” he explained to her quizzical expression. “Just point and press the trigger.” He loaded it with a strip of nails and had her test fire it a few times. At first, she closed her eyes and flinched at the sound of the gas releasing, missing her target completely, but by the third shot she had managed to control the nail gun well enough to at least hit the target, if not the bulls eye. “You’ll do,” he said.
There was little else of use to them. Saws and saw blades were dull and rusty and more likely to infect them than to inflict damage on an opponent. As well armed as they could expect to be, they left and went to the chemical room, checking out the shadows and each nook and cranny of the corridor as they went. Jeff took a deep breath and plunged through the doorway, shining his flashlight around.
“Empty,” he said, ushering her inside. He dogged the door shut knowing it would not keep out Damballah Wedo but might at least slow his zombies.
Lisa looked at him and sighed. “He’ll know what I’m up to as soon as I start the ritual. Don’t try to fight him. Concentrate on the walking dead. Keep them away from me.” She handed him the nail gun. “Here, you’ll need it more than I do.” He took the nail gun. With nail gun in one hand and hatchet in the other, he at least looked ready to fend off a zombie horde.
She reached and wrapped her arms around him. Her lips felt warm and alive amid so much death, a wonderful oasis from what lay before them. He did not want to leave it but she pulled away. Without another word, she donned the earphones and turned on the I-pod. She closed her eyes and began to sway to the beat he could not hear. Her mouth opened and she began to silently chant.
There were no candles, no five-pointed star. She was beyond the need for them now. Her power came from inside. At first, nothing happened. Then, slowly, the atmosphere in the room changed subtly. The walls began to dissolve, revealing nothing beyond but deep shifting shadows. There was no storm, no rain just shadows. The floor beneath Lisa followed, breaking apart and disappearing like a dream. Lisa was dancing on air. Jeff backed away from the nothingness until he had no place left to run. His back was against the last remaining wall. It, too, vanished and he was floating. They were no longer on Global Thirteen.
Slowly, things shifted and they were standing on a stone platform whose edges trailed off into nothingness. Visible on the near edge, surrounding the platform, shadow columns stood soldier-like in neat rows. The platform was open to the black, starless sky, a hypaethral palace. Amid and at times merging with these columns like passing shadows, he recognized familiar objects—the crane standing like a two-dimensional child’s drawing near the edge of the platform; metal stairs that led to nowhere; stacks of drums and pallets of garbage, each there but insubstantial, as if only shadows of the real objects. He knew that he and Lisa were still on Global Thirteen, but only the parts that impinged on Damballah Wedo’s habitat.
In the distance, he could see a dark red swirling mass that pulsed and contracted like a beating heart—Hurricane Rita. Between the heart of the storm and the platform, a shimmering veil hung in folds suspended in the air. A myriad of colors ran through it, impossible colors with no earthly counterpart, as if he could see deep into the infrared and ultraviolet and other unknown spectrum normally invisible to the human eye.
He knew that this was the Gateway between life and death. Crimson thread-like veins and arteries laced the air between the platform and the Gateway. They pulsed sickeningly as they fed the blood of the dead to the Gateway. Similar threads like streaks of lightning raced between the heart of Hurricane Rita and the Gateway. As the storm drew closer, the pent up energy, the animal rage of the storm, would power the Gateway, opening it forever. This was what Damballah Wedo wanted; the thing he had broken ranks with the other Loas to achieve.
Lisa continued to dance. She twirled maddeningly, becoming almost invisible as nascent mists of arcane energy enveloped her body. She bent forward until her forehead touched stone and backwards just as far, as limber as a green willow twig. Her feet seemed at times to slip both above and below the stones of the floor, as if her dance transcended the limits of Damballah Wedo’s abode.
Far in the distance, north toward New Orleans, a tiny silver light glowed. It seemed to pulse and reach for her and her for it. Instinctively, Jeff knew this miniscule point of light was the others she had spoken of, those in New Orleans capable of fighting Damballah Wedo. It looked pathetically insignificant compared with the red pulsing heart of the approaching storm.
A foul stench blew in on a light breeze, the odor of death. He knew his part in the battle was coming soon. He readied himself. Shadows shifted slightly near the columns, breaking away and becoming human-shaped—zombies, the walking dead. Jeff was surrounded. Lisa danced on oblivious to her surroundings, a slight smile playing on her lips. He knew without trying that she would not respond to him if he warned her. She was both there and elsewhere. It was up to him to keep her safe. That would be his contribution to this battle.
