Scarlet Dream

by James Axler

  Kane checked the position of the sun as he engaged his Commtact once more, calling on Cerberus to give further directions to their make-do shelter. The road around them appeared to be empty, a line of blacktop out in the middle of nowhere, far from the towering spires of the nearest ville.

  “Hang a left,” Brewster Philboyd’s calm voice directed over the radio contact in Kane’s skull. “The road curves gently away from the coast. You’ll find the house about one-fifty, one-seventy-five yards along. It’s set back a little from the road but it should be visible.”

  As Kane spoke, Grant recalled his Sin Eater to his hand with a whirring of motors from its holster and, without warning, drilled three rapid bursts of fire into the foliage by the dirt track they had just exited. Something lurched out of the bushes about fifteen feet down the road, a woman dressed in rags and struggling along with her lopsided gait—another of the undead. Grant’s shots slammed into her right shoulder and her torso, and the undead woman spun in place like some nightmarish ballerina, absorbing the impact of the shots as if they were nothing more than snowballs.

  “Dammit,” Grant stormed as the undead woman fixed him with her eerie, dark gaze, raising one withered hand and pointing at his group with a fleshless finger.

  Grant’s shots couldn’t do much, he knew, but keeping these things at a distance was preferable to tackling them up close.

  Then the undead woman began to shout, or at least what passed for shouting from her dry, rotten throat. It sounded like the brushing of reeds in the wind, but amplified a hundredfold into something terrible. As she called out, more of the undead forms stepped from the bushes and hurried along the dirt road to join her in their sickening, unbalanced way.

  “They’re learning,” Brigid stated ominously. “Calling to their friends.”

  Grant carefully sighted down the length of the Sin Eater once more and pumped a shot into the throat of the screaming woman, silencing her despite the distance between them. As a Magistrate, Grant had been highly trained in the effective use of many weapons; he considered there was nothing remarkable about his marksmanship under duress.

  To Grant’s side, Brigid added a hail of bullets from her TP-9, cutting the woman down as she reached for her ruined throat. Already other undead figures were lurching ominously along the dirt track, heading relentlessly onward toward the Cerberus teammates.

  “Come on,” Kane urged, “let’s keep moving.”

  With that, Kane led the way at a fast jog along the ruined blacktop, Grant and Brigid hurrying at his heels. Grant kept checking over his shoulder as the group rushed down the curving road, and finally he spotted more of the shambling, undead figures emerging from the entrance to the dirt track. Others came lurching out of the vegetation along the side of the road, until Grant counted nine of them making their slow, relentless way toward the retreating Cerberus warriors.

  Then Kane spotted the mansion house, exactly where Philboyd had advised. It was set back twenty feet from the road’s edge, a gravel drive made up of pale stones the color of sand leading to its wide front door. The door was painted a rich maroon, its luster like bruised flesh. The house itself was three stories, with high windows arrayed across its front, reflecting the rays of the late-morning sun. A small flight of steps led to the magnificent front door, which was framed by twin columns holding aloft a portico.

  Kane stopped at the edge of the driveway for a moment, examining the building and its dark slate roof. Despite Brewster’s description, it didn’t look run-down at all. In fact, it seemed to be in wonderful condition.

  As the Cerberus trio made their way along the path, Kane and Brigid walking abreast with Grant walking backward to keep his eyes on anything that might be following them, the majestic door to the house swung open and the wide figure of a portly woman stood there, her face hidden within the shadows of the hallway beyond.

  “Welcome, weary strangers,” the woman called, and her voice was as rich and as dark as coffee sweetened with muscovado sugar. “Welcome to the House Lilandera.”

  Kane and Brigid exchanged a confused look as they continued to stride up the pathway toward the open door, Grant trailing behind them as he watched the entryway to the drive.

  “No need to be worried,” the woman assured them from the shadows. “Every stranger is welcome here, be he waif or stray.” And then she let out a laugh, a deep, throaty chuckle that sounded faintly perverse.

  Kane offered the woman in the doorway a smile and a wave. Through his clenched teeth, he muttered to Brigid, “Keep your eyes open.”

  Out of options, all three Cerberus warriors made their way up the steps and into the House Lilandera.

  Chapter 10

  At the Cerberus facility in Montana, Brewster Philboyd was busy explaining the situation to his colleague, Donald Bry, as they sat together in the operations center. Bry, a short man with a mess of copper-colored curls atop his head and a permanent expression of concern, nodded in sour agreement.

  “If this Red Weed virus is unleashed, the death toll would be catastrophic,” Bry said. “We’d be looking at a megacull the likes of which hasn’t been seen on this planet since the nuclear hostilities in 2001. Maybe worse.”

  “So what can we do?” Brewster asked. “Once this catalyst is formulated, the Weed effectively goes live. It doesn’t even need to come into direct physical contact. So long as enough of the catalyst is in the air of the facility housing, the Red Weed will set it off.”

  “And the Weed is so virulent,” Bry noted as he scanned the file on Philboyd’s terminal screen, “that it would spread like wildfire. Could we close down the entire redoubt, do some kind of remote lockdown on the place, sealing the virus inside?”

  “Difficult verging on impossible,” Philboyd concluded, shaking his head. “The door’s already been broken open, so we’d be looking at serious reconstruction work to make it airtight. This catalyst cycle completes in eleven hours.”

  “But there must be…” Bry began, scratching at his head as he pondered. “Dammit, we need Lakesh. He’s been to the facility.”

  “Where is he?” Brewster asked, peering around the hectic operations room.

  “He’s taken a couple of hours to himself,” Bry explained. “Domi said he was exhausted, though I can’t think why.”

  With a “humph” of acknowledgment, Philboyd turned back to his screen. “We need a counteragent, just as Brigid proposed,” he said.

  “I’ll put a team on it,” Bry agreed. “You look into the possibility of sealing the redoubt.” Then he made his way across the room to where Reba DeFore, the Cerberus physician, was working at her terminal close by the entry door. “Reba, how is your knowledge of toxicology?”

  “So-so,” DeFore said, holding her hand out, palm down, and tilting it in the air.

  “We need to find a way to turn back this Red Weed,” Bry said, “and it seems that the catalyst is the weak link. If we can find a way to break that, we could prevent any outbreak of this virulent bioengineered anthrax. Your thoughts?”

  “Get the chemists together,” DeFore said, brushing a loose strand of her ash-blond hair from her face. “We’ll see what we can do.”

  KANE AND BRIGID RUSHED through the door and past the woman holding it open in front of them, with Grant following a moment later.

  “Welcome, welcome,” the woman said in her treacle-rich voice.

  Kane looked at her, seeing her in the light for the first time. She was a little over five feet tall with coffee-dark skin. Although she was short, the woman was wide, making Kane think of her almost like some second door made of flesh that would open and close to allow callers entry to her domain. Her thick hair seemed uneven, brushed in such a way as to clump around the center line of her head. She was dressed in a floor-length dress of a red like blood, low cut over the bosom to show off an ample décolletage. A string of glistening pearls was wrapped double around her neck, the second loop hanging low to her navel. Her fingers seemed to flash with lightning where rings of s
ilver, platinum and gold encircled each of her stubby digits. She even wore rings on her thumbs, two on the right thumb and one on the left, a flat gemstone laid in the latter’s center twinkling with the purple of amethyst. Her chocolate-rich eyes met with Kane’s, sitting in pools of white turned yellow, and a broad smile lit her face, bringing with it the cracks and wrinkles of age. At a guess, Kane would say she was in her fifties, maybe older.

  “And what brings you to the House Lilandera, handsome stranger?” the woman asked as she openly admired Kane.

  Still standing close to the open doorway with his Sin Eater clutched in his hand, Kane peered back outside, warily observing the shambling undead as they stalked along the gravel drive toward the vast house. They seemed to have slowed, walking less purposefully now as if they had lost track of their quarry. Grant and Brigid had taken up positions to either side of the open doorway, Grant’s own weapon trained on the shambling creatures as they lurched nearby, Brigid with the steel pole poised and ready in her grip.

  “You might want to close this door,” Kane urged the dark-skinned woman. “We don’t seem to be keeping the best of company today.”

  The woman followed Kane’s line of sight, squinting slightly as she peered out the door; she was short-sighted, Kane realized.

  “Them?” the short woman said, and there was a note of laughter in her rich voice. “They won’t come in here, my darling. This place is only for the living. The beautiful, beautiful living.”

  Grant and Brigid exchanged looks before turning their attention back to the shadowy figures outside the door.

  “I’m not sure they make the distinction,” Kane said, firmly pushing the door closed with a press of his hand.

  Once Kane shut the outside door, it seemed as if the interior itself took on new light. A low-hung chandelier warmed the place with its creamy glow. The Cerberus rebels found themselves standing in an old-fashioned hallway, mock Victorian with wood paneling in a rich chestnut, polished so that it gleamed beneath the rich glow of that ornate chandelier. A wide staircase led upward into the second story of the building.

  The hall was decorated with paintings, each one mounted in a golden frame that had been enlivened with velvets of the richest reds and purples. The way the material hung gave the impression of drapes, as if the paintings were windows half hidden from view. Kane took a step closer, the better to appraise the nearest painting between its rich, velvety curtains. It showed a well-proportioned man, naked and glistening with sweat, sodomizing a braying goat with his phallus. The man had dark hair, cut short like Kane’s own, and for a moment Kane felt a strange mixture of repulsion and embarrassment, as if the painting showed himself committing the sin, as if some terrible inner desire had been laid bare for all to see. The broad brushstrokes of the face looked eerily like his own.

  Kane turned away, focusing his attention on the round woman who had welcomed them to her house. She had moved from the door, leaning now against the banister to the wide staircase. The stairs were thickly carpeted in the deep, rich red of autumnal leaves, and Kane saw human figures had been carved into the banister, their rounded shapes polished so they shone. Like the painting, these, too, were engaged in graphic sexual acts, and Kane struggled to turn away, fascinated and repelled all at once. Though static, the carved figures seemed animated, as if they might move at any moment.

  “What kind of house is this?” Kane asked, his voice low and wary.

  “A celebration of life,” the dark-skinned woman said, smiling her broad smile. She intertwined her fat fingers in front of her, and their rings glittered as they caught the overhead light. “A place where everyone can find a friend, my darling. Just you see.”

  “We’re not looking for friends,” Kane assured her, “just a place to catch our breath while we figure out what’s going on.”

  The round woman gestured with her stubby arm, indicating a lounge that resided through an open door along the wide, warmly lit passageway. “You stay as long as you like,” she told Kane, taking in his companions with an incline of her head. “As long as you like.”

  Standing close to the front door, Grant was peering through a side window there, watching the driveway outside.

  “Grant?” Kane said.

  Grant turned from the window. “They’re still out there, but they don’t seem to be approaching the house yet. I guess they didn’t see us come in.”

  “Won’t take them long to figure it out,” Brigid stated dourly. “It’s not like there’s a myriad of places we could have gone.”

  Before Kane could reply, the woman who seemed to own the house spoke up. “They won’t come in here,” she explained, shaking her head confidently. “They’re drawn to the living, but they’re afraid of them, too. Afraid of meeting the same fate they suffered once before. I imagine it must be a tremendous burden, knowing what it feels like to be dead.”

  Kane’s eyes narrowed as he assessed the woman in front of him, realizing there was much more to her than met the eye. “Have you seen a lot of this? Dead folks getting up and walking around?” he persisted.

  “Since as long as I can remember, though that isn’t very long,” the woman replied cryptically. “People call me Ellie, by the way, so you nice folks might as well, too.”

  “Well, Ellie, I’m Kane,” Kane told her, before indicating his companions. “Grant, Brigid Baptiste…”

  Brigid offered her hand to the shorter woman, who grasped it firmly, the bracelets on her wrist clattering as they shook hands. Brigid’s slender hand looked small in Ellie’s paw.

  “Well, well, aren’t you just pretty as a cloud,” Ellie said, eyeing Brigid with approval. “A pale child as beautiful as you would be a treat to our honored gentleman callers.”

  Brigid dismissed the comment, not quite sure of how to take it. “What do you know about the things outside?” she asked. “They are dead people, aren’t they?”

  “Don’t need me to tell you that,” Ellie assured her, “not a sweet and clever young lady like you.”

  Brigid found herself taken aback by the compliment. While it was no doubt a social grace, she felt as if it meant something more, that this Ellie woman had looked into her soul with those chocolate-rich eyes, seen the aspects that came together to make her. It was weird. “Th-thank you,” the beautiful Cerberus warrior stuttered, feeling disconcerted.

  Still peering through the side window, Grant saw the corpselike figures meandering along the shingle track. Just a few minutes before, they had been savagely determined, relentless in their pursuit of the Cerberus field team under the tutelage of their rotting mistress. Now they seemed idle, confused, as if they had forgotten their purpose for coming here. Whatever effect this house had, it seemed to be the equivalent of stealth tech, hiding it from the view of the walking dead. There was something very peculiar going on here; that was for certain.

  With a sweep of her skirts, Ellie led the way into the lounge. Like the hallway before it, the lounge was richly decorated, its walls painted a lustrous red, the lighting low and intimate.

  “You all make yourselves at home,” Ellie instructed, indicating the cushioned seating of the cozy room. She turned then, exiting the room to give them some privacy.

  There were several couches, each of them plumped up with cushions. Kane walked across the room, feeling the soles of his boots sinking into the thick carpet. The room smelled of vanilla, and he noticed incense burning from three sticks in an ornate holder on the low coffee table, their smoke trails puffing languidly into the air. A well-stocked drinks cabinet with a glass front lined one wall, and beside it a bookcase towered almost to the ceiling. The shelves of the bookcase were lined with thick volumes bound in leather, and Brigid Baptiste couldn’t resist taking a step toward it, eyeing their titles for a brief instant.

  “What is this place?” Kane muttered, keeping his voice low.

  Grant slapped Kane on the back and laughed. “I think we just hit the honey pot, partner. This here is what they call a house of ill repute,
where a boy becomes a man.”

  Brigid looked at them both and rolled her eyes once more. “Let’s just get on with it,” she said, “and get out of here.” With that, the red-haired former archivist took up a position on one of the luxurious couches, resting the steel pole beside her, propped at an angle against the seat.

  “Something’s not right here,” Kane stated, his voice quiet.

  “We’ve come to the conclusion that one of our arch foes has come back from the dead and is proceeding to raise the dead,” Brigid concluded sarcastically as Grant took up a seat beside her. “Yes, I think you’re correct, Kane—something isn’t right here.”

  “No,” Kane said, turning to examine the low-lit room they were now in. “This place. There’s something—”

  Kane stopped himself as Ellie returned, bustling through the doorway carrying with her a silver tray on which rested a bowl of dried fruits. She placed the bowl on a low table in the center of the room, within reaching distance of Brigid’s seat, before shuffling over to the drinks cabinet. “Help yourself,” Ellie cooed encouragingly. “Now, what would you nice folks be drinking today?”

  “We’re not—” Kane began and stopped himself.

  “I’m sure there’s something here you’ll like,” Ellie insisted as she stood in front of her drinks cabinet.

  Kane did see something he liked there, reflected in the glass of the drinks cabinet. He turned to see more clearly and watched as, striding down the stairs in the hallway, a shapely woman appeared, dressed in whispers of white lace, her long blond hair trailing past her shoulders and down, over the swell of her breasts. The thin whisper of her white garment ended at her hip, leaving those long, shapely legs bare as she strode slowly to the foot of the staircase, her smooth skin shining in the warm glow of the chandelier. Meeting his eye, the blonde woman played her tongue slowly over her lips, her blue eyes narrowing and the hint of a smile tugging at the edges of her painted mouth. Her eyes were the color of a cornflower’s petals, the color of the assassin.