Halfway House

by Weston Ochse

  The face.

  The head.

  The brain.

  The mind of a Japanese soldier who’d been shoved headfirst in the ground for sixty years and was still capable of bleeding.

  Bobby didn’t want to think about it. Instead, he joined the others as they began to enlarge the excavation site so that they could more easily get to the rest of the soldier. First the knees, then a few minutes later the legs. Without the earth to support them, the legs flopped to the side. Lucy gestured for Bobby to stabilize them. Against his wishes, he stood and grasped each of the ankles. At first he held them at arm’s length, but the strain on his arms was too much, so he finally hugged the feet to his chest as he straddled the hole. Beneath him, the others kept working, revealing more of the soldier.

  The wool fabric of the uniform was rotting. Only the leather belt with ammo pouches and holster containing a black metal pistol and the leather strap crossing the soldier’s chest seemed to be serviceable. When the pistol was revealed, Vincent grabbed it and shoved it in his pocket. Trujillo glared at him for a moment, then went back to digging when Vincent merely smiled and shrugged.

  They hadn’t found any arms yet. When they dug down to the shoulders they found out why. Whatever had happened to the soldier, he’d seen it coming, because his arms had been raised to block his face, as if it would protect him from the wrath of the Bruja.

  Lucy exchanged glances with everyone. Manolo and the other banger named Freddie seemed ready to bolt. They had the same wild-eyed look in their eyes as a freshly captured animal. Vincent and Trujillo seemed unfazed. Blockbuster kept his lower lip firmly between his teeth. If Bobby had to guess, it was to keep from screaming.

  “Enough of this,” Lucy said, standing and dropping his shovel. Let’s do it by hand the rest of the way. Manolo, you and Freddie grab the arms. After we jerk it free of the hole, we’re going to lay the body over there.”

  Manolo and Freddie stared back without speaking.

  Lucy ignored them and came face-to-face with Bobby, grasping the soldier’s legs from the other side. He motioned with his head that they’d pull the body to the left. Bobby nodded. Lucy counted to three, then both of them jerked. At first the body wouldn’t move, but they strained. The massive muscles in Lucy’s shoulders bunched and jumped like snakes beneath his soiled T-shirt. With a final snarl, he jerked the body free.

  The sudden release sent Bobby staggering. Try as he might, he couldn’t find his balance and with a shout, he fell to the ground, still gripping the body. Lucy had let go. He stepped across the excavation and helped Bobby to his feet. They both grabbed the soldier’s legs and turned expectantly to Manolo and Freddie, but neither seemed willing to touch the body. Freddie began backing away as Manolo began to pray once more.

  “That’s fucked up,” Vincent cursed.

  Everyone’s attention went to the soldier’s face and took in the bulging eyes and the open mouth as a rotten tongue tried to work its way around words not spoken in more than half a century. What came out sounded like a cat at the end of its days, a noise as inhuman and gruesome as anything from Bobby’s nightmares.

  Bobby and Lucy dropped the legs as everyone stared. Bobby found it hard to breath. He wanted to run, but couldn’t figure out how to tell his legs. He might have never left his spot if Blockbuster had not done what he did. With a scream that would make Freddy Krueger proud, Blockbuster brought his shovel in an overhead swing onto the soldier’s face. The flat edge pummeled the features, blood gushing and exploding across the ground. He raised the shovel once more and brought it down with all his might. The nose imploded, pieces of bone jutting free as it merged with the skull.

  Still the thing wouldn’t stop its mewling.

  Blockbuster brought the shovel up once more, turned it a quarter turn, and brought the keen edge of the blade down across the neck. It severed like a stick of fridge-hardened butter as the head rolled back in the hole and blood drenched the California soil.

  Lucy cursed, knelt on the ground and reached into the hole. He grasped the head by the hair and pulled it free.

  That was it.

  Freddie bolted. Manolo fainted. Vincent and Trujillo grabbed each other by the shoulders, and Blockbuster fell to his knees.

  When Lucy turned the head so that he could see the face, he saw the eyes still bulging. The tongue wagged in an open mouth as the soldier began to moan.

  The eyes finally blinked, snapping Lucy from his fear. With a great heave of his arm, he hurled the soldier’s head high into the air, over the edge of the cliff and into the water below.

  Bobby tried to make sense of it. He had nothing to fall back on but comic book logic. If he believed in the magic that had made these things, then he had to believe in everything else. The soldiers were alive. They bled, but didn’t breathe. By the bulging eyes, it seemed that they somehow grasped the horror of their situation. They were locked in some kind of stasis, some magical paralysis that allowed their bodies to be the locus for the curse the Bruja had placed upon the land.

  What they had wasn’t contagious. They weren’t zombies, ready to rend and tear human skin. These were soldiers caught in the middle of a recon mission by the Bruja. They’d been rumored to have killed her daughter, which was probably right. If the girl had seen the soldiers, they’d have been forced to silence her. Not only was the Bruja’s rage consuming the souls of the dead, but it had forced these six men to live in a state of horror for more than sixty years. Raw fear transformed in Bobby’s mind to sympathy for their ordeal. This understanding, this adherence to comic book logic, enabled him to take charge of the ogling men and put them to task.

  Bobby explained to them what he knew and understood. He pointed out that there was really no reason to be afraid. Whatever magic the Bruja had used had been expended long ago and was locked in the bodies of the soldiers. The only moment of danger was when they burned them. Until then, this was just like digging up a stump.

  No big deal.

  The others were slow coming around. It was with Lucy’s added urging that they finally hurried to complete the project. After all, they had five more bodies to unearth.

  Bobby sent Blockbuster to retrieve the head while he, Lucy, Vincent and Trujillo continued to dig. They cleared a space along the cliff’s edge to pile the bodies. They placed driftwood in a thick layer beneath them for the accelerant to feed the fire when they burned them. The first body already lay atop the wood, decapitated. Blockbuster returned empty-handed, unable to find the head in the outgoing tide.

  The second soldier was wedged firmly and it took four of them to pull it free. The third soldier came away easily as the dirt began to cascade into the trench that was forming. The fourth and fifth soldiers soon lay beside the others. While they unearthed the last soldier, Blockbuster went to the van and returned with a gas can. When the bodies were stacked, eyes bulging, mouths moving in partially paralyzed forgotten words, he emptied the can onto them.

  By this time only Freddie showed fleeting signs of his initial fear. All but Manolo had become angry. The idea that this had been done to living humans because of one woman’s anger slid under their skin and lodged there. And as far as Manolo, he couldn’t stop crying. He couldn’t explain it, nor was he asked to. His response was a perfectly reasonable reaction to something this horrible.

  They retrieved the lookout from down below and sent him to the van. He rushed by the pile of bodies, unwilling to look. Finally they all stood back. Lucy said a brief prayer then tossed a lit book of matches onto the pyre.

  The bodies erupted in a whumpff.

  The flame went from blue to yellow to an unearthly green. The smell of the algae-soaked waves was replaced by a putrid stench as the skin began to crackle as the internal fluids began to boil. Thick acrid smoke billowed and gushed with the wind, sometimes blocking the bodies from view, sometimes pouring into the faces of the onlookers. In the trench, the bodies moved as the flames gripped and moved them. Their hands came up in a pugilistic stance a
nd their knees curled upwards into a fetal position.

  Bobby and the others stayed until the skin had burned enough to reveal bone, then found they could stay no more. They piled into the van and pulled away. Exhausted as they were, they knew what had to come next.

  * * *

  They parked the van in the parking lot of the Vons Grocery Store on Gaffey Street. Three of its windows had been shot out the night before and were boarded up. Other than that it was business as usual.

  Blockbuster had left to get Lucy’s abuela so they could find the spot where the Bruja’s daughter was buried. She’d seen it once as a child, and believed she still knew where it was.

  One-armed Polo was in the store buying beer and tamales from the deli.

  Manolo, Vincent, Bobby and Lucy sat against the insides of the van, staring at the floor between them, coming to grips with what they’d done. That they’d lain to rest the souls of the soldiers wasn’t in doubt, but hacking and burning the undying bodies wasn’t something common, even to the gangbanger lexicon.

  It was Lucy who finally broke the heavy silence. “You got all that from comic books?”

  “Sure.” Bobby shrugged. “Think of them as primers for what to do in the event of an apocalypse, meteor shower, invasion of aliens or robots or godlings or zombies, or any type of undead or fantastical creature that you might think of.”

  “The Bruja included?” Manolo asked.

  “The Bruja included.”

  Lucy nodded and closed his eyes. Manolo still needed to understand. “Weren’t you scared? I thought you were scared like the rest of us.”

  “Me? I was scared shitless. But the DC Universe has done this before. Marvel did it with Doc Strange. There are rules to magic, just as there are rules to physics. If you know the rules, you can win. Half the battle is knowing the rules.”

  “I don’t get it. How do you know there are rules?” Manolo asked.

  “There are always rules. Everyone and everything has a kryptonite.”

  “Like Superman,” Lucy murmured without opening his eyes.

  “Exactly!” Bobby opened one hand and began to count on his fingers. “But it’s different for everyone. For Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four, it’s severe cold. Ever try and use a rubber band when it’s cold outside? They snap and break.”

  “Not much winter here,” Vincent said.

  “And for the Green Lantern it’s the color yellow.”

  “Yellow what?” Manolo asked.

  “Yellow anything. A yellow tree. A yellow bus. A yellow rock. A yellow Jell-O mold. Whatever. The point is that power of his ring can’t work on anything yellow.”

  Vincent leaned forward. “So what is it about the Bruja? What’s her kryptonite?”

  Bobby shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  “But for this to work, then we need to know her kryptonite,” Lucy said. “We need her yellow so we can get past the magic.”

  Manolo nodded. He leaned forward and repeated Vincent’s question. “What’s her yellow? What’s her kryptonite? What is it that will make us win?”

  Bobby smiled sheepishly. “I was actually hoping to force our way inside, beat the living hell out of the wardens and bring the whole place down.”

  “So we just take down the building?” Manolo asked.

  “Just like in Assault on Precinct 13,” Bobby said.

  Manolo grinned. “I like that one. Samuel L. is the shit.”

  Vincent shook his head, “He’s not in that movie.”

  “Which one, the old version or the new?” Lucy asked.

  “Either.”

  “Then who is the black guy?” Manolo asked.

  “Laurence Fishburne.”

  Lucy, who’d been trying to figure it out himself, snapped his fingers when Vincent gave the answer.

  But Manolo didn’t recognize the name. “Who?”

  “The guy who played in Matrix,” Lucy said. He held his hands out as if it were the most obvious thing. “He was Morpheus, the leader of the resistance.”

  “Oh yeah, him. Badass.”

  Lucy sat back, smiling.

  Bobby couldn’t help but smile, too. Nothing like a little pop culture to calm them. Who said television would rot your brain? Without the comfort of it, they’d be unable to continue.

  “So we’re gonna bust the place down.” Lucy nodded and massaged a fist. “Not so sophisticated as most plans, but it’ll do.”

  “We’re going to need everyone,” Vincent pointed out.

  “That we are. Round them up. We’ll hit the place at ten. Hopefully that’ll give Blockbuster enough time to find the body of the daughter.”

  “What if he can’t find it?” Bobby asked.

  “Then he can’t. Either way, when we find the Bruja we’re going to have to destroy the body and burn it, like we did the Japs.”

  Like we did the Japs.

  Bobby remembered the faces of the Japanese soldiers and how terrified they’d looked. Somehow he didn’t think the Bruja would accept salvation as easily. She was the monster who’d started this whole thing, and it was her magic that linked it all together. She wouldn’t be as easy to put down as they hoped. She couldn’t possibly be.

  Chapter 31

  Fourteen cars, trucks and vans carrying forty men converged on the halfway house. There’d been some thought to parking along side streets and slipping silently through the shadows, but they’d opted for the bum’s rush instead.

  The first car skidded over the curb and stopped inches from the door, surprising the three wardens huddling outside for a late-night smoke. Of the mourners there was no sign. By the time the third and fourth cars made the street a parking lot, the lead shock troops were barreling out of the first car, wielding the finest in brand-new Louisville Sluggers. Three swings and a miss was all it took to plant the wardens in the ground.

  When it was over the survivors would have to answer to the authorities and explain the unexplainable. So it was with the greatest seriousness that Lucy commanded his Angels use only weapons that could be used for other things. No guns or knives; his men were to use things such as pool cues, baseball bats and crow bars. As the cars emptied, Angels of all shapes and sizes leapt out, wielding implements of daily life with the occasional rake and shovel making it all the more like that night at Castle Frankenstein where the villagers rose up in indignation.

  The three gangbangers grinned with the flower of violence full on their faces. Their eyes glowed white in the headlights as they turned and ran down the side of the building to guard the back door. Two more joined them as the remainder of the forty men drew up in front of the halfway house, eager to free the souls of the dead, eager to avenge their loved ones. The house that they’d passed a thousand times had become a dread beast, corrupting the destiny of San Pedro souls. They hadn’t thought of it that way until Lucy gave his speech, but by the time he was through, they were ready to fight, even if it meant dying. Their very own souls hung in the balance.

  Before the battle, they’d sat in their cars along the side streets, listening as Lucy poured his heart through the walkie phones.

  “For too long the halfway house has eaten the souls of those we loved, those who spent a life of hand-to-mouth hardship and expected a celestial reward. How can we stand by and let it happen again and again? How can we let those we love go to a doom they never wanted or earned? There comes a time when the people of a village must rise up and destroy the cancer living in their midst. We are those people, my Angels. We are the chosen few who will free this land from the evil the Bruja laid upon us. We are those who will gladly give our lives so that hundreds of thousands can gain salvation. Whether it be heaven, whether it be hell...at least it’s not the halfway house.”

  Bobby remembered Lucy pausing here. All that could be heard was the big man’s breathing through the phone. During those moments Bobby polled his own heart, as probably every Angel was doing, to see if this was what he truly wanted to do. To give his life? Having never had a family, Bo
bby didn’t even hesitate. Kanga, Laurie, Lucy and the Angels were as close to a family as he’d ever had, and if having a family meant this sort of sacrifice, then sacrifice he would.

  “You must decide for yourselves. This isn’t just an Angel thing we do, this is a human thing, so it is as humans and residents of San Pedro that I ask you to join me in delivering this land from an evil that has eaten upon the fabric of our existence for too long. And as those villagers did when they assaulted the great castle of Frankenstein, we must show no mercy. Those creatures in thrall to the Bruja, these gray-garbed wardens, are as imps, devilish minions who would stop us in this, our holy endeavor.”

  Bobby and Lucy had worked on what to say while drinking beers in the van in the Vons parking lot, culling references from comic books that Lucy remembered as well as television shows, using words and ideas that had left both of them staring in awe at the page and the screen, wishing they could be a part of the action instead of passive observers.

  “We must strike them down. Do not give them another moment’s breath of freedom. Remove them from our land and then continue into the house. Our goal is the Bruja. Once a woman of great magic, I don’t know what power she has left. I don’t know what to expect. So be wary as you seek the dead witch. Take care that your eyes don’t deceive you. For it is in her nature to deceive, and to save herself there may be nothing she won’t do.”

  They’d wondered aloud what they might encounter. A witch who could keep the Jap soldiers undead and upside down all these years was more dangerous than a loaded .45, and they were walking right down the barrel.

  So they planned. They had overturned tractor trailers at every major intersection south of tenth street and along Harbor Boulevard so the police couldn’t disturb them. They had found a salvaged tug berthed in the shipyard on Terminal Island and set it ablaze, which would keep the ghetto birds busy.

  Lucy would lead the first stage of the attack right through the front door of the house. Trujillo and a dozen Angels were the second stage and would climb the palms in front and enter from the third floor. Bobby, Vincent, Woody, Boonie, and Mark Nunez waited across the street inside the martial arts dojo. With actual firepower, they’d act as reinforcements and come when they were called.