“Is he an older Hispanic man who weighs about three hundred pounds?” I asked, hoping the kid would describe the bomber instead.
“Nah, man,” he replied, bouncing the ball. “Dude that lives there be young and look like he come from Iraq, except he ain’t got no beard. You a cop? What he do—beat somebody for making too much noise?” He snorted.
“No, nothing like that. And no, I’m not a cop. Do you know his name?”
“Nah. He always keep to hisself,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “If you ain’t a cop, why you looking for him? He owe you money?”
“No, it’s just important that I locate him. Did he ever have friends over?”
“Not that I ever seen. I told you, he crazy. I ain’t telling you nothing else.”
“That’s okay, you’ve been very helpful so far. Why don’t you go inside now?” I said, trying to usher him along so I could break into the apartment.
“Nah. Can’t dribble in the house. Wakes up my baby sister.”
“If I give you ten bucks, will you go back inside?”
The kid stopped dribbling and stared at me for a few seconds.
“Twenty bucks,” he finally said, sticking out his chin and tossing the ball between his hands.
“Fine.” I pulled some money out of my wallet. Normally, I would never flash money in a place like that, but I was far from normal. I handed the kid two tens. “Now, will you go back inside? You’ll be safer that way.”
“I knew it. You gonna kill him!” the kid responded excitedly.
“No, I’m not. In fact, he’s already dead. Now go back inside,” I pleaded.
“Whatchu mean, he already dead? Somebody else cap his ass?”
“Look, kid, I gave you twenty bucks, now just go back inside.” I was beginning to worry that our conversation would attract unwanted attention from other residents. I glanced down the hall to make sure we were still alone, and my jacket fell open, giving the kid a good view of the gun under my arm.
He barely even registered a reaction. “That a nine?” he asked matter-of-factly.
What’s up with kids these days? “Yeah. Now go. Scoot!” I said through clenched teeth, waving him off.
The kid let out a sigh and bounced the ball back toward his door. Just before the kid closed the door completely, he looked up at me. “My brother went to talk to your guy the other day on account of all the noise he be making in the middle of the night. I heard the shouting through the walls, and then everything got real quiet. I ain’t seen Maurice since, but Momma say that’s ’cause he had to go do a job. Maurice ain’t never left on no job without saying bye to me and my baby sister.” He spoke softly, the tough street-kid attitude slipping away.
“I’m sure your brother’s just fine, kid,” I replied, a little upset with myself for being so abrupt with him. “Go on inside, now.”
The kid closed the door, and I made sure the hall was still clear. Satisfied I was alone, I pulled the Sig then pressed my shoulder to the door and shoved hard. It didn’t budge. There were only two deadbolt locks in addition to the knob, but apparently, it had been reinforced. To hell with it. I took a step back and performed a tactical entry.
The door flew open on its heavily reinforced hinges, with a thud that echoed through the hall. A normal door would have come right off, but this one stayed completely intact and hinged. I dropped down on one knee, raised my gun, and was instantly assaulted by the intensely sweet smell of decomposition and the buzzing sound of swarming flies.
Behind me, the kid’s door opened on its chain across the hall, and I immediately swung the door closed, covering my mouth and nose with the back of my gun hand. He may have been used to seeing guns around there, but I’d be damned if I was going to expose him to a dead body, especially since it might be his brother.
The curtains in this space were drawn, but there was still enough light that I could see. The ten-by-ten room was entirely devoid of furniture and decorations, but right in the middle of the floor, lying in a dark stain, was the lower half of a body, from just under its ribs down.
The legs, still wearing jeans, were askew as if they were badly broken and then tossed around. The feet were bare. The person had definitely been African-American, but I couldn’t tell if it was male or female without checking, and I really didn’t want to do that.
A similarly gruesome scene lay in the next small room, as well. I walked to the doorway to the bedroom, mouth and nose still covered, and leaned on the doorjamb to survey the carnage. The body was missing its arms, legs, and head, leaving behind only its partially clothed and badly mangled torso. A bloody, matted mess of long blond hair lay next to the body. This one was probably a woman.
As I made my way around the apartment, the only things I found were the remains of a destroyed cot in the bedroom and a camp stove in the space that served as a kitchen. There was one other doorway off the bedroom, which I assumed to be a bathroom, but I didn’t bother to check.
I crossed back out into the main room and sat on my heels next to the first body for a solid minute, debating whether I wanted to search it for a wallet for the kid’s sake. I finally decided I would check the pockets. I poked the front pockets with my gun, but they felt empty. I hooked a finger through a belt loop and rolled the legs slightly, and I could see the outline of a wallet in the right pocket. I set the gun down and reached for it.
From my left, I caught a blur of motion coming from the room with the blond corpse in it. Some creature vaguely resembling a massive dog slammed into me, sending me flying hard into the wall at the far side of the room, and then it crashed through the window, taking the curtain with it, gibbering a bizarre, high-pitched squeal as it ran.
I got to my feet as quickly as I could, scrambled to get my gun, and then ran to the window, but I was too late. The damned thing must have been hiding in the bathroom. It had taken out the window and the metal security grate that covered it from the outside without slowing down.
With all that noise, I was sure someone would call the cops, and I did not want to be here to explain these partial corpses, so I stuffed the dead guy’s wallet into my jacket pocket, holstered the Sig, and hopped out the window in an attempt to follow any tracks that might have been left behind. Back inside, I could hear someone banging on the apartment door.
Whatever it was that had barreled through the window left a messy set of deep divots in the grass. I followed them around the building, back toward Dwight Street, and found the curtain lying on the ground just before the sidewalk leading to the building’s main entrance. I continued to follow the trail of dirt and grass onto Dwight Street for about fifty yards until it finally petered out, and I lost it.
I hadn’t had much of a chance to search the apartment, but it didn’t seem like the bomber left much behind anyway. Other than being attacked by a giant dog, I had nothing but a corpse’s wallet. That was real bang-up detective work. It was twilight, and activity along the streets and in the playgrounds had completely died out, making for a quiet evening—much quieter than I would have expected, but maybe that was just the way it was here.
Without any other leads at the moment and since the tracks led down Dwight before they disappeared, I decided to continue along the street to see if anything presented itself. As I walked past the park opposite the housing project, I got the distinct impression that I was being followed.
CHAPTER 19
I learned long ago to trust my instincts, so even though I couldn’t pinpoint anything specific, I walked purposefully toward several expansive open lots just down the street. I crossed the split between Dwight and Otsego Streets and tried to keep my pace even as I approached a strip mall with a sizable parking lot out front surrounded by a six-foot chain-link fence.
The shopping center consisted of a bank, several small stores, and a supermarket, which I decided to duck into. I p
aid for a bottle of water and then drank it just outside the store to see if I could make out what was following me. It was hard to see much because neither of the two lampposts in the parking lot was functional. Despite being focused and wary, I spotted only a few cars in the lot and the occasional shopper walking to and from a vehicle.
Being followed was nothing new, but I had to remain vigilant to avoid being ambushed. I preferred to draw out whatever was tracking me, but that took time and at least an inkling of where they might be.
As I stood there, waiting and watching, I took a minute to check the wallet I’d taken off the corpse. Sure enough, it held a driver’s license for a Maurice Ingram, aged twenty-two, with an address in the Red Hook Houses. His ID put him at six-four, one hundred ninety pounds. Based on his remains back in the apartment, I never would have guessed he was that tall. Poor kid. I shook my head and put the wallet back into my pocket and refocused my efforts on spotting my tail.
After about fifteen minutes of garnering odd looks from a few locals and another bottle of water, I decided to keep walking in the darkness. That was when a group of guys about half a block away started making their way toward me from a side street just past the shopping center. In the moonlight, I could tell they weren’t dressed in any gang colors I could identify, but they definitely gave off thuggish vibes. They ambled toward me as a loose group, laughing and making comments about how stupid I must be to be out here at night alone. A couple of them made jokes about why I’d be there at all and how I probably should pay to pass through.
Just what I needed. I continued on, focusing more on my surroundings than on them, but I’d only made it across the street in front of a school-bus lot ringed by an eight-foot-tall corrugated-metal fence before they closed in on me.
I was sure these thugs weren’t what had been following me or what had attacked me in that apartment, and if either of those things showed up while I was forced to waste time dealing with these wannabes, the guys would likely just end up getting themselves, or me, killed. I attempted to push past, but they made it clear I was their target for the evening. I counted six men, at least four of them armed with guns. The oldest couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, and the youngest probably couldn’t even legally drive. All of them wore their pants so low they would have made Isaac Newton rethink his theories on gravity.
“I don’t want any trouble,” I said, dividing my attention between surveying my surroundings and trying to identify the leader.
“Trouble’s all you got,” said the tallest one just off to my right.
The others laughed and jostled around nervously while trying to act tough. I could see the fear in some of their eyes, but several others had the cold, dead eyes of kids who were used to violence. The nervous ones presented the real danger. They were unpredictable and often rash, the ones who shot people during a purse snatching because something startled them. And I wasn’t wearing my cuirass.
“Why don’t you pass over your wallet and anything else you got, before you make me shoot you,” the talker said as he dramatically pulled a gun from the front of his pants. The talker was taller than the others by a few inches and beefier, too. He wore a white tank top with way too many gold chains at his neck and a ball cap turned most of the way around. I could also see a glint of gold on his teeth every time he talked—and he was the only one saying anything. He was undoubtedly the leader.
The gun he pulled was a Smith and Wesson M&P nine millimeter—a street gun, easy to obtain, easy to get ammo for, and powerful enough to kill. He pointed it at me and held it sideways, the ridiculous way they did in movies, with his last three fingers extended rather than around the grip. I could have slapped it out of his hand.
“Look, guys, just walk away now, and everything will be okay. I’m just passing through,” I said as calmly as possible, turning myself so that I presented a smaller profile to the talker just in case he did pull the trigger.
That was when I got that paranoid sensation again: those guys definitely weren’t what was following me. My feeling was substantiated by a horrible screeching noise and what sounded like a car crashing. Something was making its way through the school-bus parking lot on the other side of the tall fence to my left, and it sounded as though it was pushing buses out of its way. Then two distinct calls, similar to the high-pitched gibbering I’d heard from the thing that blindsided me in the apartment, emanated from the lot.
“You guys better run now,” I said to the thugs as I pulled the Glock from my waistband and pushed through them to take cover behind some parked cars across the street. I was behind the car before they could even react.
The would-be gang members’ heads swiveled around as they tried to figure out what was going on and where I’d just gone. The only light on the darkened street came from a single streetlight at the other end of the block, but the rending of metal, the scraping of steel on cement, the shattering of glass, and the grinding of the buses being shoved around was hard to miss. Several of the gang members took off back up the street at a full sprint, clearly terrified. The three that stayed behind were either too scared to move or too stupid to know better.
“What the fuck’s going on in there? Where’d that dude get to?” one of them said with an audible tremor in his voice.
“You guys really should follow your friends—right now,” I shouted from behind the car.
“I ain’t runnin’ from nobody,” came the reply, followed by half a dozen quick pops from his gun as he fired into the car I was hiding behind.
“Suit yourself,” I said, popping my head up just long enough to see what was coming from the lot behind them. I looked from the bus lot to my gun, noting that the weapon was going to be practically useless against something that could move a bus. I could have pulled one of my knives, but I really didn’t want to have to get in close enough to something that strong and fight it with a knife—even a really sharp one—especially without my armor. At least with the gun I might get lucky and shoot whatever it was in the eye. More than likely, it would just irritate the crap out of it, but at least I could do that from a distance.
I poked my head out again just in time to see the two gang members who weren’t focused on me get flattened by a section of the sheet-metal fencing behind them as it suddenly sheared loose with a deafening explosion and smashed into them like a freight train. Driven by something massive, the mess of metal and human bodies continued straight into the car I was hiding behind with a thundering crash that slid the car sideways and knocked me on my butt. I got back into a crouch and could see and smell motor oil leaking all over the street and realized that what had gone through the fence and crushed the thugs was a fifty-five-gallon drum full of it. It must have weighed over four hundred pounds, and whatever was out there had tossed it like a baseball through a metal fence. As I once again contemplated the usefulness of my gun in this situation, I found myself thinking we could really use a guy like that on the Padres.
The remaining gunman froze. I, on the other hand, quickly crawled behind the next car to my right. As I raced between cars, I could see at least three figures inside the bus lot through the gaping hole in the fence. One was gigantic compared to the other two, but they all appeared humanoid as they crossed the lot toward Otsego Street. The giant creature walked completely upright, but the smaller ones alternated between loping on all fours and standing on two legs as they weaved back and forth across the lot like dogs on a scent trail. In the darkness, I couldn’t tell exactly what they were, and at three against one, I wasn’t sure I wanted to stick around to find out, so I sprinted down Otsego Street as fast as I could go.
I easily covered a hundred yards in less than four seconds before a guttural scream that I assumed came from the last gang member echoed from behind me, followed by two of those bizarre gibbering howls. The more I listened, the more it sounded just like a damned hyena’s laugh.
I s
topped running right outside a fenced community farm across from a brightly lit furniture store and realized I had to lead whatever these things were away from any kind of crowded places. I grabbed the top of the farm’s eight-foot chain-link fence and vaulted into the field beyond.
The farm was an open pasture a city block in size with a few small structures along its northern edge, which at least meant that whatever was following me couldn’t sneak up on me. The land had been plowed and planted with a few dozen rows of several kinds of vegetation that were all about a foot tall or less except for two sparse rows of corn along the south side of the field. The furniture store was just beyond the corn and across the street. The corn stalks were a foot and a half taller than everything else, but none of the vegetation offered enough real cover to hide behind. Still, it was all there was apart from the storage building, which would be too obvious, so I chose to head across the field to crouch among the diminutive stalks of corn.
I felt for my Sig in its holster under my jacket and pulled my knife from its sheath on my calf. This was really going to be ugly. My only chance was to attack at least one of the creatures as hard and fast as I could and take it out, evening up the odds just a bit. I waited, breathing in the earthy smell of the small urban farm.
It took a long few minutes, but I noticed movement coming from back up the street. A pair of oddly shaped dogs approached the fence, then one of them barked that laughing cry. They really were freakin’ hyenas.
The creatures stopped outside the fence where I’d jumped, and sniffed the air. The most massive of the pair tossed its head and let out a low laugh, and then the creatures leaped the fence in a single bound. In midair, they shifted into humanoid form, landing heavily in the tilled dirt, and the last piece clicked: they were ghouls—not just any ghouls, but Middle Eastern Ghilan, the least powerful of the various races of Jinn. Of course, that was still a relative observation. And while Ghilan may not have been the smartest kids in the class, they could not only shapeshift but could also assume the form of the last person they ate. In human form, the massive one had the appearance of a very stocky blond woman while the other looked like an African-American man.
Havoc Rising Page 13
