The rearmost creatures moved against me, reaching, chomping, eyes wide. They were new, and only minutes before had been guests of the resort, happy, carefree, normal kids, with normal lives. I shoved those thoughts aside and went about my gruesome business. My knife was heavy, curved. It was designed for taking off limbs, and I put it to work.
Teeth. Snapping closed inches from my arms. I reversed my blade and cleaved the jaw off of a zombie with a Chico State tee shirt. I realized I was screaming, bellowing something incomprehensible. The cop had regained his senses enough to reload his shotgun. He fired and I was concussively sprayed with brains. I stepped aside, hoping not to catch a stray piece of buckshot, and the final zombies followed me, having zeroed in on the scent of my flesh.
There were three of them, and they were piling on top of each other to reach me. I backed away, swinging at anything that presented itself, leaving fingers and the occasional hand on the ground. The zombies didn't seem to notice. My feet slipped on the now sodden carpet and I slid against the check-in desk. Lunging forward, I slammed the tip of my knife through a nasal cavity, and then jumped back as the final two grabbed at me. My knife handle, slick with gore, slipped from my fingers, still lodged in the falling zombie's skull. Now I was really hosed.
I grabbed the desk and vaulted over it, landing painfully on the other side. The zombies flung themselves at the counter and started to wiggle over, their fingers and stumps flailing at me. Lying on my back, I kicked one of the things in the face hard enough to put bone fragments through its brain, launching it back over the counter. I leaned forward, swatted aside the last zombie's arm, avoided the snapping teeth, grabbed it by the side of the head and twisted. The blood-soaked mess was too slippery for a solid grasp, so I shoved my thumbs through the squishy eye sockets for leverage and twisted violently to the side. There was a brutal crunch and the final undead flopped down, twitching.
"I… hate… zombies…" I lay on the floor in a rapidly spreading pool of blood as the last corpse was drained by gravity. The lobby was quiet. The clock on the wall read 12:21. I gradually pushed myself up and glanced over the counter. It looked clear. There was a pile of bodies heaped in the entryway, but none of them had made it to the street. Gunfire could be heard in multiple directions now, so hopefully my team had gotten on the outbreak quick enough to keep it contained. The sucky part now was going to be isolating the bitten survivors. I had to get to my radio.
The Mexican cop stepped gingerly through the shattered window. His Mossberg was shaking and he was hyperventilating. I recognized the feeling, the feeling that a regular person gets when they find out that the world they live in was not really as it was supposed to be. It could be a real bummer. I walked slowly around the counter, my dripping hands open in front of me. I knew that I had to look terrible, covered in all manner of disgusting stuff, and I didn't want him to mistake me for another zombie.
"Hey, amigo. I'm a friend," I said calmly.
He looked at me in shock, leveled the muzzle at my chest and pulled the trigger. The click of the firing pin landing on the empty chamber was extremely loud. I jumped about two feet straight up.
"Whoa! I'm human! Easy!" I shouted, raising my hands high. "I'm one of the good guys. Soy un hombre bueno."
He nodded slowly, some comprehension dawning in his shocked eyes. I nodded back. Sirens approached. A green truck with Policia on the side screeched to a halt in front of the hotel and men with M-16s jumped out of the back. I looked back to the cop, ready to congratulate him on a job well done, but the last thing I saw was the butt of his shotgun sailing toward my forehead.
Chapter 2
"Do you know what the penalty for having illegal firearms in Mexico are, Senor Pitt?"
"Like a million years per bullet?" I responded. The police interrogator shook his head sadly, nodded at his subordinate, and my head snapped back as the junior policeman hit me. He was wearing some sort of weighted leather glove, and it hurt pretty bad. I leaned my head forward and spit blood on the plastic table. Somehow I had managed to cultivate a hobby of being beaten up by law enforcement officers. On the bright side, this guy was a featherweight compared to my old buddy Special Agent Franks. Now that guy knew how to beat a confession out of somebody.
"You are being held on suspicion of murder, Senor Pitt. I have over seventy bodies to explain, and somebody will be held accountable. I assure you that our justice system is not as lenient as your own." I didn't think that that many tourists had been bitten, so they must be charging me for the original zombies too. I suppose the fact that they had obviously been dead for months wasn't going to help me.
I had no idea where I was, or how long I had been out, having woken up in the back of a truck with a sack tied over my head. Since the air tasted like burning tires, I was guessing that I had been taken inland, and if I had been unconscious long enough, I might even be in Mexico City. The interrogator's English was excellent. He was short, pudgy, with a bad comb-over, but his manner indicated that he was not a man to be trifled with. "Now why did you have multiple firearms and illegal military equipment in your room?"
"About that, any chance I can get some of those guns back? The shotgun and the matching set of. 45s? Those have sentimental value…" I went back to the question before he had the chance to signal the other cop to hit me again. "Really, like I already said, contact the consulate. We have written permission from your government. I'm here as an independent security consultant. Our weapons were allowed per the terms of the contract."
"And what exactly was your duty in Mexico?"
"I already told you I'm not at liberty to disclose that." The Mexican government had a policy similar to the United States' official position: Monsters Do Not Exist. The rules are idiotic, but for those of us who made our living cashing in on these governments' bounties for unnatural creatures, we always had to be careful to tiptoe around the truth with the general public. It may have been evil, it may have been stupid, but it was policy. And the people who enforced that policy had no problem shooting people like me if we talked too much. "Just call your superiors. This is all a misunderstanding."
He nodded at the other police officer, and I braced myself for the impact. This time he hit me above the kidney. I grunted. It hurt, but he didn't really drive the fist in there. When you're hitting somebody in the body, you need to punch through the target, not at it. Amateur.
"We already contacted them." The interrogator took out a pack of cigarettes, shook one out, and lit it with a gold-plated Zippo. "Sadly, they said that they had no knowledge of you, your organization, or why you are here."
It sounded like MHI had just been disavowed. Not good. "Well… there's been a mistake then."
"Certainly, merely just a, how would you say? Clerical error." He nodded, and this time I was pelted across the back of my head. At least the guy hitting me was getting some variety. This was bad, very bad. There was no way that the Mexican government had just forgotten about a team of American Monster Hunters. They were going to deny that they had ever contacted us. Better that than to admit there were supernatural creatures on their soil. They were probably already spinning some story to cover up the zombie outbreak and I was willing to bet that my team wasn't going to fit in with the official version of events.
"I can show you our copies of the contract, signed by your state governor. All I need is one phone call."
"I think not. My superiors and the governor's office have already confirmed that they have signed nothing. You are a liar and I'm tiring of this game."
Options were starting to run thin and I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in a Mexican jail. So I guess that meant it was time to see if the interrogator could handle the truth. "Okay, I'll talk."
"I'm waiting."
I gestured with my head at the other cop. It was the best I could do since my forearms and ankles had been zip-tied to the sturdy chair. "Does this guy speak English?"
The interrogator held up his thumb and forefinger. "Un poco, a li
ttle."
My whole body ached. At least if I could get rid of Cop #2 they'd quit hitting me for a while. "You might want him to wait outside. You don't want what I'm about to tell you to get out, if you know what I mean."
The interrogator slowly exhaled a thick cloud of smoke. The three of us were in a small, plain room. The only furniture was my chair, his chair, and a cheap plastic table. There was a bloody phonebook, a pair of needle-nose pliers, and a five-gallon bucket of water sitting in the corner. I didn't want to guess what those were for. Finally he gestured for the younger cop to leave. I heard the snap of a crisp salute, and then the opening and closing of the door behind me.
"Any chance we can settle this with some good old-fashioned bribery?" I asked. "My company's very generous."
"Mordida? Maybe if I only had one or two bodies. But this many? And half of them Americans? I'm afraid not. You see, someone must be executed for this. Tell me what I want to know, and it might not be you."
"Gotcha. Figured as much, but you never know until you ask. I didn't think you had the death penalty here."
He shrugged. "There is the unofficial death penalty. So let us continue, Senor Pitt. Who are you?"
"I work for a company called Monster Hunter International. We're based out of Alabama. We specialize in discreetly handling monster-related problems." He stared at me blankly. "Monsters… For example we were paid to come here to deal with a pack of goat-suckers."
"Chupacabras?" he asked slowly.
"Yes. A few weeks ago, some hikers were killed at the resort, and once those things taste people, they don't go back. We were hired because it was thought more deaths would be detrimental to tourism." I suppose a massive zombie attack rendered that a moot point. "The company I work for is considered the best in the world when it comes to dealing with things like this."
"I see… and the reason that I have never heard of this is.. " His voice betrayed no emotion.
"Government-mandated secrecy. Those of us who have monster experience are usually warned by the authorities to keep our mouths shut. That has been the policy for forever. If the regular population were to know that all of the stuff from the myths, and the fairy tales, and the bad movies was real, well, you can imagine the panic and the trouble it would cause."
"And you believe this?"
I paused. I didn't know if he asked if I believed in the government's policies, or if I believed in what I was just telling him. I decided to run with the first option. "No, I think the policy is stupid. People should know the truth. Instead, to keep the problem in check, most governments have some sort of system to keep the unnatural populations down. In my country there is a bounty system administered by the Treasury Department. It's called PUFF."
"Puff?"
"Perpetual Unearthly Forces Fund. It pays money to any private citizen who kills a monster on the PUFF list. My company specializes in working the PUFF list, and also in private contracts from municipalities, companies, and private individuals, like your wealthy resort owners. See, lots of important people know about monsters, but they have to keep it on the down low, if you know what I mean. So they call people like us. Let's see, PUFF was started by Teddy Roosevelt, uh… he was our president back in-"
"I know who Theodore Roosevelt was. I attended UCLA."
"Go Trojans," I said.
"You're thinking of the wrong school." He sighed and rubbed his temple with his fingers. "Please continue…"
"I guess you don't want to hear the history of professional Monster Hunting…"
He casually examined the end of his burning cigarette. "No, I really want to know about last night." He glanced absently at his watch. "Fourteen hours ago. What happened at the hotel. There were many deaths, and I wish to know why."
"That was not our doing."
"I have witnesses who saw you chopping people up with a machete."
"Those weren't people. Those were zombies."
"Zombies…"
"Yes. The walking dead. The man who created them, the man you are looking for is an Englishman." I proceeded to give him a rough description of the real villain. I didn't know what the Englishman was, but he'd been there for me, which meant that the carnage at the hotel was partially my fault. "Bastard works for the Old Ones," I muttered under my breath.
"What is an Old One, Senor Pitt?" The interrogator casually reached under his chair and pulled out a manila file folder.
Screw it. It was obvious he thought I was nuts, might as well give him a good reason. I just needed to stay in one piece long enough for my team to find me. "They're a race of ancient creatures. Evil and ugly."
He pulled an ornate pen from his pocket and began to make notes in the folder. "And how will we know when we find these Old Ones?"
My father had always warned me that I didn't know when to shut up. "The real thing? They're hard to miss. The ones you have to worry about are their servants. Last summer…" I caught myself.
"Last summer what?"
I shrugged. He already thought I was a complete whackadoo, so what did I have to lose? Crazy prisoners probably got their own cells. I was guessing that you wouldn't stick them out with the regular population. "Remember last summer, with the missing five minutes?"
"Yes," he replied. Of course he did. Everybody on Earth had experienced it. Five minutes of time had been erased as if they had never existed. It had caused a global panic. People had instantly found themselves where they had been five minutes before, but with the memory of what had transpired during that missing time still intact. Pandemonium ensued. Thousands had been born twice, others had died twice, and others still, like myself, had died, only to have those moments erased to be given another chance.
"That was caused by the Old Ones. Last summer, one of their minions arranged for them to break into this world."
"And did these… Old Ones… succeed?"
I snorted. "Of course not. If they had, you would have known it. But that rift in time, the missing five minutes, was caused by somebody screwing around with one of their ancient artifacts." I didn't mention that that had been me, or that apparently I was the only human in the world with the ability to do so. They had manipulated me in the hopes that I would open the door for them, and they had almost succeeded.
The interrogator leaned back heavily in his chair. "Scientists are now saying that it had something to do with solar radiation. Increased activity causing a distortion in the atmosphere, along with psychological delusions of missing time caused by imbalances in our brain chemistry."
"Yeah, I saw that on the Discovery Channel too, but I'm telling you, it was the Old Ones. That was no delusion. Those things are out there, and they are some bad mothers. This guy with the zombies, he works for them, and if he works for them, then we've got a serious problem on our hands."
"Do we?" He continued writing. From my zip-tied vantage point, I couldn't see what his notes said, but I was sure that it was something to the effect that I was totally screwed and was going to be enjoying a long stay in the Mexican penal system.
"Yes. They'll stop at nothing to get what they want. Those undead you had crawling all over that resort were a joke compared to what these things can whip up." He cocked his head to the side and studied me intently. I could tell that I had lost him, but at least they weren't hitting me with that phonebook. "Talk to a doctor, take a look at those bodies. They've been dead for a lot longer than a day, but they were moving around. I'm sure you have plenty of witnesses to that. You do a little looking, and you can probably find the cemetery where all those bodies were stolen from."
He clicked his pen and dropped it back in his pocket. "I don't know how you dug up all of those corpses and spread them out like you did, but let me assure you, Senor Pitt, pretending to be insane will not get you off in this country. I have had enough of your nonsense. You disgust me, and your fairy tales will not save you. You are nothing but a filthy murderer, and you think that you can come here and spin these ridiculous lies? Do you think we are stupid?" He s
tood, adjusted his tie, and spit in my face. I could not move my arm to wipe it away, and I could feel it slowly drip down my forehead and into my eyes. The beating was one thing, but that was too much. If I hadn't been tied to the chair, I would have broken the interrogator in half. The door opened behind me and other policemen entered the room. The interrogator switched back to Spanish, but I could understand him relatively well.
"I've had enough for today. We'll work on him again in the morning. Put this piece of shit in Section Six with the other animals. Let them teach him some humility."???
Section Six was one large room, subdivided into a bunch of ten-foot-square pens, each enclosed with thick iron bars and chain-link fencing. There was a path between the pens where the guards patrolled with truncheons ready. Small naked bulbs dangled in each alley. There were two sets of cots in each cell, with anywhere from five to seven prisoners shoved into each. My cell had all of the comforts of home, including a bucket, and not much else. You can guess what the bucket was for.
It was dark, and it stunk of sweat, and fear, and violence. I don't think that Amnesty International ever spent much time in this place. I sat cross-legged in the corner of one of the cells. The four other men who shared my tiny space sat across from me, glaring sullenly. Section Six seemed to be where they kept all of the badasses, lunatics, and that general selection of humanity that you just didn't invite to the church picnic. There were incoherent cries and shouts all across the large space. It was not exactly pleasant.
A stocky man with one milky eye, and missing an ear, whispered to his buddy in Spanish. "You think he understands us?"
"I don't know… he don't look too smart," answered the prettier of the two, an obese man with a spider web tattooed across his face. "Look at him. He's got to be messed up in the head. He just keeps staring at us."
The reason I was staring at them was because I had to really concentrate to understand what they were saying. I had practiced up on my Spanish before taking this trip. I have a gift for languages, but the gutter slang these guys spoke was terrible by any standard. I could keep up, barely. Strangely enough, having magically learned archaic Portuguese last summer was really helping.
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