by Steve Perry
“The head!” Yamada yelled. “Shoot them in the head!”
Around him, the remainder of his men—some of them—heard and obeyed. Half a dozen shots later, the jungle fell silent . . .
No, that wasn’t true. There was more gunfire, but it was distant, not close to them.
The Germans. Or the archaeologists?
He looked around. Most of his men were down, dead or dying.
Three of them still stood, two soldiers and Captain Suzuki. Suzuki had used his sword to good effect, as well.
“We will grieve for our fallen brothers later,” Yamada said. “For now we need to get away from here, quickly!”
They ran. He regretted having to leave his calligraphy materials behind. If he survived, he could return for them someday. The tent might withstand the wind and rain for a season or two.
If he did not survive, it would not matter.
In the forest, Gruber took stock. He had two men left, the rest . . . well, they were dead, dying, or lost, and he was not going to waste any time looking for survivors. He had replaced his pistol’s spent magazine but he had no faith it in, nor in the second pistol he had tucked away in his pocket, a flat, single-shot 7.65 mm, handmade by a clever Swiss jeweler, thin enough to be tucked into a wallet. Some officers carried a poison pill they could take if captured. Gruber preferred an option, to kill his captor and take his chance on escape. The Swiss pistol was a last resort, and if the Luger wouldn’t stop the attackers, the tiny gun wouldn’t do the job.
Some of the attackers could be stopped with a gun, some not, and you would likely not know which was which until it was too late. Better to avoid them all.
He was still warring with his notion that such a thing could not possibly be.
One of the men said, “Somebody is coming!”
The two soldiers raised their rifles, trembling in fear, and Gruber held his pistol out, unable to keep his own arm from shaking.
“Don’t shoot,” somebody called out. The voice spoke English but the accent was heavy and Gruber immediately realized who the speaker must be—
“Lower your weapons,” Gruber ordered.
The two soldiers glanced at him in wonder, but he had already pointed his pistol at the ground. They obeyed his orders, of course.
“Come ahead,” Gruber said, also in English.
Yamada, carrying an unsheathed sword, followed by three Japanese men, stepped into view.
“Dr. Gruber,” he said. He offered a slight bow.
“Dr. Yamada,” Gruber responded.
“Are these all your survivors of the attack?”
Gruber nodded. “As far as I know.”
Yamada nodded at his own men. “We are what remains of our group. It would seem wise for us to combine our forces against those terrible gaki of the forest.”
Gruber didn’t recognize the word Yamada used, but he understood the sense of it: Monsters. Demons. Not ordinary humans as he knew them. Silly, but—“Yes. We all know why we are here. We must survive, and we must obtain the secret of these creatures. Our armies would be unstoppable.”
There was no point in speaking of their competition to this point. Done was done.
“You will agree that we share this discovery, then, once we obtain it? Equally?” Yamada had lowered his sword so that the tip pointed at the ground.
“Yes, I agree. Once we obtain it.” That seemed less certain than it had only an hour earlier. Most of his men were dead, and the same with the Japanese group. Only seven of them together.
“Perhaps we should find a safer place, if we can, to discuss our strategy.”
“Good idea, Dr. Yamada.”
TWENTY-THREE
THE GUNFIRE seemed distant, but sound in the forest could be tricky. How far away the shots were—from rifles and pistols, as best Indy could tell—was impossible to determine with any kind of precision.
“Now what?” Mac said.
Marie said, “If I had to guess, I’d say the Germans and the Japanese are dealing with Boukman’s slaves.”
“Why them and not us?” Indy asked.
She shrugged into her backpack, adjusted it, and nodded at Batiste. They were leaving behind the tents and most of the cooking supplies, and taking only enough food and water to keep them going for a couple of days. Long and slow meals around the campfire weren’t going to be part of the program. Nor campfires, either. If you were running and hiding, you didn’t light beacons to draw your enemies. And if something that wanted to kill you was on your trail, you didn’t stop moving until you could no longer keep going.
“Boukman knows we won’t be able to get far and that he will be able to find us when he wants. I might be able to throw him off—there is a spell I haven’t tried, it might help—but the Germans and the Japanese, they could be a danger to his plans. If he gets rid of them, he eliminates the risk that they might get the artifact and manage to fight their way past his zombis.”
“Cutthroat the competition,” Indy said.
“Yes. Perhaps literally. And there is something else to consider.”
“Which is?” Indy had his own pack loaded and shouldered, an extra canteen strapped to his belt, and extra ammunition in his pockets. His bullwhip was attached to his belt with a slipknot so he could get it into play in a hurry, if it came to that.
If it came to that, things were going to be bad . . .
“The Japanese or Germans who fall might not stay fallen. If his true zombies are destroyed, he can replace them.”
Indy shook his head. Wasn’t that just great?
Batiste said, “We will head for the coast. There may be a way to skirt the edge of the forest for a bit, to get a lead on our pursuers.”
“ ‘May be’?” Mac said.
Batiste said, “We have few options. We know how long it takes to cut our way through the jungle. If we can save any time by not having to do so, it is to the good.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Indy said. In his backpack were the wooden boxes containing the Heart of Darkness. At least they had found it, and had possession of it. For now. If Marie was right—and he had no reason to believe she wasn’t—then there were things out there in the woods who would be coming for them.
They surely didn’t want to be here when that happened.
Batiste frowned and looked up. He sniffed.
“Rain coming,” he said. “Big rain.”
Indy glanced up, too. The late-afternoon sky was clear, not a cloud in sight.
Batiste said, “Not today. Tomorrow. Might be to our advantage, might not, but hurikán on the way, for sure.”
Indy wanted to laugh. Just when you thought things were as bad as they could be, they got worse. Never failed.
Oh, well. Part of the job.
They set off.
Boukman nearly died.
The last trip to instruct his slaves and the return to his body was almost too much. He had taken his form for granted for so long, kept it vital with the application of his skills and magic, that the idea of it actually failing him hadn’t ever really seemed possible. He had been alive longer than any man he knew of, certainly in the Caribbean region.
He had barely made it back from the Other Realm. Another two minutes? It would have been too late. He’d had to thrust hard to force his spirit back into his body, which didn’t want to accept it. The struggle had exhausted him, in both realms.
When, at last, he managed it and awoke, the heat that normally would not have been noticeable lay on him like a heavy blanket. His heart beat rapidly, his eyes fluttered, and his breathing was shallow and fast. He trembled, was too weak to even sit up at first. He had nearly spent himself during the last couple of days, and he was not going to be able to wave his hand, importune a passing loa for added energy, and shake it off like a dog does water. His vessel was tired and weakened, and importing energy not its own before repairing it might well cause it to burst.
It was ironic. Out there in the jungle was a source of power that could raise th
e dead by the thousands—raise them and make them dance. But any hand that dared to use it thus had to be strong and steady. How much time he would need before he was recovered enough to risk it he did not know, but it wasn’t going to be in the next few hours. Another attempt to fly into the Other Realm now would be the end of him. He had no doubt.
Power beyond measure was out there—and he could not go to it.
Any enemy who saw him now could destroy him with a minimum of effort, and Boukman did not care for that thought at all.
He needed food, drink, and blood. He needed medicines, and he needed sacrifices, and even then it would not be a thing done before the sun had come and gone, maybe more than once.
He managed to sit up. He drew in a breath to call for an attendant—someone would be outside, awaiting just such a command. There was no way that Marie and the imen blan could get off the island safely for at least a day or two, and even then they must return to Haiti, where Boukman’s forces were also strong. They would not get that far, though. He was sure of it.
And he had left instructions for his slaves. It would have to do for now. There was no help for it.
Yamada had sheathed his sword, after carefully wiping it as clean as he could of the bloodless and greasy flesh that had smeared it. The wooden sheath he had under his belt held the blade secure, edge-up, and ready for an instant draw and cut. After years of practice, Yamada could, now and again, achieve the state called zanshin—a complete melding of body and spirit so that the sword could go from sleeping in its wooden bed to effortlessly appearing in his hand, ready to strike, in less time than the blink of an eyelid. The thought was the deed.
He and his men followed Gruber’s lead—it was not a matter of any importance who led a retreat, only who led an attack, and given their forces they were going to have to be most selective in such matters. Falling gloriously in battle was honorable; failing your mission by dying first was not.
Yamada had heard stories of samurai who had sustained mortal wounds but managed to stay alive long enough to take their killer with them. Spirit mattered. And that was surely somehow involved with these gaki, that they could do the same . . .
“One doctor to another,” Gruber said, keeping to English as they walked along a narrow and winding animal trail, “have you ever seen anything like that before?”
Yamada shook his head. “No. Some of the attackers were as you and I—a bullet to the heart dropped them. Others were invulnerable to guns or knives. Removing the head of these worked, and perhaps a shot to the brain might do it, but I did not witness any such shots.
“I cannot imagine that any potion would offer such protection, no matter what it was made from. Nor why it would work on some, but not others.”
“But what else could it be?” Gruber said.
“Gaki,” he said. “Hungry ghosts. Undead wanderers.”
Gruber shook his head. “I do not believe in fairy tales. I am a man of science.”
“As am I. But I have no science to explain these things. Have you?”
Gruber shook his head. “No. But because I haven’t uncovered the reason yet does not mean that it is supernatural.”
“Nor does it mean that it is not. There are many things under the heavens that science cannot explain.”
Gruber shrugged, unconvinced, and Yamada did not choose to continue the discussion. Instead, he said, “Regardless of that, the reason we are here is unchanged, and certainly, somebody locally has the formula or some variant of it, and there is ample evidence that it has some efficacy.”
“Indeed, Doctor, indeed. We must obtain it. Nothing the Allies have could stand up to soldiers bolstered by this medication. Those people in the woods were not even armed—they attacked men with rifles bare-handed. Imagine how effective they would have been had they been shooting or even using machetes!”
“I suspect that had that been the case, we would not be here to speak of it,” Yamada said.
“Precisely my point.”
They had been walking for nearly an hour, and one of the German soldiers came back and offered a quick report to Gruber.
Yamada’s German was excellent, and he easily understood the soldier’s comments. There was a stream not far ahead, and a curved rocky outcrop near it. It would be a place that would offer some protection on three sides—anybody trying to come at them by swimming the river or climbing the hill wouldn’t have an easy time of it. A good spot to stop and consider future plans.
Yamada pretended to less understanding than he had. In English, he asked: “What did he say?”
“There’s a place to stop up ahead that’s somewhat sheltered and defendable,” Gruber said. “It might be a good idea to rest and plan what we need to do next.”
In this much, the man was telling the truth. “Good thought, Dr. Gruber. Please have your man lead us there.”
Gruber had little respect for foreign tongues, believing as most in his homeland did that civilized people would all eventually come to speak German. Even so, he had good English, some French, a smattering of Italian; as soon as the war broke out, he had learned basic Japanese. They said that a man’s language shaped how he thought, and Gruber considered it wise to learn as much about how his enemies—and allies—thought, to at least know the rudiments of their tongues. Yamada didn’t know that Gruber had any Nihongo, and Gruber wasn’t going to let on that he did. Never knew but that somebody who thought you couldn’t understand him might allow something useful to slip. And he suspected that Yamada probably understood some German, so Gruber wouldn’t make the mistake of saying something he wanted to keep secret aloud in any language in front of Yamada. Some of these little yellow men were clever; it would be folly to underestimate them with so much at risk.
They needed each other now; survival might depend on it. After they had claimed the prize, well, the idea of sharing it with the Japanese? That was but a convenient fiction. Herr Hitler would have this presented to him with clicking heels and a grand flourish. The Emperor Hirohito would never see it, of that Gruber was certain.
TWENTY-FOUR
INDY BROUGHT UP the rear as they moved along the swine trail through the forest. The smell of the sea was in the air, and they were close enough to hear waves breaking. They had the artifact, they were free and moving, things could be a lot worse, knock on wood.
It had been only forty minutes or so before they came to the cliffs, and when they arrived and he looked over the sheer drop, Indy could see they weren’t likely to climb down. The dark gray rock had a spongy look to it—like pumice, but with bigger holes—and the distance was 180 or 200 feet, almost vertical, to a shore that was gravel and jagged rock, with breakers rolling in to spray as they hit the stone.
Fall, break your legs, drown when the tide came in. Not pleasant prospects.
Indy was a few feet back. He moved closer to the edge. He put his right boot down on the honeycombed rock and swiveled his heel with a little force, to see how solid the—
—a section of the cliff’s face six inches thick and half a yard wide sheared off and tumbled down to the rocks. When it impacted, it broke apart as if it were made of glass.
No, they weren’t going that way, no siree . . .
“This way,” Batiste said. “You want to stay back from the edge.”
There was advice Indy could take.
The bad thing was that the cliff was unstable. The good thing was that the trees stopped several yards away from the precipice, and there was, at least for the next few hundred yards, an open path that skirted the edge.
It would be dark soon, though, and no way did they want to be walking, either here or in the forest, so they’d have to stop. They needed the rest, but—
Indy moved up to stand by Marie. “The Germans and Japanese will have to call it quits at night, like we will,” he said. “But what about the zombis? Can they function in the dark?”
“Not particularly well,” she said. “The True Risen can’t see as clearly as even we can, but then a
gain they cannot easily die. If one falls over this cliff and hits the rocks, it may break so many bones that it won’t be able to walk.”
“That’s something.”
“If it can climb and crawl, though, it will.”
Indy stared at her. “Even I can outrun somebody going that slow.”
“As can the hare outrun the tortoise,” she said.
He blinked at her.
“A zombi dispatched on a task will continue to move using whatever is left to it, without ever having to rest,” she said. “While we are sleeping, it will be crawling . . .”
Indy shivered at the thought of a man with broken legs doggedly dragging himself along on his bloody elbows . . .
Mac edged over to where they walked. “What?”
“You don’t want to know,” Indy said.
Boukman drank from the bowl, sipping at the blood therein. It was warm, and he needed to finish it before it cooled, for clotted blood was of no use to him; its power faded quickly once it was out of its container. He had taken a pint from one of the potion-slaves, a pint from another, and that was enough to start.
He had leaves brought in and piled into a soft pad, covered with a sheet, upon which he could lay. Two of his slaves stood nearby, waving large palmetto fans to circulate the air over him.
He had laid a restoration spell, offered a chicken and a goat to the proper loa for their assistance. He had eaten fruit and bread and roast pig, washed down with the blood.
It was all he could do for now. He would have to sleep and allow his work to help heal his body and spirit. This spent, ideally, he would stay quiet for several days, a week, longer. He could not do that now. Time was of the essence, and even this amount of forced rest tried his patience, though he knew he had no other option.
He finished the bowl of blood, had it removed, and lay down upon the bed. He closed his eyes. He deepened his breathing, slow and long, to bathe his innards in life-giving air. He felt it flow into his limbs, into his feet. His toes. Fresh air in; used air, out; easing slowly his aches and pains.
