Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead (23 page)

A fast-moving scud of tattered, dirty-gray clouds appeared in the blue sky not long after they started, and by now the sun was mostly blocked, the hard-edged shadows gone fuzzy and dim. A herald wind began, cooler than the fetid jungle air had been, if not by much. Even Indy could smell the approaching rain.

“Storm comes,” Batiste said. “Soon the wind will start to blow hard and the rain will come at us sideways. It will be impossible to track us in such weather, but we will have to move slower ourselves. Mixed blessing, this. Best we move quickly while we can. It will get bad soon.”

It was only forty-five minutes or so later when the first drops began to fall, pelting hard enough to sting Indy’s eyes, making a sound like fine gravel thrown into the trees. Wind whipped the branches and canopy. Leaves tore loose and flew past, swirled away in the tempest.

“We must stay on the pigs’ trail!” Batiste said, yelling to be heard above the increasing downpour. “There will be some kind of shelter along it that the pigs sometimes use.”

“I hope they won’t be using it now!” Indy yelled back.

The rain and wind grew fiercer, and visibility dropped to a few feet. Batiste led the way while Mac brought up the rear; in the middle with Marie and the other men, Indy could not see more than a few yards. The wind seemed to be behind them at the moment, which was a small blessing, but it kept trying to take his hat, and Indy had to jam it down hard on his head to keep it from flying off. Bad for the shape, that. He’d have to spend another week’s salary to get it spruced up when he got home.

If
he got home . . .

Yamada was yelling something at him, and Gruber was unable to hear most of it in the wind and rain. He did catch the word “typhoon,” and while he had never been through one of those, this was a storm that seemed much worse than any he had experienced in the Caribbean so far. Wind had to be blowing at thirty or forty knots, gusting to fifty or sixty. Stand up too straight at the wrong moment, it would knock you sprawling.

Yamada leaned in. “It will get worse!” he yelled. “We have to find shelter or risk being crushed by falling trees!”

“We will lose them!” Gruber yelled back.

“No! They can’t move any faster than we can! And if we die in the forest trying to catch them, that is unacceptable!”

The man had a point, Gruber had to concede. Being squashed by a falling tree would not serve to collect their quarry, who would certainly be having the same thoughts about shelter.

As if to punctuate the thought, a branch as big around as his leg fell not two meters away, hit the ground with a muddy splash, and then was pushed and tumbled away by the slashing wind.

Gruber had a cousin who had been a logger in the Black Forest. His cousin had been killed by a falling branch while cutting trees. Widowmaker, they called those things . . .

“We need something to block the wind!” Gruber yelled. “A rock wall, a cave!”

“Best we find such quickly, Doctor!” Yamada said.

Boukman woke again to the sound of rain. He stood, shook himself to loosen the stiffness in his joints, and moved to the hut’s door.

The wind drove the rain over the ground in sheets; it looked like rippling grass. The trees whipped back and forth, leaves tearing free, filling the air with bits of greenery. The hurricane-loa would be rejoicing, for this had the feel of a big storm.

Boukman had lost count of how many such whirling monsters he had endured. Some years, there were none; some years, two, three, even four of them, raging against the land, flattening trees and houses, throwing boats onto houses nearly a kilometer inland. He had been through the eyes of these beasts a dozen times, felt his ears pop as the wind and rain died, seen the stars above with no clouds to block them before the wind came back from the other quarter.

Fierce monsters, these tempests.

They were part of the cycle here, the big storms, and while many structures were swept away each time one of them stomped ashore, there were places that had been standing for two hundred years. Normally, Boukman would be inside one of those places—on Haiti, he had a low-walled stone house with heavy Spanish roof tiles that shrugged off the wind and rain the way a pelican did a drizzle. Even on this tiny island, there were places like that, and he would have to go to one of them, to protect this body, until he could collect the talisman he sought. And now, before the wind grew much worse.

To the two slaves with fans, he said, “Put those down and come. Stand between me and the wind.”

He was stronger. Not as strong as he would wish, but he would have to make do—hurricanes brought many dangers, and those who had his talisman would be at risk. He would have to do something about it. As soon as he had his body in a place where it would be safe.

In the far jungle, Boukman chose the strongest of the potion-slaves, one who had been a cane cutter, and he sent his spirit into this horse and took control of it.

It was but the work of a few minutes to find others, then order them to collect their brothers and sisters for the attack.

Even inside such as he was, his slaves knew who he was.

An hour later, all those in the area were returned to where Boukman’s drugged human horse stood, the rain and wind lashing at them and the trees.

“We go to fetch the talisman,” he said. “Follow me.”

He could not see Marie’s spirit-cord. Perhaps the energies of the storm extended into the Other Realm and hid it, but it did not matter. His slaves had marked their prey in this realm, and Boukman knew what his horse knew.

Boukman led the band along the animal trail. Marie and her
imen blan
were only half an hour’s march, even in the foul weather, and once he got there with the eighteen other slaves, it would take only a few moments to overwhelm them and collect their trophy. He would direct the attack—he had much experience in such matters, going back over most of his two hundred years. He knew where to put his troops to best advantage—living a long time gave you plenty of opportunity to test out theories. One thing he had learned was that patience always led intent. Not because it took extraordinary skill, but because being in exactly the right place at the right time made all the difference.

The strongest of men would trip over a small foot, placed just so as he ran past. Smooth was better than rough.

They were drawing nearer their destination, and Boukman was ready to survey the situation, see what he needed, then to order his slaves into position.

He sent two of them to look.

There was a break in the rain. The wind continued in fits, but it was no longer pouring like a waterfall. For a while—the rain would return soon enough. Maybe by then, he would have his prize and be on the way home.

While he was waiting for them to report back, his horse began to buck—

Boukman frowned. What was this? He could feel the
âme
of the slave rising, trying to reassert control of the body they shared.

Go back to sleep!

Who are you? Get out of me!

Boukman felt a surge of anger.
I will kill this body! Go back to sleep!

But—no. The man who had lived here until Boukman’s potion had taken his will and submerged it so deep it was nearly extinguished had, somehow, broken free of the chemical bindings.

Of a moment, Boukman realized how it had happened: This slave had been too long from maintenance—he had not drunk of the potion in some time, perhaps weeks, and the effect had begun to wear off. Somehow, this one had been left on his own and the drug not administered when it should have been.

Boukman had his regulations in place, he had a method he’d used ever since he had developed the powers of a bokor and first mixed the potion and used it. Somehow, this one had slipped through the normal net.

It happened. Not often, but a man as busy as he was sometimes lost track of minor things—

Out! Out of me! Leave, demon!

The horse’s owner began praying.

This was the wrong time, the worst moment for a minor mistake to show up. The man’s spirit was strong—too strong to squash from inside the same body without the Potion to help. Boukman would have to leave, find another host, but his strength had not returned fully, and he could not risk trying it and failing. He would have to depart, retreat to his own form, regather his strength, and come back!

Damnation! Why did the gods task him so?

The prey would leave with his prize, and he would have to find them again!

In that moment of weakness, being pressed by the owner of the horse he rode, Boukman made a choice. It was not the patient and considered decision he would normally have made, but he deemed it worth the risk.

“Attack them!” he said. “Go, kill them, collect the box, and bring it to me! Now!”

It was not so much a risk. The odds were in his favor. Chances for success were good, based on numbers alone—

And with that, he leaped free of the chemically bound horse he rode. What the man who regained control would do didn’t matter. He meant nothing. He would find and deal with him later.

Boukman flew, cursing to himself as he went.

They came out of the jungle just after the rain got cranked up again, and the panicked yell of one of the bearers alerted Indy and the others to the danger:

Zombis!
A dozen, fifteen—more—!

Indy pulled his revolver.

Head shots were difficult, but Indy had spent enough time practicing with his Webley that he knew what it would do. The .455 round wasn’t a tack driver—you weren’t going to be knocking walnuts off a fence post at a hundred yards—but at close range, a few yards, he could hit a head-sized target most of the time. And it was faster to reload than his old Smith Hand Ejector II had been.

Even in a pouring rain, you didn’t need to be a crack shot when the head-sized target was shambling in a straight line right at you and only a few yards away—

Indy fired, and was gratified to see the approaching
zombi’s
head splatter, followed by a boneless collapse onto the wet ground.

More of them headed at him. He fired, two, three, four, five, six—

Three more collapsed—

Some of the bearers were shooting, some using machetes. They were making a lot of noise, screaming loudly. Men fell. More
zombis
did, too—

Next to him, facing the other way, both Mac and Batiste were shooting their weapons to similar effect. Of the score or so attackers who had swarmed them, at least eight or ten were down—

Indy’s gun was empty. He snapped the top-break weapon open, which automatically ejected the empties. They seemed to fall in slow motion to splash into a puddle at his feet . . . Quickly he began to reload the cylinder. He managed to drop one of the replacement cartridges, but hurriedly fished another one from his jacket pocket and jammed it into the chamber—

He noticed in the middle of all the ado a rivulet run down the brim of his hat and onto his nose. How odd that he would focus on that . . .

Marie, next to him, mumbled some kind of invocation. Indy couldn’t tell if it was doing any good, though—

He snapped the revolver closed, swung the gun around, and fired at another attacker—

Just as he pulled the trigger, the creature lurched, slipping on the soaked earth, and Indy’s shot missed—

He stroked the trigger again—this time the shot found its mark, and the thing fell—

Here was another one—Indy fired twice more, got it—

Behind him, Batiste said something that sounded like a curse, and added,
“Bloque!”

A jam. His rifle had jammed—!

To Indy’s right, a
zombi
fell on one of the bearers. More screams. A second bearer leaped at the fallen pair, swinging his machete—

Indy’s field of fire was, for the moment, clear. He spun as Batiste dropped the rifle and drew his machete—

Why not the handgun at his hip?
Indy had time to wonder.

Indy couldn’t get a clear shot at the things charging from that direction. “Mac! Move over!”

Mac took a step to his left, continuing to fire his little pistol. That move gave Indy an incoming target. He lined up the sights—

Batiste yelled and charged the two attackers closest to him, but his body blocked Indy’s target. Indy jerked his weapon down to point at the ground—

“Batiste! Move—!”

But Batiste was in a full sprint. He swung the machete and caught one of the attackers just above its left ear. The zombie was a large fellow, but the cut took off the top of his head as if it were a cantaloupe, and the
zombi
fell, no blood from the cut, none—

Unfortunately, the thing’s fall was not straight down. It had enough momentum that it slammed into Batiste. It wasn’t a threat, but its weight was enough to knock the guide down. As Batiste struggled to get up, one of the remaining bearers panicked. The man yelled and pointed his rifle at the fallen pair.

“Don’t—!” Indy yelled. “The
zombi
is dead!”

Well, yeah. It was, but that’s not what Indy meant—

The bearer fired. Worked the bolt of his weapon, fired again—

The first bullet hit the
zombi
in the back.

The second bullet hit Batiste as he struggled to his knees. The round took him dead-center in the chest. Batiste fell—

A
zombi
leaped on the bearer and bore him down, teeth sunk into the man’s throat—

Mac ran closer, pointed his pistol down, fired off the remainder of his magazine into the
zombi’s
head. It released the bearer, but too late for him, his throat gushed red—

“I’m empty!” Mac yelled. “Cover the left—!”

Indy turned and saw three more
zombis
coming in, a tall, thin, pale-skinned male with red hair; a shorter, heavyset darker one, a female; and one in such bad condition that he couldn’t tell what it had been in life, man or woman—

The tall one was closer. Indy got a quick sight picture, stroked the trigger—
easy, easy, don’t jerk it!
—and the redhead fell.

He lined up on the woman . . . fired—got her!

He swung his revolver to cover the last one, still twenty feet away—squeezed off the shot—