Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead (32 page)

A ragged circle of eight or ten of them started to close in on him, though, and he was trapped—!

All right, he’d go down swinging—

There was a sudden bright flash, and a big
whoosh!
behind him. Indy turned to see Mac, holding a torch of his own and standing next to a drum with flaming liquid pouring from it onto the ground—the darkness retreated from the burning pool—

“Over here, you bloody bastards! Come and get me if you can!”

Indy managed a grin.

Distracted for an instant, the
zombis
in front of him lost focus, and Indy battered his way through them. Last one he hit, the torch broke open and fire
whooshed!
from that, too, as the
zombi
seemed to explode into flame. It uttered no sound—

Boukman’s rage flared in him like the fires the
imen blan
had started. How
dare
they interrupt this ceremony! He would squash them like insects! He would have them ripped limb from limb!

The Maldye seemed to take delight in the chaos. As Marie, in the grip of the thing’s power, danced almost erotically in the circle, the Maldye’s thoughts came:

Yesss . . .

The power Boukman had absorbed was but a small piece of what was in the talisman, incidental to the main part of it; even so, it was like bathing in energy, he felt stronger than he had ever felt, and all he needed to do was focus it properly.

The dead were rising and more of them coming, but he couldn’t seem to connect to them directly. Something was interfering, somehow, something was blocking him—what was it?

No. Not what.
Who . . .

Marie! She was bathed in the same energy. The Maldye had her dancing to his unheard tune, but even as she did, she soaked in the light from the talisman! Here was a danger—!

She had to die. To feed the Maldye, now!

He reached for his knife again—

Indy found another handy torch, pulled it up, and hammered his way toward Marie. He would have to do it; Mac was too far away.

As he got closer, he saw Boukman pull a knife and raise it—

Indy had thrown the javelin in college. Not well, and not far, but he was only thirty feet away. He pulled the torch back like a spear, felt the heat of the flame singe his hair and scorch his hat—

He threw the torch—

It was top-heavy and didn’t fly straight. It started to spin, rotating, so it wasn’t the fire that hit Boukman, but the stick part. Even so, it was enough to knock the knife from his hand—

Indy ran toward them—

Boukman felt the impact, and the shock of it caught him unprepared. He lost the knife, lost his balance, staggered, but kept to his feet.

“Sakpata Loa!”
he screamed—“Help me!”

Indy was almost there—

“Indy!” Marie yelled. “The pearl! I need the pearl!”

She continued to dance, as if she were a puppet on strings. It was bizarre.

It was all bizarre—

He knocked over one of the inner circle of torches, and when he did, the
zombis
in line with it behind him collapsed, as if struck by lightning. He kept going—

Boukman turned, saw Indy, and raised a hand—

Indy dove, hit the ground on his shoulder—ow!—but rolled up and kept going. He scrabbled past Marie, still dancing, and dove again. This time he grabbed the pearl as he rolled.

He came up, and the black pearl felt like his gun when Boukman had made it hot. It was burning him, but he held on.

“No!” Boukman screamed.

Indy thought he heard another voice, deep in his head:

Yes!
it said.

Boukman cursed, and Indy felt his legs turn rubbery. He fell, unable to support himself, but he crawled. Marie was only a couple more feet . . .

“Marie!”

Boukman was coming—

She looked down at him. Dropped into a low dance step, as if doing a split—

He shoved the Heart of Darkness into her hand.

Somebody laughed inside Indy’s head. Something was really funny, though he didn’t have a clue what it was—

More
zombis
appeared and came at Indy. Six, eight, ten of them, and he knew it was about to be all over. He couldn’t get to his feet in time, and even if he could—

Marie was there. Holding the black pearl in both hands and singing? chanting? moaning? He couldn’t tell.

Boukman stopped. He cursed again, but Marie said, “No. Not this time!”

The
zombi
closest to Indy grabbed him, lifted him up, and bared its teeth as it lunged to bite out his throat—

—but the
zombi
next to it smashed the one holding Indy with a head-butt to its nose, and the thing let go of him. The two
zombis
grappled and fell to the ground—

Indy looked around. Boukman was moving away, waving his hands and yelling.

Around them, the
zombis
had turned on one another.

Indy realized what must have happened. Marie had done it. Just as she had at the village. Only now, she had a lot more horsepower.

Boukman called on every bit of strength he had taken in. He was more skilled than Marie, he knew so much more, but she was feeding from the talisman, and the raw energy of it was too much. He would have to use his talents to beat her!

Two hundred years’ practice to her scant twenty or so, he had ten times her experience! He could do this, he could still prevail—he just had to be careful—!

She had taken control of some of his slaves—!

Indy looked at Marie. Her eyes were completely white and her face creased with veins. Her hands trembled. She chanted, words Indy didn’t understand. But he knew that Marie had wrested control of some the
zombis
from Boukman and they were going at one another.

But—which were
hers
and which
his?

—a
zombi
dressed all in black leaped onto one wearing what looked like a sarong—the one in black looked alive, the other much less so. They toppled to the wet ground, clawing and biting at each other—

—a naked and rotting man was ignoring the pair biting and tearing chunks out of his body in favor of the one he was dismembering—

—five
zombis
were locked in undead combat against ten others, a tangle of limbs and teeth—

—one of them, on fire but apparently not bothered that much about it, lurched past Indy and wrapped its flaming arms around another of the mob, pulling it close—

—the second one’s clothes caught fire, and it screamed.

Who was in control of which ones? Which should Indy attack?

And with what? His gun was gone. Another torch? . . . wait, he had his whip, for all the good that might do—

Gruber stared as one of his men—the missing soldier!—went up against a dark man with a shaved head. The pair of them grappled and fell, and a Japanese soldier arrived and wrapped his arm around the bald one’s neck—

Yamada, awed, watched the battle. There was no skill to it, no sense of strategy or tactics, just the hammering of fists and feet, the flashing of stained and broken teeth.

There—was that one of his men? Trying to gouge the eyeballs out of a woman he had pinned to the wet ground?

—vertebrae cracked as another one lurched in and grabbed the soldier, twisted his head—

They had to go. They had to—but the scientist in him wanted to stay and watch, it was so unbelievable—

“Doctor!” Gruber said.

Yes. Time to go, now!

Boukman screamed and unleashed what energy he had remaining in all directions.
Zombis
fell, living and dead, flattened by the blast. Marie was too strong—he had to hit her hard!

But he made a mistake—what he let go also splashed against the Maldye—

The evil god was enraged. Boukman felt the malignant darkness well and flow reflexively from the fiery creature, roiling like lava and spewing toward him—

Boukman raised his shield, and the black fire splashed harmlessly over him but knocked down
zombis,
smashed into the shed, flattened trees in its path. He could withstand that, but it took all his concentration. “I did not mean it!” he yelled. “Please!”

He had to concentrate or he would—

“Hey, pal!” somebody yelled.

Boukman looked. Jones. The American, lunging at him with something in his hand—a rope? No, a whip—

Boukman raised his hand to ward off the attack—

Two things happened: His protective shield slipped—just a hair, but enough to allow a bit of the black fire to touch him. And then he flinched at its touch, enough so that his warding-off gesture missed Jones—

Indy snapped his wrist out straight and tugged back a hair as he cast the length of his whip at Boukman. The leather end flew past the bokor, not fast enough to crack the sound barrier, but enough to curl back and wrap around the man’s thin neck—

Boukman screamed as the whip encircled his throat. He grabbed it, and the leather caught fire. He needed only a second and it would be be burned to ash—

—but his attention upon the whip choking the life out of him took his attention away from his shield . . .

Indy saw his whip burst into blue-green fire, but he pulled for all he was worth—

—Boukman toppled, face-forward but in slow motion, as if falling through thick glue—

—Boukman, as he fell, realized that it was The Dream. The awful heat at his back, the vileness of his pursuer, it was, after all these years, coming to pass. The Maldye—!

—Boukman’s shield winked out, leaving him unprotected against the black fire that washed over him—

He screamed—“No—!”

The blue-green fire raced up Indy’s whip toward him, and he let go of the handle just as it exploded into unnaturally colored flame—

—Boukman was down, and as Indy watched, a different kind of conflagration enveloped the bokor, what looked like black fire, swirling around him. He screamed, and the darkness somehow flashed in a way that blinded Indy; he threw his forearm up to cover his eyes from a bleakness too intense to behold—

When he lowered his arm and looked past the afterimages on his retinas, he could see what was left of bokor Boukman on the ground: a pile of smoking gray ash . . .

Marie stood there, smiling, and it was not a pleasant expression, but one full of triumph. She waved one hand at Indy.

“Marie . . .”

“It wasn’t me. He did it to himself,” she said. “The evil turned on him.”

“Are you okay?”

“I am fine, Indy. More than you can imagine. What was Boukman’s is now mine. I have . . . energy beyond any I have ever imagined. We are safe.”

Indy nodded. “You knew all along about the magic attached to this, didn’t you? From the moment we met?”

“I didn’t know for sure. I suspected. I grew up hearing the stories. Once I realized they were true, I could not allow Boukman to obtain the pearl. I’m sorry. I should have told you.”

He nodded again. “Yeah. You should have.”

He looked around. “Mac?”

“Still here, by God!” Mac called from behind him.

Indy turned.

They were alive.

Son-of-a-bitch! How about that?

What about the German and Japanese?

As if in answer to his thought, Mac said, “The Axis seem to have left the field.”

Indy nodded. “I wonder how far they got?”

“Not far,” Marie said.

Indy looked at her.

She shrugged.

THIRTY-NINE

D
ESPITE ALL THE ODDS
, all the death and destruction, the storms and fighting and everything, Gruber had survived. More, he and Yamada had escaped and were approaching the sea. A hundred meters away, there was a small boat tied to a rickety dock, both of which had somehow escaped the hurricane’s heavy winds and waves. A man stood by the boat, his back to them.

Excellent!

“It appears that we have won,” Yamada said.

The two men were no more than a couple of meters apart.

“Yes, it does, doesn’t it? Why don’t you let me carry the box for a while? You must be tired.”

“It does not weigh all that much,” Yamada said.

“I insist. Give it to me.”

Yamada laughed. “You insist? I am a samurai, Doctor. Trained with a sword, but also with my hands. You cannot defeat me in personal combat.” He looked at Gruber in wonder. Did the man think that he had come all this way to simply
give
him the artifact with the formula because he
asked
for it? Whatever training Gruber might have in hand-to-hand combat, it could not begin to approach Yamada’s expertise in ju-jitsu. He could take the German apart like a child’s toy, break his neck and leave him here without working up a sweat, even in this climate. If Gruber was ready to die, then that was up to him.