Zombie D.O.A. (7 page)

As I watched this I felt a cold, dark anger
brewing up
inside me.
Blaze had given me solid advice about laying low. This really wasn’t my fight and I was outmuscled and out gunned.
Despite what had happened to me on this day of death and suffering I very much wanted to live. And I knew that if I went out there I was dead.

I also knew that if I let them kill this woman and these little boys I was dead anyway – in soul at least.

I stuck Dom’s misfiring
.38 into the back of my waistband and left the apartment at a run. I didn’t have a particular plan in mind other than to tackle them head-on, perhaps create a diversion so the woman and he
r
sons could escape.

I bounded down the stairs out onto the street and shouted, “Chavez!” That got their attention.
As if as one, the 42’s turned in my direction
and I could see that there were a lot more of them than I’d originally thought, at least 50 battered
, corpse-like
creatures
.

Chavez
calmed
them with his sweeping hand gesture. Then
he
turned to me an
d
smiled.  

“Hey Homes, how’s it hangin’?”

“Pretty fucking good.
Now
let these people go.”

Chavez looked at me with an exaggerated expression of incredulity of his face, hal
f turned towards his followers
then looked back at me.

“Or fucking what?” he said.

“Or you die.”

He laughed then, threw back his head and laughed like I was
Eddie Murphy
doing a guest spot
on Saturday Night L
ive.

“You got cohones homes, I give you that. But what’s to stop me settin’ my posse on you right now. They be cleanin’ their teeth with your rib bones long before I’m finished snackin’ on this fine white lady’s pussy.“

He was right
of course. I had about a twenty-
foot lead on them and I’m pretty fi
t
, so if I
bolted they’d have
had
a hard time catching me. But there’d be more of them waiting out there in the darkness and what chance did I have of surviving the night out in the open.

Besides I would be abandoning this woman and her children, not to mention Ruby who was awake by now and probably needed feeding. No, I was seeing this through, whichever way
it
went.

Behind
Chavez
the 42s were getting restless. Chavez turned and used his peculiar hand signal
, like sprinkling something on the ground, to calm them.

When he turned back to me he had a strange look on his face. “I know you
,
” he said.
“Y
ou that
mick fighter
, Chris ‘Cruisin’ Collins, right. Yeah
,
I
seen you at
the Paradise fighting Ronaldo Holmes. Man, that nigger
was all over you like
white on ric
e
. Whoo hoo, ladies and gents we got ourselves a celebrity here.”

“Bronson”, I said. “Tell you what, w
hy don’t you and me have a talk?
You’ve got no beef with this woman and these kids.
Why don
’t you just let them
go?
”

“I look like I gotta talk to you? Look behi
nd me, homes. I got me an army.” Behind him, the ranks had indeed swelled, not an army
, but upwards of a hundred. They
stood dispassionately, like a crowd watching a rather boring concert.

“I the only one can control these people, homes. Right now I be the king of New York, maybe next year I be president.”

He laughed at the idea, but then was deadly serious again. “What I’m saying is, I want to spend some time with that fine-assed white lady, I wa
nt to feed her little boys to my
posse, I snap my fingers and it’s done.
Who’s gonna stop me? You?
”

“
And when your
people
turn on you?  Who’s going to stop them?
”

Chavez threw back his head and laughed. “Ain’t gonna happen, homes. I be bokor.
Ain’t
no zombie
gonna mess with no bokor.”

The guy was obviously insane and I wasn’t going to get into a debate with him. The crowd behind him was getting restless again and he had stopped trying to calm them. If I was going to make
my move it had to be now, but
even so I knew I had virtually no chance of getting out alive. 

I looked over to where the woman and her boys were huddled against the car and hoped she wouldn’t freeze when it was time to move. 

“I’m leaving now, Bronson,” I said. “And I’m taking these people with me.” I hoped that my fear didn’t carry to my voice.

Chavez smiled as though a brilliant idea had just occurred to him. “Tell you what homes, I a sportin’ man, and you got some brass balls, so I’m gonna cut you a deal. You a fighter right?

“Now
I ain’t seen a good fight since that Holmes wupped your ass at the Paradise. So I tell you what, let
’
s have us a fight. You against one of my boys, mano a mano, no holds barred. You win and you walk outa here with your white bitch and her brats. You lose and we eat your ass, what you say!”

What could I say? Although I knew there was no way Chavez would stick to his side of the deal regardless of the outcome, I needed to buy time. Needed to think of a way to get us out of this.

“You’re on.” I said.

“Yee ha! We got ourselves a fight ladies and gen
tlemen,” Chavez said disappearing
into the crowd.

Without Chavez there to control them, the ghouls in the front row shuffled a few paces forw
ard, and looked hungrily at me, some faces fixed with insane grins, others blank as a white sheet. I could hear the angry, guttural noises they made, an insane
cacophony that conveyed hunger
and anger and pain.

Then the crowd began to part as Chavez returned, leading a man by the hand. The guy was huge a
nd appeared to be of Hawaiian or
Samoan descent. He was wearing a black suit, white shirt and black tie. He reminded me of “Oddjob”, in the James Bond movie, Goldfinger.
All that was missing was the bowler hat.

Oddjob’s face was mainly in tact, but his neck had been severely mauled and the front of his suit and shirt was stained scarlet.

“This here
be
Iakopo , heavy
weight champion of American Samoa
or some fucking place. Well, I’m not sure if he is or
he
ain’t but he fucking well could be, right. Now I realize he’s a bit out of your weight division and all, but this the
best we got, so what you say, Mister
Chris Cruisin’ Collins?
”

“I’ll take him.”

“Now that’s the spirit. L
adies an
d
gentleman, we got ourselves a fight!”

To my right I saw movement, and noticed one of the
creatures
, a y
oung
guy in a pizza delivery uniform
,
hobbling towards the woman and her children
.

“Hey!
” I shouted, and Chavez produced
a long barreled handgun that looked like something out of Dirty Harry and fired. He hit the man with his third shot, spattering blood and brains.

The crowd became restless and Chavez stilled them with his now familiar hand gesture.

Then he turned to me and smiled
. ”
Right ladies and gentlemen, we have a real treat fo
r you tonight. Bronson Chavez Productions presents
this fight to the death.

“
In this corner, from New York City, the challenger, Chris Cruisin’ Collins. Collins. And in this corner
, from American Samoa, or some fucking place, Iakopo, the destroyer!”

While Chavez was doing his Michael Buffer impersonation, I looked
over at Iakopo. He was huge, and
appeared to be
least a foot taller than my five
ten
, with a build that would have made him a good offensive tackle for the Jets.
He stood there looking down at his shoes like a scolded schoolboy, his massive fists clenching and unclenching.

I’d fought some big guys in my life, both inside and outside the ring, but never anyone close to this big. Still, in a normal standup fight, I might have
stood a chance
. You learn things
as a fighter
- h
ow to protect yourself
, how to hurt the other guy, where to direct your bombs so they really hurt.

Problem is,
this was
no
ordinary fight
. These things seemed oblivious to pain
. Not only that
but
, say I hit him, say my fist grazed his tooth and
it
opened up
my hand
. I was
done right there
, infected. Seemed to me the only way to stop one of these things was a bullet to the brain.

Chavez was finishing his ring announcer act with, “Let’s get ready
to rumble!” He dragged the last
word on and on, like Buffer used to do. When he eventually stopped he looked directly at me and said calmly, deliberately, “Seconds out, round number one.”

Out of habit, I
put up my fists and
shuffled into the centre of the
imaginary ring, then
I realized what I was doing and retreated
back to where the ropes
might have
be
en.

Iakopo stood dead still
for a minute then looked up from contemplating his shoes and blundered forward like Frankenstein’s monster. I took another step back, reached behind me and produced Dom’s .38.