A Passing Curse (2011) (52 page)

He stood at the head of the table and pulled back his chair. His plate was artfully done. The asparagus just so. The prime rib exquisite. A dapple of raspberry sauce. He could smell the blood from the meat. He called for his guests’ attention. “I propose a toast!”

The musicians kept playing. He screamed at them to stop. All heads pivoted his way. Rene” appeared at his side, a quizzical look, a frightened rabbit.

The musicians quit playing and looked at their feet.

Governor Bill glanced at him and cleared his throat. His wife tried to smile. The others gazed at each other and coughed. A few opened their mouths in delayed awe. The waitresses scurried into the pantry. The dancers adjusted their skirts. The jubilance had evaporated.

“You there!” he screamed at the musicians. He was looking right at them and their silly hats but they would not respond. “I’m talking to you!”

Rene” said, “Mr. Ajax, they do not speak English. You are scaring them.”

“Scaring them?” He slapped the little man. Rene’ backed up, rubbing his cheek. The governor’s two bodyguards rushed to their charge, hands inside dinner jackets. Ajax patted Rene’ on the head. “Scaring them? I only want to feed them. They must be hungry.”

He left the confused Rene” and walked to the cowering musicians, causing them to cower even more. He grabbed a plate from a lady dressed in yellow chiffon, a diamond the size of a grape dangling from her neck, and offered her plate to a musician holding a flute. The man took the plate, put the flute in a fold of his serape, and began gnawing on the prime rib while nervously eyeing Ajax.

Ajax went around the table. He grabbed the plates from several of his startled guests and handed them to the musicians. Then Bill Smith laughed and handed his plate to one of the dancers. Rene” wiped the blood off of his lip and started to cry. Everyone ignored him.

“That’s the spirit, Bill,” Ajax said as his guests started laughing and loosening up. “Enjoy yourselves. I can’t stay to eat, but I will be back for champagne and dessert. I have other matters to attend to. Busy. Busy.”

When he was out of their view, making his way back to her, he heard Reginald Welles, the oilman with a platinum Rolex, say, “He’s finally lost his mind.” Indeed.

Reese chewed five aspirins and dressed.

He made the car without falling. He started the engine, chewed two more aspirins, felt the crunching far back in his head. That was all he could take for the pain. No hospital. No drugs. He had to be able to walk, to function. He had to be able to kill Ajax. At least be able to point a pistol in the billionaire’s direction. He had to find Rusty.

He felt lightheaded. He’d drank three glasses of water, but he was still thirsty. His legs and arms tingled. The night seemed blacker than before. Colder.

He drove off weaving. He ground the gears, clumsily shifting with the heel of his hand, saving his sprained fingers, pacing himself.

At South Coast Liquors he bought one bottle of beer. He bought two flashlights. The clerk gave him strange, apprehensive looks, like he might get robbed. He drove to the mission and drank the beer in the parking lot.

He had two things to do. One: Save Rusty. Two: Find the LX before a million zombies, a million Homer Wermels, were killing people from Los Angeles to London. He had to kill Ajax. That was three things. Wake up.

He left the empty beer bottle on the front seat and got the shotgun and night goggles from the trunk. He grabbed a roll of electrical tape that had been rolling around in the trunk for years.

He adjusted the sling and hung the shotgun over his back. He kept one flashlight in his hand, the other went in his jacket pocket with the tape.

He tightened the goggles’ head strap and adjusted them to see in the dim light. Hot spots glowed dull green. He tilted the goggles up and walked slowly through the ruins toward the steel frame of the bell tower, ghostly in the half-moon. The huge bells had fallen, and both sat upright like giant hats.

He shined the light into the cellar beneath Ramon’s room. He climbed down tumbled sandstone blocks. At the bottom, he taped the flashlight to the shotgun barrel. Charred timbers creaked and popped. Embers glowed like silent eyes.

The cellar was thirty feet square. Water from the fire hoses lay in pools, reflecting his skittering light. Water still dropping from above made expanding circles around soggy piles of blackened paper from spent fireworks. Weathered beams, scorched and still smoking, angled down. He made his way around the collapsed floor and tried the first door. An empty closet. The next door led to a room full of brandy vats and barrels of wine resting on wooden racks.

Cobwebs caught his light like spun glass. The next door led to thousands of piled manuscripts and an old printing press gathering dust and more cobwebs. The air was black and dense and quiet except for the dripping water. Ashes floated in the small pools like tea leaves. He ducked through an archway and into a chamber where stone caskets, stacked one on top of another, rose five high.

Skulls, amidst jumbled bones, stared from the top ledges. The catacombs. Lavour had told him most of the old priests were buried here. The final chapter of Spanish dreams.

The light picked up skulls and bones, varnished with age, dark brown and brooding. He swung the shotgun around, lighting wet rock and more bones and, finally, the door that led into the belly of the castle. The door was oak, studded with iron bolts, a long curving handle, a square grid to look through. An ancient lock was fitted into a wrought-iron hasp.

The flashlight dimmed, the grinning heads moved in, alabaster and feint blue. He felt his chest tighten and thought about running back outside, back into he cold night and the stars. Easy does it. He tapped the flashlight and it brightened. Both flashlights had probably been sitting in the store for years, unsold. He concentrated on the door. He tried the handle, locked tight. He hit the door with his shoulder but only raised dust.

The air was tight now, closing in.

He tried to break the neck of the lock with the shotgun butt, but only managed to crack the stock. He wound his black tape around the stock a dozen times, good as new but worthless as a hammer.

He brushed his hand across the lock, wiping off dust, scraping off brown paint with his fingernail. The lock was fairly new, painted over to look old.

He heard something far away and put his ear to the grid. Someone screaming and in the background, clarinets?

Rusty?

He swept the shotgun around the room, the bulb again dimming. He snapped the goggles down. In the dull green shadows he saw a long pry-bar in the corner, left from some long ago project, the end resting in the carcass of a large rat, the tail running out like a tapered cord.

He picked up the bar, dislodging maggots, squirming and tinted spooky green. He wanted clean air and stars. He heard her scream, definitely her, and wedged the bar between the lock and the door jamb and pulled. The bar snapped mid-shaft. The scream again. He was losing time.

He stripped the flashlight off the shotgun and propped it to shine on the lock. He taped the barrel to the curving handle, wedging it against the lock to focus the blast. He used more tape, tearing it with his teeth.

He closed his eyes, turned his head, pulled the trigger. The blast lit the room. Pellets ricocheted with a low whir. The recoil cart wheeled the gun across the floor.

A fist-sized hole in the door. He grabbed the gun. Kicked the door open. “Hang on,” he said softly.

From a distant dream, Rusty Webber watched Ajax tear off her pants. Then her shirt. He ripped her bra, gone wild, shredding with teeth and hands, covering the floor with bits and pieces of fabric, a fierce growling from deep inside.

He smoothed his hands along her bare legs. He brought his nose to her top thighs and breathed deeply. He licked between her breasts and sighed.

Like a craftsman, he attached a new chest needle to the syringe and drove it into her leg. She felt the bone nick from deep inside and yelled.

He struck her with the needle over and over, an arcing, stabbing motion, each hit like fire. She yelled at him, every name she could think off, until her throat hurt. When the heavy needle finally broke, he changed it with an even larger needle, kept gouging and stabbing until she lost count.

“Motherfucker!” It was real now. Real time. His arm rising. Dropping. Her head spinning.

His hand flashed, the thin steel fell, a far away slapping as the hand hit. The deep bone pain melting her.

He found a vein in her left foot, finally, and she held still for him, tired of the holes. The syringe filled. He laughed, sprayed blood on her face, the rest in his mouth. Blood down his chin. The hand raised again. She tensed, waiting for the fire, but he stopped, and in the background she heard a bell ringing. Burglar alarm? Telephone?

He raised his index finger as if to test the wind. “It’s Reese, knocking at the back door. Your savior.” He darted away.

She had to stop shaking. Get control. Evaluate.

She was a mess. She tasted her own blood. Naked, blood from a dozen holes, a broken needle sticking from the middle left thigh. The smell of vomit. Don’t exaggerate. It wasn’t that bad. Mostly pinpricks. Don’t think of the needle. You’ve been in worse spots.

She saw no way out until Ted poked his face around the door, saw her, and grinned.

He taped the second flashlight to the shotgun and went through the door. He noticed the small magnetic contact bars, gray plastic, attached to the door jamb. Burglar alarm. He scanned the area in front of him, shucked another round into the chamber, made sure the safety was on, and kept his finger on the outside of the trigger guard. The passageway narrowed to a tunnel six feet high and two feet wide. He ducked slightly, felt the walls squeezing in on him, and walked for another twenty feet before the tunnel angled up sharply.

The tunnel narrowed and lost height, closing in on him. The walls glistened, seeping artesian water. The floor was slick, his running shoes soaked and cold. He went into a chamber ending in a wall of jumbled rock. He slung the shotgun and used both hands to climb. Light and shadow played along the ceiling as he moved.

When he got inside, he’d take the flashlight off the barrel. He didn’t want to be a target. With the goggles and IR lamp he could move in total darkness.

Lavour had told him that the old system of aqueducts and natural tunnels bringing water from the mountains had not been used for years, in fact, he claimed the system had been destroyed by the last earthquake. But someone had been using it. Someone had installed a new lock and alarm system. Someone had been playing hell in Father Ramon’s room.

He was nearly out of breath from the climb when he saw the rubble of sharp, horse-sized boulders blocking the path. He smelled fresh sulfur mixed with sawdust and saw the black radiance of blast patterns. Ajax had used dynamite, a small charge, to block the tunnel. He didn’t want anyone proving he had a way into the mission.

He searched until he found an opening, a jagged hole, rocks delicately balanced on each other. On his knees, he aimed the shotgun, shining the light inside. The hole widened a bit then emptied into a large room.

Facing him, twenty feet away, was another wrought-iron and oak door. Dim light came through its viewing grate. A flashing red light softly illuminated the granite floor. Probably the alarm set off by the sensor on the first door. He was under Ajax. And Ajax knew.

He heard her scream again, closer now. She sounded mad which was good. She was still fighting. Hurry. He pulled the flashlight off the barrel, breaking the tape, and pushed the shotgun in front of him, scraping it along the rock, scratching the barrel. He smiled thinking of the Chief’s face when he returned his personal shotgun.

He measured the opening with his hands, two feet, maybe less. He made his shoulders as small as possible. The goggles scraped rock. The sandstone rubbed his burned leg. He stifled a yell.

He pushed hard, his legs straining, trying to get his shoulders through. The rock shifted. A grating sandpaper noise. A shudder from the stone, a blinding but brief pressure, and he dropped the shotgun, clattering to the floor of the room in front of him. He was stuck good.

He tried to back out, but wedged tighter. The pistol horned into his side. His left arm pinned. He switched off the flashlight to conserve power. He had one arm free. He could yell, but who would hear him? Rusty had quit screaming, and he prayed that was a good sign.

The door creaked open, throwing dust and more light into the room. A head poked through. Ajax. Good. He was away from Rusty. The screams had stopped. That was good. Unless she was dead.

“Is that you Reese? Come a’calling?”

A light now above the door. A bare bulb in a socket. The room now fully lit before him. Ajax standing, smiling. Another tunnel shot off to the left. He stretched for the shotgun. Nearly a yard away, nestled in a jumble of rock that had spilled across the granite floor.

To his right a pair of shoes floated. The shoes, brown leather wingtips stained with a spattering of black, were attached to legs hanging from the roof.

Ajax moved closer. He had once resembled the perfect executive: good posture, slightly graying hair, conservative suit. Normal. But, this man in front of him was something else.

Flashy eyes. Skin slack and sick white. Two long bangs of black hair framed his face. Blood fell off his chin, the front of his ancient black suit shiny with it.

“Can it be?” Ajax said. “I told Ted to use more dynamite, to block the way in, but he never listens. I was expecting you at the front door.”

“Rasmussen.”

Ajax came to him. He clapped his hands together. “You are late,” he scolded. “But we’ve waited for you.” Ajax pointed to the hanging figure.

He looked around. The shotgun out of reach. The pistol wedged in its holster, under him, impossible to get. He could throw the flashlight at him. He could do that or he could spit in his eye. He could call him names. But that was about it.

Reese glanced at the shoes again, close enough to touch. The smell now. He recognized the brown Verliani suit. Hernandez had bragged about it. He remembered the last time he’d seen Hernandez, the detective had been dressed casually. The fool had dressed up for Ajax, probably to impress the billionaire, maybe angling for a well paid security job. Nothing like getting dressed up for your own execution.