Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead (24 page)

Click!

It really was the loudest sound in the world. Either a dud or it was empty—how many had he shot?

Never mind! Indy dropped the gun, grabbed the slip-knotted cord holding his whip to his belt, and pulled it free. He cleared the coiled leather to his right and whirled the plaited whip overhead at the
zombi
as it moved into range—

The lash caught it across the face, sliced it open as if the tip had been a knife. Got its attention—it turned its head to look at Indy as he pulled the whip back for another strike—

This time he didn’t try for a cut, but twisted his wrist and came at the thing horizontally—

The end of the whip wrapped around the thing’s neck—

Indy jerked, hard, and it stumbled forward and sprawled into the puddles facedown—

Indy ran to where it was trying to get up. Pulled his machete, aimed for the middle of its head, and swung as though he was trying to split a log with an ax—

It made a sound like a hollow gourd being hit with a baseball bat—

Mac fired his pistol again, one-two-three-four-five! and Indy turned to see the last of the attackers collapse.

They had stood them off, but at a great cost. All the bearers were down, gone or dying, Batiste among them.

Only Marie, Mac, and Indy were still standing.

He unwrapped the end of his whip from around the motionless thing’s neck. Coiled the leather absently as he looked around.

This was bad. Could be worse, but still bad.

In the stone house on the highest part of the island, Boukman awoke, still cursing. Had he been able to stay on his mount, he could have directed the attack, could have taken them!

But without his guidance, the slaves had simply charged en masse, no attempt at stealth. Of course. They had no fear.

A mistake.

Now he could feel that most of his force was down. The True Risen who had fallen would not be able to stand again; the potion-slaves might be useful, some of them who weren’t too badly damaged, but he would have to animate them. He could not manage that now, given his current state. He would have to do something to give himself power—risky, but it must be done. Even so, he would have to turn all his energy in this direction, focus it, and everything else in his realm would suffer. There was no help for it. It must be done. Must be.

“Did you hear?” Yamada asked.

“Yes,” Gruber answered. “Gunfire.”

“It must be the Englishman and American’s party.”

“Shooting at our spies?”

Yamada shook his head. “I think not. Too many shots. The things in the forest. The
gaki.”

Gruber nodded. Yes, that was possible. But—what did it mean? What did those things want?

“We should go and see. The situation might have changed materially.”

Yamada nodded.

TWENTY-SIX

I
NDY LOOKED AROUND
, and they quickly took stock—wasn’t much to that chore:

The three of them were the only ones left alive.

Were there more of the
zombis,
real or chemical, around? Had they gotten them all?

Marie could not say. She had been trying to control them, but Boukman had protected them. She did not have enough magic to break through his wards.

Mac moved about and collected odds and ends, including a coil of rope, and more food and water. He picked up one of the rifles, hefted it, then put it back down.

Indy got that—if pistol bullets to the head would do the trick, then a rifle was just one more item to carry. Rifles were superior weapons, no question, but better to leave it and haul something more useful—whatever that might be in this particular situation . . .

The rain and wind started and stopped, pouring, then not, then blowing and raining again, and the breeze was definitely getting stronger. They needed to find somewhere else to shelter—this place was marked. If there were still
zombis
about, they would probably show up here. And there were the Japanese and the Germans. If they had heard the shooting over the wind and rain, they might be thinking about dropping by, too.

They were on the southeastern end of the island, and they needed to head north and west to get back to the village. If they followed the shore and kept it on their left, that would handle the western part, and that would mean north would be to their right. But if they didn’t keep within sight of the ocean, which was already the case and going to stay that way as they started north, the heavy cloud cover wouldn’t let them use the sun or stars for reckoning.

Indy dug into his backpack, fishing for something he knew was there somewhere . . .

Ah.

He came up with a small compass. Showed it to Mac, who nodded.

“We want to head that way,” Indy said, pointing. “And find us a big tree or something to block the wind!”

Marie had moved to Batiste’s fallen body. She knelt and spoke a few words over it, made the sign of the cross. A final blessing, Indy figured. A shame, he had been a good man. Best they got moving so they didn’t join him . . .

Yamada, sword drawn, followed the two scouts, Suzuki next to him, his own blade bared.

They came into the sheltered area, which partially blocked the wind and rain because there was a slight rocky rise on the west side.

The place was littered with bodies. More than a score of them.

It did not take long to determine that none of them was the Englishman, the American, or the woman.

Suzuki said, “They know the trick to stopping them.” He pointed with his katana’s tip.

Yes, the downed
gaki
had been shot or cut on the head.

Gruber said, “Helmets.”

It took Yamada a moment to understand it. Ah, yes. If their soldiers took this drug and were able to protect their heads from attack, they would be virtually immune. Yamada had always wondered why Achilles had not worn stout boots, with the heels sheathed in iron. It would not have taken a particularly bright man to come up with that thought. Perhaps if you were spear- and sword-proof, you didn’t have to be particularly bright . . .

“The three we want aren’t here,” Gruber observed. “They cannot have gotten far.”

“But which way did they go?” Yamada said. “We cannot find a trail in this.” He waved his sword at the driving rain.

“Northwest,” Gruber said. “If they want to reach the place where their boat came ashore, they must eventually go that way.”

“Eventually is not now,” Yamada said.

“If we cannot catch them from behind, then we might be able to get there before them,” Gruber said.

Yes. That was true—but: “We are not the only ones after them.”

“There is nothing to be done about that. Besides, it looks as if they have dealt with that problem.” He waved at the corpses.

Gruber had a point.

A tree behind them creaked in the wind. The tree gave up the fight and fell, ripping the ground up as the root-ball tore loose.

“It is still dangerous!” Yamada yelled. “We should find shelter.”

“Agreed!”

They moved out of the battlefield, leaving the dead behind them.

Twenty minutes away, the three of them found a big tree that offered some respite against the wind and rain. The tree seemed to be some kind of tropical hardwood, gnarled and sturdy looking, a baobab tree, maybe, but Indy couldn’t be sure. Did they even grow here?

Well, whatever the species, it had been here for a couple of hundred years and was still standing. Maybe it would survive this.

They tucked themselves in close to it, and it stopped enough of the weather so they weren’t under constant bombardment by the wind and rain.

This couldn’t go on forever. They’d wait it out if they had to, or at least until it slackened some.

Of a moment, the rain seemed to ease up. That was good—

There was a sudden silence, only a heartbeat or two long, and then an ominous roaring noise.

Mac said, “What is
that?
Sounds like a bloody train!”

Indy shook his head. No trains in the jungle. “A tornado!”

They didn’t get many of those in England, Indy knew, but he had seen a few connected to thunderstorms in the United States, and he knew that hurricanes and typhoons often spawned the whirlwinds as they made landfall. Smaller but fiercer versions of the big storm that birthed them. A hurricane might flatten some of the trees and blow houses down, but a tornado was like a sickle through dry wheat—it mostly cleared a path—

The rain returned with a vengeance, and the terrible sound of what had to be a tornado was getting louder fast.

There was no place to go.

“The rope!” Indy yelled. “We have to tie ourselves down!”

That was a danger, being plucked up from the ground and carried away. Indy had heard stories of people being snatched from the ruins of their houses and tossed half a mile by the spinning winds. More of a danger was being hit by debris inside the tornado, where even a straw could, with enough velocity, be turned into a deadly spear—

Lightning flashed, a sudden blast of brightness against the gloom, and thunder crashed half a second behind it. Close—

The wind began to blow harder, leaves and branches spinning past.

The tree’s trunk was too big for their rope to go around and leave them enough to work with, but there were a couple of thick roots that arced free of the soil, there—

Quickly, Indy looped the rope through the larger of the roots, as big around as his leg. He ran one end through his belt and passed it to Marie. “Tie it around yourself!”

Mac was already working with the other end.

The roar of the tornado blotted out anything else they might have said, but Indy waved them down. Lying prone, they would present less for the wind to catch and lift.

The world turned black and the noise grew even louder.

Facedown in the mud, Indy wondered if this was the last thing he would feel in this world. He gripped his hat to his head with both hands. If he survived and he let the wind take the fedora, he’d probably never find it again . . .

It was like being next to a plane’s propellor, only worse.

Small objects smacked into Indy’s back, pocking like popcorn. Something slightly larger bounced off his hip, ow! that hurt!

He felt himself starting to slide along the ground, moving in little hops as he bounced like a ball, the wind catching him, losing him, catching him again.

He pulled his knees in tight, used his interlaced fingers to draw his head closer to his body, and curled into a fetal position as the wind nudged him onto his side.

His belt went taut, and he felt himself sliding along the rope as if held by a giant’s insistent hand:
Come with me,
it said.
Now!

He stopped when he arrived at the end of the line that was tied around Marie. She wrapped arms and legs around him and held on tightly. He grabbed his hat in one hand, let go with the other, and used it to encircle Marie. Nearly face-to-face they bobbed up, cleared the muddy ground, then fell back down. The water that had puddled on the earth was gone, blown away. He felt the rope straining, could feel the vibration, could hear the sound of the rope thrumming as might the string of a musical instrument—

Would his belt break? Would the rope? Would the tree fall?

He couldn’t catch his breath, so fast was the wind rushing past his face. He tucked his cheek into the hollow of Marie’s throat and managed to draw in air as he labored to breathe.

Odd what a man notices when he is close to death—she had a musky, pleasant smell—

He heard wood cracking under the wind’s force, felt rather than saw something big rush past, missing them by inches—

If it got any stronger, it would be all over—

And then, the wind slowed. A heartbeat . . . three more . . . yes, definitely it was easing up . . .

The tornado went on its way, heading to the northwest, clearing a path in front of itself like a steamroller . . .

A few seconds later and the driving rain began to fill the empty hollows the wind had cleared. The near pitch blackness lightened enough for him to see that Mac was no more than a few feet away, the wind having dragged him along the same path.

The wind eased yet more. Enough for Indy to yell, “Mac! You all right?”

“Never better!” Mac hollered back.

“Marie?”

“I am fine.” She released her grip on him, and reluctantly he did the same. He slid back a bit along the rope so that there was a bit of space between them.

“It appears that we have dodged another bullet, old sod. Dame Fortune smiles on us yet again.”

Well, they were still in the middle of a hurricane with all kinds of people in the forest who wanted them in the worst way, but yeah.

Indy nodded. Sooner or later, Dame Fortune was going to turn her smile elsewhere—you couldn’t have it forever—but this had been a big favor on her part. Luck had favored him more than a few times, and he was happy to accept that. Better to be lucky than good . . .

The good thing? The tornado had created for them a walkway, and it was going in the right direction . . .

TWENTY-SEVEN

B
OUKMAN CONSIDERED
his choices, but he could see no better one, and so he invoked Papa Legba, the Master of the Crossroads. This was nothing out of the ordinary, for Papa Legba was both the first and last called upon in heavy magic—he was the Gatekeeper, and contact between human and loa went through him. He controlled the access between the real world and the Other Realm.

Papa Legba was usually revealed as a little old man who smoked a pipe, wore a broad-brimmed hat, and leaned on a cane.

He generally walked with dogs. They revered him, for he was their patron and protector. Abuse a dog, and sooner or later Papa Legba would find you and make you pay. Might be tomorrow, might be fifty years, but find you he always would.

Everybody knew this much about Papa Legba. But it was not so well known that he could and did borrow bits of mojo from every loa who passed through his gate. Not much, and the loa didn’t miss it—if you have millions, you do not miss a few pennies, but after many centuries those small bits from tens of thousands of crossings added up. Papa had amassed strength beyond most. He was not a god, but he could do things that most loa could not. For what each loa had, Papa Legba had, too. Not as much, but more than anyone probably knew.