Suddenly, Terry felt like laughing out loud. Here, he was having an issue with an old man who says he saw a zombie, and he was walking around with an alien in his head. And his girlfriend…
Terry stopped abruptly. It was the first time he had heard himself call Traci that. For a moment, he wanted to call her, but he knew it wasn’t time yet. He had to let it go. At least for the moment.
As he slid into the passenger’s seat, he mentally called Charlie. He was rewarded a second later, as Charlie answered, sounding chipper if somewhat let down.
“I’m here, Terry. And feeling more like myself. Pity. I think I was beginning to enjoy the gruffness.”
Terry didn’t want to tell him that he felt the same thing. He had always felt Charlie was a little on the stuffy side. It could be a good thing as long as he could keep it under control.
“Anything new in the stuff you got out of that computer?”
He could feel Charlie’s ambiguity over his answer. “
No, not really. This is a case of them not lying to you. If anything, I would say this, more than anything, means they are even more afraid than they are willing to admit.
”
“Translation, if they are that scared, it’s even worse than we thought.”
“Exactly.”
“Anything about this guy Chans?”
“There was no mention of him in the files of any of the cases.”
“Think you can do your lie detector thing on this guy?” Terry could feel Charlie tense.
“That is not science. That is simply an opinion. It might be good in most cases, but I would not care to stake the final opinion of a man on it. There are just too many variables, especially on a man that has lived a life as rough as the one this man has. His fields could be skewed all but beyond recognition.”
Terry smiled, careful to keep facing away from Decker to keep him from seeing the grin. He needn’t have bothered. Decker was concentrating way too hard on driving at a speed many would have considered foolish. Add the intricacies of doing it in an over grown go-kart with a windshield and Terry could have been singing
Dolce Mia
and not get a second look.
Satisfied he was safe, he told Charlie.
“You may not think that it’s a science, but I put more faith in one of your guesses than most anybody else’s research. You do what you can. I’ll take it from there.”
Charlie said nothing, but Terry could feel his appreciation. One of the few emotions Charlie’s people hadn’t denied a million years ago.
The mayor had, if nothing else, great taste in love nests. This one was complete with a fountain in the room and its own sauna. Whatever he did there, he did it in style.
Decker led Terry up the back way. He had his own key card, apparently in case there was a need like their present case, or possibly if the mayor, or whoever used the room, needed his help with something. Terry preferred not to elaborate on what that something might be.
Inside the room, Terry was shocked to see the reason for their visit sitting stiffly in a wingback chair. It was easy to see it was him. He wasn’t dirty or even unkempt, but there was no way he would be mistaken for a normal occupant of this hotel.
His clothes were threadbare and rough dried and faded from far too many washings, while his shoes looked as if they had been used at the turn of the century. Still, he looked like he still had enough pride to care about what he looked like.
At least he looked as if he did normally. At the moment, he looked as if he was about to bolt out the door and run like hell. Whatever he thought he saw, it had definitely rattled him. He looked up when the two men entered the room, recognition flitting across his face as he saw Decker. Whatever else might be happening, at least the guy had seen a familiar face.
Then, he turned his gaze onto Terry. It wasn’t hard to see that, at the moment, new people weren’t on his list of favorite things. His eyes widened and his breath quickened. Thanks to Charlie, Terry knew his heart rate had gone up as well. Terry hoped for a moment that he had a Chrliti inhabiting him. It could make things a whole lot easier.
Waiting patiently, he was quickly made aware that the later was not a possibility as Charlie informed him that he could sense nothing from him other than humanity.
Terry sighed. It could have been so much faster if the guy was one of the occupied, but then, that would have made things way too easy.
Decker, meanwhile, was already working to calm Chans down, stepping up to him, quickly extending his hand, a smile spreading across his face. “Chans, you looking good, man.”
As the man stood, his quick movements surprised Terry as he almost jumped up and shook Decker’s hand vigorously. Apparently, he hadn’t cared much for his original companion.
His voice was like the rest of him, well worn and rough but edged with a civility that belied his station in life.
“Thanks, Mr. Decker. They sent me up here and told me you were coming. I didn’t want to, but they told me I had to do the right thing. I woulda come in sooner, but…”
His voice trailed off then came back with a vengeance.
“I hada come in! I saw that thing! I know what it was! You gotta stop it, Mr. Decker!” As he spoke, he had held onto Decker’s hand.
The big man seemed to be surprised by his strength.
Chans wasn’t done yet, however, as he launched into a barrage about what he had seen. Even Charlie took note as he could feel the man’s bio-fields fluctuate. It was easy to see this Chans was trying to keep it together, but the strain was evident.
“That thing was something out of hell, and it looked like it was heading back. I know everybody thinks I’m crazy, but I’m telling the truth! That thing was a freakin’ zombie!”
As he spoke, the man behind him, Clyde Rich, the one that had brought Chans to the penthouse, had stepped behind the bar and poured a drink, in anticipation of a need he could sense coming.
Decker nodded toward Chans to tell the man to hand him the drink he had poured. What it was didn’t matter. What mattered was that it was tall and heavily alcoholic.
Chans accepted it gratefully. He wasn’t a drunk, but he did drink moderately heavy. Enough that the drink had a pronounced effect on his composure. He was a lot calmer as he started to relate the story for the first time in its entirety.
Having drained the drink, he sat up a little straighter as if to add credence to his tale. He knew it would be hard to believe under the best of circumstances, so he wanted to be sure there was no variance in this story and the one he had told at the police station.
“You gotta know, I know what it sounds like when I say I saw a
zombie.
I know you all think it’s just an old man who done had a couple too many. Truth is back home, the stories about zombies are like folklore. Like Bigfoot or a Yeti. This thing wasn’t big, but he had the look.”
Decker and Terry looked at each other quizzically.
“What look?” Terry asked finally. It was the first time he had spoken, and Chans’ reaction was composed if guarded. Still, he had come in with Decker, so that was a point in his favor. Besides, having started, Chans was loath to stop.
Terry mentally checked with Charlie who signaled he could detect no change in Chans’ bioelectric fields. As far as it went, it was a good sign.
Decker, though, wasn’t privy to Charlie’s opinion. All he knew was that the story sounded as fantastic as any he had ever heard. And the worst part was that since he trusted Chans, it was believable.
Chans, meanwhile, had realized he was slipping into his island voice. Unknown to Decker, he used it to con tourists out of a little spare change occasionally. No harm. After all, it was real. He just didn’t want to let it out now for fear they would think this was an act. He decided to go with the facts any way they came out.
“I had just found this dumpster, see? It was full of cans! Looked like one of the night shift had decided waiting on the recycle bin to come back was too much, so they just tossed all of them in with the trash. I thought I hit a gold mine! There was at least a dozen bags of them. Just in the first dumpster! The other two were just as full as far as I could tell, and I figured I could get enough for a couple of nights of happy out of the deal if nothing else.”
He sat back then and looked around, almost hopefully.
Decker looked at him and smiled, reaching into his pocket to pull out a pack of some generic cigarettes.
Terry had no idea where he got them from, but from the look of the pack, he had had them for some time. Probably kept them around for situations like this or something.
Gratefully, Chans took one of the cigarettes and lit it with a lighter he produced from a pocket without a word. After a long pull on it, he went on, still as excited as ever.
“I had moved one dumpster’s worth and sifted through it for the cans and anything else I could find. Wasn’t much else, but it was still good just for the cans. Anyway, after a while, I sat down to catch my breath. Dumb luck put me in the shadow when he came around the corner. He wasn’t rushing or nothing, just seemed to be walking like he didn’t have a care in the world. That was when I saw his eyes.”
Decker frowned as he asked pointedly, “What about his eyes?”
Terry split his attention between both men and Charlie, who was still trying to interpret what Chans was telling them via his bioelectric fields. The bottom line was that there was nothing different about him. Whatever was going on, as far as Chans was concerned, it was true, at least as far as he knew.
Chans simply started talking again without missing a beat. “His eyes, man! They were empty and black! Like a fish! Or a shark! Nothing in them was alive. He was moving, he was even breathing! I could see it! But he was not in there! It was just a body! It was a
zombie
!”
He was trying to make them see what he had seen. There was really no way to do it, but he tried anyway. “The thing was walking the same way the ones I had seen when I was a boy. Same shuffling—”
Terry cut in on him now, curiosity forcing him to ask, “Wait, you’ve seen these things before?”
Chans gave a snort and looked at him as if he wanted to say one thing then thought better of it. Instead, he quipped, “Where I am from, the stories of them are as common as the ones about Bigfoot or UFOs are here. And more people see them whenever they come out. We seen them for centuries. We even know who they were sometimes. But the Houngan that made them, their creator? He the real danger. The thing I saw was just a tool. A slave. It follows the commands of its master like a dog. It killed her and probably others too. If not this one, then others like him. You have to stop this one, yes. But if you want to stop this...all of this...you must find the Houngan!”
Decker said sharply, “What the hell is a Houngan?” Although he knew about many things, he had never thought about any of the things Chans was talking about. To him, like most others, zombies were the stuff of movie horror stories and overly active imaginations. The idea of them being real was almost beyond him. The only reason he had entertained the thought at all was that this was Chans. And of course, the fact that they were grasping at straws.
Terry was more open minded as well as a little more knowledgeable, thanks mainly to Charlie. In his travels, Charlie had come across the things Chans was talking about on several occasions, but they were always in the realm of fantasy. The fact that there were those that believed in them did not make them any more real to him, but they did have a structure of rules and regulations that seemed inviolate or, at least, consistent. Just the kind of thing that Charlie and all the Chrliti loved.
Chans went on stoically. He was still straining to maintain himself as he added.
“He walked straight ahead without making a sound. I could hear him breathing like he had a mask on, but his face was right there! Back home, when we saw one of them, we always knew what he was, even before we saw the eyes, from the smell. They had this scent. Dirt, pinewood from the coffin, death, all rolled into this funk that was easy to pick up. You could smell it long before they came into view. This guy, though, was clean! There was nothing that said he had been dug up out of a grave to serve the Houngan. This one was like everyone else but for the eyes.”
He stopped there to catch himself before he again started to lose himself to his fear. After a second, he took off again.
“The thing was, he could have seen me, but he just walked on by. Matter of fact, the further he walked, the more normal he looked. It was like whatever was controlling him was behind him, and the further he got from it, the more normal he became. Once he passed me, I couldn’t see his eyes, but I could tell he was almost like...reverting as he walked, changing back into a normal human. That was when I knew.”
Decker was thoroughly confused now. Almost plaintively, he asked. “Knew what?”
To both his surprise and Chans’, Terry answered the question almost immediately. Neither of them, however, knew that he was simply parroting what Charlie was telling him inside his mind.
“He’s afraid that this is a Bokor Houngan. A master’s master. Basically, a sorcerer. One who can not only make a zombie, but also turn him back into a human. If I remember right, that is the ultimate power. To create a zombie that does his bidding but then turns back into a human without any knowledge of what he did. A perfect weapon. Hell, if he did it right, the poor bastard can’t even tell anyone what happened or who did it to him.”
Chans was amazed.
Decker was stunned. He had done his due diligence on Terry as soon as he had heard about him, but still, he found himself also amazed by this apparent range of knowledge he was displaying. Amazed and impressed.
Suddenly, Rich, silent as a stone and just as immobile up to now, stepped up and handed Decker his phone, leaning forward to whisper into his ear. Without a word, Decker looked up at him then turned again to Chans.
“Chans, if you saw this zombie guy again, would you be able to recognize him?”
Chans’ face lit up with agitation and indignation, strangely enough, at the same time.