The Savage Dead (5 page)

She went around to the side of the warehouse and saw three guys standing just inside an open doorway. She knew them at a glance. Knew their kind, anyway. They were like all the other common foot soldiers taken off the streets of Ciudad Juarez, tattooed, skinny, unkempt, with a perpetually feral look in their eyes, like dogs that were never fed enough. Men like these died by the dozens every day in Ciudad Juarez, their only claim to fame the horrors that were ravaged on their bodies.

They saw her coming and separated from the shadows. One of the men—Jesus, she thought, he's not even wearing a shirt—put out his cigarette and walked right up to her. He looked her over, head to toe, leering hungrily.

“I'm here to see Ramon,” she said, not wanting to waste time with these losers.

The man laughed. He glanced over his shoulder at the two men behind him.
“Ramon se esta putas caras en estos dias,”
he said.

This brought a laugh from all three men.

“I am no man's whore,” Pilar said.

The man looked back at her, a stupid grin still on his face. Perhaps, at that moment, he sensed the change in her posture, or perhaps he saw the look in her eye, but either way it didn't help him.

He was still grinning when she drove her fist into his throat, crushing the hyoid bone. The man staggered backwards and fell over. He was choking, holding his throat, rolling on the pavement like a fish out of water.

The other two men were already pulling the pistols from the waistbands of their jeans, but they weren't fast enough either. Pilar sidestepped the first man, and when his right hand came up with the gun, she caught his wrist, pushed it high to get the arm and the gun out of play, and then brought the blade of her foot down hard on the side of his knee. The bone crunched beneath the kick and the man cried out. He sagged into a crouch, his leg unable to support his weight. That gave her the height advantage she needed. Using her weight as leverage, she twisted the man's gun hand around, turning in a circle so that he was off balance. He tried to hold on to the gun, and that was a mistake. She snapped the bones in his wrist and sent him tumbling away.

All of this happened in the time it took the third man to pull his weapon, and by the time he did, he found himself staring down the muzzle of the pistol in Pilar's hand.

“Enough!”

Pilar kept the weapon trained on the man's forehead.

He glanced back toward the warehouse door, where Ramon Medina was standing with several of his personal bodyguards. The man turned back to Pilar, and she could sense his uncertainty, his damaged machismo. What would Ramon Medina think of him now, beaten by a girl they'd had outnumbered and outgunned? That's what he's wondering, Pilar thought.

He looked at the two men behind her. Both were still writhing and coughing, unable to get up.

If he had any self-respect at all he'd try to slap me, Pilar thought.

She smiled at him, inviting him to make the next move.

He didn't take the bait. Instead, he muttered, “You fucking bitch.”

Pilar had been dealing with jerks like this little man her entire life. As a child, she'd run from his sort, men who leered at her with dirty faces and bad teeth, their intentions and desires plain on their faces. For years, she'd lived in terror of what such men would do to her when they caught her. But that was a long time ago, and she wasn't a little girl anymore.

She wasn't running anymore.

And she didn't take insults from anyone anymore.

Pilar closed on him before he could react and slammed the butt of her gun down on the bridge of his nose, shattering it with a sickening crunch. The man wilted below her, but Pilar wasn't about to let him go. She was no whore. She was nobody's bitch. The nerve of the man. Who the hell did he think he was?

A red curtain of rage dropped over her.

The blood rushed in her ears. She let the rage fill her.

She knelt over the man and brought the gun down on his face, slinging blood everywhere, smashing teeth and sending them skittering across the pavement like spilled coins.

The man's eyes lost focus. His hands dropped to the pavement. But Pilar didn't stop hitting him. The rage was too strong in her, her need to crush this son of a bitch too powerful.

She slammed the gun down on his mouth. “Bastard !”

And again.

“How do you like that?”

Again.

“Tell me I'm a bitch now.”

Again and again and again.

“I said,
enough!
”

Ramon's words cut through the rage that had momentarily blinded her. He was the only one that could do that to her, pull her back from the edge.

She looked down at the man she'd just attacked. He wasn't moving anymore.

Pilar's chest was heaving, the gun was still raised above her head, blood dripping down her arm. Every nerve felt raw from too much adrenaline.

“You're done there,” Ramon said.

Pilar lowered the weapon, and was about to get up when the man groaned through his busted teeth.

She slammed the gun down one more time.

Then she looked up at Ramon Medina. “Now I'm done,” she said.

Ramon sighed. He was wearing a dark blue tailored suit, a white silk shirt with a gray tie, and crocodile skin boots. When she'd first met him all those years ago he'd looked just like every other street thug trying to carve out a section of Ciudad Juarez for his own. But the years, and more lucky breaks than any ten men deserved had polished him. Just like they'd done her. These days, Ramon Medina looked more like the wealthy playboys of the Mexico City club scene than the leader of the largest cartel in Northern Mexico, and despite the rage still simmering within her, Pilar remembered again why this man had held her in such sway for so many years.

She stood up, blood dripping from her face, her clothes, her hands.

“I see you're trimming off some of the deadweight from my staff,” he said.

She smiled. “Isn't that what you pay me for?”

“I pay you for all kinds of things, Pilar.” He put his hands in his pants pockets and studied her. “How was your trip?”

She shrugged.

“Would you like to get cleaned up before we talk?”

“I thought you said it was urgent.”

He nodded. “Always straight to the heart of the matter, eh?”

“You should know better than anyone.”

His expression remained pleasant. If he had any idea of the heartache he'd caused her over the years, all the things she swore she'd never do but did anyway just because of what he meant to her, he made no sign of it.

Oh, he knew, she thought. He knows everything there is to know. He's the only man who knows everything there is to know about me.

He just doesn't care.

Ramon turned to his bodyguards and gave instructions for the injured men at Pilar's feet to be brought inside.

“That one there, the one that's all beat up, take him to Dr. Rosato. Tell him I want a demonstration on the floor in fifteen minutes.”

The men were removed inside, and Pilar and Ramon were left alone. He stood to one side and ushered her inside.

“What, no hug?” she said.

His smile broadened. “It is good to see you, Pilar. I missed you.”

 

 

“What exactly am I looking at?” she said.

She was standing in Ramon's office, staring through a pane of one-way glass. On the other side of the glass was a fairly large open room, a few boxes here and there, some rusting pieces of machinery, a few doors along the back wall.

Aside from the men she'd injured outside, now sprawled out on the floor, there was nothing much of interest.

Ramon flicked his wrist, checking the time on his slim gold watch.

“Any minute now. It takes about ten minutes for someone as badly injured as our friend out there to feel the effects.”

“When did you get the watch? I don't remember you ever wearing jewelry.”

He gave her his best smile, perfect white teeth gleaming in the lamplight from his desk. “Do you like it? It was a gift.”

“From who?”

“Does it matter?”

She turned away. “You're a bastard.”

“Come on, Pilar. Don't be like that.”

She didn't take the bait. She wasn't going to get into this again. How many times could he play her like this, keep her coming back for more like she was on some kind of string?

How many times would she let him?

Nodding toward the window, she said, “Tell me what I'm supposed to be looking at.”

He stood up from his desk and came over to the window to stand by her side.

“I've diversified quite a bit over the years. Drugs and weapons pay well, but the real money is in investing. American sports franchises, banks, software startups, you name it. And, among other things, I happen to own significant interests in six different biomedical research firms, which is why you're here.”

She nodded toward the man she'd pistol-whipped. He was on his back, a puddle of blood forming around his head. “I don't think biomedical research is going to help that guy.”

“No,” he said. “You're right about that. He's definitely a dead man.”

“So what am I supposed to be looking at?”

“Just wait.” He looked at his gold watch, and then flashed that disarming smile of his again. “It should be any minute now.”

She scowled, but said nothing.

Pilar turned her attention back to the three men out in the middle of the warehouse floor. Two of them were moving, rising shakily to their feet. The third wasn't going anywhere, though. She could see that from here.

Must have done more damage than I thought, she realized. Of course, the bastard deserved—

The thought broke off cleanly. The man she'd injured so badly was convulsing. He was coughing blood all over the floor. She'd seen men die from beatings before, and that wasn't what was happening here. It looked more like something was inside him, and trying to tear its way out.

“What's wrong with him?” she asked.

“Just watch.”

The room wasn't lit very well, but as the man flopped around on the floor, Pilar got a pretty good look at his features. He was ghastly. Something was wrong with his face. She'd smashed him up pretty severely, but she hadn't caused that. Not those injuries. The cuts on his face looked black. That wasn't bruising. She could see that. That was disease. And the skin around the black, diseased wounds was mottled red and shot through with burst blood vessels, like fresh burn marks.

“I didn't do that to him,” Pilar said. “What is that? What's going on?”

“I know you didn't. I did.” Ramon pointed back to the floor. “Just watch.”

The man stopped fighting. As Pilar watched, he sank to the floor and went still. Pilar's brow furrowed. Had he just died? It sure looked that way. But then, he climbed to his feet, stood there stupidly for a moment, and then started to look around the room.

“This is the tricky part,” Ramon said. “Sometimes they don't attack. They just stand there.”

Pilar looked at him. “What are you talking about? What is this? What did you do?”

“Always so many questions, Pilar. Even when you were a little girl, you always questioned me. What have I told you? Don't ask questions. It keeps you from hearing the answer.” He pointed to the window. “Ah, good, he's one of the movers. See? Look.”

Pilar turned back to the glass. Inside, the man with the ruined face was staggering forward, advancing on the man that Pilar had hit in the throat. Pilar didn't react when the first man attacked. She didn't react when he pushed the man's chin up and leaned into his neck, exposing the bruised throat. She thought maybe he was checking the damage she'd done to his friend. But when the man started to tear into that bruised throat with his teeth, pulling huge strips of flesh away with the broken stubs of the teeth he had left, Pilar gasped.

“My God,” she said.

“Oh, no,” Ramon said. “God has nothing to do with this, I assure you. That right there is good old-fashioned American biomedical research. Nearly a billion dollars of it, in fact. It took my labs almost two years to modify the
Clostridium
bacteria that's causing that reanimation.”

Pilar's only response was a long, muted groan. The man was eating that guy. Actually
eating
him.

“Ramon, what have you done?”

“Incredible, isn't it?” Ramon said.

“It's ghastly.”

He laughed. “Pilar, I'm surprised at you. Don't you see what's going on out there?”

A gunshot kept her from answering.

Inside the room, the third man was backing away from his two companions, a look of abject horror on his face. He held a pistol on the man with the ruined face, but Pilar was unable to tell where the shot he'd just fired had gone. The cannibal was climbing to his feet now, so he hadn't been hit.

Or had he? There was a blackish-looking hole in his right shoulder, and as he lurched forward, that arm didn't come up.

Four more shots rang out, all of them solid center mass hits to the chest.

Pilar nodded in approval as the man with the ruined face fell backwards onto his butt and sat there, staring up at the man who had just shot him. Strong will, Pilar thought. The human body, she knew from experience, could withstand a huge amount of violence and damage and still carry on. She'd once slashed an American soldier's belly wide open, and then been surprised when the man ran away from her. She'd chased him for four blocks through the slums of Ciudad Juarez, the man cradling his intestines as he ran, before finally putting him down. It all depended on the amount of fight an injured person had in them. This man, with four gunshots to the chest and one to the shoulder, might still hang on for a few hours, though he wasn't going to be getting back up.