Terry Saunders pulled his black mask up over his blonde beard with one hand as he waited for the signal. His other hand gripped his Glock-19, ready in the hopes he’d have reason to use it.
Sweat trickled through his eyebrow into his left eye, prompting a backhand swipe to clear his vision. The moisture had nothing to do with nerves; those were ice cold and taut as steel cables, though again, not from undue strain.
Terry Saunders liked his job. A lot.
Hogan nodded.
Tate swung the battering ram, sending the door to apartment 106 flying open. Hogan breached first, followed by Terry, then Petersen, with Tate bringing up the rear.
“ICE!” Hogan shouted as he darted left into the galley kitchen where Bella Rodriguez was shucking corn for a dinner her family would never eat. “Get on the ground! Now!”
Hogan didn’t wait for a response. Grabbing a handful of hair, he dragged the woman to the ground, one knee planted in her back.
Terry and the others kept moving, Petersen behind him, Tate darting past Hogan and his captive to the far side of the kitchen.
A short hallway led to a T-junction, a living room to the left, closed doors lining the hall to the right. Terry followed the hall, throwing doors open and ducking his head in as he went. Behind him he heard Petersen and Tate yelling “Freeze! ICE!” at whomever was occupying the living room.
The first door was a bedroom, likely shared by sisters, given the twin beds and Taylor Swift posters on the walls.
The room across the hall was larger, a master bedroom, simply furnished, with family photos and a large wooden crucifix one one wall.
Terry reached for the third door, presumably another bedroom, when the fourth and final door at the end of the hall flew open to reveal a figure silhouetted from the light behind. A young woman’s voice called out, “What’s going on?” before she was drowned out by the back of Terry’s Glock.
The silhouette crumpled in the doorway, leaving Terry staring into his own spider-webbed reflection. A few shards of glass hung tentatively in place before abandoning all hope and plummeting into the bathroom sink.
“Kara!” Bella Rodriguez screamed from somewhere behind, in the direction of the living room. The sounds of a scuffle followed, that in turn by a violent subdual.
Terry ignored it all, including the sound of Hogan’s footsteps coming down the hall, intent on enjoying the moment, the juice of power flowing through every artery, vein, and capillary.
He looked down at the dead Latina girl. Fourteen? Fifteen? Nice tits. Shame I didn’t catch the little whore in her bedroom.
Hogan appeared beside him, followed down the hall by the wails of the surviving Rodriguez family members.
“You good?”
“Of course,” Terry replied. “Anchor baby gave me a jump, is all.”
Hogan frowned downed at the dead girl. “I don’t see a piece on her.”
“Who cares? Terry shrugged. “She’s just another spic bitch. No one’s going to miss her aside from the illegals back there.” He shrugged one shoulder in the direction of the living room.
“I care. It’s extra fucking paperwork. For both of us. Just be thankful Miami doesn’t have the budget for bodycams.”
Terry glanced into the bathroom. “I’ll tell you what.” He stepped over the shell of Kara Rodriguez, careful not to leave a boot print in the pooling blood.
“Problem solved.” He picked an object off the bathroom counter and tossed it onto the girl’s body.
Hogan looked down at the hairdryer on Kara’s crimson-soaked chest. “Works for me.”
He turned and walked back down the hall to oversee the removal of the rest of the Rodriguez family.
Terry eyed the dead girl on the floor, then pulled the bandana from his face. A thorough wipe of the blow-dryer’s handle left him satisfied any prints would be smudged beyond use. He then placed the dryer in the dead girl’s hand and laid it across her chest; the image made him think of a gunslinger, cut down in a dusty small town main street.
He smiled.
Still, a shame. Nice tits.
Down the hall, he could hear the others escorting the illegals out through the galley kitchen. With a final glance at Kara’s corpse, he went to join them.
Back in the lobby, Terry let the others load the remnants of the Rodriguez family into a white panel van as he took a small prybar to the mailbox for apartment 106 and studied the contents. A couple of bills. A handwritten letter from someone in Playa del Carmen. A letter from USCIS advising Mr. Rodriguez of his family’s Naturalization Ceremony and welcoming them to the United States of America.
Terry tossed all of it in the lobby’s trashcan, his sweat-soiled black bandana following all the paper, when he realised he was not alone.
He guessed her at over eighty years old, though he’d never been good judge of age; her thin, frail frame, slightly hunched, and dark, bird-like hands, implied such to him.
Her stare, however, was stiletto-sharp, broken only by a quick glance past him at the broken mailbox, before stabbing back into his skull.
He didn’t need to look to know what she’d seen outside the building’s glass doors—Hogan and the boys loading the spic family into the van. And then finding him rooting through the Rodriguez mailbox.
“You should keep on minding your own business, Aunt Jemimah,” Terry growled, “Unless you want to be taking a boat back to Jamaica.”
Fear and disgust dulled the edge in the old woman’s eyes. Turning away, she made for the elevator, vanishing into its depths a moment later.
I swear to God, abolishing slavery was one of the stupidest things we’ve ever done, Terry thought. Well, maybe we’ll get lucky and Miami PD will put the old bat out of our misery.
With a smile at the mental image of Miami’s finest busting down the old biddy’s door, Terry joined his fellows to straighten out their stories regarding the dead girl and wait for the coroner.
None of them returned to apartment 106 in time for Kara Rodriguez to be discovered by the old woman who lived next door, let alone to see her collect Kara’s hairbrush from the bathroom counter. Nor did any of them notice the young black man who retrieved Terry’s bandana from the lobby trashcan at the behest of his grandmother.
Louisa Jean-Guerrier looked across her kitchen table at her grandson Antoine, with no small amount of concern in her eyes.
“Are you sure?” she said softly, her voice rich with the flavour of Haitian creole.
“She was my best friend, Granmanman,” Antoine said, his own accent flat and American. “I’m sure.”
Louisa studied the lines on her grandson’s face where tears had etched a path. After a long moment, she nodded.
She began the ritual. A ritual she’d performed dozens of times, with different variations, depending on what she needed, who she needed to speak with.
This particular variation she’d only done once before. The night a Miami-Dade sheriff had been acquitted of gunning down Antoine’s parents in a routine traffic stop.
Eleven years. Eleven years since the last time she’d spoken to HIM.
Louisa began to pray aloud as she cast the veve in cornmeal across the table’s surface, careful not to disturb the lit purple pillar candles that marked the circle containing the veve. Before Antoine, she set a shot glass of dark rum, an espresso cup of dark coffee, and a fine Cuban cigar, ironically a gift from Mr. Rodriguez.
Antoine himself was swaying rhythmically in his seat, tapping an odd, aggressive cadence on a petno drum with a pair of small drumsticks, Haitian creole flowing from his lips in a song of invitation.
Their voices entwined and ascended, grandmother and grandson, chant and song striving to a crescendo.
The room went dark.
A heartbeat passed.
The candles flickered back to life. The darkness however remained—the table and its two occupants the only thing visible, the rest of the apartment relegated to obscure, indefinite shadows.
Louisa peered across the table to where her grandson had been seated but a moment before.
The body was still his; of that there was no doubt. The preternatural intelligence, however, that glittered in his dark eyes, the mischievous grin that lit Antoine’s normally sombre face, the way his lanky teenage frame was casually draped across his chair—Louisa knew Antoine was no longer present, his body a chwal for the loa within.
“Gran Louisa Jean-Guerrier. Such a pleasure to see you after all these years.”
Though the voice was Antoine’s, it was not. Gone were the wavering highs and lows of late puberty, as well as the inflectionless American accent. The loa’s voice was both rich and dry—smooth like dark rum, with the whisper of dry leaves in a cemetery.
Baron Samedi, Lord of Graveyards, extended one hand to Louisa in greeting.
Louisa bowed and extended her own hand in return, albeit with but her index finger closed.
The Baron smiled as he shook the single finger. “Well met, Gran Louisa Jean-Guerrier.”
Releasing her finger, he picked up the shot glass of rum and held it to his nose. With a deep inhale, his smile grew wider. Downing the dark elixir in one swallow, he placed the glass upside down on the table and picked up the cigar. With a single breath that ran the length of the siga laj, he soaked up the aroma before lighting it with the flame of one of the pillar candles.
Leaning back in his chair, he took a long pull, then blew a series of smoke rings into the darkness before taking a delicate sip of the coffee.
“So,” he said, contentment inscribed in this voice and features, “Tell me, Gran Louisa. What brings me here today?
Louisa reached down beside her and pulled two items from her knitting basket. The first, a few strands of Kara Rodriguez’s hair, carefully braided. The second, a black, sweat-imbued bandana. These she laid on the table between them.
“A great wrong has been done.” I know it cannot be undone. But it can be stopped from happening again.”
The Baron nodded solemnly. Clenching the cigar in his teeth, he picked up the strands of hair and rubbed them between his finger and thumb, before doing the same with the baclava.
“Hm,” he said thoughtfully, “Clearly a miscarriage of justice.”
“However,” he leaned forward, placing the cloth mask on the table, “She is not of our kind.”
Louisa had expected this.
“Family is not blood or skin. Family is deeper.” She tapped a fist against her bony chest. “Family is in the soul.”
The Baron studied her as he took another long pull from the cigar. A moment later another succession of smoke rings sailed through the air.
“You are a wise woman, Gran Louisa. It shall be done.” He sipped his coffee. “Revenge shall be yours.”
“No.” Louisa shook her head. “I wish to avenge her death. Revenge I do not seek.”
The Baron broke into a toothy smile. Louisa knew she’d passed a test.
“Well spoken, Gran Louisa. And well-met. Until next time.” Again, he extended his hand. Again, she offered her index finger. With this odd-seeming handshake, a pact was sealed.
Gran Louisa watched as her grandson’s body slumped, the deep wells of his eyes shifting to reflect youthful innocence once again.
One hand raised the cigar to pensive lips, eyes avoiding Gran Louisa’s gaze.
“Antoine! You stop that! You are too young to smoke!”
Gran Louisa made a feeble swipe at her grandson, who started to cough harshly from the unfamiliar sensation of smoke in his lungs.
Terry guided his Audi Q3 through the streets of North Beach, streetlights splashing across the SUV’s ebon body. He turned the phone conversation of five minutes ago over and over in his mind; strange news from Hogan.
“So, she’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone? Who’s gone?” Terry wasn’t a fan of cryptic statements.
“The girl. From today. The Rodriguez kid.”
“Seriously?”
“Yup. Vanished. Like she never was.”
“How? Someone break into the morgue? Don’t they have cameras?”
“Apparently she never made it that far. They left her covered up in a hallway ‘til they could clear a backlog. As for the cameras, the hospital’s been dealing with brownouts, so they’ve been diverting power away from non-essentials.”
“Like the morgue.”
“The morgue cameras. Don’t imagine they want the fridges turned off. Place would stink up real bad, real fast. What I don’t get is why someone come take some no-name teenage spic’s body in the first place.”
“Who knows?” Terry said. “Probably some necrophiliac pedophile libtard.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Terry heard relief in Hogan’s voice.
“Why, were you thinking something else?”
“Ah, it’s nothing,” Hogan said, an odd hesitancy in his voice.
Terry waited and listened.
Hogan started again. “Just been hearing some whispers about those Sante Ria freaks acting up again. Superstitious bullshit, but they believe it, and that makes them extra dangerous, even before considering we’re already walking around with targets on our back just for doing our jobs.
“Anyways, don’t sweat it. If anything, this’ll take any heat off. No body, nothing to investigate. Though I still have some paperwork to do.”
Hogan smiled to himself. “Yeah, sorry, ‘bout that boss.”
“Ah, don’t sweat it. Just go home and have a few for me. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow, boss,” Terry said, and hung up the hands-free.
Of course, that had been all of five minutes ago. Now, here he was, standing on the doorstep of his mid-century modern, staring at the surveillance camera above the door.
Brownouts, he thought. Bullshit.
Turning away from the Nikon’s inanimate stare, he punched in the door code and pushed through. In the small foyer, his hand reached for the dim green glow of the alarm pad, punched in his code, and hit OFF.
Hogan’s right. I need a stiff one. Or five.
He checked the electronic deadbolt and engaged the chain latch on the door. The image of the Rodriguez’s door splintering open rose in his mind; they hadn’t even bothered to see if it awas unlocked before Tate had swung the ram.
The scared are weak. And the weak are pliable.
Intimidation is everything.
He dropped his car keys on the table and continued down the hall towards the kitchen’s swing door, not bothering to to re-alarm the bungalow. A small red light indicated a breach at the living room patio door, then darkened, as unnoticed as the slight sound of glass breaking in the living room darkness.
Terry flicked on the light to reveal a large kitchen with white marble counters and clean, white windowed cupboards, a central island flanked on either side by stools. He tossed his shoulder rig onto the island, Glock snug and secure in its holster, and opened the fridge to study its contents. After a long moment of staring at the cans of Coors Light therein, he decided he did want something stronger after all and turned to peer through the kitchen’s galley window into the open concept space of the conjoined dining room and living room, where the wet bar stood sentry against one wall.
Guided only by the light through the galley window, he made his way through the kitchen’s other swing door to the wet bar, where he poured himself a finger of Benchmark bourbon and downed it in one swallow. Adding a single ice ball into the glass, he topped it with three more fingers, took a long sip, and sighed.
The bourbon’s fire cooled his nerves, and he meandered over to the dining area’s patio doors, identical to the ones a few feet away in the living room, right down to the vertical blinds hanging open to frame the view outside.
What…
Terry couldn’t place it at first, but something was wrong. The back fence that bordered on the Boyd’s property seemed undisturbed; but not so the hibiscus that bordered the wooden barrier.
With a frown, Terry reached for the patio light.
Soft incandescents illuminated red brick and green grass. Along the fenceline, Terry’s flowerbeds ran, their earth dark and rich. Gardenias, oleander, and jasmine all stood in bloom, squat mourners standing over their fallen comrade, the hibiscus, itself cracked and crushed as if some weight had fallen from the heavens upon it.
A scattering of crimson petals reached into the grassy lawn, falling shy of the patio, but only by mere yards. Terry’s eyes tracked across the lawn, imagining invisible footprints embedded in the close-cropped green—then his eyes widened as the footprints manifested into reality, earthy silhouettes on the red patio bricks.
Small, bare-footed prints led across the patio to the living room’s sliding glass door.
What?
Terry stepped towards the door, studying the footprints as he went. Small, —like a kid’s—, each step fading as it approached the patio door.
Glass crunched under Terry’s shoe.
Terry froze, then reached for his Glock. A figure lurched out of the shadows towards him.
“Fuck!”
The gun of course, lay on the kitchen’s island, a scar on the pristine marble.
Terry raised an arm in defense against the intruder, who moved slowly and clumsily. Small, grave-cold hands latched onto his forearm, and before he could comprehend what was happening, small teeth followed suit.
Terry screamed, less out of fear than surprise and pain. He threw his arm outward, sending his assailant floundering into the the living room coffee table, albeit with a small chunk of his extensor muscle clenched between their teeth.
“Fucker!”
Riding a wave of shock, Terry lurched across the dining room, putting the dining room table between him and the intruder. Blood flowed down his arm, warm and slick, as he pushed through the kitchen door and fell back against a counter.
He looked down at his arm and swore again. The wound wasn’t as bad it looked—a flesh wound, really—but there was enough blood to look like he was wearing a crimson glove.
Through the galley window, he could hear movement. Shuffling, slow, but intent.
Moving around the kitchen island, he reached for his Glock.
“Fuck.”
With the bite in his arm, his grip was too weak to unholster the weapon.
The kitchen door began to swing open. Slowly. Excruciatingly slowly.
Fighting down a sliver of panic, Terry pinned down the shoulder rig with his bloody arm and freed the Glock with his off hand. With a clumsy grasp on the pistol, he swung it up to point at his attacker—and froze in disbelief.
Her dark hair was still shiny, as if life clung to it; her skin on the other hand, was too sallow for her fourteen-year-old face and appeared to hang slackly from her jaw. A sheen of milk seemed to veil her eyes, yet Terry could sense burning pupils focused on him.
She was wearing the over-sized Hamilton t-shirt from when he’d shot her earlier, the center-mass bullet wound rimmed with crusty brown blood. Her legs were bare, just as they had been in her bathroom; now, however, her lower legs were dark, pooled with what blood hadn’t been left on the linoleum.
Terry didn’t notice the tremble that overtook his body, as one single word overtook his mind.
Zombie.
“You’re a fucking zombie,” he said aloud.
His mind raced back to his conversation with Hogan.
“—been hearing some whispers about those Sante Ria freaks acting up again—”
Jesus Christ. Bitch’s family brought her back. Fucking beaners.
Terry raised his Glock and fired. Between his off-hand and the shake that permeated his body, the shot went wide. On the far side of the galley window, something shattered; possibly his eight-five-inch plasma screen TV. Not that he cared in the moment.
The Rodriguez girl stumbled across the kitchen to the island, directly opposite Terry. Hesitated, as if unsure how to reach her prey.
Terry squeezed the trigger twice, knowing even with his off-hand and frayed nerves, he couldn’t miss at such close range.
Both slugs hit center-mass, tearing through cotton fabric, each less than an inch from the original entry wound. Unlike that initial wound, no blood spilled forth from these; no bodily fluid of any manner seeped forward. It was like shooting a ballistics dummy.
More importantly, the girl didn’t drop.
Fuck! I need a head shot!
Terry raised the gun as the girl’s hand grabbed the barrel and forced it down. How is she so slow and so fast? Weakened by the blood loss—
Fuck!
—Terry couldn’t fight against her. So, he did the only thing he could. He fired.
The round entered at the bottom of her ribcage; once again, the only evidence of its existence was the hole in the sullied Hamilton t-shirt.
With superhuman strength, the girl wrenched the Glock from his grasp and sent it skittling across the floor. With the recognition he was outmatched and the dawning realisation I’ve been bit by a zombie!, Terry broke for the kitchen door leading to the hall, the sound of inhuman shuffling following behind.
In the hall, he looked at the door and its locks and instantly regretted the security measures. He’d never get the door open in time. Instead, he ducked into the powder room and locked the door behind him.
Throwing open the medicine cabinet, he studied its contents, grabbed a bottle of iodine, and hastily unscrewed the cap.
Goddamit! Fuck! Fuck! I don’t wanna turn!
He dumped the bottle on the bite on his arm and screamed.
Darkness almost—almost—consumed him. He clawed back from the agony-swollen void to the sound of wood splintering.
Bitch is breaking through the fucking door!
With alternatives running few and far between, he threw open the tiny powder room window.
The warm Florida night flowed into the room, overpowering the house’s air conditioning. Without hesitation, Terry climbed on the toilet and hoisted himself through the small opening, struggling to fit his muscled bulk through. Behind him, he heard the door give a final shuddering show of resistance before surrendering to the fourteen-year-old dead girl on the other side.
Terry went out head-first; he was almost clear when he felt a small hand close on his ankle.
“No! No! You fucking bitch! Let go!”
With his loose foot braced against the outside wall, he pulled with all his might. Her grip was too strong—he could feel teeth closing in on the tender flesh of his calf—when suddenly his shoe gave, and he found himself on the ground, down one Danner shoe, but otherwise unscathed.
Pushing himself forward—
Hospital. Must get to a hospital.
—he stumbled around the side of the house and into the front yard.
Probably have to amputate. Better than becoming like her.
The fresh nighttime air brought clarity to his surroundings. Behind him, he could hear clattering—bitch is unlocking the fucking door!—and in front of him, on the sidewalk, stood a tall figure, watching him curiously.
Terry’s mind glossed over some of the odder details—the bare chest underneath an old-fashioned black tuxedo jacket, the battered black top had, the wire-rimmed sunglasses with one lens missing. The man’s colouring, rich and dark, did register, but Terry pushed aside his disgust with the recognition the stranger might be his only hope.
“Help,” he croaked, “Bitch bit me—need a hospital—before I turn…”
The stranger’s accent was as rich and dark as his skin, and held a note of bemusement.
“Sir,” the stranger spoke, his voice a whisper in a field of desiccated sugarcane, “I don’t think you are mortally wounded. It appears to be merely a flesh wound.”
“You don’t understand!” Terry snapped. He glanced down the walk where the dead girl had managed to open the door and was now stumbling out of the house. “She’s a fuckin’ zombie! She bit me, and if I don’t get to a hospital, I’m gonna fuckin’ turn! Help me up!” He extended his hand violently upwards.
The stranger smiled, bemusement turning into something more sinister. “You Americans. So disrespectiful.” He reached down and took Terry’s open hand into his own before the ICE agent had time to reconsider.
The lifeless corpse of ICE Agent Terry Saunders slumped to the ground as Kara Rodriguez shambled down the cobblestone walk.
“Americans,” Baron Samedi, Lord of Graveyards said. “They still don’t understand the difference between their cinematic ghouls and a true zombie.”
Kara looked up at the Baron, an unspoken plea hidden in her milky eyes.
The Baron smiled, softly, kindly. “Yes, my child. I will release you from this torment. Your part in this is done.” He held out his hand.
“You will no such thing,” a voice spoke in the night, it’s texture melodic and feminine, and decidedly Latinx.
The Baron’s smile fell, then returned, a hint of mischief now present.
“Santa Muerta, how lovely to see you,” he said, turning his gaze to a dark-haired woman whose yellow eyes outshone the nearby lampposts.
One eyebrow rose below a wide-brimmed sombrero bedecked with lit candles, marigolds, and brightly coloured sugar skulls. “Is it? It seems to me you were about to claim what is not yours.”
“Ah, but who is to what—or whom—belongs to whom? After all, family is more than simply blood or skin. Family runs deeper.”
“True. And she has a family. A family who misses her. A family who remembers her.”
An impossible tear rolled down Kara’s cheek. The Baron watched it as wound its way down to catch at her chin.
With a gentle hand, he reached out and stroked a loose strand of Kara’s hair.
“Go with Mictēcacihuātl, child. Go with her and be remembered,” the Baron said softly.
Sightless eyes stared up at the Baron before surprising the loa with a hug. Kara then shuffled to where Santa Muerte stood.
Santa Muerte’s voice took on a softer tone. “Gracias m’lord.”
“No hay de qué,” the Baron replied.
“Ven nina,” Santa Muerte said, and wrapped her long black cloak around Kara Rodriguez. Like memories, the two faded away in the humid Miami night.
Baron Samedi stood for a long moment on the sidewalk, staring at the spot where the two had stood. Breaking out of his reverie, he stared down at the cooling carcass of what had been Terry Saunder.
“Up, puppet,” the Baron said. “I do believe I still want two souls tonight.”
The soulless shell of Terry Saunders—a meat puppet in the truest sense—climbed to its feet, thoughtless and directionless.
The Baron closed his eyes, seeing in his mind another ICE agent, this one currently raping a young Honduran teen under the threat of having her family deported.
And evil smile crept across the Baron’s lips.
“We’re coming to get you, Hogan!”
The Baron broke out into laughter at his own joke. His puppet simply stood staring blankly at nothing in particular.
In the near distance, sirens cut the night. The Baron beckoned to his tool, and the two strode into a patch of shadow, where they vanished without a whisper.
Unlike ICE Agent Peter Hogan, whose screams echoed throughout his high-rise condo before he too, vanished into the night.