The flames roar as the dark one pours rum over the burning logs. He extends his arms in silent prayer to the old gods as the shadow awakens. Tongues of flame erupt from the bonfire to lick at the twisted trees around him. Crumbling and tilting granite stelae glow orange with the flickering reflections of the fiery pyre, revealing inscriptions from a time of strife.

“It been a long time,” the dark one speaks. His words are stretched into a Caribbean patois. “Loong fuckin’ time.”

From the shadows within his long black sport coat, the dark one produces something that wiggles in his hand. It chirps as he dangles it over the flames. It is a black rooster bound with zip ties. The dark one douses the animal in rum and throws it to the flames.

“Da stas is lined da way dey need ta be an’ it won’t be long now,” he says.

The dark one drinks from the bottle of rum. The drink burns on the way down and he hisses after he finishes it.

“Now I jus’ gotta find somethin’ you like,” he whispers to the flames.

Dominique

Clapping thunder and clattering rain clamor continuously outside as Dominique struts along the hallway in jade plastic platform heels that add more than half a foot to her height. Without them, her rain spattered brown overcoat would drag the gaudy orange carpet. The rounded yellow and silver CD player she carries over her shoulder isn’t that heavy, but the shoes make it seem so much worse. The balancing act with her cell phone is a difficult one. She glances back in annoyance at Brad, her bodyguard, but he doesn’t notice.

“Man on the TV says there’s a level five weather emergency for Convent Parish, mom.” The voice on the cell phone belongs to her son, Etienne. He’s nine.

“For Christ’s sake, child,” Dominique says. “That’s thirty miles away.”

“What if the power goes out, mom?”

“What if it does? Maybe you’ll get your homework done instead of playin’ video games.”

“I already did my homework.”

“Good,” she says. She already knew he did, but she likes to keep him on his toes.

“Two-seventeen?” Dominique whispers back at Brad as she continues to strut past numbered hotel room doors. The hotel is older than dirt and so far from the city that her better judgment screamed not to come out at all. Out here she could be walking into a cookout filled with wholesome LSU boys or a scene from Deliverance. She’s seen both of those and everything in between. Going to the boonies is asking for trouble, but there were no other calls tonight and Etienne’s tuition is already behind. She won’t see that boy in the Louisiana public schools. That can’t happen.

“Mmm?” Brad groans wearily. He’s a greasy white yank with a shaggy salt and pepper mullet and a thick goatee. He never wears anything but dirty grey sweat pants and a size XXXL Affliction tee shirt. Dominique doesn’t like him. None of the muscleheads Mitch hires are winning any personality contests, but this one is especially dour. He makes her carry the radio, while most of the others offer to do it for her. He’s grumpy and ugly and half asleep most of the time, but he’s a mountain of a man, at least a foot taller than her with her heels on, and that counts for everything in this business.

“I don’t like it when you work late,” Etienne says.

“You like wearing clothes and not starvin’ to death and havin’ a roof over your head?” Dominique replies.

“Yeah,” the boy laughs.

“Then ah gotta keep workin’ late.”

“Uh, myeah,” Brad grumbles as he thumbs his cell phone. “Two-seventeen.” Most of the jobs come through as text messages with an address and not much else. They’re presently passing two-fifteen, two-sixteen, and there it is: two-seventeen.

“Ah got a table so ah gotta go,” Dominique says. She told Etienne she works overnights in a diner. Whether he believes that is a matter of speculation.

“Okay,” Etienne says. “Love you, mom.”

“Love you too, baby.”

She pushes the red button to disconnect her call as she stops in front of door 217.

She takes a deep breath and then gently knocks three times at the door. An unfortunate thunderclap drowns out the sound of her knocking, so she waits only a second before knocking again. Her knuckles barely contact the old lacquered wood before the dull steel door handle turns. The door creaks open as lightning flashes throughout the hallway. Between the door and the jam Dominique sees a pair of threatening black eyes glaring out at her from a room with no lights on.

“Hi there,” Dominique whispers. “Somebody call for a dancer?”

The door opens the rest of the way to reveal a hard looking white boy with a square jaw and bulging muscles. His eyes are level with hers, which puts him at six feet, and his black hair is buzzed close to his head. He wears only a pair of black jeans and some heavy boots that look military to her. Her attention is so drawn to his titanium six-pack abs, that she almost doesn’t notice the criss-cross of scars up and down the outsides of his arms. Maybe he’s a cutter, or maybe he had a hell of a weed whacker accident. Either way it’s not her business.

“I asked for a dark haired girl with tattoos,” the stranger says.

She hears what he says, but what he means is something different. What he means is he didn’t expect a black girl.

“Ah have tattoos,” Dominique replies. She eyes him coldly, as the unspoken racism of their conversation hangs conspicuously between them.

The stranger only answers with a tilt of his head. His scornful eyes remain trained on her.

“Your man can wait outside,” he says after another moment passes.

“That’s not how we do things,” Brad tells him. “I go where she goes.”

The stranger’s daring glance is enough that she should turn around and leave right now, but she needs the money too much. She’s on the wrong side of thirty for her line of work and the days of four figure nights as a club dancer are long over. She never imagined herself doing private shows back then, but things change, and she’ll die before she sees that boy in the public schools. He’s a good boy and too bright for that.

“Take off the jacket,” the stranger says.

“Is there somewhere ah can plug this in first?” Dominique asks, holding out the CD player in front of him. The stranger palms the CD player from her grasp and sets it on the dresser next to the TV.

“The jacket,” he nods at her and his eyes belie nothing but barbarism.

“Okay...” Dominique says, undoing the button on the front of her coat. An uneasy glance at Brad, still standing in the threshold of the door, reveals an alertness she rarely sees from him. She looks back at the stranger as she drops the coat to the floor and steps past him, further into the little hotel room.

The stranger flicks the light switch near the door and the room is flooded with warm light from a lamp in the far corner. It reflects off the butterscotch wallpaper in a way that adds a sickening yellow hue to all of the already stained French colonial furniture inside. A small dresser with little curtained doors supports an old boxy television which displays a broken image of Jerry Seinfeld that moves only occasionally. Next to it sits a plain brown leather briefcase. There is a single bed and a single faded green chair with a black electrician’s tape patch the size of a paperback novel stuck to the front corner near one of the legs. This place is a far cry from the Waldorf-Astoria.

Dominique turns and looks back at the stranger. He stands quietly, moving his eyes over her smooth black form like he’s judging a prize hog at the county fair. He stops briefly at the green butterfly tattoo on her hip. Dominique is hardly unaccustomed to men ogling her like a piece of meat, but this guy takes it to a whole new level. Over the stranger’s shoulder, Dominique sees Brad shaking his head at her in dismay.

“Turn,” the stranger commands gruffly.

Dominique complies. She folds her arms to stretch out the angel wings that take up most of her back. She has on a jade string bikini with extra-long ties that stream from her hips down to her knees. The color matches her heavily applied eye shadow and the few dyed strands in her long braided hair. A dozen strings of shiny plastic beads rattle over her chest. Tourists practically shit bricks over the dumb things. Mitch gives them to the girls in ten lbs bags to be kept in their cars.

“I’ve never been with a black girl before,” the stranger says.

“What makes you think ah’m gonna-” Dominique starts as the stranger wraps his arms around her. Brad starts in without a millisecond of hesitation.

“Awright, chief. No touching!” he stomps toward them. He claps a hand down on the stranger’s shoulder.

In a flash, too fast for Dominique to follow, Brad is on the floor. The stranger stands on him, pressing a boot between Brad’s shoulder blades and gripping one of his arms. The bodyguard squeals like a pig until the stranger cracks him in the back of the head with a clenched fist.

Dominique tries to run, but he’s on her with a speed that cannot possibly be human. His arms coil around her body like a giant python, scooping her off her feet as she makes for the door. She opens her mouth to scream, but his thick fingers gag her before the slightest chirp can escape her lips. She kicks at his shins with one bare foot and one heel, having lost the other one already in the scuffle. He is undeterred.

The stranger sighs.

“Relax,” he says. “It’ll be better for both of us. I promise.”

She doesn’t stop. She kicks even harder and tries to scream through his fingers, but only a simpering whine makes it out, not nearly loud enough to carry through to the other side of the door, much less all the way to ears that matter in this vacant place. She tries to bite through his fingers, but finds it to be like chomping down on rebar.

The stranger throws her down on the bed and straddles her without ever removing his fingers from her mouth. She fights to push him off, but it feels like a pickup truck is on top of her.

“Listen to me,” he says. “I don’t want to hurt you, but if you scream, I will. Are we clear?”

She considers his words, and relaxes her body as she contemplates her options. She could do what he says, and he’ll probably rape her and kill her; or she could keep fighting him and he’ll probably kill her and rape her. These are not good options, but one does seem a bit better than the other.

“Are we clear?” the stranger asks again.

Dominique nods and he removes his fingers from her mouth.

“Please don’t kill me,” she cries. “Mah kid needs me. Please.”

“I told you,” the stranger says. “I’m not gonna hurt you unless I have to.”

“What do you want?”

“You know what I want,” he says as he cups her left breast in his hand.

“Ah- Ah don’t do that.”

“How much will it take to change your mind?”

It’s a question that flattered her when she was young and stupid, but insults her now that she’s older and wiser. She likes to think her integrity is the reason and not the shrinking figures thrown at her, but she knows that is a lie. How much will it take to make her a whore? More than he’s willing to pay.

“Four thousand dollars,” she says. It’s an absurd amount. A centerfold model probably wouldn’t ask that much for a night.

“An hour?” the stranger asks. “I think I can make that happen.”

“What?” Dominique says.

“You want more?” he says. He narrows his eyes at her dubiously.

“Show me the money,” she says. The harsh reality of this nonsensical discourse hits her like an ice pick. He’ll tell her whatever she wants to hear. He’s just going to kill her when he’s done with her anyway.

“That briefcase,” he says. He points to the skinny brown leather briefcase lying next to the TV. Dominique turns her attention to it, then nervously back to the stranger. “Open it.”

Hesitantly, she sits up and stands from the bed. He makes no effort to pin her back down. She kicks off her remaining heel, in case she decides to make a break for the door again, and she slowly steps to the dresser where the briefcase sits. She presses in the little latch buttons beside the handle and lifts the lid to peek inside. She flinches as she does, half expecting something to pop out of the case at her, or the stranger to bludgeon her from behind.

The briefcase is filled with money; hundred dollar bills in stacks rubber banded together. It must be a hundred thousand dollars—maybe more.

Suddenly, Brad lurches from the floor, growling like an angry dog.

“Motherfucker!” he barks, searching in confusion for an assailant that is no longer assailing him. He pulls a pistol from his sweatpants—a sleek black gun that he racks as he zeroes in on his enemy. “I’ll teach you to bust me in the head!”

“Brad!” Dominique yells. “Stop!”

The stranger does not move a muscle. He remains on the bed, resting his back against the headboard as he stares down the barrel of the pistol.

“Brad!” Dominique shouts again. The second time, he hears her.

“What?!” he seethes, looking down the sights at the stranger on the bed before him.

“Go wait in the car, Brad,” Dominique says. “This gentleman and ah got some business to do.”

“You fuckin’ with me?” Brad grunts. “You got to be.”

“Nah.” Dominique crouches down to the floor, where her trench coat rests, and reaches into the right pocket. The jangling collection of keys she pulls out dangles from a Minnie Mouse keychain. She extends the key ring toward Brad with angry force.

“He make you do this or what?” Brad says. “I’ll fuckin’ shoot him right here. Don’t be afraid of him. He’s not gonna do nothin’ to you.”

“Ah said get out,” Dominique says. “Ah’ll cut you in decent. Just go.”

He reluctantly lowers the gun as he narrows his eyes curiously.

“This is fuckin’ stupid,” Brad says, snatching the keys from her outstretched hand. “Really fuckin’ stupid.”

He stashes the gun back in his pants before he opens the door. He gives her one last glance on his way out into the hall.

“This better be worth it,” he says.

“Go,” Dominique replies with an annoyed tone.

Brad throws up his shoulders in begrudging disapproval as walks away. She watches the door swing closed completely before she turns back to the stranger. He remains in the same position, never having flinched throughout the course of the argument.

“We got ourselves a deal, Mister,” Dominique says, undoing the tie between her shoulder blades. She tosses the jade bikini top haplessly aside. She starts to remove the strings of plastic beads, but the stranger shakes his head.

“Leave the beads on,” he says.

Brad

Brad walks down the creaky hallway toward the elevator cursing at the shit he puts up with for this stupid job. That dumb slut better cut him in on some real juicy profits for this one. He steps on to the elevator and mashes the button for floor one. As the door closes, he presses his hand to the back of his head. Blood encrusts his hair near his collar. It stings as he touches it and the pain makes him angrier. He doesn’t know how he let that little fucker smack him around the way he did. The kid was a whole foot shorter and three weight classes under him. Even his elbow hurts from where the squirrelly fuck bent it. Brad can’t wait to leave this dump behind. That bitch better not take long in there. There’s no way he’s waiting all night in the car in a fucking thunderstorm for this shit. He can promise her that.

The doors slide open to reveal the first floor of the hotel, a place he feels like he was in only seconds ago, even though he knows he was passed out on the floor for some time. The first floor is just as quiet as the second. A glance out into the lobby reveals not even an attendant on duty at the front desk. The five seat bar which was anchored by an older woman and a quiet bearded drunk on the trip up now is devoid of life signs. The fucker in 217 might be the only person staying in this old dump.

Brad swings through the lobby and out to the parking lot. The blacktop is broken and cracked. Pot holes the size of tires appear in some spots. Lightning crashes in the distance as rain pours down in sheets on hotel. The lot has become a lake, almost completely submerged in pooling water. Brad makes a mad dash for the car, which Dominique parked way too far from the door. His feet splash into water inches deep as he runs. He stumbles knee-deep into one murky puddle and waterlogs his shoe and pant leg, but he keeps dredging along.

As he reaches the car, he already has the keys out and he stabs them into the door lock perfectly with his first attempt. He rips the door open and falls into the driver’s seat safe from the torrential downpour assaulting the roof. Water leaks from his shoe and puddles on the floor mat. This for what?

Ah’ll cut you in decent, Dominique said. What the hell was that supposed to mean? She’s gonna hand him a twenty dollar bill in the morning and call it square? Fuck that bitch. He’s got the car. Maybe he’ll go for a little drive. There has to be a twenty-four hour diner around here somewhere. He could use a cheeseburger more than anything. That whore better hope she doesn’t need his help tonight.

He puts the key in the ignition and twists it, expecting to hear the sound of the engine turning over.

Nothing.

He turns it again. Still nothing.

“Fuck!” Brad grunts aloud even though there is no one there to hear him. Dominique’s car won’t start. He isn’t surprised really. It’s just like a woman not to keep up with her car. She probably forgot to get an oil change or didn’t put gas in it, or something stupid like that.

Brad considers his options. He could pop the hood in the rain and try to fix the damn thing himself. He doesn’t know enough about cars to do that, truthfully. Though he likes to think he does. He goes for it. He searches the inside of the car for a lever or a latch—whatever pops the hood, and he finds it. The hood pops open with a thump and Brad pushes the door open to charge out into the rain and look at the engine.

Someone is waiting for him outside the car. A tall, black, muscular shadow, clad in a top hat and a black sport coat.

“Hello?” Brad says, acknowledging the strange figure. That’s when he notices the most unusual feature of all. The man is wearing sunglasses.

Sid

The woman feels good. This is not a huge surprise to Sid. He knows, perhaps better than any man living, that people of all colors are the same inside. Though his firsthand understanding of the old maxim is probably much more literal—and visceral—than most.

He requested a girl with dark hair and tattoos for reasons of nostalgia, never thinking to specify her skin color. She is shades apart from the pale vamp he expected. Still, the idea of trying something new was not without appeal in this scenario. The differences of race turned out to be nearly non-existent, but the difference in her disposition is noticeable.

She kneels on all fours atop the bed and Sid fucks her from behind. The masses of shiny colored beads rock with her dangling breasts over the sheets each time he thrusts into her. After some less-than-impassioned missionary intercourse, he learned that this girl will do something none of the others would so far—and even may prefer it. She’s louder than he is used to and more animated. It’s hard to tell if she’s having a good time or giving him a show, but that matters little to him. She screams and clutches the sheets several times throughout their coupling.

Sid finishes inside the girl and pushes her aside. He flops down next to her, where her heavy panting continues in his ear.

“Damn, sugah,” she says. “Ah’m gonna feel bad about taking your money. Ah’m still gonna take it, but ah’m gonna feel bad about it.”

It was good, but not the best. Memories of another threaten to invade his mind: alabaster skin adorned with images of death, the smell of her jet black hair and the sparkle in her deep blue eyes as they—he forces that away. He doesn’t want to remember that anymore.

The girl steps out of bed and goes to the bathroom to tend to herself. Sid remains on his back, looking up at the chipped plaster ceiling. He keeps quiet so he can listen to the girl’s actions in the bathroom. If she is preparing a double-cross of some nature, he may be alerted by unusual noises; perhaps the slide of an automatic pistol, or the dis-assembly of a bathroom fixture. It seems impossible that she could have any weapons on—or in—her body after being so deeply examined, but there could be something hidden in the toilet tank or behind a false tile in the shower or any number of locations.

He hears nothing of the sort, and the girl soon returns to the room equipped only with the colored beads she had around her neck when she left. She steps around to the side of the bed next to him and crouches down to pick up her bikini bottom from the floor. She begins tying the strings at her hips, but he reaches out and snatches her wrist to pull her back into the bed.

“Stay,” he says. He curls his left arm around her to ensure she goes nowhere. “I may not be done with you yet.”

“We just went for ah don’t know how long,” she squawks.

“Two hours, seventeen minutes.”

“What? You timed that?”

He most certainly did. His brain is like a supercomputer, clicking away, tracking details normal humans would never consider worthy of attention: the number and placement of windows on the building, the distance in feet between doors in the hotel hallway (fifteen), all of the exits, the faces of everyone who saw him enter the building and the time—he always knows the time.

“You gonna pay me to sleep here?” the girl asks after a fruitless moment waiting for him to respond to her last question.

“Yes,” he says.

“You crazy, but ah ain’t gonna bitch about it.” She rests her head on his chest.

Dominique

Dominique awakens in the roaring darkness of the storm. It hasn’t let up, even in the hours she’s been asleep. Rain drops continue to barrage the roof above. The stranger’s steely arms remain coiled around her, holding her like a child’s teddy bear, she thinks.

She searches the room for the cool blue glow of the alarm clock and finds it only inches from her face, on the night stand right next to the bed. 2AM. Next, she moves her eyes back to the TV. The blinking flicker of the screen, still on even though what was on it was unwatchable, burns her eyes as they adjust to look upon the open case of money sitting next to it. The money in that briefcase is enough to feed her family for decades, maybe forever. It could change everything.

The stranger’s faint breathing in her ear is like a taunt to her mind, daring her to pick up the briefcase and make a break for it. The whole situation is a cruel joke. He lies soundly asleep with a fortune right there in front of her, only feet from the door and packaged neatly for her to pick up and go. The circumstances don’t just tempt her; they force her hand.

She’s never stolen anything in her life. Not even a piece of candy. Of course, she never did any prostitution before tonight either.

He can’t possibly mean to pay her the exorbitant sum he promised. More than likely, she’ll awaken in the morning to find the stranger and his money gone along with the storm—if he even cares to be that discreet. He might beat her or kill her before he walks away. No matter how he goes about it, he’s not leaving without that money. She can be sure of that. It means the only thing left for her to do is take the cash.

Dominique quietly and carefully slides herself out from under his arm, planning her excuse if she wakes. She’ll tell him she has to pee, then stay in the bathroom long enough for him to fall back to sleep.

The more elaborate plan is unnecessary. The stranger stays asleep as she slips out of the bed and onto the cheap motel carpet. She tiptoes away to the edge of the dresser, and turns back to make sure she hasn’t awakened him one last time before she reaches for the briefcase. He remains asleep in the same position, only without her company.

The briefcase closes easily and Dominique waits to snap the locks shut in case the noise wakes the stranger. She folds the case underneath her arm to keep it shut tightly and then picks up her long brown coat from the floor where it still lies. She leaves her bikini and heels where they lay, as well as the radio. She won’t need them anymore—no matter how this turns out. She reaches for the door, slowly turning it and hoping, praying that it does not creak. Her pulse pounds as she slides her foot outside and into the hallway. Sheer amazement fills her as she pulls the door behind her, leaving it cracked just in case the clicking of the bolt might wake him. At first she tiptoes down the hall, then walks hurriedly as a few more doors slide by. At last she clasps the locks on the briefcase closed and runs full tilt, making for the elevator at the end of the hall. She jabs the call button furiously as she looks over her shoulder at the empty corridor. She expects the door to room two-seventeen to burst from its hinges and the stranger to come charging down the hall like a rhinoceros. It does not happen. Even as she steps onto the elevator and the doors slide shut on her view of the hallway, there is nothing but quiet.

She drops the briefcase on the elevator floor with a loud thud and wraps her jacket around her naked body. She slips her arms through the sleeves and buttons the front all the way down. She picks up the briefcase just as the elevator doors open on the first floor lobby.

A single attendant sits sleepily at the front desk, a frizzy haired girl with pasty freckled skin and her nose buried in a hardback library copy of Lolita. She has on a thin blue smock opened to a low cut white tank top. She raises her drowsy head to look at Dominique and then returns it to the novel without a word or even a second glance.

Dominique patters through the lobby barefoot and to the front doors, where she looks out into the swamp that used to be a parking lot through the big glass panes in the wooden double doors.

“Fuck,” she whispers to herself, wishing she had brought her shoes, until she reminds herself that the heels she wore here would be useless in this mess.

She pushes through the doors and runs for her car, the only one parked in the lot. Cold water slaps against the bottoms of her feet and splashes the hem of her coat. She increases the pace, wanting nothing more but to jump into the passenger seat next to Brad and punch him in the shoulder while screaming at him to drive faster than he has ever driven before. When she does see the car, her heart sinks.

The little white Toyota supra, her car, not Brad’s or her employer’s car, occupies the same parking space, but the driver’s side window is a gaping hole with shards of shattered glass clinging to the rims all around. As she moves closer, she can see no sign of Brad inside. She reaches the window and peers into the interior. The front seats are empty. She leans in and checks the back; empty as well. Rain trickles in through the broken window to soak the upholstery of the driver’s seat. Dominique reaches through the shattered window to finger the automatic locks. She yanks the door open and sits down inside, tossing the briefcase on the floor next to her. She reaches under the wheel without bending to look, almost afraid of what she will find, but her fingers grasp the dangling metal bits of the key ring she handed Brad when they parted ways. The keys are in the ignition.

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Dominique turns the keys and listens to the grinding of the engine. It does not start. She tries it again. Still, it refuses to come alive like it should. It makes no sense to her. She takes damn good care of this car. Oil changes on schedule like clockwork; tire rotations, batteries, alignments and new brakes—anything the mechanic tells her to do, she does. The headlights weren’t left on. The switch is even still flipped to the off position.

Before she has much time to ponder the situation, something huge thumps against the door to her left. Dominique yelps as the big bulbous shape blocks out the little bit of moonlight that shone in through the broken window. A familiar hand reaches in through the empty frame to clutch at Dominique’s neck. She screams again until she recognizes the immense tee shirt as belonging to Brad.

“Oh fuck,” she breathes. “Where were you? What happened to the window?”

No answer comes. Rain continues to trickle in through the shattered glass.

“Brad?” Dominique she says again. She turns up and leans out through the window to look up at him. “Brad?” she questions. “Brad?”

The stone-faced golem outside her window is exactly like Brad in every way except for the oozing red muck that runs from the wide open gash across its throat. Its eyes track nothing, staying fixed to the motion of the head. Cold hands grasp the front of her coat.

Dominique screams and bends backwards into the vehicle, away from her gore drooling attacker. Hands much stronger than hers close in on her from the driver’s side window as she kicks against the door to force herself into the passenger seat. She smacks her head against the dome light as she scurries and it illuminates the inside of the car.

“Waaaagh,” the dark form of Brad gurgles through the window. His throat is open from ear to ear and Dominique sees the red mess of severed cords and bubbling wind pipe inside. She screams again as he squeezes clumsily through the window frame. His body scrapes the broken glass around the edges and it cuts into his flesh, but he keeps coming. Dominique reaches for the door handle behind her. She fumbles with the lock as Brad reaches for her. He grabs hold of a bare foot, but she snarls angrily and kicks him in the face as she opens the passenger door. She tumbles out of the car and into the pouring rain. She sinks into the storm water and it soaks through her coat. She pushes herself up out of it and looks back at the car. Brad still struggles his way through the cab. Dominique runs.

She heads for the hotel lobby as fast as she can. Her waterlogged clothes feel like they weigh a hundred pounds but her legs hold. Years pole dancing have made them strong.

The hotel lobby is just as quiet as she left it as she returns, screaming hysterically for anyone to help her.

“Help! Help!” she screams. “He’s trying to kill me!”

The desk clerk abruptly stands from her seat, leaving her book open on the desk.

“What’s happening?” the desk clerk asks, curious, but not yet frightened.

“Mah bodyguard,” Dominique rasps, between breaths. “There’s something wrong with him. He’s tryin’ to kill me.”

“I’ll call the police,” the attendant says. She reaches for the phone as Dominique looks back through the front doors. There is no sign off Brad out there in the darkness. She looks for a way to lock the door from inside, but she sees only a brass keyhole near the knob. No switch or latch that could be manipulated without the key.

“The phones are dead,” the attendant says, placing the desk phone back on its hook.

“What? How?” Dominique says, digging into her coat pocket for her cell phone.

“I don’t know,” the clerk feebly says. “It’s never happened before.”

She pulls her cell phone from her pocket and a steady stream of water pours from all of the seams and ports on the device. It was soaked when she fell out of the car back there. Mashing the buttons does nothing.

“We need to lock the front door!” Dominique says. She barely finishes the sentence and he’s there. His nose, now broken from their struggle in the car, smears blood on the glass in front of her as he rubs up against it.

“Oh no!” Dominique shrieks. She grips the door knob and pulls back on it with the weight of her whole body, but Brad easily overpowers her and rips the door wide open.

He enters the lobby quietly, though lightning strikes with an ear shattering boom in the storm outside. The attendant shrieks at the sight of him.

Dominique reaches for a weapon, anything heavy at hand. She picks up a duck-shaped copper bookend positioned on a small display of old leather bound books near the door. The books tip to the left and a few on the end topple over the edge of their shelf to the floor.

She lifts the heavy bookend high above her head and brings it down with all the force she can muster. It smashes against Brad’s skull with a horrific crack, but he does not stop. His feet continue to shuffle forward as his arms reach out for her. Dominique hits him again with the bookend, then again and again. The top of his skull is visibly caved in and his right eyeball dangles from the socket as his arms encircle her.

“No! No!” she screams. “Get away from me!”

Suddenly, something wet and black erupts from Brad’s mouth, like his tongue, but pointier, sharper--and metal.

She falls backwards as the stranger tears Brad’s head from his shoulders with the help of a big black knife. He wears only the simple black boxer shorts she saw him leave on the floor back in the room. Blood spatters his face and chest as he carves through the thick muscles of Brad’s neck. He tosses the head aside and it lands on the floor beside Dominique with a dull thud. Blood expands from it in a pool. Brad’s body turns and grabs at the stranger anyway.

The desk attendant releases a shrill scream befitting a try-hard theatre student. Then her eyes roll back in her head and she passes out on the chair behind her.

“That’s different,” the stranger says. He raises a single eyebrow as he steps backwards, away from the headless monstrosity shambling toward him. He steps to the side and watches silently as the walking cadaver continues straight on past him, feeling ahead with wiggling fingers.

“That’s not possible,” Dominique says. “Ain’t no such thing.”

The stranger looks back at Dominique. He doesn’t speak. He only points emphatically at the severed head and then the headless body walking around the room on its own. Then he puts his hands out face up, gesturing for her to draw her own conclusion.

The walking cadaver bumps into a pillar and turns about face (chest?) to come back in their direction. The stranger begins butchering the thing with that big knife of his, hacking at the arms first, then the legs. It hardly bleeds as he cuts the limbs from it. Most of its blood must already be on the floor, Dominique reasons. As the severed extremities fall to the carpet, they continue to writhe and squirm. An arm, not that far away from her, still flexes at the elbow in motions that cause it to jump up and down.

“The parts are still moving,” Dominique says.

“Yeah,” the stranger says. “That happens with voodoo zombies.”

“Zombies? Did he say zombies?” the desk attendant screeches, rising from the chair.

The stranger gives her an annoyed glance as he wipes blood from the blade of his big knife.

“Yeah,” the stranger says. “We need to get out of here before the rest show up. You have a car here?”

“The rest of them?” the attendant says. “What do you mean the rest of them?”

“Zombies are like cockroaches. There’s never just one.”

“No. No. You’re wrong. That man was sick or something.”

“She’s already freaking out,” the stranger says, speaking directly to Dominique. He deliberately ignores the attendant as she continues rambling. “You can hear it in her voice. Again now, do you have a car?”

Dominique wobbles momentarily as she looks back at him. Could he not know about the money somehow? He must not. He would have said something already. What if he finds out? She left the money in the car…

“Lady, chop chop,” he snaps his fingers at her.

“Ah have a car,” Dominique says. “But ah don’t know where the keys are. Brad had ’em.”

The stranger ducks down to the floor and begins routing through the pockets of Brad’s blood-soaked pants. His legs, still in them, keep squirming, though they are unable to do much else.

“What are you doing?” the attendant says. “You can’t do that! This is a crime scene! The police are on their way!”

“She’s not gonna make it,” the stranger says, in a dry, almost boring tone, as he pulls the last of Brad’s pockets inside out. “When the rest of them show up, they’re going to eat her, or make her one of them or whatever they do.”

“You’re crazy, whoever you are!” the attendant shrieks. “You need to go now or I’m calling the police!”

As the attendant screams at the stranger, Dominique looks out through the glass in the old double doors into the darkness. She sees something out there, moving in the surrounding tree line.

“You just said they’re on their way,” the stranger corrects. “Which is it?”

“Nuh- No I didn’t,” the attendant clumsily attempts to counter.

In the darkness outside, what was only vague shadowy movement has now gained definition. At first there are only fleeting bits in the tangle of foliage: a dark hand, a set of feet stepping one ahead of the other, a face, a different face. As the first of the figures emerges fully from the woods, Dominique freezes in fear.

“Whatever, lady. I don’t have time for this,” the stranger says, flipping the attendant his middle finger. “Come on. There has to be a car in the lot we can hotwire.”

“They...” Dominique points out through the glass, unable to speak the next word. She wants to say more, but she can’t figure out what comes next in the sentence.

The shapes outside have become a crowd of shambling human bodies. Flesh clings to them only in patches. Pointed skeletal fingers reach straight ahead. Empty sockets appear like big black eye patches in the dark. They wear tattered, muddy gray army jackets like ones she’s seen in museums.

“Civil War reenactors...” Dominique says.

“Civil War veterans,” the stranger says, looking out the window.

“There must be a hundred of ’em. They got the whole building surrounded!”

The stranger picks up a tall lamp stand from the floor and swings it against the wall to smash the shade free of it. The light bulb inside goes out with a crunch. He slides the stand between the handles of the old double doors to bar them shut.

“You!” the attendant exclaims. “We’re taking all of this damage out of your deposit!”

The stranger pays no mind to her. He snatches Dominique’s wrist and tugs her away from the door.

“Come on!” he says. “That’s only going to hold them for about ten seconds.”

Dominique follows as he pulls her along down the hall away from the lobby. As they pass each of the old colonial windows looking out over the front lot, she can see the army of shapes growing closer and closer outside.

Wind howls into the building with the sound of shattering glass and the screams of the desk attendant now left far behind them.

Dominique looks back and sees the poor girl being pulled into a crowd of the dead. Her screams rise sharply and then end abruptly as she is lost in the moving swarm.

“Where are we going?” Dominique asks, snapping back to realty—to her only chance at getting out of here alive now.

“Other exit’s down this way,” the stranger says. “We can lose them in the woods.”

He turns a corner and halts so suddenly that she slams into his back. Dominique curses.

“What?” she says. She doesn’t need to wait for him to answer. She can see with her own eyes that the exit down the hall ahead of them is already overrun. The walking dead flood into the hallway, silent except for their boney footsteps and the dragging of their torn rags on the carpet behind them.

“Fuck,” the stranger says. “Elevator. Now.”

He turns about face and runs back around the corner for an elevator door they passed only a few yards back. Dominique idles for a second, unable to follow at his pace. Then she joins him as he punches the elevator’s call button repeatedly.

“Why are they doin’ this? How?” Dominique asks him as they wait for the elevator.

He shrugs as though she’s asking him if the galaxy is round or why so many things taste like chicken. “Black magic, forbidden knowledge,” he replies. “The usual bullshit.”

The elevator doors slide open on the face of a confused looking gentleman wearing a maroon bathrobe. The stranger shoves him into the back of the elevator as he steps aboard. Dominique takes one last glance back down the hallway before she steps through the doors and sees something she almost doesn’t believe, even in the midst of this madness.

The skeletal horde advances slowly down the hallway from the lobby with fingers outstretched and dangling jaws drooling mud from the storm. Leading the charge is a tall male figure, brown skinned and strong. He strides along smoothly where the others hobble and limp. His muscular form is clad in a dark smoking jacket and trousers. His face is hidden under a tall stove-pipe hat at first, but then he tilts his head upward to look at her and a vicious chill runs all the way down her spine. His face is painted into the milky white visage of a human skull. His mouth forms a smile beneath the cheap sunglasses that conceal his eyes.

Suddenly, the stranger pulls her into the elevator. She barely clears the doors as they shut behind her.

“What the fuck is your deal?” the stranger growls. “You got a death wish?”

“No... Ah saw... Something?” she says, not sure what to call it, if it was anything at all.

“Please help!” shrieks the man in the elevator. He sits now on the floor, his oily bald head glimmers in Dominique’s eyes under the fluorescent lights. “Someone attacked us upstairs! He bit my wife!”

“Get up,” the stranger says. “What floor?”

“Two!” the man shouts. “He was insane, like he was on PCP or something! I put his eye out with a corkscrew but he just kept coming!”

“They do that,” the stranger sighs.

“What are you talking about? Who does what?”

“Here we go again,” the stranger shakes his head. He reaches down and picks the bald man up from the floor by his collar with one hand. “There are fucking zombies here. Zombies are a thing. Deal with it.”

“Is this some kind of joke?” the bald man says.

The elevator doors slide open and the creature is already waiting on the second floor. It gazes coldly at them through one undamaged eye as it begins to move. The other eye is gone and an oozing socket remains in its stead. Its skin is pale but mostly unbroken and it wears a jacket embroidered with the fleur-de-lis of the New Orleans Saints. The stranger lunges out with his big knife and hooks the creature through the jaw. He pulls it into the elevator with very little difficulty and mashes the hold button. The bald man yelps as the stranger pushes the snarling dead thing against him.

“Zombie,” the stranger says. “See it? Got it?”

“Oh God!” the bald man cries. “Get it away from me! Help me! Help me!”

Dominique presses herself against the corner of the elevator as far from the monster’s grasping hands as she can. The stranger shoves the monster to the floor and drives his knife through its neck to saw its head free from the body.

“They can’t be killed because they’re already dead,” he says. “Severing the head or destroying the brain won’t stop them either.” He plunges the knife into the creature’s shoulder and begins cutting at the arm. Gore dribbles on the elevator floor, but does not spray from the wound like it would from a living thing. It has no blood pressure. Its blood doesn’t pump.

The writhing creature smears more and more gore around the bottom of the elevator as the stranger carves its arms away. He leaves the legs, though even with them attached, the monster is still not able to do much more than roll around the floor aimlessly.

The stranger punches the hold button again and the doors slide open. He leans out into the hallway and looks both ways.

“Which room?” he asks the bald man.

“Two-fifteen,” the man replies.

Dominique’s stomach turns. It’s only two doors from their—the stranger’s—room. What if he goes back in there to grab his money? He’ll know for sure she took it, and there is no question in her mind now about how he would deal with her. She imagines the tip of that big black knife sticking through her throat. She chokes for air as her life’s blood runs into her lungs.

“Come on,” the stranger says. He steps off the elevator and into the hallway ahead of them. The bald man goes first. Dominique follows cautiously, convincing herself along the way that the stranger still does not know her secret. She’s safe from him for now.

The hallway is devoid of any movement from the living or the dead. Dominique follows the stranger down the hall to room 215, where the bald man taps gently on the door.

“Sheila, it’s me,” he whispers.

The three of them wait there for a moment as no one responds. Dominique pictures the horrors that may await them inside. Sheila may have already bled to death from some gaping throat wound. She probably lies prone on the floor in there, floating atop a lake of crimson gore.

Baldy knocks on the door again. This time, only a few seconds pass before someone turns the knob and pulls the door inward. The stranger wastes no time pushing his way into the room. Sheila makes a half effort to hold him up, but is quickly defeated.

The stranger immediately flips the light switch mounted near the door and the room goes dark, except for the glow from the little adjoining bathroom.

“Who are these people, Ronald?” Sheila asks.

“I brought help,” the bald man says. Ronald. His name is Ronald.

The stranger takes one last peek into the hallway before he pushes the door closed behind them.

Ronald’s wife is a middle-aged woman wearing cloth pajamas with tanned skin that is spotted brown and curlers in her dark hair. She isn’t torn from jaw to chest and hosing arterial spray around the room like Dominique pictured at all. She appears slightly battered with some bruising on the face and she holds a blood-soaked washcloth up to her right forearm near the elbow.

“Let me look at that,” Dominique says, reaching for Sheila’s arm.

Sheila looks to Ronald for approval and the man nods at her to do as they say. She steps into the light of the bathroom and pulls away the washcloth to reveal a leaking crater in a pattern that was obviously made by human teeth.

“It don’t look like it hit anything important,” Dominique says. “Keep pressing the rag against it harder and the bleeding should stop.”

“Are you a doctor?” Sheila asks with innocent curiosity.

“Uh, no.” Dominique lingers, bracing herself for awkwardness. “Ah’m an exotic dancer.”

The stranger chuckles at her.

“What?” Dominique yaps back. “Ah used to be a volunteer firefighter.”

“Ronald?” Sheila asks. “Who are these people?”

“Yeah,” Dominique says, eyeing the stranger accusingly. “Who are these people?”

“I don’t know, honey,” Ronald says with a look of confusion replacing the mask of absolute terror he has worn since they met him in the elevator.

“How come you know so much about them things out there?” Dominique says, glaring into the stranger’s deathly black eyes. “They the reason you’re here? Or the other way around?”

“Anything’s possible,” the stranger says.

“We don’t even know your name,” Dominique says.

“I don’t know your name. Didn’t ask. Don’t care.”

“I’m Ronald Herzfeld,” Ronald offers meekly. “This is my wife Sheila. We’re staying here for Mardi Gras.”

“Dominique Delacourt,” Dominique offers, waving the fingers of one hand at them all. “Y’all know what ah do. Ah’m here cause he ordered a dancer.”

She points at the stranger and the Herzfelds both turn their gaze to him. The three of them wait for a response—anything at all. He looks annoyed.

“I thought strippers all use fake names,” the stranger says.

“Well ah use mah real name,” says Dominique. “Now what’s yours? An’ who are you?”

“I’m Sid,” he says. “I kill things. That’s all you need to know.”

“Them things what gave you all them scars up and down your arms?”

“No,” he says. “I got those from something much worse.”

“Remind me not to go into his line of work,” Ronald says.

“Okay, Sid,” Dominique says. “You got a plan to get us out of here?”

“Maybe. If I had better weapons, I could probably fight the zombies.”

“Um,” Dominique says. “All of the zombies?”

“Yes.”

Dominique wonders if her strange new friend is delusional.

“You mean like a machine gun or somethin’?” she says, incredulously.

“Nah. Not a man-portable one. These things have to be completely dismembered. That means explosives, deuces, real artillery. We’ll be lucky if we find some power tools around here.”

“There are lots of power tools in the shed by the pool,” Sheila says. She taps Dominique on the shoulder. “And Esteban’s not usually far away.”

“Sheila…” Ronald says, showcasing his annoyance with a sharp tone.

“What? We’re talking about a serious mandingo here, Ronald. I’m allowed to look.”

“How many of those mojitos did you have?”

“I’m an adult, Ronald. We talked about this.”

“The hallway is still clear,” Sid says, pressing his head against the door. “I’m going to run down to my room and grab a few things--”

“No!” Dominique squeaks, almost involuntarily.

His head lurches back to look at her, as do the others.

“I…um…” Dominique fidgets for a reason to keep him out of that room. “You can’t leave us here alone. What if those things find us?”

“I’ll be twenty feet away,” he says, turning back to the door. “Now stand here and hold this thing for me while I go.”

Dominique reluctantly grasps the door knob as he swings the door inward and creeps out into the hall. She watches in abject horror as he strides down to room 217 with his room key in one hand and his knife in the other. She worries that he will turn back the very second he opens the door, seeing that the briefcase is gone, and returning to lunge at her with all of his wrath. She quakes with fear.

“Are you gonna be okay?” Ronald asks, waiting behind her in the dark.

She is not going to be okay. She needs to escape. She needs to run now. She could do it. If the monsters haven’t raided this floor yet, then they probably aren’t upstairs. She could run and look for a closet, or if she can find an unlocked room she could hide under the bed. The stranger won’t find her there and neither will those things—not if she stays quiet.

She halts her breathing as the stranger pushes open the door to his room. He vanishes into 217. He sees, she thinks. He knows. He’s turning around right now to come finish her.

Dominique runs. She rips the door back and flies out into the hallway. She hears the whispered calls of Ronald as she dashes along the corridor as fast as her legs will carry her—away from all of them.

“Wha—Where?” Ronald rasps.

Dominique doesn’t look back. All she can feel is her heart pounding in her chest and her bare feet slapping against the floor. She passes the elevator and keeps going. She wants the stairs at the end of the hall. She just wants to reach them and be out of sight. She glances back down the hall as she lays her hand on the stairwell door. There is no sign of the stranger. She presses through the door and into the claustrophobic little staircase, fearing she will run face-first into a horde of those monsters.

The stairs are quiet and empty. Dominique marvels at her good fortune as she continues on. She cannot stop. He will be after her soon. She pounds her way up the stairs, turning on a tiny landing to look up at the doorway to the third floor corridor.

One of those horrible things is there blocking her way. This one is like the others from the woods, rotten and destroyed from a century’s decay. It stands now, little more than a skeleton with withered limbs in a loose hanging grey jacket and shredded pants circling its knees. It reaches out for her.

“Oh no!” she cries. She slaps a hand to her mouth as quickly as the words come out. No. No. Not this close. She stands there, eyes wide in terror, unable to decide what to do next. Up? Down? It doesn’t matter. Death awaits her on every floor of this place.

She turns to run from the creature and finds herself looking into the eyes of evil itself. The man with the stovepipe hat is there next to her, his skull-face smiling wide as he takes her by the arm and raises an open palm to his chin. He blows, as if to blow her a kiss, but the colored powder that leaves his hand is anything but loving. It sticks to her face and hangs in the air around her like a miasma. The skull-face fills her vision and for a moment she thinks she sees something moving in those hollow black lenses over his eyes: teeming masses of the dead, laughing and screaming and crying all in one raging cacophony.

Then she’s lost to the blackness.

Sid

Sid steps out of 217 and grimaces at the situation developing in front of him. Ronald runs down the hallway his direction with Sheila tagging along behind him. A swarm of the limping dead follows behind them from the stairwell at the opposite end of the hall.

“Where’s the girl?” Sid asks.

“She made a run for it,” Ronald says. “Ran right into them.”

Sid grunts. He collected his pants and boots from his room, and a little something extra.

As Ronald dashes past, Sheila looks back at the mess of creatures tailing them.

“Oh Jesus,” she shrieks. “What’s wrong with those people?”

“Sheila, we went through this,” Ronald says. “They’re zombies. The reanimated corpses of the recently deceased.”

“They don’t look that recently deceased.”

She’s right about that. The condition and literal uniformity of the zombies is an odd detail that stuck out in Sid’s mind since he saw the first of them. He has little doubt the whole army was raised in the same place, with a few fresh standouts picked up along the way.

Sid pulls the pin from a standard M67 fragmentation grenade and tosses it underhand into midst of the collection of zombies working their way down the hallway toward him. He yawns as he waits for the grenade’s three-second fuse to tick away. It goes with a POP that reverberates down the old hallway, blackening the walls around it and quickly filling the corridor with a cloud of black dust. A wriggling arm lands near Sid’s feet. He advances into the smoke with his KA-BAR and butchers three creatures that remain standing. Another six were rendered incapable by the blast. Curiously, no more of them come through from the staircase doors.

Sid turns back down the hallway and walks toward the Herzfelds. They’re crawling on the ground coughing from the smoke.

“What happened, Ronald?” Sheila says. “There’s so much smoke.”

“I think it was a bomb, Sheila,” Ronald chokes. “How am I supposed to know?”

“The zombies are retreating,” Sid says.

“You mean they’re leaving?” Sheila says. “Did you hear that Ronald? The zombies are leaving.”

“Wonderful.”

“It doesn’t make sense… unless whoever is controlling them got what he wanted,” Sid says. “You said there are tools in the shed by the pool?”

“Yeah. All kinds of tools: shovels, clippers, chainsaws. Oh, you should get a chainsaw! In the movies they use chainsaws on the zombies!”

Sid has no use for such a thing. Chainsaws are terrible weapons. Aside from being uncomfortably heavy, they require prolonged and consistent pressure to saw deeper than a flesh wound and have a tendency to clog and jam when used on anything that isn’t wood.

“Are there any cemeteries nearby?” Sid asks.

Ronald shrugs. “We’re not from around here.”

“There’s a little Civil War cemetery up on the hill over that way,” Sheila says. “Esteban waters the plants up there. Very scenic.”

“Damn it, Sheila,” Ronald says.

Sid grunts.

“You two should leave now,” he tells the Herzfelds. “I have unfinished business with someone.”

Dominique

“Ya wakin’ up now, sweet thing?” the dark one says. “Dat be good. Ya wakin’ up jus’ in time.” He lets loose a booming belly laugh that echoes through the warped trees all around.

Dominique tries to move, but her ankles and wrists tug hopelessly against a rough hemp rope. She feels cold stone against her back and opens her eyes to find herself tied to the top of a stone sarcophagus. She is naked under the moonless dark—all except for the strings of plastic beads that have dangled around her neck all night long. A flaming pyre built from sticks and logs rages nearby and the faces of the walking dead reflect the dim orange light all along the periphery.

Dominique screams.

“Somebody help!” she wails up at the sky. “Somebody help me!”

“Nobody’s comin’ for ya sweet girl,” the dark one says. His stovepipe hat looms over Dominique as he runs his fingers gently over her belly.

“What are you?” she cries. “Why are you doing this?”

“Jus’ one dat serve w’ both hands is all, girl.”

She’s lived here long enough to know what that means. She’s been to the crackpot museums and tourist traps with their gris-gris and dolls, but she never paid much mind to any of that make-believe. Now the living proof stands before her—the bokor, a practitioner of black magic, said to steal men’s souls.

“No. No!” Dominique says. “You can’t be real!”

“I’m real as you are now cause I ride dis horse,” he says. “Now I brought ya here for my woman to have ya, and ya got skin so perfect.”

He caresses her breasts with his freezing cold palm and Dominique shivers.

No one is coming for her here. She doesn’t even know where here is. The hotel is lost to her in the black, somewhere far beyond the trees. All she sees are granite carved epitaphs and ancient woods. If the stranger is out there, he certainly knows she took his money by now. He probably already raided her car to retrieve what belongs to him and headed off to whatever strange adventure awaits him next.

She screams again for help that will never appear. Her screams arouse a sinister smile from the dark one, which turns into a chuckle, then rises into hysterical laughter.

He reaches away from the icy stone to which she is affixed and he picks up something that draws a shriek from her—a bleached human skull. The top of it is gone, carved away to expose a wide open and empty braincase.

“Oh god. Oh God,” she repeats.

“God? You about to become a god! Ya lucked out, girl. Mos’ don’ ever be much more den worm food, but you can have eternity!”

“No! Please let me go!”

“It couldn’t o’ been a better night for ya ta walk into da hotel ‘ere. I been waitin’ a long fuckin’ time for da stars to be jus’ right. MMmmmmm, jus’ right.”

“There are no stars tonight!”

“Jus’ cause ya can’t see ‘em don’t mean dey ain’t there.”

The bokor plucks something from the ground at his feet and sets it down on the sarcophagus next to Cindy’s head. It’s a handle of dark brown rum with an old paper label. Cindy can see red peppers pressed up against the glass.

The bokor twists the cap away from it and sniffs at the bottle neck. “Mmmm. Da good stuff,” he says as he tilts the bottle to pour the concoction into the hollow cranium. The searing smell of the liquid burns Dominique’s nose and makes her eyes water. Once the skull-cup is filled to the brim, the bokor takes a swig of the rum himself.

“Aahhh,” he breathes. “Tasty. Now ya be a good horse and drink.”

He picks up the skull-cup and holds it to Dominique’s cheek. Some of the rum sloshes over the side and drips onto her face. It stings.

“No! No!” she screams. The bokor motions for assistance and two of the walking corpses shamble over to the side of the sarcophagus. One is a mud-covered skeleton. The other Dominique recognizes as the desk attendant from the hotel, though now her frizzy red hair flares outward at many messy angles and her head sits mounted closer to one shoulder than the other. The desk attendant puts her cold damp fingers into Dominique’s screaming mouth to hold her jaw open as the skeleton keeps her head steady.

The bokor pinches her nose and pours his fiery sludge into her mouth. She feels it sizzle against her tongue. It feels like drinking acid. The fumes go up her nose and down her throat. She coughs fire, but the bokor keeps pouring more and more of the stuff into her. She forces down mouthful after mouthful just to catch what little breath she can between gulps.

Then all of the pain goes away. She no longer struggles. She finishes the last of her drink in calm compliance. Her muscles relax as she feels nothing but an overwhelming desire to please her new master.

The bokor sets the empty cup back on the sarcophagus and the dead withdraw from holding her in place. The bokor uses a bone knife to cut the leather straps that bind her to the stone.

“Now, girl,” he says. “Show us how ya dance.”

“Yes, master,” Dominique replies. She sits up and scoots to the edge of the sarcophagus before dropping down to the muddy grass with her bare feet.

“Rhythm section! Ha HA!” the bokor bellows into the rotting crowd.

Without any delay, three of them come forward with heavy drums made from bone and stretched hides. The beat begins.

BOOM BA DOOM BA DOOM BA DOOM.

Dominique throws her arms in the air and howls at the sky as lightning strikes the pyre. She throws her hair back and shakes her hips. She spins. She twerks. She dances like the sun won’t be coming up tomorrow, and for all she knows, it won’t.

BOOM BA DOOM BA DOOM BA DOOM.

“Mama!” the bokor shouts into the starless black. “I got somethin’ for ya!”

The pyre rises. The flames become like a fiery dervish that stretches nearly to the tops of the trees. With it comes something Dominique first thinks is only the night wind blowing through the forest, but she quickly realizes the syllables form too perfectly.

“I BE SEEIN’ IT,” the voice calls.

Suddenly, the drumming comes to an abrupt halt.

The dead acolytes stir as the stranger makes his presence known by carving one of the drummers to a half dozen pieces. Limbs flop and sail in all directions as the stranger hacks the thing to bits and starts in on the next. He wears black pants and boots which are muddy from trekking through the forest. His raging chest expands and he roars at his enemies. He rises above them like a giant, swinging and striking with two enormous blades that cleave through meat and bone in flawless fluid motions.

A group of them gathers to stop his progress and he cleaves their heads away with one swipe of a machete. In another second he has taken the arms from all of them and then the legs as well. He continues into the crowd of the dead without any sign of fatigue.

“Kill him!” screams the bokor, specks of spittle blow from his mouth to give away the secret that is his humanity. Dominique would spit on him herself if she could, but her body does not respond in any way except to lie still.

Another shambling mass of them move for the stranger, but he is faster than any man Dominique has ever seen. He slices the head from one thing and then cuts it down the middle so that the bisected halves clatter to the floor with one arm and one leg each. He dashes behind another and lashes out with both blades at the same time to cut a wide X shaped pattern that leaves it in four pieces. He makes similarly quick work of several more.

The stranger spins his blades over the fallen dead and calls out to the bokor.

“That all you got, dickbag?” the stranger yells.

The bokor betrays himself briefly with a look of disbelief at this insolent swine. Then he snatches up his bottle of rum from the sarcophagus and picks a stick from the base of the burning fire.

More of the dead approach the stranger, stumbling into an awkward charge as the stranger confidently twirls his blades. The bokor makes sure his minions will not so easily be cut down this time. Chugging rum from the huge bottle, he extends the flaming stick in his other hand. Then he leans forward and spits a jet of flame that carries for twenty meters. He sprays it across the charging dead and sets them aflame.

The stranger screams as he dashes forward to hack a dozen flaming zombies apart. He bats the blazing skull from the first and it sails through the air, coming to rest at Dominique’s feet. Burning hands grasp for the stranger. Mouths that spew acrid black smoke bite at him. Still, he is an unrelenting engine of destruction, smashing their bones and spilling their cold blood across the swampy ground before them.

The bokor chugs his whiskey again and holds up his torch. Dominique thinks to call out in warning, but she does not. She cannot defy her master.

The stranger picks up a cadaver and throws it into the oncoming spray of fire as he weaves out of the way. He steps the other direction to avoid another burning blast and then he cleaves asunder another of the monsters, the desk attendant that helped force that horrible swill down Dominique’s throat. The stranger cuts through her torso with both blades from shoulder to crotch and three pieces tumble to the ground—a spinal section, and two flopping sets of limbs.

“Ya can’t stop a god, ya stupid pig!” the bokor shouts. “I got powers ya can’t even imagine!” He spits another jet of flame, but the stranger winds up and throws a single machete straight down the center of the burning stream. It arcs downward along its lengthy trip to stake the bokor in the sternum.

The sorcerer chokes and dribbles bits of burning rum down on the massive knife that sticks from his chest. He places his quivering hands on the blade with intent to pull it free, but the stranger grabs hold of the machete blade, having already covered the distance between them. The stranger pushes the blade deeper into the bokor’s body and Dominique sees the tip erupt from his back with a trickle of his black blood. The stranger draws back his right foot and then snaps it upward to kick the bokor in the testicles. Then he swings the other machete around to sever the sorcerer’s head.

As the cadaver falls before him, so do all the zombies surrounding them. Some collapse into heaps of scattered bones. Others groan and tip over to meet the ground with a dull smack. The stranger picks up the bokor’s handle of rum and dumps the whole contents on his remains. As the last of it contacts the still burning torch in his dead hand, the bokor goes up in flames. As he ignites, Dominique hears the sound of a woman’s scream on the wind.

The stranger stomps toward Dominique with one machete in hand and a look of rage in his eyes. She whimpers with fear as she realizes she has control of her body again. She wastes no time turning to run from him, but she immediately trips over a small headstone and falls face-first into the muddy grass. She turns over to crawl away from him on her back. Dragging her naked butt backwards through filth and prickling green blades, she pleads with him.

“Please don’t kill me!” she cries. “I’m sorry!”

The stranger continues toward her with the machete in hand, dripping the oozing ichor of the dead.

“Ah’m sorry ah took the money!” Dominique screams. “Ah can give it all back! Just don’t kill me!”

The stranger stops in his tracks.

“The money?” he says, raising a curious eyebrow.

“Ah took the money from your room!”

“Yeah. I know,” the stranger says. He shrugs. “You can’t sneak anywhere with those beads around your neck.”

“Are you gonna kill me?”

“Why would I kill you for a briefcase full of money?”

“It was a lot of money.”

“Was it? I don’t really care about that shit. You can keep it if you want.”

“What?”

“Keep it.” He takes her arm in hand and hoists her up to her feet.

“Um, okay… So wha—”

She yelps as the stranger scoops her up and throws her over his shoulder. He begins walking away from the old cemetery at a pace that is unimpeded by her added weight, as if she is no heavier than a child’s toy.

“Where are we going?” she sheepishly asks.

“You agreed to the whole night,” he says. “The sun’s not up yet.”

If you want to read more about Sid Hansen and his gnarly adventures across America, check out The Postmodern Adventures of Kill Team One.