Scarlet Dream

Commanding his Sin Eater back into his palm, Grant snapped off a quick burst of covering fire from the truck’s window as Kane vaulted over a dust-caked desk and scrambled toward the waiting vehicle. A moment later Kane had clambered up into the high rig, the figure with the dreadlocks lunging after him.

“What kept you?” Kane asked breathlessly, delivering a swift back-kick into the grasping corpse woman’s chin.

“Traffic,” Grant replied, working the gearshift into reverse and pumping the gas.

A moment later the Army truck was hurtling backward across the hangar bay, rotten rubber tires screeching on the metal decking as Grant wrestled with the wheel. They hit something behind them, and Kane leaned out of the window, peering to see what it was. A stack of crates toppled over, and two undead corpses were knocked from their feet. Ezili Coeur Noir watched, well away from the path of the rushing vehicle.

Over by the elevator, Kane spotted Brigid jabbing at the control panel with her free hand as she sprayed staggered bursts of bullets at a half-dozen undead men who threatened to overwhelm her. With a cheerful chime that seemed utterly out of place in the nightmarish surroundings, the elevator arrived, its jawlike metal doors sighing open while Brigid’s sweeping bullets knocked another zombie off his feet.

Grant’s foot pumped the brake, and he gripped the steering wheel as the truck threatened to go into a skid on its bald flat tires. As the vehicle screamed across the metal it knocked three corpse figures from its path, but there was no time for celebration. Brigid Baptiste leaped aside as ten tons of truck hurtled past her and crashed hard into the edge of the open elevator, metal-on-metal kicking up a lightninglike burst of sparks. As the truck drew to a stop, its left side flush with the wall of the goods elevator, Brigid rushed into the elevator cage and jabbed at the control panel with the heel of her hand. In front of her, the doors began to close on their pneumatic motors as several undead figures struggled from the floor toward the fleeing Cerberus team.

Behind Brigid, Kane had jumped down from the cab and was adding bursts of gunfire from his own weapon to hers as she fended off the approaching figures until the shining metal doors finally closed. As they did so, Brigid let out a long breath. “What on earth…?” she asked.

“RWI077-093-d,” Kane replied, flexing the tension from his shoulders as the elevator shuddered and began to rise.

“What does that mean?” Brigid asked him, baffled.

“It was the code on the file that crazy-looking woman was studying,” Kane told her. “She called herself Ezili Coeur Noir.”

“Ezili of the Black Heart,” Brigid said in translation. “Voodoo loa, the spirit of death.”

“No.” Kane shook his head. “That’s no voodoo spirit.”

Brigid looked up at Kane querulously as she discharged the near-empty clip from her TP-9 and loaded a fresh one. “No?”

“Don’t ask me how,” Kane told her, “but that there—that’s Lilitu, Annunaki dark goddess and royal pain in the ass.”

Brigid’s eyes widened as she stared at Kane, utterly dumbfounded.

Chapter 6

In her guise as dark goddess of the Annunaki pantheon, Lilitu had been manipulating humankind almost from the day that she had first emerged from the water and begun to walk on two legs.

Her story had been told in a hundred different ways across the different religions of mankind, where she had been Lilith, Lilu and even the Queen of Sheba who seduced wise King Solomon. The ancient Sumerian records cast Lilitu as a terrible harlot-goddess who reveled in the extremes of carnality. As Lilith, Lilitu was reputed to sexually take men by force as they slept, and in Talmudic lore she was believed to be the first wife of Adam.

While mythology was often mired in interpretation, it was clear that Lilitu was a shrewd and ruthless manipulator with a sadistic streak. Thousands of years ago, when the Annunaki had first walked the Earth, Lilitu’s family holdings had become a sprawling empire near the Red Sea. Wishing to acquire the territory, Overlord Enlil had wed Lilitu in a pact that had resulted in betrayal and usurpation. Thus, Lilitu had embarked on a millennia-long war with the Annunaki Supreme Council, a sprawling game of chess with humanity as pawns. And so Lilitu was rightly renowned for her utter ruthlessness, the possessor of a callous streak that recognized no limitations.

Several years ago, Lilitu had emerged from her chrysalis state where she had hidden for ninety years in the guise of Baroness Beausoleil, ruler of her own self-named ville in the Outlands. She had caused trouble for the Cerberus rebels—both as Baroness Beausoleil and in her true form—since almost the day of their inception.

However, although she had assumed many forms in her near-immortal lifespan, the last time the Cerberus rebels had dealt with Lilitu she had been in her true body, a graceful humanoid goddess with a snakelike aspect to her crimson-scaled skin and black-vertical-slit yellow eyes, a magnificent crest atop her skull.

Less than a year ago, the Cerberus team had dealt what had appeared to be a final, decisive blow against the Annunaki’s mothership, Tiamat. During the scuffle, Lilitu had been shot—and apparently killed—by her brood sister Rhea, and her corpse had still been aboard Tiamat when the magnificent organic spacecraft had been destroyed in an almighty fireball. Kane, Brigid and Grant had seen that with their own eyes, and yet they knew that the Annunaki had a nasty habit of surviving even the most dire and absolute of circumstances.

Kane climbed back into the cab of the artillery truck as the elevator doors opened in front of them, and he shot Brigid an inquisitive look. “You going to say anything, Baptiste?” he asked. “Or are you just going to let your jaw hang like that until the wind changes?”

Brigid Baptiste brushed a lock of her red-gold hair behind her ear as she finally spoke, now seated between Kane and Grant. “Lilitu,” she said, as if quite unable to comprehend what Kane had said. “That…thing…was Lilitu?”

Kane nodded. “I think so,” he said. “She’s been through a few changes.”

“A few changes?” Grant repeated, amused. “She looked awfully dead, my friend.”

Placing his hands on the steering wheel, Grant pushed down gently on the accelerator and the truck idled out of the elevator as the doors opened to their full extent, a long, ill-lit shaft yawning in front of before them. As the truck rumbled along a few feet, motion-sensitive lights popped on overhead, lighting a little more along the wide tunnel. In the flickering lighting, the three Cerberus teammates saw they were in a gray-walled corridor that angled upward toward the surface. The corridor was wide enough to accommodate the truck twice over, and as they watched the lights pop on ahead of them, the team became aware of dark figures lurking in the shadows. These figures, like the ones they had left below, stood at strange angles like once-proud trees struck by lightning, their bodies rotten, creamy bone visible amid the perished skin of their emaciated faces. The undead.

“How much gas do we have?” Kane snapped as he wound down the passenger side window and recalled his Sin Eater back into his right palm with a slap.

Grant looked at the fuel gauge that was set beneath the speedometer on the dashboard display as the cab shuddered in time with the idling engine. The needle stood at empty. “Not much,” Grant said.

Kane cursed as he began blasting a stream of 9 mm slugs at the nearest shadowy form. The zombie thing to their right fell in a hail of bullets, but Kane watched with revulsion as it began to struggle back to its feet. Up ahead bright sunlight was just visible through a huge rollback door that stood open at the end of the tunnel.

“Think we have enough to get outside?” Kane asked, peering at Grant and seeing the twisted wires beneath the ignition where his colleague had hot-wired the ancient truth.

“We’re running on fumes,” Grant admitted, “but what the hell.” With that he slammed his foot down hard on the accelerator and the truck lurched forward, bumping over the struggling corpse and knocking another rotting figure from his feet like a bowling pin.

The truck rocked so much that it felt as if it might shake itself apart as they picked up speed. Leaning from the passenger window, Kane snapped off swift burst of gunfire as another rotting figure loomed into view.

The truck now snugly within the tunnel, trundling along at a steady clip as Grant wrestled to keep it on course. The vehicle’s bald tires struggled for traction, pulling the heavy machine toward the walls as Grant held the accelerator down. The cab stank of diesel, and Grant eyed the fuel gauge on the dashboard once again—the needle seemed to be stuck at empty, and Grant tapped the plastic several times to see if it was a genuine reading or whether it had simply become jammed over time. The needle didn’t move.

“Kane,” Brigid urged, pointing up ahead.

Kane saw what was worrying Brigid—a zombie stood close to the rollback door, his skin peeled away from his face, skull held at an odd angle atop his broad shoulders. The undead thing grasped a thick tree branch—wider than a man’s leg—and as Kane watched he hefted the branch forward like a jousting pole, swinging its sharp point at the windshield of the cab.

Grant stomped on the accelerator, knocking another corpse flying in the air until the undead thing slapped against the low ceiling. Grant peered in the mud-caked side mirror, watching as the corpse fell from the ceiling and dropped into the back of the truck. He could not tell if it was still moving, and he turned his attention back to the doors ahead.

Up ahead, the broad figure lunged with its jousting pole branch, driving the sharp end into the grille of the truck with a rending of metal. Beyond the windshield, the engine began to pour a cloud of steam, obscuring Grant’s view as he struggled with the wheel. Behind them, the undead corpse in the back grabbed onto the flatbed of the truck with clawlike hands, the ancient paint there flaking away with each scratch of his ragged nails.

As they hurtled over the lip of the redoubt doors, Kane swung open his passenger side door, using it like a battering ram to knock the broad-shouldered zombie off his feet. Bald tires spun on the dirt track beyond the redoubt, and suddenly the truck was out in the open. Outside the external door they found themselves bumping along a dirt road that carved a path through the dense swamp. Although dense, the plant life in the immediate vicinity of the doorway looked brown and ragged, as if it had been touched by poison.

As soon as they left the shadows of the underground redoubt, the heat of the Louisiana swamp struck them like a wall, the thick, heavy atmosphere of late morning like some physical blanket weighing down upon them. The breeze through the open passenger side window didn’t feel refreshing at all; it felt oppressive, hitting Kane in the face like hot liquid. Sweat beaded on his brow immediately, and his companions shifted in their seats, sweat running down their backs. Kane pushed the collar of his jacket back off his neck, wiping away the perspiration that was already forming there with an irritated hand. Threads hung from the shredded front of the jacket where the undead creature with the eye patch had grasped him.

As they continued along the overgrown dirt track away from the redoubt entrance, they became aware of other shambling figures moving through the undergrowth, and Kane peered in his side mirror to see more corpselike forms massing at the rollback doorway of the redoubt.

Warm air sullied the cabin, and the smell of the bayou came to them through the open window. Sitting between Grant and Kane, Brigid held her hand against the dusty vent in the center of the dash, feeling the stream of warm air there like breath against her skin.

Suddenly the remains of Grant’s side window shattered entirely as a charcoal-black skeletal hand reached through, grabbing for the wheel. It was the undead thing who had landed on the bed of the truck as they sped out of the redoubt, Grant realized. As the wheel was pulled out of the ex-Mag’s grip, the truck lurched to the left, screeching off the dirt road and crashing through a clump of saplings, thin branches snapping as they struck the grille and windshield.

“There’s one on the roof!” Grant shouted as the truck bumped through dense leaf cover that hung like a green curtain ahead of them, obscuring their way.

Grasping the steering wheel with both hands, Grant fought with the wheel, struggling to right the old artillery truck’s path as the bald tires spun for traction in the marshy ground underfoot. Grant eased up on the accelerator as he felt the truck threaten to roll, pulling the vehicle back toward the dirt road, even as the undead figure batted at his face with his clawed hand.

On the other side of the cab, Kane thrust open the passenger door and clambered out, the road rushing by just a few feet below the soles of his boots. “Come on, you ugly son of a bitch,” he snarled as he pulled himself up onto the roof.

The undead figure on the cab hissed as he saw Kane, dark-colored spittle spraying from his black mouth. Dressed in tattered rags, the figure had stick-thin limbs and dark rubbery skin so taut that it looked as if it had been stretched over a drum. He lay on the cab roof, legs splayed out behind him for balance, reaching into the driver’s window with one bony, emaciated arm.

With his left hand reaching back to cling solidly to the edge of the truck, Kane clambered toward the undead thing in a crouch, powering the Sin Eater back into his free hand as he did so. “Ride’s over,” he snarled. “Don’t forget to tip your driver.”

The undead creature grabbed for the muzzle of the Sin Eater as Kane’s finger tightened on the guardless trigger, and his rotten hand was blown away in a burst of bullets. The walking corpse seemed surprised for a moment, the dead pit eyes gazing in astonishment at his ruined hand. Kane brought the pistol around and blasted off another stream of bullets as the truck bumped over the uneven road, and his shots went wild.

Then the undead thing flipped his legs out in a such a way that they almost seemed to be dislocated, and Kane found himself tumbling off the roof and over the front of the truck. Everything seemed to whirl around him, and Kane reached out blindly until his left hand found purchase. As swiftly as it had begun, Kane’s fall stopped, and he found himself lying prone on the front of the truck above the engine housing, his hand grasping one of the wide side mirrors that stuck out like an elephant’s ears from the truck’s hood.