Treasure of the Dead

Chapter 21

Maddock had given up on tracing a tiny crack in the wall when he noticed Bones had frozen, standing stock still. He knew the man possessed an excellent sixth sense of sorts, and during their days in the SEALs, he was often the first to detect an enemy presence.

“What is it, Bones?”

No sooner had he completed the question than they heard the rumble of a vehicle approaching.

Willis headed for the rope. “We’re fish in a barrel if we stay here.” He made his way up the rope and then helped Bones and Maddock climb out.

“Now what?” Bones pointed to a large group of people heading their way. The vehicle had departed.

Maddock eyeballed the throng. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something about the way they moved just wasn’t right. They stared straight ahead, their movements not quite robotic, but lacking the natural ease with which a person might normally stroll or even walk. The assemblage of persons reached their location at the edge of the fort. Maddock called out to them a few times in English as well as limited French, but none of the people had a vocal response other than incoherent wheezing and indistinct moans.

Suddenly one of the individuals rushed forward with surprising speed toward Bones, who sidestepped him and clocked his assailant square on the chin. It was a blow that would have knocked out any rowdy drunkard at Crazy Charlie’s Saloon, but this man seemed to be barely fazed.

“Now we run!” Maddock pointed off to their right and took off at a sprint. Bones and Willis were right on his heels. They flew over uneven rock formations and clumps of dirt until they reached the palace’s perimeter wall. Maddock led them to a break in the structure and paused there to gauge the progress of their pursuers — still coming, and fast.

“Let’s go, this should act as a bottleneck for them.” Maddock slipped through the break in the wall, again followed by Bones and Wills.

Their pursuit didn’t delay much, rapidly pouring through the gap. Others appeared on either side, preventing Maddock and the others from doubling back to their vehicle. The trio ran directly uphill, often skipping the switchback trail in favor of climbing straight up.

“Up there!” Maddock shouted. Lungs burning, muscles screaming, he led the way up to a massive building — much larger and more intact than Sans Souci palace. He knew from his research that it was called the Citadelle Laferrière, another popular tourist destination. Cut off from any other escape route, the three had been forced to retreat uphill. Several times they’d tried to evade their pursuers and work their way back downhill to their waiting vehicle, but to no avail. They were hemmed in, choked off by natural landforms and nearly encircled by the line of pursuit. Maddock estimated they’d covered nearly five kilometers. Thankfully all were in excellent shape, because their pursuers had dogged their trail, not flagging for an instant. Maddock and the others had managed to widen the distance between themselves and the pursuit, but it was only a matter of time before they ran out of steam.

Bones stared up at an imposing structure. “If Sans Souci Palace was on a hill, this place is on a mountain.”

Willis surveyed their surroundings in all directions. He lingered on the road behind them. “They’re still coming.”

“Unbelievable,” Bones said. “And they’ve spread out, too. One of us might get past them, but not all three.”

“I nominate Maddock as sacrificial lamb,” Willis said.

“Yeah, right.” Maddock eyed the citadel. “That gang or whatever they are will be on us soon. We don’t want them to catch up to us on open road. We’ll have to make our stand here.”

Bones pumped his fist. “Remember the Alamo! Or somewhere the good guys actually won.”

The trio moved off the road to a path that wended its way up the final stretch to the Citadelle. The way became even tougher going on the upper part of the mountain, and by the time they were near the crest, they could hear the upward progress of the horde as they crunched over brambles and knocked down rocks. The three men forged on and after a while Bones’ whoop signaled that they had reached the plateau on the summit where the citadel was situated.

Before them, the high walls loomed more than one hundred feet tall. It would have afforded defenders a remarkable view of the surrounding area.

“Too bad we don’t have a few sniper rifles handy,” Bones said.

They moved onto a concrete strip probably once used for staging artillery. Signage nearby indicated that the old stronghold was built in 1805 as a means of defense against French invasions. The building, up close, was much more elaborately designed and more intact than the fort at Sans Souci.

“Check it out.” Bones pointed to rows upon rows of round, metal balls a few feet in front of them. “Cannonballs.”

“Hey Bones,” Maddock said, looking down the slope, “maybe you could come back as a tourist some other time, okay? Because we don’t have long before our friends down there get to us.”

“He’s right.” Willis also looked down the mountain, his brow furrowed with concern.

Maddock looked back to the cannonballs and then down the mountain again, where the mob of non-lingual men was that much closer. “I have an idea. From watching these things, I’ve noticed that they can run fast, but they don’t have good lateral movement. They can’t turn well. It’s almost like these are the…”

Willis turned to look at him. “The what?”

Maddock shrugged. “The zombii Rose told us about. Look at the way they move — it’s like certain parts of their senses are just… off.”

He turned and eyed the stack of old ammunition Bones had pointed out.

Bones smiled. “Hell yes. Zombie bowling.”

The cannonballs, though old and rusted, came free with a little persuasion. They were heavy enough that it was only practical for each man to carry two at a time, but they made quick trips and in short order had a good sized pile perched on the concrete strip on the edge of the summit. Below them, the horde was scrambling ever closer; they could hear the ragged rasp of their breathing from those on the front line.

“Bombs away.” Maddock hefted the first cannonball and gave it an underhanded toss over the mountaintop. It bounced once and then rolled smoothly until it slammed into one of the zombii, cutting it down at the knees. It fell face-first on the ground and attempted to crawl forward, fingers digging into the soft turf.

“Score!” Bones then lobbed the second shot, and then Willis got into the action. Soon the three men settled into a rhythm, lobbing a ball down the hill and then bending down to scoop up another without watching to see the result of the last shot. Many balls missed their mark, but enough hit so that the main thrust of the attacking pursuers was diminished.

When the defending trio had gone through all of their stockpiled ammunition, they returned once more to the main pile to grab one more cannonball each before the still climbing zombii would reach the summit. Returning to the edge, each took down one more marauder with a well-rolled projectile, leaving four more to scramble over the top up onto the concrete strip.

It was now clear that in order to eliminate these final four, the three treasure hunters faced a hand-to-hand fight. Bones backpedaled away from a zombie who lunged at him. He assumed a fighting stance, legs wide, shifting nimbly from foot to foot, a knife in his right hand while his left was extended to block.

“Davy Crockett wins this time!” he said, sidestepping the zombie’s crude hammer blow and then shoving him off the cliff with a swift kick.

“Still with the Alamo?” Willis grunted as he slammed an elbow into the cheekbone of another assailant, knocking him to the ground.

“That’s why we’re awesome!” Bones’ enthusiasm was infectious, and before long all four of the attackers had either been tumbled down the mountain with the others, or else lay at their feet, incapacitated.

Maddock reached down and rifled through the pants pockets of one of them, but found no identification or objects of any kind. He stood and looked around. “We better get out of here before someone sees what happened and we get detained for questioning.”

Bones and Willis agreed, and the three of them set off for a different way back down the mountain.

“Now what,” Willis asked once they had started down an empty path.

Maddock’s eyes focused unwaveringly on the path ahead as he answered. “Something happened to those zombii people to make them that way. We’re going to find out once and for all what it was. More important, I want to know why they were sent after us.”