The Wastelands

The hand was mangled. It looked chewed, a finger missing, maybe an accident with a dog, his mind supplied. Accidents with dogs happened. He watched the little boy stumble along. The arm a grotesque parody of a real arm, swinging freely from its shoulder socket. Their eyes met a moment later, but it was already too late for the little boy. Roux had used his hands to prop his knees so he could stand. A second of standing had told him he could walk, and a single limping step had told him he could walk well enough. It had probably been the standing, his mind supplied now. His feet scraping on the loose gravel at the side of the street. His one ruined leg dragging slightly

He held the boys eyes with his own. Large, frightened, transfixed by the odd glow in his own eyes. He had closed the gap quickly, limp or no. Long before the boy had ever thought to call out. A second of standing and looking down into those, large, sad eyes and he had reached forward quickly and pulled the boy into the air with both hands wrapped around his neck, cutting off his startled squawk. A second later and he had dashed him onto the street surface and fallen once more to the asphalt himself. He pulled the still warm body to him.
Rising from death to life. The end of life no longer means the actual end. Now it means the beginning of death. A new type of life. A hunger machine searching for sustenance among the living…

Andrea Zurita was a young woman, there seemed no reason for her sudden illness and death, but there were things that should be done and so the local Mirukus, shaman had come. A few words, prayers, the shaman was a transplanted Haitian: They understood most of what he said, but not everything. He had left and they had prepared her for burial. She was washed and dressed in a plain white cotton dress. The second day came and the family came to call, leaving their wishes where she lay in her grandmother’s home. The third day came and the burial was coming. Cousins, men who worked in a neighboring village were on the way to open the grave. That was when Andrea had sat up and vomited blood.

Her eyes had rolled back into her head. Her body shook, but her chest did not rise. She had spoken no words, but she had tried to rise several times before one of the arriving cousins, crossing himself, had bound her with rope, hand and foot. They had sent for the Mirukus again.

The old Haitian had come quickly, taken one look at Andrea and then spoken cryptically, quickly. “Return her to the man that has cast this spell on her. He has bound her to him in life and that has followed her into death: Return her for she is yours no longer.”

The Mirukus believed the white man, Prescott had attempted to control the river spirit Pullujmu, to take control of the beautiful young woman for his own devices, but she had slipped over into death and was now controlled only by those who controlled the dead. He had left fearfully, quickly and had refused to come back for any reason. With nothing left to do for her they had taken her and left her bound body on the long drive that lead to the Prescott house. The white man may have her, but he would not have what he expected to have.

Jefferson Prescott.

Jefferson watched as the men carefully skirted the body of the young woman in the back of the patrol truck. They had picked her up and not knowing what else to do they had bought her to him.

Her eyes rolled in her head, but occasionally they would stop and focus, seeming to stare through him. Blood seeped from her open mouth, staining the front of what looked to be a burial garb of some sort. She was, at first unrecognizable to him until one of the men told him she was his own worker, Andrea Ivanna Zurita: Kitchen help, among other things; she had been here for more than a year. To Jefferson’s Catholic upbringing she seemed possessed and he kept his distance as he watched her, perhaps as superstitious as the local shaman had been.

Book three in the series and more Zombie drama… A blur farther along the line of buildings caught his attention, and he watched as another woman, also dead – he could tell from the way her skin stretched too tightly across her face, the way her bones protruded through that skin in places…Janelle met her in midair. Her hands, hooked into claws, punctured the other woman’s chest and dragged her down to the ground. From there it was all downhill for her. She had underestimated the power that Janelle possessed. Janelle’s fingers had punched straight through her chest, hooked into her ribs and then ripped her chest apart. Janelle threw her to the ground and then pounced on her, her feet driving powerfully into her. Her mouth angled down and tore at her face as her hands closed around her neck. She squatted on her torn chest, weight on the balls of her feet, and rode her as she fought to live.

The fight did not last long. Her powerful hands ripped her head from her neck even as her teeth tore her face apart. There was no mercy in treachery. This one could have been a part of Janelle’s army. She could have had power handed to her, but she had decided to go her own way, and she had convinced herself that defeat of Janelle was obtainable. That was not a belief that could be allowed to grow…