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“Shithead?” the kid says, thumbing over his shoulder. “Yeah. He’s running scared. He’ll probably head for the south end of the tunnel and try to slink away like the rat he is. But he doesn’t have the mombie with him anymore. He put her with the others before he took off.”
“What tunnel?” I ask.
“What others?” Recon asks.
“The hell is amombie?” Steel asks as his boots hit the platform. “Jesus Christ!” he says as he catches a glimpse of the kid. “The fuck is that.”
“Language.” My tone is sharp. Taking the Lord’s name in vain is the one curse I don’t tolerate under any circumstance.
“Sorry, Sarge. But is that a ghost?”
I cock my head at the kid. “Got an answer for that, son?”
The kid cracks a smile, and I can see a hint of the good looking, athletic young man he might have been at one time. There’s a charm about him that’s winning me over, though I admit having Jud’s ability to instantly read people would sure come in handy about now.
“Which question do you want me to answer first?” he asks, hands spread. “You just threw like four at me.” I can imagine him using that charming, smart-ass tone in class and getting his crochety professor to crack a grin.
Priorities. “The guy you call Shithead. You said he was probably headed for the south end of the tunnel? I didn’t think there were tunnels in New Orleans. Doesn’t the ground water prevent it?”
“Yeah. This tunnel’s one of the few underground structures in the city.” The kid motions to the door, and his hand disappears through it momentarily. “It leads to the casino’s parking garage, but it wasn’t always a garage. Originally, they built it as an underground extension of the freeway. Sank a lot of money into it to clear up congestion on the surface. But a bunch of rich people started complaining about damage to the historic buildings above the construction site. They made a big enough fuss that the city stopped the project. It never got connected to the freeway, so the casino kind of adopted it as their garage. I wrote a paper on it for my Civics class,” he adds with a shrug.
“Anyway, now it’s where they keep the mombies.” He glances at Recon. “Theothers. There are, like, a hundred of them. They were dead, but Lazarus raised them. He and the others tried using the mombies to, uh, breed, but they can’t—you know—get pregnant. Now they just use them for sex…and whatever else gets them off.”
“Jesus Christ,” Recon says.
That’s sick. I’m too shocked at what the kid’s saying to chide Recon.
“You’re telling me,” Steel says. “There’s a hundred women behind that door?” He sounds just as shocked as I feel. Could this kid be telling the truth? Can this Lazarus really raise the dead?
The kid levels a sober look at him. “They’re not really women anymore. I mean, anatomically, I guess, but they’re not the people they were when they were alive. They’re like shells. They don’t have souls or, like, any sense of direction. They can only follow simple commands, and they survive—if you want to call it that—on food scraps and the water that collects in puddles on the floor. It’s no wonder they can’t, you know, function the way a real woman does.”
I’m staring blanky at him as he describes a horror I wouldn’t have imagined in my darkest nightmares.
“That’s probably why they want that woman from Montana,” he goes on. “Lazarus and Raptor, they play with the mombies, but those things can never really be moms. They need a real woman for that.”
I feel sick to my stomach, but I’m sure as hell not going to let this news stop the mission. I put in my earpiece, trusting Recon to keep his weapon on the kid, just in case.
“Sarge to street crew. Who do I have at the south end of the casino?” I ask over comms.
“I’m here,” Brawn says. “What do you need, Sarge?”
“There should be some kind of underground garage or tunnel opening. Look for a target trying to escape the casino that way.”
“On it. What do I do when I find him?”
I look at the kid. “This guy is one of Raptor’s crew?”
“Shithead? Yeah. Inner circle. He’s dangerous. They call him Rigor. If he lays eyes on you, he can paralyze you.”
I tell Brawn, “Shoot to kill, and do it before he sees you.”
The kid nods his approval of the command as I relay the target’s name and Gifting to Brawn.
“Roger that,” Brawn says.
While I’ve got my mic open, I connect with Doc again. “Soon as you find Grim, send him our way. We just learned about one of Raptor’s crew called Lazarus. He’s probably with him on the roof. He can raise the dead.”
“Come again, Sarge,” Doc says. “Did you say they’ve got a guy who can raise the dead?”
