Wild Cards: Aces Abroad

  “Bon jour,” she called out, exhausting most of her French. But the man made no sign that he had heard. He kept on walking past the tree against which she leaned.

  “Hey! Are you deaf?” she reached out and tugged at his arm as he passed by, and as she touched him, he stopped, turned, and fixed her with his gaze.

  Chrysalis felt as if a slice of night had stabbed into her heart. She went cold and shivery and for a long moment couldn’t catch her breath. She couldn’t look away from his eyes.

  They were open. They moved, they shifted focus, they even blinked slowly and ponderously, but they did not see. The face from which they peered was scarcely less skeletal than her own. The brow ridges, eye sockets, cheekbones, jaw, and chin stood out in minute detail, as if there were no flesh between the bone and the taut black skin that covered them. She could count the ribs underneath the ragged work shirt as easily as anyone could count her own. She stared at him as he looked toward her and her breath caught again when she realized that he wasn’t breathing. She would have screamed or run or done something, but as she stared he took a long, shallow breath that barely inflated his sunken chest. She watched him closely, and twenty seconds passed before he took another.

  She suddenly realized that she was still holding his ragged sleeve, and she released it. He continued to stare in her direction for a moment or two, then turned back the way he’d been headed and started walking away.

  Chrysalis stared at his back for a moment, shivering, despite the warmth of the evening. She had just seen, talked to, and even touched, she realized, a zombi. As a resident of Jokertown and a joker herself, she’d thought herself inured to strangeness, accus­tomed to the bizarre. But apparently she wasn’t. She had never been so afraid in her life, not even when, as a girl barely out of her teens, she had broken into her father’s safe to finance her escape from the prison that was her home.

  She swallowed hard. Zombi or not, he had to be going somewhere. Somewhere where there might be other . . . real . . . people.

  Timorously, because there was nothing else she could do, she began to follow him.

  They didn’t have far to go. He soon turned off onto a smaller, less-traveled side trail that wound down and around a steep hill. As they passed a sharp curve in the trail, Chrysalis noticed a light burning ahead.

  He headed toward the light, and she followed him. It was a kerosene lantern, stuck on a pole in front of what looked like a small, ramshackle hut clinging to the lower slopes of the precipi­tous hillside. A tiny garden was in front of the hut, and in front of the garden a woman was peering into the night.

  She was the most prosperous looking Haitian that Chrysalis had yet seen outside of the Palais National. She was actually plump, her calico dress was fresh and new-looking, and she wore a bright orange madras bandanna wrapped around her head. The woman smiled as Chrysalis and the apparition she was following approached.

  “Ah, Marcel, who has followed you home?” She chuckled. “Madame Brigitte herself, if I’m not mistaken.” She sketched a curtsy that, despite her plumpness, was quite graceful. “Welcome to my home.”

  Marcel kept walking right on past her, ignoring her and heading for the rear of the hut. Chrysalis stopped before the woman, who was regarding her with an open, welcoming expression that con­tained a fair amount of good-natured curiosity in it.

  “Thank you,” Chrysalis said hesitantly. There were a thousand things she could have said, but the question burning in the forefront of her mind had to be answered. “I have to ask you . . . that is . . . about Marcel.”

  “Yes?”

  “He’s not actually a zombi, is he?”

  “Of course he is, my child, of course he is. Come, come.” She made gathering motions with her hands. “I must go inside and tell my man to call off the search.”

  Chrysalis hung back. “Search?”

  “For you, my child, for you.” The woman shook her head and made tsking sounds. “You shouldn’t have run off like that. It caused quite a bit of trouble and worry for us. We thought that the zobop column might capture you again.”

  “Zobop? What’s a zobop?” It sounded to Chrysalis like a term for some kind of jazz afficionado. It was all she could do to keep from laughing hysterically at the thought.

  “Zobop are”—the woman gestured vaguely with her hands as if she were trying to describe an enormously complicated subject in simple words—“the assistants of a bokor—an evil sorcerer—who have sold themselves to the bokor for material riches. They follow his bidding in all things, often kidnaping victims chosen by the bokor.”

  “I . . . see . . . And who, if you don’t mind my asking, are you?”

  The woman laughed good-humoredly. “No, child, I don’t mind at all. It shows admirable caution on your part. I am Mambo Julia, priestess and première reine of the local Bizango chapter.” She must have correctly read the baffled look on Chrysalis’s face, for she laughed aloud. “You blancs are so funny! You think you know everything. You come to Haiti in your great airplane, walk about for one day, and then dispense your magical advice that will cure all our ills. And not once do even one of you leave Port-au-Prince!” Mambo Julia laughed again, this time with some derision. “You know noth­ing of Haiti, the real Haiti. Port-au-Prince is a gigantic cancer that shelters the leeches that are sucking the juices from Haiti’s body. But the countryside, ah, the countryside is Haiti’s heart!

  “Well, my child, I shall tell you everything you need to know to begin to understand. Everything, and more, than you want to know. Come to my hut. Rest. Drink. Have a little something to eat. And listen.”

  Chrysalis considered the woman’s offer. Right now she was more concerned about her own difficulties than Haiti’s, but Mambo Julia’s invitation sounded good. She wanted to rest her aching feet and drink something cold. The idea of food also sounded inviting. It seemed as if she’d last eaten years ago.

  “All right,” she said, following Mambo Julia toward the hut. Before they reached the door, a middle-aged man, thin, like most Haitians, with a shock of premature white hair, came around from the back.

  “Baptiste!” Mambo Julia cried. “Have you fed the zombi?” The man nodded and bobbed a courteous bow in Chrysalis’s direction. “Good. Tell the others that Madame Brigitte has found her own way home.”

  He bowed again, and Chrysalis and Mambo Julia went into the hut.

  Inside, it was plainly, neatly, comfortably furnished. Mambo Julia ushered Chrysalis to a rough-hewn plank table and served her fresh water and a selection of fresh, succulent tropical fruits, most of which were unfamiliar, but tasty.

  Outside, a drum began to beat a complicated rhythm to the night. Inside, Mambo Julia began to talk.

  One of Ti Malice’s mounts delivered Ezili’s message at midnight. It had succeeded in the task he’d given it. A new mount was lying in drugged slumber at the Royal Haitian Hotel, awaiting its first kiss.

  Excited as a child on Christmas morning, Ti Malice decided that he couldn’t wait at the fortress for the mounts he’d sent Taureau after to be delivered. He wanted new blood, and he wanted it now.

  He moved from his old favorite to a different mount, a girl not much bigger than he, that was already waiting in the special box that he’d had built for occasions when he had to move about in public. It was the size of a large suitcase and was cramped and uncomfortable, but it afforded the privacy he needed for his public excursions. It took a bit of caution, but Ti Malice was smuggled unseen to the third floor of the Royal Haitian Hotel where Ezili, naked and hair flying wild, let him into the room and stood back while the mount bearing him opened the lid and stepped from the box as he moved from the girl’s chest to the more comfortable position upon its back and shoulders.

  Ezili led him into the bedroom where his new mount was sleeping peacefully.

  “He wanted me the moment he saw me,” Ezili said. “It was easy to get him to bring me here, and easier yet to slip the draught into his drink after he had me.” She pouted, fingering
the large, dark nipple of her left breast. “He was a quick lover,” she said with some disappointment.

  “Later,” Ti Malice said through his mount, “you shall be rewarded.”

  Ezili smiled happily as Ti Malice ordered his mount to bring him closer to the bed. The mount complied, bending over the sleeping man, and Ti Malice transferred himself quickly. He snuggled against the man’s chest, nuzzling its neck. The man stirred, moaned a little in its drugged sleep. Ti Malice found the spot he needed, bit down with his single, sharp tooth, then drove his tongue home.

  The new mount groaned and feebly reached for its neck. But Ti Malice was already firmly in place, mixing his saliva with his mount’s blood, and the mount subsided like a grumpy child having a slightly bad dream. It settled down into deep sleep while Ti Mal­ice made it his.

  It was a splendid mount, powerful and strong. Its blood tasted wonderful.

  iv.

  “There have always been two Haitis,” Mambo Julia said. “There is the city, Port-au-Prince, where the government and its law rule. And there is the countryside, where the Bizango rules.”

  “You used that word before,” Chrysalis said, wiping the sweet juices of a succulent tropical fruit off her chin. “What does it mean?”

  “As your skeleton, which I can see so clearly, holds your body together, so the Bizango binds the people of the countryside. It is an organization, a society with a network of obligations and order. Not everyone belongs to it, but everyone has a place in it and all abide by its decisions. The Bizango settles disputes that would oth­erwise rip us apart. Sometimes it is easy. Sometimes, as when someone is sentenced to become a zombi, it is difficult.”

  “The Bizango sentenced Marcel to become a zombi?”

  Mambo Julia nodded. “He was a bad man. We in Haiti are more permissive about certain things than you Americans. Marcel liked girls. There is nothing wrong with that. Many men have several women. It is all right as long as they can support them and their children. But Marcel liked young girls. Very young girls. He couldn’t stop, so the Bizango sat in judgment and sentenced him to become a zombi.”

  “They turned him into a zombi?”

  “No, my dear. They judged him.” Mambo Julia lost her air of convivial jollity. “I made him into what he is today, and keep him that way by the powders I feed him daily.” Chrysalis placed the half-eaten fruit she was holding back upon its plate, having sud­denly lost her appetite. “It is a most sensible solution. Marcel no longer harms young girls. He is instead a tireless worker for the good of the community.”

  “And he’ll always be a zombi?”

  “Well, there have been a few zombi savane, those who have been buried and brought back as zombis, then somehow managed to return to the state of the living.” Mambo Julia plucked her chin thoughtfully. “But such have always remained somewhat . . . impaired.”

  Chrysalis swallowed hard. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me. I . . . I’m not sure what Calixte intended, but I’m sure he meant me harm. But now that I’m free, I’d like to return to Port-au-Prince.”

  “Of course you do, child. And you shall. In fact, we were planning on it.”

  Mambo Julia’s words were welcome, but Chrysalis wasn’t sure that she cared much for her tone. “What do you mean?”

  Mambo Julie looked at her seriously. “I’m not sure, either, what Calixte planned for you. I do know that he’s been collecting people such as yourself. People who’ve been changed. I don’t know what he does to them, but they become his. They do the dirty deeds that even the Tonton Macoute refuse. And he keeps them busy,” she said with a clenched jaw.

  “Charlemagne Calixte is our enemy. He is the power in Port-au-Prince. Jean-Claude Duvalier’s father, François, was in his own way a great man. He was ruthless and ambitious. He found his way into power and held it for many years. He first organized the Tonton Macoute, and they helped him line his pockets with the wealth of an entire country.

  “But Jean-Claude is unlike his father. He is foolish and weak-willed. He has allowed the real power to flow into Calixte’s hands, and that devil is so greedy that he threatens to suck the life from us like a loup garou.” She shook her head. “He must be stopped. His stranglehold must be loosened so the blood will flow through Haiti’s veins again. But his power runs deeper than the guns of the Tonton Macoute. He is either a powerful bokor, or he has one working for him. The magic of this bokor is very strong. It has enabled Calixte to survive several assassination attempts. Though one of them, at least,” she said with some satisfaction, “left its mark on him.”

  “What has all this to do with me?” Chrysalis asked. “You should go to the United Nations or the media. Let your story be known.”

  “The world knows our story,” Mambo Julia said, “and doesn’t care. We are beneath their notice, and perhaps it is best that we are left to work out our problems in our own way.”

  “How?” Chrysalis asked, not sure that she wanted to know the answer.

  “The Bizango is stronger in the country than in the city, but we have our agents even in Port-au-Prince. We’ve been watching you blancs since your arrival, thinking that Calixte might be bold enough to somehow take advantage of your presence, perhaps even try to make one of you his agent. When you publicly defied the Tonton Macoute, we knew that Calixte would be driven to get even with you. We kept close watch over you and so were able to foil his attempt to kidnap you. But he did manage to take your friends.”

  “They’re not my friends,” Chrysalis said, starting to realize where Mambo Julia’s argument was heading. “And even if they were, I couldn’t help you rescue them.” She held her hand up, a skeleton’s hand with a network of cord and sinew and blood ves­sels woven around it. “This is what the wild card virus did to me. It didn’t give me any special powers or abilities. You need someone like Billy Ray or Lady Black or Golden Boy to help you—”

  Mambo Julia shook her head. “We need you. You are Madame Brigitte, the wife of Baron Samedi—”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “No,” she said, “but the chasseurs and soldats who live in the small, scattered hamlets, who cannot read and who have never seen television, who know nothing of what you call the wild card virus, they may look upon you and take heart for the deeds they must do tonight. They may not totally believe either, but they will want to and will not think upon the impossibility of defeating the bokor and his powerful magic.

  “Besides,” she said with some finality, “you are the only one who can bait the trap. You are the only one who escaped the zobop column. You will be the only one who will be accepted into their stronghold.”

  Mambo Julia’s words both chilled and angered Chrysalis. Chilled her, because she never even wanted to see Calixte again. She had no intention of putting herself in his power. Angered her, because she didn’t want to become mixed up in their problems, to die for something she knew virtually nothing about. She was a saloon keeper and information broker. She wasn’t a meddling ace who stuck her nose in where it didn’t belong. She wasn’t an ace of any kind.

  Chrysalis pushed her chair away from the table and stood up. “Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. Besides, I don’t know where Calixte took Digger and Wilde any more than you do.”

  “But we do know where they are.” Mambo Julia smiled a smile totally devoid of humor. “Though you eluded the chasseurs who were sent to rescue you, several of the zobop did not. It took some persuading, but one finally told us that Calixte’s stronghold is Fort Mercredi, the ruined fortress overlooking Port-au-Prince. The cen­ter of his magic is there.” Mambo Julia stood herself and went to open the door. A group of men stood in front of the hut. They all had the look of the country about them in their rough farm clothes, callused hands and feet, and lean, muscular bodies. “Tonight,” Mambo Julia said, “the bokor dies once and for all.”

  Their voices rose in a murmur of surprise and awe when they saw Chrysalis. Most bowed in a gesture of respect and obeisance.

>   Mambo Julia cried out in Creole, gesturing at Chrysalis, and they answered her loudly, happily. After a few moments she closed the door, turned back to Chrysalis, and smiled.

  Chrysalis sighed. It was foolish, she decided, to argue with a woman who had the demonstrated ability to create zombis. The feeling of helplessness that descended over her was an old feeling, a feeling from her youth. In New York she controlled everything. Here, it seemed, she was always controlled. She didn’t like it, but there was nothing she could do but listen to Mambo Julia’s plan.

  It was a rather simple plan. Two Bizango chasseurs—men with the rank of hunter in the Bizango, Mambo Julia explained—would dress in the zobop robes and masks that they’d captured earlier that evening, bring Chrysalis to Calixte’s fortress, and tell him that they tracked her down in the forest. When the opportunity presented itself (Chrysalis wasn’t pleased with the plan’s vagueness on this point, but thought it best to keep her mouth shut), they would let their comrades in and proceed to destroy Calixte and his henchmen.

  Chrysalis didn’t like it, even though Mambo Julia assured her airily that she would be perfectly safe, that the loa would watch over her. For further protection—unnecessary as it was, Mambo Julia said—the priestess gave her a small bundle wrapped in oil-skin.

  “This is a paquets congo,” Mambo Julia told her. “I made it myself. It contains very strong magic that will protect you from evil. If you are threatened, open it and spread its contents all around you. But do not let any touch yourself! It is strong magic, very, very strong, and you can only use it in this simplest way.”

  With that, Mambo Julia sent her off with the chasseurs. There were ten or twelve of them, young to middle-aged. Baptiste, Mambo Julia’s man, was among them. They continually chattered and joked among themselves as if they were going on a picnic, and they treated Chrysalis with the utmost deference and respect, helping her over the rough spots on the trail. Two carried robes they had taken from the zobop column earlier that evening.