Alphonse stood his ground.
Cooper said, “You understand?”
Alphonse did not say anything.
“I know you’re a religious man, and a religious man should never have to participate in what I’m about to do.”
Cooper shoved the money against the kid’s concave belly. Alphonse took the money and the key, then counted out two hundred and fifty dollars, handed Cooper the remainder-including the key-and straightened his long spine.
“I am your guide,” he said.
Cooper took the money and key from Alphonse’s palm, thinking that now, not only would he have to do what he’d already planned on doing, but he would also need to keep an eye on Alphonse while he was at it. He would need to pay close attention, considering the witch doctor’s gang was following them around-make sure Lew Alcindor here didn’t guide his own way into the afterlife before they made their way back up the hill.
“If that’s the way it has to be,” Cooper said, “then follow me, big guy.”
Cooper didn’t like the moon being out, but he and Alphonse were almost done, Cooper finishing the last of it. It was a shallow grave, about three feet deep, and they’d had to scrape their way down with whatever sticks and stones they could find. With the moon out, anybody watching could see them doing it, digging up the grave of Marcel S. in the middle of the night, but to Cooper there was no other way, not once Simone had told him her man was buried here.
He scooped some dirt from the edge of the coffin. They’d cleared the soil from above the thing, a rudimentary box held together by rusted nails, and with four hands pulling at it he figured they could probably pry the top off now. He was trying to ignore the nausea welling up into his throat, nausea or fear, he wasn’t sure which, Cooper out here past midnight in a voodoo cemetery in the badlands of Haiti.
“Get in here, Kareem,” he said. “Looks like we can pop it off if both of us do it.”
Alphonse murmured something before he came over, Cooper not caring what he said. The kid reached for one of the planks and they tugged at the top of the coffin together, grunting and jerking, the nails screeching as they pulled. Cooper’s fingers slipped on the board and he sliced his hand open, but when he got back at it the lid popped off, flying back and tossing them into the mound of dirt they had dug. With Alphonse hanging back, Cooper crouched forward, holding his breath against the coming stench, and moved the last loose board out of the way. In the moonlight, he could see inside the coffin as though it were part of a track-lit museum display.
There was nothing in the box.
A couple rocks, sure, some dirt, but nothing else: no body, no bones, no tattered old clothes. Cooper was starting to sort through this unfortunate confirmation of what he’d already feared to be the case when he heard a voice.
It was Alphonse. He was topside, out of the grave now.
“Monsieur!” he said again. “Il faut you come look!”
When Cooper poked his head above ground he saw a sight that gave him chills.
A bunch of figures were coming at them out of the darkness-predatory shadows, approaching from every angle in the moonlight.
He counted eight of them. Spaced five or ten yards apart, they had managed to form a circle around the open grave about forty yards across. Cooper couldn’t see any definition to their dark faces even in the pale desert moonlight; they were shadows, ghostly figures standing there at the edge of the graveyard. Wraiths.
Barry must have had one or two of them following when Cooper had taken Alphonse out of town and up the slope of the mountain. He gave Barry and his band of wraiths some credit, not believing the show he’d put on, either seeing or guessing that they’d come back down once it got dark.
Cooper came out of the grave and stood beside Alphonse, planting his feet three feet apart in the soft earth, knees just bent. Relaxed.
Alphonse wasn’t so relaxed. He started to edge away from the hole.
“Sit tight,” Cooper said.
“They comin’ get us,” Alphonse said, his beanpole of a body coiled like a spring. “Il faut partir.”
“Just stay by my side,” Cooper said, “right there where you are.”
Cooper was trying to determine what it was they were packing and how they planned on killing him when Alphonse bolted. He called after the kid, but it was no use, Alphonse running for the wrong place, straight for one of the gaps between men, Cooper thinking he should have picked out one of them and bowled the man over, but that wasn’t what he did.
Two of the figures jumped him, Cooper seeing what they had now-looked like machetes, though the weapons could have been old lawn mower blades for all he could tell.
“Shit,” he said, and, having to do it earlier than he’d wanted, he drew his pistol and cracked off two quick shots, thinking he was probably too late, seeing the arc of a machete swinging down on Alphonse before the slugs broke up the party. Kareem’s attackers fell, but the kid dropped to his knees, probably cut bad, he thought, but there wasn’t time to check. The other six closed in at speed, brandishing the blades, Cooper seeing a couple of shivs, one of them holding what looked to be a spear.
He didn’t hesitate, working his pistol like Player One in a voodoo video game, shooting, stepping back and to his right, shooting again, repeating, so that he moved himself in a circle and got at least one bullet moving toward each of the approaching men before they could close the gap on him. The gun was loud in his ears as he completed the circuit: shoot-step, shoot-step; the closer they got, the easier it became, the specters falling like cardboard cutouts at a shooting gallery. Cooper registering while he fired away that this had to be one of the last places a handgun still gave you an advantage, these guys actually out here fighting with knives the way people used to.
He had to duck under the swipe of the last man’s blade, but he came up under the swinging arm with a point-blank shot to his assailant’s rib cage and, wraith, evil spirit, or otherwise, the shot felled him, and Cooper was done with the targets in his video game.
He went to Alphonse. Some of the would-be killers were making noise, moaning on the ground, but Alphonse wasn’t. He lay flat on his back, silent, his face expressionless but alert, Cooper thinking he looked as though he’d expected this precise turn of events to happen. It wasn’t pretty: Alphonse’s right arm had been sliced clean through, his blood, black in the moonlight, spreading out all over everything, the soil, his clothes, his legs, his feet. The two dead men Cooper had shot lay beside him.
Cooper looked for and found the kid’s long arm. The machete had severed it above the elbow; a length of nearly three feet of it was twitching on the ground a foot or two from the body it belonged to.
He found his backpack, grabbed the inventory of T-shirts from its main pouch, tore off two of the backpack’s straps, and did his best to tie off Alphonse’s upper arm with the makeshift tourniquets. By the time he finished, the shirts he’d wrapped around the stump were soaked through with blood, but there was at least a chance he’d managed to curtail the blood loss. He tore off another strap from the backpack, took off his shirt, did a scaled-down version of the same tie-off on the severed arm itself, set the arm across Alphonse’s waist, and leaned down near the kid’s face.
“Hang tight, Kareem,” Cooper said. “I’ll be right back.”
He came through the middle of town, passing the driftwood bar and the old woman’s lean-to along the way. The lights were burning inside the witch doctor’s house when Cooper came up the porch stairs. He tried the knob, which turned, but the door was latched somehow and wouldn’t open, so he kicked it in.
Barry the witch doctor and Cooper’s escort from the morning were seated on the floor, cross-legged and facing each other about four feet apart. The place was thick with smoke. They shared a pipe-smoking a little herb, eh, Cooper thought. Get ready to smoke this pipe, poppy.