Free The Zombie Game by Glenn Shepard

hands in front of his face. “Please, Iwa , don’t let nothin’ bad happen to Minis Duran and Doktè Tomas.”
    He paused for a moment. “Would you have me follow Minister Duran to the jail?”
    He listened, but there was no reply.
    Jakjak was scared. He didn’t know what to do. Are there other police in the office waiting to arrest me?
    He went to a quiet alley and sat with his back against a building, waiting for direction from the spirits.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    The Streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti
    2:15 p.m.
    CLAUDE STOPPED HIS MOTOR bike a block from Julien Duran’s office. I got off and called Tomas using the fisherman’s smart phone. But he didn’t answer. I called his home number. Again, no answer. I was reluctant to give the phone back to Claude until I’d contacted Tomas. I held up a one-hundred-dollar bill in one hand and the phone in the other. The old man looked back and forth between the two items and snatched the money.
    I dressed quickly in the clothing I’d bought from old Claude: faded orange cotton pants cut off below the knees, a red cloth tie-belt, a loose-fitting faded-green guayabera shirt, and a baseball cap with the Haitian flag. I pulled down the hat to partially cover my face and walked toward Minister Duran’s office. Tomas had warned me to stay out of sight. I found an alley in which I could hide, but still see the Finance Ministry building. I called Tomas again.
    I redialed Tomas’ number. Again, no one answered. Just as the call went to voice message, someone grabbed my arm. I raised my fist, but before I could hit him, the man fell back onto his knees and held his chest with both hands. He was breathing heavily.
    “ Mesye Doktè . It’s me, Jakjak,” the Haitian man said. “Don’t you remember?”
    I’d met him only briefly three weeks earlier, but I did remember him. “Of course, Jakjak. Sorry. What happened to you?”
    He stood with difficulty, obviously in pain. “A gang of men have taken Minister Duran prisoner. They are trying to crack into the Haiti Relief Fund and take the money.”
    “What are you doing here?”
    “I just escaped from the jail under the National Palace. I was going to Minis Duran’s office to see if he’d escaped, too, when I seen him and Doktè Duran in handcuffs. They was with Presidenti Longpre and Police Chief Conrad. I was scared and don’t know what to do, so I hid and tried to figure where I could go that I wouldn’t get arrested. Then, you came along.”
    From the moment I met Jakjak, I loved the way he spoke. His language was sing-song, and whatever he said sounded mellifluous. He had broad, coarse features and spoke with complex hand movements that were almost as beautiful as his accent.
    Now, though, it was his breathing that got my attention. It was labored, like he had pneumonia or was having a heart attack. I took his wrist to check his pulse.
    Jakjak pulled his hand from my grasp and stepped away. “Don’t get too close to me. I think I’m a zombie.”
    “What? You’re definitely not a zombie.”
    He frowned and opened his shirt. “See? Here’s where I was shot. The bullet went in my heart. You believe what you want, and I’ll believe what I know.”
    I started to look at his wounds, but he pushed me away and said, “Please. We have no time. They’ll probably arrest both of us if they see us. Let’s get away from here.”
    I followed Jakjak as he circled the building. He had to stop every hundred yards or so to catch his breath. There was an area about two blocks away from the palace that had been badly damaged by the quake. It was the size of two city blocks and little had been done to fix anything. The land was buckled with a crevasse between three steep, seismic ridges.
    Jakjak ducked behind one of the ridges and entered a dark cave. I followed him through a winding corridor littered with massive stones, and then Jakjak stopped.
    “ Mesye Doktè , I was held before they dumped me with the dead. I was really dead before