by AnonYMous
For around ten seconds the Kid slowly heaved Hunter’s head further into the fan’s razor-sharp blades as they zipped around. He watched the consequences without emotion.
To begin with, the Filthy Pig’s thinning, fair-coloured locks were sliced away and blew out into the bar area like wisps of smoke. And when the hair was gone, the scalp followed, dislodged by one blade and then ripped clean off by the one that followed it. The top of the skull went next and finally the brain. Hunter’s head was filed down at high speed into thin bloodied slices by the propeller blades. Blood, brain matter and pieces of eye splattered all around the bar.
When the head had been sliced right down almost to the neck, the Kid released his grip and Hunter’s body spun round with the fan, some part of it still tenuously attached to one of the blades. Then, after one full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn, it detached itself from the fan and flew off and down onto the bartop, where its momentum caused it to slide along the polished and bloodied surface, scattering glasses and bottles as it went.
Too late, the Nightjar’s occupants realized that the Kid’s killing was only just beginning. It was time to get rid of all the undead this time. Without exception, and without mercy. He pulled two Skorpions from inside his long robe and jumped on to Hunter’s torso as the corpse slid slowly along the surface of the bar. Pointing his guns at the onlooking crowd he began using the torso like a surfboard, gliding on down the bartop as he loosed bullets in all directions. Hitting his target with every shot. Vampires fled for the shattered doorway in droves.
No one made it. Every shot was fired with Casper in mind. The hooded gunman fired his automatic weapons, his aim driven by an intense hatred for the undead. His desire to kill each and every vampire was etched into the face beneath his cowl. For what their kind had done, every last one would suffer.
When the Kid reached the end of the bar counter, he stepped from Hunter’s hideous corpse and allowed it to slide off and crash into an empty table in the corner, sending several abandoned glasses of beer crashing into the wall. Then he began walking back along the bartop, picking out his targets with cold deliberation. With an automatic weapon in either hand, he fired at anyone who dared to try to escape. By the time he was halfway back down the bar he had used up all the ammunition in the Skorpions. Dropping them to the floor, he drew two smaller automatic pistols from concealed holsters within his robe barely a second later. As he began firing off rounds from these two pieces he jumped off the bartop and on to the floor in the middle of the room, shooting into the backs of a number of fleeing customers, most of whom were vampires. Naturally, there was always the possibility that some of them were merely innocent civilians, but it was not something that overly concerned the gunman.
By the time he had finished his latest bout of killing, the barroom was littered with smoking corpses turning slowly to ash, with here and there the body of some unfortunate who was not a vampire.* All that remained, apart from the Bourbon Kid himself, were the shocked, part-deafened figures of Dante, Dino the bar owner and Chip of the Dreads clan.
Dante was busy checking himself for holes, and was relieved to find that, somehow, all of the bullets had missed him. Chip, on the other hand, had been shot twice in the chest through his black wraparound top and was bleeding a little, but, strangely, seemed to be okay. His loose-fitting black karate pants were also spattered in blood, not all of which was his own.
The Kid, with his hood now pulled back and resting on his shoulders once more, secreted his two pistols somewhere about his person then bent and retrieved the Skorpions, which also vanished inside his robe. He stepped over a few broken glasses and decaying corpses towards Chip. He stopped just two feet in front of him and for a few moments the two of them stared each other out. The white Rastafarian in the karate outfit didn’t seem in the least bit afraid of the man in front of him. Eventually, just as the Kid was about to speak, Chip whipped out a pistol of his own that had been tucked away in the back of his pants. In one easy movement he pointed it at the Kid’s head and fired. The bullet zipped past the killer’s left ear.
Wielding a machete, Reuben the clown had sneakily jumped to his feet behind the Kid. For the last minute or so, the clown had been lying on the floor, playing dead in the hope of surviving until the hooded man had run out of ammo. He had managed this successfully, but had then made the mistake of assuming that the greatest danger was past. As he attacked the Kid from behind, Chip fired a single round right into his face. Dead centre. In the blink of an eye the clown was back on the floor again, only this time he was not playing dead.
The Bourbon Kid didn’t bother to look back to see who Chip had just fired his gun at. Instead, he pulled a soft pack of cigarettes from inside his cloak. He held the pack to his mouth and extracted a cigarette with his teeth.
‘Aren’t you gonna thank me for that?’ Chip asked, nodding at the smoking body of the green-wigged clown on the floor behind the Kid.
‘I had it covered.’
‘Bullshit!’ Chip snapped. ‘He was about to cut you in half!’
‘You think I didn’t see those feet?’
Chip looked down and spotted a pair of brown boots on Reuben’s feet. Each was almost three feet long, sticking preposterously up from the floor like a large ‘V’. In getting within machete range, the clown would have had to place them so that the toes must have jutted a few inches past the Kid’s own black boots.
‘Oh, I see,’ Chip said sheepishly.
The Kid looked him up and down. ‘I just pegged you,’ he said, nodding. ‘You’re that monk.’
‘Name’s Peto,’ replied the dreadlocked former Hubal monk.
‘When I’m done here, I’m gonna wanna borrow that blue stone you’re wearin’ round your neck.’
Peto nodded in turn. ‘I know.’
He watched as the Kid performed his trick of sucking on the cigarette and allowing it to light itself. Peto was keen to learn the trick himself, but before he started sharing smoking tips and such with this guy he needed to know a few things. Like why he killed innocent people? And did he feel remorse for what he did? Maybe in return for trading secrets, like how to light a cigarette without a flame, the Kid would listen to reason and allow Peto to teach him about morals and ethics. He hoped this man’s soul could be saved. After all, although a mass murderer, he was the son of Ishmael Taos, so he had to have some good in him, right? Peto knew that Taos would have wanted his son to know right from wrong, and to feel remorse and strive for repentance when he sinned. He owed it to his former mentor to try to teach the son these things. The precious Eye of the Moon would be a superb resource for this task. Its healing powers could rid the Bourbon Kid of all his evil thoughts. First, however, Peto wanted to know just how evil those thoughts were, and whether there was any regret hidden within that creepy dark cowl.
‘One thing I gotta say to you, mister,’ the monk began, wagging a finger at the Kid as he tried to establish some sort of eye contact. ‘You shouldn’t have killed Ishmael Taos.’
‘So?’
Peto was instantly annoyed by the other’s seeming lack of concern at having murdered the greatest monk that had ever lived. He had learned enough about the Kid in recent times to accept that he had his reasons, and that he was worth teaming up with because of his hatred of the undead, but he really couldn’t get to grips with the guy’s total lack of conscience.
‘You just shouldn’t have killed him. That’s all I’m trying to say.’
‘Okay. Anything else?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Let’s get some drinks.’ The Kid turned to Dino, who had just poked his head up from his hiding place behind the bar and was brushing some stray shards of glass out of his dark hair. ‘You. Get me three bourbons. And fill the glasses to the top.’
‘Sure,’ sighed the Nightjar’s shaken owner, limping to the shambles behind the counter to look for unbroken bottles and glasses. His bar was a wreck, and almost all his regular customers were dead. But, somehow, he wasn�
��t. He decided that this was a positive.
The Kid turned to Dante and Peto again. ‘You two want anything?’
‘I’ll have a beer, please, Dino,’ Dante called over to the bartender.
‘Beer for me too,’ said Peto. ‘And put a shot of bourbon into it.’
Dante had been a stunned bystander in the recent series of life-threatening events, which had exceeded anything he’d been involved in before, and that was really saying something. Surveying the carnage all around him, he took a deep breath. The events of the last few minutes were going to take a while to sink in. There were questions to be answered, that was for sure. For a start, the hooded man in front of him had just killed at least a hundred people, and some of them were supposed to be Dante’s friends. Sort of. Fritz, Silence and a fair few other undead folks had just perished at the Kid’s hands. And that was another thing. Who the fuck was this guy, anyway?
‘So whaddo I call you now? Déjà-Vu, or Bourbon Kid, or what?’ Dante asked him.
‘I don’t give a fuck. Call me what you want.’
‘Okay Dave. Thanks for not killin’ me, by the way.’
The Kid blew out a lungful of smoke and picked up a stool from the floor to seat himself at the bar. ‘I seem to recall tellin’ you I owed you one when you helped out during the eclipse last year. That was you in the Terminator outfit, wasn’t it?’
‘Yeah. Thanks, man. Guess that makes us even, then?’
‘Not likely. I shot a clown in the head for you the other night. You owe me one now’. He paused, looking hard at Dante and Peto in turn. What he said next surprised them both. ‘I want you to help me out with some other shit I gotta do. Coupla real badass vampire bosses need wipin’ out. You guys in?’
The Bourbon Kid wasn’t generally given to asking for help from others, but a Hubal monk with the Eye of the Moon and a guy who had helped him kill Jessica the Vampire Queen were useful allies to have. And with him currently being a vampire himself, he wasn’t going to be able to use the old Book With No Name-strapped-to-his-chest routine when it came down to killing whoever the chief bloodsucker might be.
‘I’m in,’ Dante shrugged. He was up for a fight, as always. Besides, he wasn’t sure what would happen if he turned the kid down.
‘Has this got anything to do with Rameses Gaius?’ Peto asked, quietly.
The Kid frowned. ‘What the fuck would it have to do with him? He’s been dead for centuries.’
‘He was,’ Peto agreed partially. ‘But he was mummified, and from what I hear, he rose from the dead when you killed Ishmael Taos and Armand Xavier, which lifted the curse upon him.’
‘You fuckin’ Rastas man. You should stay off the fuckin’ weed.’
‘I’m serious.’
‘I don’t give a shit.’
‘Well, you should. There’s a mummy on the loose somewhere in this city.’
‘So why don’t you go fuck your mummy?’
‘That’s not very nice,’ Peto said defensively.
‘Do I look nice to you?’
It was a fairly open question that didn’t really need answering. The Bourbon Kid was covered in blood and dressed like the Grim Reaper, so no, he didn’t look nice.
‘Look, I was just telling you,’ Peto protested. ‘But if you don’t care about Gaius, then that’s fine. But yeah – you can count me in to help you kill these vampires, but then I seriously suggest we get the fuck out of town before this mummy shows up.’
‘Thanks,’ the Kid said in his unmistakable gravelly tone. ‘Now let’s have us some drinks to wind down. And, Monk Boy, put somethin’ on the jukebox, will ya? I seem to have killed the band.’
The corpses of the dead band members were smoking away into dust and ash on the stage amidst all their instruments, which were riddled with bullet holes. Peto was sorry to see the end of them, as he’d rather enjoyed their habit of playing a song to fit any occasion. Ruing their violent end, he walked over to an old Wurlitzer jukebox in the far corner to the left of the stage. The machine had remained surprisingly undamaged in all the gunfire. It was a fairly battered old unit that had seen better days, and it had been turned off for at least six months since The Psychics had showed up and insisted on playing nightly for free. Dino had switched it off in the middle of a song, with no intention of ever turning it back on.
Peto stood next to it and faced the others. Then he elbowed it once, much as he had seen the Fonz do in the TV show Happy Days. It kicked into gear, and by the time he’d taken a seat at the bar alongside Dante and the Kid, Thin Lizzy were well into a chorus of ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’.
Forty-Six
De La Cruz, understandably, was in a state of abject panic. Not least because he still had no idea where the hell Benson had got to. His colleague had not been seen since early morning, when he had left headquarters without saying a word to anyone about where he was headed. On top of that was the small matter of the stories he was hearing about the Fawcett Inn, the Tapioca and the Nightjar. All had received an unwelcome visit from the Bourbon Kid. Massacres had taken place in each of them. The next stop for the hooded maniac would no doubt be police headquarters.
De La Cruz was extremely tempted to make a run for it, but he knew that would leave him on his own, looking over his shoulder for the rest of his days, waiting for a visit from the Grim Reaper. He was going to have to call in as many officers as he could and make a stand right there in the building. His main problem was that it was getting late, and the only cops that liked working the late shift were the ones who happened to be vampires. One such officer was the red-haired receptionist, Francis Bloem. He was doing his damnedest to find available colleagues of the undead kind to come and help protect De La Cruz (and Benson, if he showed his face again any time soon).
As it happened, Bloem was going nuts as he sat at his desk in reception. Trying to track down any available officers was proving all but impossible. Many of those he had tried to contact were no longer answering their cell phones or responding on the police networks. The reasons why weren’t exactly clear, but there was a distinct possibility that many of them were unable to respond because they were dead. He was shifting uncomfortably in his chair, flicking through his own small black personal address book in the hope of getting some alternate contact details for any of his fellow officers, when De La Cruz came bounding over. It was obvious the detective was badly spooked. His smart red shirt was practically glued to him by the wet patches of sweat that made it look as though he’d taken a shower in his clothes.
‘You found anyone yet?’ he asked urgently, unable to hide the panic in his voice.
‘The only two guys who have responded to the call are Goose and Kenny, sir. They’re on their way here now,’ Bloem responded.
De La Cruz’s jaw dropped open. Only two officers available? And two absolute deadbeats, to boot. His disappointment was all too evident.
‘Goose and Kenny?’ he groaned.
‘Yessir.’
‘We are so fucked.’
‘I’ll keep trying to get hold of some of the other guys, sir, but no one seems to be responding. Reckon they know what’s coming and don’t want any part of it. Or they’re already dead.’
De La Cruz frowned and picked up a piece of foolscap-sized scrap paper from Bloem’s desk. It had a handwritten list of officers on it and all of them had crosses next to their names, with the exception of Goose and Kenny, who had ticks. What if Benson had decided to back away as well? Or had been killed? If the reports that were trickling through were true, then Hunter had just been given an absolute pounding at the merciless hands of the Bourbon Kid. So much for immortality. In spite of what they had come to believe, drinking blood from the golden chalice didn’t seem to be making too much difference. If the Kid got his hands on you, you were still fucked either way. Not good. Not good at all. Damn you, Benson, he thought. You’d better not have bailed on me. Not now.
***
At that precise moment Randy Benson was standing at the recept
ion desk in the local clinic just two miles down the road. The clinic had been reopened that evening at his request. Having closed at the normal time of 5 p.m. the key members of staff had been dragged back in, courtesy of Benson. They weren’t overly happy about it, either, but a police emergency warranted – indeed, demanded – their cooperation.
Benson had a book in his hands and was reading some details aloud from it to the woman at the reception desk. The nurse in question, Jolene Bird, scribbled down the numbers he read out to her. She was a little nervous at being in the presence of a senior member of the local police, and was struggling to hide it. With her free hand she fiddled constantly with her curly blonde hair, and when she wasn’t doing that she was adjusting her wing-framed blue spectacles. Anything to keep her hands busy. She’d worked at the clinic for a good twenty years, and she could recognize a serious visit from the police when she saw one. They were usually linked to a murder. This looked like one of those times. The mere knowledge that she could make a mistake that might result in a murder investigation being compromised made her seriously edgy.
‘Do you have the warrant with you, sir?’ she asked Benson, making only fleeting eye contact.
‘Sure,’ Benson smiled, in an attempt to put her at ease. He pulled a piece of yellow paper from the breast pocket on his shirt and handed it over the desk to her.
‘Great, thanks,’ Jolene smiled back nervously as she gratefully accepted the warrant. She proceeded to do her best to concentrate on its main points for a few moments to ensure it was all in order, then she folded it in half and placed it in a large pocket on the front of her long white coat.
‘This all appears to be in order,’ she said. ‘If you’d like to follow me I’ll take you down there now and fetch it for you.’ She opened a metal cupboard behind her, looked around inside it for several seconds, selected a key, which she pocketed, then closed the cupboard door and stood up.
