The Book With No Name (46 page)

‘One.’

CRASH!

The door of the washroom to Peto’s left came flying open, almost off its hinges, and Dante, still dressed in full Terminator attire, came striding through it. He pointed a sawn-off shotgun at the back of Peto’s head.

‘Don’t do it, Peto,’ he said.

‘Dante, this doesn’t concern you.’

‘Yes, it does. Take your Eye of the Moon thing and get the hell out of here. I’ll deal with this guy.’

‘But he killed Kyle.’

‘Peto, you’re a monk. Monks don’t kill people. Not for any reason. Not ever. Now get outta here. Take your precious
stone and go back to where you came from. Go on. Use the back door and get gone.’ Dante jerked one thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the back door, indicating the best way to get out quickly.

Sanchez, watching the latest standoff in open-mouthed astonishment, waited for Peto to choose his course of action. After what seemed like an eternity, the monk lowered his gun and stepped back warily. He looked deep into Dante’s sunglasses to see if he could make any sense of what was going on from the young man’s eyes. Unfortunately, he could tell nothing. The shades were just too damn dark.

Peto had the look of a man betrayed. Although he didn’t know Dante well, he had trusted him more than he trusted most of the other people he had met outside of Hubal. Above everything, he wanted to avenge Kyle’s death. Yet Dante was right. Monks didn’t kill people. Dejected, he turned away and walked slowly backwards past Dante and out through the emergency exit at the back, never taking his eyes or his gun off the Bourbon Kid until he had made it safely out through the door. Then he and the Eye of the Moon were gone.

Left behind in the Tapioca were the Bourbon Kid, who was still aiming his guns at Jessica, and Dante, now also pointing his own gun at her. Looking on from the comparative safety of the bar counter, Sanchez was completely and utterly baffled. Why would this kid, this no-hoper dressed as the Terminator, who had looked as though he was about to soil himself only minutes earlier, suddenly jump out of the shadows in defence of the Bourbon Kid? Who was he? And what the fuck did he know that Sanchez didn’t?

When the eclipse started and the sun was blacked out, covered by the moon, Dante discovered that he had a chance. Someone was on his side, maybe even the Almighty, but whoever that someone was, they had thrown him a lifeline. He had been given a golden opportunity to get himself and Kacy out of the Tapioca alive.

All the other people around the table were gripped by uncertainty, even panic, as the light disappeared. No one knew who was pointing a gun at whom. Except for Dante. He saw everything. Over to his left he saw the hooded figure of the Bourbon Kid slam an empty glass down on the bar and pull a pair of Skorpion fully automatic pistols from inside his long trench coat. In front of him, Dante saw Kacy, El Santino, Carlito, Miguel, Jefe, Jessica and the two monks, all getting nervous at the sudden lack of light. Those of them with guns looked very twitchy indeed.

It was not just the biggest stroke of luck of all time, this had to be a moment of divine intervention. Thank the good Lord, and thank the fancy-dress store that had rented him his Terminator costume, because there was something special about it. The salesman had not mentioned this to him when he chose the outfit. A small detail that the guy had overlooked, maybe? Surely not, for this was no small detail, certainly not in Dante’s current predicament. This was a big deal. A lifesaving bonus supplied by the kind folk in Domino’s Fancy Dress. At no extra cost.

In the movies, the Terminator had infrared vision. Now, as the last of the daylight fled the Tapioca, Dante was amazed
to find that the cheap imitation pair of sunglasses that had come with his outfit had infrared too. As a consequence, he saw everything that happened from the moment the sun disappeared and the Bourbon Kid fired his first shot. True, he saw everything in subdued detail suffused with red, but it was good enough.

Everyone in the place seemed to reach for a weapon except for the two bartenders. Knowing the drill, Sanchez ducked down behind the bar instantly. Mukka was a little too slow, and paid the price of his inexperience early on as bullets began to fly around the bar from all directions. Everyone who had a gun was firing it. Most of them probably didn’t know who or what they were firing at, but that didn’t matter. Self-preservation was all in a scenario like this. Instinct took over. Dante was no different, except that, to him, the preservation of Kacy was important, too. She had come to his rescue. It was time that he came to hers.

He reached for her baggy clown outfit and grabbed a fistful of the material, then dragged her down to the floor, causing her to drop one of the shotguns. She was clearly startled, but there was no time to reassure her that everything was going to be all right. Instead, he took her by the hand and, half crouching, tugged her with him towards the washrooms at the back of the bar. The sound of gunfire was deafening, making it impossible to communicate with her. Dante just hoped she would know from the feel of his hand that it was him dragging her around. It was at times like this that he wished he had held her hand more often in public, but even so, surely she would know it was him? Right? The small things mattered to Kacy. She would know his hand instinctively. Of course she would.

Once they reached the ladies’ washroom Dante barged the door open with his shoulder and dragged Kacy through it with him. Bullets were spraying everywhere, and he felt a couple whistle past him and slam into the tiled walls. He hadn’t heard Kacy cry out, so he hoped she was unhurt.

As soon as they reached relative safety on the other side of the door, Kacy collapsed in a heap on the floor. She was
breathing heavily and unevenly, as if she were about to have a panic attack.

‘Dante, is that you?’ she called out, her voice almost drowned by the gunfire on the other side of the wall. The lights weren’t on in the washrooms either, so although Dante could see Kacy through his infrared glasses, she was still in complete darkness. Rather than speak, Dante simply stroked Kacy’s cheek to let her know she was with him. This had the desired effect, calming her enough for her breathing to return almost to normal. Dante wasn’t about to take any chances, though. He kept the washroom door very slightly ajar so that he could keep an eye on events in the barroom.

The first participant in the standoff at El Santino’s table to die was Carlito. He was shot full of holes by the Bourbon Kid, who seemed to be firing off more rounds from his two weapons than the rest of the place put together. Nor was it random shooting; every shot found its target, and the first ten or so were aimed at Carlito. Kyle was next to go, then El Santino. The giant gangster was actually the gunman responsible for taking out the monk. He had simply fired off his pistol in all directions, and the first thing to get in his way was Kyle. The older of the two monks crumpled to the floor with the back of his head missing, blasted away by one of El Santino’s bullets. As his body hit the ground Dante saw the Bourbon Kid deliberately aim one of his Skorpions right at Jefe. Like El Santino, the bounty hunter was firing blindly into every part of the room, hoping to hit anyone, friend or foe.

It was at this point that it dawned on Dante that he wasn’t the only one who could see in the dark. The Kid appeared to see perfectly, too. He took careful aim with the weapon in his left hand and sent a burst of fire right through the eye-holes of Jefe’s Freddy Krueger mask, sending him to sleep permanently. The mask, its strings shot away, fell face upwards on the floor, seeming to mock the carnage all around it. As Jefe fell, his gun dropped from his right hand and on to the floor. More significantly, the Eye of the Moon, which Jefe must have extracted from its necklace (probably to sell the silver chain
separately), slipped from the clutch of his left hand and rolled along the ground, meandering between the falling bodies as if it had a mind of its own. It rolled a good ten yards along the floor of the bar until it finally found its way into the hand of Peto, who was hiding under one of the larger tables. Peto, recognizing the stone from the feel of it at once, was quick to seize it and roll back out from his hiding place. He scampered across the barroom floor, occasionally crashing into a chair or tripping on a body, until he found refuge in a relatively safe spot behind a large wooden barrel, although not before a bullet had creased his calf.

All over the bar, bodies were now dropping at a horrifying rate. Of those that Dante recognized, Miguel was the next to fall, victim of another dead shot from the Bourbon Kid. Normally, seeing so many people’s lives ended by the same gunman would have guaranteed the Bourbon Kid Dante’s full attention. But not here, not today. Stealing the Kid’s thunder was the girl dressed as Catwoman.

It was obvious that she too could see perfectly well in the dark. She was moving quicker than any feline, dodging bullets, hurdling the bodies of the dead and dying, ducking under tables, trying her best to get across to the body of her dead lover, Jefe. This was proving to be a pretty hazardous task for her. Every time she got near the bounty hunter’s corpse the Bourbon Kid would turn a gun on her and blaze away like someone possessed, forcing her to back away. At first Dante figured she was just lucky to be avoiding the bullets, and he found himself silently rooting for her survival. Then something happened that made him change his mind.

Catwoman – or Jessica, except that Dante didn’t know her name – seemed to tire of dodging all the gunfire. Instead, she suddenly jumped up over the large table at which they had all been negotiating, and landed lightly on the other side, next to the bloodied remains of Jefe. She obviously had tremendous strength in her arms, for she easily lifted up the dead weight of the big bounty hunter by his shoulders. As she looked over him, her eyes turned a bright red and she began ripping
frantically, first through his clothes, and then through his skin. Her mouth had suddenly sprouted a set of fangs that a Bengal tiger would have been proud of, as well as fingernails that bordered on being claws, and they were definitely not part of her costume.
Okay, she’s not a cat,
thought Dante,
but she’s not entirely human, either.
She was now so preoccupied with what she was doing that she paid no attention to the Bourbon Kid. She paid even less to the only man stupid enough to walk into the Tapioca during a blind gunfight. It was a man dressed as Elvis.

The Bourbon Kid did notice the Elvis impersonator enter, and was momentarily distracted by this large, bullish figure of a man. The yellow stripes down the sides of his red suit were almost visible in the dark, but that wasn’t what had alerted the Kid to his presence. The Elvis lookalike was wielding a heavy double-barrelled shotgun and pointing it in the Kid’s direction. It was hard to tell whether or not he knew he was aiming it at the Kid, or if it was just by sheer chance that he was directing the weapon at the gunman doing most of the killing.

This man has to be insane!
Dante thought. Why else would anyone walk into a pitch-dark bar right in the middle of a shootout? For his part, the Bourbon Kid wasn’t about to ask questions and shoot later. He dropped both of his Skorpions at the sight of the newcomer and then, without warning, unleashed two smaller pistols from within the sleeves of his coat. The guns flew out from the cuffs and straight into his hands. Before the lookalike King could fire his own weapon he had taken the full force of two bullets through his sunglasses, one shot in each eye. He toppled slowly backwards and landed with a thud that made the floorboards tremble. Even Dante, cowering in the washroom, felt the impact through his feet.

Clearly aware that he had taken his eye off Jessica, the Kid quickly spun back to face her and began firing in her direction again. She was still ripping her way through what remained of Jefe, oblivious to everything else around her. This made her an easy target and the Bourbon Kid took full advantage, hitting
her with shot after shot.

By now acclimatized to his strange infrared world, Dante could see quite clearly who was shooting at whom. Nearly everyone else in the bar was dead or dying, and that was surely the state Catwoman should be in, too. She had been hammered by the Kid’s bullets, but as Dante watched in astonishment, instead of collapsing in a bloody heap like almost everyone else, she did something unbelievable. She leapt upwards. In a show of enormous strength she sprang towards the ceiling, pulling Jefe’s heavy, lifeless body up with her. He must have weighed twice as much as she but Jessica lifted him up with her as if he were a feather, then slammed his corpse against the ceiling and remained floating below him as she ripped the remaining clothes and skin from his body. She was obviously looking for something, and there were no prizes for guessing it was the Eye of the Moon, but as Dante had seen, Jefe no longer had it. Peto did, and he was hiding behind a barrel a few yards away, out of Catwoman’s line of sight.

When at last it dawned on Jessica that Jefe no longer had possession of the blue stone, she thrust one clawed hand deep into his chest and ripped out his heart. It looked as though she was checking inside him to see if he had swallowed the precious blue stone. That was how desperate she had become. Blood and guts from Jefe’s torso began dropping towards the floor like slops from a bucket of pigswill, covering tables, chairs and bodies.
Not an entirely dignified way to treat such a feared man in death,
Dante thought, inconsequentially.