Sanchez considered what he’d
just said. Not only had he apologised for doubting Flake, he’d also warned her
to steer clear of the courtyard, and then told her he missed her.
That last
part was particularly alarming. Probably because it was genuinely true. He
really did miss hanging out with Flake when she wasn’t around. Who knew how
that had come to happen? All the time he’d been obsessing about Jessica, Flake
had been like a rock for him. Hell, the woman had saved his ass when Ulrika
Price tried to kill him, then she’d come to his rescue when the Sunflower Girls
had been chasing him, baying for blood. And most important of all, she knew how
he liked his sausage cooked. Right now, given the choice of hanging out with
Jessica or Flake, he’d pick Flake any day of the week. Of course, there was no
guarantee that she would want to hang out with him right now. He’d been a bit
of a shit to her of late, what with blaming her for the mess The Book of Death
was in after she’d hit it with the car. He promised himself if Flake could get
him out of this latest scrape, he’d even stop tipping her with fake one dollar
bills when she waited on him in the Ole Au Lait.
He slipped his phone back into the
hip pocket on his pants and considered his options. He needed to find somewhere
to hide.
But where?
There was nowhere suitable
within the dining room, other than maybe under the table. At the far end of the
room was a large black door with a shiny brass doorknob on it. Hopefully it
would lead to an exit of some kind, or at least a bathroom with a lock on the
door. If he could find a bathroom he might be able to lock himself in it and
wait for Flake to call back.
He quickstepped over to the
large black door and turned the brass knob. It opened inwards and behind it he
saw a long narrow corridor. Thankfully an empty one. There were doors on either
side of the corridor every ten yards or so. Bedrooms? Bathrooms? Only one way
to find out. He scurried over to the first door on the right and opened it. He
peered inside. There was a double bed in the middle of the room with a bedside
table and not much else, other than a set of walk in wardrobes and a small door
in the corner. He checked both ways down the corridor to make sure no one saw
him, then he slipped inside the room and closed the door behind him. He headed
over to the door in the corner. This had to be an en suite bathroom, right? He
poked his head around the door and was pleased to see that he was correct, for
once. There was a long royal blue bath against the far wall and a matching
toilet and washbasin on his left. A light blue shower curtain hung down from a
rail above the bath. He stepped inside and bolted the door shut behind him.
He thought about the phone
conversation he had overheard between Panda Girl and Jessica. Jessica had
indicated that he would be of no further use to her once she had her hands on
the book. What a bitch. After all he had done for her. That book was the only
thing keeping him alive. The minute he gave it up he would become food for the
immortals.
In the interest of keeping
himself alive he made a snap decision.
He would hide The Book of Death.
He took his satchel off and laid
it on the floor. Then he pulled the book out. The cover was still a little bit
damp and edges of the pages were looking a bit crusty courtesy of Flake hitting
it with her car and knocking it into the snow earlier in the day. He carefully
placed it down in the bathtub. He didn’t want anyone hearing him place it
there, and in the hopes of making it reasonably difficult to find he pulled the
shower curtain across to conceal it from the sight of any casual passer-by
dropping in for a shit. It wasn’t the best plan by any means, but it was a
plan. If he bumped into Jessica he could pretend he’d forgotten to bring it
with him and claim he had to head back to the Tapioca to get it from his safe.
As he was busy congratulating
himself on coming up with a half decent plan he heard the door to the bedroom
open. It seemed that someone
may
have found him
already. He heard footsteps coming towards the bathroom door. Then the handle
shook. Someone was trying to open the door from the other side.
A muffled voice called
through the door. ‘Who’s in there?’
Sanchez panicked. ‘Just
a minute!’ he called out to buy himself some time.
There was no sense in looking
like he had anything to hide, so he crept over to the toilet and flushed it.
Then he picked up his empty satchel from the floor and hung it over his
shoulder again. He unlocked the door and strolled out in as calm a manner as he
could in the circumstances.
Standing outside the bathroom
with a fierce look on her face was the Panda Girl with the stupid black eye
makeup and the baseball cap.
‘All done,’ said Sanchez. He waved
his hand in front of his nose and added, ‘I wouldn’t go in there for a while if
I was you.’
Panda Girl looked down at
Sanchez’s satchel and then back up at him. ‘Your satchel’s empty!’ she scowled.
‘Where’s the book? What have you done with it?’
Forty-Four
Bull spoke on behalf of
everyone. ‘Oh sweet Jesus,’ he whispered. ‘God have mercy on us all.’
He rushed back to the window and
stared down into the courtyard below. His eyes confirmed what he had seen on
the monitors. Swarming into the courtyard through the large iron gates at the
end of the driveway was an army of flesh hungry zombies. And there appeared to
be an infinite number of them piling in from the woodland opposite the Casa de
Ville.
Tex confirmed it verbally.
‘Fucking zombies!’ he said, staring at his bank of monitors. ‘Thousands of the
muthafuckers. Where the
hell
did they come from?’
‘Devil’s Graveyard, I’m
guessing,’ Bull replied.
The zombies had charged in and
there was now one almighty scrap taking place in the courtyard. The vampires
and werewolves were hopelessly outnumbered and the sudden onslaught had
completely overwhelmed them.
Bull had seen some violence in
his time. He’d been in the thick of some pretty serious war zones along with the
rest of his team, but as he watched the carnage in the courtyard below, he knew
he was witnessing something utterly unlike anything he’d ever encountered
before. The sounds that made their way up to the window in the Control room
were quite sickening. Crunching bones, ripping flesh, screaming beasts. This
was not a place he really wanted to be. All he wanted was the Bourbon Kid, but
since the exploding smoke bombs and arrival of thousands of zombies it was now
impossible to see the serial murderer anywhere. Bull’s quest for revenge was
not going according to plan.
Tex remained glued to his seat
staring at the bank of monitors in front of him, watching and commentating on
the events as they unfolded. Razor took up his position standing guard over
Beth. He had drawn a pistol from its holster by his ribcage and had it aimed at
her in case she had any thoughts of escape. Of the three, he was the most on
edge. This was a man that followed orders and when there were none being barked
out, he got anxious.
‘What are we gonna do, boss?’ he
asked.
‘I’m trying to spot the Kid in
this crowd,’ said Bull craning his neck to get a better view out of the window.
‘Hang on, I see something.’
‘What is it?’ asked
Razor. ‘Is it him?’
‘It’s a fucking car,’ said Bull.
‘Someone’s driving right through the middle of the zombies and vampires, toward
the front doors.’
‘Is it the Kid?’ Razor asked
again.
‘I can’t tell.’
Tex interrupted. ‘The Kid is
already inside the building,’ he said. ‘Look!’ He pointed at one of the
monitors on the top row. It showed the view from a camera in one of the Casa de
Ville’s outer corridors.
Bull strode over to take a look.
He recognised the figure on screen. ‘How the hell did he get inside?’
‘He must have smashed a window
or something,’ said Tex, flicking a few switches on his control panel. The
image on screen changed as a different camera angle came into play, this one
showed the Kid from behind. He was walking towards a large black door at the
end of a corridor.
‘Where exactly is he?’ Bull
asked.
‘This is a corridor in the East
wing,’ said Tex. ‘He’s heading towards the reception area.’
Bull pulled his pistol from its
holster and double-checked that it was fully loaded. He’d checked it less than
an hour earlier and not used it since, but he needed to remind himself exactly
how many bullets he had at his disposal. The bullets were still there. He
tapped Tex on the shoulder. ‘Come on, let’s get to the main hall. There’s a
group of Jessica’s personal bodyguards in there. We can send them down to the
reception area to deal with him.’
Tex didn’t look convinced. ‘How
many of them are there?’
‘About ten, mostly werewolves I
think.’
‘In that case, he’ll probably
kill them all, right?’
Bull nodded. ‘Most likely, but
they’ll slow him down. By the time he gets up to this floor, you and me can be
concealed in the main hall, waiting for him, armed to the teeth. He won’t know
what hit him.’
Over by Beth, Razor still looked
on edge. ‘What about me?’ he asked.
Bull pointed at Beth. ‘You stay
here with her. Keep the gun pointed at her head. And watch what’s happening on
the monitors. If you see me get taken down, you put a bullet through her face.
Understand?’
‘You got it, boss.’
Forty-Five
Kacy had been doing her best to
keep the group of young girl scouts calm. In the wake of the Bourbon Kid
murdering just about everyone who had been out in the streets outside the
church, she was able to assure them that there wouldn’t be any more vampires
flying in through the windows any time soon. She had the girls all seated in the
pews at the front of the church and was doing her best to give some kind of
off-the-cuff sermon about how the Good Lord would spare their lives. She was
making it up as she went along because in all honesty she wasn’t the religious
type. As she began to run out of stories to tell, the girls’ attention began to
waver and one of them asked a question.
‘Why does the Bourbon Kid kill
people?’
Kacy grimaced. This was a tough
question that needed to be handled tactfully. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘The Bourbon Kid
was sent by God to protect us all. When we came to the church and begged for
God’s help, he sent us the Bourbon Kid, and it worked out pretty well for us
all, didn’t it?’
‘Does that mean he’s like
Jesus?’ one of the girls asked.
‘Yes. He’s exactly like Jesus,’
Kacy replied.
It was a lie, of course. But it
seemed to make the girls feel a lot better about their predicament. Some of
them even looked like they believed her. Ever since the Kid had finished
shooting up anything moving in the streets outside, things had gone pretty
quiet.
Dante helped out by explaining
to the girls that no harm could come to them while the Bourbon Kid was alive.
He even regaled them with a tale about how he’d seen the Kid stick a shotgun up
a vampire’s ass once in an elevator. The girls laughed, probably because they
thought he was kidding.
Vanity seemed more on edge than
anyone. He was spending a lot of time on his phone, regularly texting or
chatting in a far away corner of the church where no one could hear him. After
one particularly long call he came back to where Dante and Kacy were. He looked
worried.
‘Whassup, man?’ Dante asked.
‘I just spoke to Moose. She says
Gaius left the Casa de Ville half an hour ago. He’s probably at the museum
already. We’re gonna have to go now if we want to catch him with his eye out.
We’ll have to leave the girls here.’
Kacy balked at the suggestion.
‘We can’t do that. They’ll be all on their own. It’s not safe.’
Vanity turned to Dante. ‘We
gotta do something. If you two are really serious about ever becoming human
again then we have to go now.’
Dante puffed out his cheeks.
‘He’s right,’ he said, rubbing Kacy’s back. ‘What do you wanna do, babe?’
Kacy looked at the troubled
faces of the Sunflower Girls. It had taken almost an hour to calm them down. If
she now announced that she was leaving them they would be in tears again pretty
quickly.
‘I’m staying here,’ she said.
‘Why don’t you two go. If you can get the Eye from Gaius you can bring it back
here, can’t you?’
‘That’s not such a bad idea,’ said
Dante. ‘You’ll be safe here. If things with Gaius get ugly I wouldn’t want you
there anyway. Me and Vanity can go on our own. Right, Vanity?’
Vanity didn’t look convinced. ‘I
think the three of us should go together. We’ll be stronger.’
‘I can’t leave the girls,’ said
Kacy.
Vanity shrugged. ‘Why don’t you
bring them along with us?’
‘That’s a shitty idea,’ said
Dante immediately. ‘They’re Sunflower Girls, not Ewoks!’
‘Fine,’ said Vanity. ‘Just us
two should go then. But we’ve gotta go now.’