Brother Bones!
His guns continued to boom
as he approached her, a sulfur stench permeated the air around him.
He was the creepiest thing she had ever seen, which was saying a
great deal.
Suddenly, he stiffened as
two feet of hard steel ruptured out of his chest impaling him.
Bones looked down at the sword sticking out of his chest and merely
shook his head, the small assassin behind him still holding on to
the leather handle, as another ninja suddenly sprung up in front of
the undead avenger.
Bones, still clutching his
guns, blew away the new threat and then twisted around hard,
tearing the blade out of its wielder’s grasp. Then, before the
small oriental killer realized what was happening, Brother Bones
reached down and embraced him, driving the sword that had
penetrated his own carcass into the silent killer, bonding them
together. The ninja tried to scream only to have his lungs fill
with blood which then spewed out of his mouth as he died, going
limp in the avenger’s arms.
“
Have you seen enough?”
Bones asked the Pulptress as he opened his arms and the dead ninja
slid off the now blood soaked katana and crumbled at his
feet.
Cody looked around her, the
area had become a slaughter house with bodies strewn everywhere.
Then she saw Pete Malone stumbling away into the back of the
building to lose himself from the copious bloodletting. Without a
second thought, she put one hand on the money table and vaulted
over it to give chase.
“
Stop!” Brother Bones called
out, but she ignored him. Without Malone she would never find his
brother, the Butcher.
The frightened Malone had
disappeared around a corner which led to another hallway. Turning
into it, Cody froze as she was instantly enveloped in a thick,
cloying darkness. Somewhere ahead there was a scraping noise along
the floor, something heavy being moved.
Frantically she dug into
her jeans pockets and produced a wooden match which she lit with a
flick of her index fingernail. Ahead of her was a narrow hallway
she could just barely make out. She started off cautiously, her gun
cocked and ready to shoot should Malone be hiding in
ambush.
An old worn rug covered
part of the floor and as she put her foot down on it the entire
fabric caved inward and she fell through the hidden aperture. Cody
had been trained to react far quicker than normal people and the
second she began to fall, she tossed her pistol and the match, both
hands frantically clawing for a grip anywhere.
They caught the edge of
square cut out, stopping her descent as rug continued to fall until
she heard a soft splash. She dangled over the open sewer unable to
see anything within the dark recesses beneath her. She could
faintly hear someone moving further away, sloshing through the
water.
Before she could decide
what to do next, a big hand wrapped itself around her right wrist
and she was pulled upward like a prize fish and set on the floor
again. In the inky world around her, she could just barely discern
Brother Bones shape.
“
Thanks,” she gasped,
reaching into her jeans to find another match.
“
I told you to
stop.”
She scratched the sulfur
tip to find him standing right in front of here, the light shining
off that smooth ivory colored mask. Cody stifled a scream, aware of
how silent Bones moved, much like the wraith he appeared to
be.
“
Give me a heart attack, why
don’t you?” she barked, trying to get her nerves calm. “Just what
the hell are you doing here, Bones?”
“
I am here to help
you…”
“
Mission
accomplished.”
“…
find Arnold
Malone.”
“
The Butcher.
Why?”
“
I will explain later. Come,
our prey has eluded us.” With that he moved down the empty corridor
leaving Cody behind to pick up her gun just as the expiring match
burned her fingers.
“
Ouch.”
Brother Bones moved around
the trap door and she stayed close behind him.
“
You knew that was there,
didn’t you?”
“
Yes, there are hundreds of
these under the streets of Cape Noire. They saw much use during the
days of prohibition.”
Cody smelled brine. “Is
that the sea I smell?”
“
Yes. The tunnel leads to
Malone’s dockside hideout. We will get there much quicker by
car.”
“
Lead the way.”
A few minutes later they
were back in the warehouse proper, moving past the dead
bodies.
“
Bones, hold up a
second.”
The grim bringer of death
halted as Cody came up around him and tapped the katana blade still
sticking out of his chest. He looked down surprised to see it was
still there.
“
Remove it,
please.”
Cody stepped around him,
the brimstone stench on him pervasive. Using both hands, she
clasped the sword handle and pulled the Japanese short sword from
his body. Brother Bones grunted and continued his exit out of the
building.
***
Cody Randall also retrieved
her shotgun by the time she and Brother Bones left the warehouse
and started across the slick, empty parking lot. Thunder rolled
somewhere off in the far distance and she searched the clouded
skies, hoping whatever foul weather was on its way would hold off a
while longer.
“
Where the hell are we
going?” she said to Bone’s back.
Her answer came wheeling
out of a nearby alley in the shape of an old, dented up gray
roadster that pulled up in front of them with a squeal of the
brakes.
“
Get in the front,” Bones
commanded as he opened the rear door. She complied, holding her hat
with one hand and shotgun in the other as she fell back into the
seat beside the driver; a freckled face kid with a goofy smile on
his face.
“
Hi, I’m Bobby Craddock, my
friends call me Blackjack.”
“
Really?”
“
I’m a card dealer at the
Gray Owl casino.”
“
Well, ah…nice to meet you.
I’m Cody Randall.”
“
I know,” a nod to the
figure in the backseat. “He told me.”
“
Drive, Craddock,” Brother
Bones interrupted. “Malone has fled to his hideout on Pier Sixteen.
We will find him and his brother there.”
“
Gotcha, Boss.” Craddock
shifted into gear and stomped on the gas pedal sending the roadster
speeding off into the deserted streets of Cape Noire.
Okay
, thought Cody,
it’s catch up time.
“
So one of you want to fill
me on what’s going on here?”
“
Sure,” Craddock agreed as
he pulled them around a sharp corner never once letting up on the
accelerator. “What do you want to know, Miss Randall?”
Miss Randall? Geez, was
this kid real? Then again, he was cute.
“
Well for starters, just
call me Cody, okay? And how the hell do you and Bones here know so
damn much about my business in Cape Noire?”
“
The Boss has a spirit
guide.”
“
A what?”
“
The soul of a young girl
who appears to him every so often when innocent lives have been
taken. Which is what happened two days ago.”
Craddock went on to explain
that a local crusading attorney had convinced one of Pete Malone’s
accountants to turn state evidence against him for a fat financial
reward. Somehow Malone had gotten wind of the betrayal and
dispatched his psycho sibling, Arnold to take care of the problem.
Arnold Malone, known as the Butcher, did so by blowing up the
downtown bus on which the accountant traveled daily. In the process
he also killed thirteen innocent passengers.
“
Their souls cry out for
vengeance,” Brother Bones added at the end of Craddock’s tale. “My
spirit guide sent me to avenge them. She also told me another
seeker of truth and justice had come to Cape Noire and I was to
find and save her.”
“
Meaning me? You’re spirit
guide told you about me?”
“
Yes.”
“
Don’t you find that a
little strange?” Cody looked back at the undead creature with the
porcelain mask and realized she had just asked a dead man if he
thought ghosts were strange. “Right. Forget I asked.”
Craddock chuckled, “He does
take some getting use to.”
“
No fooling.” They were
leaving the main boulevards for narrower streets. She could make
out wharves and anchored ships through the gaps between the old
buildings they were passing.
“
So tell me, Blackjack,
how’d you get hooked up in all this?”
Craddock eased up on the
gas pedal as they rolled onto the road skirting the piers. A tense
fog was beginning to slide in from the bay. His headlights barely
penetrated the thick blanket of condensation.
“
Two years ago he saved me
from being shot by his twin brother.”
“
His brother?”
“
It’s a long story. Anyway I
owe him and the work he does means something. So I help in whatever
way I can.”
Craddock slowed the
roadster to a crawl, peered at a dilapidated building front and
then stopped the car. “We’re here.”
***
Cody Randall clutched her
shotgun to her bosom, standing beside the Undead Avenger as they
looked up at the words, Hanson Boat Builders. Faded letters on a
crooked sign over the main doors to the wooden
structure.
“
Stay with me,” his gravely
voice ordered. “Do what I say without hesitation.”
“
I’m not use to taking
orders,” she said matter-of-factly.
“
Then stay with Craddock in
the car.”
She pulled her cowboy hat
down and glared at him, her show of bravado lost on his stoic
demeanor.
Didn’t anything ever get
to this guy?
“Alright, Bones, have it your way. But let’s hurry
it up. I don’t want them escaping us a second time.”
Brother Bones seemed to
nod, then he walked over to the iron padlock that wrapped around
the twin door handles. Smoothly he produced his powerful .45
automatics and proceeded to blow the lock into small
pieces.
BLAM! BLAM!
BLAM!
Cody moved past him, pulled
off a loose section of chain and pulled the right half open by a
few feet. “So much for the element of surprise, heh?”
“
They knew we were coming,”
was all Bones would say as he moved past her into the shop’s
interior.
Unlike the business
district warehouse, the boat shop was brightly lit from high
hanging light bulbs, and as they moved through it, Cody gave the
place a careful visual inspection. A thick layer of sawdust covered
the floor almost muting their footsteps as they moved around work
benches, saw horses and various machines such as drills and lathes,
all used in the manufacture of sea worthy crafts.
They passed all styles of
boats from canoes to larger sailing ships, all assembled with
different planks of lumber and steel spines for reinforcement.
Several completed hulls were suspended upside down on pulleys from
the ceiling, where they had been hoisted to allow coats of paint to
dry properly. That was another thing Cody became aware of, the
strong odors that saturated the shop from linseed oils to paint and
alcohol based thinners. It was clear, despite its owner’s nefarious
illegal activities, Hanson Boat Builders was a genuine enterprise
with lots of contracts.
“
Hold it right there,
Spook!” Pete Malone came out from behind a stack of old lobster
crates with a Thompson submachine gun in his hands. Behind him
emerged his brother, Arnold. He appeared unarmed, wearing a simply
gray suit and black tie. Cody could see the family resemblance
accentuated by the thick glasses both brothers wore.
“
Your reckoning is upon you,
Arnold Malone,” Brother Bones announced, his own gleaming pistols
pointing at the two Malone brothers.
“
Is that a fact?” the small
man retorted as he began unbuttoning his jacket. “Well, let’s see
how much you are willing to pay for this dance, Brother
Bones.”
With a flourish, Butcher
Malone pulled opened his suit to reveal a strange corset of glass
tubes that was wrapped around his middle.
“
Dear God in heaven,” Cody
gasped. “What the hell is that stuff?”
“
It’s nitroglycerin, my
dear. And the slightest bump to any of these vials could set it
off…and then …KABOOM! We’re all history.”
“
So we have us a Mexican
stand off,” Pete Malone declared. “I suggest the two of you slowly
turn around and walk out of here.”
“
That is not going to
happen,” Bones started to bring his right hand up, sighting along
the top of his pistol. “Instead both of you are going to die
here.”
Cody sidled up to the black
clad zombie warrior and whispered, “What are you doing? If that
nitro goes, we’re dead ducks. At least I am.”
“
No more talk, Pulptress.
Shoot the Butcher.”