I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) (30 page)

“We’d a had to kill Heinlein last week,”
Jerry pointed out, “You were okay with that then, right?”

“Right. But that was a week ago. And we got
away with it.”

“Hey, you going to eat that?”

Tom pushed his plate over to Hank, rising as
he did, saying, “I mean—what are we going to do, rob him and shoot
him?” Tom stood, leaning down, one hand on the table, one on his
stomach. “Make it look like a robbery?”

“Not bad.” Hank chewed and nodded.

“
Exactly
, Tom,” said Gaby. “We go to
his house, make it look like a break-in.”

“And what, Gaby? ‘Bump’ him in the process?”
Tom looked towards Hank as he said this last part.

“Yes. Little louder, maybe?”

“What about the wife?” Jerry asked.

Hank grunted a question, his mouth
stuffed.

“The wife. What about her?”

“Well,” Hank swallowed, gulping down some
coffee. “We’re gonna have to take care of her too.”

“Her too?” Tom couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t
believe how it had all started, where it had gone, and where it was
all going. “That’s the solution, then. Great.”

“Keep it low,” Gaby warned. “Why you standing
there anyway?”

“Her too?” Tom looked to Jerry. “Really,
Jere?”

“Maybe we can tie her up or something.” Jerry
gestured with his fork. “If she don’t see us.”

“Dickie doesn’t know us.”

“
And
?” Hank looked up at Tom.

“Well—we are going to ‘take care of’
Heinlein, that’s what we’re deciding here isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but so what?” Hank dabbed at the side
of his mouth with his napkin. “He’s a criminal, Tom. He launders
money for the fucking Mafia. He’s a scumbag.”

“And what are we?”

“I’ll tell you what we are, Tom.” Hank used
his fork to emphasize his words. “We’re scumbags too.” The tines of
his fork jabbed the air in Tom’s direction. “But the thing is,
we’re rich scumbags.”

“And I’d rather be a rich scumbag,” said
Jerry, “than a dead scumbag. Any day.”

“But the wife?”

“What do you think, Gaby?” Hank asked the
heavy man. “You think the Hiney talks to his wife, you know, about
stuff?”

“Don’t know. My wife never said much to
me.”

“Shit. We’ll figure this out tomorrow night.
See, the Hiney, this guy is an asshole. We let him go with just a
warning, he ain’t gonna keep his trap shut. Nuh-uh. No way.”

“It just doesn’t sit well with me,” Tom
admitted.

“The fuck was that?” Gaby waved the air in
front of him, his face scrunched up.

“That was me.”

“Tomorrow night, then?” Jerry was nodding his
head.

“What if something goes wrong?”

“Look, Tom.” Disgust on Gaby’s face. “You
gotta take a dump—”

“What could go wrong?” Hank sat back, arms
folded, seemingly content.

“—go take a dump.”

“I don’t know, but suppose something
does?”

“Worse-case scenario, something gets fucked
up, we have to run.” Gaby explained how it would work. “We grab the
money and we hit the road. Canada.”

“Nah, Mexico.” Jerry had his hands tented in
front of him again. “Uncle Anthony’s got people south of the
border, right Tom?”

“What? Yeah.”

“I got a job here, guys.” Hank had taken a
cigarette out of its pack, was tapping its butt on the tabletop. “I
got a wife here. I don’t want to lose my job.”

“Tell you what, Hank. We get
caught—
you
stay here with your job and wife. See how long
either lasts.”

“I’m just saying, Jere, we
can’t
get
caught.”

“Exactly.”

“Which is why,” Hank continued, “We’re going
to do, what it is, we’re going to do,” he looked directly at Tom.
“We all agree?”

Tom knew what he was expected to say, knew
what he had to say. “Yeah. Of course.”

“Well,” Hank sat back in the booth. “That’s
settled then. Damn waitress, I need more coffee.”

“Excuse me.” Tom hurried off towards the
men’s room, hoping he’d make it.

“Maybe you should, like, you know, slow down
with that stuff.”

Big Duke’s suggestion irritated him, Boone
having just snorted more meth and found himself walking back and
forth across the large central room of the apartment, his eyes
wide, his temple twitching.

“Thanks for your, like, you know, concern.”
Boone shot back at the man in the high-crowned, wide-brimmed hat,
the unlit spliff in the side of Big Duke’s mouth. “But why don’t
you worry about yourself.”

Big Duke held his hands up, palms out.

“If I drop this,” Damian was asking Kane,
“will it explode?” The white-haired man with the star-shaped scar
around one milky eye had blocks of what looked like modeling clay
on the table before them. Damian had picked up one of the blocks
and was studying it in his hand.

“Let’s see.” Kane took a lump of the material
from the table, rolled it into a ball in his hands and threw it
against the wall, where it stuck.

Damian nodded. “Guess not.”

“No,” Kane was smiling to himself, amused. “I
guess not.”

Boone paced the rooms of the flat in
Amsterdam, thoroughly tweaked. While most of the others had slept
on the flight over, Boone had openly hit the meth, not bothering to
hide it. And he’d continued to do so for the last day they’d been
here. The seven of them holed up in this apartment, the idea to
prep their equipment, get over the six-hour time difference, and
generally prepare for the coming mayhem.

Boone’s mouth was dry, his skin flush and he
was restless as hell. He passed the door that led to where the
three vampires rested, the door locked and barred from the inside,
the vampires smart enough not to trust the men they were teamed
with.

How they’d found an apartment with so few
windows Boone had no idea. He figured it for a vampire safe house,
a place only Rainford and his allies would be aware of. The windows
were either bricked up or blacked out from within. Boone wondered
what they’d look like from outside.

He passed through the kitchen, not at all
interested in whatever there might be to eat, wondering fleetingly
where and when the vampires would feed, how often they had to have
their fix. He’d been pacing the apartment for the last few hours,
restless, popping into the kitchen to snort more meth. Damian kept
him supplied.

When he came back into the room, Big Duke
looked back quickly to his task, unpacking crates, propping
submachine guns up against one of the walls. Boone couldn’t read
minds like Big Duke, but he knew the man would have been talking
shit about him to the others while he was out of the room.

“Composition 4’s very stable,” Kane was
telling Damian as he shaped charges. “We used to burn it in
Vietnam, cook our food.”

“It wouldn’t explode?”

“Not without a blasting cap.”

“What are you?” Boone asked the scarred man,
brushing his forearm across his runny nose. “Some kind of
explosives expert?”

Kane showed his teeth, looking like the
intimidating older uncle everyone in the family knew not to fuck
with. “Expert’s too strong a word.”

The ball of plastic explosive that had stuck
to the wall dislodged,
thunking
on the floor. Something on
Boone’s head felt like it popped.

“You were in ‘Nam?” Boone wanted to be
outside and walking around, but Colson had told them to stay put in
the apartment. “You have a necklace of human ears or
somethin’?”

“It served us well in Laos,” Kane ignored the
ear comment, stacking one block of C4 on top of another. “It’ll
serve our purposes here just as well.”

“You can bring the castle down around all
them all I care.” Big Duke had the muzzle of his Benelli shotgun
pointing towards the floor. “But I’m not going to hurt the
children.”

“The fuck not?” Something in Boone’s face
twitched again as he turned from the window. “They’re
bloodsuckers.”

“They’re innocent.” Big Duke fished a steel
box of shotgun shells out of their equipment stacked against the
wall, taking it to another folding table with the shotgun. “They’re
children.”

“They’re abominations, son.” Kane had a way
of referring to anyone younger him—which meant all the other humans
on this job—as
son
. He raised an eye from the task before
him to look at Big Duke. “They’re damned.”

“They’re still kids.”

“
Thou
shalt
not
suffer
a
witch
to
live
.”

“That the Bible?” Boone asked.

“Yes it is.”

“Amen.”

Boone stood over Big Duke, studying the man’s
belt buckle.

“What are you looking at?” Big Duke never
took his eyes off his task, thumbing shells into the shotgun’s
tubular magazine.

Wasn’t
his
name
Marion
?

“You’re tweaked.”

Marion
?

“You should lay off that stuff.”

Marion
?

“Everywhere he went,” the unsmoked spliff in
the side of Big Duke’s mouth bobbed up and down as he spoke, “he
took his Airedale Terrier,” up and down the way some men walked
around with a cigar in their mouths, never bothering to light it,
“Terrier’s name was Duke.”

Didn’t
he
wear
a
hairpiece
?

“Firemen used to see him going to school with
the dog,” Big Duke concentrated his gaze on each shell he fed into
the semi-automatic shotgun. Kane and Damian looked at him briefly,
wondering what the man in the cowboy hat was talking about, what
had brought it on. “Fireman called him, said
hey
little
duke
. Name kind of stuck.”

Marion’s
a
girl’s
name
,
though
,
ain’t
it
?

“He didn’t like being called Marion.”

You
ask
me
,
Marion’s
a
fag
name
.

“Keep it up.”

Kane looked up from his plastic explosive to
Damian, who was watching Boone standing there as Big Duke finished
loading his shotgun.

“It doesn’t bother either of you two guys—”
Big Duke tapped a shotgun shell on the table top, addressing Damian
and Jonah, not even looking at Boone “—that this guy here is
walking around strung out? We’re supposed to depend on
this
guy
for what’s coming up?”

“Boone will have his head on straight when we
go in,” Kane remarked. “Won’t you, son?”

“Oh yeah.”

Big Duke looked back down to the task at
hand, not pleased.

“
If
we
walk
in
the
light
,
as
he
is
in
the
light
,” Kane quoted scripture again, “
we
have
fellowship
with
one
another
,
and
the
blood
of
Christ
purifies
us
all
.”

“He was married three times, right?” Damian
asked of John Wayne, Damian sitting back in his chair, big arms
folded over his chest. “How many was it,” the cleaver on the table
in front of him, freshly sharpened, “Seven kids?”

Seven
kids
by
different
women
, Boone tried to burn holes through
Big Duke with his eyes, Big Duke looking down, hand on his fancy
Italian shotgun.
No
wonder
niggers
like
him
.

“What’d I—” Big Duke’s lower lip was
quivering as he looked up at the younger, larger man standing
there. “What’d I just say to you?”

“What gives with this guy?” Boone looked from
Big Duke to Kane. “You see he’s provoking me, right?”

“
I’m
provoking
you
!” Big Duke
drew back the bolt on the shotgun, chambering a round.

“Let’s take it easy here, gentleman.”

Red
River
was
the
fag
cowboy
film
,
wasn’
it
? Boone
thinking,
Rock
Hudson
was
one
of
his
best
friends
?
And
he
got
along
real
good
with
that
other
queer
,
Monty
Cliff
too
,
no
?

“Keep pushing me,” Big Duke got up from the
table, stepping around it, leveling the 12-gauge at his waist, the
barrel centered on Boone, “You son of a bitch.”

“Duke.” Kane warned. “Duke, he’s going to
kill you.”

Damian sat back in his chair, arms folded
over his chest.

“Whoa! Hold on there a second pal,” Boone
held his hands out, palms flat towards Big Duke.
Oh
that
is
sweet
. “No need to get all up in my
grill. Look—nice belt buckle, okay?”
That
just
makes
it
easier
. “You’re real proud of that
shit, ain’t you?”

“Makes
what
easier you punk—”

Boone’s hands moved faster than any of the
men in the room could see. He flipped the barrel of Big Duke’s
shotgun back around at the cowboy’s midsection and the Benelli
discharged, the blast deafening in the confines of the room. Big
Duke collapsed, his Red River belt buckle and most of his
midsection obliterated.

Kane rose from behind the table of
plastique.

“So much for fellowship.” Damian put the legs
of his chair back on the floor.

Big Duke lay rasping under his cowboy
hat.

“Dumb nigger.” Boone tossed the shotgun aside
and reached down, taking the spliff that hung limply from the
corner of Big Duke’s mouth. “
Dumb
nigger
would have
got us all killed.” He wiped the spliff on his pants leg before
putting it in his own mouth. He took the cowboy hat from the downed
man’s head, Big Duke’s eyes trying to follow what he was doing,
losing focus, Big Duke lying there in his own blood and
innards.