The Book With No Name (45 page)

Then a voice from just outside the bar yelled out something that would ensure the mayhem started sooner rather than later.

‘HEY, EVERYBODY! WATCH! THE ECLIPSE. IT’S STARTING!’

Whoever had shouted was right. In order to enjoy the full experience of the eclipse Sanchez had not turned on any of the lights in the bar, and it was now becoming noticeably darker. If the stone was to change hands before complete darkness
fell, then someone was going to have to act fast. Yet still no one moved at the table. In fact, even Sanchez had frozen to the spot as the darkness began to descend over his bar. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mukka putting a drink down on the counter for someone. Then, as the eclipse began to take full effect and Santa Mondega was plunged into night, Sanchez heard Mukka’s customer utter the immortal line, ‘Fill the glass.’

It was a glass of bourbon. This had not registered with Sanchez at first. He had had too many other things on his mind. But as soon as he heard
that
voice utter those three words it had registered like an earthquake beneath his feet. He knew that voice, all right. He had been so engrossed in the standoff at El Santino’s table that he hadn’t paid any attention to the hooded figure to whom Mukka had served a glass of bourbon. If things had seemed bad before, surely now they could only get worse. The Bourbon Kid was in the bar.
And he had been served.

The Tapioca’s descent into total darkness was the spark that lit the fuse. The light leached from the room, to be replaced with a sense of impending catastrophe. Seated or standing, armed or weaponless, the people in the bar waited silently for their eyes to adjust to the darkness, knowing that time had run out.

Sanchez couldn’t tell who fired first, but a single shot did indeed break the silence. It was followed by a half-second pause and then all hell broke loose. The sound of gunfire was deafening. The shots came from all angles, and bullets flew in all directions. Sanchez cowered under his bar as he always did at times like this. In the darkness, all he could hear were shots, screams, curses, and the occasional sound of a body slumping to the floor, one of which was undoubtedly that of Mukka. He felt it close by, and he could tell that the cook was dead. There was no scream from his employee, no yell for help, just that slumping sound. Bullet to the head or heart, probably. Poor bastard.

The eclipse lasted for what seemed like well over two minutes, the gunfire almost as long. Sanchez spent the entire time cowering on the floor behind the bar with his hands over his ears, in the vain hope of shutting out the deafening noise of guns firing and glass breaking, and people screaming and swearing. And dying.

As the gunfire became less frequent and the eclipse gradually came to an end, light began to trickle back into the Tapioca. There were still people moving about in the barroom, but to Sanchez it sounded as though they were on their last
legs. There was the occasional groan or cough, intermixed with the sound of tables collapsing, glasses breaking and liquids dripping on to the floor.

Finally, after about twenty seconds without gunfire and when he deemed it safe enough, Sanchez managed to bring himself into a crouching position. He checked himself for bullet wounds, and when satisfied that he was still intact pulled himself up so that he could peer over the bar. There was a hell of a lot of gunsmoke. A hell of a lot, and this made it a little difficult to see anything much. It also made his eyes sting, so that they began to fill with tears, as if he was on the point of crying.

As the smoke began to clear a little in the draught from the open street doors, Sanchez was taken back to the day five years ago when the Bourbon Kid had blown away his entire client base. The Tapioca looked exactly the same now as it had then.

The first body he recognized was that of Carlito. His shirt was thickly matted with blood and there were thin tendrils of smoke drifting from his wounds. Not far from him, in death as in life, lay his partner in crime, Miguel. At least, it had to be Miguel, if only because he was wearing a Lone Ranger outfit like Carlito’s. Without that it would have been impossible to tell that it was him. Half of his head was missing, and he seemed to have been shot at least ten times in each arm and each leg.

Sanchez looked across to the next lifeless form. It belonged to one of the monks, although it was hard to tell which one. He was lying face down on the barroom floor, and since Kyle and Peto looked similar at the best of times there was no way of telling which one of them this was. Either way, this monk had taken a bullet to the back of the head and had probably been one of the first killed. He must have hit the ground early because the fatal head wound appeared to be the only injury he had sustained. The yellow cobra on the back of his jacket provided a splash of bright colour amidst the blood.

Sanchez continued to scan the shambles of bodies lying
all around, ready to duck down again at the slightest sign of danger. What he was most anxious to find out was whether or not Jessica had survived, and – although it seemed a slightly ridiculous, and indeed selfish, notion – he also wanted to know what had become of Jefe. If he was dead and Jessica was alive then perhaps Sanchez could offer her some comfort.

As it happened, one of his prayers had been answered. Spreadeagled on top of a table in the centre of the room, caked from head to food in his own blood and guts, lay Jefe. It was difficult to decide whether he was better looking now that his Freddy Krueger mask had come off. He looked much the same without it as he had only minutes earlier when he’d been wearing it, so badly had his face had been messed up.

And still, what of Jessica? There was no sign of her. Sanchez cared for very few of the people in the bar, but he was more than a little anxious to know what had befallen the beautiful woman whom he had rescued five years ago.

The next body he recognized was one he had thought he would never see: El Santino, the man people said could never die. The Gene Simmons lookalike had been – well – slaughtered, and pretty badly, too. His head and face were all over the floor, as if someone had steamrollered over him. It seemed he’d also lost an arm and a leg. Someone had really worked him over.

Sanchez’s face fell when he eventually set eyes on Jessica’s blood-spattered body. He couldn’t understand how he had failed to noticed it before. She was actually lying underneath the dead monk whom he had seen face down just moments earlier. She was still alive, just, but she was struggling for breath. Her battle for air wasn’t helped by the dead weight of the monk’s body slumped across her chest. As she lifted the corpse up slightly, Sanchez recognized it as Kyle’s. There was no sign of the other monk anywhere.
And where was the Bourbon Kid?
It was as if he had asked this question out loud, for no sooner had he thought it than he received an answer.

‘
I’m still here.
Don’t even think about goin’ to help Catwoman,’ said a voice from deep within the shadows to his left.

Out of the smoke and darkness stepped the Bourbon Kid. He held a smoking pistol in each hand, and was slowly stepping over bodies on his way towards Jessica, who was now desperately trying to push Kyle’s body off her so that she could get up before the next bullets came flying at her head.

Sanchez wished he was a braver man, but he knew that rushing to her aid would mean only certain death for him. Besides, he also knew that she could take a bullet. He’d seen the Bourbon Kid try to kill her five years ago. She had survived then, and if she survived this time, he promised himself he would once again find a safe place and take care of her.

The Kid was only four or five yards from her when she finally managed to drag herself out from under Kyle’s corpse. She was about to struggle to her feet when her nemesis raised his right arm, took aim with the gun in that hand, and fired two more rounds into her chest. She fell back against an overturned wooden table and coughed up a mouthful of blood. Her chest began to heave, and she looked as though she was about to choke to death on the blood filling her mouth. Sanchez flinched away from the grisly sight. No two ways about it, this girl’s time was nearing an end.

‘You bastard.
You fucking bastard!
’ she screamed at the Kid, dribbling more blood from her mouth as she did so.

‘I
am
a bastard. You got that right. I’m a bastard sonofabitch and I’ve come here to kill you. It’s time to finish off the job I started five years ago. Now give me my blue stone, you fuckin’ whore.’

‘Fuck you. I don’t have it,’ she said, choking. ‘One of these dead guys must have it.’

Jessica desperately needed to buy some time, and it must have dawned on her that taking a hostile tone with the Bourbon Kid wasn’t going to help her. She suddenly changed her tack. ‘Why don’t we look for it together?’ she offered, in a more conciliatory voice.

Sanchez could see that the Kid was unimpressed. He fired twice more, this time with the gun in his left hand. One bullet hit her left knee, the other her right, spattering yet more blood
over her black catsuit. Her tolerance for pain was being tested to its absolute limit. Sanchez flinched again, knowing how much agony she was in. If she could just survive a little longer, maybe the Kid would run out of bullets and the police would arrive.

‘We ain’t doin’ nothin’ together,’ the dark figure replied hoarsely. He took a long stride over Carlito’s body, moving ever closer to her. ‘None of these dead guys has the stone, and you know it. NOW WHERE IS IT?’

‘I told you, I don’t know. I swear.’

‘The next round goes in your face. Where is it?’

‘I’m telling you. One of those guys’ – she pointed at the nearest bodies – ‘has it. I think maybe Jefe had it last.’

The Kid paused and looked down at the bodies Jessica was indicating. There was no way of telling if he even knew who Jefe was. One thing was clear, however: the Eye of the Moon was nowhere to be seen.

‘Well, he obviously hasn’t got it now, has he?’ growled the Kid turning his stare back on Jessica. ‘If he had, he wouldn’t be dead. The stone would have kept him alive. Now, it’s a safe bet to say none of the dead guys have got it. The only people alive in this place are you, me, and the bartender. I ain’t got it, and the bartender … well, he don’t have the guts to touch it, so that means it’s you.’

A loud crash caused both Jessica and the Kid to whip their heads round towards the far end of the bar, near the back door. A large barrel had been pushed over and out from behind it stepped Peto in his Cobra Kai karate outfit, now stained with blood. He was clasping the Eye of the Moon in his left hand. Rather interestingly, he held a sawn-off shotgun in the other.

‘There’s one other person who isn’t dead,’ he said, stepping towards the two of them. Sanchez was astonished by the change in his voice. It was now pure gravel.

The surviving monk was limping from a bullet graze on the outside of his left calf. There was also a small amount of blood trickling from his mouth, although it was hard to tell
why this was.

‘You didn’t reckon with the resilience of the Hubal monks, did you?’ he croaked. ‘Now you drop those fucking guns, mister, and step away from that nice lady, or I’ll fill you so full of lead you’ll be shitting it for the rest of your pitifully short life.’

The Bourbon Kid looked slightly bemused. ‘You can kiss my ass,’ he said at last.

In his former monkish existence, Peto would have been taken aback by such a remark. But after all that he had been through in the short time he had spent in Santa Mondega, foul-mouthed comments like the Kid’s simply went straight by him.

‘You’ve got three seconds to drop those two guns or I blow you away,’ he said. There was real conviction in his voice. Sanchez actually believed Peto would blow the Bourbon Kid away in three seconds. In fact, he was praying for it.

‘Three …’ Peto snarled.

‘Two,’ the Bourbon Kid snapped back, without a hint of fear.

Sanchez wanted to close his eyes, but there wasn’t time. If the monk didn’t finish counting down it looked like the Kid was going to. As it happened, Peto, unfazed by the Kid’s intimidation, finished the countdown himself.