The Book of Death (26 page)

The name of the bar shone
brightly in red neon letters on a large signpost above the entrance out front.

PURGATORY

He walked up a dirt and gravel
covered pathway towards a pair of traditional old Wild West swinging wooden
saloon doors at the entrance. A gentle murmuring noise from within the bar grew
louder with every step he took. The murmur soon became a loud buzz of voices.
People were inside, drinking and conversing. He felt a sense of trepidation as
he approached. He had no idea who or what he would find in this place, but it
sounded busy and it looked like the kind of place where the Bourbon Kid would
fit in. Unfortunately, right now he still felt like JD. Maybe that would change
once he was inside? One thing he sensed was a distinct possibility that some
killing would be called for. The time to test out those good ol’ murderous
skills might be near.

He reached the saloon doors and
paused for a moment. He peered over them and saw a large propeller fan hanging
from the ceiling above the bar. Several feet beneath it he could see the heads
of a crowd of drinkers, mostly men, but of all ages, shapes and sizes. He
pressed both of his hands up against the doors and pushed them open. Then he
stepped into the bar.

The second he set foot in the place,
it turned deathly quiet. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to
stare at the newcomer holding the doors of their bar open. They stood there
like statues, no one moving an inch. JD took another step forward and let his
hands back down to his sides. The saloon doors swung back shut behind him and
flapped back and forth on their springs until they came to a stop. Still no one
moved.

Directly in front of him there
was a narrow opening through the crowd of drinkers. It led up to the bar where
a lone barman was waiting for his newest customer to walk up and order a drink.
JD walked slowly through the crowd, noting the angry looks from the men
standing on both sides of him. Everyone’s gaze followed him as he approached
the bar. He glanced at some of the faces either side of him as he walked. These
were faces he recognised.

Faces of people he’d killed.

There were many other faces he
didn’t recognise, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he hadn’t killed them
too. The Bourbon Kid had slaughtered a lot of people, and not all of them had
been significant enough to remember.

He could feel the eyes of all
the other drinkers burning into the back of his head as he reached the bar. The
bartender, a rather shifty-looking guy with straggly black hair hanging over
his face, had been wiping the bartop with a towel. At the sight of JD he tossed
the rag onto a shelf behind him. This bartender was another face he recognised.
And it wasn’t one that was pleased to see him. It was Berkley the bartender
from the Nightjar in Santa Mondega. The Bourbon Kid had shot him in the face
shortly after downing a glass of his finest bourbon one night. He remembered
the incident with Berkley well because upon arriving in the Nightjar he had
seen the dead body of his old arm wrestling adversary Rodeo Rex. Rex had been
curiously positioned on top of a large rotating metal propeller fan that hung
from the ceiling. He had received a serious pasting at the hands of Jessica, or
Archibald Somers, or maybe even both. Who knew? Or cared?

Berkley placed a whisky glass
down on the bar in front of JD and produced a bottle of bourbon from under the
bar. Considering that the last time they had met, JD had blown a huge hole
through the middle of Berkley’s head, it seemed a fairly forgiving gesture. The
head wound had vanished. The bartender looked exactly as JD remembered him. His
hair was still long, dark and unwashed and he had maintained his overall tramp
in a waiter’s outfit look down to a tee. His white shirt looked unwashed and
most of it was conveniently concealed beneath a black waistcoat.

‘Pour me a shot,’ said JD
leaning against the bar and taking a look back at all the people behind him.
They were still all watching his every move. Hundreds of them. Not one of them
seemed remotely pleased to see him. Hardly surprising really.

Berkley uncorked the bottle of
bourbon and poured it into the whisky glass. He filled the bottom inch of the
four-inch high glass and then stopped pouring. JD glanced down at the drink as
the bartender began to replace the cork in the bottle.

‘I’m gonna want a bigger shot
than that,’ he remarked.

Berkley stopped corking the
bottle. ‘How much more?’ he asked.

‘You really need to ask?’

‘No.’

Berkley filled the glass to the
top and stepped back away from the bartop. JD looked down at the drink. This
was a serious moment. If he took a sip of that bourbon his deal with the Devil
was done. There would be no turning back. He would be back to the man he once
was.
A man with no soul
. A man capable of killing everyone in this
shitty bar. A man who had probably killed them all once before. And might be
expected to do it again if he was going to get out of there alive.

He picked up the glass and
inspected the contents. There was a bead of sweat sliding down the outside of
the glass.
Actual sweat
. As he was watching it he heard a voice. A
fairly gravelly one, as these things go, and it said: ‘What are you doing in
our bar, stranger? What’s your business?’

JD put the glass back down on
the bar. He recognised the voice. It was Ringo, a fat fuck he’d killed some
years earlier in the Tapioca. Through a crowd of people on his left, Ringo
appeared, barging aside anyone in his way. He looked exactly as he had done all
those years before. He was a heavy set, greasy, unshaven slimeball wearing
dirty brown trousers and a sweat stained baggy grey shirt. He came to a stop at
the bar by JD’s left shoulder and glared at him.

JD sighed. ‘I’m not looking for
any trouble.’

Ringo grinned menacingly and
growled, ‘Well I
am
trouble, and it looks like you found me.’

The bartender stepped back even
further away from the bartop, corking up the bottle as he did so. JD shook his
head and then turned to face Ringo, looking him dead in the eye.

‘You don’t fuckin’ learn, do
ya?’

Ringo placed a hand on JD’s shoulder
and squeezed hard. With his other hand he pulled out a pistol from a concealed
holster at his side. He pointed it at JD’s face. ‘We been hearing rumours that
the Bourbon Kid is headed this way. You’re drinking bourbon, ain’t you? Are you
the Bourbon Kid?’

JD took a deep breath. ‘Y’know
why he’s called the Bourbon Kid, don’t you?’

A high pitched male voice from
the crowd of onlookers shouted out. ‘I know. They say that when the Kid drinks
bourbon, he turns into a fuckin’ giant, a psycho, and he goes nuts and kills
everyone in sight. They say he’s invincible and can only be killed by the Devil
himself.’

‘That’s right,’ said JD. ‘The
Bourbon Kid kills everyone. All it takes is just one sip and then he goes nuts
and kills everyone in the bar. And I should know, I seen it happen. Quite a few
times.’

Ringo cocked his pistol and
snarled at JD. ‘Let’s put it to the test. Drink your bourbon.’

JD looked at the glass of
bourbon and thought about picking it up. It looked like pretty good stuff. He
glanced back over at Berkley. ‘Bartender, is this real bourbon?’ he asked.

Berkley looked confused. ‘Sure
it is. Why wouldn’t it be?’

‘No reason. Just checking.’

JD picked up the glass and
raised it to his lips. The whole bar watched, barely able to stand the tension
of waiting for him to drink the contents. As if to torment them he didn’t
actually throw the contents down his throat straight away. He paused for a
moment, deep in thought. Did he really want to go down this road again? He
thought about making an apology for what he was about to do. The thought passed
all too quickly and he smiled to himself. Then, like a man who hadn’t had a
drink for a week, he downed the entire contents of the glass in one mouthful,
before slamming the glass back down on the bar.

And it was definitely real
bourbon.

Thirty-One

Outrunning a mob of angry girl
scouts wasn’t as easy as it sounded. With the rather hefty Book of Death tucked
under one arm, Sanchez was carrying even more weight than usual. And having
just been in a fight with a vampire dressed as Santa Claus he was already
feeling pretty tired. Adrenaline was the only thing keeping him going. Panting
heavily as he rushed along the icy sidewalk, he took a look back over his
shoulder to see if the Sunflower Girls were as close as their screams
suggested. It came as no surprise to him to see that they were closing in on
him. One of them (a dark haired girl who looked like she’d be a future gold
medallist in the shot put) was out front and she was gaining fast. In fact she
was close enough that Sanchez was able to get a look at the early stages of a
moustache she appeared to be cultivating above her top lip.

He needed to think of a plan
quickly. How the hell was he going to ditch this angry mob? He sure as hell
wasn’t going to outrun them. What he needed was an escape route. He hoped to
spot a cab, preferably a passing one that he could flag down and jump into
before the girls caught up with him. The streets of Santa Mondega were usually
rife with taxicabs, so taking his gaze off the moustached girl at the front of
the pack he began scouring the roads for one as he ran. There was no traffic
about at all. Not one single car. The snow had kept virtually everyone indoors.

As he raced perilously along the
icy street he made a snap decision. There was a left turn up ahead that led
into a busier part of town. Unable to slow himself down as he approached the
corner, he attempted to turn but instead slipped on a patch of black ice. His
feet took off, leaving the ground completely. As his head fell backwards and
his feet carried on upwards he instinctively dropped his arms to try and soften
the fall by landing on his hands. The Book of Death came loose from his grip
and bounced onto the icy ground at the same time as his ass landed on a
particularly cold slab of ice. And this ice was slippery. Before he knew what
was happening he was sliding along the sidewalk in some kind of high-speed race
with The Book of Death. His fat ass trailed just a few feet behind it. The only
good thing about his predicament was that he was now moving slightly faster
than when he had been running. His major problem was that he had no control
over what direction he slid in. He skidded ass first off the end of the kerb
and out into the middle of the road. And he finally heard the sound of a car
approaching.

The ice on the road wasn’t as
bad as it had been on the sidewalk, so his momentum slowed significantly. He
eventually came to a stop slap bang in the middle of the road and watched in
horror as The Book of Death bounced up into the air and into the path of the
oncoming vehicle. There was an almighty bang as the fender of the car smashed
into the book, sending it flying back up in the air and down the road. Sanchez
looked on in dismay as the pages of the book blew open and it landed face down
in a puddle of snow and ice in the road. The driver of the car slammed on the
brakes and it came to a screeching stop in the middle of the street.

Sanchez hauled himself up into a
seated position in the road. Tempting though it was to lie there and collect
his thoughts as he processed just how badly bruised his ass would be, he knew
that the first of the angry girls would soon be upon him (if of course she was
allowed to cross the road without an adult). As he attempted to climb to his
feet, only too aware that the back of his pants was soaking wet, he heard a car
door open. A voice called out to him.

‘Sanchez, quick, get in!’ It was
Flake. The car that had hit the book was her Volkswagen Beetle. It was now in
front of him with the passenger side door open and Flake beckoning him to climb
in. He didn’t need a second invitation. He rushed over and jumped in, pulling
the door shut behind him just as the biggest Sunflower Girl slammed into it. He
pushed the lock down on the door and poked his tongue out at the ugly
schoolgirl as Flake put her foot down on the accelerator and pulled away.

‘Hold on,’ yelled Sanchez. ‘Pull
over by that book.’

Flake drove the car down the
road, swerving on the ice as she went, to where the book was lying face down in
the pool of snow. Sanchez unlocked the door again and opened it, leaning out so
he could grab the book. Flake slowed the car down and they came to a stop right
by the book. Despite appearing to have no driving skills whatsoever (in Sanchez’s
opinion) Flake had in fact hit her mark spectacularly. He reached down and
grabbed a hold of the book and hauled it up from the street by its front cover.
He plonked it on his lap and slammed the car door closed again, then he turned
to Flake.

‘Okay, floor it!’ he ordered.

Flake didn’t wait to be told
twice. She accelerated off down the middle of the road towards the city centre
leaving the chasing girl scouts way behind.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked, not
taking her eyes off the road. ‘What happened back there? Why are those girls
chasing you?’

Sanchez inspected the book in
his hands. The cover was damaged, torn and scratched in several places, but
worst of all, upon opening it he discovered that most of the pages were sopping
wet.