The Devil's Graveyard (50 page)

Up to this point, his day had been one of utter frustration. He’d wasted a lot of time trying to retrieve his twenty thousand dollars from Sanchez, and had blown his opportunity to complete the hit for which Julius had offered to pay him. Here was a chance to carry out the task he had been given, and maybe pick up a cash reward.

It was worth using one bullet on this bitch, wasn’t it?

He didn’t need to think twice. As the girl turned and began running down the corridor towards him, he took aim and fired a bullet straight into her chest.

The look on her face was priceless.
Total surprise.

Angus loved to kill. And when the victim was caught completely by surprise, and looked him in the eye after taking a bullet – well, a hit didn’t come much sweeter than that.

The man with Judy Garland had taken on three zombies in a fistfight and was making a pretty damn good job of it. Hearing the gunshot he visibly stiffened at the sound. He managed to throw two of the zombies simultaneously to the floor as another one circled, waiting for its chance to attack, biding its time. The hooded man turned and saw Judy Garland slump to the floor. Her legs had buckled at the knees and folded underneath her. She collapsed, landing on her side before falling over on to her back, staring up at the ceiling. Angus could see the face within the man’s dark hood. He looked stunned. It was plain that this woman meant something to him, because he seemed momentarily to forget about the third zombie behind him as he watched her legs crumple beneath her. For a split second he looked up at Angus and the two of them exchanged a look. Angus smiled. This guy obviously considered himself a major-league hardass. But he had zombies swarming all round him. As the third zombie pounced on the man from behind, Angus winked at him.

Job done.

Thirty seconds later Angus made it out of the hotel through a fire exit that led to the parking out back. The ground was trembling violently beneath his feet by this time and he was relieved to be out in the open. The building was falling to pieces.

It wouldn’t be long before the hotel and its parking lot crumbled into a huge chasm in the ground. Angus wasn’t quite sure what had caused the earthquake, and he didn’t have time to stop and work it out. He scoured the parking lot for any sign of his camper van, in the hope that the zombies had left the keys (and his Tom Jones CD) inside it. It was nowhere to be seen, and with sections of the lot beginning to crack open and sink into the pits of Hell below, he decided it would be safer just to head for the best car in the lot, which happened to be a black Pontiac Firebird. He fired a bullet through the driver’s-side window and unlocked the car from the inside. It took him thirty seconds to hot-wire it, the big V8 engine bursting into life with a deep-throated roar.

A minute later, Angus was back on the highway and heading out of the Devil’s Graveyard.

The gunshot drowned out the burping frogs, the creaking of the walls, and the horrible sounds of the undead and their victims. And it could mean only one thing. Out of the corner of his eye, the Kid saw Emily stop dead in her tracks. But before he could turn around, he had two zombies to deal with. With one swing of his right arm he caught the nearest one across the head, the back of his fist slamming hard into its skull. The impact sent the zombie crashing into its comrade. They both fell down and rolled, entangling themselves in each other, across the corridor and towards the widening crack in the centre of the floor. On the far side of the crack, up against the wall, the third zombie was still standing back, ready to pounce. The Kid ignored it and turned back to see where the shot had come from.

Emily lay crumpled on the floor. The bullet had hit her in the chest and her legs had buckled under her. She had collapsed into a heap on the floor with blood oozing out of a hole in her chest, staining her blue dress and turning it a horrible colour that looked black from a distance. She stared up at the Kid and he saw in her eyes the fear of death. A small amount of crimson liquid began to trickle from the right corner of her mouth as her lungs filled with blood. But who had fired the bullet?

The Kid looked down the corridor to where it joined another. Standing at the intersection with a gun in his hand was a giant of a man. He had long red hair tied back into a ponytail and a matching goatee. He was dressed much as the Kid himself often was, in dark clothes and a long trench coat, no doubt designed for concealing weapons. Their eyes met briefly, and then the gunman winked at him and disappeared out of sight along the main corridor.

Before the Kid could go to the stricken girl, he felt the third zombie pounce on his back, its bony grey arms clinging tightly round his neck. This creature was thin and wiry and appeared to be wearing little more than a torn pair of grey shorts. The Kid stepped back hard towards the wall behind him, smashing the spine of the creature up against it before it could take a bite out of his neck. Then he spun round and smashed his right fist into its face. The sound of bone cracking followed and its face caved in like putty. Its arms fell helplessly to its side. It was incapable of defending itself, so the Kid hurled it across the crumbling corridor at the other two members of the undead. They were in the process of climbing back to their feet. When the third zombie hit them, they all ended up in a heap on the floor. There were easier victims to prey on than the Kid and the zombies, even with their limited intellect, were quick enough to work that out. He didn’t bother to watch them retreat down the corridor towards the auditorium.

Emily was on her back on the floor, struggling for breath, choking. He ran to her. Before he could get to her, another huge tremor from below sent him crashing into the wall. He bounced hard off it and landed on his front at Emily’s side. She was staring wide-eyed at the ceiling above, gasping. Getting to his knees, he took hold of her right hand with his. She didn’t seem to have much strength left as her life ebbed away. The feel of his hand seemed to wake her from the almost hypnotic trance that had left her staring at the ceiling. She blinked, then stared into the Kid’s eyes. Her own eyes were beginning to fill with tears and she choked out a few barely audible words that caused more blood to seep from her mouth.

‘I want to go home.’

The Bourbon Kid covered his mouth with his free hand as he felt a lump settle in his throat. She reminded him so much of Beth, the girl he’d loved and lost ten years earlier. The similarities were uncanny. The same clothes, the same kind, generous nature and the sweet innocent face. He watched on as she spluttered out five more words.

‘I don’t want to die.’

‘I know.’ Despite the constriction in his throat, his voice had lost its gravelly edge.

Her pigtails had come loose and her hair was a straggly mess. The Kid wiped some stray strands out of her eyes and swept them back across her forehead. Although she was cold to the Kid’s touch she was sweating profusely and her breathing was noisy and laboured. Her mouth had filled with blood and she could neither spit it out nor swallow it.

Tears streamed down her cheeks. ‘Don’t leave me here,’ she choked. ‘I don’t want to die on my own.’

‘It’s okay. I’m stayin’.’

It didn’t seem an appropriate moment to point out that they were minutes away from sinking into the depths of Hell, along with the hotel and everything and everyone in it. For Emily’s sake he hoped she’d be dead and her soul gone elsewhere long before that happened. Her hand was rapidly growing colder and her grip on his was weakening. The only thing he could think to do was to squeeze her hand tighter, as if it might help her ignore the pain she was in. And let her know that he was there. He wasn’t leaving.

The plaster on the ceiling above them began to crack and crumble as the building shook. The Kid managed to use his free hand to deflect a few chunks of debris away to prevent them from landing on Emily. The dark stain from the bullet wound in her chest fanned out across most of the upper half of her blue dress, while the blood trickling from her mouth tainted the white sleeves.

As the huge crack that bisected the floor in the corridor began to widen further, Emily’s body nearly slipped over the edge and into the smoking pit of Hell below. He pulled her clear of it, to be certain she didn’t slide in before she died.

A few seconds later her eyes rolled up into her head and her hand fell totally limp in his. Her breathing ceased, and her body slumped lifeless on the ruined floor.

The Hotel Pasadena crumbled at an alarming rate. On the ground level, huge cracks appeared in the ceilings, floors and walls. Sanchez knew that at any second the ceiling might collapse on him, or a huge crack in the floor might swallow him up and send him plummeting into the pits of Hell. As he raced across the lobby towards the front entrance, he prayed that he would make it out in one piece. The desert had never looked so inviting.

He had never been much of a runner, preferring to drive whenever the need arose to travel more than fifty yards. But with his life on the line, he was suddenly a match for a greyhound. Jacko had proved invaluable in leading the way out and keeping the zombies at bay, but now, with the night sky outside visible just a few yards away, Sanchez decided to light the afterburners.

A huge crack in the marble floor of the reception was widening at a frighteningly rapid rate. It ran from the corridor right through the middle of the reception area to the front entrance. As Sanchez made his move to get around Jacko, a particularly violent eruption shook the whole building and the crack in the floor suddenly doubled in width. It was now a good two yards across. The crimson welcome mat by the remains of the entrance doors suddenly disappeared into the chasm. The hotel was, quite literally, splitting in half. In his haste to avoid the smoking fissure and reach the exit, Sanchez accidentally knocked into Jacko as he passed him. The Blues Man let out a surprised yelp and Sanchez heard him stumble and fall.

There was no time to look back and see if he was okay. Sanchez felt a little bad, but getting himself out of there was his top priority, so once he was past the man who claimed to be Robert Johnson, he just kept on running as fast as his short, pudgy legs would carry him.

He could hear Elvis screaming at him to run faster, and Janis shouting something that sounded like ‘fat bastard’. With all that was happening he hardly needed the extra encouragement. He charged through the remains of the glass doors at the front of the hotel and down the concrete steps on to the long driveway out front. Then he kept on running, only glancing back once to see that much of the giant hotel had already sunk into the huge crater that had suddenly appeared in the once beautifully maintained grounds.

Eventually, with not a breath left in him, Sanchez came to a ragged stop at the end of the hotel driveway, underneath the arched welcome sign that spanned the entrance. To right and left, the highway was dark and deserted, but it felt relatively safe. The tremors from behind weren’t having any effect this far from the hotel. Doubling over with his hands on his thighs to catch his breath he looked up and was pleased to see that Elvis and Janis had also made it out safely. They both looked relieved, though there was a distinct probability that Janis would begin cussing once she got her breath back. But of Jacko, Emily or Freddie there was no sign.