The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (28 page)

The light came from Madame Tussaud’s Conservatory, which was devoted to a collection of figures from the entertainment world. With the footsteps pounding fast after him now, Kimberlain had time only to drop down behind the figure of a constantly smiling, saluting doorman on the right of the raised entrance just inside the doorway. When the first of another set of Hashi passed through the doorway, Kimberlain tipped the doorman over to distract him while he whipped Guy Fawkes’s sword in a slash across the throat of the second Hashi, who staggered backward with blood jetting between the fingers he had futilely raised to stem the flow. By now the first Hashi had shoved the figure of the doorman aside and was swinging around with his pistol raised. Kimberlain held his ground and lashed out with the sword blade. The Hashi killer wailed horribly as the edge sliced across his brow, blinding and disabling him. The gun slid from his hand, and he stumbled forward directly into the path of a bullet fired by a third Hashi who had entered the Conservatory through a door on the other side of the hall.

The Ferryman dove over a white wooden railing rimming the entry pedestal as the killer’s pistol continued to spit. The head of one of the Beatles, who’d been propped up on the railing in a display, was obliterated, and Kimberlain took cover behind a white piano between two more of the famed quartet.

More bullets cascaded against the piano as a second Hashi gunman joined the first from the Conservatory’s other end. The impact rocked it slightly, and Kimberlain heard footsteps pounding between the shots as the Hashi charged forward to better their positions. Above him, one of the downed men’s pistols lay teetering on a step. He managed to grasp it as fragments of the stairs exploded around his wrist. Kimberlain fired twice and knew he at least had the gunmen pinned. But time and position remained on their side, especially since the gunfire would attract more of them to provide the reinforcements needed to finish him.

Kimberlain could see only one possible means of escape, and he seized it. He lowered himself against the piano and stretched the pistol around its side to keep the pair of Hashi in place while he thrust with all his strength against the frame, right shoulder shoving to supply momentum. Instantly the piano’s wheels began to turn, and it picked up speed quickly. Kimberlain kept firing, and by the time his clip clicked empty the piano had crashed into the white pedestals the gunmen were using for cover. The pedestals toppled, and the piano went after them, with Kimberlain heaving it upward at the last moment. The force of his lift carried the piano up enough so that its top-heavy weight smashed down on both Hashis’ faces, and only their feet were left exposed.

The Ferryman grasped one of their still-smoking pistols as he found his balance and bounded through the remains of the Conservatory up a set of steps past a grinning Telly Savalas. Near-darkness welcomed him, and he found Sylvester Stallone staring down from one side and Grace Jones from the other. The leather-clad Jones exhibit featured a heavy chain draped in front of it, and Kimberlain tore the chain free before continuing on. He had a gun now, but using it was the surest way of alerting whatever Hashi remained to his precise location. A better strategy was to keep his kills and disablings as quiet as possible while he searched for a way out.

He had lost count of how many he had felled already and how many more might remain. This was the Hashi he was facing, after all. They had been prepared for him in London, an army marshaled in expectation of his arrival. He was facing at least a portion of that army now and had to remain patient if he expected to leave the museum alive.

With the chain in one hand and the pistol in the other, he passed into another darkened exhibit hall that mainly featured music superstars. Slinking on, he had just registered the fact that the dark, bearded figure holding a machete on the pedestal diagonally across from Michael Jackson was out of place when the figure leaped at him, blade glinting in the dim light. Kimberlain got his gun up, but a sharp clang sounded as the edge of the machete grazed it, separating it from his grasp. The big man whipped the blade around again, and the Ferryman ducked so that Michael Jackson caught the brunt of the blow. As the singer keeled over, the song “Thriller” began to play.

The man was quick to launch another strike, and this time Kimberlain deflected it to the side with his chain. The Hashi quickly swept it at him in roundhouse fashion, but Kimberlain was equal to that as well, backing off with his chain spread wide between his hands. The big man came in with an overhead strike, and Kimberlain caught the blade in the center of his chain and twisted his hands to lock it tight. Forcing the blade down, he tried for the big man’s head with an elbow, but the Hashi twisted to avoid the blow and the result was a stalemate as they grappled across the floor toward a statue of David Bowie. With Michael Jackson silent, Bowie was now shrouded in theatrical smoke, as “Changes” played in the background.

The big man was fighting to work the blade free when Kimberlain noticed the duct beneath Bowie’s platform through which the fake smoke emerged at regular intervals. The blade was almost free of the chain binding it when Kimberlain realized he had to change his strategy. With one eye on the duct, he released his hold on the machete. A slight
poof
signaled that more of the smoke was about to emerge in the instant the Hashi brought his blade overhead for another strike.

The Ferryman let him bring it down, whipping the chain up against the steel at the very last instant to knock it aside. The big man regrouped quickly, but the momentum of his blow had forced his upper body and head downward so that in a perfectly timed motion Kimberlain could force the head down still further toward the duct belching smoke.

The Hashi’s huge eyes were bulging when the noxious smoke found them. He screamed horribly as his lenses seemed to catch fire. But his screams were cut short when Kimberlain worked the chain up and under his neck, jerking and pulling until the snap came and the dead Hashi sprawled on the floor.

Kimberlain headed on after retrieving his pistol. Finding an exit was still uppermost in his mind, and now he left the half-dark of this gallery in favor of a winding descent down a staircase layered in pink, the light brightening as he approached Madame Tussaud’s historically elegant Grand Hall. The light would help him find an exit, but as he emerged into the hall he saw that once again his plans would have to be rethought.

Hashi with guns drawn were coming in his direction in a silent spread from the opposite end of the Grand Hall. They must have emerged from the cavernous underlayer housing the Chamber of Horrors, those at the head just now making their way around a display of Charles and Di’s wedding. Kimberlain dropped to the floor and crawled on his elbows to an exhibit of Henry VIII and his six wives—the close proximity of the figures allowed for excellent camouflage. He crept between the figures of Jane Seymour and Catherine Parr and rose up just enough to steady his gun and eye between them.

Out of view from his position was the doorway across the Grand Hall which led down into the Chamber of Horrors. The chamber’s darkness was what he needed now most of all in order to find an exit. For the time being, though, he had the light to contend with, and creating confusion among the approaching Hashi was his best chance of countering it.

The Ferryman could see eight of the Hashi mixing among the historical figures, only their movement betraying them. They had chosen a wide, defensive spread to keep him from a rapid assault but had limited their own options in the process and left him with a vital one. One of the Hashi slid cautiously behind a pedestal displaying current leaders of European nations and moved right into Kimberlain’s line of fire. He sighted carefully and fired once, then immediately went into motion to take full advantage of the distraction and resulting confusion. The Hashi all turned first in the direction of the shot’s origin and then toward the downed gunman, who had taken the wax figure of Helmut Kohl with him to the floor, but by then Kimberlain was frozen behind the draping robes of an Arabic national leader display. In all the chaos they could not possibly pick him out before his next shot. The key was to fire at targets as far away as possible to keep them off guard.

A Hashi padded toward him. The Ferryman didn’t dare turn. He knew his strategy would have to employ a double, almost simultaneous kill now. He held the pistol at hip level, tilted up—a difficult shot. Across the hall a Hashi moved toward the kneeling figure of William the Conqueror. Kimberlain righted his pistol and fired.

The echo of the shot had barely sounded when the Ferryman turned quickly toward the Hashi who was standing with a clear view of him. The man had just realized the shot’s origin and was bringing his own gun up even as the dead Hashi across the way collapsed across William. Spinning ever so slightly, Kimberlain turned his gun on the man and fired his last bullet, in motion before the reality that he was now weaponless again had a chance to sink in. As the man fell, shots began to ring out everywhere, Hashi screaming into the silence that had prevailed just seconds ago. Kimberlain used the chaos for the cover he needed and crept behind more of the wax figures, continuing on toward the doorway that would take him into the Chamber of Horrors.

The staircase wound dark and low. At the bottom a bell chimed, stunning his ears and making him swing wildly around. But it was just a sound prop. Gunshots thundered and again he spun, this time to find a Gary Gilmore figure acting out a firing-squad sequence. He swung away from that and came face to face with an electric chair sizzling to accompanying flashing lights. He started forward when a wax newsboy’s call almost cost the figure its head.

“Extra! Extra! Read all about it.”

The Ferryman realized happily that the sounds of the Chamber of Horrors made the best camouflage of all, for it negated anything that the ears of the Hashi could tell them once they reached this level. He moved slowly on through this waxwork testament to the macabre. Beneath him the tile flooring changed to cobblestone, and a fake mist rose through a brilliant reproduction of a Victorian London street where Jack the Ripper’s next victim lay eternally in wait and a past one lay dead in an alley with a waxen hand clutching at a steel rail. The sound of a horse-drawn carriage was real enough to make him gaze over his shoulder as he passed by the front of a dimly lit pub called the Ten Bells, complete with laughter and the sound of mugs clanking together or on tables. The clippity-clop of the horse-drawn carriage sounded again but was intermixed this time with very real footsteps coming rapidly down the stairs he had just descended.

Kimberlain looked into a reproduction of a small bedroom containing a cowering child long enough to dismiss it as a hiding place, since it was too confining. Much better was a musty, dust-covered stairway featuring a pair of body snatchers sinking low to hoist up a crate containing their latest theft. He hurried up the steps and crouched down behind the display.

An instant later a flood of at least a dozen Hashi poured through the Chamber of Horrors and down the cobblestone walk, but they were distracted by the colorful sights and sounds. One yanked open the false door of the Ten Bells to find only partial figures and painted shadows within. Another ducked into the small room Kimberlain had dismissed for refuge and kicked the cowering wax child aside to search under the bed. The Hashi were obviously confused, thrown off the track of what should have been a logical and successful pursuit. They continued on, certain Kimberlain must have as well. On the chance he had not, though, guards were certain to have been left behind in case he backtracked. Stalemate again, and it would continue until ultimately their superior numbers wore him down or he made a mistake.

Kimberlain searched the walls and ceiling for a smoke detector. If he could set one off somehow, help would be here in minutes. But no smoke detector was in sight, which left him with …

Yes, he reckoned, just one bit of strategy left to him. They had him boxed in but would never expect him to turn the tables by following the ones who had preceded him through the rest of the Chamber of Horrors. Soundlessly the Ferryman glided back down the steps, leaving the body snatchers to themselves, and started on through the final stretch of corridor with his back pressed as close to the wall as he could manage.

The wall ended in a death’s row prison display, and he went through it quickly, with Charles Manson the last on his route before he came to another set of stairs leading back up to the ground floor. Near the stairs was a set of double black exit doors, and next to them was a red fire ax in a rack. He was thinking of using the ax against the doors to burst free when footsteps closed on him from behind. Those who’d been laying in wait had grown impatient, or perhaps had stayed the specified period of time before joining the chase. Kimberlain had to move.

Cannon fire burned his ears as he sped into an exhibit immortalizing the Battle of Trafalgar. A gun deck complete with cannons shifted back and forth in rhythm with the blasts, and soot-blackened men manned them in the darkness splintered by eruptions of white smoke. Kimberlain leaped onto the platform and crouched in a dark corner near a pile of cannonballs.

The cannons continued to recoil and the taped cannon fire to sound as Kimberlain watched more of the Hashi pass by, unable to spot him in the lifelike scene. To survive, he had become part of a living exhibit to soldiers and causes long dead, and, though the irony struck him, for now there was only his own cause to concern himself with. His escape might be as close as the fire ax and the black exit door. He eased himself carefully along the rear of the exhibit, watching to avoid the recoiling cannons, and then cut quickly to the front railing, climbing down as close to the exit as he dared. He was reaching up for the ax when the double doors slammed open and the emergency signal began to wail nonstop.

And directly before him stood a blond woman in a brown leather jacket who had by now become very familiar.

Chapter 26