by Marks, Leon
Gunshots. A lot of gunshots.
I rode in unchecked, swerved around a quintet of drunk mercs firing assault rifles as diverse as themselves into the heavens. I expected more busted down locals being forced to work the mines, but everybody seemed to be wearing a uniform and carrying a gun. I sidestepped the arms of the general brawl and ballyhoo and climbed the steps to a stale-beer shithole with a shiny new neon Budweiser sign. At the back, five men played darts with throwing knives—one was winning, giving the finger to his friends. I threw my leg over a barstool and motioned to the bartender, a big guy who looked like he'd taught Mr. T to be a hard bastard and where to get a haircut.
"What?"
"Bud and a shot."
He put down an anonymous brown bottle and poured pale liquid into a cracked shot glass. It tasted like rum and kerosene.
"What was that shit?"
"Rum and lighter fluid."
"Oh."
"Only fuckin' with you. It's just cheap as shit."
It was time to get some information with the patented O'Shaunessey charm.
"Damn, son. Never thought I'd hear that accent this far south. Where you from in Brooklyn, my dude?"
"I'm from Miami. Why the fuck are you talking like that?"
"Whatcha mean?"
"You know exactly what I mean, white boy."
I gave up trying to blend. "I'm looking for somebody. Local bartender usually knows what's going on, right?"
"Depends. You should discreetly slide a hundred bucks across the bar. And then you should stop fucking talking to me."
Nobody talks to Banyon O'Shaunessey like that. I felt the color rise up my neck and toward my face. The bartender shook his head.
"Swing and I'll pull the trigger on the scatter gun under the bar. You'll be a little paler from asshole to appetite."
Well. That had a calming effect. I put five twenties on the bar.
"Look, seriously. I'm just looking for somebody."
"Well don't look at me. I'm just a two-dimensional character here to try and convince the folks reading the author's not a racist."
"What?"
"I said try the hotel across town and have fun with all the other racists."
"Okay." I looked out the door, all that distance and gunfire in the street. "Think I could get drunk first?"
He poured more rum and I watched the fellas playing knife darts come close to losing fingers, listened to the gunfire. For a few hours at least, I forgot I had a job to do. Rico, as the bartender turned out to be named, didn't tell me anything else, but he had a heavy hand with the booze and was fairly nice about throwing me out at dawn. I could see why a man could stay in a place like this—an adventurer's town where fortunes were made by sweat and nerve. I could see myself setting up shop.
The hotel was tallest nearby building, easy to find. I passed block after empty block. Even gunfire and revelry have to sleep sometime. Yep. A man could get used to mornings like this.
Around the next corner I found the mercs from the bar, remembered them playing darts with their knives, drunk on camaraderie and cheap rum. The four losers had the winner braced against the building, knives rising and falling, red and rhythmic. They cut off his middle fingers before I looked away.
On second thought fuck this place.
At thirteen years old, the hotel was one of the oldest buildings in town—and much like a teenager, it was mostly gangling bits and craters. Inside the lobby, a corpse was splayed across the front desk, its hand covering the service bell. I looked around for somebody, anybody else.
"What?" A voice asked.
I dropped into a crouch, hand twitching toward the .45 under my arm.
"Asshole, I'm right here."
It was the corpse. Either that or a ventriloquist with a hand up its ass.
"You alive?" I asked.
"Yeah I'm alive, motherfucker." One finger on the hand moved, managed to ring the bell. "Find my wheelchair. These pricks think it's funny to steal it."
"You're paralyzed?"
His index finger twitched. "Wow. Nobody told me Einstein was visiting."
"Uh. Can I rent a room?"
He rotated his head to look at me out of the corner of one eye.
"I'll send up sixteen dancing boys, a case of Pacifico and a burlap sack of kittens and grenades. Shit, I'll even throw in clean sheets if you find my wheelchair. These drunk fucks usually end up riding it. Check the second floor, I think I saw that fat schwanz Carlos head that way."
I unholstered the Kimber.
"Try not to shoot him too badly. He's one of the few actually pays his rent."
I found Carlos in a collection of stinking fatigues and body armor too small to cover his center mass—emphasis on the mass. He was passed out in the motorized chair, the most modern thing I'd seen here other than guns and tattoos. I wished for a bucket of water, an air horn, some random noise to wake him so that I didn't have to. I took his weapons one at a careful time and placed them on the floor several feet away. When I'd made Carlos as safe as possible, I grabbed him by the back of his belt and heaved, sending him cartwheeling out of the chair.
He landed in a pile. Still snoring.
Whatever these guys drank was worth every penny.
I looked down into the seat of the wheelchair and dropped, banging into the wall and cowering with my arms around my head. When nothing happened I took another look. The chair's seat was a kind of toilet bowl, which I guess makes sense. The grenade made less sense. The pin was still in place and I followed a strand of fishing line from it through a series of stays up to the headrest. At the end was a leather tab covered with teeth marks.
I wheeled the chair down the makeshift ramps and to the front desk.
"Aw, you're the best. Mind helping me?"
"Sure. Fair warning, Carlos left a grenade in the seat."
"Oh, that's mine."
"What happens when you…"
"Grenades are waterproof."
"Okay…" I slipped my hands under his arms and levered him into the chair. He moved his neck around and sighed, his fingers twitching toward the controls.
"See?" He asked, reaching his head around to grab the end of the fishing line with his teeth. "Awr I gorra do ish purr."
Great, a Stephen Hawking suicide bomber, but I guess if I was crippled in a town like this I'd have a contingency plan too.
"Name's Rudy, Rudy the Gimp. What can I do for you?"
"O'Shaunessey. I need a room and I'm looking for somebody. Maybe he's staying here?"
"Who?"
"An archaeologist."
He started chuckling. "Man, I don't have any idea what one of those would be doing in this dump."
"What are you doing here?"
"Used to be an accountant for one of the mining companies."
"Why would you..?"
"Why would a gimp live in a backwater shithole like this to begin with?"
"Yeah."
"When the mining companies were running shit, I was like a wizard. Got taken good care of, local whores used to give me sponge baths." His eyes went glassy, mouth slack and I let him have his moment while I stood around and twiddled my thumbs until he snapped out of it.
"Anyway, when the shit hit the fan it's not like I could drive to the border."
"Guess not."
"I'll get you that room, and just to show my thanks I'll throw one of these in for free." He tossed a padlock and thick chain onto the desk.
"The fuck's that for?"
"So you can lock the door."
Sure enough, the door to the room was just a piece of steel on hinges. I looked at the crumbling sheetrock and wondered why anybody would try and take out the door when they could hire a chihuahua to chew through the wall. After I heard the mattress rustling, I decided to sleep on the floor. I didn't want to disturb my roommates.
If I'd known what was gonna happen next, I'd have invented a time machine so I could slap the shit out of myself for taking this job. It would've been easier.
One. Fucking. Week. In. This. Shit. Pile.
A week and no sign of that asshole nerd or a stone fucking tablet. I'd become the funniest thing in the town, the mercs think I'm a trip. You're looking for what? A rock? And not gold or silver?
Yeah. That's me. Banyon O'Shaunessey. Funny as fuck.
They started calling me Indiana.
Dickheads.
When I found that archaeologist I was going to beat him to death with that tablet and tell Debonaire those "any means" had been necessary.
I sent email updates from the bar's Wi-Fi when it was actually working, and he assured me of his absolute faith. Meanwhile I could actually hear this end of my payment trickling away on booze. I tried my hand at knife darts, but lost most of what I won. I remembered what happened to the last winner. I behaved like the locals and did my best to stay drunk.
Which is why I thought that first hooded figure was a product of my hangover. I'd wandered out of the hotel into the brutal sunlight only because my room smelled worse than the town or my breath. I was heading to the bar to get breakfast when I saw him walking from the main gate, hands in his sleeves and this swaying, heavy walk. Only faith could make a man wear that robe in this heat.
I rubbed my temples while he walked past, face lost in the shadow of his hood and an actual rope for a belt.
"Uh," I said, "Good morning, father?"
He ignored me and continued into the town.
Rico nodded as I entered the bar, a new height in familiarity. He put down a steaming mug of coffee, dumped in a liberal amount of rum.
"Thanks, but I think I need to sober up."
"I didn't have time to boil the water first."
"Oh." I sipped, "Is there a monastery in this town?"
"Used to be. This big old building at the center, old mission. Mercs rolled in and turned it into an ammo dump."
"What happened to the monks?"
"Thing's been empty for decades. Indians killed them a long time ago, I guess."
The rum was warm, the coffee was warm. I became happy.
"Why you asking?" Rico asked.
"Because I just passed a monk out in the street."
"You been eating the paint chips in the hotel?"
"Not unless the roaches have been feeding them to me in my sleep."
He paused, giving the idea actual thought.
"Want some more coffee?"
"Probably a good idea."
"You find that rock yet?"
"Since I'm still sitting in your bar, that'd be a strong fucking no."
"You search the hotel?"
"Are you nuts? I'm not wandering around in there. Whatever's living in the walls sounds like it's starting a band."
"You should search the hotel. In case you're wondering, this is a combination of foreshadowing and deus ex machina."
"For-what? Deuce what?"
"I said I'm gonna re-apply my eyeshadow and then go drop a deuce. You should have more coffee. Think your hearing's fucked up."
I had more coffee and wished bloody, fiery doom on this entire rancid shithole of a town.
Silver lining? It turns out wishes do come true.
Heh. Silver lining. That's a mine pun. Get it?
No?
Fuck you.
After it was all over, when the smoke from the last fire had gone out, people would talk about how they saw the monks, but only one at a time and so naturally assumed that was all there was. Naturally is another word for complacent or just plain dumbshit.
Gunfire woke me up from a great dream. Well, actually it was a nightmare about a giant octopus with chimney red tentacles and the face of Debonaire's secretary, but reality made it look like a puppy and a blowjob.
Through the window bars I saw flashes, heard the pops, men screaming. No celebrations tonight, this was something else. I put my boots on and slipped into a double shoulder holster with another Kimber from the bag. A knife went in one boot, another clipped to my pocket. I put on a flak vest and dangled an automatic shotgun from a sling around my neck.
Rudy was behind the front desk wall. Being paralyzed, the only way I could tell he was scared was his twitching finger.
"Rudy, what the fuck's going on?"
"These robed weirdos're shooting up the place. The mercs are killing anything in brown."
I moved over to the desk and pushed Rudy's chair so that he was behind the load-bearing wall.
"Fuck, man. Now I can't see!"
"You'll thank me when you're not dead tomorrow."
"No I won't."
Outside the hotel was an entire chorus of battle percussion. Shadows charged, shadows shook and shadows fell screaming. I kept close to the walls and cradled the shotgun barrel down. Bodies lay in the streets, brown wool and military regalia.
"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck," I whispered.
I checked pulses until I hit paydirt in an alley too close to the action for my liking. A monk sitting against a wall groaned and clutched at a belly of exposed meat.
"How you doing, buddy?"
"Water. Please."
"Whiskey." I tipped my flash to his lips. He took a couple swallows and gagged, spat it back up.
"While you're wasting my booze, what the fuck's happening?"
"It is time. It is time. Now. Now is upon us. We are now. We are now and we are then. We are always."
"Doesn't answer my question."
"The tablet…has revealed itself. We must find it. We will burn this town to the foundations, we will raise…"
He died mid-rant, which is really the best way for a zealot to go, like a millionaire dying under his stripper wife. The battle in the streets hadn't lessened any. I figured I had about two hours, maybe less. That was when I remembered the hotel.
Jesus, I'm an asshole sometimes. What had the bartender said? Something about eye shadow?
Fucking archaeologist. I bet that prick's been in the hotel this whole time.
That prick was in the hotel this whole time.
I returned the hotel to find the front guarded by four monks with guns. Couldn't tell what kind in the dark, but their general description was "bigger than mine."
Hello, shit. Meet fan.
I let the shotgun dangle from its sling, drew one of the .45's and put a round through the center of the closest brown robe. He crumpled and the rest sent a few buckets of lead my way, the concrete chipping out in pieces and the ground pocking, dusting at my feet. I ducked back around the building and peeked, saw them swiveling to locate the shooter.
Might be easier if you took the hoods off, you morons.
They retreated into the hotel and I heard Rudy yelling at them so hard he must have ruptured something he couldn't even feel.
"Fuck you motherfuckers, you can't have my chair. I'm taking it and you douche canoes with me!"
The explosion took out part of the first floor and most of the lobby. Guess that grenade was waterproof after all. I crept the corner with my gun up, scanning the pile of rubble and settling dust. Arms and legs stuck out, chunks of red wrapped in brown. I saluted Rudy's chair. It was spattered red where it wasn't black and twisted from the explosion. Of him there was no sign, but I didn't take the time to scrape the walls with a spatula.
I felt like I should say a few words before I headed upstairs, but I didn't have anything better than 'douche canoe.'
No need to search the first floor—half of it was in the lobby on top of five robed idiots and one badass cripple. Second floor was a bust.
On the third, two monks stood in front of a door with their hands up, chanting. There was a stealthy way to do this, sense and strategy instead of brute force.
But sense, like signs and being careful, is for pussies.
I brought up the shotgun and turned the hallway air into a Cuisinart. Scratch two hooded weirdos. That was for you, Rudy.
The door was padlocked, so I aimed the shotgun at the hinges and pulled the trigger twice. I stepped inside as the door fell away and had my fucked-up-shit-bar read
justed to the highest level.
Perched on the bed was the egghead I'd been sent to find. Had to be. He was about a month past better days—lap damp and red, right hand busy in what remained of it. In his left was the stone tablet. He'd been writing on the walls in what looked like his blood.
SO GOOD, SO WET, SO WARM. OH THE TENT
FEEL SO GOOD SO WET SO WARM OH THE
ACLES TENTACLES FEEL SO GOOD SO WET SO WARM.
SO WARM SO WET OH THE TENT
It took a few more moments to get the sequence.
OH THE TENTACLES TENTACLES FEEL SO GOOD, SO WET, SO WARM.
For. Fuck's. Sake. I shook him.
"Hey, man. Pull up your pants. We gotta go."
He rocked back and forth, hand busy and mumbling, hacking and chattering his teeth. Lips cracked, face gaunt. I wonder when he'd last had anything to eat or drink. I reached for the tablet and he lunged, sank his teeth into my shoulder. I shoved him back and slapped him, but he darted in again, this time going for my face, teeth snapping at the air where my nose had been. I grabbed him by the throat and shoved him back. He bounced off the bed and jumped to his feet. Before he could get any closer, I emptied a clip into his chest while the world screamed, turned red. After the gun was empty I realized I was the one screaming.
"Jesus Christ, why'd you make me do that, you crazy fuck?"
I picked up the tablet, looking at it like it might know the answer to that question. Writhing lines were carved in the stone, so lifelike, so real. There were depictions of women and men among the swirling lines…tentacles, the tentacles. The tentacles went in and out, in and out, in and…
Stirring, below my waist, heat and stirring.
The tentacles go in.
Where do they go in? So many lines, you could get lost trying to follow...each led to a warm place I was sure, so warm, so wet...
A burst of gunfire from outside the hotel brought me back to reality. Skin crawling, I dropped the tablet into the egghead's shoulder bag and reloaded the pistols and the shotgun.
I took a deep breath.
It was definitely time to get the fuck outta Cinco Putas y Medio.