Bad II the Bone

by Anton Marks

  Patra shuddered and wiped her arms.

  Spokes opened the top of the alabaster jar to show the dwindling measure of white powder.

  “We got to think of something quick becah when it done…”

  “… our ass is grass,” Patra completed.

  Spokes groaned when he felt the slow rise of the wind again and watched disheartened as the dust particles languidly gave in to the twirling currents, manipulated by the dust devils.

  Spokes wished for a miracle but amongst such evil, wishing for miracles seemed pointless. There was no balance in this place, just shades of rottenness. Yet the intricate patterns that weave the tapestry of life can be unpredictable at the best of times and fucking sardonic too. In that moment Deacon, two goons and his pet Obeah man came bursting out from a corridor on the right, guns drawn and grins of triumph on their faces.

  Not quite a miracle but beggars can’t be choosers.

  “Spokes, mi breddrin,” Deacon boomed. His voice gathered resonance as if he was speaking through an amplifier.

  “Finally we meet. Mi nuh too late for deh party?”

  Deacon stood in the middle of the cavern, his gun pointed at the three huddled in the circle. The two men with him moved out to his left and right, surveying the place suspiciously.

  Remy stood behind them, not venturing as far into the cavern as the others. He had his fingers in his shoulder bag tensed for a quick protective spell at any indication of threat. He looked up and then looked around nervously, retreating slowly as his head did a three hundred and sixty degree orbit. The bravado he exhibited earlier was leeching away with the seconds. Uncertainty, like a tick burrowing into his flesh had replaced it and more uncertainty was hatching. The forces of dark magic that were thrumming through the air, reacting with everyone and everything, subtly changing ordained outcomes, tainting them in imperceptible ways, had startling. Remy trembled with a mixture of fear and awe. He could feel the power he had available to cast spells had improved ever since being in the employ of Deacon but nothing he had at his disposal could challenge the man who had created this display. Manipulating the Chinese girl’s sense of time and space, as elaborate as he thought the incantation was, that exhibition paled into insignificance in comparison to this extravaganza. This was an overwhelming act of voodoo craftsmanship that he had no answer to. Being as far away from this place as he could was his plan of action. And while Deacon and his men were occupied with the prize, Remy intended to slip away.

  “Yuh not talking to mi, boss? I’m hurt,” Remy heard Deacon say absently. The Obeah man’s focus was more on survival than the inane banter taking place between the other two men. If they knew what he did they would be more concerned about what was transpiring around them. But the other man on his knees with the haggard look of horror and incredulity obviously knew something Deacon ought to.

  “I understand, my yout,” the gangster continued. “I’m not in a talkative mood either. I just want to know one bloodclaat ting.

  Where is deh treasure?”

  Remy hesitated at the words because his heart had been set on acquiring some of those magical items for his own practice. The advantages he would have, the respect, the money.

  Whatever his heart desired.

  His life meant more to him.

  Remy edged back into the darkened corridor.

  Deacon grimaced.

  Just a few things gave away the fact that there was something very unsettling about this scene. Not the subterranean location because that was expected for such things and not the fact that a bad man of his caliber was about to add his own rare breed of craziness to the mix.

  Nah, that was a obvious.

  His senses were screaming out caution although for the life of him he could not detect the threat. Okay, the breeze was weird within a cavern but weird wasn’t dangerous. And the danger was here as solid and unassailable as a twenty foot brick wall. Spokes and the two bitches, huddled together, riveted with fear and subdued panic flashing in their eyes, was puzzling enough. Consider what lay beyond them in the shape of a stone hewn altar or ceremonial table stacked with rare books, artifacts, scrolls, old boxes and good old fashioned currency and jewels was what perplexed him. If they had made an attempt to acquire it before he had arrived, he had no indication of that now. Something or someone had stopped them from completing what they had set out to do.

  The dark skinned gal kept looking to the ceiling nervously. Deacon’s eyes followed hers but the darkness above him meant nothing.

  “I don’t know what game yuh playing, an mi nuh give a fuck. All I want is all three of you to approach me very slowly. Nice an easy.”

  No one reacted.

  Deacon fired two shots into the earth, feet away from where they stood. The slugs threw up chunks of clay with the sound of the report echoing in the cavern.

  “Yuh tink mi a play?” Deacon forced the words through clenched teeth.

  “We look like we having fun to yuh?” Spokes shot back. “Can’t you feel it? There is more happening here than meets deh eye. Ask yuh Obeah man if this place feels like play time to him.”

  Deacon turned to see what Spokes was referring to; keeping his gun hand in his direction and his eyes met Remy’s backward retreat.

  Deacon cocked his head and smiled grimly.

  “You going somewhere, bwoy?” Deacon asked evenly. His weapon was now firmly aimed at the Haitian and from that distance he could not miss him. “You should be standing beside me. Walking in the valley of the shadow of death, in my footsteps,” He intoned sarcastically.

  “This is suicide, Deacon,” the Obeah man blurted out with a grating French patois lilt, his right hand already in the bag around his neck, his finger tips pinching grains of potions that he started sprinkling at his feet while murmuring words of power and ignoring the gun pointed at him. “I’m telling you this cannot be won. Come with me, let’s walk away from this...”

  He didn’t finish. Didn’t have time to finish.

  A heel caught him with a perfect roundhouse kick to the jaw, cart-wheeling him to the ground. Suzy stood over him a bit worst for wear but with a playful gleam in her eyes as if she understood this cosmic joke was at her expense and decided to do the mature thing and laugh along. She stood in combat stance her senses attuned to her environment. Suddenly everything was amplified and the cavern was acting as a huge echo chamber for every sense, not just sound.

  Her eyes, hyperactive, already the positions of all the players in this drama branded into memory. Her skin prickling from the eddies of the mystical and natural forces at play, she took in the waft of excrement, sulphur, earth, sweat and fear. The coppery tang of that latter emotion, she tasted sharply in her mouth.

  Suzy looked down on Monsieur Remy’s bloodied face and crumpled body and looked up defiantly at Deacon as if asking, Yuh got more? Bring it come nuh! Slowly she took her long plaited hair and wrapped it around her neck Manchu style and realizing what was to come, she took the ends of her pony tail and bit down on it, anchoring it with her teeth. She moved effortlessly into Wushu dragon form and beckoned them forward with her fingers a la Bruce Lee.

  “Yuh still alive Chiny gal?” Deacon bellowed. “The last time I see you,” his tone more measured as he recalled the memory. “You were diving off a gantry about fifty…sixty feet high. Don’t know how yuh did that an’ survive but it don’t matter.” Deacon grins looking over to his Hench men. “Chuck, Rog. Dead dis pussyclaat gal for me please.” He pointed to Suzy and returned his attention to Spokes and the girls in the circle.

  “Now some one betta start walking towards me or I will empty mi clip in somebody rass tonight.”

  The men opened fire on Suzy without hesitation.

  They acted with the randomness she fully understood. The goons and Deacon wanted her dead. Off the cuff preparation and a hammered down strategy was not for a situation like this. This required chaos thinking and Suzy had a sneaking feeling Deacon was an ‘A’ grade student in that. In seconds, Suzy Won
g was the centre of attention and the time it took her to inhale deeply, the men had taken aim and were firing copper jacketed death her way.

  As battered and bruised as she was from the last encounter with these two gorillas, adrenaline injected into her blood stream like a fuel injector, she was tumbling and somersaulting out of harm’s way like a gymnast. The nine millimeter ammo chewed up a route behind her as she skittered away behind a carved rock formation. Suzy placed her back to the moist cavern wall, breathing heavily, and used the only opportunity she would ever have to observe her surroundings properly. Not that there was much to see from the vantage point behind the rock but she just had to hope quick glances would not end with her head being blown off.

  She had no choice.

  The men were approaching cautiously, firing as they came and walking in the light as if they were men of virtue. She already had a snapshot of what was behind the structure and still the picture made no sense to her. The girls, Spokes, Deacon - he had told her that much before trying to kill her, the two gun men and that witch doctor she had dispatched. What concerned her, even more than not knowing what she was looking at, was that the scene was dynamic and would not remain in place for her to take action based on what she had seen seconds earlier. But whatever action she did take it would involve evading bullets and disabling pro killers. Deacon was shouting at the top of his voice, Patra and Y were calling out to her, the goons kept coming and that god awful wind was gusting without let up.

  Under the circumstances she should be cursing the day Bad II the Bone was ever conceived; instead she felt a gruesome exhilaration. She felt as if she had been dipped in a malevolent night and was infected by it. For the first time she understood it completely, bypassing mere senses for a whole body experience. Her reasonable and sane self wanted to get away and have nothing to do with this place. But that part of her was not in ascendency tonight.

  Escape wasn’t an option.

  She was feeling the dark powers being concentrated into the cavern like an infernal magnifying glass, feeling the wind whip through the cavern, the air pregnant with menace. A storm was on its way and she could sense it as certainly as she knew it was going to rain when she was back in Jamaica. Suzy felt almost relieved, as if everything had led up to this moment. She looked up to the darkness above her; she sensed the movement. Even above the din of the wind it reminded her of thousands of puppies’ feet, their claws tapping on the rocks as they moved. Her mind constructed a picture of twisted Chihuahuas who were imbued with the darkness and a taste for human flesh scurrying above her. Then as if in response to her macabre musings black teardrops started falling to the cave floor with the sound like a coming monsoon. The deluge was like something had struck oil from above. Greasy precipitation fell with droplets the size of fists, some of which instead of forming puddles, some grotesquely merged together like molasses with instincts for self preservation. Others kept a terrible individuality of teeth, claws and savagery. Suzy shuddered to her bone, the effort of deflecting the almost overpowering presence of darkness weakening her.

  The decision was made in those desperate moments.

  Suzy jumped up, a half baked plan forming in her mind as she ran for the closest torch on the wall expecting bullets to her back but the suddenness of her dash had caught her assailants unawares. When they realised what was happening Suzy was air-bound, leaping up to the torch and snatching it out of its holder and throwing it to the floor, dousing the flames in the dirt.

  Her plan, if it worked was supposed to produce a wide enough line of darkness between herself and the gun men. A moat populated with the flesh eating demons which would keep her corralled from the gunmen.

  OK, the plan wasn’t perfect but it had to do for now.

  Suzy was on the move again, deftly springing to the cave wall, using it as purchase to launch herself higher and yanking another torch from its holder, dousing it again and falling to the ground in a crouch. She took in four deep breaths, sprang to her feet again, readying herself to explode from where she stood but she faltered and that’s when time slowed. Suddenly, another force had been introduced into the equation of motion, totally disrupting what her mind told her she should be doing now. In an agonizingly long second she was flung to the floor in a dirty, uncoordinated pirouette as the world around watched her fall with ponderous disinterest.

  A pain that was distant at first became more personal and like a bubble of time dilation bursting the full symphony of agony hit her in discordant waves followed by the Doppler effect of the guns discharge.

  Suzy cried out in pain and went down.

  “Noooooo!”

  Y’s scream came from across the cavern was like the crack of a whip. Her anguished face twisted in shock as she saw the shot fling Suzy to the ground. Without thought Y was sprinting towards where Suzy fell.

  All around them was pandemonium. The sky above continued to rain these creatures. The twirling winds persisted with their mischief, obliterating the circle of protection and steadily extinguishing the torches and slowly spreading the domain of shadow if not for the luminescent veins of rock.

  Y moved so quickly out of the circle that Deacon re-acted a second or so too late, the Browning bucked twice in the gangster’s hand, his slugs connected with rock instead of flesh. Whipping his weapon back to where his intended targets had been a moment ago, he was welcomed by an empty space.

  Patra had rugby tackled Spokes to the ground out of the circle and shielded him momentarily from the threat of bullets. Deacon barked an order and stormed after Patra, leaving the security of the light to step across the band of shadows, but he didn’t get far. A tar like mound of reconstituted creatures flowed in front of him like the surf from a massive oil slick, blocking his path and defying gravity as it reeled up. He could literally feel its heat and the stench was almost unbearable. The air was ripe with rot and decay, an almost solid thing that rammed into his nose like a fighters left hooks. Deacon stepped back repulsed then horrified as it began to morph into the form of a man. A patch work man, who was an irreverent construct of these creatures, stuck together in haste and with a lack of respect for the aesthetic of the human form, in a kind of fuck you to nature.

  Deacon started firing into it, the report of his weapon deafening, the smell of cordite permeating the air. He tried to move back, flee into the light but the man thing generated tendrils with gruesome popping sounds, shooting tentacles around his ankles, his waist and arms. He screamed pathetically, his voice cracking, a memory of which he would not be proud if he ever had a chance to recall it. He squirmed and thrashed the touch of the creature reminiscent of millions of maggots foraging through decayed flesh. Deacon stumbled, fell on his ass, swearing as he kicked and clawed, but could not break free. He was being dragged on his back, his fingers grasping for purchase, his gaze fell desperately on the upside down visage of Remy who was just picking himself up from the floor behind him

  “Hey pussy,” he screamed. Yuh tink mi pay yuh feh yuh good looks, amigo? Yuh need to deal with this.”

  Remy looked at him with bleary eyes, gaining some degree of focus with the confusion around him. His horror was unshielded and it had the power to prop him up somehow. He looked around like a frantic man planning to flee but was not sure if he could. Beginning to chant, he walked over to him with stumbling steps, simultaneously thrusting his hand into his pouch. Remy slung a cloud of dust over Deacon and the man-thing as if he was sowing seeds in a field. Every individual grain burst into incandescence, like a multitude of fire flies, lighting up what once was darkness, sending the thing shrieking for the cover of the element that had birthed it.

  The crime boss scurried in Remy’s direction on all fours, all pretences of invulnerability lost. The witchdoctor couldn’t help thinking how weak and pathetic he looked when he came up against the real supernatural forces of the world.

  Already the power of his spells had dissipated and the darkness was creeping back into dominance. Remy admitted to himself there and
then that he had been outclassed, outdone had humiliated. A fact that became clear to him at the most inopportune of times.

  Y made no effort to conceal her approach and with so much happening at the same time, the element of surprise was easy.

  Reaching Suzy was an entirely different proposition.

  Y had to be walking through portions of shadow and light with every band of darkness teeming with the unspeakable things, tearing at her from all sides. The katana was a blur, the metal humming sweetly and an iridescence emanating from the blade’s surface. She hacked and sliced her way through the hell spawn, dark blood, or what these things classed as such, splattered her from top to toe. And Y’s blood mingled with theirs, as the chitin daggers of their claws and teeth, slashed her flesh, through leather, slowing her down but not stopping her. She was deftly skipping from one band of light to the next, screaming from the pain but pushing forward all the time. The things were scurrying underfoot and she pounded some of them with her boots but they simply shook themselves off and continued to patrol the domain of darkness. The men who were with Deacon began to understand how important it was to stay in the light and they were winding their way to Suzy with that important fact in mind, firing as they went, focused but unaware of Y’s approach. One of the men was changing clips frantically, his nervousness unusual for a man who had dealt with human threat innumerable times before but now was faced with the very bedrock of his beliefs disappearing before his eyes down the rabbit hole.

  Y sprinted towards him, maybe sensing his indecision, the katana gripped with both hands holding it away from her body while she moved like a classical samurai from the flicks, teeth gritted and a cry rising from her diaphragm and spitting out of her mouth.

  When his highly tuned sense of danger alerted him and he spun with the magazine firmly in the butt of his semi, Y was on him, samurai sword flashing and a bullet exchanging, blood splatter and the dull thud of metal hitting the cave floor. The man staggered back gripping the wrist of his gun hand, crimson spurts erupting from the stubs of his fore and ring finger. The blade had sliced through the gun metal, severing the Browning in two and the tips of his fingers with it. Anger, surprise or both made him charge her with a wail like a wounded elk. Y was quick on her feet and took flight, twisting away from him but able to use the hilt of her sword to strike him to the back of the head. His own momentum threw him further into the shadows.