by AnonYMous
As she lay dazed and disorientated underneath Napoleon, she heard Gaius speak out again. He wasn’t talking to her this time. He was addressing the four vampires he had brought with him.
‘Go get her,’ he ordered. ‘Wrap her up and throw her in the tomb with her idiot boyfriend.’
‘Yes sir,’ one of the vampires replied.
She felt a pair of cold hands haul her up from the floor. Her cell phone fell from her pocket and clattered onto the floor. She was still seeing stars so she had no idea where it landed. As she was dragged across the floor by one of the ninjas, she heard one of the others speak out.
‘Hey Gaius, according to this bitch’s phone, the Bourbon Kid is on his way here.’
Fifty-Five
Sanchez opened the front door of the Casa de Ville and peered out into the courtyard. Just as he feared, there were still vampires, zombies and werewolves tearing each other apart and spraying blood and guts all over the snow on the ground. Worryingly, there were also quite a few of them scrapping in the space between him and the police squad car Flake had parked near the bottom of the concrete steps below him. Getting to the car was going to be difficult and dangerous.
He turned back to see where the others were. At the back of the reception area Flake was holding open a door so that the Bourbon Kid could carry Beth through it. He had her in his arms, resting her head against his left bicep to stop it from drooping back and causing her any discomfort. The woman’s time on earth was limited, that much was evident to Sanchez. She was barely conscious and seemed oblivious to all that was going on. Lucky bitch.
Flake let go of the door and rushed past them towards him. ‘What’s it like out there?’ she asked.
‘Not too bad,’ he replied. ‘Here, why I don’t hold this door open for the others while you go start the car.’
‘Okay,’ said Flake. ‘Good thinking.’
Sanchez held the door open for her and ushered her out into the courtyard. She had The Book With No Name tucked under one arm, so he figured she was probably pretty safe. As she charged down the steps to the car, she held it up in front of her in case anything lunged at her.
Sanchez turned back to see the Bourbon Kid approaching with Beth. ‘Flake’s just starting the car,’ he said. ‘It’s right out front. You head on through. I’ll cover your back.’
The Kid peered around the door at the carnage outside. Then he looked back at Sanchez. ‘You sure you don’t want me to carry you out too?’ he asked.
It was a tempting offer, but Sanchez sensed he was just being sarcastic. ‘I’ll be okay. Come on, let’s go.’
The Kid stepped through the door, taking great care not to bang Beth’s head against the door’s frame. Sanchez drew his nightstick from his belt and followed him out.
Flake had already started the engine on the car and was reversing it back up against the steps to ensure their journey from the front door to the car was as short as possible. She flicked on the headlight too which drew the attention of a few of the nearby undead creatures. Sanchez shoved the Bourbon Kid in the back to hurry him along in case any of the vampires or werewolves decided to lunge at him. The Kid strode quickly down the steps towards the car. Most of the undead knew full well who he was and steered clear of him. Sanchez took advantage of the situation and was able to follow along behind in the Kid’s slipstream, pausing only to thump a legless zombie over the head with his nightstick.
They made it to the car untouched. Sanchez rushed around the Kid to open the back door, hoping to dive in before any vampires swooped. As he pulled the door open, he lost his footing on the icy driveway and fell back on to his ass. The Kid sidled up and carefully placed Beth onto the back seat of the car. He climbed in after her and pulled the door shut behind him.
Sanchez staggered to his feet and saw a huge werewolf bounding across the driveway toward him. It was a big hairy beast that had taken on the shape of a giant wolfhound. It was probably a pure breed, born a werewolf under a full moon. The worst kind. It had great big fangs and bloodthirsty eyes that were focussed on him. There was no sense in hanging around waiting for the bastard to get any closer. But as Sanchez lumbered forward to the car the beast leapt up in the air, swooping towards him, fangs wide open, ready to take a bite out of his face.
Luckily, Flake had seen the werewolf approach. She reached over from the driver’s seat and flung the passenger side door open. It hit the wolf in the face, making a sickening crunching sound. It knocked the beast back down the driveway, eliciting an agonised yelp.
Sanchez needed no second invitation and dived into the front passenger seat, slamming the door shut behind him. He looked over at Flake. ‘Get us the fuck out of here!’ he screamed.
Flake didn’t really need to be told. She pressed her foot down hard on the accelerator and the car zipped off down the driveway. Vampires, zombies and werewolves bounced up onto the hood of the car as it screeched along the icy path towards the front gates.
‘Are you trying to hit them all?’ Sanchez asked as a Panda’s face splatted against the windscreen directly in front of him.
‘It’s kinda hard to avoid them,’ said Flake, fighting with the steering wheel.
Sanchez looked over his shoulder to the back seat. The Bourbon Kid had Beth draped across his lap. He was brushing her hair away from her face and wrapping a white rag around her neck to stem the flow of blood from the wound Jessica had inflicted upon her.
‘How’s it look, man?’ Sanchez asked.
‘Not good. We need to be at the museum in a matter of minutes if we’re gonna have any chance of saving her.’
‘It’s eleven thirty already!’ Flake shouted back.
‘Then I’ve only got half an hour,’ said the Kid. ‘Put your foot on it, Flake.’
‘You got it.’
Sanchez shuffled back around in his seat and watched Flake steer the car through the front gates and turn left onto the road. ‘Jesus Flake, Stevie Wonder drives better than you!’ he yelled.
‘And he plays the piano better than you, so shut up,’ came the reply.
Sanchez ignored the insult. He was just relieved to see that the road into town was free from undead monsters. He hadn’t exactly approved of Flake’s driving on previous occasions when he’d been in a car with her. She had a habit of hitting something every thirty seconds, whether it be a vampire, werewolf, zombie or simply a book. At least when Sanchez hit something like a snowman, it was intentional. With Flake at the wheel he had to take up his default position, gripping the dashboard tightly with both hands and hoping for the best. By some small miracle, Flake didn’t crash into anything else for the rest of the journey to the museum, in spite of the icy roads and her high speed driving.
After a ten-minute rollercoaster ride across town, she parked up right outside the front of the museum.
‘We’re here,’ she yelled back to the Kid.
He was already opening the back door and climbing out. He slammed it behind him and stepped onto the pavement. Instead of racing straight into the museum he tapped on Sanchez’s window. Sanchez wound it down a few inches.
‘Whassup?’ he asked.
The Kid leaned as far into the space at the top of the window as he could. ‘Flake, take care of Beth for me. I’ll be back as quick as I can.’
‘Sure thing,’ said Flake. ‘Good luck!’
The Kid dashed off up the stairs to the museum. Sanchez wound his window back up and peered over his shoulder at the back seat. Beth was laid out in a state of unconsciousness, her head rested against the seat. She was barely breathing. It was entirely possible that she might either die or transform into a vampire at any minute. ‘We best stay up front,’ he suggested.
Flake scowled at him. ‘She’s dying, for goodness’ sake. I’m gonna go sit in the back with her to make sure she’s okay.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Sanchez. He reached down and picked up The Book With No Name, which Flake had thrown onto the floor by his feet when she got into the car. ‘I’ll keep ho
ld of this book in case she transforms and we have to kill her.’
Flake had just opened the driver’s side door to climb out. She hesitated and looked back at The Book With No Name in Sanchez’s hands. ‘Oh shit!’ she said, wide eyed. ‘The Kid’s gone into the museum without the book! You’d better take it and run in after him!’
‘What?’
‘I promised I’d stay here with Beth. You’d better run on in after the Kid and give him the book. He’ll never get the Eye of the Moon back without it!’
Sanchez looked out of his window. The front door of the museum was open. The Kid had already gone through it. If Sanchez wanted to catch up with him before he confronted Rameses Gaius he was going to have to get a move on. He tucked The Book With No Name under his arm and opened the car door. As he climbed out, Flake raced around from the other side of the car. She opened the back door so that she could climb in and attend to Beth. Before she climbed in she hesitated. Then she reached out and grabbed a hold of Sanchez’s arm. She pulled him over to her.
‘What now?’ he asked.
‘I wanted to say thanks for pulling me clear from the fire earlier.’
‘Oh. Yeah.’ He found himself blushing as he thought back to the moment he had dragged her away from the fire. ‘Well, y’know,’ he mumbled, ‘you’re my ride home.’
Flake poked him playfully in the stomach. ‘They need you in there,’ she said, pointing to the museum. ‘Go be a hero again. Good luck.’
Fifty-Six
Kacy’s head hadn’t cleared. She felt nauseous and totally dazed from the impact of being hit on the head by Napoleon’s concrete bicorn hat. Her eyesight had temporarily deserted her too. But she could hear voices. They were the voices of the ninja vampires who had dragged her over to the tomb where Dante was laid out on the floor in an even worse state than her.
‘Yo! Save some bandages for us. We’ve got to do the girl.’
‘Just strip her off. We’ll bandage her up.’
‘Why do you get to bandage her up?’
‘Because I’ve got the bandages, numbnuts.’
A third voice butted in. ‘I’ll help you strip her.’
‘Okay. Hold her up while I take her pants down.’
‘All right, but hurry up. She looks like she’s getting her wits back.’
On hearing that she was about to have her pants pulled down, Kacy was indeed trying her best to clear her head and get her wits back. She felt a pair of hands slide under her armpits and haul her up from the floor. Another figure bent down in front of her and began unbuttoning her jeans. He got to work pretty quick too. Her jeans were tugged down past her knees with ease.
‘Fuck me, look at those legs.’
Kacy blinked a few times and slowly began to get her sight back, albeit somewhat blurred. Her jeans had been pulled down to her ankles. The ninja who was bent down in front of her was in the process of frantically pulling her sneakers off.
As her sight was returning, the guy who was holding her up from behind reached down and grabbed the bottom of her sweatshirt. He yanked it up over her head, where it got stuck and smothered her face, blinding her again. She was now being twisted in all directions by two vampires who couldn’t care less how it made her feel. Even if she hadn’t been totally dazed it would have been difficult to put up much of a struggle.
She felt her sneakers come off and heard them being tossed aside. Moments later her jeans were tugged hard and came off completely. She felt the touch of the vampire’s cold, bony hands making their way up her legs towards her underwear (a pair of tiny pink panties Dante had bought for her with the words FREE ENTRY sewn into the back in black lettering). Behind her, the other ninja was still fighting hard to get her sweatshirt over her head.
As she felt the cold vampire fingers tug at her panties, she heard a loud crack. The grip of the vampire’s fingers on her underwear loosened, then his hands fell away, leaving her underwear in place, albeit only just.
The guy behind her stopped tugging at her sweatshirt. ‘What the fuck?’ he said, sounding puzzled.
BANG!
Kacy’s felt the whoosh of a bullet speeding past her head. The guy behind her immediately relinquished his grip on her and she fell backwards, her head crashing down hard on the floor. She lay there on her back feeling even more dazed than before, wondering what had happened. After a brief moment wincing at the pain of yet another blow to the head, she came to her senses and remembered her predicament. She grabbed at her sweatshirt and set about pulling it back over her head to cover at least part of her modesty.
The blast of the gunshot was still ringing in her ears. As she wrestled with her sweatshirt she heard two further shots, followed by the sound of two more bodies dropping to the floor. A few moments of quiet were followed by the sound of Rameses Gaius’s distinctive booming voice.
‘Show yourself, you cowardly sonofabitch!’ he yelled.
Kacy finally managed to poke her head back through the top of her sweatshirt. She took a deep breath and looked around. Her vision was still blurred but at least was able to get an idea of her bearings. Dante was laid out on the floor a few yards away. She expected to see the Bourbon Kid somewhere too. He was definitely in the hall because the results of his handiwork were in evidence. She could see a pair of dead vampires on the floor either side of Dante. Both of them had suffered fatal head wounds courtesy of the Bourbon Kid’s deadly aim with a gun. Two others were on the floor, not far from her. One had a broken neck, the other one only had half a head.
As Kacy continued to survey the carnage around her, a flash of bright blue light suddenly dazzled her. She saw the source of it. Gaius was firing off blue laser bolts from both hands, aiming blindly in all directions. But where was the Bourbon Kid? There were numerous statues and displays within which he could conceal himself, and it seemed that Gaius was unable to locate him.
As if the laser bolts and gunshots weren’t enough to contend with, one of Gaius’s mistimed attacks had created another problem. A set of red curtains had caught fire and burst into flames. So as well as being stuck in a room with an angry mummy, a serial killer, an unconscious boyfriend and not knowing for sure where her pants were, she now had to contend with the fact that the place was on fire too!
She hauled herself forward onto her knees and stared around the hall. Her jeans and sneakers had been tossed across the floor and had landed not too far from an antique piano with a mannequin of Ludwig Beethoven sitting at it. She took in another deep breath and groggily began crawling on her hands and knees towards it.
Behind her she could hear Rameses Gaius cursing and firing laser bolts off in all directions. Occasionally a gunshot would ring out in response. Gaius and the Kid were taking shots at each other but, where the Lord of the Undead was out in the open, the Kid was hiding within the shadows of the museum’s displays.
Kacy reached out and grabbed her jeans with her fingertips. As she did, a blue laser bolt hit the floor nearby and ricocheted up, flying a few inches past her nose. Clearly, time was in short supply. Her jeans were almost completely inside out where the vampires had yanked them off so hurriedly. As she picked them up off the floor, something fell out of the one of the front pockets. It was the small object Vanity had handed her. She cast her mind back to the moment when he had slipped it into her hand. “Use it…’ he had said.
Fifty-Seven
Sanchez made his way tentatively down the stairs to the main hall. Below him he could hear gunfire and all kinds of stuff breaking. That was a sure sign that the Bourbon Kid was already taking on Rameses Gaius, and doing it without The Book With No Name. Sanchez hoped he wasn’t too late.
At the bottom of the stairs he saw the actions that went with the noise. A pair of curtains had been set on fire too, and the flames were spreading. There were dead bodies lying around on the floor, which was nothing unusual in all honesty. Over by a shattered glass display he saw the unconscious figure of Dante, wrapped up in bandages from his feet to his shoulders. There was a
lso the strange sight of a rather attractive brunette in her early twenties crawling across the floor on her hands and knees, wearing just a black sweatshirt and a pair of pink panties with the words FREE ENTRY across the back. In any normal situation Sanchez would be checking the spelling quite rigorously, but this wasn’t the time. The large shaven headed figure of Rameses Gaius was standing in the centre of the hall with his back to Sanchez. He was firing off blasts of blue lightning from his hands, aiming them at just about anything. They were ricocheting off the floor and walls, blasting into statues and displays. Everything he hit either snapped in half or burst into flames. This was one destructive bastard.
Out of the corner of his eye, Sanchez caught sight of the Bourbon Kid. He was hiding in the shadows behind a black curtain that covered a statue of a fat naked guy. He had a large gun in his hand. He saw Sanchez and nodded at him. Then he vanished into the shadows. His disappearance was followed by a loud gunshot that drew Gaius’s fire. The giant mummy launched a laser bolt at the curtains where the Kid had been hiding.
Sanchez had no fucking idea what the Kid had nodded at him for, but he suspected it was some kind of signal. It probably meant he was supposed to do something important. Something brave. The Kid had drawn Gaius’s attention away from the stairs so Sanchez could sneak in undetected. This was obviously his big moment. Gaius was only twenty metres in front of him. Time to be a hero, like Flake had suggested.
He tiptoed as quickly as he could up behind Gaius, only taking his eyes off the back of the mummy’s head briefly to check out the ass on the girl with the pink underwear one last time, just in case he never got another chance.