by Pro Se Press
There were steel shelves to either side filled with various crates containing all kinds of manufacturing supplies. Cody had done her homework and knew the business itself was a legitimate front used by Malone to clean the money he earned from his more nefarious enterprises. Cape Noire was still an open city as far as its underworld inhabitants were concerned, ever since the Boss of Bosses, Topper Wyld had been wasted by the white faced grim reaper known as Brother Bones. Malone was one of the smaller sharks vying for a bigger piece of the criminal pie.
Cody recognized him from the various newspaper mug shots, as he sat at the back of the building, laid out with three desks, steel cabinets and other assorted business paraphernalia, all bathed under three low hanging florescent tubes. The area was dead center of the main floor and Malone, seated in front of long table covered with bricks of cocaine, was surrounded by half a dozen men all cut from the same Neantherdal mold, each heavily armed and dangerous.
Peter Tomlin Malone was an average looking fellow with thinning gray hair, a neat mustache and thick eye-glasses. Cody thought he looked more like an accountant than a mobster and she noted the predominant eye-glasses were similar to those worn by his brother Arnold; the reason for her visit.
Now Malone was adjusting those glasses, as he looked up at her and the towering guard who had escorted her to his inner sanctum.
“So, Otto, who the hell do we have here?”
“Don’t know, boss. She said she had to talk to you and that there were nin..nin...”
“The actual word is ninja-jitsu,” Cody provided, wanting to move on with her purpose. She could sense the shadow warriors were only minutes from launching their assaults.
“Ninjas?” Malone sat back in his stiff back chair, now studying the lithe young woman in the western get-up and mask. “Lady, just who the hell are you and what do you want here?”
“My name is Cody Randall. I’m a bounty hunter.”
“Big deal, last I looked there were no outstanding warrants with my name on them.”
“I’m not here for you. It’s your brother I want.”
“Arnie? You’re after my little brother. Lady you got a real set of balls, you know that?”
“I also know there are six ninjas overhead about to cut loose. I’d guess a rival gang after your turf.”
“That’s the biggest whopper I’ve heard yet,” Malone scoffed. “Otto, show her the door and make sure she don’t come back.”
“Sure thing, bo….” Otto’s reply ended in mid-phrase as a whistling noise came out of nowhere and ended with a loud smack as a steel star suddenly appeared in the middle of his forehead. Blood began to seep out as his eyes dulled, trying to see the offending instrument of his demise, then he started falling forward.
Cody spun around and pulled the shotgun out of his hand just as another whistle pierced the air. She instinctively whipped the barrel up to her face and it deflected the second shuriken sending it ricocheting off to her right.
Meanwhile a dead Otto crashed into Malone’s sorting table, toppling stacks of drugs as several other spinning missiles rained down from the rafters above.
All hell broke loose.
Cody pumped a shell with one jerk of her hand, then fired upward just as a black clad assassin appeared above her. The shotgun blast caught him in the chest and propelled him backward.
Meanwhile Malone’s goons were dancing back and forth; guns pointed every which way trying to find a target. While the black clad assassins seemed to emerge out of the surrounding shadows, strike and then vanish in the blink of an eye. Within thirty seconds half of the gunmen were down from either throwing stars or sword cuts.
Cody had dropped to one knee, using the table as cover while she dug her Colt peacemaker out from under Otto’s dead body.
Two ninjas landed like cats on the table just as Malone fell backwards out of his chair, the only thing that saved his life as a razor sharp katana blade clove the air where his head had been. Still, he had the presence of mind to open up with his own .38 caliber hand gun as he toppled over, three shots catching the first ninja in the chest. The second rose up in a crouch, blade ready when the table top ruptured upward from the shotgun load and tore away his genitals and belly in a spray of blood. He died screaming.
The Pulptress sprung up from her kneeling position and fired another blast towards the ceiling seconds before a steel chain suddenly wrapped itself around the barrel’s tip. Her eyes widened as the weapon was ripped out of her hands and vanished into the darkness.
Damn! She whipped out the Colt and backed up into a mobster with half his head sliced off. He made a gurgling sound in his throat before collapsing in front of her.
This wasn’t going exactly as planned and with most of Malone’s goons dropping like flies, the outcome for her continued well being was diminishing rapidly.
Suddenly three of the wraith like, silent warriors dropped to the floor surrounding her, katana blades aimed at her. Cody fanned her pistol and the masked killer to her front lost the top of his head. At least she’d go down fighting, she thought ready to feel cold steel ripping through her back.
Instead there came the booming of two loud shots and both ninjas were thrown off their feet, gaping wounds in their chests. Cody spun about to see another fighter enter the fray unlike any other she had ever seen before. Tall, draped in a worn, black overcoat and wearing a beat up slouch hat, the shooter marched into the kill zone with twin silver plated .45 automatics blasting away, his targets both the ninjas and Malone’s thugs. And as he came into the harsh, cold light of the florescent lamps, she saw his bone white porcelain mask just before he began to laugh.
Brother Bones!
His guns continued to boom as he approached her, a sulfur stench permeated the air around him. He was the creepiest thing she had ever seen, which was saying a great deal.
Suddenly, he stiffened as two feet of hard steel ruptured out of his chest impaling him. Bones looked down at the sword sticking out of his chest and merely shook his head, the small assassin behind him still holding on to the leather handle, as another ninja suddenly sprung up in front of the undead avenger.
Bones, still clutching his guns, blew away the new threat and then twisted around hard, tearing the blade out of its wielder’s grasp. Then, before the small oriental killer realized what was happening, Brother Bones reached down and embraced him, driving the sword that had penetrated his own carcass into the silent killer, bonding them together. The ninja tried to scream only to have his lungs fill with blood which then spewed out of his mouth as he died, going limp in the avenger’s arms.
“Have you seen enough?” Bones asked the Pulptress as he opened his arms and the dead ninja slid off the now blood soaked katana and crumbled at his feet.
Cody looked around her, the area had become a slaughter house with bodies strewn everywhere. Then she saw Pete Malone stumbling away into the back of the building to lose himself from the copious bloodletting. Without a second thought, she put one hand on the money table and vaulted over it to give chase.
“Stop!” Brother Bones called out, but she ignored him. Without Malone she would never find his brother, the Butcher.
The frightened Malone had disappeared around a corner which led to another hallway. Turning into it, Cody froze as she was instantly enveloped in a thick, cloying darkness. Somewhere ahead there was a scraping noise along the floor, something heavy being moved.
Frantically she dug into her jeans pockets and produced a wooden match which she lit with a flick of her index fingernail. Ahead of her was a narrow hallway she could just barely make out. She started off cautiously, her gun cocked and ready to shoot should Malone be hiding in ambush.
An old worn rug covered part of the floor and as she put her foot down on it the entire fabric caved inward and she fell through the hidden aperture. Cody had been trained to react far quicker than normal people and the second she began to fall, she tossed her pistol and the match, both hands frantically clawing for a grip anyw
here.
They caught the edge of square cut out, stopping her descent as rug continued to fall until she heard a soft splash. She dangled over the open sewer unable to see anything within the dark recesses beneath her. She could faintly hear someone moving further away, sloshing through the water.
Before she could decide what to do next, a big hand wrapped itself around her right wrist and she was pulled upward like a prize fish and set on the floor again. In the inky world around her, she could just barely discern Brother Bones shape.
“Thanks,” she gasped, reaching into her jeans to find another match.
“I told you to stop.”
She scratched the sulfur tip to find him standing right in front of here, the light shining off that smooth ivory colored mask. Cody stifled a scream, aware of how silent Bones moved, much like the wraith he appeared to be.
“Give me a heart attack, why don’t you?” she barked, trying to get her nerves calm. “Just what the hell are you doing here, Bones?”
“I am here to help you…”
“Mission accomplished.”
“…find Arnold Malone.”
“The Butcher. Why?”
“I will explain later. Come, our prey has eluded us.” With that he moved down the empty corridor leaving Cody behind to pick up her gun just as the expiring match burned her fingers.
“Ouch.”
Brother Bones moved around the trap door and she stayed close behind him.
“You knew that was there, didn’t you?”
“Yes, there are hundreds of these under the streets of Cape Noire. They saw much use during the days of prohibition.”
Cody smelled brine. “Is that the sea I smell?”
“Yes. The tunnel leads to Malone’s dockside hideout. We will get there much quicker by car.”
“Lead the way.”
A few minutes later they were back in the warehouse proper, moving past the dead bodies.
“Bones, hold up a second.”
The grim bringer of death halted as Cody came up around him and tapped the katana blade still sticking out of his chest. He looked down surprised to see it was still there.
“Remove it, please.”
Cody stepped around him, the brimstone stench on him pervasive. Using both hands, she clasped the sword handle and pulled the Japanese short sword from his body. Brother Bones grunted and continued his exit out of the building.
***
Cody Randall also retrieved her shotgun by the time she and Brother Bones left the warehouse and started across the slick, empty parking lot. Thunder rolled somewhere off in the far distance and she searched the clouded skies, hoping whatever foul weather was on its way would hold off a while longer.
“Where the hell are we going?” she said to Bone’s back.
Her answer came wheeling out of a nearby alley in the shape of an old, dented up gray roadster that pulled up in front of them with a squeal of the brakes.
“Get in the front,” Bones commanded as he opened the rear door. She complied, holding her hat with one hand and shotgun in the other as she fell back into the seat beside the driver; a freckled face kid with a goofy smile on his face.
“Hi, I’m Bobby Craddock, my friends call me Blackjack.”
“Really?”
“I’m a card dealer at the Gray Owl casino.”
“Well, ah…nice to meet you. I’m Cody Randall.”
“I know,” a nod to the figure in the backseat. “He told me.”
“Drive, Craddock,” Brother Bones interrupted. “Malone has fled to his hideout on Pier Sixteen. We will find him and his brother there.”
“Gotcha, Boss.” Craddock shifted into gear and stomped on the gas pedal sending the roadster speeding off into the deserted streets of Cape Noire.
Okay, thought Cody, it’s catch up time.
“So one of you want to fill me on what’s going on here?”
“Sure,” Craddock agreed as he pulled them around a sharp corner never once letting up on the accelerator. “What do you want to know, Miss Randall?”
Miss Randall? Geez, was this kid real? Then again, he was cute.
“Well for starters, just call me Cody, okay? And how the hell do you and Bones here know so damn much about my business in Cape Noire?”
“The Boss has a spirit guide.”
“A what?”
“The soul of a young girl who appears to him every so often when innocent lives have been taken. Which is what happened two days ago.”
Craddock went on to explain that a local crusading attorney had convinced one of Pete Malone’s accountants to turn state evidence against him for a fat financial reward. Somehow Malone had gotten wind of the betrayal and dispatched his psycho sibling, Arnold to take care of the problem. Arnold Malone, known as the Butcher, did so by blowing up the downtown bus on which the accountant traveled daily. In the process he also killed thirteen innocent passengers.
“Their souls cry out for vengeance,” Brother Bones added at the end of Craddock’s tale. “My spirit guide sent me to avenge them. She also told me another seeker of truth and justice had come to Cape Noire and I was to find and save her.”
“Meaning me? You’re spirit guide told you about me?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you find that a little strange?” Cody looked back at the undead creature with the porcelain mask and realized she had just asked a dead man if he thought ghosts were strange. “Right. Forget I asked.”
Craddock chuckled, “He does take some getting use to.”
“No fooling.” They were leaving the main boulevards for narrower streets. She could make out wharves and anchored ships through the gaps between the old buildings they were passing.
“So tell me, Blackjack, how’d you get hooked up in all this?”
Craddock eased up on the gas pedal as they rolled onto the road skirting the piers. A tense fog was beginning to slide in from the bay. His headlights barely penetrated the thick blanket of condensation.
“Two years ago he saved me from being shot by his twin brother.”
“His brother?”
“It’s a long story. Anyway I owe him and the work he does means something. So I help in whatever way I can.”
Craddock slowed the roadster to a crawl, peered at a dilapidated building front and then stopped the car. “We’re here.”
***
Cody Randall clutched her shotgun to her bosom, standing beside the Undead Avenger as they looked up at the words, Hanson Boat Builders. Faded letters on a crooked sign over the main doors to the wooden structure.
“Stay with me,” his gravely voice ordered. “Do what I say without hesitation.”
“I’m not use to taking orders,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Then stay with Craddock in the car.”
She pulled her cowboy hat down and glared at him, her show of bravado lost on his stoic demeanor.
Didn’t anything ever get to this guy? “Alright, Bones, have it your way. But let’s hurry it up. I don’t want them escaping us a second time.”
Brother Bones seemed to nod, then he walked over to the iron padlock that wrapped around the twin door handles. Smoothly he produced his powerful .45 automatics and proceeded to blow the lock into small pieces.
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
Cody moved past him, pulled off a loose section of chain and pulled the right half open by a few feet. “So much for the element of surprise, heh?”
“They knew we were coming,” was all Bones would say as he moved past her into the shop’s interior.
Unlike the business district warehouse, the boat shop was brightly lit from high hanging light bulbs, and as they moved through it, Cody gave the place a careful visual inspection. A thick layer of sawdust covered the floor almost muting their footsteps as they moved around work benches, saw horses and various machines such as drills and lathes, all used in the manufacture of sea worthy crafts.
They passed all styles of boats from canoes to larger sailing shi
ps, all assembled with different planks of lumber and steel spines for reinforcement. Several completed hulls were suspended upside down on pulleys from the ceiling, where they had been hoisted to allow coats of paint to dry properly. That was another thing Cody became aware of, the strong odors that saturated the shop from linseed oils to paint and alcohol based thinners. It was clear, despite its owner’s nefarious illegal activities, Hanson Boat Builders was a genuine enterprise with lots of contracts.
“Hold it right there, Spook!” Pete Malone came out from behind a stack of old lobster crates with a Thompson submachine gun in his hands. Behind him emerged his brother, Arnold. He appeared unarmed, wearing a simply gray suit and black tie. Cody could see the family resemblance accentuated by the thick glasses both brothers wore.
“Your reckoning is upon you, Arnold Malone,” Brother Bones announced, his own gleaming pistols pointing at the two Malone brothers.
“Is that a fact?” the small man retorted as he began unbuttoning his jacket. “Well, let’s see how much you are willing to pay for this dance, Brother Bones.”
With a flourish, Butcher Malone pulled opened his suit to reveal a strange corset of glass tubes that was wrapped around his middle.
“Dear God in heaven,” Cody gasped. “What the hell is that stuff?”
“It’s nitroglycerin, my dear. And the slightest bump to any of these vials could set it off…and then …KABOOM! We’re all history.”
“So we have us a Mexican stand off,” Pete Malone declared. “I suggest the two of you slowly turn around and walk out of here.”
“That is not going to happen,” Bones started to bring his right hand up, sighting along the top of his pistol. “Instead both of you are going to die here.”
Cody sidled up to the black clad zombie warrior and whispered, “What are you doing? If that nitro goes, we’re dead ducks. At least I am.”
“No more talk, Pulptress. Shoot the Butcher.”
“What? Are you crazy…”
Brother Bones squeezed the trigger and shot Pete Malone between the eyes. The mob boss’s head rocked back, surprise in his eyes as his brain was demolished by the hot missile passing through it.