by Bill Carson
The last one hit the bonnet of the nearest vehicle with a resounding clunk and harmlessly bounced off onto the gravel.
“We can’t have this now. It just wouldn’t be fair, twenty against three,” Ryan muttered as he aimed at one of the grenades, and a second later the thing exploded with a sharp crack of thunder and blinding white light. Sparks and smoke flew out of it and instantly maimed two of the four armed men as they stepped from the lead vehicle, which was now in flames.
The rest of the vehicles suddenly stopped, and all occupants spilled out quickly. They took up prone positions and started to open fire with automatic weapons, pouring it into the doorway of the hotel. George pulled Anna to safety, and with an immense burst of fear-induced strength he turned the huge oak banqueting table on its side, dragged it to the far wall and hid himself and Anna behind it. He sat on the floor and cradled her in his arms.
Must be a delayed reaction, Nick thought as the welcome sight of the explosion lit the battlefield. The sound from the old Webley pistol was deafening as Nick returned fire, but above that he could hear the welcoming steady tap-tap-tap coming from the intermittent bursts of the Thompson as John stitched the rounds into them. But Nick knew they couldn’t keep up this type of defence for long, as their ammunition was already becoming low. It’s just a matter of time before they overrun us he thought as he fired the last two rounds from the shotgun at them. He then decided to make his last stand inside the hallway to try and bring them into a choke point and murder them as they came through the narrow gap.
Meanwhile, the strange smouldering figure that Ryan had spotted earlier had made its way undetected into the hotel through the service entrance at the back. It had totally ignored Nick and the rest of them as it went past unseen. The gunfire intensified, and the attackers were now making significant ground. Nick decided to draw them in so he fired two more shots and then crept back inside, reloaded and waited for the first of them to come through the opening.
Twelve rounds left, he said to himself.
George peeked out from behind the table, and watched Nick blowing great holes into their attackers as each one of Costa’s goons came through the gap. The pistols spat fire and death into their bodies and they stood no chance of survival at that range. Then Nick walked forward and just blasted away at anything that was moving.
The pistols were now empty but they still kept coming. One of the men had managed to crawl inside, and he now had Nick dead centre in his sights on his assault rifle. Nick froze and closed his eyes but then suddenly there were three thunderous pistol shots from behind him. George dropped the gorilla just in time.
“Jesus,” Nick breathed as he looked over his shoulder at George, who was standing behind the table, still pulling the trigger of the empty smoking gun. Nick took it from his grasp. “Well done, George. I think we’ve put a stop to them for the time being, so stay behind here with Anna, OK?” He patted him on the shoulder.
Their last stand seemed to have worked, and Nick had managed to drop eight of them before he ran out of bullets. The others had decided to retreat and regroup before launching another assault. As they did so, Ryan picked a few of the bad guys off. Costa’s soldiers decided to drop their weapons and run back toward the gate once they saw the heads of their comrades being suddenly blown apart by the silent sniper’s shots.
Jimmy Costa was watching all of the action from behind the curtain. As his men ran for cover he decided on doing the same, and began to hastily empty the contents of his safe into a holdall. There was a noise outside the door and Costa blazed away at it with his pistol, shooting the door handle to pieces. Despite that, the door slowly opened.
As he fired his last shot, the first thing Costa noticed was a terrible stench in the air which resembled something like an overcooked joint of roast beef. At that moment Harold Harper booted the door open and stumbled into the office. He grimaced with excruciating pain as only his index finger and thumb were left intact on his right hand. He gripped the pistol between his two remaining digits as he aimed the gun at Costa.
The blast had removed the flesh from the rest of his fingers, and all that remained of them were yellow stick-like bones and some shredded tendons which hung from them like a bunch of thin Chinese noodles. His other arm was mutilated in a hideous manner and had been completely rotated. The useless appendage hung limply at his side.
His trousers were ragged and his legs had been badly seared. One side of his face was coated with huge glistening yellow blisters. Costa dropped the empty pistol, and backed away from the hideous mess of a man standing before him.
“Harold, is that you?” Costa gasped in disbelief, as he eyed the bizarre figure.
“It’s me, Jimmy, thought you’d got rid of me, did you?” Harold hissed as he shuffled forward.
“Listen, Harold, I had nothing to do with that bomb. It must have been down to them others. They done ya, not me,” Costa pleaded as he backed off into the corner.
“Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic,” Harold croaked as he slumped into a chair by the door.
“Now hold on, Harold, don’t do nothing hasty. We can still get away with this one if we use our loaves. I’ve got all the money we’ll ever need right here and a fast car outside in the lock up. We’ll take the lift to the basement and have it away on our toes. Fifty-fifty, right down the middle, just you and me, and I’ll take you to someone to get you all fixed up. Whaddya say?” Costa inched closer to the desk drawer.
“I say this. You are about to die because you are a wretched cowardly man and that’s all you have ever been and I’m… going… to…” Harold slowly pitched forward from the chair and fell face first into the carpet, where he remained motionless. Jimmy quickly grabbed the pistol from the drawer, snatched up the bag full of cash and jewels, but as he was about to make his escape John Kane suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs. He levelled the old machine gun at Costa’s midriff. Jimmy’s eyes zoomed in on the Tommy gun and he backed off into the office.
“Now don’t be a fool, son, I’ve got a shit load of cash here. It’s all yours – take it. There’s a car outside with the keys in it as well. You’ll be set up for life, here, take it. Look, it was just revenge for my brother. You’d have done the same, now come on, whaddya say?” Costa backed away from him and laid the pistol on the desk. He dropped the bag at his feet. It tipped over on its side, and some of the chunky gold jewellery spilled out onto the floor.
“That’s funny, I seem to remember your brother said something similar before I blew his brains out. Who are you people, anyway? Without your thugs behind you, you’re nothing, just pure scum,” John said, as he ran his tongue over the painful blood-filled craters in his gums.
“Fuck you, I’m Jimmy Costa!” he said defiantly with his arms outstretched, and waited for the machine gun to cut him down.
“Who?” John said.
As he aimed the barrel of the deadly machine gun directly at Costa’s chest, he gripped the forestock tight and squeezed the trigger. The empty sound of the click of the trigger seemed to be magnified a thousand times. Costa quickly snatched the pistol from the desk, and without a thought quickly squeezed off two rounds. One sent the Tommy gun flying from John’s grasp and the other ripped a hole through his side.
The impact knocked him on his back. He was now as good as dead as Costa loomed over him and came in for the kill. Costa knelt beside him and pressed the smoking barrel of the pistol up against John’s temple.
“Well, there’s a stroke of luck good for me and bad luck for you. You just asked me who I am. Well, I’m the bloke holding the fucking loaded gun at your head, and this is for my brother,” Jimmy said, as his finger curled around the chrome-plated trigger.
While Jimmy had been talking, John had managed to unscrew the cap on the bottle of the Fluorosulfuric acid that he’d swiped from the desk in the police station. He turned and quickly tossed the contents of the bottle straight into Costa’s sneering face.
The high-pitched scream that emanat
ed from the man was almost inhuman. John watched as Jimmy fired his pistol blindly around the room with one hand, while covering his disintegrating face with the other. He stumbled and fell backwards over his desk, only to rise and fall once more, this time with both hands stuck to his rapidly liquefying features.
The sound of the gunshots had alerted Nick. He raced to the top floor, and as he reached the landing he could see that Costa’s bullet-riddled office door was slightly ajar. He approached cautiously and pushed the door open with the toe of his shoe. As the door slowly creaked open the first thing he saw was Costa lying at the back of the office in the foetal position, his fingers just mere twigs over the dark cavity where his face had once been.
There was a foul and terrible stench in the room, and a strange thin mist of light blue smoke hung in the air. Nick went over and took a closer look at Costa, but before doing so he picked up Costa’s revolver and put two rounds into the centre of his chest, just to make sure.
He pushed Costa’s hands away from his face with the barrel of the revolver and the remaining skin fell away like strips of melting mozzarella. Now he could see that there was nothing left of his face; it had been completely burned away and his teeth and all bone material had disappeared as well. It was as if the contents of his head had been neatly scooped out, so all that remained was an empty shell, totally and utterly devoid of all physiognomy.
Nick went over to check on John, and his eye was drawn to the holdall full of cash and jewels which twinkled against the warm rays of the rising sun streaming through the window. Nick, not one for turning down such an invitation, immediately grabbed the bag and pulled John to his feet. He stepped over Harold who was face down, rigid and unmoving. Nick bundled John into the lift and took him into the banqueting hall, where George immediately got to work trying to stem the steady flow of blood coming from the hole in his side.
“Right, I think it’s time to check out of here, George,” Nick said.
“Too right. Whatcha got there, then?” George said as he pointed to the heavy holdall.
“Oh, just some souvenirs. How’s Anna doing?”
“She’ll be OK, only minor cuts. She must have hit her head when she fell over. She’s a bit dizzy, that’s all,” George said with big grin.
“Nick, you OK?” Anna said with a weak, croaky little voice.
“Hello, love, everything’s gonna be all right now. We’ll be out of here in a minute and back home before you know it. You are so brave and I’m so lucky to have someone like you,” he said, as he leant forward and gently placed his swollen lips onto hers.
“What the…?” George exclaimed, as the foliaged form of Andy Ryan suddenly presented itself in the middle of the hall, holding a huge rifle across his chest.
“What the bloody hell’s that?” Nick said, as he squinted in disbelief at the peculiar figure. He immediately stood up and held the empty revolver out in front of him.
“I’m here for John Kane and no one else, so you can put that down. Now where is he?” the figure said, as it removed its bushy hood.
“He’s upstairs, top floor, back room. He’s dead, the two of them killed each other in there,” Nick said quickly, as John tried to get to his feet.
Andy Ryan took a look around and noted the pile of bodies littering the doorway. He was simply in awe of the magnificent last stand that they had put up. “Who are you people, anyway? And what the hell are you doing here?”
“Well, I’m a private detective and this is Anna, my fiancée. This is George and he runs a pub,” George stood up and puffed his chest out proudly as Nick pointed to him, “and this is one of the waiters. Looks like we were all in the wrong place at the wrong time, you could say,” Nick said.
“Yeah, if you say so. I’m going upstairs to take a look, OK?” Ryan trotted up the staircase.
“Just when you thought things couldn’t get any weirder, a bloody bush walks through the door holding a gun,” George smiled.
“Right, George, it’s time to definitely blow the gaff. Do you reckon you can get that old banger of yours started?” Nick said.
“I’ll try, mate, it’s pretty smashed up though,” George said, as he grabbed a claw hammer from Costa’s tool box to remove the six inch nail that he’d hammered through the accelerator pedal.
Within five minutes Ryan was back. “So that’s John Kane, is it? The bloke up there with no face or teeth. Even the skin on his hands has melted. What the bloody hell happened to him? And of course it’s now impossible to say who it is, as he’s got no teeth or fingerprints. So I suppose he could be anybody?”
“I saw the whole thing. They killed each other up there, and that’s all there is to it. We’ve got wounded to evacuate and we’re out of here. You can do what you like,” Nick said in a determined tone, with the revolver firmly clutched in his hand, which was duly noted by Ryan.
“You said they killed each other, but there’s only one body in the room. Where’s the other one?” Ryan asked.
“Listen, mate, I ain’t got all the answers, have I? We’re out of here and anyway, who the fuck are you?”
“Me? Good question, I‘m a shadow, a nobody, I don’t exist and I’m not really here.”
“Well, I’m glad that’s cleared that one up,” George said sarcastically, as he started to clear the rubble away from under the wheels of the old battered Rover.
“It looks like John Kane must have been killed here today, then. And my job is done and that’s what I’m going to put in my report. It was my job to kill him, you see, and it looks like someone’s already done it for me. Now, in about ten minutes I’m going to call in the cavalry so you lot had better clear out, unless you all want to be sharing a police cell,” he said, as he grabbed John by the arm and looked him in the eye as he hobbled past. “Understand this, mate, John Kane is dead, OK?”
“Yeah, I heard he died a long time ago,” John said, as George helped him into the back of the Land Rover.
“Yes! She’s gonna start, I knew she wouldn’t let us down! Anna, you jump in the back and strap yourself in, and Uncle George will have you out of here in no time,” George said, as the engine came to life on the third twist of the key.
“What about your car, Nick, you fancy driving it back home?” George said.
“I’d have a job, mate. It’s been shot to pieces and it’s got grenade fragments all over it. It was bad luck that motor, anyway. I think this is the best place for it, and I’ve been thinking about getting one of them new Jags, you know,” Nick said.
George’s weary old wagon limped out of the grounds. As they approached the park gates the horizon suddenly lit up behind them as the hotel went up in a huge explosion, courtesy of some carefully placed C4 explosive from Andy Ryan’s backpack.
“That’s it then. There’ll be absolutely no evidence left now. It’ll all be totally incinerated and you’ll be in the clear, my son,” Nick said and John nodded in agreement.
George changed down into second gear and almost slowed to a halt as they passed the smoking wreckage of Billy Brooks and Johnnie Carter’s hearse, their gruesome overcooked blackened heads lolling from the window of the upturned carcass of the vehicle.
Harold Harper was somehow still alive and had managed to drag his burnt, battered, broken body across the field and over to the wreckage site. He was now standing right in front of them on the other side of the road. They didn’t see him at first, and only knew of his presence as he hobbled forward and waved at George to stop the car.
Harold had managed to strap one of his pistols to the bloody stump of his wrist by using his belt and his teeth, and his one remaining finger was hooked around the trigger of the Colt 45. It was now pointing straight at Anna. The man was a mess, his body was wrecked and torn apart, and it was a sheer miracle that a human being inflicted with such hideous injuries could still be alive.
As the early morning sunlight streamed through the branches of the bare trees, Harold’s dreadfully disfigured head was clearly made visible. He l
ooked like something that should not belong in this world. He truly was evil personified in flesh and in thought.
“I want everyone except the driver to disembark now,” he said in a low pathetic tone, his mouth drooling with a mixture of thick spittle and blood. He stepped back a few paces and kept the shaky pistol trained on Anna as she stepped down from the vehicle. He then ordered her, Nick and John to face the wall as he slowly shuffled the battered silver security case from the side of the road over to the Land Rover with his foot. The case was blackened and dented but had survived the blast and the contents were still intact.
Andy Ryan had rescaled the huge tree to collect the rest of his kit that he’d left there. As he looked out from his vantage point, the red brake light of the old vehicle in the distance had caught his eye. He picked up his binoculars and zoomed in on the strange little gathering by the park gate.
“He’s going to kill us all, I know it. Look at him, I know that look,” John Kane whispered to Nick.