Gator Wave

by David F. Berens

  The entire right side of the building collapsed and cinders exploded into the air above them. Troy felt himself duck and raised his hands to block anything from falling on him. The other dude just stared into the embers of the ruined remains of Woody’s.

  “Okay, then,” Troy said, mustering his courage.

  A siren rang out down the road and he considered waiting for the firetrucks to arrive. As he looked back, he saw something fluttering above the back end of the SUV.

  “Well, I’ll be danged,” he said, stepping back to the rear of the vehicle.

  Spinning atop the CB radio antenna in the evening breeze, circling lazily, like it didn’t have a care in the world … was his hat. He put a foot up on the bumper and grabbed it. He slid it on his head and turned back toward the nearly extinct strip club. From this vantage point, he could see all the way into the bar. A dude was standing on the bar, walking back and forth, two bottles of liquor—one in each hand—spouting flame from dangling bits of cloth. And behind him, huddled under the nearly empty shelves of booze, Troy could see Cinnamon, crouching as far away from the guy as she could get.

  There was no time to wait for the cavalry. Once again, Troy knew he was going to run into danger, maybe even certain death, to save the girl.

  He left the dude who had let him out of the cop’s car standing in a daze and ran through the open door without slowing down. If he had one thing on the mad bomber, it was the element of surprise. It was unfortunate that he hadn’t checked the back of the Explorer and found what Sheriff Paul Puckett referred to as his Islamorada Crowd Control.

  47

  Who’ll Stop The Rain

  Troy burst through the door, absolutely certain that he could hear the “Flight of the Valkyries” reverberating through the flaming timbers in the remains of the roof. He hoped in vain that the choppers were coming and then, in a sudden moment of clarity, he realized he wasn’t in Afghanistan. Dude, this is Islamorada, he told himself. Get a grip, Troy. This is no time for an episode. The one psychologist he had agreed to see before they discharged him had insisted on calling them episodes. After twenty minutes, Troy said he was all good, a bit more fishing and layin’ in a hammock would do the trick and he didn’t need to set up another appointment. The doc had chased him down the hall until Troy wheeled on him and thumped him in the chest with a single finger. He’d flopped down onto his back, his white coat rumpling around him. After that, Troy had walked out past two orderlies, a heavyset nurse with a lazy eye, and a handful of applauding veterans without incident.

  As he cleared the blazing threshold, a flaming bottle of something flew over his head and smashed in liquid fire behind him. He ducked just in time, the Molotov cocktail singeing the peacock feather in his hat. The searing heat of the projectile must have been the last straw for whatever was still supporting the header above the door, because it collapsed like a house of cards in a hurricane. The exit was now as impassable as a velvet rope to a tourist on South Beach.

  That’s one way to keep customers from walkin’ out, Troy thought.

  He pulled himself up to a crouching position, his knee protesting all the way, and squinted through the smoke and fire. Of all the things he expected to see, he estimated that what he saw was literally the last thing he would have guessed would be playing out in front of him.

  On top of the bar, a flaming bottle of something in either hand, naked as a jaybird, stood the drummer for Big Dick and the Extenders—whom Troy realized were not playing at the moment. The lanky man didn’t have a stitch of clothing covering what his mama had brought him into the world wearing, except for one thing. A singed, straw cowboy hat. In a sudden moment of clarity, the thing Troy had been trying to remember, the fact on the tip of his tongue, the déjà vu feeling of recognition snapped into place.

  It was him. The man who Troy was watching dangle his body across the bar hurling fiery death around at every square inch of Woody’s nightclub was the same man who had murdered Earl Heskett and held him and a few new friends hostage in the back of Benny’s World of Liquor. Because the dude had stolen a straw cowboy hat from the store and disappeared—originally, he’d taken Troy’s hat off his head, but eventually it came back like it always did—the authorities had started calling him The Cowboy Killer.

  That incident had made the bus ride down to the Keys quite memorable and the kid who had perpetrated it all was now raining brimstone on the one and only bar Troy had enjoyed in Islamorada. Troy took an awkward duck-walk step forward, trying to stay below the thick smoke, but a hand clamped down hard on his ankle. He kicked at it, but the grip remained firm. He turned to see who had a hold of him and was shocked to see Ian Bass lying on the floor, outstretched like a soldier on the battlefield.

  Ian pulled at Troy with surprising strength, hauling him backward behind the overturned, charred jukebox. It was just enough cover to keep the Cowboy Killer from seeing them.

  “What in the hell are you doing in here, Troy?” Ian gasped.

  The FDLE officer was holding his right arm tight against his abdomen. Troy could see that his sleeve was burned away and the man’s skin was charred. He probably had third degree burns.

  Seeing Troy’s eyes, Ian said, “He tagged me with a bottle as soon as I walked in the door. A pretty damn good shot. Knocked my gun out of my hand.”

  Ian jutted his chin toward the gun lying on the floor, ten feet across a smoldering bed of coals that used to be the carpet.

  “I can’t get to it,” Ian explained. “My right arm is burned and feels like it’s broken. Can’t crawl at all and if I stand up, he’ll see me and hurl a vodka bomb my way.”

  Troy nodded. “So, what’s the plan, then? Get out, call the cops?”

  “I am the cops, Troy. But to your point, I called the cops, remember? Puckett is probably trying to finish his solitaire game before he comes to check it out. And as for getting out, that ship has sailed.”

  In reply to his statement, the roof above the front door lurched and fell a few feet in a splash of brilliant embers. Troy was reminded of a log in a fire pit reaching its breaking point where the fire had eaten through the center of it and it split in two, tumbling in half throwing sparks into the sky.

  “There’s only one thing that will get us out of this alive, Troy,” Ian winced in pain as he said it, his face looking more pale than it had a second ago. “You’ve got to get that gun. I think I have two shots left. That’s enough to take this guy out. I know you had time in the service. This is your time to take out the bad guy and win the war.”

  “Whoa now,” Troy said, raising his hands in a double high-five. “I was just an officer chopper taxi pilot. Only combat I ever saw got my buddy’s legs blown clean off.”

  Ian studied him with resignation. Troy wasn’t sure exactly what the man was seeing, but he nodded. His face became that of a poker player laying down his last card.

  “The girl, your friend, Cinnamon,” Ian said, his eyes flitting toward the bar. “She’s behind the bar. The naked bomber there has her pinned, she can’t get out.”

  Troy felt a blast of icy cold reality hit him. “Dangit.”

  He glanced over at the gun. Seven feet away, maybe eight. If he could get to his feet, it was two big steps, then he’d have to aim and fire. The guy would surely get a chance to throw at least one bottle at him. He figured his best bet was to wait the guy out a few seconds. Let him discharge a couple more cocktails, then go while he was reloading. Fireballs shattered the VIP room—in which nothing but regular lap dances happened—and Troy jumped for the gun. He took a step and was greeted with an explosion of flame and glass at his feet. He leapt backward and fell flat on his back next to Ian. The FDLE officer patted Troy’s leg putting out a small flame threatening the hair on his shin.

  “Dude is good,” Troy said. “Like Nolan Ryan good. How the heck is he flinging those things so fast?”

  “He’s been doing it for a while now,” Ian said. “And he’s pretty accurate, too.”

  Great, Troy
thought. Kid coulda been an MLB contender, but he’s here in my bar, in his birthday suit, killing people with burning alcohol bottles.

  “I kept hoping he’d run out of ammo,” Ian said, “but they just keep coming. Can’t move or he hums one right at us.”

  “We gotta get him to look away for a sec.” Troy peeked over the edge of the jukebox. The Cowboy Killer, still prancing around the bar, did indeed have his head on a swivel. Anything or anyone that moved, paid for it with a fastball of fire. “What we need is a good old fashioned distraction.”

  Which is exactly what Cinnamon Starr was thinking as she inched away from the naked man stalking the top of the bar. She had a plan. She wasn’t one hundred percent sure it would work because nothing in the building was up to current fire codes, but she thought it was worth a shot.

  48

  The Cavalry

  Troy was about to suggest that Ian jump up and shout waving his one good arm to distract the Molotov flinger, when he saw a hot pink blur run out from behind the bar. Everything slowed down like a John Woo film. The one pretty dancer at Woody’s nightclub darted out in long, gazelle-like strides—an impressive feat in the nine-inch heels she was wearing. He saw the little red box on the wall she was running for and realized what she was doing. She yanked down on the handle, sending the fire alarm into action. The bell trilled through the air with ear-splitting volume. Troy could hardly believe it was so loud amidst all the chaos. His first instinct was to watch the action sequence, enjoying the first-rate direction, brilliant special effects, and Oscar-worthy acting, but Ian smacked him on the arm. He yelled the word “go” but it came out in the low rumbling growl of slo-mo.

  “Goooooo,” the FDLE officer shouted.

  Troy snapped back to reality. He dove for the gun as the sprinklers came on. He rolled onto his side, raising his arms to aim at The Cowboy Killer. He pulled the trigger and the click was deafening. He pulled it again and again. The Glock clicked like a metronome keeping time for “Flight of the Bumblebee.” Troy shot a glare over at Ian. Somehow, even with a bad arm, the man shrugged and held up his palms.

  Troy glanced back up at the man on the bar, certain he was about to get a flaming drink to the face. All he saw was the man’s lily-white bottom staring back at him. Cinnamon had distracted him alright and he was not happy at all.

  He screamed, “No, no, no! That’s not the plan. The plan was to send all of you to hell. This place is a bastion of indecency and filth and the devil’s workshop.”

  Troy thought that was an odd thing to say standing on the bar completely naked, but the man was obviously one brick shy of a full load anyway.

  He screamed again, but it was unintelligible gibberish spat through his spittle covered lips. Troy watched as the kid reached down, picked up a bottle, and lit it with a Zippo. Instead of throwing the bottle, he launched himself down from the bar and ran straight at Cinnamon. Her eyes were wide and she became a deer in the headlights, frozen to the spot to the right of the fire alarm. Troy willed her to move, but she didn’t. He wondered if she thought the guy was like a T-Rex whose limited vision could only see movement. That obviously wasn’t the case, because he was tromping right at her.

  Troy jumped up. His knee buckled and pain shot through his thigh. Not now, he thought. He massaged his aching tendons until he could stand. He lurched like a fast Zombie toward The Cowboy Killer who had raised his arm into the air. He looked like the Statue of Liberty, a Smirnoff torch held high in one hand—if the statue had been a man, without a dress, wearing a cowboy hat.

  Not going to make it in time, Troy thought. He leapt toward them, hands outstretched, watching in horror as the flaming bottle began its slow arc toward Cinnamon.

  Troy opened his mouth to scream, but the voice that came out was not his. He fell to the ground, his knee refusing to take him any farther. The bottle the man had thrown at Cinnamon smashed just above her head and didn’t explode. It must have been thick glass, Troy thought as it bounced away harmlessly. The screaming—that hadn’t been his—continued and he turned to see what was happening. Through a wall of flame, fire dripping all around on non-flammable curtains, posters crisping and flying away like Autumn leaves, and sequins melting into silvery pools of mercurial goo, the man who had freed Troy from the Explorer burst in, arms raised Evel Knieval style. If only the dude had a motorcycle, it would’ve looked like a Vegas stunt, as it was, it looked like the stupidest thing Troy had ever seen anyone do—running into a building that was seconds away from collapsing into a fiery, flattened pile of burning rubble.

  The guy, who Troy would later find out was named Gary, sprinted through the smoke and flame like a man on a mission, or a Kamikaze flight. He was two steps from the bar when the most serendipitous thing occurred. Troy watched as a body—a body Troy had thought was a dead man—stirred. Though the man’s silver hair was drenched with blood and his face was a mask of dark congealed fluid, Troy recognized him. Dante. It was Dante rising from the dead. As he made it up on all fours, he looked in the direction of the door and obviously saw Gary running toward him. His eyes became huge white orbs, glowing against the mask of blood on his face. The terror there reminded Troy of similar looks he’d seen on faces during his short, but dreadful time in Afghanistan.

  Dante opened his mouth and screamed, but Troy couldn’t hear anything over the sudden cracking of a timber above him. He rolled to his left, guessing at the safest direction to move. A massive piece of the rafters above him slammed down, angled just over his head. Cinders rained down on him burning tiny pinpricks on his arms and legs. Ian, whom he had bumped into when he rolled, slapped his good hand on Troy’s back to put out several small spots that had ignited.

  Troy looked back toward the bar to see Gary take a step up on Dante and launch himself like an Olympic vaulter up and over the bar. His right foot took off from the old man’s back and his left hit the edge of the bar at full speed. He jumped hard and flew into the air. The Cowboy Killer had just put his hands up to grab Cinnamon when the missile named Gary slammed into him.

  Cinnamon must have seen what was coming, because she ducked just in time for the two men to crash into the wall behind her. The Cowboy Killer’s head smashed into the drywall, leaving a bowling ball sized hole in it, but Gary wasn’t through. He began raining blows down on the man’s head, shoulders, and back. The dude squirmed enough to roll over under Gary, but Troy thought that was a bad idea. The punches were now landing on his face and chest. One punch glanced off the guy’s forehead and his cowboy hat went sailing away to catch fire and burn up in a flash.

  “He’s gonna kill him,” Ian croaked. “You’ve got to stop him.”

  Troy didn’t hesitate. He jumped up, Ian’s empty Glock in his hand. In ten obstacle-course-like steps, he was on him. The Cowboy Killer was bleeding through a sickening grin, his teeth stained red from blood running from his nose. A strange thought entered Troy’s mind. He wondered if this is what the kid had wanted to happen. Maybe he couldn’t stop the killing and needed someone to stop him. Why else would he take a job as a drummer in Islamorada rather than continue south and hop on a boat to Cuba? As Troy stared down at him, a flash of recognition painted the man’s face.

  “Hey,” he said pointing up at Troy. “I know you. You’re the guy from Benny’s liquor store … with the hat.”

  Gary’s arm pulled back and Troy knew if he let the fist fly, the man on the ground—the now-completely-naked Cowboy Killer—might not make it out of here alive. Troy raised the Glock and smacked Gary in the back of the head. He crumpled forward in an awkward bloody hug over the man.

  At that moment, the sky opened up and water began to rain down on them from all sides. The firemen had finally arrived in what Troy imagined were nanoseconds before the total collapse of Woody’s nightclub in Islamorada:

  13 UGLY GIRLS AND 1 PRETTY ONE.

  49

  The Sheriff Is Near

  Sheriff Paul Puckett jumped out of his car, ran two steps toward the smoldering, wet mess
of a building that used to be Woody’s. Even though the Islamorada Fire Rescue Station #20—or the Bernard Russell Station, named for its founder—was only three blocks away, the trucks had been delayed arriving for a staggering thirty minutes. Linda “Big Boobs” Morganstern’s prized Bengal cat had managed to claw its way to the top of a thirty-foot palm on Marathon. The fifty-thousand dollar cat found itself stranded with no limbs to make its way back down on. The seventy-five foot ladder truck had been dispatched to deal with that. Cheeca Lodge had commandeered the use of the two pumpers to fill a newly repaired pool. Normally, they wouldn’t have been used at this time of night, but the owner of the famous resort had put a big, fat campaign check into Paul’s hands requesting both trucks to get the pool filled before the pending arrival of a semi-famous starlet the next day. Though he was not directly responsible for the operations of the station, he could certainly influence what they did and didn’t do in relation to non-emergency activities. Amidst the screams and flames, he could see his reelection efforts floating up and away with the sparkling embers.

  Apparently, there were a few people with serious injuries on their way to the hospital and a couple of people had been shot during the blaze, but for the most part, the building had taken the most damage. Oddly, the back corner of the building Paul recognized as Dante Caparelli’s office—another wacky story altogether—was still standing. He took two steps toward the sizzling, smoking, dripping mess and stumbled on a piece of the front door. He reached out to stabilize himself against a black Ford Explorer parked in the first space. His hand smudged through the ash on the vehicle uncovering the familiar logo of the Islamorada Sheriff’s Department.