The Devil's Graveyard Read online

  Twenty-Eight

  Invincible Angus fired his pistol and all hell broke loose. Literally. Mutant creatures were climbing out of the ground all around him. One of them grabbed hold of his pants leg as it pulled itself up, which was the cue for him to start shooting wildly in all directions. It was also the cue for Elvis and Sanchez to make their escape.

  ‘Run!’ yelled the King.

  He needn’t have bothered. Sanchez had already dropped the shovel, turned and started heading back to the roadside, at what was, for him, a crisp jog, running as best as he could considering his wrists were bound together with tape. He’d managed to avoid the outstretched arms of a couple of creatures that had surfaced behind him, and luck was still on his side. The bodies of the two security guards had attracted the zombies’ attention. They were easy prey: recently killed, still warm, and unable to fight back.

  Angus, on the other side of the grave that he had made Sanchez and Elvis dig, had rather more of a problem on his hands. There were no corpses on his side of the grave, so all the zombies near him were reaching out and grasping for him. Although he’d shot the first one in the head, they were springing up all around him. Not that Sanchez gave a fuck. Served the dickwad right.

  There were no zombies between Sanchez and the van at the roadside, and he and Elvis charged towards it as fast as they could. Sanchez found running difficult at the best of times, but it was proving particularly tricky with his hands stuck out in front of him. Making a virtue of the situation, he raised his hands in front of his face, closed his eyes and prayed to any kind of god who might be listening that the van was unlocked and that the keys were in the ignition. And if there happened to be an untouched meatball sub on the front seat, then so much the better.

  They were within a few yards of the road when a small glimmer of light approaching on the highway in the distance offered them some hope. A single headlight appeared about half a mile down the road. Sanchez looked at Elvis. He’d seen it too, and knew it was their best bet.

  It would, they hoped, be slightly safer on the road because the chances of any of the loathsome, half-rotted creatures buried beneath it breaking through the asphalt were slim. But their luck ran out before they reached it, as a hand burst out of the dirt at Sanchez’s feet and grabbed his left ankle. The check to his progress was enough to make him stumble, and he lost his footing, falling heavily to the ground and hitting himself in the face with his bound hands. It was lucky for the bar owner that Elvis, although now a yard or two ahead, wasn’t the type to ditch a friend just because there were half-rotting undead creatures climbing out of the ground. Hearing Sanchez fall, he stopped to see what had happened.

  ‘Fuck, Sanchez! You got a big fuckin’ hand on your ankle!’ He was staring down at his friend’s foot where the grey-skinned, almost skeletal hand was gripping his ankle tightly. Attached to the hand by a rotting arm, rising up out of the sand and dirt, was the upper half of a giant of a zombie. It had a head twice the size of any normal man’s. Its skin was a dark ashen colour that looked as though it had been covered in hot tar. Its eyes were yellow and glowed brightly in the darkness. Had Sanchez seen it he would almost certainly have fainted from terror.

  Still mercifully unaware of what had grabbed him, Sanchez was far more concerned with trying to free his ankle from its hand. He heaved hard with all the power of his leg muscles, but the monster’s strength was far greater. It was trying to pull his foot towards its mouth as it climbed out of its former grave. If the other zombies looked hungry, then this one looked like it could eat the terrified bar owner whole, without spitting out the bones. Its gaping mouth was enormous, revealing a set of large yellow teeth set in shrunken, bleeding gums and a pair of huge tonsils at the back of its throat. Its bright yellow eyes were agape at the sight of Sanchez’s plump leg in its hand.

  Elvis reached out, grabbed his friend’s bound hands and pulled as hard as he could. Now the King was strong, but the giant muthafucker on Sanchez’s leg was a shitload stronger, so his attempt was in vain.

  ‘C’mon, ya fuckin’ wimp! You can make it!’ he yelled down at Sanchez.

  The wimp wasn’t convinced. He had now seen the thing that had hold of him.

  ‘Fuck! FUCK!’ he screamed. ‘I can’t get it off. I can’t get it off!’ He had never been so terrified. He’d been scared by a great many things in his time, from tiny spiders right through to gangs of vampires and werewolves, but this beat the lot. It was the first time anything of such a size had attacked him and tried to eat his leg. Nor were Elvis’s attempts to pull him away achieving much. Sanchez had been unfortunate enough to have been grabbed by the Hulk Hogan of zombies. A giant of incredible strength. To make matters worse, three more zombies had climbed out of the ground and were now bearing down on them. They had given up on trying to get their teeth into the corpses of the two security guards, which were already swamped beneath a swarm of decaying undead.

  ‘Elvis! Shit! Help me, man, fer fuck’s sake!’ Sanchez screamed desperately.

  ‘I’m trying, man. Can’t you kick it, or somethin’? Or sit on the muthafucker?’

  Sanchez turned to see the giant zombie was now more than halfway out of the ground and was lifting him up by his ankle to destabilize him, readying itself to take a bite out of his leg. He was on the point of letting his bowels open to run riot down his leg towards the creature’s mouth when…

  BOOM!

  Startled, he looked up to the road where the noise had come from. As he did so he felt the zombie’s grip on his ankle slacken. He scrambled to his feet, desperate to escape the unstable ground. The zombie was still holding him – he could feel its cold fingers around his flesh – but he was now able to kick his leg free. A glance down revealed that the creature’s hand was no longer attached to the rest of its body. Its arm had been blown off at the elbow, courtesy of a shot fired by the rider of the motorcycle now drawing to a stop on the highway.

  Elvis, still holding Sanchez’s hands, hauled the tubby bar owner towards him. Then, suddenly embarrassed, they quickly dropped their grip as the motorcycle covered the last few yards, the rider blipping the throttle as he changed down through the gears. Both rushed to the edge of the road to greet their saviour. The motorbike rolled up alongside them and came to a halt. The rider blipped the throttle a last time, then killed the engine. In the sudden silence, he kicked down the sidestand, leaned the Harley on it, and stepped off. Even Elvis, who was not small, could see he was a giant of a man. Ignoring Sanchez and Elvis, he strode past them, drew a .357 Dan Wesson PPC from a shoulder holster, aimed it at the middle zombie of the three approaching them, and fired a single shot into its face. The sound, and the sight of their companion’s disintegrating head, startled the two others on either side. They stopped dead in their tracks and then began slowly to back away, waiting to see if the massive biker was going to fire at them again. Instead, he turned his attention to the giant mutant that was still halfway out of the ground, and now had only one arm. He pulled a handful of bullets out of a pocket in his black leather pants and calmly reloaded his heavyweight revolver. Then he fired a shot into the zombie’s face, killing it stone dead. Destroying the biggest enemy early in the piece always had the desired effect. The others backed away and headed back towards the two dead security guards and Invincible Angus, who was still fighting off a whole bunch of creatures in the dark, by the shallow, freshly dug grave. Tough shit, thought Sanchez.

  The man with the massive handgun turned back to Elvis and Sanchez.

  ‘’Kay, let’s get the fuck outta here,’ he said. ‘This is only gonna get worse.’ He didn’t seem remotely concerned about the hitman battling away in the distance. Apart from anything else, there were now too many resurrected zombies for a lone man with a single handgun to attempt a rescue. Angus was going to have to shift for himself.

  ‘Amen to that!’ said Sanchez, looking to the heavens and giving quiet thanks. He was, fitfully, a deeply religious man, although only at times that suited him. In other
words, when he was in deep shit.

  To his surprise, the big biker walked up to Elvis and the pair of them grinned at each other. The King, having succeeded in ripping off the duct tape that had bound his hands together, slapped hands with the other man.

  ‘Yo, Gabriel, man, how’s it goin’?’ Elvis asked with a smile. It was plain that the two of them were old friends.

  ‘Been worse. Whatcha been up to?’

  ‘Not much. Kinda dead around here.’

  ‘Yeah. Need a ride?’

  ‘You betcha.’

  Gabriel climbed back on to the big Harley-Davidson chopper, kicked the propstand up and fired up the engine. Elvis climbed on to the long leather-upholstered seat behind him. Gabriel looked over at Sanchez, who was praying that he too would be offered a ride, although he didn’t see how.

  ‘C’mon, lardass. Get on,’ he ordered, gesturing that Sanchez should climb aboard and sit in front of him on the few inches of the seat still available between Gabriel and the massive fuel tank. The bar owner didn’t need to be told twice and somehow managed to get a leg over the bike and squeeze himself in on the front of the seat, Gabriel’s long arms reaching round him to the controls. It wasn’t even slightly comfortable, but it was a dam’ sight better than being left in the desert with a bunch of decaying, long-dead freaks.

  ‘What the fuck are those goddamn things?’ he asked, nodding at the zombies by the shallow grave that were still fighting to get a bite of Invincible Angus.

  ‘If I ain’t mistaken, they’re ghouls, or maybe zombies. I wouldn’t worry if I was you – Invincible Angus’ll take care of ’em,’ said Gabriel, revving the bike’s engine. Sure enough, the hitman’s distant cursing was occasionally punctuated by shots.

  ‘You know Angus?’

  ‘Sure. Now hold on.’

  The chopper pulled away and cruised off down the highway, the torque of the big V-twin coping effortlessly with the extra load. With the desert wind blowing sand and all kinds of insects into his face, Sanchez decided it would be best to keep his mouth shut to avoid the intake of unwanted food. He listened as best he could to Elvis and Gabriel as they conducted a quick catch-up, yelling at each other above the beat of the engine and the roar of the wind as the Harley powered through the night.

  ‘What brings you out this way, Gabe?’ Elvis shouted from the rear.

  ‘Rex sent me. There’s an undead problem round these parts. Guess you noticed. I’m here to fix it.’

  Holy shit! thought Sanchez. He’d only known Gabriel for a minute and was already in awe of him.

  ‘You’ve come here just to fight the undead?’ he heard Elvis ask.

  ‘That’s one reason. I also gotta kill some singers.’

  ‘Reckon someone may have killed them singers for you.’

  ‘One less job then, I guess. Give me time to focus on some more personal business I gotta attend to.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You hear about Roderick an’ Ash?’

  ‘Yeah, man. Real sorry ’bout that.’

  ‘Well, the guy who killed ’em is rumoured to have headed out this way. Reckon I’ll have time to go lookin’ for him.’

  Sanchez listened in on the shouted conversation for the rest of the journey back to the hotel. It sounded like the dead bodies he’d seen earlier in the day were just the tip of the iceberg.

  Twenty-Nine

  Invincible Angus was doing an impressive job of fighting off the zombie creatures. Over the years he had fought men and women of all different shapes and sizes, wielding all kinds of different weapons, so he knew how to handle himself in a fight. And even though he had been surprised to find zombies attacking him, he was disciplined enough to put that out of his mind and concentrate on killing the fuckers. There would be time later to reflect on exactly what they were doing out here in the desert. For now, survival came top of his agenda.

  He had figured out pretty early that these creatures had a surprisingly high level of intelligence. In most of the zombie movies he’d seen, they tended to stumble around in a dazed fashion with their arms outstretched, mumbling words like ‘Brains’ over and over. But these were different, at least a couple of notches above that kind of nonsense. They attacked strategically. They knew to steer clear of his pistol. In fact, the sneaky bastards only ever attacked him when his back was turned, so he had to keep spinning around. He managed to gun down four of them, but pretty soon he found that all the spinning was making him dizzy. He’d only be able to keep whizzing around for so long before one of them would catch him off guard.

  The really unexpected thing, however, was that not all of them were intent on killing him. When one particularly bony, tattered creature crawled along the ground and then jumped on his back, he expected it to try to take a bite out of his neck. But the sneaky little bastard actually pushed its hand in the coat pocket of his trench coat. What the fuck? At first, Angus couldn’t work out what the thing was after.

  To his utter dismay, by the time he’d shaken it off, the zombie had snagged the keys to his van, right out of his pocket. Sneaky fucker. As the other zombies continued circling him, the sneaky one ran off limpingly towards the van, followed by another wearing what looked like a very dirty and badly torn pink dress. If Angus didn’t get a grip on the situation, he had a feeling he was about to watch two undead, brainless freaks hijack his pride and joy. This was entirely unexpected, and extremely unwelcome.

  ‘Get outta there, you miserable fucks!’ he yelled after them.

  Why Angus wasted his time calling after them was anyone’s guess. They weren’t going to respond. Worse still, he should have been running after them, but instead, he stood rooted to the spot as other creatures circled him, finding himself mesmerized by the sight of two fuckin’ zombies getting into his beloved giant blue camper van and closing the doors.

  If they knew how to drive and actually pulled away, his chances of escape would, for all practical purposes, vanish. When he heard the engine splutter into life he knew he had one option: batter his way through the swarming monsters and get to the van before it drove off. The noise of the engine starting was followed a few seconds later by the sound of CD player in the van bursting into life. Angus’s face dropped. He charged at two zombies who were standing between him and the van, knocking them aside more easily than he had expected. Then he started running as fast as he could, shooting down or kicking away any zombie rash or stupid enough to get in his path. No fucking way were those bastard zombies gonna make off with his van and his CD of Tom Jones’s greatest hits.

  ‘Get the fuck outta there! That’s my fuckin’ van, you fuckin’ muthafuckers! I’m gonna kill you! Again!’

  Angus’s cries were to no avail. As the zombies pulled away and zoomed down the highway, he heard the chorus of ‘Delilah’ blaring out from the van’s speakers.

  Bastard thievin’ undead pricks!

  Angus’s van was one of his most valuable possessions, but his Tom Jones CD was priceless. A signed edition from the man himself. If he had been angry before, he was absolutely seething now. Unfortunately for him, he still had a bunch of zombies to fight off before he could even think about following the van back down the highway to the Hotel Pasadena.

  Thirty

  The Bourbon Kid waited for Jacko to finish waving at the audience. The Blues Brothers impersonation hadn’t gone down as well as he’d hoped. Emily Shannon, the Judy Garland impersonator, was way better. And having just briefly met her, the Kid was pretty sure he’d made a bad first impression. In trying to convince her to quit the show and not perform in the final, all he had succeeded in doing was upsetting her and making her dislike him. That would have been okay if she’d followed his advice and quit the show, but it didn’t look like she had. This left him with an uneasy feeling. Something he hadn’t felt in a long time. Guilt. He felt guilty about upsetting her. He couldn’t get his head around the reasons it was bothering him.

  It had been ten years to the day that he had effectively deserted Beth, t
he one true love in his life. Emily looked so much like Beth. They were even dressed exactly the same, for fuck’s sake. And Emily had that pleasant way about her, the same fresh-faced innocence Beth had possessed. What the hell was this all about? Was it some sort of sign? A chance to make amends for the wrongdoings of ten years ago? A chance to get things right? If he righted the wrongs this time and saved Emily, would it ease his conscience?

  The memory of his mother’s face flashed through his mind. He saw himself, aged sixteen, standing over her as he fired bullets into her chest. Then he remembered the grinning face of Kione, the vampire who had raped his mother and turned her into one of his own kind. That sonofabitch was still alive, albeit in a permanent state of torture, hanging from a ceiling in the Kid’s apartment back home, ripe for being tortured again upon his return. And maybe that’s where he was best off? Back home? Maiming and torturing? That’s what he did best. Particularly when it mattered.

  ‘You okay?’ Jacko asked.

  The Kid had barely noticed that his Blues Brothers-impersonating sidekick was standing next to him at the side of the stage. He snapped out of his more maudlin thoughts and looked at the idiot in the red leather pants and black suit jacket. He’d pinned his hopes on this buffoon. What a fuckin’ waste of time.

  ‘I’m done,’ he said to Jacko. ‘You can keep the sunglasses. Good luck in the final. If you get there.’

  ‘Huh?’

  The plan to spare Emily from winning the competition hadn’t worked. The Kid had done all he could to stop her from the inevitable, but she seemed hell-bent on ignoring him and putting herself in danger by winning the competition and signing the ill-fated contract. The Kid’s talents were best used elsewhere. Everyone he’d met in the Hotel Pasadena was a fucking idiot, a lousy cheat, or a murderous slimeball. Time to leave.