The Devil's Graveyard Read Online Free Page A

him. They would, he thought, have shamed a leper. Fortunately, after an inappropriately long time, she removed her hand herself and pointed through the window at something ahead, close to the road’s edge.
    ‘Oh look,’ she said excitedly. ‘There’s a road sign. See what it says.’
    They had been on the bus for two hours. On their arrival at an airport named Goodman’s Field, Sanchez had been surprised to find that there were no tour guides; in fact no one to tell them where they were headed. He’d asked around, but none of the other passengers was any the wiser. Even the Mystic Lady, with her dubious talent for seeing into the future, had no idea. And everyone was complaining that there was no signal for their cell phones. So a signpost truly was worth a look.
    Since leaving the airport, they had been driven along a deserted highway through an arid and almost featureless desert. The bus driver had spoken to no one and refused to acknowledge, let alone answer, any questions concerning their destination. Rude indeed, but he was a big bastard so no one was inclined to make an issue of it. And up to this point in the journey there hadn’t been a single signpost to tell them where the fuck they were.
    As the roadside billboard drew closer, Sanchez peered through the window to see what it said. The sign stood out in front of the miles of desert wasteland, framed by a distant vista of orange-coloured mesas and cliffs. It was a big black sign at least ten feet high and twenty feet wide. Five words painted in a dark red colour across became visible as they neared. The sign read ‘ WELCOME TO THE DEVIL’S GRAVEYARD’ .
    ‘Nice,’ Sanchez thought out loud. ‘Ain’t exactly the fuckin’ Bahamas, is it?’ Annabel, certainly more excited than him, showed it by squeezing his thigh playfully again with one hand and slapping her own thigh with the other.
    ‘Aren’t you just thrilled?’ she asked. ‘I haven’t been out of Santa Mondega for years. Isn’t this fun? Boy, I could use a drink to calm my nerves.’
    Sanchez sighed, then reached inside his jacket. He pulled out a small silver hip flask.
    ‘Here,’ he offered glumly, unscrewing the stopper and handing the flask over to Annabel.
    ‘Oh my! What’s this then?’ she asked, her eyes lighting up with alcoholic glee at the possibility of some liquor.
    ‘It’s my own homebrew. Been saving it for a special occasion.’
    ‘Oh Sanchez, you are such a gentleman.’
    ‘Don’t mention it.’
    Annabel took the flask and poured a mouthful down her throat. A second or two later she began choking. She pulled a hideous face (even by her standards).
    ‘ Ugh! That’s horrible ! What on earth is it?’ she asked, retching.
    ‘It’s kinda an acquired taste. You gotta persevere with it. By the time we get where we’re goin’ you’ll be addicted to it.’
    The Mystic Lady didn’t look convinced. Within ten minutes of her first sip of Sanchez’s finest, she had locked herself in the confined space of the bus’s lone restroom. Her alleged ability to predict the future had not helped her to foresee that Sanchez might serve up a flask full of his own piss.
    Even more importantly, she hadn’t foreseen the evil that lay ahead for their brief stay in the Devil’s Graveyard. A place with an even greater undead problem than Santa Mondega.



Four
     
    In almost the same second, the Bourbon Kid tucked the pistol back inside his leather jacket, sliding it into a snug holster below his left shoulder. As if in slow motion, Joe’s still-vertical body began to sway. It was a sequence of events all too familiar to the Kid – the victim’s knees were about to buckle beneath him. Right on cue, after a count of three, the body wobbled a bit, then crumpled in on itself and fell to the floor like a rag doll. The old man’s face crashed into the hardwood counter on the way down. All that was left on display was his blood. An elegant spray of it speckled the long row of white mugs