The Devil's Graveyard Read Online Free Page B

on the shelf behind the counter, while a few errant drops splattered a selection of candy bars by the till . A work of art indeed. If the Kid chose to add a signature to the piece, it could be worth a fortune.
    To his left, the Kid had seen the customer in the red leather suit jump to his feet in shock at what had just happened. The guy said nothing. Instead, he walked slowly over to the counter to take a look at the dead body of the diner’s owner. Normally people tended to exit pretty quickly once the Kid started blowing people away, but this guy seemed to have forgotten that the killer was still present. The Kid watched him lean over the counter and wince at the sight of Joe’s corpse. After a few seconds of staring at the body of his friend, the guy suddenly seemed to remember that the Kid was there. As was his gun. Slowly he turned to face him. The Kid waited for his reaction. More importantly, he waited for the guy to go fetch the bottles of bourbon the Kid had asked him for shortly before shooting Joe in the throat.
    ‘You killed him,’ the guy said, stating the obvious.
    ‘You think?’
    ‘Why would you do that? Joe’s a good guy.’
    ‘Was.’
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘ Was a good guy. Now he’s a dead good guy.’
    ‘He didn’t do anything to you.’
    ‘He pulled a gun on me, case you didn’t notice.’
    ‘You pulled yours first!’
    ‘Wanna see me do it again?’
    ‘Not really.’
    ‘What’s your name, son?’
    ‘Jacko.’
    ‘Right. Jacko, you listen up, and listen good. If you ain’t grabbed me the two bottles of bourbon I asked for by the time I count to three, my gun’s comin’ out again.’
    Jacko nodded. ‘Yeah. I gotcha.’ He walked tentatively around the counter checking the floor, mostly to make sure he didn’t tread in any blood. ‘Bourbon, huh?’ he mumbled.
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘Comin’ right up.’
    ‘Get me some cigarettes, too.’
    ‘What kind?’
    ‘Any kind.’
    The Kid picked up a Texan chocolate bar from the display on the counter. With his forefinger, he flicked a piece of what might have been bloodied gristle off the wrapper and then ripped the bar open at one end. He took a bite and, deciding that the taste was acceptable, left Jacko to pick up the rest of his shopping list and headed back out to the car.
    The Kid had strong instincts when it came to sniffing out danger. They had served him well when, from the corner of his eye, he had seen Joe reach below the counter for something. It could have been a doughnut, but there was an outside chance it was a weapon of some kind. As it turned out he’d been right, so the bullet he’d used to blow the old guy’s throat out hadn’t been wasted. Now those same instincts were telling him that an evil moon was coming. That wasn’t much of a surprise on Halloween. He’d learned that the hard way. He’d killed for the first time on Halloween, a decade earlier. Since then, he’d killed hundreds of people – some had deserved it, and some hadn’t – but not one of those killings had been as hard as the first.
    Dispatching his mother with six rounds to the heart at the age of sixteen was never going to be anything other than traumatic. Even though she had been bitten by a vampire and had turned into one in front of his very eyes. True, it was only when she had attempted to kill him that he had realized that he had no choice but to kill her. But, unsurprisingly, it had been a defining moment in his life. One intertwined with drinking his first bottle of bourbon.
    And now? Well, here he was on Halloween, ten years later, in an area of the desert known as the Devil’s Graveyard, about to give a ride to a hitchhiker dressed as one of the cast of the Thriller video. And he was down to his last two bullets. He still had plenty of weapons, just no ammo for the guns, having used his last 12-gauge shell on the rookie cop in the fast cruiser. His own fault for killing so many other people earlier in the day. Could just be a tough