A sudden volley of explosions shattered its way through the music. I tensed. Then the sky lit up with flashes and streamers of light. Red, white, green, blue — fountains of light, waterfalls of color. Fireworks. On a grand scale. They blinded me for a moment. Then my vision cleared, and a jangle of alarm sounded throughout my whole body.
The crowd had split up. The greater part had continued straight ahead, but an off-shoot had turned the corner into a side street. And Michelle was among that offshoot.
I plowed through the crowd like a bull through tall grass. When I got around the corner I found myself in a street so narrow it was little better than an alley. Michelle was in the center of a group at the end of it, and as I watched, cursing, I saw her borne around another corner. I elbowed and shouldered my way through knots of revelers, many of them drinking from bottles, then? smashing the bottles to the paving stones. The street got darker and narrower as I went along, until finally the only illumination came from the shattering explosions of light high above in the black sky. They cast eerie shadows on the stucco walls of buildings, the wrought-iron grills of windows. I reached the corner and turned, only to find myself in still another dark alley-like street.
With a shock, I realized it was empty.
There was no sign of Michelle.
Then, suddenly, it was no longer empty. There was a rush of bodies, of weird-looking masks, and I was surrounded by a circle of foil fish heads.
A moment of absolute silence ended abruptly with the explosion of a wheel of sparks in the sky above.
In the hands of the figures around me I could see the dull gleam of machete blades, sharpened to a razor edge.
"Ah, M'sieur," said one of the figures, "it seems the fish have caught the fisherman."
"The fish," I said, slow and hard, "are going to be eaten for dinner, if they don't stand away from the fisherman."
"The fish," snarled the figure, "are going to gut the fisherman."
The machete blade flashed in his hand, as his arm slashed forward. But he was slower than my hand, with Wilhelmina in it. The crack of the bullet echoed in the alley almost as soon as he had moved, and he fell, blood spurting through the hole in his foil-wrapped chest, seeping out of his mouth. The two men behind him moved in on either side of me. A second bullet from Wilhelmina caught the one on my left in his guts, and he screamed in pain and horror, as my right leg shot out in a Kensai kick to the other's groin, making him collapse instantly into a fetal position.
I turned barely in time to see, by the grotesque light of a Roman Candle exploding above, the bright flicker of a machete blade hissing through the air. I twisted and side-stepped, and it clanged harmlessly to the paving stones in back of me. Wilhelmina spat once again and another of the fish figures fell, his skull an instant eruption of red blood, gray brain matter, and white chips of bone.
But my twisting had revealed something else. At the other end of the alley, another group of fish figures was slowly advancing toward me. I was being attacked from both sides, and every path of escape was blocked.
Except, I suddenly realized as another Roman Candle exploded in the sky and lit the alley, one way. Up.
Three fish figures were detaching themselves from the crowd in front of me, moving warily toward me, spaced as far apart as the alley would allow. A glance over my shoulder showed me that three figures behind me were doing the same. They moved slowly, in a sort of rhythm, as if performing some kind of deadly ritualistic dance. From the crowds behind them, a humming chant began to rise. It had the deep, spine-chilling tone of murder.
"Tuez… Tuez… Tuez… Tuez…"
Kill… Kill… Kill… Kill…
I waited, moving forward and slightly to the side, gauging their advance. They were close enough now so I could see eyes gleaming in back of the foil fish heads. Unnaturally wide eyes, rolling, fevered. Hot to kill. Still, I waited.
"Tuez… Tuez… Tuez… Tuez…"
The dance of murder came ever closer. I could almost feel kill-fevered breaths on my face. The machetes began to lift. I waited, holstering Wilhelmina, my muscles tensing in readiness.
"Tuez… Tuez… Tuez… Tuez…"
Now!
I sprang upward, high, using every ounce of my strength. My reaching hands grasped the wrought-iron rail of a balcony overhead, as my feet, held close together like twin clubs, swung in a vicious pendulum arc. There was a sodden clonk as my shoes smashed into a skull, and then another as they swung back.
Then I was flipping myself upward, over the railing and onto the balcony. A machete blade clanged against the railing, thrown from over-eager, frustrated hands, and then another. Seconds later, Hugo was in my hand, I slashed downward, severing four fingers from the hand of a man trying to climb onto the balcony. His scream was ear-splitting.
Then I was springing upward once again, grasping the railing of the balcony above me. The chant below had broken into a chaos of furious shouts, intermingled with moans and shrieks from the ones I had wounded. Fish costumes were being torn aside, to enable the attackers to climb the balconies as I had. But by the time I reached the roof, only one had managed to gain the lowest balcony. I swung myself over the ledge and crouched, squinting into the shadowy darkness of the rooftops around me.
Then I gasped.
The houses on either side of me all had connecting rooftops at the same level. And on the rooftop of the furthest house was a crowd of costumed figures.
In the middle of the crowd, tightly enclosed by bodies, was Michelle.
And descending toward the crowd, from the firecracker-lit sky, was a helicopter.
Wilhelmina jumped into my hand, and I launched myself forward, running in a low, fast crouch. I cleared the first parapet, jumped onto the next roof, and paused to snap off a shot. The giant pink pig with the oversized snout spun, clasped his hands to his face and gave a scream gargled with spurting blood as he fell.
"Nick!" I heard Michelle scream as she caught sight of me. Then: "Get back, Nick! Get back! They'll kill you! They have automatic…"
I slammed myself to the rooftop just in time. The brutal chatter of a Sten gun cut through the night, and bullets chipped bits of brick from a chimney just in back of me. I raised my head and squeezed off a shot. Another figure fell, but the chatter of the Sten gun continued. The helicopter was just above the roof now, settling slowly to a landing. I gritted my teeth, then decided to take a desperate chance. In another minute it would be too late; Michelle would be taken aboard the helicopter.
My muscles tensed, and I sprang forward. I ran desperately, zigzagging, hurdling the roof parapets like a track star. In front of me, I could see the deadly flashes from the Sten gun and the helicopter settling on the roof, its door being opened from within.
Then my skull exploded like Mont Pelee itself, my brain was on fire, and I felt myself pitching forward.
Blackness.
Silence.
Nothing.
Twelve
Something, somewhere, was nagging me with an idea. It wasn't a clear idea, but I knew it was a very unpleasant one. I tried to avoid it as long as possible. But it kept on nagging. Finally, I had to admit I knew what it was.
Eyes, it said. You have to open your eyes.
I did. I didn't want to, but I did.
Familiar double-lidded eyes, in a familiar Oriental face, stared down at me. They blinked, then the mouth curved upward in a wholly scrutable smile of relief. Another face, this one black, and just as familiar, came into vision. Also smiling.
"Hey, Carter," the Oriental face said, "do you always go to sleep this early in the evening? I mean, we didn't even eat dinner yet."