Sliding serenely past the men with guns, like a pike through a trout pond, came a small, bespectacled man in a blue uniform, carrying a long, thin, brown paper.. wrapped parcel, tied with string. His sole concession to the climate were his open.. toed brown plastic sandals, although the green woolen socks he wore underneath them showed his deep and natural distrust of foreign weather.
He had a peaked cap on, with International Express written on it in large white letters.
He was unarmed, but no one touched him. No one even pointed a gun at him. They just stared.
The little man looked around the room, scanning the faces, and then looking back down at his clipboard; then he walked straight over to Red, still sitting on her bar stool. “Package for you, miss,” he said.
Red took it, and began to untie the string.
The International Express man coughed discreetly and presented the journalist with a well.. thumbed receipt pad and a yellow plastic ballpoint pen attached to the clipboard by a piece of string. “You have to sign for it, miss. Just there. Print your full name over here, signature down there.”
“Of course.” Red signed the receipt pad, illegibly, then printed her name. The name she wrote was not Carmine Zuigiber. It was a much shorter name.
The man thanked her kindly, and made his way out, muttering lovely place you've got here, gents, always meant to come out here on holiday, sorry to trouble you, excuse me, sir ... And he passed out of their lives as serenely as he had come.
Red finished opening the parcel. People began to edge around to get a better look. Inside the package was a large sword.
She examined it. It was a very straightforward sword, long and sharp; it looked both old and unused; and it had nothing ornamental or impressive about it. This was no magical sword, no mystic weapon of power and might. It was very obviously a sword created to slice, chop, cut, preferably kill, but, failing that, irreparably maim, a very large number of people indeed. It had an indefinable aura of hatred and menace.
Red clasped the hilt in her exquisitely manicured right hand, and held it up to eye level. The blade glinted.
“Awwwright!” she said, stepping down from the stool. “Finally.”
She finished the drink, hefted the sword over one shoulder, and looked around at the puzzled factions, who now encircled her completely. “Sorry to run out on you, chaps,” she said. “Would love to stay and get to know you better.”
The men in the room suddenly realized that they didn't want to know her better. She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close.
And she held her sword, and she smiled like a knife.
There were a number of guns in that room, and slowly, tremblingly, they were focused on her chest, and her back, and head.
They encircled her completely.
“Don't move!” croaked Pedro.
Everybody else nodded.
Red shrugged. She began to walk forward.
Every finger on every trigger tightened, almost of its own accord. Lead and the smell of cordite filled the air. Red's cocktail glass smashed in her hand. The room's remaining mirrors exploded in lethal shards. Part of the ceiling fell down.
And then it was over.
Carmine Zuigiber turned and stared at the bodies surrounding her as if she hadn't the faintest idea of how they came to be there.
She licked a spatter of blood.. someone else's.. from the back of her hand with a scarlet, cat.. like tongue. Then she smiled.
And she walked out of the bar, her heels clicking on the tiles like the tapping of distant hammers.
The two holidaymakers climbed out from under the table and surveyed the carnage.
“This wouldn't of happened if we'd of gone to Torremolinos like we usually do,” said one of them, plaintively.
“Foreigners,” sighed the other. “They're just not like us, Patricia.”
“That settles it, then. Next year we go to Brighton,” said Mrs. Threlfall, completely missing the significance of what had just happened.
It meant there wouldn't be any next year.
It rather lowered the odds on there being any next week to speak of.
Thursday
here was a newcomer in the village.
New people were always a source of interest and speculation among the Them, [It didn't matter what the four had called their gang over the years, the frequent name changes usually being prompted by whatever Adam had happened to have read or viewed the previous day (the Adam Young Squad; Adam and Co.; The Hole.. in.. the.. Chalk Gang; The Really Well.. Known Four; The Legion of Really Super.. Heroes; The Quarry Gang; The Secret Four; The Justice Society of Tadfield; The Galaxatrons; The Four Just Persons; The Rebels). Everyone else always referred to them darkly as Them, and eventually they did too.] but this time Pepper had impressive news.