Bronzini's animal-like groans grew into a crescendo, and were joined by another groan-the inhuman cry of metal stressed-to the breaking point.
The plate gave: Bronzini fell on his ass. But he had the ring. He jumped up and attacked the door with it. It took very little time. One hinge cracked. Another one came free. The door hung by the padlock. Bronzini shoved it aside impatiently.
He stepped out into the stone courtyard and made his way past the rows of open-air cells until he came to the parking lot. He moved cautiously, although he expected to encounter no opposition.
There was a pickup parked in front of the museum gift shop. Bronzini got in and hot-wired the engine and soon had the pickup squealing up Prison Hill Road.
Bronzini drove recklessly, not exactly sure where he was going or what he was going to do once he got there. The roads were deserted, but as he pulled into the city, there were people standing in their yards, looking anxious and confused. Bronzini pulled up to one of them.
"Yo! What's going down?" he barked.
"The Japanese have pulled back into town," an older man said excitedly. "There's heavy fighting, but no one knows who they're mixing it up with."
"Rangers?"
"Your guess is as good as anyone's. We're all wondering what to do."
"Why don't you fight? It's your city."
"With what?" the man demanded. "They took all our guns."
"So? This is Arizona. The wild west. Take 'em back."
The man peered closer. "Say, now, aren't you that actor fella? Bronzini."
"I'm not exactly proud of it right now, but yeah."
"Didn't recognize you without your headband."
Bronzini cracked a pained grin. "This wasn't supposed to be a Grundy movie. Know where I can find some guns?"
"Why?"
"Back where I come from, if you make a mess, you clean it up."
"Now, that's right smart reasoning. They're supposed to have weapons cached at the Shilo Inn," Bronzini was told. "Maybe you could sort of spread 'em around."
"If I do, will you and your friends fight?"
"Shucks, Bart. I seen every one of your movies. I'd fight with you any day."
"Tell your friends, I'll be back."
Bronzini took off. He floored the pickup until he got to the Shilo Inn. As he pulled into the parking lot, he spotted uniformed Japanese troops in the lobby. Bronzini wheeled the pickup into a parking space, and there, leaning between two cars, was his Harley. He slipped over to it and kicked the starter.
The Harley gave a full-throated roar that brought a smile to Bronzini's sleepy-eyed face. He backed it up and sent it rocketing toward the lobby entrance.
Attracted by the noise, two Japanese came out shouting. The Japanese had AK-47's. But Bronzini had the element of surprise. He went through them like a hurricane. They threw themselves to the ground. The bike hit the curb and vaulted through the glass doors. It wasn't special-effects candy-glass, however. Bronzini sustained a gash that opened up one cheek, and a shard embedded itself in his right thigh.
Undeterred, Bronzini danced off the careening bike and landed on the plush lobby seats. He yanked the triangle of glass from his thigh and used it to slash open the jugular of the Japanese who jumped from behind the front desk.
Bronzini pried the AK-47 from the guard's fingers. He pulled off the bayonet and sheathed it down his boot. Then he stepped outside and sprayed the two guards while they were picking themselves off the ground.
That accomplished, Bronzini raced through the firstfloor rooms. He found the guns behind a door marked with the Red Christmas Productions symbol-a Christmas tree silhouetted against a mushroom cloud. This was the film's in-town production office. Bronzini carried the rifles out to the pickup under both arms. He filled up the bed with rifles and crated hand grenades and then lifted his Harley into the back by main strength.
Before he drove off, he tore one of the sleeves off his combat suit and used it to dress his leg wound. There was some cloth left over and Bronzini tied it over his forehead to keep the sweat out of his eyes.
"What the fuck," he said as he climbed behind the wheel. "Maybe we'll retitle this Grundy's Last Stand." Bronzini returned to the knot of men. It had doubled in size. He distributed the guns from the back of the pickup. While the men checked their weapons, he raised his voice.
"Yo! Listen up, everybody. There's more guns back at the hotel. Form teams and go get them. After that, it's up to you. It's your city."
Bronzini mounted the Harley and started her up. "Hey, where are you going?" a man asked.
"It's your city, but it's my problem," he said, shoving stick grenades into his belt. "I got a score to settle." And with that, Bartholomew Bronzini roared off, his ponytail dancing after him like a fugitive spirit.
Jiro Isuzu no longer had to rely on radio reports confirming that his crack units were being decimated. He had only to look out the window where the tanks formed a bristling line of cannon muzzles.
As he watched, one smoothbore coughed a shell. The recoil made the tank roll back. The shell reduced an already-shattered storefront to further ruin.
"It" walked in under the shell, which overshot him by no more than a hand span. Now that he had penetrated the outer perimeter, by all accounts destroying men and tanks with his bare hands, the burning-eyed man had come to Isuzu's last line of defense.
Isuzu shoved open the window. "Crush him!" he shouted. "Crush him in the name of the emperor. Banzai!"
The tanks started up. It was a calculated risk, breaking the last bulwark that separated him from that creature that walked like a man, but they had no choice.
Isuzu was alone. Nemuro Nishitsu lay unconscious on the couch. He was crying out in his fevered sleep. Isuzu tried to block out the words. "Death comes," Nemuro Nishitsu warned over and over. "Death that leaves no footprints in the sand."
Nishitsu was obviously delirious. Isuzu turned his attention to the conflict.
The once-supreme New Japanese Imperial Army had been reduced to a small band of defenders. All night long the battle had raged. Tanks, men, and heavy guns against a lone man who walked unarmed and unafraid.
They would surround him and he would render the tanks helpless with his bare hands, breaking the tracks and snapping off gun barrels with openhanded blows.
He had progressed to city hall, remorseless, unstoppable. At first it was reported that he moved with impunity, as if the mere soldiers who got in his way were insignificant fleas to be swatted and thrown aside. But as more tank units were thrown up against him, the unknown man had shaken off his zombielike demeanor as if coming out of a trance. He moved with increasing grace and speed, until, as one frightened assistant director cried over a walkie-talkie, "We cannot halt his advance. He dances out of the way of our bullets. He crushes everything under his feet. We must pull back."
The weird picture that had been conjured up over scores of frantic radio reports was of a mad dance of death and destruction. And Isuzu was forced to withdraw his units into a smaller and smaller circle around city hall until those tanks that had not fled in blind panic remained. With growing dread he awaited the approach of the unstoppable one.
Finally Jiro Isuzu got a clear look at "it." The sight froze the breath in his lungs. "It" looked like death walking. No, like death dancing.
It was beautiful, yet ghastly. A squad of fresh Japanese troops rushed up to confront the aggressor. He spun like a dervish from the bullet tracks of their chattering rifles. He weaved around them, limbs flung with abandon, feet leaping, turning, kicking. One stiff index finger entered many skulls, creating dead Japanese.