Big Numbers (27 page)

“Y’all get to the bike.”

Cope had been right. Bodies stacked at the doors. Screaming priests scratched and pawed over those bodies, seeing escape rather than a growing junkpile of flesh.

I headed the other direction. The back door beckoned, damn near a portal to another World where none of this shit was happening.

And maybe a World where Mama was even still alive.

“Brother Darcy.” A weak voice. “Take me with you.”

Brother Enrico. A junkie from Sante Fe who told me he’d been fighting his demons for years. He was on the floor. He’d fallen in the confusion, but when I bent over to grab him, I heard two pops and then watched two blooms appear on his chest.

He looked at himself. “Son of a bitch. I knew that cop was here for me.”

I said, “He’s here for me.”

From the hallway, Cope sneered. “Fuck y’all, he’s here for me.”

Along the far side of the sanctuary, something had caught fire. Flames and smoke rose in meandering plumes toward the stained ceiling. The plastic windows were already beginning to melt open and inch down the frames and walls to the floor, a leper’s skin sliding off his body.

“Shit,” I said. “What is that?”

“Yeah…that’d be a fire.” Enrico coughed up yellow and pink fluids, then blood. “This pisses me off.”

“Damnit. Darcy, what y’all doing?”

“I’m dying, Blackie.” Enrico tried to smile.

From the doorway, Cope looked at him, something soft in his brown eyes. “Then die already so I can get outta here, Mex.”

Enrico laughed up a huge amount of blood. “Is that sass? God, I love him.”

“Love y’all, too, Enrico, now die.”

The fire raced, fed by the carpet and tossed-aside robes and sandals.

“Don’t I get…a…send-off?”

Crossing himself, Cope came to Enrico and said, “Hail Mary, Mother of God, here’s another one.”

Enrico closed his eyes. “Best he could do, I guess.”

“Hang on, Mex, don’t croak out on me yet.” Cope pulled one of his rings off and closed Enrico’s hand around it. “Y’all been a good boy. Maybe this’ll help when you get there.”

Enrico nodded. “Bless you.”

I didn’t think he was quite dead, but we couldn’t wait any more. The place was burning down around us, the heat so stifling that breathing was getting tough. The hair on my arms burned away and I knocked a handful of embers off my robe. So we left him there, clutching Cope’s ring and talking to Jesus.

The hallway was already full of smoke. But it wasn’t black. Rather, it was a dingy gray.

As dirty as the last few weeks.

“Where are we going?”

“Thought y’all had the plan.”

Cope laughed, though damn me if I could see anything remotely funny about this nightmare. I tried to yell at him some, but great gouts of smoke flooded me. So instead of yelling at that old black man, I hacked up his name and then panicked.
This
was how it was going to end. Not with a bullet to the head or in a cell at the Texas State Prison for the accidental death of my father, but here in a hell fire that was going to roast the outside of me as badly as I had roasted my own insides.

A Little Less Than Eight Days Ago

The streets of Valentine, Texas

There was darkness and maybe it was a dream and maybe it was death.

Either way was fine because I didn’t hurt and that was just fine with me.

Who knows, maybe I’d managed to get out of the church without getting shot. Or maybe I had been shot, but then died and so there was no more pain. There was a certain beauty in that notion.

That was a notion I didn’t believe for shit.

So in this darkness, I saw everything blown away. The church, the guns, the priests, the cop. Everyone in the church glared at me like it was all my fucking fault. Dead or dreaming or both, my guts twisted. Last thing I wanted to see was their faces…or the blood rain from their bodies.

But I saw something else, too.

A skanky tattoo shop, sandwiched between two flea-bag hotels, walls thin enough that everyone could hear how good business was for the five-spot whores. Squalid neon advertising that painted the street in lurid reds and blues, purples and greens, and bent the shadows throughout the wet and scummy streets. Music poured through the open window, sometimes rap, sometimes 1970s soul, sometimes twangy country. The rap came from gangsta wannabees, black and white, who cruised with their hands hanging out windows holding cell phones to look the slightest bit like guns. The twang came from tough country boys who’d grown up on the ranches forgotten in the Zachary County outback and who came to town on the weekends looking to trade their homemade meth for a quick roll with a city chick, preferably dark skinned but don’t tell anybody.

A single, hanging bulb cast the room in the same yellow as the sanctuary, and exactly as in the church, the yellow didn’t hide the blood. The main chair, where the artist had done his work, and the two benches where people waited, were both bloody.

And it was pretty much my fault.

That much I knew. But seeing the room didn’t tell me anything else about that night.

Didn’t tell me who else might have been dead besides my father. Didn’t tell me how they died. Didn’t tell me why I’d killed my father. Or why I’d chopped his foot off and taken it with me.

All of that was lost in repressed memories or drunken memories or just a cheap black hole of fear.

The question was why did that black hole of fear smell like pig shit?

I opened my eyes as we drove past a muddy yard filled to overflowing with swine. Had to be a hundred porkers there, farting and snorting and staring at me with an odd complacency.

“Y’all gonna live or what?”

Live? Probably not. I was, after all, in the side car of a broken down piece of crap that would absolutely kill me. “The hell am I doing here? Where’s my damned cooler?”

“Relax, White-Boy Darcy. Down by y’all’s feet.”

Blue, beat up, and scarred. With a cracked handle. Somehow, Cope had managed to get both the cooler and me out of the church.

“I put my veggie in there, right on top. Why’n’t y’all hand it to me?”

“Keep your food out of my cooler,” I said as I handed the man his cuke. “You did a good job, boy scout, saving me and all. Now stop this thing and let me out.”

“Ain’t happening. Gotta get us safe.” Cope jerked his head toward the church and crunched into the cuke.

My stomach rolled. Above the church, orange fingers scratched at a black smoke that burned the entire Valentine, Texas, sky.

“Holy fucking Mary of God.”

A quick sting snapped my face; not Cope’s hand, but the cucumber he held. He growled. “Blasphemer. Watch your language.”

“Ease up with banging on me, Cope. I get’cha, no problem, but I don’t—”

“Speaking of problems, that li’l fire ain’t our only one.”

Sirens filled the air, a soundtrack to the burning. Squad cars—Jeff Davis County deputies and Valentine police and probably squads from Culberson and Brewster Counties—as well as fire engines and ambulances, blasted through town, smearing screams through the afternoon air while those orange fingers kept gigging at that sky.

Beneath the racket of the sirens, I clearly heard the pops of aluminum melting and wood snapping and the moans of the dying. But I could smell, as though I were standing there in the middle of it, burning flesh.

I leaned over the side and threw up. Ropes of vomitus trailed behind us.

“They all ever’where.” Cope’s voice fought with the sound of the bike engine. “Robe’s trailing.”

I grabbed my robe, which had been flapping out behind us, and stuffed it under my ass.

“We got Five-O behind us right now.” Cope eased up on the accelerator.

“Shit fire.”

Though I couldn’t see the cop, I felt him big as day. Cruising behind us, nose up our butts, watching. Probably running the license plate.

“Son of a bitch, he’s going to run the plate.”

“Calm down,” Cope said. “Don’t worry ’bout that plate.”

He signaled, turned, and I wrenched the right side rearview mirror around so I could see. A Valentine city car came around with us, then abruptly stopped, backed up, blasted its siren and headed down another street.

“Jesus Christ, that was close.”

“Y’all best not take that name in vain.”

I chuckled, but Cope did not. He kept his eyes on the road while his lips tightened.

“I ain’t playing. I am a lot of things, White-Boy Darcy, but I ain’t blasphemous.”

“Uh…okay. Sorry.” I swallowed. “The cops can’t find us.”

“Y’all think?”

“Listen to me. They. Can’t. Find. Us. They’ll ask all kinds of questions. Damnit, they’ll want to take us in.”

“I know, Darcy, I know.”

“Fuck. We can’t let them—”

“I know.” Cope’s voice boomed. “Shut up and let me drive.”

“Damnit. It was just a little fire.”

“Little got big.”

All those cops and deputies. They led back to SuperCop. It was inevitable. SuperCop would hear about the fire and he’d know I was involved. He was that kind of detective, made those kinds of intuitive leaps. Ninety percent inspiration, eight percent shoe leather, and two percent Pop-Tarts and Dr Pepper. That’s how he worked, always had been and always would be until they laid him and his shoe leather in a nice rosewood coffin and shoved him six feet down.

“We’ve got to get out of town.”

“Ain’t going anywhere any time soon,” Cope said.

He whipped the handle bars and the bike shot across the street and down an alley. Cope crouched close to the gas tank, maybe looking to disappear into it. He slung us into a driveway, then into a wide garage. A tiny car filled a little more than half the garage. Cope angled the bike sideways and killed the engine.

“Are you crazy? Don’t stop, they’ll find us.”

“We keep going they gonna find us. Got to hunker down.” Jumping off the bike, Cope slammed the garage door. It was an old garage, with a creaky door and loose slats. Cope peered through those slats. “God’s lookin’ out for us, ain’t She? Leaving this garage open?”

When I looked through those slats, a county car crept through the alley. In front of the garage, the deputy stopped. His face was clear. He fixed on the garage and took a long, serious look at the door.

Because of our tracks.

Right into the garage. Rather, from the dirt alley onto the paved driveway where they ended. But they ended pointing to the garage.

“Y’all gimme that board.”

Together, and as quietly as we could, we put the board through one end of the door frame and tied the other end with a bit of wire hanging against the wall.

The deputy—he looked like a Davis County cop—climbed from his cruiser, radioed something on his portable, and headed for the garage. His hand wasn’t on his gun, but he was twitching to put it there. The town was burning down and he had no idea what was going on. He stopped and listened, his head cocked.

Our breath stopped. Behind us, a dull metal tick came from the bike’s engine.

I think he heard that tick. His frown deepened as his gaze slid smoothly over the door twice. Finally, he headed back to his car. When he climbed in, Cope sighed hard enough to blow cobwebs off the dirty wall in front of him.

“Not yet.” I quickly found an old tarp and tossed it over the bike. “Get under the car or the tarp.”

Dropping to the dirt, Cope scrabbled under the car while I slipped under the tarp. Fear sweat, covering me as hot and sticky as it had that night at the parlor, glued the thing to me.

When the flashlight banged against the door, I almost shit. Then the light laid a tight beam through the loose slats and across the tarp. A second later, it snapped off and the man’s heavy boots thunked against the driveway. The cruiser’s engine was a soft purr that belied its power. How I loved hearing that purr disappear down the alley.

I helped pull Cope out and coughed up a wad of dirt. “This is bad. This is so bad. This is going straight to hell bad.”

A squeak of a laugh slipped from Cope. “Man, we all of us are going to hell…and for shit we done long before this.”

“You don’t know what I’ve done.” I sounded defensive, though I wanted to be big and strong. In this garage, with half the cops in Texas looking for me, I wasn’t a man in his prime on a soul-defining search for the meaning of his life. I was just a scared thirty-eight-year-old who’d stumbled his way through day after day.

“Y’all were at the church so I know it’s got blood behind it.”

After pulling the tarp off the bike, we opened the door and I took a careful look up and down the alley. We moved through Valentine an alley at a time, checking the cross streets for the police. Cars raced back and forth, their sirens as heavy on the air as the fire’s black smoke.

“Church of the Bloody Souls, boy,” Cope said. “Y’all cain’t get in you ain’t spilled blood.”