Black and Orange (42 page)

“I dressed as a zombie cowboy for three years straight. Don’t know what that says about my denial.” Martin picked up Cloth’s screwdriver and brought it to his lips. He was right. It wasn’t bad.

Discord fluxed through the white face. “You know, when this started the gateway was the size of a particle. There was no interference with the yearly sacrifice. Progress was slow. My patience had to last thousands of years. Back in that time the Heart of the Harvest grew everywhere. I need only choose the greatest among the billions. I am the offspring of something natural, Martin. Don’t you see? My fingerprints have smudged all the window panes of time.”

“
Were you ever a living thing?
”

“I recall passion,” replied Cloth. “It’s always passion in the beginning of creation, isn't it? Flesh, blood, bone and brain have no place in the outer dark.”

Martin’s hand poised on his gun.

Cloth gazed around in mock wonder. “I think I’ll put a song on the jukebox.”
 
He hovered over the table a moment. “Don’t worry, I’ll try not to pick something ironic.”

Martin carefully watched him go. Cloth probably wanted him to run. He wouldn’t take the bait. One of the lobster-faced men at the bar leaned back with wide arms balanced on a rotund belly. “What are you supposed to be? A demon? You the Devil?”

Cloth turned. “The Devil’s just a cover song, friend.”

The drunkards laughed as Cloth entered two quarters and typed in a song. A moment after, the chaplain dropped back into the chair. “Let’s not draw this out. I just wish to find the Hearts sooner rather than later. I will find them. That, you know.”

Martin straightened. Heat flushed under the cold sweat on his neck.

“I’ve felt you try to pull from the Old Domain several times now. You’ve no strength left. Teresa is dying. Other people will soon as well.”

“Let’s take a walk outside then,” Martin suggested. “And talk about this a little more.”

Cloth leaned back. “Nah, it’s sort of pleasant in here.”

Outside the saloon, the children chorused:

How wonderful is that blood yolk?

How beautiful is that tendon pie?

How bountiful is that seared polyp?

How fanciful is that flea-bitten old rube?

It’s dreadful to wait for feast time.

The three men at the bar turned to the singing and shared looks of confusion.

Martin realized something then.

He wasn’t afraid. For the first time in almost twenty years, fear did not come into this. There was sadness. There was also helplessness: he couldn’t bring a mantle, he couldn’t draw his gun and he couldn’t call Teresa. The little bar had become calm, the men not howling anymore, everyone softly tasting their drinks. In better company it might have felt like the day at Fisherman’s Wharf with Teresa. Just strolling mindlessly through tranquil oblivion.

“You’re not going to help, are you?” Cloth folded his arms. The orange kerchief bent sideways.

“I really don’t see the need.”

Cloth’s eyebrow knifed. “That so?”

Styx came on:
The Best of Times
.

“Irony was unavoidable, I suppose.” Chaplain Cloth laughed. His humor departed quickly and impatience resurfaced. “Tell me where the Hearts are. Tell me right now.”

Martin gripped his gun, finger wrapping the trigger. “I’ve forgotten.”

No sooner had the words come out, Martin heard a loud thump and a glass shatter. He dared not turn, but out of the corner of his eye he saw Dreads stand. The thin man spaced his hands evenly and then drove his skull into the bar. The two pudgy fellows pushed out their stools, cursing, not completely shocked; possible regulars at this bar and others, they’d seen some fucked up shit before and they’d seen it on a whim.

Dreadlocks obscured the face. A growing puddle of blood shone on the wood under the blue neon glow.

“John—what the hell?” The barmaid took a step forward and reached out, a golden braid hanging over her thin arm.

John answered by slamming his head down harder. Several teeth lodged into the wood and one went spinning down the bar like a coin.

“Good Jesus! Grab him, he’s
havin
’ a seizure!” She put her hands up to her mouth. Several drinkers had pushed up from their seats. The brothers tried to grapple with the flailing body.

Martin’s mouth went dry. “Stop this.”

“Stop what?” Cloth’s black and orange eyes were a dead luster.

John’s head went down once, twice, thrice and then the fourth let out a crunch that must have sent skull shards into the brain because the body twitched and slid quickly off the stool like a greased worm.

“Let’s end this day early. Process of elimination. You just tell me the Voids you aren’t using,” the Chaplain persisted.

Martin couldn’t tell Cloth the exact location of the Hearts. No Nomad could. Even if he wanted to, the words would not form on his lips. He didn’t know if this was the Messenger’s doing or something in his biological makeup, but Cloth was trying to get around this.

“I’ll tell you,” said Martin. “Okay? But let’s leave. These people—”

Cloth drained half of his orange juice drink.

The barmaid went bolt-straight and her huge eyes engorged even wider. Her braids whipped around her neck, crossed and knotted. Her hands shot up and worked at forming the knot. The braid noose yanked, clenched by an invisible hand. Up into the air she went. The ascent ended with a spinal snapping and the corpse dropped behind the bar.

Martin swung up his gun and fired into Cloth’s face. A mantle shielded instantly and the bullet caromed off and chewed a diagonal hole through the ceiling. The gun came out of Martin’s hand, struck by another force, an anvil on a pendulum.

His hand rung deeply with pain. “They aren’t even in Colton!”

“Ever stared down from an airplane to see the moist little chiggers winding around the grid?” The Chaplain looked like an eager wolf pawing for more flesh. “Tell me Martin, would you feel remorse gargling mouthwash and purging the bugs living between your teeth?”

Round tables exploded around people fighting for the exit. Their necks opened in bloody screams as they collided with each other and fell to the floor. The brothers’ rosy faces detonated across the other end of the bar, yellow-red jelly scattering in a winding vertigo.

Martin wanted to close his eyes. There was nothing left to do. No way out. No turning back. He reached once again for the cold place. Still empty. The Spyglass Saloon smelled of aftermath. The sole survivor, the old man near the toy machine, hyperventilated against a corner, stacks of toys a rampart around his feet.

Martin shook so hard he had to grasp the edges of the table. “I’ll go with you. I’ll take you where she’s gone. But we need to go.”

Cloth pulled something chirping out of his pocket. He placed the cell phone on the table and read the text cut into the hot blue light below. “My, my, technology!” He read the text to Martin. “‘New tire tracks have been spotted through an unlocked gate at the train graveyard, and there’s a partial Void in the area. Tracks indicate a jeep Wrangler.’” Cloth smiled brightly. “We have a winner, I think.”

“Search it. You won’t find anything. I’m telling you, Teresa and the babies are long gone from this city. The Messenger is protecting them.”

The black and orange stare became wet with disbelief.

Something horrible started beneath Martin’s heart. Salty fluid poured then from him nose. Inside he felt his organs burst like water balloons, some squeezing shut under the pressure of murderous fingers, some dividing up with scalpel cuts. His bladder emptied into the front of his jeans and warmth spread through his boxers. The pain ultimately canceled out, replaced by shock and terminal blackness. Cloth said nothing, but Martin could feel his eyes as everything fell away. There was something left to be thought, something about a person, a T word. He couldn’t grasp the idea, although he clawed the darkness to find it. It almost came but his lungs filled and he gagged. The lungs... the lungs...

Teres
—

~ * ~

Chaplain Cloth watched Martin struggle for a few moments. When the Nomad died, his mouth opened to say something, like he’d finally acquired last words. The hazel eyes beseeched Cloth. The whites had blossomed into a nice scarlet from all the capillaries rupturing. Cloth reached forward and tore off the man’s necklace for a memento.
Puka
shells.
How very earthy
. He regarded Martin’s still, peaceful form for a moment longer.
So much well-meaning meat.
He kicked under the table and sent the corpse flying back in its chair. The table upended, screwdriver spilling sideways in an orange arc. Martin slammed to the floor. Blood pooled out from an opening in a busted upper tooth.

Cloth put the necklace and cell phone in his pants pocket. He was whistling by the time he got to the door. The old man huddled near the toy machine hadn’t moved. Cloth bowed. Narrowing his eyes at the machine, Cloth leaned in and affirmed his suspicions. “Still haven’t got that giraffe, I see. He’s got the long neck. It should be easy.”

The man quaked.

“Just keep at it.” Cloth placed his fingers on the tavern’s door. “Eventually you’ll get the one you’re after. You just have to keep at it. Never give up.”

Chaplain Cloth pushed the door open to the bright world. The gateway howled inside the building opposite. It was a big empty piece of the future there to behold. And his children. Bloody orange visages huddled obediently around the building’s grounds, Quintana’s power flooding their every
thew
, making them quake for the next chance to slaughter. Cloth took the crisp air inside his provisional lungs.

The Hearts were his now.

It would be dark in a couple hours and then the little gears of light that twisted through the cracks of the train’s door would go flat, become shadows. Teresa changed the third baby out of a soiled diaper. She scrubbed the bottom too roughly and the baby started bawling.

“Hush, hush!” Her hand floated above the baby’s mouth.
I’m not much of a foster parent, am I?
The baby boy punched himself in the eye as she slid the wipe once more for good measure. The train already smelled of salt and urine and mildew, so the scent of baby powder was welcome. The other babies rolled around on their blankets but were otherwise calm. Perhaps they felt they’d returned to the womb.

She positioned the diaper under the baby and began to stick the tabs down. Every Heart she’d met had been old enough to later carry memories with them of the Halloween that almost did them in. To think these babies would never relive this, one way or another, brought her comfort, strangely enough.

She swaddled each in their blankets and took out her radio. Leaning against an empty drum, she folded her legs inward for warmth. Hours had passed and the possibility of Martin’s plan working seemed more tangible with every minute.

Until cars pulled into the yard and the sounds of shoes hit the gravel.

~ * ~

I have to say this isn’t at all what I expected.

As bewildered as I was that Halloween, the Inner Circle that drove into that train yard arrived to outmatch my befuddlement. Chaplain Cloth would be there shortly, and they could wait for his arrival, but if they waited any longer the Hearts might slip away. What would Cloth do if they let that happen? The first Church limo at the scene was abandoned. Cordite already hung on the air. Blood was already speckling the dirt and rocks. It wasn’t a promising start. The newly arrived formed into squads.

One squad went around a cylindrical tanker car that had once been used to transport high fructose corn syrup. Fifteen different trip mines had been placed just around the corner, buried in dirt and shrouded in standing weeds—and the mines went off, one and two and three and death, death all around.

The remaining suits retreated between two boxcars. This led to the other squad, which approached their target head on. Another trap sprung. Two mantles raced toward each other: one gathered a mass of church members and the other crashed into them like two silver palms clapping dead a swarm of hornets. Most perished in an instant, crushed into leathery
bonebags
; functional people one moment, turned into husks dribbling colon particulate the next.

Five minutes had passed since they separated and their number had been halved. The consensus, not surprising, was to retreat to the limos. It was a wise decision, better than the original plan. What might have made it even better would have been a different route. Thirty mines had been staggered on the main slope and the adjoining slope near the gate. Swift red wings rose and settled. Suits fell in the dirt. Some rolled. Some dropped right there.

Only four made it back to the limos. A young man recently brought up through the Church called his former boss. The phone rang four times before the automated message came on. He shouted his message: “Bishop
Szerszen
, this is Jake
Weins
again. If you didn’t get my message before. We need help. The Nomads have gone to the train yard near the treatment plant off Rancho—We’ve taken casualties. We...” He gave up and his phone came away, shaking in his hand. He pushed END and noted how fitting the button was. Jake
Weins
tripped a mine a few minutes later.