Book of the Dead: A Zombie Anthology (44 page)

Wayne looked at Sister Worth and thought maybe things were not good. Maybe she had lied to him in her slow talking way. Only wanted a little dick and wanted to keep it quiet. To do that, she might have promised anything. She might not care what Brother Lazarus did to them.

If it looked like a double cross, Wayne was going to go for it. If he had to jump right into the mouth of Brother Fred’s shotgun. That was a better way to go than having the hide peeled from your body. The idea of Brother Lazarus and his ugly nose leaning over him did not appeal at al .

“It’s so nice to see you,” Brother Lazarus said. “I hope we’l have none of the unpleasantness of yesterday. Now, on the tables.”

Wayne looked at Sister Worth. Her expression showed nothing. The only thing about her that looked alive was the bent wings of the bird birthmark on her cheek.

Al right, Wayne thought, I’l go as far as the table, then I’m going to do something. Even if it’s wrong.

He took a step forward, and Sister Worth flipped the contents of the tray into Brother Lazarus’s face. A scalpel went into his nose and hung there. The tray and the rest of its contents hit the floor.

Before Brother Lazarus could yelp, Calhoun dropped and wheeled. He was under Brother Fred’s shotgun and he used his forearm to drive the barrel upwards. The gun went off and peppered the ceiling. Plaster sprinkled down.

Calhoun had concealed the little knife in the palm of his hand and he brought it up and into Brother Fred’s groin. The blade went through the robe and buried to the hilt.

The instant Calhoun made his move, Wayne brought his forearm back and around into Brother Mold Fuzz’s throat, then turned and caught his head and jerked that down and kneed him a couple of times. He floored him by driving an elbow into the back of his neck.

Calhoun had the shotgun now, and Brother Fred was on the floor trying to pul the knife out of his bal s. Calhoun blew Brother Fred’s head off, then did the same for Brother Mold Fuzz.

Brother Lazarus, the scalpel stil hanging from his nose, tried to run for it, but he stepped on the tray and that sent him flying. He landed on his stomach. Calhoun took two deep steps and kicked him in the throat. Brother Lazarus made a sound like he was gargling and tried to get up.

Wayne helped him. He grabbed Brother Lazarus by the back of his robe and pul ed him up, slammed him back against a table. The scalpel stil dangled from the monk’s nose. Wayne grabbed it and jerked, taking away a chunk of nose as he did. Brother Lazarus screamed.

Calhoun put the shotgun in Brother Lazarus’s mouth and that made him stop screaming.

Calhoun pumped the shotgun. He said, “Eat it,” and pul ed the trigger. Brother Lazarus’s brains went out the back of his head riding on a chunk of skul . The brains and skul hit the table and sailed onto the floor like a plate of scrambled eggs pushed the length of a cafe counter.

Sister Worth had not moved. Wayne figured she had used al of her concentration to hit Brother Lazarus with the tray.

“You said you’d have guns,” Wayne said to her.

She turned her back to him and lifted her habit. In a belt above her panties were two .38

revolvers. Wayne pul ed them out and held one in each hand. “Two-Gun Wayne,” he said.

“What about the ultra-light?” Calhoun said. “We’ve made enough noise for a prison riot. We need to move.”

Sister Worth turned to the door at the back of the room, and before she could say anything or lead, Wayne and Calhoun snapped to it and grabbed her and pushed her toward it.

There were stairs on the other side of the door and they took them two at a time. They went through a trap door and onto the roof and there, tied down with bungie straps to metal hoops, was the ultra-light. It was blue-and-white canvas and metal rods, and strapped to either side of it was a twelve-gauge pump and a bag of food and a canteen of water.

They unsnapped the roof straps and got in the two seater and used the straps to fasten Sister Worth between them. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was a ride.

They sat there. After a moment, Calhoun said, “Wel ?”

“Shit,” Wayne said. “I can’t fly this thing.”

They looked at Sister Worth. She was staring at the controls.

“Say something, dammit,” Wayne said.

“That’s the switch,” she said. “That stick… forward is up, back brings the nose down… side to side…”

“Got it.”

“Wel shoot this bastard over the side,” Calhoun said.

Wayne cranked it, gave it the throttle. The machine rol ed forward, wobbled.

“Too much weight,” Wayne said.

“Throw the cunt over the side,” Calhoun said.

“It’s al or nothing,” Wayne said.

The ultra-light continued to swing its tail left and right, but leveled off as they went over the edge.

They sailed for a hundred yards, made a mean curve Wayne couldn’t fight, and fel straight away into the statue of Jesus, striking it in the head, right in the midst of the barbed wire crown.

Spotlights shattered, metal groaned, the wire tangled in the nylon wings of the craft and held it.

The head of Jesus nodded forward, popped off and shot out on the electric cables inside like a Jack-in-the-Box. The cables popped tight a hundred feet from the ground and worked the head and the craft like a yo-yo. Then the barbed wire crown unraveled and dropped the craft the rest of the way. It hit the ground with a crunch and a rip and a cloud of dust.

The head of Jesus bobbed above the shattered craft like a bird preparing to peck a worm.

[11]

Wayne crawled out of the wreckage and tried his legs. They worked.

Calhoun was on his feet cussing, unstrapping the guns and supplies.

Sister Worth lay in the midst of the wreck, the nylon and aluminum supports folded around her like butterfly wings.

Wayne started pul ing the mess off of her. He saw that her leg was broken. A bone punched out of her thigh like a sharpened stick. There was no blood.

“Here comes the church social,” Calhoun said.

The word was out about Brother Lazarus and the others. A horde of monks, nuns and dead folks, were rushing over the drawbridge. Some of the nuns and monks had guns. Al of the dead folks had clubs. The clergy was yel ing.

Wayne nodded toward the bus barn, “Let’s get a bus.”

Wayne picked up Sister Worth, cradled her in his arms, and made a run for it. Calhoun, carrying only the guns and the supplies, passed them. He jumped through the open doorway of a bus and dropped out of sight. Wayne knew he was jerking wires loose and trying to hotwire them a ride.

Wayne hoped he was good at it, and fast.

When Wayne got to the bus, he laid Sister Worth down beside it and pul ed the .38 and stood in front of her. If he was going down he wanted to go like Wild Bil Hickok. A blazing gun in either fist and a woman to protect.

Actual y, he’d prefer the bus to start.

It did.

Calhoun jerked it in gear, backed it out and around in front of Wayne and Sister Worth. The monks and nuns had started firing and their rounds bounced off the side of the armored bus.

From inside Calhoun yel ed, “Get the hel on.”

Wayne stuck the guns in his belt, grabbed up Sister Worth and lept inside. Calhoun jerked the bus forward and Wayne and Sister Worth went flying over a seat and into another.

“I thought you were leaving,” Wayne said.

“I wanted to. But I gave my word.”

Wayne stretched Sister Worth out on the seat and looked at her leg. After that tossing Calhoun had given them, the break was sticking out even more.

Calhoun closed the bus door and checked his wing-mirror. Nuns and monks and dead folks had piled into a couple of buses, and now the buses were pursuing them. One of them moved very fast, as if souped up.

“I probably got the granny of the bunch,” Calhoun said.

They climbed over a ridge of sand, then they were on the narrow road that wound itself upwards. Behind them, one of the buses had fal en back, maybe some kind of mechanical trouble. The other was gaining.

The road widened and Calhoun yel ed, “I think this is what the fucker’s been waiting for.”

Even as Calhoun spoke, their pursuer put on a burst of speed and swung left and came up beside them, tried to swerve over and push them off the road, down into the deepening val ey. But Calhoun fought the curves and didn’t budge.

The other bus swung its door open and a nun, the very one who had been on the bus that brought them to Jesus Land, stood there with her legs spread wide, showing the black-pantied mound of her crotch. She had one arm bent around a seat post and was holding in both hands the ever-popular clergy tool, the twelve-gauge pump.

As they made a curve, the nun fired a round into the window next to Calhoun. The window made a cracking noise and thin crooked lines spread in al directions, but the glass held.

She pumped a round into the chamber and fired again.

Bul et proof or not, this time the front sheet of glass fel away. Another wel -placed round and the rest of the glass would go and Calhoun could wave his head good-bye.

Wayne put his knees in a seat and got the window down. The nun saw him, whirled and fired.

The shot was low and hit the bottom part of the window and starred it and pel eted the chassis.

Wayne stuck the .38 out the window and fired as the nun was jacking another load into position.

His shot hit her in the head and her right eye went big and wet, and she swung around on the pole and lost the shotgun. It went out the door. She clung there by the bend of her elbow for a moment, then her arm straightened and she fel outside. The bus ran over her and she popped red and juicy at both ends like a stomped jel y rol .

“Waste of good pussy,” Calhoun said. He edged into the other bus, and it pushed back. But Calhoun pushed harder and made it hit the wal with a screech like a panther.

The bus came back and shoved Calhoun to the side of the cliff and honked twice for Jesus.

Calhoun down-shifted, let off the gas, al owed the other bus to soar past by half a length. Then he jerked the wheel so that he caught the rear of it and knocked it across the road. He speared it in the side with the nose of his bus and the other started to spin. It clipped the front of Calhoun’s bus and peeled the bumper back. Calhoun braked and the other bus kept spinning. It spun off the road and down into the val ey amidst a chorus of cries.

Thirty minutes later they reached the top of the canyon and were in the desert. The bus began to throw up smoke from the front and make a noise like a dog strangling on a chicken bone.

Calhoun pul ed over.

[12]

“Goddamn bumper got twisted under there and it’s shredded the tire some,” Calhoun said. “I think if we can peel the bumper off, there’s enough of that tire to run on.”

Wayne and Calhoun got hold of the bumper and pul ed but it wouldn’t come off. Not completely. Part of it had been creased, and that part final y gave way and broke off from the rest of it.

“That ought to be enough to keep from rubbing the tire,” Calhoun said.

Sister Worth cal ed from inside the bus. Wayne went to check on her. “Take me off the bus,” she said in her slow way. “…I want to feel free air and sun.”

“There doesn’t feel like there’s any air out there,” Wayne said. “And the sun feels just like it always does. Hot.”

“Please.”

He picked her up and carried her outside and found a ridge of sand and laid her down so her head was propped against it.

“I… I need batteries,” she said.

“Say what?” Wayne said.

She lay looking straight into the sun. “Brother Lazarus’s greatest work… a dead folk that can think… has memory of the past… Was a scientist too…” Her hand came up in stages, final y got hold of her head gear and pushed it off.

Gleaming from the center of her tangled blond hair was a silver knob.

“He… was not a good man… I am a good woman… I want to feel alive… like before… batteries going… brought others.”

Her hand fumbled at a snap pocket on her habit. Wayne opened it for her and got out what was inside. Four batteries.

“Uses two… simple.”

Calhoun was standing over them now. “That explains some things,” he said.

“Don’t look at me like that…” Sister Worth said, and Wayne realized he had never told her his name and she had never asked. “Unscrew… put the batteries in… Without them I’l be an eater…

Can’t wait too long.”

“Al right,” Wayne said. He went behind her and propped her up on the sand drift and unscrewed the metal shaft from her skul . He thought about when she had fucked him on the wheel and how desperate she had been to feel something, and how she had been cold as flint and lustless. He remembered how she had looked in the mirror hoping to see something that wasn’t there.

He dropped the batteries in the sand and took out one of the revolvers and put it close to the back of her head and pul ed the trigger. Her body jerked slightly and fel over, her face turning toward him.

The bul et had come out where the bird had been on her cheek and had taken it completely away, leaving a bloodless hole.

“Best thing,” Calhoun said. “There’s enough live pussy in the world without you pul ing this broken-legged dead thing around after you on a board.”

“Shut up,” Wayne said.

“When a man gets sentimental over women and kids, he can count himself out.”

Wayne stood up.

“Wel boy,” Calhoun said. “I reckon it’s time.”

“Reckon so,” Wayne said.

“How about we do this with some class? Give me one of your pistols and we’l get back-to-back and I’l count to ten, and when I get there, we’l turn and shoot.”

Wayne gave Calhoun one of the pistols. Calhoun checked the chambers, said, “I’ve got four loads.”

Wayne took two out of his pistol and tossed them on the ground. “Even Steven,” he said.

They got back-to-back and held the guns by their legs.

“Guess if you kil me you’l take me in,” Calhoun said. “So that means you’l put a bul et through my head if I need it. I don’t want to come back as one of the dead folks. Got your word on that?”

“Yep.”

“I’l do the same for you. Give my word. You know that’s worth something.”