What Would Satan Do? (16 page)

“Sorry.”  Liam shook his head, which was helpful, considering that Festus was talking to Liam from the other end of a phone line, inside a jail almost three miles away.

“Come on, man,” Festus pleaded, “I don’t have anyone else who can help.  Don’t leave me here.  I pretty sure Mount Iwannadoya is ready to take our relationship to the next level.  He has nothing on his lower half but leather chaps, by the way.”

“Sorry, man.  Gotta go.”

“Liam?!  What in the hell is wrong with you this morning?  Did someone die or something?  Or did some kind of angry, stinging insect somehow manage to crawl up your ass?”  He could hear more heavy breathing from Liam.  “Just come get me already, you heartless bastard.  You would not believe what this guy just told me about Governor Whitford.”

“What?” asked Liam. 

“Can’t talk about it now.  Just come get me.”

“I’m only coming to get you so that I can kill you and leave your body in a ditch somewhere.”

“I can live with that.”

Chapter 19.
          
I Love a Parade of Naked Guys

In the 1970s, lots of people thought that the world was going to end.  The Earth was supposedly going to melt or freeze or explode or something, all because we couldn’t be bothered to turn off the tap water while brushing our teeth, and so we were all definitely going to die.  In this period of disco and wild-blue-sky optimism, there emerged the worst architectural style the world has ever known: modernism.  “Build ‘em big,” they said.  “Build ‘em big and ugly and monolithic.  Build ‘em so that they’re still here when the Time Traveler arrives and dinosaurs have reappeared and evolved to the point where dino-archaeologists can be impressed by our stupendous architectural achievements.”  And so they built them big and ugly and monolithic.  And now we’re stuck with the damned things.  These awful tributes to the dystopian future –where old people are melted down and recycled as food – infest our cities and, perhaps appropriately, are used primarily for government offices, low-income housing, or (combining the two) jails. 

The Austin City Jail is one of these ultra-modern abominations.  It is a very tall, very brown, and very government-looking building on the eastern edge of downtown.  It was built, of course, in the 1970s, and there are now very few people alive who will admit to having had any part in its construction. 

Liam and Festus walked out of the front of the jail building and down the front steps to the street.  Liam wore the kind of pained expression you might see on the face of a person who is on his first visit to a sewage processing plant.

“So he said that it’s the end of the world,” said Festus.

“Who did?”

“Haven’t you been listening?  The guy last night.”

“Some crazy dude you met in jail?”

“Well, yeah.  But I’m not sure he was crazy.  He told me some really wild stuff.”

“Wait, did you hear what you just said?”

“Wild stuff, man,” said Festus.

“You need to stop going to jail, dumbass,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Festus, nodding as if he were receiving an ancient Chinese secret or other bit of profound wisdom.  But then he muttered, mostly under his breath, “It’s not like I was trying.”

“The hell you weren’t.”

They crossed the street in silence.

“You know,” said Festus, by way of changing the subject entirely, “I’m pretty excited about animal adjectives.”  He paused, looking around.  “Where the hell did you park?”  Liam nodded toward a parking lot up the street and kept walking.  Festus had to scramble to catch up. 

“So,” he said.  “Animal adjectives.”  He waggled his eyebrows at Liam as he were referring to an inside joke about their shared harem or a horde of cash they’d recently liberated from a bank.

“What—?”

“You know—”

“—the fuck?”

“—like feline, which means ‘cat-like,’ and canine, and equine.  But those are just the usual ones.”

“Oh sure,” said Liam.  “Right.”  He kept walking.  An outside observer might have thought, based on his body language and the way that he seemed to speed up his pace, that Liam was trying to tune out Festus’ rambling.  An outside observer would have been correct. 

“And my favorite – get this,” Festus smacked Liam’s arm, “—is turdine!  It means ‘bluebird-like.’  Caprine is pretty good too, I guess.  Means ‘goat-like.’”

Liam stopped and turned to face Festus.  “You done yet?”

“Yeah, I guess.  Sure.” 

Liam turned and stepped into the street, only to have a motorcycle cop blip his siren at him.  “What th—?”  He stepped backward, but missed the curb and fell backward onto his butt.

“Wow,” said Festus, leaning over to offer Liam a hand.  “What was that?”  He pulled Liam up, and the two watched two more police motorcycles roll down the street.  A third burbled and blatted its engine as it followed the others, but then slowed and came to a stop five feet away from Liam and Festus.  The policeman, still seated on his bike, held his arms straight out, signaling that no pedestrians should cross the street.

“What’s going on?” asked Festus.

The cop stared straight through them, ignoring Festus’ question.  “Stay back, gentlemen.”  Liam and Festus looked at each other for half a second and then headed off down the sidewalk. 

As they walked, and the sound of the cop’s idling motorbike faded, they heard voices – men’s voices.  They turned to see what was coming and there, half a block away and five-abreast, was a very long line of men dressed in a random assortment of camouflage fatigues, trucker caps, and T-shirts advertising professional wrestlers.  Many of the men had signs.  The line of men in front marched shoulder-to-shoulder, holding a banner that read, “Texas Independence NOW!!”  They were chanting too, but there seemed to be little in the way of organization, rhyming schemes or even coherence to their discordant cacophony. 

“Hell no, we won’t pay income tax!”

“Texas, our Texas, you are great!”

“Are these some of those militia men who you always hear about having standoffs with the FBI or the IRS or whatever?” asked Festus.

“I guess.”

They stood and watched the parade with the kind of enthusiasm that people usually reserve for red lights and “DO NOT WALK” signs.  Liam turned to look at the gathering crowd, and then nudged Festus.

“Hey, look at that!”

An assortment of naked men appeared, rushing in from the other side of the street, cavorting and leaping about in flamboyant displays of unclothed athleticism not generally seen outside of 19th-century French sculpture. 

“Oh God!” said Festus, shielding his eyes.  Bellies quivered and bits flopped and the nudists yelled in competition with the militia men.

“It’s the end of the world!”

“We’re all gonna die!”

A nearby cop leaped off his motorbike and tackled one of the naked men, pinning him on the ground in a fit of law enforcement fervor that would come back to haunt him for years.

“I totally got that!” said a nearby kid, holding his camera phone up as a trophy.  “You’re gonna be on the Internet, you fascist homo!”

The gathering crowd jeered and the cop stood up, only to have the naked guy leap up and wrap his arms – and legs – around him.  Two of the marchers broke off and tried to help the policeman, swinging the butts of their rifles at the naked man, but the cop lurched and spun, staggering all over the place as he struggled with the man’s weight.  One of the helpful marchers ended up nailing the cop in the gut with the butt of his gun.  The policeman doubled over, and Naked Man leapt off, hooting and waving his arms as he left the cop to collapse in the middle of the street.  The parade continued, the militia men streaming around the disabled cop.

Liam and Festus continued slowly down the street, walking sideways as they watched the insanity unfold. 

“The car is just over there,” said Liam.  But Festus was busy watching two more streakers sprint up the street.  One stole a rifle from one of the paraders, hooting as he waved it in the air.  The man was surprised a few seconds later when the gun, which he’d assumed was merely a prop, discharged, shattering the windshield of a nearby automobile.  He paused, looked around with a kind of worried, surprised expression, and then hooted again and unleashed a barrage of bullets at a nearby hot dog stand.  Hot dogs and buns exploded, and the vendor dove for cover.  A group of the marchers took off after him, but the man turned and threw the rifle at them before taking off down the street.

“Oh my god,” said Festus.  “It’s like it really is the end of the world.” 

Another gaggle of naked guys ran by, apparently in pursuit of the marchers who were in pursuit of their trigger-happy comrade.  Three of them broke off from the larger group and ran up to Liam.

“Master!”

“Master!” 

“Yes, Master!”

The men bleated the words like relieved and slightly weepy sheep as they collapsed onto their knees. 

Two of the men knelt at an appropriate distance, while the third edged his way up, and with another impassioned “Master!” threw his arms around Liam’s feet.

“Um,” said Liam.  “Stop that.”

The man looked up, his lip trembling, but did not let go.

Liam gave him a helpful kick.  “Get the fuck off me.”

The man rolled back, ending up curled up on his side.  He stared up at Liam with the sad, naked-guy equivalent of puppy dog eyes.  “Yes, Master.”

Liam looked at Festus, and Festus looked back at Liam.  They made WTF faces at one another until Liam finally spoke.

“Let’s go,” he said. 

They picked their way through the increasingly disorganized parade, and headed toward the parking lot across the street.  They made it to the other side, and Festus turned for one last look at the parade. 

“I can’t believe it,” he said.  “It’s—it’s just nuts.”  Liam didn’t respond, so he turned back toward the parking lot.  “Liam?”  But Liam was oblivious.  His sights were fixed on the vision before him.  Festus shook his head and kept walking  This is what always happened when they approached Liam’s car. 

The automobile was the about only thing that he ever really seemed to get excited about these days.  It was a hot-rodded, 1969 Camaro, with black paint that, if you got close enough, had nice little sparkles in it.  It was, in a word,
bitchin
’.  He’d spent most of the last five years since he’d retired and most of his money fixing it up, and it now had a power-to-weight ratio just short of a Saturn V rocket.  He’d also worked with a local shop to tweak the chassis and replace all of the suspension components.  Between that and some very expensive tires, it lobbed its nearly two-ton weight around in ways that tended to elicit furrowed brows from innocent bystanders and snarky comments from physicists.

“Ooh.”  Liam ran his hand along the body of the car. 

Festus shook his head again.  This was how it always went.  But today there were naked crazies and armed militia men about.  “So I need to tell you about what the guy told me.”

Liam glanced up.  “What?”

“I need to tell you—”

“Yeah, yeah.  Why do I need to know?”  He squatted down to pick at a dust mote or something on the front fender.

“What’s that sound?” asked Festus. 

Liam popped back up.  “What sound?”

Festus tilted his head to listen, and then pointed back the way they’d come.  “That,” he said.  “That rumbling sound.”

Liam stepped around the car.  “Maybe it’s those military trucks.”  He nodded in the direction of what appeared to be a second, much faster, much larger, and much more menacing parade coming up behind the first. 

They watched for a second, listening to the rumbling sound made by a very large swarm of Humvees coming down the road.  They watched as the first of the trucks overtook the parade and stopped about a block away.  Naked guys scrambled everywhere.  The flannel-clad guys just kept on marching, albeit in a somewhat more irregular pattern as they picked their way around the trucks.  Soldiers began pouring out of the trucks and running after the naked guys.

Festus stepped forward, squinty-eyed and hunched over like a little old lady as he tried to see something more clearly.  “What is—  Does that say ‘Texas’ on the side?”

“Yeah,” said Liam.

Festus pointed a look of surprise at Liam.  “Do we have a military?”  Liam always seemed to know these things.

“Apparently we do.”

A naked guy sprinted past.  “Freeeeeee-doooooom!”  Two soldiers turned away from the fray and gave pursuit.

“Liam,” said Festus, “I think we should go.”

“I think you’re right.”  Liam unlocked the car and the two climbed in. 

Liam cranked the ignition.  The car sounded like the demon love child of a rough-idling lawn mower and a 747; as if it were powered by a rageaholic Tyrannosaurus Rex who preferred to spend its days downing cocktails made from gasoline and liquefied oxygen. 

“Dude,” said Festus, glancing down at the arm Liam had used to put the car into gear, “what happened to your arm?  Is that a… a tattoo?” 

Liam looked down.  “Shit,” he said.  There were three bright, unnaturally red spots – little circles with tails.  It almost looked like he’d had an unpleasant encounter with a badger (though one would expect such marks to appear lower on the body – perhaps on the shins) or a kangaroo (again, not a terribly likely scenario, given that kangaroos are not indigenous to Central Texas. 

“I don’t know what that is,” he said.

“Does it hurt?” asked Festus.

Liam tried out his arm, flexing this way and that.  “Nope.”  He looked at Festus and shrugged. 

But Festus was already over it.  “We’re going to need some tacos,” he said.

Liam nodded.  It was getting a little late for breakfast, but Festus had uttered an undeniable truth; a Euclidean first principle:  When all else fails – or pretty much whenever you have time – get tacos.  Especially on a morning like this.  “All right,” he said.  “Tacos.”

Chapter 20.
          
Clyde Parker Mortuus Est

“Fine,” said Dick Whitford.  “Yes, I understand.  No, that’s quite alright.  No.”  He slammed the phone down in its cradle and sighed.  It was shaping up to be a very shitty morning.