What Would Satan Do? (21 page)

“Any idea what Baphomet is?” he asked.

“No, not really.  Apparently it had something to do with mind control, but that’s pretty much the extent of what we know – other than that the CIA was involved originally.”  She pulled out a phone, and clicked some of the buttons as she waited for Liam to look through the folder.  “One of the names you’ll see in there is Alistair Preston.  He was, apparently, one of the leads that Parker dug up, only he’s here – in Texas.”  Lola reached for the folder and shuffled through the papers. 

Liam took the page she held out.  “Preston…  British Intelligence?”

“I guess,” she said, playing with her phone again.  “I’m supposed to meet him in – shit – thirty minutes.”  She reached over to gather up the folder. 

“What?  Where?”

“Wimberley.”  She held out her hand, and Liam handed back the page he’d been reading. 

“We went tubing there,” said Festus.  This wasn’t quite the contribution to the conversation he’d hoped it would be.

Lola didn’t even look in Festus’ direction.  “I’m hoping he can tell us what the heck Baphomet is.  Maybe that will give me some insight into whatever the Governor is really up to.”

Festus nudged Liam.  “Oh yeah, right,” said Liam.  “Festus heard something about how the Governor might be planning some kind of thing.”  Another nudge.  “Some kind of biological or chemical weapon or something.”

“What?”  She glanced up from her bag.  “Why would you know anything about—?”  She sighed a weary sigh.  “Never mind.  Liam, we need to leave.”

“You’re right,” said Liam.  “He can tell you about it in the car.”

Lola held up her hands.  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“No, no.  It’ll be fine.  Let’s go.”

Raju was doodling on the counter with a dry-erase marker as Lola, Liam, and Festus walked out of the back room. 

“Raju,” said Liam, “I’m going out for a while.  You’re in charge.”

“Okay,” mumbled Raju, apparently still hung over from whatever adventure had culminated with him being curled up in the desk chair.

“I may be a while.  I don’t know.  You might have to close up.”

“What?  How long—?”  Raju looked up, a tiny bit of alertness finally having crept in to his baked-out gourd.  “Hey!  Wait a second.”  He stood.

Lola made the mistake of glancing in Raju’s direction, but only for an instant before gluing her eyes to Liam.  Liam didn’t look as worried as one might expect the proprietor of a guitar shop to be upon finding his cash register being manned by a pants-less employee.

“Raju, where the hell are your pants?” 

“I love her,” explained Raju. 

“I don’t care,” said Liam.  “Put your pants back on.”

Raju smiled at Lola.  “Hey, baby.”

Lola took a couple of slow, sultry steps toward Raju and the cash register.  Her lips parted ever so slightly and glistened.  Her chest heaved.  Liam’s jaw dropped, and his eyebrows tried to get out of the way of his enlarging eyes.  She leaned over the counter, thrusting her chest forward, and reached up to caress Raju’s face.  Raju’s eyes got giant, like he was trying to absorb every last photon in the entire shop.  She slid her finger tips down his cheek, lingering for an instant, and then slapped the ever living shit out of him.

“Put your pants back on,” said Liam, and they left Raju alone in the store.

Outside the shop, Lola headed straight for a sedate-looking sedan with four sedate doors and painted a sedate shade of maroon.  Liam and Festus did not, opting instead to stand and stare at what they regarded as one of the more shocking things they’d seen that morning.  After a couple of seconds, Lola turned and saw a look of horror mixed with disgust mixed with disdain on Liam’s face.  Festus looked afraid.

“What?” asked Lola.  Liam made a face like he was having gastronomic difficulties and gestured in the direction of his own car.  “Oh, it’s not that bad,” she said.

Liam opened and closed his mouth a few times, but no words came out, so he looked a little bit like a fish. 

“Okay,” she said.  “I guess we’re taking your car.”

“Shotgun!” said Festus.

A few minutes later, Festus sat in the back seat, alone and nursing a bruised ego.

Liam waved his hand in Festus’ general direction.  “Tell her.”  And Festus did.  He told her about Whitford, and Cadmon’s army, and the poison gas.  He told her about his repeated attempts to rebuff the Hawaiian guy’s romantic advances.  He told her he was thinking about shaving his beard.  She told him to shut up about the beard already.

“He didn’t give any details about the weapon?”

“No,” said Festus, “but he did mention the—the project you guys keep—”

“Baphomet?”

“Yes.  That one.”

“What did he say about it?”

“Well…” Festus pursed his lips and scratched his beard.

“Anything you can remember,” said Lola.

Festus looked up, his faced pained.  “It was jail, you know?”

“You spend a lot of time in jail?”

Festus’ expression did not change.  “Yeah, you know, more than I’d like, really.  You know, the guy seemed drunk or high or something.  I don’t know.  He wasn’t making a ton of sense.  I would have ignored him except he kept mentioning Whitford’s name.”  He suddenly braced himself in the backseat, gripping an extra seatbelt and a window post.  “Hang on,” he said.

“What?”

“We’re about to get onto the highway.”

They got onto the highway.

“Oh my god!” said Lola.  She hadn’t spent a lot of time riding in racecars or stunt planes, and hadn’t ever been strapped to the front of a rocket, and so was therefore inadequately prepared for Liam’s enthusiastic approach to entering onto a freeway.  There was far more tire squealing, swerving, and lung-crushing acceleration involved than she’d expected or might have, had she been behind the wheel, deemed absolutely necessary.  And she expressed her feelings about the situation by invoking the name of a guy who’d been nailed to a tree two millennia earlier.  “Jesus!”

“Yeah,” said Festus.  “I know.”

Chapter 25.
          
Beat Me Up, Scotty

There are parts of downtown Austin that, but for the lack of tumbleweeds – and, of course, an overabundance of tallish buildings, paved streets, and traffic-control devices – could easily pass for a desolate, isolated scene in a Western movie.  Which is just to say that there are parts of downtown Austin that are almost apocalyptically empty.  In particular, there is a section that sits east of the state Capitol Building, where various and sundry bureaucratic monstrosities give way to a slew of parking garages that all the important political types, lobbyists, and bureaucrats use before scurrying off to conduct the business of the Lone Star State.  Most days of the week, this area sits pretty much entirely empty, wanting only for the occasional rolling tumbleweed to transform the sun-scorched canyon of concrete and steel into the Old West.  On Sundays, even the ghosts, rodents, and bugs make themselves scarce – a twelve-foot, winged scrotum could host a mythical-creature dance party and no one would be the wiser.

In the middle of this brick-and-mortar wasteland, there is an intersection.  And at that intersection, on this particular Sunday, the former Lord and Master of the Underworld waited, pointed in the general direction of the Governor’s Mansion. 

The Devil sat.  His engine idled.  He rolled his neck and shrugged his shoulders and sat some more.  He glared at the stoplight.  It was not a very nice stoplight.  Not that that’s really saying anything – they all suck.  But this one was a particularly mean, old stoplight. 

Most folks don’t know that stoplights have personalities.  Sure, most of us indulge in the occasional anthropomorphization of objects – labeling this boat a “she,” or that broken can opener a “complete fucker.”  But there aren’t that many people out there who really believe (or who will admit to believing) that inanimate objects have feelings (or, in the case of broken can openers, loathsome, nefarious agendas).  And the few people who really do believe in that sort of thing are mostly raving idiots who shouldn’t be trusted with ships (or can openers, for that matter).  This works out pretty well, on the whole, because most inanimate objects are, in fact, just that: inanimate. 

Except for stoplights.  Stoplights have personalities.  Some are nice.  Some are wistful.  Some are complacent.  Most are assholes.  Their hopes and desires and dislikes and dispositions run the gamut – just like people.  But unlike people, stoplights can’t actually do anything about any of these things.  This is especially galling (for stoplights) because most were, in their past lives, gods of one sort or another who outlived their usefulness, and are now, quite understandably, pissed at only being able to shine red, green, or yellow. 

People eventually cease to believe in or pray to or sacrifice for or need or even care about most gods, and when a god becomes obsolete, he (or she or it) gets reassigned.  And due to the fact that the universe is an infinitely weird and fucked up place, most end up reassigned as stoplights.  This particular light happened to have been the Greek goddess Enodia (in charge of crossroads and gates) in a past life.

Satan – a god only in disposition and, anyway, still relevant enough to escape relegation to the mytho-galactic parts bin – continued to sit at this bitchy stoplight.  He waited.  On any other day, the Devil’s normal response to the interminable, evil stoplight would have been to do something decisive.  Something rash even.  Like stomping the accelerator and laying twin strips of quarter-inch-thick rubber across the intersection and maybe exploding some nearby buildings for good measure.  But not today.  Today, Satan was tired – ridiculously, impossibly tired.  He had, after all, just come off a string of more than fifteen hours of mostly uninterrupted driving.  And so he just sat, feeling wiped out, and maybe just a little bit weary. 

This wasn’t the first time he’d been in this state, but exhaustion wasn’t really something he’d gotten the hang of.  His first experience with fatigue had come at the end of his first full week in a human body – a seven-day marathon of debauchery and rage-fueled obliteration of pretty much anything and everything close to hand (including an unfortunate family of squirrels in Farragut Square).  The Devil had thought then that he’d broken something.  Or that the body was defective maybe, and that he ought, perhaps, to try exchanging it for another.  But then he’d collapsed and slept for almost thirty-six hours straight. 

When he awoke, refreshed and just a tiny bit giddy, he surmised that this was just one of the limitations imposed by the human body he chose to inhabit.  It was just like it had been with the snake, which he’d been able to make talk, but not fly (which would have substantially increased the awesomeness of the Book of Genesis).  He accepted this – mostly because he liked the waking up bit so much – and put himself on a regular, almost-human sleep schedule.  He never quite got the knack, however, of recognizing when exhaustion was creeping in and clouding his mind.  But then, when you view the world through insanity-tinted lenses, everything seems fucked up, and it’s hard to tell when you’re not quite thinking straight. 

He sighed, mostly too tired to care that the only thing that crossed in front of him were a few leaves and bits of trash carried by an intermittent breeze.  He gripped the steering wheel with human hands and worried:  Had he been right to come to Earth?  Had he been right just to leave like he had?  To leave, and live as a human, abandoning the world and His Plan to work themselves out?  Of course, he had figured that, without him, things couldn’t go forward.  That was The Plan, after all, wasn’t it?  He was essential, wasn’t he?  It was his job to instigate things – he felt sure of it.  Mostly sure, anyway.  How could it possibly happen without him?  It couldn’t.  No way.  But then, all the signs seem to suggest that that’s exactly what was happening.

The ex-goddess Enodia continued to be a stubborn bitch, but the Devil hardly noticed as he sat, lost in his thoughts, watching as zero cars crossed through the intersection in front of him.  He also failed entirely to notice the monster-sized truck that came up behind him (of course, the Italian guys who build the cars claim that Lamborghini drivers don’t really need to bother looking at what is behind them), or the low-pitched urrrping sound of its knobby tires attempting to slide to a stop.  Nor was he aware that the truck, emblazoned with flames, images of the Confederate flag, and various stickers professing the driver’s loyalty to the National Rifle Association and to the Lord Jesus Christ, Savior and King, had, in fact, been following him for nearly twenty miles.  He did, however, register a jolt as the behemoth smashed into the back of his Lamborghini, crushing the hand-crafted engine. 

The stoplight finally changed to green.

The next thing Satan was aware of was his window being shattered with a crowbar, and bits of glass spraying his face.  A pair of hands reached in and grabbed his jacket, trying to drag him through the small opening. 
This will not do
, he thought.  The hands disappeared, and the Dark Lord heard a surprised scream.  He glanced out the space where the window had been and saw that there were at least three men.

“Oh, shit!  What the fuck is that?” said one of the men.

“He turned Jimmy into a newt!”

“That’s not a newt, you dumbass.  It’s a komodo dragon.”

There was another scream, though this one sounded more like a scream of pain than fear. 

“He bit me.  Get it off!  Get it off!”

“Don’t kick Jimmy, goddamnit!”

“He bit me!”

Inside the car, Satan reeled.  His cheek hurt.  He reached up and felt something hard and sharp on his skin.  It was a glass shard, and it came off easily, as if it had just been sitting there on the surface of his face.  When he pulled his hand back to look at it, he saw that it was covered with blood.  In fact, his whole hand was covered in blood.  A strange, new sensation enveloped his body.  His head felt lighter than normal.  His heart rate shot up, like it did when he got angry, but instead of the urge to destroy things, all he felt was a very strong desire to sleep.