What Would Satan Do? (29 page)

“What’s that all about?” asked Festus.  He noticed that there were a lot of military trucks all over the place.

“Shut up,” said Jimmy.

“Yeah, shut up,” said Wayne.

“You shut up,” said Jimmy.

“No, you shut up, asshole.”

“You shut up.”

“You.”

Jimmy turned and pointed a wide-eyed, crazy man look at Wayne.  Festus looked back and forth between his captors, moving only his eyes.  It was, he thought, probably one of the tensest situations he’d ever been in – outside of the city jail anyway.  The odd thing about it though, was that he felt remarkably at ease.  All the tension seemed to be between the two other men.

Jimmy slammed the truck into park, causing his passengers to jerk forward as the truck tilted and swayed on its giant shocks.

“Jimmy, I gotta have words with you.”

Jimmy gave Wayne the kind of look a homophobic Marine might give a son who’s just announced he’s going to study floral arrangement and interpretive dance at some highfalutin’ college north of the Mason-Dixon line.  He stewed there for a second and then turned his angry face to Festus.  “You stay put,” he said, climbing out of the truck.

The men slammed their doors and immediately started yelling at each other.  Jimmy waved his hands a lot, while Wayne held his out in front of him in what looked like a conciliatory gesture. 

From inside the truck, Festus could hear nothing, but guessed astutely that something was amiss between the men.  He watched as Jimmy’s hand waving became more insistent and more animated.  And then, apparently having done all the hand-waving he intended to do, the man lunged at Wayne. 

“Holy shit!” said Festus, as he watched the two men topple over and disappear from view behind the edge of the hood.  He leaned forward, pressing his face up against the windshield to try to get a better view.  And then he realized that this was an opportunity.  He wavered for a moment before shifting over to the driver’s seat.  Festus hesitated again, checked to see if the two idiots were still busy, and eased the handle back to open the driver’s door. 

With the door open, he could hear grunting noises punctuated by the occasional “son of a bitch!” and “you goddamned pansy!”  He slid down off the seat and dropped to the ground.  There was a door into the church just fifteen feet away.  The alternative was to head back over toward where the military guys were stationed.  Festus scampered over to the door and, finding it unlocked, went inside. 

The door made a clicking sound as its spring hinge pulled it closed, and Wayne perked up from where Jimmy had him pinned to the ground.  “He’s getting’ away!” he said.  “Ow!”

“Shut up,” said Jimmy.

“Would you get off me, you dang cretin?  That hippie just went inside!” 

“Sheeyat.”  The two men set aside their differences for the moment in favor of the bigger problem of Festus P. Bongwater having an unsupervised visit at headquarters.  They jumped up, each covered in dust and sporting what looked very much like sex hair, and ran after the hippie who was loose inside Driftwood Fellowship Church.

Chapter 36.
          
Why Aren’t There Any Naked Ladies?

When one naked guy jumps out in front of your car, you think, “Huh, that’s strange,” and hope that he doesn’t leave any of his nastier, more personal bits stuck in the radiator grill.  When the road is filled with naked guys cavorting, frolicking, and otherwise doing unseemly, naked things, you begin to realize: Something is up.

“Something is up,” said El Jefe, chomping his cigar.  The three other old men in the car nodded in agreement.  Actually, only Angus and Virgil nodded in agreement.  The third – Josiah – had this old-man thing where he kind of nodded all the time, so it was hard to tell whether he was agreeing or not. 

In the middle of the back seat, the Lord of the Underworld and putative angel of divine vengeance did not nod.  He sat quietly, bopping slightly to the swing of the big-band music coming from the car’s cassette deck, looking this way and that as the unclothed hordes cavorted.

“Are those men – do they – are they naked?” asked Josiah.  He was the eldest of the group, and his sight wasn’t great.

“No, Josiah,” said El Jefe.  “They’re just wearing flesh-colored body suits.  It’s one of those new-fangled fads.”  It wasn’t good for a man of Josiah’s age to get too excited. 

“What?” 

“Flesh-colored suits.”

“What?”  Josiah couldn’t hear real well either.  It happens.  Most companies, militarized or not, have mandatory retirement ages, and can therefore avoid problems like the deafness or general crabbiness or grade-A, goat-shit senility that accompanies aging.  This, however, was the militant wing of a group whose minimum age for eligibility was the trigger for most groups to start distributing gold watches and bus tickets to Florida.  Compounding this problem was the fact that advancement through the Krijgsheren Wijsheid was via seniority, which meant that all the guys in charge were themselves too addled to realize that something ought to be done about all the old, addled guys running around in the group.  Josiah hefted his large, military-issue shotgun and started ranting and mumbling nasty, old man things at all the whippersnappers out there in the street in their weird goddamned clothes.

In the front seat, Virgil, a spry 78-year-old, did kind of a slow, contemplative head bob as he watched the world through the windshield.  Something was definitely up – there really were a lot more naked guys than usual.  They seemed to be appearing out of nowhere (but then, to really old guys, lots of things seem to appear out of nowhere), and their numbers seemed to be increasing.  In fact, it looked as if El Jefe was piloting the Town Car directly into the naked guy hive or something.

“Jesus,” said El Jefe.  He navigated the land barge around an up-ended garbage can and then slammed on the brakes to avoid running down a couple of the flesh-colored-suit guys.  “First the burned-up sports car, and then the—” he glanced in the rearview mirror, scowling at the most recent addition to his compliment of passengers, “—and now this.”  He gestured at the windshield, beyond which naked guys were busy cavorting.  “What the hell
is
all this?”

Virgil turned to El Jefe, a surprised look on his face.  “I told you already, it’s the end of the world.”

“Oh, shut up.  We’ve had enough of your nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense, you … asshole.”  Virgil pronounced the epithet in the halting manner of someone who is still trying to un-learn a lifetime of using polite language.

“A bunch of goddamned naked people running around—” El Jefe spun the steering wheel with the base of his palm, “doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world.”

Virgil shook his head.  “You just need to accept it.”  He turned to look out the window, muttering half under his breath.  “Jesus will be here soon.”

“Shut up.”  El Jefe didn’t just have the beak of a bird of prey, he had the keen hearing too. 

Virgil whipped his head around.  “And he’s going to kick your
ass
.”

El Jefe ignored the threat by tripartite-God proxy.  “It’s probably that damned Cadmon.”

“What?” asked Virgil.  “You think that preacher has something to do with all these naked men?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well.”  Virgil rubbed his chin.  “I don’t know.  He never struck me as being a homo.”

El Jefe gave Virgil a Look.  “No, I think he hired them to make people think it’s the end of the world.  Just like he hired those guys with the snake hats to play trumpets on the lawn of the Capitol Building.”

“What?  You think he’s trying to stage the end of the world?”

“He’s been selling that crap for years.  Brings more people into his church.”

“Who is Cadmon?” asked Satan.

El Jefe seemed to have a lot of Looks to dispense.  He gave one to Satan.  “He’s a preacher.  A rich, television preacher.  Dumb as a post.”

Virgil turned to face the Devil, resting his arm on the back of the seat.  “He’s got a huge church,” he said, gesturing to indicate the hugeness of the church and nodding, apparently to try to impart some enthusiasm to his audience.  “Used to be a stadium.  And he’s got an army.”

Satan perked up.  “An army?”

“Yeah!  He and Governor Whitford—”

“Shut up, Virgil,” said El Jefe.

“—they’ve got a whole—”

“Shut up, Virgil.”  El Jefe looked at Virgil with the long, sober face and droopy eyelids of someone who is either giving a warning or is very, very tired.

Josiah joined the living for a moment.  “We should shoot the bastards first, before they can attack us.”  He brandished his shotgun.

El Jefe glanced back at Josiah in the rearview mirror.  “Josiah?  Josiah!”  Josiah finally seemed to notice El Jefe.  “You were supposed to put that thing back into the trunk.”

“What?” asked Josiah.

“You were supposed to put your gun back into the trunk.”

“What?”

“Oh, never mind, you dumb old fuck.”

Josiah either ignored or just didn’t hear El Jefe, and continued to stream quiet epithets and loathing at the world he saw through his window.  It was a confusing place, that world, mostly because his vision had gone to hell and he could barely differentiate a person from a stoplight.  Didn’t matter though.  They were all screwy anyway.  Young, immoral, and screwy, the goddamned blurry bastards.  He hefted his gun a little higher.  He might not be able to see or hear anything anymore, but he could still heft the hell out of a weapon. 

El Jefe glanced at Satan, who suddenly looked as if he were having indigestion problems.  He snapped his fingers at Virgil, and pointed at the glove box.  “We got reflux.  Get the pills.”

With speedy familiarity, Virgil smacked the glove box, which dropped open.  He grabbed a plastic bottle and proffered it to Satan.

“What is this?” asked Satan.

“Uh, Tums?” said Virgil, leaving off the word, “dumbass.”

Satan regarded the bottle in his hand.  “I don’t need this,” he said, and handed it back.

“It’ll help,” said Virgil.

Satan shook his head a tiny bit, but it looked less like “no” than like he was trying to erase an image from his mind. 

“What’s wrong with you?” asked El Jefe.

Satan’s breathing was not the calm respiration of someone who was sitting on the comfortable, overstuffed couch in the back of a Town Car.  “Nothing,” he said.  “I guess I just need to remember my anger management exercises.” 

It was at that instant that something clicked in Satan’s mind.

A curious, slightly worried look came over El Jefe’s face, as he watched in the rearview mirror.  The eyes of the weirdo they’d just picked up had grown quite large, suddenly taking on the aspect of someone who has just put the family dog in the oven and is wondering whether to choose “bake” or “broil.” 

Virgil didn’t notice.  “Why aren’t there any broads?” he demanded from the front.

“What?”  El Jefe tore his attention away from the backseat.  “How the hell should I know?”  He swerved the car away from the curb, narrowly avoiding a man who dangled from the top of a bus stop shelter by one arm, and eased the car to a stop at an intersection. 

“Why aren’t there any women?” continued Virgil.  “That’s what I want to know.  Why is it all just men?”  He waved his hand, gesturing at the lack of naked ladies among the unclothed hordes. 

“I don’t know,” said El Jefe.  “Maybe it’s because naked ladies lead to temptation, and Jesus didn’t want anyone to be too tempted at the end of the world.  You’re the one who knows all about this crap.  You tell me.  “

“Well, that’s just it.  There’s supposed to be a lot of … debauchery at the start.”

“The start of what?” asked El Jefe.

“The start of the end of the world.”  Virgil turned to face the window again so that he could get some more muttering done.  “Dumbass.”

El Jefe smacked him. 

“Ow!”

El Jefe continued the conversation casually.  “I’m not sure,” he said, “that all the bad stuff that precedes the arrival of your Lord and Savior is supposed to be entertaining.”

“Yeah, but a few naked ladies couldn’t hurt.”

They waited at the intersection as a long line of naked guys paraded through the crosswalk.  El Jefe glanced in the mirror back at his new passenger, who now seemed calm, almost serene, even.  He opened his mouth to speak, but one naked guy carrying a sign threw himself onto the hood of the car.  His sign flopped onto the windshield, along with the more dangly bits of his anatomy, obscuring the passenger side of the glass and putting an end to Virgil’s hopeful scanning for naked ladies. 

“We’re all gonna die!” said the nudist hood ornament.  He let out a savage, animal scream and then turned over sideways, chomping at the air like a shark on the deck of a boat.

“That’s disgusting.”  El Jefe turned on the windshield wipers and squirted the man with wiper fluid.  One of the wipers got tangled up with some of the more sensitive parts of a man’s anatomy.  He yelped, and there was a lot of ooh-ing and sucking air between teeth inside the car.  Ultimately, it took an extended horn blast, along with a couple of taps of the gas pedal to lurch the man off the hood.  Finally, the guy rolled off the side, and El Jefe hit the accelerator, letting the sound of an enormous, American V8 discourage any further attacks.

They rode in silence for a few moments before El Jefe turned his attention back to Satan.  “So, those kids back there.”

Satan glanced over his shoulder to see which kids El Jefe was talking about.

“No, no.  The couple.  Back at the apartment complex.”

Satan looked forward again and tilted his head in a non-committal gesture.

“Those kids back there,” continued El Jefe, now negotiating a wonky freeway entrance – of which there are many in Austin.  This one required El Jefe to head south and loop back around in order to get into the north-bound lanes of the Mopac Expressway.  “They really seemed to believe your parlor trick.”

“It wasn’t a trick.”  Satan evaporated Virgil.  “See?”  Dust swirled around the car.

“Holy shit!”  The hardened edge of El Jefe’s demeanor vanished, and he immediately ceased to convey his usual sense of authority and ass-kicking-ness in favor of something altogether more like shock.  The car, apparently sensing the lapse, started veering all over the place, pretty much in whatever the hell direction struck its fancy.  The tires left thick trails of rubber along the pavement in large, Z-for-Zorro shapes as it hurtled northward.