What Would Satan Do? (31 page)

“I mean it.  He will literally walk among you.  Soon,” said Cadmon.

Then Festus noticed that there were soldiers – real soldiers – standing just off to the side of the stage.  They were pulling black, rubbery things out of giant cardboard boxes.  He couldn’t tell what they were.  Gas masks?  S&M gear?

He suddenly had that feeling of being watched – the one that doesn’t register until, without thinking, you turn your head and find yourself looking at someone whose gaze is bouncing around between various inanimate objects as they feign interest in a random plant or a pole or something.  He was disappointed to find himself being watched by Wayne and Jimmy, and not some curvy hottie who wanted him.  They were still standing in the hallway, just out of sight of the people in the arena.

Jimmy cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled at Festus in an exaggerated stage whisper.  “Get back here, you dirty hippie!”  The well-coifed man of God at the front of the auditorium stopped talking, but Jimmy didn’t notice, and continued in his unsubtle non-whispering.  “Hey!  Hippie!”

Festus ducked back down and scrambled the rest of the way across the floor on his hands and knees.  He glanced back just in time to see Wayne whack Jimmy on the arm and point to the stage. 

“Gentlemen!” said Cadmon.  “You’re late.  But come on down here and have a seat.  We’ve just started.”  He opened his mouth into a wide, spotlight smile full of improbably white teeth.

Wayne, still frozen, stared at Cadmon like a deer caught in headlights, or, more accurately, like a dumbass.  Jimmy’s glare remained fixed on Festus.

“The Lord is wondrous and patient, gentlemen, but I do not have all day.”  Cadmon did the teeth thing again, this time flashing it at the rest of the members of his audience.  They murmured appreciatively.

“Come on,” said Wayne, tugging at Jimmy’s shirt sleeve.  Jimmy, doing his best impression of a dog who has just chased a squirrel up a tree, stayed put.  “Come
on
!”  Wayne tugged harder, almost pulling Jimmy over.  Jimmy caught himself and started to walk, jerking his arm away from Wayne.  He turned his head back to give Festus a death stare, but Festus was gone.

Festus made his way down a tunnel that led from the auditorium, moving slower now as he tried not to fall over dead from cardiac arrest.  The black, rubbery things were definitely gas masks.  Festus was sure now.  Had to be.  After all, hadn’t one of the soldiers been trying to fit one over his head?  Technically, that didn’t rule out the possibility that it had been S&M headgear, but it just seemed unlikely. 

He needed to get out of the church, or at least find a phone to call Liam.  But then, Liam refused to carry a cell phone.  Could he call the guitar shop?  Would Liam head back there?  Should he call the cops?  No, he didn’t think he could stomach that. 

There was a noise – voices.  He stopped and listened.  There were at least two people coming.  Festus panicked, turning this way and that, until he noticed he was standing more or less right in front of a door.  He tried the knob.  It worked.  He opened the door and slipped into the room.

It appeared to be a closet – completely dark and musty.  He shuffled his feet and held his arms out in front of him as he groped around.  After just a couple of steps he touched a smooth metal pole, which turned out to be a rack with some clothes or curtains or other fabricky things hanging on it.  He climbed in to hide between them.

Festus waited, still breathing heavily but straining to make as little noise as possible.  After what seemed like an hour, but was probably only about fifteen seconds, the sound of the voices faded, and he stepped out from between the clothes and crept to the door.  He grabbed the knob and began to turn it, but realized that his other hand was resting on a light switch.  He paused for a second to assess the situation:  Risk going out into the hall, where crazy militia men would probably catch him and do bad things to him?  Or stick with the safety of the closet.  The choice was easy.  He flicked the switch, and turned to survey his hideout.

It wasn’t a closet – it was much too large for that – but it was clearly being used for storage.  There were big wooden screens, staffs, a smattering of random tables, shelves and chairs.  It almost looked to Festus like a prop room.  The metal pole he’d touched was indeed a rack, and the fabric where he’d hidden appeared to be a group of costumes.  He flipped through them absently – a shiny blue thing with stars, something that appeared to be a pirate suit, a peasant girl’s dress – until he noticed a desk in the back of the room.  It sat against the back wall, as if someone had intended it to be used, rather than just stored in the room.  In fact, there were stacks of papers and – Festus was thrilled to see – a phone.

He scampered over to the desk, picked up the phone, and dialed.

Chapter 39.
          
Wherein Satan Enjoys Dessert

The Town Car swayed and lurched as El Jefe flung it into an old restaurant parking lot.  He drove as if in a zombie trance, his movements – and those of the car – the jerky and abrupt motions of an automaton.  They skidded to a halt, sliding into a parking spot amid clouds of dust and bouncing gravel. 

El Jefe proceeded to stare straight ahead for about the next forty seconds.

“Hello?  Is this it?” asked Satan. 

El Jefe said nothing.

“Is this the headquarters?”

Still nothing.

“Well, let’s go in.”

El Jefe leapt out of the car, moving with an un-elderly burst of speed as he scampered around to open Satan’s door.  He stood at attention until Satan had climbed out, and then marched, with robotic efficiency, leading the Prince of Darkness toward the headquarters of the Krijgsheren Wijsheid. 

Satan paused for an instant to glance at the restaurant’s sign before following El Jefe inside. 
The headquarters for the Krijgsheren Wijsheid, f/k/a the Militant Arm of the American Geriatrics Society, was hidden in a Lucy’s Cafeteria?

Once inside, Satan was greeted by the soothing smells of fried okra and boiled things, along with less soothing smells of old people, of which there were many.  El Jefe led him past a cash register and some tables full of placid-looking geriatrics who sat spooning creamed corn and tapioca pudding into their faces.  A few eyes flicked over to glance at the Devil and his companion, but the faces of the customers betrayed only stoic impassivity, not unlike grazing cows as passing motorists moo at them.

El Jefe led Satan toward the back of the restaurant, past a row of sneeze guards under which various dishes passed the time steaming or chilling and attempting to look enticing.  A handful of old people shuffled along the railing, ordering various foodstuffs. 

About halfway down, Satan spotted an array of Jell-O desserts sitting on a bed of finely-crushed ice.  Each sat in a fancy, faux-crystal dessert cup, and was arranged relative to its companion treats in neat, orderly rows so as to create a rainbow.

“Ooh!”  Satan paused in front of the multi-hued array.  He dithered for a moment —watching as El Jefe continued his robot march through a pair of metal doors at the back of the eatery – and then scooted over to the silverware stand, plucking up one each of the forks, spoons, and knives.  He started back toward the desserts, but then thought better of it, and went back for a straw. 

Finally equipped with the right tool, Satan returned to the spectrum of gelatin desserts just as an old man in a nasty yellow sweater reached for a green Jell-O.  Satan slapped the man’s hand away and reached for the green Jell-O for himself.  But then he put it back, and grabbed a red one instead.  Then he set the red one down, and grabbed a yellow Jell-O.  He stopped, realized something, and looked around.

“I need a tray,” he said.

By this time, the line behind him had grown not quite to epic length, but long enough to disgruntle old folks who are used to getting their mashed potatoes and gravy in a timely manner.  The elderly gentleman whose hand Satan had slapped gestured over his shoulder to a stack of trays at the end of railing.  The old lady behind him let loose a stream of quiet, but very obnoxious old lady ranting.  Satan extended a long, warning finger at her, and she shut up.

“Give me your tray,” he said to the man, “and you go get another.”

The old man tilted his head and squinted at the Devil.

“Your tray,” said Satan.  “Give it to me.  This instant.”

The old man’s eyes changed from confused slits to wide-open orbs of surprise before ceding the stage to his eyebrows.  His eyebrows decided that the situation called for a little bit of dismay, and arched upward accordingly.  The man proffered his tray. 

Satan reached for the red-orange rectangle, but then yanked his hand back, as if he were afraid it might bite him.  “What is this?”

“Okra?” asked the man.  “Fried okra?”

“Get it off.”  He waved it away. 

The old man removed the okra.

The Devil grabbed the tray and help it up to examine it by the light of a nearby heat lamp.  “Very good,” he said, picking at an invisible speck of something.  He set the tray down and immediately returned his attention to the Jell-O desserts, piling two of each color onto his tray.

Then he stepped back to admire his handiwork.  “Hmm,” he said, looking around.  “I’m going to need more straws.”  He waited for a brief moment, and seeing the lack of scurrying or other hurried forms of locomotion toward the straws, he turned and raised an eyebrow at the old man, who was still busy being dumbfounded.  “Straws?”  Satan pointed at the silverware stand. 

“Oh!”  The old man hurried – or, rather, shuffled in a somewhat brisk manner – to get some more straws. 

“Wait!”  Satan held one hand up, indicating that his straw retrieval specialist should cease all straw retrieval activities immediately.  “What—?  Is that what I think it is?”  He tipped his tray up, dumping his collection of desserts back onto the ice, and headed off toward a large, metal machine near the cash register.

“I didn’t see this before,” he said.  “Where are the cones?”

The cashier was large and possessed an indefinite and lumpy shape, like a snowperson constructed by an inexperienced snowperson builder.  She didn’t answer the Devil immediately, but continued to converse with an old lady who was digging through a purse.

Satan stepped over to help speed up the transaction, which he accomplished by shoving the old woman toward the door.  “You!  Where are the cones?”

“I’m sorry?” asked the cashier.

“Oh!” said the old lady. 

“The cones?  Where are the cones?”

“What on God’s green Earth are you talkin’ about?”

Satan grabbed the cashier by her collar.  “I want some of that ice cream,” he said, “but…”  He breathed a calming breath.  “…there are no cones.”

The cashier made a sound like a duck might be expected to make if he were suddenly to find himself substituted for a football seconds prior to a kickoff or a field goal attempt.  Satan loosened his grip.

“They’re on the side.”  She pointed to the far side of the machine, and immediately leaned over to catch her breath.

Satan peered around the side of the machine, and saw that there were indeed cones.  “Oh good,” he said.  “Thank you.”  He grabbed one and took a step back to regard the flavor options.

“Sir?” a man in a white shirt with buttons and short sleeves tapped Satan on the shoulder.  His clip-on tie imbued him with an air of managerial authority.

Satan declined to look at the man, opting instead to treat him as a co-conspirator.  “What do you think?  Swirl, or just plain chocolate?”

“I’m sorry?” asked the manager.

“Or maybe I could start with chocolate, and then do the swirl, and then some more chocolate?  You know – kind of a chocolate-heavy mix.  Hmm…”

“Excuse me, sir,” said the manager, “but—”

Satan held up his hand, as if to instruct the man to cease speaking immediately, which he did, but only because he disappeared in a singular puff of blue flame.  This also shut up pretty much everyone else in the restaurant, but only for a moment.  The silence gave way almost at once to a flurry of activity and sound.

The word “flurry” is, perhaps, an overstatement.  It was really only a flurry in the same sense, for example, that the original super-continent Pangaea could be said to have engaged in a flurry of activity by breaking up into the modern array of smaller continents. 

This geologically-paced flurry, accompanied by a barrage of crotchety, half-hearted – in the I’ve-got-several-blockages-and-am-suffering-from-mild-mitral-valve-regurgitation-and-so-my-cardiologist-says-it’s-like-I-only-have-half-a-heart sense – screaming. 

The Devil pulled the lever that caused the machine to extrude a stream of chocolate-and-vanilla swirl ice cream, and then turned to watch the geriatric horde stream – again, an overstatement – out the front door of the restaurant.  This, however, required more patience than he was prepared or, indeed, equipped to give, so he took his ice cream treat, and went off in search of El Jefe.

He didn’t get very far before he found himself confronted by a line of gray-haired gentlemen in blue engineer’s coveralls.  All but one had black handguns, which they pointed at Satan.  The one unarmed man was busy fumbling with some kind of leather pouch attached to his walker.

Satan continued to eat his ice cream.

The man with the walker quit fumbling with the pouch – which turned out to have been a holster – and now raised a trembling, gun-laden hand.

“Put that damned ice creamed down,” said the old man in the center of the line.

“No,” said Satan.

“Do it.”

“No.”

The old man raised his gun to hold the barrel at Satan’s eye level.  “Do it.”

Satan locked eyes with the man.  He raised the cone, stuck out his tongue, and licked.

Usually, when a gun goes off, it makes a noisy sound that is a little like a cross between a pop and a snap, but much, much louder.  In movies, this is usually accompanied by the Doppler-induced “fwang!” or “kerpow!” that small, high-velocity objects – such as bullets – make as they travel a relatively large distance or ricochet off a rock.  In real life – particularly in smallish, enclosed spaces – all you get is the ear-splitting popping sound, which lasts about as long as it takes the bullet to lodge itself in a wall or a bit of someone’s anatomy.