The Forsaken - The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Two (22 page)

She looked at him, her eyes trying to express
something that was transformed into another puff of smoke. She
looked away. He repeated the noise, louder—snuffling on the stuffy
air. She gave a quick look at him, almost desperate, then turned.
Slowly, her eyes came back to him.

“Is it the mission?” Stoneworthy asked
finally.

“What mission?” Cawood’s look was genuinely
bewildered.

“This!
This
mission, Karen.”

“Oh. What about it?” She threw her cigarette
butt out the window, and dug into her pack for another.

“Is this mission bothering you?” He smiled
warmly, turned back to the road. “It
is
unusual.”

“Oh. No, Able.” She smiled when he looked at
her. “I haven’t given it much thought.”

“You haven’t given it…” His fingers gripped
the steering wheel. He hurried to hide his alarm.

“Well. No. I mean, I’ve thought about it.”
She touched his forearm.

“Because I would think, Karen.” Stoneworthy
searched for understanding. “I was going to say that
our
mission. It’s okay if you’re nervous about the Angel. I’m nervous
too.”

“Actually, I’m looking forward to the
diversion.” Her voice fell flat.

“A diversion from what?” Stoneworthy couldn’t
hide his chagrin. “You need to talk to me.” Karen turned away to
light a cigarette, he grabbed the lighter from her hand.

They shared an intense, almost angry look
before his heart fluttered at her obvious pain. He gave the lighter
back.

“I’m sorry. Please, just open the window
farther—please—if you’re going to smoke the whole pack now.” He
tried to smile at her, saw her features waxy and indistinct.
“Look…” He took the lighter and lit the cigarette that dangled
lifelessly from her lips. “Let’s not get sidetracked. I want you to
talk to me about what’s bothering you.”

“Able, I was going to call you last night,”
she started, her cigarette flared.

“What for?”

“Oh, to talk about this mission and things,”
she said, smiling weakly. “Do you think we do any good?”

“Good” His eyebrows lifted. “What? Why of
course!”

“Really?” She watched the smoke curl off her
cigarette. “Sometimes I’m not sure we can help, with the
Change.”

“The unknown is nothing new. We can help
people with that, Karen.” Stoneworthy slowed the car, turned to
watch his friend as long as he could. A glance at his watch told
him there was no time for this.

“I just.” She studied the dashboard, eyes
blank. “Do you think there’s forgiveness for all of us? Can it, can
we, as humans forgive everything?”

“Oh. You mean with our mission today? I
contemplated the very thing.” He nodded absently. “Righteousness,
the word of God in us, gives us the right to forgive, and the duty
to do so.”

“Yes, today, but for everything, too?” She
looked at him thoughtfully. “For anything…”

“If you’re concerned about this Angel’s sin.”
Stoneworthy smirked. “
That
we will have to determine. But, a
sin is a sin, in the eyes of the Lord. We are bound to forgive in
His name.” Then he smiled. “And a man of good conscience will
always offer the hand of forgiveness. It is the key to repentance.
We must.”

“So you’d…so we have to forgive everything,
every sin?” Her eyes were pleading.

“Of course, Karen.” Stoneworthy pulled up to
a stoplight. “It is not always easy to do. The sin could be
abhorrent. Could run contrary to what we believe—may even repulse
us. But everyone gets a chance to repent. Everyone deserves
forgiveness.”

She nodded quietly to herself, and puffed her
cigarette.

“That doesn’t mean we have to
lik
e the
sinner,” he added, starting ahead when the lights changed. “We are
obligated to love our fellow man, but we needn’t like him.”
Stoneworthy stared at her until she turned. “Why so much doubt, my
friend. Is there something you wish to tell me?”

He’d said, it. He opened the door to her.

“Oh, it’s just the mission,” she said with a
weak grin. “I suppose I doubt the reality of Angels…”

“Don’t doubt yourself because of it,” he
laughed, eyes penetrating. “Believe me, I want you along because I
am also not beyond doubt. I am aware that people must roll their
eyes at me. Don’t let my story cause you to doubt. I hope it will
reaffirm both of our faiths. And I want you here to hold me up in
this.”

“Yeah.” She sat silently watching the
condominiums pass.

Stoneworthy turned his attention to the road.
The buildings were all alike—and finding the address would require
his full attention. He had been told that the Angel was expecting
him at 232 Towerview Terrace. His heart raced. The minister was
suddenly gladdened by Karen’s introspective nature. That’s what
made them work so well together. She asked the questions he
sometimes forgot to ask himself—and it made him feel competent for
what lay ahead. He glanced at her smiling.

She caught his gaze and looked away.
Stoneworthy was glad he wasn’t alone. Karen distracted him from his
own doubt.

“There it is.” He pointed to the brass
numbers on brick and then started looking along the curb for a
place to park. “Okay, there we are.” Stoneworthy glanced at his
friend’s face as he pulled in behind a pickup truck. Her face had
paled again, accented with distinct redness about her ears. “Karen,
are you going to be all right?”

“Yes.” She nodded dully, conjured up a weak
smile. “I’m sorry. But we should talk later.” She reached a hand
over and patted Able’s. “I’m sorry for talking like this right
now...this is more important.”

“Karen, talk to me anytime about anything.”
This time he couldn’t hold it in. His eyes watered as he continued,
“You’re my friend. And if you have a problem we’ll get through it.”
He patted her hand in return. “Regarding
this
mission. I
have faith in you and need of you. We can do this.” Stoneworthy
held her gaze. “Regarding all other things. I have faith in
you.”

“What…” she started and let it go. Her eyes
ran over his face, studying, searching. Then she smiled. “Yeah,”
she said, as she pushed her door open, “Thank you.”

Stoneworthy climbed out, a leather-bound
bible under his arm. Karen waited for him on the sidewalk. Again,
her face was awash with emotion. This time she grabbed his forearm
and drew him close.

“You…so we’re actually going into that house,
and talking to an Angel!”

Able looked at her, then laughed. “Oh,
Karen!” He threw his arms around her. “I haven’t lost my mind.” The
minister kissed her cool cheek. “Not yet, anyway. But I understand
your doubts. I have them myself. Revelation is difficult to share.”
He clasped her fingers. “But come with me now and you will witness
something that will get you through all that is to come.”

Karen hesitated, fingers playing at her
lips.

“After this,” he said, “we’ll talk. I know
what’s
really
bothering you.”

She smiled weakly, somewhat puzzled, as he
led her by the hand toward to the stair.

The door opened when they reached the third
step. A man pushed his way out, leaning heavily on the doorframe.
His face was haggard, his features ringed with strange vaporous
smoke. The man’s dark eyes were wild with rage or realization as
they turned to the minister. One of his muscular shoulders was
seeping blood. He snarled, the gun in his right hand whipped
up.

Stoneworthy smiled as the first two bullets
punched him hard in the chest. He flew backward with sheets of fire
tearing through his mind. Bullets continued to punch into him until
he hit the sidewalk with a shuddering impact. Numbness quenched the
fires. There was no time for panic. Vision fading, Stoneworthy
watched Karen’s eyes wide with horror. He smiled through tears. She
took a step toward him and then turned to the gunman. Stoneworthy’s
mouth filled with blood—heavy, coppery, suffocating. He saw the gun
come up, point at Karen’s head. The minister drifted into darkness.
No Heaven waited.

****

PART TWO

****

31 – The Wild Bunch

The man stood on the porch of an old
farmhouse in the middle of a muddy gray desert. His suit and tie
refused to fit in with the surroundings but he always wore them. It
had just stopped raining which made the hot day humid. The house
behind him was never built for the rain. The crazy old farmer must
have been patching the roof for a hundred years right up until this
man and his friends arrived and killed him.

Six months back, the law in Greasetown was
closing in so they headed for the desert—a ferry across the
Mississippi Sea, then a long drive south. The trio stopped to buy
ammunition and supplies in Imperial—an oil town before the wells
dried up, it was a cracked main street of empty buildings now. The
desert around it had grown green and gray and heavy with all the
rain.

After re-supplying they stumbled on the
farmhouse. The old man was as crazy as a
red rug
—as Driver
put it. He was a decent enough sort at first, until he introduced
them to his wife. She had been dead for about fifty years and was
wrinkled into a knot of reanimated, greasy leather that moaned.
Bloody was moved by their story, so he killed the farmer and burned
the pair of them on a pile of fence posts.

Tiny had just hung up the phone. He had
forwarded his new number to a gangster friend in Vicetown in case
anyone he could trust came looking. Tiny and the boys had been out
of work for almost a year and he had to get something going. He was
on the porch gearing up for the tough sale ahead.

Driver would be an easy sale
. The
Texan was ready to lock and load. But Bloody was getting worse. The
big gunman spent his days, whisky bottle in one hand, .45 Colt in
the other. He had an old cassette player and a warbling tape of Roy
Orbison’s songs. He’d hide out with a big box of ammunition in the
driving shed out beside the ruins of a barn. “Crying” and gunfire
haunted their nights.

Tiny sold television advertising before the
Change. He was good at it. People could call him a no good son of a
bitch and tell him to get the hell out, but he would only smile and
sell them whatever he wanted.

One night—a good five months before the
Change—his life had started over when he first met Driver and
Bloody at a bar in Houston. Driver was a fast talking Texan of
average height and build with dazzling blue eyes. Bloody was a tall
flat-faced man who joked in a cynical way, until the booze made him
dark.

Neither of them was very drunk when they met,
but for whatever reason—
fate
—Bloody had said, they sidled up
beside Tiny and began drinking with him. That bar led them to
another, and another, until they ended the day, or began the next
at an all night strip joint. About fifteen other men following
similar empty hallways of life sat around the stage. Tiny didn’t
remember much of what led up to his new life. He just remembered
Bloody crying.

“What is it, brother?” Tiny asked. They had
all become
brothers
after the sixteenth drink.

“Look,” Bloody had said, pointing to the
stripper looming over them. The small Latino woman ground her naked
pelvis in their direction. “I can’t take it!”

“Yeah, beautiful…” Tiny replied. “What, you
want some?”

Driver jumped in then. “Hey! Hey! Whoa there!
Hey there! Tiny, brother. Bloody’s just feelin’ a little down.”
Then the Texan put his bearded face close to Bloody’s. He whispered
something into his friend’s ear where his forehead rested against
the bar. Bloody grunted. Then, Driver stepped back shaking his
head.

“Shit!” The Texan cursed, wiping a hairy
knuckled hand over his bristly scalp. “Bloody’s feelin’ bad for the
girl.” He slid a chrome-plated pistol with a six-inch barrel out of
his coat and handed it to Tiny.

“There may be some shootin’. You fire that
little darlin’ with both hands.
Both
, you hear? Hey!” Driver
pushed it under Tiny’s coat. “Keep it down now. What you’ve got
there is a .357 magnum with enough killin’ power to drop a goddamn
Texas steer. You see the barrel, that extra length and those ribs?
That’s to keep her cool for lots of shootin’. She’s a som’ bitch!”
Driver whispered with a wink.

Without warning, Bloody lurched to his feet.
He glared at the dancer through his sunglasses.

“You poor bitch!” he growled. “Who’s doing
this to you?” Tears slid effortlessly down his flat cheeks.

The stripper stopped, her hand instinctively
covering her abdomen. A few shouts came from behind the trio as
other revelers called for the show. Bloody turned.

“So.” His eyes squinted behind black lenses.
“
You’re
making her do it.” With speed that belied his
drunkenness, Bloody pulled a gun from his jacket. It looked like
Tiny’s but was jet black, and its barrel was longer.

“Careful, brother!” Driver yelled at Tiny, as
he pulled a pair of guns from shoulder holsters.

The dark room had erupted in flashing gunfire
and noise. Tiny remembered few particular actions, just Bloody
firing into the crowd before spinning to shoot the stripper between
the eyes. Driver fired rapidly with twin .9 mm automatics—chewing
an escape route through the screaming patrons.

Tiny’s strongest memory was the feeling of
power warming his hand through the chunk of forged steel. It was
something he had never felt before. And his new brothers shared it
freely with him. So his life changed. Married to the gun and his
talent, no one would ever rake this salesman over the coals
again.

Bloody wept in the rear seat of the car as
they tore away from the scene. He didn’t explain his actions.
Neither did Driver. The Texan worked the wheel of the big black
Chevelle with his hot guns in his lap.

Tiny didn’t want an explanation either. They
screamed across the state throwing lead. The law was just rounding
on them, when the Change came. The boys managed to lose themselves
during a storm where tornadoes corkscrewed across the landscape.
The sirens of pursuit faded; the law was needed elsewhere.
Liberated by the Change, Tiny and his brothers drove, scored and
killed. And Tiny never lost another sale.