Book of the Dead (48 page)

Calhoun down-shifted, let off the gas, allowed the other bus to soar past by half a length. Then he jerked the wheel so that he caught the rear of it and knocked it across the road. He speared it in the side with the nose of his bus and the other started to spin. It clipped the front of Calhoun’s bus and peeled the bumper back. Calhoun braked and the other bus kept spinning. It spun off the road and down into the valley amidst a chorus of cries.

Thirty minutes later they reached the top of the canyon and were in the desert. The bus began to throw up smoke from the front and make a noise like a dog strangling on a chicken bone. Calhoun pulled over.

[12]

“Goddamn bumper got twisted under there and it’s shredded the tire some,” Calhoun said. “I think if we can peel the bumper off, there’s enough of that tire to run on.”

Wayne and Calhoun got hold of the bumper and pulled but it wouldn’t come off. Not completely. Part of it had been creased, and that part finally gave way and broke off from the rest of it.

“That ought to be enough to keep from rubbing the tire,” Calhoun said.

Sister Worth called from inside the bus. Wayne went to check on her. “Take me off the bus,” she said in her slow way. “…I want to feel free air and sun.”

“There doesn’t feel like there’s any air out there,” Wayne said. “And the sun feels just like it always does. Hot.”

“Please.”

He picked her up and carried her outside and found a ridge of sand and laid her down so her head was propped against it.

“I… I need batteries,” she said.

“Say what?” Wayne said.

She lay looking straight into the sun. “Brother Lazarus’s greatest work… a dead folk that can think… has memory of the past… Was a scientist too…” Her hand came up in stages, finally got hold of her head gear and pushed it off.

Gleaming from the center of her tangled blond hair was a silver knob.

“He… was not a good man… I am a good woman… I want to feel alive… like before… batteries going… brought others.”

Her hand fumbled at a snap pocket on her habit. Wayne opened it for her and got out what was inside. Four batteries.

“Uses two… simple.”

Calhoun was standing over them now. “That explains some things,” he said.

“Don’t look at me like that…” Sister Worth said, and Wayne realized he had never told her his name and she had never asked. “Unscrew… put the batteries in… Without them I’ll be an eater… Can’t wait too long.”

“All right,” Wayne said. He went behind her and propped her up on the sand drift and unscrewed the metal shaft from her skull. He thought about when she had fucked him on the wheel and how desperate she had been to feel something, and how she had been cold as flint and lustless. He remembered how she had looked in the mirror hoping to see something that wasn’t there.

He dropped the batteries in the sand and took out one of the revolvers and put it close to the back of her head and pulled the trigger. Her body jerked slightly and fell over, her face turning toward him.

The bullet had come out where the bird had been on her cheek and had taken it completely away, leaving a bloodless hole.

“Best thing,” Calhoun said. “There’s enough live pussy in the world without you pulling this broken-legged dead thing around after you on a board.”

“Shut up,” Wayne said.

“When a man gets sentimental over women and kids, he can count himself out.”

Wayne stood up.

“Well boy,” Calhoun said. “I reckon it’s time.”

“Reckon so,” Wayne said.

“How about we do this with some class? Give me one of your pistols and we’ll get back-to-back and I’ll count to ten, and when I get there, we’ll turn and shoot.”

Wayne gave Calhoun one of the pistols. Calhoun checked the chambers, said, “I’ve got four loads.”

Wayne took two out of his pistol and tossed them on the ground. “Even Steven,” he said.

They got back-to-back and held the guns by their legs.

“Guess if you kill me you’ll take me in,” Calhoun said. “So that means you’ll put a bullet through my head if I need it. I don’t want to come back as one of the dead folks. Got your word on that?”

“Yep.”

“I’ll do the same for you. Give my word. You know that’s worth something.”

“We gonna shoot or talk?”

“You know, boy, under different circumstances, I could have liked you. We might have been friends.”

“Not likely.”

Calhoun started counting, and they started stepping. When he got to ten, they turned.

Calhoun’s pistol barked first, and Wayne felt the bullet punch him low in the right side of his chest, spinning him slightly. He lifted his revolver and took his time and shot just as Calhoun fired again.

Calhoun’s second bullet whizzed by Wayne’s head. Wayne’s shot hit Calhoun in the stomach.

Calhoun went to his knees and had trouble drawing a breath. He tried to lift his revolver but couldn’t; it was as if it had turned into an anvil.

Wayne shot him again. Hitting him in the middle of the chest this time and knocking him back so that his legs were curled beneath him.

Wayne walked over to Calhoun, dropped to one knee and took the revolver from him.

“Shit,” Calhoun said. “I wouldn’t have thought that for nothing. You hit?”

“Scratched.”

“Shit.”

Wayne put the revolver to Calhoun’s forehead and Calhoun closed his eyes and Wayne pulled the trigger.

The wound wasn’t a scratch. Wayne knew he should leave Sister Worth where she was and load Calhoun on the bus and haul him in for bounty. But he didn’t care about the bounty anymore.

He used the ragged piece of bumper to dig them a shallow side-by-side grave. When he finished, he stuck the fender fragment up between them and used the sight of one of the revolvers to scratch into it:
HERE LIES SISTER WORTH AND CALHOUN WHO KEPT HIS WORD
.

You couldn’t really read it good and he knew the first real wind would keel it over, but it made him feel better about something, even if he couldn’t put his finger on it.

His wound had opened up and the sun was very hot now, and since he had lost his hat he could feel his brain cooking in his skull like meat boiling in a pot.

He got on the bus, started it and drove through the day and the night and it was near morning when he came to the Cadillacs and turned down between them and drove until he came to the ’57.

When he stopped and tried to get off the bus, he found he could hardly move. The revolvers in his belt were stuck to his shirt and stomach because of the blood from his wound.

He pulled himself up with the steering wheel, got one of the shotguns and used it for a crutch. He got the food and water and went out to inspect the ’57.

It was for shit. It had not only lost its windshield, the front end was mashed way back and one of the big sand tires was twisted at such an angle he knew the axle was shot.

He leaned against the Chevy and tried to think. The bus was okay and there was still some gas in it, and he could get the hose out of the trunk of the ’57 and siphon gas out of its tanks and put it in the bus. That would give him a few miles.

Miles.

He didn’t feel as if he could walk twenty feet, let alone concentrate on driving.

He let go of the shotgun, the food and water. He scooted onto the hood of the Chevy and managed himself to the roof. He lay there on his back and looked at the sky.

It was a clear night and the stars were sharp with no fuzz around them. He felt cold. In a couple of hours the stars would fade and the sun would come up and the cool would give way to heat.

He turned his head and looked at one of the Cadillacs and a skeleton face pressed to its windshield, forever looking down at the sand.

That was no way to end, looking down.

He crossed his legs and stretched out his arms and studied the sky. It didn’t feel so cold now, and the pain had almost stopped. He was more numb than anything else.

He pulled one of the revolvers and cocked it and put it to his temple and continued to look at the stars. Then he closed his eyes and found that he could still see them. He was once again hanging in the void between the stars wearing only his hat and cowboy boots, and floating about him were the junk cars and the ’57, undamaged.

The cars were moving toward him this time, not away. The ’57 was in the lead, and as it grew closer he saw Pop behind the wheel and beside him was a Mexican puta, and in the back, two more. They were all smiling and Pop honked the horn and waved.

The ’57 came alongside him and the back door opened. Sitting between the whores was Sister Worth. She had not been there a moment ago, but now she was. And he had never noticed how big the backseat of the ’57 was.

Sister Worth smiled at him and the bird on her cheek lifted higher. Her hair was combed out long and straight and she looked pink-skinned and happy. On the floorboard at her feet was a chest of iced beer. Lone Star, by God.

Pop was leaning over the front seat, holding out his hand, and Sister Worth and the whores were beckoning him inside.

Wayne worked his hands and feet, found this time that he could move. He swam through the open door, touched Pop’s hand, and Pop said, “It’s good to see you, son,” and at the moment Wayne pulled the trigger, Pop pulled him inside.

BY BRIAN HODGE

Every night, without fail, it began like this:

MUSIC: opening of Gustav Hoist’s “Mars, Bringer of War”

…A dark and brooding piece of music if ever there was one. Next came the announcer, cheerful, bouncy as a beachball. Monty didn’t know where they’d found the guy, but he was the best Don Pardo soundalike he’d ever heard. 

     ANNCR, VO:

Drop what you’re doing… it’ll still be there! Come on! Join us now for the most unpredictable hour on television…
Deaaaad Giveawaaaaay
! 

Every night, without fail. Seven nights a week, live on the air, and no reruns.

When Monty first checked his watch, it was a half hour to show time. He slumped a little deeper into the chair in his dressing room. Time on his hands. Time to kill. Would that lead to blood on his hands?

Too late, Monty! It’s already there!

So he reached out onto the counter before him and plucked his bottle of Chivas Regal from the carpet of dust beneath it. And drank until it burned. Penance. A little later he was comfortably numb. And could live with himself again.

Time was that Monty Olson lived with just about everybody. In spirit, if not body. He traveled the airwaves, waltzing into bright, sunlit living rooms and bedrooms, borne on the wings of daytime TV. Always a guest, never an intruder, forever welcome. Shows such as
Deal of the Century
and
Bet You a Million
had made him a star. And was he loved? Oh was he ever… because he was the man with the cash, the man with the prizes, the man with the motherlode.

The man with the million-dollar smile.

It was a little tougher to conjure up that smile these days, the big one that wrapped the corners of his mouth almost back to his wisdom teeth. But he managed. Once a pro, always a pro.

Who would have ever guessed it?
he wondered for maybe the billionth time since waking up to find that he and everyone else unfamiliar with the rigors of rigor mortis were in a declining minority.
Who’d’ve guessed that they’d still want to be entertained?

Monty fortified himself with another character-building gulp of scotch and reached for his makeup case. He did his own makeup these days, wondering why he bothered. His face was a little flabbier, a little looser, with a few more broken veins mapping his nose. But he was still a regular Clark Gable by comparison with the rest of the folks on the show. Monty peered at the lines webbing from the corners of his eyes and mouth and did his best to erase them with a little pancake makeup.

They still want to be entertained
.

It wasn’t
that
crazy a notion, not when you gave it time to sink into your already shell-shocked head. Because back in the days when the dead suddenly weren’t obliged to stay in their holes and their morgue drawers anymore, Monty had found himself wandering the streets. He didn’t want much, only to avoid becoming lunch for some newly awakened cadaver, and maybe to link up with someone else whose blood still ran warm. And he’d seen the zombies in their homes. There they were—by themselves, in pairs, as entire families—parked in front of their televisions just as before, as if nothing whatsoever had changed. Even when all the networks and independent stations had dropped from the airwaves like fruit from a dying tree, they watched the blank screens anyway. Mesmerized by the static.

The watching dead, waiting to be entertained.

Most of the zombies weren’t that bright. Most of them weren’t much more than two-legged dinosaurs in search of the nearest tar pit to blunder into. But some of them—perhaps those who’d been the sharpest and shrewdest to begin with—had managed to retain enough intelligence that it was downright scary in itself. You looked into those glassy eyes and found that they weren’t quite as dull as you’d thought. Or hoped. Yep, the lights were still on and somebody was still at home up there… only now the resident’s priorities had been turned on their heads.