The one Hobby called Bee said, “Just shoot the bitch and let’s get on.”
Shotgun said, “And the preacher. I really wanna shoot the preacher, that’d be some wicked shit.”
From the floor, the Reverend started laughing, weakly. He pushed himself up to his knees, blood smeared all over his face, and said, “You know what, Loretta? You hit like a motherfuckin’ girl, you know that?”
All three gangsters looked at him.
Shotgun stepped around Hobby, unslinging the shotgun. He hefted the weapon in his hand like a baseball bat and swung.
Metal connected against the Reverend’s temple with a sickening crack and blood arced away from the Reverend’s head and splashed like rain on my boot. He dropped like a dead weight and didn’t move.
“Now,” Hobby said, to me. “To bid-ness, yeah? Here’s the deal. You can still walk outta here. Walk right on out without a scratch on you. But there’s conditions, like.”
“Let me guess. The money. All you want is your money.”
“Straight up. We know what you can do. We, what you call, weighed our options and shit. You ain’t natural. You can do shit to people, like what you done to my boys. I don’t like it, but I ain’t stupid. I know that a few bullets ain’t gonna kill your ass. So that’s the deal. Give us the money you took, the money that belongs to us, and you can walk right outta here.”
Shotgun said, “Yo, Hobby, I ain’t buyin’ it. I think Bee’s trippin’. Why don’t we just shoot him, we find out then if he’s Superman.”
Bee said, “Hey, fuck you man. I seen it.”
“Bullshit, man, you freakin’ out for nothing. James just missed him, is all.”
“James shot him point fuckin’ blank. And he just laughed. I seen it. And then his hands started glowin’ all orange and shit and he melted James’s hand right to his fuckin’ gun, man.”
“You trippin’.”
“And you heard what he did to Leroy. He put a big fuckin’ hole right in his chest.”
“Shut up,” said Hobby. “My boy Bee says he seen it, then he seen it. And I seen with my own eyes what he done to James and to Leroy. And to that sad fuck he left behind at the house. Dude with his neck bones all hangin’ out?” He turned his attention back to me. “You got my ear, Superman. What you wanna do? You wanna walk outta here?”
“What about Tassie?” I said.
Hobby shook his head. “Not part of the deal. She comin’ with us. Bitch been a thorn in my side for too long now.”
I grinned at him. “You’re not thinking it through. If you can’t kill me, then guess what? I’m the one in charge. How about this? You drop your guns and turn around and walk away, and we’ll all avoid having to see what your goddamn ribcages look like, how’s that?”
Hobby shook his head. “Boy, didn’t I just tell you, I ain’t stupid? I always think shit through. I’ll put a bullet through Terrible Tassie’s head.”
Tassie looked at me, her eyes giving away nothing. Fists still clenched, teeth still gritted.
A soft groaning from the floor. The Reverend stirred. All eyes shifted to him as he rolled over onto his back, saying, “Ah . . . ah, Jesus. . . . Okay, that one hurt, sister. But you know . . . you know what?” He sat up, gingerly, and blood practically poured off him. He grinned up at the gangsters and his teeth gleamed white in the mask of red. “I think I’m beginning to like it. You reckon I can have some more?”
Hobby said, “Well, I’ll be a sonofabitch. I can’t believe it.”
Shotgun said, “What is this motherfucker? Dawn of the Dead?”
The Reverend laughed. “Come on, Maybelline. Gimme another kiss, huh?”
Hobby shook his head, unbelieving. When he spoke, his voice started at a normal octave, but it grew louder and angrier as he went on, “I gotta admit, preacher man, you’re starting to get on my last . . . fucking . . . NERVE!”
The Reverend cackled. “What? Don’t you love me no more?”
Hobby said, “Pick him up, goddamnit. Pick him up.”
Shotgun and Bee hurried to carry out orders. They flanked the Reverend, grabbing him under each arm, hefted him up off the floor. Hobby, keeping his gun pointed in Tassie’s direction, approached and looked him in the eye.
The Reverend grinned at him.
Hobby said, “You’re something, you are, preacher man. You are a right piece of work.”
“I think you’re pretty, too.”
Hobby scowled. “Masochist faggot preacher. How you like that?” His eyes went to the giant cross against the wall, and a slow smile played across his face. “I got an idea, preacher man. You wanna be closer to Jesus? How ’bout you share some of his pain, how ’bout that?”
Everyone got it right away. I felt a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Bee looked uncertain. “You mean . . . naw, dog. You serious?”
“Yeah, I’m serious. Find a hammer. And some goddamn nails. We gonna do it up right.”
Shotgun kept Tassie and me covered—pistol on Tassie, shotgun on me—while Hobby and Bee ransacked the cabin. It didn’t take long to find the toolbox, under the sink. Hobby whooped, “Yeah, bitch! This’ll do just nice.” The hammer was good, solid, but the nails were long and rusty and bent. No one seemed troubled by that.
He’d hit the Reverend one more time, just long enough to put him out of commission for a few more minutes, then herded Tassie and me over to a cot and made us sit. The Reverend was just coming to again as Shotgun and Bee lugged him over to the cross. The fight seemed to have gone out of him. His eyes looked unfocused, and he mumbled incoherently as his head lolled on his shoulders.
Hobby said, “Bee, don’t take your eyes off Terrible Tassie and Superman over there. We got this.”
Bee looked relieved. He pointed his gun at us and didn’t watch what his partners were doing.
“Okay,” Hobby said to Shotgun. “Hold his hand there. No, up on the wood, nigga. Fuck, man, ain’t you ever been to church?”
Shotgun pushed the Reverend’s arm against the cross, and Hobby paused with the hammer and nail and glanced at Tassie and me. “Here’s something I bet you didn’t know. You know all those pictures of Jesus hangin’ on the cross, with the nails in his palms, holdin’ him up? Well, that’s bullshit. You don’t crucify no one by nailin’ their palms. They be too heavy, slid right off. Naw, man, you gotta pound the nail right in the wrist, where the bones can support the weight. Like this.”
He placed a nail against the Reverend’s wrist, took aim with the hammer, and pounded it in.
The Reverend grunted once and passed out.
Tassie cried out sharply and her hands went to her face.
I watched. I didn’t take my eyes away once, even though everything in me wanted to look away. I watched, and I waited, and I felt the power beginning to grow inside me.
I watched the faces of three men who were destined to die bloody, horrible deaths.
Shotgun looked as sick as I felt, but he did what he was told and held the Reverend’s other arm against the cross. Hobby was laughing. Blood had splattered on his face and ran down his jaw but he didn’t seem to care. He took the other nail in hand, placed it at the Reverend’s wrist, and pounded it in with the hammer. The sound bounced around the room like a bass drum. Hobby said, “Yeah! How’s that, preacher man? You feelin’ all holy and shit?”
When both nails were in, Hobby stepped back and looked at his handiwork. “Let ’em go, man. Let’s see how it looks.”
Shotgun moved away, not looking at the cross. He’d lost his appetite for blasphemy, it seemed.
The Reverend slumped on the cross, blood streaming from his wrists and his face. His head hung down over his chest, and he could have been dead for all anyone could tell.
Hobby said, “What a fuckin’ friend we have in Jesus, huh?”
Bee glanced at Hobby’s handiwork. “Jesus, dog.”
“What?” Hobby said. “You don’t like it?”
“Naw, man, it’s just—”
“I didn’t take you for a pussy. You got some kinda problem with the way I do bid-ness?”
“Naw, man.”
“You got some kinda fuckin problem?”
“Naw, man, I’m just sayin’, yo—”
“Then shut up. We got more pressing matters, right?”
A weird, self-righteous anger had taken hold of Hobby, as if he knew he’d crossed a significant line. He stormed over to Tassie and me, on the cot, pulled his gun from his waistband, and said, “Well? How ’bout it? You handin’ over the money?”
“I’ll give you the money, but I’m not leaving. Not without Tassie.”
He gritted his teeth, pointed the gun at Tassie. He pulled the trigger.
The bullet caught Tassie full in the chest, and she jerked back against the wall without a sound.
The gun had gone off less than a foot from my head and the boom of the bullet exploding out of the chamber left me nearly deaf for a long moment. All I could hear was a mad roar. I could tell Hobby was laughing, his mouth was open and moving, but I couldn’t hear it.
In my peripheral vision, blood spread across Tassie’s torso, spat out of her mouth, and she didn’t look surprised or concerned or anything. She looked dead. It had happened so fast. Hobby shot her and she bounced back against the wall and slumped over and that was all.
I launched myself at Hobby, vaguely aware of the scream coming out of me. He started to move back, not fast enough. My fist caught him in the throat and he tried to swing the gun around at me but I knocked it aside and hit him again, in the mouth.
He said something under the roar, and Bee and Shotgun moved. I couldn’t hear the sound of Shotgun cocking his weapon, but I felt the result—the blast hit me in the upper thigh, hundreds of steel pellets like shrapnel ripping into my flesh.
I raised my hands up to my face. Light played around my fingertips. I concentrated hard on it. The Reverend was out of commission, right, so the power inside me was back.
Too late to save Tassie. In time to kill the gangsters, but too goddamn late to save Tassie.
A bullet caught me in the shoulder. I couldn’t tell who it came from, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t hurt.
The light grew stronger, a golden, amorphous cancer spreading into my hands, feeding on me, giving me strength. It spread down into my wrists, my forearms. The gangsters opened up, I could see them shooting at me, shooting with their silent weapons, their mouths open with cries I couldn’t hear.
Bee stood only three feet from me. I took a step toward him, touched his face gently. He screamed and his flesh sizzled and he stumbled back and dropped his gun.
Shotgun panicked. He bolted for the door, tore it open, managed a step. I pointed at the door and amber light arced out of my hand and slammed the door shut. He looked at me and his face was such a portrait of pure terror that I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
With a slight push of will, I made the light swirl around him, up his legs and thighs and lower torso. I pulled, and Shotgun’s legs went out from under him and he thudded to the floor. I wished I could hear his screams.
The light was flowing around me now, not just in my hands and arms, but everywhere. I looked down at my own body and saw that it nearly encased me. I was a creature of pure, golden light, alive with deadly luminescence.
I raised my hands above my head and called it down, called it all down on the heads of the wicked.
The Reverend stirred on the cross. The light swirled around his head and arms and chest, and he grunted and moaned. He had my attention only for a moment before I realized that Hobby was standing right in front of me, unloading his little gun at my chest. I laughed, willed an arc of light out of my head, and it leapt like liquid gold fire to gasoline.
The light played at the scar on Hobby’s forehead, like tentative fingers looking for an opening. He screamed a scream I could almost hear, and then the light found purchase and his head cracked wide open.
I willed the light around the Reverend, moving it over his arms and to his wrists. The nails moved, slowly pulling out of the wood, and his face contorted in agony before going slack again as he passed out.
Shotgun was scrambling across the floor, trying desperately to find someplace safe. Bee, still clutching his face, cowered near the sink. I turned my attention to both of them.
The light oozed across the floor toward them, pushing them back. Shotgun scrambled toward Bee, kicked at the light, like it was a rabid dog he could keep at bay, but there was no stopping it. I doubted if even I could call it off now. It was a force of nature.
It enveloped them like lava. By the time the burning light reached their knees, even the screaming had stopped and they huddled together in death like citizens of Pompeii, their last agonizing moments captured forever for posterity.
My hearing was coming back, just in time to hear the thump of the Reverend falling off the cross. The rusty nails rolled across the floor and into a leg of the table.
And it was over.
The light began dying away, retracting back into me. I heard something metallic plink-plinking on the floor in front of me, looked to see bullets dropping out of my body. There were a lot of them.
I didn’t have to will the light back into me. It did it on its own, as if it was a living thing that knew the job was finished for now. The golden glow faded slowly, up my body and into my arms and finally settling in my hands, until even the slight amber glow in my fingertips flickered out.
Silence. I could hear again, but there was nothing to hear. The Reverend lay crumbled at the foot of the cross, unmoving. Hobby sprawled in front of me, his head cracked open and blood pooling around it like a halo. Bee and Shotgun, huddled against the wall, burnt black and unrecognizable. And Tassie . . .
Tassie, slumped on the cot, covered in blood, a gaping wound in her chest. Dead.
I can’t explain what I felt. The euphoria of a moment before vanished and the most hopeless sort of grief replaced it. I stood there, the only one untouched by the carnage, the only one still standing.
I went to her, touched her neck, feeling for a pulse. Nothing. Carefully, I picked her up. Her blood smeared my arms and chest and her head lolled back.
Degrees of death, she’d said. There should be degrees of death. Vinnie and Bone rated better deaths, she thought, but no, that wasn’t true. They didn’t deserve better or more interesting deaths than anyone else. But Tassie, Tassie did. She deserved something better, something grander, than being shot in the chest by some half-ass gangster.