The Devil's Alphabet (12 page)

“Probably still got his keys,” Deke said. He was keeping his volume low, as if reluctant to disturb Harlan’s praying.

“Probably,” Pax said. “Or he could just come in the side door—you just have to yank on it to get it to unlatch. They ever fix that?”

Hooke did not seem amused. “He won’t listen to us at all, and of course we can’t go in after him—look at him.”

The blisters. They were afraid of touching him.

“Okay,” Pax said, “why don’t we let him finish? Whatever he’s doing.”

The reverend shook her head. “We can’t let him stay in there all day. Now Paxton, you may have heard that your father and I had our differences, but that’s got nothing to do with this. I respect him as a man of God. But it just isn’t safe to have him in there, not with … not in his condition. I told Deke we ought to call Aunt Rhonda, and have her boys—”

“But I said that was your call to make,” Deke said to Pax.

“No, you’re right,” Pax said. “My dad didn’t want to go with her, but … look at him.” He should have brought the papers with him. Rhonda had guards, gates, medical equipment—everything to stop this kind of thing from happening. “I don’t think I can handle this.”

“Well, today you’re gonna have to,” Deke said.

Pax felt his face flush. He didn’t look at Deke, instead
turned to the reverend and said, “Call Aunt Rhonda. I’ll try to get him out of there. You have any rubber gloves? Or some plastic I can put over my hands?”

The Reverend Hooke said she had some garbage bags in her office, and Pax followed her up the steps of the pulpit and through the narrow door behind the podium, to the hallway that led back to the offices and Sunday school rooms. To their right was a door, left ajar, that opened onto the baptistry.

“I’ll be right back,” Hooke said, and headed down the hall.

Pax opened the baptistry door. Steps led down into the pool, and the water was as high as the top step. His father was within arm’s reach. His huge body almost filled the pool, and every movement sent water lapping over the edge.

This close, the smell of the vintage was strong, made heavier by the moisture in the air.

“Dad,” Pax said. Then, louder, “It’s me, Paxton. It’s time to go home.”

His father’s eyes remained closed. “—to die in the flesh, Lord,” he prayed. His voice bounced around the enclosed space, but it seemed both quieter and more desperate. “And yet to be resurrected in the spirit. We ask these things in your name, amen.”

“Dad, you’re hallucinating.”

The Reverend Harlan Martin opened his eyes, turned. His face looked like it had been pummeled, a mass of protuberances and swelling flesh. It took him a moment to focus on Pax through eyes closed almost to slits.

He smiled and extended an arm to him. “Don’t be afraid, Son,” he said, his voice low, as if to keep a congregation from hearing. “Take my arm and I’ll help you down.”

The surface of the water seemed oily, reflective.

“I’m not coming in there, Dad.” Pax breathed in through his mouth, tasting the vintage. “Step out now, okay? Can you climb out?”

His father glanced toward the front of the church. Who was he seeing, out there—and when? Pax remembered standing in this spot when he was twelve, his father reaching out to him exactly like this. Paxton’s mother had bought him a new white dress shirt and had told him to wear an undershirt so he wouldn’t look naked when the water soaked through.

His father chuckled, shook his head. “All righty then.” He turned toward Pax, sloshing water over the sides of the pool, and moved toward the steps.

“That’s it. Come on out and we’ll get you dried off,” Pax said.

His father grasped Paxton’s forearm, his fingers surprisingly strong.

It’s okay, Pax thought. His arm was covered by his sleeve, no skin contact. “Easy does it,” he said.

“That’s the spirit,” his father said. He backed up, pulling Pax down to the second step. Pax yelped and grabbed the door frame with his free hand. The water splashed cold against his shins.

“Dad! Stop it!”

“In the name of the Father,” his father said. He looped an arm around Pax’s waist. “And of the Son—”

He yanked Pax toward him. Pax lost his grip on the door frame and fell onto his father’s chest. The big man overbalanced and tipped backward and they plunged under the water.

Cold water surged into Pax’s ears, his mouth.

Pax’s left arm was smashed between his father’s body and the side of the pool, his right arm trapped at his side. Pax
arched his back, trying to get his head up above the surface. His father’s arm cinched tighter, hugging him close.

Someone else was in the water with them. Pax felt something grip the back of his neck, slide down to tug at his elbow, freeing it. Pax reached up, found the top of the glass panel, and held on.

Pax got his legs under him, pushed. The arm around his waist loosened and his head broke the surface. He gasped, and immediately coughed up water.

From the sanctuary, murmurs of “amen.”

Deke stood in front of the baptistry, reaching down, his arm covered to the elbow by a black plastic bag. Behind him the room was full of light, the pews crowded. The women wore colorful summer dresses. The men, in white shirtsleeves because of the heat, draped their arms across the pew backs. All of them were unchanged—not an argo or chub or blank among them. The organ played “Rock of Ages.”

My church, Pax thought, but it was his father’s voice saying it. My church, my church. Pax felt the tightening in his chest, love and gratefulness and sorrow blossoming like heat.

E
VERY PAYDAY A
gang of charlie men gathered in the lobby of the Home like eager pups. Rhonda Mapes could hear them outside her door, talking and joking, eager and impatient. Every week they came earlier and earlier. Well they could keep waiting. Rules were rules.

At fifteen before the hour, Everett knocked on her door, then leaned in apologetically.

Rhonda looked up from the accounts book. “It’s not eleven yet,” she said. “Tell the boys—”

“It’s not about that,” Everett said. He glanced to his side, and a young charlie poked his face around the side of the door. Travis was seventeen, hired as an orderly last year. Where Everett was bald, Travis wore a thick wave of black hair and long sideburns.

“He’s doing it again, ma’am,” Travis said.

Rhonda sighed, took off her reading glasses. “Is he producing?”

“No ma’am. But he’s pretty worked up, and it looks like he’s having trouble breathing. I was wondering if you wanted to do the sedative thing again, or—”

“No! I told you, he’s got to come through this.” She closed the accounts book. “Go back to the room, I’ll be there in a minute.”

Travis’ face disappeared. Everett stepped into the office and closed the door behind him. “You want me to do payday?” he asked. “The boys have been out there a half hour, we can get rid of them early.”

“Certainly not!” She got to her feet and walked to the floor safe, a squat black thing about the height of a two-drawer filing cabinet, and bent to squint at the dial. “Give it to ’em a half hour early, pretty soon they’ll take an hour, and the next thing you know they’ll be showing up on Mondays.” She opened the safe with a few practiced spins, withdrew the key ring for the coolers downstairs, and tossed it to Everett. “You can get the bonus out, but don’t give them a drop until I get there. I’m going to find out what Travis needs. Then after we pay the boys, we’ve got some errands to run.”

The charlies in the lobby all stood when she walked out of her office. Twelve well-built men, the strongest in the clade, from boys not much older than sixteen to a couple of elders who were only a step or two from becoming Home residents themselves. She employed them all, but most didn’t work at the Home; they were distributors and messengers, her hands, the means by which she touched every member of the clade.

Clete said, “Hey, Aunt Rhonda.”

“Y’all here a bit early this morning,” she said.

“You always say, on time is late, early is on time,” Clete said, smiling.

“Too bad you only remember that on payday,” Rhonda said. “Y’all sit down and wait your turn.”

Rhonda plucked a paper surgical mask from the dispenser on the wall and walked toward the men’s wing. She could faintly hear Harlan’s caterwauling, and as she pushed through
the second set of doors he let loose with a particularly full-throated shout.

“Goodness gracious,” she said to herself. She had no use for crying and tears, not anymore. She’d buried her husband when she was forty-six, and oh, she’d bawled for weeks. But then came the Changes, and by the time her body finished blowing up like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon all those tears dried up.

(Almost all. Ten years ago she’d walked into Willie Flint’s cabin and the sight of the man had hit her like a punch to the stomach. She’d burst into tears, but only for a moment—the final spurt before that faucet sealed shut for good.)

The charlie men—the old ones, anyway—were just the opposite. Tough old coots, who before the Changes wouldn’t have yelped if they’d grabbed the wrong end of a chainsaw, suddenly got as touchy as babies. You couldn’t even frown without them taking offense. And when the vintage was flowing they just went out of their heads, laughing, crying, seeing things—and trying to hump anything that moved.

As she reached Harlan’s door she heard the reverend shouting something about “bread and stone.” More preaching, then. He’d been at it nearly nonstop.

Old chub men went crazy when the vintage hit them hard, but Harlan had it worse than she’d ever seen. He was crying out and talking to people when they’d picked him up at the church last night—it had taken Everett and Travis and Clete to pull the old man out of the water and get him into the van—and he’d kept making noise all night and into the morning. Rhonda kept her distance from him and let the boys handle him, of course. Harlan was throwing off vintage like a water sprinkler, and while the boys had a natural tolerance, Charlie
women had to be careful. A couple years ago she’d embarrassed herself terribly when she caught a splash off of Mr. Lukens. Everett had stopped her before she climbed on top of the man, thank the Lord, but she’d already started rubbing against the old chub’s legs and—well, she wouldn’t let that happen again.

Rhonda pushed open the door, and the smell of the stale vintage hit her through the mask. She didn’t step any closer.

Travis put down some electronic gadget he’d been thumbing and popped to his feet.

“It don’t sound like he’s having any trouble breathing,” Aunt Rhonda said.

“He was gasping,” the boy said. “Now he’s doing the preaching thing again.”

Harlan lay on the queen-sized hospital bed, straining against the wide black Velcro bands they’d put across his chest, waist, and legs. He was sweating and red faced, his eyes wide and roaming the room. “Every good tree,” he said. “Every good tree brings forth good fruit. And every corrupt tree …”

“I told you, you have to talk to him. Have you been talking to him?”

“I tried,” the boy said. “It just seems to make him madder. He sure don’t like those straps.”

The boy looked like he could handle Harlan if the old man broke free—Travis was built like a clenched fist, all muscle and bone. He’d been a preschooler during the Changes, and at seventeen he was already broader and more muscular than Everett. That’s how it went with the charlie boys; the younger they were when they caught TDS, the bigger those muscles. The second-generation charlies—the natural-born boys who were under twelve and looked like butterballs now—would probably be five-foot Schwarzeneggers by puberty.

And when they got old as Harlan? Maybe they’d go fat again and start producing. Or maybe they’d turn into something different altogether. Nobody knew what the course of life would be for a natural-born charlie. They were in uncharted territory.

Rhonda put her hands on her hips. “Is he making any more sense? Does he know where he is?”

“I don’t think so,” Travis said. “It’s all Bible stuff, mostly. Sometimes he calls me Paxton.” He laughed. “Or Lorraine. Which I guess is his wife?”

“She died in the Changes,” Rhonda said, and her tone snapped the smile off the boy’s face. “As for Paxton, well …” The last time she’d seen him, he was pale, wet, and unconscious, and Deke was carrying him off to Dr. Fraelich’s clinic.

Rhonda risked coming another foot into the room. “Harlan!” she said sternly. “Pastor Martin!”

Harlan gave no indication that he heard her. “Is not the life more than meat?” he said. “Is the body more than raiment?” His voice was scratchy, but still strong. These backwoods preachers didn’t tire easily; she’d seen Harlan do week-long revivals, bringing the fire and brimstone two hours a night.

“Time for you to wake up now, Pastor. You can’t be carrying on like this all day.” He kept babbling, his eyes focused on nothing. Rhonda stepped back and said to Travis, “Are you sure he’s not producing?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean, you don’t
think
so?”

“I mean, no ma’am. I check him every hour, but I haven’t found any new blisters, and there’s nothing coming through the cream.” After they’d gotten him into the Home last night the boys had plastered his blisters with antibiotic
cream—standard procedure. “I guess he’s still drunk on the dose from last night.”