752 Miles
“Captain Brooks,” Hal said, warm piss streaming down his leg.
“I love the smell of piss in the morning.” Brooks’ laugh was both as hard as steel and as cracked as a tired sidewalk. “You are a heavyweight, aren’t you?”
Embarrassment filled Hal even as his bladder emptied. The man had scared him; more properly, the gun had scared him. He’d been shot and stabbed and even thought he was going to die once in a car crash, but he’d never had a gun so close he could smell the oil. He’d never felt a cool, slick barrel against his skin.
Would he hear the bullet traveling down the barrel when Brooks fired? Would he ever even realize Brooks had fired?
Around them, the priests spun slowly, still chanting. The noise reached a level that rumbled in Hal’s bones like a low-volt charge.
“Let him go, Brooks,” Shawn said. “Are you crazy? Trying something like that in the middle of all these people? They’ll take you down.”
Brooks laughed. “Take me down? They’re so tranced out they don’t even know I’m here.” He fingered the badge hanging from a slim chain around his neck. “Doesn’t matter, anyway, I’m a good guy.”
Hal surveyed the priests. With the exception of the two who’d been watching earlier, none looked at the trio, none of them stopped twirling or chanting. Shawn, Hal, and Captain Brooks were as invisible as a breeze.
“What do you want?” Hal asked. Stupid question, granted, but he was looking to stall and nothing else came to him.
“What do I want?” He laughed. “You got time for everything I want?”
“Gimme the express version.” Hal tried to measure the distance from where he stood to the door. It was about twenty feet but no way in hell could he cross it before Brooks killed him. All right, he thought, then let’s go to Plan B. Except there hadn’t really been a Plan A so he was at a bit of a loss.
Maybe the priest, Hal thought. He glanced at the first one he’d noticed, the one whose faced had been scared and almost laughed. This guy would be zero help. He’d gone from scared to terrified. His eyes never left Brooks’ badge.
“Don’t be so flip with me, my friend. Smart mouth could get you in trouble. Now, first of all I want my twenty grand.”
“Don’t have it.”
“I want my dope.”
“Don’t have it.”
“I want my woman.”
Hal bit his lips.
With another laugh, Brooks grabbed Shawn and hauled her close to him. “What are you doing here, honey?”
“Taking in a show,” she said through gritted teeth.
Brooks slapped her face. The pop sounded like a small caliber shot in the chapel. The priest who’d eyed Hal earlier looked over. Only his eyes, though, his head stayed toward the group of priests.
Shawn held a hand to her cheek. The skin was already going a deep, angry red.
“Don’t sass me, bitch.” He ran a finger along the barrel of his gun. “I’ll kill you here and now, don’t think I won’t.”
Hal opened his mouth but said nothing, a healthy fear of the gun still in the back of his throat like bad booze.
“What’s that, loverboy?” Brooks said, his dead eyes on Hal. “You got something to say?”
“Leave her alone.” His voice was so soft he wasn’t certain he’d even said anything. “She…she ain’t done nothing…to you.”
Brooks grinned at Hal. “That’s right, loverboy, you’ve done it all. The dope, the money, the girl. You took it all.”
“He didn’t take me,” Shawn said. “I went with him.”
“Semantics. The point is, this particular set of problems pretty much start with Halford Turnbull.” He raised the gun, sighted it on Hal’s face. “Might as well end it with Halford Turnbull.”
Hal’s eyes closed. He wanted them open, but he was so freaked out it wasn’t happening. You pretty much got whatever dignity I had left, Hal thought, so best get to shooting. Except he didn’t want it to end in this goofy-ass church with his brains as splattered as priests’ blood. Truth was, he didn’t want it to end at all, he’d just as soon live forever. Certainly long enough, anyway, give his brother a kiss on the cheek and make love one last time to Theresa.
“I guess we have a problem here, don’t we?” Brooks said. “I mean, I got some things I want and you say you don’t have them. That’s a problem.”
Brooks’ voice was nearly lost by the chanting, growing louder by the moment. The robed men moved faster, too, in time with their chants, in rhythm to the words and sounds.
They’re like dancing teenagers, Hal thought. This is their music, their socializing. And they were just as oblivious as teenagers. A man held a gun on two other people, had slapped one of them, and two priests had noticed. One of those two was piss-scared and was trying to disappear into the damned walls and the other seemed to be getting off on the confrontation.
“Officer?” He stepped up to them. “Is everything okay? Do you need some help?”
Brooks tossed Hal and Shawn an angular grin, then shook his head. “No, sir, I have the situation under control. But let me just offer my thanks for your checking. If we had more citizens like you, we’d have fewer citizens like them.”
With a nod, the priest went back to the others. He joined their movements, sang their chants, but his eyes stayed on Hal and Shawn.
That was probably the former cop, Hal thought. Wearing that robe like a fucking uniform. Probably still had his badge and paddled his pud with it at night when the rest of the freaks were safely in bed.
“You’ve got no problem,” Shawn said. “Get out. Leave us alone. You lost some money and drugs, deal with it.”
Hal shook his head. “Ain’t gonna work like that. He lost something. Three somethings. Boy needs something to replace what he lost.”
A grin crawled across Brooks’ crooked mouth. Teeth, like a fence twisted about by the forces of nature, stared out. “Not bad, loverboy. You may actually not be as stupid as you look.”
“Thanks for that, I guess.”
“Now, let’s start this again. First I’ve got to correct you on one point, I only lost two things.”
Hal frowned.
“I’ve got my dope.”
Of course he did, Hal thought. Of course the money and the drugs would be exactly where they fell when Goon got whacked.
Understanding came to Hal suddenly. “But then the money — ”
“Was gone.” Brooks sucked his teeth. “You got it. Everything else was there: cars on fire, a dead man, two other local hoods, about a ton and a half of spent brass. But no money. What was amazing was that neither Dogwood nor Templeton could agree on exactly what happened.”
“Go figure,” Hal said.
“But they did agree that you were there when it all went bad. And seeing as how you are the only one who walked out of there, I put my money…literally…on you. You’re probably also the one that brought down that particular fire-fight in my city.”
“He didn’t shoot at all.”
Brooks swung his gaze toward Shawn. “You’d know because you were there. With Dogwood.”
“Yes.”
“Who I told you to stay away from.”
“Yes.”
“Lighten up, corporal, you don’t own her.”
Brooks jammed the gun into Hal’s face. The barrel pressed against Hal’s teeth. “Let me tell you something: not only do I own her, I own everything.”
Even if the gun hadn’t been scraping the enamel off his teeth, Hal was not prepared to disagree. He might well have made some dumbass decisions in his life, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to make one now. For now, as the priests got themselves more and more worked up, he’d keep himself nice and quiet, thank you very much.
“And it’s Captain, not corporal, asswipe. Now, please do tell me where my money is.”
Hal swallowed. “Swear to God, I don’t know. When I left, it was with the dead guy.”
“You expect me to believe you left $20,000? Not even a piece of afterbirth like you is that stupid.”
Around them, the priests all raised their arms. Slowly, ritually. They came back down, then went up again. Everyone’s head, Bob’s included, was tilted back, eyes closed and mouth in a slight grin. Hal half expected some kind of golden light to come blasting out of the sky straight from God and shine down on them.
“Of course I ain’t,” Hal said. “I tried to get that money. Damned hard to get with bullets flying all over the place. Those fuckers shot at me. Shot my bootheel off.”
“Shocking.”
“The dead guy had it,” Shawn said. “Templeton’s goon. Did you check him?”
“Wow, why didn’t I think of that? Oh, wait, I did. No bread.”
“Well, it was there when we drove off.” Shawn nodded. “We left it there.”
Brooks grabbed her hair and twisted it until her face was nose to nose with his. “It’s ‘we’ now is it?”
“Whoa,” Hal said. “No need to go honking on women, Captain.” Hal stepped forward a foot or so. “Just let her go and let’s you and I get this thing straightened out.”
“Officer?” the priest asked. He stopped with his eyes dead hard on Hal.
The arms, like a collective, raised above the priests’ heads. They hesitated for a moment, then came back down before repeating the ritual. The chanting and twirling continued, growing like a wave coming in off the sea, larger and larger as the winds around it whipped up.
“What the hell is this?” Brooks asked, as though seeing the display for the first time.
“It’s what we do,” the priest said.
“It’s stupid.”
“It is self-sacrifice.” The priest nodded. “It is getting to the heart of the matter of sin.”
It kept going, over and over, a visual version of the chant, a monotony of movement. But then the chant changed, like a jazz tune changing key, changing mood. The arms came down fast and as they shot back up, four priests brought out whips. A half-second later, those four whips smashed against skin. The whap of leather and flesh rang out, bold over the chant. Blood exploded into the air.
“What in the hell….” Brooks backed up a step, his eyes wide.
Blood flipped through the air, dotted the ceiling, nailed Shawn. Like a kid with a paintbrush had whisked it across her skin. She yelped and fell backward.
“The fuck is that?” Brooks said. He turned toward the priests, amazement plain and naked on his face. “You guys are craz — ”
“Go,” Hal shouted. He shoved Shawn toward the chapel’s front door. “Get your ass outta here.
Shawn never hesitated. She ran for the front door, mowing through priests like a bowling ball through robed pins. Her yells banged around the chapel’s walls, interrupted the priests. The chant stopped, replaced by their confused questions. “What’s this?” “Officer, should I get my — ” “Who are you people?” “Why are the cops here? I’m wanted in — ”
“Get your ass back here,” Brooks shouted.
“Go,” Hal called. “Get outta here.”
Brooks lowered the gun toward Shawn and fired. Two shots missed, instead pulverizing the walls, vaporizing the adobe. The sting of cordite hung heavy in the air as the priests hit the floor. For a split second, Hal thought maybe they’d all been soldiers once, so quick and seemingly instinctive was their fall.
While Brooks was distracted by the falling priests, Hal jumped at him. Two minutes, maybe three, and Shawn would be gone. She’d be in the car, on the highway, getting the fuck outta Dodge. And surely Hal could go two minutes with this badge-wearing ape.
The ape punched him. In the face. Hard.
Scratch that original plan. Might not make it thirty seconds with the ape.
Hal shook his head, tried to clear it as Brooks landed a second punch. It banged against the side of Hal’s head and his hand to God, it was like the Liberty Bell had gone off inside his skull.
Hal stumbled forward, not really looking to go another round. In fact, not really looking at anything at all. His eyes were closed, the bell in his head bonging. He was just trying to get some place where the fighting wasn’t.
Instead, he found Brooks. They hit the floor in a mass of swinging fists and missed punches. Brooks laughed and pounded Hal’s gunshot wound.
If nothing else, the skin-splitting pain of that punch quieted that goddamned bell, didn’t it?
“Hal?” Shawn called. She had stopped suddenly at the front door. Her eyes pleaded with him, begged him, to get his ass out the door. “What about you?”
“I’ll get back to you. I’m a little busy right now — ”
Brooks’ thin fists landed a one-two in his gut.
Another hesitation but then she was gone. Hal turned back to Brooks and for a while, managed to stay with him, punch for punch. He moved into Brooks, tried to get inside the cop’s arm to avoid the gun. Brooks tried to slip around him but the blood on the floor, both from Hal and the priests, made it impossible.
“Officer?” the priest asked.
The others stood, brushed themselves off, and watched. Their eyes were intent on Brooks and Hal and more than one gently rubbed himself. Ah, homo-eroticism rears its ugly head, Hal thought.
“I’m a cop,” Brooks shouted. “This guy’s wanted for murder.”
His words rang out through the chapel but still no one wearing a robe made a move. Most were frowning now, as though caught in some internal debate. Help the cop? Or help the wanted? Shit, most of them were probably wanted on some kinda bullshit charge, no wonder they weren’t jumping to Brooks’ aid.
But the one who’d asked Brooks if he needed help, the one who’d stared at Hal like he were the devil incarnate, did help. His face a huge, sexually charged grin, he pulled his robe up, revealing tanned and muscular legs.
And a wooden holster.
“The fuck is that?”
While he was looking at the priest, Brooks nailed Hal in the jaw. Washed out stars, limp and ragged, beat down by the Texas heat and sheer exhaustion, flashed in his head.
“Lemme help,” the priest howled.
He whipped an obviously old, exotic gun from the holster. A long barrel, a square box with a short magazine in front of the trigger guard, a large wooden grip.
When he fired, the sound filled the chapel like a thousand whips against skin. Most of the priests screamed and hit the floor. At least one moved too slowly. His head came apart in a mist of robed-red. Behind and around him, adobe exploded in a line from one side of the room to the other. Beneath it, where the bullets pounded, silver aluminum skin peeked out like some kind of metallic baby playing hide-and-seek.
“Shit.” Hal hit the floor while bullets sprayed everything in sight. The cross near the back of the chapel danced and splintered its way to the floor. The largest piece, sharpened at the end by the fracturing, went through the leg of a downed priest. He howled.
The small framed stained glass windows hanging on the walls exploded in a blast of shards. The blacked-out windows were gone instantly, as though they’d never been there. Sunlight streamed in, mostly blinding Hal but giving him enough light to see damn near all the priests head for the doors.
They ran like scared cattle, like cows in the stun line at the slaughterhouse when they figured out what that fucking sledge-hammer was for. Some of their robes slipped down their ankles, got kicked off. Others jerked the hoods over their heads as they ran, almost like the hood gave them some sort of protection.
Two figured out that was bullshit when their chests burst like water balloons against a brick wall. Blood splashed everywhere, but not in the neat, organized lines of the penitents. Now, as the one priest continued to shoot, it came in great gobs, like water pouring out of a garden hose, reminding Hal of the Garden City motel room pictures. Those priests still alive, screaming and crying now, stumbled and fell away from the dead men, as though that ugly death might somehow rub off and leave them just as dead.
“Hal,” Shawn screamed. She stood on the other side of one of the windows, Templeton’s .380 barking in her hand. Who in hell was she shooting at? “Let’s go. What are you waiting on?”
Brooks punched his arm again. Pain flared bright and bold like a blowtorch.
“What the hell is going on?”
The guy Shawn had scored with — the one Hal had thought was dead on the bed — came through the far doors. His face was waxy, his eyes like glassine paper. Blood dribbled from the crook of his elbow.
Then blood dribbled from everywhere as the priest raked the gun across the guy. His chest sank in on itself as the bullets slammed him backward. He gurgled, or at least Hal thought he did, before he cashed out.
“Teach you to eat smack in a church,” Hal yelled, his voice mostly lost in the din of bullets. Shitty thing to say, Hal knew, but try as he might, he couldn’t quell the hysteria. It jangled him like the bullets thunking against the aluminum, squeezed him like the one priest desperately squeezing his intestines back inside his abdomen.
The gun fell silent but as quickly as he had pulled the gun out, the priest jammed in another magazine and fired again. This time, the bullets worked all the way around the room, a jagged line of holes marching somehow neatly from wall to wall. Both Hal and Brooks, intent as they were on each other, knew exactly where those bullets were. When they began to march toward them, both men fell away from each other.
Hal landed a last punch, managed to send Brooks’ gun flying across the floor, and ran his ass toward the door.
Where the priests were piled up. Some obviously dead, others trying to crawl over the dead, some trying to crawl out from under the dead to the door. Their moans were like the dark flip sides of their chants.
“I’ll get him,” the shooting priest yelled out. He whipped the gun around toward Hal.
Okay, no door, Hal thought. Window’ll work just as well.
He crashed through the window to get gone. A finger of broken glass caught him and zipped open a stretch of skin on his cheek before breaking off. He hit the ground hard and ran. His boots pounded in the dust as he realized he wasn’t going to die in that chapel.
Behind him, the chapel door burst open, spilling the dead and the somehow still living out. In the harsh sunlight, the brown robes seemed like the dried blood on the ceiling. Like the blood had gotten scared and jumped its way off the ceiling, ran its way out of the church.
Like the blood was running for its life.
There was nothing in front of him. A building, maybe two, and then desert. Fucking Valentine, Texas, he thought. Population four counting all major cats and dogs and there ain’t no next move. Where the hell you gonna go? This is it, end of the line.
Except for the car pulling up beside him.
“Let’s go,” Shawn said.
“I’ll fucking kill you,” Brooks screamed from the window. Bullets whapped the car.
He dove in the window as Shawn jerked the gear shift into overdrive. “Fuckohfuckohfuck.” Hal’s teeth chattered, bit the tip of his tongue off. Blood flooded his mouth. “Go go gogogogo!”
The car fishtailed around a corner just as Brooks came out of the church, blasting away. One shot took out the back windshield while others popped the trunk. Shawn jammed the accelerator all the way down and hit the highway blacktop damn quick. Tires squealed like teenagers on a Saturday night and the momentum pressed Hal backward into the seat.
“Son of a bitch.” This was bad. Real bad. Not like stealing cars bad or stealing money bad. This was like dead Missy bad. This was ‘get a rope’ bad.
When he sat up, the town was long gone. His hands shook like an old man’s, his heart had stopped long ago and might never start again. His head, surprisingly, didn’t hurt. But it did continue to show him the chapel over and over. Shooting over and over again, priests falling repeatedly to the floor. And priests, continually dying.
And Brooks’ face, twisted into something beyond anger, something in a whole different universe than simple anger.
“Holy shit,” Hal said. “We gotta get hidden, he’s going to follow us.”
“Not for a while,” Shawn said.
“Why not?”
She tossed a hunk of metal and wires at him. “Distributor cap. What do you think I was doing while you two were dancing?”
