HELLz BELLz (20 page)

“Fuck that. You just get us the hell outta here.”

“I am.”

After a long pause, Josh said, “We killed those fuckers. I know I killed at least three. How many did you kill?”

“Two for sure.”

“‘Thou shall not kill,’” Josh quoted one of the few Bible passages he knew. “Jesus ain’t gonna like that. What if those freaks didn’t do it? What if it was those two Night Rider dudes? They rode out from behind the church like they’d just left the place. Shit.”

“Will you cut this what-if shit? I don’t wanna hear it.”

“I’m just saying—”

James slapped Josh’s shoulder with the back of his hand. “Shut up.”

“Hey! Watch it! I got the guns, ya dumb shit.”

“So what? You gonna shoot me?”

“Hit me again and find out.”

“Just stop talking shit. I can’t take it right now, okay?”

“Okay. But you don’t have to hit me, goddammit.”

“I didn’t hurt you, ya pussy.”

“Pussy…pussy…” the old woman in the back mumbled.

“Grandma?” James said, looking back over his right shoulder.

“Pussy, pussy,” she said in a raspy voice. “’Ere, puss.”

Her eyes were still shut, but something like a smile was twisting her lips up at the corners.

Josh had turned around in his seat to check her out. “I think she’s calling a cat.”

“We don’t have a cat,” said James. “She’s out of it.”

“Maybe she’s coming out of it. Maybe she can tell us what happened to her.”

“What does it matter? I don’t think she’ll ever be right again.”

“Puss…puss…”

Speaking in a loud voice the way you would to someone hard of hearing, Josh said, “Miss Dora? Can you hear me? It’s Josh. And James.”

“Pussy…”

Josh snickered. “I tawt I taw a puddy tat.”

“Puddy…puddy…” she echoed.

“She hears me.”

“Grandma? Can you hear me? It’s me. James.”

She mumbled incoherently, then fell silent once more.

“Guess that’s all she had to say,” said Josh. “She’s fried, man. Toast. Think she just pissed herself too.”

James looked at the glowing gauges in front of him and said, “Goddamn. We’re on empty.” Then he looked at the digital clock. “After midnight. Where the fuck are we gonna get gas?”

“Tonight? Hell, we just take it. If the gas station guy bugged out and went postal I doubt he took the time to close up and turn off the pumps. Go to that one on Broadhurst, the BP station. We might even get some free munchies inside. And beer.”

James took the suggestion and drove the shortest route he knew to the BP station. As they pulled up to an island of pumps, his eyes searched the well-lighted building and surrounding pavement for lurking dangers. There was an old pickup truck parked in front of the glass storefront and a black Caddy crouched at the next island, both vehicles apparently empty. The back window of the Caddy looked as if someone had taken a ball bat to it.

“Don’t see anybody inside,” said Josh. “And all the lights are on, so it’s probably wide open. You get the gas and I’ll get the beer and shit.”

James shut off the motor. “No, wait. You stand guard while I get the gas. I’m not taking any chances. We’ve got to be smart. Careful. Like we’re enemy territory, right?”

“Yeah, right. We are.” Cradling the shotgun in his arms, Josh stepped out of the car and slowly turned three hundred and sixty degrees, the barrel of the shotgun like a compass needle seeking—but not finding—north.

James got out, went to the pump and lifted the handle from its metal cradle and touched the little square for high-octane fuel. As long as it was free, he figured he’d just as well take the best they had. He unscrewed the Saturn’s gas cap and jammed the nozzle into the throat of the tank. “Shit,” he spat. “Ain’t nobody inside to hit the Begin Fueling thingie. I’ll have to do it myself. Be right back. Stay sharp.”

“I’m a fucking razor, dude,” Josh said with a grin.

James got the .22 bolt-action rifle out of the front seat and walked toward the storefront. As he reached for the glass door he heard what sounded like the distant chatter of an automatic weapon, and behind that, the endless tolling of the cursed bell. He pushed through the doorway and into the glaring light inside. He smelled beer and cordite, and knew someone had recently discharged a firearm in here. He scanned the few rows of merchandise, ready to shoot anyone who might pop up out of hiding to do him harm. In front of the cashier’s counter a crumpled six-pack of beer lay on the shiny tile in a pool of sudsy brew. He went behind the counter and almost tripped over the body of a black girl in a BP shirt. Her dark face looked like it had been stuck in a meat-grinder. Her left eye was a pulpy mush and bright cartilage shone through what was left of her nose. Her shirt was spattered with blood. Somebody shot her face off with a shotgun, he thought. Poor kid. The image of his dead mother flashed before his eyes and he suddenly felt sick to his stomach. He swallowed hard and went to the electronic console, studied it a moment and then touched the button to reset the gas pump where he’d parked his mother’s car. He looked through the glass and saw Josh give him a thumbs-up. He waved back and Josh began filling the Saturn’s tank.

He walked to the back wall of refrigerated units to get some beer. As he reached for the cooler door with the bottles of Budweiser behind it, he heard a scraping sound and he froze. He darted his eyes in the direction of the sound and raised the rifle to a shoot-from-the-hip position. He held his breath and listened intently for further sounds. Unless he was wrong, the sound had come from behind a gunmetal-gray door next to the last cooler, standing like an ominous slab barring entrance to a forbidden realm. Somebody was on the other side of the door, he was sure. But what should he do about it? Should he grab the beer and run, or find out who was in there? Easy, he answered his own silent question, get the beer and get out fast before somebody comes busting through that door with a gun to shoot my ass. But something held him in place. Something whispered to him, summoning him to the door and urging him to throw it open and see who was on the other side of it. His pulse thundered in his ears. The sense of danger heightened his awareness and gave everything a sharp edge. He was high, as if he’d smoked some kick-ass weed. He worked the bolt of the .22 to snap a shell into the chamber and stepped toward the door with his finger tight against the trigger.

This is stupid,
he warned himself.
Get the hell out of here.

But he was momentarily divorced from his cautious self, compelled to follow the instincts of the new persona emerging from the chrysalis knitted from his old life—his life before the Night of the Bell.

“Who’s there?” he called. “Come on out and I won’t shoot you.”

Maybe I won’t shoot you.

Another dry scrape behind the gunmetal door.

James stepped back and raised the rifle to his shoulder and snugged it firmly in the flesh-and-bone pocket.

The door opened soundlessly. A tall figure in white stood in the mouth of the dark room. It came forward into the light.

“Jesus,” whispered James.

And it was. The Jesus of those artists’ unrealistic renderings he’d seen as a child in Sunday school. Blond-haired, bearded, blue-eyed Jesus Christ, with no Jewish feature in his face.

Jesus raised his arms waist-high, the palms of his long-fingered hands open and facing forward as if in welcome. The folds of his flowing toga hung majestically from bare arms.

James lowered the rifle and stared into the Savior’s deep blue eyes.

Jesus said nothing, but only gazed into James’s eyes and into his soul.

“Whu-what are you doing here?” James stupidly asked. Then he saw that the toga was a bed sheet, not even white, but pale pink. “You’re not Jesus. Are you?”

The tall young man in the pale pink sheet said nothing. But he smiled. The heat of that smile enveloped James.

“Answer me,” he said, popping beads of sweat.

No, it couldn’t be Jesus Christ. James didn’t believe in God, much less the Son of God. And anyway, why would Jesus be in the BP station wearing a bed sheet? Ridiculous.

He lowered the rifle to his hip and pointed it at the belly of the longhaired sheet-wearing guy. “Who are you?”

The hands came up very slowly, reaching toward James. He tightened his finger against the trigger, but he couldn’t shoot. The hands gently cupped his face, and he felt a cool current pass through his skull.

The Jesus man smiled a beatific smile.

The rifle slipped from James’s hands and clattered on the floor. He fell to his knees. The hands moved to the top of his head and rested there. He closed his eyes. An image of his butchered mother waited for him on the inside of his eyelids, but the image didn’t disturb the overwhelming sense of peace blossoming in his chest. His mother was dead, sure enough, but it was all right. She had been freed from suffering and released from the prison of earthly flesh and desire. Jesus must’ve been there to ease her passing into the next world.
Maybe He’s here to free me as well.

But Jesus didn’t free him. He raised him up on his feet and merely smiled at him.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked the holy man.

Jesus raised an arm and pointed to the front door. Out at the island, Josh hung up the gas pump and screwed the gas cap back in place.

“Outside?” James picked up the rifle and followed Jesus outside.

When Josh saw the man in the pink sheet, he pointed the shotgun at him.

“No!” shouted James. “Don’t shoot!”

“What the fuck…?” Josh didn’t lower his weapon.

“It’s okay,” James told him. “I think he’s coming with us.”

“The hell you say.”

Ignoring the shotgun aimed at his belly, Jesus walked to the Saturn, opened the rear door and leaned in to look closely at the old woman slumped in the back seat.

“What the hell’s he doing?” demanded Josh.

“I’m not sure. I think he’s going to heal my grandmother.”

“Heal? Are you nuts? The guy’s wearing a sheet, for Christ’s sake. He’s a fucking psycho.”

Jesus knelt on the back seat and held the woman’s head in his hands. He bowed his head and said something James couldn’t make out.

“See? He
is
Jesus,” said James. “He’s healing her.”

“Bullshit. You better—”

The man in the sheet suddenly wrenched the old woman’s head.

James heard a dull pop. His grandmother said, “Huhh,” with her last breath, and Jesus let go and she fell across the seat. Dead.

“He broke her neck!” shouted Josh, raising the shotgun to his shoulder and stepping toward the killer in the sheet.

James saw it right away. He understood. “Mercy killing,” he said. “He ended her suffering.”

“I’m ending his,” said Josh and pulled the trigger.

The shotgun didn’t fire.

Back on his bare feet, Jesus turned toward Josh and smiled.

Fumbling with the shotgun, Josh said, “Shit. Misfire. Shoot him.”

“No. It’s all right. It’s supposed to be this way.”

“Bullshit it is.” Josh pumped the shotgun, ejecting the dud and sending a fresh shell into the chamber.

James grabbed the barrel and yanked it. Josh spun with the gun to face James. The muzzle of the 12-gauge was a couple of inches from James’s chest.

“Let go,” Josh warned.

“No. You can’t shoot Jesus.”

“He ain’t Jesus. He killed your fucking grandmother!”

“I can’t let you do it.”

“You’re losing it, man,” said Josh. “The bell—”

They both looked up at the sound of an approaching vehicle.

The black van came at them from the street. Jesus stepped in front of the van with his arms spread wide.

The van accelerated.

Jesus flew backward from the impact.

Josh shot the van.

* * *

They were at her eyes again. Sara white-knuckled the steering wheel and shook her head to throw them off the fogged windows to her soul. The street ahead shimmered in the headlights and rippled like gray water. Something, she feared, was just beneath the rippling surface, threatening to shoot up like a giant whale and swallow her and the car.

Where am I going? What am I doing here?
She tittered as these questions echoed through her head. They were absurd, these questions. She knew this in her heart. She was already where she was going. She was in hell. What she did here didn’t matter. Couldn’t matter. They were at her eyes and eating into her brain and it didn’t matter, did it? You don’t ask questions in hell. The answers would only make things worse. Those things riding the bell bongs to her eyes knew exactly where she was, and they wanted to eat her soul. She wished the thing under the street would go ahead and rise up to take her and end it all.

She glanced down at the gun on the passenger seat. Joseph’s gun.
I could end it all myself.

She pulled to the side of the street, parked under an elm tree and shut off the engine. She picked up the pistol. A streetlight cast prickly night shadows.

She heard the tinkle of faint music, the tune from the music box Joseph had given her as an anniversary present years ago. The theme from
Love Story.

“Joseph,” she sobbed. A fat tear rolled down her cheek and dripped onto the gun in her hand.

* * *

“Do you have a gun that actually shoots?” Joe asked.

Woolrich chuckled. “No, I’m afraid of the things. You think we need one?”

“Yes.”

Suzie said, “Gary’s got…had one in my apartment. It might still be there. Unless he had it on him when…you know.”

“We don’t want to go into an apartment building now,” said Joe. “Too many people. Too many potential killers.”

“Oh dear,” Woolrich said, rubbing his belly with a pained expression. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom. All that pizza and ice cream isn’t agreeing with me. Excuse me.”

Woolrich went whistling down the hall to the bathroom. Joe sighed. Gave Suzie a look of frustration. “Well, let’s close his windows,” said Joe. “No point in making it easier for someone to come in and rip him off.”

“From what I see, he doesn’t have anything worth stealing.”

“The bell’s getting louder, seems like. It feels…raw. Or maybe it’s my nerves. Come on, help me. I’ll start in the back rooms.”