Sloughing Off the Rot (13 page)

Chelloveck wept and screamed at the sky. Sympathy moved John and he patted at Chelloveck’s back, saying “there, there.” He lifted the goblet of cider to Chelloveck’s mouth and helped him to drink his emotions into submission. And while John found himself feeling sorry for Chelloveck and his loss of sons, he likewise felt concern for the lumbering oaf known as Joad. Something about the giant moved John. He did not seem like a mindless killing machine, as Chelloveck suggested. Even in the midst of the battle, John saw a sensitive, thoughtful creature who just so happened to be fighting for his life. Something about Joad felt like family. And the sympathetic notions churned in John’s gut, paining him and giving him a feeling of strength at the same time.

And that night, while John, Joad, Santiago and all the Chellovecks slept, The Reverend Android Lovethorn, with a bag of soot from the crematorium of his mountain fortress, stood atop the tallest tower of his fort and summoned the winds of a crossfire hurricane. Lashing himself to the posts of the tower with leather thongs, Lovethorn leaned out over a great drop and felt the storm’s fingers pulling at him, trying to yank him over the side, the blasts of wind ripping his sunglasses from his head and tossing them into the void. The slight jowls on the Man in Black pulled back taut with the wind; the loose skin flapped from the backsides of his head like shredded sails in a storm, but his slicked, black hair remained perfectly combed and unaffected by the storm. Lovethorn scooped the ashes of the dead and tossed handful after handful into the churning funnels of wind that twisted and chased each other around the tower. The leather straps pulled hard against the post as the storm tried to drag Lovethorn away. The thongs stretched to the point of almost snapping. Sensing the imminent peril of being plucked from the tower by a cyclone and tossed into oblivion, Lovethorn heaved the burlap sack into the air and watched it hurtle into the blackness, trailing a cloud of cadaver dust behind it. Android Lovethorn locked his hands on one of the tower posts and spat into the wind. He laughed a scratchy, mad cackle that the winds ripped from his mouth and carried far into the night, waking confused desert creatures in the badlands below. And his yellow eyes reflected into the dark night, gazing over the span of countless days’ journeys. “Double, double, boils and bubbles,” he shouted into the wind.

And an enormous cloud of dust spread over the land, blocking out the light of the star Wormwood and the two full moons in the sky. The blanket of black death dispersed in the swirling gales and gusts. The four winds rose from their caves and carried the clouds of dusty death forth. And the clouds pissed torrents of acid rain on the land and people, burning flesh and causing running sores, infecting and afflicting all whom the dust came in contact with. And where it did not rain, the soot settled on people’s skin and in their lungs, causing stinging tumors and mucky death rattle coughing.

The storm passed and calm settled over Android Lovethorn’s domain as quickly as it had erupted. Lovethorn unlashed himself and slid to the ground, seated with his back against the wall. His eyelids closed, snuffing out the yellow fire in his irises, and his lips moved silently. Despite the lack of audible words, Lovethorn spoke. And he was heard.

Running sores. Infected running sores. Bubbling abscesses, carbuncles and furuncles. Infected pus-bubbles. Monkeypox. Gangrenous open blebs, blains and boils. Pustules, pimples, ulcers and tumors. These are the things that the Chellovecks found all about their faces and bodies as they rose to the humectrus of the gloomy morn.

The slate sky blocked out the sun. The scant light that did filter through the ash clouds above cast everything in a sinister glow. A purple haze drifted close to the ground, blurring objects in the distance. And the Chellovecks ran from their dwellings and into the open. They stood before each other in gloomy light, inspecting each other’s bruises, blisters, and burbling blood bubbles. And it was as if the Chellovecks were staring into mirrors, seeing exact replicas of themselves with similar skin blights. And all but one in the village suffered from the oozing leprous skin rash.

The racket outside of his shelter-bus woke John. He felt refreshed from the feast the night before. A night’s sleep on a mattress stuffed with hay was an immense improvement over his nights resting on the hard-packed desert ground. John stepped from the bus door and into the morning. His unblemished skin radiated a rested and healthful warmth. He rubbed his eyes to clear his fuzzy vision, but realized that his eyes were not clouded with sleep. Instead, the haze hanging about the mesa distorted and blurred everything. He momentarily could not tell if it was day or night. John looked to the sky and saw that it was muddled with a cloud of ash. And the ash eclipsed all else in the sky except for the quick flowing river of clouds that ran above the red brick road. The flowing clouds took on a pinkish tinge from the sunlight above and the path below. The soot in the air stung John’s eyes and he rubbed at them again. He pushed his palms against the burn and it comforted him. He left his hands applying gentle pressure over the eye sockets for minutes and focused only on the pleasant sensation. And then he pulled his hands away and allowed his eyes to adjust. And until his vision cleared, John did not notice that a gang of soldier-Chellovecks were accosting him and jabbing the trident points of spontoons in his direction.

John gasped at the sight of the Chellovecks. With their running sores and festering boils, the men’s appearance shocked John, even more so than the bedraggled lunkheads he had encountered. He looked around at the Chellovecks and saw that all were plagued with horrific pus-dribbling cankers and diseased tissues. He inspected his own arms, put his hands to his face, and found no such blight on himself.

“Our father has ordered us to bring you to him,” said the leader of the soldier-Chellovecks, poking his spontoon in John’s direction.

Two other soldier-Chellovecks approached and grabbed ahold of John’s arms, as if to prevent him from resisting. Instinctively, John gripped his hands on the wrists of the men and squeezed. A soothing calm spread over the soldiers’ arms. They released their hold on John and stood slack as he held their wrists. The healing sensation spread up their arms and throughout their systems, washing over them like warm, clean water. The other soldiers looked on in awe as the soldiers’ bulging, throbbing cysts and boils melted away and left fresh, pink skin in their absence. And when they were cured, the men dropped to their knees and thanked John. He belched and farted and waved them away. Behind the newly healed soldiers, the other Chellovecks lined up in a queue that grew and eventually extended all about the mesa, until every single Chelloveck awaited the healing touch of John the Revelator.

And for three days and three nights, John laid hands on the Chellovecks and relieved each and every one of their suffering. Instead of tiring from the chore, John drew strength each time that he sucked the poison from a man. There were no ill effects from drawing out the sickness, other than the intense build-up of gas, making John fart and burp continuously as he laid hands on the men. Occasionally, John became so bloated that he had to lay on his back on a stone bench and have Chellovecks sit on his stomach to push out the foul stench that collected in his system as he drew out the men’s sickness and took it on himself.

At the end of the third day, they led John to Father Chelloveck’s bus. The old man lay on a mattress, shaking and leaking bodily fluids from infected, gaping sores, stuck to the sheets with the coagulated and crystallized blood and pus. A crackling sound emitted from the sheets as Chelloveck writhed and peeled his skin away from the bedding. At the sight of John, Chelloveck sat up, propping himself with his arms, and tried to speak, but the cankers on his face and skin had progressed down into his mouth, stripping his throat raw. He croaked at John but words would not come, only a multi-toned, jangling, incomprehensible rattle that hitched in his throat and pained all that heard it.

“Lay back, old man,” said John. And he put his hand on Chelloveck’s forehead. John sucked out the affliction. And the energy flowing from Chelloveck nearly knocked John off his feet. John drew out the sickness and sorrow and took it on, farting and burping all the while, as if the release of the gas served to purge his system of whatever malady he was taking in. When it was all over, Chelloveck lay unconscious on his bed, covered in sweat, but cured of the blisters and boils. Finally spent from his three straight days of sleep deprivation, John fell to the ground and passed out. His ass bleated sulphuric puffs and his belly vented rotten, bile-stinking belches. Several Chellovecks picked John up, carried his dead weight to his bus, and put him on his mattress. As the men left the bus, the blurps and blarps of flatulence and eructation boomed out like an untrained horn section. John and Chelloveck both slept as if dead to the world.

And after a full day’s rest and recuperation, John and Chelloveck parleyed in the Tent of Meeting. The Chelloveck guards dunked John in the basin outside of the bright red tabernacle to ensure that he was ceremonially clean and gave him fresh clothes of fine twisted linen. Chelloveck guards – dressed in coats of many colors and wearing pale grey metal helmets topped with blue fadoodle plumage – stood sentry on each side of the entryway. The guards crossed their spontoons in a forbidding X that barred any uninvited visitors. From the outside the shelter presented as an optical illusion, looking like little more than a small, single-roomed dwelling. But when the front doors pulled back, John walked into a spacious big top bedecked with plush couches and animal skins. Halls led from the center gathering room to other chambers. Soothing, tuneful hums escaped the chambers and combined in the gathering room in sublime harmonies. Chelloveck sat cross-legged on a puffed cushion, looking rejuvenated. He waved John in to sit with him. John accepted the invitation and sat on a fluffed cushion.

“The Chellovecks thank you for what you did for us over the past couple of days,” said Chelloveck. “It was a selfless act that I will not forget.” He put his ear trumpet to his ear and waited for John’s response.

“It was nothing,” said John. He was glad to have helped. With each Chelloveck that he drained of the plague, John felt a stirring within. An awareness. Knowledge. Power. The sickness fed the void in John, threw light on the darkness. It did not so much answer questions about John’s situation as it made him care less about his past and more about his future. He instinctively began to understand things that he had no words to explain. “I would have done it for three more days and nights if needed.”

“I know that,” said Chelloveck, stroking at his frosty chin curtain and furrowing his wiry eyebrows. “I also know that we were stricken with the skin ulcerations because you are here. The Man in Black came to me as I slept and threw ashes of the dead in my face. The dark spirit plagued this land because he wants you to stay away from him. I am supposed to hold you captive here until his men arrive to take custody of you. He is sending a squad at this very moment to get you.”