The Suicide Motor Club (27 page)

A motorcycle rushed past her, its driver turning his head at the sight of her in her habit, the smoldering corpse nearby, but she could do nothing for him.

She didn't even look when she heard him crash behind her.

She grabbed the cross and another bottle and walked east toward the wreck of Luther's car.

—

CLAYTON SAW THE SMOKE AND BLAZE OF CALCUTTA'S ENDING. HE SAW JUDE MAKING
her way toward the wrecked Mustang and knew she needed him. He saw the blinding single light of a motorcycle approaching, heard its insectile buzz. At that instant he felt Cole's hand on him. He turned his head, saw Cole, his head mostly healed, preparing to bite him. Instead of engaging, Clayton sprang right, past a bright oncoming headlamp and toward the wreckage of the van.

The motorcycle jogged to its right to avoid Clayton, making a wet thump and skid as it plowed into Cole and dragged him on the road, its driver vaulting headfirst into what was left of the truck and breaking his neck.

Clayton lunged forward, grabbed a bent door from the truck, and moved toward Cole.

Cole, dragged half out of his clothes, stared up at Clayton, too injured to do more than try to cover his exposed breast. He had taken great pains this evening, as every evening, to wind his breasts beneath a sheet, flatten them against his body so the others wouldn't see. Except Calcutta. Calcutta knew. And Luther knew.

The vampire once known as Dolores Cole, the pretty ash-blond Georgia girl who had been Blitz Nixon's lover when he raced cars as a man, the one for whom Luther returned as a vampire, didn't try to move his broken limbs.

Clayton just looked, holding the door up over his head.

Cole met his gaze and sneered, angered by how slowly his limbs were healing, angered by the contempt he imagined in the other vampire's hesitation.

“You'd just better,” Cole said.

Clayton did.

He used the door like a blunt cleaver and mashed Cole's head off at the neck.

Cole's dying body arched its back and gathered its ragged knees to its chest, and then it moved no more.

The truck caught fire now.

Clayton saw that Jude had almost made it to the wrecked Mustang.

He ran to her.

It was 5:06
A.M.

LUTHER AND NECK BRACE HAD CRACKED THEIR HEADS AGAINST ONE ANOTHER IN
the Mustang's dying tumble, but that wasn't the worst of it. Neck Brace, stretched flat over the broken bucket seat, half gutted by a piece of the roof, gathered himself together as best he could, feeling the parts of himself that had come out now running backward through his slick fingers to retake their proper places. Luther's head had been twisted all the way around but had held. He made a very wet repetitive sound with his mouth that was certainly some vulgarity, but his brain had been so knocked about even he didn't know what he was saying. Then he did and he stopped. His mouth hurt too much. Luther righted his head, crawled bloodily from the upside-down wreck, bewildered as much by the impact he had just absorbed as by the sight of the nun walking toward them with fire behind her. She held a cross before her as though she believed with all her being in its power to protect her.

“Sheeee-it,” Luther drawled.

He reached into his pocket for his gun but the pocket had been torn away, along with much of the denim in his jeans, to reveal a large, white trapezoid of thigh. Neither was the gun in his blood-filled boot. At the sound of a pathetic whistle, he looked back at the wreck, saw
Neck Brace too large, hurt, and badly caught to free himself just yet, holding the gun up with his one good hand. Luther stumbled back and took it, opened the cylinder, squinted through blood to check that it was loaded, then snapped it shut.

When he pointed it, however, his target had changed. He now saw a banged-up truck door walking at him with two pairs of legs.

“Aw, fuck you, door,” he said, shooting. Five pops came from the gun, to no apparent effect. On the sixth shot, the door fell.

He saw the Yankee vampire down, a neat hole just under his hairline. He saw the nun sitting on her butt, holding her stomach.

“Why!” he shouted at her. “Why the FUCK do all this!”

“You killed a boy,” she said.

“I killed a lot a' boys.”

“Mine. You killed
my
boy,” she said, crawling for the cross, which lay broken on the asphalt.

“Yeah?” he said. “Well,
fuck
him, and fuck you, too.”

He pointed behind him at the steaming wreck with the large vampire making a mess out of himself trying to get free. “I
loved
that car.”

He threw the empty gun at her, but it flew over her shoulder and slid on the road. He started stalking forward. Then he saw something that stopped him. When the nun grabbed the bottom half of the cross, the broken top part skittered across the road and rejoined itself to its base.

The pain in her stomach subsided.

She stood.

Held the cross up.

Started walking toward Luther.

“Anyway, I didn't kill him.”

Now Judith froze.

“Liar.”

“I ain't,” he said.

He walked softly closer, staring at her, trying once again to hook her eyes.

“You took him.”

“That's right,” he said.

“But you didn't kill him.”

“Nuh-uh.”

He edged closer.

From the wreck of the car, Neck Brace panted with exhaustion. Every time he tried to flatten his head and squeeze out of the aperture, his brace caught on metal and hung him up.

Clayton sat up and held his head.

“What did you do?”

“You know,” he said, “that wreck musta shook me up. I don't remember.”

“What did you
do
?” she hissed.

She felt in her heart that whatever power waited in the Italian cross weakened with her anger.

Pain racked her belly.

Her legs shook.

“Somethin', I'm sure,” he said, stepping closer.

Clayton got shakily to his feet.

Now Rob walked up the road toward them, coming up from behind Judith, his face pinched with rage. He held the shifter that had been through him like a schoolmaster would hold a whipping rod.

“They done Calcutta,” he said.

Luther's eyes cut to Rob.

Judith dared not look away.

“Clayton,” she said.

“I see him,” Clayton said.

“Cole?” Luther asked.

Rob didn't say anything.

“This young lady I'm lookin' at hopes you don't tell me Cole is dead,” Luther said.

“Cole too.”

“Gone?”

“Yeah. He . . . he's gone.”

Luther nodded.

Closed his eyes longer than a blink.

He drooled, then wiped his mouth.

“You know what?” Luther said, looking hard at Judith. “I just remembered. What I did to that kid.”

Take my anger away, God. Take it away I humbly pray thee.

“After we put your husband's dick in the dirt. See, I'd forgot, but I read the file on you. That husband of yours was a cheater, right?”

I am thy humble vessel.

Behind Luther, the sound of grinding metal rose up. Neck Brace had removed the brace from his neck and was simultaneously pushing the wrecked car open and getting small to free himself. It was working.

“Guess he wasn't getting enough at home, huh? Was you already practicing to be a nun, makin' sure he didn't get none?”

The vampire called Rob rushed at Judith's back.

Clayton shot forward, grabbed his waist, rolled to the ground with him. They writhed in a knot, Clayton working his way to Rob's neck, trying to bite.

Neck Brace worked most of his chest free from the wreck of the Mustang.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

The sky was lighter now.

Judith spoke.

“Peace to this house and all who dwell therein.”

She moved forward with the crucifix.

Luther stopped.

“So, anyway, Glendon, that's his name, right?”

“Cleanse me of sin with hyssop, Lord, that I may be purified; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”

They spoke over each other now.

“So that kid. You know, scared blood tastes best, and that kid literally shit himself when we got him in that car.”

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.”

She moved closer.

Neck Brace was out all the way to the navel.

Clayton was holding Rob's head down with his elbow, gouging his neck with his fangs.

“We drank him out while he yelled, ‘Mommy, Mommy.' How does that make you feel? You still his mommy with all that ridiculous shit on?”

“Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Oh Lord hear my prayer and let my cry come to thee.”

“All that penguin-lookin' shit you wear. Ain't gonna help you. I'm gonna flipside you. You know what that is?”

“Hear us, and be pleased to send thy holy angel from heaven to guard, cherish, and defend all that dwell in this house.”

The pain in her belly was all but gone.

“Maybe you don't 'cause I made it up.”

Rob groaned as Clayton sucked hard from him.

Neck Brace started working his hip bone through. Judith saw him emerging naked and pale and hairy from the car, but she kept on.

“In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,”

“But flipsidin' means I'm gonna fuck you livin' and dead. Once each. Don't that sound fun?”

“let there be extinguished in you all power of the devil by the imposition of our hands,”

She came closer. She was no more than five yards away.

Rob started to shudder, said, “He's killing me.”

“and by the invocation of the glorious and holy Mother of God, the Virgin Mary,”

The bullet came out of her stomach, fell squat and mushroomed on the asphalt.

“Anyway, Glenny-glen.”

Neck Brace was out now.

“and of her illustrious Spouse, St. Joseph,”

“After we drank him all up, he died, a' course.”

“and of all the holy Angels,”

“Wasn't much in him, little as he was.”

“Archangels, Patriarchs,”

“But I brought him back.”

“Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs,”

Clayton vomited black blood on the street to clear his stomach so he could finish draining Rob.

Neck Brace picked up his brace, put it back on.

“I turned that cute little motherfucker just for fun.”

“Confessors, Virgins, and of all the saints together.”

Neck Brace stomped toward Rob and Clayton.

“Left him in a desert town to burn up.”

“Lord God, who said by thy apostle James,”

“Like I'm gonna turn your retard sister, too. For fun.”

“Is any man sick among you?”

“Killin' your mom and dad'll just be on principle.”

She came within three yards of him.

“But that ain't all.”

The lights of a police car loomed a mile away, coming closer.

“Thy mercy restore him.”

“There's something you need to know.”

Two yards.

“Is any man sick?”

“Somethin' I been savin' back to tell you.”

One yard.

“Is any man?”

“'Cause it's funny.”

“Infirmátur quis ín vobis?”

“Do you want to know?”

She stopped.

“It's somethin' you really oughta know. Somethin' that happened. With your boy you couldn't save.”

“What?” she said, a tear rolling down her eye. The arm holding the cross weakened, dipped lower.

Neck Brace grabbed Clayton, lifted him up in the air, and threw him down on his head.

“What?” she said again, her voice even smaller.

Neck Brace put his foot on Clayton's head, pulled his arms up behind him. Clayton yelled. Then he whimpered. His head started to come off.

“This,” Luther said.

He flashed his arm out fast, meaning to bat the cross away and then knock the nun out. Put her in the trunk of some car, maybe this police car coming. Flipside her. Leave her body out for the buzzards. Then go to Fresno and finish the job with her family.

But that wasn't what happened.

THE CROSS JUDITH HELD HAD BEEN MADE IN 1873 FOR THE CHURCH OF SANTA
Maria Maddalena Sopra Fontana just outside Cisterna di Latina in central Italy. The craftsman who made it, Gian Carlo Orpeggio, was a devout man who had been considered the best carpenter in the village by his twenty-second birthday. He was also a gifted painter. He made the cross of rosewood painted with gold leaf, and to very specific dimensions, as it was to fit snugly into the hand of a plaster angel. This angel had formerly been holding a gas lamp but had so struck an opera singer born in Cisterna that he purchased it from a dealer in Paris and gifted it to his boyhood church. The cross was blessed by Pope Pius XI on July 22, 1874, for the Feast of Maria Maddalena, when Father Luca Morandi brought it to Rome for exactly that purpose. While cross and priest were gone, the angel's hand offered a bouquet of sunflowers and red poppies picked by young girls of the parish.

When war came to Cisterna in the next century, occupying Germans were impressed with the beauty of the angel, whom they called Magda. One rabidly Catholic young soldier, a Breisgau paratrooper and explosives expert named Karl Gerber, had become so smitten with her that he told other members of the
Fallschirmjäger
that he would
become a priest after the war if they would let him take Magda to whatever church he was assigned to. Their laughter bristled him, but not so much as the news that the American army was coming in force to avenge the several hundred rangers they had caught in an open field and massacred, and that a northern retreat was likely imminent. The idea of Americans, with their farmers' hands and watered-down colonial Catholicism, flooding into this church and worshipping beneath Magda's gaze when he could not, filled him with such hatred that he decided to take measures.

His idea was to wire the rosewood cross to an eighty-eight-millimeter shell.

His reasoning was that anyone who would steal a cross must be a communist or an atheist, and that such vermin deserved what they got. He had already written a letter to the priest explaining how to deactivate the booby trap, and he would mail this later, once the main American army had left. The obvious moral and logistic flaws with this plan escaped Karl and his commanding officer because the first was half mad and the second suffered crippling insomnia since the fight with the rangers. The shell went in the platform supporting the angel and aimed into the pews, where flying wood splinters would shred personnel but, God willing, leave Magda mostly unharmed.

It was into this church that PFC Luther Nixon and three other American soldiers of the third infantry division ventured in May 1944.

That this same cross made its way into a Vatican storehouse and across the Atlantic at the request of one Phillip Wicklow is a phenomenon some would see as massive coincidence.

Others would see it differently.

If Judith somewhat resembled the dark-haired angel of the Maddalena, with her sad, pretty eyes and her fair skin, only Luther could have said. Only he saw them both. Once living, once dead. And the same thing happened both times.

When Luther touched the Cisterna cross for the second time, it was as though something even more furious than an eighty-eight-millimeter German artillery round exploded near him, and near the others. Luther took the worst of it, followed by Clayton and Rob. To catalog their injuries would be exhaustive; let us just say that they were swept aside and broken so badly that they were as formless as scarecrows. Judith, much like her plaster counterpart in Cisterna di Latina, largely escaped injury, although the concussion temporarily deafened her and she lost consciousness for several moments. The blast threw great hunks of asphalt that shredded the tires and broke the windshield of the approaching deputy's vehicle such that he skidded into the remains of Rob's truck and bounced his head on the driver's-side window hard enough to star it and black out for half an hour. A ripple in the asphalt jolted all the vehicles into the air, breaking the glass jars of gasoline in the trunk of the '67 Camaro and dropping it close enough to a worm-shaped pool of fire for the fumes to catch. It exploded with a huge, hollow
THRUMP!
that bucked the husk of the vehicle a second time, causing it to collide with and burn the '69 COPO. A mushroom-shaped cloud of fire and black smoke ascended into the still-dark sky, illuminating the debris field scattered along I-40, and all the injured and undead whose fates were soon to be determined.