The Zona (2 page)

Whispers stopped.  The inhabitants stood still.  One spoke.

“I’m he.”

A middle-aged man dressed in brown jeans and a leather vest stood up from his table and gestured to an aluminum and canvas chair.  His skin was darkly splotched with layered sun damage.  His hands were thick and heavy indicators of lifelong labor. His eyes sparkled with intelligence.  Lead pulled the seat out and sat down.

“I got no qualms with the Church, Preacher.”  The man said.  He sat behind a dinner arrangement of roasted pork.  He kept his eyes on Lead.

Lead laid the blanket and rope on the table.

“Your violation is between the Almighty and thee.  I’ll hear no appeals.”  Lead recited by rote.  Anxiety pierced his chest with a thousand little flames.  He steeled his face against the fear.

“Choose.”  

Aaron contemplated the items on the table in a manner both slow and deliberate.  He picked up a piece of pork and chewed it, as though mastication assisted the decision making process.  Lead stared at Aaron’s face, watched the jaw muscles flex with each chew.  Sweat slipped past Lead’s eyebrow and stung his left eye. He kept both eyes on Aaron, but his ears pricked for sounds of rear ambush.  Aaron’s chewing and smacking lips echoed in the breathless room.

Suddenly, Aaron leapt from his seat and over the table with a dinner knife clutched in his fist.  The larger man knocked Lead and his chair to the ground in a sweeping tackle.  Aaron’s fist flashed, Lead felt a sharp, quick pain in his side.  He smelled the meat on Aaron’s breath as the man’s face loomed enormous.  Aaron tore the knife from Lead’s side and swung out.  Lead caught the blade in his left hand, and twisted it, but failed to free it from Aaron’s grasp.  Aaron shifted the blade and forced the tip into Lead’s chest.  Metal dug into Lead above his heart, the knife’s tip scratched bone.  He kept his grip and the two struggled.  The room was occupied with grunts and screams from both men, though no inhabitant could tell one from the other.  Blood ran down Lead’s left hand, coating the blade protruding from his chest.

All the noise of man was cut-off by a sharp pop.

Aaron’s grimace turned into a look of surprise, a cloud of pink mist hung suspended behind his back.  Lead rolled him off. The knife snapped in Lead’s chest, leaving a shard buried deep.

Lead’s shirt smoked from the discharged firearm, an old six-shooter tied with rawhide loop around his neck and hidden under his shirt; a rig some called a Van Cleef.

Aaron clutched his chest with both hands, the knife clattered to the floor.  The inhabitants continued their silence.

Lead pulled himself up with the edge of the table.  He levered his weight against the table and wrenched his right arm, tearing his shirt and freeing the Van Cleef.

Aaron convulsed on the floor.  He opened his mouth wide and tried to fill his lungs, but the hole in his chest issued a sucking wheeze.  Blood bubbled out.  He had neither the strength nor the ability to consume air.

Lead swung his gun in a wild parabola at the other patrons, an unnecessary warning.

Aaron died with a crimson face.  His hands slapped his body in search of air that would never be found.

Lead unfurled the blanket with one hand, the other clutched his pistol.  Blood from his chest and hand speckled the floor.

“What was done here was the Lord’s work.”  Lead said to the inhabitants.  “If any of you seek appeal on behalf of Goodman Century’s soul, you will be heard at the Flagstaff Parish.”

Lead laid the blanket over Aaron’s body and backed out of the front door, pistol waving at man and furniture alike.  He rode his mule out of Ash Fork with the .38 clutched to his wounded chest. The heat of anxiety burned worse than the stab hole.

Halfway to William’s Town Lead let go of his pistol with stiff, bloodless fingers.  No one was coming for him.  Lead slumped off his mule and gathered dead wood and kudzu for his campfire.  His wounds burned cold.  A straight line had been cut across his palm through what the heathens called the head and life lines.  Lead wrapped his hand in strips torn from his shirt and said a quick prayer of healing.  He pressed cloth bandages against the puckered wounds of his chest and side.  He searched for the broken knife tip with clumsy fingers but could not venture deep enough.  He said another prayer.

Lead’s anxiety reduced with time and quiet in front of the fire.  He felt soiled, worn, an old man in his middle twenties.  He turned to the heavens and gave a prayer of attrition.

“Lord God, my Father.  Lord of Earth and Heaven.  Forgive me for breaking a commandment you set forth clearly.  Forgive me for spilling the blood of man onto the Earth.  Forgive me for all was done in your name and on your behalf.  All was done to cleanse the Earth which we the meek and unworthy have inherited.  Forgive me and if you have any dispute with my actions please give me a sign or smite me where I sit if thou finds me unworthy.”         

Lead listened to the wind rustling through dying pine trees and dried jungle vines, to the crackling of the fire behind him, to the distant coyotes howling at the moon, to the humanless nothing of nature.  He hunched near the fire and wrapped himself in blankets, a guard against the curious, hungry insects.  Lead took a flaming branch from the fire and lit a paper of tobacco to ward off spirits, to pass the time.  The stars above rotated in shapes named and renamed and named again by the variations of man both civilized and barbarous.  Lead ignored the infinite and changed the dressing of his wounds.

He drifted into sleep, his mind drifted to dreams, which turned to the Storms, death and, as always, the Broken Times.

II. The Mojave Desert, Yucca, and Cibola

Some days later, Lead rode into the Mojave.  His sombrero kept the sun from burning his face, its cloth band kept the sweat from his eyes.  His uncovered hands were slick and ruby despite the early hour.

Kingman was part of the aptly named Hell District.  The unrelenting heat was punishment for its residents.  Lead felt comfortable with this knowledge.  The few good homes in Kingman sat in a straight line; tall, identical, cracked but still gleaming.  Ruins stood as relics.  The rest of Kingman tilted in jagged disrepair, like an old fighter’s teeth.  Eyes peered from windows of homes both solid and destroyed.  The hooves of Lead’s mule competed only with the wind.

One of the homes stood with a massive antenna affixed to its roof.  Here lay the domicile of Radioman Smith.  Lead dismounted at the front entrance.  Misshapen crucifixes marked each of the double doors.  Lead ran his fingers along a cross, feeling the grain of the wood under his fingers.  He closed his eyes and listened for movement inside.

Lead opened his eyes and struck the wood.  The door eventually opened to a waft of stale air and body odor.  A fat, bearded man leaned against the frame.  An aura of ill-temper hung about him, a companion to his stink.   The man wore no shirt, giving Lead the overall impression of soiled and ill-favored cherub.

“Lets see your silver, son.  I ain’t standing near this sun for no reason,” said Smith.  His teeth were yellow and slanted inward like a shark.

Lead held forth his crucifix.

“I come before you now as a vessel of the Lord and Savior to receive the information you so know and transmit.  Allow me entrance and give me the knowledge I need to spread the word of the Holy Trinity upon this, our inherited Earth,” Lead recited.

Smith looked at the cross and Lead.  His eyes squinted in the light.  He scratched the hair on his bulbous stomach.

“Come in, Preacher.  May the knowledge of man and the intent of our Lord and Savior purge our inherited Earth of sin and filth which brought us into these dark times,” Smith recited back.

Lead walked into the Radioman’s home, a two-story survivor of the Storms.  It was a true house of the Broken Times with space and carpet and luxury now soiled by odor, dirt, and the habits of its resident.

Lead followed Smith through the darkness of the lobby into a room sunlit by glowing, opaque plastic sheets.  The floor was composed of tile, still beautiful despite its many long cracks and years.  Smith’s radio sat on a kitchen counter.  Next to it was a metal basin and a faucet harkening to the days of automatic water.  In his mind’s eye, Lead saw water flow from the contraption, unending and unearned.

Smith watched Lead stare at the basin and assumed he had a taste for things worldly.  His mind calculated odds and profits.

“If you stand with any spare notes, Preacher, I’m sure we can come to an arrangement for you to pay bounty on contraband.”  Smith opened a cupboard and pulled down a cardboard box.  He beckoned for Lead to look into it.  The box held bottles of spirits and ancient picture books, once called magazines, laid open to pages of fornication and scantily clad women.  Lead’s stomach tightened at the sight of all the banished goods and sin.

“Radioman, I suggest you turn over your contraband to the Havasu Parish or in the very least burn such items under the sun and in the presence of your Lord.  To keep these is a sin and an abomination.”  Lead said, keeping his voice cold and unexcited.

Smith’s demeanor changed instantly.  He realized his miscalculation regarding the worldliness of Lead.

“I apologize sir…er…Preacher.  If I have offended you with the sight of this…”  Smith stammered.  “After your work here has run its course, I will be sure to submit all to the Havasu Parish or burn it to ash.”  Smith forced his face to show no surprise or frustration; he smiled again, flashing those tilted, stained teeth.

“It’s alright and unnecessary, Radioman, I’ll dispose of them.” Lead said.  He placed a hand on the box and the other to his chest, over the Van Cleef, a gesture serving as a reminder.

Smith’s face kept its neutrality.

“Of course, Preacher, I would be honored if thou would dispose of this contraband on my behalf,” he said.

The two stared at each other in silence.  Lead tightened his grip on his Van Cleef; Smith shoved the box towards him and turned away.  Smith kept the fake smile on his face and continued as though nothing had transpired between the two.

“Here is the information on thy hunted Mark.”  Smith said with increased formality.  He took chunk of cardboard from his pocket and set it on the counter.

Lead slowly translated the markings.  The interpreting of symbols and letters had not been a strength in his training and any reading he did was performed in slow deliberation.

The mark was in Yucca, domiciled in a hermitage alone amongst the sand and beasts.  Here was a man whose life had brought him to a shack in the middle of blighted earth, without reason committed to paper.  Here was a fugee.  Lead traced his finger over the map.  Here was a man found wrong with the Lord and Church and thus needed to be punished or smote.

“What did he do?” Lead asked.

Smith leered at Lead’s lapse in etiquette.

“Tis not for you to know or inquire, Preacher, a mark’s offense is between himself and the good Lord.”

Lead looked at Smith’s smug and hateful face.  The reek of Smith’s dirty skin permeated everything.  Lead felt smothered by it.  A hatred swelled within Lead for this petty officer of the Church, this sinful feudal lord of Kingman, with his fools’ technology and backsliding.

Lead’s hand shot out with trained speed.  His fingers twisted into Smith’s beard.  Smith let out a surprised yelp and jerked his head.  Lead spun the Radioman into a head lock, and planted a boot firmly behind Smith’s knee.  They both collapsed to the ground, with Lead’s arms wrapped tightly around Smith’s head and neck.  

“Don’t toy with me filth!  For what offense must I apprehend?”  Lead hissed into ear.

Smith struggled against the hold.  Lead noticed a tattoo of a drop of water at the corner of Smith’s mouth disappear into a dimple as he swallowed.

“Tis not for me or you, Preacher, but tis for the Lord, and the mark, and the parish to know, ask not of me which I know not.”  Smith gasped.  The drop of water again disappeared into a dimple.

Lead shoved the Radioman away and rolled to his feet.  He felt soiled from the physical contact.

Smith scuttled like a wounded beast into a shadowed corner of the room.

“Tisn’t proper for a Preacher to question Parish,” Smith whispered from the darkness.

Lead took a pouch of silver notes from his belt and tossed it next to the radio.  He took the box of contraband.

“If I hear you have defamed me to the parish, I will smite thee with no hesitation or remorse,” Lead said and left.

That evening Lead hunkered next to a tumbleweed fire in the sand between Kingman and Yucca regions.  The heat of day was erased and forgotten by night’s chill and all the desert’s creatures for which day does not exist.

Lead contemplated the night, set to the tune of crickets who were legion and insatiable.  He took the magazines from the box and poured the bottles of spirits onto the earth.  The liquid fell through the sand as though it were without corporal presence, absorbed without stain.  The spirits joined the earth, where they had once started, where all life and matter had once started at God’s behest.  Lead looked over pages of naked women, of men and women engaged in intercourse.  His face was warmed by the fire and feelings he did not trust within himself, guilt and excitement built at the sight of blatant sin.  More than the fornication, he was fascinated by the physical locations of the lovers.  Some did their act on lustrous red vehicles, versions of which Lead had only seen twisted in the dust.  Others fornicated in rooms with large beds, which made Lead think of home and mother and the comfort of a childhood that lived on in flashes and dreams.  Some pictures showed daylight with a blue sky.  Lead often thought of a blue sky.  His sky was various shades of yellow and orange, with a sunset shift to purple and pink fire.