What Would Satan Do? (34 page)

She smacked him and pointed to the side of the parking lot.  “Over there, on the side,” she said.

He folded an arm across his chest, and scratched his chin, and thought.  “Hmm… What did it look like?”

“It was a purp— maroon sedan.”

“Yes,” said Raju.  “I see the problem now.”

“What?”

“I had this car towed away from here.”

“You what?!”

“I love you,” said Raju.

Lola spent the next two minutes acting out the “hate” part of her love-hate relationship with Raju.  Once he was incapacitated and on the ground, she pulled out her cell phone, dialed, and started to pace.  “Hello?  Yes, I need a cab.  I’m right next to Holy Land Coffee on Guadalupe.  Right.  That’s the one.”  She walked back over to where Raju was still curled in the fetal position and kicked him.

“Stop it, you heartless witch!” 

She turned and paced some more.  “No, sooner than that.”  She listened.  “You can’t get someone here any faster?  All right.  Thanks.”  She snapped the phone shut and walked back over to where Raju was now sitting up.  “Apparently it’s going to take twenty-five minutes to get a cab here.”  She kicked him again.

“Ow,” said Raju, as he fell over onto the ground again.

Lola sighed and glared at him, her hands on hips and one toe tapping.  “Do you have a car?”

Raju sat up.  “Yes!  Yes, I do.  And it is sweet.”

“Where is it?”

“Somewhere.”  He started looking around on the ground, as if he’d dropped a coin.  Suddenly his head shot up, like a superhero’s might on detecting a cry of distress somewhere.  “I think it is parked to the back of the shop.  Perhaps.”

“Give me the keys.”

“I don’t have them.”

“Where are they?”

“There are no keys.”

“What?”

“It is powered by love.  Keys are unnecessary.”

Lola paused to let her palm and face enjoy a moment together, and to do some sighing she’d apparently failed to take care of earlier.  “Alright,” she said, “let’s go.”  She grabbed him by the collar and shoved him forward.

They walked around the side of the guitar shop and into the overgrown jungle of garbage and weedy colonizer plants behind the shop. 

Lola stopped.  “Where is it?” she asked.

Raju stopped short and went into sort of a crouch.  “What?  What’s wrong?” he said, scanning.  He very nearly did a dive roll to take cover under a nearby bush, but then noticed that Lola was standing with one hand on her hip.  That looked pretty hot, he decided, and so he stood back up and began nodding to the beat, a slight, sly smile on his face.

“Raju?  Can you please stop dancing so we can find your car?”

Raju looked lost for a minute.  He opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it, and then opened and shut it once more.  He squinted at Lola.  “Wait, what?”

“Where is your car?”

He pointed an uncertain finger at a large, van-shaped topiary.

“That?” she asked.  “That’s a
car
?”

Raju nodded.  “Uh-huh.”

“That’s not a car.  That’s a Chia Pet.”

“Right.  You are so right!”  Raju did his nod-dancing thing again, this time to a tune that had a heavy, funk emphasis on the downbeat.

“Why is your car covered… in plants?” 

Raju looked at the van.  If he were being honest, it really did have an unusually large amount of foliage.  “It’s earthy.”  More nodding.  “Man.”  Another sly smile. 

“Give me the keys, and zip your pants back up, right now.”

“Okay.”  He tossed her the keys.  “It’s kind of tricky to drive.”

“What do you mean?”

He grabbed the keys back, and opened the door, revealing an interior held together with a larger quantity of duct tape, clothes pins, and bungee cords than would be expected in, say, a Mercedes Benz. 

“You kinda gotta…” he said, bracing himself with one arm as he jiggled a lever back and forth.  “And you gotta watch out for…”  He bounced up and down on the seat as he put all of his weight into pumping the gas pedal.  “And once it starts…”

“Raju?”

He stopped.

“You’re driving.”

“All right!”

“Leave your pants on.”

Raju paused mid-zip.  “You sure?”

“I’m sure.

“Okay.”  He shrugged.  “I could take off my sh—”

“No.”

“All right.”

“Let’s go,” she said.

“Where are we going?”

“To church.”

Chapter 44.
          
There Are a Lot of Weirdos Here

Once upon a time, back in the day, some enviro-Nazis showed up in Austin with charts and graphs and all sorts of other crap, and tried to persuade the Governor that the State of Texas should invest in viable public transportation. 

“Trains?” asked the governor, incredulous.  “Communal transport?  Funded by the state?  Sounds like Communism to me, boys.  I think we’ll just build more freeways instead.”  He tipped his ten-gallon hat, nodded congenially, and moseyed off to get in his enormous convertible Cadillac with the steer horns on the hood.  Then he drove straight over to the Capitol Building, marched into the Senate chamber, and announced a plan to “pave the hell out of everything.” 

So now, every free and independent-thinking, non-Communist Texan needs a car, preferably with really big tires and terrible fuel economy.  Texas may be famous for its big skies and wide open spaces, but all too often, those wide-open spaces are filled with horseless carriages.

The parking lots and fields surrounding the Driftwood Fellowship Church were overflowing with trucks of all shapes and sizes.  There were green military Humvees, less-imposing, but similarly green military Jeeps, and an apparently random sprinkling of pickup trucks.  Most of the pickups sported stickers advertising their drivers’ fondness of guns and regret about the outcome of the War of Northern Aggression, along with tires large enough to house a family of eight in some countries.  There were also a lot of men milling around, many of whom wore gas masks.  The men appeared to have been scattered liberally and more or less at random around the church – on the grass, driveways, in what used to be shrubbery beds – and they all seemed to be waiting for something. 

Liam found a parking spot about three light-years from the church, and made his way past disgusting puddles of blood rain, trying to look casual as he made the long trek toward the sprawling Driftwood Fellowship compound.  He was a little worried about standing out, seeing as he was a pair of boots, a shiny belt buckle, and maybe a gas mask short of looking like everyone else.  On the other hand, he was wearing pants, which was more than could be said for the sprinkling of naked guys who were also making their way toward the church.

The sound of so many trucks, and so many men – groups of whom were taunting and engaging in intermittent, light skirmishes with the naked guys – was great and cacophonous.  It would have been difficult, for example, to enjoy a quiet picnic lunch or meditate.  The situation was compounded by the presence of a largish lawn crew that, for whatever reason, had concluded that this was an ideal day for botanical ministrations and leaf-blowing. 

Liam watched some of the military men watch as a couple of gardeners with leaf blowers held a couple of naked guys at bay.  The streakers appeared to want to traipse through some pansies.  The two men from the lawn crew appeared not to want the naked guys to do that, and had instigated a standoff.  The naked guys squinted and squared their jaws.  The lawn guys cranked their leaf blowers up to the highest setting, brandishing them at the naked guys. 

Each side juked and faked and made jerky movements this way and that to try to throw the other side off balance.  Finally, one of the naked guys faked left, while another ran right.  The gardeners tried to follow the naked guys with their blowers, but then one of the crew tripped, and it was all over.  A horde of other naked guys noticed the breach, and began streaming through, trampling the lawn crew and pansies alike. 

A group of soldiers and secessionists immediately swarmed the area where the naked guys were getting through, presumably to avenge the gardeners or the pansies, which they did by yelling and hooting and stomping both to bits.  Most of the naked guys ended up escaping the throng and hoofing it up the street toward more of their unclothed comrades.

Liam shook his head and strolled up one of the sidewalks that led to the church, hoping that the nearby battle between clothed and unclothed idiots would serve as enough of a distraction for him to slip by unnoticed.  But this was not to be.

“Hey!  You!”  A small group of soldiers spotted him, and stepped out onto the sidewalk to block his path.  One stood in front the others – the leader, apparently.  “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m just trying to visit the church,” said Liam. 

“The church is closed to visitors.”

“Are you sure?  Who are they?”  Liam pointed to one of the larger group of patriots milling about in the parking lot. 

“That’s a well-relegated militia,” said one of the other soldiers. 

“What about them?” he asked, pointing to another naked-guy intrusion force.

The leader of the soldiers scowled.  “You’re not going in,” he said.  He raised his gun a little.  The other soldiers followed suit.

Liam let a quiet, skeptical laugh escape his lips.  “Seriously?  You guys realize that what you’re doing is illegal, right?”

The soldiers just stared at Liam.  The leader of the group said, “Our orders come from the Governor himself.”  He paused before adding, with a smug head bobble, “So there!”

“Yeah…” said Liam.

“And you,” the soldier continued, “are not going in there.  Put your hands behind your head.”  He used the barrel of his gun to knock Liam’s backpack off his shoulder, and then poked the weapon at Liam’s chest.

“All right,” said Liam, his eyes fixed on those of the soldier who’d done all the talking.  “If that’s how you want it.” 

What happened next was quick and, with the exception of a couple of grunts by the soldiers, silent.  The first clue that any of the military men had that something had happened was the fact that they were all disarmed and on the ground.  One soldier rolled over onto his side and groaned.  Another sat up and rubbed his head.  Their leader lay face down, his body smoking slightly.

“Sorry, guys,” said Liam.  He leaned over to scoop his backpack up off the ground, and trotted off in the direction of the church.

Bill Cadmon looked the Messiah Festus up and down.  “What’s going on here?” he said.

Normal, rational Festus took a moment to gibber and look around in a panic, but then cuckoo Jesus-impersonator Festus came back and pulled himselves together. 

“Hi, I’m Jesus.”  He reached down and grabbed Cadmon’s hand, shaking it vigorously. 

Cadmon regarded the hand as if someone had just given him a week-old, gasoline-soaked rat.  Festus dropped Cadmon’s hand and twirled around, taking in the cavernous space around him.  “Nice work you’ve done here.”  He waved in the direction of the rear of the church.  “It’s… pretty.”  He nodded, beaming contemplatively off into the middle distance.

“Who the hell are you?” asked Cadmon.

Festus turned around to face the preacher.  “I told you.  I’m Jesus.”

“You are not.”

“You doubt me?”

“Yes.”

“Heretic!”  Festus pointed an accusing finger at Cadmon, his eyes wide.  The preacher stared back at Festus, tilting his head and squinting, his mouth hanging open slightly, as if he were trying to decide whether this was a practical joke.  They stood, staring at each other, while seconds oozed by in slow motion, like rubberneckers creeping past an accident to try to see whether there are any heads in the road.  And then Festus did what any normal Christ-impersonator would do in that situation.  He bolted.

He brushed past Cadmon as he headed off stage right, away from the crowd of cowboys and soldiers. 

“Hey,” said the man with the guitar, after Festus had already gone.

Cadmon spun to face his army.  “Well?”  He did a little head shake and shrugged and pointed in the direction where Festus had gone.  His audience shrugged right back.  “Aren’t you going to go after him?”

“Who, Jesus?” asked a man down in the front.

“What?” asked Cadmon.

“You want us to chase Jesus?”

“He—” Cadmon glanced over his shoulder.  “That man was not Jesus.”

“Unbeliever,” muttered the man.

Cadmon shot him a withering look, and then scanned the audience for some men who were less annoying.  “You.  And you.  And you two.  Go get that man.”  The men glanced around and shuffled their feet, as if they weren’t sure they hadn’t just heard the boss crack an off-color joke.  “Go!”

Liam made his way up toward the main building of the church, concealing himself behind ginormous tires and truck beds as he went.  He recognized the monster truck from the ranch house, and grimaced as he made out what looked like the imprint of arms and a torso in the dust covering one of the fenders.  They’d apparently been rough on poor Festus. 

“I ain’t wearing it,” said a voice. 

“Aw, it ain’t that bad,” said another.  “B’sides, ‘s’not like it’s gonna be forever.”

Liam ducked behind a tire – which is to say that actually just leaned over a little so that his head and shoulders were no longer visible over the treads – and waited until the men passed.  Then he straightened up and, seeing no other soldiers or militia men between him and the church, went in.

Inside, the church was quiet.  A sign over the door he’d come through indicated that he’d come in via the entrance for deliveries.  He padded down the broad hallway, paused to listen, and slipped around a corner just in time to see a bearded weirdo scamper through a doorway.

“Festus!”  Liam hurried down the hall toward the door.

After a second, Festus’s head popped out.  “Liam!  Hey!”

“Jesus Christ,” said Liam.  “Why are you dressed like that?”

Festus just smiled sheepishly.  “Well…” he said, picking at his cassock, “I—”

“Shhh!” said Liam, turning to look over his shoulder.  He turned back a second later and shoved Festus back through the doorway.

“Hey!”