What Would Satan Do? (38 page)

Satan turned back to Festus.  “Where’s the other one?”

“Uh…?” said Festus.

“The preacher,” said Satan, “who was just here a minute ago?” 

“He left,” said Lola.

Satan threw his hands up. 

“Wait a minute!” said Raju.  He stepped forward, shaking his head and looking disgusted at the Devil.  “That’s it?  That dude was so – so evil?  And you didn’t do anything to him!”

Satan turned to stare at Raju in a not very nice way.  Raju plowed ahead, oblivious.  “That was so wussy, dude.  I mean,” he said, holding up one of his palms, apparently undaunted by the fact that he was getting a full dose of the Evil Eye from the guy who invented the Evil Eye, “that guy sucked.  You should’ve, like, tortured him first or something.”

Satan pondered this.  His eyes grew less evil, and more contemplative, which caused his eyebrows to creep up his forehead – presumably in disgust at the diminution of evil in his eyes.  “Yes,” he said, nodding and stroking his chin as if it featured a trim little Satanic chin beard – which it did not.  “You are correct.”

Dick Whitford popped back into existence, making a kind of robot, zipper sound (“Zworp!” for those unfamiliar with cyborgian clothes-fastening devices) as he reappeared.  He swayed and nearly fell over, but then caught himself, and looked surprised at everyone.  Everyone – other than Satan and Raju, who were busy directing satisfied nods to one another – stared back, just as surprised. 

“What the hell just happened?” he said, swaying slightly.  He reached up and felt his throat. 

“Dick,” said Satan.

Whitford stopped fondling his now-healed throat and glanced up at the Devil, looking haggard, but – in the scheme of things,
i.e.
, as a man who’d just been evaporated and then brought back to life moments later – fairly well.  “What do you want from me?”

“You’re not allowed to try to end the world!” said Satan, sounding a little bit like a little girl complaining about a breach of her rules for having a make-believe tea party with Mr. and Mrs. Bear.

Whitford smirked.

Satan grabbed him by the collar, and lifted the enormous man off the ground with just one hand.  The Governor seemed less affronted by this than just genuinely amazed that the Devil had managed to get him up in the air. 

“I came here to avoid all of this.  I’m not going to let some regurgitated shite such as yourself screw things up.” 

“Regurgitated shite?” asked Festus.

“Poop that gets eaten and thrown back up,” said Raju.

“Oh, yeah.  Of course,” said Festus, nodding.

Whitford’s mouth hung open for a second, and then closed, and then opened again, making him look a little bit like a big, fat fish out of water.  “But you can’t.  I— I just…”

“Yes,” said Satan.  “I can.  Watch.”  Satan now held him with both hands and somehow began to shake the man up and down.  He shook faster and faster.

“What the hell are you—?”  The Devil shook him faster.  “Arrgh!” said the Governor to indicate that he wasn’t enjoying the ride.

And then Satan stopped, and set Whitford down.  The Governor immediately plopped down onto his bottom, seeming a little dizzy, but otherwise unharmed.  Then he began to breathe short, sharp breaths, and started shifting around on the floor as if it were burning.  The skin on his face and on top of his bald head started to bubble and sizzle.  He let out an inarticulate yelp, having apparently lost the ability to use consonants, and held up one of his hands.  The skin sloughed off like a glove.

Whitford collapsed sideways, and the sizzling sound grew louder as he offered up his own whimpery accompaniment.

“Oh my God!” said Lola.

“What?  Where?” asked Satan.  He glanced around in a bit of a panic. 

The others kept their eyes glued to Whitford.  In front of them, the Governor lay on his side, curled up in the fetal position, steaming and fizzling.  His whole body heaved as he gasped for air.  The remains of his clothes clung in strips and tattered shreds to the hulking mass of his body, revealing two things: first, that there really was a lot of him, and second, that very little of his bulk was covered in skin.  And this epidermal paucity did little to aid his already grotesque appearance.  Weak, sad-kitty-cat sounds seeped from his mouth.

“Ooh!  So, that’s what you look like without skin,” said Raju.  “Gross.”

“Whoa,” said Festus.  “Look at his penis.”

“Uh … no?” said Raju.  He turned to look Festus up and down disgustedly.  “Fag.”

The group just stood and stared at the pile of smoldering, heaving flesh for a moment.  Somewhere off in another part of the building, there was a rumbling, staticky roar that lasted a couple of seconds and then began to fade.  The walls rattled and shook.  Liam, Lola, and Festus exchanged quizzical glances and shrugs at the noise. 

Raju was otherwise engaged.  “Can I kick him?” he asked.

“What?” said Liam.

Raju pointed to the vile nastiness heaving and being disgusting on the floor.  “Can I kick him?”

“No,” said Liam. 

Even Festus gave Raju a look.  “Do you really want to get that on your shoe?”

“What is your problem?” asked Lola.  “Hasn’t he been through enough?”  She gestured to the slimy lump of ex-governor.  “I mean, he’s got no skin.  Let it go already.”

Raju made a face as if she’d just asked him to clean out underneath a refrigerator using only his tongue.  “What?”  Then the unpleasantness drained out of his face.  “I love you.”

Lola glared at him.

“So, gentlemen,” said Satan.  He turned, holding his hands out like a circus ringmaster.  “How was that?” 

Festus nodded appreciatively and, when the Devil just stared at him, gave a polite golf clap.  Then he realized that Satan was staring at Raju.

Raju sucked air in through his teeth.  “Yeah…” he said.  “I don’t know…”

Satan’s shoulders slumped.  His eyes grew dark and his lips turned into a very thin line.  But then he brightened.  “I’ve got an idea!” he said.  “Watch this.”  He held his free hand up high over Whitford and made a fist, spilling individual drops of clear liquid down onto the Governor’s body. 

Whitford screamed as each tiny droplet splattered on his skin – or, rather, the acres of slimy, anatomical nastiness where his skin had so recently been.  This went on for almost thirty seconds before the Devil finally tossed the spent lemon wedge aside.  The governor whimpered and made inarticulate animal sounds.

“Better?” asked the Devil, turning back to his audience.  “Hey, wait!  Where are you going?”

Liam, Lola, Raju, and Festus stopped and turned. 

Raju made puppy dog eyes, and pointed back over his shoulder.  “They say we have to go…” 

“You can’t go!” said Satan.  “I still have to do the preacher.”

Liam grabbed Raju.  “Come on,” he said, and the group turned to leave. 

They didn’t get very far.  At that moment, Bill Cadmon came back around the corner, nearly crashing into Lola.  He paused, gave her a sly smile, and then shook his head as if to clear it.  He stepped around her and into the middle of the hall to stand in front of the Devil. 

Satan turned.  “Ah!” he said.  “There you are!”  He stepped toward the preacher with his arms out, as if he were about to embrace the man. 

Cadmon just smirked and glanced back over his shoulder.  As he did so, a very tall, very well-lit man with wings came into view.  Cadmon looked back at Satan and smirked again.

Satan’s eyes got all slitty.  “You,” he said in a low, gravely voice.

“Yes,” said the angel Ezekiel, his wings and robe all glowy and radioactive looking.  “It’s me.” 

Chapter 49.
          
Satan and Ezekiel

The angel was friggin’ huge.  And standing there, with his angry face on, he totally dwarfed and overshadowed the Prince of Darkness. 

Satan glared up at him.  “What are you doing here?” . 

Ezekiel glared right back.  “What are
you
doing here?”

“I asked first.”

Ezekiel scoffed.  “So?  I asked second.”

“So,” said the Devil, scoffing right the hell back, “that means you have to answer first.”

“Make me.”

Liam, Festus, Raju, and Lola watched the supernatural standoff with the weary and wary eyes of people who’ve already met their quota of really weird shit.  Cadmon, on the other hand, watched enthusiastically, flipping back and forth to stare at Satan and Ezekiel like an amphetamine addict at a tennis match.  He was therefore the last to notice the two men in military uniforms who clomped up the passageway in their heavy soldier boots.

The two soldiers skidded and stumbled to a stop, and, breathing heavily, clicked their heels together and stood ramrod straight to salute the preacher. 

“Mr. Cadmon, sir!” said the first.

“Sir!” echoed the second.  He stood as still and rigid as his companion, but sneaked a peek at Lola.

Cadmon either ignored or simply didn’t hear them, and so the soldiers just stood, their steely eyes boring in the back of the preacher’s well-coifed gourd.  They continued to stand for a few, long seconds, waiting for the preacher to take a break from his manic imitation of a sprinkler head.  Satan and Ezekiel paused in their argument and turned to stare at the preacher, who looked confused for an instant, and then turned to see what they were looking at.  There, ten inches from his face, was an emphatic man dressed in camouflage.

“Sir!” said the man.

Cadmon stepped back and wiped spittle from his cheek.  “Not now,” he said, shooing the soldier away, and turned to smile at the Devil and Ezekiel.

The soldier would not be shooed.  “But, sir!”

Cadmon spun as if powered by a spring.  “What is it?” he snapped.

The soldier finally seemed to notice that everyone there in the passageway was watching him, and he wilted a little under the weight of everyone’s stares.  He glanced around sneakily and then switched to stealth mode, sidling up closer to Cadmon.  “Shir,” he said, whispering out of the side of his mouth and through clenched teeth, “da wefon uz rey tabeh reweez.”

“Wh—?”  Cadmon shook his head very slowly, mystified. 

The soldier tried again, this time bouncing up and down on his heels and nodding his head with each syllable, as if he could make Cadmon understand through the sheer force of unconquerable, soldier-iffic will.

“Da wefon.  Uz rey.  Tabeh reweezd.”

Cadmon took a moment to pause and reflect on the soldier’s words and to place his palm over his face.  Finally he surrendered.  “Just say it,” he said.  “Spit it out.”

The soldier’s eyes darted back and forth.  Satan and Ezekiel, apparently bored with the soldier, resumed their bickering.  The other soldier, also apparently bored, opted to smile and wink at Lola.

Raju was not bored.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  He scrambled toward the soldier, shoving Liam out of the way.  “Dude, I can’t stand it!  Tell us already!”

The soldier who’d done all the talking – whose body had become so tense and clenched that he had actually started to shake – let out a percussive burst of breath and seemed to deflate.  When he finally spoke, it was with the grit and effort that generally only accompanies certain tasks, like lifting a crashed car off of a body or forcing a stubborn bowel movement.  “The weapon is ready to be released, sir!”

“Weapon?” asked Lola.

“Oh, tell them to go ahead,” said Cadmon, waving his hand and turning back to watch the supernatural fight club.

“Sir?”

“What weapon?” asked Lola.  Cadmon ignored her, and waved off the soldiers again, trying to ignore them too.

“But we need the key, sir!” 

The preacher let out a testy sigh, and then reached into his collar and removed a necklace, from which hung a single, small key.  He looked at it, and started to raise his arm to hold it out to the soldier, but paused, apparently distracted.  Satan and Ezekiel’s discussion was starting to get a little bit testy.

“Why didn’t you say something?” asked Ezekiel.

“I knew I couldn’t trust you,” said Satan.  “And that you’d never agree.”

“So, what?  You just walked out on us!” said Ezekiel.

“What?” asked Cadmon.  “Walked out on who?  What are we talking about here?”

“You little shit,” said Satan, completely oblivious of the irony of a normal-sized person saying that sort of thing to a giant guy with wings.  “Don’t you understand?  We were never going to win!  I left to avoid,” he waved the flaming shotgun around, “all of this.  But now you’ve gone and started it up anyway!”  He smacked Ezekiel, which was a little weird, because, due to the size disparity between the two supernaturals, the smack landed at about Ezekiel’s waist.  Between that and the glowy, other-worldly appearance of the angel, it came off a bit like someone from the Lollipop Guild walking up and hitting Glenda (the Good Witch).  “You screwed everything up!”

“Wait just a goddamned second.  What the fuck
is
all this?” asked Cadmon, stepping away from his soldiers, the key dangling from his hand. 

The soldier, still waiting for the key, turned and finally seemed to register the fact that there was a large angel in the room, at which point he began doing a pretty good impression of a statue.  His companion continued to wink and nod and smirk and wobble his head at Lola.

Raju snatched the key from Cadmon’s hand.  The preacher, whose attention was focused on Ezekiel, just let go, apparently thinking that the soldier had grabbed it. 

The more erect of the two soldiers saw Raju.  “Hey!” he said.  “Give me that!”  He tackled Raju.  Liam skidded over to pull the him off Raju.  Festus stayed put and offered unspoken moral support.

The other soldier did not join the fray, opting instead just to keep smiling at Lola.  He continued to do that until Lola punched him in the face.  He promptly fell backward onto the floor.  It is not clear whether this was solely due to the force of Lola’s punch.  It could have been that, but it also could have been the fact that the stadium began to shake and rumble – nothing too serious, of course – but the floor was definitely moving more than would be expected on, say, pretty much any other day ever in the history of Austin .