by D V Wolfe
"Jesus, Noah," I said. "It's a gun, not a load of your dirty socks. There's no safety on that thing, so don't go throwing it around." We climbed in and slammed the doors. "Though being shot may be a more humane way to go than sitting next to your Rawhead-covered ass for the next five miles. You reek."
"Man, I think I've got more of that thing in my hair," Noah said, cranking down his window.
"Well karma can be a bitch," I grumbled as we backed up and turned around. "You still managed to shoot me." I ran a hand over my cheek and felt the impact wounds from the salt.
We made it back to the highway just in time to pass the paramedics from Jessup slowing down for the turn to head up to the Crawford's house.
"Why does my head hurt?" Noah asked, rubbing a hand over his forehead.
"No idea," I said, reaching for the radio knob.
3
“Oh, before I forget,” I said, rolling onto my right buttcheek to pull out my wallet. I dropped it on the seat between us and returned my good hand to the wheel, using my right to gingerly flip it open. I felt the familiar sensation of a hole in the pit in my stomach being carved deeper, and the twenty materialized between my fingertips in the cash pocket of my otherwise empty wallet. I tugged it out, handing it to Noah.
“Thanks,” Noah mumbled, picking up his backpack and stuffing the twenty in the front zippered pocket. “How are you not dead?” Noah asked, turning to look at me as we motored into town. “I think I saw the charge of that thing lift you off the ground.”
“I was careful not to cross the streams,” I said. My attention was back on my side-view mirror. I still thought there was a pretty good chance Sister Smile’s crew were going to be out looking for me. As far as I’d ever heard, no one who tangled with the H.A.N.D. Cannibal Tribe, lived to talk about it. Byron was probably sitting at Pitch’s right now having a good laugh and trying to mooch a tab out of Mattie Mae. I should have never listened to anything he said, but I’d been desperate.
“So, what the fuck was that?” Noah asked. “I mean, a bad guy with B.O. problems or something?”
I glanced over at him. “It was a Rawhead.”
Noah shook his head. “You keep saying that like it’s completely normal and that I should know what that is.”
I sighed. Short and sweet and then a boot out of the car. “It was just a bad man in a rubber mask, Scooby-doo.” Let him just walk away from this, thinking it was a bad acid trip. “Thanks for your help in stopping him.”
“That wasn’t a man in a mask,” Noah muttered. “That was some freaky shit. I must have had some bad mushrooms in the forest.”
“That must be it,” I said.
The whiskey wore off as we rolled into town, forced out of my system I guessed, by the adrenaline of the standoff with the Rawhead. The cold-water-shock hit me again as the visions in front of the truck sharpened back into the burning bodies of people and livestock.
“Well, where can I let you off?” I asked Noah as we passed dark residential neighborhoods and a boarded-up supermarket on the main drag running through Jessup. It would have looked completely deserted if it wasn’t for the burning images of the Ashley townsfolk standing in every storefront parking lot and driveway we passed.
“Oh,” Noah said. His voice was quiet as he stared around at the tiny town. “Uh, I don’t know.”
I sighed inwardly. This is what I get for straying from the plan. Now, on top of everything else I had to do, I had an innocent in tow, with nowhere to leave him. Leaving him here, with no place to take cover, would probably be worse than leaving him in the woods. Besides, he had been useful. I cut my eyes to him and cleared my throat. “You know it’s only about four-thirty here. There’s not gonna be much open in this one-horse town. If you want, I’m heading towards Baltimore and I probably owe you a ride that far for your help tonight.”
I wasn’t actually heading to Baltimore, but I figured that was probably the closest Greyhound station along the way. The sooner I sent him somewhere far away, the better.
“Yeah,” Noah said, sitting up straighter in his seat. “That would be good.”
I couldn’t resist screwing with him a little. “Of course, you did shoot me, and if we were weighing what I really owed you in miles, that would probably leave you somewhere in the boonies between here and there.”
Noah sighed. “I didn’t mean to.”
“You did fix my arm up though,” I said, glancing down at it.
“Yeah,” Noah said.
“But it hurt like hell,” I said, turning into a gas station with just one flickering light above the pumps.
“I told you it would.”
“Man Noah, I’ve only known you for, what, maybe two hours, and most of that time, I’ve been in pain because of you. I have to ask, why are you always hurting me?”
He hung his head. “Apparently that’s what I do now; hurt people.”
“God, Noah, I was kidding. I don’t do angst so go over into that scary men’s room and get rid of it before we get back on the road.” I climbed out and glanced back in the cab at him. “And while you’re at it, try to scrape off some of that Rawhead. You smell like a Chinese restaurant dumpster baking in the sun.”
The gas station had probably been closed since sundown. It was on the outskirts of town and I could barely make out the outlines of the houses around us.
The restrooms were outside and had doors made of painted plywood with handles instead of knobs.
“No deadbolts on the crappers,” I said. “You gotta love that small-town charm.” Noah climbed out the passenger side door and came around the end of the truck to stand next to me as I unscrewed Lucy’s tank cap. I had to reach through the burning vision of Mr. Shuck holding his pet chicken Bertie who was a ball of fire in his arms, to stick the fuel nozzle in Lucy’s tank.
“That pump doesn’t have an electronic card reader, how are you going to get it to start?” Noah asked.
“That’s my problem,” I said. “Your problem is going to be an exploding bladder because I don’t make stops except to feed Lucy. You better go see a man about a horse.”
Noah stared at me and then stalked off towards the men’s room. I put a hand on the side of the pump and closed my eyes. It was a relief to not see the burning victims, even if it was only for a second, and even if I knew it wouldn’t last. In a moment, they’d be behind my eyelids too. I focused on the feel of the cool metal under my palm and thought about the empty truck tank. Then, I felt the familiar jolt go up my arm and the feeling of a hole in my stomach being carved a little deeper, as a little more of my blood or soul or whatever the bastards used to pay for my fuel, left me, and the pump started. I stood there, staring at the numbers spinning by on the old pump and I felt my heart beginning to race as the familiar panic tried to get a toe-hold again. I was down from years to months left to finish this suicide mission. I’d had two false starts already and had burned up nine years worth of time I could have been hunting. Some in Hell, some just fucking around, kidding myself. Now I was down to months and I still had so many I had to save.
A shriek made me turn around. Noah was stumbling back from the men’s room and the reason why quickly became apparent.
A man wearing a black suit with slicked-back black hair had just pushed through the door. He was calmly crossing the parking lot now, drying his hands on a paper towel and grinning at me.
“Festus,” I grumbled. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“Evening Bane,” he said with a smile, revealing the gold incisor tooth with a ruby chip in it that he was so proud of. His voice was smooth and sickening and always made me wonder if his words were actual poison being spewed from his mouth. He glanced at Noah who had backed away from him until he was up against Lucy. “Who’s the boy scout?”
“Not a boy scout,” I said, “I asked.”
“Huh, he looks like one.” Festus leaned towards Noah and I saw his eyes glow red for a moment before he quickly leaned back. “Whew! He doesn’t smell like one though.”
Festus coughed.
“Rawhead,” I said. “I’m surprised you can tell with all that sulfur and brimstone in your nose.”
“Never knew you to take an innocent as a partner,” Festus said, his attention back on me.
“Not a partner, just a hitchhiker.”
Festus snorted. “And he thought it would be a good idea to get in the truck with you?”
The pump stopped and I hung the nozzle up and screwed the cap back on Lucy’s tank.
“Are you here for a reason, Festus, or do you just hang out in gas station men’s rooms for a change of scenery?”
Festus unbuttoned his suit jacket and put his hands in his pockets. “We need to talk.”
I glanced at Noah, trying to ignore the Daniels family who were crying behind him, their heads on fire. “Go ahead and take care of that bladder problem, Noah. The odds of two cut-rate Johnny Cash’s coming out of that men’s room tonight are pretty low.”
Noah looked at me. I nodded and he crossed the lot again. Festus watched him go over his shoulder and as soon as the plywood banged shut behind Noah, he turned back to look at me.
“Time is getting short for them, Bane. And for you. The upper-management downstairs is starting to get very excited about your time running out.”
I leaned against Lucy. “Well I bagged another one tonight. The Rawhead. I saved three.”
Festus snapped his fingers and a red notebook appeared in his hand. He licked his thumb and flipped through the pages slowly, taking his time and glancing up at me with his sickening smile between pages. I’d played this game before. I sighed and stared at him, deadpan.
“Let’s see; ravager, raven, ahh Rawhead.” A pen appeared in his hand and he wrote something. “Three innocents saved…but a Rawhead,” He shook his head and clicked his tongue. He looked up at me, “that’s only worth one more soul.”
“Three saved is only worth one?” I asked.
Festus pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. I felt the smirk trying to form on my face. I loved fucking with Festus. “Bane, I’ve actually lost count as to how many times I’ve had to explain this to you. It doesn’t matter how many innocents you stop a supernatural from killing. Their worth is in the value of their power and what they’re capable of. Human souls are weaker currency, so on the whole, killing a supernatural should be worth more than one human soul. However, Rawheads are not that powerful as far as supernaturals go, so a Rawhead is only worth one soul. I don’t make the rules. Inflation is everywhere and that’s the current going rate.” He glanced up at me and saw my smirk. He closed his eyes and I could almost hear his teeth grinding. “Why do you insist on picking at the sliver of patience that I have remaining?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It gets me through the dry spells. So what’s my total up to?”
“You know that doesn’t matter,” Festus said, and now he was not able to conceal his wicked grin. “If you don’t save every last one of them, they all stay in the pit.”
“You just love reminding me of that, don’t you?”
Festus shrugged. “Yeah, it gets me through the dry spells.”
I shook my head. “You’re such a kind soul, you know that?”
“See, that’s what I like about you, Bane. You’re the only person I know who could make ‘kind soul’ sound so much like ‘sadistic bastard’.”
I crossed my arms. “Without knowing your father personally, I’d say the description is accurate.”
“I always was my mother’s favorite,” Festus said with a grin.
I heard plywood creak and glanced behind Festus to see Noah emerging from the men’s room.
“Total, please,” I said. “I need to know how many more.”
“Four hundred and eighty-two,” Festus read from the notebook.
“Fine,” I said, opening the cab door. “Anything else?”
“Your father sends his best wishes,” Festus hissed.
Blood was suddenly pounding in my ears and I had to consciously keep my hands on the cab door handle and the side of the bed to stop them from moving to his throat.
“Go to hell,” I spat.
“Yeah, I need to get back to the office anyway.”
I glanced back up at Noah who was slowly crossing the lot, looking like he wasn’t sure if he should run for one of the nearby houses or return to the truck.
“Don’t do any of that stupid ‘poofing away’ stuff. It’ll freak the kid out,” I muttered to Festus. Granted, Noah had just been through some pretty weird shit, but I wasn’t anxious to subject him to more if I didn’t have to. He had too many questions. And I liked making Festus do something.
“I don’t ‘poof away’,” Festus said.
“You ‘poof away’ if I say you ‘poof away’,” I said. “And as my court-appointed accountant, Festus, I say you do ‘poof away’, but you’re not allowed to right now.”
His expression was murderous, but he tucked the red notebook into his pocket and turned to Noah. “I think it’s only fair to tell you that her last partner was eaten alive by a Bunyip. You probably don’t know what those are, but imagine...”
“Festus,” I barked. “Go.”
I saw him fight the urge and then he turned on his heel and stalked off into the dark. Just outside the pool of stuttering light, I saw a few red sparks scatter across the ground like the lit cherry of a discarded cigarette and I knew he was gone. I couldn’t summon Festus or really make him do much, but I could send him away when I wanted to, and that was comforting.
“Well,” I said, climbing into the cab. “It’s good to see you survived the men’s room.”
“Who was that?” Noah asked, climbing in and shutting his door. I opened my mouth to speak and he held up a hand. “No lies, Bane. After the shit you put me through tonight, I deserve to know.”
“He’s my accountant,” I said. Well, it was right in principle.
Noah shook his head. “It’s a simple question.”
“And I gave you a simple answer. What do you want from me? If you’d asked him, he’d have told you the same thing.”
We were quiet then and the humming of the tires served as therapy in the silence that stretched between us. After a while, I looked over at Noah and saw he was sleeping, softly snoring and fogging up the passenger side window. I flipped on the radio and twiddled the knob to the old station. I kept the volume low and when the weather report came on, I strained to listen to Walter’s ‘old man voice’.
“Clouds over St. Louis today with a sixty percent chance of showers and possible thunderstorms and a severe cold front moving in over the next three days.”
Half a second after Walter finished the weather report, my cell phone started with its high-pitched racket. I snatched it off the floor by the gear shift where it had landed after we left the gas station and flipped it open.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to keep my voice low so I wouldn’t wake the kid. The way he was snoring it sounded like he hadn’t slept for a week.
“Did you hear the weather report?” Nya asked.
“You mean the one that just ended, two seconds before you called?”
“Yeah, smartass,” Nya didn’t wait for me to reply. “I had some luck figuring out what the hell has a bug up its ass about you.”
“Please tell me it’s something exotic but really easy to kill,” I said.
“It’s a demon,” Nya said.
I snorted. “Nya, I clawed my way out of Hell on a technicality. I’m sure there are lots of those fuckers waiting to gleefully and enthusiastically drag me back.”
