He hurries toward the exit and steps into a purpling dusk.
The sight is almost unbearable. Through watery eyes, he squints into the day’s dying light. Tall brown grasses and color-pricked wildflowers sway in a gentle breeze, rolling like waves. Trees linger in the distance, and he can see their leaves flutter in the wind. He reaches, wanting to touch them, to caress the ragged bark of their trunks, to feel the leaves’ rubbery texture between his fingers, to repose in their shade, and to ascend their branches into the forever sky.
For the first time in his life he wishes he had wings. He has found a god.
He kneels on the dust-dry rock, overcome by the openness of space. Forgotten images—including, for a fraction of a second, the smile of a human woman with alabaster skin, dark hair and full pink lips—rush to the surface, his brain on the verge of explosion.
He cannot bear it.
Let me die here, now.
He has seen this world before. He has, at one time or another, belonged here. Of this he is certain. Tears streak his coal-black cheeks. Sobs wrack his body. A hand hides his face, shielding his wet eyes.
The verse finds him.
It screams, this lovely parasite
Hungry to fill the hollowed husk
Plug the pit with hallowed musk
To seed, to breathe
To fulfill the promise
Never given but implied
By the architect
Unnamed, unseen
The tongue tastes lament and deceit and defeat
Too much left
Untouched
Even for the newly hatched mite
As the end comes much too soon
Something snaps behind him, and he turns to see a red, white and blue flag affixed to a silvery pole jutting from the center of a boulder pile. The cloth flaps in the steady breeze, and the movement reminds him of ripples in Cthaal’s lake of blood. As above, so below, it seems.
He wanders mindlessly across the meadow. Grasses climb to his waist and tickle the space between his legs. The grasses’ straw-like tips graze his palms. Birds of prey soar overhead, calling out. He takes each piercing screech as a welcome.
He has escaped. He is “of the world” again.
In the distance he eyes a seam of black cutting through the sea of brown and green. Every so often he sees movement—big unnatural things, thoughtless and noisy machines, aliens, drones, metal monsters. An unpleasant odor finds his nose, and the burnt smell reminds him of Our Fiery Home. He growls disapprovingly, but he must know its source. He zigzags toward the roadway, wondering how close he can get before conflict finds him, because conflict always finds him.
Moments later he stands at the edge of the black seam as a caravan of cars and tractor-trailers whiz by. Flecks of tire rubber coat the fur of his lower half. A chrome-streaked semi lumbers to a halt next to him. The right turn signal blinks its angry red eye. The passenger-side door creaks open, and a pot-bellied human with dark skin—a shade so rich it’s purple more than brown, a shade nearly as dusky as Basil’s midnight flesh—nods in encouragement.
“Where you headed, friend?”
“I’m not sure,” Basil says warily, realizing he has no idea where he is or where he should go. He also knows he has no reason to trust anyone, especially someone who regards him as “friend”.
“Not going too much farther tonight, but you’re welcome to the seat.”
“As far as you can take me then. Much obliged.”
Basil climbs into the compartment, and the cab sinks an inch or two beneath his weight. As with the cramped tunnels that led him out of Our Fiery Home, he finds the cab to be a tighter fit than he would like. His horns scrape the ceiling and carve ruts into the soft fabric. He decides, for the duration of this experiment, to accept being uncomfortable.
The truck lumbers to a start, and they drive in silence for several miles.
“’Bout time you showed up,” the human says.
“Beg your pardon?”
“I figured you would have made an appearance a long time ago. I didn’t think we’d make it out of the Eighties alive.”
Basil lacks understanding, but he senses no malice so he keeps the conversation going.
“I’m here now.”
“Makes perfect sense to me, all things considered.”
They continue west, toward the sinking sun, and Basil tries to reconcile the distance he has put behind him. The world blurs past so quickly, so indiscriminately, he feels awestruck. He has never seen such magic, can’t fathom how the man next to him wields the power over time and space so freely, with this mechanical beast to do his bidding, as if it were nothing.
A moment later the driver eases up on the gas pedal and the world around them comes into sharper focus. The truck slows to a stop at the entrance to a squat, shack-like building with a sole car and three motorcycles in the graveled parking lot.
“This will work for you,” the man says. “Listen now: Most people call me Chit, but my right name is Charles Upton, middle initial J, as in James. Born in Franklin, Tennessee. I’m guessing you knew that already, more or less. What else you need to know ’bout yours truly?”
“Nothing at all. I appreciate the ride, Charles Upton of Franklin, Tennessee.”
“Remember me. Remember my good deed. Be kind now.” Basil has no idea what the man means.
“Sir,” Basil says. “One last thing: Where am I?”
“Fair enough. You just about in the dead center of Nebraska, heartland of the US of A. Maybe a couple hours outside of Lincoln, right on the dividing line between the towns of Beak and Ellicott. Afraid there’s not much action in this neck of the woods for someone of your eminence, my friend, but this place right here is probably the closest thing you gonna find to what you’re looking for.” He pauses before adding, “Head inside and grab a drink. It’s your kind of place.”
Basil climbs out of Charles Upton’s semi and surveys the near-empty lot. It’s an unremarkable outpost, even depressing, pale against the grassy plains and infinite sky. He waits for the truck to trundle forward and watches the great metallic beast pull away. A cloud of road dust swallows him as the truck’s taillights shrink to crimson pinpricks.
This world, he thinks, is an unexplained treasure. He eyes the darkening sky, thankful for its lack of ceiling, thankful for its dearth of carrion-craving vampire bats or fire-breathing reptiles. Stars sprinkle the night sky, and the moon’s ivory crescent hooks in the dead space above a stand of trees so far into the horizon he can’t imagine he will ever have the chance to touch them.
He strides toward the box of a building, which bears a hand-painted sign with a cartoon likeness of an eagle. The raptor’s painted bill curves around the words “Beak Tavern.” He pauses. If for some reason he has to forfeit his life, he would choose to take his last breaths beneath the blessings of clouds and stars, not anywhere cursed by four walls and a ceiling.
He inhales deeply and reaches for the door handle. As he ducks through the entrance, the abhorrent stink of cigarette smoke corkscrews into his nostrils.
* * *
Horns everywhere—the first thing he notices. The cobweb-laced heads of long-dead animals line the walls, each trophy sporting an imposing rack of antlers. White-tailed deer. Caribou. Sable antelope. Moose. Oryx. He imagines the severed heads of his horned minions alongside these decapitated ungulates, their dried blood painting the walls in crude starbursts.
He should feel at home given the commonality, he thinks, but instead he feels unwelcome, an intruder, a potential target. It’s the smoke. It’s the magic of moving pictures filling the rectangular screen behind the bar. It’s the crassness of the music—he supposes that’s the right word for it: music—spilling like shat sludge from speakers at both ends of the bar. A guitar twangs while a forlorn man whines about his worst day, which includes, near as Basil can tell, a broken-down car, a dead cat and a girlfriend with a gifted tongue and a wandering eye. But mostly it’s the four male humans inside w
ho stare at him with a combination of wonder and contempt.
“You lost?” says the man behind the bar.
Basil clops closer because he doesn’t want to shout over the caterwauling.
“I’m here to figure a few things out,” he says.
“Right-o,” says the barkeep. “I figured you would have gotten here years ago, working behind the scenes. You look like you could use a drink.”
“Certainly.”
“Take a seat.”
“I’ll stand.”
“Whatever you like.”
The bartender holds a small, thickset glass to the light so he can look for smudges, of which there are many. He pulls a rag from his shoulder and gives the glass a cursory swipe. He then takes a half-empty bottle from behind the bar and pours amber liquid into the glass.
“Our best scotch, not that it’s all that great,” he says. “On me.”
Basil lifts the tumbler, smells the acrid liquid swimming around inside, and gingerly takes a sip. Liking what he tastes, he gulps down the rest. It stings his palate but he savors the feeling, the way the liquid warms the lining of his throat on the way to his belly. It, too, seems somehow familiar.
“My compliments,” he says.
Basil feels a presence behind him. He turns to see three men standing in formation, one behind the other. Hierarchy. Each wears an ensemble of leather and denim. One sports a spiked collar. Two of them don sunglasses, even though it’s dark both inside and out. By now the sun has dipped below the horizon.
“What do we have here?” asks the one in front.
Basil nods toward them. He inflates his chest.
“Holy shee-it,” says the man wearing the spiked collar. “What mange-ridden jungle cat dragged you into this hellhole?”
“Buy me another drink,” Basil says.
“Ha! Listen to this guy. Coming into our fucking bar, telling us to buy him a fucking drink. Motherfucker’s got nerve.”
Basil senses their character. They have done bad things, as all have, but these humans are unique in their capacity for wrongdoing. Immediately, he can tell they are neither kind people nor particularly good people—a vague sense of knowing, something beyond the gifts of smell, touch or sight.
“That’s King Motherfucker to you,” Basil says.
The tallest of the three—leather vest, leather skullcap embroidered with an electric-blue snakelike dragon, beard flecked with gray whiskers, scar running the length of his right cheek—takes a step closer and extends a hand toward Basil.
“Name’s Cronos,” he says. “These sad sacks and me, we’re brothers of the Fang and Claw. This is our bar. Consider it yours too.”
“Fang and Claw?”
“Fang and Claw Motorcycle Club. Figured you would have had your eye on us. Heard of us, at least. This is home base for the F and C, or one of ’em anyway. There’s eighty-two of us—”
“Seventy-nine,” another interjects. “Remember what happened last week.”
“Right, can’t forget what happened last week. There’s seventy-nine of us, running from Wyoming to Texas.”
“Running from what?” Basil asks.
“Whatever’s necessary, chief. A little this, a little that—anything to make sure we’re spending one more day above the dirt than the asshole next door. You know how it is.”
“Do I?”
Basil picks up his glass, bearing the weight of a fresh pour, and tilts it back. He feels nervous, ill at ease, disadvantaged. These humans know something he doesn’t—too many things, in fact—but they seem to think he’s clued in. He’s smart enough to not tip his hand, knows when to shut up.
Cronos trains his eyes on Basil and asks, “So. Hell finally froze over?”
“I was delivered here, by Charles Upton of Franklin, Tennessee, and his big machine.”
“Big machine?”
“An unnatural thing. From outside. Its name eludes me.”
“Why here and now? Why lame-as-fuck Nebraska?”
“It seemed like a good place to start,” he says, lying. He did not choose to be here. In fact, he chose nowhere specific. He’s not even sure what Nebraska is.
“As good a place as any, right? Set the world alight from the inside out. Genius. Pure genius. No one will see it coming.”
“Precisely.”
“Stick with us, we’ll make sure you get where you’re going.” The grating song ends and another starts in right behind it. To Basil’s ears, the new noise sounds louder, tinnier and more irritating than its predecessor. His agitation grows.
“What should we call you?” Cronos asks.
Basil chooses to not answer, knowing the burden of his identity, the power of names.
“This here’s Worm,” Cronos says. “And the fella sitting on his ass right behind him—that fat fuck is Hunter. Get off your fat ass and say hello, Hunt. It’s not every day Satan comes a-callin’. Praise and hail Satan. All that jazz.”
Basil tenses. The coarse hairs of his arms and chest stiffen.
“I don’t go by that name. Watch your tongue.”
“All right, big boy. I didn’t mean anything by it. … So what’s the first item on your itinerary? What’s the agenda?”
“Agenda?”
“You know, your reign of terror—Hell on Earth and all that business. Maybe burn down a few churches. Deflower a virgin or two. Feed some ugly babies to the meat grinder just ’cause they’re ugly babies. Shit like that.”
This man is a fool, Basil knows.
Hunter nods toward the TV behind the bar.
Basil marvels at the magic box.
On screen, a voluptuous brunette in a red bikini and ridiculously high heels shimmies along the perimeter of an in-ground pool. Her pendulous breasts bounce in slow motion toward a bespectacled man in a chef’s hat and an apron, diligently tending a charcoal grill. As the man hands the buxom brunette a hot dog, she slides most of it, sans bun, into her lipstick-smudged mouth. The screen fades to black, replaced by the red, white and blue logo for Frank’s Double-Beef Franks.
“I’d like to fuck her twice with a broken bottle,” Hunter says.
“She wouldn’t fuck you with your dog’s dick,” Worm counters.
These men deserve to suffer, Basil decides. Still, he cannot remove his eyes from the talking box tacked to the wall. The corners of his mouth curl because he now has proof: Magic does exist away from Our Fiery Home. He wonders how he can tap into it.
“One request,” Cronos says. “If you get the nuke codes, take all them commies out—every last one of ’em, the world over, so there’s nothing else left to burn, no one but us left standing. I’ll be one disappointed SOB if I wake up tomorrow and see the Nebraska plains colored Day-Glo orange, all burnt to shit by waves of radioactive fire.”
These words make no sense to Basil.
“He should come with us, Crone,” Worm insists.
Worm’s name seems appropriate, given the man’s rail-thin body. Even so, his wiry mustache and hooked nose give him a birdlike appearance.
“And do what, genius?”
“We got a short run coming up day after next,” Worm says. “Out to Oklahoma City, Sweetwater and back.”
“Sweetwater?” Basil asks.
“Texas. We call it a fundraiser. Picking up … let’s call them ‘supplies’ from our friends in Mexico and bringing ’em back here for prompt distribution. Coke, mostly. Some pills. Some heroin. But mostly coke. Got to pay the piper, you know. It’s your kind of racket, I would think. We’ll find some respectable trouble for you to stir up on the way out. You know, some tight little minx for you to corrupt with your melted-marshmallow seed, maybe find a church door or two for you to piss on.”
“I’m looking for a break from trouble.”
“That’s a trip,” Cronos says with a laugh.
Basil wonders how—rather, if—he will escape this encounter unsullied. Behave, he tells himself. His eyes seek points of egress.
“Look,” Cronos insists, “you wa
nt in with us or not?”
“I want nothing from no one.”
“You’d do all right by us, and we’d return the favor—no shit. Pledge your allegiance to the Fang and Claw, give your word to Ronald, and you’re golden.”
“Ronald? He’s your god?”
“Ronald’s the man with the plan, the toucan at the top of the totem pole,” Cronos says. “Considering your, ah, track record, I’m sure he’d waive the initiation. He’d treat you real good and nice. Probably make you an officer within five minutes.”
“How kind of him.”
Basil grows weary of these beastly men. They remind him too much of demons who do not know their place. The reality of the world above—at least the parts that humans touch—cannot compete with his expectations of peace, of paradise. Maybe, he thinks, coming here was a horrible mistake. He wonders if he will ever find the place to which he belongs.
“You’re going to have to excuse me,” he says. He nods toward the exit.
“Don’t be rude,” says Worm. “Listen to the man.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s talking to you.”
“I’m done listening.” Basil takes a step away from the bar.
“Look,” Cronos says. “We don’t want trouble from you, and I’m sure you don’t want trouble from us. You’re an alpha dog by a red cunt hair or two. We get it. But remember: We ain’t far behind you.”
“Should I take that as a threat?”
“Take it as fact. You ain’t better’n anybody.”
“Only a child marvels at his penchant for violence and bad behavior. And only a fool brags about it. I wash my hands of you.”
Cronos slams his beer onto the bar.
“You’re done when we say you’re done,” he says. “You come in here like some kind of tough guy, like some kind of asshole. I don’t give a flying fuck who or what you think you are. You want to leave? You’re going to have to beg. You got no power here.”
Burn, Beautiful Soul Page 4
