by Al Ewing
Ask for more orders, General, Sir?
Or just take a bite?
There was a gunshot from one of the broken windows of the supermarket, and the boy's head jerked, the body lifting up as the force of the bullet pushed his brains out through the shattered skull, then lay still.
Cade figured that this would probably be a good time to feel something. Anything. Remorse, maybe. Guilt. Triumph.
Something.
But Cade was sick and tired of feeling things.
And at the end of the day, he didn't give a damn about the kid, just like he didn't give a damn about anybody else laying dead in that lot. They'd made the decision to be laying there, one way or another. All Cade had done was give them a push.
When he was in the mood for it, Cade could be a real stone cold son of a bitch.
He looked up at the sound of the supermarket door opening, the creak of old metal on metal. The Pastor walked out, a smoking revolver in one hand and a bible in the other, eyes hooded and scowling as he shuffled towards Cade, feet twitching and shifting on the concrete like a snake's tail. He was flanked on either side by his bodyguards in black tees. They weren't carrying baseball bats this time. This time, they had Uzis.
"Brother Cade," hissed the Pastor, and his eyes were like stones in black well-water, ice cold and unreadable.
"Welcome home."
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Prodigal Son
The Pastor didn't say much for a while after that. He just stared, looking Cade up and down. He clicked his tongue once as his eyes lingered over HUG ME - I HAD A HARD DAY, but whether that was because of the seventies imagery or the fresh, wet bloodstain, Cade couldn't tell.
Cade didn't say much either. He was bone tired, and there wasn't much to be said.
The bodyguards didn't break the silence. They stared straight ahead, a pair of tin soldiers waiting for a little boy to pick them up and clash them together. Cade figured right off they weren't much on thinking - they'd wait for the Pastor to make the move, if there was a move to be made.
Cade figured he was waiting for that as well.
He didn't figure he could outdraw a pair of machine pistols with a bowie knife, but if that's the way the Pastor wanted to handle this then Cade was damned if he wasn't going to give it a damn good try anyhow. The two had a lot of muscle on them, but there was fast muscle and slow muscle, muscle that was built to move like lightning in a jar and muscle that was built for showroom purposes, for looking the part of a badass. The difference between them was obvious as the difference between a greyhound at a racetrack and one at a dog show with a ribbon in its tail.
Cade was the one, and these two were the other. He figured the Uzis made it just about even, assuming they had any bullets in them.
He kept his eyes on the Pastor and the Pastor kept his eyes on him in turn, those cold grey ice-chip eyes boring into him and ferreting out his secrets. Cade stared back like a block of stone in the place of a man - he figured there was a good chance the Pastor knew he'd brought the cannibals down on them, either because he was an intuitive little snake when he wanted to be or because one of them had remembered how to talk in words instead of growls. If he did, that'd make it tough for Cade to get any more use out of him. Might even lead to Cade getting a bullet in his back inside the next twelve hours.
Of course, we wouldn't know for sure until that bullet hit him.
The Pastor reared back, swaying in place like a cobra. His eyes were narrow slits, and his lip curled softly, the cracked lines of his face splintering up one side as he did. It was almost a sneer, but there was a look of appraisal there, too. A look of judgement.
"Praise be to thee, oh Lord, oh Lord..." hissed the Pastor, almost beneath his breath. "For thou, in thy holy wisdom... have delivered thy soldier back unto his flock. Praise be unto the Lord of Hosts!"
He let the words hang a moment. Then he smiled, a sinister little grin, teeth bared like a dog's.
Cade still didn't know what the hell the Pastor was thinking, but he knew better than to start something now. For all he knew, they had a dozen guns trained on him in there, and he needed to know just what they had and how many people they had left.
Cade didn't have much of a plan concerning the bigger picture at this point, but what little he had depended on the two remaining sides, the Pastor's and Clearly's, being pretty much evenly matched - enough to smash them together and whittle them down to something he could manage or control, or at least something that wouldn't bother Muir Beach in the future. It wasn't much of a plan, and Cade wasn't much of a planner, but it'd have to do. Trouble was, it looked like the Pastor'd taken a bigger hit than Cade had figured on. Unless a hell of a lot more of the flock were breathing than Cade figured, they'd be wiped out to the last man, woman or child before the night had passed, and Clearly's love children would barrel right on to Muir Beach without stopping for breath.
Which meant the best thing right now, near as he could figure it, was to throw his weight behind the Pastor, if the Pastor didn't decide to kill him. If he didn't, maybe they could take down Clearly's whole community of psychopaths.
You're a dead man, dog. Nice knowin' ya.
Cade didn't twitch a muscle, but he scowled. Damn Fuel-Air anyway. He was going to have to do something about that boy if he didn't shut up.
The Pastor turned and began to shuffle towards the doors of the supermarket, and Cade followed, with the guards behind him. He didn't need to turn his head to know that their hands were on their guns and those guns were probably pointed at his back.
Time to get a few things straight, Cade figured.
"What the hell happened here?" he said, though he knew damn well.
The Pastor chuckled, a laugh like jackboots wading through broken glass. "Cannibals, brother. Heathens and degenerates, lusters..." He hissed the word like a python. "I say, lusters after the foul stink of Mammon, most wretched and vile of all Satan's demons. Their thirty pieces of silver has become a pound of flesh, brother. Their craven need for money has become a thirst for blood..." The Pastor turned his head, fixing Cade with a long stare. "I can't help but wonder, Brother Cade, why Washington Strong would be so... aggressive. Do you know why, Brother Cade? Did he happen to mention? Hmm?"
"Who?" Cade looked puzzled. He was a little surprised the Pastor was trying such a simple trap, and more surprised that he knew that Strong had been the one in charge of the cannibals before Cade had come along. Cade was coming to the conclusion that he'd walked into a regular damned soap opera, where all the players knew each other but him.
The Pastor fell silent.
They walked through the doors and into the supermarket - not much had changed, at least as far as Cade could see. There was still that near-silent atmosphere, that reverential quality. Everyone still looked distant, almost brain-damaged, and where the kids had been quiet before they seemed shell-shocked now.
Nice work, dog, said Fuel-Air. This time he was harder to take than before - morphed horrifically into a ten-year-old's body, scampering between the huddling children with a yo-yo and a Snoopy t-shirt, but the same rotting, maggot-ridden face, the same flashing gold tooth. Cade winced. Every time he saw Fuel-Air, he was looking worse, and this one really took the prize.
Nice fucking work. This ain't no way for a kid to grow up, says Big Bad Cade, the Social Worker That Time Forgot, I'm gonna be fuckin' Santa and make sure every little dickens has a toy. A regular Miracle On Fucked-Up Street, fuckin' yes, Virginia, there is a Cade, and he's gonna get any father figure you managed to pick up since the shit went down eaten by motherfuckin' cannibals and turn whatever fuckin' life you had left into a river of fuckin'' shit, why don't you fuckin' LOOK AT ME you fuckin' asshole, look me square in my fuckin' empty eyes because I'm every damn crime you're ever gonna commit you god-damned motherfuckin'...
Cade shook his head and squeezed his eyes tight shut for a moment, trying to focus past that incessant caffeinated whisper. Hadn't Fuel-Air been on his side once? A h
elping hand, helping him see things he'd missed?
What did it say that he wasn't on Cade's side any more?
What did it say that the thing Fuel-Air wanted him to see was his own body count?
Hell with it. Cade wasn't one for metaphysics and he wasn't one for psychology either, least of all his own. Best to ignore that gibbering thing scampering down between the legs of the trembling, ashen-faced women, caught up in horror beyond anything they'd imagined, horror that he'd brought down on them like a damned...
Hell with it.
Fuel-Air was right about one thing, though. Cade's cannibal army had taken a hell of a toll.
He'd been right to think the Pastor's force was broken. There were a few left - twitching, huddling shells of men cowering in corners, injured men cradling broken arms and open wounds, and those few who could still hold a gun and walk - about six or seven, by Cade's count. Cade figured the women had probably helped out with the ammunition, and maybe even fired a couple of guns themselves if the Pastor had allowed it.
He checked what ordinance they had left - a couple more hunting rifles, slow loaders, three shotguns, a glock and the two Uzis the guards had. Not to mention the police special the Pastor was holding. There were a few more police specials laying on the ground, among the shell casings.
Cade could put two and two together. If those guns were any use, they'd be in somebody's hand. That meant ammo was scarce, maybe gone altogether. If a gun was in somebody's hand, Cade had to assume there were bullets in it, and the fella with the hunting rifle could probably scavenge a little from his dead friends on Lombard if he had a mind to, but everything else had been pumped into the mountain of fresh corpses in the parking lot.
The Pastor had spent all his strength on that battle. Now he needed Cade's information - if Clearly attacked in force, with the kind of raging, blazing, burning anger that he'd apparently unleashed back in the day, the Pastor needed to move out or die. That was one theory, anyway.
Of course, if the Pastor thought that was the case, he'd have started packing up already, so Cade figured he had something in reserve. The plot thickened. Cade figured he'd try and nudge the Pastor into showing his cards.
"Looking short of ammo." He kicked a shotgun shell casing with the toe of his boot, and it skittered across the floor, banging into a couple of nine-millimetre casings as it went.
The Pastor looked at him out of the corner of one eye, the cracks on his face shifting as he searched for an expression. Finally he smiled again. "Tell me, Brother Cade, what did you see during your pilgrimage to the land of the Devil? Anything I should know about?" He let the question dangle without any of his usual flourishes.
Cade weighed it up. The Pastor could probably order him killed right there. Now ordering a man like Cade killed and actually killing him were two different things, and Cade didn't doubt that if need be he could make sure a lot of folks died in his place, but even for him there was a danger in facing down a pair of Uzis as well as a loaded shotgun or two.
Might as well be honest.
"I killed about fifty of Clearly's people. They were on something - me too. They ain't happy. Probably saw where I was going." He shrugged. "Coming tonight." Cade hoped that'd satisfy the Pastor. He'd gone over every detail at some length.
The Pastor raised an eyebrow. "You bearded the Devil in his lair and killed his demons..." He stared for long moments into Cade's eyes. "Is it true, Brother Cade?"
Cade wasn't used to being called a liar. It pissed him off something fierce, and the Pastor seemed to take note of that. He smiled wider. "You impress me, Brother Cade, with your dedication to the service of our Lord... so many have gone to the Devil and not returned, tempted and twisted by his potions and his powers and the lies spilling from his forked and hissing tongue! Oh yes, Brother, you stepped into the mouth of the dragon, the many-headed Beast of Revelations and breathed his poison breath... and found it in you to come back! And join the worshippers of the mighty and glorious Lord once again!" He reached, gripping Cade's shoulders for a moment with withered hands. "Lord bless you, Brother Cade! Lord keep you!" He chuckled, shattered glass raining down on slate, while his gimlet eyes fixed Cade's.
Cade frowned. There wasn't any mileage in this sort of bullshit as far as he was concerned. "Got a plan?"
After a moment of loaded silence, the Pastor turned again, shuffling towards the back of the store. Cade followed, shooting a quick glance at the handful of armed men still facing out of the window - all that was left of the Pastor's army, unless you counted the broken, sobbing heaps trying to burrow into the floor-tiles like moles, or the ashen-faced women the Pastor'd stupefied and brainwashed, or the kids, shell-shocked and malnourished. And Cade didn't.
Clearly's people were going to be as bad as the cannibals - maybe worse, since the cannibals were brain-damaged savages. The love children were going to turn into hate-crazed savages the second the sun went down, but right up until then they were keeping fit, drinking fruit juices and fresh water, probably getting any guns or knives they had ready into the bargain. Cade could picture the Doc looking on with his sad eyes as his followers raided kitchen drawers and police precincts, finding anything they could to kill folks with while he stood back and told himself that it'd all be worth it to make them whole again.
Cade wasn't exactly on the Pastor's side, but the kids didn't deserve to be torn to pieces by a bunch of feral junkies and he sure as hell wasn't going to let Muir Beach fall that way. Cade was hoping the Pastor had something to even up the score a little bit.
He wasn't disappointed.
The Pastor removed a bunch of jangling keys from his pocket, swinging them around on a bony finger, and then shuffled towards one of the double doors at the back of the store that led through to the storage area. Cade had figured this was where he'd kept his weapons cache up until now.
The turning of the key in the lock made a sound like a skeleton rattling undead bones in a cellar in the dead of night. Cade felt a sudden stab of instinct deep in his gut, and looked around for a sign of Fuel-Air. He'd vanished back to wherever he came from.
That made Cade uneasy, somehow.
Then the doors swung open, and Cade saw it.
It was squat and black, a huge ebon egg sitting on a wooden trestle. The metallic casing of the thing reflected the lights above in a dull sheen, and towards the back of it there were fins and an opened container that had once held a parachute, now cannibalised for cloth. Bolted to the side was some kind of improvised detonator system, an electronic hotch-potch that had replaced the original detonator. Somebody had done a lot of work to make sure this could be delivered by land instead of by air, but the purpose was still the same. Cade didn't have to read the word THERMOBARIC, stencilled with military precision on the old, scratched casing, to know what it was.
He didn't have to look too closely at the face on the front of the bomb either. The grotesque warping of metal into flesh that only he could see, grinning a grin with a diamond in it.
He knew exactly what it was.
It was a Fuel-Air Bomb.
Howdy, Fuel-Air said, and winked one black metal eye. How you like me now, bitch?
Cade took a deep breath. Under the circumstances, there was one question that needed to be asked first.
"Everybody else see that?"
The Pastor looked at him quizzically, eyes narrowing. "A thermobaric explosive, Brother Cade. Doubtless the noble men of the FBI would have swooped down with all their fury on the terrorist cell who were planning to detonate it, had they not died of the Lord's displeasure, and the terrorists too. Leaving only their weapon behind, to be found by one who will put it to more righteous use."
Al Qaeda, dog. The bomb pouted, mock-stern. You stop fightin' those fuckers over there, they come over here, like Rush said all along. Chain of command, bitch. Shoulda listened, you fuckin' socialist.
"Al Qaeda?" said Cade. That sense of surreality was washing over him again.
The Pastor shook his head. "
Domestic terrorists." He grinned, pointing to a blood-red slogan painted on the side of the bomb: SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS. WE SURROUND YOU. "Of my faith, in fact, which explains how they were taken to the glory of the Lord all the sooner. Or perhaps He thought their way was too merciful for the liberals and the deviants, compared with mine." He chuckled, a chain mail fist crushing a wineglass.
Damn. My bad. Guess I'm just politically incorrect or some shit. Fuck it, dude, let's go bombing. The bomb winked again and grinned, waggling its tailfins. Cade turned his back on it, looking the Pastor dead in the eye.
"You didn't use that earlier?"
The Pastor's smile faded. "He turned many of my flock with his lies. If such a device was driven into Clearly's territory and the chosen faithful failed to set it off... if they were corrupted... then Satan would hold this power. I... I could not risk even the most pure of my brethren..." He turned away, looking into the distance, as though trying to grasp some awful theological dilemma that had plagued him for years.
In other words, he was too much of a fuckin' pussy to do it himself. Jesus motherfuckin' Christ, can't a weapon of fuckin' giant-ass destruction get some respect around here?
Cade ignored the voice behind him. Fuel-Air's voice was grating and metallic now, and interspersed with little electronic blips and whines. Cade wasn't a man who got the creeps as such, but that voice was definitely driving him close. Not to mention pissing him off.
"So why now?"
The Pastor's head snapped towards Cade's, fixing him with those eyes again. They burned, and the face beneath them snarled like a cornered rat, or maybe - hell, why not - a rattlesnake, swaying in place the instant before it struck.
"Because now is the endgame, Cade. Now is where the battle between good and evil, between the Lord and the Devil, comes to it's final end... oh, my brother, I tell you now, I give you the word that before the dawn rises, either I or the demon Doctor Clearly will be dead..."
His eyes narrowed, and the words hissed from cracked lips like steam.
