“We're not stopping. We keep going down.”
“But Mom, I have to pee.”
“Hold it. I am.”
Lissandra crossed her arms again. “How far?”
“We're going all the way down. Level 5.”
“Moon, whatever is down here had better be pretty damn awe-inspiring.”
Moon just smiled. “Would I have brought you all this way just to disappoint you?”
“I don't even know where all this way is— beyond a dead president's ranch in Nowhere, Texas.”
“Lissandra, you're at one of the most magical places on the planet Earth. This is where secrets that even you can't see in those cards of yours all go to die.”
“We really are going into Hell, aren't we?”
Moon drew one of her swords as the big yellow 2 began to roll into view.
“We're definitely going into Hell-adjacent. LBJ called it Atlantis Ranch.”
~23~
LOCK BUMPING
BILLY PURGATORY FIGURED OUT that the army base he'd been stationed at in Colorado had been closed down. He'd spent the rest of the forty-five minutes and a roll of quarters calling everyone he could remember he had once known there. People had moved on, and he and Anastasia took the truck away from the highway again and down out-of-the-way roads. The place where they'd finally stopped was an old wrecker yard with a combination foreclosure and smiling real estate agent sign nailed onto a fence post.
Rusting old cars and a locked metal building, down a drive and through a small stand of trees, all sitting and waiting for the Hog-Bitch to rumble past them, and rumble past it did. It was cold in Colorado, and Anastasia didn't like it here. Too many fir trees and bad roads. The whole place smelled like camping, and she hated camping.
“I'm not camping.”
Billy sighed as he stopped the truck in front of a high metal roll-up door. “I already told you, we're not camping.”
“Good, because I'm not camping.”
Billy climbed out of the truck and belched loudly. Anastasia was still disgusted at just how many onion rings he had gorged himself on. She followed his motions through the windshield and watched him bend down, then vanish, in front of the door the headlights beamed into. Anastasia heard chains rattling and watched a long minute be recorded by the digital clock on the stereo display. She almost made it another minute before sighing loudly and opening her door to step out.
“I hate it here, it's cold.”
“Will you get back in the truck? I can't concentrate on what I'm doing with all your complaining.”
“Why can't we just drive and get out of Colorado? Maybe head south a bit. I liked the desert, it was warm.”
“Because it's almost daylight, Anastasia, and one of us, for liking warmer climes so much, doesn't tan well.”
Anastasia closed her arms to her chest and stared down at what he was doing. “You are seriously trying to pick that lock?”
“If you'll shut up for thirty seconds, I am going to pick this lock.” He had some piece of metal he'd either found, or crudely fashioned, jammed into the padlock. “This is a very delicate operation, and it requires a steady hand. Stand back for finesse.”
“Because you're so good with things that require what is implied of that word — which I'm sure you don't even know what you're saying, and you just heard it somewhere.”
“Anastasia, get back in the truck.”
“What? And miss Billy Purgatory teaching me how to pick a lock?”
“I am an expert lock-picker.”
“I see that, and I'm rapt to learn all your secrets. Consider, what would poor defenseless me do if I were ever trapped and had a padlock to contend with if I were ever to be allowed to escape?”
“If that ever happened to you, you'd be wishing you'd shut up so you could concentrate on your work. Lock-picking is a skill, but you wouldn't understand anything about that.”
“Oh, so I have no skills now?”
“You got plenty of skills, sizzle-britches.”
Anastasia could feel her nails extend. She considered how much Billy's open neck would look like one of Mrs. Suzanne's pie fillings were it to spill out.
“I don't know what you're implying, but if it has anything to do with sex, and you're equating such to my only skill set, then you are sadly mistaken.”
Billy jammed the pick into the lock harder and pulled against the chains as he tried to hit the internals just right. “I was not implying anything. I just called you an annoying name because you were annoying me.”
Anastasia took a step back and tried not to listen to the voices in her head. The ones telling her to just kill him and take the truck off to a quiet paradise which would be all her own.
“Besides, for me to be implying something like you're accusing me of implying, it would have meant something that ain't true.”
Anastasia stared down at him in wonder. Had he just, in his own strange way, agreed with her? Had he given her a compliment?
“Honestly, you weren't that good.”
Of course he hadn't given her a compliment. She knew her eyes were glowing rings of amber fire now. Anastasia was becoming so angry she'd soon be glowing in the dark.
“Oh, which part wasn't good for you? The spooning afterwards, where you went on about your dreams and talked about your feelings?”
Billy punched the steel door with his fist and yanked at the lock. “That is not what happened.”
“You were a scared little boy before we did any of that, and you're a scared little boy now. Now, you're even worse though. At least then you thought you actually wanted something.”
“I hope you don't think that all this had anything to do with me wanting that! Because I got plenty of that before, and I'll get plenty of it after.”
Anastasia raked her fingernails over the hood of the truck and watched the paint peel off it in slow, lazy curls. “Well, I'm glad you've figured out that much of the plan anyway, because I can assure you of one place that is definitely closed for business.”
Billy laughed. “As if I'd even want to shop there again.”
Anastasia looked back at the frost hanging off the trees, blanketing the rust and wrecked cars. All she had to do was to start walking. “It's much more high class than you're used to, I'm sure. Plus, there's a strict No Spooning return policy.”
Billy jumped up and got in her face. Anastasia wore an evil smile and let out a more evil laugh.
“Just because we had an actual conversation after we had sex,” Billy said, “doesn't mean that anyone did any spooning — you don't even know what that means. Because we faced each other the entire time, and you seemed pretty damned interested in share time. You didn't look away until you tried to double-cross me.”
He was so close — and so angry.
“Who double-crossed who? You left me hanging upside down in the jungle like bait.”
Billy banged his fist into the hood of the truck, denting where Anastasia had just scratched up all the paint. “Did you mean it?!”
“Which part? Go ahead and accuse me of being a liar, and seducing you so I could use you for some nefarious plot. Do what you always do and call me a lying harlot.” Anastasia's fangs slid into place as she screamed at the top of her lungs, “I dare you!”
Billy pulled his fist from the hood of the truck. His fingers opened and he ran them into his hair as he looked down. “Did you mean what you said? That you'd kill my parents?”
Anastasia could hear his heart beating; it was a hot and frantic thump, and to her ears, it was running faster than all the belts turning and the pistons firing under the hood of the running truck. She closed her mouth and turned away from him. She stared again at the path they'd wandered from the road, and there again was that pull.
She wasn't sure if she had meant it or not.
She heard Billy pulling on the chains and the padlock again. In all the noises he'd ever made, and he made a lot of noise…all of the stupid things he'd said to her, and there had been s
o many stupid things…
In all of it…
Anastasia bent down to crouch beside Billy at the lock. She didn't look at him, she just put her hand in his and pulled it from him. She twisted her wrist, and the lock went from something which kept things secure and safe to useless pieces of nothing which no longer served any purpose in the world.
She let them slip from her hands as she rose to her feet and walked back to the truck. “It's almost daylight.”
Billy didn't say anything as he pushed up the door and then sat beside her to drive into the abandoned machine shop.
II.
BILLY HADN'T GOTTEN THE DOOR OF THE OLD GARAGE rolled back down into place yet before Anastasia was out of the truck and crossing the new environment. She saw a door, didn't know where it led, but she walked through it just the same. She pushed it lightly closed when she'd reached the other side and locked it. It had been an old office, with desks, antiquated computers, and stacks of yellowed papers. Moving further into the room, she crossed through another door and found a storage room of shelves with a cot against a wall.
She closed and locked that door too.
Pulling a painters’ tarp over her body, she closed her eyes and found darkness.
She wasn't sure how long she'd been asleep, but she knew it had been longer than a day. The tarp made a crinkling that had corrupted perfect silence as she kicked it off herself.
She still had the taste of that sugar coated cherry in her mouth.
Loud music that spoke of death and heavy guitar echoed from every corner of the garage. The hood of the truck was up, and there were tools and rolling work carts everywhere about its perimeter. She found Billy by following the trail of sparks which sailed to the concrete floor from the undercarriage of the truck.
He was almost completely beneath it, using a welding torch. The acetylene rig which powered it was sitting atop his skateboard, which drifted lazily towards the vehicle as he took up the slack in the fuel lines that extended from it. The only part of Billy which was actually visible from Anastasia's vantage were his boots, toes pointing up towards the roof, sticking out from under the back bumper.
She crouched down and called to him beneath the truck. He wore a welder's cap and heavy goggles. “Billy, I need to talk to you.”
Billy was focused up on whatever it was he was applying heat to.
“Billy!”
Nothing.
Anastasia took hold of his ankles and pulled hard. Billy Purgatory came cursing and rolling into view as she crouched over him. He shut off the torch and stared at her through those stupid goggles. “What the hell?”
Anastasia grabbed a wrench from the floor and threw it as hard as she could. It sailed across the garage and impacted the radio, which had provided unyielding and annoying soundtrack. The music ended as it crashed to the floor into a thousand plastic bits.
Billy rose up from the wooden rolling creeper he had been lying on. He took off his cap and ran fingers through his hair, which only made it worse, then raised his goggles off his eyes to his forehead.
“So, you finally woke up?”
Anastasia ignored his question. “Are we in this together?”
Billy gave her a confused look. “Are we in what together?”
Anastasia was on her knees and swept her arms out, the exaggerated motion meant to indicate much more than the interior of the garage they were within. “This. Whatever all of this is. Are we together in this?”
“Like, buddy-cop movie together?”
“However you rationalize it — yes. All of this!”
Billy set the welding torch on the floor and crossed his legs, still sitting atop the creeper. “I hadn't really thought about it like that.”
Anastasia pushed hair back from her face, annoyed. “Why not?”
Billy looked at her, and to his credit, seemed to really be trying not to annoy her on purpose. “I don't know, Anastasia. Maybe because all that's come out of your mouth since I picked you up in the desert was ‘Just drop me off at the next state line’ or ‘I'm not camping’.”
“What if that's the wrong way to look at things?”
“Are you saying that you've been looking at things wrong?”
“I…” She wasn't going to let him make her angry. “Perhaps, yes.”
“What is it that you're saying, exactly?”
Anastasia decided to take, for her anyway, a really giant leap of faith towards Billy-logic. “What became of vampires, and whatever it is the Satanic Five ultimately want, that is the ‘it’ — and for whatever reason, we seem to continue to be pulled into all of it. You and I.”
“And the Time Zombie.”
“Yes, and the Time Zombie.”
Billy only said it to make Anastasia say ‘Time Zombie’; he still liked making her do that. “See, my mission is real.”
Anastasia pointed at him. “No. That part is wrong. You've never had a mission.”
“I sure as Hoover Dam did too have a mission.”
“No, stupid, you had a desire. You had a fantasy.”
“Well, I called it a mission.”
“How'd that work out for you, Billy?”
Billy thought about it, really thought about it, and finally nodded. “It wasn't worth a kiss on a pole-cat's ass when it all went down.”
She wished she had something to tie her hair out of her face — and clean clothes after a shower. Anastasia refocused. “Are we partners?”
Billy leaned forward. “Like what kind of partners?”
“Like the kind in those cop movies you were just talking about. The kind who, under no circumstances, ever have sex with one another. Ever.”
“Oh.” Billy leaned back against the bumper of the truck. “Well, if you put it like that, then that sounds a lot like what we've got going on, yeah.”
“Then if we're partners, I'm proposing we drop the word ‘mission’ from our vocabularies.” Anastasia pulled the hair out of her face and clutched it in her hand behind her neck as she spoke, using her grasp as a temporary ponytail holder.
Billy looked her over from his reclined position, her in her tight jeans. With her leaned back, struggling to control her dark hair with her hands, her top was pulled up just enough that the tiniest hint of her stomach came into view. She had a pretty bellybutton.
Billy blinked and shook his head. Who looks at bellybuttons?
“Are we good with that? No more missions?” Anastasia took her hands from her hair and waved them in the air before Billy's eyes. Her shirt fell and the bellybutton went back into witness protection. “Billy?”
“Present!” He rose back up. “Okay, whatever you say.”
Anastasia smiled, proud of herself. She might have actually gotten through to that rusting junkyard which existed where his brain should have been. “What we need, is a plan.”
Billy looked up at her. “New word: plan. I'm in.”
She drummed her hands on his boots and then rose from the floor to stand. “Now, you finish whatever it is you're doing, and I'm going to start thinking about ‘the plan’.”
Billy watched her walking away — swaying away. She moved in the most interesting ways when she was happy. Billy was starting to think Happy Anastasia was even hotter than Evil Anastasia. The concept confused his brain a little — okay — a lot.
She was pulling her hair into a knot as she crossed the garage. There was no reason he could fathom that the simplest things she did could speak to his brain like they were speaking to it now.
“Hey, Anastasia, just to be clear and stuff.”
“Yeah?” She didn't look back, which from his current perspective was just dandy.
“What if, hypnotizingly — or whatever — those two cops had already had sex?”
“If that happened, you better hope they enjoyed it more than a bag full of cocaine and donuts, because they're never gonna frisk each other again.”
~24~
ADJACENT
THEY BLINDFOLDED THE SOLDIER at the entrance to
the mine and didn't bother leading him in — they just pulled him. In the dark and bound, it didn't take much force at all for him to slam hard to his knees and then dragged along the gravel floor. It took even less for him to fall down and be pulled like a sled. How that boy had loved that thing. The Soldier had saved what he could from his other job during the summer to buy it.
The richest boy in town didn't have such a fine sled as his boy did when winter came. The Soldier would smoke his pipe and watch the boy run up the hill out behind the homestead with it. It'd been his daddy's place, before the pox had taken him away faster than it had seemed justified for it to do so. The Soldier knew enough about farming to get himself in trouble, but she knew a lot about tending the grounds when the snow all melted away.
Aside from the corn and beans and potatoes, she kept a big herb garden. Everyone came to her for sprigs of mint and thyme and oregano. The woman who cooked at the hotel said it made the dinners she made fancy, and it was worth the cost. Word got around, and the older women would always come out on Saturdays and walk the herb garden with her. Dirt on her hands and her red hair tied up in a tight bun atop her head…
“They sure love what you grow,” he had said to her one night, when he found her out looking at the stars after the boy had gone to sleep.
“It's not what I grow they love. It's why I grow it.”
The Soldier hadn't known then what any of that meant. He'd just kissed her and wrapped his arms around her. “I love you with such intensity that sometimes I feel like I might choke.” He pulled her hair free and let it fall down her shoulders, under the stars. “Why won't you marry me?”
“I can't marry you.” She kissed his lips to quiet him. “I was promised to another when I was just a girl.”
The Soldier pulled back from her warm lips and studied her face. He could barely see the freckles that began at the edge of her cheeks in the starlight. “If you love someone else, then why are you with me?”
She placed her fingertip to his lips. “I never said I loved him.”
The Soldier was hoisted from the hard ground and the knots of the rope were cut. The pain let up a little as his hands were freed, but it didn't last —he was thrown into a stone wall. He sank down it and could feel the blood seeping from the many cuts he had been given by the sharp rocks. He heard the iron hinges creak, and when he pulled away the blindfold, the dark cloaked men were already gone.
Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five Page 22
