Messiahs

by Matt Rogers

  ‘He means “cult,”’ Slater said.

  King twisted round further so he could look Jace right in the eyes. ‘Listen. You don’t get to tell us what we can and can’t say. You’re in more trouble than you think. Adrenaline’s making you feel superhuman right now because you just killed someone, but it’s going to wear off soon.’

  Jace laughed.

  There was something intensely strange about it, given his youth and his current predicament.

  Each stab of laughter seemed to build on the last.

  King said, ‘Shut up.’

  Jace calmed down, a smile on his face like all was right in the world. ‘Here we go.’

  Slater didn’t speak. He was watching Jace’s face closely.

  The boy’s pupils had swelled to twice their usual size.

  Slater said, ‘Did you take something?’

  Jace cocked his head to one side, cracking his neck. ‘Yeah, man. I took something. I’m telling you, let me out of this car.’

  King said, ‘You going to turn into the Hulk or something?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Jace said. ‘I just won’t give a shit about anything anymore.’

  Slater said, ‘I’ve met my fair share of people like that.’

  ‘Not like this,’ Jace said.

  He threw his head back and smiled to the roof and let out a moan that was near-orgasmic.

  Slater froze.

  9

  King said, ‘You want to restrain him better?’

  Slater said, ‘Probably smart.’

  Jace didn’t hear a word they said. He was lost in ecstasy, hit by something he’d ingested prior to killing Mickey. Whatever it was, it came on fast.

  Slater made to get out of the car.

  The moment he moved, Jace took a deep breath, sucking in oxygen to the pit of his stomach, and strained like a madman. King saw every vein in the kid’s skinny frame throbbing from the exertion, his muscles utilising every ounce of lactic acid.

  And then some.

  Because instead of breaking out of the cable tie he simply pushed and pushed and pushed until the skin on his wrists tore off, and he jerked his palms apart in opposite directions. His wrists slid out of the blood-soaked plastic, taking all of the skin off the tops of his hands with it. Jace didn’t even recoil in pain.

  King said, ‘What the fu—’

  Slater twisted and made to grip Jace by the throat and pin him to the seat but he was lightning fast, aided by youthful athleticism and some devastating combination of substances racing through his brain, and he ducked under the arm and snatched the Ruger off the centre console.

  King knew he should have moved faster, but your mind takes a second to compute the sight of a kid ripping his hands apart to get out of cable ties.

  King roared, ‘Put that down!’ as Jace’s hand — now a mess of exposed muscle — snatched the gun.

  His voice shook the car.

  Slater dived over the centre console to crush the kid in a flying shoulder-charge.

  He landed with all his two hundred pounds in the centre of Jace’s chest.

  Jace didn’t notice.

  Pinned in place by Slater’s bulk, he brought the gun up and put it to the side of his head and blew his own brains out.

  10

  His head still down from the shoulder charge, Slater felt bits of blood and brain matter coat the back of his skull.

  He froze, realising he wasn’t hit.

  He rolled off the body, sitting up beside Jace’s corpse.

  King stared back from the driver’s seat, his face white.

  He said, ‘What just happened?’

  Slater couldn’t hear. His ears whined painfully. He managed to lip-read the words coming from King’s mouth, but he couldn’t muster the energy to respond.

  King swallowed, blinked hard, looked all around to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. Then he shook his head back and forth, swinging his jaw, bringing himself back to reality. Lucidity gripped him.

  He grabbed the door handle. ‘We’re ditching this car. Now.’

  Slater thought the stench of a corpse might make him sick for the first time in years. ‘Yeah.’

  He frisked the body with more care and came upon a concealed pocket sealed within the lining of the kid’s waistband. He pried it open and withdrew two small glass vials filled with cloudy liquid tinged the colour of gold. Inscribed on each vial was a word indented in the glass: BODHI. Slater held them up for King to see.

  King said, ‘What is it?’

  ‘Beats me. Must be the stuff that made him superhuman.’

  ‘Which drugs are soluble?’

  ‘Almost all of them,’ Slater said, speaking from personal experience.

  He pocketed the vials and continued frisking.

  Came up with nothing.

  ‘No ID?’ he said. ‘No keys? No wallet? No phone?’

  ‘I don’t think he was planning to make it back tonight,’ King said. ‘Those two vials were backup, in case he didn’t have enough stuff coursing through his system to incentivise him to finish the job.’

  Slater sat, still stunned. ‘You think?’

  The dead boy’s eyes stared vacantly at the roof.

  King said, ‘This was going to happen, one way or the other. I’d wager we kept him alive longer by interfering. If we weren’t there, he’d have killed himself as soon as he confirmed Mickey’s demise.’

  ‘But why?’

  King said, ‘Bodhi. That’s Buddhist. It means knowledge, wisdom, enlightenment. Freedom from the banality of life. What does that tell you?’

  ‘Not much. But it sure sounds like you’re going somewhere with it.’

  King said, ‘Remember the Manson murders? He made them worship him using LSD. I’m sure he used similar jargon. You take buzzwords from Buddhist philosophy and combine it with powerful substances and you’ve got a kid that thinks his drug addiction is a message from the heavens.’

  Slater said, ‘That wasn’t a psychedelic. Trust me. I’ve taken my fair share. That … was like ten tons of crack to the brain stem.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be exactly the same thing for the principle to apply.’

  Slater soaked in the toxic silence. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’

  They got out and walked away, moving as fast as discretion would allow. There was nothing in the vehicle to trace it back to them — they’d rented it under a false name, using fake documents generated for them by Alonzo back in the U.S. They hadn’t brought anything to ambush Mickey besides themselves and the Glocks concealed in the holsters at their waists.

  They didn’t talk for at least a mile. It was three miles back to their villa, and Slater figured they might go the whole time without saying a word. The tinnitus from the unsuppressed gunshot going off inches above his head took the whole first mile to fade, and when he finally got his hearing back he let out a mighty exhale.

  King took it as a cue. ‘So if it wasn’t a hallucinogen, what do you think he took?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

  ‘I’d wager you’re more of an expert on mind-altering chemicals.’

  ‘I’ve taken almost everything,’ Slater said. ‘I’ve never seen anything do that.’

  ‘PCP?’

  ‘PCP’s a hallucinogen,’ Slater corrected. ‘But I get what you’re playing at, and no. PCP makes you lose your mind. He was all there. He had the cognitive skills to get the gun in his hand and his finger in the trigger guard before either of us could stop him. It’s like it made him more lucid than he’d usually be, and it stripped away his concept of pain simultaneously. That’s a mixture of a few different things. I can’t put my finger on exactly what.’

  ‘Can we test it?’ King said.

  Slater said, ‘We can use our doc if we go back to the mainland.’

  King nodded knowingly.

  Their “doc” was the reason they could maintain their gruelling schedules. Dr. Noah Pressfield risked his medical licence to provide King and Slater wi
th testosterone replacement therapy, human growth hormone, and accurate microdoses of the safest, most expensive steroids on the market. They had no medical reason for the supplementation, so the deal took place under the table — no scripts, no justification, just a pinch of missing inventory for Dr. Pressfield to clear up each calendar month.

  The need for artificial enhancement was an unfortunate necessity of the industry.

  Trying to survive using the capabilities of their bodies alone would never work, and that had been a fact since they’d first begun their careers in black operations. To do things the human body is barely capable of, you need help. Wherever they’d gone in their careers and their lives, they’d quickly acquired the connections necessary to keep the supplies flowing. In their previous lives the government had taken care of it all, but they knew the doses, knew the reputable substances, and they’d taken matters into their own hands as soon as they’d come out free. They only took the best stuff money could buy, and they paid Pressfield a premium to make sure it was all lab-tested when it showed up on their doorsteps. The concoction accelerated their recovery and kept their muscles firing when any other body would have collapsed under the workload.

  Every professional athlete dopes, and they were professional athletes of a different kind.

  More importantly, no one was drug testing them.

  They could do what they liked.

  And so could Pressfield.

  Slater said, ‘That would mean flying back with this stuff on us. We don’t even know what it is yet.’

  King said, ‘How’d the kid get them over here? Look at that vial design. It’s airtight. He swallowed them.’

  ‘That’s the route you want to go? We’re becoming drug smugglers?’

  ‘I haven’t agreed to anything,’ King said. ‘I’m just listing options.’

  They passed Holt’s Saloon on their right, its steady thrum of country music like a bad dream, reminding them of what had happened since.

  Slater pocketed the vials. ‘What the hell are we going to say when we get back home?’

  ‘What we always say,’ King said. ‘The truth.’

  11

  Violetta and Alexis stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the other side of the living room, their faces pale.

  Slater bit his lower lip and chewed it absent-mindedly. He only realised he was doing it when the silence became too heavy, and he took his teeth off the skin so he didn’t draw blood.

  He shifted from foot to foot. ‘I’d appreciate it if one of you responded.’

  He’d laid out what happened, word for word, leaving nothing out, not even the explanation of the fine mist of blood coating the top of his bald head and the back of his skull.

  Violetta said, ‘Let me see the drugs.’

  Slater fished them out of his pocket and handed them over. She twirled the vials around between her fingers, scrutinising them. Alexis looked on, her eyes swirling with discomfort.

  Alexis said, ‘You keep saying boy. How old was he?’

  ‘Eighteen,’ King said. ‘So technically an adult, but that’s no relief, I know. He had his whole life ahead of him…’

  He trailed off, staring at the floor. He couldn’t lift his eyes to meet theirs. He’d seen kids die before — the number of operations he’d undertaken, it was simply inevitable — but something about this time had him shellshocked. Maybe the proximity of it, the confined space of the rental car’s interior, the horrendous noise, the fact that it was a suicide.

  ‘Did you spook him?’ Violetta said. ‘Was it your fault?’

  Slater smirked without a hint of happiness and turned away, as if he couldn’t bear the conversation a moment longer. He went to the kitchen, took a shiny whiskey tumbler down from the top shelf of a glass cabinet, twirled it over in his hand, then put it back. He put his hands on the kitchen bench and breathed a sigh that came from deep in his core.

  He said, ‘I need a fucking drink.’

  Alexis was fixed to the spot next to Violetta, but concern plastered her face. ‘It’s that bad?’

  ‘Yeah,’ King said, his stare vacant. ‘It was bad.’

  Violetta said, ‘I hate to sound remorseless, but I take it he was going to do it one way or the other.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ King said. ‘It’s … I’ve seen brainwashing before, but that takes the cake. He didn’t even consider an alternative.’

  He trailed off, his gaze locked on the vials in Violetta’s hand. He said, ‘We need to test that stuff as soon as possible.’

  Violetta said, ‘Why?’

  ‘I need to know what’s in it,’ he said. ‘I need to know what it did to that kid.’

  Her face changed.

  She saw something in his eyes.

  He was haunted.

  Across the room, it clicked for Slater. They were both considering that it could have been their own kid. Sure, Jace was technically an adult, but at that stage of life there’s little room for independent thought. You do what you’re told, and if everyone in the small hemisphere that encompasses your reality tells you the same thing, you listen. Add a chemical cocktail to the mix, and it speeds up the process, amplifies it tenfold in some cases. This was a more extreme version of what had happened to Melanie Kerr in Vegas a month earlier — roped into underage prostitution with the aid of drugs to squash any intrusive thoughts.

  Slater could see King had abandoned everything he’d said earlier that day.

  He would follow this to the bitter end.

  Violetta was beginning to understand that, and the accompanying silence was overwhelming.

  King said, ‘Mother Libertas.’

  Violetta said, ‘What?’

  ‘That’s the cult he named. Dylan funded it. It’s based in Wyoming. That was as much as we got out of the kid before he degloved himself. We need to—’

  ‘He what?’ Alexis said.

  Slater sighed and pressed his hands harder into the countertop, sending veins bulging in his forearms. ‘You skipped over that part, King.’

  King realised he had. He thought he’d told them everything, but he’d only told them Jace had forced himself out of his restraints. He hadn’t elaborated.

  Violetta said, ‘He ripped the skin off his hands?’

  Slater said, ‘The cable tie was tight. Tight enough to almost cut off circulation. He still got out.’

  Violetta held the vial up to the light. ‘What the hell is this, then?’

  King said, ‘I need to know. And we need to go to Wyoming.’

  Alexis said, ‘I thought—’

  Slater said, ‘I think we’re past that now.’

  He spoke to Alexis, but his eyes were on Violetta. She had newfound understanding on her face, and the last thing on her mind was discussing their agreement.

  Alexis reached over and put a hand on Violetta’s shoulder. ‘Listen, I know this is fresh. But you need to think about this. What if we fly back home and you get cold feet? I say we sleep on it.’

  King shook his head, but no one was paying attention to him.

  Violetta was staring off into space, but she turned to face Alexis. ‘What if there’s kids younger than eighteen? We just had an opportunity fall into our laps we otherwise wouldn’t have known about. I doubt Dylan kept records of his deal with Mother Libertas. If we don’t put a stop to whatever the hell’s going on over there…’

  She trailed off.

  King said, ‘You don’t think he kept records?’

  ‘I’d wager he treated it like a start-up,’ she said. ‘An initial investment to help them gain momentum, unrecognised and unspoken. It sounds like a passion project for him. I don’t think even someone as awful as Dylan Walcott would want a written record of his cooperation in something as evil as this. From what you explained, it’s some sort of extremist cult. Gaia, Bodhi … that Maeve woman. What was her name?’

  ‘Maeve Riordan,’ King said. ‘That’s what the kid said.’

  ‘Jace,’ Slater said. ‘Let’s stop calling him “the kid
.”’

  He said it with a wavering pitch to his ordinarily atonic voice, like he was fighting for control.

  King nodded. ‘Jace.’

  Violetta said, ‘Whatever they’re doing in Wyoming, it’s working. You know what lies at the end of the road for violent cults. They either fizzle out, or they head toward an endgame event. Violent revolution in some way, shape, or form. We can’t sit back and wait for something to hit the news we knew we could have prevented.’

  Slater had to be sure.

  He said, ‘What you said earlier today…’

  Violetta said, ‘I’ve had a change in perspective. My baby is one life. What this is … what it could be … it outweighs any concern I have for my personal safety and the future of my child.’

  Slater said, ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She didn’t hesitate.

  Slater looked at King.

  King maintained a calm facade, but underneath something burned. He wanted, more than anything else in the world, to find whoever was responsible for brainwashing Jace and rip them limb from limb.

  Slater wasn’t about to get in his way.

  He said, ‘Then let’s get packing.’

  12

  After a stopover in Florida, they landed back in Nevada less than twenty-four hours after reaching their agreement in Nassau.

  King half-expected to see their estate reduced to rubble when he turned into their street in “The Ridges,” a private gated community in Summerlin, west of the Strip. He wasn’t sure why — maybe it was inconceivable that life had gone on peacefully, with normality, while they’d been away. So much had happened in The Bahamas, such utter madness spanning nearly the entire archipelago, that it wasn’t conceivable for things to be quiet and uneventful back home.

  But the house still stood, untouched and unblemished, with its beautiful exterior facade and the water feature that usually flowed from the second-floor landing to a pool at the top of the circular driveway. Now it lay dormant, switched off in anticipation of a long stay in The Bahamas.