by James Maxey
"Now you're just being gratuitously offensive," said Sarah.
"It's okay," said Johnny, determined not to sound flustered. He was five six, just two inches shorter than the average male height. He only looked short because he was in the same room as Clint. "I've been called worse."
Shepard turned to Servant. "Like it or not, you look like a hero, and you've got a hero's voice. James Earl Jones would be envious. You're the spokesman."
Clint shrugged. "Fine."
"The first question the press will ask is, are you Ogre?"
"No."
"One word answers won't do."
"No, sir."
"Then where did you get your powers?"
"From the Lord," said Servant.
The general stared at him.
"I became Servant after accepting Jesus Christ as my lord and savior." Johnny had never heard Clint's origin story before, and at first thought the big man was joking, but as he continued talking Johnny thought he sounded utterly sincere. "God gave me these powers to use for the good of all mankind. As long as I have my faith, I'll have my powers."
The general grinned. "Oh, the folks in fly-over country are going to love this."
* * *
Things turned ugly when they got back on the plane.
"The nerve of that bastard," Johnny grumbled. "Acts like I'm an embarrassment because I'm gay."
Clint shook his head. "You should have told us."
"You didn't know he was gay?" Sarah asked, with a tone of surprise that Johnny found bothersome.
"So he's got a funny voice," said Clint. "I try not to judge people."
"What's funny about my voice?" said Johnny.
"Never mind," said Clint. "Anyway, what I meant was, you should have told us about your record. The Covenant is supposed to represent the highest moral standards. It's hard to think of anything less moral than having a faggot prostitute on our team."
"I thought you were Christian," said Johnny, crossing his arms. "You're not being very love-your-neighbor at the moment."
"Loving my neighbor means trying to help that neighbor get into heaven," Clint said. "If you're having sex with men, that's a sin. I know people who can help get you straight."
"Get me straight? It's not a disease. It's just how I was born."
"Maybe you could use the belt to fix it," said Clint.
"It's not something that needs fixing!"
"Guys, let's just calm down," said Sarah, as the plane taxied down the runway. "We've got a long flight home."
"So," said Johnny. "Were you Ogre? Because being a murderous drug lord trumps being a hungry teenager who had to do some unpleasant things in order to buy a meal."
"You could've walked into any church in San Diego and asked for help," said Clint.
"You didn't answer my question."
"Who I used to be doesn't matter," said Clint. "I've been born again. I'm a new man."
"Then you were Ogre."
Clint shook his head. "There's a solid steel cube in Detroit you could cut open if you ever wanted to find out the truth."
"Or you could tell me the truth."
"I'm Clint Christenson. I'm Servant. This is truth."
Things went quiet after that. Clint stared out the window as they cleared the dome. Sarah looked straight ahead. Johnny pulled the wireless keypad off his belt and activated his retinal display. He'd been off-line for almost two hours. In the missing time he'd gotten two hundred comments on Facebook on his proposed costume changes. People were enthusiastic about swapping the white capital "A" for the "@" symbol.
Of course, there was also the usual trove of spam. "What a fag costum!" someone named Alpha Dude had posted. Johnny started to delete the comment, but left it. Sometimes the simplest form of justice was to let people expose their own ignorance.
He signed into the Ap Exchange. Thirty-two new apps had been uploaded. As usual, a fair amount were vision powers, mostly duplicates of stuff he already had. It turned out to be relatively easy to tweak a retina to see in infrared or ultraviolet. But what he really needed now was something no one had yet effectively cobbled together.
He opened a chat box and typed, "X-ray vision. See through thirty feet of steel. Possible?" He hit send.
Instantly, people on the forum started responding.
Sidekick: "Nope."
BruceBanner: "What you need are gamma rays."
Code4U: "Steel>gamma ray penetration."
TheYellowKid: "Seismic imaging might work."
BruceBanner: "Neutrinos?"
Sidekick: "How 2 capture?"
TheYellowKid: "4 iron, something like magnavision?"
Sidekick: "Like!"
BruceBanner: "Easy. I'll upload by midnight."
Code4U: That long? I'm already banging out code.
BruceBanner: "It's on."
Found a pistol in the rubble. A .22 revolver, intact. Most gun parts I find are mangled where I bit through them. Three bullets, but I bet I can find more out here if I look for them.
Out here? In here?
The gun will come in handy in catching those damn chickens. I might could have caught them on earth, but out here (in here?) they can actually get some distance with those wings. I've already lost all the darts I was throwing at them.
Funny thing is, I've had a lot of guns in my hand, but I don't think I've ever shot anyone or anything. But how hard can it be?
Chapter Six
* * *
The Kind of Dance Where You Take Your Clothes Off
THEY WERE AT A REST AREA in southern Ohio when the cop spotted them. The rest area wasn't much, just a couple of cinderblock outhouses with no running water. There were some cement picnic tables under an oak tree, all cracked up, crumbling, and covered with bird poop. They had their Harley parked next to the tables, well away from the official parking spaces. Thanksgiving was only a week away, and they were near the mountains, so Pit had expected the weather to be chilly. Instead, the day had passed from pleasantly warm into flat-out hot at some point. When the weather was cold, it was no big deal. Sunday could keep them warm. When it was hot, alas, her thermostat only ran in one direction.
It was mid afternoon and Sunday had stretched out on the table top with her jacked under her head to catch a nap. They'd been racing down highways more or less at random, picking new roads purely on the impulses of his fractured brain. They hadn't exactly been discreet as Pit had adopted a standard cruising speed just shy of 110 mph. That was the speed the Harley wanted to go, a speed where he felt like the bike was flying. They'd put over 8,000 miles on the bike in two weeks. It was nearly impossible that no cop had seen them. Why hadn't they been ambushed yet? The suspense was killing him.
Then a Highway Patrol car pulled into the rest area. The cop parked, got out of his cruiser, glanced in their direction, then froze. The cop very, very, very slowly lowered himself back into his driver's seat, fastened his seat belt, then drove out of the rest stop at a moderate rate of speed, his head never turning in their direction.
Pit thought this was peculiar. Had the cop seen them or hadn't he? Then Pit figured it out. The cop had seen them. Probably so had a hundred others. Each of them had to know, by this point, that Pit and Sunday had a reputation for leaving behind a trail of widows. It was also well established that Devourer and Burn Baby never struck twice in the same town. For most cops, it was probably an easy choice to act like they hadn't seen anything.
After Sunday woke, they headed south, across the Ohio river into West Virginia., After nightfall, Pit wound up pretty much as lost as a person could get, after taking a wrong turn off Highway 23 and winding up on a road so full of switchbacks that Pit really had no idea where they were headed. The gas was getting low. And, of course, Sunday was complaining about how hungry and tired she was. Pit had no problem with just pulling off the road and sleeping under a tree and his dietary needs weren't particularly dainty. Sunday, on the other hand, refused to eat roadkill, which Pit thought was a bit snooty of her, espec
ially since she of all people wouldn't have to eat it raw. Sunday was also insistent that they sleep in a place with a real bed and an actual bathroom. She'd been nagging Pit to take a shower every day, which was just crazy, and who was she, his mother? But he went along with her agenda without a grumble. As long as they were robbing a bank every couple of days, he was having fun.
But was it just for robbing banks that they were still together? From what memories Pit could assemble, they'd always parted ways quickly in the past following their annual meet-ups. Sunday had been focused on Monday's mission, and she'd had little patience for Pit's meandering approach to life.
Now, if Monday really had dismissed them from duty, Sunday was just as lost and directionless as he was. He wasn't a guy known for his deep insights into the minds of women, but he couldn't help but think that Sunday was with him still because she didn't know where else to be. In all his aimless wandering, he secretly hoped he might one day turn down a road and find himself in front of a familiar house. He would suddenly realize, "This is the house I grew up in." Or, "This is the house I lived in when I got married." Somewhere on one of these roads, he would find the key. The gates of his mind would swing open, and he'd know his past.
And Sunday?
Somewhere, on one of these roads, she was hoping to find the sign that pointed toward her future.
For now, on this particular road, he would have been happy to find a sign that pointed toward any recognizable destination at all. He'd been lost in the boondocks before, but this was getting ridiculous.
Just as he was on the verge of stopping the bike and admitting that he didn't know where the hell he was so that Sunday could fly up and look around for nearby towns, he spotted lights through the branches of the trees on a ridge above them. He gunned the bike up the curves, arriving at a structure that looked like an old gas station that someone had nailed a bunch of planks to. A wooden sign in front declared it to be the Hillbilly Hideout. In smaller letters it read "B-B-Q and Beer." A half-dozen pick-up trucks were parked in the gravel lot.
"Dinner time," he said, as he pulled the bike in beside a beat up Ford.
"I was hoping we could find a hotel first," said Sunday. She looked exhausted, and she'd been quiet all day.
"I'll ask how to get to the nearest one," he said.
"Damn," she said, getting off the bike. "You asking for directions? This I gotta see."
As they approached the door, he heard loud country music thumping from inside.
"Oh lord," Sunday moaned. "I'm not sure I'm up for this."
"What's wrong?"
She crossed her arms. "Nothing. I'm just tired. Tired of greasy road food. Tired of being on that bike twelve hours a day. This road we've been on tonight must surely be the intestines of America. I say the next big town we reach, we steal a plane and head for France."
"You speak French?"
She shook her head. "But French cops probably scare even easier than American cops. When we aren't working, the food's got to be better."
"It's all the same to me," said Pit. "I really can't taste anything."
"Your taste buds have probably been killed off by all the crap you put in your mouth."
"Maybe," said Pit. "The thing is, the food doesn't really go in my mouth. Every now and then, I feel a tickle at the back of my throat, especially when I'm pulling stuff out, but I really don't think the stuff I eat goes in my stomach at all."
"Then where does it go?"
Pit shrugged.
"I mean, some of it must go in you. You haven't starved."
"Maybe. But what's weird is that I haven't used the bathroom since I woke up on the side of a highway back in 1956."
She stared at him.
"Honest," he said. "I don't even pee."
"Okay," she said. "That's either way more information than I needed, or the most fascinating thing I've ever learned about you. Seriously? Never?"
"Nope."
"Wow," she said, eying the door. "Let's go in. Suddenly I need a beer."
"I thought you didn't drink."
"Ordinarily I don't," she said. "But with any luck I'm going to kill the brain cells that have latched onto the mystery of your excretory functions."
They opened the door to the strains of "Achy Breaky Heart."
Sunday sighed.
The place was a dive, even by Pit's standards. There were about three light bulbs total working in the place. What he'd assumed to be a jukebox was an iPod plugged into a boombox sitting on a bar stool. There were eight or nine guys in the room, all middle-aged rednecks with beer guts. Some were sitting at a bar, but most were clustered around a pool table, though not to shoot pool. Instead, there was a teenage girl dancing drunkenly in the center of the table stripped down to her bra and panties, which were stuffed with dollar bills. She was a little on the chunky side, her belly covered with stretch marks, a square-faced blonde wearing too much make up. She looked the way Tammy Faye Bakker must have looked when she was sixteen.
Half of the men in the room turned their heads to see who'd just come through the door, and the other half continued to ogle the dancing girl.
Pit turned around and placed his hand on Sunday's shoulder. "Let's find another place."
"We're here," she said firmly, pushing past him and heading toward the bar.
The girl on the table stopped dancing. The men all stared at Sunday.
"Got any Red Stripe?" Sunday asked the man behind the counter, a squat bald man with an eye patch. The sleeves of his red long johns hung out of his filthy white V-neck tee shirt.
"Red Stripe? You mean the gum?" Eye-patch asked.
"There's a gum named Red Stripe?" Sunday asked. She was shouting to be heard over the music, but the song ended and she was simply shouting.
"We don't got no gum," said Eye-patch.
"Red Stripe's a beer," Sunday said. For some reason, the music hadn't started back up again.
"We got Bud and PBR."
Sunday pursed her lips, pondering her options.
"PBR," she said. "And a barbeque sandwich."
"We ain't got no barbeque."
"Your sign---"
"Kitchen's closed." He crossed his arms. "We serve breakfast and lunch. At night, we turn the joint over to private parties."
One of the men at the pool table staggered over. He had a half-empty Mason jar in his hand, full of clear liquid that made Pit's eyes water.
"I'm Root," he said, his speech slurred. "It's my birthday. You're welcome to stay."
"How old's that girl?" Sunday asked.
"I don't rightly know," said Root. He belched. "It ain't polite to ask a woman her age."
"How old are you, girl?" Sunday asked.
"Old enough," the girl said, crossing her arms.
"If we had an older woman," Root said, looking Sunday up and down, "she'd be more than welcome to dance."
Pit put his hand on Sunday's arm. "If y'all ain't got no food, we'll just be moving on," he announced.
By now, two of the beefier men had moved to stand in front of the door.
"What's your hurry?" asked Root. "You just got here. This party's just getting started."
"We're just looking for dinner," said Pit. "Didn't really come to dance."
"All women like dancing," said Root.
"She doesn't," said Pit.
"You talk for her?" Root asked.
"He doesn't talk for me," said Sunday.
"Then, what do you say? You want to dance?"
By now, Eye-patch had produced the can of PBR. Sunday took it, popped the top, and downed it while she contemplated Root's question.
"This would be a dance where I take off my clothes?" she asked, wiping her mouth.
"Well, sure, if you wanted to. Sure. The kind of dance where you take off your clothes would be just fine."
Pit tried to pull Sunday toward the door, but she twisted her arm free.
At the door, one of the large men pushed aside his jacket and revealed a pistol.
> "Why don't you have a seat, Mister?" the gunman said.
"I reckon I will," said Pit. He raised himself onto a stool, suddenly looking forward to what was about to happen. In his opinion, once a man pulled out a gun, he deserved whatever was coming his way.
Sunday had taken off her jacket and laid it on the bar. She was wearing a tight black sweater beneath this that showed off her curves. She took a seat on a stool and began to unzip her boots.
Someone started the music back up. "Six Days on the Road" by Dave Dudley. It had been years since Pit had heard this song.
The girl on the table placed her hands on her hips. "Root, I ain't splitting the money."
"I dance for free," said Sunday, standing up barefoot on a floor that even Pit Geek thought looked germy.
She unbuttoned her jeans and peeled them off. This was normally the time in a bank robbery where she would start glowing. She wasn't using her powers yet. Pit noticed that her new leg had darkened up a little, but was still a lot whiter than her other leg.
"She's not even dancing!" the girl complained. "She's just taking off her clothes!"
Sunday pulled off her sweater. The girl on the table started grinding her butt up against an imaginary pole, trying to regain the room's attention, but no one was looking at her now.
Sunday reached up and cupped her bra, pressing her breasts together. If Pit had been a fair judge, he would have to admit that the girl on the table had nicer jugs. Still, Sunday won the rest of the body competition hands down.
Root was practically drooling. "Oh mama," he said. "Baby, you should be a model."
Sunday glanced back at Pit. "For the record, that's much more flattering than you telling me I could be a prostitute."
"Aw, what do I know about talking to women?" Pit said.
Sunday removed her bra. Sweat beaded on Root's forehead. The song shifted to "You Never Even Called Me By My Name."
"You like what you see?" Sunday asked.
"What a damn awesome birthday," Root mumbled.
"Want to touch?"
Root reached with thick, trembling fingers toward her dark areola.
Then Pit couldn't see anything. Root was screaming. The girl on the table started shrieking. The boom box squealed as its electronics were fried by the ions flooding the room. There was a gunshot to Pit's left. Then another, and another, then a scream cut short. The room took on the smell of burnt bacon.
