The Heavens Rise

by Christopher Rice

  The young man in the wheelchair dismissed this with a distracted nod.

  Outside the glass door were three metal trash cans Shire hadn’t noticed before. He hadn’t noticed them because they hadn’t been there. And now they were lined up at the foot of the back steps, lids askew atop the animal carcasses stuffed inside. It started pouring all of a sudden, and the clouds of flies around each trash can departed like apparitions.

  “Thank you for your help in the yard, Allen.”

  Shire screwed his eyes shut, as if he could will himself away from this dark bedroom with the same baffling, supernatural skill Marshall Ferriot had used to make him clean up all the carnage in the backyard.

  “The animals are different, you see. They can’t go for very long is the problem. Their little skulls, they just . . . give way. No better word for it. But with people . . . With people, everything is different. And now that you’re here, I can find out how.”

  • • •

  Shire was outside. He was holding a muddy shovel in his hands, his arms burning from exertion he couldn’t remember.

  The rain had soaked him from head to toe.

  “Katrina, Shire.”

  He was standing in a five-foot-deep hole he couldn’t remember digging. Marshall was parked in the open back door. He felt the same sense of lost time as when he’d come to after his wisdom teeth surgery.

  “Who is Katrina? She’s in your notes. It says, ‘Marshall relocated before Katrina.’ ”

  “We got hit,” Shire answered. His lungs felt like they were seizing up as they struggled to perform deep, much-needed breaths he apparently hadn’t been capable of while Marshall forced him to dig the hole. The trash cans towered over him. The rain had stopped, so the flies were back, and occasionally several of them would land on Marshall’s blanket-draped legs.

  “Hit . . .” Marshall said, with a furrowed brow and a searching, almost pleading look in his eyes.

  “A hurricane,” Shire answered, and it came out like a seagull’s squawk. He struggled to get his breath back lest he risk the kid’s impatience. “A big one. Almost as big as Camille. The eye, it hit Bay St. Louis, but the way it was moving, it drove water up all over the levees and into the city. Mid-City. Lakeview. Chalmette. St. Bernard . . . The Lower Ninth Ward. There was water all through ’em. People got trapped on their roofs, died in their attics. For days it went on. Days and days.”

  He was astonished to find that reciting the cold, clinical details of this cataclysm, which had shaped every nightmare he’d suffered since the summer of 2005, brought about a strange kind of stillness inside him, as if the only thing that could distract him from his present agony was the memory of a different, more distant, pain.

  The kid’s stare was vacant all of a sudden, dreamy almost, and it was impossible to tell how this news was affecting him. Shire couldn’t even guess how the enormity of such a revelation about someone’s hometown would have affected a normal person who had been asleep for almost a decade, let alone a sadistic fuck like Marshall Ferriot.

  “But it’s still there, right? New Orleans. It’s still there, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. It’s . . . different. But it’s still there.”

  “Good. Then they’ll still be there too, probably. Both of them.”

  Who was the kid talking about? Surely not his parents; their deaths were referenced in his file multiple times. Other family members? There were hardly any left except some second and third cousins who’d never been involved with the family business. The kid had no life waiting for him back in New Orleans. None that Shire had seen any evidence of. But there was no chance in hell Shire was going to point this out to him now.

  “I’m so glad you’re here, Mr. Shire. See, it’s going to take me awhile to walk again, and I’ll need plenty of help.”

  The smell. A wave of the awful smell hit him from the trash cans, and it occurred to him that he was digging a repository for all the animal carcasses he’d been forced to collect, and he was digging the thing just a few feet away from the back door of the house. Marshall was making him dig the thing just a few feet from the back of the house. And if that was the case, that meant this thing he had, this power he was using, it had range. And if it had range, then maybe he could make a run for—

  He held the last tendrils of this thought to him as the darkness closed in around him with silent speed.

  • • •

  He was staring down into the pit now and the trash cans were empty, their contents emptied into the grave’s muddy bottom in a tangle of stiff legs and blood-matted fur and desiccated scales. And because it truly was like lost time, the thought he’d gone under with was still right there with him, a whisper in his ear through the rain. Range, he thought. And in a flash of insight, it turned into another word. Run!

  “Now let’s—”

  But before Marshall could finish the sentence, Shire hurled the shovel at him and took off running.

  He heard the blade strike something with a metallic thwang, but he didn’t look back. Just kept running like hell.

  Then his right foot seemed to sink into open air and he pitched forward, and when the palmetto leaves didn’t slap him in the face, he knew he had failed and his sob of despair was swallowed by a darkness without time or substance or even the comforting finality of death.

  • • •

  Now he couldn’t move. The house towered over him and his entire body was wrapped in a cold, wet embrace. When he coughed, his chin struck mud.

  The grave was closed and he was in it, buried up to his neck. Marshall hadn’t moved an inch. His wheelchair was still parked in the open back door, and the shovel lay across his lap. If Shire had managed to strike him with it, there was no evidence of the blow on Marshall’s face and neck. And there was no evidence of anger in the young man’s contented expression.

  “I’m so glad you came, Allen Shire. You see? I have so much to learn, and I’m going to learn it all from you.”

  IV

  * * *

  ANTHEM

  13

  * * *

  NEW ORLEANS

  MAY 2013

  What the hell are you doing?” Marissa Hopewell shouted. Her voice sounded rain muffled through the iPhone’s tiny speaker, and for a moment, Ben considered hanging up on her and blaming it on a lost connection.

  He should have known better than to answer a call from his employer after what he’d just done. But it was instinct, and ever since Marissa had been promoted to editor in chief of Kingfisher a few months before, he had been determined not to take advantage of their long personal history. Still, he had no interest in involving her in the text message he’d received a few minutes earlier.

  It was almost ten o’clock, and he was speeding down St. Charles Avenue in his Prius. He was most certainly not sitting in the upstairs balcony at Good Friends across from the complete bore Marissa had set him up with because they were two of the only gay men she knew.

  “Well,” he finally answered, “I’m driving and talking on the phone at the same time.”

  “Well, that’s fascinating.”

  “You’re right. It’s big news for people who think blonds can’t walk and chew gum.”

  “Uh huh. How’s your date going, smart mouth?”

  “You first, hot stuff.”

  “Seriously, Ben. Did you just walk out on Dobie after I—”

  “No! Pardon me, I did not just walk out. I excused myself and explained that I had a— Wait, Dobie?”

  “Explained that you had a what exactly?”

  “His name’s not Davey?”

  “Oh my God, Ben.”

  “Maybe it’s for the best then.”

  “Ben! Do you have any idea how difficult it was to get him to—”

  “No, actually. I didn’t realize I was that hard a sell. Jesus Christ!”

  “Ben!”

  “Should I switch colognes?”

  “It was a hard sell because you work for a newspaper and you might have to
cover his office one day. But honestly, I might fire you before that ever becomes an issue, so it’s just as—”

  “You’d really fire me over a blind date with a guy who admits to listening to One Direction?”

  “Where are you going? Dobie says you hightailed it outta there like your pants were on fire.”

  “So he was thinking about my pants, huh? Doesn’t sound like it was a total bust then, right?”

  “Where are you—”

  “Did he actually use those words? The ones about my pants being on—”

  “No. He did not. He thanked me for wasting his time and asked me not to fix him up with anyone on my staff ever again.”

  “So he was lying when he agreed to a rain check?”

  “He was being polite. Which you have never, ever been in your entire life apparently.”

  “Yeah, because that’s what Kingfisher needs more of right now. Polite reporters.”

  “Watch your mouth, Uptown Girl.”

  “Speaking of which, how is your date—”

  “You have thirty seconds to tell me where you’re going right now.”

  “Well, that’s good, ’cause I’m going to be there in fifteen.”

  It was a lie but he hung up on her anyway.

  The author of the text messages that had sent Ben Broyard flying through Uptown New Orleans was one Luther Rendell, an NOPD patrol cop with the Second District whom Ben had been cultivating as a contact for years.

  The first text had read: Shots fired at Fat Harry’s.

  The second, which came just a few seconds later read. & they were fired at yr buddy w. the funny name

  • • •

  St. Charles Avenue was a broad, oak-shaded thoroughfare that gently mirrored the Mississippi River’s crescent path through the city. Along most of its length, it was lined with Greek Revival mansions so beautiful and well maintained that an Oregon native Ben had gone to Tulane with had once asked him if people actually lived in them or if they were all museums. Antique streetcars traversed the street’s broad, grassy neutral ground, islands of segmented light that gave off great lazy rumbles as they traveled the shadowy avenue.

  Ben usually avoided Uptown bars like Fat Harry’s. They were too popular with his old high school classmates. Every now and then it was fun to see which former crushworthy varsity athlete and small-time bully had been knocked from his genetic pedestal by a constant diet of fried seafood and Dixie Beer. But an occasional burst of schadenfreude wasn’t worth the risk of an old Cannon student he barely knew dragging him into a conversation about those awful final months of senior year. Anthem Landry felt the exact same way for the exact same reason, which meant that if he’d set foot inside Fat Harry’s at all that night, he’d have been pretty sauced by the time he arrived.

  Ben was jogging across the grassy neutral ground when the lights atop the ambulance parked in front of Fat Harry’s spun to life. It peeled off into the night, sirens screaming, revealing the crowd of mostly white college students gathered in front of the bar’s awning and large front windows. Ben had an insane urge to run after the thing, or at the very least, dash back to his Prius so he could pursue. But then he saw Luther Rendell, one of three uniformed cops standing at the edge of the crowd, and when the guy waved him over, Ben stepped out from the path of an approaching streetcar and crossed the street.

  “Was that him?” Ben asked, breathless.

  “No. That was the other guy,” Rendell answered. He was bantam-framed, with knots of gray hair that looked like steel wool, and as usual he reeked of Camel Lights and gas station coffee.

  “The other guy?”

  “The one who fired the shots.”

  Rendell walked them away him from the crowd. “So apparently your boy Landry—”

  “He’s not my boy, but continue.”

  “Your friend, ’scuse me. He and the guy with the revolver get into it over the video poker machines and everyone’s watching like it’s not going to go so well for the guy with the revolver. Because they don’t know the guy has a revolver. They just know he’s got a big mouth and your buddy Landry’s about twice his size. About twice everyone’s size, to hear them tell it.” Which meant A-Team was long gone, Ben noted, otherwise Rendell would have seen for himself how tall Anthem actually was.

  “Who ID’d Anthem?”

  “Old classmate of his tending bar. Classmates of yours too, I guess. Said Landry kinda went off the deep end when his girlfriend went missing.”

  “The video poker machines?” Ben said, hoping the effort it took to ignore this reference didn’t show on his face.

  “Gunslinger wanted to try his luck apparently. Landry didn’t seem interested in giving him a turn.”

  “And so?”

  “Things got physical. Sounds like Landry knocked the guy on his ass, then when the guy got up, he had a gun all of a sudden.”

  “And he fired it, apparently.”

  “Yep. Into his own foot.”

  “You’re fired, Ben!”

  Ben was so startled by the voice of his boss, he spun away from this baffling detail.

  Marissa Hopewell Powell was dressed in a plain V-neck T-shirt and hip-hugging blue jeans, and she was approaching with a relaxed gait and a casual smile that made Ben wonder if he had imagined her outburst. Once again, Ben was reminded of how much weight the woman had lost since they’d first met. True, the stress of losing her home in Katrina had forced her to shed a bunch of pounds in a very short time. But the rest of it she’d unloaded the old-fashioned way. A diet, brought on, in large part, by the publication of her first book, a critically acclaimed account of Katrina’s terrible aftermath that included a searing retelling of the seventy-two hours she, Ben and a few other Kingfisher staff members had spent pulling people from their flooded homes in the Lower Ninth Ward.

  But Marissa’s scheduled date that night had not been some blind fix-up with a dull city accountant. More like dinner with a housing rights advocate and attorney who’d graduated from the same college she did. The guy was marriage material, and jeans and a T-shirt were not what Marissa wore to dinner with marriage material.

  “Were you following me?” Ben asked.

  “I live close by,” she answered, giving Rendell a polite smile.

  “You live in the Marigny.”

  “It’s called a police scanner. We used to use ’em before Twitter.”

  “You knew I was coming here, and you were testing me, weren’t you?”

  “Yep,” she said with a bright smile. “And you failed.”

  “Yeah, sure. How’d your date go?” Ben asked her.

  “How’s all this going?” Marissa asked.

  Rendell gave Ben a searching look.

  “Oh, I see,” Marissa said. “So you two are best buds now. I’m actually the reason those guys who knocked over your mother’s restaurant got caught, Luther.”

  “I helped,” Ben offered meekly.

  “I wrote the story,” Marissa countered.

  “Because I bugged you about it every day.”

  “I still wrote it.”

  “That’s because I didn’t have a desk yet, so I couldn’t write the story, which is why I had to get you to—”

  “Keep talking. It’ll go well for you. I promise.”

  Rendell lifted his hands like an intervening parent, and to Ben’s surprise, the gesture was enough to silence both him and Marissa instantly.

  “Now, Lord knows, I am truly indebted to both of you fine, fine journalists for the piece you wrote about what happened to my momma. But if memory serves, I’ve bought you both a helluva a lot of beers to make up for it. So right now I’m gonna need to tend to a bunch of scared little white kids over there who aren’t used to hearin’ a gun go off, ’less they’re duck huntin’ with Daddy. So if y’all don’t mind.”

  Rendell started off.

  “Well, that wasn’t racist,” Ben muttered.

  “Oh, please,” Marissa groaned.

  When Rendell stopped and turned t
o face them suddenly, Ben thought the cop might have heard his comment. But the man formed one hand into a trigger finger and pointed it at his foot. “Ben. I forgot—it was both feet.”

  Ben just stared at him, so Rendell mimed shooting his right foot, reaiming, and shooting his left.

  “Are you serious?” Ben called after him.

  Rendell nodded.

  “How is that even possible?”

  “Ask them,” Rendell called back, jerking one thumb at the crowd. “When I’m done with ’em, of course. Guy who actually did it wasn’t any help at all. Said he doesn’t remember even pulling his own gun. But if you find your buddy, tell him we’d love his opinion on the matter as well.”

  Ben turned to Marissa. “One foot after the other? How’s that possible? The first bullet would knock him on his ass, right?”

  “Well, you know what they say.”

  “Do I?”

  “God watches over children and drunks. And Anthem Landry is a combination of both. So maybe he’s got extra, extra good luck.”

  “Yeah, that last part is what you say, I think.”

  “So you off to find your buddy now?”

  “You want to join me?”

  “No. And don’t ever hang up on me again.”

  “Promise, as long as you tell me how your date went.”

  “It didn’t go anywhere.”

  “You canceled?”

  “On the phone today he made some crack about how he couldn’t be married to anyone with a dangerous job.”

  “And?”

  “I told him I had to ask tough questions of dangerous people. And that I’d be doing it for as long as I could.”

  “You wouldn’t reform your dangerous ways? Not even for an attorney?”

  “Not even for Barack Obama.”

  “Aw, come on. You could cover the Garden District beat. You know, new flower shops, the occasional car theft. It’d give you more time to actually edit the paper.”