“For her to save the world, we first have to save her. Besides, I saw a smile cross her lips. Just how much life you expect out of a coma patient? Small steps.”
“She wasn’t in a coma,” Muriel insisted. “That was a catatonic state.”
“That woman really knows how to take herself to the naked edge while saving others. She’s my god.”
“She’s not the hope of the free world. She can’t be. Too much of a basket case.”
“I think you just proved my point; if she can save herself, anybody can. Leastways, her sheer presence should make us feel a lot better about ourselves.”
Muriel reattached her grimacing face to her head.
“How do you do that?”
“Maybe, like her, I’m more dead than alive.” She disappeared back into the woods.
Toby yelled after her. “Any decent magician’d have a wider range of tricks!” Mumbling more to himself, he added, “I’ve heard of niche specialists, but really?” He knew she had a background as a special effects artist; but she still refused to explain how she did what she did, or why.
***
Johnny steered the jeep across the featureless expanse. Each bump in the dirt road ironically conveyed more of a sense of terrain than anything his eyes could reveal. The higher the jeep flew off the ground, the more he gripped the steering wheel and pressed down on the accelerator, and the wider his grin.
Phoenicia held on to the underside of the seat in case that seatbelt gave; it was as worn as the rest of the vehicle. “You don’t have to look like such a mad man,” she said.
“Just getting in character, hon, for when the dehydration and delirium sets in.”
“That why you picked the Australian Outback? I remember when we drove each other into such delirious altered states with all-night lovemaking.”
“Guess that explains the infatuation.”
Phoenicia smiled. She’d long since given up on the nagging and bitching, and learned to go along for the ride. For all his risk-taking, he always seemed to get them out alive, and with bigger memories.
***
Johnny eyed the overheated radiator from underneath the popped hood. “Hoses. The first thing to go in the desert.”
“That would be why you brought spares, no doubt.”
He slammed the bonnet closed. “What would be the fun in that?”
Phoenicia kicked the front tire. “You couldn’t have waited until sundown to breakdown.” She gazed at the blinding noonday sun directly overhead, its light broken only by the occasional vulture. “That can’t be a good sign.”
“I say we play dead until they get close enough to lasso. At least then we have something to eat.”
“Not a half-bad idea, as crazy as it sounds. Never could stand those things. Any excuse to go on a murderous rampage.”
***
“Now, just remember to play dead.”
“As opposed to actually dying?” Phoenicia grimaced. “I’ll try.”
The vultures didn’t wait long to investigate, as desperate to survive out here as they were.
Phoenicia monitored the situation as best she could in her peripheral vision. So far, Johnny’s traps and snares had bagged three of them. The others seemed only too pleased by the reduction in competition.
She had to endure the ones crawling around on her until their talons tripped the miniature lassos meant to grab their feet and whisk them away on bungee cords into their new prison cells.
When one of the little buggers went to poke out her eye, she was suddenly grateful for the shop glasses. Expensive shades might have made her eyes harder to aim for, but would have done nothing to stop that beak.
“Enough,” Johnny said. He sprang to his feet and kicked away the last of the birds. “These should keep us good and plump for a while.”
“Provided we can light a fire, and cook them, before the jackals and whatever else lives out here—”
“Crockodiles, dingoes, Perenties—”
“…make a meal of us. And let’s not forget the sharp knife for stripping the meat off the bone for the jerky, that we don’t have.”
“You should learn to look on the sunny side of life.”
“Maybe from where it’s forty degrees cooler in the shade.” A few adventures back, she would have been hysterical by now. But grant him that: he was bloody good at staring death in the face, and coming out the other end laughing.
She hoped he hadn’t lost any of his magic, or that death wish of his didn’t overpower his love for her.
She’d feel better if the honeymoon period hadn’t ended a while back.
***
Phoenicia dry-heaved for the third time. She’d expectorated the last of her stomach contents more than a minute ago, but her system couldn’t stop reacting to the insult all the same. She felt feverish, but a scalding forehead and perspiration went with this terrain and time of day, healthy disposition or no.
“I suppose it was wrong of me not to tell you.” Johnny regarded her as if the betrayal was complete now. “Vultures are pretty unsavory beasts. Their own kind won’t touch them when they find them dead at the side of the road.”
Conveying calm, order, resoluteness—all hallmarks of sanity—he remained entirely absorbed in the insane ritual of hanging the strips of bird jerky out to dry, as if it was important to balance these yin and yang elements as part of a well-balanced lifestyle, even now.
Serendipity—showing her hand a bit early, Phoenicia thought—had provided Johnny the crushed and discarded beer can at the side of the dirt road from which to tear a sliver of aluminum in order to slice up the bird jerky.
“Look on the bright side: actually dying gets my mind off fear of dying.”
Johnny smirked. “That’s my girl.”
“Don’t suppose your solution to the water problem is any better.” Phoenicia wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and straightened her hair, because the most important thing right now, at death’s door, was to look presentable, and most of all, sexy, for Johnny. She laughed at the madness, let him guess as to its cause.
Johnny folded his legs under him like a collapsing chair, flopped down on the ground, and proceeded to dig about with the wedge of aluminum.
Moments later, to great fanfare, he unearthed the plant by the root, brushed off the large gourd. It was not unlike the uncooked squash adorning her kitchen counter back at home. He sliced a wedge out, and said, “Chew on this.”
Showing a total incapacity to learn from inexperience, she did as instructed without comment.
“Filled with water and trace nutrients, proteins and enzymes. We find enough of these, we won’t need to bother with the jerky. Only you usually have to wander the desert for days before you chance on one of them.”
“I guess that means rationing.”
“Nope. Just the opposite. We stuff ourselves, sit about digesting for the next twelve hours, because we’ll be lucky to feast but once every three days, barring a return to the diseased jerky.”
Phoenicia made a chair for herself using the tree as a backrest and the rocky earth as a seat. “I need some way to pass the time besides praying for death.”
“I carved some runes for us out of these stones so we can divine our futures.” He hiked over to her, squatted down, shook the rocks like dice, and cast them.
She observed the etchings on the stones that landed face up. “Five’ll get you ten they don’t tell me anything I don’t already know.”
“Says we have many more such adventures ahead of us.”
She laughed. “That’s the good news?”
He padded around behind her, and let her use him as a chair, rested his back against the tree. He stroked her as she drifted into unconsciousness, which she suspected would be the only reprieve for her for quite some time.
***
Johnny awoke with the sleeping Phoenicia lying against him. He stroked her arm like a painter putting the finishing touches on his masterpiece. “You’re cold.”
&
nbsp; When he got no response, he squeezed her arms gently to rouse her. If they didn’t get moving, they’d die. Moving risked killing them sooner by adding to the exertion of survival, but staying in one place was certain death.
The horror dawned on him only slowly; it had to push its way past the fear and guilt: Phoenicia was dead.
The wind, rising, whistled his mournful lament for him, serenaded her, and sent her on her way.
Across the rippling heat, a woman walked toward him. A trembling mirage, no more. He wiped his eyes of tears all the same to sharpen her image.
The woman stooped down, and passed her hand over his runes. The stones turned without her actually touching tem, changing the future.
She gazed up at him. “Her death is on your hands, Johnny.”
“Why?”
“You let your addiction get the better of you. The craving for the next adrenaline fix. You didn’t prepare yourself enough, or her, before coming out here. Why bother, when the thrill of facing death head on was all that mattered?”
“Screw you.”
“You need to nip this in the bud. Otherwise, with each lifetime the compulsion grows more powerful, your ability to resist it, that much less. Soon the only thing heroic about you is your willingness to play the losing hand.”
“Better to have truly lived than not to have lived at all.”
“Is that what you think you’re doing? Match the skills to the challenge and you might have a point. Skills come first, Johnny.”
“I did, I tell you.”
“I’m not just referring to what you can find in a desert survival field guide.”
The woman disappeared.
“People like you are why I’m out here in the first place.” He threw a rock at the spot where she was last. “Naysayers. Want to live your lives with fear and regret. Well, go right ahead. My way is the only way.”
He kicked over the runes. “It’s not about insight. It’s about an act of will.”
***
Minerva patted Robin’s forehead with the damp cloth before dipping it in the bowl, and then wringing the rag to freshen it, and subsequently reapplying. “Help me slide her up.”
Frumpley took hold of Robin from the opposite side of the bed, and helped Minerva prop her up against the bed board with some pillows.
Minerva punched the pillows to mold them to Robin’s lower back. “We’ve got to get her up and moving about. She’s so busy rescuing souls she didn’t get to in time in neighboring timelines, she’ll have nothing left for our timeline.”
“Maybe if you taught her how to use the vortex.”
“What the hell you think she’s using to pull off her outreach program? Not the least bit of training, mind you. She’s lucky she’s still alive.” Minerva slapped her across each cheek and repeated until she got a response. Robin finally opened her eyes. “Well, what have you to say for yourself?” Minerva said.
Robin adjusted her position against the pillows and backboard. She reflected on Johnny and Phoenicia. She had had no choice but to psychically reach out to them in another timeline, missing her chance in this timeline to get to them before a random dog walker’s dog attacked Johnny, biting off his dick, and driving Phoenicia to kill the dog, the dog walker, and ultimately Johnny, to put him out of his misery, and herself, out of an inability to see any point of living without him. “These Renaissance men are hard cases, one and all. Like talking to a bloody wall.”
“We wouldn’t know what that’s like,” Frumpley said.
Minerva doubted Robin caught the sarcasm; she was still too delirious with her fever, self-imposed as part of the purifications. She kept burning her soul brighter in hopes of burning her way through her body. Maybe if Minerva had a chance to tutor her on dialing up the flow of energy through her body slowly in the presence of the vortex in order to keep from frying her circuitry—
“What’s he up to?” Robin pointed to Toby, asleep in the caboose of the toy train snaking its way around the perimeter of the room, hugging his rifle like a favorite teddy bear.
Minerva tried her damnedest to squeeze the impatience out of her tone. “He’s standing guard against any ghosts or demons you bring back from the netherworlds, or break-offs; fragments of the troubled psyches you’re doctoring. God knows what else can come pouring through. Not like you know what the hell you’re doing, you complete novice.”
Robin smiled. “You people are completely nuts, in a delightful sort of way.”
“We wouldn’t know what that’s like,” Frumpley said. Minerva suspected this time Robin just might have caught the sarcasm.
“Yeah, I guess that is the pot calling the kettle black.” She swung her legs over the bed. “Get me off this damn mattress.”
“Now she wants to be cooperative. What will we do?” Frumpley eased her off the bed, allowed her to use him as a crutch. He walked her about while she got her sea legs under her.
Minerva fanned Robin as she walked. “You’ve got to cut out this nonsense thinking you can save every last soul.”
Robin groaned, Minerva suspected, from the aches and pains of treating a bed as if it were a workout mat with all her tossing and turning. “I don’t think that,” Robin said. “But if they show up on my radar, it’s for a reason. That means they hold some key to saving me, as well. You might do well to remember that, being as you’re so convinced I’m the hope of the free world. I need them to get across the finish line as much as your underground needs me.”
Minerva snorted. “A lot of damn-fine rationalization, if you ask me.”
She set Robin on the bidet with Frumpley’s help. She was gone before they could take their hands off her. She used the rigidity of her catatonia to prop herself up.
“She’s run away from us again, Minerva. Just how many alternate realities are there to get lost down?”
“We need to up our game against this kind of incorrigibleness.” Minerva rubbed her lower back as she stood up straight.
***
Purnell surveyed the compound before him. It looked like a better setting for NORAD than another potential Waco. The religious complex might have made out pretty well in the medieval era, as well—pre-cannons, and pre-Perdue. “What the hell are we doing here?” Purnell said.
“Same as always: killing bad guys.” Perdue grabbed Purnell’s hands. “What the hell are these?”
“Hard to fire a gun with frostbite.”
“Harder with these on. Here, try these. Perfect for killing people in the cold.” Perdue handed him a pair of thin leather gloves to replace the admittedly limiting ones he had on. They wore like a second skin.
“I’d prefer we hold off on any killing, thank you very much. The religiously brainwashed qualify as apprentice psychotics, no more. They deserve a good shrink and a bottle of meds, just like me.”
Perdue smirked. Purnell realized Perdue was enabled by the banter rather than restrained by it, which made his role in things doubly dubious. “What’s your next move?” he said.
Perdue divested himself of his automatic rifle, stripped off his pistol, peeled off his munitions straps. He marched headlong towards the compound empty-handed and arms held out wide.
“Great. Massacre it is,” Purnell mumbled to himself. “I appreciate you including me in the decision.”
He glanced back at the SWAT truck, stowing an unseemly amount of munitions, and the ZAPPER, as he’d nicknamed it, the vehicle that was a mobile disintegration platform, in which they stuck bad guys and made them disappear forever. It was Perdue’s reward for capturing a team of car thieves. Little did they know their madness just enabled his.
***
Perdue regarded the cult leader as his men patted him down. He was without arms himself, though his people were loaded for bear. He figured there were about a dozen rifles aimed at his head. “I gather you folks worship a vengeful god.”
Monatello, the cult leader, with his trim beard and handsome good looks that were all part of the prophet-package if he expected to dr
aw serious converts these days, smiled. “When in Rome, general. Your kind only speaks one language.”
“SWAT commander, though I appreciate the promotion.” He lowered his hands as his pat down came to an end. “So what is it you people want exactly?”
“To be left alone.”
“Sorry. No can do. America doesn’t take kindly to its citizens going off and declaring themselves a sovereign nation all on their own, with God or anyone else at the helm.”
“We’ll just hold you captive, then, until they see things our way.” Monatello stepped closer to him to better size up the man he was addressing. “You aren’t even within your jurisdiction.”
“Strictly freelance these days, and strictly off-grid,” Perdue informed him. “I guess we have more in common than we realize.”
Monatello smiled.
Perdue stepped toward him. He felt a gun press against the back of his head. “I bet I can wipe that smirk off your face.”
“Bet you can’t.”
Perdue snapped Monatello’s neck. Ducking and pivoting in the same motion, he liberated the gun from the hand that had the pistol pressed against his skull a split-second after it took off Monatello’s head—rather unnecessarily.
He turned the gun on its holder, and fired.
By the time the bullets in the room came flying at him in the next half second, he was using the two bodies collapsed against him as shields.
He shot the fellas with the guns to his unprotected flanks, then rotated safely under his body-suit. Next, he addressed the shooters on either side of the bodies shielding him.
The screaming, hysterical flock without guns displayed more sense under the circumstances, charging him. He was soon buried beneath the huddle better than a linebacker on a football field who’d caught an interception.
He waited patiently for Purnell to get his head out of his ass, an act for which much patience was needed.
Minutes later, his team pulled the rest of the parishioners off him, arms handcuffed behind their backs, still spitting and cursing.
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 117
