by Platt, Sean
But Boricio was starting to worry about the lack of protein, for him and for all of them. They’d need to make a run soon to find some beef jerky, beans, or start hunting some fresh meat. Too many shitty carbs made you fat, slow, and stupid.
And being fat, slow, and stupid was a one-way ticket to the morgue post-October 15.
Boricio stepped into the large dining room, then looked over at Mary tending to a pancake on the portable stove.
“Morning, Miss Mary,” he said, looking around the dining room, surprised to see he’d beat both Paola and Luca downstairs, despite the pounding in his head. “Where are the Happy Meals?”
She looked up. “Well, good morning. I’m surprised to see you walking.”
Mary smiled, and Boricio was surprised to find himself liking it, and without a dirty thought to chase it.
“Paola’s been up for a while,” Mary said. “She went upstairs to wake Luca, since he’s still sleeping. I’m surprised you guys didn’t cross one another in the hall. Want a pancake?” She lifted the pancake with a fork, then set it on a wide plate and held it out for Boricio.
It was the light brown color of a beautiful woman; Boricio couldn’t have cooked it better himself. He raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Thanks,” he said, taking the plate and wishing the hammers would stop slamming nails into his skull.
Paola came running downstairs, then spilled into the dining room. “Mom,” she cried, her voice slightly high and flying way too fast to not have trouble chasing behind it.
“What is it, Honey?” Mary moved her eyes from the frying batter to Paola.
“It’s Luca. He’s not waking up. And there’s nothing I can do. I keep calling him and shaking him and I even punched him in the arm once I worked up the courage to do it, but nothing is working.”
“Is he breathing?” Mary asked.
“I . . . I think so.”
“What do you mean, ‘you think so’?” Boricio said, his mouth full of pancake. “Fuckers either suck air or don’t. There ain’t no in-between when it comes to breathing. Is Rip Van Creepy sucking air or not?”
Paola said, “I guess so, but not very much.”
Well, FUCK!
Boricio dropped his plate onto the counter, then bolted up the stairs and charged into Luca’s room.
The man-kid had to be okay. It wasn’t even that Boricio cared, necessarily; it was that the old fucker was stringing the shit of their world together. He couldn't explain it, even to himself, but Boricio somehow knew that without Luca, things would take a sharp detour into Fuckedsville.
“Hey buddy,” Boricio yelled, a foot into his room. “Time to stop dreaming about the Golden Girls. Wake up and I promise we’ll find you some granny porn, so you can tug your raisin.”
One look at Luca, and Boricio understood why Paola wasn’t sure if he was breathing. He looked damned close to dead.
Boricio dropped to a knee and started to shake Luca.
“Is he okay?” Mary asked, suddenly in the room even though Boricio hadn’t heard her come in.
Before Boricio could answer, the sound of an engine roared from the front yard, then up into the room, bringing Boricio another sting of déjà vu.
Engines meant enemies and enemies meant fights. Fights likely meant death. Even if that death was dealt to someone other than Boricio, it was an inconvenience to his morning quiet.
Boricio leapt from the bedside and was at the window in a second, peeling the curtains aside. He turned to the girls. “A black van. Looks like it’s been beat to hell.”
His eyes returned to the window, then Boricio suddenly broke into a grin as the passenger door opened and Callie stepped out. He turned to Mary and said, “Holy fuck yeah, I know her.”
Boricio was smiling, though it faded like a hot fog when he saw the ugly mother fucker, bald as an 8-ball, and wearing Bluebeard’s eye patch, climb from the driver’s side. Something about the way the asshole was walking, gave Boricio the same wretched sense of déjà vu he’d felt when waking that morning, then again a minute before.
This shit isn’t right.
Two fresh fuckers — a guy who looked like former military and then a pasty faced soft guy who looked to be in his early thirties — joined the party.
Boricio didn’t know who the three fuckers with Callie were. He only knew that he wanted to murder the Jolly Roger before he had the chance to open his big ugly mouth. Something about the man made Boricio immediately angry. But something else about him made Boricio almost want to run and hide, something no man had ever made him want to do before.
Fucking Luca broke me. And now he’s gonna die before he can fix me!
It was good to see Callie, but if she was a hostage, and those men meant to harm her, or him, or anyone on Team Boricio, well then they had minutes to live, whether Boricio was frightened or not.
He closed the curtains and turned to Mary.
“I need you to stay upstairs,” he said. “You know the drill; don’t come down for dick.” He looked from Paola to Mary, all four eyes on his, then over to Luca, who was finally starting to lightly snore — a good sign, even though he still lay there looking mostly dead. “Go to my room and get my shotgun, get Little Lamb her peashooter, then both of you stay in here with Luca. I want all three of you in the same place. Got it?”
“Got it,” Mary said. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m gonna take my two friends Peacemaker and Snaggletooth, then go downstairs and see what needs to be seen.” Boricio lifted his shirt and showed Mary his pistol and sheathed knife pressed against the tan canvas of his tight abs.
“Okay,” Mary said, swallowing. Paola trembled beside her.
Boricio nodded again, left the room, then ran down the hallway to the stairs, leapt them in a trio of strides, and jumped past the bottom four, quickly eclipsing the distance between living room and front door.
Boricio could see the three fuckers and Callie out the window, but mostly as blurs and shapes. His hand was a foot from the knob before he saw the shit that soured his throat and held his breath hostage.
No.
No fucking way.
It isn’t possible.
Boricio had seen plenty of beer-battered bullshit, and about a billion pounds of goddamn impossible since he woke up too fucking early on October 15, lucky to wake up at all, wondering if the woman he cut had disappeared like all the rest of the planet’s fuck-all.
This was something different.
This changed the meaning of the goddamn word impossible.
Boricio swung the front door and stared into the eye of the bald scarred man; a horrible man with an intelligent stare.
The man who looked exactly like him, but fugly.
Like the man’s looks, his voice was Boricio’s, even though it wasn’t quite.
Boricio tore his eyes from Fugly, then turned them to Callie who seemed shockingly calm, especially since she was standing right beside the impossible, and even tilting her head so she could see it from all sides.
“Good morning, Boricio,” said the fugly fucker who couldn’t possibly exist. “We’ve come for Luca.”
****
CHAPTER 6 — Boricio Bishop Part 1
Kingsland, Alabama
October 13, 2011
TWO DAYS BEFORE THE EVENT…
The dreams were getting worse.
Boricio woke with his nose curling at the scent of Jack soaked into his collar. He swung his feet to the floor, rose from bed, then went to the motel window and stared outside at the empty parking lot, and the few beat to hell cars, including an ancient Chevy.
Boricio’s dreams, as they had been for the last month, were a special sort of bullshit, and worse for their razored edge of reality.
He went to the bathroom, took a shit, then put on his shoes and collapsed back onto the mattress, wondering if today would be the day he’d finally get the fuck out of Dodge. New Orleans was about seven hours away. If he left this morning, he could be there by the end of the day and s
tarting his new life tomorrow.
Boricio was sick of dreaming about Rose, sick of hearing her final screams screeching every time he closed his eyes, and sick of thinking about the goddamned vials.
He was awake for several minutes before realizing he was still slightly drunk. He’d never had a hangover before, at least nothing beyond a mild headache. He’d never thrown up, at least not from too much alcohol, though the bottle of Jack he’d spilled on himself while falling to sleep the night before made him want to wake with a Technicolor yawn.
Boricio glanced over at the empty bottle, and felt almost happy for the draught. One more reason to shift gears and get the fuck out of town. He was drinking too damn much, even though the too much felt like it was barely enough while he was doing it. Becoming a drunk was too easy, and Boricio had known too many men who were too stupid to live any other way. That was the problem with alcohol: You drank to forget and drank to celebrate. And if you didn’t have anything to mourn or memorialize, well hell, you could just drink while waiting.
Boricio wished that so much of his last few months weren’t swirled in such a blur. He was having a difficult time separating truth from horror, and the past he was trying to flee. He wasn’t sure where the true lines lay between nightmare and reality. Time had turned soupy, and while the calendar clearly said October 13, Boricio could hardly believe so much time had passed since his last time behind the wheel of the Mini-Cooper.
When Boricio fled Black Island, he was searching for the time and space to find himself anywhere else and away from everyone’s reach — he longed to find a place beyond the flow of time.
But Boricio had found nothing like that at all. He found The Prophet instead.
It was odd, how much Boricio felt drawn to The New Unity Church, even though he knew religion was bullshit. Even smart theology left you with two choices: Either man was one of God’s fuck-ups, or He was one of theirs. Boricio found the second one far easier to believe.
Before walking through the front door of New Unity, Boricio would have claimed, gun to head, that God was definitely not good. Religion was a crutch for the weak, giving you nothing you couldn’t get for free, costing plenty you shouldn’t have ever had to spend, and ultimately, worth exactly the same squirt of piss it was worth before your ass ever kissed the flat of the pew.
Yet mankind was largely religious, which in Boricio’s estimation made people slightly dumber than most animals, since most animals were smart enough to kill for food and protect their young, without being dumb enough to murder another just because their two theories end-to-end failed to make a straight line. It was bullshit, but the truth: Two religions in a valley meant war. Add another dozen and you had enlightenment.
When the old man first started talking about October 15 and the Judgment Day right behind it, Boricio thought he was crazier than a sewer rat. But that was before he said something that momentarily bleached the marrow from Boricio’s bones.
The old man had been giving one of his two daily sermons a few nights earlier, about 90 minutes or so before Boricio started emptying his bottle of Jack. He said, “There is no power, short of the gentle hands of the Good Lord Himself, that can pry the secrets from the depths of the human heart.”
After he said the word “heart,” the old man kept going on and on and on like he always did, except this time Boricio seemed to smell before every word before it left the old man’s mouth. When the old man started talking about standing at the empty well, even describing it down to the pile of bricks beside it, Boricio could see the same well, same as he’d seen in his dreams. Then, when he started talking about the end of it all and the beginning of everything else, Boricio could see it like he did in his dreams, staring down from space at the world, where everything was turning to black like pixels fading from a dying screen.
In that sermon, the old man somehow changed from a smarmy evangelist to something Boricio didn’t quite understand, but he was just curious enough to stick around and figure out. The longer Boricio spent around the old man, the more it seemed as though he’d known him, or at least had been dreaming of him, forever. Boricio couldn’t tell if that was true, or just part of a larger illusion.
The old man certainly took himself seriously, and carried himself with dignity, but everyone on TV, from news anchors to folks on the street, loudly testified to his lunacy. Of course, Boricio knew one-sided when he saw it. He’d seen plenty of people praising the old man, twice a day for a week, though he never saw the anchors or the interviewers on the news getting their side of the story.
The TV talking heads made fun of “The Prophet,” crafting jokes and casting him as anything from a raving idiot to a master of deception. Boricio hadn’t untangled the second part yet, but knew the first one was downright ridiculous. Anyone who failed to see the intelligence in the old man’s eyes a second after staring inside them had to be idiots themselves. And anyone who hadn’t looked into his eyes, didn’t have a right to pound their nails into a rickety bridge of opinion. Assholes were entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own set of facts. Hell, even an eight year old knew that.
Boricio suddenly missed Luca with a flare of fierce intensity, as though his little brother could make his world orbit like it did back when everything was better. As if Luca could give him permission to start living, without having to wake in the morning with the scent of Jack on his collar.
Given the time, Luca should be alone, assuming he was still being home schooled, or maybe with Sarah, but when Boricio called, Will answered on the first ring.
“Hello?”
Boricio was silent.
“Hello?”
Still nothing.
“Is that you, Boricio?”
Will gave Boricio a minute to respond, but Boricio only chewed the air without hanging up.
“I’m sorry, Boricio,” Will finally said. “Please, talk to me.”
Boricio thought of telling the old man to fuck himself, maybe with something sharp, but silenced the line instead.
He dropped the phone in his pocket, where it buzzed seven or so seconds later. Boricio pulled it back out, looked at the screen to see what he already knew, then opened his nightstand drawer and dropped the phone inside with a thunk before slamming it shut.
He heard a knock at the door, so in time with the slamming drawer that Boricio wondered if it was his imagination.
Three more knocks said it wasn’t.
Boricio went to the door and opened it to the round face of the old man, split a third down the middle with the widest smile Boricio had seen before breakfast in months.
“Care to have a talk over drinks?”
Boricio scratched his head. “You kidding, Father? You’ve any idea how early it is?”
The old man said, “I’m not a Father, just a humble servant of The Good Lord. My cloth gets stained before it gets in the wash, no different from yours.” He smiled even wider and pat Boricio on his shoulder. “Besides, I’m not drinking anything but the blood of Christ, and all times of day are great for that. And you,” he shook his head, “well, you’re not having anything but the hair of the dog that bit you, and I can’t see a lick of harm in that.”
The Prophet added, “Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink,” then winked. “Isaiah 5:11.”
Boricio said, “Doesn’t that verse mean we’re not supposed to drink?”
“Nope, Son,” The Prophet shook his head. “It sounds exactly like permission granted to me.” He winked again, then said, “I’ll be right back.”
The old man nodded at a now smiling Boricio, then disappeared to his F-150, returning a minute later with a full bottle of Jack — replacing the single drop Boricio had left — and a black wine bottle with a large rooster on the label, and a gold twist-top instead of a cork, plus two red plastic cups.
The Prophet set both bottles on the small table in Boricio’s room, then turned to Boricio. “What’ll it be?”
Boricio said,
“Jack, please. I can’t trust wine without a cork.”
“Corks don’t make the wine taste better,” The Prophet argued.
“Yeah, but it’s how wine’s supposed to be finished. Would you listen to a sermon that didn’t mention God?”
“That’s different.”
“Nope,” Boricio shook his head. “I don’t think it is.”
“People want things easy, and don’t always have a bottle opener.”
Boricio didn’t want to argue. He said, “Wine is poetry in a bottle; sunlight, held together by water. The cork is the final verse. I’m not interested in your savior’s blood this morning, Padre.”
Boricio watched The Prophet, blinking twice as fast while breathing half as slow, trying not to look a quarter flustered as he was, probably trying to figure out how to talk to a man like Boricio — not just the man he was, but the man he was becoming, a man unwilling to wait for the world to tell him who he was.
Boricio wanted to know why the old man was in his room. If he was drinking this early in the morning, he was likely holding onto a special sort of bullshit he was ready to shovel onto Boricio’s plate.
Boricio sipped his Jack beside the old man, more out of curiosity than anything else. Because there was already alcohol in his blood, it was only a half hour or so before he was well on his way to demolished — even though he’d yet to wring his liver from the evening before.
The old man started talking about the coming prophecy again, and Boricio found himself swaying back and forth in half-belief. “You know I haven’t just been dreaming of this day for years,” The Prophet said. “I’ve been dreaming of you.”
Boricio felt an icy chill, not just because he was slowly, and inexplicably starting to believe, but because he’d been dreaming of the old man too.
The Prophet must have noticed the look on Boricio’s face, because he started to question him like a prisoner. “You’ve dreamed of me too, haven’t you?”
