City of Heretics

by Heath Lowrance

  They were Dr. Maggie, Marco Vitower, and Marvis Hicks.

  Crowe come to late yesterday afternoon, after being out for almost twenty-four hours straight, and the first face he’d seen hovering over him was Marvis. He’d said, “Well, I’ll be damned, he’s waking up,” and then he veered out of sight and Crowe heard him calling, “Dr. Maggie, Crowe’s waking up,” and Crowe sort of groaned and tried to move an arm to touch his face—everything hurt—and Dr. Maggie loomed into view, pushing his arm back down, and saying, “Try not to move, Crowe. You’re okay now.”

  He wasn’t convinced, but he let her push his arm down. Marvis said, “Long time no see, Crowe. Sure hate that we meet again with you in such sorry-ass shape.”

  Crowe said, “Where?”

  Dr. Maggie told him about the farmhouse then, and how their so-called back-up had come upon them sprawled around on the blacktop.

  Marvis said, “They put you boys in the Hummer, managed to get it separated from the tree it was attached to, and they all got the hell out. They said it was a crazy scene. What the hell happened?”

  And Dr. Maggie said, “Not now. Let him rest.” She looked down at Crowe and said, “I have to call Mr. Vitower now that you’re awake. He’ll want to talk to you.”

  Crowe said, “Chester?”

  She nodded. “He’s here. Worse shape than you. I pulled a bullet out of his stomach, and another had gone through his leg and hit the femoral artery. He’s in and out of consciousness.”

  Crowe didn’t like the way the room smelled, sort of antiseptic and musty at the same time, and he didn’t like the glaring yellow of the walls and he didn’t like the way his pillows were bunched up under his head. It was hard to talk; something was on the left side of his face that made moving his mouth difficult. He managed, “He gonna make it?”

  “The worst is over, he’s fine. The man you all refer to as D-Lux… was dead long before he got here.”

  He didn’t need her to tell him that; he’d seen the man’s head explode. But he had mixed feelings about Chester.

  She perched her considerable hips on the side of his bed and went on to tell him all the juicy details about his own condition, making sure to use laymen’s terms. He’d been shot in the right arm, but it was the least of his wounds—the bullet had torn through the outer layer of muscle. He’d have a small scar, but after a few weeks normal mobility would return, she said. He’d lost a lot of blood from the two knife wounds—one in his left shoulder, another in the back, low and between the shoulder blades—and muscle had been seriously damaged on both of them. They could affect his mobility pretty seriously, and could potentially be painful for years to come.

  “The thing that’s most distressing, though,” she’d said, looking very serious, “is the gash across your face.” He reached up again to touch the area she was talking about, but again she pushed his hand down. “I’m… I’m pretty certain I was able to save the vision in your left eye, but, well. I’m not an eye surgeon, am I?”

  “My vision?”

  “The blade was apparently slashing in a downward motion,” – she illustrated, slowly karate-chopping the air in front of her as if he wasn’t sure what she meant—“and it got you from right above your left brow and down to your cheekbone. I’m afraid you’re going to have a very noticeable scar, Crowe.”

  So that was what was all over his face, bandages. The whole thing started coming back to him then, the squad of killers, the eighteen-wheeler, the slaughter. And the Ghost Cat.

  He said, “Food.”

  Dr. Maggie nodded. “Of course. I’ll have the man fix you up something. Marvis will bring it up for you. I’m off to call Mr. Vitower, I’m sure he’ll want to see you.”

  Crowe mumbled, “Bet he’s worried sick about me.”

  She cocked one formidable eyebrow behind her wire frames. “Most men take at least an hour after waking from a near-death experience to regain their bad attitudes.”

  He didn’t answer her, and she sighed resignedly and left the room, Marvis trailing her.

  Later, Marvis brought up a bologna sandwich and a bowl of cream of mushroom soup. Crowe ate left-handed since his right arm ached too much for use, finished it in no time flat, and drained three glasses of water, which he knew he would regret later when Dr. Maggie brought the bedpan up. Marvis, a stout little man in his early ‘30’s, with a receding hairline and skin the color of used-up coal, showed him that morning’s newspaper.

  BOLD AMBUSH, ESCAPE OF KILLER PETER MURKE, the headline read. The lead story said that Peter Murke was at large, and that the transport vehicle had been ambushed in route, smashed by an eighteen-wheeler, which led the very clever authorities to wisely conclude that Murke had been aided in his escape. Four Sheriff’s Deputies were dead, one had been rushed to Baptist East, where he was currently listed in critical condition.

  The story didn’t say anything about signs of another vehicle, or the possibility of a third party. But then, it probably wouldn’t have.

  Crowe started nodding off after that, but when Vitower showed up Marvis shook him awake to talk to him. Vitower looked drawn and tense, anger simmering behind his cool façade. Crowe had to run over the whole crazy story three times before Vitower was satisfied, although satisfied isn’t quite the right word.

  He sat on the edge of Crowe’s bed, where Dr. Maggie had sat earlier, and nodded grimly and gritted his teeth and black clouds played in his eyes. He smelled like gin. He said, “This… this is completely fucked. All over the motherfucking news, and nothing to show for it. I need you to still be in this, Crowe.”

  Crowe shrugged. “As Dr. Maggie pointed out, it’s not like I have somewhere better to be.”

  Vitower said, “What kind of fucked-up plan were you running? Ambush the fucking truck? Sonofafuckingbitch.”

  He stood up and paced around the room for a long minute, furious. Crowe watched him until he calmed down and came back and sat at the edge of the bed again.

  Vitower said, “But on the other hand, what plan could have foreseen a goddamn eighteen-wheeler smashing into the van out of nowhere? Or a bunch of weirdos slaughtering everyone?”

  “I’ll admit, I didn’t see it coming.”

  That drew a slim, reluctant smile. He said, “Rest up while you can. You promised me something and you’re gonna deliver, motherfucker. As soon as Dr. Maggie says you’re okay to get up and around, we start over.”

  Crowe went to sleep after that. It was the next morning when Dr. Maggie started pulling up her dubious medical credentials and telling him that, in her “professional opinion”, he had to stay in bed for three more days.

  He kicked the blankets off and sat up, feeling woozy. His blood by then was about half-composed of pain meds, but he managed to make it to his feet and took a moment to make sure he wasn’t about to drop. Dr. Maggie folded her arms and glared. She shook her head, turned on her heel and walked out of the room.

  He braced himself on the side of the bed, waiting for his head to catch up with the rest of him. They’d stripped off his clothes, so he was shivering in nothing but boxer briefs, and his body looked unhealthily thin and pale.

  After a few minutes, he felt okay enough to pull on the khakis and tee-shirt Marvis had left out for him. It wasn’t easy, pulling the tee-shirt on—his right shoulder ached fiercely, and the wound in his back felt as if it would bust open whenever he moved his arms higher than mid-level. The neck of the tee pulled against the bandages on his face when he slipped it over his head, and he tried not to think about that particular wound. A scar on his face, well, that would be pretty goddamn inconvenient. In this line of work, any distinguishing marks, as they say, were a hindrance. But losing the vision in his left eye would be considerably more than inconvenient.

  He left the room, walking fairly straight, out into the hall. The walls were bare and the pine wood floor was cold on his bare feet. Chester was bedded up in the room almost directly across.

  Crowe opened the door and went in. There was more light
than in his room. Two windows instead of the one, facing east and the mid-morning sun streaming in. Chester was sleeping in a metal frame bed, looking very small, with the blankets pulled up to his sharp chin and a heavy growth of beard on his face.

  Dallas half-dozed in a fat easy chair by the windows. She looked up when Crowe came in but didn’t say anything.

  She looked tired. Her hair was pulled back and half-covered by a kerchief. A threadbare blanket was thrown over her legs. Crowe said, “The distressed wife, keeping vigil over her ailing husband.”

  She said, “Marvis didn’t call me until Chester first woke up, early this morning. So I haven’t been here long enough to qualify as being on a vigil.”

  He almost asked her who was looking after her kid, but didn’t. Instead, he said “Has he been awake since you’ve been here?”

  “Yes. He didn’t say much, though. Just ‘oh, hello’ when he saw me. He nodded when I told him Tommy was at home with the sitter. And he kinda chuckled when I told him you were in the other room.”

  “It’s good that we can laugh about it now.”

  She stood up and stretched cat-like, the slim muscles in her arms and legs taut and her smooth white stomach showing between jeans and sweater. She had a new tattoo there, just above her belly button, in red and black, but it was too small to be able to tell what it was—some sort of cross or something. He looked away from her.

  She said, “Lucky I was able to get the day off from work.”

  “Work?” Crowe said. “What, you have a job now?”

  “Yeah. Some people do work for a living, you know.”

  “Don’t give me that. You don’t have to work.”

  “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe some people want to work?”

  “No, not really.”

  She huffed. “Funny. Chester said the same thing. I got a job at the Mall of Memphis about four months ago. Working the evening shift at the shoe store.”

  Crowe said, “Well, you always were obsessed with shoes.”

  Chester snored peacefully. Crowe gently lowered his blankets a bit and saw the bandages around his torso. Dallas joined him next to the bed, standing entirely too close, and said, “What exactly happened out there?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.”

  She laughed softly. “Another daring adventure with Crowe and Paine comes to its inevitable conclusion. You two will be hard-pressed to top this one.”

  “I suppose so.”

  Her smell, again, that flowery scent that always went right to his head. He moved away and went to the windows. Another bleak winter morning out there, an expanse of dead brown grass trailing away from the house, into some sparse woods beyond an unpainted wood fence. In the distance, he could see a road, winding away toward what he could only imagine was civilization. A farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. The Dr. Maggie Memorial Hospital for the Criminally Inclined.

  “Well?” she said after a minute. “Are you going to tell me what happened or what? All I could get out of Marvis was that you two were on a job and everything went south.”

  “That about sums it up,” he said, staring out the window.

  He didn’t have to look at her to see the anger. “Oh, well thank you for clearing it all up, Crowe. I swear you drive me insane sometimes.” She sighed and he heard her moving behind him, away from Chester’s bed. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

  And then Chester said, “Yeah. He’s still a jag-ass.”

  Crowe turned around and Chester was grinning at him weakly from his bed. Dallas went to him, touched his forehead with a gentle hand. “Chester,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Right as rain,” he said. His voice was scratchy and dry. “Fucking starving, though.”

  “I’ll go get Marvis, have him bring some food.”

  “Yeah.”

  She kissed him lightly on the temple, and, with a wary glance at Crowe, left the room.

  Chester looked around with bleary eyes. He started to sit up, but winced in pain. Settling back down, he croaked, “You got a smoke? Ah, never mind, I keep forgetting you don’t smoke.”

  “Bad for your health,” Crowe said. “Haven’t you heard?”

  “I think I remember hearing something about that. Thought it was an old wife’s tale. Shit, I could use one. What the hell day is this?”

  Crowe told him they’d been at the farmhouse for two days now, and what Dr. Maggie had said about his condition. Chester peeked under the blankets at the bandages around his torso, frowning philosophically. “Huh,” he said. “Y’know, I thought I felt something like excruciating pain. Now I know.” Then, “Looks like you didn’t come out so well, either.”

  “You remember much about what happened?”

  He sighed and adjusted his shoulders against the pillows. “Yeah, I think so. Big-ass truck outta nowhere. A bunch of weird cats with guns and what-not. I remember… I remember a guy wearing some metal shit over his face. And... there was some Goth kid, I think. They… they got D-Lux, didn’t they?”

  Crowe nodded.

  “What the fuck?” Chester said, echoing his sentiments from that day. “What… who the hell were those fellas?”

  “Don’t know. But Vitower was here yesterday, and he wants me to find out. They sprung Murke.”

  “No shit.”

  “I’m heading back to Memphis tonight, and tomorrow morning I start asking around.”

  Chester frowned. “Asking around where? The Crazy-Ass Freako Killer Society?” He laughed at his own joke, but the exertion of it made him groan and wince. He slid down farther under the blankets. “Oh,” he said. “Ah, shit. I ain’t gonna lie to you, this hurts like a bitch.”

  Crowe studied him for a moment, thinking about how easy it would be to kill him, right here and now. Just grab one of his pillows, push it over his face, and hold it there for a few minutes. He was far too weak to be able to do anything about it.

  “Earth to Crowe,” Chester said. “You’re looking at me kinda funny.”

  Crowe gazed back out the window. “Million miles away,” he said.

  “Yeah? Well, I hope the mattresses are softer wherever you are.”

  They were dangerously close to small talk, so Crowe said, “I’ll see you around, Chester,” and headed for the door.

  Chester said, “Yeah, okay, I’ll see ya,” and then, “Hey, Crowe.”

  Crowe stopped and looked at him.

  He said, “Listen, there’s something I been meaning to say to you.”

  “Yeah?”

  He shifted painfully under his blankets. “Well, see. It’s like this. It’s about when you got sent up.”

  “What about it?”

  “I just wanted to tell you, you know. I mean, I know what you must’ve thought, what with the Old Man not doing anything to help.”

  Crowe said, “That was a long time ago.”

  “Yeah, but I think you should know. There wasn’t anything I could do, you know what I mean? He was… pissed, right? Pissed that you killed Leon. And the cops had Leon just about cold on a lot of stuff that the Old Man didn’t wanna be involved in.”

  Crowe didn’t say anything, just watched him and tried to keep the coldness out of his face.

  Chester said, “I reckon you felt… I don’t know. Betrayed? But the Old Man had to think about the organization, you know?”

  Every word he said was another layer of ice in the pit of Crowe’s stomach. Crowe had ideas back then, ideas about loyalty. Ideas about professionalism that almost bordered on sacred. He knew better now, but that didn’t stop Chester’s little speech from filling him with a sort of ebbing fury.

  He took it in hand and said, “Some reason you’re telling me all this?”

  “Well. I’m thinking about giving it all up. I’m thinking about telling Vitower I’m done. I got some money saved up, you know, and I was thinking about going into business for myself. I mean, a legit business.”

  “Like what?”

  He said, �
�Heating and cooling. I took a class, you know, and I can fix shit. I’m pretty good at it.”

  “Heating and cooling,” Crowe said.

  “Yeah. I mean, just a normal kind of life. I got a kid now. I gotta think about the future. And this whole mess, well… we kinda cut it a little close, don’t you think?”

  Crowe said, “You finished?”

  Chester frowned. “Yeah, I’m finished. I just wanted to tell you that. I don’t know why. Never mind.”

  Crowe nodded and said, “Okay. Be seeing you,” and left the room.

  Faith was drunk when he showed up. She let him in when he knocked, looked at him blankly for a long moment while he eased into the sofa, and with a voice only slightly slurred said, “Well. You look like you could use a drink.”

  “I wouldn’t say no. How do you feel about having a house-guest for a few days?”

  She said, “Mixed feelings. You don’t look like you’re up for nailing me anytime soon.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  “We’ll test that out later. For now, though…” Her perpetual rum and Pepsi was on the coffee table, but for him she went off to the kitchen and came back with a bottle of vodka that had been in the freezer and some lime soda and a glass.

  For the next three days he didn’t do much. He drank more than he should in the evening, exercised half-heartedly to keep his muscles from stiffening up. He thought about Peter Murke, and the bizarre coven of killers who’d rescued him. If Chester hadn’t seen the same thing, he might’ve become half-convinced it was all some crazy dream.

  But it wasn’t a dream. They’d been stymied by some freak-show posse, and now Peter Murke was free, and all Crowe’s plans were teetering on the brink of utter failure.

  He and Faith didn’t talk much. She was drunk, usually, but on the occasions she wasn’t she looked after him pretty well, helping him around in the mornings when the pain was at its worst, feeding him, changing bandages. She even made a trip to the farmer’s market downtown and came back with a paper bag full of fresh fruit. On the second afternoon, she went out for a couple of hours and came back with a new overcoat for him, just like the one he’d bought a few days earlier, and which was now blood-stained and lacerated. For his part, he tried at least to clean up after himself, not mention the nauseating smell of rum sweat or the increasingly tedious sex, and in the evenings, when she was at work, he drank and brooded.