by Tonia Brown
“Such as?” Jonah asked, his mind conjuring terrible requirements, such as walking across hot coals or swallowing buckets of broken glass.
Satan chewed his cigar and eyed Jonah. “You have to do this the old-fashioned way.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“Come on now, lad, you know exactly what I mean. A good, old-fashioned road trip. Gas up the car. Load up on snacks. Crack out the maps.” Satan stressed the last word long and slow, as if there were some hidden meaning behind it. He pulled hard on the cigar—its glowing tip an angry red with the intake of breath—then blew a puff of smoke that faintly resembled the outline of the United States. The States smoke shape lingered in front of Jonah for a moment before it floated away. “What do you say, son? You look like the kind of guy who can read a map.”
“Yeah, I suppose I can.” The coincidence was too much. Jonah wondered just how much the Devil knew, how much was guesswork, and how much was designed to irk him. “So essentially no GPS—”
“Instant point A to point B? No. You don’t need advice from the heavens. Keep your feet on the ground. Plan your route by hand, just like your forefathers did. Then it’s just you and your little red car and the wide open road.” Lucifer paused to rap his knuckles on the Focus’s hood. “I’m sure that hunk of junk can take it. And if all else fails, why, just put your thumb to the wind and wear your best smile.”
“Then I have to stick to driving, with no… um… modern help.”
“Hell, I don’t care if you ride a bicycle. But if I catch ya using any highfalutin’ gadgets, you forfeit and I win. Got it?”
“I think I got it.” Jonah was glad he’d left the tempting GPS at home.
“Then stop sounding so glum about it. I want this to be an experience. It’s meant to be an adventure. I want you to have stories to share when you’re done.”
Confused by the sentimental tone, Jonah echoed, “You want stories?”
“Hell yes, I want stories! Why do you think I’m agreeing to this circus?”
“Then why not just go find stories and leave us alone?”
A smile gleamed around the cigar. “Where’s the fun in that?”
“Of course,” Jonah grumbled, suspecting he was about to get very tired of hearing that phrase.
“Besides, there’s nothing better than a road trip for cooking up the best yarns. I’ve been on some amazing road trips myself. Of course, back in my day, road trips were more intense.” As he chewed on the burning cigar, Satan absentmindedly scratched at the label of the beer bottle and stared into the distance at nothing in particular. His sapphire eyes gleamed with memories. “Yeah, back in my day, every trip was a road trip. Me and the guys would pack up and head out for some godforsaken spot. And I when I say godforsaken, I really mean godforsaken.”
He paused, mid-speech, to let out a little giggle.
“I remember this one mule in Macedonia,” Satan continued, “who would suck on anything, and I mean anything, for an hour straight without stopping. Granted, first you had to jam a finger up his-” the Devil stopped short in his reminiscing as he looked back to Jonah, who was doing his best not to appear as appalled as he felt.
Satan, on the other hand, seemed amused by the mortal’s discomfort. “Yeah, you don’t want to know about that. Man, oh man. What I wouldn’t give to go with you. Take a week off, see the sights. Sounds like a laugh.”
“Sounds like a nightmare,” Jonah whispered.
Satan shrugged away the dismay. “Six in one hand, half dozen in the other. But no need to fret, I ain’t got time for such excursions. Hell don’t run itself, you know. Now, what’s next on your little list of requirements? Or are we ready to call this a deal?”
“Um …” Jonah scrambled for possible concessions. It wasn’t often a man had the Devil at his mercy. “Dale’s soul has to stay in one place.”
“It will. Ain’t that a basic rule of hide and seek? In fact, I already have the perfect little hidey-hole picked out. Anything else?”
“You… you… you have to leave me alone. Don’t interfere.”
Clenching the cigar tightly in the corner of his mouth, Satan glared at Jonah, hand over heart, as if aghast at the very idea. “Me? Interfere?”
“You know what I mean. You and your supposed network of spies have to leave me alone. No tricks.”
“No tricks,” the Devil repeated, as he raised his forefingers in a very Boy Scout manner.
“No traps.”
“You have my word. I promise not to interfere.” Satan then lowered his hand, proffering it to Jonah as he asked, “Do we have a deal?”
Jonah stared at the hand of the Devil, knowing what he was about to do was wrong but unable to keep from falling for it. He clasped Satan’s hand—warm and strong and tingling with unspeakable power—into his own—pale and clammy and as limp as a dead fish. Jonah gave Satan’s hand a curt shake. “We have a deal.”
With his blue eyes twinkling in the California sun and a smile so bright that it hurt to look at, Satan said, “Excellent.”
The Devil clutched down hard on Jonah’s hand for a moment too long, and with the extra contact, Jonah picked up the ominous sensation that he had just made the worst mistake of his life. When the Devil finally released his hand, Jonah was already regretting the loss of his own soul, as if it had come to pass even before the seven days were done.
“Then I’ll be off,” Satan said, as he tossed the butt of his cigar to the gravel and pressed it under the heel of his expensive-looking shoes. Pointing the bottle of Dale’s soul at Jonah for emphasis, the Devil added, “You have a long trip ahead of you. I’d suggest getting started right away.”
“Wait a minute,” Jonah said. “What about that?” He nodded to Dale’s corpse.
“What about it? He’s your problem now. But then again, hasn’t he always been?”
Jonah’s eyes widened. “I can’t drag a corpse all over the country for a week while looking for you. What if he, you know, rots?”
“Oh, no, no, no. That’s the fun of the thing. You gotta find his soul before his body turns to soup. That was the deal. You bring me Dale’s body in a week and I return his soul to it.” Satan gasped as he tipped his head to one side and feigned a look of exaggerated surprise. “Did I fail to mention that part?”
The gravity, the truth, the whole of the situation fell on Jonah at that moment. As much as he’d tried to remain in control, as much as he’d tried to make up the rules, as much as he’d determined he would not be tricked, he had, in fact, just been tricked. “Yeah, you kind of failed to mention that part.”
“Sorry,” Satan said with a smile that looked anything but sorrowful. “Must have slipped my mind.”
“I see.” Jonah shouldn’t have been surprised. He expected something underhanded, but this was just wrong. And stupid. “So essentially you want to reenact some road trip version of Weekend at Bernie’s?”
“Excuse me?”
“You know, the movie where they drag around—”
Satan held up his hand to silence Jonah. “Yes, yes, I know the plot. Ugh, I try so hard to forget about that celluloid disaster. Thanks a lot for reminding me about it. Whatever happened to good movies? That’s what I want to know. Actors used to have such pride in their profession. And now, it’s all flash-in-the-pan dead humor. Every pun intended.” Under his breath, but just loud enough for Jonah to hear, Satan added, “Why is it every time I try to get someone to carry around a dead body, they always bring up that damned movie?”
Sensing a sore spot, Jonah smirked, then lowered himself to a crouch over Dale’s corpse. He picked up a limp arm and said, “Maybe I can rig a wire to make him wave at passing cars.” Jonah wiggled Dale’s dead hand at Satan.
“Don’t be so gauche. I’ll tell you what. Let’s make this a little easier on both of us. Shall we?” With a slight grunt, the Devil nodded at Dale’s corpse.
Jonah waited for something to happen.
Nothing did.
A
t least nothing immediate.
“How are you going… to… make …” Jonah started, but his words trailed off when he realized the dead hand he held was twitching. He lowered his gaze to Dale’s corpse just in time to see the body jerk once. Then twice. Jonah dropped the now-thrashing arm and leapt back, crawling up the hood of the Focus, recoiling in horror.
Dale groaned a long, low moan before he flopped over onto his back. There, the corpse writhed, bones cracking, cartilage creaking, as the body twisted into shapes most unnatural. Under the heat of the afternoon sun, Dale’s mortal coil danced macabre on the blacktopped shoulder of the California highway, wriggling and wiggling, shucking and jiving, shaking and baking, until, as if its dime had been spent, the thing fell still again.
Jonah held his breath, hoping that was the end of the gruesome display, but inexplicably confident that it wasn’t quite finished. Something was to follow. Something terrible. Something ominous. And given all the time left in the universe, with an extra Sunday to boot, he could never have guessed what that something was. What happened next not only surprised the young Jonah, it almost killed him on the spot with the shock of it all. As Jonah looked on, the corpse’s eyelids shot open, wide and wonderful, and the corpse sat up.
And the once-dead Dale declared, for all the world to hear, “Whoa. Did anyone get the number of that bus?”
Chapter Five
Still on the shoulder of I-80, California
Not expecting the corpse of his best friend to sit up, much less to speak, Jonah did what any young man in his situation would have done. He screamed. And it wasn’t just a simple little shriek, either. No. He screamed long and loud and with a slight feminine timbre that would have embarrassed him had it been played back on a recording. But in that particular moment, he didn’t care. The scream came from a place deep within. A lot of passion and communication went into that scream. It not only conveyed certain emotions—which included but were not limited to fear—it also implied at least one of a variety of statements.
The scream said something like, “I am not pleased with this turn of events.”
Or perhaps, “This was a bit unexpected. Please excuse me while I sort this out.”
Or maybe the presumptuous, “Oh, what is this now? Really? This whole corpse revitalization thing is just passé. Yawn. Where’s Mary Shelley when you need her?”
But most likely, the scream said, “Holy fuck! My dead best friend just came back to life and is talking to me! What in the hell is going on? I think I might be crazy!”
“Calm down,” Satan demanded.
Jonah ignored the Daddy of Demons and kept on screaming.
“Yeah, buddy,” Dale said, as he got to his feet. “Calm down.”
Jonah almost choked on his own scream at the casual tone of the corpse’s request. His eyes bugged as he coughed and sputtered and squirmed on the hood of the Focus, until he finally gained enough composure to put forth a retort. “Calm down? Calm down? You were dead ten seconds ago, and now you’re not, and you want me to calm down?”
Dale scrunched up his face, wrinkling his nose and narrowing his eyes as he touched a fingertip to his chin and stared off into the distance. He stayed like this for what seemed to Jonah an unnatural amount of time.
“Dale?” Jonah finally asked.
“Shhh,” Satan hissed. “Can’t you see he’s busy?”
Jonah went quiet for a few more seconds, staring hard at the screwed-up face of his once-dead best friend. “What’s he doing?”
Satan nodded at Dale and said, in a very serious voice, “He’s trying to think.”
“Think?” Jonah asked, and with the question, he knew something was amiss.
More than anything, Jonah wanted Dale to be alive. He wanted this whole terrible affair to be over and done. And if he had been just a wee bit less clever, he might’ve assumed that that very thing had happened. He might have thought that the Dale standing before him, the Dale scrunching up his face and putting every synapse in his surely tired mind to work, was the old Dale. The regular Dale. His Dale. But even as he wished it, even as he longed for it, Jonah knew it wasn’t true—despite the fact that the man in question was scratching his ass with one hand while adjusting his junk with the other, both very classic Dale moves. But regardless of this characteristic ass scratchery and junk shiftery, one simple fact remained.
Dale Jenkins—at least, the one Jonah knew—didn’t think.
With a trembling finger, Jonah pointed to the glowing beer bottle in Satan’s hands and asked, “If Dale is still in there, then how can his body be all—umm—up and about?”
Satan laughed aloud, amused by Jonah’s confusion. “You ain’t gotta have a soul to walk and talk. I think quite a few mortals have proved that in the past.”
“No soul,” Jonah echoed, trying hard to understand what that implied.
“Yeah. But trust me, you’ll hardly notice the difference.”
The newly risen Dale ignored the pair and continued his deliberation.
“What’s taking him so long?” Jonah asked in a whisper.
Satan whispered in return, “Thoughts move much slower when one is dead.”
That was it, then. Dale wasn’t alive. He was dead. Jonah thought as much, but to hear it put in such final terms made it seem, well, final.
Final, but still unreal.
And still unbelievable.
“You’re telling me Dale’s body is still dead?” Jonah asked.
“Nope,” Satan said. “He’s undead.”
The words didn’t make any sense to Jonah. But then again, nothing made sense to him anymore. He was beginning to believe that he was in the throes of one very long, very silly nightmare. That, or Dale had slipped another hit of LSD in his apple juice and they were both still back at the house, tripping balls. “Undead. That’s preposterous. Either he’s alive or dead. There is nothing else.”
“Yes, there is,” Satan insisted. “There are sixteen states of being, son. ‘Alive’ and ‘dead’ are just party tricks compared to the others.”
Forgetting the dead-undead dilemma for a fraction of a moment, Jonah asked with genuine interest, “What are the others?”
“That’s too theological for me to get into with the likes of you.” Satan grinned and shook his head, obviously pleased at keeping such secrets to himself. “Besides, theology ain’t my bag. Ask the Man Upstairs. He just loves shit like that.”
Jonah decided to back up and try again. “Is Dale alive?”
“No.”
“Then he’s dead.”
“No, he’s undead.”
Jonah grunted. This was frustrating. Like some twisted, unholy Abbott and Costello routine. He lay back against the windshield of the car and heaved a long sigh before he spoke again. “Okay, from the top. That is a corpse.”
“Yup.” Satan stowed the bottle in his jacket again.
“And physically—just physically speaking—it is dead.”
Satan produced another cigar and lit it as he answered. “Dead as a can of ham.”
“But it’s talking.”
“Yup.”
“And standing of its own accord.”
“It would seem so.”
Jonah sat up and eyed the corpse, which was still frozen in mid-thought. “And it’s thinking.”
“Actually,” Satan corrected between puffs, “I do believe I said he’s trying to think.”
“Trying. Yes. I see the difference. Then—and forgive me for seeming so adamant about this—but based on the whole walking and talking and trying to think thing, logic dictates that he’s not dead.”
“Which he isn’t.”
Jonah smiled for the briefest of moments, almost sure he had a grasp on what was happening. Then Satan went and ruined it by opening his fat mouth.
“He’s undead.” Gnawing on the cigar a moment, Satan gave Jonah a sideways glance, as if measuring the mortal’s worth. “I thought Dale said you were smart. You talk like you’re smart, but I’m beginning t
o wonder.”
“Look, is that Dale or not?” Jonah asked. “That’s all I want to know.”
“Yes and no.”
Jonah screamed in frustration and drummed his fists against the hood beneath him. “Why can’t you just give me a straight answer?”
Satan’s smile was harsh and empty as he repeated his tired mantra. “Now, what would be the fun in that?”
“Okay.” Jonah slid down the hood of the Focus, shoulders slumped in defeat before his shoes touched the gravel. “I get it now. This is all just a game, and you’re very amused by my confusion. I get it. Ha, ha. Joke’s on me.”
The cold grin melted, not into a warm smile, but instead into a pout. Satan patted Jonah on the back. “Aw, come on. Don’t take it so personal, kid. I know this is rough, and I must seem like a complete jackass, but trust me. This is what you wanted. Better yet, it’s what you needed.”
“But… why?”
Satan shrugged. “You said you couldn’t drag a corpse around the whole U.S. while looking for me. Now you don’t have to.”
“But that thing is dead.”
“No, he’s …” Satan started, then shook his head as if thinking better of it. “You know what, forget about semantics, okay? He’s dead. Dead, dead, dead. Right?”
