by Tonia Brown
“What do you expect me to say?” Satan asked. “I know you’ve had very little experience with women, son, so let me enlighten you. When a woman makes up her mind, there is nothing you can say to change it.”
“Then do something. Like you did with me. Like the trick with the keys.”
“Jonah, I’m a demon, not a dog.”
“Please.”
“Something to help her believe you?”
Jonah nodded.
Satan grinned, wide and weird. “Now where’s the fun in that?”
“Ugh!” Jonah moaned under the Devil’s wild laugh. “You’re useless!”
“Both of you can just save your breath,” Candy said. “Because there is nothing you can say that will ever make me believe either of you. I don’t know how you two know each other,” she pointed her finger at Lucifer, “or how you got past Jack’s men if you aren’t working for them. But there is one thing I know for a fucking fact, boys. Mark my words when I say this. There is nothing, and I mean not a single thing, in the known or unknown universe that either of you can do or say or even dream up that will make me believe this bullshit story of yours.”
At the inflection of her last remark, a mere millisecond after the word ‘story’ left her lips, a series of muffled cries and shouts seeped into the hotel room. Desperate roars echoed through the cheap motel walls as the men beyond called back and forth to one another.
“Jesus, Murray!” a man cried. “What the hell is that thing?”
“Get down!” another yelled. “Let me get a clear shot!”
The cries and shouts soon degenerated into pure screaming, accompanied by soft cracks that could have been smashing furniture, or even muffled gunplay.
“What’s going on?” Candy asked.
“I can’t imagine,” Jonah said. He looked to Satan and, not surprisingly, the Devil was staring back, wearing his customary shit-eating grin.
Then the screaming stopped. One moment there were hollers for help, then there was nothing at all. In the vacuum of the absent chaos, everything else seemed abnormally loud. Jonah glanced at Candy, who had moved ever so slightly closer to him and was now clutching his arm, her breath heavy as an angry bulldog’s snorts in the sudden silence.
He whispered, “Should we go check it out?”
“Hell, no,” she whispered. “Jack’s got all kinds of enemies. There could be anyone out there. Could be the real mafia. I don’t want to get wrapped up with them. Do you?”
“But if they are Jack’s rivals, then they should be our friends. Right?”
Candy cut her eyes at Jonah. “You don’t get out in the real world very much, do you?” She tossed a nod to the Devil. “You go. If you really are Satan, you’ve got nothing to lose. How ‘bout it, Big Red? You up for a little exploring?”
Satan laughed at her request, soft and low, the sound of an empty breeze rolling through a cold, forgotten mausoleum. Just over the Devil’s laughter came another sound. A thump. Two thumps. Three, then four. Footsteps. Whoever had visited the men in the other room was now coming up the hallway to call on Jonah and Candy.
Candy tightened her grip on Jonah’s arm and drew closer to him. Jonah swallowed hard and prayed that whatever divine forces watched over the world would see it in their hearts to take care of her. He knew it was useless to pray for himself; his soul was lost. But the least he could do was offer a word of recommendation for her, if his word meant anything. With this last prayer, Jonah grabbed Candy by the hand, and was pleased to find that she didn’t resist his touch. Another time, another world—maybe, just maybe, they could have made a go of it. They could have found each other. They could have found love.
With this fiery beauty in hand, Jonah closed his eyes and prepared to meet his fate. The door hinges creaked in a protracted, guttural groan. Jonah felt the presence of someone joining them in the small room. Time stretched into impossible lengths, the space between heartbeats seeping through eons of utter torment.
Until Candy finally asked, “You?”
Jonah opened his eyes to the most glorious sight he thought he would ever see.
“Jonah!” Dale Jenkins shouted from the doorway.
“Oh, thank God!” Jonah cried. He felt the Devil cringe, but didn’t care one whit.
The zombie raced across the room and flung himself at Jonah, hugging and hugging and hugging, almost as if he never intended to let the living man go. “Jesus, Jonah. I thought you were dead.” At last, with a final pat and squeeze, he released Jonah.
“Man, it is so good to see you.” Trying to get to his unsteady feet, Jonah barely noticed that Candy had let go of his hand. “I thought you were really gone this time.”
“You, too,” Dale said, as he lent Jonah a strong shoulder to lean on. “I thought they killed you.”
“It takes a little more than some goons with guns to put me down.”
“Yeah, I’m the expert at putting you down.” Dale held Jonah by the shoulders and declared, “You’re ugly and your mother dresses you funny.”
The men laughed together, and for a single sweet second, all seemed right.
“No,” Candy whispered.
Jonah, who had almost forgotten about her in the face of this new development, turned to find Candy cowering against the dresser again.
“Y-y-you,” she stammered. “D-d-d-dead.”
The zombie stepped between Jonah and Candy, pushing Jonah behind him, as if acting as a shield for the injured man. On some level, Jonah was touched by the thoughtful act. “Watch her, Jonah. I think the bitch is with those assholes.”
“She’s not,” Jonah said. “I mean, she was, but now she’s not, and, well… it’s kind of complicated.”
“Oh. If you say so.” Dale backed off and raised his crimson-coated hand in greeting. “Sorry about the whole ‘bitch’ thing.”
Candy didn’t seem to notice the insult. “You were dead!”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.”
“Forgot? They shot you. I was there!”
“I know. You cried.” Dale nudged Jonah. “She cried.”
“You were dead!” she shouted again.
“He still is,” Jonah said.
“Actually,” Satan said, “he’s undead. If you want to get technical.”
Candy stared at the three of them, zombie and demon and Jonah, as if they were the strangest things on the face of the earth. Which, to be fair to the poor girl, they were. And to her credit, she didn’t scream. Didn’t run. Didn’t faint or freak out. She just stood and stared, openmouthed and royally flabbergasted. Jonah gave her a moment to absorb it all.
Without looking away from them, she crossed the room and sat on the bed, trembling, and as pale as the sheets beneath her. “I think I’m losing my mind.”
Jonah sat beside her. “I know how you feel.”
“He was dead.” Candy locked gazes with Jonah, a flood of emotions racing behind her eyes. Confusion, worry, dread, fear. “I saw him go down. I saw him bleed to death.”
“I know, but …” Jonah motioned to Dale. “There he is.”
“But just look at him.”
Whereas Dale could at least pass for a living member of the human race before, he had little chance of pulling that trick off now. The dead man’s chest was a blackened waste of flesh, ripped and torn asunder by the same violence that gored Jonah’s knee. There was a good-sized hole straight through Dale’s right pectoral; Jonah caught glimpses of the other side of the room through the gap. The zombie’s stomach, however, was swollen, bloated almost to the point of popping the button on his slacks. His color was beyond sallow, edging into a sickly blue-green. His lips were dark, as was his tongue, while his eyes bore a filmy cloud. Atop all of this was a bright sheen of red, flowing in fresh rivulets from his mouth to his waist, and soaking him from fingertips to elbows.
Jonah ran his hand down his own shirt and pulled away a crimson palm. He pushed this discovery out of his mind, already knowing but not ready to deal with the probabilities
of why Dale was covered in warm, sticky blood. And why his stomach was swollen.
“He can’t be alive,” Candy said. “It’s not natural.”
“He isn’t alive,” Jonah said. “He’s dead.”
“He’s undead,” Satan added.
“He’s walking around,” Candy argued. “He can’t be dead.”
“He’s dead,” Jonah said again.
“He’s undead,” Satan repeated.
“He’s right here!” Dale shouted. “Stop talking about me like I’m in the other fucking room. Makes me feel like I’m the little retarded son or something.”
Candy fought a giggle and lost. “Well, you’re definitely Dale. That’s for sure.”
“Yes,” Jonah said. “And he’s dead. I know it’s hard to believe, but—”
“No it’s not. Hell, there’s the proof right there. You can’t argue with that.”
Jonah couldn’t deny that he was pleased by her acquiescence, but it seemed, well, a little too easy. “You’re taking this awfully well. I mean, when I first saw him come back from the dead, I screamed.”
“Like a little girl,” Dale added.
Jonah flinched. “Thanks for that.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Well, now,” Satan said, rubbing his hands together. “This is all well and good, but we have a bet to settle.”
Dale dug around in his pocket for a moment, then pulled out a set of familiar-looking keys and jingled them at Jonah. “Let’s get back on the road, buddy.”
Jonah took his keys from the zombie. “My car is here?”
“Yeah. How did you think I made it back here? Hitched a ride?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just didn’t think about it.”
“Seriously, dude. Would you pick me up?”
“Wow.” Jonah stared down at his keys. “This is incredibly fortuitous. Considering just how shitty everything else has gone.”
“If ‘fortuitous’ is French for ‘sweet’, then yeah, it is.”
“How did you follow us all the way here without them noticing you?”
Dale shrugged. “I didn’t have to. Those morons who rolled me into the ditch were awful chatty. One of the guys said, ‘Jack’s gonna be pissed we waxed this one.’ Then another guy said, ‘If Mr. Diamond wanted it done his way, he shoulda done it himself.’ Then the first guy said that he dreaded riding all the way back to Reno with that pussy whining about his fucking knee.” Dale leaned over and whispered, “I think he meant you, Jonah.”
“Yeah, I got that impression.”
“So it was sort of easy to find you after that. I mean, there’s only one Jack Diamond in Reno that I know of.”
“How do you know Jack?” Candy asked, returning to her defensive tone.
“He’s the douchebag that hired us.”
“Oh my God,” Jonah said. “Jack of Diamonds was the gig.”
“Yup,” Dale said.
Coincidence upon coincidence. Fluke upon fluke. Too much happenstance and chance matched up for Jonah’s taste. He started to get the sneaking suspicion that the plot of this whole affair had been written long before any of the characters became aware of their roles.
“Gentlemen?” Satan asked, tapping his Rolex.
“Yeah, yeah,” Dale said. “We’re going.”
Jonah knew that wasn’t what Satan meant. “No, Dale. We can’t. It’s… it’s over.”
“What do you mean ‘it’s over’? It’s just started. You got to act like the hero. I got a meal I could finally enjoy for once. We got our wheels. Let’s hit the fucking road!”
“It’s not that easy.” Jonah decided to gloss over the whole meal thing.
“Sure it is. I know we don’t have a whole lot of time left, but we can make it. I know we can. Speaking of time, one of those fuckers had this on him.” Dale pulled the Devil’s timer from his back pocket and held it out to Jonah. “Here you go.”
Staring down at the blood-covered watch, Jonah frowned. He was close in his estimates. They had less than twenty-seven hours before they lost everything. He pushed the watch away and sighed. “Dale, we can’t make it. There’s not enough time.”
“I thought we had two days.”
“We did. But we lost a lot of it when they brought us back here.”
“I forgot about that.” Dale turned the watch to his own eyes. “We still got lots of time left.”
“No. We don’t. It takes almost forty hours to make it to the opposite coast.”
“We can make it.”
“No, we can’t.”
“Sure we can; it’s just a matter of picking the right routes.”
Jonah huffed in exasperation. “It has nothing to do with routes. We can’t make it from here to there in twenty-seven hours. We’d need at least twelve more hours.”
“We can’t the way you drive.”
“It’s not me! It’s impossible!”
“Are you guys serious?” Candy asked.
Jonah and Dale stopped their bickering and looked to her.
“About this whole racing for your soul thing,” she explained. “You’re being serious?”
“As serious as death,” Dale said.
And Jonah, despite his higher IQ, couldn’t have put it any better himself. “So you believe us now?”
After thinking about it for a moment, she confessed, “I believe I’ve gone crazy.”
Jonah grinned. “I believe that makes two of us.”
“Yeah, well, I believe we can still make it,” Dale said.
“And I believe you gentlemen have a choice to make,” Satan said. “Either spend your last few hours running around like headless poultry, or just give up and save yourselves the humiliation of defeat.”
“No way are we giving up,” Dale said.
“Satan’s right,” Jonah said. “Why drag it out? It’s over.”
“Don’t be such a pussy!”
“Stop calling me a pussy just because I recognize the truth when I see it!”
“We could at least try.”
“There’s no trying. It’s too far, and we don’t have enough time!”
“There’s plenty of time if you’d get your head out of your vagina!”
“We can’t make it. Jesus, Dale! How many ways do I gotta say it?”
Amidst this squabbling, Candy asked, “How much am I worth?”
Again, the guys stopped arguing and looked to her.
“Well?” she asked as she stood. Turning in place, slowly, she ran her hands along the length of her body. “How much?”
Jonah considered the question, and the trap he was sure lay hidden within.
Dale, however, didn’t hesitate to spring the damned thing. He advanced on Candy, running his withered tongue over his dry lips as he evaluated her worth. “I’d give you a hundred an hour, easy. Two if you swallow. Three if you felch.”
“I’m not talking to you,” Candy snapped. She pushed Dale away, giving her a clear view of Satan. Or rather, giving the Devil a clear view of her. She returned to spinning in place, caressing her body and asking, “How much? What am I worth to you?”
“I’m with the dead guy,” Satan said. “Three if you’ll felch. I haven’t had that done in a long, long time.”
“I meant in hours, you dickhead.”
“That was per hour.” From the mysterious confines of his coat, Lucifer produced a cigar and lit it with his fingertip. After a few puffs, he added, “I’m feeling generous, so we can negotiate for more if we must. And it’s Mr. Dickhead. You should learn to respect your elders, young lady.”
Candy wasn’t amused by Satan’s levity. “You know what I mean, Mr. Dickhead. If these two idiots are worth a week between them, surely I’m worth a few days?”
That was when Jonah got it. And he didn’t like it. Not one bit. “No.” He wanted to stand, but couldn’t gain purchase under his agonizing knee. Flailing on the bed like a turtle trying to right itself, he shouted, “No! No! No! You’re not going to do this!”
> She ignored him. “Come on. How much?”
“How do you know you aren’t already mine?” Satan’s eyes gleamed with mischief.
“I just know.”
“Confident, aren’t we?”
“Hun, growing up as the daughter of a Southern Baptist preacher has taught me one thing above all else.”
“Which is …?”
Candy brought her hands together in front of her, palm against palm as she batted her eyelashes and explained, “Redemption’s just a prayer away.”
“Nice.” Satan stepped closer to Candy, running his eyes along the length of her body. “I like a girl who isn’t afraid to beg.”
“I never beg. I bargain.” She stroked her hips and belly and breasts, very sensually, as she lowered her voice to a purr, and asked, “So, how much time am I worth?”
“How much time do you want?”
“No!” Jonah yelled again, finally getting to his feet and limping his way in between the bargaining pair. “Damn it! I won’t allow this.”
“Nobody asked you,” Satan said. “This is between me and the little lady. Now kindly step aside.”
