Nailgun Messiah (Micah Reed Book 1)

by Jim Heskett

  He recognized this voice. The same woman who had been ranting and raving at the Indian restaurant those months ago. The tall woman with the fiery eyes and charismatic preaching style. These types were always animated and captivating, because people trust a charismatic speaker. Become receptive to the words, no matter their content.

  Footsteps echoed from inside and drew close, and he resisted the urge to flee. He was safely hidden next to the window. The window shut next to him, and he paused, then dared a peek, keeping his head as far back as possible. He could see through a sitting room into a living room, where the woman was presiding over everyone in a grand chair while as many as fifteen people sat on the rug before her. She held a black Bible in her hand, with dozens of Post-It notes jutting out from pages.

  If Benedict were right about this woman, he could guess that she had marked pages mostly in the Books of Daniel and Revelation. All prophecy and symbolism, easily open to perverted and manipulative interpretation. The vaguer the passage, the more people believed you when you claimed to have the sole correct interpretation.

  He whipped his head back before anyone could spot him outside the window. On to the next option. The other two were shut, and he approached the second cautiously, then peered inside to a darkened room. He had the troubled notion that Hannah might be at this Bible study with the rest of them. He could try to leave the note in her room, but which one was it? What if she was on the second floor? He wasn’t suited to sneaking inside and creeping past everyone in the house like some kind of secret agent.

  Maybe this had been a terrible idea.

  Still, he pressed on. He paused at the third window, taking care to keep out of view since he could see light inside the room. He edged closer and closer to the window to look. A bookcase came into focus, then a wardrobe, and then a doorway into a bathroom. He could see further along the wall with each inch he crept. Eventually, he saw a bed and a nightstand, but no people. No way to tell whose bedroom this was. He barely knew anything about this young woman who had come to him in such desperation, so how would he expect to find it on sight?

  He leaned against the house with his hands on his knees, taking long and slow breaths to consider what to do next. If only God would give him some kind of sign, but he seemed to be receiving little guidance this evening.

  “This is private property,” said a voice with a harsh and guttural tone.

  Benedict shot up straight. At the next corner of the house stood a man in a long black coat, with a baseball bat in his hand, the nose pointed at the ground. The man lurched a few steps closer, letting the bat drag through a snow drift. He had not raised the bat in anger, at least not yet.

  Benedict lifted his hands, trying to show surrender. “Easy, friend. I mean you no harm.”

  A glaze of moonlight fell on the man’s face. He was brown-skinned, with deep acne scars turning his face into something like the surface of the moon.

  “Why are you here?” the man said.

  “I’m… lost. I was looking for a house on Caribou Road.”

  “What number?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. I only know it’s on Caribou and there is a gate near the turnoff.”

  “This is 1623,” the man said as he moved closer still. Benedict backed off, but the man smiled. “Wait. I know who you are,” the man said. “You’re the priest from the Catholic church. Out selling some indulgences this evening?”

  Benedict couldn’t help staring at the baseball bat. The man still hadn’t raised it, but the arm holding it seemed tensed, ready to strike.

  “I apologize if I’ve come to the wrong house. I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”

  The man finally lifted the bat and rested it on his shoulder. Benedict could see scars up and down the wood that didn’t look as if they’d come from hitting baseballs.

  “It’s time to leave, priest. I’m only going to tell you once.”

  Rather than belabor the point, Benedict bowed his head and reversed course. He had no idea how he would get word to young Hannah that he wanted to help her, but coming here tonight hadn’t done anything to further that cause.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  As Bible study came to an end and the guests in the house were either chatting or getting ready to leave, Micah noticed Eagle entering, holding a baseball bat. He looked around, stashed the baseball bat in a broom closet, and then picked up his car keys and headed out the front door.

  Micah wondered if it had anything to do with that man he’d seen outside, skulking around the side of the house. Had Eagle scared off some would-be intruder? Or more likely, refused entrance to someone who wasn’t approved for Bible study.

  Micah ran a quick check of the room. Hannah, Magda, and Lilah were all missing from the crowd. Garrett was sitting on the floor, blankly staring at the fire popping and crackling in the fireplace.

  Micah grabbed his car keys, waited a minute, and then followed Eagle outside. He closed the door behind him quietly, trying not to attract attention from anyone inside or outside the house.

  “Hey,” a voice said to Micah’s left. Rodney was standing near the firewood pile on the porch, with a log in each hand. The motion sensor lights turned on, casting a shadowy glow on one side of his face. He was frowning. “What are you doing?”

  “Just going out for a little while.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  Micah didn’t know what to make of his housemate, the one he’d spent the most time with so far, even if that time had been guarded and superficial. Snowshoeing and discussing the Israelites’ exodus over cereal at breakfast.

  He didn’t trust Rodney, that was for sure.

  So Micah chose his words carefully. “It’s fine. I need to process what we learned in there, and I meditate best when I’m driving.”

  Rodney shifted the logs to the crook of one arm and sighed, preparing his response. He nodded his approval, which annoyed Micah, but he did his best to hide it.

  Eagle’s car crept toward the road, and Micah hurried to his Honda before Eagle got too far out of sight.

  Micah waited until Eagle had opened and shut the gate before he started his car. Rodney had already gone back inside.

  He followed Eagle down to the main road, making sure he kept a safe distance, but caught up quickly any time he lost sight of Eagle’s tail lights. He was going toward town.

  Micah patted his pants, feeling the little bump that Boba Fett’s head made in his pocket. “Okay, Boba, what would you do to unwind after you chased someone away with a baseball bat? Go down to Barker Reservoir and do some nighttime ice fishing?”

  As far as Micah knew, Eagle didn’t have a job, which was one of the main rules of the house. Everyone had to work, and give some of their money to support Lilah, since she sat on her ass and worked on the website all day. This True Manna website that was supposed to make their little religion a worldwide phenomenon, but as far as Micah knew, hadn’t done anything yet.

  Eagle drove through town and parked his car in front of Hooligan’s, a building made to look like a log cabin. Micah had never been inside before, but he knew from the glowing neon signs out front what he’d find inside. The kind of place with cheap domestic beers and sawdust on the floor. People there to screw or fight, or maybe both.

  A little tug of unease pulled at Micah’s stomach, spreading trickles of anxiety through his chest. He’d only been sober a few months, and hadn’t been to an AA meeting in two weeks. Two weeks was a long time to wait between meetings. Walking into a bar seemed like one of the most stupid things he could do, but as he watched Eagle open the door and disappear inside, Micah knew what to do.

  He had to follow Eagle. Eliminate some of the mysteries surrounding these people.

  Micah parked and walked around the back of the bar to locate an alternate door, maybe one that led through the kitchen. He found a heavy metal door on the opposite end, but it was locked. He returned to his car, donned on a different jacket, and replaced his knitted cap with a Br
oncos cap, which he pulled low to hide his face as best he could. Back at the front entrance, he cracked the door open a bit, to make sure Eagle wasn’t facing in his direction.

  When he didn’t see anything, he opened the door wide, and he saw Eagle’s long black duster jacket facing away from him, sitting at the bar.

  The room was like the inside of a barn, wooden everything and farming implements nailed to the walls at intervals. Horseshoes, saddles, pitchforks. There were maybe twenty customers inside, with a row at the bar and some at high-backed booths around the rest of the single-room establishment. Micah found an empty booth off to one side that gave him a view of the bar, and he sat, facing away from Eagle. He checked to make sure his booth wasn’t in the path to the bathroom, so Eagle wouldn’t stumble upon him.

  Micah pulled his cap low and turned his head at the right angle to see Eagle out of his peripheral, but still retreat behind the booth’s wall, if he had to.

  After a few minutes of no excitement, a server approached his table, with a tablet computer in one hand, casting a glow on her shirt. She wore a collection of necklaces with different kinds of crystals, all of them clinking as they rolled around in the space above her cleavage.

  “Hey,” she said. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were back here. Little busier than we were expecting tonight. Anyway, you don’t care about that, so what can I get you?”

  Micah hesitated a split second as his unease turned into a thudding heartbeat in his chest. He’d ordered thousands of drinks from waitresses like this one. Not ordering a drink seemed foreign to him. “Diet Coke, please.”

  “Only a diet? We’re doing two-for-one on domestics until ten.”

  He cleared his throat. “Just a diet.”

  She slipped the tablet in her pocket without entering anything and walked back to the bar. Micah sneaked a glimpse at Eagle, who was now working on his third or fourth beer-and-shot combo.

  As his heart rate slowly eased, Micah wondered if he would ever feel comfortable around alcohol. He’d heard stories in meetings about people who’d been sober for years, who kept it in their houses to serve to guests, without feeling tempted themselves. Micah didn’t see how he could get there, when alcohol invaded his thoughts dozens of times a day.

  He slipped a hand into his pocket and squeezed Boba Fett’s head, which eased his tension a little.

  After the server dropped off his Diet Coke and told him it was on the house, he thanked her and went back to studying Eagle. The dark stranger’s eyes were on the bar, only looking up every few minutes to order more alcohol. While the bar stools to either side of him were occupied, neither he nor his stool-mates made any attempt at conversation.

  Micah wondered how long he would have to be absent before someone at the house noticed. They didn’t have a literal curfew, but people seemed to stay in and keep to themselves in the evenings, Bible study or not.

  Another half hour later, Micah caught a familiar face strutting into the bar. Micah stared at the bearded man for a second as he hung his brown Carhartt jacket on a hook next to the front door. Then it hit him. This was the same man from the hardware store the other day, the guy who had asked him about drills and then fled when he realized Micah was a resident of 1623 Caribou Road.

  Micah ducked back into his booth when the man headed his way, then waited a couple moments before checking again. The man slid his ample butt onto the now-free barstool next to Eagle, and he raised a hand to catch the bartender’s attention.

  Someone had turned the music up a few minutes ago, and Micah couldn’t hear conversations at the bar over the loud jangle of bluegrass pumping from the speakers. But he saw the whole scenario go down.

  Eagle turned his head to the man and said something. The man also turned his head, and said something in reply. They talked to each other for thirty seconds, both of them straightening their backs to make themselves taller. The conversation was becoming an argument, and their faces tightened as the quarrel swelled.

  The man stood, and Eagle swept his duster back as he also got to his feet. They pointed fingers at each other’s chests, their mouths spitting incomprehensible words in a flurry of motion.

  Eagle threw the first punch. He decked the bearded guy in the gut, which knocked him back a few steps, arms pinwheeling. The guy recovered and tried to throw a slow and lumbering punch, but Eagle sidestepped the jab and countered with a hard slap to the man’s face.

  This fight had been going on less than two full seconds, but a half dozen people on either side sprung into action. Someone jumped in the middle, and people were trying to hold both of them back.

  Micah could read the violence in Eagle’s black eyes. The pure hatred. The bearded guy looked mad, but nothing compared to the malice on Eagle’s face. As if he could pull out a gun and shoot the man in the forehead as easily as slapping him.

  Since they couldn’t get at each other with all the people intervening, Eagle raised his hands in a truce, and Bearded Guy jerked his head toward the door. They were going to take it outside.

  Micah scrambled to get his wallet so he could throw a couple bucks on the table for the server, then he waited until both Eagle and the guy had headed for the door before leaving his booth. A small crowd followed, and Micah hurried to catch up with them so he could blend in. With his cap low and wearing a different jacket he’d kept in the trunk of his car, he figured he could stay back and remain unnoticed.

  Micah joined a group of ten people outside in the cold as Eagle and the guy faced off in the parking lot. The air lit up with the flurry of snow like thin flakes of soap cascading toward the ground.

  “You should walk away now,” Eagle said. His words were deep and low, like a movie trailer voiceover. “This will get ugly for you.”

  “Why are you freaks even here?” the guy said. He turned to the crowd, maybe an attempt to win them over to his side, but he didn’t get any more words out. Eagle pounced on him, clocking the guy with a right hook that sent him spinning to the ground.

  Eagle stood over him as Bearded Guy spit blood into the freshly-fallen snow. “Do not stand up. Do not follow me.”

  Eagle didn’t wait for a reply, instead he strode off and away from the parking lot. Micah folded back into the crowd and lowered his head so he wouldn’t be spotted, and when he looked up, Eagle was walking toward First Street.

  But his car was still in the parking lot.

  Micah started off after him, before Eagle could disappear. Micah followed him down First, past the town’s visitor center and the gem shop, and then Eagle disappeared into an alley between two restaurants. Micah broke out into a jog, but when he reached the alley, Eagle was gone.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  10 DAYS UNTIL

  Lilah climbed the rickety steps of the basement, wiping dirty hands on her pants. Dust and cobwebs hung in the still air, suspended like fish in frozen water. The dead skin and spiders would end up ruling the world, eventually. Or whatever was left of it after the humans abandoned it for a better place.

  She unlocked the door from the inside to let herself out, then she shut the door and locked it from the outside. The key lived on a chain around her neck, and Eagle had the only other copy in the world. Their friend in the basement had to remain a secret.

  So much hinged on that little fact that she actively had to force herself not to think of it often. She could become consumed with it, let herself be dragged into panic attacks because of it.

  When she turned, Eagle filled her vision, like a dark ghost in the hallway with his long black coat and shirt. Her heart sizzled like a lightning bolt that dissipated as it spread out through her chest and down her spine.

  “You scared the crap out of me,” she said.

  His face was grim and tensed. “We need to talk.”

  He nodded to the kitchen and led her out the back door. The sunny winter day had reduced much of yesterday’s snowfall into water, killing all but the clumps that lived in the shadows of bigger objects and leaving the yard a sea of br
own muck. They strolled through the mud toward the barbed wire fence, and he paused, wrapping his hands around it. He touched one of the barbs with a fingertip.

  “What?” she said.

  “The priest from the Catholic church in town.”

  Lilah immediately knew who he was talking about. She’d seen him, that Father Benedict, casting scowls at her whenever they crossed paths at the grocery store or strolled past each other in Chipeta Park.

  “What about him?”

  “He was here last night, at the house.”

  “What are you talking about?” she said. “Here for Bible study? I would have seen him.”

  Eagle shook his head. “Sneaking around outside, looking into windows. I confronted him and he ran off.”

  Lilah’s anger rose. The skin on her arms tingled and crawled, and she crossed her arms and dug her fingers into her flesh to neutralize it. “Why didn’t you tell me about this yesterday when it happened?”

  “I had an errand to run, then I had to go to work.”

  She pursed her lips. “And you couldn’t have called me?”

  “I was busy. He didn’t come inside or see anything he shouldn’t have, so I didn’t think of it as an emergency.”

  Her hands began to shake and she slipped them into her pockets so Eagle wouldn’t see. “Did you at least find out what he wanted?”

  Eagle shook his head. The Indian could be so damn stubborn and blank sometimes that it drove her insane. As if he lived in his own world of unconnected priorities, an island from the rest of them.

  “I can take care of this, if you want,” he said.

  Lilah shook her head. “No, we need to be careful. With the website… we don’t need the extra scrutiny. I’ll find some other way.”

  His head tilted an inch, enough to give his eyes the impression of judgment. This added to her ire, but she wasn’t mad at Eagle. Not his fault. Before she could get any angrier, she spun, muttered something about needing alone time, and stormed back into the house.