Coven

by David Barnett

  “Fuck him,” Lydia answered. She cocked the Trooper and pointed it at Besser’s head.

  “Yes!” Besser begged. “Please!”

  Lydia looked baffled. “You want me to kill you?”

  “For God’s sake, yes! Don’t leave me for the Supremate!”

  Wade remembered the hash room, Besser’s inheritance, no doubt, for failure. “Leave the fat fucker,” he said.

  “Noooooo!” Besser wailed. “Pleeeeeeease, nooooooo!”

  Lydia reholstered the Trooper. She and Wade left the warren as Besser’s pleas faded behind them.

  She led him toward the next extromitter, explaining how she’d killed the sisters with the ultraviolet spotter. It wasn’t sunlight that killed them, it was the UV rays of the sun’s spectrum. Wade was impressed by her ingenuity, and also her faith. She’d come into this horrid place for him.

  Then suddenly, she stopped. “Wade, before we go on, there’s something I have to tell you.”

  “What’s that. babe?”

  “I love you.”

  “Uh.” Wade hemmed. “Yeah.”

  Lydia looked the way a girl always looks when she’s pissed. “Well?” she said, hands on hips.

  “Well, what?”

  “Aren’t you going to say you love me too?”

  Jesus, Wade thought. Sure, he loved her, but he couldn’t tell her that. It wasn’t his style, not this soon. When a guy said that, he’d lose the upper hand. Instead, he said, “Ditto.”

  Now she really looked pissed. “I knew it. No balls.”

  “Hey!”

  “I almost got buggered by a monster for you. The least you—”

  “I seem to recall doing a little rescuing today myself.”

  “That’s not what we’re talking about—”

  “And this is not the time or place for a romantic spat,” he added. “We’re in a fucking spaceship.”

  “Just shut up and come on,” she said, disgusted.

  Wade dredged up some nifty terms from his Sociology 202 class. “We can isolate and identify the spatial parameters of our relationship later.”

  “Isolate and identify this,” she said, and gave him the finger. “Besides, there might not even be a later.”

  “What are you talking about? We’re home free.”

  Lydia laughed. “Don’t you know how the extromitters work?”

  “Yeah, you stick the key in the hole and we’re out of here.”

  “Not quite. They’re programmed by thought, level to level. But the only way we can leave is through the main point access.”

  “So? Let’s go there and split.”

  “Wade, every warren and hall, every extromitter, every everything in this place has a sensor in it. Eyes and ears. The Supremate knows where we are and what we’re trying to do.”

  Wade’s enthusiasm plummeted.

  “And you can bet your Corvette,” she went on, “right now the Supremate is ordering every sister in the place to the main point access, to keep us from leaving.”

  “Besser said most of the sisters were terminated.”

  “Most, or all?”

  Wade gulped. “Most,” he remembered. This was getting too complicated, like the trig and literature courses he’d gotten untold D’s in. He didn’t want to be confused with facts—he wanted out. “So the sisters are waiting for us at the exit?”

  “Yes,” Lydia clarified.

  “Use the spotter.”

  “The spotter’s battery powered, and it’s already getting low.”

  Fanfuckingtastic, he thought as she plugged her key into the next extromission dot and pulled him through.

  Wade didn’t care to have the molecular mass of his body turned inside out as a means of transportation. Elevators were more to his liking, or ladders, stairs, dumbwaiters—anything. They extromitted down several levels until they made it to what Wade presumed was the bottom of the labyrinth. At the end of the warren, the sign glowed like a mirage: POINTACCESSMAIN#1.

  But the main was empty. No sisters stood in wait.

  “This can’t be right,” Lydia murmured.

  “Stick the key in the hole!” Wade shouted.

  She did so, almost fatally. She couldn’t believe it was going to be this easy. Nevertheless, this final extromission left them standing dumbfounded by the wall of the student shop.

  “You did it!” Wade celebrated.

  They ran their asses off, to the door, to the parking lot, to the waiting Vette. The twin turbos roared. The Vette’s plushness embraced them, and in a moment they were smoking out of the lot, through the turn, away, away…

  Wade’s mind, as he drove, fielded countless abstractions. He thought of birds flying lazily across the heavens. He thought of cathedral ceilings, long open pastures, endless seas. Never again would he take the becalmed night or the beauty of the world for granted. Indeed, the air smelled of freedom—

  —and maybe even absolution.

  —

  CHAPTER 37

  Jervis, as with everything now, took the radio to have a special meaning, symbols like shadows of his new, mysterious life. The campus station played “Head Cut,” by the Banshees, “The Cutter,” by Echo and the Bunnymen, and “Delicate Cutters,” by Throwing Muses. “Lots of cutters tonight, folks,” the D.J. said. Jervis agreed. Lots of cutters. He looked fondly at the wrapped bouquet of roses. For you, Sarah. With love, from the Cutter.

  He dressed with care—to kill, you might say. He put on the same jeans he’d worn when they first met, the same shoes, the same belt. He plugged his bullet holes with tissue and put on the black shirt she’d given him their first Christmas together. This was symbology. This was the past coming to the future. For such an important event, he had to look just right. He had to look perfect.

  The last song on the radio was by Bauhaus: “Exquisite Corpse.” Jervis combed his hair a final time. He slicked it back off his brow, not with Vitalis, but with Wilhelm’s blood.

  He lit a Carlton, grabbed the bouquet, and left. He walked cheerily out into the night. Across the quadrangle, Sarah’s window was lit. No doubt she was waiting for Wilhelm, and that thought made Jervis smile. Wilhelm won’t be coming over tonight, Sarah. He’s a little bogged down right now. The bouquet felt heavy, its wrapping moist. When he knocked on room 202, the door opened at once. Sarah squealed, “Willy! You’re so late! I was worried!”

  “You better be worried,” Jervis said.

  A gasp froze in Sarah’s chest. She stared. She wore canary-yellow pants, canary yellow shoes, and a Ram’s Head Tavern T shirt.

  Uninvited, Jervis stepped in. He closed the door.

  “Jervis, I…” she started. Then her eyes narrowed. “You look…terrible.”

  “But I feel great,” he said. “How are you, Sarah?”

  She was shivering already, on the verge of making those canary yellow pants a bit more yellow. After a long, gauging pause, she answered, “I I’m fine.”

  “That’s good. Aren’t you going to ask me how I am?”

  This query seemed to puzzle her. She did not blink at all. “All right Jervis. How are you?”

  “How am I!” he exploded. “I’ll tell you how I am! I’m fuckin’ dead!”

  He marched a mad circle about her, while she didn’t move at all. His footfalls made the entire room vibrate, probably the entire building too. Frid, the cat, fled to the top of the refrigerator, while Sarah remained stock still. When Jervis pulled the Webley revolver out of his belt, a wet spot did indeed appear on the front of Sarah’s canary yellow pants. It was a big spot.

  “Oh, I’m not going to shoot you,” he apologized. He set the gun down. “I came here…to give you this.”

  He gave her the bouquet. She took it, surprisingly, with no reluctance. “They’re lovely, Jervis. Thank you,” she said. She was faking it, of course, because she was scared. She sniffed the roses, paused. She looked into the bouquet.

  Then she screamed.

  Jervis laughed like a Titan. The bouquet hit the floor a
nd spilled open. Amid the beautiful fresh cut roses, there it lay, once grand, but now shriveled, parodic.

  “What did—!” she hitched. “What did—what did—”

  “Guess,” Jervis offered, “and I’ll even give you a hint. It ain’t a ballpark frank in there.”

  “What did you do?” she shrieked.

  “I cut off his dick,” Jervis said.

  She screamed very unbecomingly and without abatement. Now she was stepping back, and Jervis was stepping forward.

  “But that’s nothing compared to what I’m going to do to you.”

  Frid watched placidly from its high perch. Like all cats, it seemed to care only for itself. Sarah continued to scream, throwing things as she backtracked in a circle. People are always throwing things at me, Jervis observed.

  A Brother typewriter bounced off his head. A stereo receiver hit him in the face. Jervis shrugged it all off, maintaining a measured smile. Life had bestowed only weakness on him. Death, though, gave him power, physical and spiritual. He was the Seer, the Knower, the Destroyer.

  “Enough,” he said. “You’re the last loose end of my old life. It’s time for me to tie it up.”

  He threw her to the floor and straddled her. How should he do it? Break her neck? Crush her throat? No, he thought. Be creative. He must execute this last symbol with diversity, with style. His brain seemed to tick as he deliberated.

  She squirmed under him, her tiny fists beating his chest.

  “Why wasn’t I good enough?” he asked.

  She gave no reply, only continued to squirm.

  “You dumped me like garbage. Why? Tell me.”

  She raked his arm with her nails, drawing bloodless fissures.

  Was he actually starting to choke up? Myrmidons don’t cry, he commanded. What was wrong with him? This was his moment of true existential triumph. Nevertheless, his grip slackened. A tear came to his dead eye. “How could you do that to me?”

  She tried to claw his face, punch out his eyes.

  I know.

  “You took my heart,” he said. “Now I’m going to take yours.”

  It was perfect. He would tear her heart out, just as she had done to him. Tear it out and eat it, feast upon it…

  He pulled the Ram’s Head shirt up, cast off the pink lace bra. Her breasts were much more beautiful than he remembered. When he touched them, the warm contact rifled back images of love. Soon, his hands were shaking…

  Do it! Take the bitch’s heart out! Eat her guts and puke them back up into her face! Just DO IT!

  His fingers stiffened, lowering…

  “No!” she whined. “You can’t!”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because you love me!”

  He expected any reply but this. It silenced his thoughts like wind blowing out candles. Beneath him, her squirmings ceased; her heat flowed up into his dead groin. What could urge her to say such a thing? Suddenly her voice was quiet, soft as silk.

  “You still love me,” she whispered.

  Jervis jittered now. It was truth—the real truth—that summoned these words to her lips. At once, he was as helpless as he’d ever been. There was one thing that wielded even more power than him. She was right. He still loved her.

  “Goddamn it,” he muttered. He hauled her up, put her car keys in her hand, and shoved her out the door. “Get in your car and drive!” he yelled. “Drive far away, because at midnight, I’ll be gone, and everyone on this campus will be dead!”

  Sarah didn’t question this inexplicable revelation. She scampered away, into the elevator, and down.

  Jervis watched from the window. He saw her frantic form jump into her car and drive away.

  A marshmallow even in death, he thought. Some myrmidon I turned out to be. Yeah, some killing machine. “But, goddamn,” he griped aloud, “I’ve got to kill something.”

  He realized the sacrifice even before he turned. From atop the refrigerator, Frid hissed at him, showing little feline teeth. Jervis’ smile almost cracked his head. He raised the Webley to Frid’s whiskered cat face and squeezed off one round. The report blew the wicked animal clear across the kitchen, where it splattered grandly against the wall.

  ««—»»

  “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know,” Wade said. “What time is it?”

  Wade paid the attendant at DeHenzel’s Texaco, grateful for the full serve option. He wasn’t up to pumping it himself, not so soon after nearly receiving non-anesthetic brain surgery. Small favors were rare these days. But Lydia had made a pertinent inquiry. Where would they go now?

  “That note you left me,” Lydia recalled. “Didn’t you mention something about a bomb?”

  The bomb! he thought. He floored it out of the station, burning rubber. “Jervis has a bomb, and it’s supposed to go off at one minute after midnight.”

  “What do they want to blow up?”

  “I don’t know,” Wade said, but he did know one thing…

  He pulled onto the Route and pushed the gas to the floor.

  “What are you doing?” Lydia complained, her hair a flurry.

  “Just be quiet.”

  “Don’t tell me to be quiet!”

  “All right, then. Shut up.”

  The speedometer rose from 60 to 120 rather quickly. Then 130, 140. “Where are we going?” Lydia screamed over the wind drag.

  “As far away as possible,” Wade said. “Who knows how powerful that bomb is? When it goes, I want to be as far away from the campus as possible.”

  “You’re chickening out? We have to do something! Call the state bomb disposal unit, call the National Guard—”

  “Right, and tell them what? That aliens are here?”

  Wade shut out her complaints. In twenty minutes he covered about fifty miles of Route 13, which was easy when he owned a twin turbo 455. Then he pulled over onto the shoulder and stopped.

  Lydia was wearing her pissed off look again.

  “Get out of the car,” Wade said.

  “What the—”

  “Just get out of the car. There’s something I’ve gotta do.”

  “What?”

  “Find the bomb, disarm it. Jervis is the only one who knows where it is, so I’m going to track him down.”

  Lydia laughed. “If you go anywhere near him, he’ll drag your dumb ass straight back to the labyrinth.”

  “No, he won’t. I’ll be crafty.”

  “Crafty! He’s a homicidal walking corpse!”

  “Would you please just get out of the car,” Wade implored.

  “No,” Lydia said.

  “Get out of the car!” he yelled.

  “Make me.”

  Wade punched her in the face. It was a hard thing to do, but he had no choice. The blow knocked her silly. He dragged her half conscious from the Vette and set her down on the shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, Lydia.”

  “Fucker,” she mumbled.

  “Just head north. There’s nothing you can do. Even if you hitchhiked back to Exham, no one would believe you.”

  Wade got back in the Vette. He pulled a perfect smoke raising 180 in the road. Lydia was up to her hands and knees, but that was about it.

  “One more thing,” Wade called to her.

  “What!”

  “I love you.”

  Lydia’s eye was already growing a shiner. She smirked in perfect female rage, “You better love me, you asshole!”

  Wade laughed. What a woman, he thought. He floored the accelerator, burning rubber and heading south.

  —

  CHAPTER 38

  Time to go home, Jervis thought. He drank Kirins and smoked, steering the Dodge Colt downtown. His last night on this world was a spacious and beautiful one. What would nights look like on other worlds?

  —JERVIS.

  His dead heart surged at his master’s beckoning. “I’m coming, lord. I’m coming home now.”

  —NOT YET, MY SON. A CALAMITY HAS BEFALLEN US.

&n
bsp; Jervis stopped in the middle of the road, closed his eyes to see his master more clearly. All he saw was fog.

  —YOU ARE ALL I HAVE LEFT.

  “What happened?”

  —WADE HAS ESCAPED.

  But how could that be? Wade had been locked up in the hold; escape from the labyrinth was impossible.

  —TIME IS ALMOST GONE. YOU MUST FIND HIM, BRING HIM BACK.

  Was it Jervis’ deterioration, or had the Supremate’s voice grown weak? The once glorious trumpet in his head was now little more than a wisp of static.

  —WE MUST HAVE HIM BACK BY RECHARGE.

  “We will, I promise. But—” The dash clock read 10:21 P.M. “I need help! There’s no time!”

  —IN MY GRACE, JERVIS, I SHALL ASSIST YOU. I GIVE YOU MY BLOOD. USE IT WISELY AND WITH HASTE—TO FIND HIM.

  “I will, my lord!”

  The Supremate’s voice had all but faded out. The master was indeed bleeding, but Jervis made out his lord’s last ordination:

  —MY SON. YOU ARE THE FINAL PRAYER OF DESTINY.

  ««—»»

  Jervis was back on campus in minutes. It was the labyrinth, he knew, and its recharge preliminaries. At midnight, the labyrinth would leave, and that was one bus Jervis didn’t want to miss.

  Blood, he thought. Yes, he could feel it, taste it, even hear it. The black pommel of his transceptionrod was turning warm with the Supremate’s blood.

  Wade and the girl were probably hightailing it out of town. But that didn’t matter now, for didn’t they have some of the Supremate’s blood too? Blood leads to blood, like lovers in the dark.

  His lord’s blood would lead him straight to them.

  ««—»»

  Wade gunned the Vette back to campus. Lydia had left the UV spotter and Tom’s extromission key on the seat. The spotter would be useless against Jervis—any weapon would be. So even if he did find him, what would he do? And Wade knew nothing of the nature of the bomb. Lydia was right in her objections. Trying to ascertain the whereabouts of an alien bomb from a walking dead man was, at the least, pushing fate. At the most, it was fucking suicide.

  But he needed something, for God’s sake, some means of defense before he could seriously expect to confront Jervis again. Guns were out—obviously. It had already been proven that shooting Jervis with bullets was as effective as shooting him with rubber bands. Knives and blunt objects were equally useless. But what about corrosives, sulfuric acid or something? Yeah, Wade thought. They had all kinds of stuff like that at the sciences center…