Bloody stood beside Driver. He had been brought from his walking coma by the danger and speed. He was trying to sink into darkness again, but he was aware of things and there was a ringing in his ears that he hated. He just wanted quiet.
They got lost for the better part of a day searching Zero-eventually taking turns napping and covering the Angel. Even Felon slept eventually, shivering and crying out in a sick slumber. The Marquis only knew that Lucifer could be found under Zero. But that was all. They’d spent hours driving alternately searching and hiding from Authority. And Zero was huge. The Angel said it was Lucifer’s defenses at work. He didn’t want company, and he wouldn’t be found by accident.
Everyone in the car was ready to kill the Marquis when the Angel suddenly called out a series of directions that took them close to the waterfront. A short time later, Driver drove through the boarded up entrance of an underground parking garage. After six dizzying revolutions on a spiral ramp, Driver drove the Nova up to a wide broken grate set in the foundation. The Marquis said it was an air intake for the garage’s ventilation system. It opened on an old sewer and the Maze.
Felon had one hand twisted in the Marquis’ lacy collar. The other kept the. 9 mm pointed at his face. The assassin had immediately barked orders.
“You,” he had gestured at Bloody, “and you,” he nodded at Driver. “Stay with the nun. Tiny you come with me to cover him.” He shook the Marquis’ collar.
Tiny had winked at Driver but didn’t even glance at Bloody. This was something that the dead gunman had brought on himself, he understood. But since Felon killed him he’d been unable to control the feelings that once made him a merchant of death. Whiskey somehow quieted the feelings of helplessness, and firing his gun had kept him grounded.
The nun was sitting in the Nova blinking. They were watching as the silhouettes of Felon, Tiny and the Marquis shrank into the distance. Their footsteps echoed back. The vaulted brickwork distorted their shadows, thrown by a single flashlight.
Bloody followed a roaring vacuum inside his head that was heavy with space and silence. A long echo filled him, like a gong the size of the earth had been struck at the beginning of time, and it still rang in his ears. It was distracting and it got worse every time he came close to his old self. The vibration would grow in volume.
But drifting wasn’t much better. Faces would appear on waves of shadow-familiar and strange. When he tried to identify them, they shattered with a sound similar to that gong, so he stopped trying. Shocked, empty and alone, the gunman became a void with eyes.
Then his friends’ muffled voices would bang and thump into his peace. And all those syllables would rattle images and memories from the dark places-draw his awareness to the forefront and the gong would ring again. In time he realized the gong was what he was, or what he used to be. And the sound of it was the shape of him. But he was all through with that.
Here was a face in front of him. It spoke a name, a word, and a sound over and over again. It was an oval face with receding hair and a bushy black Devil’s goatee. Motion. His mind drifted toward it. Impact. His dead body responded slowly, cautiously identifying the detonation of misfiring neurons. The face had pushed him. The touch of the living drew him back. Ringing, his soul identified the words.
“Bloody!” Driver glared at him. “Goddamn! Pay attention. We got to talk.”
Talk. Walk. Wander. The dead muscles in his face contracted in a horrible smile.
“There y’are!” The Texan, his friend, lit a cigarette. “Christ! I don’t expect underground is a happy place to bring a dead man!” Driver’s eyes searched his face with something like worry.
Worry?
“We got to talk.” Driver grabbed his arm, led him toward the front of the Nova. Clang!
Pressure. Touch. Pressure. His dead mind cascaded with electric strands of feeling. His eyes filled with tears. Driver looked up at him.
“Damn it! Don’t!” His friend leaned him against the hood, handed him his cigarette and lit another.
Smoke. Burn. Ring!
“I don’t like all this shit. I don’t like it at all.” The Texan blew a thin stream of smoke out. It caught Bloody’s attention. He watched it drift upward like smoke from a chimney. From a cottage, a house, a burning building. A building full of orphans without futures . Lives filled with hate.
He lifted an arm. It pulled away from his side like a twist of hardened leather. The cigarette was wet with Driver’s saliva. Bloody drank it in. Clang!
“What the fuck are we doing here?” Driver started pacing. “This Angel and Demon stuff, Bloody. They’re fucking with our minds.” Driver nervously checked his armpits for his guns, dropped his hands again, and plucked the cigarette from his mouth. “Like them Eyesores wasn’t real…illusions. I read about that shit.”
“Real.” The word dropped out of Bloody’s mouth like a broken tooth.
Driver scrutinized him momentarily, and then continued, “That Felon’s goin’ to get us all killed. Fuck!” Driver took a deep breath of the damp air. “We already got a mark on us, you bet. I gotta keep my cool. This ain’t the end of the world. Jesus! Did you see him? Fucking Felon walks off with old Tiny and the Angel to have a chitchat with the Devil, Lucifer or whatever the Hell he’s talking about!”
“Hell.” Bloody’s mouth controlled the shape of the word. It was softer than the first.
“That’s right: Help.” Driver misheard him and laughed. “Goddamn it, Bloody. We gonna need it.” The Texan shook his head then smiled up at him. “But you ain’t never been a worrier.”
Worried. Worried only once when he walked up the stairs to the bathroom. Mom had told him to stay downstairs in his room when men visited, but he walked up fearing each creaky step. And he got to the top and saw the bathroom door open. And mom was there on the floor with her throat cut. Gong!
“So, off goes Tiny.” Driver’s hands shook on his cigarette. “Smilin’ like a bobcat with a mouth full of mouse. Did he tell you what he was goin’ to ask Lucifer?”
More tears leaked past his rotting memories. “Blood.” His voice was a croak to his dead ears.
“For Christ’s sake, blood? What in Hell would he be askin’ about that for?” Driver’s blue eyes turned to slits. “I guess maybe you ain’t all there yet.” He scratched the stubble atop his head.
Bloody’s mind had opened up like a subterranean stream. Thoughts and memories sluiced into the blackness.
“And her,” Driver whispered, peering in at the nun. She was watching them. “What we brung her along for? I ain’t a religious man, but that got to be bad luck!”
Gong! Bang! Gong! Bang! Guns blazed in Bloody’s mind. Flesh burst with the impact of lead. Blood filled him as a boy died with a bullet in his heart, as a woman screamed pierced between her ribs and legs, as a carload of seniors burned by the side of the road. Tiny’s face was flushed with rape and murder. Driver’s eyes were full of blood. His own face tingled where the teen scratched while he raped her.
“Bloody!” Driver’s face was near to his. The Texan’s breath was rank with fear.
“Crime.” Bloody’s dead mouth spat the word.
“Yeah, we’re in deep this time.” Driver squinted into the tunnel.
Ring. Tunnel. Clang. Mind the gap. A woman was near the edge of the platform, her back arched over tight buttocks in denim. A horn blew. She fell into the path of the subway without a sound. Gong. A touch of the hand. Bitch!
Driver’s face softened looking up at him. “Do you know, I expect this Goddamned place has made me antsy. I don’t like ridin’ unknown range, I’ll tell you. I got to remember there’s a shit load of money waitin’ for us at the end of the trail.” Driver dropped his head, shook it. “Tiny needs us.”
Us. Gong. Driver and Tiny and Bloody. Ring! They’re drinking. A woman is dead in the alley with a knife in her. They’re carrying on. A guy tries to pistol whip Driver. Bloody’s cannon takes his head off.
“Shit,” Driver hissed, looking at his boots. “Now I’m gettin’ gloomy.”
“Gloomy.” Bloody’s voice was a papery rustle.
“You too huh?” Driver looked him over. “Why not with all this Devil-Angel shit…”
Clang. Bloody snapped his head forward, looking around the parking lot. Driver was busy with a new cigarette, couldn’t see him. Ghost. The gunman rode the gong waves back into himself-away from himself. If they brought him back again it might be too much. He could not resist so many ghosts.