Thunder rolls like boulders across the roof.
Lightning shows me Cadaver in the corner, counting.
Me, I feel no more envy. Instead, I feel bolstered a little, aware that all those long-winded old passages you find in the bible about life and death and retribution may mean something after all. All we know, all we have known for as long as I can recall, is death. Now there’s life. Even if we can’t help poor Brody and Carla, even if we can’t save her baby, Flo is pregnant, and the significance of that single fact is so great it makes my head hurt and my heart beat a little faster. Flo, a creature of death, is carrying life. Untainted life. Life Reverend Hill, for all his threats and blustering, cannot reach. Yet.
Flo is pregnant.
And whether or not she ends up filling that empty vessel with hate, or sadness, or sin, right now, for me, it represents just the tiniest bit of hope.
It’s enough.
And it would seem I’m not alone in feeling that.
Without any of us, even the supposedly all-knowing Reverend, hearing his approach, Kyle is standing next to the priest, and the gun that has held so much meaning tonight, is gripped firmly in his hand again, the determination I’ve watched for three years back on his face, the muzzle nestled firmly against Hill’s temple.
“I’m not driving tonight,” I tell the priest, but Kyle has other ideas.
“Yes you are.”
I look at him, wondering if this is how he finally intends to rid himself of his long-dead father. A man, who, despite all the nightmares and all the people he’s killed on someone else’s behalf, only ever felt guilty for the death he didn’t cause. Cold as that sounds, I reckon there’s a lot of truth to it.
“Me and you and the Reverend are going to take a ride tonight,” Kyle says. “We’re going to take that girl with us, and we’re going to get her to Doctor Hendricks.”
The priest chuckles. “Is that so?”
“Shit,” Brody intones, struggling to sit up straighter. “What about me?”
He is ignored. We’re not going to abandon him. That much I know. Not if there’s a chance to save him. But Kyle’s calling the shots now, so we’re going to play it his way for the time being. The girl looks a lot worse off, so she goes first, is what I’m guessing is Kyle’s reasoning here, though it would be just as easy to take them both. Maybe I’ll suggest that once the gun’s been lowered.
“Yeah, that is so,” he says in response to Hill. The gun trembles in his grasp. I’m not yet at the point where I’m doubting my earlier opinion on whether my son will ever shoot a man again, but I’m not confident. What I am, however, is damn proud.
“Let me ask you something, Kyle. What exactly do you think shooting me will accomplish? Do you think I’ll just drop like a rock? Like all these other weaklings? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m the landlord here. Everyone answers to me, just as there are higher forces I answer to when the work has been done. When their penance has been done. And you, boy, have a lot of making up to do.”
“And when is the penance done, huh? How many corpses amount to penance in your eyes? Ten, twenty, a hundred?”
“You’ll know when it’s done.”
“Right,” Kyle tells him. “When you’ve had your fill, maybe, you sick fuck.”
The Reverend sighs. “Is it your intention to see how much suffering you can bring upon yourself? Pull that trigger then and we’ll all see just how—”
Without warning, Kyle does as he is asked. The Reverend stands where he is for a moment, then topples. The echo of the gunshot rivals the rage of the storm and the sound of blood dripping could be the rain tapping on the window. What used to be Reverend Hill’s head is now spread across the wall next to where Flo is standing, spattered in his blood. She doesn’t seem at all put out, merely inconvenienced. Her eyes, white periods in a gore-smeared face, widen. “There’s no way it can be that easy.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I tell her. “He’s down, and that’s the end of it.”
And yet no one moves. Instead we watch Hill’s corpse warily, waiting for some sign of the power that has kept us bound for years. We half-expect the brains splashed across the wall to fly back into the man’s ruined skull, the blood to return to the cavity Kyle’s bullet burst open, the wound to heal. We wait for the Reverend to rise, murderous rage contorting his sallow face as he chooses which of us to destroy first. We wait. We watch.
But what happens is infinitely more surprising.
Nothing.
The all-powerful Reverend just lies there, minus most of his head, and deader than dog shit.
“I’ve never in all my years seen so much blood,” Gracie says, and it sounds like a comment that should be followed by tears. But this is Gracie, and I’m willing to put money down that she’s already stressing over the cleanup. “Guess he was just a man after all.”
“I want to go home,” the girl on the bar says, and that pulls us from our trance-like state of expectancy.
“We’ll get you there, honey.” Flo’s hands tremble as she sleeves some of the priest’s blood from her face.
“It’s gonna be all right babe,” Brody soothes, though he’s in too much pain to sound sincere. “We’ll be out of here soon, then it’ll just be you, me and Dino.”
Kyle is still holding the gun out, still pressing it against the ghost of Hill’s temple, and I put a hand on his forearm, urge him to lower it before it goes off and adds someone else to the rapidly rising number of dead. For a moment he resists, then the tension ebbs away.
“It’s okay son.”
“Kyle,” he mutters.
“What?”
“You don’t get to call me ‘son’.”
“Okay.”
Wintry is still tending to Cobb. The old man has downed half a bottle of whiskey. I’m sure wherever his mind is, it doesn’t know what just happened, and maybe that’s for the best. Wintry locks gazes with me and in that brief glance, we’re like two old farts trading war stories. What’s happened here tonight won’t ever be forgotten, no more than will the things that led us here, the errors in judgment, the wrong turns, the simple little mistakes that all add up to an express elevator ride right into a nightmare no amount of waking up can cure. But this is a lull, and a welcome one, and I figure everyone (except maybe Brody and the girl) is going to savor it before the next unwelcome development. For however briefly, this is Eddie’s bar, the only functioning water hole in a near-dead town, and right now, for the first time ever, these people truly are my friends.
Wintry goes back to silently consoling the inconsolable Cobb. Gracie heads into the ladies room and emerges with a mop and bucket that are filthier than the floor but don’t, to my knowledge, have human remains on them. Flo tries to get the girl to stand up. It isn’t going to happen.
“We need to take him too,” I tell Kyle with a nod in Brody’s direction.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Yeah,” Brody adds. “Why? If it’s because you shot a perfectly nice guy like me, and don’t know how to apologize…hell…that’s all water under the bridge.” He grins and there is blood on his teeth. “I don’t hold grudges.”
“He’s a murderer,” Kyle says.
I lean in close. “For fuck sake, Kyle. Everyone here is a murderer.”
“Not like him we’re not. He enjoyed it. Did it on purpose.”
His logic makes my head swim, and the only thing I’m really sure of is that I don’t agree with it. “Listen, you have to—”
“Leave him,” Cobb says dreamily, as if our banter has woken him from a doze.
Everyone looks in his direction. He, however, does not look at us.
“Cobb…”