“Our respite is finished now, good servant,” Buyoux said and took back the Glasses.
“Thank you for bestowing me the honor, Grand Sergeant . . .”
“You deserve it.” Again, Buyoux’s voice declined in volume. “There are great wonders afoot, here, there, all about. And we are privileged to be a part of it.”
“Yes, your Wretched Eminence!”
Buyoux seemed to pause, suddenly taken by the Conscript’s adornments on his arms and face. “Tell me, just how many women and children did you kill in Angle-Land?”
Favius paused. “I . . . never kept count, sir. Hundreds, I’m sure.”
“But what of the men?”
“They were hobbled and enslaved, then forced to build fortifications until they dropped.”
“Then why not do the same to the women and children?”
“It was viewed as too great a risk, Grand Sergeant. Better to butcher the women so that their wombs may never bear future enemies, and better to butcher the children so that they may never grow to adulthood to raise a sword against Rome.”
Buyoux’s scabbed brow rose. “My. You are quite a killer . . .” He patted Favius’s armored back. “And soon, by the grace of the Morning Star, you may be killing again.”
Favius snapped to attention. “I live to serve Lucifer!”
Buyoux, hands behind his back, began to walk away. “And, Favius? Mind your tongue.”
“I would halve myself with a halberd before I would betray a confidence, Grand Sergeant!”
Buyoux, still smiling, raised his left forearm. “Until we meet again, hail Satan . . .”
“Hail Satan!”
Favius brimmed in the news of his departing commander. Yes! There IS hope . . . What else might the Grand Sergeant have implied of the future? But as he turned to ponder this question he found himself staring down at the rampart’s stone floor . . .
He stared.
The shining black surface of basalt shined like polished obsidian; and in that reflection he peered at the adornments of his Oath in the Brigade.
The prideful thought slipped into his head: Praise to Lucifer. My adornments look so much better than the Grand Sergeant’s . . .
Indeed. Onto nearly every square inch of Favius’s body had been grafted the severed face of a murder victim, the Human Damned, the face of a species of Demon, a Hybrid, a Troll or Imp—it didn’t matter.
Favius liked his modifications, especially those most recent. Onto each cheek had been grafted the face of a butchered demonic newborn babe.
(III)
Gerold rolled out of the downtown library, into stifling heat.
Jesus . . . Between Florida’s high temperatures and the outrageous humidity, he felt as though he’d just rolled into a pizza oven. He wilted even before he’d made it to the Fourth Street bus stop.
Gerold didn’t walk, he rolled. In a Tracer EX2 wheelchair. The IED near Fallujah had penetrated the floor of his Hummer, just a week before the vehicle had been scheduled for up-armoring. Gerold had killed four insurgents that day with the caliber .50—his first enemy kills, he was pretty sure—and felt awful about it, even knowing that the four would’ve gladly killed him and not felt awful about it. On his way back to the firebase, the bomb had gone off, shattering his spine and shredding his kidneys. He’d never walk again, and would need dialysis for the rest of his life.
Still, he kept the faith, or at least he had until last night.
Shit. Last night. What was I doing? Then: “Shit!”
In a gust of exhaust-stoked heat, the bus roared by when Gerold was but five yards from the bus stop. The driver had pretended not to see him, and he knew why. Because it’s a pain in his ass to lower the wheelchair ramp . . .
Sweat trickled down his forehead as he wheeled north.
Last night. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. The last time he’d been in that bar was three years ago—on a thirty-day leave—and, yes, he’d solicited a prostitute, the very one he’d seen last night wearing the NO GAG REFLEX shirt. The sin made him feel tainted, but he wanted to be with a woman, if only for a few minutes, in case he got killed when he went back to his combat duty station. Last night, though? Why? Why go in there knowing I can’t do anything anymore! It doesn’t make sense! It was almost as if some cruel sliver of his psyche had forced him in there just to make him feel lousy. Impotent. Sterile.
That’s when he had snapped, and determined to go to the library the following day . . .
Gerold had opted for a manual chair rather than a battery-powered one; at least if his legs no longer worked, he’d have strong arms. But . . .
Big deal, he thought now, huffing as he wheeled farther up. The heat was killing him. And though Florida possessed mind-boggling heat, it also possessed mind-bogglingly attractive women. They walked by this way and that, braless breasts bouncing beneath sheer tops, with sleek tan legs, silken hair, and beaming faces. However, this, too, had become an annoyance even worse than the heat because as the women passed they either averted their eyes or merely didn’t see him at all, as though he were utterly invisible. Just more reminders of what he could never have.
Up the road he wheeled around to the Fourth Street Shrimp House, one of his favorite restaurants before he’d shipped out. He knew it was his subconscious that had brought him here—the same cruel mechanism that had sent him into that bar last night. As he stared at the specials sign, he realized that his ruined kidneys now precluded him from eating fried seafood because it would raise his creatinine levels and force him into an emergency dialysis session.
Fuck! he thought.
Today just wasn’t Gerold’s day.
“Hey, I remember you,” said one of the cooks. The slim, straggly man stood outside the restaurant, smoking. “You used to eat here all the time, but then . . . Oh, you went into the army, right?”
Gerold remembered the guy, because the restaurant had an open kitchen. “Yeah. Got back a year ago . . . like this.”
“Sorry to hear it, man, but, shit, my uncle was in a chair for thirty years and he always said ‘walking or rolling, it’s still a beautiful world.’ ”
Gerold couldn’t reply.
“You guys are hard-core,” the cook went on. “I hope you know that all of us peacetime candy-ass civilian punks honor your service.”
“Thanks,” Gerold said.
“Come on in. Your lunch is on me. All-you-can-eat clam strips, man, and they’re hand-dipped. None of this pre-breaded frozen shit.”
Gerold felt dizzy in despair. “Thanks but . . . I can’t now. I don’t even know why I came here. I’m on a restricted diet ’cos of my kidneys.”
“Shit, that sucks. Those fuckers.” The cook paused. “Did you . . . Well, never mind. None of my business.”
“What?”
“Did you get any of them?”
Gerold didn’t look at him when he said, “Four, I think. With a machine gun called an M2. It tore them apart.”
“Fuck ’em.”
“Half hour later . . . this happened.”
The moment collapsed into cringing awkwardness. “I gotta go,” Gerold said.
“Sure. See ya around.”
I doubt it. Gerold wheeled away, back up into scorching sun. His throat felt swelled shut; he didn’t want the cook to see the tears in his eyes. Eventually he made it to one of the covered bus shelters—finally, some damn shade—but when he wheeled in, a squalid face peered over very quickly. It was a woman, probably a lot younger than she looked. She wore dingy shorts and a baggy men’s white T-shirt. “Hey,” she said and smiled.