“Okay,” Pestilence nods to the tiny face. “I guess we’re done with him.”
He gestures toward the pickup, and General O’Coddle nods, his gray lips curling into a smile. O’Coddle turns on his heels and raises the demon’s fat head over the feces-filled cab. The demon’s small face crinkles as though to cringe away from the stench, and it shrieks in short bursts that squirt boiling hot blood out the stump of its neck.
“You CAN’”T drop me in there,” it whines. “Put me back on my body! I’ll join with the shit! No! That’s my shit! Put me on a corpse! I’ll serve you the way a master with mercy deserves to be served! Please! No! Don’t!”
Pestilence and O’Coddle look at each other while the demon head wails and cries above its own defecation, and they start laughing uproariously. General O’Coddle glares at the small legion of zombies around them, and they grunt and moan in unison, the best expression of mirth they can manage. O’Coddle turns from the zombies back to Pestilence, but the hooded horseman is already walking toward the back doors of the sex shop. O’Coddle grunts and drops the screaming head into the truck full of demon dung. It lands with a plop and sinks quickly, screaming until shit fills its mouth.
Someone has boarded up the back door to the sex shop. Pestilence reaches one slender hand through the boards, and the doorknob pops open. “Idiots,” he mutters. He shoves the door open and peers through slits in the boards. Thin yellow smoke stinking of chemicals stings his eyes. His nostrils flex and pull a mist of the yellow smoke into them. The secondhand meth smoke hits his twitching brain right away, and his eyes dilate and bulge.
“Bingo,” he whispers over his shoulder to General O’Coddle. Pestilence hears excited voices chattering back and forth in whispers just out of his line of vision. He can’t tell what they are saying, and the more meth smoke he inhales, the less he cares. Drool rolls down his long chin, and he shouts, “Let me the fuck in and get me HIGH!”
His voice rattles the building and sets a few loose angel feathers aflame. A fat man waddles into his line of sight and stomps out the burning feathers. Pestilence hisses, “I see you, fat man. Let me in.”
Again the building rattles and loose feathers engulf themselves in flames. The fat man has his back to Pestilence. He stops on the flaming feathers and raises his hands above his head as though he were being arrested.
“I’m not taking you to jail,” Pestilence screams and then whispers, “I want all your drugs or I’ll fucking gut you and feed you to my zombies!”
The fat man is shaking and crying, but he starts to turn around behind the door. Pestilence hears someone addressing the fat man in a half-whisper. “Jerome! No, mother fucker, don’t you turn around!”
Jerome ignores him and turns around. His tearful eyes glance behind the door before falling on a grinning Pestilence. One heavy foot falls forward, then another. A skinny priest with a shock of bright red hair darts from behind the door and shoves Jerome away from Pestilence. The priest looks at Pestilence with eyes as round as saucers and his jaw popping back and forth. The young priest looks lost for a minute then shouts, “Leave here, foul demon!”
Pestilence leans his head back so far that the hood falls, revealing his thin greasy hair, and he roars laughter. He laughs so hard he hacks and spits on the sidewalk. General O’Coddle doesn’t laugh. He leans in when Pestilence leans back. The general spots a skinny shape with a bright red top. He squints his eyes, and the blurry shape yells a second time (with even less confidence), “Leave here, foul demon!”
“Little brother Don,” General O’Coddle growls between the boards, “I’ve thought about you a lot!”
The general smashes his arms against the boards, splintering the wood. Pestilence stops laughing and stares at the general as the dead officer screams and pounds at the makeshift barricade. Inside, Father Don O’Coddle recognizes his brother Mac. He also recognizes the fact that Mac wants to kill him.
“Holy limping hooker fuck, Jerome,” the young priest gulps. “That’s my crazy fucking brother out there.”
Jerome unfreezes and runs around Father O’Coddle to slam the door just as General O’Coddle destroys the last of the boards. Jerome dives behind the counter, jumps back up, tosses Father O’Coddle the store shotgun, then dives back down and covers himself with scraps of busted counter and floppy dildos.
General O’Coddle kicks the door so hard it breaks off its hinges with a shrieking sound and flies inward. Father O’Coddle pumps the shotgun and pulls the trigger at the first shape that approaches through the stirred dust. The blast shreds the shape as it picks it up off its feet. A second takes its place, and Father O’Coddle turns the barrel and blasts it as well. As he chuckles to himself, a massive gray fist zooms out of the smoke at the end of his shotgun and into his nose. His nose shatters. When he breathes, tiny shards of cartilage shoot down his throat.
“Mac, no,” Father O’Coddle gasps. “I’m sorry, Mac. So sorry.”
“Fuck you, Don,” General O’Coddle yells as he picks his brother up by his bright red hair. “I bet she loved this hair. Mine is this elegant white, earned through battles of war and love. And yours is like clown hair.”
Big tears roll down Don O’Coddle’s cheeks as he tells the general, “I like your hair, big brother.”
“Oh good. Then you won’t mind if I take yours.” General O’Coddle smiles before ripping his little brother’s scalp back with one firm yank. He drops the screaming Don to the floor and admires the bright red scalp in his hand. Then he kicks his little brother in the ribs and stuffs the hair into his shirt pocket, which quickly grows sodden with dark blood. Father O’Coddle tries to crawl away from his brother, but both his hands and the floor are slick with his blood. Mac grabs Don by his priestly collar and picks him up.
“She left me too, Mac,” Don whispers as his brother leans close, “for a navy guy.”
General O’Coddle growls as he sinks his teeth into his brother’s neck. He shakes his head and pulls away chunks of tendon and muscle. Instantly the meth in Don’s blood hits General O’Coddle’s dead system. His heart twitches back to a slow life, and his dead eyes dilate. His big meaty hands shake, and his big square jaw pops back and forth.
Pestilence fluffs his cloak as he walks through the door. He steps over the dead priest behind the counter. He picks up a thirteen-inch pink dildo and tosses it over his shoulder. Even as Pestilence digs through his cocoon of sex toys, glass and particleboard, Jerome remains in the fetal position with his eyes closed. Pestilence leans down to talk to him, but Jerome whines and tries to duck under the remnants of the counter. Pestilence shakes his head and gestures at the counter. General O’Coddle grabs what’s let of it and rips it away with no effort. He tosses it behind him, where it shatters and knocks the few remaining DVDs to the floor.
“Where is your tweek?” an enraged Pestilence yells.
“We smoked it all,” Jerome whimpers from his fetal position.
“Bullfuck,” Pestilence tells him. He nods to General O’Coddle. The general reaches one large shaky hand down and grabs Jerome’s ear. The fat man uncurls and scrambles to his feet. General O’Coddle’s dead hands twitch, and he accidentally tears Jerome’s ear off. The man bellows, and General O’Coddle holds up the ear, regards it curiously, then eats it whole. Jerome screams and wets his pants, and Pestilence asks again, “Where is your tweek?”
With one hand cupped to the side of his head, Jerome sobs, “In Father O’Coddle’s hollow leg.”
Something dawns in General O’Coddle’s brain, but the meth pounds more thoughts over it. He mumbles, “Don only had one leg” as he pops the prosthetic off his brother’s corpse. Rather than searching for some opening mechanism, he crushes the hard plastic limb to shards and tosses Pestilence the Ziplock bag half full of crystal meth. “Mai Ting only had one leg.” More thoughts chase that one away too.