Calhoun put the shotgun in Brother Lazarus’s mouth and that made him stop screaming. Calhoun pumped the shotgun. He said, “Eat it,” and pulled the trigger. Brother Lazarus’s brains went out the back of his head riding on a chunk of skull. The brains and skull hit the table and sailed onto the floor like a plate of scrambled eggs pushed the length of a cafe counter.
Sister Worth had not moved. Wayne figured she had used all of her concentration to hit Brother Lazarus with the tray.
“You said you’d have guns,” Wayne said to her.
She turned her back to him and lifted her habit. In a belt above her panties were two.38 revolvers. Wayne pulled them out and held one in each hand. “Two-Gun Wayne,” he said.
“What about the ultralight?” Calhoun said. “We’ve made enough noise for a prison riot. We need to move.”
Sister Worth turned to the door at the back of the room, and before she could say anything or lead, Wayne and Calhoun snapped to it and grabbed her and pushed her toward it.
There were stairs on the other side of the door and they took them two at a time. They went through a trap door and onto the roof and there, tied down with bungee straps to metal hoops, was the ultralight. It was blue-and-white canvas and metal rods, and strapped to either side of it was a twelve gauge pump and a bag of food and a canteen of water.
They unsnapped the roof straps and got in the two-seater and used the straps to fasten Sister Worth between them. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was a ride.
They sat there. After a moment, Calhoun said, “Well?”
“Shit,” Wayne said. “I can’t fly this thing.”
They looked at Sister Worth. She was staring at the controls.
“Say something, damn it,” Wayne said.
“That’s the switch,” she said. “That stick…forward is up, back brings the nose down…side to side…”
“Got it.”
“Well, shoot this bastard over the side,” Calhoun said. Wayne cranked it, gave it the throttle. The machine rolled forward, wobbled.
“Too much weight,” Wayne said.
“Throw the cunt over the side,” Calhoun said.
“It’s all or nothing,” Wayne said. The ultralight continued to swing its tail left and right, but leveled off as they went over the edge.
They sailed for a hundred yards, made a mean curve Wayne couldn’t fight, and fell straight away into the statue of Jesus, striking it in the head, right in the midst of the barbed wire crown. Spot lights shattered, metal groaned, the wire tangled in the nylon wings of the craft and held it. The head of Jesus nodded forward, popped off, and shot out on the electric cables inside like a jack-in-the-box. The cables pulled tight a hundred feet from the ground and worked the head and the craft like a yo-yo. Then the barbed wire crown unraveled and dropped the craft the rest of the way. It hit the ground with a crunch and a rip and a cloud of dust.
The head of Jesus bobbed above the shattered ultralight like a bird preparing to peck a worm.
Wayne crawled out of the wreckage and tried his legs. They worked.
Calhoun was on his feet cussing, unstrapping the shotguns and supplies.
Sister Worth lay in the midst of the wreck, the nylon and aluminum supports folded around her like butterfly wings.
Wayne started pulling the mess off of her. He saw that her leg was broken. A bone punched out of her thigh like a sharpened stick. There was no blood.
“Here comes the church social,” Calhoun said.
The word was out about Brother Lazarus and the others. A horde of monks, nuns and dead folks were rushing over the drawbridge. Some of the nuns and monks had guns. All of the dead folks had clubs. The clergy was yelling.
Wayne nodded toward the bus barn, “Let’s get a bus.” Wayne picked up Sister Worth, cradled her in his arms, and made a run for it. Calhoun, carrying the guns and the supplies, passed them. He jumped through the open doorway of a bus and dropped out of sight. Wayne knew he was jerking wires loose, trying to hotwire them a ride. Wayne hoped he was good at it and fast.
When Wayne got to the bus, he laid Sister Worth down beside it and pulled the.38s and stood in front of her. If he was going down he wanted to go like Wild Bill Hickok: A blazing gun in either fist and a woman to protect.
Actually, he’d prefer the bus to start.
It did.
Calhoun jerked it in gear, backed it out and around in front of Wayne and Sister Worth. The monks and nuns had started firing and their rounds bounced off the side of the armored bus.
From inside Calhoun yelled, “Get the hell on.”
Wayne stuck the guns in his belt, grabbed up Sister Worth and leapt inside. Calhoun jerked the bus forward and Wayne and Sister Worth went flying over a seat and into another.
“I thought you were leaving,” Wayne said.
“I wanted to. But I gave my word.”
Wayne stretched Sister Worth out on the seat and looked at her leg. After that tossing Calhoun had given them, the break was sticking out even more.
Calhoun closed the bus door and checked his wing-mirror. Nuns and monks and dead folks had piled into a couple of buses, and now the buses were pursuing them. One of them moved very fast, as if souped up.
“I probably got the granny of the bunch,” Calhoun said. They climbed over a ridge of sand, then they were on the narrow road that wound itself upwards. Behind them, one of the buses had fallen back, maybe some kind of mechanical trouble. The other was gaining.
The road widened and Calhoun yelled, “I think this is what the fucker’s been waiting for.”
Even as Calhoun spoke, their pursuer put on a burst of speed and swung left and came up beside them, tried to swerve over and push them off the road, down into the deepening valley. But Calhoun fought the curves and didn’t budge.
The other bus swung its door open and a nun, the very one who had been on the bus that brought them to Jesus Land, stood there with her legs spread wide, showing the black-pantied mound of her crotch. She had one arm bent around a seat post and was holding in both hands the ever-popular clergy tool, the twelve-gauge pump.
As they made a curve, the nun fired a round into the window next to Calhoun. The window made a cracking noise and thin, crooked lines spread in all directions, but the glass held.
She pumped a round into the chamber and fired again. Bullet proof or not, this time the front sheet of glass fell away. Another well-placed round and the rest of the glass would go and Calhoun could wave his head goodbye.
Wayne put his knees in a seat and got the window down. The nun saw him, whirled and fired. The shot was low and hit the bottom part of the window and starred it and pelleted the chassis.
Wayne stuck a.38 out of the window and fired as the nun was jacking another load into position. His shot hit her in the head and her right eye went big and wet, and she swung around on the pole and lost the shotgun. It went out the door. She clung there by the bend of her elbow for a moment, then her arm straightened and she fell outside. The bus ran over her and she popped red and juicy at both ends like a stomped jelly roll.
“Waste of good pussy,” Calhoun said. He edged into the other bus, and it pushed back. But Calhoun pushed harder and made it hit the wall with a screech like a panther.
The bus came back and shoved Calhoun to the side of the cliff and honked twice for Jesus.
Calhoun down-shifted, let off the gas, allowed the other bus to soar past by half a length. Then he jerked the wheel so that he caught the rear of it and knocked it across the road. He speared it in the side with the nose of his bus and the other started to spin. It clipped the front of Calhoun’s bus and peeled the bumper back. Calhoun braked and the other bus kept spinning. It spun off the road and down into the valley amidst a chorus of cries.