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“Sure.”
“Then tell them.”
The rain was intensifying again, so Homer turned up the wiper speed. “What do you want me to say, exactly?”
“You just walked into a Seven-Eleven and killed five people. Talk about why you did that.”
Homer shook his head. “Is that what you think I did?”
“Didn’t you? You attacked everyone, bit them…”
“I didn’t bite everyone,” Homer said. “And I only killed two of them, and the Red Mouth brought them right back. It’s funny, in court they went on and on about how many lives they say I took. Maybe that used to be true, but that’s before I understood the real power of the Red Mouth. I wasn’t trying to take anything from anyone. I was always trying to give them something. That’s why I wanted my lawyer to put me on the stand so I could tell everyone that, so I could explain it. But he wouldn’t do it. He said that people wouldn’t understand and it would go against me in court. Against me? They fucking executed me. How much more against me could it have gone? I think that if he’d let me have my say, if he let me explain what the Black Eye saw and let me speak with the voice of the Red Mouth, then they wouldn’t have sentenced me to any frigging lethal injection.”
No, thought Goat, they’d have put you in a tiny padded cell and spent the next forty years experimenting on your brain to see what makes it tick.
He did not say this to Homer.
The killer kept talking, working it out for the camera. “That’s all different now. Thanks to Dr. Volker and the gift he gave me; now I can share that gift with other people. No one’s ever going to die. Not really. Not like it used to be. We’re all going to live forever.”
Goat kept the camera on the killer’s profile, capturing the way he nodded in agreement with his own words and thoughts.
“In the Bible Jesus talked about how the meek were going to inherit the earth. I forget where he said it, but it was important, and I think this is what he was talking about. The way people are when they wake up after I open the Red Mouths in their flesh. They don’t act the way they used to. They don’t talk; they don’t say stupid shit. I’ll bet they don’t even know if they’re Republican or Democrats. They’re just people. All the bullshit is gone.”
“They’re zombies,” suggested Goat.
“Sure, if you want to use that word. But I don’t know. Zombies. I always think of black guys with bug eyes in those old movies. Down in Jamaica someplace.”
“Haiti.”
“Haiti? Okay. Haiti. Wherever. Those are zombies. Is that what they are?”
“Dr. Volker said that he studied zombies in Haiti. The witch doctors there use a chemical compound to—”
“None of that matters. It’s what, voodoo? The Red Mouth isn’t voodoo and it’s not magic.”
“Then what is it?”
“If I tell you, you’ll laugh.”
“Believe me,” said Goat, “I won’t laugh.”
“It’s god stuff. I read a word once in a book. Celestial. You know what that means?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what this is. I know that because it’s what Jesus spoke about. It’s the meek inheriting the earth. And he knew. Those Romans opened Red Mouths in his flesh and he spoke the real truth. And he came back from the dead, too.” Homer shook his head. “Maybe Jesus was the first zombie. That makes sense to me.”
Goat almost asked him if he was serious or if this was some kind of twisted joke.
He didn’t.
And therefore Homer did not have a reason to kill him.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX
WHAT THE FINKE THINKS
WTLK LIVE TALK RADIO
