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“Science put to the use of our lord Jesus Christ, that’s how. Brother Lazarus made a special device he could insert directly into the brains of dead folks, through the tops of their heads, and the device controls certain cravings. Makes them passive and responsive—at least to simple commands. With the regulator, as Brother Lazarus calls the device, we have been able to do much positive work with the dead.”
“Where do you find these dead folks?” Wayne asked.
“We buy them from the Meat Boys. We save them from amoral purposes.”
“They ought to be shot through the head and put in the goddamn ground,” Wayne said.
“If our use of the regulator and the dead folks was merely to better ourselves, I would agree. But it is not. We do the Lord’s work.”
“Do the monks fuck the sisters?” Calhoun asked.
“When possessed by the Spirit of Christ. Yes.”
“And I bet they get possessed a lot. Not a bad setup. Dead folks to do the work on the amusement park—”
“It isn’t an amusement park now.”
“—and plenty of free pussy. Sounds cozy. I like it. Old shithead up there’s smarter than he looks.”
“There is nothing selfish about our motives or those of Brother Lazarus. In fact, as penance for loosing the germ on the world in the first place, Brother Lazarus injected a virus into his nose. It is rotting slowly.”
“Thought that was quite a snorkel he had on him,” Wayne said.
“I take it back,” Calhoun said. “He is as dumb as he looks.”
“Why do the dead folks wear those silly hats?” Wayne asked.
“Brother Lazarus found a storeroom of them at the site of the old amusement park. They are mouse ears. They represent some cartoon animal that was popular once and part of Disneyland. Mickey Mouse, he was called. This way we know which dead folks are ours, and which ones are not controlled by our regulators. From time to time, stray dead folks wander into our area. Murder victims. Children abandoned in the desert. People crossing the desert who died of heat or illness. We’ve had some of the sisters and brothers attacked. The hats are a precaution.”
“And what’s the deal with us?” Wayne asked.
The nun smiled sweetly. “You, my children, are to add to the glory of God.” “Children?” Calhoun said. “You call an alligator a lizard, bitch?”
The nun slid back in the seat and rested the derringer in her lap. She pulled her legs into a cocked position, causing her panties to crease in the valley of her vagina; it looked like a nice place to visit, that valley.
Wayne turned from the beauty of it and put his head back and closed his eyes, pulled his hat down over them. There was nothing he could do at the moment, and since the nun was watching Calhoun for him, he’d sleep, store up and figure what to do next. If anything.
He drifted off to sleep wondering what the nun meant by, “You, my children, are to add to the glory of God.”
He had a feeling that when he found out, he wasn’t going to like it.
5
He awoke off and on and saw that the sunlight filtering through the storm had given everything a greenish color. Calhoun, seeing he was awake, said, “Ain’t that a pretty color? I had a shirt that color once and liked it lots, but I got in a fight with this Mexican whore with a wooden leg over some money and she tore it. I punched that little bean bandit good.”
“Thanks for sharing that,” Wayne said, and went back to sleep.
Each time he awoke it was brighter, and finally he awoke to the sun going down and the storm having died out. But he didn’t stay awake. He forced himself to close his eyes and store up more energy. To help him nod off he listened to the hum of the motor and thought about the wrecking yard and Pop and all the fun they could have, just drinking beer and playing cards and fucking the border women, and maybe some of those mutated cows they had over there for sale.
Nah. Nix the cows, or any of those genetically altered critters. A man had to draw the line somewhere, and he drew it at fucking critters, even if they had been bred so that they had human traits. You had to have some standards.
’Course, those standards had a way of eroding. He remembered when he said he’d only fuck the pretty ones. His last whore had been downright scary looking. If he didn’t watch himself he’d be as bad as Calhoun, trying to find the hole in the parakeet.
He awoke to Calhoun’s elbow in his ribs and the nun was standing beside their seat with the derringer. Wayne knew she hadn’t slept, but she looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. She nodded toward their window, said, “Jesus Land.”
She had put that special touch in her voice again, and the dead folks responded with, “Eees num be prased.”
It was good and dark now, a crisp night with a big moon the color of hammered brass. The bus sailed across the white sand like a mystical schooner with a full wind in its sails. It went up an impossible hill toward what looked like an aurora borealis, then dove into an atomic rainbow of colors that filled the bus with fairy lights.
