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“Yeah, she isn’t pretty, is she?”
She puts her hand on the body’s forehead.
“James, she’s already dead.”
I set the body down on a chair.
“I don’t think so. I think she’s just empty. The body is fine, but there’s no one inside.”
Vidocq and Allegra look at each other for a moment.
Allegra opens the chop shop’s eyes and peers at them. They’re still clear.
“It’s not like I have anything else to do right now. I still think she’s dead, but I can keep her from getting any deader.”
“Thanks. When you’re done, just stick her in a corner somewhere. She won’t be here long. I have to go.”
“Do you need any help?” says Vidocq.
“Lots. But I have a plan. I think. Maybe. I hope. If not, maybe we’ll all get lucky and Hell will survive and I’ll see you there.”
“Why do you think we’re going to Hell?” says Allegra.
“Because you’re my friends.”
It’s 9:50. I head out through a shadow for the Nickel—Fifth Street and Pershing Square.
THE SQUARE IS above street level, so it’s fairly clear of the flooding. There are trees and benches and not much else around us for a giant to crush me with. The monsoons have backed off a little and the rain has gone from pounding to merely drenching.
Af
ter everything that’s happened and everything the Shonin told me, I still don’t feel like the thing that came along to destroy the universe. Not that I’d know what that felt like. But I have to believe it would feel like something. Not evil or anger or anything like that. Maybe hunger. A deep-down gnawing hunger that won’t be filled until it swallows all of creation. What do you chase the universe with? Beer or a cold Coke?
I wonder what oblivion will be like? Let’s face it. The chances of everything working out the way I want, the chances of anything I plan working out, are dim at best. Still. What else is there to do? I have a lot to make up for, I guess, even if I never intended to murder everything. Yeah. I thought about it, but I never did it and now I find out I was doing it all along. Funny, the things you find out about yourself. Maybe I should get my aura read or try going macrobiotic. That should take the edge off being a universe killer, right?
I don’t know what to think anymore. If I can’t trust my own past, what can I trust? And don’t say the future because one, there might not be one, and two, how do I know I’m not something else nefarious? A jaywalker or a sleepwalking flimflam man?
I guess I’m supposed to be okay with everything dying. Marcus Aurelius, a guy I read when I was stuck in Hell and finished all the coloring books said, “Death, like birth, is a secret of nature.” Only with birth you get a blanket and a bottle. You get a blanket with death too, but they call it a shroud and everyone else gets the bottle. How am I supposed to be okay with that?
The future is a mess, the past is a wreck, and I’m center stage at the shit storm of the century. I guess I can take comfort in knowing that if it all goes balls up tonight, I’ll be among the first to die and won’t have to see everything gobbled down like an all-you-can-eat buffet.
It’s 9:55.
I take the 8 Ball out of my pocket, toss it up into the air, and catch it a couple of times in my Kissi hand. As it falls, it changes shape too quickly for me to see. I want to look anyway because it’s the last time I’ll see it. I keep tossing it and waiting.
The light in the square goes up a couple of notches. The trees blur and the air turns red. A vault slowly emerges in the air above the treetops. It’s red and wet. Not with rain, but blood. The flesh cathedral encloses half the park, like a Grand Guignol band shell. I don’t know how many bodies hang inside it. The naves stretch back as far as I can see. It’s all of Saint Nick’s victims, plus the Angra worshipers who offed themselves.
Weaving through the suspended bodies are two chop shops. The guy is Shaky. I don’t recognize the scarred woman.
She says, “I told you you should have joined us. All this pain. All this fighting and here we are, just where I told you we’d be.”
I know the voice from our phone chats.
“Deumos? Is that you? Your look finally matches your personality.”
She shakes her head. Her face is split nearly down the middle. Her eyes and lips don’t quite line up right. Her face is a mass of wrong angles.
“I won’t engage with you, Stark. You’re just stalling and you know it’s futile. Just give us the Qomrama.”
