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“Hold it. Bill, I’m going around to Quay’s side. Keep him covered.”
“With pleasure.”
I move around the van slowly, looking for shooters or traps. When I get to the driver-side door, I pull Quay out. He doesn’t resist. Bill steps out, then Candy—still holding her gun on Holly, though she’s not even trying to look like she’s serious.
The wind changes direction and the stink from the water plant is blinding. Quay just takes a deep breath and smiles.
“Here we are.”
“Are we going for a dip?”
“I wouldn’t if I were you.”
He heads into the plant and we follow, me with my gun on him.
“Is this what you’re telling us, Norris? That black milk is water? I don’t believe you.”
“Of course it’s not water,” he says.
He walks straight to the edge of the closest holding pond.
“Come closer, Sandman Slim. Take a whiff of the future.”
I have to hold my hand to my face until I get used to the stink.
“What are we doing here, Norris?”
“Here’s the story. We’re not in a water treatment plant. We’re in Hell. Who cares if Hellions have clean water? Yet as awful as this place is, what’s the one thing Lucifer, you included, wouldn’t tolerate in his streets?”
Holly coughs like she’s going to throw up. Candy pats her on the back.
“Effluent,” says Bill. “Even these Hellion pig fuckers don’t want shit on their boots.”
Quay points at Bill with one hand and taps his nose with the other.
“You win,” he says. “Behold. The only source of black milk in the universe.”
I go up with him to the holding pond.
“Black milk is Hellion shit?”
“Of course not. This is a sewage plant, not a shit plant. There’s every kind of Pandemonium trash and runoff in here. It’s the complete brew that’s the secret. It’s Pandemonium itself. But you’re right to the extent that Hellion shit is the most essential ingredient. Think of it like saffron. Every squatting, sitting, diarrhea-ravaged fallen angel is leaking the most valuable substance in the universe from their puckering assholes.”
I look down into the black, clotted mess. Then point the Glock at Quay’s head.
“This is a joke. When I met you in L.A., you were surrounded by all kinds of death totems. You were looking for a way not to die. If you’re in Wormwood, why weren’t you in the immortality program?”
“I wasn’t in Wormwood then. Not until right at the end.”
“What changed?”
He clasps his hands behind his back.
“I gave them my son. You didn’t know I was married, did you? One dead wife. One living child. I was in. On my way to eternal bliss.”
“Then why did you follow me into Kill City if you were set up with Wormwood?”
“Well,” he says, “you were hunting for a mystical object. One likes to hedge one’s bets with these things. I died before I could use my dose of black milk. But I was repaid for my good works.”
