Chapter Thirty-six

When Johnny Z came to, he was tied to a gurney in the back of a meat truck. In front of him was an aluminum wall, and although he didn't know it, on the other side of it were various cuts of frozen meat—steaks, roasts, pork chops. They were packaged and had been placed on shelves by two men wearing winter jackets and ski gloves. The temperature in the freezer was about ten above zero.

If a cop stopped the truck and asked to look in the back all he would see was frozen meat.

They wouldn't think to look beyond the refrigerator wall, where Johnny was tied up, rags stuffed in his mouth.

Johny's teeth chattered and his eyes darted around the room looking for some way out.

Formerly helpless old Millie, wearing a warm winter coat, looked down at him with snarling contempt.

“Hey there, big guy, how are you?” she asked. “Probably wondering where you're going. Well, I'll tell you. You're going to a party, a party you will never forget. Trust me on that.”

Johnny tried to talk but all that came out were idiot mumbles.

They took him out of the back of the truck and put his gurney down on the desert floor. Then Millie took the gag out of his mouth. Johnny looked up at the moon. He felt a terrifying panic and the moon was so luminous and beautiful that he almost wanted to cry.

Millie stood next to him. In her hand was some kind of remote-control device.

“Look up there, Johnny-boy,” she said in an almost motherly tone.

She pointed at a mountain in front of them. Rocky, sandy, not all that steep. As mountains go, you wouldn't stop to take a picture of it.

“So?” he said. “A fucking hill. Who cares?”

“But watch this.”

She then aimed the remote at the hill and pushed the button.

Johnny's mouth dropped open.

There was a whirring sound and the earth on the hillside parted. Two boulders slid open, just like elevator doors.

“What the fuck?” Johnny cried.

“This is the party we told you about,” Marty said.

“Party?”

“You're probably wondering where all the guests are. Well, they enter on the other side,” Millie said. “You're one of the star attractions. You wouldn't expect the star to come in the same entrance as the audience, would you?”

“Star attraction? What the fuck are you talking about?” Johnny screamed.

Marty smiled and stuffed the gag back in his mouth.

Two men picked up Johnny's gurney and began to carry him up the hill.

Johnny tried to talk but the words just sounded like, “Waitaman-fuckers basflerds.”

Marty and Millie and the two bearers found him hilarious and began mimicking his pronunciation.

Before he could object any more, they had already walked up the pathway, gone through the doors, and were inside.

The doors in the hillside closed behind them.

They took him into a great underground room lit by wall torches. He felt such fear that he was sure he would lose control of his bowels. How Marty and Millie would love that.

Marty and Millie. He still couldn't get over it!

The two old fuckers had somehow tricked him, the fabulous Johnny Zaprado, by playing on his greed. The whole match had been a setup. He should have seen it coming a mile away.

But who would think them capable of it?

Old people had been his criminal specialty because they were so helpless and such goofs. Really, until now he had never had one iota of trouble bashing them around, stealing their money, and screaming into their fragile, tissue-paper-thin-skinned faces.

Until now, until this very moment . . . and where the hell was he?

Inside a freaking mountain! Moving through some long tunnel, with torches flickering on ancient walls.

They passed through some doors and took him into a big meeting room. The kiva.

He squinted and moved his head slightly so he could see who was there. From the sound of it, there was a pretty large gathering of people, maybe a hundred or so.

But there was no way he could prepare for what he saw next.

All the guests wore metallic shimmering gray capes and really bizarre white masks with strange little eye slits and oversized mouths. Very grotesque-chic.

It was some kind of weird masquerade party. Maybe they were going to teach him a lesson. Old creeps were good at that kind of thing, teaching young people a lesson. That had to be it. They were going to scare him a little bit and maybe give him a few memorable bruises and then dump him a few miles from town and let him think about taking on old folks again.

He could almost hear them hanging around, saying, “Well, we'll teach that young hustler a thing or two, by crackie.”

So let them scare him if they wanted. Let them do whatever they had in mind. He could hack it. But when he healed up afterward, oh, baby, were they going to get a rude surprise! Yeah, he was going to track all of them down and crush their ancient asses.

To think that they had tricked him, Johnny Z, like this. They were going to pay and pay and pay and . . .

But wait now. What was this? Something weird was happening. His two new bearers—two people dressed in the same silver tunics and weirdo almost-alien masks. As they carried him through the great, torch-lit hall, the place became utterly silent.

And where were Marty and Millie?

As he managed to raise his head a little and look around the cave, he realized every masked eye was staring down at him.

What the hell was going on?

He watched as the crowd moved in on him. They crowded so close to him that his bearers could barely carry him through the curious, masked mob to the front of the room.

But get him there they did.

Then Johnny looked up and saw something that he could no longer pass off with a laugh or with his usual psychotic revenge fantasies.

He saw something so horrifying that for a good three or four seconds he didn't really recognize it, even though he was staring right at it and could see it plainly.

It was . . . but it couldn't be . . . no way.

But it was!

What Johnny Z saw was two other people in front of him. A middle-aged man and an attractive woman Johnny assumed was his wife, and they were naked.

But being naked was the least of their worries because they were also on a makeshift stage at the front of the room, and they were . . . oh, God, was he actually seeing this?

Yes, he was. Oh, God help me, he screamed in silence.

The two of them were each nailed to a cross.

The older man and the younger woman were totally nude and were being freaking crucified.

Crucified! With real nails in their palms and their ankles.

And look at the size of those nails. Fucking huge. The kind of nails you might use in building a bridge.

And all the people in their shimmering gray capes and their weird white masks were looking at the poor crucified bastards and ooohing and aahing. Then Johnny noticed something odd. The two crucified people should have been screaming their lungs out but they weren't. They were utterly quiet. He looked at their mouths and realized why. There were gags stuffed in their mouths.

But their eyes . . . ah, their eyes told the story without words.

Their eyes were wide open and filled with nameless, unspeakable terror. Their eyes were doing all the screaming for them.

And now they were prying open his mouth and sticking in rags soaked in chemicals that scorched his tongue and the roof of his mouth, and there was a gag being tied tightly all the way around his neck, and he was trying to beg and scream but could do neither.

They were pulling him off the gurney and moving him to his very own cross and they were starting to rip off his clothes. He was stunned that he could feel shame as well as terror.

But he did. He wanted to apologize to everyone for the roll of fat on his stomach. And he wanted to say he had intended to go on a diet because when you get . . . when you get fucking crucified you really want to look your best!

But that line of thought was soon cut off because there was a man walking toward him with a big hammer in his hand, and sticking out of the mouth hole of his mask were four huge motherfucking nails.

Johnny Z began to scream and scream and scream some more.

But all that came out was a muffled torrent of animal sounds, like the bleating of a screaming pig, with no hope of mercy from his torturer.

All the masked people in the crowd began to laugh. Wild, crazed, lunatic laughter that echoed around the green-gray walls and shook the very foundations of the room.