“That was quite the bombshell back at the house,” Hunter said. He walked beside Barbie in the small hours of the morning shrouded by the dark sky, without an ounce of sleep since he had woken up the previous day in a room surrounded by death.
Barbie looked dead on her feet also, but there was no time for sleep. There was only time for the search and, as pointless as it had become, chasing after his body, losing Joan and regaining Raven, Hunter held hope that the outcome was still being governed by a higher power. The one in the sky, not the one down below.
Raven led the group through the quiet streets of Denver towards the house where she and Barbie knew Cal lived in their previous lives. Raven had been a disciple of Pestilence. Most likely, she would have become the Horseman of War if not for the intervention of Independents and Scout’s love. That mantle had befallen her best friend, Kessie. The girl appeared to enjoy the role she now played. Raven, in turn, didn’t really understand that she had lost a chunk of her life because God had chosen her to be the living vessel of Saint Joan of Arc.
Hunter had to give Raven one thing though: nothing ever slowed her down. She was onboard with the current plan, whether or not Scout accepted her company.
Scout kept pace in the back of the pack. His distance was equal to that of his departure from his normal self. Hunter worried like his brother, and hated it. He worried about his friend, his constant need to check his pistol to make sure it remained loaded, but most importantly he worried about Scout’s growing silence. Scout never withdrew like this, always had something to say about anything and normally about something stupid that Hunter had done. But since Joan’s death and since he stood in the corner of the house holding her sword, Scout had fallen. Hunter didn’t know what it would take to pull him back up, or if his best friend had even hit bottom.
That left Barbie. “So do you want to tell me about it while we walk?”
Barbie kept her focus up ahead. “Why do you care?”
“Don’t be like that. You know I care about you. So what if you used to be a prostitute. I don’t give a shit.”
“Language,” Barbie said on automatic. “I was not a prostitute. She was the prostitute.” Barbie pointed to her chest.
“That wasn’t you though.”
“No, you’re right. I’m just the lucky girl who inherited her memories and has to deal with her previous life choices day in and day out until this apocalypse is over. Super.”
“God must have put you in her place for a reason. There must be something about the girl that made her special.”
“I don’t know, Hunter. Why don’t we ask the hundred or so boys she slept with and see if they found anything special?” Barbie spat like the taste in her mouth had turned sour. “I know. When we find Cal, we can ask him why the girl was special to him. I’m sure he has some answers.” Barbie smacked her fist against her palm and rubbed it in. “Yeah, I’m liking that idea a whole lot.”
“Can I make another comment?”
“What is stopping you?”
“The fear of getting punched for it, actually.”
“Go ahead and ask, you big sissy. We’ll see where it goes from there.”
“What happened that put you in that grain elevator in Cozad?”
Barbie stopped in the middle of the street. Her face looked to the sky and her eyes filled with tears that came from the memory Hunter had asked from her.
Hunter turned and held up his hand, stopping Scout in his tracks behind them. Scout pulled out his magazine and checked to see if his bullets had magically disappeared. He slammed the mag back in and stared stone-faced back at Hunter, but not really seeing him.
Hunter sighed and returned his attention to his current problem. He reached over and took Barbie’s hand. She jerked away like he was the one that could call upon the lightning.
“Don’t touch me.” Barbie began to walk again.
Hunter fell in beside her with his painful shamble—it had not eased since gaining this new life. He had asked the question, and now he waited. She hadn’t punched him so that fear was gone, replaced by another. What was so horrible that it brought Barbie to tears?
Barbie wiped her eyes with rough strokes. She breathed in and out and then she spoke. “She was raped.”
A furious tide rolled over Hunter. He clamped his mouth shut and clenched his fists.
She said, “It was right before Tommy became Famine. When Patrick told him to leave town, Tommy came to see Cal to call on certain favors owed him. For whatever reason, Cal shoved the girl into the trunk of a car and gave both to Tommy. They traveled all night and before the sun came up that next day, Tommy dragged her out into a farmhouse and did what he did to her, and in the process, Famine overtook him and then locked her in that grain elevator. She lost herself there until she begged God for forgiveness and mercy. Then she fell asleep.”
Hunter stared straight ahead without seeing, only hearing Barbie’s story.
Was he to blame because he had been the catalyst for Tommy’s expulsion that led to the rape… To Tommy becoming Famine?
“I woke up in her place.”
They walked into Raven standing on a street corner, looking down the block. “This is it, third one on the right. It looks like business has quieted for the night.”
Barbie crossed her arms and rubbed them. She looked like the girl she had been before Hunter’s rescue. She looked haunted with memories.
Hunter wanted to reach out and comfort her the way she had with Scout an hour ago, but his awkward hand stayed put.
Scout walked up.
It was high time to make some noise.
“Are you ready?” Hunter asked Scout.
Scout walked towards the house, gun in hand. Hunter slipped his out of the back of his jeans. Raven had Hunter’s spare already in her hand, prepared to follow with an extra magazine tucked in her front pocket. Hunter checked Barbie and she left after Scout with Raven in tow. Hunter shambled after.
Scout opened the front door and walked right inside before Hunter could say, “Stick to the plan.” There was no plan other than sweep the house and find Cal.
Raven stepped inside next and Barbie waited by the door for Hunter to catch up. She let him pass before going in after.
One candle lit the foyer. Scout licked his thumb and finger and snuffed out the light. He moved through the bottom floor in dark silence. Raven stood at the bottom of the stairs looking up for signs of trouble. Barbie stayed by the front door. Hunter followed after his best friend as quietly as he could, dragging the one leg after the shorter one.
Barbie had recited the layout of the house to them before they left. She relied on memories that weren’t her own.
Scout opened the first bedroom door quietly and waited for his eyes to adjust. Hunter approached and looked over Scout’s shoulder, doing the same. According to Barbie, this was Cal’s room and sure enough, Cal was home in bed. Scout moved with deadly purpose, Hunter at his back.
Scout’s muzzle rested against the sleeping pimp’s temple. Cal’s eyelids flipped open in alarm and his hand moved under the other pillow on his king-sized bed. Scout jammed his temple with the muzzle and placed his finger over his lips.
“You got a pair of balls on you, I’ll give you that,” Cal said aloud and unafraid, at least not visibly. The hand slipped out empty beneath the pillow, fingers spread.
“Speaking of balls,” Hunter said and dropped his muzzle down between Cal’s legs. “Where the fuck has Patrick taken my body?”
Cal narrowed his eyes at him. “You must be Hunter.”
“Only in spirit. Don’t make me ask twice, I don’t have the time.”
“I know,” Cal said and left it like that.
Hunter didn’t want to play games like fifty questions. He jammed the muzzle against Cal’s softer parts instead. Cal winced with watering eyes and then he took stock of his predicament and spoke. “I have no idea where Patrick is, but I do know where your body has gone. My boy Jack took it because Patrick told him too. You know what Patrick is, right?”
“Besides a giant walking piece of shit? Yeah, I know. Where did your boy Jack take my body?”
Cal looked scared for the first time since waking up with a gun pointed at his head and another at his balls. “If I tell you anything, Patrick will kill me.”
“And if you don’t, you’re going to see him anyways. Just a lot sooner than you think.”
Scout cocked his head at Hunter. Hunter saw it in his eyes, but before he could stop him, Scout pulled the trigger.
Blam!
Cal’s head opened out the other side and blood hit the wall.
“No!” Hunter screamed.
Scout held his gun in both hands waiting in anticipation.
The smell of sulfur filled the room. Then smoke flooded in. Patrick said, “I knew you had it in you, kid.”
Scout fired his gun at Patrick, but Death had already collected his soul and moved on.
Hunter shouted, “You stupid motherfucker! What did you do?”
Scout ignored him and tilted his head at the sound of feet pounding on the floor upstairs. He left the bedside where Hunter raged alone beside the silent corpse.
Hunter took one last look at what Scout had done, and then he was trying to catch him down the hallway. Raven stood there pointing her gun at the top of the stairs and Barbie was in full-alarm by the front door.
“What happened?” Barbie asked, the need for quiet gone.
Scout rounded the stairs and began to mount them quietly. Raven backed out of his way.
“Scout shot Cal!” Hunter said, desperately trying to move his borrowed body. “Stop him!”
Scout reached halfway up. The big lumbering goon known as John stood at the top with a shotgun in his hands, but he was not in any position to open fire—his unbuttoned jeans hung around his knees and the gun was pointed towards the ceiling.
Barbie screamed as Scout took aim and put two in the chest of the big kid, who then came crashing down. Scout jumped onto the banister as John flew past. Raven dodged out of the way and the dead kid hit the wall. Scout landed back on the stairs and waited.
“You gotta thing for knocking people down stairs or what?”
The voice came from up the stairs out of Hunter’s sight.
Scout swung his gun around and unloaded, muzzle fire lighting the house for three seconds. The noise of the gunfire rang throughout the narrow combination of foyer, hallway and stairway.
Black smoke appeared over John’s dead body. “Two for two, I think we should be in business together.”
Scout screamed and reloaded, but Death was gone again.
Barbie opened the door and stepped to the side as the Archangel swept in. He took a look at the carnage of John’s mangled limbs and his soulless body. Then he climbed the stairs to Scout, took his gun away and embraced him.
The Archangel said, “You must stop now before you can no longer go back.”
For a moment Scout breathed in deep breaths, his adrenaline amped, seething with rage. The toll of what he unleashed finally caught up to him and he crumbled in the Archangel’s arms.
Hunter smelled sulfur from the corner and turned as Patrick reappeared behind Barbie.
“You took two from me. I owe you another.”
He broke her neck, took her light into his pale hands and then vanished in black smoke.