CHAPTER EIGHT

THE FLOCK

 

 

IT WAS A lie, of course, but it seemed to be good enough for the Pastor.

Cade was glad to get out of that room. The same air in the corridors that’d seemed tainted when he walked in now seemed sweet on his tongue, and he took a long breath of it. Then he turned to the Pastor, shuffling along next to him with his cobra walk.

“You did the sign?”

The Pastor narrowed his eyes, confused. Cade almost sighed. If there was one thing he hated, it was using a bunch of words when a couple would do.

“Sign on the bridge. Figured someone had a problem with hippies. Figured it was you.” Cade didn’t elaborate any further than that. Either the Pastor’d know what he was talking about or he wouldn’t, and that’d be an answer in itself.

The Pastor chuckled his little dry-bone laugh. “Yes it was, my friend, indeed it was. Or rather, it was the work of my people, performing a public service for the glory of the Lord. The goodly in this city, the saved, feel it best to warn off them that’d spread their sin and wickedness, their pestilence, to our beautiful city –”

“Huh,” Cade grunted, cutting the Pastor off before he got started. Cade wasn’t in the mood for a big speech. He had things to find out. “You burn Sausalito?”

The Pastor chuckled softly. “No, my son, no. When the Lord visits the terrible necessity of taking life upon us, it is with purpose, yes it is, a great purpose, the cleansing of sin from the community... so that the chosen people of the Lord might go about their works without its taint amongst them. Now what you speak of there is a thing of chaos, my friend, of chaos and dam-nation; a serpent, I say, let loose upon the earth; a terrible beast of rage and flame, yes indeed...” He stopped, suddenly, his whole body shaking like a leaf in a breeze. Then he tilted his neck and turned those cold grey eyes on Cade, seeming for a moment to look deep into him. He hissed out the words, spitting them like venom. “The Devil’s work!”

Cade stared for a moment, then nodded slowly.

“So who did?”

The Pastor frowned sternly, drawing himself up, the snake-walk quickening in pace. “You should learn to heed my words, sinner man. Heed them well, for they come from the Lord, yes indeed, from the very mouth of the Lord on high! Didn’t I say it was the Devil? Didn’t I say we were fighting those that spread their sin? Did you not believe, O sinner?”

Cade figured he’d caused some offence with the question. Hell with it. He knew who the Pastor was getting at. “The hippies.”

The Pastor grinned, and the grin didn’t touch his eyes. “The hippies. The godless. Satan’s own. They burn and they destroy, yes they do, enact the Devil’s commandments and bring the Devil’s punishment down onto all that stand in their way. It’s the truth I bring you, brother, the truth of the Lord. Do not doubt.” He chuckled, a high, snickering sound, like a rat skittering in a glass ribcage. “I speak the word of the Lord!”

Cade nodded, but what the Pastor had to say didn’t seem right. He’d been down the Haight-Ashbury a couple of times back before the bad times, and while it wasn’t the Summer of Love anymore by any stretch, most of the folks he’d seen there were peaceable enough folk, and the man walking next to him definitely wasn’t that.

Still, Cade knew how the bad times could change a body. Wasn’t nothing quite like losing everyone you ever knew to make you crazy. He figured he’d reserve judgement until he knew the score a little better, but he was going to need to head east pretty soon and check on Haight-Ashbury for himself.

Right now he had other problems.

He heard the sound of the crowd through the front doors before he saw it. Somewhere between a hundred and a hundred and fifty people were choking the street outside – men at the front, the biggest first. At the back, Cade could see the womenfolk, huddled, not looking up. That made some sense, at least. Maybe Cade could be charitable and say that the Pastor didn’t want the womenfolk hurt, but he was building a new society for himself that nailed people to crosses for reasons provided for him by a voice in his head claiming to be an Old Testament God of death and pain and damnation. Traditionally there wasn’t a big role for womenfolk in a system like that.

A couple of the women were pregnant, and Cade figured probably more of them were than showed. Breeding the new generation of the saved.

Cade looked around the crowd, and frowned. There were a hell of a lot of them, and though he wouldn’t put it past the Pastor to baptise him into the faith in front of an audience, it was a lot more likely that he’d brought these people around because he figured even Cade couldn’t kill a hundred people.

And Cade couldn’t. Not these hundred, anyhow.

It wasn’t just the women. Cade had never killed a woman – though he’d been accused of it – but he wouldn’t have a problem if the circumstances came up. It wasn’t the numbers, either. Cade didn’t have a problem with dying, and he’d take as many of these sons of bitches as he could with him before he went. The ten or so that finally did for him would know they’d been in a fight, that was for sure. Neither of those reasons would have been enough to stop Cade going to work right there.

It was the children.

Little faces with big eyes, peeking between the women’s skirts. Ready to hide if things got bloody, but brought out to see something. A show. A lesson, maybe. Their mommas had brought them to see the sinner.

Cade drew the line at killing kids. As weak spots went, that was one he could about live with.

Cade looked at the Pastor. He didn’t bother saying anything. He was a little curious how the Pastor’d got the word out – maybe one of his guards had passed a signal while Cade had been watching the Pastor froth at the mouth in there – but beyond that things were pretty clear.

The Pastor smiled back, and stepped into the crowd. Not a word was said as they swallowed him up. Just an eerie silence, like they were all waiting for Cade to speak. He didn’t bother.

“The children of the Lord,” came the Pastor’s voice from inside the throng. “They who have heard the word, the good word of the Lord in their ears. You want to join my flock? A sinner? A killer of goodly men? Your sins are black, I tell you black, inside your soul!” The voice rose, an edge of hysteria creeping in. “You call yourself my brother, with your hands steeped in your black and evil sins! If you touch me, you defile me! Your sins are black as pitch! You must be shrieved, O sinner, you must be purged, your sin must be driven from you...”

Cade frowned, taking a step forward. The crowd took a step forward too.

As one.

“Hell with it,” he muttered.

The Pastor’s voice laughed, his bone-rattle laugh. Cade cast his eyes through the crowd and couldn’t see a sign of him. It was as though he’d simply melted into the mass of people. “Oh, sinner. Oh, sinner... your sins have found you out!”

The crowd surged.

Cade had a couple of choices at this point. He’d left his good chain back at the bar, but his best knife was in his belt and he could get his knuckledusters on quick, maybe pop a chain from his bicep, then wade in. Swing the chain in a wide arc, slash the knife with the other hand, cutting through a swathe of people – the ones he didn’t blind with the chain would find their guts hanging on the floor. Then he could advance into the mob, slashing, cutting, keeping a wide circle around him, and then...

What?

Cade had fought big groups of folks before, but it’d take a lot of doing to fight a crowd this size. Most likely he’d tire, or leave an opening sometime – with that number it’d only take one. That was when they were going to drag him under. If most of them were dead on the ground, that’d just make the rest more likely to kill him. And even if he killed a good hundred men – and he figured that he probably could, given time and a hell of a good dose of luck – then what? Start on the women?

The children?

Cade could do that if he had to. But it’d most likely be a death sentence to start, and he wasn’t sure there was too much of a need for it. If he was gonna die here, he’d die here.

But he was willing to gamble on the Pastor having something else in mind.

He stepped into the crowd, hands raised, and the crowd folded around him. Dozens of men, jostling and pushing at him, herding him through into the middle of the street, hands roaming and pushing at his back, grabbing at his shoulders and forcing down.

For a second, Cade resisted, and then someone behind him kicked into the back of his knee, sending that knee crashing into the concrete. Cade’s expression didn’t change, even when they forced him onto his back. He didn’t make it easy for them – he fought as much as he could. But the trouble with Cade was that so far as he was concerned, fighting meant killing, and he’d decided he wasn’t going to kill any of these people.

Not just yet, anyhow.

Cade wasn’t a man who enjoyed being held down, and he flexed his arms as well as he could, but there were two or three big men for each arm or leg. He wasn’t going anywhere.

“O sinner man... are you prepared to embrace the Lord, your master?”The voice was soft and almost soothing as the Pastor stepped out of the crowd, shuffling. He had a pair of railroad spikes in one hand – big, sharp steel things, giant nails. In the other, he had a hammer.

Cade was starting to wonder if he’d gambled wrong.

He flexed, but they had him pinned. He still wasn’t going anywhere. Suddenly he was very conscious of how warm the tarmac was against his back.

He didn’t bother saying anything. There wasn’t much to say.

Gently, almost lovingly, the Pastor pressed the tip of one of the spikes into Cade’s palm. Then he brought down the hammer.

Cade didn’t flinch. The spike went through the palm, kicking up a gout of blood as it lodged fast in the tarmac. The Pastor raised the hammer again, and brought it down hard enough to drive the spike another inch in. The pain was like a red hot knife carving all the way down Cade’s arm, and he wondered if he’d be able to use his hand again when he got that spike out.

If he got that spike out.

Another blow from the hammer and the spike was deeper into the road. Then a third. Each of those blows of the hammer was like someone sticking battery acid into Cade’s palm and shooting eight hundred volts down his nerves. It was a hell of a thing to take and not flinch or cry out, but Cade didn’t figure crying out was going to profit him all that much, and flinching was just going to tear his hand up worse.

Another blow. The sound of the hammer on the spike was like a ringing bell. Cade started wondering about infection. The spike was most of the way into the tarmac now. The Pastor stood, panting slightly. “Oh Lord,” he breathed, his face flushed, his eyes shining. “Oh Lord.”

The Pastor was stronger than he’d looked, to swing the hammer that way. Cade wondered how many times he’d done this before.

Probably a few.

That gamble was starting to look like the worst bet Cade had ever made.

Cade’s thoughts were starting to run away from him a little. He tried to focus. He’d been a damn fool to let himself get took. He could’ve run. Running wasn’t his nature, but all the same, he could’ve hid out, got his answers another way.

He could feel his forearm getting sticky as the blood pooled under it.

The pain was gigantic.

The Pastor moved to the other hand, pushing the point of the railroad spike into the flesh. Cade was ready for it now, when it came, anticipating that first brutal blow of the hammer. But the Pastor was ready too. The hammer didn’t move.

Cade looked up and saw that cracked, crazy-paving smile, the eyes glittering above it.

All he could hear was the slow, steady tic, tic, tic of someone’s watch.

Cade scowled.

The son of a bitch was making him wait for it.

Cade’s lips twitched, nearly baring some teeth. He came pretty damn close to saying something about that. Then he realised that even a cross word was giving the son of a bitch a measure of satisfaction, and the hell with that. Cade took a deep breath, and relaxed, letting the pain in his pinned hand be its own thing, not touching him.

Above the crowd, the sky was a slowly deepening blue. The first stars were starting to come out. Cade looked up at them, letting everything else fade away.

Crang.

The hammer came down, hard, and another white wave of pain smashed down Cade’s arm, then crackled and burned like hot coals as the hammer rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell. The Pastor wanted to get it done quick now, Cade figured. Good for him.

The men in the crowd let him go and stood back. They still hadn’t said a single damn word, which might have shown an impressive command of internal discipline, under other circumstances. Right now, Cade wasn’t concentrating too hard on that. He was pinned, arms spread wide, palms nailed to the tarmac, and that was where he was going to be staying. He figured he could probably pull himself free if he wanted to – except that’d drag those metal spikes through the flesh and bones of his hands, tear them both apart. He’d probably cripple himself for life.

Might have to come to that.

The Pastor knelt down, grinning like a snake in a gerbil’s cage.

“Oh, sinner, your sins are black as pitch... but have faith. Trust in the good word of the Lord. Oh, sinner, hear his word!” The Pastor’s bony hand crept to Cade’s combat knife, pulling it out of Cade’s belt. Then he laid the blade against Cade’s chest and the black fabric of his tank-top. “You got the Devil in you, sinner! You got the hand of Satan on you!”

He laughed, and it chattered like skeleton’s teeth rattling in a cracked glass jar. “Cast him out, Lord! Cast... him... out!”

Then he cut.

Down first, through fabric and flesh, then across, the blade bit, slicing as keenly through Cade’s skin and muscle as it did through anything else. Carving a bloody cross.

Cade swallowed. That was just overkill – plus it wrecked a pretty decent vest. He just hoped nobody he’d cut up earlier had any kind of blood diseases. These days there wasn’t any telling. A man should be careful.

The Pastor stood, passing the knife to a man in the crowd. That was it. The whole mass of people walked away, not saying a word, most of them heading back down Cervantes and filtering off into the streets and buildings. Within five minutes, Cade was alone.

The agony in his hands and chest had become a steady drumbeat of pain. He could feel the blood matting what was left of his top and the hair on his chest. He was very conscious of the hard blacktop under his head, and how uncomfortable the chains on his biceps were, all of a sudden. He wanted to flex a little, but with the soft tissues in his hands pierced by a pair of railroad spikes, that wasn’t a good idea.

Cade breathed in, and breathed out. Far away, a dog howled.

It was going to be a long night.