EXIT BLOOD
a Barefield novel
By
Trey R. Barker
Copyright 2013 by Trey R. Barker
All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Down and Out Books, LLC
3959 Van Dyke Rd, Ste. 265
Lutz, FL 33558
www.DownAndOutBooks.com
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Cover design by JT Lindroos
Cover photo by Wonderlane
ISBN: 978-1-937495-43-5
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Exit Blood
Acknowledgements
Bio
Other Books Available from Down and Out Books
A preview of Bill Moody’s The Man in Red Square
A preview of J.L. Abramo’s Gravesend
A preview of Terry Holland’s Chicago Shiver
Playing with a new amp
Three Weeks Ago
Church of the Bloody Souls
Valentine, Texas
Father Bob handed me the package. A delivery man at the church’s back door, Phil stitched on the left side of his yellow shirt.
“He smoked, too,” Father Bob said.
“Lots of us do.” I opened the package.
“Our body is a temple. Shouldn’t be fouled with cigarettes.”
“What about fouling it with weed? That acceptable?”
“As our newest member, you would do well to try and remember that.”
This time, I managed to keep the smart ass answer in the back of my throat. I’m new and who knows what the fuck is going on with these guys anyway. The quieter I am, the better off I’ll be.
In the box was a commemorative plate. Barefield Centennial, blared cowboy rope letters. Arranged around the sentiment were pictures of oil derricks, cattle, barbed wire, and fences.
“What the shit is this?” I asked.
Father Bob was already gone, leaving me alone in my tiny room.
There was no return address.
Ten Days Ago
“Again?” The box was open and another commemorative plate sat heavy in the middle of newspaper used as packing. “What the hell?”
With a shrug, Father Bob disappeared down the hallway. I slammed the door to my six-by-six room and stared at the plate. Barefield. This was a message. Or a bullshit reminder.
Problem was I didn’t remember much of my last night in Barefield. And what I did remember, I’d just as soon forget.
“Fuck.”
I smashed the plate—just like I’d done with the previous three—and began to pack the few belongings I had. Obviously, it was way past time to slip this bizarro church into my history.
Eight Days Ago
—Whap!—
The sound of whips against skin.
—Whap!—
Blood it out.
Blood, scalding hot at one hundred forty-five degrees, poured down my back while I kept an eye on the visitors. Had to be cops. Who else would be here looking for me?
They made my nerves twitch like a meth junkie on the haul. Straight up knew they were here for me, and that my pleas would have zero effect on them. Bullets bouncing off of Superman’s chest. They didn’t care if the murder was an accident. They didn’t care that my father had gotten me drunk, had stuffed two or three or, hell, maybe four, spliffs between my lips. Anything I might say would cut me exactly no ice.
Didn’t know them, but I damn sure knew the shock on their faces. I recognized it. It had been on mine when I arrived.
It was the blood that was so shocking.
And that the priests did it to themselves.
Thirty men, their heads tilted back, eyes closed; supplicants at the altar of violence. Every arm stretched out like the arms of a cross. Every right arm holding a short leather whip, every mouth moving, filling the sanctuary with chants. Each man hit himself, spattered his own blood on the ceiling in hundreds of short, straight lines. Each new line of blood covered an old one which itself covered still an older one.
They’re cops.
The fact that they never looked at me was what told me. Too studied in how they avoided my gaze.
And not just cops, but friends of SuperCop’s...of Kurston’s. They were scoping me out and trying desperately to be cool about it. Probably they had already called SuperCop. He was probably already busting ass down the road to snatch me up.
’Cause there ain’t nothing better for a cop than bagging a killer.
My stomach tightened.
Would they let me call my step-father before they snapped on the cuffs? Would they let me apologize for being such a disappointment to him? Would they let me tell him how sorry I was that I’d screwed things up so fully and completely? If I could make him understand, then I could go happily.
Well...not happily. I sure as shit didn’t want to go to prison, but I was tired. I’d been running for weeks now and was exhausted. The back of my throat was coated in fear, but it was spiced with relief because this thing was just about over.
Except I never found Mama’s pendant.
Or the damned money.
And I still didn’t actually remember killing him.
—Whap!—
“Y’all hitting y’all’self pretty hard.” His name was Cope, an old black man who munched cucumbers and who’d brought me to the church. He had a big, gaudy ring on every one of his fingers. “Got some angry penance going on today.”
“That’s what happens when—”
The gun suddenly, painfully, in my ear snapped my words off. I tried to move away from the thing, but a powerful arm held me tight against the barrel. My whip, covered in my one hundred forty-five degree blood, hit the floor. “SuperCop...you came.”
“What? Yeah, sure as fuck did. Didn’t think I wouldn’t, did you?”
I’d known I’d be scared when SuperCop—Kurston—finally arrested me. Everybody is scared all the time, even if they don’t admit it, but the sheer amount of terror surprised me. Kurston’s gun stayed hard against my head and my fear tightened my brown robe like a noose. My heart stopped as though that noose had snapped it dead.
I managed to look sideways at him. “Who the fuck’re you?”
“Nice try,” the cop said. “Where is she?”
“Who—” I coughed. My vision swam. “Who are you?”
He frowned. “What? I’m Captain Brooks.” He bared his teeth, a dog looking for dinner. “Carson City Police.”
“Where’s SuperCo—Detective Kurston?”
“Who?”
“Detective Kurston. Barefield PD.”
“Never heard of him. I’m from Carson City.”
“Carson? By San Antonio?” I asked.
“San Antonio? Fuck, no. Carson City, Nevada, asswipe. Remember? You shot up my town? Killed a couple of my local thugs? Ringing any bells?”
“Whoa...hang on.” There were huge chunks of that last night I didn’t remember—thanks to the ganja and whiskey—but Nevada? All the way to Nevada, shoot the place up, and then back to Barefield?
In...like...two hours?
“I have never been to Carson City.”
The cop made a game show buzzer sound. “Wrong answer.”
This had to be more of Fagan’s bullshit. This cop—curiously alone, I realized—had to be chasing my father.
“Fagan leave you a message?” I asked. “Maybe tell you it was his New York nu
mber? ’Cause that’s what he did to me. I was 16 and it was a damned dry cleaning shop in Little Havana...Miami.”
The cop backed up, but his gun stayed at my head. “The hell’re you talking about?” But instead of letting me answer, he yanked me around to cuff me. “I don’t care what you’re talking about.”
He pinched my arms and I yelped. “Wait, I didn’t do anything.” I stumbled over his feet and fell to the floor. “You can’t arrest me, I wasn’t even there. I was in Barefield.”
And did something there.
“Whoa,” Cope said. “What’s up?”
“Back up,” the cop said to Cope. “This is official business, boy.”
“Boy?” Cope grinned. “Y’all didn’t just say that.”
“You gonna play hero, black boy, beat me to death with the cuke? Kick my ass so I don’t shoot your boy in the head?” When Cope said nothing, the cop nodded. “Thought so.” He looked at me. “Where the hell is she, Hal?”
There was a pause.
“Who?” Cope said.
“Hal. You didn’t tell your jungle bunny friend how you shot up my town and I followed you right into this...church?”
“Darcy,” I said.
The cop’s head tilted. “What?”
“I’m Darcy.”
“You’re Hal.”
“Darcy.”
“Hal.”
“Who’s on first?” Cope’s laugh spiraled into the dank air.
A handful of chanting priests glanced at us.
“Pretty good, lawman,” Cope said. “Y’all ain’t even got the right bad guy.”
“Wrong man? Fuck that noise.” But the cop’s face was red. “I’m here for—” He stopped and his gaze went straight to the visitors. “Son of a bitch. That’s them.”
Then he was gone, across the room in a blur, pushing his way through the tight pack of self-flagellating monks.
But their blood never stopped. They tore it from their own backs and flung it through the air. The tang was the odor of a chemical spill. The blood patterned all over the ceiling and dripped on their heads.
The art of self-mortification.
Staggering in its intensity.
But I was pretty sure this idiot with the badge hadn’t really seen it yet. He’d been pretty well focused on me. Did he even realize he was standing in a chapel built from the living rooms of four mobile homes lashed together, walls removed? Did he see the giant wooden cross hanging over the altar? Or the windows, blacked out with shoe polish? Only a smudge of late afternoon sunlight managed to bully its way in and it was just yellow enough to make the priests appear to be dancing in stale piss.
“What in the hell....” The cop tried to move through the crowd of priests to get at the visitors.
“Best be getting to the door,” Cope said.
I didn’t move until Cope shoved me.
“Do it slow and ritualize all the damned way. Get a little luck and mayhap this cheap Dirty Harry forgets we here.”
When I saw Cope’s eyes, my ass puckered. “Holy fuck, you’re scared.”
Cope slapped me with a hard pop. “Blasphemer.” He nodded toward the cop. “And yeah...that cop scares me. Time for us to be getting on down the road.”
Cope and I both moved our arms in tandem with the other priests, what Cope called ritualizing, whips against backs, blooding our sins out. Doing that, we headed for the back door of the chapel. Through it was the rest of the church.
“Why not the front?”
“Bullets start flying and all them priests gonna head for that front door. They’ll pile up like gristle after a steak fry.”
—Whap!—Whap!—
The cop brought his gun to bear on the two visitors I had thought were cops there to nab me. “You’re under arrest.” But his voice got lost in the chanting and the blood. “You guys are craz—”
“Go.” The visiting man shoved the woman toward the front door.
She tore through the priests, disappeared into the forest of brown.
“Here we go,” Cope said.
He was right. This woman, cutting through the place, brought most of the monks out of their ritualizing trance. At which point they saw the cop.
And fucking panicked.
Most were at the church because they were running from Johnny Law. Or from something that would interest Johnny. So seeing a cop in the place, in the literal and metaphoric sanctuary, wasn’t something they’d planned on.
It was a fucking explosion. Howls and shouts, priests ducking into the shadows. Some priests kept blooding, some yelled at the officer. Some randomly screamed. “Who called the cops?” “I’m wanted in—” “—didn’t mean to kill—” “—the other bodies—” “I’ll kill again, motherfu—”
And then the shooting started.
A single shot and I had no idea which priest fired it. Then a second shot. And then a fucking fusillade. Smoke and the stink of gunpowder. More blood but now in drops and spatters rather than slick lines on a ceiling.
A priest I hadn’t met jerked a gun from under his robe and blasted away. Another priest yanked a knife from somewhere and swung it wildly as he headed for an exit.
The shots hit the walls and pulverized the cheap adobe. Bullets shattered the windows and sent shards through the air like New Year’s confetti in Times Square. Huge gouts of sunlight poured in, the naked neon light from that New Year’s celebration. Monks squinted, yelped, at the sudden explosion of harsh light.
And I couldn’t get the fucking stench of gunpowder out of my nose. Smell reminded me of firecrackers...big ass, industrial firecrackers.
In the tangle of bullets, the cop yelled, “This guy’s wanted for murder.”
“That’s crap,” I said to Cope. “He’s not a cop. He’s lying.”
“What y’all talking about?”
It was anarchy around the cop and the male visitor he fought with. Screams and yells, fists and feet, dust. Bits of wood shot off the cross buzzed through the air. Cordite and adobe, blood and maybe even the piss of scared men. It filled the church and created a gumbo of foul odors. Reminded me of desert roadkill left too long in the west Texas sun.
God, Mama, I really need you. Can’t save myself...obviously...I need you.
Everyone fled for the exits. Somewhere in the middle of the pack, a head disintegrated in a shower of bone and brain. Beyond him, a single line of bullets poked holes in the walls. Those bullets marched around the chapel and as they got to me, Cope jerked me to the floor. His big paw covered my mouth and though he yelled in my ear, his voice was a whisper.
“Y’all get to the bike.”
Cope had been right. Bodies stacked at the doors. Screaming priests scratched and pawed over those bodies, seeing escape rather than a growing junkpile of flesh.
I headed the other direction. The back door beckoned, damn near a portal to another World where none of this shit was happening.
And maybe a World where Mama was even still alive.
“Brother Darcy.” A weak voice. “Take me with you.”
Brother Enrico. A junkie from Sante Fe who told me he’d been fighting his demons for years. He was on the floor. He’d fallen in the confusion, but when I bent over to grab him, I heard two pops and then watched two blooms appear on his chest.
He looked at himself. “Son of a bitch. I knew that cop was here for me.”
I said, “He’s here for me.”
From the hallway, Cope sneered. “Fuck y’all, he’s here for me.”
Along the far side of the sanctuary, something had caught fire. Flames and smoke rose in meandering plumes toward the stained ceiling. The plastic windows were already beginning to melt open and inch down the frames and walls to the floor, a leper’s skin sliding off his body.
“Shit,” I said. “What is that?”
“Yeah...that’d be a fire.” Enrico coughed up yellow and pink fluids, then blood. “This pisses me off.”
“Damnit. Darcy, what y’all doing?”
“I’m
dying, Blackie.” Enrico tried to smile.
From the doorway, Cope looked at him, something soft in his brown eyes. “Then die already so I can get outta here, Mex.”
Enrico laughed up a huge amount of blood. “Is that sass? God, I love him.”
“Love y’all, too, Enrico, now die.”
The fire raced, fed by the carpet and tossed-aside robes and sandals.
“Don’t I get...a...send-off?”
Crossing himself, Cope came to Enrico and said, “Hail Mary, Mother of God, here’s another one.”
Enrico closed his eyes. “Best he could do, I guess.”
“Hang on, Mex, don’t croak out on me yet.” Cope pulled one of his rings off and closed Enrico’s hand around it. “Y’all been a good boy. Maybe this’ll help when you get there.”
Enrico nodded. “Bless you.”
I didn’t think he was quite dead, but we couldn’t wait any more. The place was burning down around us, the heat so stifling that breathing was getting tough. The hair on my arms burned away and I knocked a handful of embers off my robe. So we left him there, clutching Cope’s ring and talking to Jesus.
The hallway was already full of smoke. But it wasn’t black. Rather, it was a dingy gray.
As dirty as the last few weeks.
“Where are we going?”
“Thought y’all had the plan.”
Cope laughed, though damn me if I could see anything remotely funny about this nightmare. I tried to yell at him some, but great gouts of smoke flooded me. So instead of yelling at that old black man, I hacked up his name and then panicked. This was how it was going to end. Not with a bullet to the head or in a cell at the Texas State Prison for the accidental death of my father, but here in a hell fire that was going to roast the outside of me as badly as I had roasted my own insides.
A Little Less Than Eight Days Ago
The streets of Valentine, Texas
There was darkness and maybe it was a dream and maybe it was death.
Either way was fine because I didn’t hurt and that was just fine with me.
Exit Blood (Barefield Book 2) Page 1