by Tim Scott
The bearded Rider leaned over and very slowly drew the gun out of the hand of the manic one. War didn’t flinch, staring into my eyes like he was trying to find my soul; just as you might look for a large fish that was hiding under the weeds of a crystal clear river.
“Porridge,” said the bearded one, tossing the piece onto one of the old upholstered chairs, where it bounced like a dropped toy.
The door clacked shut and War smiled at me, pointing two fingers at my head and making a “pcchhh!” noise like he was firing a gun, while Famine smiled on witlessly.
If I ever get out of this, I thought, I’m going to eat more garlic or whatever it was you’re supposed to do to stay healthy, and I’m definitely going to take up smoking again. I really, really could do with a cigarette, and I tried to imagine the deep pleasure of inhaling one now, but the taste of the first drag lay agonizingly out of reach.
“The great day of wrath is come, who shall be able to stand?” one bit of spray painting said in bulging letters. And farther along, half-obscured by the pinball table, another said: “And power was given to him over the four parts of the earth, to kill with sword, with famine and with death and with the beasts of the earth.”
No mention of shotguns or porridge, I thought, staring at the grimy ceiling. “And the power was given to him over the four parts of the earth.” I ran it over in my head. What four parts? The words rang a bell in my brain, and I knew I knew where those lines came from, but for some reason I couldn’t bring it to mind. And the more I ferreted around my head, the more the memory just sidestepped me, like a bullfighter playing with a bull.
In the end, I had less sense of what the answer could be than when I started. All I was left with was a distant clang of familiarity that was too far off to hear clearly, like a warning buoy for a ship chiming somewhere in the dead fog.
“Come on, Dukey!” cried the Rider who had put the gun to my head. And twisting around again, I saw he had started to play a handheld Game Guzzler. He was still sweating like the teenager at a disco who could never understand why he didn’t get the last dance. I watched his huge, ripped-up hands flick at the keys, and I could almost imagine he had swallowed a furnace a little earlier, which now caused this excess of heat and made his eyes flare with sparks.
“The great day of wrath is come, who shall be able to stand?” was painted just behind him. I sighed, wondering how I would ever make sense of all this. And as I lay there, I felt a strange silence sink into the room—a very particular sort of mildewed silence that was immensely depressing.
It reminded me of the faceless, tragic breakfast rooms I had encountered in countless motels when I had been on the road for EasyDreams, and the sensation shivered through me, even here, with a hollow, dry-rotted clarity. Those mornings had always been the same, with the same dull breakfast-cutlery-chinking silence. The same tired uncertain smiles on the faces of the waitresses. The same dampened rattle of Spanish voices at the other tables. The same wither of sunlight that dropped painfully on the dried-up furniture. The same stench of people passing through, the carpets sodden with the presence of strangers who’d gone ahead, or back, in a ceaseless trawl around that lost underworld of shuffling travel, and here it was again. The same rootlessness. The same sense of being on the edge of life, in some backwater that nobody cared about.
The same pockmarked, down-at-the-heel, lost-to-humanity silence.
“Don’t do that with your hat!” War screamed at the Game Guzzler, but I hardly heard him. Despite myself, I was thinking about those damned motels and how, at the end of the weeks, I’d come home with relief, finally feeling I was in a place I could breathe properly again, and spend time with Sarah. On the fleeting Sunday afternoons, we’d hold each other and talk about our dreams. Or read books on the deck of our wooden house while our black-and-white cat, who we named Possible Horse, would claw at my lap with his white-whiskered, head-nuzzling paws, and his solid build and powerful purr would make him vibrate like a jackhammer. In my mind’s eye I saw myself sitting there drawing in the gentle warmth of the winter sun on my back and hearing a distant clang of a train edging its way through the town, nosing the kids off the track.
I really loved books. They were one of the things I used to get emotional about. At a party, I could remember seeing the eyes of a good-looking woman glaze over as I had gone on about my passion for them with a childlike, religious fervor: the way you could slip them into your pocket; the way they took you into your soul, like a secret, unexpected journey. I wondered why reading from a screen seemed too transient, brittle, and temporary; maybe it was as though a final decision about the order of the words had yet to be reached.
I hadn’t learned then, as a teenager, that talking with that kind of earnestness about something can be exhausting to listen to, and that those sorts of girls were far more impressed by my friends who lied to them anyway, claiming they were the brothers of someone famous. Truth is not generally the keenest weapon but I had persevered with it, stubbornly thinking that in the end it ought to come out on top, but it had never really seemed to prove me right.
“Phase one incomplete. The Duke of Wellington cannot be tempted with bananas,” enunciated the Game Guzzler crisply. I sighed. I really hated those machines and would gladly have reintroduced penal colonies for those who were caught with them.
“The Duke of Wellington will be sick if you feed him furniture,” the thing burbled on, seemingly getting more confident and content. The door clacked open as the bearded Rider swung in, injecting some energy into the docile quiet.
“Porridge,” he said grimly, “nice and fucking fresh,” like this was something virtually unique. “Get the Package out of there. Come on!”
“Level two!” growled War, not raising his eyes.
“Come on!” said the Beard. “Leave it.”
“The Duke of Wellington will be sick if you feed him furniture,” the machine reiterated in the same deep tone that I was more used to hearing from someone giving a commentary about the life cycle of an oak tree or something.
“Level two? Jesus, War,” said the bearded Rider. “To get to level three all you have to do is not feed the Duke of Wellington the furniture. Weren’t you supposed to be a teacher once?”
“I was a teacher,” said War looking up from the screen to some distant point, as though he might just be able to see his class three-quarters of a mile away. “Who’s making all that noise?” he said. “See?”
He plonked the machine down and I felt him loosen the straps holding my arms. The main Rider indicated with a tiny rock of his head that I should sit up, and I swung my legs stiffly off the bed, awakening a throbbing ache of pain in my jaw where his punch had landed. I touched it gingerly, reassuring myself it wasn’t as big as it felt.
The Rider handed me a bowl of sweet-smelling porridge with a spoon standing perpendicular in the middle. I lifted a dollop of the steaming stuff slowly into my mouth and found it was warm with a thick texture. The chirpy Rider came in closer and made a strange guttural growl, and smiled at me.
“Porridge, eh?” He nodded. “You like porridge! Porridge for the Catch. You like that stuff, eh?”
“It’s lovely,” I said, but it came out flat. I thought he was going to turn away then, but he continued to stand there, rather too close to my face, and watch me eat just like a dog hoping for a scrap. I took another spoonful and he followed me intently, grinning, then turned around and grinned at the other Riders. When he looked back, I noticed a flash from his mouth and saw that one of his teeth seemed to have been replaced by a brass round of ammunition.
“So, Jonny X, you want to know why you are here, eh?” He smiled.
“Yes, that would be good.”
He seemed to find this funny and repeated it more loudly for the others to hear. “He wants to know why he’s here!” The Riders all smiled, happy to play along with him for now. “We shoot the hell out of a bar and give him a flying lesson and he wants to know why he’s here!” The others continue
d to smile in a self-congratulatory kind of a way and I nodded uncertainly, not ready for this change of mood.
“I’m Jonny X; I want to know why I’m here!” yelped the Rider—an impression that bore no resemblance to me at all. He was on a roll now. “Why am I here?” he cried starting a weird walk. “I’m Jonny X, why am I here? I must be here for some reason!”
A gunshot choked all life from the atmosphere.
Bits of ceiling sifted to the floor in the dead, severed silence, and the chirpy one was left marooned in the middle of the room, a forced smile stuck to his face like a bit of tape. The bearded Rider resheathed his smoking shotgun on his back.
“We’re professionals. We’re not some kind of fucking circus.”
“Professionals,” echoed War. “Professionals,” he enunciated again, right in the face of the chirpy one. He took a chair and scraped it along the floor toward me and sat down. The atmosphere was roller-coastering wildly, and I had no idea what was going through their minds, or how dangerous this all was; but I sensed that this was probably how they lived from day to day, in a jumble of drama and confusion. They filled in time with it, feeling it was somehow necessary to always push the boundaries.
The small, jumpy one who didn’t want to be called Pestilence looked at me from the pinball table where he had ended up and grinned. Once again, I felt like I caught a flash of the brass round of ammunition stuck there in place of one of his teeth, and the image went into my head in one lump, as though I had unexpectedly swallowed it whole.
War put his mouth next to my ear. “We have a little job for you, Jonny X,” he whispered, and I realized no one else could hear him. “A nice, simple little job.”
I sighed because, frankly, I couldn’t see that whatever he was likely to suggest was going to be “simple” or indeed “nice.” I didn’t think they had got me here to weed a window box or something.
“Know what we are?” cried the jumpy one from across the room.
“Leave it,” cut in the Beard.
“We’re the chosen ones,” he said, grinning. “We are the four Riders. You understand?”
I felt War breathe into my ear without paying any heed to anyone else.
“We need help with a very special target,” he whispered, raiding my thoughts so that all I heard was his voice. Automatically, I ate the porridge.
“What are you saying?” called the bearded one. “Don’t tell him the target, all right? The Double E gave instructions for us to wait.”
“Our target,” whispered War, pressing on softly and pausing only to wet his lips, “our target is…God.” His voice was barely audible even an inch from my ear, then he finally pulled back, smiling.
“God?” I coughed, in the midst of some porridge.
“You told him?” growled the Beard. “I don’t believe you just fucking told him! Fucking mental case amateur.”
“We have been hired to assassinate God,” whispered War, unperturbed. “The creator of the entire fucking universe. And you, little man, are the key!”
The bearded Rider pulled him back by the shoulder. “You’re a liability.”
“No, no, no. I am a professional.” War smiled. “Pro-fess-ion-al.”
I felt a wave of cold uncertainty sweep over me. Something was very wrong here. This was definitely not the sort of situation they teach you how to deal with at night school, although I’m quite certain they could get a reasonable grant if they chose to start a course. No doubt a sizeable group of married mothers would dutifully sign up and be rather too conscientious about the whole thing.
“What do you say to assassinating God, Package? Reckon you got the guts?” added the one who didn’t want to be called Pestilence.
I nodded imperceptibly, hoping to buy some time, while inside my head I was shouting, You’re all bonkers! You’re all bonkers! You’re all completely bonkers!
“What about your house?” he went on. “You do that? You get that organized?”
“No,” I murmured.
“No? What about the girl from the chopper? She know you?”
“No.”
“All very weird. No one steals houses anymore, not without us knowing about it.”
“Forget it,” droned the bearded one. “Now, we have things to plan.”
“No way am I going clothes shopping with him again,” Famine said.
“All right, cool it.” And he turned back to me. “So, now you know all about it, Jonny X. We’ll see you in the morning for some action.”
And with that, he caught me with a thumping uppercut.
I half heard his fist connect with my jaw before I leapt into a thick, black swirl of unconsciousness.
6
In this dream I was alone, and the sunlight reflected in a blinding sheet off the wide, curving field of smooth snow.
I glanced at my feet and saw I had on my old climbing boots, the ones that had worn out years ago, and over them were the familiar, hard-to-tighten blue crisscross straps of my crampons. I was breathing hard, drawing in huge lungfuls of air that seemed to be light and empty of any substance. My legs ached, feeling heavy and bulky as I pushed methodically through the caking snow. The slope wasn’t unusually steep but I stopped after a while to regroup my senses, leaning on the top of my ice ax and adjusting my hood and snow goggles with my left hand as best I could while still wearing my clumsy overmitts.
It was then I saw the figure plodding away up the slope ahead of me. For a second I was disoriented, wondering who it could be, then suddenly I knew. It was Eli’s brother, Jack, and we had come out here together. While I was watching he stopped, turned toward me, put his ice ax above his head and pointed excitedly. I stood there and smiled, just savoring the moment, wondering what he had seen. It was so good, being here. It was better than good. I turned and felt a lash of excitement as I glimpsed the vista he’d been pointing at.
We were above most of the other peaks now, and could look across mile after mile of sculpted white mountains, sleek and graceful with their pure hard sides and pitted edges, shading to black where the rocks poked through. It was like looking down into the jaws of time. A sharp, crisp, snapping crack came from somewhere, followed by a low ominous rumble that ran around the inside of my head. I turned back to look up the slope, but Jack was swept from view amid a wash of snow that was thrown up by the boiling noise. I struggled to breathe. I was coughing. The explosion seemed to carry on ricocheting inside my head and I fought against it, now knowing it was a dream, but I couldn’t seem to shake it off. I battled with it, but it was like being trapped inside something I couldn’t control.
I kept going, fighting it, and suddenly my eyes opened and I was breathing heavily.
7
It was dark and I was awake. Just.
There was dust everywhere, and my eyes were still heavy with sleep and fought to make sense of anything. A small pile of rubble seemed to have collapsed in the corner, coughing up more dust in bulging clouds. I heaved myself up and berated my mind for not being up to speed more quickly. More noise. Something metal falling.
Wherever I was, it was all but destroyed and the explosion had been real. I had sucked it into my dream. A small light danced about in the darkness, picking out fallen beams and snapped pipes until it settled on me. It looked like a tiny, blinding, shooting star. A black-gloved hand appeared with the fingers outstretched, and a woman’s voice said: “Come with me if you want to buy a set of encyclopedias.”
I was knocked sideways and backwards and several other directions in confusion.
“I really don’t want to buy any encyclopedias,” I said, groggily. “I don’t have the shelving, for one thing.”
“We have,” she said, “about ten seconds to get out of here before a sizeable proportion of hell breaks loose, and I don’t mean the cafeteria bit.”
I thought about it for roughly a tenth of an instant, then grabbed her hand. She forcefully yanked me up and I flapped after her like a kite pulled by a seven-year-old on a windless day. Rub
ble lay strewn in ankle-snapping piles, and my feet scuffed and floundered on the uneven surface as we flew into the impenetrable dust.
God knows how she has any idea where we are going, I thought.
There were shouts from somewhere, and the dull, empty, hollow explosion of a shotgun firing, and more rubble falling. I was accosted by the image of the jumpy Rider leering at me with that damned round of ammunition stuck in among his teeth, and it finally woke me up, as if lightning had lit up my mind and set fire to the remains of my sleepiness. Was this woman rescuing me? And if so why? And then it occurred to me just how mad the Riders would be—like a bunch of bears that have just found out they’ve had their honey stolen. Along with their wallets.
Another gunshot cracked the air, this time closer, and my lungs ached. My mind was still playing catchup with events, and I realized this had to be the same woman who had come out of the helicopter and tried to sell me those encyclopedias. It had only just clicked. Somehow I was being rescued by an encyclopedia saleswoman.
We ducked under a fallen beam and slid into a long, empty room. For a sliver of a second, part of my brain tracked away from everything and saw how the moonlight coursed in through the tall windows, picking out the swirling dust in long shafts. Then I felt my feet ache as we clattered over the wooden floor down to the far end. The noise echoed flatly and reminded me of being in a school gym. I was beginning to feel an excruciating pain creeping up my arm as she held my wrist with the weight of a felled redwood.
We slammed, thwick-thwacking, through a set of double doors, and she hooked me sharply right as, almost immediately, the doors exploded off their hinges under a barrage of fire. She skidded to a halt and looked me in the eyes. I thought she was about to say something, but instead—with hardly a flicker of movement—she somehow jettisoned me out of an open window, headfirst.