by Rick Jones
"Seeing that you're a Stranger and all, the rule of thumb in this here bar is that the new guy has to buy a round of beers for everyone."
"Yeah, well, I'm not the new guy. I'm just someone who is passing through, that's all."
The face on the large man quickly shifted to something more menacing. "Now that's not real friendly like. We don't cater to those who are unfriendly in this here town." The large man stood to his full height, somewhere in the neighborhood of six-six, and he was big, perhaps from lifting all those engines over the lifetime. But the Stranger knew that no matter how large this man was, he was no threat to him.
"Now, we don't need no trouble here, Billy-Joe," stated the bartender.
The large man turned to the bartender and stared him down with hard impact. "Now you stay out of this, Jimmy-Ray. This don't concern you."
"It does when it's my place," he said, putting the beer-mug size glass in front of the Stranger. "At’ll be five bucks. Gratuity’s not included in the price, either."
The Stranger took out a ten dollar bill from a large fold of money, and proffered it to the bartender. "Keep the change," he told him.
When the bartender walked away, it didn't go without notice from the brothers that the Stranger was in possession of a great deal of cash.
"Seems to me that you got the means to be rightly friendly by buying us all a round of beers.” When the large man took a step forward, his two brothers who were equally as large got to their feet.
The Stranger could not afford a confrontation, not now, especially when he carried something of great importance in his pocket. So he feigned a smile at the approaching man, the mock smile stopping the big man in his tracks. "I'll tell you what," the Stranger told them, raising his finger and looping it through in the air, the body English behind it saying rounds for everyone. And then to the bartender, "How about a round of beers for these fine young men?”
The bartender nodded. "Coming up," he said. "No you set yourself down, Billy-Joe. The man's been rightly friendly. And he tips well, too."
The big man’s features remained hard as his eyebrows dipped sharply over the bridge of his nose. Over time this particular characteristic softened, the hardness melting away to a face that was, without a doubt in the Stranger's mind, nothing more but fabricated congeniality.
When the large man returned to the table and sat down with his brothers, the Stranger could hear them speaking in hushed tones, which was soon followed by laughter and snickers. But the Stranger didn't care. In thirty minutes they would be dead anyway.
After sipping on his make-believe Coke or Pepsi, the soda tasting like neither, the Stranger reached into his coat pocket and removed a glass vial that had been dipped in black paint, so that its contents could not be seen within. And then he placed it on the tabletop. Removing a small business card that was blank on both sides, he wrote something on it, folded the card in half so it resembled a tent, and placed the folded card over the glass tube.
Standing, the Stranger offered the brothers a nod of good-bye with a tiny inclination of his head, which brought a derisive comment from Billy-Joe, and follow-up laughter from his brothers, before he left the establishment.
When he got to his Jeep he put on his Bluetooth and turned it on. "It's me," he said, starting the engine and putting the vehicle in reverse.
"Where are you?" asked the Navigator.
"I'm on my way out of Bensenville," he returned.
"Very good. And the package?"
The Stranger smiled, one side of his mouth training up into a sardonic grin. "I left it as a tip," he told them. The Stranger stepped hard on the gas and sped by the fountain, which caused the raven to take flight, and made his way to the access road and away from Bensenville, a perfect place for Ground Zero, a place where there were no cameras and bone dry of technology. It was also an area completely isolated so that the collateral damage would be held to a minimum.
"Very good," repeated the Navigator. "Human nature will do the rest. You did all you could do, Ezekiel. Now it's time to come home."
The man behind the wheel of the Jeep took the rises and falls of the landscape, putting as much distance between him and the town as possible, wondering if the brothers had let the genie out of the bottle.
He smiled.
#
As soon as he disappeared, the bartender made his way toward the stranger's table with a damp rag to wipe the table clean, saw the folded card, and read the penmanship that was scrawled on it. It read: Here's your tip. As soon as he lifted the card he saw the glass tube, picked it up by pinching the vial between his thumb and forefinger, and shook it.
"Now what you got there, Jimmy Ray?" asked one of the brothers.
Jimmy Ray simply looked at the tube with a questioning look, tweaking his brow into folds of flesh. "Now why would a young fella like that leave something like this behind?"
"Whatcha got there?" asked Billy-Joe.
The bartender shook the container. "That's weird,” he said. “It don’t feel like there’s anything inside."
Billy-Joe made his way toward the bartender with a beer mug in his hand and reached for the vial. But Jimmy Ray held the vial away from him.
"Now you hold your horses there, Billy-Joe." But Billy-Joe didn't hold his horses. With his free hand he reached out and snatched the tube away from the bartender's hand, and held it out with an outstretched arm due to waning vision. And then he shook it, hard, eventually making admission that Jimmy Ray was right, the tube was empty, so he handed it back to the bartender.
Returning to the bar with the vial in hand, Jimmy Ray tossed the damp rag aside, toyed with the plastic cap and scraped away the sealant, until it eventually popped free. He then tipped the vial over to shake the contents into his open palm. But nothing came out. The vial was empty. "Oh, yeah,” he said. "It's as hollow as your head, Billy-Joe."
"That's a hell of a tip he left you, Jimmy Ray.” The statement from Billy-Joe caused an eruption of laughter between the brothers. “Hell of a tip.” Then: “I toldja it was empty.”
But Billy-Joe was wrong. In fact, he had never been so wrong in his entire life.
That vial, which Jimmy Ray had just tossed into the trash, contained more demons than Pandora's Box.
#
Bensenville, New Mexico
1:34 PM
When the pickup truck entered Bensenville through the rear access road, the two occupants, both brothers, Dana and Andrew, with Andrew being twelve years older than his sibling, quickly noted that the entire landscape was covered with dust the color of ash, and settled as fine as talcum powder, which layered the grounds, fountain and rooftops. The entire area was cast in gray as small particles of ash drifted lazily from a cloudless sky, the tiny fragments moving like snowflakes that accumulated against the windshield, which prompted Andrew to use his wipers, which smeared powdered ash across the glass with the arcing sweeps that eventually blocked his view.
At the top of the rise the driver pulled the vehicle over to the fountain, got out of the pickup, and, along with his younger brother, noted that the ram they had bagged earlier that morning in distant plains and now lying in the truck’s bed, was coated in gray, its fawn color gone. The accumulation was raining down that quick.
Andrew look skyward and saw no source for this odd snowing of ash, since the sky was uniformly blue and without a cloud to be seen anywhere. Yet here they were, the flakes drifting.
Dana, a young man in his late teens and a face so badly pimpled with pustules threatening to erupt, wiped his fingertips against his clothing that were beginning to turn gray as the dust began to cling to him. "What's going on here, Andy?" he asked.
Andrew, his eyes remaining heavenward, shook his head, the man obviously puzzled. "I don't know," he finally said. As he stood there, flakes began to settle on the crown of his head, turning the color of his raven hair to the color of ash, the color of gray.
And then he began to scan the town and quickly took note that everything w
as covered with ash, including the landscape, which could be seen as far as his eyes could see. Moving away from the truck and fountain with Dana shadowing him, they took the steps necessary to venture inside Jimmy Ray’s, the men leaving a trail of footprints along the accumulation that was as fine as moon dust, and tracked the ash inside the bar.
And like the outside, the interior was no different—with the tables, chairs and the countertop covered with dusting the color of deadened ash.
The entire atmosphere was clouded as dust motes circled the air in lazy eddies, creating a scrim wall reminiscent of a cloudy haze.
Sitting at a table to their right sat three bodies, each slouching over a glass of beer. Yet their clothes appeared too large for them and hung over their frames like drapery. When Andrew walked toward the table for further inspection, he immediately saw that the flesh of their hands did not appear right, but aged and wrinkled and flat, as if they were boneless. Beneath the bodies were puddles of dark fluid the color of grape and burgundy, the viscous drippings coming from every orifice as the bodies bled out, and the stench was paramount, like a cesspool on a hot summer day.
"Andy—” Dana cut himself short, sensing something wrong.
But Andrew raised a hand to stop him from adding anything further.
Taking a few tentative steps closer, Andrew could see that the bodies beneath their clothes seemed to have dissolved, their legs and arms no bigger than broomsticks. And the moment he looked upon their faces he immediately felt his scrotum crawl. Beneath full heads of hair their skulls appeared to have softened to the texture of clay, the once sharp angles and the marginal sloping of the brow seemed to have melted beneath the skin like the tallow of wax. Their faces were highly disfigured and asymmetrical with one eye lower than the other. And their mouths were horribly lopsided, which gave them all the appearance that they were smiling with malicious amusement.
Andrew backpedaled without taking his eyes off the bodies, then pivoted on his heels and raced out of the bar with Dana calling out his name.
Inside the lounge, the dead continued to smile.
CHAPTER SIX
Saint Viator’s Church, Las Vegas, NV
3:47 PM
On the same day that a small town had died a horrible death, Kimball Hayden was finishing the carpentry work on a donation box. Its dimensions were the size of a breadbox with beveled edges, polished brass hinges, a hasp, and several coats of cherry-wood finish that gave it shiny appeal. Using money he earned as a day laborer, he created a small chest with exemplary craftsmanship, putting as much love and effort into his labor as he did managing his team as a Vatican Knight, which he sorely missed.
It had been several months since he last led his team into France to take out a vicious human trafficker, a man by the name of Jadran Božanović. But in the end when the objectives had been achieved with Božanović still alive to live and prey another day, Kimball decided damnation over salvation by going after the Croatian and killing him, choosing justice over law.
So having chosen to kill a man who preyed on those who couldn’t protect themselves, a man who would continue to steal away the souls and the free will of others, Kimball believed himself to become an abomination in the eyes of God the moment he killed Božanović, a man so diseased with evil that he was nothing more than a blight to mankind.
Kimball then closed his eyes and sighed through his nose, wishing for a life he once had, as leader of the Vatican Knights, sometimes feeling regret and sometimes not, believing that such man as Jadran Božanović needed to be extinguished from the face of the planet. But today he felt regret, knowing that if he hadn’t allowed his temper to guide him on that day, then he would be manning his team inside the Vatican and addressing them on how to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves.
In essence, he was caught in a moment of self-pity.
“It’s beautiful,” a voice said.
Kimball’s eyes snapped wide. Sister Abigail was standing beside him wearing her habit and wimple.
“Thank you, Sister,” he said. “I appreciate it.”
Sister Abigail traced her fingers along the box. “It appears that you have quite a talent in carpentry,” she told him.
“Yeah, well, unfortunately the market in construction right here in Vegas is almost nonexistent. No jobs.”
Sister Abigail turned to face him. Her cherubic face with skin as smooth as porcelain enamored him, always pinning her with a stare, his eyes often wandering over her features. By the time he realized that he held his gaze far too long, he always cast his eyes toward the floor and blushed.
With a preamble of a smile, Sister Abigail stepped away and noted the additional repairs Kimball did to the entryway, such as fixing the door so that it no longer hung at an odd angle. “Seth,” her voice held a hint of curiosity to it. “Why do you choose to live the way you do?” she asked him.
The question seemed to catch him off guard. “Choose to live like what?”
She turned to him. “Why does a man like you, a man not given to drug or drink, a man with obvious skills, choose to live in the streets?”
Kimball hesitated a brief moment before answering. “Sometimes, Sister Abigail, a man who has crosses to bear is best to carry them alone.”
She cocked her head. “Sometimes, Seth, a man with crosses to bear is a man with little hope or faith, and is afraid to ask God for forgiveness when God would certainly carry the burden until the grief of that burden is lifted.”
“You have no idea, Sister, how hard I tried. Or how many times I’ve taken a positive step forward, only to end up taking two steps back. How can I ever get ahead if I can’t get even?”
“It begins and ends by forgiving yourself, Seth. No matter what you did in the past, the future has yet to be written. What you did here at Viator’s this week is a wonderful step toward redemption.”
Kimball sighed.
Then: “Tell me, Seth? What have you done to cause a man of good heart to lose faith?”
“Forgiveness,” he said simply.
“From God?”
He shook his head. “From myself.” Kimball then stepped over to the donation box and grazed his fingertips over its surface. “The hardest thing for any man to do,” he went on, “is to forgive himself.” Then after a moment of silence, he made a stark admission. “And I’ve done horrible things,” he told her. “Things I could never forgive myself for doing.”
Sister Abigail sidled up to him. “If you’re truly repentant—”
“Then God has already forgiven me,” he finished. “I know. I’ve been told that many times before. And many times thereafter I always do something to put another stain on my soul.”
When Sister Abigail put a gentle hand on his shoulder, Kimball closed his eyes and felt something alien crawl inside him. It was peace. “Are you running from the law?” she asked him.
He nodded. “No.” But he clearly omitted the fact that if the U.S. government got hold of him for the secrets he kept as a government assassin, then the answer would be completely different. But as far as the government was concerned, Kimball Hayden had died a long time ago in Iraq. What he was doing was running from himself. But no matter how far or how fast he ran, his past always caught up and clung to him like a cancer that had been cut away, and then returned.
Sister Abigail moved away so that she could measure Kimball in his entirety.
When Kimball saw this he said, “What?”
She smiled. “You’re a mystery, Seth. In fact, I don’t even know your last name.”
“It’s just . . . Seth.”
“Well, Seth, I’d like to get to know the man a little and leave the mystery behind.”
“What is it about me that you want to know?”
“Well, why don’t you tell me about your family? That would be a start.”
His face suddenly dropped, the topic an obvious sore spot. “There’s not much to talk about in that department,” he told her.
“We all have a moth
er and a father,” she led him. “Why don’t we start there?”
Kimball hesitated. Then: “Both dead. My mother died when I was young. And my father, my biological father, was nothing to rave about. So I moved on without either one, only to fall into the hands of another who took me in when I was at my lowest point.”
“A good friend?”
“More like a surrogate father.” Images of Bonasero Vessucci flashed through his mind’s eye, quick snippets from the moment when they met inside a small bar in Venice, to the time he last saw him and then committed himself to damnation by killing Jadran Božanović, which went beyond the protocols of the Vatican.
“Is he still alive?”
He looked at her with obvious anguish in his eyes. “He is.”
Seeing this, she gave him a questioning look. “What’s wrong, Seth?”
“It’s complicated,” he said.
“Try me.”
Kimball looked ceilingward as his mind worked to find the right words. Then: “Like I told you, I’ve done terrible things in my life.” When he spoke he was hoping that his admission would not push her away from him. “And I mean horrible things. Things he could never forgive me for because I went against his wishes.”
Surprisingly, Sister Abigail reached out a hand and gently grabbed his forearm, pulling him closer. “You’re ashamed,” she simply said.
“I don’t have the courage or the strength to look him in the eyes and see the pain that I’ve caused him.”
“Do you know for sure that you caused him any pain at all?”
“Like I said, it’s complicated. Trust me when I say that he has the utmost moral values. And what I’ve done, Sister Abigail, no matter how much he loves me, can never be forgiven.”
“Seth,” now she sounded concerned. “Did you take a man’s life?”
Several.
“Please, Sister, all I ask is that you give me my privacy. What I do for Saint Viator’s I do because I want to, and because I enjoy it.”