Taste of Wrath

by Matt Wallace

  By the time he’s finished, Bronko is weeping silently.

  Nikki is quick to stand up from her seat and wrap her arms around him, or at least attempt to encircle his massive frame. Bronko holds her like a cherished daughter.

  “None of us are here because we have to be, Chef,” she assures him. “We’re here because we want to be, because this is where we belong.”

  “She’s right, Chef,” Lena adds.

  That sentiment emanating from her is enough to shock Bronko’s tears into abatement. He stares at her over the top of Nikki’s perfectly formed victory rolls, the reddened eyes behind their glassy sheen watching her curiously.

  “We belong here,” Lena confirms. “All of us.”

  That seems to satisfy Bronko on a level he can’t even vocalize, or at least he doesn’t try. Choking back whatever tears remain, he pats Nikki on the back, and the two of them return to their seats.

  “Thanks, y’all,” he says to the table.

  Each of them raises whatever glasses they have without any of them being told to do so. It just seems to feel right to everyone gathered there.

  “To the Chef!” Dorsky toasts.

  The sentiment is echoed by each of them before they all drink.

  “Is it time for dessert?” Pacific asks in the wake of the toast. “Because that’s where I’ve planted my flag.”

  He removes a package from his coat protected by crumpled aluminum foil and begins unwrapping it.

  “I smell fudge!” Nikki proclaims. “Are those brownies?”

  “Homemade with the secret ingredient,” Pacific confirms, passing the unwrapped package of dark, hastily cut squares to his right.

  “THC?” Cindy asks.

  “Love, brah,” Pacific assures her. “Love.”

  Examining one of the homemade confections, Bronko glowers down the table at Pacific. “Pac, no bullshit now, boy. Are these pot brownies?”

  Pacific’s perpetually mellow demeanor melts into something uncharacteristically somber. “I don’t want to lie to you, boss,” he says, equally solemn. “So I won’t. I’ll tell you the straight truth. . . . I do not remember.”

  Everyone laughs, Bronko loudest of all.

  The moment doesn’t last, or at least it has lasted as long as it can. There’s an electric sizzle above the center of the table, and Droopy Hound appears there in a flicker of static and animated color. His sagging, defeated jowls are hanging from a dark hood. The demonic cartoon is clad as the Grim Reaper, complete with comically crooked scythe.

  “They’re coming,” he announces in his dreary monotone voice without preamble.

  Bronko stands so quickly, his chair is skidded back five feet.

  “What’s coming?” he demands.

  “Allensworth, sir,” Droopy Hound explains. “He’s leading a procession of vehicles up Forty-third Avenue right now. They’re coming.”

  Nikki’s hands involuntarily cover her mouth. “Oh, my God.”

  Ritter and the rest of his team stand, reacting with military poise and efficiency.

  “How long?” Cindy asks the toon.

  “Perhaps fifteen minutes, ma’am. The streets appear to have been cleared for miles.”

  “Fuck!” Marcus curses. “I thought we’d have more warning.”

  “I did my best, sir,” Droopy Hound insists, though his trademark tone never falters.

  “We don’t have time to rally the troops,” Ritter says to Bronko.

  “Call ’em anyway,” Bronko instructs him. “All of ’em, anyone who’ll come. If they get here in time, they’ll be a help to whoever’s left. If not, it won’t matter.”

  The weight of those words stuns and quiets most of them, all except Ritter, Cindy, and Marcus, who spring into action, Moon eventually following on their heels.

  “Y’all know what to do,” Bronko says to the rest of them. “It’s battle stations. We went over this as best we could. Just do your jobs. That’s all I ever asked of any of you.”

  White Horse abruptly stands, licking fudge from his fingertips. “How about I buy y’all some time? Give the cavalry a chance to get here? Not my favorite analogy, ya understand, but under the circumstances—”

  “What are you talking about, Pop?” Little Dove asks, the initial shock on her face transformed into concern.

  “I’m going to go out there and meet them,” he calmly informs her. “Good ol’-fashioned guerilla tactic. I’ll hold ’em up as long as I can. Hit-and-run, like.”

  “That’s not part of the plan, White Horse,” Bronko says.

  “Neither was them showing up on our doorstep with no time to get situated or call in reinforcements.”

  “They’ll kill you!” Little Dove shouts at him.

  “That’s a lot of artillery coming our way,” Bronko reminds him. “What can you honestly do against that all by yourself?”

  “More’n you know, white man,” White Horse says with a grin and a wink. “Besides, my people have a saying. When you see the rattlesnake poised to strike, strike first.”

  “You just made that up!” Little Dove protests.

  “I read it on the Internet!” White Horse insists.

  “This isn’t a game, Pop!”

  White Horse sighs, his tone lowering rather than rising. “I know that. Listen to me now. We all have to deal with our destiny. I’ve put mine off longer’n anyone I know. I’ve helped you to the foothills of yours. You have to walk the rest of the way up that hill alone, whether I’m around or not. Tonight’s the night I finally face up to what I’ve been runnin’ from all these years.”

  Tears are spilling down Little Dove’s cheeks as she pleads with him. “I can’t lose you, too.”

  White Horse reaches up and cups her cheek in his hand, the rough edge of his thumb smoothing away the salty stains there.

  “I’m an old man,” he says, sounding as sincere and worldly as she’s ever heard him sound. “This is what happens, if we’re lucky. You have a whole family here. You’re not alone. I owe you so damn much, for everything I didn’t do and everything you did do for me, especially these past few months. You brought me back from the dead. There’s nothin’ those bastards can do to me. I only need one thing from this world now, and that’s for you to keep going, to live. If you can do that, it doesn’t matter what happens when I walk out there, y’hear?”

  His words do nothing to stem the flow of her tears, but Little Dove doesn’t protest further. Instead, she steps forward and clings to him, hard, burying her face in the denim of his jacket, reveling in the smell of tobacco and weed and a thousand nights at the racetrack that usually repels her.

  White Horse holds her close and kisses the top of her head. “I live as long as you live,” he whispers to her. “You’ll always find me in the Fourth World. I’ve taught you how.”

  Little Dove nods against his chest, sucking air as she attempts to regain control of her emotions.

  He carefully disengages her and steps back, offering his granddaughter a final, warm smile as he gently grips her arms.

  No one else speaks as White Horse turns around and walks away from them, his wearied gait carrying him like a broken-down gunfighter swaggering off to meet one final challenge.

  “Maybe,” Bronko whispers to himself as the old medicine man disappears from sight. “Maybe we got a shot.”

  AS ELOQUENT AS A RATTLESNAKE’S TAIL

  They’re rolling up Forty-third Avenue, a procession of half a dozen armored, matte-black vehicles. Most of them are troop carriers, squat and ugly conveyances with bulging steel plates designed to pack in as many soldiers as possible for safe delivery to the battlefield. The lead vehicle, however, is the kind a SWAT team would use to take down entire walls. It’s a six-ton tank with a fourteen-foot battering ram instead of a barrel. The manhole cover–sized steel plate on the end of the ram has been scrawled with the words WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?

  White Horse walks up the center line of an eerily deserted Long Island City street. The only sound that can
be heard for blocks in every direction is the hard soles of his boots clacking against the pavement. He wonders if they cleared these streets using mystical means, or whether they did what their kind has been doing in this country ever since enough of them piled off a leaky, shit-smelling boat: bully people from their path, destroying anything that could not or refused to move. Neither means would surprise him.

  He stops walking when he reaches the middle of the intersection of Forty-third Avenue and Twenty-first Street. White Horse expected his sour guts to be churning like butter mixed with gasoline by now; for all his bold words and courageous sentiment back at the dinner table, he was actually terrified down to his core. A large part of him, the aspect of indifference and cynicism and borderline nihilism he’d spent many decades perfecting, balked as he’d stood up to proclaim he’d head the enemy off at the pass. That part shrieked a torrent of curses so vile, he didn’t know he retained those words and phrases in his brain.

  In this moment, however, he feels only a warm sense of calm, something almost serene in its composure.

  As the battering ram approaches Twenty-first Street, White Horse wonders if they’ll attempt to simply roll over him, or even veer and ignore the lone, withered figure barring their path. He begins summoning that thing deep inside him, the portal he was born with that allowed him to call between worlds, to speak to what has gone beyond and seek its aid and wisdom (although, facing the perpetual twilight, White Horse suddenly wishes he’d spent more time harnessing that wisdom and less time simply demanding aid for his own purposes).

  To his surprise, when the battering ram enters the intersection, the hulking machine grinds to a stop, the rest of the procession halting behind it. The end of the ram is close enough for White Horse to see the chips in the painted letters.

  “I am White Horse!” he cries at the armored monstrosity. “The Earth sung its deepest secrets to my people while yours were cornholing goats and speaking in low grunts! And you’re standing between me and my last chance not to fuck everything up! That’s a bad place to be!”

  In response, the top hatch of the vehicle springs open and a partially cloaked head peers above it. White Horse can only see half the man’s face in the night, but he recognizes Allensworth from his many visits to Sin du Jour, especially that phony pitchman’s smile the man always wears.

  “Good evening, Mr. White Horse! It’s lovely to see you again. Are you just out for an evening missive? That’s a good thing for a man of your advanced years. I’m afraid your route is poorly chosen, however. Would you mind repairing yourself to the sidewalk?”

  “You should turn back, white man,” the old Hatałii warns him. “You won’t like how this all ends.”

  “Oh, but I will. This is the part I’m going to enjoy the most. This is all just for me. Yes, after the bother you’ve all caused me, tonight is like my birthday and Christmas all rolled up in one fine Turkish rug.”

  White Horse nods, his eyes falling on Allensworth like raining shrapnel. “So be it.”

  “I must admit, I am genuinely curious how precisely you imagine spirit magic will aid you in this situation. But perhaps that’s why your people stumbled when they found themselves beset by armored and mounted soldiers in the first place.”

  “If you can’t figure out how the spirits of a million pissed-off Navajo might come in handy in a fight like this, then you’ve never been in a fight like this, you steaming pile of elk shit.”

  Though he seems unperturbed, the smile never vacating his lips, Allensworth is silent for a prolonged moment.

  Finally, he says, “I’m going to run you over now. I’ve enjoyed our chat.”

  When White Horse raises his arms and opens his mouth, the voice that booms from it causes the very air to shake. Thunder cracks on the heel of his words and lightning seems to flash through the very street.

  It’s enough to cause Allensworth to tilt back, startled. He quickly dips his head back inside the tank and pulls the hatch shut.

  White Horse grins. In that moment, he feels like a young man.

  In that moment, he feels born anew with a clean slate stretching before him forever.

  He also knows forever won’t last very long at all.

  THE WAITING ROOM

  The lobby is the natural front line in any attack on Sin du Jour, so naturally that’s where Ritter, Marcus, and Cindy have been stationed. The three are bunkered behind the crescent-moon reception desk that has never, in anyone’s living memory, hosted an actual receptionist. Ritter keeps an eagle’s eye on the front of the building as his brother loads shells into the feeding tube of a shotgun and Cindy idly sharpens the blade of her tactical tomahawk.

  “What are you loading into that beast?” she asks Marcus.

  “It’s my own mix. Chupacabra teeth, dragon nail, and about ten bucks’ worth of pure silver dimes. There’s nothin’ these sisters won’t kill.”

  “Now, that’s sexy.”

  Marcus grins.

  “So,” he begins, tentatively. “If we live through this . . . I mean . . . I’m gonna score, right?”

  Cindy shakes her head. “Damn, boy, it’s good to know you’re bringing your A game for me.”

  “Jesus, Marcus,” Ritter says under his breath, too embarrassed to look at either of them.

  “C’mon! We’re facing a pitched battle for our lives against overwhelming odds. It’s the good guy underdogs versus the ultimate evil. All that shit. How does this not put me over the top, points-wise?”

  “I’ll take it under consideration,” Cindy says, refusing to offer him even a subtle grin.

  “That’s all I’m requesting here.”

  “Are you done, you sad little man?” Ritter asks.

  “You say ‘sad,’ I say I’m a man who has his priorities firmly—”

  Ritter hisses at him to be quiet, his demeanor shifting subtly but noticeably into a far more urgent mode.

  Marcus immediately falls silent and levels his shotgun, peering over the reception desk.

  Cindy does the same, hefting her tomahawk in her dominant hand and unsheathing a large combat dagger with the other.

  “What did you see?” Marcus whispers, the street appearing utterly serene to his eyes.

  “Don’t look, listen,” Ritter instructs him.

  It’s a distinct whirring sound, faint at first, but growing louder and louder by the moment.

  Through the lobby windows, all three of them watch as a giant battering ram, ripped free of its hulking metal host, twirls like a fourteen-foot baton down the street until it spears both the front and back windshields of a car parked on the curb in front of Sin du Jour, exploding both panes of safety glass and causing the car’s alarm to screech and flash in protest.

  For several moments, it’s the only sound echoing in the lobby as the trio stares through the window in shock.

  “The old man?” Marcus finally asks.

  “Apparently, White Horse had more game than I ever gave him credit for,” Cindy says.

  Ritter activates the mystical security panel embedded in the reception desk with a wave of his hand.

  Droopy Hound appears in the middle of the lobby, now clad in a firefighter’s uniform.

  “Things appear to be heating up, don’t they, sir?” he asks, his nasal, dreary tone belying the play on words.

  “Seal the building,” Ritter orders him.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t?” Ritter demands. “You damn sure did before. I was ready to try and run through a brick wall because of you.”

  “Something is interfering with my ability to cast those protective fields, sir. Something more powerful than the charms over which I was given control.”

  “Well, shit,” Cindy says

  “What the hell can you do, then?” Marcus asks the demonic cartoon.

  The scantest grin spreads through Droopy Hound’s saggy jowls.

  “I can watch, sir,” he says before his animated form fills wit
h static and fades from view.

  “I’m gonna ace that fuckin’ dog, I swear,” Marcus promises.

  “Later,” Ritter says. “Right now, we hold the line.”

  Outside, the procession of troop carriers begins rolling by. The first two speed up and disappear down the street, while the third screeches to a halt directly before the front entrance.

  Ritter watches the other two go. “They’re headed around back!”

  “That’s not our gig,” Cindy says. “We hold the lobby. You just told us. Everybody gonna have to do their part.”

  Ritter nods, knowing she’s right even if the uncertainty of what’s about to happen to the others twists his guts into balloon-animal shapes not found in nature.

  Figures begin piling out of the troop carrier, rushing towards the entrance. It’s too dark outside to make out anything except stray heads of blond hair, but none of them appear to be carrying weapons and all of them possess human, or at least bipedal, silhouettes.

  “Party time,” Marcus says, lining up the sights of his shotgun, centering the entrance.

  They begin breaking through the lobby doors and windows like something from an old zombie movie. As glass breaks and wood shrapnel rips free, Ritter, Cindy, and Marcus begin to spy identical red faces and irradiated gold hair like birds’ nests perched atop human skulls. All of them are clad in the same dark suits and red ties.

  “Okay, then,” Cindy calmly assents. “We’re being set upon by a horde of the cotdamned POTUS. Fine.”

  “They’re meat puppets with gremlin drivers!” Ritter yells above the commotion. “Go for the sternum!”

  The double doors break free of their hinges and topple to the lobby floor. Half a dozen presidential meat puppets pour through the entrance while another half-dozen begin climbing through the shattered windows.

  Marcus takes aim at the one farthest out front and shoots him in the chest. The force of the shotgun’s output literally knocks the meat puppet out of his shoes and splatters the walls with gelatinous, bloodless shrapnel. The body hits the floor, motionless, the front of its torso half-hollowed by the blast. A tiny, three-pronged green claw reaches out from inside that cavity, trembling and running with iridescent green blood.